An Examination of the Singular in Maimonides and Spinoza: Prophecy, Intellect, and Politics [1st ed.] 9783030494711, 9783030494728

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An Examination of the Singular in Maimonides and Spinoza Prophecy, Intellect, and Politics Norman L. Whitman

An Examination of the Singular in Maimonides and Spinoza

Norman L. Whitman

An Examination of the Singular in Maimonides and Spinoza Prophecy, Intellect, and Politics

Norman L. Whitman Department of History, Humanities, and Languages University of Houston - Downtown Houston, TX, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-49471-1    ISBN 978-3-030-49472-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49472-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Tower in Orange and Green, 1922, Paul Klee Cover design by: Artokoloro / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Lindsey

Acknowledgments

My best friend, greatest love, and confidante, Lindsey Reymore, enriches my life in so many ways, including this work. Her beautiful and critical mind invigorates my passion for inquiry and is a resource from which to develop myself. I rely on her so much, and I am grateful for her review of this work. Of course, I must also thank my teacher and friend, Idit Dobbs-­ Weinstein, for her instruction and care; she is in many ways the source of this project. Most of all, I thank her for instilling in me the awareness that philosophy is a difficult practice of striving to manage one’s living and thinking so that one does not succumb to pleasing prejudice and dogma. Essential to this way of philosophizing is a critical engagement with ethical-­political inheritances so as to have some self-awareness and equity. As she has often noted, pace Walter Benjamin, to think and live philosophically, we must read history against the grain. With friends like Michael Brodrick, one can achieve so much. He is a true and selfless friend, who read many drafts of this work and provided constructive feedback. More than that, his caring friendship enables me to continue to strive. Likewise, I must thank my dear and oldest friend, David Lummus, for reviewing the last two chapters as well as my close friend, Terry Boyd. Additionally, I must thank my academic colleagues. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the Chair of the History, Humanities, and Languages Department at the University of Houston–Downtown, and my friend, Jeffrey Jackson, who discussed with me the ideas presented in this book. Also, I am grateful to have engaging colleagues at UHD, such

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as Andrew Pavelich and Joseph Westfall, who create an enriching environment for philosophy. Others of note in the field of academic philosophy, who provided helpful feedback on conference papers that became chapters in this work, are Julie Klein, Jason Aleksander, and Sean Erwin. Finally, I am forever grateful to my mother, Seranoosh Assadurian Whitman, and my late father, Thomas Whitman, whose boundless love continually affects me so as to grow, learn, and inquire.

Book Abstract

This work presents an alternative reading of the respective works of Moses Maimonides and Baruch Spinoza. It argues that both thinkers are primarily concerned with the singular perfection of the complete human being rather than with attaining only rational knowledge. Complete perfection of a human being expresses the unique concord of concrete activities, such as ethics, politics, and psychology, with reason. The necessity of concrete historical activities in generating perfection entails that both thinkers are not primarily concerned with an “escape” to a metaphysical realm of transcendent or universal truths via cognition. Instead, both are focused on developing and cultivating individuals’ concrete desires and activities to the potential benefit of all. This book argues that rather than solely focusing on individual enlightenment, both thinkers are primarily concerned with a political life and the improvement of fellow citizens’ capacities. A key theme throughout the text is that both Maimonides and Spinoza realize that an apolitical life undermines individual and social flourishing.

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Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 Prophecy and Intuition: Singular Knowledge in Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s Philosophy 11 3 Out of Many: Prophecy and Sovereign Authority in Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s Politics 47 4 A Singular Method: A Healing of the Soul and an Emendation of the Intellect109 5 The Demand of the Concrete: The Non-­Contingency of Language169 6 The “Place” of Reason227 Bibliography267 Index275

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Abbreviations

Abbreviations of Spinoza’s works are: E Ethics (P=Proposition, C=Corollary, and Schol=Scholium) TdIE  Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (Numbers=Paragraph Section) TTP Theological-Political Treatise TP Political Treatise Letter Letters PPC  Descartes’ “Principles of Philosophy” and Appendix Containing Metaphysical Thoughts Primary texts used for E, TdIE, PPC, and Letter: Baruch Spinoza, The Collected Works of Spinoza, Vol. 1, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley. (Princeton University Press, 1985) and Baruch Spinoza, The Collected Works of Spinoza, Vol. 2, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley (Princeton University Press, 2016). Primary text used for TTP and TP: Baruch Spinoza, Spinoza: Complete Works, ed. Michael L.  Morgan, trans. Samuel Shirley et  al. (Hackett Publishing, 2002). For Spinoza’s original Latin texts, see Spinoza Opera: Im Auftrag der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Ed. Carl Gebhardt, Vols. 1–4 (Carl Winter-Verlag, 1972). Abbreviations of Maimonides’ works are: Guide The Guide of the Perplexed EC Eight Chapters Primary texts used for the Guide: Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, Vols. 1 and 2, trans. Shlomo Pines (University of Chicago xiii

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Press, 1963). Primary text used for EC: Moses Maimonides, Eight Chapters in Ethical Writings of Maimonides, eds. Raymond L.  Weiss and Charles Butterworth, trans. Raymond L. Weiss and Charles Butterworth (Dover, 1975), 59–104. Please note that at times I switch from Curley’s translation to Samuel Shirley’s translation of Spinoza as well as from Pines’ translation to the Ralph Lerner, Muhsin Mahdi, and Joshua Parens’ translation of Maimonides.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Why and What Is the Singular When describing the greatest perfection of knowledge, virtue, and political unity in their works, Moses Maimonides and Baruch Spinoza consistently emphasize that these perfections have a quality that is singular, i.e. irreducible and unique. These perfections are singular in that they do not have the status as merely one among many. These perfections can neither be fully reduced to nor exhaustively explained by images or rational universal concepts, since both kinds of explanation situate perfection in some sense as one among many. An imaginative explanation situates perfection as a common image or opinion equal to others, and a rational explanation relates any perfection to a universal metaphysical reality that is ideally indifferent in application or identical in status. Even as philosophers committed to the necessity of reason, curiously, Maimonides and Spinoza argue that a discursive science built on universal demonstrations and concepts cannot fully express ultimate perfection, whether intellectual, ethical, or social. Both philosophers argue that explaining individuals and specific contexts through the use of abstractions which are drawn from those very same contexts would distort rather than fully express those specific concrete realities. For both, the complete suppression of natural individual circumstances so as to merely attain a universal transcendent ideal reality and perfection seems incomplete and unproductive for human perfection, i.e. the knowledge and the good of a concrete individual or society. Nevertheless, both philosophers © The Author(s) 2020 N. L. Whitman, An Examination of the Singular in Maimonides and Spinoza, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49472-8_1

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consistently reject imaginative explanations as too errant, accidental, and disruptive to provide stability and activity for the perfection of individuals and society. Despite their critiques of imaginative influences and the extrinsic material conditions that they involve, both philosophers argue that imagination and material conditions have an important part to play in whether an individual expresses perfection. Nonetheless, imagination and embodied conditions cannot express perfection merely as image or passive representation. Instead, imagination and one’s concrete form of living must be “transformed”1 into a singular expression that actively resists reduction to either errant image or a transcendental. Through this process, the actuality (or activity) present in passive modes of representation and concrete conditions may become intrinsic, necessary, and as (self-) active as possible, i.e. “perfect.” However, a singular irreducible expression does not fully detach from concrete conditions and actualities; the activity intrinsic in a singular perspective concurrently relates to and expresses physical conditions in a most perfect way. As a result, singularity does not represent transcendence and a complete suppression of physical activities/actualities but, rather, a rendering of these activities/actualities under their most active and expressive perspective. The achievement of this mode of living cannot be merely reduced to the mere acquisition of correct opinions or universal truths, since these would again represent a passive, extrinsic mode of living and orientation. The mere having of knowledge is too static to express singular perfection. Thus, both emphasize that in order to achieve singular “moments”2 of perfection, one must not only acquire virtuous and intellectual truths but also must continually strive by these truths as maxims so that an intrinsic (philosophical) way of life actually determines and intrinsically guides one’s life. The continual enactment of knowledge and virtue is essential to perfection, which, again, implies concrete management of and support from one’s conditions/context, but more importantly, this enactment implies the constant appetitive commitment to live intelligently. When individuals are able to perfect themselves with exceptional and careful self-management, they themselves become singular people. For both philosophers, these singular individuals have been commonly defined as prophets, sages, virtuous sovereigns, or perfect philosophers. For Maimonides and Spinoza, not only do these unique individuals express

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absolute singular knowledge, they also embody singular ethical-political virtue. Singular ethical-political virtue entails that a wise individual has managed their unique embodied historical, physical, and psychological conditions so as to generate and institute wisdom to perfect themselves and others. Whereas some have argued that for Maimonides and Spinoza, human perfection is solely derived from cognition of metaphysical truths,3 I argue that by examining the instances in which Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s address the singular, it reveals that historical, physical, psychological, and political conditions must be incorporated and properly managed to generate intellectual and ethical perfection. As a result, concrete conditions, such as history, politics, and ethical habituation, rather than being ancillary to metaphysical cognition, are primary or, at the very least, must be coordinated with metaphysical truth to generate intellectual and human perfection. A key claim that my work advances is that metaphysics and abstract reason alone cannot generate intellectual and human perfection. Rather, concrete conditions must be recognized as necessary for and, subsequently, included properly to achieve singular intellectual, ethical, and political virtue. Examining the singular allows us to see how each thinker is concerned more with the perfection of the complete individual, including the concrete sensible faculties and conditions.

A Skeptical Tradition In general, this work aligns with a skeptical reading of Maimonides and Spinoza.4 Most notably, Shlomo Pines and, more recently, Josef Stern have argued that Maimonides’ philosophy is concerned primarily with a way of living that in some way must engage with concrete practices, conditions, and subjects such as ethics, politics, and psychology to achieve complete happiness and human perfection.5 Inspired by others, who see Spinoza’s philosophy as similarly concerned with ethical-political flourishing, such as Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, I read Spinoza as well from a skeptical perspective. Dobbs-Weinstein argues, as I do, that, for Spinoza, ethical-­ political flourishing must be concurrent with intellectual understanding so that together they generate complete perfection.6 As these and other scholars have detailed, a skeptical reading primarily entails that, for Maimonides and Spinoza, knowledge of metaphysical realities cannot be fully attained and verified by an embodied knower through demonstrative reason. In particular, universals that ground rational demonstrations are products of human embodied knowers abstracting from

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particulars, and these abstractions can neither fully guarantee nor fully capture a metaphysical reality as presented in the abstract content of a universal. Although I agree with a skeptical reading of these thinkers and will present skeptical interpretations of Maimonides and Spinoza in this text, nonetheless, this work does not claim that metaphysics per se is impossible for Maimonides and Spinoza. Instead, it follows the lead of Maimonides and Spinoza, who consistently argue that the cognition of metaphysical and rational truths is insufficient to generate complete happiness and perfection for individuals and communities. Throughout the text, I will demonstrate how they consistently return to the question of individual and social perfection from the perspective of the singular, which requires the “transformation” of concrete activities into an irreducible and unique expression. An important question that supports a skeptical reading is that if the attainment or cognition of metaphysical truths is so real and perfecting, why do both thinkers continually return to focus on concrete activities, and subsequently, highlight the difficulty in attaining perfection without proper and continual management of physical conditions? Of course, by reading these two thinkers from a skeptical perspective, and emphasizing their shared focus on the singular, I draw these two thinkers rather close but so have recent scholars. In particular, Warren Zev Harvey has provided a seminal reading of Spinoza as a Maimonidean.7 Shlomo Pines, the originator of the skeptical interpretation of Maimonides, notes a close affinity between Maimonides and Spinoza: “[Spinoza] does Maimonides the honour, rarely or never vouchsafed to him in modern times, to disprove him […] [H]e is able to do this because he is prepared to adopt some of the presuppositions of Maimonides. He also pays [Maimonides] the, in a sense, greater compliment of adapting some of his ideas.”8 Recently, Jeffrey Bernstein has argued that Leo Strauss did not see Maimonides and Spinoza as radically opposed thinkers, but that for Strauss, Spinoza carries Maimonidean premodern thought into the modern era, thereby making Spinoza, to a considerable extent, premodern (i.e. Maimonidean).9 Despite these scholars’ works on the kinship between Maimonides and Spinoza, many others dispute a deep similarity between Maimonides and Spinoza. Chief among these critiques is Joshua Parens’ book, Maimonides and Spinoza: Their Conflicting Views of Human Nature.10 Additionally, a common view is that Spinoza’s critique of Maimonides in the Theological-­Political Treatise reveals a profound rejection of Maimonides’ philosophy, particularly Maimonides’ view of religion and

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prophecy—an argument developed by Steven Frankel.11 Suffice it to say, given my previous argument that Maimonides and Spinoza share a focus on singular perfection, I believe both have similar views of human nature, contra Parens. Furthermore, in this work, I show that Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s understandings of prophecy and a prophet law-giver, in fact, share a strong commitment to a naturalistic foundation for politics and religion. This work does not seek to directly refute the proposed divergence between Maimonides and Spinoza. Instead, it seeks to offer a reading of Maimonides and Spinoza through examination of a shared commitment to the singular. Whereas some scholars have addressed and examined the importance of singularity in Maimonides and Spinoza’s works, in many instances, they have only focused on a specific topic.12 Additionally, these scholars have not expressed their analysis under a systematic theme such as the concept of the singular. Using the concept of the singular to guide interpretation of Maimonides and Spinoza provides a more systematic and coherent representation of the importance and use of this idea in these thinkers. Notably, this interpretation suggests that a more complete representation of Maimonides and Spinoza cannot be based solely on the primacy of metaphysics and abstract rationalism. This challenges many accepted views of Maimonides and Spinoza and provides an alternative view. Not only will the examination of the singular in this work provoke a possible reinterpretation of each philosopher but also of their respective kinship to each other. As a result, it suggests greater commonalities between Maimonides and Spinoza through their shared commitment to a singular notion of truth and the good. Hopefully, this examination provides a new analytic concept and highlights texts in each thinker, some commonly known and less so, so that readers can approach these thinkers and their texts in a new critical light. Finally, this work aims to appeal to readers who are interested in shared philosophical concerns present in the medieval and early modern periods as well as continuity between the two, despite many claims that modern philosophy is radically different and novel. In particular, it suggests an implicit Maimonidean influence on Spinoza’s thought, which can be traced back to Judeo-Arabic medieval thought. In light of this, this book appeals to readers who are interested in non-Western foundations to Spinoza’s thought, contrary to a dominant view that Spinoza derived the majority of his innovations by responding to Christian and Cartesian sources. This text understands Jewish philosophy not merely as a

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secondary influence on major currents of philosophical thought but as a vibrant and important resource to understand major philosophical problems dealt with by a major secular thinker such as Spinoza.

Outline of Chapters As this work is an examination of the idea of the singular in various topics addressed by Maimonides and Spinoza, chapters may seem to be independent of one another. However, I have tried to unify the connection of topics as much as possible by building on and referencing different chapters throughout, so as to show the richness and explanatory power of the concept of the singular. Below is an outline of what to expect and how chapters may be unified. Second chapter: This chapter demonstrates how for Maimonides and Spinoza, perfect knowledge can neither be captured solely by rational nor imaginative means; examining how both eschew the reduction to either reveals a conceptual space in which the notion of the singular inhabits. Distilling how the singular operates to perfect both rational and imaginative activities shows how intellectual perfection must be unique and involve concrete conditions, including ethical-political conditions. Third chapter: The political philosophies of both thinkers show exemplary expressions of why ethical-political conditions are needed to generate (singular) perfection and that reason alone is unable to secure perfection. Nevertheless, if properly instituted and induced by social conditions, reason is required to achieve individual and social perfection; reason must be concurrent with social affects so that both can induce singular perfection of individuals and society by properly structuring the concrete desires of individuals. The concurrence of reason and political affects itself shows that virtuous societies are also singular, in that they are incapable of being reduced to mere imaginative associations or to indeterminate rational precepts. Fourth  chapter: Focusing on Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s respective epistemic methods reveals that rather than relying solely on the development of abstract reasoning so as to develop individual perfection, both philosophers develop therapeutic ethical-epistemic methods that seek to induce singular occasions of understanding in the continual management of one’s life. For both, method addresses and affects the concrete health and living of each individual so that they generate and express from their

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concrete conditions singular understanding and virtue. As a part of the philosophical way of living, method cannot be a detached scheme that reduces wisdom to an adept manipulation of abstract concepts but rather must enter into and transform the striving of potential knowers so that they prudentially seek singular perfections whenever possible. Both philosophers use the idea and love of God in their methods not only as a means to emend and restrain improper expectations of knowledge but also to redirect the desire to know, so that an awareness of one’s singular living is primary and should be continually cultivated. Fifth  chapter: The demand to continually address and cultivate concrete conditions so as to achieve singular perfection reveals that both philosophers are concerned with language, history, and culture. Rather than being contingent and disposable conditions to one’s individual and social perfection, these concrete realities are in a way necessary, or rather non-­ contingent, to the achievement of intellect and virtue. That is, these conditions cannot be merely disposable stages to rational enlightenment, but rather, they affect and orient one’s striving from which one may express singular understanding of one’s concrete historical context. Nevertheless, one must maintain an ambivalent or philosophical perspective toward these conditions, especially language, in order to express the strength of mind to manage these historical affects and use them to generate philosophical awareness. In particular, a wise individual must strive to maintain a cautionary awareness to language so that she is not drawn by her passive, but nonetheless, inescapable determinations. Although linguistic determinations and the value-claims they transmit are necessary because of our political natures, we must strive to control and rule them so as to generate a singular understanding resistant to mere passive reduction to social prejudices and egotistic evaluations. Sixth  chapter: A more skeptical reading of Maimonides and Spinoza will be presented in which I argue that reason and cognition of metaphysical truths derives from concrete concerns and activities. Because the amoral and a-rational foundation of human existence initiates the very need for reason and metaphysical order to guide and perfect our lives, the place of reason and metaphysics is in our continual striving. That perfection is not located in a metaphysical realm per se but in the singular, irreducible activity of concrete individuals.

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Notes 1. The term “transformed” does not fully capture the sense of the change because actual conditions are both passive and active so that under one aspect they may be passive and under another they are active. As a result, conditions rendered active and singular are not necessarily completed by achieving some teleological final state separate from the very activity present in immediate conditions. It would be inaccurate to say also that the “transformation” is completely irreversible, since actual conditions can revert to passive states so that in order to maintain an active and singular expression requires much work, ruling of present conditions, and continual striving. Nevertheless, a transformation in some sense occurs when one’s way of living resists reduction to passive representations and extrinsic conditions that would extinguish or diminish one’s singular reality. 2. Although singular perfection is expressed through concrete conditions and requires their realities from which to manifest itself, nevertheless, singular expressions are not reduced to mere temporal moments (duration) and imagistic representations of duration. The irreducible and unique quality of singular expressions is immediate and irreducible to any common standards of judgment such as time, aggregate of parts, and so on. 3. Heidi Ravven argues that Maimonides and Spinoza are committed to moral intellectualism in which one only seeks the cognition of universal theoretical truths so as to perfect oneself. The attainment or cognition of these universal theoretical truths transforms and can be the only source by which to perfect the whole person. She discounts ethics and habits as secondary or trivial to the achievement of intellectual and human perfection. See Ravven (2014, 142 and 151). Despite this, Ravven argues elsewhere that Spinoza is not a rationalist and is committed to a materialist ethics in which reason is deployed so as to educate and reform desire. Reason transforms the material desires and activities so as to generate intellect and freedom. See Ravven (1990). I agree with the second analysis presented by Ravven, but I will argue that ethical-political affects and critical epistemic practices are required to manage and realize the limits of reason so as to generate singular self-understanding. 4. See Pines (1979). See also Stern (2013). 5. Whereas Shlomo Pines argues that Maimonides supports primarily a bios praktikos, or a political way of life, as the avenue to perfection and happiness, diminishing the role of the intellectual life in attaining this, Josef Stern argues that Maimonides still supports an intellectual life as a regulative ideal (or “spiritual exercise”) that can guide one to express perfection—although, Stern does argue that concrete activities and care of self must be included in the achievement of happiness. See Pines (1979, 100),

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and see Stern (2013, 7–8). My work attempts to bring these two positions closer with an understanding of the singular. Singular perfection includes both ethical-political actions and intellectual apprehension/activity. Nevertheless, I would characterize my work ultimately as advocating for a bios praktikos, since the issue of desire is central to human ethical-political and intellectual perfection; desire and ignorance must be managed via ethical-political affects so that one strives by reason and for intellect. 6. See Dobbs-Weinstein (1994). In this article, Dobbs-Weinstein explains how both Maimonides and Spinoza are acutely aware of the need to address authority and ethical-epistemic practices so as to generate intellectual perfection. 7. Harvey (1981). 8. Pines (1968, 3). See also Frankel (2014, 79). For an exposition on Shlomo Pines’ connection of Maimonides to Spinoza, see Harvey (2012). 9. Bernstein (2015, 136–138). Bernstein notes that both seek contemplative apprehension (i.e. immediately affective intuition or intellect) rather than merely rational or imagistic knowledge. Ibid. (141–142). 10. Parens (2012). 11. See Frankel (2014). 12. For example, Heidi Ravven develops Etienne Balibar’s concept of transindividuality to argue that there is a singular dimension in Spinoza’s relational autonomy where individual and society merge but so as to generate unique individual actions and intellectual self-understanding not polluted by extrinsic pursuits and modes of perception. Ravven also suggests a connection between Spinoza’s relational autonomy and Maimonides’ political philosophy. See Ravven (2019). I agree generally with Ravven’s analysis that singular self-understanding derives from one’s relation to one’s concrete environment, but in this work, I examine how those concrete foundations induce and inform virtue and intellect. This may be something that Ravven would reject given her position that Maimonides and Spinoza are committed to moral intellectualism. Concerning Maimonides, Idit Dobbs-Weinstein has developed the concept of providential participation to explain how there are singular “moments” of perfection in a way “separate” from but informed by prior material conditioning/activity. See Dobbs-Weinstein (1995, 181).

Bibliography Bernstein, Jeffrey A. 2015. Leo Strauss on the Borders of Judaism, Philosophy, and History. Albany: SUNY Press. Dobbs-Weinstein, Idit. 1994. Maimonidean Aspects in Spinoza’s Thought. Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 17: 153–174.

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———. 1995. Maimonides and St. Thomas on the Limits of Reason. Albany: SUNY Press. Frankel, Steven. 2014. Spinoza’s Rejection of Maimonideanism. In Spinoza and Medieval Jewish Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler, 79–95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harvey, Warren Zev. 1981. A Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean. Journal of the History of Philosophy 19 (2): 151–172. ———. 2012. Shlomo Pines on Maimonides, Spinoza, and Kant. Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 20 (2): 173–182. Parens, Joshua. 2012. Maimonides and Spinoza: Their Conflicting Views of Human Nature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pines, Shlomo. 1968. Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Maimonides, and Kant. Scripta Hierosolymitana 20: 3–54. ———. 1979. Limitations of Human Knowledge According to al-Farabi, Ibn Bajja, and Maimonides. In Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. I. Twersky, 82–109. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Ravven, Heidi M. 1990. Spinoza’s Materialist Ethics: The Education of Desire. International Studies in Philosophy 22 (3): 59–78. ———. 2014. Moral Agency without Free Will: Naturalizing of Moral Psychology in a Maimonidean Key. In Spinoza and Medieval Jewish Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler, 128–151. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2019. Spinoza’s Path from Imaginative Transindividuality to Intuitive Relational Autonomy: From Fusion, Confusion, and Fragmentation to Moral Integrity. In Spinoza and Relational Autonomy: Being with Others, ed. Aurelia Armstrong, Keith Green, and Andrea Sangiacomo, 98–114. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Stern, Josef. 2013. The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

CHAPTER 2

Prophecy and Intuition: Singular Knowledge in Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s Philosophy

In Book II, Chapter 38 of The Guide of the Perplexed, Moses Maimonides describes a true prophet as someone capable of achieving theoretical apprehension without doubt.1 For Maimonides, a true prophet does not rely on philosophical tools to achieve ultimate or divine wisdom and to overcome doubt associated with sensation. The prophet does not grasp divine causes through theoretical premises alone and by a discursive science. Despite this diminished role of philosophical reason, Maimonides does not then equate true prophecy with mere imaginings derived from common experience. Instead, he argues carefully that the imaginative faculty of the elect is perfected by an emanation from the active intellect. That is, an elect individual has the proper bodily proportions in his or her brain so that the imaginative faculty may manifest divine wisdom immediately when the active intellect emanates to the individual’s constitution at that specific moment.2 Divine truth is imparted singularly to an elect person without mediation—neither from a discursive, theoretical science nor from the imaginings of common experience. In his discussion of true prophecy, Maimonides describes three types of knowledge or perception3 available to humans: imagination, theoretical or discursive reasoning, and immediate prophetic wisdom. Among these three possibilities, prophetic wisdom is selected as the truest and absolute form of knowledge. Baruch Spinoza argues in a similar way that there are three levels of knowledge: knowledge from common experience (knowledge ex auditis et signis and ab experientia vaga), knowledge from demonstration © The Author(s) 2020 N. L. Whitman, An Examination of the Singular in Maimonides and Spinoza, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49472-8_2

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(discursive reason), and intuitive knowledge (a singular essence or definition).4 The first two levels of Spinoza’s hierarchy correspond to the components of Maimonides’ prophet’s knowledge (imagination and discursive reasoning), whereas the third, intuitive knowledge, corresponds to Maimonides’ divine wisdom or prophetic perfection. In this chapter, I will examine the similarities between Maimonides’ divine or prophetic knowledge and Spinoza’s account of intuitive knowledge. In particular, I will investigate why each believes a non-discursive or singular form of knowledge represents the pinnacle of wisdom. Developing this latter point will demonstrate how both Maimonides and Spinoza are concerned with the ethical perfection of the wise rather than the mere attainment of rational certainty.5 A comparative analysis of these two thinkers will be fruitful in giving a more complete representation of each thinker. It will show that rather than being solely concerned with metaphysics, Maimonides and Spinoza incorporate metaphysics equally into ethics, politics, and an embodied psychology. For both thinkers, the contemplation of abstract metaphysics is not the end of human perfection. Instead, human intellectual perfection only occurs when metaphysical truth is expressed through the complete and concrete existence of a wise individual. This entails that metaphysics as a separate philosophical enterprise is an ill-conceived project for both Maimonides and Spinoza. In Spinoza’s case, this is especially elucidating, as many have interpreted Spinoza as solely concerned with metaphysical contemplation.

Extrinsic and Intrinsic Knowing The distinction employed by Maimonides and Spinoza between extrinsic and intrinsic forms of perception and knowledge enables us to better understand their shared concerns. Both see this distinction as essential to understanding and achieving human intellectual perfection. For both, extrinsic perceptions and kinds of knowledge imply certain properties such as being common, bodily, mediated, affecting, passionate, and unrestrained, whereas intrinsic perceptions and kinds of knowledge entail properties such as being unique, self-moving, intrinsic, active, free, and necessary. Both employ this distinction to emphasize the perfecting transition of knowledge from mediated, extrinsic, dependent passions and perceptions to unique, intrinsic, active, free ideas. Nevertheless, for Maimonides and Spinoza, the movement from extrinsic to intrinsic

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perceptions and ideas does not entail a complete disassociation between the two stages of knowing. Both aspects are required for the perfection of the intellect. Without undergoing extrinsic and mediated forms of knowing (sense-based perceptions and passions), intrinsic knowledge (intellect) cannot be attained. For both philosophers, perfect knowledge is also the perfecting of the different stages and aspects of human knowing, including extrinsic forms of knowing such as the imagination. For Maimonides, what ultimately establishes and sustains the relation between extrinsic and intrinsic forms of knowing is the excessive overflow from the providential Creator to natural, embodied, human knowers.6 This overflow expresses the metaphysical relation of God to the material world in which essential, intrinsic causes are not readily accessible to a mediated, existential order described by imagined ends and discursive reason. Although understanding essential causes may seem initially random or entirely extrinsic from the finite knowers’ perspective, due to God’s overarching providence and all-encompassing power, this overflow does not imply that causes are contingent for finite, individual knowers.7 Rather, God’s providential wisdom and all-encompassing power affects human individuals throughout their different modes of knowing—each aspect receiving God’s perfect and perfecting order according to its capacity and power. Intrinsic and self-generating knowledge represents a form of conjunction with God’s agency, whereas extrinsic knowledge or perception represents an inability to fully express and participate in God’s power and providence, thereby appearing as if to be dependent on an extrinsic order and power. Similarly, Spinoza argues that a distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic develops from the power and necessity of the ultimate singular cause: God, Nature, or Substance. According to Spinoza, God’s power generates every mode within every attribute. Although God cannot be properly described by modal causality and cannot be completely reduced to specific attributes, nevertheless, God’s power must determine each singular mode through a mediated order of extrinsic causes from which an intrinsic essential cause for each mode may manifest itself.8 Within the modal causality of thinking, human minds are subject to passions and images because they are unable to adequately and fully express God via determinate, projected ends and by discursive reasoning alone. Nonetheless, they may achieve singular, intellectual knowledge by rendering their concrete conditions well-defined and concurrent with (and expressive of) God’s necessity.

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For Maimonides and Spinoza, congruence of one’s overall existence, including mind and body, with God’s providence or necessity implies an ethical dimension to the achievement of knowledge. Both thinkers argue that knowledge must be achieved by appropriately managing one’s material conditions and embodied psyche so as to generate and manifest divine or singular intellection. Since a wholly rational or demonstrative method is unable to achieve human intellectual perfection, the wise must also rely on ethical practices and devices to achieve wisdom. In the process of achieving intellectual perfection, the appropriate and useful ethical tools that a wise individual uses to secure and generate wisdom at the same time perfect her ethical life. Not merely is there intellectual perfection, but intellectual perfection also entails the utmost ethical or moral perfection of the wise.

Maimonides’ Prophetic Knowledge Central to Maimonides’ understanding of divine excess and its relation to knowledge is that natural reason or demonstrative science can neither fully detach from mediated and composite bodily existence nor can it fully express divine providence via ideal concepts.9 As he notes in The Guide of the Perplexed, Book I, Chapter 72: […] [The] proprium of man only [is] the rational faculty—I mean the intellect, which is the hylic intellect[.] […] None of the individual animals requires for its continued existence reflection, perspicacity, and governance of conduct.10

Continuing, he states that: […] The rational faculty is a faculty subsisting in a body and is not separable from it, whereas God, may He be exalted, is not a faculty subsisting in the body of the world […] For the governance and the providence of Him, may He be exalted, accompany the world as a whole in such a way that the manner and true reality of his accompaniment are hidden from us; the faculties of human beings are inadequate to understand this.11

For Maimonides, the rational faculty is neither able to address the mediated causes fully nor manifest how divine providence directly determines and orders the unique conditions in which an individual is embodied. The

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rational faculty only abstracts universal forms by which it constructs theoretical premises to order and govern natural diversity associated with material affections. Yet, by these abstract means, one guided solely by reason cannot appropriately address the singular conditions and sensible particulars, either completely incorporating them into an ideal end or eradicating their errant effects. Now as the nature of the human species requires that there be those differences among individuals belonging to it and as, in addition, association is necessary for this nature, it is by no means possible that this association should be accomplished except—and this is necessarily so—through a ruler who gauges that actions of the individuals, perfecting that which is deficient and reducing that which is excessive, and who lays down actions and moral habits for all of them to practice always in the same way, until the natural diversity is hidden through the multiple points of conventional accord, and so that society becomes well-ordered. Therefore, I say that the Law, although it is not natural, has a basis in what is natural. It was a part of the wisdom of the deity with regard to the continuance of this species, that He put it into its nature […] that individuals belonging to it should have the faculty of ruling. Among them there is one to whom that governance has been revealed by prophecy directly; he is the prophet or the one who lays down the nomos.12

Maimonides explains that the necessary association among diverse individuals requires an extra-natural law or rule that can order the natural and material existence of individuals without the law itself being reduced to the natural world as a merely particular, limited, and potentially excessive or errant perspective. The Law is singular in its ability to address the particulars; yet, it also maintains a non-errant perspective. The need for the Law shows that diverse particulars cannot be properly addressed by universal truth or good. To maintain accord among diverse individuals, conventional, common, and concrete methods must be communicated to all so that doubt may be reduced and overcome for order. Discursive reason may be a tool to convey to a group of potentially wise individuals universal and necessary knowledge of nature; yet, as abstract and commonly held, reason cannot descend to the particulars. It only communicates generally valid premises derived from individual instances. For the intellect divides the composite things and differentiates their parts and makes abstractions of them […] It is by means of the intellect that the

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universal is differentiated from the individual, and no demonstration is true except by means of universals.13

By their very existence, universals reveal an inability to address composite existence directly. Demonstrations do not explain composite existence directly but rather only through abstract universals can rational certainty be produced. Nonetheless, universals originate from the process of abstracting from concrete particulars, and this process cannot instantiate ready-made ideas and thus circumvent an intellectual engagement with sensible particulars. Having been derived from concrete, composite individuals, yet unable to descend back to that level, reason requires help to address the necessity or providence of particular causes without itself reducing to errant, composite matter.14 Errancy defines matter and is the primary cause for limited, deficient, and inconsistent perspectives of Nature. Maimonides has a very low opinion of matter and its ability to distract, confuse, cause doubt, and undermine order: The nature and true reality of matter are such that it never ceases to be joined to privation; hence no form remains constantly in it […] Solomon said in his wisdom […] likening matter to a married harlot[.]15

Only an individual capable of bridging the gap between the two realms can address the necessity of particulars neither as errant matter nor as mere instantiations of universals. For Maimonides, the prophet has the unique ability (through prophetic knowledge) to bridge the immediate and divine (i.e. simple divine unity) and concrete particulars without diminishing the relevance of either for explaining the necessity of particular events. Know that the true prophets obtain theoretical apprehension without doubt. By theory [or speculation] alone, man is unable to grasp the causes from which that known thing necessarily follows. This has a counterpart in their giving information as regards matters about which man, using only common conjecture and divination, is unable to give information.16

As Maimonides stresses in the above passage, someone who relies on purely theoretical premises will be unable to grasp unique causes because of the general nature of that theoretical knowledge. Someone who relies

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on common conjecture (i.e. commonly agreed upon images and hypotheticals as to what will probably happen) similarly cannot provide an appropriately unique explanation of events. Instead, prophetic knowledge is able to bring both imagination and reason together by receiving a form of divine excess or providence that perfects both the imagination and reason at once and immediately. That is, without doubt, whereas doubt derives from relying on extrinsic forms of knowledge such as common conjecture or prior rational instruction. For the very emanation that flowed to the imaginative power [or faculty] (so as to render it perfect so that its act brings about its giving information as to what will happen and its apprehending of matters as though they had been perceived by the senses and had reached this imaginative faculty from the senses) also perfects the act of the rational power [or faculty], so that its acts bring about its knowing things that are true; and it achieves this apprehension as if it had apprehended it by starting from theoretical premises. […] It is even more fitting that this pertain to the rational faculty. For the active intellect truly emanates only to it [that is, to the rational faculty], and that is what brings it into actuality. It is from the rational faculty that the emanation comes to the imaginative faculty. How then could the perfection of the imaginative faculty reach this measure [that is] the apprehension of what has not reached it from the senses, without the rational faculty being affected in a similar way [that is] apprehending without having apprehended by way of premises, inference, and reflection?17

Divine emanation that induces prophetic wisdom has the characteristic that it is able to draw both imagination and reason away from extrinsic sensible sources or prior inferences so that their specific powers or faculties are able to intrinsically generate results that are wholly based on their agency. This intrinsic expression directly manifests a unique or singular reality that does not allow imagination or reason to digress past its unique and immediate conditions; any digression or errancy would pull the two faculties apart so that an appropriately singular focus on the immediate is occluded. As a result, prophetic knowledge perfects both imagination and reason: imagination is no longer forced to address extrinsic sensations and reason receives imaginative forms that are intrinsically determined, i.e., images that are suitable to the generation of knowledge (disposed to an internal agency) rather than errant opinions and passions. In the case of prophetic knowledge, the prophet does not have to prove the rational and divine order by showing how natural diversity and resistance by sensibles

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and images can be overcome to produce agreement and order. The immediate reception of divine knowledge perfects the mediated faculty of the prophet (i.e. his imagination) without a requirement to remove doubt associated with sensible particulars. Nevertheless, with his account, Maimonides seems to generate a new problem: how are we to distinguish the perfect knowledge and virtuous imagination of a prophet from the imaginings and ravings of one claiming divine knowledge and insight? Maimonides responds: I have stipulated […] “the true prophets,” in order not to involve myself with people […] who are utterly devoid of rational [notions] and knowledge, but have mere imaginings and thoughts. Perhaps they […] are merely opinions that they once had had and of which traces have remained impressed upon their imaginings together with everything else that is in their imaginative faculty. But after they voided and annulled many of their imaginings, the traces of these opinions remained alone and reappeared to them; and they thought them to be something that had unexpectedly occurred to them and something that had come from outside. According to me, they are comparable to a man who had with him in his house thousands of individual animals. Then all of them except one individual, which was one of those that were there, went out of that house. When the man remained alone with that individual, he thought that it had just now come to his house […] This is one of the positions that are sophistical and destructive. How many among those who have aspired to obtain discernment have perished through this! […] Therefore one ought not to pay attention to one whose rational faculty has not become perfect and who has not attained utmost theoretical perfection. For only one who achieves theoretical perfection is able to apprehend other objects of knowledge when the divine intellect emanates to him. It is he who is truly a prophet.18

Central to Maimonides’ response is that images that are merely traces indicating extrinsic and inaccessible causes do not manifest the potentially intrinsic aspect of the imaginative power. Instead, they deceptively indicate intrinsic power by seeming to be spontaneous manifestations when in fact they generate great confusion and express the greatest weakness of the imagination, enslavement to extrinsic causes that do not have contrary images to resist and void errant movements based on them. Although these spontaneous images appear to manifest an intrinsic, self-generating truth, since they are material images that by definition may be eradicated, their tenuous status can entail an exclusion of and by of other images. The

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errancy and exclusionary nature of these images and opinions lead to sophistical and destructive results both for the supposed “prophet” and others. Using a purely imagistic standard derived from extrinsic sources as a tool for discernment establishes a primarily antagonistic relationship between the “knower” and others, who have competing images and dogmas. As a result, the false prophet not only is incorrect but dangerous to himself and others. Opposed to sophistical and dogmatic prophecy, imaginative forms that have been intrinsically related so that they do not project an external sensible to be sought or desired align with reason and intellectual perfection. To further block the relativism of imaginings and their sophistical uses, Maimonides argues that images do not have a positive content that transparently presents truth even if one’s image seems very vigorous, truthful, and demands attention and commitment. Following his claim that the rational faculty must be perfected and involved at the same time in prophetic truth, he argues that images and bodily faculties producing them should only be non-defective.19 As long as images do not exceed their rank as subordinate to and ordered by reason, they will enable the truth and perfection possible for an individual at a particular moment to be expressed by him or her. On the other hand, allowing images to run rampant and determine other imaginings (as though they were a ruling force) corrupts the order possible within natural individuals and their imaginative faculties. As a result, the deficiency of images, their continual application and seeming truth, must be checked so as to enable their perfection. Maimonides advocates revealing imagery that resists easy appropriation by the imagination’s tendency to mimetically and discursively repeat representations. It behooves rather to educate the young and to give firmness to the deficient in capacity according to the measure of their apprehension. […] [T]hese true opinions [of religion] were not hidden, enclosed in riddles, and treated by all men of knowledge with all sorts of artifice through which they could teach them without expounding them explicitly, because of something bad being hidden in them, or because they undermine the foundations of Law, as is thought by ignorant people who deem that they have attained a rank suitable for speculation. Rather have they been hidden because at the outset the intellect is incapable of receiving them; only flashes of them are made to appear so that the perfect man should know them.20

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As Maimonides explained, images that resist appropriation to the imagination’s tendency to seek extrinsic causes and sources are the best for intellectual perfection because by definition that is what perfection is: the restraint of the imagination so that an intrinsic and unique generation of knowledge may occur. For within Maimonides’ account, the imagination has a vital role in providing an active vehicle through which an immediate, prophetic, truth may pierce, or as he is fond of saying, appear as a flash of divine wisdom.21 When the imagination is overburdened by many images and constant confusion, it proceeds to discursively seek or desire many projected and false ends. A corrupt image undermines the imagination’s ability to participate in an intrinsic action, and thereby, perfect its nature along with reason. This is why Maimonides states: This is what the Sages intended to signify by their dictum, Whoever considers four things, and so on, completing the dictum by saying, He who does not have regard for the honor of his Creator; whereby they indicated what we have already made clear: namely, that man should not press forward to engage in speculative study of corrupt imaginings.22

Pressing forward with corrupt imaginings as the basis for inquiry subjects the unique nature of God’s necessity to the determinate ends and improper desires of finite individuals. As Maimonides notes, the honor of the creator must be respected and used as a rhetorical device to limit improper actions. Nonetheless, natural or discursive reason does not then have free reign or an unlimited scope of application to determine divine order or providence. Discursive reason and rational certainty cannot provide a universal method to generate intellect and achieve prophetic wisdom.23 For Maimonides, reason must restrain its propensity to project an object of knowledge, which really for Maimonides expresses an imagined external source. Furthermore, attaining this imagined end or ultimate source of wisdom in fact would not only occlude or extinguish intellect but also pervert the individual’s appetitive faculty, much to his or her demise. If, on the other hand, you aspire to apprehend things that are beyond your apprehension; of if you hasten to pronounce false, assertions the contradictories of which have not been demonstrated or that are possible, though very remotely so […] you will not only not be perfect, but will be the most deficient among the deficient; and it shall so fall out that you will be overcome by imaginings and by an inclination toward things defective, evil, and

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wicked—this resulting from the intellect’s being preoccupied and its light’s being extinguished.24

Desire for absolute certainty that is attained by grasping one projected truth or rational concept and by which one judges all possible truths, for Maimonides, perverts reason’s (intrinsic) power and rank at the same time blocking intellect’s expression of providence for the specific conditions. A universal rational or demonstrative method would subordinate divine necessity and providence of God to human judgments as to what is possible according to generally valid premises. For Maimonides, for an individual to use a projected measure (which itself is derived from possible existence) to validate natural possibility undermines the unique necessity of God and subsequently the intrinsic ability of reason to perfect itself and express intellectual or prophetic knowledge. When points appearing as dubious occur to him or the thing he seeks does not seem to him to be demonstrated, he should not deny and reject it, hastening to pronounce it false, but rather should persevere and thereby have regard for the honor of his Creator. He should refrain and hold back. This matter has already become clear. The intention of these texts set down by the prophets and the Sages […] is not, however, wholly to close the gate of speculation and to deprive the intellect of the apprehension of things that it is possible to apprehend—as is thought by the ignorant and neglectful, who are pleased to regard their own deficiency and stupidity as perfection and wisdom, and the perfection and the knowledge of others as a deficiency and a defection from Law, and who thus regard darkness as light and light as darkness. Their purpose, in its entirety, rather is to make it known that the intellects of human beings have a limit at which they stop.25

Similar to imaginative corruption, the intellect is corrupted when undue haste and desire draw the focus of reason from intrinsic conditions and actions to extrinsic objects. Central to this understanding is that reason itself may express an appetitive dimension.26 If reason is enlisted to seek an extrinsic object as though it could achieve certainty from its possession, the individual is susceptible to opinion and dogma rather than finding genuine knowledge. Since opinion is a material image potentially voided by other opinions, the individual uses the search for rational certainty to exclude and eliminate possibly dissident opinions, thereby solidifying a dogma and prejudice. As Maimonides notes:

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With regard to such things there is a multiplicity of opinions, disagreement arises between the men engaged in speculation, doubts crop up; all this because the intellect is attached to an apprehension of these things, I mean to say because of its longing for them; and also because everyone thinks that he has found a way by means of which he will know the true reality of the matter. Now it is not within the power of the human intellect to give a demonstration of these matters.27

Rather than being given immediate perfection and eternal truth at birth, human beings must seek their perfection, which implies an appetitive dimension. Desire for a power or source that would perfect oneself is solely intellectual in the case of humans. This is demonstrated by the very fact that knowledge is what humans ultimately seek or desire, and unlike animals, sensation or imagination cannot satisfy our natures. Human (intellectual) perfection is derived from the perfecting and the “prior” eternal agency of the Agent Intellect with which human intellects may conjoin or express. Yet, the appetitive dimension to human knowing must be managed carefully lest corruption, errancy, and prejudice overtake one’s mind. If approached from an imaginative standard which is to be absolutely acquired and possessed, a longing for divine truth leads to an unhealthy and destructive attachment to truth whereas an appropriate attachment to one’s source of perfection requires humility, self-effacement, and critical self-reflection upon one’s rational abstractions and projections. A wise individual must be aware that imagistic and externalized projections masquerading as divine truth to be possessed can easily intrude into one’s rational pursuits. By being expressions of one’s concrete embodied desire for personal perfection, these projections are very hard to emend with general, abstract concepts. One’s perfection and desire is most dear to each individual, and so he or she may closely cling to perceived intellectual and divine opinions (“prophecy”) and vigorously defend them against any other image. An essential method to emend (rational) prejudices requires that an individual must give up on their egotistic and imagistic knowledge so that intellect may express true intrinsic power/truth. This is why Maimonides advocates that each individual direct all his thoughts to God and love God with all his heart.28 This aids in restraining rational or speculative prejudices from dominating and entails that thinking is not dispassionate to one’s existence and Nature. One cannot be stoic and hope to achieve

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intellectual perfection either in the form of dispassionate contemplation or ascetic dismissal of desire. As a result, reason conceived solely as an abstract activity cannot emend concrete prejudices. God’s providence and absolute power must be employed to restrain and orient the complete individual including his or her mental faculties (appetition, imagination, and reason) to a total love and contemplation of God.29 If not, the need to have and to assert a single authoritative opinion subjects the inquirer to the passions driving group consensus and deceives the learner to believe that others’ extrinsic circumstances (i.e. imaginative conditions that produced their so-called opinions) can be transferred and translated to the learner’s unique conditions and intellect. This supposed teaching indicates at once anti-intellectual and imagistic notions both in the so-called wise teacher and ignorant student. Consider, therefore, you who are engaged in speculation, if you give the preference to the quest for truth and cast aside passion, blind following of authority, and obeisance to what you are accustomed to hold great. Your soul should not be led into error by the circumstances of these men engaged in speculation, neither by what has happened to them nor by what has come from them. For they are like one who flees from torrid heat into fire.30

Rather than following the authoritative dogma of others for the hope of certainty, Maimonides ends Book I of the Guide of the Perplexed with an ethical maxim to resist extrinsic sources as the basis for one’s own prophetic knowledge or intellect. In fact, Maimonides’ ethical demand implies that one may only achieve prophetic knowledge when his or her psyche is ordered and restrained from extrinsic pursuits. As a result, prophetic and ethical perfection are coordinated. Without one, the other cannot manifest or express itself from properly restrained and internally ordered faculties: a well-ordered and coordinated imagination and reason. Generating this ordered relationship is divine excess. As Maimonides was fond of noting, only one who first and foremost honors his or her creator will be able to restrain his or her unethical, damaging, and errant passions which seek improper acquisition of imaginative or discursive ends. Divine excess cannot be reduced to imaginative opinions, errant experiences, or even demonstrative certainty, which itself is a form of imaginative projection. Instead, divine providence and excess expressed by prophetic perfection only manifests itself when providence is used to check or block mimesis.

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Thereby, an appropriate engagement with and expression of providence can render those finite conditions (producing errancy) singular or unique in relation to this divine necessity.

Spinoza’s Intuitive Knowledge Like Maimonides, Spinoza argues that one’s mind or soul has two aspects: one extrinsic and the other intrinsic. Extrinsic affections indicate how the mind is subject to causes unconducive to its intrinsic power. [T]he fictitious, the false, and the other ideas have their origin in the imagination, i.e., in a certain sensation that are fortuitous, and (as it were) disconnected; since they do not arise from the very power of the mind, but from external causes, as the body (whether waking or dreaming) receives various motions. […] [I]t is something different from the intellect, and in which the soul has the nature of something acted on. For […] it is something random, by which the soul is acted on, and […] we are freed from it with the help of the intellect.31

Although it may seem from the above passage that Spinoza advocates for a purely rational truth, independent of experience, this is not so. Spinoza stresses throughout his works that sensation and images are not removed or annihilated by true or adequate ideas.32 Rather, adequate ideas provide the means for the mind or soul to achieve intrinsic perfection and action by restraining and transforming images into a rational, and possibly, intellectual order. And here, in order to begin to indicate what error is, I should like you to note that the imaginations of the Mind, considered in themselves contain no error, or that the Mind does not err from the fact that it imagines, but only insofar as it is considered to lack an idea that excludes the existence of those things that it imagines to be present to it. For if the Mind, while it imagined nonexistent things as present to it, at the same time knew that those things did not exist, it would, of course, attribute this power of imagining to a virtue of its nature, not to a vice—especially if this faculty of imagining depended on its own nature, i.e. […] if the Mind’s faculty of imagining were free.33

In a strikingly similar manner, Spinoza seems to follow Maimonides in arguing that imagination is not in-itself false, and thereby, it cannot be wholly defective. Like Maimonides, imagination has a nature or power,

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and therefore, it must be real in some way. It is resistant to intellectual ideas only when it seeks extrinsic sources as if real. Akin to Maimonides’ description of false spontaneity in the story of a thousand animals, Spinoza argues that without another more adequate or appropriate image to exclude and void the errancy of a fantastical image, one’s imagination becomes enslaved to the projection of that image as if real and directs its desire and faculties toward extrinsic sources rather than intrinsic powers. In fact, to have intrinsic power entails that the imagination or mind would be able to exclude an errant image. In this case, mind would express an intrinsic action and the necessity of one’s reality rather than a dependency on extrinsic and seemingly contingent sources—reflected most aptly by conflicted passions, doubt, and mental confusion. That is, in the vein of Maimonides’ argument, being susceptible to destructive forces and sophistical devices. For Spinoza, freedom indicates necessity or agreement with God’s or Nature’s order, much like how an individual relates to providence in Maimonides’ philosophy.34 When intrinsically related to this order or necessity, an individual and his or her mind, including imagination, may be free. The complete individual and his or her different aspects are included in this reality and must relate to other aspects or expressions of this reality such as reason and intellect. As a result, Spinoza notes that imagination is an aspect of mind insofar as mind regards bodies in a certain way: […] the affections of the human Body whose ideas present external bodies as present to us, we shall call images of things, even if they do not reproduce the figures of things. And when the Mind regards bodies in this way, we shall say that it imagines.35

Spinoza’s language of “we shall call” and “regards … in this way” indicates that imagination is merely a certain aspect of mind. The distinction between mind and imagination is perspectival since both aspects represent actual ways the mind involves and expresses Nature. As the body undergoes affections which indicate external bodies as present so the mind merely involves and expresses (i.e. regards) that condition under the aspect of thought. As a potentially active aspect for mind and intellect, imagination, like for Maimonides, has a role to play for intellect.36 Mirroring Maimonides’ position, Spinoza argues that an unrestrained imagination (or mind) which engages in discursive or mimetic errancy undermines its own powers. Engaging in errant seeking or inquiry

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confuses the mind so that an intrinsic action of the intellect cannot express itself. First, Spinoza notes that an imagination which assumes that its images can supply a measure to reality not only undermines the order of nature but also moves the individual to seek extrinsic means to achieve perfection. In fact, this seeking is destructive to the very intrinsic power and perfection that he or she desires. The movement to extrinsic sources and, subsequently, the confusion produced that these sources will provide a sufficient basis for perfection undermines the intellect’s intrinsic ability to reflect on itself: We avoid, moreover, another great cause of confusion which prevents the intellect from reflecting on itself—viz., when we do not distinguish between the imagination and intellection, we think that the things we more easily imagine are clearer to us, and think we understand what we imagine. Hence, what should be put later we put first, and so the true order of making progress is overturned, and no conclusion is arrived at legitimately.37

For Spinoza, an unrestrained imagination projects its images as determinate ends for Nature. This contravenes Nature’s necessity because now a finite measure establishes and verifies all existential possibility.38 Additionally, it also occludes how the necessity of Nature, as expressed by an intellectual order, truly indicates and determines how each singular mode produces another. Instead, a contingent and finite measure undermines how true causality operates. By being unrelated to God’s necessity (whether under reason or intellect),39 an image cannot then be determined as necessary. As a result, images are not conducive to generating deductions that actually explain God’s necessity and so block the intellect’s agreement with that necessity. In the Appendix to Ethics I, Spinoza’s major discussion of teleology, he argues that final causes and a teleological order of Nature are derived from images and individuals’ experience of contingent existence, which really represent their inadequate understanding of and agreement with Nature. […] [A]ll the notions by which ordinary people are accustomed to explain nature are only modes of imagining, and do not indicate the nature of anything, only the constitution of the imagination […] they have names, as if they were of beings existing outside the imagination. […] For many are accustomed to arguing […] if all things have followed from the necessity of God’s most perfect nature, why are there so many imperfections in nature? Why are things corrupt […] [T]hose who argue in this way are easily

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answered. For the perfection of things is to be judged solely from their nature and power; things are not more or less perfect because they please or offend men’s senses, or because they are use to, or are incompatible with, human nature. […] [T]hose who ask “Why God did not create all men so that they would be governed by the command of reason?” I answer only “because he did not lack material to create all things, from the highest degree of perfection to the lowest;” or, to speak more properly, “because the laws of his nature have been so ample that they sufficed for producing all things which can be conceived by an infinite intellect” […] These are the prejudices I undertook to note here.40

Ignorant, ordinary people, prone to imagistic thinking, assume that Nature’s excessive power must be curtailed and comport with their projections of order (teleology). This order primarily expresses their desire, based on inadequate images and confusion, to achieve perfection. They project their individual feelings of beauty, love, and pleasure, which are limited images and finite standards, onto Nature. Subsequently, they are baffled why Nature does not agree with their images and final causes. Final causes represent a limit to Nature’s power and the possibility that they could possess an ultimate truth. This ultimate truth would represent a resting point that may alleviate not only intellectual confusion but also emotional conflict, which is the basis of intellectual confusion.41 But much like Maimonides, Spinoza notes that Nature does not lack power and so must produce all modes despite human conceptions as to what should or should not exist. Human conceptions of order are merely fantasies and inadequate expressions of their desires based on extrinsic perceptions and images. Neither can a discursive and demonstrative form of reason provide the necessary determination to one’s intellectual and concrete conditions so that an intrinsic intellectual judgment may express itself. Although reason can relate and order particular causes to effects via certain universals or abstract notions, it conceives the actuality of particulars through general properties that can confuse the intellect with a false sense of certainty. [T]he same difference that exists between the essence of one thing and the essence of another also exists between the actuality or existence of the one thing and the actuality or existence of the other. […] Therefore, the more generally existence is conceived, the more confusedly also it is conceived, and the more easily it can be ascribed fictitiously to anything. Conversely, the more particularly [singularly] it is conceived, then the more clearly it is

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understood, and the more difficult it is for us, [even] when we do not attend to the order of Nature, to ascribe it fictitiously to anything other than the thing itself.42

As Spinoza notes, the essence or definition of a thing, the proper object for intellectual apprehension, can be improperly unrestrained from actuality or real conditions. As a result, the wide-ranging applicability of this type of improper essence or concept would not only undermine Nature’s necessary order but occlude the intrinsic power of the intellect to express real determination and, subsequently, its own well-defined actions. Therefore, so long as we are dealing with the Investigation of things, we must never infer anything from abstractions, and we shall take very great care not to mix up the things that are only in the intellect with those that are real. But the best conclusion will have to be drawn from some particular affirmative essence, or, from a true and legitimate definition. For from universal axioms alone the intellect cannot descend to singulars, since axioms extend to infinity, and do not determine the intellect to the contemplation of one singular thing rather than another.43

Continuing, Spinoza notes that singulars must be concrete or physical: […] From this we can see that above all it is necessary for us always to deduce all our ideas from Physical things, or from the real beings, proceeding, as far as possible, according to the series of causes, from one real being to another real being, in such a way that we do not pass over to abstractions and universals, neither inferring something real from them, nor inferring them from something real. For to do so either interferes with the true progress of the intellect.44

A complement to Spinoza’s position is that the human intellect, like Maimonides’ intellect, has a limit. For Spinoza, the human intellect can neither know Nature completely nor all the singular knowables that would perfect its intellect and intrinsic power to the level of God. For to conceive them [singular things] all at once is a task far beyond the powers of the human intellect. But to understand one before the other, the order must be sought, as we have said, not from their series of existing, nor even from the eternal things. For there, by nature, all these things are at once.45

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Instead, as a part of Nature and God’s intellect, the human intellect must proceed from one true and adequate idea to the next. For Spinoza, the human intellect is produced, i.e. natura naturata, and, thus, is not absolutely prior to affections, i.e. it is not natura naturans. As Spinoza notes: “I think I have demonstrated clearly and evidently enough that the intellect, though infinite, [refers] to natura naturata, not to natura naturans.”46 Only God or Nature, i.e. natura naturans or naturing nature, exists prior to its affections and is absolutely infinite: an infinity without limit and an ultimate cause of every possible attribution. Attributions (made by a mind or intellect) indicate that affections occur with and within an intellectual mode and that attributions cannot present an unmediated and absolutely prior cause. Therefore, attributions, definitions, or descriptions show that a mind or intellect is historical.47 Throughout Letter 9, Spinoza uses the term “description” interchangeably with the term “definition” to indicate that a concrete experience generates an intellectual understanding of ideata or perceived objects.48 For Spinoza, a definition as a human attribution does not reduce the defined object to extrinsic referents or an absolute foundational truth. [T]o explain by an example how one and the same thing can be designated by two names […] I offer two: (i) I say that by Israel I understand the third patriarch; I understand the same by Jacob, the name which was given him because he had seized his brother’s heel[.]49

For Spinoza, definitions must express an actuality of experience. As a result, many definitions may express this actuality lest a linguistic definition presumes to correspond to a single absolute reality. For example, the meaning and actuality of Jacob or Israel does not reduce to either perspective so that his dual meanings can be used to generate perspectives or aspects of the thing defined; any absolute perspective would assume that it captured the reality of Jacob/Israel and could deduce absolute truths or attributes from a secure foundational perspective. Spinoza’s genetic definitions have the potential to acknowledge not only that an individual generated them but also that the generation was from a demand placed upon the knower by the concrete singular experience. That is, the knower expresses a perspective on reality yet acknowledges the perspective as a singular and concrete perspective. Thus reality is not reduced to a totalizing static perspective. As a result, definitions are not absolute concepts that must agree with or correspond to an absolutely determined reality.

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The human intellect is perfected by its intrinsic actions when it appropriately agrees with those concrete and amenable conditions—not exceeding them with improper imaginative projections or unrestricted universals. Like Maimonides, Spinoza realizes that intellectual perfection also entails ethical perfection of the wise, since the wise not only express intrinsic actions of mind but are able to and actually do restrain errant affections so that an individual is most active and free. Next, the more the mind knows, the better it understands its own powers and the order of Nature. The better the mind understands its own powers, the more easily it can direct itself and propose rules to itself; the better it understands the order of Nature, the more easily it can restrain itself from useless pursuits. In these things, as we have said, the whole of the Method consists.50

Similarly, Spinoza understands that mediated and practical tools and habits are needed to structure an individual’s concrete conditions and perceptions so that intellect or perfection, as Spinoza notes, will easily manifest itself.51 These tools provide means by which the mind does not weary itself in useless pursuits or potentially excessive practices that lead to an unrestrained imagination or dogmatism. [Method] is understanding what a true idea is by distinguishing it from the rest of the perceptions; by investigating its nature, so that from that we may come to know our power of understanding and so restrain the mind that it understands, according to that standard, everything that is to be understood; and finally by teaching and constructing certain rules as aids, so that the mind does not weary itself in useless pursuits.52

Examples of useless pursuits include the endeavors for riches, sensual pleasure, or honor among the so-called wise. By persistent meditation, however, I came to the conclusion that, if only I could resolve, wholeheartedly, [to change my plan of life], I would be giving up certain evils [bad things or mala] for a certain good […] But all those things men ordinarily strive for, not only provide no remedy to preserve our being, but in fact hinder that preservation […] Furthermore, these evils [bad things or mala] seemed to have arisen from the fact that all happiness and unhappiness was placed in the quality of the object to which we cling with love. For strife will never arise on account of what is not loved, nor will

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there be sadness if it perishes, nor envy if it is possessed by another, nor fear, nor hatred—in a word, no disturbances of the mind. […] For though I perceived these things so clearly in my mind, I still could not, on that account, put aside all greed, desire for sensual pleasure and love of esteem.53

Additionally, like Maimonides, Spinoza understands that the idea of God can provide a powerful force to block and emend unruly desires based on inadequate understanding. He notes: [T]o restrain the mind from confusing false, fictitious, and doubtful ideas with true ones. It is my intention to explain this fully here, so as to engage my Readers in the thought of a thing so necessary [God] […].54

Finding and using this kind of idea is the basis for Spinoza’s search to find a “good, capable of communicating itself, and which alone would affect the mind, all others being rejected.”55 Much like Maimonides, Spinoza’s idea of God is neither an image to be mimetically appropriated by the imagination nor a concept of discursive reason whereby one would reduce Nature to a specific rational order. Instead, the idea of God expresses the absolute necessity of Nature outside of human projections and reductions, and thereby, it demands of the wise the recognition of the limits of imagination and reason. Similar to Maimonides’ demand to honor the creator, Spinoza’s idea of God instills restraint so that one may be congruent with Nature by expressing singular ideas which in turn are ordered by the laws of Nature. [W]e learned which is the best perception [God], by whose aid we can reach our perfection [and] we learned which is the first path our mind must enter on to begin well—which is to proceed in its investigation according to certain laws, taking as a standard a given true idea. If this is to be done properly, the Method must, first show how to distinguish a true idea from all other perceptions[.]56

It may seem curious that the idea of God would be described as a perception, an affection to which the human mind is passive. Yet, this perception implies that the human mind cannot have full control over Nature and that the human mind has a limit. Instead, the idea of God places a demand on (human) thinking so that one may express intrinsic actions or adequate, active ideas in agreement with the necessity of Nature and that singular human’s necessity within that active order.

