The Pale God: Israeli Secularism and Spinoza's Philosophy of Culture

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Author: Gideon Katz

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The Pale God Israeli Secularism and Spinoza’s Philosophy of Culture

-------------------------------- Gideon Katz --------------------------------------

Israel: Society, Culture and History Yaacov Yadgar (Political Studies, Bar-Ilan University), Series Editor

Editorial board Alan Dowty, Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Notre Dame

Allan Silver, Sociology, Columbia University

Tamar Katriel, Communication Ethnography, University of Haifa

Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Ethnicity, London School of Economics

Avi Sagi, Hermeneutics, Cultural studies, and Philosophy, Bar-Ilan University

Yael Zerubavel, Jewish Studies and History, Rutgers University

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The Pale God Israeli Secularism and Spinoza’s Philosophy of Culture --------------------------- Gideon Katz --------------------------------Translated by Miriam Ron and Jacky Feldman

Boston 2011

A catalog record for this title is available from the Library of Congress.

Copyright © 2011 Academic Studies Press All rights reserved ISBN 978‐1‐936235‐38‐4 Book design by Olga Grabovsky On the cover: Sunrise with Sea Monsters, William Turner Published by Academic Studies Press in 2011 28 Montfern Avenue Brighton, MA 02135, USA [email protected] www.academicstudiespress.com

Contents

Introduction��1 Chapter 1: Three Options for Secularism in Israel��9 I. Foreword. ��9 II. Judaism as culture.��15 III. Reservations about Judaism.��28 IV. Spiritual Judaism. ��38 V. The distress of secularism.��45 Chapter 2: Why Spinoza? ��55 I. The historical-cultural context. ��56 II. Special philosophical relevance��61 Chapter 3: Imagination and the Masses: An Outline of the Object of Politics��69 I. Non-reflective consciousness and the image of the dream: the epistemological aspect. ��69 II. Instability, associations and egocentrism: the psychological aspect. ��76 III. Inconsistency, conformism and hostility in the life of the masses: the political aspect. ��83 Chapter 4: Political Secularism��92 I. Undermining religion.��97 II. Rationalization of the masses and political power.��99 III. Does rationalization mean overcoming religion? �� 103 IV. The importance of religion in the establishment of political power. �� 106 V. Moderating religious tradition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 VI. Invigorating the life of the masses and the spirit of obedience. �� 125 Chapter 5: The Role of the Philosopher in His Society in Times of Secularization�� 143 I. The “Healthy Judgment,” the radiance of theology and the problem of the philosopher’s sincerity. �� 143 — v —

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II. The resonance of truth. �� 148 III. Metaphysical secularism.�� 157 IV. The schematic nature of Spinoza’s thought. �� 160

Chapter 6: Traditionalism as an Optional Form of Secularism in Israel�� 169 I. Traditionalism in Israel. �� 170 II. Spinozian articulation and the secular nature of traditionalism.�� 179 Conclusion�� 189 Bibliography�� 201 Index �� 209

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Introduction

Among many Israeli intellectuals, secularism arouses discomfort. For them, the secular public — and Israeli society as a whole — has become devoid of the legacy of Jewish culture, and remains without roots or a substantive identity. Other Israeli intellectuals claim that the incessant search of secular Israelis for new relationships to Judaism is a result of a misunderstanding on the part of the secular. They demand a writ of divorce from religion, and from Judaism in particular. Common to all is their distress with Judaism; for some, Israeli society has abandoned Judaism and, consequently, is impoverished and bereft of a past. For others, Judaism is a burden which prevents the creation of a new national society. These thinkers have proposed solutions to resolve these problems. The aim of this book is to present their approaches, explain why their proposals lead to a dead end, and suggest a solution derived from Spinoza’s philosophy. In these few sentences, we have hinted at the subject of the book and the assumptions upon which it rests. As we all know, secularism is a complex concept. It refers to behavior and identity, to historical processes and changes. The object of this book is thought, and it deals with the views of men of letters and philosophers on the question of the worthy place for Judaism in the lives of secular people. The basic principle underlying this research is that, whatever be the elements of thought included in it, secularism is not just an abstract topic. It takes place in a concrete context and can only be analyzed within that context. This concreteness is relevant for the contents of thought, just as it is relevant for understanding historical processes or — 1 —

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sociological facts. The reason for this is simple: many of these contents criticize a particular religious tradition. It is specifically because of the specific, concrete context of our book that the contents of thought we will examine are not limited to what has been produced in Israeli culture. Zionism, especially the thought of spiritual Zionist thinkers, is important for the secular public in Israel, if only because this is the thought of the “founding fathers” of Israeli society. From what has already been claimed, and even from the title of the book, it becomes clear that the web of thought discussed here is not homogeneous. We will deal here with the thought of Israeli intellectuals and the philosophy of Spinoza. In spite of the differences between these kinds of thought, their relationship is not artificial, and the justification for this pairing will be presented later on in the book. For the moment, I will suffice with one brief comment. The problem is evident in the thought schemes of Israeli intellectuals. The investigation of the thought of Spinoza is part of the development of its solution. This is not a philosophical recommendation that falls like a note from heaven. This solution is rooted in Israeli culture, and may shed light on trends rooted in that society. It gives rise to severe criticism of the approaches of Israeli intellectuals. The solution I will provide here not only breaks through the impasse to which the approaches of Israeli intellectuals lead, but also helps us in understanding this impasse. In order not to leave things unclear, let me now specify their principles. There is a wide variety of approaches among Israeli intellectuals, but they all share a common basic assumption — that Judaism as a set of contents bearing religious significance can no longer serve as a basis for the Jewish collective. Secularization, the establishment of the State of Israel, liberation from the oppressive rule of the halakha — all these have given birth to a new national identity. The common religious sources are not included in it. To our great surprise, this assumption — which would seem to be selfunderstood — is not part of the secular position which may be developed from Spinoza’s thinking. What he calls “secularism” suits his efforts to provide a basis for political authority. Such authority enables the striving for the creation of autonomous, secular human life. But — 2 —

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such an effort does not require the rejection of religious tradition. On the contrary, such life necessitates a “common spirit.” An essential part of this spirit is the images that are part of religious tradition. Thus, Spinoza’s thought, according to the explanation I will provide here, strives towards something complex: the fostering of religious tradition on the one hand, and the rationalization of the image of God and the neutralization of religious experts on the other. For Spinoza, secularization is at base a political project. In the framework of this process, there is no need to kill God — as in the well known slogan of Nietzsche — but to moderate him. It suffices to transform him from an unknown and capricious God, who cannot be worshipped without the leadership of religious virtuosos, into a “pale God”: the image of a transcendental power that has become rationalized and can be easily placated through accepted morality and the ways of the fathers. This moderated tradition can serve as a common culture and as the basis for political authority. This is the gist of secularism according to Spinoza. This option is especially germane to the changes wrought by Zionism among the Jewish people — after all, Zionism sought to redefine the Jewish people and place it in a political framework. The materialization of this change does not necessarily involve the abandonment of religious tradition and, consequently, the forsaking of the spiritual content common to Jews gathered in Israel. A better option is the rendering of religious tradition more malleable and better adapted to political life. But for various reasons, some of which will be explained in the Conclusion, this is not the accepted model of secularism in Israel. We have already hinted that it clashes with the views of Israeli intellectuals with respect to the place of Judaism in the world of secular people. In the course of the book, we will show that it also conflicts with the positions taken in Zionist thought with respect to these questions. Let us now define several of the key terms. As we wrote, the concept “secularism” implies a view, a position and a content of thought. Any concept which fulfills these two criteria will be designated in this book as “secularism.” First: it expresses the modernist ethos that man creates his life autonomously, both as an individual and as a collective. Thus, — 3 —

---------------------------------------------------------------------  Introduction ---------------------------------------------------------------------

it rejects the validity of transcendental authority. Second: it negates religious tradition as a normative content whose interpretation is in the hands of a monopoly of religious experts. This definition, of course, demands justification. It has two advantages: it suits all the webs of thought cited here, i.e. the main views of Israeli intellectuals; and it provides a solution to the problems they raise. Unlike overly abstract definitions — like the identification of secularism with immanence — the conditions for this definition are faithful to the concrete nature of secularism. It does not impose upon it general formulas, but leaves ample room for the polemic element of the secular position as a reaction to certain religious transitions (especially the second condition). Another phrase which calls for explanation is what we term Spinoza’s “philosophy of culture.” The term “secularism” does not appear in Spinoza’s work, nor, certainly, does the term “philosophy of culture.” These do, however, fit the analysis which I attribute to him in my explanation. In my understanding, the special quality of his thought is the great attention he devotes to the consciousness of the masses and their spiritual life. The political philosophy of Spinoza has an epistemological and an ontological basis. The establishment of authority and the lack of stability inherent to that authority cannot be understood in isolation from the spiritual traits found among members of society. Thus, Spinoza’s philosophy contains a “philosophy of culture” — a broad reflection on the roles of traditions, contents and images in social life and the examination of their relevance for the establishment of rational authority. This is also, as we will show at length, the most productive framework for viewing the problems of Israeli secularism. The order in this book is as follows. In Chapter 1, we describe the positions of Israeli intellectuals with respect to the relation of the secular Israeli to Judaism. Here we describe three options: “Judaism as a culture”; a position taking exception to Judaism; and “spiritual secularism.” The chapter concludes with a description of the difficulties of each of these options; furthermore, this difficulty is compounded by the fact that this repertoire of options continues what were — 4 —

---------------------------------------------------------------------  Introduction ---------------------------------------------------------------------

considered, at the beginning of the 20th century, to be the solutions expressed by the spiritual Zionism. Thus, we come to understand the need for the development of another option. This alternative option is developed in Chapters 2 through 5. There we describe the nature of the masses according to Spinoza — their spiritual life and the reasons for its instability and passivity. Special attention is required to clarify the nature of Spinozian secularism: the striving for the formulation of a rational authority and the harnessing of a moderate religious tradition to undergird it. Chapter 6 returns to the Israeli reality, and it consists of two parts: the first section describes the nature of the traditionalism in Israel, while the second chapter explains why this option may be considered as an example of Spinoza’s proposals and how it may be reconstructed from this philosophical perspective. It is not understood — as is accepted among its researchers — mainly through the religious practices inherent in it, but in epistemological and political categories. These categories enable us to understand “muted” secularism and the profound significance inherent in it. Thus, the intense study of the philosophy of Spinoza is the basic foundation of this book: the metaphysical issues in his thought shed light on concrete phenomena in Israeli society. It also enables us to reject more vehemently its accepted secular options. *** I am very grateful to the Posen Foundation which assisted with the writing of the book, and to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, which assisted with its publication.

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------------------------------ Chapter I -----------------------------------

Three Options for Secularism in Israel

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-----------------------------------------  Three Options for Secularism in Israel -----------------------------------------

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------------------------------------------------------------------------ I. Foreword ------------------------------------------------------------------------

I. Foreword Israeli intellectuals are deeply concerned over the potential meaning of Judaism for the Israeli secular public. In the course of their deliberations, they deal with a wide range of topics — the Jewish identity of secular people; the proper place for Jewish studies within the educational system; the Jewish library; the Jewish roots of Israeli culture; the development of non-Orthodox Jewish traditional alternatives, such as the traditionalist (masorti) movement, the Reform and Conservative movements, Judaism as culture, and secular Judaism; the shaping of a Jewish Israeli public space, and more. These intellectuals fear that the secular public, and the entire Israeli society in its wake, have renounced their intellectual assets and, in doing so, their future as well. As pointed out earlier, not all share this view: some intellectuals claim that in order for Israeli society to fully mature, it must cut itself off from its religious heritage, which they view as oppressive. All the intellectuals expressing these views — whether they call for a rapprochement with Judaism or for further distancing — share a common focus, i.e. the potential significance of Judaism for the Israeli secular public. Before describing and analyzing these notions, I would like to propose some preliminary comments. The ideas we will be discussing are part of a lively debate on the Jewish identity of secular Israelis. This debate is not identical to the one on the relations between religion and the State, which is a political issue. What the sides in that conflict seek to clarify is the nature of the threat between the parties and the proper distribution of power. That debate does not attempt to clarify — 9 —


the significance of Judaism for the non-religious public, nor does it attempt to define the nature of any secular position. In other words, the discussions on the relations between religion and State in Israel revolve around the presence of religion — the position of its contents and institutions in Israeli public life. On the other hand, the discussion on the significance of Judaism for the secular public focuses on the meaning of secularism (which is linked to philosophical issues) and on the question of the Jewish identity of secular Jews (which is linked to cultural issues). It is therefore not surprising that this discussion found no place in the public conflicts between the religious and the secular in Israeli society. The opposite is true as well: as the issues linked with the problems of religion and society were linked to power struggles among the parties, the main debate concerned the parties’ demands and their justifications rather than any examination of secularism or of the values of the secular public. Moreover, as indicated in the introduction, Israeli culture expresses the secular Jew’s distress as his estrangement from his past — a widespread phenomenon in the spiritual life of Israeli society. This is the subject of numerous essays, songs, and literary works.1 This distress can be apprehended in a number of ways. The secular person’s limited affinity with tradition is often likened to orphanhood, its main expressions being his ignorance of Judaism and his alienation from the sources of humanistic Hebrew culture. A similar claim is that the alienation of the secular from their past relegates Judaism to the Ultra-Orthodox, thereby damaging the richness of Jewish culture. Signs of distress arising from the weakness of the attachment to the past were already manifest during the early years of the state. Two significant examples were Baruch Kurzweil’s book Our New Literature — Continuity or Revolution? and Nathan Rotenstreich’s essay entitled On Jewish Existence at the Present Time. As is well known, the two authors — one religious and the other secular — were particularly sensitive to the superficiality of Judaism among the secular public. Both sides were concerned that 1

These things are true for the Hebrew culture, in general. For an extended analysis of this, see Schweid, Three Night Watches. I expanded this point further in the Hebrew version of this book. See Katz, Core of Secularism, Chapter 10. — 10 —

------------------------------------------------------------------------ I. Foreword ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Judaism would have no real significance for Israeli society. This distress is the background for the intellectual ideas discussed in this book, and both those who seek to liberate themselves from the hold of Judaism and those who fear for the destiny of a collective without roots relate to these feelings of distress; it is their reaction to it that sets them apart. Those who call for a rapprochement with Judaism seek to infuse it with new meaning and adapt it to the secular public, while those who wish to liberate themselves from Judaism seek to escape it once and for all and create a post-Jewish collective experience. This chapter has two goals — the first is to present the views of Israeli intellectuals on the relation between secularism and Judaism (for the moment, we will postpone the question of their image of Judaism); this task is more challenging than it seems at first. Most of the expressions we will describe are fragmentary in nature; the intellectuals who write on these topics do so because the significance of Judaism for the secular public and for Israeli society concern them personally, even if it is not the main area of their interest or expertise. Thus, their expressions do not generate a broad, comprehensive debate about Judaism or about its potential significance for secular people — they are mostly sporadic expressions of opinion. In order to deal with these sporadic and fragmentary expressions, we need to examine the entire discourse and the types of positions expressed there. By examining several of these positions together, we may more easily identify them as efforts to describe Judaism as a human cultural creation in order to present it as a palatable option for the secular public. This holds true with respect to other positions as well. The second aim of this chapter is to identify the dead-end of the various paths of Israeli secularism, as will be clarified in the last section. For now, we will simply state a few general points. These options exhibit severe weaknesses: one option is foreign to the inclinations of Israeli society; another neutralizes the basic meaning of the Judaism it sets out to investigate; while the third ignores the fact that Judaism — in all its shapes and forms — represents a content shared by the Jewish collective. We will now describe the three options, which will provide a key to understanding the development of the chapter. The first model we will — 11 —


be looking at can be summed up under the slogan “Judaism as culture,”2 and its main contents are as follows: the ensemble of contents unique to the Jewish people and perceived as having been created by flesh and blood Jews. In Israel, this view of “Judaism as culture” is infused with a national tone, according to which Jewish creations (i.e. works created by Jews) are the property of the nation. The representatives of this model struggle to provide a literary or philosophical interpretation to religious contents and thus account for or strengthen their affinity towards them or their legitimate “ownership” of them. The philosophical ideas that serve as a framework for their interpretations are anthropocentrism and humanism. One can find countless examples of these views;3 all share the notion that the secular person shapes his life without any transcendental authority, and that he no longer views tradition as content deriving from divine revelation, but rather as the creation of the Jewish people. “Judaism as culture” represents the most important tendency in Israeli society. It is widespread among Israeli intellectuals, politicians and jurists, and within the secular education system. Another set of views we will present here claims that secularism implies alienation from Judaism. The arguments put forth by some proponents of this view focus on the ideal individual attitude of the secular person towards his tradition — that the adoption of Jewish contents on the part of secular people conflicts with an honest recognition of their secularism. Other intellectuals focus on the public-political sphere. They claim that a genuine secularism requires that that the State of Israel dispense with

2

3

The attempt to describe Judaism as a culture derives from a long and complex tradition within Jewish thought, including some of the Wissenschaft des Judentums ideas, the ideas of the Haskala, and a long list of Zionist thinkers (Ahad Ha’am, Zeev Jabotinsky, Berl Katzenelson, Micha Yossef Berdichevsky, Haim Nachman Bialik, Mordechai Kaplan, and many others). On the history of the notion of Judaism as culture and its various versions, see Schweid, Towards. The discussion here focuses on the expressions of this idea among Israeli intellectuals. For example: Nathan Rotenstreich’s writings on the renewal of the halakha today; Menachem Brinker’s claims on the cultural war in Israel; the debates on the teaching of the Bible in Israel and the attempts at analyzing it as a literary work; the attempts to turn the halakha into the basis of Israeli law; and some of the cultural experiments made by the kibbutz movement. — 12 —

------------------------------------------------------------------------ I. Foreword ------------------------------------------------------------------------

all religious and Jewish symbols. The intellectuals who voice these ideas present Judaism as a threatening entity which is intrinsically in conflict with political life. These positions figure in the debate on “Israel as a state of all its citizens,” as well as among some of the supporters of a bi-national State or of multiculturalism. The third model to be discussed could be entitled “spiritual secularism.” This model has been gaining popularity in the last decades within so-called “new-age” circles, although it has roots in spiritual Zionism (particularly in the work of A.D. Gordon) and in some esoteric ideas from the 1950’s found in the works of Yosef Schechter and Pinhas Sadeh. These views are of a highly religious tone, which is characterized by the striving towards being aware of the “other,” transcendental dimension of life. This dimension, however, does not resemble the transcendental images of accepted religion; in many cases, it is also presented to the individual through an eclectic reservoir of symbols and teachings of various origins, but including Jewish contents, taken mainly from Hassidism and the Kabbalah. From the discussion above, it is clear why intellectuals who call for “Judaism as culture” or who express reservations about Judaism address the secular public in Israel. However, how is the last model — “spiritual Judaism” — at all suitable for the world of secular people? The answer derives from the definition which was formulated in the introduction. The spiritual approaches presented above choose contents and symbols from mystical Jewish trends, albeit without granting them any normative significance. What is described in the introduction as one of the characteristics of secularism — the negation of religious tradition as a content whose interpretation lies exclusively in the hands of religious virtuosi — does not vanish as a result of the interest in religious symbols. Moreover, such views express the notion of man’s autonomy, as arises from their eclectic nature. In presenting the interested person with a mélange of sources, they actually call upon him to shape his spiritual world for himself. This demand is not limited to a single act of choice; rather, he is required to choose over and over again. In this way, the modernistic view of man as a self-generating autonomous subject makes up for the contents taken from various religious and — 13 —


mystical traditions.4 In any case, the secular nature of these views is not neutralized by the overwhelming presence of mystical symbols and religious contents, because the focus is on the relationship between man and these contents. Man is presented as shaping his own spiritual world; what is borrowed from religious tradition is borrowed as a result of his autonomous choices, and does not express his subordination to tradition. In fact, the transcendental dimension present in the reservoir of symbols fills a rather passive function; it does not represent any authority empowered to command. It becomes a kind of mirror through which man can identify the depths of his life. As indicated above, thought on the meaning of Judaism for the non-religious public does not originate with Israeli culture — the proponents of spiritual Judaism were deeply involved in it. Therefore, a presentation of the views of Israeli intellectuals regarding the significance of Judaism for secular people must include the thoughts that were expressed in Zionism, and which are still perceptible in Israeli intellectual life. This will be discussed at length in the last section of this chapter, its main point being as follows. Spiritual Zionism reacted to the break with Judaism in three different ways: in the eyes of Yaakov Klatzkin and, to a great extent, Yosef Haim Brenner, national revival means that Judaism should not serve as a basis for the identity of the Jewish collective; Ahad Ha’am’s secular position is based on the annulment of the religious meaning of Judaism, and on the latter’s affirmation as a national culture, which is to be apprehended in secular categories;5 and A.D. Gordon presents a paradigm in which the cosmic force of life replaces the transcendental dimension of traditional religion. In this way, Judaism is transcribed as a religious-cosmic content. Klatzkin proposed abandoning Judaism altogether; Ahad Ha’am formulated Judaism as a form of human tradition; and Gordon, for 4

5

Both the post-modern approach to truth and the capitalistic market view resonate in this eclecticism. For more on this, see Tavori, New Age in Israel; Ruah-Midbar, Tarbut; Heelas, New Age. This position was also accepted by the supporters of political Zionism, although they were opposed to the precedence Ahad Ha’am granted to Jewish secular culture over social and political action. — 14 —

------------------------------------------------------------- II. Judaism as Culture -------------------------------------------------------------

his part, attempted to infuse it with a new religious meaning that was not based on traditional divinity. Each of these paradigms presented a particular approach to Judaism, which was suitable for those who had turned their backs on religious tradition as a normative system originating in divine revelation. The fact that this repertoire of solutions still prevails in Israeli intellectual life has many implications: if, indeed, we become convinced that the secular paths commonly found in Israeli culture all lead to some type of dead end, we will be forced to reach the conclusion that this dead end did not start with Israeli culture. The roads that were paved within the spiritual world of Zionism, the paradigms outlined at the time, all failed. It will then be our duty to reach beyond them and develop a new option.

II. Judaism as Culture As mentioned above the common points shared by the various proponents of “Judaism as culture” lie in the attempt to present Judaism as a human creation whose uniqueness stems from the fact that it was created by Jews. The Bible is perceived as a wonderful literary text; the Jewish way of life embodies moral or other values (not only for Ahad Ha’am, as we know, but also in the eyes of, for example, A.B. Yehoshua and Amos Oz).6 In this section, we will examine statements made by Israeli intellectuals on three main topics: the efforts to determine the identity of Judaism as culture as a legitimate alternative to traditional Judaism; the way in which they deal with the consciousness of the break with historical Judaism; and the possibility of expressing this identity in the Israeli public sphere. We will start with Menachem Brinker’s article on the limits of the culture war in Israel. In Brinker’s view, the culture war stems from the dispute over Jewish culture, in the contrast between the ways in which 6

I do not presume to present all the relevant theories linked to the “Judaism as culture” approach. What will be missing here — as in academic research in general — is a description of the thoughts on Judaism among the members of the kibbutz movement. This thinking is interesting not only because of the nature of its participants, but as a reflection on one of the most intensive attempts in Israeli society at formulating a Judaism geared towards secular people. — 15 —


it is perceived by the religious, on the one hand, and by the secular, on the other. He formulates the core of this dispute using the terms “origin” and “originality”:7 A consistent secular approach emphasizes the fact and the value of originality, i.e. that every Jew is also a potential source, and not only a passive tool for the transmission of Jewish culture; a religious-traditional approach, for its part, will emphasize that whoever considers himself as the bearer of Jewish identity takes part in a given culture, which does not originate with him, and which has, according to traditional Jewish faith, an absolute origin. According to the latter approach, Jewish culture is not a historical adventure, whose future cannot be predicted; one can distinguish a stable pattern, which is persistent across all its changes and upheavals, and which also shapes the future in advance. This distinction is particularly salient in the attitude of Jewish culture towards its past. For the secular creator of culture, such as Bialik or the Kibbutz Movement, for example, the texts, ceremonies and customs of the past are, first and foremost, material that will lead to the making of new creations that will be different, in one way or another, from those of the past. For the guardians of the traditional culture, the texts, religious rituals and customs of the past — at least the main bulk of them — represent binding models and norms that may not be tampered with.

In the above words, Judaism as perceived by secular people is compared to Judaism as perceived by the religious. The conflict between these two approaches results from their extreme difference: the secular approach attributes the creation of culture to man, granting importance to the fact of his originality; the religious approach, for its part, attributes the contents to one absolute source. The secular approach is open and dynamic, whereas the religious approach exhibits permanent patterns, and those who maintain it have a passive role. Another formulation of this opposition is found in the claim that the past is only raw material for the secular, while for the religious people the past is perceived as a norm which they must maintain. Through these binary oppositions, Jewish culture is presented as an alternative to traditional Judaism. The contents of these pairs of 7

Brinker, Culture War, p. 279. — 16 —


oppositions (original versus origin and dynamism versus passivity) express Brinker’s preference for secular culture, and his analysis is an attempt at legitimizing it. This portrayal of secular Jewish culture as dynamic and creative accurately reflects the widespread image of the secular person among Israeli intellectuals. The secular person is presented as someone who does not embrace traditional contents, but as someone who scrutinizes them and shapes them according to his choice. This is, for example, S. Yizhar’s main claim, in his famous article entitled “The Courage to Be Secular”8: “The secular person is someone who takes upon himself to be constantly in a revolutionary situation […] thus the secular person is aware of his duty to decide, constantly, about the issues at stake. The fact that people once acted as they did is not sufficient reason for us to act this way today.”9 Brinker speaks in similar terms, although he uses a slightly different tone: “A secular person lives by his thought more than by his instinct of belonging. He comes to terms with the dictates of modernity invoking the absence of a single life-style for all human beings. He demands and, in fact, takes on the freedom of determining for himself and by himself, from his intellectual and psychological sources, what is good and what is bad in his tradition, as in any other human tradition.”10 The secular person is presented as having set himself free from the bonds of tradition. Thus, we should not be surprised that he is also described as the one who discovers its hidden treasures and, in fact, who saves Jewish tradition from the ongoing repression perpetrated by the Orthodox. As put by journalist Yakov Rabi:11 During most of Diaspora history, and particularly during the hundreds of years prior to the Haskala, the path of Jewish heritage was narrow, albeit deep: serving God in two ways — prayer and supplication, fasting and other religious rituals, on the one hand; and the Torah study, on

8

9 10 11

Yizhar, Courage, p.75. This rather famous article appeared in the early ‘80s, at a time when the return to religion was widespread within the secular population. Yizhar, Courage, p. 75. Brinker, Without Doctrine, p. 57. Rabi, Knowing Judaism. — 17 —


the other. In other words, Torah study, which is essentially and mainly the Oral Law, the Talmud or large chunks of it, the debates of Abaye and Rava, the deliberations of the halakha — hair-splitting longwinded debates. Only those who left the fold, adopting a so-called bad lifestyle, free of the suffering inflicted by the tyranny of the halakha — expanded the domain of our cultural assets; it was they who enabled the Bible, the Kabbalah and religious philosophy to regain their pride, and clarified and refined the meaning of all Jewish religious contents. These things could take place only within a liberal-scientific, historical-philological or esthetic approach. Even halakhic research — the foundation and institution of the rabbinate and learning — was expanded and clarified only outside the confines of the yeshiva and the beit-midrash, under the wings of modern scholars (regardless of whether or not they observed commandments in their private lives) and in academic research centers, seminars and university libraries. Woe unto us as Jews and woe unto Judaism as a cultural system if the orthodoxy of the pious faithful were to continue to rule.12

This type of argument is the backbone of the claims made by historians, such as Josef Dan and Amos Funkenstein, claiming that they are the keepers of Jewish tradition, and better keepers than the Ultra-Orthodox.13 The statements brought forth so far represent the effort to present secular Jewish tradition as an alternative to traditional Judaism. What they imply is the claim that the bearers of this culture should be thought of as the faithful followers of historical Judaism. This issue vaguely expresses the second point we mentioned above — coming to grips with the awareness of the break from traditional Judaism. This issue directly concerns some of the intellectuals writing about these topics, who express opposing views: some speak of the power of this break and, based on this recognition, try to clarify the possibilities open to them; others, on the other hand, claim that this break is non-existent. The words of Meir Ayali, a member of Kibbutz Yifat, are an example of the first position. His fear is that the members of the kibbutz movement will lose their “post-biblical literary-cultural” heritage.14 In 12 13 14

Kedmi, Jewish Identity, p. 62. Dan, Collapse; Funkenstein, Secular Judaism. Ayali, Religious Tradition, p. 20. — 18 —


his view, Judaism is fraught with religious symbols and, therefore, “it is absurd to demand from someone whose heart has emptied itself of religious faith to return to the faith.” The possibilities that open to the secular Jew who wishes to return to his sources are the following: “to adopt a purely religious approach and ‘fake’ faith, or to define Judaism as a purely national phenomenon, without any spiritual attributes or specific values.”15 This dichotomy expresses the awareness of the gulf between the secular person and Judaism. Ayali attempts to overcome this by suggesting a third option: “Great spiritual and moral values appeared among this nation and became its heritage, and they are what determined its unique character. They found their expression in numerous cultural creations — not only in the Bible, determined day-today behavior and were symbolized in a number of commandments that determined our mentality. Can a return, even partial, not be possible for a person who strips away the trappings of simple faith from all these, a faith which has also undergone change from generation to generation?”16 Ayali provides further details on his proposal as he proceeds. The contact with the sources of Judaism requires that their spiritual significance be clarified. In order to do so, we must revert to study as a basic value, and return to the symbols of Judaism: “By renewing the existence of these symbols, albeit in a selective way only, we will grant a more Jewish character to our life […] and we will return the missing link from the chain that binds us to generations of our ancestors and branches of our brothers.”17 It is doubtful if this suggestion of Ayali’s provides any real solution — indeed, what return to Judaism can there be for the one who “does away with the trappings of simple faith”? How can selectivity help him in this endeavor? What Ayali suggests is, in actual fact, not that different from the dichotomy he finds unsatisfactory. These problems, however, are not of our concern at this point; we only mention them here because they illustrate the difficulty of overcoming the break from religious tradition. Those conscious of this break are reminded of it not only when they reflect on their remoteness from tradition, but also in 15 16 17

Ayali, Religious Tradition, p. 22. Ayali, Where is Honesty? p. 129. Ibid., p. 129. — 19 —


their attempts to overcome it. The poet Avraham Shlonsky presented a totally opposite view. He questioned the fact that the continuity of Judaism represented a unity: “What continuity is there, for example, between a chapter from Amos, or from the Song of Songs, Job and the Psalms, and ‘the bull that gored the cow’? Even from a formal point of view, other than style and syntax, there is, so to speak, no unbroken link between the Bible, the Mishna and the Talmud.”18 This general objection leads Shlonsky to claim that the problem of the secular is not the break but, in fact, “the loss of faith in continuity”: The question of culture is that of the active inheritance. Our generation has enjoyed a generous portion of it — because this is the generation of a great tikkun. Whoever does not live today’s events — in the destiny of the world and in the destiny of Israel — as a period of revolution, will never comprehend the theory of the stages of the changes also taking place within us. He will see what is new and claim: “Blasphemy.” He will hear the other and say: tradition is being abandoned. But tradition does not amount to a fixed and stable sum of significant values that need to be maintained — rather, it is a power pushing towards continuation, in which imagination and difference, in their unaggressive opposition, create continuity. To quote Lenin: “Maintaining a tradition does not mean in any sense being satisfied with it.”19

Shlonsky does not see the secular as having squandered away their tradition, but rather as carrying out, unknowingly, a tremendous revolution within this tradition. The main reason for their distress stems from their lack of understanding of their role, and from the misunderstanding of the dynamic nature that characterizes every tradition. The claim that tradition, by nature, is comprised of a wide range of contents leads many intellectuals to think that they are standing on the threshold of a new Jewish culture whose entire image will only take shape in the future. Therefore, the construction of a continuous and unified Jewish culture is a task that necessarily surpasses their activities and their time period. This same tone is 18 19

Kedmi, Jewish Identity, p.112. Ibid., p.113. — 20 —


also voiced by Daniel Ben Nahum, a member of Kibbutz Mizra, who translated the work of Ber Borochov into Hebrew: A new, integral Jewish culture will develop here, built on the foundations of Jewish heritage. The ones who were right were those who claimed that this heritage comprised both religious Judaism and the Haskalah, as well as the history of emancipation, and even the Bund, with all its mistakes; and Spinoza and Marx, as well. A new, integral Jewish culture will arise here, one that is synthetic in the deep sense of the word. How will it grow? This is a question for the generations to come, a very difficult issue. This is an endeavor that is no less grand and important than the economic establishment of the Jewish people on productive grounds. The task is not for us to complete.20

The words spoken by the people presented above — Ayali, Shlonsky and Ben Nahum — illustrate their opposing views, along the continuum that stretches between secular Judaism and Jewish tradition. Some, like Shlonsky, feel that secular people are located along this continuum, while others, like Ayali, feel that they are outside it; one party emphasizes the existence of the break, whereas the others believe that the awareness of the break shows a misunderstanding of the ways a culture is created. Some intellectuals, however, found another way of dealing with the awareness of the break: they attempt to clarify which life experience in Israeli society can best perpetuate Jewish tradition. Their focus is not on a general evaluation of the break from Jewish tradition, but rather on the attempt to clarify how a secular person can connect to tradition. For example, in Eliezer Schweid’s book, Judaism and Secular Culture, he presents the humanistic secular approach, as well as the potential place of religious contents within it.21 He opens with the following question: “Is it not possible to define the notion of secular culture in a positive way, without casting away religious contents that seem positive from the point of view of this culture?”22 The answer he suggests is based on his evaluation of human life. Faith is not meaningless for the non-believer, 20 21 22

Ben Nachum, Judaism, p.77. Schweid, Secular Culture, pp. 221-248. Ibid., p.223. — 21 —


as it is “an alternative that interprets the meaning of his decision to take the opposing direction.”23 Therefore, faith and the absence of faith do not contradict each other; they represent “conjoining spiritual worlds.”24 Choosing one of them throws light on the meaning of the alternative choice: “No human decision is totally devoid of ambivalence. The road not chosen is felt through pangs of pain that we experience at every crossroad.”25 According to Schweid, the secular person can find religious tradition interesting, since through it he can reach a deeper understanding of the significance of his decisions. In other words, the secular person’s affinity with religious contents — with his past, his culture and its various traditions — implies the actual fulfillment of his identity. In this way, the secular person contributes genuine meaning to the world of tradition — a world he can no longer accept in all its simplicity — which becomes part of his consciousness as a secular person. A similar attempt is found in the book On Jewish Existence at the Present Time by philosopher Nathan Rotenstreich, who suggested an interpretation of the relevance of the halakha in the life of the secular person. The gist of his thought is as follows: the contents of tradition have been expropriated from the regular authority and submitted to the judgment of the individual (the examples of Yizhar and Brinker cited above illustrate this point very well); the religious meaning of tradition has gone. What does Rotenstreich propose to the secular person interested in tradition? He starts by claiming that the main point of Jewish religious tradition is the halakha rather than the Bible.26 This claim stems from the role filled by the halakha in the life of the Jewish people in the past, as well as from the contents to be found in it, which are relevant for the modern Jew. In his view, the halakha is what enabled a unified national life to take place in the past. In the present, this unity is achieved through the framework of a sovereign state. This outcome enables a change to take place in the attitude towards

23 24 25 26

Ibid., p. 236. Ibid. Ibid., p. 237. Rotenstreich, Jewish Existence, p. 51. — 22 —


the halakha: rather than looking at it as a unifying factor for life as a nation, one should examine its philosophical importance.27 How can a renewed affinity with religious Jewish tradition, i.e. with halakha, take place? Rotenstreich’s reply is that the halakha tends to judge the present in light of the past. Lighting a fire on the Sabbath is forbidden; therefore, turning the light on is forbidden today. In other words, the inflexibility of the halakha stems from the fact that it is anchored in the past.28 The devotion of the modern Jew cannot be attributed to the obedience to the authority of past generations. The inflexibility of the halakha means it cannot serve as a foundation for the perpetuation of tradition, although the ideas it contains can serve as a genuine basis for the modern Jew’s interest in his religious tradition. To quote Rotenstreich: “The modern Jew is likely to find reason and justification for his allegiance to Judaism, not because it is a given system, but because it contains ideas and thoughts that are meaningful to him.”29 What are these ideas that Rotenstreich finds in the halakha? Modern-day life is based on scientific culture, which abstains from taking a moral stand. In other words, scientific culture measures man according to his ability to act, to turn potential into reality. It does not bother to clarify which potential element would be worth realizing. Scientific culture generates a lifestyle that is universal and which the modern Jew is called upon to digress from, in order to fulfill a tradition that is his own. How can religious Jewish tradition serve as the modern Jew’s own tradition and extricate him from the universal culture of science, according to Rotenstreich? His answer is that the philosophical ideas invested in a life of halakha call for a critical look at the necessary limitations of “shapeless spontaneity” or “spontaneity without boundaries,”30 which characterize a science-based lifestyle. What the scientific culture lacks — pointing to the limitations of the fulfillment of possibilities — is a basic principle in the Jewish halakhic life.

27 28 29 30

Ibid., p. 53. Ibid., p. 52. Ibid., p. 53. Ibid., p. 76. — 23 —


According to Rotenstreich, “The limits of man’s action are determined by scientific and technological knowledge. Jewish tradition, for its part, sets boundaries to man’s action, not determined by the possibilities enabled by his knowledge, but based on the orders incumbent upon him and the responsibility he is required to take upon himself.”31 Thus, the main idea proposed by Rotenstreich is based on the fact that the halakha contains a dimension that is critical of the culture of science. In his view, the adoption of this dimension is a highly significant spiritual act: it has the power to connect the Jew to his tradition and set ethical limitations on the culture of science and technology. The adoption of this critical dimension contained within the halakha is likely to express the main value of secular life — the shaping of human life in an autonomous way, insofar as man fulfills his own sovereignty by imposing limits upon himself. Rotenstreich addresses himself to the individual in his attempt to delineate the secular Jew’s relation to Judaism. Judaism can assist the secular person in shaping his spiritual world and nurturing his autonomous life. In this way, according to Rotenstreich, he can perpetuate religious tradition, while shaping his secular life. Schweid suggests a similar schema — he also addresses himself to the individual. In his view, the contents of religion and a life of faith are relevant for the secular person since they enable him to grasp the significance of his own spiritual decisions as a secular person. In other words, the solutions suggested by Rotenstreich and by Schweid — if we are willing to consider these as real solutions — are suitable for secular people whose spiritual life is sufficiently vibrant, for those who reflect on their spiritual choices and on their spiritual world. Not all Israeli intellectuals address themselves to this group of secular people — some strive to find the relevance of Judaism for wider realms of being, i.e. for Israeli society or for the State of Israel. We will now observe two examples that illustrate this last point. Amos Oz expresses the secular person’s sense of belonging to Jewish tradition, in the following way: in his view, the culture of the people of Israel is made up of a hodgepodge of contents. “The history of the culture of Israel over the last thousands of years is made up of 31

Ibid., p. 61. — 24 —


a series of bitter quarrels […] Jewish culture at its best is a culture of cooperation, of negotiations, of looking here and there […] It is a spiritual essence which goes hand-in-hand with the idea of democracy like a polyphony — a choir of different voices that are orchestrated by a system of accepted rules.”32 And what does this anarchic culture contain, according to Oz? “All that the people of Israel has, all it has accumulated over the generations, what was generated inside as well as what was absorbed from the outside and became a member of the household […] what is in Hebrew and what is in other languages. What is written and what happens outside the written texts.”33 According to Oz, the nature of Jewish culture grants the secular authority a central and vital role. Since the halakha rejects variety, the various factions within Judaism cannot coexist without a “secular” authority or a non-Jewish authority. The secular State is the framework that perpetuates the richness and variety of Jewish culture; it maintains the multiple currents and contents as a shared experience. A.B. Yehoshua goes one step further, and claims that it is the Israeli State and society that have the power to fully enable the unfolding of Jewish culture. Yehoshua’s starting point is that the Jew is defined in two ways — both as member of a nation and of a religion. One of the achievements of Zionism is to liberate him from religion and to define him based on his belonging to a nation. On this basis, Yehoshua presents a hierarchy between the Jew and the Israeli: the Jew always represents a partial way of life, whereas the Israeli represents the full measure of the Jewish experience within a binding framework. “The word ‘Israeli’ represents a total Jewish lifestyle […] This totality stems first of all from living within a specific territory, which is the main basis for identity; from a popular language, and from a well-defined lifestyle and society, which is called upon to provide answers for each individual within its framework.”34 How does the Jewish way of life come about as part of the Israeli way of life? Yehoshua’s answer is that the person living in the Diaspora cannot realize his Jewish values within his life’s frameworks. The Judaism of 32 33 34

Oz, All the Hopes, p. 43. Ibid., p. 48. Yehoshua, In Praise of Normality, p. 126. — 25 —


the Israeli is fuller — he can express his Jewish values within the Israeli experience. This is how he illustrates this point:35 Is an Israeli jail, for example, managed according to the system of Jewish values? This is a real question. When IDF soldiers keep combat ethics, Jewish values are strengthened; but when IDF soldiers commit atrocities — Jewish values collapse. There is no longer any separation between a closed spiritual world, where ideas are discussed, and reality, where this is irrelevant. Large sections of our spiritual heritage were only theoretical, and the fascinating and painful thing in Israeli reality is the exposure of theory to life.

Yehoshua’s ideas represent an attempt to explain how Israeli society, which is of a secular nature, can express Jewish tradition. In the description we provided here, his position is close to Oz’s position: both characterize Judaism in some way (pluralism, ethics) and designate Israeli society — a society of Jews organized within a political life that is unique to them — as the framework in which it can be expressed. Until this point, we have been examining a number of Israeli intellectuals who express, in various ways, the idea of “Judaism as culture.” These intellectuals present Jewish culture as an alternative to Jewish tradition, and attempt to explain how the former is a continuation of the latter. This is what all of them attempt to do: by juxtaposing the opposing terms “source” and “originality,” Brinker opposes Jewish culture to religion in general; Rotenstreich claims that the secular person’s delving into the halakha will serve as a source for the formulation of norms within a scientific culture; Shlonsky believes that the revolution taking place in this generation is part of Jewish tradition as a whole; while Yehoshua aims at realizing Jewish values within the Israeli experience. These intellectuals did not focus on what the Jewish people created in the course of the process of secularization as the basis for the identity of the secular Jew. This focus, which is exceptional within the discourse of Israeli intellectuals, is the key purpose of the secular encyclopedia New Jewish Time (Zman Yehudi Hadash), an enterprise that aims at 35

Ibid., p. 133. — 26 —


strengthening the identity of the secular Jew. What is proposed to the secular person who consults it is not a transcription of Judaism as a culture, but rather the creation that developed in the course of the “New Jewish Time.” This is what the initiator and editor of the project, Yair Tzaban, writes in the introduction to the project volumes. He writes about the famous meeting between David Ben Gurion and Rabbi Yeshaya Karelitz (the Chazon Ish), in which secularism was spoken of in terms of an “empty cart.” Tzaban expresses his surprise at the fact that, in voicing his defense of secularism, Ben Gurion spoke of the settling of the land, of its building and development, but did not emphasize the “achievements of the new Jewish culture, particularly of the Hebrew culture, in all its aspects.”36 According to Tzaban, another example of the disregard for the secular culture is the absence of the word “secularization” or “secularism” from the Hebrew Encyclopedia. This leads him to the conclusion that underlies the foundation of the project of this encyclopedia: “The public that defines itself as secular should learn about the meaning of secularism, and how the processes of modernization and secularization unfolded in our nation and in other nations.”37 Ahad Ha’am, of course, was the first to voice the idea of compiling an encyclopedia that would incorporate all the knowledge necessary for the construction of the identity of the secular Jew. This notion was behind his writing The Treasury of Judaism (which, ironically, was finally published in Russian) Thus, the idea of compiling the New Jewish Time stems from Ahad Ha’am’s thought: the secular person should try to overcome his difficulties by compiling texts that build his identity and by familiarizing himself with them. However, the difference between the two projects is significant: Ahad Ha’am sought to encompass all of Jewish tradition, as familiarity with the works of people of ancient times was a central axis in the creation of the non-religious Jew. The writers of the New Jewish Time disagree with this view; they strive to define the secular Jew’s identity on the basis of secular Jewish culture.38 36 37 38

Yovel, New Jewish Time, p. XI. Ibid., p. XI. See Jobani, Models of Secularism. — 27 —


What is the significance of this change? What does the focus on modernity — or perhaps, confining oneself to modernity — teach us regarding the strengthening of the secular person’s identity? Naturally, one can look at is as an expression of the secular public’s growing self-confidence as it generates its own culture. The process of secularization undoubtedly involves tearing oneself away painfully from Jewish tradition; over the course of the generations, however, there has been an accumulation of rich cultural creation in all realms of life — literature, thought, ways of life, politics, and more — which is deep enough to enable the secular person to take root in it. The focus on secular culture can also be a kind of acknowledgement of the futility of the attempts to rewrite traditional Judaism as a culture. This project most likely implies that the attempts on the part of Ayali, Rotenstreich, Schweid, Brinker, Rabi, and of many others who are not mentioned here, have failed. The contents of Judaism are religious contents; as such, they settle easily into the heart of the simple believer. Removing the religious significance from these contents has turned them into artificial symbols, fraught with explanations and justifications, and they are no longer indispensable. Locking oneself up within secular creativity thus expresses a sign of this disappointment. It could also illustrate the two possibilities that were just mentioned: given the selfconfidence of the secular culture, the editors of the encyclopedia do not hesitate to abandon the pointless efforts of rewriting traditional Judaism as a culture.

