A History of Modern Jewish Religious Philosophy: Volume 1 - The Period of the Enlightenment

A History of Modern Jewish Religious Philosophy

Supplements to The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy Edited by

Elliot Wolfson (New York University) Christian Wiese (University of Frankfurt) Hartwig Wiedebach (University of Zurich)

VOLUME 14

A History of Modern Jewish Religious Philosophy Volume 1: The Period of the Enlightenment

By

Eliezer Schweid Translation by

Leonard Levin

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schweid, Eliezer. [Toldot filosofyat ha-dat ha-Yehudit ba-zeman he-hadash. English] A history of modern Jewish religious philosophy / by Eliezer Schweid ; translation by Leonard Levin. p. cm. — (Supplements to the Journal of Jewish thought and philosophy ; v. 14) Includes bibliographical references. Contents: v. 1: The period of the Enlightenment ISBN 978-90-04-20733-2 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Jewish philosophy. 2. Philosophy and religion. 3. Jewish philosophers. 4. Judaism and philosophy. I. Title. II. Series. B5800.S3913 2011 181’.06—dc22

2011008586

ISSN 1873-9008 ISBN 978 90 04 20733 2 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. Originally published in Hebrew as Toledot Philosofiat ha-Dat ha-Yehudit ba-Zeman he-Hadash (2001) All rights reserved ©Am Oved Publishers, Ltd., 2001, Tel-Aviv. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

To the memory of my four great teachers whose teachings have guided me in writing this book: Yitzchak Julius Guttmann Isaac Baer Shlomo Pines Nathan Rotenstreich

CONTENTS Translator’s Preface ....................................................................

xi

Abbreviations ..............................................................................

xvii

Introduction Judaism, Philosophy and Modernity ................. Defining the Topic and Purpose of This Work .................... The Identity of Jewish Philosophy and Its Place in General Philosophy ........................................................... “Religious Philosophy” versus “Philosophy of Religion” ........................................................................... The Crisis of Religion in the Period of the Enlightenment—the Beginnings of Modern General and Jewish Philosophy ...................................................... The Special Task of Jewish Philosophy of Religion .............. Continuity, Centers, Influence, and Periods of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages and the Modern Age .....

1 1

Chapter One God and Nature in the Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza .................................................................................... The Beginning of Modern Philosophy of Religion, General and Jewish ........................................................... Asserting Freedom of Knowledge—of Self, and of World ................................................................................ The Doctrine of Spinoza’s Ethics ........................................... Spinoza’s Rebellion against Religion: Theological-Political Treatise ................................................................................ Chapter Two Leibnitz and Mendelssohn: Enlightened Defense of Christianity and Judaism ..................................... Beginning of a New Dialogical Confrontation between Judaism and Christianity .................................................. Leibnitz’s Monadology and Philosophy of Religion ............. Moses Mendelssohn: Enlightenment, Common Sense, and Tolerance ................................................................... Mendelssohn’s Phaidon and Jerusalem ...................................... Mendelssohn’s Disagreements with Spinoza and Lessing ..... Mendelssohn on Religion and State in Judaism and Christianity ........................................................................

7 14 25 33 39 53 53 55 60 66 87 87 88 96 98 101 109

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Chapter Three Challenge of the Idealist Revolution in the Enlightenment: Religion in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant ...................................................................... Reason Addressing Religion’s Perennial Questions .............. Religion Within the Limits of Reason ................................... Kant’s Critique of Judaism ..................................................... Chapter Four Philosophy Supplants Religion: The Teaching of G. W. F. Hegel ................................................................... Hegel’s Ambition: Philosophy Embracing All ....................... Hegel’s Dialectical Epistemology: The Ascent of Consciousness .................................................................... The Progression of Consciousness in Individual and Cultural Development ...................................................... Hegel’s “Sublation” of Religion ............................................. Hegel’s View of Judaism as “Negative Dialectic” ................. Chapter Five The Philosophical Return to Religion and Myth—The Philosophy of F. W. J. Schelling ....................... Schelling, Philosopher of Romanticism ................................. The Early System: Art, Creation, and “Intellectual Intuition” ........................................................................... Rational Ecstasy: Knowing the Mind of the Creator ........... Myth and Schelling’s Religious Philosophy of History ......... Schelling’s Appropriation of Kabbalah .................................. Chapter Six Judaism Between Sensualism, Imagination, and Reason: The Jewish Philosophy of Religion of Solomon Maimon ................................................................... Celebrity of the Mendelssohn Enlightenment ....................... From Hasidic Village to the Streets of Western Culture .............................................................................. Reciprocal Critique of Kant’s and Aristotle’s Epistemologies ................................................................... God as Postulate of Pure Reason .......................................... A Skepticism Rooted in Maimonides and Kant ................... Maimon’s Philosophy of Religion .......................................... Maimon’s Philosophy of Judaism ...........................................

117 117 128 132 135 135 137 139 144 146 153 153 158 163 166 168

173 173 176 178 189 193 196 200

contents Chapter Seven Correcting Judaism By Its Own Criteria: Saul Ascher’s Philosophy of Religion .................................... A Corrective to Kant (and revision of Mendelssohn) ........... Ascher’s Leviathan: Redefining the Relationship of Religion and State ............................................................ “Regulative” and “Constitutive” Stages in Religion’s Evolution ........................................................................... Regulative and Constitutive Elements in Judaism ................ Ascher’s Program for Reform; His Credo ............................. Chapter Eight The Appearance of Enlightened Orthodoxy in Response to Modern Philosophy—Naphtali Herz Wessely and Mordecai Gumpel Schnaber ........................................... Traditionalists Open to Enlightenment ................................. Wessely: The “Law of God” and “Law of Man” ................. Schnaber: Enlisting Maimonides in Defense of Tradition ........................................................................... Schnaber’s Foundation of the Torah: A Rational Reconstruction of Maimonidean Dogmatics ................... Drawing on Kant and Halevi ................................................ Modifying Maimonides’ Rubric: Philosophical Pragmatism and Practical Traditionalism ........................ Chapter Nine Judaism as an Evolving National-Spiritual Culture: The Thought of R. Nachman Krochmal Based on Hegel’s Dialectical Idealism .............................................. A New Guide, Using Hegel’s Dialectic ................................... Spearheading the Galician Haskalah ..................................... Krochmal’s Adaptation of Hegel’s Historiosophy for a Jewish Renaissance ........................................................... Philosophy of History for a Culture in Transition ................ The Perplexity: Transition from Traditional to Modern Outlook ............................................................................. Krochmal’s Pedagogical Strategy: Reformulating the Tradition in Modern Historical Terms ............................ Diagnosing the Spiritual Errors of the Age, and the Truth To Which They Point ........................................... Affirming Spirit Within A Modern Naturalistic World View ..................................................................................

ix 205 205 211 219 221 225

231 231 234 241 246 252 260

267 267 269 272 275 277 286 292 302

x

contents Development of Culture: Technology, Science, Morals, Art, Religion, Philosophy ................................................. Monotheism, and the Unique Cyclical Pattern of Jewish Historical Development ....................................................

Glossary ....................................................................................... Bibliography ................................................................................ Index ...........................................................................................

307 316 335 337 343

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE It is my privilege to be able to assist in the English-language publication of the crowning work of one of Israel’s greatest contemporary intellectuals and scholars of Jewish thought. Eliezer Schweid was born in Jerusalem in 1929, during the building of the Yishuv, and came to maturity in 1948, the year of Israel’s independence and fight for survival, in which he participated. Born into the bosom of secular Zionism (the matrix of the “new Jew”) but in the city of Jerusalem (sanctified by three millennia of Jewish history), he was fatefully situated at the crossroads of old and new, of religious and secular. The tension between these two worlds has been the inspiration for his life’s work: studying the tradition of classic Jewish thought from the perspective of modernity, and analyzing how the thought-world of Jewish modernity developed from the confrontation of traditional Jewish religious culture with modern Western secular civilization. In an autobiographical memoir,1 Schweid describes how he studied the methodology of Jewish intellectual history from the generation of German-trained Jewish scholars at the Hebrew University: Shlomo Pines, Gershom Scholem, Yitz˜ak Baer, and Nathan Rotenstreich (and indirectly from the recently-departed Julius Guttmann whose influence was still strongly felt). He describes how the difference in personal situation resulted in a difference between their conception of the mission of history of philosophy and his conception. From the time of the Emancipation and the establishment of the Jüdische Wissenschaft2 movement onward, it was the existential need of Western European Jewish scholars to adhere to an ideal of disinterested objective scholarship in the study of Judaism. It was as if they wished to demonstrate to an impartial court of scholarly opinion (if such a court indeed ever existed) that the Jewish people possessed a historical culture and intellectual traditions ranking with the best that humanity has produced. “My Way in the Research and Teaching of Jewish Thought,” published in Limud va-Da’at be-Ma˜shavah Yehudit, Volume 2, Ben Gurion University of the Negev: 2006, edited by Haim Kreisel. 2 See Glossary. 1

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To aspire to this objective, they had to commit themselves to an ideal of scholarship that was free of any admixture of personal agenda. Only through strict fidelity to “value-free” scholarship could they establish to outsiders the value of Jewish culture that was so central to their own sense of identity. By contrast, as a member of the generation born in the Israel-inthe making and not raised in the Jewish religious tradition, Schweid turned to the scholarship of Jewish ideas with a host of pressing existential concerns: What does it mean, positively, to be “Jewish”? What values does the Jewish tradition have to teach us to guide our personal lives, and to guide our national project to found a Jewish homeland that can justify calling itself “Jewish” in more than a biological or political sense? There were answers to these questions from the prophets of modern Zionism—Ahad Ha-Am, Bialik, and Aaron David Gordon (to whose life and thought Schweid devoted his first monograph)— but these answers, forged in the fires of personal identity-formation and political struggle, were amateurish and questionable in their factual claims, when viewed through the lens of academic scholarship. Another group of thinkers—Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Martin Buber—combined philosophical brilliance and personal originality and were accessible as models for contemporary value-orientation, but also dubious in their historical reconstructions. Interestingly, their thought was not taught at the Hebrew University when Schweid began his career there. Though Guttmann included Cohen and Rosenzweig in his Philosophies of Judaism, it is remarkable that his lectures on philosophy at the Hebrew University ended with Spinoza. The older German-trained cadre thought that historical distance was necessary to obtain the objectivity needed for cool analysis of one’s scholarly subject. Under Rotenstreich’s encouragement, Schweid pioneered the teaching and researching of modern Jewish thought in the Jewish Thought Department at the Hebrew University. He devoted the bulk of his scholarship to the intensive study of modern Jewish thought and culture, including the mutual relevance of the medieval and modern Jewish intellectual legacies. It is instructive to read his work on medieval Jewish thought—The Classic Jewish Philosophers3—as background for the current work, and to note the pervasive cross-references, as Schweid

3

Schweid, The Classic Jewish Philosophers, Brill, 2008.

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discusses at length the importance of Maimonides’s thought on Mendelssohn, Krochmal, Cohen and Ahad Ha-Am, or of Halevi on Hess and Rosenzweig. Schweid’s innovation in the investigation of modern Jewish thought is visible in many ways, large and small. One of the most important and influential modern Jewish thinkers, Hermann Cohen, is also one of the most difficult. The available presentations of his thought suffer either from excessive brevity or prolixity. In this study one will find a presentation that though straightforward and understandable is also thorough enough to relate the many facets and his dimensions of his thought, his importance in social-political as well as Jewish-religious intellectual history, and his seminal influence on later Jewish thinkers (Buber, Rosenzweig and Soloveitchik). One will also find the first complete accounts of works of minor thinkers such as Saul Ascher and Mordecai Gumpel Schnaber (Levison) who serve as important connecting links between their better-known colleagues. Another whole area, largely neglected in general accounts of Jewish thought, is the intellectual development of those Orthodox and especially ultra-Orthodox Jewish thinkers who, despite their declared opposition to all things modern, show their debt to the currents of modernity in unexpected ways. Schweid’s discussion in Volume 2 of the 19th-century movements spawned by Reform includes fresh insights into Kalischer, Malbim, and the disciples of Elijah of Vilna. In the 1970s Schweid produced the first monograph on the Safed-born, American Orthodox theorist of Jewish democracy ˜ayyim Hirschensohn; he devotes a half-chapter to him in Volume 5 of the current work. Also in Volume 5 Schweid revisits the ˜aredi thinkers (Wasserman, Shapiro, et al.) whose innovative theological responses to the Holocaust he first researched in 1994.4 But the outstanding feature of this work is its multi-dimensionality. The author provides a biographical narrative of each of the individual thinkers. He offers philosophical analysis of the issues raised. He develops the historical progression of the purely intellectual issues, both in the stream of the Jewish tradition and in that of general philosophy, delineating in the process the successive elaborations of the influences of major general thinkers (Spinoza, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, the positivists and pragmatists) on their Jewish counterparts. He charts the

4

Schweid, Bein ˜urban li-yeshua, Tel Aviv, Ha-Kibbutz ha-Me’u˜ad, 1994.

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impact of the external historical factors—the entrance of Jews into modern European society, with all the political, social, and cultural consequences this entailed—on the philosophies of the individual thinkers. And the reader gathers from all this the continual working out of problems that transcend the individual thinkers: How shall Judaism be transformed by its encounter with modernity? How shall each variant of modern Judaism—liberal, centrist, or traditional, religious or secular—evolve with the successive challenges posed by the Enlightenment, the prospect of Emancipation, attempts at integration with Western European societies, tensions with competing nationalities in Eastern Europe, the march of science, the assault on humanist ideals, the catastrophes of the twentieth century, and the displacement of centers of Jewish life from Europe to America and Israel? One can hardly escape in this connection using the term “dialectical,” for all the abuse it has received. Though Schweid distances himself from Hegel’s teleological historicism and supersessionist hubris, he is indebted to Hegel especially in the ability to treat the history of philosophy and the philosophy of history as two sides of the same coin. The analyses and narratives of individual thinkers are steps in the working-out of global problems that transcend each individual thinker. They are stones in a mosaic that ultimately reveals the progression of larger movements of thought. Or (to use a musical metaphor) they give voice to leitmotifs that recur in variations, inversions and permutations through the vast cross-referential symphony of modern Jewish thought and experience. The dilemmas raised by the encounter of Judaism with modernity generate an exceedingly vast panorama of responses, each with its strengths and weaknesses, each trying to learn what it can from all that has gone before. The integration of all these themes into a coherent narrative is the supreme achievement of this work. This leads to a dialectic that we may observe taking place in Schweid himself. Rebelling against what he considered the excess of objective detachment of his Wissenschaft-trained teachers, he nevertheless incorporated their respect for exacting standards of honesty and disciplined research, that were necessary for the furthering of his existential goals. One is impressed throughout this history by the impartial respect that he shows to all the thinkers he discusses. This was necessary to achieve his goal. For it is only by reading closely and listening with the utmost humility and respect to all the thinkers of the past that one can learn from them what needs to be learned, to answer the question that burns

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within oneself: How can one absorb and apply all the wisdom that they have to offer, to discover what it can mean to live authentically as a Jew and as a human being in the modern world? Helping us to this realization is Schweid’s greatest gift to us. Acknowledgements My thanks to Ute Steyer for assisting me in the annotation of this volume, and to Laura Shelley for compiling the index. Leonard Levin December, 2010

ABBREVIATIONS BV GPT GW TPT Versuch YT

Book of Virtues (Wessely). Guide of the Perplexed of the Time (Krochmal ). Gesammelte Werke (Collected Works). Theological-Political Treatise (Spinoza). Salomon Maimon, Versuch über die Transzendentalphilosophie, Florian Ehrensperger, ed. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2004. Yesod ha-Torah (“Foundation of the Torah,” Schnaber).

INTRODUCTION

JUDAISM, PHILOSOPHY AND MODERNITY Defining the Topic and Purpose of This Work This work deals with Jewish thought that confronted the totality of problems of religion and its place in the life of society, state and culture in modern times, on a philosophical level, as a historical process. This opening sentence is based on several critical distinctions. They deserve discussion, which will be forthcoming in this work. First, I have chosen to characterize the thought I will be dealing with as “confronting” the problems of religion. Thus, I stress that my aim is not to deal only with “religious thought” that bases itself on faith in God and Torah in order to fortify the foundations of such a view against the challenges of the age, but also with reflection on religion from various other viewpoints, including those that criticize and oppose religion, as well as others that appreciate it but see it as only a provisional stage toward the truth whose full understanding is beyond it. The distinction between these two approaches to religion is a feature of the general history of philosophy in the West, starting with the first encounters between philosophy and monotheistic religion—Judaism and Christianity—in the Hellenistic period and later in the Middle Ages. It has sharpened and deepened in the modern period, because of the secularization of Western culture. It has found philosophical expression in the distinction between the two disciplines of “religious philosophy” and “philosophy of religion,” one that we shall elaborate below. It is important to identify this distinction at the outset, to avoid possible misunderstanding. Focusing the discussion on the issue of “religion and its place in the life of society, state, and culture” is not meant to isolate religion from the larger picture, but rather to examine it as a unifying axis of the various domains revolving around it. This assertion follows from a historical observation: Religion continued to be the primary axis for dealing with the problems of “Judaism” (including the problems of the Jewish people) on every plane—ideological, literary, and philosophical.

2

introduction

The notion of “Judaism” was coined in the modern period, with the emergence and consolidation of “Jewish studies”1 as an academic discipline, and with the declared intention of conceiving that totality that was previously defined as “Torah” or “religion” under the rubric of “culture” in a humanistic sense. Clearly, through this revolution in the understanding of the components of Jewish identity, new avenues of discussion besides religion emerged, such as the historical image and destiny of the Jewish people; the social and political status of Jews among the nations; Jewish ethical, social, and political values; Jewish scientific, artistic, and literary achievements; and of course, the philosophical ideas of Jews, divorced from religious considerations. To be sure, the scholars and thinkers who focused on these new avenues of investigation could not ignore the centrality of religion in shaping the historical destiny of the Jewish people and in shaping all areas of Jewish culture, not only in ancient and medieval times, but even today. However, they were engaged in transforming a religious culture into a secular humanistic culture. Thus, they had to confront the problems of religion in every aspect of their enterprise, whether it was the new challenge that humanistic culture posed to religion, or the challenge that it posed to this culture that was striving, despite itself, to identify as Jewish. Second, it is our aim to focus on that body of thought that is “on a philosophical level.” What identifies philosophical thought from other thought? We shall propose a fuller answer later. But we can already emphasize the difference between systematic philosophical thought— that strives for complete description and understanding of entities in their totality, on the basis of defined epistemological criteria and methods of deduction and verification—from other varieties of thought that rely less (or hardly at all ) on such methods. For example, ideology— including religious ideology—has taken on the role of traditional theology in the modern period, though relying on it. This applies also to the intellectual essay or broadside, as well as narrative literature and poetry. This is not an easy distinction to carry out consistently. There will be many hybrid and borderline cases, across a continuous spectrum “Jewish studies”—Jüdische Wissenschaft (so-called “Jewish Science”), a term in use in Germany starting from the Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft der Juden in the 1820s. (See Volume 2, Chapter 1 and following.) Unlike “science” in English, Wissenschaft includes systematic study of both natural sciences and the humanities. 1

judaism, philosophy and modernity

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of possibilities without clear lines of demarcation. These types often developed together in a state of constant interchange and mutual influence, and the boundaries between them were never ironclad—consider, for instance, Plato’s dialogues. The distinction is even harder in the modern period, because of the changing forms both in the literary and philosophical genres, especially in dealing with religion. A major contributing factor is the shift of attention to the experiential aspects of religious thought, and the common denominator between religious experience and other forms of experience—ethical, erotic, esthetic, and intellectual. In modern times, these have become the subject of artistic treatment, and art has shown it can deal with them more sensitively, more precisely, and more empathetically than analytical prose. This phenomenon is not unique to modern times. What is unique is the growing tendency to blur the boundaries of the disciplines, which contrasts with their stricter demarcation in the Middle Ages. In our age, the disciplines tend to blend into each other. This reached its culmination in the philosophical school of existentialism, which presented itself as an integrative philosophical discipline. It developed its own ideology to present its ideas in the public arena, with the result that its ideology aspired to independence and spilled over into the philosophical realm in the statement of its principles, and into the literary realm in the manner of expression of its ideas. Thus the literary arts— and the other arts in their wake—began to compete with philosophy, dealing with themes in which experience appeared preferable to analytic reflection. Thus, it happened that several existentialist philosophers (Kierkegaard, Buber, Sartre) started to write creative literature as a complement to their theoretical writings. Others (Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Rosenzweig, Gordon, Kook) introduced an element of literary criticism or creative literary experimentation directly into their philosophical works. It is understood, therefore, that reference to “philosophical thought” only signifies striving for the highest plane of intellectual reflection— the plane of profound, inclusive wisdom —without ignoring thoughtproducts that have expressed this same wisdom through other vehicles than philosophy, and thus have become its interlocutors, its partners and counterparts. Finally, implicit in the definition of the historical substance of this book’s topic is the assumption that contemplating the history of philosophy is itself philosophy. In that role, it becomes part of the

4

introduction

development of its subject, and plays a vital role in the continuing accomplishment of the philosophical task, both as a specialized area of the life of the mind, and by providing integral guidance to the development of the culture in all its areas. If this assertion has any meaning, it is that it is the task of a reflective history of philosophy to retrace the steps of the philosophical thoughtprocess, to examine it critically as a creative process, and to pass judgment on this process from the historical perspective of its development. At the same time, it must pay attention first of all to external historical connections and causes, as well as to those internal to the development of each philosophical discipline in its own terms. Finally, it must consider the historical connections and causes, both external and internal, of the developmental flow among all the branches of philosophy taken together. Indeed, according to the outlook implicit in the arrangement of this work, this is the full meaning of presenting philosophical thought in its historical flow. The intention is not simply the chronological sequence, which is a mere technicality of arrangement of the material discussed, but rather the substantive contexts and connections that take shape thereby. It follows from what we have said that a history that contents itself with a formulaic dogmatic presentation of positions side by side—or even opposite one another—in the chronological order of their appearance and in the framework of a given period of development of a given culture, will misrepresent the philosophical character of the history of philosophy. Such an account will yield only antiquarian knowledge, lacking any value with respect to the fructification and continuation of the creative philosophical process. The true task can only be properly fulfilled through critical examination of every teaching that has reached the requisite level of expression, has entered the circle of philosophical discourse of its generation, and has had influence in its time, as a direct effect of the process that created it. Such examination must take into account the way that such a teaching presents itself as an integral unit of thought, as well as the way that it is illuminated by examining the relevant connections, challenges, and broader historical causes. All this assumes that philosophical thought develops in a structured and coherent pattern. Indeed, every new philosophical doctrine adds new ideas that were not expressed at all before, or not in the same form; still, it develops from its predecessors, and from the cultural milieu that nourished and inspired its predecessors. It always stands in relation to the cultural milieu of its environment and its time, espe-

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cially through critical dialogue with the other philosophical doctrines that developed alongside it in the same cultural arena. In every period of the development of Western culture, there is a prevailing philosophical agenda that is set by challenges that arise from the different cultural areas with which philosophy is in contact. Although philosophy is nourished by these connections, these challenges are expressed ultimately as problems or dilemmas that develop internally from the subject matter of philosophy itself. The solutions that were proposed for the questions and problems arising from prior philosophical discussions raise new problems and questions—either in and of themselves, or through confrontation with the dynamic, conflict-laden life of the culture. To solve these new problems, one must analyze, revise, and develop further the previous solutions. Such a process must distinguish between the true and the mistaken, the partial, or the defective elements that were in the previous solutions, to explain their source and to suggest a new solution, one that will take into account the entire history of the problem, and not just its most recent formulation. This, then, is the methodological “organon” that formulates philosophical thought as a structured historical process, comprising also the changes that necessarily take place in the forms and styles of philosophic thought. We shall show later that one of the central contributions of philosophy in the modern period was the idea that history shows a structured process of development of human culture in accord with a rational and purposive pattern, that provides it with an overarching direction; furthermore, that this direction is positive with respect to the quality of creative fulfillment and with respect to the social morality which is at the foundation of the life of the culture. In other words, this view posits continual progress in the level of achievement in all domains of the culture, including ethical knowledge and fulfillment of ethical norms that are continually improving in society and state, bringing the promise of a life of happiness, freedom, and peace to all humanity. Today, after the historical traumas of the twentieth century, this outlook seems generally discredited. Perhaps it will have some respite by virtue of the impressive achievements of post-modern science and technology. To be sure, awareness of the dangers inherent in these achievements will surely prohibit a return to the version that presented the moral progress of humanity as an inevitable historical process based on a rational pattern that is the incarnation of philosophy. Nevertheless, the impressive progress that has taken place in science and

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technology confirms that the modern idea of progress had some historical basis, which can be corroborated by the philosophical contemplation of the history of philosophy as well as by the history of the sciences. The principle of development showed its worth in the advances of methodology and in the successful correction of previous errors through the accumulation of knowledge and refinement of the methodology that had produced it. New thinkers were able to solve old problems and to transcend the prior limits of thought. New solutions would raise fresh problems on a higher logical level, so that uncovering the new problems and defining them precisely would open new horizons of thought. All this is evidence of continual progress in man’s ability to understand himself and his environment, to consolidate his place in his environment and master it—whether for good or for ill. Indeed, this progress seems to go hand in hand with the seamless consistency of the structure of knowledge that supports the sciences and guides philosophical thought. Reflecting on this relationship gave rise to the notion that the history of culture is an organic unity based in nature itself, sublimating the deterministic order of nature (described by the physical sciences) into the ethical and teleological order characterizing man’s natural reason. If that were the case, then philosophy would embody the rational order that brought about the development of culture, in which is rooted the authority that guides history! But philosophy is critical thought that develops through continual self-criticism. Today, it should recognize that in modern times philosophy has tended to assume a position similar to that which religion assumed in a prior age, and that it is unable to defend this position because it is unable to fulfill the task that would justify it. Philosophy is a part of the culture with its own special values, and it has an important contribution to make to the development of all other areas. But no field or discipline of cultural creativity can claim to embody in itself the creative principle of the whole, of which it is only a part. Therefore, in the overall project of defining possible orientations—be they ethical, esthetic, or spiritual—that address the totality, let it be enough for philosophy that it aspires to know it! Indeed, it seems that even this critical approach reconfirms the basic assertion that philosophy is a discipline parallel to other creative areas of culture, and that it relates to the sciences, technology, social and political organization, jurisprudence, ethics (as a theory of values), art, and the like. All these disciplines develop and achieve perfection in

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accordance with their own principle of order, and by relating to each other. Philosophy, as a discipline whose task is to present a critical view of human society in the environment that it created for itself and remade afresh, develops out of the effort to contemplate them all in order that it may continue the creative processes that express the richness of its life and bear responsibility for it. This fundamental notion of the historical substance of philosophical thought, embracing its response to the complex challenges of cultural history as well as its internal continuity and development, guides the composition of this work, and that is its goal. From the scholarly standpoint, it is my purpose to describe the intellectual evolution of Judaism in the modern period from a religious culture to a humanistic culture. From the philosophical standpoint, it is my purpose to present the organic flow of developing Jewish thought as the basis for the continuation of philosophical creativity that is required in our time. Such an effort must respond to the traumatic events that marked the historical fate of the Jewish people in Western culture in the twentieth century, as well as to the immense and rapid changes that are occurring today, and are likely to occur to an even greater extent in the twenty-first century. The Identity of Jewish Philosophy and Its Place in General Philosophy Our focus on Jewish religious philosophy requires that we deal with the problem of its definition or identity, and its place in general philosophy. We shall see later that this problem engaged (in different ways and from different perspectives) all the Jewish philosophers who dealt with Judaism, whether as Torah, religion, culture, or historical destiny of the Jewish people. It seems that even scholars who tended to deny the existence of Jewish philosophy—or at any rate its philosophical character—could not deny that the question of its identity was unavoidable. At the very least, the question of the nature of this phenomenon (is it philosophical? is it Jewish?) is central to investigating it and has implications for discussing all its aspects. We must therefore consider from whence this problematic character derives. At first sight one may give the question of defining the identity of Jewish philosophy a simple historical answer. We are talking of a body of philosophical work that was produced in the cultural arena of the Jewish people and that focused on that culture, and the image and fate

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of the Jewish people who created it, as the object of its investigation. In this way, we can demarcate, describe and investigate the philosophical literature that was produced within the Jewish people and label it “Jewish philosophy” without defining in advance what may be its intrinsic characteristics, either as to its content or its genre and methodology. Whatever these may turn out to be on examination, let the literature that we have thus demarcated be subjected to philosophical analysis, and let the proper conclusions be drawn! This literary-historical definition of Jewish philosophy is based on a certain general assumption: philosophy as a discipline strives (like the sciences) for universality and objectivity. It aspires to knowledge of general truths—of the nature of the world; the nature of humankind; and society, culture and religion as human products. There should not in principle be any difference between the science and philosophy that are created in one culture or in other cultures. One can show in retrospect that the history of all Western peoples had a common root in Greek philosophy, which presented itself as a universal discipline stressing the common humanity of all who engaged in it. Jewish philosophy first developed by adopting and internalizing Greek philosophical sources (as in the case of Philo of Alexandria), and afterwards by adopting and incorporating those schools of thought that evolved from Greek philosophy among the peoples of Christian and Islamic lands. On the other hand, one of the first objective, universal judgments that philosophy—in its capacity of critical examination—must recognize, is the individual, subjective character of human thought, and thus the particular character of every investigated object that becomes the basis of generalization. Culture is the sum of the particular creations of human individuals and groups that have accrued throughout history. Philosophy is reckoned as an objective, universal mode of thought in every culture in which this special need has been awakened. It can also be considered one of the special expressions of the culture, and it is expressed in particular creative forms, each of which has the stamp of the culture impressed on its language, its literary characteristics, its historical background, its scale of values, and the like. Philosophers of the various cultures nevertheless felt compelled to draw a picture of the particular totality to which they belong. They embraced from that standpoint all the other particular totalities that stand in relation to their culture. Thus, they arrived at a picture of the totality that was conceived as human culture not just from the universalistic perspective—which generalizes through abstraction—but also

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from the combined perspectives of the particular and subjective givenness of its concrete cultural creations. If we investigate the literature of philosophy from this perspective, we discover the truth of this assumption. Philosophical schools developed and became established in each of the various national cultures out of their own unique historical situations. In every case, each philosophical school expressed the identifying characteristics of the national culture in which it was formed, and particularly its religion. Sometimes this was done with the intention of justifying their preference over every other culture and religion, and sometimes without such an intention. But of the cultures that produced philosophy, there is not one that did not develop a unique philosophical school with its own tradition, distinctive in its methods and conclusions. The connection between these distinct philosophical styles and their respective cultural and religious backgrounds is pronounced, and would be worth investigation and philosophical analysis in its own right. At any rate, the philosophers, whose special interest was selfconsciousness, were always conscious of this fact. The Greek philosophers emphasized the uniqueness and superiority of the Greek language and culture over all other languages and cultures, and explained on that basis why philosophy developed only in Greece. In the Middle Ages, there prevailed a political and religious tendency that ignored the national linguistic and cultural differences among the Western peoples. The ruling elites aspired to develop one universal religious high culture within the framework of the imperial and ecclesiastical institutions. Its language of expression was Latin in Christendom and Arabic in the Islamic world. The clashes among the particular constituents of these cultures were focused prominently on issues of religion and language, through which they struggled with each other for exclusive universal supremacy. Thus, the philosophical schools diverged along the axes of differences and conflicts within and between the major religions. Yet they emphasized—each in protest against the other—the exclusive value of their language, signifying their culture, and not just the superiority of their religion and its teaching. In the modern period in the West, national particularism became again the prevailing tendency in politics and in higher cultural creativity. The philosophical schools followed suit and defined themselves along lines of cultural, linguistic and national differences. This was especially the case in German philosophy, which enjoyed a dominant position in Western thought from the late eighteenth to the early

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twentieth century, and which (as we shall see) presented the paradigm of universal philosophy to the Jewish philosophers of the modern period. It would seem, then, that there is no difficulty in principle in applying the same model to the philosophic thought that developed in the Jewish people. When Jews felt the need to philosophize, there developed in Jewry a philosophical school with its own linguistic, literary and topical tradition. Thus, we may assert that Jewish philosophy is the philosophical creative product that was produced in the Jewish people by contemplating their own culture and the problems of their religion and historical destiny in comparison with the religions and historical destinies of the surrounding peoples—also factoring in their own self-preference, by which they saw themselves religiously as a chosen people whose particular status has uniquely universal significance. In this manner, the question of the place of Jewish philosophy in the context of general philosophy is simply solved. It is like any other philosophical school, whether nationally or religiously based. Indeed, Jewish philosophy was nourished from both sources, and presented both of them as equally important and authoritative. This gives us a key for understanding the unique character of philosophy among other cultural creations. Philosophy, which demands objective self-reflection, requires conscious and intentional balance between the individual, particular self on the one hand and objective, universal contemplation on the other. Every philosophical school therefore simultaneously represents both the universal philosophical tradition and its own particular culture. Every philosophical work participates both in the universal circle of discourse of general philosophy and in the particular circle of discourse of the culture in which it was created. It follows that every school of philosophy has a double history, within the particular circle of discourse of its culture, as well as within a more universal circle of discourse. One should see this duality as comprising two complementary aspects of a single two-sided history, which it is natural and proper to present in two ways and from two contexts— the particular and the general—in relation to each other: the general history of philosophy, that combines the histories of individual philosophical schools transcending their contexts of national cultures and religions; and alongside it, the individual histories of those national and religious schools, that comprise chapters in the history of general philosophy.

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The great philosophers of various national cultures and religions related intentionally to both of these contexts of their activity, contributing to both in parallel, while also enjoying universal influence and shaping the contours and history of general philosophy. This applies also to Jewish philosophers. They all sought to participate and contribute to both contexts in parallel. The greatest of them, such as Philo, Maimonides, Spinoza, Hermann Cohen, and Buber, were influential in both. These remarks will provide a starting point and a basic first approximation for a definition of the content of Jewish philosophy and the ways of looking at it. Still, they do not sufficiently explain the special intensity of the debate over the identity of Jewish philosophy, or the fact that this was a key question in the self-understanding of Jewish philosophy and perhaps of Jewish religion. It seems we shall not understand the source of this controversy, its significance and its implications for the study of the history of Jewish philosophy, unless we examine the special questions that were raised about the legitimacy of philosophy in the religious culture of the Jewish people on the one hand, and about the legitimacy of the Jewish religion in general philosophy on the other hand. The problem was precipitated historically by the sharp controversy that accompanied the emergence of philosophy in Jewish culture. It was evidently the case that philosophy did not emerge from within, but was acquired from outside, and this acquisition was considered problematic and difficult from the outset. It seemed to be imposed by the external conflict between Jewish religious culture and the surrounding religious cultures in which philosophy had previously developed. This precipitated a fierce conflict within Jewry between those who recognized the necessity and usefulness of philosophy and those who derided it as a kind of assimilation and submission to an alien culture that denied or usurped authentic Judaism. These facts preoccupied the historians of Jewish philosophy greatly— and to some extent also the historians of Christian and Moslem philosophy. This was because of the strong internal connection between these faiths and Judaism (and between their respective philosophical parties), and because the religious philosophy that developed in all three faiths started with the activity of a Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria. The first conclusion drawn by the historians of Jewish philosophy was that the canonical sources of Judaism—the Bible, Mishnah, Talmud

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and Midrash, as well as many non-canonical ethical writings—contain no philosophy. The canon contains a form of “wisdom literature,” but this is not scientific or philosophical wisdom, based on systematic rational investigation. The wisdom in this literature derived from prophetic inspiration and had the purpose of religious guidance. It focused on ethics, not in investigating nature or studying man as a natural creature. The fear of God was not only the beginning of wisdom, but its end as well. Clearly, a wisdom whose source is fear of God and that is directed to His service—a condition of human happiness and success—is not only ill-adapted to serve the development of science and philosophy. It is also fundamentally opposed to a kind of thinking that perceives the self-sufficiency of reason, from which the sciences and philosophy developed. Indeed, it is an instructive fact that philosophy first developed under the aegis of the pagan Greek religion, not the monotheistic religion of Israel. These remarks should not be seen as disqualifying the role of independent human reason, or as disqualifying the sciences and pursuit of truth for its own sake by the human intellect. A religion based on supernatural revelation might limit the activity of independent human reason, but it does not forbid it in its own domain. If any disqualification ensues, it is directed only against the representation of science and philosophy as a wisdom that is the purpose of human life and the source of happiness. In this manner, belief in a supernatural God can create an obstacle to the development of science and philosophy, and there is also the obstacle of suspicion leveled against that science and philosophy that were developed in an idolatrous culture. These wisdoms are perceived as alien, and they are associated with a sense of danger to the faith. Therefore philosophy was able to penetrate Jewish culture and to be included in its wisdom literature only under conditions of compulsion and attraction, i.e., when a Jewish cultural nucleus came to exist within an alien cultural center, where philosophy thrived, thus forming within Jewish culture itself a basis of universalistic openness. This deserves special emphasis. Jews who sought to preserve their separate identity while also mixing with the surrounding culture and playing a part in it (if only for their economic needs) availed themselves of the open, universalistic aspects of the host culture and quickly internalized them. In this way the external culture became the higher general culture in which they participated together with their hosts. Thus, for Jews in Diaspora, philosophy and the sciences acquired a power of attraction that counter-balanced the original attitude of suspicion.

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At the same time, internalizing the general cultural values necessitated a reevaluation of their original particular identity, to which they still remained attached—not just in its own terms, but also from the universal perspective that encompassed and examined it. Thus, they had to validate their particular identity in terms of the general culture. In this way, philosophy was transformed from an external compulsion and attraction to a real inner need. This created a basis for conflicts that can be defined from shifting perspectives as external-internal and internal-external. To judge these conflicts properly, let us first draw the sociological picture in more detail.2 The social elites, who had internalized the general culture through amalgamation and creative participation in it, had to assess the meaning and validity of the religious culture that defined them from the perspective of the surrounding general culture. Basically, they sought to consolidate their own sense of identity by achieving harmony with their environment. But this gave rise to a dual conflict, arising on the one hand from their sense of independent religious identity, and on the other hand from their new universal cultural identity, presenting two different ways of grasping the universal significance of the Jewish Torah and of the status of the Jewish people among the gentiles. The first presented a conception of a particularistic universalism, identifying and singling out the Israelite people through its religion, based on revelation. The second presented a conception of an all-embracing and amalgamating universalism of philosophy, based in reason. Meanwhile, on the social-national side was born a conflict between an attitude of openness to the outer environment, represented by the elites who aspired to take part in it and contribute to it, and an attitude of isolation, represented by other elites who saw themselves entrusted with the original authority of the religion that divided Israel from the gentiles. This was a fierce struggle, both in the spirit of the modernizing elite who were attracted to philosophy, and also between them and the rabbinic elite who led the majority of the people. The creators of Jewish philosophy expressed this conflict—the internalexternal, and the external-internal—in all their works. This, then, is the background for the development of the problem of the special identity of Jewish philosophy, whether in respect to its

2 For the way this process played out in modern times, see Schweid, The Idea of Modern Jewish Culture, Chapters 1–6.

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philosophical quality compared with general philosophy (inasmuch as it is a universal intellectual discipline) or in respect to its Jewish legitimacy in relation to the Torah (based on a particular prophetic revelation that aspires to universal validity). In its relationship to Jewish religion, philosophy functioned in two contradictory directions that clashed with each other. On the one hand it posed an intellectual challenge to the claim that the Jewish Torah is based on supernatural revelation. In that respect its opponents (among the Jews) and proponents (among the Christians or Moslems) were able to argue that philosophy, as long as it is faithful to its methodological and intrinsic essence, cannot be Jewish. On the other hand it appeared as a mediating factor, creating a common circle of discourse for adherents of different religions, transcending their religions, enabling them to verify their claims by universal criteria and concepts, and conducting a religious discussion calculated to advance them in understanding themselves, and perhaps also to draw them closer to agreements resting on the basis of all their arguments for universal validity. In that respect, the adherents of philosophy within the Jewish camp, as well as the opponents of philosophy in Christianity and Islam, could argue that Judaism is philosophical and that philosophy is Jewish in its essence. The discussion was conducted, and is still conducted, in a particular circle of discourse and in a general circle. What is common to all of them is that they have an interest in taking a principled position in this debate—on all sides of this double debate. Therefore, no matter which position they take, even those who seek to demonstrate (for very good reasons) that philosophy in this sense cannot be Jewish and Judaism cannot be philosophical, comprise various streams in Jewish philosophy and insure its existence despite themselves. “Religious Philosophy” versus “Philosophy of Religion” From this analysis of Jewish philosophy’s formation and the problems of special identity that it raises, we have established that the philosophical tradition generated from the encounter of “Athens” with “Jerusalem” brought into Western culture a new entity that was more than merely a sub-branching or variety of the previous philosophical tradition. It revealed a philosophical problem of a new type, and with it appeared a new genre of philosophy—philosophy of religion.

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We should be precise. Philosophy developed in ancient Greece from the pagan heritage that identified its gods as spiritual-personal embodiments of the forces of nature. Greek philosophy developed this heritage and embodied it in itself. It identified with it through critical confrontation that strove to reveal the supremacy of the “Logos” in nature and to raise the person who loved wisdom (which was knowledge of reality in its truth) to the level of the divine Logos that holds the world together. Is it not proper, then, to describe philosophy from its first founding as a philosophy of religion? Yet it turns out that precisely this analysis of philosophy’s relation to its pagan foundation clarifies the special significance of the confrontation that developed between it and “religion,” due to the overtones of meaning that the terms “God” and “religion” took on as a result of prophetic monotheism. Monotheism denied the apotheosis of the forces of nature. It condemned it as “idolatry” and utterly denied the possibility of overcoming the barrier between God and man. The one God is supernatural, He is the Creator and Ruler over nature, and religion (or Torah) is His direct commandment. It is clear, then, that religion, in the sense of monotheism (whether Biblical or rabbinic), cannot be incarnated in philosophy in such a way that the latter will occupy the whole place of religion, in the same way that philosophy took the place of pagan religion. Monotheistic religion presents a separate truth, a truth that rests on the authority of revelation. Philosophy must relate to religion, and religion must relate to philosophy, but neither of the two can completely take over the domain of thought and knowledge of the other. The substantive difference between paganism (rooted in pantheism) and prophetic monotheism is what defined the new character of philosophy of religion and the special dilemma embodied in it. The first question that arises from this conclusion is: Is a true encounter between philosophy and monotheistic religion possible? Should one see in the prophets’ repudiation of idolatry a decisive repudiation of the philosophy that developed from it and embodied it? Is the deification of the Logos in nature an implicit negation of monotheism? It should already be clear from the previous discussion of the development of Jewish philosophy that this question became a key problem in religious philosophy, and that positions crystallized that responded to these questions in a definitive manner. However, as was said, even the philosophical argument that denied the possibility of an encounter between philosophy and religion was itself a dialectical manifestation of that encounter.

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Sociology of culture suggests an explanation for the paradox that apparently arises from this step in the argument: Monotheistic religion and pagan philosophy were formed by their respective cultures and operated within them. Therefore, when a historic encounter occurred between the two cultures that involved mingling of the civilizations that constituted their substructures, religion and philosophy would necessarily encounter each other and mingle as well, no matter how problematic the result. Necessarily, we say, not only from the force of external compulsion, but also—primarily—from the force of internal compulsion, which is fundamentally positive. Why so? Because the relation of monotheistic religion, on the one hand, and pagan philosophy, on the other hand, to their respective cultural infrastructures was positive. Each strove to direct the life of the individual and society in all their scope and domains. Each aspired to mold and unify the culture and to express itself through the totality of its creations. The task of each was to establish an absolute framework of values, as the basis to guide patterns of living and creating, and in this way to mold the cultural totality. In order to fulfill their role in the common culture in which they met, it was therefore necessary for the two to relate to each other and to confront each other. If it is clear that each of them fulfills an essential role, which the society that lives a cultural life cannot do without, they will discover the necessity to form between them a complementary mode of relation. That role is the vital cultural task of philosophy of religion. It includes within its scope religion’s accommodation with philosophy, philosophy’s accommodation with religion, the self-awareness of each in relation to the other, and each one’s validation of the other. Indeed, it appears that if the compulsion for this encounter is internal, not just external, we must reexamine the original distinction that decreed opposition between philosophy—the child of paganism—and monotheism. Was not this distinction too simplistic and unequivocal? Let us examine the generally known historical facts. The cultures, bearers of monotheism and pagan philosophy respectively, met and were influenced by each other, without one effacing the other. They could not have withstood the inner tension generated by this encounter, were there not between them—in addition to their oppositions— deep and strong common elements that were sufficient to hold them together in the framework of one multi-layered culture. The civilizational substructure, the social foundation and the political organization formed a framework of a single culture, which had a common value

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foundation. These common elements were validated both by philosophy and by religion. Historical observation indeed verifies that this was more than just a reconciliation after the fact. Prophetic monotheism developed from a pagan cultural foundation. Whoever examines monotheism in depth as a teaching that molded an entire culture in its historical development will discover that this teaching never entirely displaced the pagan substructure on whose basis and through whose framework the latter developed. On the contrary, the Torah received many of its legacies and institutions from pagan culture. This is especially true in the realm of the natural and earthly life of the people—the economy, society, and state. Therefore, it could also be seen in the realm of religious ritual, which was closely connected with human beings’ involvement with nature for the sake of their survival, and with their social and political organization. Many examples substantiate this. We will content ourselves here with pointing out that the prophets, and even more the priests, did not entirely deny the very existence of the forces of nature, or humanity’s direct dependency on them, and so they did not deny the need to relate to these forces through religious ritual. The relation to idolatry thus had to arrive at a compromise. Though the prophets condemned idolatry in this respect, especially where their own people were at stake, they did not deny the vital role and relative efficacy of the gods of the other nations to rule over nature. It was their contention that the supernatural God, creator of nature, had dominion over the forces of nature and was their source. Therefore the prophets acknowledged that God had imbued nature—and humankind—with independent powers. Monotheism rejected absolutely the worship of the forces of nature as divine, but it adopted, by way of adaptation, portions of the ritual of the nature gods together with pantheistic elements that retained a measure of vitality. Because of that positive relationship to the culture that human beings created (by the command of their God), prophetic monotheism did not deny the validity of the reason of man who was created in the image of his Creator. On the contrary, humankind is commanded to contemplate the wonders of nature as an expression of the divine wisdom that was revealed in creation. In this connection, one finds in the wisdom of the priests in the Bible—as well as in the wisdom of the halakha and aggada of the rabbis—elements of the wisdom of the idolatrous priests, especially in the mystical tradition that preserved a very strong connection to the pagan myth steeped in pantheism.

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The upshot of all this is that the encounter with the pagan culture that was the bearer of philosophy and science had ample prior preparation, because the pagan culture itself produced a kind of monotheism, in a dialectical movement of criticism on the one hand and absorption on the other. The encounter with philosophy was made possible by a deep connection with that civilizational substructure, which was natural, social, and political. Furthermore, it is clear that from the viewpoint of monotheism—which by now had been refined and purified from the dross of idolatry that had clung to its culture from its foundation—the sciences and philosophy were preferable to the myth and magic that were in the original idolatry. If we turn our attention now to the pagan culture that philosophy represented, we discover the other side of the same equation. Monotheism was not foreign to it. On the contrary, it had been a latent potentiality of pagan culture, and it was possible to bring it out into the open through critical self-reflection. When we consider philosophy afresh in the light of this insight, we discover how much truth there is in it. Philosophy developed in parallel to prophetic monotheism through a process of intellectual purification, and thus arrived in its own way at a henotheistic conception of God’s unity. The two great schools of Greek philosophy—those of Plato and Aristotle—arrived at the idea of the unity of the world, and with it the idea of the unity of the divine intellect as the supreme formal cause of that world. To be sure, the road that led from idolatry to the idea of God’s unity and uniqueness in prophetic monotheism was not the same road that led from pagan pantheism to philosophic henotheism. Therefore the conceptions of God and the world in the two cultures stand opposed to each other, as we have described: a supernatural divine revelation on the one hand, as opposed to knowing God through the Logos that penetrates nature and distinguishes the human being from all other creatures. In other words, a personal supernatural God who creates and governs the world, as opposed to an eternal intellect that unites the world through its self-knowledge. The original intention of philosophy was to develop, purify, and perfect the notion of nature implicit in pagan mythology. Its criticism was not intended to uproot the myth of the gods of nature, but to confirm it. By contrast, biblical monotheism denied idolatry and made an absolute distinction between those forces that shape nature from within and the Creator-God who rules absolutely over nature and over humanity.

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In light of these distinctions, we should not present the relationship of philosophy and monotheistic religion as one of opposition alone. On the contrary—before the opposition became manifest, the common cultural substructure was already apparent: the parallel critiques of idolatry, and the recognition of the unity of the world and of God. The great opposition became manifest only when each side examined in depth the spiritual process that underlay the opposing side’s position. Only that deeper awareness highlighted it and revealed the tension not only between religion and philosophy, but within each of them separately. This, at any rate, is the explanation for the fact that the first encounter between prophetic-rabbinic faith and Greek philosophy, which occurred in Hellenistic Alexandria, emphasized the common denominator between the two paths more than the opposition between them. At that point in time, philosophy and Biblical monotheism appeared to be partners in critical opposition to popular idolatry (that was institutionally recognized by the government but immersed in myth and magic). It appeared that both strove for the same goal: purified knowledge of one God and one world, knowledge of true good, and ethical conduct on the individual, social, and political levels. It was with this background that the first philosophy of religion developed. It was a kind of harmonious commingling of philosophic and prophetic teachings. Philo of Alexandria, who developed this mixture, saw himself as a consistent philosopher and as an enthusiastic believer in the Torah’s view of revelation. He united the two ways, which seemed complementary to him, through philosophical interpretation of the Torah and the prophets on the one hand, and by philosophical argument that confirmed prophecy as divine revelation, while supporting creation, providence, and God’s command as philosophical truth on the other hand. Thus, he created a single system that assumed at its foundation both the philosophical Logos and the historical facticity of revelation, as the sources for coming to know the two parts of a single truth.3 However, the first encounter between philosophy and the Torah lasted only a generation. Philo’s legacy did not survive in Judaism See Harry Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Harvard, 1947 (2 vols.); David Runia, Philo: On The Creation of the Cosmos According to Moses, Society of Biblical Literature, 2001; David Winston, Philo of Alexandria: The Contemplative Life, The Giants, and Selections, Paulist Press, 1981. 3

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after the destruction of the Hellenistic Jewish center in Alexandria of Egypt in the second century.4 It was preserved as a source of religious philosophy by the Christian Church Fathers, but in the major Jewish centers of Israel and Babylonia the urge to systematic philosophy had not been awakened, even though Greek wisdom influenced the thought of the rabbis of these two centers in many ways, both in law and lore. This influence would serve on a deeper level as preparation, both in method and in idea, for absorbing the influence of philosophy when the time was right. An organized Jewish school of philosophy, with its own fully-formed tradition, arose only several centuries later, in very different cultural and political circumstances. It came into being against the backdrop of the establishment of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy in authorized schools that provided the foundation for the sciences in the countries of Christendom and Islam, while the religions themselves provided the legitimation for the authority of the government. This double institutionalization set up philosophy and monotheistic religion side by side (and in opposition to each other) not as two critical oppositional movements against a reigning idolatry, but as bearers of authority of two elites vital to the culture. For this reason, there was no escape from a two-sided confrontation that expressed the necessity of religion and philosophy to support each other for the need of the whole culture, but that at the same time expressed the competition between them due to each party’s aspiration to hegemony over all the domains of life and creativity. Both sides simultaneously experienced this conflict. Religion experienced tension in trying to relate to the sciences and philosophy, and philosophy experienced tension in trying to deal with religion. Under these circumstances, it was impossible to preserve the notion of a harmonious commingling that was achieved in the philosophy of religion established by Philo. The perspective of conflict was compounded from the two points of view of elites that struggled with each other within a common framework. The necessary result was the split of religious philosophy between two opposite strategies, each of which was trying to achieve the requisite harmony. Thus, already in the Middle Ages there was marked a distinction that came to full methodological and

4 The end of Alexandrian Judaism is variously dated at various points in the first half of the First Millenium.

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conceptual fruition only in modern philosophy, between the strategies of “philosophy of religion” and “religious philosophy.”5 The strategy of philosophy of religion took its starting point from philosophy and interpreted the religion within it as a special kind of human spiritual creation. The strategy of religious philosophy took its starting point from religion, based on supernatural prophetic revelation, but sought to illuminate through revelation all the areas of human spiritual creation. These are two ways of reconciling philosophy with religion, but they have a visible tension between them. The problem of reconciling the two standpoints therefore became a central issue for both, and generated mediating and compromising strategies from time to time. As we said, the methodological distinction between these two approaches was consolidated in modern philosophy, but there was a trace of it already in the Middle Ages in Moslem, Christian, and Jewish philosophies of religion. We give an example in our area of interest, namely the Jewish philosophy of religion. There is a basis for defining the teaching of the first medieval Jewish philosopher, Saadia Gaon, the author of Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, as “philosophy of religion.” Similarly, there is a basis for defining the philosophical perspective in the work of Judah Halevi, the outlook of the Kuzari, as “philosophy of religion.” By contrast, there is also a basis for defining the philosophical work of the greatest of the medieval Jewish philosophers, Maimonides, as “religious philosophy.” But this forces us to a paradoxical conclusion, which alerts us to the substantive difference in the ways that the problem of religion is posed in medieval and in modern philosophy, and to draw the sharp line of distinction between the old and the new. What appeared as religious philosophy in the Middle Ages is closer to what is defined as philosophy of religion in the modern period, and the reverse. The source of this paradoxical reversal is rooted in the revolution that occurred in the understanding of the role of philosophy in relation to the culture in general, and to religion in particular, as a result of the modern process of secularization. We will expand on this later, but we can present here the distinction between the strategies of the different philosophies, as was evident in the Middle Ages.

5 The distinction made here was developed by Julius Guttmann in his lectures on the subject (Devarim {al ha-filosofyah shel ha-dat, Magnes Press, Jerusalem 1981).

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Philosophers such as Saadia and Halevi regarded philosophy as a tool standing at the service of the Torah, and recognizing the Torah’s dominion. In their view, philosophy was “of religion” in the sense of serving it as its handmaid. It was its job to prove, with its special tools, the truth of those articles of faith that religion teaches authoritatively on the basis of revelation. This was in order to guard religion from the danger of heresy that was implicit in opposing religions on the one hand and in rationalistic philosophy on the other hand. Thus, the philosophy of religion comes to present to the congregation of believers, who are exposed to the disruption of their faith from various quarters, a way to absolute certainty. Revelation is the source of certainty on the basis of faith, and philosophy, which serves it, dissolves the doubts on the basis of systematic knowledge. In this way, religion receives a kind of philosophical enlightenment. It is the fundamental assumption of these philosophers of religion that religion, too—not just philosophy—allows no intellectual inconsistency within it. Furthermore, it allows no contradiction between what is learned from revelation and what human beings learn from scientific experience and from the intellectual reason that God implanted in them. To be sure, religion has truths and commandments that are not rooted in sensory experience or intellectual reflection, but even if faith is above reason, it will not contradict any truth that can be proved by sensory experience or by reason. God, who in His wisdom created nature and man’s natural intellect, will not contradict in prophecy what He demonstrated to us through the senses and reason. From these arguments, one may deduce a much farther-reaching conclusion: Philosophy is the tool that enables the believer to understand the words of revelation in a profound and precise way, to use them as acquired wisdom, and to reapply them himself, through rational considerations based on revelation. All this takes place without disrupting the fundamental assumption of the independence of both religion and philosophy as disciplines that are not contingent on one another, and without disrupting the one-sided superiority of religion. There are, however, domains of investigation that religion and philosophy have in common—ethics, psychology, politics, and metaphysics. But here, too, religious instruction and philosophical instruction are distinct—in their methods and canons—though they may be similar in content. Outside these common areas, there may be areas where religion arrives at knowledge on its own, and philosophy accepts this knowledge and interprets it. There are also areas (the sciences) where

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religion has no direct interest, and philosophy determines the truth on its own, empowered by the religious command to know God’s wisdom that is revealed through creation, and to carry out the earthly mission that God assigned to humanity, to inhabit the world and create culture. By contrast, Maimonides’s religious philosophy identified the whole domain of philosophy with the whole domain of religion, and vice versa. It follows that in Maimonides’s view religion and philosophy hold in common a two-sided hegemony that casts its authority over all domains of knowledge and over all domains of cultural activity. We are speaking essentially of one teaching and of substantial identity between the contents of teaching that come from the two sources, but it is given in two methods of propagation and study. One (religion) is directed to serving the practical goals of the society and state, and it addresses all people—without distinction as to their abilities and knowledge. Therefore it is prior in respect of the order of study and the exercise of commanding authority. The second way (philosophy) is directed at the purposes of knowledge and metaphysical reflection, and it addresses the enlightened only. This second way is more important with respect to the rank and spiritual perfection that a person is commanded to attain to the best of his ability. These two ways are complementary in their roles. But what distinguishes them? The answer is—the method of propagation and learning. Yet it is clear that we are speaking not only of different means of expression, but also of the different fundamental assumptions of the way of learning. The whole tension between religion and philosophy is focused in these assumptions. They appear as two different styles of thought: a credulous way of thinking that is based on the authority of external, dogmatic proclamation; and a rational way of thinking, that is based on scientific, systematic experience and on intellectual reflection. However, it is clear that in order to preserve the two-sided unity of the Torah, religion must recognize reason as an independent source of knowing the truth, and reason must recognize revelation as an independent source for also knowing the truth. The existence of these requirements raises a halakhic problem from the religious side, and an epistemological problem from the philosophical side.6 Maimonides solved these problems by proving halakhically

6 See Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law: Essays Toward the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors, (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1987), Chapters 2–3.

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that the Torah requires scientific investigation and intellectual reflection as supreme religious values. Afterwards, he sought to demonstrate, by speculative definition of the boundaries of human reason and of the substantive difference that must exist between infinite divine reason and finite human reason, that there must be a supernatural truth whose source is in revelation. This is the same truth that human reason aspires to attain but that it must always remain just on the way toward attaining. According to this view, philosophy raises several problems in relation to revelation-based faith, for which it cannot offer a solution through its own tools. However, the philosopher has sufficient reason to make peace with the lack of a solution, with the certainty that it is to be found in the divine reason. Standing firm on the boundary that has thus been well defined and specified—that is the solution that is possible and sufficient. On the other hand, when we come to discuss all the topics within the boundaries of knowledge and appraisal of the human intellect, then religion and philosophy will each aspire to encompass and validate the findings of its partner. The result will be worthy of a double appellation: philosophical religion, which strives to know the truth as the highest perfection of humanity—and religious philosophy, which confirms and strengthens the faith in revelation and everything that follows from it as proper means for attaining human perfection. As we indicated, the distinction between philosophy of religion and religious philosophy was not drawn in the Middle Ages in these terms, but in terms of the distinction between the ways of the Kalamic philosophers7 and the Aristotelians. Furthermore, after the distinction between these strategies had crystallized in these terms, the significance of the distinction underwent a complete reversal. With this, we come to the threshold of the transformation that signified the beginning of the philosophy of the modern period.

7 Saadia was truly a Jewish philosopher in the tradition of the Kalam. While Halevi was critical of the Kalam as such, he also resembled them in his mode of defending religious belief through ad-hoc argumentation.

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The Crisis of Religion in the Period of the Enlightenment—the Beginnings of Modern General and Jewish Philosophy It is hard to set sharp boundaries between periods of cultural history. There is never a beginning for which there was no preparation in the past, or beyond which there are still not visible survivals of the old ways. There are tangible differences and consensual agreement on what divides one period from the next in their essence, but even then the discussion will persist on the precise characteristics of the new versus the old, and on the question, when did the new become visible in a noticeable way? There are many possible standpoints and aspects from which to draw these distinctions, and the landscapes of historical memory that can be drawn from each of them are likely to differ substantially from one another. This observation is applicable, of course, to the history of philosophy that depicts the cultural foundations of each period. Nevertheless it is possible in the history of philosophy to arrive at clear and accepted conclusions. We are dealing with the process of critical thought, concerning which the awareness of what it received as a legacy from a given school and what it seeks to add in relation to what preceded it, follows necessarily from its critical methodology. It must define its new insights, give reasons for them and spell out their relation to the prior philosophical legacy. It is therefore easy to determine that a new philosophy begins when the leading philosophers of a generation—those who see themselves as establishing a new method in philosophy—announce a substantive change in their way of thinking and reveal their discoveries. All the more so with the philosophy of the modern period, which was outstanding for its historical awareness and its desire to bring about historical change. To be sure, research will always uncover antecedents that preceded the official revolution and laid the foundations for it, as we shall see, and yet the boundary line is sufficiently clear— the appearance of several new philosophers, distinguished in their stature and in the revolutionary nature of their thought, such as Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza and Leibnitz, in the seventeenth century. These philosophers created a modern movement in philosophy, valuing progress over tradition. Their thinking informed the Enlightenment as a secular-rationalist movement, striving for fundamental political change of the relation of state and religion, and for a scientific transformation of traditional Western culture.

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Modern Jewish philosophy also began with the appearance of enlightened philosophers who absorbed the changes in their European environment, responded to it, and seized the opportunity to lead the movement of enlightenment among their own people. We may speak of a cultural lag here, in which the Jewish Enlightenment followed the general European Enlightenment; certainly the special social and political circumstances of the Jews as a Diaspora people played a part. Nevertheless the movement had several precursors in various localities, starting with the Italian Renaissance and the Reformation in Prague and Holland. But as an ideology of an established movement, it truly got under way only with the beginning of the political and social struggle for emancipation in Germany in the middle of the eighteenth century, and its first major philosopher was Moses Mendelssohn. One may say that the appearance of his book Jerusalem in 1781 signaled the official beginning of modern Jewish philosophy. Except that this conclusion requires qualification. Theoretical expressions that were preparatory—and even prophetic—of Mendelssohn’s new views had already appeared long before in Italy (for instance, the writings of Judah Abravanel ), in Prague (the writings of the Maharal),8 in the congregations of the conversos who reclaimed their Judaism in Amsterdam, and also in Germany. These precursors are especially important because they were uncovered in retrospect and were cited as traditional precedents for legitimating the Enlightenment. But there is nothing unique in this phenomenon. The major qualification that begs to be made in the question of the official beginning of Jewish enlightenment philosophy is that before its positive beginning, it had a negative beginning. This occurred outside the Jewish community but within the preparatory stages of the general Enlightenment philosophy in the seventeenth century. For one of the outstanding philosophers who prepared the philosophy of the general Enlightenment and determined its relation to religion—Baruch Spinoza—was a Jewish philosopher whose early philosophical education was rooted in Jewish philosophy

8 The name of Maharal (Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague) is emblematic of the whole renaissance of philosophical and kabbalistic thought that took place in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in the Mediterranean lands and northern Europe. See David Ruderman, ed., Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, (New York: NYU Press, 1992), and Leonard Levin, Seeing With Both Eyes: Ephraim Luntshitz and the Polish Jewish Renaissance, (Leiden: Brill, 2008). (LL)

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of religion, from Maimonides through Gersonides and Crescas to Judah Abravanel. Spinoza may have read himself out of the Jewish community, but he did not embrace another religion, rather he left the community of religious believers altogether. His goal was to win freedom of thought and to devote himself to science and philosophy as his life’s purpose; thus, in his personal status he was a forerunner of the Emancipation. Because he left Judaism but stood aloof from Christianity as well, while justifying his stance philosophically, his system became the great challenge that established modern philosophy of religion in the general and Jewish domains simultaneously. Modern philosophy of religion absorbed Spinoza’s radical rejection of religion through its critical encounter with it, sometimes to emancipate itself from religion, and sometimes to reconstitute religion in a rational spirit. We see before us an exceptional beginning, in two stages: one negative, the other positive. (Mendelssohn indeed responded directly to Spinoza, and his Jerusalem can be seen as a counterpart to Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise.) It may be that this unusual sequence was not accidental, but was a consequence of Judaism’s exceptional situation. It was the monotheistic religion that laid the foundations for the major religions of the West—Christianity and Islam—from the Hellenistic period until modern times, but in the process the Jewish people went into exile and were ruled by these religions. Because of Judaism’s historical position of primacy, the philosophy of religion originated in its fateful historical encounter with Hellenistic culture. From this, Christianity was also born—in parallel, and as a condition of the latter’s propagation. However, exile and its subordinate status led Judaism to separate itself from Philo’s philosophy of religion as a defensive measure, and that legacy was picked up instead by the Church Fathers. We recall that only in the Middle Ages, under Christian and Moslem rule, Jews recovered the philosophy of religion that Philo had started. It absorbed its reflected light through the medium of the philosophic tradition that had been preserved and developed by Christian and Moslem philosophers. It makes perfect sense that the same process repeated itself in modern times. Spinoza, who came originally out of the tradition of medieval Jewish religious philosophy, became its great destroyer, and thus posed one of the major challenges that the establishment of modern religious philosophy had to address. Like Philo, he operated intentionally in the domain of general philosophy, but with an opposite

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goal: to dismantle the connection between philosophy and religion.9 His epoch-making influence on Jewish philosophy of religion was also indirect and delayed. Nevertheless, we can say that in responding to the general philosophical legacy, Jewish philosophy of religion had to address not just the primal sources of Jewish monotheism, but also philosophies of religion that their authors (Philo and Spinoza) had created while transitioning out of the Jewish cultural sphere. In this introduction to the history of modern Jewish philosophy, we should emphasize that the historical consciousness that characterizes modern philosophy of religion already in Spinoza’s teaching, insured that this last fact would not only be known but also emphasized as significant. It informed the debate between Judaism and Christianity and made it a central thread not only in Jewish philosophy of religion but also in the general (i.e., Christian) domain, when it came to confront the question of its roots. The nature of the revolution that occurred in general philosophical thought during the Enlightenment will be clarified if we examine the influence of the development of the sciences. From the times of Giordano Bruno, Galileo, Francis Bacon, Copernicus, and Newton, it had an influence on all the creative processes in Western culture, including its socio-economic foundations and political structures. Already in the Middle Ages the sciences—and philosophy, which unified them—were considered the independent creation of human reason. Even then the sciences were constituents of a “secular” culture that served worldly purposes. Culture—inclusive of both worldly and spiritual (religious) creations of the human mind—was united through the state (a secular institution), while religion, representing the will and command of God, was the source legitimating the state’s authority to legislate and enforce its laws. This meant that the life of the culture, in its totality, was based in this period on religious values, on religious laws, and religious truth. In all these senses, the culture, though it was maintained within a secular political framework, was still a religious culture. All its worldly

9 See Harry Austryn Wolfson’s two landmark studies: Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1947) and The Philosophy of Spinoza (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1934). Wolfson argued that Philo put together the synthesis of Greek philosophy and Biblically-based religion that was the standard for medieval philosophy as practiced by Christian, Moslem and Jewish philosophers, until it was dismantled by Spinoza. (LL)

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constituents (the sciences, arts and crafts, social stations, and political offices) required consensus, validation, and moral authorization. They got these from the teachings of the religion, and so they stood directly under its supervision. It will be understood, then, that philosophy, which was entrusted with the worldly aspects of the culture, required the approval and moral authority of religion. Therefore, it had to affirm the truth of the religion and serve it by mediating between it and the worldly products of the culture. In other words, the Church’s supervision over the sciences rested all the more on philosophy. The secular revolution of the modern Enlightenment was based on the prior development of an independent science that rebelled against the interference of the Church. It proved its utility both in respect to its empirical understanding of the processes of nature, and its pointing the way to exploit those processes for human benefit. This science was based on redirecting the line of scientific inquiry away from the religious-ecclesiastical interest, which was focused on the question of the purpose of the world with respect to its Creator and with respect to humanity created in the divine image. Its new direction was an inquiry into the intrinsic qualities and causes of the natural process itself, by accepting the givenness and facticity of the natural process and its products. The scientific question was thus redirected from asking the transcendent purpose of human life ruled by a supreme Power, to serving the human aspiration for mastery over nature—with the help of his own natural powers. This turning away from religion, or at least away from religious authority that limits the freedom of scientific reason, required support and legitimation, and it was able to obtain this only from the political worldly power that could benefit from it. But to receive this, it had to emancipate itself from the rule of the Church and operate exclusively in accord with the worldly interest that was inherent in the state. But where, then, would the political state receive legitimation for its worldly rule? The only source that could replace the Church, representing God’s will, was the direct worldly interest of the community of citizens. Thus proceeded the general revolution in European culture, which culminated in changing the form of government along with its policies and stated goals. The final result was to transform and redefine of all the creative functions of the culture, including religion, which in the end was considered still useful—not for the purpose of its supremacy, but rather for the utility of the state that could use it, or for the moral and psychological benefit of its citizens.

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This, it seems, was the essence of the revolution that took place. Religious truth, too, began to be conceived from the perspective of the authors of the revolution, who set up human happiness and earthly fulfillment at the center of their outlook. From this humanistic perspective, religion was conceived as a creation of the human spirit, no longer a revelation of an authority that was superhuman, supernatural, and supra-rational. That being the case, it was proper to reexamine the foundation of this revelation and the nature of prophecy, and the true, all-too-human meaning of the claim of revelation and everything that was previously received as its teaching and commandments. All these topics call for scientific research and systematic philosophical analysis, which will uncover the human truth that had covered itself with the mantle of revelation. It would be possible to study this process in a logical order, were it not the case that these different stages all mixed together. The secular state threw off the yoke of the Church; the authority of the legal order passed completely into the domain of the state, while the sanction of moral authority passed to public opinion. The source of morality and law was located not in a divine command, but in social utility (Bentham, Mill ) and the autonomous judgment of human reason (Kant), based on scientific experience. The arts had previously been conceived principally as an aid in religious education and worship. They, also, became emancipated from religion and revealed their independent esthetic values as a uniquely human achievement in the realm of creative imagination and expression of feelings. As for philosophy, it was based on the new sciences and provided them with conceptual unity. It rested on the foundation of the authority of truth which it itself embodied, and it demanded—both from religion and from the state—that they respect freedom of thought and accept its guidance. In other words, philosophy again openly raised its claim to hegemony in culture. If religion had any truth left at all, philosophy had the sovereign right to interpret it, and in this way, it presumed to take religion’s place. Nevertheless, we should emphasize that although the philosophy of the Enlightenment expressed consistently the secular revolt against the authority of religion, it immediately stumbled on its own limitations. It faltered both in its ability to compete with religion in ruling the masses, and in its ability to overcome the dilemmas in its own epistemology and the contradictions that came to light constantly in scientific research and philosophical analysis. One case in point was

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the problem of understanding the relation of the knowing subject to the known object. Another was the relationship of causal determinism, revealed in nature, and the sense of purposive value that is linked with the free volitional choice of the human spirit. These dilemmas forced the scientist and the philosopher who based his view on science to go back and confront the complexity and mysteriousness of nature and the finitude and dependency of human reason. These, in turn, raised again the questions of religion as scientific and philosophical concerns: can science and philosophy bring humanity back to the religion that they need, on their own terms, after they have become emancipated from it? Even a radical rebel against religion such as Spinoza could not deceive himself with regard to the substantial and vital human need that religion fulfills. He was forced to acknowledge that there is no other cultural resource—including philosophy—that has proved itself capable of meeting this need. One could not ignore the essential role of religion, whether in ethical education or as the source of the profound depths of feeling and imagination in artistic creation. Rational philosophy itself retraced its steps and stood repeatedly on the threshold of religion when it encountered dilemmas whose source is the finitude of human reason, faced with the infinitude of the world and the mystery of its source. On the other hand, religion did not readily surrender its truth or its status. The first natural reaction of traditional philosophers of religion was to reject the new and reaffirm the traditional positions with their old intellectual tools. However, the more that the limitations and difficulties of the new philosophy vis-à-vis religion became obvious, the more evident became the preferable alternative to use the new philosophical categories to reestablish religion, its faith, its values, its symbols, and its ways in the center of spiritual creativity of modern humanism. The emancipation of secular culture from the yoke of the religious framework did not succeed in displacing the concerns of faith, its symbols, or its imperatives from their central place in the modern cultural mainstream. But it undoubtedly deprived religion of its authority to dictate to the culture its framework, its scientific outlook, and its moral values. In so doing, it awakened a religious problem in the heart of the modern secular culture. And in the heart of religion, which was now struggling for its survival, it awakened a cultural problem. These two problems expressed, from opposite sides of the barricade, awareness

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of a deep and continuing internal crisis. Philosophy was obliged to take responsibility for this crisis, since it had caused it and embodied it. Clearly, if there was any arena in which one could seek a solution in the hope that it would be found and would aid in overcoming this double crisis, it should be the arena of philosophical thought. We can see that in this way the two standpoints and two strategies of solution that had been developed in the traditional philosophy of religion were reconstituted. The first view was from within religion, seeking to relate to the secular culture that had withdrawn from it in critical indignation, in order to renegotiate its ties connecting it with the culture. The second view was from within the culture, which sought to relate to religion out of the recognition that it, too, was a vital spiritual creation of the human mind. From these two standpoints, which are simultaneously opposing and complementary, modern philosophers had to redefine the task of philosophy as interpretive thought mediating between religion and scientific, artistic and theoretical culture. Can philosophy reconcile in itself the contradiction that has come to light, at least apparently, between belief in a transcendent God—Creator, Provider, Revealer, commanding and rewarding/punishing—and the knowledge, value, and creativity that are based on autonomous human reason? Or can philosophy discover in itself the truth that religion expresses in its own unique ways, in a way that meets the needs of the majority of people who are not philosophers? We have again indicated two ways. One proceeds from the standpoint of religion, and the other from philosophy. The one seeks to solve the problem of religion in culture, and the other seeks to solve the problem of culture in religion. Together, they express concretely the official methodological distinction in modern philosophy between religious philosophy and philosophy of religion. But the meanings of the terms have undergone almost complete reversal. Philosophy of religion, in the modern sense, took the viewpoint of secular humanistic culture—according to which religion is a creation of the human spirit—but it is an unusual creation. This puts philosophy in an unusual position: the human spirit appears in it as if it contradicts itself or exceeds its boundaries. From this aspect, it is a philosophy “of” religion not because it comes to serve it out of obedience to its directives, but the opposite: because it comes to serve the culture, which needs religion for its own agenda. Therefore philosophy defines religion as a special object for its analysis, and only in this

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sense is the inquiry “of” religion, to include it, in its uniqueness, into the systematic thought-process that unites all the autonomous realms of knowledge and creation of humanity. Religious philosophy responded by posing the opposite, traditional alternative: to philosophize from the standpoint of religion. In other words, to present the sui generis, supernatural sources of religion, to prove—by the tools of reason—their necessity, propriety and validity. It also tries to explain—with those same tools—the relation of religion to those domains in which the autonomy of the human spirit is manifested in its striving for worldly objectives, accepting them in that capacity but also pointing out and interpreting their religious value and meaning. We can say in summary that the philosophy of religion, in its modern sense, adopted from the outset the revolutionary standpoint of the Enlightenment. It did this to reintegrate religion into the culture by defining it as a separate domain in an inclusive philosophical system, based on scientific knowledge and autonomous human reason. Religious philosophy, in the modern sense, adopted the traditional standpoint of religion, based on revelation. It did this to confirm the validity of its sources and to apply itself anew to the domains of human worldly creativity, without depriving them of their autonomy.10 The Special Task of Jewish Philosophy of Religion The development of the problem of religion in secular culture—and the problem of secular culture in religion—took place in the Jewish people, as among the other European peoples. It raised for philosophical discussion the same questions of religion versus science and reason: creation, revelation, divine command and supernatural providence against moral autonomy and against the inherent regularity of nature, in society and history. Other issues also required discussion: the place of religion in the state and the proper relationship of the various religions in that state; the relation between worldly human objectives and

10 While this methodological distinction should be borne in mind throughout this study, the difference in terminology will not be strictly observed in the English translation, starting with the title of the work. “Religious philosophy” (the more idiomatic and familiar English term) will be used frequently to describe both thought projects, even where the Hebrew uses filosofiat ha-dat (“philosophy of religion”). (LL)

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supernatural objectives (including the question of survival of the soul and eternal life); the relation between religious and secular education, as preparation of a person for his various goals. But it should be understood that the structural differences between the religions raised special issues for the Jewish philosophical discussion. These included the foundations of faith (in Christianity, “dogma”) and the very understanding of that concept. There were also the question of organizational structure (the Christian “church” versus the Jewish “community”); of ritual; of the degree and form of religion’s involvement in the daily lifestyles of individuals and communities (the Jewish halakha, for which there was no Christian equivalent). Finally, there was the question of national destiny—how to conceive the national entity and the way that the various religions envision the future of their people and the Messianic future of humanity. All these issues were unique to the Jewish discussion, and had to be taken very seriously. First of all, the differences between the Jewish and Christian religions became a burden on the relations between Jews and the Christian society in which they wished to mix. The differences intensified the dilemmas that had been created in the confrontation between religion and reason. They caused a deep division within the people, especially in the unprecedented discussion that broke out concerning the relation between the halakha on the one hand and the laws of the state and universal humanistic ethics on the other hand. Also in the encounter with the external environment, these topics generated a confrontation of ideas that bore an unprecedented burden of feelings of suspicion, hostility, and prejudice—even in the philosophical arena! The common agenda of the monotheistic religions was not new; neither were the differences, oppositions, and powerful conflicts between them. Both followed from the common Jewish foundation of the monotheistic religions and from the differences that brought about the separation of first Christianity, and later Islam, from Judaism. They became entrenched because of the special destiny of the Jewish people. The exile of the Jews, and the rise of Christianity and Islam with the intention of supplanting Judaism, were bound together as cause and effect. Already in the medieval religious discussions the points of similarity and difference that would be discussed in the modern period had been identified. We may remark that in this respect one can recognize a marvelous continuity between the scholastic philosophical tradition of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation periods and modern religious philosophy, both in Judaism and in Christianity. On the one

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hand, the modern philosophers subverted the philosophy of religion of their predecessors, who had been subservient to the ecclesiastical and dogmatic authority of their religion. On the other hand, even the fiercest critics of religion, such as Spinoza, relied on the tradition of philosophy that was the foundation of the religious philosophy against which they rebelled. They perpetuated it, and especially the previous views and criticisms that were directed against the rival religion, in their efforts to give their arguments a historical basis and traditional legitimation. But as a result of this impressive continuity of the interreligious controversy, revolutionary developments were precipitated. We cite first a difference whose source is in the external process of history. In the philosophical arena, the interface for confrontation between Judaism and its daughter religions was narrowed from the thirteenth century onward. Islam had ceased to be a candidate for such confrontation, both for Judaism and for Christianity. In the philosophical-religious battlefield in the West, Judaism and Christianity still remained, but Islam was mentioned only by way of historical association to the medieval heritage. The reasons for this are evident. The boundaries between Islamic lands and Christian lands remained stable; Christians had the upper hand, and were no longer in fear of Islamic takeover. Moslem lands entered a quiescent cultural period, while Christendom started on a period of active development. The resulting cutting off of mutual exchange went unchallenged. Moreover, the culture of Islam ceased to be productive, especially with respect to the development of the sciences and philosophy, while Christian culture became prolific and more creative in these areas. Finally, the most significant centers of the Jewish people in these centuries developed under Christian rule, while the communities that remained under Moslem rule stagnated and withered, both in size and in their cultural contribution. The center of gravity for the Jewish people shifted to Europe, and its leading centers of creativity developed in Christian lands accordingly. The inter-religious debate was thus conducted with the competing movements in Christendom, while Islam participated hardly at all, like the religions of the Far East beyond the horizon. It is noteworthy that during the early modern period of general and Jewish philosophy, the horizon of universalism was limited to Western culture. The process of cultural isolation of Europe in the late Middle Ages had repercussions for the Jewish relations with European peoples. We will not properly understand the depth of the crisis that occurred in the Jewish people during the Emancipation, if we do not pay attention

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to the fact that during the late Middle Ages, and even more so after the Spanish expulsion, there was a general process of progressive isolation of the Jews from European society and culture. Some places were an exception to this pattern, and Italy saw even an opposite process of increasing cultural openness from both sides (even though the walls of the ghetto remained in place, but they became more transparent). But in the places of concentration of the majority of European Jews, isolation grew, and the walls of the ghetto grew higher and more opaque. In the first centuries of the Middle Ages, especially under Islam, Jews were active partners in the general culture of the peoples around them, and even the leaders in certain domains. But coming into modern times, higher European culture became for the Jews an external, foreign culture, and they had practically no meaningful dialogue with it. The developments that led to the Enlightenment took place gradually and continuously in the participating areas of Europe. For most of the Jews, however, they took place beyond the horizon, so the Jews had no preparation for them. There were, indeed, individual exceptions to this rule, such as the Maharal of Prague and some of his disciples, but the communities lived in the religious world, without any direct spiritual response to the changes that started to occur in the surrounding cultures. This led to conservatism to the point of inflexibility, which sanctified the halakhic and theological molds in a fundamentalist spirit, for the sake of defense against the outside environment. These would develop eventually into the ultra-Orthodox reaction that would follow on the heels of the Enlightenment in Germany and Eastern Europe. The background of these developments should throw into greater relief the significance of the fact that the challenge of modern secular culture appeared to most of the Jewish people as an external challenge. It was accompanied by a sudden change in their lives and the conditions of their existence, as a result of legislative changes that were enforced by the government. The rabbinic leadership had no influence on the legislation and no breathing space to orient themselves, to prepare, to adapt, or to respond constructively to the changes. Except for certain individuals from the wealthy classes, who were few and far between, the people were treated as passive objects for arbitrary decrees. Moreover, it became clear that in order to overcome the passivity and to acquire the necessary tools to confront the new situation, it was necessary to pay the price of apostasy or dilution of the traditional identity. They were called on to absorb an outside intellectual enlightenment and cultural language that appeared to contradict altogether what had been accepted for generations.

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These hard facts were thrust on them in the way that the secular enlightened state (but not gentile society, even the enlightened of them, who continued to oppose the process with all their might) presented emancipation to the Jews. We emphasize, first of all, that before the Emancipation was demanded by Jews, it came as a requirement of the state, following from its centralizing legal and administrative principles. The traditional socioeconomic and political status that had been set aside for Jews, and that had previously allowed them a certain measure of autonomy, started quickly to disappear under the circumstances created by secularization in the economic, social, and political domains. In the new situation, the Jews were perceived by the state and gentile society as an element that did not fit in, that was superfluous and a nuisance. They were being asked to give up their special identity and their separate ways and structures. Their religious difference was compounded by cultural alienness. The general philosophy of religion echoed the state’s requirements. It demanded social and cultural conformity of those Jews who attempted to enter the general circle of discourse with the intention of representing their people and their religion. This development had direct implications for the status of philosophy in modern Jewish culture. In those states where modern philosophy played a leading role in the culture, from the standpoint of the advocates of emancipation, philosophy was the means of choice for dealing properly with the problems of religion and halakha. It allowed them to form a common circle of discourse with the enlightened cultural environment. Through philosophy, it was possible to define the objectives and mold the educational process that would integrate Jews into their environment—at the price of sacrificing their identity, or by creating a different identity that took an adaptive stance to the enlightened environment. But it is clear that this situation had implications for the development of fault-lines within the Jewish people. The openness to the environment resulted in a new cleavage, dividing the pro-emancipation elites from the rabbinic leadership and their loyal mass following. The traditionalists’ opposition to the emancipation became ipso facto opposition to philosophy, which was perceived (correctly) as midwife to the emancipation. We emphasize here that the opposition to philosophy was categorical. It was directed not only against modern philosophy but also against traditional philosophy, for the devotees of the Enlightenment and Emancipation relied on it for legitimation of their position. The memory of the deep division that Maimonides’s philosophy

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had caused between his revisionist disciples and its conservative opponents was still fresh. The rabbinic leadership, which led the opposition to emancipation, condemned philosophy in general, and thus left it in the hands of their opponents as a tool for their internal dialogue and their dialogue with the gentile environment. In the context of an introduction to the history of modern Jewish philosophy, it is proper to emphasize that this philosophy developed only among those constituents and those cultural elites that identified with the Emancipation. At the same time, the ultra-Orthodox Jews— Hasidim and non-Hasidim—condemned philosophy and availed themselves of other forms of thought—theological, mystical, or ideological. Only in a relatively later stage—in the twentieth century—was philosophical thought known in these circles. They availed themselves first of traditional religious Jewish philosophy, and on that basis there developed some degree of indirect openness to modern philosophy. It follows that the discussion of the history of Jewish philosophy cannot reflect all the intellectual positions that developed in the Jewish people in the modern period. But the main implication was for the definition of the fault-lines of the religious-philosophical discussion between the representatives of Judaism and its gentile critics. Two quite novel challenges appeared in response to the question of whether Jewry could be integrated in a positive way in a culture that permitted and facilitated emancipation, and at the same time allowed Jewry to preserve aspects of self-identity, whether religious or national, that distinguished it. On the one hand, there was the question of the ability of the Jewish religion to adapt itself to the universal ethos of humanism. This was especially true with respect to the relationship between Jews and non-Jews—for that was the general value-matrix of the Emancipation. On the other hand, there was the question of whether the Jewish religion could adopt toward Christianity the same tolerance that it demands for itself, and to recognize it as a legitimate religion, for this demand was also a prerequisite for the Emancipation. In this context, too, problems were raised particularly in the realm of Jewish law and in the domain of the religious values that were its basis. Only philosophy could deal with these issues while seeking a way of dynamic adaptation—one that could effect change while preserving continuity of identity—between the Torah and life, or between Jewish law and the requirements of the time.

