[F]aith can be taken seriously as a condition of ethics. This, more than any other reason, is why Kant’s thought should be studied as an answer to Spinoza: no philosopher strived like Spinoza to reduce practical reason and faith to theoretical reasoning; indeed, this is why his geometrical metaphysics is called the Ethics, why Substance is dubbed “God.” Kant attempts to put that Spinozist picture on its head: neither practical reasoning nor faith are reducible to theoretical reasoning; ultimately, in fact, he would argue that theoretical reasoning is grounded in practical reason. (xxiii)
To understand Kant’s position as a genuine alternative to such [Nietzschean] ethics—and to be able to consider this Kantian alternative as a genuine possibility for us—we must be willing to take seriously the project of denying knowledge in making room for faith. Historically speaking, this means that we must come to terms with Kant’s answer to Spinoza and Spinozism. (xxvii)
Jacobi’s claim that Spinoza’s philosophy is the only possible one relies on his understanding of the PSR ; first, as the normative criterion of rationality; and second, as the “spirit of Spinozism.” Ex nihilo nihil fit—Jacobi argues that this principle entails both necessitarianism and pantheism. And, interestingly, he claims to have learned this lesson from Kant’s Beweisgrund. As we saw in Chapter 1, this isn’t, pace Beiser, merely a “tendentious” reading of Kant, who himself was aware of his Spinozist commitment....Accordingly, he thinks it would be vain to try to give a rational defense of freedom, morality, or faith, because such a defense is beforehand committed to the PSR and would fall back on fatalistic pantheism (201)
The big picture issue in Boehm's exciting book, Kant's Critique of Spinoza, is to show that Kant's regulative Spinozism, which makes room for rational faith, is the only alternative to ontological (or metaphysical) Spinozism, which itself is taken to lead to a kind of Nietzschean nihilism and fatalism.* In particular, while the book is constructed in terms of historical figures, the issues are still open: soft Kantianism is in full retreat in professional philosophy, and dogmatic realism is the new common sense, yet few thinkers have really confronted what this entails for a morality worth having without, it often seems, a kind of metaphysical special pleading. Boehm's book is, in part, intended to rethink what is at stake in the debate between regulative and metaphysical Spinozism. [This is the third piece on the book (see here and here); the series should also be read in light of my comments on the debate between Garber and Della Rocca on the status of the PSR.]
There are a number of signs throughout the book that Boehm understands this book as a kind of set-up for a further book (or series of books) in which Kantian rational faith is articulated and more fully defended. (To be sure, if metaphysical Spinozism is the only alternative, then Boehm offers a modal and a distinct normative argument against such Spinozism such that rational faith becomes the default position. In this post I won't do full justice to either of these arguments.) So, here I want to focus on his characterization of Spinoza and Spinozism.
In regulative Spinozism (that is the Critical, Kantian position) the PSR is a kind of epistemic imperative ("for every p that exists, we demand a reason why p exists") while the key maxim is (which is also the "essence of enlightenment") to "use one's own understanding--never to believe something I cannot myself understand." (182) By contrast, metaphysical Spinozism embraces an ontological commitment to the PSR: "for every p that exists, there is a reason why it exists," which itself -- from the Kantian position -- becomes caught up in a transcendental illusion (172). (In addition, positions that try to finesse the choice between the epistemic and metaphysical versions of the PSR or that accept the ontological version, but then add bells and whistles to avoid pure Spinozism, are taken to be fundamentally unstable. I am also ignoring issues about the role of infinity in this.)
So much for set-up.
Let's stipulate that Spinoza was a metaphysical Spinozist and that the PSR plays the roles assigned to it in Boehm's (Jacobi inspired) hands. This entails, and Boehm is right about this, that the ontological argument is both a central part of Spinozism and also defensible within it. (My old colleague Dan Schneider had already taught me a version of this, and I hope his version appears in print before long.) But Spinoza's philosophy also gets distorted from within the Kantian framework in at least two ways (I think the second is more subtle than the first, so be patient). The two may be connected, but I treat them separately. First, Spinoza's conception of freedom, which we can put in a slogan: acting from reason, is never really taken seriously by Boehm (here he follows the Jacobi-Lessing reading of Spinoza (see 201)). To be free is to act from knowledge (or adequate ideas or virtue, etc.). By this I do not mean that complete Spinozistic freedom is almost out of reach for ordinary mortals (who are always under the influence of passive affects) which may (in light of say, 'ought implies can') be thought to be a reductio of the Spinozist position; but rather that he treats Spinoza as a kind of combatibilist (x). To be sure, Spinoza is (probably) best understood as a compatibilist in the strict sense, but that does not really do justice to the Spinozist position (which in various ways he inherits from Descartes and other strands of Platonism) which is not in the business of defending freedom of the will, but rather another notion of freedom.