III. Reservations about Judaism The views presented in this section share the call to dispense with Judaism as the basis for the identity of secular Jews, both at the individual level as well as at the level of society. This claim is not new: as we remember, Yaakov Klatzkin expressed it very strongly. He believed that religion, which helped the Jewish people survive both spiritually and in its political life, has vanished forever; therefore, the Jewish people recreate itself on the basis of secular elements — a shared territory and the Hebrew language. Another more familiar expression of the alienation from Judaism is linked to the group of the “Young — 28 —

--------------------------------------------------  III. Reservations about Judaism --------------------------------------------------

Hebrews” (best known by the derogatory name “The Canaanites,” coined by Avraham Shlonsky). This group included YoNathan Ratosh and Adia Horon, the linguist Uzi Ornan, the poet Aaron Amir, the historian and journalist Boaz Evron, the journalist and public figure Uri Avneri, and others. One expression of the Young Hebrews’ sharp disagreement with Judaism appeared in Aaron Amir’s article in Aleph, the movement’s journal, in 1950:39 Judaism in its entirety, all the values and creations of its history’s tradition, is foreign to the generation of its youth, the Sons of the Land (bnei ha’aretz), not because they have grown to hate the teachers or as a consequence of a defective teaching method; rather, it has become foreign in spite of those who strove to make them love Judaism. It is essentially foreign to them because the social reality which they come from and into which they are growing is naturally and essentially opposed to the Jewish experience. It is strange to them because they are strangers to it.

All the members of the Young Hebrews shared these reservations concerning Judaism. They also believed that Jewish heritage was retarding the formation of an Israeli nation. However, all the persons mentioned here did not share the same view on every topic; for Ratosh, Horon and Amir, Judaism should be rejected in favor of a primeval Hebrew culture, which they hoped to return to as the basis for the identity of the immigrant society that would crystallize in Israel. This culture, however, was not the final destination for intellectuals such as Avneri — he followed Ratosh’s trend by rejecting Judaism, but drew away from the latter’s cultural visions and called for the creation of a Hebrew collective, which would blend into the political space surrounding it, and whose identity would be shaped entirely within a secular-national framework. The importance of the approaches mentioned above — both that of Klatzkin and that of the Young Hebrews and their followers — does not lie in their impact on the public, nor in their adoption by intellectuals: Klatzkin’s analyses of the loss of Judaism have been forgotten; the visions of Ratosh and his friends about the “new Hebrew” drew few 39

Gretz, The Canaanite Group, p.5. — 29 —


followers and certainly did not develop into a politically significant ideology — the details of these approaches have become dim and their plans seem like naïve daydreaming. The claim contained in these approaches, however, gave rise to a certain option within the ongoing debate on the future of Judaism among Israelis. In other words, those who believe that in order for Israeli society to crystallize it must cut itself off from Judaism are not formulating a new claim. This option has many predecessors, who grant those calling for alienating oneself from Judaism a certain historical and ideological depth. We will now expand several of these ideas. As we proceed, we will be able to see that the reservations concerning Judaism were shared by intellectuals who are very distant from one another: Zionists, who fear for the secular future of the State of Israel (such as Gershon Weiler and Yigal Elam); the perpetuators of the Canaanite idea (Boaz Evron, Uzi Ornan); and anti-Zionists who strive to eradicate from Israeli society nationalist myths that originate in Judaism (Adi Ofir). The reader will also notice that a secular philosopher (Gilad Bareli) and an Orthodox philosopher (Yeshayahu Leibovitz) both claim that the religious meaning of Judaism is unaccessible to the secular person who strives to acquaint himself with it.40 A partial characterization of the model of the views we will be calling “reservations about Judaism” can be found in Charles Liebman’s article on the culture wars in Israel.41 In this article, Liebman distinguishes between two secular cultures present in Israeli intellectual life — the first he calls “Jewish secularism” (which can serve as the general term for the secular cultures that maintain a positive link with Judaism); the second, which is alienated from Judaism, Liebman links with “Western post-modern consumer culture.” This is how he describes it: “This culture is, at best, indifferent to Jewish tradition and in certain aspects, even hostile to it. At the level of the individual, its most extreme supporters avoid celebrating any Jewish tradition or ceremony. 40

41

This last example shows us that, although this chapter deals with the secular thinkers, the nature of their thought is not determined exclusively by their personal identity. We limit ourselves to this group because it suffices for the drawing of a schematic picture of the Israeli debate on the meaning of Judaism for the secular public. Liebman, Culture War. — 30 —


Its extreme political expression is post-Zionism, i.e. the objection to the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish State.”42 Liebman believed that this trend was prominently represented in the media and among academics in the humanities and social sciences departments. In characterizing the nature of this culture, he quoted Ha’aretz journalists. For example, Gideon Samet described secularism as an experience superior to nationalism: “The new language is made up of new forms of consumption of culture and leisure, which are transnational. This is the case, for example, in popular music, cinema, travels abroad, fashion, and even in the way people talk.”43 Orit Shohat writes that “From that day [when Rabin was murdered] onwards, Israeli society should have split, primarily based on this criterion: democrats on one side, and all the others on the opposite side; democrats versus royalists (David’s royalty which is being renewed in Hebron), democrats versus fascists, democrats versus the religious.”44 We will now turn to more detailed expressions of reservations about Judaism, in which the renunciation of Judaism is presented as the conclusion of an analysis — examples of this can be found in the writings of post-Zionist intellectuals. In his book The Work for the Present, Adi Ofir analyses the secular people’s use of texts from the religious tradition.45 He devotes one chapter to the Passover Haggadah, opening with a question pertaining to the unique status of this text for the secular public, most of whom read the Passover Haggadah on the night of the Seder. This is highly surprising, for a number of reasons: the text is not easily accessible to the average Israeli reader — the language is difficult and the text is made up of an assemblage of pieces, which makes it hard to understand; contrary to many other religious ceremonies that are celebrated by secular people (such as circumcisions, bar mitzvahs, and weddings), the Haggadah is not read under the auspices of a religious figure who leads the ceremony and determines its contents — in other words,

42 43 44 45

Ibid., p. 9. Samet, Advance One Class. Shochat, Fascist Ecology. Ofir, Present. — 31 —


secular family members read the Haggadah of their own free will; and in Israeli culture, and particularly in Kibbutz society, attempts have been made at creating alternative, secular Passover Haggadot. The secular person could have chosen texts which he feels closer to and which reflect his own world. Why then are secular people attached to the Passover Haggadah? Ofir attempts to answer this question by looking at its core significance. In general terms, his claim is that “one can identify the entire structure of a discourse that revolves around the opposition between the Jew and the Gentile, whose main outline has been preserved, not only in the rabbinical discourse but also in the secular nationalistic discourse, which rebelled against it and tried to replace it.”46 The aim of this discourse is to organize Jewish self-consciousness and the Jewish historical experience as it has been experienced throughout the generations.47 According to Ofir, the links between Israel and the other nations are shaped along the plot which is told in the Haggadah. Its main lines are as follows: the Gentiles oppress the people of Israel; the people of Israel turns to its God, who responds to this call by humiliating the oppressive Gentile. As stated, this narrative determines the Jewish people’s self-consciousness, and is ahistoric in status: The entire history of Israel is the history of the descent from Egypt, enslavement in Egypt and the Exodus from Egypt. Henceforth, Israel has no history, only stories whose beginning and end are foreknown, since they are generated as analogies to the first and last historical event, ‘History’ with a capital ‘H’. Henceforth, each story will be a reflection of the first story and will serve as a concretization, at different times and in various places, of the eternal return of the paradigm: Israel/Gentile/God.48

The call for the release from these texts is the conclusion drawn from the analysis of the politico-cultural function of Jewish sources, which have caused tremendous damage. The narratives they formulate nurture Israeli nationalism, and particularly the notion that peace 46 47 48

Ibid., p. 53. Ibid., p. 85. Ibid., p. 102. — 32 —


threatens the existence of the Jewish people. The danger such sources entail is particularly severe because they are shared by the various camps of Israeli society, both religious and secular. What does Ofir suggest should be done? One suggestion is “to maintain at all costs the threatening presence of the Gentile and the fundamental role of every external threat that is perceived as an expression of essential otherness.” Another way, which Ofir believes best describes his proposal, is to try to liberate the discourse or change it.49 In Ofir’s case, the alienation from Judaism is justified as a way to “liberate the discourse.” Other justifications for the desired liberation from Judaism are found in the works of sociologist Uri Ram. In his view, Hebrew secular nationalism contains a blurred or repressed form of Judaism — this must be the case, since Judaism is what justified its act of colonization. However, democracy and the secular values underlying this secular nationalism clash with the presence of Judaism in Israel. Ram describes this conflict as follows: Secularism implies the recognition of the absence of any given meaning in the world. Freedom implies generating meaning out of free will. Democracy is a form of regime that is based on secular freedom. There is a basic contradiction between a democratic regime and collective faith, whether it is defined as religion or as nation (naturally, religion and nation can coexist in a democratic regime, however the latter cannot exist within a religious or nationalist commitment). Religion and nationalism strive to mold the individual existential “void” according to the fixed patterns — which are invented every now and again — of collective memory: whether through following the commandments and believing in an eternal omnipotent God, or by striving towards a unique national-historical goal, like the “values” which principals instill in the minds of young children in dark totalitarian countries, God forbid. In order to maintain a democratic life, i.e. a secular and free life, a clear and deliberate act of ‘forgetting’ must be initiated.50

Thus, the strong claim for alienation from Judaism stems from the contradiction which Ram sees between Judaism on the one hand, and 49 50

Ibid., p. 56. Ram, In Praise of Forgetting, p. 357. — 33 —


democracy and the secularism which underlies it, on the other. He thus offers the reader three possibilities: In Israel, a cultural struggle is taking place over collective memory, both theoretically and concretely. It is a struggle between three main historical approaches: the national approach to history, which contains the unsolved contradiction between democracy and Judaism; the nationalistic approach to history, which solves this contradiction by renouncing a democratic future; and the civic approach to history, which solves this contradiction by renouncing the ethnic past. This is a struggle taking place between a past which calls for burying the future and a future which calls for burying the past. The choice is: a tormented past or a reasonable future.51

It is clear to the reader which possibility Ram favors: Judaism is an obstacle to the creation of a democratic and secular future for Israeli society, and it is essential that it be renounced. The intellectuals presented in this section are post-Zionists — their dissociation from Zionist ideology is perceptible even in the short extracts cited in this section. The dissociation from Judaism, however, is not limited to these circles; this conclusion is arrived at through a variety of different and even conflicting arguments, including those marshaled by persons who identify deeply with the Zionist enterprise. Philosopher Gershon Weiler is one such example. In his view, the Jewish halakha is in fundamental conflict with the State as a secular entity: The halakha recognizes only slaves. It recognizes no national will; it relies on the slave’s will whose aim it is to please his master. There is no room in the halakha for the citizen who is free to choose his lifestyle within the framework of laws that he legislates by way of his freely elected representatives. Hence, it is diametrically opposed to the principles that inspire the State, and his life as a person and as a citizen. Perhaps the position of the halakha is that a person need not be a citizen at all; this is the problem of the halakha. The problem of the State is that a person cannot be a citizen and the slave of a being whose representatives claim His supreme authority.52 51 52

Ibid., p. 349. Weiler, Theocracy, p. 291. — 34 —


Weiler knows very well that his claims about the halakha are but one of its many aspects (he even indicates this prominently in his book, on the text appearing on the back cover). His position, however, that Judaism is dangerous for the State of Israel because of the tension that exists between its basic values and the secular State, is based on the recognition of one of halakha’s aspects. In his view, the mere presence of this trend in Judaism endangers the State of Israel. Historian Yigal Eilam expresses a similar view of the struggle between the State and Judaism, and thus his book is entitled “The End of Judaism.”53 Weiler and Eilam’s views differ greatly from those of Ofir and Ram. The differences between them are reflected in the nature and intensity of their dissociation from Judaism. For Ofir, for example, Judaism mutilates the Israeli, in the sense that it contributes to his holding of distorted views; it is at the root of nationalism and stirs up war. In Weiler’s opinion, Judaism as the religion of halakha undermines the existence of the State. In spite of the differences between them, these intellectuals express a shared view: Judaism is perceived as an ensemble of contents which, given what they are, endanger the values of secular life. We will now turn to the last example of the representatives of the position we called “reservations about Judaism.” We are referring to the provocative article written by philosopher Gilad Bareli, entitled “On the Secularized Study of Torah.”54 Bareli directs his claims — and, in fact, his criticism — at the cultural phenomenon of the spread of the study of religious texts among secular people (whether it is the Talmud, the Agadah, traditional biblical exegesis, etc.) This learning takes place in secular batei midrash and in colleges, such as Alma. In his article, Bareli defines the secular person as follows: “[He] is not a person who considers himself as exempt from the fulfillment of religious obligations, but someone who does not recognize these obligations or the source of their validity in any way; he does not recognize them because, for him, they are groundless, which is why they are obligatory for no one. From his point of view, they are not obligations which, for some reason, are not applicable to him or from which he is exempt: they 53 54

Eilam, The End of Judaism. Bareli, The Study of Torah, pp. 9-23. — 35 —


are not obligations at all — neither with respect to their contents, nor with respect to their validity.”55 The aim of Bareli’s article is to show that this secular person — someone for whom the basic concepts of Judaism are meaningless — is a stranger to Judaism. Even if he desires, the religious contents are inaccessible to him. Bareli’s central assumption is borrowed from Russell’s and Frege’s philosophy of language — more specifically, the claim according to which understanding of any content depends on the conditions in the world and on previous assumptions: “The very existence of a content […] and the possibility of it being understood depend on the presence of specific concrete conditions in the world […] in such a way that it is doubtful that whoever rejects them can, in a coherent way, hold on to the possibility of grasping these contents.”56 Since the secular person, according to Bareli, is not someone who rejects the existence of God, but someone who rejects the meaning of the concept of God — he cannot understand texts that revolve around this and similar concepts: What can the totally secular person understand when studying the midrashim on the Vision of the Chariot and the Creation, the laws pertaining to prayer and intention, sacrifices and sacred things. All of these are imbued with religious concepts which, in order to be understood, call for the acceptance of a system of presuppositions, beliefs, and a way of life; they are based on behavioral patterns and the experiences they imply, which are entirely foreign to the totally secular person, who denies and rejects them.57

In other words, the secular person, if indeed he is genuinely secular, the “totally secular person,” in Bareli’s language, must reject any study of religious contents as such, or he must admit that he is not secular in the full sense of the term. One way or another, genuine secularism and any approach to Judaism as a collection of religious contents are two contradictory possibilities. The genuine secular person must avoid 55 56 57

Ibid., p.10. Ibid., p.15. Ibid., p. 17. — 36 —


studying Judaism; naturally, he can study it as historical material or as an ensemble of cultural expressions, but Judaism as a religion is inaccessible to him. Although this chapter deals with the positions of secular intellectuals, we should deviate for a moment from this frame in order to take a look at the deep similarity between Bareli’s claims and Yeshayahu Leibowitz’s position. In one of his articles, Leibowitz responded to the question as to how the secular person could celebrate the Jewish holy days.58 He claimed that there are two ways of understanding the Jewish holy days: as “permanent formulas expressing service to God, which are imposed upon man” or “as human-popular institutions, which were meant to fulfill the needs of man or of the nation.” This dichotomy is essential for Leibowitz’s categorical analysis: “The entire meaning of the holy day lies in its religious content, and any cancellation of this content (which is often euphemized as ‘innovation of content’) is nothing more than the annulment of the meaning of the holy day and its transformation into a pointless festival, devoid of any value or meaning.” Therefore, the Jewish holy days are necessarily foreign to secular people. In a nutshell, it is impossible “to bring free young people to the traditional holidays.” The traditional holy days have no meaning for them and, therefore, “a person cannot feel any affinity towards them, if he does not take upon himself the yoke of the Heavenly Kingdom.” Leibowitz leaves no possibility of affinity with the Jewish holy days — and with tradition, in general — for the secular person. For him, religion has meaning only for the one who believes in its divine origin; the secular person must alienate himself from it if he intends to remain secular. Until this point, we have cited a number of claims made by Israeli intellectuals, all of whom reach the conclusion that the secular person and his world are in conflict with Judaism. The reader may claim that the inclusion of these intellectuals in the same category — Klatzkin, the Canaanites, Ofir, Ram, Weiler, and Bareli — distorts their work, and puts forth a single position entitled ‘reservations about Judaism’ by ignoring or blurring the differences between these figures. This claim must be rejected for two reasons. Firstly, although it can be assumed 58

Leibowitz, Faith, pp. 67-69. — 37 —


that Gershon Weiler had a more positive attitude towards Judaism than Uri Ram, he invested much intellectual effort into clarifying the dangers of Judaism for the existence of the secular state, rather than on delineating a possible meaning of Judaism for secular people. Weiler’s warm feelings towards Judaism are, therefore, outside the realm of our discussion. Naturally, our study is limited to the contents of the remarks made by these intellectuals, rather than to their full understanding in light of the authors’ identity or personality. Secondly, the differences between the intellectuals do not annul the fact that they reach a common conclusion. This conclusion — reservations about Judaism — is of considerable public significance; therefore, if an intellectual holds this view, we should consider it, rather than the justifications he brings to support it, as sufficient basis for characterizing that view.

IV. Spiritual Judaism Over the last few years, Israeli culture — and many other cultures in the West — has been marked by a blossoming of the New Age trend, which includes familiarization with Oriental meditation techniques, numerology, alternative therapy methods, esoteric teachings, ecology, and even Judaism — mainly the Kabbalah. As indicated at the beginning of the chapter, this eclecticism is an essential feature of the New Age: it enables the individual to express his selfhood, as well as the modern ethos of man as a self-fashioning subject. The individual explores the various possibilities, “meanders” among them regularly, and chooses according to his taste. These trends — and, apparently, their predecessors as they appeared in Israeli culture of the late 1950s — can be characterized as follows: unlike the secular positions described above, here the Jewish contents are not voided of religious meaning; while “God” still refers to a transcendental being, this does not imply an acceptance of tradition or a return to it. Religious tradition, as perceived by the bearers of spiritual culture, has no collective meaning, and its interpretation is not given to the rabbis. In fact, God no longer serves as a source of authority with the power to guide the believer through life, but as a being whose presence is mysterious. Thinking about this presence is — 38 —

--------------------------------------------------------------  IV. Spiritual Judaism ---------------------------------------------------------------

likely to rescue man from the sphere of his everyday life, where his soul dwells in exile, and help him discover “another dimension” of his life. Religious symbols are thus integrated into a project whose main focus is to help man discover his individuality, and to discover the divine within him. In other words, as mentioned above, the representatives of this trend seem to have nothing to do with our topic of interest; those advocating a “spiritual” path towards Judaism seem to represent a religious current that has nothing in common with the world of secular people. But how then are we to understand why most representatives of these trends are perceived as secular and that their readers and students are also identified as such? Perhaps this reflects the superficiality of the secular-religious classification or, more precisely, the flaws in the use of the term “secular”? I do not think so. Spiritual trends proliferate among the secular public because some of their key values reflect the secular way of life: they perceive religious contents as raw material for the fulfillment of the idea of autonomous human life. Religious contents are not perceived as a call to respond to the commands of a God who reveals Himself to his people and whose will is transmitted through a common and binding tradition; rather, the Divinity and its presence are more like a resonating box through which it is possible for the individual to feel his individuality, as well as the depth of his life, rather than ordering a specific lifestyle. The secular nature of the spiritual approaches is determined on the basis of the role played by religious contents, and is not undermined by their presence. We will now investigate these approaches through the prism of the world of several such intellectuals, beginning with Pinchas Sadeh in the late 1950s. In the last two decades of his life, Sadeh was deeply involved in editing and publishing religious texts for the secular public, including a collection of prayers, and collected stories about Rabbi Nachman of Breslov and the Ba’al Shem-Tov. His interest in and admiration for Judaism were very uncharacteristic of his early days: in his wellknown book Life as a Parable, published in 1958, he sharply criticizes Judaism, highlighting its flaws. This followed the rejection of his first published collection of poems, Masa Dumah. Sadeh characterizes the critics’ coldness towards these poems as a misunderstanding, which he explains as follows: “I don’t think that the misunderstanding towards — 39 —


me was accidental. I think it had — and still has — a deep reason. I believe that the reason lies in the fact that the Jew […] is essentially non-religious, whereas I am essentially religious.” What is the meaning of “religious” for Sadeh? “The supreme value in my world is the soul, which God created in all its uniqueness, and to whom he gave every fruit of the Gardens’ trees to eat, and every animal and fish to rule over. The world is the soul’s landscape.”59 Judaism, on the other hand, is a collective and suffocating religion — in fact, not a religion but the oppression of the religious feeling. Sadeh explains this as follows: How can something that is not individual be religious? Life, which is God’s world, is directed towards the individual! But do Jewish religious texts contain any recognition of the individual? Do they include any hint of the soul’s everlasting nature? Judaism could only understand the notion of redemption as social redemption, because it understood guilt only in terms of social, criminal guilt; Judaism never gave birth […] to any real genius in literature, philosophy or art unless the individual, by accident or as a result of persecution, sought beyond its borders. […] Judaism is irony, politics, vulgarity, nullity, science, materialism, i.e. everything that seals the source of life, that freezes the heart and shuts any door leading to the Kingdom of Heaven; it is the enemy of greatness, of love, of longing, of charm, of the real sin, of truth itself.

What characterizes Sadeh’s world throughout his oeuvre is his unequivocal reduction of religion to the individual’s attachment to God, and his indifference and even outright mockery towards any broader social context. In his view, life is the story of the individual facing God: “Man is a cosmic being, he exists within the infinite, i.e. within God; he is not a social being, he does not exist within the city or the State.”60 His faithfulness to himself echoes Nietzsche’s motive of “self-creation,” which Sadeh presents as an act of religious significance: “I want to be faithful to life. This is my criterion. I have no other way of coming into contact with God […] Only through life […] this is the only contact I have with the divinity, of which I know nothing, and this I want to express.”61 59 60 61

Sadeh, Life as a Parable, p. 185. Ibid., p. 414. Ibid., p. 36. — 40 —


As mentioned above, Sadeh’s deep interest in Judaism, particularly in Hassidism, in the final period of his life, does indicate a change in his religious world. What Sadeh found at the start of his journey in thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Friedrich Hölderlin, and Herman Hesse, he found in old age in Hassidic works and in the corpus of Jewish prayers, as is witnessed through his project of editing Jewish books. As we recall, Sadeh edited these books for the secular public. His role as mediator was the creation of a rapprochement between the secular, who had become estranged from the spiritual world, and the language and contexts of those books. Through his editing and in the essays he appended to them, he granted them a new meaning, expressing secular values. For example, his editing work made the prayer book (Aneni [“Answer Me”] — A Selection of Prayers and Religious Poems of the People of Israel, from the Covenant of the Pieces to The Present Day) into a series of poems whose common denominator was the potential link between them and the individual’s world. Sadeh states this clearly in the epilogue: Naturally, I had no specific intention of giving this book the shape, even if partial and limited, as a prayer book or a mahzor [festival prayer book], which is why I made my choice without any obligation to normative values. For example, I did not include the Amidah [the 18 daily blessings] although, from the normative point of view, it is the fundamental prayer in the prayer book; of course, as such, it has become rote. What I chose was what evoked in me a feeling of wonder, of magic, of respect, a sense of “how awesome is this place” or “how beautiful is this place.” In other words, my true interest was in prayer as an expression of individual faith, of mental enlightenment or spiritual creation. As for the social or psychological role of prayer […] — that did not interest me in the least.

In spite of his religious state of mind, Sadeh assumes that religious tradition is raw material subject to his judgment and taste. The fundamental justification for the choice of certain texts is the extent to which it corresponds to the world of the individual. These elements — if we return to the example we cited above — stand out in the personal essays included in the book Aneni. Personal moments in Sadeh’s life shed light on the prayers; the meaning attached to them is in fact their power to express the murmurs of Sadeh’s soul, — 41 —


as is all great poetry. What, then, is the difference between Sadeh and the representatives of “Judaism as culture”? Those intellectuals seek to infuse Jewish contents with new meaning, having rejected their religious meaning. In their world, God has lost his status as superior transcendent being and becomes a kind of “literary hero.” Sadeh, on the other hand, cleaves to God; in his world, however, God becomes a means towards sensing one’s own unique existence. The individual’s truthfulness in relation to himself, his uncompromising self-fashioning — this Nietzschean tendency is expressed in a religious tone. To this tendency he adds the expropriation of tradition from the hands of religious authorities: the Jewish books which Sadeh edits are not presented to the reader as part of a religious tradition expressing God’s will, as interpreted by accepted figures of authority; they are presented as spiritual works that have the power to generate “spiritual enlightenment, spiritual creation.” Thus, the ideas found in the forewords to the books edited by Sadeh are expressions of the secular ethos of the individual who creates his own world. This ethos is reflected in the individual choice of the contents of tradition; vowels and punctuation are not the only things that render these texts comprehensible to secular people — they simply make them more accessible. What actually makes them more understandable is the individualistic approach to them, through which the secular project of self-fashioning is expressed using religious language; thanks to these ideas, it is clear and even obvious to Sadeh that his work is suited for secular people: “It seemed to me like I was taking someone, who was locked up inside some Ultra-Orthodox ghetto — I’m referring to Rabbi Nachman — to bring him to the secular reader so that the latter would be able to read him, just like he’d read secular masterpieces like Pascal or Tristan and Isolde.”62 Another intellectual expressing a spiritual approach is writer and educator Yosef Schechter. As a Bible teacher at the Re’ali School in 62

Reuveni, Interview, p. 61. Naturally, the assumption that these books were geared for secular people was not Sadeh’s alone; he published them through publishing houses directed towards secular people (Carta, Schoken). The editors working for these publishing houses shared in his assumptions by agreeing to publish these books, as did the secular people who purchased them. — 42 —


Haifa, Schechter gathered around him a group of youngsters who were involved in spiritual study. Towards the end of the 1960s, some of them went on to establish Yodfat, a settlement in the Galilee. Schechter never moved there but the Yodfat residents continued corresponding and meeting with him, and he came to stay with them several times a year.63 The main idea emphasized by Schechter in his writings is that God exists in man’s soul — or “the divine in man,” as he calls it. Man’s goal is to identify this dimension of his existence, which he tends to forget in his everyday life. In other words, religious life is characterized by a constant awareness of the fact that man lives on two planes: on the psychological-biographical-social plane, and on the plane of “internal meaning,” whose discovery Schechter and his students called “internal work.” The plane of “internal meaning” is the bridge between the world of Torah and our contemporary world, so that instead of saying “I believe” (ani ma’amin), one should say “I am aware.” Schechter explains the principles of Judaism for his contemporaries and replaces “I believe” by “I am aware,” as follows: I am aware of the fact that within myself there is a plane of life other than the plane on which I make do in my daily life at home, at work, etc., and it is the plane on which I become aware of the meaning of my life; I am conscious of the fact that I need to rediscover this meaning constantly; I am conscious of the fact that there is a divine force whose radiation I feel in situations of love, vital spontaneity, responsibility, etc.; I am conscious of the fact that the meaning of my life lies in the wholeness that is in the present; insofar as memories from the past and expectations for the future strengthen this wholeness, I use them.64

Similar to what takes place today in New Age circles, Schechter suggests that Judaism is one among many spiritual contents. He strives to illustrate the similarities between Hassidism and various foreign teachings. In his view, the teachings that call for “internal work” and those that call for man’s improvement (tikkun) share a common denominator. This emerges from the numerous explanations 63 64

Tadmor, The Divine in Man. Ibid., p. 148. — 43 —


he provided his students regarding the meaning of the commandments or other Jewish contents. In answer to the question as to whether there is a parallel to the mantra in Judaism, he replied that in Judaism there is a visual mantra: “I have set the Lord always before me.”65 In an article he wrote on “The Phylacteries from a Symbolic Point of View” (1976),66 he indicated that “the phylactery placed on the head symbolizes human awareness, willfulness, and man’s intention” and added that its place between the eyes represented the center, as mentioned in Indian and Chinese literature. When asked about the importance of the link with Oriental doctrines, he answered: “In our technological and bureaucratic world, most people have distanced themselves from God as well as from the god inside themselves, and these methods are designed to bring individuals and groups closer to the divine within themselves. With the assistance of these methods, any Jew can achieve partial understanding of Hassidism, understand the Shabbat and Yom Kippur from an internal aspect, and may be enabled to seriously advance towards internalizing Judaism as a whole.”67 Through all these explanations, Schechter tried to bring his students closer to Judaism, albeit without leading them towards becoming observant. This he viewed as unacceptable, since it was an extreme reaction to “the ignorance of the religious, internal aspect. In reaction to this, people started leading extreme ritualistic lives. This return to religion has a destructive aspect, it has a measure of superficiality, of fashion. It’s for the masses.”68 Schechter opposes superficiality and the masses to internality and the individual. Following the rabbis and adopting “extreme rituals” are not the desirable path for man to follow in nurturing his spiritual world. In his view, Judaism is part of the discovery of “the divine within man”; “internal work” has no source of authority outside the individual who discovers his hidden existence, the divine within him. What expresses the autonomist ethos of the individual is the eclectic nature of the spiritual tendency, thanks to which secular people can accept it as part

65 66 67 68

Ibid., p. 85. (The biblical citation is based on the King James translation). Ibid., p. 247. Ibid., p. 306. Ibid., p. 302. — 44 —

----------------------------------------------------- V. The distress of secularism -----------------------------------------------------

of their world. The student is exposed to a multitude of doctrines and contents, from which he chooses; through these decisions, he creates his own unique world. Judaism is no longer perceived as a religious tradition, whose interpretation is in the hands of rabbis. It becomes raw material; the individual has to examine for himself which contents are not “worn out” and give them meaning.69 Schechter’s attitude towards Judaism is not very different from that of Sadeh. Both emphasize the existence of God, while transferring the focus from God to the autonomous individual. The divine represents the other dimension of the soul’s life; man discovers its depth and mysteries. The individual’s autonomist position is also perceptible from the status of religious tradition, which is subject to his judgment and affinities; he chooses from that tradition based on his preferences and infuses meaning into its parts. It is therefore clear why Schechter’s and Sadeh’s views on Judaism are convenient for secular people, or at least why we are entitled to call their views “secular,” as per the definition submitted in the introduction: they denounce religious tradition as a set of contents whose meaning is left exclusively in the hands of an accepted religious authority, and express the modernistic ethos, according to which man shapes his own life autonomously.

V. The distress of secularism As we have already mentioned, secularism gives rise to feelings of discomfort among intellectuals, and even among its proponents; although the Jewish collective has liberated itself from an oppressive religious tradition, it has remained rootless, with a weak sense of identity. In addition to this deep discomfort, we should note the difficulties inherent in the three approaches mentioned above, as well as in the traditions of Zionist thought that preceded them. We shall start with the “Judaism as culture” approach. It seems to me that the weaknesses of each of the ideas included in the discussion of this approach above are quite obvious. Is the individual indeed an active agent only in secular Jewish culture — as claimed by Brinker — while 69

Ibid., p. 293. — 45 —


in the religious approach the static and passive aspects are central? Where then, according to this taxonomy, are we to place revolutionary religious creators, such as the Maimonides and Rabbi Nachman of Breslov? Rotenstreich’s ideas give rise to another series of issues: can halakha serve as a source of inspiration for the secular person striving to contain the all-invasive scientific culture? To what extent will he be able to delve into the fine details of the halakhic discussion if most of its significance is foreign to him and its main call is for man to restrain himself? Yehoshua’s claims are also insufficient: how is Judaism to be fulfilled within Israeli reality? His own examples demonstrate the extent of the difficulty: are battle ethics, for example, a Jewish issue at all, and what are the Jewish values that underscore a prison warden’s proper behavior? The weaknesses inherent in the option of “Judaism as culture” stem not only from the problems exhibited by certain specific ideas; more serious problems are linked to its essence. The main point of this option lies in the effort to extricate the contents of Judaism from their religious meaning; it proposes a mixed bag of interpretations for these contents: from the search for a “secular” meaning of the religious symbols found in religious texts (birth, bar mitzvah, marriage and death) to the literary interpretation of the chapters of the Bible. The strong rejection of these religious contents, which is the basic premise of the “Judaism as culture” approach, is deficient in three points. First, as we have learned from works written by sociologists of religion in the last decades, and from the debated of the “secularization thesis,” religions have not disappeared; indeed, they are widespread across Western societies. In spite of the criticism of religion and the decline in the status of religious authorities, people are in need of religious symbols in order to express their deepest inner being. Rewriting Judaism as a human creation amounts to erasing these vital meanings. Second, the spiritual assets of the Jewish people are for the most part religious; these contents are not perceived “from within” as a cultural work, as a whole whose main value is contemplative and aesthetic. The self-perceptions of these contents are religious; they testify to the will of God rather than to the acts of creative persons. In other words, the attempt to conceptualize Judaism as a culture implies a — 46 —


level of contradiction: its proponent is asking to recognize the very thing he is castrating.70 In my view, these problems are attested to by the weak status of the Bible in Israeli society. As everyone knows, it was Zionism that granted the Bible precedence among Jewish sacred scriptures; this was, however, accompanied by a total disregard for its religious significance. Exalting what had already been castrated was an unstable endeavor: the denial of its religious contents weakened the strength of the Bible and turned it into one more book among many literary masterpieces. Finally, Jewish religion — faith, the image of God, and the lifestyle that derives from these — form the common spiritual basis for all Jews. The attempt to formulate Judaism as a culture means erasing the single layer of meanings that is shared by the entire Jewish collective. The second option presented above — the negation of Judaism — meets with another difficulty: the distancing from Judaism is foreign to the tendencies found within Israeli society. According to the Guttman Institute reports, Israel is one of the most traditional Western societies; thus, intellectuals who call for divorcing Israeli society from Judaism are estranged from the fundamental tendencies rooted in the society. We can see this not only in the ideas of the Canaanite Movement and the reaction to them, but more recently, in the protest brought forth in the articles of Bareli and Ofir: the latter condemns the attachment felt by the majority of the Jewish public for the Passover Haggadah, the prayer book and the Yom Kippur Mahzor; Bareli, for his part, objects to the rapidly spreading study of religious texts among secular people. The phenomena opposed by these intellectuals are the reflection of a shared tendency — the secular public’s search for its religious roots without renouncing its secular identity. “Spiritual Secularism,” the third option described above, seems to present an advantage over the two other approaches: it enables secular people to express their values and fulfill their lifestyle without negating the religious meaning of Jewish tradition; it somehow manages to bring together secularism and Judaism as a religious tradition. This 70

Strong formulations of this type of criticism, although slightly different from those brought here, can be found in Kurzweil, Ahad Ha’am. — 47 —


impression soon dissolves under closer analysis: Judaism, as proposed in this option — at least as proposed in the writings of the intellectuals we have discussed — is not perceived as the spiritual baggage belonging to a collective, but merely as part of the world of the individual. In other words, what is suggested in the approaches of spiritual secularism is a kind of “private Judaism.” This is true for two reasons. First, these approaches do see the spiritual contents that a person finds relevant as part of a culture or of a national tradition, but deliberately suggest something eclectic. The contents of Judaism are included in a transnational repertoire, from which the individual person is requested to choose in order to shape his own world. Second, authenticity and autonomy are the key values in these approaches. They are expressed in the call for the individual to decide what contents to adopt, and to continuously reconfirm his choices. The result is that the affinity of the secular to religious tradition is reduced to the individual; this relation has to express his own self, his changing tendencies, and does not imply the acceptance of any external burden. Judaism is included as part of an eclectic repertoire. The relation to Judaism is not based on the acceptance of an external authority but on the secular ethos, whose values are autonomy and authenticity. The writings of Sadeh and Schechter reflect these points, which is why I claim that for them, Judaism does not represent a content shared by a collective. The fact that these circles speak of the Divinity does not alter my claims. The subjective nature of their views — the fact that the focus of religious life is not God but, rather, His presence within man — means that the Divinity cannot function as a source of authority; it is not a transcendental being that shows men how to live. Religious tradition does not indicate what His will is; it is part of an eclectic repertoire which the individual chooses from as he wishes, as he sets out to fashion his own world. From the things I have so far described, we can see what was meant by the “dead-end” — each of these options exhibit essential problems: one, in its attempt to understand Judaism, it castrates its fundamental meaning; another is foreign to the inclinations of Israeli society; and the last ignores the fact that Judaism, in all its shapes and forms, is a content shared by the Jewish collective. The differences between these — 48 —


options can be summed up as follows. “Reservations about Judaism” differs from the two other approaches: it calls for the Jew to renounce tradition, while the other two strive to define his relation towards it. The difference between the two approaches which we grouped together, i.e. between “Judaism as culture” and “spiritual secularism,” is evasive, but remains strong: the representatives of Judaism as culture relate to Judaism as the bearer of a common national content, while emptying it of all religious meaning; they link it to a collective by accounting for its creation and continuity in historical categories. Spiritual secularism, at least as expressed by the intellectuals we have cited, retains the religious significance of Judaism, but deconstructs its collective identity. Thus — and this conclusion has surprising political significance — spiritual secularism is close to the position expressed by the secular intellectuals who reject Judaism; both deprive Judaism of any public status — one neglects the collective aspect of Judaism, so that it not restrict of its adaptability to serve the individual, while the other opposes the public status of Judaism for political reasons. In other words, the various explanations lead to a common position — Judaism is no longer the common basis for Israeli society. It thus emerges that the main weakness of the position which we called “reservations about Judaism” is not exclusive to this position; most surprisingly, this problem is also true of “Judaism as a culture” which, as we recall, proposes to treat Judaism as a national culture. However, can a Judaism whose religious significance has been uprooted serve as genuine basis for society? What Jews coming from distant places have in common is a tradition of religious symbols; in all other aspects, we find only multiplicity. Therefore, any attempt to base the identity of the Jewish public on a national culture, in which secularism must be perceived as the total annulment of any religious meaning, willfully ignores any shared meaning while highlighting the mixed bag of cultural traditions (esthetic, literary, linguistic, etc.) among the various members of the Jewish people. To sum up, the positions we described here present various problems, but they all share one important weakness. The intellectuals who express them attempt to formulate something suitable for their society. Their proposals, however, are sterile, as they are opposed to — 49 —


prominent inclinations of the society (“reservations about Judaism”) or because they do away with what is shared by the members of this society (“Judaism as culture” and “spiritual secularism”). Therefore, in spite of all the efforts of intellectuals to come up with formulas expressing the secular public’s spiritual world, the secular public remains cut off from their past and from the possibility of formulating a common culture and identity. The significance of the claim that these options lead to a dead-end becomes more serious when we recall that this repertoire of solutions did not originate in Israeli culture; these approaches were first formulated as part of spiritual Zionism, in light of the crisis brought about by secularization. As mentioned above, the “reservations about Judaism” approach is clearly expressed in the thought of Yaakov Klatzkin. Another important representative of this approach is Yosef Haim Brenner — this is the gist of his scandalous article “On a Vision of Conversion to Christianity.” According to Brenner, it is a mistake to base the life of the collective on Judaism; identifying with the world of the Bible is a private issue; neither this world, nor any other Jewish content, has any special status. The individual’s identification with specific Jewish works is the only justification for his affinity with them, just as it is the only justification for his affinity with any intellectual work, whatever its national identity. Thus, the claim that the secular person should liberate himself from the burden of his inheritance was not first uttered as part of Israeli culture. This is also true of the position of “Judaism as culture.” Ahad Ha’am’s position was highly important in establishing this approach; he suggested the following model: Jewish culture is the result of the activity of a national spirit which is unique to the Jewish people. This basic assumption does away with the religious significance of Judaism, which is perceived as the creation of the Jewish people. Its moral significance,and the historical value of its works and symbols form the basis for the secular-national meaning attributed to Judaism. The national Jew, i.e. the secular Jew, is called upon to follow it, as a kind of analogy to halakha’s normative lifestyle. The “Book of Books,” however, is no longer a sacred text, and “God” is just another superior being, which the Jew happens to believe in. The duty of the national — 50 —


Jew to familiarize himself with these contents is justified by the latter’s national status. The main herald of the spiritual position in Zionism is Aaron David Gordon. This thinker considered the relation to cosmic life as the main action required in order to revive Judaism. Generally speaking, he identified the return to nature with the return to Judaism; Jewish creation, including religious creation, can only occur as a result of the proper assimilation into the life of the universe. Only the return to nature and the devotion to work, particularly manual labor, can assure the vitality of Jewish creation. Gordon’s view is the example of the spiritual position similar to what was described above in the thought of Sadeh and Schechter. All these thinkers rewrite Judaism in religious terms, as it becomes loaded with new religious meaning, different from its traditional form. It no longer depends on divine revelation; its contents do not reveal His will. Judaism becomes a repository of symbols expressing the individual’s position facing the transcendental or cosmic dimension; its gist lies in the subjective meaning of religious experience. In short, the classification suggested above does not represent Israeli culture alone — to a large extent, Israeli intellectual life perpetuates the trends found in spiritual Zionism. How are we to understand this point? Does this continuation stem from the tremendous impact of Zionist thought on Israeli intellectuals? I do not think so, although these thinkers did leave their mark on the thought of Israeli intellectuals. The thinker who influenced them the most was Ahad Ha’am, if only because his thinking shaped to a large extent the commonly accepted view in Israel of the secular-national position towards Judaism. Gordon’s thought has substantial presence among certain Israeli intellectuals not discussed here,71 and he clearly had a deep influence on Schechter, who wrote a book about him, taught him at the Re’ali School (instead of teaching Ahad Ha’am), and who expressed clearly Gordonian thoughts.72 71 72

For example, Eliezer Schweid, Avraham Shapira and the “Shdemot Circle.” For example, when he explains that those possessing an atheistic conception have no internal relation to society or to nature. In an article written on the 50th anniversary of Gordon’s death, he remarks that “work, and especially agriculture, has two important elements in the internal life of man: the conquest of the universe and the merging into the universe.” Tadmor, The Divine in Man, p. 165. — 51 —


There is no point expanding on the important role played by Brenner in Israeli culture. However, notwithstanding all the influences we mentioned, I do not believe that the positions voiced by Israeli intellectuals are conscious or unconscious reproductions of the possible solutions of the previous generation. The Canaanites did not formulate their position by absorbing Brenner’s arguments, or even Klatzkin’s pessimistic views. It would be pointless to try to name a single source for the entire range of views expressed by the representatives of the “reservations about Judaism.” Could it be that the Canaanite Movement, Gershon Weiler, Gilad Bareli, Adi Ofir, a few journalists from the Ha’aretz newspaper, Boaz Evron, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, and others all reached their conclusions regarding Judaism, based on one or two Zionist thinkers? The ideas of the representatives of the option of Judaism as culture may have been based upon the cultural concept of Ahad Ha’am, but they derived different conclusions from it; moreover, this certainly cannot be the case with respect to the thinkers whom we called “spiritual” (Gordon is totally foreign to Pinchas Sadeh, who never alludes to him in his writings). In other words, the intellectual constructions of Israeli intellectuals were not formulated as a result of the impact of members of the previous generation. This “repeat performance” should be described as follows: Israeli intellectuals share the same repertoire of positions in relation to Judaism as those who preceded them, but did not inherit it from them. Contemporary intellectuals reiterate the same reactions towards an identity crisis that gives them no respite — their sense of estrangement from their ancestors’ religious traditions. They react to this crisis in three ways — expressing reservations about Judaism, formulating it as a culture, and granting it meaning in a spiritual way — all of which attempt to deal with the problem of their identity. In other words, Israeli intellectuals did not develop the answers provided by their predecessors. This limitation — so it should be called — most likely does not stem from an overenthusiastic adoption of Zionism but rather from its abandonment: if these intellectuals were to take a closer look at the solutions offered in the Zionist schools of thought, they might feel the need to go beyond what the latter had to suggest. — 52 —

----------------------------- Chapter II -----------------------------------

Why Spinoza?

