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A Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean
Warren Harvey
Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 19, Number 2, April
1981,pp. 151-172 (Article)
Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI:
10.1353/hph.2008.0351
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A Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean
W A R R E N Z E V H A R V E Y
I
IN WHAT FOLLOWS, I try to sketch a portrait of Spinoza as a
Maimonidean, as the last major representative of a tradition that
mightily dominated Jewish phi- losophy for almost five centuries
following the appearance of the Guide o f the Perplexed. The
portrayal of Spinoza as a Maimonidean is admittedly controver-
sial. To be sure, it is well known that as a young man Spinoza had
been exposed to mediaeval Hebrew philosophic texts and that in
particular he had studied Maimonides. It is also well known that
one can rummage through Spinoza's writings and come up with a fair
amount of Maimonidean borrowings. Indeed, ever since the pioneering
researches of Manuel Jo~l more than a century ago, I much has been
written on Spinoza's relationship to the mediaeval Jewish phi-
losophers, the most prominent of whom was Maimonides. However, it
generally has not been held that there was a distinctive
Maimonidean influence on Spi- noza's philosophy.
To my knowledge, the only modern scholar to argue systematically
for a distinctive Maimonidean influence on Spinoza was Leon Roth in
his Spinoza, Descartes, and Maimonides. 2 In this incisive little
book, Roth presented Spinoz- ism as a Maimonidean critique of
Cartesianism and concluded: "Where Spinoza rejected the lead of
Descartes, he not only followed that of Maimonides, but based his
rejection on Maimonides' arguments, often, indeed, on his very
words . . . . Maimonides and Spinoza speak throughout with one
voice. ''3 The case for distinctive Maimonidean influence on
Spinoza also may be recon- structed out of various writings of the
eminent Maimonidean scholar Shlomo Pines. 4 While Roth and Pines
are the two scholars who have supplied the frame-
1 Spinozas theologisch-politischer Traktat auf seine Quellen
gepri~ft (Breslau, 1870); Zur Gene- sis der Lehre Spinozas
(Breslau, 1871); ef. his Don Chasdai Creskas'
religionsphilosophische Lehren (Breslau, 1866).
2 (Oxford, 1924; New York, 1963). See also his Spinoza (London,
1929, 1954), and his The Guide for the Perplexed: Moses Maimonides
(London, 1948). Cf. his contributions to Chronicon Spinoza- hum, I
(1921), pp. 278-282; II (1922), pp. 54-56; and his "Jewish Thought
in the Modern World," in E. R. Bevan and C. Singer, eds., The
Legacy oflsreal (Oxford, 1927, 1965), pp. 433-472.
3 pp. 143-144. 4 See his "Spinoza's Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus, Maimonides and Kant," in Scripta Hiero-
[151]
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152 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
work for the present portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean, the
notion of a distinctive Maimonidean influence on Spinoza also
appears occasionally in the writings of other scholars. Mention,
for example, may be made of Arthur Hy- man, who developed concisely
"some similarities in Maimonides' and Spinoza's philosophy of man
and in their philosophy of the state."5
The prevalent view, however, has been that there was no
distinctive Maimon- idean influence on Spinoza's philosophy.
Moreover, this view has been prevalent not only among the
generality of Spinoza scholars, but also among those scholars
who--not unlike Roth, Pines, and Hyman--came to Spinoza after
having studied the mediaeval Jewish philosophers. It was, indeed,
the view of the late Harry Austryn Wolfson, the distinguished
Harvard Hebraist and historian of philoso- phy, whose approach to
the problem of Spinoza's relationship to his mediaeval Jewish
sources is today doubtless the best known and the most
influential.
Wolfson, it is true, counted Maimonides, together with Aristotle
and Des- cartes, among the three philosophers who had "a dominant
influence upon the philosophic training of Spinoza a n d . . ,
guided him in the formation of his phi- losophy. ''6 However,
seeing mediaeval philosophy as "homogeneous, ''7 Wolf- son made it
a methodological rule n o t to distinguish between the influences
of individual mediaeval philosophers on Spinoza. s In discussing
Spinoza's sources, he accordingly treated Maimonides not as a
personality in his own fight, but as a representative of
homogeneous mediaeval philosophy. As Wolfson saw it, medi- aeval
philosophy was "the common philosophy of the three religions with
cog- nate Scriptures, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam." This
"triple scriptural reli- gious philosophy," according to his
theory, had been "ushered in" by Philo of Alexandria, who
revolutionized Greek philosophy by interpreting it in the light of
Scripture; and it was "ushered out" by Spinoza, "the last of the
mediaevals," who by his campaign to free philosophy from Scripture
became also "the first of
solymitana, XX (1968), pp. 3-54; his "A Note on Spinoza's
Conception of Human Freedom and of Good and Evil," in Spinoza, His
Life and Work (forthcoming); and cf. his "The Philosophic Sources
of The Guide of the Perplexed," in his English translation of the
Guide (Chicago, 1963), pp. lvii- cxxxiv (references to Spinoza on
pp. xcvi, xcviii, c).
s "Spinoza's Dogmas of Universal Faith in the Light of Their
Mediaeval Jewish Background," in A. Altmann, ed., Biblical and
Other Studies (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), pp. 183-195 (p. 186). Cf.
also, e.g., S. Rubin, Spinoza und Maimonides (Vienna, 1868); K.
Pearson, "Maimonides and Spi- noza," Mind, VIII, 29 (1883), pp.
338-353 (reprinted in his The Ethic of Freethought [London, 1888,
1901], pp. 125-142).
6 The Philosophy of Spinoza (Cambridge, Mass., 1934), I, p. 19.
' Religious Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), p. v; "Philo
Judaeus," in The Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (New York, 1967), VI, p. 155 (reprinted in his
Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, I [Cambridge,
Mass., 1973], p. 70). Wolfson held a much different position in his
early essay, "Maimonides and Haievi," Jewish Quarterly review,
n.s., II, 3 (1912), pp. 297-337 (reprinted in his Studies in the
History of Philosophy and Religion, II [Cambridge, Mass., 1977],
pp. 120-160).
s The Philosophy of Spinoza, I, pp. 14-18. "[The] passages
quoted [as sources of Spinoza] are only representative of common
views which were current in the philosophic literature of the past"
(p. 18). "To Spinoza these three literatures, Hebrew, Latin, and
Arabic, represented a common t r ad i t i on . . . [and] were in
fact one philosophy expressed in different languages, translatable
almost literally into one another" (ibid., p. 10). Cf. "Some
Guiding Principles in Determining Spinoza's Mediaeval Sources,"
Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s., XXVII, 4 (1937), pp. 333-348
(reprinted in Studies, II, pp. 577-592).
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MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 153
the moderns." In Wolfson's view, "the philosophy of S p i n o z
a . . . is primarily a criticism o f . . . this triple religious
philosophy," which is "properly to be called the Philonic
philosophy. ''9 According to Wolfson's approach, therefore, Spi-
noza's relationship to the mediaeval Jewish philosophers is not
qualitatively different from his relationship to the mediaeval
Christian and Muslim philoso- phers, although it is of course
quantitatively different. Owing to accidents of birth and
education, Spinoza had studied the mediaeval Jewish philosophers
more than he had studied the mediaeval Christian or Muslim
philosophers, but the Philonic philosophy he found in the former he
could as well have found in the latter. Similarly, according to
Wolfson's approach, Spinoza had studied Mai- monides more than he
had studied any other mediaeval Jewish philosopher simply because
of all mediaeval Jewish philosophic works Maimonides' Guide is "the
most excellent depository of mediaeval philosophic lore" and
contains "the most incisive analyses of philosophic problems, the
most complete summaries o f philosophic opinions, the clearest
definitions of terms, all these couched in happy and quotable
phrases. ''10 But, Wolfson insists, the Philonic philosophy Spinoza
found in Maimonides he could as well have found elsewhere.
Now, there is much to say for Wolfson's approach. It is evident
that mediae- val philosophy (or, if you will,, Philonic philosophy)
was indeed a "triple religious philosophy," that is, it was common
to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and not split neatly along
confessional lines. Thus, Maimonides' philosophic position was
closer to the Muslim Alfarabi's than to the Jewish Judah Halevi's,
and Aquinas's philosophic position was in turn closer to
Maimonides' than to Augustine's. But the very mention of such
disparate thinkers as Augustine, Alfarabi, Halevi, Mai- monides,
and Aquinas gives the lie to Wolfson's subthesis that mediaeval
philoso- phy was "homogeneous." Can it be, as Wolfson's approach
indicates, that there is no way to distinguish meaningfully between
Maimonides' influence on Spinoza and the influence of other
mediaeval philosophers on him? It goes without saying that
Wolfson's general thesis concerning a "triple religious philosophy"
ushered in by Philo and ushered out by Spinoza need not be any the
worse after that philosophy has been duly recognized as
heterogeneous.
