HC1320

1
HC1320

• Secularization II

2
Philip II of Spain 1527-1598

• Marrano (Used as a disparaging term for a
  Converso.Spanish, pig, Marrano (from the Jewish
  prohibition against eating pork), probably from
  Arabic mah?ram, something forbidden, from
  h?arama, to forbid. )
• "statutes of blood purity" limpieza de sangre
• "All the heresies which have occurred in Germany
  and France have been sown by descendants of Jews,
  as we have seen daily in Spain."i i.
  Quoted in Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity
  (New York Atheneum, 1977) 307.

3
Baruch Spinoza 1632-1677

• de Espinoza
• Manasseh ben Israel 1604-1657
• Sephardim (Ashkenazi)
• Maimonides 1135-1205
• Kabala
• Colligians
• Mennonite
• Johan de Witt Councillor Pensionary 1653-1672
• Jodenbort
• Franciscus van den Ende d. 1674

4
Ruling Council (Maamed)

• "By decrees of the Angels and the words of the
  Saints we ban, cut off, curse and anathematize
  Baruch de Espinoza. . .with all the curses
  written in the Torah Ley Cursed be he by day
  and cursed by night, cursed in his lying down and
  cursed in his waking up, cursed in his going
  forth and cursed in his coming in and may the
  Lord's wrath and zeal burn upon him. .
  ."i i. Quoted in Yovel, Spinoza and Other
  Heretics, I 3.

5

• Rijnsburg
• Voorburg
• Descartes Principles of Philosophy 1663
• Hague
• Ethics

6

• O were all humans wise
• And would they also be well
• The earth would be a paradise
• Now it's mostly a hell.i
• i. Quoted in Joseph Dunner, Baruch Spinoza
  and Western Democracy (New York Philosophical
  Library, 1955) 15.

7
Terms

• fluctuatio animi vacillation of fear and hope
• Superstition
• God "has written his decrees not in man's mind
  but in the entrails of beasts, or that by divine
  inspiration and instigation these decrees are
  foretold by fools, madmen or birds" (Preface,
  50).i i. All page references in the text
  refer to Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus
  Theologico-Politicus, tr. Samuel Shirley intro.
  Brad S. Gregory (Leiden E.J. Brill, 1989
• Vana religio a religion of outward forms
• Religio catholica true religion

• ).

8

• "love, joy, peace, temperance, and honest dealing
  with all men" (Preface 52)
• We see nearly all men parade their own ideas as
  God's Word, their chief aim being to compel
  others to think as they do, while using religion
  as a pretext. We see, I say, that the chief
  concern of theologians on the whole has been to
  extort from Holy Scripture their own arbitrarily
  invented ideas, from which they claim divine
  authority. In no other field do they display
  less scruple. . .than in the interpretation of
  Scripture. . .(chap. vii 141).
• "the point of issue is merely the meaning of the
  texts, not their truth" (chap. vii 143)

9
Truth vs. Meaning

• Truth refers to matters of universal significance
  that reason is able to discern regardless of time
  and place.
• Meaning refers to the cultural expressions and
  artifacts of specific peoples bound to time and
  place.

10
The Jews

• the Jews never make mention of intermediate or
  particular causes nor pay any heed to them, but
  to serve religion and piety or, as it is commonly
  called, devoutness, they refer everything to God.
  For example, if they make money by some
  transaction, they say it has come to them from
  God if it happens that they desire something,
  they say that God has so disposed their hearts
  and if some thought enters their heads, they say
  that God has told them this. (chap. i 60f.)

11

• Language Study.
• Critical attention to contradictory and obscure
  pronouncements.
• I call passages clear or obscure according as
  their meaning is inferred easily or with
  difficulty in relation to the context, not
  according as their truth is perceived easily or
  the reverse by reason. We are at work not on the
  truth of passages, but solely on their meaning. .
  .in order not to confound the meaning of a
  passage with its truth, we must examine it solely
  by means of the signification of the words, or by
  a reason acknowledging no foundation but
  Scripture.
• Examine circumstances of each book.
• such a history should relate the environment
  of all the prophetic books extant that is, the
  life, the conduct, and the studies of the author
  of each book, who he was, what was the occasion,
  and the epoch of his writing, whom did he write
  for, and in what language.
• chap. vii

12
True Virtue

• "a simple conception of the divine mind as
  revealed to the prophets and that is -- to obey
  God with all one's heart by practicing justice
  and charity. . ." (Preface 55)
• Spinozas definition of true virtue echoes
  nothing less than Christ's summary of faith upon
  which "depend all the law and the prophets" (Mt.
  22.27-40). It also calls to mind the schma
  (Deut.6.4-5) and the injunction to serve the
  neighbor (Lev. 19.18), the latter passage being
  the most common summary of the Torah made by the
  rabbis

13
Critical Principle

• "Everyone should be allowed freedom of judgment
  and the right to interpret the basic tenets of
  his faith as he thinks fit, and that the moral
  value of a man's creed should be judged only from
  his works" (Preface 55).