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Much like Maimonides, Spinoza advocates for humility from the human knower.57 God or Nature must be respected, and humility is an important component to intellectual and ethical perfection. In a remarkable passage, Spinoza seemingly agrees with Maimonides’ understanding of the true prophet as someone able to use God to instill humility so that some in the populace may achieve intellectual and ethical perfection. Because men rarely live from the dictates of reason, these two affects, Humility and Repentance, and in addition, Hope and Fear, bring more advantage than disadvantage. […] If weak-minded men were all equally proud, ashamed of nothing, and afraid of nothing, how could they be united or restrained by any bonds? […] The mob is terrifying, if unafraid. So it is no wonder that the Prophets, who considered the common advantage, not that of the few, commended Humility, Repentance, and Reverence so greatly. Really, those who are subject to these affects can be guided far more easily than others, so that in the end they may live from the guidance of reason, i.e., may be free and enjoy the life of the blessed.58

Not only does humility lead to common advantage through conventional accord, but it has the ability to lead capable minds to freedom and blessedness, i.e. the highest intellectual perfection derived from, or “bestowed by,” God’s truth and power.59 This clearly indicates that understanding God and achieving human perfection cannot be solely attained by a rational contemplation of God. There must be an ethical and political dimension to understanding divine truth. In her impressive work on the relation between Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s understanding of prophetic imagination, Heidi Ravven explains how both Maimonides and Spinoza support the use of imaginative, ethical doctrines to help form a community maximally capable of generating philosophers. Nevertheless, I disagree with Ravven’s position that Spinoza sees ethical praxis, including Mosaic religious doctrines, as merely laying down practices on which the philosopher may reflect. As a result of her interpretation, Ravven argues that any ethical rule would do for Spinoza if it generated philosophical reflection.60 She argues that philosophical reflection is in some sense self-determining outside ethical-political conventions, and thereby supererogatory: For Spinoza, instead, the ethical doctrine and virtuous society envisioned in the Bible address only practice—yet a practice that, when adequately reflected upon, is seen to conform implicitly to rational principles and also

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to point beyond ethics and praxis to their theoretical foundations. Philosophy, scientific theory, is left untouched, giving those who have the capacity for further understanding the freedom necessary to envision and live the supererogatory philosophical life.61

I believe that Ravven’s position ignores the constitutive effect of concrete historical conditions on one’s imagination and intellect. Additionally, it suggests that philosophers may be privileged and somehow separate from the masses. I would argue that Maimonides and Spinoza are more closely linked than Ravven indicates, because both realize that affects not only constitute imaginative concepts but also inform intellectual understanding. Both are concerned with managing imaginative affects not merely as errant problems to be overcome but to be directed and restrained according to the historical meanings and prejudices of the time so that as many as possible may express intellectual activity in and from their concrete historical context/affects. The philosopher is not apart from the masses. He or she needs extra-­ rational rules or habits to generate understanding.62 Given one’s susceptibility to his or her affects and desires, he or she consistently needs political and ethical training so that not only is social harmony secured but also philosophical activity as a social-political activity may express itself. I would argue that given the historical nature and limitations of the human intellect, a wise individual must rely on ethical-imaginative forms that may non-discursively generate singular truths. I am concerned that Ravven presents an improper duality between pure theoretical philosophy and mere imaginative confusion. Although Ravven provides a good account of Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s understanding of prophetic imagination and its relation to ethics and politics, my account develops Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s understanding of the non-discursive aspects of knowing to show how the philosopher or the wise are more closely linked to the masses. This explains why early in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, rather than merely advocating for individual, rational contemplation of God, Spinoza argues for an ethical and political project by which not only Spinoza, or the wise, may be perfected but by which others in the community may be perfected as well. Spinoza requires intellectual perfection to be entwined with political actions that improve the total community. [13] But since human weakness does not grasp that [eternal or divine] order by its own thought, and meanwhile conceives a human nature much stronger

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and more enduring than his own, and at the same time sees that nothing prevents his acquiring such a nature, he is spurred to seek means that will lead him to such a perfection. Whatever can be a means to his attaining it is called a true good; but the highest good is to arrive—together with other individuals if possible—at the enjoyment of such a nature. What that nature is we shall show in its proper place: that is the knowledge of the union that the mind has with the whole of Nature. [14] This, then, is the end I aim at: to acquire such a nature, and to strive that many acquire it with me. That is, it is part of my happiness to take pains that many others may understand as I understand, so that their intellect and desire agree entirely with my intellect and desire. To do this it is necessary, first to understand as much of Nature as suffices for acquiring such a nature; next, to form a society of the kind that is desirable, so that as many as possible may attain it as easily and surely as possible.63

The initial lack of access to the intellectual order of God requires an extrinsic pursuit for knowledge. Yet, the highest good for humans—human perfection—is not individual contemplation. Instead, a social-political engagement generates the highest intellectual good, and it is indispensable. In point of fact, as Spinoza states, mere knowledge of Nature is subordinated to a political nature that will enable social-intellectual engagement. Knowledge of Nature is beneficial insofar as it suffices to generate a social-political nature capable of producing individual and social awareness and knowledge. Politics is essential for Spinoza’s concept of perfection because human-shared perfection(s) requires continual negotiations of singular interests. Distinct singular interests imply a diverse polis not easily reduced to a simple political or natural identity. As a result, a more perfect society is not guaranteed—it is a possibility, as Spinoza notes—so it must be continually generated by virtuous and perfecting actions. The agreement among individuals’ intellects and desires should indicate tolerance and involvement of unique others in the attainment of knowledge and social well-being. This at the same time entails individual restraint, ethical virtue, and wisdom throughout the populace. Thus, Spinoza should not be interpreted as advocating for a complete reduction of others’ minds and pursuits to one’s own. Etienne Balibar argues that Spinoza’s use of the Latin term convenientia for political usefulness and accord requires knowledge of the singular difference of other unique, individuals: In Reason the Other is conceived as useful not in spite of his singularity or difference, but because this singularity is implied by the general laws of

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human nature. As a consequence, there is no question of reducing the qualities of each individual (his opinions, his way of life, or even his appearance) to those of the rest. This is what makes all the difference between convenientia and similitude, “friendship” and “ambition” or even “humanity” (E4P37S1, E4P70). But with this consequence, we are in fact considering Reason, not as a “Second”, but already as a “Third Kind of Knowledge”, in which singularities as such are known as necessary.64

As a result, any dogmatic reduction of others, and a politics based thereon, would distort the true sense of Spinoza’s highest form of knowing. Convenientia implies a constant political engagement in which the singular interests of individuals cooperate as best as they can to generate the most philosophically and politically flourishing society. Yet, political cooperation among distinct, finite individuals is still conducted through mediated and conventional means such as language, material history, and culture. As a result, the wise philosopher’s knowledge is historically situated in a concrete form of living and expresses knowledge of that concrete living. The most dangerous situations emerge when a drive for dogmatic consensus—in the form of an abstract, single, universal truth “applicable” to all—kills the freedom to philosophize and the singular perfection of each unique citizen. Nevertheless, individuals’ desires and communal ethics/politics, if appropriately managed and deployed, lead to intellectual perfection, much like in Maimonides’ arguments.65 As a result, a political dimension is required in which Spinoza, or other wise individuals, will take pains (passions) so that a true free agreement of equals and thinkers (i.e. teaching) may occur. In this enriching political and educative environment, each individual perfects her own singular capacities rather than expressing obeisance to dogma or seeking domination by sophistical and destructive means. As in Maimonides’ view, a wise individual must promote a rhetorical and political system so that each can perfect her abilities, according to her ability. In this case, passions are not removed for both, wise and ignorant, but each individual must work through her passions and images including social-political affects that may encourage wisdom or its opposite. A proper working through produces images that are restrained, properly aligned, and intrinsically active by being congruent with Nature, other mental powers, and social-political conditions. In the end, this project leads to individuals who are most free, social, and wise.

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Conclusion Both Maimonides’ prophetic knowledge and Spinoza’s intuitive knowledge represent expressions of non-discursive knowledge that immediately express and reinforce ethical perfection. Rather than being mystical emanations to finite imaginations or random flashes of insight, they express the necessity of the Providential Creator or God that manifests an order capable of perfecting individual minds to intrinsic perfection, and, at the same time, of agreeing with their singular conditions. This allows them to adequately agree with the singular causality that generated their necessary expressions, thereby establishing intellectual and ethical-political means to continue to gain and express increasing perfection. The comparative analysis that I have presented reveals how, for both Maimonides and Spinoza, non-discursive or singular knowledge, the pinnacle of wisdom for both, does not support an interpretation of each thinker as solely concerned with metaphysics. Instead, each thinker aligns metaphysical truth with concrete existence, including ethics, politics, and embodied psychology. Without each discipline playing an equally valid role in the generation of intellect and wisdom, the potentially wise may be subject to destructive, sophistical, and ill-conceived philosophical pursuits. The generation of intellection perfection, or blessedness (beatitudo), requires careful management of the ethical and political conditions for true intellectual activity. Central to this project is the management of appetition so that it does not lead to unruly desires for truth. Rather than being something to be dismissed, embodied desire must be properly included and expressed in thinking. Thus, the view that both thinkers are merely concerned with wholly dispassionate metaphysical reflection is a distortion. This can be especially fruitful in the case of Spinoza, who has been often elevated as the paragon of a dispassionate, rational philosopher. To the contrary, using the interpretations and sources that I have presented the path to a further development of an ethical-political reading of both thinkers is apparent.

Notes 1. Maimonides (2011a, 190). See Book II, Chapter 38. I prefer the Lerner, Mahdi, and Parens’ translation because they translate the term ‘faculty’ in many cases as ‘power’. I believe that Maimonides is vague concerning the faculties (or powers) of the human soul because the human soul must

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a­ ctualize its unique realities. It is in many cases more similar to the Greek term dunamis. See Maimonides’ discussion of the powers of the soul in chapter one of the EC, pp. 61–64. Idit Dobbs-Weinstein makes a similar argument that for Maimonides, a faculty signifies a power or pure potentiality. See Dobbs-Weinstein (1995, 116). 2. Maimonides (2011a, 186–187). See Book II, Chapter 36. 3. Throughout Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s works, both present knowledge as a perception, and vice versa. For both philosophers, perception and knowledge can be understood in many ways as equivalent. This point will be developed further. 4. These Latin terms translate as knowledge “from things heard or from things signified” and from “vague or random experience.” See TdIE, 19. 5. Elhanan Yakira notes that Maimonides and Spinoza are similar in that they share methodological and philosophical concerns and approaches that attempt to undermine and defeat religious simplicity and irrationality. In his presentation, Yakira shows how Maimonides may have influenced Spinoza. Nevertheless, he argues that the crucial difference between them is religious in that Maimonides defends Jewish exceptionalism, whereas Spinoza advocates for a rational, universal “religion” or reason open to all. See Yakira (2014, 34). This chapter primarily attempts to show how the methodological and philosophical concerns of Maimonides and Spinoza are closely linked when examining prophetic knowledge and singular knowledge. This work will not resolve the lengthy debate concerning the degree Spinoza is a Maimonidean, or vice versa. Nevertheless, there are compelling reasons to believe that Maimonides may have not been so committed to Jewish religious exceptionalism, particularly concerning the issue of prophetic perfection. Menachem Kellner provides numerous examples in Maimonides’ works that show how prophetic perfection may be open to all and is a natural process that distinguishes the relative reality or perfection of each singular individual. Intellectual or divine perfection may not be achieved exclusively by Jews. Additionally, providence represents a concept applicable only to the human species in general. See Kellner (1991, 23–29). Concurring with this less religious interpretation, one can find many passages in Spinoza’s text in which natural individuals are primary rather than classes or (religious) nations. Spinoza explicitly states that nature creates only individuals and not nations. See TTP, p. 548. As a result, nations and religious traditions must be a product of conventional habituation. Yet, for Spinoza, conventional habituation is not an unnatural and merely useless tool for philosophical emendation. To form an effective polis “guided as if by one mind” requires extra-rational and rhetorical devices that generate affections which secure social harmony and eventually pro-

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mote the freedom to philosophize. See TP, p. 700. In fact, Spinoza explicitly states in EIVP54 that a prophet may be an effective leader that engenders human blessedness or perfection. This point will be taken up more fully later. 6. Guide, pp. 24 and 168–169. See Chapters 2 and 69 respectively of Book I of the Guide. 7. Maimonides states clearly that for both followers of Mosaic Law and philosophers, the thought that God would allow imperfection is irrational and undermines both reason and fundamental beliefs in Judaism. Such is the belief of the multitude of the men of knowledge in our Law, and this was explicitly stated by our prophets: namely, that the particulars of natural acts are all well arranged and ordered and bound up with one another, all of them being causes and effects; and that none of them is futile or frivolous or vain, being acts of perfect wisdom […] Philosophic speculation similarly requires that there should not be anything futile, frivolous, or vain in all the acts of nature[.] Guide, p. 505. See Book III, Chapter 25. All particular natural acts and events are necessary due to the overarching wisdom and existence of God. Providence dictates that privation is relative and not absolute in Nature. 8. See EIP28 and EIP29. 9. My view of Maimonides’ position concerning knowledge of metaphysical realities can be generally described, according to Josef Stern, as skeptical. Aligned with Pines and others (e.g. Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, Sara Klein-­ Braslavy, Kenneth Seeskin, etc.), my position is that knowledge for Maimonides must be derived from sensible experience. See Stern (2013, 133–134). See also Pines (1979). Additionally, I am sympathetic to Stern’s view that an embodied intellect can be considered “becoming an intellect in act.” As a result, the emphasis is on the intellectual practices and processes that generate intellectual apprehension and perfection. Sterns describes this well: “His emphasis is not, as it were, on being an intellect in act, but on being, or for an embodied substance, becoming an intellect in act. One engages in this perfect life, and prepares for it, through the performance of spiritual exercises whose ultimate aim is imitatio dei, the imitation of God’s actions through one’s own actions and behavior. It may be impossible for man to be an image of God, but he can imitate divine actions. An important task of the Guide, we shall show, consists in setting out these practices, or spiritual exercises.” Stern (2013, 307)

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Developing this further, it would be more accurate to align my view with Idit Dobbs-Weinstein’s concept of participative apprehension: […] [T]he non-scientific nature of such apprehension of metaphysical truths manifest the limitations of natural human reason, or the disproportionality between the rational “subject” and the extra-rational “object” of knowledge, but in no ways does this reflect the quality of the apprehension itself, especially since this knowledge is said to render “perfect the act of the rational faculty (al-kuwwah al-natiqa), so that its act brings about its knowing things that are real in their existence, and it achieves this apprehension (al-idrak) as if it has apprehended it by starting from speculative premises.” Consequently, Maimonides seems to suggest that participative knowledge not only can be verified by the degree of its congruence with what exists, but also that it enters into existence, the domain of demonstrative reason, and perfects it. […] [P]articipative apprehension requires the prior natural perfection of the intellect as well as the acquisition of great moral perfection and that, apart from brief moments, it is not independent of sensible knowledge in this life.” Dobbs-Weinstein (1995, 180–181). Participative apprehension includes both the skeptical position, and, additionally, the process in which individual intellects are perfecting themselves and immediately relating to necessary existence, which is verified by congruence with concrete, sensible existence. 10. Guide, p. 190. See Book I, Chapter 72. 11. Ibid, pp. 192–193. For a good account that defends the central status of the material intellect for human perfection and an aspectival understanding of Maimonides’ use of the terms “soul” and “intellect” according to a context, see Dobbs-Weinstein (1995, 121–123). 12. Maimonides (2011a, 192–193); emphasis added. See Book II, Chapter 40. 13. Guide, p. 209. See Book I, Chapter 73. 14. Sarah Pessin provides a thorough account of Maimonides’ ambivalent relation to matter. She argues that Spinoza may have developed Maimonides’ position to advocate for a positive account of matter. See Pessin (2008). In both Maimonides’ or Spinoza’s cases, I would argue that matter is integral for modal existence, to use Spinoza’s language. As a result, I would further argue that material affects cannot be dissociated from the generation of knowledge for both Maimonides and Spinoza. 15. Guide, pp. 430–431. See Book III, Chapter 8. 16. Maimonides (2011a, 190); emphasis added. See Book II, Chapter 38. 17. Ibid; emphasis added. 18. Ibid; emphasis added. 19. Ibid, p. 186. See Book II, Chapter 36.

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20. Guide, pp. 70–71. See Book I, Chapter 33. Idit Dobbs-Weinstein argues that an extreme version of the Straussian position that Maimonides ­completely dissimulates and provides exoteric lies is inaccurate. Instead, she aptly notes that Maimonides intimately relates exoteric and esoteric layers of meanings of philosophical/divine texts so that neither can be radically separated. This entails that divine texts are not purely lies to suppress the populace according to the rational ideals of philosophers. See DobbsWeinstein (1995, 18–20). 21. In his thorough examination of prophecy in Jewish philosophy, Howard Kreisel explains that there are textual evidence and reasons to argue that, for Maimonides, imagination must be a necessary component to apprehend divine intelligibles: If we combine all [Maimonides’] pertinent remarks, there is some basis for ascribing to him the view that the superiority of the prophet’s imagination plays a role in the prophet’s apprehension. In his approach to epistemology, a healthy imagination is required in order to attain intelligibles. Following Aristotle and most of his Islamic followers, he views apprehension as resulting from the process by which the rational faculty abstracts the incorporeal forms of objects from the sensible forms contained in the imagination. The Active Intellect serves to “illumine” the rational faculty enabling it to accomplish its task, just as light enables the eyes to see. The lack of an emanation to the philosopher’s imagination thus indicates a defect in the nature disposition that hampers the philosopher in perfecting the rational faculty. Maimonides may have also agreed with the view that the figurative representation of metaphysical truths serves as an aid to the prophet’s own apprehension of these truths, in addition to enabling him to convey these truths to the multitude. The “lightning flashes” of metaphysical truths experienced by the prophets may be in part dependent on the service of a powerful imagination under the sway of the intellect. With the aid of the imagination the prophet is capable of “seeing” metaphysical reality in its unified state. The knowledge is superior to discursive knowledge, which assumes the form of propositions. In other words, the prophet’s apprehension of metaphysical reality may be essentially a non-verbal knowledge attained by the intellect, which is best “translated” into images. Kreisel (2001, 256–257); quote modified. My work proceeds from this premise and attempts to develop and defend further this interpretation. In particular, how there must be ethical and political dimensions for a healthy imagination/reason—these dimensions incorporating ethical and political emendation. Nonetheless, Kreisel’s above description of the illumination of the rational power/

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faculty and imagination and their coordination provides an accurate representation of what should result from appropriate imaginative/rational prophetic perfection. 22. Guide, p. 70; emphasis added. See Book I, Chapter 32. 23. Idit Dobbs-Weinstein details well how Maimonides opposed the practitioners of kalam (Mutakallimuns) in their search for a universal, rational method to demonstrate how existential possibility may be absolutely known and determined, thereby undermining God’s actuality and necessity. See Dobbs-Weinstein (1995, 69–72). 24. Guide, pp. 68–69. See Book I, Chapter 32. 25. Ibid, p. 70. 26. Kellner presents an excellent account of how each prophet must incorporate their singular individuality, including their specific affects, in their apprehension of divine intelligibles. Prophetic knowledge is, therefore, transformative of a concrete singular individual. For Kellner, Maimonidean prophets are not super-philosophers or thinking machines: “Prophets, as the most perfect humans, are not understood by Maimonides as thinking machines, but as concrete individuals, whose individuality is a part of their prophethood, not something to be overcome.” Kellner (2002, 140). As a result, in order to properly express the love or commitment to God’s truth or reality, a prophet must use “all the forces of the body,” as Maimonides claims. See Maimonides (2011a, 89) (Book I, Chapter 39), and also see Kellner (2002, 141). This can represent itself in the fact that each prophet has a specific language or expression of their apprehension of truth. As Maimonides notes: “Know that every prophet has a kind of speech peculiar to him, which is, as it were, the language of that individual, which the prophetic revelation peculiar to him causes him to speak to those who understand him.” See Guide, p. 337, Book II, Chapter 29, and see also Kellner (2002, 139). 27. Guide, p. 66; emphasis added. See Book I, Chapter 31. 28. Guide, pp. 512–513. See Book III, Chapter 28. 29. Steven Nadler argues that for both Maimonides and Gersonides, intellectual love of God does not imply a transcendent reward but the acquisition of actual virtue (living well) in this life. He notes that these two major Jewish philosophers may have influenced Spinoza’s adoption of a similar principle. See Nadler (2009, 494), and see Nadler (2002). 30. Guide, p. 260. See Book I, Chapter 76. In this chapter, Maimonides’ main targets are the Mutakallimuns. Nevertheless, they are exemplars of “inquirers” who seek an absolute demonstrative method or standard to resolve all speculative matters and debates. See Note 38 of this chapter as well. 31. TdIE, 84; emphasis added.

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32. See EIVP1 and EIIP35 concerning how the sensation and image of the sun does not disappear when one acquires an adequate idea of the sun’s actual distance. 33. EIIP17Schol.; emphasis added. 34. For an account as to how Spinoza’s understanding of Deus sive Natura is similar to and may have been derived from Maimonides’ idea of a monotheistic God, see Fraenkel (2006). 35. EIIP17; emphasis added. 36. Julie Klein provides a good account of how Spinoza uses the Latin term quatenus (insofar as) to indicate aspectival differences in reality and knowledge rather than actual ontological differences. She notes that quatenus is especially used in the discussion of the eternity of the mind in Ethics V to indicate how the imagination and intellect may express one reality. As a result, this treatment of the eternity of the mind does not imply a radical separation of mind from body. See Klein (2014). 37. TdIE, 90; emphasis added. 38. Idit Dobbs-Weinstein provides a good account as to how both Maimonides and Spinoza have similar aims in that they seek to resist dogmatic authority and the search for an absolute demonstrative method of the Mutakallimuns and radical Cartesians, respectively. See Dobbs-­Weinstein (2009). 39. For Spinoza, God’s or Nature’s necessity can only be expressed by reason or intellect, whereas images express a contingent or possible existence and, thereby, do not represent some essential or inviolable order. Natural necessity, whether expressed under reason or intellect, has some force to restrain the errant effects of images and, thereby, properly order them with a true and necessary order. Nevertheless, reason cannot fully link effects with their (singular and necessary) causes. Spinoza notes that “[a]lthough such a [rational] conclusion is certain, it is still not sufficiently safe, unless we take the greatest care. […] When things are conceived so abstractly, and not through their true essence, they are immediately confused by the imagination.” See TdIE, 21 footnote h; quote modified. Despite this, for Spinoza, both intellect and reason can order errant experience. A parallel can be drawn here with Maimonides’ account of God’s providence, which has the ability to restrain the errancy and confusion of images and to order knowledge by linking it to some greater degree of perfection. 40. EIAppendix. 41. See EIIIP17 concerning the identity between affective conflict and mental vacillation or doubt. 42. TdIE, 55; quote modified. 43. TdIE, 93; emphasis added. 44. TdIE, 99. 45. TdIE, 102; quote modified.

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46. Letter 9; translation modified. 47. Expanding this point, one may argue, as Warren Zev Harvey has argued, that Maimonides and Spinoza deploy similar philosophical arguments so as to appropriately respond to their historical, social-political contexts and to emend minds habituated by those prejudices, or popular religion. See Harvey (1981, 172). Idit Dobbs-Weinstein makes a similar point that Maimonides and Spinoza utilize similar philosophical arguments to emend the prejudices of their respective historical-philosophical-religious milieus. See Dobbs-Weinstein (1994, 162–169). 48. Spinoza utilizes two Latin terms, ideatum and objectum, that have been translated in English as “object.” However, this may occlude the true sense that it had for Spinoza. For Spinoza, ideatum, or thing perceived, represents an actual perception of mind, or that which constitutes the reality of the mind. It is the mind but also is an aspect of what is sensed—much like a medieval Jewish-Islamic Aristotelian understanding in which the sensed and the sensing or known and knowing are the same. See Yakira (2014, 72–78). See also Wolfson (1958, 46), and see Dobbs-Weinstein (2015, 35). 49. Letter 9; emphasis added. 50. TdIE, 40. 51. TdIE, 25. 52. TdIE, 37. 53. TdIE, 7 and 9; translation modified. Spinoza uses the Latin term mala which is the substantive neuter plural form of the adjective malus. As a substantive, mala can be translated as “bad things” which I believe is more closely aligned with Spinoza’s intent. Given Spinoza’s resistance to evil as an ontological category, I believe that mala as bad things indicates more clearly that good and bad are only related to our specific concrete psyches and intellect. The term indicates more the embodied instance of “evil” (i.e. something bad) rather than “evil” as a category. 54. TdIE, 50; quote modified. 55. TdIE, 1. 56. TdIE, 49; emphasis added and quote modified. 57. Spinoza does state that humility is a sad passion which is contrary to reason. See EIVP53. Yet in the following proposition, EIVP54, humility provides needed restraint that an active reasonable person would already exhibit. Comparing these two propositions, passion and action can be viewed, in a way, as two aspects of the same reality. 58. EIVP54Schol. 59. Susan James presents a compelling case that Spinoza’s criticism of Maimonidean prophecy in the Theological-Political Treatise may be related to a specific political project and audience, and it does not necessarily

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exclude a broader view of prophecy or revelation, which may be more naturalistic: In one form, then, prophecy encompasses the natural knowledge that philosophizing yields […] Revelation, it seems, is not always mysterious and extends into the familiar reaches of current life. Nevertheless, as Spinoza now goes on to observe, common or uneducated people are prone to be fascinated by prophecy of the biblical kind, and often fail to recognize natural revelation for what it is. […] Embedded in this critical analysis is the tacit implication that, when authorities such as the Reformed Church go along with the popular conception of revelation, they reinforce the disposition of ordinary people to turn their backs on reasoning and encourage them to take refuge in ignorant wonder. […] To counteract these tendencies, one might expect Spinoza to develop his conception of the revelatory dimension of reasoning, as he will later go on to do in the Ethics.” James (2012, 43). I agree with James that Spinoza has a broader understanding of the definition of prophecy. In many ways, this work attempts to show how there are revelatory or, rather, singular, non-discursive aspects to reasoning for Spinoza. Additionally, as James aptly observes, for Spinoza, a distorted view of prophecy leads to not only epistemic error but ignorant wonder that is the primary tool to generate an impoverished ethical-political condition. This is why much of my work focuses on the ethical-political dimension of appropriate singular or prophetic thinking, so as to demonstrate their necessary union. 60. Ravven (2001, 400–401). Joshua Parens argues that Ravven’s account of the imagination for both Maimonides and Spinoza includes a mimetic and an active dimension. An active imagination could order a virtuous society solely on based on imaginative means. Parens argues that imagination is too blind and unrestrained to achieve this result, and so, a practical intellect based solely on reason is required. See Parens (2012, 168–170). Although I agree that imagination as unrestrained is incapable of achieving ethical and political flourishing, I do not believe reason solely has the power to overcome images and affects. As a result, I generally concur with Ravven that imagination can be active, if that means viewed under the aspect of reason and intrinsically disposed to potentially generate intellect. As I have argued, especially for Spinoza, the distinctions between imagination, reason, and intellect should be regarded as aspectival. My interpretation of Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s aspectival understanding of mind has affinities with an Aristotelian understating of thinking as an expression of the aspectival equivalence between knower, known, and intellect. As a result, I would concur more with Harvey’s interpretation that Spinoza and

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Maimonides share a close intellectual kinship contrary to Parens’ claim that Harvey and Pines should treat Maimonides and Spinoza as fundamentally disparate thinkers. See Parens (2012, 10–13). More recently, Warren Zev Harvey has defended the link between Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s epistemologies by examining their shared commitment to a version of Aristotelian intellectual love. See Harvey (2014). 61. Ravven (2001, 400). 62. See TdIE, 10–17, and see the ending of the Ethics in which Spinoza describes the difficulty and rarity of producing intellect. 63. TdIE, 13 and 14; quote modified and emphasis added. 64. Balibar (1995, 29–30). 65. As for Maimonides, desire is essential to thinking and cannot be detached. This kind of affective thinking can ultimately be traced back to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Section II, Book VI (1139a15–1139b10). See Aristotle (1980, 102–103).

Bibliography Aristotle. 1980. Nicomachean Ethics. Trans. Hippocrates G.  Apostle. Grinnell: The Peripatetic Press. Balibar, Etienne. 1995. Spinoza: From Individuality to Transindividuality. Mededelingen vanwege het Spinozahuis 71: 3–36. Dobbs-Weinstein, Idit. 1994. Maimonidean Aspects in Spinoza’s Thought. Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 17: 153–174. ———. 1995. Maimonides and St. Thomas on the Limits of Reason. Albany: SUNY Press. ———. 2009. The Ambiguity of the Imagination and the Ambivalence of Language in Maimonides and Spinoza. In Maimonides and His Heritage, ed. Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, Lenn E.  Goodman, and James Allen Grady, 95–112. Albany: SUNY Press. ———. 2015. Spinoza’s Critique of Religion and Its Heirs: Marx, Benjamin, and Adorno. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fraenkel, Carlos. 2006. Maimonides’ God and Spinoza’s Deus sive Natura. Journal of the History of Philosophy 44 (2): 169–215. Harvey, Warren Zev. 1981. A Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean. Journal of the History of Philosophy 19 (2): 151–172. ———. 2014. Ishq, hesheq, and amor Dei intellectualis. In Spinoza and Medieval Jewish Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler, 96–107. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. James, Susan. 2012. Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion, and Politics: The Theological-­ Political Treatise. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Kellner, Menachem. 1991. Maimonides on Judaism and the Jewish People. Albany: SUNY Press. ———. 2002. Is Maimonides’ Ideal Person Austerely Rationalist? American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 76 (1): 125–143. Klein, Julie. 2014. ‘Something of It Remains’: Spinoza and Gersonides on Intellectual Eternity. In Spinoza and Medieval Jewish Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler, 177–203. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kreisel, Howard. 2001. Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media. Maimonides, Moses. 2011a. The Guide of the Perplexed. In Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 2nd ed., ed. Joshua Parens and Joseph Macfarland. Trans. Ralph Lerner, Muhsin Mahdi, and Joshua Parens, 183–202. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Nadler, Steven. 2002. Spinoza’s Heresy: Immortality and the Jewish Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2009. The Jewish Spinoza. Journal of the History of Ideas 3: 491–510. Parens, Joshua. 2012. Maimonides and Spinoza: Their Conflicting Views of Human Nature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pessin, Sara. 2008. Matter, Form, and the Corporeal World. In The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy: From Antiquity through the Seventeenth Century, ed. Steven Nadler and T.M.  Rudavsky, 267–301. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pines, Shlomo. 1979. Limitations of Human Knowledge According to al-Farabi, Ibn Bajja, and Maimonides. In Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. I. Twersky, 82–109. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Ravven, Heidi M. 2001. Some Thoughts on What Spinoza Learned from Maimonides on the Prophetic Imagination: Part Two: Spinoza’s Maimonideanism. Journal of the History of Philosophy 39 (3): 385–406. Stern, Josef. 2013. The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Wolfson, Harry Austryn. 1958. The Philosophy of Spinoza. Vol. II.  New  York: Meridian Books. Yakira, Elhanan. 2014. Spinoza and the Case for Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 3

Out of Many: Prophecy and Sovereign Authority in Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s Politics

Rather than view demonstrative reason as the sole means to achieve knowledge and one’s singular good, Maimonides and Spinoza present compelling cases why extra-rational affects and tools are necessary to generate singular knowledge and one’s own good, or perfection. Their commitment to the necessity of extra-rational factors for generating individual perfection explains why both focus heavily on politics. Both see politics not as a mere hindrance to philosophical and ethical success, but as a necessary, effective, and empowering factor for intellection and virtue. The focus on politics is especially relevant, since politics may restrain and redirect errant desires for the good of an individual and society; in particular, it can restrain obstinate desires, or prejudices. For Maimonides and Spinoza, politics is central to philosophical understanding and individual-­ social perfection.1 The necessity of politics is introduced because individual appetition can neither be managed nor appropriately explained by rational, universal concepts. Maimonides and Spinoza share the realization that desire is always initially of a sensible, concrete particular and is directly related to each individual’s embodied striving and perceived good. As a result, desire is always individualized, and by definition, it does not coordinate its activity, the seeking of a perceived good, with those of others, unless directly compelled by extra-rational political affects and institutions. For both, the existence of a universal desire for transcendent knowledge would not be able to directly and initially move an individual to an © The Author(s) 2020 N. L. Whitman, An Examination of the Singular in Maimonides and Spinoza, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49472-8_3

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ethical life, let alone a philosophical life, that would be characterized by moderated desires and judgments. A universal desire with indeterminate content could not manage or restrain specific, concrete desires that have actual imaginative content. Additionally, a universal desire implies widespread, identical application across many diverse, individualized persons. This is contrary to experience in two fundamental ways. First, human beings are naturally ignorant of their own good, and therefore, they need conventional habituation to align with a conventional good. Second, human beings are obviously and continually moved by individualized desires rather than by universal concepts. Universal knowledge assumes that everyone would consider, primarily and initially, an objective rational reality before personal concerns, which is contrary to the individualized nature of desire. Instead, individuals are essentially divided by diverse and chaotic affects, bodily processes, and strivings to achieve particularized images of the good. Thus, a posited ready-made, universal, natural good does not have the reality or power to modify, persuade, and restrain individuals to that posited ideal good life. Additionally, the lack of power to organize individuals according to a “universal” good entails that there cannot be a universal political template by which everyone is identically perfected, presumably perfected to the life of a philosopher or sage. In reason’s place, experience of one’s environment provides the fundamental means to gauge, restrain, and coordinate individuals into a cooperative, functioning society. As a result, a successful and empowering political organization must exclusively address concrete historical affects and images of the good so as to direct and coordinate many diverse individuals into a cooperative polis in which, at a minimum, security is established and from which philosophical perfection may be possible. The incorporation of specific concrete desires and historical images of the good in the achievement of political success, in turn, implies that historical desires and images are directly involved in the philosophical understanding of the one’s immediate and singular good. To know one’s own good requires both an awareness of social-political affects and how they are expressed in one’s identity. Given these requirements, one may ask: how much do historical, material, and political conditions inform an individual’s knowledge of their singular good? Do these concrete conditions inform the identity of individuals, or are humans merely pre-political, natural individuals capable of understanding their good and themselves without politics? In the latter

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case, favorable social-political conditions can be viewed as merely a catalyst to enable potentially wise individuals to reflect on themselves and Nature’s universal laws. If so, self-interpretation and self-knowledge would not be fundamentally affected by historical, material, and political affects. Yet for both Maimonides and Spinoza, self-interpretation or self-knowledge requires that concrete historical, material, and political conditions must constitute the identity of individuals and cannot be dissociated from true, singular knowledge. Rather than being a disposable stage for self-­ enlightenment, these concrete conditions affect that very identity of individuals. Social-political affects generate images and emotions by which individuals essentially live, both as singular individuals and political actors. These social-political images and strivings are the basis for knowledge and not mere obstacles to be removed or suppressed. Self-knowledge and philosophical perfection express an active awareness of how one’s living is necessary relative to one’s embodied context. For both philosophers, there can be no pre-political, natural individuals capable of understanding their “universal,” “innate” good, but every individual is situated in a historical and political context from which their life and knowledge of their good is thoroughly mediated by political affects and conventions. At its core, this idea is derived from the fundamental fact that human beings come equipped with neither the necessities for life nor any immediate knowledge of what sustains, and potentially, perfects them; they must figure this out through social and historical interaction. Despite their recognition of the liberating and empowering potential of politics, Maimonides and Spinoza are keenly aware that the sensible and imaginative origins of knowledge and politics preclude any final elimination of errant desires/beliefs and a political institution agreeable to all.2 In fact, the majority of individuals will be governed by their individualized appetitive processes that are structured by vagrant bodily experiences and varying social valuations. This is so because every individual has a natural propensity to accept whatever initial sensible images affect and determine them positively or negatively. Since the images and the imagination are a real aspect of the mind, the actuality of these images, per se, do not contain any contrary cause to negate or destroy themselves. These images and individuals’ judgments about them do not seek to counter the asserted reality. As a result, one’s primary experiences provide a powerful disposition to evaluate any subsequent experiences and compel one to give absolute interpretations of nature.

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In order to restrain and redirect individuals’ primary desires and passions, a law-giver or sovereign must have a singular status through which he or she is able to dispense singular laws. These laws move everyone to desire them and to not abandon them when circumstances are adverse to the dictates of the law. An essential character to singular authority and singular laws is the ability to affect each individual’s imaginative and appetitive powers but then to be not merely one opinion or image among many that could be simply overturned by contrary material affections or images. A singular law impacts the imagination, but it is not merely defined by the material imagination. Although seemingly indeterminate and irreducible to images and individualized judgments, reason may appear to be the best contender for achieving a singular status among citizens and the chief force of political cohesion, but clearly, Maimonides and Spinoza reject this. From the beginning, law and authority must be mediated solely through appetition and the imagination, and thereby, are capable of moving the concrete desires and embodied activities of community members. Whereas the vulgar or the masses merely remain at the level of imagistic satisfaction, certain individuals are able to master their imaginative experiences and render them under the aspect of intellect. Through their great strength of mind and ruling, they are able to take concrete images and transform them into a vehicle for intellection and moral restraint of errant desires. As a result, they have the ability to transmit these “images” to vulgar masses and to move them to their highest possible perfection, but at the very minimum, to ethical restraint of errant desires so that a cooperative polis may flourish. Since the “image” transmitted has a singular status (neither merely a discursive image nor an indeterminate universal), it can link the diverse parts of a community to be like one thing or a unity. This living unity consistently strives (via concrete desires) to maintain the community, despite adverse shocks, and to maintain a specific character or tradition that can impart wisdom and generate intellection (or perfection) for subsequent individuals in far-removed and diverse contexts from the institution of the singular law. The law is not merely a directive to be dogmatically or universally translated into every context, but what is transmitted is a powerful way of life, a wise, virtuous tradition, which can affect desires and lead to the generation of wisdom, when possible. In the following sections, I will show that for both Maimonides and Spinoza, law-givers or sovereigns, and subsequently the laws established by them, have a singular status. They derive their authority neither from

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mere imagistic experiences nor from universal reasoning. The laws that they institute are not merely one voice among many, but out of the many’s voices, theirs is able to uniquely and directly affect the multitude into a cooperative unity, providing them with a powerful experience that may induce them to wisdom, but at the very least, to peace and security.3

Maimonides’ Politics A simple examination of Maimonides’ political philosophy reveals that he is heavily indebted to Al-Farabi’s political writings. Al-Farabi established the philosophical background from which Maimonides developed his views of an ideal law-giver and a virtuous polis founded and governed by such a leader. Al-Farabi blended Neoplatonist metaphysics with a naturalized Aristotelian ethics-politics to describe how a sovereign is uniquely authorized and able to unify a people into a virtuous city. Maimonides expressed great admiration for Al-Farabi’s political philosophy, especially for Al-Farabi’s text, The Political Regime: Do not busy yourself with books on the art of logic except for what was composed by the wise man Abu Nasr al-Farabi [Alfarabi]. For, in general, everything that he composed—and particularly his book on the Principles of Beings—is all finer than fine flour. His arguments enable one to understand and comprehend, for he was very great in wisdom. (The Principle of Beings was a nickname given to Alfarabi’s The Political Regime)4

In this text and other political writings, Al-Farabi consistently presents a naturalized account of the ideal sovereign. Of course, for Al-Farabi, an ideal sovereign would be a law-giver prophet who founds a thriving and enduring religious community, such as Moses and Mohammed. Although this would have appealed to Maimonides, he is primarily impressed by Al-Farabi’s naturalized account of authority and politics.5 By briefly examining Al-Farabi’s account of a prophet law-giver and how he founds a religious-political community, we can situate many of Maimonides’ thoughts on authority and politics and then analyze why he concurs with and expands Al-Farabi’s naturalistic view of politics. The naturalism that Maimonides derives from Al-Farabi’s philosophy in turn leads Maimonides to consistently view authority and the law as singular.

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The Al-Farabian Foundation In his Book of Religion and The Political Regime, Al-Farabi gives a detailed account as to how a law-giver prophet founds a city and why he is uniquely warranted to create the best polis. At first glance, it seems that Al-Farabi simply deploys a Neoplatonist metaphysics that locates the ultimate power of rulership in extra-natural sources that are able to unify diverse and multiple individuals into a harmonious association. [Rulership] does not cease ascending like this from things in lower ranks to things in higher ranks that have more complete rulership than those below. […] [T]he number of beings in that rank must be fewer and each one of the beings in it must have greater unity in itself and less multiplicity.6

Al-Farabi seems to suggest that the authority and power to successfully lead a community rests solely in a higher and less divided metaphysical reality. Following the logic of ascent ultimately back to a single source and power, God bestows a special power and authority on a unique lower being to govern lesser and diverse individuals. It explains how revelation descends from Him level by level until it reaches the first ruler who thus governs the city or the nation and nations with what revelation from God[.]7

Principles of order in political reality imitate God’s governance of Nature. Each level of rulership in some way has a source which is indivisible, immediate, and outside of a process of discursive mediation. Additionally, each subsequent rank of rulership or unity itself is a derivative of God’s simplicity and exists as both divine-like and a part of Nature, in the sense that it is a specific form of governance or unity. As an ordering power or unifying force, a more perfect and simple rulership is not subject to divisions and external affections. This does not imply that this higher rule has direct participation in the individuals governed and their relations to one another. Rather, each lesser individual is external to and divided from one another so that an intrinsic unity of parts or individuals is not guaranteed. Harmony and cooperation must be continually emanated so as to organize and impart order to lower individuals; thereby, the rule sustains a system of mutual support. In a way, first principles of rulership are inaccessible to those who are ruled; they are

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“accessible” only as an extra-natural unity that communicates itself throughout via the divine prophet. From the preceding, it may seem that Al-Farabi simply follows religious accounts which state that supranatural powers govern nature, including the institution of virtuous political rule by a divinely endowed individual. This type of account requires no need for naturalistic explanations. Yet, Al-Farabi also mixes Aristotelian naturalism with Neoplatonism, and so, he assumes that natural causal processes among diverse material beings are real and necessary to politics and religion. Natural and material diversity is the necessary inverse to simple metaphysical unity. This entails that even individual human beings are necessarily composed of diverse material elements. Instead of eradicating material diversity, Al-Farabi includes it as a necessary component to ethical and political life which must be addressed appropriately with an Aristotelian ethics, epistemology, and psychology. Al-Farabi establishes three primary natural foundations to any city; all of them are rooted in a natural process that can be investigated and explained: Human beings are of the species that cannot complete its necessary affairs nor gain its most excellent state except by coming together as many associations in a single dwelling-place. […] A nation is distinguished from another by two natural things—natural temperaments and natural states of character—and by a third conventional, thing having some basis in natural things, namely, the tongue—I mean, the language through which expression comes about.8

Natural temperaments and natural states of characters are derived for the very concrete diverse material bodies that make up human individuals. […] [F]rom the difference in their nutriments is the difference in the materials and crops from which people come to be[.] […] Likewise, the difference in air is also a cause for the difference in temperaments and states of character[.] […] Then from the mutual help of these differences and their being mixed follow different minglings according to which the temperaments of nations and their states of character differ. In this way and according to this manner there is a concordance of these natures, a tying of some to others, and rankings of them.9

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Following from the natural material diversity expressed in human temperaments and states of a character, a true leader must use conventional, but no less natural, means to induce a populace to seek true happiness. […] [W]ith respect to the difference in innate characters in individual human beings, the innate character of every human being does not on its own know happiness or the things that ought to be done; rather, for that, there is need for an instructor and a guide. […] Nor, when he is guided to these two, does he inevitably do what he has been instructed and guided to do without an external spur and being aroused toward it. […] One who has the power to guide someone else to a particular thing, to prompt him to do it, or to use him in it, is […] a ruler over the one who is not able to do that thing by himself[.]10

Yet, Nature does not preset the standard of usefulness or utility; it cannot establish one way by which to achieve ultimate happiness. A leader has broad discretion to determine which naturally diverse phenomena are conducive to achieve happiness. Whatever is useful for obtaining happiness and gaining it is also good, not for its own sake but for the sake of its usefulness with respect to happiness. The good useful for obtaining happiness may be something existing in nature, and that may come about by will. […] [I]t is in the substance of the heavenly bodies to give whatever is in the nature of matter to receive without their caring about what is useful or harmful to the purpose of the active intellect. Therefore, it is not impossible that in the sum of what is attained from the heavenly bodies there at times be what is suitable to the purpose of the active intellect and at times what is contrary to it.11

For Al-Farabi, material parts and individuals are not essential constituents of a specific totality. Instead, through their individual activities and range of capacities, these material parts and individuals may coordinate and express a more vital, greater activity with a long-lasting “purpose.” […] [I]t is not possible to reach the purpose of voluntary actions and dispositions, unless they are distributed among a very large association of people—either each assigned to a single individual in the association or each assigned to a single group in the association—so that the groups in the association cooperate, through the actions and dispositions in each to perfect the purpose of the whole association in the same way that the organs of

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a human being cooperate, through the capacities of each, to perfect the purpose of the whole body.12

The lack of an initial good or use for material beings, including human individuals, is implicit in this deferred form of purpose. Human goods and actions are not naturally apparent and do not reveal a purpose or completion of an order unless associated in many different ways and under many different aspects. Mediation and extrinsic relationships, as well as extrinsic affects between individuals, are necessary to provide an appropriate perspective and association which may properly provide a possible “unity and single” meaning to the many different capacities, realities, and aspects of the individuals constituting the city. As a result, there is no universal blueprint by which to institute the same perfect society. Experience must be primary to how a society will achieve its goal of human perfection. The lack of an apparently rational and useful good in nature implies that individuals may desire contrary imagined goods. That is, they are moved by imaginative useless ends so that, in order to achieve true good or perfection, concrete desires must be redirected and coordinated. In what the active intellect gives the human being, it proceeds in the way the heavenly bodies do. For it first gives the human being a faculty and a principle by which he strives, or by which a human being is able to strive on his own, to the rest of the perfections that remain to him. That principle is the sciences and the primary intelligible attained in the rational part of the soul. It gives him those cognitions and those intelligibles only after the human being first proceeds and attains the sense-perceptive and the appetitive parts of the soul through which there come about the longing and loathing following upon sense-perception, as well as the instruments of these two from the parts of the body. Through these two, will is attained.13

The redirection of desire must start with the sense-perceptive images. A rational motivation only comes about after appetition and imagination have been oriented to pursue a useful good toward thinking. Since imagination and appetition begin with a longing for an external good, there must be management of that longing so that the commitment to thinking is achieved and sustained as a persistent striving to know. The desired images and content must be capable of redirecting blind or useless desire so that it agrees with a later rational and intellectual desire.

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Will is at first only a longing [that comes] first from sensation. Longing comes about through the appetitive part and sensation through the sense-­ perceptive part. Then, by attaining the imaginative part of the soul and the longing that follows upon it after that, a second will is attained after the first. So this will is a longing [that comes] from imagination. After these two are attained, it is possible to attain the primary cognitions from the active intellect in the rational part. At this point, a third kind of will is generated in the human being, namely, the longing [that comes] from reason. This is what is particularly characterized by the name “choice.” This is what is in the human being in particular, apart from the rest of the animals. […] Now the first two wills may come about in non-rational animals. When this [third will] is attained by the human being, it enables him to strive toward happiness or not to do so.14

The manner of instruction instituted by a leader and society is important for rational perfection. This indicates that political formations and their affects provide the basis through which thinking occurs. Thinking requires concrete processes by and through which it cognizes intelligibles. Thinking does not merely think universal indeterminate truths, but thinking derives its activity from the concrete teachings inducing individuals to think and to strive or desire to think more. What is passed down in a virtuous society and instituted by a wise leader is a tradition by which as many individuals may arrive at and sustain their moral and intellectual perfection. As an expression of a natural process, however, the tradition must be continually enacted by and continually affecting individuals so that it does not disappear. [Rulership] explains that the things […] so as to be practiced in common are only brought about by means of a rulership that establishes those actions and dispositions in the city or nation and strives to preserve them for the people so that they do not disappear or become extinct.15

Rooted in natural processes, a tradition also must rely on the power of good images and concrete practices so that the populace maintains a living unity despite the fraying potential of errant material desires. [Rulership] brings about cognizance of their harmony, or how they are linked together, how they are organized, how their actions are organized, and how they mutually support one another so that despite their multiplicity they might be like one thing.16

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Given the potential proliferation of opinions and images within the populace, there is need of common imaginative practices (a virtuous religion) by which out of the diversity of opinions there may be a unifying order. A common religion utilizes the extrinsic nature of images to reach as many individuals as possible and to lay down a common practice and desire by which a coordination and unification of individuals may occur. […] [A]ll of this is impossible unless there is a common religion in the cities that brings together their opinions, beliefs, and actions; that renders their divisions harmonious, linked together, and well ordered; and at that point they will support one another in their actions and assist one another to reach the purpose that is sought after, namely, ultimate happiness.17

Within this common, mediated order, individuals may be both rulers and servers. The power that governs a cooperative association requires actions that may be perceived as both active and passive, which implies a required level of mediation among individuals. This mediation cannot be reduced to a simple ideal formula or removed from any political association. This explains why in a prior passage Al-Farabi uses the phrase: “despite their multiplicity they might be like one thing.” Associations are merely unified to be like a posited singular thing or in the image of God. Multiplicity disallows a direct unity and natural co-implication of different individuals to certain ends. Natural worth should not be understood to indicate some essential plan for individuals but more that different ranks of individuals or parts have different capacities or different ranges of expressions that may be used to sustain and promote harmony. Out of the images and concrete practices that may generate intellect and moral perfection emerges a reality that expresses the unified and striving aspect to a society which can be reduced neither merely to its material constituents nor to an indeterminate universal template. It is evident that the happiness attained by the inhabitants of the city varies in quantity and quality in accordance with the variation in the perfections they procure through civic actions. And in accordance with that, the pleasures they gain vary. For when the soul attains separation from matter and becomes incorporeal, the accidents that affect bodies insofar as they are bodies is removed from it. So it cannot be said of it that it moves or that it rests. […] When a sect passes away, and their bodies are nullified and their souls are delivered and made happy, then other people follow after them, take their place in the city, and perform their activities […] They are

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­ eighborly to them in the way that what is not corporeal is neighborly. And n they join with the similar souls of the people of the unique sect[.]18

The leaders who are most aware of this reality, being the highest expressions of this activity, are themselves united by similar desires, practices, and mind. […] [A]n association of these kings at a single moment in a single city, a single nation, or many nations, then their whole association is like a single king due to the agreement in their endeavors, purposes, opinions, and ways of life. If they succeed one another in time, their souls will be a single soul.19

The “soul” or the living unity of the city expresses a historical tradition that includes specific virtuous images, desired ends, practices, and teachings by and through which intellectual perfection may be expressed, hopefully, by as many individuals as possible. Nevertheless, the tradition requires a historical dimension both in so far as the law was uniquely instituted at a concrete moment and must be continually enacted historically (within singular/unique historical conditions) to ensure material survival as well as the possibility for intellectual perfection. A law-giver prophet does not institute a virtuous tradition from universal reasoning, but rather he or she must use his experience within a populace and its own history to determine which virtuous images and practices are uniquely relevant to unifying a populace. And the first kingly craft is like that [of a physician’s craft]. […] In performing those actions particular to it, the ruler is not content to have comprehensive cognizance of universal things, or the ability to grasp them, unless he has another faculty as well, one acquired through lengthy experience and observation that enables him to determine actions with regard to their quantity, quality, times, and the rest of what actions may be determined by and stipulations placed on them[.] […] For the actions of the kingly craft are only concerned with particular cities […] the faculty by means of which a human being is able to infer stipulations […] is what the Ancients called “prudence.”20

Al-Farabi explains that the first ruler must intimately link his desire and effective striving (or virtue) to the community’s well-being and life:

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If the first ruler is virtuous and his rulership truly virtuous, then in what he prescribes he seeks to obtain, for himself and for everyone under his rulership the ultimate happiness that is truly happiness; and that religion will be virtuous religion. […] Now the craft of the virtuous first ruler is kingly and joined with revelation from God. Indeed, he determines the actions and opinions in the virtuous religion by means of revelation. This occurs in one or both of two ways: one is that they are all revealed to him as determined; the second is that he determines them by means of the faculty he acquires from revelation and the Revealer, may He be exalted, so that the stipulations with which he determines the virtuous opinions and actions are disclosed to him by means of it.21

An effect of the law-giver prophet’s virtue is the establishment of a living community that must maintain the stipulations and application of the fundamental law by prudentially dealing with time and place. Since the law-­ giver derived his virtuous actions and knowledge from his own experience so as to impart a historical way of life, subsequent communities with a similar striving and form must deal with unique conditions. Al-Farabi explains that the indefinite circumstances in Nature and among individuals throughout history and across political associations require that in order to sustain itself, an established tradition must address singular circumstances and actions rather than assuming that a universal and unifying law can resolve the differences and divisions among individuals. [H]e determines, legislates, and establishes a tradition regarding what ought to be done […] Since not everything that can occur does occur in his time or in his country, many things remain that could occur in another time or in another country, each needing a specifically determined action, and he will have legislated nothing about them.22

A hard (literalist) law is a bad law, even for a fundamental law posited as the most complete and perfect. But perfection should be understood more as perfecting or providing a continuing “purpose” to the extrinsic relations and tenuous existence between individuals. As a result, the law-­ giver and revealed law must represent the order and harmony among individuals as itself something that must be imparted to every citizen, lest dissolution occur.

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The image of the city’s unity and well-being as well as individual well-­ being in that commonwealth must be presented in an extrinsic image so as to determine and influence the citizens in their concrete practices. The description of the things comprised by the opinions of religion ought to be such as to bring the citizens to imagine everything in the city—kings, rulers, and servants; their ranks, the way they are linked together, and the way some yield to others; and everything prescribed to them—so that what is described will be likenesses the citizens will follow in their ranks and actions.23

Through images, citizens are affected by concrete particulars which they may desire to continue and by which they relate to other extrinsic individuals in the same common practice. Universal or philosophical knowledge and assent cannot provide the concrete determinations that address the indefinite and multiple aspects of human actions. Although philosophical knowledge may show a universal aspect or unity among different individuals, it cannot enter into the world of concrete particulars and individuals which require affects and imagistic presentations to motivate action and desire. For the law-giver, the revealed law requires rhetoric and dialectics to continue the concrete community and its established unity. Al-Farabi describes the necessity of dialectics and rhetoric: […] [V]irtuous religion is not only for philosophers or only for someone of such a station as to understand what is spoken about only in a philosophic manner. Rather most people who are taught the opinions of religion and instructed in them and brought to accept its actions are not of such a station—and that is due to nature or because they are occupied with other things. […] For that reason, both dialect and rhetoric are of major value for verifying the opinions of religion for the citizens and for defending, supporting, and establishing those opinions in their souls, as well as defending those opinions when someone appears who desires to deceive the followers of the religion by means of argument, lead them to error, and contend against the religion.24

In the above passage, it is revealing that Al-Farabi notes that virtuous religion is also for the philosopher. This raises the question whether the philosopher could do without a concrete tradition that orients their initial desire with rhetorical and imagistic representations and affective associations. Additionally, it raises the issue of whether the philosopher develops

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in the case of religion and politics the rhetorical and imagistic foundations of concrete civil life into a philosophical discourse directed toward universal assent and verification. Whereas rhetoric and dialectic address the concrete particular actions, philosophy validates the tradition’s truth, virtue, and activity as indeterminate and thereby should be convincing to all. Nonetheless, philosophical knowledge should not assume to un-­determine tradition, as it may have no basis in concrete reality. Philosophy may aid the law and its maintenance by resisting sectarian and divisive positions which seek to reduce the tradition to particular opinions or to assumed foundational opinions that cannot dynamically govern the continual flow of new experiences and problems of the city. These problems and extrinsic tensions must be resolved by prudence and the continual use of rhetoric and dialectics on and by the citizenry. As such, rhetoric and dialectic as initiated by the first law-giver should impart and evoke a continuance of the truth of the revealed law in the philosopher and vulgar alike. Counterintuitively, the extra-natural status of the prophet law-giver should ensure both the governance and maintenance of determinate actions and provoke the philosophical and indeterminate forms of knowledge from resting in or supporting specific beliefs or authoritative pronouncements. Much of Maimonides’ political philosophy draws on Al-Farabi to argue that the Law and the law-giver’s authority must have a singular status. For Maimonides, some important results of the Al-Farabian naturalistic foundation of politics are as follows: (1) natural diversity is always present in human affairs; (2) no natural good is easily identifiable and present to each individuals’ divided perspective; (3) given the pull of natural and human diversity, there must be a continual striving and mastery of materiality to maintain and express a specific existence or good; (4) this mastery of material and human diversity entails that usefulness is a primary characteristic of ethical-political rule, but usefulness is not readily apparent as a natural good; (5) since all “lower,” diverse phenomena are real as expressions of the one actual universe, sensation and imagination are real and a basis for and to be included in “higher” realities, such as wisdom; (6) desire cannot be merely intellectual, but there is a unity of desire that must express itself throughout sensation, imagination, and thinking; (7) there is no real or absolute privation or evil in material existence since it is a real created/ necessary object: nature does nothing in vain; (8) striving and desire is always expressed through this concrete reality but can be transformed into a higher expression out of those imaginative elements; (9) political desire must be grounded in imaginative opinions and practices that structure the

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total human being toward perfection; (10) there is a non-discursive reality arising out of this diversity, not reduced to it but also not independent of the constant unification in diverse contexts; and (11) a virtuous and unique law-giver uses their singular experience, wisdom, and strength of mind to deploy and transform imaginative means that can establish a virtuous tradition and perfecting community, expressed by and through the Law.

