Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity (review)

Book Reviews 151 quantity, but it could also support principles ofhuman dignity, compassion, and respect for the autonomous choices of persons endowed by God with free will. Some utilize these principles to support decidedly liberal positions, including active euthanasia. Furthermore, many bioethicists criticize methodologies that simply deduce conclusions from principles, arguing that such methodologies yieldresults that are tyrannically blunt or uselessly vague. There is a need to specify and balance principles in the complex contexts of life. Analysis of normative issues requires the same careful attention that Newman devotes to concepts and methodology. Some limitations may reflect the scope of the book, and the fact that a pathbreaking work such as this is bound to have some aspects not yet fully developed. No single work can deal thoroughly with all aspects of Jewish ethics. In illuminating the complex connections among religious beliefs, ethical methodology, and substantive norms, the volume offers an invaluable contribution. Aaron L. Mackler Department of Theology Duquesne University Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question ofJewish Identity, by Steven B. Smith. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. 270 pp. $30.00. From its very beginning Spinoza reception has been sensitive to the fact that Spinoza was a Jew and, moreover, a Jew banned from the Jewish community. And ever since Moses Mendelssohn's attempts to rescue the most infamous philosopher, modem Jewish intellectuals understood Spinoza's philosophy to be, among other things, the expression of a specific concern to rethink the place of Judaism in modernity. On the other hand, ever since Hegel, historiography of philosophy was eager to point out Spinoza's "Oriental" side. The contested grounds of such conflicting readings of Spinoza as, on the one hand, a Jewish philosopher by non-Jews, and, on the other hand, as a universal thinker in the eyes of German Jews-who from Mendelssohn to Leo Baeck saluted Spinoza as their exemplary protagonist, providing them with legitimacy as self-consciously Jewish and, at the same time, thoroughly modem men-has informed the history ofSpinoza reception. And latest with Yirmiyahu Yovel's study on Spinoza's possible connection to Marrano culture, the dimension ofSpinoza's Jewish background has again received increased attention. Yet, a critical study of the role of Spinoza's hidden and manifest Jewish identity for the formulation of his thought has been missing. Equally, a study of the defining impact Spinoza had on the emergence of modem Jewish culture has been overdue for some time. Steven B. Smith attends to the urgency of addressing this concern. For too long, Spinoza has been separated into the dry and abstract rationalist, the vicious atheist who decomposed religion, and the inspiring modem mystic. Against such reductive 152 SHOFAR Summer 2000 Vol. 18, No.4 readings which for a long time have haunted Spinoza reception, Smith holds that Spinoza's central place in the creation ofa modern Jewish consciousness can no longer be ignored. The emphasis on this crucial point will force historians of philosophy and Jewish intellectual history to revise the books. It makes Smith's study a landmark contribution. Yet framing the discussion of Spinoza's Jewishness in terms of the "Jewish Question" might ultimately present more problems than solutions. Smith writes that it was Spinoza who made "the Jewish question an essential ingredient ofmodern political thought" (p. xii). But such an approach creates a hermeneutic screen that, as defmitive as it may sound, taints the outcome of the interpretation of his political theory in a problematic way. To re-importthe problematic ofthe "Jewish Question" retrospectively proves especially questionable in the case ofSpinoza, who, it could be argued, was the frrst philosopher to challenge the constraints that would lead to notions like the "Jewish Question." Instead, Spinoza's intervention in political theory of his times signals a resolute argument that exposes what the nineteenth century will address as the "Jewish Question" as, in reality, its "Clrristian Question." To read the theoretical approach in Spinoza's political thought exclusively tlrrough the "Jewish Question" trivializes the project ofthe Theological-Political Treatise, reducing it to the modern liberal concern to rationalize Jewish specificity into the realm of the universal. Rather, and more radically, Spinoza takes another turn. Developing his argument out of the...