David spinoza biography

Born in in Amsterdam to a modest Jewish family, Baruch sometimes Benedict Spinoza became one of the key figures of the seventeenth-century Dutch and European Enlightenment. As a young man, he was considered an outstanding student of the Talmud and a promising religious scholar. But he soon found himself on the outside of the orthodox tradition due to his radical and unorthodox opinions.

Moreover, on the basis of Ezekiel , Spinoza finds the explanation of the frequent falling away of the Hebrews from the Law, which finally led to the destruction of their state, in the fact that God was so angry with them that he gave them laws whose object was not their safety but his vengeance. To motivate the common individual to practice justice and charity, certain doctrines concerning God and humans, says Spinoza, are indispensable.

These, too, are a product of the prophetic imagination, but they will necessarily be understood philosophically by those who can do so. This universal scriptural religion is distinguished both from philosophical religion, which is a product of reason and is independent of any historical narrative, and from the vulgar religion of the masses, which is a product of the superstitious imagination and is practiced through fear alone; it consists of seven dogmas.

The first four concern God and his attributes of existence, unity, omnipresence, and power and will. The other three deal with people's religious acts, and seem to derive from a Christian context: human beings' worship of God, their salvation, and their repentance. Each of the seven dogmas can be understood either imaginatively, in which case they would all be false, though useful, or philosophically, in which case they would all be true.

Presumably, the average individual's score would be a mixed one. Spinoza begins and ends with God. He is convinced that upon reflective analysis individuals become immediately aware that they have an idea of substance , or that which is in itself and is conceived through itself. Because substances having different attributes have nothing in common with one another, and because if two things have nothing in common, one cannot be the cause of the other, then it is evident that all the entities of which humans have experience, including themselves, must, because they all have extension in common, constitute one substance.

Although a human being is also characterized by thought, which has nothing in common with extension, since one is aware of one's own extension, these two attributes cannot denote two substances but must be instead two parallel manifestations of one and the same substance. Spinoza thus insists that humans have a clear and distinct idea of substance or God having at least two parallel attributes.

In Ethics 1. Although he elsewhere hints that there may be more than two attributes, he stops short of saying that there are. Even more controversial is the question whether the attributes are to be understood as subjective or objective. Although this conception of substance is ultimately derived from empirical observation, it is not dependent on any particular observation as such but follows from the analysis of ideas and is therefore a product of the power of the mind to think ideas and analyze their logical structure.

It is in this sense that knowledge of substance, or God, is a priori , deriving essentially from an analysis of a given true definition contained within the human mind. Spinoza designates knowledges of this kind as intuitive; he ranks it as the highest form of knowledge humans have, above deductive reasoning, which is mediated by the syllogistic process, and imagination, which is based either on hearsay or random experience.

For Spinoza, the only adequate or clear and distinct ideas humans possess are those related to God, simple ideas, and common notions, or axioms, and what is deduced from them. Knowledge derived from syllogistic reasoning which yields universal knowledge and intuitive knowledge which represents the power of the mind itself, on which syllogistic reasoning ultimately rests are necessarily true.

God is eternally in a state of self-modification, producing an infinite series of modes that are manifested under either of his attributes. Under the attribute of extension, there is the immediate infinite mode, motion and rest; and under thought, the absolutely infinite intellect, or the idea of God. Finally come the finite modes, or particular things.

Substance with its attributes is called natura naturans , the creative or active divine power, whereas the entire modal system, the system of what is created, is called natura naturata. Spinoza's God is thus not identical with the natural world as such but only with the creative ground that encom-passes it. While others consider human actions and appetites as virtues and vices to be bewailed or mocked, Spinoza considers them natural facts to be studied and understood.

Vice is impotence, whereas virtue is power. Individuals act when anything is done of which they are the adequate cause; they suffer when anything is done of which they are only the partial cause. The first law of nature as the Stoics had already noted is the impulse, or effort conatus , by which each thing endeavors to persevere in its own being.