Maimonides’ Singular Law and Prophet Law-Giver By adopting Al-Farabi’s naturalistic politics and intensifying certain aspects of it, Maimonides can argue that the Law and law-giver must uniquely arise out of a concrete historical context but cannot be merely reduced to one practice/opinion among the multitude’s many. Neither can the Law be a mere momentary image, but rather it must attain a special status as a living tradition that can guide the desires and subsequently the minds of a community to achieve moral and intellectual perfection. Yet all the while, it must do this as a concrete and arousing force and not merely as an indeterminate concept or a merely passive image. In one of his earliest works, The Treatise on the Art of Logic, Maimonides clearly accepts the general Al-Farabian framework of political science: The governance of the city is a science that imparts to its citizens knowledge of true happiness and imparts to them the [way of] striving to achieve it; and knowledge of true misery, imparting to them the [way of] striving to guard against it, and training their moral habits to abandon what are only presumed to be happiness so that they not take pleasure in them and doggedly pursue them. […] Moreover, it prescribes for them rules of justice that order their associations properly. The learned men of past religious communities (milal) used to formulate, each of them according to his perfection, regimens and rules through which their princes governed the subjects; they called them nomoi; […] In these times, all this—I mean the regimes and the nomoi— has been dispensed with, and men are being governed by divine commands (al-awamir al-ilahiyya).25

Political science understands fundamentally that human beings do not have an innate sense of good and bad and that they require extrinsic habituation to manage and redirect their initial desires of the “good” so that a higher form of happiness is achieved. Essential to achieving this higher former of happiness is striving in a particular manner so that knowledge of

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the good may actualize itself through that concrete activity, despite diverse errant influences. Moreover, while one strives to achieve the good, that activity also immediately coordinates with others so that each individual’s existence can associate as best as possible with others so as to further the achievement of social and individual good. Maimonides notes that individual perfection, the expression of a virtuous management of one’s conditions and awareness thereof, translates into the degree of political acumen and authority to guide a populace. Whereas Maimonides ends his summary of political science with a rather strong claim indicating that universal divine commands have replaced the need to rely on the embodied perfection of human leaders, elsewhere, he emphasizes that the natural basis of politics cannot be eradicated and that a faculty of ruling, i.e. one based on experience, is essential to human survival and well-being. Now as the nature of the human species requires that there be those differences among individuals belonging to it and as, in addition, association is necessary for this nature, it is by no means possible that this association should be accomplished except—and this is necessarily so—through a ruler who gauges that actions of the individuals, perfecting that which is deficient and reducing that which is excessive, and who lays down actions and moral habits for all of them to practice always in the same way, until the natural diversity is hidden through the multiple points of conventional accord, and so that society becomes well-ordered. Therefore, I say that the Law, although it is not natural, has a basis in what is natural. It was a part of the wisdom of the deity with regard to the continuance of this species, that He put it into its nature […] that individuals belonging to it should have the faculty of ruling. Among them there is one to whom that governance has been revealed by prophecy directly; he is the prophet or the one who lays down the nomos.26

Rather than circumventing the natural basis of authority, Maimonides situates the law-giver prophet as entering into the natural world and satisfying the natural requirements for political governance and success.27 The faculty of ruling is a necessary product and response to natural diversity among individuals so that some type of survival and thriving may occur. Even the Law represents a conventional response to natural diversity and implies a more effective means to habituate material individuals rather than a universal rational pronouncement. This is so because material diversity for Maimonides seems even more intensified than Al-Farabi so that a

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law must be even better able to directly coordinate the material diversities, or excesses/deficiencies, to establish some cooperative order: It has been explained with utmost clarity that man is political by nature and that it is his nature to associate with others. He is not like the other animals for whom association is not a necessity. Because of the manifold composition of this species […] there are many differences between the individuals belonging to it, so that you can hardly find two individuals who are like in any one of the species of moral habits, any more than their visible forms are alike. The cause of this is the difference in temperaments: the material [constituents] differ, and so do the accidents that adhere to the form[.] […] For you find among us two individuals who seem to belong to two different species with regard to each moral habit[.]28

Following Al-Farabi, but intensifying his view on material diversity, Maimonides argues that each individual is like a species unto to his or herself so that an effective law must necessarily associate and coordinate individuals so that their individual activities, although they remain individual, may produce a personal and social good through compatible cooperation. The Law is a conventional rather than a natural or ontological good, since by nature there is no real good or bad that is readily apparent to each individual. Whereas other animal species seek and conform to their necessary good without any excess, human beings do not have a firm natural good and knowledge of its natural limits29 by which to orient their individual activities, and thereby seek out others to alleviate doubt concerning the good. The individualized nature of perceived goods prohibits any one individual from claiming a universal apparent good from their perspective. Each individual’s claim to the good would be an individualized projection onto Nature and an improper demand on Nature to agree with one’s finite perspective. This dynamic shows an interesting dilemma for human beings: there can be no species-being good that is compelling enough to force individuals to conform to that posited good. As a result, each individual seeks their perceived good without coordination which in turn demonstrates that desire is non-rational or excessive/unrestrained. Desire is unwilling to conform to any “necessary” “human” good. As a result, rational judgments that are then without any imparted extrinsic ethical restraint and training would be merely individualized imaginative projections as to

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what nature should be and thereby only satisfying to a single individual’s desires. Those who would follow these “rational” projections rather than discovering the necessary good for human beings would be unethical and excessive to the community and themselves. Conformity to the true and the good must be induced by external and prior instruction and ethical devices rather than from unaided divine or rational insights. This shows that the very concept of species-being or an essentialism to human nature is merely an imaginative projection. Furthermore, it shows the limits to reason’s discovery of natural kinds.30 A teleological and rational understanding of natural good is not justified for Maimonides. If, as Maimonides says, that real good is to accord with one’s purpose, a purpose set by God, humans’ ability to judge whether natural beings conform with their purposes is not only unwarranted but undermining of God’s knowledge, which is inaccessible to humans.31 Thus, an investigation into natural purpose and species-being for humans reveals limits to human reason as well as a critique of universal reason. The instruction and imparting of the proper ethical life and truth should not be interpreted to imply that the true and the good are known a priori and merely circulated by the community as the final pronouncement on the good. Instead, Maimonides concurs with Al-Farabi that the concept of utility more accurately captures the dynamic between individual and society and how the good is continually imparted. The good comes about from usefulness to the community and the individual. Usefulness is best determined by how it enables the community and individual to express similar activities; it integrates the individual without a mere reduction in their capacities. Individual diversity remains but is moderated so that a compatible useful whole may arise. The Law as a whole aims at two things: the well-being of the soul and the well-being of the body. As for the well-being of the soul, it consists in the multitude acquiring correct opinions corresponding to their respective capacity. Therefore some of them [namely, the opinions] are set forth explicitly and some of them are set forth in parables. For it is not within the nature of the common multitude that its capacity should suffice for apprehending that subject matter as it is. As for the well-being of the body, it comes about by the improvement of their ways of living one with another. This matter is achieved through two things: One of them is the removal of reciprocal wrong-doing from among them. This consists in not allowing any human individual to act according to his will and up to the limits of his powers, but compelling him to do that which is useful to all. The second consists in the

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acquisition by every human individual of moral qualities that are useful for social intercourse so that the affair (amr) of the city may be well-ordered.32

Given the diversity of human beings, imparting the truth itself cannot be merely uniform, nor can even a simple truth be identically received and cognized. The Law cannot present the truth as merely a universal good, with essentially one transparent common nature. This kind of rational understanding of the good and truth does not realize that the opinions of what is good and what is true happiness actually harbor within them a depth of truth that must be expressed differently by different intellects/ activities. This is supported by the fact that the (material) capacities of each individual are important to whether they are able to express these truths; through this, diversity is introduced via individuals’ abilities to know. Their capacity to know relates directly to their innate material or imaginative faculties’ ability to express themselves without external interference. Similarly, a transparent essence of the good could not provide the exact good to which everyone would be compelled to conform. In the place of a universal rational template of the good, Maimonides emphasizes usefulness or utility in establishing bodily and social well-­ being. On the whole, I would argue that the Law imparts a general goal or deferred purpose that coordinates the many individual natures so that they may act as individuals and as parts of a larger social activity/tradition. Concurring with Al-Farabi, Maimonides notes that each individual’s desires (or will) do not have a natural/innate limit and that individuals have a capacity to seek/strive for that which is excessive. Their natural powers as material forces will act, absent external restraint. As a result, to establish a “necessary good” for each individual, first and foremost their natural powers must be aligned with a conformable and conventional good (a desire for and image of it), and they must be compelled to conform to it. This establishes the basis for social utility and association as well as limits the natural powers and faculties of individuals so that they might be rational and good! The removal of reciprocal wrongdoing is based on limiting natural actions, thereby allowing a social space for many restrained individuals to coordinate. Yet, the natural or amoral is what is being modified; thus, there can be no natural specific sense of justice—justice is not necessarily preprogrammed in nature. Additionally, moral qualities are beneficial only insofar as they promote social intercourse, and moral practices must be judged by how they promote a greater form of activity rather than as a

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priori moral laws necessary for the concept of one ideal moral society. Following Al-Farabi, the purpose of society emerges from the diverse ways that diverse beings are able to act collectively, “despite their multiplicity, to be like one thing.”33 The purpose of individual moral action, let alone the purpose of a society, cannot be naturally apparent but must express its virtue through society’s general and continuing activity, which is in turn the expressions of ethical restraint of individuals. Laws are not naturally apparent; neither are laws easily dissectible with reason. One cannot locate a simple prior cause to determine the law’s usefulness and worth. Instead, the worth of a law is determined by its historical context and continual use. Usefulness throughout a historical frame is more important to judge the law’s worth than whether it is equivalent to a posited universal reason or judgment. Thus, Maimonides argues that seeming historical artifacts in a tradition, such as certain commandments,34 are appropriate and should not be subjected to analysis. This enables Maimonides to discuss how specific individual reasons ultimately provide the justification of their inclusion in the Jewish tradition. Additionally, individual laws or statutes should not be subject to continual analytic justification because this would assume that only one necessary reason or rationality should dictate or predict how specific laws and actions appeared, and, more importantly, how they must be justified. Everyone who occupies himself in seeking causes for one of these particulars [commandments or prohibitions] succumbs to an enduring madness in the course of which they do not put an end to an incongruity, but only increase the number of incongruities. One who imagines that a cause can be found for these is as far from the truth as one who imagines that the generalities of the commandments (mizvot) do not seek any real advantage. Know that wisdom made it necessary or, if you will, say that the necessary determined that there should be particulars whose cause could not be found, such that it was an impossibility with respect to the Law that there not be in it anything of this sort. […] This resembles the nature of the possible, for it is necessary that one of the possibilities come into being. The question should not be raised why this possibility and not another came to pass because the question would inevitably occur for any other possibility that might come into being. Know this issue and grasp it. The constant statements [of the sages] about finding the causes refer to the advantage of that commandment found in a general way, not in its particulars…35

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Maimonides’ inclusion of a discussion of the possible in relation to the reason for specific laws is warranted since both phenomena relate to how rationality, a presumed kind of single necessity and universal value, cannot provide determinative or predictive power when it comes to the utility and historical use of a law (and the possible). To assume that a cause can only proceed in one way or causal pattern entails that subsequent events (their possibility) require that they cannot be justified without this prior reason. Yet, this raises the issue of whether an event’s actual occurrence should be unreal and unjustified, unless weighted to this previous more “real” cause. However, in reality, this is a conjecture as to the “real” cause and an improper inference to origin. The posited cause would not be accessible and would render one skeptical of the actuality of the present event’s occurrence, thereby making it incongruous with its already instituted reality and effective use. Seeking one ultimate reductive cause would undermine causality. The favored effect or value would be read back into nature and would determine how the necessity or actuality of the cause should determine itself, rather than assuming the necessity provided reality without need to consult and limit itself to a subsequent imaginative standard or reasoning. Seeking out how each occurrence or law is justified would undermine its ability to be productive and effective in the community, as it has evolved with the community/tradition.36 That something has happened makes it necessary to subsequent realities, but not as a mere prediction; neither does this eliminate the adaptability to the historical context. Additionally, this shows that knowledge and value have a history along with knowledge/value’s effective use in the community. Theory and praxis are not separated in the usefulness of a law. Both the issue of the reason for specific statutes and the misunderstanding of general advantages of the commandments as Maimonides notes are based on imaginative projections and not derived from true reasoning. A single individual imagines that nature should comport with their specific opinions, images, values, or desires rather than having the restraint to see that their projection undermines true causality and true advantage. Concurring in some way with Al-Farabi, Maimonides understands that there can only be a general advantage of the Law. How the Law coordinates diverse individuals cannot be reduced to their imaginative, individualized, and seemingly “certain” notions as to the good; instead, the good comes about through the general advantage that moves the individual into a cooperative activity. The general purpose is not clearly specified for each individual but is deferred in the continual virtuous activity of a

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community. The purpose and good of the Law is to render many diverse individuals capable of more than their mere individualized desires and perceptions so that they may be more active. […] [T]he Law does not pay attention to the exceptional, and legislation is not made with a view to things that are rare. Rather, in everything that it wishes to bring about, be it an opinion or a moral habit or a useful work, it is directed only towards the things that occur in the majority of cases and pays no attention to what happens rarely or to the harm occurring to a single human being resulting from this determination and governance of the Law. […] [D]o not wonder that the purpose of the Law is not perfectly achieved in each individual and that, on the contrary, it necessarily follows that there should be individuals whom this governance of the Law does not make perfect. For not everything that derives necessarily from the natural specific forms is actualized in each and every individual. Indeed, all things proceed from one deity and one agent[.]37

Whereas the above passage at first may seem to be against a conventional understanding of the Law and to specify a clear universal by which all or most should be identically perfected, a closer examination shows that Maimonides may be following Al-Farabi’s understanding of perfection and use as arising out of the material diversity of individuals. First, Maimonides stresses the one universe and one agency of god. This secures the necessity and actuality of every existing thing. Nature does nothing in vain. The plethora of material diversity disallows a natural universal good to be implanted. It would/could not be sustained by their diversity. As a result, any good must arise out of diversity to consider the general/majority so that a “higher” actuality may express/be coordinated. This shows that the Law is not a mere individual opinion. Furthermore, like Al-Farabi, the forms or laws are not specifically good to each individual’s natural imagined good; in fact, the imagined “good” is really representative of amoral/natural actions or realities, so there could be no real good in it. Maimonides’ argument is against essentialism of kinds, forms, and values. Additionally, the argument shows that “form” (a conjecture of some prior universal “reality”) cannot predict, guarantee, and determine the good. Although the good is necessary for the present society and reality, the good requires that the material dimensions of the society and individual must achieve, strive, and express the Law, with usefulness as the primary characteristic to justify it. As a result, the general purpose of the Law cannot be a specific imagined good for one or some individual(s), but the Law

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as a practice or tradition must continually move beyond the individualized. The Law remains or persists as irreducible by expressing itself throughout the activities of the body politic. When Maimonides speaks of an unqualified and common good of the Laws as irreducible to time and place, he has in mind the usefulness of the Laws as being irreducible to individual idealizations or images of the good or true. The Laws are unqualified or singular not as rational laws and universal values but as expressing a common advantage or use for the populace. The unqualified represents the advantage through use. This indicates that the Law is historical, but not merely one opinion among many individuals’ opinion, so that it has a singular status. In view of this consideration, it also will not be possible that the Laws be dependent on changes in the circumstances of the individuals and of the times, as is the case with regard to medical treatment, which is particularized for every individual in conformity with his present temperament. Rather, the governance of the Law ought to be unqualified and common for the generality even if that is required only for certain individuals and not required for others; for if it were made to fit individuals, corruption would befall the generality, and “you would make out of it something that varies.” For this reason, matters that are primarily intended in the Law, ought to be dependent on neither time nor place; rather, the decrees ought to be unqualified and common, in accord with what He, the Exalted, says: As for the congregation, there shall be one statute (huqqah) for you [Num. 15:15]. However, only the common interests, those of the majority, are considered in them, as we have explained.38

Yet, as an Aristotelian, Maimonides still stresses the qualified nature of virtue. Virtue and vice are not readily apparent in an unqualified sense. As he states, virtue and vice are not by nature: Since by nature man does not possess either virtue or vice at the beginning of his life (as we shall explain in the eighth chapter), he undoubtedly is habituated from childhood to actions in accordance with his family’s way of life and that of the people of his town. These actions may be in the mean, excessive, or defective—as we have indicated.39

How the individual is trained and habituated by their family/community leads to the kind or type of virtue; there is not a preset universal good actionable without social conditioning. Maimonides is careful not to

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specify a particular practice of virtue, but, rather, situates the source for virtue in different ways of living imparted by one’s social context. The nature of desire and transgression is essential to the issue of virtue and vice. The mere presence of images and concepts are not necessarily value-laden. For Maimonides, images and rational concepts are natural phenomena and cannot be contrary to their necessary actions. One cannot “sin against nature” by having specific images and beliefs. Neither is it possible for us to limit images by our thoughts and judgments: Know that disobedience and obedience of the Law are found only in two parts of the soul, namely, the sentient part and the appetitive part. All the transgressions and the commandments involve these two parts. There is no obedience or disobedience in the nutritive or imaginative parts, since thought and choice do not act upon them at all. By his thought man is not able to suspend their action or limit them to a certain action. […] concerning the rational part, […] there is no act in it to which the terms commandment and transgression would apply.40

Maimonides is rather blunt when he stresses the natural and amoral quality of the imagination: Neither virtue or vice is ascribed to the nutritive and imaginative parts. Rather one says that they flow properly or improperly, just as one says that a given man’s digestion is excellent, has stopped, or is impaired, or that his imagination is impaired or flows properly.41

Images either flow or they do not. Nevertheless, images as expressions of memory represent projections as to what is possible (or acceptable), and thus, must structure our desires. Once we have been trained by our society to desire certain images—desire is never without an image to orient it—we desire many things as if real and do not have an internal mechanism in the imagination to resist their flow or occurrence. Desire combined with socially imparted images provide a strong motivation to perceive and value the world. Such perceptions can be hindrances to the achievement of virtue, which would be to moderate desires and accurate judgments, so as to be active rather than passively determined or moved by external sources. […] However, in our times there is a fourth cause that he [Alexander] did not mention because it did not exist among them. It is habit and upbringing. For man has in his nature a love of, and an inclination for, that to

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which he is habituated. Thus you can see that the people of the desert—notwithstanding the disorderliness of their life, the lack of pleasures, and the scarcity of food—dislike the towns, do not hanker after their pleasures, and prefer the bad circumstances to which they are accustomed to good ones to which they are not accustomed. Their souls accordingly would find no repose in living in palaces, in wearing silk clothes, and in the enjoyment of baths, ointments, and perfumes. In a similar way, man has a love for, and the wish to defend, opinions to which he is habituated and in which he has been brought up and has a feeling of repulsion for opinions other than those. For this reason also man is blind to the apprehension of the true realities and inclines toward the things to which he is habituated. This happened to the multitude with regard to the belief in His corporeality and many other metaphysical subjects as we shall make clear. All this is due to people being habituated to, and brought up on, texts that it is an established usage to think highly of and to regard as true and whose external meaning is indicative of the corporeality of God and of other imaginings with no truth in them, for these have been set forth as parables and riddles.42

Maimonides is clear that how we manage desire and images leads to the basis for generating a “higher” order rather than assuming there is one preset and naturally obvious path to the good, ordered, or true. Desire and pleasure must be properly aligned with useful and productive images and beliefs so as to induce an individual to achieving moral and intellectual virtue. Like for Al-Farabi, desire begins with the appetitive and sentient faculties and then develops with images. Freedom or voluntary action develops sentience and imagination to express more possibilities out of those concrete conditions. I disagree with scholars who assume that Maimonides accepts a concept of free will or freedom without being informed by one’s social and material conditions (including images). As suggested by quotes such as the one above, I think that this is opposed to Maimonides’ view of responsibility and contrary to intellectual or true rational activity.43 Additionally, true freedom is informed by the intellect and an actualization of the various powers of the soul so that it is more active. Without knowledge, the form of the human is not achieved and therefore the lower powers are not fully coordinated to achieve full complete self-activity. A lower form of human existence is one in which the individual is dependent on external movers such as sentient and imaginative influences that compel the individual without full control. This kind of human being is dependent on their passive, external conditions; unable to be fully human, he or

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she is instead merely animal or bestial. Yet, the coordination of the various powers of the soul to express knowledge and self-action are not merely natural or purely individual expressions. Intellect and knowledge are not able to limit natural processes solely from the power and perspective of the individual. If an individual assumes that their rational judgment can bend nature to their rational projection, this is merely an imaginative fantasy and would lead to further enslavement to external influences. Rather, knowledge that has been imparted through specific images provides the means to arrange and curb desires so that a higher and true form of self-­ action expresses itself. It would be both individual perfection and an expression of wise social and material conditions. Maimonides argues that images or imaginings are the primary vehicle to induce and arouse individuals to desire the Law, but more importantly, that the imaginative content of the Law provides content which can become moral and intellectual actuality, or perfection. Unlike, for example, the imaginings and external meanings to which people of desert and heretics have been habituated, the external or imaginative aspect of the Law can provide more to its citizens so as for them to achieve perfection both moral and intellectual through these concrete tools: As for the truth-telling Law, of which, as we have already explained, there is only one and no other, namely, the Law of Moses our Master, it has come to give us both perfections—I mean the well-being of states of people in their relations with one another through the removal of reciprocal wrongdoing and through the adoption of noble and excellent moral character, to make possible the preservation of the population of the country and the perpetuation of their being under a single order, so that every one of them achieves his first perfection; and the soundness of beliefs and the giving of correct opinions through which ultimate perfection is achieved. The text of the Torah has spoken of both perfections and has informed us that the end of this Law in its entirety is the achievement of these two perfections.44

Through the desire and images that are imparted by a society, a way of life is set down. This way of life, similar to Al-Farabi’s political state, has a soul or single order that arises out of the practices that induce everyone in the community to basic activities that show or express the deferred purpose. The activity, soul, order, and purpose achieves first the perfection of laying down imaginings that lead to moderate desires so that general usefulness can be achieved. This, in turn, disposes everyone to achieve intellectual

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success via desires conformable to the good and rational/intellectual. Without ethical restraint, even in one’s manner of thinking, there could be no intellectual perfection, as is shown by Maimonides consistent attack on the unruly (uninformed) desire for knowledge. Intellectual success must be coordinated with these extra-rational conditions so as to be active/ perfect. Furthermore, this coordination indicates that no intellectual success is completely random but is based on the individual virtue and (social/ external) experiences of the person. Additionally, how this person is able to convey this success is dependent upon their history and mental experience, through which they can transmit their powerful/effective experiences and instruction to achieve similar success. Prophets represent these kinds of perfections and leaders. According to this opinion it is not possible that an ignoramus should turn into a prophet; nor can a man who is not a prophet become a prophet overnight, as though one has made a find. Things are rather as follows: a virtuous individual who is perfect with respect to his rational and moral qualities, when his imaginative faculty is in its most perfect state and when he has been prepared in the way that you will hear, he will necessarily become a prophet, inasmuch as this is a perfection that belongs to his nature. According to this opinion an individual cannot be fit for prophecy and prepared for it and not become a prophet, any more than an individual having a healthy temperament can be nourished with excellent food without sound blood and similar things being generated from that food.45

Intellectual perfection does not represent a “find” neither in the sense that it is a mere application or instantiation of a universal nor that it is merely a passive image that happens to work, or stick in one’s mind. This would be wholly outside the unique agency of the prophet and show that he is merely dependent on external sources. Instead, the prophet’s individual unique agency and experience with his instruction expresses a kind of necessary knowledge that is congruent with his concrete existence. Essential to this intellectual perfection is an embodied basis that, when properly managed by good instruction and individual agency, can coordinate and master the many faculties or powers of an individual to produce perfection. Additionally, since perfection is rooted in embodiment, the prophet’s powerful experiences can become a concrete and affecting “template” to coordinate the others’ faculties and help master their images. These powerful “images” can give more to the populace’s desire so that it may

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move beyond the mere physical/individual, and hence, can become a “template” by and from which to express rich truth/activity. This greater or “higher” activity joins the populace into a single soul or order through which many may generate more good, including intellectual good. The generation of these truthful “imaginings” do not follow merely a theoretical or imagistic logic by which one could easily determine or predict the worth and utility of law/instruction. From only a theoretical or imagistic basis, one cannot guarantee the success of the tradition/instruction. It is not merely a process of identical application (whether from a universal or imaginative perspective). Rather, the success and truth of instruction/tradition must take on a singular or unique status by which it works. More specifically, the singular aspect of the knower/prophet enables him or her to have a greater reality expressed through and by himself or herself, and he or she is not merely determined by extrinsic sources (universal or image). It is our fundamental principle that there must be training and perfection, whereupon the possibility arises to which the power of the deity becomes attached.46

The very virtue and strength of mind of the prophet matters in regard to whether the truth will be expressed or “the power of god becomes attached.” However, even if this knowledge and reality is necessary, it requires the striving of and expression in and through the natural knower/ prophet. Thus, the expression of this greater and singular truth/good is not necessarily guaranteed from a rational universal or imaginative perspective. It requires the institution of the divine, the true, and the good in the singular present moment through the concrete activities of the prophet and the community that may be led by his or her powerful instruction/ tradition.

Spinoza’s Singular Sovereignty A common reading of Spinoza’s TTP argues that he is decidedly opposed to Maimonides’ representation of prophetic knowledge as superior knowledge of the true and good. According to this interpretation, Spinoza undermines the basis for prophetic wisdom by arguing that knowledge must be universal and that the “special” status of prophecy rests only on the inclusion of the imagination which is opposed to demonstrative reason. As a result, Spinoza rejects the seemingly extra-natural knowledge

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and revealed authority of a law-giver prophet. In its place, Spinoza’s philosophy develops from the fundamental premise that there is only one universe, completely natural and intelligible. For Spinoza, all individuals involve the causal power of Nature, God, or Substance (these are all equivalent terms) in their existence and essence. As a result, any supernatural, special, or inaccessible knowledge must be due to natural causes and a misunderstanding of the necessary, natural order.47 For Spinoza, prophetic knowledge can only be an expression of misunderstanding in which a natural effect is detached from necessary causes and the causal order proceeding from Nature. The effect seems to be a special occurrence, outside the bounds of Nature, whereby the prophet and others are struck with wonder—unable to situate the effect in a cause or Nature. As a result, prophets rely only on images which point to extrinsic causes to establish their special status and, simultaneously, vindicate their image as a valid portent of a higher and authorizing power. […] [T]he prophets were not endowed with a more perfect mind, but with a more vivid power of imagination. […] Those with a more powerful imagination are less fitted for purely intellectual activity, while those who devote themselves to the cultivation of their more powerful intellect, keep their imagination under greater control and restraint, and they hold it in rein […] so that it should not invade the province of intellect. Therefore those who look to find understanding and knowledge of things natural and spiritual in the books of the Prophets go far astray. In response to the demands of our age, of philosophy, and of truth itself, I have resolved to demonstrate this point at some length, disregarding the rantings of superstition, the bitter enemy of those who are devoted to true knowledge and true morality.48

Unable to restrain their imaginations with the aid of intellect, prophets rant incoherently at the world and others to produce discord and false doctrines about the world. Aside from the fact that Spinoza’s characterization of Hebraic prophecy may really represent an attack on Dutch Calvinists’ attempts to use religious doctrines as grounds for seizing political authority,49 Spinoza concurs with many of Maimonides’ points concerning a wise and effective leader. In the above passage, like Maimonides, Spinoza argues that the imagination and its power must be controlled and restrained so as to cultivate a more powerful intellect.50 As discussed before, for Spinoza, intellect is not a ready-made rational faculty by which one can achieve

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immediate access to the truth and the good, but it must develop concurrently with the managing of imaginative factors so that intellect may express an intrinsic (or non-errant) power. For this cultivation of the intellectual power to develop, favorable external conditions and guidance are required to affect individuals non-rationally so that they become disposed to live rationally and moderately.51 Ultimately, non-rational affects are needed to dispose individuals to the rational good because individuals do not naturally know the good and are excessive to themselves and others in seeking after their own personal perceptions of the good. Spinoza suggests in a very Maimonidean way that the (wise) prophet or sovereign can guide a people to achieve happiness and wisdom. He notes: Because men rarely live from the dictates of reason, these two affects, Humility and Repentance, and in addition, Hope and Fear, bring more advantage than disadvantage. […] If weak-minded men were all equally proud, ashamed of nothing, and afraid of nothing, how could they be united or restrained by any bonds? […] The mob is terrifying, if unafraid. So it is no wonder that the Prophets, who considered the common advantage, not that of the few, commended Humility, Repentance, and Reverence so greatly. Really, those who are subject to these affects can be guided far more easily than others, so that in the end they may live from the guidance of reason, i.e., may be free and enjoy the life of the blessed.52

For Spinoza, the dictates, or bonds, of reason are neither sufficiently powerful nor initially compelling enough to restrain individuals’ affects. Most individuals are compelled and guided by their initial affects and imagination. Nevertheless, the imagination represents a weak power and weak kind of mind, since one’s mind is dependent on extrinsic affects and, thus, is fleeting, i.e. not intrinsically firm. For human beings, the imagination is not all-powerful and all-determinative, but with the aid and guidance of constructive imagery, an intrinsic and consistent way of life, an intellectual way of life, may emerge in a conducive and fostering political environment. Unlike an impotent and decontextualized form of reason, “good” imagery and emotions are able to directly confront powerful desires and images expressed in the (diverse) masses by blocking and redirecting those emotions and images to generate a social good and intelligently moderated bonds for social and personal living.53 In the above passage, Spinoza links unity with restraint on equal terms. For Spinoza, restraint and unity are two aspects of the same reality. If a

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mob, or a diverse mass of individuals, were naturally unafraid or equally proud of their actions, i.e. not susceptible to imaginative and affective restraint, they would not lessen their individual activities and, thereby, be unable to coordinate intelligently their individual activities. But the very fact that individuals are afraid entails that they can have their “excessive,” or naturally amoral, affects restrained. As a result, their imaginative reality can be emended so as to agree with a larger social and productive reality, i.e. an intelligently led ethical and political life. In this case, a social contract—in which individuals are in some way aware rationally of their individual goods and, based on that rational analysis, transfer their rights to an intelligent sovereignty that would satisfy their essential goods—would be a myth. Instead, individuals must be primarily determined non-rationally so that a unity may express itself and, thereby, immediately institute the very possibility and practice of reasoning about the good. As such, like Maimonides, this kind of politics must generate only a common advantage, since individuals alone, by nature or by natural reason, cannot know their rational or sure natural good. The advantage of the rational few, who, without aid, understand their rational good, is mythic; it is not the goal of politics. Instead, the goal is to seek to establish a singular political unity by which everyone can be unified and capable of shared reasoning. As a result, virtue and freedom come about by being subjected necessarily to “good” extrinsic affects that promote social coordination and individual perfection. Freedom is not the absence of or “freedom” from the political, but rather is derived from it. Given that social affects are necessary for virtue, virtue or strength of mind entails not only the ability to manage one’s extrinsic affects and psyche but also the ability to use one’s effective imaginative-intellectual understanding to generate it in others. Since there is nothing apolitical or pre-political, one’s virtue can become an active model way of life by which to foster not only one’s own but others’ perfection, and in the process, strengthen the practice and institution of that virtue for all. For Spinoza, the “true” prophet, or wise sovereign, in the Maimonidean sense, has the ability to guide their people to political and intellectual success because of their skill to unify diverse natural individuals. Essential to this task is the realization by the wise sovereign that each individual is generated by singular causes that exclusively individuate their existence and private understanding of their own actuality.

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[…] [I]t is not in every man’s power always to use reason and to be at the highest pitch of human freedom, but yet he always endeavours as far as in him lies to preserve his own being and (since every man has right to the extent that he has power), whether he be wise or ignorant, whatever he endeavours and does, he endeavours and does by the sovereign right of Nature. […] Nature’s right and established order, […] forbids only those things that no one desires and no one can do; it does not frown on strife, or hatred, or anger, or deceit, or on anything at all urged by appetite. This is not surprising, for Nature’s bounds are set not by the laws of human reason whose aim is only man’s true interest and preservation, but by infinite other laws which have regard to the eternal order of the whole of Nature, of which man is but a tiny part. It is from the necessity of this order alone that all individual things are determined to exist and to act in a definite way. So if something in Nature appears to us as ridiculous, absurd, or evil, this is due to the fact that our knowledge is only partial, that we are for the most part ignorant of the order and coherence of Nature as a whole, and that we want all things to be directed as our reason prescribes. Yet that which our reason declares to be evil is not evil in respect of the order and laws of universal Nature, but only in respect of our own particular nature.54

Whereas when Spinoza examined the prophet as a political leader he suggested that a reasonable and virtuous society may form from their guidance, the quote above does not imply that reason is the default reality to which any political leader should appeal. Not only is reason not the default reality of human existence; it is not always operative for human beings, since human beings cannot always be at their highest level of activity or freedom. Instead, the “natural” default position is a-rational and amoral. Spinoza argues that individuals equally proud in “the state of nature,” or rather in a mob, would project, affirm, and desire their imagined good without any fear. They would not even be aware of another that might limit their conjectured good. Without any vacillation or indecision,55 they would seek their idealized good without limit and, thereby, could not intrinsically conform to a specific universal good. Rather than viewing reason as an objective fact, in the above passage, Spinoza notes that each individual urged by their individualized appetite or determination would project an idealized “good.” Reason is created by a human projection onto an amoral and a-rational foundation, but Nature does not favor specific viewpoints, including reason. Like Maimonides, Spinoza’s a-rational and amoral view of nature and politics derives from his view that Nature only creates individuals rather

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than kinds. For Spinoza, singular individuals equally involve the power and reality of Nature, thereby abolishing any evaluative hierarchy among individuals or modes. Additionally, Nature does not favor a specific value and political system by which individuals may agree and through which can form the ideal society. But surely nature creates individuals, not nations, and it is only difference of language, of laws, and of established customs that divides individuals into nations. And only the last two, laws and customs, can be the source of the particular character, the particular mode of life, the particular set of attitudes that signalise each nation.56

Starting from a perspective very similar to Maimonides, for Spinoza, Nature does not consider the good of humans in general, and it does not establish one universal political law or rule by which everyone is satisfied and equally perfected. As such, there cannot be one law that all would understand and to which assent. Instead, each individual is generated by specific causes by which they understand the natural order and their unique form of striving (conatus) or desiring.57 In a natural state (status naturalis),58 each individual would be unable to attain their good effectively and necessarily would impinge upon others’ “good,” creating an ineffectual “community.” Much like Maimonides’ account, their natural processes would have no preprogrammed rational or moral limit to restrain them and guide them, and so their activities would be in vain. This shows a lack of a rational good and a lack of a universal species-good capable of satisfying everyone equally. The primary reality of individuals entails a diverse and chaotic collection of differing values and determinations. Any wise political leader must address this reality rather than assume that a natural kind or good is effective in organizing individuals. Since one’s striving or conatus (i.e. desire) does not consider others by definition, an individual’s internal perspective must be determined extrinsically to consider others so that he or she may restrain his or her desire in order to align it with intellectual and political success. In reason’s place, individuals must be made to fear, or check their affirmed “goods,” so that through that fear a shared way of existing and coordinating of activities may manifest itself throughout each individual. Of course, the fear would be associated with certain historical images and practices that one would fear to deviate from and through which (i.e. through those sanctioned practices and images), there may be a possible

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way of life. The existential possibility of such a way of life in one’s mind implies that the way of life could be continually or indefinitely enacted and developed. Hope would then emerge in one’s ability to satisfy one’s desires and maintain the greatest level of self-action, but also, a ground for security to live one’s life as a part of that specific way of life. If a commonwealth grants to anyone the right, and consequently the power […], to live just as he pleases, thereby the commonwealth surrenders its own right and transfers it to him to whom it gives such power. […] [I]t is quite inconceivable that each citizen be permitted by ordinance of the commonwealth to live just as he pleases, and consequently the natural right of every man to be his own judge necessarily ceases in a civil order. […] for in a state of Nature and in a civil order alike man acts from the laws of his own nature and has regard for his own advantage. In both these conditions, I repeat man is led by fear or hope to do or refrain from doing this or that. The main difference between the two conditions is this, that in the civil order all men fear the same things, and all have the same ground of security, the same way of life. But this does not deprive the individual of his faculty of judgment[.]59

In both the natural and civil states, the same desire for advantage operates. There is not a distinction in kind from the natural state and the civil state, when considered from the point of view of desire. As a result, the motivation to change within either state is the same. For example, fear can be induced by merely divisive and chaotic affects as expressed by individuals in a natural state, or fear can be used by extrinsic and contextually attuned images to induce commonality. Whether certain images and practices would be most effective involves the experience and intelligence of a wise leader(s) who is able to discern which things should be commonly feared. Experience is the primary driving force to understand diverse individuals and the fears that divide them from one another. Experience derives from the undergoing of extrinsic contextual affects. As a result, philosophers guided solely by universal reason and general moral principles would be unable to effectively institute political success nor properly discover the reality underlying political existence. So while they [statesmen] seek to anticipate human wickedness, employing those arts which they have learnt from long experience and which men habitually practise when guided by fear rather than by reason, they appear to be the enemies of religion, especially so to theologians, who believe that

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sovereign powers ought to deal with public affairs according to the same moral principles as are binding on the private individual. Yet there can be no doubt that statesmen have written about political matters much more effectively than philosophers.60

Fear is the most basic affect and most basic representation of one’s political environment. Fear shows how individuals undergo passions from the environment and how they have been determined by those passions to a way of life, usually a “bad” or unproductive way of life that indicates a divided or merely extrinsic relationship to one’s environment and others. Fear represents primarily the extrinsic relation to the world that all individuals experience as mere individuals, but fear also represents a persistent or habitual reality that affects political life. Habit indicates that an extrinsic and continuous pattern of affections influences and determines human existence in a specific context via specific images. The experience of this basic and persistent reality provides the only means to address it rather than naively circumvent or suppress it with universal projections. For Spinoza, this concrete, extrinsic, and specific reality is primary and formative rather than something that can be willed away. As Spinoza notes, universal moral principles and a rationality that seeks to discover or assume that such regulative principles are actual would distort the grounds of politics rather than discover them. Spinoza’s focus on fear allows him to argue that modern statecraft must utilize the constant presence of fear effectively so that diverse individuals may coordinate into a singular whole. The need for a state and political (i.e. non-rational) guidance to achieve security and possible perfection derives from the continual presence of fear which is subsequently derived from humans not knowing their good and not being satisfied by initial images of the “natural” good. Since men, as we have said, are led more by passion than by reason, it naturally follows that a people will unite and consent to be guided as if by one mind not at reason’s prompting but through some common emotion, such as […] a common hope, or common fear, or desire to avenge some common injury. Now since fear of isolation is innate in all men inasmuch as in isolation no one has the strength to defend himself and acquire the necessities of life, it follows that men by nature strive for a civil order, and it is impossible that men should ever utterly dissolve this order.61

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As Spinoza notes before, humans are habitually determined by persistent fear and guided primarily by that condition so that a statesperson must develop an art (not a rational science) to address non-rational fear. The statesperson achieves an effective political art by long experience generated by concrete conditions in which the statesperson and populace experience similar images, primarily ones related to specific fears and desires. The discovery of effective political rule must be grounded in conventional historical sources. Similar to Maimonides, every individual requires political involvement to acquire the necessities of life, and subsequently, they fear isolation, which would destroy them. As a result, individuals must always participate in and seek out a specific civil order, even though at the same time, they seek to achieve their individual goods over others. Human beings’ fundamental political nature entails that there is always a singular political order expressed by specific historical human beings. Yet like Maimonides, Spinoza understands the seemingly contradictory political nature of human beings: humans naturally resist a rational politics, while at the same time, they need political participation and conventional affects to induce them to attain (and, hopefully, maximize) their individual goods to the level of perfection. Central to Spinoza’s project is a concern, shared with Maimonides’ Aristotelian ethics, to establish a conventional value structure and politics that could reduce the voluntary excesses of individuals so that a commonwealth (salus publica)62 will form. A commonwealth is necessary because individuals are political by nature, since they do not have the means to institute their private good in a larger social context. Not only are individuals like a species unto themselves, as Maimonides would argue, but they lack the power to secure, promote, and project their individual good absolutely onto their environment. Ultimately, the only means to achieve the good for diverse individuals is a conventional source, whose development and institution determines the moral and intellectual nature of its citizens. Therefore the best state is one where men live together in harmony and where the laws are preserved unbroken. For it is certain that rebellions, wars, and contempt for or violation of the laws are to be attributed not so much to the wickedness of subjects as to the faulty organisation of the state. Men are not born to be citizens, but are made so. Furthermore, men’s natural passions are everywhere the same; so if wickedness is more prevalent and wrongdoing more frequent in one commonwealth than in another, one can

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be sure that this is because the former has not done enough to promote harmony and has not framed its laws with sufficient forethought and thus it has not attained the full right of a commonwealth. For a civil order that has not removed the causes of rebellion and where the threat of war is never absent and the laws are frequently broken is little different from a state of Nature, where every man lives as he pleases with his life at risk. [3] But just as the vices of subjects and their excessive license and willfulness are to be laid at the door of the commonwealth, so on the other hand their virtue and steadfast obedience to the laws must be attributed chiefly to the virtue and the absolute right of the commonwealth […]. Hence it is deservedly regarded as a remarkable virtue in Hannibal that there was never a mutiny in his army.63

Similar to Maimonides, the natural excesses of the populace for Spinoza do not indicate a natural evil, or even a transgression of natural reason, which would be premised on the assumption that there is a natural good, purpose, or rational way to behave. Instead, political and moral success is only based on a relative historical and conventional source, namely, the state and its devices to institute political order. Spinoza is clear that citizens are made and do not have a natural disposition for a good that would be rationally persuasive or readily apparent. The state and politics provide the sole means to achieve any political good, and, thereby, the conditions that would induce individuals to freedom, reason, and personal perfection. Private reason cannot achieve these goods. Spinoza explicitly states that in order to live wisely, an intelligent individual must live by the dictates of the state so as to live by the dictates of reason and, thereby, perpetuate that form of life. A man who is guided by reason is more free in a state, where he lives according to the common decision, than in solitude, where he obeys himself. […] A man who is guided by reason is not led to obey by Fear (by P63), but insofar as he strives to preserve his being from the dictate of reason, i.e. (by P66S), insofar as he strives to live freely, desires to maintain the principle of common life and common advantage (by P37). Consequently (as we have shown in P37S2), he desires to live according to the common decision of the state. Therefore, a man who is guided by reason desires, in order to live more freely, to keep the common laws of the state, q.e.d.64

Whereas this passage may seem to suggest that the state may simply increase individual freedom or reason, Spinoza implies that any desire for reason immediately seeks to transform itself into a social desire. Rational

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and individual desires do not seek to remain individual but seek to enact themselves in a social context whereby the very activity of reason is instituted and shared as reason. Instead of obeying themselves, intelligent individuals understand the necessity to obey the common decision of the state. This is so because the state uses specific affects to bend the desires and practices of individuals into a cooperative singular whole, hence one based on reason. Fear as a primary affect can be used to block the diversity of individualized desired images to solidify a common desire and behavior structured on that desire so that the individuals’ treatment of that conventional way of life as merely imaginative and contingent is expunged from the citizens’ minds. This way of life becomes absolute or singular for Spinoza because no one would consider it merely as an image to be potentially abandoned. The singular way of life and its imagery are not subject to individuals’ interpretations of the favorable or unfavorable conditions for the state. Such an assessment of the viability of the state usually represents individuals’ highly idiosyncratic views of what is pleasing or unpleasing to their own personal existence rather than actual conditions of the state. Instead, in an effective state, citizens would dread the thought of leaving the commonwealth and its characteristic mode of living in favor for their own or for similarly aligned subgroups’/sects’ evaluations. If not, the presence of such kind of thinking or estimation would immediately show that the commonwealth is divided among many separate individuals whereas a unity of affect and common thinking immediately expresses a singular, absolute power or political whole. The necessity of a singular unity to be expressed in a commonwealth shows that certain effective imagery and political practices are neither merely expressions of discursive images that happen to stick among the populace and produce some coordination nor are they the decontextualized applications of a universal form of reason. There must be a “higher” level of organization and political unity indicated by a singular or absolute quality. This shows that virtuous sovereigns have some acumen and knowledge to guide people to form a community and not merely contingent imagination or decontextualized reasoning. They have a strength of mind or virtue which is defined by the ability not to subject the individual to errant desiring or to be easily subjected to diverse (extrinsic) affects. If an individual were subject to errant desiring and extrinsic affects, this would indicate that the individual is merely dependent upon extrinsic affects rather than having a strength of mind or freedom to maintain their specific

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kind of existence despite external affects. Rather, they (the strong in mind) are able to manage and use their affective environment so that they maintain a specific way of life to their own intrinsic benefit. They are not pulled apart by errant affects, images, and desires. Nevertheless, there are levels to political virtue and strength of mind due to the fact that political unity is always subjected to errant extrinsic affects, and there are levels to political unity that derive from managing those affects. Those citizens that are merely determined by fear to curb their individual projections and desires are not firmly or as active in promoting a “higher” or more powerful singular order. Nevertheless, even an impoverished, fearful state is in some bare sense singular because human beings cannot do without a political association. The individual contribution to the singular activity of the state is very sluggish or barely non-­ existent. Therefore, strength of mind and activity in the state should be concurrently both in the commonwealth and within the citizens’ psyche themselves. At this point, which imagery and practices a sovereign deploys will enable as many citizens to express their own success within the commonwealth. Although fear is constitutive, it can be wedded to certain customs and views to promote the individual and social success of the citizens. In this instance, reason as a practice would be a virtuous behavior within a specifically determined state and within a specific way of life that promotes reason as well. As for Maimonides, virtue for Spinoza is not merely a negative response using fear; which images are deployed to maintain fealty are important and based on experience. As Spinoza notes above, Hannibal (a historically situated political leader) displayed unique or remarkable virtue in organizing and unifying a specific political entity. Presumably, Hannibal maintained the absolute or singular right of his authority by eliminating private fears of his command (which would induce desertion) and deployed historically attuned imagery and practices that provided hopeful means through which his soldiers believed that they would succeed in that specific context.

The Practice of Reason as the Virtue of the State For Spinoza, reason as a practice within a state provides some of the greatest benefits (i.e. sure hope) that may include the activities of the individual so that psychological/mental steadfastness and benefit occur concurrently for citizens and the commonwealth alike.

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A commonwealth whose subjects are deterred from taking up arms only through fear should be said to be not at war rather than to be enjoying peace. For peace is not just the absence of war, but a virtue which comes from strength of mind; for obedience […] is the steadfast will to carry out orders enjoined by the general decree of the commonwealth. Anyway, a commonwealth whose peace depends on the sluggish spirit of its subjects who are led like sheep to learn simply to be slaves can more properly be called a desert than a commonwealth. [5] So when we say that the best state is one where men pass their lives in harmony, I am speaking of human life, which is characterised not just by the circulation of the blood and other features common to all animals, but especially by reason, the true virtue and life of the mind.65

The peace of the commonwealth directly relates to how citizens have been induced to carry out the commands and practices of the commonwealth. Those external means and affects that induce citizens to activate their individual (hopeful) capacities, as well as blocking their individualized personal interpretations (divisive judgments), are the most powerful and steadfast. Whereas in the above passage, it seems that commands to be obeyed from a sovereign merely indicate extrinsic or non-intrinsic affects for citizens, and therefore, could not be a virtue of self-action/perfection, this is not so. Rather, at the end of the passage, Spinoza links the citizens’ very ability to have reason and virtue/life of the mind only to a state that is premised on the steadfast maintenance of a shared way of life that would concurrently generate reason. Without being determined by external affects and a way of life, citizens would not curb their individual judgments, nor would they have a concrete inducement to follow and express a way of life for themselves that would be most congruent with the actual material and political conditions. Reasonable external inducements by a sovereign enable more citizens to express a shared and cooperative way of life that, in turn, is rational, since it limits individuals’ egoistical and merely imagistic interpretations. This subsequently supports common judgments that are rational since they include a greater social reality in which many citizens may participate. In general, reason enables more individuals to be incorporated into the state. In this case, the state has already blocked and coordinated personal interests so that citizens are most prone to practicing reason, having been determined and induced to its behavior by the wise sovereignty. In this state, individuals’ bodies, or security, are not merely established, but their

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ability to carry out the reasonable commands that, in turn, establishes citizens’ virtuous rationality and indefinite hope for success within that community are fostered. As a result, the lives of individuals’ minds and mental virtue are determined and reinforced by specific political conditions that express harmonious congruence. Key characteristics of this kind of state are that most citizens do not judge the minds or beliefs of others but only their external “objective” or social actions, i.e. the modification of the state conditions. The first feature implies that individuals have checked their tendencies to absolutely interpret the world according to their favored doctrine and personal pleasures/imagination. Additionally, it indicates a singular or absolute political relationship to other citizens has taken hold of and expresses itself in the populace, since most citizens are unwilling to deny the absolute right of others to occupy and express themselves as members of the community. These other citizens have a claim on political participation that cannot be abrogated by one’s personal beliefs. As a result, these citizens cannot be judged worthy of inclusion by one’s own imaginative standards. As mentioned before, this shows a different view of democratic “rights,” contrary to standard liberal models. Additionally, it shows that a social contract based on rational and fully aware individuals transferring their individual rights/autonomy to a larger sovereign or individual is completely inaccurate. The individuals would not know their own “innate” good and be unable to determine whether they were in a just state, unless that are already in some way incorporated into it. This shows also that political virtue and wisdom is not merely a matter of identical application of a political theory. Having universal theoretical knowledge and applying it identically is not what Spinoza is arguing for, because the political agreement among individuals is expressed in the very non-cognitive participation in a specific body politic. The assumption that individuals must cognize their individual good rationally and then transfer it via a rational contract is not accurate of individual-political reality. A theory being identically applied would not properly address and incorporate the historical conditions that are needed for the good of the individuals. Additionally, it would assume an a priori rationality/good to politics when politics is derived from the useful goods that are expressed in the continual participation and striving of the citizens as a specific commonwealth.66 The only standards that can be used to include or exclude citizens are “objective” ones, or ones based on a reasonable account that everyone can share and employ. These “objective” standards would be ones that judge

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only the actions that modify the state’s material and political conditions, rather than seditious personal beliefs. The need to judge others’ minds already indicates a weak and insecure state and mentality, since fear would occupy the minds of many, dividing many individuals from one another. Fear would not only show a divided commonwealth but would concurrently display itself in individual psyches and, thereby, reinforce the perpetuation of fear, whereas a strong virtuous state would promote tolerance of the many to even exist and accept their right as necessary members of the body of the state. This acceptance of others aligns well with Maimonides’ and Al-Farabi’s view that the purpose of the state cannot be judged a priori but must be deferred and expressed by continued virtuous activity and participation. There can be no single rational telos that would determine and justify political success and a natural concept of the good. Instead, “purpose” and the achievement of the good must be born out of acceptance of the other and the realization that their included alterity enables the expression of the good, reason, and philosophy to occur. It shows that the virtue and strength of mind of individuals to restrain their imagistic values and potential violent reduction of the other. Furthermore, it demonstrates that by practicing this form of life they in turn reinforce their ability to express an “objective” view of their environment. This recognition of the other as necessary, however, is singular in that it acknowledges the other as unique rather than merely as an object or tool to be reduced by imaginative or universal judgments or projections. The “good” or “purpose” of individuals is born out in the continual participation of citizens in a state which in turn expresses the citizens’ good as a singular entity that arises out of their coordinated and cooperative activities.67 Each citizen would be singularly incorporated in this singular whole. Citizens’ active fealty to a state and their necessary incorporation into it is best achieved by reason and thinking. A harmony or union of minds into a single mind is made so by the state and the commands, customs, instruction, and laws used to induce citizens to maintain a kind of fealty, in this case, a rational version of fealty. Rational practices are the best or the most active/powerful experiences because they are self-reinforcing and most productive in a state. Many individuals can share and produce a similar mind or unity of mind, or soul, through the concrete activities/practices they express. This is very similar to Maimonides’ and Al-Farabi’s concept of a social soul in which many individuals strive together to institute a way of life that is shared among many very disparate individuals. Again, similar

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to Maimonides and Al-Farabi, Spinoza argues that the human animal is most productive or powerful by perfecting and expressing thinking, and a good state should not be merely for security. The best state does not merely redirect base desires so that they are satisfied, although this is an essential feature of a secure state that supports basic pleasures. Instead, the best state through good/empowering images, practices, and laws enables as many citizens as possible to redirect their desires so they express their minds/intellects with others concurrent in the state and in individuals. This would be one in which individuals’ intellects and desires are coordinated,68 not just fear or mere desire for security. Since desire is tied continually to concrete particulars and images, an intelligent life and community must be actively instituted and continually expressed so that they do not dissolve and return to uncoordinated individualistic states. Although reason and intellect do provide the greatest benefit for a powerful state and generate the most active citizens, they cannot eliminate the pull of errant affects and individualized judgments because they arise out of those very concrete material grounds. Instead, intellect and desire must strive to maintain and express virtuous thinking despite affects and because they emerge from those very affects, which are anchored in individuals’ diverse concrete reality. Reason and intellect together would provide a “higher” virtue or singular existence out of extrinsic affects and living, but they cannot eradicate affects nor universally persuade individuals once a reasonable environment is achieved; they must be continually achieved and strived for. Despite this continual threat of dissolution grounded in undergoing the material affects and their errancy, Spinoza still supports reason as the most powerful basis for the most productively peaceful state. Peace would be defined as the virtue and productivity that arises out of errancy/diversity but institutes a common way of life that is reasonable—i.e. most productive for the human being—and most capable of ruling extrinsic affects by forming intrinsic and singular actions. This would be a democracy, since a democracy operates under and through practices that support tolerance and the “objective” judgment of common activities. Nevertheless, the concrete dimensions to individuals’ existence, and, subsequently, the state, preclude a utopian democracy that would institute a rational good universally persuasive to all and compelling to all individuals to maintain a democratic way of life indefinitely. Despite this material errancy in individual and social life and the constant threat of dissolution, peace and reason established by a democratic way of living is the best or more

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powerful because it accords most with the cooperative perfection of individuals’ minds into a singular mind. As Spinoza notes: […] and, conversely, none have proved so short-lived as popular or democratic states, nor have any been so liable to frequent rebellion. But if slavery, barbarism, and desolation are to be called peace, there can be nothing more wretched for mankind than peace. Doubtless more frequent and more bitter quarrels are wont to arise between parents and children than between masters and slaves. Yet it is not to the advantage of household management to change paternal right into the right of ownership and to treat children as if they were slaves. It is slavery, then, not peace that is promoted by transferring all power to one man; for peace, as we have already said, consists not in the absence of war but in the union or harmony of minds.69

Spinoza is quite clear in emphasizing that dividing affects are continually present and never eliminated, even in a virtuous democratic state—the most powerful political organization available to human beings. This is fundamentally due to the fact that extrinsic or external affects constitute the individual and social life of people. Humans initially perceive, image, and desire through and by external affects, determinations, and inducements. As a result, the extrinsic customs, instruction, socially determined desires, values, laws, and political institutions that affect and induce individuals in a specific cultural context are the foundation to any “higher” virtue, freedom, and knowledge. Extrinsic and intrinsic forms of living are two aspects of the same reality in different respects. As with Al-Farabi and Maimonides, the state may deploy extrinsic inducements to compel/guide certain individuals to philosophical perfection, but philosophical perfection is not guaranteed or necessary. Many individuals will desire different forms of life because the specific individual affects that constitute their desires and way of “thinking” are non-­ philosophical and will never be conducive to the philosophical way of life and desire for knowledge. Whereas philosophers have been instructed and determined to practice and express a more stable and consistent way of life that brings greater hope and self-action, other forms of human life are content with their unstable, but no-less pleasing way of life. Spinoza juxtaposes the philosopher’s desire and way of life to that of a drunk to emphasize this: […] [T]he affects of the animals which are called irrational (for after we know the origin of the Mind, we cannot in any way doubt that the lower

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animals feel things) differ from men’s affects as much as their natures differs from human nature. Both the horse and the man are driven by a Lust to procreate; but the one is driven by equine Lust, the other by a human Lust. So also the Lusts and Appetites of Insects, fish, and birds must vary. Therefore, though each individual lives content with his own nature, by which he is constituted, and is glad of it, nevertheless that life with which each one is content, and that gladness of the one differs in nature from the gladness of the other as much as the essence of the one differs from the essence of the other. […] [I]t follows that there is no small difference between the gladness by which a drunk is led and the gladness a Philosopher possesses. EIIIP57Schol.

Aside from the crucial point that both types of humans have radically different desires, i.e. contrary to a universal human desire for philosophical knowledge, Spinoza also emphasizes that the concrete desires that move individuals to sustain and participate in a way of life are primarily extrinsic. Nevertheless, the drunk is moved by exclusively extrinsic desires that perpetuate dependent or slavish behavior and can, in a way, be said to be imperfect or less powerful. However, a philosopher is induced by his or her structured desires and manner of prior instruction or habits, to express self-action, greater power, or virtue (despite the many affects undergone) so that he or she is most congruent with a political environment and/or tradition that supports such a life. Additionally, philosophers are not guaranteed to be philosophers simply by having been exposed to or educated in necessarily true demonstrations or arguments. Rational arguments do not induce all human beings to be rational, nor do they satisfy or reveal a desire for universal knowledge, since for Spinoza, like for Maimonides, desire is fundamentally structured by specific extrinsic habits, affects, images, or instruction. Certain individuals who happen to be capable of managing their desires and adopt a philosophical way of life may express more self-actions and align with the state and, hopefully, support a virtuous one built on tolerance. Nevertheless, like for Maimonides and Al-Farabi, for Spinoza, external images and inducements may not reach everyone, since they may lack proper instruction, experience, and affective dispositions to understand how certain images are to be understood or why they are meaningful. As a result, achieving intellection is not merely a random find, concurring with Maimonides, but one based on instruction, experience, and dispositions. Neither is it a reproduction of universal forms of reason applied

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indiscriminately so that it could be equally relevant to anyone employing this universal rational method. This shows that Spinoza has concerns similar to Maimonides and Al-Farabi: we think through images, and when we think through virtuous images and in a virtuous environment, then we may express virtue, both ethical and intellectual. Spinoza is explicit that we do not eliminate images with intellect but render them under an aspect of eternity or an intellectual judgment.70 He also links the understanding of certain images as related to the way of life and experience in which the knower has been habituated.71 More importantly, Spinoza suggests that certain images and perceptions of them by an ignorant knower would not generate intellect and true understanding. If anyone sees some books (imagine one to be that of a distinguished philosopher and the other to be that of some trifler) written in one and the same hand, and if he pays no attention to the meaning of the words (i.e., insofar as they are symbols) but only to the shape of the writing and the order of the letters, he will find no distinction between them such as to compel him to seek different causes for them. They will appear to him to have proceeded from the same cause and in the same manner. But if he pays attention to the meaning of the words and of the language, he will find a considerable distinction between them. He will therefore conclude that the first cause of the one book was very different from the first cause of the other, and that the one cause was in fact more perfect than the other to the extent that the meaning of the language of the two books, or their words considered as symbols, are found to differ from one another.72

The image (of the book) would affect the person at the lowest level (mere external image) because the “knower” is unable to understand the action or reality that is inherent in the perception. The wise would understand the perception and, hence, be able to express the seen reality within their intellects as a moment of self-action or perfection. But more importantly, the wise would also have the requisite experience with the images to know how they might express knowledge.73 A good experience (or well-­ structured instruction) with the material/images would enable a person to know how to use the images to express intellect and some form of self-­ action. Without experience, the individual would have a mind unable to express the order/reality within the perceived material. Instruction enables an individual to order their imagination/desire and express a consistent order out of affects that may seem random to another without proper

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instruction/experiences and the capacity to take up the action inherent in the material. The need for experience shows that a wise law-giver sovereign, a singular political leader, cannot derive their authority from a universal rational authority decontextualized from concrete and affecting conditions. Neither could the political leader rely solely on past successful and explicit judgments and actions as (predictive) formulas to achieve continual success. Effective past laws or decisions cannot be literally or identically true or applied again because new affects may disrupt and modify the concrete conditions of the state that require adaptability and intuitive/prudent responses. Similarly, this applies to the leader’s virtue/strength of mind; he or she is always susceptible to errant affects that may undermine their judgments and wisdom. The leader can only achieve singular knowledge at certain times, and the best singular knowledge would be one that can translate into a long-lasting singular tradition that strives (together with many) to continually rule and manage errant affects. Like with Maimonides, the singular moments of intellection would not express a universal truth to be translated identically the same into everyone’s mind and into their different experiences. The singular establishes a way to truth to be transmitted and expressed by diverse individuals without being reduced to a prior identical universal or to the mere imaginings of the contemporary populace. The singular wisdom and virtue of a political tradition is essentially based on the idea that no private individual can divide the absolute sovereignty of the commonwealth, as this would immediately undermine and express/embody an uncoordinated multitude based on the destructive affects of fear and hate. Nevertheless, the singular knowledge that is passed on would be expressed by external images that can convey to many diverse individuals a non-private or public political commitment so that a stable and rational state may form from it. What is conveyed is not the law-­ giver’s mere imaginative/individualistic view and desires that may happen to stick in the populace’s imaginative consciousness. Instead the law-giver’s virtue understands how to make one’s way of life not merely imaginative or individualistic. As such, it cannot be merely based on the individual will of the law-giver but rather must be based on how the law now has a special singular status which moves from personal virtue/knowledge to public virtue and practices. The virtuous political-cultural traditions, or political institutions, must be so constituted that they cannot rely on the private reason and good faith of one or many wise individuals. The faith to carry

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out reason and sociable conduct, which really represents how well reason can persuade and compel a single private individual, is not sufficient to bind even a wise, genius-like individual completely to an intelligent life and virtuous political rule. Instead, reason and the best state must come out of a public reason that is generated by certain concrete conditions, images, desires, and instruction (inducements). These inducements curb individual excess and provide virtuous images by which the individual could be rational and, most importantly, tolerant of the other so that a singular society could form and continually strive/thrive despite and from errant affections and diverse individuals. Now if human nature were so constituted that men desired most of all what was most to their advantage, no special skill would be needed to secure harmony and trust. But since, admittedly, human nature is far otherwise constituted, the state must necessarily be so established that all men, both rulers and ruled, whether they will or no, will do what is in the interests of their common welfare; that is, either voluntarily or constrained by force or necessity, they will all live as reason prescribes. This comes about if the administration of the state is so ordered that nothing is entrusted absolutely to the good faith of any man.74

Spinoza is clear that any private faith in or a will committed to reason is insufficient to uphold continual rational behavior in ourselves and in the public because our desires or wills are not fundamentally rational. Human nature is not disposed essentially to reason and the good because they are not inherent in nature and in our “instinctual” makeup. Our advantage, i.e. security, reason, and freedom, comes about only in a cooperative state. As a result, compulsion is needed, as Spinoza emphasizes above. The term “will” equally translates as appetite75 for Spinoza, and will/appetite cannot be trusted even when it attains the status of a rational desire. Desire by definition is too adaptable, being affected by different environments/situations and being mixed with many other non-rational determinations.76 Some individuals can live by reason on average, or above average, with a consistent personal desire for it and a virtuous makeup/strength of mind that resists errant affects, but most must be compelled to align with reason and with a public space from which thinking and freedom may be attained/ expressed. This is even in the case of a wise individual and leader; they cannot be trusted not to succumb to the errant pull of non-rational affects.

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As with the philosophies of Maimonides and Al-Farabi, the extrinsic inducements by the state/tradition do not allow for any single person to use their random imaginings or personal interpretations (their “sure” arguments) of the supposed good to subvert the transmitted laws. Only individuals who have long experience and understand that their reason is a very expression of the “objective” conditions of the commonwealth would be able to have authority to modify the state, but even then, they are usually modest in changing the state as it may lead to the dissolution of a stable rational community and invite rampant discord and vice, i.e. egotistical projections and uncoordinated and divided individuals in a mob or chaotic multitude. This fear of desolation, combined with the wise experiences of these stewards or guardians of the state, in turn supports a civic and intellectual tradition. These stewards strive to pass down and induce a way of life capable of continuance, but also they themselves strive to protect or guard that virtuous way of life concurrently.

A Civil “Religion” Religion as an extrinsic means or tool to induce civic commitment may express a virtue or a vice in the practice and for the goals of governance. As a result, religion is never truly a private matter, since it induces citizens to possible sectarian strife or civic unity. The allegiance or fealty that a religion induces via its concept of the divine is usually called piety, but Spinoza redefines piety as a virtue in which individuals maintain the trust in the peace of the state and in the singular relation to other citizens (i.e. political tolerance). He makes true piety a force aligned with reason which supports the civic state; in a sense, this kind of piety would be wedded to a civic religion in which the singular nature of the state and its good is sacrosanct. However, reason teaches men to practise piety and to be calm and kindly in their disposition, which is possible only in a state. […] As far as religion is concerned, it is also quite certain that the more a man loves God and worships him with all his heart, the more he is free and the more completely obedient to his own self. Still, when we have regard not to Nature’s order— of which we are ignorant—but only to the dictates of reason as they concern religion (at the same time realising that these are revealed to us by God as though speaking within us, or that they were also revealed to the prophets in the form of laws) then, speaking in human fashion, we say that he who loves God

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with all his heart is obedient to God, and he who is guided by blind desire is a sinner. But we must always remember that we are in God’s hands as clay in the hands of the potter, who from the same lump makes some vessels unto honour and others unto dishonour. So a man can indeed act contrary to these decrees of God insofar as they have been inscribed as laws upon our minds or the minds of the prophets, but he cannot act against the eternal decree of God, which is inscribed on universal Nature and which takes into account the order of Nature in its entirety.77

Piety is defined now in a more robust sense than merely as extrinsic and imaginative obedience which would represent bad piety or mere imagistic piety. At a minimum, good piety is one that restrains the sectarian judgments of religion and makes religious worship a private practice which is unwilling to intrude into public experience. This is similar to Maimonides’ restraint of individual interpretations, but also it is different in that worship is primarily private. Nevertheless, Spinoza continues Maimonides’ point that when piety is referred to the divine, or to the amoral and a-rational natural order, it merely expresses the individual’s desire for natural self-preservation and thriving. The natural or divine order bestows equal “blessings” and reality unto every individual without a natural evaluative hierarchy and without any trace of imperfection. By expressing a piety toward that kind of reality, individuals can emend a bad anthropomorphic form of piety and orient their psyches and activities toward productive communal life. Nonetheless, Spinoza tempers the extent to which individuals or humans could directly know that order rationally. Piety is only situated in the state which transforms individual desiring into a public practice that fosters as many individuals’ good in a singular body politic. Natural reason is transformed into a civil or public reason that would best achieve the “natural” or “original” aims and activities of humans, i.e. individual advantage. Piety and religion explained under the limited perspective of human reason (as though real), rather than as a direct understanding of nature, shows that religious laws are conventional and solely for human benefit. Despite their conventional status, these laws can seem like sure directives from the divine, as though God is speaking through us, because these laws provide conventional and real benefit for a specific, singular community. Yet, like Maimonides, Spinoza is aware that these conventional but singular laws do not express or necessarily institute a natural good for every individual. Although piety is only possible in a state and should foster the

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public reason and good of the state, the religious laws cannot be assumed to be naturally real or good and always capable of perfecting worshippers. In a Maimonidean spirit, Spinoza notes that some natural individuals are naturally resistant to the perfecting forces of religious-political laws and so these laws do not render everyone to an honorable and good life. As Spinoza notes, some individuals may be naturally determined to dishonor in relation to the conventional yet no less virtuous laws. Nature’s eternal power, or decree, is too diverse to be reduced to a human form of the good, and therefore, natural piety is mythic and should be properly wedded to political piety that fosters the state by incorporating and inducing restrained individuals into a singular political order. Piety should express a practice or habit that disposes as many individuals as possible to agree in a singular unity and share a similar striving of the mind. Important to this practice of piety is the removal of the disposition toward relying on extrinsic images and on the imagination. This kind of dependency on the extrinsic really indicates a weak mindset that is primarily divided from others and induces vice or sectarian discord. As a key feature of emending bad imagistic piety with rational and civic piety, the sovereign has every right to use a rational “religion.” Since Spinoza is skeptical that reason can achieve the state solely from its persuasion, all extrinsic tools or inducements are available that would be useful to achieve peace and the virtue of reason in a community. Reason’s utility is not prior to the state and so also natural piety is not prior to the state. In accord with this view, Spinoza grants the sovereign (rather than individual citizens) the right to manage and use religion to induce individuals to the civic good, if it is necessary.78 Therefore everyone, wherever he may be, can worship God with true piety and mind his own affairs, as is the duty of a private individual. Therefore everyone, wherever he may be, can worship God with true piety and mind his own affairs, as is the duty of a private individual. But the burden of propagating religion should be left to God or to the sovereign, on whom alone devolves the care of public affairs.79

Although Spinoza leaves a space for individuals to practice a highly internalized version of worship, in reality, this is to serve a political form of religion and piety. Aside from God, whatever other external images or inducements that would promote civic accord is left to the sovereign to deploy to maintain a singular unity in the community. Although Spinoza

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supports God’s “ability” to propagate religion, this really represents an attempt to persuade individuals to give up their right to interpret the natural or divine so that they may agree to a civil order. Yet, that civil order is not merely the expression of individuals coming together to freely agree to a reasonable society order (i.e. in the form of a social contract in which individuals transfer their right to judgment to a rational sovereign).80 Rather, individuals must be continually induced to participate in the shared political order so that a sovereign should continually affect them with a proper public form of religion and pious practice to maintain/ express a concurrent political or “religious” order. Since reason, whether in the form of philosophical reason or religious natural good, could never persuade individuals to maintain a political order, the sovereign has every right to induce the populace to a singular political formation so that everyone may achieve their good as much as possible.

