Maimonides and Spinoza: Their Conflicting Views of Human Nature 9780226645766

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Maimonides and Spinoza

Maimonides and Spinoza Their Conflicting Views of Human Nature

Joshua Parens

The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London

Joshua Parens is professor in and graduate director of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Dallas. He is the author of An Islamic Philosophy of Virtuous Religions and coeditor of the second edition of Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

© 2012 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2012. Printed in the United States of America 21  20  19  18  17  16  15  14  13  12    1  2  3  4  5 ISBN-13: 978-0-226-64574-2 (cloth) ISBN-10: 0-226-64574-6 (cloth) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Parens, Joshua, 1961–   Maimonides and Spinoza : their conflicting views of human nature / Joshua Parens.     pages. cm.   Includes bibliographical references and index.   ISBN-13: 978-0-226-64574-2 (cloth : alkaline paper)   ISBN-10: 0-226-64574-6 (cloth : alkaline paper)  1. Theological anthropology—Judaism.  2. Philosophical anthropology.  3. Maimonides, Moses, 1135–1204—Criticism and interpretation.  4. Spinoza, Benedictus de, 1632–1677—Criticism and interpretation.  I. Title.   BM627.P37 2012   296.3'2—dc23 2011051496 a This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

C o nt e nt s

Acknowledgments / vii Introduction / 1 ONE

/ Desire (Shahwa) and Spiritedness (Ghad.ab) vs. Conatus / 19 TWO

T H REE

F OUR

FIVE

/ Veneration vs. Equality / 51 / Forms vs. Laws of Nature / 77

/ Freedom vs. Determinism / 107

/ Teleology vs. Imagined Ideal / 139

SIX

/ Prudence vs. Imagination / 163

Epilogue / 187 Appendix: Richard Kennington’s Spinoza and Esotericism in Spinoza’s Thought / 193 Index / 213

a c k n o wl e d g m e nt s

I thank the University of Dallas (UD) and the Earhart Foundation for generous support of sabbatical leave. During the summer of 2010, Jonathan Jacobs ran a helpful NEH Summer Seminar titled “Free Will and Human Perfection in Medieval Jewish Philosophy.” In addition to offering further opportunity to read and discuss Maimonides (with fine colleagues, especially Scott Girdner, Gregory Kaplan, and Greg McBrayer), it gave me the opportunity to expand my familiarity with Bahya Ibn Pakuda and Saadya Gaon—which is evident on occasion in this book. During that seminar, Jon directed me to Richard Sorabji’s useful insights about necessity and causation in Aristotle in his Necessity, Cause, and Blame: Perspectives on Aristotle’s Theory (London: Duckworth / Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)—which was especially useful for sorting out Maimon­ ides’s views on choice. I thank many students, especially graduate students, at UD for the opportunity to teach and learn with them about Maimonides and Spinoza over the last decade. To the many colleagues with whom I’ve partnered in panels at the American Academy of Religion Southwest and the Association of Jewish Studies in recent years: thank you. I also thank John Tryneski for his helpful suggestions on the manuscript and for steering me so ably through the process to publication. I want especially to thank the two anonymous reviewers of my manuscript. They were both very helpful. The more critical of the two enabled me to see that I needed to link the Ethics more explicitly to the TheologicoPolitical Treatise. I believe that the argument of the book has been clarified significantly as a result. An earlier version of chapter 6 appeared as “Leaving the Garden: Maimonides and Spinoza on the Imagination and Practical Intellect Revisited,” Philosophy and Theology 18, no. 2 (2006): 219–46.

Introduction

Until the last century, it was generally agreed that Maimonides was a great defender of Judaism and Spinoza was one of its great opponents—if not an opponent of the Jewish people. In other words, it was recognized that Spinoza was one of the leaders in the Enlightenment drive toward secularization of politics. Since the 1960s, it has become commonplace to argue that Maimonides, not Spinoza, fired one of the first salvos in modernity or our modern secular world. This introduction will eventually consider how a few very influential scholars, especially Harry A. Wolfson, Shlomo Pines, and Warren Zev Harvey, paved the way for this view. One of the key objectives of this book is to challenge the view that Maimonides is in any significant sense a protomodern. I contend that the main value to be derived from studying Maimonides is to gain distance from our own world and viewpoint, which has been so deeply shaped by the thought of Spinoza. The view that Spinoza is a modern and Maimonides is a premodern was once the prevailing view. For example, Leo Strauss argued this about Maimonides

. See Shlomo Pines, “Limitations of Human Knowledge according to al-Fa¯ra¯bı¯, Ibn Ba¯jja, and Maimonides,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. I. Twersky (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 82–109; reprinted in Collected Works of Shlomo Pines, vol. 5, ed. W. Z. Harvey and Moshe Idel (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997), 404–31; Warren Z. Har­ vey, “Ethics and Meta-ethics, Aesthetics and Meta-aesthetics in Maimonides,” in Maimonides and Philosophy, ed. S. Pines and Y. Yovel (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986), 131–38; Aryeh Botwinick, Skepticism, Belief, and Modernity: Maimonides to Nietzsche (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997); Heidi Ravven, “Some Thoughts on What Spinoza Learned from Maimonides about the Prophetic Imagination,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 39, no. 2 (2001): 193–214 (pt. 1) and 39, no. 3 (2001): 385–406 (pt. 2); and David Biale, “Not in the Heavens: The Premodern Roots of Jewish Secularism,” Contemplate 5 (2008–9): 4–12, a brief article anticipating the argument of his book Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought (Prince­ ton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

 / Introduction

and Spinoza. As any reader will be able to see in short order, my reading of these two authors is deeply influenced by Strauss’s—indeed, could even be considered a defense of his overall interpretation. One difference between my approach and Strauss’s is that I have shifted my focus to Spinoza’s Ethics from what seemed in Strauss’s time to be the neglected Theologico-Political Treatise. The present book compares primarily Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed and Spinoza’s Ethics. Another difference is that it focuses on their views on human nature or what would more traditionally be called their anthropologies rather than directly on their approaches to what Strauss, following Spinoza, refers to as the theologicopolitical problem. In addition to offering a novel approach to the Ethics, this shift in focus has other advantages: Most of the scholarship on Maimonides since 1960—and there is an enormous amount of it—has focused on uncovering his well-guarded theoretical, especially his metaphysical, views. Although his anthropology is closely related to his physics, which is part of his theoretical teaching, physics and anthropology are not simply identical. Above all, this approach will make it possible to approach the core theoretical issues of Maimonides (the Account of the Beginning or physics and the Account of the Chariot or metaphysics) obliquely rather than directly. It may be that this more oblique approach will save us from, as it were, being blinded by the sun—to borrow a Socratic image from Plato’s Phaedo. This book’s approach to Spinoza’s Ethics, though it draws heavily on the last half-century of scholarship, including the last two decades of especially intense study, is deeply indebted to an unfortunately neglected 1980 article written by Richard Kennington. Kennington was first known as a Descartes scholar and later as a Bacon scholar. He published only one article on Spinoza, but it sheds brilliant new light on the Ethics. (See the appendix on Kennington’s article.) Its main value is to compel the reader to take seriously certain methodological features of the Ethics too long assumed to be defects. For example, Kennington gives us a way to approach the fact that the opening definitions lack the intuitive obviousness that one would expect in an apparently synthetic or deductive argument such as the Ethics. Another example: he argues persuasively that Spinoza’s use of synthesis or deduction is not nearly as continuous throughout the Ethics as is widely as. Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). . “Analytic and Synthetic Methods in Spinoza’s Ethics,” in On Modern Origins: Essays in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Pamela Kraus and Frank Hunt (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 205–28; originally in The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, ed. Richard Kennington (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1980), 293–318.

Introduction / 

sumed—indeed, a prominent role is to be played by analysis. Others have noted that some of the most important moments in Spinoza’s argument, for example, in long appendices and scholia such as 1app and 3p2s, do not fit neatly into the putatively deductive structure of the whole, but no one other than Kennington, as far as I am aware, has made the argument that Spinoza seriously employs analysis. Above all, Kennington shows that the extended (analytic) digression on physics in part 2 between propositions 13 and 14 plays a more foundational role than has been previously acknowledged. In short, Kennington compels us to rethink our approach to the Ethics. The most important contribution of this book is to contrast the views on human nature of Maimonides and Spinoza. Although these authors have been compared in a 2009 book aimed at a relatively wide audience, not since Wolfson’s magisterial Philosophy of Spinoza has an extended discussion of Spinoza and Maimonides been published in English. In Spinoza, lecteur de Maïmonide: La question théologico-politique (2006), Catherine Chalier has focused, as her title indicates, on Spinoza as interpreter or reader of Maimonides. And as her subtitle indicates, she is focused more directly on the theologico-political problem than we will be here. Although I will address the issue of the way Spinoza reads Maimonides in this introduction, my focus in the rest of the book is different from hers. Before turning to a more detailed discussion of the recent scholarship that has provoked this book, we need to consider briefly the general trend toward assimilation of Maimonides to Spinoza. An important argument made to justify this assimilation is that the theologico-political differences are obvious but that once one penetrates the practical surface of their teachings one discovers that at greater theoretical depths Maimonides and Spinoza are much closer than first appears. W. Z. Harvey may be the most outspoken proponent of this view. It is difficult to say exactly what drives such an interpretation: whether it is a certain version of Strauss’s own effort to promote the recognition of esotericism in both of these authors or perhaps the conviction that theoretical science is so much more important that it trumps merely theologico-political concerns. Whatever the motive, . See, for example, Efraim Shmueli, “The Geometrical Method, Personal Caution, and the Ideal of Tolerance,” in Spinoza: New Perspectives, ed. Robert W. Shahan and J. I. Biro (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), 197–215. . Marc D. Angel, Maimonides, Spinoza, and Us: Toward an Intellectually Vibrant Judaism (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2009). . Catherine Chalier, Spinoza, lecteur de Maïmonide: La question théologico-politique (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2006). . Warren Z. Harvey, “A Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 19, no. 2 (1981): 151–72.

 / Introduction

I will attempt to show in this book that the putative theoretical similarities between Maimonides and Spinoza are superficial. Another important (largely tacit or implied) argument made to justify the assimilation of Maimonides to Spinoza is that Maimonides is so radical an author—a claim that hardly anyone can gainsay—that he must have presaged the kinds of all-too-radical theoretical breaks from the past exemplified by the Enlightenment. Although Maimonides deserves his reputation as the most pathbreaking of thinkers in the Jewish tradition, that pathbreaking character may not derive from theoretical innovations. Instead, I will argue that that character derives from the way that he relates the Jewish tradition to philosophy. No one before Maimonides had attempted to make room for philosophy within the Jewish fold. True, important thinkers had taken pages out of the books of philosophers to bolster their defenses of Judaism—such as Saadya Gaon, Judah Ha-Levi, and Bahya Ibn Pakuda—but none of them had opened the space that Maimonides opened. Although this interpretation of what makes Maimonides novel may not be as dramatic a claim as that he brought about radical metaphysical changes, I will try to show that it is truer to the facts. What if it were the case that the theoretical innovations of modernity were in one way or another misbegotten? Perhaps then Maimonides’ lack of theoretical radicality might prove to be an asset. Let us now turn to some of the details in the rise of the view that either Maimonides should be viewed as a protomodern of sorts or Spinoza as a medieval of sorts or both. (Readers who do not count themselves as specialists in Maimonides and Spinoza might want to skip this detailed discussion and go to the overview of the parts of the book near the end of this introduction.) Floris van der Burg in her 2002 book Davidson and Spinoza: Mind, Matter, and Morality reports that Seymour Feldman, in two different texts published in the same year, credits Harry Wolfson with dubbing Spinoza both “the last of the Medievals” and “the first of the Moderns.” Van der . Shlomo Pines, for example, “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. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 95–157. . Floris van der Burg, Davidson and Spinoza: Mind, Matter, and Morality (Hampshire, Eng.: Ashgate, 2002), 11–12 n. 3. Feldman infers the “last of the Medievals” in his fine review of the first volume of Yirmiyahu Yovel’s Spinoza and Other Heretics (“Spinoza: A Marrano of Reason?” Inquiry 35, no. 1 [1992]: 37–53, esp. 37–38) based on Wolfson’s “Spinoza and the Religion of the Past” originally delivered in 1949 and appearing in Religious Philosophy: A Group of Essays by Harry Austryn Wolfson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961; rpt. New York: Atheneum, 1965), 246–269, esp. 269. (To my mind, the passage cited is less convincing than the opening

Introduction / 

Burg’s report is a symptom of the ambiguity of Wolfson’s views, as well as an indicator of some of the confusion to which they have contributed. The opening of Wolfson’s massive two-volume Philosophy of Spinoza insinuates that Spinoza is the “last of the Medievals” by describing the method of his (Wolfson’s) project as “reconstructing the Ethics out of scattered slips of paper figuratively cut out of the philosophic literature available to Spinoza” (3). What Wolfson considered the “philosophical literature available to Spinoza” is evident from a perusal of authors in Wolfson’s “List of References.” The vast majority are medieval. The most prominent modern is Descartes, but Wolfson has more citations referring to the Aristotelian corpus than to Descartes.10 Of course, this does not prove that Wolfson viewed Spinoza as a medieval in 1934; however, it does indicate that he thought Spinoza’s “source material” is primarily premodern. That Wolfson viewed Aristotle’s influence over Spinoza as profound is evident also from one of the last things he wrote about their relation: “Spinoza is daring, but he introduces no novelty. His daring consists in overthrowing the old Philonic principles which by this time had dominated the thought of European religious philosophy for some sixteen centuries. But in overthrowing these principles, all he did was to reinstate, with some modification, the old principles of classical Greek philosophy.”11 Lest we become sidetracked into the question of how we are to view the relation between a philosopher and his predecessors, I will simply posit that I do not share Wolfson’s tacit view that philosophers—whether they realize it or not—are to a very great extent shaped by their predecessors.12 Leaving that aside, the periodization conundrum that Wolfson faces, with respect to

pages of Wolfson’s The Philosophy of Spinoza [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934], esp. 1: 3–4.) Feldman infers the “first of the Moderns” in his introduction to the second edition of Samuel Shirley’s translation of Spinoza’s Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992), 5, based on Wolfson’s Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948), vol. 2, chap. 14—Feldman seems to be referring to pp. 457–60. It should be noted that Feldman offered this account of Wolfson’s views of Spinoza in his introduction to the first edition, published some ten years earlier than his review of Yovel. In other words, these comments were really made ten years apart. 10. Cf. Philosophy of Spinoza, 1: 19, where Wolfson identifies Descartes, Maimonides, and (indirectly) Aristotle as the greatest influences upon Spinoza. 11. “Spinoza and the Religion of the Past,” 269. Wolfson’s “with some modification” is extremely tame as compared with most scholars’ views on the depth of Spinoza’s break with all things premodern. 12. My phrase “whether they realize it or not” is inspired in part by the subtitle of Wolfson’s Spinoza book. The full title is The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes of His Reasoning (my emphasis).

 / Introduction

Spinoza, is evident as early as 1926 in his reply to Joseph Ratner’s critique.13 Wolfson concludes that [Ratner] feels quite confident that he knows a priori the difference between medieval and modern philosophy, and assures us that “Spinoza in every particular is a full-blooded modern,” and that his God is not the God of Maimonides. . . . I must confess that I am not always sure as to what is medieval and what is modern in philosophy. But this much I can say with certainty, that I find nothing medieval in Maimonides’ approach to the problem of religion except his modernist lack of logical consistency [by which Wolfson surely means “his lack of modern logical consistency”] in raising the superstructure of a traditional religious system upon a purely scientific conception of God. The advance made by Spinoza is not in modifying Maimonides’ conception of God, but rather in escaping his logical inconsistency.14

The claim that Spinoza is a more consistent extension of Maimonides is crucial for the rest of this introduction because we will trace echoes of this view in the more recent scholars, Pines and Harvey. To say that Spinoza is the logical extension of Maimonides is not necessarily to say that Spinoza is a medieval, because as we have just seen, as early as 1926 Wolfson identifies “logical consistency” as the centerpiece of what it is to be modern. It could be objected that all that Wolfson means by “logical consistency” is that moderns were deeply enamored of what Descartes famously dubbed “method.” Yet Wolfson does not treat Descartes as truly modern. Indeed, he treats him as continuing the putatively medieval lack of consistency. According to Wolfson, at least the Wolfson of the 1940s and onward, Spinoza and Spinoza alone marks the first true break with medieval philosophy.15

13. H. A. Wolfson, “Towards an Accurate Understanding of Spinoza,” Journal of Philosophy 23, no. 10 (1926): 268–73. This is a reply to Ratner’s piece in the Journal of Philosophy criticizing Wolfson’s interpretation of twelve of the first thirteen propositions in Spinoza’s Ethics in Chronicon Spinozanum 1, 2, and 3. 14. Wolfson, “Towards an Accurate Understanding of Spinoza,” 272–73. 15. Review both Wolfson, “Spinoza and the Religion of the Past,” 269, and Philo, 2: 459, but esp. 2: 457: “Similarly, when toward the end of mediaeval philosophy, in the sixteenth century, new conceptions of nature and of the physical universe began to make their appearance, exponents of mediaeval philosophy, among whom Descartes is to be included, tried to show how easy it was for them to adjust their inherited principles of mediaeval philosophy to their new conception of nature and the physical universe. . . . Spinoza . . . for the first time launched a grand assault upon [Philonic philosophy].”

Introduction / 

More troubling than the ambiguities in Wolfson’s writings about the proper historical locus of Spinoza is his implied characterization of medieval philosophy as at bottom lacking logical consistency. For Wolfson medieval philosophy is what we have already heard him refer to as “religious philosophy,”16 and Philo is its founder. As he states in his 1961 collection titled Religious Philosophy, Philo “revolutionized philosophy and remade it into what became the common philosophy of the three religions with cognate scriptures, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This triple scriptural religious philosophy . . . reigned supreme as a homogeneous, if not a thoroughly unified, system of thought until the seventeenth century, when it was pulled down by Spinoza.”17 Recently, I have argued against Wolfson’s (and many other scholars’) tendency to lump together the three traditions of medieval philosophy in this way. I revisit Strauss’s argument that much of twentieth-century scholarship on medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy has distorted those traditions by viewing them through the lens of Scholasticism.18 Rather than rehearse the details of my objections to Wolfson’s overstatement of the homogeneity of medieval philosophy here, I want to focus on the putative lack of consistency of Maimonides and putative consistency of Spinoza. It almost goes without saying that the view that Spinoza follows through or extends Maimonides has contributed to the view among scholars such as Pines and Harvey that Maimonides and Spinoza are far more similar than prior scholarship had recognized. Consequently, rather than ongoing confusion about whether Spinoza is the last of the medievals or the first of the moderns such as we find in Wolfson, what begins to emerge is confusion about whether Maimonides is not in some important sense modern. This notion gained credence because Pines began to insist on Maimonides’s novelty, at least vis-à-vis Aristotle. In other words, contrary to Wolfson, it is Maimonides rather than Spinoza who exemplifies the break with the past—if not exactly Wolfson’s Philonic past. For example, in his article “Truth and Falsehood Versus Good and Evil” on Guide 1.2 and its possible sources, Pines argued that Maimonides represents a break from Aristotelianism, which may have some precursors in the Greek commentary tradition but which is 16. Consider for example the subtitle of the Philo book (Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and the title of the collection of his essays (Religious Philosophy). 17. Wolfson, Religious Philosophy, i. 18. Joshua Parens, “Escaping the Scholastic Paradigm,” a paper presented at a conference titled “The Modern Invention of the Medieval” at the Institute of Jewish Thought and Heritage at SUNY Buffalo, June 6–8, 2010.

 / Introduction

in many ways unprecedented.19 When this is combined with the observation that Spinoza establishes a divide between intellect and imagination based on the split between truth and falsehood versus good and evil, as Pines observes in this article, then one is quite close to insinuating that Maimonides represents a break with ancient thought that paved the way in decisive respects for Spinoza. Pines’s most widely known declaration that Maimonides was a protomodern of some sort came in his 1979 “Limitations” article.20 In a manner that is somewhat at odds with Pines’s stress elsewhere on Maimonides’s affinities with Spinoza, in “Limitations” he argues that Maimonides is a proto-Kantian about the limits of metaphysical knowledge. This claim about Maimonides’s affinities with Kant gave rise to a great outpouring of scholarship about whether Maimonides (or Alfarabi or Ibn Bajja) believes that any kind of metaphysical knowledge is attainable.21 Warren Zev Harvey, perhaps Pines’s most prominent student, was far less enamored of the Kantian thread in Pines’s scholarship.22 Instead, he focused on the Spinoza thread and penned one article in English and one in Hebrew, which were so influential that the one written in Hebrew was eventually translated into English, in which he outlined what he considered the profound similarities between Maimonides and Spinoza.23 Among the most striking claims about similarity that Harvey makes is that Spinoza’s understanding of God is very close to Maimonides’s save the addition of the attribute of extension. In explaining this claim, Harvey appeals explicitly

19. Pines, “Truth and Falsehood versus Good and Evil.” 20. Pines, “Limitations of Human Knowledge.” 21. Alexander Altmann, “Maimonides on the Intellect and the Scope of Metaphysics,” in Von der mittelalterlichen zur modernen Aufklärung: Texts and Studies in Early Modern Judaism (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1987), 2: 60–129; Herbert Davidson, “Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge,” in Maimonidean Studies, vol. 3, ed. Arthur Hyman (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1992–93), 49–103; Alfred Ivry, “The Logical and Scientific Premises of Maimonides’ Thought,” in Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism, ed. Alfred Ivry et al. (Amsterdam: Harwood, 1998), 63–97; Barry Kogan, “What Can We Know and When Can We Know It?” in Moses Maimonides and His Time, ed. E. Ormsby (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989), 121–37; Kenneth Seeskin, Searching for a Distant God: The Legacy of Maimonides (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Josef Stern, “Maimonides on Language and the Science of Language,” in Maimonides and the Sciences, ed. R. S. Cohen and H. Levine (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000), 173–226; “Maimonides’ Demonstrations: Principles and Practice,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 10 (2001): 47–84. 22. Harvey, “Political Philosophy and Halakhah in Maimonides,” in Jewish Intellectual History in the Middle Ages, BINAH series, ed. Joseph Dan (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994), 3: 47–64, esp. 58–59 and 48 n. 5; first published in Hebrew in Iyyun 29 (1980): 198–212. 23. “Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean”; “Maimonides and Spinoza on the Knowledge of Good and Evil” [in Hebrew], Iyyun 28 (1979): 167–85; trans. Yoel Lerner, in Studies in Jewish Thought, ed. Joseph Dan (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1989), 131–46.

Introduction / 

to Pines but does not seem at the moment to be aware of the influence of Wolfson’s claim that Spinoza extends Maimonides’s line of argument with greater consistency than Maimonides himself.24 After citing Guide 1.68’s recapitulation of the Aristotelian claim that God is knower, known, and activity of knowledge, Harvey cites Ethics 2p7s and concludes that according to Spinoza, “Maimonides saw the truth ‘as if through a cloud,’ but did not pursue the logic of his own thesis. Had he done so, he would have realized that if extended space is intellectually cognized by God, then God—being the intellectually cognized Object—must be extended!” After acknowledging that Maimonides insisted in all of his writings on divine incorporeality, Harvey goes on to argue in explanation of Spinoza’s putatively greater consistency. Spinoza certainly has Maimonides in mind when he speaks about those who have in some way “contemplated the divine nature” but deny that God is a body. He complains that “they remove altogether from the divine nature . . . corporeal or extended substance, and state that it was created by God.” Then he [Spinoza] exclaims with monotheistic indignation worthy of Maimonides: “By what divine potentia it could have been created they are altogether ignorant, so that it is clear that they do not understand what they themselves say” (E 1p15s). Spinoza’s exclamation must be understood against the backdrop of another Maimonidean teaching: that in God “there is absolutely no potentia” (Guide 1.68). Spinoza must thus be understood as addressing Maimonides as follows: You do not understand what you are saying, for if you say that there is absolutely no potentia in God, how can you say that he created body and extension? Spinoza argues, in effect, that what Maimonides has said about intellect must—according to Maimonides’ own monotheistic premises!—be true about everything [namely, that God is everything that He knows, including matter].25

In the next paragraph, as if to drive home his point that Spinoza is under the distinctive influence of Maimonides, Harvey argues the following: Spinoza presses his case that God is body by mustering arguments for the view that body need not be finite, views he borrowed from Hasdai Crescas—yet, 24. Indeed, when Harvey discusses Wolfson, it is primarily to take him (along with Strauss) to task for failing to single out sufficiently the depth of Maimonides’s “distinctive . . . influence” on Spinoza. See “Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean,” 151–53. A much more recent article by Harvey may suggest that he has become more sympathetic to Pines’s Kantian thread; see “Maimonides’ Critical Epistemology and Guide 2:24,” Aleph 8 (2008): 213–35. 25. “Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean,” 166.

10 / Introduction

according to Harvey, Crescas, not Spinoza, was Maimonides’s true opponent. Spinoza merely sought to “carry the Maimonidean position to its proper conclusion.”26 My point here is that what Harvey and Wolfson portray as Spinoza’s greater logical consistency has little or nothing to do with consistency. Rather, Spinoza employs the rhetoric of clarity and distinctness (and by implication “consistency”) to discredit his medieval opponents. Unfortunately, at least Wolfson seems to have been won over by this rhetoric to such an extent that he accepts the view that Maimonides is a less consistent, merely Philonic philosopher. Taking the rhetoric of both Maimonides and Spinoza seriously, I hope to show that Spinoza is not as consistent as Wolfson and Harvey would have us believe, nor is Maimonides as inconsistent as Wolfson would have us believe. Rather, Spinoza deploys the rhetoric of logical consistency and Maimonides openly embraces the use of contradiction—which is not quite the same as saying that he tried, as Wolfson claims, to “rais[e] the superstructure of a traditional religious system upon a purely scientific conception of God.” The most widely known and generally misleading manifestation of Spinoza’s rhetoric of consistency is his argument in the Theologico-Political Treatise: on the one hand, Maimonides foists an Aristotelian reading of scripture upon the Torah; on the other hand, he (Spinoza) interprets the Torah on its own terms. I, like others,27 have attempted to show elsewhere that by subtly insinuating an all-too-modern standard of clarity and distinctness into his own interpretations of scripture, Spinoza distorts the original. In contrast, Maimonides, rather than pawning the Torah off as Aristotle, consistently draws the reader’s attention to divergences between Aristotle and scripture. The present case, God’s attribute of extension, is not so different from that far more widely known hermeneutic claim about scripture. I return to “the present case.” According to Harvey, Spinoza uses two (or three) Maimonidean premises, namely, (1) God is knower, known, and activity of knowledge;28 (somewhat tacitly and as part of a reductio ad absurdum argument, the un-Spinozist premise, [2] God creates the world);29

26. Ibid., 164–66. 27. See Martin Yaffe’s interpretive essay to his translation of Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise (Newburyport, MA: Focus, 2004), 267–347 (hereafter TTP). 28. Harvey acknowledges the Aristotelian provenance of this claim. See “Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean,” 164 n. 74, citing Meta. 1072b19–23 and 1075a10–11 and De anima 431a1–2 and b17–19; and Pines’s translator’s introduction to his translation of the Guide (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), p. xcviii. 29. “Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean,” 166, top.

Introduction / 11

and (3) God is wholly lacking in potency,30 to yield the conclusion that even for Maimonides it should be the case that (4) God Himself must be, or include as one of His attributes, matter. Now of the three premises from which Spinoza draws this conclusion, the first and third are obviously Aristotelian premises and the second is biblical. For Aristotle, God as pure actuality could know things only as form—consequently, God cannot know matter and thus cannot “be” it. For the moment, let us set aside Aristotle and consider Spinoza’s implied objection to the role of creation in Maimonides’ account, that is, that the very notion of creation implies that God is not purely actual. Maimonides would merely acknowledge that he raises the same problem himself.31 Harvey seems to be implying that Spinoza holds that Maimonides’s Aristotelian claim about the coincidence of knower and known object contradicts Maimonides’s claim (unbeknownst to Maimonides?) that God creates the world and that a more consistent view of the coincidence of knower and known entails that matter is one of God’s attributes—and that Spinoza discovered that more consistent view of God. (The inconsistency between premise 2 and the others is highly reminiscent of Wolfson’s claim that Maimonides raises traditional religion on scientific grounds.) What Harvey does not bring out is that Spinoza’s own modified version of the Aristotelian coincidence of knower and known presupposes the rejection of the Aristotelian distinction between potency and actuality (cf. E 1p34 and 2p13s–14). It is that very distinction between potency (that is, matter) and actuality (that is, form) that underwrites Aristotle’s implied claim that God (as pure rational actuality) could not know matter. Spinoza’s rejection of the Aristotelian conception of actuality is not a more logically consistent approach than Maimonides’s. Rather, Spinoza conceals the depth of his break from premodern thought by dressing up his thought in premodern parlance—appealing to well-worn tropes such as thinker = object = activity of thinking, as if he remained somehow premodern. In reality he fills these old vessels with very new wine. (For evidence that filling premodern philosophical terms with radically new meaning was a key way of making modern novelties more acceptable, see, for example, Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning 2.7.2 and New Organon 2.2.) Here, I turn from this rather extreme case of Harvey’s analysis of Spinoza’s arguments for extending God’s attributes to include extension to a broader and more synoptic look at Wolfson, Pines, and Harvey: (1) Wolfson 30. Here, Harvey cites only the Maimonidean source. See ibid., 166 n. 80. Cf. Aristotle, Meta. 1050b18–20, 1071b13–23. 31. Guide 2.14, esp. pp. 287–88 of Pines trans.

12 / Introduction

overstates Maimonides’s inconsistency by (a) conflating premodern philosophy with a “scientific conception of God” and (b) failing to attend to the rhetorical role of contradiction in Maimonides’s Guide—a complex cross between defense of Judaism and opening up a space for philosophy within the Jewish fold. (2) Pines and Harvey both overstate the novelty of some of Maimonides’s positions (e.g., on true vs. good and intellect vs. imagination) because they adopt overly traditional, even Scholastic, interpretations of Aristotle. What they take to be a break from Aristotle is less a break from the original than a deviation from the received (mainly Scholastic) interpretations of Aristotle. In effect, they both failed to learn from Strauss just how unlike traditional readings of Aristotle are the readings of Alfarabi and Maimonides.32 (3) Pines and Harvey overstate Spinoza’s consistency by failing to flag (a) the ways in which Spinoza distorts Maimonides to display his [Spinoza’s] putative consistency and (b) the ways in which Spinoza distorts the Bible to suit his own purposes. And they fail at both (a) and (b) by (c) inattentiveness to Spinoza’s subtle shifting of the meaning of terms. Regarding 1a: Just how deep is Wolfson’s confusion of premodern views of God and modern “scientific conception[s]” is evident in his efforts to bring out the Aristotelian provenance of many of Spinoza’s arguments. As in the example from Harvey above, it is true that Spinoza will use longstanding tropes such as, in the case of God, thinker = object = activity of thinking. Yet he so transforms the meaning of knowledge that God must know not only form but also matter. This transformation in the meaning of knowledge is matched by a transformation in the object of knowledge, a transformation that I can merely adumbrate here as laws of nature as opposed to premodern forms.33 Returning to the knower, God: In the premodern scheme He is the first cause; in the modern, God is a term that serves to gloss laws of nature—such laws, as Richard Kennington has shown so convincingly, are certainly not first causes and, in the most precise sense of the term, not even properly causes.34 In spite of his declarations that Spinoza is

32. This may help explain why Harvey lumps Strauss together with Wolfson as someone who overstates the homogeneity of premodern philosophy (“Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean,” 153–54). True, Strauss insists on a relatively strong break between premodern and modern, which Harvey opposes (153). More importantly, however, Strauss opposes the Wolfsonian view that medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy is Philonic—though he might acknowledge as much about the main currents of medieval Christian philosophy. According to Strauss, the medieval Jewish and Islamic traditions reveal a side of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy lost to the modern world through its tutelage to Scholasticism. 33. See chap. 3 below. 34. See Kennington, On Modern Origins, 27.

Introduction / 13

the first true modern in Religious Philosophy,35 Wolfson seems, like Harvey, to ignore the innumerable consequences of such a fundamental distinction between premodern and modern views of God,36 by taking Spinoza’s use of quasi-Aristotelian, even Scholastic, turns of phrase at face value. Regarding 1b, the complex rhetorical role of contradiction in Maimonides, Wolfson surely misconstrues Maimonides when he claims that Maimonides tries to raise traditional religion on a contradictory scientific ground. Although much of the premodern tradition, especially the premodern Christian tradition, could be accused of blending elements of classical philosophy with monotheism—what Wolfson refers to as Philonic philosophy— Maimonides can hardly be accused of this. After all, what else accounts for the sense of readers over hundreds of years that Maimonides’s Guide seems almost as much a source of perplexity as a guide out of it? The Guide does not provide the kind of harmonization or synthesis that most readers hope for. Although it cannot be denied that Maimonides juxtaposes inconsistent Aristotelian and biblical arguments or claims throughout the Guide, it is dubious to insinuate that the former serves as the ground of the latter. Regarding 2: Pines and Harvey ascribe to Maimonides a radical break from the past on themes such as true vs. good, intellect vs. imagination, and opposition to teleology. I have already published on the first two pairs of oppositions (and chapter 6 below is one of those publications).37 Here, I will consider briefly teleology, the theme of chapter 5. Maimonides’s resis­ tance to “ultimate finality” (the hierarchical ordering of all species) in Guide 3.13 is misinterpreted as a break from Aristotle, which is then purportedly taken up by Spinoza.38 Maimonides is not as alone in the medieval tradition as Harvey insists in his efforts not to overstate teleology. Indeed, Maimonides merely takes a page out of Alfarabi’s playbook. Although Alfarabi is renowned for offering rhapsodic descriptions of the hierarchy of beings that

35. See note 15 above. 36. Cf. note 32 above. Harvey views Strauss’s distinction between premodern and modern as akin to Wolfson’s account of Philonic philosophy, which seems to me to be highly misleading. As part of the effort to highlight Maimonides’s novelty, Harvey, like Pines, insinuates that Maimonides evades distinctions between premodern and modern. 37. “Leaving the Garden: Maimonides and Spinoza on the Imagination and Practical Intellect Revisited,” Philosophy and Theology 18, no. 2 (2006): 219–246 appears below in slightly modified form as chap. 6, “Prudence vs. Imagination.” The other publication relating to the first two pairs of oppositions is “Prudence, Imagination, and Determination of Law in Alfarabi and Maimonides,” in Enlightening Revolutions: Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner, ed. Svetozar Minkov and Stéphane Douard (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006), 31–55. 38. See Pines, “Truth and Falsehood versus Good and Evil,” 114 n. 53 and Harvey, “Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean,” 164.

14 / Introduction

would make Lovejoy blush, closer reading reveals in a Farabian work that Maimonides knew well and praised highly (The Principles of Beings or the Political Regime) that the hierarchical order of things is not what it appears to be at first: two key things reveal the breakdown in that order, namely, vipers and the so-called weeds, among whom the philosophers can be counted. In effect, the lower often not only does not serve the higher but also harms the higher—contrary to the traditional views of “ultimate finality” that Maimonides rejects in Aristotle’s name in Guide 3.13.39 Regarding 3a and 3c: I believe that I have already displayed Harvey’s inattention to or unwillingness to bring out Spinoza’s intentional distortions of Maimonides and subtle transformations of key Aristotelian/Maimonidean terms and tropes. Here, I bring out a striking confirmation that Pines was insensitive to Spinoza’s intentional distortion of Maimonides. Near the beginning of Pines’s article “Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Maimonides and Kant,” he says, “Spinoza seems to have been blind to the political obligations and apprehensions motivating the great philosophical tradition of coded writing; he seems also, in spite of Maimonides’ explicit statements, to have been unaware of the fact that the Guide is, in point of fact, a hermetic book and that many of its statements cannot be taken at their face value.”40 It is precisely by reading Maimonides literally or naively that Spinoza often makes Maimonides appear “inconsistent”—as we have seen in the case of God’s attribute of extension. Could Spinoza be so Machiavellian as to interpret Maimonides literally in his own writings while understanding perfectly well how he ought to be read? Although Pines made the just quoted claim in 1968, after publishing his translation of the Guide in 1963 at least to some extent in collaboration with Leo Strauss, and even dedicates the article to Strauss; Pines appears to be oblivious that, according to Strauss, Spinoza as himself a practitioner of coded writing must be aware of its presence in others—indeed, must have learned how to practice it from those very others whose writings he so artfully distorts.41 39. Cf. the moment in the Aristotelian corpus when Aristotle comes closest to embracing “ultimate finality” in Politics 1.8 and the various claims made by Pines about medieval Islamic and Jewish awareness of the Politics (or lack thereof) in “Aristotle’s Politics in Arabic Philosophy,” Israel Oriental Studies 5 (1975): 150–60. 40. Shlomo Pines, “Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Maimonides and Kant,” in Further Studies in Philosophy, ed. Ora Segal, Scripta Hierosolymitana, vol. 20, (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1968), 3–54; reprinted in Collected Works of Shlomo Pines, ed. W. Z. Harvey and Moshe Idel (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997), 5: 660–711, esp. 662. 41. See Leo Strauss, “Persecution and the Art of Writing” and “How to Study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise,” in Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 22–37 and 142–201, esp. 33–35 and 181–89.

Introduction / 15

Regarding 3b, Spinoza’s distortion of biblical terms: The most egregious case is his distortion of the meaning of God. As Spinoza conceives Him, God would violate His own nature if He allowed for miracles (TTP, Yaffe trans., 6.1.33). It almost goes without saying that Spinoza knows that his God is not the God of the Bible. Spinoza, then, is not more consistent than Maimonides; rather, above all in his Ethics, the main focus of Wolfson and Harvey, Spinoza sings the siren song of consistency and subtly compels the assent of his theologically inclined readers to unprecedented views on God, by wrapping those views up in familiar terminology and definitions.42 In contrast, Maimonides proffers novel views of God (novel at least to his intended audience) while highlighting for all but the laziest or most headstrong among his admittedly high-end target audience just how inconsistent are those views with the biblical inheritance. In this introduction, I have argued that Harry A. Wolfson, Shlomo Pines, and Warren Zev Harvey too readily assimilate Maimonides to Spinoza and vice versa. Whatever other benefits these scholars have provided us, and those are many, I believe that at least in this respect they have impeded rather than increased our access to Maimonides and Spinoza. When Spinoza insinuates that he is providing a more consistent version of Maimonides, he is almost uniformly distorting the Maimonidean original to score his own points. Although Spinoza learned from Maimonides more than his renowned attacks in the Theologico-Political Treatise imply, it is misleading to claim that an accurate portrayal of Spinoza renders him a Maimonidean. I intend over the course of this book to offer a more accurate portrayal. Because this book grew out of an effort to respond to Harvey’s portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean, it may help for me to list the elements of Harvey’s portrait before sketching the outline of my book: (1) for both thinkers, intellect : imagination :: true vs. false : good vs. evil, which means that good and evil are primarily the object of our imagination,43 (2) both thinkers view intellectual perfection as our highest end,44 (3) both thinkers oppose anthropocentrism and teleology,45 (4) Spinoza’s God = Maimonides’s God + extension,46

42. That Spinoza is in the business of compelling assent is apparent if one compares the geometrical, that is to say, the synthetic organization of the Ethics with Meyer’s preface to Spinoza’s Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy” and Descartes’s Replies to the Second Objections to the Meditations. See chap. 3 and the appendix, below. 43. Harvey, “Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean,” 155–61. 44. Ibid., 161–62. 45. Ibid., 162–64. 46. Ibid. 164–66.

16 / Introduction

(5) Spinoza and Maimonides, because of their views on intellect vs. imagination, are equally “inequalitarian.”47 I have responded to Harvey’s claim 1 in two previously published articles,48 one of which is included as the final chapter of this book. I touch on point 2 throughout the book. Chapter 5 on teleology responds to 3—on the matter of both teleology and anthropocentrism. I have already addressed point 4 briefly in this introduction, and I continue to touch on it throughout the book in my various discussions of Maimonides’s stress on divine incorporeality and especially in its relation to forms in chapter 3. I address 5 the issue of “inequalitarianism” or inegalitarianism in chapter 2—though I approach it from a different angle than Harvey’s claim 1. It almost goes without saying that I would not have expended as much time and effort addressing Harvey’s claims if I did not respect him and think his arguments are powerful. This book is divided into six chapters and an appendix, as well as an epilogue. Chapter 1 begins with the most basic contrast between Maimonides’s and Spinoza’s views on human nature: Should all passions be traced to a single source (Spinoza) or are they irreducible to fewer than two sources (Maimonides)? The discovery of a single source for the passions, if true, would fit together neatly with Spinoza’s effort to unify the parts of philosophy or science—which recurs as a theme later in the book in chapters 3 and 4. This unification is part and parcel of Spinoza’s determinism about human nature. In contrast, Maimonides’s view preserves the distinctiveness of a key principle of human nature, choice. Having described the sources of the passions in chapter 1, in chapter 2 we turn to the most obvious divergence between Spinoza and Maimonides—evidenced by Spinoza’s open attack on Maimonides in the Theologico-Political Treatise for promoting the veneration of religious authorities such as himself. (I take the opportunity provided by this point of convergence between the Ethics and the TTP as the occasion to explain my understanding of the relation between these two works.) Veneration is a passion (or affect) rooted in wonder, which may be the one passion most uniformly opposed by early modern philosophers in general and Spinoza in particular. The opposition to this passion flows directly from the rejection of premodern notions about desire and love as they fit into the economy of the philosophic way of life, as discussed in chapter 1. Although Spinoza maintains the philosophic elitism of 47. Ibid., 167–69. 48. See note 37, above.

Introduction / 17

premodern thinkers, his attack on veneration and his promotion of liberal democracy and religious toleration undercut the long-term maintenance of premodern views of inequality. Chapter 3 connects Maimonides’s dual root of the passions to his views on form, especially as those views manifest themselves in his inculcation of a belief in divine incorporeality among all Jews. Love or desire must be distinguished from spiritedness as long as love or desire of things incorporeal remains a primary, irreducible passion. Spinoza’s reduction of all passions to the singular root, conatus, evinces his rejection of the premodern notion that desire or love is somehow primary. His determination to add corporeality as a divine attribute presupposes his decidedly modern view of “laws of nature.” Such laws are the replacement for premodern form. Along with Bacon and Descartes, Spinoza rejects forms, despite his ongoing use of the word “essence” throughout the Ethics. Chapter 4 takes up one of Spinoza’s most widely decried innovations: his affirmation of determinism. Ultimately, the weakening of premodern notions of freedom aids religious tolerance. Well aware of the explosive nature of his teaching on determinism, Spinoza is not beneath judiciously mixing talk of political freedom in the Theologico-Political Treatise and philosophic freedom in the Ethics. (This may be one of the most obvious indicators that Spinoza writes esoterically—though many commentators continue to deny that he does so.) Although Harvey never goes so far as to insinuate that Maimonides embraces a form of determinism, Pines has at least entertained the possibility.49 In earlier chapters, especially chapter 3, I pave the way for showing the connection between, on the one hand, Maimonides’s premodern understanding of forms in particular and causality in general and, on the other, his views on choice. In chapter 4, along with anticipating the connection between final causality or teleology and freedom in chapter 5—a connection often denied because causality is often confused with necessity50—I describe three subtle ways in which Maimonides makes his argument for freedom: his critiques of astral determinism, the views of Abu Bakr al-Razi, and Ash‘arite views on providence. In effect, Maimonides uses these non-Jewish sources of fatalism to steer Judaism clear of its own proclivities toward it. Chapter 5 concerns teleology and its counterpart an imagined ideal. I argue that Maimonides’s views on natural teleology are 49. “Excursus: Notes on Maimonides’ Views concerning Human Will,” in Studies in Philosophy, ed. Samuel Hugo Berman, Scripta Hierosolymitana, vol. 6 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1960), 195–98. 50. For the distinction between causality and necessity, see Richard Sorabji, Necessity, Cause and Blame: Perspectives on Aristotle’s Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), chap. 2.

18 / Introduction

not nearly as novel as Harvey claims—finding evidence for the same views in Alfarabi, whose books Maimonides commends highly. Although these views are not widely shared in the Scholastic appropriation of Aristotle, they may very well be a more accurate understanding of Aristotle. They may also indicate ways in which Aristotle may be read more subtly and usefully for modern purposes. Regarding Spinoza, I take up the hotly contested question whether he allows for human teleology, as opposed to divine teleology, which he obviously rejects. I argue that Spinoza is thoroughly consistent in his rejection of all teleology. The teleological conditionals, whose status in the Ethics is widely debated, are not an expression of his most considered philosophic views but a concession to everyday speech, which conforms more to the way we imagine we think than the way we really think, according to Spinoza.51 Chapter 6 concludes with the issue that served as the basis for many of Pines’s and Harvey’s claims for Maimonidean novelty, the role of the imagination. Maimonides maintains an important role for prudence in the discovery of good and evil, a role that Spinoza no longer has room for—except when, as with his teleological conditionals, he makes concessions to everyday speech or the imaginings of the multitude.

51. This gap between everyday speech and an accurate understanding of how we really think and feel should be compared with contemporary descendants such as twentieth-century attacks on so-called folk psychology. See the early salvos in the eliminative materialist critiques of folk psychology by Richard Rorty (“Mind-Body Identity, Privacy, and Categories,” Review of Metaphysics 19, no. 1 [1965]: 24–54) and Paul M. Churchland (“Eliminative Materialism and Propositional Attitudes,” Journal of Philosophy 78 [1981]: 67–90), which can both be found in Materialism and the Mind-Body Problem, ed. David M. Rosenthal (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000).

one

Desire (Shahwa) and Spiritedness (Ghad ·ab) vs. Conatus

Spinoza’s conception of conatus has long been viewed as highly novel and as central to his teaching in the Ethics. When one casts the mind’s eye over Maimonides’s oeuvre, no comparable term takes on such saliency. As the endeavor to exist (E 3p6), conatus is more than the tendency of human being to preserve itself and more than the tendency of human being to con­ ceive ideas. Indeed, conatus, like Nietzsche’s will to power after it, manifests itself in the most primitive kinds of beings (even what we would call “inani­ mate” beings) and in the highest activities of the most complex beings (such as Spinoza’s putative metaphysical search for “salvation”). Conatus is the force “behind” all being and becoming—which really is to say that it is that force itself. Ultimately, conatus is the efficient cause of all activity whether viewed physically, metaphysically, or epistemologically. No term takes on comparable saliency in Maimonides because no single term or force plays so many roles in his thought. In other words, he does not seek a unifying principle—as opposed to a unifying first cause, God. Spinoza’s method of inquiry and conception of the sciences go a long way toward guaranteeing

. See, for example, David Bidney, The Psychology and Ethics of Spinoza, 1st ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), 387 (the second edition appeared in 1962) and Nathan Roten­ streich, “Conatus and Amor Dei: The Total and Partial Norm,” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 31 (1977): 117–34. . See Yirmiyahu Yovel, “Spinoza and Freud: Self-Knowledge as Emancipation,” in Spinoza and Other Heretics, vol. 2: The Adventures of Immanence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 136–66, esp. 144–45. . For the origins of the distinctively modern search for what I refer to as a “unifying prin­ ciple,” see Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning 2.5.2. Also see below, the references to Des­ cartes’s early search for the mathesis universalis in his Rules for the Direction of the Mind. For an account of the shift from the premodern search for first causes to the modern focus on proxi­ mate efficient causes, the reader should see chapter 3 below.

20 / Chapter One

the discovery of such a principle. The love of or longing for God plays an important, even a central role in Maimonides’s thought. Yet Maimonides would resist the Spinozist insinuation that the highest form of love of God is an extraordinarily complex version of an endeavor to preserve oneself (cf. E 3p7 with 5pp3, 7, 15). Indeed, of an endeavor or desire to preserve oneself Maimonides says very little. Part of the reason Maimonides does not seek a unifying principle such as conatus is that he does not view the sciences as so radically unified as does Spinoza. Like Aristotle, Maimonides places a premium on the differences between the sciences, as dictated by the difference in character of their vari­ ous objects of inquiry, and the related need to approach them in the proper order. Aristotle often warns his readers not to expect the sciences to be un­ dertaken in the same manner or according to the same method, or to be capable of achieving the same precision. On more than one occasion in the Guide, Maimonides states or hints that his student, Joseph ben Judah, needs to approach his studies in a more orderly fashion—first logic, then mathe­ matics, then natural science (or physics), then divine science (or metaphys­ ics) (Epistle Dedicatory and 1.34). One of Joseph’s most revealing failings is his having leapt over physics to pursue metaphysics prematurely. Although Spinoza might be thought to be a great proponent of orderly inquiry, based on the putatively rigid synthetic structure of the Ethics, he cannot be said to advocate the orderly study of sciences whose independence needs, at certain crucial junctures, to be maintained rigorously. On the contrary, the Ethics fulfills Descartes’s early ambition to discover the mathesis universalis. Spino­ za’s was the first modern work to include physics, metaphysics, and ethics, so to speak, under one roof. For this reason, the Ethics is often referred to as containing Spinoza’s “system”—even though this word was first popular­ ized by Leibniz. (Just how much integration of the sciences Spinoza was able to achieve will become apparent especially in chapter 3.) An important result of Spinoza’s pursuit of a universal method was the discovery of cona­ tus, as a universal (proximate efficient) causal principle. I do not mean to . See note 8, below. . See below, the discussion of Guide 3.12. . EN 1095b16–26, 1096b30; Meta. 995a5–20, 1006a5–10, 1025b19–1026a24. For the ultimate import of Spinoza’s drive toward unity, see chapter 3, below. In brief, this drive is part and parcel of his denial of the premodern distinction between practical and theoretical sciences. It also reflects his desire to resist the premodern focus on the kinds of beings. See Richard Ken­ nington, On Modern Origins: Essays in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Pamela Kraus and Frank Hunt (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2004), 218–19. . See Strauss, “How to Begin to Study the Guide of the Perplexed,” in Shlomo Pines’s ed. of the Guide of the Perplexed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. xvii–xix.

Desire (Shahwa) and Spiritedness (Ghad ·ab) vs. Conatus / 21

suggest, however, that the method alone drove the discovery of it. On the contrary, Spinoza seems to have been aware of the mutual dependence of a unitary method and a unitary causal principle. Whether Maimonides or Aristotle was aware that the lack of such a method would tend to yield the lack of such a causal principle is less apparent. Nevertheless, that seems to have been the case for them. For now, we must set aside these issues of method and causality, to which we will return in chapter 3. The central concern of this work is to compare and contrast Maimonides’s and Spinoza’s views of human nature. We must also turn from Spinoza’s conception of conatus to consider the closest parallel to conatus in Maimonides’s understanding of the human realm. As I have already suggested, the closest parallel is more multifaceted than conatus. At a minimum, Maimonides sees in human being two related but irreducible, primary components, desire (shahwa) and anger or spirit­  edness (ghad ·ab) (3.8, p. 434, 13a). Although spiritedness tends to result from frustrated desire, the former is not reducible to the latter. Here, again, Maimonides is no stranger to the Greek philosophic tradition. The greatest challenge for Plato and Aristotle in the human realm was the education of love (ero¯s) and spiritedness (thumos). Indeed, the general continuity of Maimonides’s views on love and spiritedness with those of his predeces­ sors accounts, at least in part, for the lack of a salient parallel to Spinoza’s conatus. Although conatus is so salient in Spinoza’s Ethics, it appears relatively late in that work (E 3pp6–9). In contrast, the challenge and promise posed by human love or longing appears from the very beginning of Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed. From the opening lines of the Epistle Dedicatory, Maimonides highlights the challenge posed not only by human longing in . Although these terms seem to refer to the most basic passions, the most memorable references to the passions are surely to the intense love (‘ishq/h ·osheq, Ar./Heb.) of God extolled in Guide 3.51 (p. 627, 129a) and to anger (h ·araj) as it is exemplified by Moses in Eight Chapters (EC) chap. 4. Also compare the following closely related passions and powers: shawq (love or longing, Ar., esp. in the context of the pursuit of knowledge, in Guide opening lines of the Epistle Dedicatory and in 1.31–34, discussed below); ahavah (love, Heb., with · hosheq in Guide 3.51 (p. 627, 129a) but also and esp. in the second volume of the Mishneh Torah, The Book of Love); iqda¯m (boldness, Ar., esp. in Guide 2.38 and see my note regarding this term in the second edition of Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, ed. Joshua Parens and Joseph C. Macfarland [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011], selection 15). Also compare Alfarabi’s use of ifra¯t· al-ghadab · (excessive anger) in Selected Aphorisms no. 18 as the precursor to Maimonides’s use of haraj in his · comparable list in EC chap. 4 opening. For the Selected Aphorisms, see Abu¯ Nas·r al-Fa¯ra¯bı¯, Fus·u¯l Muntaza‘a (Selected Aphorisms), ed. Fauzi M. Najjar (Beirut: Da¯r al-Mashriq, 1971), and Charles E. Butterworth’s translation in Alfarabi, the Political Writings: “Selected Aphorisms” and Other Texts (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001).

22 / Chapter One

general but also by the longing of Joseph ben Judah for knowledge in par­ ticular. The educative character of the Guide, evident in both its epistolary form and its very puzzling character, appears from the very first. Many have joked that the Guide leads into perplexity as much as out of it. Far fewer realize just how difficult it is to induce the right kind of perplexity in the right kind of audience. Perhaps as few realize that perplexity leads to noth­ ing more than frustration if it is motivated by anything less than an intense desire for knowledge. Only the consummate educator, an educator such as Maimonides, is capable of both educating his audience and enabling that same audience to inquire into the very heart of education itself, namely, the desire to know. The Ethics cannot be said to burn with the fire of the Guide. It has been described aptly as cool or even cold. This should come as little surprise both because of its geometric form and because of the long delay in arriving at the core teaching, conatus. Unlike the Guide, the Ethics strives for the com­ pulsory character of deductive argument.10 As I will explain later in greater depth, following Richard Kennington, Spinoza demonstrates through his Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy” that deductive or synthetic argument is intended to compel assent. Part 1 of the Ethics is devoted almost solely to compelling readers to accept new meanings for the old key terms of the Scholastic tradition. Beginning in part 2, Spinoza starts to show some of his cards in what David Lachterman first called the “Physical Digression,” which I will refer to as the Physical Treatise (the material following E 2p13s and preceding 2p14).11 Not until part 3, the center of the work, however, does he bring out into the open his central concept, conatus. His project in the Ethics is not educational in any traditional, dialogic sense. Rather, in a complex scheme to win acceptance, Spinoza evinces his own view that knowledge is less a matter of desire, love, and persuasion than a matter of compulsion and force. His reader can be won over to his view of conatus only through a many-phased battle. The old erotic, educative story about philosophy must be supplanted by a far colder and “more realistic” story: love of wisdom is the endeavor to preserve oneself, even if by other, more complex means. . Harold Bloom, “The Heretic Jew,” review of Betraying Spinoza, by Rebecca Goldstein, New York Times, June 18, 2006, Sunday Book Review, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/18/books/ review/18bloom.html?_r=1. 10. See Aristotle, Meta. 5.12. Compare the following with chapter 3, below. 11. David R. Lachterman, “The Physics of Spinoza’s Ethics,” in Spinoza: New Perspectives, ed. Robert W. Shahan and J. I. Biro (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), 71–111, esp. 75.

Desire (Shahwa) and Spiritedness (Ghad ·ab) vs. Conatus / 23

How love can be reinterpreted as endeavor (conatus) is one of the chal­ lenges of the Ethics. Indeed, were one to trust common sense at all, one might wonder whether such a thing were conceivable. How can something as apparently teleological as love be reinterpreted nonteleologically as en­ deavor?12 It should come as little surprise that Spinoza attempts just such an inversion of common sense within the opening presentation of conatus (3pp6–9). There he argues that we believe mistakenly that we desire things because they appear good to us. In fact, we judge or deem things good because we desire or tend toward them—by instinct, as we moderns say (3p9s).13 The pattern for such an inversion of common sense had already been set forth as early as Ethics 1app, in the subversion of teleology—which brings us to another element of our argument, at least as important as the matters of method and causality discussed above. In the appendix to part 1, Spinoza argues that not only do we project teleology upon the rest of nature but also the belief in our own teleological character derives from our igno­ rance of the true (at least in part, nonconscious) causes of our own actions (cf. E 1app with 3p2s and 4pr).14 Maimonides’s teleological understanding of love is complemented by his understanding of spiritedness or anger. As for Plato and Aristotle, eros seems to require thumos as a complement. Anger is too directly opposed to love to be derived directly from it, even if anger arises in the wake of frustrated love. In contrast, for Spinoza, the demise of a teleological conception of love will at least temper the proclivity of spiritedness or anger to being inflamed by love (especially of the beautiful). Love and spiritedness can be traced back to a common root, conatus; they both aid in preservation, especially of the individual but also of the species. Ironically, spiritedness is more easily reduced to conatus than is love. One could go so far as to say that conatus (like the will to power) is thumotic. As the endeavor to preserve itself, conatus tends inevitably to thrust outward and assert itself.

12. The answer to this question here is preliminary. The more complete answer will be fleshed out in chaps. 3 and 5. 13. Cf. Socrates’s contrast between two visions of the gods in the Euthyphro 10c–11a. Is the pious pious because the gods deem (or will) that it is pious, or do the gods deem (or think) it pious because it is pious? The former view is fideistic; the latter view is the view exemplified by the forms. Of course, what I refer to here as “fideistic” is altogether different when carried over to the human realm. Rather than fideistic, it reappears as “subjectivist.” 14. Like his subjectivism, Spinoza’s opposition to teleology contributes to an eliminativist trend in his thought. As we will see in chap. 5, even though Spinoza condemns teleology as early as 1app, he allows teleological terminology to continue to be used, as an accommodation to the way we imagine that we choose and act.

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Spinoza depends upon the disjunction between love and conatus to in­ sinuate conatus only very subtly and indirectly into his account of the high­ est kinds of love—above all, amor Dei intellectualis. Without this large gap between our commonsense view of love and the conception of love Spinoza puts in its place, he could never have acquired the romantic moniker “God intoxicated.” Even though Spinoza was not a romantic, he sought to per­ petuate the image of the contemplative life as filled with erotic longing for the divine. How else could he hope to win over the Scholastic opponents of Cartesianism? Certainly, he could not by a forthright repudiation of the premodern image of the contemplative life any more than Descartes had. We need to clarify why Spinoza would adopt such a counterintuitive un­ derstanding of love as endeavor. Lest we become confused by the details, I will state preliminarily that the reduction of love to endeavor, which renders love in a sense more thumotic than in the traditional erotic conception of love, is indispensable in defusing religious intolerance.15 Once again, com­ mon sense is undermined: Refashioning love in the image of spiritedness appears intended to reduce spiritedness. And as a corollary, if all thoughts and affects (especially both anger and love) can be traced to this common root, conatus, then religious tolerance is enhanced. Why doesn’t Spinoza’s more thumotic view of human desire make human beings more intolerant? Again, I offer a preliminary explanation, based on Spinoza’s most explicit attack on premodern views on love or on the objects of love, namely, the premodern objects of intellectual inquiry, the forms. According to Spinoza, ideas and universals lack reality. They arise because the imagination is over­ whelmed by the sheer multiplicity of particulars (E 2p40s1). Ideas such as those of beauty or the beautiful and the good are surely more problematic than forms such as those of dog and cat. Few things fuel spiritedness or anger quite as much as the love of the beautiful or noble.16 Perhaps Spinoza promotes the reduction of all appetites to conatus because only by doing so can he undercut that which inflames anger, namely, love of (images) of

15. For a modern precursor to Spinoza’s effort to defuse spiritedness by rendering every­ thing, including love, thumotic, consider Machiavelli’s portrayals of love in his comedies, Clizia and Mandragola. For a possible premodern precursor, at least to the tendency to blur the distinc­ tion between eros and thumos, see Aristophanes’s account of love in the Symposium (189a–193e, esp. 190a–b, 191e–192b). 16. Thus the need for the elaborate premodern education of eros, lest it fuel thumos. Cf. Republic in general, Glaucon in particular, especially the relish/couch scene in book 2 (372c– 374d), and my discussion of the second wave of book 5 in Islamic Philosophy of Virtuous Religions (Albany: SUNY Press, 2006), 22–24.

Desire (Shahwa) and Spiritedness (Ghad ·ab) vs. Conatus / 25

beauty or nobility.17 A great deal must be argued before one can even begin to find plausible the Spinozist claim that human beings are moved, not as they imagine themselves to be by erotic desire toward objects of desire as final causes, but ultimately by more or less complex forms of conatus. As one might have expected, Maimonides’s approach conforms more readily to common sense. He seeks to regulate, guide, and shape both love and spir­ itedness. He does not, however, insinuate either that love is merely decep­ tively teleological or that love is aimed primarily at illusory images. To do so would be to court the very weakening of religion at which Spinoza aims. Rather than deny the reality of love’s objects, Maimonides seeks to reorient love from lower to higher objects. Rather than undermine spiritedness by eliminating its fuel in love of the beautiful, Maimonides guides us from lower imitations of the beautiful to higher ones, or from beauty toward the good. Aiming at higher objects is different from claiming that objects of love (understood as teleological objects) are as such illusory. In addition to changing the objects of love that one pursues, Maimonides acknowledges the inherent proclivity of desire toward excess. Indeed, the greatest root of evil in human life is not anything external—neither natural disasters nor the hostility of one group against another—but the individual’s excessive desire (Guide 3.12, p. 445). Although Spinoza cannot help but acknowledge that individuals are prone to excessive desire (cf. E 4pp43–4 with 3p11), his stress shifts from individuals’ proclivity toward excess to the hostility of groups. Conatus, which follows pleasure as a rough and ready guide toward preservation, is less inclined toward “infinite” excess than is desire in Maimonides’s more erotic account. According to Spinoza, many desires that appear excessive are so more because of the misguidance of the imagination than because of co­ natus as such. And if excess can be cured by a correction of the imagination, surely one of the gravest dangers of human life is that posed by religion, which, according to Spinoza, traffics in the inadequate ideas of imagination. (In contrast, Maimonides sees religion as the great ally of reason in curbing

17. Cf. Lucretius’s attack on beauty as accidental—the case of Helen (On the Nature of Things 1.445–82). The divergence between the Platonic tradition of educating eros and thumos, which continues in Alfarabi and Maimonides, and the argument based upon illusion of Lucretius, which is continued by Bacon et al., may be one of the deepest divides in intellectual history. Cf. Leo Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, trans. E. M. Sinclair (New York: Schocken, 1965; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 37–52.

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a natural tendency toward infinite excess in human beings.)18 In other words, according to Spinoza, the greatest root of evil in human life is less individual desire than the inflammation those desires undergo at the hands of communal images or illusions, known as “prejudices.”19 (Even within Spinoza one can begin to see the outlines of doctrines such as Rousseau’s perfectibility, which should not come as a great surprise since the seeds for it are already present in Machiavelli’s reconception of human nature.)20 Hu­ man existence is torn asunder less by any inherent tendency of individual desire than by the corrupting influence of society. As soon as the failings of desire are linked more to the imagination than to desire itself, the prospect of an external savior for human failings becomes more plausible. As soon as the individual ceases to be the primary root of his own suffering, the causal burden for suffering shifts to the community and its conventions, and fan­ tastic possibilities for amelioration of the human condition begin to appear on the horizon. History with a capital “H” lurks within the transformation of desire from a teleological appetite prone, in human beings, to excess to a self-preservative power, combative though it may be, which lacks an inher­ ent tendency toward excess. Now that we have a rough sketch of the opposition between Maimonides and Spinoza on love and spiritedness versus conatus, let us take a closer look at Maimonides’s approach to desire, love, or longing, especially in the Guide. For the sake of orienting our inquiry, I begin by previewing the con­ clusion of his book. By the end of the Guide, passionate love (‘ishq/h ·osheq)

18. This is not to say that Maimonides does not view imagination as a problem. Neverthe­ less, imagination does not, as I will show below in chaps. 5 and 6, have the centrality in his thought that it has in Spinoza’s. Also see Parens, “Prudence, Imagination, and Determination of Law in Alfarabi and Maimonides,” in Enlightening Revolutions: Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner, ed. Svetozar Minkov and Stéphane Douard (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006), 33–35. 19. My use of the word image will remain imprecise until chap. 5, where I will draw Spi­ noza’s distinction between “images” (imago) and “imaginings” (imaginatio) or “imaginations” (imagines). The former can involve pictures, the latter cannot (cf. E 2p17s with 2p48s). 20. See Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 296– 97, and What Is Political Philosophy? (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 42­–43. Note Strauss’s use of the phrases “infinitely malleable” and “almost infinitely malleable” to describe Machiavelli’s view of human nature in its receptivity to transformation by customs or institutions. Cf. Francis Bacon, Essays no. 39, “Of Custom and Education.” And cf. Strauss’s account of perfectibility in Rousseau in Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 271: “Man is by nature almost perfectly mal­ leable.” I thank John Peterson, a graduate student at the University of Dallas, for reminding me of this passage in Natural Right and History.

Desire (Shahwa) and Spiritedness (Ghad ·ab) vs. Conatus / 27

of God proves to be the most worthy human passion (3.51, p. 627).21 Mai­ monides notes in passing that such love follows upon knowledge of God (p. 621). Exactly what knowledge is required or even possible, especially when it comes to God, cannot be uncovered upon a first reading of the Guide. Upon a first reading, however, one is struck by the at least apparently irreconcilable alternatives: the unknowable and un- (or at least very rarely) speakable YHVH of the so-called negative theology (1.52–62) vs. the know­ able Aristotelian god (1.68–69). The requirement that knowledge precede love could be said to be the watchword of Maimonides’s approach to love. It is highlighted by the very structure of the Mishneh Torah: volume 1 is the Book of Knowledge, volume 2 is the Book of Love (Ahavah). And Maimo­ nides concludes the Book of Knowledge with the same claim we have found at the end of the Guide. As sensible as the suggestion that love follows upon knowledge might seem, it needs to be compared with the more obviously biblical suggestion that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.22 With this trajectory in mind, we turn back to the characterization of Joseph ben Judah in the Epistle Dedicatory of the Guide. Joseph does not begin with the passionate love of God of the conclusion. If he did, then there would be no reason for the dialogue that is the Guide. Rather, he begins with a longing or craving for theoretical matters (ishtiya¯q [root, sh.w.q.] li-l-umu¯r al-naz ·ariyya). He also evinces, however, an inclination toward poetic display in the rhymed prose of the form known as maqama. Whether such display demonstrates a longing for the highest things or a proclivity to display or showing off cannot yet be determined. Almost immediately, Maimonides raises the doubt that his longing is matched by his grasp (tas·awwur, idra¯k). In what follows, Maimonides implies that there is some coincidence between longing and grasp, though he does not state explicitly that the disjunction between longing and grasp is overcome. Indeed, his unease is displayed in his description of the course of study Joseph followed. Rather than state straightforwardly that he studied math and then astronomy, Maimonides states that he studied astronomy and before that he studied math. Joseph’s craving for certain kinds of knowledge (such as astronomy) tends to lead him by the nose. As Strauss has noted, he gives little or no evidence of hav­ ing studied physics proper. (According to Maimonides’s own recounting 21. I have followed and will quote Shlomo Pines’s translation of the Guide of the Perplexed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), except where modifications are indicated. Regular page numbers refer to that edition. Page numbers with the letter a or b following refer to Dala¯lat al-H · a’irı¯n, ed. Solomon Munk, revised by Issachar Joel, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Junovitch, 1929). 22. Prov. 9:10. Cf. esp. Guide 1.54, p. 125; 2.40; 3.8; 3.13, pp. 451–52; 3.51, p. 627; and esp. 3.24, pp. 500–501; 3.28, p. 514; and 3.29.

