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31 CHAPTER 2 The Shadow of Spinoza Farewell here, no matter where. Conscripts of good will, we’ll have a ferocious philosophy: ignorant of science, wily for comfort: let the world go hang. That’s true progress. Forward—march! —Rimbaud, Illuminations (“Democracy”) “A Humanly Incomprehensible Betrayal” Reviled as a godless heretic in his own time, Spinoza was rehabilitated in the eighteenth century by German philosophy, exalted by nineteenthcentury Romanticism, and finally received into the philosophical pantheon in the twentieth century as one of modernity’s founders.1 This process was not exclusively Western European; Spinoza’s reputation became firmly established in the Jewish world as well. According to Strauss, however, the inviolability attendant to this almost canonical status led to a certain neutrality and even indifference, which constitutes the primary obstacle for any attempt at a critical reassessment. Fortunately, Strauss points out, this obstacle was already cleared away by Hermann Cohen. The founder of neoKantianism and the rejuvenator of Jewish theology was also the first to challenge the modern Jewish veneration of Spinoza. In an essay of 1910 entitled “Spinoza On State and Religion, Judaism and Christianity” (“Spinoza über Staat und Religion, Judentum und Christentum ”), Cohen launched an unusually fierce attack on Spinoza.2 With the Theological-Political Treatise, he argued, Spinoza had written a tendentious political pamphlet in which he had given free rein to his feelings of hatred and revenge toward the Jews. As the title indicated, the text was a hybrid construct aimed at securing the writer’s interests on two separate fronts: religion and politics. On the one hand, Spinoza put his talents as a political writer at the service of the secular regime of the De Witt brothers, from which he had received a modest stipend. On the other hand, he had tried to placate the orthodox Christian establishment by discrediting Judaism, developing a critical reading of the Old Testament that denied Mosaic authority and reduced the old religion to the status of a mere political instrument. The fact that he was far less severe with regard to the New Testament, and that he declared his agreement with Paul’s critique of Mosaic Law, was the proverbial last straw for Cohen. Speaking of “a humanly incomprehensible betrayal” of Judaism, he castigated Spinoza as a renegade who abused his exceptional intellectual gifts to bolster the anti-Jewish attitude of Christianity. In Cohen’s view, the herem issued by the Amsterdam sanhedrin was fully justified. This severe judgment marked a turning point in the Jewish reception of Spinoza.3 In Germany as well as abroad, Cohen enjoyed a brilliant reputation as a philosopher, theologian, and Jewish thinker. That a leading light of modern Judaism castigated one of its “founding fathers” was a remarkable event. Precisely because of its contentious and untimely character, Strauss hails Cohen’s attack as an excellent starting point for his own inquiry. This does not mean, however, that he adopts Cohen’s view throughout. Rather, he develops his own approach in a critical reading of Cohen’s essay. For, if he praises Cohen’s courage in contesting the prevailing view, he also suggests that Cohen may have gone too far. In particular, his “biographical” reading of the Theological-Political Treatise leads to a misguided interpretation . Whether Spinoza was actually driven by anti-Jewish sentiments is without importance, Strauss insists. Both the purpose and the results of the Treatise can be sufficiently understood by a “dutiful” (pflichtmäßig), historical -critical reading, without the need for any reference to the historical or biographical details of Spinoza’s relationship with Judaism.4 According to Cohen, the connection between politics and theology implied by the title of the Treatise is contingent, a mere reflection of Spinoza ’s contingent personal interests. Against this objection, Strauss argues that there is an intrinsic and coherent connection. As its title asserts, the Treatise intends to show “that the freedom to philosophize can not only be allowed with due regard to piety and peace in the state, but that it can only be suspended together with piety and peace in the state.”5 Thus, the connection becomes clearly visible when one looks at the declared purpose of the Treatise: to secure the freedom of philosophizing, which the earthly powers regarded as a threat to peace and stability, and which the religious powers regarded as a threat to piety. Religious piety and political peace, however, were anything but separated issues in Spinoza’s time. Secular and spiritual powers were locked in a dogged...

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