What Form of Latin Did Spinoza Use and Why Does it Matter? part 2

In my previous post (Part 1), I established that Spinoza wrote in neo-Latin and that he was part of the neo-Latin movement which discarded the old medieval thought with their Scholastic 'bad Latin', their Christianized Aristotelianism, dogma, autocracy and censorship in Catholic universities, and worked to usher in the new, democratic, tolerant, free, scientific, open-mindedness era to replace it. 

But why does this matter? What does it tell us about Spinoza? Where did the anti-Scholastic alternative thought come from? 

You may be surprised to learn that the Catholic Scholastics weren't the only intellectuals around in the medieval period. There were strands of non-Catholic, non-Scholastic and even anti-Scholastic thought prior to the Early Modern rejection of Scholasticism. 

It's worth bearing in mind that Scholastics didn't invariably dominate all scholarly work even during their peak in the medieval period. There were intellectual arguments around at that time that didn't go along with traditional Scholasticism which was restricted to religious settings and Western medieval universities. In that era, these were all founded and controlled by the Catholic church and Papal power. So although the Vatican and the Catholic Western universities had a vice grip on academia in the medieval period (a monopoly on academia that I'm sure Catholics would love to regain today), there were pockets of scholarship, both institutional and independent, away from their control. 

Those free from Catholic Scholastic domination were: 

1) a few non-catholic medieval educational institutions, for example: 

i) Islamic madrasas (such as the 'Al-Azhar University' in Egypt or 'al-Qarawiyyin' in Morocco);

ii) Byzantine academies which were theologically opposed to Catholic Scholasticism and combined any Christianity with a heavy dose of Classical Latin and Ancient Greek influence. The most well-known of these Byzantine style universities being the 'Pandidacterium' (ie the 'University of Constantinople', considered the first university established in 425 CE by Emperor Theodosius II, well before the Catholic medieval European ones). 

iii) Secular universities, such as the first secular, state university: the 'University of Naples Federico II', founded by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in 1224 as a push back against the Vatican dominating European universities, which they are still prone to do these days! 

Unfortunately, we perhaps don't notice this rejection of Scholasticism enough because this secular university focused on educating the next generation of lawyers, judges and bureaucrats, rather than becoming Philosophers or Theologians. Ironically, Aquinas attended this university, perhaps because he came from this region of Italy and his father worked for the Emperor who founded it. 

At the University of Naples, Aquinas studied secular subjects, such as, maths, logic, grammar, astronomy and music, until he fell under the controlling influence of a Dominican preacher (John of St. Julian) who changed Aquinas's entire course of life at the age of only 19. He manipulated Aquinas into the Dominican Order and kept him away from his family simply because they wanted to thwart Dominican designs on their son. 

This shouldn't have been necessary because had Aquinas wanted to go into the Catholic church, he could have simply joined the Benedictine clergy like his uncle. However, sadly, eventually Aquinas did end up a Dominican Scholastic. 

I wonder if Aquinas's life story has set a disturbing habit of Dominican Catholics recruiting and surreptitiously pressurising secular university students into the Catholic church through the kind of evangelizing mentorship you wouldn't wish on anyone! Now that's inappropriate mentoring! 

And we can hear how the Catholic Church is heavily evangelical by the way Pope Leo XIV mentions evangelisation every time he speaks. 

I base this on my own experience of being a non-religious student studying a secular subject (Philosophy) at a secular college within a secular university. The first person to try to 'pick me up' and get me into his social circles was someone who became a convert to Catholicism himself during his student years. He was a Dominican lay religious, although he never admitted that to me, I was just lucky I found that out for myself albeit belatedly. Once I didn't give in to that pressure, despite it potentially negatively impacting my marking and grades, a substitute was suggested to me, this time a young female who, I was told, could walk around everywhere with me. This made me extremely uncomfortable because it reminded me of the Handmaid's Tale I'd just studied in A Level English Literature. 😱This young woman could apparently 'mentor' me. 

Both were PhD students of the then BA tutor! And the Dominican was marking my 1st year essays in Ep and Met. 

Let's be honest, peer to peer mentoring is total nonsense. Someone of your own age cannot mentor you. You need to be different ages so you can mutually share your particular knowledge, your experiences and perspectives and thus learn from each other.  

Nevertheless, this peer to peer mentoring is one that universities are keen on. They only want to censor non-religious mentoring, or should I say non-Catholic mentoring, by mislabelling it with false accusations of abuse of power even when the mentoring was entered into  freely, and with informed consent on the part of both parties and initiated by the student herself. 🤦‍♀️

So the only abuse of power happening is what I encountered: religious people trying to convert an atheist into a raging Catholic, and at the same time, converting her out of being gay. And trying to scare her into dressing like an ultra-conservative woman for fear of being sexually attacked if she continues to dress the way she does (eg. edgy; or gender non-conforming whether unisex, genderfluid or masculine; or merely normal student wear such as a jumper and jeans). However, if you're religious eg. a female lecturer who drops the word 'transubstantiation' in her first lecture then you can invariably wear a unisex outfit of a black t-shirt and jeans and nobody says a word and you can do anything you like and that's fine, even including not marking and returning History of Philosophy essays on time, so impacting final year coursework and exam essay choices if you don't chase her up, which I did.

I didn't change what I was wearing though, indeed, I became even more punk.

Why include my personal experience here? Surely it's irrelevant?

Because it gives us historical perspective: it shows history isn't linear. Everything was bad back then but now we know better. However, there aren't neat, strict divisions in history, for instance, everything was Catholic Scholasticism then suddenly the Early Modern thinkers were the first to reject it and do things differently. 

Just as we assume that Catholic dominance in European universities is a thing of the past, that was only in the medieval period, not now, in the 21st century when we have secular universities everywhere. My story says otherwise and moreover, for me, I came across the Dominican evangelising from within the university's Philosophy department, whereas even Aquinas didn't find this John the Dominican within his secular university or even at a Church, but somewhere out there, sleeping and preaching on the streets of Naples as a travelling friar (picture a 13th century version of a Street Pastor / Street Angel). 

Hence, I also generally argue:

Firstly, why do Catholics expect us now, in the 21st century, to put up with their evangelising and attempt at total domination of higher education and university life when even way back in the 13th century, the Emperor Frederick II rejected this and boldly set up a secular university free from Catholic power? 

Secondly, why do an increasing number of researchers want to see Scholastic influence everywhere, almost without exception, down the ages, including arguing for potential links between Suarez or Aquinas and Spinoza, when there have always been plenty of non-Scholastic and anti-Scholastic thought in all eras? 

This historical backdrop matters because it informs us both about 1) Spinoza's philosophy, academic situation and his perspective on the world and religion, as well as 2) informing us about our own times, helping us to analyse the backwards direction 21st century scholarship and universities are taking by encouraging a recent, fast growing trend in medieval and Scholastic research. 

Returning to my list of those who were free from Catholic Scholastic domination:

2) Those outside of medieval universities altogether could write freely, away from the framework of Catholic Scholasticism, for instance: 

i) women, such as Christine de Pizan (1364–c. 1430, late medieval/early renaissance)

ii) those of other religions who worked outside of that university setting, for example, Islamic and Jewish thinkers. Perhaps the most famous of these being Maimonides. He's an interesting case in that he's not a traditional theologian in the sense that he wasn't one of the canonical Christian thinkers. However, he is considered mainstream and traditional theology in the sense that 1) he influenced Aquinas and 2) he became the 'cornerstone' of both Jewish Orthodoxy as a religion as well as of traditional Jewish theology. 

Why does this strand of Jewish (hence non-Scholastic), independent medieval scholarship, such as Maimonides, matter in terms of understanding Spinoza? 

Take the perennial debate over whether Spinoza was a religious person or an atheist. Suppose, as Nadler does, we measure Spinoza's outlook according to a general concept of what constitutes traditional theology and atheism. 

However, on my historical picture I've presented, we can begin by moving to the question which is rarely asked: 

Whose Traditional Theology? Whose concept of Atheism? 

I find the religious and atheist criteria usually cited too vague. For instance, that you are religious if you:

Obey religious authority and conform to religious institutions; 

Believe that God is always in heaven;

Believe that God created the world like a potter then stepped away from it; 

Believe that God is providential in the sense of always looking after you and directing you in life and in death and that you should do God's will, however a religious institution interprets that for you;

You are full of awe and wonder and religious emotion, whilst strongly rejecting rationalism and scientific explanation, in case it challenges your faith, asks questions about scripture and ruins the specialness of the divine. 

I argue that this is not an accurate set of criteria for judging whether a philosopher is religious or an atheist. Many of these criteria actually lead to serious theological problems for the existence of God and are not sufficiently substantiated in scripture as required beliefs but rather are merely a way of simplifying complex abstract ideas of God and how the world works. 