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We emphasize, finally, that against the background of these two questions an unprecedented dialectical tension was set up in the relations between Judaism and Christianity. From the Christian side, the struggle for Jewish emancipation turned into an inseparable part of its own struggle over its place in the disrupted hegemony. At the same time, there formed a common religious interest between it and Judaism, with respect to the struggle of the place of religion itself in secularized culture. From the Jewish side, there was awakened the need to be reconciled with Christianity on the basis of mutual toleration and mutual legitimation, but also the need to redefine the differences between the religions, because only on that basis could Judaism preserve its separate identity. The question of Judaism’s similarity to Christianity in one respect and its difference from it in another respect, like the question of adaptation to humanism, required an unprecedented re-examination of all the national and religious constituents of Jewish identity. All the issues that had been discussed in traditional Jewish philosophy of religion were therefore presented in substantially new form. These included: Judaism and reason; Judaism and science; Judaism and art; the problems of revelation, prophecy and the giving of the Torah; the problem of commandment, and preserving a halakhic lifestyle of life of Torah and mitzvot; the problem of the status of the Jewish people as a chosen people; the problem of exile; and the problem of the ways of divine providence in the history of the Jewish people and the meaning of Messianism. These look like standard topics of Jewish religious thought from time immemorial. However, in truth there occurs here a far-reaching transformation in the meaning of all these issues, in order to adapt Judaism to the modern age and to insure its future. Continuity, Centers, Influence, and Periods of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages and the Modern Age The renowned historian, Simon Dubnow described the history of the Jewish people throughout all the periods of its exile in terms of the development and alternation of centers of spiritual creativity that served as focuses for national unity and spiritual influence. Despite the dispersion of Jewish communities to many lands and the absence of a unifying political framework, there always arose several great centers from which Torah emanated to the whole people. These centers stood

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in close reciprocal relation to each other. Even though competitive tensions and varying tendencies developed among them, there was always one leading center that stood out in terms of its preeminent halakhic authority, whose influence shaped the Jewish way of life and the common circle of intellectual discourse, uniting the entire people. These centers developed naturally in those countries that constituted a focus of attraction for Jews both in respect of economic and social-political opportunities and cultural development. These tended to be the countries that were in the ascendancy in influence and power and had an interest in the economic and cultural activities of the Jews. They opened their gates and offered the Jews favorable conditions for the development of their communities. The combination of openness to the environment and actively contributing to its culture, together with maintaining a separate way of life, enabled Jewish communities to sustain their own continuous intellectual-spiritual development. It also allowed them to meet the positive challenge of the surrounding culture, both on popular and higher cultural levels. Jewish philosophy was created in those countries in which the development of high culture reached the scientific level, with philosophy playing the leading role. Jews collaborated in this enterprise and contributed to it, at the same time internalizing it in order to be au courant with their surroundings and to solidify their independent identity on the same level. In the nature of things, the centers of cultural creativity in the Diaspora maintained their position as long as the conditions of their original establishment remained intact. When political, social, and economic developments took place that disturbed the equilibrium between the communities and their non-Jewish environments (which included anti-Jewish religious factors), enmity increased and isolated the Jews as a foreign body. The value of their contribution then diminished in the estimate of the secular states. This led to internal segregation and external defensive measures, but it was not possible to stop the spiral of deterioration and decline. This usually led in the end to catastrophic collapse: pogroms and expulsions, or the voluntary emigration of the Jews, until such a center would fade into oblivion or disappear entirely. But its cultural legacy would be carried by the emigrants to their new centers, which would start developing in parallel fashion in the countries that were open to them. So continued the process of accumulation and renewal from generation to generation, from one center to another, and from one age to the next.

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The details of this process are well known. After the destruction of the First Temple, the first Diaspora center arose in Babylonia. During the Second Temple Period, a new center arose in Alexandria of Egypt. After the destruction of the Second Temple, competition developed between the Palestinian and Babylonian centers. Toward the end of the Geonic period, new centers developed in Northern Africa and Moslem Spain, and shortly thereafter in Italy, Germany, and France. These last soon stood in intimate connection with the center in Christian Spain. After the expulsion from Spain, new centers developed in Turkey, Palestine, Holland and England, and especially in Eastern Europe, which became the greatest Jewish center of modern times. In this account of Jewish history, when considering the manner of conservation and development of its culture, we must accord major importance to understanding the place and role of philosophy within Jewish culture, especially in modern times. On that basis, we can broadly assess its importance to the development of Jewish culture from the time of its first appearance, even though Jewish philosophy itself was produced only in selected centers, in which the special conditions required for it were ripe. However, in order to understand the broader influence of the creative works of Jewish philosophy we must pay attention to the variety of ways that influences were transmitted among the various Jewish centers. It is clear that we are speaking of the propagation of those works that gained approval for authoritative acceptance. Their study, teaching, and integration into the cultural-creative process was not necessarily done by transmission of the disciplines in which they were originally composed. Rather, they were integrated and combined in the traditions of learning, the ways of thought, and the intellectual agenda of every school and independent thinker in their respective locales. One domain alone embodied the supreme authority of religious governance, based on the striving for strict obedience to a single discipline of study and teaching, and maintained its authority among all Jewish communities. This was the domain of halakha; but here too there were naturally methodological disagreements as well as a certain degree of normal variation. By contrast, in those domains of learning that were classed as “aggadic,” from the outset, there was a large measure of creative freedom in defining the disciplines and in the transition from one to the other. A work that was written in the philosophical tradition was studied as such only in those locales where

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philosophy was taught systematically. However, in other places, its study was combined with other prevalent disciplines, such as aggadic midrash, and biblical exegesis, moralistic writings, liturgical poetry, theology, or mystical thought. These sought to fill the same role in religious life that philosophy had taken on itself. This tendency was already prominent in the hiatus between the Hellenistic Jewish philosophical project in the short-lived center of Alexandria, and the resumption of Jewish philosophy nearly a thousand years later under Geonic auspices in Babylonia. It would appear at first impression that there was a complete disconnect between the intellectual productivity of these two centers, and that only modern historical scholarship recovered the lost earlier legacy and reclaimed it for Judaism. A deeper examination will reveal that the historical flow embodied in the intellectual-creative process was not entirely severed, and it can be found in two trajectories. The first was the course of transmission of Philo’s thought through the Christian Church Fathers to the general legacy of medieval religious philosophy. The Jews had recourse to that legacy, and thus encountered an echo of their own heritage, without recognizing it as such but still feeling some sense of connection. Second was the indirect influence of Greek philosophical thought on the development of the independent discipline of midrash, which was the foundation of the Oral Torah literature. It is worth emphasizing this in order to properly evaluate the selfimage of the creators of Jewish philosophical thought in the Middle Ages—including its greatest founders and creators, Saadia Gaon and Maimonides. In their view, they were not importing a strange creation of foreign idolators into the sanctum of Judaism. Rather, they were uncovering a continuous internal tradition that had been originated by the nation’s founding fathers and was embodied largely in allusions and parables in the Torah of Moses and the prophets. This assertion, which was in fact ahistorical, would not have been entertained had it not had nevertheless a historical basis. This was the audacious rabbinic exegetical tradition of the “Work of Creation” and the “Work of the Chariot,”11 which had incorporated the influ-

11 Two distinct understandings of these terms, both relevant, should be articulated here. The locus classicus of these phrases is in Mishnah Æagigah 2:1 (and the accompanying Gemara), which enjoins that the expounding of these topics (understood to refer to the Scriptural texts of Genesis 1 and Ezekiel 1) be restricted to private study. The tradition of “Merkavah mysticism,” which extended from rabbinic times through the

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ence of conceptual language and metaphysical thought whose source was in Greek philosophy. There was a similarity between Philo’s allegorical commentaries on the Torah and prophets and the rabbinic midrashim, which continued to nourish Jewish religious thought for the whole period between Philo and Saadia. This is a tangible example of the absorption of philosophical ideas and their reworking in a nonphilosophical medium, which nevertheless laid the groundwork for philosophical commentary when the time was ripe. The continuity between centers in which Jewish philosophy developed in the Middle Ages and other less philosophically-oriented Jewish centers was clear and direct. Here too, however, we should pay attention to ways in which philosophical influence was mediated through other modes of thought on the basis of midrashic-exegetical foundations. There was a continuous connection between the Geonic center in Babylonia and all the other centers that arose in the Jewish Diaspora. In our context, it is proper to emphasize that the influence of Saadia Gaon’s philosophical work was felt in all of them, whether they themselves were creators of philosophical thought or consciously took a polemical stand rejecting philosophy but developed theological and mystical thought in its place. In any case, from this period on the tradition of philosophical writing continued unbroken, passing from one center to another. We should especially emphasize that from Saadia’s age onward, there was always at least one center in which Jewish philosophy was being written, and that its influence was ecumenical in scope. It was not always accepted by universal consensus, but often after debate, and by way of transformation into alternative modes of thought that functioned differently. The primary modes of thought that absorbed philosophical influence in the Middle Ages, in those centers where philosophy did not develop as a discipline in its own right, were biblical exegesis, moralistic writing, and kabbalah. These were also of great importance as preparation for philosophical creation in the period of the Renaissance first millennium, was the immediate outgrowth of the rabbinic understanding of the “Work of the Chariot.” The relation of this tradition to Gnosticism—which itself was influenced by Greek philosophical speculation—is the subject of scholarly discussion. The other major interpretation was inaugurated by Maimonides, when he (ahistorically, to be sure) identified “Work of Creation” with the study of physics and “Work of the Chariot” with metaphysics. By either interpretation, the importance of philosophy as background for general Jewish thought should not be underestimated. (LL)

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and the Reformation (which served in retrospect as a transition from medieval to modern times) and in the modern period as well. We dealt above with the disciplinary rivalry between philosophy and mysticism, and about the need to distinguish from the outset between the history of philosophy and that of mysticism and kabbalah. We do not wish to blur this distinction, however it is proper to point out their dialectical relationship and the transitions from the one to the other. In the course of the continuous confrontation between them, they defined themselves against one another and conducted an intimate dialogue. This led to the absorption of elements of philosophy into mystical doctrine and mystical elements into philosophy. In between, hybrid forms were created that sought to blend the two disciplines and belonged equally to both.12 In any case, in the centers in which kabbalistic thought was dominant, philosophical influence was also felt, and there developed a preparatory foundation for the development of later philosophy. This was indeed formed in the transition from Jewish and Christian philosophy of religion in the Middle Ages to their counterparts in modern times. In the centers that were formed in Italy, Turkey, and Palestine after the expulsion from Spain, kabbalah had the upper hand over philosophy. It spread from there to all the centers of Jewish life in the world, including those in central and Eastern Europe and the Arab countries. However, this does not mean that the influence of philosophy ceased altogether. First of all, they continued to study the works of Saadia, Bahya ibn Pakudah, Halevi, Maimonides and his major commentators, Crescas, Albo and Abravanel—who were his disciples and intellectual heirs. Second, philosophical writing continued openly in Italy during the Renaissance and in certain locales of central Europe in response to the Reformation. Finally, it continued in force and to a considerable extent invisibly, as an underground layer that was absorbed and rendered quite productive within kabbalah. In this context, we should emphasize especially that in the two principal methods of kabbalah that developed in Safed and spread from there to all reaches of the Jewish world—the kabbalah of R. Moses

12 One may point, for instance, to Moses Isserles’s Torat Ha-Olah, a voluminous philosophical-allegorical interpretation of the traditions concerning the sacrifices and the Temple, which develops the argument that philosophy and kabbalah are “the same wisdom in two different languages” (a formula he borrowed from the fifteenthcentury writer Moses Botarel ).

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Cordovero and that of R. Isaac Luria—there was a philosophical substrate. It is impossible to understand either one without the conceptual language and dialectical logic of Neoplatonic and Aristotelian philosophy. Cordovero’s kabbalistic teaching had a frankly philosophical aspect, but even Luria’s contained a philosophical dialectic in the language of myth. This was a fact that enabled several of his students, who were exposed to the influence of the new Platonic philosophy of the Renaissance in Italy, to translate the Lurianic myth back into philosophical language. We may point in this connection to the profoundly philosophical aspects of the teachings of R. Moses Hayyim Luzzato and the Maharal of Prague. It is even possible to argue that Spinoza was influenced by the Neoplatonic pantheism embodied in kabbalah. In the framework of an introduction to the history of modern philosophy, it is proper to point out that in contrast to the reliance of the Maskilim on the tradition of medieval philosophy, their Hasidic and ultra-Orthodox opponents relied on the authority of kabbalah. Yet the latter retained its philosophical potential which could reappear at a later stage. When the challenges of scientific and philosophical rationalism started to disturb the foundations of the self-enclosed traditional society, it was forced to defend its positions by systematic argument that would engage the philosophical attacks directed against it. Conversely, when the urge to return to religion was awakened as a romantic response to disillusionment with the rationalistic enlightenment, the kabbalistic mysticism was capable of revealing in itself the roots common to it and Jewish and general philosophy. It did so in a way that would enable it to encounter modern Jewish and general philosophy within its own inner space, to return it to its source and to “correct” it by a revolutionary dialectical turn from the profane to the sacred. It is instructive that the process of creation of modern philosophy of religion from the philosophical potential in kabbalah first came about in general philosophy. In the Renaissance and Reformation period, the central ideas of kabbalah penetrated into Christian theology. From there, they were imparted to the religious philosophy of the German Romantics, who sought a way of return to religion without renouncing the advances of modern philosophy. The outstanding representative of this movement was Schelling, in whose later writings we can recognize the ideas of the Zoharic and Lurianic kabbalah. In modern Jewish philosophy, this phenomenon can first be seen among Schelling’s Jewish

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disciples, and in the twentieth century it reappeared as an original development, especially in the thought of Rabbi Abraham Kook. From here, we come to the story of the centers of Jewish philosophy in modern times and the absorption of their influence in the broader Jewish world. One might have assumed that modern Jewish philosophy should first have developed in Italy at the end of the Renaissance, whose transition to the Enlightenment was apparently continuous and direct, or in France of the period of the Revolution. But in fact we see that the interest of Italian Jewish thinkers in the philosophy of their contemporaries faded after the generation of Judah Abravanel. Italian Jews continued to be interested only in classical philological-historical research. This was not the case among French Jews, most of whom willingly accepted emancipation with all its conditions. There was no felt need for a revival of religious philosophy to fortify their Jewish identity against the universalistic, assimilationist ideas of the Revolution. As we saw, the urge to philosophize in modern vein in the spirit of the Enlightenment was awakened first among the community of conversos who returned to Judaism in Amsterdam. However, the dichotomous dialectic that characterized the spirit of the conversos who returned to their Judaism led on the one hand to stringent halakhic zealotry, relying on the kabbalah, and on the other hand to heretical philosophical rebellion. Recourse to philosophy thus expressed the extreme oppositional urge against the fundamentalist, isolationist authoritarianism of the community. For that reason, philosophy could not function within the Jewish creative life as an internal movement and factor striving to open it to the universal arena and integrate it within it. It functioned only as a factor of breaking-out from the community and from the horizon of its religious life, subjecting them to destructive criticism from without, as in the cases first of Uriel da Costa and later Baruch Spinoza. The conditions required for the development of Jewish philosophy with a positive purpose to defend the Jewish religious legacy—while at the same time opening it to the modern environment—came about in Germany. We may say that from the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, Germany was the leading center of Jewish philosophical creativity. This, of course, was in keeping with German philosophy’s leading role in Western culture during that entire period. We have already mentioned the factors that stood at the background of the development of philosophy’s special status in German culture, and the special character of the struggle for Jewish emancipation. To

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recapitulate: Philosophy was important in the crystallization of the national culture in Germany from the middle of the eighteenth to the start of the twentieth century, and German philosophy was deeply involved in political, social and cultural movements in Germany and in Europe. The goal of emancipation called for ongoing struggle—first in the state, and afterwards in German society. Though its cultural objectives were largely achieved, its political and social objectives were continually frustrated. All these contributed to the fact that philosophy became a central arena of the intellectual-spiritual encounter between Judaism and general culture, and thus also a formative and determining factor of the encounter in the other areas of cultural creativity and social life. Through philosophy, the Jews realized their aspiration to become integrated in the high culture of Germany. At the same time, they tried to preserve their separate identity—by emphasizing its universal significance. The circles of general and Jewish philosophical discourse that were created in Germany spread and became influential in all the circles of Jewish life in Europe, and later in Israel and the United States. As a result of this influence, movements of modern Jewish philosophical thought emerged in other countries: in Galicia, Italy, Lithuania, France, and eventually in Israel and the United States. However, until the Second World War, the central axis of this discourse was in Germany. In other words, the writers of Jewish philosophy in other countries participated in effect in the German-Jewish circle of philosophical discourse. Yet, in stating this fact, we cannot but be aware of the ecumenical (i.e., international ) character of this philosophy. We may appreciate the significance of all this if we note that Germany was the center in which there arose and from which was propagated the movement of Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) in all the countries of central and Eastern Europe. Furthermore, all the modern Jewish movements that developed from the Haskalah had their origins in Germany. They were influenced by ideologies that themselves were the offspring of the various streams of German philosophy, and which spread from there to other European countries. Indeed, this applies not only to the formation of the movements and their ideological platforms, but also their continued organized leadership. Not only were the ideologies and the platforms shaped in Germany, but it continued to be the active center from which the theory and substance of the Enlightenment emanated. In Germany, the scholarly study of Judaism (the Jüdische Wissenschaft) found institutional expression in journals, book-publishers,

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and institutes of research and instruction; in Germany were academic institutions in which the Enlightenment continued to be propagated in scholarly and popular-philosophical forms; and Germany was also the home base of the organized movements of modern Judaism. Against this backdrop, the propagation took two forms: first, the publication in Hebrew and German of literature, journals, and school curricula; second, the training of leadership cadres of Jews aspiring to enlightenment and emancipation in the German universities. We may safely conclude that the intellectual stratum that provided the leadership of all the modern movements in central and Eastern European Jewry—in research, instruction, literature, and social and political activism—was educated in German universities. To the extent that the members of this class received academic instruction in Jewish studies, this was also acquired in the Jewish institutions of higher learning in Germany. This fact had an additional consequence that was of great importance for the academic character of Jewish scholarship and Jewish philosophy. The Jewish intelligentsia who came to acquire their education in Germany quickly became the primary resource for renewing the cadre of teachers and scholars for Jewish studies and Jewish philosophy in Germany, for the reserves of German Jewry itself had become depleted in the course of the previous two or three generations. A rapidly increasing portion of this cadre consisted of young scholars who had been educated in traditional Jewish studies in the yeshivot of Eastern Europe. They had adopted the Haskalah outlook, and came to complete their general education and acquire the tools of modern scholarship and thought in the German universities. As a consequence, the Jewish intellectual-spiritual center of Germany came to represent not only German Jewry proper, but also the Jews of central and Eastern Europe who aspired to a modern education. Still, we must emphasize again that only in Germany, or in contiguity with its circle of discourse, was Jewish thought articulated on a philosophical level and in its disciplinary framework. The influence of the philosophical ideas that emanated from the German schools and universities were absorbed in large measure by other non-philosophical creative genres—ideology, journalism, literature and poetry—that were more appropriate for the educational format of the general Jewish public, who could not attend the academy. The general education of this public was mainly the result of independent study, which could bring only a few gifted individuals to the point of creative engagement with philosophy.

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Starting from the last decades of the nineteenth century, and especially in the twentieth, another vista was added for transmitting Jewish scholarship and Jewish philosophy from Germany to the masses of Jewry. It came as a consequence of the immigration to America and the aliyah to Israel. This was effectively the transfer of established legacies from the centers that were on the brink of collapse to new centers, that promised a continuation of Jewish life. Here too the academic leadership that staffed the centers of research, teaching, and modern Jewish thought in Israel and America, came from Germany, or received their academic training in the German universities. Thus was insured not only the preservation of the legacy but also the continuity of creative renewal. The giants of Jewish scholarship and Jewish philosophy at the start of the twentieth century provided the models of Jewish philosophy in America and in Israel. In summary, Jewish philosophy in modern times was founded through the agency of the Haskalah, the Jüdische Wissenschaft, and the modern religious movements that developed from the Haskalah in Germany. Its influence was felt on modern Jewish cultural development in all parts of the Jewish world. The methodological continuity of research and instruction in Jewish scholarship in the Jewish academy, and the continuity of ideas of the modern movements that emanated from the Enlightenment to our own day, lend force to the assertion that we are speaking of a continuous development from the period of the Enlightenment to the present. This applies to philosophic creativity as well. Still, this overall continuity was marked by several dramatic changes, both in the stances taken toward the sources of Judaism and modern culture, and in philosophical methods. The substance of these changes, their causes, and background will be the subject of description and detailed analysis in the body of this work. We may say in general that changes in Jewish philosophy proceeded from changes in general philosophy, which represented dramatic developments in the overall German and European cultures. The historical background for these changes in the general culture consisted of the problems, struggles, great successes—and greater failures—of modern secular culture in its efforts to realize its fundamental values. The changes that occurred in the intellectual-spiritual movements of the Jewish people took a parallel course. They can be seen against the backdrop of the problems, struggles, major achievements and even greater failures of the Emancipation movement, both in respect to its aspiration to integrate the Jewish people in modern Western culture

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and in its striving to preserve the independent spiritual identity of the Jewish people within the internal rubric of its culture and religion. Accordingly, we may divide the history of Jewish philosophy from the Enlightenment through the twentieth century into four principal periods: 1. The period of the founding and institutionalization of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) movement as a movement for the renaissance of original Jewish culture, in the spirit of humanism and modern nationalism. As we shall see in the description of the historical development itself, this stage lasted about a generation. But, it was repeated successively in the three centers that arose in succession in Germany, Galicia, and Russia, primarily in the last two decades of the eighteenth century and the first two decades of the nineteenth century. During this period the modern Jewish philosophical agenda was set, and the preliminary formulations of the modern intellectual and religious movements that developed from the Enlightenment made their appearance. 2. The philosophy that accompanied and guided the struggle for emancipation through the appearance and institutionalization of the primary religious movements that developed from the Enlightenment. These were: Reform, Conservatism, and Neo-Orthodoxy, followed by the nationalist movements (both religious and secular). Examination of the sequence in which these movements appeared one after another highlights the dialectical process of their development: first a movement of opening-up, to leave the ghetto and integrate fully into the general culture—then a movement of return, not for the sake of seclusion, but in order to base one’s independent identity on reaffirmation of the connection with the sources of Judaism. This movement continued from the end of the 1820s (the formation of the Verein für Kultur und Wissenschafts des Judentums may serve as a milestone of the institutionalization of modern Jewish scholarly research) through the 1880s. 3. The philosophy that arose to deal with the crisis of humanism in European society, that took place at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the first half of the twentieth century. This was an earthquake that changed all perspectives on the outlook for the fate of Jewry and Judaism within modern Western culture. This upheaval did not change the topics of the Jewish agenda, but it necessitated their redefinition, as well as defining the means and

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methods for coping with the new situation. The intellectual-spiritual movements continued their course but changed their direction, and at the crossroads of the Jewish emancipation two new paths appeared that required deep intellectual examination: political and spiritual Zionism, and Jewish socialism. 4. The philosophy of the period between the two World Wars, which had to grapple with the traumatic implications of the catastrophe that was clearly pre-visioned, and with the renewed struggle for survival. This could be seen first of all in the destruction of the great centers of Jewish life in central and eastern Europe, and secondly in the challenges for the survival of the people, its culture and religion in the two new centers: Israel and the Diaspora of the western democratic countries, especially the United States. Through the prism of philosophical creativity, we shall thus have to examine the Herculean spiritual struggles of the Jewish people for the preservation of its identity, through its integration with the best achievements of modern Western culture. Against that backdrop we shall be able to define the challenges of the spiritual struggle at the outset of the new period stretching ahead for us at the turn of the twenty-first century. Philosophy is a continuing discipline, the reservoir of wisdom accumulated in the remote and recent past, vital for forging the tools required for the struggle for continuity in the future.

CHAPTER ONE

GOD AND NATURE IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF BARUCH SPINOZA The Beginning of Modern Philosophy of Religion, General and Jewish It is possible to see the beginning of the general Enlightenment’s philosophy of religion in the systems of thought of some philosophers who preceded Spinoza and influenced him—especially Descartes and Hobbes. However, the great revolutionary transition and the new beginning are marked by the position of Baruch Spinoza as a philosopher, who stood beyond Judaism yet did not convert to Christianity, thus choosing to define himself as a free, secular individual. His landmark status can be seen in many respects. First, he drew on his full historical awareness of the problem of philosophy-in-religion and the problem of religion-in-philosophy, in order to address the process of secularization in the modern period. Second, one does not exaggerate his influence in saying that he set the agenda of modern philosophy of religion in all its ramifications, down to our time. Finally, standing at the crossroads of Jewish and general (read: Christian) philosophy of religion, he crucially shaped the terms in which each defined itself vis-à-vis the other historically in the modern period. Spinoza’s greatness and the strength of his influence on modern philosophy of religion, in all its permutations up until twentieth century existentialism, is rooted in the identity that he fashioned between his personality and his life’s destiny, against the backdrop of his age, with his philosophical doctrine. It is worth expanding on this broad generalization, for it is a fitting starting-point for the study of philosophy of religion in our age. The connection that was fashioned (and that persisted continually) between philosophy and religion in the Western, monotheistic tradition was rooted in the all-inclusive, fundamental position that each aspired to occupy. In this respect, they either had to compete for supremacy or complement each other. Each sought to offer to all human beings, as individuals within their societies, a comprehensive world-outlook and a way of life that aimed at realizing it. In the cases of monotheistic faith

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and philosophy, we are not talking of partial disciplines, each of which realizes one aspect—intellectual, emotional, practical—of human life but of a total world-view whose adoption (to the point of identifying with it) commits one to realizing it as a way of life. This account of the essence of philosophy and of religion can be seen in religion to this day, especially in its orthodox forms. Religion was forced, however, to renounce custody and realization of most of the domains of knowledge, feeling, and activity pertaining to worldly human life, in favor of other disciplines, whereas for philosophy that was scarcely the case. This is a key to the current vexing problems of religion, as well as for humanistic culture. These problems come up for discussion in the philosophy of religion and ethics to our own day. Like religion, philosophy was intended to serve as a holistic way of life, not a restricted intellectual discipline. In this respect, the philosophers who constructed the great thought-systems are similar to prophets who found religions. As individuals, their teachings were identified with their personalities, with their way of life, and with the personal destiny that they chose for themselves and shaped out of a sense of mission. This holistic conception attended the creation of philosophical as well as religious thought throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages. Philosophy, like religion, was studied not only for intellectual guidance but to actively realize a way of life. For this reason, when it was institutionalized it was conceived as an academic discipline that should unite in itself all the disciplines of the life of the culture—including psychology, ethics, economics, and politics—for it was interested in the life of inquiry and feeling, as well as the life of action. The revolutionary transition caused by secularization had its impact on this nerve-center, as its purpose was to change the status of religion in the life of individuals and of the society. As a consequence, the status of philosophy was changed as well, not only in its relationship to religion, but also to the culture. At the outset, the new philosophers saw their task as fulfilling the mission of an all-inclusive truth, which should be properly realized beyond religion, or in place of it. This was the sense of mission of the founders of the new thought-systems. But it turned out that the process of secularization fostered the establishment of separate intellectual disciplines. This meant that not only religion in its domain but also philosophy in its domain found themselves isolated within the culture. They were two separate disciplines fighting with each other for the hegemony that religion had lost and philosophy had not succeeded in attaining.

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In the institutional arrangement of our time, the religions are encapsulated in churches, concerning themselves with a narrow domain of life-activity and truth-claims that remain in their jurisdiction. Philosophy, on the other hand, is institutionalized in academia as an intellectual discipline. Its task is to serve the sciences and facilitate dialogue among them, but it is no longer permitted to present itself— though the aspiration is still a part of its makeup, the same as with religion—as a total world-view shaping and realizing a way of life. This is indeed a limitation common to religion and philosophy. The problem of religion-in-philosophy and the problem of philosophy-inreligion, therefore, continue to be central to religion, to philosophy, and to the humanistic culture in our age. Whether one approaches it from the side of religion or of philosophy, representing humanism, religious philosophy and the philosophy of religion both raise in their mutual confrontation the problematic that is generated by cultural fragmentation. This fragmentation comes from the loss of leadership and the loss of the ability to strive to achieve full realization of higher values and higher destiny in the arena of social and individual life. Only one element remains constant, imbuing philosophy of religion in its different varieties with central significance—the aspiration for an all-embracing unity and for the realization of a way of life that will imbue human existence with meaning. Philosophy of religion voices this aspiration, and raises the problem for clarification. Asserting Freedom of Knowledge—of Self, and of World This background should clarify our assertion of Spinoza’s primal importance in modern philosophy. The transformation from the older traditional philosophy to modern philosophy occurred during his lifetime and in his writing, and was embodied in both. It was his original philosophical urge to present philosophy as an inclusive life-teaching and to realize it as a way of life on the individual, social-ethical, political, scientific, and philosophical planes.1 Spinoza lived this out with all his power and in the full consciousness of his mission. In this respect, For views of Spinoza as a contributor to the modernization of Western thought, see: Lewis Feuer, Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism (Beacon Press, 1958); Willi Goetschel, Spinoza’s Modernity: Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine (University of Wisconsin, 2004); Steven B. Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity (Yale, 1997). 1

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he faithfully followed the philosophical tradition of the Middle Ages, against which he polemicized in his desire to divert its path from the other-worldly to the this-worldly direction. For this purpose, he required a philosophy that would completely fill the place of religion. In retrospect, however, did he not work against the objective for which philosophy was ordained? This question accompanies our inquiry into his teaching and the philosophical-religious debate that ensued from it. In any case, Spinoza represented the problem of philosophy-inreligion and the problem of religion-in-philosophy in the modern age out of a sense of mission as the herald of a new truth, imbuing human existence with general meaning. In this respect, the fact that a Jew— who strove to realize his life as an individual within the universal circle of humanity—took this mission on himself again, was not accidental. Nor was it accidental that Philo, the founder of the monotheistic philosophy of religion, was a Jew. Precisely from the viewpoint of a Jew aspiring to attain freedom in a secular state, the problem of religion in modern culture first stood out with all its existential poignancy, in its full extent, and in all its aspects. Spinoza himself presented his path to philosophy as the story of a personal mission. He did this in his first philosophical work, Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. In this treatise, he depicted his path to philosophy as an individual seeking out, with his own powers and through his own understanding, the proper way for himself and all humanity to achieve “happiness.” He examined all the goods that human beings adopt for their pursuit—wealth, honor, power, and the means to attain them, and he arrived at the conclusion that none of them are worthwhile, because all the efforts to attain them end in disappointment and misery. But the intellectual search itself revealed to him the one way that brings firm and certain happiness—in the journey itself, and not as a hope for the future: namely, the philosophical path to the truth. And so he chose it.2 He realized this goal in writing his great systematic work, Ethics. Why Ethics and not Physics? Surely, it was because Spinoza’s mind was set on that truth that directs the path of a person’s life toward the highest happiness. He defined this as the constitution of life through complete physical and spiritual identification with nature. In other words, to resort to the expression that he himself preferred,

2

Spinoza, Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (Hackett, 1992), §1–§16.

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despite its origin in the medieval religious philosophy against which he polemicized—“the intellectual love of God.”3 This ambiguous affiliation with traditional religious philosophy is highly significant.4 It shows that the question that Spinoza raised as an individual qua individual, without prior identification with a particular human group—whether family, community, religion, or nation—was nevertheless the question asked by a particular individual, who willy-nilly was identified as the member of a particular family, community, religion, and nation. It follows that his well-considered decision, to present the question in a way that transcended all these private circles of identity, was nevertheless made against their background. It stands to reason that Spinoza, who rejected all the specific values by which people generally measure their success and their happiness, rejected first of all the identity with the religion and the nation in which he grew up. He did not want to learn the way to happiness from them; he sought to arrive at his solution by himself, without any prior commitments. The happiness that he discovered in philosophy was first of all the liberation from what others taught him and forced on him as obligatory truth. We can see in this too Spinoza’s secular outlook, rooted in a radical individualism. To be sure, it was not his intention to remove himself from human society. On the contrary, he knew and accepted at the outset that no individual can leave human society, just as he cannot separate himself from the totality of nature that formed him. On the contrary, happiness can only occur through the proper integration with nature and society—this is the message of his Ethics. But he also wished to choose for himself his connections as an individual to the group, in a way that would come about naturally. Just as he sought the realization of his happiness from those existing social and political ties in whose context he lived, he could not avoid, in his continuing journey, the need to repeat his personal question in the context of those historical ties. Having set it in its historical context, he could not then ignore the actual history that was embodied in his own personal biography. Thus he arrived, in the course of writing his philosophy, at a frontal confrontation with the problem of religion in Spinoza, Ethics, Part V, Proposition 32, 33, 36. For the definitive thorough examination of Spinoza’s transformation of medieval thought-categories in his mature philosophy, see Harry Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza (Harvard, 1934). 3 4

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general and of Judaism and its relation to Christianity in particular, as they were manifested in the historical reality of his own age against the backdrop of the history with which he was familiar. Thus, Spinoza’s last great work, Theological-Political Treatise, represented his personal religious and national perspective as a Jew. But it is clear that at the outset this was the fuller perspective that determined his entire philosophical journey. Spinoza, the scion of a converso5 family from Portugal who returned to Judaism in Amsterdam, did not find his place and the realization of his life’s destiny in his community. The religious truth of the Torah, based on prophetic revelation, not only failed to persuade him, but he saw in it a set of chains on his thought and on his way of life as a free human being who wished to choose his own path, to find his happiness and realize himself as a human being. This recognition brought him to a frontal confrontation with his community, and of course with his religion, which preeminently emphasized halakha, including the commandment of faith, as Maimonides had taught. Spinoza rebelled. His struggle took place around that issue in which he saw the highest human value: the freedom of thought—the freedom to think and to express his truth, thus to be what he was in his deepest self. In order to achieve his life’s goal, he thus had to leave the community and break with it entirely. To do this, he needed to find his way to becoming a citizen in a secular state, in which alone he saw a chance to realize his mission. Clearly his philosophical conscience did not allow him to change to another religion. Had he been baptized, for instance as a Protestant, which was closer to his political views than Judaism or Catholicism, he would have exchanged one form of religious compulsion for another. His own choice was for individual freedom of thought that could be provided to him only by a state that had no interest in dictating eternal truths—in other words, a secular state. Therefore he removed himself from the Jewish community and cut off ties with them, by forcing them in effect to throw him out. In this way, he had reason to believe that the community would have no legal claim on him, even in the eyes of the state. He could achieve

5 The importance of the converso (“Marrano”) culture as an incubator of early philosophical and cultural modernism is explored by Yirmiyahu Yovel in Spinoza and Other Heretics (Princeton, 1989). Uprooted from their Jewish orientation, they were thrust into a standpoint from which all traditional orientations appeared suspect. See also Stephen Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge, 1999).

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this objective only if they would excommunicate him. Therefore, he purposely provoked them into doing just that. He did not change his religion, but he withdrew into his private space, as a private citizen of Holland, in order to devote himself to scientific research and philosophical inquiry for its own sake. But whether he intended it or not, the significance of his decision not to become a Christian was that in retrospect he did not succeed in excluding himself from the historical flow of his religion or its particular religious philosophy, nor from the destiny of his people. In later generations, the integration of Jews in the general society and culture became a goal and a fateful problem of all his coreligionists in European countries. This meant that through his decision to philosophize as a citizen of a secular state from a standpoint of dissociation from his religion and his people, he became the herald of a movement that encompassed the majority of his people. Even if he did not intend it originally, he thus became after the fact the first trail-blazer of modern philosophy of religion in general and Jewish philosophy of religion in particular. The fundamental ideational basis of Spinoza’s philosophy comes from the implementation of his primal aspiration to become liberated from the dictates of compulsory doctrines that his society tried to impose on him through various arguments: revelation, tradition, conventional ideas, and dogmas. By his scientific method, it is utterly inadmissible to accept any truth on the basis of external authoritative pronouncements. Any confession that people make, even sincerely, of dogmatic doctrine bespeaks no knowledge of its content, but is only an external mouthing of its words. Knowledge is identified with understanding, and understanding is the product of a process of thinking that takes place within a person’s intellect, not the product of external indoctrination. Knowledge thus consists only of what the knowing subject has learned on his own by activation of his own intellectual powers. This assertion does not yet contain any advance on the received philosophical tradition. Even religious philosophers of the Middle Ages, who made their peace with the claim of prophetic revelation, did not yield on this fundamental basis of scientific and philosophical thought. The understanding of revelation was in their view also a process of the independent thinking of those who received it. However, Spinoza went further; he pressed on to an epistemological position that seemed to him to follow necessarily from this premise. Therein lies his essential criticism of the philosophical-religious tradition in which he

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was educated, and particularly of Maimonides. In his discussion on independent thought, he argued against the whole Aristotelian tradition in philosophy. Independent thought consists not in the activation of a person’s senses, imagination, and intellect in order to absorb a truth concerning reality that exists outside himself. He felt this was because activation of these faculties in this way toward a reality that is a priori conceived as external, is similar to receiving the authority of revelation or external testimony of others, who rely on their truths without understanding them. To know something means to recognize it from within, and to recognize something from within is only possible when it is within thought, not external to it. It follows that whatever remains outside of thought after we have made its acquaintance is not truly known to us, and cannot be known to us at all. The conclusion is that we are able to know only what exists a priori within thought. More precisely, it exists within the physical-spiritual reality of beingand-knowing of the thinking essence.6 In this radical sense, all knowledge is self-knowledge not only with respect to the activity of knowing, but also with respect to its objects. If so, does it imply that a human individual’s knowledge is limited to the knowledge of his limited psycho-physical existence, and that it cannot extend to knowing the larger totality encompassing him? Certainly not. Even the knowledge that the individual is only a “part” of a larger encompassing reality, the person knows from his knowledge of himself. It follows that the human being, as a physical-mental unity, is substantively united with that larger encompassing reality, to wit, the Nature that produced him. The Doctrine of Spinoza’s Ethics We may now broaden the application of this finding to its fullest extent, and arrive directly at Spinoza’s pantheism, which identifies God with the original unity of Nature. The fact that the person knows himself as an independently thinking body implies that Nature in its unity is an independently thinking body. It then follows that a person’s knowledge

6 This seems to be the force of Ethics Part II, Definition IV and Propositions 3 and 5.

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of himself as a part of Nature that encompasses him is only a deduction from the physical-mental reality of the entire universe.7 It is at this point the great fundamental assumption of Spinoza’s philosophical epistemology appears. Just as the thinking person is a unified organism with two complementary “attributes”—body that is extended in space and persists in time, and thought that thinks itself—so too, is the entire world-reality one substance with two attributes: thought and extension. Nature, which is that one substance, knows itself in its unity, while all the separate creatures that we discern in it are only its “modes.”8 Human beings are also “modes” of Nature, and their thinking about themselves in Nature is also a “mode” of Nature’s thought (or God’s thought) about Himself.9 Thus, Spinoza’s aspiration to independent freedom of thought was elaborated into a radical secular epistemology. This was not only because of his a priori rejection of any religious truth (which would necessarily have to be based on the assumption of a supernatural spiritual reality, which is external to the person’s being). Primarily, it was due to his positive conception of the person as a natural creature, whose entire destiny and happiness are rooted in terrestrial nature and the regularity immanent in it. Spinoza did not deny God. He went much further than that. He turned religion upside-down and identified God with terrestrial truth, the truth of Substance, or that Nature of which man is only a representative. However, in order to develop this general philosophical insight into an epistemology, which could serve as a methodology of thought that would help man realize his worldly objectives through it, Spinoza needed to elaborate it in tandem with the natural sciences. They needed to constitute the source both for the philosophical methodology and for the detailed knowledge from which would be generated the holistic knowledge that would guide secular man’s way to happiness. Indeed, the assertion that philosophy should be based on the sciences was not new either. Plato and Aristotle defined it as the discipline that united all the sciences within itself, and the Aristotelian religious philosophy of Maimonides, in which Spinoza was educated and against which he polemicized, based its metaphysical method on

7 8 9

Ethics II, Prop. 1, 2 and 7; Prop. 13, Scholium. Ethics I, Def. 5, Prop. 23. Ethics, II, Prop. 11.

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this definition. In order to appreciate the substance of Spinoza’s critical innovation, we must consider the convergence between his aspiration for freedom of thought and the revolution that occurred in the natural sciences. This revolution shaped the emerging social sciences and humanities as humanistic disciplines investigating man’s intellectualspiritual nature. At this point, Spinoza’s unique contribution among the philosophers of his age stands out again. He was among the first, if not the first, who drew the conclusions that followed from the revolution in the natural sciences. These not only concerned epistemology and the connection between physics and metaphysics, but also psychology, the theory of personal and social ethics, politics, and even humanistic studies, especially about the interpretation of texts (philology) and history. In all these areas, he posed the essential methodological requirements of a secular science, as will become clear below. In this connection, we should recall the difference between the Aristotelian natural sciences, which provided the foundations for medieval philosophy, and the modern sciences. Spinoza dealt from the outset with the formulation of the question, which determined the methods of research and the inventory of solutions. The Aristotelian natural sciences asked mainly the teleological question: For what purpose are these things the way that they are? What explains their existence and their qualities with respect to the goal for which they were fashioned? It is obvious that when one asks about the purpose we assume its existence as a prior assumption. According to this philosophical conception, rational explanation consists in determining the reasons and motives of the Creator, or of the “First Cause” of the world and its orderly arrangement for the sake of a purpose that stands as an “ideal good” worthy of a wise creator. It is thus the task of the sciences to discover how this purpose is implemented and realized in nature. This conception of the task of the sciences facilitated the medieval accommodation between scientific truth and religious truth. The divine will was the teleological will that created the world and humanity for the purpose of the good; the God who legislated nature’s laws also legislated laws for humanity, who are the crown of terrestrial creation. The modern natural sciences asked a different question: does teleology exist in nature? Such a question can indeed give rise to various speculations, but at bottom it is not a physical but a metaphysical question, whether or not it is possible to answer it with certainty. It yields in importance to the physical question—what is the inherent causality

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that can be discovered empirically and formulated mathematically? In other words, the question of the sciences is not the question of the Creator and His purpose, and not even the question whether there is or is not a Creator. Instead they ask: How are things? How do they act on one another? What is the regularity that determines their existence, their qualities, and their mode of action? Spinoza adopted the scientific outlook, which investigates the causal regularity that is immanent in nature, not assuming any prior volition, but instead assuming a deterministic causality by which objects act on one another. In his view, the teleological question is rooted in a prior assumption that does not have—and cannot have—any scientific basis.10 This is the assumption that nature is activated by an external being which is the cause of its existence and the cause of its order. In his view, reflection takes place from within, internal to existing reality. It raises questions about the laws of that immanent causality, which can be discovered only by converting those findings grasped inductively through the senses into conclusions that proceed necessarily and deductively from the rational Substance’s knowledge of itself. In other words: Through conceptualization and logical-geometrical proof. Thus, Spinoza built the geometrical model by which he set out to investigate not only the natural sciences but also ethics. According to him, ethics was the science of human nature, a kind of physics of human behavior. He omitted from it, however, the moralistic assumption that human beings act by free will for a purpose that they choose for themselves. Indeed, they feel or imagine this to be the case at times, but if we examine their behavior scientifically we discover the causes inherent in their nature and that of their surroundings that cause them to imagine that what they do out of the necessity of their nature is their free choice.11 Like all natural creatures, human beings act out of the natural urge towards happiness. Creatures’ happiness is identified with their power to survive while preserving those attributes that define their essence.12 They are thus motivated by the instinctual urge to secure the

10 “Now all the prejudices which I intend to mention here turn on this one point, the widespread belief among men that all things in Nature are like themselves in acting with an end in view . . . I shall demonstrate its falsity.” (Ethics, I, Appendix [Hackett, 1992, p. 57]). 11 Ethics II, Prop. 48–49 and Scholium to 49. 12 Ethics III, Prop. 6–7.

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conditions necessary to perpetuate their lives and increase their power. In the course of this they come into conflict with each other and are affected by each other. The sensations, imaginations, and feelings that challenge and direct their responses are nothing but affections such as these, which can be investigated along with their subsequent effects. This is the way physics investigates the actions of bodies in space and time, and through such investigation is revealed the deterministic regularity of human conduct in all its areas of activity. Spinoza thus assumed that human beings are happy to the extent that they succeed in attaining the majority of the conditions for their survival and for the increase of their life-force in harmony with the necessity of their physical-mental nature. Their freedom is identified, in his view, with their ability to act in accordance with the necessity of this dual-attribute nature without encountering external obstacles. They suffer when other creatures come into conflict with them, set limitations on them, or withhold these conditions from them.13 This constitutes the limitation of their freedom, or their servitude. What, then, is ethical behavior? It is conduct that is in accord with the person’s own nature and secures him a reasonable portion of happiness. Since intellect is man’s proper natural quality, his happiness is expressed in the strengthening of his intellect through clear and distinct knowledge. If so, it is up to him to acquire the majority of the conditions for knowing himself and his social and natural environment. Through this, he will be able to insure the acquisition of the conditions for his bodily survival, which is a condition for the growth of his intellect in the measure truly necessary for him. How so? By acting on the basis of true knowledge of himself, his needs, and his environment.14 One should not act on the basis of imagination—which in Spinoza’s view consists of muddled (and therefore misleading and erroneous) perceptions. Nor should one act on the basis of feelings, which are only instinctual affections of the soul caused by external factors. Spinoza deduced from these considerations that suffering is at bottom an emotional disturbance stemming from muddled or mistaken perception of one’s circumstances. It is possible to prevent it through knowledge that should help one achieve appropriate emotional equilibrium with all life’s circumstances. The person who acts out of

13 14

Ethics III, Prop. 11–13. Ethics Parts III and IV, especially IV, Prop. 35–37.

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knowledge increases his happiness through knowledge itself, which is tantamount to perpetuating and strengthening one’s vital human essence. In addition, the obstacles that a person encounters in the satisfaction of his bodily needs should not cause him pain if he has sufficient knowledge of the causes that necessitate them. This will happen, first, because his knowledge will direct his behavior in the most appropriate way for the attainment of his basic needs in any situation that he should encounter. Second, recognizing that obstacles, when they occur, do so out of necessity, will help him avoid the emotions of deprivation, humiliation, fear, and the like, which are truly irrational responses that are the root of most human suffering. In other words, as a scientific psychologist Spinoza arrived at the conclusion that it is not the objective obstacles of our human nature that are the source of our suffering, but the emotions aroused by them. If this is so, sufficient knowledge of the facts is apt to rid us of these emotions and to bring in their place contentment with a person’s place in nature. This will bring with it a broader identification of the person with the totality of Nature, in whose power there is no deficiency, and which is fixed for eternity. In every possible respect, a person’s true happiness consists in knowledge of his own nature, of the nature of society, and the nature of the world. Spinoza was extravagant in the value of self-knowledge, which at its climax should eventuate in the knowledge of the unity of nature. This is, as we said, the strengthening of man’s intellectual life to the level of knowledge—which is intellectual identification with the world in its unity. Spinoza devoted the last section of his Ethics to the attainment of this degree of human happiness and presented it as the intellectual love of God.15 This is the degree in which the person identifies with God(/Nature)’s contemplation of Himself, i.e., he identifies with God and loves Him as God loves Himself. But in this way, God’s love of Himself is identified with man’s love of himself. This is perfect happiness. We should note finally that in arriving at the description of the supreme degree of intellectual love of God, Spinoza approximated substantially not only Maimonides’ theory of prophecy, but also the

15

Ethics Part V, especially V, Prop, 30–36.

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theory of mystical union in the theoretical kabbalah.16 His words are fraught with a mystical significance that is very difficult to reconcile with his scientific outlook. Moreover, from his words about the intellectual love of God, it would seem that God relates to Nature not only from within it but also from beyond it. It would also seem that the intellectual love of God from the human side is a transcendence of human nature, and in that respect is a volitional-teleological action done out of free will. However, even if Spinoza paid attention to the contradiction that one may discover between the greater part of his system and its culmination, it is clear that he ignored it. It is also clear that the Ethics was written in the same manner that Spinoza himself lived, and through it he arrived at the same degree of supreme happiness that he was describing, and thus he came to confer its blessing on all his kind. Spinoza’s Rebellion against Religion: Theological-Political Treatise We have here, as we said, a mission, and it appears in effect a prophetic mission rooted in the intellectual love of God. However, Spinoza did not present it as a religious mission. On the contrary, this in his view was a mission that contradicted religion and came to take its place. Let us now turn to clarify the argument concerning religion in his teaching. We saw above that Spinoza’s rebellion against that religion which stifles human freedom of thought was rooted in his epistemology. The assertion that the concept of knowledge can only apply to what is rooted in reason and what is deductively derived from it, undermines the epistemological basis from every belief on which monotheism rests. These are the beliefs: 1) that God is a supernatural person; 2) that this supernatural God is the transcendental creator of nature ex nihilo, and determines all its orders and laws; 3) that nature was created for some purpose and that its order expresses this purpose and is subservient to God’s providence; 4) that God exercises providence through direct intervention in the course of nature, and even through miracles that

16 See Richard Popkin, “Spinoza, Neoplatonic Kabbalist?” in Lenn Goodman, ed. Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought (SUNY, 1992) and Hubert Dethier, “Love and Intellect in Leone Ebreo,” ibid.

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override the natural order, in order to achieve His objective; 5) that God reveals Himself to human beings in a supra-rational manner, issuing them commands and laws; 6) that human beings exercise free will when they act to obey (or disobey) the divine command, and that He rewards them for fulfilling His commandments and punishes them for their sins; 7) that in this way God guides human beings toward their miraculous Messianic salvation in the end of days; and finally, 8) that on the basis of all these beliefs, the religious institution, which mediates between God and humanity, has the right to enforce these beliefs and the fulfillment of the religious commandments. According to Spinoza, all these are beliefs and not knowledge. That is to say, they are arbitrary stipulations that derive from wishes, fears, expectations, and hopes that people have, not from facts that were learned in a scientific way. All of these beliefs are explicit confessions relating to subjects external to reason, which is to say they are completely unknown to it. This is thus, in Spinoza’s view, the substantive difference between faith and knowledge. Faith, as opposed to knowledge as described above, has its source in desire or in the obscure imagining of various subjects—visionary or sensible—that were not examined in a scientific manner nor did they attain to the level of clear, demonstrable concepts. In this respect, they are justly conceived as external to reason, and consequently as mysterious and the cause of astonishment and wonder. Instead of striving to arrive at knowledge and scientific understanding of the visions that arouse his astonishment and awe, the believer interprets them as it suits him. He does this in order to soothe his fears and to arrive at an inner security in the face of situations that are not under his control (of course, for the same clear reason that they are not at all known to him). In summary, faith is an ignorant error that seeks to displace true knowledge, though it responds to a true psychological need.17 This understanding of faith is the foundation for the scientific explanation of the phenomenon of religion. We must note at once, that this understanding enables Spinoza to discover in religion not only the error and falsehood but also the truth and utility that it possesses as long as it is subjected to rational criticism. Paying attention to this objective stance is the proper preparation for understanding the

17

TPT, Preface.

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scientific disciplines to which Spinoza has recourse to in his discussion of religion. It is thus, the purpose of his writing the work that he devoted to this topic—Theological-Political Treatise. We should first pay attention to the name of the work, which is surprising. Theology is a religious discipline that is in fact unscientific. It relies on the Holy Scriptures and it interprets them in accordance with the authoritative doctrines of religion. As such, it is unworthy of a philosopher, especially one like Spinoza, whose purpose is to question religious doctrines. If Spinoza nevertheless resorts to theological deliberation, this is only because he sought to make the case for his ethical and political views not only for philosophers and their disciples, but also for the broader educated community, which in his age was still religious. He thus assumed from the outset that it was impossible to abolish religious faith and its institutions.18 It was necessary to live with it and to use it also for his goal. In his view, political considerations justified the calculated critical employment of theology as a framework for the political discussion. The political objective of the work can be discerned from these conclusions. Spinoza sought to present a form of political constitution that would protect the freedom of thought—both from religion and from every other kind of tyranny.19 For this purpose, he presented in his theological discussion an innovative approach, compatible with his philosophical method, in interpreting the Holy Scriptures—namely, the scientific philological-historical approach. From our interest in documenting the history of modern philosophy, we ought to emphasize now that Theological-Political Treatise is the work that established the critical study of the Bible as a scientific discipline. It laid its theoretical foundations, defined its methods and also exemplified them through detailed research that related to those topics that interested him. The intention was, as we said, to prove to his educated religious readers—through scientific interpretation of Holy Scripture itself—that the original religious truth found in the Holy Scriptures does not contradict the requirement of freedom of thought and does not oppose any TPT Preface and Chapter 14. “Now, seeing that we have the rare happiness of living in a republic, where everyone’s judgment is free and unshackled, where each may worship God as his conscience dictates, and where freedom is esteemed before all things dear and precious, I have believed that I should be undertaking no ungrateful or unprofitable task, in demonstrating that not only can such freedom be granted without prejudice to the public peace, but also, that without such freedom, piety cannot flourish nor the public peace be secure.” (TPT Preface, Dover p. 6) 18 19

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political constitution that insures that freedom. Just the opposite—the prophets, who founded the religions, exercised freedom of thought and supported it. Only the malicious and calculating use that the ecclesiastical institution made of their words in order to legitimate their power, attributed to the prophets ideas that were foreign to them. This was accomplished through the scholastic method of interpretation, which in Spinoza’s view was rank deception and demagogy. It was on it that he declared war, not on the prophets and their writings. In order to accomplish the political objective of the discussion, it was necessary for him first to present a scientific explanation of the origin and the literary character of the Holy Scriptures, and for this purpose, a scientific understanding of the phenomenon of prophecy, which claimed divine revelation, was required. We recall that Spinoza’s epistemology denied in advance the factual possibility of revelation of a transcendent God to human beings. If one denies the existence of a transcendent God, how can we think that He revealed Himself? But on the other hand, as the philosopher of Ethics, for whom the intellectual love of God is the supreme happiness, Spinoza was able to adopt the notion of divine revelation through a rational interpretation that transformed its meaning. God is Nature, therefore every recognition of truth of the nature of the world and of human nature is worthy of the name of “divine revelation.” This is, of course, not in the sense that God as a person appears and speaks, but in the sense that truth is revealed in the person’s natural light of reason.20 Does this subtle interpretation apply to the beliefs of the prophets who composed the Holy Scriptures? Is it possible to attribute to them, or to impose on them this philosophical conception of revelation, in order to give their words such a far-fetched meaning? The answer is no, if we are guided by the question, how they as believers understood the phenomenon of revelation that they experienced. But it is yes, if we are guided rather by the content of their words. If we find in them, in retrospect, wise and useful words concerning the nature of humanity, society, and state, we can say that they were privileged with a true divine revelation. Indeed, they did not arrive at it as scientists or philosophers; yet it stands to reason that it is possible to arrive at such truths also by way of direct intuition. Furthermore, if we discover in the prophets’ words psychological truth that contributes to

20

TPT Ch. 1 (Dover p. 14).

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understanding human beings’ emotional world, their motivations and manner of response, and the proper ways to influence them to behave in accordance with reason and morality, then we shall then be able to say of them that they, too, are the word of God. It follows that Spinoza found his way—the secular, scientific way—to verify what can be verified in the prophet’s words and to reject what cannot be verified. He did this through the philosophical distinction between the subjective understanding of the phenomenon of prophecy from the prophetic experience itself as against its objective scientific understanding acquired through critical examination. These remarks provide the key to understanding the ironic ambiguity that accompanies the theological discussion through the whole of Spinoza’s work. He presents religious truth from the perspective of the prophet who conceives it on the one hand, and from the perspective of the scientist and philosopher on the other. If so, who are the prophets? What is the nature of prophecy? If religion would acknowledge the prophetic status of our contemporary prophets, it would be proper for us to examine the prophets themselves and judge their nature. Religion does not acknowledge the existence of prophets who arose after the closing of the biblical canon, and it gives the authority of interpretation to its institutional theologians. Because of this, we need to examine the original phenomenon from the authentic testimonies that embody it. However, we must refrain from any prejudicial bias—including the prophets’ own view of the nature of the experience that they underwent and the origin of the words that they heard. The authentic documents are, of course, the words of the prophets themselves, and it will be our task as scientists to discover after the fact what is in them. We shall not describe in detail the rules of Spinoza’s scholarly method or the course of his research. From the standpoint of the history of philosophy, our interest is in the conclusions that he presented in counterpoint to those of Maimonides in the course of a close dialogical debate. They have substantive differences, but it is possible also to find points of agreement. Spinoza concluded that the prophets were sincere believers, and he found no basis for doubting their integrity or honesty. They described the visual and auditory experiences that they had and reported on historical events as they appeared to them. They felt with absolute certainty that the visions that they saw and the words that they heard were the words of the living God, and that the disturbing historical events that they underwent attested to God’s direct presence. When Spinoza re-examined their actual words in their

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original context, he found in them much truth that he could confirm by his reason. This was especially the case with the prophets’ lessons in the area of social ethics, justice and equity, and the governance of the state. Up to this point, Spinoza agreed with Maimonides, but unlike him, he did not find in the prophets’ words any scientific or philosophical method or any truths pertaining to the nature of the world and the concept of God. He felt that all the expressions Maimonides interpreted figuratively and allegorically with a physical or metaphysical significance, ought not to be interpreted so according to their plain meaning in their given context.21 On the contrary, the expressions of the prophets are poetic, permeated with pictorial imagination, strong feelings, and direct involvement in actions. Such expressions appear strange in all their qualities to an objective, detached scientific observation. If so, it is clear that the prophets did not intend to have an effect on the intellectual ideas of their listeners and readers, but to arouse their religious and ethical emotions and to motivate them to actions. That is their whole content, and it is wrong to read other meanings into their words.22 If this is so, it is clear that Maimonides’ attempt to discover philosophical truths in the prophets’ words through non-literal interpretation is in effect deceptive. He attributed his own ideas to the prophets rather than learning their ideas. Even from the standpoint of naïve faith, for Spinoza, this amounted to a desecration. It was clear to him that this was no innocent mistake. It was done with the intention of using the authority of the prophets to force people to accept beliefs and views in which the religious institution of the time was interested. It was done for the purpose of exerting sovereignty, of course, not for the sovereignty of God but of tyrannical human beings, an issue to which we shall return later. If we remain faithful to the words of the prophets themselves, we can verify that they spoke the words of the living God. It is proper to study them and carry them out in the manner that they were said, according to their plain sense. In summary, the prophets were men endowed with a strong poetic imagination. Their imaginings represented themselves to them as tangible as sensory perceptions, and maybe even more so. They believed sincerely that the events of their visions occurred in a sphere

21 22

TPT Ch. 7 (Dover p. 117). TPT Ch. 1–2.

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of divine reality. Through them, they came to know the will of God, whom they pictured in their imagination as a human-like person. The prophets were also endowed with strong ethical feelings, which they similarly ascribed to God. Those feelings allowed them no rest in the face of injustice and evil. They envisioned the terrible consequences that must come as a punishment for such deeds, and they felt impelled to protest, to exhort, and to demand repentance as well as social and political reparation. Spinoza agreed with Maimonides’ view that the prophets were endowed with outstanding creative imagination and with practical reason that expressed itself in their ethical, social, and political judgments. He even agreed that this quality afforded them a valuable advantage as teachers of morals and perhaps also as judges and legislators. However, in his view they were not endowed with theoretical reason. One should not seek in their words any scientific or philosophical truth, but only the psychological knowledge that it is possible to elicit from them through critical examination. Spinoza attributed great importance to the positive verdict of the prophets. He saw in them superb ethical teachers whose words are still valid today. But the importance that he attributed to the negative verdict, that their words contained no philosophy or science, was even greater. If the prophets did not teach science or philosophy, it follows that they did not require adherence to any doctrine on these matters. They did not command any articles of faith relating to the sciences and philosophy, nor take any stand on them. They left investigation of these matters to scientists and philosophers in the unregulated domain of free thought. It is important to note that the prophets themselves showed no favoritism to any institution, whether priests or kings, when the word of God—which was the word of truth—was in their mouth. Who had more recourse to free thought, which is the special prize of humanity? Spinoza’s task was to explain how institutional religion developed on the basis of the prophets’ words and yet in contradiction to them. How did religion take shape, based on mandatory articles of faith? For this purpose, he had to enter into the domain of historical research and to achieve a critically-informed understanding of monotheism’s development, especially the development of Judaism and Christianity. He had to do this, of course, on the basis of the authentic religious documentation found in the Holy Scriptures. On this topic too, we shall summarize briefly the conclusions of Spinoza’s research. The obvious historical point of origin was that of

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Judaism itself. It defines itself to this day as the organized religion that unites the Jewish people through the Torah. This is the book of the covenant that was enacted between the Israelite people and its God in the convocation of Mount Sinai, through the agency of the prophet Moses. In the Christian terminology that informed the universal perspective of Spinoza’s research, which was addressed to a Christian reading audience, this was the “old covenant” (“Old Testament”). It constituted the basis for establishing Christianity through the book of the “new covenant” (“New Testament”). The question is: what knowledge could be obtained from the Torah about the foundational historical event to which it attests? The key is, of course, the narrative of the Exodus. Spinoza saw no reason not to accept the story as historical in its essentials. Of course, he did not accept the miraculous interpretation the source of which was in the observations of the enthusiastic believers, who evidently experienced what happened to them as a supernatural occurrence. The national, social, ethical, and political significance of the legislation of the Torah that Moses gave to his people at Sinai will be clarified for us if we research it against the backdrop of the people’s exodus from Egyptian servitude under the charismatic leadership of Moses. A people that lived for several generations under extreme tyranny went free and immediately had to establish its own political regime. In Spinoza’s view, Moses stood at that moment before a grave political dilemma. After generations of cruel servitude, the people he had led to freedom would refuse to accept a tyrannical rule, such as it had just now broken free of, even if the man who had liberated them stood at its head. Such a thing could not occur to the man who acted out of a sincere sense of mission. Nevertheless, these people who had lived for centuries under a regime of servitude were not ready—given their education and moral characteristics—to receive the alternative form of rule, worthy of free men, namely democratic rule, based on a social contract. In Spinoza’s view, Moses had to solve this grave dilemma, and examination of the legislation that he established at Sinai attests to his ethical and political genius. Even in Spinoza’s view, one could say of it that it was a divine illumination.23 The significance of Moses’ solution consisted in attributing the rule to God and proclaiming His sovereignty through enacting a covenant

23

TPT Ch. 5 (Dover p. 75), Ch. 17 (pp. 218ff.).

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directly between God and His people. The kingdom of God, which was the result, had the effect of imposing the rule of the ethical, social, and national law that was given in the name of God, in a way that the Israelites would not feel themselves to be slaves to any flesh-and-blood ruler. They would willingly become servants of God. That should not pose any contradiction to their freedom. They were already convinced at the Exodus that God had no interest in dominating them, but only sought the welfare of the people who would broadcast His fame to the nations of the world. It was obvious that the one who legislated, judged, governed, and concentrated the ruling authority was in fact Moses. It was he who appointed all the office-holders in the regime that he governed, but he did not set himself up as ruler. He was only a “prophet,” namely one who communicated God’s will to the people. In Spinoza’s view, this was no hypocritical deception, at least not at the beginning. Nor was it simply the enthusiastic faith of a charismatic personality, but rather a calculated political outlook that Moses implemented in such a way that the rule should indeed be the rule of law, not his personal rule.24 In retrospect, Spinoza discovered in his research that the basic law of the Torah included nearly all the elements of the democratic contract that was enacted between the Israelite community and God. It only lacked the institutionalization of the exercise of the people’s authority through appointment of all office-holders in a framework of a single regime. This authority was preserved in the hands of God Himself, or more exactly in the hands of the prophet who was chosen by God and in whom the people placed their trust. Thus was created a framework of terrestrial rule whose ultimate source of legitimization was religious. In order to preserve this religious authority without compulsion, but with the continuing consent of the people, Moses implanted in his people the faith that God chose them and brought them out of Egypt in order that they should be His special treasure of all the nations. If the Israelites would be loyal to the laws of the Torah and fulfill God’s commandments in love, they would achieve unity as a nation, and no outside force could withstand them. Thus, they would secure their

24 “Being, then, in the state of nature, they followed the advice of Moses, in whom they chiefly trusted, and decided to transfer their right to no human being, but only to God.” (TPT Ch. 17, p. 219)

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national independence, take possession of their land, and earn their prosperity and earthly happiness. In this connection, Spinoza noted that the Mosaic Torah provided no basis for Maimonides’ later claim that Moses gave his people a law that was the basis not only for earthly prosperity but also for spiritual perfection, namely gaining a portion in the World to Come. In Spinoza’s view, Maimonides’ claim was a gross fabrication that came to justify imposition of obligatory articles of faith, through which one would supposedly merit spiritual perfection. In effect, this was the last step in the process of institutionalizing the ecclesiastical power of the rabbis in order to govern not only the deeds of the members of their communities but also their minds. Spinoza took care, however, to prove through his research that Moses established a secular political framework. All his promises were directed at worldly national achievements: victory over foes, settlement in a land flowing with milk and honey, peace, economic prosperity, and social-national expansion.25 One cannot find, either in the entire Mosaic Torah or in the writings of the other Biblical prophets, any mention of supra-terrestrial spiritual promises or commandments relating to recognition of eternal truths. How did Moses insure the democratic character of the Torahitic covenant that was enacted at Sinai? Spinoza pointed first of all to the division of political powers. Each body that Moses appointed— the elders of the assembly, the priests, the judges, and the military commanders—was instituted on its own as an independent authority. It was limited in its own jurisdiction and in setting limits to the domains of the other bodies. They had to arrive at agreement among themselves, and no one of them was able to achieve domination over the entire political establishment.26 Second, Moses did not institute his own office as prophet-legislator with authority passing through inheritance to later generations. His function as legislator was for one time only, and no prophet took it on after him. In this way, indeed, the law kept its character as divine command. No person or institution had the authority to change it. The other functions that the prophet fulfilled in the name of God would later be filled by a person whom God would choose. What did this mean? In Spinoza’s view, it meant that leaders would arise

25 26

TPT Ch. 3–5 (especially p. 70). TPT Ch. 17, 218–224.

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in each generation who would feel in themselves the inspiration of prophecy. If they succeeded in obtaining—like Moses—the trust of the people through verification of their word and their performance of the Torah’s commandment, they would be accepted as prophets with the consent of the people. Third, according to the Mosaic Law, neither the role of military commander nor (in later times) the role of “judge” would be passed down by inheritance. They would be appointed by a prophet with the consent of the elders of the people. Finally—this was essential— according to the original law of the Torah, the priesthood, appointed over the religious ritual, was not set up as a hierarchical order based on inheritance. Instead, the first-born of all the families were selected to fulfill ritual functions. However, even afterwards, when the priesthood was established on a hereditary basis in Aaron’s clan, the Mosaic Law took care to limit not only its authority but also its economic independence. This was done in such a way that the priests and Levites, on whom the people were dependent for the service of God, were economically dependent on the elders of the people who were chosen on a familial-tribal basis. Since only the law united all these powers, while no political body was granted comprehensive enforcement authority, its preservation was contingent on the good will and the trust that the people invested in their leaders, especially in their prophet. This was an advanced degree of democratic freedom. However, it was clear that with what was known about human nature, and especially the nature of a people who had just emerged from a tyrannical servitude, it was exaggerated optimism on Moses’ part if he hoped that his well-equilibrated law would survive for very long. Moses did not have to wait very long to become convinced that he himself must exercise the comprehensive ruling authority, and even to establish it in such a way that it should no longer be dependent on “God” but on the supremacy of the body exercising it. This was the beginning of the deterioration in the direction of the institutionalization of religion that would tend to dominate the state. Spinoza was, of course, referring to what happened during the episode of the Golden Calf. While Moses was studying the details of the ritual that would unite the people around the worship of God in the Tent of Meeting, the people betrayed him and made up their own mind about establishing the ritual that they needed. From the people’s point of view, this was a superb expression of democracy in action. Yet it was also an open subversion of Moses’ leadership, which had left in his hands

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the exclusive right to interpret God’s demands on the people. One should thus not be surprised at his raging reaction. But in Spinoza’s view, Moses acted at this instance, first and foremost, not as a prophet of God but as a threatened tyrant. He thus committed a grievous, irreparable error, one which undermined his basic law and brought a historical curse on his people. Spinoza was referring not only to the cruel slaughter to which Moses resorted in his burst of zealotry in order to put down the rebellion and restore rule to his hands (with the help of the members of his tribe who were loyal to him). But he was referring even more to the fact that Moses changed his first plan—to invest the first-born of all the tribal families as priests—and instead entrusted the priesthood to his family, to be passed down in established hereditary fashion from generation to generation.27 Indeed, it is proper to emphasize the far-reaching revolutionary significance of this step. The perpetual hereditary transmission of sovereignty means that sovereignty has become supreme to the point that it is self-appointing and self-legitimating, without being dependent on any other factor—not the divine will or the will of the people. This is the beginning of institutionalized tyranny. Indeed Moses refrained at this point from giving the priests authority beyond the domain of their ritual functions, but he laid the foundations for a hierocracy (the rule of priests) similar to that in Egypt. From this eventually developed the rabbinic Synagogue and the Christian Church. Such a hierocracy constitutes a potential threat to the other bodies of government. It is not dependent on them and therefore it is stronger than they are, and is liable to try to gain supremacy over them. In the natural course of events, the other bodies of government will also each try to establish its authority in its own domain, on the same basis of inheritance. Indeed, this is what eventually occurred when the Israelites established the offices of military command and that of the judge in the institution of the monarchy. They set it up in fact against the priestly hierocracy of Samuel. We find here the first roots of the great historical struggle between the Church and the secular imperium, each of which tried to gain control over the other, thus bringing about the destruction of the state. Spinoza’s historical research concluded that this is in fact what happened. He resorted intentionally here to theological language. He argued that Moses’ action was an expression of God’s anger against

27

Ibid., 232–233.

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His ignorant people, and God’s vengeance on His people through “no-good laws.” The results were not revealed at once. As long as the people had the motivation to unite around the ritual of their God against the foes that surrounded them, the law manifested the democratic advantages embodied in it. But this motivation weakened on its own accord when the people had relief from their foes. Then the conflicts between the various powers led to outright division. One saw the beginning of attempts at tyrannical domination of each of the contending powers against the other. The result was a series of catastrophes, each graver and more severe than the previous. But no power succeeded in gaining complete control and enacting fundamental change of the failing law. The reason for this lay, in Spinoza’s view, in the basic Achilles’ heel of the Mosaic law: its establishment as a political law around revealed religious authority—which is, as it were, absolute and eternal. It imposed obligation by virtue of a supra-human, supra-rational sovereignty, and therefore was not given to change. The religious powers took on themselves the authority to interpret and implement the details of the law at their discretion, but they construed the law itself to be eternal and unchangeable, even by God Himself. It is clear that without this claim the basis of religious authority in whose name they acted would have been undermined. In the final analysis, however, this was an irremediable curse. It did not allow the unnatural hybrid that Moses had created—half democratic, half hierocratic—to be transformed into a proper democracy. In order to arrive at that, it would be necessary to abolish it and establish a different covenant in its place. This constitutional curse, identified with the Jewish religion and nationality, explained, in Spinoza’s view, the historical fate of the people of Israel up to his day. Against that backdrop, he interpreted the birth of Christianity within the Jewish people and its development outside it, not within it. From the New Testament Spinoza learned that Jesus the Nazarene took on himself a mission parallel to that of Moses, to raise the Torah of Israel to a higher ethical and political level, closer to God’s will in the rational sense.28 According to this, it was Jesus’ intention to correct Moses’ fateful error by repairing the constitutional Achilles’ heel that had made Moses’ error inevitable. Instead of the Sinaitic covenant, Jesus sought to enact for his people a

28

TPT Ch. 5, 70–71.

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new covenant that would redeem them from the curse of the perpetual clash between the religious and secular powers. How, then, did Jesus differ from Moses, and especially, how did their ethical and political outlooks differ? As we said, Spinoza expressed himself on this topic in Christian theological discourse taken from the New Testament. His transparent political intention was to support the standpoint of Protestantism, which strove against the Catholic Church and demanded an essential change in the relationship between the Church and the secular political powers. The basis of this demand was the argument that the Catholic Church from its inception falsified the essential saving gospel of Jesus, and this was the source of its corruption. In order to correct what went wrong, one must return to the original gospel of the New Testament, and thus inevitably to the New Testament’s original correction of the teaching of the Old Testament. It is easy to see that Spinoza adopted the Protestant perspective from the outset. He found in it a confirmation of his argument that secular democracy is not opposed to the original meaning of the Holy Scriptures, but only to the dominating interests of a corrupt hierocracy. From a more immediate point of view, Spinoza’s scathing criticism of the Achilles’ heel of Mosaic law was also directed against the rabbinic hierocracy. It had become crystallized by his time on the basis of the halakhic dogmatism of Maimonides. However in its essence his criticism was directed against the Catholic hierocracy that based itself on the New Testament but in practice copied the model created by Moses in the Old Testament. The Pope inherited the symbolic station of Aaron in the Israelite priesthood. From this perspective, Spinoza adopted the Christian outlook, which believed that Jesus stood on a higher level of divine revelation than Moses. Inevitably this outlook meant that the New Testament was destined to replace the Old Testament, which had been given in its time to a stiff-necked slave people, whom their prophets had spent all their energy trying to reform without success. In Spinoza’s theological language, Moses was the prophet of God who communicated the (rational ) will of God to his people on the lower, defective level that the people could understand in their time, whereas Jesus was the mouth of God.29 In other words, he brought the true, pure, rational,

29 Moses “perceived [the Decalogue and other laws] not as eternal truths, but as precepts and ordinances, and he ordained them as laws of God, and thus it came to

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ethical message to the people, without the intervening addition that led directly to its corruption. It is possible to argue that Spinoza identified Jesus as a philosopher, just as Maimonides identified Moses. However, this understanding cannot be reconciled with Spinoza’s outlook concerning the proper methods for interpreting the Holy Scriptures. He was neither able nor willing to attribute to Jesus the teaching of philosophical truths with religious sanction. Jesus fulfilled the role of a prophet in the name of a supernatural God, not the role of a philosopher. The truth that we can find directly and openly in Jesus’ words is the same ethical truth of the prophets, but this time without any compromises or concessions, with strict consistency. In Spinoza’s view, the superiority of Jesus’ teaching is expressed in three ways that he believed original Christian teaching of the New Testament differed from the teaching of Moses and the Israelite prophets: 1. The prophets of Israel based themselves on the idea of Israel’s chosenness from all the nations. The basic Law of Moses was, in practice, the law of a national state in every respect. The prophets taught their ethical teaching only to Israel as a people—within its own national-political framework and for its exclusive advantage. It was not taught to general humanity as individuals, crossing the boundaries of peoples and states, whereas Jesus taught a universal ethical teaching. His message was not addressed to just one people or nation as such, but addressed every person as a human being, and thus humanity at large. Jesus’ apostles therefore went forth, by his word, to propagate this ethical truth to all humanity—crossing the borders of nations and states. Two great advantages resulted. The first was with respect to the consistency of understanding the universal application of the moral law. The second was that the ethical teaching was being addressed only to the private individual and not to the citizen, who is defined as a part of a particular political group. 2. The prophets taught the moral law as commanded by God’s authority. They placed great emphasis on the element of the fear of God be that he conceived God as a ruler, a legislator, a king, as merciful, just, etc . . . Christ perceived (truly and adequately) what was revealed . . . He doubtless taught His doctrines as eternal truths, an ddid not lay them down as law, thus freeing the minds of His hearers from the bondage of that law.” (TPT Ch. 4, pp. 64–65)

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and on the motive of obedience to God’s authority, inasmuch as He is the awesome King. They also emphasized the element of assurance of reward and punishment, which is extrinsic to the good and evil inherent in the deeds themselves. It follows that doing the will of God—because He is God—is the essential good, and for this a person receives his reward. Moreover, on the basis of this conception, the prophets emphasized the greater importance of justice as compared with mercy. On the other hand, Jesus taught the ethical imperative as valid for its own intrinsic reason, as good in itself, and for the sake of the rational value embodied in it. Thus, it transcended any interest of external reward or punishment. Jesus made the rational consideration autonomous and preferred the value of love to fear, and the spiritual value of mercy to the material value of justice. 3. The prophets struggled to impose their ethical-religious outlooks on the monarchy and became involved in political matters. In contrast, Jesus was the first who taught of the separation and respecting the autonomy of the secular state regarding its own matters: “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” On this premise, the conflict between religion and the state ought to have disappeared. Religion, as an institution, would have been subordinated to the authority of the state, on condition that it occupies itself with the moral education of the individual, which was its special strength, and for which there was no substitute. (It is clear that in Spinoza’s view the Catholic Church betrayed Jesus’ teaching. It established a hierocracy that imitated the model of Moses’ teaching after the sin of the Golden Calf. It even extended its prerogatives to intervene in the affairs of the secular state.) 30 We should emphasize again that Spinoza’s adoption of Protestant theological discourse did not imply identifying with it. The fact that he did not adopt another religion, though he left Judaism, emphasizes that as a philosopher he did not identify any theology with the pure truth. Protestant Christianity was, in his view, remote from philosophical truth—like any religion that relied on faith. Spinoza’s interest was limited, as we said, to the proof that his suggested political solution was compatible with the Old Testament, and even more so with the New

30

Ibid., pp. 63–66.

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Testament. The political covenant that he proposed in their place was a terrestrial social contract. In it, all citizens renounce a portion of the rights that they possess in the natural state (in which power belongs to the stronger) for the benefit of the commonwealth, in order to advance the general good, and thus their individual good as well.31 We should emphasize that in Spinoza’s view, it was unlikely that in a civil contract, enacted on the basis of the free consent of all citizens, there would be any sacrifice of freedom of thought. A thinking person is not able to renounce this right, integral to his nature, of his own free will.32 He can only renounce the realization of his egoistic desires by limiting the right of his free action for the benefit of the state that will extend its protection to him. On the other hand, the interest of the civil state is focused on the legal behavior of its citizens, and from its perspective it has no need to limit their freedom of thought. All this being granted, it is proper to emphasize the second side of the same coin. Spinoza did not demand or envision the disappearance of religion. First, he had to include faith under the rubric of implementing the general principle of the freedom of thought. Second, he thought that the terrestrial state had a genuine and justified interest in allowing the activity of religion for its purposes and within its domain. As a student of human nature, Spinoza recognized that religion is universal. Only philosophers (such as himself ) had no personal need for religion. But inasmuch as they too live in the human community and rely on the civic peace, they are also in need of religion for the sake of social order. Thus, they too are obligated to refrain from abusing their freedom of thought in order to disturb the religious faith of the masses. Religion bases its educational influence—which is of benefit to the state—on several beliefs. These include such beliefs as the authoritative command of God, individual providence, reward and punishment, personal immortality, and the like. Spinoza defined such beliefs as necessary (with respect to human nature and social order).33 He thus suggested that as a philosopher he disbelieved their veracity, but his political responsibility required him to teach them publicly as principles worthy of belief. It would then follow that Spinoza accepted certain limitations in freedom of expression as justified on political

31 32 33

TPT, Ch. 16. TPT, Ch. 20, p. 258. See TPT Ch. 14, especially his enumeration of basic principles of faith, p. 187.

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grounds, yet was of the opinion that this posed no contradiction to freedom of thought. From this would follow the conclusion that the secular democratic contract would have to include, under its rubric, extending the state’s protection to the pedagogical activity of religion. But without a doubt, this protection should be conferred only on that one religion that recognized the absolute authority of the secular state. It was clear in Spinoza’s view that only Protestantism answered to this condition. These conclusions about the place of religion in the secular state had direct implications for the prospect of the national Jewish religion in the secular democratic state about to be born. We should emphasize in this context, the fact that Spinoza dared to publish his critical work on religion. This testifies to his confidence that the sovereign secular state, liberated from the domination of the Church, would have to arise in all Christian countries, as a response to the intolerable anarchy caused by the religious wars. He, thus, came to the conclusion that despite the storm that would be aroused by its publication, his work was necessary to advance this realization. One may well ask, how did he see the future of the Jewish people and the future of its religion in this future state? Since he had excluded himself from the Jewish community and turned to the Christian public, Spinoza saw no need to devote a separate discussion to this question. Yet from his own conduct, and from hints buried in his writings, it appears that he saw two ways opening up to Jews. The first way pertained to individuals and was exemplified in his own personal behavior: those individuals desiring their personal happiness might forsake their people and their religion and be accepted as citizens in the democratic state. However, in Spinoza’s day this way seemed open only to exceptional individuals like himself. Jews who were not philosophers, if they wanted to leave the community, were forced to change their religion. Spinoza knew that most Jews were zealously attached to their religion, and it would not occur to them to do this. What could the others do, the majority who identified as Jews? How could the people conduct themselves in this respect? It was clear that the Jewish religion, as it was represented by the communities and by the powerful official rabbinate, could not continue to function in a political state that demanded for itself full authority over legislation and civil justice. On the other hand, in contrast to the New Testament, the Old Testament gave no opening of accommodation

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to the demands of citizenship in a secular state. The conclusion that followed from this was simple: the halakhic Jewish religion could not operate within the rubric of a secular state. The natural consequence of this would be that the Jewish community that held steadfast to its faith would, once more, have to affirm the emphatically national character of its religion. It would have to return to its promised land and fulfill there the prophecy of redemption (whose hope the people continued to carry in their hearts) by re-establishing its state as in days of yore. In one passage of his Theological-Political Treatise34 Spinoza foresaw this development, though without spelling out his reasons. Thus, later Jewish-nationalist thinkers, who saw Spinoza as the first herald of modern Jewish nationalism and even of Zionism, had some basis for their interpretation. Yet, one should emphasize, first that Spinoza did not predict the establishment of a secular democratic Jewish state in the land of Israel. He saw, rather, the renewal of the ancient religious state, in accordance with the Mosaic law and the traditional vision of redemption (perhaps in the halakhic guise presented by Maimonides). Second, if that was how it was going to be, he was not interested in being among the citizens of such a state. For himself, he chose the way of assimilation, which would later also be the way of many Jews. Nevertheless, through his comprehensive criticism of Judaism and Catholic Christianity and the relationship between them, Spinoza presented the great theological, political, and ethical challenge, around which the tension-fraught dialogue between Christian religious philosophy and Jewish religious philosophy would be conducted in modern times. His characterization of Judaism as a national religion, based on a particularistic ethic of justice and a heteronomic basis of authority— and the contrasting portrayal of Christianity as an ethical religion of individualistic universalism based on an ethic of mercy (not to mention his other arguments about the relation of Judaism and Christianity to the state)—all these would be accepted as the basis of discussion by all philosophers of religion in Christian countries. When the Jewish and Christian religions sought later to defend themselves against his harsh secular critique (that was motivated by his desire to seek a new place for religion and for the Jewish people in a secular state and culture), they not only had to grapple with his theological-political challenges,

34

TPT end of Chapter 3, p. 56.

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but they were inevitably forced to employ his concepts and at least some of his arguments. We may say, in summary, that it was Spinoza’s thought that defined the agenda of modern philosophy of religion and provided its conceptual language, as well as a respectable portion of its stock of arguments.

CHAPTER TWO

LEIBNITZ AND MENDELSSOHN: ENLIGHTENED DEFENSE OF CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM Beginning of a New Dialogical Confrontation between Judaism and Christianity Despite the theological elements in Theological-Political Treatise, Spinoza’s philosophy was the first prototype of philosophy of religion in its modern sense. That is, it was the first criticism of religion from the standpoint of the rationalist method, whose objective was to unite within itself—on its purely intellectual foundations—the totality of human knowledge. Spinoza took as his starting-point the new political reality that was intimately bound up with the revolution in the sciences. However, it was possible to grapple with the same reality from the contrary standpoint of religion itself. This was not necessarily done to negate the new developments, but on the contrary in order to adopt them. It proceeded from the assumption (whose source was in traditional philosophy of religion) that monotheism is rational, and that in any case, it is impossible that there should be a contradiction between it and scientific truth or humanistic ethics. The controversial appearance of the Theological-Political Treatise in Spinoza’s lifetime, and the appearance of his Ethics some years after his death, necessitated an up-to-date philosophical response from a religious perspective. The philosopher and scientist Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz, a younger contemporary of Spinoza, was the first to present the antithesis from the Christian viewpoint. The antithesis from the Jewish viewpoint had to wait until the appearance of Moses Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem and Morning Lessons. In his day, Leibnitz’s philosophy had already become standardized in the German academy, especially through the writings of his interpreter, Christian Wolff. It was natural that Mendelssohn saw himself as a student of Leibnitz and Wolff and adopted their philosophical method, which seemed compatible in several respects to Maimonides’ method.

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Leibnitz’s grappling with the problem of religion presented a religiousphilosophical alternative to Spinoza. Like Spinoza, Leibnitz started from traditional philosophy of religion in order to implement it on the new scientific and political basis. This was not out of rebellion against the religious element in it, but rather out of recognition that the eternal truth of monotheism remained valid, independent of the changes that took place in scientific thought. It did require, however, reinforcement of its philosophical basis. The contrast between Leibnitz’s and Spinoza’s relation to monotheism is expressed in Leibnitz’s fidelity to two Christian doctrines. First was his belief in the faith in a transcendental personal God who by His will caused the world to exist. Second was his faith that God exercises providence over His world. Therefore—despite all the evil in it—this is not only “the best of all possible worlds” but a world of hierarchically ascending perfection, and the history of humanity is a history of progress from creation to redemption. However, a comparison between them shows not only common interest in the new sciences, but also a common existential experience, that was one of the substantive characteristics of the modern course of secularization. We have resorted to the expression “existential experience.” We shall note, however, that although the existentialist philosophy appeared by that name only in the twentieth century, its roots are anchored in the individualistic characteristics of the systems that established the philosophy of the Enlightenment. It is especially found in the writings of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz. These three were rooted in the thinking “I” of the human individual and in the problem of his individual identity in its relation to society and the world. They express directly and indirectly not only their historical background but also their biographical background. We return to Spinoza’s Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, which starts with the story of the search for the way to individual self-realization, after the awakening and disillusionment from all the accepted ways in his surroundings.1 We found it surprising that his revulsion at the popular human ideals—wealth, honor, power—was not very different from the religious outlook in this respect. The solu-

1

Spinoza: Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, Propositions §3–§6.

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tion that Spinoza arrived at seemed essentially a philosophical reconstruction of religious idealism, pointing to the value of truth and doing good for its own sake as human destiny. Spinoza’s uniqueness stemmed from the fact that he raised his question after he had also rejected religious idealism as misleading, hypocritical, and false.2 He then set up in its place scientific truth as obligatory on individuals, the truth of the individual “I” who strives to give validity to his separate identity, whose validation constitutes his happiness. The existential experience framed in Spinoza’s words is the experience of discovering the independent individual worth of the “I.” It also recognizes the severe price from the standpoint of the uniqueness, validity, and happiness of that same self-consciousness. That price is the loss of feeling of belonging to a unified human community, proceeding on its way in confidence and imparting that confidence to all its members; the loss of orientation in a unified world that has a defined status for each of its constituents and members—the great and the small; and the loss of objective validity of the subjective demand for prosperity and happiness. Behind the curtain of the religious faith-narratives, scientific experiment uncovered for the individual who drew from its lessons a chaotic nature, swarming with instincts battling with each other in a cruel fight for survival. The human community was depicted in the same pattern. It was seen as a mob of isolated individuals, captive to their instinctual urges, their subjective emotions and imaginations, wrestling and competing with each other to attain their wretched bit of happiness. Religion, which had the audacity to propose another truth, is revealed against this backdrop as a hypocritical charade. In the last analysis, it also does nothing but authorize the attainment of a bit of imagined happiness—of wealth, honor and power, or the delusional hope of eternal life. In effect, it only increases and exacerbates the cruel fight for survival in human society, without bringing it to resolution. This was the dilemma on the plane of individualism. Spinoza attempted to overcome it by continuing the scientific method that had brought it to awareness. His whole system was a monumental philosophical attempt to escape the lonely prison of individual subjectivity, by the philosophical discovery that was built on the foundation of natural science. The objective totality that unifies the world replete

2

Ibid., §52–§54.

