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! 😅
