Religion and Power in Spinoza [New ed.] 3034338074, 9783034338073

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Religion and Power in Spinoza

Josep Olesti / Jörg Zimmer (eds.)

Religion and Power in Spinoza Essays on the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus

Bern · Berlin · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available online at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-3-0343-3807-3 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-0343-3808-0 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-0343-4030-4 (EPUB) E-ISBN 978-3-0343-4031-1 (MOBI) DOI 10.3726/b16778

© Peter Lang AG International Academic Publishers Bern 2020 All rights reserved. Peter Lang – Bern ∙ Berlin ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙ Oxford Printed in Germany All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com

Preface Translated and edited by Cadenza Academic Translations The book that you have in your hands is a collection of essays on Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TPP). Although fated to enter posterity, the term ‘theological–political’ is not explicitly defined in Spinoza’s work. Nonetheless, its meaning seems clear, referring to the bearing of religious ideas and practices on the political sphere. Contrary to what one might assume, religion is more than a soteriological discourse linked to belief in some form of entity beyond our immanent reality. Even when we speak of religious beliefs that affirm the distance of our world from a transcendent divinity, the implications of these beliefs on the here and now are inescapable. A religion is also (or is primarily) a system for coordinating intersubjective relationships and for deciding how social practices should be organized, and as such it will clearly elicit a certain sociopolitical response. The political consequences of religious discourse, and the real set of problems that these bring about, are precisely what is meant by the term ‘theological–political’. In the case of the Christian West, the root of the theological–political problem may have appeared asymmetrical, more political than religious, due to the conditions under which Christianity split off from the Judaic tradition to develop as a distinct faith. Indeed, there can be no doubt that the Ancient Judaism that predated the Roman conquest shaped the civic lives of Jewish people from cradle to grave. Religion was at once an individual belief system, a pattern of collective behaviour and the bedrock on which the architecture of the state was founded. The Roman religion was broadly similar in this regard. On the other hand, certain Gospel passages might be enlisted to support the view that Christianity is a purely dogmatic religion, with no political implications. Yet, we cannot ignore other passages that can be invoked with equal validity, and which are difficult to reconcile with this interpretation. These passages suggest that, from its very inception, Christianity had a practical and collective dimension that inevitably came into conflict with the principles on which the society in which this new religion emerged was organized. Nor can we ignore the fact that, given the delicate sociohistorical conditions in which Christianity first took form, it would have been suicidal to openly challenge the established theological–political doctrine that surrounded it and to which it claimed to offer an alternative (incidentally, it is on this basis that Pierre Bayle suggests an overarching interpretation of Christianity in Commentaire philosophique sur ces paroles de Jésus-Christ, contrain-les d’entrer). In any event, the fact

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is that Christianity at that time did not avoid staying out of the political life of the Roman Empire. Moreover, it was Christianity that lay at the crux of a momentous conflict with the political authorities that played out in the political life of the West, traceable at least to the Edict of Milan. Particularly from the time of Gregory the Great, popes and emperors were in perpetual disharmony, and Christianity’s theological–political nature became plainly apparent. In the seventeenth century, the flame that this conflict ignited was far from dying out. On the contrary, the schism between Christians wrought by the Reformation had added a new source of fuel. Powerful voices within the church, confident of their spiritual mandate, continued to aspire to a parallel dominion in the temporal order, challenging the prerogatives of the political authorities. Despite their many differences, the Catholicism of Rome, the Calvinism of Geneva, the Lutheranism of the Schmalkaldic League and the Puritanism of England had one thing in common: a deep engagement with the political life of the age. Not without design does Hobbes spend half of the Leviathan grappling with this issue; his aim is to quash these ambitions for good. A Hobbesian reading of the Bible is directed towards justifying the subordination of religious authorities to political power and questioning the traditional arguments put forward to contest it. Nor is it insignificant that the longest chapter of the Leviathan (­chapter 42: ‘Of Power Ecclesiasticall’) contains an overt and systematic refutation of the book De summo pontifice, written by Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino, a champion of the Catholic faith. This long tradition of discord is woven into the Tractatus TheologicoPoliticus. Spinoza was well versed in it, and sets out his own position through the text. Even if we acknowledge that, at least as far as grand metaphysical arguments are concerned, the book betrays a certain effort to smooth over those aspects that might chafe readers well-disposed to its theological–political thesis – an (understandable) illustration of what Leo Strauss refers to as the ‘art of writing’– we must recognize that this thesis remains clearly expressed and Spinoza’s position unequivocal. Yet, there are certain points that are not so clear-cut: the finer details of his arguments, the true identities of the allies and adversaries that people the book and the more-or-less veiled connection between the line of reasoning that emerges in this work and that of the Ethica. It is these different aspects that we will explore in the essays that make up this volume. Miquel Beltrán opens the discussion with his chapter on the status of divine decrees. God’s eternal decrees, which, understood literally, could be interpreted as decisions emanating from an inscrutable mind (if we hold that God’s intellect is of a completely different nature to the human intellect, as argued in proposition 17 of part II of the Ethica), are identified as the same universal laws that govern nature, both in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus

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and the Ethica. Consequently, although the Ethica regards prophecy as a form of knowledge that is not accessible to just anyone, as it is not common to all of humanity and revelation is powered by faith, these decrees are discharged through the unfolding of the natural world itself. This is possible because the source of both kinds of knowledge, prophecy and natural law, is God. If eternal decrees are none other than the laws of nature, they become a kind of general providence, which raises the question of what distinguishes God’s providence towards particular individuals. We can consider this providence equivalent to what Spinoza calls God’s guidance, described in chapter III of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus as the fixed, immutable order or chain of natural phenomena, including human action. Francisco David Corrales sets his enquiry in the context of recent studies that situate Spinoza’s conception of prophecy within the Arabic and Medieval philosophical tradition, particularly the school of thought known as Jewish Averroism. However, rather than concurring with Giovanni Licata, who finds textual parallels between the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and Elia Del Medigo’s Examination of Religion (Beḥinat ha-Dat), Corrales complements Licata’s work by showing that there are certain features of the Spinozian approach to prophecy that seem under-explained in Beḥinat ha-Dat, although they can be traced back to the same tradition of Jewish Averroism. Beḥinat ha-Dat, incidentally, was clearly inspired by Averroes’ Decisive Treatise, a link that draws our attention to the importance that Spinoza placed on certain concepts from classical rhetoric in his engagement with political philosophy. Corrales accounts for these features by pointing to a different text, Averroes’ Epitome of the Parva Naturalia. He suggests that this widely read collection of treatises, which offers a theory of prophecy compatible with Spinoza’s own, was probably adopted by Spinoza as a writing guide or source of theoretical inspiration. Josep Olesti analyses the different uses of the phrase ‘imperium in imperio’ in the Spinozian corpus. This phrase crops up relatively frequently in seventeenth-century theological–political literature, used to describe the situation where a church avows itself to be beyond the reach of legal provisions laid down by the state. This is the meaning that Spinoza gives ‘imperium in imperio’ in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, whereas in the Ethica (and in the Tractatus Politicus) it denotes the exceptionalist belief that mankind is apart from nature, a belief he describes as an illusion. Olesti argues that the key to understanding both usages, and the relationship between them, is the concept of power as construed in the Ethica. It is this concept that allows us to simultaneously expose the illusory nature of free will and justify the civil sovereign’s plenitudo potestatis over the state. The conflict between civil and ecclesiastical authorities is also the topic chosen by Josep María Ruiz Simón, whose chapter reveals the tacit presence

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in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus of post-Machiavellian literature on reason of state, particularly Clapmar’s De Arcanis rerum publicarum. These works, he argues, formed the backdrop against which Spinoza and his readers viewed the question of sedition. He reads the TTP as a work aimed at protecting a republic that, in Spinoza’s view, was at risk from the ‘seditious opinion’ of the clergy, intent on usurping part of the supreme civil authorities’ rightful sovereignty. Ruiz Simón suggests that we approach the TTP from the perspective opened up by the discourse surrounding reasons of state and the secrets of power, with particular emphasis on the Machiavellian matrix on which Spinoza bases his arguments. The TTP had a pronounced impact on all of Spinoza’s contemporaries, but its influence on the Jewish community deserves special attention. Moshe Shner’s chapter explores just this. Shner points out the incongruity of the TTP’s main theses (in essence, support for the historicity of scripture and the notion of religious tolerance) in their historical context, in terms of both the preceding tradition, represented by Judah Halevi, and the ones that followed, especially that associated with Moses Mendelssohn and Salomon Maimon. As a direct result of Spinoza’s work in the TTP, both Mendelssohn and Maimon abandoned the ahistorical interpretation of Judaism to which Halevi ascribed in favour of the Spinozian position that scripture is rooted in historical fact. Recognizing this historicity is the necessary first step towards acceptance of different religious traditions. The concept of religious tolerance was introduced by Mendelssohn, who, for the first time in the history of Jewish philosophical enquiry, declared that Judaism was not the only path to salvation. The divine and immutable nature of Mosaic law, on the other hand, was not in question. Maimon went one step further, suggesting, in the wake of the TTP, that Mosaic law was a mere human construction. The logical outcome of such reasoning is obviously tolerance. Even today, this is still a controversial position among Jewish thinkers. Jörg Zimmer explores the influence of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus in the context of the Vormärz, the period leading up to the German Democratic Revolution of 1848, which is essentially tantamount to its influence on Feuerbach and Marx. Breaking away from classical German philosophy (encompassing the period between Jacobi and the Pantheism controversy and Hegel, say), which proposed a theological and metaphysical reading of Spinoza’s work, focused primarily on the Ethica, Feuerbach and Marx developed an interpretation that accentuated Spinoza’s politics and religious criticism. They supported this reading by pointing to the strands of biblical criticism (Bibelkritik) and liberalism running through the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. It is especially surprising to learn how Marx picked out certain passages of Spinoza’s work to argue for a conspicuously liberal

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view of press freedom. This was around 1842–1843, before Marx became politically radicalized. All references to Spinoza’s work are taken from the classic Carl Gebhardt edition (indicated by the letter G, followed by the volume number in Roman numerals and the page number in Arabic numerals):  Spinoza, Benedictus de/Gebhardt, Carl (ed.):  Spinoza. Opera, im Auftrag der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, 5  vols. Carl Winter Universitätsbuchhandlung:  Heidelberg 1972–1987 (1925). The English translation cited is by Edwin Curley:  Spinoza, Benedictus de/Curley, Edwin (trans. & ed.):  The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2  vols. Princeton University Press:  Princeton NJ 1985–2016. Josep Olesti Jörg Zimmer

Table of Contents Miquel Beltrán Divine decrees as eternal truths in the Tractatus TheologicoPoliticus ............................................................................................

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Francisco David Corrales Cordón Prophecy in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus in light of Averroes’ Epitome of the Parva Naturalia ....................................  29 Josep Olesti Imperium in imperio: Theme and Variations ..............................  57 Josep Maria Ruiz Simon The palace and the ramparts: Spinoza’s stratagems to defend sovereignty from the seditious opinion of the clergy ..................  81 Moshe Shner A virtual dialogue between Baruch Spinoza, Yehuda (Yehuda) Halevi, Moses Mendelssohn and Shlomo Mimon on the ideas of History and Tolerance ..........................................  113 Jörg Zimmer Spinoza in the ‘Vormärz’ Period .....................................................  131

Miquel Beltrán Divine decrees as eternal truths in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Translated and edited by Cadenza Academic Translations

1. The dog that is a heavenly constellation and the dog that is a barking animal In 2014, a young Spinoza scholar named Oberto Marrama published a piece in The Leibniz Review under the title ‘Alexandre Koyré: The dog that is a heavenly constellation and the dog that is a barking animal (1950): Introduction and Translation’.1 The piece was a translation of the famous paper by the Russian philosopher Alexandre Koyré, which first appeared in French in Revue de métaphysique et de morale in 1950 and that examines the scholium to proposition 17 in part I of the Ethica. Here, Spinoza reiterates his argument that, should God possess will and intellect, these qualities must be in Him of a completely different nature to those possessed by mankind. In his brief introduction to the English translation of Koyré’s text, Marrama states that this new translation is necessary as scholars have been unable to reach agreement over Koyré’s interpretation of the scholium and, by extension, have failed to bring clarity to the question of Spinoza’s conception of divine will and intellect. Nonetheless, Marrama manages to succinctly set out the paradoxical conclusion to which a literal reading of the scholium appears to lead, given that in book II of the Ethica we are told that: the human Mind is a part of the infinite intellect of God. Therefore, when we say that the human Mind perceives this or that, we are saying nothing but that God, not insofar as he is infinite, but insofar as he is explained through the nature of the human Mind, or insofar as he constitutes the essence of the human Mind, has this or that idea.2

Marrama also reminds us that in the final part of the Ethica, this argument leads us to the crucial question of human salvation. He writes: Since the human intellect is part of the divine intellect, when we truly know God and we are therefore affected by love towards God, then that knowledge can be correctly regarded as a finite part of God’s infinite self-knowledge by which God

1 Marrama, Oberto: ‘Alexandre Koyré: The dog that is a heavenly constellation and the dog that is a barking animal (1950): Introduction and Translation’. The Leibniz Review 24, 2014, pp. 95–108. 2 E, II, 11 cor.; G, II, 94.

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Miquel Beltrán ‘contemplates itself, with the accompanying idea of himself,’3 and our love towards God is understood as ‘part of the infinite love by which God loves himself’.4

So, these passages, together with another from Spinoza’s masterpiece, more crucial still, apprehend God’s infinite mode of thought as a whole of which our human intellects form part. The scholium in question is attached to proposition 40 in part V of the Ethica. Having demonstrated his proposition on the soul and its relation to the essence of the body (with one part enduring, more perfect than the rest because the soul’s eternal dimension is the intellect, the only impetus for human action), Spinoza writes: These are the things I have decided to show concerning the Mind, insofar as it is considered without relation to the Body’s existence. From them – and at the same time from IP21 and other things  – it is clear that our Mind, insofar as it understands, is an eternal mode of thinking, which is determined by another eternal mode of thinking, and this again by another, and so on, to infinity; so that together, they all constitute God’s eternal and infinite intellect.5

As Marrama astutely observes, on the question of divine decrees as conceived in the TTP, ‘the same identification of the human mind with a part of the divine intellect is seriously challenged by a long and complicated scholium in the first part of the Ethics’.6 This point has great relevance to the subject we will shortly be discussing. The scholium in question is the same one examined by Koyré (E, I, 17 sc.), and Marrama quotes it as follows: God’s intellect, insofar as it is conceived to constitute God’s essence, is really the cause both of the essence and of the existence of things [...]. Therefore it must necessarily differ from them both as to its essence and as to its existence [...]. But God’s intellect is the cause both of the essence and of the existence of our intellect. Therefore, God’s intellect, insofar as it is conceived to constitute the divine essence, differs from our intellect both as to its essence and as to its existence, and cannot agree with it in anything except in name’ – as in fact do the dog that is a heavenly constellation and the dog that is a barking animal.7

As these two conceptions of God’s intellect are antithetical, the main purpose of Koyré’s paper is to argue that this scholium should be understood in such a way as to render it compatible with the idea that the human intellect is a part of God’s infinite intellect. This infinite intellect corresponds to the natura naturata, which must be (as Spinoza does not shrink from pointing out, for example in letter 64 to Schuller) an infinite mode of thought.

3 4 5 6 7

Marrama, 2014, p. 95. Marrama, p. 95. G, II, 306. Marrama, pp. 95–96. G, II, 62–63. Marrama, p. 96.

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However, an intellect like the one described in the scholium to proposition 17, said to constitute the very essence of God, cannot be natura naturata, unless we hold that God’s essence is created (natura naturata) by God in himself – a possibility that, ultimately, should not be dismissed out of hand.8 Introducing his own English translation of Koyré’s paper, Marrama goes on to summarize the interpretation on which it is based. Given that God causes, and so precedes, all things, if intellect were part of God’s essence it would have to be, Marrama suggests, a creative intellect that conceived of these things independently of and prior to their creation. Such an intellect, he argues, would have nothing in common with human intellect except its name, because human intellect clearly succeeds the things it understands, or is at the very least synchronous with those things. In other words, Marrama continues: we understand the nature of our own intellect as inherently intentional, that is, as being always and necessarily intellection of something given. Hence, our intellect must be completely different from an intellect which exists before its objects in such a way that it can create them at will (Maramma, 2014, p. 96).

I would agree with this last observation, and I  believe that it is possible to demonstrate that God’s intellect, which corresponds with his essence, is clearly non-intentional, as I  will do shortly. Among other reasons, this is because God’s will cannot be conceived as operating in the same way as human will (since God cannot understand, nor love, anything in such a way that subordinates him to the object of his understanding or love). However, I would argue that Marrama, like Koyré before him, is mistaken in attributing a creative quality to God’s unique intellect, in the sense that Spinoza’s God would have had knowledge of the things he created before or independently of their creation. There is a crucial passage in the TTP which, as well as allowing us to resolve the apparent incongruity between the scholium to proposition 17 in Part I of the Ethica and the assertion that God’s intellect is an amalgam of each of our human intellects (as stated in the scholium to proposition 40 in Part V, discussed above), will also demonstrate that God’s intellect does not create things that he understands as intelligible, but rather, as long as God is the source of all things, we must conclude that his understanding and creation are simultaneous. God does not form the ideas of the things he creates before he creates them; this would subordinate God’s perfection to the ideas of which he conceives (contradicting his

8 See, for example, Martin, Christopher P.: ‘The Framework of Essences in Spinoza’s Ethics’. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 16, 2008, pp. 489–509. See also id.: ‘Spinoza’s Formal Mechanism’. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99, 2017, pp. 151–181.

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primary causality). The idea that God could create things that he did not understand is simply inconcevaible, and so the only possibility is that God’s understanding and his creation are one and the same. In any event, Marrama seems to be correct in his view that an English translation of Koyré’s text would be helpful, given that the literature that grew up around this problematic scholium has not succeeded in shedding light on this crucial passage, which Koyré himself regards as essentially rhetorical, with little to contribute to our grasp of Spinoza’s ontology. This chapter aims to demonstrate how far Koyré is mistaken in that seminal paper. It does so by examining the vital notions of eternal truths and divine decrees we eventually arrive at if we take seriously the idea that God’s intellect and will are not faculties that he possesses, but instead expressions of the divine essence itself. In Marrama’s words, the general conclusion Koyré draws is that: ‘Spinoza’s text is not affirmative, but polemical. It is not an exposition of Spinoza’s own theory, but a reductio ad absurdum of the theologians’ traditional theories.’9 Koyré believes that this is something that has escaped historians up until this point, leading them to approach the text, erroneously, as something fundamentally different to what it really is. He also ascribes a tacit conditionality to the scholium, which Spinoza wrote in the present tense. Through this reductio ad absurdum, he maintains, what Spinoza actually achieves is a demonstration that there is no such thing as a divine intellect that is one and the same as God’s essence, nor can the divine will be understood in this way. He quotes Spinoza once again: if intellect pertains [pertained] to the divine nature, it will [would] not be able to be (like our intellect) by nature either posterior to (as most would have it), or else simultaneous with, the things understood, since God is prior in causality to all the things [...]. On the contrary, the truth and formal essence of things is [would be] what it is because it exists [would exist] objectively in that way in God’s intellect. So God’s intellect, insofar as it is conceived to constitute God’s essence, is [would be] really the cause both of the essence and of the existence of things. This seems also to have been noticed by those who asserted that God’s intellect, will and power are one and the same.10

The conditional tense contained in square brackets is Koyré’s way of transposing and converting Spinoza’s scholium into a hypothetical argument, thus undermining its assertive force. More important, however, is the fact that elsewhere when Spinoza states that the essence, the intellect and the will

Marrama, p. 101. The page numbers relate to Marrama’s English translation. 9 10 Marrama, pp. 104–105. Emphases original.

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are one and the same, he expresses a clear admiration for those among his predecessors who anticipated his argument that: a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways. Some of the Hebrews seem to have seen this, as if through a cloud, when they maintained that God, God’s intellect, and the things understood by him are one and the same.11

The statement that God and his intellect are one and the same does not appear to be a mere rhetorical device in the Ethica, and the same can be said of God’s will. We will be able to demonstrate this by examining a key passage of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.

2. The intellect and the will, both human and divine We now come to the crucial passage of chapter IV of the TTP, where, in proposing to examine the nature of divine law, Spinoza conceives it as universal or common to all of mankind, since it is derived from our general nature as human beings. However, there are grounds to question whether the natural light of reason really leads us to regard God as a legislator or monarch who dictates laws and judges us accordingly, as he is commonly understood. The answer to this question can be readily deduced from the nature of God’s will, which cannot be distinguished from his intellect except in our own reasoning. In other words, God’s will and intellect are in fact, in themselves, one and the same. They cannot be separated except through the ideas that we have of them, despite the fact that they are clearly very different from our own. For example, when we say that the nature of a triangle, as an eternal truth, is part of the divine nature that has existed for eternity, we are saying that God conceives of the idea of the triangle or that he comprehends its triangular nature. However, this is not because this idea has some independent existence that precedes God, but because in creating the triangle God also creates the idea of the triangle. Likewise, when we say that the nature of a triangle is part of divine nature, this is not because the essence and nature of the triangle are somehow necessary; it is simply by virtue of God’s nature. Moreover, the nature of the triangle’s essence and properties, even when conceived as eternal truths, depends solely on God’s intellect and not on the nature of the triangle itself. What we previously called God’s intellect we might now call God’s will or decree (given that God’s intellect need not be subordinate to the nature of the triangle in order to conceive of it, depending, we might argue, on his will). Thus, Spinoza writes of:

11 E, II, 7 (G, II, 90).

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Miquel Beltrán the nature of God’s will, which is distinguished from his intellect in relation to our reason. That is, in themselves God’s will and God’s intellect are really one and the same; they are distinguished only in relation to the thought we form about God’s intellect.12

He demonstrates this with an example: For example, when we attend only to the fact that the nature of a triangle is contained in the divine nature from eternity, as an eternal truth, then we say that God has the idea of the triangle, or understands the nature of the triangle. But afterward we may attend to the fact that the nature of the triangle is contained in the divine nature solely from the necessity of the divine nature, and not from the necessity of the essence and nature of the triangle – indeed, that the necessity of the essence and properties of the triangle, insofar as they too are conceived as eternal truths, depends only on the necessity of divine nature and intellect, and not on the nature of the triangle. When we do that, then the same thing we called God’s intellect we call God’s will or decree.13

Spinoza continues: So in relation to God we affirm one and the same thing when we say that from eternity God decreed and willed that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, or (when we say) that God understood this. From this it follows that God’s affirmations and denials always involve eternal necessity or truth.14

It is significant that Curley, in the note that accompanies his translation of this passage, is clearly unaware that this definition of the divine will coheres with that discussed in a presumably metaphorical sense in the Ethica, which tells us that God possesses neither intellect nor will and that, if he did, they would be of a completely different order to these faculties as found in mankind. The note reads: This is a common medieval doctrine [...] also advocated by Descartes. See his letter to Mersenne, 6 May 1630 (where the formulation nevertheless seems to give a certain priority to God’s will). But since Spinoza’s Ethics denies both will and intellect in God (E 1 P31), his argument here may be ad hominem.15

2 G, III, 62–63. 1 13 G, III, 63. Emphases original. 14 G, III. 63. 15 Spinoza, Benedictus de/Curley, Edwin (trans. & ed.). The Collected Works of Spinoza, II. Princeton University Press: Princeton NJ 1985, p. 131. Before embarking on an analysis of the concept of divine intellect in the TTP, it is worth bearing in mind that in an impressive study, Yitzhak Melamed (‘The Metaphysics of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus’. In: Melamed, Yitzhak Y./Rosenthal, Michael A. (eds.): Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise. Oxford University Press: Oxford 2010, pp. 128–142) found that ‘with a few exceptions, the existing literature on the TTP pays little attention to the metaphysical doctrines of the book’ (p. 128),

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Further on, in chapter V of the TTP, which seeks to demonstrate that nature is governed by a fixed and immutable order, it is readily apparent: that whatever God wills or determines involves eternal necessity and truth; for we have shown, from the fact that God’s intellect is not distinguished from his will, that we affirm the same thing when we say that God wills something as when we say that he understands it. So by the same necessity with which it follows from the divine nature and perfection that God understands a thing as it is, it follows also that God wills the same thing as it is. But since nothing is necessarily true except by the divine decree alone, it follows quite clearly from this that the universal laws of nature are nothing but decrees of God, which follow from the necessity and perfection of the divine nature.16

Here, as in the Ethica, Spinoza maintains that our conclusion should be that God creates everything that is in his infinite power to create. It follows that everything of which an infinite intellect can conceive will be created, which is the same as saying that it is God’s will to create those things (as it follows from his power, or rather it is his power, that this should be so). More importantly, however, understanding God’s infinite creation in this way, as commensurate with divine decrees, gives rise to ethical consequences that deter us from embracing a mere rhetorical solution, as Koyré would wish. The notion that God’s creative essence is perfectly heterogeneous to our human creativity, as it wills and creates the same thing simultaneously, or wills that thing because it creates it, is key to understanding Spinoza’s complex ontology and how it leads us into the realm of ethics. According to Spinoza, God conceives of and wills something at the same time as he creates it; he does not create that thing because he understands it or because he wants to create it. The moral inferences that stem from this are crucial to chapter V, and Spinoza illustrates them by describing the consequences of Adam’s unwillingness to recognize God’s creation as both a truth and a decree at once. He had previously ventured a similar argument in his letters to van Blijenbergh.17 It goes beyond mere rhetoric to maintain that, for God, it is the same to say that from eternity he decreed or willed that the sum of the three angles of a triangle should be equal to two right angles, or that he understood this to be true. The conclusion that we reach is that God’s affirmations and negations always involve an eternal necessity and an eternal truth. Spinoza devotes some time to the story of Adam and his supposed disobedience to referring precisely to Curley and to the present author: Beltrán, Miquel: ‘The God of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus’. NASS Monographs 3, 1995 pp. 23–33. 16 G, III, 82–83. Emphases original. 17 Beltrán, Miquel: ‘Spinoza y el árbol de la ciencia del bien y del mal’. Revista filosófica de Coimbra 19, 2009, pp. 297–313.

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what is presumed to have been a divine command, but he subverts its traditional interpretation. If we understand God’s will and intellect in the way that Spinoza sets out in chapter IV of the TTP, then it would be impossible for God to tell Adam that he did not want him to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and for Adam to then eat from it regardless. Rather, God’s words were pedagogical. Indeed, Medieval Jewish scholars such as Abraham Bar Hiyya read them in this way:  as a mere warning to Adam that the fruit of this tree was morally toxic. God was informing Adam that eating from that tree would have fatal consequences for his and Eve’s understanding. What was happening here was a revelation of an eternal truth (eating the fruit would be equivalent to death). However, the first man was not able or willing to interpret God’s words as the teaching of a truth; instead, he took them as a rule that he could choose to obey or not. God had done no more than to reveal to his creation the evil that would befall him if he ate from the tree. Adam, hampered by his intellectual imperfection, mistook an eternal truth for a command. There was an inherent necessity in the very nature of that act; it was not a law imposed at the whim of someone who wished to make such a law. Adam’s imperfect intellect led him to interpret God’s words as an order, and not as the revelation of an eternal truth – just like, for example, the truth that a poison is deadly for anyone who swallows it.

3. The infinite intellect: Natura Naturans or Natura Naturata? At this point, we should give our attention to something that, as far as I know, has gone unnoticed by Spinoza scholars in recent centuries. As letter 64 explains, the absolute and infinite intellect is an example, ‘in Thought’, of something produced immediately by God. Therefore, this intellect forms part of the Natura Naturata; it is produced by God, and is not an expression of his essence. The intellect described in chapter IV of the TTP, however, is equivalent to God’s will and the same as his power/essence. It can therefore be identified as Natura Naturans. This distinction between an internal and external divine intellect is presaged in the Kabbalah, and it is only with respect to the internal intellect, described in chapter IV of the TTP, that we should understand the claims in the scholium to proposition 17 of Part I of the Ethica, so heavily debated by scholars. The scholium is saying that if God had an intellect, it would be completely different to anything else in the world. Most importantly, it would be completely different to any possible description of the human intellect (the other intellect, the infinite mode, comprising all of the eternal modes of thought of which souls are made, is clearly of the same nature as the human intellect).

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Wachter18 argues that when Spinoza refers to God’s intellect, his philosophy takes an appreciable slant towards Kabbalah. This school of thought holds that there are two Logoi in God: one internal to him insofar as it is part of his own essence, the other external. Wachter traces this idea back to Tatian, suggesting that belief in the duality of God’s intellect was widespread among the ancient Hebrews. Quoting from Tatian, whom he presents as a proselyte of Jewish philosophy (philosophia hebraicae sectator), that is, as a Christian of old as opposed to the neoterici christiani to whom Spinoza refers in letter 73, Wachter claims that the Kabbalists distinguished two divine intellects. The first was an infinite intellect (Ein Sof), which Wachter identifies with the absolute nature of thought, and the other was what we might call an external intellect, corresponding with the Idea Dei, the infinite mode, which is the first Kabbalistic principle. This second intellect is said to be the essence of the human mind. As I have argued elsewhere,19 the distinction between these two intellects can be found in a Kabbalistic book written in Spanish around the time of Spinoza’s birth and in the very same city. In the seventh book of Puerta del cielo, Abraham Cohen de Herrera20 writes: there is not and cannot be anything that is not revealed to Ein Sof the First Cause, although it is not a mind or an intelligible but is rather ineffably elevated over the one and the other. The most simple One which surpasses all minds and wills, no understanding or intelligible and no desire or desirable objects can be located in it. It might therefore appear that the production, preservation, and rule of all things is random and unintended by any universal, primary One (but) negations in the First Cause do not mean defects or lack but rather abundance and advantage, because

18 Wachter, Johann, G.:  Elucidarius Cabalisticus, sive, Reconditae Hebraeorum Philosophiae Brevis & Succincta Recensio, IV, 14. Schröder, Winifried. FrommanHoltzboog (eds.), Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1995 (1706), pp. 3–54. Wachter was a Lutheran minister, lexicographer, philosopher and theologian, who in 1699 published Der Spinozismus im Jüdenthumb, intended as a rebuttal to Spinoza but written without a firm grasp of the intricacies of his ontology. Some years later, in 1704, he published a book on the origins of natural law. This was followed by the Elucidarius, influenced by various works on the Jewish Kabbalah, in which he attempted to tease out the Kabbalistic genealogy that he believed he had found in Spinoza’s system. 19 Beltrán, Miquel: The Influence of Abraham Cohen de Herrera’s Kabbalah on Spinoza’s Metaphysics. Brill: Leiden 2016. 20 On the life and works of Cohen de Herrera, see Melnick, Ralph: From Polemics to Apologetics. Jewish–Christian Rapprochement in 17th Century Amsterdam. Van Gorcum: Assen 1981. See also Niewöhner, Franz: ‘Abraham Cohen de Herrera in Hamburg’. Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 35, 1983, pp. 163– 167; and, for example, Necker, Gerold: Humanistische Kabbala im Barock. Leben und Werk des Abraham Cohen de Herrera. Walter de Gruyter: Berlin 2010.

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Miquel Beltrán to say that it is not an essence, life, mind, or other perfection does not mean we should understand that it does not exist at all or that it is dead and deprived of life, or ignorant and lacking in knowledge, but rather that, surpassing all produced, limited, and intelligible essences, life and mind with infinite advantage, it produces, preserves, and perfects them [...]. Thus, the first principle is not and does not have a mind that, depending on the life and essence on which it relies or is based, tends toward the intelligible that it lacks on its own and by which it is, illustrated, shaped, and perfected, but is rather the good or light that all minds try to attain and in which, ultimately, illuminated and perfected, they can blissfully to rest.21

Herrera warns us that: we should not understand that the First Cause, which because of its singular infinite perfection, surpasses all understandings, intellects, and minds, is ignorant [...] because in reality it is everything that all minds attempt to be or to grasp, and much more.

In another passage, Herrera reveals that the doctrine of God’s two intellects was first articulated in the Zohar: He said to Him: ‘My son, this is clearly so, and he is the Adam that the high one of high ones produced in his image, hidden and concealed, and this one required that the high one of ones be separated’. And in Tiqqum 69, folio 113, even more is explained, differentiating between the external maḥšabah (intelligence or mind), which is in effect dressed in the other one, and the internal one that is like a spirit or life to it. He concludes that this intrinsic one is the high of high and the brain or gray matter from which the seed issues that is the stream of the tree of life (which is the emanated world of the ten sefirot), that is, the light that goes before, the lustrous light, and the illustrated light.22

If the external intellect is indeed equivalent to the infinity of finite modes of thought, a description of the internal intellect, which as far as we know is only found in the passages of the TTP cited above, demonstrates that this duality is indeed part of Spinoza’s ontology. In corollary 2 to proposition 32 of part I of the Ethica, he writes: So will does not pertain to God’s nature any more than do the other natural things, but is related to him in the same way as motion and rest, and all the other things which, as we have shown, follow from the necessity of divine nature and are determined by it to exist and produce an effect in a certain way.23

Spinoza has already argued, in proposition 31 of part I, that ‘the actual intellect, whether finite or infinite, like will, desire, love, etc., must be referred

21 Cohen de Herrera, Abraham/Krabbenhoff, Kenneth (trans.& ed.): Gate of Heaven. Brill: Leiden 2010, p. 263. 22 Cohen de Herrera, 2010, p. 318. 23 G, II, 73.

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to Natura naturata, not to Natura naturans.’24 In the proof, Spinoza argues that by ‘intellect’ we mean a particular mode of thinking that must be conceived through some attribute of God, which expresses the eternal and infinite essence of thought in such a way that it can never exist or be conceived except through that attribute. This will contains all possible volition, and none of these volitions can exist independently from another mode of thought that both precedes and determines them. This mode, in turn, is determined by another, and even if we were to understand that God’s will is infinite, it must in any case be determined to exist and produce its effects through God – not insofar as he is conceived as an absolutely infinite substance, but insofar as he possesses an attribute that expresses the eternal and infinite essence of thought. This absolutely infinite substance is what is meant by God’s internal will, which is the infinite power of creation itself.

4. Divine decrees and eternal truths Just like Adam and the Israelites, the prophets among the people were also incapable of fully apprehending God’s decrees as what they were, eternal truths. Moses himself perceived these truths to be analogous to orders issued by a legislator. Belief in God’s mercy and justice towards those who obey his laws is a direct consequence of understanding his decrees as laws to be obeyed. Christ, on the other hand, did apprehend these eternal truths. Spinoza writes: ‘Christ was not so much a Prophet as the mouth of God.’25 It follows from this that Christ’s mind was attuned to the beliefs that all of humankind was capable of holding – in other words, all of our common notions and truths26  – and used them as a medium to speak to ‘those to whom it was given to understand the mysteries of heaven’.27 Christ ‘taught things as eternal truths and did not prescribe them as laws.’28 In this way, the law became deeply inscribed in human hearts. The apostle Paul also taught this way, although he often seemed reluctant to do so, preferring to adopt a human perspective  – for example when he described God as ‘just’. The fundamental point is that he understood and taught that divine wrath and mercy were not responses to human actions, but simply expressions of God’s vocation, that is to say his will. Thus, nobody can be justified by virtue of

4 G, II, 71. 2 25 G, III, 64. 26 On common notions, see Beltrán, Miquel: ‘Conocimiento del modo infinito inmediato de la extensión en Spinoza’. Enrahonar 57, 2017, pp. 55–70. 27 G, III, 65. 28 G, III, 65.

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their own actions, but only by faith itself: internal assent to God’s decrees, or eternal truths, which are one and the same. It does not make sense to describe God as just or merciful, or ascribe to him any other attributes that might suit us human beings. In reality, God works solely in accordance with the necessity of his nature and his perfection, and in this way directs all things. His decrees and volitions are eternal truths, and always involve necessity: the necessity that God should work in the way that he does, that is, according to his infinite nature and power. Spinoza goes on to attempt to prove that Scripture contains references to the law of nature and this divine law. He argues that God’s simple instruction to Adam contained all of divine natural law, and was completely consistent with natural law, since in reality God was teaching Adam to do right, and to look for what was inherently good and not what was contrary to evil. That is why he warned Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – because this would cause him to learn to see two ideas as binary opposites. He would then form the false notion that good is the opposite of evil, inextricably binding the two concepts together so that Adam would never be able to seek out the good out of pure love for the good, but only from a desire to escape evil. Only ‘he who does good from a true knowledge and love of the good acts freely and with a constant heart, whereas he who acts from fear of evil is compelled by evil, acts like a slave, and lives under the command of another.’29 We can point to other passages in Scripture that also address the question of divine law, particularly those set down ‘by the one who spoke from the power of the natural light’.30 Here, Spinoza is referring to Solomon, who in his Proverbs calls human intellect the fountain of true life, stating that misfortune is composed of ignorance alone. According to Solomon, ‘he made the fruit of understanding consist only in true life’.31 Directing us back to Paul, Spinoza quotes from Romans 1, 20 in the translation by Tremellius that he kept in his library:  ‘for from the foundation of the world, God’s hidden things are visible in his creatures through the understanding, and his power and divinity, which are to eternity; so they are without escape,’ commenting below: By this he indicates clearly enough that everyone, by the natural light, clearly understands God’s power and eternal divinity, from which he can know and deduce what

9 G, III, 66. 2 30 G, III, 66. 31 G, III, 66.

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he ought to pursue and what he ought to flee [...]. Hence he concludes that no one has any escape and none can be excused by their ignorance.32

Paul goes on to conclude that ‘evildoers are inexcusable’.33 Notice, however, that in various passages of his work Spinoza claims that nobody can will themselves to have a healthy mind, any more than they can will themselves to have a healthy body. Even so, evil is always inexcusable, because the natural light was created in such a way as to be within the grasp of a level of intellect that everyone is capable of reaching, although his rejection of universal truths would seem to contradict this claim. Paul also came up against this apparent paradox. In the parable of the potter and the clay, which Spinoza reproduces in letter 78 to Oldenburg, he is clear that no one who lacks a lucid intellect can blame God for having made him that way. His conclusion, however, is of great interest for our purposes: ‘Scripture, therefore, commends, without reservation, both the natural light and the natural divine law.’34 We might consider this statement as the preamble to a proposition that will occupy Spinoza in chapter VI (on miracles), namely: by a number of Scriptural examples, I’ll show that Scripture itself understands by God’s decrees and volitions – and hence his providence – nothing but the order itself of nature, which follows necessarily from its eternal laws.35

Thus, the TTP introduces an argument that is fundamental to Spinoza’s ontology, and he admits that certain eternal truths can be found in Scripture. This is despite the fact that he believes these truths to be accessible only through interpretative reading, this being the approach to Bible study that Spinoza advocates.36 In the same vein, he argues that: Scripture doesn’t teach directly things which don’t concern its doctrine; as we’ve shown concerning the divine law, its purpose is not to teach things through their natural causes, or things which are merely speculative. So what we want to prove here must be drawn by inference from certain Scriptural Narratives, where, by chance, events have been related more fully and with more circumstances. I’ll cite a number of examples.37

Nothing is necessarily true apart from divine decrees, and so the universal laws of nature are decrees laid down by God, which follow from the necessary perfection of divine nature. Consequently, nothing can occur in nature that 2 G, III, 68. Emphasis original. 3 33 G, III, 68. 34 G, III, 68. 35 G, III, 82. 36 See Levene, Nancy: ‘Does Spinoza Think the Bible is Sacred?’ The Jewish Quarterly Review 101 (4), 2011, pp. 545–573; also, Mason, Richard: ‘How Things Happen. Divine–Natural Law in Spinoza’. Studia leibnitiana 28, 1996, pp. 17–36. 37 G, III, 89.

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would contradict these universal laws, as this would be to contradict divine decree and God’s own intellect (which is the same as saying his will), and God cannot act in a way that is contrary to his nature. To understand the essence and existence of God, and his providence, we should not look to those things that appear to many people, in their ignorance, to be exceptional, but to the immutable order of nature. Spinoza’s argument is as follows: Given that the existence of God is not self-evident, it must necessarily be demonstrated on the basis of principles that we know to be definite and irrefutable truths, so that no argument could be made, or even conceived, to contradict them. Spinoza has already accepted that he cannot be entirely sure that his explanation corresponds to the intentions of the author. However, on the subject of miracles, Spinoza wants to prove, and believes he has proven, that nature always maintains a fixed and immutable order, showing this to be an evident truth and not a mere possibility. Just as the essence and existence of God – as I have related – cannot be proven by miracles, nor can his providence, being much more readily observable in the order of nature itself. This seems to define providence as essentially the manifestation of God’s plan through the unfolding of human action, an idea that exegetes studying the notion of a design in the Bible have recently defended38 as the way in which events come to pass in accordance with God’s pact with his people. The third point that Spinoza sets out to prove in chapter VI of the TTP therefore interests us a great deal. This is the idea that God’s decrees and volitions are understood in Scripture itself as simply the consecution of human action and other natural events. God’s providence, then, is understood as the natural order that derives from his eternal laws. Having proven that the workings of nature proceed from God’s essence, and that the laws of nature are God’s decrees and volitions, we must conclude unreservedly that our knowledge of God and his divine will deepen as our understanding of nature grows, and as we reach a clearer understanding of how it depends on the primal cause and functions in accordance with natural law. For this reason, those works of our intellect that we conceive of clearly and distinctly should be called works of God, being far more justifiably attributed to the divine will than those works that we do not understand at all, even if they occupy a great deal of our imagination. Moreover, despite the many miracles they witnessed, 38 See, for example, Wharton, James A.:  ‘A Plausible Tale. Story and Theology in II Samuel 9.20, 1 Kings 1–2’. Interpretation 35, 1981, pp.  341–354; and, more recently, Johnson, Benjamin J. M.: ‘The Heart of Yhvh’s Chosen One in 1 Samuel’. Journal of Biblical Literature 131, 2012, pp. 455–466 and Park, Song-Mi Suzie: ‘The Frustration of Wisdom. Wisdom, Counsel, and Divine Will in 2 Samuel 17, 1:23’. Journal of Biblical Literature 42, 2009, pp. 453–467. These are just a few examples.