As for saying we can define anyone who isn't Catholic or Protestant and doesn't expound their Theology as an atheist: this is simply unacceptable discrimination against other faiths, and is Antisemitic against religious Jews. While this appalling attitude of the Vatican that anything that isn't hardline Catholic is automatically atheistic and heretical, no matter how religious it is, was the Vatican's stance in the Medieval and Early Modern period (and sadly still is, albeit less overtly). This doesn't make it a plausible, acceptable or workable definition of Atheism, be it historical or contemporary. It's merely Catholic arrogance, prejudice and superiority complex about their own faith. This doesn't provide a solid foundation for a definition of Atheism. 

What if we look at specific forms of traditional theology? 

What if we judge Spinoza by a generic, Judeo-Christian or Abrahamic traditional theological standard, with criteria such as: 

Is God a personal, anthropomorphic being, does He have a will, sit in judgement, control the world and show emotions like a human? 

Is God always transcendent?

Is God a creator who made the universe by design?

Is God teleological, does He have a purpose for us? 

Is God omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent?

Is God uncaused by anything other than Himself? 

If the answer to these questions is no, then Spinoza seems like an Atheist. But I argue that this is also misleading. Firstly, although these beliefs are found amongst Orthodox Jews today, they are not all required in Judaism, especially if one wishes to be strictly academically and biblically accurate about it, as opposed to merely conforming to some community's religious expectations. Secondly, these are more distinctively Christian beliefs, so irrelevant to Spinoza. Thirdly, Spinoza rejects these for religious reasons and provides a religious refutation, not an atheistic contra. Fourthly, Spinoza does not reject the last two statements in this list. 

If we judge Spinoza by Scholastic, Catholic traditional theology, then, I argue, he erroneously appears to be more of an atheist and an heretic than he really is which is partly why the Vatican banned his books. However, because Scholasticism was quite technical and metaphysical, it's interesting to note that Spinoza doesn't entirely clash with all of their criteria. 

For instance, Spinoza's concept of God does not deny the Scholastic criteria that: 

God is not made up of parts 

God exists by His own nature and does not depend on anything 

God is not potential, contingent but immutable and eternal 

God is immaterial, does not possess a body, is not limited in space and time

God is not caused by something other than Himself 

One can provide rational arguments for the existence of God because they're not contradiction between reason and faith. 

So Spinoza doesn't even rank as an atheist by certain key Scholastic metaphysical standards, including having a rational approach to religion. So why label Spinoza an atheist when he's rational, but not the Scholastics when they argue for using logic and reasoning, not emotion? 

Where Spinoza and the Scholastics part, is describing God as providential, in the sense of a guiding God who directly intervenes in the world and has a plan. And  their description of God as Creator differs although it amounts to the same thing overall: that the world exists and functions the way it does because of God.

Spinoza even overlaps with some Scholastic moral principles especially their cardinal virtues, such as prudence, justice and fortitude, albeit arriving at them through Judaism not Christianity but nevertheless seeing these virtues as useful to interfaith dialogue since Christians should be able to somewhat identify with these too through their Christianity. Both Spinoza and Scholastics argue for roughly the same moral truths, for instance: love the stranger; and justice as objectively true; and seeing these as compatible with scripture, not merely some human invention. Indeed, even Aquinas has an impersonal God to some extent, so Spinoza is not clearly atheistic when compared to Scholastic acceptance of impersonal concepts of God either. 

Furthermore, Spinoza's ethical truths are cornerstones of Judaism: Tzedek (justice, charity, ethical obligation to act honestly, fairly and more) and Chesed (loving kindness including acts of kindness, termed gemilut hasadim). So there's nothing Atheistic or Humanistic about Spinoza arguing for justice and loving kindness, especially since he does sometimes cite scriptural support for such ethical concepts. 

So what about Jewish traditional theology according to Maimonides? Let's tick off how many traditional theological claims Maimonides makes that we can also spot in Spinoza's perspective: 

✅ A highly rationalist approach to religion

✅ A naturalist approach to religion, whereby we understand God better through the study of nature and science 

✅ Rejection of superstition 

✅ Miracles are part of the natural order that God set up, not a break with the laws of nature hence he provides a naturalistic explanation for miracles 

✅ God is necessary and self-caused 

✅God is One and a perfect, absolute, indivisible unity (Tawhid /Oneness)

✅God is completely incorporeal (no body)

✅ God is not anthropomorphic, indeed he was so opposed to anthropomorphism that he even avoided any standard descriptions of God that might imply human qualities 

✅God was described anthropomorphically sometimes in biblical times for educational and social purposes, not because this is strictly metaphysically accurate 

✅ We can give a naturalistic explanation of how God acts in the world but we cannot know God's emotions 

✅God generally connects with humans through the divine intellect, especially with those humans who develop their intelligence 

✅Divine Providence is through the intellect so perfection of the individual human mind is important and connects you to God 

✅ An anti-idolatry stance 

✅ Prophecy is not magical, it's a mental state and higher mental faculty at work 

✅ The Torah contains the word of God

Atheism and heresy for Maimonides included several features that are not true of Spinoza's Philosophy: 

✅A corporeal, anthropomorphic concept of God 

✅A denial of the existence of God and denying that the world functions according to how God set up the laws of nature 

✅ Polytheism

✅Denying God's unity

✅ Not believing that God existed before all else 

✅ Believing in and using intermediaries between God and yourself 

And more besides. Nonetheless, I'm not arguing that Spinoza agreed with everything Maimonides thought, because he didn't. But Spinoza wasn't obliged to agree unthinkingly with anyone. Rabbinic debate and differing arguments are allowed in Judaism: there's no set religious dogma to unquestioningly obey, unlike in Catholicism. 

Moreover, in Judaism, God is also seen as an imminent being who dwells in the world, this is seen as the female divine presence called the Shechinah. So, in the context of Judaism, this is not pantheism or atheism. And it's very Jewish / Maimonidean, not atheist, of Spinoza to have a naturalistic standpoint and appreciate God through appreciating nature and all it's complexities. 

Indeed, Maimonides himself was accused of heresy in his day and his book: 'Tractate on Idolatry from the Mishneh Torah with notes by Dionysius Vossius' was banned by the Vatican and belatedly placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in the 18th century (1717). Hence, we obviously cannot deduce from accusations of heresy in a thinker's lifetime that the person in question was an actual heretical atheist. Otherwise, Maimonides would be inexplicable: he went from being deemed a heretic to being foundational to orthodox Jewish theology, religion and halakhah (Jewish law). Maimonides was also sometimes considered atypical in his theology yet that did not stop him from becoming a canonical Jewish religious figure. He simply cannot be conveniently dismissed as somehow not counting as traditional Theology or being too unorthodox in his views, when he's a pivotal part of Orthodox Judaism. Hence, I argue, that any common ground between Maimonides and Spinoza counts as evidence of Orthodox Jewish thought being present in Spinoza's Philosophy and worldview. 

But what I am saying though, is that this is still a significantly long enough list of agreement on traditional Jewish theology between Maimonides and Spinoza that I don't find it plausible that Spinoza didn't remain an Orthodox Jew all his life. I also don't find it plausible that Spinoza can be classified as an atheist or that his views were at odds with traditional theology, including Jewish traditional theology. Jewish Theology is the only theology Spinoza was meant to cohere with in an overall sense, given that he was Jewish himself, and I see enough textual evidence of solid Jewish Theology in Spinoza's works to support my Jewish interpretation of him. 

Perhaps most importantly of all, since Spinoza was a Philosopher, not a Theologian, he did not need to expound traditional theology at length, he merely needs to be believed when he states, in his letters as well as his books, that he wasn't an atheist. 

So why not just believe Spinoza when he so strongly and repeatedly denied he's an atheist? Especially when we have clear textual evidence to support it. A striking example of Spinoza arguing against and demonstrating how he was not an atheist by any stretch of the imagination is his Letter XLIX to Isaac Orobio, defending his TTP in 1671:

"But I would ask, whether a man throws off all religion, who maintains that God must be acknowledged as the highest good, and must, as such, be loved with a free mind? or, again, that the reward of virtue is virtue itself, while the punishment of folly and weakness is folly itself? or, lastly, that every man ought to love his neighbour, and to obey the commands of the supreme power? Such doctrines I have not only expressly stated, but have also demonstrated them by very solid reasoning."...........

"......I have expressly stated in Chap. IV., that the sum of the divine law (which, as I have said in Chap. II., has been divinely inscribed on our hearts), and its chief precept is, to love God as the highest good......"