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of the classic division of the sciences, astronomy is a part of mathematics, not of physics [Treatise on the Art of Logic chap. 14].) After math and as­ tronomy, Joseph read logic under Maimonides’s guidance. Hastily then he turned to the secrets of the prophetic books and eventually divine matters (al-umu¯r al-ila¯hiyya) or metaphysics. From the Epistle Dedicatory, we may infer that Joseph’s longing for knowledge tends to be disorderly and hasty. He is prone to excessive desire, which, as we will see when we get to 2.36, is traceable to his love of honor or the beautiful. One of the key indicators that Joseph is prone to excess is his disor­ derly approach to inquiry. That proclivity toward excess must be tempered by reining in desire. Through a complicated and nuanced account of not only the proper order of inquiry but also the possible limits of knowl­ edge, beginning in Guide 1.31–34, Maimonides will attempt to rein in de­ sire. Like Joseph, we must resist our own desire to leap to this discussion prematurely. All that being said, Maimonides begins to lay the groundwork for the inquiry into the limits of knowledge from the beginning of the Guide (esp. in 1.2, 1.5, 1.7, 1.17, and 1.21 to mention only the most obvious nonlexi­ cographic chapters with direct bearing on the limits of human knowledge) by first inquiring into human nature more broadly. The reader should not misunderstand me. I do not mean to suggest that the sole or even necessar­ ily the main reason that Maimonides begins with human nature is that he is laying the groundwork for his discussion of the limits of knowledge. On the contrary, Strauss has articulated the main reason for Maimonides’s begin­ ning as he does: He intends to establish the belief in God’s incorporeality as a belief upon which all Jews should come to agree. Consequently, he begins, not with a philosophic proof for God’s incorporeality, but with the exegeti­ cal bases of the widespread confusion about whether God is corporeal or incorporeal. By beginning exegetically as he does, Maimonides is enabled to persuade even the least educated of his readers to accept or imagine divine incorporeality. In the process, he appeals to philosophic views without the reader’s necessarily detecting them.23 Indeed, one becomes aware of how foreign to the Bible are some of Maimonides’s claims in the opening two chapters of the Guide only when one arrives finally at the discussion of the biblical terms most relevant to human nature in Guide 1.39–42. In Guide 1.1, Maimonides begins lexicographically with one of the earliest dilemmas that the Bible poses to any anthropology, namely, what does it 23. Strauss, “How to Begin to Study the Guide of the Perplexed,” xx.

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mean to be made in the image (s·elem) of God (Genesis 1:26). According to Maimonides, our image cannot refer to a corporeal form. Rather, it refers to the “natural form” (al-s·u¯ra al-t·abı¯‘iyya),24 from which in human beings derives their “human apprehension” (al-idra¯k al-insa¯nı¯), which is to say “in­ tellectual apprehension” (al-idra¯k al-‘aqlı¯). In effect, Maimonides identifies the form of human being as the intellect. In chapter 2, he makes it quite evident that the core of our humanity is our theoretical intellect. How else could matters be if knowledge of God is to precede passionate love of Him? If Joseph is filled with longing for theoretical insights, and such longing befits a soul whose core is theoretical intellect, then how could such a soul be misled into excess? Guide 1.2 and 1.7 lead us quickly to get purchase upon these questions. Maimonides offers his innovative reading of the Garden of Eden in chapter 2. Dismissing out of hand a relatively literal interpretation of Genesis 3, Maimonides argues that before Adam’s disobedience to God he possessed theoretical intellect, that is, the intellect by which one distinguishes between the true and the false. When he disobeyed and inclined toward his imagi­ nary desires,25 he then became obsessed with practical matters, matters of good and evil. I will leave to chapter 6 my effort to clear up some of the confusion that has arisen about whether Maimonides claims the imagina­ tion supplants what Aristotle called prudence or practical intellect or practi­ cal judgment (phronesis). If this were the case, Maimonides would indeed significantly foreshadow the argument of Spinoza. Let it suffice for now to say that although the imagination plays a prominent role in Maimonides’s account, especially in his efforts to refute the Mutakallimun (EC chaps. 1, 6; Guide 1.71, 1.73, tenth premise), imagination cannot be the leading culprit in love, longing, or desire gone wrong. It cannot because imagination like sensation or the sentient part is not the motive cause of action (EC chap. 2). Maimonides indicates as much, even if only indirectly, in Guide 1.7. He ar­ gues that just as Adam was made in the image (s ·elem) and likeness (demut) of God, so Seth was made in the image and likeness of Adam (Genesis 5:3). Leaving aside any questions this passage might raise about Maimonides’s initial interpretation of Genesis 3, Maimonides goes on to explain that any­ one who fails to achieve the human perfection that Seth achieved, through 24. Although chap. 3 of this book will take up Maimonides’s attention to “form,” the inter­ ested reader should see Maimonides’s Mishneh Torah for evidence that his conception of form is based on a philosophic rather than a biblical view of “soul” as “form.” See the Book of Knowledge, H. Yesodei ha-Torah 4.8 and H. Teshuvah 8.3. Cf. Aristotle, On the Soul book 3. 25. See Parens, “Prudence, Imagination, and Determination of Law in Alfarabi and Mai­ monides,” 33–35, for guidance on how to interpret the phrase “imaginary desires.”

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Adam’s education (‘alima, II) of him, will fall prey to desire gone wrong. Why? Not because of desire, or because of imagination, since we share these with other animals. Rather, that which brings man lowest is not shared by any other animal, namely, reason or practical intellect gone wrong— powers that Maimonides refers to somewhat vaguely as “powers of thought and deliberation” (qudra . . . al-fikra wa-l-rawiyya). Here, what was intended to be practical judgment oriented properly by suitable habits has become mere calculation in the service of unguided desire. (As I said above, I will return to the relation between prudence and imagination in chapter 6.) Maimonides’s argument that human desire runs the risk of forming a terrible alliance with calculative reason is a loud echo of a central theme in both Plato and Aristotle. Consider the central comedy and tragedy of the Republic. In order to regulate the erotic necessity that tends to rule among the auxiliary guardians, Socrates uses the geometric necessity of the lottery to arrange marriages (458d, 459e-460a). The lottery requires that the auxil­ iaries become as pliable in the hands of their rulers as domesticated animals (459a-460e). The mysteriousness or incomprehensibility of the nuptial number is emblematic of the inevitable failure of the lottery. It is often overlooked that Socrates pokes so much fun in the Republic at geometric necessity that one must wonder whether he did not already anticipate some of what Aristotle had in mind in developing phronesis as distinct from the mathematical calculation of the arts. Aristotle offers a similarly dim view of the possible alliance of calculation and desire. Shortly after declaring the city is natural, Aristotle argues that human beings are more prone to excess in matters of food and sex than any other animal (Politics 1.2). And also consider his clear declaration that when the distinctly human principle, namely, reason or prudence is deformed in the human soul, human beings are worse than any other animal (cf. EN 1150a8). Back to the Guide. In brief, at least so far, the greatest risk of excess in desire or longing does not come, as one might expect, from the quarter of unlimited theoretical inquiry. Rather, the greatest risk derives from the inad­ equate cultivation of prudence (which in turn depends upon proper train­ ing in ethical virtue). Yet the way in which the theme of the limits of human knowledge is taken up (in Guide 1.31–34) suggests that Maimonides is all too aware that his ongoing praise of theoretical intellect might be looked upon askance within the Jewish fold. Beginning in chapter 31, Maimonides alludes to the apparent tension between the authority of scripture and the human desire to know. The soul’s longing (shawq) for knowledge and the possible limits of that knowledge are one of this chapter’s two themes. The other is the three or four causes of disagreement. The inherent limits of

Desire (Shahwa) and Spiritedness (Ghad ·ab) vs. Conatus / 31

human knowledge contribute somehow to such disagreement. Yet wherein lie the limits of human knowledge and how exactly they contribute to such disagreement are far from obvious from Maimonides’s cryptic account of those limits. It is plausible to conjecture that chapter 31 constitutes a development of the apparent argument of chapter 21. In this earlier chapter on the Mosaic theophany (in Exodus 33–34), Maimonides’s exegesis concludes that Moses, having seen only God’s back, implies that his apprehension (al-idra¯k) of Him is “veiled [mah ·ju¯b] and hidden [mamnu¯‘] in its nature.” He goes on to suggest that a human being’s (power of ) apprehension can be harmed in seeking knowledge beyond its limit—unless “divine aid” (ma‘u¯na ila¯hiyya) is given him. That Maimonides describes the limits of human knowledge as they might apply in the case of YHVH is clear. Yet even these limits are not crystal clear here, that is, in connection with Moses. It is unclear what can be achieved on the basis of divine aid. Based on the rest of the Guide, it seems obvious that Moses has privileged access to YHVH, ironically, based on his claimed “face to face” experience of God (Deut. 34; Guide 2.35). The limits of our knowledge of YHVH would seem to be absolute. (Maimonides makes far less pretense of proving the existence of the God of scripture than, for example, Thomas Aquinas. He makes it amply evident, as early as 1.71, that the God whose existence [unity, and incorporeality] he is capable of proving in Guide pt. 2 is the Aristotelian God.) Thus, one is reminded of the enormous gulf with which we began our whole inquiry into love and what leads love astray. Is the God whom one loves on the basis of knowledge the same as the God whom one loves after having learned to fear Him? Put differently, is the Aristotelian God the same as YHVH? If not, and I take this to be one of the few things about which most scholars and interpreters of Maimonides agree, then it becomes far less obvious that the apparent limits on human knowledge outlined roughly in 1.21 can be carried over directly to 1.31. At best 1.21 shows that YHVH is unknowable—as Maimonides will go on to confirm in the so-called negative theology. When we return to 1.31 where Maimonides is most forthright in setting down the limits of human knowledge, we are struck by his silence about God. Furthermore, we notice the oddly circuitous path by which he sets forth these limits. Although he begins with a declaration that there are things that humans cannot know, he seems to hesitate to specify what those things might be. He outlines somewhat vaguely the limits of knowledge only after having elaborated upon the vast differences in powers of apprehension of different human beings. Indeed, he seems to stumble over those limits only with an eye to clarifying that the differences between human beings are “not

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infinite” (cf. 2.40). Once he finally wends his way to the agreed-upon limits of what human beings can know, the examples of things we cannot know all concern the limits to our knowledge of vast, possibly infinite, quantities of stars, living species, minerals, plants, and so on. Perhaps the most telling example is our inability to determine whether the total number of stars is odd or even. Maimonides’s examples may seem somewhat quaint in light of our own science whose greatest stress is precisely upon quantification. Yet no scientists today would claim to have discovered every living species on earth—no matter how much they might seek to continue cataloging every species. Even more tellingly, I doubt that any scientist would be so bold as to suggest that we could ever determine the exact number of stars in the universe. Approximation is inextricably intertwined with all modern efforts at quantification about such matters. According to Maimonides, human be­ ings do not long (shawq) for exact or precise knowledge of such things about which they cannot possess such knowledge. In contrast, there are other things that human beings have a great long­ ing to apprehend (shawqah ila¯ idra¯kih ‘az·¯ıman). Here, we are reminded of the longing or craving with which the Epistle Dedicatory opens. About these things, human beings, including theoretically inclined human beings (naz··z a¯ra min al-na¯s), disagree. There is a multiplicity of opinions (al-a¯ra¯’ ). Just previously Maimonides discussed those things that humans know they can­ not know. Here, he goes on to mention that there is not any disagreement about things about which certain demonstrations exist—in other words, things that human beings know they can know. Between the things that we know we cannot know (number of stars) and the things that we know we can know (mathematical demonstrations), there are at least two remaining things about which disagreement might exist: things that perhaps some or few might be able to know but that most cannot, and things that most be­ lieve one can know that humans cannot. He begins with the latter. About these matters he states clearly, “there is no demonstration [burha¯n].” About the former, such as that the earth is spherical, there is disagreement—dis­ agreement between those who know and the ignorant. Having identified this kind of lack of knowledge of ignorance on the part of the ignorant, Mai­ monides dismisses this group with the phrase: “These do not enter into this aim [or intention]” ( fa-ha¯’ula¯’i la¯ madkhal lahum fı¯ hadha¯ al-gharad · ). What exactly is this aim is not immediately clear. More importantly, what follows immediately is less clear. He refers to sources of perplexity (al-h ·aira)—the same term as in the title—that are great in number in divine matters and in physics, though not in mathematics. With the dismissive sentence about “this aim,” did he return to matters about which there is not any demonstra­

Desire (Shahwa) and Spiritedness (Ghad ·ab) vs. Conatus / 33

tion, or is he still discussing differences between the many ignorant and the few wise? In brief, are the disagreements among human beings about divine matters (especially God) due to the fact that all human beings are ignorant of the truth about them (because no demonstrations exist) or because only few are able to follow such demonstrations and all that leads up to them? If one were to trust what the majority of the Guide’s contemporary interpreters claim, then the answer would be simple. Maimonides must mean that all human beings, left to their own rational devices, are ignorant, at least about God’s essence. After all, everything he has argued about Mosaic lack of ac­ cess to YHVH seems to suggest that human beings are incapable of know­ ing Him—and all human beings should, therefore, accept or believe in the truth of His revelation. The biggest challenge to this solution of the matter is that if each of us is doomed to ignorance or even mere belief about God in every conceivable respect, but especially of His essence, then how can Maimonides call us to love God?26 In other words, we are returned to the initial gulf between the exhortation to know God that we might love Him and the exhortation to fear God that we might love Him. Because my reference back to one of the most basic oppositions of the Guide may not be enough to dissuade the reader from the notion that Mai­ monides is exhorting us to mere belief, we must consider what follows in chapter 31. He reviews the three causes of disagreement (ikhtila¯f ) described by Alexander of Aphrodisias. The first cause is love of predominance and victory (al-riya¯sa wa-l-ghalaba)—in other words, that blend of anger, love of honor, and love of the beautiful or noble that we considered before turn­ ing to the Guide. In keeping with the preceding discussion of knowledge of ignorance, the second and third causes concern obstacles to such knowledge in the object of apprehension (al-mudrak) and in the one seeking the knowl­ edge. To these, Maimonides adds a fourth cause of disagreement, which he claims Alexander did not mention because it did not exist in his time: At first he claims vaguely that that cause is “custom and upbringing” (al-ilf wa-l-al-tarbiya). Human beings in general prefer, as they always have and always will, things to which they have grown accustomed, even for example lack of luxury. So far, he seems to offer nothing new. More importantly, humans become attached to opinions (al-a¯ra¯’) to which they have grown accustomed. Even this link is not novel. Yet Maimonides steers ever closer to the truly novel aspect of this novel cause of disagreement, when he of­ fers the example of how the many have grown accustomed to the belief in 26. See 3.51, pp. 619–21, esp. 620 for evidence that Maimonides maintains disdain of reli­ ance on mere belief in such matters.

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God’s corporeality—the most prominent theme of part 1 is the eradication of this belief. That novel aspect is not truly revealed until the following, tell­ ing sentence: “All that [shaping of opinion] is from custom and upbringing on texts [nus·u¯s·] whose greatness and truth is settled upon [istaqarr].”27 Of course, the Torah itself and that it speaks in accordance with the language of the sons of man are the causes of the misguided belief in God’s corporeality (1.26). In other words, the novel cause of disagreement of Maimonides’s age is the unprecedented authority of monotheistic scriptures. (No set of polytheistic scriptures has ever acquired the kind of authority claimed by the Torah, the New Testament, or the Qur’an.) According to Maimonides, this account of the limits of human knowledge and their role in causing disagreement constitutes an introduction to the following chapters. In chapters 32–34, Maimonides transforms what appear to be less clear biblical and clearer rabbinic strictures against inquiry into the mysteries of physics and metaphysics into mere acknowledgments that human knowl­ edge is limited. In chapter 32, he transforms the relatively transparent pro­ hibition against such inquiries in B.T., Tractate H · agigah, 11b into a mere acknowledgment that the intellect has limits (review chap. 31). In chapter 33, he prepares the long account of the proper order of education in chap­ ter 34 by arguing that these mysteries have been hidden not because they undermine the foundations of the Law but because when one approaches them prematurely (or fails to follow the proper order of study) one is inca­ pable of receiving them. What I have referred to as an account of the proper order of education in chapter 34 is more precisely an account of the five reasons one must not begin one’s inquiries by studying metaphysics. In brief they are (1) one may not begin with the most difficult subject mat­ ter, (2) the human mind is deficient in its beginnings due to lack of train­ ing (irtiya¯d ·) and its tendency to become distracted by unnamed obstacles, (3) the preliminary studies are lengthy and, at times, tedious (as is dem­ onstrated by Maimonides’s lengthy discussion of this problem), (4) some people lack the natural aptitudes required for ultimate perfection, and (5) the demands of the body may lead one away from perfection of the in­ tellect. Reasons 3 and 4 are of greatest interest to us here. Reason 3 contains within it a further exploration of the limits of human knowledge, the main account of the proper order of inquiry, and an account of how little can be achieved by desire (shawq)28 alone. Reason 4 contains a description of how 27. Here, there is an extraordinary prevalence of words that highlight the power of what is posited to shape opinion—custom, upbringing, texts, settled upon. 28. Cf. note 8, above, for other terms for desire and love.

Desire (Shahwa) and Spiritedness (Ghad ·ab) vs. Conatus / 35

our two key appetites, desire (shawq, especially as sexual desire [m.n.y., V]), and anger (h ·araj), especially as they manifest themselves in young people, can impede inquiry. Before probing the crucial references to appetite in reasons 3 and 4 fur­ ther, I want to draw attention to an important link between reason 4 and the preceding chapters of the Guide. At first glance, the claim that some peo­ ple lack the natural aptitudes for ultimate perfection seems self-evident and innocuous enough. After all, Maimonides will go on to suggest eventually that prophets alone are capable of such perfection. Such a claim does not appear to be shocking because the prophet is said to be the beneficiary of unique gifts from God. If it is the case that only a few people are capable of ultimate perfection, however, does this not reinforce one horn of that mys­ tifying dilemma that emerged in chapter 31: Are there great disagreements about divine matters primarily because all human beings are ignorant of the truth about them (because no demonstrations exist) or because only few are able to follow such demonstrations and all that leads up to them? Chapter 34 would seem to support the second horn of this dilemma. The support for this second horn seems only to increase as Maimonides moves over the course of the Guide toward a more and more “naturalistic” account of prophecy. In chapter 34, the third reason not to begin with divine science is the length of the preliminaries. Any human being would prefer to acquire knowledge of the highest things immediately, without any effort. Maimo­ nides evokes his discussion of the limits of human knowledge in chapter 31 by observing that even the stupidest among us (lit., the most countrified) would desire to know how many beings are in the heavens, whether they be stars or angels. In addition to that desire for quantitative knowledge (which it is clear, at least to the wise, human beings cannot acquire), this person wants to know how the world was created (kayfa khuliq al-‘a¯lam), what the ultimate finality of all of the parts of the whole is (cf. 3.13),29 what the soul is, how it came to be (kayfa · hadu¯thah), and whether it is separable from the body. Once again, we run into the same dilemma: whether Maimonides intends to insinuate that most people are unaware that every one of these matters is as impossible to know as the quantitative matter, or that these can be known only through preliminary training that most are unwilling to endure. Which horn of the dilemma to choose remains far from obvi­ ous. The person who wants to know these things is predisposed toward the answer offered by revelation, owing to the authority of texts. He does 29. Cf. my discussion of “ultimate finality” in chap. 5, below.

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not seek to know first whether the world is created or eternal but jumps the gun to the question “how” it is created. Ironically, if one were able to prove that the world is created, one would surely not be able to know how YHVH goes about so creating. The how of a mysterious creator is surely at least as mysterious as the Creator Himself. Similarly, how the soul came to be or was created would seem to be wholly inaccessible. This kind of stupidity is characterized not only by haste but also by the power of unchecked desire. According to Maimonides, the hasty, stupid per­ son is motivated by “a natural desire” (shawqan ·t abı¯‘iyyan) for the truth as well as a desire for the “calming of this desire” (suku¯n hadha¯ al-shawq). One wonders why the dolt finds the desire to know to be painful. Apparently, the theoretically inclined do not find the desire to know to be painful enough to impel them to haste in calming the desire. Perhaps there are practical matters that are influenced by the resolution of these questions. The dolt, fully enthralled by the human proclivity to overvalue practical concerns, demands immediate answers. Be that as it may, to arrive at answers to the highest questions, one can­ not pursue knowledge of God directly. It requires the unfolding and inter­ relating of many premises. Furthermore, it requires seeking to know His governance indirectly through His effects (p. 74). One must, therefore, seek to know “all beings as they truly are.”30 In other words, one must pursue physics before metaphysics. And thus we are led to Maimonides’s unfolding of the proper order of inquiry. Should one fail to adopt the proper order of inquiry owing to haste, then one cannot help but fall prey to many doubts (shuku¯k) (p. 75, 39b). Of course, as the title of the work suggests, perplexities and doubts are the name of the game. Yet productive doubt must be distinguished from un­ productive. Maimonides speaks cryptically of these doubts undermining certain doctrines much as one might destroy a building—by removing cer­ tain key parts of the structure, one undermines the structural integrity of the whole. The most extensive treatment of this issue with which I am familiar is Socrates’s account of the effects of dialectic in Republic 7, his metaphor of the changeling child (537e–538e). Dialectic undermines one’s received beliefs. When those beliefs have been undermined it often results in the collapse of all of one’s beliefs—and thus relativism. To exemplify what he means, Maimonides turns to Proverbs 21:25–26. According to Maimonides, the desire (shawq) of the slothful kills them because it lacks its proper instru­ ment, namely, education in the sciences—without which desire becomes 30. Cf. Maimonides’s use of the “nature of existence” in Guide 1.71 (e.g., p. 182).

Desire (Shahwa) and Spiritedness (Ghad ·ab) vs. Conatus / 37

little more than sexual longing (tamannin). When scripture points to un­ stinting giving of the righteous as the antithesis of the slothful, Maimo­ nides interprets this unstinting giving to mean that one should give oneself wholly to the pursuit of knowledge. He confirms this by appeal to Proverbs 31:3, which seems to link righteousness to wisdom. It almost goes without saying that such an easygoing linkage or perhaps equivalence of justice and wisdom avoids raising any questions about the precise meaning of “wis­ dom” in the Bible (cf. Guide 3.54). At last, we may turn to the third reason one should not begin one’s stud­ ies with divine science, namely, because of “natural disposition” (al-isti‘da¯da al-t·abı¯‘iyya). It is easy to see how this flows directly from the previous reason not to begin with divine science. One should begin one’s inquiries with the most elementary sciences. Beginning at a more elementary level enables those who educate to use education itself as a winnowing process. Perhaps the most hilarious of all failures to exclude the chaff, that is, an unfit stu­ dent, is to be found in Aristophanes’s comedy the Clouds. In that play, the destruction of Socrates’s thinkery can be traced ultimately to his willingness to educate Strepsiades, the corrupt old father (who is also stupid apparently owing to his age). In the Platonic dialogues Aristophanes’s challenge is rec­ ognized and exemplified dramatically perhaps most strikingly in Republic 6 and 7. In these two books, Socrates vacillates between recommending that philosophy be taken up when students are old (in book 6, 498a–c) and when they are young (in book 7, 536c7). At first Socrates requires that it be taken up when old because only then are students guaranteed to possess the moderation and experience necessary to be a good king as well as a phi­ losopher. He switches back to studying philosophy in youth, however, be­ cause one loses one’s intellectual flexibility and desire for knowledge unless philosophy is taken up in youth. Yet even in book 7, Socrates admits that dialectical inquiry can result in relativism—thus, undermining the shift to taking up philosophy in youth. Ultimately, this is one of the most profound reasons that the philosopher-king idea proves untenable. The very same problem is exemplified in the person of Joseph ben Judah. Above all, it is ex­ emplified in his peculiar mixture of strong desire for knowledge and power­ ful spiritedness. (The Epistle Dedicatory already informed us of the presence of strong desire for knowledge in him; shortly, we will look at the evidence for the latter in him.) Maimonides alludes to the same issues here. In the fourth reason, he exhorts the young to acquire moral virtue as a means to the acquisition of intellectual virtue. If he is predisposed by the nature of his heart to uncontrollable anger (h ·araj) or of his sexual (minan) vessels to uncontrollable sexual desire—described with medical precision

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by the doctor Maimonides—then he can never achieve perfection. These natural dispositions have a strong bodily basis. Maimonides also mentions the disorderly actions of those with disorderly temperaments. Such tem­ peraments are impediments at any age, but they seem to be nearly par for the course at a particular age. For this reason, according to Maimonides, it is not possible to teach the young divine science. They are preoccupied with “the flame of growth [youth]” (shu‘la al-nash’).31 He goes on to link that flame directly with perplexity—“this perplexing flame” (al-shu‘la almuh ·ayyar). Presumably, it bears some relation to the perplexity of the Guide. Yet Maimonides claims that this flame needs to be put out before one can raise oneself to the apprehension of God. So important is the curbing and restraining of desire that Maimonides is willing to run the risk of undermin­ ing even appropriate perplexity. Although Maimonides has referred repeatedly to the role of desire in the acquisition of knowledge, the fourth reason to avoid beginning studies with divine science (here, in 1.34) is the first occasion on which anger enters the inquiry—with one exception. Back in 1.31, we saw that Alexander of Aph­ rodisias identified the human desire for predominance or victory, which at least includes spiritedness or anger, as the first cause of disagreements. Here, Maimonides identifies anger as the first natural disposition that is wholly incompatible with achieving perfection. It would seem that spirit­ edness or anger will play a central role in impeding perfection. At the same time, the presence of spiritedness in Joseph and the role of spiritedness in the philosopher-kingship, which is the paradigm for the prophet-legislator, suggest that spiritedness will require even greater attention than Maimo­ nides’s exhortations here about controlling sexual desire.32 The importance of spiritedness is evinced in the balance of Maimonides’s discussion of the fourth reason. To illustrate what he means about natural dispositions, Mai­ monides lists four human types, some of which he will allude to through­ out the rest of the Guide: (1) someone who combines feebleness of opinion (ra’y) with great understanding (fahm), (2) another who combines flawless opinion and ability in political matters with inability to understand one of the most elementary intelligibles, with being very stupid (abla jiddan) 31. Compare Socrates’s requirement in book 7 of the Republic that the young in the two or three years leading up to their twentieth year be freed from studies (536c–d). 32. For the theme of asceticism in Maimonides, see Leo Strauss, “Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed,” in Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 75–76, and Parens, “Maimonidean Ethics Revis­ ited: Development and Asceticism in Maimonides?” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 12, no. 3 (2003): 33–62.

Desire (Shahwa) and Spiritedness (Ghad ·ab) vs. Conatus / 39

and lacking the needed stratagem (hila), (3) another who possesses great understanding, yet fails to engage in the sciences, (4) and finally, one who has acquired knowledge of the sciences, who is said in the Talmud, follow­ ing upon biblical usage, to be “wise in crafts” (h harishim). (Whether ·akham · the Bible and Talmud mean by “wise in crafts” what the philosophers mean by the sciences should be determined in light of 3.54.) Here, Maimonides shows how difficult it is to find the proper combination of the needed natu­ ral dispositions, drawing a dividing line for the most part between theoreti­ cal science and practical action (in which spiritedness plays an important role). Immediately after citing that Talmudic proof text, Maimonides al­ ludes to an unidentified “book” (kita¯b),33 which is surely not the Talmud, for a comprehensive inventory of aspects of perfection. That book is almost certainly by Alfarabi, who, following Plato, requires the theoretico-practical combination characteristic of the philosopher-king or prophet: “being per­ fect in the varieties of political regimes [al-siya¯sa¯t al-madaniyya]”34 and in the theoretical sciences, perspicacity and understanding, and eloquence of 35 expression (h ·asan ‘ibara) in flashes. Finally, Maimonides adds age to the previous aspects of perfection. For further insight into the relation between desire and spiritedness, we turn now to the discussion of prophecy, specifically to Guide 2.36. The connec­ tion between 2.36 and 1.34 is threefold: In 1.34, Maimonides alludes to prophecy as philosopher-kingship in reason 4; in 2.36, he elaborates upon this theme explicitly. In 1.34, he discusses the role of “natural dispositions” (al-isti‘da¯da al-t·abı¯‘iy ya) in reason 4, especially the natural disposition of the potential philosopher-king or prophet; in 2.36, he discusses the “natural temperament” ( jibla) of the prophet. In 1.34, he highlights the role of both sexual desire and anger in particular; in 2.36, he discusses both sexual desire and the desire for predominance that we saw first back in 1.31. Because I have already discussed Maimonides’s apparently extreme curbs on sexual desire in this passage elsewhere,36 I will focus here primarily on the discus­ sion of the “the wish [or desire] for victory” (t·alab al-ghalaba).

33. See Pines’s note regarding this, p. 78, note 32. 34. Possibly an allusion to the Alfarabian work of political philosophy to which Maimonides refers explicitly elsewhere, even if to the alternate title, the Principles of Beings. 35. The last requirement, eloquence, is an innovation of Alfarabi’s. See Richard Walzer’s edition of the Virtuous City 15.12, Al-Farabi on the Perfect State (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 246–49. 36. See Parens, “Maimonidean Ethics Revisited.”

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Much as Maimonides argued against the perfectibility of someone whose seminal vessels are prone to excess and whose heart is prone to overheat­ ing (in 1.34), here he argues that prophetic perfection requires that the “substance of his brain” ( jawhar dima¯ghih) possess anatomical perfection (79a). Furthermore, he explicitly opposes the influence of such a brain to the influence of an unspecified other part of the body. Somehow a person with a sufficiently perfect brain develops intellectual and moral perfection. (Maimonides does not state explicitly how the mean in moral matters is achieved, here.) Based on the subsequent renowned attack on the plea­ sures of the “sense of touch,” it is rather obvious to what part of the body the “other part of the body” refers. He also notes in passing the strange irony that it is precisely “the men of knowledge” (ahl al-‘ilm) who are es­ pecially drawn to these pleasures. He mocks them for wondering why they do not become prophets.37 Almost as soon as reference is made to proph­ ecy, Maimonides turns to “forms of rule or predominance [al-riya¯sa¯t] that are wrong” and the problematic “wish for victory” (79b). Like Plato, Ar­ istotle, and Alfarabi, Maimonides acknowledges the central role of honor (kara¯ma) in this desire. First, he seeks to dissuade his reader and Joseph ben Judah from pursuing these things for their own sake. Second, he counsels the person pursuing perfection not to concern himself with others, or at least not with pleasing them. Third, he argues for the extreme detachment of the “perfect man who lives in solitude” (al-ka¯mil al-mutawah hid). Here, ·· he embarks upon the theme of the solitary made famous by Ibn Ba¯jja. (The issue of the solitary appears for what may be the first time in the Guide back in 1.34 in his discussion of the third reason not to begin studies with di­ vine science, namely, the length of the preliminaries. He argues that many fail even to grasp the most rudimentary truths, such as whether God exists, without the aid of authoritative opinions. The solitary, however, is capable of acquiring all the required premises [39a].) What is perhaps most striking about this effort to curb the wish for victory and the pursuit of honor is just how antithetical it appears to be to the highly political account of prophecy Maimonides develops. One can perhaps justify this kind of extreme anti­ dote as an example of the kind of counterbalancing of one moral extreme with its opposite, championed by Aristotle and utilized by Maimonides in the Eight Chapters. The most moderate of these three recommendations for steering clear of honor is surely the first one. One should not pursue honor for its own sake. The second recommendation is quite extreme, especially 37. But contrast the bodily renunciation ascribed to the same group in 2.40 (p. 384)—there rendered by Pines as “the people of science” (ahl al-‘ilm).

Desire (Shahwa) and Spiritedness (Ghad ·ab) vs. Conatus / 41

in the image used to get it across. Maimonides recommends that the aspi­ rant to perfection view others as akin to domestic animals or beasts of prey, depending upon one’s relation to them, namely, friend or foe.38 Only when he turns to the solitary does it become fully apparent that the prophet is himself at risk.39 Throughout both the second and third recommendations Maimonides appears to verge upon the view that most human beings, even in one’s own community, should be treated in a purely utilitarian fashion. Here, Maimonides could appear to be a monster who himself views most human beings as little more than animals. He appears monstrous in modern eyes because he runs directly contrary to everything we hold dear about equality.40 Yet his response to the threat posed by spiritedness is, if quite strong, characteristically premodern. The love of victory promises great rewards to its devotee, a whole community looking up to the victor like a god. Human beings expect great satisfaction from such worship by others. To interrupt this, Maimonides counsels detachment from honor for its own sake. Furthermore, he argues that honor is acceptable when it is given by others who seek similar perfection; honor is not acceptable when it reflects the politician’s need for the garlands of the crowd. After all, the crowd frequently offers the garland to those who satisfy its basest desires. Maimonides’s opposition to the love of victory is nearly as much for the sake of the ruled as for that of the ruler. He knows that its mutual appeal to the ruler and the ruled is what makes it such a challenge to oppose. It promises rewards to both while diverting each from its own highest possi­ ble degree of perfection. The ruler’s vanity is flattered, and the ruled’s desires to obtain bodily pleasure and to avoid pain are placated. The subsequent argument introduces significant complications to any interpretation of this chapter. Initially, it seems to raise the possibility that 38. The theme of shepherd and flock or human beings as domestic (esp. herd) animals recurs often in Plato, especially Republic 343b–345e, Laws 713d, Statesman 271e. And Mai­ monides’s troubling recommendations about how to treat such people should be compared with Alfarabi, Political Regime §92, trans. Charles E. Butterworth, in Parens and Macfarland, Medieval Political Philosophy. On the clear link between Alfarabi and Maimonides regarding this, see Leo Strauss, “Some Remarks on the Political Science of Maimonides and Farabi,” trans. Robert Bartlett, Interpretation 18, no. 1 (1990): 3–30, esp. 19. Finally, cf. Polemarchus’s definition of justice as doing good to friends and harm to enemies (Rep. 332d) and Socrates’s eventual reap­ propriation of it (375c). 39. See Maimonides’s sketch of solitude amid rule in Guide 3.51, esp. pp. 622–27. For the Is­ lamic background, see my introduction to the Islamic section and the selections by Ibn Ba¯jja and Ibn Tufayl in Parens and Macfarland, Medieval Political Philosophy. Also see Strauss’s discussion of the solitary in “Law of Reason in the Kuzari,” in Persecution and the Art of Writing, 116–18. 40. In spite of the vestiges of elitism in Spinoza, our reaction to Maimonides here is a good indicator of the gap between Spinoza and Maimonides on the issue of equality. See chap. 2.

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the imagination supplants practical judgment in Maimonides, as it seems to in Spinoza—an interpretation that I will deal with at great length later. Seen within the wider context of the chapter, however, I believe that initial impression is misguided. I digress to set forth that background. This chapter (2.36) adds, to the initial sketch of prophecy given in 2.32, a more detailed account of the workings of divine overflow in prophecy. (For now, we will not raise any questions about the significance of the talk of divine overflow or emanation [al-fayd ·].) In brief, Maimonides argues that divine overflow from the Active Intellect is received by the “rational faculty” (al-qu¯wa al-na¯t·iqa) and “then” (thumma) by the “imaginative faculty” (al-qu¯wa al-mutakhayyila). In 2.36, he stresses the role of the imagination in the perfection of prophecy. He highlights repeatedly the physical basis of this perfection, even more than he stressed the importance of the perfection of the brain in what we have discussed so far. (Not until 2.37 will he identify the three human types most relevant to his inquiry into prophecy: men of science [overflow to intellect alone], prophets [overflow to intellect and imagination], and political ac­ tors and diviners, both true and false [who receive overflow to imagination alone].) I return to 2.36 and the passage that might cause confusion. It falls into two parts. The first part states that when the imagination receives overflow from the intellect, the human being apprehends (idra¯k) and sees (ra’a¯) only the most divine things, including God, and he has awareness (sh.‘.r.) of and attains to (h ·.s·.l.) knowledge of political matters. It is notoriously difficult to determine what role the imagination plays here and what the intellect— since overflow takes place only by way of the intellect. The trend in recent scholarship, however, has been to claim that the imagination is responsible for knowledge of political matters—a view that I do not share. Probably for this very reason, Maimonides goes on, in the second part, to distinguish the three powers involved in such perfection, though he does so without stating clearly the connection between these three powers and what has preceded. The three powers are the rational faculty, the imaginative faculty, and moral habit (al-khulq). The first is developed through study. The second depends solely upon perfection of the relevant part of the body. Ultimately, the third is our central concern here. Moral habit is the antidote to mistaken pursuit of honor. One thing is certain. Maimonides does not argue that one can transform politics by undercutting the imagination’s proclivity to generate misguided universals, forms, or ideas—as does Spinoza. On the contrary, he says that the correct moral habit (in relation to honor) is achieved by “hindering thought [al-fikra] about all bodily pleasures and eliminating the

Desire (Shahwa) and Spiritedness (Ghad ·ab) vs. Conatus / 43

desire for the kinds of ignorant and evil glorification [al-ta‘z ·¯ımat al-ja¯hiliyya al-sharı¯ ra].” In other words, once again, guiding and shaping desire, limiting its proclivity toward excess, is the cure Maimonides recommends. This exhortation to curb desire through fitting moral habits (2.36) com­ plements the earlier suggestion that prudence or practical intellect is defec­ tive when it fails to develop beyond mere calculative reason (1.7). Here, Maimonides shows once again his Aristotelian colors. The way to curb ex­ cessive desire and to take excessive anger in hand is to cultivate appropriate moral habits and (thereby) prudence. Here, it is worth recalling that Spino­ za’s view that imagination plays a leading role in practical affairs descends from the divorce between prudence and habit pronounced by Machiavelli. Prudence becomes roughly equivalent to mere calculation in Machiavelli, Hobbes, and subsequent thinkers. And habit becomes separated from a teleological view of desire. At least as early as Descartes, habit acquires its negative connotation in the model we have become familiar with today as stimulus and response (Passions of the Soul a. 50). We turn now to Maimonides’s main discussion of evil (Guide 3.12). We turn there because it is in the context of this discussion of evil that Maimo­ nides says some of the most revealing things about the individual character of excess. In contrast, as we will soon begin41 to see, Spinoza stresses the role of groups in causing human suffering. This difference between Maimonides and Spinoza is directly correlated to Maimonides’s erotic view of desire and Spinoza’s view of desire as a conatus to preserve oneself. The erotic view al­ lows for the inherent human tendency toward excess of the individual. The conatus view links excess more to groups than individuals. In chapter 12, Maimonides begins with a particularly strong assault on the suggestion that evil predominates in human life. To make his argument, he considers the case of that renowned opponent of revelation, Abu Bakr al-Razi, who claimed that human life is filled with more suffering, evil, and misfortune than their opposites. According to Maimonides, such a view can be adopted only by someone who overstates the significance of individu­ als. In a highly Aristotelian argument, he claims that from the point of view of the whole it is the species, not the individuals within it, that is of any account. And the cause of most evils is “our [that is, human] free will [or choice] [bi-ikhtiya¯rina¯]” (p. 443). Then he identifies three causes of evil in ascending order of prevalence in human life. The first cause of evil is the 41. Although I will begin to discuss the role of the imagination in Spinoza’s account of excess here, I will not address directly the role of groups in the production of imaginings until chap. 5.

44 / Chapter One

suffering that we undergo as beings that come into being and pass away or that are mortal. Maimonides argues that only foolish people can imagine that a mortal being will not die and will not be subject to pain. Yet the vast majority of human beings come into the world in health, not illness.42 What he means extends beyond human health to accidents such as floods. The second cause is the suffering that “some men inflict on others” (al-na¯s min ba‘d ·ihim li-ba‘d ·), especially in which one group seeks “dominion over” (tasallut·) another. Although individuals may tend to dominate one another, that tendency does not prevail anywhere. This cause of suffering, especially between groups, becomes prevalent only during wartime. Third and finally, there are the self-inflicted evils. They are more numerous than the second, which were more numerous than the first. Maimonides discusses this class of evils at great length. Leaving aside for the moment the main features of Maimonides’s argu­ ment about the third class of evils—namely, that individuals as such are prone to excess and that human desire knows no limit—perhaps the most striking feature of his account is how frank he is about the corporeal basis not only of excess but also of the soul itself. This is especially striking in view of the importance he has already attached to choice. According to Mai­ monides, these self-inflicted evils are the result of vices (al-radha¯’il) (20a). The key vices are those connected with bodily pleasure. Evil arises owing to excess in quantity or irregularity in quality or simple badness of, for exam­ ple, foods. Indeed, that (e.g., bad foods) is said to be “a cause of all bodily and psychic diseases and illnesses” (sababan li-jamı¯‘ al-amra¯d · wa-l-a¯fat al43 jisma¯niyya wa-l-nafsa¯niyya). How this is the case for the body is obvious. It is less obvious for the soul. The soul is affected in two ways: First, the soul’s moral qualities (akhla¯q al-nafs) are the result of the body’s tempera­ ment (miza¯j al-badan) (20b). Second, the soul becomes accustomed (a.l.f ) (cf. 1.31) and habituated to things that are unnecessary, that is, things un­ necessary for the continuance or preservation (baqa¯’) of the individual or the species. “And this desire is a thing to which there is no limit” (wa-hadha¯ al-shawq huwa amr la¯ niha¯ya lahu). Human desire tends to become infinite. Maimonides’s rare reference to continuance or preservation is not as it might seem an allusion to a modern conception of self-preservation. On the 42. Cf. Aristotle’s use of “what is for the most part,” throughout his theoretical works. See, for example, Meta. 1026b31 and the citations listed by Richard Sorabji in Necessity, Cause and Blame: Perspectives on Aristotle’s Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980; rpt. Chicago: Uni­ versity of Chicago Press, 2006), 50 n. 20. 43. I have put “a” in the place of Pines’s “the” before “cause” because sababan lacks the definite article.

Desire (Shahwa) and Spiritedness (Ghad ·ab) vs. Conatus / 45

contrary, he highlights necessity for continuance because in the Aristotelian parlance with which his readers are familiar it is precisely necessary desires, as opposed to desires choiceworthy for their own sake, that are prone to unlimited expansion.44 He means to focus on the striking fact of human life that it is precisely those things that are necessary for existence about which we are most prone to excess. He goes on to extend that proclivity toward excess to other things such as wealth and luxury. Ultimately, Maimonides cautions his readers against falling prey to the view that because human beings are prone to excess, God has created us naturally evil. Rather, it is in accordance with “the nature of that which exists” (cf. 1.71) to obey the Law (and 2.40). Furthermore, he seeks to undercut the human tendency to bemoan one’s lack of great wealth and luxury by downplaying their signifi­ cance. Such a thing as wealth is not an improvement upon one’s substance ( jawhar) but a “false imagining” (khaya¯l ka¯dhib).45 Now we may turn to Spinoza’s Ethics. Images may be conatus’s greatest stimulant to excess.46 The occasion for the most problematic images is not the imagination of the individual as much as group images. By group im­ ages, I refer not to the power that generates the image (which may very well be the imagination of one individual) but to that which dwells upon and embraces such images. Of course, the most problematic images are religious images. The tendency of groups to believe in such images is the root of what Spinoza seemed to view as the greatest evil: theologico-political conflict or the wars of religion. The remote descendant of this proclivity of groups to believe in misleading images is, at its worst, propaganda, and at its best, ideology. We must limit our discussion of imagination in this chapter to its role in inducing excess in conatus. I wish to reserve a more extended discussion of imagination, especially its relation to prophecy and therefore religion, for chapter 6. Although the most important discussion of imagination is in part 2 of the Ethics, well before the core argument regarding conatus in part 3, I want to begin closer to the heart of Spinoza’s argument with conatus in part 3. Our main initial challenge is to make some sense of Spinoza’s effort 44. Cf. Aristotle, EN 1147b25–32, 1148a22–27. 45. This passage clarifies what Maimonides has in mind regarding imagination in the muchcommented-upon phrase “imaginary desires” in 1.2. See notes 25 and 18, above. 46. Here for purposes of clarity, I will inevitably run the risk of violating various Spinozist strictures against faculty psychology, directed above all at the distinction between will and intel­ lect. See, for example, E 2p48s. On the contrast between “images” (imago) and the “imagina­ tion” (imaginatio), see chap. 5, below.

46 / Chapter One

to view both anger or spiritedness and desire or love as forms of conatus. As I argued in the introduction to this chapter, it is somewhat easier to view anger as a form or expression of conatus than to view love that way. Spir­ itedness is characterized by a form of self-assertion that lies at the heart of conatus. What if not conatus is at work in the all-too-familiar “struggle for survival” with which we are all raised from our earliest exposure to modern science, especially evolutionary theory? Nearly everyone would admit that this struggle is an expression of the organism’s (spirited or thumotic) drive to preserve itself. The first word of Spinoza’s introductory account on co­ natus (E 3pp6–9) is the individual thing (prop.: Unaquaeque res; demo. Res enim singulares modi sunt). In other words his account of conatus begins em­ phatically with what in Spinozist parlance is the “finite mode.” Of course, the Ethics as a whole begins with the claim that is difficult to understand, let alone swallow, that there is only one substance, namely, God, and He possesses or is constituted by an infinity of attributes and these in turn of modes. The precise relation between the infinite modes that are said to be God and the finite modes—that are somehow a part of and yet somehow different from God—is not something we need to settle here.47 We need only observe that the conatus doctrine, which I have argued is the central teaching of the Ethics, seems to run most fully against the current of those initial claims about God. (The center and the periphery are in tension with one another, as we might expect in a teaching whose purpose is to win us over to the core teaching without disabusing us too quickly of our most cherished beliefs.) Now, if it is the nature of the finite mode to preserve itself, then how could experience be said to be anything more than the con­ flicting collision of self-assertive individuals? Here, we begin to see some of the rhyme and reason of the initial characterization of modes as “in God.” Even though each finite mode tends to preserve itself, its so doing is not in­ herently opposed to the tendency of the system of finite modes also to pre­ serve itself. Better than the opening arguments for the singular substance, the Physical Treatise (E 2pp13–14) explains this feature of experience quite well. Each finite mode is itself a constellation of “simplest bodies” (corpora simplicissima) (discussed in E 2p13dem1,schol, ax1 through lem3, ax2). A composite individual (Individuum compositum) can then belong to a con­ stellation of such individuals forming yet another individual and so forth until one reaches the “totality of Nature as one individual” (totam naturam

47. See the appendix on Kennington’s Spinoza.

Desire (Shahwa) and Spiritedness (Ghad ·ab) vs. Conatus / 47

unum esse Individuum) (2p13lem7schol).48 Spinoza’s conception of the in­ dividual, then, is quite a bit looser than any commonsense or premodern notion. Such looseness has at least two effects: It helps to explain how cona­ tus can be self-assertive, even angry, and desirous or loving. And it helps to highlight just how strong the tendency toward materialism is in Spinoza’s thought. By the latter, I mean that it is on the basis of this conception of the individual that he implies that living beings possess no more individuality than any other lawfully constituted constellation of individuals in nature. Living things are, like any other constellation, a ratio of bodies in motionand-rest (2p13lem4–6). Spinoza eschews any traditional notion of formal wholeness that might set living beings apart from other composite individu­ als. The self-assertion of individuals becomes less combative the more one comes to view every individual as embedded in a greater individual. (Here, we see one of the bases of much of the left-Spinozism that has gained cur­ rency, especially in Europe, in the last half century.)49 Indeed, anger and love tend less and less to be clearly at odds with one another. Furthermore, love tends to be viewed less erotically and far more mechanically. Does it serve the preservation of the individual? If not, might the individual’s love serve the preservation of the species? If Spinoza argues that love serves the preservation (or continuance) of the species, is he not treading close to the territory we saw was occupied by Maimonides (in Guide 3.12, following Aristotle)? On the contrary, Spinoza does not view the species as a whole, which by virtue of its wholeness somehow trumps the individual. Rather Spinoza would argue as contemporary scientists do for the selfishness of DNA. The species is little more than an expression of DNA’s selfish drive to preserve itself—especially if such preservation entails transformation. Thus, love is merely an embellished form of conatus that appears at times to strive beyond itself toward something higher than itself (cf. 3p9s)—all the while merely expressing its tendency to preserve itself in a more complex way, 48. I have followed and will quote Samuel Shirley’s translation of the Ethics, 1st ed. (India­ napolis: Hackett, 1982). My references to the Latin text are from Spinoza, Opera, ed. Charles Gebhardt, 4 vols. (Heidelberg: Carl Winters, 1925). 49. See, for example, Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Philosophie pratique (Paris: Presses Universita­ ires de France, 1970), trans. Robert Hurley (San Francisco: City Lights, 1988); Antonio Negri, L’anomalia selvaggia (Milan: Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, 1981), trans. Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991); and the collection by Warren Montag and Ted Stolze, eds., The New Spinoza: Theory out of Bounds (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997). For a survey of the issue of the individual as a political concept in Spinoza in light of European Spinozism, see Steven Barbone and Lee Rice, “Individu et état chez Spinoza,” NASS (North American Spinoza Society) Monograph no. 12 (2005): 1–31.

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because greater complexity itself, at least at times, serves preservation. Once again, according to Spinoza, love cannot be viewed as a being’s longing for a good somehow greater than itself. With these varying expressions of conatus as love and anger in mind, we may now turn back to Spinoza’s account of imagination in an attempt to see how it might tend to induce excessive desire. He begins his account of imag­ ination in Ethics 2p17. Over the course of some twenty-three propositions, he prepares the argument that what has traditionally been viewed as intel­ lectual intuition of forms of any kind, but especially of such abstractions as the good, is merely imaginative production of universals (2p40s1). Not intellect but imagination conjures up such abstractions. Thus, the core of this argument must show that what had been taken to be intellect or mind for centuries, possibly even millennia, was not that at all. He needs to interrupt the Aristotelian account of imagination, which places it squarely between sensation and intellection in an indispensable, somewhat mysterious, role as mediator between the particulars of sensation and the universals that were thought to be the object of the intellect. Spinoza will dislodge imagi­ nation from its mediating position to reveal a far less exalted expression of conatus, one that tends only to exacerbate or inflame conatus itself. Spinoza locates universals as both the product and the object of the imag­ ination by discovering an entire realm of the imagination diametrically opposed to that of reason. Those two realms are opposed as inadequate idea (2p26c) to adequate idea (2pp43–47), but more tellingly as the “common order of nature” (communi naturae ordine) (2p29c) to “common notions” (notiones communes) (2p40s2#3) or “notions common to all men” (notions omnibus hominibus communes) (2p38c). The common order of nature leads directly to the production of forms or universals. Spinoza intends to insinu­ ate that the mind as imagination is prone to generate universals or forms through anticipation of the order of nature.50 In contrast, “common no­ tions” are like laws of nature to which all bodies must conform (2p38c, see esp. reference back to lemma 2 in the Physical Treatise). Chapter 3 will ex­ plain at length the difference between forms, attributed to the imagination, and laws of nature. For now, the main point can be conveyed by recalling the previous discussion of the Physical Treatise in the interest of explaining conatus. There I argued that for Spinoza the fullest sense of the individual,

50. See Bacon’s use of “anticipations of nature” in Great Instauration, ed. Jerry Weinberger, rev. ed. (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1980, 1989), 17, end of preface, and Kenning­ ton, On Modern Origins, 24–25. For why the mind is naturally prone to distortion from the start, see Bacon, New Organon 1.20, 1.48.

Desire (Shahwa) and Spiritedness (Ghad ·ab) vs. Conatus / 49

or of its wholeness, that he will allow is the ratio of bodies in motion-andrest. Of course, a ratio of parts does not a whole make. Thus, laws of nature, which reason is suited to grasp, must be contrasted with fantastic forms and universals, which the mind imagines it perceives in nature. The imagina­ tion, according to Spinoza, generates wholes where none exist. In contrast, reason rests satisfied with the mere constellations and systems of bodies. (Once again, we detect in Spinoza a strong pull toward materialism.)51 Having uncovered the link between the imagination and the generation of wholes, we may now consider how such wholes might inflame conatus. The most relevant kinds of wholes one might consider are precisely “abstrac­ tions” such as the good, the noble, the just or justice, even God Himself. (Since Spinoza’s God as the assemblage of infinite modes is little more than an array of laws of nature, such a God shares little or nothing in common with the biblical God. Indeed, it falls short even of the Aristotelian God whose role as telos of the whole warrants ascribing attributes such as beauti­ ful to Him—even if only by rather remote analogy.) It almost goes without saying that groups of human beings have laid down their lives in the belief that their vision of God, especially their vision of the one God, is the true vision. Spinoza’s attack on forms and universals—though Scholasticism is the more immediate target—is a highly sophisticated if thinly veiled attack on traditional, especially biblical views of God. It is hardly by chance that such wholes evoke far more passionate devotion than mere laws of nature.52 No one ever started a religious war over a law of nature. As we saw at the beginning of the chapter, Spinoza takes advantage of the prevailing, imaginative view of God in his own account of the philosopher’s love of God (E 5). Even there, however, one need only scratch the surface of the account to see that his God could hardly be the object of the tradi­ tional contemplative, erotic relation to God. According to Spinoza, all such erotic accounts rest upon an inadequate understanding of beings, above all, God. Ideas are inadequate when one fails to recognize that a merely 51. Contrast the following proportion implied here (part : whole :: intellect : imagination) with the apparently opposite message of the highly confusing, indeed, misleading E 1p15 (part : whole :: imagination : intellect). That proposition seeks to bolster the claim that there is only one substance—it is this grandiose (though hollow) sense of wholeness that intellect is sup­ posed to be able to grasp in contrast to imagination. Yet by the time the reader reaches the Physical Treatise, the corpora simplicissima seem to take on a greater reality than God. As we will see in the appendix on Kennington’s Spinoza, the system of laws of nature that constitute God (or nature) hardly form the kind of whole we imagine (!) when reading passages of the Ethics such as 2p40s2 and part 5. 52. Cf. the discussion of the imagined free, necessary, contingent, and possible in chap. 4, below.

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imagined being as an image lacks independent existence (2p17s). This failure is tantamount to believing that something that does not exist truly exists. What better way for Spinoza to characterize the way he views the traditional erotic accounts of God. At their most biblical, they claim that God is particularly provident like a parent. Even at their most philosophic, such as Aristotle’s, they rest satisfied with loose talk of the Prime Unmoved Mover as somehow beautiful or noble (Meta. 12.7). In both cases, Spinoza would characterize these images as inducing a passion for God that is wholly inappropriate in our “relation” to God. Rather than passion, reason allows us to assess more properly our precise position in the totality of things. Indeed, knowledge and love of God for Spinoza are little more than a proper understanding of where our body fits into the matrix of physical causes (5pp14–15). Even though Spinoza might appear to hold out a more spiritual account of such love, he does so only through smoke and mirrors. The clearest indication that this is the case is the way he appears to hold out an amorphous “intuition” of God as the third kind of knowledge (2p40s2), immediately after he has denied the possibility of intellectual intuition (2p40s1). Those who retain the conviction that Spinoza holds out hope of some form of intuitive grasp of God’s essence need only consider his final statement on the nature of the third kind of knowledge, namely, that the highest kind of knowledge is of particulars (5p36s). In other words, laws of nature are the object of the second kind of knowledge merely because the highest (third) kind of knowledge attainable by human beings concerns the production of individuals. In that final account of the third kind of knowl­ edge, Spinoza confirms his continuation of the Baconian project of mastery and possession of nature, itself a development of Machiavelli’s more nar­ rowly circumscribed antitheological political project.

TWO

Veneration vs. Equality

That early modern philosophers attack wonder and especially veneration is not difficult to see. Wonder is the key philosophic passion (or emotion or affect) of premodern philosophy. One seeks to know because one is filled with wonder, at least to begin with, because of strange things such as eclipses, the origin of the cosmos, and the incommensurability of the side with the hypotenuse of a right triangle. And seeking such knowledge is placed at the opposite extreme from seeking useful knowledge (Aristotle, Meta. 982b12–983a24). Early modern philosophers attack both wonder and the divorce of knowledge from production with which it is associated. Indeed, they linked theoretical knowledge with “practical” (that is, in premodern parlance, productive) application from the beginning of modernity. In contrast, Aristotle attempts a rigorous separation of theoretical knowledge from production. He argues that rapid advances in production would undermine political practice and custom (Politics 2.8). Early modern philosophers boldly sought precisely such an undermining of political custom and tradition. For them, the maintenance of tradition meant the continuation of bloody wars of religion. According to Bacon, wonder is the experience of premodern man before the ceaseless cycles of eternal nature. By adopting a new approach to the . For Spinoza’s attack on wonder, see below. For Bacon’s initiation of the attack on wonder, consider his subtle deconstruction of premodern metaphysics, whose object is to establish a direct link between theory and production, in the Advancement of Learning 2.5–8, esp. 2.5.2, 2.7.1, and 2.7.3. Bacon condemns wonder for causing inaction (used loosely to cover both praxis and poie¯ sis or production) in Great Instauration, ed. Jerry Weinberger, rev. ed. (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1980, 1989), 2 (proemium) and 3 (preface). For citations for Descartes, see note 4 below. . Cf. Bacon, Essays no. 58, “Of the Vicissitude of Things,” with Great Instauration, ed. Weinberger 2, 8.

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relation between theory and production, Bacon seeks to establish a progressive science, suited to a progressive view of time and nature. In other words, human beings are not doomed to gaze upon eternity with wonder. It would appear from the modern point of view that wonder either is or is inclined to become a kind of stupefaction. Descartes, for example, designates excess of wonder as “astonishment” and criticizes it most vehemently for inducing inaction. Indeed, he establishes much of the argument of his Passions of the Soul around loosening the grip of wonder. That wonder’s main consequence is not vigorous action but contemplation is both the intention of Aristotle and the target of early modern attack. Interestingly, Spinoza offers his account of veneration (veneratio) as a form of wonder (admiratio) (E 3p52), even before announcing that wonder is not an affect or emotion at all. Indeed, it is nothing but a thought that lacks connection to others. In other words, it is merely a senseless thought (3def.emot#4explic). Nevertheless, I return to veneration. Veneration is when our wonder is stirred by imagining that something is singular (singulare) or extraordinary. And we experience veneration of human beings, at least, when we imagine their prudence or industry or the like to be singular. Of course, Spinoza does not declare forthrightly that veneration is bad—though he implies as much by the end of part 3 by doubting whether wonder even qualifies as an affect. Furthermore, he implies his opposition to veneration by arguing that all human beings love themselves and find self-contentment pleasurable (3pp53–5)—as well as by arguing that selfcontentment is itself happiness (4p52) and humility is its undesirable and vicious opposite (4p53). Veneration feeds humility. Spinoza’s democratic teaching is diametrically opposed to such submission to authority. His opposition to all things premodern is perhaps most explicit in his attack on the veneration of religious authorities promoted by two of the greatest premodern religious authorities, Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas. Indeed, one of Spinoza’s most explicit attacks on these thinkers, the former by name and the latter by insinuation, is an attack on their inegali. See note 1, above. . For the central condemnation of “astonishment,” see Passions of the Soul a. 73. For the ongoing attack on wonder, see esp. aa. 52–55, 69–78, 149–64. . See Aristotle’s rejection of innovation in production because of the way in which it indirectly undermines laws (Politics 2.8, esp. 1268a6–10, 1268b22–30, 1269a19–23). This is at least one central reason that Aristotle insists that contemplation should be for its own sake or even useless. Cf. Meta. 1.1. . Cf. Descartes, Passions of the Soul aa. 55, 162. . Cf. ibid., aa. 159–60 and epistolary preface (Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, 11 vols. [Paris: J. Vrin, 1983], 11: 306.9 [hereafter AT]).

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tarian promotion of their own authority in the all-important chapter 7 of the Theologico-Political Treatise. In that chapter, Spinoza sets forth the broad outlines of his new approach to biblical interpretation: (1) know the nature and properties of the scriptural language(s), (2) reduce scripture to its most basic tenets, and (3) study the context of the prophetic authors. Here I need only note the trajectory of the new method. One learns the language to point out all of the textual problems in scripture. One reduces it to its tenets so that one may find an ethic easily translatable into modern terms. And one learns the author’s context to establish how backward he and his community were at the time of composition. In contrast to this method, unnamed interpreters, the foremost of whom is surely Thomas Aquinas, appeal to a supranatural gift to understand the inner meaning of scripture. In chapter 6, Spinoza argued against supranatural events, namely, miracles, that belief in them, as departures from nature, is atheistic (6.1.33–34). Insofar as he has established since chapters 1 and 2 that prophecy is the product of the imagination, he questions the possibility that prophets who lack fully developed reason (natural light) could possess such a supranatural gift (7.11.20). In other words, prophecy is subrational. Why then should we suppose that they receive supranatural gifts? He insinuates thereby that when thinkers like Aquinas appeal to supranatural gifts of interpretation they insinuate that their own interpretations are privileged because supranaturally based. If so, according to Spinoza’s argument, they are atheistic. When he attacks Maimonides, Spinoza seeks to portray him as a manip­ ulative reader of scripture who forces a preconceived reading upon it, on no other basis than his unquestioned religious authority. Furthermore, Spinoza portrays himself as offering a thoroughly objective, scientific approach to scripture. The occasion for Spinoza’s attack is Maimonides’s explanation of why he does not interpret creation figuratively (Guide 2.25). He does not because neither creation nor eternity has been proven. Spinoza attacks Maimonides’s implication that he would interpret scripture figuratively if this had been proven. How could Maimonides so casually violate the plain meaning of scripture (TTP 7.11.22–23)? Furthermore, Spinoza argues that little in scripture can be deduced rationally. And if scripture needed to agree with reason, then the multitude, which is ignorant of demonstrations, would have to be given all it understands of scripture by theologicophilosophic authorities. In other words, the vulgar “will not be able to admit anything about Scripture except on the authority and attestations of those who philosophize; and consequently, they will have to suppose that Philosophers cannot err about Scripture’s interpretation: surely this

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would be a new Church authority and a new kind of priests or Pontiffs, which the vulgar would ridicule rather than venerate” (7.11.27). Writing for a primarily non-Catholic audience, he insinuates that all premodern, elitist approaches to scripture tend toward claims of infallibility, which his audience cannot but resent. By so impugning Maimonides’s elitism, Spinoza prepares the way for the conviction in his reader that he, Spinoza, purveys an approach to scriptural interpretation that is both more egalitarian and truer to scripture itself. Consequently, he ascribes to Maimonides the following tenets: (1) prophets were philosopher-theologians of the highest cal­ iber, (2) the sense of scripture cannot be established from itself, and (3) we are permitted to twist (that is, interpret figuratively) anything in scripture that does not agree with reason (7.11.31–34). The central tenet ascribed to Maimonides is the key element in Spinoza’s rhetorical attack. Spinoza needs to insinuate that his approach imports nothing into scripture—in contrast to Maimonides (and Thomas). As we will see, however, the second and central tenet of Spinoza’s own method (reduce scripture to its most basic tenets), when fully realized, will prove far more distant from the intention of scripture than Maimonides. For example, in Spinoza’s hands, the most basic tenet, love thy neighbor as thyself, is rapidly translated from a principle of devotion to the common good, charity, or perhaps even selfsacrifice into the modern parlance of self-interest (E 4p35c2). What I have argued so far about Spinoza’s critique of Maimonides in the Theologico-Political Treatise will come as little surprise to the reader. In brief, Maimonides promotes veneration of religious authorities such as himself; Spinoza opposes veneration and even promotes equality, especially among interpreters of scripture. Yet the lengths to which Spinoza goes to undermine veneration I believe have often been overlooked. On a related note, I believe that it has rarely been recognized that his arguments for divine corporeality or for the inclusion of corporeal nature in the concept of God are not merely odd theoretical innovations but also theoretical claims made with definite practical consequences in mind. God’s attribute of extension is not just another attribute. Throughout this book, I will attempt to show that Spinoza is more deeply materialist in his conception of both God and human being than he is often thought to be. And the ascent of the attribute of extension represents more than the addition of another attribute. This attribute tends to usurp the place of any other—even though Spinoza . See appendix on Kennington’s Spinoza. . See introduction and cf. W. Z. Harvey, “A Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 19, no. 2 (1981): 151–72, esp. 164–66.

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claims at the same time that God’s substance includes an infinite number of attributes (E 1p11). In this chapter, I will show that eliminating wonder and veneration goes hand in hand with promoting materialism, especially about God and human being. Many of the technical details of Spinoza’s view of God as corporeal will be reserved for the next chapter. Here, we will be interested primarily in the relation between that view and the attack on wonder and veneration. Before we turn to the substance of the relation between corporealism and the attack on wonder and veneration in the Ethics, let us digress to consider the nature of esotericism in Spinoza’s thought and the closely connected matter, the relation between the Theologico-Political Treatise and the Ethics. I have argued so far that Maimonides is frankly elitist and that Spinoza is egalitarian, especially about interpreting scripture. Readers of Spinoza are aware that he is considered to be an elitist in comparison with other early modern philosophers. He frequently underlines the need to speak ad captum vulgi loqui, according to the language of the vulgar. How can Spinoza’s egalitarianism be reconciled with his apparent elitism? Without revisiting all of the details of the differences between premodern and modern forms of esotericism,10 the most succinct observation is that Spinoza’s elitism is far less thoroughgoing than that of premodern esotericists. Even if Spinoza maintains an elitist view of philosophy, he develops the first outspokenly democratic political teaching among early modern liberal political philosophers. For a premodern philosopher such as Maimonides the hierarchy of ends among the various ways of life has significant implications for the right ordering of political life. Spinoza seems to have jettisoned teleology (see chapter 5 and epilogue) at least in part because he saw that the effectual truth of teleology was that the wise possessed a superior title to rule. (This is far from the last word of premodern political philosophy regarding wisdom as a title to rule. Maimonides as a student of Alfarabi and thus in turn of Plato [Laws 690a, 714e, 744b] is especially aware of how much more complicated a matter political life is than a simple bow to the superior claim of wisdom.) Although Spinoza obviously prefers his own way of life to any other and seems convinced that his way of life is more powerful and refined 10. For such detailed discussions, see Strauss, “Persecution and the Art of Writing,” in Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 22–37, esp. 33–34. Also see Michael Kochin, “Morality, Nature, and Esotericism in Strauss’s Persecution and the Art of Writing,” Review of Politics 64, no. 2 (2002): 261–83. See the appendix for additional discussion of esotericism in Spinoza.

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than any other, he eschews the claim that the hierarchy of power should be interpreted as a premodern hierarchy of ends. That hierarchy of ends and the claim to rule of the wise were too readily hijacked by unscrupulous theologico-political actors propounding their suprapolitical insight over the vulgar only to fleece the vulgar for the sake of their own private advantage. Spinoza shares this assessment of premodern political philosophy with his modern predecessors (Machiavelli, Bacon, [I would argue even] Descartes, and Hobbes). What makes Spinoza’s political philosophy novel is his turn to the vulgar to overthrow the political implications of premodern teleology once and for all. If Spinoza’s approach to biblical interpretation were not enough to reveal his democratic political teaching, his use of the opposition between democracy and theocracy in the closing chapters of the Theologico-Political Treatise (as well as his Political Treatise) establishes his credentials as a philosophical proponent of liberal democracy. To break free from the hold of premodern political elitism, Spinoza links that elitism to theocracy and throws in his lot with democracy and the people. It is often suggested that he does so because he believes deeply in the Enlightenment faith in moral and political progress. Steven Frankel has recently argued quite convincingly that Spinoza is not quite as naïve a believer in moral progress as he has often been presented as being, as the founder of modern liberal democracy. On the contrary, Spinoza promotes belief in political equality and political freedom as the new prejudices of the new liberal democratic state.11 This interpretation is certainly more compatible with Spinoza’s ongoing philosophic elitism than the traditional story about the Enlightenment faith in moral progress. It should be added, however, that Frankel does not deny that Spinoza presents the turn from theocracy to democracy as a form of progress—even if it is underwritten by prejudice just as much as was theocracy. How does Spinoza then use his democratic political turn to the advantage of the (still elitist) philosopher? He opens the floodgates to all manner of interpretation of scripture by establishing tenets sufficiently broad (TTP, chap. 14) that they can be filled with nearly any content.12 By separating philosophy from theology and limiting theology to the moral teaching that he himself propounds in the Theologico-Political Treatise, he eliminates the doctrinal influence of philosophic-theological authorities such as Maimon­ 11. Steven Frankel, “Determined to Be Free: The Meaning of Freedom in Spinoza’s TheologicoPolitical Treatise,” Review of Politics 73 (2011): 55–76. 12. Ibid.