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the Israelites were unable to form a correct idea of God, as demonstrated by their own experience. It is true, Spinoza argues, that Scripture repeatedly tells us that God worked miracles, and that he intended mankind to know him through these miracles. In this way, God outwitted the Egyptians and made his presence known so that the Israelites would understand that he was God: This (attitude) seems to have originated with the earliest Jews. The Gentiles of their time worshipped visible Gods, such as the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, Water, Air, etc. To prove them wrong and to show them that those Gods were weak and inconstant, or changeable, and under the rule of an invisible God, the Jews related their miracles, by which they tried to show that the whole of nature was directed only for their advantage, by the command of the God they worshipped. This was so pleasing to men that to this day they haven’t ceased to feign miracles, so that they might be believed to be dearer to God than the rest, and the final cause on account of which God has created, and continually directs, all things.39

However, Spinoza is keen to demonstrate that miracles, which he defines as works that exceed or are believed to exceed our human understanding, cannot make God known to us, and that this is explained in Scripture itself. Firstly, miracles did not allow the Israelites to form a correct idea of God. Providence is no more than the order of nature, and so when Scripture tells us that this or that is God’s will, or that something occurred because God willed it, all this means is that it occurred according to the laws and the order of nature. It does not mean, as the common man might believe, that at that moment nature ceased to function or that its order was temporarily suspended. Spinoza argues that this conception of divine providence follows logically from certain stories recounted in the Bible; therefore, the original purpose of scripture was not to help us draw conclusions about what he calls speculative matters, nor to teach things by reference to their natural causes. The examples that Spinoza picks out are edifying, showing that certain biblical stories can in fact lead us to the same conclusion that he believes he has demonstrated in the Ethica. He writes: In 1 Samuel 9: 15–16 it’s related that God revealed to Samuel that he would send Saul to him. Nevertheless, God didn’t send Saul to him the way men usually send one man to another; this sending of God’s was nothing but the order of nature itself. The same chapter relates (vv. 3–10) that Saul was looking for asses he had lost, and was already deliberating whether to return home without them when he went to the Prophet Samuel, on the advice of his servant, to learn from him where he could find them. The whole narrative shows that Saul did not have any other command of God than this order of nature to cause him to go to Samuel.

Other examples he gives include: In Psalm 105:24(–25) it’s said that God changed the hearts of the Egyptians so they would hate the Israelites. This was also a completely natural change. It’s evident

39 G, III, 82. Emphases original.

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Miquel Beltrán from Exodus 1 that the Egyptians had no slight reason which moved them to reduce the Israelites to bondage. In Genesis 9:13 God says to Noah that he’ll put a rainbow in the clouds. This action of God is certainly nothing but the refraction and reflection of the rays of the sun, which the rays undergo in the drops of water.14 In Psalm 147:18 the natural action of the wind, and the heat by which frost and snow are melted, is called the word of God; and in v. 15 the wind and cold are called the command and word of God. In Psalm 104:4 wind and fire are called the messengers and ministers of God. Many other things of this kind are found in Scripture, which indicate quite clearly that the decree, order, dictate and word of God are nothing but the very action and order of nature.40

Spinoza concludes: So there is no doubt that everything related in Scripture happened naturally, and yet is referred to God, because, as we’ve already shown, the purpose of Scripture is not to teach things through their natural causes, but only to relate those things which fill the imagination, and to do this by that Method and style which serves best to increase wonder at things, and consequently to impress devotion in the hearts of the common people. So if we find in the Sacred Texts certain things whose causes we do not know how to give an account of, and which seem to have happened beyond, and indeed, contrary to the order of nature, they must not cause us any difficulty; we must believe without reservation that what really happened happened naturally. This is also confirmed by the fact that in miracles many circumstances were found, although they are not always related, particularly when they are celebrated in the Poetic style. I say that the circumstances of the miracles clearly show that they require natural causes.41

Consequently, the idea that God’s will is expressed, not in the form of exceptional supernatural events that reveal his power to humankind, but rather through the natural order of all things can be found in the Bible, in these passages and in others. They clearly show that the authors of Scripture, deferring to God as the ultimate author of everyday events, also conceived of him as the ultimate cause of all things. This, in essence, is the Spinozian concept of ‘substance’.42 0 G, III, 98. 4 41 G, III, 98. 42 As far as I am aware, in recent years only Charles Huenemann (Spinoza’s Radical Theology. The Metaphysics of the Infinite. Acumen Publishing: London/New York 2014, p. 22) makes reference to these examples, concluding: ‘Other allegedly miraculous events are perfectly natural themselves: thus Samuel met Saul by happenstance, Noah saw a rainbow and the Pharaoh failed to feel compassion (that is, his “heart hardened”). And so on, until Spinoza is confident enough to conclude that “all things that are truly reported to have happened in Scripture necessarily happened according to the laws of nature, as all things do” (Theological–Political 6.15). Indeed, Spinoza is so confident that scripture never intends to say that events have happened contrary to the laws of nature that he believes we can rule out any scriptural claim to the contrary as something inserted later by no-good interpolators.’

Francisco David Corrales Cordón Prophecy in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus in light of Averroes’ Epitome of the Parva Naturalia Translated and edited by Cadenza Academic Translations

1. Introduction The approach to prophecy that we find in the TTP is perfectly consistent with a tradition dating back to antiquity, which can be summarized in general terms as follows: 1) From a cognitive perspective, prophecy is a genuine product of a lower information processing system (the imagination), operating freely and beyond its usual subordination to a higher system (reason or intellect). 2) In anthropological terms, this activity occurs only in a certain category of individuals who are less well equipped to access forms of knowledge associated with higher levels of processing. 3) In practice, this inferior cognitive activity is part of a teleological dynamic, through which it acquires a certain value with respect to individual and community survival.1 Further to (1), in a letter to Balling in July 1664 Spinoza allows that people do seem to have a faculty for anticipating future events on the basis of imagination, even if what this yields is merely a muddled form of knowledge.2 In Spinoza’s words, due to the constitution of the mind itself, and through the free or unfettered activity of the imagination,3 vivid images are produced that affect us as if the objects they represented stood physically before us.4 Such images, which have the status of omina, are also discussed in the Ethica. Again according to the Ethica, these images have a varying capacity to inspire belief  – varying persuasive power, we might say  – depending on our natural constitution5 and, more specifically, our bodily 1 For a more detailed explanation, the reader may wish to consult Struck, Peter T.: Divination and Human Nature. A Cognitive History of Intuition in Classical Antiquity. Princeton University Press: Princeton NJ 2016, pp. 96–104. 2 Letter 17 (G, IV, 76–77). 3 Letter 17 (G, IV, 76). 4 Letter 17 (G, IV, 76–78). 5 E, III, 50, sc. (G, II, 177–178): ‘Things which are accidental causes of Hope and Fear are called good or bad omens. And insofar as these same omens are causes of Hope or Fear, they are causes of Joy or Sadness (by the definitions of hope and

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constitution.6 The TTP approaches prophecy in consonance with these ideas. Moreover, its conception of prophecy satisfies the anthropological and practical criteria that have been identified as constants in the classical understanding of this kind of cognitive phenomenon. Equally important, it emphasizes the persuasive dimension that is also evident, although never fully explicit, in the Ethica. Taken together, these points are consistent with something that Spinoza sets out clearly in the preface to the TTP, namely that for him prophecy as a cognitive phenomenon is intrinsically rhetorical. He writes in the preface that the prophet guides the minds of the people towards devotion by teaching simple lessons, appropriately embellished. The prophet conveys a simple concept that has been revealed to him to the rest of his community, in accordance with that community’s needs and capacity for understanding.7 This idea conforms with the explicit, categorical portrayal of the prophet as an orator or interpreter that we find in the first chapter of the TTP.8 Moreover, these interpreters are by no means distinguished by their wisdom, intelligence or mental perfection, but solely and exclusively by their highly vivid imaginations.9 So, prophetic activity displays the qualities outlined above,

6 7 8 9

fear – see P18S2); consequently (by P15C), we love them or hate them, and strive (by P28) either to use them as means to the things we hope for, or to remove them as obstacles or causes of Fear. Furthermore, as follows from P25, we are so constituted by nature that we easily believe the things we hope for, but believe only with difficulty those we fear, and that we regard them more or less highly than is just. This is the source of the Superstitions by which men are everywhere troubled.’ This chapter draws on the English translations of Spinoza’s works by Edwin Curley (Spinoza, Benedictus de/Curley, Edwin (trans & ed.): The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2 vols. Princeton University Press: Princeton NJ 1985–2016). E, III, 51 (G, II, 178–79). TTP, praef. (G, III, 10). TTP, I (G, III, 15). TTP, I (G, III, 21): ‘We have asserted, then, that except for Christ no one has received God’s revelations without the aid of the imagination, i.e., without the aid of words or images. So no one needed to have a more perfect mind in order to prophesy [ad prophetizandum non esse opus perfectiore mente], but only a more vivid imagination [sed vividiore imaginatione]’; TTP, I (G, III, 28): ‘Prophets perceived God’s revelations only with the aid of imagination [non nisi ope imaginationis], i.e., by the mediation of words and images; these (words and images) may have been either true or imaginary [mediantibus verbis, vel imaginibus, iisque veris, aut imaginariis]’; TTP, II (G, III, 29): ‘Prophets were not endowed with a more perfect mind, but rather with a power of imagining unusually vividly. The Scriptural narratives also teach this amply. It’s clear that Salomon excelled all others in wisdom, but not in the gift of Prophecy. Similarly, those outstandingly wise men, Heman, Darda, and Calcol, were not Prophets. On the other hand, countryfolk,

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being a cognitively weak exercise that produces a confused form of knowledge. This form of knowledge is found in those with a particular gift, the gift of imagination, by virtue of which they are elevated to a dominant role in the everyday life of their communities.10 The prophet moves comfortably within the confines of the knowledge of the first kind, parading an exceptional talent for demagogy that derives from his use of imaginative and passionate language. He does not convince by applying the principles and logic of proof,11 although the words and images through which the prophetic activity manifests itself may be presented in a sequence analogous or parallel to that of an intellectual proof.12 Finally, although he takes a weak view of the cognitive value of prophecy, and, therefore, the epistemic stature or position of prophets, Spinoza acknowledges that it has a certain practical value. The workings of the imagination take on a special relevance in his conatus theory and thoughts on the disorders and passions of the soul.13 The TTP’s discussion on the concepts of internal and external aid allows him to find a place for prophetic experience in a wider practical framework, wherein a living being’s resolve to preserve its own existence is extrapolated to the political sphere in the form of the state’s stability and salvation.14 In short, Spinoza regards prophecy as no more than an expression of the reign of divine power: a form of guidance that God, in his infinite power, imparts to certain cognitively deficient

without any education, and even simple women, like Hagar, Abraham’s handmaid, were granted the gift of Prophecy.’ 10 Indeed, in the preface (G, III, 9–10) Spinoza claims that the opinions of prophets carry little weight or authority when they stray beyond practical matters. On this point, see Jean Préposiet’s notes on prophecy in Spinoza et la liberté des hommes. Gallimard: Paris 1967, p. 169. See also Donagan, Alan: Spinoza. HarvesterWheatsheaf: Paris 1988, pp. 21–26 (especially p. 24); Matheron, Alexandre: Le Christ et le salut des ignorants chez Spinoza. Aubier-Montaigne Éd.: Paris 1971, p. 243. 11 Préposiet, 1967, p. 169. 12 Cf. Matheron, 1971, p. 243–244, on Letter 17 (G, IV, 77): ‘We find by experience that fevers and other corporeal changes are causes of madness, and that those whose blood is thick imagine nothing but quarrels, troubles, killings, and things like these. We see that the imagination is also determined by the constitution of the soul alone; for as we find by experience, it follows the traces of the intellect in everything and links its images and words together in order, as the intellect does its demonstrations, so that we can hardly understand anything of which the imagination does not form some image from a trace.’ 13 Cf. E, III, 6 ff. (G, II, 146 ff.). 14 TTP (G III, 45 ff.).

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men or categories of men through natural laws, for the purpose of keeping them alive. From this point on, in order to determine the theoretical coordinates of Spinoza’s reasoning on prophecy with greater precision, we need to identify the sources that may have inspired or aided him in his work. Certainly, Spinoza’s views on prophecy reveal a certain distancing from Maimonides, who is often regarded as his philosophical forefather in the Jewish tradition.15 Indeed, for Maimonides, prophecy represents a morally and physically perfect man’s capacity to apprehend the principles that govern reality. It is therefore a speculative faculty and the apex of the prophet’s physical and spiritual perfection.16 As Zac observes, where Spinoza refers directly to Maimonides in the TTP, he does so only to further his ‘réfutation directe’.17 15 As argued by Yirmiyahu Yovel (Spinoza and Other Heretics. The Marrano of Reason, I. Princeton University Press: Princeton NJ 1989, pp. 136–37), Spinoza’s decision to write the TTP in Latin is consistent with Maimonides’ teaching, in the sense that it is predicated on a society with varying levels of education. He envisaged his readers as belonging to the cultivated class (as indicated by his correspondence with Oldenburg), which included not only Jewish rabbis but also Calvinist thinkers and Christian theologians more generally. However, as we will see, there are virtually no commonalities at the doctrinal level, particularly with regard to prophecy. 16 Cf. Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed; translated with an introduction and notes by Shlomo Pines; with an introductory essay by Leo Strauss, 2 vols. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1963, 32, where the idea that prophecy could be a God-given privilege that anyone, regardless of their intellectual training, is eligible to receive is dismissed as profane and contrary to biblical and Talmudic doctrine. In this respect, the lines from TTP II (G, III, 29) cited earlier clearly demonstrate Spinoza’s adherence to these ideas rejected by Maimonides, which, in fact, posit a dichotomy between wise men, excluded from prophecy by virtue of their wisdom, such as Solomon, and prophets, who belong to the coarse and uneducated masses. These even include the occasional woman, such as Hagar, a handmaid to Abraham, who Maimonides maintains cannot have been a prophet (cf. The Guide for the Perplexed II, 42). 17 Cf. Zac, Sylvain: Spinoza et l’interprétation de l’Écriture. Presses Universitaires de France: Paris 1965, p. 65. Maimonides refutes this precisely on the grounds of the privileged epistemic status that he accords to prophetic activity: ‘En partant de l’idée que le but suprême de la révélation est le développement de la vie théorique, Maïmonide soutient que le prophète est un philosophe et même supérieur au philosophe, en matière de connaissance spéculative’ (ibid.). Along the same lines, cf. Spinoza, Benedictus de/Lagrée, Jacqueline (trans.): Traité Théologico-Politique. texte établi par Fokke Akkerman, traduction et notes par Jacqueline Lagrée et Pierre-François Moreau. Presses Universitaires de France: Paris 1999, p. 704, n. 28: ‘à beaucoup regards, la théorie spinoziste de la prophétie est construite en confrontation constante avec la sienne: mêmes textes de référence, mêmes objets

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This controversial take on the Cordoban philosopher’s ideas can largely be explained by the influence that the nova philosophia18 had on Spinoza, particularly in relation to the concepts of evidence and certainty, equally fundamental to geometric and mathematical proofs and to prophecy.19 For the same reason, we might say that Spinoza had moved away from other theories emanating from the Jewish tradition, such as those of Gersonides. Although critical of both Maimonides and Averroes, Gersonides nevertheless followed Maimonides in according prophecy a privileged epistemic status.20 de discussion (il est vrai que ce sont les thèmes obligés d’une tradition) et opposition sur un certain nombre de points clefs’. 18 Zac, 1965, p.  15  ff., describes how this distances Spinoza from the exegetic method practised by Maimonides, as he adopts an essentially empirical or historical approach in keeping with the etymological meaning of the term ἱστορία. 19 The prophet’s vivid imagination evokes the ancient rhetorical and poetical concept of ἐνάργεια, meaning clarity or perspicuity. Along with brevity, clarity in educational texts came to be viewed as invaluable in humanistic culture. Indeed, clarity and brevity are the qualities that Spinoza attributes to geometric explanation (in this respect, see Audié, Fabrice: Spinoza et les mathématiques. PUPS: Paris 2005, p. 13 ff., and its bibliography). According to Travis D. Williams (‘Mathematical Enargeia. The Rhetoric of Early Modern Mathematical Notation’. Rhetorica XXIV (2), 2016, pp. 163–211), enargeia remained an important rhetorical concept all through the advances in science and mathematics that occurred during the early modern period. Williams’s illustration of its role in the development of notation or symbolic language, as used by Descartes in his analytical geometry, is particularly noteworthy. He proceeds by examining the changes that this method brought in comparison to the preceding geometric discourse, based on the interaction between a diagram, a textual description of how the objects were drawn and a proof (ibid., p. 183 ff.). Among these three components, priorities can be established: while in practice the textual description is completed first, from a conceptual perspective the diagram and the proof have greater weight and are of essentially equal standing. With notational language, however, it is the proof that takes conceptual precedence, even though the efficiency of the notational language used to express it still depends on the use of a visual language. On these questions, see also Lenoir, Timothy: ‘Descartes and the Geometrization of Thought. The Methodological Foundation of Descartes’ Géométrie’. Historia Mathematica 6, 1979, pp. 355– 379; Cifoletti, Giovanna: ‘The Algebraic Art of Discourse. Algebraic Dispositio, Invention and Imitation in Sixteenth-Century France’. In:  Chemal, Karine (ed.): History of Science, History of Text. Springer: Dordrecht 2004, pp. 123–135; Cifoletti, Giovanna: ‘Mathematics and Rhetoric: Introduction’. Early Science and Medicine 11, 2006, pp. 369–389. On Spinoza’s mathematical education and the role of algebraic geometry therein, cf. Audié, 2005, p. 27 ff. 20 Gersonides bemoans the fact that prophecy became devalued in Averroes’ work; he mirrors Maimonides’ position, regarding it as a privileged form of sensory experience. For a general comparison of how prophecy is understood by Gersonides, Averroes and Maimonides, see ben Gershom, Levi/Feldman, Seymour (trans.): The

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Despite distancing himself from the kind of prophetic doctrine espoused by Maimonides, Spinoza’s position is compatible with alternatives found within this same tradition, which can be directly applied to the critical aims explored in the TTP. Such an alternative doctrine would need to recognize prophecy as a necessary medium for imparting guidance to those who would be incapable of finding the path to the good by their own cognitive faculties, while also leaving a privileged space for reason and philosophy. There are a number of possibilities in Averroist scholarship that meet these criteria, particularly in the tradition known as Jewish Averroism.21 Wars of the Lord, II. The Jewish Publication Society: Philadelphia/New York/ Jerusalem 1987, p. 16; Sirat, Colette: Les Théories des Visions Surnaturelles dans la Pensée Juive du Moyen-Âge. Brill: Leiden 1969, pp. 166–174. 21 On the historiographical perspective on Latin Averroism and its twentieth-century critiques, see Schmitt, Charles B. ‘Renaissance Averroism studied through the Venetian Editions of Aristotle-Averroes (with particular reference to the Giunta edition of 1550–2’. In: L’averroismo in Italia. Convegno internazionale (Roma, 18–20 aprile 1977), Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei: Roma 1979, p. 122 (repr. in id.: The Aristotelian Tradition and Italian Universities, VIII. Variorum Reprints: London 1984). For more on Jewish Averroism and Jewish philosophy more generally, see the work of Tamar M.  Rudavsky (e.g., Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages. Science, Rationalism and Religion. Oxford University Press: Oxford 2018; Nadler, Steven/Rudavsky, Tamar M. (eds.): The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy. From Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 2009); Frank, Daniel/Leaman, Oliver (eds.): History of Jewish Philosophy. Routledge: London/New York 2004; Sirat, Colette: A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 1990). On the Jewish community’s flourishing intellectual and publishing culture during the Renaissance and early modern period, with particular focus on the translation and introduction of works by Arab thinkers such as Averroes, see the article by Schmitt cited above and also Donato, Silvia di: ‘Traduttori di Averroè e traduzioni ebraico-latine nel dibattito filosofico del XV e XVI secolo’. In: Licata, Giovanni (ed.): L’averroismo in età moderna. (1400–1700). Quodlibet: Macerata 2013a, pp. 25–49). On the prolific tradition that has grown up around the interpretation of Spinoza’s Averroism, from the publication of Ernest Renan’s Averroès et l’averroïsme (Oeuvres complètes, III. Calmann-Lévy: Paris 1949 (1852)) to the present day, see the overview by Giovanni Licata (La via della ragione. Elia del Medigo e l’averrosimo di Spinoza. EUM: Macerata 2013b, p. 9 ff.). Licata links together a series of studies carried out over the last two decades by professor Filippo Mignini, which offer a systematic historical and critical analysis of the Averroist underpinnings of Spinoza’s philosophy (see also Mignini, Filippi: ‘Spinoza e Bruno. Per la storia di una questione storiografica’. In: Bostrenghi, Daniela/Santinelli, Cristina (eds.): Spinoza. Ricerche e prospettive. Per una storia dello spinozismo in Italia. Atti delle Giornate di studio in ricordo E. Giancotti, Urbino, 2–4 October 2002. Bibliopolis: Napoli 2007, pp. 211–271). In the same vein, among the most recent work in English we would recommend Harvey, Steven: ‘On the Nature and

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Carlos Fraenkel recently attempted to reinterpret certain aspects of Spinoza’s work in these terms, such as the relationship between philosophy and religion in the TTP. We would also highlight similar efforts focused on Elia Del Medigo’s Examination of Religion (Beḥinat ha-Dat).22 This work, a copy of which Spinoza kept in his library,23 provides evidence that certain ideas concerning prophecy that appear in the TTP share similarities with the theories of Arab philosophers, such as Al-Farabi and, particularly, Averroes, in his Decisive Treatise (Faṣl al-maqāl)24 and Commentary on Plato’s Extent of Jewish Averroism. Renan’s “Averroès et l’averroïsme” Revisited’. Jewish Studies Quarterly 7, 2000, pp. 100–119; Zonta, Mauro: ‘Influence of Arabic and Islamic Philosophy on Judaic Thought’. In: Zalta, Edward N. (ed.): The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 10.12.2007, rev. 6.5.2016, retrieved 29.12.2018 from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/arabic-islamic-judaic/, which incorporates part of a previous work: Zonta, Mauro: ‘Linee di pensiero islamico nella storia della filosofia ebraica medievale’. Annali dell’Istituto Orientale di Napoli 57, 1997, pp. 463–474. 22 A number of modern editions and translations of Beḥinat ha-Dat are available, including: Medigo, Elia de/Ross, Jacob J. (trans.): Sefer Behinat Hadat of Elijah del Medigo. A critical edition with introduction, notes and commentary. The Chaim Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies: Tel Aviv 1984; Medigo, Elia de/Hayoun, Maurice-Ruben (trans.): Examen de la religion, présentation, traduction et notes par M. R., Hayoun. Les éditions du cerf: Paris 1992; Medigo, Elia de: Beḥinat ha-Dat. Editio Princeps (1629), traduzione, note e appendici di critica testuale. In Licata, 2013b, III, pp. 288–390. 23 The copy of Beḥinat ha-Dat in Spinoza’s library was probably part of the volume published as Ta’alumot hokhma (fol. 2a–8a) (The Secrets of Wisdom/Abscondita Sapientiae) in Basel in 1629 by Del Medigo’s great-grandson, Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (Yosef Shlomo Roféh mi-Kandia or Joseph Solomon, the Cretan physician). Cf. Hayoun, 1984, pp. 9–10. 24 Fraenkel, Carlos:  ‘Philosophy and Exegesis in al-Fârâbî, Averroes, and Maimonides’. Laval Théologique et Philosophique 64, 2008, p.  105–125; Fraenkel, Carlos: ‘Spinoza on Philosophy and Religion. The Averroistic Sources’. In:  Fraenkel, Carlos/Perinetti, Dario/Smith, Justin (eds.):  The Rationalists. Between Tradition and Innovation. Springer Academic Publishers: Dordrecht 2010, pp. 27–43; Fraenkel, Carlos: ‘Reconsidering the Case of Elijah Delmedigo’s Averroism and its Impact on Spinoza’. In:  Akasoy, Anna/Giglioni, Guido (eds.): Renaissance Averroism and Its Aftermath. Arabic Philosophy in Early Modern Europe. Springer Academic Publishers: Dordrecht 2013, pp. 213–236. On the close interrelationship between Del Medigo’s work and that of Averroes, as evidenced through parallels, paraphrases and crypto-citations found in the former, see Licata, Giovanni: ‘Un riadattamento del Trattato decisivo di Averroè’. In: idem., 2013b, pp. 119–186; and Licata, Giovanni: ‘Un riadattamento ebraico del Faṣl al-maqāl di Averroè: la Beḥinat ha-dat di Elia del Medigo’. Schede Medievali 52, 2014, pp. 239–254. Licata maintains that there is a case for regarding the entire text of Beḥinat ha-Dat as inspired by Averroes (2014, p. 241).

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Republic, which Del Medigo paraphrases in the opening lines of Beḥinat haDat. Likewise, Giovanni Licata has identified and systematically analysed a number of similarities between Beḥinat ha-Dat and the TTP. These similarities suggest that Spinoza’s approach to this question was strongly influenced by the way that medieval Arabic and Jewish philosophers assimilated the templates, principles and concepts of the ancient rhetorical tradition. Specifically, Licata homes in on the concept of assent, acceptance or affirmation (taṣdīq / ‫ تصديق‬in Arabic and ‘immut / ‫ אמות‬in Del Medigo’s Hebrew).25 This idea is closely linked to the concept of composition or conceptualization (taṣawwur/‫ تصور‬in Arabic and ziyyur/‫ צ׳ור‬in Hebrew).26 As Licata’s enquiry shows, Spinoza’s position on prophecy and prophets as developed in the TTP reveals a close kinship with Beḥinat ha-Dat as far as the logic of acceptance is concerned. Even so, Beḥinat ha-Dat cannot satisfactorily account for all of the systematic aspects of the TTP’s arguments on this question, which can be traced back to the same tradition. Del Medigo is anxious to establish the demarcation between philosophy and religion by reference to their respective methods and, specifically, by pointing to Aristotle’s distinction between scientific arguments, based on apodictic syllogism, and the methods used in rhetoric and dialectics. Acceptance or affirmation is the goal of the logic of proof in the scientific discourse, but

5 Cf. Beḥinat ha-Dat § 3 and Licata, 2013b, p. 327, n. 22 ad loc. 2 26 On how these terms were translated in the medieval tradition, see Wolfson, Harry A: ‘The Terms Taṣawwur and Taṣdīq in Arabic Philosophy and their Greek, Latin and Hebrew Equivalents’. The Moslem World 33, 1943, pp. 114–128. Reprinted in: Wolfson, Harry A./Twersky, Isadore/Williams, George H. (eds.): Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion. Harvard University Press: Boston MA 1973, pp. 478–492. According to Wolfson (1973, p. 490), the Greek words νόησις (in the Aristotelian sense) and φαντασία λογική (as used by the Stoics) were both translated into Arabic as taṣawwur. In turn, taṣawwur was variously translated into Latin as: imaginatio (in Al Gazali’s Maqasid), formatio or informatio (in Averroes’ Long Commentary on De Anima III, Comm. 21, 26). The Hebrew equivalent of taṣawwur, ziyyur, was translated as conceptio in Abraham de Balmes’s translation of Averroes’ Long Commentary on Analytica Posteriora I, Comm. 1 and formatio or notitia in Burana and Mantinus’ translations of the same work. The word taṣdīq, used to translate the Aristotelian phrase ἀποφαντικός λόγος and also ἀξίωμα, was rendered in Latin as credulitas (in translations of Avicena’s Shifa’ and Algazali’s Maqāṣid) or fides (in Averroes’ Long Commentary on De Anima III, Comm. 21 and 26). Latin translations of the Hebrew equivalent include assertio (in Abraham de Balmes’s translation, mentioned above), verificatio (Burana) and certificatio, certitudo and fides (Mantinus). In general, taṣawwur refers to the act of forming or conceptualizing something, while taṣdīq means judgement (in the sense of accepting or refuting what somebody else reports or claims to be the case).

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it has a persuasive counterpart in rhetoric that comes to the fore when a speaker is presenting certain ideas to an audience.27 Within this framework, prophecy, by default, is considered insofar as it can be classified under one of these two methods,28 but the way Spinoza structures his arguments on prophetic activity exceeds the explanatory power of this distinction. In my view, this has to do with the imagination, and the formation or conceptualization that happens there. This necessary and indispensable activity is at the core of what we might call the prophetic inventio, without which no assent or acceptance can be achieved. Arab philosophers commenting on Aristotle’s Organon, within they included rhetoric and poetics, placed great importance on the power of the imagination,29 and it is a constant in texts focused primarily on prophecy. This aspect of prophetic activity is given particular weight in the TTP, where it is portrayed as the fundamental key to understanding the prophet’s psychological, cognitive and anthropological status. Yet, it is an aspect that is absent from Del Medigo’s work. When we add in the idea that prophecy can provide a means of salvation or aid for the political community itself and, specifically, for the Hebrew people, the plausible theories on Spinoza’s sources for the TTP’s chapters on prophecy and prophets become more clear-cut. One candidate is Averroes’ Talkhis kitab al-hiss wa-al-mahsus, or Epitome of the Parva Naturalia, hereinafter the Epitome.30 The Epitome is a short commentary and does not encompass all of the texts included in modern Greek editions of the Parva 27 As the goal of a rhetorical discourse, Averroes in fact chooses taṣdīq as a translation of the Greek πίστις (cf. Faṣl al-maqāl, pp. 15, 11, 8–13). 28 Cf. Beḥinat ha-Dat §§ 1–6; along with a whole series of textual parallels identified by Licata (2013b, p. 257 ff.) that indicate that Spinoza almost certainly drew on these ideas in addressing the same questions in the TTP. 29 The constants and problems associated with the efforts of Arabic scholars of Aristotle’s Organon to reconcile these two functions are the subject of a methodical study by Deborah L. Black (Logic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics in Medieval Arabic Philosophy. Brill: Leiden 1990 (see especially p. 180 ff.). 30 Modern critical editions are available of the Arabic text of Kitab al-hiss wa-almahsus (Blumberg, Harry: Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem, Versionum Arabicorum, VII. Medieval Academy of America: Cambridge MA 1972); of the Hebrew version, also courtesy of Blumberg (Blumberg, Harry: Sefer ha-Hush weha-Muhash. Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem, Versionum Hebraicarum, VII. 7.  Medieval Academy of America:  Cambridge MA 1958); and of the Latin, from Shields, Aemilia L./Blumberg, Harry: Averrois Cordubensis Compendia Librorum Aristoteli qui Parva Naturalia Vocantur, recensuit Aemilia Ledyard Shields; adiuvante Henrico Blumberg, Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem, Versionum Latinarum, VII. The Medieval Academy of America: Cambridge MA 1949. An English translation is also available: Blumberg, Harry: Epitome of Parva Naturalia, translated from the

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naturalia.31 It does, however, include those that particularly interest us here, such as De sompno et vigilia (which incorporates parts of both De sompniis and De divinatione per sompnum). It is important to bear in mind that the Epitome was undoubtedly a very well-known text.32 Following Averroes’ death, an intense flurry of translation and commentary took hold in Jewish philosophical circles, spanning the century between Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s Arabic to Hebrew translation, published in Montpellier in 1254,33 and Levi ben Gershon’s 1354 supercommentary.34 Blumberg particularly admires Tibbon’s text for its faithfulness to the original and consistent use of Jewish philosophical terminology,35 while ben Gershon’s work appears in what is believed to be the first encyclopaedia of science written in Hebrew in the Middle Ages: The Opinions of the Philosophers (De’ot ha-Filosofim) by Tov ben Joseph Falaquera.36 It is possible that Spinoza was familiar with the Epitome, not only through these versions and commentaries produced by scholars of Jewish philosophy, but also through the Latin translations that began to circulate in printed form around the middle of the fifteenth century. These included Laurentius Canozius’ version, which appeared around 1473

original Arabic and the Hebrew and Latin versions with notes and an introduction by Harry Blumberg. Medieval Academy of America: Cambridge MA 1961. Unless otherwise indicated, quotations and references to Averroes’s text are taken from this English translation. 31 In this respect, we need only compare the text of the Epitome with the Parva Naturalia in Immanuel Bekker’s edition (Aristotelis opera, ex recensione Immanuelis Bekker; edidit Academia Regia Borussica; accedunt fragmenta scholia index aristotelicus, Berolini, 2ª de. Addendis instruxit fragmentorum collectionem retractatvit Olof Gigon, 5 vols, 2nd edn. Academia Regia Borussica: Berlin 1960. 32 As evidence, Blumberg points to Maimonides’ complaint to his disciple Judah Aknin that he had found copies of all of Averroes’ commentaries in Egypt except for the Kitab al-hiss wa-al-mahsus (Blumberg, 1961, p. xv). 33 Blumberg, 1958, p. xi. The translation work carried out by several generations of the Tibbon family was vitally important in opening up the Greek scientific legacy, as preserved by Arabic scholars, to Jewish communities in Provence. For more on this topic, see also Sirat, 1990, pp. 213–214; on the importance of Averroes in this context, see Rudavsky, 2009, pp. 45–47. 34 Ibid.; Rudavsky, 2009, pp. 48–50. 35 Blumberg, 1958, p. xii. 36 Ibid., p. 47. For a detailed discussion on Falaquera’s use of Aristotelian sources, Rudavsky (2009, n.  122)  refers readers to Harvey, Steven:  ‘Shem-Tov Ibn Falaquera’s De’ot ha-Filosofim: Its sources and use of sources’. In: Harvey, Steven (ed.): The Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias of Science and Philosophy. Kluwer Academic Publishers: Dordrecht 2000, pp. 211–237.

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or 1474,37 and the sixteenth-century (1550) Editio Iuntina. We might argue, in fact, that with this latter edition, the proliferation of Latin translations of Arabic and Hebrew philosophical texts, a trend that was already perceptible by the last twenty years of the fifteenth century, reached its peak.38 Most notably, these translations included a number of Averroes’ works, which drew the interest of both Jewish and Christian scholars.39 As I will attempt to demonstrate, the Epitome has many similarities to the TTP in terms of content. Its approach to prophecy as a form of imaginative experience clearly anticipates the TTP’s conception, in its cognitive, anthropological and practical dimensions alike. The remainder of this chapter is divided into three sections. First, I will examine the relevant aspects of prophetic activity in the TTP from the perspective of a logic of acceptance or affirmation, in accordance with Licata, whose work in this area has already been mentioned. In this section, I will present some further textual evidence from the Epitome that supports the idea that Spinoza was influenced by Averroes on this subject. Second, I  will address the question of conceptualization  – the way in which prophets apprehend both divine law and future events in practice. Spinoza’s description of this process, which we might describe as inventive, displays traces of the arguments contained in the Epitome. Finally, in light of the prophetic inventio, I will conclude by demonstrating the degree of convergence between the TTP and the Epitome when it comes to identifying prophecy’s pragmatic vocation.

2. The concepts of endoxon, taṣdīq and ‘immut and prophetic activity According to the summary notes to the preface and first chapter of the TTP, scripture is a medium that channels a simple concept from the mind of God, the object of the revelation granted to the prophets. This simple concept is the requirement to obey God by practising justice and charity.40 As the vehicle 37 Shields/Blumberg, 1949, Prolegomena, p.  xiii and n.  7; Blumberg, 1958, Introduction, p. xiii. 38 Cf. Donato, 2013, pp. 28–29. Schmitt (1979, p. 121) draws a connection between this upsurge that began at the end of the fifteenth century, persisting right through the sixteenth century, and the vigorous debate on immortality led by the philosopher Pietro Pomponazzi. 39 Donato, p. 29. 40 TTP, praef. (G, III, 10): ‘After this, I show that the revealed Word of God [Verbum Dei revelatum] is not some certain number of books, but a simple concept of the divine mind revealed to the Prophets [conceptum simplicem mentis divinae Prophetis revelatae]:  to obey God wholeheartedly, by practicing justice and loving-kindness.’

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for this concept, scripture is an educational resource and an appeal to live in compliance with divine law. To use the language of rhetoric, scripture has a protreptic function,41 fulfilled by introducing this simple concept to a specific audience (the assembled public to whom prophets tended to preach) with the purpose of obtaining their assent or acceptance. Phrases such as secundum captum et opiniones eorum, ad captum vulgi and ad captum plebis are scattered throughout these passages, alerting us to the rhetorical function of revelation. As Licata points out, these phrases are one of the crucial links between early chapters of the TTP and Del Medigo’s Beḥinat ha-Dat.42 The logic of acceptance inherent in this conception of prophecy evokes the concept of ἔνδοξον found in rhetoric and dialectics.43 According to Aristotle’s definition, which appears in the Topics, the ἔνδοξα are commonly accepted opinions44 that the orator needs to understand and be able to use to his advantage. The orator draws upon the ἔνδοξα most likely to help him convince any given audience, presenting them as premises for his enthymemes, that is, his persuasive arguments.45 Particularly relevant for our purposes is the idea that these general opinions are shared by the groups of individuals of varying dimensions that represent communities or peoples in the political sense. Accordingly, we might find different assortments of ἔνδοξα among different communities or, in our case, peoples. Both of these concepts, political communities and peoples, subsume the idea of a collective with profound ties to the tradition that has grown up around these opinions.46 It follows, then, that prophets, orators and interpreters – and, for that matter, political 41 Cf. TTP, III (G, III, 44–45): ‘To exhort the Hebrews to obey the law Scripture says [Cum igitur Scriptura, ut Hebraeos ad obedientiam legis hortetur, dicit] […]. When it says this, it speaks only according to the power of understanding of people who, as we have shown in the preceding chapter [ad eorum captum tantum loquitur, qui, in superiore capite ostendimus] […] did not know true blessedness.’ 42 Cf. Beḥinat ha-Dat §§ 3–5. With regard to the Latin phrases highlighted here, Licata (2013b, p. 263, n. 50) finds examples of their use in Maimonides’ The Guide for the Perplexed as well as equivalent phrases in §§ 3 and 39 of Beḥinat ha-Dat. In the specific case of ad captum vulgi, he notes its formulaic role in exegetic studies of the Bible dating from the sixteenth century. To the phrases cited by Licata, I would add ad Hebraeorum captum (TTP, III (G, III, 45)) and ex captu & secundum opiniones Judaeorum (TTP, III (G, III, 54)). 43 While the relationship between prophecy and this concept found in Aristotelian dialectics and rhetoric is not made explicit in Beḥinat ha-Dat, it is used to refer to widely known and accepted interpretations of the Torah (§ 6). The equivalent Hebrew word is mefursam (‫( )מפורסם‬cf. Licata, 2013b, p. 360, n. 44 ad loc.). 44 Cf. Aristotle, Topica 101a29–b26 45 Cf. Aristotle, Rhetorica 1355a14–18. 46 The idea that persuasive effect varies not by individual, but by groups of individuals depending on their character or qualities, is put forward by Aristotle in

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leaders – were simply the mouthpieces for a specific, targeted message that offered the Hebrew people a chance to grasp or apprehend this simple concept emanating from the divine mind. It also follows the revelation that God bestowed on Moses was no more than a set of rules intended only for the Hebrews (jura singularis Hebraeorum imperii).47 However, as an orator and interpreter, the prophet occupied a unique position in the communicative system through which he passed this simple concept from God to the Hebrew people and successfully predicted future events. In fact, while the prophet’s communicative role is directly acknowledged, he remained, at the same time, a recipient of his own message, as a member of the community that would receive the revelation. Despite his privileged position as an orator, the biblical prophet had no control whatsoever over the words used to deliver these truths. Unlike secular orators, it was not in his gift to formulate the message by applying the rules and principles of composition he had studied. The prophet, by virtue of his vivid imagination, merely underwent a certain experience that was identified as prophecy, which he then imparted to the rest of his community. According to Spinoza’s analysis of the kind of experiences we mean when we talk about prophecy, these generally depend on the natural constitution of the prophet’s soul,48 the attitudes that mark him out as a member of a particular social group, such as the Hebrew people, and various other factors linked to his own physical constitution and personal qualities. If we study the use of the word ruagh (‫ )רוה‬with a view to determining the precise meaning of those phrases that allude to the presence of the holy spirit in the prophet or other men, the conclusions we reach tend to support this idea.49 The prophet is someone who achieves pre-eminence over others by virtue of both his extraordinary Rhetoric (1356b28–35). On the correlation between the unique character of a community and the commonly accepted opinions of different political systems among its members, see Aristotle, Rhetoric, I, 8. In his dialogue with Averroes, Gersonides (The Wars of the Lord, VI, p. 50–53) also identifies this as an essential property of prophetic communication. 47 TTP, praef. (G, III, 10); see also TTP, I (G, III, 25–26). 48 Cf. TTP, I (G, III, 16): ‘Therefore, since our mind – simply from the fact that it contains God’s Nature objectively in itself, and participates in it – has the power to form certain notions which explain the nature of things and teach us how to conduct our lives, we can rightly maintain that the nature of the mind [mentis naturam], insofar as it is conceived in this way, is the first cause of divine revelation [primam divinae revelationis causam statuere possumus].’ 49 Cf. TTP, I (G, III, 27): ‘The Spirit of God was in the Prophet [Prophetae Spiritus Dei fuit], God infused his Spirit into men [Deus Spiritum suum hominibus infudit], men were filled with the Spirit of God and, with the Holy Spirit [homines Spiritu Dei, et Spiritu Sancto repleti sunt], etc. For they mean nothing other than that

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moral journey and his particular genius: his capacity to imagine things with such vividness that they appear to be before his very eyes.50 It is said that the prophet receives the holy spirit only when he is capable of perceiving God’s mind or judgement through this unbridled imagination. However, as we noted earlier, the product of this imagination may take different forms depending on the prophet’s own beliefs (pro ratione opinionum),51 his imaginative capacity and his bodily disposition. This explains why the prophetic the Prophets had a singular virtue, beyond what is ordinary, that they cultivated piety with exceptional constancy of heart, and that they perceived God’s mind, or, judgement.’ Emphasis original. 50 TTP, I annotation III ad pag. 27, line 20 (G, III, 252): ‘some may, with their eyes open, imagine certain things so vividly that it’s as if they had those things before them [ut etiam quod oculis apertis aliquis res quasdam adeo vivide imaginetur, ac si easdem coram se haberet].’ This ability has a clear link to the concept of enargeia, which, as we know, is associated with the power of poetic and rhetorical language to induce the audience to visualize the things of which the orator is speaking. This power is also evoked by the Greek phrase πρὸ ὀμμάτων ποιεῖν, which seems closely intertwined with Aristotle’s understanding of metaphor (Rhetoric 1386a35; 1405b15; 1410b34; 1411b4, 21 ff.; Poetics 1455a22-23) and the symbolic projection of the imagination (cf. De mem. et rem., 449b30450a5). In the Latin tradition, this phrase is translated as ante oculos ponere (cf. Galand-Hallyn, Perinne: Les yeux de l’éloquence. Poétiques humanistes de l’évidence. Paradigme: Orléans 1995, pp. 99–121). Indeed, this is the first criterion for legitimizing an alleged prophecy, as set out in TTP II (G, III, 31): ‘1. That the Prophets imagined the things revealed to them very vividly, in the way we are usually affected by objects when we are awake [ut nos vigilando ab objectis affecti solemus, imaginabantur]’. Note also that in TTP II (G, III, 34–35), which identifies variations between the representations of different prophets according to their imaginative capacity, Spinoza refers to perspicuitas [translated by Curley as ‘clarity’]. 51 TTP, II (G, III, 30, 32–33). Overall, we might say that there is a shift in the conception of revelation towards something that flows immanently from the prophet. Cf. Laux, Henri: Imagination et religion chez Spinoza. La potentia dans l’histoire. J. Vrin: Paris 1993, p. 24: ‘L’extériorité de la révélation semble reversée sur un processus subjectif, où le “sujet” n’est plus tout à fait maître de la connaissance qui apparaît en lui […] c’est qui se produit en lui et à travers lui indique très exactement un mouvement avec lequel il ne coïncide pas, qui le dépasse et qui, à ce titre, peut être dit de révélation.’ Similarly, on the Spinozian analysis of Ruagh, see ibid., p. 25: ‘Le Ruagh exprime ce qui dans l’expérience d’un sujet provient en lui de la conjonction d’un force donnée et d’une capacité de production personnelle, telle l’unification vécue du divin et du naturel’; also ibid., pp 25–26: ‘La représentation objective de l’Esprit de Dieu, avec ce que comporte d’extériorité sa représentation, est intériorisée dans l’imagination; c’est un processus interne au prophète qui est sacralisé […] la révélation prophétique devient révélation de l’Esprit de Dieu dans l’esprit du prophète, à partir des moyens propres à ce dernier; elle se produit au

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experience is so impossible to generalize, why it necessarily varies depending on the qualities of each individual prophet and why the prophecy itself is always expressed through the rhetorical norms that govern the communication or delivery of revealed wisdom to the rest of the community.