The tendency to see Spinoza's mediaeval philosophic sources as
one homoge- neous block is by no means unique to Wolfson. It is,
for example, characteristic also of Leo Strauss, who, like Wolfson,
wrote significantly on both Maimonides and Spinoza. 11 In his
overarching concern to understand the conflict between religion and
philosophy ("Jerusalem and Athens"), Strauss tended to see all
"philosophy" from the Greeks until the rise of modern historicism
as fundamen- tally one and the same thing. Accordingly, he
explicitly criticized Roth's view of
9 Religious Philosophy, loc. cit.; "Philo Judaeus," Ioc. cit.;
Philo (Cambridge, Mass., 1947, 1968), II, pp. 445,457-460; The
Philosophy of Spinoza, I, pp. vii, 10.
1o The Philosophy of Spinoza, I, p. 14. t, See, e.g., his
Spinoza's Critique of Religion (New York, 1965; German original,
1930); his
Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, I11., 1952), chs. 3
and 5; and his "How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed,"
in Pines's translation of the Guide, pp. xi-lvi. Cf. his What is
Political Philosophy? (Glencoe, II1., 1959), p. 230: "Spinoza was
much more original.., than was Maimonides; but Maimonides was
nevertheless a deeper thinker than Spinoza."
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154 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
Spinoza's relationship to Maimonides. "Roth ," he contended,
"over-estimates the importance in intellectual history of Spinoza's
relationship to Maimonides, which is doubtless important in
Spinoza's philosophic development. Roth does not sufficiently take
into account that the theories regarding which Spinoza stands with
M a i m o n i d e s . . . are for the most part not peculiar to
Maimonides, but are the common property of the 'philosophers'. ''~z
Strauss, like Wolfson, was thus of the opinion that Spinoza was
critically influenced by his reading of Maimonides but that this
influence was not distinctively Maimonidean.
That there was no distinctive influence of Maimonides'
philosophy on Spi- noza was held also by Jacob Klatzkin, who, like
Wolfson, was a Hebraist and a savant in mediaeval Hebrew
philosophic literature and who is known to students of that
literature as the author of the four-volume Thesaurus
Philosopohicus lin- guae Hebraicae. z 3 Klatzkin set down his
thoughts on the relationship of Spinoza to Maimonides and to the
other mediaeval Jewish philosophers in his Hebrew book on Spinoza
~4 and in the preface to his still standard Hebrew translation of
Spinoza's Ethics. ~s Although he held that the mediaeval Jewish
philosophers, including Maimonides, did not appreciably influence
Spinoza's thought, he claimed that they did appreciably influence
his language. Indeed, it was his extra- ordinary argument that
since Spinoza's early exposure to philosophy was in Heb- rew, and
since he never properly mastered Latin, a Hebrew translation of the
Ethics not only should be expected to express Spinoza's thought
more accurately than the various German, French, or English
translations, but it should be ex- pec t ed -a t least in some
instances--to express it more accurately than Spinoza's Latin
itselfl. "There is necessarily an advantage to a Hebrew translation
[of the Ethics] over the translations in the languages of the
West," he wrote in the preface to his own Hebrew translation of the
Ethics. "Sometimes," he continued, "i t is even superior to the
Latin text, which is in this sense itself a translation." Klatz-
kin was making the bizarre claim that, in a certain sense, his
Hebrew translation is the original of the Ethics, and Spinoza's own
Latin a translation! Spinoza, as it were, thought his philosophy in
Hebrew, even when he wrote it in Latin: to translate the Ethics
into Hebrew, thus, is really to restore it into Hebrew. Not shying
from the implications of his claim, Klatzkin concluded that future
transla- tions of the Ethics into Western languages would have to
be made only after consultation of his Hebrew version! ~6 Be that
as it may, what follows from Klatz- kin's view is that the only
distinctive influence the Guide of the Perplexed had on Spinoza was
not that of Maimonides but that of Samuel ibn Tibbon, in whose
Hebrew translation from the Arabic Spinoza read the Guide.
Now, although Klatzkin has surely overstated his case, his
argument ought not to be dismissed out of hand. It should not
surprise us to find instances where
12 Spinoza's Critique, p. 297, n. 238. 13 Leipzig, 1928-1933. 14
Baruch Spinoza (Leipzig, 1923). ~5 Torat ha-Middot (Leipzig, 1924).
Cf. Rosenzweig's review of this translation in N. N. Glatzer,
ed., Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought (New York, 1953,
1961), pp. 263-71 (original in his Kleinere Schriften [Berlin,
1937], pp. 220--27).
16 Torat ha-Middot, pp. xvii-xx.
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MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 155
Spinoza's philosophic Latin is influenced by mediaeval
philosophic Hebrew, and perhaps in particular by that of Ibn
Tibbon's translation of the Guide. It might, however, be surprising
if a philosophic literature that left its imprint on Spi- noza's
language did not also leave an imprint on his philosophy.
No matter the enormous differences in their approaches, Klatzkin
and Wolf- son (and Strauss) ageed fully on two points: (1) the
mediaeval Hebrew philo- sophic literature in general, and
Maimonides in particular, exercised a significant formative
influence on Spinoza, but (2) it did not exercise a distinctive
influence on his philosophy. Moreover, I think that it is fair to
say that these two points are explicitly or implicitly accepted by
most Spinoza scholars today--by those who are familiar with the
mediaeval Hebrew philosophic tradition as well as by those who are
not. Yet how reasonable is the second point in the light of the
first? The question of Spinoza's relationship to the mediaeval
Jewish philoso- phers, and to Maimonides in particular, demands
further clarification.
The clarification of Spinoza's relationship to the mediaeval
Hebrew philo- sophic literature properly begins with the
clarification of his relationship to Mai- monides. Maimonides'
Guide of the Perplexed made such an impact on the medi- aeval
Hebrew philosophic literature that all subsequent mediaeval Jewish
philoso- phers philosophized under its influence, even when--like
Hasdai Crescas--they attacked it. Certainly it would make little
sense to try to ascertain the possible distinctive influence of
post-Maimonides Jewish philosophers such as Gersonides, Crescas, or
even the Renaissance Platonist Leone Ebreo on Spinoza without first
having clarified the Maimonidean influence on him, since much of
what can be found in Gersonides, Crescas, and Leone Ebreo is itself
Maimonidean.
In sketching the following portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean,
I obviously do not mean to deny that there are other no less
convincing portraits that may be sketched of him. However, I do
mean to show that fundamental elements of Maimonides' philosophy
recur as fundamental elements in Spinoza's.
II
At the conclusion of his Notes on the Guide of the Perplexed,
Leibniz re- marks: "Maimonides distinguishes exce l l en t ly . . ,
between intellect and imagina- tion. ''17 This distinction of
Maimonides' between intellect and imagination is a suitable place
for us to begin our discussion of Spinoza's Maimonideanism.
According to Maimonides, it is in virtue of the intellect alone
that we distin- guish between true and false, while it is in virtue
of the imagination alone that we fall into error. 18 Spinoza,
similarly, holds that it is in virtue of knowledge of the
i~ "Praeclare distinguit passim Maimonides inter intellectionem
et imaginationem" (Leibnitii Observationes a d . . . Doctor
perplexorum, published with a French translation in Louis Foucher
de Cariei, Leibniz, la philosophie juive et la Cabale [Paris,
1861], pp. 44-45 [English translation by L. E. Goodman, Journal of
Jewish Studies, XXXI (1980), p. 236]). Cf. Leibniz on Guide, 1, 47;
I, 71; I, 73, 10th; III, 15.
is Guide, I, 2, pp. 24-26; I, 73, 10th, pp. 209-211; II, 12, p.
280. Page references to the Guide are to the Pines translation,
cited in n. 4 above. In quotations, Pines' translation will
sometimes be modified. When the Guide is quoted in Hebrew, it will
be from the Samuel ibn Tibbon translation (from the original
Arabic) in which the Guide was usually studied by the mediaeval
Jewish philoso- phers, and in which it was studied by Spinoza.
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156 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
second and third kinds (i.e., ratio and scientia intuitiva)
alone that we distinguish between true and false, and that it is in
virtue of knowledge of the first kind (opinio vel imaginatio) alone
that we fall into error. ~9 By knowledge of true and false,
Maimonides and Spinoza both mean knowledge of what exists, and both
hold that a true idea (de'ah amittit = idea vera) is one that
corresponds with what exists, z~ Both also proclaim that God is
Truth. 21
The intellect, according to Maimonides, is man's "substantial
form, ''zz but it is also "the bond" between God and himfl 3 "the
divine intellect conjoined to him, ''z4 and thus man knows God by
means of the selfsame intellect by which God knows him. zs Spinoza,
similarly, writes: "The essence of man is constituted
~9 Ethics, II, 40-42. Translations from the Ethics will
generally be based on Elwes (New York, 1883; Dover ed., New York,
1951) and White-Stiding-Gutmann (Hafner ed., New York, 1949). Where
page and line references are given to any of Spinoza's writings,
the reference is to C. Gebhardt [G.], ed., Spinoza Opera, 4 vols.