14
Political Philosophy

• Democracy is the proper governing vehicle for
  recognizing the radical pluralism of the human
  condition. There is no standpoint beyond
  competing claims of individuals and factions
  striving to exist and exercise power. As such,
  democracy is a political articulation of the
  structure of reality because reality itself is
  characterized by a natural heterogeneity of
  individual attributes. These form one overall
  system or "substance" which Spinoza calls "God."
  God, for Spinoza is identical with all there is.
  God, in other words, is the sum of immanent
  reality.

15
Historical-Critical Method

• First, the Bible is treated like any other text.
  It is shorn of a priori religious authority.
• The Bible must be understood in its own sphere
  apart from the use made of it by synagogue and
  church. Research into biblical meaning is pursued
  ut si Deus non daretur -- as if there were no
  God.
• The meaning of the Bible must fit the experience
  of reality as we know it. Its accessibility is
  determined by its correspondence to the
  "everyday" of human life, particularly its moral
  sensibility.
• Only an educated elite that is fit to judge what
  is and what is not reasonable. The true
  exposition of the Bible is confined exclusively
  to the intellectual class in society, not the
  masses. The masses will continue to be driven by
  their passions.

16
Pierre Bayle 1647-1706
17
Hermann Samuel Reimarus1694-1768

• it is certain.. .no book, no history in the world
  were so full of contradictions, and therein the
  name of God so often and shamefully misused
  Since all the persons who are cited here as men
  of God, their sum total, give sheer offense,
  annoyance and aversion to a soul which loves
  honor and virtue. In the whole series of this
  history one finds neither patriarchs, judges and
  kings, nor priests and prophets, whose real and
  earnest purpose had been to disseminate a true
  knowledge of God, virtue and piety among men to
  say nothing of the fact that one could encounter
  in it one single great, noble act useful to all.
  It consists of a weaving of sheer stupidities,
  shameful deeds, deceptions, and horrors, for
  which clearly selfishness and lust for power were
  the stimuli.i
• i... Hermann Samuel Reimarus, Apologie oder
  Schutzschrift fuer die vernuenftigen verehrer
  Gottes (Frankfurt Joachim-Jungius-Gesellschaft
  der Wissenschaften Hamburg, 1972) 671-674, 678f.

18
There is a clear contradiction between the
disciples' constant hope for a temporal
redemption, for an earthly empire, and such
speeches of Jesus as indicate a spiritually
suffering Redeemer. . .If he had wanted to rid
ideas of temporal honor and power totally from
their minds, why then does he promise them they
should have such a share in his kingdom?. . .The
shattered hope in an earthly kingdom which no
longer found nourishment after the crucifixion
birthed the new system of the apostles. .
.i i... Ibid. 141-142.
19
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing1729-1781

• Accidental truths of history can never become
  the proof of necessary truths of reason
• On the Proof of the Spirit and of Power 1777
• Revelation gives nothing to the human species,
  which the human reason left to itself might not
  attain only it has given, and still gives to it,
  the most important of these things earlier.
• The Education of the Human Race 1778

20
Immanuel Kant 1724-1804
21
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749-1832

• I pay homage to you? For what?
• Have you ever relieved
• The burdened mans anguish
• The frightened mans tears
• Was it not omnipotent Time
• That forged me into manhood
• And eternal Fate,
• My masters and yours?
• Prometheus 1773

22
Jean Jacques Rousseau 1712-1778

• Born in Geneva, Swiss Protestant
• Worked at odd jobs
• Kept by women
• Success as a writer after forty
• Thérése Levasseur
• First Discourse 1750
• Second Discourse 1755
• Social Contract 1762

23
First Discourse 1750

• Does moral progress coincide with scientific
  progress?
• Historical argument moral decadence accompanies
  cultural advance
• Essential argument arts and sciences create
  needs beyond natural needs
• Themes celebration of the simple life nature
  vs. artifice

24
Second Discourse 1755

• Question What is the origin of inequality among
  men?
• Inequality is not natural
• Primitive innocence
• The catastrophe society dominant and
  coercive
• The first man who, having enclosed off a piece of
  land, got the idea of saying "This is mine" and
  found people simple enough to believe him was the
  true founder of civil society. What crimes, what
  wars, what murders, what miseries and horrors
  would someone have spared the human race who,
  pulling out the stakes or filling in the ditch,
  had cried out to his fellows, "Stop listening to
  this imposter. (Second Discourse, part II)
• Unnatural relationships
• The physical is that general desire which
  inclines one sex to unite with the other the
  moral is what determines this desire and fixes it
  on a single object exclusively or which at least
  provides it with a greater degree of energy for
  that preferred object. Now, it is easy to see
  that the moral aspect of love is an artificial
  feeling, born from social habits and celebrated
  by women with a great deal of skill and care, in
  order to establish their empire and to make
  dominant the sex which should obey. (part I)
• Conscience General Will

25
Social Contract 1762

• All individual freedom given to state
• Private association illegitimate
• Society is grounded in general will

