Spinoza, Kaballah, and the Onset of Modernity

Spinoza, Kabbalah, and the Onset of Modernity

Baruch Spinoza left a deep and indelible mark on the history of ideas. At a time of deepest unrest, both philosophically and politically, he offered the world a cohesive, systematic answer to some of the most intractable philosophical problems of his or any age. In his Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata, better known as The Ethics, Spinoza presented a novel, geometrically axiomatized explication of the world in which we live. It is well known that Spinoza received a Jewish education as a young man, and was subsequently excommunicated from the Marrano Jewish community in Amsterdam, where he had once lived. Still, for a philosopher whose magnum opus focuses in large part on the nature of the divine, it seems only right to ponder what effect his early religious education may or may not have had on his philosophy. This essay will serve as a critical exegesis of The Ethics, juxtaposing it with Ha Zohar, The Book of Radiance, a central text in the tradition of mystical Judaism. In particular, it will focus on Part I of the The Ethics – that part ‘Concerning God.’ Specifically, it will explore the connection between the kabalistic notion of the ein sof and Spinoza’s concept of deus sive natura. Then, after showing how Spinozism shares its philosophical roots with Jewish thought, it will discuss how, by radically different means, they ultimately bear a very similar ethical fruit: a love of nature’s effulgence. What is called amor dei intellectualis in Spinoza, and cabod with the Maimonadean crowd – what I call basking in the glory and splendor of it all. Finally, it will explore the connection between the geometric method of The Ethics and the numerological and geometric construction of Ha Zohar. After exploring the ways in which Spinoza does borrow from his Jewish predecessors, it will be equally important to ask the ways in which he departs from this tradition. Overall, this textual analysis, in concert with a brief historical interlude, will help us to better understand the worldview of a deeply enigmatic thinker. The picture that will emerge from this essay is one is which Baruch Spinoza, though he ultimately departs from the Jewish philosophical tradition, owes a deep and lasting debt to the intellectual lineage from which he emerged.

Before setting about the task at hand – to show that Spinoza was actually influenced by his knowledge of The Radiance – a bit of history will be necessary to show that he did, in fact, have such knowledge. The kabbalah is not usually included in primary Judaic education. It would be surprising, then, and somewhat out of the ordinary, for Spinoza to have been acquainted with it when he received his schooling in the foundational texts of Judaism. Yet, there is evidence to suggest that this is exactly what happened. According to Stanislaus von Dunin-Burkowski, German Jesuit, and author of Der Junge de Spinoza, it was the young Spinoza’s Talmud teachers, Saul Levi Morteira and Manasseh ben Israel, who introduced him to the subject of Kabbalistic philosophy. They did so through the use of Alonzo Herrera’s Sha’ar Ha-Shamayim, or Gate of Heaven, which had been translated into Hebrew by 14th century Talmudic scholar Isaac Aboab, and is purported to have been one of their most favored textbooks.1 This assertion is buttressed by the degree to which Spinoza’s take on The Radiance, as expressed in his Ethics, reflects the interpretation laid out by Herrera and Aboab in Gate of Heaven. 2

Having established this historical linkage, it is almost time to move on to the heart of the matter, and examine what it is, exactly, that Spinoza took from The Radiance. First, though, a caveat – a bit of a lemma, I suppose, if you’ll allow the misappropriation of that term: The exegesis that follows is not intended to demean, diminish, or debase the importance and uniqueness of Spinoza as a scholar and historical figure. Rather, it is intended to extoll his contribution to the western philosophical tradition by contextualizing his contribution more accurately and framing his work as a bridge between a narrow rabbinical tradition and a wider, philosophical one.

The strongest pylon, then, of this bridge, and the essence of the association between Jewish thought and Spinozism, is the connectedness of two ideas: the ein sof, on the one hand, and deus sive natura on the other. The first of these is at the root of the kabbalah’s ontology; the second is at the root of Spinoza’s. Before we can understand the ways in which they mirror each other, however, we will need to understand their meanings independently of one another.