Conclusion Much like Maimonides’ solution, for Spinoza, humans must come together through non-cognitive means or emotions to be guided “as if by one mind.” If the law-giver is skilled and wise, he or she can “set down” or enact compelling laws, customs, and practices that may promote traits which not only unify individuals in a society but also restrain errant and imaginative opinions, which appear like knowledge, but, in reality, undermine intellectual understanding and freedom. In the end, for both Maimonides and Spinoza, political authority must be sacrosanct and never divided among individuals. Given the precarious and difficult process of forming a functional polis out of many diverse natural individuals, a law-giver sovereign or prophet must be assumed to be a final authority on questions of law; otherwise, everyone will revert back to a natural state which is opposed to practical and intellectual good or striving. Thus, a wise sovereign or law-giver under the dictates of reason uses appropriately imaginative and concrete means to induce complete happiness, including philosophy. The sovereign uses his or her experiences and strength of mind (virtue) to understand and curb his or her own as well as others’ errant affects and desires so that a productive and cooperative polis may form out those historically situated affects. As a result, the sovereign’s instituted images, customs, and laws take on a different status than mere universal reasoning or mere image. The law and virtuous practices laid down by the sovereign

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become singular and absolute because they cannot be overturned by abstract reasoning nor imaginative evaluations, unless one seeks divisive and destructive results. Rather than supporting individuals’ good, this divisive state is opposed to human nature as necessarily political, and thus, it is really opposed to individual flourishing. Instead, everyone should be induced by specific virtuous political practices so that they strive to maintain a specific commonwealth as a singular life-like unity. Although this commonwealth is not guaranteed by nature, it is necessary and absolute for the individuals participating in it and achieving their highest perfection possible.

Notes 1. Heidi Ravven argues that Maimonides and Spinoza are committed to moral intellectualism in which ethics and habits are secondary or trivial to the achievement of intellectual and human perfection. Although Ravven does emphasize the material and contextual basis of knowledge, I nevertheless disagree that ethics and politics would be secondary to human perfection. See Ravven (2014, 142 and 151). However, more recently, Ravven has presented Spinoza as a thinker committed to relational autonomy. See Ravven (2019). In this article, Ravven does an excellent job showing the political imaginative dimensions to autonomy via Balibar’s concept of transindividuality. I found myself agreeing with most points presented, especially that Spinoza’s use of political images can be traced back to Al-Farabi and Maimonides. Nevertheless, Ravven still seems to privilege an attainment of singular autonomy that makes images and extrinsic conditions recede from intuition. Although I generally agree, I will argue in this chapter that in order to have singular perfection requires a direct engagement with concrete desires structured by historical and political images so that one’s constitutive social influences must be worked through and mastered. On the opposite spectrum, when discussing Spinoza, Leo Strauss is rather definitive that for Spinoza, human perfection, or intellectual perfection, must be “non-social.” See Strauss (1965, 166). 2. Whereas Maimonides does support a messianic age, I do not believe that for Maimonides, the natural (amoral) origins of the political life are negated by such a possibility. See Maimonides’ 12th Principle of Faith. 3. Steven Frankel describes well how Spinoza understands the limits of reason in politics. Yet, he then argues that Maimonides and Spinoza have opposed political projects and goals; Maimonides supports rational enlightenment of the populace, whereas Spinoza merely supports peace and stability. He argues that Maimonides “ignore[s] the limits of reason in political life.”

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See Frankel (2014, 94–95). I disagree and propose in this chapter that through both thinkers’ awareness of the limits of reason, they seek political stability so as to induce intellectual understanding whenever possible. The two goals of understanding and stability are coextensive. 4. Parens and Macfarland (2011, 36). See also Maimonides (1977). 5. See Kreisel (1999, 1–62). 6. Al-Farabi (2011a, 33); quote modified. 7. Ibid., 34. 8. Al-Farabi (2011b, 37); emphasis added. 9. Ibid., 38; emphasis added and quote modified. 10. Ibid., 41–42; emphasis added and quote modified. 11. Ibid., 39; quote modified. 12. Al-Farabi (2011a, 29). 13. Al-Farabi (2011b, 38); emphasis added. 14. Ibid., 38–39; emphasis added. 15. Al-Farabi (2011a, 29); emphasis added and quote modified. 16. Ibid., 33; emphasis added and quote modified. 17. Ibid., 35; emphasis added. 18. Al-Farabi (2011b, 43); emphasis added and quote modified. 19. Ibid.; emphasis added. 20. Al-Farabi (2011a, 31); quote modified. 21. Ibid., 25; emphasis added. 22. Ibid., 27. 23. Ibid., 26; emphasis added. 24. Ibid., 27; emphasis added and quote modified. 25. Maimonides (2011b, 181–182); emphasis added and quote modified. 26. Maimonides (2011a, 192–193); emphasis added. See Book II, Chapter 40. 27. Heidi Ravven makes an important point that for Maimonides a law-giver such as Moses has the ability to use his or her powerful or perfect imagination to institute virtuous political rule. However, she makes the point that the imagination is required to do this because after the Fall of Adam (the perfect human), human beings no longer attain universal apprehension of theoretical intelligibles and are unable to possess solely a life of the (rational) mind. As a result, good and powerful images are required to guide them, absent their perfect state. See Ravven (2012, 211–215). I agree that the use of images derived from a perfected imagination are required to institute political success. However, as I have argued before, I believe that imagination should be intrinsically disposed to generate singular intellectual wisdom so that there is a dimension of the imagination in the intellect. As a result, I agree with Idit Dobbs-Weinstein that the perfection of Adam does not represent a pure rational state but that there must be an imagina-

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tive and ­appetitive dimension as well to explain the Fall. Dobbs-Weinstein notes that desire drives the perfect man from intellectual apprehension: Although he states that Adam’s sin consisted in following an imaginative desire, he does not explain how it was possible for Adam in the state of intellectual perfection […] to follow such a desire[.] […] Clearly, Maimonides does not wish to maintain that the primordial human intellect was immaterial[.] […] [S]ince he does not provide an explanation to account for the necessary role of the imagination in Adam’s perfect, or acquired, intellect, it seems to me that the assertion cannot be asserted philosophically. Dobbs-Weinstein (1995, 123) As a result, the coordination among the various powers of one’s individual soul also represents intellectual apprehension. This implies that even in the Edenic age, there was coordination among Adam’s faculties, or mental powers, so that there was a perfect imagination present that also expressed intellectual perfection. Warren Zev Harvey and Sara KleinBraslavy have also argued that Adam had a perfected imagination; see Harvey (1979). Also, see Klein-Braslavy (1986a, b). For someone who rejects the need for perfected imagination in Mosaic and Adamic prophecy, see Berman (1980). In general, I believe that Dobbs-Weinstein’s position is accurate because the intellect must rule in order to express its perfection. As a result, it must rule and coordinate something, i.e. bodily senses and faculties, or powers. Nevertheless, since all of creation for Maimonides is necessary, and hence, there can be no absolute privation, or absolute evil in it, amoral natural conditions and faculties must be converted or transformed into intellectual perfection and ethical virtue. As a result, reason does not have an initially privileged position prior to experience. Yet, a practical intellect may express itself concurrently from and with concrete conditions and rule images guiding them to what may be necessary, possible, or impossible. In this regard, the transition from sense to imagination to intellect represent aspectival shifts and greater (intrinsic) activity. Nevertheless, I believe that Ravven has good textual reasons to believe that for Maimonides, Adam represented human perfection without imagination; however, concurring with Dobbs-­ Weinstein, I believe that philosophically this state is not representative of Maimonides’ understanding of human perfection. 28. Maimonides (2011a, 192–193); emphasis added and quote modified. See Book II, Chapter 40. 29. My reading concurs with Shlomo Pines’ position that moral good and rational truth are radically separated in Maimonides’ philosophy. See Pines (1991). 30. See Dobbs-Weinstein (1995, 99–102).

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31. See Guide, pp. 471–478; Book III, Chapter 12. 32. Maimonides (2011a, 199); emphasis added. See Book III, Chapter 27. 33. Al-Farabi (2011a, 29). 34. See EC, p. 80, Chap. 6 and Guide, Book III, Chapter 26. 35. Maimonides (2011a, 198–199); quote modified. See Book III, Chapter 26. 36. This point relates to Maimonides’ discussion of the infant-adult causal relationship. See Chap. 6 of this work. 37. Ibid., 201–202; emphasis added. See Book III, Chapter 34. 38. Ibid., 202. 39. EC, p. 68; emphasis added. Fourth Chapter. 40. Ibid., p. 64. Second Chapter. 41. Ibid., p. 65. 42. Guide, p. 67; emphasis added. See Book I, Chapter 31. 43. Tamar Rudavsky details well the various views concerning free will in Maimonides’ philosophy, which include determinists, strong libertarians, and compatibilists. In general, she notes that most scholars agree that Maimonides does not support free will, since divine governance links all causes and effects. See Rudavsky (2010, 159). Among these views, I align most closely with Josef Stern’s reading, which argues that individual actions are “free,” or, rather, autonomous, although necessitated. Yet, “autonomous” in this sense should be understood more as in control of one’s passions and affecting conditions; the perfect person has control without being reduced to his or her affects. See Stern (1997; 2013, 360–364). Nevertheless, I argue that one’s social conditions and affects are powerful causes from which to generate perfection for those capable, and without them most, if not all, will be unlikely to attain perfection and philosophical autonomy. 44. Maimonides (2011a, 200); emphasis added. See Book III, Chapter 27. 45. Ibid., 184; emphasis added. See Book II, Chapter 32. 46. Ibid., 185; emphasis added. 47. See TTP, p. 403, Chapter 1. 48. TTP, pp. 404–405; emphasis added. Chapter 2. 49. See Dobbs-Weinstein (2015, 91–92). 50. See Chap. 2 of this work. 51. In general, I agree with Eugene Garver’s analysis of the cunning of the imagination at work in Spinoza’s political philosophy. Garver notes that given the prevalence of cognitive akrasia in naturally conflicting individuals, we need non-cognitive, imaginative means by which to induce individuals to a non-conflicting state from which intellectual understanding may manifest itself. See Garver (2018, 151–152). 52. EIVP54Schol.

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53. Michael Rosenthal explains well how for Spinoza, the Hebrew prophets used imagination and universal exemplars, i.e. universal images of ­perfection, to induce individuals to abandon individual interests so as to join a common good, or state. He shows how the prophets compounded images to maintain authority; however, that authority was imagistic and, thereby, inevitably failed to secure peace and unity indefinitely. I agree with the basic logic that Rosenthal presents; however, I disagree with his separation of the ethical from the political. See Rosenthal (2002, 227). I believe that given the ignorance of one’s interests, political-ethical habituation informs our desiring, or self-understanding of interests, so that certain productive images may induce singular unity in a particular historical society and, thereby, attain a singular status so that they are not merely disposable to one’s perfection and desiring. Nevertheless, this process still requires continual striving by those “images,” so that political success is not guaranteed. In this regard, Rosenthal is correct that when these productive “images” are viewed or accepted as mere images, then the unity of a society is in peril and weak. Yet again, I believe that Spinoza borrows a Maimonidean understanding of law-­giver prophet who restrains and guides imaginations so as to produce a striving life-like political unity. 54. TP, p. 685; emphasis added. Chapter 2. 55. On the connection between vacillation and doubt, see EIIIP17Schol. Important to note in this scholium is that one and the same “thing” can affect one’s various constituting parts in different ways so that there is no contingency in the posited external “object.” Essential to modifying one’s behavior or assertions is whether these behaviors/oneself have been affected and is not due to presenting “correct objects.” 56. TTP, pp. 548–549. Chapter 17. 57. See EIIIP7. 58. I agree with Idit Dobb-Weinstein’s analysis that status naturalis in Spinoza’s works should be best translated as “natural state,” rather than as a “state of nature.” This is because there is not a separate state of nature that precedes political and historical existence. Dobbs-Weinstein argues there are no pre-political natural states for human beings, since politics is natural and vice versa; they are coextensive for human beings. See DobbsWeinstein (2015, 25). 59. TP, p. 690; emphasis added and quote modified. Chapter 3. 60. TP, p. 680; emphasis added and quote modified. Chapter 1. 61. TP, pp. 700–701; emphasis added. Chapter 6. 62. This term implies a common form of striving more so than merely a state of existence. 63. TP, p. 699; emphasis added. Chapter 5. 64. EIVP73; emphasis added.

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65. TP, p. 699; emphasis added. Chapter 5. 66. Hasana Sharp presents a compelling case that the concept of utile in Spinoza’s philosophy demonstrates that there cannot be an ideal and common notion of a reasonable good by which to unify a political group. Concepts of usefulness are too diverse and particularized. Sharp then makes a very insightful point that rationality must be more contextualized and work for specific contexts. See Sharp (2011, 104). 67. Although the singularity of the other is sought, nevertheless, the recognition of the other must include and derive from imaginative and social affective conditions. There is never a pure other but always a historical other. In this case, a Levinasian Other is not the basis of ethical-political formations. Instead, my view aligns more with Ericka Tucker, who argues that a historical imaginative dimension is the basis for recognition of the political other. See Tucker (2019). 68. TdIE, 14. 69. TP, p. 701; emphasis added. Chapter 5. 70. See EIIP17Schol and EIIP35. 71. See EIIP18Schol in which Spinoza describes how a farmer and a soldier will understand the tracks of a horse according to their life experiences. 72. Spinoza (2002c, 132). See Proposition 4, Axiom 9 Taken from Descartes. I have used the Shirley translation instead of the Curley because I believe that it best captures the issue of experience implied by the text. 73. Spinoza’s example of experiencing Peter before truly knowing Peter represents this point well. See TdIE, 69. 74. TP, p. 701; emphasis added. Chapter 6. 75. On this equivalence, see EIIIP9Schol. 76. Warren Montag describes well the continual multiplication of and inability to reduce desires because of the infinity of affective relations possible for an individual, let alone in a political environment. See Montag (1999, 68–69). 77. TP, p. 689; emphasis added. Chapter 2. 78. Susan James provides a good account of how sovereignty must never be divided and that the management of religious sectarianism is imperative for a wise sovereign. However, a wise sovereign realizes that to induce a populace to civic piety, let alone reason, religious imagery is not merely suppressed in favor of reason or an ideal, but rather, imaginative conditions should be guided and managed to generate absolute sovereignty in that specific religious-political community. See James (2007; 2012, 302–303). 79. TP, p. 693; emphasis added. Chapter 3. 80. Edwin Curley presents a good account of how for Spinoza, as well as for Machiavelli and Hobbes, there can be no theory of justice and a rational social contract based thereon because such a (Rawlsian-like) theory requires inherent moral notions to guide self-interests and the transfer of

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individual rights. Curley notes that the diverse passions of individuals and their ­individualized egoism can only imply a contract in which a foundational law expresses the will of the people insofar as it also rejects individuals’ passions and interests as relevant to the foundational common law, or will. In this way, society can become useful to individual success as well as political cohesion. See Curley (1991). I agree with this general logic; however, I feel that it may rely too much on individual voluntary actions and clear self-­understanding. Instead, I have argued that individual interests are in a way already social because of ignorance, and thus, they require habituation and political inducements to understand usefulness.

Bibliography Al-Farabi. 2011a. The Book of Religion. In Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 2nd ed., ed. Joshua Parens and Joseph Macfarland. Trans. Ralph Lerner, Muhsin Mahdi, and Joshua Parens, 24–35. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 2011b. The Political Regime. In Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 2nd ed., ed. Joshua Parens and Joseph Macfarland. Trans. Ralph Lerner, Muhsin Mahdi, and Joshua Parens, 36–55. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Berman, Lawrence V. 1980. Maimonides on the Fall of Man. AJS Review 5: 1–15. Curley, Edwin. 1991. A Good Man Is Hard to Find. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 65 (3): 29–45. Dobbs-Weinstein. 1995. Maimonides and St. Thomas on the Limits of Reason. Albany: SUNY Press. ———. 2015. Spinoza’s Critique of Religion and Its Heirs: Marx, Benjamin, and Adorno. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frankel, Steven. 2014. Spinoza’s Rejection of Maimonideanism. In Spinoza and Medieval Jewish Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler, 79–95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Garver, Eugene. 2018. Spinoza and the Cunning of the Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Harvey, Warren Zev. 1979. Maimonides and Spinoza on the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly 28: 167–185. James, Susan. 2007. The Role of Amicitia in Political Life. In The Concept of Love in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Philosophy, ed. Gabor Boros, Herman De Dijn, and Martin Moors, 43–54. Leuven: Leuven University Press. ———. 2012. Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion, and Politics: The Theological-­ Political Treatise. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Klein-Braslavy, Sara. 1986a. Maimonides’ Interpretation of the Adam Stories in Genesis: A Study in Maimonides’ Anthropology. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass. ———. 1986b. The Creation of the World and Maimonides’ Interpretation of Gen. I–IV. In Maimonides and Philosophy: Papers Presented at the Sixth Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter, ed. Shlomo Pines and Yirmiyahu Yovel, 65–78. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Kreisel, Howard. 1999. Maimonides’ Political Thought: Studies in Ethics, Law, and the Human Ideal. Albany: SUNY Press. Maimonides, Moses. 1977. Letters of Maimonides, ed. and trans. Leon D. Stitskin. New York: Yeshiva University Press. ———. 2011a. The Guide of the Perplexed. In Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 2nd ed., ed. Joshua Parens and Joseph Macfarland. Trans. Ralph Lerner, Muhsin Mahdi, and Joshua Parens, 183–202. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 2011b. The Treatise on the Art of Logic. In Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 2nd ed., ed. Joshua Parens and Joseph Macfarland. Trans. Ralph Lerner, Muhsin Mahdi, and Joshua Parens, 180–183. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Montag, Warren. 1999. Bodies, Masses, and Power: Spinoza and His Contemporaries. New York: Verso. Parens, Joshua and Macfarland, Joseph. 2011. Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 2nd ed., ed. Joshua Parens and Joseph Macfarland. Trans. Ralph Lerner, Muhsin Mahdi, and Joshua Parens. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Pines, Shlomo. 1991. Truth and Falsehood versus Good and Evil: A Study in Jewish and General Philosophy in Connection with the Guide of the Perplexed, I, 2. In Studies in Maimonides, ed. I. Twersky, 95–157. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Ravven, Heidi M. 2012. Maimonides’ Non-Kantian Moral Psychology: Maimonides and Kant on the Garden of Eden and the Genealogy of Morals. The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 20 (2): 199–216. ———. 2014. Moral Agency without Free Will: Naturalizing of Moral Psychology in a Maimonidean Key. In Spinoza and Medieval Jewish Philosophy, ed. Steven Nadler, 128–151. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2019. Spinoza’s Path from Imaginative Transindividuality to Intuitive Relational Autonomy: From Fusion, Confusion, and Fragmentation to Moral Integrity. In Spinoza and Relational Autonomy: Being with Others, ed. Aurelia Armstrong, Keith Green, and Andrea Sangiacomo, 98–114. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Rosenthal, Michael A. 2002. Why Spinoza Choose the Hebrews: The Exemplary Function of Prophecy in the Theological-Political Treatise. In Jewish Themes in Spinoza’s Philosophy, ed. Heidi M. Ravven and Lenn E. Goodman, 225–262. Albany: SUNY Press. Rudavsky, T.M. 2010. Maimonides. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.

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Sharp, Hasana. 2011. Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Spinoza, Baruch. 2002c. Principles of Cartesian Philosophy and Metaphysical Thoughts. In Spinoza: Complete Works, ed. Michael L. Morgan. Trans. Samuel Shirley, 108–212. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Stern, Josef. 1997. Maimonides’ Conception of Freedom and the Sense of Shame. In Freedom and Moral Responsibility: General and Jewish Perspectives, ed. C. Manekin and M. Kellner, 217–266. Bethesda: University Press of Maryland. ———. 2013. The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Strauss, Leo. 1965. Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. New York: Schocken Books. Tucker, Ericka. 2019. Spinoza, Religion, and Recognition. In Religion and Recognition: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives, ed. Maijastina Kahlos, Heikki J. Koskinen, and Ritva Palmen, 219–231. New York: Routledge.

CHAPTER 4

A Singular Method: A Healing of the Soul and an Emendation of the Intellect

Much like good political institutions, for Maimonides and Spinoza, epistemic methods are modes of instructing and disposing a learner to the way to wisdom and perfection. They are primarily concerned with restraining errant desires and structuring one’s desire through virtuous habits so that wisdom and perfection may be expressed, if the learner is capable. Like their politics, their epistemic methods derive from the central premise that there is no immediately perceived good or clear truth without external aid and prior preparation. For both, the way to truth, and truth in general, is not ready-made for correct use by any individual. As a result, methods to truth cannot be based on an epistemic model in which a foundational universal truth is cognized and used as a blueprint to be universally adopted and identically applied. Whereas, when dealing with politics, Maimonides and Spinoza argued that conventional inducements or aids were primarily for moving a mass of individuals from an amoral natural state into a civil state based on common advantage, their epistemic methods focus on how the individual only relates to their individual perfection and not the political good in general. Nevertheless, since individuals are ultimately, or naturally, amoral and a-rational, appeals to individuals’ “innate” reasoning must be guided well lest individuals merely replicate an ignorant view of nature or improperly project from where their good should derive. For both thinkers, many of the same conditions that lead to need for commonality also must be

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acknowledged and used when the focus is solely on an individual’s good and intellectual perfection. Continuing many of the same insights in their political philosophies, Maimonides and Spinoza describe their epistemic methods as extrinsic conventional aids that are able not only to restrain individuals’ errant desires and opinions but also to institute an affective ethics with a regime of habituation that induces intellectual perfection. As with their politics, the virtue of such a conventional aid is that it can directly affect one’s individual desires and experiences so that one may consistently desire and enact that philosophical mode of living and thinking, whereas a universal method would be divorced from this affective reality and unable to compel sustained intellectual commitment in the individual learner. Both philosophers present their epistemic methods as practical conventions and emphasize the quality of usefulness as essential to any proper method. Much like how a foundational political law should be judged on its usefulness in generating and sustaining a commonwealth, rather than on whether it satisfies a presumed standard of the natural or rational good, a proper and useful method should be similarly indicative of and propaedeutic to the truth. As a result, a method cannot be simply demonstrative and definitive, and this indicates why Maimonides and Spinoza emphasize great caution and care in instituting a method to wisdom as well as what a potential learner should expect of a philosophical method. The learner should not expect the method to provide a simple clear pronouncement of the truth that would be agreeable to his or her prejudices as to what should be an easily digestible truth. Instead, as with the relationship between law-giver and populace, the teacher transmits his or her virtuous prudent mentality to the learner, albeit via external means and indicative instruction, so that the learner may express the transmitted wisdom’s virtue and truth by embodying it in his or her striving and thinking, i.e. in his or her own developed strength of mind. In this way, the method would indicate the possibility of itself becoming a singular mode of thinking and living for the learner, and thereby, become uniquely relevant for his or her own perfection as a practicing philosopher. The primary goal of method is to restrain the learner’s efforts and capacities to agree with and actively express the singular experiences that the learner has undergone. This is why both Maimonides and Spinoza stress the propaedeutic nature of method, to eliminate prejudices that rigidly block the learner’s intellect from actively expressing itself from diverse lived experiences. These prejudices and their attendant obstinate desires

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thwart the different psychological aspects of the learner from coordinating themselves to express complete and singular knowledge. Instead, the learner seeks errant images or desires that pull apart his or her individual psychological-mental capacities so that they become excessive, unable to transform themselves into intellectual and ethical perfection. As a result, method must address the needs of a complete individual, his or her appetitive, psychological, ethical, and intellectual dimensions, so that all of them may coordinate and express unique knowledge and good for the individual. Essential to this task, method must address language. Since, for humans as political beings, value, truth, and tradition are mediated by language, language conveys the extrinsic affects that initially and habitually determine our evaluations, modes of perceiving, and characters. Given this foundation, a proper method understands that instruction may have a dual character: one in which language presents merely extrinsic affects and images as though certain and the other in which language subverts its own tendency to project an easy, universal, or imaginative meaning. The aims of the latter type of awareness are not only to restrain the learner to focus on the singular relevance of their experience, and thereby express an intrinsic activity or meaning for the individual learner, but also to limit the tendency of the learner to interpret the minds of others according to one universal meaning that would be applied indiscriminately and unethically. Whereas a universal meaning would initially appear certain, seeming to meet the standard of objectivity and widespread applicability, in reality, it can represent a mode of deception, passivity, and errancy that limits self-­action and the generation of intrinsic meaning. If only understood at the level of universal reason, words and their underlying logic can distort rather than help to express the singular experiences of individuals. Nevertheless, for Maimonides and Spinoza, reason is a necessary component of a propaedeutic method in that it helps to restrain one’s more imaginative fantasies and individualized desires. Reason can provide a means to initially structure the learner’s desires and expectations so that they may then, at the very least, seek dialogue and evidence from which to transform reason and desires into intellect. However, the lure of absolute rational certainty can distort one’s desires and perceptions of an intrinsic truth, a truth that expresses one’s immanent generative activity and embodied experiences. Primarily, they argue that if reason is assumed to present absolute truth through a deductive system in which foundational truths are universally applied with identical meaning so as to establish an

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absolute identity among individuals, rather than representing the absolute truth, it would represent a misunderstanding of truth. In order to avoid this, both philosophers argue that definitions should not be interpreted to present an absolute concept from which a deductive system may proceed. Definitions are not absolutely reductive but are genetic and explanatory. For both, the truth present in a good definition should intrinsically perfect human individuals and their concrete reality rather than present an abstract universal reality beyond the concrete experiences of the individual. Good definitions help to restrain language’s tendency as well as the desires wedded to them from errancy and to direct the learner’s focus toward intrinsic experiences and meaning. To demonstrate the generative and propaedeutic nature of definitions, Maimonides and Spinoza argue that even the definition or idea of God, presumably the most certain reality and the ground of reason, should not be interpreted to present merely an absolute metaphysical concept. Both continually emphasize how the idea of God provides the best model of truth, which is singular and cannot be reduced by universals. For both, the idea of God provides not only a representation or standard of the best truth or definition, but that definition can provide the best ethical standard to restrain and guide one’s epistemic-ethical actions. Assimilating the definition of God and its characteristics into one’s living and striving leads to the most perfect and complete life, including intellectual perfection. Both thinkers in some way argue that the imitation of God and love of the divine are necessary to achieve the highest wisdom and perfection. These two actions provide the best standards and means to order one’s life. They provide a clear standard to judge when one’s mind and life are excessive and unhealthy. The primary goal of these standards is not to reach metaphysical realities as such but to render one’s finite embodied life as perfect as possible, viewed under this divine aspect. Contrary to many readings in which Maimonides and Spinoza ultimately search for a universal rationalist method to truth, a method derived from cognition of universals and metaphysical realities, in this chapter, I present both philosophers as developing methods that require non-­ cognitive processes and training to achieve wisdom. Both present epistemic-­ethical methods intended to be adaptable to the specific learners’ lived historical, physical, and social context. Their epistemic-ethical methods seek primarily to address how a knower can overcome improper

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desires, prejudices, bad definitions, and inferences which are predominantly due to improper ethical/intellectual training and social-­political forces structuring desire and belief. To stress Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s similarity on this point, I will emphasize how each approaches their epistemic method to knowing from the perspective of healing or emendation. Maimonides is clear in the Eight Chapters that the doctor, and, by extension for my argument, the teacher, treats the singular individual and not the universal human. The teacher must address the complete concrete individual so that they generate singular knowledge and the ethical-political good. Likewise, in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, Spinoza not only addresses physical and social affects that render thinking and desire excessive but also explains that improper abstract definitions and words distort concrete singular truths by appealing to universals.

Piety to Wisdom: Curing the Habits of the Soul In Maimonides’ major ethical and propaedeutic work, Eight Chapters, his stated aim in the book is to explain why the Avot, a culturally specific ethical-religious text, provides the means to prophetic perfection and true happiness. According to Maimonides, rather than being opposed to philosophical wisdom, the Avot provides the ultimate guidance to achieve philosophical or prophetic perfection. […] [W]e explained the reason this complier placed this tractate [Avot] in this Order, and we also mentioned its great utility. […] For even though it is clear and easily understood on the surface, to carry out what it contains is not easy for all people, nor are all of its intentions understandable without lucid explanation. However, it leads to great perfection and true happiness […] Whoever wants to become a pious man should fulfill the words of Avot. […] [T]here is no rank above piety except for prophecy, the one leading to the other.1

Maimonides’ emphasis on the necessity of the Avot may seem at odds with his commitment to natural philosophy by placing religious tradition ahead of reason. Yet, Maimonides’ view of philosophy and knowledge cannot be circumscribed by a narrow definition of abstract reason. Instead, by explaining, with the philosophical points raised in the Eight Chapters, the usefulness and wisdom of the Avot, Maimonides is making the deeper

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point that philosophical wisdom should not be assumed to be merely dependent on rationality but must primarily develop out of ethical and conventional sources. In alignment with many of his political insights, Maimonides argues that the ultimate guide to perfection, both philosophical and ethical, cannot be merely presented as a clear truth to be assented to and adopted. Instead, the instruction and method provided must be enacted, and most people are incapable of continually managing their lives to express such philosophical and ethical perfection. This is why Maimonides argues that a deeper and less evident meaning or intention of the instruction must not only be explained but must be instituted by following and embodying a discipline, or regime of habituation. Similar to his politics, piety and prophecy entail one another: without a discipline, or regime of habituation, enacted and desired, prophetic or intellectual wisdom cannot express itself as a uniquely relevant experience of one’s actual and necessary existence.2 Despite his praise of the Avot, curiously, Maimonides does not give a close textual reading of the Avot in the Eight Chapters, opting instead to explain how one should generally interpret what is intended by the text. Throughout the Eight Chapters, Maimonides explains what general interpretative stance one should maintain in relation to wisdom. His interpretive stance reveals that he is more concerned with what the learner should expect of wisdom and how he or she might achieve it. This is in accordance with Maimonides’ goal of highlighting how wisdom cannot be merely externally presented, assented to, and adopted, even in the Avot. Maimonides uses the occasion of examining the Avot to develop an epistemic method in which wisdom cannot be simply taken up and applied but must be thoroughly embodied in one’s complete life. Maimonides’ epistemic method initially manages the learner’s expectation by dissuading him or her from assuming knowledge is a clear truth and static technique simply to be applied identically in all circumstances. He argues that the learner should be aware that his or her initial views as to what is true, clear, and pleasing should not be trusted, lest they become sick. Those with sick souls who do not recognize their illness but imagine they are healthy or who recognize it but do not submit to medical treatment will meet the fate of a sick who pursues his pleasures and does not submit to medical treatment—he will undoubtedly perish. Those who recognize their illness

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and pursue their pleasures are spoken about in the true Scripture[.] […] For in the stubbornness of my heart I walk, etc., i.e., he intends to quench his thirst but actually increases it. […] The way of the fool is straight in his eyes, but he who listens to counsel is wise[.]3

The sick soul is characterized by the inability to distinguish the true or good and the pursuit of pleasures that overwhelms any wise limit. As a result, such a soul needs an external force and guide to block this pursuit so that they may achieve health and the disposition to knowledge. As Maimonides notes, they should seek the guidance of a physician of the soul to extrinsically guide and compel their actions so as to align with the wise. […] [S]ick souls need to seek out the wise men, who are the physicians of the soul. The latter will prohibit bad things which [the sick] think are good and treat them by means of the art that treats the moral habits of the soul[.]4

For Maimonides, the guidance of the wise cannot be assumed to be the simple task of presenting the good or true to the sick in a universal procedure or regime. Such an ignorant man then says: “Since these things cure disease, it is even more appropriate and fitting that they preserve or augment the health of a healthy man.” He therefore proceeds to take them continuously and follows the regimen of the sick; as a result he undoubtedly becomes sick. […] This perfect Law which perfects us makes no mention of such things. […] The Law of the Lord is perfect, making wise the simple, restoring the soul. Indeed, its goal is for man to be natural by following the middle way.5

The sick must be cured by an art that uses prudent judgments using particular counter-affects or counter-images to bring the sick back to a consistent and internally balanced health. The required health must be transmitted through a continual embodied practice. With this, Maimonides implies that a deeper sense of ethics and practice must be imparted to the complete soul of the individual. If one follows rigorously or identically a single good or procedure, they will become sick and reinstitute a bad form of awareness in his or her soul. Instead, they should seek the middle way that represents the natural, rather than a specific human or artificial prescription of the good or bad. The natural middle way includes adapting to specific circumstances and experiences and using counter-affects and

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counter-images to maintain an irreducible activity, not solely defined by the imaginative content of the regime nor by any universal prescription. Maimonides’ focus on the soul of the learner represents his view that knowledge or wisdom cannot be dissociated from the complete mental and physical life of the learner. He argues that although knowledge is perfection of the human being, i.e. the form of the soul—without which everything concerning the human is for naught6—perfection must be an expression of all the powers, or parts, of the soul or mind in coordination. You know that the improvement of moral habits is the same as the cure of the soul and its powers. The doctor who cures bodies needs first to know, in its entirety, the body he is curing and what the parts of the body are […] Similarly, the one who treats the soul and wishes to purify moral habits needs to know the soul in its entirety[.]7

Sick souls unable to achieve wisdom are defined by an excessive character that seeks extrinsic “goods” without limit and that assumes what seems immediately good or clear represents the truth. Sick souls have been possessed by their posited pleasing good and do not have the strength to know when those “goods” are extreme or excessive, drawn by them and errantly pursuing them without limit8: […] [T]he perfect man needs to inspect his moral habits continually, weigh his actions, reflect upon the state of his soul every single day. Whenever he sees his soul inclining toward one of the extremes, he should rush to cure it and not let the evil state become established by the repetition of a bad action[.] […][H]e should attend to the defective moral habit in himself and continually seek to cure it, for a man inevitably has defects. Indeed, the philosophers have said that it would be very difficult to find someone disposed by nature toward all of the moral and rational virtues. This has also been said frequently in the books of the prophets.9

Nevertheless, this characteristic of errancy and natural ignorance is essential to human life since human beings lack an innate and ready-made good that could guide them, preferring instead to follow the initial desire and image without a limit. As Maimonides notes, it would be very rare to find someone disposed to express, let alone actually expressing all the moral and rational virtues: humans inevitably have defects. Yet, those defects are based on repetitions of actions that are without limit, possessing completely the conscious and physical activities. “Defective” people do not

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seek or express the mean as a way of life. This kind of virtuous life represents a general adaptive awareness capable of keeping all actions in some sort of affective balance rather than exactly equating to one universally good life or practice. In order to be perfect and wise, an individual must continually weigh their actions to determine whether they are productive (active and balanced) or harmful (passive and extreme) in that singular circumstance. Unlike animals and their souls, which necessarily comport with nature,10 for Maimonides, human beings have a different kind of soul that is perfected only by knowledge—an activity which is specific to human beings and which provides order to human life.11 Developing similar arguments as presented in his politics, Maimonides argues that the human soul is essentially defined by its innate inability to know and its requirement for conventional guidance, or knowledge of good and bad: It means that he [Adam] has become unique in the world, i.e., a species having no similar species with which he shares the quality he has attained. […] It is that he himself, of his own accord, knows the good and the bad things, does whatever he wishes, and is not prevented from doing them. […] Since this is necessary for human existence, I mean that man performs good and bad actions by his choice when he wishes, it necessarily follows that he can be instructed in the good ways and be commanded, forbidden, punished, and rewarded. […] It is necessary for him to accustom his soul to good actions until he acquires the virtues, and to avoid bad actions until the vices disappear from him, if he has acquired any. He should not say he has already attained a condition that cannot possibly change, since every condition can change from good to bad and from bad to good; the choice is his.12

Whereas it seems that Maimonides argues for a strong notion of free will, in truth, Maimonides stresses the volitional nature of human beings as arising from human inability to perceive and follow any innate natural good. Rather than implying free will, this character requires conventional and extrinsic affective guidance so that human beings may develop and institute a stable form of life, one induced by a virtuous custom. This interpretation is further supported textually: when Maimonides discusses in Chapter 4 of the Eight Chapters the lack of an innate ethics,13 he stresses that this condition leads to the determining power of social instruction to make an individual virtuous or otherwise. In that passage, he suggests that in Chapter 8, he will explain more fully the lack of ethical knowledge. Thus, if one refers back to Chapter 4, the above-quoted

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passage from Chapter 8 implies the need for conventional instruction to address one’s volitions and does not imply the foundational status of individual free will. The social instruction and determinations needed for virtue and vice explain why Maimonides argues that only the conventional Law can provide the ultimate basis of good and bad. The primary determination of whether an action or object is praiseworthy or condemnable derives from conventional practice. This explains why Maimonides states that certain actions condemned by the Law would not be so naturally.14 Since nature is amoral, the Law and its practice are the only reason that certain actions are condemned. Additionally, the structure of choices between good and bad is derived from social convention and not from free will. In fact, desire for the good can only be instituted by conventions so that it is incumbent on conventional practices to induce citizens to continually desire these conventional goods, lest such a tradition and society disappears. Nevertheless, this conventionally determined desire is good in the sense that it enables a constant and stable life despite the errant changes produced by amoral and a-rational nature. As Maimonides notes, this stability in one’s life requires that his or her soul accustom itself to the practice of virtue and the avoidance of vice. The stability of such a kind of life is the basis of any virtue or truth that may result. Even if a rational or good order seems clear and easy for the intelligent to follow, as Maimonides notes above, this does not eliminate the underlying instability that can overtake the experience of that rational good. Instead, it requires constant management of ever-unique situations and responding to them with concrete remedies. Yet, the relation to and awareness of this necessary and determining influence of convention should not assume that a good can be clearly perceived, definitively attained, and statically employed. Even in relation to these conventions, one should not assume that a simple clear or universal truth and practice which one can identically employ to achieve continual success are present in them. Conventions do not represent an easy truth, since this would violate the inability to initially to know and perpetuate the myth of a natural truth. Rather, the continual presence of human beings’ malleable desires to a posited, extrinsic good and method requires that human virtue is primarily expressed in and derived from the constant prudent managing of one’s life. Since human beings are constantly subjected to chaotic and diverse individualized conditions and affects, they require an equally attuned and individually oriented method to direct and induce one to perfection.

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Prudence requires that one maintain an awareness of the extremes of one’s actions and desires, or rather when they do not have a limit. A limit both imposes an order and simultaneously restrains desire in order to agree with the changeable conditions of life as well as to establish productive, stable activity as much as possible. Yet, to achieve this level of prudence, one must interpret the conventions and instructions of one’s virtuous tradition to have a deeper meaning or intention than merely presented on the surface level. Prudence and the wisdom to understand a deeper meaning of the instruction require that one not simply follow one’s immediate imagistic desires and interpretations of the truth of the text and do not entail that one can escape the constant managing and judgment of one’s affective states by means of the mere application of an identical procedure or universal truth. Having this prudent mentality or awareness reveals that the individual has a “higher” or more perfect knowledge that is in control of one’s affective conditions rather than being drawn by these extrinsic (passive) conditions without limit so as to produce unique self-­ action or self-knowledge for the individual. Know that no prophet prophesies until after he acquires all the rational virtues and most of the moral virtues, i.e., the most important ones. This is their saying: Prophecy only comes to rest upon a wise, powerful, and rich man. Wise undoubtedly includes all of the rational virtues. Rich refers to one of the moral virtues, I mean, contentment[.] […] That is, he is content with what time brings him, and he is not pained at what it does not bring him. Similarly, powerful man refers to one of the moral virtues, I mean that he governs his powers as thought dictates[.] […] This is their saying: Who is a powerful man? He who conquers his impulse.15

Although the passage seems to suggest that only the rational virtues drive the achievement of perfection, Maimonides also stresses that prophecy occurs only when wisdom, power, and richness exist together and are coordinated. Without the moral and psychological stability and power, prophecy would not express itself. As a result, when one conquers their impulse and aligns it with a stable psychological life, then along with reason as an expression of that life, they may express intellect. At this level of awareness and psychic-physical stability, they would have true strength of mind rather than rational adeptness based on the manipulation of abstract concepts.

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When one achieves this perspective from and on one’s concrete conditions (i.e. self-mastery), they can be said to have a singular knowledge and intrinsic virtue insofar as they do not merely rely on and are not drawn by extrinsic affects or images. This individual does not repeat passively a set of instructions or perceived goods, nor do they assume that the truth or knowledge that they achieve in this unique moment can be reduced to a set of descriptions that could be universally repeated and identically adopted by all. As a result, Maimonides’ view of true wisdom or perfection could not support a view of epistemic method in which all answers or truths could be definitely presented and continually demonstrated in exactly the same way or by the same epistemic procedure. Instead, Maimonides’ general view of wisdom and how it is attained by coordinated activities of a complete individual supports an epistemic method which is propaedeutic and indicative.

A Propaedeutic Method For Maimonides, a method is propaedeutic in that it derives from conventions and habits that impart the awareness that conventional sources cannot provide a definitive answer but only an awareness that human living requires concrete management of diverse affects. The management of these affects relies on the aid of conventional values and practices that can be just as concrete and affective as errant ones. These values and practices are able to block and redirect these affects so that an individual may express unique self-action, self-knowledge, and the continued discipline or virtue to achieve as much as may be possible. An epistemic method at best, considered only as a set of instructions and practices to achieve wisdom, could only be indicative of such knowledge and perfection. Understanding how such a method can only be indicative is the first step to achieving and expressing wisdom: this is why Maimonides’ invests so much time in conveying this point and emphasizing the caution necessary to attain this perspective while avoiding the easy surface presentation of truth. Ultimately, such an awareness of the limitations of a universal method derives from an awareness that human living requires engagement with diverse particular affects and requires constant adaptation to these particular conditions. This engagement restrains particular affects when extreme and deploys conventions to regulate them toward a productive and useful life, ultimately a shared and equitable form of living that could reinforce such virtue and knowledge. Maimonides states that we must continually

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live by weighing our individual actions so that we will be divine-like and worship properly—that is, best practice our religious tradition. If a man continually weighs his actions and aims at the mean, he is the highest of human ranks. In that way, he will come close to God and will attain what belongs to Him. This is the most perfect of the ways of worship.16

Living cannot merely rely on static judgments as to what must be the universal good, and, hence, to be repeated identically. Instead, a proper method manages the concrete particular affects of an individual so as to make them prudently useful to one’s singular lived experiences and capable of further agreement with new experiences. An epistemic method that may produce such awareness must incorporate the art of medicine and a healing of one’s concrete body and soul so that they may express coordinated self-action or self-knowledge rather than myopic and dogged adherence to damaging static practices and intractable prejudices. Already at this “higher” stage of awareness, one expressing and deploying the medical art, an individual would have strength of mind and not merely be at the level of images and desires for mere extrinsic posited “goods.” A person informed by this medical art: […] would not aim at pleasure alone[.] […] Rather he would aim at what is most useful. If it happens to be pleasant, so be it; and if it happens to be repugnant, so be it. […] [I]f the humor of black bile agitates him, he should make it cease by listening to songs and various melodies […] and by things like this which […] make the disturbance of black bile disappear from it. […] [T]he goal of his body’s health being that he attain knowledge. Similarly, if he bestirs himself and sets out to acquire money, his goal in accumulating it should be to spend it in connection with the virtues and to use it to sustain his body and to prolong his existence, so that he perceives and knows of God what is possible for him to know.17

The natural aspect of human living is not to follow an artificial human prescription of the single good or true, such as absolutist and apparent interpretations of virtuous texts or conventions. Instead, the natural aspect of human beings, which a true epistemic method seeks to highlight, is the ever-changing experiences to living and desire that must be concretely moderated so that unique self-actions may express themselves. Nevertheless, one may assume that there are “natural” goods and truths that are required to structure human life. Maimonides notes that there are

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certain moral “laws” that should be written down if they were not so already.18 However, these “rational laws” alone cannot induce perfection. These goods do not specifically determine and restrain individuals so that they would not be excessive. No human under the influence of these natural “laws” wholly establishes a stable life and mind.19 Conventions have the ability to more directly address immediate desires and experiences that may be initially excessive and derived from social-political influences. If you consider most of the commandments in this way, you will find that all of them discipline the powers of the soul. For example, they eliminate revenge and vengeance by His saying: You shall not take revenge nor bear a grudge, You shall surely release it, and You shall surely help to lift them up, etc., these aim at weakening the power of rage and irascibility.20

By restraining certain errant actions, desires, and powers, conventional laws through discipline establish a non-errant, intrinsic power expressing virtue and truth—i.e., in the mean. This is why Maimonides emphasizes the importance and necessity of medicine for wisdom and worship. Not only can medicine address the ever-changing concrete conditions with adaptive remedies based on prudent judgments and undergone experiences—responding directly affect for affect with equally forceful counter-images—but medicine can also foster a stable way of life that concords with one’s worship, i.e. practicing political-religious conventions and enacting their imparted wisdom so that virtue and knowledge may express themselves. [T]he art of medicine is given a very large role with respect to the virtues, the knowledge of God, and attaining true happiness. To study it diligently is among the greatest acts of worship. […] [F]or it enables us to perform our actions so that they become human actions, leading to the virtues and the truths. For if a man sets out to eat appetizing food which is pleasant to the palate […] but is harmful […] then this man and the beasts are alike. […] A human action [requires] taking only what is most useful; one sometimes leaves the most pleasant aside and eats what is most repugnant, with a view to seeking what is most useful.21

As Maimonides notes, medicine cannot be based on apparent notions of the truth and good. He uses this example to argue that a good epistemic and medical method, as well as good worship, should similarly not assume a rigorous application of one standard. His emphasis on medicine not only

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allows him to argue for what is necessary to human living and its perfection but also to argue that conventional-religious traditions impart and transmit different wisdom than simple prescriptions. These conventions should follow the model of living set out in medicine. Medicine, like proper worship and proper epistemic practice, seeks to establish, enact, and continually impart a prudent mentality with modest epistemic expectations. When human beings embody epistemic modesty, they express human wisdom and activity. They understand that the natural flux of experiences and their amoral foundation must be addressed by medical or conventional practices so that strength and knowledge are expressed despite and because of this condition. By realizing their amoral material foundation and the appropriate ethical-epistemic response to changing conditions, human beings are able to transform their actions into human actions. This allows Maimonides to argue that the standard of usefulness is central to the achievement of perfection in living and in instituting political affects to achieve virtue and knowledge. Much like in his political philosophy and his understanding of medicine, usefulness should not be interpreted to mean that a tool, practice, or method should lead to one definitive static end. Instead, usefulness entails the opposite: the ability to maintain a continually dynamic and adaptive activity. This activity can include new experiences and affects and persist despite their errant pull and because of their vital differences. Method is useful in that it does not seek to find a final resting point which would be assumed to be a static universal good/truth but, rather, uses conventional and concrete historical devices/ affects to ward off being drawn to a static passive perception and application of supposed truths. Usefulness realizes that there must be conventional, concrete means to induce one to achieve virtuous self-activity. It realizes that it cannot merely rest in the perception of these extrinsic means but must make them and other experiences intrinsic to their individual existence, if possible. Usefulness also does not imply utilizing “subordinate” affects and physical-psychological powers as mere stepping stones to rational enlightenment. It does not follow the model in which prior realities are jettisoned once an individual achieves a higher truth transcendent to “prior” conditions. Instead, it realizes that these conditions are integral to the expression of any perfection, as a moment of total self-action. All of these physical-psychological parts or powers must be coordinated by this standard of usefulness, which in turn leads to concrete self-action.

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Given Maimonides’ concern that utility addresses directly the self-­ action and perfection of the complete individual, examining God, the supposed ultimate reality and good, in light of the standard of usefulness, shows the primacy of God. Instead of being removed from one’s ethical and intellectual activities or perfection, God provides the greatest use for and inducement to achieve self-activity. The “apprehension” or “perception” of God does not represent an extrinsic transcendent source that directly transmits identical cognitive data to every individual. Instead, what is transmitted wholly affects each individual’s concrete activities so that he or she generates a unique and necessary expression of understanding and good.22 Rather than indicating an identical, universal, and separate source of truth, the definition of God as a transcendent reality, beyond all human reductions and perceptions, disrupts the common attempt to render God an easy captured image (i.e. projected object). Blocking such a representation of God as a posited thing additionally disrupts our desire to use God as a supreme source of validation or source which encourages the continual pursuit of domination and authority. Access to divine knowledge and existence would require our minds to capture the totality of God or reality in a concept, which is impossible for a finite intellect. […] [W]e do not know His knowledge either, nor do we comprehend it in any way, since He is His knowledge and His knowledge is He. This idea is strange and marvelous, but it eluded them so they perished. […] [T]hey sought to perceive His knowledge so that it would fall within their intellects. This is impossible, since if we were to comprehend His knowledge, we would comprehend His existence—because the whole is one thing. To perceive Him perfectly would be to perceive [Him] as He is in His existence with respect to knowledge, power, volition, life […] Thus we have explained that speculation about perceiving His knowledge is sheer ignorance. […] He who wished to perceive His knowledge […] was rebuked[.]23

Maimonides’ definition of God thwarts human perceptions and desires that would seek to institute passive and errant imagistic desiring. Those who do not have a proper understanding of God would seek God as though it were an object or image, and thereby, would suffer and might even perish in the sense that they do not embody healthy or balanced limits to desire and reason. In general, their individual constitution would seek without limit, and thus, express a distorted and unhealthy soul.

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God as the Standard of the Active True and Active Love For Maimonides, the definition of God is primarily a positive guide. God as a standard represents the kind of living that Maimonides sees as most active: one that is irreducible. God’s irreducibility induces an awareness resisting reduction to images and to universal judgments, and thereby, this irreducibility promotes singular expressions of understanding and living. God represents life because, from our perspective, God seems to be most alive in relation to the best dynamic standard of human living available, i.e. irreducible self-expression as expressed by intellectual and ethical perfection. It is correct that He (may He be exalted) is identical with His attributes and His attributes are identical with Him, so that one who says that He is the Knowledge, the Knower, and the Known; He is Life, the Living, and the one who prolongs His living essence; and likewise with the rest of the attributes.24

God’s actions and life can be to some extent mirrored and expressed in our actions and living and, thus, can become the most useful and direct tool to activate our self-action and understanding. God is a living God that is with us, so to speak, for Maimonides. The perfect person is able to express the activity of God in some way by attaining or expressing intellect. It is clear that the perfection of man that may truly be gloried in is the one acquired by him who has achieved, in a measure corresponding to his capacity, apprehension of Him, may He be exalted, and who knows His providence extending over His creatures as manifested in the act of bringing them into being and in their governance as it is. The way of life of such an individual, after he has achieved this apprehension, will always have in view loving kindness, righteousness, and judgment, through assimilation to His actions….25

As Maimonides notes, attaining perfection and knowledge would equally entail a consistent way of life that has as its focus ethical-psychological actions. By focusing on and embodying those virtuous actions, the individual immanently assimilates26 such activity to continue to be as active and knowledgeable as possible. In this condition, humans express actions similar to those of God’s in that virtuous actions immanently reinforce

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one’s mind and body to the expression of the same singular perfections grounding one’s “perfected” living. Yet, given the finite embodied nature of human minds, they must continually perceive objects of possible knowledge from and through sensation, and additionally, desire errant particulars without an innate ready-made good to restrain and compel them to virtue and productive political associations. Even if someone were to attain every rational and moral virtue, that would not enable the person to fully grasp God, or absolute perfection, due to their embodied reality: When our master Moses knew […] [that] all the moral virtues and all the rational virtues had become perfected in him, he sought to perceive the true reality of God’s existence, since no obstacle remained […] God informed him that this was not possible, due to his being an intellect existing in matter, I mean since he was a human being.27

As embodied intellects, human beings can only perceive God, or a notion of God, as irreducible to their cognitive reductions. Hence, what is named or posited as this extrinsic affecting source, i.e. God, can have an extrinsic ethical or conventional relation to human beings. The posited reality of God can inhabit this projected space so as to disrupt any totalizing claims and excessive desires by individuals. Additionally, God, when viewed as an extrinsic perception, can represent the best telos. Whereas other finite imaginative ends would establish a seemingly certain goal and definitive hierarchy to reality, God as an end becomes disruptive to reductive and projective thinking so that the individuals are redirected back to the management of their immediate lives. God blocks errant desiring and ethical-­ intellectual domination so that the individual is forced back to address which present affects and conditions could be necessary and most useful to their living. God is of the greatest use since it can affect and disrupt particular concrete desires and concepts that overreach and seek to abandon the continual care of one’s immediate ethical-intellectual condition. By affectively displacing other presumed ends, God as a telos not only promotes continual ethical care but also reveals its power to directly affect all the aspects of an individual toward one’s most perfect state and God. God directs all forms or parts of one’s living toward it and the dynamic kind of life that God represents. Every aspect of human living must be integrated to this purpose and shown to be necessary for this purpose; otherwise, one’s life would collapse back into a merely errant, passive, and

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uncoordinated form of living and, thereby, render the demand of God’s existence as uncompelling to one’s immediate life and practice. If a man sets [knowledge of God] as his goal, he will discontinue many of his actions and greatly diminish his conversation. For someone who adheres to this goal will not be moved to decorate walls with gold or to put a gold border on his garment—unless he intends thereby to give delight to his soul for the sake of its health and to drive sickness from it, so that it will be clear and pure to receive the sciences. […] For the soul becomes weary and the mind dull by continuous reflection upon difficult matters, just as the body becomes exhausted from undertaking toilsome occupations until it relaxes and rests and then returns to equilibrium. […] Know that this level is very lofty and is difficult to reach. Only a few perceive it and then, only after very great discipline. So if a man happens to exist in this condition, I would not say that he is inferior to the prophets. I refer to a man, who directs all the powers of his soul solely toward God, may He be exalted; who does not perform an important or trivial action nor utter a word unless that action or that word leads to virtue or to something leading to virtue; and who reflects and deliberates upon every action and motion, sees whether it leads to that goal or not, and then does it. This is what the Exalted requires that we make as our purpose when He says: And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. He means, set the same goal for all the parts of your soul, namely to love the Lord your God.28

The notion of God has the ability to displace lesser ends because it can occupy one’s desires completely and satisfy those desires in the sense of directing them back onto one’s immediate self-activity, thereby making the individual’s complete self as vital as possible. In this sense, God provides the greatest avenue to expressing our lives and expressing our love for ourselves. By directing all of our desires and love toward God, we are able to concurrently reform our desires to be most stable and most productive to our singular living, and as such, we can continue to profit in this kind of higher form of love and desiring. As a result, the love of God rejects the view that certain aspects of one’s existence are merely disposable stages. Rather than dismissing “lower” powers and conditions as ultimately unreal and wholly subordinated to a cognitive truth and a will informed only by reason, such as a Stoic might argue, Maimonides argues that one’s passionate love must be directed toward and included in a love of God so that all one’s parts may be completely coordinated via this restrained productive desire.29

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God, as the greatest avenue for and expression of our love, provides also the means to remain committed to one’s conventions as virtuous and valuable determinations. Rather than abandoning them for individualized errant judgments, these affective influences and historical determinations become a necessary part of the individual’s complete form of striving. Furthermore, by remaining committed to our conventional, and by extension, communal influences, we in turn support an equitable ethical-­political environment that is most productive and simultaneously promotes the general welfare, including our own. Having this kind of love produces an ethical and intellectual awareness in which others are not to be reduced to identical standards or to be dominated by pursuits seeking to validate a single or a few individuals’ judgment of the good. The institution of equity, via the love of God, also generates an equivocal understanding of conventional sources. Sacred texts should not be employed reductively, but different individuals may achieve different expressions of understanding from those sources. As a result, linguistic interpretation and meaning, similar to ethical behavior, takes on a more adaptive and practical form of living and thinking that promotes usefulness and singular perfection for each individual. This ethical-intellectual awareness expresses certain character traits such as kindness, tolerance, humility, and piety. Individuals exhibiting excessive traits and desires reveal an uncoordinated soul and relationship to God so that they at the same time inhibit their ability to achieve and express awareness of God in a truly dynamic sense. Maimonides argues that the lack of complete integration of the individual’s body-soul to the goal and activity of knowing God leads to vices that are veils to prophecy. These moral habits and others like them are the veils of the prophets[.] […] Thus, whoever has two or three moral habits not in the mean […] is said to see God from behind two or three veils. Do not fail to know that the defectiveness inherent in some moral habits diminishes the degree of prophecy.30

They are veils both in the sense that they represent corrupt conditions and that those conditions are unable to generate a restrained and coordinated activity that would be capable enough to be aware of itself, awareness being immediately the activity’s expression. Living in the mean indicates a coordinated unity that has limits and through those very limits may express

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itself, achieving virtue and intellect, as best it can, despite errant affects that would pull the mean activity apart. In light of Maimonides’ comments on the status of God and its utility in achieving an individual’s complete perfection, reason as an aspect of human practice must be aligned with this ultimate reality but not be discarded as useless. As Maimonides notes, natural reason cannot provide a limit to appetitive aspects of human beings.31 It cannot restrain the desires for the “good” or “bad” with judgments of the true and false. Conversely, reason does not presumably set the categories of the good or bad; convention and practice are directly related to these activities and provide restraint. Yet, reason can provide a stable and seemingly objective outlook of the world so that the learner does not usually stray to extremes and does not often follow individualized desires of the pleasing (i.e. the externally posited) good. He or she can use reason to order his or her life and most productively agree with others to establish a commonwealth and possible intellectual tradition that can endure. Nevertheless, the appetitive aspect of a learner that would agree with and sustain such a truth must be derived out of non-cognitive ethical and propaedeutic practices that generate a psychology most disposed to carry out rational thinking as often and best as possible. In this case, reason would be thoroughly embodied and realize that it too can be interrupted by external affects and changing material conditions. As Maimonides notes, reason could not be merely a cognitive and non-physical process in which a person would cognize a truth with certainty and then use that certainty to maintain a continuous will to apply such a truth. In fact, as he notes, reason as linked to embodied and ethical conditions also can become weary due to continuous application. Reason can be overturned by other considerations and affects, unless the learner has the ethical discipline to maintain reason as an expression of their complete perfection and strength of mind-body. Implicit in Maimonides’ connection between intellect and embodied practice is that intellect must be related directly also to singular judgments rather than solely to universal precepts. Expressions of knowledge represent judgments by an embodied knower so that rational principles are relevant to and expressive of the concrete conditions that he or she embodies and experiences. As a result, reason must be explanatory rather than completely determinative or predictive of reality and experiences. The reality of experiences is not dependent upon an abstract analytic principle that should determine and predict every moment of reality or experience.

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Instead, reason depends on the reality of experiences and must be congruent with and expressive of them. When reason can agree completely with one’s embodied experiences and powers, it can transform into intellect and provide a uniquely appropriate, or singular, explanation of one’s reality and experiences. It has a form of necessity that is no longer merely abstract but one uniquely and intrinsically expressed by an individual’s concrete reality. From an intellectual perspective, reason explains how one’s reality may further express itself through rational agreement with other individuals and by arranging experiences together. In order to develop the singular explanatory power of reason, a proper understanding of linguistic meaning is paramount. If one assumes that universal meanings or concepts are represented by words, with exact correspondence to external objects, then one is unable to deploy them with prudent judgment and relevance to singular conditions. Thus, being reasonable no longer entails applying a concept rigidly and identically across as many events as possible, but rather, it entails using general explanatory terms so that they may be employed to make sense of one’s concrete experiences appropriate to that time and possibly used with more experiences. Without the elements of prudent judgment and equivocal meanings, reason would not be able to express an intellectual understanding of one’s experience or a modesty to experiences and reality. Maintaining an explanatory and adaptive view of meaning and reason enables the individual to have the most useful and necessarily relevant experience with reason and realizes reason’s greatest potential to generative understanding in the individual. Maimonides furthers this point by arguing that different sciences, or forms of reason, are not equally valuable. He notes that certain forms of abstract reasoning, such as the study of mechanics, do not directly relate to individual perfection, i.e. the attainment of virtue: There is no question about [the value of] whatever he learns from the sciences and from studies insofar as they provide a way for attaining that goal. Subjects not useful […] such as questions of algebra, the Book of Cones, mechanics, most questions of engineering and moving weights, and many such questions—aim at sharpening the mind and training that rational power in the method of demonstration, so that a man acquires the skill of distinguishing a demonstrative syllogism from one which is not. He then possesses this method for attaining knowledge of the true reality of His existence, may He be exalted.