---------------------------------------------------------------------  Introduction ---------------------------------------------------------------------

One should not interpret the focus on Spinoza* as indicating that his thought alone can contribute to the discussion of the problems of secularism; in 17th-century philosophy, there are various formulations of secular theologies that introduce the notion of individual salvation independent of divine truth. These philosophical approaches can provide an interesting perspective for examining the problems faced by secularism at any time and in any context. This is the case with Kant’s definition of enlightenment and in his views on establishing ethics through religion; it is also the case with Mill’s and Rousseau’s political ideas. Our preference of Spinoza’s notions for our discussion has both historical and philosophical reasons. The historical reasons lie in the unique cultural context in which his thought developed. Judaism and Jews occupy a special place in his world, while he himself has played a unique role in Jewish consciousness in recent generations: Spinoza is the person who endless numbers of Jewish heretics, lost souls, “free people,” secularists and nationalists have turned to in order to define their individual identity, as well as the ever-changing identity of their people.1 In other words, his thought is intimately linked to the problems of Israeli secular society, although this does not imply that it is philosophically privileged in any way. This claim must be demonstrated by examining Spinoza’s thought, which is the aim of following chapters.

*

1

I quote from Spinoza’s Ethics with the common abbreviations; I use page numbers from other books by Spinoza as they appear in the quotations. Naturally, Nietzsche’s thought has been another important philosophical reference for secular Jews in their attempt to solve various questions of identity. Nietzsche’s impact on Hebrew culture and Jewish intellectuals is discussed by Golomb, Nietzsche. — 55 —

----------------------------------------------------------------------  Why Spinoza? ----------------------------------------------------------------------

In the first part of this chapter, I will be discussing the historical context and describing the unique place Spinoza’s thought occupies in the Jewish search for identity in recent generations. The following section will discuss the philosophical reasons, and will be limited to a few general remarks. The discussion that ensues in the remaining chapters will contribute towards clarifying these points.

I. The historical-cultural context Spinoza played an important role in the thought of many Jewish philosophers, such as Moses Mendelssohn, Moses Hess, Hermann Cohen, Solomon Maimon, Nachman Krochmal, Leo Strauss,2 Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas, and intellectuals, such as Abraham Krochmal, Samuel David Luzzatto, Meir Letteris, Aaron Zeitlin and others.3 It is a known fact that Spinoza’s thought and, more specifically, his political ideas deeply influenced the founders of Zionism: Nachum Sokolov and Yaakov Klatzkin wrote books about him;4 Joseph Klausner referred to him with admiration; and David Ben Gurion viewed him as a guide and encouraged the translation of his works into Hebrew.5 On a number of occasions, he has been described as one of the fathers of political Zionism.6 Spinoza’s life and work also play a role in Israeli culture. In the introduction to his book entitled Jewish Theocracy, Gershon Weiler describes the discussion in his book as a footnote to Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise.7 “Boundless Happiness,” a film on Spinoza which shows the philosopher living in an apartment 2

3

4 5

6 7

For an interesting analysis of Spinoza, his Jewishness, and its significance, see an early article by Leo Strauss: Strauss, Early Writings, pp. 216-223. This is only a partial list. The following people also felt a strong attachment to Spinoza’s thought: Albert Einstein, Henri Bergson, Sigmund Freud, Heinrich Heine, as well as leaders of the Religious Zionist Movement. Several examples of researches dealing with Spinoza’s impact on Jewish thinkers are: Schwartz, Religious Zionism; Goetschel, Heine; Goetschel, Modernity; Yakira, Strauss; Melamed, Maimon; Motzkin, Luzzatto; Kaplan, Freud; Lachover, Haskalah; Levy, The Notion of Judaism; and Navon, Herman Cohen. Sokolov, Spinoza and his Time; Klatzkin, The Life of Spinoza. See the note that introduces the Hebrew translation of Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise, opening page. See for example Strauss, Early Writings, 216-223.. Weiler, Theocracy, p. XIV. — 56 —

---------------------------------------------- I. The historical-cultural context ----------------------------------------------

building in Holon, the publication of a collection of poems dealing with ethics,8 academic papers and university courses, the activities held at the Jerusalem Spinoza Institute, numerous discussions on Hebrew internet sites that are devoted to his thought, his position regarding Judaism, and his special relevance today — all of these are only some of the many cultural activities relating to Spinoza in Israel. We cannot provide a detailed description of all the above. However, we can provide a brief illustration of the tremendous importance of Spinoza for non-religious Jews: the exceptional work of the Hebrew translators of the Ethics as agents of ideas. The Ethics, Spinoza’s most important work, was translated into Hebrew three times9 (few philosophical works have been translated this often).10 The first translation was by the Galician intellectual Shlomo Rubin, the second one was by Yaakov Klatzkin, and the third translation was carried out by Yermiyahu Yovel.11 As claimed above, the approaches of the Hebrew translators of the Ethics to the object of their work are entirely different from those 8 9

10

11

Eliraz, Spinoza and Friends. Rubin, Research of a God; Klatzkin, Ethics; Yovel, Ethics. These translations were carried out over the last hundred years, a period of great intensity in the history of the Jewish people. Rubin’s translation was published in 1885, in the heart of the haskala centers in Eastern Europe; the second one was published in 1925, when the Zionist idea was gaining strength; the third and final translation one was published in 2003, in Israel. The Hebrew readers are not “spoiled” as far as translations of philosophical works go; although Plato’s Symposium and Maimonides’s Guide to the Perplexed were translated into Hebrew three times, many philosophical works have never been translated, while others were translated once or not always fully, and these translations are often outdated. Aristotle’s Metaphysics and his Physics, for example, were never fully translated; neither were Hegel’s main works. Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature is only partially accessible to the Hebrew reader. The same applies to Jewish philosophy — one example is the outdated translation into Hebrew of Moses Hess’s Rome and Jerusalem. Rubin was born in Dolina, Galicia, in 1823. A prolific writer, he wrote extensively about Jewish folklore and traditions. He was deeply interested in persons who were persecuted because of their views or thoughts. He translated K. Gotchkov’s play Uriel D’Acosta. His interest in these persecuted thinkers accounts for his prolonged work on Spinoza. In addition to various essays and articles he compiled about Spinoza, Rubin also translated his Grammar of the Hebrew Language. Rubin’s life was characterized by endless wanderings and conflicts with the rabbinical establishment. He lived a long life and died in 1910. Details of his wanderings and the campaigns against him can be found in Klausner’s preface to Rubin’s book The Ethics and in Dorman, Spinoza’s Disputes, p. 190, note 106. — 57 —

----------------------------------------------------------------------  Why Spinoza? ----------------------------------------------------------------------

of translators of other works.12 The translators of the Ethics, in the translation itself and particularly through what they wrote about it, function as active liaisons between the thought of the excommunicated Jewish philosopher — the “other,” the “first secular Jew”— and the modern Jewish reader.13 The most important part of their work lies in their attempt to clarify the special relevance of Spinoza’s life and philosophical work for the Jewish people today. Each of these translators translated Spinoza’s most important work into the Hebrew language in full awareness that, in doing so, he was making a vital contribution to Hebrew culture, and that the study of Spinoza and his thought could help clarify questions pertaining to a Jewish existence that was no longer based on a religious lifestyle. This awareness is clearly felt in the Hebrew translators’ introductions and in the reactions these translations drew.14 We will simply evoke some of the best-known reactions: Samuel David Luzzatto’s opposition to Rubin’s first attempts at translating the book was based on the claim that the very act of translation would introduce Hellenism — the opposite of Judaism — into the Hebrew language. In his response, Rubin tried to refute this claim by stating that, from a Jewish perspective, Spinoza and his thought were legitimate.15 The fact that Klatzkin’s translation was so deeply rooted in the Hebrew linguistic tradition was the main point that drew Franz Rosenzweig’s attention to it. In a critical essay, Rosenzweig expressed his wonder at the fact that such a translation was carried out by a representative of the formal Zionist approach, which strived to free itself of the Jewish people’s religious baggage.16 Oded Schechter, in his critique of Yovel’s translation, speaks against the hidden Zionist conviction, which Yovel attributes to Spinoza’s thought, and, surprisingly, opposes Yovel’s translation to that of Klatzkin with respect to this parameter.17 These various reactions

12 13

14

15 16 17

I expanded this point in my article: Katz, Spinoza’s Translators. Particularly in these works: Rubin, Six Paintings; Rubin, A Decisive Answer; Klatzkin, The Life of Spinoza; Yovel, Heretics. See introductions to the following works: Rubin, Research of a God; Klatzkin, The Ethics; Yovel, Ethics. Regarding this discussion, see: Motzkin, Luzzatto. Rosenzweig, The New Hebrew. Schechter, Yovel and Spinoza. — 58 —

---------------------------------------------- I. The historical-cultural context ----------------------------------------------

revolve around similar issues: secularism, the attitude towards tradition and religion, Spinoza’s affinity with Judaism, etc. These issues arise both in the translator’s and in the critic’s minds as they attempt to mediate between Spinoza and his Hebrew-speaking readers. One must remember that these acts of mediation between Spinoza’s thought and the Hebrew reader took place in differing historical contexts: Rubin’s translation appeared towards the end of the period of the Haskala; Klatzkin’s translation appeared in the formative years of the Zionist movement; and Yovel’s translation was published when the state was already in existence. Therefore, the differences between these translator-mediators transcend their individual differences (such as their intellectual abilities, level of education, and spiritual affinities); they also reflect broader differences that stem from the conditions that characterized the various periods. Rubin’s attempts at legitimizing Spinoza reflects the distress of an oppressed, educated person living in a traditional community who wishes to remain faithful to his people, although he has no clearly-defined nationalist approach. Klatzkin, for his part, sees great similarities between Spinoza’s thought and Judaism, while he predicts that both will be totally annihilated. This prediction leads him to expect an entirely new beginning for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, where it will succeed in liberating itself from its past. Such a momentum stems from the promise contained in the Zionist idea, which had yet to be fulfilled. On the other hand, some element of the concrete fulfillment of secular Jewish life in the State of Israel is reflected in the search for the historical roots of Jewish secularism suggested in Yovel’s translation. In this sense, we can say that the various translators’ approaches are infused with a broader significance, and that the introductory sections to the Ethics serve as platforms for the expression of the searchings and questionings of secular Jews over the last hundred years. The Hebrew language itself and its status in translations became a special topic of interest in the study of Spinoza. As we all know, Spinoza had an excellent command of the Hebrew language — he even wrote a Hebrew grammar book. Some of the translators have raised the hypothesis that there is a special connection between the Ethics and the Hebrew language, and view the translation into Hebrew as — 59 —

----------------------------------------------------------------------  Why Spinoza? ----------------------------------------------------------------------

an act of restoration of stolen property to its owner. Rubin believed that Spinoza would have written his book in Hebrew had he not been persecuted by the rabbis.18 According to Klatzkin, Spinoza formulated his philosophical thoughts in Hebrew. In Klatzkin’s view, the affinities between the words and the Hebrew language are crucial when seeking to understand Spinoza’s method; therefore, the Hebrew translation should be considered the source of the Ethics, and “it is to the credit of the Hebrew language, rather than to the credit of the translator.”19 In other words, the first two translators viewed their task not as an act of translation, in the usual sense of the term, but as the restoration of a major asset of the Hebrew culture to its rightful place. The original Hebrew character which these translators attribute to the Ethics, as well as the sense of reparation which they attribute to the “return” of the Ethics to the Hebrew language, stem from their understanding of the link between Spinoza and Judaism; it is also colored by their view of the relevance of Spinoza for the Jews of their time. The myth of the Hebrew origin of the Ethics no longer serves as a motive for the last translator of the Ethics. In Yovel’s eyes, a new translation is called for because of reading requirements, because of the changes undergone by the Hebrew language, and because of the need to correct the inaccuracies found in his predecessors’ translations.20 Yovel translated Spinoza into modern Hebrew, a Hebrew very distant from that of the Middle Ages, which Klatzkin used in his translation. The fact that modern Hebrew replaced ancient Hebrew drew much attention on the part of critics of Yovel’s translation. According to Schechter, the critic mentioned above, Yovel’s new translation into secularized Israeli Hebrew, the language of “Protestant nationalism,”21 silences the ancient layers of Hebrew, i.e. the Jewish past. The fact that Schechter’s claim is totally unfounded22 is irrelevant to us; more important is the nature of the issues that arise naturally when we deal with Spinoza: Zionism, secularism, the Hebrew 18 19 20 21 22

Rubin, A Decisive Answer, p. 23. Klatzkin, The Ethics, p. XIX. Yovel, Ethics, p. 59. Schechter, Yovel and Spinoza, p. 107. A critique of this appeared in Schmidt, The End of the Road; Katz, Spinoza’s Translators, p. 60, note 78. — 60 —

---------------------------------------------- II. Special philosophical relevance ----------------------------------------------

language, the attitude towards tradition, the status of religion, the roots of Israeli culture, etc.

II. Special philosophical relevance As we have indicated above the fact that Spinoza’s thought and identity occupy a significant place in the discussion of the identity of the modern Jew is an important point in any attempt to determine the cultural and historical context of his thought. It does not, however, grant his philosophy any particular theoretical status. This status was achieved thanks to other unique qualities that characterize his thought — its relevance for dealing with the difficulties faced by secularism, particularly given its particular difficulties in the Israeli context. The special patterns of analysis in Spinoza’s works also make them particularly germane. What then are these basic issues which make Spinoza’s thought relevant to the problems faced by the secular Jew? The purpose of Spinoza’s philosophical thinking is to help find a “new order in life” and to redeem man’s soul from its distress. The titles of his books testify to this, as do the introductions to a number of them. For example, Spinoza opens his Treatise on the Improvement of Understanding (henceforth: TdIE) by describing himself as akin to a “terminally ill person who sees his certain death in front of his eyes.”23 Through philosophy, he strives to become attached to the eternal and infinite entity, and the permanent joy it entails. In this way, he can be redeemed from the vain desires that fill him, and from the disturbances that beset him endlessly throughout his life. A quick comparison with Descartes’ well-known foreword to the Discourse on the Method highlights the therapeutic aspect of Spinoza’s philosophy. In his foreword, Descartes relates some personal issues, the aim of which was to seek the truth, and the method for achieving this. Spinoza speaks of life’s instability and of the dissatisfaction with physical pleasure and with honor. Descartes’ 23

TdIE, Chapter 7; On the philosophical importance of the introduction, see the comment of Joachim, TdIE, pp. 14-15. In his opinion, the Treatise was meant to be part of a larger work, so that the existing introduction was to serve as the introduction to the planed much larger opus. — 61 —

----------------------------------------------------------------------  Why Spinoza? ----------------------------------------------------------------------

philosophical aim is to discover a theoretical truth and reinforce it, while for Spinoza philosophy becomes a clearly therapeutic act aimed at saving one’s soul. In his foreword to the TdIE, Yosef Ben Shlomo emphasizes this point,24 adding that Descartes did not search for a cure for life in philosophy, since he found its meaning in religion.25 On the other hand, the fact that Spinoza was torn away from his community and from its commonly-accepted beliefs determined the purpose of his philosophy. An acute existential problem lies at the heart of Spinoza’s philosophy, and his main purpose is essentially therapeutic; hence, this thinker is particularly close to the Jewish secular public. This is an important reason (though not the only one, as we remarked) why he and his thought have been quoted by non-religious Jews for many generations in their efforts to deal with their problems, which recall his own, and to define their new identity. The secular person has cast off a rich spiritual and religious tradition which determined the meaning of his ancestors’ life. Although this Jew may long for tradition he can no longer find in it a refuge from his distress. Just like Spinoza, he remains uncomforted by tradition and faces death alone. Spinoza’s exceptional philosophical achievements make him a special asset for the secular Jew; indeed, the philosopher formulates an entire system of ideas that draw on historical religion and its values. Divine protection, for example, is replaced by the conatus, while the comfort of the world-to-come is replaced by the immortal and by the rational love of God. The fact that Spinoza suggests a comprehensive approach to all human aspects of life — ethics, politics, psychology, religion, tradition and the relation to God — means that the secular person tormented by the question of the meaning of existence can draw on an all-encompassing secular philosophical approach; he can adopt a total approach, as complete as religion, while remaining secular. He can achieve this with the help of a thinker whose image and thought he feels close to in a unique way.26 24 25

26

TdIE, Hebrew, p. 10. From this point onwards, I will be using the term “religion” for either of the two revelatory religions: Judaism and Christianity. For more on the meanings of religion for Spinoza, see Yovel, Critique of Religion; Guttmann, Spinoza. Smith, Spinoza and Liberalism, p. XII. — 62 —


Another problem which underlies Spinozian philosophy pertains to the issue of the masses, which renders it uniquely relevant for modern society in general, and for Israeli society in particular. Spinoza was not the first Western philosopher to perceive the masses as a philosophical problem. Plato’s discussions in The Republic, which deal with the productive condition, as well as the political consequences of the soul’s division into three parts, may be considered as one such philosophical analysis. Clearly, the interest of both philosophers in the masses stems from their view of philosophy as therapy. Their understanding that philosophy can cure man from his distress and save him from suffering obligated them to clarify what it could offer to the spiritually weak person, i.e. the masses. In any case, Spinoza’s interest in the masses — his attempts to account for their inconsistency, to clarify their characteristic way of apprehending things, and to suggest ways of putting their life in order — all make him a highly relevant philosopher for modern mass society. Moreover, his philosophical analysis of the masses takes their spiritual difficulties into consideration. What system of belief is required in order to establish a stable authority? What characterizes the mentality of the member of the masses, and what relief does he gain from being part of some futile religion? Such questions take up a significant part not only of his Theological-Political Treatise (henceforth: TTP) and of the Political Treatise (henceforth: PT), but also of the Ethics. This focused attention derives from Spinoza’s conception of the masses as those exhibiting limited spiritual abilities and confused tendencies; he saw the understanding of the nature of the masses as extremely important. To a large extent, Spinoza’s analysis of questions pertaining to society and to power can be characterized as an epistemological-political analysis. The difference between Spinoza and Plato is useful in order to clarify this point: Plato characterizes the average person as one whose desires control his soul; the member of the masses does possess understanding, but it is subjugated, and practically insignificant. What characterizes him is ravenousness. For Spinoza, on the other hand, the masses are characterized by their mentality — the average person is led by his desires, but what characterizes him is his imagination, which is a form of consciousness. Spinoza’s conclusions about the masses include spiritual problems — prejudice, confused — 63 —

----------------------------------------------------------------------  Why Spinoza? ----------------------------------------------------------------------

ideas, as well as the nurturing of desirable beliefs; they are not limited to the clarification of the possible means of control of the uneducated mob lacking in any spiritual dimension, as we find in Plato. Since these questions — existential distress and the question of the masses — form the basis of Spinoza’s philosophy, it can be linked to two models of secularism. The first model could be entitled “metaphysical secularism.” This system comprises the terminology and the approaches which Spinoza develops throughout the Ethics, and through which he suggests a full alternative to religion: the personal God, which stands at the heart of the revelatory religions, is replaced by an infinite substance. This concept of God is totally purified of any concrete cultural or religious aspect. The other key religious concepts are similarly purified: destiny and divine Providence are replaced by the conatus and by an infinite chain of causes expressing the necessary actualization of the substance. The philosopher’s life is secular in the sense that his knowledge is founded on the rejection of all revelatory and historical religions; the philosopher sticks to a logical-philosophical analysis that reveals his existence within the divine and the moral and political conclusions that derive from such an analysis. Spinoza’s interest in the question of the masses does not enable him to suffice with this model of the abandon of revelatory religions. Those who are able to behave in such a way are those who follow the directives of reason. Spinoza often emphasizes how rare such people are, and that society as a whole cannot be expected to act this way.27 The difference mentioned above between Plato’s view of the masses and that of Spinoza is relevant once more. Plato does not view the masses as people who need to get their spiritual life adjusted, but rather as a mob, frantically acting out their desires, who it is essential to suppress in order to create a united society whose pieces fit; the philosopher becomes king, since the masses serve mainly as objects to be controlled rather than liberated. Thus, the crux of the political problem in The Republic is the portrayal of the image of the ruler. Spinoza, on the other hand, apprehends the masses as possessing reason, albeit of a lesser degree and needing to be regulated. The aim of political philosophy is to 27

See for example E 1App; TTP, pp. 76-77. — 64 —


rationalize the entire scope of society’s strengths. In Spinoza’s case, this rationalization involves activation, improvement and intensification. The problem of the masses is not solved by finding the ruler to control it; rather, it implies an in-depth analysis of the mentality of the masses and of the possible ways to improve and empower them — a topic which Spinoza reverts to continuously throughout his writings. Therefore, the validity of Spinoza’s model of metaphysical secularism is very limited. Although secular people who look to Spinoza as a basis for formulating their views emphasize this metaphysical secularism, it cannot, due to its limitations, be considered as the main and most fruitful model found in his philosophy. This philosophy comprises another model, which can be entitled “political secularism.” This model includes his views on establishing the rationalization of society: strengthening political authority, undermining the authority of the religious establishment, and examining ways to formulate a popular religion or religious tradition that pose no threat to the ruling power. One final reason for discussing Spinoza within the framework of our topic is the following: from what has been explained above, it is clear that Spinoza’s philosophy discusses at length the question of the place of religious tradition, and clarifies the reasons for its survival. In the interpretations of Spinoza, one often finds complaints as to the lack of understanding of man’s historicity. These interpreters claim that Spinoza does not perceive man as a historical creature, but that man is only discussed on the basis of his ontology and of the epistemology that derives thereof.28 As some interpreters have noted in recent years, this analysis is erroneous.29 In the following chapters, I will attempt to address this question and will argue in favor of the important role played by Spinoza’s historical consciousness.30 In any case, and quite surprisingly, Spinoza’s thought on questions pertaining to secularism and traditionalism is unique not because of its historicity, but rather as a result of its focus on ontology, which others see as a weakness

28 29

30

This view is expressed in, for example, Hampshire, Spinoza, p. 194. Preus, The Bible, p. 32 and Chapter 5; Smith, Spinoza and Liberalism, p. 63 and notes 16 & 17, p. 225; Morrison, History. Chapter 8, particularly the end of the chapter. — 65 —

----------------------------------------------------------------------  Why Spinoza? ----------------------------------------------------------------------

in his thought. Spinoza’s ontological analysis is of particular value in the clarification of cultural questions. Spinoza analyzes the necessity of tradition and the ways to moderate it, first and foremost within the framework of ontology. Passivity and being mired in imagination characterize man in general, and the masses in particular, not because of some specific historical link, but due to the structure of the finite entity called “man.” From the perspective of this philosophy, the obstinate existence of religions in the Western world, which perplexes some sociologists of religion, as well as the blurring of the sharp dichotomy between traditional and modern societies, are developments that are to be expected. There are fixed givens within the nature of man and society, in its finite existence, in its limited consciousness and necessary passivity that call for a permanent, continuous and allpenetrating influence of traditions, including religious traditions. This “eternity” which is revealed through Spinoza’s ontological analysis was abandoned by modern thought on tradition, due to the latter’s oversensitivity to historicity. This is another reason for seeking solutions to the questions this book addresses within Spinoza’s thought.

— 66 —

---------------------------- Chapter III ----------------------------------

Imagination and the Masses: An Outline of the Object of Politics

Imagination and the Masses

----------------- I. Non-reflective consciousness and the image of the dream  -----------------

This chapter focuses on imagination, i.e. the cognitive function characteristic of the masses. My intention is not to provide a comprehensive analysis of this concept, but to clarify certain issues relevant to the discussion presented in this section.1 I will discuss the concept of the imagination under three rubrics, each focusing on a specific philosophical domain: epistemology, psychology and politics. This division is not justified methodologically: the first level of knowledge, centered on the imagination, like many other topics in Spinoza’s thought, cannot be exhausted by an in-depth discussion within the framework of a single philosophical field. This division thus serves practical purposes and the sake of clarity, facilitating identification of the problems discussed in each of the following chapters, as well as the solutions I will suggest for them.

I. Non-reflective consciousness and the image of the dream : the epistemological aspect Spinoza presents his epistemological theory in the TdIE, in his Short Article on God, Man and his Happiness (henceforth: KV) and in the Ethics.2 He describes the various levels of knowledge and provides examples of them. The first level of knowledge is based on the perception of single 1

2

The issue of imagination is often discussed in the interpretation of Spinoza. See, for example: Raven, Tradition; Blair, Imagination; De Deugd, Imagination; Garret, Truth and Imagination; and Preus, Spinoza and Vico. Particularly in E 2p40s2; E 2p41-43; TdIE in its entirety, where the degrees of knowledge are discussed in pp. 8-12. — 69 —

------------------------------------------------------ Imagination and the Masses ------------------------------------------------------

elements which our senses relay to us in a fragmented way. In the Ethics, this type of knowledge is entitled “opinion or imagination.”3 This knowledge is based on vague experience (experientia vaga), on a perception arising “from hearsay” (ex auditu) or from some sign (ex aliquo signo) which all may employ as they see fit.4 Spinoza distinguishes three types of defective ideas that are included in the first level of knowledge: fictive, doubtful and false ideas; these are mostly discussed in the TdIE, pp. 50-69.5 The second level of knowledge is entitled “reason”; it is based on the perception gained with the help of general concepts.6 The third level is entitled “intuitive science” (scientia intuitiva) in the Ethics; it is described as the knowledge of something gained with the help of its “proximate cause,” i.e. through God.7 In the TdIE, this type of knowledge is explained in terms of the individual’s self-perception.8 In the TdIE, Spinoza provides several examples for the first level of knowledge: the fact that I know my date of birth; that I will eventually die one day; that oil feeds fire; and that man is a thinking animal.9 These examples are not similar: awareness of my date of birth is based on hearsay, whereas knowledge concerning the effect of the oil on the fire is based on vague experience. In the TdIE and in the Ethics, Spinoza illustrates the difference between the three levels of knowledge through a single example — finding a fourth number with the help of three numbers and the proportion between them.10 3

4 5

6

7

8 9 10

E 2p40s2. On the difference between Spinoza and Plato in the understanding of the imagination, see De Deugd, Imagination, p. 22. TdIE, p. 8; KV, Part II, Chapters 1 and 2. Idea ficta, idea falsa and idea dubia are all opposed to idea vera. Joachim, TdIE, Chapter 4, calls these types pseudo-cognitive types. De Deugd, Imagination., p. 69, rightly criticizes this attempt. There is a difference between the Ethics and the position expressed in the TdIE. The approach expressed in the latter is closer to the first degree of knowledge, whereas in the Ethics, it is closer to the third degree. The question as to how a person can surpass the third degree of knowledge is discussed in De Deugd, Imagination, p. 185. Spinoza’s use of this term (for example, in E 1p28s), makes it clear that he refers to God. TdIE, p. 9; Joachim, TdIE, p. 47. TdIE, p. 8-9. Ibid., p. 9-10; E 2p40s2. — 70 —


In presenting his epistemological theory, Spinoza distinguishes between its three levels; many of his interpreters follow his lead and emphasize this division and the links between its elements.11 In fact, Spinoza’s epistemological theory actually suggests a distinction more basic than these degrees — that between non-reflective and reflective consciousness. The various divisions suggested by Spinoza easily fit this dichotomy. Imagination, with all the faulty ideas it produces, is an example of non-reflectivity, while the two other degrees of knowledge, reason and the science of observation, are examples of reflective consciousness, albeit with varying degrees of intensity.12 The importance of this distinction — between reflective and nonreflective consciousness — is particularly salient in places in which Spinoza describes imagination as a kind of “dream” or “daydream”13 — an image he often uses. In the TdIE when describing the false idea, he indicates that “falsehood, in itself, is not very different from the dream (non multum differat a somnio).”14 The false idea is also described as “dreaming with our eyes open, or while awake.”15 In TdIE, Spinoza explains one of his main epistemological ideas — that truth is a test to itself — by using these images: “Anyone who possesses the truth can therefore not doubt the fact that he possesses it, but whoever is deep into a lie or a mistake can easily imagine that he is in the truth. This way, the dreamer can dream that he is awake, but the person who

11

12

13

14 15

For the possible sources of Spinoza’s epistemology, see Wolfson, Spinoza, vol. II, Chapter 16, particularly p. 132, where he claims that Spinoza adopts Saadia Gaon’s understanding of the term “auditory knowledge,” i.e. what becomes known through hearsay. However, contrary to Saadia Gaon, for Spinoza this represents the lowest degree of knowledge, and is illegitimate from a philosophical point of view. At this point, the reader may rightly wonder what a non-reflective idea refers to. Indeed, every idea contains some degree of reflectivity, or else one would not be able to describe it in terms of cognitive activity. The answer must take into consideration the possible centers of reflection rather than its degree alone and the means of confirmation included in the idea. This point will be clarified in the next chapter. Spinoza uses few images, and he certainly does not grant them any special status in the development of his thoughts, as Plato does in The Phaedrus, for example; thus if this image recurs, there must be good reason for it. TdIE, p. 24, note 1. Ibid., p. 25. — 71 —


is awake can never think that he is dreaming.”16 He reverts to these images in a more careful and suggestive tone, in his description of the deeds of the prophets in TTP.17 The aspect common to imagination and the dream is their state of consciousness. The mind is not active in combining ideas and creating links between them; they are created “without approval,” as thoughts wander about. The imagining consciousness is expressed in the dream and in the imagination by means of passive acceptance;18 this passivity stems from the absence of the reflective dimension within it. As a result of this characteristic of imagination, Spinoza emphasizes, through various examples, the absence of doubt of defective ideas. In the TdIE, he presents the day of birth and parents’ identity as examples of such ideas, and adds that what he means are “matters about which I have never felt any doubt.”19 The absence of doubt, here, does indicate the presence of some nucleus of truth found in the defective idea — as De Deugd (among others) believes;20 rather, it points to the nature of the imagining consciousness. The fact that this consciousness is devoid of any reflectivity means that it neither negates nor imposes anything in any substantial way, but that in its passivity it accepts the external data as unquestionable. The absence of doubt, or the imaginary certainty, is similar to the absence of doubt that characterizes the dreamer’s judgment of the images of his dream. In other words, the absence of doubt points to the passive adoption of a datum external to consciousness, rather than its raw truth.21 One could also add that this characteristic of doubtlessness points to the basic tendency of the nonreflective consciousness: due to its passivity, it tends to approve while 16 17 18 19 20

21

KV, p. 163. TTP, pp. 13-16. I will revert to this topic in Chapter 4, section 5, and Chapter 5, section 2. TdIE, p. 8. De Deugd, Imagination, p. 22; such a claim corresponds to De Deugd’s main tendency, which involves identifying the epistemic value of the first level of knowledge (see, for example, pp. 51-52). E 2p49s: “When we say that a man rests in false ideas, and does not doubt them, we do not, on that account, say that he is certain, but only that he does not doubt, or that he rests in false ideas because there are no causes to bring it about that his imagination wavers .” See also E 2p44s. — 72 —


fully distracted, rather than to negate, since negation implies a greater measure of distinction concerning the negated object and the reasons for its negation, i.e. a greater measure of reflectivity — that is, unless the negation is already included in the idea that was accepted “without any doubt” by consciousness. In other places, Spinoza distinguishes more directly between reflective and non-reflective consciousness without making use of the image of the dream; these examples may help us understand this distinction and its importance. In the concluding words of the Ethics, Spinoza contrasts the ignorant and the wise man, writing as follows: “For not only is the ignorant man troubled in many ways by external causes, and unable ever to possess true peace of mind, but he also lives as if he knew neither himself, nor God, nor things.” The wise man, on the other hand, “insofar as he is considered as such, is hardly troubled in spirit, but being, by a certain eternal necessity, conscious of himself, and of God, and of things, he never ceases to be, but always possesses true peace of mind.”22 Consciousness and the absence thereof are opposed to each other with respect to three entities: the mind, God and things. It is vital to mention these three since reflectivity, just like non-reflectivity, cannot become clear within the framework of consciousness alone, without its objects, so to speak, not even in relation to the link between consciousness and a specific object.23 For 22 23

E 5p42s. Spinoza’s formulation in this concluding paragraph of the Ethics is very important. Two things can be said about the text at this point: 1. In this paragraph, Spinoza draws a comparison between the ignorant and the wise man and describes their situation while reverting twice, and in the same order, to the objects of their consciousness (sui, Dei, rerum). The special position of this concluding paragraph and the exact and frequent repetition of these words grant them special importance. From an ontological point of view, the words should open with God and not with the self; Spinoza, however, opens in this way in order to point to the reflective dimension of knowledge. This reflective dimension does not refer only to the internal mode of consciousness; it necessarily depends on the distinction of the external context. Therefore, the self is emphasized, while in the same breath it is repeatedly recognized in things and in the divinity — this time, of course, in proper order. 2. The ignorant is called “ignarus,” while his lack of self-consciousness is indicated by the words “quasi inscius sui.” The words “inscius sui,” as far as I know, is not found in classical Latin. Even if this is not an innovation of Spinoza’s, this non-classical, “new” meaning of self-awareness, a form of subjectivity, is emphasized by the use of “quasi.” Self-consciousness is also emphasized here by the — 73 —


Spinoza, unlike Descartes, understanding something in a clear and distinct manner is synthetic rather than analytic.24 It is only by placing an element within its context and exhibiting its causal affinities that one can know it in an adequate manner.25 The same is true regarding the mind’s perception of itself. Therefore, the mind’s knowledge of itself or absence thereof represents the immediate knowledge of its causal link to things and to God. Reflection and non-reflection are therefore anchored in a general disposition, rather than in the internal situation of consciousness.26 This disposition is determined by the context in which man apprehends himself and things; essentially, things can be conceived in two ways: through non-reflective imagination or reflective thought: “either insofar as we conceive them to exist in relation to a certain time and place, or insofar as we conceive them to be contained in God and to follow from the necessity of the divine nature.”27 Clearly, these two options represent the extremes. The total absence of imagination represents God alone: “If there is a God, or omniscient Being, such a being cannot form fictitious hypotheses.”28 Spinoza repeatedly formulates his considerations about man and his abilities, using quantitative conditional words (quatenus, eatenus).29 Man, including the ultimate philosopher, cannot extricate himself from his finite status and from his passive condition, while the common person also exhibits a certain degree of activity and reflectivity. This fact, that

24

25

26 27 28 29

pronoun in a reflective form and by the fact that Spinoza speaks of the absence of knowledge differently from the way he refers to the ignorant. See Gilad, Method, pp. 91-92. This is discussed at length there. On this point, Spinoza’s claim in the TdIE, p. 37 is of great importance: “For the latter [from eternal things] are all by nature simultaneous.” The epistemological ideal of Descartes’s “clear and distinct” refers to synthesis because the knowledge of something implies the exposure of its causal context and the presence of its limits. The difference between Descartes and Spinoza which I remarked above is particularly relevant to the claim regarding the cogito: Descartes points to the “I” as a thing whose necessary existence is detached from any context. See note 23; compare: Hallett, Spinoza, p. 66. E 5p29s. TdIE, p. 19. For example, E 5p30,31; E 5p11,12. Such examples are found on nearly every page of the Ethics. The use of these conjunctive adverbs (together and separately) is more complex, as is indicated, for example, in Cassel’s dictionary. — 74 —


man’s consciousness is always found between these extremes, between full reflective activity and its absence, and between being aware of the fullness of the eternal context of things and failing to distinguishing it, does not rule out the importance of the sharp and primal distinction between these poles. Only through this distinction can one understand the nature of man’s active and activated consciousness, as well as its status. The level of reflectivity of consciousness is perceptible at the psychological level as well. All of Spinoza’s ideas on passions and passivity are linked to this topic. I will limit myself to a short remark and will expand further in the next section. In the extract from the final words of the Ethics, which are cited above, the tranquil wise person is contrasted with the ignorant person, who is ceaselessly tossed about by his thoughts. In the foreword to the TdIE, Spinoza also emphasizes emotional turmoil and lack of reflectivity. After his description of the mind’s confusion, he adds that “this as a fact I suppose everyone knows, though few, I believe, know their own natures.”30 Between the two parts of this sentence, there is an apparent opposition rather than a contradiction. Those who experience being tossed about are those who do not know themselves. More precisely: their excitement stems from the nature of their consciousness, just like the dreamer — to use Spinoza’s image of the non-reflective consciousness — is moved by the images of his dream precisely because he cannot know himself or the way he is in the world. The distinction between reflective and non-reflective consciousness, as well as its description using the image of the dream, touch on essential points in Spinoza’s thought. In using these motifs, Spinoza perpetuates a long philosophical tradition which associates the ignorant with the dreamer and the goal of philosophy with awakening and the effort to live a life of wakefulness.31 At this point, we should be more specific and clarify the role of this image in Spinozian epistemology. As

30 31

TTP, p. 3. Plato’s images of philosophy as a form of awakening are also applicable to Spinoza’s philosophy. The non-philosophical person is caught in a deluding web of sleep; thus, imagination characterizes the cognitive activity of the masses. — 75 —


mentioned above, the types of human consciousness are not identical to either of the two extremes — absence of reflectivity or full reflectivity; moreover, we can assume that just as the human body is made up of different types of elements, so too man’s mind is also heterogeneous.32 The nature of the ideas it comprises and the degree of intensity of reflection they entail are neither homogeneous nor permanent.33 The heterogeneity of consciousness and the existence of secondary degrees of knowledge — not necessarily three or four — point to the rich and concrete aspects of thought, but do not rule out the validity of this basic distinction between the tendency of finite consciousness towards passivity or towards activity or between reflective and non-reflective consciousness. The image of the dream points to one pole of the repertoire of consciousnesses, and, its importance notwithstanding, bears a schematic role; the tendency of consciousness towards passivity rather than reflexivity is not necessarily simple or unitary, and is certainly not as transient as the dream situation.

II. Instability, associations and egocentrism: the psychological aspect At the opening of TdIE and in the course of the Ethics, Spinoza describes man’s sufferings (animi fluctuatio); he recalls the masses’ craving for things that “not only bring no remedy that tends to preserve our being, 32

33

“The human body is composed of a great many individuals of different natures”; “Corpus humanum ex plurimis diversae naturae individuis componitur” (E 3p17s). This point can be derived not only from the relation between the attributes, but also, for example, from the fact that the person living with the knowledge of “himself, God, and things” knows the structure of reality only as a sketch. He is aware of the existence of the infinite attributes, but not of their identity. He knows the logic behind the allpenetrating multiplicity of substance, although he does not grasp the concrete fullness of this multiplicity. TdIE, p. 37: “It would be impossible for human infirmity to follow up the series of particular mutable things.” This schematic aspect of the philosopher’s understanding leads him to notice continually the eternal existence of things, but leaves a large space for dim ideas and for varying degrees of reflective intensity, i.e. of heterogeneous consciousness. While I do not deny distinctions between different levels of knowledge, they should, however, be considered as the conceptual basis for understanding mental activity in light of Spinozian ontology and psychology, rather than topics that exhaust all manifestations of thought. — 76 —

----- II. Instability, associations and egocentrism: the psychological aspect  -----

but even act as hindrances, not infrequently causing the death of those who possess them.”34 These things that only seemingly satisfy the mind are “Richness, Fame, and the Pleasures of Senses.”35 The mind becomes totally addicted to these pleasures, and is loath to give up what is certain for something that is still uncertain,36 i.e. to prefer an unknown pleasure over a known pleasure. However, once the mind has achieved satisfaction “… it is followed by extreme melancholy, whereby the mind, though not enthralled, is disturbed and dulled.”37 In other words, the situation of the mind is that of someone unable to subdue his desires and hence is depressed due to his dissatisfaction. The turbulence — between uncontrollable desires and their pointlessness — only illustrates what Spinoza often points to as the telltale sign of man’s distress: confusion, running around between opposite excitations, living between hope and fear, and not knowing the external reasons; “…like waves on the sea, driven by contrary winds, we toss about, not knowing our outcome and fate.”38 At the beginning of the TdIE, he compares this existence to the situation of “a sick man struggling with a deadly disease.”39 Life experience acquaints all men with this inconsistency — even those who do not know themselves.40 This is thus a starting point for philosophical analysis rather than a conclusion that emerges from that analysis. In the course of his psychological discussions in the Ethics, particularly in Book III, Spinoza describes this inconsistency in what can be called “phenomenological” terms; he also explains it and the suffering it involves. It is important to recall that the aim of Spinozian philosophy is not only to save man from the turbulence of his mind, but also to grant these phenomena a comprehensive articulation. This task is not a means only; it is an issue in itself. In the next section, we will discuss this in greater depth. At this point, we should simply recall 34 35 36 37 38

39 40

TdIE, p. 5. Ibid, p. 3. Ibid, p. 6. Ibid, p. 4. E 3p59s. The masses (vulgus, multitude, plebs) are characterized by inconsistency, an addiction to passions, foolishness and feelings of inferiority. Spinoza refers to this repeatedly in his writings: see TTP, pp. 13, 57, 77, 81-82. TdIE, p. 5. TTP, p.3. — 77 —


that human faults are not, in Spinoza’s eyes, disabilities that must be erased at once; they are necessary expressions of divine multiplicity.41 This approach determines the non-judgmental tone that characterizes his analyses of human weaknesses and ailments. One example of this is his famous claim that he would seek to examine human feelings as people look at lines and volumes.42 The main point in this statement is not the assertion of a logical and alienated analysis, as might be understood, but the emphasis on the suspension of judgment and the full commitment towards understanding people as they are, with all their weaknesses and in all their wretchedness.43 The reasons for the inconsistency of the mind and for its sufferings can only be fully apprehended within the framework of Spinozian ontology,44 the starting point of such an analysis being the conatus. The striving towards existence, as commentators rightly emphasize, is a dynamic act between what strives towards existence and what is outside its realm.45 At the beginning of Book III of the Ethics, Spinoza presents some of its basic rules: something can only be destroyed by an external cause,46 and “The striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being involves no finite time, but an indefinite time” (indefinitum).47 From that point on, particularly from Proposition 14 in Book III onwards, it becomes clear that the way emotions exist in the mind depends on the way external things impact on it. The structure of emotions, as revealed in Spinoza’s theory of the affects, is antipodic. 41

42 43

44 45

46 47

The first book of the Ethics concludes with the following topic: to the question why God did not create all men so that they would be governed by the command of reason,” he answers as follows: because he did not lack material to create all things, from the highest degree of perfection to the lowest.” E 3pr. This approach characterizes Spinoza’s thought in other places as well. At the beginning of the TP, he criticizes the philosophers who in his view apprehend people “not as they are, but as they themselves would like them to be” (TP, p.287). Spinoza’s approach is based on his doing away with normative behavior, which characterizes weaknesses as bad or wrong. See E 3pr and note 41 above. This topic will also be discussed in later chapters. Hallett, Spinoza, Chapter 4; see also Lloyd, Nature, from p. 13 onwards, including a comparison with Leibniz and Descartes. E 3p4. E 3p8. — 78 —


Sadness and happiness, and all the other emotions that are defined in relation to them, are perceived with the aid of the conatus, based on their capacity to strengthen or weaken existence. The main concept used in this analysis is association, the general mechanism of which is outlined in Proposition 14: “If the mind has once been affected by two emotions at the same time, it will, whenever it is afterwards affected by one of the two, also be affected by the other.”48 The explanation provided as proof is based on the fact that man apprehends the outside world through himself; the activation of external bodies tell us more about our own bodies than about these external bodies. The two types of impression become indistinguishable as they are apprehended by the body, and become linked to one another. This associative aspect is therefore a basic expression of man’s egocentric existence, of the distorted prominence of his body and of his entire individuality as the main medium through which things appear.49 Associativity, the mechanism of linking random things analyzed throughout Book III expands continually as per its nature, thereby turning man into a hyper-sensitive creature that is continuously tossed about. The untrammeled spreading of associations stems first of all from the nature of imagination — it places in the present an idea that does not exist, and renders it present.50 Therefore, the impact of a thing is not limited to the present: “Man is affected with the same affect of joy or sadness from the image of a past or future thing as from the image of a present thing.”51 Since the image of a thing comprises its existence, “as often as we recollect a thing — even though it does not actually exist — we still regard it as present, and the body is affected in the same way.”52 The random and fragmented perception of the imagining person 48

49

50 51 52

A similar principle is formulated in E 2p18: “If the human body has once been affected by two or more bodies at the same time, then when the mind subsequently imagines one of them, it will immediately recollect the others also.” See Hallett’s description of man’s egocentrism in Spinoza, p. 65. He is absorbed by the temporary existence of things and does not observe their eternal status. This implies mental poverty, and man’s imposing himself upon nature and divorcing it from the rest of mankind. See also De Deugd, Imagination, p. 62. E 2p17d, cd. E 3p18. E 3p47s; E 3p36; E 3p36d. — 79 —


is thus not limited to the presence of external things; it is subject to ongoing and unlimited presence. The influential things resonate repeatedly within consciousness. In other words, the association resembles the dream; it is presence contained within consciousness, in which the ideas drift about, without any reflective dimension. They “hatch” and wander back and forth endlessly by themselves, tossing the mind about. The strengthening of the associative mode mainly stems from its transitive nature. The mind’s attitude toward things is not determined within itself alone, but also through the mediation of a third party: “If we imagine a thing like us, toward which we have had no effect, to be affected with some effect, we are thereby affected with a like effect”53; if someone, who has still not provoked in us any emotion, arouses joy in someone who is similar to us, we will feel love towards him; and the opposite is true for sadness and hatred.54 These arbitrary networks of ideas are created in various ways: something that makes us feel happy, and which in our eyes resembles something that makes us feel sad, will give rise to both feelings of hatred and love at the same time;55 whoever imagines that the person he hates is possessed by sadness, becomes happy, and vice versa.56 Emotions that originate in objects that are similar to those that gave rise to emotions — this linking mechanism is not limited to private subjects, but stands at the root of generalizations: “If someone has been affected with joy or sadness by someone of a class, or nation, different from his own, and this joy or sadness is accompanied by the idea of that person as its cause, under the universal name of the class or nation, he will love or hate, not only that person, but everyone of the same class or nation.”57 The fact that emotional existence is found through the ongoing mediation of additional subjects means not only that we will react to a growing number of things (for example, all the members of a collective arouse 53 54 55 56

57

E 3p27. E 3p27s. E 2p17. E 3p23. In the note to this proposition, it is indicated that this happiness can hardly be stable (vix solida). E 3p46. — 80 —


fear because one of them is violent); it also means that our feelings will be more intense and conflicting. If we love something that someone else loves, we love is all the more stably; likewise, if we love something that someone we hate loves, we will suffer from the mind’s agitation.58 In other words, the associative model of the imagining consciousness, or of the tossing about of the mind, is disseminated as a result of the possibility of rendering present non-existing ideas in the imagination and due to their epidemic-like transitivity: “Anything whatever can be the accidental cause of hope or fear.”59 They result in the mind being tossed about endlessly, since “there is no hope without fear, and no fear without hope.”60 All this can be summarized as follows: the associative tendency of consciousness is the result of egocentrism. The arbitrary collection of ideas is possible due to this principle: the impressions left by two bodies are linked to one another because they are contained among the impressions of the apprehending body, which becomes more influential than the impressions of the two separate bodies. There is one important general point which we may learn from the associative pattern; it is formulated in clear terms in the note to Proposition 32, in Book III. Spinoza explains, following a long discussion on associations, that experience teaches us that our existence is similar to that of children, as they “…laugh or cry simply because they see others laughing or crying; moreover, they desire forthwith to imitate whatever they see others doing, and to possess themselves whatever they conceive as delighting others….” What is striking in this comparison to children is the aspect of passive existence in the imagination. Another point expressed in this comparison — which is of interest to us at present — is the child’s “domination” of the world.