Ein sof translates to ‘infinite nothingness’ and is used in The Radiance to express the nature of the divine prior to its modification and manifestation in the universe as we experience it. The ein sof is generally understood as that singular substance which contains infinite properties. Emanating from this all-containing-void are the sephirot, which are taken to mean the divine attributes, and all manifestations of the divine essence. Existence itself is termed ohr ein sof, which can be translated as the light of infinite nothingness, or divine light.3 Maimonides expresses the crucial importance of this idea at the opening of the mishneh torah: “The foundation of all foundations, and the pillar of all wisdom is to know that there is God who brought into being all existence. All the beings of the heavens, and the earth, and what is between them came into existence only from the truth of God's being.”9 Deus sive natura, on the other hand, translates to ‘god or nature.’ Spinoza’s conception of god is that of the “eternal and infinite being, [which] acts by the same necessity as that whereby it exists.”4 While he does not employ the term which has come to express this conception, deus sive natura, until Part IV of The Ethics, he does spend most of the first part, ‘Concerning God,’ establishing and explaining his conception of the divine. Perhaps the most essential of the propositions put forward there is Prop. XVI which states that “From the necessity of the divine nature must follow an infinite number of things in infinite ways – that is, all things which fall within the sphere of infinite intellect.”5

Now, with a basic understanding of these concepts in place, we can move forward with their juxtaposition, and establish the connection between the two. It is important to recall at this point that the idea of the ein sof emerged at least 350 years before the idea of deus sive natura, and that Spinoza had likely been exposed to this idea from a young age.

In both ideas, the fundamental upshot is the same. Spinoza expresses this consequence in Proposition XIV, when he says: “Besides God, no substance can be granted or conceived.”6 He goes on to express this ramification with even greater force of clarity in Part II, when he states in his fourth proposition that “The idea of God, from which an infinite number of things follow in infinite ways, can only be one.”7 This idea stands at the root of Jewish mysticism, perhaps even at the root of Judaism itself, as it is expressed in the most sacred utterance of the religion, the shema: “Listen, Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one.” It is a virtual certitude that young Baruch, as part of a Jewish community, recited this affirmation upon waking each morning and before sleeping each night.

So, It is Part I of The Ethics that most clearly reflects the influence of Spinoza’s Jewish roots, with the latter parts expressing a modern philosophy capable of flowering in the same monistic soil. Michael Della Rocca expresses the importance of this metaphysical grounding in his book, Spinoza, when he asserts that “It cannot be overemphasized how the rest of Spinoza’s philosophy – his philosophy of mind, his epistemology, his psychology, his moral philosophy, his political philosophy, and his philosophy of religion – flows more or less directly from the metaphysical underpinnings in Part I of The Ethics”8

Still, the Jewishness of Spinoza’s philosophy goes beyond his core philosophy, as the even geometric method of The Ethics seems to reflect the numerological and geometric focus of rabbinic thought in the medieval epoch. The connection here is perhaps looser than those having to do with the actual content of Spinoza’s philosophy, but my claim is weaker, as well. I do not intend to suggest that the geometric method is anything but a Spinoza original. Geometric proof as a means of argument has existed since the Hellenic age – a fact that does not take much away from the novelty of Spinoza’s approach. The suggestion here, rather, is that Spinoza may have been inspired to frame his philosophy in geometric terms by the numerological and geometric principles of The Radiance.

The study of mystical Judaism is somewhat frequently referred to as the study of the sacred geometry. This is because The Radiance, Boon for the Befuddled, and other medieval rabbinic texts are laden with mathematical and geometric methodology of the sort that guides and pervades The Ethics. Spinoza himself admits that methodology is reflective of ideology: “Method is nothing but a reflexive knowledge, or an idea of an idea; and because there is no idea of an idea, unless there is first an idea, there will be no method unless there is first an idea.”13 While the rabbinic works in question are neither formally axiomatized nor presented in the form of proofs, as is the The Ethics, the do present a sort of proto-geometry. The Radiance follows the Pentateuch, taking each week’s portion of the torah as a sort of given, or axiom, and building from there. This line of inquiry doesn’t deserve much more of our time, but it does seem necessary, at least to mention.