(Heidelberg, 1925).
Spinoza's three kinds of knowledge seem to correspond to the
three kinds of knowledge indi- cated in Maimonides' distinction
betwen those who grope in the darkness, those whose darkness is
illumined by something like a polished stone, and those whose
darkness is illumined by lightning flashes (Guide. I, Introduction,
pp. 7-8); that is, between imaginative knowledge, intellectual
knowledge derived from demonstrations based on empirical data, and
intellectual knowledge by direct apprehension of the Active
Intellect; that is, between the vulgar, the scientist, and the pro-
phet. See Roth, Spinoza, Descartes, & Maimonides, pp. 129-134;
Pines, "The Philosophical Sources," pp. civ-cvi; idem, "The
Limitations of Human Knowledge according to AI-Farabi, ibn Bajja,
and Maimonides," in I. Twersky, ed., Studies in Medieval Jewish
History and Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1979), pp. 87-90; and Lawrence V. Berman, lbn Bdjl'ah and
Maimonides (Ph.D. dissertation, in Hebrew with English summary, The
Hebrew Univer- sity of Jerusalem, 1959), pp. 30--34. In Guide, I,
62, p. 154, the apprehension of the Active Intellect is identified
with divine science or metaphysics.
zo "[D]eviation from t r u t h . . , a belief about a thing
different from what it is" (Guide, I, 36, pp. 82-83); "false . . .
no existent corresponds to it [Io yishveh Io nims. a]" (I, 73,
10th, p. 209); el. I, 50, p. 49; I, 60, p. 146. Cf. Samuel ibn
Tibbon, "Glossary of Unfamiliar Tetras" (included in standard
Hebrew editions of the Guide), s . v . erect: "I t is said of ideas
[de'ot] and beliefs that they are true when their existent [nims.a]
outside the mind corresponds [shaveh] to what the mind believes of
them; and, in general, truth is that to which existence corresponds
[mah she-yishveh Io ha-me.si- 'ut] ." According to Spinoza, "A true
idea is related to a false idea as being [ens] to non-being
[non-ens]" (Ethics. If, 43, sch. [G., II, p. 124, l 1.28-30l; cf.
IV, 1), and "idea vera debet cure suo ideato convenire" (I, ax. 6;
cf. Cogitata Metaphysica, l, 6 [G., l, p. 246, II. 27-31]; Epistle
60 [to Tschirnaus] [G., IV, p. 270, I I. 16-17]). Spinoza's unusual
use ofideatum is explained by Klatzkin as a translation of the
Hebrew muskal (Baruch Spinoza, pp. 103-104; Torat ha-Middot, pp.
xvii-xix, 204-205). Klatzkin's arguments are even stronger
ifideatum is taken as a translation of the Hebrew yadu' a, and idea
of the Hebrew de'ah.
zt Maimonides, Book of Knowledge, Foundations of the Law 1:4
(The Book of Knowledge is the philosophizing first volume of
Maimonides' fourteen volume Code of Jewish Law, the Mishneh Torah.
An available English translation of the Book of Knowledge is by M.
Hyamson [New York, 1937; Jerusalem, 1962]; but the French
translation by V. Nikiprowetzky and A. Zaoui, Le livre de la
conaissance [Paris, 1961], is more reliable, is helpfully
annotated, and contains an important preface by Pines, pp. 1-19).
Spinoza, Short Treatise, II, 5 (G., I, p. 63, 11. I-2) and 15 (p.
79, I 1. 15-17); but cf. Cogitata Metaphysica, I, 6 (G., I, p. 247,
11. 1-3).
22 Guide, I, l, p. 22; cf. l, 7, p. 32; III, 8, p. 431; cf. Book
of Knowledge, Foundations of the Law 4:8; and Eight Chapters, l
(two good English translations of the Eight Chapters are available:
The Eight Chapters of Maimonides on Ethics, trans., J. I. Gorfinkle
[New York, 1912, 1966]; Ethical Writings of Maimonides, trans., R.
L. Weiss and C. E. Butterworth [New York, 1975], pp. 59-104).
23 Guide. I11, 51, pp. 620, 621; il i , 52, p. 629. z4 Ibid., I,
I, p. 23; cf. Ill, 17, pp. 471-472. z5 Ibid., il, 12, p. 280, and
III, 52, p. 629, on "in Thy light do we see light" (Psalms 36:10);
of.
Ill, 21, p. 485. Cf. also I, 68; l, 72.
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MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA I57
by certain modes of the attributes of God, namely by modes of
thought . . . . Hence, it follows that the human mind is part of
the infinite intellect of God; and thus when we say that the human
mind perceives this or that, we say nothing else than that G o d .
. . has this idea or that. ''2~
Perhaps the first thing that should be said about the
imagination, according to Maimonides and Spinoza, is that it is not
the intellect. The act of the imagina- tion, writes Maimonides, is
"the contrary" of that of the intellect. 27 "One may take any view
one likes of the imagination," allows Spinoza, "so long as one
acknowledges that it is not the intellect. ''2s The imagination,
according to Mai- monides, is the power "which recalls the
impressions of sensibly perceived objects after they have vanished
from the immediacy of the senses which per- ceived them. ''29
Spinoza, similarly, describes the imagination as the power "to
contemplate external bodies by which the human body was once
affected as if they were present, even though they are not in
existence nor present. ''3~ Mai- monides emphasizes that "the
imaginative faculty is indubitably a bodily fac- ulty ''3s and that
its objects are bodily affections (hi tpa'a luyyot ) . 32 Spinoza,
fol- lowing Maimonides but in disagreement with Descartes, holds
that all rerum imagines are corporis humani af fec t iones . 33
Moreover, Maimonides and Spi- noza, again in contradistinction to
Descartes, assert that the imagination is in no way able to
conceive the i n c o r p o r e a l ) 4 If the intellect is for
Maimonides and Spinoza man's divine cognitive power, the
imagination is his animal o n e ) s
2s Ethics, II, 11, dem. and cot. (G., II, p. 94, 11. 17-19,
30-32; p. 95, 11. 1-2). Cf. 1, 30; lI, 47, sch. (knowledge of the
third kind is per Deum) (p. 128, 11. 14-15); V, 29-31.
27 Guide, I, 73, 10th, p. 209. The contrariety of intellect and
imagination is suggested by several passages in Alfarabi. Cf.,
e.g., his Political Regime, in R. Lerner and M. Mahdi, ed.,
Medieval Political Philosophy (Glencoe, IU, 1963), p. 41; and his
Plato's Laws, in Lerner and Mahdi, p. 89.
z8 De lntellectus Emendatione, w (C.H. Bruder, ed. [Leipzig,
1844]) (G., I, p. 32, l 1.9-11) (in Dover Ethics, p. 32; in Harrier
Ethics, p. 29 [see n. 19 above]).
29 Eight Chapters, L Cf. Guide, I, 73, 10tfl, pp. 209-210.
Maimonides" definition of imagination derives from Alfarabi. See,
e.g., Wolfson, "Maimonides on the Internal Senses," Jewish
Quarterly Review, n.s., XXV (1935), pp. 441-467 (reprinted in his
Studies, I, pp. 344-370); and H. Davidson, "Maimonides' Shemonah
Peraqim and Alfarabi's Fus.M aI-Madani," Proceedings of the
American Academy for Jewish Research, XXX (1962), pp. 35-50 (esp.
p. 38).
30 Ethics, II, 17, cor. (G., II, p. 105, 11.2-4). sJ Guide, II,
36, p. 372, cf. p. 369; and cf. also I, 73, 10th, p. 209. 32 Ibid.,
III, 51, p. 623; of. "all sensation is affection" (I, 44, p. 95). ~
Ethics, II, 17, sch. (G., II, p. 106, 11. 7-9). According to
Descartes, the imaginatio is an
"applicatio facultatis cognoscitivae," an "acies mentis" or "la
force et rapplieation interieure de mon esprit," "une particuli~re
contention d'esprit," etc. Although Descartes holds that in
imagining the mind "turns toward the body," he affirms that the
idea of corporeal nature which he has in his imagination is an idea
distincta (Meditations, VI [Adam and Tannery Latin], pp. 72-73).
Moreover, he even attributes imagination to God (Ili, p. 50; IV, p.
57). Cf. Roth, Spinoza. Descartes, & Maimonides, pp.
125-128.