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ides and Thomas Aquinas over the multitude. In addition, under the cover provided by the flood of novel scriptural interpretations, he is able to found the philosopher’s unprecedented degree of freedom to engage in theoretical speculation (TTP, chap. 20), with the underlying assumption that such speculation will no longer guide or shape the prejudices of the multitude. Whether that underlying assumption is well grounded is beyond our purview here. Under these new conditions of unprecedented philosophical freedom, we should not be surprised that the whole tenor of esotericism would change. Although we should expect to continue to see some recourse to esotericism to conceal the philosopher’s distance from the multitude, new tasks and forms of esotericism develop. For example, modern esotericists employ esotericism because they cannot convey openly their opposition to premodern views while (theologico-political) elites with allegiances to those premodern ways of thinking remain in positions of authority. The only way to breach the walls of the premodern Troy is to enter it by means of a pseudo-premodern Trojan horse. Works like Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy and Spinoza’s Ethics are precisely such Trojan horses. That is, they present themselves as fully compatible with premodern philosophy while thoroughly undermining that very philosophy.13 Thus, modern esotericists employ esotericism less to defend themselves from the uneducated masses than (philosophers had previously and) to win over the still reigning theologico-political authorities, however unwittingly, to a new view of God and human being. To achieve this result, modern philosophic esotericists cultivate a vast class of intellectuals (primarily clergy and university teachers)

13. Descartes’s success in donning a premodern theological mask in the Meditations is testified to by Harry A. Wolfson’s misinterpretation of Descartes as a premodern thinker attempting to reconcile the premodern inheritance with modern science. Although it would take far too long to make a convincing case for this interpretation of the Meditations here, the interested reader should consider Descartes’s related suggestion in a letter to Marin Mersenne dated January 28, 1641: “[T]hese six meditations contain all the foundations of my physics. But please do not tell people, for that might make it harder for supporters of Aristotle to approve them. I hope that readers will gradually get used to my principles, and recognize their truth, before they notice that they destroy the principles of Aristotle.” This translation appears in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy in “Descartes’ Life and Work,” by Kurt Smith, accessed December 6, 2010, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-works/. The interested reader should also consider Descartes’s or his anonymous correspondent’s related highly ambiguous remarks in the Epistolary Preface to the Passions of the Soul (AT 11: 311, lines 5 through 14), as well as the shocking assessment of previous philosophy and theology of the Discourse on Method (AT 6: 8), in stark contrast to the putative orthodoxy of the opening pages of the Meditations, the preface to the theologians of the Sorbonne.

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to mediate between themselves and the many.14 It is just such a form of esotericism that we see Spinoza practice in the Ethics. Although Spinoza does reveal many of his own philosophic views in that work, he often hides them with well-worn tropes of philosophical freedom and contemplative wisdom. Much as Frankel has shown that political freedom in the Theologico-Political Treatise must be viewed as a popular teaching out of sync with Spinoza’s determinism, I will try to show below that his use of philosophic freedom and amor Dei intellectualis is part and parcel of a semipopular teaching intended for the new class of intellectuals. In effect, the Ethics is nearly as esoteric as the Theologico-Political Treatise.15 At least when Spinoza wrote, his intention seemed to be to use intellectuals both as a buffer between the philosopher and the multitude and as a means of promoting the new liberal democratic political teaching. By the time one reaches late modern thinkers such as Kant and Hegel, the mediating role of intellectuals had been so successful that most of the differences between few and many had become unthinkable. Indeed, such distinctions came to be viewed as vestiges of the injustice of various premodern conventions such as slavery—and nothing more. Faith in human progress led to the conviction that gaps between few and many were altogether temporary and should be forgotten. After all, they appear to be utterly antithetical to late modern views of human dignity and mutual recognition. Let us return to Spinoza’s characteristically modern attack on wonder and veneration—part and parcel of his opposition to the political inequality sanctioned by premodern political philosophy. Although wonder begins in perplexity at departures from rational order such as the incommensurability of the side and the hypotenuse of a right triangle, wonder is not limited to being awestruck before apparent lack of order. Aristotle alludes to the different sources of wonder when he mentions both “attributes of the moon and things pertaining to the sun and the stars” and “the coming into being of the cosmos” (Meta. 982b15–17). The former is an allusion to one of the oldest initiators of philosophy, evident for example in one of the anecdotes about the first pre-Socratic, Thales. He is said to have been able to predict eclipses and to have used that knowledge to defeat the enemies of his city. In other words, eclipses were viewed by less knowledgeable opponents as evil omens. Wonder then was initially elicited by such disturbing perplexi14. Spinoza’s account of the “free man,” which I will discuss at the end of this chapter and in chap. 4, is a portrait of just such a mediating intellectual. 15. See appendix.

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ties. In contrast, the coming into being of the cosmos, which does not refer to creation out of nothing,16 refers to more purely motivated wonder at the order of things. One sees this more sophisticated kind of wonder alluded to in the opening page of Aristotle’s Physics. There, one begins by detecting wholes (natural forms) and rapidly becomes perplexed about their parts (causes). The order of the cosmos and the order of individual beings elicit wonder. The apparent disorder of eclipses leads the observer to seek an underlying order, which proves far less frightening than the initial perplexity. The deeper wonder at the order of things is much more the target of early modern philosophers like Spinoza than the initial wonder at the eclipse. Bacon labeled the former wonder “anticipation of nature.”17 By which he means, when we view natural beings initially we are prone to anticipate prematurely what their nature or natures are. Bacon develops a method to yield what he calls “interpretations of nature.” Without descending into great detail, we note that here Bacon develops his method of “induction” (New Organon 1.14)—which must never be confused with Aristotle’s epago¯ge¯ (though that is often translated as “induction”).18 In a nutshell, Bacon’s method of induction is aimed above all at taking things apart. Like pre-Socratic atomists, he questions the wisdom of trusting our initial impression that natural beings are the most relevant kinds of wholes. Instead, he pursues the path that came to be known as corpuscularianism, the modern updating of atomism, which views natural beings as constituted of more primary constituents—though unlike pre-Socratic atomists, he does not treat seriously the search for indivisible atoms. Rather, corpuscles are the smallest known quantities, which are potentially infinitely divisible. Indeed, one of the greatest insights of Bacon is the eschewing of a first cause of any kind, whether it is a form or an atom (or God).19 The Baconian turn toward induction is a clear precursor to Descartes’s development of the analytic method. Like Bacon, Descartes resists the premodern privileging of synthetic or deductive argument. Rather than search for the causes of initially perceived wholes, Descartes insists in good Baconian fashion on analytic problem solving. One of the greatest obstacles to understanding Spinoza today derives from contemporary scholars’ inability to detect the same privileging of induction or analytic argument in Spinoza. After all, Spinoza is reputed to be the 16. Cf., e.g., Aristotle, Phys. 191a24–34. 17. See above, chap. 1, note 50. 18. See Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. Joe Sachs (Santa Fe: Green Lion Press, 1999), glossary, xlvii and liii–iv. 19. See Kennington, On Modern Origins: Essays in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Pamela Kraus and Frank Hunt (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 33–56, esp. 44.

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outspoken proponent of deductive or synthetic argument, as evident in the synthetic structure of the Ethics. Based on the profound insights of Richard Kennington’s scholarship on Bacon, Descartes, and Spinoza, I will attempt to bear out the view that Spinoza ultimately privileges analytic method in the next chapter.20 For now, it will suffice to observe that in chapter 1 I have already shown that one of the most important corollaries of Spinoza’s conatus doctrine is that individual natural beings are composite individuals rather than natural wholes. Eros, even if not in our contemporary, strictly sexual sense, is felt for natural wholes; conatus is “felt” in relation to a world constituted of constellations of corpora simplicissisima (simplest bodies). Although much debate exists about how Spinoza understands these simplest bodies, I believe that he shares in common with Bacon not only his method but also his corpuscularianism. For now, it must suffice to observe that Bacon, Descartes, and Spinoza form a united front against premodern wonder at formal wholes.21 The central teaching on conatus precludes the possibility that Spinoza could mean by “essence” anything like premodern, Aristotelian notions of the formal cause.22 The essence or ratio that human beings seek to know is a ratio of bodies in motion-and-rest. We endeavor to know such a ratio not out of an erotic desire to know a whole but as part of our endeavor to preserve ourselves. Wonder is a privileged passion only where one’s approach to experience is understood as underwritten by eros. Wonder of the deeper kind, wonder at the wholeness of natural beings and a desire to know such beings, is a form of, or accompanies, eros. Of course, eros can take other forms such as erotic longing for a beautiful body. Yet even such longing is inflamed less by the body itself than by the promise of eternal possession that beauty elicits. In contrast, conatus is incompatible with a desire to know natural wholes. For Spinoza, souls or forms are imagined because of a prejudgment or anticipation that a mere composite individual is somehow more than a composite.23 Seen through the lens of conatus, natural wholes of the premodern kind in science are illusory. And seen through the lens of conatus, erotic

20. Also see the appendix on Kennington’s Spinoza. 21. Cf. Bacon’s attacks on the traditional “notions of logic and physics” and on “anticipations of nature” in natural science at New Organon 1.15–16 and 1.26–33; Descartes’s attack on “forms or qualities” and on “colors,” respectively, in Discourse pt. 5 (AT 6: 43) and Meditations 1 (AT 7: 19­–20); and Spinoza, Ethics 2p40s1. Also see chap. 3 below, esp. note 35. 22. Spinoza uses “essence” throughout part 1 but avoids defining it until the Physical Treatise’s account of “form” ( forma) (E 2p13lem4–6). 23. Again, see above chap. 1, note 50.

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longing is little more than one composite body’s instinctual response to another composite body. The beauty of bodies serves to stimulate a response that promotes the preservation of the species. Beauty is thoroughly relative (E 1ap). If eternal forms or universals enter the picture at all, they enter solely as the result of the imagination’s proclivity to simplify experience.24 Such a proclivity of the imagination is only intensified by the composite body’s endeavor to exist. What better way to continue in existence than to appear to immortalize one’s body through imagined immortalization of a “soul.” No doubt nature takes advantage of such images to perpetuate the species, according to Spinoza. With the demise of wonder and veneration comes the rise of materialism. The materialist tendency in Spinoza’s account of human being is not difficult to detect in the Physical Treatise. If form is nothing but a constellation of bodies (2p13lem4), then how can soul, thought, or intellect be more than an epiphenomenon of such a constellation? It should come as little surprise that Spinoza attempts to protect himself against the accusation of materialism before the Physical Treatise (2pp13–4), namely, in the first salvo in the development of so-called psycho-physical parallelism (2p7). The realm of soul, thought, or intellection is constituted of “ideas” (2p15). And such ideas belong to a chain of ideas that run parallel to the chain of things (rerum), that is, bodies (2p7). Spinoza goes on to claim over the course of the Ethics that he has solved the by-his-time timeworn challenge of Cartesian dualism, namely, the problem of interaction (e.g., 5pr). (That is, how can two distinct kinds of substances, res extensa and res cogitans, interact.) He avoids this problem altogether by treating extension and thought as attributes of one divine substance and by denying the 24. Cf. E 2p40s1. This explanation of forms or universals has its roots in Bacon’s critique of the mind’s innate tendency to leap to generalities. He calls those generalities prematurely arrived at “anticipations of nature,” which he denigrates vis-à-vis “inquisitions” or “interpretations of nature.” See Great Instauration, ed. Weinberger, 16–17 (preface, end); New Organon 1.19, 1.20, 1.24–33, esp. 1.28; cf. Advancement of Learning 2.17.7. Despite his reputation as a rationalist believer in innate ideas, Descartes had already moved in the direction of Spinoza’s direct critique of forms (in 2p40s1) in an account of the workings of imagination in Passions of the Soul a. 78—not surprisingly in the context of wonder’s proclivity to become fixated upon the “first image” that occurs to the mind. Although all of these thinkers shared this dim view of the mind’s tendency to leap to generalities or first images insofar as it influenced the pursuit of speculative knowledge, it was not until the so-called empiricists that the advantages of this tendency came to be fully exploited. See, for example, Hume’s arguments regarding the trustworthiness of what he calls “instinct.” In effect, he argues that reason’s speculations cannot be trusted regarding the most pressing needs of human life. Instinctual leaping, if not speculative or rational leaping, to generalities regarding, for example, hot coals and lions and bears has great survival value (Inquiry concerning Human Understanding 5.1).

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existence of any such interaction, that is, by affirming parallelism. Yet much as one wonders how serious Descartes could ever have been in arranging such an obvious and intractable problem as that of interaction, so one wonders how long Spinoza could sustain the claim that body and mind need not interact. For example, in 3p2, he insinuates in the proposition that neither body affects mind nor mind affects body. Yet, he goes on in the scholium of that very same proposition to argue that no one has yet determined how much the body can do. In other words, he brings into question whether mind is as distinct as we imagine it as being. In yet other terms, he raises the specter, all too familiar to contemporary students of the philosophy of mind, of epiphenomenalism. Indeed, in the very same scholium, Spinoza uses the example of sleepwalkers to convey much of what is conveyed today in talk about zombies. Is there any way to tell apart a being conscious of qualities from a zombie? Is there any real difference between consciousness and the lack thereof ? In brief, why should one be concerned about interaction of body and mind when mind is little more than very complexly arranged body? I do not intend in one short paragraph to prove Spinoza’s epiphenomenalism or naturalism. I intend merely to show that his attack on wonder and veneration is of a piece with his stunningly thoroughgoing rejection of premodern forms. Body alone does not elicit wonder. Nor do human beings venerate other human beings, whom they view as just another bag of bones. Veneration is of the extraordinary human being. Of course, veneration plays a central role in religious worship. No human being has ever bowed down to an idol in the belief that the piece of wood alone was worth worshiping (cf. Guide 1.36). Even humbler cases of veneration such as the veneration of an extraordinary athlete is not of the athlete’s body alone but of the athlete’s perceived “will” or “grit” or “determination.” Spinoza’s opposition to veneration of extraordinary human individuals is at least as strong as his opposition to veneration of God as a spiritual being. Although God is said to possess infinite attributes, from among which we are aware of only two, including thought, one wonders whether God’s thought fares any better than human thought. Spinoza’s key argument regarding God’s corporeality flies in the face of all previous theologicophilosophic argument about God, especially premodern Aristotelian arguments of the kind one sees in Maimonides’s Guide. In 1p15, Spinoza argues that God must include body because there is only one substance that is God (1pp5–14). The bulk of his long scholium defending this view is devoted to refuting the idea that God as inclusive of all body must be constituted of parts. “In” God, all body is “infinite, one, and indivisible.” To justify

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such a bold claim, he must develop the first and most cryptic aspect of his distinction between imagination and intellect—an argument over which endless ink has been spilled. The perceived parts of things are perceived only by the imagination. The intellect grasps the unity that is God.25 This argument is not strengthened by the fact that Spinoza simply attributes such distinct powers to intellect and imagination. Nor is it bolstered by the fact that eventually he stresses how questionable faculty psychology is from his viewpoint (2p48). More importantly, the intellect’s supposed ability to perceive this unity in body flies in the face of the Physical Treatise. Are the corpora simplicissisima nothing more than figments of our imagination? Indeed, in the light of the Physical Treatise, one wonders whether one should not pay closer attention to Spinoza’s closing admission in 1p15s: even if his arguments about the unity of infinite extension and the role of intellect in perceiving it should be false, he sees nothing against the idea that God includes extension. There is nothing “undignified” (indigna) about matter such that it should not be included in the divine nature. Ironically, here Spinoza trusts in his largely Christian audience’s inclination to allow for God made flesh to justify this bold attack on veneration. After all, once God comes to include extension and to exclude the supernatural (TTP, chaps. 4 and 6), one begins to doubt that God’s possessing the attribute of thought could evoke wonder or veneration. Not only does Spinoza’s God lack any supranatural qualities, but also His natural qualities are decidedly modern. That is, these qualities are not really qualitative at all. Rather, they are quantifiable laws of nature, and nothing more.26 Contrast, for example, Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover. Even though he may lack particular providence, his general providence is to be the final cause toward which all things are drawn, on analogy to erotic longing (Meta. 12.7). In other words, the key to wonder and veneration is less particular providence than that God should be elevated in some way. It may be a stretch or merely an analogy for Aristotle’s God to be said to be beautiful (Meta. 12.7, 12.9). Yet a formal and final cause can somehow possess elevation that a law of nature cannot. A law of nature, after all, is not really a being or a cause so much as a description of the relation of bodies in motion-and-rest. Once again, we see that hints of materialism prove to be far more than mere hints. The turn toward the inclusion of extension in God is intended in the long run to spell

25. See chap. 1, note 51. 26. For the contrast between forms and qualities, on the one hand, and laws of nature, on the other, see Descartes, Discourse on Method pt. 5 (AT 6: 43).

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the exclusion of any significant sense in which God could be said to possess a soul or a mind worth loving and emulating. Spinoza’s attack on veneration is not exceptional in modernity. Hobbes also seeks to weaken the subjects’ perception that among them or above them live men of extraordinary prudence (cf. Leviathan chap. 13 with E 3p52). Hobbes’s sovereign rules on the basis of consent, of one kind or another. The attack on veneration is an essential part of undermining the old order, with its reliance on divine right—and privileging of great theologicopolitical actors. The modern story told about divine right is that it was used by old families and usurpers to guarantee their line’s hold on power. Far from being truly divine right, it laid the grounds for the kingdom of darkness. Claims to divine right rested upon claims to extraordinary prudence verging on prophetic insight. Hobbes vigorously attacks such pretensions. One wonders, then, how Maimonides utilizes veneration. Is his use quite as tyrannical and politically harmful as is implied by Hobbes and Spinoza? The challenge posed by divine right is a concern of premodern political philosophy nearly as much as modern, even if only indirectly. From the premodern point of view, however, the challenge comes less from extraordinary claims to prudence than from the tendency of the old to become conflated with prudence or wisdom. Divine right of inherited kingship cannot help but conflate these. When the naturally gifted ruler who comes to power as a usurper establishes his line’s divine right, he inevitably conflates extraordinary prudence with what is old, not in himself but in his progeny. For no amount of arranged marriages can guarantee the preservation of the natural gifts of the usurper. Eventually, what is venerated in divine right is merely the virtue of the naturally gifted founder of the line, not his descendants. Although the starting point of premodern political philosophy might be the distinction between the natural and the conventional (which comes to be the venerated tradition), the task of rightly combining that volatile natural virtue cleverness (which may or may not become prudence) with the moderation of old age becomes the watermark of just rule, especially just rule by law. For law is the rigid compromise between the prudent and the old, the natural and the conventional. Rather than divine right, Maimonides concerns himself with that strain within the biblical tradition which places so much emphasis on the venerability of the old. Respect for the elderly and honoring one’s parents knows few limits in the Bible. To appreciate its centrality, one need only consider the shock the modern reader experiences when he observes the severity of the punishments the Written Law (Pentateuch) metes out to disobedient

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sons—punishments so severe that the Oral Law (Talmud) found it necessary to establish nearly insuperable obstacles to proving such disobedience. To temper the biblical veneration of the old, Maimonides transfers the highest honor granted by the Bible to parents and elders to “his teacher” (rabo) (H. Talmud Torah, chaps. 5 and 6). In doing so, he could appear merely to be recapitulating a similar shift from parents to teachers of the Talmud in the Oral Law itself (chap. 5). In other words, he might be seen to be shifting from parents and elders to the Law itself—and the Law merely as old. Yet, Maimonides’s reconception of the Law in the Mishneh Torah is so profound (as already hinted at in the previous chapter on the shift from stress on fear to stress on knowledge) that he cannot be thought to be merely echoing the Talmudic tradition. To begin with, what Maimonides means by one’s teacher (rabo) is complicated by his account of the wise (h ·akham) and the student or disciple of the wise (talmid · hakhamim), a distinction first established in Hilkhot De’ot. The wise man first appears as the bearer of the Aristotelian mean (HD 1.4). He is quickly distinguished from the pious man (h ·asid), who inclines to the extreme of abstemiousness and humility (1.5). Here, Maimonides echoes a distinction he drew in Eight Chapters between the wise or learned (‘ulema¯’) 27 (chap. 3) and the virtuous (al-fud ·ala¯’) (chap. 4). The former aim at the mean; the latter aim, at least temporarily, at the extreme. Throughout De’ot, it is a challenge to keep track of this key distinction because occasionally he uses the term “wise” for the exemplar of the pious tradition, especially when included in the phrase “wise men of old” (h ·akhamim ha-rishonim) (cf. 1.4 [Aristotelian mean] with 2.3 [Talmudic sages]). Is the “disciple of the wise” to be a disciple of the mean or of the extreme of abstemiousness? If we are to trust Eight Chapters, it should be obvious that the ascetic extreme should be used solely as a corrective to bring one back toward the mean (EC chap. 4). De’ot appears at first to elevate the abstemious extreme by pointing to the example of Moses (HD 2.3). Eventually, however, Maimonides follows out the implications of Eight Chapters by briefly challenging the potential disciple of the wise to sort the wise from the pious (cf. HD 5.2 with 5.5). Although the Aristotelian ethical doctrine of the mean, which Maimonides

27. For the English of Hilkhot De’ot and the Eight Chapters, see the translations by Charles E. Butterworth and Raymond Weiss in their Ethical Writings of Maimonides (New York: New York University Press, 1975; rpt. New York: Dover, 1983). For the Hebrew version of Hilkhot De’ot, see The Book of Knowledge, ed. Moses Hyamson (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1981). For the Arabic (and Hebrew) version of the EC, see Mishnah im Perush ha-Rambam, ed. Y. Kafah · (Jerusalem: Mossad Ha-Rav Kook, 1971).

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advocates for the disciple of the wise, is not equivalent to philosophy, it positions its adherents well to recognize the limits of the moral life.28 Ultimately, the key to Maimonides’s revision of the traditional Jewish emphasis upon tradition is his novel approach to knowledge in all of his works but, for our purposes here, most importantly in the Mishneh Torah. Not only does he establish that love of God follows upon knowledge of Him, but also he identifies the secret teaching of the Talmud, Pardes, with the two central theoretical elements of philosophy, natural science and divine science (cf. H. Yesodei ha-Torah 2.11, 4.10–13 with H. Talmud Torah 1.11–12 and Guide Introduction to pt. 1). In brief, Maimonides shifts from a veneration of the old toward a veneration of the old as leavened by wisdom. Of course, one’s access to wisdom is highly attenuated in Maimonides’s writings. One must sift through layer upon layer of tradition to arrive at the core of wisdom itself. Perhaps such cloaking could be viewed as the highest manifestation of that moderation that makes the old truly worthy of veneration. Although Maimonides adopts the Aristotelian teaching on the mean, there is one partial exception, humility. I have already sought elsewhere to clarify Maimonides’s complicated teaching on humility in Hilkhot De’ot. Leaving aside all of the complications, especially those surrounding the case of Moses, it must be acknowledged that, like Alfarabi before him, Maimonides lists “humility” (al-tawa¯d ·‘) as the mean with respect to giving and receiving honor (EC chap. 4, beginning; Alfarabi, Selected Aphorisms no. 18),29 not Aristotelian greatness of soul (megalopsuchia). Our primary concern here should be to determine whether humility fits into the program of promoting veneration. This provides us an opportunity to clarify the framing opposition of this chapter, veneration vs. equality. Of course, the truest opposite of equality is inequality. To some extent, Aristotle’s conception of rank order reflects more purely this opposition between premodern (inequality) and modern (equality). Indeed, it is not by chance that in modern society humility is more readily recognized as a virtue than greatness of soul, which today would likely be called arrogance or pride. Yet, Maimonides’s recognition that humility is in the mean does not indicate that he shares our modern egalitarian views. Rather, it shows that modern morality is still under the shadow cast by revelation. (Indeed, as we will see when

28. On the status of asceticism in Hilkhot De’ot and Eight Chapters, see Parens, “Maimonidean Ethics Revisited,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 12, no. 3 (2003): 33–62. 29. See Alfarabi, the Political Writings: “Selected Aphorisms” and Other Texts, trans. Charles E. Butterworth (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 20.

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we look at Spinoza’s critique of humility, what we mean by humility today bears little relation to comparable biblical notions.) Revelation casts more than a shadow over Maimonides’s teaching. Humility must be held to be the mean because, despite the obvious differences in rank that permeate Maimonides’s teaching (for example, disciple of the wise, pious, wise [HD]; ignorant, virtuous, and learned [EC]; and, more strongly, the palace simile in Guide 3.51), the Law as the revelation of the one God must elicit a response different from that of the pagan city envisioned by Aristotle.30 Although the infinite height of YHVH must evoke humility, Maimonides should not be thought to teach that all human beings are thereby rendered equal.31 More importantly, he cannot be accused of undercutting veneration of God, the Law, and of religious authorities. He supports them as long as they do not rest upon mere claims to being older. At the same time, one must be careful not to overlook all of the avenues for freedom of thought that Maimonides opens up to us. As we know from the previous chapter, he is not passive in the face of the constraint exercised by the authority of texts peculiar to monotheistic revelation (Guide 1.31). He does not accept what appear on a literal reading to be Talmudic strictures forbidding inquiry into theoretical science (1.32). If Spinoza’s opposition to veneration can be linked to his promoting materialism or corporealism, it would appear likely that Maimonides’s promotion of veneration may be linked with his promotion of divine incorporeality. I have already implied as much in my account of the venerability of the soul and of God in premodern thought in general. As I argued above, no one venerates either a bag of bones or a carved piece of wood as such. According to Spinoza, we venerate what we believe to be extraordinary prudence. His egalitarian argument seeks to undercut this. Yet we venerate extraordinary prudence because great theologico-political actors possess extraordinary freedom by virtue of it. Like pagan gods, thanks to their prudence they have a freedom that the rest of us lack. Whether such freedom is true freedom need not be settled here. I draw the connection between veneration and freedom, however, because in what follows the connection between freedom and incorporeality is more obvious than the connection between veneration and incorporeality.

30. For a closer approximation to Maimonides’s acknowledgment of humility as the mean, consider Plato’s Laws, esp. 762e. 31. For evidence that Maimonides is closer to Aristotle here than first appears, see Parens, “Maimonidean Ethics Revisited,” 60–61 and 61 nn. 65–66.

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Prior to Maimonides, the main focus of the Law was the rooting out of idolatry. It is tempting to equate idolatry with corporealism. Maimonides often takes advantage of just such an equivalence or confusion. (See, for example, Guide 3.29.) Nevertheless, a careful reading of the Guide reveals that he shifts the Law’s focus of opposition from idolatry to corporealism.32 His argument against believing that God has a body is more vigorous and more public than perhaps any other feature of his teaching. Indeed, even if the vulgar cannot understand why God is incorporeal, they must believe that He is incorporeal (Guide 1.35 and Pereq H · eleq, Sanhedrin 10, third root or principle). Maimonides has his work cut out for him because of just how extensive corporeal imagery is in the Bible. The first part of the Guide is devoted primarily to the exploration of those terms in the Torah that appear to ascribe a body to God. Furthermore, Maimonides’s extensive analysis of the role of imagination in prophecy serves to justify the presence of corporealistic imagery throughout the Pentateuch. When the Torah speaks according to the language of the sons of man, it does so by representing God corporealistically, that is, imaginatively (Guide 1.26). Maimonides’s opposition to corporeal representations of God can be linked with the opening theme of the Guide. From Guide 1.1, Maimonides argues that being made in the image and likeness of God means possessing an intellect akin to God’s. Once again, we are brought back to the issue of form. The form of human being is the intellect. This highly Aristotelian anthropology requires that God be viewed as being incorporeal. Maimonides prepares the way for the shift in emphasis from idolatry to incorporeality by reassessing the true nature of paganism. In Guide 1.36, he argues that no one who worships an idol has ever believed that that idol was his god. Rather, the idol is merely the image for some incorporeal god whom that person seeks to worship. Although Maimonides’s recapitulation of the Law’s response to idolatry in the Book of Knowledge (H. Avodah Zarah ve-H · uqot haGoyim) can hardly be called softhearted, the weight of his argument in the Guide is clear. He goes so far as to imply that Jews who believe that God is corporeal are, in a sense, worse than idolaters—because, he claims, no idolater has ever made the mistake of believing God is corporeal (1.36). The problems with belief in divine corporeality are legion. To begin where Maimonides does explicitly, to ascribe a body to God is to ascribe to Him the kinds of passions, most notably wrath, anger, and jealousy, that human beings, as bodily beings, possess. Maimonides works constantly to 32. Cf. Guide 1.36 and 3.29 (64a) with Strauss, “How to Begin to Study the Guide of the Perplexed,” in Guide, ed. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), xxi–xxiii.

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wean his readers from the belief that God could possess passions, affects, or emotions. Readers may be prone to believe that God possesses a body because of the way they conceive of divine providence. Maimonides frequently distinguishes between God’s providence as giving rise to the perfection of a fetus and other senses of providence such as that of a father (Guide 1.54, 3.32). That God lacks a body and is not subject to affects implies that either God is limited to general providence or God is also particularly provident. If the latter, however, unlike a provident father, he cannot really be subject to anger. It is not by chance, then, that Maimonides follows Alfarabi (who, according to Maimonides, follows both Plato and Aristotle in this) in recommending a striking version of imitatio Dei: the most perfect and, therefore, best-provided-for human beings are capable of “making their soul pass from one moral quality to another” (3.18). Just as Maimonides argues that anger brings about the cessation of prophecy, so he argues that passion in general interferes with good self-rule, not to mention rule of others. His philosopher-king-prophet must possess the most extreme self-control— even if not being so ascetic as to embrace the path of the pious (HD) or the virtuous (EC). Such a ruler must be capable of appearing to be while not in fact being angry (Guide 1.54, 66a). That self-control, understood in one way or another, is the path to human freedom is echoed even by that proponent of determinism, Spinoza. (Consider the titles of parts 4 and 5 of the Ethics.) Yet, our job will be to clarify the chasm that separates Maimonides’s conception of human freedom from that of Spinoza. Here we may begin in that task, which will be taken up more fully in chapter 4. We may begin on the theme of freedom here because Maimonides’s opposition to corporealism is directly linked to his opposition to determinism. The link between corporealism and determinism is most evident in Maimonides’s frequent attacks on the astral determinism of the idolaters (EC 8, Letter on Astrology). His most nuanced and sophisticated attack on astral determinism is in Guide 3.29, the account of Abraham’s break from the idolatry of his forebears. Already the reader should have become uneasy because our categories have grown fuzzy. It would appear at first glance that Maimonides is attacking idolatry. Closer examination will reveal that his deepest opposition is to corporealism. In brief, he argues that Abraham grew up, and it became evident to him (how is not exactly clear) that God is a separate, that is, an incorporeal being. He sought to refute the opinions of idolaters and to preach to others to follow him. Here, Maimonides accentuates the lack of persuasiveness of Abraham’s preaching, which is followed by his having received prophetic inspiration. Maimonides offers a far more extensive account of Abraham’s itinerary in

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H. Avodah Zarah, chap. 1. Here, however, Maimonides’s main focus is on the opposition of the idolaters to Abraham. The most striking feature of their opposition is not so much the ad hoc character of their attacks as that they both believe in the eternity of the world and at least appear to believe in the most implausible superstitions (a growing golden tree, a stone tree, a green leaf of a tree that could not burn, a tree of the height of a man that could shelter ten thousand men) (63a). In short, they believe both in the eternity of the world and in the most egregious departures from what Maimonides refers to elsewhere as “the nature of existence” (1.71). He hints here that eternity serves as the fundamental premise of philosophy.33 Philosophers adopt the belief in eternity because they believe that any other premise would violate the nature of existence. Not by chance, philosophers like Plato and Aristotle are idolaters. Here, Maimonides’s reasons for opposing corporealism more than idolatry become obvious. Ultimately, Maimonides opposes idolatry insofar as it is linked to superstition and determinism. The link between superstition and determinism is most evident in Maimonides’s arguments against astral determinism in Eight Chapters, chap. 8. Astral determinists hold that one’s date of birth determines whether one will become virtuous or vicious.34 Superstition leads us to believe that matters that are up to human beings or matters that are up to nature or the nature of existence are in the hands of some other, inscrutable force. Maimonides states forthrightly that the Law and Greek philosophy oppose at least the former view. Law would not be in the right for punishing disobedience if each of us did not have the freedom to obey or disobey. Yet the Talmudic adage “Everything is in the hand of Heaven except fear of Heaven” could be thought to maintain that God’s omnipotence impinges upon human freedom.35 For this very reason, Maimonides goes on to offer an account of creation that places clear limits on divine omnipotence, as will become more evident in chapter 4. Here, I touch in a cursory way on what I will treat more carefully in chapter 4. The link between certain versions of omnipotence and astral determinism is more than casual in Maimonides’s account.36 In Maimonides’s account of the five (or more) positions on providence in Guide 3.17–18, 33. Cf. Strauss, “Law of Reason,” in Persecution and the Art of Writing, 121 n. 78. 34. See Weiss and Butterworth, Ethical Writings of Maimonides, 84. 35. Ibid., 85. 36. Compare the similar parallelism Maimonides arranges between Abu Bakr al-Razi (an outspoken opponent of revelation) and unmitigated omnipotence in his account of evil in Guide 3.12–13. For further discussion of al-Razi as well as evil and freedom, see below, chaps. 4 and 5.

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he criticizes two Muslim theological schools that developed approaches to providence that have their echoes in the Jewish tradition. Most notably, the third position, that of the Ash‘arites, argues that God is absolutely omnipotent. For that reason, He is responsible for all of the actions of all beings, including animals and human beings (33a–b). Although Maimonides offers a variety of positions under his fifth position, the lead position is found “in the books of our prophets and . . . believed by the multitude of our scholars,” that is, in “the Law of Moses our master.” Although this view claims that man has the “absolute ability to act” in virtue of “his nature, his choice, and his will” (bi-t·abı¯ ‘atih wa-bi-ikhtiya¯rih wa-ira¯datih), it ascribes a similar “will” to animals (34b). Although choice (prohairesis) and will or the voluntary (ekousia) mean different things in Aristotle (EN 1111b3–14), there is little evidence that the Bible draws such a distinction.37 Furthermore, the fourth position, that of the Mu‘tazila, though it offers a more mitigated understanding of omnipotence, adopts an important position on divine justice that flows even from this more mitigated understanding. If God is just and He cares for all beings, then any suffering that a living being, such as an animal or a human being, undergoes must be part of God’s punishment or must be counterbalanced by some extra reward in the afterlife (34a). Early in the Guide in the important chapter on Adam (1.14), Maimonides alludes to a similar passage in the Bible (Eccles. 3:19). In brief, although the Law requires freedom, certain views on divine omnipotence come disturbingly close to astral determinism. It would appear that opposition to idolatry helps little or not at all in the preservation of human freedom. Still, we wonder where the link between freedom and anticorporealism enters. Many forms of corporealism leave little or no room for human freedom. If one supposes that human beings are composites of atoms and all of those atoms are subject to external forces, then human beings are truly passive. (The similarities here between extreme materialism and astral determinism are striking.) Few, if any, philosophic materialists have ever taken so extreme a position.38 Spinoza distinguishes between passive and active affections (cf. E 3p56 with p58). He argues that by virtue of passive affections, we are 37. Contrast Shlomo Pines, “Excursus: Notes on Maimonides’ Views concerning Human Will,” in Studies in Philosophy, ed. Samuel Hugo Berman, Scripta Hierosolymitana, vol. 6 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1960), 195–98, esp. 196–97. Pines ascribes to Maimonides views that Maimonides ascribes to Moses. See chap. 4 below for further discussion of the confusion of human with animal. 38. Cf. Lucretius’s effort to elude determinism through his difficult-to-swallow doctrine of “the swerve.” Premodern atomism was dogged by its lack of anything akin to the modern doctrine of inertia, which served such an important role in establishing that each thing possesses its own force.

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subject to the influence of external forces. In contrast, by virtue of active affections, we are active. In other words, and as I will clarify in chapter 4, we must not be thought to be subject only to external forces—this is to deny the idea that we each possess a certain amount of force of our own.39 In effect, we would thereby deny that we possess any conatus.40 At the same time, it must be stressed that Spinoza is forthright in denying that reason or will can counteract the “force” of affects (E 5p7). True, he links passive affects to the imagination and active affects to reason or understanding (3pp56 and 58). Yet he will not claim that reason can command or take a leading role in the manner that premodern thinkers did. The most obvious evidence for this is his claim that reason cannot command anything directly; affect must be set against affect.41 At least to this extent, Spinoza’s theoretical preference for determinism is decisive. It may seem counterintuitive, but I hope to show that his rationale for this view is central to his teaching. He weakens our conception of will and freedom of the will because when we ascribe these to others, this intensifies our love and hatred toward them (3p49). This element of determinism is an essential part of his battle against intolerance. He intends with the rise of determinism to stem the tide of nemesis (righteous indignation) that plays such a crucial role in premodern and all commonsense views of justice—but which also plays an undeniable role in religious intolerance.42 Again, we see that determinism and corporealism are intimately linked.

39. See Lee C. Rice, “Action in Spinoza’s Account of Affectivity,” in Ethica III: Desire and Affect: Spinoza as Psychologist, ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel (New York: Little Room Press, 1999), 155–68, esp. 161–62. 40. Leibniz’s conception of spontaneity, as opposed to that of Kant, has similar roots. See Leibniz on spontaneity in “A New System of Nature,” in G. W. Leibniz: Philosophical Essays, ed. Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989), 138–45, esp. 143, and on what he variously calls conatus and nisus in “A Specimen of Dynamics,” in Philosophical Essays, 117–38, esp. 118. 41. See E 4p7. Cf. Spinoza in this regard to Aristotle, especially Aristotle’s distinction between the master/slave relation of body and soul and the political or kingly relation between reason and the passions (pathe¯) (Politics 1.5, 1254b2–6, and EN 1.13, 1102a28–1103a10). Maimonides gives ample evidence that his view of the relation between reason and passion is far closer to Aristotle’s than is Spinoza’s. For further discussion of the role of reason and passion in Maimonides, see chap. 4. 42. Cf. Ronna Burger on nemesis in Aristotle’s Dialogue with Socrates: On the “Nicomachean Ethics” (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 90–92. Although Aristotle may soften nemesis by allowing it to drop between books 2 and 4 of the Nicomachean Ethics, that softening is not nearly as concerted as Spinoza’s effort to drain anger and righteous indignation of all of their fuel by rooting out transcendent objects of desire such as the beautiful or form or telos, promoting toleration, and subtly promoting determinism at least among his intellectual elite.

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The connection between freedom and incorporeality is at least as old as Socratic philosophy. Although Plato’s Phaedo is devoted to themes of death and learning to die and the immortality of the soul, for our purposes its most striking feature is the way in which Socrates links the appeal to something incorporeal and human choice. In Socrates’s autobiographical interlude, he reviews the pre-Socratic accounts, finding them wanting, though he finds Anaxagoras’s appeal to nous and the good to be appealing. Yet, according to Socrates, Anaxagoras so failed to combine them (and also appealed to a whirl of elements out of which the world comes into being)43 that he would likely have explained Socrates’s being in prison by claiming that his bones and sinews kept him there. Socrates offers in place of such accounts an account of his beliefs about what is best and an appeal to his choice (hairesei) (98d3–100c, esp. 99b1). Although Socrates’s appeal to choice can hardly qualify as proof of the immortality of the soul, it does seem somehow bound up with the soul’s incorporeality or its transcendence of mere bodily determination. Socrates goes on to explain his turn toward speeches and especially speeches that require some reliance on the positing of forms or ideas. Without intending to draw out of Maimonides an elaborate theory of ideas, it does seem evident that he sees important connections between divine freedom and incorporeality, and human freedom and incorporeality. Once again, we are reminded of the Aristotelian anthropology Maimonides adumbrates in the opening chapters of the Guide (see chapter 1). That human beings are made in the image and likeness of God means that human beings possess first and foremost an intellectual form, and God possesses only such a form (see chapter 2). The highest aspect of the intellect is theoretical intellect. The freest human life is one devoted to contemplation of the whole. It could be objected, as it sometimes has been against Aristotle, that God, if He is anything like an Unmoved Mover, hardly seems to possess freedom. Aristotle’s reply holds just as well for Maimonides. He would reply to begin with that the Unmoved Mover’s necessity is his freedom (cf. Meta. 5.5 with Guide 1.69 [90b]). Such necessity can never be confused with the necessity of the compulsory. God’s detachment from body means that He is not subject to passion (Guide 1.36 and 1.54, p. 126). It will be tempting to reply that Spinoza (though he includes extension in God) also denies that God is subject to passion (5p17) and, therefore, implies a similar equivalence between freedom and necessity in God—indeed, most philosophers do. I doubt, however, the claim that Spinoza means by necessity anything like 43. See the fragment from Simplicius’s Commentary on Aristotle’s “Physics” 164.24–25, DK 59B12.

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what Aristotle or Maimonides means by it. For Spinoza, God is the laws of nature (Natura naturans) and includes “within” Him the particular beings that are the expression of those laws (Natura naturata) (1p29).44 I hope by the end of the next chapter that it will be amply evident that a law of nature cannot be confused with a teleological cause that is formal in character. Even if Maimonides’s and Spinoza’s conceptions of necessity differ, can it be argued that they really do not both venerate and promote the veneration of extraordinary human beings? Indeed, Spinoza does discuss the “free man” in such a way as to appear to continue to promote the veneration of freedom—if not of extraordinary prudence. Let us take a look at the “free man” section of part 4 (namely, E 4pp67–ap).45 Spinoza follows Descartes in cultivating a Stoic patina to his account of the “free man.”46 Yet certain features of his quasi-Stoicism are strikingly un-Stoic. To begin with a feature I have already mentioned, Spinoza departs from the tradition on the role of reason or will. Although just prior to the “free man” propositions Spinoza speaks as if reason could guide life in the spirit of the Stoic hegemonikon (4p66s), such claims must be balanced against the shocking claim earlier in part 4 that affect may oppose affect, not reason or will (4p7). Another striking feature of his quasi-Stoicism is his focus on life (4p67). The Stoics are not unusual in focusing on death. We find a similar focus in Plato’s Phaedo—though one wonders how literally one should take Socrates’s claim that philosophy concerns learning to die. Yet Stoics are quite unusual in the fervor with which they focus upon death. Epictetus for instance recommends that a Stoic focus on the possibility that his wife could die tomorrow when hugging her. Spinoza is obviously eschewing this focus in 4p67. Yet Stoic focus on death is linked to the Stoics’ peculiar form of determinism, which entails acceptance of everything that is not up to us, such as the death of a wife—together with the most vigorous cultivation of a hegemonikon (ruling reason) that could exercise ironclad control over affects. The key departure from Stoicism was already taken by Descartes, and we will hear it echoed in Spinoza.

44. Cf. 1p17 with the watchword of Spinoza’s philosophy, Deus sive Natura. 45. My interpretation of Spinoza here is indebted to David Lachterman’s thorough analysis of the “best life” as one filled with amor fati. See Lachterman, “Physics of Spinoza’s Ethics,” in Spinoza: New Perspectives, ed. Robert W. Shahan and J. I. Biro (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), 93–98. A more detailed analysis of the “free man” will be given in chap. 4 below. 46. For this Stoic mask, consider especially the opening and conclusion of part 4, namely, 4pr and 4ap#32.

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In Discourse on Method, part 3, maxim 3, Descartes claims to embrace the Stoic view that one cannot conquer fortune, one can only conquer oneself. Yet in Discourse part 6, he appears to retract this suggestion completely by recommending the mastery and possession of nature. The resolution of this contradiction is evident in the way Descartes understands self-mastery. True self-mastery is set forth in Discourse part 5, the summary of the contents of the unpublished Le Monde. It requires that one set aside one’s anticipations of experience (doubt the world’s existence) that one may begin again from scratch based on a construction of the world, employing the insights of the new mathematical method of analysis. In other words, the way to conquer fortune is to construct the world to fit the understanding of man (through self-conquest). Spinoza follows this pattern both simply and directly, and by more convoluted argumentation. I begin with the simple and direct route. He adopts explicitly the wholly un-Stoic ambition to master nature in the numbered appendix to part 4 (4ap#26). There, he opposes human beings to the rest of nature and advocates our preserving or destroying nature as we see fit. He does not argue for a kingdom within a kingdom, ascribing a false sort of freedom to human beings (3pr). But he does argue that nature must be treated in keeping with human utility. Here, he points to another less direct route by which his Stoicism can be distinguished from the premodern version. The turn toward utility appears only after many propositions and many parts of the appendix appearing to recommend a more than Stoic, indeed, a quasi-Christian love and forgiveness of all wrongs (4p73s, 4ap#11; also 4p46). Much as his Stoicism is hollow, his Christianity is hollow. Christian forgiveness in its original form was accompanied by a strong admixture of divine judgment and threats of punishment, should one fail to seek the Father through the Son. In keeping with the tactic of the Theologico-Political Treatise, Spinoza cultivates a version of Christian love while undercutting the element of judgment in scripture because he views it as fueling religious intolerance. That love is fundamentally transformed by being detached from judgment. Moreover, as we have already seen, Spinoza’s notion of love of neighbor rests upon a utilitarian conception of selfinterest (4p35c2). In part 4, he seals the connection between utility and religious love by undercutting traditional arguments that the highest goods are worth competing for (p37s1).47 47. The reader should pay special attention to the link between the following propositions touching on the theme of love and forgiveness, in part because they all add up to ten: 4p37, 4p46, and 4p73.

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For now we may leave aside Spinoza’s obvious departures from Stoic freedom and Christian love, to reconsider whether he does not advocate the veneration of the “free man.” If a free man is free by virtue of embracing Spinozist utility, conquest of nature, and an acceptance of one’s place in the matrix of physical causes, wherein lies the venerableness of this freedom? Spinoza comes closest to the cultivation of an elite when he describes how the free man should avoid ignorant human beings (4p70) and how only the free can be truly grateful to one another (4p71). This elitism, however, is not intended to promote veneration of the theologico-politically powerful or authoritative (cf. 4ap#10). (Precisely because the account of the free man is part of his semipopular rhetoric designed to call forth a new intellectual class to mediate between philosophers and the vulgar, we should not be surprised that he allows himself to piece together such a pastiche of bits and pieces of premodern sources such as Stoicism and Christianity in formulating it.) Rather, he is calling forth a group of intellectuals to follow him in leading a campaign in favor of religious tolerance. Here, we are reminded of the central tenet of Spinoza’s method of biblical interpretation, namely, reduce scripture to its primary tenets. Few passages in the Ethics exemplify this call to repeat such tenets as much as the “free man” propositions. They paint a picture of a free man who is an elitist for a new vision of love and forgiveness, the forgiveness of the tolerant human being. This new person has faith in the philanthropic conquest of nature initiated by Bacon. Scripture so understood is wholly compatible with modern science, nay, it is merely an extension of modern science, whose divine natural laws are synonymous with the utilitarian ethic applied to human beings. Scripture is thereby rendered utterly transparent and amenable to modern, that is, Spinozist interpretation. One might accuse Maimonides of reading Aristotelian elements into scripture. Yet he never tires of illuminating the differences between the Bible and Aristotle. Furthermore, by the very cryptic character and elusive structure of the Guide, Maimonides emulates the elusiveness of scripture itself. Contrary to Spinoza’s claims, Maimonides’s method of scriptural interpretation brings him far closer to the original meaning of scripture than does Spinoza’s.

THREE

Forms vs. Laws of Nature

Part 1 One of the biggest challenges in interpreting early modern philosophers is grasping fully how novel is their usage of “laws of nature.” Although Galileo used the phrase in its modern sense first, Bacon foresaw the novel task of this new term first in his New Organon. He speaks as if it were interchangeable with “forms.” He does so, however, precisely because he seeks the overthrow of “forms.” The main difference between a “form” and a “law of nature” is that the former is, above all, an object of intellectual intuition; the latter is a (discursive) description most recognizable eventually in formulas such as E = mc 2. Intellectual intuition is its own reward. It is precisely the kind of intellectual activity that thinkers like Bacon rail against because it leads to awe and inaction in the face of eternity. Although forms or, as they came to be called by early modern philosophers, “occult essences” might appear to us today to be highly mysterious, far more is hidden within the formula or law of nature than first meets the eye. What is so mysterious about the law of nature is its precise relation to knowledge. Of course, whether objects such as forms (here I do not mean Platonic forms such as of justice but Aristotelian natural forms such as of dog or cat) really exist is debatable. (Indeed, Aristotle champions forms of natural beings while appearing to oppose the existence of separate [Platonic] forms to such an extent that it becomes difficult to say in what sense form can be said to . This chapter should be read together with the appendix on Kennington’s Spinoza, especially the section where I briefly summarize Kennington’s approach to the Ethics. . See Jacob Klein, “On the Nature of Nature,” in Jacob Klein: Lectures and Essays, ed. Robert B. Williamson and Elliott Zuckerman (Annapolis, MD: St. John’s College Press, 1985), 219–39, esp. 228. . See Kennington, On Modern Origins: Essays in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Pamela Kraus and Frank Hunt (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 26, 36–37, 42–56.

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exist, even for Aristotle.) But forms’ relation to knowledge is less mysterious or debatable than laws of nature’s relation to knowledge. A law of nature cannot be an object of intellectual intuition. To confirm this, we need to consider what intellectual intuition is. In theoretical science as conceived by Aristotle, intellectual intuition represents the culmination of discursive inquiry, achieved once one moves beyond argumentation to grasp the being intuitively. Why does a law of nature not lead ultimately to such intuition? It does not because laws of nature describe an array of related forces. Such an array of forces will give rise to a particular result in a given situation. For example, when a gas of a given density is heated to a given temperature, it will achieve a particular volume. That particular volume is calculable; it cannot be intuited. If it could be intuited, one would not have had to grind out the calculation. That laws of nature do not give rise to intellectual intuition is confirmed by the fact that early modern philosophers oppose the possibility of intellectual intuition. I say this in spite of Spinoza’s frequent talk of ideas and even of intuition of things such as God’s essence (E 2p40s2). In Spinoza’s case I say that he denies intellectual intuition because of what I have already argued about the meaning of form or nature or essence in the Physical Treatise. He means by this merely a ratio of bodies in motion-and-rest. Such a ratio can be formulated by a law of nature. It cannot be intuited intellectually. (At this point, the only way to save the idea of intellectual intuition in Spinoza would be to attempt to prove that he ascribes an independent formal existence to nonphysical things such as mind. This avenue proves elusive, however, because even purportedly nonphysical things such as mind are just as much composed of ratios of parts as is body [2p15]. To be truly capable of being intuited, something needs to be a whole or unity that transcends numerical ratio. Ratio, as the Latin of logos, is characterized essentially by discursivity, not intuition.) Kant is the first modern philosopher to make the denial of intellectual intuition into an explicit principle of . That the so-called empiricists deny intellectual intuition is widely recognized. That the so-called rationalists rely on some form of intellectual intuition is widely believed. For example, innate ideas are supposed to play an indispensable role in Descartes’s proofs for the existence of God in the Meditations. Elsewhere I will try to show that Descartes’s own reservations about innate ideas (Reply to Objection 10 of the Third Objections to the Meditations) call into question his own proofs. In the future, I hope to show that the other great “rationalist” of modernity, Leibniz, intends neither to affirm innate ideas of a premodern kind nor to affirm the possibility of intellectual intuition. Here, I will limit myself to Spinoza as putative rationalist. . Note the shocking proximity of this talk of intuition to the denial of the possibility of forms and universals in the previous scholium, 2p40s1.

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his philosophy. He establishes this denial as a principle by linking intuition to sensation alone, and by transforming forms from knowable objects into what might be called receptacles of sense data, namely, the forms of sensibility, space and time. Leaving aside history for now, the mysterious role of laws of nature is to produce certain outputs or, to speak in ordinary language, to describe particular events or to predict particular events. What makes laws of nature so mysterious is their hidden connection to prediction and production. At first glance, a formula would appear to be the purest form of knowledge. After all, human beings hardly disagree about matters subject to the precision of mathematical calculation. Yet the purity of mathematical calculation derives from its neutrality. Unfortunately, neutral powers are precisely the most dangerous because they can produce harm as well as good. The intent of early modern philosophy from the beginning was to render theoretical knowledge of laws of nature of use to production—and though products may themselves be neutral, the very activity of production may not be. Laws of nature once they enter into and affect production immediately have effects on public life and customs. For this very reason, Aristotle sought to establish a barrier between theory and production, in the form of his practical science—a barrier whose presence is also evident in Maimonides’s thought. The most obvious evidence of this barrier is his conservatism about the Law. Despite Maimonides’s great daring in the name of the individual’s freedom of the mind (including even bold reframings of the Law), he does not predicate that freedom on the kind of abandonment of the Law that Spinoza advocated. Of course, Spinoza was not alone in embracing a revolutionary approach to public order, though he was the first advocate of liberal democracy. The theoretical correlate to that revolution was the Baconian turn toward the law of nature. It represents a wholesale abandonment of the kind of barrier between theory and production embraced by all premodern thinkers, and for our purposes most evidently by Aristotle and Maimonides.10

. Critique of Pure Reason B72, 307–9. . See Plato Euthyphro 7b–e and Phaedrus 263a and Guide 1.31, as discussed above in chap. 1. . Aristotle, Rhetoric 1355b3–6. . An obvious example of such a “reframing” is his promotion of anticorporealism as more central than anti-idolatry (Guide 1.36). 10. See chap. 2, notes 1 and 5. Aristotle’s Politics 2.8 is the clearest expression of the barrier between theory and production erected by practical science.

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The synthetic or deductive geometric surface of the Ethics, however, can mislead the reader into neglecting the importance of laws of nature in Spinoza. In Spinoza’s Metaphysics,11 Edwin Curley argues, especially in his second chapter on causality, that the Ethics needs to be interpreted in the light of the Theologico-Political Treatise’s stress on laws of nature. Even if one does not quite agree with Curley’s effort to translate the deductive structure into the language of the “British philosophy of the early years” of the twentieth century,12 his insistence on the centrality of laws of nature is true to Spinoza’s intention. He attempted to use that British language to make more transparent Spinoza’s various claims about the causal relation between different kinds of modes: infinite immediate, infinite mediate, and finite.13 The biggest challenge in understanding the synthetic structure of the Ethics, however, is to mix such deduction with the discovery of laws of nature. Even if one might be able to set laws of nature within such a deductive framework after the law is discovered, one is hard put to see how one could discover a law of nature by means of such a structure. Subsequently, Jonathan Bennett attempted to show that Spinoza’s method is a hypothetico-deductive method that deduces various claims and then sees whether they “square with the data.”14 It is not immediately obvious what squaring with the data might mean. Bennett insinuates that that which is logically entailed gives a weak kind of confirmation of that from which it was deduced. He mentions Leibnizian reservations and apparent resolutions of the problem. Yet by focusing so extensively on finding correlates to a Hempelian hypotheticodeductive model, Bennett obscures Spinoza’s mixture of methods. Furthermore, unlike Curley, Bennett is surprisingly quiet about laws of nature. Yet that is what is at stake. Can one deduce a law of nature? Neither Bacon nor Descartes believed that laws of nature could be deduced; thus, each developed a truly novel method of scientific inquiry: induction and analysis, respectively. It is widely assumed that Spinoza as “the last of the Medievals” could not part with deduction as the preferred method of premodern science. (Here, I leave aside the nearly endless squabbles among scholars about the precise role of deduction or synthesis in the thought of its supposedly

11. Edwin Curley, Spinoza’s Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969). 12. Ibid., 50. Cf. ibid., 78–80, and Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method (Princeton: Prince­ ton University Press, 1988), xv, for Curley’s admissions that he is treating Spinoza anachronistically. For other reasons to have reservations about Curley’s use of that British philosophy, see the appendix on Kennington. 13. Cf. E 1pp23, 25, 28 with Curley’s Spinoza’s Metaphysics, 59–74. 14. A Study of Spinoza’s “Ethics” (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1984), 20.

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greatest advocate, Aristotle.) Furthermore, it is often inferred based on the correspondence with Henry Oldenburgh over Boyle’s spirit-of-niter experiments that Spinoza is an opponent of experimental science. Fortunately, Steven Nadler’s biography has succeeded in putting some of those ideas to rest, by uncovering evidence that Spinoza’s lens grinding was for the sake of his and others’ use of microscopes.15 The most trustworthy way to uncover Spinoza’s method is to consider, first, where and how he employs laws of nature in the Ethics and, second, the methods he approves of, either in speech or in deed. Lachterman began such an inquiry, and Kennington developed and extended it.16 The former shifts the reader’s attention away from the metaphysical beginning in part 1 to the physics in part 2. His guiding insight is that Spinoza attempts a unification of method that is in direct violation of the “ineliminable multiplicity” (the multiplicity of forms or kinds) in Aristotelian science.17 Furthermore, in doing so, he pursues the objective of Descartes and Hobbes to provide a unified method.18 Therefore, Spinoza seeks to repudiate “two intertwined principles” of Aristotelian science, teleology and the distinction between real and apparent goods.19 Lachterman shows that the physics in the Ethics plays a pivotal role in the thought of Spinoza much as it does in that of Descartes and Hobbes.20 Spinoza, in Lachterman’s account, is in line 15. Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Cf., in connection with the Boyle-Spinoza correspondence about the spirit-of-niter experiments, the disdainful treatment of Spinoza by A. R. Hall and M. B. Hall (“Philosophy and Natural Philosophy: Boyle and Spinoza,” in Mélanges Alexandre Koyré, II: L’aventure d’esprit [Paris: Herman, 1964], 241–46) as quoted by Curley in his Collected Works of Spinoza, Spinoza’s Letter 6 addressed to Boyle by way of Henry Oldenburg, April 1662 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 178 n. 23. 16. Lachterman, “The Physics of Spinoza’s Ethics,” in Spinoza: New Perspectives, ed. Robert W. Shahan and J. I. Biro (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), 71–111, and Kennington’s “Analytic and Synthetic Methods in Spinoza’s Ethics,” in On Modern Origins, reprinted from The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, ed. Kennington (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1980), 293–318. 17. Lachterman, “Physics of Spinoza’s Ethics,” 73. 18. See also Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method, xi. Some might object that Descartes was not in earnest in seeking the mathesis universalis, once he left behind the Rules for the Direction of the Mind. They would point to the apparent divergence between Descartes’s analytic method, apparently appropriate to physics, and his meditative method, apparently appropriate to metaphysical matters. I doubt the accuracy of that reading, though I cannot explain why here. 19. Lachterman, “Physics of Spinoza’s Ethics,” 74. 20. Ibid., 76–77. Regarding the unity of method in Hobbes, Lachterman may oversimplify matters somewhat. Consider Strauss’s insistence on the lack of unity in Hobbes between his accounts of nature and man in “On the Basis of Hobbes’s Political Philosophy,” in What Is Political Philosophy? (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 179–82.

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with his predecessors, though their devotion to modern experimentation is easier to document. Richard Kennington’s interpretation has the virtue of focusing on Spinoza’s method in an unprecedented way, which verifies Lachterman’s stress on his physics, as well as his interpretation of the continuity between Spinoza and his predecessors Descartes and Hobbes.21 Kennington’s most basic insight is the missing piece in the puzzle we have seen so far. That puzzle is the odd relation between Spinoza’s deductive method and his focus on laws of nature. Deduction appears ill equipped for the discovery of such laws. Kennington shows that the Physical Treatise (2pp13ff.) is not deductive or synthetic but analytic. Like Descartes, Spinoza holds that analysis is the method of discovery; synthesis is the method of compulsion suitable for the stubborn. Spinoza signals his agreement with Descartes’s assessment of these two methods in the Reply to the Second Objections to the Meditations on First Philosophy, by allowing Lodewijk Meyer to echo that very assessment in the preface to Spinoza’s Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy.” As Kennington notes, Spinoza approved Meyer’s preface. In this sense, Spinoza echoes Descartes in speech, even if through another.22 More importantly, Spinoza illustrates in deed his agreement with Descartes’s view of the relation between analysis and synthesis by using the synthetic method in Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy” to prove Cartesian claims with which he disagrees—as once again noted by Meyer. In other words, synthesis does not lend itself to revealing the falsity either of its initial premises or of its logical entailments. Pace Bennett, Spinoza repudiates in deed the possibility that the synthetic structure of the Ethics lends itself to correction by its logical entailments, or even by data. Kennington shows the analytic character of the Physical Treatise, above all, by showing that none of its elements are deduced. Rather than defining terms and using them to infer various propositions, the Physical Treatise 21. Kennington, “Analytic and Synthetic Methods in Spinoza’s Ethics.” Especially the following should be compared with the appendix on Kennington’s Spinoza. 22. Cf. Aaron Garrett, Meaning in Spinoza’s Method (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 116 and 116 n. 45, for his citation of Curley’s, “Spinoza’s Geometric Method” as “adducing . . . evidence” against Spinoza’s acceptance of the preface. Garrett offers an ingenious way of harmonizing the obvious privileging of analysis in the preface to Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy” with the synthetic structure of the Ethics. On the one hand, Spinoza cannot abide analysis because it rests upon the willful self-assertion of the cogito, which his determinism will not allow. On the other hand, synthesis does not rest upon will (120–21). See the appendix on Kennington’s Spinoza for a more complete explanation and more extensive evidence of the centrality of analysis in Spinoza’s thought.

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employs key terms such as “body” without defining them. Such terms are then used to describe one another but in a circular rather than deductive pattern. Lying behind this circularity is unacknowledged reliance upon experience—experience employed in a manner well suited to the discovery of physical laws, but of little or no use in deducing propositions from definitions, axioms, and so on.23 Although Kennington’s focus is on Spinoza’s method, he offers a convincing interpretation of the relation between part 1 and the Physical Treatise, which he obviously views as more fundamental than part 1. The whole in nature implied by part 1 is contradicted by the whole implied in part 2. The former is a whole that possesses attributes that are not the sum of their modes; the latter is nothing more and nothing less than a totality of parts.24 Although Kennington is rather cryptic about which view he considers to be Spinoza’s true view, I believe that it is obvious that he means to imply the latter view is the correct one. If so, the Physical Treatise is far more central than part 1. Following Lachterman, Kennington also argues that Spinoza seeks a method diametrically opposed to Aristotle’s “ineliminable multiplicity.” To some extent, Spinoza’s pursuit of a single method is obvious—why else would he write a work titled Ethics that includes metaphysical and physical parts, unless he held that one method is possible for all of science? Based on the surface of the Ethics, however, that method would appear to be geometric deduction. Consequently, the real significance of his pursuit of a single method can easily be overlooked or misconstrued. If Kennington is correct about the centrality of analysis in the Ethics, then analysis is likely to permeate the Ethics more than appears at first to be the case25 and to be the unifying method of the sciences. Among the most obvious results of the unification of the sciences is the extension of determinism beyond physical science to the science of human affairs or ethics.26 Of course, Spinoza’s determinism in human affairs will come as a shock to no one. Yet that determinism is at least compatible with Kennington’s argument that Spinoza’s unified method is analytic—though it would also be compatible with an interpretation that took the synthetic method more at its face value. 23. Kennington, “Analytic and Synthetic Method in Spinoza’s Ethics,” sect. 5, esp. pp. 219–21. 24. Ibid., 223. 25. Cf. Efraim Shmueli, “The Geometrical Method, Personal Caution, and the Ideal of  Tolerance,” in Spinoza: New Perspectives, ed. Robert W. Shahan and J. I. Biro (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), 197–215. 26. Lachterman, “Physics of Spinoza’s Ethics,” 75.

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In addition to the unity of method, Lachterman hints at a strong materialist tendency in Spinoza’s argument.27 In doing so, he is not alone.28 The unity of method and consequent determinism in turn support a materialist reading. After all, not only does Spinoza’s unity of method lead to a collapse of practical science (the study of being that exercises choice) into theoretical science (the study of necessary being) (Aristotle Meta. 6.1), but also it leads to a collapse of metaphysics (as the study of incorporeal being) into physics (the study of corporeal being). We need not rely solely on Kennington’s interpretation of Spinoza’s method and on Lachterman to verify the shocking implications of Spinoza’s unification of method—a unification that runs counter to the premodern stress on the ineliminable multiplicity of being underwritten by forms. Let us turn more directly to the Ethics itself. Part 2, proposition 10 of Spinoza’s Ethics is often recognized as the first direct treatment of the central subject of the Ethics, namely, man or human being.29 Of course, anyone who has read part 1 knows that God alone is substance. At first glance, 2p10 appears to announce little more than what we could already have inferred from part 1, namely, man or human beings (like all other finite things or modes) are merely modes of the divine substance. Strange though Spinoza’s claim about human beings might seem from outside his system, it is old hat, so to speak, by the time we reach 2p10. Far more surprising is Spinoza’s determination to make one of his most programmatic statements about his method of inquiry on this apparently less than momentous occasion. He claims that heretofore no one has followed the “proper order of philosophic inquiry.” I quote at length from Samuel Shirley’s translation to highlight the peculiarity of Spinoza’s new approach to the order of philosophic inquiry, that is,

27. Ibid., 78, 84, 92, 95–96. 28. Cf. Curley, Behind the Geometrical Method, xiv, as well as S. Hampshire, Freedom of Mind and Other Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), whom Curley (xiv n. 10) cites on this score. Also consider the epiphenomenalist interpretation of Harold Barker, as described by R. J. Delahunty, Spinoza (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), 191–92. There is one matter in Lachterman’s interpretation with which I disagree—and that disagreement is revealing. He suggests that, in approximating to Leibniz’s teaching on live force, Spinoza’s treatment of conatus “looks more like an incorporeal force than a feature of bodies” (“Physics of Spinoza’s Ethics,” 92). I doubt that Leibniz’s various claims that live force should be viewed as metaphysical should be taken quite as literally as Lachterman takes them. Ever since Descartes denied that soul was the cause of motion in living beings (Passions of the Soul a. 5), early modern philosophy was well on the way to dispensing with incorporeal (form-like) forces altogether or to embracing reductivism. 29. See Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934), 2: 8, and Bennett, Study of Spinoza’s “Ethics,” 126.

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his complete overthrow of the distinction between the order of cognition and the order of nature. For the divine nature, which they should have considered before all else—it being prior both in cognition and in Nature—they have taken to be last in the order of cognition, and things that are called objects of sense they have taken as prior to everything. Hence it has come about that in considering natural phenomena, they have completely disregarded the divine nature. And when thereafter they turned to the contemplation of the divine nature, they could find no place in their thinking for those fictions on which they had built their natural science, since these fictions [the “forms” or “ideas”] were of no avail in attaining knowledge of the divine nature. So it is little wonder that they have contradicted themselves on all sides. (Emphasis added.)