"Thus you see, my friend, how far this man has strayed from the truth; nevertheless, I grant that he has inflicted the greatest injury, not on me but on himself, inasmuch as he has not been ashamed to declare, that "under disguised and covert arguments I teach atheism." " ............¹

¹ Spinoza, Letter XLIX. Spinoza To Isaac Orobio

In: Correspondence, by Benedict de Spinoza, [1883], at sacred-texts.com

Available at: 

 https://sacred-texts.com/phi/spinoza/corr/corr47.htm

What Form of Latin Did Spinoza Use and Why Does it Matter? part 1

As various Spinozists with an interest in medieval philosophy and theology, especially Scholasticism, publish articles about the links between Scholastic thinkers and Spinoza, one might be forgiven for thinking Spinoza was writing in scholastic Latin, a language form that was common in Catholic medieval universities. It's important not to confuse Medieval Latin with Scholastic Latin. The latter is a subset of Medieval Latin designed for the use of neo- Aristotelian Catholic theology and so-called philosophy, for example, Aquinas and Suarez. For general purposes, such as documentation, for instance, the Magna Carta, Medieval Latin was used. 

Nevertheless, it's easy to conflate all academic Latin in the past with Scholastic Latin and assume that anything and everything academic was written in Scholastic Latin from the medieval period until much later, when Latin was eventually phased out as the universal language of academia and scholars all wrote in their own language. 

But this is not the case. 

Both forms of Latin, Medieval and Scholastic, went out of fashion by the 16th century (which is the Tudor and Elizabethan period in England and Scotland) and was replaced by neo-Latin which was already in existence since the 15th century. Scholastic Latin and Scholasticism only staggered on during the 16th and 17th century in very Catholic universities, and was reduced down to the Iberian peninsula. This is where the Catholic scholastic Francisco Suarez lived as a conversos Jew, who feared the same fate as his family,  even down to his relatives being burnt at the stake by the Catholic Inquisition. Hence, it was in this region of the world that the Spanish Priest and theologian Suarez became a leading figure in the Spanish School of Salamanca which became pivotal in the Second Scholastic period. 

Spinoza and his relatives had left the Iberian peninsula so fortunately didn't suffer the same fate.

There was the odd exception to this Iberian geographical remit of Scholasticism, albeit with major adjustments. The University of Leiden took an intellectual interest in Suarez. However, as a Protestant university, they needed to remove all the Catholic thought and dogma from Suarez's works, and therefore slimmed it down to examining his systematic approach to philosophy, using it as a vehicle to increase their own rigour and systemisation within their own new style of Early Modern philosophy. Even so, in the end, Cartesianism took over from their study of Suarez. 

This 16th century mainstream changeover period between Scholasticism and neo-Latin also enjoyed literary success in the form of Shakespeare and Sir Philip Sidney. However, neither of these wrote in Latin. Although some 16th century poets and dramatists in England and Scotland did write in neo-Latin such as Legge, Grimald, Alabaster, and Buchanan. 

Over in Holland, Spinoza learnt Latin from Franciscus van den Enden (1602-1674) with whom he lived for a period of time. Enden was a 17th century, Dutch, neo-Latin poet and philosopher, amongst other professions. He was a Roman Catholic who preferred to use reason over religious authority. He has the 'badge of honour' of being thrown out of the Jesuit Order! But that doesn't make him an heretic or an atheist, he was just a rational human being who believed in democracy, equality, liberty, and freedom refusing to just go along with dogma. Like Spinoza, he was ahead of his time. 

The fact that van den Enden taught Spinoza Latin makes for hard evidence that Spinoza wrote in neo-Latin, not Scholastic Latin. Firstly, because that was the Latin everyone was using in the academic world, and the form used in both written and spoken Latin. So to be understood in the Early Modern World it was necessary to write in neo-Latin. Secondly, the main and highest level of Latin education Spinoza received was from the neo-Latinist van den Enden.  Thirdly, had Spinoza written in medieval Latin, he would have been dismissed, in that century, as linguistically inept because the prevailing perception of Scholastic Latin in that era was that it is linguistically 'bad Latin'. Consequently, no one would have taken him seriously had he done so. Fourthly, Spinoza was also corresponding with scientists who wrote in neo-Latin. So neo-Latin was inescapable for Spinoza. 

Furthermore, 17th century poets were known to write in a style even closer to Classical Latin. Hence, van Enden would have been even closer to Classical Latin than non-literary neo-Latinists because poets were the gold standard for pure Latin. The purer the Latin, the closer it was to Classical Latin. Therefore, Spinoza's neo-Latin would be closer to Classical Latin as a result of being taught by Enden. Furthermore, Classical Latin was  primarily used in elite circles, such as academia and official dealings in the world of politics, science, medicine, and diplomacy. 

By the 17th Century, neo-Latin took over as a language as well as a movement to specifically reject medieval thought and scholasticism and their 'bad Latin'. So the movement went back to Classical Latin which is a rigorous style of Latin. In contrast, Medieval Latin was seen as obscure and unclear. However, Classical Latin was seen as correcting this therefore they purified their Latin to its ancient form in order to communicate pellucidly and reach higher understanding and preciseness of meaning. So it would logically follow that Spinoza is very precise in his writings, particularly in the Ethics. 

Van den Enden is considered to have also been a huge philosophical influence on Spinoza, including his groundbreaking ideas on democracy and how an ideal state should look in practice. He practised what he preached. Enden went to Paris setting up a school to teach Latin but was caught plotting to turn Normandy into a republic and he came to a sticky end. Earlier, in 1662 Enden published his pamphlet on his vision of an ideal republic state in America which consisted of present day Delaware, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. At that time this area was a Dutch colony but not for very long.

This would have no doubt further influenced Spinoza's politics and, especially, his TP. 

So we can confidently say that democracy is not some modern day experiment gone wrong when van den Enden was already, in the 17th century, putting forward a very recognisable contemporary form of democracy as an ideal state which he attempted to bring about in practice!

Some argue that the French Revolution and the subsequent Republic was, in part, inspired by Enden's principles of equality, liberty, freedom, and democracy.

The 17th century, unlike today, was about progress not regress and neo-Latin exemplified this new movement which wanted to distance itself from everything medieval. This is possibly why Spinoza was often critical of Maimonides, a medieval Jewish scholar, and would cross-apply this critical stance to the Jewish Catholic thinker Suarez. 

This new movement introduced a new philosophy; a new politics; a new approach to religion; a new science free from religious / Vatican censorship. 

Out with the old: The medieval, feudal, Scholastic, book banning, censoring, divine kingship way of life.  

In with the new: The new way of life meant more democracy, more religious, scientific, academic, social and political freedoms, more toleration, more ability to explore ideas open-mindedly and develop science as your experiments or reasoning reveals to you, not merely peddling past accepted theories irrespective of new evidence to the contrary, for instance, heliocentrism. 

Background to Spinoza: The Inquisition in Portugal

I came across this amazing video on Facebook this Shabbat, which shows you a Portuguese synagogue and gives you a brief history of how the Portuguese Jews suffered and had to hide their Jewish identity for centuries after the Inquisition started (1536-1821) and this suppression of Jewish identity and way of life persisted right up until the 1980's and 1990's. 

The Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism so had to continue all aspects of their Jewish heritage, culture and Judaism in secret are termed Crypto-Jews (also sometimes referred to as Conversos or Marranos). 

Take a look at their educational video here and read their entire post I shared to my personal Facebook page and to see some extra photos here. 

This is an important, tragic background to Spinoza, since his family were forced to flee their Portuguese homeland to escape the Catholic Inquisition. 

This video tells the moving story of a Jewish Portuguese community which the Catholic Inquisition tried to erase. The Jews there fell silent outwardly but inwardly they stayed Jewish. It explains that it wasn't until the late 20th century that the Jewish community  slowly revived in the area and finally, by 1996, it had a synagogue of its own. 

It's a shocking story of how Catholics have constantly tried to eradicate the Jews. And since there are far too many Catholics in the world it can feel as though a tidal wave is against you. So Jews can be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed.

After watching the video, I read this informative academic piece on the Portuguese inquisition, available to read here. It explains that, while the Catholic inquisition was branding itself as being full of mercy and justice, it was actually a disgracefully violent movement, full of extreme and shocking human rights abuses. It was a bloody era that was obsessively antisemitic. Countless Jews were mercilessly and viciously persecuted for centuries. 

Nevertheless, the Catholic inquisition also hounded other social groups to whom they took a dislike, such as gays, healers, 'witches', and other types of Christians, for instance, Erasmians, and Lutherans. The ideology behind the Catholic Inquisition was exclusionary and racist (with an obsession for their statutes about 'purity of blood'). The inquisition was particularly violent in Portugal during Spinoza's era of the 17th century. This could have influenced Spinoza's insistence he didn't want the Pope to obtain copies of his works.