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with contradictions and oppositions is concealed in the depths of every individual’s self, for each individual is one of its modes. Leibnitz chose the opposite way. It was anchored in the same point of origin. This was the discovery of the worth of individuality in the face of the chaos of contradictions between subjectivity and objectivity, and between striving for unity and absolute orientation in the face of a world composed of individual selves clashing blindly with each other in their pursuit of happiness. However, the direction toward which Leibnitz strove was opposed to that of Spinoza not only in respect of his positive a priori attitude to religious truth but also in respect of his attitude to human individuality. Consider: Spinoza affirmed individuality by identifying it with the totality that he grasped as a single substance. Thus, by raising it to the level of “intellectual love of God,” he turned his absolute affirmation into its absolute negation. Leibnitz, however, refused to forego the value of individuality, and affirmed it by fixing it at the foundation of the constitution of the whole. This enabled him to return philosophically to the belief in an individualized God. This God relates to the world that He fashioned and to human beings in the same way that a transcendent personality relates to individuals with their own identities, dependent on Him. This conception was comprehended in a metaphysical doctrine that formed the basis of Leibnitz’s epistemology. Its fundamental cognitive premise was no different from Spinoza’s. We have no true knowledge except of those things that are found in thought; what exists outside thought is unknown, and what is unknown has no existence except in our erroneous imagination. However, in order to affirm this assertion as a foundation for scientific knowledge of the world, Leibnitz assumed, in place of Spinoza’s single substance with two attributes and many modes, the postulate of “monads.” According to this assumption, the world is composed of an infinity of monads3 (separate individuals). Each monad is a unique totality or substance. It operates from sources of energy intrinsic to itself, through those organs in its domain—knowing, insofar as it is possible for it to know by itself, and striving with all its ability to persevere, to consolidate, and to accomplish itself to the point of perfection. Leibnitz went so far in the individual separation of the monads that he included

3 Leibniz, G. W.: Discourse on Metaphysics and Monadology, (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1992).

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within the monad itself, even the relations between each monad and the others, and between it and the infinite universe.4 In other words, even those “external” relations between the monads take place within the monad itself, in the relations between its idea of itself and its ideas of the other selves. This whole scheme of relations is posited from the outset in each of the monads, depending on the level of self-consciousness that it was granted or achieved on its own.5 All the events between an individual and other individuals, or between these individuals and communities or the encompassing nature, occur in this way within each monad. They occur as the relation between it and the ideas of other monads posited in it—and not in a common external arena, as we may imagine. The difficulty that arises with Spinoza—how to explain the multiplicity that is evident to our eyes within the unity of the world—is turned with Leibnitz into an opposite difficulty. How does one explain the unity amid the multiplicity? How comes about the harmony of these windowless monads (as the knowledge of each is self-enclosed)? How do they combine into a totality of a single world? In order to address this difficulty, Leibnitz had first of all to extend Spinoza’s epistemology. The assumption that the universe is composed of monads that relate to each other externally, that it is factually contingent and does not follow necessarily from the nature of one substance, requires that one add to those truths that each monadic individual apprehends internally and deductively. These additional truths concern relations and changing factual events between it and the external monads, that are represented, as we said, by ideas that appear in thought as inductive disclosures of outside objects. Leibnitz arrived from here at the substantive distinction between a priori and a posteriori truths. A priori truths are given originally to the intellect of each rational monad; the mind apprehends them as necessarily and eternally following from the substance of reason, with which it identifies. A posteriori truths are apprehended through experience, inductively—for example, through scientific investigation of nature and history. These latter are truths that from the standpoint of reason itself are not conceived as necessary. They are merely possible, and their factuality is ascertained by determining the “sufficient reasons”

4 5

Leibniz, G. W.: Mondadology, Proposition 56. Ibid., Propositions 51, 52.

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that prefer the actualization of one possibility over other possibilities, whether these are general fixed conditions (the cyclical continuity of nature) or the specific causes (such as singular events in nature and history) governing the reality under consideration. This epistemological advance has great ethical and religious importance. It opens the way to distinguish between the operation of rational volition, that chooses among all possibilities by the criterion of the greatest good within its jurisdiction (that is the “sufficient reason” for preferring one possibility over another), and the deterministic realm, in which things must necessarily be as they are. The door was thus opened to discerning a teleological and developmental dimension in reality, alongside the dimension of causality that operates in accord with the deterministic regularity of nature. It follows that the world contains aspects whose source is in the divine reason, which established their necessity. It also contains aspects whose source is in the divine will, which seeks the greatest good within the limits of possibility and brings about development in nature and progress in history. However, it is proper to note that according to Leibnitz’s monadology even inductive knowledge, pertaining to the particular truths learned a posteriori, is not able to penetrate into the thinking monad and be known to it as an external truth. As we have said, the monads are windowless, and they know everything from within themselves. It follows that ideas, in fact, are to be found potentially in each monad— conveyed by the faculties of sense, feeling, imagination, and cognition. These, also, turn out to be internal events, in accord with scenarios unfolding in parallel within the monads that relate to each other. This surprising finding indeed brought Leibnitz to the necessary deduction that turned out to be quite fruitful in the field of modern psychology—namely, that people have unconscious or undiscerned thoughts, and that it is possible to raise them to consciousness through investigation that reveals the deeper levels of consciousness to itself. But how is it possible to sustain the requirement that there should be consistency between the reality that every individual knows, both a priori and a posteriori on his own, and the reality in the parallel knowledge of other individuals? The solution to which Leibnitz was driven will appear no less strange and contrived than Spinoza’s doctrine of the one substance and its infinite modes. It is, however, the only solution possible for the difficulty that follows from the basic axioms6 of 6

Ibid., Proposition 63.

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his monadology. In that sense, it is necessary, and we have already learned that whatever is necessary must be accepted as truth—a priori or a posteriori. Leibnitz claimed that all the monads had a “preordained harmony.”7 In every drop, the whole ocean is reflected. Each particular monad carries potentially the ideational representation of all the other particular monads. This is true even though in each monad the representation is in accord with its unique location and rank in the totality of the world. It follows that all the representations of each monad in itself are equivalent to other monads in their objective intellectual aspect. They differ from each other with respect to their situation in the totality and their clarity of cognition and subjective rank. There is an objective validity to every subjective apprehension of truth (arranged on the same foundation of a priori truths), just as there is a subjective validity to every objective apprehension of truth. There is an independent value to all of the monads, each of which is unique and singular, in the reciprocal relation through which all of them together build the one universe. The conception of the world as the conglomeration of an infinite number of monads, adapted to each other through a preordained harmony, is in contradiction with Spinoza’s pantheism. The universe does not constitute a single substance, and therefore it is clear that it is not to be identified with God. On the contrary, the opposite is necessarily the case. The world as a conglomerate of monads, among which a preordained harmony subsists, is not necessary in and of itself, and the sufficient reason for its existence cannot be discovered within itself. Of itself, the world’s existence is only contingent, and it requires prior to itself one monad whose existence is necessary in itself. That monad possesses knowledge and a free, purposive will, that should prefer the plenitude of existence over its non-existence, because it chooses the good, preferring existence to non-existence. It is the source of the sufficient reason for the existence of all the infinity of monads within the limits of the possible, as well as the preordained harmony subsisting among them. In addition, if a person possessed of intellect knows on his own that he exists, and if he knows in the same way that he is one monad of the infinity of monads that comprise the universe, and if he knows—in the same a priori way—that there is a preordained harmony between him and all the monads known to him from within himself, then there 7

Ibid., Proposition 78.

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must be a God. For he knows a priori, as a notion following necessarily from the nature of thought itself, that beyond him and beyond the totality of the world there exists a God possessed of intellect and will on whom his existence, such as it is, depends. Not only that, but he also finds the idea representing God as an idea implanted within him in advance; and he knows on his own that this idea of God, implanted in him, is the ideal of perfection toward which he must strive out of the volitional preference to grow in wisdom and to be as good as he possibly can. Leibnitz reconstructed in this way the traditional religiousphilosophical proofs for the existence of a transcendent personal God who is other, unitary, and eternal. He is a God who is the Creator inasmuch as He is the intellectual and volitional cause of the world and all its orders. In that respect, He is indeed the legislator, commander, supervisor, and governor of reality in all its details, in nature and in history. This is by the necessity of His wisdom on the one hand, and by His will, that prefers the good insofar as possible, on the other. These determinations constituted a justified basis for a philosophical explanation of all that exists, in nature and history, in accordance with God’s wisdom and will, despite all the evil that persists in them. In his influential book, Theodicy, Leibnitz took on the task of demonstrating that the world as we know it is “the best of all possible worlds.”8 He did this despite the existence of evil (which Leibnitz, like Maimonides, defined as an “absence” or “privation,” yet without ignoring the reality of the suffering associated with it).9 He found consolation for the

8 Leibniz, G. W.: “Essays on the Justice of God and the Freedom of Man in the Origin of Evil” in Philosophical Essays (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1989), Proposition 8. 9 The “privative theory” of evil as non-existence was standard in the majority of medieval Western thinkers and had its roots in Plato and especially Neoplatonism. “Underperformance” would be a modern paraphrase. All existing beings strive for their proper state of “perfect being” defined according to their type: an elephant strives to be a perfect elephant, a human a perfect human, and so on. All fall short of perfection, and in that sense “exist” (according to the standard of their type) less fully than if they perfectly realized it. The human who is only 50% percent “perfect” is by that token only 50% “existing,” relative to the standard of perfect human existence. The “evil” is then the measure of the deficit, and is therefore the measure of what portion of ideal humanity a person fails to represent. Evil is thus the measure of his relative non-existence. Insofar as he exists (and manifests the ideal), he is good; his evil is thus non-existence. Since God only creates being (that which exists insofar as it exists) and evil is nonexistence, it was therefore classically claimed that God does not create evil.

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suffering of existing in the terrestrial world in the knowledge that the limits of the good in the world are given to a perpetual and continual process of development and perfection. In his view, existence in the world is making continual progress in two respects. First, the monads (that God, in His eternal will, desired should exist) do not return to non-existence at their death. Instead, they ascend from the present sphere of their existence to a higher sphere of existence, reaching toward infinite perfection. We should take care to stipulate in this connection that in Leibnitz’s view one should speak of complete continuity of the monadic identity in the transition from one sphere to the next. Each of them is intrinsically necessary. It is impossible to skip over any monad, but one must extract the fullest possible perfection and happiness from it as preparation to the next stage. This will mean that there will be no opposition between terrestrial success in this world and the felicity designated in the sphere serving as “World to Come” after it. Second, terrestrial nature in its proper sphere of existence continues to develop in its knowledge of itself and of the world, in its ability to derive from itself the potential good that is latent in it, and in its moral progress. We finally note, however, that Leibnitz’s theodicy and his holding fast to religious truth as an ideal of human perfection and a source of human transcendence does not stand in contradiction to his terrestrial objectives and pursuit of terrestrial success and happiness. Nor does it contradict the intensification of scientific research in full agreement with the modern scientific revolution. On the contrary, according to his method, there is full continuity and preordained harmony between worldly ideals and the ethical-spiritual ideals of religion. Therefore there is no contradiction between inductive scientific research based on causal determinism in reality, as necessitated by divine wisdom, on the one hand, and philosophical-religions inquiry uncovering the teleological volition operating in nature and history, stemming from the divine will on the other hand. On the contrary, they complement each other and shape reality together. It is easy to understand, from this the final conclusion, that there does not need to be any contradiction between religion and the secular state, if each of them preserves its sovereignty in its proper domain and does not deviate from it. Religion is in the domain of faith, ritual, and moral-spiritual education, and the secular state in the domain of legislation and political leadership in its worldly functions. Furthermore, the two are dependent on each other and complement each

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other. This is based on the condition that scientific and philosophical understanding should be the compass determining the direction and methods of activity of each. Of course, it is the religious philosophy here presented that needs to be the suitable compass. Moses Mendelssohn: Enlightenment, Common Sense, and Tolerance Leibnitz recognized and appreciated Maimonides’ religious philosophy. Despite the substantive difference between Maimonides’ Aristotelian metaphysics and conception of the sciences and those implicit in Leibnitz’s monadology, the two were very close in their rational understanding of religious truth. We should not be surprised, therefore, that Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), grew up from his boyhood with the book Guide of the Perplexed. He found in it the confirmation of his desire for enlightenment and the new philosophy. In his young maturity, he studied assiduously the writings of Leibnitz and Wolff, accepted their more up-to-date philosophical positions. He then sought to implement their path by realizing the philosophical task that he took on himself for the sake of his people and his religion. This was a double task in light of Spinoza’s double attack on religion in general and Judaism in particular. In addition to the general need to defend the independent position of religion in the sovereign state, Mendelssohn had to defend the equal status of Judaism in the sovereign state—alongside Christianity. For that purpose, he had to establish the need for change in three areas: the attitude of Christianity toward Judaism, of Judaism toward Christianity, and of the state toward both of them. This task, which Mendelssohn took on himself as an enlightened religious Jewish philosopher in favor of emancipation, set at the center of its interests the problem of tolerance. This was his life’s destiny, though at the outset, he sought to avoid it and find a way around it. He enjoyed an exceptional position as an enlightened Jew. He was outstanding in his brilliant intellectual talents, amid the general philosophical culture of his generation. He enjoyed celebrity in Germany and in Western Europe from the start of his philosophical career. This thrust on his shoulders the difficult task of representing the Jews in their struggle for improved status in the state, by recognizing their right to preserve their special religious identity.

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Thus, he personally stood in the same situation that Spinoza had stood, but with an opposite goal with respect to his Jewish identity. He did not want to escape it, but to hold onto it while gaining entry into the enlightened state and its culture. From this followed his sense of personal kinship with Spinoza, tempered with opposition. He had to accept Spinoza and reject him at the same time. He was able to achieve this, with the help of the Leibnitz-Wolff philosophical method. As background for understanding his philosophical path, it is proper to note that Mendelssohn preferred from the outset to refrain from direct ideological struggle, whether religious or political, on the philosophical plane. He preferred to demonstrate through his personal example that Jews are able to integrate into the culture around them and to make an original contribution to it. He believed that there is no justification for maintaining divisions—whether social, cultural, or secular-political—between Jewish and German-Christian individuals, because they are equal in their humanity and in their moral value. On the other hand, he had to show that integration without distinction on the universal human plane and on the secular political plane does not require Jews to give up their special religious identity. In other words, in Mendelssohn’s view a Jewish person could be educated and enlightened in the area of humanistic creativity, be a proper citizen discharging his obligations in his secular sovereign state, and still be a Jew fully and strictly observant in the sphere of his religious life. This was the substantive difference between his stance and Spinoza’s. In Mendelssohn’s view, there was no contradiction between being personally obligated to Jewish law and desiring to live in an enlightened, secular state as a citizen observant of its laws and morals, sharing equally in civic rights and obligations. In order to prove this in actuality, Mendelssohn chose to dedicate the first fruits of his efforts in German philosophy to universal topics. There were topics in which the differences among religions and nations do not come up for discussion, such as the problem of evidence in the sciences, the problem of the immortality of the soul, or esthetic theory. These were topics of great interest in his age. Mendelssohn devoted himself especially to this effort, and engaged in fruitful theoretical dialogue with his soul-mate, the German humanistic philosopher, Ephraim Gotthold Lessing. Indeed, the synergistic relationship between these two tolerant enlightened philosophers could be taken as paradigmatic of the message of tolerance that both sought to propagate among Christians

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and Jews alike. But Mendelssohn preferred that the direct ideological struggle for the implementation of tolerance should be conducted by enlightened Germans and not by a Jew like himself, fighting against Christians for his own individual and collective interests. This was liable to provoke opposition rooted in the widespread Christian prejudice against Jews and Judaism. He especially did not want to be dragged into a polemic against Christian positions that would only fan the flames of religious intolerance. When circumstances took shape that demonstrated that even enlightened irreligious Germans such as Lessing were not free of Christian prejudices against Jews, and were not free of misunderstanding of the purpose of his personal struggle for emancipation—only then was Mendelssohn forced to arm himself for the theological-political battlefield. He was exposed to fierce fighting on three fronts. The first battle was against the stereotypes that Spinoza planted in the general Enlightenment movement against the Jewish people and its religion. The second battle involved applying the notion of religious tolerance to Judaism, in parallel to Christianity. The third battle was for legitimating enlightened religiosity and religious enlightenment, against the extreme proponents of Enlightenment who maintained that a consistent rationalist position must negate religion (Spinoza, Lessing, Voltaire). It was also against the contention advanced by extreme religious Enlightenment thinkers, that rationalism by its nature contradicted religion (Hamann, Jacobi). Toward the end of his life, Mendelssohn was forced to engage in personal self-defense against the suspicions leveled at him—namely, that his religiosity was a forced pretense; that his fidelity to Judaism was a deceptive tactical move; and that in essence he was concealing— for reasons of political convenience—a Spinozistic repudiation of religion in general and Judaism in particular. Mendelssohn’s Phaidon and Jerusalem We begin with Mendelssohn’s general contribution to the religious philosophy of his age. It centered on one book that he wrote before his direct involvement in the public discussion over the emancipation. It was a dialogue in the Platonic literary mode, named after Plato’s famous dialogue Phaidon and dealing with the topic of personal immortality.

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This erudite book saw great success in its time. It was translated into many European languages and gained Mendelssohn fame as the “Jewish Plato,” although it was praised mainly for its literary elegance and clarity of style. It showed neither philosophical originality nor Jewish identity. Mendelssohn grafted a branch from the Leibnitz-Wolffian tree onto the Platonic stock. He undertook to prove the monadic unity of body and soul, the eternity of the monad, and the continuity of its life that continues perpetually upward from the sphere of existence that we inhabit to the spheres of existence that extend above it. On the basis of the chain of organic life, which can be discovered in the transitions between the various spheres of natural life (the inorganic, the plant, the animal, the human), he sought to demonstrate that this chain is not broken. It continues after death through a more purified bodily-spiritual quality, toward which we intend by yearning for intellectual and moral perfection in this life. On the other hand, Mendelssohn supported his faith by the enlightened belief in a God who is the ultimate in wisdom and goodness, and who prefers existence to non-existence. God guarantees that our monadic identity, in its unique singularity, finds itself in a perpetual progression of ascent toward perfection, symbolized by the divine wisdom and goodness. This book, thus, attests to the depth of Mendelssohn’s connection to the Leibnitz-Wolff philosophy, while emphasizing the broad common denominator among all the monotheistic religions. There is a basis for assuming that the existence of this common denominator was among the lessons that Mendelssohn sought to impart. He did this by the very fact that a Jewish philosopher was writing a Platonic dialogue, in the spirit of the teaching of a Christian philosopher, in order to provide grounding for a universal religious truth. However, we can return and look again at the Phaidon after reading his other book Jerusalem, which was written many years later—for the need to grapple with the problem of tolerance and the problem of what is common and different between Judaism and Christianity. It becomes clear that by adapting Leibnitz’s ideas concerning the organic continuity of life in the world, Mendelssohn laid a foundation not only for establishing the common elements that facilitate tolerance between Judaism and Christianity, but also for explaining the differences for which he preferred Judaism to Christianity. In any case, reading Jerusalem, Mendelssohn’s most important philosophical-religious book, shows that he found in the Leibnitz-Wolff

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philosophy a special affinity specifically for Judaism, in its debate with Christianity about tolerance. In addition to fostering the idea of the unity of body and soul and the idea of the organic continuity of life, Mendelssohn found it fruitful for emphasizing the unique value of every individual. He was able to apply the distinction between a priori truths and a posteriori truths in two ways. There were certain a posteriori truths that we discover in the cyclical recurrent patterns of nature, and others that can be discerned in the singular particularity of historical events.10 He invoked the latter kind in support of establishing Judaism’s outlook on tolerance, against the intolerance that in his view was fundamentally rooted in Christianity.11 It was the business of tolerance, in Mendelssohn’s view, to grant mutual legitimization to faiths that were different from each other, each having its own particular historical existence. Interfaith tolerance presupposes that different religions have common elements that are comprised in the definition of religion as such. But just as the definition of humanity encompasses all human beings, each of whom is a singular monad in its unique particularity, so too nations and religions are the same in their universal definition but unique in their respective essences and qualities. Qualitatively unique entities such as these are not subject to debate or preference one over the other, but only to being accepted respectfully as they are. In other words, every religion—if it lives up to the elements of its definition in this respect— should be accepted as true in its singularity for its believers. It is the obligation of all believers in every religion to recognize and respect the truth of other people’s religions, on the same basis that they prefer their own religion for themselves.12 Leibnitz’s monadological individualism, and his distinction between eternal a priori and a posteriori truths, on the one hand, and unique historical truths on the other, seemed to have been created especially for the establishment and implementation of this outlook on tolerance.13 Mendelssohn sought to show that Judaism, which had been prevented historically from engaging in proselytizing conversion, was built on tolerance, whereas Christianity, which claimed absolute exclusivity, tended to oppose it.

10 11 12 13

Mendelssohn: Jerusalem ( Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 1983), 90–91. Ibid., 89–90. Ibid., 89. Ibid., 90–93.

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We must therefore inquire what the definition that unites all religions is, and what are the qualities that distinguish them. For this need, we should first determine what tools lie at our disposal for making enlightened distinctions. Mendelssohn’s philosophical rationalism was expressed in his prior determination that it was inconceivable that any religion, as such, should determine and demonstrate the truths that define it. This should be done on the basis of those supra-rational and particular prophetic revelations that differentiate the religions one from another. If religious truth, as such, is a universal value, whose knowledge constitutes a necessary condition for the life and happiness of human beings insofar as they are human, then both their nature and the absolute goodness of the God who created them necessitate that it be implanted from birth within every human being. This, then, is an a priori determination, in the spirit of Leibnitz’s religious philosophy: in both of their views, the human being is a religious creature by his nature. Religious truth is implanted in him and is manifested in his “natural light”—in other words, in the intellect that distinguishes him from other natural creatures. It is clear that these assertions are the broad rationalistic common denominator between Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Mendelssohn. However, they also contain the sharp cleavage between the latter two and Spinoza in their manner of presentation, as well as the difference between Mendelssohn and Leibnitz. Leibnitz agreed with Spinoza in preferring Christianity over Judaism on rationalist grounds. At this point Mendelssohn parted ways with Leibnitz, reverting to the Jewish rationalist tradition from Saadia to Albo, which rejected certain elements of Christian dogma on the basis of rational argument. Mendelssohn’s Disagreements with Spinoza and Lessing The clear verdict on this tangled issue is found in Mendelssohn’s last philosophical work, Morgenstunden (Morning Lessons), which is a detailed debate with Spinoza.14 In Jerusalem, Mendelssohn had consistently refrained from mentioning the name of this famous heretic, although he knew (or maybe because he knew) that some suspected him of being

14 Moses Mendelsohn, “Morgenstunden” in: Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Leo Strauss (Stuttgart: Friedrich Fromm Verlag, 1974).

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his secret disciple. But here he dealt directly with the issue, which constituted a methodical basis for a philosophy of Judaism whose axioms were assumed in Jerusalem. Mendelssohn’s agreement with Spinoza is expressed in the conclusion that man has no way of knowing worldly or metaphysical truth except the natural light of his reason. The point of disagreement is on the question of the relation of reason and faith.15 We emphasize again that in Mendelssohn’s view this question is of central importance, both from the standpoint of defending religious truth generally and of the debate between Judaism and Christianity. We saw that according to Spinoza, there is a substantive difference between knowledge and faith. Knowledge is the final product of systematic rational examination, whereas faith is “irrational certainty”— certainty whose source is in the emotions and imagination, which were not examined but articulated to satisfy the demands of the passions. From the standpoint of reason, according to Spinoza, faith is a passive accommodation to the blandishment of the passions whose source is in a person’s bodily existence. Mendelssohn, by contrast, argued that in Christianity there is a basis for defining faith as a category opposed to knowledge, but this distinction is foreign and contrary to the understanding of faith in the Hebrew Bible. According to Mendelssohn, Christianity posited faith in itself as the supreme religious value that exclusively leads to salvation. The source of this postulate was in Christian mystical dogma—especially, the belief in Jesus as Son of God. This is based on the incarnation of God in a flesh-and-blood human being, which not only transcends the comprehension of human intellect but also contradicts its a priori assumptions. This is thus a truth of which one can never have knowledge, and therefore one is required simply to believe in it in order to be saved through it. In Judaism, too, there are indeed supra-rational truths, in the sense that they cannot be explained except by the revelation of God’s will (such as the revelation at Sinai), but there is no doctrine that contradicts rational truth.16 This means that according to Mendelssohn’s theory of Judaism, there are two kinds of knowledge: scientific, based on causal determinism, and supra-scientific—based on moral volition. If we return to Leibnitz’s concepts, scientific knowledge has to do with universal

15 16

Ibid., 105. Mendelssohn, M.: Jerusalem (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 1983), 89–90.

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eternal truths, whether they are a priori or a posteriori, whereas faith has to do with singular particular truths, i.e., historical truths.17 The source of historical truths is in immediate experience, the same as in the natural sciences. However, because we are speaking of singular facts which cannot be subjected to empirical verification through repetition (unlike the sciences), we can only rely on them on the basis of the testimony of the people of that time who experienced them. The certainty of historical knowledge is based on the reliability of its transmitters and the faith of its recipients. If so, according to Judaism, faith is the certainty of obligatory factual truth, based on the reliability of its transmitters. But in itself, faith is intellectual in the same sense that empirical science is intellectual. It, too, is based on a judgment of reliability of the facts and theoretical weighing of their reasonableness and their significance within their context. (It is easy to show that Mendelssohn based this conclusion on the tradition of Jewish philosophical rationalism from Saadia through Maimonides and his disciples). In summary, according to Mendelssohn, religious truth is based from the universal side on knowledge of eternal truths implanted in human reason, and from the particular side on belief in the factuality of historical revelations. However, it is clear that these conclusions necessitate a fresh examination of the relationship between philosophy and religion. The “natural light” that Mendelssohn analyzed, and through which he verified the truths of religion, is the same “natural light” that was a defining characteristic of human beings as such—in other words, the “natural light” with which all human beings free of mental disability were endowed. But, it was clear that this did not necessarily refer to methodical scientific reason, much less to speculative philosophical reason. Mendelssohn determined that it referred precisely to the “common sense” of every reasonable person. Unlike Spinoza and Maimonides (and Leibnitz), he refused to grant pride of place to science and philosophy in achieving that value which was the acme of human destiny. One’s perfection as a rational creature was expressed, according to Mendelssohn, in one’s physical-spiritual happiness. It was to be achieved in a life of action, in civil society. Also, science and philosophy are only a means to human happiness on earth, not the path of life to be pursued for their own sake. If so, the supreme test of a person’s 17

Ibid., 91.

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rational perfection lay not in his scientific and philosophical accomplishment but in his achievement in what was at once the foundation and the goal—knowing and performing the ethical good. According to this, Spinoza was right in concluding that the words of the prophets, founders of religions, contained exalted ethical truth. He was also right when he maintained that their words contained no science or philosophy. But he was not right to belittle the prophets’ value. On the contrary, moral truth, which is at one with universal religious truth, is the highest rational perfection of humanity, and its realization constitutes supreme happiness. Everything else is subordinate to these objectives, and whoever has learned and realized them to perfection—such as the prophets—stands at the highest level of rational perfection. It turns out that in order to know ethical-religious truth, one needs neither science nor philosophy. One only needs the a priori notions and a posteriori ethical judgments of common sense, based on accumulated life experience and life’s wisdom. These basic notions, judgments, and accumulated experiences are the birthright of every person— but only so long as his passions do not come to cloud his reason, subvert his judgment, and bring him at times to hair-splitting and convoluted philosophical sophistries that seek only to rationalize his sins and silence the reproving voice of conscience. For that reason, religious philosophy, whose precincts Mendelssohn entered only with marked reluctance, was required only when the compulsion is aroused to defend ethical common sense, on which religion rests, against its philosophical misrepresentation. The ethical teleology of religion is, in any case, the basis for defining the three foundational principles of “rational religion” or “natural religion,” according to Mendelssohn: 1. There is a supernatural power—God—ruling nature, who is the cause of all reality and order, to whom human beings are subordinate; 2. God requires human beings to abide by the moral way, to shun evil, and do good; 3. God bestows earthly and eternal good to those who follow the moral way, and punishes those who pursue wicked ways. Knowledge of these principles—Mendelssohn argues—is a necessary condition for man’s moral happiness. Therefore, God’s wisdom and goodness must implant them a priori in every person’s common sense. It is also worth noting that Mendelssohn’s formulation of the principles

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of “the religion of reason” is identical with the presentation of Rabbi Joseph Albo in his Book of Principles. Mendelssohn did not note this explicitly, but there is no doubt that this similarity to Albo’s “religion of reason” was in his eyes one of the evidences for proving his claim that Judaism was—from its foundation and its roots in its historical tradition—a consistent rational religion. At this point one may rightly raise the question—what need is there for religions based on belief in God’s revelation in human history? What do they add to the truths planted in ordinary human reason? Mendelssohn’s answer is twofold. First of all, historical revelations express the individual experiential paths by which human beings who are neither philosophers nor scholars (and nobody is a philosopher or a scholar to begin with) arrive at the cognizance of these rational truths. In other words, revelations are various forms in which the illumination of moral truth takes place in persons’ individual consciousness, or the way in which they discover that God has implanted these truths in their reason. This argument will become clearer if we observe how individuals come by these discoveries in the process of organized education that leads them to these insights through narrative and experience, not conceptual abstraction. Secondly, the rational principles of religion are generalities. Instead, what people need in religion is a comprehensive teaching to guide their way of life. It should include one’s relation to other persons and to the society, as well as a relationship of the person to God that includes a concrete sense of divine providence and guidance. Clearly, this complex of commandments forms a connection among individuals to each other and to their society through their unique connection to God. It cannot be created by human beings themselves, except through that same revelatory way in which religious truth penetrated into their direct life experience. But the supreme good, expressed in people’s outlook and way of life, cannot be the same for all. Each human community, regarded as a monad in its own right, has a culture rooted in its environment and its history. As each monad is special and unique, so the religious teaching that shapes it is special and unique—designated for it and nobody else. From this ensues the need, constituting sufficient reason, for the divine will to be revealed in different forms in different historical religions: each nation having a special revelation appropriate to itself. But we should mention finally that the common denominator of the principles of rational religion unites all these traditions in a way that

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causes diffusion between it and the particular forms that it assumes in the traditions of the various peoples. It follows that according to Mendelssohn, the “religion of reason” is not an organized religion in its own right from which the particular religions have emanated, as it were. Instead, it is given to each people through its historical religion—finding its implementation in that entire tradition. If so, the question of the validity and scope of application of each religious revelation is raised anew: how does one verify it? How does one determine the extent and limits of its applicability? The first and most general criterion for this validation derives from the harmony between rational principles and other religious injunctions: all persons are equally bound by universal truths. If a religion should arise that contradicted universal principles, it would not be worthy of credence. The state would be right to declare war on it and uproot it from its midst for the sake of the welfare and happiness of its citizens. But if we are speaking of particular historical tenets, the power of moral obligation is vested in each religion in its historical domain. This is on the basis of its special tradition, which is the continuity of historical memory transmitted within that nation from each generation to the next, and only in it. We have an instance of Leibnitz’s distinction between universal determinations of truth and ethics, which are objective and apply equally to all rational beings, and particular determinations which are subjective. The validity of the latter applies only to those who took part in the experience—which occurred to them but not to others—or in the experiential transmission of the memory of that event in a form that allows recipients to participate in the full power of its occurrence. The credibility of the witnesses and transmitters is thus anchored in the persuasive experience of their testimony. It can be valid only for those who received it from their closest relations, those who raised and educated them: their parents and teachers. They will then retransmit it to their children and students. In the course of so doing, they experience the authentic tangible presence of the memory and are convinced beyond a doubt of its positive factuality. It is thus natural that the members of other groups, who have a different common memory, will not be able to penetrate in the same way into the subjective memory of their neighbors, and what they hear from them will lack the power of persuasive factuality. The story of a revelation that occurred to others in a different manner than it occurred to themselves, will appear strange and foreign, impossible and doubtful. This is how Jews view

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the particular traditions of Christians, and how Christians view the particular traditions of Jews. This is the great test of tolerance. It rests on the understanding that such is the status of the particular truths of all the historical religions. They are credible and objectively valid only within the particular historical circles of this or that people or religion. We should learn from this that we should each respect his neighbor’s religion. We should refrain from superfluous debates that cannot come to any resolution. We should share in our common humanity; and for what we do not have in common, “each should live by his own faith.” By basing the demand for tolerance on the basis of ethical common sense and empirical history, Mendelssohn was better able to counter the widespread prejudices against Judaism, which found theological prestige and rationalization in Christianity, and philosophical rationalization in Spinoza and his disciples. In Jerusalem, Mendelssohn directly confronted his close and esteemed friend Ephraim Gotthold Lessing, Spinoza’s disciple. Lessing yearned to see him as a second Spinoza and was disappointed when it became clear to him that Mendelssohn remained attached to halakhic Judaism out of sincere commitment. Lessing’s famous essay, “The Education of the Human Race,” influenced the development of the historical outlook of German idealism. In it, Lessing argued (following Spinoza, and to some extent Leibnitz) that one should consider the history of world cultures and religions in the same manner as the educational development of people from childhood to maturity. Different cultures and religions develop one after another, and they can be imagined as classes in a grand historical curriculum through which humanity passes, as if ascending the rungs of a ladder, culminating in the ethical and intellectual maturity of the sciences and philosophy. If so, chronology, by itself, would require that the Bible should be regarded as a textbook for a rather low grade. It would seem that the Jewish people declined promotion to the next grade, and instead of freeing themselves from the Bible, they became wedded to it through Talmudic commentary, which Lessing found capricious, perverse, and forced. Therefore, it was necessary to divorce Christianity from Judaism, on the basis of the revelation of the New Testament. Clearly in Lessing’s view, as in Spinoza’s, the New Testament was also a far cry from spiritual maturity. It needed more progress to get to science and philosophy; but at any rate Christianity was closer to the goal than the childish Judaism of the Bible, or the arbitrary casuistry

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of the Talmud. Incidentally, Lessing was alluding to the same vision in his play Nathan the Wise, in which he immortalized the image of his friend Mendelssohn. You will find on inspection that in the parable of the three rings, which is the climax of the plot, none of the rings (symbolizing the three major religions) of those that the sage (symbolizing God) distributed to his three sons (symbolizing the peoples of Jewry, Christendom, and Islam) was the genuine ring. The pure (philosophical) truth remained in the hands of the wise father, while the rings were just imitations, or if you prefer, counterfeits. These ideas of Lessing seemed unpalatable to Mendelssohn, and he recoiled from them with a historical consideration that was straightforward and unapologetic. In his view, experience teaches that there is a rather fixed and stable horizon for humanity’s intellectual and moral development in each generation: no culture or religion has ever arrived at perfection. In his view, there are ascents and declines; there is progress followed by inevitable retreat; but the average never rises or declines, and there is no basis for the claim that the later generations are wiser or more moral than the earlier generations. Only knowledge increases, but not the level of judgment or the level of ethical and political responsibility. Therefore the need for religions has not changed; they are necessary in the present just as they were necessary in the past, and so they will be in the future. Only the unwarranted presumption of the daughter (Christianity) towards the mother who bore her (Judaism) seduces her into thinking that she is the glorious heir, and that it is decreed that her forebear should pass away from the world and vacate her place. Truly all religions that pass the moral test of the principles of “religion of reason” stand on a more or less equal level, and have a more or less equal right to exist. At any rate, Judaism is not ethically or rationally inferior to Christianity. On the contrary, if the criterion of tolerance were the yardstick, maybe Judaism was superior to Christianity. It was not triumphalist, nor did it seek the abolition of other religions. According to Judaism, Mendelssohn argued vehemently, all the “pious of the nations of the world” had a portion in the World to Come, and this did not depend on confessing a particular dogma or a particular rite, but solely on one’s ethical standing.18 The time had come that Christianity should remove the “beam” from her eyes and correct the error that (in his

18

Ibid., 94.

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view) impaired her moral and intellectual image with respect to her attitude to Judaism and the Jewish people. Mendelssohn raised this demand in Jerusalem on the basis of the universal common denominator of the religions and out of care not to enter into any debate with Christian dogmatics and ritual. In this respect, we can see in him a far-reaching change from the ethical stance of rabbinic Jewish leadership toward Christianity. Mendelssohn on Religion and State in Judaism and Christianity Thus far, we have discussed the doctrine of tolerance as it pertained to interfaith relations. From here on he discusses the question pertaining to the relations between religions and the state. First, how should one arrange the relations between the domain of organized religion and the political domain of the sovereign secular state? Second, is there place in one state for more than one religion? On the basis of recognizing the unity of body and soul and the doctrine of continuity of the human monad’s life even as it progressively ascends from one world to another, Mendelssohn determined that the state and religion have a common objective. It was to provide the spiritual and material conditions required for human happiness, in this world and in the World to Come. In Mendelssohn’s view, this was a central affirmation that distinguished Judaism from Christianity— that the conditions for human happiness in this world are the same as the conditions for happiness in the World to Come. Ethical conduct and observance of the Law were the basis of worldly and spiritual felicity alike. The correct distinction between the role of religion and the role of the state is thus not that the one is responsible for spiritual felicity and the other for worldly felicity as Christianity maintains. Rather, the state is responsible for the objective conditions necessary for the existence of the society, and thus for the existence of all its members, whereas religion is responsible for the inner subjective perfection of each individual in his or her own right. These are different aspects of the same general mission that are defined by the principles of “the religion of reason.” But for the achievement of each of these principles different appropriate means are required, and this, in Mendelssohn’s view, is the essential difference between the state and religion.

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The state is entrusted with the preservation of social order through external reward for good deeds and effective prevention of bad deeds. This requires a means of enforcement, for whose lawful use by the state there is ample moral justification from the standpoint of consideration of the general welfare. By contrast, religion is concerned with moral education of the personality. It is clear that for this need one should resort only to pedagogical means. Compulsion not only subverts the goal of education but entails consequences that are opposed to it. Implementation of this distinction in the framework of church-state relations would forbid, in Mendelssohn’s view, any interference of religion in the affairs of state and of the state in religious affairs. This would eliminate any possibility of conflict between them, as between the various religions that are active in the same state. The broad common denominator of “rational religion” embraces the state as well. It requires the state to uphold the religions within it, to refrain from interference in their affairs and to prevent them from interfering in its own affairs. According to this conclusion, religions need to operate within a voluntary framework. They do this by the free choice of their adherents, for the sake of the ethical education and spiritual elevation of their members, without resorting to compulsory means, whether directly (such as through excommunication and ostracism) or indirectly (through the state’s grant of protection to religion). Regarding the first form of religious enforcement, Mendelssohn argued that it is a form of “closing the pharmacy to the invalid,” i.e., religion’s forsaking of its educational task. As for the second form of religious compulsion, he said that it not only subverts the goal of religion but involves the state improperly in religious affairs, by departing from its legal-political charter. The concern of the state should be to take care of the objective conditions that secure the social order and the internal and external security of its citizens. It is pledged not to interfere in matters of religious belief or personal morals except in the event that religious teachers deviate from the canons of ethical teaching and teach things that constitute incitement, or disruption of the proper social order, for such deviation is a clear threat to the state. It goes without saying that establishing religion in a voluntary framework would facilitate tolerance and reciprocity among the various faiths that are active within the country. Each of them would fulfill its functions in its own way among its adherents, and would not interfere in other’s affairs. Only the state, representing the rational common

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denominator between them, brings their adherents together beyond the ecclesiastical domain. It is this point that reveals in full force the difference and problematic tension between the Jewish stance, as Mendelssohn represented it, and the Christian stance in its Catholic and Protestant versions. We have already hinted that Mendelssohn presented his conception of tolerance and church-state relations as the original position of the Torah. He thus agreed with Spinoza’s assertion that Judaism never drew a distinction between the objectives of earthly happiness and those of spiritual perfection, which was a condition of achieving the World to Come. Judaism indeed aims through its precepts at the worldly prosperity of the nation and all its members. Contrary to Spinoza’s view, Mendelssohn construed that achievement of true (ethical) worldly happiness is also a prerequisite to entering the World to Come. Furthermore, he indeed agreed to Spinoza’s view that neither the Torah nor the prophetic writings contained any teaching of compulsory articles of faith that went against freedom of thought. However, he maintained (contra Spinoza) that Judaism recognized, from its founding and evermore—even after the Sinaitic revelation—that general legislation could enforce only deeds, not beliefs, opinions, or thoughts, and that enforcement of deeds was the province of the state, not religion. To be sure, in trying to prove this claim Mendelssohn encountered two great objections. First, the law of the Mosaic Torah resorted to severe measures, even capital punishment, to enforce belief in God. Second, the Jewish community in Mendelssohn’s own time held onto the instruments of excommunication and ostracism over matters of faith, and the rabbinic leadership vehemently refused to waive its authority to exercise these instruments. Mendelssohn responded to these two objections with historical considerations. As to the first objection, he responded that compulsion in matters of faith in the Mosaic Torah applied only in the period when the “kingship of God” was a reality, so that there was a complete identity between religion and state, such that the religion was the state. Compulsion did not flow from the religious aspect of the Torah’s law but from its political aspect. It was justified at that time, just as every state is justified in its demand that its citizens recognize the authority of its sovereign and officials, for non-recognition of this authority is rebellion that disrupts the social and political order. Indeed, in Mendelssohn’s view the complete identity of religion and state had been

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abolished in the days of Samuel, when the people dissolved the political covenant enacted at Sinai and requested a king like all the nations. The prophet of God acceded to the people’s demand, and from that time onward a separation was formed in Israel between state and religion. The authority of enforcement was entrusted to kings—within defined limits—while the religion ceased entirely from any enforcement of matters of faith and knowledge. It devoted itself to instruction in halakha, the religious law that shaped the way of life. As for the second objection, Mendelssohn responded that the recourse to excommunication and ostracism stemmed from the necessities of survival in exile. It represented a corruption in need of correction. He wholeheartedly called on the state to administer this correction by refusing to grant this authority to the Jewish community, and on the rabbinic leadership as well by refusing to exercise it. At any rate, the position of Christianity on this matter was the opposite. According to Mendelssohn’s account, Christianity distinguished church and state in their objectives. The state was responsible for worldly happiness, both individual and collective, whereas religion was responsible for the conditions of transcendent spiritual happiness. The Church defined these conditions as comprising binding dogmas of faith and rituals of mystical significance. On the other hand, Christendom combined religion and state for purposes of enforcement. Indeed, the Church justified resorting to forcible means on the basis of the dogmatic distinction between intellectual belief and faith. Faith did not require understanding and knowledge, but only verbal confession, which could be compelled. This compulsion was performed through the agency of the state, and thus was formed the dangerous amalgamation of the educational authority of religion and the enforcing authority of the state. In this context we should add Mendelssohn’s reply to Spinoza’s preferring Protestantism over Judaism and Catholicism, since Protestantism acknowledged the sovereignty of the state. Mendelssohn replied that Protestant Christianity did not forgo its demand that the state should grant it exclusive protection, from which it followed that it did not renounce compulsion when it was exercised for its benefit by the state. Thus, only Judaism renounced compulsion of faith, and its practical commands concerned deeds, to which each individual could give whatever meaning he wished. Even the excommunication of Spinoza, to which Mendelssohn was opposed on principle, stemmed not

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from opposition to his philosophy, but from his coming out against the performance of practical commands. The conclusion that he sought to infer from this discussion was that contrary to Spinoza’s view, Judaism’s original standpoint was worthy of adoption by the state, whereas Christianity should be required to conform itself to this position. But Mendelssohn, for whom common sense was the light on his path, knew full well that in his age such a demand would not seem proper for compliance by most Christians, who were responsible for the governance of church and state alike. It might not be acceptable to most Jews either. Therefore he restricted his practical conclusion to demanding that the two Christian faiths and the state recognize that the Jewish religion—organized in a voluntary communal framework, with renunciation of the means of compulsion over its members—was worthy of legitimation and equality. Finally, how was the Jewish religion depicted in Mendelssohn’s thought? What was its uniqueness, in his view? The answer to these questions summarizes matters that were highlighted in the previous discussion of the theory of tolerance: Judaism is a rational religion. It holds to all principles of the “religion of reason,” and though it contains non-rational narrative elements, there is nothing in it that would contradict the proven truths of science and philosophy. In the realm of scientific knowledge and philosophical truth, Judaism has no commandment concerning faith. It grants its adherents unlimited freedom of thought, for it is aware that it is impossible to command matters of knowledge and recognition of the truth, only to teach and persuade. The elements that distinguish Judaism as a historical religion relate to the following two complementary realms: 1. One realm is historical memory. This can be seen especially in the sacred memory of God’s revelation to the whole Israelite people in the covenantal convocation. According to this tradition, only the people of Israel (and not the members of other peoples) are obligated to fulfill the Torah, which was entrusted at that time to Israel for all generations. They have no moral right to abrogate this obligatory covenant, unless God Himself appears in a similar convocation and abrogates it. Through this historical memory, obedience to the divine will and devotion to His service in deed were sanctified as supreme religious values that distinguish Judaism from every other religion.

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2. The second realm is the content of the Torah, that was given at Sinai in two forms—in writing and orally. Its essential part is a complete panoply of these particular, defined commandments, concerning obligatory deeds, pertaining to personal ethical conduct, moral-spiritual education through symbols and rituals—these and no others. These shape a unique and distinctive way of life for the Jewish individual, society, and community, but are restricted to the domain of religious obligations (leaving aside the secular and political domains of the members of the society). The conclusion that arose from presentation of these matters at the end of his book Jerusalem immediately sparked a sharp philosophical discussion. Some of his readers concluded that Mendelssohn agreed fundamentally with describing Judaism in the terms proposed by Spinoza. Those terms were that Judaism is a legal religion, whose main business is observing the heteronomic will of the Legislator—whether in respect to sanctifying the essential value of obedience to God’s will, or in the detail of the commandments defined in the written and oral Torah. However, Mendelssohn interpreted these facts differently from Spinoza. His was an insider’s point of view, affirming the factual and experiential validity of the revelatory event, as well as the emotional, moral, and experiential richness to be found in observing the mitzvot. From this vantage point, Mendelssohn, unlike Spinoza, sought to show that heteronomic devotion to service to God through fulfillment of the mitzvot entails no surrender of intellectual freedom, no compromise with ethical values that constitute the essential function of religion, and above all no segregation in the secular social and political spheres. In its unique methodical way, the Jewish religion is apt to fulfill its educational-ethical role in the framework of the enlightened state in a more perfect way than Christianity, and it is fit to be an example of tolerance to the other religions. This was the start of a dialogical confrontation—the likes of which had not taken place before the Enlightenment—between Christian and Jewish religious philosophy. Each tradition was faced with challenges to redefine the place of religion in the state, in the society, and in modern secular culture. The symmetrical dependence between the two religions and everything bound up with their relationship in the past—the wonder, the fears, the prejudices, the suspicion and attraction of the foreign neighbor—were awakened again against a historical backdrop. This necessitated turning the eternal polemic of

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the past into a dialogue that strove toward mutual understanding and tolerance. A sharp debate broke out around Mendelssohn’s positing Judaism against Christianity as the rational religion of commandments vis-à-vis the religion of mysteries. Against the backdrop of philosophical agreement and disagreement with Spinoza, it generated echoes and internal and external debates for the whole duration of the history of Jewish religious philosophy down to our own day.

CHAPTER THREE

CHALLENGE OF THE IDEALIST REVOLUTION IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT: RELIGION IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF IMMANUEL KANT Reason Addressing Religion’s Perennial Questions Signs of subversion of the Enlightenment as established by Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Wolff, and signs of the idealist revolution that took place in the German Enlightenment, were already in formation when Mendelssohn wrote his two last philosophical works, Jerusalem and Morning Lessons. The last was written as an impassioned response to the philosophical and personal attack of the religious Romantics Friedrich Jacobi and Georg Hamann against the rationalists of the Enlightenment in general, and against Lessing and Mendelssohn in particular.1 Jacobi and Hamann presented Mendelssohn and Lessing as secret disciples of Spinoza, digging secretly under the foundations of Judaism and Christianity together. Before he was free to respond to these arguments, there appeared Kant’s revolutionary philosophical work Critique of Pure Reason, that ousted the Leibnitz-Wolff philosophy from the German academy and would eventually enthrone in its place the idealist philosophy—established by him and by his principal disciples and critics: Fichte, Maimon, Hegel, and Schelling. Jacobi and Hamann argued that every rationalistic philosophy, as such, is anti-religious in its essence, and that it is completely absurd to speak of faith and reason as of two sides of the same coin. Thus, they rejected out of hand Mendelssohn’s doctrine of tolerance and subverted his life’s hope—to combine Judaism with the Enlightenment and to integrate it into the fabric of modern humanist culture without surrendering its identity.

Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Über die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herrn Moses Mendelsohn, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009); Johann Georg Hamann, “Golgatha und Scheblimini. Von einem Prediker in der Wüste”, (Gütersloh: Brockhaus Verlag, 1999). 1

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Kant had been among the many responders to Jerusalem; he related to Mendelssohn with admiration which followed from the latter’s essential identification with the Enlightenment and with humanism. But Kant regarded as strange and self-contradictory Mendelssohn’s desire to combine emancipation with preserving the religious-halakhic Jewish identity. In Kant’s major philosophical work, he undermined the epistemological foundations of all his predecessors, including Leibnitz, thus in effect pulling the philosophical rug out from under Mendelssohn’s project.2 As we said, in Morning Lessons Mendelssohn defended himself, Lessing, and to a certain extent also Spinoza from the charge of secret heresy, and sought to demonstrate that Spinoza’s pantheism was only a philosophical error committed in all innocence by a man whose exalted ethical conduct was worth the testimony of a hundred witnesses to the purity of his faith. Thus, Mendelssohn sought to reassert his fundamental premise, that religion and reason complement each other, and that Judaism is in every respect a purely rational religion. However, Mendelssohn did not attempt to respond to Kant’s critical challenge. He acknowledged that he had not the strength to come up with new arguments to grapple with the idealist revolution. Thus, he cleared the stage and left it for those who would come after him. In any case, from that point on, every new philosophical attempt to reconstruct the enlightened Jewish stance of Mendelssohn—a combination of faith and reason, together with defense of Judaism’s uniqueness through its integration in the enlightened state and humanistic culture—had to contend on the basis of the idealistic foundation that Kant and his disciples laid. Just as the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle (and their Arab followers Avicenna, Averroes, and others) was absorbed into medieval Jewish religious philosophy, and just as the philosophy of Leibnitz and Wolff was absorbed as the foundational layer of Mendelssohn’s Jewish religious philosophy, so the idealism of Kant and his two greatest disciple-critics, Hegel and Schelling, was absorbed as the foundational layer of the Jewish religious philosophy

2 In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant refuted all proofs for God, immortality of the soul, and freedom of the will as hubristic pretensions of reason exceeding its proper boundaries (though he later went on to reaffirm them as postulates of practical reason in Critique of Practical Reason).

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that was created from Mendelssohn onward. It is therefore fitting that we offer first a presentation of their philosophical teachings from the standpoint of their relation to religion in general and Judaism in particular. Earlier, we described Spinoza’s philosophy of religion as a prototype of “philosophy of religion,” and Leibnitz’s as a prototype of “religious philosophy” in their modern sense.3 However, these were retrospective descriptions, as Spinoza from his standpoint and Leibnitz from his did not have recourse to these concepts. Their methodological definition was an expression of the need that was generated out of the idealistic revolution in Kant’s epistemology. Indeed, his book Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone is the first philosophical work that was written intentionally as “philosophy of religion” in its full modern sense. Philosophy of religion in the modern sense is a part of “method.” Its interest is to provide a unified, comprehensive, rational, and critical consideration of all domains of knowledge and human creativity, on an epistemological basis, with the method that this requires. Kant’s book on religion was in fact the fourth and final part of his method. We should therefore examine it within the general framework of the “method,” on the basis of the revolutionary epistemology that was presented in the Critique of Pure Reason, and similarly on the basis of the theory of ethics, law and politics, and esthetics, that Kant presented in his next two books, Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of Judgment. We shall show later that in these works Kant dealt philosophically with the key ideas at the core of religion—with the difference that religion deals with these ideas in a non-philosophical way. In doing so, he set the stage for raising the question of the special function of religion and offering a solution in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant offered a basic solution to the dilemma of epistemology, whose source is in the inescapable, irreducible duality between the knowing, willing subject and the objects that are known, and upon which the will acts. Kant’s predecessors in modern philosophy, from Descartes on, including Spinoza and Leibnitz, tried to reduce this duality to the unity of the mind. The solutions that they proposed ignored in effect the clear existence of the objects of knowledge outside it, and therefore their approaches led to 3

See the distinction between these two paradigms above, page 20–24, 32–33.

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contradictions, which they tried to resolve through arbitrary harmonization. Thus, they failed in their efforts to provide a sufficiently solid foundation for the sciences and philosophy, and in that failure opened the door to telling criticism from the opponents of the Enlightenment. Kant provided a critical analysis of the structure of rational thought, its categories and its functions. He examined the relation between the act of knowledge itself and its objects, demarcating the independent activity of knowledge on the one hand and the independent existence of the objects on the other hand. The solution that he proposed offered an exact determination of the limits of knowledge with respect to its objects. In Kant’s epistemology, knowledge, through its own independent categories, apprehends the appearances (called “phenomena”), but the “noumena” (the “thing-in-itself,” including the substance of the knowing “I”) remains necessarily outside of knowledge. These are the limits, both internal and external, which cannot be surpassed. However, whatever can be learned about the phenomena and the relations between them—consistent with the conception of space and time, the categorical structure, and the causal regularity of knowledge itself—is deemed true. Two decisive conclusions concerning religion were drawn in this way: 1. Man has no source of knowledge other than knowing and willing reason, which legislates to itself the structure of its thoughtprocess and the principles of its operation. Reason is the unity of the knower and the known, the willer and the willed, whether it operates through the senses, the imagination, or the intellect. 2. Reason has its limits and knows its limits. As there is no source of knowledge other than the knowing reason, there is no way to surpass its limits. We must thus assume that there are objects with respect to which consciousness remains in a state of question without an answer. The question that leads to the limits of knowledge is a necessary one, but the only possible answer will be the critical determination of the limits of knowledge on each topic. With respect to religion, the conclusion is an absolute refutation of reliance on any supernatural source on which religion grounds its teaching and injunctions. In this, Kant’s view agrees with Spinoza’s: the claim of prophetic revelation is unacceptable. For knowing-willing

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reason, there is no way to accept “revelation” from an external source. Whatever is beyond its purview must remain beyond it forever. This means that whoever claims a divine revelation makes an absurd claim: he knows, as it were, something that cannot be known. Nevertheless, there is a substantive difference between Kant and Spinoza. For Kant, critical reason, which knows its own limits, knows that just as it cannot know what is beyond it, so it cannot deny the existence of what is beyond it. On the contrary—on the basis of what is known, reason must assume that there is a reality that it is incapable of knowing, because without it one cannot understand the cause of existence of those things that are known. The strictures of Kant’s epistemology affect religion as well as science. In the case of the sciences, it raises the question of the relation between the “phenomena” (appearances) and the “objects” that bear them. In the realm of religion, it takes a critical look at the question of the existence of God as the source of the existence of the world and its order, and of the existence of knowers and the objects of their knowledge. This question is more problematic than that of the question of objects and the self outside of knowledge, because God does not appear in the way that objects appear—through the senses and imagination. Kant’s central conclusion in The Critique of Pure Reason was indeed that not only is there no supra-sensory, supra-rational appearance (revelation) of God to humankind, but there are not—nor are there likely ever to be—any proofs for God’s existence.4 As for the objects of sense and the knowing self, Kant concluded that we have intimations of their existence though we do not know them as such, but concerning God we cannot even know that He exists. In this connection, Kant analyzed all the traditional and modern proofs that had been offered for God’s existence, and he showed that they all begged the question. On this basis, he concluded that there is no way to derive God’s existence from the existence and order of nature, nor to apprehend it a priori from reason itself. We do indeed have an idea of God, whose source is in the notion that there must be an origin for the existence

4 According to Kant there are only three possible ways of proving the existence of God through speculative reason: the physio-theological, the cosmological and the ontological. The first two are based upon the third. Kant then demonstrates that each proof is impossible: Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan and Co., 1953), 500–524.

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of the world and for human beings who know the world. But this idea of a supremely wise and beneficent being does not carry in itself the necessity of existence of this ideal object, because existence is not a constituent attribute of the idea, but rather a judgment of its application in reality. Therefore the ontological proof, of which Descartes was fond, also begs the question. In the last analysis, Kant came to the conclusion that we have sufficient reason to have faith in God as the source of the world and the order manifested in it, but we must not confuse faith with knowledge.5 Nor are we permitted to deduce from faith a conclusion pertaining to what is in the province of reason to know about reality, or to what reason must judge as right to will or to do. Reason is autonomous within its limits. This was Kant’s definitive verdict, addressing the central religious questions of “knowledge of God” and the possibility of instituting regular relations between God and humanity: Kant concluded that beyond the idea that human reason creates for itself, and beyond the faith that idea inspires concerning an extra-rational reality, there can be no known, established relation between humanity and God, let alone between God and humanity. Man is limited in his knowledge and his volitional and emotional relation to the reality that he can know and on which he can act, or (in any case) to will to act, and from which he can hope to derive the desired outcome. Thus, the human being is limited in his relations to nature, to human nature, to society, and cultural creativity. This is the earthly realm to which human knowledge and will are confined, by virtue of the necessity of human nature. Within that realm are raised the three universal questions that Kant presented as the fundamental questions to whose solution philosophical speculation is directed: What can we know? What ought we to do? For what may we hope? These three questions are addressed to human life on earth. It is thus clear that if after these limitations religion is left with anything to propound on its own authority, one must search for it within the boundaries of these terrestrial questions. We must clarify if religion, as a separate discipline from philosophy, has any interest in the realms of knowledge, moral volition, and spiritual creativity through which it will encounter the philosophical interest and achieve confirmation.

5

Ibid., 427.

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The foregoing contains the answer to the question of the encounter of religion with philosophy in the domain of knowledge of the truth: religion has no interest in natural science for its own sake. Its interest in knowledge is confined to metaphysical issues. As we said, in Kant’s view man has a rational idea of a transcendental God, the apotheosis of the true and the good. As this is a transcendental, infinite idea, it does not include the perfected knowledge of it—just as it does not include knowledge of its transcendental existence—but Kant did think that we have sufficient reason to have faith in God’s existence. It is clear from this that Kant accepted Spinoza’s distinction between faith and knowledge. It is also clear that there was a substantive difference in their understanding of this distinction. According to Spinoza, faith is a misguided, deceptive view—usually harmful—but occasionally beneficial. By contrast, according to Kant faith can be critical— and thus rational. Of course, this is on condition that the believer knows that he merely believes, knows the sufficient reasons for his belief, and examines carefully the rationality of the idea in whose existence he believes. The difference between Spinoza and Kant in understanding the concept of faith is rooted in a prior distinction that was alluded to earlier: Spinoza’s epistemology was one-dimensional in respect to the definition of the functions of knowledge. It did not distinguish between knowledge and will, just as it did not distinguish between desire and will. This was all part of Spinoza’s consistent causal determinism. He denied the power of human rational choice and recognized only the natural necessity that a person experiences—on the sensory level as desire, and on the cognitive level as knowledge. Thus, in Spinoza’s view, a person acts always out of the necessity of his nature, which consequently clashes with the necessity of other people’s natures. That person may call himself free who knows always to act by the necessity of his own nature, not by external compulsion. The dualism of Kant’s epistemology showed its advantage in this area too. It enabled one to overcome the dilemma of the relation between efficient causality and final (purposive) causality. Spinoza denied final causes altogether, even in the realm of ethics. By contrast, Kant conceded causal determinism—which is the basis of research in the natural sciences—but in addition, affirmed the volitional purposiveness of human reason, which should be carefully distinguished from instinctual desire. Reason knows by the power of self-choice that it chooses between good and evil, between proper and improper, between obligatory and non-obligatory.

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It is self-evident that on this topic too Kantian dualism arrives at a limit that is significant from the religious perspective: We cannot know whether and how free will, which operates for a purpose, coincides with deterministic natural causality, which operates out of causal necessity. The question is: how, if at all, does our will act upon nature? How—if at all—do we realize our will in deeds that impact on objective reality? The question is inescapable, but the only possible intellectual answer is that we know with equal certainty the determinism in nature and the purposive free choice of reason, but we cannot know whether and how these two are joined in reality. All that we can claim—from the standpoint of reason legislating to itself—is that it is proper that the good will should be realized in deeds, and that the deeds should be realized in reality, so that the good will should transform reality in accord with its purpose, yielding a result that is for the good of all. The distinction between scientific knowledge and a will that chooses purposively gives rise to Kant’s notion of rational faith. Faith, in his view, results from the conjunction between the transcendental idea of pure reason and the rational intention of practical reason. It is possible to identify it with the decision of the will to act for the good. Kant invoked the notion of “postulate” in this connection. God’s existence is a postulate of practical reason,6 and the efficacy of our moral will in nature is also a postulate of reason. Our will requires that it attain its goal. With respect to the rational order of the world, the rational ordering of human society, and the rational meaning of human life, it is fitting that the idea of God in our reason should be a transcendental reality. Why? So that it could guarantee that knowledge of truth and willing the good should coincide not just in thought but also in reality. This is the deeper meaning of Kant’s assertion that the cosmic order and purposive unity in human reason itself are sufficient explanation to believe in the existence of God. But it is clear that this assertion falls short of proof. It rests not on the necessity of knowledge but only on moral certainty, which in this respect is absolute so long as our will is directed absolutely toward the good. With this we move on from the realm of knowledge pertaining to religion to the realm of ethics, relating to the religious imperative. It is clear that if there are imperatives, which may be defined as proceeding

6 Ibid., 526–527; also Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Book II, Chapter 2, §4–§6 (Bobbs Merrill, 1956, pp. 126–138).

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from God, they come not from a supernatural revelation but from the human idea of a rational God. Thus, they represent human rational autonomy. The consideration that requires reason to conceive a transcendental idea that unifies the perfection of knowledge of the truth with willing the good, requires also that we represent this knowledge as a transcendental ideal to which human reason is obligated to devote itself in thought and in deed. In other words: a human being is bound to morality not because a supra-rational God “revealed” it and “commanded” us, as religion teaches, but because this is what human will—which is the general united will of all humanity—requires. His reason indeed postulates that God should be not only an ideal but also a real being acting in reality. But this postulate is not necessary for knowing the obligation to realize the ideal of seeking the truth and performing the good. However, it is necessary for hoping that the deed done out of a moral will shall be preserved in reality, such that our good intention shall be rewarded with beneficial results. As with the idea of God and the faith in His existence, so also in the coincidence between this conception of the source and goal of the moral imperative and that of religion, a comparison with Spinoza’s deterministic ethics is instructive. Kant agreed with Spinoza on the autonomous knowledge of reason in ethics as in the sciences. But in place of the causal determinism that Spinoza introduced into ethics and political theory, Kant proposed a volitional theory of morality acting for a purpose. Such a moral theory is not based on causal necessity but on knowing the objective duty that reason imposes on each person with respect to his fellow and society. This lays the basis for Kant’s decisive step against any religion that imposes imperatives originating in transcendental divine authority.7 We saw above that recognition of the absolute objective obligation of the choosing rational will—as opposed to causal determinism à la Spinoza—proceeds in Kant’s view from the transcendental idea that the will grasps as an ideal. This anchoring is necessitated from the notion of the will itself, directed by itself absolutely toward the good insofar as it is good, not for the sake of the subjective interest of the individual himself. A moral will, directed decisively toward the good as such, is directed toward the other and the commonalty, and there

7

Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 635–644.

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follows from it an absolute obligation (the “categorical imperative”). This obligation is the objective imposition of a universal norm given to particular application, toward whose realization every human individual is obligated to devote himself, even if it conflicts with subjective interests that are based on particular motivations that differentiate individuals as particulars. The realization of the rational ideal thus demands that reason (spirit) shall impose on the full personality of each individual in the struggle between his spirit and his physical nature— which is particularistic and egoistic—the norms decreed by the ideal of the good. In this way, the moral will is interpreted as the decisive direction of individuals toward transcendence of their subjective-egoistic individual personalities, so that they will realize their objective-universal spirituality. Since the connection of spirit and body cannot be dissolved, and they cannot be separated, the effort to strive in the proper direction will continue throughout the lifetime of humanity and the duration of history. Ideal moral perfection will always be a transcendental aspiration, and it will never be identified with a final achievement. In this way, God remains the eternal guiding ideal, guaranteeing that we will be able to approach by degrees the realization of the ideal of humanity; the rational individual will be faithful to his human-rational essence only when he finds himself on the right way to his infinite goal.8 This means that a rational person will never identify with himself as he is now, but only with himself as he ought to be in conformity to the ideal of humanity; and he realizes his humanity only as long as he strives for this. Thus, the connection between the human being and God— as the rational ideal—is realized only through ethical deeds between persons, between a person and society, and between the person and humanity. In this way, Kant identified the religious ethical ideal with humanism. The Critique of Pure Reason deals with the theory of knowledge, and its subject is—truth. The Critique of Practical Reason deals with the will, and its subject is—the good. The Critique of Judgment deals with what in Kant’s view stands between knowledge of truth and willing the good. In Kant’s view the mediation between knowledge and will is performed by feelings that aspire to harmony, namely beauty.

8

Ibid., 639.

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Determining the place of feeling between knowledge and will defines it as a combination of sense and reason. Feeling is knowledge of the object that has not arrived at the level of conceptual abstraction, and the will to affirm—or to negate—that has not arrived at the decision to act in accord with it. This would then seem to be a knowledge that has not arrived at definition or a will that has not arrived at consummation. But in the process is thus generated a third end—enjoyment of the very presence of objects, situations, actions. The definition of esthetic sense as a tension between the two central mental faculties—knowledge and will—enables a distinction between the various nuances of feeling, which are different forms of balance between knowledge and will. In this connection, Kant was especially preoccupied with the distinction between the sense of beauty and the sense of the sublime. The sense of beauty tilts toward distinct conceptual knowledge: contemplation of the beautiful embraces its object and examines the various relations that are apparent in it.9 By contrast, the sense of the sublime tilts in the direction of the moral will, and contemplating it expresses an aspiration to exaltation, elevation and transcendence of the self toward the infinite ideal of moral perfection.10 Enjoyment of the beautiful moves from contemplation that embraces a concrete, defined object, a unique entity. It generalizes, but it does not arrive at an abstraction that negates the unique singularity of the concrete: the abstraction unites the plurality of its details into a harmony that does not efface its parts but reinforces and highlights them from different alternating aspects. There is thus created a fascinating equilibrium between the a priori expectation of reason, to grasp unities and rule-governed relations, and the unique a posteriori phenomenality of objects, which cannot be anticipated in advance. The match thus achieved between a priori expectation and its a posteriori realization, in unique and changing ways that always smack of surprise, is the source of the sense of delight and pleasure that the beautiful inspires. By contrast, in the sense of the sublime is perpetuated the same contemplation of harmony, unifying plurality without effacing it and generalizing the singular without its vanishing into abstraction. But it veers beyond the form defined in its finite mold, and beyond the

9 “Analytic of the Beautiful,” in Critique of Judgment (Friedrich, The Philosophy of Kant, Modern Library, 1949, pp. 284–298), §1–§22. 10 “Analytic of the Sublime,” in Ibid. §23.

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balancing fixity of internal relations. An additional tension is revealed— the tension between the finite-definite and the continuous-extendingtoward-infinity in which it is embedded, so that the finite-definite is apprehended by sense or imagination as reaching out perpetually beyond itself toward the unbounded, by symbolically pointing beyond itself. Thus, it expresses the rational aspiration to the transcendent, infinite ideal of the true and the good. It is thus possible to identify the sublime with religious feeling, and this is the key to understanding religious art in the service of ritual. Religion Within the Limits of Reason In summary, it appears that in his three critiques Kant completed the rational discussion of the central topics of religion: belief in God, the ethical way of life that necessarily follows from belief in a commanding God, and the feelings that come to expression in prayer and ritual. It is nevertheless clear that we are speaking of pure, systematic philosophical inquiry, based on reason alone, without admixture of any view coming as it were from supra-rational sources, which are the defining characteristic of religion. In other words, according to Kant, the discussion of the topics outlined above is the fulfillment of philosophy’s self-appointed task, and does not relate to religion as such—neither in terms of its beliefs nor its norms of behavior. It would appear that philosophy is self-sufficient in these areas and senses no need of addition or completion from another source. This is surely not “religious philosophy,” but the questions must be raised: Is there any remaining domain with which philosophy of religion can occupy itself? What can be its special task? For what purpose did he write the fourth book, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone? Seeking the answer to these questions will return us to the comparison between Kant and Spinoza. Religion that is based on principles of faith, on a normative way of life, and on symbols and rituals occupies a unique place in social, cultural, and political existence. In the framework of a systematic philosophical inventory, with the declared purpose of embracing all areas of existence and all domains of human creativity, one must describe and explain on a scientific basis also the phenomenon of organized religion and its functions. For that purpose one must explain the source and significance of religion’s own claim

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that it is rooted in a supra-rational source or in revelation. This task must be discharged in a critical fashion, and this raises the question: Is the function of religion needed in its way for human society? Can this function be fulfilled by it alone? Or can the function be fulfilled just as successfully in another way, by a different kind of institution, rooted in reason? In short, can philosophy itself serve as a substitute for religion?11 We recall that Spinoza arrived at the conclusion that religion’s reliance on revelation proceeded from ignorance and imagination, and was absurd in principle. He nevertheless recognized that religion, as it existed, was necessary for the majority of mankind. Since most people are not rational, reason requires that a non-rational alternative be legitimated for the masses, on condition that it exists under the supervision of reason, so that freedom of thought should not be abridged. Kant, who based himself on empirical investigation following his objective epistemology, and who took note of cultural history as a scientific discipline more rigorously than Spinoza, arrived at similar conclusions not only concerning the function of religion, but also concerning the understanding of its alleged supra-rational origins, its necessity—and the dangers latent in it.12 From this followed a certain parallel between Spinoza’s conclusions and Kant’s as to identifying the religious elements that philosophy could affirm, and providing a rational political guarantee that religion should operate only within the framework that reason would authorize. This political interest indeed was expressed in the research task defined by the title of his work, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone. But it seems that this title points also to the theoretical and practical interest between Kant and Spinoza. According to Spinoza, the task that Kant assigned to philosophy regarding religion was impossible in principle, for “within the limits of reason alone,” religion would cease to be religion. What, then, enabled Kant to take on himself the philosophical task of the critique of religion—in parallel with the critique of all branches of knowledge—yet with the objective of maintaining it as religion under the supervision of philosophy? The answer is rooted in the methodological and substantive differences between the two methods: Kant’s

11 Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 3. 12 Ibid., 142.

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dualistic, transcendental epistemology; his affirmation of the limits of reason, on the one hand, and of its volitional-purposive essence, striving for self-transcendence, on the other hand; finally, his grasping God as a transcendent ideal and grasping faith as a rational postulate, conferring moral certainty. On the basis of these ideas Kant succeeded in finding in religion more rational components than Spinoza had found. Not only the educational task, and not only conferring authority on universal moral values, but also a sense of faith and connection to a personal-transcendent God—which constituted the “religiosity” of religion—were apt to receive, according to Kant, an anchoring in reason. Thus, the door was opened to finding a rational source even for the religious claim—which was irrational—in fact, that a personal God had revealed Himself miraculously to His chosen ones and entrusted His word to them. The idea that offers a bridge between religion and reason was, according to Kant, the idea of historical development in accord with the rational law of progress. If the culture was a creative development whose source was in human reason and the teleological purposiveness understood by it, then the transition that occurred in history—from “faith” in its religious sense to “faith” in its philosophical sense—did not proceed from deterministic causality, but from a purposive will directed absolutely to the ideal of infinite good. However, the understanding of this purpose becomes possible only if one assumes a certain regularity of progress. It comes in predefined stages that cannot be skipped. These are the stages of development of the human spirit that are evident in cultural-historical activity. They form the first stages of the slumber of reason in the senses and imagination, until the full supremacy of reason in all human activities. The transition process from stage to stage can be seen in the spiritual development of each person from childhood to maturity. Aristotle already dealt with this. However, in Kant’s view it is manifested in parallel fashion in the cultural development of each society. Philosophy is created in the highest stage of development. But science accrues gradually; thought becomes systematic by degrees; and precisely the contradictions and perplexities in the plane of knowledge, and the social and political conflicts in the plane of practical activity accelerate the development of critical thinking and the empowerment of the will and ability to apply its lessons. In summary, Kant’s view was that contemplation of history reveals the hidden “cunning of reason” that guides it through wars, struggles,

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and contradictions to its rational destiny. It is “cunning” because in the first stages the individuals and groups that are active in history are unaware of it. The motivations at these stages are instinctual rather than rational, but in retrospect it becomes clear that the rational spirit used them for its purposes. Spinoza did not arrive at the formulation of this idea, although he laid the background for it in his historical researches on Judaism and Christianity. Lessing, who saw himself as a disciple of Spinoza, was the first German philosopher who proposed such a formulation in his essay, “The Education of the Human Race” (mentioned in the previous chapter). Kant, in his fashion, accepted and applied this idea systematically, especially as it concerned the relations among nations and among religious faiths. The philosophical interpretation of religion was undertaken by him in this framework of historical reflection. The task was to discover the “cunning of reason” in religion and to enable it thus to continue to fulfill its task in the name of the reason that was also hidden in the reality of modern culture. The goal was to correct religion and purify it from the anti-rational dross that it contained, in order that it should be fit to operate within the framework of the rational law-governed state (Rechtsstaat) that was in the ascendancy. It was clear from this that Kant’s intention was not to abolish the institutionalized phenomenon of religion in the state, but to correct and purify it so that it should be transparent to reason and should educate its adherents for the advent of reason. The masses were in need of pre-rational modes of expression, language that was not conceptual but imagery-laden and emotional, and religion would supply them with what they needed. But in order to prevent the dangers lurking in religion,13 Kant thought—disagreeing with Spinoza—that it was not enough for the state to supervise religious teachers. Religion itself must be purified from serious errors and perversions that were embodied in its myths and superstitions whose source was in thinking immersed in the senses and imagination.14 Only those ideas that were transparent to reason and amenable to its advent would remain in this rejuvenated religion.

13 14

Ibid., 159. Ibid., 162–163.

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This, then, was the interpretative task that Kant assigned to his book, whose essence was a creative philosophical interpretation, complex and profound—but also arbitrary, and at times nearly forced, to the point of alienness and perplexity. Its main interest was of course on those topics pertaining to Christian dogma and ritual. It is instructive that this theological aspect of Kant’s project, though it was reminiscent in many ways of Maimonides, had almost no influence on the Jewish philosophers who followed his method. Kant’s Jewish disciples took hold of his central philosophical ideas concerning God, faith, ethical obligation, and the sense of the sublime, and found them closer to Judaism than to Christianity. Kant’s Critique of Judaism But in the context of his interpretative discussion of Christian dogma, Kant had to also deal with the question of the relationship of Judaism to Christianity, and thus of the definition of Judaism’s essence from a Christian standpoint. It stands to reason that Kant’s views on Judaism had an influence on Jewish philosophers. This was a central challenge with which all Jewish philosophers after Kant had to deal.15 A correct understanding of Kant’s outlook on Judaism requires that we present it in the context in which it was first published, years before the appearance of his later work on religion. The occasion was the appearance of Mendelssohn’s book Jerusalem. Kant responded to it in a letter that seemed at first sight to express agreement with Mendelssohn’s arguments, but he saw them from another angle. In retrospect, it becomes clear that Kant’s thinking on the relation between Judaism and Christianity and the proper status of Jews in Germany was completely different from the solution for which Mendelssohn strove. To begin with, Kant found in Jerusalem support for the evaluation that Judaism had not progressed even to the level of “religion” in the sense that Kant, according to his method, defined religion. In Kant’s view, from a conceptual aspect religion must possess obligatory dogA complementary analysis of the challenge posed by Kant’s autonomous conception of morality to modern Jewish thought is offered in Emil Fackenheim, “Abraham and the Kantians,” in Encounters Between Judaism and Modern Philosophy (Basic Books, 1973), pp. 31–78. 15

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mas, and from an organizational aspect religion must constitute a church that operates as an institution separate from the state. Kant argues in his letter that if we analyze Mendelssohn’s arguments in depth we shall find that even in his view Judaism came into being as an established state with a pre-rational law, and thus did not qualify as a religion in the sense defined. Furthermore, we can learn from them that the commandments of Judaism lost their obligating force in the days of Samuel and Saul—all the more so, then, after the destruction of the ancient Jewish state. It follows that the Jews who live in Diaspora continue to obey their ancient, outdated legal code out of compulsory habit. This can only be explained as an irrational, servile stance which they perpetuated in their laws, anchoring it in an imagined covenant that was allegedly enacted directly between God—their political ruler—and His chosen people. The root of this petrification is thus in the imaginary, arbitrary, and ignorant character of the Torah to which the Jews are subservient. That is clearly a charter of servitude. It is corrupted by a spirit of blind obedience, which sees critical thinking as forbidden. Obedience to authority became for the Jews a sacred value, without connection to the inner meaning of the laws. Its conditions are extremely stringent. The Jews continue to believe that if they do not obey it they will be punished with the full severity of the divine judgment, which is extreme and absolute; while if they obey, they will be privileged with material reward that (in Kant’s view) has no spiritual dimension. Moreover, the heteronomic law-code of the Mosaic Torah teaches a particularistic ethic that only applies to members of its chosen people whose destiny is to be victorious over their enemies and to subjugate other peoples. Did not Mendelssohn himself confirm this when he argued that Judaism is not identified with articles of belief, but only with practical commandments? Did he not say explicitly that the Jews cannot be freed of the commandments of their Torah without a countermanding divine injunction? Was Mendelssohn then correct in the way that he distinguished Judaism from Christianity? Indeed yes, but Kant interpreted the distinction in a way that favored Christianity. It was Christianity that raised Judaism from the level of a theocratic state to the level of a church which had an aspiration to spiritual values. Furthermore, from the difference between Judaism and Christianity Kant deduced the surprising conclusion that Christianity, insofar as it was a religion, was not rooted in Judaism and its sources, but the opposite. In his view,

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Christianity was founded after Judaism and beyond it. By absorbing Hellenistic elements, it sought to delete its Jewish elements in order to give all humanity a spiritual religion with universal applicability. It follows that Christianity’s ascent to the level of a true religion was a striking case of the “cunning of reason.” Christianity was also far from rational in Kant’s eyes, but it was at any rate closer to reason than servile, un-spiritual Judaism. As we said, Kant was critical of Christianity as well, and in citing those elements that he rejected he confirmed once more the historical and present connection between it and Judaism. He borrowed this idea, too, from Mendelssohn: that there is no positive connection between Judaism and Christianity, but there is a negative connection. Christianity inherited from Judaism the idea of personal, non-rational revelation, and the characteristic of tyrannical authoritarianism that intervenes forcibly in matters of the state. In these respects Kant confirmed Mendelssohn’s judgment that if one denied Judaism, he would thus undermine the foundations of Christianity—which rests on it— and therefore there is, in Kant’s view, validity in Mendelssohn’s refusal to turn Christian as long as Christianity continued to be so similar to Judaism in its negative aspects.16 One should draw the conclusion that only if Christianity becomes purified of the Jewish dross that clings to it, an enlightened philosopher like Mendelssohn would then be able to accept it . . . Clearly, then, in Kant’s view Christianity must purify itself in order to justify a continuing role in the enlightened terrestrial state. It must adopt Kant’s philosophical interpretation of it, and for that purpose must turn itself into a “religion within the limits of reason alone.” But then—would there be any further justification for enlightened Jews, who desire emancipation and are worthy of it, to refuse to accept a corrected Christianity as their religion, but remain obstinately in their Judaism? In his book Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone Kant repeated these same ideas and developed them with a certain embellishment. He thus presented a perplexing and frustrating challenge to the generations of Jewish philosophers who found in his systematic thoughts a great resemblance to precisely that enlightened Judaism that Mendelssohn represented.

16

Ibid., 153–155.

CHAPTER FOUR

PHILOSOPHY SUPPLANTS RELIGION: THE TEACHING OF G. W. F. HEGEL Hegel’s Ambition: Philosophy Embracing All Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” in philosophy was intended to solve the dilemma that was uncovered in the epistemology of Enlightenment philosophy. It sought to provide grounding for its rationalistic tendency and to reinforce humanism with a solid philosophical basis in the sciences, as well as provide a commanding rational authority for ethics, jurisprudence, and independent governmental bodies—while also according independent value to artistic creativity. But the solution that he offered, by presenting a definite verdict of the limits of human reason and human rule over nature, raised a new dilemma in place of the previous. It brought about a profound and continuing crisis that found especially poignant significance in the domain of grappling with the problem of religion. It became clear that the crisis that befell religion in its first encounter with scientific rationalism, humanistic ethics, and political theory, now befell philosophy, which represented rationalism and humanism as against religion. The weakness of rationalism and humanism was exposed in the same way the weakness of religion had been exposed earlier. The problem was formulated anew in the face of a radical choice: Could philosophy overcome its newly exposed weakness, and expel religion once and for all from its position in the culture, in order to take its place? Or should philosophy perhaps renounce its original ambition and rely instead on religion in those sensitive areas where its own shortcomings had been revealed? The systems of Kant’s three principal disciples and critics—Fichte, Hegel and Schelling—exemplified these two opposing directions. Hegel’s philosophy continued along Fichte’s path in its tendency to reconstruct Spinoza’s pantheistic monism through a dialectical thoughtprocess. It led to a more radical outcome than Spinoza with respect to religion. In his zeal for philosophy, Hegel strove to overcome the limits of knowledge that had been laid down by Kant’s epistemology. He

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sought to establish the uncontested authority of autonomous human reason in all areas of social ethics, law and political governance, and in all areas of human science and creativity, by arriving at knowledge of the higher truth that gives a unified interpretation of all reality. With this radical determination, to insure for philosophy a hegemonic status in all areas, Hegel went beyond Spinoza and effectually revived Plato’s totalitarian ambition. In the Middle Ages, religion seized for itself the authority to govern in the name of the truth that was revealed through it in ways transcending the limits of human reason. Philosophy was required to serve religion and had to accept this demand for appearance’s sake, at least in the political realm. We saw that Spinoza did not dare to rebel against religion without paying his respect to this appearance, which found justification in the political realm. By contrast, Hegel thought that in the modern age scientific and cultural development had matured and prepared the tools necessary for realizing Plato’s total ambition. The time had arrived when philosophy could be completely liberated from the yoke of religion and capture the hegemony that was rightfully hers, in order to lead the culture to realizing the possibilities of progress. Philosophy would reveal the whole truth that had been veiled by religion,1 and would raise it up2 to the level of reason. Religion would melt away and disappear into philosophy, like a cloud lit up by the sun shining with all its own radiance and piercing through it. It is hard to refrain from commenting on the overweening ambition and dominating stance that was expressed in the definition of philosophy’s mission in Hegel’s system. His aspiration for total dominance in the realm of knowledge was like a declaration of sovereign ownership of the truth. It departed sharply from the finite, creaturely sense of proportion in the humanism in whose name it spoke. In traditional religious philosophy, such a single, all-inclusive language was ascribed 1 G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (New York: Oxford University, 1977), 329–330. 2 “. . .and would raise it up” (ve-taxaleh). Schweid here paraphrases the key Hegelian notion of Aufhebung, a tricky German word with the simultaneous meanings of “raise to a higher level” and “supersede,” which Hegel uses simultaneously in both meanings. Characteristically, one idea is aufgehoben by being transformed into a higher-level idea, which preserves part of the original idea while rendering other parts of it obsolete. In this key instance, the partial truths of religion are supposedly preserved in philosophic form, thus making religion itself no longer necessary. This notion recurs repeatedly in the current chapter on Hegel, and will occur in the chapter on Krochmal (Chapter 9). Standard English philosophical translations of Aufhebung are “sublation” or “sublimation”; these terms will be used below where appropriate. (See Glossary, “Sublation.”)

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only to God. Rational man could approach it by recognizing the limit that a human being cannot surpass and still live, insofar as his reason is less than divine. Kant reestablished this limit from the perspective of humanism. But according to Hegel, universal human reason is destined to arrive at that level of inclusiveness and unity that traditional religious philosophy attributed only to God. Of course, we must qualify this assertion: Hegel saw the realization of the ideal of human knowledge in the comprehensive attainment of progressive humanity, in “Universal Spirit,” not in the learning and profound understanding of human individuals, even geniuses. Individuals of genius contribute each in his area, but the general attainment is that of the “Universal Spirit” of all humanity. Who, then, represents the commanding, legislating, judging and governing authority of Universal Spirit? The answer: the enlightened Rechtsstaat (State governed by law). Thus Hegel, like Kant, expressed a tendency that to him appeared humanistic and liberal, a tendency that preserved the freedom of thought for which Spinoza had fought. But the dialectic, through which he built the system that reconciles all oppositions and contradictions, harbored in itself also the contradiction between individualistic liberalism and compulsory collectivism of the rational state, which aspires to govern society in the name of the exclusive truth of the “Church of Philosophy.” Naturally, this was liable to be no less authoritarian— and maybe more so—than the Catholic Church, which recognized at least in principle God’s authority over itself. Hegel’s Dialectical Epistemology: The Ascent of Consciousness The intellectual tool that Hegel developed in order to overcome the limits of human reason, as these were determined by Kant, was the tool of dialectical thought. This, too, Hegel inherited from Plato, and he embellished it by grappling with Kant’s epistemology. He based it on contemplation of the “I,” which identified with conscious reason in the process of knowing its objects, and proceeded on the assumption that known reality is formed and develops in and through consciousness and is not derived from objects external to it.3

3

Phenomenology of Spirit, 61–62.