Humans do not desire anything because they think it good, but humans adjudge a thing good because they desire it. Desire is activity conducive to self-preservation; pleasure marks its increase, pain its decrease. Spinoza offers a pioneering psychological analysis of the ways through which the human imagination acts and discusses in some detail the various laws of what he calls the association and imitation of the emotions.

Spinoza calls active emotions those which are related to the mind insofar as it acts and of which an individual is the adequate cause. Of these there are only two: desire, or the effort of self-preservation in accordance with the dictates of reason, and pleasure, or the enjoyment experienced from the mind's contemplation of itself whenever it conceives an adequate or true idea.

In the conflict of emotions, weaker emotions are removed by stronger ones, as Plato had already indicated in the Timaeus. Knowledge of good and evil can be a determining factor only insofar as it is considered an emotion — that is, a consciousness of pleasure and pain. Inasmuch as happiness consists in humans' preservation of their own beings and they act virtuously when effecting their self-preservation in accordance with their full powers, humans must seek to maximize their power to act, which means removing their passive emotions to the greatest possible extent and substituting for them active emotions.

Spinoza suggests various remedies for the passive emotions, which he describes as mental diseases already described by the Stoics. Since a passive emotion is a confused idea, the first remedy is to remove confusion and transform it into a clear and distinct idea. Another remedy is to realize that nothing happens except through the necessity of an infinite causal series.

Humans should also endeavor to expel the many ghosts that haunt their minds by contemplating the common properties of things. Indeed, the emotions themselves may become an object of contemplation. The sovereign remedy, however, is the love of God. The mind has the capacity to cause all affections of the body to be related to the idea of God; that is, to know them by intuitive knowledge.

Spinoza endeavors to demonstrate the immortality of the human mind stripped of sensation, memory, and imagination but insists that even during a lifetime one can experience that state of immortality which he calls blessedness and describes as union with, or love for, God. The intellectual love of God, which arises from intuitive knowledge, is eternal and is part of the infinite love with which God loves himself.

Among the major philosophers, Spinoza was the only one who did not found a school. During the first hundred years after Spinoza's death, his name was connected principally with the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus , and as Isreal has emphsized, "no one else rivalled his notoriety as chief challenger of revealed religion" Isreal, , p. Only toward the end of the eighteenth century did Spinoza begin to arouse enthusiasm among men of letters.

Although a follower of Christian Wolff, who directed a formidable critique against Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn hailed Spinoza as early as as a martyr for the furthering of human knowledge. Goethe, on the other hand, eagerly devoured Spinoza's Ethics , noting that it "agreed most with his own conception of nature," and that "he always carried it with him.

According to G. Hegel — , there was "either Spinozism or no philosophy," and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling — wrote that "no one can hope to progress to the true and complete in philosophy without having at least once in his life sunk himself in the abyss of Spinozism" McFarland, , p. Appreciation for Spinoza in England was due especially to Samuel Taylor Coleridge , who wrote in about that only two systems of philosophy were possible, that of Spinoza and that of Immanuel Kant — In a letter of , Friedrich Nietzsche — expressed his astonishment at the kinship between Spinoza's position on morality and his own, although elsewhere he is severely critical of Spinoza.

Martin Buber — found much inspiration in Spinoza, seeing in him the highest philosophical exemplification of Judaism's unique quest for unity, but he criticized the Spinozistic attempt to depersonalize God. In the s, Shemu'el David Luzzatto stirred up a literary polemic concerning Spinoza after having been aroused by the first laudatory biography of Spinoza in Hebrew , written by the poet Me'ir Letteris; by the essays of Schelling's student Senior Sachs from to , in which he links together Shelomoh Ibn Gabirol, Avraham ibn Ezra, the qabbalists, and Spinoza; and by Shelomoh Rubin's Moreh nevukhim he-hadash , which contains a positive account of Spinoza's thought.

Luzzatto attacked Spinoza's emphasis on the primacy of the intellect over the feelings of the heart and his denial of free will and final causes, and called unjustified his attack on the Pharisees and on the Mosaic authorship of all of the Pentateuch. Nahman Krochmal's son, Avraham, wrote an apologetic work, Eben ha-ro'shah , in which he defended Spinoza, whom he reverently called Rabbenu Our Master Baruch an epithet already applied to Spinoza by Moses Hess — in , and later also adopted by Einstein.