So I think it's important to not only bear in mind the historical setting of 17th century Amsterdam where Spinoza lived but also to look across at what was happening in Portugal to truly understand where he's coming from.

Spinoza on Animals and Species: A Response to Susan James's paper to Celebrate Spinoza's 390th Birthday Today (updated)

Happy Spinoza Day to all Spinozists, on this his 390th posthumous birthday! 🎂🥂🍾🎇🎆 

After watching Susan James presenting her paper: 'Spinoza on Animal Species' (available on YouTube here) it struck me that maybe she was talking about, and assuming, knowledge of taxonomy. So I started to wonder what biological categorisation systems were and were not in place in Spinoza's time. Otherwise, we Spinozists could accidentally write off his ideas as mere wild imaginings or we could simply wonder what on earth he was talking about 🤔. Especially post-Darwin, we tend to make modern day assumptions and so are puzzled why Spinoza is not fitting in with our expectations. This is particularly relevant to refer to today because Darwin's The Origin of Species was first published on this day in 1859. So the contemporary reader may ask themselves: Has Spinoza got it wrong? After all, Spinoza was a physicist (designing high-end lenses for scientists, for instance, for telescopes), not a biologist. 

As philosophers, we can be inclined to become fancy and start talking metaphysics and getting into that type of terminology (such as common notions; particulars and universals) which, I think, misses the point. Spinoza was a scientist so I don't think he'd put forward scientifically inaccurate metaphysics, or at least to the extent of making his metaphysics consistent with the scientific knowledge that was available to him in his era. However, did not just stay with being a physicist, he happily corresponded about biology and chemistry, including cutting edge experiments and his own original thoughts. In this sense, academics in the Early Modern era, such as Spinoza and Cavendish, didn't suffer from over-specialising in one field, so they had a very holistic approach and could make more wide-ranging connections than perhaps many do today. By not going to university to choose only one small subcategory of science to study eg biochemistry or medicine or physics, they didn't narrow down their research fields. Early Modern philosophers kept building up their knowledge and research over the course of their whole lives. They didn't separate out fields of research, but rather intertwined and combined fields of study at will, both within philosophy as well as between philosophy and other subjects eg biology and philosophy. After all, science was called Natural Philosophy during that period. Both philosophers and scientists were doing similar or the same work at times. This is not the case now, when they are unhelpfully separated into STEM and not STEM, making Philosophy 'not STEM', a distinction that never crossed Early Modern thinkers' minds. 

Nevertheless, there are contemporary exceptions, one being Susan James because she has such a strong scientific family background that she can briefly, almost causally, refer to obscure biological facts in her papers that the rest of us have no idea about. In this way, she can go over our heads in her research, particularly when it touches on science. In order to understand her, you need a good scientific background yourself, which luckily I possess! Maybe this is why I understand her better and click more easily with her thinking and method. It's not a mystery why this is. It's a scientific approach that speaks to me more than someone who jumps around in their train of thought and suddenly introduces literary references almost randomly, as Arendt is inclined to do. Susan James can therefore sometimes assume scientific concepts and knowledge that most philosophers simply don't have sitting in their head. Perhaps she takes her scientific knowledge for granted and assumes all educated people share the same knowledge as her. A perfectly reasonable assumption. However, her scientific abilities are part and parcel of her schooling and their exam board requirements (OCR?) which is not the identical scientific education of most other philosophers in the UK or abroad. In addition she had (and still has) the advantage of being able to discuss science over the dining room table. I was lucky enough to be able to do the same with my uncle (Josef) but he didn't live with us so the input was obviously less. Luckily, my mother could take up the slack but she'd never pretend to be as good at biology as Susan James's  father. 

It is just possible that since Susan James's paper isn't a philosophy of science paper, but has different focuses, such as emotion, she maybe thought that too much scientific explanation would be off the point. But I think it does have relevance to our understanding some of what underpins her general outlook, therefore helps for understanding her interpretation and methodological approach. 

Thus, without Susan James explicitly saying so, I feel she is somewhat assuming knowledge of taxonomy in this paper. I always think she should be less brief in her papers, because with such a breadth and depth of knowledge that she possesses people can fail to appreciate the subtle points of her argument and therefore get a bit lost, lose the thread and fail to assess it accurately. 

So, I want to pick up on the background concept of taxonomy because I've always had a scientific approach to metaphysics. In other words, I like to scientifically fact-check metaphysical concepts to avoid the well-known problem with metaphysics which is that it can be so theoretical that it becomes irrelevant and runs the risk of being plain wrong, scientifically speaking. Why is that a problem? Because it impacts on the truth of the metaphysical statements and concepts. 

So, I wish to assess Spinoza on animals and species by comparing it with the scientific classification system of taxonomy. However, to be fair to Spinoza, we cannot criticise him for not possessing our present day scientific knowledge about species. 

Therefore, I began by researching the history of taxonomy so I could chart the progress of the knowledge of taxonomy down the ages to assess:

What was the information possibly available to Spinoza?

What advancements in knowledge have been made since? 

Does it impact on Spinoza's views on animals and species in general? 

So what is Taxonomy? 

There is neither a single definition of the term taxonomy, nor a robust definition of species so we are still relying on what Spinoza refers to as inadequate ideas in this area of science. Taxonomy works on two interconnecting layers: macrotaxonomy (higher classes and subgenuses) and microtaxonomy (which examines how to define what a species is). 

What is the field of Taxonomy? It's the science of creating a classification system and defining the subcategories within the Taxonomic structure, often depicted using hierarchical flow charts. The category of species is one of the main subcategories within this classification structure. The present day system is based on 18th century Carl Linnaeus (1707-78) whereas Spinoza lived in the 17th century (1632-77). 

Therefore, I suggest, there is an historical gap between Spinoza's 17th century knowledge, perspective, and arguments going on around him, compared with those surrounding us in the 21st century. For instance, nowadays we have the benefit of using a Taxonomy /classification system which fully takes into account the theory of evolution. So we can't expect Spinoza to account for our modern day knowledge, whether it be scientific, political, feminist or anything else. 

Gaspard Bauhin (1560-1624) created a classification system but focused on vegetation. Although Bauhin was before Spinoza's time, he nonetheless influenced the 17th century Taxonomist, John Ray (1627-1705), an Englishman who lived during Spinoza's lifetime. Ray argued against having fixed, binary either/or way of categorising nature. Instead, Ray categorised things, usually plants, based on his observations and classed them according to how similar or dissimilar they were/are. Spinoza may have heard of him because Ray became fellow of the Royal Society in 1667 and Spinoza was aware of the scientific experiments and findings of those involved in the Royal Society in the UK. Irrespectively, I think Ray's way of classifying nature could be relevant and makes for an interesting comparison because Spinoza also uses similarity and dissimilarity to compare animals, amongst other things, so he could be working within a similar approach to Ray. This gives Spinoza contemporary relevance too, because scientists still draw on a selection of Ray's discoveries today. Moreover, Ray is a key figure in taxonomy because he was a pioneer in initiating, what people believe to be, the first definition of species, which depicts them as not only being organisms which have similar characteristics, but also as having an ancestor in common with each other. How Darwinian of him! And contemporary, given that present day genetic researchers still argue over the possibility of what's known as a mitochondrial Eve, who has been claimed by some to be the first ancestor of humans, in terms of DNA. 

After Ray, the next well-known Taxonomist was Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708) whose main contribution to Taxonomy was progressing our knowledge of taxonomy by setting out a distinction between the categories of genera and species.

Tournefort influenced perhaps the most famous Taxonomist, Carl Linnaeus (1707-78). Indeed, classifying animals was not a priority until the 18th century, partly because they were more concerned about classifying things which impacted on their health or food supply, hence their focus on vegetation, which includes vegetables and herbs. 

So in Spinoza's lifetime, pre-18th century, animal categorisation was seen as a mere manmade, slightly random and messy way to classify things in the world. This is significant because Spinoza expresses similar views, which makes him up-to-date and the norm for his era. This may also mean that only assessing the strengths and weaknesses of Spinoza's classification, or lack of contemporary style classifications, need not rely solely on his metaphysics. His concept of animal descriptions and classifications, I think, is just as much reliant on the science of his era as it was on his monism. 

To be continued......

Thoughts on Spinoza on World Humanism Day

Happy World Humanism Day today! 🎉🎊🎉 While researching the history of Humanism in philosophy, I came across some fascinating facts which sparked some thoughts for me about Spinoza's life and philosophy. For my post on Humanism, see my philosophy blog post here. There I also ponder whether Spinoza doesn't come across as a non-religious Humanist because he possibly is an Educational Humanist, ie believes in expanding the human intellect for flourishing. However, this Educational Humanism should not be mistaken for atheism, agnosticism or a non-religious Humanist viewpoint in Spinoza's philosophy.  

