Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity

by Rebecca Goldstein

  Superstitious persons, who know better how to rail at vice than how to teach virtue, and who strive not to guide men by reason, but so to restrain them that they would rather escape evil than love virtue, have no other aim but to make others as wretched as themselves. Wherefore it is nothing wonderful, if they be generally troublesome and odious to their fellow-man.25

  Here is what he holds is true—has to be true — even before he yet sees fully how it can be true. All facts have explanations, even if we are never able to gain access to all of the explanations. Despite our human limitations, we can know that reality is intelligible through and through. How could it be otherwise? It is an affront to reason to imagine that at the bottom of explanations lie truths that can’t be explained at all. One might as well admit at the beginning, then, that nothing at all is explained.

  The awful gnawing when explanations aren’t forthcoming, or come twisted and deformed from violent attempts to jam them into places that they don’t fit, is not a symptom of his mind’s unhealthiness, but rather its health. The feeling of pleasure, of expansiveness and strength, when an explanation falls into perfect place, is an indication of how our minds ought to work. The sheer pleasure in explanatory satisfaction answers to something deep and important in the world itself.

  The world is such that the gnawing can be quieted. The world itself is woven of explanations. It must be. The mistake of all the religions is to look outside the world for explanations of the world, rather than rethinking the world itself, so that it offers up its own explanations for itself. The world itself must be self-explanatory.

  The world itself is the causa sui.

  The essential thing is to expunge all aspects of the merely arbitrary. To accept arbitrariness is not just an affront to our reason, but to the infinite God. To attribute mere whim, sheer this-is-the-way-it-is-but-it-need-not-have-been-so explanations to the Infinite Intellect is blasphemy. The superstitions are themselves species of blasphemy. If the perfection of our mind consists in its containing perfect-fit explanations, then, too, the Infinite Intellect of God must contain only perfect-fit explanations. The world must somehow offer an explanation for itself; or otherwise we fall back on the explanatory hollowness of divine final causes. And when men couldn’t come up with final causes, when the world’s suffering seemed to contradict that there were any goals being realized by a good and powerful God, they laid down an axiom, that God’s judgments far transcend human understanding. Such a doctrine might well have sufficed to conceal the truth from the human race for all eternity, if mathematics had not furnished another standard of verity in considering solely the essence and properties of figures without regard to their final causes.26

  Mathematics provides the model for explanation. In mathematics we see that facts are so because they necessarily have to be so. We discover what things are in the course of proving them to be that way; the nature of the objects emerges clearly and distinctly only within the proofs. We only know what we have once we have proved it to be. And that is how it must be for all of reality. Since the world must offer an explanation for itself, we know that we have the world only when we see that it must of necessity be the world. Only proofs can reveal the world to us, the world in its self-explicating necessity. For the eyes of the mind whereby it sees and observes things are none other than proofs.27

  Descartes was impressed by the mathematical method because once something is mathematically proved we need never concern ourselves over the question of its truth again. The very possibility of doubt has been expelled. Our knowledge is secure. We know we are not duped. For Spinoza, such worries about doubting and being duped are beside the point. The mathematical method is essential because it alone can reveal necessary connections. Since the world itself is composed of necessary connections, the mathematical method — in other words, proofs — can alone reveal the world.

  He had not balked at challenging the chief rabbi of the community, and now he has no qualms in finding fault with the great Descartes. The great mathematician and philosopher failed to see that the sort of questions that Rabbi Aboab pondered in his kabbalistic confusions — Why does the world exist at all? How did finitude, the Sefirot, proceed from out of Infinity, the Ein Sof? How did the flow of time emerge from out of timeless eternity? — could be addressed through the method to be extracted from out of the mathematical model.

  Nor does Descartes offer us an answer to the anguished question of Spinoza’s community, of all Marranos and other martyrs, of whom men had provided too many examples: Wherein lies our salvation? What is the meaning of the awful suffering that we are made to go through within our lives? Shall this suffering itself redeem us?