2.1.  The logic of acceptability and the signum as a criterion for prophetic certainty The concept of the signum is central to the TTP’s analysis of the degree of certainty provided by the prophet’s experience and revelation. Indeed, it is through the signum that Spinoza addresses the notion of prophetic probability, that is, the power of the prophecy to elicit approval or belief. Traditionally, the concept of the signum has been regarded as closely related to that of endoxon.52 In rhetorical theory, based on the Aristotelian system and its development by Arabic philosophers, signs are predominantly indicators of probability, although there is another class of signs that are called irrefutable.53 From the moment he acknowledges that these signs must be tailored to the individual prophet, it seems clear that Spinoza is thinking mainly of probable signs. Probable signs offer a degree of certainty and encourage acceptance of the prophet’s vision as a genuine prophecy by certain individuals, or individuals belonging to a particular group, but not by

lieu exact de la connaissance naturelle, mais sans coïncider totalement avec celleci, car elle n’est ni universalisable ni effective en droit chez chacun de la même manière’. Emphasis added. 52 As early as his Analytica Priora (70a3–7), Aristotle codifies the probable premise (εἰκός) as an endoxic premise (πρότασις ἔνδοξος). Rhetorical arguments, therefore, are probable because their premises elicit approval or acceptance from a specific audience (on the subjective meaning of the concept of probability in ancient Greece, see Piazza, Francesca: Il corpo della persuasione. L’entimema nella retorica greca. Novecento: Palermo 2000, pp. 120–121; and Hoffman, David C.: ‘Concerning eikos. Social Expectation and Verisimilitude in Early Attic Rhetoric’. Rhetorica 26, 2008, pp. 1–29). This notion of probability persisted in the Arab tradition, where τὸ ἔνδοξον was translated as al-mahmud/‫المحمود‬, which originally meant ‘that which is valued’ or ‘that which is praiseworthy’. As Black (p. 139) correctly observes, it is not only modern dialectic and rhetorical works that translate the Greek endoxon as ‘probable’; the translator who produced the Latin version of Al-Farabi’s Didascalia in rhetoricam rendered al-mahmud as probabile. 53 On the assimilation of this concept in the Arab tradition, see Black, p. 138 ff. Aristotle uses the word σημεῖον as a general term for signs or indications, but goes on to draw a distinction between probable signs (which he alternately calls σημεῖον or εἰκός, ‫ عالمة‬in the Arab tradition), and the much smaller class of necessary or irrefutable signs (τεκμήριον in Greek and ‫ داللة‬in Arabic).

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anyone else.54 The exception to this rule are those prophecies that do not reveal any new information, but instead relate to aspects of Mosaic Law. In this case, there is actually no need for signs; the fact that the prophecy corresponds with these familiar injunctions is enough to prove its veracity and ensure its acceptance.55 The need for the signum, then, derives from the subjectivism of the revelation. Its probability – in other words, its aptness to be accepted by the prophet and the people to whom he is to communicate it – depends on it presenting itself in a form that reflects the qualities, dispositions, opinions and concerns of the prophet and his people.56 This is exactly why prophecy is of no value whatsoever in cognitive development: the aspects that serve the logic of acceptance can only reinforce the prophet’s existing opinions and prejudices.57 This was true even for Moses, who, despite his special prophetic status, was no less afflicted with intellectual weakness, as shown by his ignorance of God’s omnipresence.58 In the Epitome, the need for a revelation to cohere with the particular and the subjective is especially problematic. This is because Averroes believes

54 In TTP II (G, III, 35), not only does Spinoza alert us to the wide range of views held by different prophets, but he also raises the possibility that a prophet might harbour contradictory opinions: ‘I shall now show more carefully and in greater detail […] that the Prophecies or representations also varied according to the opinions the Prophets embraced [pro opinionibus Prophetarum, quas amplexi fuerint, etiam variarent], and that the Prophets had various, and indeed, contrary, opinions, as well as various prejudices [& quod Prophetae varias, imo contrarias habuerint opiniones, & varia praejudicia […] curiosius, & prolixius ostendam].’ See the examples in TTP II (G, III, 41–42). 55 TTP, II (G, III, 32). 56 In TTP II (G, III, 32–34), Spinoza presents a set of examples illustrating the varied forms that these signs can take, in line with the criteria described above. It is interesting to note that, within this variability, he includes stylistic differences arising from variations in imaginative capacity; these differences may explain the variation in prophetic representations and hieroglyphics with identical meaning, such as those received by Isaiah and Ezekiel. 57 TTP, II (G, III, 35): ‘I shall now show more carefully and in greater detail – for I think the matter is of great importance – that the Prophecies or representations also varied according to the opinions the Prophets embraced, and that the Prophets had various, and indeed, contrary opinions, as well as various prejudices […]. From these propositions I shall conclude that prophecy never rendered the Prophets more learned, but left them with preconceived opinions, that for that reason we are not at all bound to believe them concerning purely speculative matters.’ Licata (2013b, p. 266) identifies a parallel to this passage of the TTP in Beḥinat ha-Dat (§ 36). 58 TTP, II (G, III, 38).

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prophecy to originate in the active intellect, which is immaterial, and yet it pertains to practical matters relevant to particular men, belonging to a particular group or community, in a particular time and place.59 In any case, Averroes’ account of all the things an interpreter would need to be closely familiar with in order to correctly interpret the dreamlike images of a prophecy reveals a clear parallel to Spinoza’s arguments. At the core of this interpretative task is the identification of specific images significant to particular kinds of people, depending on their various natures, the faculties of their souls, the material conditions in the region where they live and the opinions and beliefs that they hold.60 All of this explains why prophetic certainty is inferior to the kind of certainty we talk about in mathematics, why the prophet is cognitively inferior to the wise man and why prophecy, which is concerned with practical and future things, is cognitively inferior to wisdom and intellectual knowledge of natural principles, which can be proven mathematically.61

59 Averroes, Epitome of Parva Naturalia II, 3, 43–44: ‘Since these intelligences [scil. separate intelligences] do not comprehend particulars, would that I knew how the Active Intellect could endow the particular form that is peculiar to a certain time, a certain place, a certain class of men or a certain individual in that class! We indeed see that man can comprehend such things and, during sleep, can have a foreknowledge of future occurrences such as are peculiar to his body, his soul, his relatives, the people of his city or nation, or in general to those with whom he is already acquainted.’ 60 Ibid., p. 49: ‘It is a requisite condition that the interpreter know those dreamimages that are common to all peoples and the dream-images that are peculiar to each and every people and to each class of individuals among that people, for peoples differ in this matter in two respects: first, according to nature, that is, according to the faculties of their souls and according to the existing conditions peculiar to them in their province or city; second, according to the dream-images and opinions in the tradition of which they have been raised and in which they have been accustomed to believe since birth.’ 61 TTP, II (G, III, 32): ‘Because the certainty the Prophets had from signs was not mathematical – i.e., a certainty which follows from the necessity of the perception of the thing perceived or seen – but only moral, and the signs were given only to persuade the Prophet, it follows that the signs were given according to the opinions and capacity of the Prophet. So a sign which would render one Prophet certain of his Prophecy could not at all convince another, who was steeped in different opinions. That’s why the signs varied in each Prophet. Similarly, the revelation itself varied in each Prophet, as we have said, according to the disposition of his bodily temperament, according to the disposition of his imagination, and according to the opinions he had previously embraced.’ Cf. Epitome, II, 3, 43: ‘As for dreams, it is manifest from their nature that they cannot possibly deal with any of the theoretical things. They only deal with future things’.

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3. The concept of taṣawwur and the prophetic imagination The Epitome’s reflections on prophecy include several observations on the imaginative faculty of conceptualization (taṣawwur), understood as a kind of preparatory knowledge to empirical knowledge that derives from affirmation or acceptance.62 As we will see, in prophecy the task of conceptualization is linked to a number of functions that we might regard as belonging to the poetical realm, such is the vividness of the images that convey the revelation, whether it be a command or counsel from God or a glimpse of future events. As noted earlier, this imaginative function is described in annotation III (ad. TTP I; G, III, 27) as analogous to the role of the senses during wakefulness. The prophetic imagination presents us with observable phenomena as if they were right in front of our eyes. It performs a kind of mimicry of observable phenomena, through a process analogous to sensory perception. Accordingly, we might say that the logic of acceptance or affirmation is underpinned by a logic of similitude. This logic of similitude that we find in the TTP can also be traced back to the Epitome. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that the Epitome is not sufficiently clear as to the distinction between conceptualization and affirmation, or between empirical knowledge and preparatory knowledge. Averroes introduces these distinctions when he attempts to differentiate between the kind of knowledge we acquire during wakefulness and the kind we can access in dreams. Essentially, the difference is that when we are awake, we obtain knowledge discursively, through propositions, while any knowledge we gain in dreams is accessed non-discursively, without any prior propositions, and responds to the free drift of the imagination. Blumberg points to a quotation from the De’ot ha-Filosofim (ch. 7) by Ibn Falaquera, which allows us to form a satisfactory explanation of the nature of this preparatory knowledge associated with thought formation, or conceptualization in the case of prophecy.63 In short, preparatory knowledge for formulating a concept (taṣawwur) is knowledge of the meaning of the words that make up the definition of that concept – the definition we would give if asked what that concept was or what it consisted of. As acceptance or assent (taṣdīq) consists in affirming or negating a concept with reference to an object, the necessary preparatory knowledge would be the actual understanding of that concept. To answer the question, ‘is this a man?’ we must

2 Averroes, Epitome of the Parva Naturalia, II, 3, p. 42. 6 63 Blumberg, 1961, p. 104, n. 16.

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understand what it means to ‘be a man’. Likewise, to know whether this man is wise, we need to know what a man is and what it means to be wise.64 In the case of prophecy, potential knowledge of any particular future circumstance cannot be explained on the basis of preparatory knowledge of a concept that will later be affirmed or denied. Rather, this preparatory knowledge concerns likenesses or similarities,65 which take the form of particular images through which things that are absent are presented as if they were physically present. This interplay of likenesses can be considered a form of imitation,66 which normally involves a certain triangulation between the universal, the particular observable phenomenon to which the prophecy relates and the image itself,67 although it is also possible that a prophecy will conjure the actual physical form and not merely its likeness.68 Once again, as we have seen before, this preparatory knowledge, which consists in the formation of an image that allows the prophet to perceive things as present when in fact they are not, varies in function of the characteristics of each individual prophet. It will depend upon the things that are unique or typical of his time, his location, his own body and the people in his life who matter to him.69

64 On this point the reader might also wish to consult the work by Wolfson cited earlier (1973, p. 478–479). 65 According to Blumberg (1961, p. 9, n. 59) the same point was argued earlier by Aristotle in De divinatione per sompno. The likenesses (ὁμοιότητας) between the images seen in dreams and the real phenomena they represent are described as reflections on the surface of a body of water, which, being distorted, require some effort to interpret. 66 Epitome, p. 49. 67 Ibid., p. 47. Wolfson (1973, p. 481) sees here a remnant of Platonic terminology in a non-Platonic theoretical field. 68 Ibid., p.  48. As Black (p.  194  ff.) skilfully demonstrates, these ideas pre-date Averroes and can be found in the writings of Avicenna and Al-Farabi. She attributes the idea that there can be likenesses between images and universals, also present in Al-Farabi’s work, to a particular interpretation of Aristotle’s thesis that imagination is a necessary condition for the operation of various cognitive functions of the soul, including intellectual comprehension (Black, p. 198, n. 52, p. 199; cf. Aristotle, De anima, III, 3). 69 Epitome, p. 47: ‘The reason he comprehends of such particular things only what is peculiar to his own time, his own place, his own body and his own people, and not those other particular things that are common to them through their universal nature, is undoubtedly the fact that man will have in this kind of perception one of the classes of knowledge which precede verification […] namely, the knowledge of the concept which is prior to the verification. But man can acquire this kind of knowledge or this kind of cognition only with respect to individuals he has

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Spinoza’s analysis of Samuel’s auditory prophecy in the TTP could arguably be interpreted as indicating belief that the prophetic imagination possesses this kind of contextualized imitative capacity. This analysis is consistent with the idea that prophecy is a product of a free-roaming imagination, bound only by the limitations that the logic of similitude imposes on the formulation of the image or sound. Samuel’s imagination produced something that was similar to a voice he already knew; it imitated a voice, Heli’s voice, perhaps because there were traces of this voice in Samuel’s memory, because it was familiar70 or, although this is not suggested by Spinoza himself, because Heli formed part of the social circle that Samuel cared about. In short, both the operation and the product of the prophetic imagination can be explained through likenesses or imitations of observable phenomena produced by the imagination. Furthermore, Spinoza argues that the images and sounds that a prophet’s exceptionally vivid imagination is able to summon have a metaphorical dimension that allowed a nexus to be formed between the simple content of the concept in God’s mind and the form in which this content was communicated to the Hebrew people. Finally, our analysis of all this activity can also benefit from some observations on the variability of the style that prophecies display. Although prophecies vary in their level of sophistication, which has an influence on their persuasive power, these stylistic differences are completely extraneous to their cognitive content and can be explained by reference to the prophet’s level of education or learning.71

3.1.  Conceptualization and the free-roaming imagination Both Averroes and Spinoza recognize that the soul’s prophetic activity is a product of an untethered imagination. This unbounded imaginative exploration, as Averroes explains it, begins with information that the soul gathers through sensory perception during wakefulness,72 via a mechanism that

previously known, and in particular, with respect to those for whom he has great concern.’ 70 TTP, I (G, III, 17). 71 TTP, II (G, III, 33–34); particularly TTP, II (G, III, 34): ‘Even when the Prophetic representations and symbols signified the same thing, they still varied. For to Isaiah the glory of God leaving the temple was represented differently than it was to Ezekiel (cf. Isaiah 6 with Ezekiel 1) […]. Isaiah saw Seraphim with six wings, while Ezequiel saw beasts with four wings. Isaiah saw God clothed and sitting on a royal throne, while Ezekiel saw him as like a fire. There is no doubt that each of them saw God as he was accustomed to imagine him.’ 72 Epitome, p. 47: ‘Many people have denied the existence of this class of perceptions and have attributed to chance the existence of any such perceptions […] and still others have affirmed some and denied others. To reject their existence is

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begins in the imagination itself (when we are awake, this mechanism begins in sensory perception),73 without any effort on the part of the prophet.74 For Averroes, the imagination is free-roaming when it is not constrained by either memory or cognitive capacity. Although this happens most frequently in sleep, he admits the possibility that a similar process could occur during wakefulness, for example during times of emotional disturbance or illness. In fact, in both of these states people often display the excessive use of the imagination that can arise when the ties binding it to the cognitive faculty break down.75 When the prophet is no longer in control of his imagination, it is because his cognitive faculty lacks strength or, to put it another way, because cognitive activity is weak.76 It is at such moments that images take on the vividness that prophecy requires.77 tantamount to rejecting the existence of sense-objects, and especially the existence of true dreams; for there is not a person who has not at times had dreams that warn him of that which will happen in the future.’ 73 Ibid., p. 40: ‘We say that, since the sleeping person can sense as though he is seeing or hearing or smelling or tasting or feeling, without the presence of external senseobjects, it necessarily follows that the beginning of this movement in sleep must be where it ends during waking. Furthermore, since this movement during waking begins with the external sense-objects and ends with the faculty of memory, which is the fifth stage (of perceptions), it necessarily follows that it must originate from this faculty; but since the faculties of cogitation and memory do not function in sleep, (it must be attributed to) that which does function in sleep, namely, the imaginative faculty.’ 74 Ibid., p. 39: ‘It is appropriate, after explaining the nature of sleep, that we explain the nature of dreams and of those divine perceptions which are of the same class as dreams but are not related to the acquisition of man nor to his endeavor. We say that of these perceptions there are some that are called dreams, others that they are called divination, and still others that are called prophecy’ (emphasis added). 75 Ibid., p. 41: ‘The latter faculty [the imagination], indeed, is always in motion and in continuous activity in the formation of images and resemblances in moving from image to image.’ 76 Ibid., p. 41–42: ‘Sometimes, a similar condition will occur during waking, to one who is frightened or sick, and this as a result of the excessive activity of the imaginative faculty on such occasions; for, when its activity is intense, it, in turn, will move that by which it was moved, namely, the common sense. Indeed, the movement of the imaginative faculty will be excessive during sleep because it is released from the bond of the cogitative faculty and is no longer subject to its control. It is because of the weakness of this faculty, that is, the cogitative faculty.’ 77 Ibid., p. 41: ‘Thus it occurs that a person is able to apprehend sense-objects even though they are not present externally, because the objects of these senses have already taken form in the sense-organs, and it makes no difference whether these objects come from without (as during waking), or whether they come from within (as during sleep).’

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It is interesting to find Averroes’ remarks on prophetic activity during wakefulness echoed in Spinoza’s work. In the letter to Balling cited earlier, Spinoza comments on the madness that can be induced by fever or other changes in the body, and the kinds of evil things imagined by those with ‘thick blood’.78 In the TTP, we find another distinct example of this untethered imaginative activity, this time brought on by fear, in the story of the prophet Daniel.79 However, more pertinently for our purposes, the commonalities between Spinoza’s work and the Epitome are not confined to isolated cases of prophecy that can be attributed to medical causes or emotional disturbance. Both authors refer in more general terms to a free-roaming imagination that produces vivid images that can be interpreted to obtain a certain kind of knowledge about the future or about the simple concept in the mind of God. Averroes maintains that intensive use of any of the soul’s various cognitive capacities naturally causes the others to weaken. While the imagination becomes particularly expansive in dreams, this can also occur while we are awake. He envisages, therefore, a hypothetical dynamic whereby the various cognitive faculties reach a state of balance or imbalance, depending on one’s physical state (for example, asleep, awake or ill) and on the intensity with which the soul’s different faculties are operating in each of these states.80 For this same reason, the potential for conflict between these cognitive faculties, and for one to consistently dominate the others, seems to offer a psychological and cognitive explanation of the different anthropological types among the Hebrew people, as described in the TTP. We can explain the figure of the biblical sage by saying that his cogitative faculty continuously dominated his imagination, whereas someone whose imagination had broken free of the control exerted by his cogitative function might have become a prophet.81 There may, in turn, be a further hierarchy within this second category, 8 Letter 17 (G, IV, 77). 7 79 TTP, II (G, III, 34–35). 80 Averroes, Epitome of the Parva Naturalia, p. 48: ‘As to the question why this kind of perception is peculiar to sleep, the reason is the fact that, since the soul is single in subject and multiple in faculties, therefore when it uses one class of faculties, it will be weaker in the use of another class of faculties. Thus, when it uses external perception, it will be weaker for the use of internal perception; and when it uses any class of motor faculties, it will become weaker for the use of perceptive faculties. Likewise, when it uses some of the internal faculties, it becomes weaker for the use of other faculties, as in the case where the faculty of imagination becomes weaker when the cogitative faculty is in use, or vice versa, when the faculty of imagination is active, the cogitative faculty becomes weaker.’ 81 Cf. TTP, II (G, III, 41), where Spinoza points to Solomon as a prototype of the biblical sage, who ‘spoke from the power of the natural light’ more than any other, while emphasizing the ignorance of Moses, first among prophets.

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according to how vividly each prophet is able to imagine. This is coupled to a corresponding distinction between different degrees of prophetic perspicuity. For example, Spinoza attributes the lack of clarity in Daniel’s prophecies to the disparity between his imaginative capacity in wakefulness and his prophetic capacity in sleep, as well as to his emotional state.82

4. Prophecy, internal aid and external aid The final point that I would like to discuss is how prophecy fitted into the lives of the Hebrew people, and its general practical value to them. The functions of conceptualization and acceptance found their ultimate vocation in their salvation. In the chapter dedicated to divine law (TTP IV), Spinoza recognizes the spirit of the law in the commandment to love God as the highest good (Deum ut summum bonum amare),83 as knowledge and love of God are our highest good and the ends to which all our actions should be directed.84 However, a man of flesh and blood is incapable of grasping the meaning of divine law through his own intellect. This, then, is the unique purpose of prophecy:  to provide a means whereby a people can come to know this law in a way that makes sense to them. Mosaic Law, in fact, can be called divine law (Lex Divina) or the law of God (Lex Dei) insofar as it has been sanctioned by prophetic light. However, it is not a universal law, but rather one intended for the salvation of a particular people, adapted to their talents.85 Yet, Mosaic law, intended for one specific group, is also a human law. The same is true of the revelation given to Adam and, in general, the content of all revelation regardless of the prophet who receives it. It follows, therefore, that while this content, taking the form of a law or institution for a particular people, revealed the behaviours necessary to keep that people united and help them successfully navigate danger, leading them

2 TTP, II (G, III, 34–35). 8 83 TTP, IV (G, III, 60–61). 84 TTP, IV (G, III, 61). 85 TTP, IV (G, III, 61): ‘We have explained, therefore, what the divine law consists in above all, and what laws are human, viz. all those which aim at something other (than the knowledge of God) – unless they have been enacted by revelation. For as we have shown above, that is another reason why we may refer things to God. It’s in this sense that the law of Moses, although not universal, but accommodated for the most part to the mentality and special preservation of one people, can still be called God’s Law, or divine Law. For we believe it was enacted by the Prophetic light [& hoc sensu lex Mosis, quamvis non universalis, sed maxime ad ingenium & singularem conservationem unius populi accomodata fuerit, vocari tamen potest Lex Dei, sive lex divina; quandoquidem credimus, eam lumine Prophetico sancitam fuisse].’

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to salvation and the birth of an empire,86 it also codified divine law, simply because those receiving the revelation lacked cognitive capacity. Prophecy, then, is a form of guidance conceived especially for anyone who is incapable of grasping divine law intellectually. So, the warning to worship God delivered to the Hebrews by their prophets was formulated in a way that their childlike minds could understand.87 This was the defining characteristic of the Hebrews: a form of religiosity that was by no means the fruit of excellence in science or any other speculative activity, far less a sign that they were God’s chosen people. Just as the logic of similitude and the logic of acceptance seem to echo the theoretical universe we find in the Epitome, the doctrine of external aid, as a general framework for understanding prophecy from the perspective of a particular people’s specific needs, also has clear roots in Averroes’ text. In the Epitome, the answer to the question of why prophecies occur is found precisely in the concern, solicitude or care of nature or God for those men whose cognitive faculty is weak.88 Prophetic experiences, the imaginatively 86 TTP, IV (G, III, 63–64): ‘So that revelation was a law, and God, as it were, a lawgiver or Prince, only in relation to Adam, and because of a defect in his knowledge. That’s also why the Decalogue was a law only in relation to the Hebrews, because of a defect in their knowledge. For since they did not know God’s existence as an eternal truth, they had to perceive as a law what was revealed to them in the Decalogue: that God exists and that he alone is to be worshipped […]. What we say about the Israelites and Adam must also be said about all the Prophets who wrote laws in the name of God: they did not perceive God’s decrees adequately, as eternal truths. For example, we must say even of Moses himself that by revelation, or from the foundations revealed to him, he perceived the way the people of Israel could best be united in a certain region of the world, and could form a whole social order, or set up a state.’ 87 TTP, III (G, III, 45): ‘But though we say that in the passages of the Pentateuch just cited Moses was speaking according to the Hebrews’ power of understanding [ad Hebraeorum captum locutum fuisse], we still don’t wish to deny that God prescribed those laws of the Pentateuch only to them, or that he spoke only to them, or, finally, that the Hebrews saw wonders whose like no other nation ever saw. We mean only that Moses wanted to warn the Hebrews in this way, and especially by these reasons, so that he might bind them more to the worship of God, in accordance with their childish power of understanding [Mosen tali modo, iisque praecipue rationibus Hebraeos monere voluisse, ut eos ex ipsorum puerili captu ad Dei cultum magis devinciret].’ 88 According to Blumberg, 1961 (p. 109, n. 49), the Latin word sollicitudo, the Arabic ‫ عناية‬and the Hebrew ‫ החגשה‬derive from the Greek infinitive φροντίζειν as used by Aristotle in De divinatione, 2, 464a 29 ff.: ‘That certain persons in particular should have vivid dreams, e.g. that familiar friends should thus have foresight in a special degree respecting one another, is due to the fact that such friends are most solicitous on one another’s behalf.’

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mediated foresight of important events in the lives of men, those with a bearing on their salvation or destruction, are the form in which nature itself equips the least cognitively gifted with the means to navigate safely the multiple dangers that threaten the community’s prosperity.89 The prophetic imagination is therefore understood as a means for guiding a people towards salvation in a way that accommodates their specific needs, when that people has no prospect of guiding themselves through their own intellectual endeavour. In the third chapter of the TTP, this idea is expressed in the term Dei directionem (God’s guidance),90 which encompasses both Dei auxilium externum and Dei auxilium internum (God’s external and internal aid). The entire order of nature, the whole chain of natural phenomena, follows a fixed and immutable pattern determined by the universal laws of nature, which are none other than God’s eternal decrees (Dei aeterna decreta). These decrees do not envisage a more or less favourable divine disposition towards the multiple different peoples on Earth; they simply require a certain degree of adjustment to allow for the specific needs of each. So, as we have observed, Spinoza does not deny that the precepts in the Pentateuch truly applied exclusively to the Hebrew people, or that the only explanation for this exclusivity is the set of particular cognitive characteristics that they shared.91

89 This idea had already been suggested in the Epitome, II, 3, 43: ‘As for dreams, it is manifest from their nature that they cannot possibly deal with any of the theoretical things. They only deal with future things. Be that as it may, generally, this kind of endowment is very noble and is attributed to a principle that is higher and more noble than the principle of free choice. Indeed it is through the divine element and full solicitude concerning man that man acquires this kind of knowledge of many things.’ It is examined in more detail later on (ibid., p. 49): ‘As for the question why dreams occur, they take place because of (nature’s) full solicitude for man. This is for the reason that, since man is defective in the knowledge and comprehension of the rational, cogitative faculty by which he can comprehend the coming-into-being of useful or harmful things in the future, so that he can prepare himself for the thing and be ready for it and also rejoice when the good occurs and strive for its occurrence, the faculty (of dreaming) will therefore aid this noble foretokening and this spiritual perception. Consequently, it is said that this perception is part of such and such a prophecy. This is manifest in the dreams which King Pharaoh had and concerning which he queried Joseph, may he rest in peace! When Joseph, may he rest in peace, had interpreted the dreams, he ordered them to make ready for the famine which the dreams had foretokened to him, by storing away the wheat in their stalks during the years of plenty, so that it would not spoil but would remain intact for the years of famine.’ 90 TTP, III (G, III, 45 ff). 91 TTP, III (G, III, 45).

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Because of these characteristics, they were not able to access the internal aid they would require to attain knowledge or understanding of things through their first causes. By internal aid, we mean everything that human nature can muster in order to preserve our own existence, to control our passions and to instil the habit of virtue.92 It is thanks to that internal aid that societies or political orders achieve stability, as societies that lack internal aid are at the mercy of fortune – in other words, God’s guidance working through external causes.93 On the other hand, it is these external causes that determine whether a people remains safe and in good health. While deficiencies in internal aid can be an obstacle to creating a political order that fosters and protects safety and good health, it is not impossible that a community could achieve these goals regardless, in which case it may attribute its good fortune to God’s mysterious work.94 This is what happened to the Hebrews, who could only be considered chosen in the sense that circumstances and fortune allowed them to create a state and preserve it over time, which was largely due, Spinoza claims, to God’s external aid.95 Obedience and disobedience are given their just reward in the form of material advantages or disadvantages that sustain or corrode the safe and healthy life of the people.96 However, this external aid, in the language of scripture, is expressed through God’s promise to the Hebrews, whereby he vows to protect them against the buffeting of fortune.97 So, it appears that external aid is conceived in the TTP as akin to God or Nature’s concern for mankind, as discussed in the Epitome. This hypothesis gathers even more weight when we consider that the TTP identifies prophecy as the form taken by the aid given to compensate for the deficiencies in the Hebrew people’s own nature that prevented them from building a stable and prosperous future. Old Testament Law, imparted through revelation, is a set of rules that applied solely and exclusively to the Hebrews, by virtue of their specific qualities. These qualities are what determined how God and his attributes were imagined in the prophecies through which these rules were laid

2 TTP, III (G, III, 46). 9 93 TTP, III (G, III, 46). 94 TTP, III (G, III, 47). 95 TTP, III (G, III, 47): ‘For the most part this was just by God’s external aid’; TTP, III (G, III, 48). ‘Their election, therefore, and their calling consisted only in the enduring prosperity of their state and in (other temporal) advantages.’ 96 TTP, III (G, III, 48, 49). 97 Annotation IV Ad. p. 48, line 8 (TTP, III; G, III, 252) draws on Genesis (15, 1) to demonstrate how the content of God’s promise to the Hebrew patriarchs should be understood in terms of a defence against fortune. God was promising that they would enjoy certain advantages and be protected from material want.

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down, independently of any external aid that God may have granted other peoples by the same means.98 Although scripture offers no irrefutable proof that God’s external aid took the form of prophecies in this case, Spinoza makes the same argument that we found in the Epitome: that prophecy is not a talent unique to the Hebrews, but a natural facility for man’s education in divine law.99

5. Conclusions If we compare the Epitome and the TTP, it becomes apparent that there are various commonalities in how they account for both the cognitive and anthropological/practical dimensions of prophecy. By virtue of its brevity, the Epitome provides a convenient overall framework in which to place a critical theory of prophecy as understood in the religious circles that Spinoza was addressing. Averroes eschews a dogmatic approach in favour of a naturalistic reading in which prophecy, as a cognitive phenomenon, is accessible to everyone and every people, even if certain individuals could be said to display a particular talent for it. Moreover, the prophet’s unique gift, reduced to the vividness of his imagination, does not imply any kind of epistemic privilege – quite the opposite, in fact. The dominance of a free-roaming imagination diminishes his likelihood of reaching an understanding of eternal truths, allowing him to access only certain practical truths that will lead his particular community to salvation. In this way, even if we allow that prophecy has a practical value, an important place is preserved within the political community for philosophy.

98 TTP, III (G, III, 48): ‘I add only this: the Laws of the Old Testament were revealed and prescribed only to the Jews. For since God chose only them to constitute a particular social order and state, they necessarily had to have special laws. Whether God prescribed special laws to other nations also and revealed himself to their Legislators prophetically, i.e., under those attributes by which they were accustomed to imagine God, that seems to me not sufficiently established. But this, at least, is evident from Scripture itself: that by God’s external guidance the other nations also had a state and their own special laws.’ 99 TTP, III (G, III, 50–51): ‘Since God is equally beneficent, compassionate, etc., to all, and the function of the Prophet was to teach men, not the special laws of their native land so much as true virtue, and to advise them about that, there is no doubt that all the nations had Prophets, and that the gift of Prophecy was not peculiar to the Jews (donum Propheticum Judaeis peculiare non fuerit) […]. Although the sacred histories of the Old Testament do not establish that the other Nations had as many Prophets as the Hebrews, or indeed that God sent any gentile Prophet expressly to the nations, that does not matter. For the Hebrews were concerned to write only of their own affairs, and not those of other nations.’

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Meanwhile, the specific process of accessing these practical, specific truths that Spinoza describes signals the clear influence of traditional rhetorical and poetical principles on his approach, as indispensable constituents of the logics of assent and similitude. These elements can certainly be found in various forms in other sources within the same tradition, but the Epitome has the distinction of distilling them all into a single text. Occasional lapses of clarity notwithstanding, we can identify important similarities between its analysis of the prophetic phenomenon and that of the TTP – or, by the same token, the value that Spinoza may have seen in it as an effective aid in the task of systematically arranging his own ideas on this question. In both texts, prophecy operates on the basis of probable likenesses that are meaningful to individuals of a particular group and of a particular natural and bodily constitution. Both assume that these probable likenesses are a function of the prophet’s prior opinions, prejudices and concerns. The prophetic inventio is governed by the same logic. This is the process through which the imagination presents the prophet with things that are not physically there, as if they were before his very eyes: things that hold the key to the salvation and stability of his own community. All of the above supports the conclusion that, if we are to acknowledge that the ideas we find in the TTP, particularly with respect to prophecy and prophets, were informed by texts originating in the Averroist tradition, then the Epitome deserves special distinction among them- as a vital influence on Spinoza’s work.

Josep Olesti Imperium in imperio: Theme and Variations Translated and edited by Cadenza Academic Translations The phrase ‘imperium in imperio’ appears four times in the corpus of Spinoza’s work. Two instances occur in the same paragraph of chapter XVII of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus;1 another is found in the preface to part III of the Ethica,2 and the fourth appears in chapter II, paragraph 6 of the Tractatus Politicus (TP).3 These four instances can each be attributed to one of two meanings. In the TTP, on both occasions the phrase (translated by Edwin Curley as ‘a state within a state’) refers to the situation that the Hebrew people found themselves in at one point in their history, when those who ruled over spiritual matters resisted the authority of their kings. By extension, this usage may also denote a situation where a state contains a church that operates independently of it, to the point where that church feels entitled, in extreme cases, to disobey the law. In both the Ethica and the Tractatus Politicus, it refers to the belief that man is exceptional to, and apart from, nature. Curley translates this usage as ‘a dominion within a dominion’. The aim of this chapter is to explore the relationship between these two meanings (which, from this point on, I will refer to respectively as political and metaphysical), in order to establish the extent to which the former meaning is subsumed by the latter  – or, more aptly, the extent to which they can be regarded as variations on the same theme. I  will show how the concept of power (potentia, or in some cases potestas)4 advanced in the Ethica, which allows Spinoza to expose the illusion of free will, at the same time provides justification for the civil sovereign’s plenitudo potestatis. 1 2 3 4

G, III, 220. G, II, 137. G, III, 277. There seems to be little substance to the famous distinction between potestas and potentia suggested by Antonio Negri (L’anomalia selvaggia. Saggio su potere e potenza in Baruch Spinoza. Feltrinelli: Milano 1981) following Martial Gueroult (Spinoza, I. Dieu. Aubier-Montaigne: Paris 1968, pp. 378–389, based on E, I, 34 and 35), who had earlier raised the possibility that potestas may denote a form of potentia that is purely hypothetical. Spinoza’s usage does not bear out this theory (cf. for example E, IV, ch. 32.; V, 29 dem., 42 dem.). Edwin Curley (trans. & ed.) (The Collected Works of Spinoza, 2 vols. Princeton University Press: Princeton NJ 1985–2016) translates both words as ‘power’. When I mean to specify one term or another, I will use the original Latin.

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The phrase ‘imperium in imperio’ is very well known, and there would be little interest in drawing attention to it here were it not for the fact that the relationship between its various meanings has so seldom been examined. As far as I am aware, the only author to have done so is François Zourabichvili, who refers to this relationship briefly and in passing in one of his works on Spinoza.5 To my mind, exploring the link between the phrase’s various meanings is essential if we are to understand its full scope.

1. The political meaning of imperium in imperio In the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Spinoza outlines the situation he means to denote by ‘imperium in imperio’ in chapter XVII, after having introduced the basic pillars of his political philosophy in the previous chapter. For our purposes, the main conclusion of that introduction is that the sovereign must always be obeyed, since disobedience would lead to the destruction of the state. In essence, collective life, organized in the form we call a state, consists in the requirement that all members give up their natural right to all things (‘jus […] ex natura ad omnia’).6 In other words, each individual must transfer all of his or her power (and therefore rights), without exception, to society, which everyone must obey. The slightest deviation in this transfer of power would eventually bring down the state.7 This does not mean that individuals must relinquish (and silence) their own opinions; indeed, the stated objective of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus is to defend the right of free expression. Rather, they relinquish the right to act upon their opinions and live by the counsel of their own judgement (‘ex proprio suo judicio’).8 That is why the Ethica equates disobedience with sin.9 At the core of this argument is the thesis that the sovereign10 is not bound by any law, but makes the laws

5 Zourabichvili, François: Le conservatisme paradoxal de Spinoza. Enfance et royauté. PUF: Paris 2002a, pp. 26–27. 6 TTP, XVI (G, III, 191). 7 TTP, XVI (G, III, 193). It is true that at a later point Spinoza specifies that this total transfer of power is purely theoretical, because there is a minimum of power that an individual cannot give up without destroying himself: ‘nemo unquam suam potentiam et consequenter neque suum jus ita in alium transferre poterit, ut homo esse desinat’ (TTP, XVII; G, III, 201). In reality, the sum of all these minima will mean that the power invested in the sovereign never exceeds the multitudinis potentia. 8 TTP, XX (G, III, 241–242). 9 E, IV, 37 sc. 2. 10 Spinoza almost always uses the plural, summae potestates, since there can in fact be more than one sovereign, as was the case in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century.

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that others must obey, even in the unlikely event (it is in the sovereign’s own interest to further the common good in order to preserve his own position)11 that these laws were absurd (‘tametsi absurdissimas’).12 A bad law would be a lesser evil than no law at all. Here, Spinoza considers the possibility that there might be an exception to this rule in cases where the sovereign’s orders are contrary to religion: ‘quid si summa potestas aliquid contra religionem et obedientiam, quam Deo expresso pacto promissimus, imperet?’13 The question places the reader at the crux of the theological–political problem. It articulates the traditional argument that religious authorities have persistently used to defy the rule of the civil sovereign and challenge his or her plenitudo potestatis14 – from the medieval wrangles between emperors and popes to the religious wars of the modern period. It is no coincidence that Hobbes dedicates half of the Leviathan to dismantling this argument. Spinoza’s position follows on from that of Hobbes. The sovereign must always be obeyed, for one fundamental reason: if any subject were permitted to disobey the sovereign’s orders when they did not concur with his own beliefs (‘contra suam fidem et superstitionem’),15 then anyone would have a valid excuse (‘sub hoc praetextu’) for doing whatever he pleased. Ultimately, the state itself would collapse.16 It is a logically flawless argument, and so Spinoza (who places fides and superstitio on the same level) cannot entertain any distinction between true and false beliefs. However, as a rhetorical exercise, he indulges us for a moment by considering the possibility that a true belief could justify disobedience to the sovereign’s laws when the two demand contradictory outcomes. Of course, such a belief should be entirely true and without error, which is normally far from being the case (‘circa religionem maxime errare solent homines)’.17 However, let us suppose that we knew for certain that the sovereign’s laws were contrary to the commandments of the true religion. This scenario does not invalidate the argument that permitting subjects

1 TTP, XVI (G, III, 194). 1 12 TTP, XVI (G, III, 194). 13 TTP, XVI (G III, 199). 14 The classic text on the origin of this concept and the struggle over its meaning is Arquillière, Henri-Xavier: L’augustinisme politique. Essai sur la formation des théories politiques du Moyen-Age. Vrin: Paris, 1934. On how its meaning evolved in the modern period, the reader might usefully consult the study by Gilberto Sacerdoti: Sacrificio e sovranità. Teologia e política nell’Europa di Shakespeare e Bruno. Einaudi: Torino 2002. 15 TTP, XVI (G, III, 199). 16 TP, III, 3 (G, III, 285). 17 TTP, XVI (G, III, 199).

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to disobey the sovereign would destroy the state, but it does make it rather futile, amounting to the assertion that in such a situation it would be better to destroy the state than to preserve it.18 Nevertheless, in reality this is a mere rhetorical question, since it requires us to meet an impossible condition: that the order to obey God instead of the sovereign be received through a sure and irrefutable revelation (‘quando certam et indubitatam habemus revelationem’).19 That this condition can never be satisfied is demonstrated by Spinoza’s criterion for authenticating a true revelation: the power to work miracles (‘potestatem […] ad facienda miracula’).20 By this point, Chapter VI has already set out to demonstrate that we cannot know God through miracles, but that his existence and will can only be revealed to us through nature’s immutable order.21 The religious question is not a trivial one, because, as Spinoza diligently underscores at the beginning of chapter XVII, the idea that the sovereign can exert power over the behaviour of his or her subjects without controlling their thoughts is an illusion, because power works its influence also (or perhaps we should say ‘above all’?)22 in the order of the imaginary: Quod etiam hinc quam clarissime constat, quod obedientia non tam externam, quam animi internam actionem respiciat; adeoque ille maxime sub alterius imperio est, qui alteri integro animo ad omnia ejus mandata obtemperare deliberat, et consequitur eum maximum tenere imperium, qui in subditorum animos regnat.23

Given that power is the measure of right, a sovereign who loses power loses the right to rule,24 and a sovereign who loses the consent of his or her subjects will lose both (as Spinoza impresses on us, the stability of a state rests fundamentally on the loyalty of its subjects:  ‘nunquam eo perventum est, ut imperium non magis propter cives, quam hostes periclitaretur, et qui id

18 This is what Spinoza implies when he suggests that the alternative to total obedience to a pagan sovereign (except when we know ‘certa revelatione’ that God has authorized us to disobey) is to refuse to be part of that sovereign’s society – in other words, to refuse to transfer our rights to him: TTP, XVI (G, III, 200). 19 TTP, XVI (G, III, 199). 20 TTP, XIX (G, III, 233). This argument is revisited in the Tractatus Politicus, III, 10 (G, III, 288–289). 21 TTP, VI (G, III, 85). 22 TTP, XVII (G, III, 202). Here, Spinoza’s argument carries echoes of Étienne de la Boétie’s Discours de la servitude volontaire. On Spinoza’s possible familiarity with La Boétie, cf. Olesti, Josep: ‘¿Presencia de La Boétie en el spinozismo? Sobre un ítem de la biblioteca de Spinoza’. Astrolabio: Revista Internacional de Filosofia 16, 2015, pp. 89–105. 23 TTP, XVII (G, III, 202). 24 TTP, XVI (G, III, 194); Letter 50.