The main point Spinoza makes here is that God is prior to all other things according to both the order of cognition and the order of nature (what I will refer to from now on as “the two orders”). As Spinoza says in so many words, previous thinkers have argued that God is prior according to the one order (nature), not the other (cognition). As we will see, only a thinker who, like Spinoza, treats God as possessing the attribute of extension (or corporeality or materiality) could claim that these two orders coincide. Why Spinoza highlights this novelty of his method—namely, the coincidence of the two orders—here and now rather than, say, at the beginning of part 1 or after he announces that extension is a divine attribute (1p15s) will give us reason to wonder in what follows. At first, the coincidence of the two orders seems merely to be a corollary of Spinoza’s geometric method. After all, even for Aristotle, the two orders coincide in geometry. But the coincidence of the two orders seems ill suited to a work like the Ethics, which neglects mathematics and ranges far beyond it into every science. The coincidence of the two orders leads to and supports Spinoza’s corporealist account of God, as well as the deterministic account of God and man that flows from it. In contrast to Spinoza, Aristotle appeals to what became the distinction between the order of cognition and the order of nature when he distinguishes between what is first for us and what is first by nature.30 Although what is first for us and what is first by nature differ in sciences such as physics and metaphysics, in mathematics in general and geometry in particular

30. EN 1095b2–5 and Phys. 184a17–b14.

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there is not any distinction between what is first for us and first by nature.31 Let us consider the most relevant case of the difference between these two orders, metaphysics. The purpose of the inquiry is the knowledge of God (what is first by nature), but because God is incorporeal, we may reason our way to knowledge of God only by beginning with the world of our immediate experience, the world of corporeal things (what is first for us). In geometry, in contrast, these two orders are the same because we have immediate experience of the bodies from which we abstract geometric objects. Whether these two orders are the same or different is at least one of the factors involved in Aristotle’s distinction between the various modes of inquiry befitting the various kinds of objects or beings. Aristotle attempts to cultivate in his reader an appreciation for the variety of these modes of inquiry.32 In contrast to Aristotle and in the spirit of Descartes, Spinoza seeks an approach to science that can transcend the need for a multiplicity of modes of inquiry. He intends to find one method that applies equally to all beings and kinds of being.33 That one method is of course supposed to be mathematical. (At first, the choice to argue geometrically seems to confirm Spinoza’s credentials as a promoter of the contemplative life, if a promoter of a peculiarly modern form of contemplation. After all, geometry, unlike algebra, appears to culminate in the intuitive or contemplative grasp of truths. Yet, as we will see shortly, Spinoza is as intent in his pursuit of the modern experimental sciences as his [rough] contemporaries, Bacon and Descartes—and perhaps even more so than Hobbes.) In addition, Spinoza’s emphasis on the geometric method of the Ethics (3pref; 1app, 4p57s) is meant to show the ineluctable necessity of his arguments. The synthetic or deductive structure of geometric arguments is an immediate result of geometry’s ability to avoid the divergences between the two orders. Other sciences, especially metaphysics, must begin with what is first in cognition and only later loop back to what is first by nature. Not so geometry, and not so Spinoza’s Ethics. The coincidence of the two orders lends geometry its

31. Alfarabi, Attainment of Happiness §§10–12. See Alfarabi: The Political Writings; The Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, ed. and trans. Muhsin Mahdi (New York: Free Press, 1962; rev. ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1969, 2002), 18–20. 32. EN 1094b20–28. 33. Spinoza is even more adamant than Descartes in demanding one method for all phenomena. Descartes at least appears to leave room for some distinction between an inquiry into res extensa and an inquiry into res cogitans. Spinoza’s refusal of the two-substance doctrine points in the direction of the search for a truly universal method. For the first move toward a universal method, see Bacon, Advancement of Learning 2.5.2.

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irresistible character; Spinoza hopes to lend such an irresistible character to his all-encompassing scientific inquiry.34 More importantly, if one method applies to all beings, then it is possible to write a book called the Ethics and include in it not only practical science but all of science, especially the traditional theoretical sciences, metaphysics and physics. This one method, then, makes possible the collapse even of the traditional distinction between theoretical and practical sciences. How has the distinction between the two orders been overturned, resulting in the collapse of all of the sciences into one inquiry? God is no longer a formal but a material principle. (As we will see in the next section of this chapter, Spinoza’s characterization of the realm of thought or ideas cannot support a truly formal principle.) Aristotle’s (and Maimonides’s) reason for distinguishing between the two orders in metaphysics, namely, God’s incorporeality, is no longer present in Spinoza’s thought. Similarly, the reason Aristotle (and Maimonides) distinguished the two orders in physics, namely, the prominent role of formal causes and actuality even in physics, is no longer present in Spinoza’s thought.35 In brief, Spinoza is able to avoid the distinction between the two orders because he has transformed God into a corporeal cause. It is as if Spinoza were arguing that making God a corporeal cause renders him as immediately accessible as geometrical objects are to geometers.36 The repercussions of God’s corporeality and the demise of the traditional distinction between the two orders are felt throughout the Ethics. Indeed, 34. As we will see later, even Spinoza’s oft-bemoaned failure to achieve such credibility, especially in part 1, proves to serve the overall intention of his argument. In other words, the surface intention of the Ethics is the irresistible force of the synthetic argument—which compels the acceptance of unprecedented views about God, dressed up in traditional garb. Its deeper intention is revealed in the analytic arguments that appear in the Physical Treatise and various key prefaces, scholia, and appendices. 35. For Spinoza’s abandonment of formal causality, consider 2p13lemmata4–7. The ratio of bodies in motion-and-rest is not a truly formal cause. Compare Aristotle, Meta. bks. 1 (991b10– 993a29) and 13 and 14, esp. 14.5–6 (1092b10–1093b30). Spinoza’s rejection of forms is most explicit in 2p40s1. He seals his abandonment of formal causality in his identification of conatus as power (potentia), because potentia then is identified as the essence of the thing. In contrast, essence is identified with the form of beings in Aristotle. The repudiation of form will resurface in the next section of this chapter. This mixture of stress on the sensible and appeal to the subsensible to explain the sensible befits the view of knowledge that Spinoza shares with his predecessors. See, e.g, Bacon, New Organon 1.20–22, 2.8. 36. Just like the claim footnoted in note 34, this will prove to be intentionally dubious. Although implying that God is the material cause of all beings would seem to make God more immediately accessible—because accessible through sense experience—the true (transitive) material causes, the corpora simplicissima of 2p13lemma4axiom2 are not immediately accessible, though their macroscopic manifestations are.

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doctrines posited in part 1 start to make much more sense after 2p10’s dissolution of the distinction between the two orders. If God’s corporeality entails the collapse of the two orders and the collapse of the sciences in turn (especially the collapse of the theoretical into the practical sciences), then the determinism announced in part 1 (p32) finds its full justification. The distinctive principle of practical science was traditionally choice (Meta. 1025b23), but distinctive principles for distinctive sciences are henceforth insupportable. Indeed, one of the primary motives of the coincidence of the two orders is the subversion of traditional practical science as an indepen­ dent discipline. The geometrical method is, perhaps, Spinoza’s main rhetorical device for persuading us that in the Ethics the two orders coincide consistently. Yet there are occasions on which the use of this method becomes strained. In note 36, I drew the reader’s attention to Spinoza’s strained claim that God is as immediately knowable in his new science as the geometrical object is to the geometer. And in note 34, I drew attention to the equally strained claim that Spinoza’s propositions, especially in part 1, are as irresistible as synthetic geometrical arguments. Here, I believe that we receive further confirmation of Kennington’s interpretation that part 2 is the true, analytic starting point and that the synthetic structure of the Ethics is meant to fail.37 In any synthetic system, the crucial moment is the starting point. If a mistake is made in the beginning, in the positing of definitions, common notions, and axioms, all else that follows will be tainted. In geometry, the geometer may appeal to the reader’s immediate experience of physical objects. Although geometry does abstract from sense experience, it is grounded immediately in that sense experience and even sharpens it through abstraction.38 Once again, we are reminded of why the two orders coincide in geometry (and why they diverge in traditional metaphysics). In contrast, Spinoza’s definitions and axioms in the opening of part 1 lack any basis in our immediate experience. One could not choose a less immediate starting 37. Contrast to Kennington, Bennett, for example, who supposes that Spinoza means all of his arguments to be “strictly valid.” Because of numerous snags in the synthetic structure, Bennett is led to accuse Spinoza of being bad at “close, rigorous reasoning” and of being “somewhat slow,” in contrast, for example, to Leibniz (Study of Spinoza’s “Ethics,” 27–28). As is explained in greater detail in the appendix below, Kennington offers the more plausible interpretation that Spinoza does not adhere to the synthetic method throughout, nor does it reveal the true ground of the Ethics. 38. This helps explain why Aristotle uses the term “abstraction” (aphairesis) only in connection with mathematics—not in physics and metaphysics as it came to be used by the Scholastic tradition. See, e.g., On the Soul 429b18–20 and 431b13–18.

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point than the opening definition of God. (One could view his starting point as the most immediate starting point only for a select group of readers, namely, Spinoza’s target audience. For his audience of theologians still more or less under the influence of Scholastic theology, claims such as that God’s essence is his existence had become a kind of substitute for everyday experience. Spinoza packs into the old vessels of Scholasticism the new wine of his highly modern philosophy.) Indeed, I believe Spinoza seeks to disorient the reader who assumes such traditional meanings.39 The opening reference to God as the self-caused being whose “essence involves existence” is arranged to trigger thoughts of the Scholastic Creator. Of course, Spinoza moves quickly to put to rest any traditional notions of a God who is esse or existence, who knows and creates individuals like a Thomistic God. 40 The concept that lingers the longest and continues to promote unabated disorientation, however, is Spinoza’s continued use of the term essentia or essence.41 We are reminded that herein lies the key distinction between Spinoza and his premodern predecessors (or opponents) regarding the coincidence of the two orders. Premodern thinkers must distinguish between the two orders because they conceive of God as a formal being and a final cause remote from immediate experience. In Spinoza’s thought, God’s corporeality was supposed to serve as the basis of the coincidence of the two orders. God’s corporeality was supposed to make the Ethics like a work of geometry. But such a transformation in the reader’s approach to the topic is possible only when the meaning of essence is transformed. Spinoza must gradually evacuate the traditional meaning from essence to make way for the coincidence of the two orders throughout the sciences. Spinoza’s total abandonment of formal causality is sometimes not noticed because of his persistent use of the term essence.42 The main cause of 39. Spinoza’s intention to disorient the unwary reader is obvious, for example, from the way Leibniz’s critique of Spinoza carries little weight once one adjusts for the new meaning of such crucial terms as substance, attribute, and mode. See Edwin Curley’s fine critique of Leibniz’s interpretation and critique of Spinoza in Spinoza’s Metaphysics, 15–20, esp. 18. 40. See 1p8s2 and pp15, 24, 28. Cf. Strauss’s claims about the target audience of the Theologico-Political Treatise as liberal Christian theologians in “On a Forgotten Kind of Writing,” in What Is Political Philosophy? 225–26. 41. See note 35 above. 42. See, for example, Alan Donagan, “Essence and the Distinction of Attributes in Spinoza’s Metaphysics,” in Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Marjorie Grene (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1973, 1979), 164–81, and Wolfson, Philosophy of Spinoza, e.g., 2: 292–93. Compare Bennett (Study of Spinoza’s “Ethics,” 61), where he scolds Spinoza for withholding his poor definition of essence until 2d2. Also see Bennett’s claim (231–32) that Spinoza means by substance or form Aristotelian form. In fact, Spinoza does not really define essence until 2p13ll4–7, where he defines it out of existence. Review note 35 above.

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the confusion about formal causality is the false proximity of God as the immanent cause or the “place” of the laws of nature (1pp17–18) to God as a traditional formal cause. Once again, however, laws of nature must not be confused with forms. In the case of finite modes or the beings, Spinoza is relatively straightforward in repudiating all traditional senses of formal causality in 2p40s1.43 Yet almost in the same breath in scholium 2, he continues to use terminology that would seem to make of God a quasi-formal cause. In his intentionally opaque division of the kinds of knowledge,44 he leaves the reader with the misleading initial impression that the lowest form of knowledge is knowledge of particulars through sense experience. (This is a misleading initial impression because he rejects only defective [mutilate] knowledge of particulars.) He seems to imply that knowledge of particulars through sensation is even worse than knowledge based on opinion or imagination. The apparently highest form of (three or four forms of ) knowledge is “intuition,” which is a “kind of knowledge [that] proceeds from an adequate idea of the formal essence of certain attributes of God to an adequate knowledge of the essence of things” (2p40s2). This passage leaves the reader with the sense that Spinoza is—in a foreshadowing of the spirit of German Idealism—intoxicated with God’s essence. Having already had our conception of the essence of things or finite modes shattered just moments before (not only in s1 but also in 2p13ll4–7), however, we remain vigilant in interpreting such talk about intuition of formal essences in God. Spinoza seems to mean by such essences the infinite modes treated at length in part 1 (pp21–29, esp. 22–23), by which he means the laws of nature.45 Laws of nature seem to be not only as universal but also, perhaps because of their universality, as formal as traditional forms or essences. Yet they are not formal, or Spinoza would not repudiate the forms in finite modes or things. The model of a law of nature is an algebraic formula, for example, Boyle’s Law.46 Like a modern natural scientist (or like his philo43. Contrast Francis Haserot’s effort to salvage “rational universals” (“Spinoza and the Status of Universals,” originally published in Philosophical Review 59 [1950]; reprinted in Studies in Spinoza: Critical and Interpretive Essays, ed. S. Paul Kashap [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972], 43–67), which was then taken up by Jonathan Bennett (see previous note). My view of Spinoza’s nominalism is indebted to Lee Rice’s efforts to reconcile Spinoza’s nominalism with the presence of laws of nature in his thought, with the aid of Nelson Goodman. See Rice, “Le nominalisme de Spinoza.” 44. Spinoza signals his intention to be confusing by dividing the kinds of knowledge both into three and into four kinds. For further confusion, compare 2p40s2 with the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, sects. 19–29. 45. Here I am merely following Curley’s convincing interpretation of the immediate, infinite modes as laws of nature (Spinoza’s Metaphysics, chap. 2). On formal essence, see note 49 below. 46. Leaving the temperature constant, the pressure of a gas varies inversely as the volume.

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sophic contemporaries who sought to found the modern sciences), Spinoza is interested less in the formula itself than in what such formulas enable us to predict and produce. In other words, he is more interested in the particular output that results when numbers are plugged into the universal formula. It is difficult to make any other sense of his bold claim near the end of the Ethics that he means by “intuition” or the “third kind of knowledge,” contrary to all premodern usage, precisely a “knowledge of particular things” (5p36s). He argues that this intuition is superior to the main form of knowledge he has focused on prior to part 5, namely, the “second kind” or “common notions and adequate ideas of the properties of things,” that is, laws of nature (2p40s2). Spinoza has just severed the traditional connection between properties and essences completely (s1). He cannot mean by common notions or ideas anything akin to the premodern understanding of essence.47 Spinoza simultaneously intermingles and disentangles common notions and the traditional understanding of forms. He is both eager to repudiate forms and uneasy about severing the connection to the tradition too boldly. Over the course of 2p29 through 38, he moves from a repudiation of the “common order of nature” (p29) and the “common propert[ies] of particular things” (p31) to an embrace of “certain ideas or notions common to all men” (p38c). By the former common properties, he means the false inferences drawn by the imagination from apparently similar features to the existence of shared or universal forms (2p40s1). By common notions, as he himself notes, he means the kinds of laws governing the ratios of motion-and-rest in bodies he set forth following 2p13.48 The second kind of knowledge, then, concerns the laws of the ratios of motion-and-rest in bodies. These laws “in the mind of God” (the second kind of knowledge) are, contrary to expectation, inferior to the knowledge of particular things (the third kind of knowledge) that flows from plugging the appropriate numbers into such laws. Knowledge of particulars is superior to “abstract knowledge” of mere laws of nature (5p36s). Ironically, God, then, is less the formal essences “in”

47. On the problematic usage of ideas in Spinoza, consider S. Paul Kashap’s “Spinoza’s Use of ‘Idea’” and Thomas Carson Mark’s “Truth and Adequacy in Spinozistic Ideas,” both in Spinoza: New Perspectives, ed. Robert W. Shahan and J. I. Biro (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), 57–70 and 11–34, respectively. 48. In 2p38c, Spinoza cites 2p13lemma2, the most generic of the lemmata, namely, “All bodies agree in certain respects.” With this reference, he highlights the kind of commonality he is interested in and points us toward the more specific lemmata that follow, especially those concerning the ratio of motion-and-rest.

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God than the output of such “formal essences.”49 Once again, we receive further confirmation of just how profoundly corporeal Spinoza is rendering God. He denies the existence of premodern forms as mere figments of the imagination and embraces ratios of bodies in motion-and-rest or laws of nature in their place. According to premodern lights, including even Aristotle, to know a being is precisely to know its form. Aristotle must go to great lengths to render forms more compatible with our experience of bodies in motion, above all through his teaching on the potency/act distinction. Nevertheless, so-called abstract knowledge of so-called universal forms is precisely his object. Despite Spinoza’s continued maintenance of the terminology of essences and forms, the physical digression in part 2 (2p13ll4–7) evacuates all traditional meaning from these terms—so much so that not only do things or finite modes lack any reference to forms, but also God lacks any true connection with form. Laws of nature or formulas are not forms. Formulas are not meant to enable us to “see” anything. They are mechanisms for producing particular, material outputs. Despite his reputation as a defender of contemplation, Spinoza proves to be as profound an advocate of the productive aims of science as Bacon and Descartes. At this point the reader is likely to begin to suspect that I have overstated the corporealistic character of Spinoza’s argument. Perhaps God is not as detached as the formal God of the tradition, but surely Spinoza does not eradicate formal being completely. In response to my stress on laws of nature in bodies, the supposed parallelism of mind and body would seem to leave the realm of mind untouched by mere laws of bodies in motionand-rest. Consequently, interpreters often infer that just as there are laws of bodies in motion-and-rest, so there must be parallel laws of mind ruling a separate realm, if not a separate substance. Thus, we happen upon yet another reason for the sneaking suspicion of Spinoza scholars such as Francis Haserot and Jonathan Bennett that room is left for forms of some kind. For what else but mind would seem to be a form? I will not be able to enter into a full-blown discussion of the relation of extension and thought as God’s (known) attributes, and body and mind as our two human modes here. Let us begin to reconsider some of the factors involved in the so-called psychophysical parallelism, which our materialist

49. A review of how Spinoza uses “formal essence” in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, sect. 33–36, esp. 35, reminds the reader that formal essences are more “objective,” according to contemporary parlance, than so-called objective essences. The formal essence is not a mere thought of a thing.

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reading, following the lead of Lachterman and others, has been intended to bring into question. The so-called parallelism of extension and thought in God announced in 2p7 is usually connected with 3p2, which at least as proposed seems to renounce any Cartesian interaction of human mind and body. Of course, 5pr is an emphatic repudiation of the strange arguments Descartes offers in defense of freedom of the will and the interaction of mind and body by way of the pineal gland. And we can affirm here, once again, that Spinoza is most emphatic in his determinism—understood in the nuanced sense advocated by Lee Rice.50 Nevertheless, elements of the argument in 3p2 must give us pause before we accept or reject the prevailing version of the parallelism of mind and body. First, we must be careful not to underestimate just how deeply parallel these two series of finite modes are. After all, the mind is the idea of the body. This is so much the case that just as the body is composed of a multiplicity of simple bodies, so the mind is composed of a multiplicity of said ideas (2p15). Whatever the mind is, then, it lacks the unity traditionally associated with mind on analogy to forms—as has already been mentioned. Second, as an idea of the body, the mind is not anything but the expression of the body (2p29d).51 This fact is easy to lose track of because we are tempted by the structure of part 2 to associate the body with the imagination52 and the mind with reason, as they have been traditionally.53 Third, as the expression of the body, the mind lacks the kind of independence usually associated with minds and ideas (that is, forms). Our bodies are extremely complex assemblages of simple bodies with their distinctive ratios of motion-and-rest. Each of the simple bodies taken in isolation has its own conatus or endeavor to preserve itself (3pp6–7).54 My desire to preserve myself is merely the expression of that 50. See Lee Rice, “Action in Spinoza’s Account of Affectivity,” in Ethica III: Desire and Affect, ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel (New York: Little Room Press, 1999), 155–68. 51. Although body may not be the efficient or transitive cause of mind (because an effect must follow a cause temporally), mind is more inextricably bound up with the body than if it were a mere effect. The expression of a body is its conatus. (Cf. Lachterman’s questionable claim that conatus is more like an incorporeal principle than a feature of body. “Physics of Spinoza’s Ethics,” 78, 84, 92, 95. See note 28 above.) Mind is no more and no less than the power of the body. Consider 2p13s. 52. Cf. the distinction between images and imagination in chap. 5, below. 53. Ethics 2p16c2 leads the reader to suspect that all bodily or sense experience is tainted by the constitution of our own bodies. But through the careful distinction between imagination and thought or between the common order of nature and the common notions, the reader can come to appreciate that sense experience as such is not distorted. 54. As with Nietzsche, who inadvertently echoes Spinoza (only to realize he has done so years later), everything is, in this sense, “alive.” In keeping with his repudiation of formal causes, Spinoza’s doctrine of mind does not leave any room for the traditional distinction between

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complex assemblage. Fourth, the very feature that foreshadowed the collapse of the practical and theoretical sciences, determinism, requires that mind lack the independence associated with forms. After all, it is choice, mind, or reason that represents the mind’s independence from or control over the body.55 It is not by chance that premodern thinkers are more outspoken proponents both of human choice and of the soul as akin to the forms in its independence than are modern thinkers.56 Despite appearances to the contrary, even the parallelism of mind and body does not imply mind’s independence. Mind is as deeply connected to a complex body as the force of any simple body is connected to such a body. Indeed, mind as an expression of body is merely a concatenation of the forces of bodies or a highly complex expression of body. There is no room in Spinoza for an independent realm of laws of the mind. There are merely more and less complex manifestations of the laws of bodies in motion-andrest. Even the more “psychological” parts 3 and 4 are merely extensions of such laws.57

Part 2 From the beginning of this book, I have drawn attention to Maimonides’s shift away from the biblical emphasis on anti-idolatry toward anticorpore-

animate and inanimate—his attribution of conatus to inanimate things is not compatible with any traditional notion of the soul. Comparison with Leibniz here is revealing. Leibniz’s petites perceptions contribute to his own even more intense stress (than Spinoza’s) upon continuity between, for lack of a better word, “levels” of being (see Monadology nos. 21–24)—in keeping with his discoveries about the calculus and elasticity. 55. Cf. Socrates’s autobiography in Plato’s Phaedo (esp. 98b–c) and Aristotle, Meta. 1025b20–25. 56. Cf. Seth Benardete’s observation that “a necessary consequence of the analysis of the Phaedo is that any understanding of body is necessarily mythical.” The Argument of the Action, ed. R. Burger and M. Davis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 288. 57. For Spinoza, the laws of nature express themselves in human life through conatus not only in its simplest form as desire but also through the mind’s formulation of an “idea” or ideal of man (E 4pr). In view of the complex interplay between the synthetic and analytic forms of argument in the Ethics, we should not be surprised to find that his account of the affects throughout parts 3 and 5 has a less thoroughly synthetic tone than in parts 1 and 2. Cf. Locke’s similar claim that mathematics and his account of morality are comparably demonstrative in Essay concerning Human Understanding (3.11.16), despite the wholly nongeometric character of that work. Locke makes this parallel claim because he too views the laws of nature applicable to man as all traceable to inclination or appetite (1.3.3 and 1.3.13). I draw this parallel despite Locke’s protestations that he maintains human freedom (1.3.14), because I believe Locke’s conception of freedom, despite its elaborateness, is not significantly different from Spinoza’s (2.21). I cannot justify that claim here.

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ality. In chapter 2, I drew attention, if only in passing, to the connection between Maimonides’s stress on incorporeality and freedom. Indeed, the most pivotal differences between Spinoza and Maimonides are between Spinozist corporeality/determinism and Maimonidean incorporeality/freedom. Although human incorporeality has the practical implication of freedom, I will devote the most attention to that practical implication in chapter 4. For now, I need to bring out the theoretical role of form and incorporeality in the Guide. To do so, (1) I will consider the role of form in the anthropology of the Guide, which will include a digression on the connection between Aristotelian form and choice; (2) I will consider the connection between form and what Lachterman has called the ineliminable multiplicity of being in Aristotelian philosophy, which is echoed in Maimonides’s (a) stress on the divisions of the sciences, as contrasted with Spinoza’s search for a universal method, and especially in Maimonides’s (b) maintenance, subtle though it may be, of the distinction between theoretical and practical science, which we have seen Spinoza efface in the first part of this chapter; (3) I will consider and attempt to show that some pieces of apparent counterevidence to my argument here are not really, namely, (a) the suppression of the theoretical-practical divide in medieval Jewish and Islamic political philosophy as compared with the prominence (even exaggeration) of this divide in medieval Christian thought and (b) a passing moment of what appears at first glance to be nominalism in Maimonides, and finally; (4) I will consider the special connection between form and premodern philosophy. Rather than begin the Guide with an immediate focus on God, Maimon­ ides begins by focusing on human being. Of course, the opening discussion of image and likeness establishes a link between God and human being and comes to be part of an extended effort to counteract the claim that God is corporeal. Nevertheless, the first two chapters of the Guide are strikingly focused on human being. Chapter 1 focuses on determining what aspect of human being is in the image and likeness of God. To do so, it must identify the form or essence of man, namely, intellect. Chapter 2 highlights that in human being which obscures that original nature, namely, imagination. It is imagination that leads human beings to believe that God is somehow That Spinoza does not use mathematical laws to describe psychology does not undermine my denial of separate laws of the mind. Spinoza does not employ such laws explicitly in the Ethics even for body—as opposed to, for example, his correspondence about Boyle’s niter experiments. Like Descartes, he seems to have believed that eventually quantitative methods could be extended to the mind. Cf. Descartes’s Epistolary Preface to the Passions of the Soul on physics as a part of mathematics and on psychology as a part of physics (AT 11: 315, 326). Also see Discourse on Method pt. 6, on medicine as a means of curing the mind (AT 6: 62).

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corporeal—as Maimonides reminds us repeatedly. Having rapidly identified these key features of human nature, Maimonides enables himself to account for the human penchant for corporealistic thinking, but he also moves in a decidedly Aristotelian direction—without drawing attention to its Aristotelian character. The gaps between the Aristotelian and biblical anthropologies are treated far more subtly than, for example, the metaphysical gap between eternity and creation.58 Having set out by positing an Aristotelian anthropology, Maimonides has set his argument on a collision course between that anthropology’s stress on man’s form as intellect and the biblical stress on man as a being who needs to obey God’s Law. Although Maimonides asserts in Guide 1.2 that intellect is needed to obey law, most readers are struck by the oddity of Maimonides’s claim that prior to eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, man’s intellect possessed wisdom about true and false—and attentive readers wonder of what relevance theoretical intellect is for parsing law.59 Leaving aside the extensive disputes about Guide 1.2, I think that most interpreters would admit that the literal sense of the biblical text does not suggest an original theoretical perfection. All that being said, a collision between the anthropology emphasizing theoretical perfection and the anthropology of the Bible would seem to result from the obvious tension between eternity and creation. Is there room for “form” in a created world? One could develop an elaborate Neoplatonic harmonization of creation and form along lines developed in thinkers like Thomas Aquinas—and some have argued that Maimonides aims at such a harmonization. To determine whether Maimonides does this, however, we would have to depart from our present focus. Let it suffice to say, here, that there are deep connections between the Greek philosophic stress on intellect and eternity, just as there are deep connections between the Jewish stress on an obedient heart and creation. In spite of, or perhaps because of, such tensions, Maimonides posits an Aristotelian anthropology in the opening of the Guide. That stress on 58. For the anthropological gap, consider, 1.7—especially as it is discussed in chap. 6, below. Also consider the chapters on heart (lev), air (ruah), and soul (nefesh), 1.39–41; the · chapters in the prophetology on intellect and imagination, esp. 2.36–37; the chapter on wisdom (h ·okhmah) as located in the heart—and all of the attendant ambiguities about practical vs. theoretical intellect (3.54); and, finally, the chapters bearing on the tension between the biblical and Aristotelian conceptions of God, in which the major divide manifests itself as the divide between will and intellect (1.39, 1.69, 2.14–30). 59. Cf. Heidi Ravven, “The Garden of Eden: Spinoza’s Maimonidean Account of the Genealogy of Morals and the Origin of Society,” Philosophy and Theology 13, no. 1 (2001): 15–16, with 19–20.

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the intellect as man’s form is then manifest throughout the first part of the Guide in Maimonides’s shift in emphasis from the biblical focus on antiidolatry to his own stress on anticorporeality. The primacy of form is at the heart of this anticorporeality. Indeed, unlike anti-idolatry, anticorporeality is an essential aspect of premodern philosophy—and serves to provide a foothold for philosophy within Judaism in the Guide, as I will argue in the concluding section of this chapter. The contrast between Maimonides’s anticorporealism, and promotion of form, on the one hand, and Spinoza’s corporealism and opposition to form, on the other, could hardly be more stark—unless Spinoza were to drop altogether any talk of “essence,” which might have doomed his thought to complete oblivion. Here, I would like to digress to clarify theoretically the connection between form and choice—alluded to just above and in chapter 2, and in preparation for chapter 4.60 On the one hand, once again, the affinity between materialism and determinism is nearly self-evident. If there is nothing but bodies, then all action must be the result of the force or impact of bodies upon one another. On the other hand, although form might be a necessary condition of an Aristotelian conception of freedom, it would appear that it is not a sufficient condition—because form also plays a central role in Aristotelian physics, in which choice plays no part. My task, then, is to explain what form adds and lacks as a bridge to choice. Form adds to matter, at least as Aristotle conceives of form, what might be called the space between potency and act. As long as there is nothing but body, there is nothing but potency.61 (For further evidence of Spinoza’s drift toward materialism, consider his repudiation of the potency/act distinction early in the Ethics [1p34].)62 According to Aristotle, matter is to form as potency 60. Some interpreters detect a drift toward determinism in Aristotelian choice. Richard Sorabji’s Necessity, Cause and Blame and especially his distinction between causation and necessitation are intended to bring into relief Aristotle’s resistance to determinism. As we will see in chap. 5, Maimonides’s Aristotelian embrace of teleology, even if moderate teleology, does not lead to determinism—in fact it proves indispensable for free choice, if not liberty of indifference. 61. For some of the more extreme possible consequences of this, consider Aristotle’s treatment of the Megarian collapse of potency into act in Meta. 9.3. 62. The repudiation of actuality as a concept is not peculiar to Spinoza among early modern philosophers—indeed, it is far more prevalent than most would suspect. Consider, for example, Descartes, Discourse on Method, AT 6: 42–43; Locke’s outspoken nominalism; and Leibniz’s reduction of the first actuality to his conception of entelechy, which is little more than the force of a body (“A Specimen of Dynamics,” in G. W. Leibniz: Philosophical Essays, ed. Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989], 117–38, esp. 118, 119, 125; “A New System of Nature,” in ibid., 138–45, esp. 139; Monadology nos. 14–15, 18–19)—which is not to say that these authors are susceptible to Aristotle’s critique. Indeed, here we have the clue to the modern

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is to act—consequently, form does, even if only metaphorically, “produce space” between itself and matter. Form alone, however, is not sufficient for choice or even for an adequate explication of the character of form in nature (apart from human choice). Privation of form is, according to Aristotle, the mysterious and crucial third term missing in his predecessors’ conceptions of form and matter.63 With the addition of privation (see Guide 3.10), one can account for not only the realization of form but also the failure to reach it; it is the possibility of failure, or of choosing between success and failure, that gives us the first anticipation of choice. Maimonides indicates the profundity of his understanding of Aristotle’s teaching about everything beneath the sphere of the moon in many ways; however, for our purposes he indicates it perhaps most profoundly in connection with Aristotle’s matter-form-privation teaching. He first announces his interest in this teaching in Guide 1.17 by a cryptic rehearsal of the shift from the formulation of Plato’s Timaeus, matter : female :: form : male, to the Aristotelian formulation of three “principles of the existents subject to generation and corruption,” namely, “Matter, Form, and Particularized Privation.” He goes on to note that without privation, matter would not receive form. By his reference to male and female, he establishes a resonance between this odd chapter and the enchanting interpretation of Proverbs 7:6–12 of the married harlot who keeps shedding husbands in the introduction to part 1 of the Guide. The attentive reader stores up these tidbits until she gets to the providence section in part 3, chapters 8 to 24, especially 3.8–12. Lest I digress too far within my digression, let it suffice to say that Maimonides begins this long section on providence by appearing at first to make the extremely ascetic argument that matter is the cause of evil, and only by degrees does he make amply evident that not matter but privation is the cause of evil. The difference between these two arguments maps quite directly onto the opposition between the two anthropologies with which I opened part 2 of this chapter. Returning to the “three principles of the [corruptible] existents,” I need to show that the array matter/form/privation serves as the model for the Aristotelian conception of choice. According to Aristotle’s broadest conception in the Metaphysics, these three principles are exemplified throughout the world, not only the earthly, in broader terms as potency/good actuality/

response to Aristotle’s attack on the Megarians. Motion is made possible in modern philosophy by reconceiving force as inherent in matter (cf. modern notions of mass and inertial force), rather than as the result of weight or “the blow” as in Democritus and Lucretius. 63. Phys. 1.9.

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bad actualit(ies) (8.5, 9.9). The reader will have noticed that I have written “bad actualit(ies)” to highlight the plurality of bad options. This signifies the presence of manyness in bad actualities as opposed to the oneness of the good, which Aristotle conveys so aptly in the Nicomachean Ethics by his image of hitting the target (1106b31). It may become tempting to argue that the oneness of the good actuality cancels out any real sense of choice in Aristotle’s account. There is some element of truth in this. To some extent, Aristotle exhorts the reader to acquire good active conditions or habits in order to aim consistently at the mean. And there is little doubt that the highest and purest actuality, God, in Aristotle’s account is wholly lacking in choice—indeed, to possess choice and prudence would, according to Aristotle, indicate a defect in the divine. Nevertheless, there is a world of difference between Aristotle’s three-principle teaching and the single-principle teaching (or dual, atoms and void) of the materialists. Once again, ancient materialists had nothing but notoriously awkward ways of accounting for human freedom.64 I have yet to clarify what is missing from the matter-form-privation formulation that is necessary to make choice possible—in other words, I haven’t yet clarified why form is necessary but not sufficient. The form of human being, as contrasted to our matter, is our soul. Although soul is undoubtedly Aristotle’s motive or efficient cause, it is first and foremost simply the first actuality of our body.65 As such, it accounts for the life of any living thing. And many living beings, obviously, lack choice—even though they may be “voluntary” (EN 1111b3–10). According to Aristotle, a higher dimension of soul than mere life is responsible for choice—the combination of desire and deliberation (bouleusis).66 Other animals possess desire and prefigurations of deliberation, such as imagination—but lacking reason, they lack deliberation. Other animals, like children, possess voluntariness but not choice. It would appear then that form is indispensable for choice but requires the addition, above all, of reason—as a yet higher expression of or possibly extension beyond form, above and beyond life.67 Again, the reader may be tempted to doubt that Aristotelian choice is any different from an assortment of modern doctrines, many of which do include deliberation—albeit in a subordinate position in relation to desire. 64. Cf. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 2.216–93. 65. On the Soul 2.1. 66. EN 1113a12. 67. I say “possibly extension beyond” because reason or intellect insofar as it needs to be able to “become all things” (On the Soul 3.4–5) must, although it comprehends forms, in some sense transcend them.

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An extremely brief consideration of Hume, I believe, can clarify the matter. Although Hume admits the existence of deliberation, he stresses its subordination to desire. Above all, he embraces the one thing that launched us on this inquiry in the first place, the continuity of the natural and the ethical. His confrontation with the age-old dispute about freedom and determinism is readily resolved because ultimately (and emphatically like Spinoza) he repudiates the idea of a kingdom within a kingdom. He insists clearly and strongly that the natural and the ethical are continuous. What we perceive as freedom is according to Hume a combination of the regularity of irregularity in human desires and the hiddenness of causes.68 Once again, Aristotle’s claim that choice is the distinctive cause of motion studied by practical science indicates how large the gap is between Aristotle and Hume on this. True, Aristotle does not embrace a radical conception of free choice of the will such as Augustine’s—yet that conception of free will is radically dependent on the Christian conception of original sin, to which neither Aristotle nor Maimonides subscribes. Spinoza’s turn toward determinism was supported methodologically by the search for a universal method. Such a method undermines, among other lines between the sciences, what I have just referred to as the fundamental line between theoretical and practical science—thus, reinforcing the determinist teaching. More generally, the search for a universal method runs contrary to the Aristotelian stress on the “ineliminable multiplicity” of being.69 Leaving the connection between choice and form aside, form lies at the root of this multiplicity; the modern rejection of form is part and parcel of a rejection of such multiplicity, in favor of a search for the simple and quantifiable. Maimonides echoes Aristotle’s stress on this multiplicity by emphasizing, as we saw in chapter 1, the importance of the division of and orderly study of the sciences. Having underlined the dangerousness of open inquiry into metaphysics and even physics (1.17), Maimonides turns eventually to an explicit treatment of the proper order of study in 1.34 (p. 75). That order is logic, mathematics, physics, “and after that” (wa-ba‘da dha¯lika) metaphysics. Of course, I have attempted to show in my discussion of Spinoza that he effectively collapses metaphysics into physics—indeed, such a collapse seems to be the precondition of his claim that the two orders can coincide. Maimon­

68. Inquiry concerning Human Understanding 8.1. 69. Lachterman, “Physics of Spinoza’s Ethics,” 73.

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ides’s stress on physics before metaphysics is very different from Spinoza’s approach. Leaving aside the general stress on orderliness of inquiry and the distinctness of physics and metaphysics, we are struck by Maimonides’s silence about practical science in his inventory of sciences in Guide 1.34. It is tempting to claim that he is silent on it because he has no need for it or does not believe such a science exists—as some have been tempted to argue by the Treatise on the Art of Logic’s conclusion. Comparison of that conclusion with Guide 2.39 and 2.40, however, gives the lie to such an interpretation. Far from dispensing with political science, Guide 2.40 gives ample evidence of Maimonides’s embrace of the broad outlines of Aristotelian political science—man is a natural animal; law or habit (or active condition) is not contrary to nature but perfects nature; the best laws aim not merely at perfection of morals but at the perfection of the individual, which is theoretical not moral. We will have to wait until chapter 6 to be able to explicate fully the reasons for Maimonides’s silence on practical science.70 For now, it will suffice to note the obvious. Although practical science may not be treated explicitly in the list of sciences, Maimonides stresses the need for proper moral formation if the inquirer is to benefit fully from study of the philosophic sciences (1.34, pp. 76–77; also see H. Talmud Torah). The Law produces such formation in Maimonides’s context. In addition to the proper formation, one needs a suitably tranquil temperament. Whether it is the Law or temperament or merely Joseph’s age that has contributed to his disorder is a question Maimonides positions the reader to raise—though answering it is beyond our focus here. Once again, we need observe little more than the obvious. Moral formation is a central subject in practical science. Rather than offer a treatise on moral formation such as his own Eight Chapters and Laws concerning Character Traits (Hilkhot De’ot), the Guide offers something like a case study of moral formation—the case of Joseph. Works like Eight Chapters and Hilkhot De’ot are especially suited to inculcating morality. By taking the case of Joseph, Maimonides chooses the exception that proves the rule. Joseph’s defects show both the limits of morality and the suitability of the Law’s moral training for nearly all people.71 Seeing the limits of morality is surely one of the highest activities of practical science. Even considering the obvious and before we’ve resolved anything about

70. Cf. the preceding discussion of Guide 1.34, 2.39–40 and Treatise on the Art of Logic with Parens, “Strauss on Maimonides’ Secretive Political Science,” Perspectives on Political Science 39, no. 2 (2010): 82–86. 71. Cf. Guide 1.34 (39a) and 3.34.

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prudence, we can see the evidence mounting that Maimonides distinguishes practical from theoretical, contrary to Spinoza. In addition to this adumbration of the division between practical science and the theoretical sciences, other evidence must be considered to bolster our confidence that Maimonides shares Aristotle’s concern for the ineliminable multiplicity of being, as reflected in a rigorous division of the sciences and their methods. Two related things testify to Maimonides’s concern for this multiplicity: his heavy stress on human freedom or choice, and his heavy stress on the divide between good/bad, on the one hand, and true/ false, on the other. We leave aside further discussion of freedom for chapter 4. Regarding the latter: Maimonides’s insistence on separating the pairs good/bad and true/false is so profound that Pines felt it incumbent upon himself to find an out-of-the-mainstream tradition of separating these pairs. He was convinced that these pairs in Maimonides are not an echo of the practical-theoretical divide found in Aristotle—probably because he identified the imagination as the sole arbiter of the good/bad pair.72 I have already argued at length elsewhere73 and will continue to add evidence in chapter 6 that the imagination is not the proper arbiter of good and bad or evil in the Guide. If it can be shown that the intellect plays a role in determining good and evil, and it can be shown, therefore, that the large divide between these pairs refers to the traditional Aristotelian division between theoretical and practical science, then we will have found another piece of evidence in support of my claim that Maimonides, unlike Spinoza, intends to underline the multiplicity of being. So far the argument supports the view that Maimonides has no interest in a universal method and acknowledges the role of form in articulating the multiplicity of being. Two pieces of counterevidence need to be considered. First, there is a moment in the Guide that appears at first glance, far from supporting the premodern conception of form, to anticipate an all-too-modern nominalism (3.18). Second, I have argued elsewhere that the division between theoretical and practical science is suppressed in medieval Jewish and Islamic political philosophy vis-à-vis that division in me-

72. Shlomo Pines, “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. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 95–157.” 73. Parens, “Prudence, Imagination, and Determination of Law in Alfarabi and Maimonides,” in Enlightening Revolutions: Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner, ed. Svetozar Minkov and Stéphane Douard (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006), 31–55.

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dieval Christian political philosophy.74 It is tempting to suppose, then, that I have placed Maimonides together with Spinoza as a thinker who tends to elide the distinction between the sciences, especially the greatest division between theoretical and practical sciences. I discuss the latter first. I have argued that medieval Jewish and Islamic political philosophy suppress this distinction because divine Law in Judaism and divine Law in Islam are total laws. They do not lend themselves to the Christian separation of ecclesiastical from secular authorities. Because of the total character of those Laws, one often finds Alfarabi and Maimonides, as well as others, engaging in discussions of politics and metaphysics in the same works (in this respect, such works are not dissimilar from Spinoza’s Ethics—which may help to explain why they have so often been assimilated to one another). Yet every instance in which politics and metaphysics appear in the same writing need not have the significance I have tried to argue this has in the Ethics. On the contrary, I have argued about such writings by Alfarabi and Maimonides that politics and metaphysics, far from being continuous, stand in a more “dialectical” relation to one another than in medieval Christian thought. It is commonly argued that medieval Christian thought lays a metaphysical foundation from which a political teaching is derived; in addition, however, in medieval Christian thought the study of political thought is easily and neatly separable from any metaphysical entanglement, in no small part because Christian thinkers intensify the Aristotelian theoretical-practical divide. In contrast, medieval Muslim and Jewish thinkers are not able to so neatly cordon off practical science from theoretical science. This derives more from the way in which the Law concerns itself with both actions and opinions than from any effort to assimilate practical science to theoretical science or to suppress the peculiar principle of practical science, choice. As for the issue of nominalism in Guide 3.18, we will have to digress to take a closer look at this highly provocative passage (or passages, in the beginning and end of the chapter). We need to determine whether, in appearing to verge on advocating nominalism, Maimonides abandons form, even though it appears to play a prominent role elsewhere in the Guide, such as in 1.68 (an obviously Aristotelian setting), 1.71, 1.72 (p. 193), and

74. See Parens, “Showing Students the Importance of Political Philosophy in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy,” SMART (Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching) 18, no. 1 (2011): 61–68, and the general introduction in Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 2nd ed., ed. Joshua Parens and Joseph C. Macfarland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011).

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2.10.75 Guide 3.18 begins, “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 other universals are, as you know, mental notions and that every existent outside the mind is an individual or group of individuals.” The chapter ends on a similar note, “For outside the mind nothing exists except individuals. . . .” Although it is tempting to construe these claims as nominalistic,76 they need not be so interpreted. First, the claim that no species exists outside the mind can be interpreted to mean something wholly compatible with the Aristotelian view of forms, as opposed to the popularly received interpretation of the Platonic or Socratic teaching. We would expect such compatibility with Aristotle, considering Maimonides’s oft-repeated insistence that Aristotle is correct about everything beneath the sphere of the moon.77 Second, the context of this claim, most obvious from the completion of the second citation—“it is to these individuals that the divine intellect is united”—shows that Maimonides is not making a sweeping metaphysical claim but addressing the problem of providence, which is the theme of 3.18 and the surrounding chapters. Maimonides is not attempting to deny the reality of species or, rather, forms. Rather, he is trying to insinuate some notion of particular providence into an account of divine providence for human beings that so far has highlighted the connection between human intellectual perfection and divine providence (3.17, end). That connection has tended to tip in a direction not unlike that of the Aristotelian view of providence, apparently repudiated in the opening pages of 3.17. Third, Maimonides’s intention is to highlight, as he so often does, the inequality in God’s providence for human beings, as opposed to his species-wide providence for other living things.78 This then raises the obvious question that is the central theme of 3.18: Is that inequality in providence for humans due to some preference on the part of God or to the natural temperament of the receiver? Although it would obviously be unjust if God showered greater “overflow” on human beings because he preferred some over others, it 75. Note that often when discussing form, the Neoplatonic sense of “force” or power (qu¯wa) that “overflows” also comes up. Before we make too much out of the Neoplatonizing talk of “overflow”—for example, insinuating that by means of it Maimonides achieves an easy reconciliation of creation and eternity—we must remember how much he insists on the metaphorical character of his usage of “overflow” (2.12, p. 279). 76. Cf. Alfred Ivry, “Providence, Divine Omniscience and Possibility: The Case of Maimonides,” in Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Tamar Rudavsky (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985), 143–59, esp. 150–51. 77. For example, 2.19, pp. 306, 307, 311; 2.22, 319; 2.24, 326. 78. See esp. 2.40, opening, and 3.34.

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would also be unjust, assuming that God could reward the just and punish the unjust, if He were to fail to do so. We need not enter into the moral dilemmas raised surrounding the latter issue in 3.17 here. Fourth, the way in which one saves Aristotelianism from lapsing into nominalism is to argue that although species exist in the mind of human thinkers, they must also exist in the mind of God. Such an existence in the mind of God precludes the possibility that the existence in the human mind is merely constructed. Of course, the way in which they so exist is completely different in these two kinds of minds. For human beings, they are perceived in the individual beings by comparison with other members of the species, as it were, posterior to their having been caused. In contrast, for God, His thinking them is what causes them to be.79 In brief, Maimonides’s apparently nominalistic claims in 3.18, especially when they are extended beyond the human mind to the divine mind, need not be construed as nominalistic at all. Having set aside the threats posed by nominalism and suppression of the distinction between theoretical and practical science, let us turn to a point that has so far been treated merely as a posit: Maimonides’s obvious shift in focus from the biblical animosity toward idolatry to a novel focus, at least within Judaism, on anticorporeality. Aside from the support it seems to lend to those other crucial principles regarding God—that He be shown to exist, and be one—stress on divine incorporeality contributes to the cultivation of philosophy, at least premodern philosophy. For evidence, let us consider one of the most intense moments of anticorporeality in the Guide, 1.36. By the time the reader has reached 1.36, the many lexicographical chapters have prepared him for the high pitch of Maimonides’s rhetoric against corporeality; however, little could prepare the attentive reader for the shocking implications of this chapter. Here, Maimonides states that it is worse to believe that God has a body than to be an idolater. Incorporeality is more important than anti-idolatry.80 Yet how could one justify the claim that the belief that God has a body, which many Jews, especially in Maimonides’s time, believe(d), is worse than being an idolater? Maimonides justifies this claim by arguing that no idolater has ever been so foolish as to believe that the idol he worships—in other words, the corporeal thing before him—is 79. Cf. Averroes, Decisive Treatise §18, in Averroes: The Book of the Decisive Treatise Determining the Connection between the Law and Wisdom and Epistle Dedicatory, ed. and trans. Charles E. Butterworth (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 2001), 14–15, and Spinoza, E 1p17s. 80. Later in the Guide, when it serves Maimonides’s argument, he assimilates the opposition to idolatry to the opposition to a corporeal conception of God. See 3.29–49, including the account of the Law, 3.35–49, and especially 3.29, as well as the chapters on the sacrifices and their anti-idolatrous animus, such as 3.37, 3.43, 3.45, and 3.46.

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the god he serves. In other words, every idolater has always been aware of what ignorant Jews have been unaware of. The attentive reader should wonder whether it really is the case that no idolater has ever been so ignorant.81 The rhetorical effect of Maimonides’s hyperbole about the ignorant among the idolaters undoubtedly serves the aim of weaning Jews from a corporealistic view of God. At the same time, Maimonides makes it plain for anyone with eyes to see that he, at least, views the wise among the idolaters, viz., the philosophers, as being in a far superior position to that of the vulgar among the Jews—which is implied on many occasions throughout the Guide.82 Not only does Maimonides place the philosophers in such a superior position, but he also links their superiority to that which separates them from the ignorant in general—namely, the ignorant’s obsession with bodily things. I mean this not in a moralizing way but in a spirit akin to that of many of the key rhetorical strokes of the Guide as a whole—Maimonides’s attack on Adam’s imagination in the Garden (1.2), which accounts precisely for most men’s obsession with moral matters; his attacks on and denigration of the moral focus of the Law (1.2, 3.54; cf. Mishneh Torah, Book of Knowledge with the Mosaic version of the Law presented in Guide 3.35, p. 535); and his interpretation of the sacrificial service, not as a sustaining of biblical corporealism but as a ruse to wean man from his corporeal focus (3.32). In conclusion, it is now far more obvious than it was at the beginning of our inquiry why Spinoza’s addition of extension to God’s attributes, pace Harvey, is more than just the addition of another attribute. Spinoza’s materialism about God (and human being) makes possible the unification of the sciences—especially by eliminating choice as the distinctive principle and subject matter of practical science. The stunning scope of the Ethics drives home this point. Conversely, Maimonides’s stress on divine incorporeality and form underwrites his understanding of human nature—especially its freedom, as the next chapter will show.

81. Cf. 3.29, p. 516. 82. See, for example, 2.32’s contrast between the multitude and the philosophers on prophecy, and 3.51’s radical denigration of the “multitude of the adherents of the Law,” especially vis-à-vis the philosophic speculators (pp. 619–20), not to mention the recently discussed 3.17 and 3.18.

four

Freedom vs. Determinism

Although a central focus of chapter 2 was the connection between Maimonides’s anticorporealism and his promotion of veneration of religious authority and of God, chapter 2 also established, in passing, links between Maimonides’s anticorporealism and his promotion of freedom. Chapter 3 established links between his anticorporealism, his views on form, and in turn, again, his views on freedom. A constellation of related views about or bearing directly on human nature is becoming apparent: anticorporealism, form, and freedom. In chapter 5 I will try to add teleology to this constellation. Many readers might wonder whether teleology does not constrain freedom. If one means by freedom strong libertarianism, then teleology does constrain freedom. Not only does Maimonides not embrace strong libertarianism, but also he does not embrace milder doctrines such as an Augustinian conception of free will. Maimonides’s conception of freedom and moral responsibility, as he underlines, is a conception accepted by both Greek philosophers and the Bible (EC chap. 8). Considering how heavily Maimonides draws on Aristotle’s ethical teaching in the Eight Chapters, we may infer that he means by “Greek philosophers” especially Aristotle. Because he stresses human responsibility for actions and for the cultivation

. Richard Sorabji’s distinction between being caused and being necessitated is helpful if one is to grasp the dimension of freedom in the Aristotelian view of choice (Necessity, Cause and Blame: Perspectives on Aristotle’s Theory [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006], esp. chap. 2). Cf. Pines’s entertaining the notion that Maimonides embraces a deterministic view because he does not embrace liberty of indifference, in “Excursus: Notes on Maimonides’ Views concerning Human Will,” in Studies in Philosophy, ed. Samuel Hugo Berman, Scripta Hierosolymitana, vol. 6 (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1960), 195–98, esp. 196 n. 217.

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of virtuous as opposed to vicious habits, we may infer that he has in mind something like Aristotle’s conception of choice (prohairesis), a combination of reason and desire (briefly formulated by Aristotle as “deliberate desire” [bouleutike¯ orexis], EN 1113a11). Maimonides uses the expected Arabic equivalent for choice (ikhtiya¯r) often throughout the Eight Chapters and the Guide, and he alludes to the causal role of desire, in contrast to imagination or sensation, in the Eight Chapters (chap. 2). It is to be expected that Aristotle’s views on choice are linked, even if they do not form a system of the modern type, with his views on form and teleology. It would not be surprising if Maimonides were to follow Aristotle’s lead in this; however, it may not be so easy to show that Aristotle and the Bible see eye to eye on the matter of freedom. In a matter that may be unrelated, Maimonides insists that Aristotle’s views undermine the Law (Guide 2.25). Of course, I refer to his claim that Aristotle’s views on eternity are inimical to the miracle of the Law’s being revealed. It is tempting to assume that one can separate claims about human freedom from claims about the revelation of Law. Yet there is an important doctrine that may link freedom to views on eternity versus creation: I refer to form, especially intellectual form (Guide 1.1). Are forms more compatible with creation or with eternity? As I have already acknowledged, theologians like Aquinas developed elaborate schemes for harmonizing creation with creation of forms. In a similar vein, even if without an elaborate attempt to account for the presence of eternal forms in the divine mind such as one finds in Aquinas, Maimonides speaks of the world as being created for six days, after which time natures are more or less fixed (EC chap. 8 and Guide 2.29, p. 345). It would appear that the fixity of natures (what Maimonides calls the “nature of existence”), whether by virtue of eternity or by some cessation of changeableness in natures, is likely to be related to freedom, as the Greek philosophers conceive it. If the form of a being is its actuality, which is good, then form or actuality can orient—even if it does not determine—human action toward an end. Leaving that aside, the pressing question is still whether the Bible understands human choice and freedom as the Greek philosophers did. To determine whether this is the case, according to Maimonides’s own more detailed analyses of scripture (as opposed to his mere assertions), we will look at his extensive and vigorous efforts to root out each and every hint of determinism or fatalism he finds in or near scripture. Having touched in passing on the specter of fatalism, I need to say a word about Spinoza’s conception of determinism. Many interpreters are quick to underline Spinoza’s heavy reliance upon the language of freedom.

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Of course, the Theologico-Political Treatise even more than the Ethics is filled with talk of human freedom—though mainly with reference to political liberty. All or nearly all interpreters agree that Spinoza is not a crude fatalist. He has no intention of encouraging human beings to become passive. He does not claim that human beings are merely subject to external forces. Yet it can hardly be denied that determinism plays a crucial role in Spinoza’s teaching not only about God but also about human beings (E 1p32 and 2p48). Although he cultivates the rhetoric of freedom (especially in part 5 of the Ethics), that rhetoric is intended merely to prevent crude fatalism or naïve passivity—especially among the mediating class of intellectuals who are familiar with the deterministic teaching of the Ethics—not to deny determinism. Furthermore, it is not intended to undercut the shocking effect of the open admission of determinism. As I have already argued, Spinoza’s most important objective in declaring determinism so openly is to cultivate religious tolerance, especially among the intellectuals who purvey it for the many. Although no other early modern philosopher declared determinism as openly as Spinoza, evidence abounds that he is not alone in opposing premodern views on freedom. The main form that this opposition to premodern views takes is the limitation of will to what Aristotle refers to as the voluntary (ekousia). Aristotle’s clearest case of voluntary action is that an agent is unconstrained by external force. Even Descartes, who seems to afford such scope to the will, characterizes it as the ability to act without constraint (Meditations 4, AT 7: 57–58). Of course, Hobbes is well known for presenting the will as merely the last appetite (Leviathan chap. 6). Locke’s long and circuitous Essay concerning Human Understanding reaches its peak of evasiveness in his account of freedom or liberty (2.21). Of course, he denies that “free” should be used as an adjective to modify will (2.21.10, 2.21.14–17). Although his conception of liberty is much debated, when succinctly described it also appears to be equivalent to lack of constraint or enslavement (2.21.8, 2.21.12, and esp. 2.21.24), in keeping with Locke’s concern with “conduct,” especially political conduct. His discussion of liberty in the Second Treatise of Government is in the chapter “Of Slavery” (chap. 4)—thus confirming the view that he understands liberty as lack of constraint. To this rather meager conception of the voluntary (or will or

. See Steven Frankel, “Determined to Be Free: The Meaning of Freedom in Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise,” Review of Politics 73 (2011): 55–76. . Locke reworked this enormous section of the Essay more than any other, which enabled him to make it even more labyrinthine than the rest of that work.

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liberty) as lacking constraint, Aristotle adds his conception of choice. To begin with, choice is contrasted with the voluntary by who may possess it. Even animals and children may act voluntarily; however, only adults are capable of exercising choice. Whether action is voluntary or involuntary depends primarily on factors over which the actor lacks control. (The other leading example of involuntary action, leaving aside constraint by external force, is when an actor through no fault of his own engages in action while lacking a crucial piece of information or particular knowledge [e.g., that a weapon that one has been led to believe by a trustworthy informant is disarmed is in fact armed].) In contrast, choice is, to use the Aristotelian and subsequently Stoic phrase, up to the actor. Reason can guide desire to pursue a fitting object, assuming that the actor has cultivated the right kind of habits or active conditions (hexeis). The key features of choice for our purposes are the leading role played by reason, the supporting role played by the cultivation of ethical virtue, and the irrelevance of external factors. Although Aristotle never argues in abstraction from the agent’s possession or lack of knowledge of all of the relevant particulars, we can easily consider his teaching about choice while abstracting from the influence of external factors (that is, consider “choice proper”). (The same cannot be said for example of Spinoza’s understanding of “freedom.” For him, freedom is largely a matter of the relative power of an actor’s conatus vis-à-vis external factors.) To take, again, the more striking example, even Descartes, that apparent proponent of the importance of will, seems to have elevated a decidedly modern conception of the formation of character. Putting little stock in the power of human beings to master their passions, he developed an account of the formation of character that sounds strikingly like behaviorism (Passions of the Soul, a. 50). As we will see when we turn back to Spinoza, even though he speaks of the “free man,” his early establishment of determinism is never abandoned. Rather, he is required to develop a highly nuanced and sophisticated form of determinism. . That Spinoza understands freedom as something akin to Aristotle’s voluntary has a great deal to do with his understanding of action in light of a distinctly modern conception of “power,” which is corroborated somewhat by the fact that Locke’s Essay treats “liberty” in a chapter (2.21) entitled “Of Power.” Power is equally central to Hobbes’s teaching on “will.” Cf. Leviathan chap. 6 with chaps. 10 and 11. “Power” in the modern context is disengaged from any conception of form, essence, actuality, or telos. Cf. E 1p34, the equivalence of power with “essence.” . Many objections could be raised to this interpretation of the Passions of the Soul. Most obviously in a. 48, Descartes seems to uphold a very traditional view of self-mastery. It would go well beyond the scope of the present context to justify my passing reference to behaviorism.

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For now, let us turn to Maimonides to confront the challenge both of determining his own views on freedom and to clarify the relation between the views of Greek philosophers and the Bible on freedom. As I said above, his views on freedom in the Bible are evident not only in his analyses of scripture but especially in his efforts to root out any apparent hints of determinism therein. At times these efforts are difficult to detect because Maimonides uses foils outside of the Bible to correct errant or dangerous views prevalent among the Jewish people. Now, it will be tempting to assume that such errant views are merely the result of non-Jewish influences upon the Jews. There are three examples of determinist views (or views closely connected to determinism) discussed by Maimonides that I would like to consider: astral determinism, Abu Bakr al-Razi’s views on evil, and Ash‘arite views on providence (and freedom). Strictly speaking none of these views is Jewish. Yet one must wonder why Jews seem to need to be warned about them. Perhaps it is because various features of Judaism lend themselves to these same views, even if by different means. Maimonides is well known for his concerted opposition to astrology or astral determinism or judicial astrology. On at least one occasion, he was asked by rabbis about the validity of astrology—which was admittedly quite popular at this time in the medieval period (Letter on Astrology). The other cases are less obviously related to determinism so I must say a word to justify my inclusion of them. The case of the Ash‘arites is easier. They were one of the two most important theological schools in Islam. They adopted an extreme, unmitigated view of divine omnipotence. Divine providence when taken to the extreme of unmitigated omnipotence precludes human freedom. As we will see, Maimonides uses their position as a red line that Jews must not approach. Although he argues as if no Jew has ever believed what the Ash‘arites believe, it will turn out that, at a minimum, many Jews hold closely related views. How, the reader might wonder, is al-Razi’s view that evil outweighs good in human life related to determinism or even fatalism? To begin with the obvious, no one has ever been accused of being a fatalist and an optimist at the same time. Fatalism is inevitably connected to pessimism or despair. Unfortunately, Jewish history lends itself to the view that this life is predominantly evil—which makes Jews prone to views like Ash‘arite fatalism and Razian despair. Maimonides’s response to the views of al-Razi shows how important it is, if human beings are going to act as if they are free, to believe that on balance life is good and that we can through the acquisition of moral virtue learn to choose well.

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Let us begin with astral determinism. Maimonides’s most straightforward statement on the matter appears in the Letter on Astrology. After referring the readers of his letter to his Mishneh Torah (H. Avodah Zarah) for a repudiation of astrology, he sets about specifying the trustworthy sources of knowledge: reasoned proofs, perception, and things received from the prophets and the righteous. As if to follow up on the third source of knowledge, he cites biblical proof texts most of which have only indirect bearing on astrology. He quickly links exile of the Jewish people from the Land of Israel to their father’s sin of studying books on astrology. He goes on to say that he has studied nearly every work of idolatrous pseudoscience, including astrology, that he could get his hands on. As becomes apparent in his Guide, to which he refers at this point in the Letter, his study of idolatrous works enabled him to explain that Jewish practice which comes closest to looking like an idolatrous practice, the sacrificial service of the Temple in Jerusalem. The argument of the Guide is that the sacrificial service is a kind of anti-idolatrous parallel practice developed to wean the Jewish people from the idolatry of the surrounding peoples. Whatever the truth may be about the historical origins of the sacrificial service, every reader of the Letter is struck by Maimonides’s formulation that the Jewish people underwent exile not only because they studied astrology but also because they did not study the art of war and conquest. The most traditional view of Exile is that it is punishment for the sins of the Jewish people. To some extent, Maimonides acknowledges this traditional view by characterizing astrology itself as the sin for which the Jewish people were punished by exile. Studying astrology is sinful as a form of idolatry, and if there is anything that the Bible opposes, it is idolatry. It would appear then that God punishes the Jewish people for their idolatry. Yet the additional claim that the Jewish people had not studied the art of war adds something to the traditional view. According to that view, God punishes those whom he wishes to punish because he is a particularly provident God—indeed, an omnipotent God whose power to punish is hypothetically unlimited, even if it is limited in the Jewish case by His repeated promise eventually to restore the Jewish people. Yet Maimonides argues that astrology led Jews to neglect the art of war. In other words, astrology made them

. For a complete English translation of the letter, see Ralph Lerner, Maimonides’ Empire of Light (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 178–87. . Maimonides’s allusion to Isaiah 47:13, however, is surely one of the strongest explicit repudiations of astrology in the Bible.

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passive. That passivity entailed, merely by the natural order of things, the punishment of exile. This view of Exile is hardly traditional. When we turn to the Guide to consider what he says there about Exile, we find confirmation that Maimonides’s apparently traditional interpretation of Exile and divine providence is not so traditional as it might appear at first. The context of his treatment of Exile is his analysis of the three possible views on prophecy, that is, the opening of his prophetology (2.32). The three possible views are that of the multitude, that of the philosophers, and “the opinion of our Law and the foundation of our doctrine.” According to the multitude, God makes a prophet of whomever he chooses, with the exception that a prophet cannot also be immoral. According to the philosophers, whoever possesses the requisite nature (in other words, the nature of the philosopher[-king] of Republic 6 and Alfarabi’s Virtuous City and Attainment of Happiness) and receives the requisite training must become a prophet. The view of “our Law” is the same as that of the philosophers, except that prophecy can be withheld “on account of the divine will” (mashı¯’a ila¯hiyya). In light of the Letter on Astrology, we are especially curious about this reference to divine will. It would appear to fit with the divine omnipotence of a particularly provident God. At the same time, one wonders whether the view of the multitude would not fit better with such a God than the view of “our Law.” I leave aside some of the curious examples Maimonides first gives of divine withholding to turn to the case we are interested in, the case of exile. He gives at least two examples of divine withholding in connection with exile: Baruch son of Neriah in Jeremiah (45:3–5) and the generic case in Lamentations (2:9). Yet in each case, this withholding is not the result of an unmediated act of divine will. Rather, the withholding results from exile, as a mediating cause of sorts. The point is simple. Exile results in the failure to prophesy, even for someone with the natural ability and the training to do so. The structure of Maimonides’s argument is the same in the Letter and in the Guide: God appears to act or will something. What evidence do we have that He acts or wills? Exile. Yet the Letter at least leaves open the possibility that Exile was not God’s directly willed punishment for the sin of idolatry; rather Exile resulted from the passivity induced by believing in the arguments of astrology. Let us consider whether the philosophers would admit the possibility that exile might undermine prophecy in the case of the person with the proper nature and training. (This question makes one appreciate how bold was Maimonides’s suggestion that the philosophers held a view of prophecy close to that of “our Law.” True, Aristotle wrote on divination. Yet is it not strange to speak of the philosophers as having a full-blown account

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of prophecy—indeed, of its necessity? Perhaps it is less strange when we remember that Maimonides’s predecessor, Alfarabi, certainly had such an account.) We must look not to the Guide but to one of Maimonides’s apparently more Jewish books, the Commentary on the Mishnah, again, the Eight Chapters. Of course, the Jewish character of the Eight Chapters is belied by Maimonides’s heavy reliance on Aristotle both in his psychology or anthropology (chapters 1 and 2) and in his ethics (chapters 3 and 4). To begin with, we must recall that according to Maimonides the Eight Chapters or the Tractate Avot, which it introduces, “leads to prophecy.” In this respect, it is directly connected to the prophetology in the Guide that we just considered. Furthermore, it discusses impediments to prophecy, both internal and external to the prophet. In Eight Chapters, chapter 4, Maimonides notes in passing that the philosophers have highlighted how improbable it is that one human being should possess all of the ethical virtues previously set forth. He turns to the case of Moses and the notorious question why he was not admitted to the Land. According to Maimonides, Moses was not admitted to the Land because he suffered from the vice of anger or irascibility (h ·araj)—a vice unbecoming a leader of the people. In Eight Chapters, chapter 7, he touches again on how vices such as irascibility, if there are enough of them, can prevent a prophet from prophesying. He adds to irascibility other moral habits, which could be considered vices only by analogy, namely, “anxiety and grief.” Although anger can be caused by external events, anxiety and grief are more obviously the result of external events. One thing is certain: Exile caused the cessation of prophecy, according to Maimonides precisely by means of inducing grief. The Guide confirms this implication of Eight Chapters, chapter 7, by reference not to philosophers and their naturalistic explanations of prophecy but to the rabbis of the Talmud. In Guide 2.36, Maimonides cites Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat, 30b, “Prophecy does not descend during sadness or languor.” And he cites, as he does in Eight Chapters, chapter 7, the case of Jacob’s loss of prophecy upon the loss of Joseph.10 As in the Letter on Astrology and in Guide 2.32, what might appear at first to be a miraculous explanation proves to be a naturalistic one. The claim that . Compare Strauss’s claim that the Code is in a sense a more philosophic book than the Guide (Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983], 192). . In Guide 3.18, Maimonides refers the reader to Alfarabi’s discussion of the Platonic view (in the no longer extant Commentary on the Ethics) that divine providence is especially partial to those who can make their soul pass from one moral quality to another. Also consider 1.36. For evidence that Maimonides includes irascibility among vices, see Eight Chapters 4, where he identifies “gentleness” as the mean between “irascibility” and “servility.” Cf. Selected Aphorisms nos. 18, 56. Also see chap. 1, note 8, above. 10. Chapters of Rabbi Eliezer 38.