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Similarly in all of his conversations, a man should speak only about what is useful for his soul or about what wards off harm from his soul or body, or about knowledge or virtue, or to praise virtue or a virtuous man, or to censure vice or a vicious man.32

Implicit in this point is that reason should be subordinated to human knowledge and good, i.e., the complete individual’s concrete existence, rather than assuming that reason discovers objective truths that always can deliver useful information. Abstract reason does not perpetually guide human beings in every occasion nor does it hierarchically determine what should be experienced. The idea that objective universal truths divorced from an individual’s concrete living and experiences should determine what are appropriate actions, outside of and prior to these affective experiences, would render the judgments of living human beings contingent moments. These experiences would be contingent because they would always be justified in relation to this prior reality. Maimonides does not advocate for such a view of reality and reason, but rather, he relates types of reasoning to whether they advance and perfect the concrete individual in their immediate experiences and related to the affects that they undergo. As a result, reason must be included in the ethical determinations of the good rather than assuming that it wholly addresses cognitive success. Cognitive success does not necessarily determine the good of individuals, and it would be impotent and uncompelling to the actual perfection of the individual without involving itself in the ethical-concrete experiences of the complete individual. Important for achieving this kind of result is the realization that moving from a purely cognitive or conceptual perspective to experiences cannot reduce concrete reality to the imagined or conceived object. Cognitive objects cannot fully encapsulate reality, and conceptual meanings do not bear the standard of reality. As a result, an important aspect of Maimonides’ epistemic project is to limit the power of words to adequately reduce reality to their image. Maimonides argues that the power and reality of words, which usually are expressed as abstract and seemingly capable of universal application, in fact, often represent a social group’s desires to use extrinsic symbols as means to reduce nature and dominate others. By instituting an imagistic and extrinsic attempt to symbolically reduce nature, the improper use of words also enables harmful, errant forms of desiring to perpetuate themselves by seeking these extrinsically oriented symbols. Additionally, by seeking to force nature, including human social reality, to comport

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itself with these seemingly universal symbols, the improper use of words engenders a social regulation of others’ speech and thinking. In his dedicatory letter of the Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides is clear that his philosophical instruction does not seek to find the right words for his students, both in the sense of rightly capturing nature and being universally acceptable or meaningful to everyone: As I also saw, you had already acquired some smattering of this subject from people other than myself; you were perplexed, as stupefaction had come over you; your noble soul demanded of you to find out acceptable words. Yet I did not cease dissuading you from this and enjoining upon you to approach matters in an orderly manner. My purpose in this was that the truth should be established in your mind [intellect] according to proper methods and that certainty should not come to you by accident.33

As a guide and instructor, Maimonides seeks to impart wisdom that cannot be easily captured in socially acceptable terms. For Maimonides, the extrinsic and symbolic nature of words deceptively implies that words refer exactly to externally true realities. This engenders in the learner a pursuit of such an external reality so as to satisfy all questions about meaning and truth. However, the symbolic reality implied by words and the pursuit of that reality, in fact, produces an accidental acquisition of wisdom. These extrinsic realities are furthest from one’s intrinsic and singular intellectual activities, and in reality, thwart such a singular expression of one’s immediate good and truth. As a result, it is incumbent on the teacher and the method they employ to resist the symbolic representation and the desires for such realities. A proper method induces in the learner a consistent practice and perspective that is attuned to the singular understanding of concrete and necessary experiences. This explains why Maimonides argues against the Mutakallimuns, who seek a universal method to knowledge via conceptual and linguistic ordering. They seek to use universalized meanings and symbolic forms to dictate to reality what must be the case and how it must be reduced to a narrow, abstract form of conceptual meaning/truth. Additionally, they seek to use the universal abstract nature of words and the logical ordering of such symbols/concepts to deduce the nature of reality and the divine beyond the scope of human concrete experiences. They believe that once someone has abstracted an appropriate theory of nature, he or she can apply it without fear of falsity and thereby can be content in their desires for

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achieving complete understanding of the natural and divine. However, Maimonides would argue that rather than satisfying their desires and achieving complete wisdom, they increase it with an extrinsically oriented form of application and seeking to close off difference (experiences) and to regulate others’ minds. As such, their “intellectual understanding” really represents a political vindication of their imagined power and truth. One major factor of this ill-formed approach to knowledge and reality is the belief that everything that can be imagined as possible must be real. The imaginative part is the power that preserves the impressions of sensibly perceived objects after they vanish from the immediacy of the senses that perceived them. […] The imaginative power puts together many such impossible things and makes them exist in the imagination. Concerning this point the dialectical theologians [Mutakallimuns] committed a great, repulsive error, upon which they laid the foundation of the erroneous view concerning the division of the necessary, the admissible, and the impossible. They thought, or made people fancy, that everything that can be imagined is possible.34

By relying on the imaginations of human beings, that is, by viewing the world from a human-centric perspective dependent upon what humans view as pleasant, natural, and clear, an ill-formed epistemic method would seek to force the world and others to comport with their projections and view that world as solely for human desires/truth. Rather than comporting with and expressing reality and true undergone experiences, one would force images that are passively and extrinsically determined to further drive an ill individual to seek errant images and false sources of reality/satisfaction (i.e. false happiness). Having both a highly individualized and highly extrinsic (passive) relation to the means of one’s perfection entails a sick soul that can only be healed by moving one’s focus away from extrinsic application and universal claims to reality, embracing instead the healthy management and expression of one’s singular/complete concrete good/ truth. Continually throughout his writings on epistemic method, Maimonides argues that a sick soul and mind must be addressed with a proper method to wisdom that entails moving away from false extrinsic sources, limiting extrinsic affects overwhelming one’s conditions, and aligning the various powers of one’s soul so that an intrinsic singular good and understanding may express itself from those conditions.

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Spinoza’s Methodos: Being on the Way to Wisdom In Spinoza’s sole work dedicated to the study of epistemic method, Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, he presents arguments congruent with many of Maimonides’ own. At the core of Spinoza’s understanding of method, like Maimonides’, is the concept of healing or emending the mind. For Spinoza, we need an emendation because there is no natural or rational method to the true and the good that can be easily and initially discerned by the learner. Without external aid, preparation, and virtuous habituation, the learner will pursue their own individualized or society’s errant forms of desiring: ones seeking extrinsic objects for sensual pleasure, wealth, or honor.35 For Spinoza, we also need emendation because intellect is embodied and directly expresses its concrete physical-­ psychological and ethical-political conditions. In order to achieve proper expression of one’s reality, one requires a treatment addressing the whole human being so as to restrain and coordinate various aspects of one’s concrete life to express intrinsic self-action or understanding. Essential to Spinoza’s method is the idea that what we expect of knowledge and intellect can do much to help us to avoid errors, prejudices, and unhealthy practices that block our ability to express singular intellectual judgments and our good. Again, like Maimonides but even more so opposed in the TdIE, for Spinoza, the expectation that nature is a posited extrinsic and static reality wholly agreeable to our reason and perception of the good is a major prejudice thwarting knowledge. The belief that by possessing knowledge of external static truths we perfect ourselves as only cognitive beings represents a major prejudice that blocks our ability to live dynamically and concretely and thereby blocks our need to express singular judgments, as complete individuals. Accordingly, Spinoza begins the TdIE by emphasizing the point that there is no easily discernible natural good or truth that we may find and use as a way to perfection. Far from a possessable object that can fully satisfy our desires for knowledge and perfection, instead, Spinoza states that experience teaches us of the variability of the external world. This lesson entails that we should examine and manage primarily our internal mental-psychological affects to achieve any strength and health of mind, i.e. true satisfaction. As Spinoza notes: After experience had taught me that all the things which regularly occur in ordinary life are empty and futile, and I saw that all the things which were

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the cause […] of my fear had nothing of good or bad in themselves, except insofar as [my] mind was moved by them, I resolved at last to try to find out whether there was anything which would be the true good, capable of communicating itself, and which alone would affect the mind, all others being rejected—whether there was something which once found and acquired, would continuously give me the greatest joy, to eternity.36

As Spinoza notes, experience, that is, the undergoing of the concrete interplay and direct conflict among particular affects, reveals that any projected external natural good ready for use is a fiction: empty in reality and futile in maintaining a continual stable order. These posited extrinsic objects do not have any deep reality from which we can find a human-­ specific good—in fact, these objects should only exhibit an amoral or a-rational status to our minds and our human way of life. […] [I]t must be noted that good and bad are said of things only in a certain respect, so that one and the same thing can be called good and bad according to different respects. The same applies to perfect and imperfect. For nothing, considered in its own nature, will be called perfect or imperfect, especially after we have recognized that everything that happens happens according to the eternal order, and according to certain laws of Nature.37

Instead, how these posited “objects” affect our minds in different respects, or rather, disturb them, may provide us with the awareness to reorient our search for knowledge and the true good back onto how the mind is affected by and expresses itself from those affects. Furthermore, these [bad things, or mala] seemed to have arisen from the fact that all happiness or unhappiness was placed in the quality of the object to which we cling with love. For strife will never arise on account of what is not loved, nor will there be sadness if it perishes, nor envy if it is possessed by another, nor fear, nor hatred—in a word, no disturbances of the mind. Indeed, all these happen only in the love of those things that can perish, as all the things we have just spoken can do.38

Important for Spinoza’s reorientation and emending of individuals’ intellects is the removal of excessive desires that cling to external objects as though they are the only avenue to perfection. Similar to Maimonides, Spinoza realizes that desires that are solely focused on one apparent good easily become excessive and extreme to the health and preservation of the individual:

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But all those things men ordinarily strive for, not only provide no remedy to preserve our being, but in fact hinder that preservation, often cause the destruction of those who possess them, and always cause the destruction of those who are possessed by them.39

Striving for these posited goods leads individuals to commit two common and fatal errors based on the perspective that these goods are wholly replete with reality or the good. The first is that individuals assume that by having the object they are sufficiently guaranteed to reach perfection and continual preservation. However, for Spinoza, to be healthy and perfect requires continual activity rather than having a passive perception of the world. Whereas in the first perspective, “objects” could be dispossessed by an external agent and have a limit imposed, the second perspective, similar to Maimonides’ analysis of the ignorant sick man, is one where an individual stubbornly seeks a single apparent good without any limit. As a result, the lack of any limit causes the destruction, since the lack of limit undermines the very nature of being healthy, which is defined as restraining and coordinating various powers into a singular living unity. In both cases, these errors block the individual from developing a dynamic adaptable awareness of the many singular experiences undergone through which they may express perfection and complete self-action. Like Maimonides, Spinoza presents true wisdom and a method based thereon as not merely a cognitive device to rational truth and perfection, but one that is directly related to our preservation, i.e., one that can provide a direct and concrete remedy. For Spinoza, method derived from intellectual understanding and seeking to impart understanding must relate directly to our physical-psychological thriving. This flourishing that Spinoza seeks and the one that he notes in his opening paragraph is a cause or reality which can continually affect his mind so that it is never subject to sadness or a passive state, i.e. one limiting mind and body.40 Spinoza’s desired “end” has the ability to affect physical-psychological thriving and supply affects that will make the individual always active, unable to be reduced to sadness or pain induced by extrinsic affects. Unlike a common external object, the reality continually affects an individual so as to lead to self-action on the part of this knower. Spinoza names the “source” of this continual affect as the eternal and infinite thing, God. But love toward the eternal and infinite thing feeds the mind with a joy entirely exempt from sadness. This is greatly to be desired, and to be sought with all our strength. But not without reason did I use these words if only I

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could resolve in earnest. For though I perceived these things so clearly in my mind, I still could not, on that account, put aside all greed desire for sensual pleasure and love of esteem.41

Yet, as Spinoza notes, the external “perception” of God, or, rather, acknowledgment of some posited ultimate truth, could not on that account be sufficient to draw an individual away from errant affects. This is so because human “nature” is subject to errant affects and has an inability to follow the supposed rational/universal good or order. Our embodied existence and our very nature as desire (conatus) precludes a circumvention of this condition through simple appeal to or perception of a metaphysical, rational realm. Spinoza’s implication that we are embodied intellects subject to continual errant material affects that can disrupt our intellectual activity suggests that we require constant management of these affects and striving to achieve a limited, more local, and singular form of perfection. By managing these affects and striving to control them, we might express true unique judgments in succession in our lives, when our body-minds are capable and vital, given apt and favorable circumstances. For Spinoza, as well as for Maimonides, we cannot simply possess a universal state of truth that would complete us and forever entail perfection, fundamentally pulling us out of physical reality. I saw this, however: that so long as the mind was turned toward these thoughts, it was turned away from those things, and was thinking seriously about the new goal. That was a great comfort to me. For I saw that those [bad things] would not refuse to yield to remedies. And although in the beginning these intervals were rare, and last a very short time, nevertheless, after the true good became more and more known to me, the intervals became more frequent and longer—especially after I saw that the acquisition of money, sensual please, and esteem are only obstacles so long as they are sought for their own sakes, and not as means to other things. But if they are sought as means, then they will have a limit, and will not be obstacles at all. On the contrary, they will be of great use in attaining the end on account of which they are sought[.]42

Although God can provide a goal to orient one’s seeking, nevertheless, we experience the good or truth of that assumed reality through intervals of living. This is why Spinoza turns to the ethical management of one’s life as being an essential tool to engender as many episodes of singular knowledge.

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For Spinoza, a method of achieving perfection and wisdom must directly affect the ethical-physical conditions of an individual so that limits are imposed on their desires, thereby generating a stable order that may then express wisdom, if the learner is so disposed and capable. This explains why much of the early part of the treatise argues that one must change one’s ethical conduct and experiences so that they are not drawn by errant desiring/affects and thereby overturn the stable activity of their minds. So I wondered whether perhaps it would be possible to reach my new goal—or at least the certainty of attaining it—without changing the conduct and plan of life which I shared with other men. Often I tried this, but in vain.43

As noted before, the certainty of knowing an ultimate truth is not derived wholly from a cognitive or metaphysical reality, viewed as an extrinsic object to possess or cognize. Instead, it derives from how one conducts one’s life (activity), what kind of perspective one maintains on their vital activity, and what one expects knowledge to achieve in relation to that living: either singular knowledge or purely universal or extrinsic form. As I have argued, Spinoza opts for singular knowledge because we cannot have access to an extrinsic natural good or truth but must express any singular truth through our continual striving and activities that coordinate every aspect of our living to be congruent with and expressive of such a truth. Spinoza notes: But since human weakness does not grasp that [divine] order by its own thought, and meanwhile man conceives a human nature much stronger and more enduring than his own, and at the same time sees that nothing prevents his acquiring such a nature, he is spurred to seek means that will lead him to such a perfection. Whatever can be a means to his attaining it is called a true good; but the highest good is to arrive—together with other individuals if possible—at the enjoyment of such a nature. […]44

Like Maimonides and echoing similar claims in his Political Treatise, Spinoza argues that human intellect cannot fully grasp the order of Nature as though it were a static object to possess (in an identical way). Aligning with Maimonides’ view, Spinoza argues that usefulness is determined by whatever relevant means in a particular context further one toward perfection or self-action. For Spinoza, perfection and the truth are not

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predetermined and align with one specific way or identical truth/application. Whatever advances us toward a way of living that is most stable and capable of expressing virtue and wisdom should be regarded as useful, rather than regarding as useful whatever comports with a supposed universal or rational good. Essential to achieving a virtuous condition disposed to singular knowledge is imposing and enacting conventions that would be useful to one’s embodied circumstances, conventions able to restrain and coordinate various aspects/affects to express singular unity/understanding. As Spinoza states earlier, things which regularly occur in ordinary life may be of use to achieving intellect if they have a limit imposed that restrains their excessiveness so as to cohere and express unity of self-action. In addition, for Spinoza, we must institute conventional rules to living so that potential intellectual activity does not abandon “lower” or ordinary aspects of living, if these aspects are aligned and coordinated with achieving our goal, or, rather, intellectual activity. Yet, Spinoza stresses that these conventional rules are neither ontological nor revelatory of a universal ethics to always achieve intellect, but rather, they can only dispose us propaedeutically to intellect. Spinoza states that these rules should be understood as if [tanquam] good: But while we pursue this end, and devote ourselves to bringing the intellect back to the right path, it is necessary to live. So we are forced before we do anything else, to assume certain rules of living as [if] [tanquam] good: 1. To speak according to the power of understanding of ordinary people, and do whatever does not interfere with our attaining our purpose. […] 2. To enjoy pleasures just so far as suffices for safeguarding our health. 3. Finally, to seek money, or anything else, just so far as suffices for sustaining life and health, and conforming to those customs of the community that do not conflict with our aim.45

Like Maimonides, Spinoza argues that ethical rules are conventional and cannot be assumed to express a universal template of the good. Neither is ethics merely a stepping stone to rational enlightenment, but it represents a necessary engagement and expression of living. Ending this passage, Spinoza notes that whatever we seek should be for sustaining life and health, and from this condition, we may express our good or intellect. Neither can we remove ourselves from a political environment or customs, but we should develop a mentality that can realize which customs may be

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useful for us to express our good. In particular, we should express customs that induce us not to seek common “objects” of desire: wealth, sensual pleasure, and honor. Spinoza’s focus on ethics and instituting conventional rules show that he does not assume achieving rational understanding of the world alone will generate perfection. Prior to the above passage in the TdIE, he states that we should establish certain preconditions that are non-rational to ground us and that rational sciences too should be subordinated to this overall good. This entails that pursuing only the rational or objective sciences is not sufficient for human perfection: […] [T]o acquire such a nature, and to strive that many acquire it with me […] it is necessary, first to understand as much of Nature as suffices for acquiring such a nature; next, to form a society of the kind that is desirable, so that as many as possible may attain it as easily and surely as possible. […] But before, anything else we must devise a way of healing the intellect, and purifying it, as much as we can in the beginning, so that it understands things successfully, without error and as well as possible. Everyone will now be able to see that I wish to direct all the sciences toward one end and goal, viz. that we should achieve, as we have said, the highest human perfection. So anything in the sciences which does nothing to advance us toward our goal must be rejected as useless—in a word, all our activities and thoughts are to be directed to this end.46

Spinoza is clear that we do not need to know the whole of Nature, rationally and objectively all at once. We should use ethical-political affects and reason as tools so that we may achieve intellect, relying much on society to generate such a condition for the individual, if possible. Similar to Maimonides, the sciences are not the end good of human beings but an aspect that, if understood and deployed properly, can aid in achieving singular knowledge in our lives, i.e. understanding things in succession as well as possible. He is clear that method must be devised and developed, and neither does it simply present itself for correct use nor is it rationally compelling to us.

A Concrete Method Like Maimonides’ method, Spinoza’s method seeks to advise the learner in what to expect from method and the achievement of intellect, rather than to detail exactly how a truth may ground the proper universal

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reasoning about reality, and thereby, achieve every truth available. Spinoza’s method understands that non-cognitive aspects are necessary to dissuade and restrain the learner from having excessive desires for a posited good, whether that “good” be an imagistic or rational object. Similar to Maimonides’ method, Spinoza’s method is propaedeutic and indicative. It understands that non-cognitive affects are needed to coordinate the whole individual to singular truths about their specific embodied living. As a result, method cannot simply apply a universal truth that would satisfy and perfect every individual. Instead, method must be indicative of possible singular truths manifesting through the individual’s unique (self-) activity. Spinoza does much to distinguish his method from a Cartesian method. Spinoza characterizes a Cartesian method as seeking a universal procedure that is grounded in the attainment of one final demonstrable truth.47 Once uncovered, this truth can be used to dictate the necessity or reality of one’s experiences. Rather than seeking to dictate to experience what should be true or that we should suspend our belief in reality until we have acquired a final universal truth via rational proof, Spinoza argues that we should discard the method of rational doubt and rely on the actuality or activity of experience. So it may be asked whether our reasoning is good? [S]ince to begin from a given idea requires a demonstration, we must again prove our reasoning […] and so on to infinity. To this I reply that if, by some fate, someone had proceeded in this way in investigating Nature, i.e., by acquiring other ideas in the proper order, according to the standard of the given true idea, he would never have doubted the truth he possessed (for as we have shown, the truth makes itself manifest) and also everything would have flowed to him of its own accord.48

Instead, as in his political philosophy, Spinoza argues that the actuality of experience should be the basis from and through which one can express intellect and the good. Matters here stand as they do with corporeal tools, where someone might argue […] to forge iron a hammer is needed; and to have a hammer, it must be made; for this another hammer […] to prove that men have no power of forging iron. But just as men, in the beginning, were able to make the easiest things with the tools they were born with (however laboriously and imperfectly),

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and once these had been made, made other, more difficult things with less labor and more perfectly, and so, proceeding gradually from the simplest works to tools, and from tools to other works and tools, reached the point where they accomplished so many and so difficult things with little labor, in the same way the intellect, by its inborn power, makes intellectual tools for itself, by which it acquires other powers for other intellectual works, and from these works still other tools, or the power of searching further, so proceeds by stages, until it reaches the pinnacle of wisdom.49

Rather than viewing experience as rationally defective and as requiring an ideal truth to justify and necessitate it, experience provides the actuality and means to develop our embodied intellect so that our intellect can express a multitude of truths throughout its life and ones uniquely relevant to its experiences/form of life.50 For Spinoza, individuals are able to rely on experience as a ground from which to express intellect because human beings have an inborn intrinsic aspect that can render extrinsic perceptions and conditions into unique self-action and knowledge. Intellect is not merely a rational entity that possesses universal truths or objective facts; intellect uses its experiences and affects to transform them into understandings that are concretely relevant to the singular good and flourishing of the individual. Additionally, intellect transforms these experiences into new tools from which to generate new singularly relevant truths or goods. By arranging them in a coordinated manner, these tools or ideas can become continually effective (as best as possible) to aid us in achieving perfection. Achieving these singular truths requires that a method to understanding must always focus on the concrete conditions from which we should then derive our ideas. As Spinoza notes, relying on abstractions and universals, which exceed this reality, should not be the starting point from which to “gather” and then express truth: […] From this we can see that above all it is necessary for us always to deduce all our ideas from Physical things, or from the real beings, proceeding, as far as possible, according to the series of causes, from one real being to another real being, in such a way that we do not pass over to abstractions and universals, neither inferring something real from them, nor inferring them from something real. For to do so either interferes with the true progress of the intellect.51

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As Spinoza implies in his prior account of experience, the intellect progresses from examining and expressing singular truths from singular conditions that interact with one another directly and concretely. In order to properly investigate things or reality, we must simply develop a method that is attuned to this reality, and thereby, express it through our intellectual power. Therefore, so long as we are dealing with the Investigation of things, we must never infer anything from abstractions, and we shall take very great care not to mix up the things that are only in the intellect with those that are real. But the best conclusion will have to be drawn from some particular affirmative essence, or, from a true and legitimate definition. For from universal axioms alone the intellect cannot descend to singulars, since axioms extend to infinity, and do not determine the intellect to the contemplation of one singular thing rather than another.52

Assuming that a static universal reality could capture truth and reduce it to one metaphysical expression would undermine the true progress of the intellect in expressing multiple singular truths. It would undermine the ability of experience and its affects to directly determine us to contemplate and render experience active for and expressed by our intellects. As living embodied intellects, we require an engagement with Nature and singulars so that we may be determined (by affects) and from that determination transform the determination into an expression of virtue and truth for us (i.e. self-action/understanding). Given the multiple expressions of truth(s) that different intellects may understand from uniquely singular conditions, relying on universal meanings and symbolic forms to understand reality and its determinations would be wholly unproductive and harmful to our intellects. Next, since words are part of the imagination, i.e., since we feign many concepts, in accordance with the random composition of words in the memory from some disposition of the body, it is not to be doubted that words, as much as the imagination, can be the cause of many and great errors, unless we are very wary of them. Moreover, they are established according to the pleasure and power of understanding of ordinary people, so that they are only signs of things as they are in the imagination, but not as they are in the intellect. This is clear from the fact that the names given to things that are only in the intellect, and not in the imagination, are often negative (for example, infinite, incorporeal, etc.) […] Because the contraries of these are

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much more easily imagined, they occurred to the earliest men, and they used positive names. We affirm and deny many things because the nature of words—not the nature of things—allows us to affirm them. And in our ignorance of this, we easily take something false to be true.53

Confusing reality with our common meanings or through the symbolic forms of words would undermine the ability to understand the truth of one’s experiences and the affects from experience. Method should seek to advise the learner that definitions do not present definitive abstract truths about an individual reality or truth. In keeping with Spinoza’s overall concern that method should dissuade the learner from assuming that a universally rational form can present an always identical truth and procedure to truth, by attacking the usefulness of words, Spinoza emphasizes that a method can only be indicative and explanatory. In fact, elsewhere, Spinoza defines definition as a description.54 Definitions do not present an essence totally divorced from the experiences of the knower. Without experience, the words of a definition would be meaningless and deceptive. Instead, we should maintain a healthy skepticism of the words to reduce reality to one universal meaning. At best, words and definitions should be explanatory and derive their meaning and usefulness for us to generate intellect from the concrete singular perspectives in which individuals experience the world. Spinoza’s concern with the deceptiveness of language and an assumption of a hard (a non-adaptive and non-descriptive) meaning to words leads him to investigate what would be the best starting point to convey an instruction for individuals to achieve wisdom. Following his view that method must be indicative, a good definition must not only indicate but also be propaedeutic. A definition must actively affect and guide the learner’s desire and perspective so that an indicative perspective of truth is embodied and enacted.

A Most Useful Perception: God Like Maimonides, Spinoza turns to the definition of the posited ultimate reality, God, to argue that its definition has a different meaning and kind of usefulness, than it would if it were viewed from a purely rational perspective. God does not represent merely a logical ground from which to deduce universal truths to be identically applied to one’s life and merely possessed as cognitive data. Instead, the definition of God, like all good

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definitions, enables us to habituate ourselves, including desire and psychological aspects, so that we can search for subsequent singular definitions in its likeness or by its standard. [W]e learned which is the best perception, by whose aid we can reach our perfection [and] we learned which is the first path our mind must enter on to begin well—which is to proceed in its investigation according to certain laws, taking as a standard a given true idea. If this is to be done properly, the Method must, first show how to distinguish a true idea from all other perceptions[.]55

A good definition is primarily an ethical-epistemic tool that extrinsically affects but also indicates what a singular truth should express rather than definitively reducing it to a universal conceptual reality and meaning. As Spinoza states, a good method has the ability to restrain our desires, and, hence, our ethical activities, so that our complete ethical-epistemic endeavor can express knowledge when possible by using the standard of a true idea or definition. Further, if someone proceeds rightly, by investigating those things which ought to be investigated first, with no interruption in the connection of things, and knows how to define problems precisely, before striving for knowledge of them, he will never have anything but the most certain ideas— i.e., clear and distinct ideas.56

Rather than being a method to find and possess universal or posited objective reality, Spinoza’s method habituates perception and desires toward unique definitions. Throughout his text, Spinoza emphasizes that we need non-cognitive tools and an ethical plan considered as a propaedeutic tool rather than as a demonstrative closure to inquiring. [W]hat we cannot acquire by fate, we may still acquire by a deliberate plan […] so that it would be evident that to prove the truth and good reasoning, we require no tools except the truth itself and good reasoning […] [I]n this way men become accustomed to their own internal meditations.57

This habituation to knowing cannot be the direct discovery of causes or their justifications. As Spinoza notes, method does not concern the causes of things or the convention of reasoning by which causes are denoted. “Method must speak about Reasoning, or58 about the intellection; i.e.,

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Method is not the reasoning itself by which we understand the causes of things, much less the understanding of the causes of things.”59 Instead, method provides a means to seek the causes of things and to know unknown things by the standard or perception of a true idea. “So we shall take care to explain how it [a true idea] is to be used, that we may understand unknown things by this kind of knowledge.”60 Spinoza’s language consistently implies that his method shows the manner in which true ideas are used and that knowledge of unknown things can only refer to a true idea as a standard by which to examine one’s own understanding. The knowledge of essences and proximate causes, which have their own specific content and order of inquiry or causation, cannot be justified by the standard of the true idea. Since truth should make itself manifest, there cannot be a method which justifies the actual content or cause of a specific mode of inquiry. A specific inquiry depends upon specific definitions and principles. Spinoza’s method is more properly described by the Latin term mos, or convention based on habituation than a universal epistemological method61: the student or learner is habituated by the perception of a true idea so that he or she may distinguish proper objects of inquiry and proceed to examine the truth of those objects without straying outside the proper limits of inquiry. The definition of God provides the greatest means or usefulness to resist our tendencies to stray outside the proper investigation of knowledge. As with Maimonides’ understanding of God, God can force us to coordinate all of our living aspects, including our (embodied) intellect, toward a standard of truth that will make us as active as possible, when possible. God as a standard makes us active by focusing our care and attention onto our singular experiences, while at the same time blocking our more imaginative projections including a view of reason unmoored from our ethical, political, and psychological concerns. [T]o restrain the mind from confusing false, fictitious, and doubtful ideas with true ones. It is my intention to explain this fully here, so as to engage my Readers in the thought of a thing so necessary[.]62

Similar to Maimonides, although arguing from an immanent perspective, Spinoza states that God cannot only restrain the mind from affirmations of posited extrinsic truths or objects but also that God’s irreducible nature disallows an easy appropriation of its definition into a mere concept. As a

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result, God can block the desires and perceptual projections of the learner. God shows that it is not about getting at the thing or a posited represented truth, as though it is some static object or fact, but rather God, like for Maimonides, compels us to enact truth which is singularly relevant to our individual activity. Since God’s necessity derives from its absolute activity or actuality, we do the greatest justice and understanding to it when we engage in self-­ action or understanding, as God’s reality entails. By doing the greatest justice to God’s infinite activity, we also express our activity and, thereby, care for our singular good so that in a sense we can call love of God a love and care of self. As in Maimonides’ writings, the love of the divine features prominently in Spinoza’s works: The Mind’s intellectual Love of God is the very Love of God by which God loves himself, not insofar as he is infinite, but insofar as he can be explained by the human Mind’s essence, considered under a species of eternity; i.e., the Mind’s intellectual Love of God is part of the infinite Love by which God loves himself. […] This Love the Mind has must be related to its actions […]; it is, then, an action by which the Mind contemplates itself, with the accompanying idea of God as its cause […], an action by which God, insofar as he can be explained through the human Mind, contemplates himself, with the accompanying idea of himself [as a cause]; so (by P35), this Love the Mind has is part of the infinite love by which God loves himself, q.e.d.63

Whereas finite projected “objects” would lead to an excessive errant love and continual conflict with other affects and experiences, the love of God, the mental striving to keep it “present,” is always actual, or eternal. Hence, it is an idea or intellectual tool to enable us to always act, given the circumstances. Yet, the status of God and the love toward it cannot be represented as attaining an object or thing, since God cannot be reduced by our imagination to a thing. […] Love of God, [is] not insofar as we imagine him as present (by P29), but insofar as we understand God to be eternal. And this is what I call intellectual love of God. […] Although this Love toward God has had no ­beginning (by P33), it still has all the perfections of Love, just as if it had come to be (as we have feigned in P32C). There is no difference here, except that the Mind has had eternally the same perfections which, in our fiction, now come to it, and that it is accompanied by the idea of God as an

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eternal cause. If Joy, then, consists in the passage to a greater perfection, blessedness [flourishing, beatitudo] must surely consist in the fact that the Mind is endowed with perfection itself.64

Understanding God no longer represents a possession of a thing or state but the continual striving, maintaining, and expressing of an activity that cannot be reduced either by an image or a universal object. This activity by and through us, however, is not God’s activity as such, although we must recognize that such an eternal activity exists, much like how Maimonides understands that God’s life is its own singular reality. Instead, God’s eternal activity must be explained by our activity under a species of eternity so that we may be called, in a sense, a part of God’s infinite love, or activity. Through our individual singular activity, or love and striving to see ourselves persist, we explain God’s activity through our own activity, and at the same time, we use God’s love or activity to block our reduction back to an imagistic or passive externally oriented living. As Spinoza describes in the final proposition of the Ethics: […] Blessedness [flourishing, beatitudo] consists in Love of God […], a Love which arises from the third kind of knowledge […]. So this Love […] must be related to the Mind insofar as it acts. Therefore (by IVD8), it is virtue itself. This was the first point. Next, the more the Mind enjoys this divine Love, or blessedness [flourishing], the more it understands […], the greater the power it has over the affects, and (by P38) the less it is acted on by evil [bad] affects. So because the Mind enjoys this divine Love or blessedness, it has the power of restraining lusts. And because human power to restrain the affects consists only in the intellect, no one enjoys blessedness because he has restrained the affects. Instead, the power to restrain lusts arises from blessedness itself, q.e.d.65

God’s love or activity becomes a standard66 and tool to induce us to as much self-activity as we can express because our perfection is already a form of singular striving/living, rather than dictated and completed by an external reality. The love of God is able to do this because the love of God represents a higher activity of the singular individual, one that is not represented in an external reality, whether as an image or universal. The love of God also affects and induces activity not from any external perspective but immanently or intrinsically in our singular existence. As a result, by loving God (an irreducible eternal activity), we also resist our reduction to passive external affects and thereby have some modicum of power over

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them. Spinoza rightly notes that the mere restraint of a passive affect by another affect would not generate intellect as intellect has a different quality than finite mediated affects.

Always Back to Living In the penultimate proposition of the Ethics, Spinoza argues that the first importance of attaining our perfection, intellectual expression, still must be rooted in concrete ethical-physical activities that, if well-balanced and regarded correctly by the mind, may induce intellect to express itself. […] [W]e […] regard as of the first importance Morality, Religion, and absolutely all those things we have shown (in Part IV) to be related to Tenacity and Nobility. […] The first and only foundation of virtue, or of the method of living rightly […] is the seeking of our own advantage. But to determine what reason prescribes as useful, we took no account of the eternity of the Mind, which we only came to know in the Fifth Part. Therefore, though we did not know then that the Mind is eternal, we still regarded as of the first importance the things we showed to be related to Tenacity and Nobility.67

In order to live rightly, we must arrange our bodily affects, whether individually and/or with social inducements, to establish a stability of living and strength of mind so that we may express intellect. In the scholium of this proposition, Spinoza elaborates on how most are unable to view morality correctly, or rather express it, because they are naturally disposed to view the external world as the only source of reward and perfection. They seek their individual advantage and root it in an external rather than an intrinsic activity. […] The usual conviction of the multitude seems to be different. For most people apparently believe that they are free to the extent that they are permitted to yield to their lust […] Morality, then, and Religion, and absolutely everything related to Strength of Character, they believe to be burdens […] they are induced to live according to the rule of the divine law (as far as their weakness and lack of character allows) not only by this hope, but also ­especially, by the fear that they may be punished horribly after death. If they did not have this Hope and Fear […] they would return to their natural disposition, and would prefer to govern all their actions according to lust, and to obey fortune rather than themselves.68

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Important to note in the above passage is that the multitude of people would return to their natural disposition, which is disposed toward their favored externals and how they were individually determined. As such, they would be drawn by errant passions, and therefore, would be unable to govern themselves from an intrinsic power and perspective. Despite his distinction between the wise person and the ignorant one, Spinoza to some extent subtly includes the wise in with the lot of the ignorant. […] how much the Wise man is capable of, and how much more powerful he is than one who is ignorant and driven by lust. For not only is the ignorant man troubled in many ways by external causes, and unable ever to possess true peace of mind, but he also lives as if he knew neither himself, nor God, nor things; and as soon as he ceases to be acted on, he ceases to be. On the other hand, the wise man, insofar as he is considered as such, is hardly troubled in spirit, but being, by a certain eternal necessity, conscious of himself, and of God, and of things, he never ceases to be, but always possesses a certain true peace of mind. […] If the way I have shown to lead to these things now seems very hard, still, it can be found. […] For if salvation69 [salus] were at hand, and could be found without great effort, how could nearly everyone neglect it. But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.70

Important to note first, the wise person, being a finite human being, is necessarily subjected to passions, and as a result, they are considered wise only in a certain respect or from a certain perspective. That perspective is intellect, which is able to “arise” out of one’s affects, to govern them and be conscious of them, as best as possible under their unique or certain intrinsic form of necessity or activity. Additionally, as I have argued elsewhere, for Spinoza, human beings’ natural dispositions are not to know the true or good.71 As a result, they require much conventional-ethical inducement and strength of mind to express intellect and the good, despite and because of their affects. Echoing many of the same themes in the early sections of the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, Spinoza argues in the latter propositions of Ethics Part V that merely conceptually knowing the supposed good or rational truth is not enough to compel one to perfection. One must change one’s concrete and complete life, with the aid of virtuous ethical instruction and physical and political inducements, so that he or she may express intellect throughout his or her life as best as possible, when

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possible. In Proposition 39 of Ethics V, Spinoza lays out clearly why we must have a modest view on what reason can secure and why we must include physical and ethical-political conditions so as to express intellect throughout our lives. […] [W]e must note here that we live in continuous change, and that as we change for the better or worse, we are called happy or unhappy. For he who has passed from being an infant or child to being a corpse is called unhappy. On the other hand, if we pass the whole length of our life with a sound Mind in a sound Body, that is considered happiness. And really, he who, like an infant or child, has a Body capable of very few things, and very heavily dependent on external causes, has a Mind which considered solely in itself is conscious of almost nothing of itself, or of God, or of things. On the other hand, he who has a Body capable of a great many things, has a Mind which is considered only in itself is very much conscious of itself, and of God, and of things. In this life, then, we strive especially that the infant’s Body may change (as much as its nature allows and assists) into another, capable of a great many things and related to a Mind very much conscious of itself, of God, and of things. We strive, that is, that whatever is related to its memory or imagination is of hardly any moment in relation to the intellect[.]72

Without a physical dimension capable of meeting affects directly with its own power, that is, being capable of many acts despite external influences, a body’s singular idea or mind would be incapable of ruling those affects and becoming very conscious of its activity, i.e. “true” peace or strength of mind. Furthermore, because Spinoza eschews any rigid metaphysical categories of good and evil, perfect and imperfect, we can only call or consider a life ruling these external affects as good. Nevertheless, this intrinsic and powerful form of life does agree with our striving for our own advantage. This form of life, in fact, increases our striving and activity as best as possible, given the continuous and necessary engagement with external affects. Given these external and resistant affects, there must be an appetitive dimension that continually strives to rule and overcome them. As such, there can only be a modest form of intellectual achievement, rather than a fully formed kind of transcendent enlightenment. We may transform our images and circumstantial affects into intellectual ideas, but this does not mean that intellect is necessarily guaranteed. As Spinoza notes, we strive to change the “nature” of an infant body into an adult body’s “nature” capable of mental actions, but an infant body is not essentially disposed to an adult’s activity so that this process requires much

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work to establish human actions and mental ability. Included in this work must be physical, ethical, psychological, and political guidance and inducements. The institution of a life and mind capable of expressing intellectual judgments cannot be based on a detached will or a will only informed by reason. Spinoza is clear when he begins Ethics, Part V, that reason cannot directly compel the will toward the good and rational judgments: Here, then, as I have said, I shall treat only of the power of the Mind, or of reason, and shall show, above all, how great its dominion over the affects is, and what kind of dominion it has for restraining and moderating them. For we have already demonstrated above that it does not have an absolute dominion over them. Nevertheless, the Stoics thought that they depend entirely on our will, and that we can command them absolutely. But experience cries out against this, and has forced them, in spite of their principles, to confess much practice and application are required to restrain and moderate them.73

Instead, what is required is much practice. Yet, given that we are naturally disposed to our own individualized desires, this steadfastness must derive from ethical-political and physical inducements that virtuously institute such a life in us. As Spinoza notes, we must realize that how we have been affected by our context determines much how we will then act or express virtue: For it must particularly be noted that the appetite by which a man is said to act, and that by which he is said to be acted on, are one and the same. For example, we have shown that nature is so constituted that each of us wants the others to live according to his temperament (see IIIP31S). And indeed, in a man who is not led by reason his appetite is the passion called Ambition, which does not differ from Pride. On the other hand, in a man who lives according to the dictate of reason it is the action, or virtue, called Morality[.]74

In the case of those who have been affected “naturally,” that is as nature had “intended,” so to speak, they will live chaotically and in an uncoordinated manner, both individually and socially. However, those led by reason have been disposed to action, both individually and socially, so that they may continually foster their striving to persist in a conducive rational environment. Important to achieving this life is an understanding of what our reason can and cannot do. Spinoza attacks the Stoic position that we could

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dismiss the affects, since, according to Spinoza, affects derive from real “beings” or activity. Experience teaches us that our rational principles, even though seemingly certain, do not necessarily dictate that reality should be experienced one way. What we perceive as the only natural and certain order is determined much by context, use, and societal evaluations. […] The more this knowledge that things are necessary are concerned with singular things, which we imagine more distinctly and vividly, the greater is this power of the Mind over affects, as experience also testifies. […] [W]e see that no one pities infants because of their inability to speak, to walk, to reason […] But if most people were born grown up, and only one or two were born infants, then everyone would pity the infants, because they would regard infancy itself, not as a natural and necessary thing, but as a vice of nature, or a sin.75

Rather than giving universal reason or pure rationality the power to determine what will or must be our truth or good, Spinoza emphasizes that reason should be a tool to aid our knowledge of singular experiences. Without some imaginative or experiential dimension, universals may become unmoored and assume that the eternal order of Nature must be aligned with human rational projections. For Spinoza, instead of supporting human flourishing and activity, this would circumvent the activity of our singular intellects transforming their experiences into their own self-activity. Similar to Maimonides, reason can present stable or “objective” perspectives from which to institute a stable life and shared order that would reinforce such a conducive activity. Thinking about the properties of the universe (universal images) can feed our embodied mind with joy and support our striving because it enables our mind to be active with as many conditions as are possible. But an affect that arises from reason is necessarily related to the common properties of things […], which we always regard as present (for there can be nothing which excludes their present existence) and which we always imagine in the same way (IIP38). So such an affect will always remain the same, and hence (by A1), the affects that are contrary to it, and that are not encouraged by their external causes, will have to accommodate themselves to it more and more, until they are no longer contrary to it. To that extent, an affect arising from reason is more powerful, q.e.d.76

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For Spinoza, reason concretely provides a foundation from which we are affected and moved. This affect or movement entails a direct relation to our striving. In more specific terms, reason provides a means of consistently thinking about the world and seeing/enacting ourselves in that world as active beings rather than merely passive to it. It feeds our very concrete hopes, or desire, to regard ourselves as active as possible throughout Nature. Nevertheless, this universal imagery cannot ground and generate our individual singular existence and perfection. As Spinoza says elsewhere, these universal images are propria and cannot determine our intellect to the contemplation of a singular essence.77 At best, they are extrinsic tools and images that we may use to further our intellectual activity, but they cannot reduce intellect merely to an abstract universal projection or concept. In order to aid our understanding of our singular existence, we should use reason to align with our concrete existence. As a result, reason no longer definitively determines reality but becomes explanatory to it and to our singular experiences. Reason enables us to agree with as many other “beings” or affects that we experience so that we may simultaneously think about these affects and render them as active for us (i.e. express them adequately for our intellects). As Spinoza details above, reason regarded as an omnipresent projection can engender in our psyche an affect of power and joy that agrees with our striving to persist. However, reason primarily is able only to structure our desires when contrary affects to our striving are absent from our immediate passions. Thus, reason cannot directly remove passive affects that are encouraged by an unconducive and immediately affecting environment. Other affects that are able to directly reduce these unconducive ones cannot rely solely on reason nor can reason assume that it has an absolute dominion78 to eliminate these affects. Instead, what is entailed is that reason needs non-cognitive experiences and affects to support it and that reason must be induced and habituated in the learner by virtuous non-­ cognitive affects so that the rational way of life will persist. The determination of whether something is appropriately enacted and expressed should not be confused with what reason projects but rather whether a singular individual expresses that kind of reasoning in their concrete living, including in both their intellect and body. As a result, reason should be understood to be indicative and propaedeutic for our perfection rather than as reducing our perfection to an a priori rational reality that should dictate how our individuality should be perfected. Reason can help,

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but it does not reduce our singular existence to its identical and transcendental viewpoint. As Spinoza states earlier, knowledge of singulars provides the greatest power to rule the affects because it relies directly on and expresses our intrinsic actions as a living embodied intellect. From this non-mediated perspective, our intrinsic actions are able to rule affects because they coordinate all of our parts or powers so that the mind-body does not errantly seek external desires and projected objects. In this condition, intellect uses reason, which represents a human-specific mode of engaging the world, and transforms one’s current experiences (including images) into a “higher” conscious perspective that is non-errant and non-mediated.79 This expresses that singular individual’s ability to be a unique and necessary aspect in reality, neither subsumed in an indifferent identical universal nor errantly depending on extrinsic “objects” or fortune. An individual’s unique necessity represents a singular active power that expresses concurrently the active reality of God or Nature as explained by our unique actuality. I thought this worth the trouble of noting here, in order to show by this example how much the knowledge of singular things I have called intuitive, or knowledge of the third kind (see IIP40S2), can accomplish, and how much more powerful it is than the universal knowledge. […] For although I have shown […] that all things (and consequently the human Mind also) depend on God both for their essence and existence, nevertheless, that demonstration, though legitimate and put beyond all chance of doubt, still does not affect our Mind as much as when this is inferred from the very essence of any singular thing which we say depends on God.80

When we have intuitive knowledge, we directly affect our complete self and, concurrently, render our experiences as a non-mediated activity seemingly expressive of eternal activity without beginning or end. This intuitive, non-discursive experience expresses a greater power than reason in that it coordinates and directs all our parts or powers so that they together enact knowledge under the aspect of eternity. Once in this non-mediated intrinsic “state,” by expressing an experience without seemingly beginning or end, we understand and feel our essence or actuality as depending, or rather enacting God’s activity through us. God as irreducible becomes explained by our specific irreducible self-action or essential intrinsic activity.

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By making experience and the self-action of the concrete singular individual the locus of reality and perfection, Spinoza mitigates against hard rationalistic tendencies and prejudices.81 For Spinoza, these prejudices foreclose continual investigation and reinterpretation of Nature in favor of an absolute rational transcendental necessity that would, according to how humans’ (rationally) conceive it, dictate reality to Nature and individuals. Instead, Spinoza argues that Nature’s necessity, by blocking errant human desires and expectations, compels those desires to address and directly express epistemic-ethical practices and values, which are determined by one’s concrete conditions and experiences. The necessity of epistemic-ethical practices and an awareness thereof means that reason as a tool can be established as good and useful only if individuals have been habituated to it so as to enact it.82 Many individuals habituated to and enacting reason enable a virtuous social condition that reinforces such an “objective” and beneficial condition. Even so, as Spinoza ends his Ethics, reason should not be assumed to be able to completely eliminate the affects and changeable conditions of Nature through its presentation of an ideal identical, rational, and “perfect” metaphysical reality. Reason cannot eliminate extrinsic affects from other realities and individuals, and it cannot reduce Nature so that it could perpetually support our preferred rational prejudices as to what is true, perfect, just, and certain. Instead, Spinoza aptly ends the Ethics by re-emphasizing that we can never eliminate the affects and that the way to perfection and wisdom is rare and very difficult. We must use his method and philosophy as a means to continually strive to reach flourishing [beatitudo] or singular self-­ knowledge. With his method and philosophy, we can practice, enact, and develop a strength of mind or virtue so that we may as best as possible engage with affects and experiences to generate and express singular knowledge. Like Maimonides, Spinoza argues that reason should be understood as a tool to induce intellectual perfection and embodied flourishing. Without an embodied activity being fostered by reason, the point of reason becomes moot and counter-productive to the goal of complete self-action. We can never reach a transcendental state of enlightenment divorced from affects but must proceed to directly manage them one after another83 so as to align our total existence to activity in those specific cases. The necessary element of desiring and striving entails that we must constantly engage and affect/restrain other affects so that they align as best as possible to our understanding and self-activity. One important

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intellectual tool for helping us to engage affects and care for the development of singular knowledge is the love of God. Like Maimonides, the love of God can displace and replace our finite desires’ projected telos and thereby become an irreducible “object” which forces us to abandon extrinsic images and transforms them into an aspect of our intrinsic understanding and perspective.

Conclusion For Maimonides and Spinoza, the idea of the singular occupies a prominent and essential place in their respective epistemic methods. By seeking singular truth instead of rational or universal truth, their respective methods are reframed toward care of self and ethical-epistemic restraint rather than the acquisition and implementation of a single demonstrative procedure. Attaining knowledge does not represent the rigorous and identical application of a procedure to acquire seemingly universal static truths and the final achievement of a state of transcendent enlightenment. Instead, attaining knowledge requires the constant management of desires, physical-­ psychological conditions, and importantly, the epistemic expectations of the knower so that one’s complete self might generate knowledge. What is generated or expressed by the knower is the unique activity of all his or her mental parts or powers that are coordinated in that singular activity. Coordination among the various aspects of the knower, in fact, represents the condition of self-action, since all the parts or powers of an individual together foster a singular expression of one’s actuality despite the resistance of errant affects. To do this, one must be conscious of the embodied and immanent aspects of one’s living, as coordination and awareness entail and support one another. Developing the awareness to resist and redirect errant affects so that one might affirm and express their singular reality requires a method that can transmit a way of life that cannot be reduced merely to simple pleasing imagery or to sure universal concepts. Method is an extrinsic inducement that transmits wisdom not as a readily apparent set of universal truths. Instead, method prepares and indicates to the learner an awareness about how to perceive and what to expect of truth so as to reform their complete self: mind and body. Method resists the easy presentation of truth so as to guide the learner back to their immediate singular conditions from which they may express self-action rather than satisfy their imagistic desires in an errant pursuit and extrinsic object that would end all inquiry.

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Both Maimonides and Spinoza use the standard of God and the love of God as exemplary modes by which one can attain and continually enact wisdom. Perceiving God correctly, or for that matter, understanding God as irreducible, neither an image nor concept, enables the learner to resist the acquisition of extrinsic objects as though a perfecting source, and, thereby, to focus on one’s immanent, singular activity. This refocus onto one’s immanent and singular activity is fostered and induced by the love of God, since this kind of love cannot be imagistic. Love of the divine expresses an immanent activity through which one may express their own activity. By loving, or directing all of one’s desires and powers toward this truly irreducible “object” or “source,” one immediately actualizes one’s desire for one’s own immanent and irreducible activity. What is generated and promoted is a singular conscious focus on one’s living and its ability to be as real in relation to God’s reality. This “higher” form of awareness derived from one’s mediated existence (errant affects) is able to make one’s reality as active as possible84 and thereby express an aspect of God’s reality as necessary and unique (or singular). In this process, the propaedeutic method and practices that induce such a singular awareness and striving on the part of the knower may itself become a part of one’s singular identity as a practicing and striving philosopher. These concrete practices represent an active condition on the part of the knower to achieve their singular activity and concretely direct desires and resistances toward the continuance of that life. Nevertheless, the method itself as a set of instructions and propaedeutic practices does not constitute the truth or knowledge, but method must be embodied and expressed by those capable so that singular truths are expressed. Method alone is only propaedeutic and indicative. Nevertheless, living by its virtuous inducements, and in the process, by its transmitted wisdom, singular truths may be achieved in succession.

Notes 1. EC, p. 60; emphasis added and quote modified. Introduction. 2. My view aligns with Shlomo Pines’ and Josef Stern’s positions that Maimonides accepts a habitual soul as an important basis for intellectual apprehension. Pines makes a keen observation: if habits did not inform intellectual or human perfection, then why does Maimonides emphasize that habits can block the apprehension of true realities in Guide Book I, Chapter 31? See Pines (1979, 101). Of the two, I particularly agree with

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Stern’s argument that, for Maimonides, the wise must habitually strive to express wisdom concretely so that ethical activities are infused with intellectual understanding. See Stern (2013, 318–330). Nevertheless, I may go further than him in arguing that ethical and political content must inform intellectual understanding. For a view that rejects the habitual soul in Maimonides, see Altmann (1987). 3. EC, pp. 66–67; emphasis added and quote modified. Fourth Chapter. 4. Ibid., p. 66; emphasis added. 5. Ibid., p. 70; emphasis added. Fourth Chapter. 6. Ibid., p. 64. First Chapter. 7. Ibid., p. 61. 8. The authors of Maimonides’ Cure of Souls argue that Maimonides’ presents a psychotherapeutic method in the Eight Chapters to argue that a general (healthy) awareness of one’s living is required. As a result, strict asceticism and fastidiousness to a code are moral defects and disruptive to an integrated psychology that can produce health, virtue, and wisdom. In a way, these fastidious individuals are Freudian neurotics. See Bakan et al. (2009, 134–136). I am intrigued by their reading and the connection of the two thinkers and, in a way, agree that Maimonides’ integrated psychology is a forerunner to Freud’s theory. In particular, I agree with their assessment that both see ignorance as resistance, and therefore, both require concrete and historical awareness of affects to generate mental functioning. 9. EC, p. 73; emphasis added. Fourth Chapter. 10. On humans’ lack of concord with nature for Maimonides, see Dobbs-­ Weinstein (1995, 100). 11. EC, pp. 63–64. First Chapter. 12. Ibid., p. 88; emphasis added. Eighth Chapter. 13. See Chap. 3 of this work. 14. EC, p. 80. Sixth Chapter. 15. Ibid., p. 81; emphasis added. Seventh Chapter. 16. Ibid., p. 74; emphasis added. Fourth Chapter. 17. Ibid., p. 75; emphasis added. Fifth Chapter. 18. EC, pp. 79–80. Sixth Chapter. 19. Maimonides praises the continent man over the one disposed to the “natural” good: When the sages said that the continent man is more virtuous and his reward is greater, they had in mind the traditional laws. This is correct because if it were not for the Law, they would not be bad at all. Therefore they said that a man needs to let his soul remain attracted to them and not place any obstacle before them other than the Law. Ibid., p.  80; emphasis added. Sixth Chapter.

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Given the wide diversity and continual flux of individuals’ perceptions of the good and true, no general good could directly manage and guide individuals to achieve a stable life from which virtue and truths may express themselves. This can only be derived from a singular or unique politicalethical environment based on concrete historical conventions and practices that institute and reinforce such a life. Idit Dobbs-Weinstein makes an important point that given the amoral and excessive character of Nature, for Maimonides, no natural good or activity is essentially sufficient to reform an individual as such to the human good. This is because the good is conventional, but also because the management of one’s errant and natural activities defines human potential, activity, and perfection. Merely appealing to the natural would not achieve this human perfection but, in fact, would circumvent the means to greater human “glory.” As a result, the “good” instituted in the continual practice of a continent individual must be opposed to one’s natural dispositions so as to manifest the greater human potential, activity, and perfection of the individual. See DobbsWeinstein (1995, 159). 20. EC, p. 72. Fourth Chapter. 21. Ibid., pp. 75–76; emphasis added. Fifth Chapter. 22. Josef Stern argues that love of God does not represent simple apprehension of an intelligible (object). Instead, the love of God expresses an activity on the part of the knower to the exclusion of any possession or reception of some thing or image. See Stern (2013, 318). 23. EC, p. 95. Eighth Chapter. 24. Ibid., p. 94. 25. Guide, p. 638; emphasis added. See Book III, Chapter 54. 26. For a discussion on how Maimonides’ assimilation of divine actions represents a departure from Aristotelian natural perfection, i.e. perfection through speculation, see Dobbs-Weinstein (1995, 182). 27. EC, pp. 82–83; quote modified. Seventh Chapter. 28. Ibid., pp. 77–78; emphasis added and quote modified. Chapter 5. Sarah Stroumsa has presented an intellectualist interpretation of medicine in Maimonides’ philosophy. She argues that medicine is subordinated to philosophical understanding and the pursuit of intellectual truths. She argues that medical practice does not inform philosophical pursuit per se and, primarily, helps monitor intellectual claims. As result, she notes that Maimonides himself seemingly represented excessive intellectualism by pushing himself to exhaustion for (rational) knowledge. See Stroumsa

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(2009, 134–138). Although I agree that for Maimonides merely having (imagistic) medical knowledge is insufficient, I have argued that medical knowledge as a practice can transform into a kind of ethical-epistemic awareness that seeks to perfect the whole concrete person. It does this by addressing the concrete person’s living and realizes that living undergirds philosophical thinking. As seen in the above passage, exhaustion of the mind is coextensive with exhaustion of the body. 29. Daniel Frank offers a reading of Maimonides and Spinoza in which he argues that for both thinkers the highest realization of human perfection, i.e. one in the image of God, expresses dispassionate knowledge. See Frank (2019, 136). I disagree with this interpretation and have argued that for Maimonides and Spinoza, the greatest expression of knowledge and love of God represents an affective dimension that perfects the complete human being, including physical-ethical and intellectual activity. 30. EC, p. 82. Seventh Chapter. 31. Ibid., p. 64, Second Chapter. 32. Ibid., pp. 76–77; emphasis added. Fifth Chapter. 33. Guide, p. 4; translation modified. 34. EC, p. 63; quote modified. First Chapter. 35. TdIE, 3. 36. TdIE, 1; emphasis added and translation modified. I reduced the phrase in the original quote “cause or object” to “cause” because no direct mention of an object occurs in the Latin. 37. TdIE, 12. 38. TdIE, 9; emphasis added and translation modified. 39. TdIE, 7. 40. On pain and sadness, see EIIIP11Schol. 41. TdIE, 10; emphasis added. 42. TdIE, 11; emphasis added and translation modified. 43. TdIE, 3; emphasis added. 44. TdIE, 13; emphasis added and quote modified. 45. TdIE, 17; translation modified. I have rendered the Latin term tanquam as “as if” in place of the original “as” in order to highlight Spinoza’s intended meaning that moral categories and rules are conjectural and conventional. 46. TdIE, 14 and 16; emphasis added. 47. Developing insights from Pierre Macherey, Warren Montag notes that the TdIE should be in many ways described as a “Discourse against Method.” Yet for Montag, this does not imply elevating random opinion as a method

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to knowledge; instead, Montag argues that method should follow Spinoza’s understanding of reflexive knowledge derived from experience. See Montag (1999, 2), and see Macherey (2011). 48. TdIE, 43 and 44; emphasis added. 49. TdIE, 30 and 31; emphasis added. 50. Willi Goetschel makes an important point that the production of knowledge is not only expressive of unique conditions but also representative of the amoral essence of Nature, which eschews any evaluative hierarchy. See Goetschel (2004, 36–37). 51. TdIE, 99. 52. TdIE, 93. 53. TdIE, 88 and 89. 54. See Letter 9. 55. TdIE, 49; emphasis added and quote modified. 56. TdIE, 80; emphasis added. 57. TdIE, 44 and 45; emphasis added. 58. According to my translation, this is an exclusive “or.” The Latin reads: “rursus methodus necessario debet loqui de ratiocinatione aut de intellectione.” The Latin term aut can indicate an exclusive “or,” whereas the Latin term sive indicates an inclusive “or.” Spinoza is very fond of using sive to indicate an inclusive “or.” So, the choice of aut probably indicates aut means an exclusive “or”: either this (reasoning) or that (intellection). 59. TdIE, 37; emphasis added. 60. TdIE, 29; emphasis added. 61. For a description of mos, see “method” in Lachterman (1989); see especially p. 49. 62. TdIE, 50; emphasis added. 63. EVP36. 64. EVP32C and P33Schol; emphasis added and quote modified. I have included the original Latin word beatitudo and translated it as flourishing. I believe that beatitudo also has this connotation. 65. EVP42; emphasis added and quote modified. 66. Lee C. Rice notes that an imaginative notion of God’s love, rather than being purely deficient, is the basis from which knowledge and a truer understanding of divine love may derive. I agree with this but also argue that divine love, as an image-word and guide, prepares for self-love. Nevertheless, I disagree with Rice’s assessment that Spinoza does not understand divine love from a Maimonidean and Aristotelian perspective. Given Spinoza’s and Maimonides’ concern for the coordination of all one’s psycho-physical powers, I believe that they are quite close. See Rice (2002,

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97 and 103). Warren Zev Harvey provides a keen insight that Maimonides and Spinoza are quite close on the issue of divine love given Spinoza’s Hebraism. See Harvey (2002, 111). 67. EVP41. 68. EVP41Schol; emphasis added. 69. Salus should be considered more so an activity or striving rather than merely a state of existence. 70. EVP42Schol; emphasis added and quote modified. Salvation should be best understood as salus which in Latin more properly represents an activity of flourishing rather than a particular state. 71. See Chap. 3 of this work. 72. EVP39; emphasis added. 73. EV, Preface. 74. EVP4Schol; emphasis added. 75. EVP6Schol; emphasis added. 76. EVP7; emphasis added. 77. See TdIE, 93–95. 78. Spinoza discusses explicitly the lack of dominion or power that the Stoics had by relying solely on a will informed by reason in the Ethics V Preface. 79. Despite previous criticisms of Heidi Ravven’s moral intellectualism, I agree much with her description of the summum bonum, or highest form of cognition (intuitive knowledge): In the highest form of cognition, Intuition, the images and associations of the imagination and memory are not suppressed or lost but rationally reconfigured. We are no longer passive to their hold over us. For the meaning of the past is transformed by the widest possible perspective and the fullest explanatory grasp. It is through this rational, self-determined prism that memories are now reexperienced. The unexamined past in its rude initial form—which I have shown to be both biased and corruptive—loses its affective tyranny over the mind and a new, freer, yet still emotionally fecund, relation to memory and tradition develops. Yet the joys of self-understanding are open only to a few and can never be a reliable basis for community and politics. Ravven (2002, 210) Nevertheless, I would argue that reason itself develops out of a philosophical tradition. The habit of thinking represents an ethical-political inheritance as well that must be critically scrutinized so that it does not revert back into mere dogma and passivity. As a result, the wise cannot rely on theoretical reason alone, and perfection is not the mere application of

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rational precepts to experience, thereby reconfiguring experience into a consistent abstract system. Rather, it is the reconfiguration of experience and desire from the ground up, so to speak, i.e. requiring ethics and political inducements, to express singular and self-complete actions congruent with Nature’s necessity. 80. EVP36Schol. 81. By analyzing the implications of Spinoza’s notion of “dreaming with open eyes,” Julie Klein presents a compelling case to read Spinoza as less of a traditional rationalist. She notes that for Spinoza, “dreaming with open eyes” indicates both a prejudice to resist reason but also a rationalistic prejudice that would deny the “constitutive openness of the intellect and the actuality of true ideas.” See Klein (2003, 141–143). 82. See Chap. 3 of this work. 83. On this issue, Spinoza is explicit: For to conceive them [singular things] all at once is a task far beyond the powers of the human intellect. But to understand one before the other, the order must be sought, as we have said, not from their series of existing, nor even from the eternal things. For there, by nature, all these things are at once. TdIE, 102; quote modified. 84. Jeffrey Bernstein does an excellent job arguing that both Maimonides and Spinoza are committed to a premodern concept of contemplation that relies on a tripartite distinction: imagination, reason, and intellect. For Bernstein, intellect, the highest mental perfection, perceives and experiences “lower” discursive content (image and concepts) in relation to a whole. As a result, the knower experiences the content as immediate and completely affective; the knower undergoes the experience without mediation, discursivity, and instrumentality. By focusing on contemplation as perfection, Maimonides, but more importantly, Spinoza, stands at odds with the modern emphasis only on conceptual rational knowledge, i.e. discursive reason. See Bernstein (2015, 141–142). I believe that the issue of contemplation as superior to reason can be traced back to Aristotle’s understanding of nous and how nous is achieved through phantasia. David Lachterman describes Aristotle’s refusal to allow images or phantasia to create intelligible forms: […] Proclus is the first “modern” precisely because of his exaltation of phantasia as form-giving or, as Becker is even willing to say, “creative.” Aristotle is another matter, as his painstaking efforts in De anima to associate and to dissociate movement and noesis remind us. If any movement is an imperfect performance (energeia ateles), while thinking

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is the very perfection of performance (see De an. 3.7.431a1–7), then our understanding of noesis remains moored to our experience of movement and alteration, especially in sensation or perception, until we come to see that in those cases, too, actualization is more truly an advance into selfsameness than a becoming-other (De an. 2.5.417b6–7: eis auto … he epidosis). We can also remind ourselves that on Aristotle’s test for the interchangeability of verbal aspects (tenses), “to be seeing” and “to have seen,” “to be thinking” and “to have thought” mean the same. (Compare EN 10.4.1174b12–13, where the act of seeing, a point and a monad are allied as not admitting any coming-to-be.). Lachterman (1989, 90) Rather than viewing movement or discursivity as completing itself in a final stage, a becoming other so as to resolve initial deficiencies, knowledge and intellect view actualization from the perspective of self-sameness in order to see the necessity of activity, including “discursive” motion. I believe that both Maimonides and Spinoza are committed to methods that seek to induce this kind of noetic awareness (contemplation) that also is affective and singularly actualizing: self-same with its conditions. This noetic awareness must resist the desire to see the image as complete and perfecting of one’s mental faculties or powers, i.e. see the image as form-giving. Instead, desire as well as thinking must be managed so that they do not devolve into imagistic thinking masquerading as intellect which is due to an image’s seeming clarity and pleasing nature. Intellect or nous must maintain an aspectival awareness of the image and what knowledge it transmits; it must understand the qua that Aristotle so often discusses. Lachterman describes what is at stake in noetic understanding and its relation to desire with an analysis of mathematics, presumably the most objective and certain discipline: Nous desires, so to speak, to appreciate quality as the immediate, indivisible unity of a category (see Metaph. Eta6. 1045b 1–7); nonetheless, a quantitative and quantitatively determinate phantasm insinuates itself between noetic desire and its desideratum, since “no thinking takes place without a phantasm.” We now have the perplexing situation in which the lucidity of the phantasm occludes the “object” of noetic desire so long as we do not know how to negotiate the qua so as to render that phantasm diaphanous. When we do know how to negotiate the qua in this way, the “imagined” triangle of such-and-such determinate size and angles lets something else (the indeterminate triangle) shine through. And this means that there is no generality or universality in the phantasm as such; think-

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ing it as indeterminate when it is in truth unavoidably determinate is the work of nous, not of phantasm. Lachterman (1989, 83) As Lachterman notes, unless a knower has the ability to manage his or her desire and awareness of the received knowledge, i.e. an instruction, or ethics, in a way of thinking, he or she will be perplexed.