  It was a sort of Cartesian kabbalism he was contemplating now: the Cartesian methodology applied to the fundamental questions of the kabbalah, and all of it laid out in the proofs that replicate something of the logical structure of reality.

  Ontology shifts in the process of explaining it. We uncover things of which no conception existed in the common-sense view of the world, the view which stops far short of truth, believing in facts simply as they are handed over to us by experience, without subjecting these facts to the processes of a priori reason, which alone can grasp necessity, and thus alone can grasp the true facts. This is why common language, which has grown out of experience, is inadequate to describe the true nature of the world, and why we must bend and stretch and strain almost to the point of inapplicability such words as “God” and “nature” in setting forth their truth.

  “I am aware that these terms are employed in senses somewhat different from those usually assigned,” he writes. “But my purpose is to explain, not the meaning of words, but the nature of things. I therefore make use of such terms, as may convey my meaning without any violent departure from their ordinary signification.”28

  For nature is nothing like what we experience. Nature consists in the whole infinite system of necessary connections that exist between things, which necessary connections are revealed only to pure reason. The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.29 The order and connection of ideas is provided by logic, which displays how one idea logically entails another. And the order and connection between things, too, is displayed by logic. When one thing causes another thing the conception of the thing logically entails the conception of the other. We don’t even have the conception of a thing unless we have the conception of the cause that logically entails it. The knowledge of an effect depends on and involves the knowledge of a cause.30

  Once he was thrown out of his community, his business venture with his brother had, of course, to end. Gabriel is no longer even allowed to speak with his elder brother and business partner. Spinoza has therefore replaced the entrepreneurship characteristic of one of the Portuguese Nation with lens-grinding. It is an occupation that suits him splendidly, not only bringing him into contact with the latest developments in the new mathematical sciences, but also allowing him the solitude he now requires in order to pursue the progress of his understanding. Now even his means of support separates him from the Jews, severs him from his past.

  He and his lathe move first to Rijnsburg, a little village well known for its tolerance, not far from Leiden, which has a university where he has attended some lectures on Cartesianism. Then he moves even farther away from Amsterdam, to Voorburg, a place slightly more cosmopolitan than the bucolic Rijnsburg, but still offering the peace and quiet he finds so essential, especially after the turmoil of La Nação, the human bondage of Amsterdam’s Jewry.

  Voorburg is just outside of The Hague, where the astronomer Christiaan Huygens lives. Christiaan’s father, who was Descartes’ friend, had called The Hague “a village that knows no equal.”

  Heinrich Oldenburg, originally from Germany but now residing in London, has assumed the office of the secretary of the Royal Society of London, and as such it is his happy obligation to become acquainted with the creative minds of Europe. On one of his trips to The Hague
he is persuaded to pay a visit to the banished Jew who lives not far away. Oldenburg forms a favorable impression, initiating an epistolary exchange which will connect Spinoza, via Oldenburg, to important thinkers and scientists throughout Europe.

  Spinoza’s house in Rijnsburg

  Oldenburg is certain, from his observations of the temperate man with whom he conversed in Voorburg, that the man cannot possibly be, as he is rumored to be, an atheist. For he lives a sober life, free from any trace of corruption or licentiousness, which could not be the case of one who was truly irreligious. Therefore, he is certain that there can be nothing dangerous to the spirit of Christianity in Spinoza’s philosophy, and urges him to publish his work for the benefit of all:

  I would by all means advise you not to begrudge to the learned those works in philosophy and theology, which you have composed with the talent that distinguishes you. Publish them, I beg you, whatever be the verdict of petty theologians. Your country is free; the course of philosophy should there be free also. Your own prudence will, doubtless, suggest to you, that your ideas and opinions should be put forth as quietly as possible. For the rest, commit the issue to fortune. Come then, good sir, cast away all fear of exciting against you the pigmies of our time. Long enough have we sacrificed to ignorance and pedantry. Let us spread the sails of true knowledge, and explore the recesses of nature more thoroughly than heretofore. Your meditations can, I take it, be printed in your country with impunity; nor need any scandal among the learned be dreaded because of them. If these be your patrons and supporters (and I warrant me you will find them so), why should you dread the carpings of ignorance? I will not let you go, my honoured friend, till I have gained my request; nor will I ever, so far as in me lies, allow thoughts of such importance as yours to rest in eternal silence.31