Boehm recognizes this, of course, and sets up the challenge to Spinozism as follows "idea x is adequate in mind y iff God's idea x is given in virtue of having y. When this is the case, mind y is not compelled into thinking by any external forces: it thinks only ideas that are contained within it, and in that sense, it is genuinely free. Let us grant that if the human mind can satisfy this criterion, man is free when conceiving an adequate idea." (136) Oddly, Boehm recognizes that this challenge can be met from within Spinoza's system for common notions (138-9), but insists (even though he grant's Spinoza's position of freedom is "coherent" (140)) this is not sufficient because circular and, then, turns the issue into a question to what degree Spinoza can offer a plausible account for the acquisition of "an adequate idea of the unconditionally existing substance." (139)
Now, the main reason I say that Boehm cannot take Spinoza's account of freedom seriously is that he does not scrutinize the merits of this (neo-Stoic) freedom from, say, the vantage point of morality or politics worth having. He also assumes that it leads to (a bad kind of) fatalism, even nihilism. (By contrast, and this is my minor reason, Boehm does not let Spinoza criticize the Kantian conception of freedom, even though Spinoza has resources to cast doubt on it.) But as Adam Smith notes in the context of a very critical analysis of Stoicism (which, I think Smith actually uses to discuss Spinozistic necessity, but that's for another occasion), the doctrine of necessity (or fate) need not lead to fatalism; for the Stoic philosophy had a "great influence upon the character and conduct of its followers, cannot be doubted; and that though it might sometimes incite them to unnecessary violence, its general tendency was to animate them to actions of the most heroic magnanimity and most extensive benevolence." That is to say, for true Spinozists, fatalism (or nihilism) does not follow (necessarily) from its doctrine of freedom in the right institutional and education context.
As an aside, Boehm cannot object to such a consequentialist justification of a philosophical doctrine because, in fact, Kant, too, appeals (in "Was Heist, sich im Denken orientieren") to the analysis of a doctrine's effects in terms of the worthiness of freedom (of thought). That worthiness is understood in terms of both a doctrine's likely consequences, by way of intellectual trickle down' on a larger public and it's impact on other intellectual currents of thought (see, especially, 221-2). So, the Spinozistic doctrine of freedom need not be justified in terms of an extra Spinozistic metaphysical principles if there is such a consequentialist justification. (This is, of course, not the only way to defend acting from reason, but it is one way that Kant is not allowed to block as such.)
Second, Spinozism is understood as hyper-rationalism. Fair enough. But it is worth noting that even in a Jacobi inspired hyper rationalistic Spinozism -- in which the metaphysical of the PSR does a lot of the intra-systemic work, and in which there is some ultimate ground [be it necessity, the ontological argument, causa sui, etc.] -- a key feature (as Noa Shein taught me) of Spinoza's system is overlooked: the role of feeling. Feeling is introduced in two axioms (four and five) at the start of Book 2 of the Ethics. (It is clear from the preface to part 5 of the Ethics, that whatever Spinoza means by feeling it is not the Cartesian version.) The most prominent use of feeling in the Ethics, is in the treatment of the Spinozist the mind's eternality (E5p23Scholium).
So, rather than treating Spinoza's anthropology as turning the best of us into a kind of cold, mechanical automaton under the guidance of the PSR, Spinoza insists that philosophy requires, axiomatically, feelings and relies on feeling for his most controversial doctrine. In particular, Spinozistic demonstrations must also be brought home: "the mind feels those things that it conceives in understanding...For the eyes of the mind. by which it sees and observes things, are the demonstrations themselves."
Now, from the vantage point of Jacobi (and Boehm's Kant) this may be thought an inconsistency in Spinoza (who is, then, a not quite pure metaphysical Spinozist). For, in Jacobi, feeling is paradigmatically something uncommunicable nor rationally supported (202). Unsurprisingly, Spinoza's use of the eternity of the mind is a quasi-mystical experiental doctrine that gets the name 'intellectual love of God.' That experience is, probably, not Kant's sublime, which justifies Kant's infinite unconditioned (99), but it belongs, shall we say, to the same species of experience. So, if Kantians can appeal to the feeling of the sublime, Spinozists can appeal to the felt intellectual love of God.
*There is a minor oddity in Boehm's book. In the preface, he recognizes that he shares with Leo Strauss an interest in nihilism's origins; Boehm and Strauss also happen to agree (although Boehm is not explicit about this agreement) that the fact/value distinction (as understood post Moore) is a problematic feature of the contemporary intellectual landscape (such that the problem of worldly meaning/teleology must appear unresolvable). Unusually among analytical philosophers, Boehm also speaks of admiringly of Strauss's work on Mendelssohn and the Pantheismusstreit, but Boehm seems to think that his own defense of rational faith is somehow extremely far removed from Strauss's position. But that is odd because it is the recognition by Strauss that Athens and Enlightenment are ultimately grounded in a form of faith, that takes itself to be uniquely rational, that makes Strauss think that the debate between Jerusalem and Athens can and must be re-opened. This is, of course, not Boehm's opinion, but he seems to miss that if his regulative Spinozism can defeat metaphysical Spinozism, the door to Strauss's position is also opened.
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