34 Guide, I, 73, 10th, pp. 209-210. De lntellectus Emendatione,
w (G., I, p. 33, 11. 15-17) (Dover, p. 33; Hafner, p. 30).
Descartes not only holds that the imagination, independent of the
senses, can have an idea of the triangle (Meditations, V, p. 64),
but he also includes the idea of God among the rerum imagines (III,
p. 37).
~s "[T]he imagination exists in most a n i m a l s . . .
Accordingly, man is not distinguished by the imagination" (Guide,
I, 73, 10th, p. 209; cf. 11, 4, p. 255). Cf. Aristotle, De Anima,
III, 10-1I, 433a- b; of. Ill, 3,428a; De Memoria, I, 3,449b--450a.
Spinoza acknowledges that animals "feel" (Ethics, III, 57, sch.
[G., 11, p. 187, 11.7-8]; IV, 37, sch. 1 [p. 237, 11.6-7]).
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158 H I S T O R Y O F P H I L O S O P H Y
It is a d i s t i nc t ive and s t r ik ing a6 v i ew o f M a i
m o n i d e s ' , i nhe r i t ed f rom him b y S p i n o z a , t ha
t g o o d and evi l , as o p p o s e d to t rue and fa l se , a re
no t i n t e l l ec tua l c o n c e p t s , b u t a re n o t i o n
s tha t a r i s e o n l y as a r e su l t o f the ac t o f the imag
ina - t ion . A c c o r d i n g to th is v i ew o f M a i m o n i d
e s ' , i f k n o w l e d g e o f t rue a n d fa l se is k n o w l
e d g e o f w h a t ex i s t s , k n o w l e d g e o f g o o d and
evi l is k n o w l e d g e o f w h a t is su i t ab l e , a g r e e
a b l e , o r useful . " G o o d , " a c c o r d i n g to M a i m o
n i d e s ' de f in i t ion , is " t h a t w h i c h c o n f o r m
s to [or " s u i t s , " o r " a g r e e s w i t h " ] o u r in ten
t [or " p u r - p o s e " o r " a i m " ] " (mah she-ye'ot
le-khavvanatenu), a n d " e v i l " o r " b a d " is tha t w h i c
h d o e s no t c o n f o r m to it. a7 A c c o r d i n g to S p i n
o z a , " g o o d " is t ha t w h i c h is " n o b i s . . . u t i
l e , " o r t ha t w h i c h hits o u r t a rge t , o r t ha t w h
i c h a g r e e s wi th t h e exemplar we have se t b e f o r e us
, a n d " e v i l " o r " b a d " is tha t w h i c h p r e v e n t
s us f rom a t ta in ing s o m e g o o d , m i s s e s o u r t a
rge t , o r d o e s n o t ag ree wi th o u r exemplar, as
F r o m the o b v i o u s fac t tha t m e n d i f fer wi th r e
g a r d to the i r i n t en t s , t a rge t s , and exemplaria, it
f o l lows , a c c o r d i n g to the M a i m o n i d e a n - S p i
n o z i s t i c def in i t ions o f " g o o d " and " e v i l , " t
ha t the q u e s t i o n o f w h a t th ings a re to be c o n s i d
e r e d g o o d o r evi l is a t b o t t o n a sub j e c t i ve o n
e , tha t is , it is r e l a t i ve to our o w n in ten t s , t a r
g e t s , a n d exemplaria, as N o w , a c c o r d i n g to M a i m
o n i d e s and S p i n o z a , m e n do n o t d i f fer a b o u t
wha t t hey k n o w b y m e a n s o f the i r c o m m o n d iv ine
in te l l ec t to be t r u e a n d f a l s e ( e . g . , p r o p o
s i t i o n s o f m a t h e m a t i c s a n d p h y s i c s ) , a n
d s u c h k n o w l e d g e is ca l l ed b y t h e m k n o w l e d
g e o f " t h e n e c e s s a r y . ' '4~ W h e n , a c c o r d i n
g to t h e m , m e n d o di f fer a m o n g t h e m s e l v e s , i
t is a s a resu l t o f the i r d i f fer ing b o d i l y
36 "The inferiority of judgments based on these notions [of good
and evil] to propositions which deal with truth and falsehood is
dwelt upon [in the Guide] with a vehemence which as far as I can
see has no parallel in the Aristotelian tradition prior to
Maimonides" (Pines, "A Note," cited in n. 4 above). As for
Descartes, he does not seem to distinguish between the epistemology
of true and false and that of good and evil (see, e.g.,
Meditations, IV, p. 58; the disclaimer in the Synopsis, p. 15, is
only a decoy).
~ Guide, III, 13, p. 453; cf. 1I, 30, p. 354 (good = "manifest
utility"); and III, 12. Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, I, 1,
1094a 3.
~8 Ethics, IV, praef. (G., II, p. 208, 11.8-22) and defs. 1-2.
Cf. I, 33, sch. 2 (p. 76, 11.24-30); I, app. (p. 81, 1.25-p. 83,
1.26); Short Treatise, I, 10 (G., I, p. 49, II. 21-23); Cogitata
Metaphysica, I, 6(G., I, p. 247, I1.23-32).
~9 Maimonides' thirteenth-century commentator, Joseph ibn Kaspi,
sums up the Master's view in a comment on Guide, III, 13: "for
'good' is s a i d . . , in relation to him for whom it is good"
(Commentaria hebraica, ed., S. Werbluner [Frankfort, 1848], p.
125). Cf. Spinoza, Cogitata Meta- physica, I, 6 (G., I, p. 247,
11.26-32) and Ethics, I, app. (G., II, p. 82, 1.36-p. 83, 1. 1);
IV, praef. (p. 208, 11. 11-14). To avoid a common misunderstanding,
it should be noted here that while Maimonides and Spinoza hold a
relativistic definition of the term "good," they are not themselves
moral relativists. As we shall observe presently (section III,
below), both philosophers teach un- equivocally that a man ought to
make the intellectual knowledge of God his one ultimate goal. It
thus follows that from the moral standpoint of Maimonides and
Spinoza something is "'good" only if it leads to the intellectual
knowledge of God or is itself that knowledge. Clearly, there is no
moral relativism in such a position. In short, the relativism of
Maimonides and Spinoza with regard to the notion "good" is not a
relativism in ethics, but in meta-ethics alone.
4 o "With regard to what is of necessity there i s . . . only
the false and the true" (Guide, I, 2, p. 25); "in all things whose
true reality is known through demonstration there is no dispute"
(I, 31, p. 66); " regard ing . . . in te l lects . . , all are one"
(I, 74, 7th, p. 221). "It i s . . . of the nature of reason [ratio]
to contemplate t h i n g s . . , as necessary" (Ethics, II, 44);
"insofar as men live b y . . . reason, they always necessarily
agree in nature" (IV, 35); "they f o r m . . , one mind and one
body" (IV, 18, sch. [G., II, p. 223, 1. 12]). Cf. Aristotle,
Nicomachean Ethics, IV, 3, 1139b 20.
-
M A I M O N I D E S A N D S P I N O Z A 159
a f fec t ions . 4t K n o w l e d g e o f good and evi l , t he
r e fo re , mus t be a c c o r d i n g to t h e m a func t ion o f
ou r b o d i l y a f fec t ions 42 and m u s t be in the p r o v i
n c e o f t he imagina- t ion , no t the in te l lec t . " T h r o
u g h the i n t e l l e c t , " wr i tes M a i m o n i d e s , " o
n e d is t in- gu i shes b e t w e e n t rue and f a l s e , " bu t
" g o o d and e v i l . . , b e l o n g to t he p o p u l a r l y a
c c e p t e d n o t i o n s , " and man has " n o f a c u l t y " o
f knowi ng t h e m unt i l he inc l ines t o w a r d the " d e s i
r e s o f the i m a g i n a t i o n and the p l e a s u r e s o f
his c o r p o r e a l s enses . ' '43 In S p i n o z a ' s t e r m
i n o l o g y , k n o w l e d g e of g o o d and evi l is k n o w l
e d g e o f the first k ind , tha t is, opinio o r imaginat io , 44
and g o o d a n d evi l a r e entia, non rationis, sed imaginat
ionis . 45 It o f c o u r s e fo l lows i r r e p r e s s i b l y f
r o m this Mai - m o n i d e a n - S p i n o z i s t i c ana lys i
s o f " g o o d " and " e v i l " t ha t if t he re w e r e such a
man w h o was ru led who l ly by his in te l l ec t , tha t is, no
t in a n y w a y ru l ed b y his a f fec t ions , tha t m a n w o u
l d n o t - - a n d could not!----enter tain the no t i ons o f g o
o d and evi l . 46 The no t i ons w o u l d be for h im e i t he r
m e a n i n g l e s s ( s ince t he re is no sub j ec t i v i t y
in in te l l ec tua l kno wl e dge ) o r r e d u n d a n t ( s ince
if " g o o d " a n d " e v i l " had any mean ing for h im, t hey w
o u l d be s y n o n y m o u s wi th " t r u e " a n d " f a l s e
, "
4, "The cause of [the difference between individuals of the
human species] is the difference of temperament [i.e., mixture of
humors]" (Guide, II, 40, p. 381). "Men can differ in nature insofar
as they are assailed by affections, which are passions" (Ethics,
IV, 33).