Shortly after arriving at Sedeh Boker on December 13, , in order to settle at a kibbutz in the Negev, first prime minister of Israel, Ben Gurion, published an article in the newspaper Davar titled "Let Us Make Amends," in which he expressed the wish "to restore to our Hebrew language and culture, the writings of the most original and profound thinker that appeared amongst the Hebrew people in the last two thousand years.

What still needed mending was the literary cultural fact that Hebrew literature remains incomplete as long as it does not include the entire corpus of Spinoza's writings as one of the greatest spiritual assets of the Jewish nation. Ben Gurion's wish has now finally been fulfilled with the appearance of all of Spinoza's major works in Hebrew translation, and with the establishment of a Spinoza Institute in Jerusalem which holds biannual conferences devoted to Spinoza's thought.

This piece of historical irony by which Spinoza's philosophical legacy has now been emphatically included in the intel-lectual life of Israel would undoubtedly have afforded Spinoza a measure of supreme delight. See Dorman, , pp. Spinoza has been regarded as the founder of scientific psychology, and his influence has been seen in the James — Lange theory of the emotions and in some of the central concepts of Freud see Bidney, Spinoza has also received an enormous amount of attention in the former Soviet Union.

Spinoza's concept of nature as self-caused, infinite, and eternal was first singled out for comment by Friedrich Engels in his Dialectics of Nature. From the Soviet viewpoint, Spinoza's materialism is unfortunately wrapped in a theological garb, but his consistent application of the scientific method is seen as overshadowing "the historically transient and class-bounded in his philosophy" see Kline, , p.

In America, the transcendentalists of the eighteenth century held Spinoza in very high regard. Oliver Wendell Holmes — read and reread Spinoza's Ethics , and his famous formulation that freedom of thought reached a limit only when it posed a "clear and present danger" appears to have been made under Spinoza's influence. Moreover, Spinoza had special appeal for the young American Jewish intellectuals who were children of the first wave of immigrants from eastern Europe.

Heidelberg, ; a fifth volume was added in According to Nadler, this will be superseded by an edition from the Groupe de Recherches Spinozistes. A useful edition with translation and notes of Spinoza's Tractatus Politicus is by A. Bloom New York, A new and reliable translation of Spinoza's works by E. Curley is The Collected Works of Spinoza , vol.

In the meantime, there has appeared Spinoza, Complete Works, with translations by Samuel Shirley , edited with introduction and notes by Michael L. Morgan Indianapolis, A comprehensive bibliography of Spinoza up to is Adolph S. Oslo, See also E. Siebrand, and C. Westerveen's A Spinoza Bibliography, — Leiden, See also A. Kasher and S. Katz and Jonathan Israel Leiden, , pp.

For the Pantheism Controversy, see Frederick C. Lawson, and C. Kogan, ed. The most detailed and illuminating commentary on Spinoza's Ethics is Harry A. Wolfson's The Philosophy of Spinoza , 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass. A comprehensive introduction and commentary in Hebrew on the Short Treatise , along with a Hebrew translation by Rachel Hollander-Steingart, can be found in Ma'amar qatsar 'al Elohim, ha-adam, ve-oshero , edited by Joseph Ben Shlomo Jerusalem, See also the important study of J.

Pines, vol. Indispensable collections of documents on Spinoza's life are I. A stimulating account of the social-political context of Spinoza's work is Lewis S. Main article: Tractatus Politicus. Pantheism [ edit ]. See also: Pantheism controversy. Other philosophical connections [ edit ]. Legacy [ edit ]. Modern era [ edit ]. Spinoza and Zionism [ edit ].

Reconsideration of Spinoza's expulsion [ edit ]. Memory and memorials [ edit ]. Depictions and influence in literature [ edit ]. Works [ edit ]. Original Editions [ edit ]. Contemporary Editions [ edit ]. See also [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Notes [ edit ]. His boyhood and early adult business name was "Bento", and his synagogue name was "Baruch", the Hebrew translation of "Bento", which means "blessed".