There I mention the 15th-16th century Dutch Religious (Roman Catholic) Humanist, Erasmus and how, despite Erasmus's huge popularity and influential, undogmatic religious humanistic scholarship in Europe, the Spanish Inquisition persecuted his followers and he was nevertheless labelled an heretic. This reminded me of Spinoza because his family was also persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition and later Spinoza was also branded an heretic. 🤔 So we can see by Erasmus that, despite the fact that he was conservative and a theist who stayed within the Roman Catholic faith, he was still called an heretic. (Erasmus was the illegitimate son of a priest and himself became an Augustinian monk and priest, although he hated monastic life, preferring a scholarly life.) Hence, likewise, I think that Spinoza being labelled an heretic is essentially irrelevant to an examination of his life and ideas: he need not be any less religiously conservative and orthodox than Erasmus to be called an heretic, especially in that era. Indeed, Spinoza was not even as boldly humanistic as Erasmus was, 100 years earlier! And Spinoza wasn't even a skeptic, unlike Erasmus! 

More fascinating still, is that, when Spinoza is around 21 years old, a man named Huet (a liberal Christian skeptic) stopped off on his travels to have a little chat with one of Spinoza's Rabbis, Menasseh Ben Israel (the liberal-minded one). These discussions eventually led Huet to publish his Demonstratio Evangelica, which argued for a liberal, empirical, skepticism (even stretching to maths and theology). This surely shows that: 

• One, Spinoza's Rabbis/synagogue had strong connections with Christians, even possibly influencing what Christians wrote within academia. And Huet was not himself uninfluential or obscure, so this was no mean feat: Huet had studied with Jesuits, gained a degree in maths and went on to become an enormously influential figure. Huet remained very close to the Jesuit order throughout his life, even to the extent of giving his whole library to them towards the end of his life. Even Leibniz didn't take him lightly despite being friends with him but Spinoza was afraid of him because he was seriously worried that he was writing a contra to his philosophy. Huet's style was anti-Cartesian (even accusing Cartesians of irreligion) and philosophically skeptical. Huet also overlapped with Spinoza by wanting to find some common ground between all religions, which I think could be somewhat reminiscent of Spinoza's idea of universal religion to create toleration between different faiths. 🤔
• Two, given the above, the harassment Spinoza suffered at his synagogue, leading to him being thrown out, could have plausibly spilt over into his Rabbis generating academic and religious problems for Spinoza within academia/philosophy after he was no longer with them. Also, conversely, we cannot rule out the possibility of Christian thinkers influencing the Rabbis's decision to excommunicate Spinoza without any recourse for him to return to that synagogue, since influential Christians were clearly meeting with his Rabbis before they threw out Spinoza. After all, chronologically speaking, only a few years after Huet meets Rabbi Menasseh in that Amsterdam synagogue, Spinoza is thrown out of this very synagogue.
• Three, in addition, it shows that 1) the Rabbis could hardly have genuinely objected to Spinoza philosophising with Christian academics since they were clearly doing so themselves; 2) having academic exchanges with so-called Christian friends does not make someone so automatically influenced by Christianity that they start incorporating it into their system of philosophy. So Spinoza's philosophy is no more Christian-influenced; Christianised; and non-Jewish or anti-Jewish than his Jewish Rabbis! 😅 

Anne Lister on Euclid

What can I say, I'm always thinking about Spinoza and philosophy in general. 🤷

I was watching the wonderful TV drama Gentleman Jack 🎩🏳️‍🌈 last Sunday (BBC 1, Series 2 episode 7, still available to watch on demand here) and was fascinated by the way Anne Lister (1791-1840, a highly educated woman and 'out' lesbian living in Jane Austen's era) explained Euclid to a class of children. It made me think - do some Spinozists assume Spinoza shares Euclid's approach to God and mathematics, simply because he made use of Euclid's geometric explanation in his Ethics? 🤔

A few times I've heard philosophers (Spinozists and non-Spinozists) maintain that everything in the world is not, and should not, be reducible to maths. I've never been sure why this was of such great concern to them. So what if it was reducible to maths? Once, over a philosophy society dinner back in 2016, in answer to a question thrown out to everyone around the table: what would the description of everything in the world look like? one said it would be an impossibly long written description, I interjected that the explanation of everything could perhaps be all reduced to an equation. I wasn't thinking of Spinoza or Euclid at the time because it was in the context of contemporary philosophy, it just came to mind. 🙂 💭

However, while watching Anne Lister, it struck me: Do some Spinozists, or even philosophers in general, think that, through his use of Euclid's geometry, Spinoza is suggesting that the world / creation has been created through God's mathematical thoughts, via the laws of nature? Does this trigger some religious reaction in some philosophers? Although I haven't quite figured out yet why this should religiously bother them. 

Here's Anne Lister's summary of Euclid's approach and a brief example of his mathematics:

If the two interior angles are less than right angles then these two straight lines will meet at a point if you go far enough. 

Then a child asks her why this is important and why this relevant to the Sunday school they were attending. Lister's answer was:

Euclid deduced everything ie. his propositions and theorems from just 5 axioms / postulates. The Laws of Nature are the mathematical thoughts of God and God created the world as well as everything in it, such as leaves, trees, birds and so on. Hence, maths is the basis of everything in creation. 

Anne Lister agrees with Euclid about this. So she doesn't have any religious/Christian objections to Euclid. So why should anyone else? 

I've briefly researched who would object to the possibility (whether it is true of Spinoza's intentions or not) that maths could explain the universe. Of course, Spinoza was Jewish so his assessment of Euclid's maths and whether there is any pagan religion in it would not be the same as for Christians. So I'm not sure why this would even be an interpretive concern for philosophers. 🤔🤯 

Anyway. In fleshing out the issue of how people have interpreted and misinterpreted Euclid, here's what I discovered:

People in the medieval era did not see any religious concerns about relating maths to understanding the world because they saw it as two sides of the same coin when wrapping their head around God's creation:

"if God applied geometric principles to the creation of the world, then an understanding of those principles should aid in interpreting that divine act. What we may think of as two ways of looking at the world - the religious and the scientific - were, to the medieval mind, one." (Perry)

Nevertheless, apparently, many Christians have been Christianising Euclid's pagan text and rewriting it (and with it the history of mathematics):

"Adelard’s translation of Euclid’s Elements enjoyed no such flexibility: it was a purely pagan text. But while there may have been little room for manoeuvre in terms of content, there was nothing to prevent the makers of individual copies of the Elements, such as the manuscript housed at the Fisher, from including extra-textual details that cast the work in a Christian context. And so we find our Christ-like Euclid placed prominently on the first page, a reminder to the reader to approach this text from a Christian point of view." (Perry)

The last sentence refers to a book with a medieval illustration of Euclid but depicted with Christian symbolism, based on an image of Christ as the Geometer creating the world and skies above while using a mathematical compass.

So this made me wonder whether there is some Christian twist to Euclid that had passed me by. I, probably very much like Spinoza, just took Euclid to be a pagan mathematician and that maths, like logic, can simplify complex ideas into a succinct, brief, clear format. If I remember rightly, Spinoza had originally written the Ethics in prose and only re-wrote it as a geometric explanation later at the suggestion of some Cartesian philosopher who claimed it would make his Ethics more understandable, accessible and make it easier to follow his arguments simply through rational deduction. Thus, I merely thought of it as being a result of peer review, not part of Spinoza's authorial intention as such, therefore not entirely an essential property of the text or overly representative of Spinoza's fundamental system of philosophy. After all, Spinoza wrote all of his other treatises in prose not in the style of Euclidean geometry, so it can't be that big a deal. If he was that fixated on Euclid's mathematical system or the Christianised version of Euclid, Spinoza would have used it across all of his texts. But he didn't!

I still haven't quite got to the bottom of what aspects of Euclid's maths Christians have adjusted for their own purposes; whether this results in a completely different reading of Euclid; or any religious objections to Euclid's mathematical explanation of the universe or not. However, reading around, I did discover that religious references to Euclid can appear almost randomly in not just traditional Christian thought but even in Christian cults. 

For instance, apparently, the American Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910, the founder of the sect Christian Science) referred to Euclid a few times in her writings, although I'm not entirely sure exactly where she was going with it. 

