If someone has read the stories of Holy Scripture, and has had faith in it in every respect, and has nevertheless not attended to the lesson Scripture intends to teach with those stories, nor improved his life, it is just the same as if he had read the Koran, or the dramas of the Poets, or even the ordinary Chronicles, with the same attention as the multitude commonly give to these things. On the other hand, as we have said, someone who is completely unfamiliar with these stories, and nevertheless has salutary opinions and a true and rational way of living, is absolutely blessed and really has the Spirit of Christ in him [et nihilominus salutares habet opiniones, veramque vivendi rationem, is absolute beatus est, et revera Christi Spiritum in se habet.].--Spinoza, Theological Political Treatise [Hereafter TTP], 5:46 [[III/79] (translated by E. Curley slightly adjusted).
Afterwards this freedom was recovered by the patriarchs, guided by the Spirit of Christ, that is, by the idea of God, on which alone it depends that man should be free, and desire for other men the good he desires for himself (as we have demonstrated above, by E4p37).--Ethics 4, p68S [translated by E. Curley]
In his Ethics, Spinoza glosses "Spirit of Christ" as "the idea of God" (E468S); because this claim is uninformative, last week I asserted that Spinoza presupposes knowledge of TTP here. For, the TTP makes clear that to possess the "Spirit of Christ" it is sufficient to have the right opinions and a rational manner of living. Crucially, in order to posses it one need not have been exposed to the Gospel. This much is obvious from TTP. And this is why in the Ethics, he can claim about the Patriarchs that they possessed the Spirit of Christ even though they would have lived prior to Christ. More striking the wording in the TTP entails that one can have this Spirit of Christ without knowledge of philosophy. For, it it is said to involve merely "salutary opinions." This is not to deny that a philosophical life or knowledge can also generate, perhaps more secure, blessedness (plenty of passages in both Ethics and TTP suggest that, too).
That one can have a true and rational way of living without knowledge of Scripture would have struck Spinoza's readers as shocking (which is, perhaps, why Spinoza calls it the "Spirit of Christ"--to lessen the shock). It generated a famous controversy, associated with Bayle's name, if a society of atheists is possible. Voltaire answered in the affirmative treating the Senate of Rome on the precipice of the Republic's collapse as an exemplar, but with a sneer to Spinoza's denial of final causes ("Some geometers who are not philosophers have rejected final causes"), thought it pernicious.*
Moreover, as suggested above, TTP's wording implies that one can have a true and rational manner of living without philosophy. It is, in fact, an innate capability. (Here's how chapter four of the TTP is summarized: the "divine law which renders men truly blessed and teaches true life is universal to all men...we must think that it is innate to, and as it were, written in the human mind.") So, in the Ethics, Spinoza claims that the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) were free in virtue of their desire for other men the good that they desire for themselves. That is to say, according to Spinoza the Patriarchs were free because they lived according to moral norms in which they see themselves as no better than others. (I return to this below.) I almost wrote 'according to moral law,' but in the TTP Spinoza associates a universal moral law with Christ (TTP 5:9 [III/71]) and Christianity (12:24 [III/163]), although he credits Isaiah 1:10-17 with formulating it first (TTP 5:4 [III/69]).
An impatient reader may well think that I am ignoring the most important feature of Spinoza's treatment of Adam. For, Spinoza is re-interpreting original sin:
God prohibited a free man from eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and that as soon as he should eat of it, he would immediately fear of death, rather than desiring to live; and then, that, the having having found a wife who agreed completely with his nature, he knew that there could be nothing in Nature more useful to him than she was; but that after he believed the lower animals to be like himself, he immediately began to imitate their affects (see IIIP27) and to loose his freedom. (E4p68s)
This is complicated passage (recall). In Hasana Sharp's felicitous phrase, it's "an unusual version of the story in which neither Eve nor a deceitful animal seems to do anything." (Sharp's treatment is worth reading.) Unlike Hobbes in Leviathan, who gives Eve a starring role and in his re-telling focuses on the nature of dominion (recall), Spinoza focuses on the nature of freedom.* To simplify: according to Spinoza freedom consists in having the right comportment toward life, that is, one that is purely life-affirming (and has no space for death). Counterfactually, it would entail that one is 'led by reason alone,' that is, one would not discern any limitation in nature and in one's own life. If mortality is a mere limitation and incompatible with our true nature, that is, one's conatus (E3p4-8), then, indeed, there would be no space for the contemplation of death in a free man's life.
On Spinoza's re-interpretation of Scripture, it teaches that the Adam and Eve's way of living in the Garden of Eden was life-affirming and mutually beneficial ("nothing more useful"), that is, according to a moral norm, even though it did not require having a concept of good and evil. But contrary to the Augustinian interpretation, Spinoza allows that man's nature is not so corrupt as to prevent (the recovery of) freedom by mortals.
One may still wonder why the Patriarchs are held up as explicit exemplars of free men. Part of the answer is suggested by the fact that at least in four of the scholia of the Ethics, Spinoza treats his philosophy as an emendation or purification of Scripture; as evidence I can point to, in addition to Ep4P68s, E2p7S, E4P54S, and e5p36S. In that last proposition, Spinoza informs the reader that in the Ethics, blessedness, salvation, and freedom all mean the same thing and consist "in a constant and eternal love of God, or in God's love for men. And this love, or blessedness, is called glory in the Sacred Scriptures." (E5p35S) Another part of the answer is the Patriarchs' lack of philosophical knowledge; as Spinoza writes about Scripture's presentation of the Patriarchs, "they did not know any attribute of God which explains his absolute essence." (TTP 13:13-15; [III/169]) And, so (again), according to the reading of Spinoza proposed here, freedom (blessedness, etc.) need not presuppose philosophy.+
This is not to deny that Spinoza argues that in a philosophical or wise person, freedom is most stable and durable. But it is rarely remarked, I think, that philosophy's arch-rationalist, Spinoza, anticipates those (e.g. Hume and Smith) that philosophy is dispensable while a free and moral life remains possible.
*He also treats Adam's belief in human similarity with animals and the subsequent imitation of animal affects as the source of un-freedom. Rather than positing natural sympathy with animal1s, Spinoza insists we first need the right (well, according to him wrong) beliefs/or commitments to be able to do so
+A further reason may be in the Patriarchs' rejection of human sacrifice.
This is an interesting follow up on your previous post in line with this issue and along with the other posts you have made on Spinoza. It reminds me of Issac Ibn Latif's Sha'ar ha-Shamayim. In it he separates between a level of speculation and a level of true tradition. Eliot Wolfson in Linear Circularity and Kabbalistic Temporality partially explores his claims. Your reading of Spinoza seems to a little bit similar except unlike Ibn Latif's timelessness as strict necessity of representation that is dependent on time, here it is the necessity of the representation of emancipation. Both acquire what seems to be an atemporal function and exist in relation to discursive relations with others but both are seen as verdical.
Posted by: Aaron Alvarez | 01/20/2015 at 10:43 PM