Spinoza and the Problem of the Infinite

Abstract

Spinoza has been, and still is, susceptible to radically opposed interpretations. Of course, this is true of most great literary and philosophical figures, but with Spinoza the distance between opposed views is unusually dramatic, and is perhaps greater than with any other philosopher. Indeed, it can only be seen as a paradox that Spinoza has been described as both the ‘universally infamous’ atheist (Hume) and ‘ein gotttrunkener Mensch’, a God-intoxicated man (Novalis).¹ Likewise, Hegel sees Spinoza as the precursor to German idealism, and refers easily to ‘Spinoza’s idealism’, and yet McFarland complains of Spinoza’s ‘icy scientism’, and effectively accuses him of a straightforwardly reductive materialism by claiming that Spinoza’s God is a res extensa, an extended thing.² What is at stake in these divergent interpretations is not the technical detail of what Spinoza wrote, but its wider theological implications, and the meaning of those implications for those who wish to accommodate Spinoza to their own wider concerns.

The passage from the absolute to the {separated} finite, this is the difficulty, which who shall overcome? This is the chasm which ages have tried in vain to overbridge. (ODI 11)