Especially since her version of Christianity involved drawing inspiration for her arguments from Hindu philosophy, or more specifically, Indian Vendanta Philosophy, which is based on a type of monism whereby everything in the world is one, and this is the non-personal god Brahman, who is a world-soul which permeates everything. Indeed, apparently Christian Science is also monist but, instead, believing only in a spiritual reality (the material world is all unreal). So what seems to have a physical cause, is only really caused by mental states. However, for them, Spirit with a capital S refers to God, whereas spirit with a small s refers to quality, although I'm not sure what that means. I am not at all familiar with Vedanta or Christian Science, I'm only just beginning to investigate to what extent they have any bearings on philosophers' opinions within the fields of philosophy I research, so I'm exploring the issue here in my Spinoza Research Diary. 

Why is this this important? Spinoza is famously known as a substance monist and there is a great deal of secondary literature arguing for and against Spinoza's monism. However the term monism wasn't invented until after Spinoza's lifetime, when the philosopher Christian von Wolff (who adapted Leibniz) used it in the 18th century, in his book Logic (1728). This makes me wonder🤔: 

Is monism the best description of Spinoza's metaphysics? Is it the exact, complex concept he had in mind, given that he wouldn't have known the term or anything particularly similar to it? 

Both Vedanta and Christian Science are idealist but in different ways. Vedanta sees ideas and ideals as rooted in Spirit/Self. For them, god is the highest ideal, not the mind. Whereas Christian Scientists are radical philosophical idealists, who think all ideas and ideals are rooted in the Christian God's mind, and so people form their ideals from God's ideas. This is relevant to Spinoza because I've often found myself baffled by idealist interpretations of Spinoza and his monism. 🤔 I don't see any idealism in his philosophy. 🤷 

It is worth bearing in mind that Eddy's version of Vendanta Philosophy has a twist to it, so it's not identical. She claimed that matter is not real (as well as related things such as illness and suffering which she also thought were not real). Indeed, after reading around, I've now discovered that it's common knowledge in philosophy that Eddy's Christian Scientist argument (in her book 'Science and Health') claiming that evil is merely an illusory false belief, is based on Vedanta Philosophy which considers the phenomenal world and evil within it to be what they term maya ie an illusion/magic. For Vedanta Philosophy (a philosophy based on ancient Hindu religious scripture) this means that a god creates illusions through magic powers thereby causing false beliefs in people (at least in the Advaita school of non-dualist Vedanta anyway). Nevertheless, unlike in Western Philosophy, Indian Philosophy is not preoccupied with relating its monist and non-dualist arguments to mind-body problems. It's not clear to me yet which of the schools of Vedanta Philosophy Eddy was drawing on, or whether she combined several, and exactly how she adjusted it to put her own Christian spin on it. 

Now that's cultural appropriation! Because it's not about appreciating Indian Philosophy and respecting its cultural, religious Hindu context in its own right, but rather distorting it for Western, Christian purposes. 

It never crossed my mind before that there were any Christian Scientist beliefs hidden in the middle of Philosophy! 😲 

Eddy was keen on Spirituality, although she sometimes denied it. But one has to be careful about what someone means by spirituality because it signifies different things to different people. In Eddy's case, it involved doing séances, being a medium and going into trances, claiming she could channel the spirits of the (twelve) Apostles. Nevertheless, she seemed to reject Spiritualism in her writings despite trying to convert people to Christian Science during some of her séances. This spirituality strangely combined in some of her more metaphysical thought about matter. For example, apparently, she argued that only spirit exists, whereas matter is not real. So spirit is not within matter, although it may appear to be so. This is a problem for anyone researching Spinoza or Margaret Cavendish's vitalism. Not to mention Cavendish's references to spiritual substance, or spirits, or arguments in favour of everything comprising of matter, with the only exception being God. Such early modern concepts must be very prone to misinterpretation for anyone who superimposes any such later arguments onto it, such as Eddy's rejection of matter and her focus on a very narrow, specific version of spirits and spirituality. Such conflations between Eddy's Christian Sect metaphysics and early modern metaphysics could be an issue for some, given that her favourite subjects as a child were, amongst other complex subjects, natural philosophy, logic and ethics, so there may be appear to be some topic overlap. 

So what's my overall point here? It's simply this: it's unwise to make gross assumptions, superimpose views or conflate people, arguments or concepts. For instance:

• conflate Euclid's (pagan) aims and world views with Spinoza's;
• conflate a Christianised Euclidean geometry with Spinoza's use of Euclid's geometry in his Ethics
• jump to the conclusion (or hope!) that Spinoza must be secretly hoping to convey some medieval Christian theology via a Christianised Euclidean approach; 
• conflate Christian thought which has nothing to do with the early modern text you're reading, with the early modern philosopher who wrote it, eg conflating Mary Baker Eddy's concept of spirit and matter with arguments for or against Spinoza's or Margaret Cavendish's concept of spirit and/or matter;
• assume that other philosophers (whether speakers; attendees asking questions; philosophical discussion at socials etc) are on the same page as you eg making the same assumptions, working with the same background knowledge and concepts as you just because you are all trained in (usually analytic) philosophy. If you come from different religious and/or non-religious perspectives then you end up talking at cross purposes! Because someone's personal critical stance may draw on sources that you are completely unfamiliar with and they probably won't explain any background to their views, so you'll find yourself trying to wrap your head around some unknown, alien concepts in order to answer their questions or understand where they are really going with it;
• you can also misspeak in the sense of assuming your philosophical audience shares the same definitions and concepts as you so there's no need to explain everything ad nauseam. So when I happily work with non-religious, secular, agnostic and Jewish concepts, perhaps I need to explain it in a variety of ways so philosophers of all backgrounds can follow my argument and not slip into relating it to irrelevant (Christian or otherwise) concepts and world views. 

Having said that, it would be rather unwieldly to try to account for every possible worldview, especially if a philosopher doesn't explicitly state what their personal views, stances and perspectives are and where they have come from. And, surely, we are meant to be analysing philosophical texts in terms of 1) the content; objective properties in the text 2) the philosopher, not superimposing/projecting our worldviews onto the texts or constantly accounting for others superimposing/projecting their religion and/or worldviews onto the texts and your papers/books. 

And the reason for this is simple: 

we researchers have to stay on task: in the history of philosophy, the historical philosopher; their political/societal context; and their texts are everything - it dictates the whole interpretation. If one wants to set out one's own system of philosophy/ own philosophical thought, then one mostly does that within the field of contemporary philosophy. 

Perhaps it all just comes down to everyone communicating well! I have seen excellent examples of good communication in research, so it's not unrealistic. 🙂 But, at other times, I feel there's a hidden ingredient that changes the flavour of the stance/interpretation and it's only by chance that I may hit upon this hidden ingredient and thereby arrive at the aha moment! However, secondary literature shouldn't be so hit and miss because there can be so many suppressed premises and implicit assumptions going on in philosophy, despite a certain amount of analytic and logical underpinning. Years ago, I bought and read an excellent book on Euclid which explained everything very well. But I can't account for someone having a Christianised view of Euclid (as they often do with Aristotle and Plato too). So it was only when the TV drama related Euclid to Christianity that it crossed my mind that this was a relevant connection so I thought I'd address here because this blog is not just for my books but for my research thoughts about Spinoza, as they occur. 

On the Relevance of Rabbi Manis Friedman's Explanation of the Jewish Destination to Spinoza

Recently, I came across a short video of a Rabbi posted on a Jewish learning Facebook page. It's a snippet of a speech made by Rabbi Manis Friedman, titled 'Judaism is NOT just another religion'. I don't remember hearing of this Rabbi before so I am not familiar with or dealing with his general outlook. I can't account for everything he may or may not have said or meant throughout his entire career as a Rabbi. I can identify with most of what he says in this video and I love his style of humour. And I don't think it's just because he's Czech. Here, I'll just be sticking to his views expressed in this particular video, namely on the uniqueness of Judaism and how it is different from every other religion. Furthermore, Rabbi Manis Friedman is steeped in a very old-fashioned approach to Judaism so he is closer to an Early Modern concept and purpose of Judaism than many Rabbis today, making his views on why one would identify as Jewish more relevant to an analysis of the 17th century Jewish philosopher, Spinoza.   

For some, there may be a linguistic barrier: he throws in Yiddish words and the subtitles can misspell things. Here's an essential word you'll hear: kvetch - Yiddish for having a moan, grumble. It doesn't mean complaining as in making a complaint. My granny was always kvetching and taught me that word by acting it out, other than she had a slightly different accent, it wasn't such a crisp German accent for it. It's a key word in Jewish culture.  

I shared this video on my timeline and I commented on the main ideas to grasp in the Rabbi's speech on my Facebook post. 

Here I shall expand on my Facebook comment about what I found exciting about this speech. I shall highlight Rabbi Friedman's points in bold, red italic while adding my thoughts in black standard font. 

