PROP. LXVIII. If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.
Proof.—I call free him who is led solely by reason; he, therefore, who is born free, and who remains free, has only adequate ideas; therefore (IV. lxiv. Coroll.) he has no conception of evil, or consequently (good and evil being correlative) of good. Q.E.D.
Note.—It is evident, from IV. iv., that the hypothesis of this Proposition is false and inconceivable, except in so far as we look solely to the nature of man, or rather to God; not in so far as the latter is infinite, but only in so far as he is the cause of man's existence.
This, and other matters which we have already proved, seem to have been signified by Moses in the history of the first man. For (a) in that narrative no other power of God is conceived, save that whereby he created man, that is the power wherewith he provided (a*) solely for man's advantage; (b) it is stated that God forbade man, being free, to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and that, as soon as man should have eaten of it, he would straightway fear death rather than desire to live. Further, (c) it is written that when man had found a wife, who was in entire harmony with his nature, he knew that there could be nothing in nature which could be more useful to him; but that after he believed the beasts to be like himself, he straightway began to imitate their emotions (III. xxvii.), and to lose his freedom; (d) this freedom was afterwards recovered by the patriarchs, (d*) led by the spirit of Christ; that is, by the idea of God, whereon alone it depends, that man may be free, and desire for others the good which he desires for himself, as we have shown above (IV. xxxvii.).--Spinoza Ethics (Elwes translation) [letters added to facilitate discussion--ES].
As noted (recall and here), this is not the first time in the Ethics that Spinoza relates his own philosophy to the Hebrew Bible. So, the passage above is not just a passing remark. In the quoted passage Spinoza leaves aside his own methodology for the interpretation of the Bible and the non-trivial conclusions he has drawn from it in The Theological Political Treatise (hereafter TTP)For example, if we focus just on claims (a-a*) then we note that in TTP Spinoza denies both the traditional ascription to Moses of the authorship of the Pentateuch as well as the idea that Scripture makes claims about fundamental ontology/metaphysics. (Spinoza treats Scripture as a book with moral and political precepts.) In fact, while earlier in E2p7S, Spinoza presents his own metaphysics as a kind of emendation of Biblical clouded confusion, here Spinoza interprets the biblical narrative rather respectfully as a proto-contribution to philosophy/metaphysics: the power of God is accurately conceived. To be clear I am not claiming that Spinoza asserts (or thinks) that the early chapters of Genesis are philosophical. Rather, Spinoza asserts that his demonstrations [demonstravimus] vindicates what was apparently already adequately conceived [concipitur] in the scripture's narrative (which are a history [historia]). How any text can convey adequate ideas (or even only those that are morally certain [see TTP 2:6ff.] is not an easy matter in Spinoza, but I leave it aside here.
Now, one might think that Spinoza picks up the Creation story only on the sixth day (in (a*) Spinoza echoes Genesis 1.28-30). But his reference to "God's power" and his insistence that it is one suggests he picks up the narrative in the second sentence of Genesis. The Hebrew וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים is traditionally translated as "God's Spirit," but right at the start of the TTP, Spinoza had already argued that among many other possible meanings it could also mean "God's power, force," (TTP 1:37 [[III/26]--using Curley's translation for the TTP--ES]! It's this power that is is the cause of "man's existence." Human nature, or man's essence, is no other than this cause. (For the aficionados: this material connects to Spinoza's claims elsewhere in the Ethics about the identity of the Conatus doctrine, our essence, and God's power (see, e.g., e3p6dem.)
Thus, Spinoza removes the anthropomorphic features of the account of Genesis I and gives God's action in it an explanatory unity: one power is responsible for diverse effects. Strikingly and surprisingly enough given the polemics of the TTP, then, Spinoza deploys a Maimonidean strategy here in which the Biblical narrative is rationalized (see TTP 7:75ff].+ Because Spinoza refers back to earlier demonstrations (the "other matters which we have already demonstrated") the reader is thereby invited to impose Spinozistic principles (one thinks of Ep16 & E1p28) onto the rest of Biblical cosmogony. So, while the Ethics presents itself as more pious than the TTP (by accepting traditional authorship) and presents itself as merely a vindication of Scripture, it in effect only accepts Scriptural metaphysics and cosmogony if it confirms to Spinozistic philosophy. This is structurally analogous to the TTP's insistence that the divinity of Scripture is demonstrated from the fact that it teaches true morality (as established by philosophy/reason) [TTP 7:11 & 15:34]; that is scriptural teaching is subordinate to rational morality.
In the Ethics Spinoza violates his own method(s) for reading Scripture as proposed in TTP, even though he presupposes features of TTP in E4P68. (In this post I called attention to his treatment of God's spirit; earlier I suggested he relies on the TTP for the meaning of "spirit of Christ.") One may well wonder why he presents the Ethics as a kind of rational emendation of the Hebrew Bible and thinks it necessary to present key features of the Biblical narrative in a Spinozistic framework.
With that question in mind, I close with a remark on audience. In it is often noted that the Preface to the TTP claims that the book is not addressed to the common reader, but rather to philosophical readers, especially those hindered by the idea "that reason must be the handmaid of theology." They can be so hindered because they believe this themselves or because they happen to love in a polity where the rulers believe this. So, amongst its other features, the TTP is a book of emancipation. It is often assumed, by contrast, that the Ethics is a pure philosophical work (if not the epitome of rationalism). But this is not quite right. Here in the passages we have been discussing, Spinoza explicitly presupposes familiarity with Scripture and he seems to writing for readers that are eager to see it rationalized by philosophy. Or to end on a historical irony: in the eighteenth century (christian) Deists treated Spinoza as the key enemy because of his denial of Providence (see here for an excellent account by Colie [and also my piece]), but despite this non-trivial difference, there is a sense in which prepared the way for them.
+Omri Boehm has come to a similar conclusion in private correspondence. I thank Abe Stone for provocative comments.
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