Citations [ edit ]. In Zalta, Edward N. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Collins English Dictionary. Retrieved 27 April Zalta, Edward N. World History Encyclopedia. Retrieved 9 September Retrieved 20 March The New York Times. Retrieved 8 September World in time of upheaval: Sources of enlightenment. Deseret News. Ethics , in Spinoza: Complete Works , trans.

I, Prop. XXXVI, Appendix: "[M]en think themselves free inasmuch as they are conscious of their volitions and desires, and never even dream, in their ignorance, of the causes which have disposed of them so to wish and desire. Retrieved 21 February Penguin Books. ISBN Retrieved 11 November Smith regarded as the most dangerous enemy of Christianity, and as he announced his conviction that it had gained the control of the schools, press and pulpit of the Old World [Europe], and was rapidly gaining the same control of the New [United States], his alarm and indignation sometimes rose to the eloquence of genuine passion.

Henry Smith, D. Retrieved 18 March Allanson, "Pantheism: Its Story and Significance", Dictionnaire Historique et Critique , vol. Libraire Desoer, Paris, , p. Wood and George Di Giovanni. Cambridge University Press, p. Allen, Max Muller. Kessinger Publishing, Meeting Duquette, David A. Hegel's History of Philosophy: New Interpretations.

SUNY Press. Archived from the original on 13 May Retrieved 2 May Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. OCLC Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Retrieved 19 May Archived from the original on 22 May RTL Nieuws. Retrieved 30 November Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Translated by Shirley, Samuel. The Jewish Quarterly Review.

ISSN See Smith, Steven B. What Kind of Jew Was Spinoza? See Novak, David , ed. The question is whether or not Spinoza is really the kind of precedent a secular Zionist like Ben-Gurion was hopefully looking for. The Contemporary Crisis in Western Civilization". Modern Judaism. It is the first inkling of unqualifiedly political Zionism.

Simon and Schuster. So why was he 'cancelled'? ABC News. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 7 October The Jewish Chronicle Online. Archived from the original on 22 January Retrieved 20 June Autobiography , vol. The Anthological Society. London-Chicago, , Chapters , p. On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany. Edited by Paul L.

James Cook University of North Queensland, , p. Borges Studies Online. Licata, "Spinoza e la cognitio universalis dell'ebraico. Demistificazione e speculazione grammaticale nel Compendio di grammatica ebraica", Giornale di Metafisica, 3 , pp. Sources [ edit ]. Adler, Jacob In Nadler, Steven ed. Spinoza and Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Attar, Samar The vital roots of European enlightenment: Ibn Tufayl's influence on modern Western thought. Lanham: Lexington Books. Bennett, Jonathan A Study of Spinoza's Ethics. Hackett Publishing Company. Buruma, Ian Spinoza: Freedom's Messiah. Yale University Press. Carlisle, Clare Spinoza's Religion. Princeton University Press. Curley, Edwin, ed.

The Collected Works of Spinoza, Volume 1. Penguin classics 1st ed. London: Penguin Books. Della Rocca, Michael New York: Routledge. Koistinen, Olli In Della Rocca, Michael ed. The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza. Cambridge: Oxford University Press. Gullan-Whur, Margaret Within Reason: A Life of Spinoza. Jonathan Cape. Israel, Jonathan Spinoza, Life and Legacy.

Oxford: Oxford University Press. Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, The solution to this predicament is an ancient one. Since we cannot control the objects that we tend to value and that we allow to influence our well-being, we ought instead to try to control our evaluations themselves and thereby minimize the sway that external objects and the passions have over us.

We can never eliminate the passive affects entirely. We are essentially a part of nature, and can never fully remove ourselves from the causal series that link us to external things. But we can, ultimately, counteract the passions, control them, and achieve a certain degree of relief from their turmoil. The path to restraining and moderating the affects is through virtue.