58 59 60

E 3p31. E 3p50. E 3p50s. These claims, which bear rich existential significance, stem from the definitions of the basic terms which they employ. As mentioned in E 3p18s2, hope is an unstable form of happiness, which stems from image we have of something in the future or in the past which we are uncertain about. Fear equals unstable sadness and is described in identical terms. These passions are generated out of doubtful images, and as such they also involve the opposite passions. — 81 —


Just like the imagining person, the child cannot attain anything beyond himself. Anything outside himself must be absorbed by him — this we learned from the discussion on the strengthening of the associative model. The networks of associations to be found everywhere mean that we project ourselves more and more onto the world. Naturally, this projection is not an expansion but a distortion. The associative model thus sheds light on the nature of egocentrism: the false attribution of things to the individual distorts the external world, while at the same time conceals its separate existence. Egocentrism and the associations it entails do not represent an imaginary empowerment because of the assimilation of the world, but rather something akin to diffusion.61 In order to understand the extent of this diffusion, we must recall that due to the level of knowledge of the masses — who live in imagination and follow its callings — man has no clear notion either of his body nor of external bodies: “…so long as the human mind perceives things from the common order of Nature, it does not have an adequate, but only a confused and mutilated knowledge of itself, of its own body, and of external bodies.” 62 Following these words, he writes that we do not possess a proper consciousness of the body but only of bodily impressions that involve the ideas of external things. Since we possess no proper consciousness of them, we possess a clear consciousness neither of our minds nor of our bodies. In order to understand the irrational meaning of imagination and of the associative pattern, we must recall that within the framework of Spinoza’s thought. The explanations we provided for associativity cannot rely on the assumptions usually attributed to it. For in common sense — as well as in the history of philosophy, as perceived by Hume, for example — the association is understood based on causal relations between bodies and ideas. The relation among ideas in the mind is the result of the accidental encounter of their physical objects. In Spinoza’s philosophy, the parallel attributes does not account for the arbitrary union of ideas by way of a causal link between them and their physical objects. In Spinoza’s thought, the gathering of the components linked 61 62

Compare: Joachim, Ethics, p. 160ff. and Gilad, Method, p. 185, on Joachim’s remarks. E 2p29c. — 82 —

------ III. Inconsistency, conformism and hostility in the life of the masses  ------

through association, as it is fragmented and arbitrary, expresses the passiveness of consciousness and the inadequate consciousness that characterizes it. Associative clusters are a phenomenon that reflects the weakness of consciousness and which, ultimately, recall hallucinations. What regulates the connection between the ideas is not the presence of the bodies that impose their representation in accordance with links of causality, but rather the accumulation of events within a non-reflective consciousness.

III. Inconsistency, conformism and hostility in the life of the masses — the political aspect Until this point, the description of life at the first degree of knowledge has focused on the individual; however, one can easily see that it also involves one point of important political significance. The individual who lives essentially in imagination limits his world to idiosyncratic reactions. He looks at things as an individual and thinks with a nonreflective consciousness, while some of his thoughts closely resemble hallucinations and dreams. Imagination leads him towards ongoing instability, towards the distorted prominence of his individuality and, in fact, also towards the blurring of the separateness of his existence from the world. At the same time, collectives of such people share common and deeply rooted patterns. People exhibiting the first level of knowledge make up the vast majority of mankind. Their life is one of conformism: they have common and strong prejudices; they strictly obey religious and political authorities; in spite of the basic instability that characterizes their activities, they tend to accept external norms of behavior: “We shall also strive to do also whatever we imagine men to look on with joy, and on the other hand, we shall be averse to doing what we imagine men are averse to.”63 Why does the non-reflective consciousness not disintegrate into a madman’s consciousness, 63

E 3p29. In the note at the bottom of the page, Spinoza mentions that he refers to the following people: “By ‘men’ in this and the following propositions, I mean men whom we regard without any particular emotion” (affectu nullo). Raven, Tradition, p. 319 describes this sentence as “the general rule of social conformism.” — 83 —


ensconced in his own individuality? What is it that binds these two characteristics of society — the instability of individuals and their tendency to adopt shared external patterns? What is it that links the inconsistency of the masses, which Spinoza underscores every time he deals with them, with conformism?64 And how is it possible to reinforce authority, which determines some of the patterns shared by mankind, given this instability?65 64

65

Raven, Tradition proposes an interesting analysis of the question. I will be discussing her solution on a number of occasions in the footnotes. Seemingly, the answer is clear; it is presented in E 4p54s: “Because men rarely live from the dictate of reason, these two affects, humility and repentance, and in addition, hope and fear, bring more advantage than disadvantage. So since men must sin, they ought rather to sin in that direction. If weak-minded men were all equally proud, ashamed of nothing, and afraid of nothing, how could they be united or restrained by any bonds? The mob is terrifying, if unafraid.” Spinoza immediately recalls in positive terms the prophets’ way of raising the people’s feelings of humiliation, which showed the extent of their concern for them. In my view, in spite of the great importance of these claims, they do not exhaust Spinoza’s answer to the question on the possibility of basing one’s behavior on conduct that is dictated by reason. “Taming” the masses is one component in the strengthening of rational political authority, but it is not everything; the proof of this claim lies at the heart of the next two chapters. At this point, we need only clarify that Spinoza’s view of semi-rationality is presented by his commentators as though it were the main point. One good example is found in Yovel’s notes in his translation of the Ethics. These notes concern us not only because Yovel is an important exponent of Spinoza, but because his interpretation is echoed in Israeli cultural life. Regarding that passage in the Ethics, he writes as follows: “The people this refers to will not really live according to the orders of reason; rather, they will superficially imitate them, as follows from their education (which is perceived as taming), out of respect shown to figures of authority and out of fear of punishment, rather than from any rational knowledge. In other words, their behavior will be quasirational. This, according to Spinoza — particularly in the Theological-Political Treatise, is the foundation of society and of the rational State: its role is to get non-rational people to act rationally, in order to enable them to enjoy the freedom and mutual assistance of the State, and to savor the fruit of reason even if they did not achieve it through their awareness of it” (Yovel, Ethics, pp. 331-332, Note 1). Further on (E 4p73s), Yovel writes: “In the Theoretical-Political Treatise, Spinoza suggests […] a term for the popular religion of reason, which is an analogy or external imitation (in conduct, not in intentions) of the real religion of reason” (Yovel, Ethics, p. 351, Note 2). Clearly, such an approach cannot stand on its own. The main process it suggests is not clear: How does one get the masses to copy and adopt rational patterns of behavior? This is a very weighty question, if one reverts to Spinoza’s claim that the desirable aim of the State is not to lead the masses with a shepherd’s staff, as if they were sheep. We will discuss this at further length in Chapter 4. For the moment, we will sum up the elitist view which Yovel attributes to Spinoza: the philosopher possesses the religion — 84 —


We will respond to the last question in the following chapters. The answer to the other questions is simple: conformity and inconsistency are both clear expressions of the same thing — the passivity of the person exhibiting the first degree of knowledge. The egocentrism of the person imagining, his idiosyncratic nature, does not represent the activism of Nietzschean super-man who powerfully demonstrates his uniqueness (naturally, this type of hero is foreign to Spinozian thought); it represents, on the other hand, a person who, for the most part, thinks partial thoughts due to his lack of reflection. This passivity is what leads him to accept cultural constructs unconditionally. In other words, accepting an idea “without confirmation” and “without any doubt” represents the egocentrism of the dream characters and emphasizes the internal situation of passive consciousness; the tendency of the person of the first degree of knowledge to adopt things based on hearsay and to adopt solutions by copying other people — such as we see from Spinoza’s example of the proportion — emphasizes the nature of the affinity of the passive mind to the external. However, what is described as external (imitation) and what is described as internal (the absence of reflection) are two different manifestations of the same consciousness.66 In other words, the masses are unstable and readily tend to adopt external models. Society is characterized by constant trembling and the weakness of the non-reflective consciousness, while conformity represents the flipside of instability. This complexity, seemingly full of contradictions, characterizes the various aspects of the passive masses. The explanation as to the link between instability and conformism does not rule out any tension between them; it only clarifies the complexity of the phenomenon that will lie at the heart of Spinoza’s political analyses.67 His criticism of religious authority, his claims as to the

66 67

of reason and does away with the lies and foolishness of the religions of revelation. The masses, for their part, are guided by manipulations and imitations; their lives are not based on any dimension of independent spiritual life; they are tamed. See note 23 above. A combination similar to that between conformism and instability is found in imagination, from an epistemological point of view. On the one hand, imagination is influenced only by individual things and bodies (TdIE, p. 31: “The imagination is only affected by particular things”). The sense-related and private nature of imagination is also obvious in Spinoza’s remarks on the contents of the prophets, in TTP, pp. 30‑32. — 85 —


necessity of having “one spirit, so to speak” and his establishment of the authority of the State, can only be understood in relation to this passive mind and two-faced nature of the masses. Since this tension is chronic and deep, its reasons being ontological, epistemological and psychological, the effort to perfect human society is doomed to be temporary, just as it is possible. A first step in such an endeavor is to analyze the masses based on their independent mental categories. Hence the need to analyze imagination, more than reason, is essential for an understanding of political issues. The tensions found among the masses do not stem from their instability alone; rather, they derive from the fact that the people who make up the masses are hostile to one another. In this context, we should recall Spinoza’s claim that people entertain more powerful feelings of love or hatred towards one another than towards other things, since they imagine that they are free.68 This hyper-sensitivity still does not imply hostility; the explanation for hostility lies in the idea which Spinoza reverts to several times: in the TP, he writes that each person strives to see others live according to his own views, accepting whatever he accepts and rejecting whatever he rejects.69 The outcome is that we strive to be first and attempt to oppress one another. This claim is further detailed in the Ethics, where it is explained how love seemingly represents “[t]his striving to bring it about that everyone should approve his love and hate is really ambition. And so we see that each of us, by his nature, wants the others to live according to his temperament; when all alike want this, they are alike an obstacle to on another, and when all wish to be praised, or loved, by all, they hate one another.”70 This tendency is understood within the general framework of egocentrism, as detailed above. As we recall, Spinoza pointed to the

68 69 70

On the other hand, the marked tendency of imagination is to stick to universals. In the Ethics, it is mentioned that the mind does not have the ability to comprehend the multiplicity of details; therefore, it places them under a single thing, which is determined according to the position of the body based on physical encounters (E 2p40s1). In other words, imagination has two opposite tendencies: it creates universals for itself but is only influenced by individual elements. E 3p49s. TP, p. 289. E 3p31cs. — 86 —


resemblance between the modes of existence of people and those of children.71 Egocentrism refers to “swallowing” the other, which we do by identifying each of the other person’s impulses as one’s own, while the imposition of our preferences on the other represents the flip side of this same tendency. These imaginary and mutual acts of swallowing each other by the members of the masses can only lead to total war. What has been said so far does not cover the entire Spinozian explanation concerning the basic feelings of animosity of human beings towards one another. I will mention only one additional explanation which, in my view, is the Archimedean point of the issue. In broad terms, at the heart of Spinoza’s thought we find a series of essential oppositions that are linked to one another: eternity and time; the genuine idea versus the fruit of the imagination. Another pair of opposites which Spinoza reverts to, include a life of partnership (which represents the wise man’s natural tendency) and total war (in which the member of the masses is mired). The final opposition, that between the wise man’s life of partnership and the hostility which characterizes the masses, is both epistemic and metaphysical. In other words, this opposition is essentially linked to the other opposites mentioned so far. As we recall, Spinoza indicates that there are two frameworks through which things can be perceived — either in relation to a particular time and place, or as included within God and eternal.72 The insight into the eternal status of things is an insight into the dynamic nature of substances, which penetrates all the manifestations of its multiplicity. It is only by noticing this dynamism that the individual can achieve his genuine affinity to totality and his finite-infinite place within it.73 This realization has, therefore, a therapeutic side, and a special effect on the wise person’s overcoming death and on his tendency “to observe life.”74 Philosophical considerations help the wise person realize his belonging to totality; it bears no sign of a mystical leap towards the infinite,

71 72 73 74

E 3p32s. E 5p29s. Hallett, Spinoza, Chapter 1 E 4p67. — 87 —


involving the abolition of all partitions; on the contrary, it represents the acknowledgement of one’s belonging to society, to the State and to mankind — where his best interests lie.75 The life of partnership is anchored in the wise man’s understanding of his ontic belonging; the opposite holds true with respect to the members of the masses, whose consciousness implies a distorted approach to himself and to his existence in the world. This distortion results in his alienation and being cut off from totality. The all-penetrating dynamism is no longer within his reach, and, consequently, his genuine affinity with the world disintegrates. He is ontologically uprooted. Moreover, the member of the masses creates defective images and concepts of God. In the notes that appear along with Book I of the Ethics, Spinoza speaks of such images and concepts on a number of occasions. The main concept is that of a transcendental God who personally supervises His creations.76 Spinozian ontology helps one understand the importance of such a concept for the self-understanding of the member of the masses. Furthermore, this type of person is alienated, as we will now proceed to describe. In many places throughout the Ethics, Spinoza emphasizes the transitive sequence that characterizes the path of immanent action of the substance. This immanence cannot be presented as merely a contour of the Being — without any transcendental being; rather it is characterized by a basic internal dynamism: a finite thing is pulled into action by another finite thing.77 God does not act outside such things but within them.78 The fact that the finite is found within finite things is essential for its situation as a finite thing. Within the defective concept of the transcendental God, the member of the masses denies its ontic determination. He is pulled away — in his imagination, naturally — from the final things and from the chain of private causes which he is part of, and rises straight towards the infinite. In this way he acquires for himself an imagined status, which can be called “meta-final.” His real situation is

75 76 77 78

As emphasized in E 4p30ff. For example: E 1p17cs; E 1p33s2. E 1p28. E 1p18,p26,p28. — 88 —


not revealed through these images, but in light of Spinozian ontology and according to the nature of the distortion. Once again, like with the cutting off and the static condition described in the previous section, one holding the view of the transcendental God is torn away from the concrete context of which he is part and remains alienated from everything, in his dreamlike reality. This chapter contributed towards extending the discussion from imagination in the individual’s mind to its importance for the mind of the masses. Its conclusions can be summed up as the outline of the basic notions that lie at the root of Spinoza’s political reflections. The masses, and human society as a whole, are inconsistent, fraught with internal conflicts, and easily adopt external patterns — none of these components rules out the other. The reasons for the complex nature of the masses are found in ontology, epistemology and psychology. This clarifies somewhat the claim, formulated at the end of the previous chapter, that Spinoza’s insights into the spiritual problems of the masses are based on ontology. The masses’ instability and submissiveness do not stem from the spirit of a particular period; rather, they stem from the passive nature of their mentality. Any thought of the possibilities of perfecting the masses’ life must start with a presentation of this background.

— 89 —

---------------------------- Chapter IV ----------------------------------

Political Secularism

------------------------------------------------------------- Politacal secularism -------------------------------------------------------------

Politacal secularism In his writings, particularly in the Ethics and in the TTP, Spinoza questions religious authority1: the Ethics are fraught with remarks on the false concepts of revelatory religions. The attribution of freedom and spontaneity to the Divinity, miracles and miraculous apparitions, the distinction between will and intellect, God’s personalized image — these, among other distorted concepts, become clear through a logical analysis of God.2 In the TTP, we witness another type of objection. Spinoza’s subversive reading of the Holy Scriptures, which highlights their contradictions, and which exhibits a historical sensitivity to the time they were written and edited, amounts to an act of de-canonization. His claims as to the indivisibility of political sovereignty challenge religious authority. Through these moves, Spinoza seeks to undermine the authority of those who imagine themselves to be God’s agents. Throughout his entire philosophical work, Spinoza mounts a comprehensive objection to the authority of revelatory religion; he criticizes its basic concepts, its cultural legacy, and its legitimization in the modern State. Spinozian thought is, however, not limited to this. The complexity of the masses, their inconsistent and conflict-prone nature, the fact that they easily adopt external patterns, the important role of imagination in the life of the masses, and the fact that the reasons for the nature of the masses are elementary, i.e. ontological — all this led Spinoza 1

2

On the link between Spinoza’s view of religion and the religious ideas found in his surroundings, see: Popkin, The Study of the Bible; Popkin, Fisher; Popkin, Quakers; Hunter, Radicalism; Nadler, Biography, particularly Chapter 7. For example, E 1p15s; E 1p17cs2; E 1p33s2. — 93 —

-------------------------------------------------------------- Political Secularism --------------------------------------------------------------

to expand his philosophical mission well beyond the presentation of a comprehensive attack on religion. Spinoza was well aware that the nature of the masses made forms of authority that could be labeled as “spiritual” or “cultural” necessary. Although political authority possesses various means for shaping the life of men, the central place of awareness in his analysis of the masses leads him to realize the importance of beliefs, of common concepts, and of images, and to search for their possible origins. For Spinoza, any objection to religion must be accompanied by a clarification of the sources of an alternative spiritual authority that will contribute towards the establishment of political sovereignty. The main text dealing with these issues is the TTP; however, as I will show in this chapter, Spinoza’s statements should not be understood apart from his epistemological and ontological analysis, as it appears in the Ethics.3 It is here that Spinoza’s special relevance for the topic of this book appears once again. Spinoza’s interest in the undermining of religious authority, in the outcome of this undermining, and in the formation of alternative sources of authority — all make him relevant to the problem of secularization in Israeli society. Spinoza examines the beginnings of the modern state and notices that large numbers of people are changing their lifestyles — historical religions are slowly loosing their grip as other centers of power emerge. To a certain extent, this resembles the situation of the Jewish collective in Israel: it is being shaped at a time when religion is withering away and the state is taking shape. Political sovereignty is becoming the central authority, although it does not eliminate the power of culture and tradition which, to a large extent, continue to determine the concepts and images held by members of society. Therefore, more than we need Spinoza’s opposition to religion, we need the strength of his thought on the construction of spiritual authority which, along with political authority, are the heirs 3

I disagree with the assumption that it is possible to understand Spinoza’s political views by looking at his political and theological essays alone (TTP and TP), as we find in: Strauss, Spinoza, p. 112; Smith, Spinoza and Liberalism, p. XV. In the previous chapter, we explained why Spinoza’s epistemology is vital for understanding the object of politics and the problems involved with it. In this chapter, as in the next one, I will demonstrate that it is vital for an understanding of the solutions to these problems. — 94 —

------------------------------------------------------------- Politacal secularism -------------------------------------------------------------

to religion; together, they strive towards the rationalization of society. One more point: commentators who describe Spinoza’s analyses of these questions — the nurturing of a universal or popular religion — tend to overemphasize the passivity of the masses. They claim that Spinoza promotes a type of reformed religion as a means of organizing the life of the masses.4 In opposition to the capricious temperament of the masses and their intrigue-prone nature, they promote reformed religion as a kind of manipulation that leads the masses unconsciously towards a semi-rational life. This description underlies the fact that Spinoza’s reformed religion is based on the assumption that the passivity of the masses calls for manipulative direction of their lives. This emphasis obscures another, more important fact: Spinoza’s orientation towards reformed religion is not bound to that religion’s particular postulate; its main function is to stimulate the masses. If this aim is misunderstood, Spinoza’s orientation towards the shaping of the life of the masses in a semi-rational way remains unclear. Indeed, the main point of manipulation is not to enforce some external thing or to justify its usefulness, but the way it is assimilated and the results of this assimilation. The interesting question regarding the reformed religion advocated by Spinoza is: how are impressions and ideas found in the consciousness of the masses? Secondary questions are, among others: why does Spinoza glorify stories as a means towards instilling religious images? What is “the simple concept of God” and what is the nature of the response inherent in obedience? All of these questions should only be discussed in light of the special nature of the consciousness of the masses, i.e. in relation to the functioning of the ideas of imagination. These clarifications will help us understand how Spinoza strives to base the authority of the reformed religion on patterns that are immanent to the mentality of the masses. This authority is not only imposed upon it, but is based on the tendencies of the masses; the crux of the idea of the reformed religion lies in the structure of the consciousness of the masses and their activity, not in leading them about as if they were blind. By illustrating this point, we will understand that reformed religion is not only part of the 4

See, for example, Hallett, Spinoza, p. 139 onwards. — 95 —


rationalization process of society through semi-rational manipulations that have the potential to create a reformed political life; rather, it is a program for the activation of the life of the masses, which is called here “stimulation.” As we see in the title of the chapter, the aim of the discussion here is to clarify the nature of political secularism. This concept, as we remember, was introduced in Chapter 2, in which I claimed that two models of secularism could be linked to Spinozian philosophy. The first model is entitled “metaphysical secularism”; it refers to the entire system of concepts and approaches that are presented as a full alternative to religion. Substance replaces the personal God at the heart of revelatory religions, and removes all concrete cultural and religious connotations from its philosophical speculations. It is the philosopher to whom this type of secularism can be attributed; he is the secular subject. It is only thanks to knowledge like his that one may understand the logical-ontological analysis of the Spinozian God, follow the command of reason and reject all revelatory religions. However, the problem of secularism in Spinoza’s thought cannot be understood through such models. His great sensitivity to the problems of the consciousness of the masses accounts for the existence of another secular position — political secularism. This concept comprises his goals for the rationalization of society: the undermining of the authority of the religious establishment, the examination of ways of developing popular religion and the establishment of political authority. I will present Spinoza’s political secularism based on four principles: that political authority is the most efficient way to rationalize the life of the masses; that religion is likely to endanger political authority but it is also vital in establishing it; that, therefore, the rationalization of the masses comprises a program for moderating religious tradition and harnessing it to political life; and that this moderation can only become clear if we understand how the religious tradition is maintained in the consciousness of the masses. The first two principles are rather straightforward, while the two latter ones call for more speculative interpretation. Thus, the interpretation suggested here begins with its more overt expressions in Spinoza’s writings and moves to the more implicit ones, as will become — 96 —

----------------------------------------------------------  I. Undermining religion ----------------------------------------------------------

clear in the discussion. The first part of the chapter (sections 1-4) will deal with the first two principles, while the second part (sections 5 and 6) will deal with the latter principles — the meaning of the flexible forms of reformed religion, and the clarification of its forms in the consciousness of the masses, as well as its political significance.

I. Undermining religion Much of Spinoza’s efforts in the TTP are devoted to a subversive reading of the Scriptures. His arguments, based upon philological analyses, will not be examined here; for our purposes, we will simply indentify the trends present in the analysis and their aims. The most obvious is the de-canonization of the Scriptures. Spinoza indicates that “Scripture consists of a variety of different books, of different periods and for different men, and compiled by a variety of authors.”5 These writings are written by “a large number of men, of different temperaments and at different times.”6 This de-canonization not only identifies the multiplicity of sources in the text, but enquires into the process by which the sacred canon was accepted. At the end of the discussion on the authors of the Old Testament, Spinoza writes: “It very clearly follows from this that the learned in the Law called together a council to determine what kind of books should be received as sacred and which should be excluded. Hence, anyone desirous of being sure about the authority of them all must go through the entire deliberative process afresh seeking justification for each of them.”7 In other words, the sacredness of the text is not inherent, but the outcome of human decisions. The way to establish the authority of the books of scripture is by examining “justification for each of them.” His clarification concerning the difference between his claim and the position of lay people (profani) helps us in understanding his aim: “I admit that some impious persons who find religion a burden, may discern an excuse for wrongdoing here and may infer, without any 5 6 7

TTP, p. 188. Ibid., p. 178. Ibid., p. 154. — 97 —


justification but merely to indulge their pleasures, that Scripture is thoroughly flawed and corrupted and consequently lacks authority.”8 Such claims, Spinoza explains, could be attributed to him through false interpretation. His aim is rather to show that the words of God “is not contained in a certain number of books,” and that “in so far as the Bible teaches what is requisite for obedience and salvation, it could not have been corrupted.”9 In opposition to the contradictions in the Holy Scripture — the outcome of their various sources and of the process of their canonization — Spinoza suggests one source of authority, which is repeatedly presented through the expression “a pure conception of the divine mind.”10 Clearly, Spinoza’s proposal is neither straightforward nor simple. If we take into consideration the inconsistent and passive nature of the masses, its tendency to adopt hearsay and conventions without criticism — which was the focus of the previous chapter, particularly its last section — one cannot hope to base the concept of holiness on the natural inquisitiveness of the masses. In other words, one cannot understand Spinoza’s proposal exclusively in terms of the authority (whether fictitious or not, this is a question we will discuss later) that it grants the masses; rather, it should be understood in relation to its outcomes regarding the status of religious representatives and of the stability of the political power. This is clearly indicated by Spinoza’s claims regarding the extended authority of religious leaders: “Everyone knows how much influence right and authority in sacred matters have with the common people and how much everyone listens to someone who possesses such authority. I may say that whoever has this power has the greatest control over the people’s minds.”11 Since the authority of these religious figures is based on their mastery of the Holy Scriptures, Spinoza’s call for identifying what is most important with “a pure conception of the divine mind” robs them of their hold on the text, thereby impinging on their power. This damage to their authority

8 9 10 11

Ibid., p. 164. Ibid., pp. 164-165. Ibid., p.10. Ibid., p. 245. — 98 —

------------------------- II. Rationalization of the masses and political power -------------------------

is clear to all: the power of the religious figures over the masses poses a continuous threat to the State. The way to overcome this is by clarifying the political principle according to which the authority of the State extends to religious matters, rather than political issues alone. Those who insist upon leaving the religious power in the hands of religious authorities “[are] attempting to divide the government. Conflict and discord […] will inevitably ensue and will never be resolved.”12 To this, we should add something that was not clearly stated, but which derives logically from the above: within the context of the beginnings of the modern State, the realization of the principle of a united political power calls for the weakening of religious figures.13 The stronger their status, the harder it is to undermine their authority and transfer it into the hands of the political body. One effective way of weakening this type of power is by nurturing a popular relationship to the spirit of the Holy Scriptures. This view of de-canonization — the nurturing of a popular trend in order to establish the unity of the political power — is only partial. Two issues that are intertwined with it remain to be clarified: that the establishment of political power is a means of rationalizing society and improving it; and that religion is necessary to assure the stability of political power, which alone can assure the rationalization of society. These two topics will be discussed in the next two sections.

II. Rationalization of the masses and political power In the TTP, the TP and the Ethics, Spinoza emphasizes the indispensability of alliances among human beings as the root of political sovereignty. In a life of solitude, men would have neither the necessary time nor the strength to provide their basic material needs — “to plough, sow, reap, 12 13

Ibid., p. 245. Naturally, there is a big difference between the period in which Spinoza is thinking his thoughts and our time. Spinoza expresses the hardships faced by the modern state striving to stabilize its new authority opposite forces that are more deeply rooted. He did not foresee a modern State with all its strengths, including the power to threaten political freedom. — 99 —


grind, cook, weave and sew for himself as well as doing the many other things that are needed to sustain life.”14 They most certainly would be unable to fulfill their spiritual needs, i.e. “the arts and sciences, which are also supremely necessary to the perfection of human nature and its happiness.”15 Without a political body, men are condemned to a life of misery, which Spinoza describes in very strong terms: “wretched and brutish lives.”16 This degraded life is the lot of the lonely individual, who is portrayed as living outside society. The gathering of men involves dangers and fear — the background to this is detailed in the third section of the previous chapter. Political power is indispensible in order to prevent people from harming each other, and to keep the incontrollable passions of the members of the masses in check.17 If they remain alone — which is not perceived as a real possibility — they live like beasts; if they come together in a disorderly way, they live within their imaginations, deeply involved in their passions and at odds with each other. Whether alone or as a horde, people actually live alone. Their genuine cohesion and the appearance of a safe and nurtured life call for the presence of an external and common authority. All human beings tend to accept this type of authority. “Whether barbarous or civilized,” they create a political situation.18 They do not accept it as a result of rational recommendations; rather, we can deduce this from “the general nature or position of mankind.”19 At the beginning of the PT, we find a longer, albeit no more detailed explanation, in which Spinoza indicates that the public strives to be led “naturally,”20 i.e. through a common passion, such as “common hope, or fear, or the desire of avenging some common hurt.”21 Towards the end of this explanation, Spinoza adds: “But since fear of solitude exists in all men, because no one in solitude is strong enough to defend himself, and 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21

TTP, p. 72. Ibid., p. 72. Ibid., p. 72. On p. 197, it is written as follows: “without mutual help […] human beings necessarily live in great misery.” Ibid., pp. 72-73. TP, p. 290. Ibid., p. 290. Ibid., p. 316. Ibid., p. 316. — 100 —

------------------------- II. Rationalization of the masses and political power -------------------------

procure the necessaries of life, it follows that men naturally aspire to the civil state; nor can it happen that men should ever utterly dissolve it.”22 In these statements, Spinoza overlooks something: human beings naturally tend to gather together, either out of their fear of loneliness or because of some common passion. However, this coming together does not suffice to account for the creation of the political situation, i.e. the fact that they organize their life through some general and common authority. The consolidation of life under fixed laws cannot be explained merely by their striving to come together; the explanation for this, to my understanding, can be found in what was said about the masses, in the third section of the previous chapter. People naturally adopt an external authority, just as they tend to settle into their privacy. These opposing tendencies characterize them in equal measure. The development of authority and its acceptance are as natural as man’s egocentric existence, given their dream-like consciousness — the former and the latter represent opposite and necessary manifestations of the fundamental passivity of life in the imagination. Identifying these tendencies, as I have already indicated in the previous chapter, is the basis for the sensitivity in Spinoza’s thought to authority and its fragility.23 For Spinoza, as has already been pointed out, political authority is the means towards the rationalization of society. The term “rationalization” refers to two things: first of all, the fundamental role of political power is to ensure a rational regularization, the aim of which is to organize the life of the public whose members cannot be saved from themselves or from their imagining consciousnesses. If men were able to behave rationally rather than to follow their passions, political power would be superfluous.24 22 23

24

Ibid., p. 316. In the TTP, p. 211, Spinoza writes at length about the vulnerability of the political power. He starts with a detailed description of the unstable character of the masses, and then claims “They have never succeeded in devising a form of government that was not in greater danger from its own citizens than from foreign foes, and which was not more fearful of the former than of the latter” TP, p. 316. — 101 —


Political power is the medium or the basis for improving the life of the masses. Rationalization does designate a utopian model, but also the concrete possibility of perfecting collective and private life and molding them in accordance with more rational patterns. In this, it is infinitely more successful than religious power. In any case, Spinoza does not try to “impose” an ideal political model on society. In addition to the supra-temporal ontological context that characterizes his political observations, those observations are also continuously linked to the context of a given collective,25 their main point being the attempt to improve it. The “processual” nature of rationalization and the entire rational approach of Spinoza’s political observation are found throughout the PT. In a more complex way, they also determine Spinoza’s analysis as it appears in the TTP. Naturally, these claims need to be clarified and justified, as we will discuss further in the current section. Secondly, the rationality of political power is perceptible not only through its aim, but also through its basic pattern of behavior. This pattern is based on the understanding of the consciousness of the members of society, i.e. of the mentality of the masses and the nature of its causality. In other words, the cognitive and psychological limitations of the masses are the basic data in the foundation of authority. The psychological law that serves to establish such authority is stated in E 4p7: “An affect cannot be restrained or taken away except by an affect opposite to, and stronger than, the affect to be restrained.”26 How did this become the basis for the rational action of the authority in power? Insofar as this authority claims the right to pass judgment on good and evil, it holds the power to impose life in common. Moreover, it does not do so in an ineffective manner — by seducing people into believing in the necessity of the authority and the need to obey it — but through threats and promises, i.e. by employing a contradictory and sufficiently strong passion. The rationality of power refers here to its basis in the order and laws of the consciousness of the masses.27 25

26 27

This relative proximity to the socio-political context of the time is also perceptible in the impact of the special status of the emerging modern State in Spinoza’s thought, as stated in note 13. See also E 4p17. Religion too functions on the basis of threats and promises of rewards. The sovereign — 102 —

-------------------------- III. Does rationalization mean overcoming religion? --------------------------

III. Does rationalization mean overcoming religion? Based on their roles as well as their courses of action, the State and the ruling authority are rational. In order to protect their position, the higher authorities “are very much obliged to work for the common good and direct all things by the dictate of reason.”28 Moreover, the general good is necessarily related to the interest of the individual. Therefore, the obedience shown by the citizen differs from that of the slave or the child.29 From what has been explained so far, one might think that the understanding of political secularism that should be attributed to Spinoza calls for the shaping of social life through political means alone. In the final analysis, he aims at seeing a political society devoid of any religion; in the meantime, however, until the harmful revelatory religions are eradicated, he suggests a popular, weakened and harmless religion for the masses under control of the political power. This view is erroneous, and it is essential that we clarify this mistake, as it is at the core of the link between the political authority and religious life, which is the key issue of political secularism. We will thus be examining the considerations that motivate those expressing this view, after which we will attempt to explain why they should be rejected on principle. The reasons for this rejection will become clearer as the discussion progresses throughout this chapter. One could claim the following: according to Spinoza, the State will become the sole and definitive authority in the life of society.30 He had no choice but to make his statements on the necessity of religion; these claims should only be perceived in their historical context. Had Spinoza written his works at a later period, he would not have attributed

28 29

30

political power is more rational than religion, not because it makes use of this psychological rule, but given the nature of its aims. TTP, p. 200. Ibid., p. 201: “a subject is one who does by command of the sovereign what is useful for the community and consequently also for himself.” As mentioned earlier, the danger faced by the individual as a result of the centralized power of the State is not discussed in Spinoza’s essays. On the State in Spinoza’s political philosophy, see: Dan Oyl, Power; Feuer, Liberalism; Gildin, A Political Problem; Hallett, Spinoza, Chapter 11; and De Deugd, Political-Theological. — 103 —


any role to religion or tradition in the life of society.31 His aim is to dismantle the hold that religion has on public life and replace it with political power — this outcome is the main point of the rationalization of society. Moreover, the tendency of the masses towards instability places the stability of the authority at stake. In the TTP, Spinoza emphasizes the fact that everyone focuses on the external forces which endanger sovereignty and the State, but the rulers know well that the greatest dangers come from within: “A commonwealth is always in greater danger from its citizens than from its enemies […] He, upon whom the whole right of the dominion has been conferred, will always be more afraid of citizens than of enemies.”32 Religion and superstition can easily become the foundation for social instability. When explaining in the TPP why the political sovereign must retain control of religious issues as well, he claims as follows:33 People are very prone to go astray in religion and make dubious claims that result from the diversity of their understanding, and generate serious conflict, as experience clearly testifies. It is therefore certain that if no one were obliged by law to obey the sovereign power in matters that he thinks belong to religion, then the law of the state would depend upon the different judgments and passions of each individual person. For no one would be obligated by the law if he considered it to be directed against his faith and superstition, and on this pretext everyone would be able to claim licence to do anything.

In other words, religion can totally undermine political rule. Religion grants the masses a basis for immersing themselves in their passions, and disintegrates society — a risk that stems from the basic nature of the masses. It is not only the authority of the religious authorities that poses a threat to the political power, but also the accessibility of the contents of religion. These contents are likely to grant individuals a sufficiently broad basis for wrongly interpreting the beliefs that are 31

32 33

McShea’s claims, in Political Philosophy, p. 181, are an example of this position. He explains that in the image of the ideal state as implicated in Spinoza’s thought; religion is non-existent. TP, p. 318. See note 23 above. TTP, pp. 171-172. — 104 —

-------------------------- III. Does rationalization mean overcoming religion? --------------------------

desirable for them, and to provide them with a source of authority to which they may assign their own private purposes. For this reason, in addition to the reasons brought earlier, one could claim that Spinoza’s essential aim is to bring about full secularization through the politicization of society, and that in the TTP, his interest in religion stems less from the fundamental logic of his thought, but rather from the restrictions of permitted expression at his time and from the power of revelatory religions in the consciousness of his contemporaries. This is why the proposal to establish a reformed religion was one appropriate to the times. One should not seek any ontological-epistemological meaning in it. According to this line of argument, the meaning of political secularism which was attributed here to Spinoza — a secularism geared towards all of society and not towards the philosopher, and which aims at rendering religion more flexible and adapting it to political life — is groundless as an interpretation of Spinoza’s long-term aims. It suits his short-term intention for as long as society fails to release itself from the grip of futile religion. In the final analysis, it is suggested, Spinoza strove to eradicate religion and uproot it from society in order to prevent it from damaging the authority of the sovereign political power. Continuing this line of argument, Spinoza makes no essential distinction between metaphysical secularism and political secularism.34 Not only does the authority of religious authorities threaten the sovereign power, but even the fact that the contents of religion are accessible to the masses is dangerous: both are in opposition to the rationalization and stabilization of society. Spinoza’s metaphysical analyses expose distortions in concepts, while his political observations expose the dangers they entail as concepts rooted in the public. The common aim of both metaphysical and political secularism is, therefore, to reject religion. Their only limitations lie in the public’s capacity to accept philosophical claims. In a nutshell, the only meaning of secularism that can be attributed to Spinoza is the struggle to release man from religion and to instruct him to follow his reason or to follow reason as it is expressed through the sovereign political 34

See Chapter 2, section 2. — 105 —


power. The proposed model of “political secularism” is only the broader type of Spinozian secularism, as reflected through the limitations on permissible expression in Spinoza’s day, and as perceived through the distorted perceptions of the members of the masses. As mentioned above, I believe that this understanding is wrong. The type of political secularism that can be attributed to Spinoza cannot be reduced to the demand for the politicization of society and the desire to eradicate religion. The words “political secularism” here designate an approach that clarifies the essential need for a religious tradition founded on an ontological, epistemological and psychological analysis of the masses. This analysis is not anchored in the time of Spinoza or in the historical context of the period. Its validity lies in man’s finality and in his permanent modes of existence. Through this type of analysis, Spinoza examines how religious tradition can lie at the foundation of political life and how its dangers can be avoided. Those who believe that it is possible to do away with religion entirely and base human life on political authority alone overlook a deep ontological and epistemological consideration in Spinozian thought: in human life, the distortion of truth is more basic than truth itself. This is the reason why the cognitive limitations of the masses do not appear in Spinoza’s thought as an unnecessary appendage to the study of truth and God; they are a basic aspect of nature and of human society. To understand the spiritual needs of the masses we are compelled to pay attention to the important role of religious tradition; we are compelled to notice the need for concrete tradition as it is given in the life of a concrete society. As such, the philosophical endeavor focuses on the way religious tradition adapts to political authority, or on the clarification of ways to subjugate tradition to this authority.