42 Cf. Ethics, IV, 8. 43 Guide, I, 2, pp. 24-25. Although the
Hebrew ha-mefursamot (like the Arabic al-mashtirdt) is
used as a translation of the Greek ta endoxa, I translate it as
"the popularly accepted notions" in accordance with the root of the
Hebrew (and the Arabic) term. Cf. S. Munk's translation of the
Guide, Le Guide des ~gar~s (Paris, 1856-66), I, pp. 39-40, note;
and Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza, II, pp. 119-120.
Ethics, II, 40, sch. 2; II, 41, dem.; IV, 68, dem. 4s Ibid., I,
app. (G., II, p. 83, 1. 15). Yet in Short Treatise, I, 10 (G., I,
p. 49, 11.2-26) (cf. I, 6
[p. 43, 11.31-32]), Spinoza had referred to good and evil as
entia rationis, and this discrepancy has puzzled some scholars
(of., e.g., C. DeDeugd, The Significance of Spinoza's First Kind of
Knowledge [Assen, 1966], pp. 40-49). The discrepancy, however, is a
result of an equivocal use of terms, and is not substantive.
According to Spinoza, good and evil are indeed notions produced by
the imagination, and thus entia imaginationis, but since ratio may
be used to make judgments with regard to these imaginative notions,
such judgments are indeed entia rationis. In other words, it is
possible to have an adequate idea of the relationship of inadequate
ideas. In the passage from the Short Treatise, Spinoza's expression
entia rationis clearly refers to judgments of good and evil, not to
the notions of good and evil in themselves. Thus, he asserts: "when
we [including Spinoza himself] say something is good, we only mean
that it conforms well to the general Idea which we have of such
things" (Wolf trans., London, 1910) (G., I 1.21-23). The judgment
of whether the thing conforms to the general Idea may be rational,
but the general Idea itself is certainly a thing of the imagination
(of. Short Treatise, I, 6 [p. 42, I. 23-p. 43, 1. 17]; Cogitata
Metaphysica, H, 7 [G., I, p. 262, 1. 30-p. 263, 1.9]; Ethics, I1,
40, sch. 1 [G., 1I, p. 120, I. 26--p. 121, 1. 35]). In calling such
judgments entia rationis, Spinoza distinguishes them from entia
realia, but does not thereby identify them with entia
imaginationis, although they are auxilia imaginationTs (cf. Epistle
12 [to Meyer] [G., IV, p. 57, 11. 15, 18, 37; p. 58, I1. 17-18, 19,
35]; Cogitata Metaphysica, I, 1 [G., I, p. 233, 11.29- 31]; see
Martial Gueroult, Spinoza, I [Paris, 1968], pp. 413-425). In the
passage from the Ethics, on the other hand, Spinoza is speaking not
about judgments of good and evil ready by us, but about the notions
in themselves as held by the vulgar. Spinoza's position, according
to which the notions of good and evil are imaginative, while
judgments regarding them may be rational, is the same as
Maimonides' position (cf. his Treatise on Logic, XIV [English
translation by I. Efros, New York, 1938]; and Eight Chapters, I).
See my essay, "Maimonides and Spinoza on the Knowledge of Good and
Evil" (in Hebrew), iyyun, XXVIII (1979), pp. 167-185 (English
summary, pp. 224-225).
46 However, such a perfectly intellectual man is no more than
hypothetical, since man is by necessity always subject to passions
(Maimonides, Eight Chapters, VII, of. Guide, III, 9; Spinoza,
Ethics, IV, 4, of. IV, 68, sch. [G., II, p. 261, II. 21-24]).
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160 H I S T O R Y O F P H I L O S O P H Y
inasmuch as noth ing but t ru th is " u s e f u l " o r " a g r
e e a b l e " to the per fec t man o f intellect). 47 Maimonides
and Spinoza , in fact , bo th explici t ly affirm that a man led
whol ly by his intellect cou ld no t enter ta in the no t ions o f
good and evil. 4s
To illustrate his d is t inc t ive and striking view on the
oppos i t ion o f the knowledge o f g o o d and evil to tha t o f t
rue and false, Ma imonides presents an original al legorical in te
rpre ta t ion o f the biblical s to ry o f the Ga rden o f Eden .
Accord ing to this in terpre ta t ion , A d a m (or " m a n " )
originally l ived by his intel- lect a lone, knowing t rue and
false but having no inkling o f g o o d and evil; then he " s i n n
e d " by inclining t o w a r d his imaginat ion and his co rporea l
senses (i.e., he ate o f the t ree o f knowledge o f g o o d and
evil), and hav ing the reby lost his intellectual perfect ion, he k
n e w good and evil fo r the first t ime (suddenly his nakedness
seemed to him " e v i l " ) ; and c o n c o m i t a n t to the a t
t a inment o f this knowledge he was r educed to the level o f " t
h e beas ts tha t speak n o t " (Psalms 49:13), tha t is, the
irrational animals. 49 A d a m ' s " s i n " and " p u n i s h m e
n t " were , accord ing to Maimonides , therefore one: forsaking
the divine life o f the intellect for the animal life o f the
imaginat ion, and thus forsaking the knowledge o f t rue and false
for that o f g o o d and evil. Sp inoza il lustrates his own
Maimonidean view on the oppos i t ion o f the knowledge o f g o o d
and evil to tha t o f t rue and false with an adap ta t ion o f
this v e r y phi losophic a l legory o f Ma imon ides ' . s~
In sum: Sp inoza ' s unde r s t and ing o f the intellect , the
imaginat ion, and the oppos i t ion be tween them, is Maimonidean
in its fundamenta l s ; and his v iew on
4~ Cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI, 2, I139a 27. Of
course, in accordance with the Maimonidean-Spinozistic analysis, if
"'good" and "evil" are taken as synonyms of "true" 'and "false,"
they forfeit their original raison d'etre, which was to designate,
in contradistinction to "true" and "false," the relative as opposed
to the necessary. Nonetheless, both Maimonides and Spinoza believe
that there is heuristic justification to use the word "good" to
designate the true, true knowledge, or that which leads to true
knowledge. Maimonides, for example, explains that the use of "good"
(instead of "true") to designate existence in the first chapter of
Genesis ("And God saw that it was good") is an instance of the
rule, "The Torah [for heuristic reasons] speaks according to the
lan~,uage of men," i.e., according to the imagination of the
multitude" (Guide, III, 13, p. 453; I, 26, p. 56). Spinoza,
similarly, justifies his own use of "good" and "bad" on heuristic
grounds: "For since we desire to form an idea of man as an exemplar
of human nature to which we may look, it will be useful to us to
retain the t e rms . . . " (Ethics, IV, praef. [G., II, p. 208, 11.
15-18]). To be sure, the hypothetical perfectly intellectual man,
like God (I, 33, sch. 2 [p. 76, 11. 27-33]), would not have to look
to any exemplar, or to aim at any target. Maimonides writes of
Moses (the idealized lawgiver, not the historical personality) that
he did not have "to aim his mind" (Book of Knowledge, Foundations
of the Law 8:6).
Finally, it should be clear that it is only for heuristic
reasons (and not owing to a sudden Platonic turn) that Maimonides
and Spinoza identify God with the Good. AcCording to them, we
justifiably call GOd "good" because He is useful to us by virtue of
"His bringing us into existence" (Guide, III, 12, p. 448) or His
"conserving the being of each and every one [of us]" (Cogitata
Metaphysica, I, 6 [G., I, p. 247, 11.32-34]; cf. Short Treatise,
II, 7 [G., I, p. 68, 11. 17-20]).
4+ Guide, I, 2, p. 25; Ethics, IV, 68. Although IV, 68, follows
necessarily from Spinoza's epistemology, its strangeness to those
unfamiliar with the Maimonidean philosophic tradition has led some
interpreters of Spinoza to conclude that he could not really have
meant it. Cf., e.g., William K. Frankena, "Spinoza on the Knowledge
of Good and Evil," Philosophia, VII (1977), pp. 38--41.
49 Guide, I, 2, p. 26. Cf. n. 35 above. 5o Ethics, IV, 68, sch.;
cf. Theologico-Political Treatise [T-PT], IV; Political Treatise,
II, 6; and
Epistle 19 (to Blyenbergh). It is, of course, the imagination
which, according to Spinoza, led Adam "to imitate the affections of
the brutes" (see Ethics, III, 27). Cf. T-P/', praef. (G., III, p.