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This conclusion was the instrument through which he intended to overcome the weaknesses in Spinoza’s one-sided philosophy. Hegel gave his attention to the progressive aspect of creation of the truth, which continues through time and develops from reason, in accordance with its own rules, from one stage to the next. Instead of Spinoza’s notion of a single substance with two attributes—thought and extension—he based his method on the developmental dynamic of the creative process through time. He conceived this process as an expressive extension revealing from itself—in a predetermined order— the opposing aspects of reality. At first sight it appears that creative contemplation uncovers from itself determinations of reality that contradict each other, but at the next stage of creation the complementarity between the contradictions is revealed, and a synthesis of the opposites is created.4 In Hegel’s view, consciousness ascends over time from the sensory to the intellectual level. It progresses upwards from the sensory and imaginary notion that generates as its opposite or complement an infinite plurality of objects conceived necessarily as external to it, until it arrives at the intellectual notion that reveals in itself the conceptual categories that define these objects, as Kant demonstrated. As a result, contradictions are generated between the sensory-imaginary notion and the intellectual notion, through which Kant determined the limits of reason. But these are reconciled when the conscious “I” reflects on itself and identifies itself as universal reason, from which are derived sequentially and necessarily both the sensorium with its objects and the understanding with its concepts. All is united through reason, which reveals in itself the lawful creative process that develops through its antitheses. We should reiterate that Hegel’s creative conscious “I” is universal spirit or human reason as such, of which individuals are merely the representatives. It follows that the time of creation is historical time in which human culture develops by exerting supremacy over nature. Nature is first shown as the infinite plurality of external objects, which appear to determine the fate of humanity transcending it. In these initial stages, the lawful pattern regulating the world appears as a totality—a pattern deriving from an unseen external source beyond man and nature—and thus religion is born. But the continuing cultural-

4

Ibid., 67–79.

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creative process transcends the dichotomy between nature and intellect. Eventually “universal reason” will recognize in itself not only the source of cultural creativity, but also the source of creation of nature. As we said, the dialectical method is the instrument that embodies and reveals the developmental laws of creative reason. Through it Hegel examined the history of all world cultures that developed in parallel or sequentially toward integration in a teleological whole striving for absolute perfection. His own age appeared to him as the age of maturation of Western cultures to the level of this ultimate unifying attainment, and he viewed his own philosophical method as the selfreflection of reason as revealed in the history of human culture. We saw that Spinoza, Lessing, and Kant revealed the importance of the historical dimension in philosophy, but with Hegel philosophy became identified with the history of culture. In his thought, historical time swallowed up physical time. In his view, the central determinism of natural science became sublated in culture into the teleological determinism of the world’s unfolding. Culture was an extension of nature, embracing her notion and using her resources in its services. This is undoubtedly a more radical anthropocentric secularization than that found in Spinoza’s philosophy. God, as the totality of existence, becomes manifested in human reason striving for its selfawareness. It is possible to arrive at a more radical secularization only through a dialectical reversal, which is also potentially to be found in Hegel’s dialectical methodology: setting up the empirical regularity of nature, grasped through the senses, as the all-inclusive source of existence, instead of reason. Marx would accomplish this in the philosophy that he defined as “historical materialism.” On this basis Marx sought to present religion as a cunning deception that represents material interests, and to uproot it. Hegel, the idealist, was content, as we said, with the demand to “sublate” religion and to sublimate it into reason, which should realize the truth contained in it and inherit its place. The Progression of Consciousness in Individual and Cultural Development How, then, did Hegel understand the task of religion? What was its place in his philosophical system? What truth did he attribute to it?

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In order to answer these questions, we must look more closely into the developmental structure of historical time and consider the parallel between the general development of human culture and the spiritual development of the individuals who contribute to its creation. Human beings are social by their nature. Hegel adopted this Platonic-Aristotelian view as the starting point of his philosophical anthropology. Its primary significance was that human society exists prior to its members, and it rears and develops them in order to develop itself through them. Every individual carries in himself a creative potential that originates in the community that gave him life and educated him. At the time of birth, this potential for creation is not visible in him. An infant is only potentially human, knowing neither his environment nor himself, and the society, through education, develops the human potential latent in him. It transmits the accumulating cultural legacy to the individuals born in each generation. This is the concrete expression of the claim that universal reason, embodied in the already-created culture, implants and gradually develops its portion in each individual, in conformity to some regular pattern. Let us consider a child’s intellectual development, as shown in his linguistic expression. His first utterances express yearnings, anxieties, feelings of need or satisfaction, in disjointed syllables in which we cannot recognize either self-consciousness or thought, for clearly without words there is neither consciousness nor thought. But in Hegel’s view the reverse is also true: without consciousness and thought, there are no words. We must therefore assume that the proto-consciousness latent in the senses is the basis for proto-speech, expressed in cries of distress or satisfaction, and gradually developing into intentional identification of objects seen in the environment. Potential consciousness is exhibited in potential speech, and from this starting-point comes the development of the speech that expresses consciousness, and the consciousness that is expressed in speech. The next step is imagination, which represents objects in order to preserve them in memory, thus enabling sensory differentiation, discernment, and identification. Sensory awareness is directed externally. It recognizes objects but lacks the reflexive awareness of its own recognition capacity, and certainly pays no attention to the substance of awareness, its preconditions, and its spiritual substrate. A child who starts to talk is not mindful of the fact that what he is doing is “talking,” and he certainly

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does not know what he is doing by talking, just as he is not mindful of being an “I” standing in relation to the objects around him, even though he functions as an “I.” But the ability to point to objects and to himself already carries in itself the ability—which will gradually ripen—to arrive at consciousness. It will enable the child to absorb the language which the adults around him speak, and to use it as they do in order to express himself, to identify objects in his environment and to describe the relations between them. The syllables will combine into words, the words will combine into sentences, and sensory awareness will develop into the succeeding stage of conceptualization. Pairing a word with an object reveals a concept, and the concept embodies consciousness which is reflexive. Thus, intellect reveals itself beyond sensory awareness. It begins to shows itself as an independent activity that is not dependent on the senses, but constitutes their source. When one arrives at this stage, there is awakened the desire to know the surrounding reality and to become oriented in it, to form an organized picture of it, and to define goals within it. The goals come, of course, from the conscious, intending person himself in an autonomous way, and this aspiration will have a gradual maturing effect on logical speech and on one’s cognitive awareness of the environment. The first stage of consciousness was thus the stage of innocent sensuality, which submerged consciousness and the conscious “I” in its objects. The second stage was the beginning of conceptual awareness, which is pre-systematic and pre-scientific. Most human beings who do not develop themselves through disciplined study remain for all their lives at this stage of conceptual awareness. They arrive at selfawareness, awareness of their environment, and external orientation within it. They are not cognizant of the structure of their awareness, or of the fit between the structure of their awareness and reality, which appears to them—through the senses—as external. Just as the child who learns to speak is not mindful of the fact that he is speaking, nor is he aware of the structural principles of linguistic expression, so the adult who has not arrived at scientific awareness is not mindful of the regular pattern of consciousness and the fit between it and its objects. But he is potentially aware of it, and this awareness will become manifest at the third stage—the stage of methodical scientific consciousness—that represents the world through concepts as a hierarchy constructed and unified by causal laws, which consciousness reveals in its own logical structure.

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The fourth stage, of course, is that in which is revealed the unity of consciousness and its objects. That is the transitional stage between the understanding and universal reason, which identifies itself, through all the individuals that represent it, as the conscious “I.” This description of the four stages that each individual potentially undergoes in his self-evolution, which occurs with the aid of the culture in which he is educated, and which is manifested in his personality as the power that constructs it from within himself, also represents the general historical process of the culture’s own development. When an individual arrives at the stage of reason, he realizes that his development was nothing but a representative enactment of the stepwise plan embodied in the culture that reared him up to the level of which he is capable. The historical generalization that follows from this is that the horizon of progress of each individual cannot surpass the horizon of progress that is determined by the cultural achievements of the society in which he grows up. He must first master them, and then he can progress further in continuity with those cultural ideas that have already been articulated. Every person must recapitulate in his own educational trajectory all the developmental stages that his culture underwent up until his own time. Only then can it be determined whether he has the ability to bring forth from the cultural potential that was evident in his own development a creative innovation that will advance the culture beyond the horizon at which it had arrived so far. This means that the progress of a culture’s horizon is not the achievement of individuals, though it is realized with their help. The culture is a collective enterprise that advances through stages, by grappling with obstacles that are exposed differently at each stage. The dialectical development of individuals thus represents the dialectical development of their culture. In the course of their cultural development, human beings are not aware of the rational source from which that development flows. The culture progresses continually toward its awareness of the source, by way of the contradictions manifested in history: man’s confrontation with surrounding nature, the confrontations between competing social forces and between nations. All these are challenges that represent the contradictions of human reason that has not yet become transparent to itself, but in the face of these challenges the culture progresses from one stage to the next, revealing new horizons and thus achieving gradual self-revelation.

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The parallel between the development of individuals in each generation and that of national cultures is recognizable in the transitions from one stage to the next. Culture starts with material production: tools, implements, organizations, and institutions, which function to satisfy basic life needs. This material production is the immediate expression of natural appetites and instincts. At first it seems to result from the encounter of these urges with the external conditions of nature; but it gradually becomes clear that the intellectual ability to be aware of the environment, to become oriented within it, to understand its laws, to organize oneself within it, to fashion tools and institutions, and to crystallize a collective existence with a cultural memory, are not within the power of external nature but of human society. First the spirit of the family, next the spirit of the tribe, and finally the spirit of the nation—when these spirits come to full awareness, they broaden their scope until they are revealed as the one universal spirit of humanity. The first stage, which is the prerequisite for tool-making, is language, which enables communication, pooling of knowledge, and development of craft-skills. These develop and become institutionalized through rational division of labor. From this process are generated rules and laws, ethics, and a system of governance. The knowledge necessary for making and using tools develops into science; skills evolve into technology; crafts develop into art. In all these developments we can recognize the tendency to evolve from activities intended for mastery over external nature—for the sake of satisfying appetites and instincts—into spiritual activity for its own sake: science, ethics, and art. These show that behind the natural instincts for survival there operates the independent striving of the spirit—for truth for its own sake, good for its own sake, beauty for its own sake—which from the standpoint of human individuals only gradually emerges from potential to actual. Culture thus progresses from the sensory stage to the intellectual, from there to understanding, and finally to the stage of reason. Clearly we are speaking of an extended historical process. The lone culture of a single people cannot cover this entire development in its historical lifetime. To fulfill the creative potential of universal spirit, the activities of all natural cultures that have produced original creations are required. Each of these cultures receives the legacy that was created by original cultures that preceded it. It develops what it received and bequeaths its own creation to peoples that come

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to replace those that disintegrated prematurely and passed out of existence. Each natural culture thus has a historical duration in which up to a certain point, it develops and expresses its unique spiritual identity. When we look at the total progression, we can recognize four stages: pre-intellectual awareness, understanding, intellectual awareness, and reason. Indeed, reason is emerging in modern times as the authority that, with the help of the law-governed state, is directing rational secular creativity, which philosophy is uniting in itself. Hegel’s “Sublation” of Religion This conception of historical development defines in itself the role of religion as well. Until humanity had arrived at the highest level of philosophy, which revealed human reason as the supreme guiding authority, humanity had need of a substitute authority on the level appropriate to its degrees of development—first on the sensory level, next on the pre-intellectual level, then the level of understanding— striving toward the achievement of reason. In each of these stages, we see evidence of a reason that has not yet arrived at self-recognition, and that assigns governance to a hidden authority beyond it—an authority that inspires fear and dread. Every human society has relied on religion to establish its objectives, its laws, its institutions, its ethics, its science and art. Religion has bestowed political authority on rulers, and it has mediated between mankind and those hidden powers, whether natural or supernatural, on which human beings not yet in possession of understanding and reason feel themselves totally dependent. But religions progress and change—first unknowingly, and later knowingly, from projection and later from internalization, from splitting-apart and multiplication, and later from unification and synthesis. Through all these developmental processes, religions proliferate and become integrated into every culture, in accord with its unique level and character, representing supreme spiritual authority, until universal spirit arrives at self-consciousness and governs by the force of rational authority. This theory laid the basis for the comparative and developmental study of religions. Hegel developed it on the plane of philosophical

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speculation, in order to arrive at a comprehensive view of the history of culture. He examined the development of the religions of antiquity from the stage of fetishistic idolatry to a more sophisticated polytheism, and from there to monotheism in its religious and philosophical forms, each of which was striving for unity and synthesis in a monotheistic form. By comparing them, and by interpreting the results in accordance with his dialectical method, he was able to explain the differences among the religions in terms of their remoteness or similarity to reason, and to evaluate each religion in terms of its level of advancement toward the rational philosophical goal. Of course, he paid special attention to those religions that had made a significant impression on Western culture, and these were Judaism, pagan pantheism (which was the basis for Greek philosophy), and Christianity. The question of the developmental relations between these religions provided the focus of his contemporary discussion of the social, ethical, political, and cultural problems of progress in his own age. This developed, of course, from the current political agenda: one had to deal with the critical question of the place of religion in the state. The conflict between religion, seeking to preserve the status quo, and the enlightened state—striving to complete its emancipation from the limitations imposed on it by an obsolete authority—had reached its climax. The time had come to “sublate” religion by transferring its authority to reason, which found its institutional expression in the Rechtsstaat (the state governed by law). Following in the footsteps of Spinoza, Lessing, and Kant, Hegel attacked the Church ferociously. He was not satisfied with restricting it, but wished to abolish it. The masses, who had not arrived at reason and still required religion’s consolations, should do so of their own volition—in their private sphere—but in his view there was no justification for granting the Church an official status and legal authority over the citizens of the state. A purified Christianity could, in his view, be integrated within the rich tapestry of social and cultural life. But with respect to the central topic of the present work, we should examine the significance of Hegel’s philosophical stance in relation to the Jewish people and its religion, especially his attitude to the demand for emancipation and the desire of the majority of Jews to become integrated into the enlightened society, secular state and culture—while preserving their separate religious identity.

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chapter four Hegel’s View of Judaism as “Negative Dialectic” 5

From Hegel’s historical-philosophic viewpoint, the Jewish people and its religion appeared as ancient relics that contradicted—not just dialectically—his theory of development. It seems that he was not able to forgive such perversity. He based his analysis on the description of Spinoza, who in his view had the authority to offer an interpretation from an insider’s perspective. From this vantage-point, Judaism appeared to Hegel as a strange deviation, improbable in every respect: an ancient religion that was as if conceived by mistake, and whose time in any case had passed 1800 years ago—a dead corpse that was embalmed in Egypt as in the day it went forth from slavery. But it appears as if it were alive and breathing, fighting for its right to survive, and thus it turns into a serious obstacle to the continued progress of Western culture by the rational scenario that Hegel had laid out for it. There was thus generated an urgent need—social, political, cultural, and also philosophical—to be rid of it, and thus to remove a final obstacle from the path of progress. How, according to Hegel, did the continued survival of Jews who identified with their religion disturb Western progress? The source of disturbance was apparently the unfortunate connection that had been made since antiquity between Judaism and Christianity, that is the tie between the “old covenant” and the “new covenant.” The Christian Church, representing a supra-rational authority and aspiring to hold sway over the state, constituted an obstacle on the path of progress, and it appeared that all the elements that defined Christianity as an authoritarian entity came to it from its Jewish source. It would follow that so long as Judaism persisted stubbornly to maintain a separate existence, Christianity would not have completed its historical task and could not be “sublated.” How would it be possible to demand that the Church be dismantled, if the Synagogue was left standing in place?

5 Hegel’s early views on Judaism are to be found in his Early Theological Writings and his mature views in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (see recent critical English edition, ed. Peter C. Hodgson, Volume II (Oxford, 2007), pp. 153–60). He expressed himself on the relation of religion (including Judaism) and the state in Philosophy of Right, (ed. T. M. Knox [Oxford, 1967], § 270, p. 169 n.) Two excellent detailed analyses of Hegel’s views on Judaism are available in English: Emil Fackenheim, Encounters Between Judaism and Modern Philosophy (Basic Books, 1973), Chapter 3, “Moses and the Hegelians: Jewish Existence in the Modern World,” and Yirmiyahu Yovel, Dark Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews (Penn State Press, 1998).

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In the modern context, the principal difficulty was not in the continued existence of the older, traditional Jewish communities, although these had taken a more rigid posture—if such were possible—than they had prior to the Emancipation: these communities refused to come out of the ghetto. They did not wish, and were not able, to exert any influence on either the Church or the state, and so it was possible to leave them to perish of their own rigidity and disappear on their own. The source of disturbance was thus precisely in those religious movements that sought to free themselves of their Diaspora rigidity and to march forward to the liberal world-view of Kant and Hegel. These movements had the chutzpah to present themselves as contemporary and up-to-date, and to claim influence—and even superiority—over Christianity. Thus, they demanded from the state that it accept them as its citizens without forcing them to renounce their separate religious identity. It was this demand of the proponents of emancipation that appeared to Hegel as a dangerous obstinacy that was liable to block the way of Christianity toward its “sublation” in the enlightened Rechtsstaat. The conclusion was clear, and Hegel expressed it in a striking manner: the struggle of the Jews (who seemed to show an identification with progress) for the perpetuation of a separate religious identity was a continuation of a “negative dialectic,”6 rooted in the original sin of Judaism, which had refused originally to be “sublated” into Christianity with the appearance of Jesus and his apostles, and especially with the appearance of Paul. Hegel, who opposed granting Christianity formal status within the enlightened Rechtsstaat, was especially insistent on denying the Jewish community the status that it enjoyed under the law.7 Indeed it was impossible to force individual Jews, who insisted on clinging to their antiquated religion, to refrain from carrying on their observance privately. But it was inconceivable that the state should 6 “Mind and its world are both alike lost and plunged in the infinite grief of that fate for which a people, the Jewish people, was held in readiness. Mind is here pressed back upon itself in the extreme of its absolute negativity. This is the absolute turning point; mind rises out of this situation and grasps the infinite positivity of this its inward character, i.e., it grasps the principle of the unity of the divine nature and the human, the reconciliation of objective truth and freedom as the truth and freedom appearing within self-consciousness and subjectivity, a reconciliation with the fulfillment of which the principle of the north, the principle of the Germanic peoples, has been entrusted.” (Hegel, Philosophy of Right, §358, p. 222.) 7 He considered recognition of the Jewish community as a group, either religious or racial, an “anomaly.” (Ibid., §270, p. 169 n.)

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grant the Jewish communities authority over their members, while recognizing those members as free citizens with equal rights in the state. This was a contradiction that reason could not sustain through any dialectic: whoever was subject to the laws of a compulsory religion was not free and could not be a citizen in the free Rechtsstaat. In that case, the Jewish community as a corporate entity must be abolished, and the inevitable consequence would be that the obstinacy of individuals to cling to their religion would vanish in a short time. Individual Jews would disappear by being absorbed into the tapestry of life in Christian society, which could then free itself of its dependence on its historical past. But in order to persuade one of the requirement for this stance, it was necessary to explain the perverse deviance, seemingly contradicting the regularity that drove human development forward. How did it happen that Judaism stood steadfast for 1800 years, contrary to the laws of progress, and nevertheless managed to maintain itself? Hegel sought the solution in Spinoza’s teaching, and found it. The strong historical bond between Judaism, Christianity and Islam demonstrated that in its time, Judaism’s appearance in the face of the polytheism of the ancient peoples of the Middle East (as distinct from that of Greece) constituted a modest measure of progress toward reason: the idea of unity was in itself a rational idea. Hegel acknowledged this with great reluctance, as if forced by puzzling historical facts. Judaism, thus, appeared to him as the product of negative, fundamentally misguided development. And indeed, Hegel argued that the progress from the tyrannical polytheism of the ancient Near East to monotheism was caused by an extraneous motivation—the desire to be freed of cruel slavery—and not from an upward spiritual development.8 This

“My consciousness knows itself through and through as dependent, as unfree. The relationship [is that] of the servant to a Lord; the fear of the Lord is what defines it. In any religion, such as Judaism or Islam, where God is comprehended only under the abstract category of the One, this human lack of freedom is the real basis, and humanity’s relationship to God takes the form of a heavy yoke, of onerous service. True liberation is to be found in Christianity, in the Trinity.” (Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Volume II [Oxford, 2007], p. 156.) Yovel comments on this passage: “Again we see the dialectical paradox in Judaism. Only when the absolute is conceived as spirit [which was Judaism’s great achievement, relative to the pagan deification of nature] can human beings rediscover themselves in God; but just when Judaism makes this possible, it (immediately) also makes it impossible, and man ends up as God’s slave.” (Yovel, Dark Riddle, p. 77f.) 8

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fact would result in a distortion of proper historical development, and in the last analysis historical retreat, not progress. The advanced polytheistic religions, which had long ago overcome ancient fetishism and arrived at certain scientific attainments, were basically the deification of the forces of nature, which at that stage appeared as separate powers. According to Hegel’s scheme of historical stages, these crystallized at the stage of transition from sensualism to pre-conceptual awareness. That is to say, the religions of antiquity already stood at the threshold of conceptual awareness of the forces of nature. If these religions had been given the chance to develop according to their internal logic, they would have arrived on their own at philosophical pantheism, which incorporates the forces of nature. But the appearance of the monotheism of the prophets of Israel disrupted this process. The proper development, in Hegel’s view, will be made clear if we consider the course of development of Greek polytheism toward philosophy. This was the positive way to the conception of the inherent unity of the forces of nature. It is also what set the stage for the acceptance of Christianity in Hellenistic culture, through the mediation of the communities of Jews that had scattered through the Mediterranean basin and had started to assimilate. But the Jewry of the Land of Israel and Babylonia remained segregated and kept faith with the idea of unity that had been revealed to the Israelites when they left Egypt: not a synthetic unity, developed from within, but a reductive unity, imposed externally. Indeed, in Hegel’s view the development of the idea of divine unity—transcending nature, rather than within it—was the source of the historical error that turned progress into backsliding. The Hebrew tribes who went down to Egypt and emerged from it as Israel were the first to discover the notion of divine unity, but more out of ignorant opposition to the idolatrous culture that oppressed them than from approaching the truth of understanding and reason. They wanted to be freed from the tyrannical slavery that had been forced on them in the name of a paganism that from a cultural standpoint was more advanced than their own culture. They created their particularistic monotheism not on the level of understanding, that forms a unified totality, but on the servile level of the senses and imagination, which are a throwback to fetishism. They conceived the one God in a tyrannical, Pharaonic guise. In place of a flesh-and-blood Pharaoh, they set over themselves a tyrannical God possessed of absolute external

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authority, and they became His slaves. Here, then, is the original image of the God of Israel, who brought His people forth to freedom in order to impose on them His authoritarian yoke, based on the promise that if they remain faithful to His covenant and obey His divine authority, He will overcome and destroy their foes, and establish His sovereignty on the land that He will conquer for them from its idolatrous inhabitants. The monotheistic God of the Old Testament is particularistic and exclusive, as Spinoza maintained. He does not unify the totality of the forces of human creativity, but isolates Himself in order to dominate and exploit. He does not liberate the forces of creativity but crushes them through the demand of obedience to Him. In summary, the monotheism that developed in Judaism appears to Hegel sensory rather than conceptual, isolating and confrontational rather than unifying, closed rather than open, favoring ignorance rather than fostering knowledge, exploiting the cultural process rather than contributing to it. From all these aspects, the negative exceeds the positive, even if we examine the interests of this people, who indeed succeeded in establishing their state twice, but also succeeded twice in bringing destruction on themselves. But precisely this negative character explains, in Hegel’s view, the Jewish people’s amazing power of survival. Their religion was conceived in rigidity, to a point that choked off all possibility of progress. On the contrary, wherever the impulse to progress manifested itself in them, the fossilized religious establishment succeeded in crushing it, or in casting it out so that it might win adherents among other peoples who were open to the good news of God’s unity. Christianity was of course the most important example of this. It appeared among the Jewish people on the verge of the destruction of the Second Temple. It was intended to save the people from the fate they had brought on themselves, but the rabbinic establishment succeeded in crushing the salvific movement and casting out its founders. The new movement developed and quickly became the ruling religion among those peoples into whose midst the Jews were exiled after the destruction of their land. Against the backdrop of Hellenistic culture, which had created a basis for a pantheistic monism, Christianity developed as a compromise position between the idea of a transcendent God, providing unity through external compulsion, and a pantheism represented by the status given to Jesus as the mediating “Logos” between God and humanity.

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The rest of the story was already told earlier: Christianity did not free itself entirely from Judaism’s negative legacy, but it compromised with it and became crystallized as a Church striving for supra-rational, authoritarian dominance. In order to dismantle it, it was necessary first of all to dismantle Judaism, which would be for the good of the Jews themselves. The Emancipation should emancipate the Jews first of all from their Judaism, for it is the true source of their misfortune. Spinoza’s challenge to modern Judaism was intensified through Hegel’s teaching in all its aspects: political, social, cultural, religious, and philosophical. If one could demonstrate that Kant’s philosophy was closer to Judaism than to Christianity, despite Kant’s view to the contrary, it would appear that accepting Hegel’s teaching would entail the absolute rejection of the Jewish people’s religious identity. Yet, Hegel’s notion of historical progress was extremely attractive to the young generation of Jews seeking emancipation. They came after Mendelssohn and were convinced that his program had failed. To the members of this generation, who had already shown great willingness to assimilate in order to be deserving of equal rights and freedom, Hegel’s extreme consistency in developing the secular idea seemed to carry great promise. The question was, whether it was possible to correct somewhat Hegel’s blatant prejudice against Judaism and to demonstrate that—despite the master’s negative opinion—Judaism was indeed capable of identifying with the Hegelian outlook and becoming “sublated” into it, more than Christianity.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE PHILOSOPHICAL RETURN TO RELIGION AND MYTH—THE PHILOSOPHY OF F. W. J. SCHELLING Schelling, Philosopher of Romanticism The scholars of the history of German philosophy have placed Schelling in the German Romantic movement that arose as a reaction to Enlightenment rationalism, even though throughout his philosophical career he continued to follow the philosophical path that took its starting-point from Kantian idealism, and like Hegel he regarded Spinoza as one of his most important guides. Romanticism expressed a variety of motivations. It reflected, in part, the defensiveness of traditional social political and cultural institutions that had been attacked by the Enlightenment and were forced to modernize in order to fight back. It also represented the aspiration of society, that remained religious but in an enfeebled state, to renew itself and flourish. It voiced, too, the disappointment of sectors of the society, that had welcomed the proclamations of rationalism and secularization, with the actual achievements these had brought, or with the spiritual prices that one had to pay for them. Finally, it expressed the positive need to advance the progress of the new philosophy through in-depth grappling with the different aspects of the life of the spirit, which rationalism—and even idealism—had left as a “dead zone” because of their dogmatic dismissal of the supra-rational, existential aspects of human life. Schelling belongs to the Romantics of the last type, and this seems to have been one of his advantages and a reason for his continuing influence. He did not arrive at Romanticism from disillusionment with rationalism and idealism, but from dissatisfaction with their achievements, which in themselves seemed to him valid and even important. He quickly came to recognize that the failure of idealistic philosophy in its attempt to overcome the limits of knowledge stemmed from its sweeping dismissal of the legacy of traditional religious philosophy. In his view, idealism neglected important positive elements of this legacy, which had incorporated into itself the truths of religion. Thus, idealism

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stultified itself in carrying out its task as the philosophy of the culture. The conclusion was that it was necessary to reconnect the severed threads of continuity to the prior point of origin in order to overcome the stumbling-blocks. Of course, in this way too, Schelling expressed the Zeitgeist of Romanticism: returning home, in order to reveal it in a more positive light than it had appeared when one first set out to the new vistas of modernity. Now the traditional home of religion looked like an attractive destination and a milestone of progress, while the capitals of secularity evinced sealed horizons and aroused a feeling of isolation and bereavement. Traditional religion—and beyond it the memories of the pagan religions that had preceded Judaism and Christianity, that had been stored away in the attic of European cultural awareness—were now conceived as the burning fire on the hearth at the center of the home, the source of its light and warmth. Enlightenment rationalism had broken out from the fortress of religion as one breaks out of prison, with the desire to tear down the walls. Kant (and all the more Hegel ) fought against religion “beyond the limits of reason”; whereas Romanticism discovered that this was no prison but a home, and that the treasures of the spirit, stored in its many stories, were sources on which Romanticism could draw in order to domesticate the secular space conquered by the Enlightenment. Schelling was not the only one, and not the first, who expressed this spirit of the times in philosophy. At the start of his career of many stages and transitions, he was subject to the influences of his predecessors and colleagues. But all scholars of German philosophy agree that he was the most important figure of that school whose influence outlived his generation and bore the most fruit in the twentieth century, when the homecoming movement experienced a revival and continuation. A number of qualities explain his stature and unique influence. First was the unusual creativity that poured forth from him, in quantity, variety, and inspiration. Second was the soul-satisfying architectonic beauty of his works. Finally, his unique biographical trajectory established his personality and teaching in a unique position in the history of modern philosophy. Philosophers commonly work throughout their careers in the framework of a single system. They may introduce slight changes in their programs and views, but these are mostly piece-meal revisions that do

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not require reconstructing the whole system. But Schelling developed a new system in nearly every one of his major works. This does not mean that his views flip-flopped repeatedly. On the contrary, his own perception was that he was growing, not changing. But every philosophical discovery that he made by way of transition from one stage of deliberation to another required, in his view, the effort to rethink the whole system from the ground up. Thus, he established a developmental progression in which each stage followed naturally from its predecessor yet stood on its own as a complete method. In this way, Schelling imparted to his disciples not just one method, but several, each of which was designed to be the jumping-off point that could be taken in several directions and these were sometimes different from the direction that he himself preferred. In other words, it was possible to learn from Schelling and to be influenced by him in varying, even opposing ways. We should nevertheless emphasize that the entire enterprise was united by one motivation and goal. Schelling consistently strove to make use of the latest achievements of rationalism and idealism in order to arrive again at the foundations from which they had cut themselves off—not just religion, but (in Schelling’s view) what religion at bottom expressed: nature itself, the primal forces in which humanity’s real life in the world was rooted. Schelling yearned to return to nature, in order to renew creative spiritual life from it. In his view, philosophy too must be creative life-wisdom, not an abstract intellectual structure divorced from reality. The aspiration to restore philosophical abstraction to natural living united all the phases of Schelling’s philosophical production and was expressed in the unflagging creativity that was manifested in it. Schelling did not originally define this aspiration in religious terms. At first he sought a way to overcome the dichotomy between “phenomena” and “things-in-themselves” in Kantian epistemology, in order to arrive at that Nature that transcended natural science. But one might say that the yearning expressed in seeking the way to live with Nature herself, was already infused with religiosity. In any case, the path that he took toward the sources of religious life was not, in his view, a retreat from the latest achievements of science and rational philosophy. It was rather completing the circle that had started insetting out from religion, in order to return to it as keeper of the eternal flame of supra-rational life—by way of the vestibule of reason. In order to understand Schelling’s influence, one must emphasize the parallel-of-opposites between him and Hegel. Both took the current

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philosophy of Kant and Fichte as their starting-point. Both apparently veered in the same philosophical direction dictated by the challenge of Kantian epistemology: to return from subject-object dualism back to philosophical monism, by introducing the necessary adjustments to Spinoza’s pantheistic philosophy. But in the course of identifying these deficiencies, a dichotomy of approaches emerged that turned into a confrontation. Hegel found the goal of philosophy in philosophy itself; he strove to build a comprehensive system that should embrace all existence and identify ideal reality with the abstract. After its completion, he thought, the task of philosophy should come to its conclusion, and the history of culture would find its state of rest. Schelling, however, whose creativity gushed forth without stint or exhaustion, saw Hegel’s dream as a chimera. He valued creativity itself more than any final attainment, and therefore viewed Hegel’s resting-point of history as funereal quiescence. In Schelling’s view, human culture is expressed in a variety of dialects. The conceptual language of science and philosophy is only one of the dialects of culture, whose mission is to broaden and develop spiritual life, from Nature as an extension of it. It must draw on the eternal source from which life flows and renews itself continually ad infinitum. The parallel between Hegel and Schelling was not negated by this difference between them. On the contrary, their confrontation was the source of their eagerness to prove, each from his own point of view, the correctness of his position. Indeed, their parallel paths assumed a certain basis of common ground. This was expressed in the dialectical methodology that emphasized the dynamism of intellectual-spiritual development, in the central importance of the notion of time surpassing the notion of space, and in the effort to discover the inner regularity of the history of human culture in its totality. But Hegel used these methodological tools to arrive at the reality of intellectual abstraction, while Schelling—in order to arrive at existential reality—availed himself of abstraction, not in order to be swallowed up in it, but to serve the needs of life. The difference between Hegel’s and Schelling’s understanding of history would prove very important for Jewish thinkers, for it was in the historical realm that one had to judge the place of Judaism and its significance for general human culture in the past and present. We saw that for Hegel cultural history begins with a dim apprehension of spiritual existence that is not yet conscious of itself. This spirit develops, in his view, by laboriously climbing the creative ladder whose first

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rungs are material, externalized, responding through quasi-instinctual urges to the challenges of the material environment or through servile obedience to spiritual powers in which human beings imagine they see superhuman powers. Only after many cycles and ages of development does reason arrive in our time at the threshold of recognizing itself as the totality of its creations. Schelling, for his part, grounded the beginnings of history—as well as its culmination—not in itself, but in the supra-temporal, supra-rational eternity transcending it. Real life, and the reason that has knowledge of it, flow from a supernal source, whose creative power is absolute and inexhaustible. Therefore, even if the beginning of history must appear “innocent” from a scientific and philosophical perspective (i.e., non-analytical and uncritical as we can indeed learn from the creative productions that depict human awareness at the start of known history, as for instance from the mythological stories of all peoples), this innocence is not characterized by Schelling as “primitive” or “lowly,” but rather it constitutes a beginning that symbolically embodies the higher reason of a divine creator. It follows that innocence is an advantage from life’s standpoint, even though it is a deficiency from the standpoint of science and philosophy. The documents of earliest human culture are the embodiment of a living creative reason, which do not fall short in profundity from science and philosophy but even surpass them. This will be readily apparent, if we stop seeking a structure of logical concepts in these primal documents and consider them as works of art. It follows from this that every beginning of cultural-historical creativity, and a fortiori every new stage in cultural development, stand in a double relationship: to historical connections and developments, on the one hand, and to supra-historical eternity, on the other hand. In the first respect their value is relative and changing, while in the second it is absolute and permanent. The beginning of history, as with every new beginning and renewal within history, has thus an enduring importance, as it was when it came into being. Alongside its time-bound aspects, one can always find a timeless aspect. One may even say that the foundational beginning of a culture is endowed with the force of absolute truth, which science and philosophy must take into account. One must revisit it repeatedly, retracing ones steps from the later developments of the culture to the foundations that were embodied only in its founding documents.

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As we said, Schelling’s religious philosophy developed as a series of systems, each of which merits study in its own right. A serious examination of his total philosophical work must review the separate stages in order, while assessment of his influence also requires acquaintance with the various ideas that he developed in the various stages of his development. But when we are concerned with him as a background to Jewish religious thought, we cannot engage in such a complete presentation. We shall thus focus only on some of his principal ideas that sprang up at various stages, but were particularly fertile for Jewish philosophers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Early System: Art, Creation, and “Intellectual Intuition” We first return to Schelling’s point of departure from Kant’s and Fichte’s philosophies, and to the first objective that he set for himself: to overcome the dualism of knower and known and return to Spinoza’s monism.1 The pressing mission was to undo Kant’s confounding distinction between “phenomena” and “things in themselves.” Fichte was the first of the critics who sought to overcome the distinction that divorced an object from its appearance, and Schelling at first adopted his views, but soon arrived at the conclusion that Fichte’s solution raised more difficulty than Kant’s. Fichte maintained that there was no basis for Kant’s assumption— that there is an object behind the appearance—and concluded that this assumption was merely a projection of the senses and the imagination. It followed that the phenomenon represented only the essence of the understanding that contemplated it. But in Schelling’s view, Kant’s dichotomous dualism between knower and known was preferable to a monism purchased at the price of complete abstraction, for it at least recognized the reality of nature as studied by the sciences. For the same reason, Hegel’s favored solution seemed misguided to Schelling. Hegel went further than Fichte in denying the reality of “things in themselves,” whereas for Schelling the existential reality of life was more important than an intellectual solution to Kant’s theoretical problem. Without absolute certainty in the existential reality of life in

1 The focus here is on the system that Schelling articulated in System of Transcendental Idealism (1800) (translated by Peter Heath, University Press of Virginia, 1978).

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nature, life itself has only an objective meaning, while all the products of human culture emanating from nature did not possess objective meaning. We recall that this was the original reason that Schelling wished to overcome Kant’s epistemological dualism. The truth of natural science, which Kant wished to defend and provide with a basis, was important to him only as a means. The essential thing, in his view, was the certitude that human creativity, which availed itself of natural science, proceeded from Nature itself and had a reciprocal influence on it. From the foregoing it is clear that the Romantic impulse and the return to religion were already visible in Schelling at the start of his philosophical enterprise. His restless creativity planted in him the insight that creativity is the invention of its own reality, possessing objective existence, and validity. The creator indeed draws his creativity from his own spirit and expresses it in himself, but then comes the decisive stage in which the creation is split off and becomes a new, independent entity in its own right, unlike any previous one. Indeed, the coming-into-its-own of the new creation is the supreme achievement of the artist, without which it would be no creation at all. Indeed, no artist is satisfied with the marvelous ideas that flashed forth in his mind, or with the enchanting forms that occurred in his imagination. His mind does not rest until he sees the ideas imprinted in written words and the pictorial images fleshed out on canvas or in clay, and transmuted into substance that has left his domain and now stands on its own. This creative insight, born of the artist, is what brought Schelling quickly to the realization that art stands above science and philosophy, and afterwards to the realization that true philosophy must also be a kind of creative art. These insights led him from his original Spinozistic outlook toward the idea that is the basis of the belief in a transcendent God: real nature, real humanity, and real culture that the human creates, are all creatures, and they must necessarily have a Creator. They express the Creator’s own idea, which He split off from His own existence, thus giving them an objective existence apart from Himself. Thus, Schelling arrived at the realization that art—the human analogue of creation—has a significance surpassing science and philosophy. Art is the embodiment of the end, to which science and philosophy are only the means. It follows that the most important part of philosophy must be the philosophy of art.

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Schelling’s work on the philosophy of art had great influence in his lifetime and at the start of the twentieth century. But from the standpoint of the philosophy of religion, there was special significance in a methodological concept that he saw fit to develop for the sake of this philosophy, which he defined as “intellectual intuition.” At a later stage, he developed a more advanced method that he defined as “rational ecstasy.” According to Schelling, “intellectual intuition” is a special intellectual ability with which only some individuals are endowed. This is the ability of the thinking “I” to contemplate his mental activity and thus to perceive its quality as a process of creative self-expression. One should first of all emphasize that we are speaking of a faculty of the thinking “I” and that it resembles the faculty of conceptual thought on which it is based but is not identical with it. Intellectual intuition is distinguished in that through it the “I” is able to observe itself as it is thinking ordinary thoughts or producing a spiritual creation, and simultaneously to explain the thought-process or creative process themselves. Clearly, there is a parallel, short of identity, between the intellectual intuition of the artist and critical reflection of the philosopher. In normal rational reflection, reason is aware of itself in its activity vis-à-vis objects in the same way that it forms its concepts of the objects that it studies and verifies the findings. This is scientifically important, but criticism is applied only to the question of truth of what was learned, and it adds only the element of certainty, together with the general knowledge that reason is the source from which issue the objects given for its consideration. Left out of this consideration is the thinking “I” itself and its concrete functioning. These remain hidden from the purview of ordinary philosophical reflection. It can therefore say nothing about how the thinking “I” forms its concepts. The objects see discern what is hidden behind ordinary rational reflection and latent within it. We have here a faculty of contemplation that is theoretical, not logical or analytical. It is the task of this faculty to render an account of the genesis of ideas within the self. In other words—the transitions that occur in the thinking “I” from the moment of creation of the idea in the rational “I,” when it can be discerned against the background of the initial identity between self-consciousness and the totality of its ideas, until the idea differentiates and becomes distinct from the “I”— that gave rise to it from itself—and is transformed into an object for

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its ordinary philosophical reflection. In summary: Intellectual intuition tells how a new idea becomes a “given” for ordinary intellectual reflection. By defining the method of intellectual intuition, Schelling formalized the notion of artistic creativity within philosophy, establishing it as a category that would enable him to deal creatively with the problem posed by Kant’s epistemology, without sacrificing the reality of the things in themselves or denying their source in reason. He discovered the way in which reason creates objects, externalizing them, and splitting them off from itself.2 Contemplation of thought as a form of creative expression was first of all a way to solve the problem of epistemology. But Schelling employed it primarily to develop the philosophy of faith that led him eventually to a religious philosophy depicting creation. Through his new intellectual category he established that the process of “projection” of the objects of rational and intellectual thought does not start with the senses and imagination, as Fichte and Hegel thought, but with the rational “I” that derives ideas from within itself, externalizes them as objects and then examines them conceptually and analytically. We must nevertheless emphasize that at the stage that Schelling developed his doctrine of intellectual intuition, he did not go on to inquire how the objects of reason become things-in-themselves that are independent of them. At this stage we are already speaking of “translation,” and in order to explain the phenomenon of translation he had to develop another conceptual tool, “rational ecstasy.” In the framework of his later religious philosophy, he resorted to this when it was necessary for the question of creation. It thus appears that for

2 Schelling’s 1800 “System” concludes with his depiction of the intellectual intuition of the artist, and with the following peroration: “But now if it is art alone which can succeed in objectifying with universal validity what the philosopher is able to present in a merely subjective fashion, there is one more conclusion yet to be drawn. Philosophy was born and nourished by poetry in the infancy of knowledge, and with it all those sciences it has guided toward perfection; we may thus expect them, on completion, to flow back like so many individual streams into the universal ocean of poetry from which they took their source. Nor is it in general difficult to say what the medium for this return of science to poetry will be; for in mythology such a medium existed, before the occurrence of a breach now seemingly beyond repair. But how a new mythology is itself to arise, which shall be the creation, not of some individual race, personifying, as it were, one single poet—that is a problem whose solution can be looked for only in the future destinies of the world, and in the course of history to come.” (System of Transcendental Idealism, p. 232f.)

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purposes of human artistic creation, “intellectual intuition” sufficed to explain the creative process that occurred within the creative human ego, up to the point where the artistic idea assumed independent existence, with the help of the artist’s tools operating on his material. Thus, in any case, Schelling arrived at the general idea of esthetics: The creative genius—the original artist (as distinguished from merely talented artists who imitate the works of others) receives inspiration from the depths of his self and expresses new ideas in new forms that did not come to light in the works of his predecessors. This is a process of creation, whose beginning is hidden even from the awareness of the artist himself, who at the start does not know what will be formed from his burst of inspiration. Artistic creation is born through the inner conjunction of the artist with the sphere of supernal, supraconscious, rational personality through which he reveals, derives, and gives tangible reality to spiritual ideas for which he serves merely as a channel. In other words, he operates as a prophet. From this derives art’s superiority to philosophy: it creates the ideas which philosophy comes to examine. By employing the category of “intellectual intuition,” Schelling thus described the formation of the formal idea in the artist’s mind in an opposite way from conceptual and analytical philosophers such as Kant and Hegel. It did not proceed from the tangible object to the abstract, conceptual form, but rather from the rational-conceptual abstract representation to the sensory and imaginative, the colorful, the resounding, the living, ready to be “translated” into matter. Matter provides the reality of an object that exists for itself, and yet it expresses the spiritual life of its creator on all its levels—not just the intellectual level. Thus, the object transmits to the observer all the intellectual, emotional, and plastic messages that the artist brought into being through the creative process. Schelling’s innovative thesis in esthetics therefore runs contrary to the Aristotelian premise that held sway through the Enlightenment. Authentic original art is not a mere imitation of sensory reality through the imagination. Nor is it imitation of the rational ideas, as Plato would have it. (Plato looked down on art, because he saw it as a deceitful and misleading caricature of the divine ideas.) According to Schelling, art is the embodiment of ideal concepts expressive of truth of the supernal spheres in the divine creative being, expressed in its creation. The rational creative “I” is conjoined in the depths of its self to the reason of the divine “I”, which is the source of the world, its cre-

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ator, originator, and sustainer. In this way, art is not only an analogy of the creation of nature by God, but it is an extension of the process of creation in the sphere of human cultural existence. Rational Ecstasy: Knowing the Mind of the Creator Schelling’s next step is a fulfillment of what his esthetics prophesied.3 Intellectual intuition seems close to mystical contemplation, depicting the process of emanation in a narrative—not conceptual-analytic— manner, as a series of eruptions piercing from the depth of the divine mystery to the tangible creation of nature. But we should immediately emphasize that Schelling arrived at this outlook philosophically through reason. The mystic starts with the experience of union with the divine—transcending his separate self, and seemingly in its very source. On that basis, he knows to relate what he experienced as divine revelation when he ascended to the supernal spheres. Schelling, on the other hand, approached from the opposite direction: from the experience of the thinking “I” in nature, in culture, and in its rational personality. He strove to achieve full contemplation of his own inner self, in order to arrive at the realization of the manner in which God—his Creator—knows it. The intellectual tool that he now employed was “rational ecstasy,”4 which is a depiction of the stage of creation. By means of rational ecstasy, he strove to discern in the rational “I” the thought of God who

3 The following analysis is based on Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom (1809) (translated by James Guttmann [Open Court Classics, 1986]) and The Ages of the World (1813) (translated by Jason W. Wirth [SUNY, 2000]). For a masterful guide to this phase of Schelling’s thought, see Robert F. Brown, The Later Philosophy of Schelling: The Influence of Boehme on the Works of 1809–1815 (Bucknell, 1977). 4 Moshe Schwartz finds the explicit reference to “rational ecstasy” in Schelling’s 1821 lecture “On the Nature of Philosophy as a Science” (German edition of Schelling’s works, X, 230, cited in Schwartz, From Myth to Revelation (Hebrew, Hakkibutz Ha-meu˜ad 1978, p. 146). But there is an anticipation in his 1813 Ages of the World: “Why do all higher doctrines call so unanimously to the person to separate themselves from themselves and give them to understand that they would thereby be capable of everything and active in all things—why other than because one only thereby produced that Jacob’s ladder of heavenly forces in themselves? ‘Being posited in oneself ’ [das In-sich gesetzt seyn] hinders the person. ‘Being posited outside of oneself’ [das Außer-sich-gesetzt-werden] helps one, as our language magnificently indicates.” (Ages of the World, p. 71 [Werke 8:295–96]. The context of this excerpt is Schelling’s discussion of the emergence of the spirit-world from primordial spirit-matter ( psyche).

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created him—on the assumption that the signs of God are implanted in His creatures. This is a special method, by which the philosopher pushes his contemplation to the limits of his capacity for selfknowledge, until he discovers a hidden primal layer of reality, joining him to the divine creative thought. Indeed we are speaking here of a kind of recollection, in the Platonic sense, leading to the point of commonality between the creature and his Creator. On the basis of this memory, he is able to reconstruct in narrative form the process of emanation and creation from the divine point of view. Schelling’s distinction between two kinds of philosophy—the conceptual-analytical and the narrative—to which we have just referred parenthetically, acquires systematic importance at this stage. Schelling now had to determine the relationship of these two methods within the knowledge of reality: each of them had a domain of application, and each one led in the direction of the other. In Schelling’s view, the narrative method is ontologically prior, because it alone can represent creation from the standpoint of the Creator; it alone can conjoin the ideas of reason to the reality of their objects, after they have been split off and separated from it; and it alone can have knowledge of these objects through participation with their Creator’s thought of them when He created them. On the other hand, conceptual-analytical philosophy is historically prior in the development of human reason. It develops from external contemplation of sensory empirical experience of objects, taking in their appearance in the categorical and spatial-temporal framework of the intellect, as Kant taught, but it is not capable of knowing the essence of its objects. It therefore cannot bridge the gap between the phenomena—which it conceptualizes through abstraction—and the “things in themselves.” Thus, the narrative of the stages of emanation of the ideas in reason and their translation from it into material substance binds reality together into a unitary chain, while conceptualanalytical thought abstracts and separates it. In the debate that Schelling conducted with Hegel, he proposed the distinction between these two ways as two complementary methods. From the standpoint of chronological order, these are called “first philosophy” and “second philosophy.” From the standpoint of intellectual method, the first philosophy is “negative,” in the sense that it reduces tangible objects to pure intellectual abstraction, and apprehends them through concepts of deterministic causality. The second philosophy is

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“positive,” in the sense that it presents living reality, from the standpoint of purposive free will, that strives to fashion an existence that is free to be itself and to live its life. On the basis of these ideas, Schelling arrived at the fruitful distinction between the physical time of the actual sciences and historical time. Causal-deterministic time belongs to the natural sciences, whereas historical time is the “time of creation,” in its two complementary senses: the time that was created with the world’s creation, and the time that underlies its happenings. Historical time was created with the creatures and shapes them. The three dimensions that comprise time—past, present, and future— interact with each other in a perpetual continuum: the past shapes the future through the present, and the present converts future into past. These three dimensions express three perspectives of the creative “I” becoming in him three kinds of knowing. The past is the knowledge of ideas that were already created, and therefore the knowledge of them is complete as befits their order of existence. They, themselves, embody the narrative of the creation that was. The present is knowledge of things in the process of becoming. As such, it is the object for the categorical and causal observation of science and first (negative) philosophy, for the incomplete process of becoming cannot yet be subject to narrative. One can only observe its appearance as a process of causal determination, which conceals beneath it the free will of the Creator: at the time of creation, the will of the Creator is the substance underlying the appearance of becoming, whereas after its transposition, the Creator bestows upon the completed creature its own self, with its freedom. Knowledge of the future is another story. It turns into a rational expectation for the continuation of the narrative of creation, in accord with the vision that creative reason implanted in creation as an aspiration for goodness and perfection. It refers to the future for which humanity strives by completing creation through the enterprise of cultural creativity. In this way Schelling proposed his solution for the dilemma of scientific determinism versus creative human free will. At the same time, he set forth his three “ages of the world” through which human history extends from the creation of the world to the fulfillment of the Messianic vision of the End of Days. It is clear that we have here a reflection of the Biblical conception of history, expressed in the terms of narrative philosophy.

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The beginning of Schelling’s religious philosophy of history is rooted in “myth.” The phenomenon of myth as a creation of primordial religious culture was the focus of Schelling’s interest from the moment that the importance of art was clear to him and he determined that it was superior to philosophy. He first saw myth as a special kind of artistic creation, superior to all other works of human artistic genius. In its images and symbols, myth embodies divine ideas that the poet imbibes through prophetic inspiration. In terms of Schelling’s esthetic philosophy, myth is thus the most complete artistic embodiment of intellectual intuition, which has striven to reveal the source of existence in the thought of its creator. In other words, at this stage Schelling saw myth as a stage of human artistic creativity that preceded philosophy and gave rise to it. However, when he arrived at the path of narrative philosophy, which dared to view creatures from the point of view of their Creator, a much more expansive outlook was called for regarding the essence of myth and its manner of creation. Unveiling the divine perspective of the narrative of creation shows myth not as a human artistic creation but as an original divine creation with human mediation. What does this creation express? The conception of reality at the beginning of creation of human culture in nature, as it was conceived in the thought of its original creator. Its transmission through prophetic inspiration to the person creating his culture thus turns it, in human hands, into a testimony of the way in which humankind viewed itself, at the dawn of antiquity, in relationship to God and to Nature. We should emphasize that in Schelling’s view one was speaking of a reality that really was as the myth records it, adapted to people’s primal primordial cultural conception of themselves, their environment, and the divine forces that they knew through closely interacting with them. In other words, myth—like science and philosophy in our day—was in Schelling’s view a faithful and exact representation of the life-experience of human beings at the dawn of history, when human cultural creativity was in its formative stage, and its completion was still a future that was laid out by God’s will. It follows that the myth that expresses God’s thought through human mediation—and not human thought cut off from its source—is the very truth of the age of the creation of culture.

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The philosophical research of mythology, to which Schelling devoted himself after his philosophical discovery of the essence of myth, came to prove this theory and to develop it as a foundation for a broader theoretical vision concerning the “ages of the world” and human destiny.5 Schelling concluded in his research that myth appeared as a primal stage of consciousness in all cultures. In agreement with the Genesis myth, he determined that all humanity came from a common origin, and that the roots of its historical memory were rooted in a single myth of origins, namely the monotheistic myth. In the beginning there was not an absolute monotheism but only a relative monotheism. God was revealed in ancient myth in a series of ages of creation unfolding one from another and in the alternating images of gods. They represented in their stories various early stages in the formation of nature and humanity, as described in Greek mythology. In time, relative monotheism provided the basis for polytheistic mythologies, reflecting the historical stage of the division of the human race into nations, as described in the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. Each nation created its special culture around the images of the gods who embodied the ideas that characterized them, but they were all destined to be reunited in higher culture through the victorious revelation of absolute monotheism, as the Jewish and Christian myth proclaimed. As we said, Schelling assumed that the myth spoke truth. From this assumption follows the conclusion that the process of creation of the world is ipso facto a process of creative development in God Himself. In Schelling’s radical formulation: the narrative of creation is also the narrative of God’s creation of Himself from a primordial substrate, which can be represented as pure potentiality. Creation of God from this substrate starts with the awakening of the will—which has no explanation or cause—so that there should be a world; to conceive it and create it. Moreover, if we are speaking of a real occurrence, then God’s creation of Himself from His substrate also occurs in time, in the same double sense in which the creation of the world occurs. God creates See Schelling, Historical-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology (translated by Mason Richey and Marcus Zisselberger (SUNY, 2008). This volume presents the lectures on mythology delivered by Schelling in Berlin in 1842, yet its continuity with the outlook of Ages of the World (1813) is evident. 5

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time by Himself and creates Himself in time. This is indeed a process of the coming-into-being of substance from No-Thing, and of temporality from No-Time. This takes place incrementally: when reality shines forth from nothingness, then No-Time is converted into the “supra-temporal,” which then (with the translation of the creatures into their historical time) turns into Eternity—which is the time-dimension of the Divine Being in relation to the “time of creation” that has just been split off. Schelling’s Appropriation of Kabbalah The final result of this speculation is a narrative that constitutes a philosophical reconstruction of the Neoplatonic-kabbalistic myth, in which creation, too, is rooted in the creative expression of the divine life itself. The divine personality is first revealed as an eruption of the will-to-create, and as the emergence of the creative forces from nothingness. And indeed we can fathom Schelling’s meaning if we conjure up the narrative depiction of the Sefirot—in the order of their emanation from each other, according to the Zoharic kabbalah—and especially the transition from the Ein Sof (Infinite)—hidden from human thought, and not even in the realm of question—to the Nothingness (also called Will ), which is a kind of eruption of generalized creative divine will not defined by any given intention (this will-to-create is thus the source that cannot be known by human thought but can at least be asked about)—and from “Nothingness” to divine “Wisdom,” which is the “power of What” (the potential of the ideal quiddities by which the world will be created). Whereupon, there burst forth from “Wisdom”—still within the framework of the divine persona itself—the Sefirot, representing the formation of the ideal structures of existence that are to be created. Through them will be emanated various substances, that will be transposed eventually into extra-divine existence through acts of divine “creation” and “formation.” In Schelling’s narrative-philosophical reworking of this schema, the Ein Sof becomes the impervious dark “substrate” from which the divine persona breaks forth. In this substrate is vested the absolute potentiality of all things destined to become a world in a state of complete equilibrium, without being, without self-identity, without thought, and without time. The eruption of free divine will, anchored in itself without any outside cause provoking it, is the beginning of the

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creation of the divine personality. From that dark substrate of total equilibrium breaks forth the intention-to-be—spiritual movement toward a goal, the supra-temporal emerging from the atemporal—in which there is already the intentionality for the coming-into-being of worldly time. This is the preparation for the next stage, in which the decisive factor is the free divine will-to-will, that there should be a defined reality, a reality matching the ideas, which are the patterns and structures for fashioning actual substances. The ideas rise up in the divine will from the depths of the dark “substrate” from which the will-to-create had burst forth; thus proceeds the tale of becoming of the divine personality through the appearance of the “potentials,” which are the structural principles of the reality to be created, in its different “modes.” With the appearance of the “potentials” as a process in time, there is anchored the transition from the “supra-temporal” of the absolute divine will to the “pre-temporal” of the process of creation; when the time of creation begins, the “supra-temporality” of the divine will is transformed to “eternity.” In this connection, Schelling interpreted the notion of “eternity” in accord with the etymology of the Hebrew Netza˜ (eternity/victory): eternity is the Creator’s victory-over-time of created things. Thus there is no eternity before the emergence of the time of things in the realm of becoming. We have here the “positive” dialectic that Schelling proposed in response to Hegel’s “negative” dialectic. In his view, Hegel’s negative dialectic returns the existence that was formed through creation to an empty abstraction, to the state of absolute equilibrium of all identities within an abstract totality that is devoid of life and devoid of creation. Schelling’s “positive” dialectic embraces the purpose of creation. It presents the divine perspective of the emergence of the Godhead from its “substrate” and the creation of the world from the “potentials” of the divine personality. A deep question, which occupies religious thought on all its levels, remained so far unanswered, namely the double question of what was the divine motivation to become Will and to will creation, and the evil that appears and congeals during the process of creation. Whence comes evil? Schelling saw no way to explain it as a privation or a limitation of creation, in the manner of the idealistic philosophers. As in the kabbalists’ view, there exists in creation an active evil that cannot be explained other than as a motivation to do evil. If so, one must explain it from the source of all creation, namely, from the Godhead,

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in connection with the primal motivation of the Will that bursts forth from the dark substrate—in order to will and to create. Schelling’s solution is marvelously close to that of the Lurianic kabbalah in its explanation of the secret of tzimtzum—divine contraction— which in this doctrine is the decisive event before creation. In the will-to-will there is, according to Schelling, a kind of dialectic of rebellion. The positive moment revealed in it is preceded by a negative moment against the dark substrate: the motivation to be separated from it. The objective of selfhood and its positive consolidation are conditioned, therefore, on a prior negation. In this negation—which is the contraction of the Will into its separate selfhood—is embodied the source of evil in the Godhead itself, a kind of original primitive egotism of the Creator, over which He must overcome in order to will-to-create, to give reality and life to the other. It is thus clear that from here on the contraction repeats itself throughout the whole process of God’s self-creation, the formation of the ideas of creation, and finally—the transposition of the created entities so that they should exist on their own. Transposition is contraction, separation, and splitting-off (in the language of the kabbalists, “judgment” or Gevurah/power). At each stage, there must thus appear the active, tangible negation, which is the prior condition for formation and creation. Only from the perspective of the idealistic philosopher, who returns existence to its empty abstraction, will evil be conceived as a “privation.” On the other hand, it is clear that active, rebellious evil exists for the sake of the good, and it is destined in the end to become integrated into creation as a positive constituent, when the process of cultural creation arrives at its teleological end. Throughout our discussion of Schelling’s thought, his positive relation to religion is striking. His striving to leave no stone unturned among the sources of religious thought expresses a positive relation toward all religions, and especially a positive relation to the Jewish religion—particularly the Biblical myth and the kabbalistic myth. In contrast to Kant and Hegel who related negatively to their Christian legacy, Schelling related positively to his. This positive relationship also carries with it a positive relation to its Jewish sources. These sources continue to be actual and relevant in Christianity, and they must continue and serve as sources also to its continuing creative renewal. The process of positive creation is continual and needs to draw on whatever sources are required.

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It follows that in contrast to Hegel, in Schelling’s philosophy there is no requirement to “sublate” and “negate” Judaism on the way to Christianity, or Christianity on the way to the secular liberal state, with the resulting disappearance of the former. On the contrary, one must preserve the various modes of the life of the human spirit as positive constituents of the universal Oneness toward which history is striving. All of this points to a vision of universal progress that does not swallow up and annihilate the constituent elements in the final product, but strengthens and preserves them in harmonic reciprocity. The importance that Schelling attributed to the Biblical myth and the direct influence that he received from the kabbalah testify to his empathetic immersion in the sources of Judaism and his profoundly positive relationship to them. In contrast to Hegel, who posed a hostile challenge to Judaism, Schelling offered a positive challenge for dialogical development that would encourage a creative encounter. It is no surprise, therefore, that Kant and Hegel had greater influence on Jewish thinkers who lived in the first wave of the struggle for emancipation in Germany—the movement that tended in the direction of divesting one’s Jewish identity to adapt to the environment and be accepted in it. But when the second wave of opposite tendency began, as expressed in a yearning for rebuilding one’s Jewish identity, then Schelling’s religious philosophy became a guiding and fructifying paradigm. It was possible to find in it support for loyalty to a Jewish identity proud of itself and seeing its sources in a positive light, without cutting oneself off from the positive dialogue with humanism and with humanistic Christianity.

CHAPTER SIX

JUDAISM BETWEEN SENSUALISM, IMAGINATION, AND REASON: THE JEWISH PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION OF SOLOMON MAIMON Celebrity of the Mendelssohn Enlightenment The first Jewish Enlightenment philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn, stumbled on Kant’s global challenge to Judaism and the Leibnitzian philosophy, to which he clung until the end of his career. He gave no adequate philosophical response, and he seems to have sensed that it was not within him to give one. The appearance of Romantic religious philosophy on the one hand, and of Kant’s critical idealism on the other, created a polar dichotomy in the circle of philosophical discourse. The Enlightenment philosophy, rooted in the systems of Spinoza, Leibnitz, Descartes, Hobbes and Locke, on which Mendelssohn had been raised, and on whose basis he formed his own conception of modern philosophy, was abandoned as old fashioned; the axes of debate changed, and the fundamental epistemological assumptions that shaped philosophical language underwent transformation. Mendelssohn himself acknowledged that the time had passed in which he could come out ahead in a philosophical competition that included Kant. It was difficult for him now to plumb the depths of Kant’s philosophy, and equally so to understand the supra-rational way of the young religious Romantics. It seemed that modernity had undergone a complete revolution. In one sense, it had retreated, and in another, it had taken a great leap forward toward a new horizon, leaving Mendelssohn behind. The first original Jewish philosopher who set out to grapple with Kant’s challenge—primarily to general philosophy, but also to Judaism—from Kant’s critical standpoint, but extending the critique to Kant’s own views—had to be of a generation younger than both of them, one who could be a critical student of Mendelssohn in Judaism, and of Kant in philosophy. This was again an exceptional person, Solomon Maimon (1752[?]–1800), who was like Spinoza and Mendelssohn, and followed in their footsteps. He embodied in his personal destiny

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and his intellectual development the double crisis that was brought about in European philosophy and in Judaism by the Enlightenment. Solomon Maimon had the opportunity to address Kant’s critique of Judaism after he had already succeeded in establishing his position as an independent philosopher and made a significant contribution to advancing the philosophical discussion concerning the Critique of Pure Reason.1 His essential works were written and published in German. They dealt with the central philosophical issue that captured attention as a result of Kant’s “Copernican revolution” in epistemology—the problem of the relation of the phenomenon to the thing-in-itself. In these writings, he did not deal with religious problems in general, or with Judaism in particular, though we shall see later that the residual effects of his Maimonidean philosophical upbringing can be found in his philosophical arguments. In this context, it is fitting to note that the only book that Maimon published in Hebrew was a commentary on Maimonides’ Guide titled Givʿat Ha-Moreh [The Hill of the Guide], in which he developed his new philosophical views in a freestyle manner. In this respect there was an instructive similarity among Maimon, Spinoza and Mendelssohn. All three set out directly for the arena of general philosophical discourse, and resorted to philosophical accounting of their complex relation to their origin and upbringing only in the margins of their activity, and only for clarification of their general agenda. But in Maimon’s case, the motivation was different, at least apparently. Spinoza and Mendelssohn resorted to discussion of the Jewish issue against the backdrop of the political discussion concerning the status of religion in the state generally, and the status of Judaism in particular; whereas Solomon Maimon responded to the public interest in his exceptional personality. His discussions of Judaism, thus, appeared tangentially as appendices to his life-history, The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon. His justification was the need to explain his unique cultural background to the reader, and of course the political issues arose necessarily from this: religion, the state, and the status of Judaism relative to other religions. But what, in his view, justified the public curiosity concerning his personality? Maimon’s answer was: scientific utility. In his age, psychological research grew into a discipline necessary for understanding

1 Maimon sent a letter to Kant with his impressions about the Critique of Pure Reason and Kant replied with a letter full of praise about Maimon’s depth of understanding.

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historical and cultural processes, which were themselves background for developments in philosophy. One might say that in effect Maimon was responding to a literary fashion that started to be prevalent in his day and that may be seen as an expression of the spirit of the times, tending to the side of individualism. The individual starts to achieve prominence in his own right, apart from his destiny as a member of his group, and to demand his right to be regarded independently as a unique, particular being. One may detect this motif in the cases of Spinoza and Mendelssohn, but not in such an explicit form. The personal affinity of Maimon and Spinoza is already obvious in the comparison of their biographies and their paths to philosophical creativity. Like Spinoza, Maimon presented himself as one who had left Judaism and affiliated as a private citizen with the enlightened country in which he resided. In his adult years, he did not see himself as obligated in any way to the Jewish community, the Jewish people, or its religion and faith. He was not oblivious to the fact that his personality was shaped by his heritage and his people’s fate, but he did not see these facts as obligating him to preserve a social-political connection with them. He decided to dissociate from the Jewish community and to live as a private citizen in the German state, just as Spinoza had left it and lived as a Dutch citizen. In such a fashion, he presented himself as an objective judge, both of his personal Jewish past and of his people and its religion. Indeed, Maimon demonstrated his intellectual honesty by not concealing from his readers the Jewish educational legacy that impressed its stamp on him, for better and for worse. On the contrary, he laid bare with impressive openness and honesty both the advantages and the disadvantages of the Jewish education that he had received, and analyzed the meaning of the Emancipation from the point of view of his personal experience. In this connection, he also acknowledged factors of Jewish identity that he would not want to give up even for the sake of that other national identity that he chose as an adult. He was ready to give up his religion for full enfranchisement, but only on condition that the Church would recognize his right to reject irrational Christian dogmas. As this proposal was unacceptable, he remained by default—like Spinoza—a freethinking Jew.2

Salomon Maimon, Gesammelt Werke, Valerio Vera, ed. (Hildesheim: Olms, 1965– 1976), volume 1, 172. 2

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If we analyze these facts in depth, we learn that his affinity to Spinoza reveals his similarity to Mendelssohn as well. Like him, Maimon recognized the existence of a positive element in his relation to Judaism, because of this he preferred it in the end to Christianity. As we know, for this very reason Mendelssohn sought a way to keep faith with his religion despite his immersion in the general state, society, and culture. But we should emphasize in this connection that the personal journey that Maimon was forced to undergo for the sake of fulfilling his dream of personal emancipation was longer and harder than either Spinoza’s or Mendelssohn’s. This helps to explain the personal bitterness that formed the background of his odd reclusiveness, which was not an ordinary reclusiveness but an expression of ambivalent protest—reminiscent in many ways of Micha Josef Berdyczewski’s relation to his Jewishness. From Hasidic Village to the Streets of Western Culture Maimon was born and educated in an isolated traditional Jewish community in Poland, and until a relatively mature age had no opportunity for an introductory encounter with modern scientific or philosophical learning. He was a Talmudic prodigy, blessed with genius-like abilities, and his exceptional intellectual acuity motivated him to perpetual searching. He was captivated first by Hasidism (of the school of the Maggid of Mezerich) and afterwards by the spell of Maimonides. By studying the Guide of the Perplexed, he discovered philosophy and the legitimacy of the sciences. This was the start of his independent struggle with the problem of the relation between philosophy and revealed religion. His intellectual-spiritual struggle prompted him to leave his family and homeland and wander off to Germany, in order to acquire a modern scientific and philosophical education—all this, under difficult and degrading conditions of existence. We have here a phenomenon that would later become more widespread: the phenomenon of the east-European Jewish Maskil, whose ancestral culture, stagnant in its medieval mold, could not satisfy his spiritual and material desires. It had not the wherewithal to realize his creative personality, and so he sought his self-realization in the rich modern Western culture. But he could not cut himself off completely from his people—both because the non-Jewish society respected him, and because in his creative work he could not deny his origin and

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upbringing. The spiritual-intellectual tools by which he succeeded in acquiring Western culture and even excelling in it were, despite all his complaints, the tools of the very culture that he left. Furthermore, it stands to reason that this culture also had its own special depth, and from that depth he derived that original perspective on the other culture that he adopted and to which he contributed. Solomon Maimon’s identification with Maimonides’ outlook is expressed in his adopting the name “Maimon,” which he kept for the rest of his life. Of course it finds intrinsic expression in his commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed. Maimon used this vehicle to present his own views in the context of his master’s teaching, with the declared intention of updating Maimonides’ Guide in the spirit of the new insights of the latest philosophers—from Spinoza and Leibnitz to Kant and Maimon himself—for the needs of Jewish scholars of the current generation. Clearly, were it not for Maimonides’ aid, which helped prepare him for scientific education and modern philosophical speculation, even a genius like himself could not have achieved the revolutionary transformation and transition from a totally segregated traditional-religious culture to the modern European Enlightenment. In this sense, Maimon saw himself as a successor to Maimonides, both in what he accepted of his teaching and what he rejected as antiquated and in need of revision. Obviously, the transition from traditional medieval learning to modern Enlightenment did not take place in a single leap. This was a path that passed through many stages until it blossomed as a final result. Maimon’s Autobiography enables us to follow a process of intellectual development that started from rabbinic-halakhic religiosity, passed through a phase of Hasidic mysticism, and then turned in the rationalist direction—still within the world of religious Judaism—to Maimonidean philosophy, which reconciles scientific and philosophical truth with religious truth. From there he ultimately arrived at the modern Enlightenment and with it, the outside world. When Maimon arrived at the new wellsprings of knowledge of the German Enlightenment, he did indeed try to update Maimonides’ method by composing a new “guide of the perplexed” that mediated (after Maimonides’ fashion) between the Leibnitzian philosophy and the Torah. But this work, called Æeshek Yehoshua{ (“Joshua’s Desire,” after Maimon’s father) was not completed and was lost, and there remains only a short epitome by Abraham Geiger who saw the original manuscript. Maimon stopped working on it when he learned that

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Leibnitz’s philosophy—and by the same token Mendelssohn’s—had been superseded. In the course of his own grappling with all the thinkers who influenced his own philosophical development—Spinoza, Leibnitz, Mendelssohn, and finally Kant—Maimon became emancipated from organized religion. However, he remained a believing man in his private, personal way, and this belief came to open and emphatic expression in his philosophy. The imperative to arrive at a systematic harmonization between philosophy and religion, as Maimonides had done, for his own personal need, thus faded. Not so the need to reconcile post-Kantian philosophy with belief in God, in its universal personal sense. This Maimon achieved, as did Spinoza, in the exclusive framework of philosophy, without resorting any more to religious sources. In order to render full justice to the “appendices” that Maimon saw fit to add to his Autobiography, in which he dealt with Judaism and its sources, we must pay attention to Maimon’s entire spiritual journey and the full extent of his writings. In that context, the appendices will appear less peripheral and tangential. They will attest to how central the question of relating to religion was to him, even in those works where he focused on purely philosophical questions around the issue of Kantian epistemology. It might be correct to formulate these matters as follows: From the perspective of his reading public, for whom he wrote his works as a mature philosopher, Maimon’s struggles with the Jewish religion were tangential and peripheral. But from his own personal perspective they remained central, for in retrospect he remained connected to that faith in which he had been raised, and to the sources that shaped this faith of his as a comprehensive personal world-view. His religiosity continued to be rooted in Maimonidean thought even after he had cast off the yoke of halakha. This meant that the philosophical-religious problem to which Maimonides had first opened his eyes continued to occupy him as a believer for the rest of his life. Reciprocal Critique of Kant’s and Aristotle’s Epistemologies This judgment applies equally to Solomon Maimon’s critical grappling with Kant’s epistemology. There, too, it appears in retrospect that he was guided by the philosophical legacy that he acquired throughout his education, and especially from Maimonides. The tradition-based con-

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tinuity that we find in Maimon’s philosophical and religious thought finds its counterpart in the fact that the solution that he proposed to the central problem of Kantian epistemology is based on Maimonides’ epistemology. Maimonides’ approach in this area was based on the absolute distinction—but also the necessary connection—between finite human reason and the infinite reason of God. By proceeding from this assumption, Maimon was able to reassess also some elements that appeared valid to him in the doctrines of Leibnitz and Mendelssohn. The following discussion will focus on this issue, which is the central axis of Maimon’s philosophy. We should nevertheless emphasize that his philosophical writings deal in fine detail with all the problems raised for discussion in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. He proposed revisions and elaborations in all of them, for example in the questions of space and time and the issue of synthetic a priori judgments. He was ahead of his time on certain matters, such as his assertion that non-Euclidian geometric postulates were conceivable,3 and in his philosophical application of the theory of differentials to epistemology, which came very close to the method of Hermann Cohen. We cannot deal with all these topics here, and we shall refer the reader to monographic studies on Maimon’s philosophy. Our focus is restricted to the connection of Maimon’s post-Kantian philosophy to the legacy of religious Jewish thought by way of its central connecting link—Maimonidean thought. We maintain that a comparison of his systematic philosophical arguments in his commentary Giv{at Ha-Moreh, as well as a survey of the Maimonidean views that influenced him (in a special appendix to his Autobiography devoted to this), enables us to assess with certainty the elements that he adopted from Maimonides and worked into the post-Kantian philosophy, which would thus turn out to be Jewish philosophy. The point of origin of Maimon’s own grappling with the Critique of Pure Reason was ambivalent: agreement tempered with critical revisionism. This bears an instructive parallel to Maimonides’ own relation to Aristotelian philosophy. Maimonides accepted Aristotle as providing the correct way to philosophical truth based on independent human reason, but he restricted the domain of Aristotelian philosophy in

3 Salomon Maimon, Versuch über die Transzendentalphilosophie, Florian Ehrensperger, ed. (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2004), 169–176.

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order to point to its dependence on a prior truth, given to mankind by emanation from an infinite transcendent source. Maimon accepted without reservation Kant’s doctrine of the powers of reason and their autonomous functioning. He also agreed to the necessity of the distinction between the formal “phenomenon” perceived by sensory, imaginative, and rational reflection and the material “thing in itself ” that exhibits the form but remains “transcendent” to the formal phenomenon, and so is not apprehended by intellectual reflection. This distinction is necessitated, in his view, by the activity of knowing, which is based on a duality in principle between knowledge and its objects, and that requires—for the sake of ever-continual learning—that empirical induction should precede conceptual deduction. It appears that only on the basis of such a distinction can one determine the objective truth of knowledge. In other words, only when reason has a basis to trust that its concepts fit a given reality—that is not determined by reason, but reason’s concepts are determined by it—can it be sure that its concepts constitute objective knowledge. Objects that reason does not determine, but by which it is determined, are thus “things in themselves,” and Kant, against all his opponents, rightly assumed their existence. But on the other hand, Maimon was among the first to criticize Kant’s assertion that the “things in themselves” are outside of knowledge.4 Here the critics were right. If they are outside of thought, how can Kant think them, or predicate their existence? No empirical induction can carry knowledge beyond itself, so that it can determine the reality of something outside it, or determine a causal relation between a reality outside itself and the phenomenon that becomes a part of itself. Indeed, in retrospect Kant’s distinction between the substance and its appearance takes place entirely within the domain of knowledge, which distinguishes between its contemplative act and its objects.5 Maimon’s assertion, that the positing of objects that are learned a posteriori from empirical induction is integral to the act of knowledge, negates the solution that Fichte (and following him, Hegel ) suggested. Maimon rejected out of hand the suggestion that “thingsin-themselves” are only unverified apperceptions and illusions, as it is the habit of the senses and the imagination to “project” what they

4 5

Versuch, 186. GW II: 202–206.

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themselves have conjured up. According to Fichte, the phenomenon is itself the object. But if this is so—Maimon counters—empirical induction is abolished, and the distinction between knowledge and its objects disappears. The only solution remaining is, then, that the objects that “appear” to knowledge through induction are themselves within knowledge, not outside it, as two strata or two modes within it. In the first (primary or perceptual ) mode, the mind inductively reveals objects that serve as the data of knowledge. In the second (reflective) mode, intellectual contemplation apprehends these given objects and incorporates them in its comprehensive picture of the world, a picture that is continually growing toward completion with the aid of the sciences and philosophy.6 The next questions that must inevitably arise from this proposition are: What is the source of the data that the mind finds in itself as the objects of intellectual contemplation? How did they come to be in it? And what is the difference between the discovery of these data through induction within the mind, and their contemplation by reason? Furthermore, if the mind discovers the things-in-themselves as data within it, it will never again be able to relate to its own givenness as a selfevident, necessary fact. The origin of this, too, must be probed: how does the mind become aware of its own faculties? But while we are wondering about Maimon’s answers to these questions, it is proper to point to the source from which he himself got his solution, as something “given” to him in his awareness from prior learning, namely the religious epistemology that Maimonides constructed from Aristotelian elements. According to the Aristotelian epistemology, the existence of objects outside of thought is explained by the circumstance that their form— which according to Aristotle is the essence that defines them—emanates from an eternal primary intellectual source, in which it exists as a concept or idea. From there it is stamped on primary hylic matter, whose existence in itself is merely potential, but which is actualized by absorbing the forms emanated upon it from the transcendent intellectual source—the Active Intellect.7 Hylic matter is thus conceived as the potential to take on all the forms that alternate and combine in it, from Versuch, 250–251. This analysis holds whether the “Active Intellect” is conceived as God (one possible interpretation of the passage in De Anima where Aristotle introduces this notion) or as a separate sub-divine Intelligence (as the medievals, following the lead of 6 7

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the forms of the simple elements—earth, water, air, and fire—up to the human being, which is the most complex of all bodily creatures. Even human reason, which Aristotle defined as the power of knowing that has its potential in the lower functions of the soul—the senses, emotions, and imagination—is connected to the bodily organism and dependent on it. Human reason is actualized through learning. Through its enlightenment, it becomes individuated as a spiritual entity that becomes actualized (concretized) through its intelligible contents (the concepts that become abstracted from the material substrate perceived by the senses). It is self-evident that the act of enlightenment, that establishes the intellect as a spiritual entity separate from the body, is apt to perceive and internalize only the pure forms: the concepts, without the matter that embodied them outside of experience. The matter that bears the forms remains outside. Therefore Aristotle concluded that matter itself is not contained within knowledge, and concludes this for the very same reason that Kant argued that the thing-in-itself is outside of knowledge. Like Kant, though with a different terminology, Aristotle posited the existence of this unknown matter as a necessary substrate for the objective existence of objects that a person experiences first by way of the senses. We thus arrive at the essential difference between Aristotle and Kant on this issue: Aristotle did not identify the known object with its matter, which in itself was merely absolute potentiality. The object of knowledge, in his view, was the pure form, grasped in thought, and the source of the form is not in matter but in the Separate Intellect— a transcendent, supra-physical intelligence—that knows the forms in actuality, of itself and outside of space and time. This intellect, which Aristotle calls the “Active Intellect,” exercises influence in two directions. On the one hand, matter absorbs from it the forms that alternate in it, and thus they are actualized in the material world. On the other hand human intellect, which as we said is a potential intellect, which becomes actualized within time, apprehends with its aid the forms that are separated from matter. It thus turns out that human reason becomes enlightened by relating necessarily to the two sources that it unites within itself: sensory experience, which is necessary to it as it proceeds from potentiality to actuality from the bodily substrate

Alexander of Aphrodisias, generally understood it.) See Seymour Feldman, Introduction to Book One of Gersonides Wars of the Lord, Volume I, pp. 71–84.

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with the help of bodily organs—and the direct influence of the Active Intellect, which is absorbed by the human intellect as it becomes further actualized by gradually freeing itself from its subordination to the senses and the imagination. Aristotle explained this complex and problematic amalgamation of sensory experience and independent intellectual awakening by analogy with the sense of sight, which in his view was the most intellectual of the senses, because it encompasses its objects and apprehends them in a single whole rubric, while at the same time distinguishing its components. Just as light, coming from an external source, comprises an essential condition of seeing, because it propagates the sensory forms of material objects to the retina of the eye, so that they should be reflected in it, so the mind requires the illuminating influence of the Active Intellect to propagate the conceptual form—which the mind derives through abstraction from the sensory imagination—to the rational faculty. In other words, only the combination of empirical sensation (which propagates the material form of the object to the senses and imagination) with conceptual enlightenment (which enables the abstract definition of the material representation articulated by the senses) engenders in the human mind (which in itself is potential ) the intelligible form, which previously did not exist in it. The final result is that the human intellect is actualized and individuated as a concrete spiritual substance by absorbing ideas, which are the pure essences or conceptual notions of its objects. In Maimonides’ formulation, there is thus formed the complete unity of “the intellect, the knower and the known (ha-sekhel, ha-maskil ve-ha-muskal ): the intellect (the rational essence of the conscious person that has achieved actuality in the cogito); the knower (the process of reasoning, which lasts in time until its completion, and in which one may see, from inception to completion, a discrete intellectual trajectory, bridging the gap between the intellect and its object); and the known (the pure idea of the object of cognition). Thus is represented the totality of notions that have been actualized in human reason as a comprehensive unified knowledge. It corresponds to the eternal, constant knowledge in the Active Intellect. According to Aristotle, the perfection of knowledge by contemplation of the set of eternally true ideas, which is a finite set, will lead the philosopher to identification with the Active Intellect. Thus he becomes divine, and that is the purpose of philosophy as the highest calling (telos) of man, who is distinguished by his native ability to think and to know.

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Maimonides accepted the fundamentals of this epistemology as promulgated by the medieval Arabic commentators, but as a religious philosopher loyal to the Torah he had to introduce a number of corrections. As a philosopher bound by the truth of prophetic revelation— that the world was created exclusively by the omnipotent God—he was unable to accept the basic premises of Aristotelian dualism; the premise that matter is an entity that exists independently of God, in parallel with the eternal God who is the source only of form, cannot be reconciled with pure monotheism. Even according to Aristotle, one cannot compare the divine Active Intellect, which is eternally active and self-identical, to matter, which is in itself only potential, and can only be actualized through the emanation of the divine intellect. But the existence of the world, according to this view, is still dependent on a second factor, beyond God’s control. This view goes against absolute monotheism and against the idea that creation originates from a loving divine will. Indeed, according to Aristotle, the assumption of primordial matter alongside a primordial deity necessitates the belief that the world existed from eternity. Furthermore, in his view, the relation of God and matter is not volitional and teleological, but causal and deterministic. Divine reason is interested neither in the world nor in man, but exists for itself and thinks those ideas that comprise it. This is its eternal perfection. Matter, which in itself is only potential, yearns—from the necessity of its deficient nature—to receive the forms that radiate from the divine intellect as light radiates from the sun, again not out of voluntary intention but out of the necessity of the divine nature. Therefore, the existence of matter from the one side and of God from the other generate—out of the necessity of their nature—a world that emulates in matter, space, and time the totality of forms that are eternally united in the divine reason. It follows that the world is also eternal, and time, which measures its perpetual becoming, never had a beginning and will never cease. In his bodily existence, the human being is, of course, a part of this world, but in his intellectual capacity he joins the natural world with the pure metaphysical intellectual essences. By actualizing his reason as a separate intellect, he represents in the physical world the aspiration to a perfection similar to that of the wellspring of the forms. This is the purpose of philosophy, and according to Aristotle the philosopher—who is the perfect human being—can achieve perfect actualization of his intellect, thus shedding his materiality as a separate intellect and becoming divine.

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From Maimonides’ point of view, these concepts constitute philosophical idolatry. The Torah is the eternal expression of the divine will to govern humanity and through them to govern the world. It testifies, in its very giving and in its substance, that God has an active interest in the world, knows it and supervises it. The very giving of the Torah is proof of the Torah’s primal assertion that the world is “created ex nihilo”—by determination of God’s free will and for the purpose of beneficence to its creatures, who are distinct from God and were generated in accord with the divine will and wisdom. The natural order expresses the wisdom of God, Who knows all created beings as it occurred to Him in His mind to create them, whereas the existence of the world in itself, outside the divine thought, is rendered possible by the fact that the omnipotent God generated hylic matter out of nothingness. Maimonides agrees with Aristotle that the possibility of creation ex nihilo surpasses human understanding. But this is necessarily the case: the intellect of man, a created being, is finite and cannot know what preceded it; it depends on the material senses and the emanation of the divine intellect who created him. How, then, will the created intellect understand what preceded that emanation and enabled it from the side of the divine intellect? It follows that the incomprehensibility of creation does not entail its impossibility from the standpoint of the omnipotence of the infinite Intellect who is not dependent on any factor external to Him. In any case, facticity is determinative. If it is an empirically proved historical fact that the divine will was revealed to humanity in the Torah, then the facticity of creation ex nihilo is similarly proved. All of Aristotle’s premises about the relation of matter to form and the ways of human enlightenment still have valid application to the world—subsequent to its creation. In this way Maimonides established an absolute distinction between divine knowledge and human knowledge. For one thing, God knows eternally on His own what the human being comes to know from outside sources through the bodily senses in a time-bound developmental progression. Moreover, God knows the pure forms of all things in a manner that their formation in the divine mind is the original source of their impression on matter—as absolute essences—whereas the human being can only know what has already been expressed in matter and received its second nature, distinct from its original essence. In Maimonides’ view, there is a substantive difference between original knowledge of the pure forms subsisting in the divine mind and their

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derivative expression, removed from the source, immersed in matter. Thus, there is an essential and not merely relative difference between God’s knowledge—original, unified, eternal—and human knowledge. Even if there is a correspondence between human and divine intellect, on whose account humanity deserves to be called the creature created “in the divine image and likeness,” they are not identical in any respect. It follows from this that the absolute intellectual reality, identified with God’s knowledge of Himself and His world, is forever beyond human knowledge, even though God is the source of man’s existence, the source of his understanding, and all his knowledge. The purpose and perfection of human existence consists in a person’s approaching toward the knowledge of God by studying the divine wisdom and will implanted in creation. But the gap between God and humanity will remain eternally infinite. The partition between the divine and the human is, in Maimonides’ view (a view not shared by Aristotle) an impenetrable barrier. Even Moses, the greatest of the prophets, the man who spoke with God “face to face,” was not able to cross this barrier, which exists as a necessary consequence of the finitude of the human intellect and man’s dependence on the material senses and the source of divine emanation. If we compare this précis of Maimonidean epistemology to Maimon’s suggested amendment to Kant’s epistemology, we can spot immediately the difference that resulted from Maimon’s acceptance of Kant’s Copernican revolution. The far-fetched and confused theory of the existence of hylic matter outside consciousness appears—on the basis of the autonomy of self-sufficient reason, around which reality turns as the earth around the sun—groundless and redundant. It explains nothing. We can only conclude this: there exist in awareness sensory impressions that combine into images, from which reason analyzes and abstracts concepts in accord with its innate categories, and yet there is in consciousness the awareness that the sensory impressions and images represent external objects. What causes this? What justifies the sensory-imaginary premise that these objects are external? Maimon’s answer (which justified Kant against his critics, but nevertheless revised his position) is the knowledge whose source is in the intellectual contemplation of the sensory images, which in that respect are unclear and do not yield the full content of their objects. The images only present the objects for the consideration of reason, but they still

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lack the discernment of the internal relations that constitute the object itself, relations that can be discerned only by the analytical contemplation of reason.8 It follows that in its first contemplation reason discerns nothing beyond a general, murky façade that the senses present to consciousness. Of course, whatever is not known to reason is outside of reason, and is only a basis given for further intellectual contemplation. In Maimon’s view, this conclusion is a sufficient vindication of Kant. But this determination cannot justify excluding the object of sensory experience from knowledge altogether, or the premise that there exists behind the sensory façade an external hylic matter, as Aristotle claims, or an external thing-in-itself as Kant claims. It is, thus, completely clear to Maimon that we do not have in our knowledge any basis to speak of a physical something outside it. But it is also clear that he found no basis to forgo the notion of the object, nor (by the same token) the notion of matter, in the sense of a sensory-phenomenal object in which the form appears, becomes clarified, and is actualized through intellectual construction and conceptualization—quite the contrary. In the continuation of his inquiry he presented the possibility that the impressions and images that the senses construct (through an activity whose source is in the mind itself, not outside it) are the raw materials of experience. When reason analyzes these impressions, isolates them into their particulars, and reintegrates them conceptually, it discovers in them the totality of the structural-conceptual relations of the objects, thus, elevating the sensory manifold, or matter itself, without remainder, to the level of pure intellectual form. It thus appears that Maimon endeavored to correct Aristotle and Kant by using them both. He introduced matter into consciousness, as its object, by identifying it with the sensory activity presented for the contemplation of reason. He reinterpreted the corporeality of matter in a new way, in keeping with Kant’s epistemological revolution. Matter, Maimon claimed, is the murky sensory-imaginary apprehension of the totality of infinite particular relations that are formed

8 Maimon’s explanation of his ontology can be found in Versuch, 240ff. The development of the role of the mind in discriminating objects in one’s environment was later the subject of detailed study by the psychologist Jean Piaget, whose research program was motivated, among other things, by his study of this problem in Kantian philosophy. (See Piaget, The Construction of Reality in the Child, Basic Books, 1954; Chapter 1: “The Development of Object Concept.”)