IV. The importance of religion in the establishment of political power As a first step, we will examine the political role of religion in the eyes of Spinoza. Spinoza emphasizes the need for the Holy Scriptures in imbuing morality. Only a very limited number of people are capable of adopting good attributes by following reason. The vast majority of — 106 —

----- IV. The importance of religion in the establishment of political power  -----

people do this by simply obeying the scriptures or some revelation, as all men possess the capacity to obey.35 Therefore, “Scripture has brought great consolation to mortal men,”36 and has prevented much bloodshed.37 The adoption of a moral way of life, which is the model of a rational social life, needs the Holy Scriptures and the spirit of obedience which they have the power to arouse in men. The necessity of the contents of religion is also apparent in the link between political power and religion. It is often claimed that Spinoza places religion and the State in a hierarchical order, with religion being subject to the authority of the State.38 Clearly, Spinoza’s call for religious issues to be under the authority of the political power, as well as his efforts to weaken the authority of religious functionaries, are geared towards subjugating religion to political power; however, this subjection entails more complex links, as the political power “wraps itself up” in the spirit of religion.39 By repeating the claim according to which “God has no kingdom over men except through those who hold power,”40 he places the sovereign power in an independent position — this is the most striking element in this declaration — but he also grants the sovereign power this status because it embodies God’s wish. In other words, the absolute authority of political power is expressed by its applicability to religious affairs as well, but this authority has religious meaning. In the Ethics and in the TTP, when explaining that the basic moral concepts only achieve their full meaning within the political context rather than within the context of the natural situation, he identifies obedience to revelation with obedience to the sovereign political power: “It is […] 35

36 37 38

39

40

TTP, p. 194: “Everyone without exception can obey, not merely the very few — very few, that is, in comparison with the whole human race — who acquire the habit of virtue by the guidance of reason alone.” The term “salvation” refers to a life of “simple obedience” or the adoption of good attributes. Ibid., p. 194. Ibid., p. 184. This image is commonly found among Israeli commentators: Englard, Law; Ravitzky, Models. Israeli commentators are of particular importance, as they have been vital in the creation of the images suggested by Spinoza for the relations between religion and the State, and in order to understand his approach to religion in general. TTP, p. 238: “God has no special kingdom among men except through those who exercise sovereignty.” Ibid., p. 240. — 107 —


also the duty of the sovereign authority alone to lay down how a person should behave with piety towards their neighbour, that is, to determine how one is obliged to obey God.”41 Thus, the sovereign political power expresses the moral aspect of obeying God. There is no hierarchy between the State and religion; the sovereign political power and its rules, which determine right and wrong, become established because they are faithful to the fundamental spirit of religion. One very important question concerns the nature of this spirit, and how it is presented by Spinoza in his analyses. Without clarifying this, his claims will remain too abstract. From what has been said to this point, it is clear that the political power clearly has no intention of rejecting or uprooting religion, but seeks its assistance and adapts it to the sovereignty of the State, and that the general justification for this transcends the limitations of Spinoza’s time and place. It lies in the recognition of the power of religious contents to determine men’s moral conduct and in the recognition that nothing can replace religion in playing this role. The political power’s reliance on religion harnesses images and deeply-rooted concepts that call forth obedience in the aim of organizing social life and establishing its authority. This recruiting of religious images and concepts is also vital in order to guarantee the validity of state law. Religious affairs are likely to be determined by people, based on their individual and distorted interpretations, thereby granting validity to their taking exception to state laws. The authority of the State over matters of religion will prevent this and enable it to establish these laws as a common basis for all.42 A key concept in understanding the role of religion is expressed by the words “sovereign spirit” or “one spirit, so to speak” (“una veluti mens”), which appears throughout the TP and, to a lesser extent, in the Ethics.43 These words point to a unity and to a vague concept of “spirit.” What are the mental contents of this spirit? In what way does unity imply its existence? Spinoza makes a point of reiterating them together, rather than explaining them. For example, people’s desire to 41 42 43

Ibid., pp. 242-243. TTP, pp. 206-207. For example, in TP, pp. 297, 298, 301. — 108 —

----- IV. The importance of religion in the establishment of political power  -----

be in some type of political situation is explained in the TP on the basis of a shared passion, and he writes: “[A] multitude comes together, and wishes to be guided, as it were, by one mind.”44 This “one mind,” or common spirit, is assigned a clear mental dimension in places where Spinoza describes it as “the minds and bodies of all would compose, as it were, one mind and one body.”45 He indicates that the unity depends on common “spiritual” contents: “Especially necessary to bring people together in love, are the things which concern religion and morality.”46 The affinity of each for the other can be understood in terms of what was said above: unity is not expressed solely though the establishment of a common law; it includes the readiness of the masses to obey it. This readiness is one of the key topics in Spinoza’s political analyses. He viewed the citizens as the body endangering the stability of power, even more than the enemies of the state.47 The danger inherent in the masses should be understood on the basis of their characteristic mentality and, clearly, if one wishes to limit this danger, one has to do away with its causes. Hence, the unity of mankind calls for more than a common legal basis; it calls for nurturing the readiness to obey on the basis of the mentality of the masses. This is partly achieved through reward and punishment, restraining through threats and nurturing hope. It is also partly achieved through shared ideas that make up the “one mind” — norms, moral choices, and common images that bring the masses to obey the rational law that organizes their lives. This will enable the spirit of the sovereign power to become established — it is “the right of deciding what is good, evil, equitable, or iniquitous, that is, what must be done or left undone by the subjects severally or collectively.”48 The sovereign authority’s shaping of the conduct of the public must be built upon the images and concepts that are rooted in its consciousness and that lead it to act. The spirit of religion is the most important source of such images. One more thing should be added to what we just said about the 44 45 46 47 48

TP, p. 316. E 4p18s (“ut omnium mentes et corpora unam quasi mentem, unumque corpus component.”) E 4ap15. See notes 23 & 30 above. TP, p. 309. — 109 —


necessity of common images deriving from religious tradition and which help consolidate the sovereign political power. According to Spinoza, concepts such as culture, nation and tradition are not single entities.49 This status can be attributed to them only according to the definition of the individual thing, as it appears in the Ethics: “By singular things I understand things that are finite and have a determinate existence. And if a number of individuals so concur in one action that together they are all the cause of one effect, I consider them all, to that extent, as one singular thing.”50 This definition unmistakably expresses the dynamism that characterizes Spinozian thought. “Single” does not refer to something but rather to a way of acting. Joachim remarks that this definition of “single” was taken from Spinoza’s view of the way the various parts make up the body.51 Another model for this is the mind, i.e. the way the various ideas make up the general idea called “mind.” When we apply this definition — which is said in relation to things in general — to a collective, we understand something beyond the claims mentioned above supporting the necessity for the “one spirit.” The individuation of society is not determined by a static identity; it cannot be fixed in accordance with formal data or a common past. The concrete meaning of its unity depends on its force of action — its ability to function as a cause for its results. This can be formulated more precisely with the help of conditional conjunctions, in the style of Spinoza: a society is a single entity to the extent that it is the cause of a result. Every society strives towards individuation as a collective and achieves it to the measure of its causal force; this causal force is not granted to it as some abstract data that is found outside concrete life; therefore, the readiness of a society to act in concert and obey the law is an issue essential to its being. This readiness is not necessary in order for a society to become more or less orderly — it is necessary so that it can exist to a greater or a lesser extent. The concepts of religion 49

50 51

TTP, p. 225: “Nature certainly does not create people, individuals do, and individuals are only separated into nations by differences of language, law and morality. It can only be from these latter factors, namely law and morality, that each nation has its unique character, its unique condition, and its unique prejudices.” E 2d7. Joachim, Ethics, p. 125. — 110 —

----------------------------------------------  V. Moderating religious tradition -----------------------------------------------

and the images that make any human being obey form the vital basis for the existence of a common force of action. Thus, the presence of a tradition of such shared images is important for the existence of a society as a specific entity. Until this point, we have seen that political secularism is based on the shaping of human life within a sovereign political authority. This authority does not render the social function of religious tradition superfluous, but needs to reconstruct it. The second principle of political secularism, as recalled at the beginning of this chapter — according to which religious tradition is necessary in order to establish a political order and ensure its stability — becomes clear to us only “from the outside,” at this point: we have become more aware of its importance for Spinoza than of its significance. It has become clear to us that this political secularism should not be assimilated with some extreme form of secularism, which Spinoza was prevented from expressing fully due to the limitations of the time and place in which he lived. The logic of his thought stands in opposition to the rejection of religion and its concepts. From what has been said in the last paragraphs, we understand that religion — more specifically the spirit of religion or “soft” religion, whose nature we have yet to clarify — is essential for the strengthening of ethics, for the appearance of “one spirit, so to speak,” and in order to guarantee a society’s individuation. However, what is the role of religious tradition in the cultural-political approach, which we have called here “political secularism”? Before we answer this, what exactly are the flexible shapes of religion, and in what way do they nurture the sovereign power? We will answer these questions in the next two sections. In the fifth section, we will outline the main points of the desired religious tradition, while in the sixth, we will explain how such a tradition is likely to contribute to the establishment of the political authority.

V. Moderating religious tradition Clifford Geertz’s well-known distinctions between “worship of the text” and “traditionalism” will help us describe Spinoza’s process of building — 111 —


tradition and rejecting institutionalized religion.52 Through these two concepts, Geertz distinguishes between religion that is subjected to the authority of specialists and religion that exists in a broader sense, through family and community. At the end of the TTP, Spinoza tries to explain the dispute in the Christian world over the right of the superior authorities to possess the interpretations of God’s words. One of the reasons he raises is the following: “They vastly increased the number of religious dogmas and so utterly intertwined these with philosophy that its highest interpreter had to be both a consummate philosopher and theologian, and busy himself with an immense number of useless speculations, something which is only possible for private men and those with a great deal of free time.”53 The fact that religion is a domain reserved for people who specialize in the Holy Scriptures means that the political authorities are prevented from setting foot in these affairs. The reasons for this are clear, although they are not distinctly mentioned in the text. This specialization keeps authority exclusively in the hands of those who have been trained for it; it clearly distinguishes between the latter and the others. The lesson Spinoza derives from this discussion is that the conditions that enable this kind of specialization, i.e. some form of “worship of the text” must be prevented. He explains that the higher authorities of his day should be the possessors of sacred affairs and adds the following: “they do not allow religious dogmas to proliferate or become confused with knowledge.”54 In contrast to the specialization and complexity that typify the knowledge of religious experts, the gist of religion is always presented as something simple, and that simplicity is seen as attesting to its truth. After demonstrating at length that the Holy Scriptures are rife with contradiction, Spinoza indicates those contradictions do not impinge upon the essence of religion: “in so far as it is properly so called [the word of God], it is not defective or distorted or truncated.”55 The Divinity of the Holy Scriptures does not depend on any specific

52 53 54 55

Geertz, Islam. TTP, p. 248. Ibid., p. 249. Ibid., p. 169. — 112 —


text; it would remain even if the scriptures were written in other words or in another language, because “the essence of the Law is to love God above all things and one’s neighbour as oneself. And this cannot be adulterated nor penned in a slap-dash, error-prone manner. For if Scripture ever taught anything else than this, it would necessarily have had to teach everything else differently, since this is the foundation of all religion. Were this removed, the entire structure would immediately collapse.”56 Spinoza employs a series of binary oppositions to describe the link between religion as based in the authority of religious experts — who represent the object of Spinoza’s criticism — and a moderate religious tradition, which is based on a transcendental authority and its life in peoples’ hearts: specialization versus “simple concept”; text versus direct revelation in the heart; contradictions versus truths guaranteed by simplicity. To these, we may add: closed tradition versus open tradition. This latter distinction appears only incidentally in the TTP, in his discussion of the Pharisee tradition; however one should not measure its importance by its manner of presentation, but rather based on the principle it expresses. In that passage, Spinoza claims that his method of interpretation is the surest way of enquiring into the true intention of the Holy Scriptures. He then mentions two traditions — that of the Pharisees and that of the Pope, each of which rejects the other. Spinoza then claims as follows: “we are obliged, by our method, to consider one Jewish tradition as uncorrupt, namely the meaning of words in the Hebrew language we have received from them.”57 His adoption of this linguistic tradition does not mean, however, that he accepts the tradition of the Pharisees. The difference between them sheds light on a distinction that is important for our purposes: linguistic tradition is reliable, since those who convey it cannot change it. Any attempt to change the interpretation of the words will result in a lame and unsubstantiated interpretation of the intention of all the authors who employ this same word.58 Moreover, 56 57 58

Ibid., p. 170. Ibid., p. 105. TTP, p. 105: “For it could never have been of any use to change a word’s meaning, but — 113 —


“The learned share with the common people in preserving a language, but the learned alone preserve books and the meanings of texts.”59 Two models of tradition are presented in this passage. The first may be entitled “open tradition”; all human beings may be bearers of this tradition; the contents conveyed through this tradition and the meaning of words are visible and open to all;60 they are public and are integrated into an infinite number of contexts. The openness of this tradition guarantees its credibility; indeed, any alteration is immediately compared to other instances and is interpreted as an incomprehensible distortion. On the other hand, the tradition of “the books’ intention” is closed. The bearers of this tradition are an elite group of specialists. The means employed by this tradition of ideas are limited and hard to comprehend — they are “valuable books.” This tradition is hidden and restricted for large portions of the public. Its closedness means that it is dependent on the will of the members of a small group and subject to their decisions, including forgeries, while the members of the group remain immune to any criticism. This opposition between closed and open traditions accords with all the other oppositions mentioned above. A limited group of religious experts exert their authority as part of the closed tradition, immune to any criticism; this situation is convenient for issuing random orders, while keeping all others distant from the centers that control the interpretation of tradition. The religious tradition which Spinoza

59 60

it might quite often have been useful to someone to alter the meaning of a passage […] We are thus wholly convinced, for these and other reasons, that it could never have entered into anyone’s head to corrupt a language but might certainly occur to someone to misrepresent the meaning of a writer by doctoring his texts or interpreting them wrongly.” We can thus rely on tradition as for the meanings of the words, but we cannot rely on tradition for their intentions as they appear in the Holy Scriptures. Changing them will likely profit those who transmit the tradition over the generations. TTP, p. 105. Spinoza comes up with an interesting claim, according to which the meaning of words is determined by their use, which is close to Wittgenstein’s approach. Words do not have a permanent, essential meaning; they are part of people’s lifestyle. Language changes as lifestyles change. TTP, p. 165: “Words acquire a particular meaning simply from their usage. Words deployed in accordance with this usage in such a way that, on reading them, people are moved to devotion will be scared words, and any book written with words so used will also be sacred.” — 114 —


suggests in the TTP presents entirely different characteristics: it is open, borne by the common people, it is not limited to a text and its interpretation is found in simple terms in the hearts of all men. The opposition between open and closed traditions appears on a number of occasions throughout the discussion. On one occasion, Spinoza identifies the popular principles of religious tradition as that which is transferred from one generation to another in an open and transparent way. This pattern of transfer is cited as an explanation for the unquestionable truth of these principles.61 Clearly, more than describing the transfer of “religious truths,” Spinoza indicates its possibility, thereby encouraging the development of a tradition of concepts and images of this type. There is one place in which this opposition appears with no link to religious contents, but rather to political culture. In the TP, Spinoza discusses the question as to what extent something can be done without taking into account the opinion of the citizens.62 In this fragment, he explains that hiding one’s intentions from the enemy is useful, but that it is harmful to hide them from the citizens. We will now take a look at these claims in full: Everyone will also admit with me that it is far better for the right counsels of a dominion to be known to its enemies, than for the evil secrets of tyrants to be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a dominion have it absolutely under their authority, and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace. Now that this secrecy is often serviceable to the dominion, no one can deny; but that without it the said dominion cannot subsist, no one will ever prove. But, on the contrary, to entrust affairs of state absolutely to any man is quite incompatible with the maintenance of liberty; and so it is folly to choose to avoid a small loss 61

62

TTP, p. 170: “It remains, then, indisputable that this is what Scripture has always taught and consequently that no error has occurred here affecting the sense, which would not have been noticed at once by everybody. Nor could anyone have corrupted it without immediately betraying his malicious intent.” Therefore, there is no distortion of the foundations: “that God exist, that he provides for all things, that he is omnipotent, that he has decreed that the pious will fare well and wrongdoers badly, and that our salvation depends upon His grace alone.” TP, p. 342. — 115 —


by means of the greatest of evils. But the perpetual refrain of those who lust after absolute dominion is, that it is to the essential interest of the commonwealth that its business to be secretly transacted, and other like pretences, which end in the more hateful a slavery, the more they are clothed with a show of utility.

Hiding the matters pertaining to the sovereign authorities thus reveals a tendency towards tyranny. Spinoza demands that powerrelated issues be revealed, as long as it does not harm state security. The weaknesses of this closed political tradition are hinted at here in his writing on slavery and freedom,63 as well as on the following page. There, Spinoza writes about the reaction of the masses to the limited information on matters relating to the authorities: “as for the populace being devoid of truth and judgment, that is nothing wonderful, since the chief business of the dominion is transacted behind its back, and it can but make conjectures from the little, which cannot be hidden. For it is uncommon virtue to suspend one’s judgment.”64 What we indicated in section 3 of the previous chapter, regarding the nature of the masses, relates to this matter. The passivity of the imagination is also manifested in the unconditional acceptance of what it knows based on hearsay alone. The same epistemological-political principle used by Spinoza to justify the subjugation of religious matters to the sovereign political power should serve us here too.65 The fact that the masses do not understand religious matters does not entail a dearth of interpretation or an avoidance of relying on the Holy Scriptures; rather, it gives rise to misunderstandings and to the reliance on proof designed to justify individual decisions. This, in turn, tears society apart and harms the validity of the law. In the same vein, limited knowledge concerning political issues will not lead to the suspension of judgment, but rather to the mass-production of fallacious hearsay, which many people will use as the basis for their evaluation of reality. The weakening of society due to its reliance on faulty ways of understanding the 63

64 65

As for the kind of freedom that Spinoza can ascribe to the masses, this will be discussed at the end of this chapter and in the next chapter. TP, p. 341. In addition to other arguments. See note 32 above, as well as the discussion above. — 116 —


Holy Scriptures — which is described in section 1 of this chapter — is therefore identical to the weakening of society due to the masses’ relying on doubtful assumptions. The consciousness of the masses is, of course, the reason for these tendencies. The first level of knowledge does not require more than hearsay and the blind adoption of guesses. Hiding issues pertaining to the sovereign authority is wrong not only because it weakens the masses, but because it generates conditions that further irrational powers. Spinoza hints at this in his writing on slavery and freedom. In order to understand this, we should recall what has already been discussed above on issues of religion. Closed traditions, whether political or religious, are subject to the whims of rulers, be they tyrants or priests; the fact that knowledge and decisions are transmitted to them alone makes them into unrestrained rulers, whereas they may be restrained through overt and open traditions. Spinoza does not write this, but it derives logically from his thought: the very exposure of such matters implies a deep change, as it means that the contents are no longer in the unrestrained hands of a single expert or ruler. The fact that the best interest of the public should be the primary principle guiding the authorities inevitably results in their rationalization. The inevitable improvement of the regime does not have to result from actual criticism; the possibility of criticism suffices. The very existence of the ruling power as an overt actor with clear goals suffices to improve it to some degree. The importance Spinoza assigns to exposing stately matters, and his descriptions of popular religion as an open tradition, illustrate the nature of the rationalization proposed in his theological-political writings. This rationalization is not the imposition of an ideal model on society, but rather the improvement of the culture that is already deeply rooted within it, in order to render it more rational. The empirical and “processual” nature of Spinoza’s analysis of culture-related questions is clearly expressed here. His intention is to divert commonly accepted models in order to generate conditions enabling the development of a more rationally regulated society. In other words, this rationalization is not achieved by adopting some external system, but through internal improvement and the empowerment of the life of a specific society. The call for opening traditions and breaking the monopoly of experts over traditions is one example of this internal improvement. — 117 —


Until now, we have described the religious tradition which Spinoza opposes to the one anchored in sacred texts, whose interpretation lies in the hands of specialists. Some of the most striking features of the religion which Spinoza goes on to describe are the simplicity of religious principles, their identification with moral conduct and their settling in the hearts of men. In most cases, Spinoza mentions these three principles together, and they become, for him, the essence of God’s words: “For both reason and the beliefs of the prophets and Apostles evidently proclaim that God’s eternal word and covenant and true religion are divinely inscribed upon the hearts of men, that is, upon the human mind.”66 We should add here that the medium through which the divine word is conveyed is not of a textual nature. The opposition between the popular religious tradition and established religion can, to a large extent, be summed up as the opposition between “heart” or “man’s spirit” and “sacred writings.” This difference between writings and spiritual life is prominent in all the instances in which Spinoza dwells upon the simplicity and truth of religious tradition.67 The following words comprise a vivid description of this point: “God has revealed through the Apostles that His covenant is no longer written in ink or on stone tablets but rather on the heart by the spirit of God.”68 66 67 68

TTP, p. 163. Ibid., p. 163. Ibid., p. 230. In my view, this should be considered as the background for Spinoza’s deep interest in the Hebrew language. Commentators of his Hebrew grammar indicate that the abstract principles which he attributes to it — such as the priority of the noun, for example — are a reflection of his ontological distinctions. The question, however, is why Spinoza had to formulate his metaphysical views through a grammar book? Hadn’t he succeeded in doing so in several of his books? Moreover, it is doubtful that Spinoza, whose thought is marked by its tremendous empathy — its desire to devote itself entirely to the understanding of its nature and its objects — has to violate linguistic categories in order to imbue them with metaphysical distinctions. The methodical character which Spinoza attributes to the Hebrew language must be understood in other terms; it is part of his efforts to erode the sanctified status of the biblical text. This questioning also involves a change in the status of the Hebrew language: it is no longer the language of God but that of men. Exposing its rules throws light on its worldly and human nature. Spinoza’s thought not only marks the onset of Biblical criticism, but also the project of the secularization of the Hebrew language. Naturally, such claims need to be justified, and I hope to do so in a future essay. — 118 —


This opposition is developed by emphasizing the importance of the story as the medium for the transmission of the divine word, as opposed to the entire corpus: “When we say an awareness of the biblical narratives is most necessary for the common people, we do not mean awareness of literally all the histories in the scared writings, but only the ones that are most important and which most clearly demonstrate, on their own, apart from the others, the doctrine just mentioned, and which have the most influence on people’s minds.”69 The individual biblical story is placed here at center. In this way, what stands out is the simple identification with the characters, or the lesson, as Spinoza calls it further on.70 Placing the individual story at center is vital in order to prevent it from being engulfed in a broad system of stories; this would make the understanding of the story a complicated work of interpretation. It is for this reason that Spinoza emphasizes the importance of the individual story which can be understood in its entirety, independent of the larger body of sacred writings: “For if all the biblical histories were required to prove its doctrine, and it were impossible to draw a conclusion without a thorough consideration of absolutely all the narratives, then obviously the demonstration and derivation of the Bible’s doctrine would surpass the capacity and abilities not just of the common people but all mankind.”71 A central theme in the moderation of religious tradition is its subjection to man’s independent judgment. This can be perceived as a kind of clarification of the notion that the divine word is inscribed in the heart. At the beginning of this claim, Spinoza compares or opposes law to religion and claims the following: “If every individual had the liberty to interpret the public laws at his own discretion, no state could survive; it would immediately be dissolved by this very fact, and public law would be private law.”72 This impossibility does not apply to religion; on the contrary: “Since it [the religion] does not consist so much in external actions as in simplicity and truth of mind, it does not

69 70 71 72

TTP, p. 77. Ibid., pp. 78-79. Ibid., pp. 77-78. Ibid., p. 116. — 119 —


belong to any public law or authority. For simplicity and truth of mind are not instilled in men by the power of laws or by public authority, and absolutely no one can be compelled to be happy by force of law. It requires rather pious and fraternal advice, a proper upbringing and, more than anything else, one’s own free judgment.”73 In order to better understand the claim that the divine word is revealed in every man’s heart, one must clarify the way God acts, as it is described in the TTP, the aim of which is the development of popular religion. In this text, Spinoza emphasizes God’s rational action in a number of ways. Naturally, the context of the discussion prevents him from discussing these topics in a through and precise way, as he does in the Ethics. But even so, the necessary and rational actions of God are the outstanding principles of His nature. Divine guidance is “the fixed and unalterable order of nature,” whereas natural laws are “nothing other than the eternal decrees of God and always involve truth and necessity.”74 One important detail in this context is the way God intervenes in human affairs, as it appears in the TTP. Spinoza maintains something of the significance of God’s humanized actions in the eyes of human beings — choice, assistance, and providence — by granting them a new meaning based on His actions, and regulated by eternal laws. One example of this is the definition given to the word “choice”: “For given that nobody does anything except by the predetermined order of nature, that is, by the eternal decree and direction of God, it follows that no one chooses any way of life for himself nor brings anything about, except via the particular summons of God, who chose this man in preference to others for this task or that way of life.”75 The fact that God follows eternal law does not alienate him from the life of men and their destiny. Man’s special destiny — the divine “touch” in his life — are not denied here; they are anchored in regularity. Thus, popular religion, as it appears in the TTP, defines in its own way the finite-infinite status of man. A general expression of this relation between God and mankind is found in the fact that divine protection is determined by moral laws. 73 74 75

Ibid., p. 116. . Ibid., pp. 44-45. Ibid., p. 45. — 120 —


This, in turn, is presented as an important lesson to be learnt from the Holy Scriptures. God “takes the greatest care of men, or rather of those who live piously and honestly, while inflicting many punishments on the rest and segregating them from the good.”76 As mentioned above, God’s rational activity does not transform him into an alienated Divinity. His concern, His all-seeing nature and His providence are preserved, but they are entwined with His organized and eternal activity. The general meaning of this is clear, although it is not explicitly indicated: the questioning of the authority of religious experts also results in the rationalization of the concept of the divine. His organized and unalienated activity removes the monopoly over His representation from the hands of the elite in power, and distributes it in equal proportions among all. The religious reform, as it appears in the TTP, may be summed up as follows: Spinoza attempts to generate a new religious feeling suitable for political life. This feeling is the results of the changes in images and postulates. The word of God is not revealed through the Holy Scriptures, contained in the text or known by specialists; it lies in the hearts of men. Its principle is ethical, simple and undistorted; it is demonstrated in each and every one of the holy stories. The image of God is an important component in the creation of this new feeling; God protects his creatures, knows their ways, and his relation to them is anchored in organized and eternal lawfulness. He is not alienated from men, but man’s relation to God is not exclusive; it can only be understood on the basis of the divine order. This feeling thus stems from changes in the way in which the divine presence is manifested. The motives for His behavior are not hidden; they are overt, just like His actions. Therefore, neither He nor His teachings are the exclusive property of some dominant religious or religious-political elite. In the third section of the previous chapter, we dealt with the hostility of the masses. We claimed there that the consciousness of the member of the masses tends towards egocentric distortions, which lead him to falsely grasp himself as an outsider to the existing order. The all-penetrating dynamism is no longer within his reach, and neither 76

Ibid., p. 77. — 121 —


is his genuine relation to the world. The member of the masses is detached from an ontic point of view; hence in Book IV of the Ethics,77 the knowledge of God represents the key axis for clarifying the way people connect to one another. The new religious feeling described here — which, in my view, represents the main point of religious reform — is linked to the Archimedean point in the member of the masses’ consciousness of belonging. God’s rational activity, providence based on moral laws — all these rule out the meta-finite status that the believer in the vain religion imagines for himself. He does not stand before his God, alone and opposite his maker, but as someone who belongs to the divine order and acts within it. Thus, man’s metaphysical position is reformed. What stood at the root of his detachment from everything becomes the source of his attachment, and brings him somewhat closer to the solidarity of the philosopher. In other words, the readiness to act in an ethical way is one of the reasons for the usefulness of reformed religion for society. The basic metaphysical position contained within this religion — naturally, more felt than known by the believer — is a more fundamental reason for this. We can now understand what is comprised in the political secularism which is attributed here to Spinoza. The main point of this politicalcultural project lies in the rationalization of society. One useful means of achieving this is the establishment of a proper political authority; this is a raw datum. Understanding the nature of the masses, as learnt from this ontological-psychological study, includes clarification of the conditions necessary to guarantee the stability of political sovereignty. Religion plays an important part in this matter, both with respect to the dangers it entails, as well as in its potential utility. Consequently, the rationalization of social life not only implies the rejection of the authority of religious experts; it also involves shaping a religious feeling that originates in the cultural traditions of the masses. It has the power to gear the response of the masses to obey the ethical rules and reform the metaphysical attitude that is reflected in their life and identity. Political secularism denies the religious establishment the monopoly over religious tradition, while nurturing a gentle form of 77

E 4p28 onwards. — 122 —


religious tradition, which has the power to nurture ethical behavior and solidarity. Political secularism covers all the concepts discussed so far — imagination and the nature of non-reflective consciousness, the instability of the masses and the possibility of moderating them, and the construction of a political power and its reinforcement through religion. This political secularism is both narrower and broader than expected. Shaping life with the help of political sovereignty represents the essence of the secular way of life — in this sense, it can be called narrow; to achieve its goals, it recruits the possibilities embodied in religious life — in this sense, it is broader than one might have expected. The political secularism which we attribute to Spinoza is a theologicalpolitical tendency; the rationalization which it seeks to bring to social life is linked to the rationalization of the concept of God. In both cases, we seek to perfect existing patterns rather than adopt an external one — the limited improvement of life in society through the culture and politics already found in it. What has been described above can be summed up under the title “New Religious Feeling.” This feeling is based on the strengthening of the authority of the simple believer. However, what is the basis of this authority? What in the structure of consciousness of a member of the masses can grant him this strength? One should ponder this question seriously, as it does not arise merely as the result of the interpretation I suggested in the previous chapter; it is a dominant tendency in Spinoza’s writings. In certain places, particularly in the TTP and in the TP, Spinoza describes the activities of the members of the masses as though they arise or should arise from a source within the self. He claims that the content of the ideas that give rise to obedience depends to a large extent on the judgments of the obeying person: “Every person, knowing himself better than anyone else, should believe whatever he considers best for strengthening his love of justice.”78 He reverts to this on other occasions: “Just as it [the Bible] was once adapted to the understanding of the common people, so also anyone may adapt it to his own beliefs if he sees that in this way he can obey God with fuller mental assent in matters 78

TTP, p. 182. — 123 —


concerning justice and charity.”79 In political contexts, which are less complex from a rhetorical point of view, Spinoza also emphasizes this element of will. In the TP, for example, he writes that “commonwealth, whose peace depends on the sluggishness of its subjects, that are led about like sheep, to learn but slavery, may more properly be called a desert than a commonwealth.”80 In other words, any state deserving of the name relies on the activity of its citizens, including the masses that are part of it, rather than on leading them “like sheep.” There is one profound difficulty, which arises in presenting the simple believer, a member of the masses, as the source of authority for religious principles. Spinoza’s ontology and epistemology describe him as oscillating, without direction, between fear and hope. If so, such authority would seem to be groundless. What force of action can be attributed to the citizens of the State, to the masses who are best known for their passive spirit? The member of the masses, as we described in the previous chapter, lives in deep passivity; he uncritically adopts chance hearsay, sticks to his vague experience and oscillates in his emotions and behaviors. So what meaning can there be to the claim that the aim of the State is that people use their free reason and not live like “animals or machines”?81 Is this is not what they do by nature? “The mob is terrifying, if unafraid.”82 This “terrifying” is deeply engrained in the nature of the masses; what kind of authority, then, and what type of freedom of thought can be linked to individuals who are members of the masses? One might claim that when Spinoza speaks of the freedom of people, he is only referring to the general public. Improving the state and religion is a process of rationalization.83 The degree of reason that can be assigned to life in society depends entirely on the type of governing power. This does not solve the difficulty mentioned above: in a free country, the masses do not live like “animals or machines”; in other words, does the rationalization of society not involve stimulating 79 80 81 82 83

Ibid., p. 178. TP, p. 314. TTP, p. 252. E 4p54s. See TP, pp. 295-296. — 124 —

----------  VI. Invigorating the life of the masses and the spirit of obedience -----------

the passive life of the masses, rendering them more active? In fact, in considering the new religious feeling underlying Spinoza’s descriptions of popular religion, at least as described so far, on what basis will it be found in the consciousness of the masses? It seems that removing the word of God from the authority of the specialists of the Holy Scriptures somehow involves the intensification of one’s life; however, how can this intensification take place? Clearly in the masses, like in all that exists in Spinoza’s ontology, there is a certain measure of activity. What requires clarification is not the claim that the masses possess the force to act — this is obvious; what does require some explanation is the nature of what is attributed to the masses: what is the force that underlies a suitable political life, one that can be shaped through an appropriate religious tradition and which takes this lower level of consciousness into consideration?

VI. Invigorating the life of the masses and the spirit of obedience In order to clarify the ontological-epistemological basis of the issue of the invigoration of the masses in Spinoza’s thought, we must return to the meaning of this idea in his thought. As we know, Spinoza rejects the view of the will as a separate faculty in the mind. According to his words in the TdIE and in the Ethics, the assumption underlying such a view is that the idea is a static content, “something mute, like a picture on a table, and not a mode of thinking, namely, the very [act of] understanding.”84 An idea is a mental act which, by its nature, involves affirmation or negation. The opposite claim is also correct: there is no volition in the mind, no affirmation or negation, apart from what the idea as such includes.85 Affirmation or negation are not the result of some independent mental faculty, but are part of thought. These two statements can be summed up by claiming that each instance of willing is included in an idea and each idea includes willing. In the Ethics, it is clearer what willing refers to, i.e. affirmation 84 85

E 2p43s. E 2p49. — 125 —


or negation.86 Spinoza indicates that the difference between various affirmations is like the difference between ideas; affirmation and negation are concrete actions that depend upon a concrete idea. They are also included in the act of imagination: “For what is perceiving a winged horse other than affirming wings of the horse?”87 Thus, affirmation and negation are what mark the actual state of consciousness of the mind when it recognizes an object. The claims that willing and ideas are intertwined, irrespective of the state of consciousness, seem to question what was stated in the first section of the previous chapter. We should dwell a little on these difficulties, as their solution is necessary in order to clarify our discussion on the issue of the invigoration of the masses and the spirit of obedience. These paragraphs described the distinction between reflective and non-reflective consciousness. Their main claim was that ideas are found in the non-reflective consciousness “without approval”; hence, as we recall, this type of consciousness was described as similar to a dream. The concepts of “non-reflective consciousness” and of “approval” are seemingly incompatible — at least until we clarify further the notion of approval. Indeed, approval is an act that has a reflective aspect — consciousness identifies an item within itself and either affirms or denies it. What reflective meaning can there be for an act that takes place in a non-reflective consciousness? Another way of putting it is as follows: in what way is consciousness non-reflective if every idea it includes, i.e. every mental act, includes the possibility of distinguishing its own contents? The interpretative claims presented in this chapter are not the only ones that clash with the fact that each idea contains affirmation or negation; it seems that a significant number of places in the text itself also do: what kind of approval is found in the consciousness of the person Spinoza describes as “[…] words of a parrot or a robot which speaks without mind and sense”?88 Moreover, in general, what is the role of approval in Spinoza’s description of the activity of imagination as one relying on vague experience and the imitative adoption of hearsay? In other words, there is a need 86 87 88

Henceforth, “volition” or “willing” refers either to affirmation or negation. E 2p49s. TTP, p. 175. — 126 —


to develop a concept of approval in non-reflective consciousness (or perhaps of non-reflective approval) and to do so only by following in Spinoza’s footsteps, since this kind of development is not clearly suggested in the text. Another possibility is to abandon this concept of non-reflective consciousness, as well as the distinction between the two types of consciousness, as a general distinction for interpreting Spinoza’s epistemology. Here is how we can tackle this problem: the fact that the idea contains the affirmation or the negation of the object that arises in it — this fact does not clash with the existence of the non-reflective consciousness. Non-reflective consciousness is not devoid of all elements of selfawareness or of the ability to distinguish its contents. The approval contained in the ideas that make up this type of consciousness and that reflects the state of its awareness comprises the identification and approval of the object of the idea. It makes no distinction as to the logical content of the object and its context. Therefore, this type of approval can be described as slight or weak — like the awareness itself. In the first section of the previous chapter, I indicated that nonreflective consciousness resembles the dream, since the ideas it includes “are devoid of approval.” The epistemological principle of the inclusion of volition in the idea does not clash with these descriptions,as long as we recall the various possibilities of apprehending the word “approval”: in Spinoza’s thought, ideas are not discrete; they are not units of content given in separate units of time, but they generate one another. This has to be the case given the nature of the multiplicity in Spinoza’s ontology. The approval that is part of the idea reflects the state of consciousness in which it appears; approval, as part of a reflective consciousness, includes the understanding of the way the idea is given, as well as its affinity with other ideas. On the other hand, approval as part of a nonreflective consciousness is limited to the object, which is isolated from its context. This type of approval does not amount to much more than the intention towards an isolated object and the absence of doubt as to its existence.89 Thus, the rather unsurprising answer to the problem of the nature 89

See the discussion in Chapter 2, section 1. — 127 —


of approval within a consciousness described as non-reflective lies in the multiple possibilities of approval. Given this answer, we will now discuss the approval of a special category of ideas of imagination — religious or theological ideas, their special content being the will of God. Clearly, from an epistemic point of view, they are in no way special. The reason that it makes sense to focus on them is their political-cultural importance. They will also help us explain obedience, which in turn will enable us to clarify the meaning of the invigoration of the life of the masses. In other words, an analysis of obedience deals with the core of the issue concerning us here — the possible sources for expanding self-authority as they were expressed in the previous section — since obedience has to do with imposing rules pertaining to the believer’s way of life. We must therefore examine the nature of the link between the spirit of obedience and the self-authority which, as we have seen, stands at the heart of Spinoza’s efforts to moderate religious tradition. The argument I am about to present regarding the origin of obedience is not clearly stated in Spinoza’s writings; it does, however, accord with the epistemological and ontological arguments that have been described in the course of this chapter, and should therefore be viewed as a kind of extrapolation — an argument not clearly stated, but derived from the logic of Spinoza’s thought. Indeed, Spinoza indicates on a number of occasions that the aim of religion is obedience, and that a person’s faith is reflected by his actions and not by the contents that led him to carry them out.90 Therefore, he leaves these contents — at least according to the literal interpretation of his statements, to the person’s choice, to what he calls “full mental assent.”91 In this type of analysis, religion is a system of ideas that generate obedience. If the content of the idea that generates obedience is left to the person’s choice, and if the idea is examined in light of the actions that derive from it rather than in itself, what guarantees the spirit of obedience? In my view, what we can say about it is that obedience is a response

90 91

See, for example, TTP, p. 179. TTP, p. 183: “Indeed everyone, as we have already said, must adapt these doctrines of faith to his own understanding and interpret them for himself in whatever way seems to make them easier for him to accept unreservedly and with full mental assent.” — 128 —


to contents that are typical of certain ideas — for example, revealing the will of God and his emissaries. However, this answer is only part of the issue. The tentative description of the content of these ideas hints at the fact that not all depends upon this content. If it did, one would have to focus on the details of the desired content. Why does Spinoza only draw the general outline of ideas that generate obedience and that are thus desirable?92 What guarantees the existence of the spirit of obedience if one only tentatively designates the contents of these obedience-generating ideas? The answer to this is that for Spinoza, the idea is a content that involves affirmation or negation.93 Within this context, one should pay attention to a particular type of ideas, i.e. ideas for which the assumption of their truth involves the order to perform a specific task or directives on how to perform it (which I will henceforth call “guiding ideas”). One such example is an arithmetic rule or a theological idea. In this regard, I would like to make two remarks. The fact that an idea comprises a command cannot determine anything regarding the level of activity or passivity that one should attribute to the soul which maintains that idea. According to Spinoza, every idea is a mental act; the passivity or activity which should be attributed to the mind that possessesthat idea does not depend on content but on the way the 92

93

This question can be answered as follows: the tentative tone which Spinoza adopts when writing about theological ideas does not hint at the fact that obedience is anchored in some other thing; it is one of his stratagems in expropriating these ideas from the authority of religious figures and transferring them to the authority of the individual, to the “assent from the heart”. In fact, in my understanding, this tentative tone is one of Spinoza’s stratagems in questioning institutionalized religious authority. This, however, is not all; this stratagem ends with obedience being part of the believer’s “assent from the heart.” Spinoza’s sensitivity to the existence of a spiritual authority and his awareness of the instability of the masses’ result in his claims finally leading to the strengthening of some authority rather than to its undermining. In other words, we are once again faced with the problem we started with: if we base obedience on a source found within the member of the masses means, we must clarify the nature of this source within and for the self. What can guarantee the presence of the spirit of obedience beyond that is tentatively depicted in theological ideas? What is the basis for building obedience on the judgment of the member of the masses? Could it be that the spirit of obedience does not only derive from the content of the theological idea, but also derives, somehow, from the epistemic status of such an idea? E 2p49. — 129 —


mind apprehends it. The second remark is as follows: nearly every single idea can, in a specific context, guide conduct and contain “commands.” However, this claim is irrelevant to our discussion, since the aim of the distinction here is to emphasize the ideas that explicitly contain commands as a fundamental manifestation of their contents, a type of practical “user’s manual,” rather than instructions that may implicitly be attributed to those ideas.94 Employing the distinction we just made, we may identify an important means of expressing the approval of specific ideas, one particularly relevant for the first degree of knowledge. This may be easily seen by looking at the example brought by Spinoza in the TdIE in order to distinguish between the various levels of knowledge. The fact that a single example is used for all three degrees — finding the fourth number within a proportional series — emphasizes the fact that the degree of knowledge is not determined based on the known object, but rather on the way in which it is apprehended. The first degree of knowledge is attributed to merchants, who are described as follows: “Tradesmen will at once tell us that they know what is required to find the fourth number, for they have not yet forgotten the rule which was given to them arbitrarily without proof by their masters.”95 The next example is of those who exhibit a slightly higher level of knowledge; they (alii) are described thus: “Others construct a universal axiom from their experience with simple numbers, where the fourth number is self-

94

95

What we call here “command” depends to a certain extent on the context. The knowledge that “the dog is a barking animal” is likely to guide my actions in certain conditions. Generally speaking, every element of knowledge that is approved or rejected by our consciousness impacts upon us in a certain way. This, however, does not undermine the distinction suggested here between “guiding ideas” and “theoretical” ideas. This distinction is based on the presence of a certain act that derives necessarily from the content of the idea; it is not based on general knowledge that is likely to guide our actions. Moreover, the member of the masses who believes in a moral order that originates in the will of God is not primarily concerned with enquiring into the nature of the moral act; rather, he adopts norms and patterns of specific moral acts in accordance with the practice in his surroundings, and justifies them by claiming they are is the will of God. Thus, very general theological ideas may be, in the terminology I propose here, guiding ideas. TdIE, p. 10. — 130 —


evident, as in the case of 2, 4, 3, 6.”96 These two levels of knowledge are rejected further on: the first one is based on the adoption of hearsay, and as through hearsay we cannot have “insight into the essence of a thing”;97 the second degree is based on inductive inference, through which is it only possible to grasp the “accidental properties” of things in nature. 98 These examples characterize the two levels of lower consciousness. The difference between them lies in the means of their approval: the merchants’ knowledge does not distinguish the logical content of an idea. Spinoza stresses the mechanical use they make of rules of calculation and the absence of any logical content: they have not yet forgotten “the rule (operatio) which was given to them arbitrarily” and that was brought to their ears “without proof (sine demonstratione)”; the approval of this action is given by its use — they know “quid sit agendum.” What makes their knowledge inferior is that the idea is approved by the calculation itself with no attention at all given to the logical content underlying it. They do not even have access to the logical content, since all they know is the calculation itself, rather than any explanation provided for it. In other words, we are dealing with non-reflective approval. The main difference between merchants and those representing a higher degree of knowledge is the presence of some degree of discernment as to the content of the idea rather than mere obedience to its orders. Those of the second level of knowledge, however, still do not understand the essence of things; they determine a postulate based on their random experience. But the fact that, in the first cases of the induction, the fourth number “appears clearly” points to some form of comprehension — albeit unsatisfactory — of the logical content of the idea. These two lower levels of knowledge are contradictory: the first is an instance of mechanical and non-reflective consciousness, whose approval is given only through its use, while the second one surpasses it somewhat, although it remains limited by its faulty perception of the logical content of the idea. Since this suffices to 96 97 98

Ibid., p. 10. Ibid., p. 10. Ibid., p. 11. — 131 —


oppose it to the previous level, we thus learn about the non-reflective nature of the merchants’ consciousness. What we will be claiming here is that there are ideas whose content includes clear and obvious commands, which can be approved by carrying out these orders without logical approval.99 This will help us understand why we described ideas from the imagination as nonreflective ideas:100 although the ideas from the imagination contain some measure of reflection, such reflection is geared towards identifying objects rather than the logical content they contain. The fact that the idea implies the distinction of the existence of the object as a kind of threshold of reflection is hinted at when Spinoza indicates that, in the final analysis, things can be apprehended in one of two ways: “either insofar as we conceive them to exist in relation to a certain time and place, or insofar as we conceive them to be contained in God and to follow from the necessity of the divine nature.”101 Whether something is apprehended as part of an adequate idea — as part of the substance, or if it is apprehended in the imagination, in which objects of the imagination are interwoven with elements of the imagination, such as time and place — in both cases, it is the same object. Clearly, the awareness of the logical context of something, the perception of its existence in the chain of causes, are indeed most relevant for understanding the object; the object’s identity and existence are, however, given as something “solid.”102 The fact reported above, according to which the same example (the four numbers) illustrates all three degrees of knowledge, also attests to this. Both these cases teach us something important: that the perception of the object, the “indicating” that is included in cognitive activity, is common to all kinds of ideas. This identification represents the minimum level of reflectivity 99

100 101 102

Clearly, it is not only by making use of an idea from the imagination that we can approve it (“a horse with wings”); it is also clear that adequate knowledge does not change the use made of the idea, but rather substantiates it (a mathematician will calculate a proportion just as a merchant would). See note 12 in Chapter 3. E 4p29s. Here we witness Spinoza’s pre-modern character. The idealist idea developed by Kant and in other ways by Nietzsche that the identity of an object depends on the interpretation given it, is foreign to him. — 132 —


that is included in the mental act, in the idea. The degree of recognition of the logical content of the idea, however, remains to be determined. What we have said so far about “guiding ideas” will help us understand the meaning of obedience. As I indicated above, in the TTP, Spinoza does not analyze obedience in epistemological terms; his considerations are essentially devoted to political issues. This does not mean, however, that the epistemology he developed was not present in dealing with theological-political issues. Thus, the mental process of merchants can help us achieve a full understanding of the epistemic aspect of obedience. Spinoza describes the masses thus: “the constancy of the common people is obstinacy, and that they are not governed by reason [….]”103 Since it is associated with the members of these masses, obedience does not result from their understanding of the logical contents included in the idea, but rather is an expression of their acceptance of it.104 The person making use of the theological idea and who follows the commands it conveys conducts himself exactly like the merchants who, with the help of a simple mechanical calculation, approve of the “action they heard.” By following the commands included in the idea, the member of the masses actually states that it is justified in his eyes, without submitting it to any logical-reflective testing.105 This may be the reason why obedience becomes a self-sufficient criterion which (apparently) renders truth and falsehood superfluous: “Each person’s faith therefore must be deemed pious or impious by reason of their obedience or disobedience alone, and not in relation to truth or falsehood.”106 The lack of necessity for logical approval and the possibility of expressing approval through implementing orders can help clarify Spinoza’s claim, according to which everyone is capable of obeying but not all are capable of apprehending God with their mind.107

103 104 105

106 107

TTP, p. 12. Ibid., pp. 180-181. By claiming this, I do not claim that non-reflective ideas naturally give rise to obedience, nor that there is no true idea whose approval does not implicate some action. TTP, p. 182. TTP, p. 174: “an intellectual or precise knowledge of God is not a gift generally given to all the faithful, in the way that obedience is.” — 133 —


This is also the reason why Spinoza describes obedience as “ability.”108 The meaning of obedience, as presented here, runs contrary to the commonly accepted way of understanding the call “we shall do and listen”; it also runs contrary to what is usually presented, by Spinoza’s interpreters, as his political-theological views.109 For Spinoza, obedience is not the outcome of some manipulation, in which activity is attributed only to those initiating it. The fact that members of the masses often obey because they are subject to deep religious or political oppression should not be the basis for understanding the origin of obedience. In order to understand what is proposed in this analysis of obedience, it is more important to note Spinoza’s frequently expressed ambitions to found obedience in the believer himself, in the “assent from the heart.” Once again, the example of the merchants can be very useful. The origin of the calculation does not only lie in apprehending some hearsay; it also lies in the way the idea is adopted by their consciousness, in the mechanical self-activation of merchants. They approve of the idea through their use of it — this is an expression of their non-reflective consciousness. In the same vein, one should not look at obedience as the expression of their total passivity which, of course, is impossible for Spinoza; rather, it should be considered as something that is deeply engrained in the nature of consciousness of the masses. The readiness of the believer, a member of the masses, to obey, derives from his mechanical apprehension of things — that he gives approval through use.110 Therefore, in order to guarantee obedience, there is no need to 108 109