Spinoza is a psychological and ethical egoist. All beings naturally seek their own advantage—to preserve their own being—and it is right for them do so. This is what virtue consists in. Since we are thinking beings, endowed with intelligence and reason, what is to our greatest advantage is knowledge. Our virtue, therefore, consists in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding, of adequate ideas.

The best kind of knowledge is a purely intellectual intuition of the essences of things. They are apprehended, that is, in their conceptual and causal relationship to the universal essences thought and extension and the eternal laws of nature. But this is just to say that, ultimately, we strive for a knowledge of God. The concept of any body involves the concept of extension; and the concept of any idea or mind involves the concept of thought.

But thought and extension just are God's attributes. So the proper and adequate conception of any body or mind necessarily involves the concept or knowledge of God. Knowledge of God is, thus, the Mind's greatest good and its greatest virtue. What we see when we understand things through the third kind of knowledge, under the aspect of eternity and in relation to God, is the deterministic necessity of all things.

We see that all bodies and their states follow necessarily from the essence of matter and the universal laws of physics; and we see that all ideas, including all the properties of minds, follow necessarily from the essence of thought and its universal laws. This insight can only weaken the power that the passions have over us. We are no longer hopeful or fearful of what shall come to pass, and no longer anxious or despondent over our possessions.

We regard all things with equanimity, and we are not inordinately and irrationally affected in different ways by past, present or future events. The result is self-control and a calmness of mind. Our affects themselves can be understood in this way, which further diminishes their power over us. Spinoza's ethical theory is, to a certain degree, Stoic, and recalls the doctrines of thinkers such as Cicero and Seneca:.

The third kind of knowledge generates a love for its object, and in this love consists not joy, a passion, but blessedness itself. It is also our freedom and autonomy, as we approach the condition wherein what happens to us follows from our nature as a determinate and determined mode of one of God's attributes alone and not as a result of the ways external things affect us.

He also, despite the fundamental egoism, engages in behavior toward others that is typically regarded as "ethical", even altruistic. He takes care for the well-being and virtuous flourishing of other human beings. He does what he can through rational benevolence as opposed to pity or some other passion to insure that they, too, achieve relief from the disturbances of the passions through understanding, and thus that they become more like him and therefore most useful to him.

Moreover, the free person is not anxious about death. The free person neither hopes for any eternal, otherworldly rewards nor fears any eternal punishments. He knows that the soul is not immortal in any personal sense, but is endowed only with a certain kind of eternity. The more the mind consists of true and adequate ideas which are eternal , the more of it remains—within God's attribute of Thought—after the death of the body and the disappearance of that part of the mind that corresponds to the body's duration.

This understanding of his place in the natural scheme of things brings to the free individual true peace of mind. There are a number of social and political ramifications that follow from Spinoza's ethical doctrines of human action and well-being. Free human beings will be mutually beneficial and useful, and will be tolerant of the opinions and even the errors of others.

However, human beings do not generally live under the guidance of reason. The state or sovereign, therefore, is required in order to insure—not by reason, but by the threat of force—that individuals are protected from the unrestrained pursuit of self-interest on the part of other individuals. The ostensive aim of the Theological-Political Treatise TTP , widely vilified in its time, is to show that the freedom to philosophize can not only be granted without injury to piety and the peace of the Commonwealth, but that the peace of the Commonwealth and Piety are endangered by the suppression of this freedom.

But Spinoza's ultimate intention is reveal the truth about Scripture and religion, and thereby to undercut the political power exercised in modern states by religious authorities. He also defends, at least as a political ideal, the tolerant, secular, and democratic polity. A person guided by fear and hope, the main emotions in a life devoted to the pursuit of temporal advantages, turns, in the face of the vagaries of fortune, to behaviors calculated to secure the goods he desires.

Thus, we pray, worship, make votive offerings, sacrifice and engage in all the various rituals of popular religion. But the emotions are as fleeting as the objects that occasion them, and thus the superstitions grounded in those emotions subject to fluctuations. Ambitious and self-serving clergy do their best to stabilize this situation and give some permanence to those beliefs and behaviors.