Yet, it is not just a grounding in the singularity of God, or some certain mathematical leaninings that Spinoza has in common with his Jewish philosophical forbearers. In many ways, the endpoint of Spinoza’s Ethics is also presupposed by his Hebrew heritage. Proposition XXXVI of Part 5 asserts that:

The intellectual love of the mind towards God is that very love of God, whereby God loves himself, not in so far as he is infinite, but in so far as he can be explained through the essence of the human mind regarded under the form of eternity; in other words, the intellectual love of the mind towards God is part of the infinite love, wherewith God loves himself.10

This notion, referred to in the scholarship as amor dei intellectualis, is decidedly in line with one of the ultimate ethical dictums of the kabbalah: to bask in the kabod, or glory, of the divine light. The Radiance commands us to heal the world through the practice of Chesed, loving kindness, and Gevurah, strength of judgment. These, according to the geometry of the sephirot, combine to form Tiferes, or beauty. What emanates from tiferes is kabod. which is usually translated as beauty or glory, but is perhaps more accurately translated as the sublime. You might think that we’ve lost sight of Spinoza now, but he’s coming back with a vengeance. Warren Zev Harvey said it first, and best:

The most conspicuous example of Spinoza’s adopting a medieval philosophic interpretation of a Hebrew word comes in the climactic conclusion of the ethics. He affirms that the scriptural term “glory” (Hebrew: kabod) designates amor dei intellectualis or beautido. Like his interpretation of the tetragrammaton, his interpretation of kabod is borrowed from Ibn Ezra and Maimonedes.11

Spinoza begins with the metaphysical bedrock of the singular godhead, and ultimately arrives at the ethical high-water mark , or “human summum bonum,”12 of rejoicing in the sublime nature of creation, just like the Jewish philosophers who came before him.

What we have seen so far is that two of the crown jewels of Spinoza’s philosophy – the center of his metaphysics and the center of his ethics – are not quite as original as they might seem. They clearly still represent major additions to the western philosophical tradition, but it is important to remember what precipitated these contributions. The suggestion that the geometric method itself is rabbinically inspired would take a greater degree of exposition to fully support, but is interesting just the same. We have established, at least to some degree, the ways in which Spinoza’s early work was inspired by his knowledge of medieval Jewish thought. What remain to explore, and what are probably of greater importance in the long run, are the ways in which Spinoza’s philosophy is decided not Jewish. The quick answer here is something along the lines of ‘almost every way,’ but that answer will certainly not suffice. A better answer might be that Spinoza’s conception of the divine does differ from the Maimonidean one in at least one significant way. From the starting point of the ein sof, or deus sive natura, unfold rather distinct mythologies of creation. The Radiance suggests that the ein sof is prior to creation, or that creation is a vessel into which the divine energy pours, in order that it may know itself. Spinoza’s deus sive natura, on the other hand, is creation. It cannot be separated or teased apart from what exists.

A better answer still would be that Spinoza departs from the Jewish tradition most radically in his approach to scripture. Lenn E. Goodman discusses this departure in his essay What does Spinoza’s Philosophy Contribute to Jewish Philosophy:

“Spinoza had not the sympathy with the rabbinic or even the scriptural tradition fully to explore their normative potentials. Nor would he anchor his metaphysics or cosmology in scriptural authority. ‘High speculative thought, in my view,’ he wrote, ‘has nothing to do with Scripture. For my part, I have never learned, nor could I have learned, any of God’s eternal attributes from Holy Scripture’ (Ep. 21; G IV 133/4-7)”14