110

TTP, p. 194. See Chapter 3, note 65, and see Hallett’s approach in Spinoza, p. 140, for what he calls the “pseudo-morality” of the masses. For other analyses of the concept of obedience, see Levin, Revelation, pp. 171-175; Balibar, Spinoza and Politics, pp. 88-95. Clearly, approval through use is not particular to members of the masses. The mathematician who clearly distinguishes the logical content of a proposition approves this idea by using it. The difference between the merchant and the mathematician is that the former uses the rule as the only tool for approving an idea. In spite of what we just wrote, one should not conclude that this type of knowledge is limited to ignorant people and the weak-minded. Many educated people adopt or reject theological ideas without bothering to examine them, following the trends found in their surroundings. In other words, what is claimed here about the knowledge of the masses is relevant for many human groups and in infinity of human situations. This will be discussed in the conclusion. — 134 —


impose ideas through religious authority. The regularization of the life of the masses does not mean they have to be led like a flock of sheep. If the believer possesses ideas of the imagination, apprehended through his own particular tendencies — that should suffice. This is likely to shed some light on Spinoza’s claim, in the PT, that “Men are so to be led, that they may think that they are not led, but living after their own mind, and according to their free decision.”111 The meaning suggested here for the approval that lies at the root of obedience can be summed up by the Hebrew term “nakhon.” This term will also help us explain the role of the philosopher’s speculations for his society. In spoken Hebrew, the word “nakhon” has two meanings. It indicates an agreement with what has been brought to our attention (“correct”). The combination “ze nakhon” (“that’s correct”) expresses the agreement that what has been said is true. If this conclusion is the outcome of speculative efforts rather than some external impression, a person will choose the term “amiti” (“true”). In my view, the difference between “true” and “correct” is as follows: the first points to an active revealing of truth, while the second refers to a passive approval of it, i.e. the agreement with something that has become known to him from the outside. Another use of the word “nakhon” is “ready” as in “I’m ready (nakhon) to do this.” This refers to the readiness to do something suggested to me. In other words, the various uses of the word “nakhon” point to the two ways of being passive: a relatively passive acceptance of what seems to be true, and a readiness to act. As we have indicated throughout this chapter, the philosophical articulation of the consciousness of the masses involves the articulation of its internal concepts, and the understanding of the force of action hidden within it. The main concept of this articulation can be expressed with the help of the word “nekhonut” (“correctness” and “readiness”). The ambiguity that characterizes this term makes it useful for designating the essential affinity between the epistemic status of theological ideas and the readiness to act implicit in the term nekhonut. The members of the masses consider the religious images that are part of their consciousness as the correct (nakhon) contents, where “nakhon” refers to their feeling 111

TP, p. 382. — 135 —


of truth as well as their readiness to act. To be more precise, it refers to the fact that the sense of truth within the non-reflective consciousness is approved by way of a readiness to act.112 These two meanings, which are perceived as having a significant relation within the framework of Spinozian analysis, characterize the way of acting implied by obedience that is based on “assent from the heart.” This is the key for understanding Spinoza’s hope that the State will not be based on “the absence of action” of its citizens. As we recall, on a number of occasions Spinoza emphasizes the importance of nurturing the independence or the self-authority of the member of the masses, be he citizen or believer. He claimed that a State worthy of its name must nurture the freedom of thought of its citizens and that, on the other hand, if it is managed so that the masses live “like sheep,” it will be considered as a wilderness.113 His words on the importance of the “assent from the heart” go in the same direction, as do his other claims on the central place to be attributed to the deliberations of the simple believer. What we discussed in the previous section is also relevant here: the fact that Spinoza hopes to base the new religious feeling on the simple believer’s viewing himself as the source of this authority, and that God’s word is something engraved in his mind without any distortion. Based on what was just said, we can interpret such claims — which attribute independent power to the masses and which include the hope that they will be nurtured — not only as part of a manipulative rhetoric (which remains even after the interpretation suggested here); they are, on the contrary, genuine demands based on the understanding of the mechanical dynamism of the masses’ mentality, of its innate willingness to adopt the commands included in the religious ideas. One should not understand the nurturing of the judgment, the “assent from the heart” and the freedom of thought, solely based on the moral justification they can bear — the predominance of “nurturing life” and the hope of “avoiding death” (which Spinoza mentions in the TP);114 we 112 113 114

I took the phrase “sense of truth” from Vaughan, Myth. TP, p. 314. TP, p. 314. — 136 —


must also consider the role of this individuality in ordering social life. The ability to obey is common to all mankind;115 the degree of intensity of this ability depends on the way an idea is adopted. The adoption of an idea in the consciousness of a member of the masses is not likely to lead to a logical-reflective approval; however, this does not mean that all non-reflective approvals are one and the same: the acceptance of an idea based on “assent from the heart” is not only a worthy basis for generating obedience to the commands it contains, but also a strong foundation for it. Indeed, the intense non-reflective approval involved in acceptance deriving from the “assent from the heart” is what will be reflected in the way this idea is employed. These words on the origin of obedience also clarify the ontologicalepistemological basis for the demand to stimulate the life of the masses. As we recall, this stimulation is characterized by turning the simple believer into a source of authority, into the representative of God’s undistorted demands. Clearly, Spinoza’s efforts to increase selfauthority do not designate the masses as a spontaneous force that has the ability to take over political rule, but rather as a means of reinforcing it. The self-authority that is attributed to the masses was meant to designate the spiritual platform necessary to generate the political patterns of the internalization of the law and the adoption of a rational lifestyle. There is a way of acting anchored in a minimal understanding, that can establish a moral social life. This we can learn by looking at the origin of obedience. The importance of this fact becomes clear in light of what was stated in the third section of the previous chapter. The reason for the instability of the masses is also the reason for its potential stability; the passivity of the member of the masses leads him to perceive everything through his distorted self-concept, but also to consistently “use” ideas that are only vaguely distinct in his awareness, and thereby adopt a law-infused lifestyle. From what has been claimed so far, we may understand the meaning of the activity which Spinoza attributes to the masses; we may also understand why political power has to enrobe itself with religious contents. The members of the masses who hold religious ideas and 115

See note 107 above. — 137 —


adopt them on the basis of the “assent from the heart” instill within themselves a moral sensitivity, which derives from their own spirit. Therefore, one should not view them as having a weak spirit, and as blindly following their leaders; they should, on the contrary, be viewed as a large public — including the popular strata — that may identify a religious-moral basis with the ruling power and its leaders, but may also criticize those leaders. In other words, religious symbols and moral contents form a link between political authority and the spirit of the masses. The latter is not a submissive partner, but is spiritually able to take part in political life and to oppose corrupted power. Motivating the masses involves rationalization and actualization. In conclusion, the gist of political secularism involves two processes. The first can be entitled “making-raw”: religion dissolves into a network of images that rely upon individual judgment, and which involves the rationalization of the concept of God. Religion is set free from the authority of its specialists; it is released from its doctrinarian formulations and from its textual basis; it relies on subjective judgment, through which it maintains the awareness of the moral order of the world and of the existence of the almighty God, who protects His creatures. A detailed description of this type of tradition can only be made for a particular given society. Philosophical inquiry can reveal the main traits of what is meant by “making-raw.” The reformed religion turns religion into the raw material for the social-political order; the reformed religion does not involve the weakening of the masses or the exacerbation of its passivity, but its opposite. The network of flexible religious images has the ability to stimulate the individual spirit and to establish rational patterns in the life of society. Thus, it is clear why one ought to beware of manipulation as the key concept in the description of change as it appears in reformed religion. This concept emphasizes the passivity of the masses and the action of those performing the manipulation — leading the masses towards aims that they themselves are unable to discern. However, this is not the main point of the reform suggested here — rather, it is the stimulation of the masses’ power to act. Clearly, this does not imply “going to the people” in the sense of the Russian anarchists, but rather the claim that the understanding of secularization depends on the revelation of the — 138 —


masses’ force of action. This is the background for the second process involved in political secularism — the actualization of society through politicization, in the course of the development of political authority.116 The Spinozian approach to culture described here comprises a program that is cautious in its promises. It contains no instructions for establishing a utopia, but rather describes an epistemic-political infrastructure that is necessary, but also unstable and temporary by nature. The two main processes, making-raw and actualization, do not culminate in a celebration of victory; they form a program geared towards reducing the instability of the masses, restraining its inbred hostility and instilling a more rational way of life. Spinoza’s view of secularism remains a program for limited secularization: striving towards the improvement of political authority, and grounding that authority by stimulating the masses and preparing their spiritual and religious-moral world. The fact that the masses are not only the object of action but that they are also agents in the process of secularization determines their nature. This secularization does not depend on the imposition and fostering of “external,” semi-rational norms by philosopher-kings, but on the modification of the prevalent culture in a concrete society so that it may become the basis for political authority. This authority is likely to strengthen the rationalization and intensification of human life, of masses and individuals alike.

116

This book deals with culture as a potential platform for a civilized political life; a complementary discussion (not carried out here) concerns the ways of actualization or re-actualization. How is it possible to improve political life so that people, both individuals and as members of a society, will lead better lives? — 139 —

----------------------------- Chapter V -----------------------------------

The Role of the Philosopher in His Society in Times of Secularization

-------------------------------------------------------- I. The “Healthy Judgment” --------------------------------------------------------

The Spinozian philosopher looks at his society based on his insights into the limitations of consciousness. The liberation of the masses suggested by the reformed religion and the improvement of the sovereign authority is based on his understanding of the structure of consciousness of the masses and its inherent instability, which derives from the nature of the masses’ consciousness. A further limitation is the restricted influence of the philosopher. A philosopher who is aware of these limitations does not draw negative conclusions, nor does he take exception to his own society; rather, this awareness serves as a basis for the examination of the possibilities that the society has to offer for its own wellbeing. One such example was provided in the previous chapter. I am referring here to the ontological-epistemological-political analysis, through which we showed how persons with a lower degree of knowledge have access to a force of action deriving from obedience. This same logic will enable us to understand the limitations of the philosopher’s influence. All of these will help us understand the role of the philosopher in secularizing his society.

I. The “Healthy Judgment,” the radiance of theology and the problem of the philosopher’s sincerity In the TTP, Spinoza claims on a number of occasions that theology and philosophy are two entirely separate realms: “Scripture leaves reason absolutely free and has nothing at all in common with philosophy, but that each of them stands on own separate footing.”1 He summarizes the difference between them later on the next page: “The object of 1

TTP, p. 9. — 143 —

I. The “Healthy Judgment”

-------------------------------------  The Role of the Philosopher in His Society --------------------------------------

revealed knowledge is simply obedience. It is therefore entirely distinct from natural knowledge both in its object and in its principles and methods, and has nothing whatever in common with it. Each of them [i.e. faith and natural knowledge] has its own province; they do not conflict with each other; and neither should be subordinate to the other.”2 In other words, the origin of theology lies in revelation and its purpose is obedience. In this way, it differs from natural knowledge, even if both are presented as sources or types of knowing. At another point in the book, Spinoza claims that the main point of theology cannot be examined through the categories of truth and falsehood: “Yet since we are unable to prove by means of reason whether the fundamental principle of theology — that men are saved by obedience alone — is true or false, are we not open to the question: why therefore do we believe it?”3 The answer he provides is: “The fundamental dogma of theology cannot be discovered by the natural light, or at least that no one has yet proven it, and that is why revelation was absolutely indispensable.”4 The last of these claims is that since theology cannot be proven by a “mathematical proof,” we accept it: “So it is a sound judgment to accept this fundamental principle embracing the whole of theology and Scripture, even though it cannot be demonstrated by mathematical proof.”5 And what is this? “For it is indeed ignorance to refuse to accept something just because it cannot be mathematically demonstrated when it is confirmed by the testimonies of so many prophets, is a source of great solace for those whose capacity to reason is limited, is of great value to the state, and may believed unreservedly without danger or damage.”6 Spinoza concludes this claim as follows: when one attempts to subordinate theology to reason, he supposes that “theology’s authority will have no impact unless it is illuminated by the natural light of reason.”7 These and similar claims are most certainly part of the cunning 2 3 4 5 6 7

Ibid., p. 10. Ibid., p. 191. Ibid. Ibid., p. 193 Ibid. Ibid. — 144 —


rhetoric which Spinoza uses in the TTP. Claims that theology is entirely separate from philosophy and that its main principles are immune to logical criteria of truth and falsehood aim at dispelling the fears of the readers of the TTP as to the possible risks entailed by philosophy, and to assure them that the status of theology is unassailable. Thus, Spinoza hopes to contribute to the establishment of free enquiry. This interpretation is easy to prove as follows: this must be a manipulative declaration, since it is pointless, from the point of view of Spinozian philosophy, to separate theology from philosophy. The problem with this unquestionably correct interpretation of the matter is that it is too obvious, and thus obscures other significant potential interpretations. The meaning of the claims made in the TTP — more so than in other books — is related to their extra-textual goal. What is the meaning of the discussion of the “self-radiance” of theology for the non-philosophical reader, if it is not the light of reason? On which philosophical basis will we be able to claim that religious ideas whose contents are the belief in revelation, or the theological idea that people may be saved through obedience alone, cannot be proven to be true or false? What we discussed in the previous chapter — particularly concerning the origin of obedience — can help us respond to this. Claims about the “self-radiance” of theology and concerning the validity of the “healthy judgment” play the same role as the demand to authorize the theological ideas concerning the “assent from the heart.” Their aim is to encourage the adoption of an idea based on the inclinations of the heart. They are an argument in support of the importance of what we have called “correctness” (nekhonut). In other words, their justification derives from an understanding of the relation between the lack of reflexivity, the masses’ sense of truth, and the mechanism of obedience and its political significance. This point is no less important than the necessity to avoid clashing with the defenders of theology through manipulative camouflage of the argument. This answer raises a difficulty: if the aim of Spinoza’s claims is to release the masses from the oppression of the religious authorities in order to establish them as a source of authority sufficient for action on the basis of its religious images — then the masses should be protected not only from religious figures but from philosophers as — 145 —


well. The establishment of popular authority is contingent upon its exhibiting a “healthy judgment.” Philosophical criticism has the power to undermine it; thus, the object of TTP, at least insofar as is necessary to ensure the establishment of a broadly useful popular religion, is not only to protect philosophy from theology, but to protect theology from philosophy. But what sort of protection is this? Must the philosopher, in the final instance, obscure his thinking and avoid mentioning the faults in the faith of the masses? Such questions depend upon the social role of the philosopher, as assigned him by Spinoza. Indeed, the philosopher, who is well aware of the distorted concepts that are deeply rooted in society, appears, given his essence, as a sworn enemy of this kind of popular culture. His thought exposes the contradictions between the confused images that are so deeply engrained in society. What benefit can we expect for the public, for the welfare of the State, and especially for the fear of God, from the withdrawal of restrictions set upon these men of thought? The philosopher must, therefore, hide from his society, and perhaps base his speculative project on delusions, like declarations on the source of theology’s self-awareness. The philosopher’s work is bound to be hidden and not open to all, since otherwise his thought is likely to increase the instability naturally found in the broader society. Naturally, these claims apply to the philosopher armed with metaphysical secularism, whose essence is the knowledge of God purified of all specific cultural connotations adhering to the concept of God. The Spinozian philosopher belongs to a long tradition of philosophical figures, from Socrates on, who are seen as endangering the public.8 Things are actually far more complex: Spinoza often links the fulfillment of freedom, particularly the freedom of thought, to his claims on religion and to the issue of the desirable principles of the political sovereign. One can attribute two meanings to the freedom of thought advocated by Spinoza: first, freedom of thought for the members of society; second, freedom of philosophical enquiry. The first is expressed through his claim that the governing power must 8

These figures include Socrates and Anaxagoras, among others. See the views of Leo Strauss on the tension between the philosopher and political life. — 146 —


avoid legislating laws concerning opinions, with the exception of rebellious views that undermine the foundations of the State.9 The individual cannot pass on to the ruler his natural right to the freedom of thought.10 This view occupies a special place in the TTP, in which Spinoza claims that the ultimate goal of the State is freedom, and where he explains that the aim of the state “is not dominate or control people by fear or subject them to the authority of another. On the contrary, its aim is to free everyone from fear so that they may live in security so far possible.”11 What has been said so far about the “assent from the heart,” the “healthy judgment” and the hope to refrain from the “absence of action” concerns the stimulation of the masses, i.e. the fulfillment of their freedom to the fullest. The second meaning — the freedom of philosophical enquiry — is prominent in the preface to the TTP: “Theological-Political Treatise contain[s] several discourses which demonstrate that freedom to philosophize may not only be allowed without danger to piety and the stability of the republic but cannot be refused without destroying the peace of the republic and piety itself.” The general danger for the masses that derives from the thought of the Spinozian philosopher must now be formulated through a number of questions: What is the relation between the freedom of philosophical enquiry and the stimulation of thought of the members of society? Is there a connection between the freedom of thought of the members of society and the stimulation of the life of the masses? How can philosophical thought contribute to this stimulation, which comprises, as we recall, the deepening of the believer’s self-authority with respect to ideas about religion and the anchoring of obedience in the natural tendencies of the heart? Can the entire work of the philosopher be reduced, as we have just hinted, to forming false and manipulative foundations — such as the declaration of the independent and unassailable status of theology? This can also be formulated as follows: political secularism involves the development of the freedom of thought of the masses; the images which the masses tend to hold 9 10 11

TP, p. 55; TTP, p.159; and see the interesting statement in the TTP, p.213. TTP, p. 209. Ibid., p. 252. — 147 —


as true, “following their healthy judgment,” are false; if so, what is the role of the political philosopher in the development of a secularism based on these false images?

II. The resonance of truth In order to respond to these questions, we must broaden the discussion of the meaning of truth in Spinoza’s epistemology and ontology. It will be particularly useful for us to clarify the potential impact of the true idea on the consciousness of the masses — what we have chosen to call “the resonance of truth.” Spinoza reiterates, albeit in different ways, his famous claim according to which truth is the criterion of truth and falsehood. He backs his claim with the image of light and darkness: truth reveals itself, as does falsehood, “[a]s the light makes both itself and the darkness plain.”12 We should note that the relation of truth to falsehood is not the same as the relation between truth and the ideas of imagination. The difference between them is expressed in Spinoza’s clear formulation of the relation between truth and the first degree of knowledge: “Knowledge of the first kind is the only cause of falsity (unica est falsitatis causa), whereas knowledge of the second and the third kind is necessarily true.”13 Clearly, then, the ideas that originate in the first degree of knowledge, i.e. the ideas of imagination, cannot be described by means of the distinction between truth and falsehood. They may be the cause of falsehood, and they may be the foundation of truth if they have been reformed or deepened. The relation between truth and falsehood on the one hand, and the ideas of imagination on the other, is presented once again in the following sentence: “Knowledge of the second and third kinds, and not of the first kind, teaches us to distinguish the true from the false.”14 The discussion presented in the first section of Chapter 3 can help us understand these statements. In this section, we explained that the basic distinction which Spinoza draws in his epistemology — more 12 13

14

E 2p43s. E 2p41. Curley, Ethics, uses “cause of falsity.” The term which Spinoza uses is “falsitas”; it is only found in late Latin and points to something abstract. E 2p42; see also E 5p28. — 148 —

-------------------------------------------------------  II. The resonance of truth -------------------------------------------------------

basic than that between the various degrees of knowledge — is that between reflective and non-reflective consciousness. This distinction is the background for the distinction between the ideas that may be characterized as true or false and the ideas which, from epistemological point of view, precede them. Why is that? This is so because the absence of reflectivity means that the ideas are given in consciousness “without approval,” whereas an idea that is either true or false necessarily includes the approval of its contents,15 i.e. it contains a reflection on the logical content of its objects. It is evident that ideas given as part of a non-reflective consciousness precede, from a phenomenological point of view, the distinction between truth and falsehood. In this respect, we should view these ideas as raw ideas. They can only be the basis for a false idea (if they remain uncompleted) or for the true idea (if completed).16 Consequently, we must take care to describe the ideas of imagination based on the internal categories of consciousness that contain them, rather than distort them through distinctions which are not relevant to them. This is an important point in understanding the topic of political and metaphysical secularism, as well as the freedom of philosophical enquiry in Spinoza’s thought. The question that was presented at the end of the previous section was to what extent the true understanding of the philosopher, when publicly expressed, undermines the beliefs of the masses and their stability. To what extent can the philosophers’ truth, including the contents of thought which are summed up by the phrase “metaphysical secularism,” impact on society and endanger it? The gist of the answer involves what we have called here “the resonance of truth” — the question as to how and to what extent revealed truth impacts on the masses, who are mired in imagination. The key to this lies in what we have already claimed regarding the link between truth and the objects of imagination or between reflective and non-reflective consciousness. The analysis of emotions in Book III of the Ethics, as well as the

15

16

As we recall, in that it is being approved, a false idea differs from a fabricated idea. On the role of approval in these ideas, see Hallett, Spinoza, pp. 86-87. In E 2p41, Spinoza indicates that the first degree of knowledge is the only reason for falsity, although clearly this does not mean that it is false by necessity. — 149 —


accompanying notes about language and the masses, may serve as a good starting point for our discussion.17 As we recall, the classification of the emotions is based on the notion of conatus, the gist of which speaks of the division of affects according to their tending towards happiness or sadness. The distinctions between these affects are revealed in a logicalpsychological way. Such exposure throws light on the limitations of language. These limitations can be seen in a number of ways: words cannot describe the entire range of affects, since the affect generated by a particular object contains the nature of that object: “There are as many species of joy, sadness, and desire, and consequently of each affect composed of these (like vacillation of mind) or derived from them (like love, hate, hope, fear, etc.), as there are species of objects by which we are affected.”18 Words are thus general; these deficiencies, it appears, reflect the tendency of the imagination towards generalizations. More important is the fact that language lacks certain distinctions. Certain affects become known to the reader through distinctions achieved with the help of logical-psychological analysis, although no word designates them. In other words, philosophical analysis is not bound by the limitations of language: “and from that we can deduce in addition other affects, which we also do not usually distinguish from the others by any single term.”19 The reason for the shortcomings of words lies in the limited knowledge of those using them: “the names of the affects are found more from the ordinary usage [of words] than from an accurate knowledge [of the effects].”20 The analysis of emotions has great psychological import in Spinoza’s philosophy; it is the basis for the articulation of the oscillations of the mind and of its instability. The gap between this articulation and the masses’ use of language recalls the gap between the philosopher’s 17

18

19 20

For broader discussions of Spinoza’s philosophy of language, see: Savan, Spinoza and Language; Yovel, The Masses and Language. E 2p56. The activations are determined on the basis of their objects, because they comprise ideas of their objects. This is stated in E 3p56d: “The joy arising from A involves the nature of object A, that arising from object B involves the nature of object B, and so these two affects of joy are by nature different, because they arise from causes of a different nature.” E 3p53s. E 3p52s. — 150 —


true understanding and the distorted knowledge that maintains, with the help of words, “signs of things as existing in the imagination, not as existing in the understanding.”21 This gap illustrates not only the obvious difference that exists between the philosopher’s understanding and the distorted understanding of the imagining person, but also the “resonance of truth.” The exposure of the entire network of emotions and of the way it derives from every thing’s striving for existence takes place in opposition to linguistic habits and beyond the boundaries of the lexicon; it reveals the inadequacy of language and the distorted knowledge that is contained in it. All this is revealed to the philosopher as a result of his logical-psychological analysis of emotions; however, even if this truth is revealed and made public, it does not determine the confused use of words. Linguistic tradition is deeply anchored in the ways of understanding of the member of the masses and in the nature of his consciousness. Therefore, more than truth, the logical-psychological analysis of human emotions, in this case, is akin to a flashlight that casts light on its surroundings; it resembles the light produced by a tool for night vision: it enables us to distinguish the details of the object in the dark, but this fact remains external to the one being seen. The linguistic tradition and the non-reflective consciousness which is inherent in it remain immune to the impact of the logicalpsychological analysis found in part of the Ethics. It may very well be that some other philosophical debate will resonate much more powerfully in the consciousness of the masses; indeed, not every topic elicits the same degree of attention. Specific philosophical topics — religious criticism, for example — are likely to undermine the common beliefs within the masses and change or at least shake their thinking habits. However, the fact that a philosophical debate on religious issues will shake the consciousness of the masses more powerfully does not alter the conclusion we have reached here based on the example of language. The destructive force of philosophical truth over the beliefs of the masses cannot be deduced from the way that falsity dissipates when confronted by truth within the philosopher’s consciousness. The former must take the nature of the other 21

TdIE, p. 33. — 151 —


consciousness into consideration: the non-reflective consciousness is imprisoned in its patterns and cannot extricate itself from them in the same way that the philosopher relinquishes thinking habits which he once adopted absentmindedly.22 Philosophical debate can have some impact on non-reflective consciousness; but it is more likely to disturb that non-reflective consciousness or merely resonate within it rather than impregnate it with new meanings. This is so because truth is a light unto itself and unto falsity — but not unto what is imagined. To a great extent, what is imagined should be perceived as a “third thing” (tertium quid),23 located “below” truth and falsity. Due to the absence of reflectivity, it precedes this distinction, or is too raw. The reason for this is because Spinoza, as we recall, sees the first degree of knowledge as a cause of falsity. This epistemological issue is important for our understanding of the role of the philosopher in society. The philosopher does not possess in his toolbox destructive truths that by their mere presence undermine the distorted concepts that are commonly found in his surroundings. The person who fears the philosopher’s freedom of enquiry and who believes that the philosopher might openly undermine his own thoughts or society’s stability — such a person makes a specific assumption regarding the way a true idea makes its impact. Just as truth is a criterion for itself, so too it is a criterion for untrue ideas in general, as well as the false and the distorted ideas of imagination. This assumption is wrong since it ignores two epistemological principles found in Spinoza’s philosophy: that the distinction between truth and falsity is external to the non-reflective consciousness and to the ideas of the imagination that compose it, as we have already seen; and that the relation between truth and imagination cannot be clarified solely on an epistemological basis. It must be understood against the dynamisticontological background of Spinoza’s philosophy. Truth and falsity are not descriptions of contents, but of mental activities. They describe the

22

23

He is qualified to distinguish the large difference between himself and the masses, since he is less bound than others to grasp everything by way of his identity, in an egocentric manner. Its meaning, however, does not accord with the medieval use of the concept. — 152 —


mind’s action or, to be more precise, the way a concrete idea is found within a concrete consciousness.24 Therefore, the relation between truth and imagination more closely resembles the relation between the wise man and the ignoramus, rather than the abstract relation between the logical contents of two claims. Hence, the non-reflective consciousness is not undermined or “shaken” by the mere presence of truth; it is not this presence that extricates it, as if by magic, from its inferior epistemic status, but rather the more intense presence of truth. Clearly, one should not exaggerate: Spinoza believed that the masses were subject to the impact of the philosophical enquiry. One can find numerous examples for this, but suffice it to recall the fact that he published the TTP anonymously. This indicates how powerful, in Spinoza’s view, was the impact of philosophical ideas on the public. Undoubtedly, a philosophical idea can influence the public, but these ideas necessarily impact “from the outside,” through hearsay. This externality emerges in more detail once we understand imagination and the way it functions. The member of the masses is drawn after some vague experience. His consciousness is ready to absorb hearsay and to adopt it uncritically. The free philosopher’s thought that reaches the masses is likely to shake them, while the nonreflective consciousness is able to adopt a true idea based on hearsay. In fact, it is likely that it will tend to adopt such an idea. However, this does not mean that the masses discern the idea’s logical contents. As long as a consciousness remains non-reflective, truth is perceived as hearsay; it is given within that consciousness without understanding and is adopted through imitation. An idea adopted through hearsay is likely to offend the member of the masses due to his beliefs, to burden him and trouble his soul, yet it remains no more than hearsay.25 Philosophical thought makes its impact on the consciousness of the masses through hearsay. Thus, even if it be broad or of long duration, 24 25

See Parkinson, Knowledge. This type of mental activity is not found exclusively among the ignorant. It is suitable, to some degree, for anyone who holds a “neglected” view, i.e. a view that is determined without clarification of the logical contents included in its objects; a popular basis, limited in its reflection, may be found in everyone’s consciousness, including that of the philosopher. I will discuss this further towards the end of the next section. — 153 —


this impact is necessarily superficial — even when it is spread by people bearing a higher degree of consciousness. Spinoza’s words in the TTP can help us understand how philosophical ideas are present in the consciousness of the masses: “For invisible things which are objects of the mind alone can not be seen with any other eyes than through conceptual demonstrations. Those people therefore who do not grasp the demonstrations, see nothing at all of these things, and therefore whatever they report from hearsay about such questions, neither affects nor indicates their minds say any more than the words of a parrot or a robot which speaks without mind and sense.”26 The way non-reflective consciousness exists and the concrete relation between the true idea and the ideas of the imagination thus limit the impact of the philosopher’s thought. If so, what is the social role of the philosopher? What kind of political meaning can be attributed to his thought if, by its nature, it is destined to exist among the masses through the weak and external intercourse of hearsay? The answer to this calls for an understanding of the role of the epistemological discussion in Spinoza’s political philosophy. In order to do so, we must disengage from a common trend in interpretation of Spinoza, which generally evaluates the ideas of imagination in two ways: as devoid of any epistemic value, or as the necessary source of adequate knowledge. Although the ideas of imagination contain distorted knowledge, they can be improved and reformed.27 The common basis of these two opposite interpretations is that the ideas of imagination are evaluated in light of higher degrees of knowledge. The value or lack of value of a confused idea is determined on the basis of its relation to an adequate idea. This common basis contains an important assumption: that Spinoza’s epistemology has a single horizon — the improvement of man’s knowledge and his liberation from his faulty approaches so that he may attain adequate knowledge. Imagination is evaluated insofar as it contributes to the attainment of these cognitive, moral and spiritual aims. 26 27

TTP, p. 175. De Deugd, Imagination, p. pp. 51-52; Hallett, Creation, p. 57; Hallett, Eternity, pp. 127128; Hallett, Spinoza, pp. 84-85. Compare Gart, Truth and Imagination. — 154 —


It is natural enough that this aim became a prominent one for Spinoza’s commentators. The titles of Spinoza’s books seem to support this. Moreover the commentators are, after all, proponents of philosophy, and thus, we may assume, identify with the redemption accessible to the wise. However, the training of the philosopher is not the only mission of Spinoza’s thought — the life of the masses and its improvement are important to him too. Understanding the life of the masses does not require clarification of the contribution of the imagination to knowledge, but rather of the contribution of philosophical enquiry to the understanding of the imagination. The questions are as follows: How are we to understand the distortions and defects of inferior consciousness in light of philosophical enquiry? How can this enquiry contribute towards organizing society, in which imagination is the most dominant form of consciousness? At this point, it is important to clarify one point. In Spinoza’s thought, rationalization is common both to the improvement of society and to the education of the philosopher. The difference between them lies in their degree of improvement. The apprentice philosopher is someone who is about to extract himself from the oscillations of the soul, as they are described in the beginning of the TdIE and in the Ethics; he strives towards achieving the third degree of knowledge. The masses, on the other hand, are not about to extract themselves from the domination of the imagination. The question as to how the masses are to improve their lives does not entertain the possibility of transcending this inferior degree of knowledge. Thus, Spinoza’s political philosophy rests on a trend contrary to that offered to the student of philosophy; it is based on the understanding of imagination and the possibilities it entails, and the examination of possibilities for social-emotional improvement within the framework of a life ruled by this type of consciousness. The oscillations of the soul, the instability, the egocentrism, the signs of hostility that characterize the life of the masses, their acceptance of authority and the source of obedience — all of these are aspects of the philosophical articulation that is carried out on the basis of the contributions of adequate knowledge to the understanding of life ruled by imagination. This epistemological discussion is at the root of Spinoza’s political philosophy, and — 155 —


corresponds to the main role of the philosopher in society.28 In a nutshell, the conclusions of philosophical enquiry do not shatter the beliefs of the members of the masses. These conclusions can be captured by his consciousness as hearsay. The philosopher knows that his own thought is diffused through the mediation of vague experience and confused consciousness. Understanding the power of hearsay — something Spinoza deals with in several instances — encourages sensitivity to the way that truth is apprehended. All this means that the philosopher has to adopt rules of politeness, which we will detail in the next section. The philosopher’s political enquiry, however, cannot be limited to the rules of caution or to the rules of politeness he adopts in facing the consciousness of the masses, especially since the philosopher is the only one able to understand and express this consciousness. In other words, the articulation of the nonreflective consciousness cannot result merely in its avoidance. It must be expressed as a force that contributes to its improvement. What we have just claimed makes an additional contribution to what was remarked in the fifth section of Chapter 4. There we argued that the main action in the shaping of the masses’ lives in accordance with semirational patterns is not accomplished through imposing something external or through justifying its utility, but through encouraging the assimilation of cultural contents that are likely to deepen the process of rationalization. This clarification is impossible without an understanding of the activity of non-reflective consciousness. The claim that the articulation of non-reflective consciousness must be a force contributing to its improvement — this claim forms the basis for guaranteeing the invigoration of the life of the masses “from within.” Through this type of articulation, it is possible to establish the authority

28

In the TdIE, p. 7, Spinoza writes: “For we can gain from the multitude no small advantages, provided that we strive to accommodate ourselves to its understanding as far as possible: moreover, we shall in this way gain a friendly audience for the reception of the truth.” These words not only instruct us at to the rules of caution that were common in the philosophy of the Middle Ages, i.e. hiding the destructive conclusions that derive from Spinoza’s philosophy; he also hints at the value of limited understanding. What is written in this chapter and in the two preceding chapters provides the explanation for this. — 156 —

------------------------------------------------------ III. Metaphysical secularism ------------------------------------------------------

of reformed religion on the basis of concepts that are inherent to the mentality of the masses. Consequently, this authority is likely to be based on their own natural tendencies rather than being imposed upon them as though they were being guided by a cattle prod.

III. Metaphysical secularism The claim as to the danger stemming from the freedom of philosophical enquiry implies that the philosopher is faced with an acute dilemma: should he reveal his thoughts or hide them? However, this dilemma is not the main point: more essential is the question concerning the nature of the project which the political philosopher offers his society. Is his philosophy proposed as an enlightened alternative to a distorted religious approach, or is it aimed at providing an epistemic-ontic basis for improving the culture and traditions of a given society? What we have written so far provides a response to this issue. We have just explained that rationalization is common to the reform of social life and to the philosopher’s education process, the difference being in the range of the improvement. Unlike the philosophy student, who strives to extricate himself from the confusion of the mind and reach the third degree of knowledge, the masses live in their imagination, from which they cannot deviate in order to improve their lives. In other words, the political project which the Spinozian philosopher proposes to his society is opposed to that of the student of philosophy. It is based on the articulation of the imagination and on the understanding of the possibilities entailed by it. Whoever understands the message of Spinoza’s philosophy with respect to the questions that arise from the process of secularization as an immanent approach, purified of all particular cultural connotations, misunderstands the role of the philosopher. The error is that he looks at society from the point of view of the student-philosopher. In doing so, he loses sight of the limitations of the consciousness of the masses as well as the limitations of his own influence: the philosophy student may acquire the ability to free himself from distorted concepts in ways that the masses cannot; furthermore, the philosopher’s thought may not take root within society as it does in the consciousness of the student. — 157 —


Whoever proposes secularism as an immanentism devoid of any specific cultural tradition offers a dubious redemption that can only disturb the minds of its members and injure them. This type of immanentism and universalistic approach necessarily comes from the outside; it resonates with hearsay and amounts to a declaration of the worthlessness of the concepts of their traditions and images. The value of metaphysical secularism depends on whether its role is understood. This secularism reflects ontology — indeed, the claim about the necessary existence of the substance, its units and its infinity, is easily presented as “secularism.” However, for Spinoza, this option should not be put forward as the principal truth which has the power to undo lies, nor should it be hidden with the help of some manipulation. It is a conceptual framework for a socio-political analysis and, therefore, has a very marginal status. The downplaying of the ontological and epistemological topics in Spinoza’s political and cultural discussions can be perceived as an example of their marginality in these contexts, and not only as the outcome of his caution, given the political conditions of his time. The political focus of the philosopher’s thought lies in the clarification of the significance of religious traditions and of their great ability to nurture political life as well as an ethical lifestyle. Enquiries into this type of platform are based on understanding the limits of knowledge — both of the masses and of the philosopher — rather than on the fervor of religious criticism. The political-cultural philosopher honors the system of images and concepts that are likely to strengthen the force of action of the members of the masses, to extract them from a “life of slaves” and contribute to the improvement of society. This political and epistemic sensitivity of the Spinozian philosopher is an expression of the fact that, thanks to his unique qualities, he is less prone to egocentrism than others; thanks to his understanding abilities, he can overcome his limited understanding and perceive his thoughts “from the outside,” i.e. get a good view of their presence in the consciousness of the masses. Thanks to these skills, the Spinozian philosopher does not become a propagandist of truth who undermines unfounded but deeply rooted beliefs, but someone who has the power to express the possibilities of the inferior consciousness. Therefore, not only does — 158 —

------------------------------------------------------ III. Metaphysical secularism ------------------------------------------------------

“healthy judgment” not need protection from philosophy, but the philosopher — if he understands well his role as well as the limitations of consciousness — contributes towards strengthening the position of “healthy judgement” and ensuring the recognition of its worth. We will conclude this section with three remarks; these remarks will both sum up the topics discuss and clarify the link between what we have claimed here and two other topics discussed in the book. First: in the first section of this chapter, we mentioned the problem of the relation between the philosopher’s freedom of enquiry and the freedom of thought of the members of the masses. This topic is also discussed in section 2, where we explained why the philosopher does not aim to undermine the “healthy judgment” of the masses. From what we have just discussed in section 3, we appreciate further why philosophical enquiry is necessary for the realization of the freedom of the masses. This enquiry comprises the articulation of the consciousness of the masses and is, therefore, vital for its expression, and for invigorating the life of the masses. This is why Spinoza was sincere in declaring in the TTP that freedom of philosophical enquiry is vital for the fear of God and for the welfare of the State. The aim of the TTP is not only to protect the philosopher from the masses, but to show how important his thought is for life in society. Second: all of this does not apply to the philosopher who views metaphysical secularism as his main work. Such a philosopher views religious tradition as a lie; for him, it represents an ensemble of contents which must be analyzed in logical terms. In doing so, he ignores the question of the presence of the lie in the consciousness of the imagining person. Thus, what distinguishes metaphysical secularism from political secularism is the basic category which is employed in its analysis: one examines religious tradition as true or false, while the other examines it along what we have called here “correctness” (nekhonut). In the framework of metaphysical secularism, religious tradition is perceived as a lie. This fact is highly significant; metaphysical secularism’s approaches to views on truth resonate in the life of society. It continuously disturbs the souls of the followers of a religious tradition, but its power to reveal the false veils and lies of this tradition is far more limited. It can undermine the hold on the tradition — 159 —


and present it as a web of superstitious beliefs, thereby leaving society spiritually depleted. It is doubtful whether it is able to engender useful dispositions or structures of consciousness. Third: Spinoza’s type of metaphysical secularism is not erased by political secularism; the ontological-epistemological analysis which underlies it is the framework for the development of a cultural approach which we have called “political secularism.” The ontological-epistemological framework, which is the background for metaphysical secularism, gives rise to a more specific analysis of the question of the meaning of religion and the possibilities contained in it. Its foundations help clarify the dynamic nature of the idea and of mental life in general. The analysis reveals the structure of nonreflective consciousness, the chronic instability of the masses, and their tendency towards activity, with its various political and cultural meanings. In other words, metaphysical secularism is a type of raw thought on questions of secularism and tradition. The politicalcultural philosopher who is aware of this cannot evade the masses and their leaders through caution or cunning or manipulative tactics. While caution and manipulation are necessary, they are not sufficient; in order to guarantee the emergence of the good life in society, he must develop his thought and express it sincerely.

IV. The schematic nature of Spinoza’s political thought Obedience is a key concept in political secularism. Spinoza’s efforts to found obedience on the inclinations of the heart of the member of the masses are designed to provide a base for the shared authority, which is mainly political. The usefulness of obedience depends on the desirable contents of the ideas that give rise to it. More precisely, the fact that obedience is a mechanism that is anchored in the patterns of consciousness of the masses does not guarantee the establishment of the political power; this power depends on the nature of the religious ideas found in his consciousness. The clarification of these contents represents, therefore, an important part of political secularism. Indeed, the ambiguity of these contents endangers political stability, just as — 160 —

----------------------  IV. The schematic nature of Spinoza’s political thought -----------------------

desirable and clear contents contribute to it. The dangers which Spinoza relates to in speaking of the demise of the sovereign power as a result of people’s dependence on their contradictory interpretations of religious issues are also relevant here.29 In the TTP, some of the principles underlying such desirable ideas are indicated. When writing about the main points of reformed religion, Spinoza emphasizes God’s personal providence; God is omnipresent and all is known before Him. His authority is not subject to law, but “He does all things at His absolute pleasure and by His unique grace.”30 However, in the following paragraph, he writes: “Worship of God and obedience to Him consist solely in justice and charity, or in love of one’s neighbour.”31 In these key statements, Spinoza strives to maintain the personal relationship between the individual and God and to strengthen it by way of an explicit and stable system of laws and commands. God looks at man and judges him; His demands are explicit and constant, but obeying them is a response to God’s will, which nevertheless maintains a tone of intimate request. Religious ideas contain a constant oscillation between the emphasis on law and the emphasis on God’s address to the individual. Thus, Spinoza combines the following: the necessity to maintain the personal relationship between the individual and God in order that it may be adapted to the member of the masses’ limited capacity to reach God, and the idea that God’s permanent and clear demands are required in order to awaken obedience. The use of an idea as non-reflective approval is based on the commands delivered through guiding ideas. To this, we should add the following: the Divinity, who is attained through the knowledge of the member of the masses and who imposes a moral order upon mankind, instills in the believer a specific metaphysical position, whose essence is found in a quote from the Gospel according to John, which Spinoza quotes: “each person is in God and God is in each person.”32 As I indicated in the third section of Chapter 3, this position does away with the false meta-final position

29 30 31 32

Chapter 4, section 2. TTP, p. 182. Ibid., p. 183. Ibid., p. 181. — 161 —


towards which the believer tends. His extraction from this position is significant, insofar as it relates directly to the believer’s basic sense of belonging to his community and to all Being. This is an Archimedean point in man’s process of socialization and in his tendency to act rationally and morally within his community. From this, we understand why, for Spinoza, the status of reformed religion within the State is not merely that of subordination.33 Although, as we recall, the authority of the political power does cover religious issues, the political training of the members of the masses and the possibility of motivating them depends upon the adoption of religious ideas. These ideas generate within the member of the masses the readiness — as per the meaning discussed in the previous chapter — to adopt a moral lifestyle. In other words, the power of the State to establish a moral order within society should not begin with the political power; it requires ideas that instill within the masses the metaphysical position of belonging to a collective and responding to the moral order. In these aspects, religious tradition is a vital platform for maintaining political power with the help of the force of action of its subjects. We shall now revert to the main point of the discussion. The contents of the obedience-provoking ideas are quite general. It is clear, from the discussion in the sixth section of Chapter 4, that obedience does not depend exclusively upon the contents of the idea, but also stems from its epistemic status, i.e. from the commands it entails, and from the way it is held within the non-reflective consciousness. Naturally, these facts add no concrete content to the ideas, but they do throw light on the mechanism which characterizes their presence. In other words, we are reverting to the arguments that were put forth in the first paragraph of this section. The tendency to obey is guaranteed by the general type of ide, and given the limitations of the non-reflective consciousness; but the dangers of obedience call for a specific discussion of the contents of these ideas. What should the cultural-traditional origin of these ideas be? How can we ensure that they guide the believer towards respecting the political authority, rather than leading to its disintegration through their individual interpretations, as Spinoza describes in various places? 33

This issue is discussed in Chapter 4, section 3. — 162 —


What Spinoza describes in the parts here, as well as in other places, is not much more than a schematic description of these ideas. Why is he satisfied with schematic descriptions, if he is aware of the dangers of ambiguity and schematic descriptions in such matters? The main reason for this is his sensitivity to the historical context. As has already been pointed out, some commentators of recent years have indicated that the accepted convention, according to which Spinoza lacked all awareness of the historical dimension of human existence, was wrong.34 Indeed, his political writings reveal many examples of this sensitivity.35 A correct interpretation of the Bible must take into consideration the historical and linguistic context of the text. The biblical scholar must pay attention to the author: “who exactly he was, on what occasion he wrote, for whom and in what language.”36 This means he has to know the Hebrew language, not only when studying the Bible, but also for reading the New Testament, “[f]or while the latter were propagated in other languages, they are full of Hebrew idioms.”37 Spinoza looks at the Holy Scriptures as works that can only be understood within their historical context; his philological analyses emphasize this approach, although the latter also underlies them.38 This sensitivity is also characteristic of his political enquiries: the discussions of the types of regimes and of the possibilities of improving them are not based on a typological, ahistorical division, but on observation of the regimes of concrete societies — in Holland39 and in Venice.40 This implies that political patterns are not abstract examples, but are rooted within specific socio-historical contexts and that they can only be understood by taking these necessary contexts 34

35 36 37 38 39 40

See Chapter 2, notes 28-29. See also the discussion in Raven, Tradition, p. 303, where she claims that from the perspective of imagination, things appear to be contingent and, therefore, historical. Thus, for her, imagination is a historical way of thinking, contrary to the extra-temporal philosophical and scientific thought. See her discussion of the positions expressed by De Deugd and Curley. On this matter, see the next paragraph with its accompanying notes. TTP, p. 101. Ibid., p. 100. Ibid., p. 102. For example, TP, p. 376. For example, TP, p. 357. — 163 —


into account. These assumptions are all the more striking in his words of caution on the limitations of the reform of a specific regime. In his discussion on the monarchic regime, in the TP, he writes: “I am conceiving of that monarchy, which is instituted by a free multitude, for which alone these foundations can serve. For a multitude that has grown used to another form of dominion will not be able without great danger of overthrow to pluck up the accepted foundations of the dominion, and change its entire fabric.”41 He makes a similar remark in the TTP, where he claims that it is difficult to get rid of a despotic ruler, since the people have become accustomed to this type of power and authority.42 Through these warnings, it is clear that the ways of a regime are rooted in the political culture that has come about as a result of specific historical circumstances. One should not look at a regime based on the character of the leader and his ways, but as a specific historical, social and political entity. Whoever does not take this vital context into consideration ignores the reasons for the existence of this specific regime and his desire to reform it may result in undermining the entire political authority. In other words, Spinoza is sensitive to historical factors in his discussions of politico-cultural phenomena. For this reason, he avoids dictating useful meta-historical ideas. Although these claims are correct, they do not exhaust the topic. What we have called here “historical sensitivity” has a more essential place in Spinoza’s philosophy. In order to outline the religious ideas that should be expropriated from the hands of religious representatives — ideas which are important for preparing the masses for political life — we must abandon abstract principles and look at concrete religious traditions and cultures. Whoever accepts the concept of “correctness” (nekhonut) as a central axis of Spinoza’s approach agrees to this; indeed, this concept points to the contents and images that people absorb passively from their concrete surroundings. These contents and images find a home in the consciousness of the masses. The masses’ approval tends to reveal itself more through the use of its contents rather than by the fact of noticing them. What 41 42

TP, p. 340. TTP, p. 235. — 164 —


the masses absorb from their surroundings “from hearsay” is always attached to a specific time and place. In other words, the Spinozian enquiry into the question of culture provides a schema. From here onwards, the discussion must be conducted within the framework of a concrete society. This conclusion, according to which the Spinozian enquiry must end with the analysis of a concrete culture, reveals the dynamistic nature of his thought. As we have claimed in this section, Spinoza’s enquiry into questions of culture and politics, into the spiritual needs of the masses and the ways to satisfy them, are geared towards the articulation of the consciousness of the masses and their invigoration. Its aim is to look at this consciousness “from within,” to explain and express it and, based on these observations, to try to distinguish the potential ways for improvement contained in it. Such an analysis has a strongly dynamistic nature; it does not impose perfect models on societies, but strives to create them from the forces that exist within them. The designation of the force of action that is to be found within the non-reflective consciousness is part of the analysis of the “inside.” Anchoring this force of action within a concrete tradition of images is part of this process. Spinoza’s philosophy thus traces a schematic diagram for culturalpolitical questions. The political philosopher who follows Spinoza is compelled to complete it with the data from his own society. Two conclusions, which are only apparently contradictory, can be derived from this. The first is that what we have called here “political secularism” is a framework for the life of a collective that is based on a sovereign political power as the main medium of rationalization. This life relies on the existence of images and concepts that are rooted in the spiritual life of the masses and which are maintained by its authority. The schematic aspect of the Spinozian enquiry into these issues — the necessity to complete the schema through data provided by a concrete context — demonstrates that “political secularism” is, by its nature, an unfinished product. It must be concretized in political and cultural possibilities. In other words, the reasons why Spinoza refrains from outlining meta-historical ideas are the same reasons for the constant internal tension that accompanies the application of political secularism. — 165 —


Political secularism is determined by the spiritual contents that derive from specific traditions and which take place within concrete political contexts, rather than by extra-temporal formulas or eternal values. The second conclusion is that the Spinozian enquiry is only completed when it is adapted to the particular circumstances in every concrete society. Its schematic basis, however, is anchored in the revelation of “eternal” data about consciousness — be they ontic, epistemic, psychological or political. This enquiry proposes a system of concepts and methods of analysis for understanding society’s consciousness, its spiritual problems and its inherent instability. All this is anchored in the structure of finite substance. In other words, the Spinozian enquiry into political and cultural questions begins with the clarification of the extra-temporal limitations of human consciousness and ends with a kind of knock on the door: an enquiry into the life of a concrete society and of the possibilities it contains.

