Spinoza and Other Heretics, and: Vol. 1, The Marrano of Reason, and: vol. 2, The Adventures of Immanence (review)

reviews 141 Spinoza and Other Heretics by Yirmiyahu Yovel. Vol. 1, 7"Ap Marrano ofReason, 244 pp.; vol. 2, The Adventures ofImmanence. 225 pp. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989. V. I, $24.50; V.2, $29.50; $45.00 for the set. Most literate persons who have an enduring interest in the project and problems of selfknowledge sooner or later turn to the Ethics of Benedict de Spinoza, for the book answers the important questions about how to live so as to achieve the greatest pleasure and the highest good, given certain conditions. Even after 3(X) years, Spinoza's Ethics remains perhaps the ultimate self-help manual, showing as it does the way to proceed through reason to the knowledge that brings the person capable of it happiness, freedom, and salvation—all solely in this world and this life—while his Theologico-Political Treatise shows how the person of reason can live fruitfully in human society and work for the improvement of the state, a project that includes development of a limited religion compatible with reason for the majority who cannot lead the life of reason. But there is no personal immortality and no transcendent God in Spinoza's system (in his famous phrase, deus sive natura: God, or nature). His philosophy is rigorously, refreshingly secular as well as rational, which is no doubt why Spinoza was excommunicated "from the nation of Israel" at age 24. He then changed his name from Baruch to Benedictus and accepted wholeheartedly the ban and the curses of his Amsterdam congregation, a verdict like those that crushed the spirits of lesser men among his friends. A man of courage as well as genius, he lived an admirable life. According to Yirmiyahu Yovel's intriguing two-volume study, Spinoza developed "a new philosophical principle" called "the philosophy of immanence" which "views this worldly existence as the only actual being and the unique source of ethical value and political authority. All being is this-worldly and there is nothing beyond it, neither a personal creator-God who imposes His divine will on man, nor supernatural powers or values of any kind. The laws of morality and politics, too, and even religion, stem from this world by the natural power of reason; and recognizing this is the prelude and precondition for human emancipation" (v. 2, p. ix). Also, Spinoza's God or nature is not anthropomorphized, never made in the image of man (see especially the chapters in vol. 2 on Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud), and the quality and possibilities of human life are shown to depend upon the decisions people make, i.e., on their responses to necessity. There is no Utopian strain here. This is a philosophy, and a world, for grown-ups. Before going further, and to be fair, I want to say that I am a literary person, not a philosopher, and have little training in philosophy, although I do have a continuing interest in some thinkers, including Spinoza, and certain philosophical issues. Yovel's first volume. The Marrano ofReason, argues mainly that Spinoza's thought was shaped by his Marrano background: "Marranos were former Jews in Spain and Portugal [in the late middle ages] who had been forcibly converted to Christianity. For generations, however, many of them maintained crypto-Jewish life in secret, an experience that produced many dualities . . ." Important aspects of the Marrano pattern were "a this-worldly disposition, a split religious identity, metaphysical skepticism, a quest for alternative ways to salvation that oppose the official doctrine, an opposition between inner belief and the outer world, and a gift for dual language and equivocation" (v. 2, pp. ix-x). Moreover, the "unassimilated Marrano is the true wandering Jew, roaming between Christianity and Judaism and drifting between the two and universalism. As such he is among the precursors of modernity, with its skepticism and its breakdown of traditional structures" (v. I, p. 49). The argument for the importance of the Marrano background as determiner of Spinoza's thought is potentially interesting, despite its generality, but Yovel makes at best only a plausible case for it. This and related issues, especially the recurring problem of evidence, constitute the major weakness of...