Bibliography Altmann, Alexander. 1987. Maimonides on the Intellect and the Scope of Metaphysics. In Von der mittelalterlichen zur modernen Aufklarung, 60–129. Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr. Bakan, David, Dan Merkur, and David S. Weiss. 2009. Maimonides’ Cure of Souls: Medieval Precursor of Psychoanalysis. Albany: SUNY Press. Bernstein, Jeffrey A. 2015. Leo Strauss on the Borders of Judaism, Philosophy, and History. Albany: SUNY Press. Dobbs-Weinstein, Idit. 1995. Maimonides and St. Thomas on the Limits of Reason. Albany: SUNY Press. Frank, Daniel. 2019. Dispassion, God, and Nature: Maimonides and Spinoza. In Jewish Philosophy in the Analytic Age, ed. Samuel Lebens, Dani Rabinowitz, and Aaron Segal, 135–148. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goetschel, Willi. 2004. Spinoza’s Modernity: Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Harvey, Warren Zev. 2002. Spinoza’s Metaphysical Hebraism. In Jewish Themes in Spinoza’s Philosophy, ed. Heidi M. Ravven and Lenn E. Goodman, 107–114. Albany: SUNY Press. Klein, Julie. 2003. Dreaming with Open Eyes: Cartesian Dreams, Spinozan Analyses. Idealistic Studies 33: 141–159. Lachterman, David. 1989. The Ethics of Geometry: A Genealogy of Modernity. New York: Routledge. Macherey, Pierre. 2011. Hegel or Spinoza. Trans. Susan M. Ruddick. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Montag, Warren. 1999. Bodies, Masses, and Power: Spinoza and His Contemporaries. New York: Verso. Pines, Shlomo. 1979. Limitations of Human Knowledge According to al-Farabi, Ibn Bajja, and Maimonides. In Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. I. Twersky, 82–109. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Ravven, Heidi M. 2002. Spinoza’s Rupture with Tradition—His Hints of a Jewish Modernity. In Jewish Themes in Spinoza’s Philosophy, ed. Heidi M. Ravven and Lenn Goodman, 187–224. Albany: SUNY Press.

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Rice, Lee C. 2002. Love of God in Spinoza. In Jewish Themes in Spinoza’s Philosophy, ed. Heidi M.  Ravven and Lenn E.  Goodman, 93–106. Albany: SUNY Press. Stern, Josef. 2013. The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Stroumsa, Sarah. 2009. Maimonides in His World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER 5

The Demand of the Concrete: The Non-­ Contingency of Language

In the previous chapters, we have seen how Maimonides and Spinoza argued that any flourishing society or wise individual in some way requires that concrete affects be properly and carefully addressed so as to generate and express from them a singular reality or experience. For example, a singular experience perfects the total individual, including their sensible and imaginative aspects, to make these “lower” aspects as active as possible, thereby transforming them into understanding.1 Yet, conversely, without these concrete lower aspects and passions, virtue and intellect could not arise as an active dimension and perspective on and from them. As a result, even the wise, or most “perfect,” are a part of the vulgar masses and subject to their passions and desires, although minimally affected relative to others.2 Implicit in the prior intellectual, political, and epistemic accounts of Maimonides and Spinoza is the fundamental point that the affects from “external” sources such as one’s linguistic, cultural, and historical contexts are not contingent for embodied knowers. The reality of these affects (i.e. the experience of them) cannot be in doubt, as every individual is forced to undergo their errant and disruptive effects, through and by which individuals strive to affirm their advantage or specific kind of living. Paradoxically, that very disruptive and errant characteristic necessitates that those affects are involved in one’s consciousness, from which one may make them as active, i.e. as conscious, as possible. As a result, although singular perfection expresses an irreducible activity on the part of the knower and in a virtuous society, it must be noted that these singular © The Author(s) 2020 N. L. Whitman, An Examination of the Singular in Maimonides and Spinoza, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49472-8_5

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perspectives are neither contentless nor fully detached from their concrete conditions. The content of experiences or a singular reality derives from the concrete “lower” aspects and affects, and they must be incorporated into the content. The central thesis of this chapter is that for Maimonides and Spinoza, language, culture, and history are not secondary or accidental to the achievement of the good and intellect but rather are in some way necessary for it. Whereas traditional readings imply that these subjects are contingent to truth, I argue that these conditions instead establish and express concrete embodied activities that cannot be easily subsumed by a universalist-­rationalist perspective. Language, culture, and history mediate extrinsic influences that affect individuals in a particular society. These concrete affective processes generate unique conditions through which an embodied individual may achieve appropriate knowledge of their singular good. Despite the extrinsic mediation expressed through and by language, culture, and history, this mediation also establishes real concrete differences and affects that can be converted into singular knowledge. However, the achievement of knowledge is not a necessary result, since these differences by definition express ambivalences that must be worked through and overcome to generate concrete knowledge. Thus, there must be an acknowledgment and negotiation of differences. Language for both of these philosophers provides an ideal example of what is at stake and how the wise should address the problem. Language is the vehicle of truth, learning, and social-political communication of the good. As such, it represents extrinsic, inherited meanings and symbols which present ideas and beliefs as necessarily settled and universal. Despite the seeming universality of one’s language, one must take a critical stance toward language as something that has already affected one’s thought process but also as insufficient to generate one’s singular understanding of the present, if viewed as an instantiation of a universal meaning. Instead, the desire for absolute universal meanings must be restrained and coordinated with an understanding of language as an expression of one’s concrete embodied practices and striving for the good. Spinoza’s account of genetic definitions and of the force of prejudice provides a way to see how Spinoza understands the ambivalence represented by language and how that ambivalence can be overcome to generate singular knowledge. Maimonides’ frequent use of contradictions, negative attributes, and the realization that cultural prejudices block intellectual achievement similarly represent this point.

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The Need for Language The necessary, or rather non-contingent, aspect of language for Maimonides and Spinoza is tied directly to the fundamental political condition of human beings. Without conventional linguistic determinations, individuals would be directionless and desire excessively contrary to any political formation that would induce shared advantageous behavior, including the enactment of virtue and rational practices. Language has a genealogical relationship with foundational political conditions. Since for Maimonides and Spinoza political formations “begin” from a diverse collection of individuals, who seek and project outwardly their unrestrained imaginative ends, there must be a non-­ cognitive reformation of concrete desires/images so that this collection of individuals might cohere and transform into some singular unity. This reformation is required since every individual perceives and assigns value to external affects, or “objects,” according to their physical disposition without any internal limit. As Spinoza notes, everyone is drawn by their pleasure and projects it outwardly according to the determinations in his or her brain. […] [E]ach one has judged things according to the disposition of his brain; or rather, has accepted affections of the imagination as things. So it is no wonder […] that we find many controversies to have arisen among men, and that they have finally given rise to Skepticism. […] And for that reason what seems good to one, seems bad to another; what seems ordered to one, seems confused to another; what seems pleasing to one, seems displeasing to another, and so on.3

Similarly, borrowing ideas from Al-Farabi, Maimonides states that each individual is determined by his or her physical makeup so that he or she is like an individual species unto themselves.4 Each is drawn by their physical makeup, and hence desire, to project his or her good onto Nature and others. The highly individualized nature of desire as mediated by sensation and imagination requires a way to draw individuals into a larger social reality. Words and language are able to do this because they take imagination and desire to a more projected, universal, or “objective,” level through which individuals may more easily cohere through a highly mediated means. That is, because individuals are affected by errant physical affects

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and by uncoordinated social affects from disparate individuals, this confusion generates abstractions that “compensate” for this inability to agree with one’s environment. Spinoza details this process in EIIP40S: Those notions they call Universal, like Man, Horse, Dog, etc., have arisen […] because so many images (e.g. of men) are formed at one time in the human Body that they surpass the power of imagining […] to the point where the mind Mind can imagine neither slight differences of the singular [men] […] and imagines distinctly only what they all agree in, insofar as they affect the body. For body has been affected most […] by [the same], since each singular has affected it. And expresses this by the word man, and predicates it of infinitely many singulars. For as we have said, it cannot imagine a determinate number of singulars.5

Maimonides’ account of the compensatory nature of general words and their meanings can be deduced implicitly from his description of how customary words alleviate confusion and determine the vulgar6 to seek and understand the world according to general imaginative or “universal” notions. Maimonides notes that general customary words, especially when applied to God, the most singular being, provide merely a summary meaning. Thus when we wish to indicate that the deity is not many, the one who makes the statement cannot say anything but that He is one, even though “one” and “many” are some of the subdivisions of quantity. For this reason, we give the gist of the notion and give the mind the correct direction toward the true reality of the matter when we say, one but not through oneness[.] […] These things are not hidden from one who is trained to understand notions according to their true reality and has considered them with the apprehension that the intellect has of them and in the manner the latter has of stripping them [of accidents and matter], that is, has considered them not merely in the summary fashion of which words are indicative.7

The word “one” and its meaning is linked to many imaginative associations so that word “one” seems to be indefinitely applied to many different singular objects. However, these associations would render God merely an instantiation of “one” and introduce multiplicity in God’s reality. This indefinite and discursive application of a word derives from how the imagination combines different aspects of the sensation to project what should be possible of existing.

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The imaginative part is the power that preserves the impressions of the sensibly perceived objects after they vanish from the immediacy of the senses that perceived them. Some impressions are combined with others, and some are separated from others. Therefore, from things it has perceived, this power puts together things it has not perceived at all and which are not possible for it to perceive. For example, a man imagines an iron ship floating in the air, or an individual whose head is in the heavens and whose feet are on the earth, or an animal with a thousand eyes. The imaginative power puts together many such impossible things and makes them exist in the imagination. Concerning this point the dialectical theologians committed a great, repulsive error, upon which they laid the foundation of their erroneous view concerning the division of the necessary, the admissible, and the impossible. They thought, or made people fancy, that everything that can be imagined is possible. They did not know that this power combines things whose existence is impossible, as we have mentioned.8

However, as was seen with Maimonides’ description of God’s meaning, God cannot be reduced to an iterable concept because such a concept would be too general for the singular reality. Instead, the understanding of God should be unique and should be opposed to the imaginative word and its indefinite application. As Maimonides states, we should strip the word of its imaginative associates, but this entails that the word as an image-­ word should abandon its indefinite application for a singular irreducible understanding that is non-errant. God’s singular reality does not depend upon the initial imaginative construction, and its existence cannot be rendered possible from a universal imaginative word. Possibility, which derives from an imaginative projection, does not encapsulate the reality of God and does not make it an instantiation of a word. As Maimonides warns us continuously, the understanding of possibility should be restrained to generate wisdom; however, the products of the imagination are a natural process that will flow or not, given the imagination’s history of associations. Those associations are the initial mode by which we perceive and understand the world, and they combine with desires determined by one’s environment and society. As a result, words and imaginative concepts are pleasing and are related to our appetition to form the world according to our images/desires, which seek to have our images and words indefinitely projected onto Nature, and, thereby, seemingly recoverable from the world so as to in turn satisfy our desires. Words as indefinite images take on a very simple symbolic form that can be easily circulated among individuals. This symbolic form can bear value

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determinations that many individuals have ascribed to it, and thereby, through this general confusion, those forms engender shared values and desires. Nevertheless, through this value negotiation, words can then become symbols of external objects to desire; in fact, they create many posited objects to desire. Furthermore, since words are now circulated among many individuals, they together reinforce that external perspective as seemingly real, objective, and certain. The social economy of language helps to further externalize imagistic desire, objectify an externalized source of perfection, and establish that (mythic) source of perfection as seemingly certain, i.e. unquestionably good. The desire of the many or multitude becomes seemingly objective and common, and in turn, it disposes the masses to seek an external good everyone considers the unquestionable good. For Spinoza, the ability to deploy words indefinitely is established by the power and pleasure of the vulgar masses: […] [W]ords are part of the imagination, i.e., […] we feign many concepts indefinitely according as (prout vage) they are composed in memory from some disposition of the body[.] […] [[T]hey are established according to the pleasure and power of the vulgar.9

Similarly, Maimonides explains that the Torah, the ultimate and constant source of the good and absolutely true, had been and is determined by the imagination of the multitude because their power of representation is restricted to the imagination. Additionally, whatever the masses desire as a perfection must be constituted by a shared imaginative pleasure. […] The Torah speaketh in the language of the sons of man. The meaning of this is that everything that all men are capable of understanding and representing to themselves at first thought has been ascribed to Him[.] […] [E]verything that the multitude consider a perfection is predicated of Him, even if it is only a perfection in relation to ourselves. […] in accordance with the language of the sons of man, I mean the imagination of the multitude[.]10

For Maimonides, not only do the masses’ desires establish the Torah’s common value, but in doing so, the masses, due to their power of representing the desired good, refuse to stray from the image of the good presented in the Torah. However, rather than sating individuals’ desires for

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perfection, language increases errancy by directing everyone to external posited realities and reinforcing the abstract universal aspect of words that lack the nuance to address the singular experiences and perfection of individuals. As a foundational way by which individuals relate to their affects, language prejudices them to a certain favored reality. Individuals develop prejudices, or rather prejudge the world, from their learned language because they filter all of their experiences, desires, and affects through the presumed objectivity and seemingly certain projected reality symbolized by words. Since these words project beyond individual experience, they seem to be exempt from reality testing, which should most importantly include whether the “experiences” represented by words are actually advantageous to the individuals’ singular well-being. The inherited meaning of words and their constant use seem to represent a necessary reality, exempt from the political-ethical and psychological causes that actually engender them. Words can foster prejudices that disempower the singular reality and experiences of individuals. Having their individual experiences mediated by abstract symbols distorts and displaces the experiences of individuals toward a static extrinsic source that demands literal interpretation, seeming to be unquestionably true. As a result, the ability for individuals to know (their singular good) can be inhibited. Words can introduce contrary affects that block or restrict the generation of intellect, pulling the knower to seek errant and externalized realities rather than to develop an intrinsic understanding and coordinating self-action. The conflicted experience produces self-doubt or vacillation.

The Power of Prejudice Although words may be seemingly inert symbols, they can induce powerful affects that are contrary to knowing. The initial language in which one has been habituated works with and infuses itself with every individual’s memory so that prejudices are reinforced in this manner as well.11 Memory represents the imagination’s association of affects and images so that pleasing and displeasing affects are easily tied to inherited words. As Spinoza notes: […] [T]hese notions [universal words] are not formed by all in the same way, but vary from one to another, in accordance with what the body has more often been affected by, and what the Mind imagines or recollects more

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easily. For example, those who have more often regarded men’s stature with wonder will understand by the word man an animal of erect stature. But those who have been accustomed to consider something else, will form another[.] […] Hence it is not surprising that so many controversies have arisen among the philosophers, who have wished to explain natural things by mere images of things.12

For Maimonides, human beings incline toward the words to which they have been habituated, and as a result, this inclination transforms into indications of external realities. […] [M]an […] inclines towards the things to which he is habituated. This happened to the multitude with regard to the belief in His corporeality and many other metaphysical subjects as we shall make clear. All this is due to people being habituated to, and brought up on, texts that it is an established usage to think highly of and to regard as true and whose external meaning is indicative of the corporeality of God and of other imaginings with no truth in them[.]13

Furthermore, these words are tied to other human beings with which the individual may have a strong positive or negative emotional connection. For any social-political formation, the necessary linguistic communication of values between similar individuals, especially from loved individuals, will induce individuals to persist in associating limited interpretations of the world according primarily to those original linguistic-value associations. As a result, individuals will perpetuate and reinforce word-memory associations, which ascribe values and a specific reality to the external world and others. In particular, this happens from the report of a loved one or group, since the report is doubly removed from one’s immediate experience.14 The report of an experience in many occasions cannot be overturned by one’s immediate affects, and since the positive affection toward the loved one reinforces one’s desire for the reported reality, the individual not only lacks a correcting affect but has a desire to preserve and defend the reported reality. Spinoza describes this affective process as emulation: […] Desire […] is called Emulation, which, therefore, is nothing but the Desire for a thing which is generated in us from the fact that we imagine others like us to have the same Desire. […] If we imagine that someone toward whom we have had no affect affects a thing like us with Joy, we shall be

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affected with Love toward him. On the other hand, if imagine him to affect it with Sadness, we shall be affected with Hate toward him.15

For Spinoza, emulation directly relates to the imitation and protection of socially circulated values: […] [W]e call emulous only him who imitates what we judge to be honorable, useful, or pleasant. […] [E]nvy is generally joined to this effect, see P32 and P32S.16

Maimonides supports a similar interpretation and highlights the necessary repulsion to contrary opinions to one’s cherished inherited opinions. For man has in his nature a love of, and an inclination for, that to which he is habituated […] Man has love of, and a wish to defend, opinions to which he is habituated and in which he has been brought up and has a feeling of repulsion for opinions other than those. For this reason also man is blind to the apprehension of the true realities[.]17

In many cases, for both philosophers, emulation expresses the psychological mechanism by which a cultural inheritance is passed on. But more importantly, it explains how cultural inheritance becomes continually constituting of, or affecting, the individual so that a perpetuation and defense of the inherited beliefs are secured. Since human beings lack natural access to a universal good or truth by which to perfect themselves, linguistic communication of values, although a distortion of individual experience, is continually necessary to form a basic political-ethical reality. The constant imposition and use of language and the values that it transmits provides the conventional and concrete inducements to form the basic level of human sociality. As nature creates only individuals,18 language aids in forming a distinctive political-ethical relationship through which interaction may occur. Language is a historical and conventional necessity that affects individuals so that a sociality may occur. Nevertheless, language and its imagistic projections also principally distort a virtuous political formation because imagistic words externalize citizens’ desires and reinforce the idea that individual welfare must come through those socialized values and projected social objects. The insidious nature of language is that as a product of the fundamental confusion and ignorance of the imagination, it engenders passive desiring. Once

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language is circulated among individuals, it enables that weak passive mentality to project and implement its weakness as a form of strength onto a seemingly pliant world/society. All individuals will follow this kind of extrinsic seeking and evaluating of their lives because as necessarily social-political beings, humans find the necessities of life only in sociality. Since human beings lack the ability to attain their initial and individualized desires, they will seek societal symbols and generalized values as replacements to procure some individual advantage. However, these images will be coded in language and words that then will be reinforced by these very same human beings participating in that value system. By using the common established language, they in turn support the same values. By being affected by and using words, human beings create a vicious cycle that supports a particular form of imagistic desiring and thinking. Much like Spinoza describes at the end of Ethics V and elsewhere,19 we act from the very passions or determinations that have affected us. Enactments of shared words and their associated desires eventually become the standardized avenues for any individual to satisfy their basic psychological desires for self-affirmation and preservation. As a result, most, if not all, individuals will cherish their inherited linguistic-value system as a necessary expression of their individual well-being. Accordingly, they will also view any alterations to the common belief system and word-­ value usage as threats to their cherished loved ones, community, and sense of self-security, all of which interact to bolster one another so as to support the expression of specific desires and a favored projected reality. Through this common system of values and communication, individuals can easily move to regulating the minds of others and viewing alternative beliefs as heretical and harmful to themselves. For Maimonides and Spinoza, the regulation of others’ minds or beliefs, is a very real possibility. Since individuals are determined by commonly authorized words, beliefs, and values, they will act to ensure that those determinations, or kind of temperament, are spread everywhere, thereby simultaneously supporting their feelings of self-preservation and perceived advantage as well as defending their loved ones who support them in turn. Through the imitation of others, individuals become determined and disposed to circulate beliefs that determine others to share, or rather comport with, their favored way of life. Imitation gives way to ambition. The ambition to force others to live by one’s temperament is a most basic characteristic which individuals alone in a “state of nature” would be

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unable to effectively achieve. However, in a highly mediated society with generalized values and linguistic forms, individuals can perversely satisfy their thirst for individual ambition and actually achieve it by forcing others to agree with and to reinscribe those values-words. In this impoverished state, who controls the interpretation of beliefs and communication of values becomes a very real political question. Those who control the interpretation of beliefs and the meanings of words are empowered, under the veil of sociality and civilization, to secure their individualized desires to the oppression and servitude of most. Spinoza describes the intimate relation between political power and religion, and how each one supports the other: […] [T]he supreme mystery of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight for their servitude as if for salvation, and count it no shame, but the highest honour, to spend their blood and their lives for the glorification of one man. […] To invest with prejudice or in any way coerce the citizen's free judgment is altogether incompatible with the freedom of the people. As for those persecutions that are incited under the cloak of religion, […] law intrudes into the realm of speculative thought and that beliefs are put on trial and condemned as crimes. The adherents and followers of these beliefs are sacrificed, not to the public weal, but to the hatred and savagery of their opponents.20

Maimonides alludes to a similar logic at work in the intersection of political authority and religion. While describing a religious-political leader of his time intent on establishing his dominion over religious-­political interpretations, Maimonides notes that such a leader would never moderate the proliferation of his beliefs nor limit the suppression of opposing beliefs because such an oversaturation of his beliefs entails for him continual power through mass recognition. […] [B]ecause for this man and those like him among even greater men of former times, religion is nothing more than a way to avoid major sins, which is how the common people view it. They do not believe the duties of ethics to be part of religion, nor are they as careful about what they say as men of perfect piety are. Now, most of these [aforementioned] religious men were in positions of [political] authority, and when religion is joined to [political] authority piety disappears. […] The most noble conduct for you is to be

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reviled without reviling in turn and without letting your words get away from you. Above all show the fear of God in your words[.]21

In fact, as Spinoza notes, perversely, those who are determined by these disempowering passions usually “willingly,” or rather passionately, perpetuate their oppression in the hope of being politically empowered themselves by employing those very same words/values. But again, this form of imitation and servitude perpetuates an externalized view of perfection, where a giver transfers a single perfecting object to a receiver. However, this interpretation of power intensifies individual and social affects of insecurity because it leads to a zero-sum conflict, since not everyone can attain this privileged place of authority and “wisdom” to control the foundational communal values. Power considered as a single external object to be possessed implies that one’s temperament and individual advantage can only be secure by suppressing and excluding others individualized counter interpretations. A competitive exclusionary relationship to others promotes a community in which fear, division, and domination are intensified. In the ambitious attempt to control beliefs and language, human beings use words to create a false hierarchy in amoral Nature.22 Words are tied to a single perfecting reality, and that favored reality is in turn supported by language’s seeming mythic or extra-natural qualities, which seem to be exempt from reality testing and critical political dialogue. As a result, this presumed reality, having been generated in and supported by language, seems like the only natural value that should be affirmed and should definitely not be transgressed, or rather sinned against. Language enables human beings to project and sustain “natural values.” Even those who would dissent usually have within their own psychology vacillation and doubt on whether to abandon this mode of living for another. With “natural values” and the need to protect them, an elite few with political power and authority come to regulate others’ minds and institute their political power through those same beliefs. In many cases, a religious-­ political elite, whether a clergy and/or religious sovereign, form to force on the masses a literal belief-value system that would expunge or, at the very least, suppress dissent. […] [A] widespread popular attitude […] looks on the ministries of the Church as dignities, its offices as posts of emolument and its pastors as eminent personages. […] [T]hus […] every worthless fellow felt an intense

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desire to enter holy orders, and eagerness to spread abroad God's religion degenerated into base avarice and ambition. The very temple became a theatre where, […] orators held forth […] keen to attract admiration, to criticise their adversaries before the public, and to preach only such novel and striking doctrine as might gain the applause of the crowd. […] [T]hat of the old religion nothing is left but the outward form wherein the common people seem to engage in base flattery of God rather than his worship and that faith has become identical with credulity and biased dogma. But what dogma!—degrading rational man to beast, completely inhibiting man’s free judgment and his capacity to distinguish true from false, and apparently devised with the set purpose of utterly extinguishing the light of reason. […] Surely, if they possessed but a spark of the divine light, […] [they] would not persecute so bitterly those who do not share their views: rather would they show compassion, if their concern was for men’s salvation, and not for their own standing.23

As Spinoza describes in the above passage, rather than supporting and promoting the singular salvation, salus, or flourishing, i.e. their individual reason, religion in the hands of an ambitious and authorized few leads to the silencing of divergent views. Furthermore, it promotes a passive form of flattery of God and an obedience to presumed dogmas proffered by a religious-political class. Maimonides explains that those seeking political power through the control of religion refuse even a hearing of alternative perspectives, such as those presented in Maimonides’ text, because they prefer the default position of the multitude which assumes that the value of the initial imagined goods could not and should not be questioned. […] [T]here is a group of people who […] are so afflicted with haughtiness and envy that they do not study this great compilation. They have not even looked at it yet so that no one might say: “This man is in a position to profit from the discourse of someone else and is therefore inferior to him in knowledge.” They are mindful of the opinion of the common people in this matter and are forever like a blind man groping in the darkness. […] [Another’s] need of the people is such that he implants in their souls the abominable concoction that all of the people should seek to know about every matter coming from the judicial academy or every honorific title it confers—besides those foolish things that naturally occur to them. How could my son imagine that he would reach such a level of recognition of the truth that he would admit his incompetence and uproot his honor as well as the honor of his father’s house? […] [T]o the extent that my name becomes known there, the situation compels him, his followers, and whoever wants to have standing

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with the people to find fault with my compilation […] I do not come to my own defense, because my own dignity and moral character lead me to ignore fools, not to triumph over them with my tongue.24

Whereas in a flourishing virtuous society, difference would be tolerated and individuals would be enabled to pursue their singular goods and knowledge, this impoverished society would undermine the development of a true active good capable of all sharing in and supporting others to attain it freely. Although this impoverished society could be minimally defined as a (singular) society in accord with human beings’ basic political natures, its political “unity” rests on conditions that foment strife and ignorance rather than active ones that all can express.

Working Through Language Throughout their writings, Maimonides and Spinoza challenge mythic and superstitious naturalized values, or prejudices, but they are keen on disabusing us of one prejudice in particular, namely, that God is like a supreme king that bestows favors on a select few who must passionately obey and flatter his feckless whims and dictates, in many cases suppressing dissent and the flourishing of others to achieve a privileged status. Spinoza describes how we conflate our pleasing images with external natural realities so that we then assume that God as the ruler of the external world must bend the world to our desires. And since those things we can easily imagine are especially pleasing to us, men prefer order to confusion, as if order were anything in nature more than a relation to our imagination. They also say that God has created all things in order, and so, unknowingly attribute imagination to God—unless, perhaps, they mean that God, to provide for human imagination, has disposed all things so that men can very easily imagine them. Nor will it, perhaps, give them pause that infinitely many things are found which far surpass our imagination, and a great many which confuse it on account of its weakness. […] We see, therefore, that all the notions by which ordinary people are accustomed to explain nature are only modes of imagining, and do not indicate the nature of anything, only the constitution of the imagination. And because they have names, as if they were [notions] of beings existing outside the imagination[.] […] For many are accustomed to arguing in this way: if all things have followed from the necessity of God’s most perfect nature, why are there so many imperfections in nature? […] As I have just

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said, […] things are not more or less perfect because they please or offend men’s senses, or because they are of use to, or are incompatible with, human nature. […] These are the prejudices I undertook to note here.25

Nevertheless, as Spinoza notes, this prejudice of a human-centric world bestowed by God implies absolute value determinations in the world whereby one could identify seemingly imperfect and evil actions or entities. The identification and classifications of good and evil, in turn, support a form of explanation solely from and in support of those imagistic determinations. This logic links to how words or values are determined. Since an individual’s confusion about the world is initially “removed,” or rather displaced, by abstract words and values, the realities referred to by the words seem to end confusion and present certainty as well as pleasing values. Yet, for one enthralled by this form of imagistic thinking, inversely, to remove those seemingly natural realities or values itself would support this imagistic way of thinking because common individuals would be at loss to explain anything in nature. Rather than giving them a plausible escape from false natural values, a critical approach would seem absurd and contrary to any good for these individuals, since they are determined by this overall prejudice to view the world only in anthropocentric terms. Maimonides mirrors much of Spinoza’s reasoning about an anthropocentric view of the entire world, i.e. of the world created by God, as the primary cause of error. Know that the majority of the false imaginings that call forth perplexity in the quest for the end of the existence of the world as a whole or the end of every part of it have as their root an error of man about himself and his imaginings that all that exists exists because of himself alone, as well as ignorance of the nature of inferior matter and ignorance of what is primarily intended—namely, the bringing into being of everything whose existence is possible, existence being indubitably a good.26

Within this distorted worldview, not only does an individual place his pleasing vantage point ahead of any alternative perspective, let alone resist this kind of imagistic projecting, but as with Spinoza’s analysis, such an individual assumes that the nature of physical existence, i.e. inferior matter, could not exist or be worthy of existing without human existence and our supreme value to the created world. Yet, like Spinoza, Maimonides is clear that existence is a good irrespective of human beings and comes into being on its own terms rather than as derivatively related to human goods.

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By challenging and emending the prejudicial belief that God is a dispenser of imagined posited goods, Maimonides and Spinoza are able not only to diminish the psychology that seeks externalized goods but also to disrupt language’s seemingly absolute representation of reality, good/evil, desired ends, and reality. Through this disruption of language with language, a vacillation in one’s affects tied to such symbols occurs so that they can engender a doubt through which the individual can reform their desires so that they seek a more active and self-aware form of knowledge/ perfection. Rather than seeking the external posited ultimate good through obedience, one may take control of these passions, or linguistic determinations, and transform them into conscious awareness that seeks to develop one’s singular good and support others’ attainment of their own singular goods. By addressing the linguistic nature of values and combating them with a direct modification in their use/interpretation, Maimonides and Spinoza are able to transform the sensible-imaginative desires that all humans have undergone into an intellectual desire for wisdom. Rather than wholly disposing of these imagistic-appetitive foundations, they understand that desire for one’s advantage as expressed in an impoverished imagistic language must be reformed and redirected so that language can become a useful tool for generating intellect, if the learner has sufficient capacity for wisdom. For both philosophers, there is a unity of desire, i.e. for self-­ affirmation, from the sensible to the intellectual. As a result, intellectual achievement and self-action must coordinate and direct all the aspects of an individual, including one’s common language, to a “higher” and more active, i.e. more conscious, awareness of their embodied life. The attempt by philosophers to wrest control of and interrupt the interpretation of language from an imagistic perspective is itself a political emendation as much as a philosophical one. For both philosophers, philosophy is as much a political enterprise as an intellectual one.27 They seek to induce human beings to be led by reason and intellect. However, both realize that simply appealing to reason and its language would be either dismissed by the masses and/or provoke them to persecute this dissidence without the audience having appropriate appetitive associations between the language of reason and one’s affects.28 On the other hand, presenting reason as an abstract language coding for the ultimate source of reality by which one possessing it could determine all the specific realities and their relations would introduce a new hierarchy of being, or naturalized values, based on different imaginative-linguistic values and symbols. If the desire

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for absolute rational certainty is mediated by an exact symbolic language that is assumed to represent a projected first reality exempt from experience, individuals would pursue this imaginative-linguistic ideal in order to gain authority instead of a direct and greater awareness of their singular good and wisdom. They would trade one projected and displaced ideal system for another—albeit, nevertheless, reason can usually provide more stability to one’s psychology and to society as compared to the first kind of imagining and speaking. In much the same way as in their previous accounts of intellect, politics, and method, Maimonides and Spinoza argue in their accounts of language that a singular experience or reality should be sought and generated from the whole individual, including from concrete conditions and contextual passions that they have undergone. As a concrete affecting practice, language cannot be simply disposed of for a rational enlightenment which would be detached from concrete conditions. Rather, knowledge requires that it incorporates one’s learned cultural language, but now in a more active irreducible way. Incorporating language in the best way possible implies that linguistic meaning is neither simply a posited image nor an a priori universal concept, since both poles would engender an absolute reduction of Nature to its symbolized and projected values. Singular meaning, which is what intellect understands, should resist externally pleasing words and errant pursuits that in reality represent social conditioning fostering externalized and useless/harmful habits that draw the individual away from their singular and unique perfection. As a result, singular meaning and understanding of language express a unique quality relevant to the individual’s immediate life. As such, the immediate relevance of singular meaning to the individual’s lived experiences can only be indicated by language and induced by useful and propaedeutic linguistic formulations that are genetic for intellectual understanding, rather than ones absolutely reducing intellect to an image or symbolic procedure. Like in their epistemic methods, Maimonides and Spinoza argue that the language that one uses to define and describe language in general should be cautious and manage the expectations of the learner so that they may develop wisdom and control of words. Their language on language represents the philosophers’ first direct interruption and redirection of desires tied to common language. Both Maimonides and Spinoza argue that language should not be understood as having an external meaning to seek. An external object does not represent linguistic meaning, but most people are confused that externals do represent truth and meaning, since

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they have been passively determined by their inherited language. As a result, they repeat the inherited and passively determining language, thereby increasing their confusion. For both philosophers, there is no ultimate truth in the thing represented or external posited world, even though words appear to determine them against their agency. Spinoza provides a genealogical analysis to argue that not only did the first human beings merely describe nature with stories or mental narrations, bearing no ontological commitments but also subsequent beliefs that mental representations are in the external world arose from a confusion of ideas with their objects (ideatum, or a thing perceived). The first meaning of true and false seems to have had its origin in storytelling, and the tale was said to be true if it was of something that had occurred in actuality, and false if it was of something that had nowhere occurred. Later, philosophers made use of this signification to denote the agreement or disagreement of an idea with its object [ideatum]. Therefore an idea is said to be true if it shows us the thing as it is in itself, false if it shows us the thing otherwise than as it really is. For ideas are merely mental narrations or accounts of nature. And hence these terms came to be applied metaphorically to lifeless things, as when we talk about true or false gold, as if the gold presented before us were telling us something about itself that either is in itself or not.29

Spinoza ends his genealogical account by reminding his readers that seemingly inert and objective things do not present themselves ready for human representation, but, rather, humans improperly mold reality in the image of their affective responses and stories. Earlier, Maimonides described a similar genealogical process in language and in the construction of the Torah. For Maimonides, what early humans first thought according to the predications of their imagination established the basis for perfection and truth ascribed to the world and God. As in Spinoza’s genealogical account, rather than abandoning these imaginative predications, human beings constructed an ontological account whereby perfections relative to human perceptions and imaginations were directly implanted in the external world and God. Rather than ceding one’s agency to an inherited language and the “objective world” that it claims to represent, both Maimonides and Spinoza argue that the potentially wise must critically focus on how desire, which is the only avenue to their agency and self-affirmation, is not

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improperly fused with this errant pursuit that attempts to restore a prior reality literally. Not only does this pursuit disempower the individual by directing him or her to a displaced reality, but the pursuit feels good to him or her because it alleviates any demand to critically think about one’s conditioning. It satisfies one’s already imagistic dispositions or prejudices with a symbol that fits nicely by justifying that initial desire as complete and sufficient. Both Maimonides and Spinoza argue that this is especially the case with the young and vulgar, who lack any contrary experiences or, relying on authority, refuse alternative experiences that might open the door to a critical engagement. Contrary to the misconception of Spinoza’s philosophy that one should merely present his deductive method to capable individuals so that they may execute it and gain sure understanding, Spinoza does much to dissuade the presentation of his philosophy to even the seemingly talented. In a letter, Spinoza asks his more trusted students not to communicate his philosophy to a young talented student that Spinoza deems too unstable for the truth to establish itself in his mind. There is no need for you to envy Casearius. No one is more troublesome to me, and there is no one with whom I have to be more on my guard. So I should like to warn you and all our friends not to communicate my views to him until he has reached greater maturity. He is still too childish and unstable, more anxious for novelty than for truth. But I hope that in a few years he will correct these youthful faults. Indeed, as far as I can judge from his native ability, I am almost certain that he will. So his talent induces me to like him.30

In addition to restricting the flow of information to his young and talented student, Spinoza argues that as a wise teacher, he himself must be on guard so as to disable errant pursuits and a mentality based on quick sure answers appealing to one’s imagistic dispositions. Rather than merely providing information, Spinoza is engaged in an ethical-epistemic reformation of his student which starts with blocking and reforming his desires and which requires lengthy time to produce a stable basis for the commitment to truth.31 Maimonides concurs with Spinoza’s approach in that the desire for complete satisfaction by attaining a specific word or explanation must be blocked and redirected so that a sensible approach to understanding may occur:

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A sensible man thus should not demand of me or hope that when we mention a subject, we shall make a complete exposition of it, or that when we engage in the explanation of the meaning of one of the parables, we shall set forth exhaustively all that is expressed in that parable. An intelligent man would be unable to do so even by speaking directing to an interlocutor. How then could he put it down in writing without becoming a butt for every ignoramus who, thinking that he has the necessary knowledge, would let fly at him the shafts of his ignorance? [6] […] For my purpose is that the truths be glimpsed and then again be concealed, so as not to oppose that divine purpose which one cannot possibly oppose and which has concealed from the vulgar among the people those truths especially requisite for His apprehension. As He has said: The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him. Know that with regard to natural matters as well, it is impossible to give a clear exposition when teaching some of their principles as they are.32

The sensible or moderate understanding of what one should expect from an external source of truth represents not only a mitigation of improper errant desires but also the potential mentality capable of understanding the non-exhaustive truths of the world. Whereas the ignorant would claim necessary and complete knowledge of any subject, viewing it only from a superficial or imagistic level, the sensible understand that knowledge itself cannot be reduced to any external presentation, including universal natural principles. Nevertheless, the young, especially for Maimonides, lack this sensible mentality because without contrary experiences and/or lacking desires for authority and absolute answers, their desires for a static objective truth must be blocked so that a hearing or learning of truth may occur. This is why Maimonides omits the names of and references to certain authors in his works, because they may lead to offense and support one’s prejudices and the mentality based on it.33 […] the name of such an individual might make the passage offensive to someone without experience and make him think it has an evil inner meaning of which he is not aware. Consequently, I saw fit to omit the author’s name.34

Additionally, both Maimonides and Spinoza argue that when one presents their critical emending language to any new recipient, it may be best to provide minimal indications of their critical goal lest the individual with their capacity and desire only for imagistic perfection would seize their language as a vindication of their initial desires/interpretation. This explains why Maimonides argues that divine or absolute truth, which

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cannot be directly presented, must be indicated on many occasions in the most indirect way possible. Maimonides suggests that a sensible person “[h]ence […] should not ask of me here anything beyond chapter headings.”35 Presenting merely the chapter headings, for Maimonides, can replace parables and riddles that also can indirectly induce wisdom. The situation is such that the exposition of one who wishes to teach without recourse to parables and riddles is so obscure and brief as to make obscurity and brevity serve in place of parables and riddles.36

Yet, the brevity of chapter headings both does justice to the active and irreducible nature of divine truth but also restrains desires of the learner so that they may be on the way to continual learning and wisdom. Spinoza seems to be influenced by Maimonides to some extent when he discusses how the right way of living cannot be arranged in one glance: The things I have taught in this part concerning the right way of living have not been so arranged that they could be seen at a glance. Instead, I have demonstrated them at one place or another, as I could more easily deduce one from another. So I have undertaken to collect them here and bring them under main headings.37

These truths are not simply presentable in a single exhaustive narrative, but as Spinoza notes, some truths are relative to others and their specific context and thus may be disjointed so as to express the relevant point. Like Maimonides, for Spinoza, in some cases, one must simply present the material under general titles lest the learner believe that truth is simply taken up. Through this kind of reticence, a restraint of desire may occur from which an ethical-intellectual pursuit appropriate to the subject matter may manifest in the knower’s life.

Understanding the Excess to Language Their reticence about the efficacy of the words to present truth is meant not only to dissuade the excessive desire for the image of truth but also to test to see if the learner has the capacity and strength of mind to be capable of achieving intellect. Spinoza clearly has this sentiment when he states that he hopes Caesarius, his young student, will correct his faults after

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many years of study.38 But Maimonides is more explicit when he recounts his own view of the education of his student, Joseph: […] [B]efore your grasp was put to the test […] I said however: perhaps his longing is stronger than his grasp. […] When thereupon you read under my guidance texts dealing with the art of logic, my hopes fastened upon you, and I saw that you are one worthy to have the secrets of the prophetic books revealed to you so that you would consider in them that which perfect men ought to consider. Thereupon, I began to let you see certain flashes and to give you certain indications.39

Similar to Spinoza, Maimonides sought assurances so that his student would have the strength of mind to see the way to truth, then he may be given indications and a philosophical-critical ordering so that they do not fall back into passive desiring and imagistic thinking. Nevertheless, at this crucial stage of transitioning from image to intellect via an understanding of words, both philosophers still argue that the desire for intellect and perfection should be sufficiently appealing to one’s common desires, i.e. common language, so that the learner can be satisfied just enough so that she is not repelled by a new kind of pursuit and inquiry, one seemingly detached from one’s immediate desire for the good and appears to represent something useless to the common kind of desire.40 For Maimonides, the teacher must begin with what is easiest to conceive, and, hence, what is disposed to the student’s imagination and pleasure. For there may be a certain obscure matter that is difficult to conceive. One has to mention it or to take it as a premise in explaining something that is easy to conceive and that by right ought to be taught before the former, since one always begins with what is easier. The teacher, accordingly, will have to be lax and using any means that occur to him or gross speculation, will try to make that matter somehow understood […] Afterwards, in the appropriate place, that obscure matter is stated in exact terms and explained as it truly is.41

The teacher has great latitude in choosing the (imaginative) means to reach intellection, since intellection cannot be circumscribed by a single universal method. Only when the learner has somehow achieved some understanding can that understanding be explained appropriately, or exactly. Spinoza realizes a similar need to appeal to the understanding, or

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imagination, of the masses, the starting point of all learners, so that they might even consider a non-imaginative truth. 1. To speak according to the power of understanding of ordinary people, and do whatever does not interfere with our attaining our purpose. For we can gain a considerable advantage, if we yield as much to their [capacity] as we can. In this way, they will give a favorable hearing to truth.42

Spinoza realizes that intellection and desire are intertwined so, by appealing to the learner’s imagination as much as one can, the teacher simultaneously appeals to the desires or favors of the learner in continuing to pursue intellect. Maimonides and Spinoza comprehend that they must use the passive determinations and desires of the learner, his or her inherited language, so that it serves the transition to intellect. However, the learner’s desires are now conflicted; they are not satisfied by the external nor by a new language that implies a different reality. Rather than eradicating this conflicted perspective, Maimonides and Spinoza argue that ambivalence in regard to language is necessary so that intellect may express a singular experience: one that does not reduce to image and one that does not detach from one’s constitutive desires-images to seem useless and ineffectual in controlling and reforming ones’ desires to an active ruling condition.43 The needed feeling of ambivalence for language enables those who are potentially wise and strong enough to rule their inherited determinations/ language to continually interrupt their passive determinations so that they will be as active as possible in successive moments. When an individual is able to see and use the ambivalence for language, they are able to interrupt the domination of determinative passive affects and transform them into a singular experience that does not then surreptitiously rest in a new static image-word. Maimonides cautions his readers not to feel guilty in deploying diverse language to understand God’s reality. You should not consider as blameworthy the fact that this profound subject, which is remote from our apprehension, should be subject to many different interpretations. For this does no harm with respect to that toward which we direct ourselves. And you are free to choose whatever belief you wish.44

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He further notes that diverging from a more traditional image of or language about God would not harm God’s truth, but rather, we should use whatever belief or language would disclose and express God’s reality. Spinoza maintains a similar ambivalence toward language’s presentation of meaning and truth. I know that in their common usage these words mean something else. But my purpose is to explain the nature of things, not the meaning of words. I intend to indicate these things by words whose usual meaning is not entirely opposed to the meaning with which I wish to use them. One warning of this should suffice.45

For Spinoza, the common or traditional usage of words does not set the exact meaning and truth of a term. In fact, for him, one should use language so as to explain things rather than maintain a rigidly consistent meaning of words. Nevertheless, as he notes, language will be deployed to explain experiences so one should be ambivalent as to whether the words are essentially useful to express truth. That is, even if the language is conducive to expressing intellect, we should not assume that the language has then captured this truth and reduced it to a precise linguistic presentation. By maintaining this ambivalence, the individual is able to appropriately acknowledge their historical linguistic inheritance but also resist a new errant resolution that would undermine their singular and irreducible understanding. As a result, even in their singular intellectual understanding, the individual expresses a historical moment of unique understanding. By interrupting the passive flow of language and resisting its continued reduction of thinking, the individual expresses a singular historical moment of understanding. Rather than removing history, one makes history the most relevant to and active for one’s embodied living. This historical and singular experience directly represents the individual’s striving to express itself continually in its most active form, despite and because of these linguistic determinations. Maimonides and Spinoza describe clearly the perplexity that may occur when a potential knower does not take an ambivalent stance on language. Maimonides describes this perplexity in relation to the understanding of prophetic texts and the Guide’s purpose to address it:

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[The Guide’s] purpose is to give indications to a religious man for whom the validity of our Law has become established in his soul and has become an actual belief—such a man being perfect in his religion and character, and having studied the sciences of the philosophers and come to know what they signify. The human intellect having drawn him on and led him to dwell within its province, he must have felt distressed by the externals of the Law and by the meanings of the above-mentioned equivocal, derivative, or amphibolous terms […]. Hence he would remain in a state of perplexity and confusion as to whether he should follow his intellect, renounce what he knew concerning the terms in question, and consequently consider that he has renounced the foundations of the Law. Or he should hold fast to his understanding of these terms and not let himself be drawn on together with his intellect, rather turning his back on it and moving away from it, while at the same time perceiving that he had brought loss to himself and harm to his religion. He would be left with those imaginary beliefs to which he owes his fear and difficulty and would not cease to suffer from heartache and great perplexity. […] This Treatise also has a second purpose: namely, the explanation of very obscure parables occurring in the books of the prophets […]. Hence an ignorant or heedless individual might think they possess only an external sense, but no internal one. However, even when one who truly possesses knowledge considers these parables and interprets them according to their external meaning, he too is overtaken by great perplexity. But if we explain these parables to him or if we draw his attention to their being parables, he will take the right road and be delivered from this perplexity.46

For Maimonides, perplexity ultimately resides in the vacillation between seeking an external errant object and the rejection of that desire or pursuit without an ambivalent perspective capable of making internal or intrinsic meaning valuable and active. Those who attribute perfection solely to and desire perfection solely from an external source improperly reproduce that form of desiring when seeking a new intrinsic meaning thereby undermining both traditional desires and security as well as the benefit of a new more active perspective. We can see Spinoza deploying a similar logic about vacillation in two passages. In the first, he argues that uncertainty and doubt, like truth and meaning, cannot be presented exactly in an external object: [What are the properties of truth? Certainty is not in things.] The properties of truth, or a true idea, are (1) that it is clear and distinct, (2) that it removes all doubt, or, in a word, that it is certain. Those who look for certainty in things themselves are making the same mistake as when they look for truth

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in things themselves. And although we may say that a thing is uncertain, we are figuratively taking the ideatum [the thing perceived] for the idea. In the same way we also call a thing doubtful, unless perchance in this case by uncertainty we mean contingency, or a thing that causes us uncertainty or doubt.47

Doubt is not generated by the thing but, rather, by our lack of an ambivalent perspective on the thing’s role in generating doubt or affective vacillation. Doubt relates to an intrinsic affective condition. Doubt arises primarily when we would affirm an undergone and compelling affect, but then, we attribute another external source that blocks our affirmation, due to the word and memory associated with another contrary affect.48 Like Maimonides, Spinoza also relates perplexity or doubt to the understanding of scripture in his correspondence with a devout Calvinist, Willem van Blijenbergh: For I see that no demonstration, however solid it may be according to the laws of demonstration, has weight with you unless it agrees with that explanation which you, or theologians known to you, attribute to sacred Scripture. But, if you believe that God speaks more clearly and effectively through sacred Scripture than through the light of the natural intellect […] then you have powerful reasons for bending your intellect to the opinions you attribute to sacred Scripture. I myself could hardly do otherwise.49

Prior to this letter, Blijenbergh admits that his doubt arose because Spinoza deploys natural reason so that it excludes his attribution of perfection in his sacred scriptures.50 Spinoza in the above passage describes Blijenbergh’s imagistic logic and psychology. Due to Blijenbergh’s attribution of perfection to an external source, having been habituated by a specific community and tradition, his intellect can only explain such perfection via this image or opinion, and despite its active and liberating power, intellect cannot overturn these powerful affects. Instead, the power of his traditional prejudices determines and compels Bligenbergh to bend his “intellect” to prejudice, whereas Spinoza is compelled by a different (intellectual) necessity. This shows that intellect lacks the power to overcome traditional prejudices, and emendation would require extra-­rational interruptions and support to establish intellect. For both Maimonides and Spinoza, the perplexed individual is conflicted by two affects: the one to “honor” the traditional language/values

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that seem beneficial/necessary and the other to seek a grasp of an ultimate reality that should be exempt from any uncertainty/doubt. However, both poles represent different aspects of the same reality. The first represents the passive determinations that one has undergone and seeks to use, and the other represents the desire for absolute certainty which might be captured in a complete concept/word. However, understanding represents the middle way, which seeks continual inquiry and engagement with and expression of singular experiences, rather than a closure to difference and inquiry. The middle or ambivalent way also represents an interruption of the (political) order and desires of things. As a result, this political contestation of the meaning of words and their use indicates another engagement with historical conditions. The control of words and their status to knowledge directly challenges the status quo authoritative/settled interpretation of words/values. By challenging the settled and seemingly universal meanings of words, the philosopher’s ambivalence to language refuses to allow universal meanings to reproduce themselves uncontested and refuses to replace them with new false universals that would perpetuate an imagistic mentality and disguise old prejudices in neologisms. Refusing to close off necessary political and value interruptions so as to maintain that dialectical tension between history and truth also reveals that an appropriate philosophical use of language must consistently address the specific historical-­ political foundations to one’s life. In this dialectical, paradoxical, and contradictory position that the philosopher takes to their political-ethical-­ linguistic inheritance, they are able to be not only as active as possible, given their determinations, but also they reform their language so that it relates beneficially, or with actual value, to their embodied life. By dialectically engaging and challenging inherited words and values, the individual is able to draw the focus back onto their immediate good and make whatever means possible, including language, as relevant as and as useful to their unique good. Much like Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s descriptions of usefulness in their epistemic methods, language becomes meaningful and relevant when it is viewed as useful. That is, from an ambivalent perspective it is not predetermined to one meaning but open to take on meanings in order to express intellect. Language is not guaranteed to support one’s good, and the appeal to an a priori reality in order to guarantee such utility is circumspect for the two philosophers. Rather, language is useful in that it may lead to singular understanding and a meaningful expression of one’s good,

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if the language is deployed accurately to experience and is not drawn to any form of certainty that would foreclose continual inquiry. By having an ambivalent perspective on language, one is also maintaining language as useful but not as predetermined—or even possibly determined absolutely in some future end. Ambivalence keeps open the necessary irreducible activity implied by the concept of utility, an activity that could directly relate to and characterize a singular good. Nevertheless, being a dialectical engagement and a reformation of authoritative settled language (endoxa), this kind of continual striving to make language useful for and expressive of one’s singular good is still subject to contrary affects and unconscious passive resistances that do not guarantee that a meaningful expression in language will occur.51 The dialectical and ambivalent relationship between a critical philosophical understanding of language and endoxa (common language) entails that the meaning or understanding of one’s relevant good or perfecting truth cannot be guaranteed and definitely cannot be characterized as a complete enlightenment that would satisfy and end all inquiries. Instead, one must strive to understand and make one’s language as expressive as possible. In so doing, one realizes that meaning is not universally doled out in the exact same way and that it can be interrupted by errant and passive conditions. The use of language in a particular way does not guarantee language will lead to meaning/truth, nor does the same kind of understanding occur universally across individuals with the same terms. Each individual, according to their capacity to render their language as relevant and as active as possible, represents the degree to which they will understand from their language. This explains why Maimonides notes that even knowledge of the divine, presented through prophetic language, cannot be presented continuously and exactly for every mind to entertain in the same way. You should not think that these great secrets are fully and completely known to anyone among us. They are not. But sometimes truth flashes out to us so that we think that it is day, and then matter and habit in their various forms conceal it so that we find ourselves again in an obscure night, almost as we were at first. […] There are others between whose lightning flashes there are greater and shorter intervals. […] Know that whenever one of the perfect wishes to mention, either orally or in writing, something that he understands of these secrets, according to the degree of his perfection, he is unable to explain with complete clarity and coherence even the portion that he has

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apprehended, as he could do with the other sciences whose teaching is generally recognized. Rather there will befall him when teaching another that which he had undergone when learning himself. I mean to say that the subject matter will appear, flash, and then be hidden again, as though this were the nature of this subject matter, be there much or little of it.52

For Maimonides, the wise can only form intervals of knowledge because their embodied aspects and linguistic determinations are not wholly suited to a continuous understanding and simple representation of absolute truth. Additionally, absolute and divine truth, a meaning which should most perfect an individual, does not circumvent the activity of an individual’s mind and his or her striving to make that language as meaningful, according to his or her capacity for understanding. As a result, the meaning will be singular, although nonetheless perfecting, for each individual that understands according to their capacity or agency. When introducing his epistemic method in the TdIE, Spinoza described in much the same way that knowledge could not be merely presented and grasped by all always from the same perspective. Instead, moments of intellection have an interval or duration and do not correspond to an absolute state of enlightenment. Important for these intervals of intellection or knowing are whether and how strongly an individual’s activities coordinate to express singular perfection in that embodied context. Singular knowledge derives from one’s expression and understanding of one’s concrete living and affections. This is why Spinoza argues that an investigation of singular physical beings is required for perfect knowledge.53 Intervals of knowing are directly related to the concrete activities and their coordination in the one’s embodied context. Spinoza is clear that intellect should not be considered to be prior to nature’s affections so that there must be a discursive or serial process to knowing as related to the condition and coordination of the affects. “I think I have demonstrated clearly and evidently enough that the intellect, though infinite, [refers] to natura naturata, not to natura naturans.”54 God or Nature alone circumvents historical affections as natura naturans, whereas human knowing derives from serial experiences and specific attributions. Language as an affection that may constitute one’s concrete existence must be used appropriately to one’s singular context so that intellection may express itself. In order to achieve this, one must maintain an ambivalent perspective toward one’s linguistic affections so that intellect and true meaning may express (i.e. pierce or flash) through one’s language.

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The capacity to view language from an ambivalent and potentially active perspective implies that the individual has the virtue and the strength of mind to deploy and rule language as best as possible. Not only are such individuals able to use language to the best of their abilities, they are also able to configure language, due to their experiences, so that it may best induce virtue and intellect in subsequent moments and for capable others. These individuals are able to understand what kind of language would best aid in the generation of intellect and how to transmit their understanding as best as possible to those who might have the capacity to understand. The wisdom that they have about language from their virtue and experience cannot be reduced to a simple static linguistic formulation but must provoke and inform the learners’ concrete living/striving so that an irreducible and active perspective is generated within them. The transmission of wisdom works through language but cannot be reduced to the passive and static determinations in language. Nevertheless, as a necessary or non-­ contingent aspect in the transmission of wisdom, language’s configuration can do much to induce this active awareness.

Discerning the Role of Critical Language Both Maimonides and Spinoza invest much time in discussing which kind of language would best induce and express intellectual understanding. Important for both are linguistic constructions that counterpose language’s tendency to project beyond the individual’s immediate experience and circumvention of one’s intellectual agency. However, the goal of this kind of language is not to induce mere (affective) confusion but to redirect desire so that it will seek to use indicative and explanatory language that may generate and express intrinsic meaning and understanding. To achieve this, language should inhibit the desire for externalized meanings and transform it into a productive kind of doubt through which one would perceive the benefit and usefulness of indicative and explanatory language that may induce active intellectual understanding, rather than allowing passive determinations to rule one’s individual experiences. Language should become an active tool by which an intrinsic activity of understanding proceeds for each individual and is relevant to the singular experiences that the individual undergoes and expresses. As an affect that every individual undergoes, due to their political-historical natures, the affects of language should be, if possible, rendered as useful and active for the perfection of each individual.

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Two examples that express the kind of language best able to induce this type of active awareness are (1) genetic definitions and (2) equivocal language. Genetic definitions provide an explanatory perspective on reality so as to engage the activity of the individual’s intellect rather than passively deferring to a posited universal reality. The definition of God provides an excellent representation for both in how to derive singular perfection and appropriate mastery of language—to understand language’s limits and to know which expectations about language should be held by the wise. Additionally, the definition of God enables one to see a different kind of intrinsically compelling necessity rather than a necessity represented by deferring to assumed static universal reality. An intrinsic necessity or compelling experience is necessary so that different aspects of reality may express themselves and reveal their actual/active reality, i.e. their claim on existence, rather than being judged unreal by (human) reason/imagination. An equivocal use of language aids in seeing different real perspectives in nature, and it enables the knower to maintain control over words so that they do not hinder the real expression of diverse experiences. With a genetic and equivocal use of language, one can more readily have singular experiences that express themselves through the mind of the knower. At the same time, through such expressions/experiences, a mind concurrently is most in control of any errant affects implicit in language. In letter nine of his correspondence, also known as the Letter on Definitions, Spinoza consistently uses phrases like “by ‘X’ I understand,” “let it be called,” and “provided another word is used” to indicate that a generative intellectual process occurs via customary names, descriptions, or definitions. For Spinoza, these linguistic constructions enable one to understand how definitions, or descriptions, determine whether “effects” proceed in the intellect in a generative manner or reduce themselves to the extrinsic denomination and discursive representation/repetition of a static object.55 In the letter, Spinoza gives advice to some of his students perplexed by the nature of Spinoza’s use and understanding of definitions. Some of Spinoza’s students believe that Spinoza’s definitions represent and refer to an absolute universal truth or property from which to ground and govern subsequent deductions/propositions that continuously refer back to such a foundation. They liken Spinoza’s definitions to Giovanni Borelli’s concept of definition in which definitions are premises that are so well-known as fact that they provide inferential ground and principles to discursively

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demonstrate subsequent propositions. Spinoza’s interlocutor, Simon De Vries, quotes Borelli’s position as: Definitions are used in a demonstration as premises. So it is necessary for them to be known evidently, otherwise scientific, or very evident, knowledge cannot be acquired from them […] The basis for a construction, or the essential, first and best known property of a subject, must be chosen, not rashly, but with the greatest care. For if the construction or the property named is impossible, then a scientific definition will not result.56

However, Spinoza declares that Borelli “confuses all these things” and that Spinoza’s definitions do not resemble Borelli’s (scientific or constructive) definitions.57 Spinoza argues that his students are perplexed because they are unable to distinguish between different kinds of definitions and how these definitions may be distinguished from axioms and propositions. […] I see that you are in these perplexities because you do not distinguish between different kinds of definition—between one which serves to explain a thing whose essence is only sought, as the only thing there is doubt about, and one which is proposed only to be examined. For because the former has a determinate object, it ought to be true. But the latter does not require this. For example, if someone asks me for a description of the Temple of Solomon, I ought to give them a true description of the temple unless I want to talk nonsense to them. But if I have [caused or brought about] in my mind some temple which I want to build, and if I infer from its description that I must by land of such a kind and so many thousand stones and other materials, will anyone in his right mind tell me that I have drawn a bad conclusion because I have perhaps used a false definition? Or will anyone require me to prove my definition? To do so would be to tell me that I have not conceived what I have conceived, or to require me to prove that I have conceived what I have conceived. So a definition either explains a thing as it is outside [without, extra] the intellect—and then it ought to be true and to differ from a proposition or axiom only in that a definition is concerned solely with the essences of things [rerumve] or of their affections, whereas an axiom or a proposition extends more widely, to eternal truths as well—or else it explains a thing as we conceive it or can conceive it—and then it also differs from an axiom and a proposition in that it need only be conceived, without any further condition, and need not, like an axiom be conceived as true. So a bad definition is one that is not conceived.58

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Spinoza’s use of the term “description” as equivalent to “definition” in the letter shows that definitions involve an individual’s perspective and experience in order to explain, describe, or express how the “object” or “thing” has affected one’s mind. An individual’s active mental agency is required to take one’s undergone affections and render them coherent and meaningful to the knower. Questions about whether the definition embodies an absolute universal truth with which every subsequent experience must comport as exactly as possible or whether the definition truly captures exactly an external posited reality in itself are not appropriate to Spinoza’s understanding of definitions. Spinoza’s definitions focus internally on the affections of one’s mind. Spinoza is clear that definitions do not need to be proved by reference to an external truth but, rather, express the activity of the mind out of and through the determinations of its affections. Starting from one’s affections, whether by experiencing a determinate object or by relying on how one’s mind has been determined through its past affections to be able to conceive certain things in particular ways, one should understand that those affections represent an actuality of experience, an experience that cannot be subjectively denied or doubted. But also, the described or conceived “object” represents a potential irreducible source that may engender more affects that exceed our conceptual definitions of them. As a result, one should not seek to externalize their description but render it as active for their intellect as possible. The goal is not to reduce reality to one single imaginative or universal perspective but rather to realize that descriptions, or definitions, can be equivocal and nominal relative to one’s diverse, actual, and singular experiences. Since definitions of natural, determinate things can acknowledge an external order of causality irreducible to human desires and reason, natural objects, i.e. actual physical things experienced, can especially be understood by equivocal definitions. Rather than being determined as a static object to which one’s definitions or descriptions correspond, a natural being is determinate in that it may engender different perspectives about its specific reality. Determinate actuality does not completely agree with a single intellectual reduction of a thing but does affect and agree with the knower to the extent that it enables a specific perspective through which the knower may investigate and understand the determinate “object.” For Spinoza, definitions, particularly of natural things, must express this actuality of experience. As a result, many different definitions may express this actuality so that neither a merely symbolic definition is presumed to correspond to a single absolute reality nor is a definition assumed to have only

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contingent or a symbolic kind of usefulness. Spinoza uses the example of Jacob or Israel to make this point: [T]o explain by an example how one and the same thing can be designated by two names […] I offer two: (i) I say that by Israel I understand the third patriarch; I understand the same by Jacob, the name which was given him because he had seized his brother’s heel[.]59

Jacob or Israel is not fully reduced to either perspective so that each perspective may be used to generate a meaningful and relevant definition of one’s experiences. Whereas when an abstract definition, such as Borelli’s, proceeds from an absolute rational ground, a definition involving a physical existing thing proceeds from the necessity of actual experience. These definitions, unlike abstract definitions, have the potential to acknowledge not only that an individual generated them but that also the generation was from a demand placed upon the knower by the concrete singular experience. That is, the knower expresses a perspective on reality—yet acknowledges it as a perspective—so that reality is not reduced to a totalizing static perspective. A good definition for a physical being should allow an individual to realize that many more affections from the thing are possible. If I attribute a good description to a thing, the attribution must be understood as a necessary experience for me but also as a generative moment from which the irreducible activity of the intellect can proceed. Thus, the aspectival and equivocal nature of a definition does not limit the intellect to specific propositions about the world but, instead, forces the knower to acknowledge that his or her perspectives are not separate from an active embodied reality. Generative definitions force a knower to continually inquire into a cause so that the necessary activity of the defined cause is just that, necessary and continually active. Rather than limit an individual to a purely relativistic or static position, the singular nature of a generative definition forces the knower to order and link, deduce or gather “effects” from real singular concrete causes, moving from one real cause to another because Nature cannot be reduced to one specific definition or aspect. If there is no “movement” or activity of thinking, then one’s perspective or definition would not express the irreducible power of Nature but rather would privilege one type, kind, or universal over singular causes. By claiming that one definition reduces reality to its aspect would, in fact, necessarily establish a universal type which could rule over particulars, allowing one to

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judge whether particulars are perfect or imperfect relative to this ideal standard. In this impoverished and limited perspective, the active causal order could not be acknowledged as irreducible to the mental order; rather, the external order would be improperly collapsed into an abstract order and system of absolute values. Good definitions of physical beings attempt to make again the likeness of active Nature in the intrinsic activity of causes expressed by intellect. The definition of God or Nature itself provides the best example of the intrinsic necessity expressed by the intellect and irreducible to human attributions, requiring equivocal language to express its rich active reality. The idea of God clearly manifests the fact that ideas and their objects, or ideata (the things perceived), are irreducible. The idea of God shows that the order of properties or attributes cannot be identical with or present themselves as a part of that to which they are attributed. In letter nine, Spinoza defines and demonstrates that God must be a thing conceived as having infinite attributes in order to correctly describe or think its reality: But you say that I have not demonstrated that a substance (or being) can have more attributes than one. Perhaps you have neglected to pay attention to my demonstrations. For I have used two: first, that nothing is more evident to us than that we conceive each being under some attribute, and that the more reality or being a being has the more attributes must be attributed to it; so a being absolutely infinite must be defined[.]60

According to this definition and demonstration, the concept of an absolutely infinite being requires that all attributes be predicated of it, including the attribute of existence. A finite or infinite intellect would be, according to this object or ideatum (a thing perceived), forced or compelled to attribute existence, perfection, absolute truth, and so on. However, the idea of or attribution of God’s existence, which is distinct from its ideatum (perceived object), cannot itself be what is affirmed of God; the idea of existence is not itself God’s eternal existence.61 Thus, what is affirmed is not the idea, which indicates that the idea does not equate with or constitute a real external feature that inheres or belongs as a part of God. Properties or attributions of things do not express the things or God as they are but rather indicate that an attributing agent, an intellect, is compelled. In this case, the existence of God is not a property or propositional claim, but rather, God’s existence is a force compelling the attributions of perfection, existence, and so on.

