Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Daniel B. Schwartz is assistant professor of history at George Washington University.

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"This is a spectacular book, deeply researched and brilliantly written, on a riveting subject--the historical reception of Spinoza from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Schwartz demonstrates his command of European philosophy, modern European Jewish history, Hebrew and Yiddish literature, and Zionist culture. A tour de force."--David Biale, University of California, Davis

"In this daring and outstanding book, Schwartz does a superb job of bringing Spinoza back to life in a number of diverse and intriguing historical contexts. A full-bodied cultural history, attentive to the various settings in which Spinoza was rediscovered and revivified, this is the most wide-ranging, historically grounded, and illuminating book that has been written on the subject."--David N. Myers, University of California, Los Angeles

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"This is a spectacular book, deeply researched and brilliantly written, on a riveting subject--the historical reception of Spinoza from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Schwartz demonstrates his command of European philosophy, modern European Jewish history, Hebrew and Yiddish literature, and Zionist culture. A tour de force."--David Biale, University of California, Davis

"In this daring and outstanding book, Schwartz does a superb job of bringing Spinoza back to life in a number of diverse and intriguing historical contexts. A full-bodied cultural history, attentive to the various settings in which Spinoza was rediscovered and revivified, this is the most wide-ranging, historically grounded, and illuminating book that has been written on the subject."--David N. Myers, University of California, Los Angeles

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The First Modern Jew

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

List of Illustrations................................................................................................................ixPreface and Acknowledgments..........................................................................................................xiNote on Translations and Romanization................................................................................................xviiIntroduction Spinoza's Jewish Modernities............................................................................................1Chapter 1: Ex- Jew, eternal Jew: Early Representations of the Jewish Spinoza.........................................................15Chapter 2: refining Spinoza: Moses Mendelssohn's Response to the Amsterdam Heretic...................................................35Chapter 3: The First Modern Jew: Berthold Auerbach's Spinoza and the Beginnings of an Image..........................................55Chapter 4: A Rebel against the Past, A Revealer of Secrets: Salomon Rubin and the East European Maskilic Spinoza.....................81Chapter 5: From the Heights of Mount Scopus: Yosef Klausner and the Zionist Rehabilitation of Spinoza................................113Chapter 6: Farewell, Spinoza: I.B. Singer and the Tragicomedy of the Jewish Spinozist................................................155Epilogue: Spinoza Redivivus in the Twenty-First Century..............................................................................189Notes................................................................................................................................203Bibliography.........................................................................................................................247Index................................................................................................................................265

Chapter One

Early Representations of the Jewish Spinoza

I.

The year 1670 had hardly begun before the first Latin edition of the Theological-Political Treatise appeared anonymously and under false imprint in the Dutch republic. And this brief for the "freedom to philosophize" had hardly begun to circulate before word spread of what one objector memorably dubbed the "liber pestilentissimus" (or most pestilent book). Here was a book that denied biblical prophecy was a source of truth, rejected miracles, read scripture as a human document, limited the role of religion to guaranteeing social obedience while relegating the pursuit of truth to philosophy, and argued for stripping religious communities of the right to coercive authority separate from the sovereign power. In short, here was a book that sought to displace once and for all organized religion as a bedrock of state and society.

It took all of four months for the first published reaction to appear—a tractlet by the Leipzig philosopher Jakob Thomasius, best known as Leibniz's teacher—blasting the "author afraid of the light" for purporting to support greater liberty in philosophy alone when in fact he sought anarchy in religion as well. Thomasius was genuinely ignorant of the man behind the Treatise; in this he seems to have been more the exception than the rule. "It is said that the author is a Jew by the name of Spinosa, who long ago was expelled from the synagogue on account of his monstrous opinions": so wrote the German professor of rhetoric J. G. Graevius to the twenty-five-year-old Leibniz in the spring of 1671. Leibniz made sure to echo these sentiments in a letter to the Jansenist Antoine Arnauld later that fall, even while simultaneously dashing off his first missive to the man he fawningly addressed as "Mr. Spinosa, celebrated doctor and profound philosopher."

This was only the beginning of a raucous reaction against Spinoza throughout the West. Amazingly, Western Europe continued to be beset by war, the early modern Dutch republic grew ever more religiously fragmented, yet in regard to the philosophy of Spinoza a remarkable ecumenism prevailed: He was vituperatively attacked on all sides. The barrage only intensified with the appearance in late 1677 of Spinoza's Opera posthuma [Posthumous Works], which contained the Ethics. Here the "hidden teaching" on which the "theological-political" critique of organized religion rested—the conflation of God and Nature—was made utterly manifest. Calvinist theologians of the Dutch Reformed Church instantly tried to have his work suppressed, branding the Treatise and later the Opera posthuma "as horrible and blasphemous as anything the world has ever seen." The states of Holland banned both works; the papacy added them to the Index of Forbidden Books. All told, by the end of the seventeenth century, state governments and churches throughout Europe had proscribed Spinoza's philosophy either officially or de facto. Meanwhile, Cartesians largely disowned him, fearful lest their efforts to wall off the new rationalist and mechanical science from fundamental dogmas of Christian faith be damaged by association with the unfettered "freedom to philosophize" sought by Spinoza. Protestant sects that on balance were more liberal than reformed Calvinism or Catholicism, including the Remonstrants, Mennonites, and Quakers, even the staunchly nonconformist Dutch Collegiants with whom Spinoza is believed to have affiliated, at least for a time—all these groups were in the main repelled by Spinoza's monism and determinism and were well-represented in the torrent of anti-Spinoza literature. No one could safely acknowledge any sympathy for Spinoza's ideas and maintain a reputation as a "respectable" thinker.

The criticism of Spinoza's thought went along with gibes against his name and character. Most famously, the Kiel theologian Christian Kortholt substituted "Maledictus" (the accursed one) for "Benedictus," a swap that became a favorite of Spinoza's many adversaries for the first century of his reception. The more common target of puns was the philosopher's surname Espinosa, which means "thorn" in Spanish. Spinoza was also labeled an "exotic animal," a "frivolous bird," even a sodomizer—the latter by a Dutch Collegiant no less. The worst came in 1702 in an anonymous thrashing of Spinoza that ended on this vivid note: "These are the horrid teachings, the repulsive errors, that this impudent Jewish philosopher (to put it nicely) has shit into the world." But the two words that were probably used to describe him most frequently could be found in the caption to a popular engraving of Spinoza from around 1700: Benedictus de Spinoza, Judaeus et Atheista. Benedictus de Spinoza, Jew and atheist.

Amid this spate of polemics and vulgarities, the Jews of Holland and Western Europe largely kept to the sidelines. They held their fire despite the singling out of Judaism for especially withering treatment in the Treatise. Spinoza's charges cut right to the heart of postbiblical Judaism. By interpreting the biblical concept of election as a doctrine referring solely to political and material prosperity, Spinoza dismissed one of the cornerstones of Judaism—the idea that even in exile, the Jews remained the "chosen people" of God. On similar grounds, he denied the...