Only then will we be able to delimit exactly what we need to do to show proper respect for God and obtain blessedness. This will reduce the sway that religious authorities have over our emotional, intellectual and physical lives, and reinstate a proper and healthy relationship between the state and religion. A close analysis of the Bible is particularly important for any argument that the freedom of philosophizing—essentially, freedom of thought and speech—is not prejudicial to piety.

Spinoza intends to show that in that moral message alone—and not in Scripture's words or history—lies the sacredness of what is otherwise merely a human document. Thus, philosophy and religion, reason and faith, inhabit two distinct and exclusive spheres, and neither should tread in the domain of the other. The freedom to philosophize and speculate can therefore be granted without any harm to true religion.

In fact, such freedom is essential to public peace and piety, since most civil disturbances arise from sectarian disputes. From a proper and informed reading of Scripture, a number of things become clear. First, the prophets were not men of exceptional intellectual talents—they were not, that is, naturally gifted philosophers—but simply very pious, even morally superior individuals endowed with vivid imaginations.

They were able to perceive God's revelation through their imaginative faculties via words or real or imaginary figures. This is what allowed them to apprehend that which lies beyond the boundary of the intellect. Moreover, the content of a prophecy varied according to the physical temperament, imaginative powers, and particular opinions or prejudices of the prophet.

It follows that prophecy, while it has its origins in the power of God—and in this respect it is, in Spinoza's metaphysical scheme, no different from any other natural event—does not provide privileged knowledge of natural or spiritual phenomena. The prophets are not necessarily to be trusted when it comes to matters of the intellect, on questions of philosophy, history or science; and their pronouncements set no parameters on what should or should not be believed about the natural world on the basis of our rational faculties.

The ancient Hebrews, in fact, did not surpass other nations in their wisdom or in their proximity to God. They were neither intellectually nor morally superior to other peoples. God or Nature gave them a set of laws and they obeyed those laws, with the natural result that their society was well-ordered and their autonomous government persisted for a long time.

Their election was thus a temporal and conditional one, and their kingdom is now long gone. Spinoza thereby rejects the particularism that many—including Amsterdam's Sephardic rabbis—insisted was essential to Judaism. True piety and blessedness are universal in their scope and accesssible to anyone, regardless of their confessional creed.

Central to Spinoza's analysis of the Jewish religion—although it is applicable to any religion whatsoever—is the distinction between the divine law and the ceremonial law. The law of God commands only the knowledge and love of God and the actions required for attaining that condition. Such love must arise not from fear of possible penalties or hope for any rewards, but solely from the goodness of its object.

The divine law does not demand any particular rites or ceremonies such as sacrifices or dietary restrictions or festival observances. The six hundred and thirteen precepts of the Torah have nothing to do with blessedness or virtue. They were directed only at the Hebrews so that they might govern themselves in an autonomous state.

David spinoza biography

The ceremonial laws helped preserve their kingdom and insure its prosperity, but were valid only as long as that political entity lasted. They are not binding on all Jews under all circumstances. They were, in fact, instituted by Moses for a purely practical reason: so that people might do their duty and not go their own way. This is true not just of the rites and practices of Judaism, but of the outer ceremonies of all religions.

None of these activities have anything to do with true happiness or piety. They serve only to control people's behavior and preserve a particular society. A similar practical function is served by stories of miracles. Scripture speaks in a language suited to affect the imagination of ordinary people and compel their obedience. Rather than appealing to the natural and real causes of all events, its authors sometimes narrate things in a way calculated to move people—particularly uneducated people—to devotion.

Every event, no matter how extraordinary, has a natural cause and explanation. This is simply a consequence of Spinoza's metaphysical doctrines. Miracles as traditionally conceived require a distinction between God and nature, something that Spinoza's philosophy rules out in principle. Moreover, nature's order is inviolable in so far as the sequence of events in nature is a necessary consequence of God's attributes.

By analyzing prophecy in terms of vividness of imagination, Jewish election as political fortune, the ceremonial law as a kind of social and political expediency, and the belief in miracles as an ignorance of nature's necessary causal operations, Spinoza naturalizes and, consequently, demystifies some of the fundamental elements of Judaism and other religions and undermines the foundations of their external, superstitious rites.