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among the constituents of every comprehensive formal idea that appears in our awareness. It follows that form is not implanted in matter, as Aristotle thought, but form creates matter within the mind by activating sensation as a substrate for intellectual intuition. Afterwards, reason re-examines the murky object that the senses present, analyzes it and discovers the infinitely complex relations expressed by the conceptual judgments of reason and understanding—analytic, synthetic, analytic-synthetic and causal—in which Kant saw the purpose of science.9 In summary, by introducing matter into the mind as its sensoryimaginary stratum, Maimon succeeded in preserving, in a clearer and more consistent way than Aristotle, the identical continuity of matter and form, which taken together constitute the thing-in-itself. We add that according to Maimon the causal relation of actions and objects is to be identified in fact with the continuity of activity or with the continuity of objective reality of bodies generated from one another, such that there is a clear causal connection between the matter-as-activity of sensation and their form. Furthermore, by introducing matter into sensory awareness, Maimon succeeded in preserving the Aristotelian and Kantian premise that the objects of consciousness are first revealed by sensory induction, but must become actualized through conceptualization. Yet he did so without excluding the objects of the senses from mental awareness—neither as the hylic irrational substrate à la Aristotle, nor as the thing-in-itself whose existence we somehow intuit though we know nothing about it, à la Kant. The sensory induction that grasps a material object is within the mind, not outside it. It turns out that the mind elicits from its material objects—which are on the sensory level, first given potentially within it—the conceptual form that generated them through the first activity of the senses. The inquiry is completed when the network of internal relations is analyzed and consolidated conceptually, and then the mind apprehends the things as they are, thus forming the same unity of the intellect, the knower, and the known of which Aristotle and Maimonides spoke.

9

Versuch, 226–238.

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God as Postulate of Pure Reason We now come to the big question: From where do these forms come, that appear in consciousness itself? Who gives them to it? Maimon’s answer to this key question is as follows. First of all, the conceptual forms present in the human mind do not originate in it—neither in the senses, nor in reason, nor even in the understanding—for all the mental faculties are activated by these forms and become actualized by learning them. Second, intellectual forms can proceed only from an intellectual wellspring in which they are eternally actual. This is in fact the Aristotelian answer in the prophetic-religious formulation of Maimonides, who construes a single unified origin of all true human knowledge. It is thus clear that through his adaptive reworking of Maimonides’ teaching, Maimon retreated from the Kantian doctrine of the autonomy of human reason, and came very close to Hermann Cohen’s notion of “correlation,” which was suggested by a similar conjunction of Maimonides and Kant. According to this notion, one cannot account for the existence of objects in the human mind, just as one cannot account for the existence of a priori analytic-synthetic judgments in human understanding—or the very existence of human understanding itself, aware of its limitations—without assuming (as the condition and source of all these) an infinite, eternal divine intellect, possessed of all knowledge in its particulars, and yet embracing all these particulars in an absolute unity identical with its infinite essence. It follows that in contrast to Kant, for whom God’s existence is a postulate of the understanding for the sake of the fulfillment of morality, but not for the knowledge of reality or defining the absolute norms of morality—Maimon regarded the existence of God as a postulate of the understanding for the sake of reason, thought and knowledge themselves. Human reason is aware of its finite and conditioned state. It is not its own cause or the cause of its objects, nor does it receive its objects from an external irrational source. It follows that only another absolute intellect can be its source and the source of its objects. Nevertheless, Maimon agreed with Kant, and apparently in complete opposition to Maimonides (indeed?—we shall reexamine this below) that there is no proof for God’s existence, just as there is no epistemological basis for the prophetic claim of direct divine revelation.10 10

Versuch, 196–211.

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As we said, the deliberation that led Maimon to these conclusions is close to that of Kant but not identical. First, Maimon accepted Kant’s conclusion that man has no source of knowledge beyond his sensory and rational mental faculties. This silences the claim of prophetic revelation, which is in effect based on the uncritical exercise of the imagination. Second, human reason is aware of its limits and its dependence on a transcendent reason. This awareness directs it toward a source of reason other than itself, but it cannot be considered a proof of the existence of such a source. Indeed, in Maimon’s view this is the basis of Kant’s correct claims. From the existence of the world or the existence of human reason, we cannot prove God’s existence. This is so, for the simple reason that human reason cannot grasp the existence or nature of an infinite reason. Indeed, finite human reason has a notion of an infinite, eternal reason, but at bottom this is not a positive but a negative notion, which can serve as the impetus for striving for a positive notion. However (as Maimonides taught), this can be achieved only through employing negative attributes, i.e., by taking those positive attributes that our reason conceives as applying to itself, and negating their finitude in application to God, who is the absolute Other. Human reason’s recognition of its own limitations can thus only confront man with the absolute mystery of his own origin, and every attempt to solve the mystery will leave it in place. Man can never know the nature of the difference between his own intellect and the divine intellect that he conceives as its source, nor understand why or how this finite human intellect subsists in the face of the infinite. All this remains a mystery. It is therefore clear that human intellect is incapable of possessing a proof of God’s existence. For if proof implies knowledge of the thing proved (on the basis of knowing the thing itself through its acts or visible effects), and if there is no way to know the causal nexus between what man knows of himself and nature and their divine source, then the knowledge possessed by human reason does not prove God’s existence. At a minimum, it may be possible on the basis of human reason to form an image or concept of its source. Yet we know in advance of any such image or concept merely that it corresponds to the existence of human reason, but not necessarily the existence of its source. These conclusions are reminiscent of the theoretical kabbalah, in its wonder over the secret of the divine Nothingness, which is the exclusive and absolute (and thus absolutely hidden) source of reality

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known to humankind. Maimon indeed attributed philosophical importance to the theoretical kabbalah, to whose study he was devoted in his youth. But if we examine his conclusions with Maimonides’ teachings in mind, we will see that on this issue as well his argument appears as a systematic revision of Maimonides’ views. Revision was necessary in this case because of the invalidation of Aristotelian physics. The doctrine of hylic matter in its original version was indeed in opposition to the doctrine of creation. Nevertheless, it provided the conceptual basis of Maimonides’ doctrine of creation: creation ex nihilo of hylic matter by the omnipotent divine will. The Aristotelian theory (which was retained intact) that the divine forms were implanted in non-divine matter laid the basis for depicting the causal continuum of the generation of the non-divine world through the emanation or propagation of the divine reality beyond itself, through the chain of causes and effects. This hierarchical mediation gives force to Maimonides’ proofs for the existence of God as the Universal Mover or Necessary Being, for all entities that possess only contingent existence in themselves owe their existence to God. The manifest existence of the world is thus conceived as God’s presence in creation, a presence expressive of the divine reality, even though God is transcendent and distinct from it. Through the conception of God’s presence in creation, Maimonides’ negative attributes also received a cumulative positive significance. The series of double negations, which determine that God is not lacking those positive attributes that express His presence in creation, does not indeed bring about positive knowledge in explicit conceptual terms. Nevertheless it has a positive component that affirms a causal continuum between the divine reality and the world’s reality, especially between it and human reason. Rejecting the theory of hylic matter, while re-introducing it as a factor in the human mind, which receives even its sensory knowledge from the hidden divine source, thus negates the concept of creation and that of emanation. One then loses any possibility of grasping a causal continuity between God, the world, and finite human reason. As a result, one can no longer offer a scientific explanation either of the difference or the connection between human reason and divine reason, or between ideas that find unity in the infinite divine reason and the ideas that first appear in human sensory awareness as the image of a material world. In this situation, the finite intellect’s awareness that it and its objects must have a source in an infinite intellect—as well as

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the concept generated in it from that intellect—cannot be conceived as emanated from the infinite intellect, but must be regarded rather as generated within the finite intellect, which has knowledge only of itself. And a concept generated in the finite intellect carries no proof of its existing outside that intellect, as Kant argued vociferously. We should note in this context that following Kant, Maimon rejected the doctrine of creation as a notion of causal connection between God and the world, and affirmed that the finitude and conditioned state of human intellect prevent it from knowing the cause of its finite separate existence. But invalidating the proofs for God’s existence was only one result that followed from this. The second result was to raise Maimonides’ argument, which was contiguous to his proofs for God’s existence and constituted a basis of his doctrine of negative attributes, to its full force and consequence: God’s existence, insofar as He is an absolute infinite intellect, is beyond the grasp of man’s finite and conditioned intellect. On the basis of this, Maimonides—in contrast to Aristotle—drew the following far-reaching conclusion: the divine reason so far transcends human reason that analogy is impossible. We cannot say that God and man “exist” in the same sense, and so we can never comprehend what existence is for God—or unity, or eternity, or causality. Maimon drew the radical conclusion that follows from these assertions. If Maimonides recognized that there is no way to conceive God’s existence, and developed on that basis the doctrine of negative attributes, which is the heart of his religious teaching, he ought to have concluded that there are no proofs for God’s existence. It is nevertheless clear that Maimon did not give up the certainty established in Maimonidean thought concerning God’s existence-surpassing-existence as the source of all reality and the goal of human intellectual striving. This is after all the absolute certainty of human reason, aware of its finitude and its dependence on a transcendental source, beyond the bound of its knowledge. Furthermore, Maimon did not give up Maimonides’ complementary view, namely, that the aspiration to draw near to God as the source of human reason and the world (depicted in the Guide11 as the perpetual expansion of knowledge of the truth given to human awareness) is the human calling identical with its spiritual-religious calling: the intellectual love of God. For Maimon, too, the sciences and

11

Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, I, 54 and III, 51–54.

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philosophy are the infinite way to perpetually approaching transcendental perfection—of which God is the symbolic ideal—and for him, too, philosophy is the intellectual love of God. On this point, Maimon found truth in Spinoza’s teaching as well. He identified the connection between Spinoza’s pantheism and that of the theoretical kabbalah. He concluded, like Mendelssohn, that it was a mistake to regard Spinoza’s identification of God with Nature as an atheism belying God’s metaphysical transcendence. On the contrary, Maimon regarded Spinoza’s pantheism as acosmism: Spinoza denied the existence of the world outside of God, not the existence of God outside of the world!12 It follows that even without a scientific proof, in Maimon’s view the certainty of God’s existence remained strong, along with the absolute obligation to cleave to Him in love through devotion to knowledge of the truth. What, then, was their basis? Was this simply an extension of the postulate of the understanding, as in Kant’s formulation? Of course, one can formulate it in this way, but it seems that Maimon’s words express a far more positive certainty. We shall approximate it better if we have recourse to the notion of faith in its traditional sense, or perhaps in its philosophical sense according to Hermann Cohen, i.e., a linear connection between finite reason and its hidden source, whose affirmation needs no further proof. A Skepticism Rooted in Maimonides and Kant This conception of faith is affirmed in Maimon’s thought along with another characteristic in addition to his philosophical thought— namely, skepticism. He arrived at it, it seems, through all the philosophical transitions that he underwent, and it set him apart from all the thinkers from whom he received influence in the course of his many-phased development: theoretical kabbalah, Maimonides, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Mendelssohn, and Kant, all of whom trusted the clarity of their knowledge and held to their doctrines with dogmatic certainty. They did indeed recognize the limitations of the human mind, but they affirmed these limitations with absolute certainty. This was especially important with respect to Kant’s ambition: his philosophical

12

Versuch, 207–209.

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project was designed to restore the certainty of rational science against Hume’s skeptical attack. But in retrospect, all the dogmatic philosophers disagreed with their predecessors in the name of a new scientific or philosophical truth. Maimon—who drew his own conclusions also regarding Kant, without hesitating to retreat from him in part to the views of his predecessors (especially Maimonides, but also Leibnitz and Mendelssohn)—argued that in the last analysis he did not succeed in overcoming Hume’s skepticism. The certain conclusion at which Maimon thus arrived was that a finite, non-ultimate intellect must in principle be skeptical of its synthetic conclusions. No scientific or philosophical theory, even if it appears to be true a priori without a doubt, is secure from challenge, and one can never exclude the possibility of another scientific theory appearing on the same matter. Maimon presented his principled skepticism methodically and through well-defined arguments that were always of the sort to bring human knowledge to its limits. The most striking example was, as we said, the conclusion that Kant’s epistemology, though it was not refutable from the standpoint of rational analysis, did not succeed in overcoming Hume’s principled doubt concerning causality. The discovery that causality is an a priori construction of the human mind, not in the things-in-themselves, does not establish its absolute necessity but only its facticity in human reason. But human reason and its objects are not themselves ultimate. If they derive from an eternal infinite reason, whose structure and principles of regularity are unknown to it, it cannot be certain that this is the only manner in which they can be presented from the standpoint of their source. Indeed, the very fact that Hume cast serious doubt on the principle of causality attests to the possibility in principle that truth may be otherwise than that which we hold. If it is possible to think otherwise, it is possible that things may be otherwise. Maimon gave an example of this in the argument that the truth of Euclidian geometry, as opposed to the mathematics that establishes its premises, is a posteriori. The findings of geometry are determined factually rather than a priori: our reason can conceive another geometry, so that different geometries are possible. But as to synthetic a priori judgments, Maimon argued that it is possible—and even necessary—to assume that in their source, in the infinite divine reason, these judgments are analytical and not synthetic. This means that their unity in human reason is determined by their being placed there precisely in this combination, not by their essence. If so, one cannot exclude the

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possibility that there should appear in our minds different and even opposite a priori synthetic judgments. The source of Maimon’s skepticism is thus the combination of Maimonides’ doctrine of the finitude of human reason and its dependence on an infinite transcendent reason, and the conclusions following from Kant’s epistemology—namely, that one has no way to knowledge of the truth except for reason and understanding. If these two conclusions are correct, then they limit each other. The conclusion that follows from them is that we find in our minds certain truths, which are the only ones that we can know, but we shall not be able through our reason to prove their necessity and exclusivity. Absolute certainty exists only in the divine source, and knowing the certainty of the source is beyond the capability of our knowledge. Thus we shall not be able to be sure that opposite truths will not be revealed to our minds from that infinite source in the future. It is nevertheless clear that this kind of skepticism is different from that of Hume. It does not leave the human mind devoid of knowledge, or lacking the basis for relying on the truths known to it. This principled skepticism leaves science and philosophy not only as the only path to knowledge of the truth, but as the path that is proper for man to rely on and cleave to as his destiny—but with cautious awareness of its limits. We are left with the enlightened expectation that it may be falsified in the future, or that with continued research and reflection another truth may be revealed. This is not absolute certainty, but it is sufficient for trusting that the rational person is on the road to the truth, that he satisfies the needs of knowledge in his practical life and in his aspiration to spiritual fulfillment. In other words: Maimon’s principled skepticism is an expression of intellectual honesty, and of critical aspiration for knowledge of the truth, not an expression of intellectual despair. On what, then, is based the certainty that persists despite the principled skepticism? It is obvious—on the faith that knowledge flows from a divine source. It is perhaps possible to cast principled doubt on this assertion too, but in any case we have no reason to think that God misleads us or mocks us. On the contrary, the concept of God that we have in our minds on the basis of reason and understanding that have come to self-awareness, provides sufficient reason—not proof, of course!—to think the opposite. If so, it is possible to summarize Maimon’s skeptical deliberation with the conclusion that his philosophy is entirely based on faith in God.

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The Jewish religious philosophy, presented in the appendices that Maimon added to his autobiography, is grounded on this philosophical foundation. It is based first of all on his Jewish learning and lifeexperience, and secondly on the three philosophers whose example he followed: Maimonides, Spinoza, and Mendelssohn. Kant’s influence is recognizable in this context in the methodology of understanding historical development, but it is clear that Maimon interpreted the development of Judaism and the significance of the differences between it and Christianity in a different fashion than either Spinoza or Kant. He was closer to Mendelssohn (though revising his position also), and his debt to Maimonides—evaluating his project with respect to Judaism’s historical development—is very great. The general definition of religion, to which Maimon referred in his opening, is based on Mendelssohn, from whom he accepted the notion of natural religion as the starting-point of religious development. According to Mendelssohn, natural religion is the universal common denominator of all religions, which serve a positive socialethical function and aid human survival in nature. Mendelssohn did not base natural religion on science or philosophy, yet he defined the desire for morality as rational, alluding to that common sense which is the innate endowment of all normal, unimpaired human beings. If so, the common sense of every person leads him to recognize as self-evident that his existence and happiness derive from a higher Power to whom he is subordinate and bound to render thanks and obedience. The same common sense brings him to recognize that the same higher Power—who is beneficent to all His creatures—obligates him to act beneficently to his fellow-person and to refrain from injuring him. This is the foundation of human prosperity and happiness. In other words, everyone recognizes that he must base his life on habits of right and equity and will be rewarded for doing so, but will incur divine punishment if he violates his society’s ethical norms. According to Mendelssohn, recognition of moral obligation is known to all human beings and applies to them—contrary to Spinoza’s teaching— even in a state of nature, but in his view this is not a political but a religious obligation. Nevertheless, Mendelssohn did not differentiate natural religion as a separate stage in the development of religion, either historically or in one’s personal education. In his view, natural religion is merely the

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universal common denominator of all positive religions. Every human community, every nation, manifests it in its natural communal being (man is social by nature) in a historical religious framework peculiar to it. In other words, every nation exhibits the same universal elements and values in the particular guise rooted in its own historical truths, which are the revealed narratives that constitute the basis for its religious institutions. Maimon, for his part, associated natural religion with the immediate experiences of individuals. He identified it with the religious feeling that he believed is felt in every person’s heart from birth, whose source is in the spontaneity of conscious life of man in nature. In Maimon’s view, natural religion thus precedes—both individually and historically—all forms of revelation, as well as the process of religious education. Without it, the psychological basis required for absorbing them would be lacking. We can thus determine that in Maimon’s conception, every human being, as an individual aware of his individuality, is religious by nature. It seems that characterizing natural religion as rational underwent revision here. Spontaneous personal religiosity is emotional, not rational. It is rooted in primary childhood experiences growing out of the child’s dependence on parents and natural environment, and is not the result of deliberation, not even on the level of common sense. The child feels his dependence and grasps his obligation to please, to acknowledge the good, and to obey for the sake of his life and happiness. Did Maimon think that prior to all religions there was a primal historical phase of individual natural religion? There is no evidence from his words, but it is clear that he recognizes the priority of natural religion at all times, especially at the stage of childhood, but not just then. People’s personal religiosity is evident in their personal feelings and in their direct, spontaneous religious conduct even when they internalize the patterns of organized and collective religion, which are obviously indispensable. Each individual has his own style of personal religiosity. With this distinction, Maimon gave expression to his own personal religiosity. It was manifested in his withdrawal from organized religion and his status as an individual of Jewish origin within the state, without affiliating with another religion. He did not attribute his personal religiosity to his upbringing, against which he rebelled, but to his human nature. There is no doubt that he continued to hold on to it after he

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liberated himself from his organized religion. As we have seen, he even made his personal religious stance the foundation of his philosophy. This is the source of the difference between Maimon’s stance and Mendelssohn’s, and of course the source of his closeness to Spinoza and to Kant. Mendelssohn had discovered the universal-human and the individual-human within the particular Jewish-communal framework. It had shaped his personal experience: his personal humanity was expressed through it without playing down its universal foundation. Therefore, he sought the right of Judaism to maintain itself as a separate religion, as a universal right enjoyed by the group and its members. Spinoza, for his part, did not see himself as a person whose Judaism expressed his humanity, but rather the reverse: he felt that organized Judaism was forced on his human personality despite his inclinations. Likewise, Kant too did not see himself primarily as a Christian but as a human being and a German. Maimon stood with Spinoza and Kant on the same foundation of individualistic-universal humanism. He therefore took the decisive step that characterized the members of the generation after Mendelssohn in the process of emancipation—even when they sought rights for their group, they took their stand on the basis of the right of individuals to choose their identity. This required an additional step in understanding the history of religion. Mendelssohn did not go beyond the distinction between natural religion and historical religion. Maimon, however, resorted to accepting from Kant the distinction between natural religion and positive religion, and between both of these and state religion. In his view, these represented two distinct stages in religion’s institutional development. For Maimon, positive religion developed as a social-cultural process. In our present terminology, we would define this process as the creation of a religious language based on common historical memory, on a tradition of beliefs, symbols, customs, and rituals. This is indeed an institution, but its form depends on the power of consensual agreement, not the authority of law and compulsory enforcement. Furthermore, Maimon distinguished this stage of religious life not as a discrete stage of religious development, but as a continuing stratum of religious life indispensable to all religion—tradition, custom, folk religious expression. These mediate between the spontaneous religious feelings of individuals and the consensual religious language of the community. It is especially noteworthy in his writings that despite his withdrawal

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from organized religion, he found many of the elements of the Jewish religious tradition attractive and he judged them favorably. Political religion developed, in Maimon’s view, in all religions at a later stage, against the backdrop of advanced historical conditions. The layer of political institution is added to those of natural religion and positive religion when the religious leaders become politicians and come to use the influential power of religion as a means for maintaining power that is secular in its essence. The viewpoint of Spinoza and Kant is articulated especially in this assertion, which is grist to the mill of the critique of religion. In Maimon’s eyes, the function that natural religion and positive religion fill is basically positive and necessary in the present as in the past, not only for the society, as Spinoza taught, but also for the emotional and spiritual lives of most people. To be sure, when religion goes beyond the bounds of positive religion and becomes a political factor, it plays a role that may be necessary in the initial stages of organization of the state, for there is no other factor that can take its place at the time of the founding of the state. (Indeed, all ancient political regimes derived legitimation from religion—another fact that Maimon learned from Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed). But there is the danger that it will exceed the bounds of its legitimate authority and become a form of tyranny. This, then, is the point where Maimon departed from Mendelssohn and adopted Spinoza’s and Kant’s general critiques of religion, including Judaism. But we see immediately that his appraisal of Judaism was gentler than theirs, whereas his critique of Christianity was as sharp as Kant’s. In other words, he preferred Judaism to Christianity. The perversion in the politicization of religion is expressed, in Maimon’s view, in both its organizational and spiritual development. Organizationally, the church appears as a hierarchy of priests, imposing their supremacy over the heads of the secular government. Spiritually, priests appear who claim that they have entrusted in their hands special secrets, by means of which they can influence the fates of individuals and peoples. In natural religion and positive religion there are no such secrets. Of course, every religion grapples with the secrets of humanity and nature; but religions that are true to their calling do not keep the truths revealed to them as the prerogative of priests, rather they disclose to the people the means that bring about salvation and happiness.

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When the church was founded, salvific religious truth was made an esoteric truth, which only priests are authorized to know. Of course, this was the most practical way to govern the illiterate masses, who saw themselves as depending in life and death—in this world and the next—on the church. That is why Spinoza and Kant proclaimed the need to liberate the state from ecclesiastical tutelage, and Maimon agreed with them. But how did he explain the differences between religions that originally developed from the same emotional elements of natural religion, which are universal? Clearly, these differences appear at the stages of institutionalization of positive religion and political religion. Maimon believed that their source lay especially in the different manner and different measures of actualization of the human mental faculties— the senses, imagination, and intellect. Prevalence of the senses and imagination tends in the direction of polytheism, for the senses and imagination perceive every force in nature as a god in its own right. Prevalence of reason over imagination tends in the monotheistic direction, for it is the characteristic of reason—as Kant taught—to abstract and unify. But in all likelihood Maimon was not proposing a dogmatic distinction between absolutely different types of religion. He did not present an intellectual monotheism in the pure sense, just as he did not present an idolatry of emotions and imagination without any intellectual component. The differences are relative and a matter of emphasis, and cultural products differ relatively, preserving universal elements alongside partial particularistic distinctions. Maimon’s Philosophy of Judaism Against the backdrop of these premises, Maimon drew on Maimonides’ teaching in order to depict the uniqueness of Judaism. Maimonides argued that the Mosaic Torah is the institutionalization of a pure intellectual religion, based on philosophy and sciences. The founders of the nation, Moses and the prophets, legislated and guided from a position of high intellectual eminence. Maimonides did not deny, of course, the sensory expressions and imaginative metaphors in the prophetic writings, but he explained them as intentional adaptation of the truths of religion to the level of understanding of the masses of the people. In that way, he presented the aspiration of intellectual love of

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God as a general goal—not just for the leading individuals, but for every individual according to his level and spiritual ability. Maimon agreed with Spinoza’s argument that Maimonides’ interpretation was ahistorical. Clearly he read into the words of the prophets—which were replete with imaginative and sensory images of the idolatrous sort—philosophical meanings that were not there. But Maimon did not accept Spinoza’s argument that this was falsification, deception, misleading or abuse of secret knowledge to dominate the people. On the contrary, in Maimon’s view, Maimonides’ project was a positive educational endeavor, faithful to the prophets’ primary intellectual objective, in pursuit of the betterment of the people and its members. Maimon achieved this, of course, by correcting Maimonides’ outlook in the critical-historical spirit of Kant. He presented Maimonides’ teaching in a correct historical perspective, one that Maimonides himself did not consider. Clearly at the outset Judaism was not a purely intellectual religion; even today it is not, nor will it become such in the future. But the monotheism that established it testifies for it, that in opposition to the religions that turned in the direction of polytheism, in ancient Israel the rational element prevailed over the sensory and the imaginative. Therefore, it is proper to promote the faith in this religion, and through a purifying interpretation to reconcile it with philosophy—which is not the case in the idolatrous religions. In other words, Maimon argued that Maimonides proved that Judaism provides a philosophical option for those individuals who have reached that level. Furthermore, the monotheism in the Jewish religious sources strengthens and encourages a person to progress in the intellectual direction. Maimonides correctly distinguished this option and strove to impart it to the religious leadership. Such a project is invaluable, as Maimon could attest from his own life experience. Maimon felt that Judaism was founded as a positive religion out of a distinct tendency in the rational direction. This is especially noticeable in the ethical realm. On the other hand, Maimon remarked that this discouraged the development of natural science and the arts, for Judaism encouraged devotion to the pure fear of God, whereas polytheism, which appreciated the forces of nature, invested its intellectual energies in natural science. This tendency was indeed noticeable in the way that Judaism crystallized when its time came to be a political religion. He did not ignore

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that in Judaism there also appeared movements that used secrets to influence the masses. (Hasidism, which Maimon knew intimately, was an outstanding example of this.) Nevertheless, he asserted unequivocally that the principal rubric in which Judaism became institutionalized politically—halakha, and the rabbinate as an institution whose authority was based on halakha—was not only free of from the outset of esoteric elements, but forcibly discouraged them and took care to preserve the moral purity of its leadership. Halakha is, indeed, rational law. Open human deliberation is decisive in it, and it is open for study to whoever seeks it. There is no arbitrary caprice in its operation, and the rabbis must defend their decisions through open argumentation. Maimon had harsh criticism for the kind of Talmudic study that was devoted to “pilpul” (hair-splitting, fanciful argumentation) and avoided the sciences. But Maimon knew how to distinguish between arid argumentation, which he detested, and the proper method of halakhic jurisprudence. In this connection, he vociferously rejected the Christian criticism of the Talmud and proved that it was based on prejudice, ignorance, and the falsehoods of apostates consumed by hatred, such as Eisenmenger. Thus, for Maimon, Judaism as a political religion was fundamentally rational, and despite all its distortions and peccadilloes, one ought not to compare the regime of the rabbis, based on halakha, to the priests of the Christian church. To these words Maimon added words of praise (based on his personal experience) to the high ethical level that the Jewish religion maintained within its precincts. Against the critical allegations—which Kant repeated—against the morality of the Jews, Maimon was generous in praise of the practices of charity and mutual aid, as well as family morality, which Judaism not only teaches but maintains actively in the Jewish communities. The conclusion that Maimon drew regarding the struggle for emancipation may be surprising in its personal aspect, but it is based on the image of the religion that he depicted. Unlike Mendelssohn, who sought to abolish all the political prerogatives that Judaism enjoyed, including excommunication—for in his view the prophets had already given up political privileges in ancient times, with the establishment of the kingdom of Saul and David—Maimon concluded that Judaism never gave up political prerogatives, but exercised them to the extent allowed within their communities, and rightly so. In his view, this exercise was completely legitimate as long as the majority of Jews freely

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desired and chose it. We recall that he personally chose otherwise—he surrendered all benefits from the legal institutions of the community and therefore considered himself free to break the yoke of observance in order to live as a citizen in the German state, and by its laws. However, whoever chooses to continue to live as a Jew and to benefit from the community and its institutions—such as Mendelssohn, for instance—should recognize the right of the rabbinic leadership to enforce the law under which he has chosen to live. Maimon’s response to Kant’s criticism of Judaism is quite clear. As a critical student, he eagerly adopted Kant’s systematic criticism, and deployed it against his own dogmatic tendencies, both in epistemology and in the philosophy of religion. Just as he examined his religious Jewish heritage in the light of the new philosophy, so he examined the new philosophy in the light of his Jewish heritage, especially that of Maimonides. In effect, he revised Maimonides’ teaching in the light of Kant’s teaching, in order to return and revise Kant’s teaching in the light of Maimonides, both in matters of theology and in understanding the essence and function of religion. Finally, as for his personal identity, he indeed emancipated himself from Judaism as a political religion and became a citizen of the German state, but he remained a believing Jew in the spirit of the enlightened philosophy of Maimonides. All of his philosophical writings attest to this.

CHAPTER SEVEN

CORRECTING JUDAISM BY ITS OWN CRITERIA: SAUL ASCHER’S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION A Corrective to Kant (and revision of Mendelssohn) Solomon Maimon did not participate directly in the communal debate concerning the problem of Jewish political and spiritual emancipation. He purposely withdrew in order to devote himself to philosophical speculation for its own sake, and his response to Kant on this matter was, as we said, on the personal-biographical plane. The first Jewish philosopher who took on himself the task of communal grappling on a philosophical level with Kant’s response to Mendelssohn was Solomon Maimon’s younger contemporary, Saul Ascher (1767–1822). From the nature of the situation, this was a double debate—with Kant, and no less with Mendelssohn, who in retrospect had given a foothold for Kant’s interpretation of the substance of Judaism, which tended toward a Christian prejudice. Indeed, Mendelssohn had confirmed the view that Judaism differed from natural religion only in its accepting halakha as divine legislation. It was thus clear that in order to refute Kant, Ascher also had to respond to Mendelssohn. But as is usual in such a confrontation between a disciple and his masters, the result was that he learned from both of them and perpetuated their ideas while criticizing them. Ascher had a lot in common with Maimon, especially in their relationship to Maimonides, Spinoza, and Kant—and consequently in their relations to Judaism. The younger thinker was influenced by the older. But they differed in their Jewish point of origin—Maimon decided to part ways with his religion and his people, though in actuality he remained bound to them; whereas Ascher, like Mendelssohn, sought social, political and cultural emancipation but not at the price of detachment from his people and his faith. He identified as a Jew both nationally and religiously, and in addition he understood what people like Maimon denied, though their fate shoved the naked truth in their faces: that the way was not open for emancipation of individuals in isolation. Without the inner spiritual and social-political emancipation

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of the generality of Jews as a group, even those individuals who were willing to go as far as baptism would not be accepted in German society as persons and citizens with equal rights. Saul Ascher understood the situation of German Jews in his time without illusions. He argued in the introduction to his principal philosophical work1 (which he called Leviathan, after Hobbes’ famous work on religion and state) that if the Jews were granted emancipation on the basis of the legal principles of the enlightened secular state—without prior conditions—the process of their adaptation would be natural, quick, and free of superfluous external and internal conflicts, as had been the case in France. The Jews who desired emancipation would adapt to the culture around them, without being forced to forsake their religious identity through apostasy or denial, whereas those Jews who clung to their distinctive religious identity would not be forced into ultra-orthodox segregation and absolute opposition to emancipation. Emancipation itself, he thought, was beneficial and need not force believers to renounce their faith, though it might require considerable halakhic-legal changes. If emancipation were presented that way, then even the orthodox would discover the necessity and possibility of these changes from the standpoint of their religious faith, and they would adjust to civil society. To be sure, the Jews had a perverse situation to deal with. German society was generally opposed to the emancipation of Jews. Moreover, when the prospect of emancipation was offered to the Jews, it was made conditional on the Jews’ changing their ways in advance—so that they might prove, as it were, that they were worthy of it. It was clear that such a decision could not be made by individuals but only by the group as a whole. The Jewish community needed to take a stand and earn group status.2 Clearly, in this situation there was no avoiding a collective, organized effort, both to change German society’s elitist attitude toward Jews and Judaism, and to adapt the people and their religion to the new historical reality. Saul Ascher concluded that to that end it was necessary to unify the Jewish camp and prevent its fragmentation, in

1 Ascher, Leviathan, Hebrew translation by A. Shidlotsky, Hebrew University, 1982, pp. 15ff. The 1982 Hebrew edition comprises the Introduction and Parts II–III. Part I is available only in the German original edition, Frankeschen Buchhandlung, Berlin, 1792. A few short excerpts are available in English in Frank, Leaman, & Manekin, eds., The Jewish Philosophy Reader, Routledge 2000, pp. 361–365. 2 Ascher, Leviathan (1792), German edition pp. 1–10, Hebrew edition (1982) pp. 15–18.

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order to struggle together for general internal and external remediation. It was evident that if the condition of German Jewry did not improve in such a fashion, then the way would also be blocked for individuals striving for freedom. Even if they denied their Jewish identity completely through baptism, and even if they made an important contribution to the surrounding culture, they would not be accepted in the general society. In any case, it was clear that Ascher took a dim view of the desire of young Jews to sacrifice their religious identity, and even to undergo baptism as a way to personal emancipation. In this respect, he remained faithful to the direction that Mendelssohn had established. Jews do not have to give up their spiritual-religious identity; this was a price that had no justification either in personal human terms or from the civil-political standpoint. Changes would be required, as we said, in halakha and its status in religious life, but the tendency of such changes in the new historical circumstances should be the preservation of the Jewish religion in its full spiritual identity, not its disappearance. Thus one needed to continue in Mendelssohn’s basic direction, but the form of the solution must change. Mendelssohn’s failure was clearly conveyed to Ascher on both fronts, the internal and the external. The failure on the external front was signified by the two different negative reactions by leading German intellectuals to Mendelssohn’s position—that of Kant, who represented the liberal elite, and that of Jacobi and Hamann, who represented the anti-liberal Romantics. On the internal front, the evidence came in the form of the deep rift in the Jewish community. Ascher saw before his eyes his contemporaries, and even more frequently members of the next generation, who for the sake of personal emancipation did not hesitate to undergo baptism, or to deny their Jewish origin and identity, without giving a thought for their people. On the other hand, he saw the isolationism of the rabbinic leadership and their extreme opposition to the struggle for emancipation and to the changes required from Jews as conditions for its achievement. In the eyes of the former, Mendelssohn was an arch-conservative, demanding obedience to halakha as “Torah from Heaven” (divine revelation); to the latter, he was an assimilationist and uprooter of religion, no less than the apostates and renegades. Mendelssohn surely did not intend this, but the result was clear and one could not ignore the fact that his stance lent support to both positions. The conception of Judaism that Mendelssohn proposed did not satisfy the expectations of either party, just as it was insufficient to correct the prejudices of the German intellectual elite against Judaism.

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A new ideological framework was required, in order to stop the growing fragmentation and lead the people together to face the inevitable changes. It would need to provide first an updated understanding of the present social-political situation, and a comprehensive historical and cultural orientation besides. Kant’s philosophy made an unparalleled contribution in this respect. Through his critical method, he subjected the dogmatic received wisdom that was current in modern philosophical discourse in Germany and the West to reexamination— on the basis of epistemology, a new theory of religion, and a developmental conception of history. One clearly needed to apply a similar critical approach to the received wisdom on both sides of the current issue. In the contemporary philosophical discussion about Jews and Judaism, it was necessary to critically reexamine the views of Kant, who on this topic did not exercise his usual independent critical judgment but instead clung to the conventional wisdom that he received from his predecessors. The natural conclusion—one that was required to meet the intensified division from within and the solidified prejudices from without—was that a fundamental critical approach was in order. One needed to subject the conventional wisdom of the Enlightenment on the subject of religion to searching reexamination, on the topics of religion’s place in the enlightened state, the essential differences among the faiths and how they originated, the relation of Judaism to Christianity, and of course the essential identity of Judaism and its ability to renew itself and adapt itself to the new historical circumstances. It was clear that the conventional ideas that underlay the philosophical discourse of the Enlightenment on these topics were not based on any thorough research but on partial and superficial impressions that reflected prejudices and narrow interests. It was possible to offer a real solution only on the basis of deeper investigation that was systematic, comprehensive, and meticulous in researching the relevant historical reality. This was a demand for fundamental revision, like Kant’s in epistemology. But we should note that Ascher called for this revision in the name of the original basic approach of the Enlightenment, not in opposition to it. The basic approach of the great Enlightenment philosophers— Hobbes, Locke, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz—insisted on examining every area of existence, in nature and in culture, to discover its essence and proper lawful pattern. This was in contrast to the scholastic

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approach of the Middle Ages, which compelled theory and research to submit to prior agreement on religious or philosophical dogma that was determined on a metaphysical or theological plane transcending the domains of reality under investigation, subservient to the interests of the Church or to the state (which itself depended on the Church for its legitimation). Ascher followed Kant’s example by calling for theoretical and scholarly revision in the name of faithful implementation of the original secular-rational objective of the Enlightenment. It seemed obvious to him that the misguided conventional ideas of its philosophy concerning religion also followed from compulsory dogmatic ideas, only in reverse. From the Enlightenment’s encounter with religion as a dangerous opponent, it decided to exact retribution on it measure for measure: it judged it not for itself, but in terms of its own secular assumptions, that were based on realms of knowledge transcending religion. It came as no surprise that Judaism was the first easy prey of their critique, which had an anti-religious bias. It was easy to attack it openly, and through it, to undermine Christianity. In any case, the time had come to examine the nature of religion in its own right, from within, as well as the problems of Church-State relations. One should offer solutions that would arise from an understanding of the true nature of religion and the state respectively—not in opposition to either, but for the sake of their continued special contribution to human perfection and happiness. It was self-evident that this positive approach should be adopted also for understanding the essence of Judaism and the solution of its problems. Thus Ascher arrived at his central programmatic desideratum: to research the essence of Judaism seriously from an insider’s perspective, thus giving it the freedom to develop in accord with its own nature and the lawful pattern embodied in its history, without imposing on it dogmatic demands extraneous to its nature. Like every creation of the spirit that is rooted in human nature and expressive of it, Judaism needs to develop. Development brings change, but the change must flow from the religion itself, in order to adapt its views, its self-organization and its customs to the new historical reality. Considered in itself, this new reality would have positive implications for the happiness of all human beings, including Jews. This development must come, then, from Judaism, in keeping with its nature, according to its own criteria, not according to impositions dictated to it from outside or from above.

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Defining the goal in this way focused Ascher’s critique, one that was directed at Spinoza and Mendelssohn from within and at Kant from without.3 Their philosophical sin, in his view, lay in their decision to impose on their discussion of religion in general—and on Judaism and Christianity in particular—prior positions whose source was outside the proper essence of the subjects under investigation. The requirements that they imposed on religion in general and on Judaism in particular did not follow from knowledge of the essence and proper interests of these subjects. This was also the reason that their analyses exacerbated divisions and alienation. Ascher thought that if the sages of the generation would only investigate Judaism in a scientific spirit— in accord with its nature and history—they would be able to find a solution that would enable it to develop in accord with its nature. Thus the divisions from within and confrontations from without could be prevented. From this basic philosophical requirement followed a programmatic conception that laid the basis for two parallel spiritual movements. Though the precursors of these movements had started to emerge in Ascher’s generation, they were still in their infancy and had not received definite ideological expression. The first movement was for academic study of Judaism in its historical development; the second was for modification of the Jewish religion in accord with its own fundamental ideas and the proper lawful pattern of its historical development.4 These two movements were inter-connected. They developed and became formally organized in the following generation, when first the Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Judentums,5 and then the three major modern Jewish religious movements—Reform, NeoOrthodoxy, and Positive-Historical (Conservative) Judaism—were founded, in quick succession.6

3 Chapter 6 of Part II (German edition pp. 144–160, Hebrew edition pp. 45–51) are devoted to Ascher’s critique of Maimonides, Spinoza and Mendelssohn. The critique of Kant is implicit, especially in his discussion of the Enlightenment ideal and “refined atheism” in Chapter 1 of Part III (German pp. 186–198, Hebrew pp. 63–68). 4 Ascher explicitly calls for both of these in Chapter 7 of Part III (German pp. 233–240, Hebrew pp. 83–86). 5 “Association for the Culture and [Scientific] Study of Judaism,” the first academic institution for scholarly study of Judaism (1819–24, founded by Zunz, Gans, Wolf, et al., discussed in the present work, Volume 2, Chapter 1). 6 Discussed in the present work, Volume 2.

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These three movements accepted Ascher’s assumption that Judaism must change, develop, and adapt itself to its modern environment on the basis of comprehensive, intensive historical research, following its own internal criteria. However, they were deeply divided on the definition of Judaism’s essence. Thus, they were also divided on their attitude to the criteria and methods of change needed to maintain Judaism’s identity while being responsive to the needs of life in the modern state, society, and culture. The Reform movement sought Judaism’s essence in the universal rational principles of ethical monotheism, from which it was possible to respond to the expectations of the German state, society, and culture to the point of intermingling, but short of eliminating an independent Jewish identity. They harbored the expectation that Christianity would change in keeping with the same universalistic criteria, and that an identity should be formed between ideal Judaism and ideal Christianity, within an ideal humanistic culture. In contrast, the NeoOrthodox and Positive-Historical movements sought criteria of particularistic identity within the halakhic realm. As we shall see, Saul Ascher sought the essence of Jewish particularity within the realm of religious faith, necessitating far-reaching halakhic changes, but not in the universalistic manner of Reform Judaism. Thus, his way differed from all three movements. It is instructive that Reform Judaism, with its universalistic stance, favored the direction indicated by Hegel’s dialectical historicism, in a trajectory that moved intentionally toward assimilation. The other two movements, which sought to establish a particularistic religious identity, gravitated—like Ascher—to the critical foundation of Kant’s philosophy. Ascher’s Leviathan: Redefining the Relationship of Religion and State The title of Saul Ascher’s philosophical work, Leviathan, was chosen to signal the topic that in his view should provide the foundation for the renewed philosophical discussion in Judaism. It was intended to offer a scientific definition of the essence of religion and the essence of the state, and to prescribe the relation that should subsist between them in consequence of their respective natures. Ascher thereby sought to question Spinoza’s assumptions that had shaped the discourse of Enlightenment philosophy on the subjects of religion and the state,

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and to present another foundation.7 He first sought to question the premise that Enlightenment philosophy had inherited from the scholastic philosophies of the Middle Ages, namely that religion and the state are two parallel institutions that divide between them a common socio-political and cultural task. From this received premise there followed an inevitable conflict between Church and State, and also the need to define a priori not just the division of labor but the hierarchy: who was the master? Ascher thought that the Enlightenment outlook concerning the supremacy of the state over religion was thus born of a mistaken historical development, and therefore it was itself mistaken and perpetuated the error. However, he did not question the more basic premise, that the state and religion need each other and complement each other in shaping human social and cultural life. Surely Mendelssohn was right when he argued that religion and the state bear in common the general responsibility for human happiness. Ascher’s critical brief was directed at the manner of defining their tasks and the connection between them. Dissenting from the view of all Enlightenment philosophers (including Mendelssohn and Kant) that these two institutions divide their tasks in the same plane of activity, Ascher argued that each of them had a domain of human relations exclusively its own. Each had a task exclusive to itself, that it should fulfill in different ways—according to different assumptions and values—in such a way that the two institutions, Church and State, should not tread onto each other’s domain of activity. Thus, they need not run into conflict or competition with each other.8 It followed that there is no need to arrange a division of labor or hierarchical relations between Church and State that would subordinate one to the other. Rather, religion should be sovereign in its domain and the state in its own domain, even though they are contiguous. We might say that this is the principal basis that Ascher proposed for defining the proper relations between religion and the state, and also between different faiths. By this assumption, even the notion of tolerance appeared to him as an attempt to restrain intolerance, which was inherent in a fundamenThe title Leviathan is of course an allusion to Thomas Hobbes’ major work on political philosophy by that title (though Ascher does not mention Hobbes explicitly). 8 Ascher, Leviathan, Introduction and Part I Chapter 1 (German edition pp. 12–13, 16, 17–18). 7

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tally distorted framework of relations. Religions do not have to “tolerate” one another. If each one operates in its own domain and does not deviate from it, there should be no cause for conflict between them. Each religion will relate to those adherents who chose it voluntarily.9 If it should happen that some believers wish to change their religion for personal reasons, no religion should be harmed by this. Such a case would be rare and incidental: no motivation other than positive spiritual identification should be a factor. In the natural course, a person has childhood religious experiences through the religious education that he receives from his family and community, and if there is no external reason for leaving, he will remain faithful to it.10 In Ascher’s view, the original task of religion is the earliest and most fundamental social task. There is an interesting agreement between Ascher and Maimon, that religion is continually generated from a natural tendency and as the spontaneous expression of a natural need that is awakened in each person by virtue of being human.11 But unlike Maimon, Ascher thought that this natural characteristic is fundamentally social, and not only individual. More precisely, personal religiosity arises from the natural human disposition to cooperate with the surrounding environment and the society of one’s fellow human beings. A person needs to recognize the validity of an external authority, which both obligates him and supports him. This is the inner spiritual condition for the person to achieve harmonic integration into nature and into the natural society in which he grew up—the family and the community. According to this assumption, religion—as the source of unifying authority—was generated in the past, and is generated anew in every generation, out of every human being’s primary personal situation, insofar as that person is aware of himself and his dependence on his natural environment. He needs religion not only to survive, but in order to be truly human.12 Religion offers him connection by subordinating him to an authority that he recognizes on his own, thus providing meaning and a well-defined purpose to him and his society. It 9 Ibid., Part III, Chapter 2 (No religion should compel its adherents. “Eine jede constituirte Religion sollte sich bloß Verehrer einladen und nicht erzwingen. . . . Der Nachtheil, würde bloß darin bestehen: daß einzelne Glieder verschiedener constituirter Religionen von einer zur andern übergehen möchten.” (German p. 203; see Hebrew p. 69). 10 Ibid., Part I Chapter 1, German p. 22. 11 Ibid., German pp. 17–21. 12 Ibid., German p. 21.

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is religion that enables him to discover the values and ideals that will guide his free will in its choices. We should pay attention to the dialectical significance of this conclusion in Ascher’s philosophy of religion. Precisely because man is endowed with self-awareness, with intellect and reason—that is, with knowledge and the freedom of moral choice—he requires a directive and obligating authority, for intellect and reason by themselves are insufficient for him.13 Clearly this is a qualification of Kant’s position, yet based on it. Reason is sovereign in its knowledge and its judgments, but it does not possess within itself the ultimate reason that determines free volitional choice. Only religion is capable of presenting the ideals to which a person wishes to be obligated, and in which he will perceive a goal that generates meaning for him. This requires strong emotional motivation, which does not come from reason itself but from something transcending it. Therefore only religion, born of feeling, is capable of creating the primal social organic unity of the family and the community.14 The state makes its appearance on the basis of this unity at a later historical stage, when human civilization—which is a product of human understanding and reason—develops and arrives at a certain level of sophistication and complexity. At this stage one needs rational division of labor, and legislation that will insure coordination of the activity of the interacting social entities, as well as functional compatibility among the mass of individuals, each of whom fulfills a partial task through his chosen vocation. Clearly, in light of this distinction, the state cannot fulfill the primary role of religion in constituting the very fabric of interpersonal relations. In this respect, the state is based on the social infrastructure that religion alone can provide for it. The state will then deal, using its own proper tools, with the necessary arrangements and the problems that are raised by the intellectual and rational attainments of the culture.15 We may say that religion deals with the problems of humanity, which originate in man’s instinctual nature, his dependency, and wretched finitude—all those aspects in which we have not (and can never have)

Ibid., Part I, Chapter 5, German p. 49. Ibid., Part I Chapter 1 (German pp. 18–22), Part II, Chapter 1 (Hebrew p. 26, p. 28). 15 Ibid., Part I Chapter 3 (German pp. 33–38), Part II, Chapter 5 (Hebrew, pp. 38–39). 13 14

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control over our lives through understanding and reason. The state deals with the problem of the citizen—the problem of his functioning in the rational framework of civilization—which is itself the creation of human reason and thus amenable to rational management.16 Obviously, the distinction between the natural-cultural province of religion and the social-civilizational province of the state leads to a distinction between two different mental dispositions that are part of the human repertoire. From these, religion and the state originate respectively. Religion arises out of that primary emotional disposition rooted in human nature, which Ascher defined as the power of faith,17 whereas the state develops from the intellectual-rational faculty. In themselves, these two powers do not contradict each other and even need each other; but they are not identical, and they cannot be substituted for one another. There is thus required, according to Ascher, strict attention to the exact distinction between the provinces of their manifestation and their different qualities. This is in the interests of avoiding conflict and insuring the possible and desirable harmony between them. We have here a principled scientific and philosophical critique of the Enlightenment philosophy as it was formulated from Spinoza through Mendelssohn and up to Kant. Ascher rejected the imperious one-sidedness of rationalism, which was manifested in the preference given to reason as the uniquely identifying characteristic of humanity. At the same time, he rejected the attempt made on that basis to stamp out faith by defining it as anti-intellectual, ignorant and mistaken.18 Ascher felt that this imperialism of the intellect stemmed from the overweening straying of intellect and reason from their proper domain. A consistent rationalist position really ought, in his view, to be aware of the limits of reason. When it strays beyond those limits—in order to disqualify emotion-based religion or to subordinate it to itself—it strays from its own nature and becomes irrational.

Ibid. Ibid., Part I Chapter 5, German pp. 49–57. 18 Only if faith is disruptive to human happiness, is reason permitted to judge in matters of faith. (“Der Fall, wenn Vernunft über Religion entscheiden muß, tritt nur dann ein, wenn der Glaube die Glückseligkeit der Menschen stört, welche aber nicht durch Vernichtung alles Glaubens befödert wird, sondern dadurch, dass die Menschen im Gebrauche ihrer thätigen Kräfte nicht gestört werden.” Ibid., Part II, Chapter 7, Hebrew p 57). 16 17

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Kant, at any rate, had to arrive at this conclusion from his own premises: he showed that understanding and reason cannot prove either God’s existence or His non-existence. He also showed that God’s existence is “postulated” by reason for the sake of moral action. Thus, he allowed reason to rest on what lies beyond it, yet he nevertheless demanded that religion should promulgate its truths and values within the limits of reason alone. Did he derive the right conclusions from his deliberations? Faith, for Ascher, is neither rational nor anti-rational, but is a profound emotion rooted in the human soul. It is (in the words of the Romantic Christian theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher,19 echoed also by Maimon) the feeling of dependence on higher powers, by virtue of which a person feels the need to give thanks, to praise, to please, and to obey the higher powers that rule over his fate and determine his appointed destiny and his happiness. The emotion of faith operates in a province of human experience in which understanding and reason cannot have knowledge or exercise influence; yet it is no less essential for human individual and social life than the province in which understanding and reason operate. In the ensuing discussion, it became clear that Ascher regarded rationalist deism, Kantian philosophical idealism, and even atheism (whether vulgar or refined) as varieties of religion, even if ineffective, at least for most people.20 However, we should appreciate the irony that he expressed in this assertion. In effect, he claimed that deism, idealism, and atheism—which regard the abstract ideals created by reason as sources of obligating authority, providing meaning and purpose to human lives—are the expressions not of understanding and reason but of the emotion of natural faith that pulsates in their souls, too, inasmuch as they are human like anyone else. In this respect, the difference that they imagine between themselves and simple, unsophisticated believers does not exist at all. From this ironic conclusion, it would seem that Ascher believed the emotion of faith in itself is not an evolving function. On the contrary, faith is a natural human given that does not change from childhood to adulthood or from the beginnings of the development of a culture Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers (1800), especially Second Speech “The Nature of Religion” (Harper, 1958, pp. 36–50). 20 See his discussion of “rational religion” in Part I, Chapter 2, and of “refined” and “crude atheism” in Part III, Chapter 1. 19

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to its culmination.21 With respect to faith, which originates from one’s consideration as a conscious creature of one’s absolute dependence on nature, a person remains what he was and what he will always be. Understanding and reason develop and change with maturation and with the development of the culture, whereas the emotion of faith is the elementary common denominator of the human qua human. It levels the differences between the simple masses and educated sophisticates, between children and adults, and between the members of different cultures and historical ages. In Ascher’s view, this is not to negate the development of understanding and reason, or the development of cultural creativity that rests on them. On the contrary, if understanding and reason would recognize their own limit in relation to faith and their dependence on it, they would be able to restrict its influence to its own domain and to benefit from it. Of course, this assertion has great importance in seeking the proper solution to the problem of the relationship of Church and State and Judaism’s relations to other religions operating within the country. However, in order to consider the ways of implementing the conclusion that reason’s recognition of its own limits will enable it to benefit from faith, we must pay attention to an additional distinction that Ascher draws between faith—as the source of religion—and religion itself.22 Faith is the universal emotional substrate that is experienced by every person, whereas religion is the spiritual artifact that constitutes the tangible incarnation of this emotion. Ascher regarded faith as the motivating and shaping force of religion, but it is clear that the artifact itself is fashioned out of the believers’ openness to their spiritual experiences, internal and external, and to their internalization. The emotion of faith, turning to what is above humanity, fashions and shapes the experiences that a person has within himself, in nature, in society, and in culture. From these materials, people shape religion as a response to their expectations and needs. From here there follow necessarily both the varieties of religion, and the processes of formation and development that each religion must undergo. Religion experiences these processes through its shaping and formation, as well as through developing the reciprocal relations between it and the totality of cultural creative activity within which

21 22

Ascher, op. cit., Part I, Chapter 1, German p. 22. Ibid., Part I Chapter 8, German pp. 72–74.

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it functions. But it is proper to pay attention to the clear vista that Ascher outlined, on the basis of the previous assumptions, concerning the definition of religion’s variety and the processes of formation and change. Ascher’s basic assumptions deny, in principle, the value of the idealists’ distinction between different levels of religious expression: sensory, imaginative, conceptual, and rational. All the mental faculties find expression in the production of religion. But since it is at bottom the creation of the emotion of faith, it is faith’s impress that determines religion’s basic characteristics. In this respect, there are no significant differences among the different religions or the different stages of religious development. When Ascher himself came to express his own belief, he spoke without hesitation and without a trace of Maimonidean allegorical interpretation—in traditional, anthropomorphic, religious language— about divine revelation, about God’s choosing Israel, about God’s will and decisions, about God’s giving the Torah and governance.23 He did not, as a philosopher, have any different religious language than that of any religious Jew in the past or in the present. The differences are created, in his view, in the same domain of personal experience and they stem from the different molds of emotional experiences and from the needs of functional coordination in the social and cultural sphere. In pointing to the principal types of religion, Ascher said nothing new. But there is an interesting novelty in the characteristic terminology that he uses. Polytheism is shaped, according to him, by man’s experience in the natural world that surrounds him and conditions his fate, whereas the monotheistic religions are shaped by supra-natural experiences through the mediation of nature or of the natural powers of the human personality.24 The novelty of Ascher’s approach is in the lack of interest that he shows to the difference between monotheism and polytheism. The significant difference for him is between the immanent experience of nature and the supernatural experience mediated through history. It is that difference which characterizes Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as revealed religions, in contrast to pagan polytheism.25 23 See especially his recapitulation of the Torah narrative in Part II, Chapter 1 (Hebrew pp. 24–28). 24 Ibid., Part I Chapter 2, German pp. 23–31. 25 Ibid.

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What is revelation? Ascher’s scientific answer is the simple one that he finds in the words of the prophets taken in their simple sense: the supernatural word of God comes to human beings through prophetic experiences. Clearly, Ascher was aware of the psychological process through which religious images are produced, whether pagan— relating to the forces of nature as they present themselves directly to individuals—or prophetic visions, presenting a supernatural spiritual entity. But in response to the question of the truth-value of these images, he points again to faith. Understanding and reason cannot confirm or contradict the reality of revelation. But from the standpoint of emotion—addressing the powers confronting humanity—it constitutes the truth that one has experienced, shedding light for that person’s orientation in his environment, his moral conduct and his cultural creativity. Thus it guides and directs even one’s understanding and reason.26 As we said, Ascher also recognized deism, Kant’s humanistic idealism, and even atheism as varieties of religion—a religion that shapes the human intellectual experience to its needs, and that relates to the rational ideals as values nourishing the sense of faith. But he thought that such a religion was ineffective. The reason becomes understandable now from what was said earlier. It is common knowledge that an intellectual and rational religion does not inspire the feelings of most people, who are not philosophers. But it was apparent to Ascher that these rational ideals could not even satisfy the faith-emotion of the philosophers themselves. Idealistic or scientific abstraction carries no authority to motivate people to action or leadership, and it inspires neither reverence nor love.27 “Regulative” and “Constitutive” Stages in Religion’s Evolution We pass from here to the question of the stages of crystallization of religion. It is evident that this refers to the stages of institutionalization of religion, which take place so that it can unify and lead the society. For religion to evolve, certain preparatory changes had to occur in the general society and culture. Maimon had already drawn the distinction between “positive” (i.e., familial-social ) religion and “political”

26 27

Ibid., Part I Chapter 5, German p. 49. Ibid., Part III Chapter 1, Hebrew pp. 63–68.

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religion. Ascher availed himself of a similar distinction between two stages of the institution of religion, but his terminology focuses on different characteristics of the process. The principal distinction that he proposes is between the “regulative” [regulatif ] stage and the “constitutive” [constituirt] stage in the institution of religion.28 In the regulative stage—which in Ascher’s view is the most fertile and authentic stage in the formation and institution of religion—religion does not yet establish laws and fixed routines. It guides the free, voluntary choice of its believers by means of values, symbols, and general ideals and objectives for whose achievement the society must unite. In this stage, God is revealed as a leader by means of His prophets in order to guide His believers in accord with the needs of the changing time and place. There is not yet any fixed law, but one inquires of God’s will on each occasion. By contrast, in the constitutive stage, religion is institutionalized through set laws that govern the life-routines of the society as such. A comprehensive framework of religious law is formed that judges and legislates according to set principles. We should note the precise force of Ascher’s distinction here. Even in the constitutive stage he does not describe this institutionalization of religion as political, though it clearly can become a rival to the state’s constituted authority, thus presenting a problem. Religion’s constituted authority does not necessarily embrace the whole scope of civil life of its adherents, but only the domain of their social existence— their religious life-rhythms, their family and communal morality, their direct interpersonal relations, and the relations between the individual and God. This assertion is based on historical hindsight. The state did indeed arise on the basis of the primary social foundation prepared for it by religion, but it was developed out of other motivations, and by means of other powers beyond the religious realm. It seems that this can also explain the principal historical cause that induced religion to progress from the regulative to the constitutive stage, or—to speak in Ascher’s own religious terms—that explains why God decided eventually to give to the people, through its prophets, fixed laws and ordinances.

28 Ibid., Part I Chapter 3, German pp. 37–40. (Once defined, these terms are used throughout the rest of the book. The Hebrew version of Leviathan generally translates constituirt as tikkuni ).

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When civil society develops through the rational secular framework of the state, religion is weakened, and it must take on a quasi-political institutional form in order to defend its turf and maintain itself in the primary social realm. This is clearly a problematic development, from the respective standpoints of both religion and the state. Though Ascher recognized the historical necessity of this process in the formative stages of the state’s development, when the state itself was directly dependent on religion, he did not regard the process as positive in itself. Once the state is fully established, there is an urgent need to find a solution that will restore religion to its proper realm while enabling the state to develop freely according to its own spirit. On the basis of this general theory, one can then examine the specific problem of Jewish religion: What is the historical background for raising the problem of Judaism in the modern state? How can one solve the problem without infringing on the true core identity of the Jewish religion and the legitimate demands of civil political society? Regulative and Constitutive Elements in Judaism The focus of this discussion, for Ascher, is the same issue that stood at the center of the confrontation between Mendelssohn and Kant, and between Ascher and both of them: the legal-halakhic character of Judaism. Were Spinoza, Mendelssohn, and Kant all correct in maintaining that the distinguishing characteristic determining Judaism’s essence was halakha? If the answer to this question were positive, then in Ascher’s view Judaism by its nature would tend to be incompatible with the framework of any modern state that (correctly) aspired to exercise full authority in the civil realm. Conflict would inevitably arise, for halakha as it stands spills over into the civil realm or conflicts with it in many particulars. Only if it is conceded that halakha is merely an external envelope, preserving distinctive spiritual values that nourish faith, and therefore susceptible of being adapted to render it compatible with the needs of place and time (while safeguarding Judaism’s unique identity in the realm of faith and the way of life expressing it)—only then will the desired solution be found. This solution had to be established through historical research. Ascher sought to refute the conclusions of Spinoza and Mendelssohn, who characterized Judaism as a halakhic religion based on the narratives of the Exodus from Egypt and the Sinaitic revelation, and

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secondarily on the basis of the struggle that developed between the prophets, priests and kings in the First Temple period. To establish his alternative view, Ascher pushed the boundaries of the historical perspective backward to the start of the Patriarchal age and forward to modern times. His objective was to distinguish the processes of institutional development of the Jewish religion throughout its history, and to appreciate the appearance of halakha as an institutional form at a particular stage of historical development. The question of primary origins has, of course, importance on the plane of principle. If one regards the Sinaitic revelation as the founding event, one cannot escape the conclusion that we have here a religion that is “constitutive,” i.e., legal, in its essence, a religion at whose center is the divine law and the obligation to obey it. This is not so if we place the foundational beginning in the period of the patriarchs. We can then discern the elements of the institutionalizing process both in the Sinaitic revelation and in later historical developments, and frame them in the context of everything that preceded them and came after. Ascher thus pointed out the fact that the Biblical narrative depicts in the patriarchal period a decidedly “regulative” form of religion.29 In this stage God did not reveal any intention of giving His believers fixed laws and commandments. Rather, God set targets and goals for the nation’s founders, exhorting them to serve Him and to show fidelity to Him by displaying fidelity and devotion to the objectives that He established for them. They could demonstrate their virtue through deeds that they chose in accord with their understanding, or such actions as God instructed them to perform for that occasion— and at every new transitional time. Moses’ activity appears in this perspective as a dramatic turning point.30 A change occurred then in God’s will and in His method of governance. The reason appears clear. The need arose to strengthen and give institutional shape to the faith that had been enfeebled and crushed almost to the point of extinction under the yoke of servitude to the tyrannical Egyptian state. All this was necessary to consolidate the people and energize them to face their religious destiny. Still, historical perspective shows that the Mosaic Torah did not abandon the

29 30

Ibid., Part II Chapter 1, Hebrew pp. 24–28. Ibid., Part II Chapter 3, Hebrew pp. 31–35.

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regulative legacy of the patriarchal period but continued to propagate it as an essential part of the religious message. Furthermore, this was not the basic law of a civil state or theocracy (as Spinoza called it) but clearly a religious law that applied only to the limited extent of the life of this religious society—a society that did not yet manifest the complex functions of civil society. Historical observation will confirm that in the period of wanderings in the wilderness and in the period of the judges, there was no proper Israelite state. It is also clear that when the Israelite state appeared, in the days of Saul, David, and Solomon, it developed beyond the scope of the religious law and society. Indeed, these had to adjust themselves to it. Against this background, it is noteworthy that the process of constitutive institutionalization of the Jewish religion was incomplete at first. The religion continued to function for a long time—in fact, for the whole of the first Temple period—more as a regulative religion, relying on the ad hoc instructions of the prophets, than as a constitutive religion. Only in the Second Temple period was there a renewed effort toward the comprehensive, detailed halakhic codification of the religion by the Pharisees.31 Even this process had to contend with opposing movements who were in favor of the continuation of the regulative approach. (Ascher pointed especially to the Sadducees but mentioned also the Karaites, and commented on their inconsistency: they created their own halakha, even if it was less thorough).32 In point of fact, the process of halakhic-constitutive institutionalization of Judaism continued into the second Exilic period. In the absence of a Jewish state, it clearly applied only to the areas of social life that were in the province of religion. Furthermore, even when this process had reached its completion—in Ascher’s view, in the monumental halakhic codification work of Maimonides—there was never any thought of restricting Judaism’s essential identity to its halakhic definition. On the contrary, Maimonides—in whose work Ascher found a major support to his own outlook of the essence of Judaism—regarded his systematic halakhic codification as a necessity that followed from the dispersion of Jews in the lands of the Exile. He saw it as a means, not an end. The end-goal was faith—connection to God and to the people, the people’s destiny, the memories that document and outline

31 32

Ibid., Part II Chapter 5, Hebrew pp. 38–44. Ibid., German 136–139, Hebrew pp. 42–43.

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the way, the ethical-religious values, and the study of Torah as a way to knowledge of religious truth. Ascher thus invoked Maimonides as a source and support for the solution that he sought to present, as opposed to those of Spinoza and Mendelssohn. According to Ascher, Maimonides’ practical religious approach was rooted in his relation to halakha as an external means, and in his comprehensive effort to bring the fundamentals of Judaism to all the strata of the people, each in accord with its spiritual level— to the enlightened on a philosophical level, to the less-educated in a simple narrative and descriptive mode. It is clear that Ascher did not regard Maimonides’ philosophical interpretation of the Bible as the heart of the effort by which Maimonides grappled for the continued existence of the Jewish people and its religion in exile, but rather his basic definition of the elements of faith, around which both halakha and philosophical interpretation revolved, as the unifying essence of religion.33 But together with the formulation of the principles of faith, it was important to Ascher to give systematic attention to explaining the reasons for the mitzvot, while emphasizing that rote observance of the mitzvot without a deep understanding of their reasons and significance was worthless. Thus, he showed clearly what was the essence of Judaism, as opposed to what was only instrumental to its preservation and the people’s unification. This incidentally provided the answer to Kant’s argument against Judaism’s purported heteronomic character, that violated the rational autonomy of moral judgment: the religious command does not come to compel the rational will. It guides it to the highest meta-rational objectives without infringing its freedom to weigh, to judge and decide on its own. Ascher’s broad historical overview of Judaism thus reached its culmination in his account of Maimonides’ consolidating achievement. It demonstrated, in Ascher’s view, that identifying Judaism with the constitutive norms of the halakha and conceiving these norms as if they were the constitution of a theocratic state was nothing but a distortion on Spinoza’s part, stemming from his hostile rebellion against his ancestral religion.34 Mendelssohn, who stood up to defend Judaism

33 Ibid., II, 6 (German 144–152, Hebrew 45–48), III, 7 (German 228–232, Hebrew 83–86). 34 Ibid., II, 6 (German 147–153, Hebrew 46–49).

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against the attacks coming from Spinoza’s school, was drawn to compete on a battlefield defined by his opponent, without questioning the fundamental distortion. Mendelssohn sought to defend the propriety of the halakha and to demonstrate that it was not a political constitution but a religious constitution, which does not conflict with the law of the land and is therefore worthy of toleration. But he nevertheless accepted Spinoza’s basic erroneous definition, by which the halakha as given from Sinai—i.e., understood as static, fixed and compulsory—is the unique defining characteristic of Judaism in comparison with other religions. However, with respect to its spiritual values, Mendelssohn identified Judaism with the most universal elements of natural religion.35 Ascher thus saw a great stumbling-block in Mendelssohn’s erroneous position regarding the halakha and the core values underlying it (though presented with good intentions). It had given a pretext for the de-legitimization of Judaism on the part of the liberal German elite, who represented the interest of civil society through the modern enlightened State. It had also brought about a schism in Jewry over halakha and emancipation. One party despised halakha for effectively blocking the way to full and free integration into civil society and the state, whereas the other party clung to halakha as if it were the primary essence of Judaism, and therefore despised emancipation. Ascher’s Program for Reform; His Credo The solution that Ascher proposed becomes clear against the background of this comprehensive analysis. He returned to the point of origin of Maimonides’ teaching, in order to reconsider what balance was desirable between the fundamentals of Judaism on the one hand, and halakha as a means for its preservation on the other hand, given the changed historical reality of the present age. He concluded that in the present it was required to do the opposite of what had been required in Maimonides’ age. It was necessary now not to consolidate the halakha, but rather to relax the halakhic constraints and return to the foundational point of origin. In other words, Jews should now return to the original regulative paradigm as it operated in patriarchal times, as it was understood by the prophets, and as it was preserved

35

Ibid., (German 149–160, Hebrew 47–50).

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at the core of the halakhic process within the traditions of the rabbis of various generations, up to Maimonides, who as we said regarded halakha as a means and not the end-goal.36 Ascher believed that returning to the original regulative paradigm would enable the thinkers of the present generation to treat the religious strata of halakha as a symbolic language, which sought to express religious and ethical ideas and values. In his view, halakha was susceptible to free interpretation in accord with the needs of the age and place. One need not treat it as a compulsory legal code or “Shul˜an Arukh.” Thus Jewish society could preserve its unique religious identity through its beliefs, its patterns of living and its connection to its national existence, without ruling out full integration in civil society and all its activities. The respective realms of activity of religion and civil society should be separate and not conflict with each other. It was clear to Ascher that all this constituted a solid refutation of the humanist-liberal critique of Judaism, which had its source in the misunderstanding of the values expressed through the language of halakha. In other words, by restoring the original foundational paradigm of the Jewish religion, emancipation could take its full course amicably. The conclusion of Ascher’s work37 sets forth a reform of the Jewish religion, parallel to Luther’s reformation of Christianity. The motivation was similar: to give religion a place in the secular state without compromising its essence and identity. According to Ascher’s definition, reformation was the dissolution of an existing formal structure and the reconfiguration of its parts from scratch, in such a way that the content will be preserved but its emphases and implementation will change. The approach that he suggested was consistent in its revolutionary way. He acknowledged that it would be necessary to dismantle and reconfigure the halakhic structures that had been fashioned in the past together with their contents and explanations. But in his view (here he came into direct collision with Mendelssohn’s disciple and successor David Friedlaender)38 it was necessary to start precisely with halakhic revision, for halakha was the immediate practical obstacle that was preventing gradual, Ibid., Part III Chapter 6, Hebrew pp. 81–83. Ibid., Part III Chapters 5–7, Hebrew pp. 77–86. 38 Ascher’s critique of Friedlaender is in the Afterword to Leviathan (German 241– 246, Hebrew 87–89). 36 37

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natural adaptation to the environment. To make this revolutionary step possible without causing a deepening of the rift in the people, he saw a need to reformulate the consensus of the foundations of the religion, while faithfully matching what was found in the tradition as much as possible. He hoped that on this basis it would be possible to begin deliberation on the status of halakha and new ways of implementing it. He proposed doing this in a way that was basic and legitimate from the standpoint of the tradition. Change should be based on in-depth historical study of the sources, in order to derive from them consensually validated principles for revising the halakha. For this need, he proposed establishing a representative educational and academic institution of learned rabbis and scholars of Judaism, and in deference to this program he refrained from enumerating the halakhic changes that he thought would be needed.39 Nevertheless, he formulated what appeared to him to be the spiritual foundation that united and identified Judaism in our time, against the background of its entire history: 1. I believe in one God; 2. In a single God, who revealed Himself to our ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and promised them His salvation; 3. Who chose Moses and other individuals acceptable to Him, and bestowed on them the gift of prophecy; 4. Who gave our ancestors laws at Mount Sinai. 5. We believe that observance of these laws was sacred to our ancestors and that through such observance they succeeded in keeping to the way that we tread today, through having exclusive faith in God and His prophets. 6. We believe that this God is the God of love. 7. God will reward the good and punish the bad. 8. God governs the world through His providence and omnipotence. 9. God turns even our misfortunes to good. 10. We hope for redemption by God’s Messiah, in this world or after our death, together with all others who are worthy of the Resurrection. 11. We are obligated to continue and perpetuate the covenant that the eternal God enacted with our ancestors through circumcision;

39

Ibid., III, 7 (German 235–36, Hebrew 84).

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12. To celebrate the Sabbath as a day sacred to God; 13. To renew the memory of God’s acts of kindness, through celebrating the festivals; 14. To seek kindness and purity from God through repentance.40 Ascher’s debt to Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles of Faith is quite clear. Ascher reproduced them all in order, but he formulated and enumerated them differently, and he added principles that Maimonides relegated to the realm of halakha—practice, not belief: circumcision, Sabbath, festivals, prayer, and repentance. Examination of the reformulations and additions will of course reveal the emphases and new meanings that Ascher viewed as dictated by the modern age. In this respect, Ascher’s formulation highlights the three following novel tendencies: 1. The emphatically traditionalist and popular twist in his understanding the concept and content of faith. To this purpose, Ascher omitted Maimonides’ orientation toward philosophical understanding of the metaphysical elements: the divine existence, unity, incorporeality, and eternity. In Ascher’s eyes, the philosophical perspective—raising the belief in a single God to the level of rational metaphysics—was superfluous. He preferred the simple believer’s relationship to God, and (following Halevi and the prayer book) he emphasized the national connection over the universal: the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Thus the distinct Jewish identity achieves prominence even in the most general area of faith in God. 2. The decisive reference to the revolution restoring the religion from its constitutive mold to the regulative paradigm. We have here a calculated revision of the principle of faith asserting the eternity and constancy of the Torah. Instead of this article, Ascher alludes to the awareness of constant change in the halakha, and to its lack of fixity, but proceeding out of a continuity of historical consciousness and fidelity to the continuity of the way. In other words, the way is eternal and unchanging, but the means and norms are always changing. 3. Referring to circumcision, the Sabbath, festivals, prayers, and repentance as principles embodies the substantive change from the halakhic-constitutive approach to the regulative approach. This approach emphasizes the symbolic signifi-

40

Ibid., (German 237–38, Hebrew 85).

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cance of halakha and relates to it not as a monolith of compulsory norms but as a religious language replete with symbols. In this language, one should speak not out of the spontaneity of free expression, but (of course) out of a consensus uniting the community of Israel, as befits the regulative approach. Ascher selected the central symbols as principles that have united the people of Israel through its religion in the course of its history. In this way, this critical disciple of Maimonides, Mendelssohn, and Kant succeeded in providing through his principles a quintessential embodiment of the conservative revolution that was required, in his view, for the continued existence of Judaism in the modern age.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE APPEARANCE OF ENLIGHTENED ORTHODOXY IN RESPONSE TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY—NAPHTALI HERZ WESSELY AND MORDECAI GUMPEL SCHNABER Traditionalists Open to Enlightenment The path carved out by Moses Mendelssohn, Solomon Maimon, and Saul Ascher laid the ideological foundations for the modern religious movements that sought sweeping or partial reform of the Jewish religion. These movements based themselves directly on modern philosophy. Even when they criticized it for its negative attitude to religion generally and Judaism specifically—and even when for this purpose they drew on certain rubrics of traditional Jewish philosophy, especially that of Maimonides—they did so with the purpose of finding in the tradition itself elements which already provided an opening to the new vistas of modernity and legitimation to the substantive revisions and innovations that seemed vital to them. Thus they sought to create a bridge of continuity after taking the decisive step that constituted a conscious breach with the previous mainstream. Yet there was another possibility that could be glimpsed even in the first stages of Mendelssohn’s and Maimon’s development, whose roots could be found in their traditional religious education and its philosophical sources. This was the possibility to stand firm on the traditional philosophical foundation, which was in principle open to intellectualism, science, and philosophical inquiry for its own sake, and especially had a positive attitude to participation in civil society; and to graft onto it—as it stood, or through expansive interpretation that was not too far-fetched—the elements of modern education and its rational, secular ideals, without requiring a change in the traditional conception of religious principles or religious observance. In Mendelssohn and Maimon, we can see this stage in their Hebrew writings, which were created in direct linguistic and textual continuity with the medieval philosophical sources that were available to them in

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their traditional Hebrew translations,1 especially Saadia’s Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, Ba˜ya Ibn Pakudah’s Duties of the Heart, Judah Halevi’s Kuzari, Joseph Albo’s Book of Principles, and above all Moses Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed. Writing in Hebrew created a natural continuity between the older legacy and the modern philosophical learning and culture. This continuity was expressed stylistically, especially through the philosophical terminology that influenced the basic nuances and connotations of philosophical language, and through the method of philosophical interpretation of the sources. As a result, it was difficult to discern in these writings where traditional medieval philosophy left off, and where modern philosophy began. Recourse to the German language—the language of modern discourse in the sciences and philosophy—constituted the decisive turning-point, both in regard to the sources on which they drew, and to the audience whom they addressed in order to explain and convince, as well as the ranking of preferences between the old and new cultural strata. Writing in Hebrew implied a preference for old over new and continuity over innovation, because it remained in the circle of discourse of the traditional religious culture; whereas writing in German implied preference for new over old and innovation over continuity, because it broke into the non-Jewish circle of discourse of general enlightenment and modern philosophy. Hebrew writing interpreted modern philosophy in terms of traditional philosophy, whereas German writing interpreted traditional philosophy, insofar as it relied on it, in the concepts and terms of modern philosophy. However, not all thinkers who had access to modern philosophy decided—like Mendelssohn, Maimon, and Ascher—to follow the path of enlightenment to its conclusion. It was possible to go with it halfway (this much was unavoidable under the new circumstances) but to stop at the point where religious danger outweighed cultural utility. One could take advantage of general scientific culture in its languages, while standing firmly within the traditional circle of discourse in the 1 From the ninth through the twelfth centuries (from Saadia through Maimonides), the regular language of Jewish philosophy in Moslem lands was Judeo-Arabic. Toward the end of this period (mainly in Maimonides’ lifetime), the classic works of this period were translated into Hebrew by the Ibn Tibbons of Provence and other translators. Henceforward, until the end of the Middle Ages and through the Renaissance, Hebrew was the principal language of Jewish philosophy. Of the thinkers listed in this passage, only Albo wrote his philosophical works originally in Hebrew; the others were written in Judeo-Arabic and translated later into Hebrew.

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area of religious outlook. By doing so, one could maximize the measure of openness to reason that already existed in the old philosophical tradition (that allowed free philosophical inquiry in the service of social life), and remain within the traditional circle of discourse but not enter the circle of discourse of the general culture. This was a characteristic defensive stance that may be defined as “orthodox,” whether or not it had yet adopted this term. Eventually the religious movement that took on the explicit institutional form of “Neo-Orthodoxy” found its connection (tempered by criticism) to the world-view of Mendelssohn and his conservative followers. Once the founders of modern Orthodoxy passed beyond the linguistic barrier of Hebrew in writing on matters of faith and religion, and created an Orthodox Jewish circle of discourse in German within the general philosophical-religious circle of discourse, they found a considerable advantage in Mendelssohn’s halakhic position and in his doctrine of tolerance, for at this stage it already appeared sufficiently conservative when compared with the wave of audacity of the Reform movement. But at the time of Mendelssohn and his disciples, his approach appeared to pious traditionalists—who welcomed scientific education and equal rights but were not ready to compromise their fundamental belief in revealed Torah and their halakhic life-style—ambiguous and dangerous. Pious Maskilim preferred to remain within the inner Jewish circle of discourse, to write in Hebrew, and to base themselves on the traditional philosophy while defending their faith and halakha from the criticism of modern philosophy. The beginnings of such a stance can be found already in the Hebrew literature that heralded the dawn of the Enlightenment in Germany even before Mendelssohn’s appearance, for instance in the writings of R. Israel Zamosc and Dr. Aaron Gomperz. This kind of confrontation appeared again when the Hebrew Haskalah gradually arrived at the Jewish centers in Eastern Europe—first in Galicia and later in Russia. Mendelssohn’s influence was also absorbed in these centers in the literature that was written in Hebrew in a way that matched the medieval philosophical sources as closely as possible. There is another distinguishing characteristic of this branch of thought, standing on the boundary of tradition and enlightenment, namely its intentionally refraining from independent philosophical reflection. Its attitude to philosophy was cautious, for in the eyes of the official rabbinic establishment it was apt to lead those seduced by its charms into heresy. Better not to delve too deep, but rather to hold

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firm to simple faith. In order not to arouse suspicion, the pioneers of Enlightenment thus preferred to base themselves on the words of the traditional thinkers who had earned canonical status by virtue of their halakhic proficiency. They expressed their own views on the plane of popular exposition—the plane of common sense—and in the style of classic ethical treatises, in order to demonstrate the legitimacy of scientific enlightenment and esthetic sensibility, the necessity of improvements in traditional educational methods, and the importance of good manners and friendly relations with the gentile environment. Wessely: The “Law of God” and “Law of Man” Since this is not a matter of philosophical theory, we need not deal with these issues in the context of our history of philosophy. Nevertheless we may cite as a typical instance the teaching of one famous maskil, whose influence on the development of the Hebrew Haskalah was especially prominent—the Hebrew poet Naphtali Herz Wessely (1725–1805). Wessely was Mendelssohn’s colleague in writing the Be’ur, the commentary to the German translation of the Pentateuch, which was an important milestone in propagating the new enlightenment among Jews. His rich creative work embraced Hebrew poetry, research on the Hebrew language, contemporary ideological propaganda, and pedagogical-ethical theory. Apart from his eminence as the first poet of the Hebrew Enlightenment, he was known for his major efforts for reform of Jewish education. In this context, he laid the foundations for the religious educational theory of modern Orthodoxy. Two writings of Wessely deserve mention in this connection: Words of Peace and Truth (whose first brochure appeared in 1782) and The Book of Virtues. In the first installment of Words of Peace and Truth, Wessely sought to persuade believing Jews to cooperate with Joseph II, the Austrian Emperor’s “Edicts of Tolerance” by sending their children to the modernized schools in which they would acquire a modern literary, civic, and scientific education alongside the traditional sacred studies to prepare them for emancipation. Thus he laid the foundation for the outlook of “Torah with derekh eretz [worldly concerns]” in the shape that would be proposed later by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, though Wessely gave it different formulation. He proposed a distinction between “the Law of Man” and “the Law of God.” “The Law of Man” consisted of humanistic studies, including the foundations of

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social ethics and political citizenship, the sciences and crafts required for contribution and integration into the economic, social, and cultural life of their neighbors. All these were universal intellectual studies, comprising an essential basis for human development, survival, and happiness, and all were developed by the intellectual powers of human beings themselves. By contrast, the Law of God combines the doctrines and precepts that were given by divine revelation exclusively to the Jewish people. It adds to the worldly Law of Man those things that are required for realizing the trans-worldly and supra-rational destiny of the Chosen People. Those are the additions which human beings cannot arrive at on their own, but for whose achievement they must rely on divine assistance. It is self-evident that the spiritual objectives that have been determined by the Law of God are eternal, supernal goals which are absolutely binding, but before a person can devote himself to their realization he must first achieve ordinary human fulfillment, including universal intellectual accomplishments. Because of the difficult circumstances of their exile, Jews neglected the Law of Man and devoted themselves almost exclusively to the Law of God. It is now incumbent on them to correct their ways by broadening and improving their education (which had previously been restricted to sacred studies) so that that they may be good and desirable citizens in their countries of residence, and so that they may lay the necessary basis for realizing their special religious vocation.2 These words of Wessely were, as we said, a first, simplified formulation of the theory of the dual curriculum. They provided the basis on which modern Orthodoxy would eventually develop an educational process which would posit emancipation and humanistic learning as a universal human ideal, while at the same time pledging absolute fidelity to the norms of halakha as divinely revealed within the particular domain of religious belief and practice. The first installment of Wessely’s circular encountered fanatical opposition from the official rabbinic leadership. They viewed its message as disparaging to the honor of Torah and its sages. Furthermore, they saw it as a dangerous breach in the fortress of religion, placing Wessely, Words of Peace and Truth, Part I, Chapter 1, and Part II passim. See also a more detailed exposition and discussion of Wessely’s ideas in this work and their historical-contextual implications in Schweid, The Idea of Modern Jewish Culture, Chapters 4 and 5. 2

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a humanistic message of foreign origin on a higher priority than religious education. Did not a Jew educated by Torah alone achieve proper human fulfillment by doing so? In order to correct the insulting and suspicious impression that his words aroused, Wessely made haste to put out a second brochure of Words of Peace and Truth. He now claimed that the Law of God itself commanded us concerning the Law of Man. Indeed, the Law of Man was included as a general injunction in it—the prophets and sages always engaged in it—but its theoretical contents were rational and universal. They were held in common by Jews and all peoples, and they were subject to continual development, for they did not constitute a permanent, set law as did the Law of God which governed human relations with the divine. It was thus necessary to engage in this enterprise by itself, on its common human basis, but in recent generations Jews neglected it. In contemporary general culture, the disciplines of the Law of Man had developed noticeably, and Jews now needed to remedy their deficiency by studying general culture in order to be able to participate in it. The voluminous Book of Virtues was intended to fill out and substantiate this assertion, to certify the Law of Man as an obligation under the Law of God, especially in the area of morals, which constituted the sensitive point of overlap between the two.3 We should emphasize at the outset that Wessely did not intend to engage in philosophical deliberation. First, he wanted to emphasize the importance of relying on the Law of God based on a factual revelation that did not need any philosophical corroboration. Second, he preferred simple faith over an intellectual philosophical approach regarding belief in God’s existence and the Creation. He admitted that there were philosophical proofs of these, but he knew that these were not counted as decisive by modern philosophy. He also knew (from reading Judah Halevi) that these philosophical proofs supported an abstract deism but did not generate belief in the personal God of the Torah who commands and exercises providence. Wessely also considered that philosophy is not understood alike by everyone, and that it

3 Wessely’s Book of Virtues comprises three parts. Part I is devoted to a general consideration of the nature of the human soul, its place in the hierarchy of being, and the human being’s relation to God, all of which provide the foundation for the science of ethics. Parts II and III contain individual chapters, each chapter devoted to a particular virtue or vice.