Religion amounts to "behaving in a certain way to gain something from heaven....when you get past all the theology and philosophy". Religion is "a way of life that gives you some benefit from heaven. You'll get something from G-d". But that's not Judaism - Jews have a different destination!

People don't run around shopping for a religion. 🛒 🕉️☸️☯️☪️✝️☦️✡️🕎

What does Rabbi Manis Friedman mean by this? Why not shop around religions? Because each religion has a different destination in life so only one religion will fit where you are going as a person. There's no need to try out religions for the sake of it, despite them not fitting with who you are and where you are going in life. He clarifies this with an airline analogy. 

Rabbi Friedman is the Dean of a Chabad educational institute for girls (15+) and women where he teaches those with various backgrounds who have no knowledge of Judaism. He's packaged his explanation in such a way that means anyone of any prior education, ignorance, bias, social and religious background can grasp his point / argument. 

Furthermore, it's even an explanation that's designed to elucidate Judaism to a guy who has somehow ignored the fact that it's a women-only students educational institute to attend the women-only class on Judaism and then have the nerve to badger Rabbi Manis Friedman with daft, repetitive questions about why he's only teaching Judaism?! 🤷🤦 Just goes to show that the TERF's claim that men crossdress and claim to be trans just to access women's spaces is a total myth! I digress. My point was - if the Rabbi expects even this random man to understand it, no excuses for anyone else! 🤣 

After this video and airline analogy you should understand:

1 what's unique about Judaism that means it's not (just) a religion 

2 and that Judaism is not particularly structured like a religion

3 each to their own destination - we don't all have to use the same airline! There is such a thing as religious plurality, as Spinoza points out. 

Is Judaism the only or the best? Why not try other religions? The airline analogy: it's all about the destination not the airline. 

Rabbi Friedman used Northwest Airlines (he's from Minnesota) because he needed to go to New York. He's particular about the destination not the airline. Imagine if someone asked him - Have you tried the Southeast airline? But it goes to Florida. Should he take a flight to see if it really goes to Florida? No, he doesn't care about Florida, he doesn't want to go there. If he needed to go to Florida he would TAKE the Southeast airline but he wouldn't TRY it. The reason would simply be because it takes him to Florida, if that's where he wanted to go. 

Religions as airlines:

🧘The destination of Buddhism is Nirvana, bliss and enlightenment (no not as in the age of enlightenment in philosophy). These are the objectives of Buddhism so if you want this destination, take the Buddhist airline! ✈️🧘⛰️

But you are Jewish and don't want to be that happy! 🤷🙂 No kvetching?! 😮 So perhaps you don't want that airline. 

✝️ The destination of Christianity is to go to heaven 🌫️ to be saved from Satan 👹 and not go to hell 👺🔥- salvation!😇 If you want this destination, take Christian airlines. ✈️✝️☦️🌫️ 

Neither I nor this Rabbi can relate to this Christian mentality.  It's not who we are or where we're going in life. So we don't want this airline. And this is equally true of Spinoza!

What is the destination of Judaism? 

Mostly nobody Jewish knows or cares! 🤷 Anyway, there's a virtue in being loyal to who you are, without stopping to think - where am I going? What am I getting from it? A Jew is a Jew. Why keep Jewish holidays? Because it's Yom Kippur! It's Pesach! etc. 

True! I can identify with what the Rabbi says here. I am not a (Humanistic) Jew in order to get something from it now, at any point in this world or after death. Therefore, I don't have a 'use' as such (e.g. psychological, practical, emotional) for Judaism or G-d in my life. I am just simply Jewish and it fits with my sense of who I am and my destination in life. As a Humanistic Jew, I don't see Judaism as just a religion, I see it as first and foremost an identity, that sits alongside and coheres with my other identities. 

What airline was Spinoza on? 

As can be seen in the letters between Albert Burgh and Spinoza (September 1675), and some letters between Spinoza and Oldenburg, Spinoza was never going to take or even try out the Southeast airline/Christian airline! Burgh was trying to put Spinoza on the wrong airflight for his destination when he attempted to convert Spinoza to Catholism. Burgh used many of the concepts depicted in the Christian destination: devil, sin, hell/heaven, needing to be saved and praying for the sinner. Indeed, Burgh did more than just attempt proselytising, he was astringent and insulting about it, and, in the apt words of Curley, Burgh's tone was "highly abusive" (Curley 2010, p11). This was especially disgusting behaviour from someone who had tried to be Spinoza's close friend and admirer! 😡 

Spinoza was unhappy that Burgh converted to Catholism, even though Burgh was merely converting from one branch of Christianity to another. Perhaps this is because it had unpleasant connotations for him of Catholic conversion during the Spanish Inquisition, which forced his family to flee their homeland. 😢 When pushed to answer Burgh's hysterical insistence that Spinoza should become Christian, all Burgh received back was Spinoza adamantly telling him that he can take a very long walk off a short plank! 👍

Spinoza is making philosophical points that every philosopher should be able to understand. But when it comes to Spinoza's religion, beyond philosophy and theology, he's on a different flight from his Christian contemporaries in his day as well as Christians these days. And because this informs his thought, even though every philosopher should be able to understand his philosophy through reason alone, misunderstandings are more likely to occur because his philosophy is based on a different airline than the one the Christians are on. So it's possibly harder for Christians to wrap their heads around Spinoza's philosophy. 

And now, for Destination Judaism: ✈️✡️🕎

As Rabbi Manis Friedman rightly points out: Most Jews keep the holidays on the Jewish calendar 📆 🧐. But not because they are convinced that they are going to heaven if they do. They are not necessarily observant. But it's Pesach and you don't mess around with it. They are not rushing to a synagogue 🕍 🏃on Yom Kippur in order to get to heaven. They are just going because it's Yom Kippur - and there's something simple and beautiful about that. 🙂

What am I going to get from keeping mitzvahs and being a good Jew? 🤔 Persecution? ☹️😕😢 

✡️🕎 The destination of Judaism is: G-d gives me everything I have, and when I'm lacking I kvetch to G-d and ask for more. But it feels wrong to always take and not give back so what can I give G-d? So 'destination Judaism' is what can I do for G-d? Why does G-d need that I can give? 

This sounds like a much more religious, heavy-going task than it is. But as Rabbi Manis Friedman explains:

Judaism wants to do something for G-d but G-d is interested in earth not heaven. This can be seen in the Torah: in the beginning, G-d created heaven and earth, and that's the first and last time we hear about heaven. So G-d wants ungodly earth to become godly, "as a result of our efforts" - make it a comfortable home for G-d. 

Looking at it another way: What can I give G-d?

There's 3 different answers for 3 different religions 

🧘The Buddhist answer: the ultimate is bliss, happy and content as possible. 'G-d' doesn't need anything. But we'll teach you how to be happy. 

✝️The Christian answer: you were born in sin 👺, you are in trouble,😱 you need to be saved😇. God doesn't have problems, thank you very much. 🤨 And then they'll pray for you. 🙏

Then you ask a Rabbi: Isn't there one thing I can do for G-d that G-d really needs?

✡️🕎 So the Rabbi (a good one, ie. not a dull-witted one🤣) gives you a  typically Jewish style answer by replying with a question - why just one thing? 🤷 There are 613 things you can do. 🙂 

So here's a major difference between Judaism and Religion: 

Religion is about getting something from G-d now and after death.

Whereas Judaism is about giving something to G-d, doing something for G-d now in this world (which includes acting in ways that benefit fellow human beings). 

All other religions: the reward is:

1 some other place, outside and above this world in some nebulous transcendent space

2 at another, later, future time, once you're dead and it's now beyond earth-time 

This video shows why, I think, Spinoza is not a materialist or too this-worldly to be considered a religious Jew. He's just being a good Jew because Judaism is focused on this world not some heavenly world beyond. If this aspect of Judaism is not understood, then much of what Spinoza writes appears to endorse materialism and naturalism, because superficially, there seems to be an overlap of content and argumentation. Consequently, this leads to the erroneous assumption that Spinoza isn't in line with Judaism because materialism and naturalism are the opposite of religion. Well, yes, but not Judaism because it doesn't function the same way as other religions.

Judaism is home-focused so Spinoza can happily carry on being observant and continue his journey to his Jewish destination. The synagogue doesn't disrupt the airflight or his destination. He can still observe Shabbat, put on Tefillin, tallit, tallit katan, kippah, pray from his Siddur, keep festivals, fasts, do mitzvahs, keep kosher, and study Torah. And at the end of his life, he still held that reverence for Hebrew. 

Again, Christians possibly fail to appreciate this aspect of Judaism because their faith is centred on the Church and going to church on a weekly basis. ⛪🏃You often hear Christians argue that Spinoza could have fought his way back to his synagogue. That's assuming he only had to put his back into it and they would have embraced him wholeheartedly. Unlikely! And what if Spinoza decided it was too dangerous to do so since someone had made an attempt on his life on the steps of the synagogue?

