Spinoza on the Ethics of Courage and the Jewish Tradition

Baruch Spinoza’s elusive statement at the end of the third chapter of his Theological-Political Treatise has served as a source of inspiration for numerous thinkers, many of whom have used it in order to support their own disparate positions.¹ Spinoza’s statement reads as follows:

Indeed, I would absolutely believe that, unless the foundations of their religion were to make their spirits effeminate, they will someday, given the occasion—as human affairs are changeable—erect their imperium once more, and God will choose them anew [imo, nisi fundamenta suae religionis eorum animos effoeminarent, absolute crederem, eos aloquando, data occasione, ut sunt res humanae mutabiles, suum imperium iterum erecos, Deumque eos de novo electurum].²

Indeed, Jay Geller goes as far as to argue that this statement has “provided an optic through which leading Jewish and gentile writers and, more broadly, a variety of German (sub) cultures have seen Jewish-gentile relations and Jewish identity since the Enlightenment.”³ Of particular interest is the fact that two dominant streams of interpretation have regarded this statement as a paradigm of the modern Jewish approach to the virtue of courage. While Spinoza never explicitly utilizes the word courage (animositas) in this context, as he does in other parts of the Theological-Political Treatise and Ethics, some prominent interpreters have assumed that his denigration of effeminate spirits (animos effoeminarent) implies an absent courageous spirit. This verse became a clarion call for diverging approaches to modern Jewish courage, with the general goal being to audaciously overcome previously limited medieval boundaries. The meaning and limits of those boundaries and how they can be conquered depends on how one understands the nature of courage as a distinct virtue. Resulting from this, different meanings of sovereignty, election, and diaspora begin to emerge. Advocates of German enlightenment, such as Moses Mendelssohn, and proto-Zionist critics, such as Moses Hess, have both adopted Spinoza as their intellectual progenitor, finding their own position in this famous statement.⁴ Thus, in his Rome and Jerusalem (1862), Moses Hess interprets this line as prescriptive guidance, in which the “effeminate spirits” represent the deficiency of physical courage possessed by Jews in the Diaspora and the need to regain it to reclaim Jewish political sovereignty. In Hess’ restatement, “Spinoza conceived Judaism to be grounded in nationalism, and held that the restoration of the Jewish kingdom depends entirely on the will and courage (muthe) of the Jewish people.”⁵ In opposition to this Zionist interpretation is the liberal reading of the German Jewish enlightenment, as exemplified in the thought of Moses Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn interprets Spinoza’s statement (without mentioning Spinoza’s name) in responding to a letter by an individual proposing the creation of a Jewish state.⁶ He begins by implicitly rejecting knowledge of physical or moral courage, restricting his knowledge purely to intellectual courage. He charges that “whatever intellectual boldness (kunheit) I may possess extends, however, to matters of philosophical speculation alone.”⁷ In restating Spinoza’s proclamation, he makes some subtle, but important changes. The inability to rebuild a state is not in his version a reflection of the qualities of Jewish religion, but of the harsh realities of the Diaspora. Mendelssohn’s reconstruction of Spinoza’s statement does not recommend a Jewish state, but instead absolves the Jewish religion of Spinoza’s charge and thus leaves it free to be reformed by Mendelssohn and others as an enlightened and universal religion.

Both versions capture specific fragments of Spinoza’ conception of courage, but are limited by their political and polemical ambitions, neither completely capturing Spinoza’s multi-faceted model. While this is in no way to denigrate their separate modern political projects, it is important to note that Spinoza is not simply advocating Zionism or the German Jewish enlightenment. A comparison of Spinoza’s diverse statements on courage in both the Ethics and the Theological-Political Treatise reveals a nuanced statement on the relationship between three different forms of courage: physical, moral and intellectual courage and an appreciation of their implications for Judaism. In order to reconstruct Spinoza’s model of courage, several fundamental...