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often raises doubts that it cannot resolve by its own resources. For all these reasons he came to the conclusion that philosophers also are in need of a tradition. The simple faith based on the primal trust that a person invests in his parents, and rooted in their legacy testifying to the Sinaitic revelation, is preferable to any metaphysical knowledge and stands prior to it. Based on all of this, Wessely chose to write an ethics book on the plane of common sense—a book that addressed everyone equally, including those philosophers whose integrity and innocence were uncorrupted. But the argument that he sought to establish stood nevertheless on the verge of philosophy and had philosophical aspects. Therefore, he relied on the words of philosophers who were considered legitimate by the tradition because of their stature in halakhic matters: Saadia’s Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, Ba˜ya Ibn Pakudah’s Duties of the Heart, Judah Halevi’s Kuzari, Maimonides “Eight Chapters” and “Laws of Foundations of the Torah” from the Mishneh Torah, Joseph Albo’s Book of Principles, the books of Isaac Abravanel, and the like. The argument that Wessely sought to establish in broad outline had two aspects: (1) The Law of Man, taken as a general ethical discipline, was dependent on belief in a God who commanded, judged, and exercised providence, as well as in a Law of God as a source of normative ethical imperatives. (2) The belief in God and Torah depended on general wisdom developed by human beings. Neither of the two could exist without the other, but each was both a means and an end for the other. The foundation that Wessely assumed for his two-sided argument was the medieval psychological theory that derived especially from Ba˜ya’s Duties of the Heart. From this book he took the idea that the soul was a pure spiritual essence. It emanated from the higher spheres and descended to be combined in the terrestrial body in order to fulfill a double mission. First, it had to actualize its potential in order to return completed to its supernal source (in that respect, the service of God and seeking His closeness was its supreme objective). Second, it was enjoined to repair terrestrial existence through civil society (in other words, through development of culture by actualizing the independent intellectual faculties latent in humankind).4

4

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The difference between the medieval Duties of the Heart and Wessely’s Book of Virtues, supportive of modern scientific learning and cultural participation, is to be found in the relative balance of these two enterprises. In Duties of the Heart, the supernatural goal is not only the more important but is the true goal, to which the worldly goals are only instrumental and incidental, whereas in the Book of Virtues the worldly goals are fully worthy in their own right. Man was created to be a creator of culture, and was given for this purpose various creative faculties required specifically for this worldly enterprise, which God desires for the glory of His world. Thus, the human being is required to take care for the development of his talents of knowledge and worldly creativity for their own sake and to actualize them fully, for by this too he performs the will of his Creator. It is clear that in the last analysis for Wessely, too, the supernatural religious objective is the higher one, but it includes within it the worldly objective as a part of the intended perfection. In order for both objectives to be achieved, both the Law of God and the Law of Man are required. We thus come to the crux of Wessely’s theoretical inquiry: why does the Law of God need the Law of Man? His answer is rooted in his first conclusion, that human beings have worldly goals that they must achieve by their own powers, and in his second conclusion, that the connection of the soul (of supernal origin) to the body subordinates it to bodily urges. In order for it to return and know its source and its higher destiny, the soul must liberate itself in stages. It must first arrive at awareness of itself and of its intellectual supremacy, for then it can control the body and its bodily conditions, instead of being controlled by them. To achieve this is the task of the Law of Man, and first and foremost the acquisition of the virtues and moral habits, which constitute the soul’s control of the bodily urges. It is thus clear that the Law of Man—comprising the human being’s knowledge of himself, control over himself, orientation in his worldly surroundings, and securing all the conditions needed for a humane existence on earth—is prior in time to recognition of his spiritual supernatural destiny, expressed in the religious ideals of the worship and love of God. Only after the soul arrives at self-knowledge through development of its worldly functions does it arrive at awareness of its limits, its origin, and the rational obligation incumbent on it to love God and devote itself to His service in all ways—including what it does for the sake of creating culture. If so, why does the Law of Man need the Law of God, whose interest is in a supernatural goal? Because the human intellect is limited,

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and furthermore the control of rational will over the bodily urges is limited as well. Man is immersed from birth onward in the life of the body and the satisfaction of his worldly needs, and he is helplessly drawn into them. Human reason is continually operating in the face of direct sensory experience, and from it one learns to distinguish between good and evil. How then shall there be awakened in him even that measure of rational awareness that he needs to know that he is obligated and able to control his libidinal urges and his emotions? Wessely argued—along the lines of Duties of the Heart—that without the religious prompting that arises out of faith rooted in traditional religious education, the soul would never arrive at the self-awareness and awareness of its intellectual powers that are necessary even for fulfillment of its worldly objectives.5 Furthermore, the soul—hewn from a supernal source—is surely by its nature directed toward ethical and religious good, which is truly good for it, as the humanists maintain.6 But as long as it is tied to the body and dependent on bodily conditions, it lacks full control over them. Even when the soul arrives at a rational degree and is able to distinguish between good and evil, the rational will is not sufficiently strong to overcome sensory-libidinal temptation. A stronger obligating factor is required. It is one that is not rooted merely in intellectual deliberation and will, but in an emotional motivation based on love and reverence, which can muster greater power than worldly, libidinal temptation. The requirements for this purpose are: First, faith, which is not rooted in finite intellectual deliberation and weak rational will, but in primal experiences that awaken a sense of dependence and deeply-felt reverence. Second, Torah, whose precepts are observed out of faith and reverence for the commanding deity.7 A strongly-felt faith in God who gives the Torah, and the Torah given by Him is needed for morality and the fulfillment of man’s other worldly goals. These are not acquired by scientific examination or philosophical inquiry. They admit of no rational proofs. The faith in a personal commanding and providential God, and the faith in revealed Torah, are based on factual certainty transmitted as testimony from generation to generation through experientially-based

5 6 7

BV Part I, Chapter 3. BV Part I, Chapter 4. BV Part I, Chapter 5.

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religious education. This education rests on trusting and accepting the authority of parents and teachers. Indeed, Wessely drew the conclusion that follows from this for his time. Faith in God is first of all the faith of the child in his parents and teachers. The child must have confidence in them that they wish his good and transmit to him a Torah of truth, a Torah based on well-examined historical testimony, that will be a reliable guarantee for his salvation and happiness.8 Note well: not only religious truth rests on this foundation, but also the truth of worldly humanism. Without revelation—without a defined normative teaching, without a tradition that is passed down from generation to generation, affirming the faith in revelation and Torah on the basis of trust in parents and teachers—a person would have no chance of arriving at the intellectual and rational degree intended for him, to recognize his worldly goals, to persevere in them throughout his life on earth, and to realize them. We may conclude that not only for the sake of realizing one’s supernatural destiny but also for humanistic reasons one should defend the belief in God, in tradition and its guardians. These protect us against the danger of overthrowing our awareness of the fragile and limited hegemony of reason and will, vulnerable to the deceptive hubris of self-aggrandizement. This is the theoretical import of Wessely’s humanistic-Orthodox educational method, which availed itself of philosophy only on condition that it restrict itself and defer to the faith in that which transcends the powers of rational knowledge. Simple faith thus assumes the role of a foundational value, from the complementary standpoints of the Law of God and the Law of Man. It includes faith in parents and teachers, faith in a revealed Torah and in the God who gave the Torah and rewards obedience while punishing disobedience for its precepts. This is foundational, on whose basis alone is it possible to base a teaching of moral values that is effective in all areas of interpersonal conduct: only from it can one develop a teaching of virtue that is formative of true character. Furthermore, the faith that is impressed as the foundational stance in one’s personality is the source of true reverence for God and intellectual humility. In Wessely’s view, based on Scriptural foundation,9 this was the true

Ibid., § 7. Psalm 111:10: “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord,” cited in BV Part I, Chapter 5, § 4. 8 9

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beginning of all wisdom, whether of the scientific-worldly kind or the ethical-religious. The two diverse “Laws” thus are united in affirming faith as a foundational value in order to realize man’s worldly and supernatural goals. Wessely did not conduct any direct or open polemic against the modern philosophical views that criticized Judaism’s legal-obligatory character. He purposely refrained from any direct philosophical deliberation, but it was clear that he saw in these arguments for the foundational value of faith and tradition in human culture a decisive refutation of those philosophical arguments based on the autonomy of reason. For him, the Enlightenment critique of Judaism was based on a perverted ethicism and a lack of intellectual humility that should follow from a proper recognition of the limits of human reason and will. On the contrary, the heteronomic, legal-obligatory character of Judaism is its decisive advantage, not only from a religious but also from a humanistic standpoint. This argument, which later would acquire a more solid Kantian philosophical basis, would point the way for modern Orthodoxy’s direct and open confrontation with Kant’s critique of Judaism. Schnaber: Enlisting Maimonides in Defense of Tradition The first attempt to deal with the challenge of the new philosophers, including Kant, on the basis of traditional Jewish philosophy was undertaken by another pious philosopher, a contemporary of Wessely, Mendelssohn, and Kant. This was the physician and scientist who was perhaps the first Jew appointed as professor in a European country,10 Mordecai Gumpel Halevi Schnaber (1741–1797,11 also known as Gumperz [Georg] Levison) in his Hebrew book Yesod Ha-Torah (Foundation of the Torah), published in 1792.12

10 In May, 1780 he received this honorary title from the King of Sweden, apparently in consideration for his organizing medical services there. Schnaber also published several medical works in English and German. (Heinz Moshe Graupe, “Mordechai Shnaber-Levison: The Life,Works and Thought of a Halakhah Outsider,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, 1996 [41(1): 3–20], pp. 11, 14–15) 11 See Graupe op. cit., p. 5 for documentation of Schnaber’s birth date. 12 Though published in 1792, it may have been written in the 1770s when Schnaber was in London. At any rate it used arguments and verbiage that appeared in his earlier work Tokha˜at Megillah. See Graupe, op. cit., p. 17.

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As a reputed physician and scientist of his time, Schnaber took an interest in modern philosophy and culture. From his writing, it is clear that he studied the systems of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Locke and was influenced by them. He was familiar with Kant’s views (and gave them consideration), and he certainly felt a close kinship with Maimonides. It appears that his direct involvement with the activity of the general culture aroused in him the need to implement afresh for his contemporaries Maimonides’ philosophical project. Schnaber’s differed from Mendelssohn, Maimon, and Ascher in that he wrote his work in Hebrew, for the needs of the traditional religious Jewish public.13 He addressed those readers who felt that the scientific Enlightenment was threatening their faith and tradition, and thus regarded it with perplexity and anxiety. As we said, the true believers felt threatened even by traditional Jewish religious philosophy, and feared that it would offer legitimation to an enlightenment that in their view would be the first step toward heresy and the undermining the authority of the mitzvot. It was Schnaber who tried to deal with this major obstacle on the road to enlightenment and sought to prove the opposite: there was nothing bad about scientific enlightenment in itself. On the contrary, it was vital and necessary also from the religious standpoint. But for this purpose, he first had to change the attitude of his readers to traditional religious philosophy.14 Of course for this purpose it was impossible for him to draw support for the challenge from external philosophy, which denied the danger embodied in philosophy. From his standpoint, drawing on modern philosophers could only aid him to the extent that he found in them a defense of religion. He had to show firstly that traditional religious philosophy was legitimate and proper to rely on, and that when one adapts it to the modern age it is the only tool by whose aid one can defend the faith that was under attack by heretical rationalism.

13 However, Schnaber also apparently wrote a work in English (Rua˜ ha-Dat—The Spirit of the [Natural, Moral, and Divine] Law), presumably in the 1770s when he was studying and practicing medicine in England (see YT p. 3a, and Graupe, op. cit., p. 20). 14 Schnaber was equally forthright in pursuing this goal in his first published treatise, Ma’amar ha-Torah ve-ha-Æokhmah (An Essay on Torah and Wisdom, London, 1771), where in the introduction he rhetorically alternated the themes “Torah” and “Wisdom” to emphasize the complementarity of religious and secular knowledge. (Moshe Pelli, “Mordecai Gumpel Schnaber: The First Religious Reform Theoretician of the Hebrew Haskalah in Germany,” Jewish Quarterly Review, 1974 [64:289–313], pp. 294ff.)

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This consideration determined the form of Schnaber’s attitude to the external philosophical debate concerning Judaism. Clear evidence of this is found in the sole place in his work where he saw himself forced to counter-argue directly against Spinoza’s heretical pantheism. He presented his views briefly and alluded to Spinoza by explaining why the name of that banned heretic should not be found on the tip of his pen.15 The only way that he found to deal with the challenges of the new philosophy was to base his thoughts on Maimonides’ authority and to adapt his lessons to the needs of the age. Clearly that purpose required an updated critique—philosophical and religious—of Maimonides’ teaching. We shall show later that Schnaber’s critique was informed by developments in modern philosophy and based itself on them. But it is instructive that Schnaber preferred to base his reservations concerning Maimonides’ philosophy on the views of traditional philosophers. They took issue with him from the standpoint of pious believers rooted in revelation and tradition—especially Halevi, but also the moderate theoretical kabbalah. In this way, Schnaber strove to achieve an additional objective that was very important from his viewpoint. He wished to present an image of original traditional Jewish philosophy, based on acceptance of the authority of revealed Torah, on principles that follow from the Torah and in absolute fidelity to halakha. This highlights the principal characteristic of Schnaber’s relation to Maimonides. He did not identify directly with Guide of the Perplexed, nor did he intend to write a new “guide” to the perplexed of his time as Solomon Maimon had attempted in his Æeshek Yehoshua{ and Giv{at Ha-Moreh, and certainly not in the systematic philosophical manner that Nachman Krochmal would exhibit in his Guide of the Perplexed of the Time which we will discuss later. Maimoinides’ Guide of the Perplexed occasioned a stormy and polarizing controversy that divided Jewish thought over the course of many generations, and which had not entirely abated even in Schnaber’s time: it embodied the danger that philosophy posed to religion. Schnaber defined the objective of his book with that danger in mind. He did not come to propose a new philosophical method that would deepen religious thought but only to demonstrate that philosophy as such was

15

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not dangerous to religion, and that it was possible to defend religion with its aid against the attack of brazen heresy. The source of danger was in the fundamental assumption of the Guide, that religion—based on the prophetic revelation of Torah— and philosophy—based on rational science and metaphysical reason, rooted in the independent logical canon of human reason—are two separate disciplines which stand in need of reconciliation or compromise by mutual concession. Only by keeping them separate can they truly support each other, by interpreting each other, or approaching to the point of commingling on the plane of the metaphysical goal. This program in effect turned the supreme purpose of philosophy into the objective of religion, while turning the “God of the prophets, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” into the god of the philosophers. Clearly such a purpose as that of the Guide could benefit only the approach of philosophers such as Maimon and Krochmal, whose interest was in “philosophy of religion” in the modern sense. But it ran counter to the mission of an Orthodox theologian such as Schnaber, who resorted to philosophy as a defensive tool to shore up the foundations of religion. Schnaber thus defined the task of philosophy differently, within the framework of religion, not transcending it. In contrast to Maimon before him and Krochmal after him, Schnaber’s proposal was decidedly a “religious philosophy.”16 The purpose was to grant legitimacy to scientific reason and to show that it posed no threat to faith and religion, for religion is in need of theoretical reason and authorizes it. But we must be careful in parsing the meaning of this assertion for Schnaber. He did not regard philosophy—as the discipline of metaphysics—a continuation of the sciences, but as a science in itself, resting on the experience of divine revelation in creation on the one hand, and on the human soul on the other hand. Therefore the task of philosophy is not to reconcile the truth of revealed Torah with that of science, and certainly not to identify the purpose of metaphysical religion with that of philosophy, but the opposite. It should present religious truth in parallel with scientific truth, and it must serve religion as an organic part of it by incorporating the truth of revelation.

16 See the distinction between “philosophy of religion” and “religious philosophy” enunciated in the Introduction, Part C.

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This is the definition of a task that is fundamentally similar to the tradition of Neoplatonic religious philosophy of the Middle Ages. It is of the same type as Saadia’s Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, Halevi’s Kuzari, Crescas’ Light of the Lord, or Albo’s Book of Principles. It seeks to derive the truths that establish Judaism and distinguish it from other religions from the literary sources that are the fruit of prophetic revelation. It seeks to formulate them in religious-philosophical language in order to expound their religious truth—to the extent that it is possible for human reason to fathom them and absorb them—and to demonstrate their truth in a manner that there should not be any opposition between the domain of empirical science (which is the only domain of human intellect separate from reason) and religious truth. In this manner, religion will prove itself defensible from any opposing philosophy, whose heretical denial is rooted first of all in the attempt to arrive at metaphysical truth on the basis of science, without any relation to revelation. From this approach derives the traditional criticism of Maimonides’ position in the Guide, his method of understanding revelation and the knowledge of God that man has on the basis of prophetic revelation. This is a criticism that Schnaber accepted and adapted to his own purpose. Maimonides, on whom he wished to rely, combined philosophical and halakhic approaches to become the founding father of Jewish dogmatics. Thus, Schnaber had to make common cause with the “Thirteen Principles of Faith” formulated in the Introduction to Perek Æelek (Mishnah Sanhedrin Chapter 10) and to the “Laws of Foundations of the Torah” in the Mishneh Torah. Furthermore, Schnaber’s method led him to ally himself with the philosophical tradition that was crystallized on the basis of Maimonides’ doctrine of principles and continued to his day. This tradition was created originally against the backdrop of the major controversy over the status of philosophy that broke out in response to the first appearance of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, as well as the fierce ongoing confrontation with Christianity. It represented a moderate stance that sought to pave the “middle way” between philosophical rationalism and tradition, based on absolute obedience to the authority of revelation and the Oral and Written Torah. Maimonides’ conservative students undertook a critical reexamination of his doctrine of dogmatic principles. They added and subtracted, changed the structure and the methods of validation, whatever they thought was called for in view of the state of the controversy, both

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internal and external, which continued its polarizing course. The best-known, most influential, and systematic summary statement in this vein was R. Joseph Albo’s voluminous Book of Principles, yet the process continued even after him. In Mendelssohn’s and Schnaber’s own generation, it received a striking contribution (somewhat similar to Schnaber’s approach) from one of the leading rabbinic opponents of the Haskalah, R. Jacob Emden, who in his fervent polemic against kabbalah generally and Sabbateanism in particular sought support from Maimonides’ philosophical-halakhic rationalism. Schnaber’s Foundation of the Torah: A Rational Reconstruction of Maimonidean Dogmatics Schnaber’s work Foundation of the Torah had its roots in this tradition and extended it in order to adapt it to the needs of a pious enlightened-scientific approach that was unconditionally faithful to Jewish law. Indeed, he was not alone even in enlightened circles. We saw above that Saul Ascher strove to defend Judaism by returning to its principles, but from the converse perspective by trying to revise halakha. In effect, working from opposite sides, the two were picking away at the views of Moses Mendelssohn. Ascher did this openly, while Schnaber refrained from engaging in direct debate but did so by presenting an alternative position. According to Mendelssohn, the substantive difference between Judaism and Christianity could be seen in that Christianity, as an ecclesiastical religion, was based on a non-rational dogmatic faith that could not be intellectually demonstrated, whereas Judaism was neither ecclesiastical nor dogmatic. Faith, in Mendelssohn’s rational conception of Judaism, was not supra-rational: it was identified with truth grasped through the senses and reason; therefore it was not based on dogmas in the sense of obligatory beliefs, but rather on the obligatory practical precepts (mitzvot) of halakha. These precepts embody, on the one hand, the universal truths of natural religion, and on the other, the historical truths specific to Judaism, based on empirical testimony. Mendelssohn’s basic argument against obligatory beliefs was that belief, in the sense of the justified inner sense of conviction and certainty, cannot be commanded or compelled. A person believes in an alleged truth—as opposed to merely externally professing belief in order to please mortal authorities—only when he has become convinced of its truth through his own learning.

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However for the purpose of developing and establishing his view Mendelssohn also availed himself of the dogmatic theories of Albo and Maimonides. He borrowed Albo’s ideas, though without mentioning him, in his well-known German work Jerusalem. The formulation that he suggested in this book for the basic outlook of natural religion is an almost direct citation of Albo’s words, rendered into German.17 He relied on Maimonides in his short Hebrew work dedicated to the explication of Maimonides’ thirteen principles. Mendelssohn thus anticipated Schnaber, and perhaps even provided the literary model to which Schnaber had recourse. Nevertheless, Mendelssohn remained loyal to his own method by changing the language from obligatory belief to instruction and rational persuasion: “The Torah instructs us to know that . . .” as opposed to “The Torah commands us to believe that . . .” By contrast, Schnaber adopted Maimonides’ halakhic formulation, which obligates acknowledgement of the basic principles. Basing himself on the Mishnah, Maimonides determined that whoever denies one of these principles is excluded from being Jewish and is worthy of ostracism and excommunication, for obedient faith precedes philosophical verification.18 Thus Schnaber held, like Wessely, that faith based on revelation, requiring obedience as an independent religious value, precedes philosophy and conditions it. Only the experience of revelation in creation and in the human soul can be the foundation for theology and metaphysics. Comparing Schnaber’s position to Mendelssohn’s is important in order to define its place in the history of Jewish religious philosophy. Mendelssohn opened a new round of incisive discussion around the question of dogmas in Judaism. This began with the confrontation between Saul Ascher and Mendelssohn’s disciple David Friedlaender.19 The new focus of debate was the question whether the Jewish religion has any dogmas at all, or what is the status of the positive teachings of Judaism from the standpoint of halakhic obligation. This topic became a central issue of the religious and philosophical controversies among the modern Jewish movements, especially between Reform and Modern Orthodoxy.

17

5–7.

Compare Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, Part I, with Albo, Principles, Part I Chapters

18 Maimonides, Commentary to Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1 (Isadore Twersky, ed. A Maimonides Reader, Behrman 1972, pp. 401–423). 19 See Afterword to Ascher’s Leviathan, cited above.

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The Reform movement vehemently disagreed with Mendelssohn’s view that Judaism is to be identified with halakha and has no principles with a status of obligatory beliefs. Modern Orthodoxy tended rather to accept Mendelssohn’s view in this respect. Did Schnaber lean toward the reforming tendency that was discernible in Ascher’s views? Certainly not.20 And yet, when we examine the various positions themselves it becomes clear that the differences and comparative stances of Reform and Modern Orthodoxy did not revolve around the question whether Judaism has characteristically defining doctrines, but only the question of the halakhic status of these doctrines—to wit, is acceptance of such-and-such a doctrine a criterion of who is included or excluded from the rubric of Judaism? This issue proceeds clearly from Mendelssohn’s formulation. As we said, Schnaber made faith-assertion obligatory, in apparent contradiction to Mendelssohn. However, his view of the philosophical coherence and rational essence of the principles of faith in Judaism was close to that of Mendelssohn and correspondingly opposed to Ascher’s. The decisive issue in this respect was the relation to halakha. Ascher’s system of dogmas was presented as an alternative to halakha and a means of breaking free of it, whereas Schnaber’s—like Maimonides’—was not only a part of halakha, but at one and the same time its foundation and goal. Despite all these differences, this conclusion is in keeping with what in retrospect is also a dogmatic principle of Mendelssohn’s teaching, namely—the obligation of obedience of every Jew to Jewish law based in revelation. In this respect, we have here a clear step toward the crystallization of modern Orthodoxy. Schnaber’s objective was defined in the introduction of his book. He described there the mockery that was heaped on the true believers and pious in his generation, and their hostile shunning of philosophical inquiry, as if the blame lay there. He determined that this was a mistake. On the contrary, precisely in this situation one ought to master the proper philosophical tools in order to defend and justify the faith. This was the practice of the great Jewish thinkers of the past, especially Maimonides who had shown the way and based the principles of faith

20 Graupe correctly points out (pace Pelli) that the mildly antinomian expressions in Schnaber’s writings need to be evaluated in the 18th-century context. (Graupe, op. cit., p. 5. See YT 57b–60a, discussing Maimonides’ Ninth Principle, where Schnaber allows for a moderate degree of change in the specifics of the Torah, pending a further divine revelation in Messianic times.)

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on philosophy. Of course, this was the praiseworthy formulation of the tradition of medieval religious rationalism. But now came the novel twist that followed from the need to grapple with the challenges of the philosophy of the Enlightenment. Schnaber adopted Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles as his halakhic starting point, but he proposed major changes in the order and enumeration of the principles. It seemed to him that Maimonides had not defined as principles several truths which in Schnaber’s view were central and vital to understanding the internal continuity and philosophical coherence of Jewish teaching. It followed then that Maimonides’ dogmatic approach was deficient and in need of completion. Its proper completion was the essential task that Schnaber took on himself in order to satisfy the needs of his age. To understand his intention fully, we should emphasize again that his criticism of Maimonides was not entirely new. Æasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo had made similar criticisms, and had offered different systems of principles by way of addition and subtraction. Schnaber’s innovation lay in the philosophical core of his systematic approach, which differed with Crescas and Albo. What, then, was the philosophical defect that in Schnaber’s view was expressed both in Maimonides’ own system and in those of his successor-critics? Why does it not withstand modern philosophical examination? Schnaber observed that the system of thirteen principles that Maimonides enumerated on the basis of Chapter 10 of Mishnah Sanhedrin justifies the principles from the standpoint of the Torah, which derived its authority from divine revelation. However— and here was Schnaber’s main critique—it does not develop a logical structural progression that could justify them on the basis of critical epistemology. In other words, it does not present all religious truth as a whole, coherent domain of knowledge, standing independently in its own proper plane of reality, through corroborative examination of the tools and methods through which one can arrive at knowledge of it. That is why Maimonides’ method was defective, and could be challenged on the grounds of philosophical coherence. Thus, it failed in its task of defending religion. Maimonides arrived at his formulation of the Thirteen Principles through a hybrid method, part halakhictraditional and part philosophical. The halakhic portion was expressed by his formal, authoritative interpretation of three categories of belief from the Mishnah: belief in God’s existence, revealed Torah, and just retribution through reward and punishment. Maimonides went on to

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employ pedagogic-halakhic considerations to determine the order of presentation of these categories. He gave first place to God’s existence, as the goal that the Torah commands us to strive to approximate through all our thoughts, feelings and actions. Next came the belief in revealed Torah, which is the medium teaching the believing Jew the way to serving God, thus bringing him as near as possible to knowing the divine truth. Last of all he listed the belief in reward and punishment, which provides the incentive to study Torah and fulfill its mitzvot so he can arrive at his goal. Thus, the last group of principles plays a primary role in the educational process. It is instrumental in coming to know the second group of principles, which in turn is significant in acquiring knowledge of the first—the philosophical-metaphysical group. Thus far the halakhic consideration. The philosophical consideration comes to expression only in the detailed specification within each category. From the knowledge of God’s existence follows the recognition of His unity, incorporeality, and eternity, and therefore it is proper to worship only Him. The authority of revealed Torah depends on the principle of prophecy and the absolute uniqueness of the Mosaic Torah, and from these it follows that the Torah is eternal and eternally immutable. However, the doctrine of retributive reward and punishment is represented in the Mishnah not by the inclusive principle of providence but rather by a single detail, precisely the most problematic—namely, resurrection of the dead. Maimonides therefore anticipated it with the necessary axioms that God supervises and knows all human actions, and that God repays the righteous with goodness and punishes the wicked as they deserve (in other words, measure for measure). These broad principles make intelligible (though hardly necessary!) the more specific beliefs in the coming of the Messiah, immortality of the soul, and the resurrection of the dead. It is easy to expose the philosophical Achilles heel of this approach. Only the first group of principles expresses philosophical-metaphysical reflection based on Aristotelian epistemology. This, in Maimonides’ view, contains the Torah’s supreme goal: approaching the knowledge of God—which is knowledge of the truth of reality of which God is the creator. But the argument that leads to belief in revealed Torah and retribution (not to mention the details that follow from these tenets), is not philosophical logic. It is not based on any epistemology, but only on the institutional authority of the Torah, which is political, not philosophical. In other words, it can be justified philosophically only

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on the political level as a necessary assumption, but not as a metaphysical truth! Of course, if there is revealed Torah—something that the philosophers, who rely on their worldly scientific reason, tend to doubt greatly— then surely prophecy is required. It must then be the case that the prophet, through whom the divine Torah is given in an authoritative way eliciting complete assent, should be an accomplished prophet whose prophecy is uncontested. It must furthermore be the case that the Torah, which God gives through a perfect prophet, should express God’s absolute wisdom, which is eternal and immutable. But from the philosophical viewpoint, it all depends on the great “if ”: is there a philosophical way to validate this claim? The same applies even more emphatically to the third group of principles. Clearly if the resurrection were possible—a matter on which the philosophers not only cast doubt, but deny with the full force of their ridicule—then you have providence, retribution and immortality. In that case, why not then also concede the Messiah, which after all has an immeasurably greater worldly likelihood than an event like the resurrection? It is true that in the Guide of the Perplexed Maimonides sought as much as possible to bridge the gap between his religious philosophy, as presented in his Thirteen Principles, and his general philosophical method. But even in the view of some of Maimonides’ loyal interpreters, his explanations are problematic, and modern philosophy refutes them. One should therefore ask: prior to Schnaber, did Maimonides’ critics correct this deficiency? The answer is decidedly negative. On the contrary, the paths of Crescas and Albo pointed in the opposite direction. They reinforced the halakhic systemization and made it more unified by deriving all the principles from the Torah itself and the implications of its authority as divine instruction, without providing philosophical justification. Thus, they clearly neglected altogether the independent task of philosophy to defend the faith in God and in His Torah. What, then, is the desirable solution, seeking true agreement between religious truth and philosophical truth, as well as between a halakhic-pedagogic-political logic and philosophical logic? It must consist in presenting an independent philosophical systemization of the principles of Judaism, one that rests not on the Torah and its authority, but on philosophical methodology derived from epistemological considerations. In such a system, all the principles would be verifiable in the way that reason and intellect verify their knowledge—on the

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one hand by empirical induction, and on the other by consistent logical deduction that derives all the truths pertaining to the domain of religious truth from the foundational truth—the truth of God’s existence and His being known to man with absolute certainty. Only if we present the principles of religion as a domain of coherent knowledge, all of whose parts derive necessarily from each other and are properly philosophically verified, will philosophy’s task to defend religious truth against its deniers be fulfilled. Schnaber therefore determined in his introduction that it would be a mistake to derive the principles of faith from the Torah or from the fact that the Torah is divinely commanded. In contrast to Maimonides, he states baldly that the Torah is not a philosophical book and one ought not try to learn philosophical truth from it. Its purpose is quite different. It is to testify to God’s governance, to charge humanity to love and fear God, and to instruct them concerning God’s commandments and laws. Understanding these does not require philosophy, for the simple believer has no need of philosophy in order to understand the Torah’s directives. Only if and when philosophical doubt is raised concerning the Torah’s truth, should one counter it with a philosophical systemization outside the Torah, standing on its own foundation: a critical epistemology. Drawing on Kant and Halevi Schnaber’s point of origin for a philosophical system of principles of faith must thus be epistemological, and he presented it at the end of his introduction. His exposition is short and concentrated, and it relates only to the general premises, without citing sources. But one can easily see the influence of Kant, with a correction that is a kind of extension based on the thought of Judah Halevi. Schnaber began with a Kantian-style confirmation of the validity of scientific induction. Our awareness does not apprehend the essence of things, but only their sensory appearance in conformity to the mind’s own autonomous regularity.21 He next concluded that the senses in themselves do not err, and their impressions are reliable. All error derives from judgments that draw improper associations from

21

YT 11a.

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the totality of sensory impressions, such as those that relate to partial impressions or were not subjected to sufficient critical discrimination. One should hold as true only that which was critically derived from the totality of inductive experience, or what follows with conceptual necessity from categorical intellectual awareness. Schnaber referred in this context to synthetic a priori judgments that unify the contents of sensory experience through the autonomous necessity of human rationality. But he saw the need to emphasize that most of the syntheses of sensory impressions are not conceived as “synthetic a priori” and thus the principal source of knowledge of scientific truth is induction aided by precise observations. As a man of science, no less than as a religious philosopher, he had an interest in stressing experience—aided by precise observational tools and critical method—as the foundation of all scientific and philosophical notions.22 So far, this sounds like a simplified general account of Kantian epistemology, seeking to validate the reliability of scientific knowledge against Hume’s skepticism. But on the basis of this Kantian empiricism, which resurrects the claim of Aristotle and Maimonides that there is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses, Schnaber added an extension required for knowledge of religious metaphysical truth. Faithful at once to Kant’s method and Halevi’s, he abolished the speculative way for knowing metaphysical truth as a superstructure of knowledge. But unlike Kant, Schnaber did not give up on metaphysical knowledge, rather he argued that prophecy is a form of metaphysical experience parallel to sensory experience. In Schnaber’s view, this assertion stood the test of scientific criticism. He argued first of all that intellect and reason are aware of their finitude and on their dependence on that which transcends their capacity of direct knowledge; thus, they are open to metaphysical truth and are a priori dependent on it. Second, our reason requires that there be a reality beyond the domain of its knowledge as a prior condition to its having scientific knowledge. Finally, the Holy Scriptures attest to there being supernatural historical events as a part of experience grasped by the senses and confirmed by reliable testimony—particularly the foundational event of the giving of the Torah. These events attest with absolute certainty to a direct metaphysical presence, even though we cannot fundamentally grasp the essence of the reality that is revealed

22

YT 11a–12b (“Defining Truth”).

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through their appearances. All these require a discipline that broadens awareness beyond its intellectual limits.23 In Kantian terms, we can say that according to Schnaber our consciousness is open not only to physical truth through the phenomena, but also to transcendental truth. The latter is manifested in one respect through consciousness’s contemplation of itself, its limits, and its conditions, and in another respect through sensory events that deviate from physical truth. These events do not combine with a consciousness of a definable experiential totality. Thus, they are not to be counted as knowledge, but they are susceptible of generating a metaphysical idea whose source is not in the intellect itself but in a tangible induction. Therefore, it is clear that we have a consciousness of a different kind both in its quality and its mode of clarity and certainty. In this way, Schnaber arrived at his distinction between knowledge and faith: faith is the recognition of what is a condition to scientific knowledge. In this respect it precedes every awareness of truth. This assertion does not contradict reason, but it is a necessary complement to its functioning. Thus it is susceptible to intellectual critique. (Only the fool will believe everything, Schnaber remarks in accord with the scripture.) One may question the testimony of the supernatural event embodying metaphysical meaning. One may also raise criticism with respect to recognizing the necessity of that supra-intellectual truth for understanding the ways of knowledge, and for complementing what is known to us about the nature of existence with respect to its source and its supernatural cause. We, therefore, have a philosophical-religious conception analogous to that of R. Judah Halevi. Just as Halevi constructed a metaphysical epistemology based on metaphysical experience, emulating Aristotelian epistemology based on scientific experience, so Schnaber constructed a metaphysical epistemology based on critical faith emulating Kantian epistemology. The systematic deliberation on the principles of faith was built on this epistemology on the most sensitive topic from the standpoint of religion that arose in the new philosophy, namely the question of the proofs of existence of a transcendent God. This issue necessarily raised the question: What and how can a human being have knowledge—

23

YT 13a–13b (“Defining Faith”); 14a–16a (“Chapter One: On Faith”).

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in a critical and verified way—about this transcendent reality and its relation to human beings? Schnaber had to consider four methods that had been presented in the philosophy of his day: 1. Spinoza’s pantheistic way that denied the reality of a transcendental deity and identified God with the unity of existence, in a way that man’s knowledge of God was identified with his knowledge of himself—rooted in God’s knowledge of Himself. 2. The way of Descartes that proposed the ontological proof for the existence of God: the fact that man had a rational idea of God as a perfect being containing His existence as a constituent of His perfection.24 3. The way of Leibnitz stood closest to that of Maimonides: in his view, the world, and mankind within the world, were in themselves only potentially existent, and did not have all the conditions that necessitated their existence. Therefore there must be a perfect being whose existence was necessary, in the sense that His existence was identical with His essence, of whom man had a positive notion. 4. The way of Kant, whose epistemology undermined all three previous ways. It arrived at the conclusion that there are none, nor could there be any proofs of God’s existence or non-existence. Nevertheless Kant cited the high probability of the cosmological proof that derived God’s existence from the rational, regular order of existence. He also articulated the requirement of reason to rely on an ideal transcendent reality—which is the unity of knowledge of the truth and desire of the good, and in that respect is the guarantee of the realization of man’s moral will in reality. Schnaber contended with these four ways on the basis of his epistemology. First of all, he considered it necessary to reject emphatically Spinoza’s way, for in his view it rested on an obvious error, rooted in a one-sided rationalism that ignored the proper distinction between knowledge and its objects. Kant’s more comprehensive epistemological approach balanced the deductive rational a priori with empirical induction. From its standpoint, Spinoza’s conclusion—that all the world’s creatures, including humankind, are “parts” (Schnaber used

24

YT 17b, 19b.

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the Hebrew ˜alakim as a translation of “modes”) of the one infinite substance—appeared arbitrary and baseless. It was an expression of rational hubris that denied the absolute difference between the finite human intellect and the infinite divine intellect, which knew everything with absolute unity.25 His second step consisted in rejecting Descartes’ ontological proof. On this issue, Schnaber faithfully reproduced Kant’s disqualifying argument. He argued the idea of God does not arise a priori in the human intellect; it is generated from contemplation of the experience of the world and is based on it. Moreover, the fact that human reason contains an idea of a perfect being indeed must include the attribute of existence. But this refers to the existence of the idea within reason, and is no proof of any existence outside it. Such a proof can only be based on experience, not on reason’s contemplation of itself.26 Relying on Kant’s epistemology in refuting the first two ways to proving God’s existence had critical implications for Leibnitz’s way as well. Schnaber indeed hinted at a critique of the validity of the cosmological proof as a decisive demonstration, and saw grounds for questioning it on a formal level, if not substantively. Without specifying the final outcome of his argument, Schnaber distanced himself critically from Kant’s view. One can argue that he made use of Fichte’s and Maimon’s critique of Kant’s distinction between phenomena and things-in-themselves, in order to arrive at an opposite conclusion from them. If this distinction is necessary, then it must follow that there is a causal relation between the things-in-themselves, as they exist outside of awareness, and the phenomena that we perceive. This causal relation is necessarily rooted in the things-in-themselves, and not only in the a priori categorical structure of the intellect. Furthermore, only in this way can we validate, contra Hume, the assertion that inductive scientific knowledge is knowledge of reality, and not only knowledge of the phenomena!27

YT 19a. YT 19b–20a. 27 “Others arose and denied external reality, and said it does not exist. We only imagine falsehood of the world and everything in it, and all this glorious and awesome work of the Lord is only phenomena and ideas that arise in our minds, and exist only in our thoughts, not outside them. Conserning this it is said, ‘Answer a fool according to his folly.’ For we shall say to the view of these people, not only does an image appear to us, whereas the substance of the things does not exist, but inasmuch as our eyes see of every thing that its image differs from that of another, must it not be the 25 26

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Schnaber’s interest in this conclusion is significant both because of his capacity as a researcher of natural science (medicine) and as a philosopher of religion. He claimed that through the phenomena we can plumb to the qualities and causal connections of the thingsin-themselves. This conclusion enables him to return to the proof of God’s existence as the cause of the world’s existence, which is the external object of scientific knowledge, in the manner of Maimonides and Leibnitz.28 However we should emphasize that he nevertheless took note of the Kantian argument. Like Kant, who determined that the cosmological argument was persuasive, though it fell short of decisive proof, Schnaber too did not claim that it was a perfect proof. He admitted that the lack of direct apprehension of the things-inthemselves in consciousness, and the inability to investigate the causal connection between the things-in-themselves and the phenomena, deprive the cosmological argument of the full formal validity of a scientific proof. Yet he did not accord this doubt substantive importance. From the standpoint of faith in what is conceived as necessary beyond awareness, this is a sufficient proof. In other words, the cosmological proof seemed fully satisfactory to Schnaber, if one regards it as a foundation of rational faith in metaphysical truth. Nevertheless, since his task was to arrive at an independent philosophical basis for religious truth, he considered it very important that faith in God’s existence—as a foundational religious truth—should be based on an absolute proof. Did such a proof exist? Schnaber’s final positive answer to the question of proof brought him back to Leibnitz and Descartes, and through them to the way of the kabbalists, according to whom the human soul’s knowledge of itself and its existence is the source for knowledge of God Who is revealed through it. In philosophical terms, the source of validity of this proof is the immediate certainty of man’s self-knowledge as a conscious, willing entity that nevertheless cannot know its own essence by itself. This knowledge points with certainty to a metaphysical source that is transcendent to the knowing soul, and to the power of knowledge and will that is

case that the things themselves that give us their image will also differ from each other? In that case, there must be existent things outside our thoughts! For were it not for this, whence would the varying images come to us?” (YT 18a) 28 “For every change requires that there be a First Cause that causes this change, and if so, this First Cause should in any case be unchanging. This is the Creator, Blessed be He, Who created all.” (YT 18a, top)

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rooted in it. For the soul knows by itself that it did not arise out of itself. It knows that there is a cause of its existence. If we argue that man’s knowledge of himself contains the knowledge of his cause, we fall again into Spinoza’s pantheistic error. Conversely, we know that we do not know the cause of our existence, for it is beyond us, above us.29 Through this consideration, Schnaber sought to deal directly with Spinoza’s doctrine. He disagreed with those who found a connection between Spinoza’s view and the theoretical kabbalah. At the same time, he drew a distinction between pantheistic immanentism—which ignored the duality of knowledge and its objects—and a philosophical theism based on the idea of creation, for which God is an immanent transcendent truth uniting in itself—as Kant asserted—the totality of knowledge of the world and the totality of ethical volition. God, who creates out of rational wisdom and will, is not immanent in the world and in the soul. His wisdom and will are manifest in creation but do not dwell within it. The human being can learn God’s wisdom and goodness as they are revealed in creation, but cannot encompass all of God’s infinite wisdom and goodness. While accepting Kant’s epistemology, Schnaber pushed back its limits vis-à-vis knowledge of things-in-themselves and man’s knowledge of the knowing self who apprehends that he derives from the source. The fact that the soul knows itself and nature as the creation of God is absolute proof of God’s existence. Furthermore, in Schnaber’s view it was also the source for positive (though finite and limited) knowledge of the presence of God and the manner of His revelation in the soul and in the world. According to Maimonides, whatever we can know about God has its source in the proofs for His existence. Schnaber drew support from this argument, but he differed with Maimonides’ conclusions in order to make his argument consistent with Kant’s epistemology. According to Maimonides, there are two ways to approximate knowledge of God without identifying with Him. One is through the positive attributes of action—which we discern from the regularity that sustains the order of the world, in order to imitate it in our actions. The second is through the negative attributes, which are inferred from the perfection of natural entities—their existence, unity and wisdom. These attributes are ascribed to God as the source of all these

29

YT 18a–18b.

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perfections. We cannot, however, achieve the divine perfection, nor can we compare it to the perfection of created beings, but we can apprehend that these perfections cannot be absent in God. It is nevertheless proper to emphasize that in Maimonides’ view the attributes of action do not describe God Himself but only His deeds that are manifest in the world. The positive import of the negative attributes in human thought is identified with Aristotelian physics; their attribution to God—through negation of the negation—does not provide any positive definite knowledge of God’s essence, but expresses only the infinite striving to approach the transcendental source of the world’s perfection. Schnaber accepted and agreed with Maimonides’ attributes of action and accorded them preferred status. But in keeping with his own epistemology, he saw them as the attributes of God Himself, though without implying that through knowing them one had knowledge of God Himself.30 On the basis of the Kantian epistemology, he did not think there was any difficulty in this assertion. Just as the appearances apprehended in scientific knowledge possess the characteristics of the thing manifested, while the object itself remains beyond the knowledge that it generates, so one may see the actions of God in the world as positive manifestations of His qualities, or of His attributes. The positive phenomena lay their impression on human consciousness even though the divine essence that underlies them cannot be comprehended through them. It is clear from this that Schnaber totally rejected the doctrine of negative attributes. In his view, the attributes of existence, unity, and eternity—which are rightly included among Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles—can be learned positively from the proofs of God’s existence. There is no difference in our understanding of their meaning in human thought in their application to created entities on the one hand or to God on the other hand. Indeed, they provide no knowledge of God’s essence in Himself, but this is also the case regarding the existence and unity of natural entities that present themselves to our senses. Through the judgment of existence we assert the beingin-fact of subjects external to our awareness of the qualities that are

30 “Chapter Two: Knowledge of the Existence of the Perfect One through His Actions,” YT 16a; “Chapter Eight: Of the Attributes of the Creator, Not As the Views of the Ancients,” YT 35bff.

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manifested in awareness. In the judgment of unity we assert that each of these subjects is an entity unto itself, distinct from others and identical with itself, without our knowing what that identity is. The same applies to our positing these attributes of God. Modifying Maimonides’ Rubric: Philosophical Pragmatism and Practical Traditionalism The proofs of God’s existence enabled Schnaber to provide a philosophical grounding and explication of the first principle of faith. This laid the foundation for deductive derivation of all the other principles. It is nevertheless clear that each of the other principles would also require empirical proofs. Schnaber’s first step was changing the order of the metaphysical principles within the Maimonidean rubric. By his epistemology, correct logical deduction requires asserting as the second principle that God is “prior to all His creatures.”31 Furthermore, through this assertion one can affirm the central religious truth that Maimonides surprisingly did not mention at all in his enumeration of the principles,32 though he affirmed its religious importance in the Guide of the Perplexed, namely that the world was created ex nihilo. Schnaber remained faithful to Maimonides’ method by not reverting to the view of Saadia Gaon, according to which one should first prove that the world was created ex nihilo, and use that conclusion as the basis for proving the existence of God as creator. Schnaber accepted Maimonides’ view that the proof of God’s existence on the basis of the world’s existence took priority over proving the creation ex nihilo. But he departed from Maimonides by deducing, from God’s existence as the cause of the world’s existence, that the world must therefore be created.33 By using Aristotelian epistemology, Maimonides could not demonstrate the preferability of either the doctrine of Chapter Four, YT 21a. Maimonides’ autographed copy of his Commentary to the Mishnah includes a marginal annotation to the Fourth Principle asserting God’s creation of the world, raising the possibility that Maimonides may have changed his views on the question of creation itself, or on its central importance, between his composition of the Commentary around 1170 and his composition of the Guide around 1190. However, the creation of the world is not mentioned in the published editions of Maimonides 13 Principles. 33 Chapter Six: On the World’s Creation, YT 28b–33b. 31 32

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the world’s eternity that followed from Aristotelian physics, or the doctrine of creation, that followed from the Torah. But Schnaber thought that through Kantian epistemology one could conquer this dilemma and determine that the world was created. Raising the priority of God’s eternity in the order of the principles was based, according to Schnaber, on the proofs that God existed as the cause of the world—the causal relation requires the priority of the cause to the effect. Maimonides thought similarly. But according to the Aristotelian philosophy, the priority of the cause to the effect was not a priority in time. On the contrary, the moment of causation links cause and effect in the present and they act simultaneously. It is therefore possible that the effect can be present with the cause in an infinite time-flow. This solved the problem of the relation of God’s supratemporal eternity and the world’s infinite temporal persistence. Time, measuring the motion of the material world, imitates the eternity of the intellectual entities, which exhibit neither motion nor change. But according to the Kantian philosophy, causality is a form of human thought, and causal processes generate the awareness of time as a structural characteristic of human consciousness. It follows that every causal precedence is understood in our awareness as necessarily implying temporal precedence. In Schnaber’s view, the conclusion is simple and certain: God, as the eternal volitional cause of the world, exists before the world, for which time is an essential attribute. If we conceive God’s existence as the cause of the world, we grasp Him as necessarily prior to it in time, or—more precisely—as before time, and furthermore as the cause of time’s existence. However, human thought cannot conceive of something temporally prior to time itself. Maimonides (as well as Kant) raised this difficulty and dealt with it in his way in the Guide of the Perplexed, after having decided to accept belief in the world’s creation for the sake of the Torah’s outlook. His solution was that the difficulty follows from the limitations of human reason, and need not apply within the domain of infinite reason. Therefore, if we posit that time started with the creation of the world—and did not exist prior to it— then God’s precedence to time is not a case of something temporally prior to time, but rather of eternity prior to time. Time itself (from its own standpoint) must begin at some point or other. Why, then, does that beginning-point of time occur before thusand-so-many years, neither more nor less? From the viewpoint of the world that exists in time, there can be no answer except the conclusion

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that any starting point must necessarily appear arbitrary, but there must be a beginning. To Schnaber, it appeared that according to his epistemology the answer seemed simpler, and even followed unequivocally from God’s existence. When we know that time does not measure the movement of the world itself (as Aristotle thought) but is rather a product of the human conception of causality (as Kant taught), and when we know that the infinite divine intellect apprehends both itself and reality (of which it is the cause) in a unity transcending space and time (because space and time are external to it), then we understand that God apprehends time (including the creation of man) without thereby entering into it. We then understand that time, as a function of the human conception of causality, starts with the creation of man, who must conceive of the beginning of his own time after the absence of time that preceded it. Moreover, the decisive conclusion that the world is created ex nihilo follows necessarily, according to Schnaber, in a negative fashion as well, from understanding the logical significance of the converse proposition. If we assume that God exists together with the world that is caused by Him, and we derive the conclusion (that follows from this assumption) that God exists with His world in infinite time and infinite space, we arrive necessarily at Spinoza’s pantheistic conclusion, that God is nature, and man is a part of nature—or a part of God Himself. We saw above why in Schnaber’s view this idea is inadmissible both with respect to Kantian epistemology and to our experience in the world. Thus far, the assertion of God’s priority and the creation of the world is from the side of rational demonstration. From the side of empirical experience, Schnaber cited, without addition or alteration, the arguments of Halevi in the Kuzari, based on historical considerations. The gist is that the development of human culture attests that humanity itself and human society must have a beginning in time— which implies that the world, too, has a beginning in time. In his proofs of God’s existence and in the manner that he deduced and explicated the principles of divine unity and incorporeality, Schnaber did not add much to Maimonides’ exposition. On the matter of divine unity, he preferred the understanding of this concept in Ba˜ya Ibn Pakuda’s Duties of the Heart.34 However, he was original

34

Chapter Five, YT 21b.

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in that he did not count the principle “that one must worship only Him” among the first group of principles. In its place, he added two other principles: “God is omnipotent” (as one may learn from creation and from the supernatural miracles that the Torah attests)35 and “God knows all and exercises providence over the world that He created.”36 Schnaber also introduced a major change in the second group of principles. The principles of faith in the Torah’s revealed status and its eternity precede the belief in the uniqueness of Moses’ prophecy, and the principle of faith in prophecy and prophets does not precede that of Moses’ prophecy but comes after it.37 Indeed, the principle that only God must be worshipped is inferred, in Schnaber’s view, from the divine origin of the Torah and thus should be listed after it.38 We will not enter into the detailed deduction of all these principles from the principle of God’s existence, and of each principle from its predecessor. There is philosophical originality only in the derivation of the principle of divine providence directly from the proofs for God’s existence, and in establishing it as a premise from which is deduced the principle of revealed Torah. Schnaber argues that we need to have a precise understanding of the assertion that God exists as the cause of all existents generally, and as the existential cause of the conscious human soul in particular. The full significance of this assertion is that God exists for us as a continual causal presence in the created world, and in the same sense He is present in the soul—as its cause. Note that for Schnaber, God is causally present not in the sense of Spinoza, but rather in the sense that the kabbalists equated with the presence of God as creator in His creation. After creating it, God does not leave His creation to itself, but He is connected to it and perseveres as its cause. If He did not do so, it would revert to the nothingness from which it had been created. It follows from this that God has knowledge of all things, is connected to them as their cause, and exercises providence over them—as their guide.39 The affirmation of the existence of revealed Torah follows thus necessarily from the principle of divine providence in this sense. We are

Chapter Seven, YT 34a. Chapter Ten, YT 46a. 37 Schnaber explains his difference from Maimonides’ procedure at the beginning of Chapter Eleven (devoted to Principles 6, 7, and 8), YT 48a. 38 Chapter Seventeen, YT 65b. 39 Chapter Ten, YT 46a–47b. 35 36

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further convinced of this by two other empirical considerations. First, we have the historical testimonies of the Sinaitic epiphany, which are trustworthy. Furthermore, all mankind require that God determine their special objectives in nature and the particular rules of their survival in it, just as He determined the objectives and rules of survival of nature itself. This is obvious. Just as the world cannot contain in itself the intelligence required for establishing its own laws, so humanity, whose understanding is finite, cannot contain in itself the infinite intelligence required for governing it. On the basis of these notions Schnaber concluded that the Torah is intended for all humanity.40 God granted all humanity freedom of choice, but only the people of Israel were designated to receive the Torah and fulfill its commandments. This is the special, unique mission of the people of Israel within human history; from this necessarily follows the principle of the Messianic redemption. To complete the discussion we should note two important additions of Schnaber’s to Maimonides’ enumeration of principles: 1. The necessity of an Oral Law, which is the continual interpretation and application of the Written Torah, for divine providence operates in complex human reality that exhibits a fixed character in respect of its laws but infinite changeability in respect of its circumstances. The Torah is eternal, for in its relation to the fixed order of the world there is no reason for it to change; but its preservation requires study and interpretation that are specifically adapted to every novel situation, on account of the circumstantiality of ceaselessly changing reality.41 2. The faith that divine providence is beneficent and just, and that evil is only the deficiency of existence. On this topic, Schnaber launched into an extended and detailed discussion of theodicy, mainly on the lines of Maimonides’ method, but partly along the lines of the kabbalah. He delved especially into the issue of death and its causes as background for understanding the principles per-

YT 50a–51b. “Religion is more necessary for them than the availability of food for the need of preservation of animals, for therein lies the correction and preservation of all the human race in its entirety.” (YT 51a–51b) 41 Chapters 15–16 (YT 61a–65a). 40

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taining to divine reward and punishment: the immortality of the soul and resurrection of the dead.42 We may thus draw a picture of the sum total of Schnaber’s thought. It is a systematic interpretation of all the doctrines and beliefs that together comprise the outlook of Judaism, as imparted by the Written and Oral Torah, including the works of philosophers and kabbalists that were propagated among the people and regarded as authoritative tradition. Schnaber took pains to establish every cardinal principle discussed in the religious literature as part of a comprehensive religious worldview, each with its own logical justification. Furthermore, he took pains to study its source, to validate it deductively and inductively, and to interpret it within a systematic continuum of coherent thought that could not suffer the omission of a single added element. In other words, his purpose was to oppose the total denial of the truth of the Torah by a total philosophical affirmation of it. The orthodox character of Schnaber’s philosophy is conveyed principally in this striving for total philosophical affirmation of the Torah as given, with all its constituent parts. This was a radical stance—one may say, fundamentalist. This was expressed in the fact, which appears at first sight surprising, that this scientist and rationalist philosopher, who pledged himself to total consistency and not to make philosophy dependent on revelationally-based authority, had no inhibitions about justifying even the demonological elements in the kabbalistic literature.43 (This was in stark contrast to Maimonides, who unhesitatingly rejected them as manifestations of idolatry.) Thus while he did not subordinate philosophy to religious authority, neither did he subordinate what had been sanctified as Torah to philosophical authority. It was his purpose that the two together should only reinforce each other and never come into conflict. It seems that this demand for radicalism in both respects—for philosophical coherence and religious-authoritative coherence—was the formative element in Schnaber’s philosophy. In its purely philosophical aspect, it was innovative and even revolutionary compared to Maimonides. However, in its empirical aspect it was conservative

42 43

Chapters 19–22 (YT 71a–89b). “Chapter 24: On The Existence of Angels and Demons” (YT 93a).

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and fundamentalist, reverting to several positions that Maimonides rejected. Indeed, this constituted its character as a modern Orthodox philosophy, namely, that it was a surprising blend of systematic innovation and systematic conservatism. In this, more than anything else, Schnaber’s Foundation of the Torah was a harbinger of the religious foundationalism of modern Orthodoxy, which also rested on a Kantian foundation.

CHAPTER NINE

JUDAISM AS AN EVOLVING NATIONAL-SPIRITUAL CULTURE: THE THOUGHT OF R. NACHMAN KROCHMAL BASED ON HEGEL’S DIALECTICAL IDEALISM A New Guide, Using Hegel’s Dialectic Toward the middle of the nineteenth century, Kant’s philosophy would again become a primary rubric for formulating a contemporary continuation of Jewish identity on the philosophical plane. This occurred after the rise of Jewish historical studies and the Reform movement achieved institutional form, both inspired by a vision of historical development. In this, they were influenced by Hegel, who had established the historical development of global national culture as the central theoretical preoccupation of his philosophy. The turn to history was defined and institutionalized in the service of Jewish national-cultural assimilation. This entailed a far-reaching development in the self-understanding of Jewish religious identity, aiming at a dialectic of mutual rapprochement between Judaism and Christianity. The return to Kant came as a reaction to this historical development. It expressed an opposite objective, seeking dialectical confirmation of Jewish self-identification, both religious and ethnic (i.e., popular, familial, and communal ) without forgoing the progress of emancipation. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, the development of German (and Jewish-German) philosophy was characterized by a preference for Hegel’s philosophical methodology. This trend was marked by divergence of interpretations of a schismatic character; several competing streams developed within German philosophy, expressing competing social and cultural interests. The Jewish philosophical stream that came to apply Hegel’s historiosophical insights from a Jewish perspective was among them. Prior to that development we find the first appearance of a national Jewish philosophy that was based on a foundation of Jewish historical scholarship and adopted Hegel’s philosophy to serve an opposite purpose—not assimilation, but revival of the Jewish people’s national

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and religious culture in its full breadth and its full unique panoply. This development would mark the culmination of the first creative period of modern Jewish philosophy—the period of the Enlightenment. At the same time, it signified the dialectical transition to the post-Enlightenment period, in which both the humanistic religious movements and the secular national movements that developed from them found institutional form. We are speaking of the thought of R. Nachman Krochmal (1785– 1840), who is considered by most of the Judaism scholars of this period to have been the most systematic and influential Jewish philosopher of the Enlightenment. Throughout the nineteenth century, Moses Mendelssohn continued to be considered to be the iconic figure symbolizing both the Enlightenment and Emancipation in central and Eastern Europe for all the movements in Jewish life that underwent this process. But Mendelssohn did not intend to create a whole system of Jewish philosophy. He rested content with indicating the implications that followed from the challenges of general philosophy in his time for the integration of Jews and Judaism into the European Enlightenment. This fact limited his influence on the philosophical plane, and indeed it did not persist beyond the thought of the first generation of Maskilim. Mendelssohn’s great influence was perceived in other planes. First, he symbolized in his person the struggle for emancipation on the internal and external fronts. Second, his legacy continued to focus the discussion concerning practical policy for the implementation of emancipation on the social, cultural-educational, and political planes. It was Krochmal, however, who first raised the problems of Judaism in the modern era to the plane of systematic, comprehensive philosophical-historical deliberation. This was a monumental project, one that connected him to the project of Maimonides in two complementary creative areas: general halakhic scholarship (which was the traditional form of Jewish learning) and philosophy. Krochmal sought to accomplish for his generation what Maimonides had accomplished in his. His daring earned for his philosophy a status comparable to that of Maimonides: he founded a philosophical school and inspired disciples who continued his efforts in several directions. It was an examination of Judaism on a philosophical level. All modern streams of Judaism absorbed his influence even if they did not accept his methodological assumptions and preferred more modern general-philosophical models.

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We must nevertheless raise a chronological difficulty for associating Krochmal with the founding period of the Enlightenment. He started writing his magnum opus Guide of the Perplexed of the Time in 1826, but it was published through the efforts of the great Leopold Zunz, founder of the Jüdische Wissenschaft, only several years after Krochmal’s death. This means that even if we compensate for the chronological lateness in the appearance of the book for its German audience by allowing that a circle of disciples formed in his lifetime who absorbed his views and continued his project afterwards through their creations, still his own creativity occurred after the establishment of the Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Judentums, and after the establishment of the modern Jewish religious movements in Germany. Still, several factors differentiate Krochmal’s project from the efforts of the Verein. For one thing, the Guide of the Perplexed of the Time was written in Hebrew for a Hebrew-speaking public (and was not translated into German). In addition, in his primary objective, Krochmal reproduced the original cultural objective of Mendelssohn’s Haskalah, which was to create a renaissance of Hebrew culture. Historically, this Hebrew renaissance was conceived in the spirit of the cultural flourishing that took place during the Golden Age of the Jews in Moslem Spain, which Krochmal took as a model. At the same time, it sought to emulate the national-cultural revival of the European nations in the modern age. Spearheading the Galician Haskalah Indeed, Krochmal saw himself as a spiritual father of a fellowship of student-scholars. Their objective was the revival of Jewish culture in Hebrew, modernizing it through the spirit of that age. Thus, his project was in line with that of Mendelssohn’s Bexur and the circle of Ha-Mexasef, Wessely, and the Hebrew authors associated with him. This was to renew Hebrew literature so that it would be the basis of a complete national-cultural renaissance. For a proper evaluation of these assertions we should recall the manner in which the Haskalah movement was propagated through each of the centers of Jewish life in Europe. Its initial advance and consolidation, as a movement of cultural renaissance, lasted in each case only for a single generation, but this process was repeated three times, in three separate centers: Germany, Galicia and Russia. It is possible to

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picture these centers as three consecutive waves, each giving rise to the next: first Germany, next Galicia, and finally Russia. We may add here that the majority of the Jewish people were concentrated in the centers of Eastern Europe. Mendelssohn was regarded as the founder of the first Haskalah movement, the Haskalah of Berlin, in central Europe. Of course, his influence and that of Wessely and their circle spread the gospel of Enlightenment to Eastern Europe, but each new center had its own founding seed. Krochmal thus played a role similar to that of Mendelssohn in Germany, as the founding father of the first circle of the Maskilim in Galicia. It stood in close and direct connection with Germany and its circle of enlightened Jews. In Russia, it was Rabbi Isaac Baer Levinsohn, whose ties with the Berlin Haskalah were much weaker and more distant than those of Krochmal. Because of that, it may be possible to explain why Levinsohn did not feel the need to deal in terms of philosophy, which had such central importance in Germany. In Eastern Europe, there was no call for that kind of discourse. In any case, Levinsohn’s writings contain no original philosophical content. In his discussion of the social-political and cultural-pedagogical aspects of enlightenment, he relied on Mendelssohn’s ideas. Levinsohn was satisfied with adapting Mendelssohn’s views on the uniqueness of Judaism, on tolerance and on the relation to humanism and Christianity to the social-cultural and political background of Judaism in his country. His modification of Mendelssohn’s ideas was noticeable especially in his highlighting national issues, which Mendelssohn took for granted but took pains to leave unspoken. Thus, two fundamental facts received ideological expression, demarcating the difference between the development of the Jewish Enlightenment movement in Germany and Eastern Europe. The first had to do with the political and economic inhospitability of the outside environment, the second with the greater internal cultural cohesiveness of the Jewish community itself. As to the first, in Galicia, and even more so in Russia, political conditions did not exist for a direct struggle for political emancipation whose direct objective would be the commingling of Jews in enlightened non-Jewish society. On the contrary, there was the need to struggle, without hope of success, against a continual process of deterioration of the economic, social and political condition of the Jews. This deterioration took the form of restriction of their privileges, discrimination of every social and political kind, strengthening the ghetto

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walls around them, and deliberate economic strangulation (especially in Russia) to force Jewish emigration so that they might become a negligible minority without influence. In such a situation, equal rights and social integration could with a stretch be the dream of a tiny elite, who received privileges from the ruling power in exchange for their services. The majority of the people found themselves in a rapid, threatening process of impoverishment and social-cultural unraveling associated with it. The proponents of enlightenment in Eastern Europe sought to answer to the pressing needs of the destitute masses and could not ignore these circumstances. They had to grapple with the problems of internal stratification within the Jewish community, in order to fortify and strengthen its power of survival. It was their hope that ways could be found to expand the community’s resources, to train its members for vocations that were fitting for the modern economy, and also to renew and adapt the prevailing traditional Jewish culture. In this way, the movement sought to persuade the governments and the hostile gentile society that the Jews were a beneficial and desirable factor, and that it was proper to change the policy of oppression directed at them.1 As to the second factor, in Eastern Europe the Jewish population was not only much more numerous than in central Europe, but also was concentrated in small and large communities where Jews comprised a conspicuous mass and formed a living multi-layered cultural environment. In other words, in Eastern Europe, they were a people with a comprehensive ethnic and cultural identity. Their religion was a formative and representative factor, but nevertheless it was not solely a religious identity but a cultural identity with pronounced national characteristics. These characteristics seemed obvious to all. The Maskilim, who sought to take over the governance of the community from the traditional rabbinic leadership, could not ignore them or deny them, as the avid proponents of the Emancipation in Western and central Europe had done. In place of ideological assimilation, the Eastern Maskilim established internal regime change as their goal. Their call for change was directed against the existing Jewish communal leaders, who were

1 For a detailed study of the historical background of the Haskalah in central Europe, see Raphael Mahler, Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment, JPS 1988, pp. 3–7, 41–44.

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responsible in effect for the pitiful and deteriorating situation of the community; against the religious officials who gave short shrift to the legitimate goals of worldly life and laid heavy burdens on the people; against the social arrangements that were inadequate for contemporary conditions; and especially against the methods of education of the young, which did not prepare them properly for their future vocational, social and cultural tasks. In all these respects, the Haskalah movement of Eastern Europe focused on internal changes that were dependent on the Jews themselves. Thus the Maskilim applied the emphatic lessons of the rationalist Enlightenment and general European humanism to their own national community. The goal of the application was not for the purpose of assimilation and adaptation to the ambient gentile nationalism, but for the purpose of forming an independent Jewish national identity parallel to it. Krochmal’s Adaptation of Hegel’s Historiosophy for a Jewish Renaissance The foregoing provides the proper background for understanding the special interest that Krochmal took in Hegel’s philosophy, and his preference for it as a rubric for grappling in a scholarly and philosophical mode with the challenge of adaptation of Jews and Judaism to the modern age. It is evident that he selected it for intrinsic methodological reasons that followed from the comprehensive scholarly and theoretical task that he took on himself on behalf of his people. Of all the modern philosophical methods that he knew, that of Hegel provided him with the proper tools for achieving his goal. To demonstrate this, let us first note that Krochmal apparently ignored Hegel’s attack on Jews and Judaism. He did not bother to formulate a direct polemical refutation of it. He responded similarly to Spinoza, in whose footsteps Hegel saw himself as following. Krochmal regarded Spinoza as the first Jewish philosopher who dealt positively with the challenge of modernity. He found in Spinoza’s writings important positive lessons for understanding Judaism, and refrained from polemicizing against his errors of fact and his mistaken historical evaluations. Of course, he corrected Spinoza’s and Hegel’s errors and prejudices, but he did so in a positive way—by presenting a very different description, analysis, and evaluation. Indeed, for this purpose he utilized scholarly and philosophical tools that he took from them and developed according to his own understanding.

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It is thus evident that Krochmal was motivated first and foremost by his vision of the cultural-national renaissance and his aspiration to unite the Jewish people in fashioning a new era in its history. He adapted the methodological elements of Hegelian historiosophy in order to prepare a foundation for comprehensive cultural-historical research and philosophical speculation based on such research, in the service of this primary vision. Krochmal’s cultural mission ran parallel to the mission that Hegel took on for German nationalism that for its own historical reasons had run into problems and was striving to forge its own national identity, unity, and political independence. Hegel’s prejudices against Jews and Judaism were fed to a large extent from the problematic background of German nationalism. But Krochmal, who grappled with Hegel’s teaching as a modern philosophical method apart from its German nationalist rendering, was able to focus on its positive and attractive side. To him, Hegel articulated the philosophy of the present age, defining the general cultural arena in which the Jewish people must find integration, while preserving their unique identity and contribution to humanity. Of all the modern outlooks, Hegel’s perspective seemed to Krochmal as the most apt and proper for the Jewish people’s special needs. It should be obvious from this how Krochmal’s relationship with Hegel’s philosophy was parallel to Maimonides’ with Aristotle’s. The same challenge was being presented in a similar form, though on a different cultural plane, which appeared higher in Krochmal’s view. Indeed, establishing and confirming this fact had major significance: it provided Krochmal with the internal traditional justification that would be necessary for him to advance his daring innovations regarding the prevailing religious tradition. Krochmal could define his philosophical and scholarly task in his time as equivalent to that of Maimonides in the preceding age. It was up to him to reconcile the truth in the authoritative religious sources, which preserved the unique identity of the people, with the universal truth apprehended by human reason through the philosophy that represented this truth in his age. Krochmal’s reliance on Maimonides for support demonstrated the same innovative daring required for adaptation to the new, which appeared to contradict the old and undermine its authority. It had a foothold in the religious tradition itself, and thus proceeded from within, not from outside. In other words, this innovation exhibited internal continuity, and it was constructed through the process of the people’s identity-formation and preserved it. This claim could be

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established, if one granted that the cultural and religious identity was not set in stone eternally, but was a historical process preserving internal continuity with its origin. We may now examine more precisely the parallel between Maimonides’ and Krochmal’s respective philosophical models. Maimonides approached the Aristotelian philosophy through the rich interpretative tradition that reached him in its contemporary version through the great Arab philosophers of his age. This tradition had incorporated Platonic and Neoplatonic elements and thus represented the accepted philosophy of his age. Therefore it seemed to him that a reconciliation of these metaphysical truths with the truths of prophetic revelation would raise Jewish religion to the highest level of the culture of his age and establish it as the central religious axis of the culture in its universal scope. He hoped that this vindication of Judaism would demonstrate its absolute superiority to Christianity and Islam. The same was the case with Krochmal. It was his mission to create the encounter between the Torahitic legacy, in its cultural-historical totality, and general philosophy, which represented contemporary European culture on the universal plane. This reawakened the need to relate to modern philosophy in its broadest extent, embracing its continuous development from Spinoza and Descartes to Kant and Hegel. The Hegelian philosophy presented itself as summarizing and representing this universal totality, uniting in it the whole history of philosophy, not just modern but ancient as well. Here, too, was a claim to a universal philosophy, representing the highest level of the culture of the age.2 Again, as Maimonides with Aristotle, Krochmal did not simply copy Hegel’s philosophy chapter and verse. Hegel fleshed out his theory from a German-nationalist historical perspective; Krochmal operated in parallel fashion to create a philosophical perspective that fit his Jewish nationalist perspective. He adopted from Hegel the definition of the philosophical task and the universal methodology required for it. But in 2 Though he barely addresses modern thinkers directly, he does so implicitly in a number of key places. In his introductory chapters, he endorses the project of mental abstraction in terms articulated by the German idealist thinkers, including the progression of Vorstellung, Begriff, Idee (Krochmal, Guide to the Perplexed of the Time, ed. Rawidowicz, Ararat, 1961, pp. 11–12). More crucially, his discussion of “the spiritual” in Chapters 6 and 7 is a paraphrase and reappropriation of the notion of Geist in its Hegelian articulation. And his invocation of the ru˜ani ha-mu˜lat ( p. 37, bottom) as the God of Israel is a clear answer to Hegel’s positing Absolute Spirit as the summit of human intellectual-spiritual development.

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applying it to his own particular subject from his own particular perspective, he carved out, like Maimonides in his age, his own special path, to unite the one true philosophy with the one true religious tradition. Krochmal had a historical advantage over Maimonides in their common task of reconciling two apparently contradictory traditions. Krochmal could rely on Maimonides as precedent for his enterprise, whereas Maimonides could not base his religious truth on a prior Jewish philosophical tradition, but had to resort to the ahistorical claim that philosophy was the hidden truth alluded to by the prophets. Thus Krochmal was able to present religion through the eyes of a developed tradition of Jewish philosophy, without relying on Maimonides’ homiletic argument that had been decisively refuted by modern historical criticism. Krochmal developed two philosophical syntheses to harmonize religion and philosophy: the synthesis of modern philosophy, and that of traditional Jewish philosophy. Of course, Maimonides was representative of the older tradition. But Krochmal combined it with Neoplatonic traditions that were closer to the philosophies of Spinoza and Hegel, especially those of Abraham Ibn Ezra and Moses Na˜manides. Thus, he was able to blend the traditional philosophical legacy with the parallel but different legacy of the theoretical kabbalah. The same applied to the first synthesis. Hegel’s dialectical historiosophy suggested to Krochmal a methodological and formal logical rubric that united the philosophical contributions of Hegel’s predecessors. Krochmal’s preference stemmed, as we indicated, from a similar conception of the general philosophical task. But we cannot enter into the depths of Krochmal’s conception of Judaism without recognizing in it his repeated reliance on Kant’s transcendental outlook, which Hegel totally rejected. Krochmal understood pagan religion in terms of Hegel’s immanentism, whereas he saw pure monotheistic Judaism as uniquely different—a religion that represented absolute transcendent spirituality.3 Philosophy of History for a Culture in Transition Krochmal grafted his complex synthesis of general philosophy and Jewish religious philosophy onto a new academic discipline that grew directly from the cultural process he described, and that raised

3

GPT pp. 29, 37–38.

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perplexing questions calling for this very kind of speculation—history, considered scientifically and philosophically. When modern history looked back with hindsight on its tremendous cultural achievement (a process that took two or three generations to accomplish), it viewed itself as a structured developmental process, a process that advanced in stages toward a preordained goal. This was the great scholarly and philosophical discovery on whose threshold Spinoza set foot in his Theological-Political Treatise. Lessing defined it as a central area of philosophical inquiry in “The Education of the Human Race.” Kant took the first step in its systematic development. But only Hegel embraced it to its full extent and raised it to the level of the philosophical cultural consciousness of his age, building his whole philosophical method on it. This did not happen by accident. The development of historical research as a scientific discipline, and its acceptance as a central axis of philosophical reflection, grew out of the dynamic of the transition from the old culture, defined by religion and tradition, to a new culture defined by secular ideals rooted in human rational autonomy. As secular philosophy reflected on the history of this transitional period, and on its own historical development against the backdrop of the culture of its age, it gradually discovered the full significance and extent of the task that it took on itself as the heir of religion. Philosophy now aspired to serve as the primary spiritual authority guiding social, political and cultural development. For that purpose it had to redefine its epistemology, methodology and logic, as well as the intellectual domains that it needed to provide in keeping with its historical task. It had to incorporate the narrative of the historical transformation into the cultural consciousness of the governing elites, in order to fashion a continuity of identity between past and future—which would otherwise be cut off from each other—and to guide the history of the culture to the realization of its goals. Through their systematic development of the philosophy of history, Hegel (for modern European culture) and Krochmal (for the Jewish people) thus represented the intellectual culmination of the transition from a traditional religious culture to a humanistic secular culture. Their precursors—Spinoza, Leibnitz and Lessing, Mendelssohn and Maimon—had employed images of the past and future unsystematically in comparison. The earlier thinkers lacked a proper foundation of historical, sociological, and political research. They formed their theories without a proper foundation of social and political experience

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in modern historical reality, which had just began to dawn. Therefore, their views in the historical area were superficial, partial, and confused. It is natural that they reflected wish-fulfillment and prejudice more than fact. In the best of cases, they had brilliant guesses. But in the reality that was created in the generation of Hegel and Krochmal, one could already rely on the experience that had accrued in the meantime. The study of the past intensified and became more systematic and critical; social and political research developed, and the processes of modernization already operated to an extent that enabled scientific discernment and well-based expectations for the future. It was now possible and necessary to critically examine previous speculations from a clearer standpoint using improved methods, in order to draw up a credible outline of the contours of the modern period—the relations between the present moment of modernity, what preceded it, and what it holds in potential for the future. All these agendas came together in the philosophical study of history. The Perplexity: Transition from Traditional to Modern Outlook The need for critical and comprehensive historical inquiry now seemed quite pressing. As the structural lines of the new age became understandable, the dimensions and gravity of the crisis of cultural identity, and with it the crisis of religious identity was also clarified. The more that the shape of the modern age became clearer, the more it awakened among the peoples of Europe, and with special intensity in the German and Jewish peoples, enormous hopes as well as enormous anxieties for their identities. These anxieties generated deep cleavages among different sectors of the people, and of course among the souls of individuals in all sectors. This was a deep spiritual and psychological crisis that was felt in all planes of social life. Its focus, however, was in the spiritual perplexity that was caused by effacement of the previous identity and the loss of value orientation. The life-structures and fundamental norms of the outlooks and behavioral patterns that had been accepted for generations were seen to totter and collapse. Against that background, the new appeared— even to those who welcomed it—not fully understood and threatening. The task of coping with this crisis fell naturally to the spiritual leadership, and especially to those leaders who had welcomed the new. To

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philosophers who vied for this crown of leadership, in place of the religious leaders, whom they criticized, it was clear that only the lamp of reason in their hand could resolve the doubts and light the way. They also saw it in their vision and trusted in it, despite all doubts and perplexities—if they could only raise the people to their rational vantage point, that is, to the level toward which history was in fact striving! This “if,” for the modern philosophers, embodied the whole problem: the problem of the people, but also their own problem, as those who bore responsibility for spiritual leadership. However, they seemed to lack a common cultural language with the people they sought to lead, presumably because they and the people existed on two different planes of awareness and knowledge that were apparently impenetrable to each other. From the vantage point of the philosophers and their loyal followers—the special few—it seemed clear that the new culture, based on science and reason, was advancing to a position of hegemony. It would soon take over all areas of human endeavor—ethics, political governance and organization, economic life, artistic creativity, and the emotions—raising them to the highest level of rational spirit and autonomy. At the same time, it was obvious to them that this modern culture rested on the legacy of the past’s positive achievements and would actualize possibilities that were already potential in the old legacy. Now was the time (they thought) for realizing these possibilities, for the proper conditions—which had not existed in the past—had now been prepared. But in order to realize the potential of the past, one would need to break off the old shell, to raise the previous contents to a higher level, and to redefine them. Just as the budding seed sprouts forth its latent potential by splitting open, so must the flowering culture dismantle its antiquated elements in order to thrive. The major obstacle was that most of the people and apparently most of the governing elite, who had been brought up on the old religious legacy, were still not entirely emancipated from it. They had not absorbed the scientific and rational foundation of the new culture. Therefore, they did not sense the disintegration of the old any more than they were able to sense and understand the formation of the new. This was not only the source of the crisis and perplexity, but was the perplexity itself. It was thus obvious that in order to overcome it, a quantum leap was required, to bring the majority of the people

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from their accustomed traditional thinking (shaped by their religious education) to a level of rational autonomous thinking (in harmony with the modern culture in which they now lived). This would be a major educational revolution. It would require the same kind of critical philosophical reflection that had brought the philosophers and scientists—and with them the history of culture—to this vantage point. When everyone would understand the rational pattern of the historical process—and would internalize it—then alienation, anxiety and perplexity would disappear. All would come to realize that the modern culture, which appeared to negate the religious culture out of which it had arisen, was none other than the realization of the previous culture’s potential, raised to a higher level. In the last analysis, all would understand that the breaking-down of the old was not the goal but a means, and that the final result would be a continuation of the old in the new that surpassed it! This philosophical insight may also be formulated thus: Since the rational sciences and philosophy that created modern culture are the source and the substance of the spiritual perplexity among the people, they also carry in themselves the correct solution. Philosophy embodies through its process both problem and solution, and the critical stumbling-block is the dangerous transition from one stage to the next. From the standpoint of the spiritual leadership, questions were asked. How are all the governing elites of the people, and through them the entire people, raised from the consciousness and thinking of the religious stage to the rational level of consciousness of philosophy? Do the modern philosophers have any language in common with the people whom they seek to lead? Can they create such a language that will be equal in its utility to the traditional-religious language? Must they perhaps avail themselves of the religious language, in order to draw from it the hidden meanings that it potentially embodies and of which philosophy is the continuation? Spinoza was the first who sensed the burning character of this problem. He therefore wrote his Theological-Political Treatise, which addressed a broad public of educated readers, not just professional philosophers like himself. He indeed used (in an ironic and sophisticated manner) the theological language of religion, in order to point to the rational truth toward which he strove. Mendelssohn was also sensitive to the problem, and he solved it by refraining from open philosophizing when writing in the language of his people. He rested content with providing pedagogical tools that would prepare the people for the desired

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transition. In a free and open manner, Mendelssohn’s Jewish disciples were able to turn, in German, to a growing circle of enlightened readers like themselves. The same was even truer for Kant and Hegel, who relied on a wide circle of German (and Jewish) enlightened disciples who knew how to transmit their deeper philosophical insights in ideological language that was popularly understood. But Krochmal operated in a Jewish society and a non-Jewish environment that had only begun the process of adaptation to a modernity that was taking shape beyond their borders. He was even more sensitive to the pedagogical problem than Spinoza, for he had a strong sense of responsibility to his people. He knew that philosophical deliberation, which would not be understood by the people, was liable to aggravate the crisis instead of resolving it. In this respect, he was again close to Maimonides and the kabbalists, who dealt with a similar problem. In any case, Krochmal had not only to apply Hegel’s new philosophical insights to the real conditions of his people, but also to construct a mediating educational process that would embody the transition from the previous religious language to the new philosophical language. He would demonstrate in practice how the religious language dimly intimates the rational intellectual truth, and how it is possible to arrive from the old to the new through a deeper understanding of the old that will draw those who hold fast to it toward the new. If we reflect on this analysis of the crisis of transition from a traditional religious culture to a scientific-rational culture (especially the conception of the place, function, and problem of philosophy as guiding the cultural process), we see how the structure of this analysis of the crisis is mirrored in the dialectical logic of development that Krochmal received from Hegel. We have first of all a historiographic structure that can be considered even without philosophical abstraction. First, competing religious and political movements appear in the people. These are formed because of changes in external circumstances and conditions that generated ethical, social and political stresses, and dilemmas. As a result of the new conditions and divisions, the accepted religious patterns of life encountered difficulties and limitations that the existing body of religious instruction had no adequate instruments to deal with. This was the beginning of perplexity. It led to the appearance of religious movements that sought a solution in the hidden depths of the traditional sources (Hasidism, Mitnagdism, Sabbateanism, Frankism, and popular religion which tended toward various kinds of magic). It is

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natural that bitterness against the religious leadership—which failed to fulfill the elementary expectations of the majority—was awakened in the people. Dissatisfaction led to rebellion. There appeared competing elites, especially those who had independent sources of influence that were not linked to the community—for example, those who succeeded in forming a positive connection with the external society and with the secular culture. These elites believed that the real solution would be found in their hands because they were qualified to define the challenges by way of real historical factors. They were also able to possess the proper tools to cope with them successfully. Thus, there appeared another culture, outside of religion and in competition with it. It was created by an enlightened, restive elite who aspired to a different way of thinking, proceeding from outside and not from the sources. If we attend to the words of these elite themselves, we are convinced that they operated with positive motives with the tendency to create a new infrastructure for the people to enable survival and growth. But they appeared to the people and their religious leadership as mainly negative. They fought against the previous religious culture and against its traditional leadership, and apparently wanted to tear them down and abolish them. Against the old “thesis” of the disintegrating religion appeared its “antithesis.” One may say that the religion generated its own antithesis outside itself as its negative, adversarial manifestation. But the negativity also characterized the new form of thinking. It expressed more negation than affirmation, and in any case the negation was visible when the affirmation was not yet visible, and the people could not see or understand it. If so, then although the people were in need of a new culture, and although they were dissatisfied with the old religious leadership, the heralds of the new culture provoked a negative reaction of fear and anger. The people were still “religious” and clung to religion as their sole inner support. This, then, was the great dilemma which every revolution encounters. A positive creation requires a positive foundation on which and from which it can build its edifice. It cannot sprout up from nothing or from ruins, or from a strange and alien culture. It is in need of the same self-grounding legacy that it wants to displace. Thus, in order to bring the promise latent in it to fulfillment, it must do two opposite things at once. It must negate and drive out the old, but at the same time reaffirm it in order to continue it. In other words, the cultural revolution exists in a dialectical situation and needs to produce

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a dialectical response that is able to reunite the opposites on a higher plane than that of the present conflict. There must be a leap to a higher level, or a sublimation of the conflict to a plane on which it will be possible to harmonize it without forcing either side to surrender the truth with which it identifies. This is the decisive test. The new culture will be able to succeed only if it can rise up above the simpleminded conflict between itself and the old culture—that is to say, only if it does not act as if the decision is between truth and right on the one side, viciousness and error on the other. The victor will be the one who can rise above his opponent by recognizing and incorporating in himself the positive elements represented by the other side, even by a new interpretation that will change the form and image of the other truth. Who can do this? Clearly the traditional religion cannot, because of its static self-definition that has become hardened in the confrontation, though in fact it has been refuted by it. This is the initial advantage of the innovator, who has superior resources and intellectual tools at his disposal. But to maintain his advantage, the innovator must apply the same criticism to himself that he first applied to the religious side. He must negate his negative stance toward religion and affirm a positive stance. He does this by revealing his roots in religion and in the religious culture, and by leaping to the intellectual level that unites the oppositions through a new interpretation. Thus, the negation of the negation will create a new cultural synthesis that transcends the two conflicting theses. This is how Hegel conceived his notion of philosophical dialectic— by presenting the contradictions and oppositions as necessary constituents of the historical process of development on the plane of theoretical abstraction, in order to prove its structural necessity, its positivity, and its continuity of identity. This is the notion of the totality that in tangible historical reality reveals the creative regularity of the notion itself. But here takes place here the additional step to the realm of abstraction, which non-philosophers will have difficulty following and understanding. The philosopher who guides the new culture discovers a higher level of thought, over and above the religious thesis and the early rationalist antithesis. In the view of the philosopher, it is the revelation of a higher and more original plane of the life of the human spirit. On this level is revealed the true spiritual source that created the culture in all its strata, including religion. It now becomes clear that collective human reason, not external natural processes, is the source. All is fashioned in and through reason—first through sensory

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externalization, next from partial knowledge of the formative spiritual power. Finally the stage arrives in which reason identifies itself as the supreme source, affirming the truth in all the previous strata of its creativity, negating the negations, and thus harmonizing and unifying the contradictions at their root. It follows that the consciousness and completed philosophical understanding of the progression of the crisis is itself the solution of all the conflicts and contradictions. This is the general outline of Hegel’s dialectical logic. It may be conceded that in a certain respect this logic was indeed embodied in the historical process of the crisis that created it. If this is not the logic of human history in its totality, it is at least that of the crisis of transition from a traditional religious culture to a secular modern culture, based on autonomous reason and intellect. Hegel uncovered this structure through his own personal identification with the historical process, by way of reflective abstraction and generalization and application to all areas of cultural creativity. He thus raised the developmental structure of the crisis to philosophical consciousness. It is therefore no surprise that he was convinced that his philosophy was not subjective but it could be identified with an objective historical process. In other words, the whole process was not simply illuminated by reason, but it was at bottom a process of the creative revelation of reason itself to itself. But does the appearance of this total historical philosophy solve the crisis in historical reality itself? This is the major problem with which Hegel’s disciples had to cope, and which gave rise to controversies no less weighty than the controversies that the master’s philosophy had come to resolve. The historical dialectic continued to work its way forward, and what appeared as the solution turned into the occasion for another crisis, perhaps even more severe. However, if we are empathetic enough, it is not hard to understand the faith of Hegel and his disciples that uncovering the logical structure of the crisis would point to the rational pattern of development that leads all of history from one stage to another toward its final culmination. (To be sure, for them this was no mere faith but rather certain knowledge rooted in logical necessity.) By doing so they raised philosophy over religion as its absolute replacement, or in Hegel’s own terminology: philosophical reason did not negate religion but sublated it, by sublimating it into itself.4

4

See Glossary, “Sublation.”