26
Emile (1762) tr. Allan Bloom (Basic Books, 1979)

• The more I observe the action and the reaction
  of the forces of nature acting on one another,
  the more I find that one must always go back from
  effects to effects to some will as the first
  cause. . .I believe therefore that there is a
  will that moves the universe and animates nature.
  This is my first dogma, or my first article of
  faith.
• 273
• If moved matter shows me a will, matter moved
  according to certain laws shows me an
  intelligence This is my second article of faith
• 275
• . . .it is in this precisely that my freedom
  consistsmy being able to will only what is
  suitable to me, or what I deem to be such without
  anything external to me determining me. . .The
  principle of every action is in the will of a
  free being. One cannot go back beyond that. It is
  not the word freedom which means nothing it is
  the word necessity. . .There is no true will
  without freedom. Man is therefore free in his
  actions and as such is animated by an immaterial
  substance. This is my third article of faith
• 281

27
Emile

• Man seek the author of evil no longer. It is
  yourself. No evil exists other than that which
  you do or suffer, and both come to you from
  yourself.
• 282
• Everything I sense to be good is good
  everything I sense to be bad is bad. The best of
  all casuists is the conscience and it is only
  when one haggles with it that one has recourse to
  the subtleties of reasoning. The first of all
  cares is the care for oneself. Nevertheless how
  many times does the inner voice tell us that, in
  doing good at anothers expense, we do wrong!
• 286
• There is in the depths of souls, then, an innate
  principle of justice and virtue according to
  which, in spite of our own maxims, we judge our
  actions and those of others as good or bad. It is
  this principle that I give the name conscience.
• 289

28
Locke, Letter on Toleration

• The commonwealth seems to me to be a society of
  men constituted only for the procuring,
  preserving, and advancing their own civil
  interests.
• Civil interests I call life, liberty, health,
  and indolency freedom from pain of body and
  the possession of outward things, such as money,
  lands, houses, furniture, and the like.
• It is the duty of the civil magistrate, by the
  impartial execution of equal laws, to secure unto
  all the people in general and to every one of his
  subjects in particular the just possession of
  these things belonging to this life.

29
Joseph Cropsey, Political Philosophy and the
Issues of Politics, 1977

• There is an opinion commonly found among us
  that our lives are excessively competitive. This
  is another way of saying that we are in the grip
  of invidiousness, the sign of egoism and thus of
  asociality. We are dissatisfied with ourselves
  because our regime and life are marked by private
  striving for the satisfaction of individual goals
  rather than seeking to attain our individual ends
  through the mediation of a perfectly social act
  of provision. Alienated from one another, we are
  alienated from ourselves, for it is contrary to
  the nature of humanity to live in a state of even
  latent uncooperativeness with the others.
• 9f.

30
Bourgeoisie

• . . .he is a man motivated by fear of violent
  death whose primary concern is self-preservation
  or, according to Lockes correction of Hobbes,
  comfortable self-preservation. Or, to describe
  the inner workings of his soul, he is the man
  who, when dealing with others, thinks only of
  himself, and on the other hand, in his
  understanding of himself, thinks only of others.
  He is a role-player
• Bloom, Introduction, Emile, 5

31
Rousseaus Politics

• Individual apart from state is not adult
• Claim of the state on the individual is unlimited
• Private association is a danger to society

32
Religion, considered in relation to society,
which is either general or particular, may also
be divided into two kinds the religion of man,
and that of the citizen. The first, which has
neither temples, nor altars, nor rites, and is
confined to the purely internal cult of the
supreme God and the eternal obligations of
morality, is the religion of the Gospel pure and
simple, the true theism, what may be called
natural divine right or law. The other, which is
codified in a single country, gives it its gods,
its own tutelary patrons it has its dogmas, its
rites, and its external cult prescribed by law
outside the single nation that follows it, all
the world is in its sight infidel, foreign and
barbarous the duties and rights of man extend
for it only as far as its own altars. Of this
kind were all the religions of early peoples,
which we may define as civil or positive divine
right or law. There is a third sort of religion
of a more singular kind, which gives men two
codes of legislation, two rulers, and two
countries, renders them subject to contradictory
duties, and makes it impossible for them to be
faithful both to religion and to citizenship.
Such are the religions of the Lamas and of the
Japanese, and such is Roman Christianity, which
may be called the religion of the priest. It
leads to a sort of mixed and anti-social code
which has no name. IV/8
33
. . .the religion of man or Christianity not
the Christianity of to-day, but that of the
Gospel, which is entirely different. By means of
this holy, sublime, and real religion all men,
being children of one God, recognise one another
as brothers, and the society that unites them is
not dissolved even at death. But this religion,
having no particular relation to the body
politic, leaves the laws in possession of the
force they have in themselves without making any
addition to it and thus one of the great bonds
that unite society considered in severally fails
to operate. Nay, more, so far from binding the
hearts of the citizens to the State, it has the
effect of taking them away from all earthly
things. I know of nothing more contrary to the
social spirit. Ibid.