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tenent, non magis illos, quam hos timerent.’)25 Even so, this consent is in jeopardy if subjects see the sovereign as a threat to their faith (and vice versa; there is no better way to ensure loyalty to the sovereign than to convince his subjects that he enjoys God’s benediction).26 It is therefore crucial to establish how the sovereign should manage the religious question. It is from this perspective that chapter XVII examines the case of the Hebrew state (respublica hebraeorum), with the aim of arriving at a set of general conclusions, discussed over the following chapters, that can be applied to any other state. The foremost characteristic of the Hebrew state was that it was a theocracy. The Hebrew people, having escaped Egypt and returned to what in a way might be called their natural state (because they had recovered their natural right to all things:  ‘jus suum naturale ad omnia, quae possent, iterum adepti sunt’),27 resolved to surrender this right only to God. Since they believed that only God could protect them (as he had shown the Egyptians), they agreed to obey him (‘nam hoc ipso, quod se sola Dei potentia servari posse crediderunt, omnem suam naturalem potentiam se conservandi […] in Deum transtulerunt’).28 Thus, protection and obedience are intertwined. In his work on Hobbes, Carl Schmitt would identify this logic as the founding principle of the state.29 This foremost characteristic of the Hebrew state is less significant than it might first appear, because, Spinoza adds, in reality God’s sovereignty was more notional than real. To all practical purposes, the figure that the Hebrews obeyed was Moses; hence, it was essentially a monarchy. This means that the truly significant fact about the Hebrew state is something else: that Moses, who conducted himself like a monarch, chose not one successor, but two. The first (Joshua) would govern the state, while the second (Aaron, and after him his descendants among the tribe of Levi, the Levites) would interpret divine law.30 By choosing not to invest both powers in the same person, Moses had found the most effective mechanism to prevent the sovereign from turning to tyranny and his subjects to rebellion.31 In fact, this move had two key advantages. First, it sidestepped one of the classic routes to rule by whim, as the sovereign could not now interpret the law (because this role was the preserve of the Levites)

5 TTP, XVII (G, III, 203–204). 2 26 TTP, XVII (G, III, 203–204). 27 TTP, XVII (G, III, 205). 28 TTP, XVII (G, III, 206). 29 Schmitt, Carl: Der Begriff des Politischen. Text von 1932 mit einem Vorwort und drei Corollarien. Duncker & Humblot: Berlin 1963, p. 53: ‘Das protego ergo obligo ist das cogito ergo sum des Staates.’ 30 TTP, XVII (G, III, 207–208). 31 TTP, XVII (G, III, 212).

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and nor could he violate it (because, as the law came from God, infringing it would incite his subjects to religious hatred, the most powerful form of hate there is: ‘summum subditorum odium, quale Theologicum esse solet, fugere non poterant.’)32 Moreover, the Hebrew princes (to whom any lawbreakers would have to answer) were united by religion, and religious observance made it unlikely that any new prophets (who might otherwise have made an impression on an oppressed people) would appear. Second, it ensured that the people would also keep faith with the laws of the state; since they believed that their kingdom was God’s kingdom, they would love their country and hate its enemies all the more fervently. This hatred was not only condoned, but was even considered devout (pius). In turn, it was fanned by the hatred that the Hebrews ignited in their enemies.33 Admittedly, the most compelling motive for this loyalty was pragmatic. Loyalty is humankind’s most potent driver (‘ratio utilitatis, quae omnium humanarum actionum robur et vita est’),34 and Hebrew citizens had more rights on their own territory than in any other state, while the obligation to practise charity greatly reduced the prevalence of poverty and associated social tensions. Most importantly, however, the Hebrew people were the subjects of God, not of one of their own (‘nemo suo aequali, sed soli Deo serviebat’),35 which is the arrangement men find most difficult to tolerate (‘Homines deinde nihil minus pati possunt, quam suis aequalibus servire, et ab iis regi’).36 As a result, they were able to avoid what we might call the cycle of servitude, that occurs when the emotional logic that rules individual behaviour is transplanted to the collective. The affective mimicry described in the Ethica (from the scholium to proposition 27 of part III onwards) is the key to understanding this cycle. All of us desire the things that are desired by people we imagine to be similar to ourselves (because if we believe someone to be similar to ourselves, we also believe that what makes him happy will make us happy too). Anyone who is without power, then, cannot help but desire it, and anyone who possesses power becomes trapped in a morass of hatred and antagonism. The only way to escape this cycle is to destroy the

2 TTP, XVII (G, III, 212). 3 33 TTP, XVII (G, III, 215): ‘nec causa communis deerat, qua odium semper magis ac magis incenditur, nempe ejus reciprocatio; nam nationes eos contra odio intensissimo habere debuerunt’. In the Ethica (III, 39, 40, 43) this reciprocity accounts for the spiral that creates a spontaneous escalation of hatred: by trying to destroy those we hate, because we imagine them to be the cause of our own sorrow, we become a cause of sorrow for them, and so they hate us in return. 34 TTP, XVII (G, III, 215–216). 35 TTP, XVII (G, III, 216). 36 TTP, V (G, III, 74).

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mechanism that drives it, namely, the idea that everyone is equal. Any subject would prefer to believe that if another has power that he does not, then that individual must possess some special quality that marks him out as different. This reasoning conspires fatally with the strategy concocted by a person who wants others to obey him, which is to convince others that he is, in fact, possessed of some privilege that makes him special (‘[Reges] putabant, si modo subditi et omnes eodem non ut aequales aspicerent, sed Deos esse crederent, libenter se ab iisdem regi paterentur, seseque facile ipsis dederent’).37 According to Spinoza’s portrayal of the Hebrew state, it successfully avoided the servitude that this dynamic provokes because the Hebrew people obeyed God and not an equal. Because of this, he continues, obeying the law, which came from God, seemed like freedom, not submission.38 However, if this is the case, what prompted the Hebrews to flout the law as often as they did, to the point where they conspired in their own suppression and ultimately saw their state in ruin? The answer cannot lie in some supposed innate contrariness, because the Hebrew people were no different by nature to those of other nations (‘[natura] nationes non creat, sed individua’).39 Rather, there is one historical event that materially altered the structure of the Hebrew state and, in particular, its way of regulating the management of religious affairs. This event was their worship of the golden calf: the sin of worshipping an idol instead of the one true God, of which the Israelites (with the sole exception of the Levites) were guilty (Exodus 32). Moses’ response to this was to restrict the ministry of holy matters to the Levites (his own tribe). As they performed these duties, they became increasingly resentful of the other tribes:  ‘eos continuo suae impuritatis et repudiationis arguebant.’40 The privilege granted to the Levites, and their poor management of this privilege, impelled more by the desire for vengeance

7 TTP, XVII (G, III, 204). 3 38 TTP, XVII (G, III, 202). 39 TTP, XVII (G, III, 217). Since men are bound by the same general laws that govern nature and, for example, everyone loves the things that they imagine bring them happiness and hate the things that they imagine bring them sorrow, different patterns of behaviour must be attributed to different configurations of causal factors, which, in the political sphere, essentially means different ways of organizing relationships between subjects, such as laws and customs (TTP, XVII; G, III, 217). This is the primary lesson that Spinoza takes from Machiavelli: there is no point in quashing a tyrant if we do not also quash the factors that drive a prince to tyranny (TP, V, 7; G, III, 296–297; the same formulation appears in TTP, XVIII; G, III, 220). 40 TTP, XVII (G, III, 218).

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than the good of the state,41 roused the other tribes to hatred (in accordance with the spiral of hatred described in the Ethica, which we have just discussed). The Hebrews began to aspire to break away from the rule of divine law and choose a mortal king, and the princes took advantage of this feeling, when the time was right, to seize back the power (jus summum imperii) they had lost to the priests.42 None of this would have happened if all of the tribes had kept the same rights, or if the pre-eminence of the Levites had not fed a desire for vengeance. However, historical accounts tell us that the true story is rather different. In fact, the privilege shown to the Levites provoked periodic unrest and revolt, until eventually the Israelites renounced divine law and chose a mortal king like other nations (1 Samuel 8: 4–5): so that the tribes would all remain fellow citizens, not any longer in virtue of divine law and the priesthood, but in virtue of the Kings’ law [ut omnes tribus non amplius juris divini, et pontificatus, sed Regum respectu concives manerent.]43

Spinoza relates that this gave rise to fresh revolts, which eventually brought the entire state to destruction: ‘Nam quid aliud Reges minus ferre possunt, quam precario regnare, et imperium in imperio pati?’44 In fact, the kings of Israel (after Saul and David) wanted all of the state’s power (omne jus imperii) for themselves, instead of being subject to laws they had neither enacted nor interpreted, and which they were unable to repeal to replace them with others:  ‘quare et imperium in imperio habebant, et precario regnabant.’45 They therefore allowed temples to be raised to other gods, and abetted in the appearance of new prophets who supported their interests. The Levites were opposed to this, and put their weight behind someone who spoke against the king and would defend divine right and take legal control of the state, or of a part of it (‘et imperium vel ejus partem jure possidendum’).46 The result was the destruction of the state. Had religious matters been managed in the same way from the very beginning, the Hebrew state might have endured indefinitely (‘imperium aeternum esse potuerit’).47 Spinoza bases his analysis on the history of the Hebrew state, but his aim is to derive lessons from this history that have general validity. The most

41 TTP, XVII (G, III, 218): ‘tantam animo coelesti fuisse iram, ut ipsas leges, quae semper solum universi populi honorem, salutem et securitatem intendunt, animo se vindicandi, et ad populum puniendum condiderit’. 42 TTP, XVII (G, III, 218). 43 TTP, XVII (G, III, 219). 44 TTP, XVII (G, III, 219–220). 45 TTP, XVII (G, III, 220). 46 TTP, XVII (G, III, 220). 47 TTP, XVII (G, III, 220).

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salient points for our discussion are the following:48 (1)  both religion and the state suffer when ministers of religion have the right to rule on matters of state. (2) It is dangerous to hold that purely speculative questions are matter of divine right, and to enact laws concerning opinions (about which people tend to disagree), because when opinions are treated as crimes, violence reigns. No one can give up the right to an opinion;49 it is best for the state if piety and external worship (‘Religionis cultum’) are located only in works, with everyone free to form their own opinions in all other respects.50 (3) It is necessary for both the state and religion to recognize the sovereign’s right to rule on what constitutes sacrilege. This means that only the sovereign holds jus circa sacra; anyone who challenges this right is effectively challenging the state itself:  ‘qui hanc authoritatem summis potestatibus adimere studet, is viam […] ad imperium affectat.’51 This is the only way that the sovereign can reign over the state effectively. If he relinquishes his right to rule on holy matters and allows the priesthood to become involved in matters of state, then it is the state itself that he is giving up. The state that was once his kingdom will be destroyed, because it will have lost the form or essence that defined it and taken on another, thereby

8 TTP, XVIII (G, III, 225–226). 4 49 Collective life organized in the form of a state demands that individuals give up their right to live according to their own judgement, but they do not give up the right to the faculty of judgement itself (‘Jure igitur agendi ex proprio decreto unusquisque tantum cessit, non autem ratiocidandi et judicandi’: TTP, XX; G, III, 241). To require them to do so would not even be feasible. This is the crux of the argument that leads Spinoza to defend the libertas philosophandi: since there is no such thing as free will, a subject cannot, even at the order of the sovereign, cease to hold the views that he holds (as his opinion is the product of the particular causal chain that has played out over the course of his life). Either he is accorded the right to express his views, or this right is removed from him through violence. Chapter XX of the TTP, which concludes the work, argues that only the first option is truly viable. 50 The distinction between internal and external worship (see, for example, TTP, XIX; G, III, 229) should be read in the light proposed by Hobbes in c­ hapter 42 of the Leviathan (Hobbes, Thomas: Leviathan, II. Rogers, Graham A. J./Schumann, Karl (eds.): Thoemmes: London–New York 2005, p. 394), which distinguishes between profession (which ‘is but an externall thing’) and faith (‘a gift of God, which Man can neither give, nor take away’). This overcomes the difficulties into which Spinoza’s concept of ‘externality’ leads us if taken literally, as shown by Charles Ramond in his introductory essay to a new critical edition of the Tractatus Politicus (Spinoza, Benedictus de/Ramond, Charles (trans. & ed.):  Oeuvres, V. Traité politique. PUF: Paris 2005 (1677), pp. 21–35. 51 TTP, XIX (G, III, 235).

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becoming something other than what it was.52 It is precisely this critical scenario (in the etymological sense of the term ‘critical’, that is, a decisive judgement taken in a situation of uncertainty) that is captured in the phrase ‘imperium in imperio’. This phrase, ‘imperium in imperio’, and others like it (‘civitas in civitate’, ‘regnum in regno’, ‘Staaten in Staaten’, ‘regeering in regeering’, etc.) are sprinkled liberally throughout the political and theological–political literature of the seventeenth century. We find the formulation ‘civitas in civitate’, for example, in Hobbes’s De cive and Pufendorf’s De iure naturae et gentium, albeit in the sense of factions (Hobbes) or corporate bodies (Pufendorf) within the state and without any specific allusion to religion.53 However, as Carl Gebhardt observes,54 it appears that this formulation first arose in a religious context, during the struggles between Huguenots and Catholics, and was later adopted as a factional motto. He points to the use of the phrase by authors dating back to Theodore Agrippa d’Aubigné (Du debvoir mutuel des Roys et des Subjects, published between 1610 and 1620), including Pierre de la Court (Politike Discoursen, IV, Leiden 1662 [6, p. 312]; Letter to Johan de Witt, 3 October 1662) and Locke (An Essay concerning Toleration, 1667). In the Dutch context, its first known usage was in the 1619 trial of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, accused of wanting to create ‘Staaten in Staaten, regeringe in regeringe’. We could add numerous further examples to those highlighted by Gebhardt that would confirm that the natural environment for this phrase is the discussion of the theological– political problem. Here it is worth pointing out that Hobbes himself uses the expression ‘regnum in regno’ in this sense in De homine.55 Meanwhile, the form ‘imperium in imperio’ appears frequently in the writings of French Hueguenot Louis du Moulin (Lewis du Moulin, Ludovicus Molinaeus), who studied medicine in Leiden before settling in England. It features prominently

52 François Zouravichvili’s book draws attention to the richness of the concepts of form and transformation in Spinoza’s philosophy. Cf. Zouravichvili, François: Spinoza. Une physique de la pensée. PUF: Paris 2002b; also ibid., 2002a. 53 Hobbes, Thomas: De cive, XIII, 13. In: Molesworth, W. (ed.): Opera philosophica, II. Thoemmes: Bristol 2009, p. 306; Pufendorf, Samuel von/Barbeyrac, Jean (trans.): De iure naturae et gentium, II. Basel 1771, p. 305. 54 G, V, 99–100. 55 Hobbes, Thomas: De homine, XIII, 7. In: id.: Opera philosophica, II p. 116. A few years earlier, the English parliamentarian Henry Parker employed the same phrase in his book The True Grounds of Ecclesiasticall Regiment (London 1641, p. 8). On the connection between Hobbes and Parker, cf. Skinner, Quentin: ‘Hobbes on Representation’. European Journal of Philosophy 13 (2), 2005, pp. 155–184.

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in his work Paraenesis ad aedificatores imperii in imperio (London 1656), as the title suggests.56 It seems unnecessary to continue adding further evidence to confirm that Spinoza’s use of ‘imperium in imperio’ in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, in the political sense with which we are concerned here, was not novel but consistent with contemporary usage. However, that does not absolve us from the task of determining whether Spinoza’s use of the phrase can accommodate, in addition to its common meaning in this historical context, the truly Spinozian conception of ‘imperium’. Does the existence of a religious authority that is beyond the reach of political power constitute an ‘imperium’ in the Spinozian sense? Or is this merely a metaphor? Later in this chapter, I will argue that the word ‘imperium’ is intended to be metaphorical when used in the metaphysical sense, since, while we might allow that the state can be regarded as an individual, like a man, it does not follow that a man can be regarded as a state.57 In the political sense, however, the case for 56 See Moulin, Louis Du: The Power of the Christian Magistrate in Sacred Things. London 1650 and the collection of letters Fasciculus Epistolarum Latine et Gallice. London, 1676, p. 204 (‘regnum in regno’). Henry Stube quotes Du Moulin in three letters to Hobbes: 7 [/17] October 1656, 26 December 1656 [5 January 1657], 14 [24] February 1657 (probably in reference to the Paraenesis: cf. Malcolm, Noel: The Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes. Clarendon: Oxford 1997, p. 314, p. 427). 57 This is a delicate question that has inspired a multitude of studies, most notably: Moreau, Pierre-François: Spinoza. L’expérience et l’éternité. PUF: Paris 1994, pp. 441–459. Balibar, Étienne: ‘Potentia multitudinis, quae una veluti mente ducitur’. In: Senn, Marcel/Walther, Manfred (eds.): Ethik, Recht und Politik bei Spinoza. Schulthess: Zürich 2001, pp. 105–137. Matheron, Alexandre: ‘L’État, selon Spinoza, est-il un individu au sens de Spinoza?’ In:  Czelinski, Michael et al. (ed.): Transformation der Metaphysik in die Moderne. Königshausen & Neumann: Würzburg 2003, pp. 127–145. The main difficulty in equating the state to an individual in the Spinozian sense of the word (as defined in the Ethica; G, II, 99–100) is that in the many instances when Spinoza claims that this is so (for example, E, IV, 18 sc.; TP, II, 21; III, 2; III, 5; III, 7; IV, 1; VI 1; VIII 6; VIII, 19), he modulates his statement with a qualifier (e.g., veluti, quasi) that appears to give it a metaphorical slant. To me, the most cogent position is that of Alexandre Matheron, who argues that Spinoza’s references to the state as an individual must be taken literally, not metaphorically, because the adverbial qualifier applies only to mens and not the entire phrase, which states that the minds and bodies of all ‘unam quasi Mentem, unumque Corpus componant’ (consider the passage at G, II, 223, for example). The qualifier, then, is there because a Spinozian could say that the law is an idea corporis of the corpus, which is the group of people who constitute the state, but not that the law is their mind. While we might say that every mens is an idea corporis, not every idea corporis is a mens; this term is reserved for more complex bodies. However, some difficulty remains (cf. E, II, 13 dem).

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its metaphorical use is less convincing. We might think that it must be a metaphor, given that even a church that declares itself free of state control does not thereby become a state. A church, after all, does not regulate its members’ behaviour coercively. However, the question is actually rather more nuanced. If a church preempts ‘the rights of making, interpreting, and repealing laws, fortifying cities, and making decisions about war and peace, etc.’, then it meets the necessary conditions of statehood (imperium) as defined in the Tractatus Politicus.58 The Ethica moves towards the same conclusion when it stresses ‘the power to prescribe a common rule of life, to make laws, and to maintain them – not by reason […] but by threats.’59 We must acknowledge that a church can also browbeat its members by promising joy or sorrow, thus manipulating fear and hope, those fundamental emotions (affectus) that make states possible in the first place. It is because we fear the same things and hope for the same things that we submit to the law and live under the state’s authority: ‘in statu civili omnes eadem metuant, et omnibus una, eademque securitatis sit causa, et vivendi ratio’;60 ‘status civilis naturaliter instituitur ad metum communem adimendum, et communes miserias propellendum.’61 Indeed, a church’s power of coercion consists in its ability to dangle unsurpassable joy and sorrow before its members, and to manipulate the attendant hopes and fears in such a way that individuals who are predisposed to these emotions become inured to the coercion of the state.62 However, a church (assuming that it is not itself a state, that is, it does not constitute a theocracy in itself but is contained within a civil state,

For a comprehensive discussion of the concept of the individual in Spinoza’s work, cf. Matheron, Alexandre. Individu et communauté chez Spinoza, I. Minuit: Paris 1969, pp. 9–78. 58 TP, II, 17 (G, III, 282). 59 E, IV, 37 sc. 2. 60 TP, III, 3 (G, III, 285). 61 TP, III, 6 (G, III, 286). 62 This is the problem posed by religious superstition as Spinoza defines it (because true religion is supposed to teach piety and obedience), which turns the superstitious person into a fool or a madman, who cannot be made to obey: ‘stultus, aut vesanus nullis praemiis, neque minis induci possit ad exequenda mandata’ (TP, III, 7; G, III, 287). This is why Hobbes makes a determined effort to show that the hell of which scripture speaks does not signify eternal suffering, but death – the same fate with which the state can threaten its subjects (Leviathan, Ch. 38, ed. cit., II, p. 351: ‘It is impossible a Common-wealth should stand, where any other than the Soveraign hath a power of giving greater rewards than Life; and of inflicting greater punishments than Death.’ The distinction between religio and superstitio, or between religion and apparent religion (species religionis), is the dominant theme of the preface to the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.

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‘in imperio’) has no way of effectively fulfilling the threats that it issues. As Spinoza points out,63 religion is only given the force of law by virtue of those who hold sovereignty (‘jus imperandi’/‘per eos qui imperium tenent’/‘ex jure imperii’). Its effectiveness, therefore, ultimately depends solely on the validation of believers – their willingness to give up their natural right to act ex suo ingenio. Yet, this is also true of the state in the ordinary sense; if a subject obeys it is because, at heart, he believes that the state’s continued existence serves his own best interest.64 Consequently, any church that undertakes to regulate men’s behaviour by coercing them through the manipulation of hope and fear (even if these hopes and fears relate to an afterlife and are sustained only by individual belief) must be regarded as an imperium in Spinoza’s sense of the word. If so, a church that has no aspiration to replace the state in which it operates, thus turning it into a theocracy (in which case it would simply be an imperium, and not an imperium in imperio), but holds itself exempt from the obligations imposed by that state, has in fact supplanted it. There can therefore be no real ‘imperium in imperio’, only one imperium: that of the sovereign. The political reality described as ‘imperium in imperio’ denotes an unstable, provisional situation that will inevitably tip the state into a new equilibrium, one way or another. It is the collective equivalent of what at the individual level the Ethica calls fluctuatio animi:65 a contradictory emotional state in which a person gives himself over to his imagination and becomes incapable of rousing himself to a rational mode of life. It is an emotional mental state that produces two antithetical propensities, which, being antithetical, cannot coexist indefinitely. The balance must shift in favour of one or the other, because one individual cannot accommodate two opposing forces.66 If they were both to persist, they would destroy him. The same is true of the imperium.

2. The metaphysical meaning In the Ethica and the Tractatus Politicus, the meaning of the phrase is transposed from the political to the metaphysical. However, this transposition does not entirely erase the political sense of ‘imperium’; rather, it turns it into a metaphor. In fact, in both texts Spinoza uses the phrase to refer to the majority view (plerique) that man instead of being something natural, wich follows 3 TTP, XIX (G, III, 228–229). 6 64 TP III, 7 (G, III, 287). 65 E, III, 17 sc. 66 E, V, ax. 1.

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the common laws of nature, is different to the other things and is outside of nature (extra naturam), ‘veluti imperium in imperio’. In the Tractatus Politicus, contextual necessity compels him to introduce an additional nuance, declaring that the ignorant are also part of nature and obey its laws. However, this nuance does not alter the intended meaning, which is quite clear. Spinoza uses the phrase to crystallize one of his conclusions from the first two parts of the Ethica: the rejection of the illusion of man’s singularity. This singularity was traditionally attributed to the fact that man possess two faculties that other creatures lack: intellect, or the ability to think, and free will. For the purposes of our discussion, we can focus exclusively on the second of these faculties, because it is this supposed free will that lies at the root of the belief that mankind is ‘imperium in imperio’: For they believe that man disturbs, rather than follows, the order of nature, that he has absolute power over his actions, and that he is determined only by himself [Nam hominem naturae ordinem magis perturbare, quam sequi, ipsumque in suas actiones absolutam habere potentiam, nec aliunde, quam a se ipso determinari, credunt.]67

The Tractatus Politicus explains belief in this absolute power (absolutam potestatem) of human self-determination as stemming from the conviction that the human mind did not develop through natural means, but was directly created by God. In both texts, the fact that man stands outside the common order of nature is presented as the explanation for the mind’s capacity to reason correctly (‘ratione recte utendi’).68 This in turn gives us absolute control over our own actions (‘in suas actiones absolutam habere potentiam’)69 and absolutum imperium over our emotions, allowing us to rise above them.70 The Ethica explicitly refers to Descartes as an advocate of this belief.

7 E, III, praef. (G, II, 137). 6 68 TP, II, 6. 69 Gebhardt uses the word ‘potentiam’ in the Opera Posthuma (this chapter refers to the anastatic reprint: Spinoza, Benedictus de: Opera Posthuma. ed. Gebhardt, Carl. Quodlibet: Macerata 2008 (1677). The manuscript copy of the Ethica discovered in the Vatican Library in 2011 uses ‘potestatem’ (cf. Spruit, Leen/Torato, Puna (eds.).: The Vatican Manuscript of Spinoza’s Ethica. Brill: Leiden/Boston 2011). The reader is advised to compare Gebhardt’s text with this copy, which has a few surprises to offer. On this topic, cf.: Brandau, John: ‘Review of The Vatican Manuscript of Spinoza’s Ethica (Brill, 2011)’. Neo-Latin News 62 (2), 2014, pp. 100–102; Olesti, Josep: ‘La versió catalana de l’Ètica de Spinoza. Les raons d’una traducció’. Enrahonar. An International Journal of Theoretical and Practical Reason 57, 2016, pp. 153–167. 70 E, III, praef. (G, II, 138).

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In fact, Descartes’ work is a paradigmatic case of the kind of Christianityprimed argument that Spinoza rejects. Descartes claims that humans, unlike animals,71 have free will;72 that this free will is our highest perfection (‘summam esse hominis perfectionem’);73 and that it gives us total mastery over our inclinations (which ‘sont absolument en son pouvoir’),74 so that ‘il n’y a point d’ame si foible, qu’elle ne puisse, estant bien conduite, acquerir un pouvoir absolu sur ses passions.’75 According to the preface to part V of the Ethica, the notion that humans have an ‘imperium absolutum’ over their emotions can be traced back to before Descartes, to the Stoics: ‘Stoici tamen putarunt, eosdem a nostra voluntate absolute pendere, nosque iis absolute imperare posse.’76 All of these passages demonstrate the importance of the semantic field attached to the word ‘imperium’:  ‘absolutam habere potentiam’, ‘absolutam potestatem’, ‘absolutum imperium’, ‘a nostra voluntate absolute pendere’, ‘imperare’. For Spinoza, the verb ‘impero’ signifies at least two things, close but not identical in meaning:  ‘to govern/to command’, in the sense of exercising authority/giving orders, and ‘to govern’ in the sense of reigning or being in control. These two (obviously connected) meanings delineate an unequivocal metaphorical space, namely, the idea of having others under one’s rule, being master and wielding power (potentia or potestas). Translating the word imperium is an equally complex prospect. We have seen how even within the Tractatus politicus it is given at least three different meanings;77 sometimes it means ‘sovereignty’, sometimes it means ‘state’ in the sense of the system of institutions that govern a community and sometimes it means ‘state’ in the sense of the collective living under that system’s governance. By extension, we might add another meaning: the territory (both literal and figurative) that this collective inhabits. This last meaning seems to be what is intended by the phrase ‘imperium in imperio’ in the Ethica and the Tractatus Politicus, which would explain Curley’s translation, ‘dominion’. To say that mankind is an ‘imperium in imperio’, then, means that it is a territory ruled by laws that apply only to us, distinct

1 Letter to Mesland, 2 May 1644; AT, IV, 117. 7 72 Descartes, René: Principia Philosophiae, I, 6. In: Adam, Charles/Tannery, Paul (= AT) (eds.): Oeuvres, VIII, 6. Vrin: Paris 1996 (1897–1909). 73 Principia, I, 37; AT, VIII, 18. Cf. also Meditationes de prima philosophiae, IV; AT, VII, 57: ‘Sola est voluntas, sive arbitrii libertas […] adeo ut illa praecipue sit, ratione cujus imaginem quandam et similitudinem Dei me referre intelligo.’ 74 Les passions de l’ame, 41; AT, XI, 359. 75 Les passions de l’ame, 50; AT, XI, 368. 76 G, II, 277. 77 Matheron, 2003, p. 140.

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from the laws that govern other territories (that is, nature in general). The specificity of these laws means that men have absolute dominion over their own actions, whereas the rest of nature is subject to general laws that determine the behaviour of all natural phenomena. Mankind is thus viewed as an imperium in which man imperat: an imperium, then, of the second degree, or raised to the second power. This understanding distils into a single image a good proportion of the philosophical arguments that Spinoza rejects. The first part of the Ethica, after the first twenty-five propositions have outlined the general contours of Spinoza’s philosophy and introduced the idea that things are no more than God’s modes (that is, finite expressions of his attributes),78 is devoted to determining the ontological status of these modes. The first thing that Spinoza tells us about them (propositions 26 and 27), after stressing that their behaviour is completely dependent on God (in other words, on nature as a productive force, ‘Natura naturans’),79 is that modes are subject to both a vertical order of causation (substance/modes) and a horizontal order of causation (mode/mode). As a result, everything in the world is caught up in a causal chain that allows for no exceptions (‘quodcunque singulare, sive quaevis res, quae finita est’, etc.).80 Or, to put it another way,81 there are no contingencies in nature; everything is determined, in both its existence and its behaviour (‘existendum, et operandum’). What Spinoza is expressing here is a form of necessitarianism that denies any role for chance in our reality.82 This claim applies both to the intellect (which, like anything else, is a mode, or something produced)83 and to the will. Proposition 32 sets this out as: ‘Voluntas non potest vocari causa libera, sed tantum necessaria.’ This proposition is held to be universally valid; in other words, it is true whether we are talking about a finite will or an infinite will, because even the infinite 8 E, I, 25 cor. 7 79 E, I, 29 sc. 80 E, I, 28. 81 E, I, 29. 82 Scholium 1 of E, I, 33 states explicitly that when we hold something to be contingent, or merely possible, it is because we are unable to recognize its necessity. This claim is unaffected by the fact that, later on (E, IV, def. 3 and 4), Spinoza allows for a certain distinction between the possible and the contingent. 83 It even applies to the infinite intellect (E, I, 31), which is not a part of God’s essence, being classed with things produced and not with things that produce others. Cf. E, I, 17 sc. 3 and the classic commentary by Alexandre Koyré: ‘Le Chien constellation céleste, et le chien animal aboyant’. Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1950 (reproduced in: Koyré, Alexandre: Études d’histoire de la pensée philosophique. Gallimard: Paris 1961). For an alternative interpretation to Koyré’s, see the chapter by Miquel Beltrán in this volume.

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will is a mode, that is, a thing that is produced.84 In the first part of the Ethica, Spinoza seizes his opportunity to draw a conclusion concerning the divine will:  ‘Hinc sequitur 1º Deum non operari ex libertate voluntatis.’85 In the second part, he does the same with respect to human will: ‘In Mente nulla est absoluta, sive libera voluntas’.86 It does no good to resort to the traditional objection aimed at demonstrating a supposed ‘liberty of indifference’,87 on the basis that we must otherwise consider man on the same level as a statue or a donkey  – like Buridan’s famous ass, which, placed between two equidistant bales of hay, will die of hunger if it has no way of making an arbitrary choice.88 This argument gets us nowhere, as Spinoza simply contends89 that, in the imaginary situation described (the donkey being perfectly positioned between two alternatives, with no reason to choose one over the other), the animal would indeed die of hunger. He goes on to dismantle this objection once and for all by asserting, not without irony, that men, too, often behave like donkeys, and so experience would support this geometric logic. It is therefore not at all absurd to compare a man to a donkey, because both are equally bound by the complete determination of their actions. If man is not an imperium set apart from the rest of nature, then we, like all other finite things, cannot possess ‘absolutam […] potestatem sese 84 E, I, 32 dem. and E, I, 23. Cf. also E, I, 32 cor. 2: ‘Quare voluntas ad Dei naturam non magis pertinet, quam reliqua naturalia’; the split from the Christian tradition (Descartes included), which envisages God as possessing both an intellect and a will, is complete and unequivocal. 85 E, I, 32 cor .1. 86 E, II, 48. Although the wording of proposition 48 does not make this explicit, Spinoza is referring to the human mind. This is clear from the context and confirmed by the capitalization of ‘Mente’. Nominally, ‘Mens’ and ‘Corpus’ are capitalized only when referring to the human mind and the human body, although in some instances the Opera posthuma blurs this distinction. Cf. Gueroult, Martial:  Spinoza, II. L’âme. Aubier-Montaigne:  Paris 1974, p.  115 n, p.  203 n; also, Della Rocca, Michael: Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza. Oxford University Press: New York 1996, p. 178 n. 87 This notion of liberty of indifference poses a number of problems for Descartes, particularly with respect to his epistemological ideas, as it obliges him to insist that in a situation where the superior choice is clear and distinct, the mind cannot deliberate but must immediately select that option. Even so, Descartes does not concede his ground but admits that this indifference exists, although he describes it as the lowest grade of freedom (‘infimus gradus libertatis’: Meditationes, IV; AT, VII, 58). Descartes discusses this problem at length in his 1645 correspondence with Mesland, but his position remains essentially unchanged. 88 E, II, 48 sc. (G, II, 133). 89 G, II, 135.

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determinandi’.90 Contrary to what Descartes believed, the human mind is incapable of achieving ‘absolutum imperium’ over the emotions.91 This is because man is not a substance (and so characterized by ontological and epistemological self-sufficiency), but rather a particular entity whose essence is made up of determinate modifications of the attributes of God,92 that is, Nature. The mind was not directly created by God, in isolation from all other things (‘a reliquis rebus […] independentem’),93 far from it; the mind is simply the idea of the body,94 to the extent that it takes notice of everything that happens to this body.95 As the mind is the idea of the body and nothing more (‘et nihil aliud’),96 there can be no inversely proportional relationship between them, whereby, as philosophers (and most recently Descartes) have held for millennia,97 an increase in the mind’s capacity to think necessarily depends on a corresponding decrease in the strength of the body, and vice versa. In fact, Spinoza holds the opposite to be true: in proportion as a Body is more capable than others of doing many things at once, or being acted on in many ways at once, so its Mind is more capable than others of perceiving many things at once. And in proportion as the actions of a body depend more on itself alone, and as other bodies concur with it less in acting, so its mind is more capable of understanding distinctly.98

The imperium of the mind over the emotions that the Stoics and Descartes imagined cannot consist in an absurd control over the body (as if it were an external reality and not the expression, in the attribute of Extension, of the very same thing that the mind expresses through the attribute of Thought). It can only consist in a parallel growth in the body’s power of action and the mind’s power of thought. So, this imperium cannot be absolute,99 since the body’s power of action and the mind’s power of thought cannot be infinite, the mind being nothing more than the idea of the body.

0 TP, II, 6 (G, III, 277–278). 9 91 E, III, praef. (G, II, 137–138). 92 E, II, 10 and cor. 93 TP, II, 6 (G, III, 277). 94 E, II, 11 and 13. 95 E, II, 12. 96 E, II, 13. 97 Les passions de l’ame, 1–2; AT, XI, 327–328. 98 E, II, 13 sc. On this question, see, cf. Deleuze, Gilles: Spinoza et le problème de l’expression. Minuit: Paris 1968, pp. 234–251. 99 E, V, praef. (G, II, 277).

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3. Power The fact that Spinoza uses the same phrase, ‘imperium in imperio’, to explain (and deny) two different concepts points us towards the connection between the two. This is not immediately obvious and has to do with the concept of power. This concept comes to the fore in the last three propositions of part I  of the Ethica, after the groundwork has been laid in the preceding reasoning. These propositions encapsulate the basic architecture of Spinoza’s ontology. The essence of God is his power,100 which means that, as God is infinite, his power is also infinite. In other words, God necessarily produces everything that can possibly be produced.101 The things that God produces, namely, the modes through which he expresses his nature (‘quidquid existit, Dei potentiam […] certo, et determinato modo exprimit’)102 are also quanta of power and also produce effects.103 The difference between God’s power and the power of the things he produces is that God’s power, being infinite, meets no obstacles as it is exercised, while the second kind of power is finite and so does meet obstacles. Thus, finite things (each of which should be understood as a certain quantity of power) would develop their natures to the fullest possible extent, and so would also produce everything that they are capable of, if only they were able to do so. However, as they are finite, they never quite reach their productive potential (stopping short by a greater or lesser distance depending on their capacity to become sufficient causes of what comes after them, through the adequate ideas). It is this finite quality that gives rise to the potentiality in power. The Judeo-Christian tradition that Spinoza is arguing against also holds that God is omnipotent. However, Spinoza’s notion of God’s infinite power is radically different to the Christian idea of omnipotence, just as his notion of freedom (related to his conception of power) is radically different to the Christian notion. God is free because his actions are determined only by himself,104 that is, because he acts ‘ex solis suae naturae legibus, et a nemine coactus’105 or ‘ex sola suae natura necessitate’,106 which are two ways of saying the same thing. However, he is not free in the sense of being able to choose to act in a different way. ‘Others’ (alii), Spinoza claims, believe:

00 E, I, 34. 1 101 E, I, 35. 102 E, I, 36 dem. 103 E, I, 36. 104 E, I, def. 7. 105 E, I, 17. 106 E, I, 17 cor.

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According to these ‘others’, God’s freedom is equal to his capacity to refrain from doing everything of which he is capable. However, this would be like saying that God can make a triangle in which the angles do not add up to 180 degrees, as if the effects did not necessarily follow from the cause. They claim to accord God both free will and a supreme intellect, then deny that God can bring everything he can conceive of into existence, as if this would negate his power (potentia). Their argument is that if God produced everything contained in his intellect, this would curtail his power, as he would then be incapable of creating anything more. So, they prefer to envisage a God who creates only what he decides to create through his own absolute free will. They do not see that this argument effectively denies that God is genuinely omnipotent, because it forces them to admit that God’s intellect holds an infinite number of things that he could have created but now cannot create, because to do so would be to expend his omnipotence and thus become imperfect. This is utterly absurd. In order to claim that God is perfect, they are forced to say that he cannot do everything that his power would allow him to do. Omnipotence, therefore, renders God powerless.108 This conception, which Spinoza describes as futile (nugatoria) and which represents an obstacle to science,109 is the result of an absurd notion of power modelled on man’s finite power (‘instar hominis à vulgo concipi’),110 as illustrated by the common tendency to liken God’s power to the power of kings.111 According to this model, God’s power lies in free will, that is, the ability to act or to refrain from acting (to produce effects or to choose not to). The roots of this model are both theological and political. Its theological lineage is most neatly illustrated by Descartes, with his theory of the creation of eternal truths. Politically, it can be traced back to Bodin’s concept of sovereignty. For Bodin, the sovereign is above all law: he enacts laws as he sees fit, in accordance with his supreme free will, but is not himself bound by those laws (solutus legibus).112 Descartes’ conception of God (more radical 07 E, I, 17 sc. 1 108 E, II, 3 sc.: ‘possem hic etiam ostendere potentiam illam, quam vulgus Deo affingit […] impotentiam involverere.’ 109 E, I, 33 sc. 2. 110 E, II, 3 sc. 111 E, II, 3 sc. 112 Bodin, Jean: Les Six Livres de la Republique, I, 8. Iacques du Puys: Paris 1577, p. 157: ‘Si donc le Prince souuerain, est exempt des loix de ses predecesseurs, beaucoup moins seroit-il tenu aux lois & ordonnances qu’il fait […]. Aussi

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than that of the Scotists and Ockhamists, and in direct opposition to the Augustinian and Thomistic view) places him, too, above the law: the laws that govern nature are as they are because God decided, freely, that it should be so. To claim otherwise would be to place God at the mercy of fate, as pagans do.113 Earlier, in chapter IV of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,114 Spinoza explains the extent to which God can be understood as a prince or a legislator (one who decides the law and gives orders about what is to be done). He argues that what the common man interprets as orders (for example, forbidding Adam to eat fruit from a certain tree) are in fact eternal truths (the link, of which the common man knows nothing, between ingesting the fruit and the damage this will cause him), which God produces by the necessity of his nature. In the Ethica, the example that Spinoza uses to reject this idea that there is an extrinsic and contingent relationship between God and his creation (between cause and effect) is as follows: ‘this is the same as if they were to say that God can bring it about that it would not follow from the nature of a triangle that its three angles are equal to two right angles’.115 This is exactly the same example that Descartes puts forward to illustrate his own theory.116 What Bodin’s monarch and Descartes’ God have in common is a certain concept of power, defined as the ability to refrain from doing something (or to do it in a different way, which is a subset of the same idea). In other words, power is the power to abstain. If the reader will forgive the anachronism, this is power à la Melville’s Bartleby (‘I would prefer not to’). The monarch is sovereign and God is omnipotent because each could have chosen to lay down different laws (and so could have not done what they did do), and because they have the power to do or to stop doing whatever they desire at any moment. It is as if a fire could remain a fire after ceasing to burn: as if a cause could stop producing its effects.117 Adherents to this voyons nous à la fin des edits & ordonnances ces mots: CAR TEL EST NOSTRE PLAISIR, pour faire entendre, que les loix du Prince souuerain, ores qu’elles fussent fondees en bonnes & vives raisons, neantmoins qu’elles ne dependent que de sa pure & franche volonté.’ 113 Descartes to Mersenne, 15 April 1630 (AT, I, 145). In chronological order, the main sources in this respect are: letters to Mersenne, 15 April, 6 May and 27 May 1630; 17 May 1638; Fifth and Sixth Responses to the Objections to the Meditationes (1641); letter to Mesland, 2 May 1644; conversation with Burman, 16 April 1648; letter to Arnauld, 29 July 1648; and letter to More, 5 February 1649. A seminal work in this respect is Marion, Jean-Luc: Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes. PUF: Paris 1981. 114 G, III, 62–63. 115 E, I, 17 sc. 116 Letter to Mesland, 2 May 1644. 117 E, I, 17 sc.

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belief fail to grasp the fact that God’s power is, Spinoza argues, his ‘actuosa essentia’.118 This is his way of underscoring that God’s essence or power cannot be understood as a mere potentiality, but is always in act. That is why it should not be compared ‘Dei potentiam cum humana Regum potentia’; it is not a valid analogy. Unlike God’s power, human power can stop short of action, poised as a mere possibility. This is not, however, because man possesses free will and so can decide how he exercises his power, but because, being finite, this power is likely to collide with other, more forceful finite things, preventing it from fulfilling its potential.119 The metaphysical idea that Spinoza disparages with the phrase ‘imperium in imperio’ therefore rests on an absurd conception of power. The same is true of its political meaning. We can only accommodate the existence of a spiritual authority independent of political power if we accept that this power is unaffected by the existence of a sphere where it has no effect: as if the sovereign were able to preserve his power while curbing its use. Both meanings, metaphysical and political, are based on the assumption that power is equivalent to potency, and so can conceivably be separated from its actualization. This is what is meant by free will: that there are things that he who possesses it (whether God or man) could do, but does not do. It is also what is meant by the dual power of the state (duae potestates): the idea that the sovereign can accept the existence of a spiritual authority without diminishing his own political authority. However, just as free will is a superstitious illusion, so is the belief in a dual authority, because power that is not exercised is effectively impotence (the impotence of kings who are not sovereign in their state, either due to a functional inability to assert themselves over the priesthood or because they have fallen victim to the illusion that casts them as the servants of spiritual authority).120 Both modalities of this imaginary power have pernicious consequences: the belief in free will gives rise to greater and more intense unhappiness, while also generating a number of emotions that undermine the individual’s power to act (repentance,121 for example).122 Meanwhile, the fantasy of dual power weakens the state and, in extreme cases, will destroy it.123 Both forms of the same error, variations on a single theme, are fatal. The first is fatal for the individual,

18 E, II, 3 sc. 1 119 E, IV, ax. 120 Ultimately, this amounts to the same thing: TTP, XVII (G, III, 202). 121 E, IV, 54. 122 E, III, 49; V, 5–6. 123 TTP, XVII (G, III, 220).