He also, like Hume, was not too enamoured of institutional religion. Neither am I! Unlike Spinoza, I didn't attend any religious institution growing up. But, just because a person doesn't attend a place of worship it doesn't automatically mean they don't have a personal belief or don't express that belief through prayer, observing festivals or reading Scripture and so on. Neither Hume nor Spinoza were keen on superstitious beliefs. This does not, however, mean they were atheists. Conversey, the notion that Spinoza was a God intoxicated philosopher makes no sense whatsoever either. He was far too rational for that. Zealotry was not something he would subscribe to. Spinoza was just sticking to his airline which took him where he wanted to go and that was to be the best Jew he could be!

Curley, E. (2010). Spinoza's exchange with Albert Burgh. In Y. Melamed & M. Rosenthal (Eds.), Spinoza's 'Theological-Political Treatise': A Critical Guide (Cambridge Critical Guides, pp. 11-28). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511781339.002

Happy International Darwin Day 12th February

IDD is about the enormous scientific achievement of the freethinker, Darwin 🐵🦧🦍🐒🐻🧍🧍‍♀️🧍‍♂️as well as encouraging interest in science.🧬🧫🧪⚗️🔭🔬 

Although the day is mainly promoted by humanists it's, nevertheless, a day that marks an historical break from the religiously founded belief that everything in the world was created, in one go, by a superior being called a Creator. This is an issue which is, and always has been, a hot potato. At one end of the spectrum, religious fundamentalists go so far as wanting to ban the teaching of Darwin in schools. I'm not sure how they expect these children to grow up and take their place in the outside world where Darwin's evolutionary theory is common knowledge. Even George W Bush waded in on the debate (2005) when Intelligent Design became a fad to be taught in US schools as an alternative to teaching Darwin and his scientific theories. Bush wanted both sides to be taught but a judge threw this out as against the American Constitution which forbids 'the establishment of religion'. Quite right too! Religion has no place in the public arena. Freedom of religion means all can worship wherever they wish and hold whatever beliefs they wish but they mustn't impose those beliefs on others, especially if it's to the other's detriment.

Some have continued trying to prove Darwin wrong but with little success. Even, surprisingly enough, some philosophers, for example, the 20th century Austrian born Czech-Hungarian/Sicilian British Jewish (Sir) Karl Popper (1902-1994). Popper originally thought Darwin's theory of natural selection was untestable and unscientific. However, he later backtracked as evidence from biologists showed that natural selection wasn't a tautology, in other words, it wasn't just stating the obvious. Nevertheless, Popper is right to argue that, even though science has much to contribute to our understanding of the world, it doesn't provide unfalsifiable knowledge. (His library is at Klagenfurt Uni, Austria). At the other end of the spectrum, recent research in genetics shows Darwin to be along the right lines.  

I learned about Darwin almost by the by. It was just there on the wall chart. My mother studied Darwin and people's reaction to it, especially the response of ecclesiastical authorities (who most likely never read Darwin), during her B.D degree when she chose the history option which focused on this era, in an unbiased way. Therefore, being knowledgeable about it she inserted Darwin with ease and without any religious overtones. I also went to science museums and science played a large role in my education. I was used to handling science equipment and having a hands-on approach to the subject. Since I was not taught any religious beliefs at home I didn't have the usual conflict of Genesis (Old Testament) v Darwin.

However, it never occurred to me that I would be needing this knowledge on Darwin when studying Philosophy even down to Darwin's last book on worms, something Spinoza also wrote about in some of his letters. I refer to the latter in my volume 2 on Spinoza. Thus, writing a paper on Spinoza as a forerunner to Darwin happened by chance when responding to a CFP's on Spinoza, which included everything from Aristotle to Darwin, if one wished to go there. I always like to draw upon acquired past knowledge and further it. Here was my chance. Feeling I needed to be more up-to-date and at a higher level to fend off science specialists, I studied a module on Genetics (MA level). This clearly showed how Darwin was right. Enthused, I decided that this would help to understand Spinoza's conatus theory. Not that 17th century Spinoza could be influenced by 19th century Darwin but they may well have both read the same earlier source in the pre-Socratics. This is not to argue that Spinoza's conatus is an evolutionary theory. Neither is to argue that, therefore, Spinoza was an agnostic/atheist which he wasn't. But it lends credence to the notion that Darwin's evolutionary theory had its seed way back in history and was not as revolutionary as many tried to pretend. It perhaps also indicates that Spinoza's conatus is very much a scientific concept. This is not surprising given he was a scientist, albeit in physics (lenses, telescopes) but he did correspond with scientists about chemistry and biology. 

It follows, therefore, I think, that an interest and ability in one of the sciences usually means an interest in science, generally. The 17th century was the era of scientific awakening so any erudite individual would need to be versed in it. Thus, even if Spinoza had not engaged in science and earned his living from it, he would still have had to understand what was going on around him. This also applied to Spinoza's awareness of political and religious views around him which were different from his, for example, Christianity. Just because he debated with Christians, it doesn't mean that he became one; that he was influenced by them; that he expounded or advocated Christian theology in his works. However, there was a tension between science and religion in the 17th century. A tension that still exists today. This tension came to a head, for Spinoza, at his own synagogue and probably led to his expulsion by the more orthodox of the two rabbis there. The other rabbi, at the time, was in England, and being the more scholarly of the two and liberal-minded he would not have allowed things to turn out so badly for the now orphaned Spinoza who, still in his early twenties, was mourning and missing his father. Had this liberal rabbi, who greatly influenced Spinoza, been present at the time, it's unlikely Spinoza would have been banned from his synagogue which was like home to him, not only because his father had been a warden there, but also because all his education had taken place there too. Hence, I do not take his expulsion from his synagogue seriously. This idea he was some infamous heretic is an exaggeration and unnecessarily paints Spinoza in a negative light which people still feed off today. This negative attitude then reflects on his works and encourages harsh, unwarranted criticism. Small wonder Spinoza said don't look at my life but my treatises. Spinoza was just a freethinker like Darwin, and his father Robert and brother Erasmus. Simplistically, that means he wanted to think freely without constraints or limits to his thoughts. Progress can never be made if we keep imposing dogmas of one kind or another on people, restricting freedom of thought. 

But, some say, he could have returned to his synagogue, surely?  Others did. Yes, in theory he could, but that would have been as effective as 'conversion therapy' and as damaging! Spinoza's ban was also more final than others so we can't be sure he would have been able to reverse it. Even today, scholars can't seem to manage to reverse the ban for him despite it being nearly four centuries later! Besides, Judaism can be practised away from the strictures of a synagogue which all too often depends on which rabbi holds sway, or who the wardens are and even who sits on the council. Spinoza believed that religion is a private matter. And, unlike Christianity, it can be practised at home because rabbis are not priests. They do not act as intermediaries between God and the individual. Blessings are recited in the home. After all his mother died when he was very young so he would have seen his sister take over her role. In this way, Spinoza may have learned many of the rituals women undertake in an Orthodox home. All Jewish rituals can be conducted at home, even the blowing of the shofar, if you can buy one, or these days, you can even watch wonderful videos of shofar blowing on the internet! However, Spinoza may well have attended a synagogue far from home for high holy days or other days. I doubt he would have been recognised. 

So, part of my reason for researching the Early Modern period is not only an interest in History, engendered by my mother's excellent teaching, but also because it's a time when there was much progress, especially in the realm of science. Although not all the science is valid today. For example, vitalism has been superseded. Nevertheless, it takes one back to the time when religion was challenged as the main source of knowledge. This is important because this religion versus science debate rages on and is one which must confuse children who are brought up in a strict religious environment. Hence, the importance of education which ensures that children, teenagers, and young adults have access to up-to-date knowledge, devoid of bias. It is then up to them what they choose to think or believe. Therefore, I think it is very important that pupils in schools learn all the various scientific disciplines as separate disciplines, including those studied less often, such as, astronomy. I find it unbelievable that given that space exploration and travel is something going on here and now, it seems not to appear on the school curriculum. How can it not? 

This is why I think a day devoted to Darwin and science is a helpful way to engender and foster an awareness of all things scientific for everybody, not just those in educational establishments.

Having said that, I don't agree with the government's over emphasis on and financial bias for STEM subjects for pupils and students. The humanities, social sciences, philosophy, languages, creative arts and music are vital too. Is not Einstein one of, if not the, most influential scientist in history? Yet he credited his scientific inspiration and discoveries to his daily violin playing. 🎻 Science needs creative minds! It needs passion! It's not all rational thinking, test tube in hand!👩‍🔬🧪🥽