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it is the view of our Law that God can withhold prophecy seems at first to be miraculous. Yet the context in which He withholds prophecy is exile. Is it truly divine will that withholds prophecy in such a context? Astrology (or some other misguided theoretical view such as unmitigated divine omnipotence) causes passivity; passivity causes exile; exile causes grief; grief causes the cessation of prophecy. Let us now turn to the pessimism of Abu Bakr al-Razi, as it is described by Maimonides in Guide 3.12. Before exploring 3.12 in any detail, however, I want to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that Guide 3.13 contains Maimonides’s most extensive discussion of teleology, which we will be considering in the next chapter. Obviously, there are important connections between 3.12’s consideration of evil or the problem of evil and 3.13’s discussion of teleology, which we will need to keep our eyes out for. Maimonides opens 3.12 with the observation that the “imagination of the multitude” (khaya¯l al-jumhu¯r) is inclined to the belief that our experience of this world, as opposed to the world to come, is filled with evil. Maimonides goes on to single out al-Razi as one who is above the multi­ tude and who holds this view. This similarity between al-Razi and the multitude might not be so surprising if al-Razi did not run so contrary to the multitude in other respects—he was renowned as a physician and, more importantly, as an atheistic philosopher opposed to revelation. According to Maimonides, the view that life is predominantly evil is common in “all of the religious communities” ( jamı¯‘ al-milal). Although milal (sing., milla) could refer to any religious communities, it more often refers to revealed religious communities. Of course, it is the revealed religious communities, beginning with the Christians, who came to stress so heavily the superiority of the world to come. One cannot help but wonder, however, what the revealed communities and one of their more thoughtful opponents have in common. As with astrology which was held up as idolatry, al-Razi is being held up as an opponent of the Jewish community. Yet the multitude in the Jewish community shares something crucial with al-Razi. According to Maimonides, in his Divine Things, al-Razi bemoaned the evils that befall human beings. Although he mentions mental ailments, he emphasizes, as one might expect of a doctor, the many physical ailments and physical pains human beings suffer. Oddly though, Maimonides’s alRazi speaks of these pains as “punishment” or “revenge” (niqma). Of course, punishment implies the existence of one who inflicts punishment. One might assume that al-Razi would deny any divine involvement, since he

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opposes revelation. Instead, he seems either to have argued for the existence of a malevolent force, or, at least, to have used the supposed prevalence of suffering in human life to deny the existence of the purely good God advocated by the revealed religions. (Of course, the latter is compatible with denying any divine involvement.) Either of these views is opposed to revealed religion. Obviously, neither of these views is what al-Razi shares with believers of revealed religions. Maimonides hastens to reveal the common ground shared by al-Razi and the multitude in all religious communities: He views the world from the point of view of the individual, above all, from the viewpoint of the lone human individual, as if all that exists should exist for the sake of one human being, namely, oneself. Maimonides goes on to argue with great eloquence in favor of a shift in viewpoint. Instead of viewing everything from one’s own vantage point, human beings need to see everything in light of the whole.11 The individuals within a given species are of little consequence in comparison with the whole and the species in it. (Here, Maimonides echoes the anthropology of the first chapter of the Guide, prepares the way for a sometimes labyrinthine discussion of teleology in the next chapter [3.13], and sets up challenges to any who would oversimplify his account of providence in 3.17–18.) Human individuals underestimate their own part in their own suffering. Through an elaboration of three kinds of evil, which I touched on in chapter 1—evils due to generation and corruption, such as physical ailments, evils due to political despotism and tyranny, and evils due to a failure of moral character and individual responsibility—he makes it amply evident that human beings as individuals cause for themselves the preponderance of evil, which they suffer as individuals. Of course, as members of a species, we may suffer what might appear to be more than our fair share of evils. Nature can achieve what is good only for the most part, not in every instance.12 Returning to our main point, we recall the obvious area of common ground between al-Razi and the multitude of believers. They both exaggerate the importance of the individual. Al-Razi does this by, for example, considering the unexplained paralysis of a given individual as due either to a malign force or to a prevalence of disorder in the world. In contrast, the believers in revealed religions incline to the view that divine will is responsible for all such suffering. In other words, they tend to exaggerate divine

11. See Laws 10, 903c–904a, and cf. Rousseau Emile, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979), the Savoyard Vicar, pp. 260–314, esp. 296–97, 300–301, 312–13. 12. Compare Aristotle’s understanding of what is “for the most part.” See chap. 1, note 42, above.

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omnipotence or particular providence. Rather than explicitly warn his reader to avoid this mistake, Maimonides highlights the misstep taken by both the unbeliever, al-Razi, and the multitude of believers, namely, the exaggeration of the importance of the individual or of the individual’s viewpoint. Nevertheless, in the case of believers of revealed religions, their exaggeration of the importance of the individual’s viewpoint arises through an exaggeration of particular providence. Although the exaggeration of the importance of the individual stems from different causes in al-Razi and the multitude of believers, such exaggeration leads to pessimism, despair, and passivity. As with astrology, in the case of al-Razi Maimonides uses an opponent of revelation to undercut a dangerous tendency toward passivity in his own revealed community. Once again, he vindicates human freedom. Let us now turn to Ash‘arite views on divine omnipotence. By the time the reader reaches Guide 3.17, she has heard a steady drumbeat in favor of human freedom. Maimonides’s dismissal of the Ash‘arite view on human freedom comes as no surprise. In contrast, the argument throughout the Guide against unmitigated divine omnipotence is relatively subtle—even if some form of mitigation of divine omnipotence is required to preserve human freedom. After all, to call into question or to demand limits upon divine omnipotence is to raise serious doubts about Maimonides’s commitment to negative theology, which is generally taken for granted by readers. The theme of 3.17 is neither freedom nor omnipotence but divine providence. Yet different views of divine providence are intimately connected with views on freedom and omnipotence. For example, the first and most radical view of divine providence, the view of the Epicureans, is at once the most radical rejection of divine providence and divine omnipotence. If there is not any god, then there can be neither providence nor omnipotence. Once we leave the first, easy case, matters rapidly become more complicated, or, at least, so it appears. Maimonides appears to set forth five different views of providence: Epicurean, Aristotelian, Ash‘arite, Mu‘tazilite, and the opinion of our Law. This appearance of a profusion of views is only amplified by the fact that he subdivides the fifth view into a series of others, numbering roughly four—though it should be underlined that he opens the chapter by claiming that there are five opinions (not eight), which at least hints that at least some of the four or so views which he ranges under the opinion of our Law replicate some of the previous views. Indeed, one of the most striking features of the chapter is how Maimonides sets aside some of the traditional Jewish views by showing their similarities to the views of Muslim dialectical theologians, whom he has already criticized quite profoundly.

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The appearance of five, or as many as eight, views on providence lends itself to detaching Maimonides’s account of providence from his accounts of creation/eternity and prophecy. Of course, creation, prophecy, and providence are closely related. Why, then, are there three positions on the first two themes and as many as eight on the last one? I have already shown in this chapter that the distinction Maimonides draws between the philosophic view and “the opinion of our Law” (not to be confused with the view of the multitude) on prophecy is less stark than it appears at first. In certain respects, the differences between Aristotle and Plato regarding eternity (or creation) are not very great, as Maimonides himself implies in his first pre­ sentation of the three views on creation (2.13)—in contrast to 2.25. Now, although Plato and Aristotle may be distinguished in 2.25 by the extent of the fixity of natures each envisions, Maimonides stresses that neither view is sufficient for the kind of miracle required for divine revelation of the Law. In other words, there may be a tendency toward a reduction of three views on prophecy and creation to merely two basic views. Against this background, the profusion of views on providence in 3.17 starts to appear even stranger. Indeed, one begins to wonder whether Maimonides does not tend to multiply views about providence excessively, which is not to say unintentionally.13 Perhaps he develops what appears at first like such a profusion of views to conceal, even more extensively than he did in the case of creation or prophecy, the similarity between some of the views. Before looking more closely at 3.17, however, I want to draw out another piece of evidence supporting my claim that the basic opposition may be reducible to two rather than three views. In spite of the obvious interconnectedness of creation, prophecy, and providence, the set of three regarding creation (2.13: Bible, Plato, Aristotle [exclusion of Epicureanism]; 2.25: Aristotle, Plato, Bible) seem unconnected to the set of three regarding prophecy (2.32: the multitude, philosophers, the opinion of our Law). Indeed, the obvious difference is that Plato drops out. This absence of Plato is sustained by his absence in the five or more views on providence. Even if I am incorrect about a tendency toward a reduction to two basic views, I believe that I’ve given the reader reason to pause over the profusion of views on providence. Leaving aside Epicureanism and because our concern is with the issue of human freedom, we wish to focus on Maimonides’s rejection of Ash‘arism.

13. For another piece of evidence that Maimonides may be multiplying options on providence in a bid to conceal similarities among some of the positions listed, consider the inclusion of Epicureanism in 3.18 with its exclusion in 2.13, p. 285, the first inventory of positions on creation/eternity.

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Any attempt to look at Ash‘arism in isolation, however, is quickly frustrated. Not only is it the third of the five views, therefore demanding comparison, at least, with the second view (Aristotle’s), but also Maimonides explicitly draws parallels between Ash‘arism and, of all opinions, that of Aristotle! Here, Maimonides proceeds in a manner both like and unlike that of his treatment of astrology and al-Razi. Previously, he took views that would appear to share nothing with Judaism to bring out into the open certain risks inherent in Judaism as a revealed religion. Here, he takes Ash‘arism, a view that would appear to share nothing in common with Aristotle, and draws potentially misleading similarities between the two views. Judaism is not directly in play here. Perhaps the similarity he draws is intended not to reveal a similarity so much as to understate the shocking differences between Aristotle and Ash‘arism. We should avoid, however, jumping to the conclusion that Maimonides does not intend to teach us something about Judaism, at some point down the road. Maimonides begins with the peculiar feature of Ash‘arism. It denies that anything universal or particular is due to chance. Maimonides will draw from this the ultimate consequence that Ash‘arism eliminates the “nature of the possible” (t·abı¯‘a al-mumkin)—all that remains are what is “necessary” (wa¯jiba) or “impossible” (mumtani‘a). Put simply, the Ash‘arites place everything under divine control. In other words, they embrace the most extreme version of omnipotence, which I have referred to previously as un­ mitigated omnipotence. There are few things that Maimonides criticizes in the thought of others as openly in his writings as this illness of the Mutakallimun, that is, their subversion of the “possible.”14 It was Aristotle who first developed the vocabulary or “conceptual framework” for the distinctions between the possible, the impossible, and the necessary, upon which Maimonides’s discussion of Ash‘arism is built.15 Insofar as the Ash‘arites eliminate key elements of Aristotle’s metaphysics, they can hardly be thought to be in agreement with him in any significant sense. With this starting point (denial of chance) and this conclusion (the elimination of the nature of the possible), we turn with surprise back to near the beginning of Maimonides’s discussion of Ash‘arism, where he draws a similarity between Ash‘arism and Aristotle: Aristotle and the Ash‘arites both establish “equality” (taswiyya) between the fall of a leaf and the death of a human being.16 14. Here, Maimonides echoes loudly his discussions of how the Mutakallimun distort the “nature of existence” (1.71) and the “possible” (Guide 1.73, tenth premise, and EC chap. 1). 15. See Meta. esp. bk. 5, chaps. 5 and 12. 16. Maimonides’s choice of leaves and dead human beings is not an accident. Consider the connection between the two in his account of Aristotle (Guide 32b) and of his own view (36a).

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The equality that Aristotle establishes results from his god’s providence only with respect to the species. Insofar as the leaf and the human being are both particulars (or individuals), not universals, neither is subject to direct providence in Aristotle’s account. Ash‘arites establish “equality” on quite different grounds. Their God is provident with respect to every event and with respect to every particular. Here, the similarity that Maimonides draws between Aristotle and Ash‘arites conceals more than it reveals. It conceals the more important dissimilarity of Aristotle (general providence) versus Ash‘arites (unlimited particular providence, resulting from assumed unmitigated omnipotence), by highlighting their sole agreement, establishing a uniform relation between God and all particulars. The value of this concealing similarity is that it serves to place both Aristotle and the Ash‘arites in a camp opposed to, or at least apparently opposed to, Maimonides and Judaism. After all, when Maimonides finally gets around to setting forth his view as roughly the fourth among the views espoused by adherents of the Law, his view’s salient characteristic is that only human individuals are provided for by God. In other words, he rejects the “equality” between human beings and all other particulars, embraced by the Ash‘arites and Aristotle—or so it appears at first glance. To determine whether Maimonides’s distancing of his own position from Aristotle’s is misleading or believable, one would need to explore how directly God provides for human beings in Maimon­ ides’s account. After all, even Aristotle admits that human beings possess a capacity to govern or provide for themselves, which other animals lack.17 However things might stand between Maimonides and Aristotle, we are most interested in the role of the Ash‘arite position in Maimonides’s effort to guide the Jewish people. As I have said earlier, the Ash‘arite position is set forth as foreign to Jewish views; in effect, he treats their view as a red line that Jews must not approach. In contrast, the first two Jewish views of providence that he outlines are connected to Mu‘tazilism. Contrary to Maimonides’s ordering (third view: Ash‘arism; fourth view: Mu‘tazilism), in the history of Islam Mu‘tazilism appeared first and Ash‘arism second. I do not intend to fault Maimonides for a failure to follow the historical order. Mu‘tazilism is presented second in part because there are various features of it that are both more reasonable and closer, if not identical, to views that Maimonides wants Jews to adopt—thus he presents the Mu‘tazilite position in closer proximity to the various Jewish views. As one might expect, however, because Mu‘tazilism came first, there may be connections between 17. Compare my discussion of Maimonides’s views on the imagination and prudence in chap. 6 below with Maimonides’s account of Aristotelian providence in Guide 3.17 (32a–b).

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Mu‘tazilism and Ash‘arism that are less obvious. Perhaps Mu‘tazilism is not free of some of the problems that will blossom into Ash‘arism. In this roundabout way we can begin to see the subtle connections between Judaism and Ash‘arism to which Maimonides may be alluding, even while attempting to interrupt any affinities between the two. To begin with, however, Maimonides presents Mu‘tazilism as superior precisely in its stand on the matter of human freedom. Mu‘tazilites hold that “man has the ability to act of his own accord.”18 Consequently, law is not undermined, or at least not wholly undermined, by them. They characterize God in a way that they believe complements their understanding of human freedom. We will need to pay close attention to whether they succeed in developing a truly complementary account of God’s powers, especially because the Ash‘arites evidently failed on that count. Mu‘tazilites focus on God’s wisdom and justice. Above all, God does not punish just human beings. In addition, God is omniscient down to the falling of this particular leaf. Here is the decisive departure from the account Maimonides himself eventually develops. Is this omniscience fruitless? Had Mu‘tazilites claimed some form of divine knowledge of human individuals, perhaps such an argument would have fit with Maimonides, but not so for a “particular leaf.” If God knows such things and God is just, then He must in some sense be provident with respect to, if not provident to, even such particulars as leaves. From the point at which Maimonides begins to draw this inference that every suffering must be recompensed, he describes the Mu‘tazilite position as being subject to “incongruities and contradictions.”19 The root of these incongruities, however, reveals a crucial connection with the Ash‘arite position. The Mu‘tazilites, insofar as they defend human freedom, are on the right track, but insofar as they overstate divine knowledge of particulars, they are on the same track as the Ash‘arites. Maimonides states that these two aspects of Mu‘tazilite thought, divine omniscience and human freedom, are “incongruous” only briefly or without elaboration or clarification at the end of his summary of the four views he considers before considering the Jewish views.20 In his main discussion of the Mu‘tazilites, in 18. He goes on to add, however, that that ability to act of one’s own accord is not “absolute” (mut·laqa). 19. It is worth noting that although Maimonides ascribes both “incongruities and contradictions” (shana¯‘a¯t wa-tana¯quda¯t) (p. 468) to the Mu‘tazilites, he ascribes only “incongruities”—even if “great” ones (shana¯‘a¯t ‘az ·ima) (p. 466)—to the Ash‘arites. Even though the views of the Ash‘arites are more abhorrent, they appear also to be more consistent. Indeed, their views seem to be the result of working out many of the contradictions within the Mu‘tazilite position, which is not to say that theirs is the only way one might work those out. 20. See p. 469, 34b.

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contrast, rather than reiterate this implication of his argument, he focuses on the incongruous consequences of their views on divine knowledge. If God knows of an undeserved suffering, then he must recompense it. Since many decent human beings suffer in this life, the Mu‘tazilites must argue that God somehow offers them recompense in the world to come. If this were not incongruous enough (harm now, but pay back for undeserved harm later), they add that God repays not only human beings but also other animals for their suffering in this life. This is not the last that we will hear of the repayment of animals for their suffering. Leaving that aside, the Mu‘tazilite stress upon suffering in this life and just compensation in the next reminds us strongly of al-Razi’s affinity with the revealed position. Both al-Razi and “the religious communities” exaggerate the suffering inherent in this life because they exaggerate the importance of the individual. Ultimately, human freedom suffers within such an understanding of the cosmos. Along the way in our review of Maimonides’s assessment of the Mu‘tazilites’ position, we have seen that they share with the Ash‘arites a tendency to exaggerate divine knowledge of particulars. This exaggeration leads to overstatements about divine recompense. Even if few Jews have not gone quite so far as the Ash‘arites in denying human freedom, perhaps they have embraced a theology akin to that of the Mu‘tazilites, which shows the drift toward Ash‘arism. That Mu‘tazilite theology had far greater direct influence within Judaism, for example, in the theologies of Saadya Gaon and Bahya Ibn Pakuda, than Ash‘arism is widely recognized. Yet we are interested in whether Maimonides highlights subtle strains even of Ash‘arism within Jewish theology. We can expect as much because we know already that he ascribes to rabbis of different periods views akin to Mu‘tazilite views. We can consider only some salient moments in Maimonides’s complicated account of Jewish views on providence. Maimonides begins his account of the fifth position boldly, and quickly retreats. He begins in a manner somewhat reminiscent of his account of the Mu‘tazilites. The Law of Moses our Master acknowledges man’s ability to act in accordance with “his nature, his choice [bi-ikhtiya¯rih], and his will [biira¯datih].” Oddly, however, he adds that “all the species of animals move in virtue of their own will [bi-ira¯datiha¯].” Although Maimonides may be referring to the Aristotelian “voluntary” (ekousia) in this reference to the will of animals, there is little evidence that the Bible draws the same distinction.21 21. Review chap. 2, notes 34–35, above and the digression on form and choice in chap. 3. A survey of key discussions of “will” in the Guide (see, for example, 1.68, end; 2.1, 4th speculation; 2.12; 2.13; 2.14, 5th method; 2.18–19; 2.32; and 3.17) shows that Maimonides uses ira¯da and

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He seems to imply some failure in the Jewish tradition, akin to the failure of the Mu‘tazilites, to distinguish human choice from voluntary action by animals. Perhaps his claim in Eight Chapters, chapter 8, that the views of the Bible and Greek philosophy on man’s ability to act (or will or choice) are in harmony is less a description of all of the Bible than a description of what the Law as law requires. That the Law requires something like the Greek understanding of choice seems apparent. Yet biblical assertions of divine omniscience and omnipotence cannot help but tend at times to run contrary to such views on choice. We will leave aside for now what Maimonides says about the Law of Moses regarding the will in animals. The next stage of his argument is, in certain respects, highly reminiscent of his account of the Mu‘tazilite view. Like the Mu‘tazilites, leaving aside human freedom, the Law of Moses next stresses God’s justice. All human suffering, indeed, even all human pleasure is in accord with human desert and evinces that all His ways are judgment (Deut. 32:4). We are reminded of the incongruity just announced above in the Mu‘tazilite effort to harmonize human freedom with divine omniscience. After attempting to distinguish the Jewish view of the fate of the human individual from other views, he discusses at length elements of the Jewish view of human desert that, though far more extensive, are highly reminiscent of the Mu‘tazilite claim about divine recompense: Jewish theology demands that every human get what he deserves, and this leads inevitably to the problem of the suffering of the just, which, though it is not taken up in the Torah, is taken up by the rabbinic sages. When Maimonides finally attends to the problem whether Judaism has ever extended divine providence regarding individual human beings to individual animals, he states that such a view was never embraced in “ancient times” (qadı¯man). He admits that the Geonim have, however, accepted such a view. It is difficult to ignore a subtle parallelism in Maimonides’s accounts of recompense and his account of who should receive recompense, that is, every man receives his deserts : divine recompense for sufferings of the innocent (the “sufferings of love”) :: no recompense for animals : recompense for animals. In each ratio in this proportion, the former view is the older view. Maimonides goes on to make it clear that he rejects the view of the Geonim. The idea that other animals might be recompensed is disgraceful. Yet we must mashı¯’a with some indifference—with the exception that he prefers the latter in connection with God. A key departure from that preference, I believe, indicates how interchangeable he views these terms as being, namely, 2.13 (p. 284, 29a). On that occasion, he speaks indifferently of God’s having an alteration of ira¯da or mashı¯’a. In other words, either term can refer to “will,” not only to what Aristotle refers to by the “voluntary” (ekousia).

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consider whether the logic of the older view might not be connected to the logic of the more recent view. Review of Maimonides’s account of the Mu‘tazilites shows there is a connection between recompense for human individuals and recompense for individual animals. They both presuppose divine omniscience.22 Divine omniscience about particulars resonates oddly with the earlier discussion of al-Razi. Both al-Razi and advocates of divine omniscience exaggerate the importance of the individual. We have already seen that for Maimonides divine omniscience is incongruous with human freedom. If so, then he is likely to reject divine omniscience about particulars (though it must be admitted that he continues to affirm it until the end of 3.17) not only with respect to animals but also, perhaps especially, with respect to human beings. Of course, Maimonides affirms divine justice toward individual human beings. A key question is how one might affirm such justice without presupposing divine omniscience about particulars. The answer is for God to give human beings a faculty that other animals lack, namely, “intellect” (al-‘aql)—but not just any intellect. Maimonides must, here (474), be referring to practical intellect or prudence, an indispensable aspect of choice.23 Before turning to Spinoza, I want to review a key insight from our survey of these three moments of Maimonides’s defense of freedom and opposition to fatalism: astrology, al-Razi, and Ash‘arism. No matter what reservations the reader might have about linking Maimonides’s views of providence to Aristotle’s, we have seen again and again Maimonides’s affinity for Aristotle’s views on freedom. A key insight we discovered in passing, while considering Maimonides’s critique of Ash‘arism—which included his apparent assimilation of Ash‘arism to Aristotle—was that the Ash‘arite destruction of the possible goes hand in hand with Ash‘arite belief in unmitigated omnipotence. Conversely limits on divine power are required if the possible is to be preserved—but, perhaps most importantly, without the preservation of the possible, human freedom cannot be salvaged. Once again, we run unexpectedly into a convergence between Maimonides and Aristotle on the relation between freedom and form or nature. One needs something like an Aristotelian conception of form, or nature of existence, if human choice or freedom is to be preserved. Without form, there can be no choice 22. This underlying connection is borne out by the fact that though recompense for animals does not appear in the Law of Moses (the most “ancient times”), it does appear in the Tanakh. See Guide 1.14’s reference to Eccles. 3:19. 23. Prudence can mean a number of things. Most simply, it refers to “deliberating well” (EN 1142b17–34). “Deliberation” is the rational component of “choice” as “deliberate desiring.”

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between good actuality and the many bad actualities. In accordance with Aristotle’s ethical metaphor of the target, it is difficult to hit the target, while there are innumerable ways of missing it. Unless one maintains the distinction between potency and actuality (or form), there cannot be any room for possibility. This feature of Aristotelian (and Maimonidean) thought is not often recognized because the space between potency and act does not make possible more extreme forms of choice or will such as Augustinian libertarianism.24 One thing is amply evident when we turn to Spinoza: he has no room for the Aristotelian space between potency and act. That space has been eliminated along with the demise of form and actuality. As conatus ascends, the distinction between potency and act fades away. For Spinoza (as for, to my knowledge, all of his early modern predecessors since Bacon), the potency (power) of a being is its act (essence) (E 1p34). Although early modern philosophy must not be confused with Ash‘arism, especially regarding divine power, Spinoza’s conception of the power of natural beings shares with Ash‘arism, at least, this repudiation of the Aristotelian possible. Similarly, early modern philosophy when it attacks form and actuality does not surprise us by treating all features of beings as, in some sense, accidents—like the Ash‘arites (see Guide 1.73, premise 8). Spinoza’s rejection of a premodern conception of possibility does not mean that he is naively fatalistic, as are Maimonides’s Ash‘arites. Ash‘arism renders God the sole or sufficient cause of all events. Even though Spinoza claims a form of monism, his understanding of modes, especially finite modes, cannot entail naïve fatalism. Above all, he does not view God as an immediate cause of all things. Indeed, he links such arguments, which imply a denial of secondary (or transitive) causes, to the Bible or the Hebrews (TTP 1.1.5). Although God is not the immediate or transitive cause of all things, He is the immanent cause of all things (E 1p18). To say that all is “in” God, then, is to say that all things are subject to the laws of nature. These laws, which are the infinite modes, are the immanent causes of all things. As laws, they do not themselves act or cause transitively; rather, they describe the action of finite modes. Among these finite modes, human beings themselves are to be counted as transitive causes, to the extent that they are “active.” To the extent that they are subject to other transitive causes, they are, of course, passive.

24. See chap. 3, notes 60–62.

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Although he does not have three foils, as does Maimonides in his account of freedom, Spinoza does have (at least) three important elements in his discussion of the determination of human action: (1) his initial repudiation of the possible or contingent (E 1p29), followed by a rehabilitation of some sense of possibility and contingency (2p31, 4dd3–4, 4p11); (2) his discussion of the “free man,” which at least appears highly reminiscent of premodern accounts of freedom; and (3) his explanation of and elaboration upon the difference between passive and active affects. Here, let us recall the features of Aristotelian choice we outlined earlier in the chapter: the leading role of reason, the supporting role of ethical virtue, and the irrelevance of the external for choice proper. My main concern will be to determine whether I have overstated my case in asserting that Spinoza, like the Ash‘arites, has no room for Aristotelian possibility and choice. In addition, I will need to determine whether Spinozist “freedom” affords reason a role at all akin to the role Aristotle affords reason in choice. Although at times Spinoza appears to afford reason a guiding role (5p10), I believe that it cannot in any significant sense be said to rule over desire (cf. 4p7). We begin with the most accessible part of Spinoza’s account of “freedom,” the “free man” propositions (E 4pp67–73). This section of the Ethics softens the effect of Spinoza’s determinism (2p44) at the same time that it sets the stage for his critique of Stoicism for overstating the power of reason or will in human action (5pr). That it softens the former is obvious. How it sets the stage for the latter is less so. Indeed, the “free man” propositions could be thought to lead the reader to expect too much of reason. They seem at times to blend elements of Greek ethics with that of Christianity and Stoicism. As we have already seen in chapter 2, Spinoza’s willingness to draw on premodern imagery to establish his account of the “free man” has a great deal to do with the target audience of these propositions. Throughout the Ethics, Spinoza relies on premodern tropes to ease the transition from premodern to modern for those mediating intellectuals who are the harbingers of his new message of liberal democratic politics and religious tolerance— and the recipients of the more theologically sophisticated teaching of the Ethics. Unlike the Theologico-Political Treatise—where Spinoza for the most part stresses notions of political freedom that are accessible in some ways even to the multitude, only rarely revealing his own determinism—the Ethics mixes and blends subtler shades of meaning regarding philosophic freedom and determinism. At times, even religious tolerance and determinism are allowed to converge, as in 3p49. Yet even in the Ethics it is not beneath him to employ the imagery of freedom so cherished by his theologically sophisticated audience.

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At first, Spinoza’s treatment of Stoicism (in 5pr) has an especially curious appearance. It seems odd that he should hold up Stoics as defenders of the power of reason and will, in view of the fact that Stoics were often singled out for their determinism. Although the free man propositions might appear to extol freedom, their juxtaposition with the critique of the Stoics only highlights that Spinoza is yet more deterministic than they. Leaving aside the broader context (pts. 2 and 5) of these propositions, let us turn now to part 4 to consider the relation of these propositions to the whole of that part. In the last of these propositions (4p73), Spinoza appears to show his quasi-Christian colors the most when he invokes his version of turning the other cheek, citing two earlier crucial propositions (4p37 and 4p46). Leaving aside the obvious numerological link between these three propositions (7 + 3 = 3 + 7 = 4 + 6), of the two propositions cited, only 46 states a similar version of return love for hate. P37, in contrast, is one of Spinoza’s most problematic propositions. Like 2p40, which contains scholia that are in crucial respects opposed to one another, 4p37, contains a first scholium with a quasi-Christian spirit (its key terms being religion, piety, and honor, as manifested in the complete coincidence of the common and the private good) and a second scholium that premieres Spinoza’s stateof-nature teaching. I do not mean to insinuate that these two scholia are simply contradictory. Rather, I believe that Spinoza intends for the reader to read the first scholium first in one spirit and then, after the shock of the second scholium, to be thrown back upon the first to reconsider its possible meaning. If the reader doubts whether such a disjunction exists between (previous understandings of ) Christianity and modern state-of-nature teachings, Spinoza gives us a few indications of how great the disjunction is:25 (1) Although Christianity might appeal to God, shame, or conscience to motivate obedience to law, here Spinoza underlines that the only thing that motivates action against a disobedient (passive) affect is some stronger affect. Reminding us of the weakness not only of God and shame but also of reason, Spinoza underlines affect as the cause of human action (citing 3p39 and 4p17, in addition to 4p7). He singles out “fear” as apparently the strongest of passive affects. (2) Rather than obey God, men are required to give up their power to the state in order to leave the state of nature. At least according to Spinoza’s account, God appears to be powerless in the state of nature and insufficiently powerful to affect change in the state of society—though Spinoza seems to hope that popular religion may lend support 25. Cf. my brief discussion of self-love in the appendix on Kennington’s Spinoza.

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to the power of the state. (3) In addition to God’s weakness, there is man’s weakness when subject to passive affect. Not only is reason weak but also man’s own “power or virtue” is surpassed by passive affect. This elusive use of “virtue” throws us back on two of the most important earlier moments in part 4: the equivalence of virtue with power (4d8) and the elaboration of the meaning of virtue and power (4p18), the “dictates of reason” proposition. The moment Spinoza equates virtue with power, he breaks radically with premodern notions of virtue. Premodern ethical virtue, especially Aristotelian virtue, consists in some kind of a relation of the self (especially as reason) with desire (cf. EN 1105b26–28). Although Spinoza continues to use the terminology of premodern ethics, he fills it with new meaning. His elaboration of the meaning of virtue and power in 4p18 makes this amply evident. In the scholium, virtue is equated with tending to preserve oneself. Indeed, even happiness ( felicitas) consists in this. At bottom, all is conatus. It will not abide any other principle—certainly, not reason as an independent power.26 Against such a backdrop, the free man propositions lose much of their initial quasi-Aristotelian, quasi-Christian, and quasi-Stoic luster. E 4p67 identifies the free man as a man who thinks of life, not of death. Such love of life could have many meanings. To begin with, however, it is at odds with the learning to die of Socrates or the devotion to the other life of a Christian—if it is not so foreign to the great-souled man’s devotion to this world. Although Spinoza speaks of desiring the good, he quickly qualifies that as preserving one’s own being and seeking one’s own advantage. Seeking one’s own advantage has an old and respectable heritage, yet the sense this has acquired in part 4 (at least since 4p35c2) is a relatively low sense. Each man is of greatest advantage to others when he seeks his own advantage the most—the distance from Christianity can hardly be underestimated here. At the same time, we should guard against the notion that Spinoza envisions nothing but self-preservation. On the contrary, he attempts to show how all of the highest features of human life might be reinterpreted in the light of the concept of conatus. This is not to say that conatus as the endeavor to preserve oneself can be reduced to mere “egoism.” Spinoza has in mind 26. Once again, we are reminded of Spinoza’s stalwart rejection of any and all faculty psychology (1pp48–49). Although these propositions constitute his denial of the distinction between reason and will or volition (similar to Descartes’s rejection of this opposition, Passions of the Soul a. 47), it should be obvious that he is not merely denying the distinction between traditional views of will and reason. He means by “volition” what he comes to refer to as affect. If all such “mental” phenomena are merely more or less adequate ideas, we should not expect reason to be any more easily distinguished from desire than it is from “will.”

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a convergence of the advantage of the individual with the common advantage (not around the honor of the ancients or the Christlike self-sacrifice of Christians) in the spirit of Bacon’s new philanthropy. That which makes the new philanthropy most workable is the convergence of one’s own ambition to be lauded as the benefactor of mankind in a struggle with nature—rather than to benefit merely one’s own city or nation—with that benefit of fellow human beings (New Organon 1.129). Such an ambition does not aim primarily at beautiful action, especially death on the battlefield, for its own sake; rather, it aims at the preservation of all mankind. Proposition 68 of part 4 revisits the Garden of Eden but with some shock­ ing new twists. In spite of the earlier reservations about reason (4p18), here the free man is identified as he who is guided by reason alone. Reason lacked efficacy earlier in the face of passive affect. The man who is guided by reason is one and the same as the man in whom active affects predominate. Active affects are nothing but passive affects somehow transformed once they are understood adequately (cf. 5p3). (We must leave aside further discussion of the relation between reason and active affect, until later in this chapter.) The main import of p68 is that the good man, like Adam prior to the Fall, lives in “ignorance” of good and evil. He does so because once he has adequate ideas of things, he no longer views anything as evil. And if nothing is evil, then nothing is good either (4p64). A human being who understands his own place in the world cannot help but adopt the “spirit of Christ” and identify his own good with the good of the society to which he belongs.27 Ethics 4p69 befits the philosopher more than the intellectual, unlike most of the other free man propositions. In its praise of the avoidance of danger, it brings to mind immediately the caute of Spinoza himself, as well as Plato’s version of Socrates’s daimonion. Leaving that aside, we are reminded that Aristotle, in his account of the true courage of the gentleman, no more praises what Spinoza refers to as “blind daring” (caeca audacia) than does Spinoza (EN 1115b26–29). In contrast to p69, 4p70 evinces a conflation or overlapping of the gentleman or intellectual with the philosopher. The free man needs to maintain a quasi-premodern distance from or elevation above the multitude. Here, Spinoza discourages the acceptance of favors, especially from the 27. The self-sacrificing tone of this proposition should be contrasted with the relatively obvious self-interest of, e.g., 4p18s and p35c2. At times, Spinoza seems to use the phrase “guidance of reason” (Rationis ductu) in settings where he intends to bring out a self-sacrificing tone (e.g., 4p37demo–s1 and p65); at other times he seems to use the phrase “dictates [or rules, Curley] of reason” (Rationis dictamina) in settings where he intends to bring out a self-interested tone (4p18s).

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multitude—lest one grow indebted to them or it. Of course, Aristotle highlights how the great-souled man even goes so far as to feel ashamed at being done favors (1124b10). Spinoza goes on to qualify this distance from the multitude by reminding the free man that he is merely a man and may, one day, need the assistance of common men.28 More like p69, 4p71 reinforces the distance between the free man and the multitude by encouraging the cultivation of a group of free men, who can serve as peers to one another. Much as Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics focuses its account of friendship on the ethically virtuous political actor, so Spinoza focuses his all-too-brief allusion to a group of friends on the class of intellectuals that he seeks to call forth. Although Spinoza speaks of friendship in this proposition (as he did in p70, and earlier in p37, to which he refers the reader), his passing references to friendship stand in their brevity in stark contrast to the treatment in Aristotle’s Ethics. The reason for this is not difficult to fathom. Aristotle speaks movingly and convincingly that, among the best human beings, love of oneself serves as a precondition of loving others. Yet he is able to contrast certain kinds of self-love with others to make his case. The lower form of self-love amounts to grasping for more than one’s share of the goods of fortune (cf. 1168b17–21 with 1129b2–11). The higher form of self-love is a love of the highest part of oneself, especially one’s thinking part (1166a18)—used ambiguously to refer to that part of thought with which one “contemplates” the beautiful actions of oneself and one’s friends (1169a7–b2 and 1170a2) and to the part of thought with which one contemplates, not actions, but objects of thought (1141a19–b2). Such self-love is especially characteristic of the most virtuous human beings who make the best friends. Although one could argue and many interpreters have argued that Spinoza is as much an advocate of contemplation as Aristotle, his tracing of all endeavor back to the endeavor to preserve oneself, that is, his pursuit of conatus as a unitary causal and explanatory principle, undercuts the kind of distinction between higher and lower forms of love that one finds in premodern thought.29 We can see traces of Spinoza’s rejection of distinctions between higher and lower forms of love in his presentation of self-love. Rather than identifying happiness with an elevated form of self-love, Spinoza equates happiness with virtue and virtue with power, that is, the power with which we endeavor to preserve ourselves (4p18s). Virtue

28. Cf. Aristotle’s discussion of the great-souled man’s reluctance to seek help, especially from equals—and apparently with less reluctance from his inferiors (EN 1124b18–23). 29. Descartes is even more explicit than Spinoza in rejecting the premodern distinction between higher and lower forms of love (Passions of the Soul a. 81).

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is not a regulation of desire but simply power itself. Although the rhetoric of amor Dei intellectualis is strikingly antireductionist, the basis of this putatively elevated love in conatus subverts this antireductionism, rendering it emphatically reductionist. (It would appear that the class of intellectuals he calls forth are allowed to imbibe more fully such erotic rhetoric, with which the more philosophic teaching of the Ethics works at cross-purposes.) This does not mean that human beings never achieve anything but the lowest objective of self-preservation; rather it means that higher objectives are somehow built up out of the lowest. As we will see in chapter 5, Spinoza’s rejection of teleology is of a piece with the conatus doctrine and the reductionism implicit in his teaching on love as a form of conatus. So far I have not mentioned the affect around which p71 turns, namely, gratitude. Although gratitude may be the most basic of unwritten (or natural) laws, it remains an affect based upon mutual advantage. Of course, Aristotle refers to such friendship as friendship of use or utility, the lowest of the three kinds of friendship. Above all, such friends do not love one another essentially, but merely for an accidental feature unrelated to the essence of the friend. True friendship involves love of the good character of the friend. About such love, Spinoza is wholly silent. Ethics 4p72 extols openness and frankness in deed. Initially, this reminds us of the frankness of the great-souled man (EN 1124b28–30). To begin with something small, Spinoza focuses primarily on deception in deed rather than speech. A review of 4p69 on the avoidance of danger may help explain why he focuses on deeds rather than speeches. Avoidance of danger is the kind of thing that one might need to explain away. Aristotle’s great-souled man is frank in both speech and deed—and appears far more disdainful of the opinion of others than Spinoza’s free man. The reduction form of Spinoza’s proof, especially in the scholium, reminds of little so much as Kant’s categorical imperative.30 In effect, it asks what would be the result if everyone acted deceitfully. Ethics 4p73, in addition to the free man’s Christ-like returning of love for hatred, addresses the relation between the free man and the state in a most telling fashion. Spinoza insists that the freedom of man is greater in society than in solitude. This way of stating things is strikingly modern. In medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy, the argument is made again and again that although solitude may be desirable for the inquiring philosopher—at least insofar as philosophy is at risk from the city for its heterodox views— the philosopher is attached to the city by his own lack of self-sufficiency, 30. Cf. Steven B. Smith, Spinoza’s Book of Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).

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especially as regards bodily goods. To my knowledge, no medieval philosopher suggests that man is more free in the city than in solitude. Spinoza seems to envision a city or state—or a system of laws of that state—that can act as a bulwark against the oppression of the philosopher by the multitude. Unlike any “system” of premodern laws, which would have had the multitude on its side more readily than the philosopher, Spinoza’s system is disposed to protect the intellectual freedom of the philosopher—as the Theologico-Political Treatise makes amply evident.31 The demonstration bears out this interpretation, especially by referring us back to the state-of-nature teaching of 4p37s. Leaving aside this obvious difference, Spinoza insists in p73 upon the elevation of the free man above all passive affects (such as hatred, anger, envy, derision, pride). This aspect of the free man cannot help but remind us, as students of Maimonides, of that author’s insistence on God’s transcendence of such passions, as part of his denial of divine corporeality (1.36), as well as of his arguments that human rulers must strive to imitate God’s lack of these passions (1.54, pp.126–27). We are not surprised to see such overlap between Maimonides and Spinoza on the issue of transcending passions, such a prevalent theme among all or nearly all philosophers, yet the ratio­ nales behind such a call to transcendence are not the same among all philosophers, by any means. Spinoza traces all such transcendence of passive affect to “strength of mind ( fortitudo), that is [3p59], courage (animositas) and nobility (generositas)”—in other words, to active affect. There is reason to think that Maimonides will place greater faith in the power of reason to shape desire than Spinoza. As we turn to Spinoza’s account of active and passive affect, we must seek to clarify whether his understanding of the relation between reason and affect is as clear a departure from Maimonides’s Aristotelian approach to deliberate desire or choice as I have argued so far. Spinoza opposes premodern notions of choice and free will by arguing that reason exercises little or no direct control over affects. As I have mentioned before, Spinoza declares (in 4p7) that an affect can be countered only by another affect—i.e., not by reason, which is not to say that reason might not call on another affect as a plausible counterweight.32 In Aristotle 31. Spinoza’s conception of such freedom should be contrasted with Guide 3.51 (esp. p. 623), 1.34 (p. 75), and 3.34, as well as with the discussions of the solitary (sometimes referred to as a “weed”) in Alfarabi’s Political Regime, Ibn Bajja’s Governance of the Solitary, and Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy Ibn Yaqzan (see Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 2nd ed., ed. Joshua Parens and Joseph C. Macfarland [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011]). 32. Spinoza was not the first to argue this, though he was certainly the first to declare it so openly. Cf. Bacon, Advancement of Learning 2.22.5–6; Descartes, Passions of the Soul aa. 40, 45–46.

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and Maimonides, deliberate desire or choice, though it includes an element of affect or desire, places a premium on the leading or ruling role played by reason.33 Reason should not be viewed as ruling tyrannically; rather, it should be viewed as ruling in a political and kingly fashion (Aristotle, Pol. 1.5). Of course, reason could not lead without the support of virtue or habit or active condition (hexis, Gr.; khulq, Ar.).34 In contrast, although Spinoza may continue to speak of “virtue” (virtus), he openly identifies it with “power” or the being’s ability to act or its “active” character (E 4d8). Eventually, Spinoza states matters even more boldly or baldly when he identifies “virtue” with conatus (4p18). Far from being a stable condition in which reason guides desire, virtue comes to be identified with desire or endeavor or conatus itself. Before Spinoza, Machiavelli championed this identity of virtue with affect, when he used the Italian virtù as a means of recovering the ancient pagan Latin meaning of virtus as manliness (if not Roman virtue itself )—rather than the broader Greek notion of arete¯ as human excellence. In spite of the amazingly Scholastic tone of the Ethics and Spinoza’s Latin vocabulary, his identification of virtus as affect places him squarely in Machiavelli’s camp. In addition to selecting one affect to counterbalance another, reason, in Spinoza’s account, also plays a rather mysterious role in the transformation of affects. Spinoza argues initially as if there were groups of different affects: some passive and others active.35 When he finally gets to his discussion of “freedom” in part 5, however, he reveals that passive affects can become active affects (5p3). This is not simply a shot out of the blue, since he argued from the beginning that the difference between passive and active affects was due to their differences of origin: Passive affects have their origin in inadequate ideas and active in adequate (3p3). Yet when this difference of origin was first announced, its full significance was likely lost on the reader. More importantly, there is no indication at the beginning that a passive affect can be turned into an active one. Indeed, to claim that they have different origins seems to imply that the one is unlikely to turn into the other. Part 3 seems then to insinuate, or at least to comport well with the everyday 33. Here when I speak of reason I refer to reason as practical intellect or prudence. For further confirmation that prudence is not missing from Maimonides, see chap. 6. 34. On the crucial role of “habit,” see EC chap. 4 and Alfarabi, Selected Aphorisms no. 12. On the difference between affect or passion and hexis, see EN 2.5, 1105b20–1106a14. 35. See Spinoza’s drawing of a dividing line between 3p58 and what precedes as between active and passive affects. He seems to imply thereby that the entire discussion of active affects is in 3p59s—namely, the discussion of fortitudo, animositas, and generositas and the subspecies of fortitudo and generositas—which is of course dwarfed by the extensive, preceding discussion of passive affects.

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understanding of affects, that some are good and others are bad, that passive and active affects fall into distinct groups. The announcement that the one can turn into the other in part 5 (5p3) undercuts the everyday understanding that some affects are “good” and others “bad.” Of course, Spinoza’s undercutting of everyday notions of good and evil or good and bad has been an undercurrent at least since the appendix to part 1. Between parts 3 and 5, Spinoza deepens this undercutting of everyday notions of good and evil by moving from an initial willingness to grant knowledge of good and evil a form of merely subjective reality (4pp8, 14–17) to his ultimate denial of the reality of knowledge of evil (4p64)— or his claim that such knowledge is really merely inadequate knowledge. Although this undercutting of evil is reminiscent of the whole history of Western denials of the “being” of evil—which are at least as old as Aristotle and were made especially prominent by Augustine—we must as usual be attuned to the way in which Spinoza uses traditional tropes in radically new ways. What Aristotle means, as we saw in the previous chapter, is that evil or the bad actuality is a privation or lack of form. To some extent Augustine means the same thing—though Aristotle’s Metaphysics was inaccessible to the Christian tradition during his lifetime. In addition, however, Augustine means that evil must fit into the providential plan of the omnipotent God of Christianity, in a manner that human understanding cannot grasp. In contrast, Spinoza argues that passive affects as due to inadequate knowledge can be transformed by human beings into active affects through the acquisition of adequate knowledge of said affects. Not only does he underline the human role in this, but also he underlines the transformational, many have argued, salvational role of knowledge. One wonders how knowledge of an affect can transform its character. At first the contemporary reader cannot help but think of twentieth-century forms of psychotherapy. Although it is highly likely that some of those forms of psychotherapy were inspired in part by Spinoza’s claims about knowing affects as itself transformational, Spinoza gives little evidence of a concern for excavating the origins of mental illness in a person’s family life. Furthermore, he does not seem interested in alleviating symptoms of such illness. It is far more likely that Spinoza intends a change in point of view. How else can we account for the fact that the very same affect is active if adequately known and passive if inadequately known? It would seem that through a change in viewpoint—presumably through a broader and deeper understanding of the laws of nature, as they apply to a given affect—the finite mode that is the given human being acquires greater force. Let us take the most obvious and relevant example. If I know a human being who dis-

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sents from the religious beliefs of my community, and I believe that that person is willfully intransigent in his misguided beliefs, then I will feel toward that person far more hatred than if I believed that what human beings believe is largely not up to them (3p49s). The amor fati that is the watchword of Spinoza’s determinism can interrupt or undercut or remove the fuel from the affect of hatred. Once again, though, the main difference between the amor fati of Spinoza and that of his Stoic precursors is that his account of nature and its laws is even more deeply deterministic than was theirs. Having broached the connection between affect and determinism, we are in a position to turn to the issue of Spinoza’s rehabilitation of “contingency.” It is tempting to suppose that though Spinoza repudiates contingency in 1pp29 and 33 (and reaffirms the denial as it applies to finite modes in 2p31 by claiming that things appear contingent only insofar as our knowledge of particulars is inadequate), he rehabilitates it starting in part 4 (4dd3–4). In view of the ongoing use of the language of freedom in parts 3 through 5, it might seem on the basis of his own rhetoric that Spinoza intends to modify somehow the determinism of parts 1 and 2. A closer look at the putative rehabilitation of contingency in parts 4 and 5, however, will reveal that Spinoza continues to embrace determinism wholeheartedly. In the definitions of part 4, Spinoza introduces a distinction between that which is “contingent” and that which is “possible,” because it appears that he now has a need for the distinction that he lacked earlier (that is, in 1p33s1). When he denied the distinction, he did so because his focus was on God or substance. When dealing with finite modes, however, this distinction has some relevance. According to 4d3, a finite thing is contingent insofar as its existence is not necessarily entailed by its essence. Because God or substance’s essence necessarily entails His existence (1d1), contingency is a meaningless concept in connection with Him. Nevertheless, this did not prevent Spinoza from arguing that God is “free” (liber), insofar as He cannot be considered “constrained” or compelled by anything external to Him (1d7)—since there is nothing external to Him.36 According to 4d4, that a finite thing is possible concerns not the existence of the thing but our limited human knowledge of the causes involved in bringing it about. So contingency concerns existence, and possibility concerns our knowledge of causes of existence. 36. The notion that God is free and necessary but not compelled is at least as old as Aristotle (Meta. 5.5). As usual, however, we need to remember that Aristotelian necessity as conditioned by teleology is quite different in character from Spinoza’s—as chap. five below will confirm.

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When we turn to 4p11, we are somewhat surprised to discover that our affects are more intense toward things we deem necessary than toward things we deem contingent. In one fell swoop, it appears as if Spinoza is undercutting that rare and key convergence of his own determinism and religious tolerance—namely, that viewing others as determined quiets affect in comparison with believing they are free (3p49s). The problem is not with Spinoza but with our momentary lapse in confusing everyday language with his highly technical terminology. Of course, “necessary” is not equivalent to “determined,” nor is “contingent” equivalent to “free.” Once again, we know that God alone is “necessary.” Still we are a bit confused about the meaning of 4p11 in relation to 3p49s. It is only when we arrive at part 5 (5p5), which appeals to both of our prior propositions (3p49 and 4p11), that Spinoza provides us with an inventory of all four of the relevant concepts: the imagined free, the necessary, the possible, and the contingent. In his demonstration, he offers the following hierarchy of objects that elicit the greatest or most intense affects: imagined free > necessary > possible or contingent. What I refer to as “the imagined free” is what Spinoza refers to first as “a thing that we imagine merely in itself” (quam simpliciter . . . imaginamur). Since possible or contingent objects are placed clearly at the bottom of the list, it is obvious that this proposition (5p5) reinforces the argument of 3p49s. When we imagine that human beings are free, our affects toward them are far more intense than when we either know that they are contingent (that is, conditioned by other factors or in common parlance “determined”) or lack sufficient knowledge of their causes to move beyond viewing them as possible. Why Spinoza places the imagined free even above the necessary becomes apparent when we reflect on the original phrase used for free, namely, “merely in itself.” When we think of a finite being as “merely in itself,” we isolate it from its environment or its conditioning factors. Ultimately, the only “in itself” proper is God. Ironically, when we think of human beings we attribute to them godlike isolation, and when we think of God we attribute to Him humanlike abilities to “respond” to that which surrounds Him, as if He were “active” or “free.” Yet such “freedom” can be had only by finite modes—and all such activity or freedom should never be overstated. After all, according to Spinoza, an affect can be transformed from passive to active merely by changing our perspective on it—that is, by appreciating fully the relevance of all of the laws of nature that condition that affect. Such a change from passive to active does not eliminate the affect. In conclusion, although Spinoza employs the rhetoric of freedom throughout the Ethics, and especially in the closing parts, his determinism is

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relatively pure and unalloyed at its core. He uses such rhetoric to bring forth a new class of intellectuals to mediate between the philosopher and the multitude. In this hazy middle ground, he is not shy about employing wellworn imagery from Stoicism and Christianity to convey a complex blend of freedom tempered by a deep and abiding undercurrent of determinism. Despite his continuing use of a complex technical terminology of contingency and possibility, his use of these terms should never be confused with Maimonides’s usage. Not only does Maimonides extol freedom from the rooftops, in a bid to extricate the Jewish people from its tendency to drift into fatalism, but he also offers one of the most sophisticated critiques of the Ash‘arite confusion of the admissible (as determined by the imagination) with the possible (as perceived by the intellect). Unfortunately, we were not able to touch on that technically demanding exegesis of the ultimate meaning of the necessary, the possible, and the impossible. If we had, it would have offered further evidence of the great distance between Maimonides and Spinoza on the matter of freedom and choice.

five

Teleology vs. Imagined Ideal

Ambiguities in Spinoza’s attack on teleology and the moderation of Maimonides’s approach to teleology have led some modern interpreters to suppose that both thinkers are similarly disenchanted with teleology. Whatever Spinoza’s exact understanding of human action might be, his turn toward conatus as outlined in chapter 1 above has led us to expect a nonteleological account of human action. Before turning to the details of the disputes about whether teleology is present in either Spinoza or Maimonides or both, we should consider the inferences drawn from the claim that they both equally shun teleology. Warren Z. Harvey, who has gone furthest in declaring Maimonides and Spinoza on roughly the same page in this regard, also claims that both thinkers treat the human good as subjective and establish good and evil as the province of the imagination. I have already argued against extending the claim about subjectivism from Spinoza to Maimonides elsewhere. I have begun the case against extending the claim about imagination’s relation to good and evil from Spinoza to Maimonides in chapter 1 and will complete it in the final chapter on imagination. At this point, however, we should consider briefly how these three claims, subjectivism, imagination as moral guide, and denial of teleology, are intimately connected with one another. It must be acknowledged from the start that there are a variety of views among those who ascribe subjectivism to Maimonides. It needs to be . “A Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 19, no. 2 (1981): 163, 158, 159. Cf. notes 1 and 7 of chap. 6. . Joshua Parens, “Prudence, Imagination, and Determination of Law in Alfarabi and Maimonides,” in Enlightening Revolutions: Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner, ed. Svetozar Minkov and Stéphane Douard (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006), 31–55. . Ibid., pp. 39–43, esp. 40–41 nn. 49–51.

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underlined that Harvey stresses that both Spinoza and Maimonides are subjectivist in their meta-ethics rather than in their ethics. He seems to mean by this that though both authors privilege the philosophic life over other ways of life, they deny “good” any solidity apart from the desires of the one pursuing it. If you have not embraced the philosophic life as your way of life, then the goods of that life will be distasteful to you. (If this is what subjectivism of meta-ethics really means, I wonder whether one could not ascribe the same to Plato, Aristotle, and perhaps any other philosopher from any period. See, for example, Rep. 581d.) For now, I leave aside the issue of whether Spinoza acknowledges the existence of a hierarchy of ends. For Maimonides to deny solidity to “good,” in the way that Harvey ascribes such a denial to him, he would need to leave good up to the imagination alone. I have already begun to argue against this in chapter 1 and elsewhere, and I will continue in chapter 6. Already some of the connections between the denial of teleology, subjectivism, and the leading role of imagination in establishing good and evil are evident. Perhaps the most important underlying source of unity of these claims is conatus. As an inertial concept, conatus was developed in direct opposition to teleology; conatus is inherently subjectivist; and conatus “knows good and evil” only through the imagination (E 4p64). In addition, Spinoza links good and evil to pleasure and pain in such a characteristically modern way (E 4p8) that it will become practically impossible to maintain the claim that he and Maimonides agree about teleology. At least since Wolfson (1934), scholars have recognized the link between Maimonides’s discussion of final causes in Guide 1.13 and Spinoza’s critique . “Ethics and Meta-ethics, Aesthetics and Meta-aesthetics in Maimonides,” in Maimonides and Philosophy, ed. S. Pines and Y. Yovel (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986), 131–38. Also see Aryeh Botwinick’s effort to extend Harvey’s line of argument to show that Maimonides’s view that there is an objective hierarchy of ends is somehow subverted by his own relativistic meta-ethics (Skepticism, Belief, and the Modern: Maimonides to Nietzsche [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997], 95–96). . I have already attempted on a number of occasions to question whether Spinoza’s vision of philosophy can qualify as contemplative properly speaking—that is, whether it is not primarily laying the groundwork for science, more than a way of life itself. . Parens, “Prudence, Imagination, and Determination of Law in Alfarabi and Maimonides.” . See Edwin Curley, “On Bennett’s Spinoza: The Issue of Teleology,” in Spinoza: Issues and Directions, ed. Curley and Pierre-François Moreau (Leiden: Brill, 1990). . Cf. W. Z. Harvey’s bold assimilation of Spinoza to Maimonides in the conclusion of his argument about teleology (“Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean,” p. 164) with his telling concession that Spinoza’s rejection of teleology may have been more thoroughgoing (163 n. 65).

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of them in Ethics 1app. It may appear more natural to begin with Maimonides because he precedes Spinoza chronologically; however, we begin with Spinoza’s teleology if only because so much debate exists about his position. Perhaps by working our way through Spinoza first, some of what we need to explore in Maimonides will come to the fore. Only after we have discussed both will it be possible to assess adequately whether Harvey is correct in linking Spinoza so closely to Maimonides on this matter. It is widely recognized by all readers of the Ethics that Spinoza attacks teleology in the appendix to part 1, though agreement exists only on his attacking divine teleology, not human teleology. Jonathan Bennett argued in the mid-1980s that Spinoza attempts but fails to eschew all teleology. Bennett claims that Spinoza allows teleology to insinuate itself into his arguments in part 3 by inadvertently allowing teleological conditionals to creep into his language.10 Subsequently, Edwin Curley argued that Bennett was unwarranted in ascribing to Spinoza the view that all teleology is to be excluded. On the contrary, Spinoza intended to exclude divine teleology, not human teleology.11 In a move that I believe only confused matters further, Bennett agreed with Curley that Spinoza has a right to these supposedly teleological conditionals.12 In an article that has gone widely neglected, however, Lee C. Rice showed almost immediately after Bennett published his 1983 article that Spinoza does not imply teleology through the use of the conditionals described by Bennett.13 The neglect of that article is especially surprising in view of the frequency with which scholars have disagreed over the use of those conditionals and more importantly over the status of the mental content of such propositions. In recent years, this debate has provided substantial grist to the mill of contemporary disputes about whether mental content plays a causal role in human behavior, and at least by way of the issue of mental content, it has fed into the ongoing debates about Spinoza’s

. The Philosophy of Spinoza (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934), 1: 426–29. 10. See Jonathan Bennett, “Teleology and Spinoza’s Conatus,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 8 (1983): 143–60, esp. 152–54. 11. Curley, “On Bennett’s Spinoza,” 39–53. 12. Jonathan Bennett, “Spinoza and Teleology: A Reply to Curley,” in Curley and Moreau, Spinoza: Issues and Directions, 53–57. 13. Lee C. Rice, “Spinoza, Bennett, and Teleology,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 23, no. 2 (1985): 241–53. For another persuasive effort to show that Spinoza evades teleology, see Michael Schrijvers, “The Conatus and the Mutual Relationship between Active and Passive Affects in Spinoza,” in Ethica III: Desire and Affect: Spinoza as Psychologist, ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel (New York: Little Room Press, 1999), 63–80, esp. 68 n. 8 and 71.

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views on so-called psychophysical parallelism.14 At the risk of oversimplifying a wide-ranging and technically demanding debate, I believe that what is at issue is whether Spinoza has the right to acknowledge the role that imagining some future good might play in causing human beings to act in a given way. According to Curley, this is teleological, and we should allow it to Spinoza. According to others it is teleological in another sense (Charles Jarrett [weak teleology] and Richard N. Manning [thoughtful teleology]). It cannot be denied that Spinoza acknowledges that human beings imagine future goods and that they believe that they make choices based on those imaginings. The question is whether the latter belief is true. A closer look at the appendix to part 1 of the Ethics reveals, I believe, just how unteleological Spinoza’s account is. According to Curley and Manning, the fact that Spinoza explores how man transfers his own teleology to the rest of nature is evidence that Spinoza maintains that human beings are truly teleological.15 To make this claim stick, however, they must abstract completely from the other mistakes human beings inevitably make, namely, our ignorance of causes and our mistaken conviction of our freedom of will—which I will attempt to show lead us inadvertently to view ourselves as teleological. Here, I quote Manning’s self-consciously selective translation of the most important passage (from 1app, II/78/13):16 I take it as a foundation what everyone must acknowledge, that all men . . . want to seek their own advantage, and are conscious of this appetite. . . . It follows . . . that men act always on account of an end, viz. on account of their advantage, which they want.

I quote Curley’s own translation of the omitted passages: 1. [that all men] are born ignorant of the causes of things, and that they all 2. From these [assumptions] 3. first, that men think themselves free, because they are conscious of their volitions and their appetite, and do not think, even in their dreams, of the 14. Charles Jarrett, “Teleology and Spinoza’s Doctrine of Final Causes,” in Yovel, Ethica III: Desire and Affect, 3–23; Richard N. Manning, “Spinoza, Thoughtful Teleology, and the Causal Significance of Content,” in Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes, ed. Olli Koistinen and John Biro (New York: Oxford, 2002), 182–209; and Michael Della Rocca, Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza (New York: Oxford, 1996). 15. Curley, “On Bennett’s Spinoza,” 41; Manning, “Spinoza, Thoughtful Teleology, and the Causal Significance of Content,” 183. 16. Curley’s numbers refer to the volume, page, and line number in the Gebhardt edition: Spinoza, Opera, ed. Charles Gebhardt, 4 vols. (Heidelberg: Carl Winters, 1925), 2: 78, line 13.

Teleology vs. Imagined Ideal / 143 causes by which they are disposed to wanting and willing, because they are ignorant of [those causes]. It follows, secondly17

It must be stressed that this entire passage is presented as part of a groundclearing operation, that is, an operation to clear away “prejudices” (praejudicia).18 Of course, in any such operation it is difficult to know when you have gone beyond prejudices to an accurate account of the underlying causes. This is particularly the case with the starting point. Again, I quote Curley’s translation: “All the prejudices I here undertake to expose depend on this one: that men commonly suppose that all natural things act, as men do (literally, ‘as themselves,’ ut ipsos), on account of an end.” The opening clause insinuates that what we hold about human action may itself be a prejudice—since in what follows distorted views about human action such as that it is free are prevalent. Is our view that human beings act on account of an end itself a prejudice, or is it based on adequate ideas? One thing seems evident: human beings seek their own advantage. This claim is made repeatedly throughout the Ethics. Of course, the question is whether “advantage” is to be understood as a final cause. Curley is confident that acting with an eye to an advantage must be a final cause. Repeatedly, commentators acknowledge that throughout part 3 of the Ethics, after formulating the conatus doctrine, Spinoza speaks often of how men imagine consequences of actions and act accordingly.19 Attributing this role to imagining has been characterized variously as “thoughtful teleology” (Manning) and “weak teleology” (Jarrett). Bennett criticizes Spinoza’s claim that we imag­ ine the future as a tacit acceptance of teleology.20 To my knowledge, none of these commentators has paused to consider whether the imagination’s anticipations are the causes that we take them to be.21 This is especially surprising, considering how much has been written about the links between imagination and falsehood in Spinoza’s account. Curley views Spinoza’s appeal to imagination as vindication of the view that human beings act teleologically. Furthermore, Curley identifies the “striving” that is conatus with “desire” and “appetite” and even acknowledges that conatus, as “a central technical concept in Cartesian physics,” is “part of his [Descartes’s] attack on

17. The above phrases in brackets are inserted by Curley. 18. Cf. my argument in chap. 1 above that Spinoza, unlike Maimonides, links human excess more to “group images” (a more technical name for “prejudices”) than to individual vice. 19. Curley, “On Bennett’s Spinoza,” and Rice, “Spinoza, Bennett, and Teleology.” 20. See Curley, “On Bennett’s Spinoza,” 48 n. 14, citing Bennett. 21. Though cf. Rice, “Spinoza, Bennett, and Teleology,” 243–45.

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Aristotelian teleology.”22 Yet Curley resists the notion that the antiteleological significance of conatus may extend to human desire. But if I can show that conatus can be used to explain human beings’ seeking their advantage in a nonteleological way, then I will have gone a long way toward showing that Curley is wrong in claiming that Spinoza ascribes teleological action to human beings. Finally, I find it surprising that, to my knowledge, no one has raised the objection to those who defend teleology in Spinoza’s account of human action that this violates his stricture against “a kingdom within a kingdom” (E 3pr)—a stricture that is established at the beginning of his account of human affections and that culminates in his famous claim that he will approach human actions and affections as subject to laws like so many geometrical objects. It seems implausible that Spinoza would allow human teleology in a world otherwise lacking in it. Let us return to Manning’s selective quotation from near the opening of part 1, appendix. The first passage that Manning omits, the passage that appears before Spinoza mentions that we seek our advantage, underlines our ignorance of causes. Spinoza mentions ignorance of causes first because he believes that our misunderstanding of how we view and seek our advantage derives from this more primary phenomenon, ignorance of causes. Allow me to anticipate. It is through a lack of awareness of the underlying causes that we imagine ourselves to be free. Furthermore, in imagining ourselves to be free, we also imagine that we choose one given end over another, teleologically. (Somewhat contrary to expectation, teleology and free choice prove to be intertwined. I say “somewhat contrary to expectation” because often in contemporary analyses of premodern teleology in human action it is supposed that the influence of final causes on desire renders human action determined. As Richard Sorabji argues, however, causality is not tantamount to necessitation or determination.)23 In fact, however, our conscious decisions (cf. 3p9) are driven by what can only be called “unconscious” desires24—a claim that I will attempt to justify in what follows. 22. Curley, “On Bennett’s Spinoza,” 48. 23. Again, see Necessity, Cause and Blame: Perspectives on Aristotle’s Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), esp. chap. 2. 24. See Lee C. Rice, “Freud, Sartre, Spinoza: The Problematic of the Unconscious,” Giornale di Metafisica, n.s., 17, nos. 1–2 (1995): 87–106, and Yirmiyahu Yovel, “Spinoza and Freud: SelfKnowledge as Emancipation,” in Spinoza and Other Heretics, vol. 2: The Adventures of Immanence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 136–66, esp. 152. Although both Rice and Yovel acknowledge some place for “unconscious” ideas in Spinoza, they underline that said ideas are not made “unconscious” by repression, in the manner that Freud claims they are. I believe that part of the basis of this difference between Spinoza and Freud is that, for the latter, the main locus for the shaping of psychic energy is private life and the family. For the former, once again,

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To begin to see whether this anticipated interpretation is correct, let us break down the argument. In short, there are three claims: (1) ignorance of causes, (2) seeking our own advantage, and (3) consciousness of seeking our advantage. These three claims then lead to the initial prejudiced belief, namely, (a) that human beings possess freedom of will. Indeed, Spinoza claims that the combination of (3) consciousness of desires ([2] for our own advantage) and (1) ignorance of causes is the root of the belief in free will. In other words, we imagine (of course) mistakenly that we are free because there are causes of our conscious desires of which we are not aware. (It is tempting to suppose that these causes are not unconscious but external causes. Yet the claim that thoughts are caused by thoughts, rather than external things, would seem to preclude this.) I intend to show that the second belief (b) that we always act for an end is similarly (to [a]) prejudiced. Two things need to be underlined. First, it is crucial that Spinoza brings out the role of hidden causes, and that he does so first. After all, without this appeal to hidden causes, free will would appear to be immune to attack—at least based on everyday experience, as opposed to the purportedly deductive arguments about God’s will to this effect in part 1. Second, the belief in human teleology, it would appear, presupposes the belief in free will. Now, it may be objected that teleology in the rest of nature does not require freedom. Why then must freedom be presupposed in human beings?25 From Spinoza’s point of view, that which most underwrites the conviction that human beings are an exception to the mechanism of the rest of nature is free will. It so happens that this mechanism also precludes teleology. The link between free will and teleology, even though it is only indirect, is crucial. If human beings merely appear to choose ends consciously and freely but in fact are motivated by desires of which we are unaware, then our conscious desire for our advantage should not be viewed as evidence that we desire and act in a teleological manner. On the contrary, we appear to deliberate about some end or some means to a given end merely because we appear to be free, consciously motivated actors. (Consider Spinoza’s

society is a far more important ground for the spawning of affects as inadequate ideas, that is, images or imaginings. (See discussion of images vs. imaginings later in this chapter.) Cf. Bacon’s New Organon, especially the more public idols of the marketplace and theater (1.43, 59–60, and 1.44, 61–67) with the more private idols of the cave (1.42, 53–58). Contrast Cornelius de Deugd’s contention that Spinoza does not employ any sense of “unconscious,” in “Spinoza and Freud: An Old Myth Revisited,” in Ethica IV: Spinoza on Reason and the “Free Man,” ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel and Gideon Segal (New York: Little Room Press, 2004), 227–52. 25. For a more direct answer to this question than I provide in what follows, review the discussion of choice and form in chap. 3 above.