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Immediately following his previous definition of an absolutely infinite being, Spinoza introduces another and notes that this second definition is one which he finds best and most compelling: [S]econd, and the one I judge best, is that the more attributes I attribute to a being the more I am compelled to attribute existence to it; that is, the more I conceive it as true. It would be quite the contrary if I had feigned a Chimaera, or something like that.62

The second definition clearly indicates that the reality of a “given” object must involve the activity of an intellect. The more an intellect can attribute properties to or think about something, the more the intellect’s activity is compelled to assert that the “object” exists. The ability of an intellect to think in-and-of itself implies an intellectual reality that prima facie does not deny existence to the object but rather affirms it, so as to continually or actively think of it.63 In the case of God, the ability to attribute or conceive of an intellectual reality for that object or ideatum, i.e. God, implies that those attributes are unending, which in turn both includes the attribute of eternal existence and simultaneously rejects it as “capturing” God’s actuality. Eternal existence is not a discovery about an external thing, God, but rather, is a “product” of an intellect affirming or expressing its power; the power of the affirming intellect is not separate from what is affirmed. Presence or absence is not an aspect of an external thing to which an idea corresponds or which it has, but “presence” is the actuality of thinking immediately involving its own cause for thinking.64 In this case, God’s activity intrinsically compels an individual intellect to express its absolutely active reality, and thereby, our intellects become intrinsically the same activity as explained by our singular minds/reality. Much like the intellectual love of God, defining God through our intrinsic intellectual activity becomes a part of God’s absolute intellectual activity and expressive of it as explained through our singular intellects. Maimonides’ possible influence on Spinoza’s understanding of definition65 is apparent when Maimonides makes a similar claim about God’s attributes: It is clear then that an attribute may be only two things. It is either the essence of the thing of which it is predicated, in which case it is an explanation of a term. We in this respect do not consider it impossible to predicate such an attribute of God […] Or the attribute is different from the thing of

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which it is predicated, being a notion superadded to that thing. This would lead to the conclusion that attribute is an accident belonging to that essence.66

Like Spinoza, Maimonides argues that an attribute may be a necessary expression of an object, i.e. God, in which case, it can only explain God’s actuality. This is because the attribute as a product of predication must also be considered as different from its object. As a result, the attribute is an accident, a notion superadded to the thing, even though it is included in an essential description.67 However, Maimonides’ explanation of God is restrained and limited, and it cannot reduce God to a single set of positive attributes or descriptors. For Maimonides, there are no essential or positive attributes that can be directly applied to God’s reality so as to reveal it as such in-itself. To this category belongs the denial of essential attributes to God[.] […] For that denial is a primary intelligible, inasmuch as an attribute is not the essence of the thing of which it is predicated, but is a certain mode of the essence and hence an accident. If, however, the attribute were the essence of the thing of which it is predicated, the attribute would be either a tautology […] or the attribute would be a mere explanation of a term.68

God’s essential reality viewed from a human linguistic perspective could best be described as a tautology: “God is God.” God’s unique or singular reality exceeds any conceptual reduction of it. Nevertheless, if one does explain God’s reality through an attribute, that attribute represents an explanation of a term or how God’s reality has affected one’s limited existence, which for many, must be first through the imagination. The affection of one’s mind by that reality expresses a mode of the essence rather than the actual being in-itself. As Maimonides’ states, that mode represents an accident or superadded notion, which is applied after the fact to the reality. Maimonides stresses that many great errors about God and confusions for one’s intellectual capacity or agency occur when accidents, such as imaginative notions about God, are assumed to correspond to the divine reality. What forces him to this is, as we have said, the wish to preserve the conceptions of the imagination and the fact that all existent bodies are always represented to oneself as certain essences. Now every such essence is of necessity

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endowed with attributes, for we do not ever find an essence of a body that while existing is divested of everything and is without an attribute. This imagination being pursued, it was thought that He […] is similarly composed of various notions, namely, His essence and the notions that are superadded to His essence. Several groups of people pursued the likening of God to other beings and believed Him to be a body endowed with attributes.69

Maimonides identifies the key problem: human beings are determined by their imaginations and, thus, compelled by their wishes entwined with them to project their imaginative and accidental descriptions back onto a singular reality. Not only is the projection of specific imaginative attributions a serious problem for understanding (of God/reality), but every form of definition or explanation is assumed to be justified only if it meets the criterion of imaginative descriptions. Maimonides is especially insistent on removing this imaginative reduction of God, which for Maimonides, would induce a division in God’s unique or singular simplicity, by adopting an equivocal understanding of the attributions of God. He argues that definitions or descriptions in the likeness of imaginative ones cannot have a univocal reductive meaning. Maimonides, in fact, in a double critical move argues that human knowledge of God’s knowledge must be equivocal, since the term “knowledge” in no way is in semantic agreement. [B]etween our knowledge and His knowledge there is nothing in common, as there is nothing in common between our essence and His essence. With regard to this point, only the equivocality of the term “knowledge” occasions the error; for there is a community only in the terms, whereas in the true reality of the things there is a difference. It is from this that incongruities follow necessarily, as we imagine that things that obligatorily pertain to our knowledge pertain also to His knowledge.70

Human knowledge, which in many cases is imaginative and affirms only human perceptions, neither can properly attribute the content of human conceptions to God nor can human knowledge adequately attribute its type of imaginative knowledge to God. Incidentally, Spinoza nearly verbatim agrees with Maimonides on this point when he argues that human intellect and God’s intellect must be understood to be equivocal:

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[II.] Further—to say something here also about the intellect and will which we commonly attribute to God—if will and intellect do pertain to the eternal essence of God, we must of course understand by each of these attributes something different from what men commonly understand. For the intellect and will which would constitute God’s essence would have to differ entirely from our intellect and will, and could not agree with them in anything except the name. They would not agree with one another any more than do the dog that is a heavenly constellation and the dog that is a barking animal.71

Like Spinoza, Maimonides also uses his understanding of equivocal definitions to restrain the power of words so that intellectual understanding may proceed from one’s imaginative conceptual beginnings and move “beyond” to a higher active awareness. Maimonides argues that one’s inherited customary or initially assimilated word-images may be useful to generate understanding about God so long as one does not seek to force those linguistic-imaginative conceptions onto God—in an attempt to reduce God’s reality to human limited perspectives. For Maimonides, as for Spinoza, negations of one’s initial imaginative conceptions of God can become affirmative means to understand God as best as possible. Nevertheless, Maimonides does not seem to go as far as Spinoza to argue that God’s intellectual activity is expressed through human intellectual activity. The extent to which Maimonides is willing to allow human intellectual activity to express divine actuality is represented in how human beings may understand God’s actions: Every attribute that is found in the books of the deity […] is therefore an attribute of His action and not an attribute of His essence[.]72

Similar to his account of how human beings can assimilate God’s actions so as to be as ethically perfect and vital as possible, Maimonides argues that understanding God’s actions through God’s effects on the world provides the means to apprehend God as best as possible and, thereby, perfect our total singular selves as best as possible. It provides an activity and standard which, once understood, promotes the perfection of our complete selves (i.e. our irreducible activity). Crucial for the attainment of such perfection is the management and mastery of our (imagistic) language so that we are not errantly pulled away from intrinsic self-activity and understanding. Maintaining an equivocal understanding of God and divine absolute truths is necessary because we can neither divorce ourselves from

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historical-­cultural affections, i.e. imaginative inherited language, nor can we divorce ourselves from the affections of God’s (or Nature’s) reality. As a result, we cannot reach God’s absolute reality in itself. By acknowledging that our references to a posited extrinsic reality, as determined by these primary terms, distort this affective reality, we can return to examining our internal mind and from this examination express the intrinsic actuality of our singular experiences with as adaptable language as possible. In this case, language would be incorporated into one’s intrinsic singular experiences so as to express intellectual activity from them but would not be reduced to them. Language would in a way become necessary, or noncontingent, to this process or intellectual affirmations. Yet, in this condition, an individual would have the strength of mind and mastery over words so that what the words seem to point to would not passively disempower one’s intellectual agency. Rather than relying on the imagistic aspect of words to project beyond to a seemingly stable meaning or to a posited object, an active intellect understands truth by and through words, thus making the complete individual as vital and perfect as possible in relation to these passive but necessary (linguistic) determinations. Wise individuals resist the closure of meaning that is implied by literal interpretations of realities, including other individuals.

The Dangers of Literalism Both Maimonides and Spinoza argue that literal interpretations cause great intellectual and ethical problems. This is why Maimonides advocates for the use of parables and contradictory language to communicate divine truths so as to block errors and unethical reductions of Nature and other human beings: In speaking about very obscure matters it is necessary to conceal some parts and to disclose others. Sometimes in the case of certain dicta this necessity requires that the discussion proceed on the basis of a certain premise, whereas in another place necessity requires that the discussion proceed on the basis of another premise contradicting the first one. In such cases the vulgar must in no way be aware of the contradiction; the author accordingly uses some device to conceal it by all means.73

The use of different premises or words as starting points for understanding shows that words should not be literally applied but are merely useful

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for understanding given the appropriate context. Additionally, the interpretation of thoughts as literally words (or absolutely definitive concepts) leads to a vulgar understanding of truths; it leads to the belief that reality should be divided by rigid word-concepts or an absolute (linguistic) logic. As a result, these rigid word-concepts, and subsequent symbolic logic, rely on contradictions to enforce one rigid interpretation and understanding of reality, including the “appropriate” value and “acceptable” beliefs of others. This explains why Maimonides, having been influenced perhaps by Al-Farabi’s account of Plato’s resistance to the dissemination of the written word, argues that it is best to communicate obscure truths orally:74 You already know that even the legalistic science of law was not put down in writing in the olden times because of the precept, which is widely known in the nation: Words that I have communicated to you orally, you are not allowed to put down in writing. This precept shows extreme wisdom with regard to the Law. For it was meant to prevent what has ultimately come about in this respect: I mean the multiplicity of opinions, the variety of schools, the confusions occurring in the expression of what is put down in writing, the negligence that accompanies what is written down, the division of the people, who are separated into sects, and the production of confusion with regard to actions.75

An oral transmission of truth has the added ability not only to restrain indefinite application of words but to situate the transmission within concrete contexts so that an equitable mentality or awareness of understanding would form in the receiver. The receiver or learner would be able to develop an awareness that seeks to express or enact knowledge in that immediate context and experience and, thus, not exceed it with passive or indefinite words that appear to represent knowledge and activity. Instead, these literal words disempower the knower and seek to impoverish the experiences of others by admitting one absolute standard. Similarly, Spinoza argues that many intellectual and ethical problems arise when individuals interpret the minds of others badly by using names and words rigidly or too exactly: And indeed, most errors consist only in our not rightly applying names to things. For when someone says that the lines which are drawn from the center of a circle to its circumference are unequal, he surely understands (then at least) by a circle something different from what Mathematicians understand. Similarly, when men err in calculating, they have certain num-

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bers in their mind and different ones on the paper. So if you consider what they have in Mind, they really do not err, though they seem to err because we think they have in their mind the numbers which are on the paper. If this were not so, we would not believe that they were erring, just as I did not believe that he was erring whom I recently heard cry out that his courtyard had flown into his neighbor’s hen. And most controversies have arisen from this, that men do not rightly explain their own mind, or interpret the mind of the other man badly. For really, when they contradict one another most vehemently, they either have the same thoughts, or they are thinking of different things, so that what they think are errors and absurdities in the other are not.76

In both cases, a literal or strict interpretation of what the words refer to limits an individual’s mind either to his or her individualized imaginative perspective and desires and/or to his or her customary or common language determinations. From either passive state, the individual is both intellectually and ethically inequitable to others and their environment. When one is able to resist the literal application (or rather re-­application) of linguistic determinations and the values/desires constituting those words, deploying a more equivocal perspective on and use of language, then one expresses a greater form of striving and self-affirmation. They are able to resist ossified prejudices so that they can become as active and aware of singular meanings/experiences in as many diverse contexts as possible. They use language in an adaptable way so as to become expressive of diverse perspectives on a singular reality or in order not to reduce different realities to general abstract concepts/words that would distort those realities as well as incapacitate individual self-affirmation from different affects. Maimonides argues that equivocal meaning can only be understood and interpreted from the specific context. Equivocal meaning does not lend itself to rigid imaginative and universal distortions, or, rather, reductions to a single meaning. Know with regard to every term whose equivocality we shall explain to you in this Treatise that our purpose in such an explanation is not only to draw your attention to what we mention in that particular chapter. Rather do we open a gate and draw your attention to such meanings of that particular term as are useful for our purpose, not the various purposes of whoever may speak the language of this or that people.77

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Equivocal understanding shows that there is no single a priori meaning that is good enough to convey truth’s absolute nature and to generate intellect. What is required is experience of the context, and thus, the understanding of usefulness and relevance to the context so that the words deployed can best generate and express intellect. Spinoza makes a similar point that words viewed in isolation, or as mere symbols, do not carry with them an exact meaning independent of experience, a meaning housed in a metaphysical or transcendental space. Without a concrete experience to determine the appropriate use of particular words, there could be no understanding of their meaning, even if the word seems to correspond to an external fact: As for what constitutes the form of the true, it is certain that a true thought is distinguished from a false one not only by an extrinsic, but chiefly by an intrinsic denomination. […] [I]f someone says, for example, that Peter exists, and nevertheless does not know that Peter exists, that thought, in respect to him is false, or, if you prefer, is not true, even though Peter really exists. Nor is this statement, Peter exists, true, except in respect to him who knows certainly that Peter exists. […] From this it follows that there is something real in ideas, through which the true are distinguished from the false.78

Like Maimonides, for Spinoza, a word applied abstractly or one that assumes that it can exceed all contexts and thereby be applied indiscriminately could never be true, useful, and generative of our intellectual affirmation as an affirmation from a singular embodied context. Only from a singular context and with an intellect that has understood and expressed that context/affects can there be any form of meaning and intellect. Nevertheless, again, even the wise are continually and necessarily subject to prejudices and affections/desires in their language such that they never escape totally their linguistic-cultural inheritance/determinations. We are determined by words and memory and, thus, are determined passively by shared values and desires. As Spinoza notes: […] [H]uman affairs, of course, would be conducted far more happily if it were equally in man’s power to be silent and to speak. But experience teaches all too plainly that men have nothing less in their power than their tongue, and can do nothing less than moderate their appetites. […] [W]e can do nothing from a decision of the Mind unless we recollect it. E.g., we

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cannot speak a word unless we recollect it. And it is not in the free power of the Mind to either recollect a thing or forget it.79

Similar to Maimonides’ point that individuals are blind to the true realities because of their habituation and love of their inherited language,80 for Spinoza, our words and desires are determined and formed as a memory incapable of restraint except through an external counter-affect. As a result, we have limited power to overcome those determinations/desires so that critical and useful language is necessary to overcome those concrete desires with concrete responses. This shows that there is another historical-cultural dimension at work: the use of historically attuned critical language to one’s inherited historical meanings.81 Due to this condition, we must employ critical language for that specific moment/context so that as many people as possible may become active knowers despite their inherited values and prejudices.82 Despite being determined by our inherited passive language, with proper guidance, pedagogical interruptions, and equally attuned critical language so as to aid in the interruption and expression of singular meaning, we can address the necessary or non-­ contingent aspects of language. In a double movement, both Maimonides and Spinoza address the historical, cultural, and linguistic determinations of language and potential knowledge and thereby necessarily and critically address these aspects to human living/striving and knowing.

Conclusion For Maimonides and Spinoza, an attribution via a word or symbol of a mental reality onto Nature represents an imaginative and passive experience. Rather than expressing an objective truth of the external world, or in an external source, such an attribution of reality from a human perspective and from human language represents a distortion of reality. Human attributes and words are not in the thing per se, but rather the process of attribution expresses a human power and agency attempting to understand one’s passive determinations and affects. In relation to those passive determinations, which include one’s inherited language, an individual can merely repeat those determinations and desire by those images, or an individual can know that the process of attributing images and properties onto the world represents an internal power and attempt at intellectual understanding. Attributing a specific kind of existence to the world does not express the world exactly, but the attribution primarily involves the

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internal agency of the knower attempting to express the known (i.e. the internal experience or “object”). When there is a congruence between the knower and known, an internal agency expresses itself without mediation and wholly without division in one’s intellectual activity or understanding. However, in this internal agreement and agency, mediated forms of perceiving, or rather attributing reality via words and images beyond to an extrinsic reality, disrupt such an immediate congruence and expression of self-action and perfection for the knower. When the knower and known have an internal agreement, both are active together and represent an internal necessity not based on extrinsic posited realities that really represent a passivity on the part of the knower and passivity exhibited by and statically in the “external” world. To overcome such a passive rendition of reality and “knowing,” and subsequently, a diminution of one’s power and understanding, both philosophers argue that language and its inherited determinations must be managed carefully so that such a passivity does not replicate itself and reinforce one’s initial desires and affects. In order to contest one’s mediated and inherited linguistic determinations, Maimonides and Spinoza argue that an ambivalent perspective on language is necessary so that one can acknowledge the necessity of cultural-linguistic inheritances but also develop a mastery of language to deploy it in explaining and understanding singular experiences rather than supporting rigid imaginative meanings. The usefulness of language comes primarily in its ability to interrupt common and extrinsic meanings so that one may focus on one’s internal agency thereby possibly expressing singular understanding. As a result, how language is critically formulated to generate intellect and internal agency in potential knowers is paramount for both philosophers’ conceptions of language. The counter-affects and interruptions of “good” critical language can truly redirect one’s initial desires for self-affirmation from a merely passive imagistic and common form to one that is immediately relevant and expresses one’s self-action. An ambivalent perspective on and use of language enables a knower to understand that one cannot, through words, posit a subjective attribution as though it is the Real, since this would overturn the affections from Nature’s necessary actuality. Nature’s necessary actuality would be dependent upon subjective values and judgments as to what should be possible, and thereby, it would contravene the actuality and self-sufficiency of Nature. Words not only enable individuals to project human values and judgments as though they are natural, but also, they present a false sense

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of human agency. Words deceive humans into believing that they have an undetermined will that can choose good or bad values/words over others and that other individuals should obey one’s favored values or beliefs. Instead of representing a free will, specific ethical-political values and words determine individuals to believe in an imagistic freedom and to institute values via language use so that a favored system of values is cherished and protected through the regulation of minds and the proliferation of sanctioned beliefs. Rather than supporting a strong notion of will, and thereby, an obedience to sanctioned words, both philosophers employ language that resists the foreclosure of difference and maintains opposition to prejudicial desires. The critical language that they employ attempts to include different experiences and realities with the use of nominal, descriptive, and explanatory language. Definitions do not represent an absolute reduction of a thing but rather provide descriptive perspectives and explanations relevant for different experiences, including both the activity and actuality of the “object” and the knower. Implicit in their descriptive accounts of reality and intellectual activity is the point that engaging and experiencing nature is sufficient to generate appropriate knowledge of it. The reality of experience and of “objects” of it are not determined by our conceptual relations and forms of causality that we construct. A “thing” or “object” of experience is not reduced to an abstract relation or indefinite concept. There must be a pre-technical and immanent aspect to experience that implies a shared (causal) reality with the “object” and a determination by and engagement with it prior to any explicit logic formed in consciousness.83 Spinoza develops such an immanent condition when he describes the irreducibility of bodily processes to mental ones: For indeed, no one has yet determined what the Body can do, i.e., experience has not yet taught anyone what the Body can do from the laws of nature alone, insofar as nature is only considered to be corporeal, and what the body can do only if it is determined by the Mind. For no one has yet come to know the structure of the Body so accurately that he could explain all its functions—not to mention that many things are observed in the lower Animals that far surpass human ingenuity, and that sleepwalkers do a great many things in their sleep that they would not dare to awake. This shows well enough that the Body itself, simply from the laws of its own nature, can do many things which its Mind wonders at.84

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The “object” or the experience of the “object’s” affections has a singular activity irreducible to human causal accounts. It exceeds any general abstract system of words, images, or even universals, which have a linguistic character whereby reality can be reduced to the identical application or iteration of its reality. Maimonides’ account of God exceeding any reduction to the word or concept of “one” represents well this point. For both, the “object” or reality is sufficient in itself to exist and cause subsequent effects without having to agree completely with our (conceptual) reductions of it. For both, any kind of projection which is facilitated by an indefinite application and use of an imaginative word or symbol should be restrained and understood under an ambivalent perspective so that some kind of singular understanding may express itself or pierce through the errant confusion engendered by common words or rigid universals. Nevertheless, as political beings, humans must use words and concepts through which we are determined and oriented in our living. Thus, reason as an undergone determination and determining practice can provide much benefit in organizing and explaining our reality with its words and concepts. Reason especially enables us to agree with others in a shared pursuit of virtue and knowledge. However, reason as a determination through which we live and organize our world should not be assumed to be divorced from an affective reality that we have undergone. Reason does not represent an abstract reality prior to our experiences and wholly separate from the lived determinations and affections that orient our concrete living. Both philosophers realize that the language of reason would be completely useless and repellant to common imagistic desires if an individual or learner did not have the requisite desires and habits by which to live by reason’s concepts and imperatives. Once a rational way of life has been embodied in some way in us, then by using the language of reason, we may prepare ourselves to best explain singular experiences. We would be prepared to explain singular experiences by restraining our imagistic and individualized tendencies, and thereby, seek to order experiences according to (shared) evidence. Additionally, from practicing reason, we may develop the ability to realize when reason fails to account directly for rich, singular experiences that resist abstract reduction. We may develop the ability to understand that thought should not be separated from concrete singulars, which are the foundation for sustaining and expressing any rational form or thinking. Both Maimonides and Spinoza realize that if we are unable to understand reason as also a determining practice, we would be deceived into

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believing that reason’s concepts are absolutely expressive of Nature, i.e., reason is only Nature. Instead, for both, we need to negate or restrain rational tendencies that project beyond our immediate singular experiences. Ultimately, singular experiences are the locus of our perfection and knowledge, and reason must be deployed to service an expression of it. Reason is one of the greatest forms of self-affirmation. It is a determination and practice that can be more productive and congruent with others, thereby fostering hope and continued action on the part of the knower. Nevertheless, reason as an enabling and joyful practice must be aligned with as many other intelligently led citizens as possible so that reason can continue and reinforce a virtuous environment that concurrently enables one’s singular good or self-action.85

Notes 1. Susan James and Eric Schliesser have an interesting debate on whether there can be a gradual transition from imagistic perceptions, or “understanding” by images, to intuitive, active understanding in Spinoza’s philosophy. Schliesser argues that James is wrong in assuming that there is some continuity between imaginative “understanding” and third order knowledge. In this debate, I side with James and have argued throughout this work that there is continuity from experience to knowledge, both coimplying and supporting one another. In particular, experience has a causal dimension to knowing intuitively. See James (2011), and see Schliesser (2011). 2. See EVP20 where Spinoza describes how passions, although present, will constitute the smallest part of a “perfected” mind. 3. EI, Appendix; emphasis added. 4. See Maimonides (2011a, 192–193). See Book II, Chapter 40. 5. EIIP40Schol; emphasis added and translation modified. I have removed the phrases “what is common” and “by this property” from the original translation because I do not believe that the original Latin implies a property or common object that can affect the body-mind through the affections of singulars. 6. The vulgar includes the potential philosopher as well. 7. Guide, p. 133. See Book I, Chapter 57. 8. EC, p. 63. Chapter 1. 9. TdIE, 88; emphasis added and translation modified. I have decided to use Idit Dobbs-Weinstein’s translation of this passage here because the original Latin phrase “prout vage” does have the connotation of meaning “indefi-

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nitely,” whereas Curley eliminates this meaning. See Dobbs-Weinstein (2009a, 101). 10. Guide, p. 56; emphasis added. See Book I, Chapter 26. 11. Dobbs-Weinstein explains well how imagination and language operate together to generate powerful modes of attraction and repulsion in the service of superstition and prejudice. See Dobbs-Weinstein (2009a, 96). 12. EIIP40Schol; emphasis added and quote modified. 13. Guide, p. 67; emphasis added and quote modified. See Book I, Chapter 31. 14. See Dobbs-Weinstein (2009a, 107). 15. EIIIP27Schol and C1. 16. EIII, Definition of the Affects, Definition 33; emphasis added. 17. Guide, p. 67; quote modified. See Book I, Chapter 31. 18. See TTP, p. 548 and Guide, pp. 474–475, Book III, Chapter 18. 19. See EVP4Schol. and EVP41. 20. TTP, pp. 389–390; emphasis added. See TTP Preface. 21. Maimonides (1975b, 120); emphasis added and quote modified. 22. See EIV Preface. 23. TTP, pp. 390–391; emphasis added and quote modified. See TTP Preface. 24. Maimonides (1975b, 116–117); emphasis added and quote modified. 25. EI, Appendix; emphasis added and quote modified. 26. Guide, pp. 505–506; emphasis added. See Book III, Chapter 26. 27. Especially in the case of Spinoza, I agree with Etienne Balibar’s claim that for Spinoza, philosophy and politics cannot be two separate domains of inquiry. See Balibar (1998, 4). 28. Even someone who has the capacity for demonstrative or speculative reason must have his or her knowledge and desires/activity (as expressed by affirmation or denial) oriented toward non-explicit and divine “objects.” Know that to begin with this science is very harmful, I mean the divine science. In the same way, it is also harmful to make clear the meaning of the parables of the prophets and to draw attention to the figurative senses of the terms used in addressing the people, figurative senses of which the books of prophecy are full. […] Thus he who is seen to be perfect in mind and to be formed for that high rank—that is to say, demonstrative speculation and true intellectual inferences—should be elevated step by step, either by someone who directs his attention or by himself, until he achieves his perfection. If, however, he begins with the divine science, it will not be mere confusion in his beliefs that will befall him, but rather absolute negation. In my opinion an analogous case would be that of someone feeding a suckling with wheaten bread and meat and giving him wine to drink. He would undoubtedly kill him, not because these aliments are bad or unnatural for man, but because the child that receives them is too weak to digest them so as to derive a

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benefit from them. Guide, pp.  70–71; emphasis added. See Book I, Chapter 33. Similarly, an individual who uses solely imaginative concepts or words in an attempt satisfy his or her desire for “knowledge” would reject divine science as not only nonsensical but also as a threat to one’s “sure understanding,” or pleasing images. 29. PPC, Appendix 1, Chapter 6; emphasis added and quote modified. 30. Letter 9; emphasis added. 31. This understanding may explain why the Latin term ‘caute’ (caution) accompanies Spinoza’s monogram. Additionally, the need for experience may explain why in the Preface to the TTP, Spinoza seeks to engage with those who already have some political experience rather than the vulgar. 32. Guide, pp. 6–7; emphasis added. See Book I, Introduction. 33. This point may explain why Spinoza also is very reticent to identify opponents and interlocutors. 34. EC, pp. 60–61; emphasis added. Introduction. 35. Guide, p. 6; quote modified. See Book I, Introduction. 36. Ibid, p. 8. 37. EIV, Appendix; emphasis added. 38. Letter 9. 39. Guide, p. 3. See Dedicatory Letter. 40. See Dobbs-Weinstein (2009a, 100–101). 41. Guide, pp. 17–18; emphasis added. 42. TdIE, 17; emphasis added and translation modified. 43. See Dobbs-Weinstein (2009a, 108). 44. Guide, p. 50; emphasis added. See Book I, Chapter 21. 45. EIII, Definitions of the Affects, Definition 20; emphasis added. 46. Guide, pp.  5–6; emphasis added and quote modified. See Book I, Introduction. 47. PPC, Appendix 1, Chapter 6; emphasis added and quote modified. 48. “For doubt is nothing but the suspension of the mind concerning some affirmation or negation, which it would affirm or deny if something did not occur to it, the ignorance of which must render its knowledge of the thing imperfect. From this it is inferred that doubt always arises from the fact that things are investigated without order.” TdIE, 80. 49. Letter 21; emphasis added. 50. “Whenever it happens, after a long investigation, that my natural knowledge either seems to contradict this [revealed] word, or is not easily reconciled with it, this word has so much authority with me that I suspect the conceptions I imagine to be clear, rather than put them above and against the truth I think I find prescribed to me in that book. […] I rather incline toward that word, even without reason, merely on the ground that it has

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proceeded from the most perfect being […] and therefore I must accept it.” Letter 20; quote modified. 51. Dobbs-Weinstein explains how philosophical instruction must be paradoxical in some sense to generate the possibility of philosophical inquiry. See Dobbs-Weinstein (2009a, 102). 52. Guide, pp.  7–8; emphasis added. See Book I, Introduction. Josef Stern makes an insightful observation that the lightning flashes of understanding do not represent a transcendent-like rapture, but rather, that one understands always through one’s embodied existence. That is, there is always “night,” or material existence, and “light,” or knowledge, only manifests itself through that fundamental material condition. See Stern (2013, 43 and 292–293). 53. TdIE, 99. 54. Letter 9; translation modified. Sylvain Zac argues that Spinoza’s concept of a “living” or dynamic God disallows any direct relationship between man and God such that any description or knowledge of God/Nature must be nominal and equivocal. See Zac (1996, 151–153). 55. In his analysis of Richard Kennigton’s understanding of Spinoza’s method, Joshua Parens argues that Spinoza’s method derives itself from experience rather than through deduction. See Parens (2012, 82–83); see also Kennington (2004, 218–223). In general, I agree with his assessment. However, I believe that the language of one’s method must also be judged by its ability to induce and express intellectual activity; that is, there must also be an experience of method’s use and relevance to the knower’s ethical-­political conditions. As a result, Spinoza’s materialism and determinism, which Parens notes, rather than indicating a single universal (empirical-­analytical) method to discovery, implies a sensitivity to different concrete experiences and to the achievement of human flourishing. Additionally, for Spinoza, experience should not be conceived as a clear transparent datum, capable of resolving uncertainty, but instead, experience requires much work to express degrees of understanding. As such, I do not believe that Spinoza abandons premodern views of experience that require different perspectives, practices, and activities on the part of the knower which together elicit understanding and different kinds of experience. See also Dobbs-­Weinstein (2009b, 456). Building on David Lachterman’s analysis of Spinoza’s physics, Parens argues that the centrality of physics in Spinoza’s philosophy shows that Spinoza employs and seeks a single reductive method based on empirical experience and natural-physical laws to understand and unify diverse subjects and sciences. This shows that Spinoza rejects premodern (Maimonidean) concerns about radically different forms of inquiry. This is

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an important distinction, and Parens suggests that Spinoza’s method aligns with a Baconian method of knowing. See Parens (2012, 79–84). Nevertheless, Lachterman, in other writings, suggests that both Maimonides and Spinoza share a commitment to the absolute necessity of nature, which he terms ‘cosmotheoria’. He notes that Maimonides’ equating of divine acts with natural acts indicates a shared realization with Spinoza that any “revealed” law or any explanation must comport with and express the absolute necessity of Nature. This agrees with Maimonides’ view that nature does nothing in vain and that causes and effects are intimately bound up together. Furthermore, Lachterman notes that Spinoza’s physics seeks to primarily explain how determinate singular individuals can express their intrinsic unique reality (i.e. individuated conatus) without dependence on and reduction to an extrinsic law or standard of reality, i.e. an ideal indifferent logic, such as Cartesian physics. As a result, the reality and experiences of individuals express the intrinsic necessity of God’s eternal necessity and could not be unreal or deficient relative to an ideal logic law, logic, or value. Hence, the necessity of singular individuals and the necessity of concrete engagements among them (i.e. historical minglings in an Al-Farabian sense) is a messy process that eschews any ideal reduction. As I have argued throughout the work, the necessity of singular (historicalconcrete) experiences requires conventional-natural methods/affects so as to address and express singular perfection and understanding. I believe that both Maimonides and Spinoza are committed to using laws and explanations to primarily develop the singular perfections of embodied knowers. See Lachterman (1991). 56. Letter 8. 57. Letter 9. 58. Letter 9; emphasis added and translation modified. The translation has been modified to reflect Spinoza’s intention in the Latin text to highlight the mental agency of an individual to generate understanding from experiences. Important to note is the Latin word ‘rerumve’, which indicates ‘sive’, the Latin inclusive ‘or.’ 59. Letter 9; emphasis added. 60. Letter 9. 61. Elsewhere, I have described the importance of Spinoza’s epistemic distinctions represented by his use of three Latin terms: objectum, ideatum, and idea. These distinctions help us to see that Spinoza’s epistemology does not seek a cognitive reduction of experience but rather an engagement with it so as to express intrinsic intellectual activity. See Whitman (2019a, 105–106 and 113–115). 62. Letter 9.

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63. In “Essence, Existence and Power in Ethics I: The Foundations of Proposition 16,” Alexandre Matheron shows that the conceivability of God or any object requires that the mind by definition must assert existence as a condition for that idea to exist. As a result, the idea itself must be an affirmation or intellectual reality that does not exclude the reality of the object but involves that existence so as to continue in its intellectual actuality or affirmation. See Matheron (1991, 26–29). Michael della Rocca argues that Spinoza’s philosophy can be derived from the principle of sufficient reason. Della Rocca’s use of the principle of sufficient reason does have some similarity to my claim that intelligibility requires existence through which an idea must be conceived. However, della Rocca assumes that Spinoza advocates a strong rationalism and that sufficient explanations indicate corresponding intellectual realities that agree completely with reality, i.e., explanations are revelations of something real, e.g. Nature’s laws. See della Rocca (2008, 4–12). I argue that something like the principle of sufficient reason implies that the activities of the mind are primary and cannot reduce Nature to a specific content. This entails that aspectival definitions provide the means to express (diverse) actuality so as to continually think that specific modal actuality. 64. Edwin Curley presents an opposite view to the nominalism that I am presenting here, “Spinoza’s Geometric Method.” Curley argues that Spinoza does believe that definitions can adequately represent and conform to an external object as seen in Spinoza’s account of proper/improper definitions of God in Proposition 8 Ethics I; see Curley (1986, 160–161). 65. I disagree with Aaron Garrett’s claim that Maimonides and Gersonides did not have an influence on Spinoza’s “technical” understanding of definition. See Garrett (2003, 152). 66. Guide, p. 113; emphasis added. See Book I, Chapter 51. 67. For an additional analysis on the similarity between Maimonides’s and Spinoza’s concept of attribute, see Dobbs-Weinstein (1994, 168–169). 68. Guide, pp. 112–113. See Book I, Chapter 51. 69. Guide, p. 114; emphasis added. See Book I, Chapter 51. 70. Guide, p. 482; quote modified. See Book III, Chapter 20. 71. EIP17ScholII; emphasis added. 72. Guide, p. 121. See Book I, Chapter 53. 73. Guide, p. 18. See Book I, Introduction. 74. Josef Stern provides a good analysis of Al-Farabi’s influence on Maimonides’ understanding of the need for reticence. See Stern (2013, 52). 75. Guide, pp. 175–176. See Book I, Chapter 71. 76. EIIP47. 77. Guide, pp. 33–34. See Book I, Chapter 8. 78. TdIE, 69 and 70.

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79. EIIIP2Schol; emphasis added and quote modified. 80. Guide, p. 67. See Book I, Chapter 31. 81. Mogens Laerke outlines well the different views on Spinoza’s language and commits himself to a nominal understanding of definition. He argues that nominal definitions (of common notions) show that Spinoza’s language seeks to strip imaginative associations of words so that intellectual understanding may express itself via a nominal useful definition. I agree with much of Laerke’s understanding that nominal words that express intellectual understanding “strip” imaginative associations. See Laerke (2014). Nevertheless, I would reframe the issue in relation to desire. Why do the wise seek to restrain and manage concrete conditions so that through this ruling/self-activity, they may express singular “moments” of understanding, ones not merely reduced to and defined by imaginative and social determinations? This comes about because desire is always relative to the singular individual and his or her desire in relation to determinate engagements. As a result, the wise seek to understand and use experience to express intellectual “moments” of self-awareness, using nominal and critical language to induce such an awareness, or self-ruling. They realize that they need critical language to block hidden inherited desires/determinations and also that one’s self-activity is always relative to their specific embodied activities. Assuming language can express an indeterminate universal reality may re-­inscribe a bad consciousness and eschew the ethicalpolitical demands/activities incumbent upon them. I argue this because I believe that both Maimonides and Spinoza are committed to a unity of desire in which the same desire for perfection manifests itself in different (relatively active or passive) ways from senseimagination to reason to intellect. As a result, language that is useful to seemingly express intellect, i.e. nominal definitions of common notions, does not seek to affirm as such a (transcendent) metaphysical reality. Instead, an intellectual understanding should immediately be redirected to perfecting a singular individual’s embodied activity or understanding; its affirmation under the aspect of eternity. Julie Klein presents an understanding of eternity in Spinoza’s philosophy with which I concur. She argues that for Spinoza, eternity does not represent transcendence or a metaphysical reality, but rather an expression of concrete modalities as real, expressive, or necessary. See Klein (2002). I fear that nominal language merely expressing the structure of the universe would introduce a split in human nature: one disembodied and desiring disembodied objects of knowledge, the other embodied and engaged in concrete undergoings and activities. My view of nominalism derives itself from Idit Dobbs-Weinstein’s understanding of equivocal language nominalism. See Dobbs-Weinstein (2009a, 96). Also, it aligns with Willi

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Goetschel’s understanding of the nominalism of the singular, which is derived from Etienne Balibar’s development of it. This concept entails that nominal definitions present the singular power of Nature in opposition to abstract universals. See Goetschel (2004, 42). Also, see Balibar (1994). 82. Josef Stern provides an account of language in Maimonides’ philosophy that addresses similar points presented in Laerke’s analysis of Spinoza’s view of language. Stern notes that there is also an internal and external distinction in speech/language for Maimonides. External speech represents primarily imaginative associations that need to be “stripped” so as to generate true meaning. This removal of associations enables an internal speech that expresses logical relations and intelligibles that are immune to imaginative reduction and errancy. See Stern (2009, 244), and see Stern (2013), 198. Despite this internal consistency, the composite nature of internal speech, and any science based thereon, makes it unable to express the singular reality of God. Rather than supporting a full cognitive reduction of reality, internal speech can through its “negation” express a more active (intrinsic non-­mediated) reality with which we may participate to some extent in our understanding and activity. Again, I would argue that this internalizing of speech and meaning is ultimately meant to direct the activities of thinking and meaning intrinsically so that the knower can express his or her greatest agency and affective happiness: one not reduced to errant desiring and extrinsic objects. The primary goal is to understand and use language so as to induce greater internal activity and happiness; important to this project is a keen awareness of the hidden desires and prejudices language may re-inscribe, even in rational discourse. 83. David Lactherman explains well how Euclid and other premoderns approached mathematical rigor, certainty, and truth. For them, they did not seek to eliminate the pre-technical nature of experience but to acknowledge it as the basis from which to be a practicing geometer. See Lachterman (1989, 27–32). I have argued elsewhere that for Spinoza, experience cannot be reduced to and produced from an abstract relational system. From an Aristotelian perspective, the example of a dyad precedes and remains irreducible to the concept or the number two in general. See Whitman (2019b, 95). 84. EIIIP2Schol. 85. This expression on our part, which would indicate perfection and power, must be a singular activity and one attuned to the immanent or immediate conditions of both the knower and the known. Its perfection and power relates directly and immediately to the self-action of a particular individual rather than re-presenting a posited prior reality or indefinite concept. The affective reality becomes just that affecting and real, and through such

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activity, we are most congruent with our environment and our own power in it. This shows an intrinsic nature to experience that does not depend on an extrinsic posited reality. Furthermore, it excludes doubt as an aspect to this experience or affective/active aspect of knowing the world and one’s self.

Bibliography Balibar, Etienne. 1994. L’institution de la verite: Hobbes et Spinoza. In Lieux et noms de la vérité, 21–54. La Tour-d’Aigues: Editions de l’Aube. ———. 1998. Spinoza and Politics. Trans. Peter Snowdon. New York: Verso. Curley, Edwin. 1986. Spinoza’s Geometric Method. Studia Spinozana 2: 151–170. Della Rocca, Michael. 2008. Spinoza. New York: Routledge. Dobbs-Weinstein, Idit. 1994. Maimonidean Aspects in Spinoza’s Thought. Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 17: 153–174. ———. 2009a. The Ambiguity of the Imagination and the Ambivalence of Language in Maimonides and Spinoza. In Maimonides and His Heritage, ed. Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, Lenn E.  Goodman, and James Allen Grady, 95–112. Albany: SUNY Press. ———. 2009b. Belief, Knowledge, and Certainty. In Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy: From Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century, ed. Steven Nadler and Tamar Rudavsky, 453–480. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Garrett, Aaron. 2003. Meaning in Spinoza’s Method. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goetschel, Willi. 2004. Spinoza’s Modernity: Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. James, Susan. 2011. Creating Rational Understanding: Spinoza as a Social Epistemologist. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society: Supplementary Volumes 85: 181–199. Kennington, Richard. 2004. Analytic and Synthetic Methods in Spinoza’s Ethics. In On Modern Origins: Essays in Modern Philosophy, ed. Pamela Kraus and Frank Hunt, 205–228. Lanham: Lexington Books. Klein, Julie. 2002. ‘By Eternity I Understand’: Eternity According to Spinoza. Iyyun: The Jerusalem Philosophical Quarterly 51: 295–324. Lachterman, David. 1989. The Ethics of Geometry: A Genealogy of Modernity. New York: Routledge. ———. 1991. Laying Down the Law: The Theological-Political Matrix of Spinoza’s Physics. In Leo Strauss’s Thought: Toward a Critical Engagement, ed. Alan Udoff, 123–153. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Laerke, Mogens. 2014. Spinoza’s Language. Journal of the History of Philosophy 52 (3): 519–548.

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Maimonides, Moses. 1975b. Letter to Joseph. In Ethical Writings of Maimonides, ed. Raymond L. Weiss and Charles E. Butterworth, 113–128. New York: Dover. ———. 2011a. The Guide of the Perplexed. In Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 2nd ed., ed. Joshua Parens and Joseph Macfarland. Trans. Ralph Lerner, Muhsin Mahdi, and Joshua Parens, 183–202. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Matheron, Alexandre. 1991. Essence, Existence and Power in Ethics I: The Foundations of Proposition 16. In God and Nature: Spinoza’s Metaphysics, ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel, vol. 1, 23–34. Leiden: E.J. Brill. Parens, Joshua. 2012. Maimonides and Spinoza: Their Conflicting Views of Human Nature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schliesser, Eric. 2011. Spinoza on the Politics of Philosophical Understanding Susan James and Eric Schliesser Angels and Philosophers: with a New Interpretations of Spinoza’s Understanding of Common Notions. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 111 (13): 497–518. Stern, Josef. 2009. Meaning and Language. In The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy: From Antiquity through the Seventeenth Century, eds. Steven Nadler and T.M. Rudavsky, 230–266. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2013. The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Whitman, Norman. 2019a. A Cartesian Misreading of Spinoza’s Understanding of Adequate Knowledge. Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 40 (1): 103–130. ———. 2019b. The Reality of Modes in Spinoza’s Philosophy. Idealistic Studies 49 (1): 85–102. Zac, Sylvain. 1996. The Relation Between Life, Conatus, and Virtue in Spinoza’s Philosophy. Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 19: 151–173.

CHAPTER 6

The “Place” of Reason

When considering the status and nature of reason in Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s philosophies, it is helpful to summarize several of their commitments presented in earlier chapters in order to properly understand their respective views. In general, these commitments can be grouped under their main thesis that a human being necessarily has an embodied intellect. For both, reason must develop out of one’s initial concrete desirative and sensory-imaginative powers. The management and redirection of these concrete powers leads to a rational way of living.1 Reason is not initially compelling but must be instituted and expressed via these “lower” powers continually, primarily in a community that fosters and induces reason. For both, reason derives from a limit to excessive desires and images that left alone would endlessly conflict with other individualized desires and images. Instead, reason offers a way to move to a shared advantageous life that can profit greater numbers of individuals and increase virtuous, and rational activities, even for the individual. Yet, in order to know the success and force of reason, one must experience how reason works to directly limit and reform desires/perceptions so as to induce a more active and sustainable way of life. Reason exerts a force through and in these images, but not as a detached ruling concept that, from an a priori perspective or place, can absolutely predict and determine every possible occasion. This entails that reason must be based on experience, and that, more importantly, reason is entwined with certain images or experiences by which it directly limits and redirects historical forms of desiring. Reason comes out of images but also represents a force within © The Author(s) 2020 N. L. Whitman, An Examination of the Singular in Maimonides and Spinoza, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49472-8_6

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certain (historically relevant and advantageous) images that can corral and redirect individual activities and perceptions into a sustained ruling activity. We think through images and from them2 so as to judge how effective they are at reforming our desires and experiences to a more active expression. As a result, in order to assess reason, one must return to their desires and concrete activities not only to judge reason’s effectiveness but also to directly express its compelling and powerful force/nature in one’s concurrent desires for reason. This entails that the organization of one’s concrete living directly comports with and concurrently expresses a rational way of life, each pole implying and supporting the other. Once rational behaviors and perspectives concurrently express themselves in an individual, and in a community, individuals may achieve intellect which represents a mode of living that neither reduces to a mere reception of a universal concept or decontextualized procedure nor to an immediate image or desire. We cannot reduce intellect to an absolute concept as though it is easily and pristinely gifted from an external source apart and exempt from one’s immediate living and continued striving. Additionally, we cannot assume intellect equates to imaginative desires that initially seem universally valid or intrinsically justified without engagement with a wider world. Singular truths represent the concord when reason and desire-imagination coordinate to express concurrently immediate, necessary, and uniquely relevant truths/ (self-complete) activities.3 Nevertheless, the need for the continual striving to institute and live by reason indicates that reason is only a human mode of perfection and is not universally privileged to express Nature as such, or, rather, absolutely govern it. Instead, for Maimonides and Spinoza, their worldviews and metaphysics represent an amoral and a-rational universe that engenders a multitude of different actualities, some compatible with human activities and many incompatible; in fact, every actuality is potentially beneficial and corrupting. As a result, for both, the same natural and necessary forces/conditions that generate any human good or rational ordering also engender opposed or corrupting forces/conditions that undermine the supposed universal stability and institution of universal rational practices. The very need for rational activities for human beings is because not only are we ill-disposed to natural activity (being excessive to it)4 but also natural processes are not essentially disposed to our perspectives (and use) of them. Instead, we must always refer our views of what is possible in nature (i.e. inferences or predictions) back to our

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experiences and singular expressions so as to best generate perfection and rational truth for ourselves. We are constantly striving against and ruling errant affects (using them as instruments) so as to express a more powerful and active expression from such affects and, thereby, concurrently perfecting our intrinsic agency. For both, despite and because of errant affects, reason may express itself as a powerful force/reality capable of generating a singular truth/expression that is irreducible to errant affects (i.e. simple passive images/moments) and irreducible to a static projection assumed to be outside this affective generating natural process. Both positions represent a form of passivity and an inability to express (human) activity in Nature. Instead, both philosophers seek to incorporate reason into one’s lived existing and striving so that one may express singular moments of perfection and knowledge that are irreducible to and ruling of one’s passive determinations.5 Reason is not divorced from the material striving of individuals, and reason fits within both philosophers’ commitment to the unity of desire. For both, the desire to persist in and perfect one’s agency is the same throughout one’s existence. This same desire is expressed in different degrees from the sensible to the intellectual. Reason represents a human expression of this desire and agency to continue, and reason as specific to human existing perfects the different aspects of human living as best as possible. Reason is the activity by which human individuals organize their different aspects of life so that intellectual understanding may express itself. Reason is intimately tied to the soul of a human individual by which he or she strives to maintain an organized ratio or proportion to distinct parts/activities. Reason coordinates the different activities and experiences within an individual so that an individual may express their irreducible activity that is represented by the very need and activity of reason in the first place. The soul of human beings represents an irreducible activity and potential power, not defined by mere material parts, as represented by sense and imagination. Reason represents a potential transition from extrinsic relations among various parts/activities (i.e. a ratio or proportion) to an intrinsic relation (i.e. an irreducible, unique, and complete self-activity). Nevertheless, as an embodied soul, a human individual must have his or her rational activities initially and continually entwined with ruling motions and determinations that govern/overcome other material aspects of one’s existence so that a stable coordination comes about from this ruling force’s/motion’s ability to restrain and incorporate other forces into a sustainable living unity.

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For both philosophers, sensation, imagination, and reason develop together through this activity and are linked by this material process. As a result, both eschew any faculty psychology. There are no separate and innate faculties of will or memory. Will is not separate from concrete affects, and memory is not a disembodied faculty that has access to concepts devoid of any material history. Any rational abstractions from reality must be essentially based in experience and derive from a concrete engagement with experiences, i.e. concrete particulars. Conversely, abstractions must ultimately prove themselves useful and compelling by relating back continually to experience and a serial engagement with particulars. The intimate connection of these three powers or “faculties” is unified by a material process in the service of desire or appetition. Since will does not represent a faculty separate from and opposed to sensual desire, will and appetite are fundamentally the same and are essentially material aspects for living or the striving to persist. Desire represents and expresses different degrees of striving in the forms and activities of sense, imagination, and reason. Nevertheless, desire is always for a finite material particular and could never be for a purely abstract notion with indeterminate content, that is, with indeterminate “affective” content that could not limit, determine, and orient the individual’s material activities. For both, desire (or striving) continually engages with concrete individuals so as to move an individual toward them (i.e. be determined by them) and so as to exercise the same individual’s potential power/force through/over them. Desire that expresses itself rationally strives to generate a consistent irreducible activity (intellect) within a serial and necessary engagement with finite individuals. It moves individuals toward conducive finite images, ideas, practices, and a favorable community so that the incorporation of these beneficial conditions induces and helps reason to persist, from which intellect then may be expressed as an irreducible activity (i.e. intellectual and ethical virtue/perfection). Rational desiring strives toward and utilizes specific concrete conditions in a continual process of inquiry and ethical engagement with extrinsic others, whenever possible. As a result, abstract reason must align with prudential judgments that take into account time and place so that intellect may be expressed in this concrete striving to generate intellect/virtue, i.e. for an individual and through an individual’s (immediate self-complete) activity. Reason can remake and use the world to institute an advantageous way of life, but reason does not draw out the most ideal or optimal in material reality because there is no absolute or universal progress. There is no one

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best state of existence favored by Nature or even favored by human nature. Instead, reason exhibits what Maimonides calls “perspicacity,”6 by which it is able to perceive how certain images can exert a ruling force in certain contexts. It sees how certain images and rules may best be able to generate more powerful (consistent) effects and productive conditions from which intellectual perfection may occur despite errant and opposing affects. For both philosophers, the concept of usefulness of lower non-rational parts (as instruments for establishing the values of good and bad) is a central idea throughout their writings. Instrumentality as a central concept for establishing good and bad reveals that there is no one true or good manner that can be always relied on and can always be deployed to continue progress, and, thereby, foreclose potential (human) destruction. Additionally, this shows that a metaphysical reality that circumvents and negates experience so as to enable one to posit a single universal reality about the good or true is incorrect. Metaphysics does not indicate pure separability from matter as a form of abstraction, nor does it equate to a single abstract concept or reality. Metaphysics, rather than supporting only an achievement or attainment of abstract cognitive truths, for both, directs focus back to the actuality of individuals and materiality. Rather than dismissing metaphysical language as wholly useless and a subject to be discarded, I argue in this chapter that metaphysics and reason, as tools for structuring experience, are useful for the achievement of actual knowledge and the good. Yet, the reality of truth and the good must be actualized through the embodied faculties, powers, and singular experiences of concrete individuals. The place of metaphysics is not in a separate world but as expressed in an actual aspect derived from the actuality and activity of concrete embodied knowers. Reason does not provide immediate access to a posited extrinsic object of knowledge. Instead, reason as a practical order guides the performance of thinking such that the rational ordering becomes a lived activity, or a ruling of experiences so that experiences may generate intellectual truths. Because reason cannot have a ready-made idea or object of knowledge which it can grasp easily and always through demonstrative reasoning, Maimonides and Spinoza are very reticent on how the transition from reason to intellect occurs. Instead, reason is immanent to the regular occurrences or experiences of nature, and it manifests itself as a kind of explanation of that actuality. In turn, these explanations can be used to organize one’s concrete conditions to produce intellect. Nevertheless, rational explanations do not have an a priori, privileged perspective on

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how nature should and must proceed because for both there can be no universal inference to origin. Instead, Maimonides and Spinoza present historical forms of reasoning and intellect. For example, Spinoza uses the analogy of a hammer not requiring another hammer7 to produce it to argue that one does need ideal truths to produce appropriate and “perfect” singular truths in and for one’s context. Similarly, Maimonides argues that an individual never exposed to his or her mother and other women would be unable to have the appropriate experiences by which to explain human generation8; instead, they would rely on their current context to explain and universalize what seems reasonable. In both examples, the point is that reasoning modifies and employs experiences to generate an ordering so that the most “perfect” (i.e. most relevant and singular) ideas may occur for that historical context. Finally, the chapter will explore some differences between Maimonides and Spinoza on how they understand the singular. In particular, it examines how Maimonides’ use of an emanationist scheme may restrict his philosophy to stronger metaphysical commitments than Spinoza’s immanent view of God’s reality. Nevertheless, both are committed to the view that the activities of an embodied knower generate singular truths that are expressive and singularly relevant for their concrete conditions and desires.

The Amoralism/A-Rationalism of Nature For both Maimonides and Spinoza, reason derives from and must address the fact that natural conditions are both generative and corrupting, i.e. amoral and a-rational. Maimonides explicitly states this: And just as the forces of man that necessitate his generation and continued existence for the time in which he continues to exist are identical with those necessitating his corruption and passing-away, so are the causes of generation in the whole world of generation and corruption identical with those of corruption. To take an example: if it were possible that the four faculties that are to be found in the body of every being that nourishes itself—namely, the attractive faculty—be like the intellectual faculties and not act except as is proper, in the time in which it is proper, and in the measure in which it is proper, man would be preserved from many very great afflictions and from a number of diseases. However, as this is impossible and these faculties carry out natural activities without reflection and discernment and do not apprehend in any respect the activities they carry out, it follows

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necessarily that grave disease and affliction occur because of them, even though these faculties are at the same time the instrument through which living beings are produced and have a continued existence during the time in which they have it.9

Similarly, Spinoza implies that natural conditions do not obey human rules of reason. With these few words I have explained the causes of man’s lack of power and inconstancy, and why men do not observe the precepts of reason. Now it remains for me to show what reason prescribes to us, which affects agree with the rules of human reason, and which, on the other hand, are contrary to those rules. But before I begin to demonstrate these things in our cumbersome Geometric order.10

Instead, for Spinoza, we must accommodate ourselves to these natural conditions to have any productive and powerful form/order of reason and a stable life. Even here, Spinoza hints at that a geometric, rational order may be considered cumbersome and not necessarily suited to every object of examination. For Spinoza, all aspects of human beings are concrete, including reason, and, thus, must engage other concrete beings both positively and negatively. It is impossible that a man should not be a part of Nature, and that he should be able to undergo no changes except those which can be understood through his own nature alone, and of which he is the adequate cause. [ …] Next, if it were possible that a man could undergo no changes except those which can be understood through the man’s nature alone it would follow (by IIIP4 and P6) that he could not perish, but that necessarily he would always exist. And this would have to follow from a cause whose power would be either finite or infinite, viz. either from the power of man alone, who would be able to avert from himself other changes which could arise from external causes, or from the infinite power of Nature, by which all singular things would be directed so that the man undergo no other changes except those which assist his preservation. […] From this it follows that man is necessarily always subject to passions, that he follows and obeys the common order of Nature, and accommodates himself to it as much as the nature of things requires.11

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For Spinoza, reason must be sensitive to and instituted into these conditions/contexts. Reason is instituted in the sense that reason is expressed through them rather than merely being an application of a universal template somehow received from a universal a priori locus exempt from concrete expression. Maimonides concurs with Spinoza when he argues that human beings would initially fail, left alone without reason; nevertheless, reason does not grant success without much work and development of these a-rational natural conditions. As for man, and only man, let us suppose the case of an individual belonging to the human species that existed alone, had lost the governance of its conduct, and had become like the beasts. Such an individual would perish immediately; he could not last even one day except by accident—I mean if he should happen to find something to feed on. For foods through which he exists require the application of some art and a lengthy management that cannot be made perfect except through thought and perspicacity, as well as with the help of many tools and many individuals, every one of whom devotes himself to one single occupation. For this reason one is needed who would rule them and hold them together so that their society would be orderly and have continued existence in order that the various individuals should help one another. Because of this one finds in man the rational faculty in virtue of which he thinks, exerts his perspicacity, works, and prepares by means of various arts his food, his habitation, and his clothing. Through it he rules all the parts of his body in such a way that the ruling part acts in the way it does and the ruled part is governed the way it is ruled. Because of this a human individual who, according to a supposition you might make, would be deprived of this faculty and left only with the animal faculties, would perish and be destroyed immediately.12

When faced with this a-rational and amoral reality, reason must institute its force rather than assume that it has a privileged perspective and guaranteed access to initial success. The initial impotency of reason must be overcome by it being wedded to and expressed through powerful images and motions that can rule others so that a well-ordered form of living may occur. By relying on the material determination of the limiting image/ motion, reason must concur with these images and derive from them rather than be assumed to have an a priori authorizing position devoid of context. Reason’s authority and productivity is concurrent with material forms that rule in accord with and express reasonable activities. In many

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instances, including in the above passage, Maimonides demonstrates explicitly how a sovereign through his or her limiting capacity/power establishes a well-ordered and productive/powerful community. In this case, the limit is the basis from which reason develops and through which reason proves its worth and power. Additionally, Maimonides fundamentally links the well-ordered and ruling nature of reason to a vital and dominating motion that transmits direct force so as to limit and coordinate subordinate/weaker motions. And just as in the body of man there are ruling parts and ruled parts requiring for their continued existence the governance of the ruling part governing them, so are there in the world as a whole ruling parts—namely, the fifth encompassing body—and ruled parts requiring a governor—they are elements and what is composed of them. And just as the ruling part, which is the heart, is always in motion and is the principle of every motion to be found in the body, whereas the other parts of the body are ruled by the heart, which in virtue of its motion sends toward them the forces they require for their functions; so heaven in virtue of its motion exerts governance over the other parts of the world and sends to every generated thing the forces that subsist in the latter. Accordingly, every motion existing in the world has as its first principle the motion of heaven, and every soul existing in the beings endowed with souls that are in the world has as its principle the soul of heaven.13

Finally, this motion must be constant, being continually imparted, rather than distant and disembodied. And just as an individual would die and his motions and forces would be abolished if the heart were to come to rest even for an instant, so the death of the world as a whole and the abolition of everything in it would result if the heavens were to come to rest. And just as a living being lives as a whole in virtue of the motion of its heart, even if there subsist in it parts of the body that are at rest and not sentient […] so is this whole, being one individual that lives in virtue of the movement of heaven, which has with regard to it the rank that the heart has with regard to the beings endowed with hearts—and this even though there are in the world many inanimate bodies that are at rest.14

Without the constant immersion in and expression from these motions, reason would be a hollow and impotent “ruling” concept. From the above passages, it is important to note that certain powerful and ruling motions

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must be considered as principles which, if abolished, would immediately eliminate any material order. By wedding reason and souls to constant material forces, these ruling rational orders and souls must be concurrently expressed with material principles, or forces, and cannot exist separately and be known as real, powerful, or true.15 Similarly, Spinoza addresses unequivocally the impotent nature of reason without such a direct arrangement with concrete activities and an affective involvement in them. No affect can be restrained by the true knowledge of good and evil insofar as it is true, but only insofar as it is considered as an affect. […] An affect is an idea by which the Mind affirms of its Body a greater or lesser force of existing than before (by the general Definition of the Affects). So (by P1), it has nothing positive which could be removed by the presence of the true. Consequently the true knowledge of good and evil, insofar as it is true, cannot restrain any affect. […] But insofar as it is an affect (see P8), it can restrain the affect, if it is stronger than it (by P7), q.e.d.16

Like Maimonides, Spinoza notes that in order to rule or restrain errant affects, reason must be directly linked to an affect, and more importantly, to the affect’s force through which reason exerts governance. Nevertheless, since reason derives from an amoral foundation and responds to it with concrete affects in this natural condition, reason may be overcome by other incompatible forces. A Desire which arises from a true knowledge of good and evil can be extinguished or restrained by many other Desires which arise from affects by which we are tormented. […] From a true knowledge of good and evil, insofar as this is an affect (by P8), there necessarily arises a Desire (by Def. Aff. I), which is greater as the affect from which it arises is greater (by IIIP37). But because this Desire arises (by hypothesis) from the fact that we understand something truly, it follows in us insofar as we act (by IIIP3). And so it must be understood through our essence alone (by IIID2), and consequently (by IIIP7), its force and growth can be defined only by human power alone. Next, Desires which arise from affects by which we are torn are also greater as these affects are more violent. And so their force and growth (by P5) must be defined by the power of external causes, which if it were compared with ours, would indefinitely surpass our power (by P3). Hence, Desires which arise from such affects can be more violent than that which arises from a true knowledge of good and evil, and can therefore (by P7) restrain or extinguish it, q.e.d.17

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Consistently, Spinoza notes that reason must be directly related to and expressed through the concrete activities of natural motions and determinations; otherwise, reason would be impotent and would, in fact, induce a lack of power in this arrangement. As a result, reason considered as an unmoored or unguided image would lead to destruction, since an ideal reality could not move, if conceived as merely true. The true must be linked to experience and follow experience’s guide when possible. Historical knowledge must be the basis for developing rational rules and forms of ruling. Moreover, Spinoza notes that increasing (conceptual) knowledge, or merely reason, without the subsequent desires and material forces/expressions, would increase much sorrow and reveal a lack of productive existence, i.e. an inability to rule. With this I believe I have shown the cause why men are moved more by opinion than by true reason, and why the true knowledge of good and evil arouses disturbances of the mind, and often yields to lust of every kind. […] Ecclesiastes also seems to have had the same thing in mind when he said: “He who increases in knowledge increases in sorrow.” I do not say these things in order to infer that it is better to be ignorant than to know, or that there is no difference between the fool and the man who understands when it comes to moderating the affects. My reason, rather, is that it is necessary to come to know both our nature’s power and its lack of power, so that we can determine what reason can do in moderating the affects, and what it cannot do. I said that in this part I would treat only of man’s lack of power.18

From this passage, it is clear that for Spinoza, increasing conceptual or abstract theoretical knowledge does not directly relate to the favorable management of errant affects, let alone the ruling power and desire to do so. Instead, for both philosophers, the a-rational and amoral nature of existing beings entails that we must fundamentally acknowledge that our desires are not rationally disposed and simply seek to express themselves in this reality in whichever way is possible and/or convenient—not curtailing their activities in light of a posited conceptual standard or theory. Nevertheless, as a determination that seeks greater existence and power, imaginative desires can be directed through powerful and sustaining motions/images that would make these desires more productive, and thereby, more “well-ordered.” This is “well-ordered” in the sense of

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simply being curtailed, and thereby, being cooperative and compatible with external realities. Yet again, the fundamental nature of reality is amoral and both generative and corrupting, so that there is no one rational path or ideal expression from the material constituents. This is why both thinkers emphasize the instrumentality of actual beings. What we strive for from reason is nothing but understanding; nor does the Mind insofar as it uses reason, judge anything else useful to itself except what leads to understanding. […] Next, since this striving of the Mind, by which the Mind, insofar as it reasons, strives to preserve its being, is nothing but understanding (by P22C) is the first and only foundation of virtue, nor do we strive to understand things for the sake of some end (by P25). On the contrary, the Mind, insofar as it reasons, cannot conceive anything to be good for itself except what leads us to understanding (by D1), q.e.d.19

Furthermore, the usefulness and appropriateness of these actualities must still be determined in evolving contexts and continually so that there is no one absolute way to express the rational concretely as a final state. Whereas, for Maimonides, God would not rely on material constituents to generate its rational activity or power, human reason requires instruments through which reason may be profited, that is, so that reason and virtue may be even achieved for a human. Maimonides states this explicitly when he distinguishes God from humans: Know that in this comparison that we have established between the world as a whole and a human individual, there is a discrepancy with respect to what we have mentioned only with regard to three points. The first is this. The ruling part of every living being possessing a heart is profited by the ruled parts; the profit deriving from the latter accrues to it so as to be useful to it. There is nothing like this in the universal being. For to no being, the governance of which overflows or confers a force, does any profit accrue in any respect from that which is ruled by it. For its giving the gifts it gives is like the giving of gifts on the parts of a generous and superior man who does it because of the nobility of his nature and the excellence of his disposition, not because of a hope for a reward: this is to become like to the deity, may His name be exalted.20

For both, rather than waiting to be employed by human reason in a specific ideal way, the amoral and a-rational instruments of nature in their

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initial and essential status as versatile and plastic tools provide the potential profit so that an individual may express reason and intellect. By and through the very use of these a-rational tools, one achieves reason. Through this necessary engagement with one’s concrete conditions, reason becomes a part of the living and active context and not divorced from it as a wholly abstract entity. Additionally, reason as an organizing tool/force itself prepares the conditions and potential by which an individual may express some intrinsic or irreducible activity, i.e. intellect and virtue. Reason organizes disparate affects in extrinsic ratios so that they may be transformed into an intrinsic activity whereby an individual may express intellect.