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In any case, the fit between the structure of dialectical thought and the course of the crisis—which was now completed and available for historical observation—was the source for the development of Hegel’s ambitious philosophical system. This was also apparently the source of its influence and its acceptance among the intellectual elites who identified with progress. Doubtless, the fit between this logical developmental structure and the experienced cultural reality also attracted Krochmal to Hegel’s philosophy. This is what convinced him and his disciples that the solution to the crisis now overtaking the Jewish people was to be found in adopting and adapting this philosophy to the unique historical reality of the Jewish people among the nations. Moreover, Krochmal discovered the pedagogical potential latent in the similarity of structure between dialectical thought and the existential reality of the crisis that the people, in all strata and parties, were experiencing together. Indeed, each faction viewed the crisis from its own partial point of view (and thence the fierce struggles that tore the people to pieces). But the fact that they all lived through the crisis together could aid in the solution. It was liable to concretize and illuminate the substance of the crisis even for people who were not capable of logical abstraction and philosophical thinking. If they would just rise a little above their interest-bound outlook, in order to examine the historical destiny of the entire people, and try to understand the motivations of the opposing parties, the healing would begin. This momentary insight would constitute a beginning of quasi-philosophical reflection (if not philosophical in the full sense). For the secret of philosophy is to reflect critically on the full picture of reality, through the entry of the individual—or a partial group—into the totality. Indeed, the very ability generated in the individual to see himself within the context of his group, his group within his people, and his people within humanity,5 raises him toward a philosophical perspective. This is the case even if it starts on the level of tangible observation of external historical phenomena, which comprise that reality and depict it—political events, institutions (examining their functions and problems), various cultural creations, and the like. Historiographical study enables one to form a composite general picture, uniting these constituents into a totality and representing it as such. This can be a

5 “The individual lives a spiritual life in the life of the community of his people.” (GPT p. 113)

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first step toward understanding the regular pattern that unites what at first sight appears as an accumulation of accidental and arbitrary phenomena, or as chaos without order. There will be revealed an organic process with a principle, structure, and goal. This will be the beginning of the way to scientific understanding, which is the beginning of the way to philosophy. Understanding this is the secret of redemption. Moreover, if we recognize that the new not only tears down the old but also develops from it—and if we build on the foundations of the old by seeking solutions for the problems that were manifest in it—we will be able to find in the old culture modes of thought and expression that contain the new insights in a potential state. Then we will be able to interpret them and to reveal their fuller meaning. Maimonides did this in his day, when he argued that Aristotle’s philosophy and his own were already to be found in the words of the prophets and sages, and that the words of the prophets and sages are like sensible images of philosophical truths which they used to communicate them to the people. It is true that in his way Maimonides resorted to anachronistic allegorical interpretation, and a historically aware reader cannot give credence to this procedure. But precisely when one advances beyond Maimonides’ ( premodern, if not quite ahistorical ) mental horizon to the perspective of modern philosophy of history, one can arrive at the same result in a more credible fashion by applying the new historical perspective. This means relying on understanding the laws of development of thought in parallel with the development of culture. It also requires showing how new ideas develop from their predecessors and how they reveal what was potentially latent in them, though their authors could not understand in their own time the fully developed meaning that would be discovered by those who studied them in the future. The prophets, and after them the sages, dealt with crises and contradictions that were manifested in their culture. They expressed sharp criticism of what was accepted in their age. Their words express an effort to raise their culture to a more exalted ethical and spiritualreligious level, in order to solve the ethical-religious dilemmas that arose in their time. They interpreted the words of their predecessors differently than the authors of the same words had understood them, but their interpretation nevertheless had the force of tradition. Thus were all the sources of Judaism created in an ascending progression. Thus Maimonides treated the words of the prophets and sages,

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creating a philosophical layer to the tradition. And thus in the modern period a new traditional-religious language will be created, that will be understandable to the people and illuminated by modern philosophy. This will add another layer that will contain the full sweep of all its predecessors and will raise them to a higher level. Krochmal’s Pedagogical Strategy: Reformulating the Tradition in Modern Historical Terms Against the background of these considerations we can appreciate the substance and dimensions of the scholarly and philosophical project that Krochmal intended to address in his book Guide of the Perplexed of the Time. Like Maimonides in his time, Krochmal sought to create a prototype of the Jewish book needed for his time—a philosophicalhistorical paradigm. Such a paradigm must unite in it an anthology of sources comprising the Jewish legacy from the Bible to its own time. It must be written in the form of a course of study and educational textbook, guiding its students through the whole process of their cultural socialization from childhood to maturity, in parallel with the historical process of the creation of the culture of the nation. Every individual might progress in it to the level of understanding of which he was capable. Thus he would become integrated in the totality of the culture of the time that had arrived at its climax to the level of universal reason and been illuminated by it. The educational logic of Krochmal’s Guide of the Perplexed of the Time, like that of Maimonides’ Guide, required the implementation of its philosophical thought with due regard for educational method. In other words, it had to be constructed in a way that would prepare its students for understanding philosophical thought. It would give them the tools required for it, but would conceal the philosophical message itself until the student was sufficiently prepared for it. The topic that Krochmal raises in the introduction is the problem of the method of study and interpretation. He seeks to lay bare the perplexity of the time by way of the hard contemporary controversy that broke out between the enlighteners and the traditionalists over the question of the proper method of study and education for the age— whether to continue the traditional Talmudic-midrashic method, or to adopt the modern method of philological and historical research. Krochmal did not conceal the purpose of his book, in which he sought to bolster the method of philological-historical research and

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philosophical-historical interpretation of the Haskalah. The traditionalists saw in this—rightly, from their point of view—a revolution that involved cutting-off from the sources and denial of them. Research using critical tools, resting on intellect and autonomous human reason, was in itself an expression of mistrust of the religious authority of revelation and divine providence, which in the view of the traditionalists had created these sources, interpreted, and imparted them throughout the generations, from Sinai to the present. From the religious point of view, the change of interpretation implied by critical scholarship appeared first of all as exchanging the divine author with a human author. A divine author speaks from the plane of eternity and expresses eternal truths that mean the same thing at all times, including our time, whereas human authors express a truth that is relative to their time. Would not admitting human authorship thus be a denial of revelation and divine providence? Furthermore, changing the method of study would be changing the meaning and degree of obligation of the sources being studied. This would raise doubt whether the book as studied in a traditional way—and on the basis of its assumptions—is the same book that would be learned in a critical-scholarly fashion. In the scholarly mode, the religious content would be turned on its head and would be grasped as secular culture. Such a thing would be opposed in all respects to what comes to direct and explicit expression in the sources that present themselves as divine revelation. It would appear that the books would thus be forced to express the complete opposite of what is said in them. Krochmal did not try to hide this or to downplay the revolutionary significance of his pedagogical proposal—quite the contrary. In the first sentence of his introduction he already expressed the recurrent need to effect change in the methods of religious instruction.6 But he presented this assertion in the historical perspective of his general method, and thus sought to show that from his own viewpoint, as a creature of time,7 there is no implication of revolution in his suggestion,

6 Krochmal writes: “Know, dear reader, that the Lord, may His Name be blessed, Who calls the generations from the beginning—each generation and its expounders, each generation and its sages, and in His goodness alternates and changes the expositions as well as the ways of study and instruction of the ways that are good for Israel, so that if a known way was good and correct and fitting in a particular time, it is likely and possible that this same way will be unfitting to instruct the children of a later generation remote from the first in time and in character.” (GPT p. 5) 7 “As a creature of time”—ke-ven ha-zeman. Ambiguous: “as a creature of time,” as one who lives in the flux of time, for whom change is a natural constituent of existence;

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but the opposite—this was a faithful continuation of the sources and their tradition. Thus, he framed the entire problem as the confrontation between two opposing viewpoints, but within a single continuum that facilitated mediation between them. A close reading of the opening sentence of the introduction will teach us two things. First, Krochmal attributed the change in methods of study to divine providence, implying that he did not deny this tenet. Second, his new way could find support in the tradition—this was not the first time that the methods of interpretation, creativity and transmission changed. On the contrary, critical historical study of the tradition in its reincarnation from one generation to the next will reveal to us that it underwent several revolutions. One could compare the current crisis with the transition from the prophetic tradition to the rabbinic tradition, or between the Talmudic tradition and those of Maimonides and the kabbalists. Moreover, the scientific-scholarly change that Krochmal proposes had already begun among several of the leading thinkers of Spanish Jewry, especially R. Abraham Ibn Ezra.8 This leads us to the conclusion that through historical study Krochmal sought to introduce into the tradition the revolution implicit in the historical outlook, by uncovering its own historical character. If we see the transformation from its own viewpoint, we will be clearly convinced that he did not seek to uproot the truth of divine revelation or providence, but just the opposite. He sought to understand them more deeply, in a rational fashion, by probing deeply into the substance of the historical processes that transformed the methods of study in every generation. Krochmal was neither able nor desirous of developing his deeper thoughts in his introduction. It was meant only to prepare the reader for the convoluted intellectual journey in the main part of the book. These matters would be made explicit in a proper way later on, one stage at a time. But how could he convince his readers to follow his lead and trust him? He sought to do this by pointing graphically to the principal thing that in his view unified the tradition—despite all the or “as a creature of the time,” as one living in the modern age, which is especially attuned to historical consciousness. This reflects the ambiguity of Krochmal’s title: Guide for the Perplexed of the Time—the perplexed of the modern age, or those perplexed by the new temporal-historical perspective way of viewing Jewish tradition. 8 Indeed, Krochmal devotes the long Chapter 17 ( pp. 284–334) to an excursus on Abraham Ibn Ezra’s thought, followed by the Appendix pp. 335–394, devoted to extracts from Ibn Ezra’s writings.

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revolutions within it—and established it as a coherent whole, namely: the unity of its historical origin point and the unity of its end-goal. The consensual origin point of it all was the Torah, which was comprised of the Written Torah and Oral Torah. These included within them the principle of tradition. In every generation, one returned to this first source, via all the succeeding links, in order to receive it and interpret it according to the needs of the time. The end-goal was the continuity of the people’s life-pattern and realization of its material and spiritual national objectives. The example that Krochmal cites in his introduction in order to substantiate his argument sheds a clear light on his method of instruction and pedagogy.9 The well-known Psalm 137, “By the waters of Babylon,” was ascribed by the tradition, based on the Biblical text itself, to David. One need not be a historian to sense that this attribution is problematic. The psalm recalls a definite well-known historical event—the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, and the Babylonian Exile—as if in recent memory. Was it then really composed by King David, who lived centuries before the events described? One needs no scholarly acumen to determine that it is far more plausible to attribute this psalm to one of the Levites of the exile, expressing the traumatic experiences that he had undergone. Even so, the rabbis maintained the ancient tradition and excused the improbability— which did not escape them—with the answer that David foresaw the future through divine inspiration. Krochmal cited this example and explained that in rabbinic times their explanation was accepted in good faith and achieved a worthy and valid religious educational purpose: reinforcing the faith in prophecy and providence. He did not explain why the rabbis saw it as necessary to strengthen the people in this belief, but it is easy to surmise his reasoning. In the context of the dark reality of the protracted exile there was a great need to strengthen the people’s faith in divine providence and foreknowledge, to help them withstand the sufferings of exile. If the prophecy of destruction, uttered long before it occurred, was fulfilled, then one could be sure that the prophecy of consolation would also be fulfilled, even though it was proclaimed long ago; for in the reality of exile life redemption appeared no less remote than destruction had seemed in David’s time.

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Unlike the exiles of Babylonia—Krochmal continued—the enlightened youth of our day respond to the rabbis’ interpretation with disbelief and mockery. If we parrot back this interpretation to them as if it were our own, this would only undermine their faith in their teachers and in the authority of the Jewish tradition. Thus, we would be defeating the purpose of traditional education. On the other hand, if we present this psalm with a scholarly-historical interpretation, it would open the hearts of our youths to the full emotional message expressed in it. It would awaken in them a deep identification with their people and its teachings, and would strengthen their readiness to act for the redemption of their people. It is clear from this that Krochmal assumed that because of the transformations that occurred in his age, the national redemption of the Jewish people had become a real historical possibility—through natural or historical means—and not through miracles. Thus, though the interpretative stance of the current generation was different from that of the rabbis, their ultimate goal was the same. Krochmal did not specify the cause for the difference in outlook between the rabbis and the new generation. But it is clear that it was linked to a difference in awareness of the meaning of historical time, together with understanding the significance of the difference between the modern age, whose sun was rising, and previous ages. Moderns see the differences between historical periods as not merely chronological; they are aware that ideas can only be understood in the context of the material reality in which they are situated. Events such as the destruction of the Temple and the exile are totally disconnected from the historical context of David’s time, when Jerusalem was in its first flourishing as the capital of an Israelite commonwealth. The people were settled then on the land; there was no impending threat from external foes, and the Temple had not yet been built. It was therefore out of the question that David would entertain the possibility of destruction and exile. On the other hand, drawing the clear connection between Psalm 137 and its proper historical period enables the modern reader to draw out the full experiential meaning of this psalm and to identify with the national message that has again become relevant—this time as an expression not of destruction, but of new hope. The lesson that Krochmal wished to derive from comparing the interpretations of the psalm from various periods of the people’s history leads to the principal methodological conclusion that guided him throughout his historical researches and philosophical speculations, which we will now elaborate.

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The purpose of all learning and interpretation is to arrive at the truth of the text under study from the viewpoint of the interpreter in his own age. This objective is composed of two complementary aspects: to know what is the truth transmitted from the sources in its own right, and to know what the significance of this truth is for the investigating scholar and interpreter in his own age. This was the practice of the rabbis in their own time, and it is also the practice of scholars in the current generation. The inner continuity among the interpretations— despite their changing from one generation to the next—is rooted in the common identity of the source being interpreted, and the common desire to discover its truth and internalize it. The differences and contradictions follow from divergences in the interpretative points of departure of the members of various generations. The novel feature in the modern age is that these disagreements became more pronounced and entered into the field of awareness of the interpreters as a constituent part of their methodology. This, of course, came about because of the crystallization of modern historical consciousness. How so? The generations that were not aware of the cultural and spiritual significance of the differences between historical periods, apart from mere chronological progression and concrete events, saw themselves as free to derive from the interpreted texts the meanings relevant to their time. They assumed innocently that the meaning that they extracted (by bringing the texts into the historical contexts of their time) was the eternal meaning of the text, intended by its author. But a generation who has experienced transformations will have the awareness of historical change and can no longer operate as its predecessors did. It must first attend to understanding the text within the historical context in which it was written, in order to reconstitute the conscious historical connection between it and this text, out of awareness of the significances of the differences between one historical period and another. This is the full definition of the task of scientific research as a foundation for philosophical-historical interpretation. It is clear that the first task was to define the reality of the present and the questions that stem from it toward the sources: What are the questions? How are they asked? Why are they asked in this way? Especially, what is the nature of the barrier that has arisen in our own age between the younger enlightened generation and the sources? In summary, the question becomes: What is the perplexity of “the perplexed of the time” and what does it stem from?

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Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed starts with an introduction that explains the purpose of the book and defines the audience of readers whom he addresses. It continues with a summary of his method. He describes the religious-philosophical character of the work and the way that one should approach it in order to understand it and to absorb its truth, without being misled into religious or philosophical error. Krochmal’s Guide of the Perplexed of the Time begins in a similar way. Of course the style and content of his introduction and preface are different, but it is easy to see the parallel in terms of literary method. The source of the differences in relation to the problems of the modern age and its philosophy is in the awareness of its temporal nature. The first four chapters of the book are distinguished from the rest of the work by their special title, ”Gates of Purified Faith.”10 Krochmal defines them as a preface,11 and at the end of this section he suggests to the reader to treat these as Maimonides recommended to the readers of his book—namely, at the end of each chapter one should reflect on its logical structure and the logical connection between it and the preceding.12 The structure is laid out with thorough exactitude, every sentence fine-tuned and thought out, yet the author purposely refrains from making explicit the considerations that lead him from chapter to chapter and from topic to topic. The intention is rather that the reader should exercise his own mind and think for himself with the author. Thus he should enter into the process of critical philosophical reflection, and not rest content with a hasty reading. Only in this way will he take in these ideas and make them a part of himself. The purpose of the book is to educate one in a philosophical way of seeing, not to impart dogmatic truths. Thus, the reader will be able to examine himself: did he understand what he read, or did he perhaps err and lose the connecting thread? But what is the topic discussed in the “Gates of Purified Faith”? The title implies that the topic is faith, and the purpose is to purify it from the dross that has become encrusted on it, which is a source for error, Inner title page, GPT p. 3. See Zunz’s Introduction, p. 2.3, and Krochmal’s closing paragraph of Chapter 4 (GPT p. 17). 12 GPT p. 17. 10 11

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perplexity, and heresy. For this purpose, Krochmal opened his preface with the rabbinic motto, “Four who entered Pardes,” which attests to the dangers lurking for whoever aspires “to enter Pardes.”13 Each Gate14 is a commentary to a portion of this citation and presents the problem and its solution. We learn that even according to the rabbis faith is a path on which one must persevere to progress independently; it is not a state of childhood innocence based on authoritative dogma. A person’s world-view develops as he learns about the world, gains experience in it and arrives at maturity. Similarly his faith—which is the foundation and goal of his worldview—must also develop. It must progress from obedient simplicity to independence based on life experience and accumulated education. Indeed, this is a dangerous path; on its two sides abysses of fire and ice yawn. Every misstep carries the danger of heresy on the one hand, or falling into a kind of idolatry on the other. In the words of the rabbis, purified faith is depicted as a middle way between these abysses. The closing “gate” of the preface seeks to outline this path as a methodical instruction to the continued reading of the book. So far, this is a general description, appropriate to any age. It is easy to show that Krochmal applied it immediately to his own time. What is special about his book is that it indeed proceeds from a general historical, social-cultural description of the crisis of pure faith in his generation and his people, but it is clear that his insights have universal validity. Examine and you will find that the rabbis and Maimonides (who deals with the same topic through the same narrative) presented the problem of pure faith as the recurrent problem of specially endowed individuals, who went out on their own isolated spiritual adventures.

13 In particular, the epigraph to Gate 2 is a citation from the Jerusalem Talmud Æagigah 2:1: “This Torah is like two paths, one of fire, the other of snow. If one turns aside to the one, he will die of fire; if he turns to the other, he will die of snow. What shall he do? He should walk in the middle.” The parallel passage in the Babylonian Talmud relates: “Four men entered Pardes [ Paradise], namely, Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, A˜er, and R. Akiba. Ben Azzai looked and died. Ben Zoma looked and became demented. A˜er trampled the plants. R. Akiba entered and left whole.” (BT Æagigah 14b) This passage has been variously interpreted as referring to seeking after mystical experiences or knowledge, or philosophical speculation. “Pardes” (= Paradise, or the Orchard of Mysteries) is a proverbial symbolic term for esoteric, dangerous realms of inquiry. 14 Krochmal adopts the word shaʿar (“Gate”) as his term for chapter. It might ordinarily be taken as neutral (synonymous with perek) but acquires additional significance in the context of the “entry to Pardes” theme.

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But Krochmal from the outset describes the historical reality of an entire people, whose perplexity of faith is expressed in religious movements that tended in every which direction of faith and skepticism. Indeed, Krochmal refrains from specifying these movements by name, but there is no difficulty in identifying them through his descriptions. He clearly describes the religious perplexity of his people in his age through typographical descriptions of varieties of straying from the way of pure faith. His description is based on perceptive observation of the various movements of his time. In this way, he enables the reader to locate his or her own personal place on the cultural-historical map and to go on his or her own personal journey based on awareness of the generality and the age. In keeping with his moderating path between the abysses, Krochmal divided his panoramic description into two parts: the forms of falling into the abyss of idolatry and the forms of falling into the abyss of denial. Hegel’s dialectical method can already be seen at this stage in the antithetical distribution of the kinds of religious error and skepticism. Each form of religious excess generates from its contradictions the form of denial directed specifically at it. In the portion devoted to the description of religious error, Krochmal first described the mystical personality caught up in enthusiasm and exaltation.15 In his view, this was a delusion that had completely lost connection with worldly reality and the laws of material nature. This was a kind of “holy madness.” It is easy to identify this type with the image of the Hasidic “Tzaddik,” who was easy prey for the arrows of critical mockery of the early Maskilim. But Krochmal refrains from mockery. On the contrary, like Solomon Maimon, he sought to portray the ideal Hasidic personality with empathy and admiration. The question that concerned him was: what was the source of this fateful error? Two things were clear to him in advance. First, its spiritual motivations were positive and possessed a tragic greatness. This was no mere folly. We are speaking of individuals with spiritual gifts and a yearning for truth and goodness. They entered Pardes through the proper gate and with correct intention, but their good intention turned sour through human error, to which every truly spiritual person is liable. Second, this phenomenon is not accidental but structural; it is not the madness of individuals but representative of a cultural-historical situ-

15

GPT p. 7.

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ation. Were it not for this, these individuals would not have become the admired leaders of the Hasidic masses. Krochmal drew a quintessential sketch of a spiritual journey typical in his generation. It started out of true aspiration to devote oneself to the spiritual, and out of a correct assessment that the spiritual is the source and end-goal, while the material is only the outer garb that cloaks the spirit and is ruled by it. But the enthusiastic extremism of the mystic—who has not properly examined the manner of connection between spiritual and material through natural law—led him into the error of denial of material nature and its worldly laws, as if they are only an illusion that must be transcended in order to utterly abolish it. This madness is the final result. In the moment of his ecstasy the mystic identifies himself with the divine. He is convinced that through his will and intention, he is able to achieve whatever his heart desires, without paying heed to natural law. It is ironic that the thought that nature is only an illusion is an outstanding example of the power of imagination, raised to the point of mad delusion. The second religious type is the opposite of the first in the religious realm.16 Krochmal here refers to the various forms of popular religiosity that were attracted to practical kabbalah, as opposed to the theoretical kabbalah of the first example. They were attracted to various kinds of magic and wizardry, calling on the aid of angels, demons, and the souls of the dead, in order to achieve worldly success. This form of base material religiosity spread among the Jewish masses and became, in Krochmal’s view, one of the most blatant symptoms of the religious crisis generated by the deterioration in the material and spiritual condition of the people on the threshold of modernity. In contrast to the first type of religiosity, the second expresses a profound disillusionment. It is disillusioned with the purported power of divine spirit over material reality, and with the purported ability of man, immersed in his worldly life and unsatisfied primal bodily urges, to rise over them to a spiritual existence and establish its supremacy over the powers of the body. Out of their feelings of depression and guilt for their immersion in bodily lusts and sins, and out of a sense of helplessness to deal with worldly reality through the proper worldly tools, these believers developed ceremonies of dependence, through which they projected their alienated urges and identified them with

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spiritual powers with whose aid they could supposedly act upon nature. This was—if we read their secret correctly—a kind of esoteric science, substituting for rational natural science. We note that in his description of the second type, Krochmal again displayed a great deal of empathy and seized on the kernel of psychological truth in this type. Unlike his predecessor, this kind of believer indeed understands correctly that one must act upon nature through available means, but lacking correct scientific knowledge and the proper intellectual tools, his imagination prescribes a “science” whose source is in his urges and imaginings. At this point it is possible to describe the third religious type as a reaction against the prior two types, in response to their evident failure. Believers possessed of common sense and traditional halakhic education perceived their shortcomings and negative outcomes, but they did not arrive at a corrective “synthesis,” for that would have required a philosophical perspective. These loyal adherents of Torah and halakha arrived at a one-dimensional negation of the deviant approaches, representing them as esoteric, non-halakhic interpretations of the Torah. Without attending to the kernels of truth in these two deviant paths, they declared a severe ban on investigation of any hidden matters. In their view, one should follow just the plain sense of the scriptures and legal traditions, and observe the exoteric precepts of the Torah with punctilious exactness, in a spirit of simple obedience without investigating the meaning and significance of the commandments or elaborating on their proper “intentions.”17 One must believe wholeheartedly that divine providence ordains reward for those who observe the commandments and punishes those who violate them— sometimes in this world, but certainly in the world to come. Study of the Torah’s precepts in their plain sense and observing them for the sole purpose of obedience is the Torah’s sole concern.18 It is clear that for Krochmal these believers recognized a certain truth through their negation. But their grave error is obvious: in the name of faith and in defense of the Torah they deny the intrinsic reason and significance of

17 “Intentions”—kavvanot. Part of the legacy of the Lurianic kabbalah was to compose and recite kavvanot—declarations of the intention with which a commandment was performed, typically “to bring about the unity of the Godhead and the Shekhinah” and thus assist the repair of the cosmos. The opponents of Hasidism disparaged this practice as superstitious. 18 GPT 8.

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its precepts and thus misrepresent their purpose, which is to achieve spiritual and worldly perfection. We now come to the description of kinds of denial.19 Each type of religious error generates a type of denial directed against it, and one can find these types of denial among the various parties of the Haskalah: (a) Denial of the spirit itself in materialistic rationalism. (b) Determinism, which completely denies human ability to act on nature through free choice, because according to this doctrine the will itself is determined by natural causes. (c) Denial of the value and significance of the mechanical observance of religious precepts, presented by the orthodox as a kind of compulsory heteronomic obedience.

The considerations leading to these denials are simple and understandable, if one-sided. Like the believers of the third kind, these deniers arrived at realization of the religious failure—which was obvious to common sense and the experience of daily life. But unlike them, the deniers of this kind arrived at the extreme and simpleminded conclusion that the three kinds of failure prove that religion is false, and one must seek the whole truth outside the domain of religion. In other words, skepticism is based on the evidence of religion only in respect to its limitations and failures, while ignoring its truths. But we should not on that account ignore the truth revealed by skepticism, not only negatively but positively: it leads us to turn to science. The general conclusion is that one must set the religious truth— which can be uncovered and isolated from all the three errant ways of faith—alongside the scientific and philosophical truth, that can be isolated from each of the three errant ways of denial. In so doing, one can arrive at a synthesis that will negate the negation and affirm the positive on a more encompassing level. But for this purpose, we must first discover the critical method of thought that will enable us to release ourselves from the trap of one-sided, simpleminded affirmation and negation. The first logical step required for discovering the new form of thought is reflection that will bring the deliberation into a scientific framework, on the basis of an epistemology that distinguishes among its various planes. For in order to correct an error, one must examine

19

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where and how it came about. We can discover immediately that the appearance of the three kinds of denial that correspond to the three kinds of religious failure is not accidental. It necessarily follows from the structure that operates through three mental faculties: sense and imagination, scientific intellect, and reason. Examination with the aid of this key will show that the believer of the first type, together with the first kind of denier, both erred in the domain of metaphysics, which is the realm of reason. The mystic burst forth audaciously into the realm of metaphysics, but without the systematic philosophical preparation that arises gradually from intellectual research to rational insight. He ignored scientific intellect and theoretical reason on the basis of the claim that spiritual truth is attained from an outside source—it comes, supervening on human intellect and reason, through mystical divine revelation, perhaps through inner senses. From a rational viewpoint, it is clear that this is an intuitive attempt—audacious, but mistaken in principle—to deal with metaphysics through sensory imagination without critical reason. From this follows the error that Krochmal deems “illusion.” By contrast, the denier—who turned to materialism by denying this illusion—ignored the insight of higher reason, because he latched onto a limited kind of scientific intellect that rules out the metaphysical. The believer of the second kind, together with the deterministic skeptic corresponding to him, both erred in the realm of sensory experience, directed at the understanding of nature. The first plunged into the realm of scientific investigation on the basis of intuitive hunches, without resorting to the proper intellectual tools, and thus turned the senses and natural urges into idols. His mirror-image twin, the denier, has arrived at the sciences, but only in the empirical aspect dependent on the senses, without recognizing the independent spiritual activity of the intellect, whose structure determines the conceptualization of causality. He thus conceives the laws of nature as external laws that dictate the activity of the intellect and shape it, and has therefore turned the laws of nature into idols. Finally, the believer of the third type, together with the corresponding skeptic, erred in the realm of intellectual knowledge, in which they saw the limit of human spirituality. The believer recognizes the external dependence of finite human intellect on an absolute spiritual power, which exists wholly beyond him. The third kind of denier identifies the intellect in its capacity as the supreme spiritual power that embodies in itself will and choice, but only on the basis of utilitarian (scientific) considerations, not considerations of rational spiritual destiny.

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A comprehensive survey of this laying out of the errors on religious issues in terms of the three planes of human consciousness brings us first of all to a clear perception of the substance of the spiritual process leading to the crisis. Traditional thought, developing within the boundaries of religion, reached the limit of its resources. It has now stumbled on its limitations because of problems, dilemmas, and perplexities that it cannot solve with its own intellectual tools. Religious thought is therefore in need of an expansion that will bring it beyond itself. Thus it invites (though without knowing) the skeptics who express the undeniable necessity to burst the bounds of religion in the name of an external intellectual and rational truth whose precise substance has not yet been made clear. Thence, the great perplexity. Moreover, pure rational contemplation contains within itself the plane from which can flow not only a more comprehensive outlook but also the solution to problems and perplexities. This is because the very discovery of reason as the spiritual power that unites the intellect—just as the intellect unites sensory impressions—is the solution to the dilemmas that were raised necessarily on the planes of the senses, imagination, and intellect. What is the spiritual power that was revealed through the comprehensive survey of the drama of the spiritual errors contending with each other? Who is the observing “I” looking upon senses, imagination and intellect—beyond them? It is beyond question that this is “reason,” revealing itself now as a source beyond sensation and imagination, and beyond intellect; in the process it also reveals how it unites everything in itself. It is clear, then, that all the errors of faith and denial that were analyzed above have a common denominator—namely, a thought-process that is not sufficiently aware of the reason that thinks it (and this is the source of its error). The solution is rooted in raising the entire deliberation to the level of (self-aware) reason. But one must do this in a rational, methodical manner: out of the spiritual process that rises from the senses and imagination to intellect, and from it to reason, not the reverse. If we do not proceed this way, we will revert to the error of the mystic. What is the logical tool that will enable this? It will be the same logic that mediated the oppositions that were manifested within faith, within skepticism, and between faith and skepticism, within a single framework. We must define this process that explains the oppositions and contradictions as one which uses different perspectives to relate to the same problem. It must locate the element of truth in the two opposed views, and also locate the elements of error in each of them.

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Finally, it must reveal the way in which the two truths can be consolidated with each other, while negating the errors. If we do this, and we trace the shape of our procedure in doing so, then reason will be revealed to itself through its activity and we will come to know dialectical logic. At the end of the preface, Krochmal leads his readers to this insight. However, he does it in a circumspect way because the book is intended for readers who have not yet arrived at the highest reaches of rational thought. Only the perplexity of the time brings them to its gates. Presenting the problem on a simple level is in accord with the rabbinic wisdom concerning the entry to Pardes: in order to avoid falling into the abysses on either side, the believer must walk in the middle.20 The notion of the “middle” will be obvious enough on the level of the graphic parable—it is the thin line between the two abysses. But how does one translate the parable into its corresponding reality? What is the “mean” between two errors of abstract thought? Did the rabbis imply a compromise? But how is a compromise between two errors possible? Is it possible to arrive at truth by mediation between two falsehoods? In order to answer this perplexity to the reader, who comes from traditional education and is only at the start of his philosophical journey, Krochmal again relies on Maimonides. But he alludes here not to the Guide, rather to another well-known work that Maimonides wrote as a preparation for philosophy—namely, the “Eight Chapters,” an ethical treatise that Maimonides wrote as an introduction to his commentary on the Mishnaic tractate Avot. This is important to Krochmal because in it Maimonides uses the rabbinic term “walk in the middle” in order to convey in pre-philosophical language the Aristotelian ethical notion of the “golden mean.” In Maimonides’ popular and simplifying formulation, a person ought to choose the virtuous middle behavioral course between two vicious extremes. For example, as between prodigality (excessive spending on one’s needs and pleasures) and stinginess (excessive restraint), one should choose the middle way of thriftiness—spending not too little and not too much. No doubt this definition of the virtue of thrift is simple to understand and also pragmatically useful. One can apply it without attending to the fact that this definition does not give us an exact yardstick for

20

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defining theoretically what constitutes prodigality or the middle way. For we are speaking here of assessments which are relative to different situations, and practical reason determines them through experience. Therefore one can accept Maimonides’ definition as appropriate practical guidance. Philosophically, though, it is clear that this graphic definition skips the theoretical steps necessary for a proper definition according to a teleological principle, from which urge-based deviation leads to excess in either direction. Krochmal seizes on Maimonides’ definition and its deficiency in order to lead the reader one step further in the philosophical direction. He points out what is missing in the positive definition of the golden mean and raises the question how one can arrive at it. But the essential thing is that he awakens the reader to the fact that behind the instinctual desires leading to excess there is a definable rationale (though most people do not define it for themselves, but act on it out of emotion). The spendthrift feels that money has no value in itself. Its value is in the satisfactions that it can buy, and so he applies his money to achieve this value as much as possible. At the other extreme, the miser feels that money has value, if only the latent value of insuring his future—and so he spends in the present only the absolutely necessary minimum. It is clear that each of these views has a partial truth, and that the error of each is the failure to take consideration of the contrary truth. What, then, is the middle way? It is clearly not a compromise of the two truths and the two errors, but rather a principle comprising the two truths and negating the two errors. It is possible to formulate it through comprehensive consideration, expressing a higher level of thought in two respects: (a) its level of generality, and (b) the degree of distance from sensory attraction and instinctual urges. The new principle requires ascending to the level of thought, deliberation, and planning. Here, then, is the principle of the mean: We should use the money in our possession to the extent that it will satisfy the needs of our survival and wellbeing in the present to a reasonable extent, while leaving us enough to insure satisfaction of our needs on at least the same level in the future. Krochmal thus presented the process of thought that defined the middle way in the relatively simple practical area of ethics. Thus, he revealed the dialectical logic necessary for understanding his way of reconciling the crisis of religion in his age. As we said, at this stage he rested content with an illustrative example, deferring the deeper, more

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detailed description of dialectical logic to a later chapter. (Krochmal intended to provide this in the first chapter of Part III of the book, which however he did not succeed in completing.) Pedagogical consideration guided his course of instruction. It seemed likely that he was following Maimonides’ example, recognizing that the reader would be ripe for pure philosophical deliberation only after broad and intensive systematic study of Jewish culture using historiographic and historiosophic methods. This study would be the agenda of the first two sections of the book, most of which Krochmal succeeded in completing (but we must note that even these sections remained incomplete). Affirming Spirit Within A Modern Naturalistic World View In the first section,21 Krochmal presented a general systematic survey of the national-political history of the Jewish people among the nations, together with a historiographic and historiosophic examination of their significance and purpose. In the second section,22 he presented an inclusive systematic survey of the development of the Jewish culture, as it was documented through the succession of its sources. For him, these sources comprised the Bible, the literature of the Oral Torah (halakha and aggada), and their elaboration in the various branches of scientific and speculative literature throughout the generations. A systematic histoiographic presentation, examining the history of the Jewish people in a general perspective, must be built first of all on the disciplinary assumptions of the social, political, and cultural sciences—and these are rooted in philosophical method. Krochmal thus saw a methodological need to present these assumptions on the first theoretical level, based on induction. Here, too, he succeeded in reflecting philosophical method in an introductory fashion, without developing it in detail for its own sake. This followed his practice in the introductory material, to which he devoted the first three chapters. The methodological transition from presentation of the religious perplexity of the present to perspectival examination of the history of the Jewish people among the nations was foreshadowed in the closing sentences of the introduction. There, Krochmal depicted the reli-

21 22

Chapters 6–10 of the present Guide. Chapters 11–15 of the present Guide.

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gious perplexity without describing its background and history, that is to say, without explaining the causes that gave rise to it. Only in the last sentences he declared in a general fashion that such crises had occurred to the Jewish people several times in the course of their history.23 Thus, he hinted that in his view they exhibited some cyclical pattern. It should be expected from this that in the continuation of the discussion, he would present the historical background from which the developmental pattern would be revealed. The knowledge of this would be the key for understanding the crisis and for its solution. The methodological preparation required for this would be a clearer determination of the place of religion in the general development of the culture—among nations generally and the Jewish people in particular.24 In effect, this need was already indicated by the form of the discussion in the introduction, which presented the perplexity of religion as a primary theme. Indeed, Krochmal did not depict the general historical background for the outbreak of the crisis. But without declaring this explicitly, he already presented the fragmentation into three types of religion and three types of skepticism against the background of the encounter with the secular scientific enlightenment. It is thus clearly assumed that the upheaval was caused by the general undermining of the place and function of religion in the culture as a whole, because it had been transformed from a religious culture—in which religion is the overall defining factor—to a secular culture in which philosophy, rooted in the autonomy of intellect and reason, is the guiding determinant. It is clear that not only skepticism follows from this transformation in the definition of the culture as a whole, but the fragmentation of religion is an indirect result. Religion ceased to govern the overall life of the culture, society, and state. Believers sensed this result even if they did not understand its causes: religion was no longer effective as it had been in previous generations. It ceased to be relevant to people’s orientation and coping with the substantive problems of socioeconomic and political life. Its assumptions and directives for worldly and spiritual fulfillment of its adherents had been openly disconfirmed by the experience of daily life.

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We recall that the three religious types depicted in the introduction were in effect three attempts that had been made in three areas of human knowledge to overcome this problem; but instead of absorbing the new knowledge and the cultural orientation, they limited themselves to the intellectual and emotional resources of the tradition. It was thus clear that such a method of coping was doomed to fail from the outset. It also showed why it appeared as madness to the enlighteners; this was not coping with reality, but with its shadow projected on a closed curtain. In order to cope with the perplexity on the basis of a true understanding of its nature, a general philosophical overview was needed. One must therefore define the second topic on the basis of a global perspective, that is to say, on the theoretical plane of modern philosophy seeking its solution. Its first task is to understand—transcending the outlooks of the parties to the controversy—finding what their common interest is on the points at issue between them. What are the first group referring to when they speak of faith in God, in angels, in good spirits and evil spirits, in souls, and the like, while living in effect according to the laws of worldly nature and seeking to control it? And what do the others really believe, who argue that there is no reality behind these words and that they depict only imaginings and illusions? Yet their consciousness, wills and creations express a life of the spirit, and they feel the need for an authentic substitute for the task that religion fills in human spiritual and moral existence! If the solution must be found in a dialectical mediation that combines the truths of both positions while negating their negativity—while raising the thought-process to a higher level of reason—one must then redefine from scratch the function of religion and its place in culture. One must furthermore do this from the viewpoint of knowledge of the whole—in other words, using the tools of science and modern philosophy. This general formulation already leaps out from the controversy depicted earlier. The problem that both believers and skeptics struggled with was the problem of man’s spiritual uniqueness in nature. The topic could be defined in its broadest aspects as the question of the relation between nature and spirit (in the preferred terminology of modern philosophy) or between matter, body and materiality on the one hand, and form, intellect, angels and God (in the preferred terminology of the ancients). This problem was one that all modern philosophies presented afresh as the fundamental problem of epistemology. It also reappeared in the thought of the true believers. Indeed, this problem had been raised with the utmost seriousness by the ancient con-

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frontations between the monotheistic religions and philosophy, when theological, philosophical and mystical solutions had been proposed for it. As we saw, religion’s ineffectiveness in dealing with the challenge of secular culture had undermined these solutions even in the eyes of the believers. They stood helpless without understanding why. What was the basis of the traditional solutions? Despite the differences between the various parties of philosophers and kabbalists, they agreed on a common basic assumption of medieval thought. This was that was that there were two separate planes of reality (or two “worlds”) where two different and opposite kinds of being existed. The one was spiritual being—eternal and unchanging, transcending place and time; this was the “true” being to which all truth related. The second was material, corporeal being, which existed in place and time—which was in a perpetual state of becoming and change, and which was therefore only a simulacrum or shadow of the true being. It was thus clear that the spiritual world preceded the material world; it was the governing factor, the source and end-goal of earthly existence. The human being was the creature who united in himself the two worlds. He lived on the connecting seam between them: his body belonged to the natural, material world, whereas his intellectual soul belonged to the spiritual world. Therefore as long as the corporeal forces dominated in his soul, it seemed to him as if corporeal existence was the more real, whereas spiritual reality was insubstantial, abstract. But the truth was the reverse, and this became clear when man was able to realize his spiritual nature. The knowledge of spiritual truth is therefore the purpose of human existence. In order to realize this purpose one must overcome his natural bodily urges, control them, and use them only as a means to fulfill his spiritual destiny. If he does this, he will discover the truth: that the spiritual governs the material, and that even the natural order expresses the divine wisdom and is governed by the divine will that created nature. This, of course, is the basis for the assumption that the knowledge of God, His ways of creation and His providence can acquire for human beings not only spiritual perfection but also supernatural power over the laws of nature. This, of course, is the root of the deep controversy that unfolded between the philosophers and the kabbalists of the Middle Ages. But one should emphasize that even according to Maimonides, God rules over nature and directs it to His will, in such a way that even supernatural events (such as the Exodus and the Sinaitic revelation) are possible (according to Maimonides—without contradicting the laws of

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nature). Even particular providence over individuals who have arrived at a high spiritual level, who fulfill a central role in the realization of the divine will in creation, is possible. This belief explains the effectiveness of religion in structuring and guiding the life of the culture even in its most worldly aspects, as long as the majority of people believe in it and do not experience an intolerable contradiction between their experience of worldly life and their belief in heavenly providence. However, modern natural science was based on the revolutionary assumption that nature must be understood in its own terms, through experiment and discovery of the causal regularity inherent in it. It undermined the division between a true spiritual world and a false material world, as well as the assumption that the regularity observed in terrestrial existence represents a teleological wisdom external to it. Through the natural sciences human beings discovered a far more effective way than religion had ever achieved for controlling the forces and resources of nature for human benefit. It would never again occur to anyone that the way to exert control over nature lay through exercising religious authority. But did this mean that those skeptics were right who denied the reality of the spirit and the volitional, purposive free will rooted in it? Were those skeptics right who denied the controlling factor of spirit over the body and matter insofar as it affected human spiritual destiny? Were those skeptics right who denied the application of moral and religious precepts that a human takes upon himself out of obedience to spiritual authority? Was it established that religion was false and had no role in a culture that defined itself on the basis of the modern sciences? From all that was said above, Krochmal’s dialectical answer should be clear: on the contrary. The development of the sciences is itself the proof that spirit—which knows, learns, evaluates, sets and achieves goals—governs reality and shapes it, not outside of nature and humanity, but rather within them.25 This means that if we understand the meaning of the modern sciences correctly and in a comprehensive fashion, we will not adopt an idolatrous stance toward them. Rather, we will discover that they lead not to the denial of religion but to a scientific, rational, truer understanding of its nature. Culture has arrived

25 Krochmal credits Second Isaiah with achieving a vision of God working in history without visible miracles. ( p. 53)

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at a higher level of consciousness, and it must define the functions of religion on that level. In any case, the religious truth that remains valid is the human knowledge that spirit26 is the source and goal of existence. The human being represents free, purposive spirit in terrestrial nature. Human culture, developing on the basis of the resources and regular processes of nature, is the creation of spirit, and it is possible to know it through natural means. But before the discovery of the modern (as opposed to pre-modern) sciences and philosophy, spirit was conceived as external to nature and humanity, whereas now it is conceived as intrinsic to them. The simple conclusion that follows from this is that religion is a form of consciousness that is prior to the modern scientific-philosophical consciousness of the activity of spirit in reality. People understood the religious truth that was revealed to them without the awareness that this is how their culture worked—in a visionary, symbolic, intellectual way, that expressed a progressive apprehension of the truth whose source was beyond reason and understanding. This is because human understanding had not yet developed to the point of recognizing itself as the expression of the world’s self-understanding (“God” as conceived in Spinoza’s philosophy)—the same understanding that thinks and generates in itself the totality of existence. Perspectival contemplation of the development of human spirit, through examining the development of cultural creativity, would reveal this truth in its all-embracing unity. In this way, spirit will arrive at contemplation of itself through the objective totality of its creation. It would reveal the unity of spiritual creation, and would thus raise religious thought to the level of reason. Development of Culture: Technology, Science, Morals, Art, Religion, Philosophy The next step would, thus, be to examine, through systematic historical consideration, how in general human culture did develop. What are its constituents? What are the respective places of ethics, law and polity, science, art and esthetics, religion, and philosophy, within

26 In GPT Chapters 6–7, “spirit” has the Hegelian sense (as Geist) of mind operating in the totality of its cultural manifestations: as science, politics, social conventions, ethics, art, philosophy, and religion.

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culture? How does the spirit demonstrate itself and become known to itself through these various domains of cultural creativity? And how are cultures related to each other as manifestations of spirit? What is the source of the differences between them, and how are the mutual relations developed that express the universal spiritual substance of humanity? Finally, how is Judaism distinguished as a culture—what is the unique destiny (as revealed through its unique historical fate) of Judaism within humanity? Krochmal opens his quintessential, schematic exposition of the development of general human culture with the Aristotelian assumption that man is social by nature. This means that the special nature of the human being, as distinct from other animals in nature, is evidenced and developed only in society. Historically this assertion is verified by the fact that human beings originally appeared only in groups, not as individuals. Krochmal presents this fact as “a counsel of divine providence.”27 We emphasize that Krochmal did not intend this as a religious figure of speech to offer as a lure for religious readers, but as an assertion worthy of scientific and philosophical consideration. Krochmal resorted to religious language in order to say that spirituality, which distinguishes human beings from all other natural creatures, is expressed in a certain unique human capacity, which is communicative, linguistic, and conceptual (even when one is not aware of the conceptual aspect of the language he uses).28 This unique capacity, expressive of spirit, is essentially a function of the group, not of individuals, for this conceptual-linguistic capacity is at bottom expressive, that is to say, the relation of one person to another. This assertion is foundational for the whole process of conscious, intentional spiritual creativity. According to this view, the spirit of the group is the primal source which precedes its development, even if in its early stages, it is not yet aware of the fact, but only discovers it in retrospect. For consciousness requires reflection, and reflection is possible only after those concepts are formed which represent spirit to itself as an objective reality. This explains, incidentally, why it appears to 27 “We see that it was the counsel of divine providence not to disperse the human species utterly, like other animals which are essentially solitary but only accidentally social, but rather to join them into smaller and larger groups—patriarchal groups, clans, and onward to urban and state collectivities, up to the largest aggregate of the nation.” (GPT 34) 28 The analysis of language as the communicative medium of the group spirit is found in GPT 30–33.

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people forming their culture in its initial stages (and consequently also to certain researchers of the history of culture in its external aspects) that society is initially formed by herd instincts, and that it develops as a result of the pressures of survival under natural conditions of hardship and insufficiency. Social organization and certain cultural legacies were indeed formed originally in order to supply the satisfaction of special human needs as well as protection. But it is clear that this activity was the result of man’s unique place in nature, conditioned on prior knowledge, on the will and ability to communicate. It is thus plain that human beings organize and create a culture in order to manifest in the collective ability embodied in them from the outset. Therefore it is important for Krochmal to emphasize that human sociality is not of a herd kind and is not to be explained by instincts imprinted in man’s biological constitution. It is important to him to show that the difference between the herding nature of animals and human sociality is the element of voluntary agreement that depends on a certain level of linguistic expression, and that linguistic expression, which embodies thought and conscious, value-based volition, is the immanence of spirit. In other words, through language, spirit presents itself simultaneously to speaker and auditor. Finally, this spiritual capacity is rooted in spirit and cannot be a mere result of natural instincts, for it differs from them in essence. The religious expression “counsel of providence” thus expresses the fundamental recognition that human collective existence cannot be a mere product of deterministic natural causality as Spinoza thought, but must necessarily be a product of a purposive free will, that characterizes spirit. In that respect, spirit is not a function of individuals but a function of the group, which itself is no mere accidental or technical collection of individuals, but a unity comprising a whole. This foundational assumption is the key to understanding the developmental pattern that is apparent in the historical process of gradual development that all cultures have in common. Yet in this context, it is proper to emphasize in counterpoint a second factual assumption of Krochmal’s, which appears at first sight to contradict the first, and which very likely represents the dialectic of the cultural creative process: Humanity, in the sense of the most inclusive collective entity, does not at first appear in its all-embracing unity and does not reveal its general collective spirit at the outset. It is rather manifested at first in a multiplicity of particular groups, each of which starts on its own

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and develops on its own—in its own place and in the framework of its given conditions. Only in the advanced stages of development do we start to notice the historical processes of encounter among the various cultures, as they grow toward the formation of a cultural totality that would unite them, without obliterating their independent identities. It is clear that in this way Krochmal set the universal principle of “counsel of providence” in counterpoint to its particularistic principle. According to the latter, the development of various separate national cultures is a positive, necessary structural phenomenon that is required by the very essence of spiritual creativity. Indeed, the essence of spiritual creativity is the revelation of the general in the unique particularity of a demarcated entity. If so, only through the development and full expression of all the national cultures can the complete, variegated totality of human culture achieve formation. We will now examine the rational pattern of development of any culture, from its beginning until it reveals its unique perfection. Krochmal’s systematic description highlights the interaction between functions that are a direct effect of people’s coping with their conditions of survival in nature—through the effort to create a protected human lifeenvironment and to insure control over vital natural resources—and those functions which condition, develop, and express spiritual social existence itself. The survival needs are the means; spiritual expression is the end. At first one observes the development of economic existence and the fashioning of tools and implements, together with the development of institutions of social authority that shape the practical organization of the social unit for the sake of common endeavor. Now, agricultural and economic development is not possible without a sufficient development of social organization (division of labor and relations of exchange) and political development (a social order insuring internal and external peace). We may seek to explain the establishment of social organization, law and order, and political authority as functions that are instrumental to the satisfaction of human material needs. But it is impossible to ignore the fact that the consensus that makes social, legal, and political institutions possible is based on moral values, which at bottom and in essence are not simply a means to an end, but are rather the independent expression of the humanity of human beings, which is to say, the substantive content of a truly human existence. Furthermore, the creation of tools and their progressive deployment for the sake of humanity’s growing, proliferating, and ever-refining

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needs requires an additional layer of cultural development. This also appears at first as only a means but is gradually revealed as an independent spiritual value, for technological advancement requires more detailed and profound knowledge of nature and its laws, as well as of society and human nature. Thus, sciences and history begin to develop, first from external constraints. But when the accumulated knowledge becomes institutionalized through systematic comprehension and disciplined research and study, its independent spiritual nature is revealed. Man discovers his autonomous yearning for knowledge for its own sake—the value expressed in the aspiration to know the truth, inasmuch as such knowledge is the destiny of humanity in nature.29 As the rules and basic norms of human socialization become crystallized into constitutions and laws, the stores of knowledge also crystallize as sciences which become the basis of philosophical reflection, aspiring to know the general truth about nature and humanity within nature. A parallel process is revealed in the third aspect of cultural development—that of artistic creativity. The origin of art, according to Krochmal, is in the technological crafts that produce the tools needed for human existence and material comfort. But as comfort is attained and the crafts are perfected, people discover in them the independent value of creativity as an expression of their inner emotional and esthetic world. Here again is a conscious discovery which partakes of the reflective evaluation and identification that define human spiritual freedom as the source of creation.30 As all of these efforts mature—the awakening realization of moral, jurisprudential, and political values, as well as the realization of knowing for the sake of truth and producing art for the sake of esthetic and emotional expression—people become aware of the inner connection of all these creative legacies. They begin to appear as different aspects of a single totality with certain mental characteristics whose mark is visible in all domains of culture. Thus people become aware that the spirit that activates them from within—the same spiritual afflatus that can be clearly distinguished from utilitarian motivations—is the true source of culture; it is what manifests the unique ability that confers on human beings control over nature in order to realize a supra-natural

29 30

GPT 34. Ibid.

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destiny. But this is still not the direct self-consciousness of the national spirit. For in order for this consciousness to be complete, it is necessary that spirit contemplate its independent activity on the philosophicalrational level. Still, one may discern a necessary step prior to it, in which this rational contemplation is foreshadowed, namely what is revealed in the insights of theoretical mysticism. Religious consciousness is visionary and symbolic, and is apprehended as a revelation of an inspiration from a supra-human source. But whoever examines it from the scientific, philosophical level will discover the developmental connection between it and the prior strata of culture. Religion not only draws out and raises to unifying consciousness the foundational values of the culture, but it crystallizes the decisive transition from a deterministic consciousness to a consciousness of purposive spiritual freedom. The values that were first grasped as means to the end-goal of physical survival of man in nature, are now conceived and elevated as ideals for whose realization human beings live by divine mandate in a supra-natural sphere. Philosophy is the process by which universal spirit—which forms the whole world—comes to self-consciousness, through human religious consciousness. This assertion, which summarizes the previous discussion from the perspective of reason, constitutes a reflective confirmation of two assertions that guided the discussion of the development of culture from its inception. First, the appearance of humanity in nature represents in it—uniquely—the sphere of spirit. Originally it appeared to people that spirit arises and breaks out from the life of the body as an extension of it. At a later stage they conceived spirit as a soul animating the body. But religion already intuitively grasps the truth—foreshadowed in the understanding—that the corporeal world is formed by the spirit that senses it, imagines it, conceptualizes it, and brings it all together as a unity. If so, humanity—as manifested in the creation of culture—is the presence that represents within the world, as a part of it, the absolute spirit that creates it from within. Second, although universal spirit is unitary and eternal, and necessarily knows itself and knows the world from itself, in the dialectical process of its realization in nature it is visible and known to itself only gradually throughout historical time. In other words, reason is present as the source throughout all the stages of formation. But in the first stages of cultural development, it is concealed as the hidden source transcending its creations. People speak, think, and create, and thus activate the functions of spirit without being aware of their essence,

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and even without recognizing or knowing them. The self-disclosure of the creating spirit to itself, as the source of creativity, is the end result of a protracted process of reflection, building on the first strata of nonreflective creativity, and going back and reinterpreting them. These two assertions of Krochmal are in the spirit of Hegel’s teaching, but they hold open the possibility of an important distinction that is not found in Hegel, who consistently upheld the pantheism that he learned from Spinoza. According to Krochmal, there is a difference between the conception of “absolute spirit” as a transcendental reason—that knows itself and the world emanated from it, in a trans-temporal dimension of eternity—and human spirituality, which is immanent in nature and is manifested in the history of national cultures striving to be unified in humanity. We will show presently that this lays the basis for the substantive distinction between the Israelite culture and religion of pure monotheism, and the cultures of the other nations whose pagan religions partake of pantheism. We recall that the developmental conception—from the lack of rational awareness to the awareness and knowledge of reason—applies not only to the historical development of cultures, but also to the spiritual development of individuals in every generation. The life-cycle of every individual from childhood to maturity recapitulates this process through learning and internalization of the stages of development of the culture up to its present level. The infant develops by stages toward becoming a mature adult by internalizing the cultural legacies that came to him through his educators. The more that he raises his spiritual awareness to the level that his culture has attained in his time, the more aware he becomes that the collective spirit is the original “I” that shapes his identity—progressively, in stages. At first, it does so as an external authority—acting through his parents and teachers; later, it acts through the societal institutions of the state and religion. Finally, it operates from within him as an autonomous internal spiritual authority, identified with his own self, consciously representing the collective “I” of his national culture. Language is the most visible manifestation of the collective spirit. If we consider the evolution of the linguistic process—whose role in all human development is well known—we shall be able to see in it a microcosm of the gradual process of transition from sensory awareness, to rational self-reflection. At the beginning a person speaks but is not at all aware of the essence of speech. One is aware only of the vital external functions of

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speech, while its origin is still an absolute mystery. One sees it as a wonderful gift given to one by the grace of the gods that rule over nature. At the final rational stage, one perceives it as an expression of one’s own spirit, manifesting itself in a bodily fashion through the senses. The infant expresses herself by making various noises and bodily movements, in order to call the attention of an outsider to her feelings of distress or contentment and to various bodily needs. This is the beginning of linguistic development through externalizing sensations which are in essence unconscious expressions of the spirit. But only the mature person can be aware of this, whereas the infant is immersed in the bodily experiences which in practice are identified with her feelings. The infant lives wholly on the physical level. Only gradually does she learn to distinguish between the bodily sign and the meaning—first sensory, then emotional and finally conceptual—expressed through it. Only through full maturation, measured not just by fluent use of language but also by knowing it as a semantic structure with well-defined necessary laws, does the person perceive the true nature of speech. One discovers that true speech consists not in sounds and physical gestures but inner discourse—in other words thought—which is (in Krochmal’s view, following Hegel ) a purely intellectual process occurring beyond words though “clothed” in them. Thus the idea gives rise to the bodily sign that expresses it. Through contemplation of the essence of language and its mode of functioning as an internal discourse that is identified with thought itself, we discover the collective spirit at work in human consciousness. On the basis of this conclusion, Krochmal constructed his schema of stages of human consciousness. This schema applies on every level through which consciousness evolves—whether in the development of an individual in the context of his culture, or in the development of each culture in its own right, and afterwards in its development toward the universal culture, through encountering other national cultures. Krochmal’s stages recapitulate Hegel’s fourfold schema, which guided him throughout this entire exposition: 1. The stage of sensory experience, identified with primary infantile and childhood speech. It has no trace of self-consciousness, for the early childhood awareness is entirely immersed in self-expression of the spirit into bodily processes, and it is entirely sensory. Culture in its primal archaic stages is like this, bound to nature and relating to its powers through fetishism and to language through magic.

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2. The stage of the start of thought, identifying with the stage of thought of the older child. This child has already mastered orderly speech and has become aware through it, to a certain extent, of the semantic content of words and the rules of grammar and syntax, which reflect logic and a right order of thinking. But at this stage the child has not yet learned enough to be capable of systematic conceptual expression. In the development of culture, this is a stage of linguistic and literary development that has achieved a certain level of conceptualization and accumulation of knowledge, but without scientific system or reflection. Spiritual religion appears at this stage. 3. The stage of fully intellectual thought. At this stage, the individual has acquired systematic knowledge of language and the logic of language-based thought implicit in it. He also has obtained systematic knowledge of the sciences through cultural learning, established in formal disciplines. In the culture, this is the stage at which the scientific disciplines begin to develop. Religion is also enlightened through them, and reason starts to appear through philosophy, but still in a limited way, because it does not rely on proper scientific development and is not aware of the developmental perspective. 4. The stage of rational thought. This is the stage at which the sciences arrive at their full disciplinary development. Philosophy, building on them, is able to examine itself through contemplation of its development and the connection between its own development and the development of all strata of the culture. In this stage, philosophy thus completes the project of the culture by completing its own project through systematic knowledge of the totality. Philosophy, at this stage of reason, unifies within itself all the attainments of the culture; it reconciles in itself all the dilemmas and contradictions that were raised throughout its whole career and that propelled it forward. We can thus define the stage of reason in culture’s history as the stage of harmony and completion—the stage at which the culture can be said to have realized all its objectives, and at which historical development may be said to have arrived at its ultimate goal.31 “Know that the principle of intellect and the superiority of man over beast is its activity of taking sensory images that were transmitted to it from outside the soul, or from the soul itself, and to make of them concepts—general, singular, or collective representations. Every human being, even the most ignorant, is engaged in this 31

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For a proper understanding of this scheme as a foundation for the doctrine of cultural-historical development, we must emphasize again that it is a description of a process conditioned by time. This has two implications. First, the development of each stage in the history of each culture—and in the biography of each individual—requires at the minimum a certain length of time to complete, but it is not the same for all cultures or all individuals. Some are arrested for various reasons at earlier stages and do not progress to the higher stages. Second, development proceeds continually within each of the stages. Here too one can recognize the progression of stages—sensory, protointellectual, intellectual, and rational. This applies especially to the stage of the start of organized thinking, scientific reasoning, and philosophical reason. Intellectuality appears already at the start of thought, together with sensuality. It is possible to distinguish in it various levels of intellect distinct from sensuality, and even of reason. Reason appears already at the stage of early scientific thought—though not perceived as such—when the latter articulates its disciplinary rules, and one may distinguish different levels of rational intellectual activity here. There is continual development even at the stage of reason itself, whose own level is conditional on the level of attainments of the prior stages—as we learn from the history of philosophy. Thus, only on the basis of full development of scientific culture can reflective reason arrive at full self-awareness and the complete formation of its thought-world. Monotheism, and the Unique Cyclical Pattern of Jewish Historical Development These conclusions have great importance for understanding Krochmal’s schema of Jewish cultural-historical development. Krochmal arrived at this schema, with its many stages and cycles, on the basis of activity all day long in his thought and speech . . . “House” is the name and concept embracing every place set aside for dwelling in it. “Hexagon”—a concept comprising the image in general, its six-sidedness, the length, the regularity, the relation of the sides and angles. All these are intellectual concepts . . . The general rule is that it is of the nature of the spirit of intellect to erect constructions of a wholly intellectual world. It takes the materials of the structure from the world of the senses and gives them its own form, thus converting and raising them from sensory impressions to representations of the beginning of thought—Vorstellungen. From these it proceeds to intellectual concepts—Begriffe. And from these, to completely formed, pure and holy intelligibles, the ideas of understanding—Ideen.” (GPT 11–12. See also Krochmal’s discussion of the stages of evolution of language, GPT 30–31.)

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what he learned from Herder and Hegel. In it, he sought to reconcile the historical picture that he drew from the sources of Judaism with the broader historical picture that emerged from Hegel’s universal Western outlook, as we shall show. However, in focusing on understanding the development of Judaism as a national culture, Krochmal was preoccupied with the question: How are national cultures distinguished from each other? And first and foremost, what was the exceptional uniqueness of the culture of Israel, and what was its source? Krochmal’s empirical historical observation focused his attention on two striking parameters of difference among the national cultures: 1. External differences that derive from external natural circumstances: geography and landscape, climatic conditions, the quantity and kind of natural resources, and the like. 2. Differences among religions that developed in ancient cultures as distinct national religions. Clearly, Krochmal ascribed secondary importance to difference of the first kind. They could be significant only in the initial stages, during which a culture was centered on its outside activity and absolutely dependent externally on nature. The characteristics expressive of the collective spirit are those that are embodied in the various national religions, which represent the values and supreme ideals that come to expression in the totality of their creations. In Krochmal’s view, comparative consideration of the religious ideals of the various national cultures will show that every nation chose a certain ideal and devoted itself to its realization by applying it in all the domains of group life and creation. There were nations that raised moral values to supreme place; others exalted esthetic values, while still other nations held up intellectual values on the banner of their religion. Of course, every national culture must relate to the “other” ideals as well. Without them it would not be able to create a culture that provided a well-rounded national existence. That is indeed the source of pagan polytheism. Yet every nation emphasizes, through the choice of its supreme national deity, the ideal that it has selected as the supreme objective identifying it. It is its purpose to bring to complete realization from all aspects and contexts of the cultural life. The chosen ideal thus impresses its stamp on all areas of cultural creativity and determines its special character. That is how Krochmal would have us understand the phenomenon of idolatry. He does not mean to disqualify it and condemn it as

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“worshipping wood and stone.” Idols are symbols. Each represents a certain particular spirit that is able to combine with others. Worship of the idol is an expression of admiration for the partial spiritual ideal, and thus all idolatrous religions make a positive contribution to human culture.32 Idolatry is limited inasmuch as it presents the part as if it were the whole. It tends to ignore the true whole, which unites in itself the truths of all religions on the highest, most inclusive level of spiritual existence. Thus, the falsity in idolatry is not in its positive content but in its negativity and exclusivity. From the perspective of this understanding of idolatry, the exceptional uniqueness of the Jewish religion can be seen more clearly. In respect to its human bearer, it is also a particular national religion; it also is appointed to realize a single ideal in a single culture; but this ideal is the unique one of absolute unity, expressed in monotheism. This is the ideal of the whole totality. Its realization requires embracing and unifying in itself the entire spiritual creation of humanity.33 By aspiring to realize the absolute unity in a nation’s concrete creation, it breaks the mold of the whole, for absolute unity sublimates multiplicity to a transcendent sphere. In Krochmal’s view, the Jewish people devoted themselves to the transcendent ideal of unity from its first appearance in the history of the nations. This is a clear, emphatic fact that cannot be denied. It is 32 “And for the most part, one of these spiritual gifts that we mentioned predominates in each nation, and the others are subordinated to it and limited by it. Its god or patron angel will be described especially by this spiritual quality. For example, in a nation that rules by its sword, the patron angel will be the spirit of courage, and worship will be addressed to it. Similarly with the spirit of craft and industry, or beauty, justice, cunning, and knowledge. It would then be appropriate to single out each of these gifts and take as a symbol for them one or another of the exalted created beings in the world, especially the planets close to earth, according to some known or imagined feature of them. For example, the sun brings to light every hidden capacity. Saturn represents enlightenment; Jupiter—justice; Mars—courage; Venus—grace and beauty. Similarly it is possible for that nation to draw or sculpt every spiritual quality in pictures and other symbols: the likeness of a man thinking thoughts, the likeness of a hero capturing cities (Baal ), the likeness of a mother nursing and nurturing (Astarte), the likeness of a judge holding the scale of justice, and the like.” (GPT 37) 33 “And now the prophet announces: Not like these is the portion of Jacob, but He is the Creator of All, and Israel is the rod of His inheritance, the Lord of Hosts is His Name. This means that He is the Absolute Spirit, and there is none besides Him— the source of all spiritual being and the totality of all of them, for they are separate in their particularity, i.e., in their cleaving to the hosts of the heaven and the hosts of the earth, all of them finite and transitory. They have no true existence and absolute perpetuity except insofar as they exist in the One God, the Absolute and Infinite Spirit.” (GPT 37–38)

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surprising, however, for the principle of development should dictate that such an exalted rational awareness ought to be revealed not at the dawn of history but at its conclusion. But it appeared to Krochmal that human history would not have arrived at its goal without a guiding revelation—one that stood in opposition to the polytheistic progression that tended toward division and fragmentation, the isolation of each culture in its separate, demarcated domain.34 Therefore one ought to see the appearance of monotheism—occurring at the stage of the initial splitting-apart of the pan-human ideal because of the conflicts that occurred among peoples and their religions—as a counsel of transcendent providence. We can understand its necessity, but not its mode of operation. In any case, the monotheism that established the nation of Israel did not develop out of polytheism, but operated amidst it and beyond it. Though having its own origin, it pursued a parallel track of development, which was intended to lead polytheism beyond itself in order to raise heterogeneous plurality to the level of unity. Thus the nation and religion of Israel were placed at the outset in dialectical relation to the other nations and their religions. It was their preordained task to unite in their special culture all those positive contributions, and yet to remain distinct from them. For unity is not attained through composition of a totality all of whose parts preserve their separate identities, but through an original creation that purifies and sublimates them—in the light of the ideal of unity, and to the transcendent level of this ideal. The exceptional historical fate of the Jewish people follows naturally from all this. On the one hand they must live among the nations and cultures, in order to receive their creative influence. On the other hand, they must differentiate themselves from the nations, in a radical way that transcends the ordinary difference of the nations one from another. We must now examine the structure of the general historical process. How did the national cultures realize their spiritual destinies? 34 “Inasmuch as divine providence counseled us to choose the Source from which we were hewn (these are the holy Patriarchs), and to select from their progeny, after repeated sorting-outs, the seed of a single clan (the Twelve Tribes of Jacob) and to establish their number into an entire distinct nation in a land holding with existing boundaries (as it says: ‘He set the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel’ )—the divine wisdom saw fit to lead them and to complete its purpose, so that they should be a Kingdom of Priests—that is to say, teachers to the human race of the absolute faith of the Torah.” (GPT 38)

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And how did the culture of the nation of Israel realize its special destiny through the dialectic of integration into the heterogeneous totality and deviation from it? Krochmal’s theory of the structure of historical processes reflects a comprehensive and comparative overview of Jewish and general history. The Jewish people lived among other nations throughout nearly their entire career. The theory dialectically combines two basic patterns: one is rooted in the deterministic cycle of nature, the other in the free developmental progression that builds toward a teleological goal of the spirit. The one is circular and repeats itself, from birth to death and back again, while the second is linear and extends from the point of origin to the end-point. The combination of these two patterns must be analyzed in two steps. First, one must follow the linear developmental pattern from childhood to maturity in every life-cycle. Second, one must describe the linear development that extends across the series of generations and the series of creative cycles. In the succession of cycles, the cultures replace each other but are also heirs the one of the other, so that each starts from the level that the prior culture achieved in its maturity. A view has taken hold in modern Jewish philosophical-historical research that the structure of Krochmal’s theory is a combination of the cyclical model developed by the German thinker Herder, a contemporary of Mendelssohn, and the linear model developed by Hegel. This view has much to recommend it. Krochmal’s declared affiliation with Hegel is well established. Yet, the same conflation of cyclical and linear patterns can be found in the Bible. Moreover, Herder’s conception was itself rooted in the Bible, while Hegel’s was rooted in the Messianic historical conception that developed in Christianity on the basis of the Hebrew Bible and the religious thought of the intertestamental period. The historical books of the Bible depict a spiraling pattern that emerges by conflating the cyclical time-flow of the generational cycle with the linear time-flow of Messianic redemption. The temporal cycles of the week, month, year, Sabbatical-years, and Jubilees, the succession of generations and seasons, revolve around the cyclical axis of birth, maturation and decline, but they do not repeat. They move toward the goal that God appointed for history from the outset: from creation to redemption. Krochmal was possessed by this conception of time, but he raised it to the level of philosophical speculation in the

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spirit of the reigning contemporary German philosophical theories. He thus succeeded in integrating the contribution of Hegel’s philosophy without succumbing to the anti-Jewish bias rooted in his Christian outlook. According to this conception, every national culture undergoes a full biological cycle from infancy to death, and thus it fulfills its finite destiny. This life-cycle is divided into three periods: gestation and growth, ascendancy and strength, disintegration and extinction. At the stage of gestation and growth are laid the material and instrumental foundations—economic life, the social and political institutions of the people. Thus this period ends with establishing the state as a stable framework for cultural creativity. During the period of ascendancy and strength the cultural values as creative spiritual entities for their own sake are crystallized: ethics and law, science, literature and art, religion, and theoretical wisdom. As these periods become actualized, the creative motivation of the people is used up. The particular collective spirit has realized itself and completed its task, and so its independent reason for existence is depleted. At this point, individuals transform the creative urge that pulsed in them into the urge for enjoyment and exploiting what was already created, especially in a material sense. The spirit becomes submerged into material refinement that is decadent and enervating. Individualistic egoism reigns supreme, while conflicts of interest develop in the nation. The necessary result is the disintegration of society and breaking-apart of the state. Thus the people lose their strength to stand up to younger foes who are in their first period of existence. They envy the achievements of the decadent culture and yearn to dispossess them. Within the aging society internal conflicts break out in response to the outbreak of external wars with the foes, until enfeebled and broken, the nation that built it is destroyed or vanquished by its foes. This is the time of “disintegration and extinction,” of internal and external death, and thus it is proper to emphasize Krochmal’s conclusion that no nation is overcome by its foes until it has first disintegrated from within and its spirit fades within it.35 Yet the cultural legacy that it created suffers neither disintegration nor loss. The younger conquering peoples, full of ascendancy and strength, inherit it. They commence their career of cultural creativity

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from the highest stage that the prior culture had attained. Their inheritance enables development on the next higher level. Therefore, one should add an additional development toward a universal history: In the first cycle of human cultures there developed in parallel separate nations that were not able to influence or receive influence from each other. But the later cycles are established and conducted within an arena in which there are confrontations among nations who are already developed and spread out to a certain extent. They struggle with each other for hegemony, but in order to prevail they are interested in possessing and internalizing the cultural advantages of their enemies. It is thus clear that every historical cycle in the history of the nations presents national cultures that are more complex, richer, and more developed in their spiritual level. Indeed, we can apply the prior theory of stages to this pattern—there recurs the same schema of ascent from sensory to proto-intellectual, intellectual, and rational levels. But one must remember the principle that each of these stages must develop by itself, and that none can develop fully without basing itself on the full development of its predecessor, and without undergoing the full development of the succeeding stages. Thus, only through scientific and rational development can the material culture—representing the sensory stage—develop to the point of exhausting the potential embodied in material nature. The same principle applies at each stage. The application of this outlook to the theory of the structure of historical processes brought Krochmal (following Hegel ) to the conclusion that the full development of the potential of cultural creativity requires four complete cycles. The first cycle is focused entirely on material-sensory creativity as its primary task. It also develops intellectual and rational creativity, but it is necessarily limited, and thus its material achievements are limited as well. In the second cycle, the general level can be characterized as proto-intellectual. In it, the material stratum develops to a higher level; the horizons of intellect and reason are expanded as well, and one sees the inception of the sciences and even of systematic thought. There is a similar development in the third cycle. Only in the fourth cycle are all strata of creativity developed fully, attaining the degree of completion and perfection that perfected reason—now in the leadership role—can attain, thus allowing the culture which has arrived at the height of its end-goal: permanence and stability. How is the uniqueness of the people of Israel recognizable from its history? A comprehensive comparative survey from the viewpoint of the modern age will alert us to two unusual factors:

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1. This nation is the oldest of all the nations by whose side and in whose midst it lives. It passed through the trajectory of a lengthy series of mighty national cultures—Akkad, Sumer, Assyria, Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, Rome, and the national cultures of Christianity and Islam. The latter passed through their life-cycles, arrived at their peaks of supremacy and prosperity, and then passed away from the world. But the Jewish people still lives and endures, faithfully perpetuating its millennia-long heritage—and now it stands at the portal of modern Western culture in its ascendancy. 2. This culture stood its ground and preserved its distinctive national and religious identity under unusual conditions. Unlike all the ancient nations, it did not become a nation in its land, but in exile outside its land, under the rule of another great culture. Twice indeed it established the framework of an independent state, but both times the state was destroyed. Meanwhile, the nation experienced most of its history under foreign rule—first in its own land, then in exile. While in exile, it became more and more dispersed among many other nations, and more and more oppressed under the rule of the two rival monotheistic religions; these developed out of the Jewish religion, but they sought to supplant it and to drive it out of existence. Does this mean that the Jewish people succeeded in violating the cyclical natural law that applied to the development of all cultures in the world? Krochmal’s dialectical answer, based on his comprehensive comparative survey, was: No, and nevertheless yes. It was the dialectical “yes” that constituted the miraculous exceptionality revealed in the structure of this people’s history and in its relationship to the history of the surrounding peoples. If we examine the details we discover that this people underwent the triple periodic growth-cycle—from gestation and ascendancy through disintegration and extinction—not once but three times.36 Thus it was restored to a national existence repeatedly after its death, and now it stands before a fourth life-cycle, under new circumstances, in the wake of the gestation of new cultures. It is immersed in these cultures, yet

36 The first three cycles are demarcated in Krochmal’s book as follows: Cycle 1 (through the destruction of the First Temple), Chapter 8; Cycle 2 (restoration by Ezra, through destruction of the Second Temple), Chapters 9–10; Cycle 3 (from the rabbinic period until the Spanish expulsion and the Chmielnitzky massacres of 1648), outlined briefly on page 112 (end of Chapter 10).

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stands apart from them—in marvelous fidelity to a legacy that it has preserved from its prior life-cycle, and it recreates its distinctive culture anew. Moreover, drawing on the strength of that same legacy, it exercises renewed influence from its religious spirit on the cultures of the modern nations. This, then, is a people that is restored to life by its legacy. It repeatedly lays claim to its prior legacy, in order to develop it further by absorbing additional influences and by exercising repeated influence on the cultures on which it is built. Historical specification will substantiate this description. It will reveal the internal regularity that explains the marvelous in it. The first cycle of Israelite history began in the period of the Patriarchs, contemporaneous with the culture of Akkad and Sumer. The patriarchs grew up among them and parted from them. They laid the tribal foundation for the nation in its land, yet this was only a prelude to national history. This history first began its period of “gestation and growth” when the tribes united upon parting ways with Egyptian culture, which they had entered at the time of its prosperity, contributing to its flourishing (as in the case of Joseph) while leaving it at the time of its decline. The revelation of Torah at Sinai was the occasion of establishing the covenant that laid the ethical and jurisprudential foundations for the pattern of national life of the united people. This was the manifestation of the distinctive national spirit in a religious vein, and it crystallized on the level of state-political organization during the time of Samuel, Saul, and David. From this point on, the first period of ascendancy and strength began. Its climax of full political and religious institutionalization and cultural activity occurred in the reign of Solomon, who unified the kingdom, built the Temple, was regarded as the wisest of men, giving his name to the “Wisdom Literature” of the Bible. Afterwards we clearly see the period of disintegration, which followed from the dialectic of material prosperity. We see the division of the Israelite and Judean kingdoms that resulted from the tyrannical hubris of Solomon’s son Rehoboam. We also see the ethical-social rot, which resulted in religious betrayal of the national spirit and the pursuit of corrupt materialistic idolatry. In the end, the kingdoms of Judah and Israel became entangled in power struggles with the giant empires that appeared around them, heralding the sprouting and growth of a new stage of human culture. The end is known: the kingdom of Israel was the first to collapse, and its tribes were exiled and disappeared. The kingdom of Judah was more faithful to the national spirit and its religion; it succeeded in maintaining itself

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for several more generations, but its fate was sealed as well. Its extinction came through the Babylonian conquest. The destruction of the Temple completed the dismantling of the established religious framework. The murder of Gedaliah the son of Ahikam signified the end of political independence, while the exile of the ruling strata and the importation of foreign peoples to the land severed all connection to the homeland. This was the cultural “death” from which there is normally no rescue from all the principal aspects of national existence. But wonder of wonders! Within the span of one or two generations, a national rebirth had occurred, and again—in exile. With the encouragement of Cyrus, the founder of the youthful Persian Empire, building on the ruins and legacy of the Babylonian Exile that had destroyed Israel and exiled it from its land, a portion of the descendants of the national Jewish leadership returned to their homeland in order to rebuild its temple and re-establish political independence. A new period of “gestation and growth” began with a re-enactment of the Torah covenant—corresponding to the giving of the Torah at Sinai, but adapting it to a different cultural context. It was implemented through the legal-interpretative activity of Ezra the Scribe, who established a leadership cadre of Sages in place of the Prophets, thus launching the process of Oral Torah. In tandem with Ezra, Zerubbabel and Nehemiah laid the foundations for political existence, while the High Priest Joshua, together with the last of the prophets, reestablished the Temple worship. The second period of ascendancy and strength was signified again by the establishment of a commonwealth. This time it was the Hasmonean Kingdom, which reached its climax of expansion and power during the reign of Alexander Yannai and Queen Salome. In Krochmal’s view, this was the time of the development of the literature of the Oral Torah, the collective achievement of the Men of the Great Assembly and the “Pairs.”37 There was a considerable struggle against Hellenization, but there was also considerable absorption of the positive legacy of Greek wisdom. Yet at the climax of this development, the inner division began—on the spiritual plane and the political plane: the religious struggle between the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, combined with political struggles over the possession of state power.

37 Mishnah Avot, Chapter 1, relates how each generation of the Pharisaic period was led by a pair of teachers—Shemaiah and Abtalyon, Hillel and Shammai, etc.

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This would, then, be another manifestation of the dialectic of breakdown generated by material prosperity. The internal conflicts exhausted the people, while the loss of perspective in their evaluation of political and military power again led to conflict, this time with the young Roman Empire that arose to reap the harvest of all the ancient cultures. The result was again what had happened at the time of the destruction of the First Temple, with similarities but differences. The people lost their political independence. There began a long period of disintegration, leading inevitably to the destruction of the Temple. A generation later saw the final loss of any hope of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel, with the defeat of Bar Kokhba. The Jewish people’s second major exodus to Diaspora occurred gradually throughout the entire period. Over the course of several centuries, the land of Israel became almost completely emptied of its Jewish inhabitants and was populated by foreigners. If so, here again was a “death” in all three respects of national existence. But the miracle of national resurrection was repeated! Within one or two generations after the Bar Kokhba rebellion, the period of “gestation and growth” was again in evidence. Rabbi Judah the Patriarch succeeded in obtaining political support and a certain measure of authority from the Roman government. He repeated the re-enactment of the national Torahitic covenant by canonizing the Mishnah. From it, the people’s religious life pattern was re-established through the great academies of the Land of Israel and Babylonia, and later in other Jewish centers of the Diaspora. The differences are quite striking. This time the national culture was reinvented in the form of a “Diaspora kit” for scattered locales. Even the Jewish life in the Land of Israel took on an exilic coloration: the Temple was not rebuilt, and it seems that the people adapted by giving up the sacrificial service. The political state was also not renewed, and it seemed that the people gave up on it also in the new era. From the national-political standpoint, this undoubtedly expressed a certain decline. Moreover, the scattering of the people in exile went so far that it seemed now as if this might be the goal of its historical development—namely, to spread out through all the lands of Christendom and Islam. Indeed, to the extent that the Jews were able to reconstitute a certain degree of social and political autonomy during this third cycle, they did so under the protection of beneficent gentile rulers in certain lands of the Diaspora—Egypt, North Africa, Iberia, Germany, and Poland.