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casual dismissal of what Aristotle called phrone¯sis, that is, prudence or practical judgment, also known as “deliberating well” [EN 1142a32–b36]. See E 3def.of.emot.#6 and reference to 2p48.)26 That Spinoza seems to intend to acknowledge unconscious appetite is implied if not explicitly stated at the conclusion of the development of the conatus doctrine. Just before he explains the nonteleological character of desire,27 that is, that we do not desire something because we deem it good but we call it good because we happen to desire it, he says, “There is no difference between appetite [appetitus] and desire (cupiditas) except that desire is usually related to men in so far as they are conscious of their appetite. Therefore, it is defined as follows: desire is ‘appetite accompanied by consciousness thereof ’” (3p9s, Shirley trans.). Insofar as appetite has a broader compass than desire, Spinoza implies that many appetites are not conscious. Other passages seem to confirm this: most notably, the preface to part 4. I have in mind in particular the following: What is termed a ‘final cause’ is nothing but human appetite in so far as it is considered as the starting-point or primary cause of some thing. For example, when we say that being a place of habitation was the final cause of this or that house, we surely mean no more than this, that a man from thinking [imaginatus] of the advantages of domestic life, had an urge [appetitum] to build a house. Therefore, the need for a habitation in so far as it is considered a final cause is nothing but this particular urge [singularem appetitum], which is in reality an efficient cause, and is considered as the prime cause because men are commonly ignorant of the causes of their own urges: for I have repeatedly said, they are conscious of their actions and appetites but unaware of the causes by which they are determined to seek something.

The appetite or urge to preserve ourselves is hardly at the forefront of our minds in every action. Yet Spinoza seeks to trace all appetite to this most fundamental appetite. If, when we act, we anticipate the consequences of action through imagination, then we determine our action less than our action is determined by the underlying endeavor to exist. Imagining consequences may inflame that endeavor or desire, but that endeavor is the true cause of the action. The proximity between survival and having a habitation may obscure the significance of this claim. The further the remove of said action from immediate self-preservation, the less evident it is that the 26. Cf. Rice, “Spinoza, Bennett, and Teleology,” 250. 27. Pace Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s “Ethics,” 245, as cited in Rice, “Spinoza, Bennett, and Teleology,” 247 n. 39.

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ultimate cause is the desire to preserve oneself. In effect, Spinoza previews what came to be sublimation—in effect the view that all “higher” desires are more complex versions of the more primitive. For example, would it not appear to be debasing to the desire to know to suggest that that very desire is not ultimately a desire for knowledge for its own sake but a desire rooted in the drive to preserve ourselves? But is this not exactly what Spinoza intends to argue? Many interpreters, however, ascribe to Spinoza the view that the desire to know is somehow primary.28 But if it were so primary, how would we reconcile that with the conatus doctrine? Spinoza set the stage for modern eliminativist approaches to human psychology29—not only by opposing dualism of mind and body but also by questioning the causal role of much of our conscious life. If what I am arguing is to have any plausibility, some account must be given of the extensive talk of “the free man” (4pp67–73), “salvation” (pt. 5), and especially the “idea of a man” (4pr). Could it be that the “model” anticipated in the preface to part 4 is less a rational ideal (supported by teleological conditionals that we choose freely?) than an imagined one, intended ultimately to inflame the most other-regarding passions in human beings, all in the name of better mutual preservation?30 In what follows, I will attempt eventually to show the greater plausibility of the latter interpretation. Let us leave aside, for now, such large questions about rational or natural versus imagined ideals. Here, we need to clarify the role of anticipatory imaginings and to determine how it can be that they play less of a causal role than we suppose. Of course, Spinoza means by imagination something other than the Aristotelian power that mediates between sensation and intellection. In the Ethics, images do not mediate between sense particulars and intellected forms or universals31—since forms themselves are merely imagined, as established in chapter 3. As part and parcel of the attack on forms, Spinoza severs the connection between images and ideas. On the one hand, “images” (imago, imagines) are strictly bodily (2p48s, 3pos2). On

28. Cf., for example, Yovel’s insistence that Spinozist “salvation,” though secular, is somehow radically unlike Freud’s sobriety (“Spinoza and Freud,” esp. 144–45). In this respect, Yovel’s interpretation of Spinoza is not unlike the God-intoxicated philosopher of the Romantics. 29. See the conclusion of the introduction, above. 30. Cf. Bacon on ambition, New Organon 1.129; also see his thinly veiled pursuit of his own ambitions under the guise of benefiting humankind, Great Instauration Proemium end. Also see Robert Faulkner, Francis Bacon and the Project of Progress (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993). 31. See Aristotle, On the Soul 3.7; and cf. Eight Chapters chap. 1.

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the other hand, “imaginings” (Mentis imaginationes) are merely inadequate versions of that which the mind or thought can possess adequately (2p17s; cf. 4p9).32 Of course, Spinoza is at great pains to distinguish between images as bodily pictures and ideas (2p48s) because he is intent upon denying that the mind can affirm falsehoods by a misguided, separate act of the will (2p49s). Leaving aside that intramural dispute with Descartes, when Spinoza discusses imaginings he often identifies them not only as inadequate ideas but also as themselves affects (4p9). Thus, he calls into question perhaps the central opposition of premodern thought, the distinction between appetite and intellect. This is of a piece with his overall rejection of faculties and his specific attack on the distinction between “will” and “intellect” (2p48s). Leaving aside this radical transformation in the relation between appetite or affect and intellect, I need to connect the notion that imaginings are inadequate ideas to the question whether in imagining an ideal we would be engaged in teleological anticipation of the future. The real issue is what is the origin of inadequate ideas. The most obvious way in which an idea can be inadequate, of course, is if it ascribes mistakenly external existence to the object of which it is the idea (2p17s). The path to adequate ideas is by way of the proper relation of ideas to things. At first glance, this relation of ideas to things might appear to refer solely to external things. Matters, however, are more complicated than that. In 2p28 Spinoza argues that “ideas of the affections of the human body” (viz., that which the mind imagines) are confused or lack clarity and distinctness “in so far as they are related only to the human mind.” Not merely external things are of relevance here. In the body of the demonstration, Spinoza argues that the crucial limitation in our understanding of our ideas of the affections of our body is the relation of these ideas not only to the external things but also to the body itself. That is, to relate these ideas “only to the human mind” is to suppose that the mind originates these ideas—in other words, to fall into the trap of freedom of the will. Yet if all ideas have antecedents in the realm of ideas, then ideas that appear spontaneously generated, such as choices to act in a given way, are caused by prior ideas. There is little reason to suppose that such prior ideas are conscious—for why else would we suppose, according to Spinoza, mistakenly, that ideas or volitions are spontaneously generated (cf. 2p49s)? 32. I do not mean to oversimplify matters too greatly here. For evidence of the debatable character of all such hard and fast lines between body and mind in Spinoza, cf. Jean-Marie Beyssade’s disagreement with the French translator of the Ethics Robert Misrahi in Beyssade’s “Nostri Corporis Affectus: Can an Affect in Spinoza Be ‘of the Body,’” in Yovel, Ethica III: Desire and Affect, 113–28, esp. 114–15.

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I am the first to admit that when Spinoza speaks of imagining things in the bulk of part 3 (proposition 12 and following), it would appear as if he had in mind conscious imagining. Indeed, our use of teleological conditionals implies that much of our imagining is conscious. The question remains, however: What is the origin of such imaginings? Did we decide on an ideal and then pursue it? Or has the ideal emerged through associations of affects many of which we are not fully aware of ? E 3p14 implies what was already anticipated in 2p18, that the imagination works by association—in a manner that need not be conscious. Affects (or emotions, Shirley’s translation of affectus) tend to be associated with one another. “If the mind has once been affected by two emotions at the same time, when it is later affected by the one it will also be affected by the other” (3p14). According to the demonstration, it is the mind’s imagination that associates these (imaginings) affects of the body: “If the human body has been affected by two bodies at the same time, when the mind later thinks of the one it will straightway recall the other too. . . . Now the images formed by the mind [Mentis imaginationes] reflect the affective states of our body more than the nature of external things.” According to Spinoza and subsequent modern thought on affects, emotions or affects (or what later come to be called “moods”) are hardly something we have direct control over. Like Descartes before him (Passions a. 46), Spinoza argues that control over affects is only indirect by means of other countervailing affects (E 4p7). As reason’s direct rule over affects is abdicated and the complexity of interactions between affects increases—an essential feature of the modern turn toward affects initiated by Bacon33—one should not be surprised to find that not all links or associations between affects are conscious. In brief, that affects may be linked to one another without their being consciously linked lends further support to my suggestion that, according to Spinoza, conscious imagining of the future does not play the causal role that we normally attribute to it. Although when we consider psychophysical parallelism, it is tempting to stress the equality of the two attributes, here we can begin to see that the parallelism, by undercutting the mind’s power to dictate action to the body, raises in an unprecedented way the profile of the body, at least in comparison with the most widely received reading of Descartes. After all, action in human experience is the action of bodies. And affects are far from

33. See the Advancement of Learning 2.22, esp. 2.22.5–8, and an unpublished lecture titled “The Modern Uses and Abuses of Aristotle’s Approach to the Passions in the Rhetoric, from Bacon to Heidegger,” which I delivered to the North Texas Philosophical Association, April 10, 2010.

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being dictated to by a ruling, rational, conscious mind. Consequently, teleological conditionals employed at the level of consciousness or “imagination,” though they appear causal, may merely intensify more basic affects and affections.34 Spinoza’s use of teleological conditionals need not mean that human beings consciously choose a rational ideal. It is usually assumed that Spinoza’s exhortation to adopt an idea of man as a model (4pr), which culminates in the free man propositions (4pp67–73 and 4app), is intended as a rational ideal. The very mechanics of setting up an ideal to pursue, however, smacks so strongly of free choice that it seems far more plausible (at least to me) to view this as an imagined ideal. Not only would such an ideal be an inadequate idea, that is, it would be not Spinoza’s own understanding of the philosophic way of life but some lesser imitation of it, but also part of its inadequacy would derive from the rhetoric of freedom surrounding the ideal—as if it were an object of free choice or will. Before turning to Maimonides, I need finally to address the issue of what I referred to in chapter 1 as “group images.” Now that we have clarified somewhat the difference between “imaginings” and “images,” and have been able to touch on the essential role of association in the formation of imaginings (in connection with 3p14), we are in a better position to address the peculiar role of groups35 in giving rise to human excess. Following upon his discussion of imagining in part 2, which reaches its peak in the wholesale repudiation of the premodern stress upon forms as somehow derived from images (2p40s1), Spinoza turns in part 3 to address the ways in which our own pains and pleasures are constantly amplified by the pains and pleasures of those we hate and love. In an odd inversion of the Republic’s call to establish a city in which everyone shares the same pains and pleasures, Spinoza converts this natural human tendency to experience vicariously the pains and pleasures of others into a means of explaining the hatred of one community for another (3p46). Here, I quote the entire proposition. Not only does this proposition touch on the theologico-political core of the Ethics, but also it stands out because it both is an unusually long proposition and has a merely one-sentence demonstration, which refers directly back to one proposition near the beginning of part 3 (namely, 3p16). Spinoza thereby

34. Again, see Beysadde, “Nostri Corporis Affectus,” for the complexities in Spinoza’s uses of affectus and affectiones. 35. As I mentioned earlier in note 24 in passing, Spinoza’s focus on groups should be compared with his precursor in this line of thinking, Francis Bacon. See his discussion of the idols of the marketplace and theater in New Organon 1.43, 59–60, and 1.44, 61–67.

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indicates that proposition 46 is the culmination of a series of propositions that begin as early as p16: If anyone is affected with pleasure or pain by someone of a class [classis] or nation [nationis] different from his own and the pleasure and pain is accompanied by the idea of that person as its cause, under the general category of that class or nation, he will love or hate not only him but all of that same class or nation.

This proposition contains a thumbnail sketch of the problem of religious intolerance. Both propositions 16 and 46 flow from the associative character of the imagination and affects (set forth in p14). One affect is associated with another when they have previously been experienced together (and surely these kinds of associations need not be conscious) within each of us as individuals. In addition, because we belong to a greater totality of individuals, such a tendency to associate is bound to be communicable (esp. 3pp29–32). Although Spinoza first considers such communicability in connection with other human beings toward whom we feel no affect (3p29 note to proposition), he goes on eventually in part 4 to consider the far greater intensity of affects when we share something in common with other individuals (4pp29–37).36 Finally, when one adds to association the tendency of the imagination to leap to generalizations (2p40s1 and Bacon, New Organon 1.20), one is in short order led to the conclusions of proposition 46. Now, it can hardly be gainsaid that Maimonides has his own concerns that members of his community will be led astray by false imaginings about God such as that He possesses a body; however, he does not consider the manner in which pleasure and pain are communicated throughout a community to be central to his own inquiry, as Spinoza obviously does. Although Maimonides does not seek to foment religious intolerance, he is far

36. Over the course of these nine propositions, Spinoza argues in a manner that is, at least initially, counterintuitive that sharing things in common is possible only with other human beings, who are subject to active rather than passive affects. Here, Spinoza approaches a view somewhat more akin to the Platonic notion that I touched on earlier from the Republic, namely, the striving for the community of pain and pleasure in the beautiful city of Rep. 5. Spinoza, like Bacon and Descartes before him, is striving for service to humanity. Because such service transcends national bounds, they seem to be striving for some form of brotherhood of humanity. Against such a background, the tendency of classes and nations to bind together (3p46) cannot but appear to be a problematic result of human imagination. Thus, once again, imagination appears as a source, ultimately, of division.

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more concerned than Spinoza to rally the Jewish people, as we will see in our consideration of Guide 2.25, below. Let us begin now to turn toward Maimonides’s views on teleology, having lent credence to the view that Spinoza intends to repudiate not only divine teleology but also human teleology. In turning to Maimonides, I will attempt to show that he leaves significant room for teleology. Now, I am willing to admit that there is a significant area of agreement between Maimonides and Spinoza. Both thinkers seek to counteract the anthropocentric view that everything exists for the sake of human beings. Spinoza gives ample evidence of his disdain for this view in the following from 1app: Further, since they find within themselves and outside themselves a considerable number of means very convenient for the pursuit of their own advantage—as, for instance, eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, cereals and living things for food, the sun for giving light, the sea for breeding fish—the result is that they look on all things of Nature as means to their own advantage. . . . So it came about that every individual devised different methods of worshipping God as he thought fit in order that God should love him beyond others and direct the whole of Nature as to serve his blind cupidity and insatiable greed.

One can already see where Spinoza is headed here. He begins with the individual’s effort to secure divine favor for himself, avoiding what might be the more obvious starting point, the communal search for divine favor. He must begin here to avoid the premodern view that human beings are in any significant sense naturally disposed toward society or political life (cf. Guide 2.40 with Ethics 4p18s). Eventually, human beings band together because they determine that only by this means can each of them secure his own well-being (E 4p37s2). The eventual move from individual to group signals that Spinoza is far more outspoken in attacking God’s particular providence for the people Israel than Maimonides. Yet he also opposes the human tendency to imagine that the whole exists for the sake of the individual. I wonder, however, whether this effort to counter the human tendency to believe that the whole exists for one’s own individual sake is not very widely, perhaps even universally, shared by philosophers.37

37. See Laws 10, 903c–904a, and cf. Rousseau, Emile, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979), the Savoyard Vicar, pp. 260–314, esp. 296–97, 300–301, 312–13.

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As Harvey has argued, Maimonides’s anti-anthropocentrism is closely connected to his antiteleological views. As has already been noted previously, Maimonides opposes the human tendency to overstate the human individual’s significance first in his most extended treatment of evil (Guide 3.12), just prior to his discussion of final causes (3.13). As we saw in the previous chapter, Maimonides uses as a paradigm of man’s tendency to overstate his individual importance the case of a renowned opponent of revelation, Abu Bakr al-Razi. The latter arrived at the conviction that there is a preponderance of evil in human experience. According to Maimonides, he arrived at this assessment by focusing too much on the individual. If one adopts the viewpoint of the individual human being, one might conclude that a drought or a famine, because it is painful for a given individual, should be viewed as somehow directed at that individual. In one of his most openly philosophical moments, Maimonides argues that the individual is relatively unimportant in light of his place in the species, not to mention the whole (p. 442). Maimonides’s choice of al-Razi’s view as the opposing view is ironic because, though he goes on to cite scripture to prove that the Bible opposes this view (p. 442 nn. 5–8, that is, by citing passages that indicate man’s insignificance vis-à-vis God), the omnipotence, and omniscience that it presupposes, of the biblical God implies that the human individual and his fate count a great deal. In Guide 3.13 on teleology, Maimonides proves especially elusive. Interpreters often jump to conclusions about what view he champions and which he opposes. On the one hand, Wolfson argues that Maimonides holds the position that he dialectically works out as “our opinion and our doctrine of creation.” That position is that other creatures exist for man and man exists to worship God. As for why man worships God, it must be His will that we worship Him, because He clearly cannot gain any benefit through our worship.38 On the other hand, W. Z. Harvey underlines the supposedly antiteleological significance of the claim that “‘all other beings too have been intended for their own sakes and not for the sake of something else’” (especially not solely for the sake of man).39 But he also seems to share with Wolfson the view that Maimonides’s assertion that man worships God owing to God’s will and not for God’s sake is an important element in Maimonides’s own antiteleological teaching.40 I will attempt to show, however, 38. Wolfson, Philosophy of Spinoza, 1: 426. Cf. Guide, pp. 450–52. 39. “Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean,” 163 n. 63, citing Guide, p. 452. 40. Ibid., 163, esp. n. 66. Also contrast Bahya Ibn Pakuda’s references to worshiping God “for God’s sake” and in accordance with “His desert,” The Book of Direction to the Duties of the Heart, ed. and trans. Menahem Mansoor (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), 183, 197–98.

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that the view expressed in 3.13, which Harvey quotes and I cite above, by no means rules out the kind of teleology that Aristotle maintained. To begin with, when Maimonides writes according to “his [own] mind,” he claims that the correct view according to the Law coincides with the “speculative views” (p. 452). Furthermore, before this and after giving a preliminary outline of Aristotle’s view (p. 449), he claims that Aristotle’s view that God is a divine principle beyond nature that “makes [at least] some things [exist] for the sake of others” is “one of the strongest proofs for creation.” In effect, he posits that Aristotle and the Bible are unusually close on the issue of teleology. According to Maimonides, although it is impossible to determine the purpose for which all (or the whole) of the beings exist, it is possible to determine that some beings exist for the sake of others and some exist for their own sake but most clearly that each exists for the perfection of its species (pp. 449–50). This teleology, which Maimonides ascribes to Aristotle in these opening pages, will prove to be the teleology that Maimonides defends as his own view over the course of the chapter. Maimonides claims that for Aristotle “first finality” (al-gha¯ya al-a¯walı¯), namely, that the individual exists to achieve its species form, is clear and evident. However, the “ultimate finality” (al-gha¯ya al-akhı¯ra) is far from clear or evident. Indeed, it is not exactly clear what it is, let alone whether one could know it. According to Maimonides, all those who discuss nature view this finality as indispensable but very difficult to know. As far as I can make out, ultimate finality is an accounting of the relation of all of the ends such that they form a hierarchically organized whole—something like Lovejoy’s chain of being, which Neoplatonism first made famous. It has become a truism about Maimonides and his predecessors such as Alfarabi that Neoplatonism is central to their thought.41 The details of Maimonides’s argument as well as of that of his interlocutors, however, prove more complicated than this. In what follows, I focus only on Maimonides. Maimonides ascribes to Aristotle the view that human beings are the best of beings that exist “out of this matter.” He means by “this matter” the matter out of which sublunar, corruptible beings are generated. According to Aristotle, the heavenly bodies, not to mention their intellects (or what came to be called “separate intellects”), are superior to human beings (EN 1141a30–b5, Meta. 8.1, 1042b5). Above all, Maimonides’s Aristotle

41. See my explanation of Strauss’s view of the putative Neoplatonism of Alfarabi and Maimonides, as expressed in Persecution and the Art of Writing, 18, in Parens, “Escaping the Scholastic Paradigm”; also see Strauss, “Farabi’s Plato,” in Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume, ed. A. Marx et al. (New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1945), 357–93.

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does not voice the view that the entire cosmos is laid out on a plan primarily for the benefit of man, for which Aristotle became famous, based on Politics 1.8.42 That account would seem to be an example of a fully worked out account of ultimate finality, with very heavy stress on human benefit. Now, there is little or no evidence that Maimonides was familiar with Politics 1.8,43 but I suspect that if he had been aware of it, he would have argued, as I do, that there Aristotle expresses less his own view than the tacit view underwriting all political life—namely, the world exists for human beings, and we are the human beings.44 This deeply political view is echoed by the biblical claims that man is the center of creation and the Jewish people are God’s chosen people. One of the great divisions between premodern and modern philosophers is their disagreement about how to respond to this deeply political or spirited view. As one of the staunchest proponents of the modern view, Spinoza goes a long way toward trying to blot it out. We already saw him attack it with great vehemence (in part 4 in propositions 16–46, discussed above). Maimonides is far more forgiving regarding this human attitude than Spinoza. In Guide 2.25, Maimonides argues against the Aristotelian view of eternity because of the harm that it does to “the Law in its principle,” namely, creation. When he considers the possibility of following Plato’s view (creation or production out of eternal matter) because it seems to leave room for miracles of some kind, Maimonides argues against following Plato. The miracles that are most relevant such as that God gave the Law to a particular community at a particular time and place would not be made possible by anything but creation in the biblical sense. Whatever Maimonides’s ultimate views on creation and eternity might be, he upholds and defends belief in creation in no small part because of the way that that belief underwrites the attachment of the Jewish people to their own Law as the best one possible for human beings.

42. In contrast to Maimonides, Saadya Gaon insists rather strongly that man is the highest creature in the Book of Beliefs and Opinions, trans. Samuel Rosenblatt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948, 1976), 181–82 (4.2). 43. See Parens, An Islamic Philosophy of Virtuous Religions (Albany: SUNY Press, 2006), 108 n. 20, and the limited evidence offered by Shlomo Pines in “Aristotle’s Politics in Arabic Philosophy,” Israel Oriental Studies 5 (1975): 150–60. 44. Cf. Rousseau’s grudging admission that “fanaticism” (that is, the overstated importance of your own group and its views vis-à-vis that of other groups and their views), “although sanguinary and cruel, is nevertheless a grand and strong passion which elevates the heart of man” (Emile, trans. Allan Bloom, (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 312n). This recognition places Rousseau in the counter-Enlightenment to which we sometimes refer as Romanticism.

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I must return to Guide 3.13. Here, Maimonides’s Aristotle offers a tempered teleology. This teleology is emphatic that individuals exist for the sake of their first finality. It is far more restrained about painting a rigid hierarchy or about stating that various beings exist solely for the sake of others. This tempered teleology is not limited to human beings, as it would be even for the more liberal reading of Spinoza, offered by Curley.45 In short, it is misleading to suggest, as Harvey does, that “[t]hese resemblances between Maimonides and Spinoza are particularly striking in light of the fact that Maimonides’ strong anti-anthropocentric and antiteleological views had (as far as I am aware) no parallel in mediaeval philosophic literature, nor were they shared by Descartes.”46 As I argued in the introduction, many of Maimonides’s twentieth-century readers adopt an all-too-traditional reading of Aristotle. They fail to appreciate the ways in which Maimonides, like Alfarabi before him, provide novel insights into how to read Plato and Aristotle. Maimonides’s own antiteleological views would be more accurately described as in harmony with “speculation,” that is, Maimonides’s Aristotle’s moderate teleological views. It is true that Maimonides’s interpretation of Aristotle, one he borrows from his intellectual forebear, Alfarabi,47 is not the one usually offered in the medieval Christian tradition. Nevertheless, I believe that Harvey, not to mention Wolfson, does not see the extent to which Maimonides views himself as agreeing with Aristotle regarding teleology. To justify this interpretation of Maimonides against the readings of Wolfson and Harvey, I need to clarify the relation between what I have referred to so far as Maimonides’s moderate Aristotelian teleology and his presentation of the biblical view. To do so, I need to offer a much closer reading of Guide 3.13, especially what follows the initial account of first and ultimate finality. Although Maimonides highlights some basic areas of agreement between the Bible and philosophy regarding final causes, the bulk of 3.13 is devoted

45. By tempered teleology I refer primarily to first finality. And when I say that Spinoza would reject even this, I mean that most Spinoza scholars can agree that Spinoza rejects teleology throughout nature—indeed, I implied as much when I said that Spinoza rejects “divine teleology.” Since there is only one substance, that is, God, to deny divine teleology is to deny that inanimate and animate beings are caused by God as their final cause. Many Spinoza scholars argue that human beings are somehow the exception to this repudiation of teleology. Cf. chap. 1 above and the antiteleological implications of Spinoza’s conatus doctrine and the teleological implications of Maimonides’s views on desire and love. 46. “Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean,” 164. 47. See Alfarabi, The Philosophy of Aristotle, in The Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, ed. Muhsin Mahdi (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962, 1969, 2001), and Parens, Islamic Philosophy of Virtuous Religions, chap. 6.

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to a subtle interplay between their opposing positions. Unlike for example Eight Chapters, chapter 6, where Maimonides achieves a stunning harmonization of philosophy and revelation, forced though it may be, here he does not force matters quite so much. The most obvious areas of disagreement are between the biblical stress on God’s will as opposed to the philosophic stress on the world’s necessity and between the biblical tendency to denigrate the heavenly bodies and the philosophic tendency to elevate them, especially vis-à-vis human being. It is tempting to dismiss the issue of the denigration or elevation of the heavenly bodies as a quaint vestige of premodern philosophy, but we must guard against that temptation. The status of the heavenly bodies is less important in and of itself than its relation to the status of human beings and what that relative status can tell us about the importance of the pursuit of knowledge, as opposed to obedience. The area of agreement between the Bible and philosophy is that human knowledge has its limits. If the reader hears in this an echo of chapter 1, he should not be surprised. The reader will also not be surprised to discover, once again, that where exactly the limit lies is far from obvious. In the biblical case, the buck supposedly stops with God’s will. Once again, the things beneath man are for man’s sake and man is for the sake of worshiping God, though God gains no benefit from that worship—so the worship is really for man’s own sake, yet it is required by God’s will (or perhaps His wisdom). The mixed character of the answer is far from satisfying and leads us to wonder whether, pace Wolfson, it is really Maimonides’s own. In the philosophic case, the limit of knowledge is roughly at the level of the species or perhaps first finality. As Harvey rightly notes, although some species are clearly of benefit to other species—most clearly plants are of benefit to animals—all species are also for their own sake.48 As to what the parts of the whole are for or what the whole itself is for, that remains a mystery (p. 450). Or, perhaps, it is a not a real question. If it is good that the individuals in a species should continue to exist as a group so that the species may be sustained, then why should there be some additional purpose above and beyond the endurance of the species (p. 449)? The main thing driving the expectation that there will be some higher purpose, it seems, is an underlying human conviction that the higher must not exist for the sake of the lower—in other words, the human expectation is that the order of the whole should be hierarchical (p. 454 bot.). As we saw in chapter 1, the limits of knowledge at times have less to do with in-principle limits than with misguided or misplaced questions 48. Though even this last claim comes ultimately to be contested in the case of plants; see p. 454, “[I]t is manifest that plants were brought into existence only for the sake of the animals.”

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or the inability of a given inquirer to acquire the requisite premises for a solid answer. Although we will return eventually to the opposition between the biblical stress on divine will and the philosophic stress on necessity when confronted by these questions about final causes, we will do so only by way of a consideration of the other opposition concerning the heavenly bodies. A line or two into Maimonides’s characterization of the biblical response to teleology (pp. 450 bot.–452 top), he begins his ongoing battle against the denigrating view of the heavenly bodies: they exist for the sake of human beings. Here, he insists that even the Bible does not mean to imply that the heavenly bodies are for the sake of human beings. What is the impetus for this defense of the heavenly bodies? At a minimum, it is in keeping with Maimonides’s repeated insistence that everything does not exist for man’s sake, which in turn seems in harmony with the radical denigration of the human individual in 3.12. These two claims are not mutually entailed. One could attempt to silence the human tendency to focus on one’s own individual good and, at the same time, assert the supremacy of the well-being of the human species over that of all other species. Nevertheless, I suspect that there are important connections between 3.12’s denigration of human individuals and 3.13’s denigration of the human species vis-à-vis the heavenly bodies. For now, however, we are most concerned with why Maimonides not only takes up the elevation of the heavenly bodies but also returns to it repeatedly throughout 3.13. The simple answer, I believe, is that the elevation of the heavenly bodies is in keeping with the philosophical spirit of Maimonides’s own views on final causes. In contrast, that the Bible denigrates the heavenly bodies to discount the gods of the pagans is relatively obvious. First, God creates the heavenly bodies only after the first three days. He thereby denies that they are the cause of the light that God Himself first creates. Second, when He creates them, He creates them prior to human beings, implying thereby that the heavenly bodies exist for human beings’ sake—despite Maimonides’s repeated insistence that they do not, according to the Torah. Third, He creates man at the end of the creation as a whole (on the sixth day)—only then pronouncing everything “very good”—thereby implying that not only the heavenly bodies but also all other creatures exist for man’s sake. Fourth, by rendering the heavenly bodies subject to His will, God implies that inquiry into the heavenly bodies is not, as philosophers would argue, a basis for understanding the order of all things.49 49. These four points are based loosely on Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 147–73, esp. 152–55.

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Rather than address all of these indications that the Bible means to denigrate the heavenly bodies directly, Maimonides addresses them obliquely at best. He does so toward the middle of the chapter (pp. 453–54). Instead of beginning with Genesis, he begins remotely with the difficulty that Proverbs (16:4) seems to controvert his claim that God could not have made the whole of creation so that man might worship Him, somehow for His sake (pp. 452–53). Rather, what scripture must mean is that He created them “because of [His] will,” in keeping with the argument of the preceding page (p. 452). When he finally turns to Genesis or as he calls it the Account of the Beginning, he touches on what God means when He pronounces that what He has made is “good”50 and finally pronounces “the whole . . . very good.” Maimonides addresses the range of meanings that could be intended by “good”: that it conforms to “its purpose” or to “our purpose” or to “His [God’s] purpose.” Having merely touched on the problematic option, namely, that God created all of the rest of the creatures to conform to human beings’ purpose, Maimonides rushes past it and insists that when in Genesis God appears to place the heavenly bodies so that they will give light upon the earth, the Bible does not mean that being useful to man is essential to the heavenly bodies. Indeed, he insists, this is as patently absurd as that God made man so that he should “have dominion over the fish” (1:28). In effect Maimonides dismisses the literal meaning of Genesis, implying that the heavenly bodies no more exist for the sake of ruling the day and night than man exists for the sake of ruling over the other living creatures. Ruling is merely a useful attribute of their natures, not the very essence or final cause of their existence—as the literal meaning seems most emphatically to imply. To rehabilitate the heavenly bodies to a position above man, Maimon­ ides modifies the rhetoric of Genesis. Although we will consider later additional evidence that he is all too aware of the denigration of the heavens in the Torah, for now we must begin to raise the question: Why does he rehabilitate the heavenly bodies? To begin to answer this question, consider the price of denigrating the heavens. Although Maimonides does not address this price in 3.13, he gives indications of how we might in the highly elusive Account of the Chariot (Guide 3.1–7). Preliminarily I can say that the price of denigrating the heavens is gathering more power into God’s will, which squares with the salient features of 3.13 already discussed (Bible : philosophy :: will : necessity :: denigrating heavenly bodies : elevating heavenly 50. As in the Pines translation, the italics here and in the following indicates Maimonides’s shift from his own Arabic to the Bible’s Hebrew.

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bodies). As we have seen repeatedly throughout this book, gathering too much power into divine hands is antithetical to philosophy. Now let us consider some of the Account of the Chariot (3.1–7) more slowly and carefully to make sense of Maimonides’s repeated efforts to rehabilitate the heavenly bodies in the teleology chapter (3.13). The majority of the Account of the Chariot is devoted to interpreting Ezekiel’s elaborate—Maimonides insinuates overly elaborate—theophany (3.1–5, 3.7). Although the proper subject matter of the Account of the Chariot or divine science is God and the angels, Ezekiel cannot seem to avoid treating the heavenly bodies (or astronomy, which is properly a part of mathematics).51 The most obvious parabolic interpretation of Ezekiel’s Chariot is that it displays God’s rule over the heavenly bodies. Consequently, according to Jonathan ben Uziel, the Aramaic translator of the Bible and usually a trusted ally in Maimonides’s crusade to establish divine incorporeality, Ezekiel’s Chariot shows that the heavenly bodies follow God’s will. Maimonides offers an interpretation of Jonathan ben Uziel, however, that appears to make of the relevant passages an interpretation of God’s relation to the heavenly bodies as one of necessity rather than will (3.2, p. 419). Maimonides draws attention subsequently to very confusing quibbles with Jonathan ben Uziel over what the galgalim are to which Ezekiel refers in 10:1 (3.4, pp. 423–24). One cannot help but wonder whether these obscure hints at disagreement suggest possibly greater areas of disagreement. Perhaps Jonathan does not share Maimonides’s tendency to mitigate divine will. After all, Maimonides’s other great Hellenizing ally in decorporealization, Onqelos the Proselyte, demonstrates repeatedly his unwillingness to follow up on decorporealization with reduction or mitigation of divine will. Indeed, he goes so far as to fall back into a corporeal view of God where the punitive will of a particularly provident God is at stake (1.48, pp. 106–8; 1.66, pp. 160–61). Whether I am right or wrong in my interpretation of Jonathan ben Uziel, the key insight remains: Maimonides sees an inner connection between his ongoing anticorporeal battle and his concerted effort to reelevate the heavens. In contrast, the biblical focus on anti-idolatry is fully compatible with, indeed, seems to require the radical denigration of the heavenly bodies. 51. As Matthew Reiner, a graduate student at the time at the University of Dallas, noted, Maimonides establishes a clear line between the Account of the Beginning, as including the heavenly bodies, and the Account of the Chariot, as restricted to God and the separate intellects and angels, in the first four chapters of the Mishneh Torah, known as Sefer Madda‘. This distinction is obscured somewhat in part 2 of the Guide, where the divide between the sublunar and the superlunar is the clearer division. For a similar confusion of divine science with astronomy, see Job as presented by Maimonides in Guide 3.13, p. 455.

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To return to the original question, why does Maimonides rehabilitate the heavens? The answer is surely not that he is a closet pagan. He does not look up to the heavenly bodies as if they had wills that should be placated. Rather his rehabilitation of the heavens is philosophic. Unless the heavenly bodies are subject to divine necessity, the study of them will reveal nothing about what he calls the “nature of existence.” Although many will insist that Maimonides views the heavenly bodies as demonstrating God’s purpose (or will), as opposed to His necessity (in the spirit of Guide 2.19, p. 303 middle), even Maimonides drifts toward an abandonment of the putative opposition between purpose and necessity in the very same chapter (2.19, p. 310 bot.). More importantly, here Maimonides’s repeated insistence in 3.13 that the heavenly bodies are higher than human beings shows that he cannot be, as Wolfson and Harvey seem to believe, abandoning moderate teleology. On the contrary, the reelevation of the heavenly bodies runs against the very fideism contained in the biblical argument that the rest of creatures are created for man’s sake and man is created for the sake of worshiping God, though such worship is simply required by divine will. On the one hand, pace Wolfson, Maimonides does not adhere to this fideist argument—even though it dispenses with the absurdity that the omnipotent God should have any need for benefits received from man. On the other hand, pace Harvey, Maimonides does not reject teleology even though his account is a moderate version of teleology, of a kind not often found in the medieval period, at least in the Scholastic tradition. In contrast, Spinoza seems intent on presenting the first wholly consistent antiteleological teaching in modernity.

six

Prudence vs. Imagination

Over the course of three articles published in 2001, Heidi Ravven attempted to establish a new approach to Maimonides and Spinoza on the imagination and prophecy. This new approach was presented frankly as an extension of some basic arguments of Shlomo Pines. One of Ravven’s most important theses is that Maimonides “conflat[es]” or “absorb[s]” practical intellect (or phrone¯sis) into the imagination. She attributes this thesis to Pines. My

. Heidi Ravven, “Some Thoughts on What Spinoza Learned from Maimonides about the Prophetic Imagination, pt. 1: Maimonides on Prophecy and Imagination,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 39, no. 2 (2001): 193–214; “Some Thoughts on What Spinoza Learned from Maimonides on the Prophetic Imagination, pt. 2: Spinoza’s Maimonideanism,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 39, no. 3 (2001): 385–406; and “The Garden of Eden: Spinoza’s Maimonidean Account of the Genealogy of Morals and the Origin of Society,” Philosophy and Theology 13, no. 1 (2001): 3–51. This chapter appeared originally as “Leaving the Garden: Maimonides and Spinoza on the Imagination and Practical Intellect Revisited,” Philosophy and Theology 18, no. 2 (2006): 219–46. . On the basis of several writings, foremost of which is “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. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 95–157; his translator’s introduction to the Guide; and “Limitations of Human Knowledge according to al-Fa¯ra¯bı¯, Ibn Ba¯jja, and Maimonides,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. I. Twersky (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 82–109, reprinted in Collected Works of Shlomo Pines, vol. 5, ed. W. Z. Harvey and Moshe Idel (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997), 404–31. . Ravven, “Garden of Eden,” 10–11. Note also that Ravven sometimes speaks of “practical intellect” as “perfected imagination”—as if imagination could be transformed into intellect (e.g., ibid., 9, 17). She cites Pines, “Truth and Falsehood versus Good and Evil,” especially 98–100. Pines’s main claim in this article as a whole is that Maimonides establishes an unprecedentedly deep opposition between truth and falsehood, on the one hand, and good and evil, on the other. He argues that we see hints of this opposition in the Alexandrian commentary tradition, especially in the commentaries of Themistius and Philoponus on On the Soul 3.4. It should be stressed that Ravven argues that Pines has exaggerated how novel a departure from Aristotle this is. See Ravven, “Garden of Eden,” 17. Pines uses this purportedly unprecedented opposition as

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intention here is to explore some of the inferences drawn from this thesis and to reconsider some relevant evidence not fully enough considered by Ravven. Broadly speaking, I support the interpretation that, according to Ravven, is offered by Sara Klein-Braslavy and Howard Kreisel, as well as W. Z. Harvey, namely, practical intellect does play an independent role in Maimonides’s Guide—in spite of the fact that, as Pines has observed, “practical intellect [is] a term which [Maimonides] does not use in the Guide.” Whether or not practical intellect plays a role in the Guide is important because it is intimately connected with other parts of Maimonides’s thought. To begin with, if practical intellect does not play any role in the Guide, then human freedom is undermined. One cannot exercise free choice without some version of practical intellect. Spinoza is consistent in repudiating any role for practical intellect or prudence and choice. His elevation of the imagination the basis for driving a wedge between the intellect and the imagination such that the intellect (alone) is the guide in matters of truth and falsehood and the imagination (alone) is the guide in matters of good and evil. See “Truth and Falsehood versus Good and Evil,” 145. Apparently, Ravven accepts Pines’s conclusion about the relation between imagination and good and evil but questions at least this part of Pines’s supporting evidence. . The expected term would be either “practical intellect” (al-‘aql al-‘amalı¯ ) or “prudence” (al-ta‘aqqul), as in Alfarabi’s Selected Aphorisms nos. 38 and 39 respectively. See Shlomo Pines, “Truth and Falsehood versus Good and Evil,” 145; Sara Klein-Braslavy, Maimonides’ Interpretation of the Adam Stories in Genesis: A Study in Maimonides’ Anthropology [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Ruben Mass, 1987); Warren Zev Harvey, “Maimonides and Spinoza on the Knowledge of Good and Evil,” Iyyun [Hebrew] 28 (1979): 167–85; English trans. Yoel Lerner, in Studies in Jewish Thought, ed. Joseph Dan (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1989), 131–46; Howard Kreisel, Maimonides’ Political Thought (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999), esp. chaps. 2 and 3. When I say “broadly speaking,” I mean that I share the view that the practical intellect plays a role. I do not necessarily agree with each of these authors on the exact outlines of that role. Indeed, just how loose my agreement is should be inferred by the fact that L. V. Berman (“Maimonides on the Fall of Man,” AJS Review 5 [1980]: 1–15, esp. 3 n. 6) describes Harvey’s view as one stressing the role of the imagination—contra Ravven (“Garden of Eden,” 45 n. 11). (Ravven cites Berman’s article in support of the uncontroversial claim that the punishment for eating the fruit is falling under the sway of the imagination [ibid., 9 n. 17].) Berman describes Harvey’s view this way while contrasting it with Steven S. Schwarzschild’s view (“Moral Radicalism and ‘Middlingness’ in the Ethics of Maimonides,” Studies in Medieval Culture 11 [1978]: 73–75). Because I agree with Berman’s assessment of Harvey rather than Ravven’s and, in general, because the scholarly debates on this issue and on Guide 1.2 have become so tangled, I will focus my attention in this chapter on a critique of Ravven’s view, based especially on passages other than Guide 1.2, rather than attempting to sort out all of the conflicting views. See note 14 below where I acknowledge that there may be an even greater affinity between my approach and that of Berman than my view and that of Klein-Braslavy and Kreisel. . See the locus classicus of Spinoza’s repudiation of human freedom of choice, Ethics 2p48. On the connection between freedom and deliberation or prudence, see, for example, Spinoza’s mockery of “consent or deliberate intention or free decision” (consensum, vel animi deliberationem, seu liberum dicretum) E 3def.of.emot.#6. He refers dismissively here to Aristote-

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is consistent with his denigration of free choice. If Maimonides were to elevate the imagination to the extent Pines (Harvey) and Ravven suggest, then we might expect to see comparable denigration of free choice. In addition, if practical intellect plays a role in the Guide, then Maimonides’s teaching on prophecy is not likely to be very similar to Spinoza’s, pace Ravven. The portrait Ravven paints of the imagination in Maimonidean prophecy is of a relatively unfettered faculty, which produces not only prophetic images but also political guidance for a community. What we discover about practical intellect in the Guide will, then, have implications for this portrait of Maimonidean prophecy. Ravven’s boldest claims about the imagination are made in her article “The Garden of Eden: Spinoza’s Maimonidean Account of the Genealogy of Morals and the Origin of Society.” The three boldest claims she makes, in addition to the main thesis that imagination is conflated with practical intellect (also known as the claim that imagination is the “faculty of ruling” [qu¯wa tadbı¯r]), are that the imagination discerns the mean, that it controls desire or appetite, and that Maimonides’s thought on the role of practical intellect develops (from a distinct role in the Eight Chapters to absorption into imagination in the Guide). I will address all four of Ravven’s claims, though not necessarily in this order. I do not have room here to explore in detail Ravven’s disagreements with Klein-Braslavy on the discernment of the mean. Let it suffice to say, Ravven claims that Klein-Braslavy assigns such discernment to theoretical intellect. She also describes Klein-Braslavy’s argument as a Kantianizing reading because it seems to treat reason as the source of commandments. I return briefly, however, to the site of their confrontation, Guide 1.2 on the Garden of Eden, and will then consider some of the positions outlined by Ravven. In brief, Maimonides considers a relatively literal reading of the Garden: God gave the commandment not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to man, whom he intended to remain like animals without intellect. He (or they) disobeyed and received as punishment the very knowledge of good and evil the tree offers. Maimonides, after an ad hominem attack against the anonymous interlocutor who offered this interpretation, offers his alternative reading. He argues that before eating of the fruit, man lian notions of choice (prohairesis) and prudence (phrone¯sis) or deliberating well (euboulia) (EN 1113a10, 1142a32–b36). . See Ravven, “Some Thoughts on What Spinoza Learned from Maimonides about the Prophetic Imagination, pt. 1,” 197, commenting on Guide 2.40. . See “Garden of Eden,” 19 (claim 1); 6, 8, 17 (claim 2); 9, 16 (claim 3). . Cf. ibid., 15–16, with 19–20.

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possessed intellectual knowledge of truth and falsehood. After eating, they were punished by being deprived of that “intellectual apprehension” (alidra¯k al-‘aqlı¯), acquiring “imaginary desires” (shahwa¯tih al-khaya¯liyya), and becoming endowed with “the faculty of apprehending [al-idra¯k] generally accepted things.” Enormous amounts of ink have been spilled about the latter faculty of apprehension. Following Pines, Ravven inclines toward assimilating the second to the third: the power of imagination is the faculty of apprehending generally accepted things. In addition, while disputing with Klein-Braslavy, Ravven argues that Adam could not have possessed the faculty of apprehending good and evil or a practical intellect before eating the fruit because, according to her, Maimonides not only in the Guide but also in the Eight Chapters “assigns the commandments to a prerational and desiderative capacity of the soul and not to either of its intellectual ones.”10 Yet in the Eight Chapters, Maimonides does not assign the commandments to the appetitive part. Rather, he attributes obedience and disobedience to commandments to that part. In other words, desire is the motive cause of action that inclines us toward disobedience. Nothing prerational “knows” the commandment.11 Indeed, Maimonides himself notes that God could not have given commandments to man if they lacked intellect like a beast (p. 24, 14a).12 Yet the only kind of intellect he ascribes explicitly to them is the intellect that perceives truth and falsehood. There is surely reason to wonder what good such an intellect does in the face of such a commandment. One can see why, at least according to Ravven’s report, Klein-Braslavy seems to assign discernment of the mean to “theoretical intellect.”13 Leaving aside the riddles of Guide 1.2,14 one wonders what sense it could make to claim the imagination “discerns” the mean. Unfortunately, the . In his translation of the Guide, Pines translates this phrase “desires of the imagination.” I believe this translation misleads us into supposing that Maimonides attributes desire to the imagination. See my comments on this issue in Parens, “Prudence, Imagination, and Determination of Law in Alfarabi and Maimonides,” in Enlightening Revolutions: Essays in Honor of Ralph Lerner, ed. Svetozar Minkov and Stéphane Douard (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006), 33–35. 10. “Garden of Eden,” 16. Cf. 8. 11. See EC chap. 2. 12. Cited by Ravven at “Garden of Eden,” 7. 13. Ibid., 19. 14. Of all of the discussions, at least in English, on Guide 1.2, L. V. Berman’s (“Maimonides on the Fall of Man,” 1980) is the most detailed and revealing. This chapter and my article “Maimonidean Ethics Revisited: Development and Asceticism in Maimonides?” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 12, no. 3 (2003): 33–62, are in keeping with Berman’s suggestion that “a more fruitful approach than [ascribing either a purely rational ethics or a purely imaginative or conventionalist ethics to Maimonides] would be an investigation of the sources of moral and ethical behavior in Alfarabi’s and Maimonides’ understanding of Aristotle’s depiction of the prudent man in his Nicomachean Ethics” (“Maimonides on the Fall of Man,” 3–4 n. 6, 10).

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Guide does not offer the kind of analysis of the parts of the soul offered in the Eight Chapters.15 Eventually, we will need to consider Ravven’s reasons for claiming that Maimonides’s views on the relation between practical intellect and imagination changed from the Eight Chapters to the Guide. For now, however, we must consider what Maimonides does state clearly about the imagination in the Guide. Of course, it is all too well documented that in the prophetology (Guide 2.32–48, esp. 37) Maimonides links the imagination with politics, the intellect with philosophy, and the unification of perfected imagination with perfected intellect as true prophecy. In effect, the philosopher is to the political human being as the intellect is to the imagination. Of course, one needs to go back to Alfarabi to understand fully the background of this formulation or rendition of the philosopher-king of Plato’s Republic.16 Yet the link between the imagination and politics in the Guide is obscure. According to Guide 2.37, those with some impediment of their intellect (whether by nature or by training) can receive overflow from God (or the Active Intellect) to their imagination. Among those who receive such overflow, he includes “those who govern cities while being the legislators, soothsayers, the augurs, and the dreamers of veridical dreams.” He goes on to state that they have most extraordinary imaginings, they think they have come to possess the sciences, and they bring great confusion to speculative matters. Although Maimonides does not mention explicitly the role of practical intellect in the prophetology, it should also be stressed that he does not outline the role of theoretical intellect here either. True, he identifies those who achieve a perfected intellect but lack a perfected imagination as philosophers (2.37). Yet what exactly their intellects do is unspecified. As described, however, the imagination hardly sounds very promising as a power of discerning the mean. If the imagination has absorbed the practical intellect, then one would assume that one of these imaginatively guided rulers or legislators would be capable at least of forming a decent society, that is, of determining what the mean is for his society and formulating laws to aim at it. Yet even according to Ravven, there are three different kinds of societies in the Guide: “1. the purely conventional society; 2. the practically

15. Although this is in a sense unfortunate, it is one mark against Ravven’s application of the development thesis to the relation between Eight Chapters and the Guide. The Guide relies tacitly upon the psychology of EC chap. 1, which is a rough sketch of Aristotle’s teaching in On the Soul. For that reason, Maimonides does not offer a comparable analysis of the soul in the Guide. 16. See Muhsin Mahdi, Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). And see a review of it that I wrote, which focuses on the role of the imagination and prudence in prophecy in Alfarabi, in American Political Science Review 96, no. 2 (2002): 410–11.

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rational just society; and 3. a society that augments practical justice with a simple education in theoretical wisdom. That polity is exemplified completely and only in the Mosaic constitution.”17 In other words, even Ravven distinguishes between the merely conventional society and the practically rational society. The basis of that distinction seems to be that a merely conventional society can very well be unjust. According to Maimonides’s classifications in Guide 2.37, the merely conventional society is ruled by unjust and merely imaginative rulers. Here, I think that we have evidence of the implausibility of claiming both that the imagination discerns the mean and that it controls desires. The true meaning of “imaginary desires” is desires without any control or guidance. The imagination does not guide desire so much as offer it an unlimited array of means by which to fulfill unregulated desire. Although the imagination and practical intellect appear to be similar because both supply means,18 their relation to desire differs. The preliminary way of conveying that difference is to say that practical intellect rules, whereas imagination as such offers no constraint or limitation. Indeed, the key feature of imagination is that it knows no limits. This accounts for its role, not only in the Guide but also in the Eight Chapters, as the power that subverts speculative inquiry.19 This brings me to one aspect of Ravven’s central thesis that the practical intellect is absorbed into the imagination, namely, the identification of the imagination as the “faculty of ruling” (qu¯wa tadbı¯ r).20 The real challenge here is to determine whether the imagination can rule desire or whether, if left to its own devices, it merely offers means to unguided and unruly desires. According to Ravven, Maimonides’s conception of the imagination has been misunderstood because undue emphasis has been placed on its “receptive” as opposed to its “mimetic” functions.21 Those who stress the receptive character of imagination take relatively literally Maimonides’s claim 17. Ravven, “Some Thoughts on What Spinoza Learned from Maimonides about the Prophetic Imagination, pt. 1,” 211. 18. On practical intellect or prudence’s supplying of means, see EN 1112b12. 19. Compare Guide 1.73, Tenth Premise, “A Call upon the Reader’s Attention,” pp. 209–12, with EC chap. 1. The imagination violates what Maimonides calls the “nature of existence” (t·abı¯ ‘a al-wuju¯d) (1.71, p. 182, 97b). That is, the imagination violates the distinction between the necessary, the possible, and the impossible (1.73). It conflates the things that are imaginable (but impossible) with those that are possible. 20. “Some Thoughts on What Spinoza Learned from Maimonides about the Prophetic Imagination, pt. 1,” 197. 21. Cf. ibid., 196–97 nn. 9, 11, with “Some Thoughts on What Spinoza Learned from Maimonides about the Prophetic Imagination, pt. 2,” 386–87 and 386–88 nn. 5, 8. She draws her warrant for this distinction from Richard Walzer’s “Al-Farabi’s Theory of Prophecy and Divination,” Journal of Hellenistic Studies 77, no. 1 (1957): 142–48, esp. 144.

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that divine overflow reaches the intellect and then the imagination (2.36). They stress the passivity of the prophet. It is not difficult to see that Ravven would want to show that the imagination, as Maimonides understands it, is active. After all, one needs to be active to be a ruler. Ravven, without stating it in so many words, is insinuating that the human imagination is producing the images that appear in scripture. Let us grant Ravven’s claim that the human imagination is not only mimetic but also even “productive.”22 Is producing images sufficiently active for ruling? I believe that Ravven unbeknownst to herself hints that there is a rift between the imagination’s fertility in producing symbols and the power to rule. After stating, “the imagination also encompasses practical wisdom and convention,” she goes on to argue, “Hence the prophets employ imagination, as all leaders do, to apply their practical wisdom in the service of social welfare.” The very distinction between imagination’s “application” and the content of practical wisdom itself brings into question the relation between the ruling function and the symbol-producing function of imagination. Not by chance, the claim that imagination could rule in the way that, say, prudence or practical intellect could is a significant bone of contention. In an oddly placed footnote, Ravven argues that W. Z. Harvey is incorrect in inferring that Maimonides leaves a significant place for practical intellect when in Guide 1.53 he speaks of the role of the “rational faculty” (al-qu¯wa al-na¯t·iqa) in “sewing, carpentry, weaving, building, architecture, and governing cities.”23 She argues that Maimonides’s sole point here is that the intellect includes a diversity of functions, whose unity is akin to God’s unparalleled unity—a unity that allows for no distinction of positive attributes. In other words, we may not infer anything about the distinction between the imagination and practical intellect based on this passage. The other most obvious passage in which Maimonides alludes to the role of intellect (presumably practical intellect) in governing is the well-known passage in Guide 1.72 (pp. 190–91, 102b–103a). Rather than deal directly with the relevant passage, Ravven refers to Alexander Altmann’s treatment 22. “Some Thoughts on What Spinoza Learned from Maimonides about the Prophetic Imagination, pt. 2,” 386. Cf. pt. 1, 202 n. 25, and the citation of Norbert Samuelson’s “Comments on Maimonides’ Concept of Prophecy,” CCAR Journal 18 (1971): 9–25—though I doubt Samuelson means by “productive” what I hope to show Ravven means by it. 23. Here I quote Ravven’s report of Harvey in “Garden of Eden,” 45 n. 11, on Guide 1.53 (p. 121, 62b). The Arabic phrase Maimonides uses rendered as “governing cities” is siya¯sa almadı¯ na, the verb being from the root s.w.s. In the main, Harvey, pace Ravven, is intent upon defending Pines’s claim that good and evil originate in the imagination. See Harvey, “Maimon­ ides and Spinoza on the Knowledge of Good and Evil” [Hebrew], esp. 179–83; English trans., esp. 141–45.

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of this passage amid his very complicated technical analysis of the soul and its powers.24 Altmann seeks to trace the background of Maimonides’s references to the intellect in its practical function as “material intellect.” Yet nowhere does Altmann insinuate that the material intellect is the imagination. Now, I am ready to admit that Maimonides’s main objective in 1.72 is to offer not a definitive account of the human soul but more of a “simplifying presentation” (tamhı¯d) of the cosmos by comparing it with the human soul. Yet it cannot be gainsaid that Maimonides speaks extensively about the “rational faculty” and seems clearly to ascribe to it the power of ruling. Furthermore, he underlines a point of central importance, “None of the individual animals requires for its continued existence reflection, perspicacity, and governance of conduct [ fikr wa- rawiyya wa-tadbı¯ r]” (p. 190, 102b). Here, we hear an echo of Maimonides’s earlier claim that a commandment could not be given to an animal because it does not possess the rational faculty (1.2). Of course, animals possess imagination. I quote the most important passage in 1.72 (p. 191, 103a): 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 [al-tadbı¯ r], 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 the foods through which he exists require the application of some art and a lengthy management [wa-tadbı¯ r ·t awı¯ l] that cannot be made perfect except through thought and perspicacity [ fikra wa-rawiyya], as well as with the help of many tools and many individuals, everyone of whom devotes himself to one single occupation. For this reason one is needed who would rule [s.w.s.] 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. Similarly the precautions against heat in the hot season and against cold in the cold season and the finding protection against the rains, the snow, and the blowing winds, require arrangements for many preparations, none of which can be perfected except through thought and perspicacity [bi-fikra wa-rawiyya]. Because of this one finds in man the rational faculty [al-qu¯wa al-na¯t·iqa] in virtue of which he thinks, exerts his perspicacity. . . . Through it he rules [d.b.r] all the parts of his body. . . . Because of this a human individual who, accord-

24. “Garden of Eden,” 10, citing Alexander Altmann, “Maimonides on the Intellect and the Scope of Metaphysics,” in Von der mittelalterlichen zur modernen Aufklärung, vol. 2 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1987), 60–129, esp. 70.

Prudence vs. Imagination / 171 ing to a supposition you might make, would be deprived of this faculty and left only with animal faculties, would perish and be destroyed immediately. This faculty is very noble indeed, being the noblest of the faculties of the living beings [hadha¯ al-qu¯wa sharı¯fa jiddan ashraf qu¯wı¯ al-h ·aywa¯n]. It is also very secret [khafiyya] and its true reality cannot be understood at the first attempt of common opinion [al-ra’y al-mushtarak], as one can understand the other natural faculties.

Three important terms appear in Guide 1.53, 1.72, and 2.40, notably “governance of conduct” (tadbı¯r), “ruling” (siya¯sa, s.w.s.), and “the rational faculty” (al-qu¯wa al-na¯t·iqa). The first term is broad enough to cover both ethical conduct and political governance. The second term is relatively narrowly political. The third term is the faculty to which “governance” and “rule” are being attributed. In addition to the umbrella phrase “the rational faculty,” Maimonides repeatedly identifies the specific powers within the rational faculty that are capable of these activities as “thought and perspicacity” (bifikra wa-rawiyya). It should be noted that in addition to these activities that are political in character, the rational faculty by means of thought and perspicacity is also engaged in the arts. The function of reason to which he refers, which is involved both in political and ethical action and in the arts, is Aristotle’s logistikon or calculative (as opposed to episte¯monikon or scientific) use of reason (EN 1139a12). Here, Maimonides echoes directly his own discussion of the practical activity of reason in the Eight Chapters (chap. 1). He means by practical what Aristotle means by logistikon. In the Eight Chapters, he distinguishes between the productive (technical, in the sense of techne¯) use and the “reflective” ( fikrı¯ ) use of reason. And he identifies the latter as the power by virtue of which we “deliberate” (rawiyya) about the fitting means. Note that the very same terms come up in Guide 1.72 to refer to the specific power within the rational faculty concerned with ethical and political action, namely, what Pines renders as “thought and perspicacity” (bi-fikra wa-rawiyya) and what Charles E. Butterworth and Raymond Weiss render as the “reflective” or “deliberating” power within reason.25 Already we can see that there is reason to doubt Ravven’s effort to distance the Maimonides of the Guide from the Maimonides of the Eight Chapters on the status of practical intellect. Before turning to question Ravven’s claim that Maimonides’s thought underwent development from the Eight Chapters to the Guide (from distinguishing imagination from intellect to 25. See Ethical Writings of Maimonides, ed. Charles E. Butterworth and Raymond Weiss, (New York: New York University Press, 1975; rpt. New York: Dover, 1983), 63–64.

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absorption of practical intellect into imagination) further, however, we must consider some additional evidence from the Guide that Maimonides retains the idea that the “practical intellect” or prudence, not the imagination, rules ethically and politically. Recall that in Guide 1.2 the greatest source of confusion was the exact relation between “imaginary desires” or “desires of the imagination” and the “faculty of apprehending generally accepted things.” Ravven insinuates that the two are one in the same. I believe that we have evidence to the contrary early on in the Guide. In 1.1, Maimonides argues that to be made in the image and likeness of God means to possess the same kind of “form” that God possesses, namely, “intellectual apprehension.” Based on 1.2, it seems apparent that at least the main sense of this intellectual apprehension is theoretical intellect or intellectual apprehension of truth and falsehood, though he merely adumbrates this “form” without giving it clear content in 1.1. In 1.7, Maimonides returns to the theme of being made in the image and likeness, as possessing the same or similar form, in connection with Genesis 5:3’s reference to Seth’s being made in the image and likeness of Adam. The heading of this lexicographical chapter is “to bear children” (yalod). Among the meanings of bearing children is the fifth and final meaning, a figurative meaning connected with “happenings within thought [hawa¯dith al-afka¯r] and the opinions and doctrines [al-a¯ra¯’ wa-l-madha¯hib] they entail.” To engender one’s children in this respect is to “instruct” or “educate” them. When such engendering fails, then “[that human being] is not a man, but an animal having the configuration of a man. Such a being, however, has a faculty to cause various kinds of harm and to produce evils that is not possessed by other animals. For he applies the capacities for thought and perception [qudra . . . al-fikra wa-l-rawiyya], which were to prepare him to achieve a perfection that he has not achieved, to all kinds of machinations entailing evils and occasioning and engendering all kinds of harm.” Again, we run into that crucial pairing of fikr and rawiyya.26 This is a power that human beings possess, which animals do not. Again, this seems to rule out the possibility that it is the imagination. Quick comparison with Guide 3.54 will show that Maimonides refers here to the term rendered in Hebrew as · hokhmah, usually rendered as wisdom. There, he points out that “wisdom” can refer in the Bible to theoretical wisdom but can just as well 26. It appears that Pines has not detected the similarity between this phrase and its parallel in 1.72, since here he renders rawiyya as “perception,” when “perspicacity” does a far better job of conveying the intellectual overtones of the term here.

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refer to the practical use of reason, though often in a sinister key. Wisdom can refer to the human ability to use “thought” ( fikr) for deceitful purposes (p. 633, 132a). One may begin to wonder whether classical conceptions of “practical intellect” or “prudence” can bear this interpretation. After all, prudence has an invariably positive sense in Aristotle. Yet, various moments in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics come to mind and are likely in the back of Maimonides’s mind. What comes to be known as “prudence” develops out of a “natural virtue” called “cleverness” or “shrewdness” (deinotes). If this natural virtue is combined with ethical or moral virtue (or what Maimonides refers to in 1.7 as “education”), then it becomes prudence. If, however, it is not properly cultivated, it becomes “unscrupulousness” (panourgia) (EN 1144a23–30). Mere calculation for vicious purposes is the opposite of practical intellect or prudence. According to Aristotle, the reason human beings can be so much more harmful than other animals is that our distinctive principle, namely, reason, when left unwed to ethical virtue, becomes mere calculation wedded to unlimited desires (1150a2–10).27 That there is an intimate connection between mere calculative unscrupulousness and the imagination is likely. Both have an uncanny ability to uncover means. Yet the same can hardly be said for prudence or practical intellect and imagination. The imagination in isolation from the practical guidance of intellect lacks a compass. Another passage in the Guide offers strong evidence that Maimonides has not submerged the role of practical intellect within the imagination. At the same time, it raises other questions. I have in mind Guide 3.8, a chapter filled with the most disorienting mixture of ascetic avowals of the shamefulness of bodily pleasure and the most precise specifications of the true objective of the philosophic life. The following is an example of the latter. As for gatherings with a view to drinking intoxicants, you should regard them as more shameful than gatherings of naked people with uncovered private parts who excrete in daylight sitting together. The explanation of this is as follows: Excreting is a necessary thing that man cannot refrain from by any device whatever, whereas being drunk is an act committed by a bad man in virtue of his free choice. The disapproval of the uncovering of the private parts is a generally accepted opinion, not a thing cognized by the intellect [mashhu¯r la¯ ma‘qu¯l], whereas the corruption of the intellect and of the body is shunned by the intellect. 27. On the human tendency to unlimited desire, see Guide 3.12 (p. 445, 20b).

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Maimonides’s rhetorical point seems to be that most people think that getting drunk is just fine. In contrast, he argues that getting drunk is far worse than things that people assume to be truly the most shameful of all actions. Against the background of Maimonides’s earlier ascetic remarks about the sense of touch, this passage is quite shocking. He clearly takes some of the punch out of those remarks. On the one hand, Maimonides classifies the shame we experience about sex as merely a matter of “generally accepted opinion.” On the other hand, he argues that the corruption of intellect and body that alcohol induces is a matter shunned by “the intellect.” Now, he cannot mean that theoretical intellect shuns alcohol because he understands by theoretical intellect the power to know true and false, not good and evil. Whether someone should lead a philosophic life in pursuit, above all, of theoretical knowledge is a matter for practical intellect, not theoretical intellect—which is not to say that insights one acquires from theoretical philosophy might not bear on the decision to pursue such a life. Nevertheless, questions of happiness are questions for political philosophy or ethics. In brief, it would appear that Maimonides refers implicitly to the practical employment of reason. At the same time, this passage raises the following problem: If whether to imbibe is a question for practical intellect, what does that make matters of merely “generally accepted opinion”? Here, we would appear to be back at square one, wondering whether “the apprehension of generally accepted” matters is up to the imagination. It seems apparent that Maimonides is reiterating the original distinction between what it means to be “cognized by the intellect” and what it means to be generally accepted opinion that we first saw in Guide 1.2.28 He is denigrating the merely “generally accepted” vis-à-vis cognition. The question is whether he is denigrating the former vis-à-vis theoretical intellect or practical intellect. Could he be drawing the same contrast he drew in Guide 1.2 between generally accepted opinion and theoretical cognition, only to add another sense of cognition, namely, practical intellect, nearly within the same breath?29 28. See Guide 1.2 (p. 24, 14a). 29. This passage is worth comparing with EC chap. 6. There, shame about sexuality is identified with “traditional law” (al-shara¯’i‘ al-sam‘iyya) in contrast to “generally accepted opinion.” Does the Guide then represent a significant departure from the Eight Chapters on such matters? I do not think so. Maimonides uses generally accepted opinion (al-mashhu¯r) with the same flexibility Aristotle uses the term endoxa. See my discussion of this in the introduction to the Jewish part of Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 2nd ed., ed. Joshua Parens and Joseph C. Macfarland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011). For neither thinker does morality rise to the level of demonstration. Yet that need not mean that all laws and commandments are equally arbitrary. Some of Maimonides’s deepest views on this can be discovered by a comparison of EC

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I will return to the connection Maimonides draws in Guide 3.8 between sobriety and free choice later. The divergence between Maimonides and Spinoza on this matter is significant. Another way to sort out the relation in 3.8 between what the intellect commands and what is generally accepted is one Ravven herself employs at times. She argues that because Maimonides distinguishes between the good of the body and the good of the soul, and because he seems to link the former good to the city and the latter good to theoretical perfection (Guide 3.27–28), we have reason to believe that the power that guides us toward the good of the city must, for Maimonides, be a corporeal power such as the imagination. Leaving aside Ravven’s final inference, Maimonides’s parallel between the body and the city is worth keeping in mind while interpreting 3.8. Perhaps what Maimonides intends by his distinction between the shame surrounding sex and excretion and the greater shame one should feel about becoming drunk is to shift some of the Law’s focus on shame whose value is primarily political toward shame about neglect of the intellect. Similarly, one could argue that the purpose of the ever-troubling Guide 1.2 is not to show the primacy of the imagination in ethical and political matters but to contribute to a general revaluation of theoretical matters. In keeping with this, Maimonides impugns what was traditionally viewed as the primary concern of the Law, namely, public good and evil. Another way to consider the matter is to remember the troubling significance of Guide 3.34. The Law aims at the good of the majority of cases, not at the good of the “unique human being” (wa¯hid). Rather than relegating the generally accepted to the level of mere imagination, perhaps Guide 3.8 is meant to draw our attention to the difference between the political purpose we serve in observing the mores of our society and the perfection of our own “form” that is served by remaining ever sober. It is undeniable that Maimonides treats moral issues as issues of the body of primary relevance to the city as a whole. Furthermore, it is undeniable that he treats moral perfection as a merely instrumental good (3.54). Yet we must wonder whether the fact that ethical and political matters are treated largely as bodily matters implies that it should be left up to a bodily faculty, the imagination (see, for example, 2.36), to guide or rule those matters.

chap. 6 with Guide 3.26, which can be usefully compared with Aristotle EN 1134b18–1135a8. If we consider all of this material, including Guide 3.8 as well, I believe that we uncover a hierarchy of naturalness in commands or laws—roughly, (a) the highest command is to be sober and control one’s passions, (b) the second highest commands are those described as generally accepted in EC chap. 6, and (c) the lowest are traditional laws.