— 166 —

---------------------------- Chapter VI ----------------------------------

Traditionalism as a Secular Option in Israel


The main claim in this chapter is that traditionalism is a secular option. This claim is philosophical rather than historical; indeed, my intention is not to clarify how the ensemble of the religious behavior that sociologists and anthropologists call “traditionalism” is the reaction of a Jewish public to the processes of secularization and modernization, which penetrated their society and surroundings, particularly Muslim countries. Moreover, I do not intend to focus on the religious characteristics of traditionalism, as do researchers who attempt to understand it as a religious phenomenon; those scholars concentrate on the weakening of the orthodox patterns that characterize it, but do not relate to the sociopolitical platform that takes shape in the consciousness of the traditional person. In this chapter, I will use the concepts introduced in Chapters 2 to 5 in order to clarify which of the secular options is included in this platform. We will come to understand how traditionalism can strengthen political life-forms and how it is connected to the rationalization and intensification of social life. As I have mentioned on a number of occasions, traditionalism completes Spinoza’s analysis, whereas the latter strengthens the former in the following ways. Through traditionalism, as it exists in Israeli society, we may illustrate the patterns of a reformed religion, which is free of the authority of religious leaders and provides a spiritual basis for the adoption of a moral lifestyle within a given political society. Some of the claims made here, particularly those concerning the source of obedience, can be demonstrated though this model of traditionalism. As we will explain later in this chapter, traditionalism is frequently described as an arbitrary mixture; one of the supporting reasons for this description is the absence of a philosophical articulation. Moshe — 169 —

----------------------------------- Traditionalism as a Secular Option in Israel -----------------------------------

Shokeid claims that traditional Jews “have not developed a consistent system of rules of conduct or of philosophical justifications for this mixed style of secularism and religiosity. In retrospect, they see themselves as maintaining the tradition of their ancestors, which has been adapted to their present life situation.”1 Meir Bouzaglo describes traditionalism as “a practice searching for a worldview,” and claims that the absence of a worldview makes it easier to abandon traditionalism in favor of other patterns.2 The aim of the discussion that follows here below is to provide such an articulation.

I. Traditionalism in Israel Nearly one third of the Jewish population of Israel describe themselves as traditionalists — approximately half the Sephardic population and one-fifth of the Ashkenazi population.3 In spite of these figures, traditionalism is perceived as an unstable religious model, as a poorly formulated and even illegitimate popular view, which evades the decision as to whether to adopt secularism or cling to the logic of orthodoxy.4 Traditionalists are presented as a marginal group within Israeli spiritual creativity, since the main part of the Israeli culture is generated “by both orthodoxies, not by the middle group.”5 Often, the 1

2

3

4

5

Shokeid, New Trends, p. 88.; Yadgar & Liebman, Beyond the Dichotomy, p. 347. There is a rich literature on traditionalism, both in Israel and in the world. I rely here on the studies of Yadgar & Liebman, Shokeid, and Bouzaglo, as they suffice for the needs of this discussion. One particularly important piece of research is that of Shokeid & Deshen, The Predicament of Homecoming, which, in its revised and enlarged edition, comprises three new chapters. References to other research on traditionalism can be found in Yadgar & Liebman, Beyond the Dichotomy, pp. 341-342, notes 10-12. Bouzaglo, The New Traditionalist, p. 202, claims that due to its lack of articulation, traditionalism is easily influenced by secularism or Ultra-Orthodoxy. Yadgar & Liebman, Beyond the Dichotomy, p. 348, where they present the data from the Guttman Report, according to which 51% of all Israeli citizens define themselves as traditionalists, but only 19% of the Ashkenazic population do the same. It should be noted that traditionalism among non-Ashkenazic Jews has been the object of far more research than Ashkenazic traditionalism. Bouzaglo, The New Traditionalist, p. 187; Yadgar & Liebman, Beyond the Dichotomy, p. 348. Ravitzky, Tablets, p. 275: “The greatest quantity and quality of Israeli creative production — in literature, essays, religious commentaries, arts, or public opinion — 170 —

-------------------------------------------------------- I. Traditionalism in Israel --------------------------------------------------------

traditionalists are depicted as holding primitive customs characteristic of traditional society and foreign to modern society.6 In recent years, anthropologists, sociologists and philosophers have published studies on traditionalism in Israeli society.7 This change, according to Shokeid, reflects a new evaluation of this phenomenon, following a period in which it was ignored and scorned.8 This higher estimation is attested to not only by the intense research taking place, but, first and foremost, from the analysis of the phenomenon and the raising of the possibilities inherent in it. Shokeid himself claims that Oriental traditionalism could become the most influential option in Israeli secular culture.9 Charles Liebman and Yaacov Yadgar and, in other ways, Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt, characterize traditionalism as an outstanding expression of modernity, rather than its victim or as a useless survivor of pre-modern times.10 The most striking characteristic of the traditionalist’s way of life is his selective adoption of religious models. Traditionalists strictly observe a number of commandments but refrain from performing other commandments that are anchored in religious prohibitions. The traditionalist may abstain from lighting fire on the Sabbath, but drive his car on that day. He may keep kosher — by avoiding eating meat and dairy products together — while using the same plates and cutlery for both. This selectivity, or the fact that the religious lifestyle of the traditional person is based on compartmentalization, is clearly expressed in the wearing of the yarmulke: the traditionalist makes a point of wearing a yarmulke on special occasions, but only for a limited time. Yadgar and Liebman view this as the expression of the temporary acceptance of a religious lifestyle on the part of the traditional person: “The symbolic significance of the yarmulke is, therefore, a key component of the traditionalist tendency to compartmentalize

6

7 8 9 10

pieces — clearly derives from both orthodoxies, rather than from the middle groups.” For a clear example of the distinction between traditional society and modern society, see Katz, Traditional Society. See references in Yadgar & Liebman, Beyond the Dichotomy, p. 341, note 10. Shokeid, New Trends. Shokeid, Religiosity, p. 237. Yadgar & Liebman, Beyond the Dichotomy, p. 346. Eisenstadt, Multiple Modernities. — 171 —


Jewish religion, to limit what is holy and to distinguish it from the profane.”11 This compartmentalization, they explain, stems from the main difference between traditionalism and orthodoxy: “Religious demands are always perceived as absolute, but ‘not for me’; in other words, the traditionalist accepts the principle — the same principle represented and incarnated by the Orthodox — but this principle is correct ‘in principle,’ de jure, in the general and abstract domain; the de facto, on the other hand, is fulfilled in the private realm, where religious demands lose their absolute nature and are placed into a system of relative weights of values, positions and habits, which are not always consistent.”12 The difference between the traditional and the orthodox is formulated here as the difference between totality, coherence and generality, on the one hand, and incoherent selectivity, anchored in the private realm, on the other hand. Bouzaglo presents the difference between the traditionalist and the Orthodox person in slightly different terms. His main claim has to do with the total validity of the halakha and of the rabbis’ authority in this matter: The traditional person does not consider himself less Jewish or more Jewish if he follows this or that rabbi on these issues, or if he appropriates some issue from the rabbis and sees it as a private matter for each citizen to decide. This last claim shows that the traditionalist stands against the position of the halakha as “all-encompassing”; he may also expand this claim and stipulate not only that the halakha cannot rule on all issues, but that Judaism as a whole has no compulsory and unequivocal say. He thus expresses a position opposite to that of the ultra-orthodox, which empowers the role of the rabbi and authorizes him to rule on issues which the halakha does not explicitly engage, and present his followers with the “Torah view” on specific issues.13

According to Bouzaglo’s description, the traditionalist differs from the Ultra-Orthodox in his rejection of the total applicability of the halakha and the authority of the rabbis. The fact that the traditionalist 11 12 13

Ibid., p. 352. Ibid., p. 351. Bouzaglo, The New Traditionalist, p. 194. — 172 —


does not submit to this authority does not mean that he rejects the rabbis; he respects their rulings, and even feels inferior to them, but he maintains his religious patterns, at least as long as he views himself as a “traditionalist.” What is it, in Bouzaglo’s eyes, which enables this independence of the traditionalist from the rabbis? Sometimes, the traditionalist will not fulfill certain commandments out of weakness, i.e. he does not perform certain commandments which he believes should be fulfilled. Bouzaglo, however, views this weakness of the will as only a partial explanation for the traditionalist’s behavior. In his view, the decisions of traditionalism are not only an expression of weakness, but also derive from the strength of the traditionalist 14 — he has a nonessential view of the halakha; he does not grant it existence in Platonic terms, i.e. independent of its acceptance by the public. He believes that “the halakha is determined here in Israel as deriving from an equilibrium between those determining the halakha and those who adopt it.”15 He thus sees himself as an agent shaping his religious lifestyle, rather than as accepting practices submissively in accordance with rabbinical rulings. This is the basis for Bouzaglo’s claim that “the traditionalist is engaged in a process of democratization of Judaism itself; his attitude toward the rabbis is one of respect, but also of tension.”16 To this, we should add several details. As Bouzaglo convincingly states, the traditionalist’s choice is not necessarily determined by difficulty — it is harder, for example, to fast on Yom Kippur than not to turn on the lights on Shabbat. In this case, the traditionalist makes a point of fulfilling a difficult commandment, while exempting himself from fulfilling an easier one.17 There are also certain norms that are only maintained in specific contexts: Yadgar and Liebman indicate that some commandments are only followed strictly within the home. Traditional women guard the family purity laws, but not necessarily by behaving or dressing modestly outside the home.18 This type of behavior is 14 15 16 17 18

Ibid., p. 199. Ibid., p. 199. Ibid. Ibid., p. 191. Yadgar & Liebman, Beyond the Dichotomy, p. 350. — 173 —


understood only by explaining the logic of the traditionalist’s selectivity as based on his own resources, rather than on those of the Orthodox Jew. Only in this way is it possible to distinguish what guides his behavior, rather than by observing his allegedly contradictory deviations from orthodoxy. The main sphere in which traditionalism is expressed is the intimate one — the family, the neighborhood and the synagogue community.19 The adoption or rejection of a commandment is based on what is commonly practiced in the traditionalist’s surroundings. Clearly, the traditionalist woman will allow herself to behave in accordance with her surroundings, without incurring the slightest contradiction. In the same vein, it is clear that fulfillment of certain commandments is based not on the difficulty in their performance, but rather on the models that are commonly found in the local surroundings in which the traditionalist’s behavior is shaped. Focusing on the traditionalist’s close surroundings emphasizes his independent religious identity. His religious sensibility is anchored in fidelity to his ancestors’ ways, while adopting ideas and models that are rooted in the home and in the centers of the communities. The traditionalist’s religious models, ideas and actions originate, therefore, within himself. The strength described by Bouzaglo, i.e. the shaping of a halakhic life based on the decisions of simple believers, only represents the tip of the iceberg; the traditionalist’s ability to shape his life, to remain faithful to certain habits and customs, while adopting concepts and ideas independently of the authority of “religious virtuosi,” should be seen as a more important manifestation of this strength. In other words, the religious lifestyle depends on the believers not only because they recognize the fact that they have the power to shape it, but primarily because the authority to shape their religious lifestyle lies within the believers themselves. From what we have claimed so far, we might conclude that traditionalism is a religious lifestyle which has been reduced to family-related patterns and to personal and home-related preferences. However, it would be a mistake to describe it in those terms; in order to 19

Ibid., p. 344.

— 174 —


understand the issue, we should dwell on the affinity between this type of religiousness and moral behavior. Bouzaglo emphasizes the affinity between traditionalism and ethics. He recalls Yeshayahu Leibowitz’s well-known position, according to which the morality of the biblical commandments is not part of their essential nature. For Leibowitz, the real justification for the command “Love thy neighbor as thyself” lies in its apodosis — “For I am the Lord.” Bouzaglo goes on to claim as follows: “The traditional person is not prepared to live with this split — it is impossible for an evil man who keeps all the commandments to be a fully religious man. The traditionalist will emphasize that the halakha itself calls for sensitivity to morality.”20 Furthermore, the moral requirements serve as a compass that helps develop the halakha correctly.21 Yadgar and Liebman express a more cautious view, albeit similar in its conclusions. They indicate that the interviewees who took part in their research did not assimilate religiosity with morality or humanity,22 although they did not see this as an essential point. One can assume that it indicates their disappointment in the lack of integration of morality and religion among the Orthodox. Traditionalists expect the religious person to behave in a moral and human way. One can also derive the link that exists in their consciousness between morals and religious tradition from the traditionalists’ criticism of secularism — it appears to them to be a framework devoid of moral value.23 For the traditionalist, sensitivity to morals is deeply linked to a religious lifestyle; the disappointment (with the Orthodox) expressed by the interviewees in Yadgar and Liebman’s research indicates the extent of this sensitivity, a sensitivity anchored in the close surroundings of the traditionalist; it does, however, extend beyond these surroundings, since moral sensitivity necessarily has more general validity. In other words, traditionalism cannot be reduced to following certain habits and to home-related norms, since it attributes moral judgment to religious content which, by its nature, is geared

20 21 22 23

Bouzaglo, The New Traditionalist, p. 191. Ibid., p. 196. Yadgar & Liebman, Beyond the Dichotomy, p. 353. Ibid., p. 354. — 175 —


towards shaping behavior in general. Until this point, we have presented traditionalism as described by researchers or by those who strive to formulate it. These researchers are Israeli sociologists whose claims are based on empirical data. They also know traditionalists personally and from observation; based on their analysis, we have drawn a portrait of the traditional person. Most of this description is therefore based on facts — direct or statistical observation of population groups. To this we should add a speculative investigation aimed at solving two problems that arise from these descriptions. First, Yadgar and Liebman have indentified compartmentalization as an important characteristic of the traditionalist. Selection, which the others write about, is similar to it; however, what is it that enables this compartmentalization to take place? Clearly, the traditionalist allocates a limited place in his life to religious ceremonies, without oscillating between faith and atheism. What is it then, in his worldview or in his sensitivity (one should not exaggerate the level of reflexivity attributed to his position), that enables him to comfortably practice his religion in such an aspectual way? Second, the religious feeling of the traditionalist is linked to two contexts which are in tension: on the one hand, his religious life relies on self-governing and on following what is accepted in his immediate surroundings — this is the local context; on the other hand, for him, religion involves a moral sensitivity that, by its nature, finds expression through normative and general demands. What infuses the loyalty to family and community models with general and generalized moral principles? How are religious models derived from his intimate world, and how is a more general moral sensitivity integrated into the religious life of the traditionalist? Do they share a common origin in his religious world? The answer to this must derive from the basic fact of religious life — the image of God within the traditionalist’s consciousness and in its manifestations in the world.24 The gist of this lies in the fact that the 24

This answer was meant to account for the facts presented so far. It is of a speculative nature since it must still be justified by the explanatory strength of its claims. The limitations of this discussion makes it impossible to examine the empirical validity of this answer, which might certainly be accomplished using research methods different from those employed in this essay. — 176 —


traditionalist’s world is a more harmonious world that enables him to sequester his religious patterns. Halakha’s claim to totality is anchored in the assumption that every action and every situation in the world can be classified according to whether it expresses the will of God or fails to fulfill it. In other words, the religious feeling of the Ultra-Orthodox person is based on a deep opposition which expresses the halakha’s striving towards totality — either he fulfills God’s will or he sins before Him. It can be called “religious feeling,” since it is based on the perception of the world as the sphere in which the will of God is expressed and on the tension that stems from the possibilities contained in this world. The world of the traditionalist is less tense. The claim according to which the traditionalist’s world is more harmonious does not mean that there are no distinctions or tensions, but that they are milder; the holy, the secular, the halakha and the State are not absent from his world, but are not so sharply opposed to one another. This harmony actually describes how God is present in the world. What is the nature of a God whose presence generates this type of religious world? Clearly, this moderation, if we admit its presence, testifies to the marginality of God in the traditionalist’s world. This marginality is understood when we compare the traditionalist to the Orthodox within Israeli society, or if we look at him from a historical perspective. How does God become “marginal”? There are two possibilities. One: the existence of the Divinity has been reduced to certain specific aspects. He has become compartmentalized. More than testifying to the fact that His image is changing, His marginality testifies to the fact that His presence has been limited.25 Two: God has become marginal because He has shrunk rather than been pushed aside. He remains “in the corner at the center of the room.”26 This is also expressed by the words “the pale God” which we used in describing Spinoza’s cultural approach. It is my view that the second possibility is a good reflection of the traditionalist’s religious world. This explanation will help us understand 25

26

It seems to me that the term “compartmentalization” used by Yadgar & Liebman comprises this assumption. Based on a linguistic expression of Dov Sadan. — 177 —


how the characteristics of traditionalism combine to compose a single life experience. It is only because what stands at the heart of the traditionalist’s world is a reduced God, rather than one that has been pushed aside, that the traditionalist can compartmentalize the religious patterns without undergoing major emotional upheavals or heartache. Man’s actions are no longer examined by the Terrible God; the tension between their consequences has been reduced. It is for these reasons that the traditionalist no longer requires the constant guidance of religious specialists and virtuosi; he can rely on his own self-governance and adopt what is commonly accepted by his surroundings — his religious world is less threatened and tense. The same goes for moral sensitivity — the fact that God’s will is revealed through the moral order of the world transforms him from a jealous keeper to a pleasant and predictable metaphysical entity. God has been reduced, but He remains in the center; therefore, the traditionalist’s religious world is “safer.” No terrible God is likely to burst in; He exists fully, albeit in a minor way. The traditionalist can, therefore express his devotion to Him by adopting patterns drawn from his surroundings, without requiring instructions from specialists; he may also exhibit moral sensitivity and expect that this is the right order of things. Whether or not we accept the explanation just suggested, the moral issue does take on political meaning in the religious life of the traditionalist. Moral sensitivity enables him to belong, as a religious person, to the socio-political world surrounding him. Religious practice, be it private or home-centered, is not the only focus for the traditionalist’s expression of his Judaism. His life in the State of Israel maintains his Jewish identity, not only through its national-religious symbols; his moral sensitivity makes the life of the State and the governing powers into a framework imbued with religious significance. His full identification with the State of Israel does not imply a utopian fulfillment — subjecting it to the will of God or turning it into a theocracy, as is the case in the tense world of the Ultra-Orthodox. The State as a secular experience is not exterior to his religious life; whether he is satisfied or disappointed, it is part of his religious life —not only due to the State’s religious symbols, but also based on his own moralreligious judgments. — 178 —

-------- II. Spinozian articulation and the secular nature of traditionalism --------

We should note that the possibility for the traditionalist to identify with the State as a religious person involves his own self-activation. He tends to identify with the State as the entity through which religious contents and the moral life may find expression. This identification derives from the presence of consciousness-related and cultural dispositions, which enable the individual to deepen his belonging to society and to the State. In the same way, they also have the potential to nurture a spirit critical of the workings of power. The person holding “correct” religious-moral ideas — in the sense we gave to this word in Chapter 4 — possesses a consciousness that is not only awakened but even poised to act. A sense of truth and moral sensitivity necessarily require a disposition to action. Hence, traditionalism is not a means for adapting the masses to a seemingly external and foreign political experience, but rather to prepare them to become an important entity that shapes political life. These claims are, in fact, an example of what we have stated at the end of Chapter 4, as deriving from the concept of “correctness” (“nekhonut”).

II. Spinozian articulation and the secular nature of traditionalism What we have written in the preceding paragraphs indicates that the main concept in the world of the traditionalist is close to the concept of the “pale God” in the Spinozian view of culture. Thus, traditionalism and the Spinozian view of culture share a common axis. We will now examine the link between them in further detail, a link which is hinted at in the title of this section in the term “articulation.” As we can see from the way this term is used throughout the book, it has two meanings: clarifying a phenomenon, uncovering its essence or gist and, as a result, uncovering the relation between its various manifestations, which once seemed accidental and independent from one another; and examining the phenomenon on the basis of an abstract context (as, for example, in the application of an epistemic-political analysis examination to traditionalism). Through this type of analysis, the phenomenon is not reduced to its empirical data; an analysis of its abstract foundations enables us to distinguish the various possibilities it entails. Hence, — 179 —


articulation is not only the understanding of a phenomenon, but also its expression; it is the understanding of the range of its possible manifestations and the justification of some of them. We will begin by looking at articulation in its first sense. Based on what was described in the previous section, traditionalism in Israeli society corresponds, in many ways, to the principles of the popular religion which Spinoza introduces in the TTP. As we recall, in line with the reading of Spinoza which we presented in the relevant chapters, the authority of religious tradition is not limited to a group of religious specialists, but is found, as a “simple concept” among believers in general. It is borne by laypeople and part of an open tradition; it is not anchored in complex textual interpretations but in the hearts of men. Obedience derives, not from the masses’ surrender to the authority of specialists, but from the non-reflective way in which religious ideas are held within the consciousness of laymen. The authority of the masses is expressed through their adoption of religious contents, in accordance with the tendencies of their hearts, and through their own power of action. More precisely, Spinozian analysis sheds light on the link between the adoption of thought contents and the tendency to use them; consequently, religious tradition can serve as a basis for the liberation of the masses and for preparing them to live a political life, as well as for stimulating and stabilizing them. Traditionalism corresponds to the patterns of popular religion, which Spinoza described in the TTP, in several ways. The religious authority of the traditionalist is no longer in the hands of the religious virtuoso; it is anchored in his habits and decisions. In this sense, his religious life is more independent than that of the Orthodox believer who follows the rabbis. This independence signifies the shaping of thought and behavior within his close surroundings — the family and the community — and its presence as part of an open tradition. Religious patterns are no longer imposed upon him through the decree of specialists motivated by mysterious motives, but as a result of what is known and familiar to him. Traditionalism is “simple,” just like reformed religion. In any case, its selective patterns renounce most of the nuances. Whoever adopts only a limited number of habits and patterns does not require much religious tutoring and guidance; such — 180 —


a person may suffice with some instructions, general contents and the imitation of others. Traditionalism is thus simple both in its concrete contents and on the level of ideas. Finally, the image of the God at the heart of such religious life has undergone a process of rationalization. It is easy to appease it by adopting a moral lifestyle and by performing a limited number of practices. From a philosophical point of view, the most interesting fact in the similarity between traditionalism and the “soft” religion described in the TTP is linked to the power attributed to the traditionalist. As we recall, Bouzaglo wrote about this in his claim that traditionalism is a process of democratization within Judaism, and that the choices of the traditionalist should be understood as an expression of strength rather than weakness of will. What exactly is this strength? Where does it originate? Clearly, it does not arise from the traditionalist’s deep knowledge of religious contents. Yadgar characterizes the awareness of the traditionalists in opposition to “idolaters of the text,” recalling the opposition between reflexivity and the acceptance of “what is correct.”27 They indicate that the texts and symbols that are important for the traditionalists convey to them a system of faith, but that this system tends to be mythical rather than rational and ideological.28 In other words, the traditionalist adopts his patterns out of habit, and as an expression of respect rather than out of any deep understanding of their religious contents. Based on the discussion in the sixth section of Chapter 4 (“Invigorating the life of the masses and the spirit of obedience”), we can explain how the traditionalist’s reliance on “what is correct” is the source of his self-activity and, in fact, of his power. The description of the traditionalist’s acceptance of religious contents, using the term nachon (correct/ready) is, in a way, a shortcut. This term designates both the traditionalist’s sense of truth and the key concept derived from the Spinozian approach which we have presented; I refer to the link between both the two meanings of nachon — a relatively passive acceptance of a guiding idea, on the one hand, and the approval of 27 28

Yadgar & Liebman, Beyond the Dichotomy, p. 345. Ibid., p. 347. — 181 —


that idea by making use of the commands it transmits, on the other. The fact that the traditionalist has the power to determine his own behavior stems from the non-reflective nature of his consciousness. The epistemic status and the readiness to act that are included in the term nachon are the keys towards understanding the power of the traditionalist. His popular sense of truth enables him to adopt commands and to adjust to a moral lifestyle. Thus, the independence of the traditionalist from rabbinical authority does not leave him feeling lost and disoriented, but further embeds his patterns of behavior in his own authority over himself. Those who agree with these claims also recognize the value of the Spinozian analysis as an explanation for the consciousness of the traditionalist, insofar as it is able to present it in a coherent way. As we recall, the traditionalist was characterized by a selective lifestyle and independence from the authority of the rabbis, on the one hand, and a popular and superficial knowledge of religious contents, on the other hand. These two characteristics seem to clash with one another — indeed, the strengthening of authority is contingent upon the status of the consciousness of the person bearing the authority. On what basis does the traditionalist, as a person relying on his own non-reflective consciousness, release himself from the authority of the specialist? The answer to this is found in the Spinozian analysis of obedience. Following a guiding idea and shaping one’s life accordingly are not characteristic of the consciousness of a helpless person whose independence would surprise us. Rather, this assertiveness is anchored in the force of action of non-reflective affirmation. Religious self-authority, choice, and democratization are thus intertwined; they are part of one and the same experience of life, which stems from an active popular consciousness. The Spinozian analysis sheds light on this, and as such, should be seen as an articulation of traditionalist consciousness. One important detail in attempting to understand the link between traditionalism and reformed religion concerns moral sensitivity. In the eyes of the traditionalist, religious contents carry moral claims. In other words, the traditionalist believes that Divine Providence is based on a moral order. At the end of the previous section, we already indicated that the image of the reduced Divinity gives rise to aspects of — 182 —


traditionalism that can easily be perceived as contradictory: a loyalty to patterns that take shape at the local level (within the family or the community) and the moral sensitivity which the traditionalist finds in religious life. As we recall, these appearances stem from the image of the pale God. His paleness enables the traditionalist to liberate himself from the need of help from religious specialists; it also enables him to easily compartmentalize his religious contents, since in the harmonious world of the traditionalist, various situations are not sharply distinguished from one another. God’s paleness is also apparent insofar as He becomes a background figure identical with a system of desired instructions; hence, a morally-infused routine can be a key component in placating God. Seemingly opposite appearances — partial practices, moral sensitivities, self-governing, popular consciousness and democratization — become elements of a single life experience when we come to see them as deriving from a non-reflective consciousness and from the image of a pale God, which that consciousness contains. As mentioned at the beginning of this section, articulation can go beyond the coherent description of its object and express it by indicating its importance and drawing out the possibilities it entails. The first thing to be mentioned in this context is that the moral sensitivity that is part of a moral religious life has the same effect as that of the reformed religion. A believer who adopts the image of a God who acts within a framework of moral and religious instructions, rather than that of a hidden and capricious entity, can belong to his surroundings as a religious person. What I wrote in Chapter 3 about liberating oneself from an imaginary and meta-finite status is also valid for the traditionalist. In that chapter, I wrote that the believer in a revelatory religion imagines himself as standing before a transcendental God; in doing so, he extracts himself from the chain of causes of finite beings and transcends his status as a finite being. He assumes the false status of a meta-finite individual. This delusion determines the ontic situation of the individual, who is alienated from the world, including his own social world. The establishment of a pale God overcomes this delusion, as this background figure can introduce order into the world. The believer can use it in order to determine the nature of his belonging. The moral routine that is projected by such a Divinity — 183 —


does not enclose the believer in a separate “cell” along with the transcendental being; it situates him in some order. Consequently, traditionalism, as a form of reformed religion, can serve as a fertile ground for political life: it comprises moral regulation; it places the believer within the world; it awakens all this by stimulating the believer as a figure of authority; finally, this person is an agent of change rather than a mindless follower of commands. Spinozian analysis, which reveals the sources of the strength of reformed religion, also highlights its political importance. Continuing along this track, we may come to understand the sources of the strength of traditionalism and its political importance in Israel. What we claimed in Chapter 4 about the political role of reformed religion forms the basis for this, and we will now reiterate some of the main points. One key concept for understanding the role of religion is expressed through the phrases “sovereign spirit” or “one spirit, so to speak” (“una veluti mens”), which appear mainly in the TP and, to a lesser extent, in the Ethics. More than explaining what he refers to when using the word “spirit,” Spinoza makes a point of referring to it as “one spirit.” What this phrase refers to is that the unity of people depends not only on the establishment of a shared legal system; it must also rely on the masses’ readiness to obey the law. Spinoza’s political analysis underlines the necessity for this readiness; indeed, citizens represent a greater danger for the stability of the ruling power than do the enemies of the state. The danger that characterizes the masses becomes clear when the mentality that characterizes them is revealed (as described in Chapter 3). When attempting to reduce this danger, one must take its reasons into consideration. Therefore, bringing people together calls for more than a common legal basis — it calls for nurturing the readiness to obey, based on the mentality of the masses. This is partly achieved by allocating rewards and punishments, holding back threats and nurturing hope. It is also partly achieved through the agency of common ideas that make up “one spirit” — we are referring to norms, moral sensibility and common images, which lead men to obey the rational law that comes to govern their lives. The shaping of the behavior of the masses by the ruling power must therefore be based upon images and concepts that are rooted in their — 184 —


consciousness and which stimulate them towards action. Religious tradition is a fertile ground for the development of such images. Another claim which we have already discussed and which is relevant to our discussion is the following: in Spinozian ontology, the existence of society and of the nation as “individuals” demands explanation.29 “By singular things I understand things that are finite and have a determinate existence. And if a number of individuals so concur in one action that together they are all the cause of one effect, I consider them all, to that extent, as one singular thing.”30 Applying this dynamistic definition (which is well suited to Spinoza’s thought) to a group of men emphasizes the fact that the individuation of a society is not based on formal-statistical data. The individual’s ontic meaning depends on his force of action, on his ability to serve as the cause of some outcome. If a society is the cause of some outcome, it is an individual entity; it is an individual in accordance with its causal force. The status of society as an “individual” is not given to it a priori, outside the realm of its concrete life; thus, the readiness of a society to act jointly and to obey the law is an issue that concerns its very being. This readiness is not only necessary for the consolidation of society (as though its existence is guaranteed a priori and there only remains the question of its consolidation), but also in order that it exist as an individual entity. The religious concepts and images that awaken every man to obedience form the crucial basis for a common force of action. The presence of a tradition of such common images is, therefore, necessary for the individuation of society itself, and not only to guarantee its proper functioning. Spinozian analysis sheds light on the force of action granted as a result of the adoption of traditional religious images, and it clarifies the political function of these images; it has the ability to do so because of its comprehensive nature. Spinoza’s political approach is anchored in an epistemological-ontological analysis. The concepts that clarify the way tradition is rooted, and the level of activity involved in the passive adoption of religious images, are the key to explaining why this tradition 29 30

TTP, p. 225. See Chapter 4, note 49. E 2d7. — 185 —


is necessary for the consolidation of political power. In other words, the analysis of the chronic instability of the masses provides the key for understanding the value of religious images that are rooted within the life of society, as well as their potential role in stabilizing and improving society through the medium of politics. The value of religious images and the conditions for political sovereignty, the meaning of religious tradition and its role in political life — all become clear through this system of epistemological-ontological concepts, according to which traditionalism is perceived as an option for Israeli secularism. We can also present the above as follows: in Spinozian analysis, the term “secularism” is attributed a certain meaning; it refers to the improvement and stimulation of social life. This takes place by shaping the lives of the masses within the framework of a sovereignty that is as rational as possible. The softening of religious tradition found in Spinoza’s writings is part of this endeavor; it is not limited to neutralizing religion and undermining the position of religious virtuosos, it uses the religious images in order to generate the conditions necessary for political life: unity, nurturing the spirit of obedience and encouraging the masses. Therefore, and contrary to the other models of secularism we reviewed in Chapter 1, Spinozian political secularism is generous in its preservation of the religious significance of tradition. It does not secularize the contents of religion, nor does it infuse them with any alternative meaning, in order to appropriate them as a man-made culture; rather, it carries out some slight modifications in order to link these contents with the patterns of secular life. The moderate nature of this political secularism should not deceive us — its secularism is not abolished by its preservation of religious contents. On the contrary, these contents are the spiritual platform from which one may derive “one spirit, so to speak,” to ground the establishment of political authority, and deepen the existence of a society as “a single thing” (in accordance with Spinoza’s ontology), which will lead to the activation and rationalization of society.31 All of these illustrate the concept of “secularism,” as per Spinoza’s approach outlined here. 31

We should mention here once more that “activation” remains a topic demanding an ontological and political development that lies beyond the scope of this book. — 186 —


What we have claimed so far comprises two important claims which should be made explicit. First, traditionalism is an individual case of Spinoza’s political secularism — or perhaps, a concrete example of it. This has been demonstrated in this section. Second, traditionalism and political secularism fulfill the conditions for the definition of the term “secularism” as was presented at the beginning of the book. They reflect the modern ethos of man as one who shapes his life autonomously, thereby setting it free from any transcendental authority; it rejects religious tradition as a normative content whose interpretation is the monopoly of religious specialists. To be sure, these measures appear to be taken in secret. The rejection of the transcendental authority is formulated as the anesthesization of the Divinity rather than as opposition to it. The annulment of the status of the religious specialists is not formulated as a polemic; rather, the religious leaders are shown respect, but they no longer represent the source of authority. This procedure, however, should not lead us to false conclusions as to its nature: in political secularism in general, and in traditionalism in particular, religion blends with other forms of life; it is not only more pliant in submitting to earthly power, but it even contributes to the strengthening of the latter. It is important to remember that this secularism represents, first and foremost, possibilities. Secularism, and the reformed religion in general, can help establish a political framework; the stability and qualities of that framework, however, depend on the ruling power.32 Moreover, the highly praised qualities of traditionalism — strengthening moral sensitivity and imbuing belonging — depend on the extent and the ways to which it is nurtured. What we have explained here — and in the discussion on reformed religion in general — is the possible relation between traditionalism and political life. Political secularism is not an abstract web of ideas, but principles that are tested through concrete experience and which, therefore, exist in permanent tension. In other words, political secularism is not given as a complete view; rather, it represents the nurturing of traditions and political models in light of certain principles. 32

TP, p. 310-311. — 187 —


What we have claimed so far has helped us understand the nature of traditionalism through Spinozian analysis, and how traditionalism can be perceived as an option of Israeli secularism. We have also clarified the type of claim this is — why it is a philosophical rather than an historical claim. We did not discuss the conditions that led to the creation of the religious models that are called “traditional.” Our interest lies in the examination of the philosophical essence of traditionalism and its possibilities; these can only been learned through a system of epistemological-political concepts, which elucidates tradition in light of the basic characteristics of the consciousness of the masses. This, in fact, involves the understanding of the patterns of its passivity and of its activity. In other words, it is not only the religious nature of traditionalism that requires clarification — this is the focus of analysis of its researchers — but also its epistemic meaning and the political possibilities it entails. Due to the great sensitivity of his thought to the mental life of the masses, to their spiritual needs and to their role in political life, Spinoza’s writings comprise tools for understanding traditionalism from this perspective, tools which also enables us to recognize its secular nature.