  As it turns out, though, Oldenburg will be deeply scandalized when Spinoza at last “commit[s] the issue to fortune” and publishes his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Spinoza’s views are less compatible with Christianity than Oldenburg had suspected. Their epistolary exchange — of such interest to Spinoza scholars — will suffer from the estrangement.

  One of Oldenburg’s letters to Spinoza makes reference to the fever of messianism that is sweeping through the body of Jewry (to use something of the language of old Aboab, who has now been made the chief rabbi of Amsterdam since the death of Morteira), in the person of Sabbatai Zevi, the self-proclaimed Messiah from Smyrna, Turkey.

  Spinoza’s workroom at Rijnsburg

  Having gone through the traditional training in Talmud, Sabbatai Zevi had turned at an early age to the study of the Zohar. His interpretation of the distinction between the Ein Sof, the core of Infinity that has removed Itself from the world and so lies beyond our knowledge, and the Sefirot, God’s manifestations in the world, differs somewhat from Ha-Ari’s, so that he is said by some to have carried Lurianic insight to its next stage. He is also reputed to be so serious an ascetic that none of his several marriages has ever been consummated. He is reported to go through long periods of sustained sorrow and racking anguish, when he cannot cease his weeping, to then emerge into an ecstasy of inspired religious frenzy, beholding visions and prophecies, going for days without the mortal need for sleep or any form of physical sustenance.32 Men can see that he is either madman or Messiah. Exigency and yearning dispose Jewish community after Jewish community toward the latter, and least likely, alternative.

  Oldenburg writes to ask Spinoza what he has heard of the phenomenon:

  Here there is a wide-spread rumor that the Israelites, who have been dispersed for more than two thousand years, are to return to their homeland. Few hereabout believe it, but many wish it. Do let your friend know what you hear about this matter, and what you think. … I am anxious to know what the Jews of Amsterdam have heard about it, and how they are affected by so momentous an announcement, which, if true, is likely to bring about a world crisis.33

  Jews across the Diaspora are convinced, Ashkenazic as well as Sephardic (though the latter count more heavily among the followers), that they are at last delivered. It is the conclusion that they had long been awaiting, the expectation of it passed along the generations, drawn from the suffering that also was passed along the generations. The Jewish massacres of the Chmielniki uprising — a Ukrainian peasant revolt that had unleashed a wave of atrocities that had decimated Ashkenazic Jewry — in addition to the relentless torments of the Inquisition to which Sephardic Jewry has been subjected, are seen now as signs that the messianic era is at last upon them.

  The Jews of Amsterdam have fallen under the spell of the self-proclaimed Messiah with special furor,34 so that normal life has been for them suspended, and they are reportedly forsaking their businesses to spend all day in the synagogue, praying and purifying, as if every day is Yom Kippur, their personal fates hanging in the balance as the God on High makes up His mind as to who shall be saved and who not.

  Shrewd Portuguese businessmen though they may be, they are selling off their properties at great losses. Abraham Pereira, one of the richest of Amsterdam’s Portuguese Jews, a merchant prince, has offered his entire fortune of several million to the Messiah, a fact of which he makes certain that the Messiah knows. Still the shrewd businessman, he wants to ensure a supernatural return for his outlay.35

  The Jews are even preparing to dig up the corpses in the cemetery in Ouderkerk so that they can transport them to Jerusalem, there to be resurrected. One of the rabbis of Venice, to whom the Amsterdam community had been wont to turn for halakhic guidance in their earlier days when they were less certain of themselves, writes to express his astonished disapproval that “the graves of them that sleep in the dust have been disturbed [contrary to Jewish Law] so as to remove the bones of the dead from their graves.”

