Spinoza as a Controversial Figure

Spinoza as a Controversial Figure in the History of Jewish Thought

Baruch Spinoza was from a Portuguese Jewish family, which had fled to the Netherlands.

Considering the tolerant atmosphere of the Dutch Jewish community, one of the more remarkable things about Spinoza was that he was expelled from the Jewish community. Although now considered a respected philosopher:

Spinoza remains a controversial person in Judaism, for very much the same reasons that led to his expulsion in the first place. Spinoza's God is not the God of Abraham and Isaac, not a personal God at all, and his system provides no reason for the revelatory status of the Bible or the practice of Judaism, or of any religion, for that matter (Ross).

Spinoza was not only the first Jewish pantheist, but he also rejected the monopoly held by the clergy over the political power in the Jewish community. In addition, Spinoza was a champion of intellectual freedom. One of the ways that Spinoza challenged both monopoly of the clergy and championed intellectual freedom was by publishing in Hebrew, rather than Latin, which made his works instantly accessible to the Jewish people, without intervention by the clergy. An additional way that Spinoza was considered controversial was because his followers included members of the Islamic community as well as the Jewish community.

Although Spinoza was considered a heretic, "the Jewish heretic who transcends Jewry belongs to a Jewish tradition" (Deutscher). Along with other Jewish revolutionaries, Spinoza "went beyond the boundaries of Jewry" (Deutsher). He looked for fulfillment beyond the narrow and constricting boundaries of Jewry, and helped bring about an upheaval in modern thought. The heretic has played a consistent role in the evolution of the Jewish tradition and culture, and Spinoza, like the other heretics, played an important role in the evolution of Judaism.

However controversial, Spinoza's viewpoint on God was not unprecedented. Spinoza's version of God was firmly planted in Mediaeval Jewish mysticism, which was closely allied to the Neo-Platonic philosophical tradition of Late Antiquity, as it had been developed during the 9th Century intellectual development of Islam (Ross). "The fundamental thing to keep in mind when thinking about Spinoza is one simple, striking, and paradoxical proposition: God is the only thing that exists" (Ross). The idea is not that God is everything, but that nothing can exist independently from God. While reductionists may want to claim Spinoza as their own, Spinoza envisioned a thinking God. In addition, "although Spinoza was condemned by his community for the heresy of saying that God has a body," he actually believed that God was much more than a body (Ross).

In Spinoza's point-of-view, things like right and wrong do not exist for God; merely the appearance of right and wrong. Because of this, Spinoza disputes the relevance of God. Spinoza maintains that it is only humanities' own selfishness that creates the dichotomies of good and evil, or right and wrong. To Spinoza, God does not really have a will, which implies deliberation or alternatives (Ross). Instead, Spinoza's God is perfect, which means that "everything is as it must be and cannot be otherwise" (Ross). Furthermore, according to Spinoza, God could not have arranged history any differently from the way it in fact happened (Edelstein, Part 2).

Spinoza seized upon "the contradiction between the monotheistic and universal God and the setting in which that God appears in the Jewish religion -- as a God attached to one people only; the contradiction between the universal God and his 'chosen people'" (Deutscher). According to Spinoza, there were no chosen people. Instead, faith was an "inherent quality of man, rather than...necessary for salvation" (Edelstein, Part 2). Spinoza "was one of the first philosophers to marry Jewish thought with the emerging ideas of the Enlightenment, presaging the works of the Haskalah movement more than a century later" (Edelstein, Part 1). In fact, Spinoza was more receptive to contemporary Western thought than any Jewish philosopher since Maimonides (Edelstein, Part 1).

This realization is what led to Spinoza's banishment from the Jewish community.

However, Spinoza had to contend with far more opposition than that provided by the Jewish community. In addition to fighting with the Jewish clergy, Spinoza had to fight the hostility of the Catholic clergy and Calvinistic priests (Deutscher).