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because knowing ourselves to be part of nature is what allows us to maximize our power. The second is fatal for the collective, because accepting dual power brings the state to ruin, and with it our most effective tool for maximizing our collective power – and, indirectly, the power of each individual member.124

124 This research has been supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Tecnología (PGC 2018-095458-13-100)

Josep Maria Ruiz Simon The palace and the ramparts: Spinoza’s stratagems to defend sovereignty from the seditious opinion of the clergy Translated and edited by Cadenza Academic Translations ‘Deeds were prosecuted, but words went unpunished’ (‘Facta arguebantur, dicta impune erant’). This line from the Annales (I, 72) captures what Tacitus saw as one of the defining features of the Roman Republic before Augustus set it on the path to tyranny. Very early in the TTP, Spinoza recalls this description of freedom under the old republican order in answer to the question of what makes a republic free.1 In this instance, Spinoza does not mention Tacitus by name, although he will do later in the book.2 His learned readers, however, knew the source. In the seventeenth century, Tacitus was one of the most widely read, quoted and discussed authors of the classical period, regarded as a guide for political action and ‘le maître des intrigues du cabinet’.’3 At a time when the way to learn about politics was to read the ancient historians, his works on the history of the Roman Empire had become handbooks for experts in reasons of state and the arcana of power. In the Netherlands, reading the works of Tacitus and these experts was considered – at least after Justus Lipsius began teaching at the University of Leiden – a fundamental element in the education of the elite, regardless of their political persuasion.4

TTP, praef. (G, III, 7). 1 2 See Wirszubski, Chaim: ‘Spinoza’s Debt to Tacitus’. Scripta Hierosolymitana II, 1955, pp. 176–186. Strauss, Leo: Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. University of Chicago Press: Chicago 1965, pp. 312–314 contains an index of Spinoza’s references to Tacitus. 3 Thuau, Etienne: Raison d’Etat et pensée politique à l’époque de Richelieu. Albin Michel (Bibliothèque de l’évolution de l’humanité): Paris 2000, p. 44. On seventeenth-century Tacitism, see:  Tuck, Richard:  Philosophy and Government, 1572–1651. Cambridge University Press:  Cambridge 1993, p.  30 and Burke, Peter: ‘Tacitism, Scepticism, and Reason of State’. In: Burns, James H. (ed.): The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450–1700. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 1991, pp. 479–498. 4 See Waszink, Jan: ‘Lipsius and Grotius: Tacitism’. History of European Ideas 39 (2), 2013, pp. 151–168.

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Spinoza’s own library testifies to the wide reception of Tacitus’ in the United Provinces. A  notary’s inventory from 1677 reports that he owned two editions of his works:  one edited with a commentary by Lipsius, the Amberes edition of 1607, and another that is not clearly identified, but could well be the 1643 edition published in Amsterdam. This edition includes a commentary by Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn, another Leiden professor. Also in Spinoza’s collection was a copy of Clapmar’s De Arcanis rerum publicarum (probably the 1641 edition published in Amsterdam or its 1644 reprint). Appearing in 1605, Clapmar’s work was an attempt to take up the challenge suggested by Bodin, Lipsius and Scipione Ammirato: to marry Tacitus’ teachings on state secrecy with Aristotle’s reflections on political sophistry and the causes of crises and regime change (Politics, IV, 13, and V).5 This edition included other texts on the same subject, including Christopher Besoldus’ De arcanis rerumpublicarum dissertatio and Breviarius sex librorum de Arcanis rerumpublicarum, by Johannes Corvinus. Corvinus, who also edited the volume, was an Arminian and an old friend of Grotius. He returned to Amsterdam in 1632 following years of exile to escape reprisals after the Synod of Dort (1618–1619), where he had unsuccessfully defended the position of the Remonstrants.6 The dispute between Remonstrants and anti-Remonstrants was more than a squabble over dogmatic differences, like the controversy over predestination. It was the result of a transposition of two opposing visions of the relationship between church and state to the theological realm: or rather, in this case, between the Dutch Republic and the Dutch Reformed Church, which enjoyed the official status of ‘public church’. Remonstrants defended the indivisibility of sovereignty and, consequently, the state’s prerogative over ius circa sacra. Grotius, for example, set out his argument for subordinating the church to the state in De imperio summarum potestatum circa sacra written between 1614 and 1617, a period during which he also produced two works on the history of the Netherlands, clearly influenced by Tacitus. Published posthumously (Paris 1647), a copy of this text was also recorded

5 Clapmar, Arnold: De arcanis rerumpublicarum. Libri sex illustrati a Ioan. Corvino I.C. Accessit Chr. Besoldi de eadem materia discursus. Nec non Arnoldi Clapmarii et  aliorum conclusiones de iure publico. Elsevier:  Amsterdam 1941, second edition: 1644. 6 Pozzi, Patrizia:  ‘La biblioteca di Spinoza’. In:  Koehler, Johannes/and Lucas, Jean M. (eds.): Le vite di Spinoza. Quodlibet: Macerata 1994, pp. 159–172. On Corvinus and how Clapmar’s De arcanis was received in the Netherlands, see Tuck, 1993, p. 125 and Blom, Hans W.: ‘The Republican Mirror: The Dutch Idea of Europe’. In: Pagden, Anthony (ed.): The Idea of Europe. From Antiquity to the European Union. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 2002, pp. 91–115.

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in Spinoza’s library.7 For their part, anti-Remonstrants argued in favour of the doctrine of dual sovereignty, which also implied a dual obedience (to the civil authorities in temporal matters and to the church in spiritual matters). They reasoned that from these two dualities followed the subordination of the secular power to the ecclesiastical power in questions of religion8 On the Remonstrants’ side was the Great Pensionary of Holland, Johan Van Oldenbarnevelt, and a powerful group of regents, including Grotius himself. However, as illustrated in an allegorical painting by Abraham Van der Eyk, inspired by a famous episode related by Titus Livius, it was ultimately the sword of Stadtholder Maurice de Nassau, then Prince of Orange, a disciple of Lipsius and another reader of Tacitus, that tipped the balance in favour of the anti-Remonstrants, or Gomarists. The dispute ended with the beheading of van Oldenbarnevelt, the imprisonment of Grotius, who later went into exile, and an attempt by de Nassau to give a monarchical description to the office of stadtholder This tactical alliance between the House of Orange–Nassau and the most rigid and intolerant faction of the Dutch Reformed Church remained for decades, outlasting several successive princes. It explains certain aspects of the republican party’s appropriation of Tacitus and Tacitism in this period, when the republic was without a stadtholder and Jan de Witt had assumed the role of Great Pensionary. The republican party controlled the government in the United Provinces at this time, and had taken up the Remonstrants’ cause once again. The De La Court brothers, authors of two books in Spinoza’s library, were the most prominent advocates of republicanism during this period.9

7 Van Dam, Harm-Jan: Hugo Grotius, De Imperio Summarum Potestatum circa sacra. Critical Edition, Introduction, English Translation and Commentary, 2 vols. Brill, ‘Studies in The History of Christian Thought’: Leiden/Boston 2001. See Béal, Christophe: ‘Grotius et le ius circa sacra’. Dix-septième siècle 241 (4), 2008, pp. 709–724. On Grotius’ histories in the style of Tacitus, see Waszink, Jan: ‘Tacitism in Holland. De Annales et Historiae de rebus Belgicis van Hugo de Groot’. In: De Zeventiende Eeuw 20 (2), 2004, pp. 240–263. 8 For a summary account of political and religious tensions in the seventeenthcentury Netherlands and Spinoza’s political position, see Balibar, Étienne: Spinoza et la politique, 4th edn. PUF: Paris 2011, pp. 9–34. 9 Among the works listed in the inventory of Spinoza’s library are Consideratien van Staat ofte polityke Weegschaal (Iacob Zinbreker: Amsterdam 1661) and Politieke discoursen (Pieter Hackius: Leiden 1662), both published under the initials V. H. (De la Court = Van den Hove or Van den Hofft). After the death of his brother Johan (d. 1660), they were published by Pieter de la Court, whom Spinoza quotes in TP, VIII, 31 (G, III, 338). See Weststeijn, Arthur: Commercial Republicanism in the Dutch Golden Age. The Political Thought of Johan & Pieter de la Court. Brill: Leiden 2012.

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The Elzevirian edition of Clapmar’s work, introduced by Corvinus at a moment when anti-Remonstrant repression had come to an end, is an important event in the history of the reception of Tacitism and Tacitus’ work in the republican party, anti-Orangist and supportive of religious tolerance. It was through the dialogue with Clapmar, which invariably meant dialoguing with Tacitus and Machiavelli as well, that Dutch republicans forged the weapons to fight Orangism and its backers in the Reformed Church, immediately before and during the period without stadtholder, when the republic, initially at least, was in agreement with their approach.10 Hobbes’s political philosophy also took on an important role in this forging. The Hobbesian doctrine on the indivisibility of sovereignty held particular appeal for Dutch republicans. Not only did it accord with the position on ius circa sacra held by Grotius and the Remonstrants, but it also proved useful in rebuffing the notion that the provinces and the stadtholder could share sovereignty. The library inventory notes that Spinoza, who also may have been familiar with the Leviathan, owned a copy of Hobbes’s De cive and a work by Lambert van Velthuyssen, a Cartesian professor at the University of Utrecht who, together with Gerard van Wassenaer and the De la Court brothers, played a significant part in the confluence of Tacitism with Hobbes’s doctrines on sovereignty.11

1. The Tacitist perspective: The fall of the free republic as a consequence of extending lex maiestas to words The preface to the TTP quotes the phrase that appears in the Annales in reference to the freedom that Roman citizens enjoyed before the Republic degenerated into tyranny. Spinoza uses it to describe the kind of free republic he espouses, in which sedition cannot be dressed up as a lawful act and disputes cannot escalate into sedition. Such things would not occur, he argues, ‘si ex jure imperii non nisi facta arguerentur, & dicta impune essent’.12 Spinoza adapts Tacitus’ observation on how Rome was ruled before it lost its freedom to explain how the loss of political freedom should be avoided in

0 Blom, 2002, p. 106. 1 11 For more on Hobbes and the Dutch republican tradition, see Malcolm, Noel: ‘Hobbes and Spinoza’. In: Burns, James H./Golide, Mark (eds.): The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450–1700. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 1991, pp. 545–551; see also Blom, Hans W.: Morality and Causality in Politics (doctoral thesis). Utrecht University: Rotterdam 1995, ch. 6 and Petry, Michael: ‘Hobbes and the Early Dutch Spinozists’. In: de Deugd, Cornelis (ed.): Spinoza’s Political and Theological Thought. North-Holland: Amsterdam 1984, pp. 150–170. 12 G, III, 7.

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the Dutch Republic. Like other contemporary authors, Spinoza read Tacitus as ‘a declared enemy to Tyrants and to the instruments of Tyranny’.13 He saw him as an author whose works would not only reveal the secrets of tyranny, but would also explain how it can be prevented. The distinction between how deeds and words should be treated arises twice in the Annales. In Annales I, 72 (Spinoza’s source for the passage in the TTP we have just been discussing), Tacitus describes how first Augustus and then Tiberius broadened to the words the scope of the laesae maiestatis law, which until then only prosecuted deeds, so that individuals could be punished for what they said, and not only for what they did. Later, in Annales IV, 34, he recounts the case of Cremutius Cordus, who fell foul of this law under Tiberius’ reign and defended himself by arguing that the charges against him were based on his words and not his actions, which were wholly innocent. Despite the distance between them, there is a close relationship between the two passages. In the Annales, Tacitus sets out to describe the decline of Rome as a free city and how it declines into tyranny. His account is essentially based on a series of episodes that illustrate the city’s gradual loss of freedom as the scope of the lex maiestas was progressively expanded. The case of Cremutius Cordus, accused of having praised two of Julius Caesar’s murderers, is given particular prominence, as if this praise somehow constituted an indirect attack on the emperor Tiberius’ sovereignty, although the incidents Tacitus describes began under Augustus, who decided that the publication of certain defamatory texts about distinguished men and women should be a criminal offence (Annales, I, 72).14 According to the Annales, Rome was enslaved by tyranny because Tiberius used the law against treason to prosecute people on the grounds of things they had said, rather than done. Tacitus contrasts this tyranny with the happy days of Nerva and Trajan, chronicled in his Historiae at the time of the latter of these emperors, where he lauds the fact that ‘one may think what one likes and say what one thinks.’15 In the preface to the TTP, Spinoza 13 According to Thomas Gordon’s later portrayal in ‘Discourse II: Upon Tacitus and His Writings, Sect. I. The Character of Tacitus’. In: Gordon, Thomas (ed.): The Works of Tacitus. In Four Volumes. To which are prefixed Political Discourses upon that Author, I, 2nd edn. corrected. T. Woodward and J. Peele: London 1737, p. 19. 14 McHugh, Mary R.: ‘Historiography and Freedom of Speech: The case of Cremutius Cordus’. In: id: Free Speech in Classical Antiquity. Brill: Leiden 2004. https://doi. org/10.1163/9789047405689_018. 15 ‘Ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet’ (Tacitus, Historiae, I, 4). Machiavelli also invokes Tacitus’ juxtaposition between the era of just emperors like Nerva and Trajan and life under other rulers who governed as tyrants (Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio, I, 10). Tacitus, Machiavelli and Spinoza all

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not only adopts the Tacitist view that a free republic ceases to be free at the moment it begins to criminalise words, but also, like Tacitus, portrays the regime under which he himself is living, saying that he has the ‘rare good fortune’ of living in a republic in which ‘everyone is granted complete freedom of judgment’.16 However, what concerns Spinoza are the grievous repercussions that would ensue if the free republic in which he has the good fortune to live were to follow the path taken by Augustus and Tiberius and begin punishing people for their words. As he reveals in the preface, again borrowing Tacitus’ words without mentioning him by name, the ultimate conclusion of the TTP is that: the sovereign powers retain this right [the right to decide what is just and unjust, pious and impious] best, and can preserve their rule safely, only if everyone is allowed to think what he will, and to say what he thinks.17

Consistent with this statement is the title of chapter XX, the closing chapter of the TTP, where the same words of Tacitus are repeated again. This chapter is entitled ‘It is shown that in a Free Republic everyone is permitted to think what he wishes and to say what he thinks’ (‘Ostenditur, in Libera Republica unicuique & sentire, quae velit, & quae sentiat, dicere licere’).18 As this suggests, it aims to demonstrate, through reasoned arguments, the same thing that Tacitus illustrated narratively in the Annales. Tacitus’ words frame the entire TTP, in which everything seems to be leading up to this final demonstration. That is why it is important to be careful how we interpret the passages in which Spinoza, again in terms inspired by Tacitus, refers to his good fortune to be living in a republic and a city (Amsterdam) that embraces freedom of conscience and freedom of religion.19 Often these passages are read as indicating Spinoza’s appreciation of his city and the republic’s exceptional recognition of these freedoms. However, this reading does not seem particularly well founded if we recall his motivations for writing the TTP,

describe periods when every individual could hold and defend any opinion he chose as ‘golden ages’. 16 ‘Cum itaque nobis haec rara foelicitas contigerit, ut in Republica vivamus, ubi unicuique judicandi libertas integra, & Deum ex suo ingenio colere conceditur, & ubi nihil libertate charius, nec dulcius habetur’ (TTP, Pr.; G, III, 7). This and all translations of the TTP and other works of Spinoza are from The Collected Works of Spinoza. 2 Volumes. Ed. and transl. by Edwin Curley. Princeton 1985–2016. 17 ‘Tandem concludo, eosdem hoc jus optime retinere, & imperium tuto conservare posse, si modo unicuique & sentire, quae velit, &, quae sentiat, dicere concedatur’ (TTP, Pr.; G, III, 12). 18 G, III, 239. 19 TTP, praef. (G, III, 7); TTP, XX (G, III, 245).

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according to his famous letter 30 to Oldenburg (autumn 1665), and the circumstances in which it was written. The three reasons he lists are: 1) the prejudices of the theologians, which he sees as ‘the greatest obstacle to men’s being able to apply their minds to philosophy’; 2) the opinion of the common people, perpetually accusing him of being an atheist; and 3) his desire to uphold the freedom to philosophize and express one’s true feelings by all available means, given that he believes this freedom to be under threat from ‘the preachers [who] suppress it as much as they can with their excessive authority and aggressiveness.’20 The TTP’s remarks on the freedom of Amsterdam and the States of Holland should be read primarily in light of these factors. Spinoza is writing about a level of freedom unique in Europe – a freedom he believes is being intentionally jeopardized by preachers and diminished in the opinion of the common people.

2. In Clapmar’s shadow: The seditious opinion of the ‘opponents’ and the defensive value of arcana In chapter XX of the TTP,21 Spinoza describes the process that could lead to the downfall of a free republic in some detail. In this passage, he places crucial importance on the magistrates’ use of laws to settle controversies among university doctors (laws which, he recalls, have been the cause of schisms in the past) or laws which command what everyone is to believe and prohibit people from speaking or writing something contrary to accepted opinion. Like Cremutius Cordus before him, Spinoza’s tactic is to eschew direct commentary on contemporary events, preferring to cast himself as a historian or a scholar seeking to draw general political lessons from written histories. Even so, there is no doubt that Spinoza wrote the TTP with the situation in the Netherlands in mind, including the precedent set by the schism between Remonstrants and anti-Remonstrants and its catastrophic political consequences.22 Under the De Witt regime, in the period known as the ‘true liberty’, at least two laws were passed in the States of Holland that would have given Spinoza cause for concern: 1) the anti-Socinian edict of 1653, and

0 Letter 30 to Oldenburg (G, IV, 166). 2 21 G, III, 244. 22 Eijnatten, Joris van: ‘Making Sense of Schism. Providence and Meaning in the Historiography of the Synod of Dort’. In:  Goudriaan, Aza/Lieburg, Fred van (eds.): Revisiting the Synod of Dort, 1618–1619. Brill: Leiden 2011, pp. 397–424. Spinoza refers to this schism in TTP XX; G, III, 246. From his perspective, the events of 1618 and 1619 offered the most relevant contemporary example for the TTP’s arguments and ought to serve as a lesson, lest history be repeated.

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2) the 1656 ‘decree on philosophy’, the stated purpose of which was to ‘prevent abuse of freedom to philosophize to the detriment of true theology and Holy Scripture’ and to halt the spread of Cartesian philosophy at the university. These laws, particularly the former, were invoked as grounds for censoring philosophical and theological books over the decades that followed.23 In line with his general views on laws targeting thought and speech, Spinoza argues that these two instruments were designed: to make a concession to – or rather to surrender to – the anger of those who can’t endure free minds and who can, by a certain grim authority, easily change the devotion of a seditious mob to madness, and rouse it against whomever they wish to.24

He states that these concessions, prompted by fear of the subversive power of the ecclesiastical voice, amount to a de facto acceptance of church doctrine on the part of the sovereign powers. For him, members of the clergy who harbour ambitions to usurp part of the authority and powers of the de iure sovereigns, the part concerned with ius circa sacra, should instead be considered enemies of the state.25 Thanks to these concessions, the clergy would be able to fulfil their ambition, justifying their actions on the grounds that their interpretations of scripture are ‘divine’ decrees, and so take precedence over the mere ‘human’ laws enacted by the supreme civil authorities. By accepting this doctrine, the latter had given up their autonomy, allowing the church to establish an imperium in imperio. In Spinoza’s circle, the imperium thus established by the public Reformed Church was seen as the fulfilment of a ‘Jesuitical maxim’ (Adriaen Koerbagh), a Dutch version of the tyranny that the Roman church held over the Catholic states, based on precisely these sorts of arguments.26 In 1662, Pieter de La Court, who had been excommunicated in Leiden as punishment for writing about matters that the Church would have preferred him not to, had already written to Jan de Witt to warn him of:

23 Israel, Jonathan I.:  Radical Enlightenment. Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750. Oxford University Press: Oxford 2001, p. 28. 24 ‘Institutas fuisse ad largiendum, vel potius cedendum eorum ira, qui libera ingenia ferre nequeunt, & torva quadam authoritate seditiosae plebis devotionem facile in rabiem mutare, & in quos volunt, instigare possunt.’ (TTP, XIX; G, III, 244). 25 TTP, XIX (G, III, 247). 26 See Weststeijn, 2012, p. 312. Pieter de la Court writes of the ‘ambitious maxims of the clergy’ in The True Interest and Political Maxims, of the Republic of Holland (1662), I, 4. I quote from English translation (London 1746, p. 52), which attributes the authorship of the book to Jan de Witt, who maybe wrote some passages.

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those procedures of the clerics [that] do not only seem to conduce to extinguish the freedom of the common inhabitants [...] but [that] also, apparently, seem to serve to claim their machinated Imperium in imperio.27

In the years when Spinoza was writing the TTP, the signs of success of the censorship demands sent to municipalities and provinces by the public church’s consistories and synods grew. Spinoza and his circle would have known from personal experience that the civil authorities tended to yield to the church’s accusations, placing the freedom to philosophize in jeopardy. In 1666, Philosophia Scripturae interpres, written by Lodewijk Meyer, one member of this circle, was banned in the province of Friesland. The States of Utrecht followed suit in 1667, where an order was issued to impound all copies of the work under the law against Socinian writings, etc. The case of Adriaen Koerbagh marked a significant shift in the balance of power away from the civil authorities, furthering the public church’s agenda. Not only was the book condemned, but also, despite being published anonymously, its author ended his days in prison in 1668, while Spinoza was working on the TTP. This high-handed application of the 1653 law had a bearing on Spinoza’s deliberations over whether he should publish his own books, and in what form. His decision to publish the TTP anonymously and to refuse permission for it to be translated into Dutch should be interpreted in this context. However, these measures would not save the book from immediate persecution on its publication in 1670, followed by a prohibition in 1674 that also banned Hobbes’s Leviathan and Meyer’s Philosophia.28 In chapter XIX of the TTP, Spinoza uses the word adversaria (‘opponents’) in specific reference to those who claim ‘to separate sacred right from civil right, and contend that the supreme ‘power possesses only the latter, whereas the universal church possesses the former’. He describes the doctrine of these adversaria as a ‘seditious opinion’, remarking that, as he finds their claims frivolous, he will not take the trouble to refute them.29 The purpose of the TTP is not to argue about this seditious opinion, but to advise those who can convert words into deeds to act on his counsel by doing their duty to protect the republic and themselves from those who support such views. The book ends with an observation and a conclusion. Spinoza states that the seditious opinion that seeks to justify the church’s usurpation of the ius circa sacra, a 27 Letter from Pieter de La Court to Jan de Witt, 3 October 1662. In:  Japikse, Nicolaas (ed.): Brieven aan Johan de Witt, II. J. Müller: Amsterdam 1906–1913, p. 112. See also Politike Discoursen, IV, 6. Leiden 1662, p. 312. 28 See Israel, Jonathan: ‘The Banning of Spinoza’s Works in the Dutch Republic (1670–1678)’. In:  Bunge, Wiep van/Klever, Wim (eds.):  Disguised and Overt Spinozism around 1700. Brill: Leiden 1996, p. 3–14. Israel, 2001, p. 275. 29 TTP, XIX (G, III, 234).

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move calculated to allow it to prosecute anyone with a different viewpoint to its own, is wholly contrary to the health (salus) of the republic. He concludes that, in order to safeguard the regime, not only must the civil authorities recover the ius circa sacra that was snatched from them, but they must also exercise this power while recognizing freedom of conscience and expression and refraining from enacting laws aimed at controlling the citizenry’s ideas.30 With this conclusion, which draws attention to the convergence between the interest that citizens ought to have in defending their freedoms and the state’s interest in security, Spinoza clearly identifies the relationship between the various objectives he has been working to establish in the TTP and the health of the republic. His diagnosis is that republic has been damaged by gradual infiltration of this ‘seditious opinion’. In the seventeenth century, the narrative of a republic under threat dominated the discussion about reasons of state and the arcana of power, which the Elzevirian edition of De arcanis, owned by Spinoza, aimed to summarize. In my view, reading the TTP in light of this narrative allows us to pick up on some significant clues as to how it should be interpreted. One of these clues is the distinction between ius imperii and arcana. In De arcanis, Clapmar likens the relationship between right of sovereignty (ius imperii) and arcana to that between a palace and the ramparts that protect it.31 Arcana are stratagems intended to protect those powers from seditious attacks. The TTP’s doctrine on ius imperii concurs with the position defended by Grotius and the Remonstrants in the United Provinces, which also guided the political decisions of Jan de Witt’s regime. This was the same doctrine upheld by Marsilius of Padua, Hobbes and the Erastians.32 It maintains, to paraphrase Spinoza’s own account, that the whole right is subject to the decisions of those who have sovereignty. This not only includes civil law, but extends to sacred law as well, as the government is the only authority with legitimacy to interpret laws pertaining to religion.33 According to the TTP, in the case of Holland and the United Provinces, which had no experience of monarchy, jurisdiction over religious matters should rest with the holders of sovereignty of each province.34 If this doctrine is accepted, 0 TTP, XX (G, III, 247). 3 31 ‘Arcana enim haec nihil aliud sunt, quam abstrusae artes, per quas a jure Imperii, atque ab ipsa dominatione, homines seditiosi prohibentur […]. Ins enim Imperii, est instar arcis, vel palatii; Arcana vero Imperii sunt veluti muri ac propugnacula, sive cuniculi qui hanc arcem a factiosorum injuriis defendunt’ (Clapmar, De arcanis, 1644, I, 9, p. 22). 32 See Bayona Aznar, Bernardo: Religión y poder. Marsilio de Padua. ¿La primera teoría laica del Estado? Biblioteca Nueva: Madrid 2007, pp. 169–175, pp. 299–333. 33 TTP, XIX (G, III, 228). 34 TTP, XVIII (G, III, 227–228).

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it follows that the Protestant theologians’ ‘seditious opinion’ amounts to a usurpation of power. Spinoza, who not only accepts it but also sets out to prove it, arrives at this very conclusion, as we have seen. However, following his theoretical demonstration that ius circa sacra is the rightful preserve of the civil authorities, he goes one step further. As we will see as we move forward, he also suggests a number of mechanisms that could be used to protect it. These ways to proceed, according to Clapmar’s distinction, could be described as arcana. Spinoza’s demonstration that ius circa sacra belongs to the states’ supreme powers appears in chapter XIX of the TTP.35 As indicated by the title, this chapter also aims to show that external religious worship should adapt (accommodare debere) to the imperative of keeping the peace in the republic, if the intention is to obey God as he should be obeyed.36 There is a chapter in De arcanis (­chapter 21 of book IV) where Clapmar also considers this kind of religious adaptability, and this becomes particularly relevant when we read the TTP in the context of the broader discourse of reasons of state and the arcana of power.37 Book IV of De arcanis deals with ius dominationis, one of the categories of arcana revealed by Clapmar. He uses this expression to denote what other authors, such as Scipione Ammirato, call ‘reason of state’: the justification or right of exception that supports the actions of a sovereign who, if necessary and in the interests of national survival or peace, departs from the ordinary law.38 In c­ hapter 21, he explains how this right should and should not be exercised when religion is involved, or, in other words, how sovereign leaders can use religion to their advantage in situations where they feel compelled to break established rules. Clapmar begins his argument by pointing out that this right, if worthy of the name, does not subvert religion nor interfere with piety, despite its extraordinary nature. Moreover, it can be very useful in defending both sovereignty and the safety of princes or other public figures, as long as it does not violate divine law and remains within the lines drawn by the fides, pudor and religio itself. However, he also observes that there have always been those who, driven by ambition or some other motive, have conflated heavenly and earthly concerns and taken advantage of religion, or used as a pretext without the justification of the defense of sovereignty or 5 G, III, 228–238. 3 36 ‘Ostenditur, jus circa sacra penes summas potestates omnino esse, & Religionis cultum externum Reipublicae paci accommodari debere, si Recte Deo obtemperare velimus’ (TTP, XIX; G, III, 228). 37 Clapmar, 1644, IV, 21, pp. 227–229. 38 For more on this concept of reason of state, see Mattei, Rodolfo De: Il pensiero politico di Sc. Ammirato. Giuffrè: Milano 1963, p. 125 ff.

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with the intention of usurping a sovereignty to which they have no rightful claim. Clapmar illustrates this observation with three examples. He points to a passage where Tacitus writes of the suspicions aroused by Augustus’ piety. He turns to the Aeneid and the seer Calchas, who suggests building a wooden horse to gain entry to Troy. He also cites verses from Lucretius that caution us that religion too has been the motive for criminal and profane acts. Then he goes on to construct a spirited defence of religious freedom, in opposition to those who, carried away by their consummate thirst for power (libido dominadi), try to force people to believe in something against their will. Here, he cites first Tertullian, to evoke the disastrous consequences of curtailing religious freedom and prohibiting opinions about the gods (Apologeticum, 24, 6), and then Quintus Curtius Rufus, to remind us that the mind is less easily governed than the tongue.39 Chapter  21 of book IV is not the only section of De arcanis that talks about freedom of conscience or expression. Clapmar reflects on the latter in ­chapter 11 of book VI, entitled ‘Παρρησία et libertas dicendi et scribendi. Turcarum reverentia erga principem. Plebs natura loquax, et verbis se ulciscitur, rumusculi et pasquilli frustra prohibentur’.40 Book VI of De arcanis examines a set of arcana different to the ius dominationis, the simulacra imperii. These are what Tacitus called arcana inania and Pliny libertatis umbra, a category that encompasses all stratagems or institutions whose purpose is to give subjects the appearance of freedom. From Clapmar’s perspective as a scholar of Tacitus, such simulacra are ultimately illusions that ensure the covenant between the rulers and the governed can be sustained.41 The chapter dedicated to parrhesia and the freedoms of speech and writing compiles a series of historical examples that illustrate the benefits of the liberal approach to these essential freedoms taken by some previous rulers, emphasizing the futility of curbing free expression given humankind’s innate loquaciousness. Clapmar also recalls a quotation from Tacitus:  ‘in civitate libera, linguam mentesque liberas esse oportere.’42 The common ground between Clapmar’s reflections and chapter XX of the TTP is striking. As Spinoza himself concludes, this chapter not only demonstrates that ‘it is

9 Cf. TTP, XVII (G, III, 202). 3 40 Clapmar, 1644, VI, 11, pp. 311–313. In the preface to the TTP (G, III, 7), just before he describes the primary arcanum adopted by monarchical regimes, Spinoza also rehearses the cliché of the Turks’ extreme veneration for their prince. 41 Senellart, Michel: Les arts de gouverner. Du regimen médiéval au concept de gouvernement. Seuil: Paris 1995, p. 261. 42 Clapmar, 1644, VI, 11, p. 312. Cf. Corvinus, Johannes: ‘Breviarium de arcanis rerum publicarum’. In Clapmar, 1644, pp. 31–32.

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impossible to take away from people the freedom to say what they think’ and that ‘this freedom can be granted to everyone, without detriment to the right and authority of the supreme powers’, nor to the peace of the republic, but also that such freedom is in fact a necessary condition for preserving that right and that peace.43 The link between safeguarding the sovereign’s maiestas and upholding the libertas of his subjects, who have a duty to obey their leaders but will choose to obey or to rebel according to their opinions and feelings, is highly typical of Tacitism – as is the complementary idea that a free republic can be organised in such a way as to prevent its rulers from morphing into tyrants and its subjects from choosing the path of rebellion.44 We must not lose sight of Spinoza’s position that it is not the recognition of freedom of expression that makes human beings free, but rather the ability of reason to control passions and appetites.45 In keeping with Clapmar’s definition of simulacrum, this recognition merely allows subjects to feel more free than they really are. This feeling works in the government’s favour, while the ill repute that follows rulers who curtail freedom of expression to the point of absurdity, and are therefore regarded as tyrants, riles their subjects to outrage; thus, such measures are ultimately self-defeating. Moreover, this simulacrum – insofar as it differs from the arcana resorted to by tyrants in not seeking to ‘dominate, restraining men by fear, and making them subject to another’s control, but on the contrary to free each person from fear, so they may live, so that he can live securely, as far as possible’ – contributes to the realization of the Republic’s purpose. This purpose, Spinoza argues: is not to change men from rational beings into beasts or automata, but to enable their minds and bodies to perform their functions safely, and to enable them to use their reason freely, and not to clash with one another in hatred, anger or deception, or deal inequitably with one another.46

The fact that Spinoza identifies freedom as the purpose of the republic47 not only reaffirms the distinction between genuine freedom and its simulacrum, but also allows us to regard the simulacrum as a tool to achieve that end.

3 TTP, XX (G, III, 246). 4 44 Cf. TTP, XVII (G, III, 212). 45 TTP, XVI (G, III, 194–195). 46 ‘Non, inquam, finis Reipublicae est homines ex rationalibus bestias, vel automata facere, sed contra ut eorum mens, & corpus tuto suis functionibus fungantur, & ipsi liberâ ratione utantur, & ne odio, ira, vel dolo certent, nec animo iniquo invicem ferantur.’ (TTP, XX; G, III, 240–241). 47 ‘Finis ergo Reipublicae revera libertas est.’ (Idem.)

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3. A Machiavellian Maxim: accommodating religion to the reason of state Chapter 21 of book IV of De arcanis, after linking the outbreak of seditions to the senseless and depraved behaviour of those who seek to impose certain religious beliefs for their own ends, concludes with a quotation from a well-known passage of Scipione Ammirato’s Discorsi sopra Cornelio Tacito (1594). Here, Ammirato juxtaposes two ways to act in accordance with reason of state regarding religion:  either religion must be accommodated to reason of state, or reason of state must be accommodated to religion. It is this latter arrangement that Ammirato judges to be correct, and which Clapmar proclaims to defend as the Christian way.48 As the reader can confirm, the first of these two options, the path that Clapmar advises against, is precisely what Spinoza advocates in chapter XX of the TTP, as a cure for the sickness that the Republic brought upon itself by appeasing the clergy’s seditious opinion. Clapmar’s argument on the use of religion in the exercise of ius dominationis is structured around a set of distinctions that spring up again in the TTP. His first distinction is between the use of religion for a reason of state, which seeks the interest of the republic, and one where it is used as a pretext to assuage a thirst for power. His second distinction is between the use of religion for a reason of state in a way that subordinates this reason of state to religion, and one that, while also responding to reason of state, subordinates religion to reason of state. If we compare this chapter of De arcanis with the TTP, we find a number of elements that are useful in interpreting Spinoza’s work. The TTP also bases its argument on a juxtaposition between a legitimate ius dominationis, exercised in the common interest – such as the ius which, as we will see, justifies the religious adaptability advocated in chapter XIX – and other arcana that have no legitimacy because they use religion as a pretext for the libido dominandi. An example would be the greatest monarchical arcanus (regiminis monarchici summum arcanum), mentioned in the preface to the TTP,49 or the tyrants’ wicked arcana (prava tyrannorum 48 Clapmar, 1644, p. 229: ‘Mihi hoc caput concludere libet pulcherrima atque vere Christiana sententia Scipionis Ammirati in Tacitum. Et perche, inquit, la religione e cosa maggiore come habiam detto, della ragione di flato, et fasi conti suoi diversamente, da quelli de gli huomini, et non si da proportione della cose temporali all’eterne: ‘conviene, in tali accidenti, ricorrer priemieramente alla religione, et veder, si ella ti si oppone: perche in tal’ caso, bisogna accommodar la ragione di stato alla religione, et non la religione alla ragione di stato”. Et quae plura hac de re disserit prudens sane ac disertus scriptor.’ Cf. Ammirato, Scipione: Discorsi sopra Cornelio Tacito, XII, 1. n. p. 1594. 49 G, III, 7.

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arcana) discussed in the TP (VII, 29).50 The latter group, like the false ius dominationis that Clapmar describes, may also take the form of restrictions on subjects’ freedoms of thought and speech, the consequences of which are invariably dire. However, as we have just seen, the TTP diverges from Clapmar on one crucial point. Although Spinoza takes the necessity of obeying God as a given, he rejects the path that Clapmar, following Ammirato, recommends. Instead of arguing that the state should be accommodated to the religion, he maintains that religion should be accommodated to the state. This is clearly an immensely important difference, which has to do, among other things, with the way that Spinoza understands necessity and obedience to God and his view of religion as a political technique devised by humans alone. It is worth emphasizing that, in the chapter of De arcanis that deals with the theological–political problem (IV, 21), Clapmar does not equate compliance with this doctrine (that religion should be accommodated to reason of state) with the actions of those who, sovereign or not, take advantage of religion to satisfy their libido dominandi. This, according to Clapmar’s thesis, would fall outside the definition of reason of state, or might be classed as a false reason of state. The alternative that Clapmar draws from Ammirato does not pit the republic’s true reason of state against the false reason of state of tyrants, but rather differentiates between two different classes of reasons of state: those that, in De arcanis, he describes as ‘Christian’, and those that contemporary authors (such as the Spanish Jesuit Pedro de Ribadeneira in his De religione et virtutibus principis christiani adversus Machiavellum) identify with the wicked reason of state of the politiques that drink at the sources of Tacitus and Machiavelli himself. Ribadeneira expressly defines the latter as a reason of state that ‘accommodates religion to the state’.51 Although Clapmar does not expressly say so, the maxim that supports this second class of reason of state corresponds to what in seventeenth-century terms we might call a consilium machiavellicum. Indeed, this is one of the maxims that were usually collected from the Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio. This is, for example, what Innocent Gentillet does in his Discours sur les moyens de bien gouverner et maintenir en bonne paix un royaume ou autre principauté (Anti-Machiavel) (1576), and Louis Machon in his Apologie pour Machiavel, wherein ‘Qu’il faut accommoder la religión à l’État pour le bien et la conservation d’icelui’ is the sixth of the thirteen

0 G III, 320. 5 51 Ribaneira, Pedro de: Tratado de la religión y virtudes que deve tener el Príncipe Christiano para governar y conservar sus estados. Contra lo que Nicolás Machiavelo y los politicos deste tiempo enseñan. Amberes 1597, p. 20.

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maxims proffered.52 The fact that Clapmar declares his support for accommodating the state to religion and not religion to the state should come as little surprise if we bear in mind his own rank, Machiavelli’s scandalous reputation and the fact that he was writing at a time when simulation and dissimulation were the new golden rule of public life. Nevertheless, it should not escape our notice that, in practical terms, there was a fairly fine line between accepting that religion could be used to serve the ius dominationis and recommending that religion should be accommodated to state interests. In the Breviarius, included in the Elzevirian edition of De arcanis, Corvinus (who, like Clapmar, adheres verbally to Ammirato’s position) notes that there are some circumstances in which the ius dominationis justifies exceptions, not only to civil law, but also to ordinary sacred law. Based on passages from the Bible, he argues that such exceptional acts, ‘ex necessitatis et boni publici ratione’, are authorized by this law. Specifically, he cites one passage from the Old Testament and one from the New (I Samuel 21, Matthew 12: 13).53 Both of these passages (or alternatively Matthew 12: 4 and other similar verses in lieu of 12: 13) are also quoted in Machon’s Apologie pour Machiavel, where they are used to justify, not actions that would violate sacred law, but religion’s adaptation to state interest. This illustrates the ambiguity of the boundary between recognizing the right which justifies breaking ordinary sacred law when necessary, and recognizing a right of sovereign rulers to adapt religion to the public interest.

4.  Reading the history of the Hebrew Republic as Tacitus and Machiavelli read the history of Rome Throughout chapter XIX of the TTP, Spinoza repeatedly insists, with minor variations in its formulation, on the maxim that religion should be accommodated to the interests of the state.54 Through this repetition, Spinoza, who

52 Cf. Discorsi, I, 13–15. Thuau, 2000, p. 338. Cf. Barthas, Jérémie: ‘Remarques sur l’Anti-Gentillet de Machon’. Les Dossiers du Grihl. 25.09.14, retrieved on 24.04.19 from DOI: 10.4000/dossiersgrihl.6187, annexe A. 53 Corvinus, op. cit. In: Clapmar, 1644, p. 32. 54 G, III, 232–233. While the title alludes to the accommodation of the outward forms of religion to ‘the peace of the Republic’ (TTP, XIX; G, III, 228), in these variations (TTP, XIX; G, III, 228–236), depending on the context, he writes of accommodations of ‘piety’, of ‘the exercise of piety and the external practice of religion’, of ‘religion’ or of ‘religion and piety’ to ‘the peace and utility of the Republic’, ‘public utility’, ‘public well-being’ or ‘the dominion’ (imperium). All of these phrases can be subsumed under the general principle of adapting religion to the republic.

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in the Tractatus politicus55 will show his devotion to Machiavelli (which he reads like a pro-republican author) and his close affinity with the positions of politiques, was making a statement for the benefit of the readers familiar with these topics that his approach was in broad agreement with the ideas of an author of ill repute – whom, despite the fact that the TTP was published anonymously, he declines to name. However, as we observed earlier, Spinoza not only reiterates this maxim, but also declares his intention to prove it.56 Towards the end of his discussion, he offers a number of examples as proof that the Hebrews also made progressive adaptations of their religion in response to their republic’s changing interests. The final example refers to Jesus, who, according to Matthew 5:  43–4, amended the commandment that Jeremiah had given the exiles in Babylon, to love their neighbours and hate their enemies, to ‘love everyone’, a more suitable commandment in light of the Jewish diaspora’s political reality. This series of examples does more than illustrate that both Jews and early Christians adapted their religion to suit the interests of their own political regimes or others under which they lived. It also reveals Spinoza’s interest in presenting primitive Christianity as a product of the desire to bring the Jewish religion into alignment with the Roman state – an adaptation that, through interpretation of Jewish scripture, ultimately gave birth to a new religion. As we can see, Spinoza’s use of these examples is steered by a completely different approach to the one we find in Corvinus and also, albeit not exclusively, in Machon. Corvinus picks out passages in the Bible that would seem to legitimise departing from ordinary divine law when necessary. Spinoza’s reading is very different. He reads the Bible like Machiavelli read Titus Livius when he wanted to show ‘the use the Romans made of Religion in giving institutions to their City; in carrying out their enterprises; and in quelling tumults’.57 Spinoza wishes to demonstrate that Moses and even Jesus did as the Romans did. That is why he reads the Bible like Machiavelli read Titus Livius. However, in the TTP Spinoza also reads the Bible in the way that Lipsius, Boxhorn and other Tacitists read Tacitus. As we have seen, in the preface to the TTP, Spinoza does not mention Tacitus by name, despite borrowing certain phrases with particular relevance to his strategy. In the TTP, Tacitus’ name appears only in chapter XVII, where it is mentioned four times. In the fourth and last instance, Spinoza announces that he feels compelled to use 5 TP V, 7 (G, III, 296–297); cf. TP I, 1–3 (G, III, 273–274). 5 56 G, III, 232. 57 ‘Come i Romani si servivono della religione per riordenari la città e seguire le loro impresse e fermare il tumulti.’ Machiavelli, Niccolò: Discorsi sopra la prima Deca di Tito Livio, I, 13. In: Martelli, Mario (ed.): Tutte le Opere di Niccolò Machiavelli. Sansoni Editore: Firenze 1971, pp. 96–97.