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Finally, I want to consider evidence about practical intellect from Maimonides’s account of providence in Guide 3.17–18. He states clearly that for Aristotle God is provident for the species, in other words, generally provident. As for the individuals in these species, they “are also not neglected in every respect.” Maimonides discusses various faculties that different species have been given that serve the individuals within the species in preserving themselves. About human beings he says the following: “Finally such portions of the matter in question that have been purified to the point of receiving the form of the intellect have been given another faculty through which every one of them, according to the perfection of the individual in question, governs [d.b.r], thinks [ f.k.r.], and reflects [r.w.y.] on what may render the durability of himself as an individual and the preservation of his species” (p. 465, 32a). At least, Maimonides’s Aristotle here alludes to the rational faculty’s practical employment with the same verbs we have seen Maimonides use in 1.7, 1.53, and 1.72. Immediately following this passage, Maimonides makes it readily apparent that Aristotle views disasters such as hurricanes as “accidents”—not as providentially determined.30 Although Maimonides goes on to stress Aristotle’s view that God is generally provident, we see that indirectly Aristotle’s God can be viewed as providing human beings with the powers necessary to provide for themselves. (Pines’s translation [p. 465] leaves one wondering whether Maimonides means to distinguish the “form of the intellect” from “another faculty,” but I believe Maimonides is identifying the intellect itself as “another faculty” beyond those given to other animals—as we have seen him assert so often.) Now, when Maimonides goes on to offer his own belief about providence, he begins by reassuring us that his opinion is derived not from theoretical inquiry but from the intention of scripture. He says that his belief coincides with Aristotle as far as the well-being of all other animals and plants is concerned, but not so regarding human beings. He claims that God rewards and punishes human beings in accordance with their deserts. After substantial delay in explaining what warrants punishment and what warrants reward (see pp. 472–74, 36b–37b), he announces ambiguously, “providence is consequent upon the intellect” (al-‘ina¯ya ta¯bi‘a li-l-‘aql). Does he mean that providence is consequent upon God’s intellectual overflow (the giver)? Or does he mean that it is consequent upon the excellence of the human intellect (the receiver)? One need only recall Maimonides’s account of prophecy (2.32) to realize that the preparation of the human intellect, both naturally and in respect to training, is required for overflow to occur. True, Maimonides appears 30. See Meta. 6.2.

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to allow God to withhold overflow;31 nevertheless, that overflow requires the suitability of the receiver suggests that the claim “consequent upon the intellect” more likely refers to the human than the divine intellect. One might also wonder, however, whether overflow is suited to the theoretical intellect. If it were, how would that benefit the human being in its effort to “render the durability of himself as an individual and the preservation of his species”? If Guide 3.17 leaves us confused about which intellect providence is consequent upon, Guide 3.18 offers clear indications that what was originally meant by “consequent upon the intellect” was less God’s than the human intellect. With regard to providence watching over the excellent ones . . . The [biblical] texts that occur with regard to this notion are so numerous that they cannot be counted; I refer to the notion of providence watching over human individuals according to the measure of their perfection and excellence. The philosophers too mention this notion. Abu¯ Nas·r [Alfarabi] says in the Introduction to his Commentary on Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics”: Those who have the capacity of making their soul pass from one moral quality to another are those of whom Plato has said that God’s providence watches over them to a higher degree. Consider how this kind of consideration conducted us to the knowledge of the correctness of what all the prophets, may peace be upon them, have said concerning individual providence watching over each individual in particular according to the measure of his perfection, and how this consideration follows necessarily from the point of view of speculation, provided that, as we have mentioned, providence is consequent upon the intellect [al-‘ina¯ya ta¯bi‘a li-l-‘aql].

Although Maimonides began his account of his view on providence by asserting that he is following the dictates of scripture, he concludes, as he so often does, by showing that scripture is in accord with speculation about the meaning and import of the claim “providence is consequent upon the intellect.” It means that the individual human being receives the reward befitting a human being with a properly cultivated and gifted intellect. For Aristotle, this means that God’s providence is to enable human beings (not all equally) to fend for themselves, based on their naturally endowed practical intellect. According to Maimonides, scripture agrees with this as well. 31. Compare chap. 4 above on God’s withholding.

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Once again, it is self-evident that the kind of self-providence exercised here requires practical, not only theoretical, intellect32—not to mention the imagination. In addition, this passage from 3.18 connects in an interesting way back to the disorienting passage from 3.8. Perhaps the sobriety that Maimonides advocated back in 3.8 is meant not only literally but also figuratively. Maimonides often stresses the importance for human rulers of acquiring control over their feelings, lest they punish out of passion (e.g., Guide 1.54, p. 126, 65b–66a and EC chap. 4). Such control could be described figuratively as sobriety. Who better exemplifies such sobriety than a human being who can pass from one moral quality to another? There is an odd problem that Ravven’s interpretation of Maimonides on imagination raises, related directly to the issue of providence. If the imagination is the sole faculty in control of ethical and political matters, including reward and punishment, for human beings, then what are we to suppose would be the power by virtue of which God would exercise particular providence? I do not mean to presuppose by this question what Maimonides’s views on particular providence are. What I mean is evident when one considers the options open to Maimonides on providence. Of course, Maimon­ ides offers two portraits of God in the Guide. In the negative theology of Guide 1.52–62, God is portrayed as the being beyond human knowledge, identified properly only through the negation of attributes and through His mysterious name, YHVH—who is particularly provident. In the Aristotelian theology of Guide 1.68–69, God is the knowable being—who is only generally provident. We need not settle where Maimonides’s ultimate allegiances lie in this matter to consider what follows. Now Aristotle’s God need possess only theoretical intellect (indeed, that is all He can possess), because general providence requires only the order that arises through thought thinking its own order or the order of the species.33 Although YHVH would not possess an intellect knowable to the human intellect, it seems fair to say that His intellect must include some form of practical intellect if He is to be 32. That theoretical intellect can play a crucial role in such matters, however, is evident from Maimonides’s interpretation of Job, esp. Guide 3.22, pp. 487–88. 33. Of course, a one-sentence summary of Aristotle’s metaphysics cannot do justice to the reasonable debates surrounding what it means for God to think only of himself (Meta. 12.9). As I implied in passing in my earlier discussion of the putative nominalism of Guide 3.18, in chap. 3 above, I believe Aristotle (or at least Aristotle as Maimonides understands him) must mean that God’s thinking himself is his thinking of the species; his refusal to think of what is beneath him refers to his lack of knowledge of particulars or individuals. Aristotle establishes that his God cannot possess practical intellect or be prudent when he argues that God’s freedom derives from his pure necessity (Meta. 5.5). Prudence requires possibility, which is incompatible with his understanding of the divine as necessary.

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particularly provident. Presumably, no one would attribute to God an imagination, because as all interpreters know, the imagination is a bodily faculty (Guide 2.36). For the very same reason, Maimonides is insistent that God transcends passions (1.36 and 1.54).34 Perhaps one could argue that human beings are particularly provident by virtue of their imagination, but God is particularly provident by virtue of His practical intellect. Here, we have hit upon perhaps the oddest feature of Ravven’s approach to the imagination. By absorbing the practical intellect into the imagination, she insinuates that Maimonides has absorbed something higher into something lower. Let us turn from this inventory of evidence from the Guide that Maimonides continues to appeal to practical intellect, even if not explicitly by name, to consider Ravven’s suggestion that the Guide represents an advance over the Eight Chapters with respect to the treatment of imagination and practical intellect. Once again, she claims that the Eight Chapters distinguishes the two and the Guide absorbs the latter into the former. I will not repeat here arguments I’ve made elsewhere against ascribing development to Maimonides.35 Leaving that aside, I believe that I have shown over the course of my above inventory of evidence that Maimonides uses the same crucial pair of terms “thought and perspicacity” (bi-fikra wa-rawiyya) in the Eight Chapters account of practical intellect (chap. 1) as he uses in Guide 1.7, 1.53, 1.72, and 3.17. And in the Guide this pair is used to refer to a faculty that is distinctively human (1.7, 1.72, 3.17) and that is identified as a function of the “rational faculty” (al-qu¯wa al-na¯t·iqa) (1.7, 1.72) or the intellect (al-‘aql) (3.17). Neither of these claims can be made about the imagination, and both claims are also made about the practical intellect in the Eight Chapters. If my interpretation is correct, then an obvious question arises. Why isn’t Maimonides more forthright in referring to “practical intellect” where one would most want him to be, namely, in the prophetology (Guide 2.32–48)? To answer this question, we need to consider another one of Ravven’s arguments. In “Prophetic Imagination,” part 1, she argues, “the imaginative character of prophecy is at least one of its secrets.”36 Perhaps Maimonides

34. Cf. Ravven, “Some Thoughts on What Spinoza Learned from Maimonides about the Prophetic Imagination, pt. 1,” 200 n. 21. Although Maimonides may not claim that images mediate all affects, he does most emphatically identify the emotions with the body. 35. “Maimonidean Ethics Revisited.” 36. “Some Thoughts on What Spinoza Learned from Maimonides about the Prophetic Imagination, pt. 1,” 203–6. See especially 203 n. 32, where she notes that she happened upon this insight by comparing the discussion of prophecy in one of Maimonides’s legal writings, his Commentary on the Mishnah, with the discussion in the Guide. The legal discussion omits

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did consider it judicious not to draw attention to the role of the imagination in prophecy. Ravven (like Altmann) seems to believe that involving the imagination might cast doubt upon the reliability of the product of the imagination, namely, scripture. (It is almost as if even the man on the street can intuit that the imagination is less than trustworthy.) In addition, I wonder whether there might not be dangers in encouraging the watering of the imagination that cannot be incurred by encouraging the cultivation of moral and intellectual perfection. Leaving that aside, Ravven argues that Maimonides seeks to inculcate the belief even among the vulgar in the “philosophic character of the content of prophecy.”37 Yet they must not know that the imagination is involved. Although it is surely significant that Maimonides is silent about the imagination in the Commentary on the Mishnah, one wonders how long statements written down in the Guide are likely to remain secret. The most important secrets, it would appear, should not be written down at all. Perhaps we have hit upon a reason for Maimonides’s silence about “practical intellect” in the prophetology. To mention the role of practical intellect in the prophetology is tantamount to raising the possibility that true prophecy is not received but produced by the human mind.38 At the beginning of this chapter, I noted that Ravven takes it as relatively self-evident that Maimonides’s involvement of the imagination in prophecy is clear evidence that despite appearances he views prophecy as a human product. Here, we are brought back again to the problem whether there is anything in Maimonides’s account of the imagination in the Guide (or elsewhere) that suggests it possesses any capacity to rule or guide action properly. (The legislator or veridical dreamer of Guide 2.36 was no evidence for proper guidance.) Perhaps this helps explain why Maimonides felt free to mention the imagination in his Guide account of prophecy. He knew that even his most sophisticated readers would assume that the imagination alone cannot “produce” prophecy because the imagi­ nation is incapable of guiding anything.39 The imagination must surely then any reference to the imagination in prophecy. She notes that Diana Lobel of Boston University informed her that Alexander Altmann made the same observation independently. 37. Ibid., 205. 38. Note that at the end of the extensive passage I quoted above from Guide 1.72 on the ruling faculty, which is identified as the rational faculty, Maimonides says, “being the noblest of the faculties of the living beings. It is also very secret, and its true reality cannot be understood at the first attempt of common opinion” (emphasis added). 39. The clearest sign that the imagination lacks the capacity to rule is captured in an observation Maimonides reproduces from Aristotle, namely, the unruly, unguided power of the imagination (like the nutritive part of the soul) is most evident in sleep. Cf. EC chap. 2, end, and Guide 2.36, p. 370, 78b, with EN 1102a32–b13.

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be responsible solely for offering a profusion of particularizations of what it receives from the intellect. Without the guidance either of God or of the practical intellect, there is no way for the unruly imagination to produce fitting images. Concealed within the subtle distinction between treating the imagination as both “receptive” and “imitative,” on the one hand, and “receptive” and “productive,”40 on the other hand, is the vast difference between treating human imagination as recipient of prophetic inspiration from God and treating human imagination as the default guide of human life. The decisive question for human life is whether the prophetic Law is given by God or is the product of human thought. To say the least, Maimon­ ides’s answer to this question is ambiguous. Spinoza’s answer, in contrast, seems to be a relatively unambiguous declaration that prophetic Law is a human product. If it is such a product, then the question arises as to what, if anything, makes it dependable. According to Spinoza’s pronouncements in the Theologico-Political Treatise, it would appear that the revealed Law is utterly undependable, except with respect to tenets that modern ethics is capable of inferring without the benefit of revelation. That the imagination is productive, in the sense that it usurps rule, rather than being merely imitative, is an irresistible (and, speaking loosely, regrettable) verity for Spinoza, one he seems intent upon rectifying, to the extent it is possible. In contrast, Maimonides, like Aristotle, does not seem to view everyday life as so deeply prone to being fundamentally misled by the imagination, in no small part because the imagination fails as ruler. For this very reason, I believe that one could say of Ravven’s account that she finds the Spinozist view of the imagination as productive in Maimonides, even though she claims to find the Maimonidean view of the imagination in Spinoza. Perhaps the key distortion is that she has made productive imagination something positive for both Maimonides and Spinoza. It seems more plausible to suggest that Spinoza renders the imagination more productive than Maimonides would ever allow, but in doing so he never intends to insinuate that its rule is dependable. As evidence for my claim that Ravven has made productive imagination something positive for both Maimonides and Spinoza, consider the following from the fourth of her six points of congruence between Maimonides and Spinoza: Spinoza makes absolutely clear in the Ethics, in the TTP, and especially in the TP, that the imagination is significantly a force of primitive sociality (and not 40. For this shift, see note 22 above.

182 / Chapter Six only of difference), creating and inducing a sub-rational (and pre-rational conformity). . . . [T]he social psychology of the imaginative life [as viewed by Spinoza], while going beyond the mimetic and political functions as Maimonides describes them, still includes, and certainly begins with, the social and political function. Spinoza attributes to the imagination, as Maimonides did, a role in bringing about and maintaining conventions and conventional accord by authoritative suasion and coercion. Certainly the imagination understood as focused on the engendering of society and on its maintenance is an aspect absent from the moderns while quintessentially characteristic of it in the medieval tradition to which Maimonides was heir; and it was that aspect that, clearly, was taken up by Spinoza. For someone versed in the Guide, there is no cause for wonder that Spinoza’s treatment of politics and religion centers on an analysis of the social character and political uses of the imagination, i.e., that it is the imagination that is charged with engendering common beliefs, practices, laws, and mores in the masses. In Spinoza, this entails the imaginative inducement of group passions. And this is the case even though the content of the commonality thus brought about may owe much, for Spinoza as well as for Maimonides, to what reason recommends under the circumstances.41

The final sentence here leaves the reader wondering upon what basis reason can achieve purchase to guide imagination. For Spinoza, this cannot be a matter of appeal either to a divinely revealed Law or to practical intellect or prudence. The former is merely imaginative; the latter has been supplanted by scientific analysis of the passions. For Maimonides, the answer is ambiguous: perhaps the Law is the guide; perhaps practical reason is. The need for something beyond imagination, however, seems essential. And the difference between the “something” for Spinoza and for Maimonides is the crucial issue, obscured by Ravven’s elevation of imagination. Two interrelated areas of commonality that Ravven finds between Maimonides and Spinoza serve further to obscure this divergence. A fifth point follows from Maimonides’ and Spinoza’s shared assessment of the conventionality of morals: Both contrast conventional morals instituted imaginatively by political authority to an ethical transformation emergent from the intellectual life itself. Both . . . sharply oppose the conventional morals instituted by political leaders, prophetic or otherwise, to the ultimate and 41. Ravven, “Some Thoughts on What Spinoza Learned from Maimonides about the Prophetic Imagination, pt. 2,” 396–97.

Prudence vs. Imagination / 183 only true intellectual and ethical standpoint, namely, the reformation of base desire brought about by the joy of the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. . . . Sixth . . . Spinoza’s model constitution and society turn out to be rational in more or less the same way Maimonides’ ‘nomoitic’ (imaginative) community is: both embody an ideal virtuous constitution that aims at the moral perfection of all its members. . . . Insofar as they are both morally virtuous polities, the Mosaic constitution (in Maimonides’ conception of it) and the Spinozist state use imaginative means as a ruse to conduce the masses to a rich ethical life, a life that turns out to be more rational than the reliance on the imagination for its implementation would at first suggest.42

What is the basis of Ravven’s distinction between merely conventional morals and a rational ethic, if not reason itself? Yet rather than appeal to reason, she appeals to the way of life. Above all, one wonders whether there is great enough commonality between Maimonides and Spinoza to claim that they both view philosophy as “for its own sake.” Ravven acknowledges earlier that Maimonides embraces a “medieval cosmology” that Spinoza rejects.43 Assuming that Ravven is correct about that cosmology, we suppose that embracing or rejecting such a cosmology would have some bearing on whether a thinker views philosophy as for its own sake. We will return to the issue of “medieval cosmology” because of the role it plays in Ravven’s understanding of Maimonides’s views on prophecy. Leaving that aside, we turn to the sixth point of “congruence.” When Ravven goes on to elaborate what she means by the “ideal virtuous constitution” or the Mosaic constitution of Maimonides, she notes his various references to aiming at the mean. Is this highly Aristotelian conception of virtue what Spinoza means by virtue? Based on the Ethics, one would have to say that Spinoza understands virtue in a distinctly modern, not an Aristotelian key (cf. E 4dd1, 2, 8 and p18s). When one pushes upon any one of these purported congruences, one discovers deep divergences. The root of all of these divergences is perhaps alluded to by Ravven’s appeal to Maimonides’s embrace of a “medieval cosmology” and Spinoza’s rejection of it. I say this not because I can trot out Maimonides’s cosmology—scholars are deeply divided, not only about what it is but also about whether he even has one. Rather, I say this because Ravven’s reference to “medieval cosmology” covers over a more fundamental difference between Maimonides and Spinoza on prophecy, namely, 42. All italics are Ravven’s. Ibid., 397–99. 43. Ibid., 390.

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that Maimonides claims prophecy involves intellect and imagination, but Spinoza ascribes prophecy to the imagination. Ravven is aware of this (that is, at least of the involvement of theoretical intellect in Maimonidean prophecy), but she abstracts from this difference between Maimonides and Spinoza in the following manner: “For Maimonides, prophecy has a strictly mimetic character because, as mentioned earlier, according to his medieval cosmology and metaphor, the divine overflow graces the prophet’s intellect and only thereafter falls upon the imaginative faculty, which in turn reformulates the relevant content. Spinoza adopts this doctrine sans medieval cosmology—yet the associative character of the imagination does the same work.”44 Oddly, Ravven subtracts the medieval cosmology but not the intellect. Whatever Maimonides’s true cosmology was, the most relevant fact is that intellect remains an integral part of his account of prophecy. At a minimum, this means that theoretical intellect somehow plays some guiding role. In addition, I believe that I have shown that practical intellect or Law must play the guiding political role in Maimonides. The absence of intellect from prophecy in Spinoza’s account is the single most important indicator that he means to impugn prophecy. I cannot conceive of anything more significant than this divergence between Maimonides and Spinoza. It has nearly incalculable consequences for the status of imagination and intellect in each author. Above all, Maimonides seeks to preserve and purify revealed Law; Spinoza seeks to achieve the opposite effect—he seeks to discredit the Law. I want to return to Maimonides’s passing remark about the link between sobriety and free choice in Guide 3.8. There, he said, “[B]eing drunk is an act committed by a bad man in virtue of his free choice.” And he contrasts it with the necessity that compels human beings to eliminate waste from their bodies. In the beginning of this chapter, I argued that Maimonides must retain practical intellect or prudence if he intends to maintain a roughly Aristotelian conception of free choice. In the above passage from 3.8, I believe that I have already shown that Maimonides’s reference to the intellect shunning its own as well as the body’s destruction must be a reference to practical intellect. Comparison with Spinoza on the issue of drunkenness is rather telling. Although it is obvious that Spinoza often exhorts human beings to strive for freedom, it is nearly as obvious that his arguments against free choice must entail some revision of how freedom is achieved. Spinoza’s avoidance of reliance on “deliberation” and “free choice” is only part 44. Ibid.

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of the matter. In Ethics 3p56s, Spinoza appears at first to be recapitulating a relatively traditional approach to freedom: “For by dissipation, drunkenness, lust, avarice and ambition we mean quite simply uncontrolled love or desire for feasting, drinking, sex, riches and popular acclaim. . . . For Selfcontrol (temperentia), Sobriety (sobrietas) and Chastity (castitas) . . . are not affects or passive states, but indicate the power of the mind [Mentis potentia] that controls affects.” It is tempting to suppose that by “power of the mind” Spinoza means something like Stoic hegemonikon. Spinoza echoes Stoicism at crucial points in the Ethics. At least one obvious feature of Spinoza’s account, however, puts to rest any conviction that Spinoza merely imitates the Stoics, not to mention Aristotle—he attributes to the emotions or affects a role in freedom or self-control that is distinctly modern and directly contradicts the very sense of Stoic hegemonikon.45 Even more important for our purposes, Spinoza reveals much later in the Ethics the key to “power of the mind.” It is our appreciation of the fact that “all things are governed by necessity” through which we acquire “power of the mind” (potentia . . . Mentis) over affects.46 Here, we see Spinoza’s telltale reliance on necessity to drive us to accept the inevitable. As Spinoza says, “For we see that pain over the loss of some good is assuaged as soon as the man who has lost it realizes that that good could not have been saved anyway.” Though some version of acceptance can be found in Aristotle, the Stoics, Spinoza, and Maimonides for that matter, this does not mean that all understand the underlying psychology or, as Spinoza might put it, “mechanisms” in the same way. Mind possesses a ruling power in Aristotle, the Stoics, and Maimonides that it does not possess in Spinoza. Thus, Maimonides continues to rely on practical intellect and its ruling power in a way that Spinoza does not.

45. See E 4p8. As I have argued repeatedly in this book, Spinoza claims that affects can be checked only by other affects. 46. E 5p6.

Epilogue

By the time we reached chapter 4, it was readily apparent that a constella­ tion of philosophic teachings set Maimonides and Spinoza apart. The core of their difference is that, on the one hand, Maimonides seeks to educate the desire and spiritedness of his young charge, Joseph ben Judah; on the other hand, Spinoza seeks to change the very nature of the passions by undercut­ ting the transcendent objects that so inflame not only desire but also anger. Much as Socrates does in the Republic with Glaucon, and Alfarabi does in the Attainment of Happiness with his anonymous interlocutor, Maimonides attempts to guide and shape the interplay of Joseph’s spiritedness and his love of the beautiful. It would not oversimplify too greatly to say that all of these works are philosophic dramas intended to purge their target audi­ ence’s longing for political perfection. Maimonides is concerned above all to undercut Joseph’s longing for honor, as well as to temper his proclivity toward erotic excess of all kinds. In contrast, Spinoza transforms the land­ scape completely. He undercuts that perennially problematic passion, right­ eous indignation (a concern of premodern thinkers as well, especially as it is fueled by both spiritedness and love of the beautiful), by denying the reality of transcendent objects of desire: the beautiful, the good, telos, or form of any kind. Spiritedness is made safe for society by reconceiving all desire as thumotic. The cord between spiritedness and desire is cut by transforming all desire into conatus, which is ultimately thumotic. The modern cure that is religious toleration takes its main aim not directly at spiritedness or anger . For further evidence of the similarities between Joseph and these other interlocutors, beyond what has already been provided in chap. 1, see the Letter to Joseph, in Ethical Writings of Maimonides, ed. Charles E. Butterworth and Raymond Weiss (New York: New York University Press, 1975; rpt. New York: Dover, 1983), 113–27, and for the Arabic, David Baneth, ed., Iggrot ha-Rambam (Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 1946).

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but at the love of the transcendent that fuels it. New ways and means for the expression of newly thumotic desire must be found, most of which follow the pattern established by Machiavelli and elaborated upon by his descen­ dants, namely, acquisition in all its forms. The greatest challenge would be to determine whose understanding of human nature is truer to the phenomena. The bulk of our focus has sim­ ply been on clarifying the differences between Maimonides and Spinoza because they have become harder and harder to recognize. Nevertheless, let us address that challenge if only briefly: Spinoza, like his predecessors in modernity, seems to have become convinced that the premodern con­ cern with “occult essences” was misplaced, not only because he (like them) adopts new philosophical and scientific methods but also because he sees in the wars of religion around him moral evidence of the dubiousness of premodern theoretical views. I realize that in making such an argument I appear to violate the radical separation of good and evil from true and false that seems to be the watchword of Spinoza’s thought. Yet it seems likely to me that the greatest impetus to the development of modern philosophy came not from theory but from the political insights of Machiavelli. This may help explain just how omnipresent the theologico-political problem proves to be in Spinoza’s thought—not only in the Theologico-Political Treatise but also in the Ethics. Unfortunately, the price of the general attack and Spinoza’s specific attack on transcendent objects was the loss of what Rous­ seau calls “fanaticism . . . a grand and strong passion which elevates the heart of man.” It almost goes without saying that Rousseau attempted a rehabilitation of such passions by a variety of means beyond our purview here. Yet the results of his efforts are undeniably mixed. We cannot help but wonder, then, whether Spinoza’s understanding of human nature was not flawed and Maimonides’s somehow deeper and more accurate. Above all, Maimonides exercised far greater care for the well-being of the Jewish people. As Leo Strauss has shown, Spinoza adopted a very risky path by projecting religious tolerance upon Christianity and pointing the finger at Judaism for its putatively peculiar particularism. Let us turn to a recapitulation of the preceding account of Maimonides’s and then Spinoza’s views on human nature. In the opening of the Guide (esp. 1.1–2), Maimonides establishes a shocking new trajectory within the Jewish fold in the interpretation of human nature, familiar to all of its readers. To be made in the image and likeness of God means to possess an intellectual . Emile, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 312n.

Epilogue / 189

form like God’s. Not until some thirty-eight more chapters have passed is the reader made aware—if the reader ever becomes aware—just how shocking a departure from the traditional biblical view of the human was that initial account of it. Indeed, one could almost argue that Maimonides avoids giv­ ing the attentive reader the tools to come to terms with this shocking new departure until the closing four chapters of the entire Guide—especially the stunning juxtaposition of the Hebrew understanding of wisdom (3.54, the final chapter) with the predominantly philosophic understanding of it prof­ fered throughout most of the Guide. Here, we are given yet another clue as to why Maimonides feels it incumbent upon himself to be so secretive about prudence—the sense of wisdom of which the Bible has a far deeper inkling than its philosophical or theoretical sense. If Maimonides had discussed more openly the differences between theoretical and practical intellect, he would have led readers only to doubt the wisdom of his new championing of theoretical perfection. Along with form, we would be surprised if we did not find teleology. Although Maimonides has acquired a reputation for repudiating teleology, chapter 5 showed that the form of teleology he adopts (especially in 3.13) is far subtler than the more widely received Scholastic interpretation of teleol­ ogy. Like Alfarabi, Maimonides is more reserved when it comes to claiming that one kind of being exists solely for the sake of another. The received interpretation of teleology is more a blend of the most political version of the Aristotelian teaching (esp. Pol. 1.8) with the biblical privileging of the human over the rest of the creation than an accurate account of Aristotle’s own view of final causes. One of the most significant technical challenges of this book was to ex­ plain how choice is compatible with form and teleology—a challenge that has led many interpreters to suppose that freedom is incompatible with Ar­ istotelianism. For the details of our resolution of that challenge, the reader should see especially chapter 3. About freedom of choice Maimonides is more outspoken in nearly all of his works than about any other teaching. Indeed, he insists that the philosophers and the Bible are on the same page in this respect. Perhaps. At least it is difficult to see how the Law can expect obedience to it without such freedom. At the same time, the greatest threat to choice, namely, fatalism, seems to haunt the Guide or rather the Bible as an ongoing threat to the well-being of the Jewish people. It comes as lit­ tle surprise that Maimonides exorcises this demon by attacking not Jewish but Islamic theological sources, especially the teaching of the Ash‘ariyya. To point the finger openly at unmitigated omnipotence in the Bible might run the risk of undermining the Law.

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The Maimonidean understanding of desire and spiritedness described in chapter 1 fits neatly together with form and teleology. Unlike Spinoza’s conatus, which endeavors to preserve, Maimonidean desire has higher ob­ jects that draw us toward them: Whether we are a young Joseph ben Judah intent upon writing beautiful poetry to display our superiority over others or better yet aspiring to ethical perfection, or a mature philosopher striving for knowledge of the cause of all beings—Maimonides’s account frankly and forthrightly affirms the superiority of the highest objects of our strivings over lower ones. Despite Spinoza’s obvious elitism, he just as obviously propounds a new political teaching that so accentuates equality and political freedom that he must reject the deeper elitism implicit in teleology. The conatus doctrine is the core of Spinoza’s teaching on human nature. In striking echoes of Plato’s Euthyphro, Spinoza—anticipating Nietzsche’s will to power—clearly takes the side opposed to the Socratic (and eventually Aristotelian) cham­ pioning of form (and telos). Leaving aside any salutary effects that Spinoza’s erotic rhetoric of amor Dei intellectualis might have on his new class of me­ diating intellectuals (the “free men”), even this highest of all desires should not be interpreted teleologically. Although such a desire is undoubtedly powerful, complex, and refined, God must not be misconstrued as a tele­ ological object of desire. Again and again, we have seen that, like Spinoza’s rhetoric of philosophic freedom, his quasi-teleological rhetoric of love of God is not what it at first appears to be. If we were not sufficiently chastened by conatus, we were at least brought back down to earth by the very nature of laws of nature—and the sobering thought that Spinoza’s God really is nothing but those laws. Such laws do not elicit love. Although laws of nature might appear to be forms or essences—and thinkers at least since Bacon took advantage of the apparent similarity to promote the new science—Spinoza is all too clear in his Physical Treatise (E 2pp13–14) that the essence of things is a ratio of bodies in motion-and-rest. Laws of nature as essences are nothing but descriptions of the simplest bod­ ies in motion-and-rest. Such laws are not teleological objects of intellectual intuition, like premodern forms—rather, they are mere descriptions of bod­ ies in motion. Spinoza dismisses, as “occult essences” causing unwanted wonder and veneration, those irreducible wholes and that “ineliminable multiplicity” (to borrow Lachterman’s phrase) so central to premodern philosophy (evident for example in Guide 1.72 and 3.13). Although vener­ ation might play a plausible role in what Spinoza dubs a “theocracy,” the Theologico-Political Treatise shows all too clearly that veneration of great

Epilogue / 191

theologico-political actors should have little or no place in a democracy— and democracy is clearly more stable than theocracy (as Frankel argues). As we saw in chapter 5 (based on the opening pages of Ethics 1app), the prejudice in favor of free will is inextricably entwined with our prejudiced imagining of teleology. To come to terms with teleology, we must also come to terms with determinism. About determinism in Spinoza, there is little or no disagreement among scholars—even though many of the same scholars seem to have an equal attachment to Spinoza’s talk of philosophic freedom in the last two books of the Ethics, as well as to refuse to acknowledge the apparent esotericism surrounding freedom and determinism. Perhaps, as a result of our analysis of teleology in chapter 5 and our clarifications of his many refinements regarding possibility and contingency, one day some­ thing of a scholarly consensus on Spinoza’s intention regarding teleology might also coalesce. Whatever the fate of the scholarly consensus, Spinoza’s teaching regarding the imagination lends credence to the view that he does not expect teleological conditionals to drop out of everyday speech—any more than he expects most human beings to forswear commonsense views of free will and responsibility. The imagination acquires such prominence in his teaching that scholars have been tempted to seek precedents for it in esteemed predecessors such as Maimonides. Maimonides affords imagina­ tion an important role in his account of prophecy and in his account of base political orders. But despite his secretiveness about prudence, he shows that he is no less convinced of the importance of prudence than his predecessor Alfarabi.

appendix

Richard Kennington’s Spinoza and Esotericism in Spinoza’s Thought

Richard Kennington’s “Analytic and Synthetic Methods of Spinoza’s Ethics” is both one of the most daring and one of the most neglected pieces of Spinoza scholarship in the last half century. The daring of this article (originally published in 1980) is closely related to its neglect. Kennington dares to argue that Spinoza writes esoterically in the Ethics. Because scholarship on the Ethics is dominated, especially in the United States, by analytically trained scholars, this argument has fallen on deaf ears. Spinoza is often viewed as yet another in a long line of philosophers who lacked the logical tools that became available to philosophers at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Although his heart is in the right place, seeking to demystify the world of premodern occult essences, he is often thought to be awkward and clumsy in his argumentation. Spinoza could not intentionally put contradictions in his writings. Rather, he is merely “somewhat slow.” Furthermore, to engage in esotericism shows a lack of “sincerity and honesty.” My purpose here is not to justify the practice of esotericism. Others have already done so quite well enough. Rather, I wish to prepare the reader to read Kennington’s article with profit. Contrary to the prevailing interpretation, Kennington’s is that there are two kinds of geometrical method at work in the Ethics, one synthetic and

. This article now appears as chapter 12 of Richard Kennington, On Modern Origins: Essays in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Pamela Kraus and Frank Hunt (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 205–28, to which all citations will refer. Originally it appeared in The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, ed. Richard Kennington (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1980), 293–318. . See Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s “Ethics” (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1984), esp. 27–28. . See Errol E. Harris, “Esotericism and Spinoza,” NASS Monograph 9 (2000): 28–43, esp. 32.

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another analytic. Part 1 of the Ethics exemplifies synthetic argument; part 2, especially beginning in proposition 13, exemplifies analytic argument. Many readers are familiar with the synthetic model of argumentation from Euclid’s Elements. Beginning with intuitively obvious definitions, axioms, and common notions one infers deductively various conclusions. The analytic model is less well known, though Descartes made it famous in his Geometry. It is a method of discovery. One assumes a certain proposition true and then attempts to prove it. Or, more specifically, establishing a unit and knowing two other numbers in a proportion one is able to infer what a fourth unknown term is. Most interpreters argue that Spinoza employs only synthetic method in the Ethics. After all, that is certainly the initial impression he intends to leave his reader with. According to Kennington, the two parts of the Ethics, like these two methods, work at cross-purposes. Of course, that is not to say these methods as such must work at cross-purposes. Descartes argues, in both the Rules for the Direction of the Mind and the Geometry, as if analysis were the original mode of discovery and synthesis were the means of presenting discoveries in a more compelling fashion. Indeed, he claims that ancient mathematicians wrote synthetic works and concealed their original analytic inquiries. If Spinoza can be shown to argue synthetically in one part of the Ethics and analytically in another, this alone would be surprising, if not decisive. (Furthermore, it is curious that Spinoza argues first synthetically [part 1] and then analytically [part 2]. One would expect analysis as the mode of discovery to precede its synthetic presentation, according to the Cartesian plan.) When authors write synthetically, they usually seek to avoid the taint of uncertainty connected with analysis. In other words, the usual procedure would be to write an entire work as a work of analysis or as a work of synthesis rather than both in the same work (or at least to have the analysis precede the synthesis). As if to conform to this usual procedure, Spinoza writes the Ethics in such a way that most readers assume it must be intended to be thoroughly synthetic. Consequently, the discovery of two methods in the Ethics would be noteworthy in itself. . Rule 4. It is difficult to know whether Descartes is serious in his claims about the ancients. He may be attempting to downplay the novelty of his method by claiming to be rediscovering an old one. But compare Kennington, “Analytic and Synthetic Methods of Spinoza’s Ethics,” 218, on analysis as the universal starting point for all philosophy, ancient as well as modern. I do not think this means that both ancients and moderns intend the same thing by analysis, as Kennington’s work on Bacon shows so clearly elsewhere in On Modern Origins (chapters 1–4, esp. 2). . See, for example, Bennett, Study of Spinoza’s “Ethics,” sect. 5, “The hypothetic-deductive method” (p. 21). Here, Bennett claims that Spinoza’s model is Descartes’s synthetic representation of the Meditations in the Reply to the Second Objections.

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Kennington focuses less on the mere presence of these two methods, however, than on the content of the arguments in the two methods. The synthetic arguments of part 1 focus on God or Nature or infinite modes. Finite modes or individual things (res singulares) are not even defined until Ethics 2d7. Although Spinoza intends to leave the initial impression that finite modes can be deduced from infinite modes, in Ethics 1p28, even before he gets to part 2, he argues that finite modes are caused only by other finite modes. The disjunction in method between parts 1 and 2 merely hints at the crisis in Spinoza’s argument. More importantly, Spinoza cannot succeed in establishing a causal connection between parts 1 and 2 or between God and finite modes or “other” things. If this were the case, it could not be a mere case of “slowness.” As we will see eventually, analysts have not recognized the magnitude of this gap between parts 1 and 2 for two reasons: they have not detected the difference of method employed in parts 1 and 2, and they have glossed over the gap by treating both infinite and finite modes as propositional or conceptual rather than as beings. By comparing Kennington’s reading with those of Curley and Bennett, I hope to show how profound Kennington’s contribution is. Unfortunately, the likelihood that Kennington’s reading of Spinoza will receive a fair hearing has decreased since the “Methods” article was first published in 1980. Since then Strauss’s suggestion that the more obviously political and apparently less scientific Theologico-Political Treatise should be viewed as esoteric has been attacked vigorously. Errol Harris has argued that set against the geometric certainty of the Ethics, the Theologico-Political Treatise can be shown to be free of esotericism.10 Underlying the arguments

. Kennington, “Analytic and Synthetic Methods of Spinoza’s Ethics,” 211–12. . See Curley’s effort to prove that E 2p13–14 is argued synthetically in Spinoza’s Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), 59–61. . See ibid., 50–55; Bennett, Study of Spinoza’s “Ethics,” 41–47. . See “How to Read Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise,” in Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 142–201. 10. For the attack on Strauss, see Errol E. Harris, “Is There an Esoteric Doctrine in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,” in his Substance of Spinoza (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1995), 125–48. (Also see Jacques Moutaux, “Exotérisme et philosophie: Léo Strauss et l’interprétation du Traité théologico-politique,” in Spinoza aux XXe Siècle, ed. Olivier Bloch [Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993], 421–44 as cited in Spinoza, Letters, trans. Samuel Shirley [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995], 38 n. 86, in the introduction by Steve Barbone, Lee Rice, and Jacob Adler.) Then see Paul Bagley’s able defense of Strauss in “Harris, Strauss, and Esotericism in Spinoza’s Tractatus theologico-politicus,” Interpretation 23, no. 3 (1996): 387–415. Bagley’s article was followed in turn by Harris’s counterresponse, “Esotericism and Spinoza.” In this last article, Harris takes it as given that the Ethics presents Spinoza’s philosophy “proved geometrico ordine . . . and . . . [as] his genuine conviction” (“Esotericism and Spinoza,” 28).

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against esotericism in the Theologico-Political Treatise, then, is the tacit assumption that the Ethics is the very model of certainty. This is not merely an assumption, however. It appears to be borne out by some of Spinoza’s statements. Harris reminds us, for example, of epistle 76 in which Spinoza defends his philosophy before the new Catholic Albert Burgh. Spinoza argues that although his philosophy may not be the best, he knows it is true “‘in the same way that you know that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles.’”11 Of course, one can know or prove this mathematical truth by synthetic arguments. The Ethics is argued synthetically. Therefore, Spinoza is claiming that the demonstrations in the Ethics possess the certainty of geometry synthetically argued. Not only is the Ethics used to demonstrate the absence of esotericism in the Theologico-Political Treatise, but also any success Harris has had in showing that it lacks esotericism has contributed to the confidence of interpreters of the Ethics that it could not possibly contain any esotericism. In other words, even though the focus has been on the Treatise, a form of a fortiori argument about the Ethics has developed: If there isn’t any esotericism in the Treatise, it must be all the more the case that there is not any in the Ethics. Consequently, if I am to pave the way for serious attention to Kennington’s piece on the Ethics, I must unfortunately—even if it does not contribute directly to our inquiry into Kennington on the Ethics—attend to the arguments against esotericism in the Treatise as well.

Esotericism in the Theologico-Political Treatise Fortunately, Paul Bagley has already borne much of the burden of the renewed argument for esotericism in the Theologico-Political Treatise.12 I will not recount Bagley’s response to Harris’s first article. I will, however, address an issue in Harris’s counterresponse to Bagley that has, to my knowledge, not yet been responded to.13 Before I turn to that, however, I will offer a brief sketch of Strauss’s view of esotericism in the Theologico-Political Treatise and how his contemporaries missed its presence. In Strauss’s article “How to Read Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise,” he argues that a central clue Spinoza offers for the reading of the Treatise

11. Harris, “Esotericism and Spinoza,” 28. 12. See note 10. 13. Note that this appendix was written before Paul Bagley published Philosophy, Theology, and Politics: A Reading of Spinoza’s “Tractatus Theologico-Politicus” (Leiden: Brill, 2008).

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is his own interpretation of the Bible as a hieroglyphic work. Such works are not self-explanatory; they are not simply rational. Indeed, their authors such as the prophets might be guided by the imagination alone. Such writings must be understood against the background of their authors, their historical period, the development of their language, and so forth. Spinoza contrasts such writings with intelligible ones, which can be understood on their own terms. Consequently, we draw the following kind of proportion: hieroglyphic : intelligible :: not self-explanatory : self-explanatory. One of the results of Spinoza’s success in laying down the method that would come to guide the higher biblical criticism is that this method has spread to the interpretation of other texts. Indeed, it has spread to the study of the Theologico-Political Treatise itself. Ironically, then, Strauss implies that his own contemporaries, because of their focus on context, are more likely than he to read the Treatise as a strictly hieroglyphic work. Indeed, there is evidence of this in the attitude of analysts, who assume that when Spinoza makes bad arguments he does so because of his benighted lack of modern logical method. Strauss argues, in contrast, that because of the danger attendant upon Spinoza’s efforts to weaken the control of scripture over political life, he felt it incumbent upon himself to write cryptically. This cryptic or esoteric dimension of his writing is what makes it partially hieroglyphic. At the same time, he has intelligible purposes. Consequently, Strauss argues that the Treatise, or rather “his writings” (presumably including the Ethics), are a hybrid of the intelligible and the hieroglyphic.14 Harris seems not to understand fully Strauss’s argument that his contemporaries mistakenly treat all books of the past as if they were hieroglyphic, that is, in need of nearly endless contextualization.15 In reaction to Strauss’s esoteric reading, Harris claims that to his mind the Theologico-Political Treatise and even more so the Ethics must be approached as if they were intended to be simply intelligible. If Harris were to acknowledge any hieroglyphic elements in Spinoza’s writings, he believes, he would be acknowledging the presence of esotericism. I must leave it to the reader to determine whether Harris understands his own position properly. Perhaps the key bone of contention between Strauss and Harris is the character of the cognition of prophets. According to Strauss, when Spinoza claims that the prophet uses the imagination, he intends to imply that his imaginings are false. According to Harris, Spinoza provides a loophole for

14. Strauss, “How to Read Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise,” 149–51. 15. See Harris, “Is There an Esoteric Doctrine in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,” 126–29.

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what he refers to as “moral truth[s].”16 Harris has in mind moral truths such as that we should “love God and our neighbor as ourselves.” The prophet arrives imaginatively at what Spinoza’s own philosophic study of ethics and politics arrives at rationally. Strauss is well aware of Spinoza’s effort from the very opening of the Theologico-Political Treatise to exclude theology and theologians from all speculative matters and to limit them to moral exhortation alone. Harris claims that there can be any amount of conflict or contradiction between the speculative teachings of the Bible and what Spinoza as a philosopher teaches. This kind of contradiction Harris dismisses as no contradiction at all. For example, Bagley suggests that Spinoza contradicts himself by arguing early in the Treatise that God cannot be a judge or a legislator (he transcends such anthropomorphic qualities), and then arguing later in the Treatise (chap. 14) that God, according to the catholic faith, should be viewed as a judge. It would appear that Harris must dismiss these contradictory claims as merely the result of a speculative dissonance between Spinoza’s own rational view of the matter and the prophets’ imaginative account of God. Yet one wonders, does the belief that God is a judge qualify as a speculative or moral truth? Surprisingly, Harris does not argue this is a speculative truth. He seems to see in advance that he cannot claim that an image used to produce a moral effect can be treated as strictly speculative. Despite his own earlier reference to “moral truth,” he eventually eschews altogether references to “truth or falsity” when it comes to producing “moral effects” through images or metaphors. He claims that the vision of God as a judge is an imaginative idea that results in the same “behavior” or “moral effect” as the rational cognition of the philosopher. And it is part and parcel of “genuine action.” Indeed, ultimately he implies that the common man led by the imagination experiences “salvation” just as much as the philosopher led by reason.17 If so, one wonders why one should prefer the life of reason to the life of imagination. Be that as it may, Harris is correct in implying that Spinoza places unprecedented stress on behavior. Yet effects and behavior are not identical to the ideas that lead one to practice such behaviors.18 No amount of good moral effects from

16. Ibid., 137; Harris, “Esotericism and Spinoza,” 31. According to Harris, that loophole is established in Ethics 2p17s. 17. Harris, “Is There an Esoteric Doctrine in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,” 140; Harris, “Esotericism and Spinoza,” 41–2. 18. Even the most rigid adherent of so-called psychophysical parallelism would have to admit that there is a temporal distinction between the idea of God as a judge and the “moral effect” to which Harris refers, as is implied in his recourse to the term “effect.” The idea accompanying such a “moral effect” might be, for example, the affection of loving one’s neighbor.

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believing God is a judge makes believing God is a judge any truer. I cannot agree that metaphorical beliefs about God transcend being judged true or false.19 Whether we view the belief in God as a judge to be a “moral truth” or a “speculative” one, I believe Spinoza would admit, according to his own understanding of the truth and falsehood of images, that the traditional belief in such a judge constitutes belief in a falsehood or lie. Consequently, his affirmation of the catholic faith in chapter 14 is in contradiction of his own view as stated earlier. Pace Harris, in the Theologico-Political Treatise Spinoza does engage in esotericism. An additional difficulty with Harris’s interpretation is his assumption that Spinoza is perfectly frank when he claims the prophet imaginatively and the philosopher rationally mean the same when they speak ethically of loving God and one’s neighbor as oneself. On the contrary, isn’t Spinoza dragging the meaning of the Bible in the direction of early modern philosophy? There might be some apparent similarity between Spinoza’s claim that “it is when every man is most devoted to seeking his own advantage that men are most advantageous to one another” (E 4p35c2) and the above biblical adage, but that similarity is superficial. The biblical God, for example, through the sacrifice of his own Son, implies that such love is centered (even if miraculously) on self-sacrifice, not on one’s own self-preservation—as any and all senses of love in the Ethics surely are centered.20 Despite Spinoza’s best efforts to make it appear otherwise, modern philosophy and biblical prophecy do not agree even in their moral teaching. All legislators and teachers of new moralities are compelled to overstate the similarity between their teaching and the moral teaching of the past. After all, laws, customs, 19. I do not believe Harris has interpreted correctly Ethics 2p17s about whether images are true or false (“Is There an Esoteric Doctrine in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,” 137). Spinoza’s claim that images are false only in relation to the idea of their existence does not mean that many images are true. An image can be true only if the possessor recognizes it as being a mere image. Does the ignorant person, who behaves properly because of an image that he believes is real, possess a true image, as Harris seems to imply? Doesn’t Spinoza mean rather that the person (such as a philosopher) who recognizes an image for what it is, merely an image, is the only one to possess a true image? Because all ideas bring with them tacit assent, no one can deny the existence of an image merely by willing himself not to believe in it. Will and intellect cannot be so separated (2p49s). One must know, like the philosopher, that an image lacks existence to possess it properly. Furthermore, Spinoza wants to avoid the suggestion that images appear without a transitive cause. Especially because he does not believe prophecy is miraculous, he must argue that images, like other ideas, have their causes either internally or externally. Traditionally, falsehood has been linked with nonbeing. He wishes to avoid any misleading consequences that could flow from ascribing such nonbeing to images. 20. According to E 4p18s, “happiness consists in a man’s being able to preserve his own being.”

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and morals are loved to a great extent because of how old they are. Few, a cult, will perhaps follow an explicitly novel morality, not many. Spinoza is not a mere scholar, nor merely one of his own “free men,” whose “prevarications” should offend our sense of honesty.21 Rather, Spinoza views himself as the legislator of a new morality.22

The Parts of Kennington’s Article on the Ethics Now that I have lent some renewed credence to the claim the TheologicoPolitical Treatise is written esoterically, I believe we may turn to Kennington’s paper with a more open mind, that is, without the crippling assumption that the Ethics must be intended as a simply intelligible book. In part 1 of his article, Kennington introduces the idea that the Ethics has been taken too much at face value. Its claims to present a certain or systematic account of the whole, in geometric, that is, synthetic fashion, have been given such credit that the role of the Theologico-Political Treatise as an introduction to philosophy has been forgotten. The pantheist interpretation of the Ethics “as a self-sufficient writing which descends by geometric demonstrations from the infinite divine whole to finite beings” has won out over the earlier “atheistic naturalism” discovered in Spinoza by interpreters such as David Hume, Moses Mendelssohn, and Pierre Bayle.23 Ironically, in an age that prides itself on its logical method, interpreters ignore the difference between the analytic and synthetic methods as outlined in the preface to Spinoza’s Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy.” Owing to their hieroglyphic or historical approach to Spinoza, they attach too much importance to the 21. Cf. Harris, “Esotericism and Spinoza,” 32. As with Aristotle’s great-souled man, so with Spinoza’s “free man” as presented at the end of part 4 of the Ethics, one must be careful not to jump to the conclusion that a philosopher’s moral exemplar is simply synonymous with his vision of the philosophic life. 22. Despite the Nietzschean resonance of all contemporary references to “the legislator of a new morality,” I ask the reader not to assume I am ascribing Nietzschean views or motives to Spinoza. Leaving that aside, I believe that those who suspect the sincerity and honesty of philosopher’s legislating new moralities fail to distinguish between the self-serving lie of a Thrasymachus and the kind of noble lie presented in Plato’s Republic. Lest I be misunderstood, I do not mean to suggest that Spinoza requires precisely the kind of lie offered in the Republic as the basis of his new politics. Rather, he may recognize the need, possibly only a temporary need, for lying for the common good. If the new science is at risk of being aborted in its infancy by traditionalist theologians, and if one believes, as Spinoza seems to have believed, implicitly in the superiority of the new over the old philosophy, then why would he not seek to conceal how novel his teaching is on the surface? This is one of the less obvious bases of modern esotericism that Strauss downplays. In a world focused on self-preservation, it is much easier to convince readers of the need for esotericism based on a philosopher’s need to preserve himself. 23. Kennington, “Analytic and Synthetic Methods of Spinoza’s Ethics,” 205.

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fact that Lodewijk Meyer, not Spinoza, wrote the preface. They ignore the fact that Spinoza reviewed the whole work including the preface and made no changes to it.24 The main defect of the synthetic method, recognized by David Bidney, is that it does not prove its definitions. In part 2 of his article, Kennington turns to a profound analysis of Spinoza’s definitions. In part a, he shows they are arbitrary—far from “selfevident or intuitively obvious.” Not surprisingly, these very same definitions were ridiculed by his fellow philosophers, for example, Berkeley and Hegel. In part b, Kennington shows the definitions are indeterminate. He alludes to the absence of anything approaching the determinacy of Euclid’s definitions. He notes that Spinoza is deafeningly silent on how one might approach definition in the Ethics. And what little he says in the Emendation about definition or method does not touch on geometric method, though it may be of some use in interpreting the so-called Short Treatise. In part c, he turns at last to a huge stumbling block to most interpretations of the Ethics: Spinoza’s claim in 1p28 that finite modes require other finite modes as their causes. This is by far the greatest impediment to the prevailing pantheist interpretation of the Ethics. Spinoza seems to cut off the causal and deductive connection between the infinite modes treated since the beginning of part

24. In the notes to his translation of Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy,” Curley insinuates that Spinoza does not properly understand the difference between analysis and synthesis. See Collected Works of Spinoza (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 224 n. 3. He jumps to this conclusion because he assumes that Descartes always used the distinction between analysis and synthesis clearly and without intentional obscurity. Any serious study of the Replies to the Second Objections to the Meditations reveals a web of confusion in Descartes’s presentation. That presentation seems intentionally obscure. It would be wise to doubt our own understanding of Descartes’s distinctions rather than assume that Spinoza is a benighted fool, as scholars all too often do. For example, it is far from clear that Descartes’s claim in those Replies that the Meditations itself is presented in analytic form really holds water. For debates about how Descartes used the distinction between analytic and synthetic arguments, see Daniel Garber and Lesley Cohen, “A Point of Order: Analysis, Synthesis, and Descartes’s Principles,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 64, no. 2 (1982): 136–47; E. M. Curley, “Analysis in the Meditations: The Quest for Clear and Distinct Ideas,” in Essays on Descartes’ “Meditations,” ed. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 153–76; and Daniel Garber, “Semel in vita: The Scientific Background to Descartes’ Meditations,” in Essays on Descartes’ ‘Meditations,’” 81–116. As for Spinoza’s understanding of the difference between these kinds of argument, Kennington’s article shows that Spinoza was fully aware of it—and above all understood that the greatest value of synthesis was to compel assent. As in so many other matters of esoteric technique, Spinoza’s choice to have the preface to Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy” penned by someone else mimics Descartes’s example in his preface to the Passions of the Soul. He constructed the preface out of a pseudo-dialogue of letters between himself and an anonymous correspondent who sings his praises to the heavens. See Hiram Caton, “Descartes’ Anonymous Writings: A Recapitulation,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 20, no. 3 (1982): 299–311, esp. 301–2.

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1 and the finite modes taken up in part 2. As we will see shortly, Curley attempts to overcome this divide with little success. This crisis in the pantheist interpretation is also a crisis in the rationalist interpretation of Spinoza. Most interpreters are inclined to categorize Spinoza as a rationalist, radically dependent on certain ideas or definitions. The few who have come to question the prevailing interpretation of Spinoza have done so, not because they see that his synthetic method cannot help but fail, but because they see how dependent he is on experience for making a start in his analysis of finite modes.25 We will return to part 2c later. It is one of the two most important sections of the paper. In part 3 of his article, Kennington reviews the Cartesian basis of Spinoza’s own (secretive) preference for analysis over synthesis. To see why Spinoza chose to publish the only work to which he signed his name, Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy,” Kennington considers the example of Descartes’s Reply to the Second Objections to his Meditations on First Philosophy. Although Descartes complies with Mersenne’s request for a geometric or synthetic presentation of the main doctrines of the Meditations, he stresses along the way that such methods befit the obstinate. Those capable of learning can better engage in discovery through analysis. Meyer echoes the very same sentiments in his preface. And Spinoza confirms their truth by showing in Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy” that he can very easily arrive at conclusions with which he disagrees by starting with someone else’s assumptions. Unlike analysis, which views definitions as secondary and temporary or subject to revision,26 synthesis leaves one with a false sense of certainty about assumptions or definitions because of the certainty with which its conclusions follow from those assumptions. In part 4 of his article, Kennington argues that throughout his writings Spinoza addresses a multiplicity of audiences, as he states explicitly at the conclusion of the preface of the Theologico-Political Treatise. Kennington adds to the evidence of the Treatise the rule drawn from the Emendation, which echoes Descartes’s morale par provision, to speak according to the capacity of the vulgar (ad captum vulgi loqui). (Much like the Meditations, the Ethics is falsely assumed to offer the most serious presentation of Spinoza’s philosophy. Unfortunately, like the Meditations with its air of refinement 25. See Isaac Franck, “Spinoza’s Logic of Inquiry: Rationalist or Experientialist?” in The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, ed. Richard Kennington (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1980), 247–72, and Amihud Gilead, “The Indispensability of the First Kind of Knowledge,” in Ethica II: Spinoza on Knowledge and the Human Mind, ed. Yirmiyahu Yovel (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 209–21, esp. 213–14. 26. Kennington, “Analytic and Synthetic Methods of Spinoza’s Ethics,” parts 2 and 5.

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vis-à-vis the Discourse on Method, the Ethics lulls especially the theological reader into submission through its synthetic method, submission of a kind that cannot be hoped for in the Treatise.) For the multitude it is sufficient that they should come to accept religious toleration and its attendant political doctrines. Not surprisingly, it is the educated elite that is in greatest need of the kind of argumentative compulsion one finds in parts of the Ethics. The contradiction that leads the attentive reader beneath the surface is between the synthetic argument of part 1 (of greatest use on theologians) and its abandonment in part 2.27 It would seem that only in part 2 does the argument befitting the thoughtful reader really begin. In part 5 of his article, Kennington turns to the other most important argument of the paper: E 2p13–14, what Lachterman has named the Physical Digression and what Kennington calls and I have called the Physical Treatise, is an analytic not a synthetic argument. Lachterman argued before Kennington that the Physical Treatise constitutes a second beginning.28 Kennington adds to the interpretive insight of Lachterman the crucial insight that this new beginning is signaled by a different method. In his characteristically nonconfrontational fashion, Kennington never mentions Curley’s treatment of the Physical Treatise. Because Curley attempts to show that the Physical Treatise contains a synthetic argument,29 however, a contrast between Kennington and Curley will prove illuminating. In addition, Kennington explores the insignificant role of definitions in the Physical Treatise (especially the definition of extension, pace Curley), the surprising extent of Spinoza’s reliance on experience there, and the evident contradiction between Ethics part 1’s vision of a whole without parts and Ethics part 2’s account of a whole constituted of nothing but parts. This last reflection combines the insights from the most important moments of Kennington’s paper, in parts 2 (on E 1p28) and 5 (on E 2p13–14). In part 6 of his article, Kennington concludes by arguing that Spinoza never accounts adequately for the very heart of the pantheist argument, the equivalence of God and nature in the formula Deus sive natura. By now, Kennington has made it quite apparent that God is the quarry in part 1 and nature is the quarry in part 2. The reason God and nature are not quite equivalent is that God must be presented in such a fashion that he might

27. Ibid., 216–17. 28. See David Lachterman, “The Physics of Spinoza’s Ethics,” in Spinoza: New Perspectives, ed. Robert W. Shahan and J. I. Biro (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978), 74–76, 83, 90. 29. Curley, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, 60.

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serve as a theistic cover for the “atheistic naturalism” Kennington assented to as an interpretation of Spinoza in part 1 of his paper.

Esotericism in the Ethics Although I will draw on material from part 2 of Kennington’s article, our main focus here will be on part 5. I depart from the order of his presentation in part because I have already set forth that order and, more importantly, because we need to confront the central novelty of his article, the claim of esotericism, as soon as possible. To my knowledge, he never uses the term “esotericism.” At the time he wrote the article, it was best to avoid references to it, though he could not avoid references to Leo Strauss.30 The late appearance of the posthumous collection of Kennington’s articles on early modern philosophy (On Modern Origins) suggests he paid a high price for developing esoteric readings within the confines of academic philosophy. Today, in the wake of the ongoing dispute between Harris and Bagley over esotericism, little would be gained by downplaying the esoteric character of Kennington’s interpretation. Although the recognition of esotericism in ancient thought has gained some credence, claims to this effect even in the most obvious cases, for example, Maimonides, in the medieval period not to mention early modern philosophy are widely opposed. Kennington identifies the esotericism of the Ethics in the concluding paragraph of his part 4. He says, “In the Ethics the surface contradiction lies between the geometric form of exposition and the abandonment of that form, especially in Part II.”31 Esotericism could hardly get subtler than this. Comparison with the Theologico-Political Treatise highlights this subtlety. We return to the example of esotericism from the Treatise, discussed above. Although a philosopher can conceive of God as the “legislator” of the laws of nature, he must not view God as legislating laws regulating human conduct on the anthropomorphic model of legislation. Yet, according to Treatise 14, God should be viewed as a righteous judge (because of that view’s positive “moral effects”). The exoteric claim, God should be viewed as a judge, possesses obvious and immediate bearing on human affairs in most places and most times. In contrast, whether Spinoza uses analytic argument in part 1 or part 2 of the Ethics seems, at first, inconsequential. These two scientific methods bear little relation to everyday life. Above all, even Spinoza schol30. Kennington refers to Strauss both in the body of the text (once on p. 207, “Analytic and Synthetic Methods of Spinoza’s Ethics”) and in the footnotes (three times at 207 n. 8, 216 n. 32, and 225 n. 46). 31. Ibid., 217.

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ars are more familiar with contemporary refinements of Spinoza’s synthetic method (or “hypothetico-deductive” system) than they are with Descartes’s grand claims for analytic method, not to mention the strange possibility that Spinoza himself might employ analysis.32 Does Kennington show that Ethics part 2, especially the Physical Treatise, is argued analytically? I quote the bulk of Kennington’s relatively brief argument: The physical treatise following P13 begins with an axiom: “All bodies are either in a state of motion or rest.” This beginning is the bond between experience and science. What would be acknowledged by any man in the “common order of nature” is simultaneously the first axiom of Spinoza’s physics. It lacks any supporting geometric deduction; it has been prepared by the pseudogeometric axiomatization of sense experience that premises the existence of bodies at the outset of E 2. Axiom 1 presupposes the meaning of “a body”; the subsequent definition of “a body or individual” presupposes the meaning of motion: there is no unilateral deduction in either direction. More precisely, the definition of a body or individual presupposes the “law of inertia” and two other principles of motion given previously in three lemmata. Stated differently, the definition of a body or individual is the only definition in the physical treatise, but since motion is not defined even this definition is elliptical. The analytic procedure then scarcely relies on definitions. . . . Ultimate definitions may or may not be possible, but they are not necessary. Even the ultimacy of extension found in Descartes is lacking; the very word “extensio” is literally absent from the physical treatise; it is alluded to, certainly, though not employed, in lemma 2, apparently to link up the analysis with the divine attribute in the geometric synthesis. But whereas the geometric exposition stresses the extension of materiality to God as one of his intelligible attributes, the analysis treats extension as posterior to motion and rest.33

Kennington’s key insight is quite simple. The Physical Digression or Treatise, in spite of meager appearances to the contrary, does not rely upon definitions. Indeed, each definition presupposes another in an apparently circular fashion. Judged from the vantage point of synthetic argumentation, this would be a defect. In contrast, the appearance of circularity and the insignificance of definitions are precisely what characterize analysis. Of course, the brilliance of the argument is in the details. 32. See note 24, above. 33. Kennington, “Analytic and Synthetic Methods of Spinoza’s Ethics,” 219–20.

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The brilliance of Kennington’s argument becomes only more apparent when compared with Curley’s interpretation of the Physical Digression. Now in Ep. 64, when Spinoza is asked to give an example of something that is produced immediately by God, he mentions, under the attribute of extension, motion-and-rest. As a result, motion-and-rest has acquired the title of immediate infinite and eternal mode under the attribute of extension, which is to say that it is identified with what follows immediately from the absolute nature of the attribute of extension. But we are not told any more about motion-and-rest than this and there has been a great deal of uncertainty about the meaning of Spinoza’s doctrine of infinite modes. On the interpretation being put forward here, we will understand this in the following way. Our idea of motion-and-rest involves certain affirmations about things which are in motion or at rest, such as the principle of inertia. It should be at least theoretically possible to deduce the general propositions which express these affirmations from the general propositions involved in our idea of extension, that is, to deduce the laws of motion from the nature of extended things. To say that these laws of motion can be deduced from the common notions is equivalent to saying the infinite mode of motion-and-rest “follows” from or depends causally on the absolute nature of the attribute of extension. This immediate infinite mode will consist of the set of general facts which are described by the laws of motion. I think Spinoza would have regarded such a deduction as in principle possible, even if he was not prepared to supply the details of it himself. In fact, it seems that we are given a sample of what this deduction would be like in the axioms and lemmas which occur between propositions 13 and 14 of part II.34

Curley continues from there by citing the first two axioms, lemma 2, and the first corollary to lemma 3 of the Physical Treatise. He notes that the first corollary contains the principle of inertia. He then acknowledges how this principle is supposed to be deduced by “a few [unstated] propositions about bodies in general.” He acknowledges that none of this adds up to a convincing deduction, and it depends on assumptions that would connect finite to infinite modes missing from the crucial previous 1p28, a topic we will return to shortly. All in all, Spinoza’s Physical Treatise fails as a piece of synthetic deduction. Perhaps the most telling evidence of Curley’s effort 34. Curley, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, 59–60.

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to discover the makings of a synthetic argument where there are none is the unconvincing appeal to “the nature of extended things.” How can one claim to deduce from “the nature of extended things” the very axioms and lemmata that express that nature? Indeed, Kennington’s observation that the word “extension” never even appears in the Physical Treatise is very telling. In a wonderful exploration of Descartes’s use of extension just preceding the passage quoted above, Kennington shows that even in Descartes extension lacks the pristine status of a first principle arrived at intuitively or deductively apart from experience.35 (Here, even Descartes’s status as the father of rationalism, remote from any taint of empiricism, is placed in question.) Even for Descartes, extension lacks the metaphysical ultimacy or precedence (over figure and motion) commonly attributed to it. How much more so is this the case for Spinoza!36 Ironically, one of Curley’s greatest contributions to modern Spinoza scholarship is also one of the greatest obstacles to the proper interpretation of the Ethics. Curley claims that Spinoza’s arguments gain in lucidity when one translates claims about modes, especially infinite modes, into “a set of facts” (which he alludes to in the quotation above) that can be expressed in accordance with the contemporary conventions of deductive logic. The great benefit that flows from Curley’s approach is that Spinoza ceases appearing to be a wide-eyed idealist making amorphous claims about infinite modes and becomes the sober advocate of laws of nature that he really is. The great difficulty, however, is evident even in the above quotation. Once one begins to translate references to the infinite mode of extension and of motion-andrest into propositions, one also begins to fill in deductive gaps that Spinoza may very well have intended (and according to Kennington definitely did intend) to leave unfilled. In the well-intentioned effort to render Spinoza more deductively or synthetically lucid, Curley runs the risk of obliterating the evidence that at crucial moments Spinoza argues analytically. It almost goes without saying that this problem with Curley’s approach can hardly be limited to him. The translation of Spinoza into contemporary analytic terms 35. Kennington, “Analytic and Synthetic Methods of Spinoza’s Ethics,” 218–20. 36. For further evidence of the empirical thread in Spinoza, see Kennington’s part 2, section b. Kennington argues persuasively that the Emendation offers methodological remarks of use in the interpretation of the so-called Short Treatise, not the Ethics. The Ethics itself fails to justify its own method. The methodological discussions in the Theologico-Political Treatise do not recommend synthesis. If anything they preview the method of the Physical Treatise. Definition is not the starting point. Rather, historia naturae (history of nature, in its peculiar early modern sense) precedes any and all definition. In addition to 2b, see Kennington’s discussion of the empirical character of the Treatise’s method in the opening of his article.