However, the result was that:

Spinoza's ethics were no longer the Jewish ethics, but the ethics of man at large -- just as his God was no longer the Jewish God: his God, merged with nature, shed his separate and distinctive divine identity. Yet, in a way, Spinoza's God and ethics were still Jewish, only that his was the Jewish monotheism carried to its logical conclusion and the Jewish universal God thought out to the end; and once he had been thought out to the end, he ceased to be Jewish (Deutscher).

In the Theological-Political Treatise, Spinoza argued that "the stability and security of society is not undermined but, rather, enhanced by freedom of thought, meaning primarily the freedom to philosophize" (Dutton). Spinoza believed that the clergy, whether Jewish or Christian, constituted the primary threat to mankind's freedom to philosophize. Spinoza believed that the clergy played upon the fears and superstitions of people in order to maintain power (Dutton). Therefore, Spinoza believed that the route to freedom involved divesting the clergy of political power.

Although Spinoza believed that the clergy should be divested of political power, he was in no means an atheist. In fact, the goal of his work the Ethics was to aid in the attainment of happiness, "which is to be found in the intellectual love of God" (Dutton). According to Spinoza, the intellectual love of God arises out of the knowledge gained of the divine essence insofar as one sees how the essences of singular things follow of necessity from it (Dutton).

To really understand the controversy surrounding Spinoza, one also has to understand what he considered "the most pervasive confusion that we as humans have about ourselves;" the concept of free will (Dutton). Spinoza believed that the idea of free will was merely a delusion, caused by the inability of mankind to understand the causes of their actions. Therefore, by denying the presence of free will, Spinoza also denied the idea that one could choose to worship, could choose Judaism, or could reject Judaism. Instead, while human beings may have been going through the actions, they were not actually choosing those actions.

Another key to understanding Spinoza, and the controversy that he caused, is to understand his conception of immortality. Spinoza rejected the idea of immortality as conceived of in standard Judaism; he denied the concept of an afterlife. Instead, Spinoza believed that "there is an aspect of the mind that is the expression of the existence of the body, and there is an aspect of the mind that is the expression of the essence of the body" (Dutton). The aspect of the mind that expresses the essence of the body is unaffected by the destruction of the body, and is therefore eternal and immortal. However, according to Espinoza, the durational aspect of the human mind was not that part containing the imagination or memory of the individual, but the intellect.

Although Spinoza was exiled from the Jewish community relatively early in his life, he continued to live in the Netherlands. However, the rabbinic authorities eventually succeeded in completely getting rid of Spinoza; they had him exiled from Holland. Spinoza went to the Ottoman Empire, where Jews were emancipated. Furthermore, there was an already established rich Jewish intellectual life in the Ottoman Empire. Spinoza moved to Constantinople, where he developed a following among the wealthier Jews.

One of the reasons that Spinoza was able to develop such a following was due to the fact that he wrote the Ethics in Hebrew. Therefore, as soon as it was published, it was accessible to the Jews of the Ottoman Empire, who began to discuss it immediately. The rabbinate also began to discuss the Ethics. They viewed the Ethics as a direct challenge to their authority.

While Spinoza was essential to the emancipation, Constantinople was equally essential to emancipation. There had always been Jews who wished to break free from the limitations to which they had been born, but in Constantinople, "there were those who recognized that Judaism not necessarily be a limitation" (Edelstein, Part 2). Therefore, the community in Constantinople contributed to Spinoza's ideas of intellectual freedom, just as Spinoza's ideas of intellectual freedom contributed to the Jews in Constantinople seeking freedom and emancipation.

By 1664, Spinoza's congregation numbered in the thousands. Turkish Jews began to study underneath him. At this time, the rabbinic authorities once again excommunicated him. In addition, they excommunicated his followers. At this point, the idea of marrying Jewish scripture to contemporary philosophy had begun. In late 1664, Spinoza published the Treatise on God, Man and his Well-Being. However, unlike Ethics, which was published solely in Hebrew, the Treatise on God, Man, and his Well-Being was published in both Hebrew and Latin, therefore it was distributed widely throughout Europe.