Reason as a Human Activity and Power for Perfection This need for utility shows that reason is an expression of desire, which is an (human) actuality and an individual determination, that seeks to develop and express its reality as much as possible. Both Spinoza and Maimonides consider the reality of an individual and his or her desire as the basis for reasoning about the true and good, since reason seeks to perfect that individual’s existence or desire for actuality. Spinoza writes: No one can desire to be blessed, to act well and to live well, unless at the same time he desires to be, to act, and to live, i.e., to actually exist. […] No virtue can be conceived prior to this [virtue] (viz. the striving to preserve oneself). […] The striving to preserve itself is the very essence of a thing (by IIIP7). Therefore, if some virtue could be conceived prior to this [virtue], viz. to this striving, the very essence of the thing would be conceived prior to itself (by D8), which is absurd (as is known through itself). Therefore, no virtue, etc., q.e.d. […] The striving to preserve oneself is first and only foundation of virtue. For no other principle can be conceived prior to this one (by P22) and no virtue can be conceived without it (by P21).21

Maimonides takes a similar stance in his development of Al-Farabi’s understanding of desire and political striving.22 Both he and Al-Farabi are committed to the unity of desire in which there are stages of the same desire that proceed from sensual desiring to rational desiring. The same desire for individual perfection and mastery of natural errant affects manifests itself in each stage. For both, only political and rational striving provide

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the means by which individual human desires are perfected to intellectual and ethical virtue. Since desire (or an individual determination) is the basis for any perfection, perfecting this actuality through the activities associated with desire, or continued striving, is essential to instituting and expressing a rational desire and way of living. But this means that rational desiring can be only expressed through and by an individual and their affects. Reason is not prior to the virtue, or reality, of an individual striving, but reason is dependent upon virtue or actuality and develops it to the profit and power of both. Desire for reason must be expressed in the individual’s serial engagements with other particulars to not only prove reason’s effectiveness, reality, or force, but also, to prove the compelling nature of a desire for reason. This would then demonstrate reason is not an expression of mere random or contingent opinion or an indeterminate concept held by a “knower.” Yet, as a part of a form of life, reason cannot assume that its perfection represents a total expression of Nature. Reason is only for human perfection, and as such, reason merely as a universal theory necessarily cannot express the individualized perfection of each individual. Instead, each individual must embody and express reasonable practices that may be transformed into a singular expression of intellect. Intellect manifests itself through an individual when they are able to concurrently manage affects and express reason throughout their concrete aspects of living. When this concurrence manifests itself, an individual expresses an intrinsic power or irreducible aspect of herself that accords with a “higher” form of natural necessity, i.e. providence for Maimonides or intuitive knowledge for Spinoza. But, as Maimonides notes, providence can only be attached to and expressed by individuals. After what I have stated before about providence singling out the human species alone among all the species of animals, I say that it is known that no species exists outside the mind, but that the species and the other universals are, as you know, mental notions and that every existent outside the mind is an individual or group of individuals. This being known, it is also known that the divine overflow that exists united to the human species, I mean the human intellect, is merely what exists as individual intellects[.] […] when any human individual has obtained, because of the disposition of his matter and his training, a greater portion of this overflow than others, providence will of necessity watch more carefully over him than others—if, that is to say,

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providence is, as I have mentioned, consequent upon the intellect. Accordingly divine providence does not watch in an equal manner over all the individuals of the human species, but providence is graded as their human perfection is graded. In accordance with this speculation it follows necessarily that His providence, may He be exalted, that watches over the prophets is very great and proportionate to their degree of prophecy and that His providence that watches over excellent and righteous men is proportionate to their excellence and righteousness. For it is this measure of the overflow of the divine intellect that makes the prophets speak, guides the actions of righteous men, and perfects the knowledge of excellent men with regard to what they know. As for the ignorant and disobedient, their state is despicable proportionately to their lack of overflow, and they have been relegated to the rank of the individuals of all the other species of animals[.]23

Universal notions do not exist outside the mind and do not represent, as indeterminate universals, the perfection/providence of each individual. Rather, concrete individuals must always express their necessity and perfection through their embodied conditions according to their concrete power. Those that have greater power are “watched over by providence” more in the sense that these individuals have a greater ruling or principled (wise) existence. Those that are ignorant and disobedient have been overcome by errant affects and are unable to express from that confused condition any intrinsic singular and stable activity. The gradation of human power indicates that providence and ruling are specific individual activities. Like Spinoza, Maimonides stresses the fact that nature creates only individuals24 and that individuals are the “bearers” of truth, rather than merely instantiations of universals. Yet, how they “bear,” or rather express, truth represents whether it is merely passive and contingent (imagistic) or irreducible, ruling, and necessary (intellectual). The desire for reason so as to express intellectual truths and individual perfections is intimately tied to the soul of each human individual. Since the human soul by its nature expresses an irreducible and potential power not defined by mere parts nor satisfied or perfected by images, this kind of soul requires reason by which it strives to perfect itself into something more than a mere image. The human soul’s desire or striving to perfect itself needs reason to organize and use amoral/a-rational and disparate affects. Using and expressing one’s power rationally through these affects enables one to achieve intellect. Nevertheless, reason still represents an extrinsic organization and management of affects through which one may achieve intellectual and

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singular expressions of perfection. The circulation of rational practices and theories in themselves do not have the sufficient power to generate the individual perfection of each human soul. Instead, each human must strive to institute and express intellectual activity from their rational practices and desires. Moreover, since reason is still a part of the extrinsic conflicting environment of affects, it may be undermined and destroyed by violent and chaotic affects. To forestall this, a wise individual realizes that they must continually practice and express an intellectual power, realizing that it is not merely reduced either to image/opinion or to indeterminate reasoning. As a human need to address a-rational affects and instituted as a force against errant destruction, reason is itself not exempt from destructive processes. Although knowledge may be considered as always or irreducible to mere material affects and images, its rational expression can be eliminated if it is not appropriately expressed as an irreducible activity. As a result, the fundamental nature of knowledge does not equate with an abstract universal through which it may appear to be exempt from the destructive particular affects in an embodied context. Instead, through the irreducible activity of striving and knowing (i.e. in complete singular self-­ activity), knowledge expresses itself as a power irreducible to mere moments and parts and as intrinsic to the very ruling activity in a particular context. Hence, the irreducible nature of knowledge also can become the same irreducible activity of a human individual so that it directly perfects the individual intrinsically, rather than receiving perfection from a universal that would be still extrinsic. In this regard, true knowledge is not merely translated into different contexts identically and universally, but rather, it is transmitted as an active irreducible power and perfecting way of living for individuals. The mere reception and application of rational concepts does not produce and sustain a ruling and intrinsic truth, power, and activity for living individuals striving to persist and perfect their embodied activities. The nature of the human soul and desiring entails that reason perfects individuals by going back to engaging particulars and experience. Thus, this shows that universals and innate desires to transcend experience do not satisfy and perfect the very desires for perfection that initiated the process to develop and deploy reason. Reasoning is the human mode of addressing our fundamental affective “chaos” and of addressing our plastic desiring, but reasoning as merely indeterminate is not compelling and forceful, and hence, does not satisfy the desire and need that generated the

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very activity of reasoning. When reason is enacted intrinsically, it is most perfecting, but this implies that reason must again be instituted in a concrete historical context and satisfy the individualized desire and engagement with concrete particulars. This shows that historical forms of reasoning are the basis of our indeterminate abstract claims and, more importantly, shows when reason is most powerful. Furthermore, this reveals that there can be no innate faculties of will or memory to compel and guide human individuals to initial and individual success without much work and continual engagement with and striving in concrete contexts. Humans are not born with innate memory that somehow receives and stores concepts prior to experiences, thereby becoming the ideal means to desire/persist for an individual. Additionally, each individual does not have an innate faculty of will by which they may reject and accept practices or concepts without much work on affects and redirection of them so that in this concrete organization an intrinsic, irreducible power may express itself. Spinoza is explicit on this point: In the Mind there is no absolute, or free, will, but the Mind is determined to will this or that by a cause which is also determined by another, and this again by another, and so to infinity. […] The Mind is a certain and determinate mode of thinking (by P11), and so (by IP17C2) cannot be a free cause of its own actions, or cannot have an absolute faculty of willing and not willing. Rather, it must be determined to willing this or that (by IP28) by a cause which is also determined by another, and this cause again by another, etc., q.e.d. […] In this same way it is also demonstrated that there is in the Mind no absolute faculty of understanding, desiring, loving, etc. From this it follows that these and similar faculties are either complete fictions or nothing but Metaphysical beings or universals, which we are used to forming from particulars. So intellect and will are to this or that idea, or to this and that volition as ‘stone-­ ness’ is to this or that stone, or man to Peter or Paul.25

For Spinoza, will and understanding are restricted to concrete singular “objects” and must express any activity only from them.26 Reason, as organizing in response to and in the service of human malleable/chaotic desire, becomes a part of the activity to organize and exert a ruling force in the affects and through them. However, this entails that reason is in the concrete activity. This then provides reason the ability to truly address human desire, which is always oriented toward individuals and particular encounters. Rational perfection always comes back to engage with concrete individuals so as to show its worth and generate the

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irreducible power of knowledge whenever possible. Finally, universal concepts as such and an expression of a posited non-concrete innate will for universal abstractions is not what we seek; it is a perversion of desire. If we only seek certainty and reality as encapsulated in an abstract universal reality rather than in concrete individual activity, we misrecognize the perfecting power of reason for individuals and the true satisfaction of individual desire. Desire is always material, derived from a ruling individual determination.27 Through this determination and force, a potential irreducible activity proves reason’s power and worth, i.e. when reason generates and transforms into a singular truth for an individual.

Reason as Concrete Knowledge The transformation of or transition from reason to intellect relates directly to individuals’ activities and responses to concrete conditions, and thus, cannot represent a universal guarantee and access to truth/perfection. On this subject, Maimonides and Spinoza are rather reticent on how the transition from reason to intellect occurs because both are committed to the fact that intellectual perfection cannot be explicitly and fully given in rational concepts without individual enactment. Rather, there must be a transition from reason as merely extrinsic to an intrinsic active expression through a serial engagement. As a response to and a striving to rule concrete conditions, this transition is not guaranteed for all. The organization by reason and through it the institution of favorable conditions can dispose one to an intrinsic power and irreducible nature, but the achievement and expression of such a reality requires the agency of the individual to make intellect or prophecy happen. Reason as a universal gift does not uplift everyone but must be instituted and expressed by as many as possible whenever possible and is not readily apparent to all. Additionally, the achievement of intellect does not represent a complete transition to a transcendent state and reality. Instead, the irreducible activity of intellect expresses material activity under the aspect of intellect and does not represent a pure separability from material action and rational practices. As a result, reason and intellect do not seek a pure overcoming of material resistance or difference so as to present a reduction of reality to universal identity or certainty. Again, reason is required to see how certain images/conditions can be made to cooperate indefinitely. As Maimonides notes, reason exerts a perspicacity or force to continue the survival and perfection of individuals. To actually continue, reason must constantly

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prepare and work on/discipline conditions to produce the requisite alignment to work now and in the future, i.e. indefinitely. Reason is concurrent with the managing and directing of affects so that matter is cooperative as much as possible to thereby align with persistent and continual rule of reason. The lack of separability from material conditions and the need to use a-rational material conditions to generate intellectual perfection and virtue entails that reason must derive from and respond to historical conditions. Although reason may perfect and generate intellectual activity, it does not divorce itself from historical experiences that initiate the very need for and demonstrate the worth/power of reason’s activity/governance. This is why both Maimonides and Spinoza stress that one must approach the claims of reason judiciously and maintain humility as to the reach of reason and its ability to capture reality.28 Maimonides uses the example of childbirth to emphasize that an individual’s causal explanations may seem certain but experience ultimately is the generator and arbiter of truth and actuality. Assume, according to an example we have made, that a man of a most perfect natural disposition was born and that his mother died after she had suckled him for several months. And the man, alone in an isolated island, took upon himself the entire upbringing of him who was born, until he grew up, became intelligent, and acquired knowledge. Now this child had never seen a woman or a female of one of the species of animals. Accordingly he puts a question saying to a man who is with him: How did we come to exist, and in what way were we generated? Thereupon the man to whom the question was put replied: Every individual among us was—being small in body— within the belly, was moved and fed there, and grew up little by little—being alive—until it reached such and such limit in size. […] Thereupon he indubitably will hasten to set this down as a lie and will produce a demonstration that all these true statements are impossible, drawing inferences from perfect beings that have achieved stability.29

Maimonides use of this example to demonstrate both that the perfection or stability of a material context requires seemingly irrational affects and conditions to generate it and that reasoning from a stable (ruling) order itself can become an inappropriate distortion without a well-established relation to experience. As Maimonides notes, even one with a most perfect natural disposition to intelligence, reasoning, and virtue, exposed only to certain experiences, although justified and useful for his context, would be

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unable to understand from that context all possible realities under universal knowledge. Likewise, Spinoza’s criticism of Descartes’ pursuit of an ideal truth immune to any doubt, and thereby, universally applicable in all contexts with his counterexample of a simple material tool shows that, for Spinoza, context is sufficient to generate use, or “perfect” truths, i.e. intellectual tools. […] [T]o find the best Method of seeking truth, there is no need of another Method to seek the Method of seeking the truth, or of a third Method to seek the second, and so on, to infinity. […] Matters here stand as they do with corporeal tools, where someone might argue […] to forge iron a hammer is needed; and to have a hammer, it must be made; for this another hammer […] to prove that men have no power of forging iron. But just as men, in the beginning, were able to make the easiest things with the tools they were born with (however laboriously and imperfectly), and once these had been made, made other, more difficult things with less labor and more perfectly, and so, proceeding gradually from the simplest works to tools, and from tools to other works and tools, reached the point where they accomplished so many and so difficult things with little labor, in the same way the intellect, by its inborn power, makes intellectual tools for itself, by which it acquires other powers for other intellectual works, and from these works still other tools, or the power of searching further, so proceeds by stages, until it reaches the pinnacle of wisdom.30

A universal ideal truth is not the standard of reality, but rather, “perfect” truths must express concrete activities in and through a specific context. Intellectual truths as useful and “perfect” tools derive from concrete activities and productivity of such concrete modes, even though those modes may seem less than ideal. Similar to Maimonides, Spinoza also advocates that individuals solely relying on abstract reasoning do not represent the most powerful and perfect thinkers. The more this knowledge that things are necessary is concerned with singular things, which we imagine more distinctly and vividly, the greater is this power of the Mind over the affects, as experience itself also testifies. For we see that Sadness over some good which has perished is lessened as soon as the man who lost it realizes that this good could not, in any way, have been kept. Similarly, we see that no one pities infants because of their inability to speak, walk, or to reason, or because they live so many years, as it were, unconscious of themselves. But if most people were born grown up, and

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only one or two were born infants, then everyone would pity the infants, because they would regard infancy itself, not as a natural and necessary thing, but as a vice of nature, or a sin.31

Instead, Spinoza argues that reason with experience, and more importantly, reason simultaneously expressed in a singular experience (i.e. in and through concrete conditions), expresses the greatest amount of power and greatest intellectual perfection possible for an individual knower. In the above example, the natural and historical experiences of human growth show how the seemingly non-ideal conditions of infancy nevertheless provide the potential and necessary development to generate a stable adult and the subsequent perfections of human beings. Reasoning that is aligned with such experiences explains/expresses the necessity of these conditions as well as concurs with the force and reality of those experiences so that one is not dismissive of the actuality and use of such realities. By grounding itself in and through concrete experiences and activities, reason can organize and develop explanations of reality by which an individual can use them to generate more power and control over their affects, especially those that seem errant, absurd, or violent. By using an example similar to Maimonides’ discussion of human growth, Spinoza makes a near identical point that individuals who use only the stable general order of their context to make judgments as to what is possible or impossible, in fact, distort other real actualities and experiences that can be used to generate intellectual understanding. By using these actualities and their concrete power, one can also manage or rule one’s affects to their own individual perfection. Moreover, like Maimonides, Spinoza is making a deeper point that singulars and their necessity (i.e. their amoral and a-rational status as simply real beings) generate the demand that initiates the very development and use of reason so as to organize one’s living to one’s benefit and perfection, i.e. one’s desire to persist and express greater power/understanding. For Maimonides and Spinoza, relying on isolated but stable contexts and individual judgments from those contexts as the basis for epistemic authority represents a major obstacle to true knowledge and perfection. Individual reasoning based on abstractions from those contexts is insufficient to overcome such an obstacle. Instead, to be fully powerful and perfecting, individual intelligence requires a community through which one may express greater understanding and, thereby, satisfy and perfect one’s concrete desires for individual perfection. Since rational desiring leads to

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individual perfection—but only with an engagement of particulars and other individuals—rational desiring needs other individuals by which to express power and by which to aid in the very expression of reasonableness. Pure individualism and reliance on individual intelligence and will to govern one’s affects so as to reach individual perfection would be a distortion of reason. A man who is guided by reason is more free in a state, where he lives according to the common decision, than in solitude, where he obeys himself. […] A man who is guided by reason is not led to obey by Fear (by P63), but insofar as he strives to preserve his being from the dictate of reason, i.e. (by P66S), insofar as he strives to live freely, desires to maintain the principle of common life and common advantage (by P37). Consequently (as we have shown in P37S2), he desires to live according to the common decision of the state. Therefore, a man who is guided by reason desires, in order to live more freely, to keep the common laws of the state, q.e.d.32

We cannot fully obey our own rational percepts. Thus, to generate some stability, and, hence, individual perfection, requires a common advantage through which a continuous concrete force can correct individual distortions as well as the lack of resources to express one’s reasoning “objectively.” As a result, rational desiring seeks to obey a commonality or common decision that not only corrects individual distortions but also provides more means to express one’s rational power, and thus, may express intellectual/singular truths for that individual. Reason, as tied to a force and preferably to a reasonable community, may show that it is “more” true or objective than other random ideas/ images, but it must continually be demonstrated and must be referred back to experience. This helps to mitigate inappropriate and harmful ideas/practices that exceed their epistemic authority and appropriate use. Even if we assume that there may be certain objective features and common notions by and through which individual knowers may generate consistent and useful explanations of their contexts, nevertheless, those notions must be continually enacted and expressed in our serial engagements with experiences. Since individuals are the primary reality through which truths and values are expressed, individual knowers must continually inquire about their natural conditions so as to render their explanations valid, useful, and hence, perfecting of their individual existence. Individual desire for perfection can only be satisfied and perfected by

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concrete singular expressions that unify reason and experience. Although there may be posited something like a concrete universal, something indefinite and useful, full access to it as a mere, or complete, universal (i.e. only as a metaphysical entity) is not possible for a finite human embodied intellect.33 The worth and power of such an explanation must be expressed by and through engaging and organizing concrete realities for an individual knower. Furthermore, the power of such indefinite concepts, although continually useful, cannot overcome the engagement with disparate and diverse particulars/experiences that resist conceptual reduction. Again, the very a-rational/amoral status of natural beings initiates the very need and use/ power of reason so as to perfect and empower individual knowers as best as possible against errant affects. Reason as an indefinite explanation cannot overcome immediately resistant and violent affects, but reason with experience may provide the best means to express one’s intrinsic power and singular complete self-actions. As such, cognition of abstract universal truths is not the goal for human perfection because we strive to use reasoning to satisfy our individual desires. These desires are derived from a concrete determination and wedded to concrete forces that seek to persist as best as possible. For human beings, the best way possible is through reason and political engagement because it is our best and only means of addressing the a-rational nature of affects. From the preceding discussions, it should be clear that Maimonides and Spinoza, although they stress the limits of reason and seek to redirect reason toward singular and unique experiences and engagements, do not advocate for irrationality. Reason and metaphysics are not useless subjects that should be discarded in favor of contingency and individual play with concepts/images. Given that we desire from and because of our initial “chaotic” individualized affects, we must use reason as an indefinite explanation, yet hopefully, entwined with a contextual experience/force to organize our activities and desiring to persist. Reason is the specific mode by which humans respond to the natural amoral/a-rational condition. Yet, reason is not useless because it is the mode of human activity by which we can perfect ourselves.34 But this requires that we enact and desire reason, taking up indefinite ideas/logic and expressing them through our lived activities/experiences. We must make them concrete and relevant and, thereby, perfect our desire and rational powers in a singular expression. This singular expression also shows intellectual power most because it moves us and overcomes concrete particular affects in a serial engagement.

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When this occurs, reason becomes not merely opinion or abstract concept. Through this expression of power in a serial engagement, reason can become or express an irreducible singular truth, which is eternal in a way, and thus, is absolutely necessary for this unique expression. But again, truth is not expressed as a mere universal concept. Reason may only express an irreducible power as intellect and cannot guarantee or explicitly capture an intellectual, or singular, truth. Again, this is the case because of the amoral/a-rational basis of human life. Hence, some humans may not perfect themselves with reason, and thereby, be unable to use reason to express an individual intrinsic perfection, or power, i.e. intellect.

Emanation and Immanence Always Perfect the Actual How each philosopher explains the source of irreducible intellectual activity reveals a difference in their metaphysical commitments. This difference can be connected to the interpretation that Maimonides’ understanding of intellectual activity derives from an emanationist scheme whereas Spinoza’s view of intellect, as well as of Nature, relies completely on immanence. Maimonides explicitly states that God, intellect, and providence (i.e. the governance of the whole world) overflow to an organic body. Know that it behooved us to compare the relation obtaining between God, may He be exalted, and the world to that obtaining between the acquired intellect and man; this intellect is not a faculty in the body but is truly separate from the organic body and overflows toward it. We should have compared, on the other hand, the rational faculty to the intellects of heavens, which are in bodies. However, the case of intellects of the heavens, that of the existence of separate intellects, and that of the representation of the acquired intellect, which is also separate, are matters open to speculation and research.35

Maimonides seems clear that God and intellect confer or transmit a force to organic bodies by which they exist and operate. As a result, material bodies can be conceived as awaiting a force that is transmitted to their inert existence. The conferring of forces and/or knowledge seems like a divine gift from a wholly separate realm in which a governor seems to reside, in some way. The power, governance, and governor of the whole exist apart from the material world and individuals.

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Furthermore, the acquired perfection of human intellects (i.e. acquired intellects) seems to mirror this logic and to manifest that human divine-­ like, or irreducible activity, is emanated to individual minds and is not in any way related to concrete activities. The perfection of individuals is related to their ability to transcend material determinations and exist in some extra-natural realm. Implicit in this account is that the wholly perfecting or completing reality for an individual can only be found or received from an ideally perfect object or source that awaits transmission to individuals identically. As a result, the telos of every human being is to suppress material individualized influences and attain universal abstract truths, not in any way concerned with material and individual actions. In this case, activity equates to an abstract (static) reality and cognition or re-presentation of it to one’s own mind.36 Yet, as argued throughout this book, for Maimonides, emanation is to specific individuals and according to their concrete individual powers/ activities within the world. These powers and activities express providence and concur with a divine overflow to them. Without the embodied activities, providence would not be expressed, and this explains why Maimonides emphasizes that God’s reality is firmly attached to this individual world.37 God does not seem to have a separate power or will that would examine separate possible worlds so as to choose the logically best, pace Leibniz.38 All governance must be expressed through a principal ruling part or matter by which concrete realities are organized to express greater reality, i.e. an irreducible activity. In the same way there exists in being something that rules it as a whole and puts into motion its first principal [part of the body] granting it the power of putting into motion, in virtue of which this part governs the things that are other than itself. And if one supposed that this thing had passed into nothingness, it would have to be supposed that the existence of this sphere as a whole, that of its principal and that of its subordinate parts, had also passed into nothingness. For it is in virtue of this thing that the existence of the sphere and of every part of it endures. This thing is the deity, may its name be exalted. It is only with a view to this that it is said of man alone that he is a small world, inasmuch as there subsists in him a certain principle that governs the whole of him. And because of this, God, may He be exalted, is called in our language the life of the world. Thus it is said: And swore by the living of the world.39

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This divine governance represents an irreducible force, activity, or living that expresses itself through individual activities, sustaining concrete individual interactions. It persists through every individual action; yet, it itself is not reduced to specific objects, actions, or moments. Instead, individuals may express this irreducible activity to greater or lesser degrees depending upon their individual activities in and through concrete interactions and sound organization of themselves and their environment. Individual perfection, or singular activity in a specific context, relates directly to the rational organization of one’s life and the striving/desiring to institute reason in one’s life and environment, thereby concretely transforming their material being and environment into the most advantageous to human activity, i.e. intellect. However, individuals as actualizing agents of providence do not have full access to divine providence, and they express only in some sense providence concretely in relation only to their individual perfection or activity. The transcending of one’s mind or intellectual “life” solely to a metaphysical reality and cognition of universal truths is not representative of the true goal of perfection and providence, which must address individual concrete desires that initiated the very need for reasoning, ethics, and perfecting (human) practices in the first place. Providence focuses on the absolute necessity of the individual in the singular “now” rather than being oriented toward a metaphysical teleology that includes a supposed completing or ideally perfect single telos.40 Maimonides does not use emanation as a means to pull an individual’s reality away from concrete experiences, but, rather, to refocus on the necessity of the “now” and on singular individual activities that may generate the “best” or most powerful self-complete actions for a striving human mind in and through such a context. A human mind must use reason itself only as a guide and force to organize and strive in a concrete context. As a result, that very human striving to express the right and true for oneself may participate in an irreducible activity,41 seemingly greater and more eternal than a mere moment or object. The representation of such an irreducible singular activity can neither be expressed well by image nor by abstract concept alone, but must be expressed by a singular expression that “elevates” and transforms image and reason together to a higher more perfecting activity. Whereas Maimonides leaves open a metaphysical space from which a force, intellect, or governance (i.e. providence) may be emanated/transmitted, seemingly separate from material agency, Spinoza firmly situates all

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force immanently. For Spinoza, God’s power and “governance” is immanent in the causality and determinations among individuals. God is the immanent, not the transitive, cause of all things. […] Everything that is, is in God, and must be conceived through God (by P15), and so (by P16C1) God is the cause of things, which are in him. That is the first [thing to be proven]. And then outside God there can be no substance (by P14), i.e. (by D3), thing which is in itself outside God. That was the second. God, therefore, is the immanent, not the transitive cause of all things, q.e.d.42

Yet, God’s power as such is not a mere material object or a force emanated from a specific place as it is the irreducible activity and power (i.e. actuality) throughout all reality and among real interacting individuals. Spinoza is clear that God’s power and reality cannot be reduced to a material mass or physical objects. […] For I maintain that God is, as they say, the immanent, but not the transitive, cause of all things. That all things are in God and move in God, I affirm, I say, with Paul, and perhaps also with all the ancient philosophers, though in another way—I would also be so bold as to say, with all the ancient Hebrews, as far as we can conjecture from certain traditions […]. Nevertheless, some people think the Theological-Political Treatise rests on the assumptions that God is one and the same as Nature (by which they understand a certain mass, or corporeal matter). This is a complete mistake.43

Despite not being a part of the direct interactions and particular forces among material modes/determinations, God does not transmit an extra-­ natural force or order from a separate realm, but rather, God is wholly immanent as an irreducible activity persisting and expressing itself in every actual mode. Each mode expresses to its degree of “perfection,” or rather God’s irreducible activity, under the expression, or explanation, of its reality. This “perfection” manifests itself through the very concrete ability of each mode to exist despite and because of interactions with other individuals. Spinoza describes the process by which individuals, or their singular natures, cohere with other individuals as a concrete engagement that generates a stable order among individuals. The order or governance among these individuals is not necessarily preestablished in an ideal fashion and transmitted from an extra-natural realm exempt from immediate activity.

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By the coherence of parts, then, I understand nothing but that the laws or nature of the one part adapts itself to the laws or the nature of the other part so that they are opposed to each other as little as possible. Concerning whole and parts, I consider things as parts of some whole to the extent that the nature of the one adapts itself to that of the other so that they agree with one another, to that extent each forms in our Mind an idea distinct from the others, and therefore it is considered as a whole and not as a part.44

In very concrete terms, individuals attempt, or strive, to maintain the least resistance possible so as to express their individual activity despite and because of reciprocal actions from other individuals. When a stable effect and order forms from this engagement, one may consider it to that extent as a whole through which parts express themselves. Through this concrete striving and rational organization, a singular individual expresses an irreducible activity and coheres with the absolute irreducible activity of God. Spinoza explains his understanding by reference to an analogy of a little worm living in blood: Let us feign now, if you please, that there is a little worm living in the blood which is capable of distinguishing by sight the particles of the blood, […] and capable of observing by reason how each particle, when it encounters another, either bounces back, or communicates a part of its motion, etc. Indeed, it would live in this blood as we do in this part of universe, and would consider each particle of the blood as a whole, not as a part. It could not know how all the parts of the blood are regulated by the universal [overall] nature of the blood, and compelled to adapt themselves to one another, as the universal [overall] nature of the blood requires, so that they agree with one another in a definite way. For if we should feign that there are no causes outside the blood which would communicate new motions to the blood, and no space outside the blood, nor any other bodies to which the particles of the blood could transfer their motion, it is certain that the blood would always remain in the same state, and its particles would undergo no variations[.] […] Thus the blood would always have to be considered as a whole and not as a part. But because there are a great many other causes which regulate the laws of the nature of the blood in a definite way, and which in turn are regulated by the blood, the result is that other motions and other variations arise in the blood which follow not simply from the relation of the motion of its parts to one another, but from the relation of the motion of the blood and of its external causes to one another. In this way the blood has the nature of a part and not of a whole. […]45

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In this example, a worm or, by analogy, a human being has a limited perspective to observe and understand the determinations affecting itself and its environment. Nevertheless, each individual strives to adapt itself to and use affections so as to produce itself, and thereby, achieve its individual perfection as best as possible in the singular concrete “now.” Yet, this individual power must be ultimately irreducible to mere affections and to mere identity with its environment due to God’s immanent activity. Now all bodies in nature can and must be conceived as we have here conceived the blood, for all bodies are surrounded by others, and are determined by one another to existing and producing an effect in a fixed and determinate way, the same ratio of motion to rest always being preserved in all of them at once, [that is, in the whole universe]. From this it follows that every body, insofar as it exists modified in a definite way, must be considered as a part of the whole universe, must agree with its whole and must cohere with the remaining bodies. And since the nature of the universe is not limited, as the nature of the blood is, but is absolutely infinite, [its parts are regulated in infinite ways by this nature of the infinite power, and compelled to undergo infinitely many variations.] But in relation to substance I conceive each part to have a closer union with its whole.46

Since God cannot be considered as merely a material mass, or universal determined body, such as blood in the above example, God’s activity produces an infinity of individuals which cohere and interact with others. However, they all are unable to be reduced to a specific ideal order by which they interact and generate actuality. Instead, the irreducibility of God’s actuality itself becomes the necessity that generates the individual irreducible reality of singular beings. As a result, individuals have a closer immanent union with God since they express the same divine irreducible actuality that is explained or expressed by their individual striving and rational organizing. This immanent union explains why for Spinoza the union of an individual mind with Nature is not a conceptual reduction or equation of an individual universal mind with the universal mind of God via universals. Nevertheless in the TdIE, Spinoza seems to suggest a conceptual union: But since human weakness does not grasp that order by its own thought, and meanwhile man conceives a human nature much stronger and more enduring than his own, and at the same time sees that nothing prevents his acquiring such a nature, he is spurred to seek means that will lead him to

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such a perfection. Whatever can be a means to his attaining it is called a true good; but the highest good is to arrive—together with other individuals if possible—at the enjoyment of such a nature. What that nature is we shall show in its proper place: that it is the knowledge of the union that the mind has with the whole of Nature.47

Yet, in light of Spinoza’s discussion of immanence, any union of an individual’s mind with Nature does not equate to one identical abstract universal, metaphysical reality, but instead, to the adaptable ability of a human mind to use every amoral natural affect to generate reason and intellect from and through them. The ability of human beings to use and institute reason enables them to intrinsically agree with nature and express from that agreement more individual power and perfection. This represents an immanent union with Nature’s irreducible power and activity. Spinoza’s account of the ability and power of the human mind suggests that, rather than there being a preset abstract agreement of one’s mind to a single ideal order of reason, the concrete physical and mental abilities of an individual are unified and must undergo diverse natural affects so as to express specific rational and intellectual affirmations from them: Nevertheless, I say this in general, that in proportion as a Body is more capable than others of doing many things at once, or being acted on in many ways at once, so its Mind is more capable than others of perceiving many things at once. And in proportion as the actions of a body depend more on itself alone, and as other bodies concur with it less in acting, so its mind is more capable of understanding distinctly. And from these we can know the excellence of one mind over the others, and also see the cause why we have a completely confused knowledge of our Body[.]48

By being able to undergo many different, or errant, affects, a human mind-body may express itself as having more power, or means and ways, by which to organize and institute its singular good despite and because of these diverse affects. With more bodily interactions, a human mind-body has more power and potential by which to use and organize these interactions to its benefit and singular activity. In fact, the diversity of these affects initiates for human beings the need and institution of reason so that one may persist and perfect their singular existence. With reason and the continued institution or exertion of a rational organization/governance, a human individual may then express singular intrinsic agreements with

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their concrete conditions and, thereby, express a form of complete self-activity. However, as has been presented throughout this work, singular perfection and knowledge relate to and express directly one’s immediate concrete self-activity. Thus, individual human knowers do not have full access to the irreducible power of Nature in toto because that would entail that an individual had the power to understand and express the interactions and infinite organizations/orders among disparate individuals and contexts, i.e. they were God. […] I think you were asking for the reasons by which we are persuaded that each part of Nature agrees with its whole and coheres with the others. For I already said in my preceding Letter that I don’t know how they really cohere and how each part agrees with its whole. To know that would require knowing the whole of Nature and all of its parts. So I shall try to show the reason which compels me to affirm this. But first I should like to warn that I attribute to Nature neither beauty, nor ugliness, neither order nor confusion. For only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, orderly or confused.49

Instead, individual human knowers can only use reason from their individual striving to know and perfect their activity. As expressions of God’s infinite power, they are aware of their singular necessity. This is why Spinoza continuously stresses the fact that ideal orders of actuality and governance do not properly express individual existence, i.e. their actual and necessary striving and organization. For Spinoza, there are no ideal standards of order, beauty, and perfection that can absolutely reduce or govern/predict reality. Perfection can only be demonstrated in a concrete context by a singular knower who develops and expresses his or her irreducible activity as best as possible with reason and striving. For both Maimonides and Spinoza, using a mere image and/or abstract universal concept to represent this irreducible nature of truth and perfection is a distortion. Instead, both advocate for a singular understanding of truth, ethics, and politics so as to capture and express this irreducible actuality that is most essential for the self-perfection of concrete individuals.

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Notes 1. For many, my reading of Maimonides and Spinoza in this chapter would violate the separation between practical and theoretical reason, more so in the case of Maimonides. Nevertheless, as I have continually argued throughout this work, I believe that both Maimonides and Spinoza are committed ultimately to a bios praktikos (a life of action). Reason in all its forms should be in the service of individual activity and happiness/perfection; yet, reason cannot be separate from the embodied activity of the knower. Additionally, reason cannot perfect without much ethical-political and psychological support and coordination, since it is initially impotent to move human beings. As such, it is best to view the various physical and mental powers of an individual as aspectivally different rather than ontologically different. As a result, it is imperative to realize that absolute boundaries between “faculties,” or rather powers, do not exist. In the case of Maimonides, in particular, Idit Dobbs-Weinstein notes that the term “wisdom,” the complete perfection of an individual, has both practical and theoretical aspects expressed. See Dobbs-Weinstein (1995, 45). Nevertheless, there is always an intellectual aspect possible in (human) activity in that it may express the intrinsic non-­mediated nature of “perfect” existing/reality. 2. On the primary and constitutive nature of images, see Ravven (2014, 130–132). 3. See Chap. 2 of this work. 4. See Chap. 3 of this work. 5. Inspired by the work of Pierre Hadot, Josef Stern provides an excellent account of the nature of inquiry for Maimonides. For Maimonides, inquiry is not merely the acquisition of data but a practice which seeks to question one’s place in the world so as to elevate human activity. It elevates in the sense that through persistent inquiry and practice, one is not enslaved by passive affects and modes of representation. In particular, Stern notes that the therapeutic nature of inquiry requires the reformation of one’s complete self which includes ethics, psychology, and the practice of knowledge. See Stern (2013, 313–314). See also Hadot (1995). I agree much with Stern’s account but would add that through inquiry and the striving to live by reason, one proves one’s power and activity as well. One proves the use and value of reason and the power of the practice to conquer errant situations/desires, thereby rendering one’s complete self most active or singular. The serial engagement with particular experiences so as to generate singular knowledge is a necessity for a vibrant perfecting form of inquiry and compels one to continually strive to inquire as well, not resting in the mere acquisition of data.

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6. Guide, p. 191. See Book I, Chapter 72. 7. TdIE, 30. 8. Guide, p. 295. See Book II, Chapter 17. 9. Guide, p. 189; emphasis added. See Book I, Chapter 72. 10. EIVP18Schol; emphasis added. 11. EIVP4; emphasis added. 12. Guide, p. 191; emphasis added. See Book I, Chapter 72. 13. Guide, pp. 186–187; emphasis added. See Book I, Chapter 72. 14. Ibid, p. 187. 15. Jacob Adler explains well how Spinoza’s and Maimonides’ view of the soul belongs to the Alexandrian tradition in which the soul is a temperament that immediately derives and expresses itself from the behavior of lower material constituents and activities. Nevertheless, the soul does not merely reduce to the quantitative parts but has a qualitative (emergent) activity; despite this qualitative difference, the soul must be mortal, since it expresses itself from bodily activities. Concerning Spinoza, Adler endorses Alan Gabbey’s description of Spinoza’s account of the soul as “an ingenious neo-­Cartesian reformulation of the traditional Galenic medical doctrine of humoral balance.” See Adler (2014, 26); see also Gabbey (1996, 168). I agree much with Adler’s classification of Maimonides and Spinoza as Alexandrians and their view on the mortality of the soul. Nevertheless, I believe that one aspect that should be emphasized is that our souls strive by concrete means. As a result, the intelligent and virtuous instruction in which one has been habituated can become a mode of self-expression and perfecting of one’s (intrinsic) agency. Hence, reason (through images, habits, etc.) manifests its use and power in very concrete terms, and thereby, may generate intellect in singular moments of (self-)understanding. In this regard, perfecting of one’s soul or knowledge does not merely reduce to extrinsic modalities (i.e. receiving cognitive data), and perfection also restrains errant desirative and imaginative pursuits so that the paradox of a morally wicked but intelligent genius who may achieve singular perfection is unlikely. See Adler (2014, 34). Genevieve Lloyd also notes the immediate relation between soul and body in Spinoza’s physics and ethics. She claims that due to the impossibility of an act being separable from the agent in Spinoza’s physics, an indiscernibility between cause and effect is necessary. Lloyd argues that there is no subject doing the action, but the subject is constituted as acting in certain ways or manners. Thus, a ratio is an essential expression of an individual or “subject” and is the individual or “subject” as well. See Lloyd (1994, 14–15). 16. EIVP14; emphasis added. 17. EIVP15; emphasis added. 18. EIVP17Schol; emphasis added.

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19. EIVP26; emphasis added. 20. Guide, p. 192; emphasis added. 21. EIVP21 and EIVP22; emphasis added. 22. See Chap. 3 of this work. 23. Guide, pp. 474–475; emphasis added. See Book III, Chapter 18. 24. See TTP, p. 548. 25. EIIP48. 26. Whereas Heidi Ravven argues that Spinoza and Maimonides lack a concept of free will, she appeals to the power of theoretical truths to elicit assent. Thus, there is no will that can overturn the cognitive force of theoretical truths; by simply knowing, material activities must comport with the absolute nature of truth. See Ravven (2014, 146–148). Although Ravven is correct that both Maimonides and Spinoza carry on a Judeo-Islamic understanding of the relation between will and understanding, i.e. there is no separation of will and intellect, I argue that the lack of free will is due to the intrinsic singular activities of the knower. The activity of the knower is restrained and coordinated so that he or she expresses immediately the affective power of knowing. Submission to an ideal reality or mere recognition of it does not have the force to sustain and perfect the complete person. I agree with Dobbs-Weinstein’s account concerning the relation of appetition/will and understanding in that intellect, will, and freedom/ activity develop concurrently with bodily activities and conditions, including ethical-political ones. Freedom cannot be the suppression of errant body or desire but the redirection and expression of it. See DobbsWeinstein (2004, 62). 27. Idit Dobbs-Weinstein rightly locates Maimonides and Spinoza in an Aristotelian materialist tradition that sees appetition as materially based. See Dobbs-Weinstein (2009, 456–457). Dobbs-Weinstein notes that within this Aristotelian materialist tradition, desire is always for a particular and cannot be initially determined or moved by a universal. As a result, “thinking desire” does not seek to move desire’s focus to a posited metaphysical reality so as to satisfy it, but, rather, satisfies the desire for perfection by coordinating the material activities of the individual so that they best live in this life, with an intrinsic active relation to his or her undergoings. See also Dobbs-­Weinstein (2014). 28. See Chap. 4 of this work. 29. Guide, p. 295; emphasis added. See Book II, Chapter 17. 30. TdIE, 30 and 31; emphasis added and quote modified. 31. EVP6Schol; emphasis added. 32. EIVP73; emphasis added. 33. I agree with Heidi Ravven’s claim that for Spinoza, common notions, the basis for reasoning, represent imaginative universals that are essentially

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concrete. Ravven adds that along with herself, Susan James and Andrew Collier believe that Spinoza relies on a material basis for cognition and, thus, is not a traditional rationalist. Nevertheless, I would go further and argue that the worth and explanatory power of common notions/reasoning derives from concrete singular interactions and do not capture a universal feature of Nature as such. Instead, the enactment of reason should perfect one’s engagement with the world and oneself concurrently. Good concepts are able to overcome or explain resistant experiences and thereby project an indefinite ability to explain further; yet, without further inquiry, concepts would be impotent and potentially misguiding or destructive to the knower. Finally, even if there is a metaphysical pattern to the universe to be captured or expressed in concepts, the focus is on using reason and practices to generate singular individual perfection in concrete engagements. Many of the points that Ravven makes in her article about Spinoza she also relates to Maimonides; see Ravven (2014, 135). Also see James (1997), and see Collier (1991). Furthermore, I believe that the need for concrete engagement/inquiry in one’s knowing is implied by Spinoza’s description of a concrete “universal”:  But an affect that arises from reason is necessarily related to the common properties of things (see the Def. of reason in IIP40S2), which we always regard as present (for there can be nothing which excludes their present existence) and which we always imagine in the same way (by IIP38)[.] See EVP7; emphasis added. Rather than viewing these common notions as necessarily a preset part of the fabric of the universe, instead, Spinoza is directing us with phrases like “regard as present,” “nothing which excludes their present existence,” and “we always imagine in the same way,” to understand that the immediate concrete viewpoint of knower is the basis from which these ideas may be proven worthy and perfecting. Instead of resting easily in the sure knowledge that we have the truth, we must continually engage and explain natural experiences with these notions so that their seeming indefinite explanatory power expresses/proves itself and thereby perfects us as well. As such, epistemic modesty—rather than certainty—is required. 34. Spinoza describes reason as the eyes of the mind by and through which we feel the force of understanding: For the Mind feels those things that it conceives in understanding no less than those it has in the memory. For the eyes of the mind, by which it sees and observes, are the demonstrations themselves.

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Therefore, though we do not recollect that we existed before the body, we nevertheless, feel that our mind, insofar as it involves the essence of the body under a species of eternity, is eternal[.] […] EV P23Schol.; emphasis added. Important to note in this passage is that reason mirrors the force of memory, but whereas memory is merely an image or bodily determination, reason expresses an indefinite affirmation that concurs with a bodily expression/power irreducible to duration, or mere temporal moments. Nevertheless, this eternity of a singular body does not equate to a mere universal reality; it is a singular body under the aspect of eternity and relevant to this body’s singular necessity. 35. Guide, pp. 192–193; emphasis added. 36. Josef Stern highlights an important point discovered by Herbert Davidson that Maimonides’ understanding of reasoning, in fact, does not consistently represent the inferring of demonstrated theorems, but, rather, more so the simple activity of doing it. See Stern (2013, 312), and see Davidson (2011, 233). 37. When suggesting the connection of God to only this individual material universe, i.e. the creation and governance of only this world, Maimonides describes the connection by analogy of the human soul. He states that one should represent the universe as “one living individual in motion [...] [and by] means of this representation […] that the One has created one being” (Guide, p. 187; emphasis added. See Book I, Chapter 72). Additionally, he argues that God is or, at the very least, enables only one principle force that links all parts together, i.e. like a soul (Ibid., p. 188). As a result, the force is not reduced to the matter but is irreducible, or excessive to it. I argue that this excess represents not a separate reality per se but an intrinsic relation and activity among and through material parts. Although Maimonides does use the language of emanation, I believe that he uses it critically to suggest a concrete and intrinsic causality at work in the universe and in the perfection of individual humans. 38. Charles Manekin situates Spinoza’s understanding of “divine will” within the Jewish-Islamic tradition, where God does not choose among possible universes. Manekin notes that Leibnizian and other criticisms that Spinoza’s natural order is accidental or inexplicable are due to their assumption that Spinoza is committed to blind necessity determining the order of the universe. Manekin explains that with the principle of sufficient reason, Spinoza can evade this criticism and thereby support a rationally determined universe. See Manekin (2014, 57–58). I believe that in general Manekin is correct, but I would argue that individual knowers, both for Spinoza and

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Maimonides, cannot know “divine” governance in toto so that the actuality of the knower’s conditions provide the orientation and means to know. That is, the actual determinations of one’s living provide the means to express greater and greater activity or understanding; however, that activity must be mediated through actual forces that are situated and expressed in the natural world.  Furthermore, the lack of an episteme of emanation or of divine governance does not entail blind chance but that the actuality of the universe is the only basis by and through which to express any stability/knowledge. For both Maimonides and Spinoza, the relation of cause and effect ultimately is intrinsic and should not be understood in a purely discursive manner. Causes and effects are concurrent and, when viewed as expressing the same activity, are singular. The singular nature of this activity and knowing of this kind do not express errant discursive relations nor does it express errant desiring for the knower. As a result, there is an ethical dimension to intellection that restrains errant desiring and perceiving. Additionally, for both, the activity of God is irreducible in this kind of manner; its activity represents a singular intrinsic kind of causality not subject ultimately to determinate ends. This singular cause produces all actual causes and effects in a sense a-rationally and amorally. Hence, the expressions of knowledge must be tempered by this fact, lest a knower believes that the continued activity of inquiry can be dispensed with. Finally, it forces the knower to be epistemically modest lest they assume that there are ideal orders of good and bad, order and confusion, and a natural teleology. 39. Guide, pp.  191–192; emphasis added and translation modified. I have included the alternate translation of “principal” as “principal part of the body” that Pines notes in a footnote to his translation of this passage. 40. Josef Stern in his analysis of the emanation of divine governance argues that we cannot have any episteme of emanation. We cannot know why it would perfect individual beings. As a result, its perfection cannot be located in divine reality as such but solely in individual activities. More importantly, human individual activities should liken themselves in the image of divine activity so that they might perfect themselves with pure generosity and so on. See Stern (2013, 274–275 and 255). Also important to note in Stern’s discussion is that when an individual likens him or herself to God, seeking no hope of reward, this undermines an extrinsic teleology and refocuses the individual on the virtue and “reward” of their immediate perfecting/intrinsic activities.

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41. This would be similar to Idit Dobbs-Weinstein’s understanding of providential participation. See Introduction (Chap. 1)  and Chap. 2 of this work. 42. EIP18 43. Letter 73. 44. Letter 32; emphasis added. 45. Ibid; emphasis added and translation modified. The Latin term universalus has the meaning of “pertaining to the whole” as well. So, I have included the Shirley translation of the term as “overall.” I believe that in this passage Spinoza is not trying to convey a universal logic or property as such, but more so, how the whole “determines/affects” and how the whole is concurrently derived from the adapting/interacting of the parts to one another. 46. Ibid. 47. TdIE, 13; emphasis added. 48. EIIP13Schol; emphasis added. 49. Letter 32; emphasis added.

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Index1

A Abstractions, 4, 15, 22, 28, 142, 143, 172, 230, 231, 244, 247 Amoral, 7, 66, 69, 71, 78, 79, 97, 100n2, 102n27, 109, 118, 123, 135, 160n19, 162n50, 180, 228, 232, 234, 236–238, 241, 247, 249, 250, 256, 263n38 Amoralism/A-Rationalism, 232–239 Appetite(s), 79, 92, 95, 152, 211, 230 Appetition, 23, 36, 47, 50, 55, 173, 230, 260n26, 260n27 Appetitive, 2, 20–22, 49, 50, 55, 56, 71, 72, 102n27, 111, 129, 151, 184 A-rational, 7, 79, 97, 109, 118, 135, 228, 232, 234, 237–239, 241, 242, 245, 247, 249, 250, 263n38 Aristotelian, 53, 70, 160n26, 162n66, 223n83, 260n27 ethics, 53, 83 ethics-politics, 51 Aristotle, 40n21, 45n65, 164–165n84

Authority, 9n6, 23, 42n38, 50–52, 61, 63, 76, 86, 94, 96, 99, 104n53, 124, 179, 180, 185, 187, 188, 218n50, 234 B Bios praktikos, 8–9n5, 258n1 C Certainty, 12, 16, 20, 21, 23, 27, 111, 129, 132, 138, 183, 185, 193, 195, 196, 244, 261n33 Conventional, 15, 32, 35, 48, 53, 54, 63, 64, 66, 69, 83–85, 97, 98, 109, 110, 114, 117, 118, 120, 122, 123, 126, 128, 139, 140, 150, 160n19, 161n45, 171, 177, 220n55 Conventional habituation, 37n5, 48 Conventions, 49, 110, 118–122, 129, 139, 145, 146, 160n19

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

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INDEX

D Definition of God, 124, 125, 146 Definitions, 12, 28, 29, 112, 113, 143–146, 170, 199–204, 206, 207, 214, 221n63, 221n64, 221n65, 222n81 Demonstration, 1, 3, 11, 16, 22, 92, 130, 141, 155, 200, 203, 261n34, 262n36 Demonstrative, 3, 27, 110, 130, 157, 217n28, 231 certainty, 23 method, 14, 21, 41n30, 42n38 reason, 39n9, 47, 75 science, 14 Desire-imagination, 228 Discursive, 1, 263n38 knowledge, 40n21 reason, 11–13, 15, 20, 31, 164n84 science, 11 E Elect, 11 Emanation, 11, 17, 36, 40n21, 250–257, 262n37, 263n38, 263n40 Emanationist, 232, 250 Emendation, 37n5, 40n21, 109–158, 184, 194 Episteme, 263n38, 263n40 Epistemic, 6, 8n3, 9n6, 44n59, 109, 112, 122, 123, 131, 145, 156, 161n28, 187, 220n61, 261n33, 263n38 authority, 247, 248 method, 6, 110, 113, 114, 120, 121, 133, 134, 157, 185, 195, 197 Epistemologies, 40n21, 45n60, 53 Errancy, 16, 17, 19, 22, 24, 25, 42n39, 111, 112, 116, 175, 223n82 Ethical-political, 3, 6, 8n3, 9n5, 36, 44n59, 61, 105n67, 113, 128,

134, 140, 151, 152, 163n79, 258n1, 260n26 conventions, 32 flourishing, 3 Ethics, 3, 8n3, 12, 33, 35, 36, 100n1, 110, 115, 117, 139, 140, 164n79, 166n84, 179, 252, 257, 258n5, 259n15 Excess, 13, 14, 17, 23, 27, 189–198, 262n37 F Al-Farabi, 51–54, 57–69, 72, 73, 89–93, 96, 100n1, 209, 220n55, 221n74, 239 Flourishing, 35, 44n60, 100, 136, 142, 148, 153, 156, 162n64, 163n70, 169, 181, 182, 219n55 Free will, 103n43, 117, 118, 214, 260n26 H Habits, 8n3, 15, 30, 33, 62–64, 69, 71, 82, 83, 92, 98, 100n1, 109, 113–120, 128, 158n2, 163n79, 185, 196, 215, 259n15 Habitual soul, 158n2, 159n2 Habituated, 43n47, 70, 72, 73, 93, 146, 154, 156, 176, 177, 194 Habituation, 3, 62, 104n53, 106n80, 110, 114, 134, 145, 146, 212 Happiness, 3, 4, 8n5, 54, 56, 57, 59, 62, 66, 77, 99, 113, 122, 151, 223n82, 258n1 Health/Healthy, 6, 74, 114, 115, 121, 124, 127, 133, 134, 136, 139, 159n8 Historical, 3, 7, 29, 33, 43n47, 48, 49, 58, 59, 62, 67, 68, 70, 80, 83, 84, 88, 100n1, 104n53, 104n58, 105n67, 112, 123, 128, 159n8,

 INDEX 

160n19, 169, 177, 192, 195, 197, 198, 208, 212, 220n55, 227, 232, 237, 243, 245, 247 Human perfection, 1, 3, 8n3, 12, 32, 34, 39n11, 55, 100n1, 102n27, 140, 158n2, 160n19, 161n29, 240, 241, 249 I Imagination, 2, 11–13, 17–20, 22–26, 30–33, 36, 40–41n21, 42n36, 42n39, 44n60, 49, 50, 55, 61, 71, 72, 75–77, 85, 88, 93, 98, 101–102n27, 103n51, 104n53, 133, 143, 147, 151, 163n79, 164n84, 171–175, 177, 182, 186, 190, 191, 199, 205, 206, 217n11, 229, 230, 257 Immanence, 250–257 Immanent, 146, 158, 232, 253, 255, 256 Indeterminate, 6, 48, 50, 56, 57, 61, 62, 165–166n84, 222n81, 230, 240–243 Inquiry, 20, 146, 157, 190, 195, 196, 217n27, 219n51, 219n55, 230, 258n5, 261n33, 263n38 Intellection, 14, 26, 36, 47, 50, 92, 94, 145, 162n58, 190, 191, 197, 263n38 Intellectual love, 45n60 Intuition, 9n9, 11–36, 100n1, 163n79 Intuitive, 12, 24–36, 155, 163n79, 216n1, 240 L Language, 7, 25, 35, 41n26, 53, 80, 111, 112, 144, 146, 169–216, 219n55, 222n81, 223n82 Law-giver, 5, 50–52, 58–62, 76, 94, 99, 101n27, 104n53, 110

277

Love of God, 7, 22, 23, 41n29, 112, 127, 128, 136, 147, 148, 157, 158, 160n22, 161n29, 162–163n66, 204 M Materialism, 219n55 Materialist ethics, 8n3 Metaphysical, 1, 3, 4, 7, 12, 13, 36, 38–39n9, 40n21, 52, 53, 72, 112, 137, 138, 143, 151, 156, 176, 211, 222n81, 231, 232, 243, 249, 250, 252, 256, 260n27, 261n33 Metaphysical teleology, 252 Metaphysics, 3, 5, 7, 12, 36, 51, 52, 228, 231, 249 Method, 6, 7, 15, 20, 22, 30, 31, 41n23, 93, 109–158, 159n8, 161–162n47, 162n61, 187, 190, 219–220n55, 246 N Natural state, 80, 81, 99, 104n58, 109 Nominal, 201, 214, 219n54, 222n81 definitions, 223n81 language, 222n81 Nominalism, 221n64, 222–223n81 Non-discursive, 12, 33, 36, 44n59, 62, 155 P Participative apprehension, 39n9 Participative knowledge, 39n9 Passions, 12, 13, 17, 23, 25, 35, 43n57, 50, 82, 83, 103n43, 106n80, 150, 152, 154, 169, 178, 180, 184, 185, 216n2, 233 Perplexed, 132, 166n84, 194, 199, 200 Perplexity, 183, 192–194, 200

278 

INDEX

Piety, 96–98, 105n78, 113–120, 128, 179 Politics, 3, 5, 12, 33–36, 47–100, 109, 110, 114, 117, 163n79, 185, 217n27 Prejudices, 7, 21–23, 33, 43n47, 47, 110, 113, 121, 134, 156, 164n81, 170, 175–183, 187, 188, 194, 195, 210–212, 217n11, 223n82 Prophecy, 5, 11–36, 40n21, 43–44n59, 47–100, 113, 114, 119, 128, 217n28, 241, 244 Prophets, 217n28 Providence, 13, 14, 16, 17, 20, 21, 23–25, 37n5, 38n7, 42n39, 125, 240, 241, 250–252 Providential participation, 9n12, 264n41 Psychological, 3, 86, 111, 119, 123, 125, 134, 136, 145, 146, 152, 157, 175, 177, 178, 258n1 Psychology, 3, 12, 36, 53, 129, 159n8, 180, 184, 185, 194, 230, 258n5 R Religion, 5, 19, 37n5, 43n47, 53, 57, 59–61, 81, 96–99, 149, 179, 181, 193 S Sensation, 11, 17, 22, 24, 42n32, 56, 61, 126, 165n84, 171, 172, 230 Sense, 17, 27, 43n48, 102n27, 133, 173, 183, 229, 230 Sense-imagination, 222n81, 227 Sense-perception, 13, 55, 56 Sensible, 3, 15–19, 38–39n9, 40n21, 47, 49, 169, 184, 187, 229 Skeptical, 3–6, 38–39n9 Social-political, 33–35, 43n47, 48, 49, 113, 122, 170, 176, 178

Sovereign, 2, 50, 51, 77–79, 82, 85–88, 98, 99, 105n78, 180, 235 Sovereign Authority, 47–100 Sovereignty, 75–86 Speculation, 16, 19, 21–23, 38n7, 124, 160n26, 190, 217n28 Speculative, 20, 39n9, 41n30, 217n28 Speculative prejudices, 22 State of nature, 79, 81, 84, 104n58, 178 T Teleological, 8n1, 26, 65 Teleology, 26, 27, 263n38, 263n40 Theoretical, 8n3, 11, 15–18, 33, 75, 101n27, 163n79, 237, 258n1, 260n26 knowledge, 88 science, 11 Theory, 16, 33 Transindividuality, 9n12, 100n1 U Universals, 3, 16, 27, 28, 30, 112, 113, 142, 153, 195, 215, 223n81, 240–243, 255, 260n33 Usefulness, 34, 54, 61, 65–70, 73, 105n66, 106n80, 110, 113, 123, 124, 128, 138, 144, 146, 195, 198, 202, 211, 213, 231, 238 Utile, 105n66 Utility, 54, 65, 66, 68, 75, 98, 113, 124, 129, 195, 196, 239 W Wisdom, 3, 7, 11–17, 20, 21, 34–36, 38n7, 50, 51, 61–63, 67, 75, 77, 88, 94, 101n27, 109, 110, 112–120, 122, 123, 132–140, 142, 144, 156–158, 159n2, 159n8, 173, 180, 184, 185, 189, 198, 209, 246, 258n1