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When, then, was there a period of ascendancy and strength in the third cycle? Krochmal’s criterion here was not political structure, but spiritual content. Here it was clear that if one could discover during the third cycle of Jewish history a measure of development and progress, it would not be in the political dimension but in the spiritual. The Jewish people encountered the scientific and political legacy that represented the dimension of universal progress in the cultures of Christendom and Islam. By this criterion, the climax of the period of power and activity occurred during the Golden Age of the Jews in Moslem Spain, from the tenth through the twelfth centuries. In Spain, there arose a strong Jewish leadership that had a place of honor in the political state while remaining faithful to Hebrew culture and the Jewish religion. Under this rubric, they mounted an impressive Hebrew national renaissance that would later serve as a model for the Haskalah movement to imitate. They fostered the growth of religious law and commentaries, sacred and secular poetry, science, philosophy. In the center of all this stands the culminating work of Maimonides in halakhah, the sciences, and religious philosophy. This was clear testimony that Judaism had arrived during that period at the level of systematic scientific thought. In Krochmal’s view, the Golden Age of Jewry in Moslem Spain was the climax of ascendancy and strength during the third cycle. But again there was a great internal division, especially in the spiritual struggle between Maimonides’ disciples and his opponents. Externally, one sees again the intensification of the conditions of oppression and strife, especially coming from the Christian Church—persecutions and expulsions. The major calamity began, in Krochmal’s view, with the expulsion from Spain—the downfall of the most prosperous spiritual center that Jewry enjoyed in that era. The third national “death” came with the unprecedented bloodshed of the massacres in Poland-Ukraine in 1648–49 that could be compared to the events of the end of the Bar Kokhba war. It was quickly followed by the Messianic despair and catastrophe of the Sabbatean movement—an insane delusion of national redemption that swept away the majority of the people and concluded with calamitous apostasy. This brings us back full circle to the depiction of the dismal spiritual reality of the Jewish people that Krochmal laid out in the systematic introduction to his book. We realize that in that place he was depicting the end-results of the material and spiritual devastation brought about

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by the 1648–49 massacres and the ensuing spiritual catastrophe of the Sabbatean episode. This was a perplexity brought about by the collapse of the religious-national rabbinic leadership who had sustained the Jewish people throughout the entire exilic period. But again, within one or two generations, he could detect a movement of national renewal, with which he affiliated—namely, the Jewish Enlightenment. It was supported by the enlightened leadership of the European nations, who began to create, upon the remains of their Christian culture, the new rational humanistic culture. Krochmal thus suggested that the time was ripe to emulate the achievements of Ezra the Scribe, Rabbi Judah the Patriarch, and Maimonides, by once again renewing the religious covenant within the contemporary culture. One must give it institutional form through an appropriate educational system, thus laying the foundations for a new national flowering that would be complete and intact—and would not suffer destruction again. If so, what was the explanation for the phenomenal repeated revival of the Jewish people? What power was revealed by it? If we resort to the explanation that Jewish religious leaders suggested in every generation, in its religious language, this was a counsel of divine providence. But in Krochmal’s view, the true philosophical meaning of the notion of divine providence was to be identified with the manifestation of the rational pattern of historical development. If we translate this explanation to the language of modern historiosophy, it was the truth of the Jewish religion—the truth of monotheism—that was implemented and institutionalized in a comprehensive rule of life, the Jewish Torah that embraced all walks of the national culture. The total religious truth was not just a dogmatic theological idea, but it was the entire Torah whose goal was to realize unity and distinctiveness in the entire cultural life of the people. It was what established the national institutions that took the place of the kingdom and Temple, and it was what preserved the continuous line of identity of the people amid the revolutionary changes that they had undergone. Clear, too, was the advantage of the monotheistic religion, representing the Jewish national spirit, over the spirit of other peoples: their yearning for completeness and transcendental unity. These qualities of devotion to the absolutely spiritual are what assigned a mission to the Jewish people—a mission that was not completed in the realization of a single partial culture or a single developmental stage. Its complete realization required the whole hierarchy of values of the cultures of all the great nations, in all the stages of their development. Through

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its attachment to the Absolute, which was transcendent, it was able to adapt itself to varying conditions of place and time and to preserve its identity with respect to its foundation and its purpose. The significance of this conclusion will be clarified further if we re-examine how the Jewish culture was interwoven with the culture of the nations, and the role that the Exile played in Jewish history. From studying these factors, Krochmal concluded that the Exile did not constitute a final state—a conclusion of Jewish history at the end of each historical cycle—but rather a new beginning, from which the people would embark on its journey to achieve national flourishing in its appointed land. Here, too, a difference is apparent between Israel and the other nations, who were first established in their homelands, and in the end were exiled from them, not to return. We recall that the patriarchs left their land and birthplace, thus experiencing a kind of exile. They did this in order to found a new nation in another land, the land of national destiny. Afterwards the tribes were united and became a nation when they went out from Egypt (in whose culture they grew, and whose legacy Moses inherited, though it was perceived as an exile in retrospect) in order to go to the Promised Land. After the destruction of the First Temple, it was Babylonia that constituted the exilic birth-environment from which the next generation of Jews returned to their promised land. Krochmal did not complete the detailed analysis of the third life-cycle, and so we will not know how he interpreted the relation of the people to its land in that cycle. But there is no doubt that the Messianic idea and the movements of Messianic realization played, in his view, a central role in establishing the important centers of Jewry in Diaspora. It is also clear that the betrayal of national Messianism by Sabbateanism was in his eyes tantamount to spiritual destruction that this movement brought on them. However, as we reflect back on his analysis of Psalm 137 “On the waters of Babylon” in his Introduction, it illustrates how the aspiration and hope to return to the Land of Israel (apparently with the help of the enlightened nations, in order to establish there an independent national life as in the time of Cyrus, Ezra, and Nehemiah) animates this book. It is the national compass that points the direction of historical development of the fourth life-cycle. Yet (according to Krochmal ), the phenomenon of the Exile is bound up with yet another unique phenomenon. Israel may be the most ancient people that has survived among the nations of Western

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culture, but if we count its life-span starting afresh from the start of each historical cycle, it is always younger than the nations among whom it dwells. This may partly explain why the idea of rational unity appeared early at the start of the nation’s career, in the patriarchal period. The ancient Hebrews’ period of gestation and growth was already the period of disintegration and extinction of the Akkadian culture from which they originated. Israelite culture thus began after the climax-point of development of the preceding national culture, when intellect and reason had already progressed to a certain level, and so the culture of Israel never actually began with a stage of sensual idolatry. To summarize: In Krochmal’s view, the culture of Israel always anticipated the next life-cycle. From the outset, it looked to the next level beyond its culture of origin, and became its harbinger. The aspiration to an ideal transcendence of the future was implanted in it from its inception. Therein surely lies the secret of its overcoming extinction, and the secret of its longevity. That is not all. A culture that looks to the future is necessarily reflective and critical of the present with which it is grappling. This is also expression of a rational stance. It had this character even in those early stages when science and philosophy had not yet developed among Jews, for critical reflection that reaches out beyond the present horizon is the essence of rationality. This is the likely explanation for their withdrawal and separation from national cultures that were at the stage of disintegration. Judaism renewed itself on the basis of a legacy—not out of longing to return to its prior stage, but rather from the aspiration to extend forward its creative and imaginative pattern. In other words, the authentic continuation of the tradition of Israel is not dogmatic orthodox fixity. It is rather the quest for the saving truth—the truth that is released from the dilemmas and contradictions that the present existing culture has not succeeded in overcoming. From this followed the critical stance of the prophets toward all the ancient idolatries—Akkadian, Egyptian, Canaanite, and Babylonian— which they saw as already at the stage of decline. It also explains why the Sages distanced themselves from Greek and Roman idolatry, which they saw at the period of Hellenistic decline. This also explained why they kept their distance from Christendom and Islam, even though these religions had already absorbed the truth of monotheism. This was because the Jewish sages saw them, from their tyrannical point of formation, as dogmatic and oppressive religions. In summary, at the end of each historical life-cycle, Judaism embodied a glimmering

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of tidings of saving truth of a cycle of historical time of a higher level. It anticipated a level of knowledge of truth and ethics in which the dilemmas and contradictions that were tearing apart the present aging culture would find resolution. It is hardly necessary to say that this is the rational meaning of the Messianic idea in Judaism. Its realization is not a matter of supernatural miracles, but the anticipated outcome of historical development. In any case, the overall result of this historical outlook is a model of national culture that appears, in several respects, as the opposite of the model of national cultures of the natural peoples. Israel was involved in the cultures of those peoples, but at the same time distinct from them, preserving continuity at each cycle of its life. It did not go into exile in order to assimilate among the peoples, though it may well appear that way at the dialectical starting-point of the stages of gestation and growing, which still carry the unavoidable effects of the destruction that caused the exile. But the opposite is the case. Incorporating the culture of the ruling nation is dialectically transformed into the starting-point for national self-renewal. The Jewish people’s direction is shaped by an about-face return. From initial immersion in the modern, progressive cultures of the guest nations, they turn back to the roots of their own legacy, in order to perpetuate it through the new creative forces they have just absorbed. Thus the nation always finds itself in a dialectical movement of going-out to exile in order to return to the homeland of ingathering and unification. It is clear that in this way even the departure into exile and the assimilation bound up with it take on a positive significance. The Jewish people is in need of the legacies of other peoples, and it must impart the Jewish legacy to them. It must internalize the positive and progressive and negate the partial and negative discoveries that ensue from them. For this purpose, it must incorporate the new outside culture into its own legacy and arrive at a creative integration that will be expressed in its religious sources that raise the lessons of the earlier sources to a higher level. Despite all its negative and distressing experiences, it finds a positive task in exile. We learn from this that even those phenomena that appeared at the outset as negative in the historical framework of the Jewish people—such as the destruction of its Temple and commonwealth—are in the category of a descent for the sake of ascent. If we summarize all that has been said, the philosophical solution that Krochmal offered for the perplexity of his age becomes evident. He identified the traditional belief in divine providence in all

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its ramifications with the law of dialectical development that showed itself in the history of the nations and the history of the Jewish people. This equation applied to all aspects of traditional Jewish experience and teaching—revealed Torah, written and oral Torah, prophecy and prognostication, reward and punishment in their social and political sense, and justification of God’s ways for the evil manifest in history, and of course the vision of the Messianic days. According to this outlook, the philosophical meaning of revealed Torah is to be found in the precocious recognition and early adherence to Absolute Spirit as an ideal that must guide all the life-patterns and spiritual-intellectual creativity of the people. The Torah was created in the spirit of the people out of the yearning to realize the value of transcendental unity. It was understood in traditional pre-philosophical language as divine revelation, and that was its eternal truth. The written Torah is the Law of the Covenant that established the unity of the people in its initial constitution as a nation, and it preserved the fixed elements that shaped the spiritual identity of the people throughout the generations. The Oral Torah, on the other hand, was the dynamic tradition that interpreted and applied these elements in tandem with (and for the sake of ) the development of the culture. In this respect, in Krochmal’s view, there was a historical truth in the tradition’s belief that the Oral Torah was handed down together with the Written Torah. For the sake of its implementation, any constitution requires a method of interpretation rooted in its principles. This interpretation is required from the moment that the constitution is accepted. (This is the perpetual task of the courts, which must interpret the law in order to apply it.) But could one still hold the traditional view, that every word that the scholars were destined to innovate in halakhic matters was already foretold to Moses at Sinai? Certainly not, if by this one meant it in its naive literal sense. But certainly yes, if one interpreted it in the spirit of historical development. All the innovations, insofar as they were interpretations of the sources, were in a sense drawing out what was latent in the sources from potentiality to actuality. It was obvious that such philosophical interpretation contradicted the traditional thinking. According to it, divine providence was the activity of an external supra-rational spiritual authority that forced itself on nature and history through miraculous intervention. But if we discover the developmental law of human thought reaching toward rational truth, we recognize that it involves no contradiction of the

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original inner truth of the tradition. The tradition was saying, in its own way, that spiritual development—rather than deterministic natural forces—is what determines the trajectory of humanity toward its destiny. Thus, philosophical truth uncovers the deeper meaning of the traditional outlook, which had previously been formulated in prerational conceptual terms. Again, we are taken back full circle to the beginning. The perplexities of modernity stemmed from the conflict between the traditional outlook, undermined by historical knowledge, and the historical outlook that gained strength by this process. Their solution was to be found in a full understanding of the opening sentence of Krochmal’s book: The counsel of providence was to be discerned—perhaps first and foremost—in the change of the methods of learning and in the change of the ways of application of religious truth. In every age, Jews understood the Torah differently. In our age, we must understand the Torah using the best tools for explaining the principle that is at the foundation of change. This is the immanent counsel of providence in the Torah. The first step toward coping with the crisis on the national level is preparing the necessary tools for transforming the traditional curriculum of studies in the spirit of modern science and philosophy. The new Enlightenment has absorbed and internalized the lessens of Western humanistic culture. It must return to the sources, equipped with the tools of historiography and historiosophy, in order to learn, interpret, impart, and apply them on the rational level of our time—all for the purpose of guiding the life of present-day Jewish society and culture. Again, this conclusion contradicts the tendency of the self-defensive Hasidic and rabbinic leadership, who tremble for the future and barricade themselves against it. In their eyes, the Enlightenment meant destruction of the religious fortress. However, it was clear that the result of this defensiveness was in fact negative. It drove the youth away, rather than attracting them. Krochmal believed that the rabbinic leadership would eventually become convinced of the failure of their efforts. If they could be persuaded that that agenda of the Enlightenment was not merely negation of the tradition but its continuation in accord with its deeper inner spirit, then their stance could change, and a cooperative effort toward the nation’s future could begin. This was the mandate that Krochmal took on himself in his book. He sought to provide a comprehensive review of the history of the Jewish people, against the backdrop of the perplexity of the age. In

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this way, he was hoping to provide the scientific and theoretical tools of research needed for a penetrating and detailed study of the religious sources in fidelity to historical truth. All this was necessary for creating new canonical sources, for building new rubrics of life and fostering new national life-patterns in the new age. In conformity to this mandate, he indeed offered several foundational studies in the areas of the written and oral Torah, in halakha and aggada, in ethics, in the sciences and in philosophical speculation. In all these studies, Krochmal showed how the sources of the oral Torah were created, and what would be the way to reapply them in a creative fashion that was appropriate to our age. He created a new primal literary source which would be a tool for preparing the leadership necessary for the people in this time, to outline its course of action. Krochmal did not manage to finish his literary project. Even the first portion, devoted to historiography enlightened by philosophical speculation, was not completed. Especially glaring was the absence of a chapter foreseeing the development of the new age into the future. It is highly likely that Krochmal refrained deliberately from writing this chapter—out of caution, and in order not to frighten the pious of his generation. But what he managed to write did in effect embody his entire vision. In it, he envisioned the renaissance of the people and the renaissance of its religion as a comprehensive national culture, integrated among the nations of the West, but preserving its national identity through its connection to the Hebrew language, its connection to its ancient literary sources, the ethical and religious-legal traditions that would shape the people’s social and political institutions, and almost certainly its return to the Land of Israel. At this stage (he hoped), the Jewish culture would attain full realization of its monotheistic ideal on the level of reason. It is almost certain that Krochmal believed that all the developed nations of the West would recognize Judaism’s distinctive contribution to their culture and the unique role that the Jewish people played in the world. The Jewish people would thus arrive at their inheritance and resting-place. They would establish themselves peacefully on their land as the nation representing and symbolizing the comprehensive unity of human culture and its adherence to the transcendent ideal, which was its supreme source.

GLOSSARY Active Intellect In medieval (especially Aristotelian) philosophy, an Intelligence ranking below God but above human mortals, that is the repository of all intellectual truth and source of human knowledge, as well as a principle of rationality that plays a role in governing the world according to reason. Aggada (adj. “aggadic”) The non-legal domain of Jewish religious thought and expression, including especially theology and folklore. Halakha (adj. “halakhic”) Jewish religiously-mandated law in its broadest sense, as a code governing religious ritual, diet, Sabbath observance, dress, family life, commercial dealings, and other areas of life. Åaredi Ultra-Orthodox; that segment of Jewish society and thinkers that took an overall negative view of modern culture and resisted integration with it or adopting its intellectual and evaluative outlook. Haskalah The Jewish Enlightenment movement, especially in the form it took in central and eastern Europe in the late 18th and early-middle 19th centuries. Jüdische Wissenschaft “Jewish Science” [but the German Wissenschaft comprises the humanities as well as natural science]: the scholarly study of Judaism. The movement of disciplined scholarly study of Jewish history, literature, and thought that began in Germany with the establishment of the Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Judentums by Zunz, et al. in 1819 and continued until the emigration of Jewish scholars to Israel and other countries in the 1930s. More broadly, the enterprise established by those scholars that continues in various forms to the present day. Kabbalah (adj. “kabbalistic”) The tradition of Jewish mysticism developing from the Jewish mystics in 13th-century Spain (especially the circle of the Zohar) and 16th-century Safed (especially the circle of Isaac Luria), thereafter becoming the dominant tradition of Jewish mysticism worldwide, in addition to exercising influence on non-Jewish mystical and occult circles. Maskil (pl. “maskilim”) A proponent of the Jewish Enlightenment—especially, a creative thinker, writer, or educator who contributed to the articulation of Jewish Enlightenment ideals and their dissemination to the traditional Jewish communities of central and eastern Europe. Midrash (adj. “midrashic”) Traditional Jewish exegesis of the Bible, especially of a creative and homiletic variety. Pardes The “orchard of mysteries,” the mythic and symbolic destination of mystical or intellectual enlightenment. Phenomenon (pl. “phenomena”) Also “appearance.” In Kantian philosophy, an object as perceived or known by the perceiving-knowing subject, as opposed to the unknowable “thing-in-itself.” Rechtsstaat A state governed by laws, pertaining to all citizens equally—an ideal central to the legal philosophies of Kant and Hegel. Sublation In Hegelian philosophy, the supplanting of an earlier thought-form by a later thought-form, in which the true essence of the earlier is supposedly preserved in the later. Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Judentums “Association for the Culture and [Scientific] Study of Jewry/Judaism.” The short-lived association (1819–24) of German-Jewish scholars (Leopold Zunz, Eduard Gans, Immanuel Wolf and others) that laid the basis and articulated the methodology of the Jüdische Wissenschaft movement in Jewish scholarship that was to persist for the next century and beyond.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chapter 1: Spinoza Primary Works Spinoza, Benedict. Complete Works. Michael Morgan, editor. Samuel Shirley, translator. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002. ——. Theological-Political Treatise. Various editions. ——. Ethics. Various editions. Secondary Studies Feuer, Lewis Samuel. Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958. Goetschel, Willi. Spinoza’s Modernity: Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004. Goldstein, Rebecca. Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity. New York: Knopf, 2009. Levin, Dan. Spinoza: The Young Thinker Who Destroyed the Past. New York: Weybright & Talley, 1970. Nadler, Stephen. Spinoza: A Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Popkin, Richard. “Spinoza, Neoplatonic Kabbalist?” In Lenn E. Goodman, ed. Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. Ravven, Heidi and Goodman, Lenn, eds. Jewish Themes in Spinoza’s Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. Smith, Steven B. Spinoza’s Book of Life: Freedom and Redemption in the Ethics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. ——. Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. Wolfson, Harry Austryn. The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes of His Reasoning. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1934. Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. Chapter 2: Leibnitz, Mendelssohn Primary Works Leibnitz, G. W. Philosophical Essays (translated by Ariew & Garber). Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989. ——. Theodicy. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1985. Lessing, Gotthold. Nathan the Wise (translated by Bayard Morgan). New York: Frederick Ungar, 1955. ——. Lessing’s Theological Writings (translated by Henry Chadwick). Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1956. Mendelssohn, Moses. Collected Works ( Jubilee Edition). Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: F. Fromann, 1971–91. ——. Jerusalem (translated by Allan Arkush). Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 1983.

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Secondary Studies Bergmann, Samuel Hugo. Toledot ha-Filosofia ha-Æadashah mitekufat ha-Haskalah ad Immanuel Kant. Jerusalem: 1973. Fackenheim, Emil. “Abraham and the Kantians” in Encounters Between Judaism and Modern Philosophy. New York: Basic Book, 1973. Guttmann, Julius. “Kant ve-ha-Yahadut” in Dat u-Maddaʿ. Jerusalem: 1955. Rotenstreich, Nathan. Jews and German Philosophy: The Spirit of Emancipation (Part One: “On the Authority of Religious Convictions”). New York: Schocken, 1984. Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Kant’s Practical Philosophy Reconsidered. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1989. Chapter 4: Hegel Primary Works Hegel, G. W. F. Early Theological Writings (translated by T. M. Knox). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975. (Originally published 1948, University of Chicago Press). ——. Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (edited by Peter C. Hodgson). London: Oxford University, 2007. ——. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History (edited by Duncan Forbes & Hugh Barr Nisbet). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. ——. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (translated by T. M. Knox). London: Oxford University Press, 1967. ——. Phenomenology of Spirit (translated by A. V. Miller). London: Oxford University Press, 1977. Secondary Studies Bergman, Samuel Hugo. “Æippus neʿurim shel Hegel” in Hogim u-Ma’aminim. Tel Aviv: 1959. Cohen, Joseph. Le Spectre juif de Hegel. Paris: Galilee, 2005. Fackenheim, Emil. “Moses and the Hegelians” in Encounters Between Judaism and Modern Philosophy. New York: Basic Book, 1973. Kaufmann, Walter. Hegel: A Reinterpretation. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966. Marcuse, Herbert. Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory. Boston: Beacon Press, 1960. Rotenstreich, Nathan. Jews and German Philosophy: The Politics of Emancipation (Part Two: Divine Sublimity and Human Civility). New York: Schocken, 1984. Smith, Steven B. “Hegel and the Jewish Question: In Between Tradition and Modernity” in History of Political Thought, XII/1 (1991):88–105. Yovel, Yirmiyahu. Dark Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. Chapter 5: Schelling Primary Works Schelling, F. W. J. Sämmtliche Werke (14 v.). Stuttgart, 1856–1861. Individual volumes reprinted on demand by Kessinger Publishing, Whitefish, Montana. ——. System of Transcendental Idealism (1800) (translated by Peter Heath). Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978.

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——. Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom (1809). La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1986. ——. The Ages of the World (1813). (translated by Jason M. Wirth). Albany: State University of New York, 2000. ——. Historical-Critical Introduction to the Science of Mythology (1842). Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007. Secondary Studies Bergman, Samuel Hugo. Toledot ha-Filosofia ha-Æadashah: Jacobi, Fichte, Schelling. Jerusalem: 1977. Brown, Robert F. The Later Philosophy of Schelling: The Influence of Boehme on the Works of 1809–1815. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1977. Fackenheim, Emil. The God Within: Kant, Schelling, and Historicity. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. Fahnmann, Werner J. “Schelling and the New Thinking of Judaism” in GoodmannThou, Mattenklotte, Schulte, editors Kabbala und Romantik: Die jüdische Mystik in der romantischen Geistesgeschichte. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1994. Schwartz, Moshe. Mi-Mythos le-Hitgalut. Part I: “Mishnato ha-meu˜eret shel Schelling.” Tel Aviv: Hakkibutz hameuchad, 1978. White, Alan. Schelling: Introduction to the System of Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Chapter Six: Solomon Maimon Primary Works Maimon, Salomon. Gesammelte Werke (edited by V. Verra). Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1965. ——. Solomon Maimon: An Autobiography (edited by Moses Hadas). New York: Schocken, 1947. ——. Versuch über die Transzendentalphilosophie (Florian Ehrensperger, ed.) Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2004. Secondary Studies Atlas, Samuel. From Critical to Speculative Idealism: The Philosophy of Moses Maimon. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1964. Bergman, Samuel Hugo. The Philosophy of Salomon Maimon. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1967. Jacobs, N. N. “Ha-sifrut al Shelomo Maimon, bibliografia mu’eret.” Kiryat Sefer XLI. Jerusalem: 1966. Schweid, Eliezer. “Ha-im ha-yahadut hi dat o hukkah medinit? Hashkafat Kant al yahadut u-virorto shel Shelomo Maimon,” Da’at XLIII, Bar-Ilan 1999. Simchovitch, S. Y. Shelomo Maimon ishiyuto ve-ya˜aso le-yahadut. Tel Aviv: Ma˜barot le-sifrut, 1971. Socher, Abraham. The Radical Enlightenment of Solomon Maimon. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. Chapter Seven: Saul Ascher Primary Works Ascher, Saul. Leviathan: oder, Über Religion in Rücksicht des Judenthums. Berlin: Frankeschen Buchhandlung, 1792. ——. Leviathan. (Parts II and III, Hebrew: translated by A. Shidletsky) Jerusalem: Merkaz Dinur, 1982.

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——. Excerpt from Leviathan in Frank, Leaman, & Manekin, eds. The Jewish Philosophy Reader. London: Routledge, 2000, pp. 361–65. Secondary Studies Graetz, Michael. Introduction to Hebrew edition of Leviathan. Jerusalem: Merkaz Dinur, 1982. Littmann, Ellen. “Saul Ascher, First theorist of Progressive Judaism.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook V(1960):107–121. Schöps, H. J. Beiträge zur Entwickelung Religionsszystematischen Denken im Judentum des 19 Jahrhunderts. Dresden: 1943. Schulte, Christoph. Saul Ascher’s Leviathan, or the invention of Jewish Orthodoxy in 1792. Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook XV(2000):25–34. Wiener, Max. Jüdische Religion im Zeitalter der Emanzipation. Berlin: Philo Verlag, 1933. Reprinted Berlin: Jüdische Verlagsanstalt, 2002. Hebrew edition: Ha-dat ha-yehudit bi-tekufat ha-emantsipatsia. Jerusalem: 1974 (pp. 67–80, 216–220). Chapter Eight: Wessely and Schnaber Primary Works Schnaber, Mordecai Gumpel. Ma’amar ha-Torah veha-Æokhmah. London: 1771. ——. Tokha˜at Megillah. Hamburg: 1784. ——. Yesod ha-Torah. Altona(?): 1792. Electronic edition available online from The Society for Preservation of Hebrew Books: www.hebrewbooks.org/44388. Wessely, Naphtali Herz. Divrei Shalom ve-Emet. Berlin: 1782. Reprinted Vienna: Anton Schmid, 1826. ——. Sefer ha-Middot. Warsaw: 1888. Reprinted Petah Tikvah: R. Avraham Halevi Fisher, 1973. Secondary Studies Eliav, Mordecai. Ha-˜inukh ha-yehudi biyemei ha-Haskalah veha-Emantsipatsia. Jerusalem: 1960, pp. 39–51. Graupe, Heinz Moshe. “Mordechai Gumpel (Levison).” Bulletin des Leo Baeck Instituts V(No. 17, June, 1962), pp. 1–12. ——. “Mordechai Shnaber-Levison: The Life, Works and Thought of a Haskalah Outsider.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook XLI(1996/1):3–20. Lachower, Fischel. Toledot Ha-sifrut ha-ʿivrit ha˜adashah. Tel Aviv: 1963. Chapter 5. Pelli, Moshe. “Mordechai Gumpel Schnaber: The First Religious Reform Theoretician of the Hebrew Haskalah in Germany. Jewish Quarterly Review LXIV/4 (April, 1974):289–313. ——. Mishnato ha-Æinukhit veha-Maskilit shel N. H. Weisel. Tel Aviv: Shevilei Hinukh, 1953. ——. The Age of Haskalah: Studies in Hebrew Literature of the Enlightenment in Germany. Leiden: Brill, 1979. Chapter 9: Nachman Krochmal Primary Works Rawidowicz, Simon, ed. The Writings of Nachman Krochmal. Waltham: Ararat Publishing Society, 1961. (Includes Moreh Nevukhei Ha-Zeman, two short essays, and letters, with a lengthy biographical and critical introduction by Rawidowicz.)

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Meyer, Michael A. Ideas of Jewish History. New York: Behrman House, 1974. “Nahman Krochmal: A Philosophy of Jewish History” ( pp. 189–216). Translation of short excerpts from Guide for the Perplexed of the Time, with introduction. Secondary Studies Buber, Martin. “Goyim velohav.” Keneset (1941). Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik. Guttmann, Julius. “Yesodot ha-ma˜shavah shel R. Na˜man Krochmal.” Keneset (1941). Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik. ——. Philosophies of Judaism. New York: Schocken, 1973. Part III, Chapter 2: “PostKantian Idealism in Jewish Philosophy of Religion.” Harris, Jay. Nachman Krochmal: Guiding the Perplexed of the Modern Age. New York: New York University Press, 1991. Horwitz, Rivkah. “The Views of Nahman Krochmal (Ranak) in ‘The Nations And Their Gods.’ ” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought. VII (1988):265–287. Levy, Zeev. The Place of Judaism in Johann Gottfried Herder’s Philosophy of History. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought I/4(1981):236–278. Lachower, Fischel. Al Gevul ha-yashan vehe-˜adash: massot sifriyot. Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 1951. Contains: “Le-seder mishnato shel Renak” and “Nigleh ve-nistar bemishnato shel Renak.” Luz, Ehud. “R. Na˜man Krochmal u-vaʿayat ha-historizatsiya shel ha-yahadut.” In Moshe Idel, Devorah Diamant, and Shalom Rosenberg, eds. Min˜ah le-Sarah: Me˜karim be-filosofiya yehudit ve-kabbalah. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1994. Mahler, Raphael. “The Sociopolitical Foundations of the Haskalah in Galicia,” in Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985. Rawidowicz, Simon. Introduction to The Writings of Nachman Krochmal. Waltham: Ararat Publishing Society, 1961. ——. “Renak ke-˜oker u-mevaker” in ʿIyyunim be-ma˜shevet Yisrael. Jerusalem: 1971. ——. “Was Nachman Krochmal A Hegelian?” in Studies in Jewish Thought, edited by Nahum Glatzer. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1974. Rotenstreich, Nathan. “The Religion of the Spirit” in Jewish Philosophy in Modern Times. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968. ——. “Absolute Spirit and Cyclical History” in Jews and German Philosophy: The Spirit of Emancipation. New York: Schocken, 1984. Schechter, Solomon. “Nachman Krochmal and the ‘Perplexities of the Time.’” In Studies in Judaism. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1958. (Reprinted Nabu Press, 2010). Schorsch, Ismar. “The Production of a Classic: Zunz as Krochmal’s editor.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook. XXXI (1986):281–315. Schweid, Eliezer. “Bein ‘Æokhmat ha-Torah al ha-emet’ ve-‘Sod yi˜ud ha-emunah’ le-‘filosofiya shel ha-dat.’ ” ʿIyyun. II/1-4 (1969–70). Jerusalem. ——. “The Philosophic Historic Formation of Jewish Humanism: A Modern Guide to the Perplexed” in The Idea of Modern Jewish Culture. Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2008.

INDEX

Abravanel, Judah, 26, 27, 44, 237 absolute obligation, 125–26 “Absolute Spirit,” 313, 332 ru˜ani ha-mu˜lat [“Absolute Spirit”], 274n2 Active Intellect, 181, 181–82n7, 182–83, 184. See also Glossary ages of the world, 165, 167 aggada, 17, 41, 334. See also Glossary Ahad Ha-Am, xii, xiii Ahikam, 325 Albo, Joseph, 232n1. See also Book of Principles as a leading philosopher of the Middle Ages, 44, 101, 232, 237, 245 and Maimonides, 246, 249, 251 and Mendelssohn, 105, 247 and Wessely, 237 Alexander of Aprodisias, 181–82n7 Alexander Yannai (king), 325 Alexandria during Hellenistic period, 19–20, 20n4, 41, 42 America, Jewish philosophy in, 49 “appearance.” See “phenomena” a priori vs. a posteriori truths, 91–93, 100–101, 103, 104, 127, 180, 189, 194–95 Aristotle and Aristotelian philosophy, 18, 20, 24, 45, 60, 118, 130, 262. See also De Anima Aristotelian dualism, 184 Aristotelian physics, 191, 259, 261 assumption that man is social by nature, 308 epistemologies of, 178–88, 181–82n7, 250, 253, 260 and the “golden mean,” 300 and Halevi, 254 and Hegel, 140, 273 and Kant, 253 and Maimon, 187, 188 and Maimonides, 61, 96, 178–88, 189, 191, 192, 250, 260–61, 273–74, 285, 300 philosophy based on science, 61, 62 and Schelling, 162

art development of according to Krochmal, 307–16 development of artistic creativity, 311 place of according to Schelling, 159–60, 161–62, 161n2, 166 Ascher, Saul, xiii, 205–29, 231, 232. See also Leviathan and Friedlaender, 226, 247 and Kant, 205–11, 214, 221, 229 and Maimon, 205, 213 and Maimonides, 223–24, 225, 228–29 and Mendelssohn, 205–11, 212, 221, 224–25, 229, 246 redefining the relationship of religion and state, 211–19 and Schnaber, 242, 248 and Spinoza, 210, 211, 221, 224 Association for the Culture and (Scientific) Study of Jewry/Judaism [Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Judentums], 2n1, 50, 210, 210n5, 269. See also Glossary atheism, 193, 210n3, 216, 219 Aufhebung [sublation/supercede]. See sublation/supercede [Aufhebung] Autobiography of Solomon Maimon, The (Maimon), 174, 177, 178 Averroes (Ibn Rushd), 118 Avicenna (Ibn Sina), 118 awareness. See consciousness Babylonian Talmud, Æagigah 14b, 293n13 Bacon, Francis, 28 Baer, Yitz˜ak, xi Ba˜ya ben Joseph ibn Pakuda, 262–63. See also Duties of the Heart as a leading philosopher of the Middle Ages, 44, 101, 232, 237 Bar Kokhba rebellion, 326 beauty, Kant’s views on, 126–27 Bentham, Jeremy, 30 Berdyczewski, Micha Josef, 176 Beʾur (Mendelssohn), 234, 269 Bialik, Hayim Nahman, xii

344

index

Bible, 11, 17 Biblical monotheism and philosophy, 19 Biblical myth, 170, 171 linear patterns in, 320 Maimonides interpretations of, 224 New Testament, 82, 83 basis for Catholic hierocracy, 79 Lessing’s views on, 107–8 Old Testament, 73, 79, 81, 83, 150 Psalm 137, 289, 290, 329 study of as a scientific discipline, 68–69, 70 “Wisdom Literature,” 324 Book of Doctrines and Beliefs (Saadia Gaon), 21, 232, 237, 245 Book of Principles (Albo), 105, 232, 237, 245, 246 Book of Virtues, The (Wessely), 234, 236, 236n3, 238 Botarel, Moses, 44n12 Bruno, Giordano, 28 Buber, Martin, xii, xiii, 3, 11 canonical sources of Judaism. See Judaism, canonical sources of Catholic Church, 137. See also Christianity Mendelssohn’s views on, 111, 112 Spinoza’s views on, 58, 79, 81, 84, 112 causality Aristotle and Aristotelian philosophy on, 184, 188, 191, 261, 262 causal determinism, 31, 95, 102, 123, 125, 165 Hegel’s views on, 141 Hume’s views on, 194 Kant’s views on, 120, 123–24, 125, 130, 180, 188, 256, 261, 262 Leibnitz’s views on, 92, 95 Maimonides’ views on, 261 Maimon’s views on, 180, 188, 191, 192, 194, 256 Mendelssohn’s views on, 102 natural causality, 309 Schelling’s views on, 164, 165 Schnaber’s views on, 257, 261, 262, 263 Spinoza’s views on, 63, 123, 125, 263, 309 Christianity, 1, 20, 27, 145, 209 Catholic Church, 137

Mendelssohn’s views on, 111, 112 Spinoza’s views on, 58, 79, 81, 84, 112 Church Fathers, 20, 27, 42 conversos and Marranos, 58n5 Greek philosophy as a common root, 8 Hegel’s views on, 145, 146, 147, 148n8, 150–51, 170 humanistic Christianity, 171 and Judaism, 208, 267, 327 confrontations between, 35 differences between Judaism and Christianity, 34 as foundation for Christianity, 27, 34 Hegel’s views on, 147–48 Jewish struggle for emancipation, 38–39 Kant’s views on, 132–34 Mendelssohn’s views on, 97–98, 99–101, 102, 107, 108–15, 113, 114–15, 133 Kant’s views on, 133–34, 170 Leibnitz’s views on, 87–115 organizational structure of, 34 Protestant theology Mendelssohn’s reply to Spinoza, 112–13 Spinoza use of, 79, 81–82, 83 Reformation, 26, 34, 43–44, 45 as revealed religion, 218 Spinoza’s views on, 79–81, 84 views on church and state, 112 church-state relations. See religion; state, the Classic Jewish Philosophers, The (Schweid), xii–xiii Cohen, Hermann, xii, xiii, 11, 179, 189, 193 Commentary to the Mishnah (Maimonides), 260n32 “Eight Chapters,” 237, 300 conceptual-analytical philosophy, 164–65 consciousness Hegel’s views on, 137–44, 148n8, 314–15 religious consciousness, 312 Schnaber’s views on, 254 self-awareness, 299 self-consciousness, 147n6 stages of human consciousness, 314–15

index Conservative (Positive-Historical ) Judaism, 50, 210–11 “constitutive” stages in religion’s evolution, 219–21 in Judaism, 221–25 conversos, 58, 58n5 “Copernican Revolution,” 135, 174, 186 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 28 Cordovero, Moses, 45 “correlation,” 189 Costa, Uriel da, 46 “counsel of providence,” 309, 310, 333 creativity cultural creativity, 307, 308, 322 development of artistic creativity, 311 God’s self-creation, 170 Hegel’s views on, 138–39 Schelling’s views on, 156, 159, 161–62, 163–65 Spinoza’s views on, 150 spiritual creativity, 310 will-to-create, 168, 170 Crescas, Æasdai. See also Light of the Lord as a leading philosopher of the Middle Ages, 27, 44, 245 and Maimonides, 249, 251 Critique of Judgment (Kant), 119, 126 Critique of Practical Reason (Kant), 118n2, 119, 126 Critique of Pure Reason (Kant), 117, 118n2, 119–22, 126, 174, 179 culture, 47. See also Jewish culture; national cultures; secular culture consciousness in cultural development, 139–44 cultural creativity, 307, 308, 322 cultural isolation of Europe in the Middle Ages, 35–36 defining periods of cultural history, 25 development of, 262, 307–16 development of human culture, 322 history of culture, 139, 144–45 integration of Jews into, 38 meeting of monotheistic religion and pagan philosophy, 16–18 need for a new culture, 280–82 and philosophy, 8–9 philosophy of history for a culture in transition, 275–77 place of religion in, 303 Schelling’s views on, 156, 157 Wessely’s views on, 238 cycles in the development of Jewish culture, 316–34 Cyrus (king), 329

345

David (king), 289–90, 324 De Anima (Aristotle), 181–82n7 deism, 216, 219, 236 denial, kinds of according to Krochmal, 297, 298 Descartes, Rene, 88, 119, 122 as a leading philosopher of the Enlightenment, 25, 53, 117, 173, 208, 274 and Schnaber, 242, 255, 256, 257 and Spinoza, 53 determinism, 124, 139, 165, 297, 298 causal determinism, 31, 95, 102, 123, 125, 165 dialectical epistemologies of Hegel, 137–39, 267–334 Diaspora, 12, 26, 40, 43, 51, 133, 326, 329 divine contraction [tzimtzum], 170 divine unity, 149 divine will, 169–70 duality, 119 Aristotelian dualism, 184 of Kant’s epistemology, 123–24, 158–59, 161, 258 Dubnow, Simon, 39 Duties of the Heart (Ba˜ya), 232, 237, 238, 239, 262–63 Eastern Europe, Haskalah [ Jewish Enlightenment] in, 269–72 “Edicts of Tolerance” ( Joseph II), 234 education. See pedagogy “Education of the Human Race, The” (Lessing), 107, 131, 276 “Eight Chapters” in Commentary to the Mishnah (Maimonides), 237, 300 Ein Sof [infinite], 168 Eisenmenger, Johann Andreas, 202 Emancipation, xi, 35–36, 37, 38, 47, 49–50, 151, 175, 206, 268 Emden, Jacob, 246 Enlightenment, 114. See also Haskalah [ Jewish Enlightenment ] crisis of religion in period of Enlightenment, 25–33 critics of, 117, 120 Enlightenment rationalism reaction to religion, 154 and esthetics, 162 in Germany, 46–49, 117, 177 Romantic movement as reaction to, 153 idealist revolution in, 117–34

346

index

Mendelssohn identified with, 118, 173 and philosophy, 26–27, 88, 135, 208–9 Jewish philosophy during, 46, 173–74, 268 philosophy of religion, 33, 53–55 rationalist Enlightenment, 272 scientific Enlightenment, 242 secular revolution of modern Enlightenment, 29 supporters of, 98 view of religion and the state, 211–12 Essay on Torah and Wisdom, An [M ʾamar ha-Torah ve-ha-Æokhmah] (Schnaber), 242n14 esthetics, 119, 162, 163, 166, 307 eternity Aristotle’s views on, 184, 192 Ascher’s views on, 228 eternity/victory [Netza˜], 169 God’s eternity, 250, 261 Krochmal’s views on, 287, 313 Maimonides’ views on, 192, 250, 259 Mendelssohn’s views on, 99 Schelling’s views on, 157, 168, 169 Schnaber’s views on, 259, 261, 263 ethics, 109 development of morals according to Krochmal, 307–16 Kant’s views on, 124–25 religious ethical ideal, 126 level of knowledge vs. level of ethical responsibility, 108 particularistic ethic of the Torah, 133 Spinoza’s causal determinism, 125 Wessely’s views on, 237, 240 Ethics (Spinoza), 56, 57, 60–66, 69, 87 evil Leibnitz’s views on, 94 private theory of, 94n9 Schelling’s views on, 169 evolution of religion, Ascher’s views on, 219–21 Exile, role of in Jewish history, 27, 34, 39, 112, 150, 223, 235 Krochmal’s views on, 289–90, 323, 324–25, 328–30, 331 existentialism, school of, 3, 53, 284 ex nihilo, world created, 66, 185, 191, 260, 262 Ezekiel 1, 42–43n11 Ezra (prophet), 329 Ezra the Scribe, 328

faith, 130 Ascher’s views on, 215, 215n18, 216–17, 219, 223, 224 in Christianity, 34, 112 compulsion of, 112 Krochmal’s views on, 292–93 Maimon’s views on, 193 Mendelssohn’s views on, 246–48 rational faith, 124 Schnaber’s views on, 247, 248 as a truth in Judaism, 103 vs. knowledge Kant’s views on, 122, 125 Spinoza’s views on, 67, 102, 125 Wessely’s views on, 236–37, 239–40, 247 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 117, 135 and Hegel, 135, 156 and Maimon, 180–81 and Schelling, 156, 158, 161 and Schnaber, 256 “First Cause,” 62, 257n28 Foundation of the Torah [Yesod Ha-Torah] (Schnaber), 241, 246–52, 266 Frankism, 280 freedom intellectual freedom, 114 of knowledge, 59–60, 61, 62, 64–65 and religion, 68n19 of thought, 66 free will, 118n2, 165, 168 Friedlaender, David, 226, 247 Galicia, Haskalah [ Jewish Enlightenment] in, 50, 233, 269–72 Galileo Galilei, 28 Gaon, Saadia. See Saadia Gaon Gedaliah (son of Ahikam), 325 Gemara, 42–43n11 general philosophy. See philosophy Genesis 1, 42–43n11 Germany attitude toward Jews and Judaism, 206–7 German as choice for writing philosophy, 232–33 German culture and Jewish culture, 46–47 German Enlightenment, 46–49, 117, 177 German Romantic movement, 45, 117, 153–54, 159, 173, 207, 216 Haskalah [ Jewish Enlightenment ] in, 47, 50, 233, 269–70, 280

index as leading center for Jewish philosophy, 46–47 status of Jews in according to Kant, 132 Gersonides, 27 Giʾvat Ha-Moreh [The Hill of the Guide] (Maimon), 174, 179, 243 Gnosticism, 42–43n11 God, 254 as Active Intellect, 181–82n7 Aristotle’s views on, 184 Ascher’s views on, 220, 222 and the covenant with the Jewish people, 73–74 as Creator Maimonides’ views on, 260n32 Schelling’s views on, 165–66, 167, 170 Schnaber’s views on, 257n28 Wessely’s views on, 238 existence of God Descartes’ views on, 255, 256, 257 Kant’s views on, 118n2, 121n4, 124, 189–90, 216, 255–56 Leibnitz’s views on, 255, 256, 257 Maimonides’ views on, 258–59, 261 Saadia Gaon’s view of, 260 Schnaber’s views on, 254–55, 257–58, 259, 260 Spinoza’s views on, 255, 263 God’s eternity, 250, 261 Hegel’s views on, 137, 139, 148n8, 149–50 Kant’s views on, 121–22, 121n4, 123, 124–25, 126, 128, 130, 189–90, 216 Krochmal’s views on, 318nn32–33, 319n34 Leibnitz’s views on, 93–95 Maimonides’ views on, 185–86 Maimon’s views on, 189–93, 195, 196 not creating evil, 94n9 omnipotence of, 184, 263 as postulate of pure reason, 189–93 Schelling’s views on, 163–65, 165–66, 167, 170 Spinoza’s views on, 57, 62–63, 65–67, 69, 139, 307 unity of Nature, 60–61, 69, 193 as Universal Mover or Necessary Being, 191 Wessely’s views on, 234–41, 238, 239–40

347

Golden Age of Jewry, 327–28 Gomperz, Aaron, 233 Gordon, Aaron David, xii, 3 Greek philosophy. See also Aristotle and Aristotelian philosophy; Plato and Platonism as a common root for general philosophy, 8, 12, 15, 20 emphasis of, 9 in Hellenistic Alexandria, 19–20 role of Philo of Alexandria, 28n9 and the unity of the world, 18 Guide of the Perplexed (Maimonides), 96, 174, 176–77, 192, 199, 232, 243–44, 245, 251, 260, 261, 286, 292, 300 Guide of the Perplexed of the Time (Krochmal ), 243, 269 affirming spirit within a modern naturalistic world view, 302–7 on the development of culture, 307–16, 308nn27–28, 315–16n31 diagnosing the spiritual errors of the age, 292–302 monotheism and the cyclical pattern of Jewish historical development, 316–34, 318nn32–33, 319n34, 323n36 reformulating tradition in modern historical terms, 286–91, 287–88nn6–8 Guttmann, Julius, xi Hagigah Babylonian Talmud, Hagigah 14b, 293n13 Jerusalem Talmud, Hagigah 2:1, 293n13 Mishnah, Hagigah 2.1, 42–43n11 halakha, 17, 37, 211, 223, 234, 237, 296. See also Glossary and Ascher, 206, 207, 211, 221–29, 246, 248 and conversos, 46 and Friedlaender, 226 and Kant, 118, 221 and Krochmal, 334 and the laws of the state, 34, 84, 202 and Maimonides, 23–24, 58, 79, 84, 177, 178, 202, 223, 224–26, 228, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249–50, 268, 327 and Mendelssohn, 107, 112, 118, 205, 207, 221, 225, 233, 246, 248

348

index

need for to preserve and shape Jewish culture, 36, 39, 40, 41 and Schnaber, 243, 247, 248–49 and Spinoza, 58, 79, 84, 221, 225 and Wessely, 235, 237 Halevi, Judah, xiii, 21, 22, 24n7. See also Kuzari and Aristotle, 254 as a leading philosopher of the Middle Ages, 44, 101, 232, 237, 245 and Schnaber, 243, 252–60, 262 and Wessely, 236, 237 Hamann, Johann Georg, 98, 117 Ha-Mexasef (periodical ), 269 happiness Mendelssohn’s views on, 103–5, 109 Spinoza’s views on, 56–57, 62–65, 69, 89 Æaredi, 36, 38, 45. See also Glossary Hasidism, 202, 280, 294–95, 296n17, 333 Hasidic mysticism, 177 Haskalah [ Jewish Enlightenment ], 26, 173, 327. See also Glossary; Maskilim changes in Judaism during, 49 and denial, 297 Enlightened Orthodoxy of Schnaber, 241–66 of Wesseley, 234–41 first emergence of in Amsterdam, 46 in Germany, 47, 50, 233, 269–70, 280 Golden Age of Jewry, 327 Haskalah movements in Russia, and Galicia, 269–72 and Jewish philosophy, 25, 46–48, 50, 173 and Krochmal, 286–87, 328, 333–34 Maskilim, 176, 233, 269–72, 294 Mendelssohn as first Jewish Enlightenment philosopher, 26, 173, 268, 270 opponent of, 246 Hasmonean Kingdom, 325–26 Hebrew as choice for writing philosophy, 232, 232n1, 233, 269 Hebrew Haskalah. See Haskalah [ Jewish Enlightenment ] Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, xiii, xiv, 117, 135–51, 136n2, 154, 307n26 and Aristotle, 140, 273 and Fichte, 135, 156 historiosphy of, 272–75 and Kant, 118, 135, 137, 145

and Krochmal, 280 Krochmal basing philosophy on Hegel, 267–334, 274n2 as a leading philosopher of the Enlightenment, 154, 171, 274 and Lessing, 145 and Maimon, 180–81 and the philosophy of religion, 276, 277 and Reformed Judaism, 211 rejection of religion, 145, 147nn6–7, 151, 171, 272 and Schelling, 155–57, 158, 161, 162, 164, 169, 170–71 and Spinoza, 136, 138, 139, 145, 148 stages of human consciousness, 314–15 Heidegger, Martin, 3 Hellenistic period development of Greek philosophy, 149 Hellenistic Alexandria, 19–20, 41, 42 religion in, 1, 27 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 317, 320 Heshek Yehosuaʾ [ Joshua’s Desire] (Maimon), 177–78, 243 hierocracy, 77, 78, 79, 81 Hill of the Guide, The [Giʾvat Ha-Moreh] (Maimon), 174, 179, 243 Hirsch, Samson Raphael, 234 “historical materialism,” 139 history ages of the world, 165, 167 historical dimension of philosophy, 139, 144 differences between Hegel and Schelling, 156–57 monotheism and the cyclical pattern of Jewish historical development, 316–34 philosophy of history for a culture in transition, 275–77 Schelling’s religious philosophy of history, 166–68 reformulating tradition in modern historical terms, 286–91 role of history of philosophy, 3–5, 7 understanding the history of religion, 198 universal history, 322 Hobbes, Thomas, 206, 212n7. See also Leviathan as a leading philosopher of the Enlightenment, 25, 53, 117, 173, 208

index human development, Hegel’s views on, 139–44 humanism, 135, 198 humanistic Christianity, 171 Hume, David, 194, 195, 253, 256 hylic matter, theory of, 181, 185, 186, 187, 188, 191 “I,” concept of. See also universal spirit Hegel’s views on, 137, 138, 141, 142 Kant’s views on, 120, 138 Krochmal’s views on, 299, 313 Leibnitz’s views on, 88 Schelling’s views on, 160–61, 162–63, 165 Spinoza’s views on, 89 Ibn Ezra, Abraham, 275, 288, 288n8 Ibn Tibbons of Provence, 232n1 idealism Ascher’s views on, 216 Kant’s views on, 118–19, 153, 173, 216, 219 religious ethical ideal, 126 Krochmal philosophy based on dialectical idealism of Hegel, 267–334 rational ideal, 126 and religion, 214 and Schelling, 153–54 identity, Jewish. See Jewish identity ideology, 2–3, 26 idolatry, 15, 17, 18–19, 20, 330 Hegel’s views on, 145 Krochmal’s views on, 293, 294, 317–18, 324, 330 Maimonides’ views on, 185, 265 Maimon’s views on, 200 immanentism, 258, 313 immortality, 118n2 imperialism of the intellect, 215 individualism consciousness in individual development, 139–44 Leibnitz’s views on, 90 Spinoza’s views on, 89, 90 induction, scientific, 252, 256, 256–57n27 infinite [Ein Sof ], 168 infinite reason, 261 intellect, 181–82n7, 181–83 Active Intellect, 181, 181–82n7, 182–83, 184. See also Glossary Hegel’s views on intellectual development, 139–44

349

imperialism of the intellect, 215 role of the mind, 187–88, 187n8 Schelling’s concept of “intellectual intuition,” 160–62, 161n2 intellectual freedom, 114 intentions [ kavvanot], 296, 296n17 Islamic religion, 20 Greek philosophy as a common root, 8 Hegel’s views on, 148n8 and Judaism confrontations between, 35 early relationship, 36 as foundation for Islam, 27, 34 as revealed religion, 218 Israel, culture of, 317, 319. See also Jewish culture cycles in the development of, 323–28, 329, 330–31 uniqueness of, 322–23 Isserles, Moses, 44n12 Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, 98, 117 Jerusalem (Mendelssohn), 26, 27, 87, 99–101, 101–2, 107, 109, 114, 117, 118, 132, 247 Jerusalem Talmud, Æagigah 2:1, 293n13 Jesus Hegel’s views on, 150 Mendelssohn’s views on, 102 Spinoza’s comparisons with Moses, 79–80n29, 79–81 Jew-gentile relationships, xiv Jewish culture. See also Haskalah [ Jewish Enlightenment ] attempts to define, xii centers of continuity, during Middle Ages, 39–41, 43 challenge of secular culture to, 36–37, 39 culture of Israel, 317, 319 cycles in the development of, 323–28, 329, 330–31 uniqueness of, 322–23 German culture and Jewish culture, 46–47 and Jewish identity, 7–8, 11, 12–14 and Judaism, 2 Judaism as a national culture, 308, 317, 320, 326, 328, 330, 331, 334 and modernity, xiv monotheism and the cyclical pattern of Jewish historical development, 316–34

350

index

need for halakha to preserve and shape, 36, 39, 40, 41 philosophy of history for a culture in transition, 275–77 reformulating tradition in modern historical terms, 286–91 role that exile played, 27, 34, 39, 112, 150, 223, 224, 235 Krochmal’s views on, 289–90, 323, 324–25, 328–30, 331 transition from traditional to modern outlook, 277–86 Jewish Enlightenment. See Haskalah [ Jewish Enlightenment ] Jewish identity, 208, 226, 267 attempts to preserve a separate identity, 12–14, 39 centers of continuity during Middle Ages, 39–40 and Jewish culture, 7–8, 11, 12–14 Mendelssohn’s views on, 97 question of integrating with general culture, 38 self-image of Jewish philosophers, 42 Jewish nationalism, Spinoza as a herald of, 84 Jewish philosophy in America, 49 beginnings of, 25–33 modern philosophy of religion, 53–55, 231–66 centers of continuity during Middle Ages, 43 in modern times, 46 development of organized school of, 20, 38 and the Enlightenment, 46, 173–74, 268 and general philosophy general and Jewish philosophical discourse, 47 place in, 7–14 in Germany, 46–49 Haskalah [ Jewish Enlightenment ], 25, 46–48, 50, 173, 270, 280, 328 and Hellenistic Alexandria, 19–20, 42 historical periods for, 50–51 Jewish philosophy of religion, 33–39, 173–203 Krochmal’s philosophy of religion, 244 Maimon’s philosophy of religion, 196–200, 244 tasks of, 33–39

and Judaism. See also Judaism canonical sources of Judaism, 11–12 philosophy of Judaism, 200–203 during the Middle Ages, 39–45 in modern times, 46–51 philosophy of religion vs. religious philosophy, 14–24 reformulating tradition in modern historical terms, 286–91 response to general philosophy, 28 transition from traditional to modern outlook, 277–86 “Jewish Plato,” 99 Jewish Renaissance, 272–75 Jewish Science [ Jüdische Wissenschaft], 2n1. See also Glossary Joseph II (emperor), 234 Joshua’s Desire [Heshek Yehosuaʾ] (Maimon), 177–78 Judah the Patriarch, 326, 328 Judaism, 1, 145. See also halakha; Jewish philosophy Ascher’s views on, 205–29, 225–29, 246 canonical sources of, 11–12. See also Bible; Midrash; Mishnah; Talmud challenge of secular culture, 36–37 changes in during Jewish Enlightenment, 49 and Christianity, 208, 267, 327 confrontations between, 35 differences between Judaism and Christianity, 34 as foundation for Christianity, 27, 34 Hegel’s views on, 147–48 Jewish struggle for emancipation, 38–39 Kant’s views on, 132–34 Mendelssohn’s views on, 97–98, 99–101, 102, 107, 108–15, 113, 114–15, 133 conversos and Marranos, 58, 58n5 critics of, 209, 226, 240. See also Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich; Spinoza, Baruch end of Alexandrian Judaism, 20n4 evolution of, 7 German attitude toward, 206–7 halakhic revisions of Ascher, 226–28 Hegel’s views on, 146–51, 146n5, 147nn6–7, 148n8, 156–57, 271, 272

index Hellenistic Jewish center in Alexandria, 19–20 as a historical religion, 113–14 Kant’s views on, 132–34, 173–74, 224, 240 Krochmal’s views on, 267–334 Maimon’s views on, 174, 175, 197–98 philosophy of Judaism, 200–203 Mendelssohn’s views on, 246–48 monotheism and the cyclical pattern of Jewish historical development, 316–34 as a national culture, 308, 317, 320, 326, 328, 330, 331, 334. See also Jewish culture organizational structure of, 34 as a rational religion, 113 “regulative” and “constitutive” elements in, 221–25 as revealed religion, 218 Schelling’s views on, 156–57 Schnaber’s views on, 243, 245 Spinoza’s views on, 72–77, 84 three major Jewish religious movements, 210–11. See also Conservative (Positive-Historical ) Judaism; Neo-Orthodoxy; Reform Judaism ultra-Orthodox Jews, 36, 38, 45 use of punishment to enforce beliefs, 111–12 and Western religions, 108, 217, 218 confrontations between, 35 differences between Judaism and Christianity, 34, 39 as foundation for, 27, 34, 133–34 Judeo-Arabic language as choice for writing philosophy, 232n1 Jüdische Wissenschaft [ Jewish Science ], xi, 2n1, 47–48, 49, 269. See also Glossary kabbalah, 43–45, 44n12, 66, 288, 305. See also Glossary; mysticism and Emden, 246 and Krochmal, 275, 295–96 Lurianic kabbalah, 45, 170, 296n17 and Maimonides, 190–91, 193 Schelling’s appropriation of, 168–71

351

and Schnaber, 263, 264–65 Spinoza influenced by, 45, 193 theoretical kabbalah, 190, 191, 193, 243, 275, 295 Zoharic kabbalah, 45, 168 Kalamic philosophy, 24, 24n7 Kant, Immanuel, xiii, 30, 117–34, 153, 171, 280. See also Critique of Judgment; Critique of Practical Reason; Critique of Pure Reason; Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone and Aristotle, 253 and Ascher, 205–11, 214, 221, 229 “Copernican Revolution,” 135, 174, 186 dualism of Kant’s epistemology, 123–24, 158–59, 161, 258 and Hegel, 118, 135, 137, 145, 156 and historical dimension of philosophy, 139 as a leading philosopher of the Enlightenment, 117, 154, 173, 177, 215, 274 and Lessing, 131 and Maimon, 174, 174n1, 178, 189, 192, 193–94, 196, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 205 Maimon’s critique of Kant’s epistemologies, 178–88, 194–95 and Maimonides, 132, 253 and Mendelssohn, 118, 132–34, 173, 221 and religion challenge to Judaism, 132–34, 154, 173–74, 203, 205, 224, 240 on existence of God, 118n2, 121n4, 124, 189–90, 216, 255–56 and Schelling, 156, 158–59, 161, 162, 170 and Schnaber, 242, 252–60, 261 and Spinoza, 120–21, 123, 128–31 kavvanot [intentions], 296, 296n17 Kierkegaard, Søren, 3 knowledge God knowing all things, 263 Hegel’s views on, 135–36, 137 Kant’s views on, 124–25, 126 Leibnitz’s views on, 90, 102–3 level of knowledge vs. level of ethical responsibility, 108 Mendelssohn’s views on, 102–3 perfection of knowledge, 183 relation between act of knowledge and its objects, 119–20

352

index

Spinoza’s views on, 59–60, 61, 62, 64–65, 66, 102, 123 of spiritual truth, 305 of truth, 124–25 vs. faith Kant’s views on, 122, 125 Spinoza’s views on, 67, 102, 125 and will, 126–27 Kook, Abraham, 3, 46 Krochmal, Nachman, xiii, 136n2, 243, 267–334. See also Guide of the Perplexed of the Time affirming spirit within a modern naturalistic world view, 302–7 on the development of culture, 307–16 diagnosing the spiritual errors of the age, 292–302 and Haskalah movement, 269–72 and Hegel, 267–334, 272–75, 274n2, 280 and Herder, 320 and Ibn Ezra, 288, 288n8 and Maimonides, 268, 273–75, 286, 292, 300–301, 302, 328 monotheism and the cyclical pattern of Jewish historical development, 316–34 pedagogical strategy, 286–91 and the philosophy of religion, 276, 277 and Spinoza, 272 stages of human consciousness, 314–15 Kuzari (Halevi), 21, 232, 237, 245, 262 language development of concepts, 315–16n31 Hegel’s views on language development, 140–42 languages used to write philosophy, 232–33, 232n1 as medium of the group spirit, 308n28, 313–15 “Law of Man” and “Law of God,” 234–41 “Laws of Foundations of the Torah” in Mishneh Torah (Maimonides), 237, 245 Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 87–96. See also Theodicy as a leading philosopher of the Enlightenment, 25, 117, 119, 173, 177, 208, 276

Leibnitz-Wolff philosophy, 97, 99–101, 117, 118 and Maimon, 178, 193–94 and Mendelssohn, 96, 97, 99–101 Mendelssohn’s disagreements with, 101–9 and the philosophy of religion, 276–77 as prototype for religious philosophy, 119 and Schnaber, 242, 255, 256, 257 and Spinoza, 87–91, 93, 101 Lessing, Ephraim Gotthold, 97–98, 107–8, 117, 118, 276. See also “Education of the Human Race, The”; Nathan the Wise and Hegel, 145 and historical dimension of philosophy, 139 and Kant, 131 and the philosophy of religion, 276–77 Leviathan (Ascher), 206, 211–19 Leviathan (Hobbes), 212n7 Levin, Leonard, xi–xv Levinsohn, Isaac Baer, 269–72 Levison, Gumperz [Georg]. See Schnaber, Mordecai Gumpel Halevi Light of the Lord (Crescas), 245 Locke, John, 173, 208, 242 Loew, Judah (Maharal of Prague), 26, 26n8, 36, 45 Logos, 15, 150 Luria, Isaac, 45 Lurianic kabbalah, 45, 170, 296n17 Luzzato, Moses Hayyim, 45 M ʾamar ha-Torah ve-ha-Æokhmah [An Essay on Torah and Wisdom] (Schnaber), 242n14 Maggid of Mezerich, 176 Maharal of Prague ( Judah Loew), 26, 26n8, 36, 45 Maimon, Solomon, 117, 173–203, 216, 294. See also Autobiography of Solomon Maimon, The; Hill of the Guide, The [Giʾvat Ha-Moreh]; Joshua’s Desire [Heshek Yehosuaʿ] and Aristotle, 187, 188 and Ascher, 205, 213 and Cohen, 189 and Fichte, 180 and Hegel, 180, 180–81

index and Kant, 174, 174n1, 178, 189, 192, 193–94, 196, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 205 Maimon’s critique of Kant’s epistemologies, 178–88, 194–95 as a leading philosopher of the Enlightenment, 173, 177, 231–32, 276 and Leibnitz, 178, 193–94 and Maimonides, 174, 176–77, 178–79, 186, 189, 191, 192, 193–94, 196, 200–201, 203 and Mendelssohn, 174, 175, 176, 178, 193, 196, 198, 199, 202–3 and the philosophy of religion, 196–200, 276–77 and political religion, 199, 202, 219–20 on the role of the mind, 187n8 and Schnaber, 242, 243–44, 256 and Spinoza, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 193, 196, 198, 199, 200, 201 Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon), xiii, 42–43n11, 232n1, 260n32, 288, 305–6. See also Commentary to the Mishnah; “Eight Chapters”; Guide of the Perplexed; “Laws of Foundations of the Torah”; Mishneh Torah; Perek Æelek (Mishnah Sanhedrin Chapter 10, Maimonides’ introduction to); Thirteen Principles of Faith and Albo, 246, 249, 251 and Aristotle, 61, 96, 178–88, 189, 191, 192, 250, 260–61, 273–74, 285, 300 and Ascher, 223–24, 225, 228–29 codification work of, 223 and Crescas, 249, 251 definition of evil, 94 dogmatism of, 79 and Kant, 132, 253 and Krochmal, 268, 273–75, 286, 292, 300–301, 302, 328 as a leading philosopher of the Middle Ages, 11, 27, 42, 44, 101, 231, 232, 237 and Maimon, 174, 176–77, 178–79, 186, 189, 191, 192, 193–94, 196, 200–201, 203 and Mendelssohn, 103 and Moses, 75, 80 religious philosophy of, 21, 23–24, 60, 96, 285–86

353

and Schnaber, 242, 243–44, 245–46, 248n20, 257, 258–59, 263n37 changing the Maimonidean rubric, 260–66 rational reconstruction of Maimonidean dogmatics, 246–52 and Spinoza, 70–72, 75 struggle between his disciples and his opponents, 37–38, 327 theory of prophecy, 65 Marranos, 58n5 Marx, Karl, 139 Maskilim, 176, 233, 269–72, 294. See also Glossary; Haskalah [ Jewish Enlightenment ] massacres in Poland-Ukraine, 327–28 materialistic rationalism, 297, 298 matter, corporeality of, 187–88 Mendelssohn, Moses, xiii, 96–115, 151, 231–32, 279–80. See also Beʾur; Jerusalem; Morning Lessons [Morgenstunden]; Phaidon and Albo, 105, 247 and Ascher, 205–11, 212, 221, 224–25, 229, 246 and Kant, 118, 132–34, 173, 221 as a leading philosopher of the Enlightenment, 87, 117, 173, 215, 233, 276 as first Jewish Enlightenment philosopher, 26, 173, 268, 270 and Leibnitz disagreements with, 101–9 Leibnitz-Wolff philosophy, 97, 99–101, 118 and Lessing, 97–98, 107–8 and Maimon, 174, 175, 176, 178, 193, 196, 198, 199, 202–3 and Maimonides, 103 and the philosophy of religion, 276–77 on religion and state, 109–15 and Schnaber, 242, 246–48 and Spinoza, 27, 97, 111, 117, 118 disagreements with, 101–9, 114–15 and Wessely, 234 “Merkavah mysticism,” 42–43n11 Middle Ages, 136 blurring boundaries of disciplines, 3 and cultural isolation of Europe, 35–36 distinctions between philosophy of religion and religious philosophy, 21–24

354

index

philosophy during, 9, 28, 34, 209, 305 religion in, 1, 209, 245, 305 Judaism, 27, 39–45 transition from Jewish and Christian philosophy of religion, 44 science during, 28–31 view of religion and the state, 212 “middle way” according to Krochmal, 300–302 Midrash, 12, 42. See also Glossary Mill, John Stuart, 30 mind, role of, 187–88, 187n8. See also intellect Mishnah, 11, 247, 326 doctrine of punishment and reward, 250 Æagigah 2:1, 42–43n11 Sanhedrin, 245 249 three categories of belief, 249–50 Mishneh Torah (Maimonides), 237, 245 Mitnagdism, 280 mitzvot, 39, 114, 224, 242, 246, 250 modernity and Jewish culture, xiv Jewish philosophy during, 46–51 beginnings of modern philosophy of religion, 53–55 philosophy during, 9–10 religion in, 1 transition from Jewish and Christian philosophy of religion, 44 and role of history of philosophy, 5 transition from traditional to modern outlook, 277–86 monads, 90–95, 96, 100, 109 monism, 150, 156, 158 pantheistic monism, 135, 150 monotheism, 15, 53–54, 201, 218 development of, 16–17 Hegel’s views on, 149–50 institutionalization of philosophy and monotheism, 20 and Judaism, 27, 34 Krochmal’s views on in Jewish historical development, 316–34 as a particularistic monotheism, 149–50 Leibnitz’s views on, 88 monotheistic philosophy of religion founded by Philo, 56 prophetic monotheism, 16–19

relative monotheism, 167 Spinoza’s views on, 72, 150 morality, Kant’s views on, 132n15 morals, development of according to Krochmal, 307–16 moral will, 125–26 Morning Lessons [Morgenstunden] (Mendelssohn), 87, 101, 117, 118 Mosaic law, 133 Ascher’s views on, 222–23 and Moses, 79–80n29 Spinoza’s views on, 80, 84 Achilles’ heel of Mosaic law, 77–79 development of, 72–76 Moses, 74n24, 329 Ascher’s views on, 222 and Mosaic law, 79–80n29 Schnaber’s views on, 263 Spinoza’s views on, 73–78 comparison with Jesus, 79–80n29, 79–81 mysticism, 43–44, 45, 163, 295, 298. See also kabbalah Hasidic mysticism, 177 myth Biblical myth, 170, 171 kabbalistic myth, 170 Neoplatonic-kabbalistic myth, 168 and Schelling’s religious philosophy of history, 166–68 mythology, Schelling’s research of, 167 Na˜manides, Moses, 275 narrative philosophy, 164–65, 166, 168 Nathan the Wise (Lessing), 108 national cultures, 9, 143, 267, 310, 313, 314, 319, 321, 322, 323 importance of philosophy in, 10–11, 47 Judaism as, 317, 320, 326, 328, 330, 331, 334 Judaism as a national culture, 308. See also Jewish culture Nature affirming spirit within a modern naturalistic world view, 302–7 Hegel’s views on, 138 Kant’s views on, 159 natural religion, 196–97, 205. See also “rational religion” according to Mendelssohn Schelling’s views on, 155, 156, 159, 163, 166 Spinoza’s views on, 60–61, 63n10, 65–66, 69, 193

index Necessary Being, 191 negative attributes, doctrine of, 190, 191, 192, 258, 259 “negative dialectic” of Hegel, 146–51, 169 Nehemiah (prophet), 329 Neo-Orthodoxy, 50, 210–11, 233 Neoplatonism, 45, 94n9, 168, 245, 274, 275 Netza˜ [eternity/victory], 169 New Testament, 82, 83 basis for Catholic hierocracy, 79 Lessing’s views on, 107–8 Newton, Isaac, 28 Nietzche, Friedrich, 3 obedience to authority, 133 Old Testament, 73, 79, 81, 83, 150 omnipotent God, 184, 263 Oral Torah. See Torah Orthodoxy. See also Neo-Orthodoxy of Schnaber, 241–66 of Wesseley, 234–41 paganism, 154 Krochmal’s views on, 275, 313 meeting of monotheistic religion and pagan philosophy, 16–18 pagan pantheism, 18, 145 pagan polytheism, 218, 317 replaced by philosophy, 15 pantheism, 15, 60, 193 Hegel’s views on, 313 and monads, 93 pagan pantheism, 18, 145 pantheistic immanentism, 258, 313 pantheistic monism, 135, 150 Spinoza’s views on, 45, 60, 93, 118, 135, 156, 193, 243, 255, 258, 262, 313 Pardes, 293, 293nn13–14, 294, 300. See also Glossary Paul, Saint, 147 pedagogy and Krochmal, 280, 284, 286–91, 302 and Levinsohn, 270 and Maimonides, 250, 251 and Mendelssohn, 279–80 and Spinoza, 279, 280 and the state, 83, 110 and Wessely, 234 Perek Æelek ( Mishnah Sanhedrin Chapter 10, Maimonides’ introduction to), 245

355

perfection, 94n9, 95 Phaidon (Mendelssohn), 98–99 “phenomena,” 120, 121, 155, 158, 180–81, 187, 256, 256–57n27. See also Glossary; “thing-in-itself ” Philo of Alexandria, 8, 11, 19, 20, 27, 28n9, 42, 43, 56 Philosophies of Judaism (Cohen), xii philosophy, 2. See also Jewish philosophy; names of individual philosophers; philosophy of religion; religious philosophy art standing above philosophy according to Schelling, 159–60 conceptual-analytical philosophy, 164–65 and culture, 8–9 development of according to Krochmal, 307–16 and the Enlightenment, 26–27, 88, 135, 208–9 existentialism, school of, 3, 53, 284 general philosophy basing on new sciences, 30 beginnings of modern general philosophy, 25–33 beginnings of modern philosophy of religion, 53–55 general and Jewish philosophical discourse, 47 Jewish philosophy response to, 28 role of history of philosophy, 3–5 Greek philosophy as a common root for general philosophy, 8, 12, 15, 20 emphasis of, 9 in Hellenistic Alexandria, 19–20 role of Philo of Alexandria, 28n9 and the unity of the world, 18. See also Aristotle and Aristotelian philosophy; Plato and Platonism Kalamic philosophy, 24, 24n7 and mysticism, 44 narrative philosophy, 164–65, 166, 168 original intention of, 18 philosophical enlightenment, 22 philosophical pragmatism, 260–66 philosophy of history for a culture in transition, 275–77 philosophy supplanting religion according to Hegel, 135–51 place of Jewish philosophy in, 7–14 and progress, 6

356

index

rationalistic philosophy, 117 rationalist deism, 216 rationalist Enlightenment, 154, 272 scientific rationalism, 135 role of history of philosophy, 7 and Schelling religious philosophy of history, 166–68 two kinds of philosophy, 164–65 and science, 55 philosophy of religion. See also religion; religious philosophy Ascher’s views on, 205–29 beginnings of modern philosophy of religion, 53–55 and the Enlightenment, 33, 53–55 Jewish philosophy of religion, 33–39, 173–203 Krochmal’s views on, 244 Maimon’s philosophy of religion, 196–200, 244 Kant’s views on, 119 monotheistic philosophy of religion founded by Philo, 56 philosophy as a tool, 22 and prophetic monotheism, 18 Spinoza as prototype for, 119 tensions trying to relate to, 20–21 transition from Jewish and Christian philosophy of religion during Middle Ages, 44 vs. religious philosophy, 14–24, 32–33 Spinoza on problem of philosophyin-religion and religion-inphilosophy, 56, 119 Piaget, Jean, 187n8 Pines, Shlomo, xi Plato and Platonism, 3, 18, 20, 61, 94n9, 98, 118, 136, 137–39, 162, 274. See also Neoplatonism Poland-Ukraine massacres, 327 politics. See also secular culture; state, the Kant’s views on, 200 “Law of Man” and “Law of God” of Wessely, 234–41 Maimon’s views on, 200 political religion, 199, 202, 219–20 Mendelssohn on religion and state, 109–15 Spinoza’s views on, 82–84, 87, 125, 200 polytheism Ascher’s views on, 218

Hegel’s views on, 145, 148, 149 Krochmal’s views on, 317, 319 Maimon’s views on, 200, 201 pagan polytheism, 218, 317 Schelling’s views on, 167 “positive dialectic” of Schelling, 169 Positive-Historical (Conservative) Judaism, 210–11 pragmatism, philosophical, 260–66 pre-temporality. See time progress, 6 Prophetic monotheism, 16–19 prophets and prophecies, 285–86 Maimonides’ theory of, 65 Mendelssohn’s views on, 104 prophetic revelation, 120–21 Spinoza’s views on, 70–72, 104 comparison of Moses and Jesus, 79–80n29, 79–81 role of Moses, 73–77 Protestant theology. See also Christianity Mendelssohn’s reply to Spinoza, 112–13 Spinoza use of, 79, 81–82, 83 Psalm 137, 289, 290, 329 psyche (spirit-matter), 163n4 rabbinic leadership, and Emancipation, 37–38 “rational ecstasy” of Schelling, 161, 163–65, 163n4 rationalism, 117 Ascher’s rejection of, 215 materialistic rationalism, 297, 298 of Mendelssohn, 101 rational faith, 124 rational ideal, 126 rationalist deism, 216 rationalist Enlightenment, 154, 272 “rational religion” according to Mendelssohn, 104–6, 108, 113 rational thought, 120 rational will, 125 scientific rationalism, 135 reason boundaries of human reason, 24 bridge between religion and reason, 130 infinite reason, 261 power of reason, 180 pure reason, 117, 119, 121, 124, 126, 174 God as postulate of pure reason, 189–93

index religion within the limits of, 128–32 and self-choice, 123 and sense, 127 as a source for knowing truth, 23 ultimate reason, 214 universal human reason, 137, 139 Rechtsstaat [the state governed by law], 131, 137, 145, 147–48. See also Glossary; state, the reform, Ascher’s program for, 225–29 Reformation, 26, 34, 43–44, 45 Reform Judaism, 50, 210–11, 233, 247–48, 267 “regulative” stages in religion’s evolution, 219–21 in Judaism, 221–25 Rehoboam (king), 324 religion, 108, 151. See also Christianity; deism; Islamic religion; Judaism; monotheism; pantheism; philosophy of religion; polytheism; religious philosophy; Western religions Ascher’s views on, 211–21 bridge between religion and reason, 130 crisis of religion in period of Enlightenment, 25–33 critics of, 32, 38, 46, 58, 98, 145. See also Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich; Kant, Immanuel; Lessing, Ephraim Gotthold; Maimon, Solomon; Spinoza, Baruch fulfilling human needs, 31 Hegel’s views on, 136 philosophy supplanting religion, 135–51 “sublation” of religion, 144–45, 146, 147, 151, 171 Kant’s views on, 120–22 religion and the state, 131 religion within the limits of reason, 128–32 Krochmal’s views on the development of, 307–16 Marx’s views on, 139 Mendelssohn’s views on “rational religion,” 104–6, 108, 113 religion and the state, 109–15, 212 and national cultures, 317 natural religion, 196–97, 205 place of religion in culture, 303 political religion, 199, 202, 219–20 problems of religion, 1

357

“rational religion,” 104–6, 108, 113 religious ideology, 2–3 religious truth of Leibnitz, 95, 106 of Mendelssohn, 103 roles of, 2–3, 213 Schnaber’s views on, 264n40 and science during the Middle Ages, 28–31 tensions trying to relate to, 20–21 Spinoza’s views on, 82–84 and the state Ascher’s views on, 211–19, 220–21 Church-State relations, 209 Kant’s views on, 131 Mendelssohn’s views on, 109–15, 212 Spinoza’s views on place of religion in a secular state, 82–84 vs. science, 306 Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (Kant), 119, 128, 129, 134 religiosity, types of according to Krochmal, 294–97, 304 religious philosophy. See also philosophy; philosophy of religion Hegel’s views on, 136–37 institutionalization of philosophy and monotheism, 20 Leibnitz’s philosophy as prototype for, 119 pagan religion replaced by philosophy, 15 philosophy as a tool, 22 role of Philo of Alexandria, 28n9 Schelling’s religious philosophy of history, 166–68 Schnaber’s views on, 244 tensions trying to relate to, 20–21 transition from Jewish and Christian philosophy of religion during Middle Ages, 44 vs. philosophy of religion, 14–24, 32–33 Spinoza on problem of philosophyin-religion and religion-inphilosophy, 56, 119 Renaissance, 26, 34, 43–44, 45. See also Jewish Renaissance revelation, 22, 24, 59 Ascher’s views on, 219 divine revelation, 69 Mendelssohn’s views on, 105, 106–7 prophetic revelation, 120–21

358

index

Schnaber’s views on, 247 Wessely’s views on, 247 Romantic movement in Germany, 45, 117, 153–54, 159, 173, 207, 216 Rosenzweig, Franz, xii, xiii, 3 Rotenstreich, Nathan, xi, xii Rua˜ ha-Dat [Spirit of the (Natural, Moral, and Divine) Law, The] (Levison, aka Schnaber), 242n13 ru˜ani ha-mu˜lat [“Absolute Spirit”], 274n2 Russia, Haskalah [ Jewish Enlightenment ] in, 50, 233, 270–71 Saadia Gaon, 21, 103, 232n1. See also Book of Doctrines and Beliefs on existence of God, 260 as first seminal Medieval philosopher, 22, 42, 43 and Kalamic philosophy, 24n7 as a leading philosopher of the Middle Ages, 42, 44, 101, 232, 237, 245 Sabbateanism, 246, 280, 327, 328, 329 Salome (queen), 325 Samuel (prophet), 112, 324 Sanhedrin, Mishnah, 245 249 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 3 Saul (king), 324 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm, xiii, 45–46, 117, 118, 135, 153–71. See also System of Transcendental Idealism and Aristotle, 162 and Fichte, 156, 158, 161 and Hegel, 155–57, 158, 161, 162, 164, 169, 170–71 and Kant, 153, 158–59, 161, 162, 170 and Spinoza, 153 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 216 Schnaber, Mordecai Gumpel Halevi, xiii, 240, 241–66, 241nn10–12, 242nn13–14. See also Essay on Torah and Wisdom, An [M ʾamar ha-Torah ve-ha-Æokhmah]; Foundation of the Torah [Yesod Ha-Torah]; Spirit of the (Natural, Moral, and Divine) Law, The [Rua˜ ha-Dat] and Ascher, 242, 248 and Descartes, 242, 255, 256, 257 and Fichte, 256 and Halevi, 243, 252–60, 262 honorary title, 241n10 and Kant, 242, 252–60, 261

and Leibnitz, 242, 255, 256, 257 and Maimon, 242, 243–44, 256 and Maimonides, 242, 243–44, 245–46, 248n20, 257, 258–59, 263n37 additions to Maimonides principles, 264–65 changing the Maimonidean rubric, 260–66 rational reconstruction of Maimonidean dogmatics, 246–52 and Mendelssohn, 242, 246 and Spinoza, 242, 255, 258, 263 and Wessely, 247 writing Spirit of the (Natural, Moral, and Divine) Law under the name of Levison, 242n13 Scholem, Gershom, xi Schopenhauer, Arthur, 3 Schwartz, Moshe, 163n4 Schweid, Eliezer biographical data, xi–xii scholarly work of, xii–xv science art standing above science according to Schelling, 159–60 development of according to Krochmal, 307–16 and Islamic religion, 35 and Kant, 121 Mendelssohn’s views on, 103–4 during the Middle Ages, 28–31 and philosophy, 55 scientific determinism, 165 scientific Enlightenment, 242 scientific induction, 252, 256, 256–57n27 scientific knowledge, 102–3 scientific rationalism, 135 scientific utility, 174–75 and Spinoza, 62–63, 67–68 vs. religion, 306 secular culture, 28–31, 32. See also national cultures; politics; state, the challenge of to Judaism, 36–37, 39 development of secular philosophy, 276 impact of on religion, 54 Leibnitz’s views on, 95–96 problem of religion in, 33, 304–5 and Spinoza place of religion in the secular state, 82–84 secular outlook of Spinoza, 57, 59

index Sefirot, 168 self-awareness, 299 self-choice, 123 self-knowledge, 60 self-realization, 88–89 self-understanding, 307 sense and reason, 127 Separate Intellect, 182 Shul˜an Arukh, (Caro) 226 skepticism, 299, 303 as a form of denial, 297, 298 of Hume, 194, 195, 253 of Maimon, 193–95 social nature of man, 140, 197, 308, 308n27 importance of social organizations, 309 social utility, 30 Solomon (king), 324 soul, Wessely’s views on, 237, 239 Spinoza, Baruch, xii, xiii, 53–85, 97, 150, 222–23, 274, 279, 307, 309. See also Ethics; Theological-Political Treatise; Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect advocating philosophy of religion, 56, 119 and Ascher, 210, 211, 221, 224 and Descartes, 53 and Hegel, 136, 138, 139, 145, 148 and historical dimension of philosophy, 139 and Kant, 120–21, 123, 128–31 and Krochmal, 272, 275 as a leading philosopher of the Enlightenment, 11, 25, 53, 117, 119, 153, 171, 173, 177, 208, 215, 274, 276 and Leibnitz, 87–91, 93, 101 and Lessing, 107 and Maimon, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 193, 196, 198, 199, 200, 201 and Maimonides, 70–72, 75 and Mendelssohn, 27, 97, 111, 117, 118 Mendelssohn’s disagreements with, 101–9, 114–15 and monism, 135, 158 and pantheism, 262 and the philosophy of religion, 119, 276–77 rejection of religion, 26–28, 31, 35, 53, 56–57, 58, 59, 61, 66–85, 87, 96, 98 challenge to modern Judaism, 146–51

359

and Schelling, 153 and Schnaber, 242, 255, 258, 263 spirit, according to Krochmal, 307, 307n26, 318nn32–33 “Absolute Spirit,” 313, 332 language as medium of the group spirit, 308n27, 313–15 universal spirit, 312–13 Spirit of the (Natural, Moral, and Divine) Law, The [Rua˜ ha-Dat] (Levison, aka Schnaber), 242n13 spirit-world, emergence of, 163n4 state, the. See also national cultures; politics cycles in the development of Israel, 329, 330–31 political religion, 199, 202, 219–20 rational law-governed state, 131 Rechtsstaat [the state governed by law], 131, 137, 145, 147–48. See also Glossary and religion Ascher’s views on, 211–19, 220–21 Church-State relations, 209 halakha and the laws of the state, 34, 84, 202 Kant’s views on, 131 Mendelssohn’s views on, 109–15, 212 Spinoza’s views on place of religion in a secular state, 82–84 Spinoza’s views on, 222–23, 279 theocracy, 223 transition from traditional to modern outlook, 279 and the “Universal Spirit,” 137 sublation/supercede [Aufhebung], 136n2, 151. See also Glossary Hegel’s views on, 144–45, 146, 147, 151 Schelling’s views on, 171 supra-human source, 78, 312 supra-rationality, 30 and Hegel, 146, 151 and Kant, 121, 125, 128–29 and Krochmal, 332 and Mendelssohn, 101, 102, 173, 246 and Schelling, 153, 155 and Spinoza, 67, 78 and Wessely, 235 supra-temporality, 157, 169, 261 No-Time converted to “supra-temporality,” 167, 168 System of Transcendental Idealism (Schelling), 161n2

360

index

Talmud, 11, 107–8, 202, 288 Babylonian Talmud, Hagigah 14b, 293n13 Jerusalem Talmud, Hagigah 2:1, 293n13 Talmudic midrashic method of research, 286 technology, development of according to Krochmal, 307–16 temporality. See time theocracy, 223 Theodicy (Leibnitz), 94 Theological-Political Treatise (Spinoza), 27, 58, 68, 84, 87, 276, 279 “thing-in-itself,” 119–20, 155, 158, 180–81, 187, 256, 256–57n27. See also “phenomena” Thirteen Principles of Faith (Maimonides), 228, 245, 247, 249, 251, 259 Ninth Principle, 248n20 Schnaber’s additions to, 264–65 time, 287–88n7 and the beginning of the world, 261–62 causal-deterministic and “time of creation,” 165 dimensions of, 165 Krochmal’s concept of, 320–21 pre-temporality, 169 supra-temporality, 157, 169, 261 No-Time converted to “supra-temporality,” 167–68 tolerance Asher’s views on, 212–13 Judaism as a rational religion, 113 Mendelssohn’s views on, 99–100, 107, 108, 111, 117 Torah, 14, 38, 235–36, 261, 296 as an element of a historical religion, 113–14 as given by God, 239–40 as institutionalization of intellectual religion, 200 as the Law of the Covenant, 332 and Moses, 73–74, 76 Oral Torah, 42, 114, 264, 265, 289, 302, 325, 332, 334 and pagan culture, 17 particularistic ethic of the Torah, 133 and Philo of Alexandria, 19, 43 revealed Torah, 185, 233, 239, 240, 243, 244, 249–51, 253, 263, 332 Schnaber’s views on, 243, 244, 253–54, 263, 265

significances of, 13 “Torah from Heaven,” 207 two-sided unity of, 23 uniqueness of, 250 use of punishment to enforce belief in God, 111 Written Torah, 245, 264, 289, 332 Torat Ha-Olah (Isserles), 44n12 Tower of Babel, 167 traditions practical traditionalism, 260–66 reformulating tradition in modern historical terms, 286–91 Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (Spinoza), 56, 88 truth Hegel’s views on, 136, 138 historical truths, 103 knowledge of, 124–25 a priori vs. a posteriori truths, 91–93 rational truth, 102 reason as a source for knowing truth, 23 religious truth of Leibnitz, 95, 106 of Mendelssohn, 103 spiritual truth, 305 “Tzaddik,” 294 tzimtzum [divine contraction], 170 ultra-Orthodox Jews [Haredi], 36, 38, 45. See also Glossary unity of nature, Spinoza’s views on, 60–61, 65 unity of the mind, 119 universal human reason, 139 Universal Mover, 191 universal spirit, 137, 138, 143, 144, 308, 312–13. See also “I,” concept of Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Judentums [Association for the Culture and (Scientific) Study of Jewry/ Judaism], 2n1, 50, 210, 210n1, 269. See also Glossary victory/eternity [Netza˜], 169 Voltaire, 98 Wessely, Naphtali Herz, 234–41, 236n3, 269. See also Book of Virtues, The; Words of Peace and Truth and Albo, 237 and Ba˜ya, 237–38, 239 12 and Halevi, 236, 237

index and Mendelssohn, 234 and Schnaber, 247 Western religions. See also Christianity; Islamic religion; Judaism confrontations between, 35 differences between Judaism and Christianity, 34, 39 elements of a historical religion, 113–14 historical bonds between, 148 Judaism as the foundation for, 27, 34 Kant’s disagreement, 133–34 Judaism’s relations with other religions, 217 as revealed religions, 218 symbolized in Nathan the Wise (Lessing), 108 will divine will, 169–70 free will, 118n2, 165, 168 and knowledge, 126–27 moral will, 125–26 as Nothingness, 168 rational will, 125 will-to-create, 168, 170

361

“wisdom literature,” 12, 324 Wissenschaft, 2n1. See also Jüdische Wissenschaft [ Jewish Science ]; Verein für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Judentums [Association for the Culture and (Scientific) Study of Jewry/Judaism] Wolff, Christian, 87, 117 and Mendelssohn, 96, 97, 99 Words of Peace and Truth (Wessely), 234, 236 “Work of Creation” and “Work of the Chariot,” 42–43, 42–43n11 world created ex nihilo, 66, 185, 191, 260, 262 World to Come, 75, 95, 108, 109, 111, 296 Written Torah. See Torah Yesod Ha-Torah [Foundation of the Torah] (Schnaber), 241n12, 246–52, 266 Zamosc, Israel, 233 Zionism, 51, 84 Zoharic kabbalah, 45, 168 Zunz, Leopold, 269