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Tacitus’ words. Yet, although he does not say so, the context in which he uses these words is very different to the one Tacitus intended. In Historiae, I, 3, Tacitus writes of the misfortunes suffered by the people of Rome. Here, Spinoza uses the same words to describe the misfortunes of the Hebrews, and the inevitable destruction of their republic, embroiled as it was in perpetual seditions. He links this fate to the choice of the Levites as the priestly caste and their progressive appropriation of all iura imperii, although they were initially only meant to interpret the Bible.58 In the Annales, Tacitus quotes the saying ‘injuries done to gods are for gods to avenge’, attributing it to Tiberius who, as the reader will recall, precipitated the Roman Republic’s definitive slide into tyranny by extending the lex maiestatis to words as well as deeds. Through this maxim Tiberius would have wanted to argue that punishing disrespect for Augustus’ alleged divinity as a crime against the sovereign was unsuitable (Annales, I, 73). In ­chapter 46 of the Leviathan, Hobbes notes that criminalising opinions in this way was not something learned from the pagans.59 Spinoza, in chapter XVII of the TTP, stresses the singularity of the Hebrew regime, which he describes (following Flavius Josephus in Contra Apionem, II, 165) not as a monarchy, aristocracy or democracy, but as a theocracy whose citizens were subject to no other laws but those revealed by God.60 First, he cites the Annales to illustrate how those who usurped the sovereignty of ancient Rome used religion to their advantage in order to entrench their power and secure their safety. Specifically, he points to the case of Augustus, who managed to convince the Romans that he was descended from Aeneas and, therefore, the goddess Venus, in order to induce them to worship him like a god. Next, he contrasts this monarchical arcanus dominationis described by Tacitus with the arcana dominationis of theocracy, which he goes on to explore.61 By quoting Tacitus, Spinoza invites us to see the scenario discussed by Clapmar in the theological–political chapter of De arcanis, in which republics are threatened by fraudulent manipulations of piety and religion, through Tacitus’ eyes. He also, however, aims to highlight the substantive difference between the fraudulent use of religion in the period when the Roman Republic was beginning to lose its freedom and that which led to the downfall of the Hebrew Republic. Spinoza borrows Tacitus’ words to comment on the Hebrew, rather than the Roman, Republic because this

8 TTP XVII (G, III, 215). 5 59 Hobbes, Thomas: Leviathan IV, ch.46. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 1996 (1651), p. 471 (378). 60 G, III, 206. 61 TTP, XVII (G, III, 204–206).

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particular chapter of the TTP is concerned with the factors that caused the Hebrew Republic could hardly survive without seditions and that led to its collapse. As we have just seen, he attributes this collapse to the institution of the Levite priesthood, which, abusing the ius circa sacra conferred upon it by Moses, ultimately seized all sovereignty for itself. He emphasizes that this transfer of power not only paved the way for the establishment of an imperium in imperio, but also opened new paths for the problem of seditious opinion.62 Unlike the city founded by Romulus, which was born as a monarchy, became an aristocracy and then degenerated into a tyranny, the state that Moses created was, as Flavius Josephus observes and Spinoza reminds us, a theocracy. The seditious opinion used to justify the usurpation of the ius circa sacra could only have arisen in a theocratic regime that based its laws on an interpretation of God’s law. For this reason, there are no case studies in Roman history that can help us understand the kind of crisis Spinoza believed to be threatening the survival of the Dutch Republic. This is why Spinoza uses Tacitus’ words, and Tacitus’ gaze, to comment on the Hebrew Republic. In any case, there is another reason why he chooses the example of the Hebrew Republic to comment on the situation in Holland. The notion of Dutch Israel – the idea that the Dutch people had been chosen by God and that the Dutch Republic should model itself on the biblical example of the Hebrew Republic  – had a great many adherents among those writing about politics and religion in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. Orthodox Calvinist theologians such as Voetius argued that the republic should be remade in the image of this model, and that, just as in Israel the interpretation of divine law was entrusted to the priesthood, it was not the place of the Dutch civil authorities (the regents) to exercise the ius circa sacra. Rather, regents, as members of the Reformed Church, should be subject to ecclesiastical authority in all matters of religion.63 The prevalence of 62 TTP, XVIII (G, III, 225). It is important to note that Spinoza also analyses why the Christian republics had never stopped questioning rights of sovereignty without referring to the model of the Hebrews. He turns to an examination of the history of Christianity itself, a religion which, in its early days, was unsanctioned and practised in defiance of the state, and only much later did become an official state religion. This unique history, Spinoza argues, explains the politically inappropriate role of churches in Christian states (TTP, XIX; G, III, 236–237). 63 Koekkoek, René:  ‘The Hebrew Republic in Dutch Political Thought c.1650– 1675’. In: Velema, Wyger/Weststeijn, Arthur (eds.): Ancient Models in the Early Modern Republican Imagination. Brill: Leiden 2017, pp. 234–258. Cf. Rosenthal, Michael: ‘Why Spinoza chose the Hebrews’. History of Political Thought 18, 1997, pp. 207–241; Smith, Steven B.: Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of the Jewish Identity. Yale University Press: New Haven CT 1997, pp. 145–151.

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this view explains why certain works published between 1660 and 1670 that took a stand against theologians who wanted to create an imperium in imperio placed a great deal of emphasis on biblical criticism and the historical example of the Hebrews. In devoting so much attention to the Hebrew Republic in the TTP, Spinoza was following in the footsteps of authors such as Lambertus van Velthuysen (Het Predick-Ampt en ‘t Recht der Kercke [The Office of Minister and the Right of the Church] and Ondersoeck of de Christelijcke overheydt eenigh quaedt in haer gebiedt mach toe laten [Inquiry whether the Christian Government may allow any Evil in its Territory, hereafter], 1660); the De la Court brothers (Politikie Discoursen, 1662); and Adriaen Koerbagh (Een Ligt schynende in duystere plaatsen, om te verligten de voornaamste saaken der Godsgeleerdtheyd en Godsdienst [A Light Shining In Dark Places, To Shed Light On Matters Of Theology and Religion], 1668, the work that led to his conviction for blasphemy).64 However, the TTP takes a decidedly unconventional position in this controversy against theologians. Spinoza not only accepts Flavius Josephus’ portrayal of the Hebrew Republic as a theocracy, and, as such, a different kind of regime to a monarchy, an aristocracy or the democracies distinguished by classical philosophers, but he also follows these philosophers in drawing a distinction between non-degenerate and degenerate forms of theocracy. His aim is to show that the Hebrew Republic held up as a model by theologians was not the same republic originally founded by Moses, but its degenerate form.65

5. Another Machiavellian maxim: take republics and religions back to their first principles In his argument about the need to adapt religion to the interests of the state, Spinoza does not confine himself to historical examples. In keeping with Clapmar’s approach to this kind of accommodation in De arcanis, in the first paragraph of his argument Spinoza draws on the kind of reasoning that seventeenth-century political literature calls ratio status, or justifies as ius dominationis.66 The paragraph begins with one tacit allusion to Cicero – ‘It’s

4 See Koekkoek, 2017, pp. 250–258. 6 65 Cf. TTP, XVII (G, III, 218). 66 ‘Certum est, quod pietas erga patriam summa sit, quam aliquis praestare potest, nam, sublato imperio, nihil boni potest consistere, sed omnia in discrimen veniunt, & sola ira, & impietas maximo omnium metu regnat; unde sequitur nihil proximo pium praestari posse, quod non impium sit, si inde damnum totius reipublicae sequatur, & contra nihil in eundem impium committi, quod pietati non tribuatur, si propter reipublicae conservationem fiat.’ (TTP, XIX; G, III, 232).

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certain that piety toward a person’s country is the supreme piety he can render’ – and ends with another: ‘Since this is so, it follows that the wellbeing of the people is the supreme law. All laws, both human and divine, must be accommodated to this.’67 These two allusions to such a venerable source serve to position Spinoza’s argument as part of the republican tradition around reason of state – the context in which these words of Cicero are habitually cited. However, in the TTP Spinoza uses them to frame a doctrine that lays bare two of the most extreme consequences of these words. First, as we have just seen, even divine law must be accommodated to the sovereign law of the republic; thus, Spinoza crosses a line that neither Clapmar nor Corvinus judged advisable to cross. Second, it follows that ‘you can’t do anything impious to anyone which shouldn’t be ascribed to piety if it’s done to preserve the republic.’ The distance between making the people’s salvation (salus populi) the supreme law and the claim that ends can justify means is slight indeed. Still, few in the seventeenth century were willing to make this short leap overtly, because doing so would amount to admitting agreement with Machiavelli’s most scandalous lessons. Here Spinoza reproduces the lesson that Machiavelli sets out in c­ hapter 41 of book III of his Discorsi, a chapter that bears the title ‘That our Country is to be defended by Honour or by dishonour; and in either way is well defended’ (“Che la patria si debbe difendere o con ignominia o con gloria, e in qualunque modo è bene difesa”) and recalls the advice of Lucius Lentulus during the war with the Samnites: said, that in his opinion they ought to decline no course whereby their country might be saved; and that as the very existence of Rome depended on the preservation of her army, that army must be saved at any sacrifice, for whether the means be honourable or ignominious, all is well done that is done for the defence of our country.68

In fact, Machiavelli not only reminds us of this advice (‘il suo consiglio’), but he also holds it up as a good example to follow:

67 ‘Cum hoc ita sit, sequitur, salutem populi summam esse legem, cui omnes, tam humanae, quam divinae accommodari debent.’ Cf. Cicero, De re publica, VI, 16: ‘Iustitiam cole et pietatem, quae cum magna in parentibus et propinquis, tum in patria maxima est’; Cicero, De legibus, III, 3, 8: ‘Salus populi suprema lex esto.’ This second maxim is also found in Thomas Hobbes’s De cive, 13. 68 This and all translations of the Discorsi are from Machiavelli, Discourses on the first decade of Titus Livius, trans. Ninian Hill Thomson (London, 1883). ‘Disse che non gli pareva che fosse da fuggire qualunque partito per salvare la patria: perché, consistendo la vita di Roma nella vita di quello esercito, gli pareva da salvarlo in ogni modo; e che la patria è bene difesa in qualunque modo la si difende, o con ignominia o con gloria’ (Ed. Martelli, p. 376).

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Now this incident deserves to be noted and pondered over by every citizen who is called on to advise his country; for when the entire safety of our country is at stake, no consideration of what is just or unjust, merciful or cruel, praiseworthy or shameful, must intervene. On the contrary, every other consideration being set aside, that course alone must be taken which preserves the existence of the country and maintains its liberty.69

In agreement with this explanation, Spinoza’s advice in chapter XIX of the TTP to follow the maxim that religion should bend to the state, which he justifies on the grounds of the ius dominationis, follows the advice of Lucius Lentulus, and Spinoza supports it using arguments very similar to those put forward by Machiavelli in his comments on Lentulus’ episode. However, in this passage, Spinoza does not mention Lucius Lentulus, but rather points to another figure from Titus Livius’ Ab urbe condita of interest to Machiavelli: Manlius Torquatus, who appears in ­chapter 1 of book III of the Discorsi, entitled ‘For a sect or commonwealth to last long, it must often be brought back to its beginnings’ (‘A volere che una setta o una republica viva lungamente, è necessario ritirarla spesso verso il suo principio’).70 Specifically, Spinoza reminds his readers that Manlius Torquatus was praised for a deed that could only have been justified by his intent to preserve the republic. It is Machiavelli himself, in Discorsi, III, 1, who lauds Manlius Torquatus for having executed his own son for disobeying an order during wartime. Machiavelli describes this execution as a virtuous, exemplary and exceptional act that would have impressed upon the people of the republic that no one could alter customs or violate laws without consequence.71 By 69 ‘Da qualunque cittadino si truova a consigliare la patria sua: perché dove si dilibera al tutto della salute della patria, non vi debbe cadere alcuna considerazione né di giusto né d’ingiusto, né di piatoso né di crudele, né di laudabile né d’ignominioso; anzi, posposto ogni altro rispetto, seguire al tutto quel partito che le salvi la vita e mantenghile la libertà’ (Ed. Martelli, p. 376). 70 ‘At ubi judicatur, hoc reipublicae conservationi perniciosum esse, pium contra est, eundem in judicium vocare, tametsi mortis damnandus sit. Hâc de causa Manlius Torquatus celebratur, quod salus populi plus apud ipsum valuerit, quam erga filium pietas. Cum hoc ita sit, sequitur, salutem populi summam esse legem, cui omnes, tam humanae, quam divinae accommodari debent’ (TTP, XIX; G, III, 232). 71 ‘Surge, adunque, questo bene nelle republiche, o per virtù d’un uomo o per virtù d’uno ordine. E quanto a questo ultimo, gli ordini che ritirarono la Republica romana verso il suo principio furono i Tribuni della plebe, i Censori, e tutte l’altre leggi che venivano contro all’ambizione ed alla insolenzia degli uomini. I quali ordini hanno bisogno di essere fatti vivi dalla virtù d’uno cittadino, il quale animosamente concorre ad esequirli contro alla potenza di quegli che gli trapassano. Delle quali esecuzioni, innanzi alla presa di Roma da’ Franciosi, furono notabili, la morte de’ figliuoli di Bruto, la morte de’ dieci cittadini, quella di Melio frumentario: dopo la presa di Roma, fu la morte di Manlio Capitolino, la morte del

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considering this incident in terms of its effect, he assigns it to the category of acts that ultimately benefit both republics and religions by returning them to their first principles. Spinoza also refers to these kinds of acts in chapter X of the TP, where he explicitly cites the Discorsi, III, 1: Now that we’ve explained and shown the foundations of each kind of Aristocratic state, it remains to ask whether they can, from some inherent defect, be dissolved or changed into another form. The primary cause for the dissolution of states of this kind is the one that most acute Florentine noted in Bk. III, Disc. i, of his Discourses on Titus Livy, namely that in the state, as in the human body, ‘something is added daily which eventually requires treatment.’ So, it’s necessary, he says, that at some time something happens which returns a state to the principle on which it was established. If this return doesn’t happen when it should, the defects [of the state] increase to the point where they can’t be removed unless the state itself is removed with them. The return, he says, can happen by chance or by the judgment and wisdom either of the laws or of a man of outstanding excellence.72

Spinoza’s exploration of this topic in this chapter of the TP again carries echoes of Clapmar’s De arcanis, where recourse to dictatorship is described as one of the arcana dominationis characteristics of aristocratic regimes. It is not surprising that Spinoza, a Clapmar reader seemingly writing for other Clapmar readers, remarks that the first remedy people thought of for this evil described by Machiavelli is a temporary dictatorship, of the kind that the Roman Republic considered acceptable in times of exceptional danger, if necessary and for a limited period only. Such a move might have been justified, for example, if the republic was at war or facing sedition.73 However, Spinoza quickly clarifies that he is not advocating this solution.74 It is very

figliuolo di Manlio Torquato, la esecuzione di Papirio Cursore contro a Fabio suo Maestro de’ cavalieri, l’accusa degli Scipioni’ (Machiavelli, Discorsi, III, 1, ed. Martelli, 1971, p. 195–196). Cf. Titus Livius, II, 6. 72 Imperii utriusque aristocratici fundamentis explicatis et ostensis, superest, ut inquiramus, an aliqua causa culpabili possint dissolvi aut in aliam formam mutari. Primaria causa, unde hujusmodi imperia dissolvuntur illa est, quam acutissimus Florentinus Disc. 1 lib. 3 in Tit. Livium observat, videlicet quod imperio, sicuti humano corpori, quotidie aggregatur aliquid, quod quandoque indiget curatione. Atque adeo necesse esse, ait, ut aliquando aliquid accidat, quo imperium ad suum principium, quo stabiliri incepit, redigatur. Quod si intra debitum tempus non acciderit, vitia eo usque crescent, ut tolli nequeant nisi cum ipso imperio. Atque hoc, inquit, vel casu contingere potest, vel consilio, et prudentia legum aut viri eximiae virtutis.’ (TP, X; G, III, 353). 73 ‘In primis autem arcanum dominationis Aristocraticae sapere videtur creatio illa Dictatoris Romani post latam legem provocationis’ (Clapmar, 1644, III, 19, p. 163). 74 TP, X (G, III, 353–354).

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probable that he had in mind Clapmar’s own advice on the need to treat dictatorship with caution, its object being to preserve the freedom of the republic, not to turn it into a principality or tyranny. Spinoza would also have been very aware that the public opinion of the United Provinces tended to associate dictatorship either with England and Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate (1653–1658) or, more frequently, with the princes of Orange. The latter were looked on with suspicion by Dutch republicans, who believed they were intent on turning the country into a monarchy.75 The remedy he prescribes in the TP is not a dictatorship, but what he presents as a more root-and-branch approach: a reorganisation of the aristocratic republic. This proposal is also implicit in the TTP, where it is considered in the context of religion and expressed, of course, through the Machiavellian maxim that religion must be accommodated to the state. In keeping with Discorsi, III, 1, to which Spinoza alludes in his example of Manlius Torquatus, Machiavelli interprets this accommodation as a return to first principles, in which the added thing that should be eliminated when acting according to ius dominationis would be the concessions made to the public church by the civil power. A number of works published during the time that Spinoza was working on the TTP indicate that both republican intellectuals in general and those in Spinoza’s own circle had very much in mind the argument that the republic or religion could be saved by a return to their first principles. These groups shared the opinion that De Witt’s regime was weak and unstable, and were in broad agreement as to the symptoms of this frailty. When it came to suggesting potential solutions, they all tended to invoke that same Machiavellian maxim. For example, in the Politieke discoursen, a copy of which, as we have learned, Spinoza kept in his library, the De la Court brothers refer to Machiavelli when contemplating what could be done to stave off the republic’s decline. Their assumption is that, given the nexus between politics and religion (‘the very same passions of people spoil the Religion and install slavery or corruptions in Politics’), the causes and cures of tyranny are the same in both spheres. It is in this context that they proffer a maxim clearly inspired by that expressed in the title of the Discorsi, III, 1. Their interpretation of this maxim is contained in a passage that sets out its theological–political application:  the ‘Political rule to keep the State in its ancient liberty and purity, ad principia redeundum, namely to turn back

75 Indeed, Carl Schmitt singles out both Oliver Cromwell and Maurice de OrangeNassau as examples of figures described in the seventeenth century as embodying the spirit of the ancient Roman dictators (Schmitt, Carl:  Die Diktatur.Von den Anfängen des modernen Souveränitätsgedankens bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf. Duncker & Humblot: Berlin 2015, pp. 25–32).

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on all occasions to the first principles and to the pure fountain of God’s word’.76 The brothers maintain that this return to first principles would not only help keep the republic free from ecclesiastical tyranny, but would also protect religion from degeneration and prevent the word of God from being corrupted.77 From their perspective, in the context of United Provinces, the idea of returning to the first principles in the field of religion could be equated with the political project of a reversion to what was regarded as the founding moment of the new republic, the Union of Utrecht. Although the treaty recognized the Reformed Church as the ‘public church’, it also stated that ‘each person shall remain free in his religion’ and ‘that no one shall be investigated or persecuted because of his religion’.78 What needed to be excised so that the body politic could regain its health were the outgrowths of an intolerant Reformed Church that had abused its position in society. This is what the republic had tried to do at the beginning of the period known as ‘true liberty’ (1650–1672), when certain freedoms lost following the Synod of Dordt, during the ‘tyranny’ of the Orange princes, were recovered. Despite these efforts, however, the public Church held on to its privileged position. The republican narrative cast this return to first principles as a restitution of the freedom enjoyed by the Dutch people’s ancestors, the ancient Batavi, of whom Tacitus writes in De origine et situ Germanorum, XXIX. This narrative was in keeping with the slant that Grotius and other authors had put on the war against Habsburg rule. The popularity of this Machiavellian maxim is unsurprising at a time when there were more and more signs that the days of the ‘true liberty’ might be numbered. Earlier in the Discorsi (III,1) Machiavelli warns that the interval between each of these ‘renewals’, brought about either through legislation or by the actions of virtuous men, should not exceed ten years. It is in this context that he mentions the execution of Manlius Torquatus’ son, to which Spinoza refers in chapter XIX of the TTP. Machiavelli views this incident as a model for the kind of exemplary conduct that holds the body politic to account, with a similar impact to law. The advice distilled into the title of Discorsi, III, 1 is also cited in a work by Spinoza’s Latin teacher, Franciscus Van den Enden, entitled Free Political Propositions and Considerations of State (1665). In this book, an imaginary 6 Politieke discoursen, II, IV, 6, pp. 47–48. 7 77 See Weststeijn, 2012, pp. 308–310. Cf. Court, Pieter de la: The True Interest and Political Maxims, of the Republic of Holland, I, 14, 18. 1662, ed. cit, pp. 49–56, 69–73. 78 Rowen, Herbert H. (ed.): The Low Countries in Early Modern Times (Selected Documents). Macmillan: 1972, p. 73.

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character, Vrymont (‘free mouth’) delivers a speech in which he explicitly refers to the freedom of the Batavi, contrasting this freedom with the tyranny of Count Philip, King Philip II of Spain, during whose reign this fictional discourse is pronounced. Philip II’s reign over the Dutch Provinces would have been well known as a time when political tyranny was coupled with religious superstition. In a footnote, Van den Enden comments on this same Machiavellian maxim, combining it with another that Machiavelli extracts in Discorsi, I, 25: ‘That he who would reform the Institutions of a free State, must retain at least the semblance of old Ways’ (‘Chi vuole riformare uno stato anticato in una città libera, ritenga almeno l’ombra de’ modi antichi’).79 The result of joining the two maxims is as follows: With its first principles etc. In order to help a Sect or common Government have a long life, one often has to draw it back to its first principles. Likewise, is it necessary that whoever tries to change the old state of a Country, has to maintain its semblance. Both these things are affirmed by N. Machiavelli, see the first chapter in the third Book and the 25th chapter in the first Book of his Discourses.80

Unlike Spinoza, who regards Machiavelli as a defender of freedom and an invaluable guide on how to preserve it,81 Van den Enden leans towards the view that he is an apologist for tyranny, and treats his advice with distrust. He argues that it should not apply the first part of this new combined maxim uncritically – in other words, without having first considered whether these first principles are positive and consistent with the notion of egalitarian freedom that he, Van den Enden, espouses. As for the second part, he suggests that this kind of artifice is linked to a belief that he avows to oppose:  that in exceptional circumstances, where political stability has been undermined, regimes must save themselves through duplicity and violence.82 However, although he describes this doctrine, the result of marrying Discorsi, III, 1 and Discorsi, I, 25, as an ‘awful opinion’, this footnote and other passages of the same work reveal a close and insightful reading of Machiavelli’s work that offers a few clues for interpreting some of the arguments that Spinoza puts forward in the TTP. In fact, Machiavelli himself describes the advice he proposes in the chapter title of Discorsi, I, 25 as a rule that ‘should be used by all who would put an

9 Ed. Martelli, p. 108–109. 7 80 Enden, Franciscus Van Den/Klever, Wim (trans.): Free Political Propositions and Considerations of State. Text in Translation, the Relevant Biographical Documents and a Selection from Short report of New-Netherlands [Kort Verhael], 1662. Vrijstad 2007 (1665), p. 164, n. 92. 81 TP, V, 7 (G, III, 296–297). 82 Van Den Enden/Klever, 2007 (1665).

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end to the old government of a city and substitute new and free institutions’ (‘si debbe osservare da tutti coloro che vogliono scancellare un antico vivere in una città, e ridurla a uno vivere nuovo e libero’). He highlights its inconsistency with the proposition of the following chapter, which states that ‘a new prince in a city or province of which he has taken possession, ought to make everything new’ (‘uno principe nuovo, in una città o provincia presa da lui, debbe fare ogni cosa nuova’). This latter maxim, he argues, is not a rule for freedom, but for ‘tyranny’.83 As we have seen, and in keeping with the lessons of De arcanis, in the TTP, Spinoza does not rule out the use of tactics (such as deceit) that depart from commonly accepted moral norms – not when the republic and its freedom are at stake. His approach to the theological–political problem reflects this attitude. Adapting religion to the state is not a philosophical issue, but a technical one. It has to do not with truth, but obedience, just like the simulacrum of freedom of expression. More precisely, it is concerned with beliefs that foster an acceptance of obedience. In Spinoza’s words: faith requires, not so much true doctrines, as pious doctrines, i.e., doctrines which move the heart to obedience, even if many of them do not have even a shadow of the truth. This is true, provided the person who accepts them does not know they are false. If he did, he would necessarily be a rebel.84

Plato’s Socrates took the very same position when he spoke of myths in The Republic.85 If we read the two maxims from Discorsi, III, 1 and Discorsi, I, 25 together, we can identify another kind of stratagem to do with adapting religion to the state suggested by Spinoza in the TTP. In Discorsi, III, 1, Machiavelli illustrates the idea of a return to first principles with the example of the procedure followed by Dominicans and Franciscans in relation to Christianity in the Late Middle Ages. They presented this procedure as a return to the fundamentals of apostolic life, when really it was a new model for religious practice. This new model allowed them to reseed Christianity in the minds of men, which, Machiavelli claims, enabled the Church to recover its lost prestige.86 The thirteenth-century church, however, was clearly very different to the church of the apostolic era. What was introduced as a return to the

3 Ed. Martelli, p. 109. 8 84 ‘Sequitur denique fidem non tam requirere vera, quam pia dogmata, hoc est, talia, quae animum ad obedientiam movent: Tametsi inter ea plurima sint, quae nec umbram veritatis habent, dummodo tamen is, qui eadem amplectitur, eadem falsa esse ignoret, alias rebellis necessario esset’ (TTP, XIV; G, III, 176). 85 Cf. Plato, The Republic, VI, 414d–415d. 86 Ed. Martelli, pp. 196–197.

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origins of the faith was in fact innovation, draped in more acceptable guise. The TTP implicitly condones this tactic when Spinoza presents as a return to first principles a religion of his own invention. The difference in this case is that Spinoza is concerned with the peace of the republic and its citizens’ freedoms of conscience and expression, not the vested interests of any church.87

6. The TTP’s silent counsel In chapter VIII of the TP, the first of two chapters that explain how an aristocratic regime should be set up to ensure its stability, there is a passage that offers us a clue for interpreting the TTP. This passage can be linked to the discussion of the ius dominationis and reason of state that becomes relevant in light of the role of the seditious speech issue in this latter book. Writing on religion, and after reminding the reader that this subject has been discussed at great length in the TTP, Spinoza notes that he omitted certain elements from this earlier work on the grounds that it was not the place to discuss them. He gives an example: But at that time, we did omit some things which that wasn’t the place to discuss: namely, that all the Patricians ought to be of the same Religion, a very simple and most Universal Religion, such as we described in that Treatise. For it’s very necessary to make sure that the Patricians aren’t divided into sects, some favouring one group, others favouring others, and that they don’t, in the grip of superstition, try to take away from their subjects the freedom to say what they think.88

So, what Spinoza claims to have left out of the TTP is not the ‘most simple and universal’ religion – this is covered in chapters XII and XIV – but rather the characterization of this religion as obligatory for all the patricians of a well-established regime that aims to guard itself effectively from sedition. While in chapter XIX of the TTP he argues repeatedly for the Machiavellian maxim that the sovereign powers should adapt religion to serve the peace

87 An analysis of the characteristics of this invented religion, devised with a view to aligning the faith with a political objective that justifies religion in general, is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, a cursory look at its ‘dogmas’ (TTP, XIV; G, III, 177–178) is enough to conclude that there is nothing specifically Christian, nor anything specifically Jewish, about what Spinoza describes as ‘the fundamental principles aimed at by the whole of Scripture’. 88 ‘Quaedam tamen tum omisimus, de quibus ibi non erat agendi locus; nempe quod omnes patricii ejusdem religionis, simplicissimae scilicet et maxime catholicae, qualem in eodem tractatu descripsimus, esse debeant. Nam apprime cavendum est, ne ipsi patricii in sectas dividantur, et ne alii his, alii aliis plus faveant, et deinde ne superstitione capti libertatem subditis dicendi ea, quae sentiunt adimere studeant.’ (TP, VIII, 46; G, III, 345).

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and well-being of the Republic, this passage from the TP reveals how he believed this accommodation should proceed in practice and the benefits that it would bring. According to TP, VI, 4089 and TP, VIII, 46,90 the religious policies that further the objectives of securing the state and upholding the freedom of its subjects vary between monarchies and aristocracies. The approach hinted at in the TTP, and spelled out more clearly in the TP (VIII, 46), is designed to respond to a particular challenge: the challenge posed to an aristocratic republic by those who defend seditious opinions legitimising the church’s usurpation of the ius circa sacra, which rightfully belongs to supreme civil authority. Interpreted in light of the Dutch context, the publication date of the TTP and the moment when TP was a work in progress, it seems clear that, for Spinoza, this kind of adaptation would have avoided the sudden fall of the republic, which, as suggested in the TP, occurred, among other reasons, because it was poorly established.91 In Spinoza’s time, the United Provinces was a regime with an official religion. It should be stressed that to carry out the measures suggested in the TTP for adapting religion to the interests of the state would have been tantamount to a rejection of the Dutch Reformed Church’s status as public church. As membership of the Church was a requirement for anyone wishing to hold public office, it would also have required the ruling class to convert to this ‘most simple and universal’ religion.92 This break with the status quo is why in chapter XIX of the TTP Spinoza treats the process of adapting religion to the state as an action related to the ius dominationis, which, as noted earlier, allows for a departure from the ordinary law in extreme circumstances. In practice, such a move would have placed the provinces in violation of the pacts and concessions previously agreed with the Reformed 9 G, III, 307. 8 90 G, III, 345. 91 TP, IX, 14 (G, III, 352). 92 In the TP (VIII, 46; G, III, 345), Spinoza also stipulates that only patrices and senators would be able to perform the chief religious rituals (baptisms, marriage ceremonies, the laying on of hands, etc.). As a general rule, only they would be recognized as priests and the defenders and interpreters of the state religion. While the TTP blames the Levite priesthood for the misfortunes that befell the Hebrew Republic, this passage of the TP obliquely prescribes that the ecclesiastical Christian ministry, formed in the Levites’ image, should be abolished for the good of the republic. This is a different proposal to the one that Pieter de la Court argues for in The True Interest and Political Maxims, of the Republic of Holland (1662), I, 4, where he mounts a passionate defence of the value to the republic of tolerating other faiths as well as the state religion, contending that the fanaticism of many ministers in the public church is a threat to both freedom and well-being. Here, de la Court is arguing not for abolition, but for reform.

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Church. Reflections of Chapter XVI of TTP on pacts and promises93 should be read with this in mind. Spinoza draws these reflections to a close with the claim that ‘a contract can have no force except by reason of its utility. If the utility is taken away, the contract is taken away with it, and remains null and void.’ This principle, he adds, ‘is especially applicable to the institution of the Republic.’ This is essentially the same conclusion that Bodin reaches in his De republica libri sex (I.10), after pondering the extent to which the sovereign is bound by law and acquired obligations. Like Spinoza, Bodin resolves that, in accordance with natural right, promises must be kept, but in certain circumstances this obligation can be lifted by virtue of these same general principles of natural right. Spinoza also brings to bear the principle of the lesser evil, remarking on the folly of those who fail to follow it.94 In the TTP, Spinoza is cautiously silent on the action he considerers more suitable for the theological–political organization of the republic. No concrete measure is prescribed. But the maxims proposed by Machiavelli and Tacitus that should be followed to perform that action are presented and legitimised in the name of the ius imperii and the ius dominationis, or reason of state. The actors could only be the sovereign powers, or some dominant part thereof, who would have the power to impose their judgement by means of the kind of act attributed to Manlius Torquatus. Their acts would serve as a reminder that customs (customs in relation to religious tolerance, in this case) cannot be altered without consequence. Along with these maxims and justifications, the TTP also offers a political reading of the Bible that supports the ‘most simple and universal’ religion. For the good of the people, it suggests, this religion should replace the creed of the Reformed Church in view of the public interest. According to Spinoza’s reasoning, which is very close to that of Hobbes, it is for the supreme civil authorities, as the bearers of ius circa sacra, to impose this religion as the new public religion.95 In the preface to the TTP, Spinoza addresses a ‘philosophical reader’ (philosophe lector) as if this reader were the intended audience for the topics covered, while also remarking that he will not invite the common people, nor anyone in thrall to the same passions (superstition and fear), to pick up his book. The TTP speaks to this hypothetical philosophical reader, reminding or informing him of how these questions should be approached from a genuinely philosophical, rather than theological, perspective. As Averroes 3 G, III, 191–192. 9 94 G, III, 192. 95 Cf. Hobbes, Leviathan, II, 26, ed. cit. 191 [143] and 199 [149]: ‘The authority of writers, without the authority of the Commonwealth, maketh not their opinions law, be they never so true’; ‘All subjects are bound to obey that for divine Law, which is declared to be so, by the Laws of the Commonwealth.’

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had argued before him, the branch of philosophy concerned with religion is not theoretical philosophy, whose end is truth, but practical philosophy, whose end is action. Philosophy approaches religion as a tool of Politics. It is from this technical perspective that the TTP treats its subject matter. As we have seen, the way Spinoza develops this approach connects the TTP and the arguments we find in works on reasons of state and secrets of power. Like the authors of those works, Spinoza plays with the literary paradox of published secrets, following the path forged by Machiavelli, to reveal the arcana of the political sphere.96 Yet, at the same time, he openly defends the right to what Kant would later call ‘the public use of reason’ – the only thing that, according to this thinker, could bring enlightenment to mankind.97 Spinoza maintains that individuals do give up the right to act according to their own decision when forming a state, but do not give up the use of reason.98 A free republic, where deeds are punishable but never words, unless these words incite sedition, corresponds with this understanding of the political contract. It is in light of this conception of the free republic, the political contract and the old ideal of parrhesia evoked by Clapmar, that Spinoza advocates the right to speak and to teach, as long as the speaker or prospective teacher defends his arguments ‘by reason alone, not with deception, anger, hatred, or an intention to introduce something into the republic on the authority of his own decision.’99 This could take the form, for example, of arguing ‘that a law is contrary to sound reason, and therefore […] ought to be repealed.’100 Arguing that laws that prevent men from saying what they think are contrary to sound reason is, as we have seen, one of the TTP’s prime objectives. This argument joins together with the Machiavellian maxims that according to Spinoza should guide the sovereign powers in their task of protecting the 96 Spinoza’s use of Latin and express wish that the work should not be translated into Dutch naturally limits the risk of this disclosure, and is consistent with his desire to exclude the common people from those invited to take up the book. 97 Kant, What is Enlightenment? in Kant’s Practical Philosophy, trans. Mary J. Gregor, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 18. 98 TTP, XX (G, III, 241). 99 ‘Adeoque salvo summarum potestatum jure nemo quidem contra earum decretum agere potest, at omnino sentire, & judicare, & consequenter etiam dicere, modo simpliciter tantum dicat vel doceat, & sola ratione, non autem dolo, irâ, odio, nec animo aliquid in rempublicam ex authoritate sui decreti introducendi, defendat.’ (TTP, XX; G, III, 241). Cf. TTP, XX (G, III, 247). 100 ‘Ex. gr. siquis legem aliquam sanae rationi repugnare ostendit, & propterea eandem abrogandam esse censet, si simul suam sententiam judicio summae potestatis (cujus tantum est, leges condere & abrogare) submittit, & nihil interim contra illius legis praescriptum agit, bene sane de republica meretur, ut optimus quisque civis.’ (Idem).

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republic from those who champion such laws. The joint of that argument and these maxims also relate boldly (given the Machiavellian lineage of these latter) to the aforementioned way of understanding the public use of reason. For, as Gabriel Naudé reminds in Considérations politiques sur les Coups d’État, unlike a coup scenario where the action precedes justification, just as lightning precedes thunder, political maxims or reasons of state must be made public before they are put into practice because this publication can help give the action the legitimacy it needs to be successful.101

101 Naudé, Gabriel: Considerations politiques sur les Coups d’État. Marin, Louis (ed.). Les Éditions de Paris: Paris 1988 (Roma 1639), p. 101: ‘en ce qui se fait par maximes, les causes, raisons, manifestes, déclarations, et toutes les formes et façons de legitimer une action, précèdent les effets et les opérations, où au contraire dans les coups d’État, on voit plûtot tomber le tonnerre qu’on ne l’a entendu gronder dans les nuées.’

Moshe Shner A virtual dialogue between Baruch Spinoza, Yehuda (Yehuda) Halevi, Moses Mendelssohn and Shlomo Mimon on the ideas of History and Tolerance The Challenge of Modernity The publication of Theologico-Political Treatise (Tractatus TheologicoPoliticus, TTP, 1670) by Benedictus (Baruch) Spinoza is a milestone in the history of the critical study of scriptures; it poses a great challenge to both Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditionalists. What is this challenge? What was so difficult for 17th century Jewish and Christian authorities in the publication of this book that it had to be published anonymously, just to be banned shortly afterwards? Why could Jewish scholars of the time hardly deal with this text until the second half of the following century? What is the meaning of the TTP and Spinoza’s Ethics (1677, posthumously) that makes it “non grata” texts even in 21st century Jewish education programs, not to mention Muslim schools? Our hypothesis is that the TTP offers, among other ideas, two scandalous ideas, which posed, and still pose a threat to all monotheistic traditions: the idea of the historicity of scriptures and the idea of tolerance among all faiths that is derived from this new historical perspective of scriptures. These new insights opened the door to far-reaching changes in the way Europeans understand both their own faith and their neighbor’s faith, enabling the development of productive interfaith dialogues. The importance of a ‘milestone’ depends on its place along the road that it serves. Spinoza’s ideas may be properly studied, not in isolation, but rather within the context of the history of Monotheistic traditions and their understanding in the exploration of these traditions. What is the philosophical alter ego of Spinoza’s ideas about scriptures? What are the ideas that he challenged in this respect, and how were his ideas accepted within a winding philosophical discourse afterwards? This study suggests three reference points in the history of ideas that provide us with a context to the TTP:  the medieval Jewish philosopher and

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poet Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi1 (1075–1141 AC, Toledo & Cordoba, Spain), the Eighteen Century Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelson (1729–1786 AC, Berlin) and his younger contemporary Shlomo Maimon (Shlomo Ben Yehoshua, 1753–1800 AC). In retrospect, it is possible to draw a virtual philosophical dialogue between Spinoza and these three philosophers that develops these two ideas. On the one hand, Spinoza directly struggled with Yehuda HaLevi’s traditional worldview and proposed an anti-thesis to his ahistorical understanding of Judaism. On the other hand, his non-mythological understanding of the Jewish scriptures influenced future generations of scholars. Mendelsohn and Maimon formulated their worldview in reference to Spinoza and gradually made the historicity of scriptures an accepted idea in Jewish and Christian thought.

The Truth belongs to Us! It is the nature of a monotheistic faith to claim the sole possession of the truth about God. The three leading monotheistic traditions have their own narratives about the source of their tradition and its alleged absolute validity. To be part of a community of faith means to accept its founding narrative, whether it is about Moses, Jesus, Muhamad, Buddha, Jethro in the Druze tradition, or Abdu’l-Bahá in the Bahai faith. Monotheistic traditionalists would claim that it is a given truth; only infidels question the truth claim of their “absolutely true” narrative. No historiographical verification is needed—the internal evidence of the tradition is sufficient to establish its truth claim. Such a metaphysical stand means that these narratives are incompatible with each other and cannot co-exist or be mutually tolerated. Therefore, tolerance is an impossible challenge to monotheistic theologians and to the establishment of any monotheistic religion. Only polytheism could be comfortable with the multiplicity of Gods, faiths and religious practice. Throughout the medieval religious disputes, it was self-evident to Jews, Christians and Muslims that they, and only they, each from their own perspective, possessed the ultimate truth. The others were, at best, mistaken, and at worst, the enemies of God. Rabbinical Judaism’s stand towards other faiths was not different. Jews used to express the idea of Judaism’s supremacy over the faith of the gentiles (“Goyim,” non-Jews), while Christians tried to baptize and save the souls of all non-Christians (or offer them the redemptive Auto de F’e) and Muslims offered non-Muslims (Kuffar) the generous choice between Islam and the sword.

1 I use here Yehuda, translitaration from Hebrew, and not Juda as it is common in English.

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In his classic philosophical book, The Kosari (The Book of Refutation and Proof in Support of the Abased Religion, 1139),2 Yehuda HaLevi describes an imaginary competition between four agents: three representatives of the three monotheistic faiths and the representative of philosophy. The competition is, allegedly, about the soul of a legendary Kosari king who sought a true faith for his people. It is a great story, though it is, of course, not a historical account of a real historical drama. It is an apologetic text—a parable that was drawn to face Jewish need for a new anchor of faith. The actual reader, which Rabbi HaLevi had in mind, was not the Kosari king, but the twelfth century Jews of Spain, who faced the temptations and pressures of conversion. The Jew in that fictitious story – like the Christian, the Muslim and the philosopher—tries to convince the king, in his mind probably the Jewish reader of the book, that he alone possesses the true knowledge of God. In order to convince the king, or his readers, that Judaism is their best option, HaLevi does not tell them about revelations of any kind or busy them with any rational syllogism or scholastic argument. He just uses a common story for his audience: I believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, who led the children of Israel out of Egypt with signs and miracles; who fed them in the desert and gave them the land, after having made them traverse the sea and the Jordan in a miraculous way; who sent Moses with His law, and subsequently thousands of prophets, who confirmed His law by promises to the observant, and threats to the disobedient. Our belief is comprised in the Torah--a very large domain.3

The story continues with subsequent chapters of the People-of-Israel’s story as it is told in the Hebrew Scriptures and repeated in Jewish rabbinic rituals. The foundation of Judaism is a powerful narrative that talks about the beginning of humanity, the selection and formation of a sacred family, the creation of a nation through slavery and exodus, the establishment of the community of God through the Sinai covenant, the Land of Israel winding drama, exile and finally the long-waited redemption in the days of the Messiah. For the Jew who is struggling with his Jewish affiliation, the validity of this story has no external objective proof. The medieval Jew cannot receive any direct prophecy to validate this tradition. It is a dogmatic statement by Yehuda HaLevi: this is our narrative—take it or leave it! If one accepts the

2 I use here Kosari, as it is in the Hebrew publication, and not Kuzari as it is common in English. See HaLevi, Y.: The Kosari. Hebrew Translation by Yehuda Even Shmuel Dvir: Tel Aviv 1972. 3 HaLevi, Kosari I: 11. It continues in verses 47–49, 83–111. The text was taken from Hartwig Hirschfeld translation: HaLevi, Y.: Kitah al Khazari, 1905.