Unlike the kaballists and rabbis who preceded him, Spinoza chose to define his own axioms, rather than taking scripture as preordained and holy writ. This attitudinal shift is concomitant with the advent of modernity, and represents Spinoza’s greatest departure from his Jewish roots. Heidi Ravven sheds light on the ethical and political divergence that arises from this shift in her essay Spinoza’s Rupture with Tradition – His Hints of a Jewish Modernity:

In both the Ethics and the TTP Spinoza lays out a path of intellectual and moral development and education that leads from religious authority, internalized but backed by external political coercion, to rational self-determination and ethical autonomy. In the TTP, Spinoza finds the ideal use of the imagination in religion. Religion can legitimate and reinforce a democratic distribution of power and a just judicial system. It need not support only authoritarian powers.15

This, I would argue, is the essence of that deep and indelible mark that Spinoza left on the history of ideas. He liberated religious ideas from the authoritarian leanings of their originators, offering them to the people, encouraging self-determination and autonomy in the process. The sudden pulse of these ethics precipitated the advent of the modern epoch. It is no wonder the Jewish establishment of Amsterdam defamed Baruch as a heretic – he had chiseled away at the foundation of the power structure upon which their establishment was built. Yet, it is clear now that he did so in the service of those very principles for which the establishment supposedly stood. This is his genius. This is his mark on history.

This essay set out, not too many pages ago, to ask a very simple question: In what ways does Spinoza borrow from the rabbinic tradition, and in what ways does he depart from it? It would be of benefit now to take stock of those answers that have presented themselves here.

There are three main ways in which Spinoza carries the mantle of the Jewish thought in which he was steeped as a young man – his metaphysics, his method, and ethics. In terms of his metaphysics, there is a deep correspondence between deus sive natura and the ein sof. In terms of his method, the geometric and axiomatic tools of The Ethics may have been inspired by the so-called sacred geometry. In terms of his ethics, both Spinoza and the kaballists arrive at the same conception of the ultimate good: amor dei intellectualis, a love of the divine sublimity that is manifest in the cosmos. His departure, then, from the tradition, stems from a difference in his approach towards the scripture, and allows for a monumental shift in his political philosophy. This shift is best described as a move away from authoritarianism, towards the rational and ethical autonomy that is indicative, almost symptomatic, of the modern age.

It goes without saying that there is more to Spinoza than this essay has let on. The idea here was only to trace the lineage of a few of his most central ideas. That these ideas have Judaic origins is neither a revelation, nor is it a product of my own insight. Still, it is an important aspect of Spinoza’s thought – an aspect that is too-often overlooked in the contemporary discourse surrounding Spinoza’s works. Perhaps you will say that the claims here are motivated by some pathological need to claim him for the Jews, even when Baruch departed so visibly from the Jewish community. Perhaps this counter-claim contains some truth. Still, I contend that the reading presented here is fair and grounded, and that the origins of Modernity really are, in many ways, Jewish.

We are free to embrace the unity of the godhead, and exhibit a love for the glory and splendor of creation without having to sacrifice our right of self-determination. For this, I believe, we have Baruch Spinoza to thank, and for this I am deeply and eternally grateful. In closing then, I feel that it might be appropriate to affirm these principles with one final recitation of the shema: Hear, O Israel, the Lord, your God, the Lord is One

1-Dunin-Burkowski 2-kabalah denudate 3- kabbalah handbook 4 – Part 4, P. 4 5 – Part 1, Prop. XVI 6 – Part 1, Prop. XIV 7 – Part 2, Prop. IV 8 – Della Rocca, Spinoza, p. 38 9 – rambam, mishneh torah, beginning 10 – Part 5, Prop. XXXVI 11 – Warren Zev Harvey, Spinoza’s metaphysical Hebraism, paragraph 3 12 – Ravven and Goodman, Jewish Themes in Spinoza’s Philosophy, P. 8 13 - (TdIE, cf. 23; G II 15-16, 12/7) 14 – Lenn E. Goodman 15 – Ravven