— 188 —

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COnclusion

As we described in Chapter 1, the motivation for the development of a secular position in the framework of Spinoza’s cultural philosophy was the weakness of the existing secular options. Given that the existing solutions all lead to a dead end, and the fact that the repertoire of current solutions has already been formulated in spiritual Zionist thought, we attempted to formulate an additional option in the previous four chapters. Based on that work, and returning to the starting point of the book, we found that the weakness of the three options put forth is far more profound than it seemed to us at first. In other words, the relation between what was described in Chapter 1 and the traditionalist option is far more complicated than presumed. Traditionalism, as explained through the Spinozian philosophy of culture, is justified not only because of the limitations of the other options; traditionalism also critiques those other options, thus strengthening its claims. There are two issues comprised within this critique. First, all the approaches described in Chapter 1 share a similar image of modern man as the authority for judging tradition; he does not accept tradition passively, but becomes its master — he makes his choices based on his own judgment. In each of the secular options this is expressed differently: the proponents of “Judaism as a culture” imbue religious tradition with new meaning through historical and aesthetic categories. The deniers of Judaism are convinced of its falsity, whereas spiritual secularism rewrites it based on syntheses and selections drawn from the spiritual traditions of other cultures. In each case, the emphasis is on the autonomy of the individual who selects his symbols based on his — 189 —

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own preferences and his own personal spiritual world. The assumption that tradition is subordinate to man is part of a larger assumption with respect to the nature of modern man: the modern subject is presented as someone who constructs himself, or at least as the bearer of an independent and active awareness. He does not humbly accept the lifestyle or beliefs of his ancestors, without first evaluating what their value is for himself. The claim that the modern subject shapes himself and is an independent authority is, to a great extent, a delusion. In the West, religious tradition has been the target of critical attack for many generations. It is portrayed as a consisting of false and conflicting images and as the basis for the growth of exploitative, harmful and distorted religious authorities. In this context, modern man can easily exercise his judgment with respect to religious tradition or manifest his disgust towards it. In doing so, he can rely on a solid tradition. But his relation towards religious tradition does not attest to modern man’s liberation from the basic aspects of his traditional existence. Those aspects are anchored in the passive aspects of his consciousness rather than his stance towards a particular tradition, even if that tradition be a dominant one. The state of awareness of modern man, like that of pre-modern man, results, first and foremost, from his finite nature, which is not subject to historical processes. In depicting himself, modern man relies too much on the drama of religious tradition and the revolt against tradition, while ignoring the passive and diffuse nature of his awareness.1 The epistemic state of the traditionalist person typifies critics of the tradition as well; the same molds shaping the non-critical adoption of tradition may be present among both. Both may accept contents, beliefs and ways of life based “on hearsay.” The ways in which tradition is held is a subject not developed in this book, but which may serve as 1

Certainly, the dichotomy between traditional society and modern society and the understanding of the power of modern consciousness have already been severely undermined. Eisenstadt’s concept of multiple modernities (Eisenstadt, multiple modernities) is one such illustration. Nevertheless, the dichotomy between tradition and modernity has substantial salience in the Israeli discourse on secularism. Some of the ideas presented in Chapter 1 — those of Rotenstreich, Schweid, Brinker and Yizhar — vehemently emphasize this dichotomy. — 190 —

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the basis for further discussion. At one point, Spinoza mentions that man’s body is made up of several natures — in other words, he describes it as a heterogeneous unit.2 This heterogeneity — by virtue of the relation among the attributes — typifies the soul as well. Commentators dealing with Spinoza’s thinking on consciousness overemphasize the division into three levels (whose importance I do not deny). In doing so, they ignore the concrete wealth assigned to mental life in Spinoza’s conception. One hint at the heterogeneity mentioned here may explain this wealth: the ideas, insofar as they are mental activities, insofar as they are a multiplicity comprising the “soul,” do not bear a reflexivity fixed in nature or intensity. The logical contents contained in each of the mental activities known as ideas are not all approved in the same manner or measure — not even for the philosopher. The reflexive aspect of consciousness is thus a heterogeneous activity. These claims, which of course need to be justified, also bear political and cultural significance. More than being composed of a distinctive group of the passive masses, human society is composed of “mass” manifestations of passivity. A conclusion deriving from this is that the molds negatively attributed to the traditional person indeed typify man’s basic state of mind. Man’s essential passivity is the basis for his being “traditional,” i.e. a subject who easily adopts external contents without approving them.3 In short, from a Spinozian point of view, the assumption of the three secular options with respect to man’s superiority over tradition — especially over religious tradition — is an act of hubris. The fault in this assumption — as indicated by the Greek term — is that man forgets his human limitations. Whoever believes that modern man has become lord over himself and his preferences ignores the limits of man’s consciousness that result from his being a finite being with limited knowledge. By remembering these things, we may come to change the inferior image that traditionalism bears in Israel, and perhaps not only 2 3

E 3p17s. See also Chapter 3, note 32. Note how often academics use passive and impersonal forms of language. Appreciation for someone is usually expressed through adjectives such as “respected,” “admired,” “worthy,” etc. Even academics whose thinking is advanced adopt references and positions, including positions on scientific matters, by assigning judgment to an unspecified active agent. Is this not what Spinoza characterizes as “from hearsay”? — 191 —

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in Israel. Tradition is understood as a system of beliefs and customs characteristic of an uneducated public, whose relation to tradition is typified by uncritical adoption.4 The Spinozian analysis teaches us that uncritical adoption is not the sole property of the traditional person. The potential latent in tradition, which has been preserved through an uncritical attitude, is the most important element in the evaluation of the traditional position, rather than the condemnation — both arrogant and naïve — of the mere existence of uncritical positions like these. Another matter included in the Spinozian critique of the approaches presented in Chapter 1 is this: we closed the discussion there with the claim that those approaches undermine the common element in Israeli society. Thus, in spite of the efforts of the intellectuals who express these views, and their attempts to devise formulas for the secular public which will express their spiritual world, this public remains distanced from its past and from the possibility of formulating a common culture and identity. The significance of this weakness becomes clearer in light of the Spinozian philosophy of culture. This was the gist of what we advanced in Chapters 2 to 5. According to the Spinozian position — based on an ontological and epistemological analysis — the difference between people is the basis for common life. Society, by nature, tends to be in conflict. Its individuals and groups tend to be absorbed with themselves and hate each other. This conflicted multiplicity is the fact which needs to be repaired through political life. This reform is not necessary in order to satisfy a hegemony external to society. Successful unification of society is inseparable from its activation and intensification. The possibility of developing a rational collective life is linked to the overcoming of inherent tendencies of enmity and fragmentation. It relies on the development of a common spiritual platform for mass consciousness. An important source of such a platform is religious tradition. The criticism arising from Spinoza’s philosophy of culture applies not only to the shared elements of the secularist option. It also casts new light upon the main weakness inherent in each of them individually. Those who take exception to Judaism strive for an Israeli society which 4

Yadgar & Liebman, Beyond the Dichotomy, p. 262. — 192 —

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is limited to a political framework and whose identity is no longer based on a religious tradition or on a national culture. In Chapter 1, we explained that this demand offers Israeli society, whose traditional tendencies are deeply-rooted, something foreign to it. Based on the Spinozian analysis, we now see that this oversight is not only a result of the lack of understanding of empirical facts, but also a consequence of the lack of understanding of the roles played by such facts: the possibility for a society to exist as a political society depends, to a great extent, on the existence of a common spiritual platform in its members’ consciousness. This claim has been justified in all the chapters in which we discussed Spinoza’s thought. The weakness of the position that takes exception to Judaism was presented in Chapter 1 as an empirical matter — the willful ignorance of the tendencies of Israeli society. We have now become aware of its philosophical significance — the lack of consideration of the importance of shared spiritual contents for the constitution of the political life of a society. Spinoza’s philosophy of culture not only recommends traditionalism and casts light on its secular nature, but also deepens the criticism voiced in Chapter 1 by adding philosophical weight to the claims we advanced at the end of the chapter. This is also true with respect to the other secular options. As we remember, the proponents of Judaism as a culture understand Judaism as a continuing national creation and present its importance in aesthetic and historical categories. In Chapter 1, we explained that this tendency voices a paradox — it attempts to create a relation to the Jewish contents created by the Jewish people but voids them of their religious significance. It attempts to familiarize itself with something that it has uprooted from its source. Consequently, it cannot offer Judaism as the shared content of the Jewish immigrant society in Israel. For what is shared by them are the religious images rather than the expressions that have developed in the communities from which they came. Basic Jewish symbols rather than liturgy — this is what is common to Jewish Israelis. Thus, the nullification of the significance of those symbols, by its very nature, emphasizes difference and distance; these issues have already been discussed in Chapter 1. The Spinozian analysis adds an additional element. It is highly doubtful that the reformulation of Judaism as — 193 —

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a national culture, devoid of religious content, can serve as heir to the role played by shared Jewish tradition. As explained primarily in Chapters 3 and 4, the utility of religious tradition is that it provides a basis for the moral order in the world and that it has the potential to attach the believer to his society. A properly moderated religious tradition creates spiritual conditions similar to those that bring the Spinozian sage to realize that his own good is inextricably related to the good of his neighbor. Thus, the weakness of Judaism as a culture is not only that it denies the religious content that forms the basis of Judaism, but its abandonment of that content without providing something that could serve as its replacement. In spiritual secularism, the approach to the religious content remains. It is the only one of the secular options that retains some of its religious meaning (perhaps this is the reasons for its flourishing in secular culture over the last two decades). Its main deficiency was named in Chapter 1 as “the unraveling of Judaism”: Judaism is not perceived as a collective content, but is part of a global and eclectic reservoir of beliefs. The Spinozian analysis sheds light on several of the disadvantages in the integration of such mystical contents. The political significance of the particular religious tradition is insofar as it provides a possible base for the formation of “a single spirit, so to speak” — that normative basis rooted in images of a common deity, imbued with law, who imposes a moral order upon the world. The eclectic nature of the mystical culture of the “New Age” makes it an atomizing force, heterogeneous in its sources, which reflects no general order, and which only with difficulty can provide the basis for a shared spirit. Furthermore, the cultural-political purpose of the Spinozian analysis is to develop religious contents that can be fruitful for the rationalization of society and the invigoration of the masses. Thus, there is value in the transmission of spiritual contents in what is called an “open tradition.” The possibility that they may be guarded by bearers of secrets, who maintain their expertise in traditions that are closed, secret or “inborn,” may lead to the rise of an authority that threatens the political authority that fosters the rationalization of society. This danger is to be expected among the experts of established religions, but it may also arise on the part of those imagined as gifted with magical — 194 —

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powers. The social and political status of various “wonder workers” hints at this. Spinoza’s philosophy of culture criticizes the options presented in Chapter 1, while recommending traditionalism as a secular option which may succeed where others have failed. It continues the Jewish religious tradition in an organic fashion; instead of rewriting or erasing it, it focuses on moderating it. This minor action is far deeper than it seems at first, as its possible meaning is the establishment of the spiritual conditions necessary for the creation of a collective which may create its life based on a political authority. If one accepts my argument so far, one should recognize an additional advantage of traditionalism. Zionism is the politicization of the Jewish people — the organization of Jews in a political framework; this is the great accomplishment of the secularization of the Jews, but for this to take place it was not necessary to uproot the Jewish collective from its common religious traditions. It would have sufficed to moderate them to fit political life. Unquestionably, there were good historical reasons for the three options mentioned in Chapter 1, but the reasons are not sufficient for the adoption of the modes of thought generated by those reasons. Traditionalism is the secular option which most closely corresponds with the process of secularization which Zionism caused among the Jewish people. What was mentioned in passing in Chapter 1 — the fact that the range of options in Zionist thinking is identical to the common options in Israeli society — now takes on new significance: the articulation of political secularism was not made by Zionist leaders and intellectuals. But it is found in the philosophy of a Jewish philosopher who lived at a distance from his people. Why then was this source ignored? Why did Zionist thinkers not employ his thought to clarify the nature of secularism needed for the politicization of the Jewish people? I cannot offer a full response to these questions here. I will suffice with one answer of particular relevance to our discussion: in order to appreciate the status of Spinoza in Zionism and in Israeli culture, it must be studied in a broader perspective, particularly in light of the influence of Nietzsche’s philosophy as the source of influence for the formation of secular ideas — 195 —

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in the West in general, and in Hebrew culture in particular. Nietzsche’s critique of religion and the values he proposed for those who liberate themselves from the lies of religious tradition lead to a particular mold of “secular life.” Its characteristics are as follows. First: secularism is liberation from the yoke of God. This liberation is unconditional. God is dead. What remains is a sobered man who does not seek solace from imagined metaphysical entities. He is, on the contrary, obligated to shape his life according to new values. Second: secular life is at root an individual existential mission. The rejection of the false religious tradition and the uprooting of the false images of God is a struggle that takes place in the soul of the individual. This individuality is attested to quite clearly through the values that stand at the center of sober secular life: authenticity and self-creation. The secular hero of Nietzsche - and that of his philosophy as a whole — is the autonomous individual who lives an authentic life anchored in his unique existence. The Spinozian version of secularism is diametrically opposed to this in each of the aforementioned aspects. First, it does not seek to remove the image of God, but to moderate it and render the religious tradition that attests to it more flexible. This is what we referred to here as the “pale God”. In general, the Spinozian version of secularism does not see religious tradition as a veil blinding the eyes. By nature, because of its ontic structure, man adopts contents passively. He is always “in the midst of things,” and this is reflected in his entire spiritual existence. Second, secularism is not an individual matter — it is a political project. Its object is the masses and its means are the political authority which tends, by its nature, to be rational. These two models of secularism are opposed to one another. The first is individualist and existentialist, revolutionary and atheistic; the second is political, moderate and traditionalist. The hero of Nietzschean philosophy is the autonomous individual seeking authentic life, anchored in his unique existence and expressed with revolutionary fervor. For Spinoza, man — and the philosopher is no exception — is a traditional creature. Frequently, the Nietzschean model obscures the Spinozian one. Under the influence of Nietzschean thought, Spinoza scholars tend to understand the object of their study as if his secular message were — 196 —

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restricted to what we called, in Chapter 2, “metaphysical secularism”: the shattering of the lies of religion and the proposal of a metaphysical alternative for this distorted system of concepts. Thus, they also tend to overemphasize the role of rhetorical strategems in his writings — as if the relation between the first book of Ethics, the strong criticism of the concepts of revealed religion, and the TTP is that between truth and manipulation. In the four chapters here dealing with Spinoza, I proposed an alternative view. Its main principles are: the relation between the Ethics and Spinoza’s moves in the TTP is that between raw thought and developed thought. The logical structure of the substance is not determinant in evaluating the value of religious conceptions; it is merely a system of concepts useful for understanding the nature of inferior thought, i.e. imagination, and for appreciating its spiritual needs. The dominance of Nietzsche resulted in a “Nietzscheization” of Spinoza. Another important influence of Nietzsche may be found among Zionist thinkers, particularly those of spiritual Zionism. These thinkers understood secularization through a Nietzschean perspective, even if they did not share Nietzsche’s anti-religious fervor. For them, the world of religion was the world of their fathers. They never related to their past with Nietzschean animosity and anger. Moreover, they made great efforts to propose a new relation to their religious tradition. But they completely abandoned the God of the Jews, and in doing so submissively adopted Nietzsche’s conception. In other words, they avoided any involvement with the problem of the death of God, but uncritically accepted the news that indeed the God of the Jews was dead. In place of this God, they established trans-human forces and rewrote Judaism in its light. Ahad Ha’am based his analysis on the “national spirit”; Gordon on “cosmic life.” Klatzkin and Brenner took for granted the “world without God.” The possibility of examining Judaism in light of a “pale God” never occurred to these thinkers. The Nietzschean assumption of the death of the God of the Jews blinded them. Thus, the “pale God” is not one of their solutions, even though it fits the project they dedicated themselves to so well. The Nietzschean assumption of the death of the God of the Jews dominates not only the founders of the State of Israel, but all the secular options we described in Chapter 1 as well. Thus, it is — 197 —

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taken as self-understood that a secular person who wishes to be faithful to Judaism must do so only after extricating from it the traditional image of God. The rewriting of this God-image as national culture, its understanding through historical and aesthetic categories, provide one framework for redefining the meaning of Judaism. Another possibility is defining it through an eclectic content which is no longer understood as testimony to the will of the traditional God, but as a reservoir from which man chooses and creates his own world based on Nietzschean values such as self-creation and authenticity. What we have argued so far is also related to the common claim of scholars that traditionalism is antithetical to secularism. Scholars who investigate traditionalism see it as a kind of religious behavior. They often describe it against the background of the religious behavior of Mizrachim, or see it as a “third option” which challenges the division into religious and secular. The analysis of the epistemic-political aspect that is part of traditionalism reveals that what seems to be the weakening of religious contents is a possible base for political activism. The concrete religious contents are understood differently if we analyze their political and epistemic meaning. Only then do we see the processes of simplification of religion and its transformation into a valuable tradition for moral and political socialization. This philosophical analysis enables us to liberate ourselves from the secular existentialist pathos of Nietzschean thought and to recognize the power contained in the moderation of religious tradition for the creation of a basis for the development of secular ways of life. By investigating traditionalism in light of the Spinozian articulation, we may reveal the deeper, muted secularism inherent in it. This secularism takes place through rendering the religious contents so prominent on the surface more malleable. From all we have written, it becomes clear why traditionalism is the best option for the development of a secular way of life, why it is particularly adapted to the secularization process taking place in Israel, and why — in spite of its great importance — it is not evident. In this defense of traditionalism, I do not proclaim that the problem of secularization has been solved. It has, however, been redefined: the recognition of the importance of religious tradition and its potential required that we respect is contents, just as this recognition requires — 198 —

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that we always recognize its dangers. There is a constant risk that strong spiritual authorities may develop, authorities which may conflict with the political authority and foster disputes and even wars. The containment of this development depends not only on the contents of religion and its persons, but on the nature of political life. The reliance on religious tradition is a risky move. Another problem is that reliance on religion seems too dangerous in the context of Israeli society, especially in the eyes of the secular public. The adoption of religious values looks like a move whose bad end can be foreseen in advance. Any turn to religion may easily be described with the images of theocracy, the fragile identity of the secular person, and “return in repentance” to Orthodox religious observance. But this image is, in no small measure, the result of the attempt to remove all traditional religious elements from Jewish culture. This tendency has, to some extent, impeded the formulation of moderate traditional forms. In summary, religious tradition is both essential and dangerous. This claim applies in general, and to Israeli society in particular. These issues become so complicated because religious tradition appears so dangerous; consequently, it retains its dangerous, immoderate forms. We have a vicious circle. The resolution of this tangled situation is the main challenge that Spinoza’s philosophy of culture poses for Israeli society: the foundation of traditionalism as a broad cultural option and the understanding of its importance for a secularism oriented towards the establishment of a political life as rational as possible.

— 199 —

‫‪----------------------------------------------------------------------  Bibliorgaphy ----------------------------------------------------------------------‬‬

‫‪Bibliorgaphy‬‬

‫מאיר איילי‪“ ,‬מסורת דתית ותרבות חילונית — שתי רשימות”‪ ,‬שדמות = ‪Ayali, Religious Tradition‬‬ ‫מ”ב ‪( ,20‬תשל”א)‪.‬‬ ‫מאיר איילי‪“ ,‬איפה הכנות‪ ,‬איפה השלמות?”‪ ,‬שדמות ל”ב ‪Ayali, Where is Honesty? = ,128‬‬ ‫(תשכ”ט)‪.‬‬ ‫‪Balibar, Spinoza and Politics = E. Balibar, Spinoza and Politics, London New York‬‬ ‫‪1998.‬‬ ‫ג’ ברעלי‪‘ ,‬על תלמוד תורה שחולן’‪ ,‬אלפיים ‪( 17‬תשנ”ט)‪ ,‬עמ’ ‪Bareli, The Study of Torah = 23-9‬‬ ‫‪Blair, Imagination = R.G. Blair, “Spinoza’s Account of Imagination,” D. Garret (ed.),‬‬ ‫‪The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, Cambridge, 1996: 318-328.‬‬ ‫מ’ בוזגלו‪‘ ,‬המסורתי החדש וההלכה‪ :‬פנומנולוגיה’‪ :‬בתוך‪Bouzaglo, The New Traditionalist = :‬‬ ‫מ’ אורפלי וא’ חזן (עורכים)‪ ,‬התחדשות ומסורת‪ :‬יצירה‪ ,‬הנהגה ותהליכי תרבות ביהדות צפון‪-‬‬ ‫אפריקה‪ ,‬ירושלים תשס”ה אורפלי וחזן‪ ,‬התחדשות‪ ,‬עמ’ ‪204-187‬‬ ‫ברינקר‪ ,‬מלחמת תרבות = מ’ ברינקר‪‘ ,‬גבולות מלחמת התרבות’‪ ,‬בתוך‪ :‬ש’ = ‪Brinker, Culture War‬‬ ‫סטמפלר (עורך)‪ ,‬אנשים והמדינה‪ :‬החברה הישראלית‪ ,‬תל אביב תשמ”ט‪ ,‬עמ’ ‪285-276‬‬ ‫ברינקר‪ ,‬ללא דוקטרינה = מ’ ברינקר‪‘ ,‬ללא דוקטרינה‪ :‬ייחודו = ‪Brinker, Without Doctrine‬‬ ‫של החילוני היהודי’‪ ,‬בתוך‪ :‬ר’ רוזנטל (עורך)‪ ,‬שורש הדברים‪ :‬עיון מחודש בשאלות עם וחברה‪,‬‬ ‫ירושלים ‪ ,2005‬עמ’ ‪57-50‬‬ ‫‪Curley, Ethics = E. Curley, A Spinoza Reader, Princeton, 1994.‬‬ ‫י’ דן‪‘ ,‬קריסתו של המרכז’‪ ,‬פוליטיקה ‪ ,)1991( 40‬עמ’ ‪Dan, Collapse = 29-26‬‬ ‫‪Dan Uyl, Power = D. den Uyl, Power, State and Freedom, Assen, 1983.‬‬ ‫‪De Deugd, Imagination = C. De Deugd, The Significance of Spinoza’s First Kind of‬‬ ‫‪Knowledge, Assen, 1996.‬‬ ‫— ‪— 201‬‬

----------------------------------------------------------------------  Bibliorgaphy ----------------------------------------------------------------------

De Deugd, Political-Theological = C. De Deugd (ed.), Spinoza’s Political and Theological Thought, New York, 1984. Dorman, Spinoza’s Disputes = ‫ תל אביב תש”ן‬,‫ ויכוחי שפינוזה באספקלריה יהודית‬,‫מ’ דורמן‬ Englard, Law = ‫ארז‬-‫ ד’ ברק‬:‫ בתוך‬,’‫הרעיוני‬-‫ הרקע ההיסטורי‬:‫ ‘יחסי דת ומדינה בישראל‬,‫י’ אנגלרד‬ 308-289 ’‫ עמ‬,‫ תל אביב תשנ”ו‬,‫ מדינה יהודית ודמוקרטית‬,)‫(עורכת‬ Heelas, New Age = P. Heelas, The New Age Movement, Oxford, 1996. Eilam, The End of Judaism = 2000 ‫ תל אביב‬,‫הדת והממלכה‬-‫ אומת‬:‫ קץ היהדות‬,‫י’ עילם‬ Eliraz, Spinoza and Friends = 2006 ‫ רעננה‬,‫ ארוחת ערב עם שפינוזה וחברים‬,‫י’ אלירז‬ Feuer, Liberalism = L. S. Feuer, Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism, Boston, 1958. Funkenstein, Secular Judaism = ‫ יהדות חופשית‬,‫ מקורותיה של יהדות חילונית‬,‫ע’ פונקנשטיין‬ 21 ’‫ עמ‬,)2000( 19 Garret, Truth and Imagination = D. Garret, “Truth and Ideas of Imagination in the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione,” Studia Spinozana 2 (1986): 61-91. Geertz, Islam = C. Geertz, Islam Observed, New Haven, Conn., 1968. Gilad, Method = ‫ ירושלים תשמ”ו‬,‫שפינוזה לשיטה פילוסופית‬-‫ דרכה של תורת‬,‫ע’ גלעד‬ Goetschel, Heine = W. Goetschel, “Heine’s Spinoza,” Idealistic Studies 33 (2003): 203-217. Goetschel, Modernity = W. Goetschel, Spinoza’s Modernity: Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine, Madison, 2004. Gildin, A Political Problem = H. Gildin, “Spinoza and the Political Problem,” in: M. Grene (ed.), Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays, New York 1973, pp. 377387. Golomb, Nietzsche = ‫ ירושלים תשס”ב‬,‫ ניטשה בתרבות העברית‬,)‫י’ גולומב (עורך‬ Gretz, The Canaanite Group = ‫ תל אביב‬,‫ הקבוצה הכנענית — ספרות ואידיאולוגיה‬,)‫נ’ גרץ (עורכת‬ 1986

— 202 —

----------------------------------------------------------------------  Bibliorgaphy ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Guttmann, Spinoza = ”‫המדינית‬-‫ ‘ “ירושלים” למנדלסון וה”מסכת התיאולוגית‬,‫י”י גוטמן‬ 217-192 ’‫ עמ‬,‫ ירושלים תשט”ו‬,‫ תרגם מגרמנית ש’ אש‬,‫ דת ומדע‬,’‫לשפינוזה‬ Hallett, Creation = H. F. Hallett, Creation, Emanation, Salvation: A Spinozistic Study, The Hague, 1962. Hallett, Eternity = H. F. Hallett, Aeternitas: A Spinozistic Study, Oxford, 1930. Hallett, Spinoza = H. F. Hallett, Benedict de Spinoza: The Elements of his Philosophy, London, 1957. Hunter, Radicalism = G. Hunter. Radical Protestantism in Spinoza’s Thought, Aldershot, Burlington, Ashgate, 2005. Joachim, Ethics = H. Joachim, A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza, Oxford, 1901. Joachim, TdIE = H. Joachim, Spinoza’s Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione: A Commentary, Oxford, 1940. Jobani, Models of Secularism = J. Jobani, “Three Basic Models of Secular Jewish Culture,” in G. Katz (ed.), Israeli Secular-Religious Dialectics, Special Issue of Israel Studies 13.3 (2008): 160-169. Kaplan, Freud = A. Kaplan, “Spinoza and Freud,” Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, 5 (1977): 299-326. Katz, Core of Secularism = ‫ לעצם החילוניות — ניתוח פילוסופי של החילוניות בהקשר‬,‫ג’ כ”ץ‬ 2011 ‫ ירושלים‬,‫ישראלי‬ Katz, Spinoza’s Translators = G. Katz, “In the Eye of the Translator: Spinoza in the Mirror of the Ethics’ Hebrew Translators,” Jewish Thought and Philosophy 15.2 (2007): 39-63. Katz, Traditional Society = ‫ ש’ דשן ומ’ שוקד‬:‫ בתוך‬,’‫ ‘חברה מסורתית וחברה מודרנית‬,‫י’ כ”ץ‬ ’‫ עמ‬, 1984 ‫ ירושלים ותל אביב‬,‫ עיונים אנתרופולוגיים על העבר וההווה‬:‫ יהודי המזרח‬,)‫(עורכים‬ 34-27 Kedmi, Jewish Identity = ,‫ זהות ותרבות יהודית — קובץ עיוני למורה ולתלמיד‬,‫י’ קדמי עורך‬ 1975 ,‫הוצאת המחלקה להשכלה של הקבה”א‬ Klatzkin, Ethics = ‫ תל אביב תשי”ד‬,‫ תרגם י’ קלצקין‬,‫המידות‬-‫ תורת‬,‫ב’ שפינוזה‬ — 203 —

----------------------------------------------------------------------  Bibliorgaphy ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Klatzkin, The Life of Spinoza = ‫ תל אביב תרצ”ג‬,‫ חייו ושיטתו‬:‫ ברוך שפינוזה‬,‫י’ קלצקין‬ Kurzweil, Ahad Ha’am = :‫ בתוך‬,’‫הביולוגי‬-‫חיים הלאומי‬-‫ ‘היהדות כגילוי רצון‬,‫ב’ קורצוויל‬ 224-190 ’‫ עמ‬,‫ ירושלים תש”ך‬,?‫ המשך או מהפכה‬:‫ספרותנו החדשה‬ Lachover, Haskalah = ,‫ מסות ספרותיות‬:‫ על גבול הישן והחדש‬,’‫ ‘שפינוזה וההשכלה‬,‫פ’ לחובר‬ 129-103 ’‫ עמ‬,‫ירושלים תשי”א‬ Leibowitz, Faith = ‫ ירושלים תשמ”ב‬,‫ מאמרים והרצאות‬:‫ היסטוריה וערכים‬,‫ אמונה‬,‫י’ ליבוביץ‬ Levy, The Notion of Judaism = 1972 ‫ תל אביב‬,‫ שפינוזה ומושג היהדות‬,‫ז’ לוי‬ Liebman, Culture War = :‫ צביון‬,1 ‫ נייר עמדה‬,’‫ מיפוי מחדש‬:‫ ‘מלחמת התרבות בישראל‬,‫י”צ ליבמן‬ ‫ מאי‬,‫אילן‬-‫ הפקולטה למשפטים אוניברסיטת בר‬,‫ יהדות ודמוקרטיה‬,‫מרכז ג’ולסון לישראליות‬ 2001 Lloyd, Nature = G. Lloyd, Part of Nature: Self-Knowledge in Spinoza’s Ethics, New York, 1994. McShea, Political Philosophy = R. McShea, The Political Philosophy of Spinoza, New York and London, 1968. Melamed, Maimon = Y. Melamed, “Salomon Maimon and the Rise of Spinozism in German Idealism,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 42 (2004): 67-96. Morrison, History = J. Morrison, “Spinoza and History,” in: R. Kennington (ed.), The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, Washington, D.C., 1980, pp. 195-173. Motzkin, Luzzatto = L. Motzkin, “Spinoza and Luzzatto: Philosophy and Religion,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 17 (1979): 43-51. Nadler, Biography = 2007 ‫ תל אביב‬,‫ תרגמה דבי אלון‬,‫ ביוגרפיה‬:‫ שפינוזה‬,‫ס’ נדלר‬ Navon, Herman Cohen = E. Navon, “Hermann Cohen’s Perceptions of Spinoza: a Reappraisal,” AJS Review 4 (1979): 111-124. Ofir, Present = 2001 ‫ תל אביב‬,‫ מסות על תרבות ישראלית בעת הזאת‬:‫ עבודת ההווה‬,‫ע’ אופיר‬ Oz, All the Hopes = 1998 ‫ ירושלים‬,‫ מחשבות על זהות ישראלית‬:‫ כל התקוות‬,‫ע’ עוז‬ Parkinson, Knowledge = G. Parkinson, Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge, Oxford, 1954 — 204 —

----------------------------------------------------------------------  Bibliorgaphy ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Popkin, Fisher = R. Popkin, “Samuel Fisher and Spinoza,” Philosophia 15 (1985): 219-236 Popkin, Quakers = R. Popkin, “Spinoza’s Relations with the Quakers in Amsterdam,” Quaker History 73 (1984): 14-28 Popkin, The Study of the Bible = R. Popkin, “Spinoza and Bible Scholarship,” in: D. Garret (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, Cambridge 1996: 383-407 Preus, Spinoza and Vico = S. Preus, “Spinoza, Vico, and the Imagination of Religion,” Journal of the History of Ideas 50 (1989): 71-93 Preus, The Bible = S. Preus, Spinoza and the Irrelevance of Biblical Authority, Cambridge 2001 Rabi, Knowing Judaism = 28.10.77 ’‫ ‘על המשמר‬,”?‫ “מי בעצם מפריע לנו להכיר את היהדות‬,‫י’ רבי‬ Ram, In Praise of Forgetting = ‫ חמישים לארבעים‬,)‫ ע’ אופיר (עורך‬:‫ בתוך‬,’‫ ‘בזכות השכחה‬,‫א’ רם‬ 13-12 ‫ גיליון מיוחד של תיאוריה וביקורת‬,‫ מומנטים ביקורתיים בתולדות מדינת ישראל‬:‫ושמונה‬ 357 ’‫ עמ‬,)1999( Raven, Tradition = H. M. Ravven, “Spinoza’s Rupture with Tradition: On Ethics Vp39s,” Iyyun 50 (2001): 295-326 Ravitzky, Models = ‫ התנגשות‬,‫ הפרדה‬,‫ דגמים של איחוד‬:‫ דת ומדינה במחשבת ישראל‬,‫א’ רביצקי‬ ‫ ירושלים תשנ”ח‬,‫או כפיפות‬ Ravitzky, Tablets = ‫ תל אביב תשנ”ט‬,‫ חירות על הלוחות‬,‫א’ רביצקי‬ Reuveni, Interview = 2002 ‫אביב‬-‫ תל‬,‫ דיוקן‬:‫ פנחס שדה‬,‫יותם ראובני‬ Rosenzweig, The New Hebrew = ’‫ תרגם י‬,‫ מבחר כתבים‬:‫ נהריים‬,’?‫ ‘עברית חדשה‬,‫פ’ רוזנצוויג‬ 199-193 ’‫ עמ‬,‫ ירושלים תשל”ח‬,‫עמיר‬ Rotenstreich, Jewish Existence = ‫ מרחביה ותל‬,‫ על הקיום היהודי בזמן הזה‬,‫נ’ רוטנשטרייך‬ ‫אביב תשל”ב‬ Ruah-Midbar, Tarbu = ‫ מבוא מתודולוגי ו’הרשת‬:‫ תרבות העידן החדש בישראל‬,‫מדבר‬-‫מ’ רוח‬ ‫אילן תשס”ו‬-‫ אוניברסיטת בר‬,‫ עבודה לשם קבלת התואר דוקטור לפילוסופיה‬,’‫הרעיונית‬ Rubin, A Decisive Answer = 1859 ‫ למברג‬,‫ תשובה נצחת‬,‫ש’ רובין‬ — 205 —

----------------------------------------------------------------------  Bibliorgaphy ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Rubin, Research of a God = 1885 ‫ וינה‬,‫ חקר אלוה‬,‫ש’ רובין‬ Rubin, Six Paintings = ‫קראקא תר”ע‬-‫ פאדגורזע‬,‫ ברוך שפינוזה ברגשי אהבת אלהים‬,‫ש’ רובין‬ Sadeh, Life as a Parable = 1958 ,‫ תל אביב‬,‫ החיים כמשל‬,‫פ’ שדה‬ Schmidt, The End of the Road = ‫ השלב האחרון של התנתקות הדמיון‬:‫ ‘סוף הדרך או‬,‫כ’ שמידט‬ 47-36 ’‫ עמ‬,)2005( 16 ‫ מקרוב‬,’‫ציונות‬-‫מהמציאות באודיסיאה של הפוסט‬ Schwartz, Religious Zionism = D. Schwartz, “Fascination and Rejection: Religious Zionist Attitudes toward Spinoza,” Studies in Zionism 14 (1993): 147-168. Schweid, Secular Culture = ‫ פרקי עיון בהגות היהודית של‬:‫ היהדות והתרבות החילונית‬,‫א’ שביד‬ ‫ תל אביב תשמ”א‬,‫המאה העשרים‬ Schweid, Three Night Watches = 1964 ‫ תל אביב‬,‫ שלוש אשמורות‬,‫א’ שביד‬ Schweid, Towards = 1995 ‫ תל אביב‬,‫ לקראת תרבות יהודית מודרנית‬,‫א’ שביד‬ Shechter, Yovel and Spinoza = -‫ הקוד המטאפיסי‬:‫ ‘המוחלט של אושוויץ ושפינוזה‬,‫ע’ שכטר‬ 120-97 ’‫ עמ‬,)2005 ‫ (ינואר‬1 ‫ מטעם‬,’‫אונטולוגי של החילוניות הלאומית‬ Shokeid, Religiosity = M. Shokeid, “The Religiosity of Middle Eastern Jews,” in: S. Deshen, C. Liebman, M. Shokeid (eds.), Israeli Judaism: The Sociology of Religion in Israel, New Brunswick, 1995. Shokeid & Deshen, The Predicament of Homecoming = ‫ שינוי‬:‫ דור התמורה‬,‫מ’ שוקד וש’ דשן‬ ‫ ירושלים תשנ”ט‬,‫אפריקה‬-‫והמשכיות בעולמם של יוצאי צפון‬ Shokeid, New Trends = ’‫ ש’ דשן ומ‬:‫ בתוך‬,’‫ ‘מגמות חדשות בדתיות של יוצאי המזרח‬,‫מ’ שוקד‬ ,1984 ‫ ירושלים ותל אביב‬,‫ עיונים אנתרופולוגיים על העבר וההווה‬:‫ יהודי המזרח‬,)‫שוקד (עורכים‬ 91-78 ’‫עמ‬ Smith, Spinoza and Liberalism = S. B. Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity, New Haven and London, 1997. Savan, Spinoza and Language = D. Savan, “Spinoza and Language,” in: M. Grene (ed.), Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays, New York 1973: 60-72. Sokolov, Spinoza and his Time = ‫ מדרש בפילוסופיה ובקורות‬:‫ ברוך שפינוזה וזמנו‬,‫נ’ סוקולוב‬ ]?‫ פריז [תרפ”ט‬,‫העתים‬ — 206 —

----------------------------------------------------------------------  Bibliorgaphy ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Strauss, Early Writings = L. Strauss: The Early Writings (1921-1932), translated and edited by M. Zank, New York, 2002. Strauss, Spinoza = L. Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, New York, 1965. Tadmor, The Divine in Man = ‫דתי‬-‫ חינוך אקזיסטנציאלי‬:‫ ההתכוונות לאלוהי שבאדם‬,‫י’ תדמור‬ ‫אביב תשנ”ד‬-‫ תל‬,‫במשנתו של יוסף שכטר‬ Tavori, New Age in Israel = -‫ תל‬,‫ העידן החדש בישראל‬:‫ לרקוד בשדה קוצים‬,)‫ע’ תבורי (עורך‬ 2007 ‫אביב‬ TdIE = Works of Spinoza (translated by R. H. M. Elwes), Vol. 2, New York, 1955. TP = Works of Spinoza (translated by R. H. M. Elwes), Vol. 1, New York, 1955. TTP = Benedict de Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise (edited by J. Israel), Cambridge, 2007. Vaughan, Myth = 2003 ‫ תל אביב‬,?‫ האם האמינו היוונים במיתוסים שלהם‬,‫פ’ ון‬ Weiler, Theocracy = ‫ תל אביב תשל”ז‬,‫ תיאוקרטיה יהודית‬,‫ג’ וילר‬ Wolfson, Spinoza = H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza, 2 Vols., Cambridge, Mass., 1934. Yadgar, Traditionalism = ‫ ירושלים תש”ע‬,‫ מודרניות ללא חילון‬:‫ המסורתיים בישראל‬,‫י’ ידגר‬ Yadgar & Liebman, Beyond the Dichotomy = -‫ ‘מעבר לדיכוטומיה “דתי‬,‫י’ ידגר וי”צ ליבמן‬ ‫ ישראל‬,)‫ א’ יער (עורכים‬,‫ א’ בראלי‬,‫רפאל‬-‫ א’ בן‬,‫ א’ כהן‬:‫ בתוך‬,’‫ המסורתיים בישראל‬:”‫חילוני‬ 366-337 ’‫ עמ‬,‫ תל אביב תשס”ו‬,‫ למשה ליסק ביובלו‬:‫והמודרניות‬ Yakira, Strauss = E. Yakira, “Leo Strauss and Baruch Spinoza: Remarks in the Margins of Strauss’ Timely Reflections,” Studia Spinozana 13 (1997): 161-182. Yehoshua, In Praise of Normality = ,‫ חמש מסות בשאלות ציוניות‬:‫ בזכות הנורמליות‬,‫א”ב יהושע‬ ‫ירושלים ותל אביב תש”ם‬ Yizhar, Courage = 80-74 ’‫ עמ‬,)1981( 79 ‫ שדמות‬,’‫ ‘עוז להיות חילוני‬,‫ס’ יזהר‬ Yovel, Critique of Religion = ‫ עיון יז‬,’‫ בין שפינוזה לקאנט‬:‫ ‘ביקורת הדת ופירוש המקרא‬,‫י’ יובל‬ 269-240 ’‫ עמ‬,)‫(תשכ”ו‬ — 207 —

‫‪----------------------------------------------------------------------  Bibliorgaphy ----------------------------------------------------------------------‬‬

‫ב’ שפינוזה‪ ,‬אתיקה‪ ,‬תרגם והוסיף מבוא והערות י’ יובל‪ ,‬תל אביב תשס”ג = ‪Yovel, Ethics‬‬ ‫י’ יובל‪ ,‬שפינוזה וכופרים אחרים‪ ,‬תל אביב תשמ”ח = ‪Yovel, Heretics‬‬ ‫י’ יובל (עורך)‪ ,‬זמן יהודי חדש‪ :‬תרבות יהודית בעידן החילוני‪ ,‬מבט = ‪Yovel, New Jewish Time‬‬ ‫אנציקלופדי‪ ,‬כרכים א‪-‬ה‪ ,‬תל אביב ‪2007‬‬ ‫‪Yovel, The Masses and Language = Y. Yovel, “The Psychology of the Multitude and‬‬ ‫‪the Uses of Language,” Studia Spinozana 1 (1985): 305-333.‬‬

‫— ‪— 208‬‬

------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Index -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Index

Ahad Ha’am 12n2, 14, 14n5, 15, 27, 50-52, 197 The Treasury of Judaism 27 Amir, Aaron 29 Anaxagoras 146n8 Archimed 87, 122, 162 Aristotle’s Metaphysics 57n10 Physics 57n10 authority 12, 14, 22, 23, 25, 34, 38, 42, 44, 45, 48, 63, 65, 84-86, 93-109, 111, 112-115, 117, 120-125, 128, 129, 135139, 143-147, 155-157, 160-162, 164, 165, 169, 172174, 180, 182, 184, 186, 187, 189, 190, 194-196, 199 Avneri, Uri 29 Ayali, Meir 17, 19, 21, 28 Bareli, Gilad 30, 35-37, 47, 52 “On the secularized study of Torah” 35 Ben Gurion, David 27, 56 Ben Nahum, Daniel 21 Ben Shlomo, Yosef 62 Berdichevsky, Micha Yossef 12n2 Bergson, Henri 56n3 Bialik, Haim Nachman 12n2, 16 Bible 12, 18-20, 22, 42, 46, 47, 50, 65, 93, 98, 119, 123, 163 Borochov, Ber 21 Boundless happiness, a film on Spinoza 56 Bouzaglo, Meir 170, 172-175, 181 Brenner, Yosef Haim 14, 50, 52, 197 “On a Vision of Conversion to Christianity” 50 — 209 —

------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Index ------------------------------------------------------------------------------Brinker, Menachem Buber, Martin

12n3, 15, 17, 22, 26, 28, 45, 190n1 56

Cohen, Hermann culture

Curley, E.

56 9, 10, 12-32, 38, 42, 45-52, 55, 56, 60, 61, 94, 110, 115, 117, 123, 139, 146, 157, 164, 165, 170, 171, 179, 186, 189, 192-196, 198, 199 163n34

Dan, Josef De Deugd, C. definition of secularism Descartes Discourse on the Method

17 72, 163n34 3 61, 62, 74, 74n25 61

egocentric Einstein, Albert Eisenstadt, Shmuel Noah Elam, Yigal The End of Judaism Evron, Boaz

79, 101, 121, 152 56n3 171, 190n1 30, 35 35 29, 30, 52,

freedom Frege, F. L. G. Freud, Sigmund Funkenstein, Amos

17, 33, 84, 93, 99, 116, 117, 124, 136, 146, 147, 149, 152, 157, 159 36 56n3 17

Gaon, Saadia Geertz, Clifford Gordon, Aaron David Gotchkov, K. Uriel D’Acosta

71n11 111, 112 13, 14, 51, 52, 197 57n11 57n11

Hebrew Encyclopedia Hebrew language Hegel, G. W. F. Heine, Heinrich Hess, Moses Rome and Jerusalem Hesse, Herman

27 25, 28, 31, 58-61, 113, 118n68, 163 57n10 56n3, 56 57n10 41 — 210 —

------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Index ------------------------------------------------------------------------------Hölderlin, Friedrich Horon, Adia Hume Treatise of Human Nature

41 29 82 57n10

idea

immanence irrational

9, 11-13, 23-27, 30, 39, 42, 43, 45-47, 52, 55-57, 59, 62, 64, 70-76, 79-83, 85-87, 93, 95, 102, 104, 109, 110, 114, 117, 123, 134-137, 145, 147-150, 152-154, 160-165, 174, 179-182, 184, 187, 190, 191, 195 20, 63, 66, 67, 69-72, 74-76, 78, 79-89, 93, 95, 100, 101, 116, 123, 126, 128, 132, 135, 148-155, 157, 163, 197 4, 88 82, 117

Jabotinsky, Zeev

12n2

Kant, I. Kaplan, Mordechai Karelitz, Yeshaya Katzenelson, Berl Klatzkin, Yaakov Klausner, Joseph Krochmal, Abraham Krochmal, Nachman Kurzweil, Baruch Our New Literature — Continuity or Revolution?

55, 132n102 12n2 27 12n2 14, 28, 29, 37, 50, 52, 56-60, 197 56, 57n11 56 56 10;

language

25, 31, 35, 36, 42, 102, 60, 110n49, 113, 114, 118, 150, 151, 163, 191n3 30, 37, 52, 175 20 56 56 30, 31, 171, 173, 175, 176; Culture War 30 56, 58

imagination

Leibovitz, Yeshayahu Lenin, V. Letteris, Meir Levinas, Emmanuel Liebman, Charles Luzzatto, Samuel David

10

Maimon, Solomon 56 Maimonides’s Guide to the Perplexed 57n10 Marx, Karl 21 — 211 —

------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Index ------------------------------------------------------------------------------McShea, R. Mendelssohn, Moses meta-finite metaphysical secularism Mill, J. S. myth

104n31 56 88, 122, 161, 183 64, 65, 96, 105, 146, 149, 157,-160, 197 55 30, 60

Nachman of Breslov 39, 42, 46 nation 12, 19, 23, 25, 27, 29, 32, 33, 37, 80, 110, 185 nekhonut 135, 145, 159, 164, 179 New Age 38, 43, 194 New Jewish Time (Zman Yehudi Hadash) 26, 27 Nietzsche, Friedrich 40, 41, 42, 55n1, 85, 132n102, 195, 196, 197, 198 Ofir, Adi The Work for the Present Ornan, Uzi Oz, Amos

30-33, 35, 37, 47, 52 31 29-30 15, 24-26

pale god Pascal, B. Plato The Phaedrus The Republic Symposium political secularism

3, 177, 179, 183, 196, 197 42 63, 64, 70n3, 75n31, 173 71n13 63, 64 57n10 65, 96, 103, 105, 106, 108, 110, 111, 122, 123, 138, 139, 147, 159, 160, 165, 166, 186, 187, 195

Rabi, Yakov Rabin, Yitzhak Ram, Uri Ratosh, YoNathan reflexivity Rosenzweig, Franz Rotenstreich, Nathan On Jewish Existence at the Present Time Rousseau, J. J. Rubin, Shlomo The Ethics Russell

17, 28 31 33-35, 37, 38 29 76, 145, 176, 181, 191 58 10, 12n3, 22-24, 26, 28, 46, 190n1; 10, 22 55 57, 57n11, 58-60 57n11 36 — 212 —

------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Index ------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sadeh, Pinhas Aneni Life as a Parable Masa Dumah Samet, Gideon Schechter, Oded Schechter, Yosef “The Phylacteries from a symbolic Point of View” Schweid, Eliezer Judaism and Secular Culture secularism

13, 39-42; 45, 48, 51, 52 41 39 39 31 58, 60 13, 42-45, 48, 51

theology tradition

143-147 10, 12-15, 17-24, 26, 28-31, 37-39, 41, 42, 45, 47-49, 52, 57n11, 58, 59, 61, 62, 65, 66, 75, 94, 96, 104,

44 21, 22, 24, 28, 51n71, 190n1 21 10-13, 27, 30, 31, 33, 34, 36, 45, 47-50, 55, 5961, 64, 65, 96, 103, 105, 106, 111, 122, 123, 138, 139,146-149, 157-160, 165, 166, 170, 175, 186-189, 190n1, 194-199 secularizing 143 Shapira, Avraham 51n71 Shlonsky, Avraham 20, 21, 26, 29 Shohat, Orit 31 Shokeid, Moshe 169-171 Socrates 146 Sokolov, Nachum 56 Spinoza’s Ethics 57-60, 63, 64, 69, 70, 73, 73n23, 75-78, 78n41, 84n65, 86, 86n67, 88, 93, 94, 99, 107, 110, 122, 125, 148n13, 149, 151, 155, 184, 197 Grammar of the Hebrew Language 57n11 Political Treatise 63, 78n63, 86, 94n3, 99, 100, 102, 123, 124, 135, 136, 164, 184 Short Article on God, Man and his Happiness 69 Theological-Political Treatise 56, 63; 72, 84n65, 93, 94, 97, 99, 101n23, 102, 107, 123, 133, 146, 147, 153, 154, 159, 161, 164, 180, 181, 197 Treatise on the Improvement of Understanding 61, 61n23, 62, 69, 71, 72, 75-77, 125, 130, 155 Strauss, Leo 56, 56n2, 146n8 subjectivity 73

— 213 —

------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Index -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tzaban, Yair

106, 110-119, 122, 123, 125, 128, 138, 146, 151, 157-160, 162, 164-166, 170, 175, 180, 185-199 12-14, 38, 42, 48, 51, 59, 88, 89, 108, 113, 155, 183, 184, 187 10, 11, 41, 48-50, 73, 74, 80, 88, 113, 118, 133n105, 135, 144, 145, 148, 149, 151-154, 159, 193 27

Weiler, Gershon Wittgenstein, L.

30, 34, 35, 37, 38, 52, 56 114n60

Yadgar, Yaacov Yehoshua, A. B. Yizhar, S. “The courage to be secular” Yovel, Yermiyahu

171, 173, 175, 176, 181 15, 25, 26, 46 17, 22, 190n1 17 57, 58, 59, 60, 84n65

Zeitlin, Aaron Zionism

56 13-15, 25, 31, 47, 50,-52, 56, 60, 195, 197

transcendence true

— 214 —

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