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narrative, including the chain of teaching and learning that starts at Sinai, then he can be part of the Jewish community of faith. HaLevi’s paradigm has one more element that can be very difficult for post-20th century people. According to HaLevi, Jewish people are a sacred family by birth. One is born a Jew—Jewishness is not an acquired faculty. Only the Jews can receive the wisdom of God. Prophecy is a Jewish faculty only. So, tolerance is in principle impossible, not only because Jews carry the only true Divine teaching, but also because the true words of God are not accessible to non-Jews. For the twenty-first century mind, these assertions are difficult, but it became difficult for the Jewish mind already in the 17th century Europe, when the doors of Jewish isolation were starting to open up. Following the drawing of new geographical, economic and cultural horizons of the European world, the development of global commerce, and a new cultural atmosphere of enlightenment, the theological discourse among Jews and Christians changed as well. The most dramatic changes took place in the fast-developing union of the Netherlands among the Judaized “Marranos”, the Jews of Spanish-Portuguese origins, who had returned to Jewish life after generations of forced Christianity and hidden traces of Jewish life. This is the political and cultural context of Baruch (Benedictus) Spinoza (1632–1672), who was no longer bound to the dogma of a certain group of people, and who could no longer accept the medieval premise of only one true religious tradition.4

Emergence of Tolerance in Jewish Philosophy In the 17th century flourishing free and liberal Netherlands, Spinoza led this vision of universal rationality. Instead of competing realities of God and the world, there is only one infinite and eternal realty, i.e. God or Nature. It is a monistic worldview, but without a transcendent God: the laws of nature, which are the eternal immanent laws of God, govern all. All men, with no exclusiveness, are part of this one reality and follow the same universal laws. Following this metaphysical paradigm, Spinoza articulated in the TTP (1670) a scandalous idea that caused him his excommunication from the Jewish community of Amsterdam: tradition is the historical creation of men and, therefore, any religious tradition should be learned in its historical context. History is the thread that goes through the entire treatise even if the idea is not discussed per se.

4 Yovel, Y.: Spinoza and other Heretics. Princeton University Press: Princeton 1992, pp. 40–84.

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The Treatise starts with the phenomena of both Prophecy and the prophets. Prophesies are limited in their relevance to scientific truth and rational understanding of reality, which, in Spinoza’s metaphysics, is identical to God. Biblical prophecies vary in their content and reflect the temporal circumstances of their articulation. They are not the representation of the Divine wisdom, like in HaLevi’s Kosari, but only human expressions of the ideas of their time. While real knowledge of God is a philosophical knowledge, much of the prophecies is conveyed not through words or rationally formed ideas, but through images, metaphors and parables. In that way, they suit the intellectual capabilities of their audience. But scripture clearly indicates that God has a visible form and that it was granted to Moses, when he heard God speaking, to look upon it, though he was permitted to see only the back. […] That Revelation [sometimes] happened by images alone is evident […]5

The Prophecies show not a perfected intellect of the prophet but a vivid imagination. As a charismatic speaker, the prophet draws the attention of his audience with colorful images that catch their imagination. Miracles have a central role in the Biblical narrative, and in ­chapter  6 of the TTP Spinoza labors to demythologize them. If nature is identical to God, and what we call God’s decisions are the dictates of the eternal laws of nature, then everything follows the dictates of nature and nothing can extend it. Ahistorical or unnatural events are, in principle, impossible. When the prophets discuss unimaginable events and portray them as miracles, they just reveal the shortage of their understanding. Thus, from these propositions  – that nothing happens in nature which does not follow from its laws, that its laws extend to all things […] it clearly follows that the term “miracle” cannot be understood except in relation to men’s opinions, and means nothing but a work whose natural cause we cannot explain by the example of another familiar thing, or at least which cannot be so explained by the one who writes or relates the miracle.6

An unexplainable event becomes an alleged miracle in the human mind and serves in the public sphere as a moral teaching or political guidance. When the human intellect falls short in explaining reality or when a public leader wants to impress their people, they resort to human imagination and irrational beliefs. Human imagination played a central role in describing events as miraculous. 5 Spinoza, B.: The collected Works of Spinoza, II Edited and Translated by Edwin Curley. Princeton University Press: Princeton 2016, p. 82. 6 Ibid., p. 155.

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For many things are related in Scripture as real, and were even believed to be real, which were nevertheless, only representations and imaginary things, e.g. that God (the Supreme Being) descended from heaven (Exodus 19:18 and Deuteronomy 5:19), and that Mt. Sinai was smoking because God had descended on it. […]7

While stating that nothing in reality can transcend the laws of nature, Spinoza is laboring to take the magic out of the Biblical narrative, placing the event within the eternal context of nature and defining its account in Scripture just as human literature. It is a huge leap from the Yehuda HaLevi’s paradigm. The basic idea is that scriptures are a genre of literature, human-written literature, political literature. In discussing the unmagical nature of scriptures, Spinoza is starting to compose a dictionary of Biblical Hebrew and then a lexicon of Biblical ideas, metaphors and idioms. If prophecies are a genre of human literature, also the prophets lose their divine status in the TTP and become just charismatic or creative speakers. While HaLevi made all the people of Israel, and only them, capable of receiving the divine wisdom, Spinoza is advancing in the opposite direction: no one is a prophet in its traditional sense, the messenger of a transcendental God. All men are human and human only. Spinoza studies the Hebrew Scriptures—as far as he can, with no preliminary presumptions—and learns from the text itself that the prophets were not philosophers. They almost always needed their prophecy as kind of external proof—the idea itself was not evident. Most of their speeches carried only ethical ethos and not “mathematical” clarity or validity, as Spinoza tried to achieve in his major text, The Ethics. Unlike a clear and distinct idea, a simple imagination does not, by its nature, involves certainty. […] It follows that by itself, Prophecy cannot involve certainty. As we have shown, it depended only on the imagination. So the prophets were not certain about God’s revelation by the revelation itself, but by some sign. […] Indeed, this Prophetic certainty was not mathematical, but only moral, as it is evident from the Scripture itself.8

The prophecy, in the sense that it is rather telling something about God, which is not the transcendent Divinity but the total reality in the Spinozan sense, is telling something about the prophet himself. Each prophet has his own personality that determines the mood and the content of his prophecy. The prophecies vary, and each prophecy teaches us about the prophet himself, his social status, his time, his audience, his language and his moral or political agenda.

Ibid., p. 165. 7 8 Ibid., pp. 94–95.

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The signs were given according to the opinions and capacity of the prophet. So a sign which would render one prophet certain of his prophecy could not at all convince another, who was steeped in different opinions […] similarly, the revelation itself varied in each prophet, […] according to the disposition of his bodily temperament, according to the disposition of his imagination, and according to the opinions he had previously embraced.9

Every prophet had his own image of God and his own idea of God’s alleged will. While in nature there is only one true reality, in human understanding of this reality there is a plurality. Any prophet understood it through his own personal existence. In order to understand an ancient text of prophecy, one has to study its history, and explore the personal situation of the author of this prophecy. The plurality of human interpretation opens the door for a pluralistic and tolerant understanding of human spirituality. Every nation has its own prophets that portray the images of their own Gods. Each nation creates the Gods that match its cultural development. Here Spinoza reflects the idea of the ancient Greek philosopher Xenophanes (~ 570–475 BC) that if horses and oxen had hands, they would sculpt their Gods as horses and oxen. In Halevi’s drama, only one tradition can be true  —in Spinoza’s treatise, no tradition holds the ultimate metaphysical truth and all can be tolerated as human created traditions. In current language, we would say that Spinoza is secularizing the Biblical drama. It is not a God-People historical drama but an all-men drama. According to Spinoza, even Moses is not a prophet in its classical sense, a man of God, but a wise political leader, in a Machiavellian sense. […] from that I learned that the laws God revealed to Moses were nothing but the legislation of the particular state of the Hebrews, and that no one else was obliged to accept them, indeed that even the Hebrew were bound by them only so long as their state lasted.10

Spinoza had Machiavelli’s “The Prince” in his library11 and following Machiavelli’s ideas, he portrays Moses as a clever and brave political leader. Moses is a clever prince, who understands the social and cultural reality of his people and therefore gives the People of Israel a proper guidance that suits their spiritual capabilities as former slaves. His Law, allegedly a Divine law, is just a wise law that takes the best from the Egyptian reality he knew form his youth in the palace and his political advisers like Jethro, the high

Ibid., p. 97. 9 10 Ibid., p. 72. 11 See Spinoza’s library catalogue at https://www.librarything.com/catalog/ BenedictusdeSpinoza

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priest of the Midianites. He has the wisdom to translate them into a law that will work for his people. Moses knew, says Spinoza, that the Hebrews would not listen to him as just a political leader and therefore spoke to them in the name of God. It is a secular reading of scriptures and therefore a scandal. Spinoza adds two insights. The first is the historical relevance of the Mosaic Law to its historical time. It was good for an ancient kingdom in Cenaan, but it became irrelevant after the Hebrews had lost their state. The second is its limited relevancy as it applies only to a specific group of people and has no claim over other people, nor any attempt to disclaim other people’s traditions. The idea continues in the third chapter of the TTP, where Spinoza deconstructs a major idea in the Jewish paradigm of a sacred history: the ahistorical idea of the selectedness of the Jewish people. The exclusiveness of the Hebrews is a major Biblical idea, and a leading idea in HaLevi’s Kosari; Spinoza rejects it completely. In one immanent reality, as it is portrayed in Spinoza’s Ethics, there is a place for only one history, in which all the peoples of the world take part. Nonetheless, people vary in their presence in this reality, and hence “chosenness” means only historical political, economic or social success. Each person has his or her presence in the world—“Conatus” in Spinoza’s terminology—and so every group has its imprint in history. Nations sometimes lose their place in history and disappear and sometimes regain their strength and return to the historical arena. Chapter three ends with an interesting statement for a 1670 AC philosopher: it is a possibility that one day Jewish people will regain their cultural and political presence in history and will reestablish their state; and then people would say that God chose them again. Indeed, if the foundations of their religion did not make their hearts unmanly, I would absolutely believe that someday, given the opportunity, they would set up their state again and God would choose them anew, that is how changeable human affairs are.12

The demythologization of scriptures culminates in the TTP with the idea that, as a worldly reality, scriptures should be studied like any other object in nature. The wisdom that HaLevi escribed only to prophets—and only Jews could acquire this kind of supreme knowledge—is now accessible to all. When Spinoza is asking how the Bible should be learned, he answers in the language of a scientist: like any other natural phenomena:

12 Ibid., p. 124.

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To sum up briefly, I say that the method of interpreting Scripture does not differ at all from the method of interpreting nature, but agrees with it completely. For the method of interpreting nature consists, above all, in putting together a history of nature from which, as from certain data, we infer the definitions of natural things.13

This statement is a milestone in the development of all the Humanities, critical Bible studies, the history of scriptures, their language and their philosophy. The historical perspective, though a shock for the Jews of that time, opened the way to future historical study of Jewish life in all its aspects: political history, social history and cultural history.14 In Jewish circles, such an endeavor had to wait for about a hundred and fifty years until the emergence of the scientific Judaic Studies in the second decade of the 19th century. The meaning of the historical perspective to tolerance is obvious. Spinoza is, up to now, the great rival of any fundamentalism. If scriptures were written by men, then all religious authorities lose their monopoly on God’s words. This is the first pre-condition for any fruitful interfaith dialogue— accepting the historical and cultural context of all religious traditions. The discussion that has begun with Jewish Converses, who returned to Jewish life in the 17th century, but could not live with Jewish or Christian fundamentalism, is still an open discussion. Even today, many Jewish, Christian and Muslim college students cannot digest Spinoza’s idea that scriptures are human-made texts, and therefore are subject to our rational autonomous observation. Observant Jews and Muslims, far less Christians, are sometimes even insulted by this 350-year-old idea that it was human beings who wrote the Bible, the Talmud, The New Testament and the Koran.

Tolerance without Historicity Jewish scholars who saw the “falling of the walls” of the Jewish ghetto, physical walls as well as social and spiritual ones, wanted to be Europeans. They gradually had to abandon the fundamentalist idea that their faith is the only true faith. Jews started to enter new social circles that brought together Jews and non-Jews. Growing modernized “neutral” social circles enabled cultural interactions between them. In such circumstances, other faiths seemed more acceptable. They recognized not only the differences but also the 3 Ibid., p. 171. 1 14 The catalogue of Spinoza’s library shows the wide panorama of topics he had an interest in, including ancient Roman and Medieval texts, Rennaisance time religious discourses, philosophy and political thought. See more on https://www. librarything.com/catalog/BenedictusdeSpinoza

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simmilarities between all monotheistic faiths.15 In many cases, Jews crossed the lines to gain a better social status; in other cases, they adopted a neutral stand towards all faiths. It was by no means just a practical choice; the new Europe influenced the Jews and gave them new spiritual horizons. Ideas of Deism and rational faith, universal humanity and rational ethics made the separation of individuals of different faiths unacceptable. Spinoza was too early for the Jewish community of Amsterdam, which could not tolerate his ideas, but his idea of cultural history could not be dismissed from the European intellectual arena. In the 18th century it was Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), the “father of Jewish enlightenment”, who sought new bridges to the outside non-Jewish world.16 In those times, more and more Jews established business and social relations with the “outer world”, and sought the modernization of Jewish life and Jewish education. Nonetheless, Moses Mendelsohn, the so-called “Jewish Socrates”, was even then a strange phenomenon for Jews and Christians alike, who could not understand how a Jew can adopt rational Deism, the Religion of Human Intellect, and, at the same time, remain an observant Jew. Mendelssohn wanted to believe that the new spirit of enlightenment would enable him to be a Deist philosopher, accepted in the general society, but his dualism was not easy for his surroundings, and finally he was forced to publicly defend his position and explain—in a response to the challenge of Lavater—how a Jew can enjoy both worlds at the same time. Here is where the idea of tolerance was introduced to contemporary Jewish thought. Here, for the first time in both Mendelsohn’s thought and Kant’s thought, the medieval idea of ‘one-way-to-God’ gave way to a pluralistic paradigm of many legitimate faiths.

15 Katz, J.: Tradition and Crisis. New York University Press: New York 1971, Chapter 23, pp. 214–225 16 Mendelssohn was born in 1729 in the town of Dessau, the son of a Torah scribe. The non-fanatic approach of the Dessau community enabled him to study philosophy in addition to the traditional rabbinical education. In 1743 he followed his rabbi and mentor David Fraenkl to Berlin, at first as the tutor of the children of the soap maker Isaac Bernhard (1750), and later to become a rich merchant and a renowned philosopher. It was after this move to Berlin that he seriously undertook secular studies outside the world of traditional Jewish scholarship. A decade later (1754), Karl Gotthelf Lessing and Mendelssohn became acquainted, and a life-long friendship began, out of which grew Lessing’s play Nathan the Wise (1779). Their friendship examplified the Enlightenment’s ability to surmount religious differences and it was Lessing who secured Mendelssohn a place in the circle of German intellectuals.

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During the 1750s and 1760s, Mendelssohn wrote several philosophical discourses, including his 1763 prize-winning “Treatise on Certainty in Metaphysical Philosophy”, for a contest in which Immanuel Kant also competed. Mendelssohn was by far the most dominant figure of the German-Jewish Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. His writings include Philosophische Gespräche (1755), Philosophische Schriften (1761), Phäedon (1767), and Jerusalme: oder, Über religiöse Macht und Judentum (1783). Mendelssohn died in Berlin in 1786, from a heart attack probably following his intense engagement in a severe dispute over Spinoza’s pantheistic philosophy. Being part of the Enlightenment, Mendelsohn had translated the Psalms and the Pentateuch into German, written in Hebrew letters. The translation was accompanied by a traditional Hebrew exegesis. The translation work, which aimed at lowering the boundaries between Jews and their surroundings, stormed the Jewish community and aroused severe opposition among local rabbis. Nevertheless, the time of the traditional Jewish excommunication, which had thrown Spinoza out of the Jewish circles a hundred years ago, was over. Mendelssohn’s philosophy was influenced by the tradition of classical 18th century rationalism:  the emphasis on reason as the sole medium by which man obtained knowledge of his duties to God. The ‘Religion of Reason’, which he adopted from current European Deism, maintains the immortality of the soul17 and the idea that man is endowed with eternally valid innate ideas of absolute goodness and truth. While morality was in Spinoza’s Ethics the dictate of the laws of nature, in Mendelson’s writings it becomes, in accordance with Kant’s “Categorical Imperative”, the faculty of the rational human being. Free reason, not the exploration of nature, directs man to the fulfillment of his destiny. Tolerance needs two sides, and although it was against his nature and intentions, Mendelssohn was compelled to publicly defend his personal dualism and the right and logic of the independent existence of the Jewish religion among the non-Jewish society of his time. As Mendelssohn became more integrated into the Berlin Enlightenment circles, his prominence continued to underscore the anomaly of a traditional Jew at the center of Berlin’s intellectual circles. His encounter with the Swiss clergyman Johann Casper Lavater brought many of these underlying issues to the foreground. Lavater shared with Christian circles the medieval time ambition to convert Jews to Christianity and, in that way, show the supremacy of Christian tradition over rationality. Lavater and Mendelssohn had met during the mid-1760s.

17 Mendelsohn, Phäedon, 1767

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Somewhat reluctantly, Mendelssohn agreed to some private conversations on the subject of Jesus and expressed a positive attitude towards the moral teachings of Jesus Christ. These positive remarks toward the father of Christianity were tempting for traditional Christian ears. In 1769, Lavater recounted these discussions while dedicating his German translation of a Christian theology composition by the Calvinist Charles Bonnet to Mendelssohn, with the challenge to refute in public the fundamental principles of Christianity or to do “what prudence, love of truth, and honesty” compel him to do. Lavater’s challenge provided a direct attack on the notion of tolerance. Mendelssohn explained that his refusal to enter the debate was because of his inferior legal status as a Jew, which was derived from the inferior legal status that governed the Jewish community. The main idea he brought forward in his letter (Berlin, December 1769) was that we had to accept that there was more than one legitimate way to human salvation. Tolerance in this text is not a matter of tactics or good manners. He had to accept, in his heart, not only in his words, that there are decent people in every community of faith.18 It was the first time in the history of Jewish philosophy that a leading Jewish scholar, who became a pivot in modern Jewish mind, said that Judaism was not the only road to salvation. Not Judaism, nor any other faith, could claim ultimate and exclusive truth! The idea of Pluralism, however, was not inclusive in Mendelsohn’s mind. He was challenged by the idea of Jewish internal rationality and pluralism, by an anonymous polemic article, molded on the “Lavater affair”, which was sent to him by a well-known person, a converted Jew and a deistic philosopher Joseph von Sonnenfels, “Words of Light and Truth”. Sonnenfels referred to a case of a Jewish teacher who had to leave his job because he was not fully observant. Sonnenfels asked Mendelsohn why, as a rational person, he still held his irrational faith, and why, as a Jew, he demanded a place for Jews in the general society, but could not accept diversity among the Jews themselves. Why should the Christian accept the Jew when the Jew could not accept the different paths of life of another Jew? Mendelsohn responded with his “Jerusalem (1783), in which he spoke, following the ideas of his contemporary philosopher John Lock, on behalf of the separation of religion and the state and the freedom of thought.19 According to Mendelssohn’s social contract, in the first part of “Jerusalem”, 18 Mendelsohn, “Letter to John Caspar Lavater”, In: Mendelsohn, M.: Jerusalem and other Jewish Writings. Translated by Alfred Jospe. Schocken Books: New York, 1969, pp. 117–118. 19 Mendelsohn, Jerusalem, 1969 (1832), 10.

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the separation between the state and religion was based on the distinction of the “formal” and the “inner” side of human social life. Therefore, religion in itself, the consciousness of people, was no “formal” subject of the social contract; only the external acts of a citizen had to be judged, as long as they violated a “formal right” or “responsibility”. The state law should deal only with human external behavior. Despite this separation of the religion from political theory and its reduction to the private sphere, every religion had its own “inner” power, which Mendelssohn described in the second part of “Jerusalem”. While the mind cannot be chained, the practice of law – says Mendelsohn – can and should be enforced. One of Mendelssohn’s main doctrines in Jerusalem, which he shared with Locke, Shaftesbury and Leibnitz, was the distinction between three kinds of truth: eternal truths, which are self-evident, i.e. metaphysics and logic, scientific truths, which depend on laboratories and various search tools, and historical truths, which require the evidence of sensory experience and the chain of witnesses, teachers and disciples. While metaphysical truth and scientific truth are rational and therefore eternal and universal, i.e. open to all thinking individuals, the third kind of truth, the historical truth is particular and singular. The Israelites keep the multi-generational testimony of the Sinai covenant. The evidence only founds this truth. It happened once and only to the people of Israel. As such, it compels only the Israelites. A Jew becomes, at the age of thirteen, part of this multi-generational chain of testimony and is takes upon himself the ultimate commitment to this law. In accordance with Rabbi Yehuda Halevi’s teaching, Mendelssohn argued that the giving of the Torah at Sinai is a historical fact, which was brought to us by the long chain of Jewish teaching. The Mosaic Law is a divine law that Jews pass from generation to generation and it compels all the Jews and only the Jews. Historical truth in Mendelohn’s writings is the Halevi’s truth, the truth of the rolling narrative that is passed from one generation to the other. It is not the historiographical truth of Spinoza’s TTP. In that sense, Mendelsohn and Lavater share the same kind of dogmatic truth, though Lavater, being part of the medieval state of mind, thought that just one tradition could be true and Mendelsohn developed the idea that each community of faith may have its own “historical” truth, while sharing a common rationality. Mendelsohn’s claim on behalf of the plurality of religions goes hand in hand with his contemporary leading philosopher Emanuel Kant, who stated that, while God is one, the God of reason, there are many traditions of worshiping this one Deity:

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There is only one (true) religion; but there can be several kinds of faith—we can say, further, that in the various churches divided from one another because of the difference in their kinds of faith, one and the same true religion can nevertheless be met with.20

Like Mendelsohn, Kant recognized the particularity of any tradition, based on singular historical experiences. This fundamental epistemology helped Mendelssohn to argue for tolerance towards the Jews. Each faith has its own tradition, which is indisputable, because of its historical singularity. His idea of tolerance is based on a dualistic scheme: as a rational philosopher he shares with his non-Jewish neighbors the religion of reason and with other philosophers, the eternal truths, logic and science, which are evident to all rational people. As a Jew he shares with other Jews a divine law—not human-made law like in Spinoza’s TTP, but a divine law—given to Jews alone and obliging for the Jews only; “the Israelites have a divine legislation”. Other people have their own legitimate ways to salvation! This particularistic set of laws should not interfere in any way with rationality or good citizenship. As a rational person, the Jew can be a legitimate member of the academic community. As a decent person the Jew can be a respectful citizen of the state, while, at the same time, carrying on with his life as a member of a particular community of faith. In Mendelsohn’s eyes, diversity is required among faiths, but not within a certain faith. He writes: Brothers! If you care for true piety, let us not pretend to agree where Providence’s aim is obviously diversity. None of us thinks and feels exactly like his fellow-man; so why do we want to deceive each other with delusive words?21

Tolerance is a principle requirement from the secular political sphere—it is not yet part of the religious sphere. Mendelsohn was against the traditional Jewish tool of excommunication, the Cherem, as it tries to enforce the impossible:  certain thoughts or beliefs. The principle of the separation between political power and religious affairs intended to secure the freedom of thought and belief. In that sense, Mendelsohn was a modern, enlightened individual of the 18th century. Nonetheless, his understanding of the Mosaic Law and of Judaism as the sole practice of that law reveals his religious dogmatism: Judaism is a set of laws given to the Jewish people in Sinai. This is a historical truth passed to current Jews through the chain of Jewish learning—and a Jew has to accept it as it is or leave the circle of Jewish life. Mendelsohn was able to accept Spinoza as a philosopher of metaphysics, but not as a non-observant Jew, who challenged the idea that the Mosaic 20 Kant, I.: Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. Harper TorchBooks: New York, 2008, pp. 98–99. 21 Mendelssohn, M.: Jerusalem: Religious Power and Judaism. Jonathan Bennett online edition, 2017, p. 60.

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Law is divine and unchangeable. A bright young philosopher, Shlomo [ben Yehoshua] Maimon, challenged this stance very soon, in the backyard of Mendelsohn himself.

The ‘18th Century Spinoza’ One day, a young beggar reached Mendelsohn’s house in Berlin.22 Shlomo Maimon, a brilliant young man, had escaped from his family and community and come to Berlin to deal with his philosophical questions and his doubts about faith.23 In previous years he had been occupied with the mysteries of the Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) and now he was occupied with the larger intellectual world. Maimon was not able to stay in one place. His sharp inquiries and blunt behavior made him persona non grata in any place he settled in, and so his geographical wandering went hand in hand with a metaphysical one, which gained him a most important place in German philosophy between Kant and Fichte and German idealism, especially thanks to his discussion of Kant’s first critique of “pure reason”. Maimon’s metaphysics was very different from Spinoza. While Spinoza was a pantheist who saw all reality as one substance, which man had to know in order to reach happiness, Maimon was an idealist who based his understanding of reality on the primacy of the human mind. All aspects of reality were just a projection of the human mind. Nonetheless, in his study of Judaism and Jewish history, Maimon shares the basic ideas of Spinoza about the historicity of Judaism and about its non-exclusiveness. Maimon left behind two short personal documents, beside his prolific contributions to the general German philosophy. In his autobiography, Maimon tells his life story in a self-ironic fashion. The history of Jewish people, seen through the eyes of a young rebellious Jew, is nothing more than a sacred history in Halevi’s or Mendelsohn’s sense. Spinoza’s idea that the Jew are historical people like any other group of people, became obvious in this text. It is a sociological and anthropological account of Jewish life in 18th century Poland and Lithuania. Like Spinoza, Maimon published his book anonymously. It was too dangerous. In his text, he was cautious not to mention Spinoza as his source of inspiration; this was too dangerous, even in his time.24 The Jews in Maimon’s account are simple people, quite often ignorant, driven by superstitious and day-to-day struggle for survival. They are human 22 Maimon, S.: Hayei Shlomo Maimon. Ligvulam: Tel Aviv 1942 (Hebrew), 1942, 178–179. 23 Freudenthal, G.: “Salomon Maimons Development from Kabbalah to Philosophi­ cal Rationalism”. In: Tarbitz 70(1), 2012, pp. 105–171 (Hebrew), 2012. 24 Lachover, F.: “Shlomo Maimon Ve-Sefer Toldotaiv”. (Schlomo Maimon Auto­ biography – introduction. Ligvulam Tel Aviv 1942, pp. 9-50, 1942, 21.

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beings of the present, stricken by poverty and political inferiority. Here and there, Maimon also discusses former periods of Jewish history. The Jewish sacred narrative is turned into a historical account. This simple and preliminary historical perspective allows Maimon to also criticize the present state of his people, exposing their weaknesses and failures, and point toward individuals of outstanding intellect. For Maimon, it is Maimonidess—he even adopts his name—and then Spinoza.. Not only does history become historical, but religion also becomes historical and seen as a cultural entity. Spinoza already stated in the TTP that the Mosaic Law was a human made constitution, but it was beyond the mind or rabbinic authorities. Even Mendelsohn saw the Mosaic Law as divine law. Here, a Jewish scholar who rebelled against the rabbinic traditional paradigm framed the phenomenon of religion in a historical theory about the origins of religions as a general human phenomenon. For the first time, a Jewish scholar developed a theory about the development of religions throughout human history. All human societies developed their own faith in a certain stage of their development. Differences between religions are the result of different interpretations of reality and are not the products of right or false prophecies. All religions are the creation of the human mind: first comes the “natural religion”, then the “positive religion”, and finally the “political religion”.25 Not only had Jewish people lost their exclusiveness, now it was also Judaism that found itself in the same field of study of all the other faiths in the world. Maimons’ analysis is not neutral—the reality of the Jewish religion in his time is the third stage, a political religion. As such, it lost its original authenticity and became a burden on the life of Jews.26 Maimon uses his historical understanding of faith, and in a Spinozian way, writes an analysis of Mamonides’ Guide of the Perplexed.27 Spinoza’s TTP’s paradigm of faith returns into the philosophical stage. Maimon refers to Spinoza as a political leader and, like the TTP, considers the Mosaic Law as a human made constitution. From the perspective of this updated Spinozian worldview, tolerance is obvious. Maimon, in his wandering across Western Europe, is looking for his own spiritual salvation. At one point, he considers the possibility of conversion into Christianity. The converting priest, who interviews him, comes to the conclusion—so tells us Maimon in his autobiography—that he is “too philosophical” to become a member of any community of faith.

5 Maimon, 1942, 232–240. 2 26 Maimon, 1942, 242–246, 252–258. 27 Maimon, 1942, 260–336.

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Like Spinoza, Maimon remains skeptic, unable to find his place in any circle of faith. Like Spinoza, he is taking out of the Jewish people’s heritage all its alleged mystery and exclusiveness. Jews are human beings, like all men, and not always the most successful ones. They are part of human history and subject to critical historiography, like any other people. A few years down the road of Jewish modern history, a German Jewish intellectual, Rabbi Nachman Krochmal took this idea of historicity and wrote his classic Moreh Nebukhe ha-Zeman  (Guide for the Perplexed of the Time, 1851, posthumously). In his book, he refers to Maimon. The disciples of Rabbi Krochmal took this new paradigm one-step forward and developed scientific studies of the history of Jewish people in all its manifestations; “Wissenschaft des Judentums” (1819). A hundred and forty-nine years after the publication of the TTP, its insight into the historicity of Jewish life became part of the mainstream of Jewish intellectual life. Simultaneously, already in the nineteeth of the 18th century, appeared the first signs of reformation of Jewish life. In Mendelsohn’s writings and public discourse, tolerance was only for Judaism and Christianity, but not within the Jewish religious landscape itself. Now there was an emerging call for tolerance for the diversity within the Jewish circles as well. Following Maimon, the door was open for Jewish self-criticism—Spinoza was again present on the Jewish intellectual stage. In 1810, Israel Jacobson, who started to develop new forms of Jewish worship, established the first reform synagogue. Spinoza’s ideas returned to the core of Jewish intellectual life and the idea of tolerance for religious diversity has been at the center of Jewish discourse ever since. Nonetheless, the tolerance discourse is not over and the TTP itself is rarely present in Jewish schools, and Spinoza, posing a major threat to traditional Jewish identity, is still, in general, a persona non grata in the Israeli education system.

Jörg Zimmer Spinoza in the ‘Vormärz’ Period On the Reception of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus in the Work of Feuerbach and Marx Translated and edited by Cadenza Academic Translations Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP) and the intellectual climate in the ‘Vormärz’ (the period in German history preceding the 1848 March Revolution) form an interesting constellation. The combination of political liberalism and the historico-critical interpretation of the Bible expressed in the work converges with the central concerns of the emancipation movement in the Vormärz – freedom of philosophical thought and the political demand for freedom of speech, a non-dogmatic science of biblical interpretation and a critical philosophy of religion (precisely those elements that formed the model for Spinoza’s historical explanation of the Bible1, which was based on a strict delineation between theology and philosophy): all of this was part of the spirit of the Vormärz and had already been formulated in the TTP. If we also consider that this work had been banned in the Netherlands in 1674 and so also resonated with the young Germany’s experience of its own epoch in the restoration period after the Congress of Vienna, a period characterized by censorship, then we have here all the elements that make up this constellation. Spinoza’s excommunication must have seemed familiar to many people in Metternich’s libertarian night-watchman state. In classical German philosophy up to Hegel, the element which would serve as the ‘priming powder for an explosion’2, i.e. Spinoza’s pantheism, was still of a purely metaphysical nature. This was the reason why Ethics was the most widely received text. The demand for freedom of philosophical thought might still have been acceptable, but the political content of the TTP – the argument for a liberal and democratic political order which would include freedom of speech and a critical relationship to theological orthodoxy – would have ‘primed’ not only an explosion, but presumably also a revolution, a revolution that Germany was simply not ready for at that time. Seidel, H.: Baruch de Spinoza zur Einführung. Junius: Hamburg 2007. 1 2 Blumenberg, H.:  Arbeit am Mythos. Suhrkamp:  Frankfurt am Main 1996, pp. 438–466. Wording sourced from the English version of this work: Robert M. Wallace (trans.), Work on Myth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 403–429.

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It was therefore not until the Vormärz period that the political Spinoza of the TTP was discovered. From the early 1830s onwards in Germany, following the years of restoration after the Congress of Vienna, a bourgeois emancipation movement emerged, characterized by a conflation of nationalist and liberal ideas that could be summed up in the words ‘unity and freedom’. The political spectrum ranged from the creation of a constitutional monarchy through to more radical demands for the democratization of society. There was, however, a broad consensus in terms of criticism of censorship and the suppression of freedom of speech, and this was expressed in one of the most famous political pamphlets of this period, Büchner’s Der hessische Landbote: This sheet is to tell the Hessian country the truth, but who tells the truth, is hanged, and even the one who reads the truth be punished by perjured judge you. Therefore, those whom have this leaf belongs to observe the following: 1st You must keep the paper carefully out of her house before the police; 2nd they can tell it only to loyal friends; 3rd those who do not trust them, as himself, may only deposit it secretly [...].3

For Büchner, the ‘constitutions in Germany’ are nothing but ‘empty straw […], never one from which a stronghold of German freedom. What are our election laws? Nothing as violations of civil and human rights of most Germans’.4 It is precisely because of this persecution and restriction of freedom that the reception history of Spinoza in the Vormärz period is largely unpublished. Büchner wrote extensively on Spinoza, as did Marx after him.5 It was only in the third edition of his work on the history of the philosophy of the modern era, which offered an account of Spinoza, that Feuerbach found the courage to insert a longer defence of the Tractatus into his work. Heine published an early public opinion on the political Spinoza in the 1830s: There is a peculiar, indescribable fragrance about the writings of Spinoza. We seem to breathe in them the air of the future. Perhaps the spirit of the Hebrew prophets still hovered over their late-born descendant. There is, withal, an earnestness in

3 Büchner, G.:  Werke und Briefe. Lambert Schneider:  Darmstadt 2013, p.  21. Wording sourced from the English version of this work: Peace to the Cottages! War on the Palaces!, The Hessian Courier, retrieved 28.8.19 from https://www. indybay.org/newsitems/2010/07/10/18653443.php. 4 Ibid., pp. 27–28. English version: Peace to the Cottages!, Web. 5 There is a 176-page manuscript in the Goethe and Schiller Archive in Weimar. Cf. Kuhnigk, M.: “Das Ende der Liebe zur Weisheit. Zur Philosophiekritik und Philosophenschelte bei Georg Büchner im Zusammenhang mit der zeitgenössischen Hegelrezeption”. In: Georg Büchner 1813–1837. Revolutionär. Dichter. Wissenschaftler. Stromfeld / Roter Stern: Basel / Frankfurt/M. 1987, p. 278.

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him, a self-conscious bearing, a solemn grandeur of thought that certainly seems as though it were inherited; for Spinoza belonged to one of those martyr-families driven into exile by the most Catholic kings of Spain.6

The reference to the political Spinoza is then made explicit in the mention of a politically motivated execution in the Netherlands: for ‘and as previously he had comprehended religion with its daggers, so now he comprehended politics with the cord.’7 This link between the criticism of religion and politics is characteristic of the Vormärz period and its relation to Spinoza. The context of Young Hegelianism is essential to the reception of Spinoza in philosophy, in Feuerbach and Marx. Karl Löwith has summed up this categorization incisively: The real achievements of German criticism are limited to the criticism of theology and religion, which also subsumed moral and political ideas. Whereas the Young Hegelians “criticized” everything simply by declaring it “theological”, the Old Hegelians “understood” everything as long as it fit into Hegelian categories.8

An anthology on the so-called ‘Hegelian Leftists’ dates this movement to between 1835 (the year of publication of David Friedrich Strauss’ Das Leben Jesu, a book which, like Spinoza’s TTP, employs a historico-critical approach to the Bible) and 1843, as it was in this year that ‘the problems among the Hegelian Leftists developed and came to a head, and the break with Hegel’s system was complete and it was the year that ‘means a deep rupture for everyone involved […].’9 We will consider Marx’s reception of Spinoza in 1841 precisely against this background of the year 1843, which for him meant turning away from radical democratic demands and towards both a critique of capitalism and the development of dialectical materialism. The common democratic demands of the Young Hegelians were ‘equal rights for all people, self-determination by the people, free election of their representatives, a democratic public sphere, freedom of the press, the active

6 Heine, H.:  Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland. In:  Briegleb, K.  (ed.):  Sämtliche Schriften. Ullstein:  Frankfurt/M./ Berlin / Vienna 1981, vol. 5, p. 562. Wording sourced from the English version of this work:  Snodgrass, J.  (trans.):  Religion and Philosophy in Germany, retrieved 28.9.19 from https://archive.org/stream/religionandphilo011616mbp/religionandphilo011616mbp_djvu.txt. 7 Ibid., p. 563. English version: Religion and Philosophy, Web. 8 Löwith, K.: Von Hegel zu Nietzsche. Der revolutionäre Bruch im Denken des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, Meiner: Hamburg 1995, p. 116. Translator’s note: Unless otherwise stated, all translations of cited foreign language material in this article are our own. 9 Introduction to:  Pepperle, H.  and I.:  Die Hegelsche Linke. Dokumente zu Philosophie und Politik im deutschen Vormärz. Reclam: Leipzig 1985, p. 15.

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and responsible co-operation of all citizens.’10 It was these very demands that found a voice, as well as elements of a philosophical justification, in Spinoza’s TTP. The bourgeois dream of political freedom was to amount no more than a brief episode in the nineteenth century. In 1886, Engels wrote of Bismarck’s German Reich that the period of the Vormärz ‘had become as foreign to the present generation in Germany as if it were already a hundred years old.’11 It was not only foreign to many people in the early twentieth century; there were also voices openly opposed to a democratic constitution in Germany. And in 1938, once the ‘full century’ had just about elapsed, Carl Schmitt saw in the imperative of religious tolerance, which he associated with the TTP, the beginning of a process of neutralization of the modern state, within which ‘western liberal democracy […]’ converges ‘with bolshevist Marxism’, because both see the state as a neutral apparatus ‘of which the most diverse political powers may avail themselves as of a technically neutral instrument.’12 Schmitt argues that the link between the criticism of religion and democratic political demands, as is characteristic of the Vormärz, is already present in the work of Spinoza. In a clear echo of the National Socialist myth of the Jewish conspiracy, his attack on Spinoza refers to the ‘the liberal Jew’s perspective on the barely visible fracture point’ of religious freedom: ‘In this, he immediately recognized the great breach of modern liberalism […].’13 Schmitt traces a ‘line’ from Spinoza to Mendelssohn through to Karl Marx,14 leading to ‘the replacement of the absolute, prince-ruled state of the eighteenth century with the civil constitutional state of the nineteenth century’.15 Precisely such conspiracy theories make clear that for large parts of German intellectual history up to the middle of the twentieth century, people not only felt alienated from the democratic tradition of the Vormärz, but were even actively hostile towards it.

0 Ibid., p. 26. 1 11 Engels, F.:  Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen Philosophie. In: Ausgewählte Schriften II. Dietz: Berlin 1981, p. 330. Wording sourced from the English version of this work:  Progress Publishers:  Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, retrieved 28.8.19 from https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch01.htm. 12 Schmitt, C.:  Der Leviathan in der Staatslehre des Thomas Hobbes. Sinn und Fehlschlag eines politischen Symbols. Clett Cotta: Stuttgart 1995, p. 63. 13 Ibid., p. 86. 14 Ibid., p. 108. 15 Ibid., p. 100.

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1. On the Reception of Spinoza in Classical German Philosophy In an essay on the reception of the TTP in the Vormärz period, the focus cannot be on elucidating in detail the pantheism controversy in classical German philosophy – even if only because it was the Ethica and not the TTP that featured most strongly in the reception of Spinoza in German literature and philosophy from the 1780s through to the 1830s. The aim of the following pages is not to give an account of the pantheism controversy16 but to outline its basic tendencies as a background against which the Vormärz, too, had to view Spinoza. The cause of the disputes around Spinoza – who in actual fact did not have a high public profile in the late Enlightenment period in Germany  – was famously the indiscretion with which Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi exposed Lessing as a Spinozist in 1785 by publishing a transcript of a conversation from memory.17 This indiscretion was a scandal, forcing the Jewish philosopher and friend of Lessing, Moses Mendelssohn, to defend the most famous writer of the German Enlightenment against the accusations. Lessing himself had died a few years previously and so could no longer comment on the transcript of the conversation. This is another reason why Jacobi’s decision to publish the transcript is problematic and unfair. Ever since Pierre Bayle had described Spinoza’s philosophy as atheism in his article on him in the Dictionnaire historique et critique, the accusation of being a Spinozist was not without its dangers in Germany. In the few texts Lessing had published on Spinoza, he had tended to focus on the mindbody problem in comparison with Leibniz18, and, at best, the ring parable developed in the drama Nathan der Weise (III,7) could be understood as an allusion to the imperative of religious tolerance in Spinoza’s TTP (in actual fact, however, Lessing took it from Boccaccio’s Decamerone). Through the indiscretion, Jacobi forced Mendelssohn to take up a position in the matter, which was highly unfair because Mendelssohn was concerned, in the late Berlin Enlightenment, with promoting Jewish emancipation (and was also supported by Lessing in this connection). Jacobi committed a further indiscretion which placed the Spinoza controversy, as an argument about

16 Cf. here in detail the recently published Piórczynski, J.: Der Pantheismusstreit. Spinozas Weg zur deutschen Philosophie und Kultur. Königshausen und Neumann: Würzburg 2018. 17 Jacobi, F.  H.:  Über die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn. Meiner: Hamburg 2000, p. 19 ff. 18 Lessing, G. E.: Durch Spinoza ist Leibniz nur auf die Spur der vorherbestimmten Harmonie gekommen. In: Werke. Artemis Winkler: Munich 1995, vol. 3, pp. 78–79.