At the same time, he thereby reduces the fundamental doctrine of piety to a simple and universal formula, naturalistic in itself, involving love and knowledge. This process of naturalization achieves its stunning climax when Spinoza turns to consider the authorship and interpretation of the Bible itself. Spinoza's views on Scripture constitute, without question, the most radical theses of the Treatise , and explain why he was attacked with such vitriol by his contemporaries.

Others before Spinoza had suggested that Moses was not the author of the entire Pentateuch. But no one had taken that claim to the extreme limit that Spinoza did, arguing for it with such boldness and at such length. Nor had anyone before Spinoza been willing to draw from it the conclusions about the status, meaning and interpretation of Scripture that Spinoza drew.

Spinoza denied that Moses wrote all, or even most of the Torah. Moses did, to be sure, compose some books of history and of law; and remnants of those long lost books can be found in the Pentateuch. But the Torah as we have it, as well as as other books of the Hebrew Bible such as Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings were written neither by the individuals whose names they bear nor by any person appearing in them.

Spinoza believes that these were, in fact, all composed by a single historian living many generations after the events narrated, and that this was most likely Ezra. It was the post-exilic leader who took the many writings that had come down to him and began weaving them into a single but not seamless narrative. Ezra's work was later completed and supplemented by the editorial labors of others.

Canonization into Scripture occurred only in the second century BCE, when the Pharisees selected a number of texts from a multitude of others. Now in there was nothing novel in claiming that Moses did not write all of the Torah. Spinoza's most radical and innovative claim, in fact, was to argue that this holds great significance for how Scripture is to be read and interpreted.

He was dismayed by the way in which Scripture itself was worshipped, by the reverence accorded to the words on the page rather than to the message they conveyed. If the Bible is an historical i. Just as the knowledge of nature must be sought from nature alone, so must the knowledge of Scripture—an apprehension of its intended meaning—be sought from Scripture alone and through the appropriate exercise of rational inquiry.

This is the real word of God and the foundation of true piety, and it lies uncorrupted in a faulty, tampered and corrupt text. The lesson involves no metaphysical doctrines about God or nature, and requires no sophisticated training in philosophy. The object of Scripture is not to impart knowledge, but to compel obedience and regulate our conduct.

Spinoza claims, in fact, that a familiarity with Scripture is not even necessary for piety and blessedness, since its message can be known by our rational faculties alone, although with great difficulty for most people. This is the heart of Spinoza's case for toleration, for freedom of philosophizing and freedom of religious expression. By reducing the central message of Scripture—and the essential content of piety—to a simple moral maxim, one that is free of any superfluous speculative doctrines or ceremonial practices; and by freeing Scripture of the burden of having to communicate specific philosophical truths or of prescribing or proscribing a multitude of required behaviors, he has demonstrated both that philosophy is independent from religion and that the liberty of each individual to interpret religion as he wishes can be upheld without any detriment to piety.

Spinoza's account of religion has clear political ramifications. There had always been a quasi-political agenda behind his decision to write the Treatise , since his attack was directed at political meddling by religious authorities. But he also took the opportunity to give a more detailed and thorough presentation of a general theory of the state that is only sketchily present in the Ethics.

Such an examination of the true nature of political society is particularly important to his argument for intellectual and religious freedom, since he must show that such freedom is not only compatible with political well-being, but essential to it. Naturally, this is a rather insecure and dangerous condition under which to live. As rational creatures, we soon realize that we would be better off, still from a thoroughly egoistic perspective, coming to an agreement among ourselves to restrain our opposing desires and the unbounded pursuit of self-interest—in sum, that it would be in our greater self-interest to live under the law of reason rather than the law of nature.

We thus agree to hand over to a sovereign our natural right and power to do whatever we can to satisfy our interests. That sovereign—whether it be an individual in which case the resulting state is a monarchy , a small group of individuals an oligarchy or the body-politic as a whole a democracy —will be absolute and unrestrained in the scope of its powers.