8, I 1.24- 26), where Spinoza speaks of "'praejudicia which reduce
men from rational beings to brutes," and prevent them "from
distinguishing between true and false."
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MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 161
the opposition of the knowledge of good and evil to that of true
and false is not only Maimonidean in its fundamentals, but is even
illustrated by a Maimonidean allegory.
III
Maimonides and Spinoza thus hold that men who live in accordance
with their imaginations have differing intents, whereas men who
live in accordance with their divine intellect have one and the
same intent, namely, the intellectual knowledge of God. It is, in
fact, a heuristic aim of both the Guide o f the Per- plexed and the
Ethics to convince the reader that all his efforts ought to be
toward this one intent and toward no other; that his intellect
ought to be exer- cised for the purpose of achieving its own end,
and not one of the imaginary ends; that his intellect, in other
words, ought to be liberated from the bondage of the bodily
affections and the imagination. 5~
Over and again, Maimonides emphasizes that the ultimate
perfection (shele- mut) and true happiness (hasla.hah) of man, and
the end (takhlit) he ought to pursue, is intellectual knowledge of
true ideas, that is, knowledge of God and "the actions which
proceed from Him" (ha-pe'ulot ha-ba'ot me-it to), and that it is
through this intellectual knowledge that he achieves eternity. 52
Spinoza's view is essentially Maimonides'. For example, he writes:
"In life it is before all things useful to perfect the intellect or
reason [intellectum seu rationem . . . perficere] as far as we can,
and in this alone consists man's highest happiness or blessed- ness
[felicitas seu beatitudo] . . . . Now, to perfect the intellect is
nothing but to know God, God's attributes, and the actions which
proceed from the necessity of His nature [Deum, Deique attributa,
& actiones quae ex ipsius naturae neces- sitate consequuntur,
intelegere]. Wherefore, the final end [finis ultimus] of a man led
by r e a s o n . . , is that by which he is brought to conceive a d
e q u a t e l y . . . all things which can fall under his
intelligence. ''s3 And this knowledge, "the third kind of
knowledge," is eternal. 54
51 See, e.g., Guide, I, Introduction; 1II, 8, 12, 51, and 54;
the aim is found also in the Eight Chapters (see ch. V) and in the
Book of Knowledge (e.g., Character Traits 3:2-3, Repentance 10).
See, e.g., Ethics, IV, praef, and app.; V, praef.; V, 42, sch.; the
aim is found also in the Short Treatise and in the De lntellectus
Emendatione. Openly heuristic, both the Guide and the Ethics claim
to show the reader "the way" (e.g., Guide, epigrams, pp. 2, 5;
Ethics, V, praef. [G., II, p. 277, 1.8]; 42, sch. [p. 308,
1.23]).
It may be remarked that both Maimonides and Spinoza justify the
(apparently unnessary and hence detrimental) enjoyment of the
pleasant (e.g., seasoned foods, music, art) on the therapeutic
grounds that it restores strength to body and soul (Eight Chapters,
V; Ethics, IV, 45, cor. 2, sch.); i.e., it is in truth a necessary
means to the end, viz., the intellectual knowledge of God. Cf. also
Maimonides, Book of Knowledge, Foundations of the Law 7:4.
5~ E.g., "A m a n . . , should take as his end that which is the
end of man qua man: namely, solely the mental representation of the
intelligibles [s. iyyur ha-muskalot], the most certain and the
noblest of which being the apprehension, in as far as this is
possible, of God a n d . . 9 his actions [pe'ulotav]. Such men are
eternally [tamid] with GOd" (Guide, I l i , 8, pp. 432-433); " true
happ iness . . , is the knowledge of GOd" (III, 23, p. 492); "the
true human perfection consists i n . . . the mental representation
of the intelligibles, to learn from them true ideas [de'ot
amitiyyot] concern- ing divine things. This is the ultimate end,
and it is what gives man true p e r f e c t i o n . . , and eternal
perdurance [qayyamut . . . nish. i], and through it man is man"
(III, 54, p. 635). The phrase "the actions proceeding from God'" is
used and explained in I, 54.
s3 Ethics, IV, app. 4. Cf. IV, 28, and T-PT, IV (G., III, p. 59,
1.29-p. 60, 1.20). 54 Ethics, V, 31-33.
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162 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
Spinoza's phrase "the actions which proceed from the necessity
of His na- ture" seems to have approximately the same force as
Maimonides' phrase "the actions which proceed from Him."
Maimonides' phrase is used by him to desig- nate the natural world,
that is, "all existing things" (ha-nims. a 'o t kul lam), ss Spi-
noza's phrase, similarly, may be described as designating natura
natura ta . 56 The question of whether Maimonides held that the
actions "which proceed" from God proceed from Him ex ips ius
naturae neces s i t a t e is open to some dispute, although it
seems to me legitimate to infer that he did hold this position, s7
In any case, both Maimonides and Spinoza maintain that true
knowledge of the actions proceeding from God is knowledge of their
causal interconnection. 5s
The view that the knowledge of "the actions" of God is knowledge
of nature is typically Maimonidean. s9 It has, in fact, been
suggested that Maimonides' expression "the divine actions, that is,
the natural actions" lies beneath Spi- noza's famous phrase "Deus
sive Natura. ''6~ Be that as it may, Maimonides and Spinoza do
unquestionably concur that man must take as his one and only goal
not some figment of the imagination, but rather the intellectual
knowledge of D e u s s ive Na tura .
IV
With gusto Maimonides reviled what he considered to be the
errors of the imagination. Among his favorite targets was
anthropocentrism. "Every ignora-
ss Guide, I, 54, p. 124. s6 Cf. Ethics, I, 29, dem. and sch. s7
Maimonides ascribes to Aristotle the view that the universe
proceeds necessarily from God,
but he ostensibly dissociates himself from it, claiming that the
universe proceeds from God "in virtue of a purpose [kavvanah]"
(Guide, II, 19-20). There are, however, good reasons to think that
the dissociation is no more than ostensible. Thus, Maimonides makes
a point of stating that the word "purpose" is used equivocally when
applied to the purposes of man and God (III, 20, p. 483; cf. II,
21, p. 315), and in general he holds that God's purpose, will,
wisdom, and essence are one (I, 53, p. 122; I, 69, p. 170; If, 18,
p. 302; III, 13, p. 456). He also affirms that "the actions
[pe'ulot] of G o d . . . are of necessity permanently estabfished
as they are, for there is no possibility of something calling for a
change in them" (II, 28, p. 335; cf. III, 13 and 25); and that God,
through knowing His own immutable essence, knows "the totality of
what necessarily derives from all His actions" (III, 21, p. 485).
Moreover, Maimonides' explanation of Aristotle's view, according to
which the world proceeds from God as " the inteUectum from the
intellect" (II, 20, p. 313), seems to correspond to his own
position in I, 68. Therefore, it seems to me that on this issue
Maimonides' esoteric view is identical with the view he ascribes to
Aristotle, i.e., with Spinoza's. (On Maimonides' esotericism, see
Guide, I, Introduction, pp. 15-20; and cf. Strauss, Persecution and
the Art of Writing, ch. 3, and "How to Begin to Study The Guide"
[see n. I1 above]).
s8 "Hiqqashram qe.satam be-cle.sat" (Guide, I, 54, p. 124; cf.
II, 28, p. 336; III, 25, p. 505); "ordo et conaexio" (Ethics, II,
7).
s9 On the difference between Maimonides' view and Aquinas' via
causalitatis, see Wolfson, "St. Thomas on Divine Attributes,"
M~langes offerts ~i Etienne Gilson (Paris, 1959), pp. 673-700 (re-
printed in Studies, II, pp. 497-524 [see n. 7 above], and in J. I.
Dienstag, Studies in Maimonides and St. Thomas Aquinas [New York,
1975], pp. 1-28); and Seymour Feldman, "A Scholastic Misinter-
pretation of Maimonides' Doctrine of Divine Attributes," The
Journal of Jewish Studies, XIX (1968), pp. 23-39 (reprinted in
Dienstag, pp. 58-74). Aquinas' position concerning knowledge of God
by means of knowledge of nature is certainly influenced by
Maimonides' identification of divine actions with nature, but it
also manifestly reflects his dissatisfaction with the implied
anti-superaaturalism of Maimonides' view. See, e.g., Summa
Theologiae, Ia, q. 2, art. 2; q. 12, arts. 12-13; q. 13, art.
2.
60 Pines, "The Philosophical Sources" (see n. 4 above), p. xcvi,
n. 66; preface to Le livre de la connaissance (see n. 21 above), p.
5.