  But the messianic enthusiasm of Rabbi Aboab is not to be dampened by any cool, rational Venetian doubt. His fervor for the approaching Messiah inspires him to write a new prayer to replace the prayer Jews recite each Sabbath and festival for the ruler of the land. Now the Jews of Amsterdam no longer offer their prayer for the Grand Pensionary of Holland but rather for “Our Lord the Great King Sabbatai Zevi, the Anointed of the Lord, the Messiah son of David, the Messiah King, the Messiah Redeemer, the Messiah Savior, our Messiah of Righteousness, the Anointed of the God of Jacob.”

  The news that the Messiah had been imprisoned in a fortress in Gallipoli by the Turkish sultan, who had become alarmed by the commotion among the Jews but still does not wish to make a martyr, does not diminish the flames of delusion but only feeds them. Letters arrive from Constantinople bringing the most fantastical news, quickly disseminated by word of mouth and printed pamphlets, and believed with kavana by Rabbi Aboab and his followers. Sabbatai had resurrected the dead and passed through the locked and barred doors of his prison, which opened of themselves. The iron chains with which his hands and feet were fettered had broken of themselves.

  Yes, of course, Spinoza has heard of how the Jews of Amsterdam are affected by, in Oldenburg’s words, “so momentous an announcement.” There is nothing in their reaction to surprise him: Partly from piety, partly for the sake of opposing those who cultivate the natural science, they prefer to remain in ignorance of natural causes, and are eager to hear only of what is least comprehensible to them and consequently evokes their greatest wonder. … This idea seems to have originated with the early Jews, in order to refute the beliefs of the Gentiles of their time who worshipped visible gods — the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, Water, Sky and so on — and to prove to them that these gods were weak and inconstant, or changeable and under the command of an invisible God, they boasted of their miracles, from which they further sought to prove that the whole of Nature was directed for their sole benefit by command of God whom they worshipped. This idea has found such favour with mankind that they have not ceased to this day to invent miracles with a view to convincing people that they are more beloved of God than others, and are the final causes of God’s creation and continuous dir
ections of the world.36

  In the summer of 1666, it became known in Amsterdam that many communities had sent emissaries, or at the very least letters of homage, to the new Messiah. One of the believers, Rabbi Isaac Nahar, who had been a fellow student of Spinoza’s in the Talmud Torah, has already set off to greet the Messiah, and a letter is sent to him to present to Sabbatai Zevi, signed by Chief Rabbi Aboab.37

  And how badly it all ends for them, this delirium of false salvation, when the news arrives that the Jews’ Messiah has not been walking through the doors of his prison but, quite the contrary, is at the mercy of his captors. Given the choice of martyrdom or conversion, he has donned the turban and become Azziz Mehemed Effendi. Some are so committed to their self-deception that they continue to believe in the face of their false Messiah’s apostasy. Indeed, they believe with even deeper faith, because with even more desperation.

  Knowing the Portuguese Nation of Amsterdam as he does, Spinoza could have easily deduced the madness that has descended upon them at the word that their Messiah has arrived. It is a madness as transcendent as their history. The fevered dream had always been of redemption. They were waiting — yearly, hourly, momentarily — for their Redeemer. Even in the pardise of Sepharad—the legend of which had grown with the years — the longing had been for Jerusalem. Judah Halevy, who had luxuriated in the cultural riches of Moorish Spain, had cried out in his poetry “to see the dust of the ruined shrine.” Could such ancient dreams be displaced by the pretty tulips of Amsterdam? Though he has long ceased to identify with the ongoing dramas of his overwrought former community, he knows these people far too intimately, knows their worldview from the inside, having once inhabited it himself, from boyhood up, not to be able to resist feeling compassion for their plight. I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.