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atheism, right at the centre of the discussion not only of classical German philosophy but also of literature:  he was responsible for the first publication of the Prometheus poem by Goethe.19 If we also take into account the fact that Jacobi discusses Spinoza’s Ethica in detail in his book,20 ultimately deriving an accusation of atheism from this, then, arguably, his book not only gave Spinoza greater public prominence within German intellectual life but also predetermined the main direction this reception of Spinoza would take within philosophy: although, in fact, a first German translation of the TTP had existed since 178721, the reception was, and remained, centred on the Ethica, and specifically on the questions Jacobi had raised. He characterized Spinoza’s philosophy as staunch rationalism and as atheism. Both debates would resurface, under shifting paradigms, within Vormärz philosophy in the criticism of Hegel’s rationalism and in the criticism of religion. At the same time, the political shift in the basic situation of the pre-revolutionary restoration years led in this context to the Vormärz being able to discover and draw productively on the political Spinoza of the TTP as opposed to the purely metaphysical pantheism discussion within classical German philosophy and literature. In his analysis of the dispute between Jacobi and Mendelssohn, Kant clearly identifies the limits placed on reason by the criticism of metaphysics within Critical Philosophy; he does not wish to accuse either of ‘a pernicious way of thinking’,22 but he does characterize the dispute as purely speculative, pointing to the actual objective of the debate unleashed by Jacobi, the disaproval of knowledge in favour of belief: And yet seems in the Jacobian and Mendelssohnian dispute [or controversy] everything on this upsetting, I do not know if just the rational insight and knowledge (supposed by strength in the speculation), or as even the rationality of faith

19 Jacobi, loc. cit., p. 51 ff. Goethe himself articulated his philosophical relationship to Spinoza in a short study, which, however, is also concerned with the metaphysical concept of substance in the Ethica and not with Spinoza’s political thinking in the TTP. Cf. Goethe, J. W. von: Studie nach Spinoza. In: Trunz (ed.): Werke. Beck: Hamburg 1981, vol. 13, p. 7 ff. 20 Jacobi, loc. cit., p. 87 ff. 21 Ewald, S. H. (ed.): Über Heilige Schrift, Judentum, Recht der höchsten Gewalt in geistlichen Dingen, und Freiheit zu philosophieren. Gera, 1787. 22 Kant, I.: Was heißt: Sich im Denken orientieren? In: Weischedel (ed.): Werke, vol. 5. Darmstadt, 1983, p. 268 (A 307 f.). Kant, I. Wording sourced from the English version of this work: Ferrer, Daniel Fidel (trans.): What Does it Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?, retrieved 28.8.19 from https://ia800300.us.archive. org/4/items/KantOrientFerrerMarch2014/KantOrientFerrerMarch2014.pdf, p. 1.

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(Vernunftglaubens), and created against the establishment of another faith, the one everyone can do as he pleases.23

And Kant, a proponent of the Enlightenment, points to the consequences of this – alluding in this connection to one of the major topoi of the TTP, i.e. to the other, the non-speculative Spinoza, whom he defends against the pantheism debate, not personally but in this matter. What Kant defends is the inalienable freedom of thought: But you also probably think about what you are doing, and where it wants to reason out with your attacks? Without a doubt you will, that freedom to think will get unmolested, for without this it would soon have yourself with your free turns of genius to an end.24

In the paragraph that follows this, Kant develops the principle of freedom of thought and freedom of expression, which cannot be separated from one another. In so doing, he validates the political Spinoza of the TTP as opposed to Jacobi’s counter-Enlightenment initiative focused on the metaphysical Spinoza. Fichte continues Kant’s argument here by differentiating between critical and dogmatic philosophy and viewing Spinoza’s metaphysical project from within these paradigms. He accuses him of not comprehending consciousness as the primary phenomenon but as an attribute of a singular substance: Thus Spinoza posits the ground of the unity of consciousness in a substance wherein it is necessarily determined as well in regard to its content (that is, in regard to its determined series of representation) as in regard to its form of unity. But I  ask him: What, then, is that, again, which contains the ground of the necessity of this substance […].25

The substance is, in Fichte’s opinion, a dogmatic principle which, in addition, leads to the negation of the freedom and spontaneity of the self, such as constitute the principle of Fichte’s ‘Ich-Philosophie’ (ego philosophy). This impetus for freedom then led to Fichte being drawn into the so-called atheism controversy in 1798 in Jena. Here, Fichte was brought closer to Spinoza from the outside, i.e. through the process and the presence of the debate around Spinoza, pantheism and atheism. In a letter to Fichte, Jacobi writes that he has ‘accessed the theory of knowledge […] via the idea of an inverted

3 Ibid., pp. 278–279 (A 322 f.). English version: What Does it Mean, Web, p. 14. 2 24 Ibid., p. 280 (A 325). English version: What Does it Mean, Web, p. 14. 25 Fichte, J. G.: Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre (1794). Meiner: Hamburg 1997, p. 41. Wording sourced from the English version of this work: Kroeger, A. E. (trans.): The Science of Knowledge, retrieved 28.8.19 from https://antilogicalism. files.wordpress.com/2017/07/science-of-knowledge.pdf, pp. 95–96.

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Spinozism’.26 Jacobi locates Fichte’s proximity to Spinoza at the precise point where Fichte distinguishes himself from Spinoza: the argument for thought and extended being within a singular substance, according to Jacobi, leads to an ‘absolute identity of the object and subject themselves, upon which the system of the new philosophy, the independent philosophy of intelligence, is based.’27 From there, according to the intention, and as for Spinoza’s book of 1785, it is only another step further to the denunciation of atheism, i.e. to Jacobi calling Fichte’s theory ‘atheist, similar to Spinoza’s theory’.28 The identification of Spinoza’s metaphysics of the singular substance with the identity of the subject-object, conceived as a totality, became the basis of Hegel’s and Schelling’s reception of Spinoza, which was likewise focused on the metaphysical, and not the political, Spinoza. It is precisely Schelling’s philosophy of identity, which tries to locate the unity of nature and intellect within the system of transcendental idealism, which also continuously links to Spinoza. In certain respects it can be argued that Schelling returned to the totality of the entirety of nature from the ego via Kant’s and Fichte’s argument, just as Spinoza had gone beyond Descartes. It is this step towards thinking the totality that the systems of German idealism take as their starting point. As late as in the Munich lectures on the history of modern philosophy from 1833/34, i.e. when the project of identity philosophy was already over, Schelling admitted that this problem of the entirety was ‘the origin of Spinoza’s concept, which, as the history of philosophy has shown, is, up to the present day, the pivotal point of everything […].’29 The whole account pivots on this speculative dimension of Spinoza’s philosophy, and because substantiating the absolute is still a problem, Schelling also gives his opinion on the pantheism debate – specifically, on its irresoluteness. He argues that: […] no decision has yet been made on the correct way of thinking or speaking about God. If we say that God, in His being or according to His being, is the totality of all definitions of being, and if we wish to call this (despite being not quite linguistically correct) pantheism, then there has certainly not yet been any decision on this concept of pantheism. It is philosophy itself that must decide this.30

26 Jacobi to Fichte, March 1799. In: Appellation an das Publikum. Dokumente zum Atheismusstreit um Fichte, Forberg, Niethammer, Jena 1798/99. Röhr, W. (ed.): Reclam: Leipzig 1987, p. 154. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., p. 164. 29 Schelling, F.  W. J.:  Die Geschichte der neueren Philosophie. Münchener Vorlesungen. In: Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 4. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt 1985, p. 450. 30 Ibid., p. 462.

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Hegel had already given his position on Jacobi’s interpretation of Spinoza in the early Jena essay Glauben und Wissen, accusing Jacobi of projecting his own assumptions onto Spinoza with the intention of criticizing the rational cognition of philosophy.31 Possibly the most famous sentence from the preface to Phänomenologie des Geistes can be read as a programme for both redeeming and criticizing Spinoza’s metaphysics: ‘In my view, which must be justified by the exposition of the system itself, everything hangs on grasping and expressing the true not just as substance but just as much as subject.’32 Hegel has adopted here Fichte’s conclusion that Spinoza subordinates the ego to the substance by saying that the object of the system of totality is not the substance alone but ‘in equal measure’ (and therefore also not solely) subjectivity. Hegel is trying to articulate, within his system, totality as the development of the substantial relationship between reality and self-consciousness. This is not Spinoza, but it incorporates the speculative impetus in Spinoza – an idea that Feuerbach will gratefully pick up on. But Hegel, too, was about to be accused of pantheism. During his years in Berlin, he feared the rise of piety and demagogy, and in 1823, right in the middle of the restoration period – at all events almost forty years after Jacobi’s book on Spinoza –, he was in fact anonymously accused by Friedrich August Gotttreu Tholuck of pantheism and, respectively, Spinozism.33 In his lectures on the philosophy of religion, he characterized the theological argumentation of such accusations thus:  ‘Spinozism has been universally charged with leading to the following conclusions:—If all be One, then this philosophy maintains that good is one with evil, and with this all religion is done away with.’34 At all events, in his lectures on the history of philosophy, Hegel mentions the TTP as a book that brought its author ‘[a]‌considerable

31 Hegel, G.  W. F.:  Glauben und Wissen oder Reflexionsphilosophie der Subjektivität in der Vollständigkeit ihrer Formen als Kantische, Jacobische und Fichtesche Philosophie. In:  Moldenhauer / Michel (eds.):  Werke, vol.  2. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt/M. 1970, pp. 333–392. 32 Hegel, G. W. F.: Phänomenologie des Geistes. In: Werke, vol. 3, p. 22–23. Wording sourced from the English version of this work:  Pinkard, Terry (trans.):  The Phenomenology of Spirit, retrieved 6.9.19 from https://libcom.org/files/Georg/ Wilhelm/Friedrich/Hegel/-/The/Phenomenology/of/Spirit/(Terry/Pinkard/ Translation).pdf, p. 12. 33 Jaeschke, W.: Hegel Handbuch. Metzler: Stuttgart / Weimar 2010, p. 262. 34 Hegel, G. W. F.: Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion. In: Werke, vol. 16, p. 99. Wording sourced from the English version of this work: Speirs, E.B., and Burdon Sanderson, J. (trans.): Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, retrieved 28.8.19 from https://archive.org/details/lecturesonphilo03hegegoog., p. 98.

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reputation’ and that contains ‘a critical treatment of the books of Moses.’35 However, he glosses over the political dimension of the TTP, concentrating entirely on the speculative content of the Ethica:  ‘The simple thought of Spinoza’s idealism is this: The true is simply and solely the one substance, whose attributes are thought and extension or nature: and only this absolute unity is reality, it alone is God.’36 It is precisely through the perception of the difference between Spinoza and Descartes, who were separated by res cogitans and res extensa, that Hegel derives a perspective on Spinoza which puts a dialectical spin on his original philosophical contribution: This independence of the two extremes is done away with in Spinozism by their becoming moments of the one absolute Being. This expression signifies that Being must be grasped as the unity of opposites; the chief consideration is not to let slip the opposition and set it aside, but to reconcile and resolve it.37

It is almost as if this was written as an invitation to Feuerbach and Marx to explore the matter of Spinoza further. Between 1785 and 1830, the political element in Spinoza seemed to be limited to the question of atheism. It was only after German classicism in philosophy and literature that the political content of the TTP served as the ‘priming powder for an explosion’.

2. Feuerbach and the Upshot of the Classical Reception of Spinoza As a student of Hegel,38 Feuerbach too derived his interpretation of Spinoza from the problem of pantheism. As early as 1830, the publication Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit, which disputed personal immortality, raised this question directly under different, i.e. more or less openly atheist, paradigms. This book shared with the TTP the fate of being banned shortly after its publication – and the authors of the two works shared the fate of remaining largely excluded from public influence and having to withdraw,

35 Hegel, G. W. F.: Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie. In: Werke, vol. 20, p. 158. Wording sourced from the English version of this work: Haldane, E.S., and Simson, Frances H.  (trans.):  The History of Philosophy, Volume 3, retrieved 28.8.19 from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/58169/58169-h/58169-h. htm, p. 255. 36 Ibid., p. 161. English version: p. 257. 37 Ibid. English version: p. 257. 38 Ernst Bloch summed up this relationship succinctly: “Hegel had said, God recognizes himself in the human being; Feuerbach turns this sentence on its head: the human being recognizes only himself in his God.” Bloch, E.: Subjekt-Objekt, Erläuterungen zu Hegel. Complete edition, vol. 8. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt/M. 1962, p. 401.

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with their ideas, into the private realm. The publication made it impossible for Feuerbach to have an academic career, so he wrote his works on the history of philosophy as a private scholar in provincial Bruckberg. Unlike other representatives of ‘Young Germany’, Feuerbach did not become politically active at first, rather he pursued the history of philosophy in seclusion in the province. Up until the publication of his main work, Das Wesen des Christentums in 1841, he was known only to a small circle of insiders. Because, however, of the degree to which his writings on the philosophy of religion provoked a defensive reaction from the authorities, he also attracted political attention indirectly through the criticism of religion – here too there was a certain parallel with Spinoza’s TTP, even though Spinoza himself also articulated the political consequences and challenges through a historicocritical appropriation of the Bible in his work. Feuerbach had a political influence on the Vormärz but himself remained in isolation: ‘As the storm of 1848 looms, he becomes countrified and stagnates, as Engels later puts it, already ensconced in the rural seclusion of Bruckberg.’39 Nonetheless, his ideas on the philosophy of religion had a politically radical impact. And finally, in 1847, Feuerbach did take a public political position – namely by inserting a paragraph on Spinoza’s TTP into the new edition of his book on modern philosophy. We will now examine this paragraph more closely. In order to better understand the context of these historico-philosophical interpretations, a context which also includes the work on Spinoza, we must briefly reconstruct the concept of purely speculative philosophy that Feuerbach picks up from Hegel and then employs critically when drafting his anthropological materialism. It is clearly outlined in the early programmatic writings. In the 1842 text Vorläufige Thesen zur Reform der Philosophie, for example, reference is made to Spinoza from the very beginning: ‘Spinoza is the originator of speculative philosophy, Schelling its restorer, Hegel its perfecter. / Pantheism is the necessary consequence of theology (or of theism). It is consistent theology. Atheism is the necessary consequence of pantheism. It is consistent pantheism.’40 These purely programmatic assertions, not yet philosophically justified, turn the suspicion of atheism, which had haunted German philosophy since Jacobi, into a positive philosophical programme; 39 Schmidt, A.:  Einleitung. In:  Feuerbach, L.:  Anthropologischer Materialismus. Ausgewählte Schriften I. Ullstein: Frankfurt/M. / Berlin/ Vienna 1985, p. 12. 40 Feuerbach, L.:  Vorläufige Thesen zur Reformation der Philosophie. In:  Schuffenhauer (ed.):  Gesammelte Werke, vol.  9. Akademieverlag:  Berlin 1982, p. 243. Wording sourced from the English version of this work: Provisional Theses for the Reformation of Philosophy. In: L.S. Stepelevich (ed.) The Young Hegelians: An Anthology, 1983, pp. 156–171, retrieved 28.8.19 from http://users. sussex.ac.uk/~sefd0/tx/pt.htm.

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Spinoza was now seen as the precursor and the godfather of this programme: ‘ “Atheism” is the inverted pantheism.’41 One year later, Feuerbach, clearly alluding to the separation between philosophy and theology called for so prominently in the TTP, wrote: […] what is beyond religion dwells on this side of philosophy; that which is not the object of religion is precisely the object of philosophy […]. It is therefore an inner, a holy necessity that the essence of reason that is differentiated from reason is finally identified with reason, i.e. that the divine essence is recognized, realized and envisioned as the essence of reason. The great historical significance of speculative philosophy is based on this necessity.42

Feuerbach is articulating here his basic idea on the historical function of speculative philosophy in the context of the modern era: preparing the way for atheism. This applies, in particular, to Spinoza and the problem of pantheism, as Feuerbach explicitly puts it: And yet, if no things, no world exists apart from God anymore, then neither does God exist anymore apart from the world  – what we have is not a purely ideal, imagined essence but a real essence; what we have is, to put it simply, Spinozism or pantheism.43

This is the context within which the historico-philosophical works published by Feuerbach in the 1830s and 1840s must be seen, including the first extensive monograph on Leibniz in German philosophy, but also the historical account of Spinoza’s philosophy.44 Here, Feuerbach picked up on Hegel’s lectures on the history of philosophy, published posthumously in the 1830s. It was Hegel who first tried to methodically reconstruct an internally coherent history of philosophical thought. Feuerbach’s work picked up on this impetus for a systematic history of philosophy, but in the first version of his account of Spinoza in 1833 he referred purely to the pantheism debate within classical German philosophy up until Hegel – although, as already indicated, under different paradigms. It was only in the third edition of the work in 1847, i.e. shortly before the March revolution of 1848 and after he too had taken up the contemporary call for political freedom, that Feuerbach inserted a new concluding paragraph into his book, one which had not appeared in the first two editions.45 Up until now, Feuerbach’s 1 Ibid., p. 244. English version: Provisional Theses, Web. 4 42 Feuerbach, L.: Grundsätze der Philosophie der Zukunft. In: Gesammelte Werke, vol. 9, pp. 266–267. 43 Ibid., p. 284. 44 Feuerbach, L.:  Geschichte der neuern Philosophie von Bacon von Verulam bis Benedikt Spinoza. In:  Schuffenhauer (ed.):  Gesammelte Werke, vol.  2. Akademieverlag, Berlin 1984. 45 Ibid., p. 445 ff.

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historico-philosophical account had only mentioned the TTP in the context of an overview of Spinoza’s work and had not presented it in a particularly positive light. He regarded it as remarkable ‘not so much because of intrinsically philosophical ideas – of which it contains only a few –, rather because it contains the first thorough, rational critique of the Bible.’46 This fundamentally changes in the third edition in 1847. The newly written concluding paragraph now attributes seminal significance to the TTP: The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus is one of Spinoza’s most important texts because this is the text that most sharply emphasizes this contrast (Spinoza’s contrast between Christian religion and philosophy, JZ). The practical purpose of this text is to prove the necessity and salubrity of complete religious and philosophical freedom of thought, to fight the despotism of the mind, for it is here, he says, that we find the most violent governance, where not everyone has the freedom to say and teach what he thinks […].47

Feuerbach refers to chapter XX of the TTP, which says: From the foundations of the Republic explained above it follows most clearly that its ultimate end is not to dominate, restraining men by fear, and making them subject to another’s control, but on the contrary to free each person from fear, so that he can live securely, as far as possible, i. e. so that he retains to the utmost his natural right to exist and operate without harm to himself or anyone else.48

And Spinoza adds: […] we conclude that nothing is safer for the republic than that piety and Religion should include only the practice of Loving-kindness and Equity, and that the right of the supreme powers concerning both sacred and secular matters should relate only to actions. For the rest, everyone should be granted the right to think what he wants and to say what he thinks.49

On this basis, Feuerbach provides a summary of the argumentation of the TTP: He writes that it is: […] up to each individual to judge themselves what they wish to believe, provided that it is only his faith that moves him to do good works, for the state should not be concerned with people’s opinions, which of course elude its power, rather with their actions. Faith, religion and theology have no theoretical meaning, truth or validity at all: their value and vocation is purely practical, for they are only about bringing

6 Ibid., p. 383. 4 47 Ibid., p. 445. 48 Spinoza, Baruch: Theological-Political Treatise. In: Curley, Edwin (trans. and ed.): The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. 2. Princeton University Press: Princeton and Oxford 1985–2016, p. 346. 49 Ibid., p. 353.

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people who are not defined by reason towards a state of obedience, virtue and beatitude […]. Truth is not a matter of theology but of philosophy.50

Here we see the unity of the historico-critical approach to revelation texts and political ideals of freedom, as were characteristic of the Vormärz. Feuerbach’s newly added concluding remarks now explicitly place his historico-philosophical account in the political context of the period directly before the democratic revolution in Germany in 1848. In his summary of the basic ideas, Feuerbach indicates the chapters to which he refers: first of all, ­chapters 18 and 20 on the freedom of thought, then ­chapters  1 and 2 on prophecy and the status of beliefs, and finally ­chapters  13 and 14 on the separation between theology and philosophy. Furthermore, Feuerbach’s emphases, as the quotation above shows, are indeed confirmed by the text. In addition, the purely practical and non-theoretical function of faith corresponds to Spinoza’s concept of the task of the prophets: Since the Prophets perceived God’s revelations with the aid of the imagination, there is no doubt that they were able to perceive many things beyond the limits of the intellect. For we can compose many more ideas from words and images than we can by using only the principles and notions on which our whole natural knowledge is constructed.51

Spinoza also derives from this differentiation a clear, pedagogical functional definition of scripture: ‘From all this it follows that the doctrine of Scripture does not contain lofty speculations, or philosophical matters, but only the simplest things, which anyone, no matter how slow, can perceive.’52 The Hegelian Feuerbach must have liked these passages, for in Hegel’s system, too, the conceptual content of religion is not only distinguished from the philosophical concept, but philosophy is placed on a higher level because it is able to develop its content entirely on the basis of the freedom of the concept. Spinoza’s text even confirms the ‘practical vocation’ of theology, and in fact does so in a way that very clearly shows that Spinoza’s concept of religion is based on a Jewish understanding of faith. It could even be argued that what he is doing here is executing, in a subtle way, the intention behind his work (expressed in a letter to Heinrich Oldenburg): to diffuse the accusation of atheism and thereby publicly demonstrate his bond with Judaism.53 He refers to religion as having a legalistic character and therefore as requiring 0 Feuerbach: Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, loc. cit., p. 446. 5 51 Spinoza: Theological-Political Treatise, loc. cit., p. 92. 52 Ibid., p. 257. 53 Spinoza, Letter 30. In: Collected Works, loc. cit., p. 12 ff.

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obedience (for it is essential to the concept of law that it must be obeyed). Ultimately, however, the commandments of the Old Testament and also the law of the Torah determine how the Jewish people live their lives, and Spinoza expresses this too: ‘Since, therefore, Law is nothing but a principle of living which men prescribe to themselves or to others for some end, it seems that Law must be distinguished into human and divine.’54 Human law regulates how we live our lives; divine law relates to the love of the highest good, i.e. to God’s love. Feuerbach had articulated the consequence clearly:  from this point of view, truth is not a matter of theology but of philosophy  – and so they should both be clearly separated from one another. This, too, had already been clearly articulated by Spinoza himself. The separation between philosophical speculation and revealed religion leads to a momentous conclusion: From all this we conclude that the intellectual knowledge of God, which considers his nature as it is in itself (a nature men cannot imitate by any particular way of life and cannot take as a model for instituting the true way of life) does not in any way pertain to faith or to revealed religion. So men can be completely mistaken about this without wickedness./ It’s not at all surprising, then, that God accommodated himself to the imaginations and preconceived opinions of the Prophets, and that (…) the faithful have cultivated different opinions about God.55

The separation between faith and philosophy, which becomes so explosive in the context of the criticism of religion in the Vormärz period, is already Spinoza’s primary purpose in the TTP as a whole: the objective of religion is obedience; that of philosophy is truth. Feuerbach picks up on the differentiation between the conceptual content of God and God as a pure object of thought in order to bring not only his Hegelianism into play but also his projection thesis (which is actually, in essence, an atheist radicalization of Hegel’s philosophy of religion  – here, Hegel establishes a correlation between the concept of God and human self-consciousness, and Feuerbach then gives this the more radical form of the image of God and human self-image). Feuerbach quotes and affirms Spinoza’s thirty-sixth letter, in which he argues wholly for the conceptual clarity of the philosophical concept of God, a concept which has no room for anthropomorphic ideas that turn God into ‘a perfect human being’.56 Precisely this conceptually rigorous definition of God employed by Spinoza in the Ethica had been the basis for the admiration of Spinoza in classical German philosophy up to Hegel.

4 Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, loc. cit., p. 127. 5 55 Ibid., p. 262. 56 Feuerbach, Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, loc. cit., p. 447.

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Curiously, in his closing analysis, Feuerbach remains true to his Spinoza precisely by acknowledging that his opponents were right: The Christian philosophers and theologians accused Spinoza of atheism. Rightly so. The annulment of home comforts, amiableness and justice, of supernaturalism, freedom and thaumaturgy, in short, the humanity of God, is the annulment of God himself. A  God who does not perform any miracles, who does not generate any effects other than natural effects, i.e. a being who does not prove to be any different from nature, is in fact not a god at all. Spinoza, however, did not want to be an atheist, and, from his point of view and the times in which he was living, neither could he be one. He therefore turns the negation into an affirmation of God, the essence of nature into the essence of God.57

Feuerbach lists, so to speak, the blows dealt to faith by the TTP. He acknowledges that the theologians were right when they stated the implications: that this amounted to the abolition of God  – but he justifiably emphasizes Spinoza’s intention of averting the accusation of atheism. In this respect, he defends him against his opponents. Then Feuerbach makes a move inspired by the radical zeitgeist of the Vormärz, unequivocally going a step further than Spinoza. He criticizes an inconsistency that in Spinoza’s situation might perhaps have been understandable but in the revolutionary phase of the Vormärz could only be overcome through open and consistent atheism. Feuerbach employs the rhetorical technique of addressing Spinoza directly: Why, as a naturalist, do you wish to remain a theist, and why, as a theist, do you wish to be simultaneously a naturalist? Let’s be rid of this contradiction! Not ‘Deus sive Natura [God is equal to nature]’, but ‘Aut Deus, aut Natura [either God or nature]’ is the watchword of truth. Where God identifies or is confounded with nature or, conversely, nature identifies or is confounded with God, there is neither God nor nature but a mystical, amphibological hybrid. This is the fundamental shortcoming of Spinoza.58

3. Karl Marx: Freedom of Thought and the Criticism of Censorship Karl Marx produced his Spinoza extracts in 1841. They are documented and commentated in volume IV/1 of the MEGA.59 There are further extracts on the Epicurean philosophy Marx used in his dissertation, but also on De

7 Ibid., p. 454. 5 58 Ibid., p. 454 f. 59 Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe, fourth section, vol. 1: Exzerpte und Notizen bis 1842. Berlin 1976, p. 233 ff. and p. 773 ff., henceforth cited as MEGA. The other works are cited from the edition Marx-Engels-Werke. Berlin 1956 ff. as MEW.

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anima by Aristotle, on Leibniz and on Hume. The commentary section of the MEGA informs the reader that extracts are taken from all chapters of the TTP, however Marx does not adhere to the order of the chapters, rather his approach is one focused on content. This is particularly important for the analysis of the relationship between Marx and Spinoza, as only the extracts, and not the related commentaries, have been preserved. In order to understand Spinoza’s influence on Marx, we have to collate the texts from the temporal context with these focal points. Furthermore, there are notes from Spinoza’s letters in which the letter is only reproduced in full once: the letter to the convert Albert Burgh.60 This is interesting because the Marx family had in fact only made the transition from Judaism to Christianity through the father’s conversion  – a problem that was not only critically reflected upon by Spinoza and that not only personally affected Marx in the context of his family but, particularly in the Germany of the Vormärz period (recalling here the case of the convert Heinrich Heine, who, just like Marx’s father, was no exception) – became an attempt to liberate oneself from anti-Semitic discrimination in a country which, unlike France, had not yet politically emancipated its Jews. Although this conversion practice did in fact go right back to the Middle Ages in Europe, it took on renewed explosive force in the context of the rise of the bourgeoisie. The focal points of the extracts on the TTP relate on the one hand to the major topoi of Spinoza’s text, but on the other hand they accentuate these strongly in terms of their application to the pre-revolutionary situation in the Vormärz period at the beginning of the 1840s: in contemporary texts, freedom of thought becomes freedom of opinion and freedom of the press, the call for non-dogmatic, hermeneutic biblical interpretation is brought into the context of anti-clerical criticism of religious paternalism, and the separation between theology and philosophy is used not as a critique of the Bible, as Feuerbach and other Young Hegelians used it, but in order to shift the focus onto the politically justified call for political freedom. The commentary section of the MEGA notes that the extracts were not used directly by Marx for one of his own texts later on. This is philologically correct, but it requires further elaboration, for Marx certainly did use the ideas extracted from the TTP indirectly in order to articulate political demands in his writings from 1842/43. A few examples: With regard to the relationship between faith and reason, Marx quotes a passage from Spinoza in which the latter explains why the attempt to base faith on reason is inherently contradictory, for in an emergency, reason would have to become subordinate to faith. Yet who would

60 MEGA IV/1, p. 813 ff.

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dispense with reason?61 As regards freedom of speech, Marx uses an extract that could almost have been written in Metternich’s night-watchman and surveillance state. We quote here from the selection of quotations in the MEGA in the translation by Curley: ‘If it were as easy to command men’s minds as it is their tongues, every ruler would govern in safety and no rule would be violent.’62 The extracts go on to reconstruct Spinoza’s argumentation on freedom of thought, culminating then in an extract that clearly alludes to the circumstances at the time, i.e. to Spinoza’s topicality: ‘Those who administer the state or have the rule always try to cover up whatever crimes they commit under the appearance of legality and to persuade the people that they’ve acted honestly. They can easily do this when the whole interpretation of the law depends only on them.’63 Here, already, we find a suggestion of Marx’s concept of law, his understanding of law as an instrument of rule and power, and as ideology. This passage also clearly shows that, by juxtaposing the TTP quotes, Marx is constructing a coherent argumentation, one which combines the call for freedom of thought with a critique of authoritarian state structures. We are almost reminded of Walter Benjamin’s approach in the Passagenwerk, who often presents a collage of quotations in such a way that they generate a new, additional meaning. The producer of quotation collages does not need to manufacture this constellation of meaning through his own commentary, for it emerges itself out of the juxtaposition of the quotation fragments. In his later work, Marx referred repeatedly to Spinoza again, for example in the text he wrote with Engels, Die heilige Familie, in which the two writers called the Young Hegelian School to account. The ‘Spinoza’s Substance, Fichte’s self-consciousness’64 are elements of Hegel’s philosophy, i.e. unitary moments of the system which diverge into opposing positions in the work of David Friedrich Strauss and Bruno Bauer. With Hegel, Marx retains the positive link to Spinoza. As late as in Das Kapital, he recalls the dialectician Spinoza when he argues against the ‘vulgar economists’: ‘These gentlemen would do well, to ponder, once in a while, over Spinoza’s:  “Determinatio est Negatio.” ’65 However, any extensive and explicit reference to the TTP is 1 MEGA IV/1, p. 780, pp. 29–35 and pp. 40–45: ch. 15 (G, III, 180 ff.). 6 62 Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, loc. cit., p. 344. 63 Ibid., pp. 310–311. 64 Engels, F. and Marx, K.: Die heilige Familie oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik. Gegen Bruno Bauer und Konsorten. MEW 2, p. 147. Wording sourced from the English version of this work: The Holy Family Chapter VI/3, retrieved 28.8.19 from https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch06_3_f. htm. 65 Marx, K.:  Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. MEW 23, p.  623. Wording sourced from the English version of this work: Moore, Samuel / Aveling,

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limited to the early extracts. The prominence of this influence is connected with Marx’s biographical situation at the end of the 1830s and the beginning of the 1840s:66 his philosophy degree involved reading classics such as the works of Spinoza, and in his work as a journalist he was particularly receptive to the problem of freedom of opinion. 1839 saw the beginning of his intensive study of antique materialism. His dissertation discusses the difference between Democritus and Epicurus, and here already, he emphasizes the aspect of freedom (this will be at the centre of Marx’s reading of the TTP) over determinism:  Marx explains that the difference between the two concepts of antique materialism lies in the movement of atoms. Epicurus conceives of the scope of freedom as follows: ‘the deviation of the atom from the straight line’.67 Marx quotes approvingly a beautiful sentence by Epicurus: ‘It is a misfortune to live in necessity, but to live in necessity is not a necessity.’68 This rejection of metaphysical determinism might explain why Marx’s reception of Spinoza – quite in contrast to the reception history within classical German philosophy and even still within Feuerbach – is focused less on the Ethica with its metaphysical base model (itself deterministic) and more on the TTP and its decidedly political concept of freedom. The scope for deviation from the closed context, which Marx exposes in the materialism of antiquity (and later also emphasizes in his concept of dialectical materialism as opposed to the mechanical materialism of the modern age) leads him to maintain that freedom is the fundamental anthropological determinant of human being: ‘Freedom is so much the essence of man that even its opponents implement it while combating its reality.’69

Edward (trans.):  Capital. A  Critique of Political Economy. Volume I, Book One: The Process of Production of Capital, retrieved 28.8.19 from https://www. marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf, p. 429. 66 For the latest biographical research, cf. the extensive study:  Jones, Gareth Stedman: Karl Marx. Greatness and Illusion, Random House: New York 2016. 67 Marx, K.: Differenz der demokritischen und epikureischen Naturphilosophie nebst einem Anhange. MEW Ergänzungsband Erster Teil, p. 278. Wording sourced from the English version of this work: Progress Publishers: The Difference between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature, retrieved 28.8.19 from https:// rowlandpasaribu.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/karl-marx-the-difference-betweenthe-democritean-and-epicurean-philosophy-of-nature.pdf, p. 33. 68 Ibid., p. 275. English version: The Difference, Web, p. 21. 69 Marx, K.: Debatten über die Pressfreiheit. MEW 1, p. 51. Wording sourced from the English version of this work: Marx/Engels Internet Archive: On the Freedom of the Press, retrieved 28.8.19 from https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/ download/Marx_On_freedom_of_the_Press.pdf, p. 24.

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After he was awarded his doctorate in 1841 (the year he compiled the extracts), Marx worked from 1842 to 1843 as a journalist for the Rheinische Zeitung, where ‘he soon made a name for himself in the context of the wave of democratization.’70 Marx was in a strategically difficult situation here: The political situation in Germany initially called for national unity and democratization – a goal the revolution of 1848 fought for in Germany too, and one with which Marx therefore associated himself; not unconditionally, however. Marx’s position was complicated: he believed that in order to establish a socialist politics, it was necessary to first of all transfer the democratic achievements of the political revolutions in neighbouring countries to Germany […]. During his time as the editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, he tried to avoid an all too revolutionary tone […].71

And it is the very first publication by Marx in this newspaper on the Prussian censorship instruction which shows traces of the reading of Spinoza’s TTP throughout its argumentation:  Marx transfers Spinoza’s ideas on freedom of thought to the problem of press freedom. Right at the beginning of the text, in his analysis of censorship, he alludes to Spinoza, even though this is to a famous sentence from the Ethica: ‘Truth is as little modest as light, and towards whom should it be so? Towards itself? Verum index sui et falsi. Therefore, towards falsehood?’72 Marx makes it clear that we cannot loosen or liberalize censorship but only abolish it. There is no ‘official’ freedom: I am humorous, but the law bids me write seriously. I am audacious, but the law commands that my style be modest. Grey, all grey, is the sole, the rightful colour of freedom. Every drop of dew on which the sun shines glistens with an inexhaustible play of colours, but the spiritual sun, however many the persons and whatever the objects in which it is refracted, must produce only the official colour!73

Against this enforced self-restraint it is only possible to adopt a real moderateness, as Marx maintains in a manner very characteristic of Spinoza: ‘The universal modesty of the mind is reason, that universal liberality of thought which reacts to each thing according to the latter’s essential nature.’74 The motif of freedom of thought runs throughout the text – and accordingly ends with the call for the abolition of censorship, not without ironically emphasizing that the writer, however, at all events, stands to gain from

0 Henning, C.: Marx und die Folgen. Stuttgart 2017, p. 5. 7 71 Ibid., pp. 9–10. 72 Marx, K.:  Bemerkungen über die preußische Zensurinstruktion. MEW 1, pp 5–6. Wording sourced from the English version of this work: Marx/Engels Archive:  Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instruction, retrieved 28.8.19 from https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1842/02/10.htm. 73 Ibid., p. 6. English version: Comments, Web. 74 Ibid., p. 7. English version: Comments, Web.

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the censorship instruction, namely either in ‘real freedom, or in freedom of ideas, in consciousness.’75 This is of course more of a Hegelian idea, i.e. that progress is bound to the consciousness of freedom, but the inalienability of freedom persists as a topos in Marx’s thinking. We need only recall here the formulation from Das Kommunistische Manifest, which understands the overcoming of the bourgeois society as ‘an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.’76 Das Kapital, too, mentions an ‘association of free people […] working with the means of production held in common’.77 And if we wanted to give an example of Marx’s liberality, which he had learned from Spinoza’s TTP, we may point to the letter to Arnold Ruge of 30 November 1842, which reads, ‘I regard it as inappropriate, indeed even immoral, to smuggle communist and socialist doctrines, hence a new world outlook, into incidental theatrical criticisms, etc., and that I demand a quite different and more thorough discussion of communism, if it should be discussed at all. ’78 If only there were more such professional ethics in journalism. There are also other motifs from the TTP present in the texts that are contemporaneous with the extracts. In his critique of the censorship instruction, Marx refers to the ‘confusion of the political with the Christian-religious principle’, calling for a political state that must remain neutral towards the confessions – he took these very extracts from the TTP. Now in full flow, he denounces ‘fanatical transference of religious articles of faith into politics’ – something which was common practice in the restoration period – and

5 Ibid., p. 27. English version: Comments, Web. 7 76 MEW 4, p. 482. Wording sourced from the English version of this work: Moore, Samuel (trans.): Manifesto of the Communist Party. In: Marx/Engels Selected Works, vol. 1. Progress Publishers: Moscow 1969, pp. 98–137, retrieved 28.8.19 from https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto. pdf, p. 27 77 MEW 23, p. 92. Wording sourced from: Linebaugh, Peter: Red Round Globe Hot Burning: A Tale at the Crossroads of the Commons and Closure, of Love and Terror, of Race and Class, and of Kate and Ned Despard. University of California Press 2019, retrieved 28.8.19 from https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ve2AD wAAQBAJ&pg=PR6&lpg=PR6&dq=marx+capital+/association+of+free+people /&source=bl&ots=iu3Q5whYuE&sig=ACfU3U26Ja5hCsBVxkWfMMdZoPWW W0xZ1g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjZifzY7qXkAhU0tHEKHfN4CVMQ6A EwBHoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false. 78 MEW 27, p. 412. Wording sourced from the English version of this work: Dutt, Clemens (trans.): Letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge in Dresden. In: Marx Engels Collected Works, vol. 1. International Publishers: New York 1975, pp. 393–395, retrieved 6.9.19 from https://marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1842/letters/42_11_30.htm

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points to the following consequences: ‘Once you introduce religion into politics, it is intolerable, indeed irreligious, arrogance to want to determine secularly how religion has to act in political matters’79 Marx advocates a liberal political stance vis-à-vis religion in exactly the way Spinoza had advocated it, in the classical tradition, in the TTP. The criticism of religion, which was otherwise common among the Hegelian Leftists right from the start and, as we have seen, had also strongly influenced Feuerbach’s reception of Spinoza, only comes into its own in Marx’s work in his later writings. Marx remains wholly within the framework of the classical Enlightenment (he mentions Spinoza’s critique of the belief in miracles in the TTP) when, in the Debatten über die Pressfreiheit, he reproaches the opponents of free publicity with needing to have recourse to ‘the miraculous and the mystical’ because ‘they want to regard freedom not as the natural gift of the universal sunlight of reason, but as the supernatural gift of a specially favourable constellation of the stars […].’80 Religious mystification always happens when there is an absence of rational explanation. In contrast to Feuerbach and the other Young Hegelians, Marx does not yet go beyond these parameters, which he had ‘extracted’ from Spinoza. The idea of development and education, which Marx defends against the opponents of press freedom, is also understood entirely in terms of Enlightenment philosophy. For them, education means ‘keeping a person wrapped up in a cradle throughout his life, for as soon as he learns to walk, he learns also to fall, and only by falling does he learn to walk.’81 Significantly, it is in the 1843 text Zur Judenfrage that Marx takes a step beyond the classical argumentation of Enlightenment philosophy. In fact, the text on press freedom had already hinted at Marx’s critical approach to the conditions of production within the very bourgeois society he was defending: ‘The primary freedom of the press lies in not being a trade. The writer who degrades the press into being a material means deserves as punishment for this internal unfreedom the external unfreedom of censorship, or rather his very existence is his punishment.’82 This means that economic dependence is contradictory to the call for freedom of thought. This contradiction within bourgeois society itself, that its mode of economic operation destroys the very thing it demands politically, leads Marx further and further towards the conclusion that bourgeois society itself must be annulled in order to be able to develop the freedom of human beings.

9 MEW 1, p. 12. Marx/Engels Archive: Comments, Web. 7 80 Ibid., p. 47. English version: Freedom of the Press, Web, p. 21. 81 Ibid., p. 49. English version: Freedom of the Press, Web, p. 22. 82 Ibid., p. 71. English version: Freedom of the Press, Web, p. 40

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Because of some of its formulations, Zur Judenfrage was understood as a testimony to Marx’s anti-Semitism (Marx was notably of Jewish origin himself!). Marx actually did comment approvingly on the emancipation of the Jews  – namely employing the argument from Spinoza’s TTP that the state must cease ‘to adopt a theological attitude toward religion.’83 The problem is not that Marx is lagging behind the call for Jewish emancipation or lampooning it, rather that he goes one step further. The text on the Jewish question – which is closely connected, in terms of both content and when it was written, with the introduction to the Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie – represents the first document in which Marx presents a ‘Marxist’ point of view, i.e. argues on the basis of the development of historical materialism. Going further than the political emancipation of the Jews in bourgeois society, Marx now calls for the emancipation of the human being from bourgeois society. He remains, however, entirely true to his fundamental views, gained from Spinoza’s TTP, on the separation between state and religion: ‘Man emancipates himself politically from religion by banishing it from the sphere of public law to that of private law.’84 The Christian state’s approach to ‘other religions is one of exclusivity’, whereas the democratic state ‘relegates religion to a place among the other elements of civil society.’85 Up until this point, Marx is still dealing with the Jewish question within Spinozist parameters. The question which takes Marx beyond his Spinozist argumentation, because it cannot be dealt with using Spinoza, is the step he takes beyond the politically liberal framework of bourgeois society itself. And it is in this connection that Marx produces statements which have led to the accusation of anti-Semitism against him: ‘Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time.’86 These formulations may sound problematic to today’s reader, but the context of the argumentation shows that in this text Marx has taken a step not towards anti-Semitism but towards anti-capitalism: Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities. Money is the universal self-established value of all things. It has, therefore, robbed the whole world  – both the world of men and nature  – of its specific value. Money is the

83 Marx, K:  Zur Judenfrage. MEW 1, p.  351; cf. also Henning, loc. cit, p.  32. Wording sourced from the English version of this work: Marx/Engels Archive: On the Jewish Question, retrieved 28.8.19 from https://www.marxists.org/archive/ marx/works/1844/jewish-question/. 84 Ibid, p. 356. English version: On the Jewish Question, Web. 85 Ibid., p. 357. English version: On the Jewish Question, Web. 86 Ibid., p. 372. English version: On the Jewish Question, Web.

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estranged essence of man’s work and man’s existence, and this alien essence dominates him, and he worships it.87

From this point onwards, there is no further reference to the TTP, since Marx’s approach to the problem has shifted from a political explanation of liberal democracy to a critique of its economic bases. Whereas he had tried, up until this point, to define, using Spinoza, the relationship between politics and religion as liberal, he now moves into a critique of religion, something he cannot execute within the parameters of the TTP:  the ‘criticism of religion’ becomes ‘the prerequisite of all criticism’, and by now viewing religious suffering as the ‘expression of real suffering’, the logical step for Marx is to move into a critique of this wretchedness; philosophy, now that it has destroyed the otherworldly truth through a critique of religion, must establish the ‘truth of this world’ through a critique of the social conditions: ‘Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.’88 Marx can no longer use his Spinoza extracts for the task that emerges from this shift in the question posed. He can now put them to one side.

7 Ibid., pp. 374–375. English version: On the Jewish Question, Web. 8 88 Marx, K.: Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Einleitung. MEW 1, pp. 378– 379. Wording sourced from the English version of this work: O’Malley, Joseph (trans.): Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, retrieved 28.8.19 from https:// www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_Critique_of_Hegels_ Philosophy_of_Right.pdf, p. 3.