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M A I M O N I D E S A N D S P I N O Z A 163
m u s , " he w r o t e , " i m a g i n e s tha t all that ex i s
t s ex i s t s wi th a v i ew to his i nd iv idua l sake! ' '6t " '
I t is t h o u g h t [by the ignorant ] tha t the f inal i ty o f
all t ha t ex i s t s is so le ly the e x i s t e n c e o f the h u
m a n s p e c i e s so tha t it s h o u l d w o r s h i p God . '
'62 M a i m o n i d e s ' o w n p o s i t i o n is u n e q u i v o
c a l : " I t shou ld no t be b e l i e v e d tha t all th ings ex
i s t for the s ake o f the e x i s t e n c e o f man . O n the c o
n t r a r y , all o t h e r be ings too have b e e n i n t e n d e
d for the i r o w n s a k e s and no t for the s ake o f some th
ing e lse . ' '63 S p i n o z a , e c h o i n g M a i m o n i d e s
' r e p o r t o f the a n t h r o p o c e n t r i c v iew, wr i tes
: " I t is c o m m o n l y s u p p o s e d . . , tha t all th ings
in na tu re w o r k to- w a r d some e n d . . , for it is sa id
tha t G o d m a d e all th ings for man , and m a n tha t he might
w o r s h i p H im. ' '64 F o r his o w n pa r t , S p i n o z a f
la t ly s t a t es tha t all final c a u s e s are f i g m e n t a
. 6s
Both M a i m o n i d e s and S p i n o z a den i ed the no t ion
tha t the un ive r se has any final end ou t s i de o f i t s e l f
(or G o d ) , and bo th m a i n t a i n e d tha t it was owing to
the p r e jud i ce o f a n t h r o p o c e n t r i s m that the no
t i on had e v e r g a i n e d c u r r e n c y . 66 Fu r - t h e r
m o r e , both a rgue aga ins t the u n i v e r s e ' s hav ing a f
inal end on the dual g rounds tha t it m a k e s no sense to speak
a b o u t the pe r f e c t G o d ' s need ing to w o r k e i the r
t h rough m e a n s 67 o r for an end . 6s
61 Guide~ Ill, 12L p. 442. 6z Ibid., III, 13, p. 451. 63 Ibid.,
p. 452.
Ethics, I, app. (G., II, p. 78, l I. 2-6)_ "~ Ibid. (p. 80, I.
4). In calling all final causes figmenta, Spinoza possibly goes
further than
Maimonides. See Pines, "The Philosophical Sources" (see n. 4
above), p. Ixxi, n. 29. 66 Ethics. I, app.; Guide, III, 13. In I,
6% Maimonides describes God as the efficient, formal,
and final causes of the universe; and in III, 13, pp. 449-450,
he cites in Aristotle's name the principle that in natural things
these three causes are one in species. Cf. Aristotle, Physics, II,
7, 198a, De Generatione Animalium, I, 1,715a.
67 Maimonides challenges the anthropocentdst: surely, the
perfect God could have brought man into existence without needing
to have created "preliminaries"; therefore, "what is the utility
for Him of all these things [in the heaven and on the earth] which
are in themselves not the final end, but exist for the sake of a
thing that could have existed without all of them?" (Guide, III,
13, p. 451). Spinoza formulates the principle: "that effect is the
most perfect which is produced immediately by God, and that which
requires many intermediate causes to be produced is to that extent
imperfect" (Ethics, I, app. [G., II, p. 80, 11. 16-18]). Both
Maimonides and Spinoza thus implicitly insist that when the
anthropocentrist says that man is the final end of the universe, he
commits himself willy-nilly to the proposition that everything el~e
in it is a necessary condition of man's existence. Such logic
seemed extreme to some anthropocentrists. For example, Isaac Arama,
a fifteenth cen- tury Jewish philosopher, criticized Maimonides
thus: "We do believe that God, may He be blessed, was able to
create man without heavens and stars, and without these plants and
animals, but his existence would not have been so fine and
praiseworthy as it is according to th E way he was created; and He,
may He be blessed, saw fit to bring him into the most perfect and
praiseworthy existence" ('Aqedat Yi.sh. aq, XVIII; cf. Sarah Heller
Wilensky, The Philosophy of Isaac Arama [Hebrew] [Jerusalem and
Tel-Aviv, 1956], pp. 109-112).
6s "For He, may He be exalted, would not acquire greater
perfection if He were worshipped by all that He has c r e a t e d .
. , nor would He be attained by a deficiency if nothing whatever
existed except Him" (Guide, III, 13, p. 451). "If God acts toward
an end, He necessarily desires something He lacks" (Ethics, l, app.
[G., II, p. 80, 11. 22-23]). This anti-teleological argument--that
if the creation has a final cause, the Creator must have a need, i
.e , an imperfection---received its classical (though often
misunderstood) Latin formulation by Aquinas: "to act for an end
seems to imply need of an end. But God needs nothing." Aquinas, to
be sure, rejected the argument, explaining that GOd acts not out of
need but out of goodness (Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 44, art. 4; cf.
Summa Contra Gentiles, IIl, 19). Cf. Peter Brunner, Probleme der
Teleologie bei Maimonides, Thomas von Aquin und Spinoza
(Heidelberg, 1928), p. 66. Aquinas' reply to the argument appears,
with variations, in
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164 HISTORY OF P H I L O S O P H Y
A biblical proof- text denying the anthropocentr ic view is
found by Maimon- ides in Proverbs 16:4. He gives two exegeses of
this verse, both antianthropo- centric. According to the first, the
verse translates: " the Lord hath made every- thing for i ts sake
," not for the sake of man. According to the second, it trans-
lates: " the Lord hath made everything for His sake ," that is, "
fo r the sake of His essence. ''69 Spinoza alludes to this verse
when he criticizes " theologians and metaphysic ians" who "confess
that God has made everything for His own sake, not for the sake of
the created things. ''7~ Whatever theologians or meta- physicians
Spinoza had in mind, Maimonides could not fairly be the butt of his
criticism here. For according to Maimonides ' first exegesis, the
verse says ex- plicitly that God did make everything for its own
sake; and his second exegesis gives an interpretation to "H i s own
sake" which in the final analysis is in complete agreement with
Spinoza's doctr ine that God per se is the cause of all things.
7t
Maimonides and Spinoza both at tack anthropocentr ism as an
error of the imagination, and both hold that this er ror is at the
bottom of man 's futile search for teleological explanations of the
universe. These resemblances between Mai- monides and Spinoza are
particularly striking in light of the fact that Maimo- nides'
strong antianthropocentric and antiteleological views had (as far
as I am aware) no parallel in the mediaeval philosophic literature,
nor were they shared by Descartes. ~2
v
To be sure, Spinoza 's God is not precisely Maimonides ' God. On
the other hand, there is much in Shlomo Pines 's suggestion that
Maimonides ' God is "per i lously close to Spinoza 's attribute of
thought (or to his Intellect of God). ''73 Following up Pines's
suggestion, we might say that Spinoza's move was to add the
attribute of extension to the God he inherited from Maimonides.
There is, moreover , evidence that Spinoza was aware of this
relationship of his God to Maimonides ' .
Thus, in Guide, I, 68, Maimonides develops the Aristotelian
thesis that God is the Knower , the Known, and the Knowledge
itself? 4 Maimonides begins this chapter of the Guide as
follows:
You already know the fame of the dictum which the philosophers
stated with refer- ence to God, may He be exalted: the dictum being
that He is the Intellect [ha-sekhel], the intellectually cognizing
Subject [ha-maskil], and the intellectually cognized Object
C_,-ersonides (Mil.hamot Adonai. Via, 18, 9th), Crescas (Or
Adonai, II, 6, 5), Abraham Bibago (Derekh Emunah, I, 1), and Isaac
Arama ('Aqedat Yis. h. aq, XVIII, XXXVIII).
6~ Guide, III, 13, pp. 452-453. Hebrew has no neuter pronoun;
hence, the equivocacy. To Ethics, l, app. (G., II, p. 80, 1 I.
24-26). 7t Ethics, I, 16, cor. 2. Cf. Cogitata Metaphysica, II, 10.
Cf. Guide, I, 53-54, 64. ~2 Cf. Gueroult, Spinoza, I (see n. 45
above), pp. 399-400. ~3 "The Philosophic Sources" (see n. 4 above),
p. xcviii. ~( Aristotle, Metaphysics, XII, 7, 1072b 19-23; 9, 1075a
10--I1; cf. De Anima, III, 7,431a 1-2,
431b 17-19. Cf. Pines, Ioc. cir.