It was with the Treatise on God, Man, and his Well-Being, that Spinoza challenged the rabbinate by advocating complete freedom of thought. According to Jewish tradition, dissent was traditionally confined to people in the clergy. However, Spinoza proposed "a priesthood of all believers" (Edelstein, Part 2).

Perhaps the greatest threat posed by Spinoza was that his discussions with the Jews of Constantinople had become religious services. Although the tradition began innocently enough, when the discussions ran into the time for evening prayers, they soon began to threaten the rabbinate. Spinoza was neither a rabbi, but rabbis were not necessary for religious services. Within a short period of time, Spinoza's beliefs became integrated into the religious services; there was some modification of traditional prayers to reflect a deist interpretation of God. By 1665, Spinoza had hundreds of followers and the established rabbinate was extremely wary of him. Therefore, they determined to assemble a din Torah to weigh Spinoza's merits.

However, it was at this time that the religious and political climate of the Ottoman Empire once again interacted with Spinoza's belief. Sabbatai Zevi, who believed himself to be the Messiah, announced himself to the world. In Smyrna, Europe, and the Ottoman Empire, people lined the streets to acclaim Zevi as their king. In fact, many Jews sold their homes and prepared to return to Jerusalem under the leadership of the Messiah.

Although Zevi took some of the heat off of Spinoza, Spinoza despised Zevi. Spinoza's believed that only God deserved real reverence. In fact, Spinoza did not believe in the idea of any Messiah, much less that Zevi was the Messiah. Few of Spinoza's followers went over to Zevi. Instead, Spinoza provided a safe haven for disbelieving Jews among the frenzy caused by Zevi's revelations.

Zevi told his followers that he would "reveal himself to the Sultan, that the Sultan would renounce his throne, and that he would recognize Zevi as messiah and secular king of the world" (Edelstein, Part 3). Instead, Zevi was arrested by the Sultan. The Sultan gave him a choice: convert to Islam or die. Zevi chose Islam. Those who had followed Zevi were embarrassed and did their best to deny that they had ever followed him.

While Zevi's conversion was traumatic for many Jews, it was initially beneficial to Spinoza. Because Spinoza had consistently stood against Zevi, the fact that Zevi was not the Messiah lent credence to Spinoza's other beliefs. The crowds at his lectures increased, as did those who believed in his tenets. However, the renewed interest in Spinoza's beliefs led the rabbis to once again consider Spinoza a threat. "The Zevi controversy had raised his standing immensely, and the rabbinate feared that a move against him... might backfire" (Edelstein, Part 3). However, the rabbis decided to challenge Spinoza to a debate.

It was at this debate that Spinoza gave an answer that established one of the foundations of Rational Jewish theology. According to Spinoza, although the Scriptures were divinely inspired, they were written by men. In fact, "their language reflects the imperfect understanding of men rather than the true nature of God" (Edelstein, Part 4). Therefore, the commandments were not actually given to Moses by God, but came from Moses' understanding of God's nature. Therefore, while denying that the Torah was divinely authored, Spinoza believed that the Torah was a testament to God's power because it demonstrated that God had given humans the power of discernment. To support the assertion that the Torah was not divinely authored, Spinoza pointed to the fact that the commandments in the Torah could have been discerned through logic and reason (Edelstein, Part 4).

The debates increased interest in Spinoza's teachings, within and without the Jewish community. If the rabbis had found Spinoza threatening before, the fact that essential Muslims from the Sultan's court began to attend Spinoza's lectures did nothing to ease their concerns. In fact, the philosophy of God espoused by Spinoza had threatened the rabbinate for just that reason; it was non-denominational. A central tenet of Judaism had been that the Jews were chosen people, set apart from and above others. Spinoza's idea of God went against the presumption of Jewish superiority. However, the rabbis could not denounce Spinoza's ideas as anti-Semitic for perpetuating Jewish oppression, because they did not do that either. While Spinoza espoused support for some Christian ideas, he had the same problems with Christianity and Islam that he had with Judaism.