Spinoza and Other Heretics:
Wyschogrod, Michael
SPINOZA AND OTHER HERETICS Vol. 1: The Marrano of Reason Vol 2: The Adventure of Immanence Yirmiyahu Yovel Princeton University Press, Vol. 1, $24.50,244 pp; Vol. 2, $29.50, 225pp.; set,...
...But loyalty to Jewish survival without good grounding is better than no loyalty at all.an no loyalty at all...
...Yovel embraces this thesis with great energy-After devoting the first volume of his study to Spinoza and his background, in the second volume Yovel deals with figures such as Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, all of whom he considers imma-nentist philosophers in the spirit of Spinoza...
...It would be desirable if Yovel's commitment to the survival of the Jewish people were better grounded theologically...
...We are dealing with people who were first Jews and then became Christians, thereby relativizing their Judaism...
...Some Marranos took their Christian faith quite seriously and had no intention of returning to Judaism...
...Spinoza's vision of a universal humanity seems to him a superior alternative and follows from his naturalistic and non-biblical premises...
...Yovel shares Spinoza's premises but not his conclusion...
...Modern Zionism, adds Yovel, "chose not to wait for transcendent or messianic redemption but to work for Jewish redemption within the course of secular history...
...At the center of Spinoza's vision, as Yovel sees it, is the rejection of a world beyond that of the nat-ural order...
...Others started out as believing Christians and only gradually decided to return to Judaism, often because they found themselves considered Jews by the larger society in spite of their baptism...
...Sometimes this went on for generations...
...set, $45...
...Michael Wyschogrod When the Amsterdam Jewish community excommunicated the twenty-four-year-old Baruch Spinoza in 1656, it referred to "the horrible heresies he practices" and "the awful deeds he performed...
...In short, by passing in and out of Judaism and Christianity, the Marranos found themselves distanced from both of these historical religions...
...Marranos were Jews in Spain and Portugal who had been forcibly converted to Christianity...
...What brought Spinoza to such a secular and naturalistic philosophy...
...The Amsterdam Jewish community was largely made up of Marranos who had escaped from Spain and Portugal for the freedom of Holland where they lost no time in reverting to their ancestral faith which, in any case, many had only shed externally...
...Yovel is a secular Jew who very much wants to maintain his Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist identities...
...He never quite tells us why...
...Zionism can be meaningful only if accepted as a development within secular history-and not as a mystical doctrine about an elect people led by God to its sacred land to the beat of the Messiah's drum...
...it is simply a given...
...Then many became Jews again, thereby relativizing their Christianity...
...Spinoza's imma-nentism identifies the totality of nature with God and rejects a doctrine of creation, relying exclusively on reason as a source of human knowledge...
...In recent years, considerable attention has been paid to the Marranos as pioneers of modernity...
...It is argued by Yovel and others that the Marrano experience predisposed many, including Spinoza, to a healthy dose of skepticism...
...Under the heading "Elements of Spinoza's Jewish Self-image," Yovel argues that in various ways Spinoza remained Jewish in a subjective sense...
...Though it is hard to reconcile with his naturalistic premises, it serves the cause of Jewish survival...
...Secular Israelis admire Spinoza who, according to Yovel, "took the first step in the eventual secularization of Jewish life by examining it empirically as a natural phenomenon subject solely to the forces of secular history...
...He argues that "Judaism today is determined by the way actual Jews live it, and not by any one compulsory model...
...Spinoza is more consistent than Yovel...
...And still others never took their baptism seriously and were only waiting for the first opportunity to return to Judaism without endangering their lives (baptized Jews who secretly practiced Judaism were often burned at the stake in Spain and Portugal...
...With belief in God's election of the Jewish people removed, Jewish survival cannot be a matter of ultimate concern...
...But this is entirely beside the point...
...According to Yirmiyahu Yovel, Spinoza was the philosopher of immanence...
...He is aware that traditionally Jewish identity was very closely linked to religion and he is therefore eager to obtain all the help he can get in legitimizing a Jewish identity without any religious commitments...
...Many of them practiced Christianity outwardly but continued to practice some form of Judaism secretly...
...When the Hebrew version of this work appeared in Israel several years ago, it quickly became a best seller...
...As parts of nature, human beings are fully subject to nature's laws and any doctrine of freedom is rejected if freedom is interpreted to conflict in any way with the rule of law in a determined universe...
...Unfortunately, we lack any further specification of what beliefs and practices the Amsterdam Ma'amad (Ruling Council) found so gravely objectionable as to warrant excommunication...
...According to this philosophy, the natural order is the only and overall horizon of being, it is the only source of value and normativity, and absorbing this recognition is prerequisite for whatever emancipation human beings can attain...
...Their immanentisms are not, of course, all alike and Yovel points out the similarities and differences between the immanentism of each and that of Spinoza...
...The will to Jewish national survival then takes its place among other nationalisms, most of which have not served humanity well in modern times...
...The survival of the Jewish people, particularly as a sovereign nation in its own homeland, is a matter of profound importance to him...
...Spinoza's loyalty was to reason and to a humanity without any artificial boundaries...
...It is here that we must distinguish between Yovel and Spinoza...
...But Spinoza was not shaping a secular Jewish identity, he was shaping a secular human identity...
...Yovel insists on emphasizing Spinoza's Marrano background...
...Even if Spinoza's Jewish background influenced him in various ways, he was not a Jew in the sense that the continuation of the Jewish people was a matter of importance for him...
...The Marrano situation was a complex one...
...It is not difficult to understand that such an experience would drive some to the safety of a secular, rational, and universal istic standpoint freed of the burdens of both Judaism and Christianity...
...The historical religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) posit not only a super-natural order, but divine revelation as a source of knowledge...
...Nevertheless, if Spinoza's views at age twenty-four were anything like the views he expressed in his writings later in life, the reason for the community's displeasure is not difficult to fathom...
Vol. 117 • April 1990 • No. 7