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has grown apace with the transformation of the Ethics into a staple of the analytic history of philosophy. Whereas Curley uses his analytic tools to fill in gaps in Spinoza’s synthetic arguments, gaps Spinoza may not have wanted filled, Bennett is less faithful to Spinoza’s synthetic method. I am interested here less in his vague dismissal of the possibility that Spinoza might employ esotericism37 than in his effort to arrive at a proper view of Spinoza’s method. Like Curley who openly imports the kind of logically formalized metaphysics an analyst might accept, Bennett imports the kind of “hypothetico-deductive method” used to describe scientific inquiry in the middle of the twentieth century.38 These are roughly the same thing. And Bennett feels as free as Curley did to translate Spinoza into contemporary logical parlance. What is most troubling, however, is how similar to Spinoza’s Ethics such a “hypotheticodeductive model” appears to be while in fact being quite different. For Bennett, the hypothetico-deductive model offers various hypotheses about how the world might be, attempting to build a coherent system of argumentation, but constantly retaining the flexibility to alter any part of the system that may require it. In effect, Bennett, when he is not denigrating Spinoza’s logical abilities, treats the gaps in his argument as indications that the system is meant to be a work in progress on the model of a modern science. The similarities between Spinoza’s synthetic arguments and modern science are deceiving. Bennett’s appeal to the hypothetico-deductive model is predicated on the assumption that Spinoza did not understand what kind of argument is Euclid’s Elements. Indeed, Bennett’s Spinoza seems confused about what is a demonstration. That is, he does not seem to use the term as analysts would, solely for a logically sound, as opposed to valid, argument. Ironically, Bennett views Spinoza’s Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy” as evidence he did not understand the Elements: So when Spinoza says that his results are demonstrata—demonstrated or rigorously proved—presumably he is talking about logic and not the psychology of his procedures. That would be reasonable: if one has a logically valid argument with true premisses and conclusion P, this is a ‘demonstration’ of

37. See Bennett, Study of Spinoza’s “Ethics,” 27 n. 2. He cites Efraim Shmueli, “The Geometrical Method, Personal Caution, and the Ideal of Tolerance” (in Shahan and Biro, Spinoza: New Perspectives, 197–215), not Strauss. 38. Curley, Spinoza’s Metaphysics, 50–55; Bennett, Study of Spinoza’s “Ethics,” 20.

Richard Kennington’s Spinoza and Esotericism in Spinoza’s Thought / 209 P even if it would not convince anyone of P’s truth because the premisses are not obviously true. Sometimes, indeed, Spinoza uses ‘demonstrate’ more weakly still. The full title of his Descartes’s Principles says that it presents Cartesian doctrines ‘demonstrated in the geometrical manner’; yet Spinoza insists that much of this ‘demonstrated’ material is false. The Preface implies that the work will be based on ‘propositions so clear and evident that no one can withhold his assent from them, provided he has understood the terms’; but Spinoza did not write the Preface, and that bit of it must be mistaken. It would be much more in character for Spinoza to offer the premisses as partly false—which he must do if he is to reject some of the conclusions while claiming that the deductive moves are valid. Presumably, then, he is willing to call something ‘demonstrated’ if it is validly derived from false premisses. It is easy to believe, then, that in the Ethics he took his conclusions to be ‘demonstrated’ in the sense of validly derived from premisses which, though true, are not always immediately convincing. . . . As for ‘the geometrical manner’ or ‘geometrical order’, this must point to the likes of Euclid’s Elements, but it is not clear what its precise implications were in Spinoza’s mind, if indeed it had any. He might have been in a slight muddle about the notion of doing things geometrically.39

Bennett’s argument is relatively straightforward. In the Ethics, there are occasions, for example, the all-important opening definitions, when Spinoza fashions arguments out of premises that are not intuitively obvious. These he calls demonstrations. But what he really means is they are hypotheses that will or will not be confirmed by the phenomena. There are other, weaker examples of demonstration, in which he uses invalid premises to develop a synthetic argument, for example, Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy.” To Bennett’s mind, neither of these qualifies as demonstrations, that is, synthetic arguments of the Euclidean type. Kennington would argue that that is the whole point. Spinoza uses Euclidean synthesis in a fashion Euclid would never have used it. He uses it to convince readers of salutary arguments with which he does not necessarily agree. For example, according to Meyer in the preface, Spinoza seems to prove that the “human mind is an absolute thinking substance,” a doctrine Descartes asserts but does not prove and with which Spinoza disagrees. In the case of Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy,” Bennett might view this as a loose usage of demonstration.

39. Bennett, Study of Spinoza’s “Ethics,” 19.

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He cannot make the imaginative leap to the possibility that Spinoza might have used synthesis in the same fashion in the Ethics. Bennett is completely silent on Meyer’s references to the difference between analysis and synthesis and his affirmation of Spinoza’s expertise in both. Why? Bennett has concluded that Meyer is untrustworthy. Consequently, any light he might appear to shed on, among other things, the difference between analysis and synthesis cannot be trusted. Yet Meyer gives us the basis for confirming that he and Spinoza are on the same page about analysis and synthesis, namely, the same page as Descartes. In his preface, Meyer claims that Spinoza has taken over much of the argument from Descartes’s Reply to the Second Objections to the Meditations. Meyer’s account of the relation between analysis and synthesis is an almost verbatim repetition of Descartes’s account of analysis as for the sake of discovery and synthesis for compelling the assent of the obstinate. Yet it seems Bennett believes Meyer is of no use in understanding Spinoza. Meyer supposedly displays his ignorance of Spinoza in the preface. According to Bennett, Meyer claims “that the work will be based on ‘propositions so clear and evident that no one can withhold his assent from them, provided that he has understood the terms.’” Of course, no such thing should be claimed about Cartesian arguments resting on false premises. I have labored in vain to find this passage. (Bennett offers no citation, except the general reference to Meyer’s preface.) The three passages closest to it that I have found do not suggest Meyer is misunderstanding Spinoza as Bennett’s paraphrase does.40 Ironically, within two pages of Bennett’s dismissal of Meyer’s grasp of Spinoza’s approach to demonstration, Bennett cites Spinoza’s familiarity with Descartes’s Reply to the Second Objections to the Meditations, which inspires Meyer’s contrast between analysis and synthesis. Yet Bennett cites this reply not to attend to the difference between analysis and synthesis, as Meyer does, but to assure us that Spinoza imbibed from it mistaken hopes for certain and indubitable knowledge through synthesis. Are Spinoza and Meyer confused about the uses and abuses of synthesis or is Bennett?

The Gap between Infinite and Finite Modes in Ethics 1p28 Kennington opens 2c with the following claim, stunning for its boldness: “It is generally acknowledged that it is impossible in the Ethics to deduce 40. The passages in Meyer’s introduction I have been able to find that resemble roughly Bennett’s paraphrase are the following: Spinoza, Opera, ed. Charles Gebhardt, 4 vols. (Heidelberg: Carl Winters, 1925) 1: 127, ll. 17–21; 1: 128, ll. 28–31; 1: 132, ll. 29–31.

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geometrically any of the particular beings of the natural world, i.e., ‘finite modes.’ Hence even if we were able to assign determinate status to the Primary Definitions [in part 1] on the basis of Spinoza’s statements, the geometric method cannot be the method of Spinoza’s philosophy.”41 Kennington goes on to cite Ernest Barker’s classic article, unimpressively titled “Notes on the Second Part of Spinoza’s Ethics (I),” which bears out his claim.42 Even more decisively, at least for the historian of philosophy, Kennington discovers Spinoza admitting as much himself. In a rare example of simple and straightforward doctrine in his correspondence, epistle 10 to Simon De Vries, Spinoza writes, “We only need experience in the case of whatever cannot be deduced from the definition of a thing, as for instance, the existence of modes: for this cannot be deduced from the definition of a thing.” He adds to this the arguments of part 2, axioms 5, 2, and 4, and concludes persuasively that the only way to know that a finite mode exists is experience. None of this conforms to what the synthetic surface of the Ethics seems to imply. If the existence of finite modes cannot be inferred from the existence of infinite modes, then why proceed synthetically? When stated this baldly, the peculiarity of what is usually taken to be Spinoza’s procedure, arguing from God’s existence to the existence of other things, becomes readily apparent. Kennington adds to this conundrum about how we know that finite things exist the decisive challenge posed by Ethics 1p28. In so many words, Spinoza states that finite modes are determined by other finite modes, not infinite modes. Determinacy is equated with “‘production,’” according to Kennington. God does not create finite modes, but everything up to this point has been meant to suggest that God produces finite modes (for example, E 1pp16, 24–27). An initial reading of part 1 as well as the early account of knowledge (E 2p40s2) leads the reader to believe that knowledge of God as the immanent cause of all modes must inevitably be the highest kind of knowledge. Yet by the end of the Ethics (E 5p36), it becomes readily apparent that knowledge of particular things, especially how they are produced by their transitive causes, is the very peak of human knowledge. If God or immanent causality is nothing more than the laws of nature describing transitive causality, then the cleavage Kennington identifies between part 1 (a whole without parts) and part 2 (parts without a whole) breaks apart, leaving part 2 standing on its own. Such laws of 41. Kennington, “Analytic and Synthetic Methods of Spinoza’s Ethics,” 211. 42. The importance of this (series of ) article(s) is evident from the editor’s willingness to reprint all three parts of the article originally published in Mind 47 (1938), including “Notes on the Second Part of Spinoza’s Ethics (II)” and “Notes on the Second Part of Spinoza’s Ethics (III).” See S. Paul Kashap, ed., Studies in Spinoza (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972).

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nature or part 2’s common notions are less important than the particulars they produce. Contrary to nearly all of the secondary literature on Spinoza, Kennington enables us to see that behind the contemplative façade of Spinoza’s concern with God lies a far greater focus on the determination of particular things. Spinoza is no more a throwback to medieval concern with the divine than is Bacon.

index

Abraham (biblical figure), 69–70 Account of the Beginning (Maimonides), 2, 159, 160 Account of the Chariot (Maimonides), 2, 159, 160 actuality, 97, 98–99, 124–25, 134 Adam (biblical figure), 29, 30, 71, 106, 129, 166, 172 affects: active affects, 129, 132, 133–34; as cause of human action, 127; contin­ gency, 136; in Ethics, 94n57, 149; know­ ing affects as transformational, 134; passive affect, 71–72, 133–34; passive v. active, 39–41; power of the mind (po­ tentia Mentis) over, 184; reason, 129, 132–33; virtue, 133; volition, 128n26; wonder as, 52 Alexander of Aphrodisias, 33, 38 Alfarabi: cosmology of, 13–14; discussion of divine law, 103; excessive anger (use of term), 21n8; imitatio Dei, 69; influ­ ence of Aristotle on, 156, 166n14; in­ fluence on Maimonides, 39, 55, 66, 69, 114, 177; Neoplatonism of, 154; philosopher-king in Plato’s Republic, 167; Platonic tradition of educating ero¯s and thumos, 25n17; on prophecy, 113, 114, 177; on prudence, 191; treatment of human beings as domestic, 41n38 Altmann, Alexander, 169–70, 180 amor Dei intellectualis, 24, 58, 131, 190 “Analytic and Synthetic Methods of Spinoza’s Ethics” (Kennington), 193 analytic argument, 59, 80, 82–83, 94n57, 194–95, 201n24, 202–3, 205

anger, 21, 38, 68, 69, 114 anger (ghad · ab), 21, 23, 24 anger (h araj), 21, 23–25, 33, 35, 37–38, 114 · animals: Aristotle on, 99, 176; choice, 101, 110, 123; commandment cannot be given to, 170; in the creation story, 165; divine providence extended to, 123, 176; education as distinguishing humans from, 172; excess, 30, 173; humans with­ out education as, 172; imagination pos­ sessed by, 170; as lacking reason, 99; reason as distinguishing humans from, 99, 173; recompense for, 122, 123–24; shepherd and flock, theme of, 41n38; will in, 71, 123 anthropology: Adam (biblical figure), 29, 30, 71, 106, 129, 166, 172; of Aristotle, 73; to be made in the image of God, 28–29, 73, 172, 188–89; eros-centered anthropology, 22–25, 30, 43, 47, 49, 50, 60, 63, 131, 187, 190; of the Guide, 95, 116; idolatry, 62, 68–71, 94–95, 97, 105–6, 111–13, 115; physics as related to, 2. See also form; intellect, the anti-idolatry, 68–70, 94–95, 97, 105–6, 112, 160 appetite, 35, 109, 146, 165, 166 Aquinas, Thomas, 52–53, 57, 96, 108 Aristophanes, 24n15, 37 Aristotle: abstraction (aphairesis), 88n38; on accepting favors, 130; Ash‘arism and, 118–20, 124; barrier between theory and production, 79; on choice ( pro­hairesis), 71, 95, 97–99, 100, 107n1, 108, 110, 133; on the coincidence of the order of

214 / Index Aristotle (cont.) cognition and the order of nature, 85– 86, 87; on contemplation, 50, 52n5, 130; on creation, 118; on desire, 30, 43, 45, 133; on determinism, 97n60; edu­ cation of love and spiritedness, 21; on endoxa, 174n29; essence, 87n35; on eternity, 108, 118; ethical doctrine of the mean, 65–66, 67; ethical metaphor of the target, 125; on forms, 11, 77, 97– 99, 104, 190; on freedom, 97, 107n1, 108, 124; on friendship, 131; on God, 11, 27, 31, 63, 69, 73, 74, 96, 99, 135n36, 154, 176, 178; on imagination, 29, 48, 180n39; ineliminable multiplicity of being, 81, 83, 84, 95, 100, 102; Mai­ monides influenced by, 13, 14, 43, 96– 98, 101–2, 104, 107–8, 114; matterform-privation teaching, 98–99; on modes of inquiry, 86; Nicomachean Ethics, 72n42, 99, 130, 166n14, 173, 177; phronesis, 29, 30, 146; potency, 97– 98, 124–25; on providence, 104, 117, 120, 124, 176; on prudence, 29, 166n14, 173, 178n33; on reason, 30, 43, 72n41, 171; on the sciences, 20, 21, 78, 79, 87, 97, 101; scripture compared with, 10, 76, 96; on self-love and friendship, 130; Spinoza influenced by, 5, 128; tele­ ology of, 81, 97, 107, 135n36, 154, 156, 189; on ultimate finality, 13, 14n39, 154–55; on virtue, 128, 183; the volun­ tary (ekousia), 71, 99, 109, 110, 122, 123n21 Ash‘arism: Aristotle and, 118–20, 124; equality, 120; fatalism, 17, 71, 111, 189; on God, 125; on human freedom, 122; and Judaism, 12, 120, 121, 122; Mu‘tazilism compared with, 121, 122; on omnipotence, 117, 118, 120, 124; on the possible, 124, 137; view of provi­ dence, 117, 120 astral determinism, 69–71, 111–13 astrology, 15, 111, 112–13, 115 atheism, 53, 115, 200, 203, 204 Augustine, St., 100, 107, 125, 134 Bacon, Francis: corpuscularianism, 59, 60; on the human mind, 61n24; induction method of scientific inquiry, 80; method of induction, 59; on nature, 50, 59, 76,

77, 80, 190; new philanthropy, 129; on science, 86, 92; on wonder, 51–52, 59 Bagley, Paul, 196, 198 Barker, Ernest, 211 Barker, Harold, 84n28 Baruch son of Neriah (Jer. 45:3–5), 113 Bayle, Pierre, 200 beauty and the beautiful, 25, 60–61, 63, 187 behavior, 110, 198–99 Benardete, Seth, 94n56 Bennett, Jonathan, 80, 82, 88n37, 89n42 , 90n43, 92, 194n5, 195, 208–10 Berkeley, George, 201 Berman, L. V., 164n4, 166n14 Bible: anti-idolatry in, 68–70, 97, 105, 112, 160; Aristotle compared with, 10, 76, 96; choice in, 108; corporeal imagery in, 68; creation account, 11, 36, 53, 70, 96, 108, 117, 118, 154–60; on the desire of the slothful (Prov. 21:25–26), 36–37; Garden of Eden, 29, 106, 129, 164n4, 165, 166; heavenly bodies, 154, 157, 158–61; limits of human knowledge, 157; Maimonidean interpretation of, 52–53, 54, 55, 76, 111; Spinoza’s in­ terpretations of, 10, 12, 15, 53–54, 56– 57, 76; the supranatural, 53; theoretical perfection in, 96; veneration of the old, 64–65 Bidney, David, 201 body, the: associated with imagination, 93; beauty of, 60–61; bodily excretions, 173, 175, 184; corporeality of God, 68–69; mind, 62, 93–94, 149; multiplicity of simple bodies, 93; ratio of motion-andrest in bodies, 48–49, 78, 84n28, 87n35, 91–94, 190, 205; sense experience, 93n54; soul, 30, 44, 61, 63–64, 66, 73, 84n28, 94, 99, 175; in Spinoza’s Physi­ cal Treatise, 205; wonder elicited from, 62 Boyle, Robert, 81, 90, 95n57 Butterworth, Charles E., 171 Catholicism, 54, 196, 198, 199 Chalier, Catherine, 3 choice: Aristotelian choice (prohairesis), 71, 95, 97–99, 100, 107n1, 108, 110, 133; cultivation of ethical virtue, 110, 173; deliberation, 124n23; divine omni­ science, 123; in Eight Chapters (Maimoni­ des), 107–8; form, 95, 97, 98, 99, 124–

Index / 215 25; God as lacking, 99; human choice v. voluntary action by animals, 123; mind’s independence from the body, 94; and sobriety, 173–74, 175, 178, 184; Spi­ noza on, 106, 132–33, 164–65n5; the voluntary (ekousia), 71, 99, 109, 110, 122. See also practical intellect; pru­ dence; reason Christianity, 63, 75, 100, 103, 115, 127, 128, 134, 188 Christ imagery, 129, 131 city, the, 30, 131–32, 175 commandments, 166, 170, 175n29 Commentary on the Mishnah (Maimonides), 114, 179n36 conatus: as central to Spinoza’s teaching, 19–21; corpora simplicissisima (simplest bodies) constituting, 60; desire, 43, 46, 47, 60, 187; as endeavor to preserve, 20, 22–23, 25, 47–48, 93–94, 128–31, 199, 200n22; freedom dependent of actor’s, 110; human beings having, 72; human suffering, 43; imagination, 25, 45–46, 140; Kennington on, 22; laws of nature, 94n57; love (ero¯s) reinterpreted as, 23, 24, 46–48, 131; meaning of virtue and power, 128; pleasure, 25; potency/act distinction, 125; as power ( potentia), 87n35; religious tolerance, 24; selfassertion, 46, 47; spiritedness, 23, 46; teleology, 140, 144, 156; as universal causal principle, 20–21; virtue, 133 conduct, 109, 171 contingency (Spinoza), 135, 136 conventional society, 167, 168 corpora simplicissisima, 60, 63, 87n36 corporeality, 17, 28–29, 68–69, 71, 72, 85, 88, 95, 105–6, 132 corpuscularianism, 59, 60 creation account, 36, 53, 70, 96, 108, 117, 118, 154–55, 157, 158–60 Crescas, Hasdai, 9–10 Curley, Edwin, 80, 90n45, 195, 201n24, 203, 206–7 death, 44, 74, 119–20n16, 121 deductive argument: Elements (Euclid), 194, 208, 209; in Ethics (Spinoza), 2, 59, 60, 87n35, 88–89, 94n57, 193, 194, 196, 208, 210; geometry, 15, 20, 80, 82n22, 85–88, 89, 193–94, 205, 209, 211; laws

of nature, 80–81; modern science and, 208; in Physical Treatise (Spinoza), 206–7; purpose of, 22; relation between analysis and synthesis, 2–3, 22, 82–84, 194–95, 201n24, 202; starting point as crucial, 88–89. See also synthetic argument deliberation (bouleusis), 99, 100, 124n23, 164n5 democracy, 56, 79, 191 Democritus, 98n62 Descartes, René: analytic method of, 59, 80, 194, 201n24, 205; Aristotle’s principles challenged by, 57n13, 143–44; dualism of, 61–62, 86n33; on the existence of God, 78n4; extension used by, 205, 207; on habit, 43; human interaction of mind and body, 93; on imagination, 61n24; importance of will, 93, 109, 110; on laws of nature, 80; on laws of the mind, 95n57; mathesis universalis of, 20, 81n18; modern esotericism, 57; as premodern thinker, 6, 12–13n, 57–58; problem of interaction, 61–62; on the relation between analysis and synthesis, 82, 194–95, 201n24, 202; repudiation of actuality, 97n62; on science, 20, 81, 86, 92; on self-mastery, 75; on the soul, 84n28; on wonder, 52, 60, 61n24 Descartes’s “Principles of Philosophy” (Spi­ noza), 22, 82, 200, 201n24, 202, 209–10 desire: achievement of human perfection, 29–30; in acquisition of knowledge, 38; appetite, 35, 146, 165; Aristotle on, 99, 133; as conatus, 43, 46, 47, 60, 187; de­ liberation (bouleusis), 99, 100, 124n23, 164n5; ero¯s (love), 21–25, 30, 43, 47, 49–50, 60, 63, 131, 187, 190; exces­sive desire, 25–26, 28, 30, 40, 42–45, 48, 184; habit, 42–43, 114, 133; imagina­ tion, 26, 29, 99, 166n14, 168–69; long­ ing (shawq), 20, 21n8, 22, 29, 30, 32, 34–35, 36–40, 60–61, 63, 174n29, 175; Maimonides on, 21, 25, 27, 30, 37–39, 43, 108, 132, 174n29, 175, 190; moral habit (al-khulq) and elimination of, 42– 43, 114, 133; practical intellect, 168; for predominance, 33, 38, 39, 40–41; reason, 110, 126, 173; shahwa, 21, 25, 27, 30, 37–39, 43, 108, 132, 174n29, 175, 190; of the slothful, 36–37; as

216 / Index desire (cont.) source of evil, 25, 26; stupidity as un­ checked desire, 35–36; for victory, 33, 38, 39; virtue, 37–38, 128, 130–31, 133, 173, 183. See also conatus; love determinism: Aristotle on, 97n60; astral determinism, 69–71, 111–13; in the Bible, 111; contingency, 135, 136; cor­ poreality, 17, 28–29, 68–69, 71–72, 85, 88, 95, 105–6, 132; fatalism, 17, 70–71, 108–9, 111–12, 115, 117, 120, 124, 137; freedom and, 100; idolatry, 62, 68–71, 70, 97, 105–6, 111–13, 115; Maimonides on, 69; materialism, 47, 49, 55, 61, 63, 71, 84, 92–93, 97, 106; necessity, 136, 158, 184; al-Razi’s views on evil, 111; religious tolerance, 109; of Spinoza, 17, 72, 82n22, 83–84, 93, 95, 100, 108–10, 126, 136–37, 191; Stoicism on, 74, 127; teleology, 97n60 De Vries, Simon, 211 Discourse on Method (Descartes), 75, 203 divine omnipotence, 70–71, 111, 112, 116–18, 123, 124 divine omniscience, 121, 123, 124 divine overflow (al-fayid · ), 42, 104, 167, 169, 176–77, 184 divine providence, 69, 104, 117 divine science, 35–36, 38, 40. See also metaphysics Divine Things (al-Razi), 115 divine will, 113–17 drunkenness, 173–74, 175, 184 eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, 164n4, 165, 166 Eccles. 3:19, 71 education, 20, 28, 34, 37, 172, 173 Eight Chapters (Maimonides): anger (h ·araj), 21n8; Aristotelian thought in, 107–8, 114; assignment of the commandments, 166; astral determinism, 69–71, 111– 13; choice (ikhtiya¯r), 108; desire, 40, 108; free will, 123, 160; imagination, 167, 168, 179; on moral formation, 101–2; nature of existence, 108; passionate love, 21n8; on political science, 101, 123; practical intellect, 165, 167, 171–72, 179; shame about sexuality, 174n29; uses of reason, 171; on wisdom v. virtue, 65–66 Elements (Euclid), 194, 208, 209

Emendation (Spinoza), 201, 202 empiricists, 61n24, 78n4 endeavor. See conatus epiphenomenalism, 62, 84n28 Epistle Dedicatory (Guide of the Perplexed [Maimonides]), 21–22 ero¯s (love), 21–25, 30, 43, 47, 49–50, 60, 63, 131, 187, 190 eros-centered anthropology, 22–25, 30, 43, 47, 49, 50, 60, 63, 131, 187, 190 esotericism, 55, 57–58, 193, 195–200, 196, 204 essence, 17, 60, 87n35, 89–92, 97–99, 110n4, 124–25, 135, 190 eternity, 70, 96, 108, 118 ethical virtue. See morals Ethics (Spinoza): audience for, 203; Carte­ sian basis of Spinoza’s preference for analysis over synthesis, 202; Cartesian dualism, 61–62; conatus, 19, 20–21, 22, 25, 45; countering the force of affects, 72; on the deduction of finite modes, 195, 211; definitions used in, 209; on desire, 25, 184; determinism, 109, 126; equivalence of virtue with power, 128; esotericism in, 196, 204; essence, 17, 91; existence of God, 46, 49–50, 57, 84, 87n36, 89–90; freedom, 17, 109, 126; free man propositions, 74, 126–27, 128, 131; images as true or false, 199n19; imagination, 45–46, 48, 181–82; laws of nature in, 81; love in, 23, 24, 199; methodology of, 20, 22, 83, 86, 87; pan­ theist interpretation of, 201–2; Physical Treatise, 22, 46, 48–49; potency/act distinction in, 97, 125; rejection of forms in, 17, 61n24, 87n35; religious tolerance, 24, 126, 151; science in, 20, 81, 87; on self-control, 184; selfpreservation, 128–30; Stoicism in, 127, 184; synthetic argument in, 2, 59, 60, 87n34, 88, 94n57, 193, 194, 196; syn­ thetic organization of, 15, 20, 60, 80, 86; Theologico-Political Treatise compared with, 126; two orders in, 85–89; vision of whole without parts (part 1), 203; whole constituted of nothing but parts (part 2), 203 Euclid, 194, 201, 208, 209 evil: Adam as, 129; as bad actualities, 44, 98–99, 125, 134; belief in religious

Index / 217 images, 45; eating of the tree of knowl­ edge of good and evil, 164n4, 165, 166; excessive desire as, 25–26, 28, 30, 42– 43, 44, 45, 48, 184; the good, 102, 129, 175; in the imagination of the multi­ tude, 115; as lack of form, 134; al-Razi’s views on, 111, 115; suffering, 43–45, 44, 71, 116–17, 122, 123; vices, 44, 114 excessive desire, 25–26, 28, 30, 40, 42–43, 44, 45, 48, 184 exile, 112, 113, 114–15 extension: as absent from Physical Treatise, 205, 207; definition of (Curley), 203; as divine attribute, 8–11, 14, 15–16, 54–55, 63, 73, 85, 92–93, 106 Ezek. 10:1, 160 faculty psychology, 128n26 falling leaf imagery, 119–20n16, 121 fanaticism, 188 fatalism, 17, 70–71, 108–9, 111–12, 115, 117, 120, 124, 137, 189 Feldman, Seymour, 4–5n9 fideism, 23n13, 160 fikr/rawiyya (thought/perspicacity), 30, 170, 172–73, 179 finite modes, 46–47, 195, 201–2, 211 first finality, 154, 156, 157 form: actuality, 97, 98–99, 124–25, 134; anthropology on man’s form as intel­ lect, 96; Aristotle on, 11, 77, 97–99, 98, 190; being made in the image and like­ ness, 29, 73, 172, 188–89; choice, 95, 97, 98, 99, 124–25; as constellation of bodies, 61; corporealism, 97; in a created world, 96; evil as lack of, 134; freedom, 124–25; ineliminable multiplicity of being, 81, 83, 84, 95, 100, 102; knowl­ edge, 78; laws of nature, 77, 190; nomi­ nalism, 103–4; no species exist outside the mind, 104; occult essences, 77, 188, 190; potency/act distinction, 125; as premodern objects of intellectual in­ quiry, 24; privation of, 98; Spinoza’s rejection of, 17, 61n24, 87n35; wholes, 49, 59, 60–61, 190 Frankel, Steven, 56, 58, 191 freedom: affect, 133; Aristotle on, 97, 107n1, 108, 124; in the Bible, 111; contempla­ tion of the whole, 73; deliberation, 164n5; and determinism, 100; fixity of

natures, 108; form, 124–25; God as free, 73, 135; human freedom, 69–71, 108, 111, 117, 121–23, 164; Hume on, 100; incorporeality, 7, 17, 28–29, 67, 71, 73, 86, 87, 94, 105; Maimonides on, 67, 74, 79, 95, 111, 117, 137, 164, 189; prudence, 164n; in society, 131; Spinoza on, 17, 58, 108–9, 110, 126, 164n5, 184; teleology as constraint on, 107; veneration, 67 free man: cultivation of group of free men, 130–32; as elite, 76; the great-souled man v., 128–30, 131, 200n21; love, 128, 131; relations with the multitude, 129– 30; Spinoza on, 74, 75, 126–27, 128; and the state, 131 free will, 43–44, 100, 107, 132–33, 191 Garden of Eden, 29, 106, 129, 164n4, 165, 166 Garrett, Aaron, 82n22 Gen.: 1:26, 29; 1:28, 159; chap. 3, 29; 5:3, 29, 172 geometry, 15, 20, 80, 82n22, 85–88, 89, 193–94, 205, 209, 211 ghad · ab (anger), 21, 23, 24 God: as Active Intellect, 167; anger of, 69; Aristotle on, 11, 27, 31, 63, 69, 73, 74, 96, 99, 135n36, 154, 176, 178; charac­ terizations in Treatise, 198; in Christianity, 63, 134; corporeality of, 17, 34, 68–69, 85, 95–96, 105–6, 132, 175; creation account, 36, 70, 96, 108, 117, 118, 154– 60; Descartes on, 78n4; divine overflow (al-fayid · ), 42, 104, 167, 169, 176–77, 184; essence of, 90–92; in Ethics (Spi­ noza), 46, 49–50, 57, 84, 87n34, 89– 90; extension as attribute of, 8–11, 9, 10, 14, 15–16, 54–55, 63, 73, 85, 92– 93, 106, 7393; as free, 73–74, 135; in the Guide, 21n8, 27, 31, 68, 113, 157, 178, 179; as having soul, 63–64; image (s·elem), 29; as immanent causality of all modes, 46, 211; incorporeality of, 7, 17, 28–29, 67, 71, 73, 86, 87, 94, 105, 160; intellect of, 73, 167, 172, 178n33; intense love of, 21n8; as judge, 198–99; laws of nature, 90; as legislator, 198, 204; Mishneh Torah (Maimonides), 66; Moses’s privileged access to, 31, 33; Mu‘tazilism on, 121–22; omnipotence

218 / Index God (cont.) of, 70–71, 111, 112, 116–18, 123, 124; omniscience, 121, 123, 124; passions, 21n8, 26–27, 69, 73, 132, 179; provi­ dence, 69, 104, 117; providence of, 178; pursuit of knowledge of, 36; al-Razi on existence of, 116; Spinoza on attributes of, 8–12, 15, 46–50, 57, 62–63, 74, 84, 87n36, 89–90, 127–28, 203; as Un­ moved Mover, 50, 63, 73; will of, 113– 17, 158, 160; YHVH, 27, 31, 33, 178. See also prophecy good and evil, and true and false, 163–64n3, 188 great-souled man, the, 128–30, 131, 200n21 Guide of the Perplexed (Maimonides): on Adam’s imagination, 106; anthropology of, 95, 116; anticorporeality in, 97, 105; Aristotelian influence on, 13, 14, 96–97, 98, 104, 108, 156; astral determinism, 69–71, 111–13; being made in the image and likeness, 172, 188–89; choice (ikhtiya¯r), 108; corporeality of God dis­ cussed in, 17, 28–29, 33–35, 68–69; on creation, 117, 158; divine omnipotence, 117; Epistle Dedicatory, 21–22; evil , 43, 102, 113, 115; on excessive desire, 25; on the faculty of apprehending, 166; fatalism in, 189; fikr/rawiyya (thought/ perspicacity), 30, 170, 172–73, 179; form in, 95, 103–4, 108, 125; on free choice, 173–74, 175, 178, 184, 189; Garden of Eden in, 165, 166; God in, 31, 33–35, 73, 178, 179; governance of conduct in, 171; human being, 95–96, 106, 158; on human freedom, 117; on human nature, 28, 188–89; imagina­ tion, 42, 102, 113, 115, 165, 167–68, 175, 179–81, 183–84; on the limits of knowledge, 28, 32, 33–35, 157; married harlot (Prov. 7:6–12), 98; on moral formation, 40–41, 101; Moses’s privi­ leged access to God, 31; natural disposi­ tions, 38–39; nominalism in, 102, 103–4, 105, 178n33; passionate love, 21, 26– 27; perplexity of, 38; on the philosophic life, 105, 173; practical intellect in, 164, 165, 167, 171, 172, 179, 184; privation, 98; on the proper order of study, 20, 28, 100–101; prophetology of, 39–40,

42, 113, 114, 165, 167, 179, 180–81, 183–84; on providence, 70–71, 117–18, 176; rational faculty, 42, 169, 170–71; rhetorical role of contradiction in, 12; role of rational faculty, 169, 170; on the sacrificial service, 106, 112; teleology , 115, 116, 189; three kinds of society in, 167–68; understanding of wisdom in, 188; will discussed in, 122–23n21. See also Joseph ben Judah (student in Guide of the Perplexed [Maimonides]) habit, 42–43, 110, 114, 133 happiness, 52, 128, 130, 199n20 haraj (anger), 21, 23–25, 24, 33, 35, 37– · 38, 114 Harris, Errol, 195, 196, 197, 198–99 Harvey, Warren Zev: comparison of Mai­ monides and Spinoza, 3–4, 8–10, 12, 14, 15–16, 181–82; on discussion of practical intellect in the Guide, 169; dis­ tinction between the premodern and modern, 12–13; on the imagination, 164n4; Maimonides on determinism, 17; on Maimonides’s Aristotelian claims, 11; role of practical intellect, 164n4; Scholastic interpretations of Aristotle, 12; Spinoza on God’s attributes, 8, 9, 10–11; Spinoza’s distortions of Mai­ monides, 12, 14; on Spinoza’s logical consistency, 10; on Strauss, 12n32 Haserot, Francis, 90n43, 92 heavenly bodies, 154–55, 157, 158–61 Hegel, Georg, 201 hegemonikon, 74, 184 Hempel, Carl, 80 hieroglyphic elements in writings of Spinoza, 197, 200–201 Hilkhot De’ot (Maimonides), 65, 66 Hobbes, Thomas, 43, 63, 81, 86, 109, 110n4 honor, 28, 40–41, 42, 64, 65, 66, 184 human beings: Aristotle on the existence of, 155–56; corporeal focus of, 95–96; divine recompense, 123; as domestic, 40–41; excessive desire, 25, 28, 30, 40, 42–43, 44, 45, 48, 173–75, 184; heav­ enly bodies compared with, 154–55, 157, 158–60; ignorance, 31–33, 53, 105–6, 199n19; limits to knowledge, 28, 30– 32, 33–35, 157–58, 168; materialism,

Index / 219 47, 49, 55, 61, 63, 71, 84, 92–93, 97, 106; the mind and, 61, 62, 79, 93–94, 104; preparation for divine overflow, 176–77; on self-love and friendship, 130; teleology, 154–55, 157, 158–60; tele­ ology and, 23, 26; veneration of, 52–54, 62–65, 74. See also imagination; intel­ lect, the; providence human freedom, 69–71, 111, 117, 121–23, 164 human nature, 21, 25–26, 28 human suffering, 43–44, 71, 116–17, 122, 123 Hume, David, 61n24, 100, 200 humility, 52, 66–67 hypothetico-deductive model. See synthetic argument Ibn Bajja, 8, 40 Ibn Pakuda, Bahya, 4, 122 idolatry, 62, 68–71, 94–95, 97, 105–6, 111–13, 115, 160 ignorance, 31–33, 53, 105–6, 199n19 imagination: ability to rule, 165; and the ability to rule, 168–69, 170, 172, 180n39, 181; admissible, 137; as attribute of God, 179; of the biblical Adam, 106; body associated with, 93, 179; conatus, 25, 45–46, 140; corpora simplicissisima, 60, 63, 87n36; Descartes on, 61; desire, 26, 29, 48, 99, 165, 166n9, 168–69; determination of good and evil, 102; distinctions between the possible / the impossible / the necessary, 168n19; divine corporeality, 68–69, 95–96, 175; divine overflow, 42, 167, 169; as force of primitive sociality, 181–82; and gen­ eration of wholes, 49, 190; good of the city, 175; Guide of the Perplexed (Mai­ monides), 42, 102, 113, 115, 165, 167– 68, 175, 179–81, 183–84; human per­ fection, 29–30, 167; intellect, 42, 63, 163–64n3, 165, 167, 168–69, 171–72; as limitless, 168; the mean discerned by, 165, 168; of the multitude, 115; origins of good and evil in, 169n23; passive affects, 72; politics, 42, 167; prophecy, 42, 53, 68, 165, 179–81, 183–84, 198– 99; punishment for eating the fruit in the Garden of Eden, 164n4; receptive v. mimetic functions, 168–69; scripture as

product of, 169, 180; self-providence, 177–78; Spinoza on, 48–49, 164–65, 191; transformation of politics, Mai­ monides on, 42–43 imaginative faculty (al-qu¯wa al-mutakhayyila), 42 imitatio Dei, 69 incorporeality, 7, 17, 28–29, 67, 71, 73, 86, 87, 94, 105–6, 160 individual, the: advantage of, 129; believers in revealed religion on the importance of, 117; divine omniscience, 123, 124; and the existence of evil, 43–44; Mai­ monides on, 43, 79; preservation of, 23; self-assertion of, 46–47; worldview of, 116 induction. See analytic argument ineliminable multiplicity of being, 81, 83, 84, 95, 100, 102 inertia, principle of, 71n38, 206 infinite modes (Spinoza), 46, 201–2, 207, 211 inquiry: Aristotelian modes of, 86; dialecti­ cal inquiry, 37; disorderly temperament as impediment to, 38; haste, 35–36; impeded by anger (h ·araj), 35, 37–38; natural dispositions, Maimonides on, 38–39; proper order of, 20, 28, 36, 37; the proper order of study, 20, 28, 100– 101; speculative inquiry, 168; tempera­ ment for successful, 101; universal method of Spinoza, 86–87, 95. See also form intellect, the: absence from Spinozist prophecy, 184; anthropology on man’s form as, 96; corporeal representations of God, 68; determination of good and evil, 102; divine overflow (al-fayid · ), 42, 104, 167, 169, 176–77, 184; eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, 164n4, 165, 166; form of human beings, 68, 73; the good, 102, 163–64n3, 165– 66, 175, 181; of the heavenly bodies, 154–55; imagination, 42, 63, 163– 64n3, 165, 167, 168–69, 171–72; in­ tellectual perfection, 104, 167; intui­ tion, 77–79, 90; limits of, 34; limits of knowledge, 28, 30–32, 33–35, 157– 58, 168; Maimonides on, 28–29, 95, 169–70, 176; moral habit (al-khulq) and, 43; and obedience to the law, 96;

220 / Index intellect, the (cont.) opposition between truth and false­ hood / good and evil, 163–64n3, 165– 66, 181; possible/possibility, 125, 135, 137; providence, 176, 177; shame as neglect of, 175; theoretical intellect, 29, 30, 73, 166–67, 174, 177–78, 184; training for prophecy, 176–77. See also practical intellect intellectual apprehension (al-idra¯k al-‘aqlı¯), 29, 166, 172 intellectual inquiry. See form intellectual intuition, 78 intellectuals, mediating role of, 58, 76, 109, 137, 190 intuition, 77–79, 90 irascibility. See anger Islam, 12n32, 71, 102–3, 131. See also Ash‘arism; Mu‘tazilism Jacob (biblical figure), 114 Jews and Judaism: acceptance of determin­ ist views, 111; arts of war neglected by, 112–13; Ash‘arism and, 12, 120, 121, 122; as chosen people, 155; divine law in, 103; divine punishment for idolatry, 111, 112; fatalism, 189; human desert, 123; on human desert, 123; Mu‘tazilite theology’s influence on, 122; passivity of, 112–13; views on providence alien to, 120 Jonathan ben Uziel, 160 Joseph (biblical figure), 114 Joseph ben Judah (student in Guide of the Perplexed [Maimonides]): longing for knowledge, 22, 27–28, 37; love of honor or the beautiful, 28, 40, 184; meta­ physics studied by, 28; moral formation of, 101; on the orderly study of science, 20, 27–28, 101; as prone to excessive desire, 28, 184; spiritedness of, 37, 38, 187; study of the sciences by, 27–28 Kant, Immanuel, 8, 78–79, 131, 165 Kennington, Richard: on audiences for Spinoza’s works, 202–3; Cartesian basis of Spinoza’s preference for analysis over synthesis, 202; on esotericism in the Ethics, 204; on the Physical Treatise, 82, 203–5; on Spinoza’s definitions in the Ethics, 201–2; on Spinoza’s method­

ology, 2–3, 22, 83, 84; on Strauss, 204; synthetic argument in Ethics (Spinoza), 2–3, 59, 60, 87n34, 88, 193, 194, 208; use of finite modes, 211; vision of whole without parts (Ethics part 1), 203; whole constituted of nothing but parts (Ethics part 2), 203 Klein-Braslavy, Sara, 164, 165 knowledge: affect, 134–35; authority of monotheistic scriptures, 30–31, 34; desire in acquisition of, 36, 38; evil, 134, 165; human knowledge of divine matters, 33; ignorance, 31–33, 53, 105– 6, 199n19; intuition, 77–79, 90; laws of nature, 77, 78; limits of, 28, 30–32, 33– 35, 157–58, 168; pursuit of speculative knowledge, 61n24; self-, 22, 46–47, 75– 76, 128–30, 177–78, 184, 199, 200n22; Spinoza on, 22, 50, 90, 134. See also imagination; reason Kreisel, Howard, 164 Lachterman, David R., 22, 74n45, 81, 83, 84, 93, 93n51, 95, 190, 203 Lam. 2:9, 113 Law, the, 65; Aristotle’s views on eternity, 108; as basis of moral formation of the inquirer for study of philosophic sciences, 101; dependability of, 181; free will, 122, 123; God’s ability to withhold prophecy, 114–15; idolatry in, 68–69; in Maimonidean thought, 79, 106, 107, 184; obedience to, 96; opposi­ tion to corporealism, 68; opposition to superstition, 70; on providence, 117; as revelation of one God, 67; on shame, 175; in Spinozist thought, 79, 184; will in animals, 123 Laws Concerning Character Traits (Hilkhot De’ot [Maimonides]), 101 laws of nature: Boyle’s Law, 90; deductive framework for, 80, 81; expressed through conatus, 94n57, 190; as finite modes, 125; forms, 190; immanent cause of all things, 125; intellectual intuition, 77–79, 90; knowledge of affect, 134–35; ratio of motion-and-rest in bodies, 48–49, 78, 84n28, 87n35, 91–94, 190, 205 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 20, 72n40, 78n4, 80, 84n28, 94n54, 97n62

Index / 221 Letter on Astrology (Maimonides), 112, 113 liberal democracy, Spinoza on, 56, 79 libertarianism, 107, 125 Lobel, Diana, 180n36 Locke, John, 94n57, 97n62, 109–10 longing (shawq), 20, 21n8, 22, 29, 30, 32, 34–35, 36–40, 44, 60–61, 63, 174n29, 175 love: amor Dei intellectualis, 24, 58, 131, 190; as desire, 17; as self-sacrifice, 199; teleological conception of, 23, 25 love (ero¯s), 130; anger (ghad · ab), 21, 23; an­ ger (h araj), 21, 23–25, 24, 33, 38; of the · beautiful, 28; Christian love, 75; com­ plementarity of ero¯s and thumos, 23, 25n17; conatus, 23, 24, 46–48, 131; desire toward excess, 25; as endeavor in Ethics, 23, 24; as endeavor to preserve, 23, 47–48; free man’s return of, 131; friendship, 131; of God, 24, 27, 33, 58, 190; knowledge of God follows, 27; longing (shawq), 20, 21n8, 22, 29, 30, 32, 34–35, 36–40, 44, 60–61, 63, 174n29, 175; Maimonides on, 25, 27; passionate love (ishq/h ·osheq), 21n8, 26–27; of predominance and victory, 33, 38; premodern views of, 24; reli­ gious intolerance defused by, 24; and spiritedness (thumos), 21, 23, 24, 25n17; of victory, 41. See also desire; imagination Lucretius, 25n17, 71n38 lying for the common good, 200n22 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 24n15, 26, 26n20, 43, 50, 133, 188 Maimonides, Moses: Aristotle’s influence on, 7–8, 13, 14, 43, 96–98, 102, 104, 107–8, 114, 124, 154–55; on Ash‘arism, 17, 71, 111, 117–20, 124, 127; barrier between theory and production, 79; conventionality of morals, 181–82; on creation, 11, 108, 117, 158; on desire (shahwa), 21, 25, 27, 30, 37–39, 43, 108, 132, 174n29, 175, 190; on deter­ minism, 17, 69–71, 107n1, 111–13; on divine incorporeality, 7, 16, 17, 28–29, 68; on drunkenness, 173–74, 175, 184; elitism of, 52–53, 54, 55; on evil , 43, 102, 113, 115; on the Exile, 112–13; on fatalism, 17, 189; fikr/rawiyya (thought/

perspicacity), 30, 170, 172–73, 179; on freedom, 67, 74, 79, 95, 111, 117, 137, 164, 189; on free will, 107; heavenly bodies, 154–55, 157, 158–61; Hilkhot De’ot, 65, 66; his understanding of God, 8–9, 15, 27, 70–71, 111, 112, 120, 123– 24; on imagination, 26, 29, 163–65, 167, 168–69, 178, 180–84, 182, 191; influ­ ence on Spinoza, 9–11, 15–16; on the intellect, 28–29, 95, 169–70, 176; Mishneh Torah, 21n8, 27, 66, 106, 112; on nominalism, 103–4, 105; opposition between truth and falsehood / good and evil, 163–64n, 165–66, 181; parallel of the body and the city, 175; on passivity of Jewish community, 117; on physics, 87, 100–101; on practical intellect, 164, 165, 167, 171–72, 179, 183, 184; on prophecy, 42, 113, 165, 180–81, 183– 84; on providence, 70–71, 98, 104, 114n9, 117–18, 123, 176–78; on pru­ dence, 166n14, 189; on reason, 25, 72n41, 171, 174; rejection of unifying principle by, 19–20; scriptural inter­ pretation of, 52–53, 54, 55, 76, 111; on sexual desire, 30, 36–39, 174n29, 175; shift from anti-idolatry to anticorpo­ reality, 97, 105–6, 160; Spinoza’s attack on, 53–54, 56–57; on spiritedness, 21, 23, 25, 41, 46; on the study of sciences, 13, 20, 27–28, 101, 102; teleology of, 97n60, 115–16, 153, 154–55, 156, 157, 158–61, 189; veneration of extra­ ordinary human individuals, 52–54, 64–65, 74; wisdom (h ·okhmah), 172– 73, 188–89. See also Eight Chapters (Mai­monides); Guide of the Perplexed (Maimonides) maqama, 27 married harlot (Prov. 7:6–12), 98 materialism, 47, 49, 55, 61, 63, 71, 84, 92– 93, 97, 106 mathematics, 27, 28, 32, 79, 85, 86, 88n38, 94–95n57, 100, 160 matter-form-privation formulation (Aristotle), 98–99 mean, the, 65–66, 67, 165, 166, 168 medieval philosophy, 4–7, 12, 102–3, 131, 183–84 Meditations on First Philosophy (Descartes), 57, 78n4, 194n4, 202–3, 210

222 / Index Megarian school of philosophy, 97n61, 98n62 Mendelssohn, Moses, 200 Mersenne, Marin, 57n13, 201 metaphysics, 2, 28, 34–36, 40, 87–88, 100– 101, 103, 159, 160 Metaphysics (Aristotle), 58, 73, 98–99, 134, 135n36 Meyer, Lodewijk, 15n42, 82, 201, 202, 210 mimesis, 168, 182 mind, the, 61, 62, 79, 93–94, 104 Mishneh Torah (Maimonides), 21n8, 27, 65, 66, 106, 112 monism, 125 morals, 37–38, 42–43, 101, 107, 114, 166n14, 173, 175, 181–82, 198–200 Moses (biblical figure), 21n8, 31, 32, 66, 114 motion-and-rest, 48–49, 78, 84n28, 87n35, 91–94, 190, 206 multitude, the, 113, 116, 129–30, 132, 137 Mutakallimun, 29, 118 Mu‘tazilism, 71, 117, 120–22, 123 Nadler, Steven, 81 nakedness, 173, 175 nature, 23, 75–76, 78–79, 85–88, 93n54, 124–25, 154, 203–4 necessity, 136, 158, 184 nemesis, 72 Neoplatonism, 96, 154 New Organon (Bacon), 77, 129 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 72n42, 99, 130, 166n14, 173, 177 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 19, 93n54, 190, 200n22 nominalism, 89–90, 95, 97n62, 102, 103–4, 105, 178n33 obedience, 29, 96, 166 occult essences, 77, 188, 190 Oldenburgh, Henry, 81 omnipotence, 70–71, 111, 112, 116–18, 123, 124 Onqelos the Proselyte, 160 paganism, 68, 158 pantheism, 200, 201, 203 passionate love (ishq/h ·osheq), 21n8, 26–27 passions: educative character of the Guide of the Perplexed (Maimonides), 22; of God, 21n8, 26–27, 69, 73, 132, 179; in the

Guide of the Perplexed (Maimonides), 21n8; human mastering of, 110; Mai­ monides on relation between passion and reason, 72n41; passionate love (ishq/h ·osheq) of God, 21n8, 26–27; terms for, 21n8. See also veneration; wonder Passions of the Soul (Descartes), 43, 52, 61n24, 95n57, 110 passive affect, 71–72, 133–34 passivity, 71–72, 112–13, 115, 117, 127, 129, 132, 134, 169 Pentateuch. See Bible; scripture perfection, 26, 29–30, 35, 38–42, 96, 104, 167, 177 perspicacity, 30, 170, 172–73, 179 Phaedo (Plato), 73, 74, 94n55 philosopher, the, 70, 113, 131–32, 167, 199, 200n21, 204 philosopher-king, 37, 38, 39, 69, 113 Philosophy of Spinoza (Wolfson), 3, 5 phronesis, 29–30, 146, 163–64 Physical Digression. See Physical Treatise (Spinoza) Physical Treatise (Spinoza): analytic argu­ ment, 59, 80, 82–83, 94n57, 194–95, 201n24, 202, 205; body defined in, 205; Curley on, 206–7; on the essence of things, 78, 190; extension (extensio) absent from, 205, 207; finite modes, 46; Kennington on, 82–83, 203–5; materialist tendency of human beings, 61; principle of inertia in, 206; ratio of motion-and-rest in bodies, 48–49, 78, 84n28, 87n35, 91–94, 190, 205; synthetic argument in, 206–7; unity of God, 63 physics, 2, 27, 32, 36, 80, 81, 85, 87, 88, 95, 97, 100–101 Pines, Shlomo: good/bad v. true/false, 102; on imagination, 163–64, 169n22; on intellectual apprehension, 166; Mai­ monides as break from Aristotelianism, 7–8; Maimonides as protomodern, 8, 13; Maimonides on determinism, 17, 107n1; Maimonides’s opposition be­ tween truth and falsehood / good and evil, 163–64n; Maimonides’s view on human will, 107n1; on novelty of Mai­ monides’s positions, 12, 13; practical intellect’s absorption into imagination,

Index / 223 163–64; on the rational faculty, 171; Scholastic interpretations of Aristotle, 12; on Spinoza’s distortions of Mai­ monides, 12, 14; translation of the Guide of the Perplexed (Maimonides), 166n9 Plato: Alfarabi on the philosopher-king in Plato’s Republic, 23; on eternity, 118; on freedom and incorporeality, 73; human desire’s alliance with calculative reason, 30; as idolater, 70; imitatio Dei, 69; on love (ero¯s) and spiritedness (thumos), 21, 23, 25n17; matter : female :: form : male, 98; Phaedo, 73, 74, 94n55; Republic, 30, 36, 37, 113, 187; Timaeus, 98; treatment of animals and human beings, 41 Polemarchus, 41n38 Politics (Aristotle), 30, 154–55, 189 possible/possibility, 125, 135, 137 power, 56, 87n35, 110, 125, 128, 130–33, 165, 168–70 practical intellect, 29, 30; Aristotle’s God, 178n33; choice, 124; desire, 168; fikr (thought), 172–73; the generally ac­ cepted, 174; as imagination, 163–64, 165, 167, 168–69, 172, 181; Maimoni­ des on, 164, 165, 167, 171–72, 179, 183, 184; philosophic life, 174; provi­ dence, 176–79, 178–79; Ravven on, 163–65, 168–69, 171–72; role in pro­ phetology, 167, 180; self-providence, 177–78; Spinoza’s repudiation of, 164–65 practical judgment (phronesis), 29–30 practical science, 79, 100, 101–6 predominance, 33, 38, 39, 40 preservation, 20, 23, 25, 44–47, 60–61, 93–94, 128–31, 199 Principles of Beings, The (Alfarabi), 8, 12, 13–14 prophecy: anger, 68; divine overflow in, 42, 176–77, 184; exile causing cessation of, 113, 114; imagination, 42, 53, 68, 165, 179–81, 183–84, 198–99; impedi­ ments to, 40; loss of, 114; Maimonides on, 42, 113, 165, 180–81, 183–84; as philosopher-kingship, 37, 38, 39; philo­ sophic view v. “the opinion of our Law,” 117; prophetic law as human product, 181 prophetology of Maimonides, 113, 116, 167, 179, 180

prophets: imagination, 197–98, 199; natu­ ral temperament of, 39, 114; passivity of the, 169; prophet-legislator, 38; training of, 113 Prov.: 7:6–12, 98; 16:4, 159; 21:25–26, 36 providence: Aristotle on, 104, 117, 120, 124, 176; Ash‘arism on, 117, 120; di­ vine providence, 69, 104, 117; God exercising of particular, 178; intellect, 176, 177; Maimonides on, 70–71, 98, 104, 114n9, 117–18, 123, 176–78; Muslim theological schools, 71; practi­ cal intellect, 178–79 prudence: Aristotle on the prudent man, 166n14; Aristotle’s God, 178n33; choice, 124; cleverness, 64; deformation of, 30; ethical and political rule, 171– 72; excessive desire, 30, 43; fikr (thought), 172–73; freedom, 164n5; in the human soul, 30; Maimonides on, 191; origins of, 173; phronesis (Aristotle), 29, 30, 146; possession, 99; Spinoza’s repudiation of, 164–65; veneration of extraordinary prudence, 67, 74 psychology, 94, 95n57, 134 psycho-physical parallelism, 61, 92–93 punishment, 111, 112–15, 121–23, 155, 164–65, 176 ratio (use of term), 78 rational faculty (al-qu¯wa al-na¯t·iqqa), 42, 169, 170–71, 179 ratio of motion-and-rest in bodies, 48–49, 78, 84n28, 87n35, 91–94, 190, 205 Ratner, Joseph, 6 Ravven, Heidi: congruence between Spi­ noza and Maimonides, 181–82; good of the body v. good of the soul, 175; on Harvey’s discussion of practical intellect in the Guide, 169; on imagination, 163– 64, 178, 179–82; on intellectual ap­ prehension, 166; on Maimonides’s discussion of practical intellect, 171–72; medieval cosmology, 183–84; on practi­ cal intellect, 163–65, 168–69, 171–72; on prophecy, 179–80, 183–84; three kinds of societies in the Guide, 167–68 rawiyya (perspicacity), 30, 170, 172–73, 179 Razi, Abu Bakr al-, 17, 70n36, 111, 115, 124 reason: affect, 72, 129, 132–33; biblical in­ terpretation, 53; choice, 99, 110, 132–33;

224 / Index reason (cont.) deformation of, 30, 173; desire, 110, 126, 132–33, 173; free man guided by, 129; in the human soul, 30; imagination, Spinoza on, 48; Maimonides on, 25, 72n41, 171, 174; the mind and, 61, 62, 79, 93–94, 104; passivity, 72, 112–13, 115, 117, 127, 129, 132, 134, 169; prac­ tical activity of, 171; religion as ally of, 25; virtue, 133; wisdom (h ·okhmah) as practical use of, 172–73, 188–89 reductivism, 24, 58, 84n28, 131 relativism, 37, 38 religious intolerance, 24, 126, 151 Replies to the Second Objections to the Meditations on First Philosophy (Descartes), 15n42, 82, 194n4, 201n24, 202, 210 Replies to the Third Objections to the Medi­ tations on First Philosophy (Descartes), 78n4 Republic (Plato), 30, 36, 37, 41n38, 113, 140, 167, 187, 200n22 res extensa / res cogitans, 61–62, 86n33 Rice, Lee, 90n43, 93 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 26, 188 rule/ruler, 40–41, 55–56, 64, 69, 165, 168– 70, 172, 178, 180–81 Saadya Gaon, 4, 122 Scholasticism, 7, 12, 22, 89, 189 Schwarzschild, Steven, 164n4 sciences: astronomy, 27, 28; geometry, 15, 20, 80, 82n22, 85–88, 89, 193–94, 205, 209, 211; Maimonides on the study of, 13, 20, 27–28, 101, 102; mathematics, 27, 28, 32, 79, 85, 86, 88n38, 94–95n57, 100, 160; metaphysics, 2, 28, 34–36, 40, 87–88, 100–101, 103, 159, 160; modes of inquiry, 80, 86, 208; natural dispositions for inquiry into, 39; orderly study of, 20, 37, 100–101; physics, 27, 32, 36, 80, 81, 85, 87, 88, 95, 97, 100– 101; Spinoza on, 20, 81, 86, 87, 101, 106 scripture: authority of, 30–31, 34; choice in, 108; creation account, 11, 36, 53, 70, 96, 108, 117, 118; elitism in interpre­ tation of, 52–53, 54, 55; heavenly bod­ ies, 154–55, 157, 158–61; Maimoni­ dean interpretation of, 52–53, 54, 55, 76, 111; modern science, 76; as product of imagination, 180; providence conse­

quent on, 176, 177; role of imagination in, 169, 180; Spinozist interpretation of, 52–53, 54, 55 Second Treatise of Government (Locke), 109–10 self-interest, 75–76, 129n27, 130 self-preservation, 22, 47, 128–29, 199, 200n22 self-providence, 177–78 Seth (biblical figure), 29–30, 172 sexual longing, 30, 36–39, 40, 174n29, 175 shame, 173–74, 175, 184 shawq (longing), 20, 21n8, 22, 29, 30, 32, 34–35, 36–40, 44, 60–61, 63, 174n29, 175 shepherd and flock, theme of, 41 Shirley, Samuel, 84 Shmueli, Efraim, 3n4, 83n25, 208n37 Short Treatise (Spinoza), 201 sobriety, 173–74, 175, 178, 184 Socrates, 23n13, 30, 36, 37, 41n38, 73, 128, 190 solitary, the / solitude, 40, 41, 131–32 Sorabji, Richard, 97n60, 107n1 soul, 30, 44, 61, 63–64, 66, 73, 84n28, 94, 99, 166, 175 Spinoza, Benedict: on accepting favors, 129– 30; on affect, 71–72, 74, 127, 132–34, 136; affirmation of parallelism, 61–62; amor Dei intellectualis, 24, 58, 131, 190; amor fati, 74n45, 135; Aristotle’s in­ fluence on, 5, 11, 128; attack on Mai­ monides, 53–54, 56–57; behavior emphasized by, 198–99; biblical inter­ pretation of, 10, 12–15, 53–54, 56–57, 76; on choice, 106, 132–33, 164–65n5; on contemplation, 24, 86, 130; cor­ puscularianism, 60; critique of forms, 17, 61n24, 87n35; definitions used by, 201–2, 205, 208–9; Descartes’s “Prin­ ciples of Philosophy,” 22, 82, 200, 201n24, 202, 209–10; determinism of, 17, 72, 82n22, 83–84, 93, 95, 100, 108–10, 126, 136–37, 191; divine corporeality, 17, 54–55, 62–63, 95, 132; egali­ tarianism of, 52–53, 54, 55; epiphe­ nomenalism, 62; esotericism of, 57–58, 193, 195; essence, 17, 60, 77, 78, 91, 188, 190; excessive desire, 25–26, 28, 30, 42–43, 44, 45, 48, 184; on exten­ sion as divine attribute, 8, 9, 11, 15–16,

Index / 225 54, 63, 73, 85; on freedom, 17, 58, 108–9, 110, 126, 129, 132, 164–65n5, 184; on the free man, 74, 75, 126–27, 128; on God’s attributes, 8–12, 15, 17, 46–47, 49–50, 57, 62–63, 73–74, 127– 28, 135, 190, 203; the great-souled man, 128–30, 131, 200n21; hiero­glyphic elements in writings of, 197, 200–201; his method of inquiry, 20–21, 59–60, 80–83, 84–87, 88, 203, 205; on human nature, 21, 190; on imagina­tion, 25, 63, 181–82, 191; infinite modes, 46, 201–2, 207, 211; on intel­lect, 78, 184; on knowledge, 22, 50, 90, 134; on liberal democracy, 56, 79, 190, 191; on love, 20, 23, 24, 47, 75, 130n29, 131, 199; Maimonides’s influences on, 3, 4, 6, 9–10, 15–16, 181–82; material­ism, 47, 61, 84, 106; mediating intel­lectuals, 58, 76, 109, 137, 190; on nature, 75, 80, 81, 190; potency/act distinction repudiated by, 97–98, 125; on prophecy, 181, 183– 84; on psychology, 94, 95n57, 128n26; rejection of formal causality, 87, 89–90; religious tolerance of Chris­tianity, 188; rhetoric of consistency of, 10, 15; on science, 20, 81, 86, 87, 101, 106; selfinterest, 75–76, 129n27; on spiritedness (thumos), 21, 23, 24; on Stoicism, 126, 127, 184; subjectivism of, 23n13, 140; teleology rejected by, 18, 23n14, 55, 131; universal method of, 86–87, 95; use of Euclidean synthesis, 209; utility, 75, 76; on veneration, 18, 52, 58, 62– 63, 67, 74, 75, 190–91; on virtue, 133, 183; volition, 128n26; on wonder, 52, 58, 190. See also conatus; deductive ar­ gument; Ethics (Spinoza); Kennington, Richard; Physical Treatise (Spinoza); Theologico-Political Treatise (Spinoza) Spinoza, lecteur de Maïmonide: La question théologico-politique (Chalier), 3 spiritedness (thumos), 21–25, 38–39, 187– 88. See also anger Stoicism, 74, 110, 126, 127, 128, 184 Strauss, Leo: on esotericism of Maimonides and Spinoza, 3; Kennington on, 204; on lack of unity in Hobbes, 81; on Machia­ velli’s view of human nature, 26n20; on Maimonides as premodern, 1–2; on medieval philosophy, 7, 12; on

Neoplatonism, 154n41; on the proper order of inquiry in the Guide, 27–28; on Theologico-Political Treatise (Spinoza), 195–97, 198, 200n22; Wolfson compared with, 12n32, 13n36 stupidity, 35–36, 38 suffering, 43, 44, 71, 116–17, 122, 123 “swerve, the” doctrine (Lucretius), 71n38 synthetic argument: Cartesian basis of Spinoza’s preference for analysis over synthesis, 202–3; Elements (Euclid), 194, 208, 209; in Ethics (Spinoza), 2, 59, 60, 87n34, 88–89, 193, 194, 196, 208, 210; geometry, 15, 20, 80, 82n22, 85–88, 89, 193–94, 205, 209, 211; laws of nature, 80–81; modern science and, 208; in Physical Treatise (Spinoza), 206–7; purpose of, 22; relation between analy­ sis and synthesis, 75, 76, 82, 131, 194– 95, 201n24, 202; starting point as cru­ cial, 88–89 teleology: Aristotle on, 81, 97, 107, 135n36, 154, 156, 189; determinism, 97n60; elitism in, 190; first finality, 154, 156, 157; free will, 43–44, 100, 107, 132–33, 191; heavenly bodies, 154–55, 157, 158–61; of Maimonides, 97n60, 115– 16, 153, 154–55, 156, 157, 158–61, 189; as projected on nature, 23; Spi­ noza’s rejection of, 18, 23n14, 55; ulti­ mate finality, 13, 14n39, 35, 154–55; wisdom and the ability to rule, 55. See also determinism; freedom; love (ero¯s) temperament, 38, 39, 44, 101 Thales, 58 theocracy, 56, 190, 191 Theologico-Political Treatise (Spinoza): on biblical interpretation, 53, 75; Christian love in, 75; cryptic writing style in, 197; democracy v. theocracy in, 56; equiva­ lence between freedom and necessity in God, 73–74; esotericism in, 195–200, 204; Ethics compared with, 126; freedom discussed in, 17, 58, 109, 126, 129, 132; on revealed Law, 181; rhetoric of con­ sistency in, 10, 15; Spinoza’s attack on Maimonides in, 53–54, 56–57; on ven­ eration, 190–91 theoretical intellect, 29, 30, 73, 166–67, 174, 177–78, 184

226 / Index Thomas Aquinas, 31, 89 Timaeus (Plato), 98 Treatise on the Art of Logic (Maimonides), 101 two orders, the, 85–89 ultimate finality, 13, 14n39, 35, 154–55 Unmoved Mover (Aristotle), 50, 63, 73 utility (Spinoza), 75, 76, 131 van der Burg, Floris, 4–5 veneration: divine incorporeality, 7, 17, 28–29, 67, 71, 73, 86, 87, 94, 105; of extraordinary human beings, 52–54, 62–65, 74; of extraordinary prudence, 67, 74; freedom, 67; of the free man, 74, 75, 126–27, 128; honor, 28, 40–41, 42, 64, 65, 66, 184; humility, 52, 66–67; materialism, 47, 49, 55, 61, 63, 71, 84, 92–93, 97, 106; occult essences, 77, 188, 190; Spinoza on, 18, 52, 58, 62–63, 67, 74, 75, 190–91 victory, desire for, 33, 38, 39, 40 virtue, 37–38, 128, 130–31, 133, 173, 183 volition, 128n26 voluntary (ekousia), the, 71, 99, 109, 110, 122, 123n21 vulgar, the, 56, 76, 106, 180, 202

wholes, 49, 59, 60–61, 73, 190, 203 wisdom (h ·okhmah), 55–56, 64–66, 69, 172–73, 188–89 Wolfson, Harry A.: on Descartes, 6, 57n13; distinction between premodern and modern views of God, 11–13; on the limits of knowledge, 157; logical consistency as modern, 6; Maimonidean influence on Spinoza, 9–10, 140–41; Maimonides on the worship of God, 153; on Maimonides’s teleology, 153, 156, 161; on medieval philosophy, 4–7, 12n32; periodization of Spinoza, 4–7; on premodern views of God, 11–13; on Spinoza’s logical consistency, 10, 15; Strauss compared with, 12n32 wonder: anticipation of nature (Bacon), 59; Aristotle on, 58, 59; as contemplation, 52; demise of, 61; Descartes on, 52, 60, 61n24; elevation of God, 63; elicited from bodies, 62; eros, 60; and knowledge, 51; materialism, 47, 49, 55, 61, 63, 71, 84, 92–93, 97, 106; natural phenomena, 58–59; occult essences, 77, 188, 190; Spinoza on, 52, 58, 190 Yaffe, Martin, 10n27, 15 YHVH, 27, 31, 33, 178