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M A I M O N I D E S A N D S P I N O Z A 165
[ha-muskal], and these three notions in Him, may He be exalted,
are one single notion in which there is no multiplicity. ~s
I t is in re fe rence primari ly to this passage in the Guide
tha t Sp inoza wr i tes :
A mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the
same thing, but expressed in two modes; which seems to have been
seen as if through a cloud by certain of the Hebrews, who state to
wit: God, the Intellect of God, and the things [known] by that same
Intellect, are one and the same [Deum, Dei intellectum, resque ab
ipso intellec- tas, unum & idem esse; i.e., God is the maskil,
the sekhel, and the muskal]. TM
In compar ing the passage f r o m Maimonides with that f rom
Spinoza , it will be not iced that bo th thinkers a t t r ibute the
d ic tum to a group. Maimonides attrib- utes it to " t h e ph i l o
sophe r s , " and Sp inoza to " ce r t a in a m o n g the H e b r e
w s . " Maimonides , o f course , knew the theory as Ar is to t le
' s , and cer ta inly not " H e - b r e w . " Sp inoza k n e w the
theo ry as Ma imon ides ' (and Ibn Ez ra ' s ) , and therefore " H
e b r e w , " a l though p re sumab ly not sufficiently d e a r and
dist inct to be con- s idered " p h i l o s o p h i c . " N o w ,
Sp inoza is saying in effect tha t Ma imon ides ' thesis that God
is bo th Intel lect and Intelligible is basical ly cor rec t , b u
t - - a l a s ! - - n e b u - lous. Ma imonides saw the t ruth " a
s if t h rough a c l oud , " but did not pursue the logic o f his o
w n thesis. Had he done so, he wou ld have real ized that if ex t
ended space is intel lectually cognized b y God , then G o d - - b
e i n g the intellectually cog- nized Object---4nust be ex
tended!
Le t me give some fur ther ev idence that Sp inoza was aware o f
the relat ionship o f his God to Ma imon ides ' , and m o r e prec
ise ly that he cons ide red his God to be Ma imon ides ' plus the
at tr ibute o f extens ion , tha t is, Ma imon ides ' God clear ly
represen ted .
In his ph i losophic and popu la r writ ings alike, Maimonides
never tired o f r epea t ing tha t G o d is " n o t a b o d y . '
'77 " T h e r e is no p r o f e s s i o n o f un i ty
7s cf. Maimonides' other formulations: "He is the Knowledge
[ha-madda'], He is the Knower [ha-yode'a], and He is the Known
[ha-yadu'a]" (Eight Chapters, VIII [Samuel lbn Tibbon trans.]); "He
is the Knower [ha-yode'a], He is the Known [ha-yadu'a], and He is
the Knowledge [ha-de'ah] itself, all is one" (Book of Knowledge
[written by Maimonides in Hebrew], Foundations of the Law 10:2).
The thesis appears often in mediaeval Arabic and Hebrew texts, and
with the thirteenth century also in Latin texts. Abraham ibn
Ezra---whom Spinoza praises as liberioris ingenii Vir, & non
mediocris eruditionis (T-PT, VIII [G., III, p. 118,
11.20-21J)----had mentioned it several times, most provocatively in
his Commentary on Exodus, ad 34:36: "'And the L o r d . . .
proclaimed, "the Lord, the Lord,' etc. Be not astonished that the
Lord calls 'the Lord,' for He alone is Knower [yode'a], Knowledge
[ve-da'at], and Known [ve-yadu'a]!" Aquinas refers to the thesis
(which he accepted in a modified form) often: e.g., Summa
Theologiae, Ia, q. 18, art. 14: "In Deo autem est idem inteUectus
et quod inteUigitur et ipsum intelligere ejus." Hasdai Crescas,
however, rejected the thesis as absurd (OrAdonai, I, 3, 3; II, 2,
2; II, 6, 1; IliA, 2, 2; IV, 11; IV, 13).
~6 Ethics, II, 7, sch. (G., II, p. 90, 11.8-12). The cloud
metaphor is Maimonidean, and there is thus irony in Spinoza's use
of it to describe (in effect) Maimonides' own knowledge of GOd.
Accord- ing to Guide, III, 9, man cannot apprehend God truly, but
only through a "cloud," i.e., through the veil of human matter (of.
Eight Chapters, VII).
7~ Maimonides did not merely urge the denial of God's
corporeality as a correct metaphysical doctrine, but went so far as
to set down in his Code of Jewish Law (Book of Knowledge,
Repentance 3:7), that anyone who says that God is a body
is---together with the atheist, the polytheist, the denier of God's
ontic priority, and the idolater--an infidel! Cf. Guide, I, 35, p.
81, where belief in God's corporeality is again bracketed with
atheism, polytheism, the denial of God's ontic priority and
idolatry.
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166 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
[monotheism] unless the doctrine of God's corporeality is
denied," he insisted. "For a body cannot be one, but is composed of
matter and form, which by definition are two; it is also divisible,
subject to partition. ''Ts Spinoza certainly has Maimonides in mind
when he speaks about those who have in some way "contemplated the
divine nature" but deny that God is a body. He complains that "
they remove altogether from the divine n a t u r e . . , corporeal
or extended substance, and state that it was created by God." Then
he exclaims with mono- theistic indignation worthy of Maimonides:
"By what divine potentia it could have been created they are
altogether ignorant, so that it is clear that they do not
understand what they themselves s a y . ' '79 Spinoza's exclamation
must be under- stood against the backdrop of another Maimonidean
teaching: that in God "there is absolutely no potentia. ''8~
Spinoza may thus be understood as addressing Maimonides as follows:
You do not understand what you are saying, for if you say that
there is absolutely no potentia in God, how can you say that he
created body and extension? Spinoza argues, in effect, that what
Maimonides has said about intellect must--according to Maimonides'
own monotheistic p remises ! - be true about everything. "Besides
God, no substance can be nor be con- ceived," and thus "extended
substance is one of the infinite attributes of God." Quicquid est,
in Deo est! sl Spinoza thus seems to have seen himself as pushing
Maimonides' metaphysical monotheism to its logical conclusion. He
thought---or imagined--that what Maimonides had seen "as if through
a cloud," he now saw clearly and distinctly.
Spinoza explains that his "adversaries" who hold that God is not
a body do so because they suppose that corporeal substance must be
finite and measurable. The battery of mathematical and physical
counterarguments he brings against these suppositions will not
excite the student of mediaeval Maimonideanism, since they are for
the most part appropriated from Maimonides' radical critic Hasdai
Crescas, whose brilliant arguments against Aristotelian
physics--some two and a half centuries before Spinoza---contributed
to the revolution of mod- em science, s2 While Crescas had shown
Spinoza how to argue against the im- possibility of an infinite
corporeal magnitude, he did not himself hold that God is extension.
But then, again, he also did not hold that God is intellect. By
rejecting Maimonides' description of God as Intellect-Intelligible,
Crescas broke more severely with Maimonides than did Spinoza, who,
after all, was only trying to carry the Maimonidean position to its
proper conclusion.
7s Guide, Ioc. cit. ~9 Ethics, I, 15, sch. (G., II, p. 57, 11.
15-17). According to Maimonides' ontology, there is
nothing but God and the totality of things He has created
(Guide, I, 34, p. 74; el. I, 71, p. 183). s o Guide, I, 68, p. 165:
"ve-eyn koal) bo kelal." This is the chapter in which God is, as it
were,
described as the attribute of thought. st Ethics, I, 15. se
Ibid., sch. (G., II, p. 57, 1.23 to p. 60, 1.15). Cf. Epistle 12(to
Meyer) (G., IV, p. 55, 11.16,
33, and seq.). In Or Adonai, 1, 1, 1, Crescas explains the
Aristotelian arguments for the proposition that the existence of
any infinite magnitude is impossible, and in I, 2, 1, he presents
his refutations of these arguments. The Hebrew text and an English
translation of these chapters appear in Wolfson, Crescas' Critique
of Aristotle (Cambridge, Mass., 1929), pp. 135-217, with
annotations on pp. 327- 476, of. also pp. 36--37. See his The
Philosophy of Spinoza (see n. 6 above), I, oh. 8, of. also p.
16.
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MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 167
VI
Even with regard to the question of the true worship of God
Spinoza followed Maimonides. His discussion in the
Theologico-Political Treatise, Chapter IV, of the divine Law and
the summum bonum is composed almost entirely of Maimo- nidean
propositions. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that it is
a prrcis of the first four chapters and the last chapter of the
Book of Knowledge. s3 Like Maimonides, Spinoza affirms that all
knowledge depends on knowledge of God; that without God nothing
could exist or be conceived to exist; that knowledge of nature
involves knowledge of God; that the true worship of God is the love
of him; that the love of him is in accordance with the knowledge of
him; and that one must love God not out of fear of any punishment
or desire of any reward, but solely because of the knowledge of God
itself. It of course goes without saying that for both Maimonides
and Spinoza the knowledge of God by which one loves him is
intellectual, not imaginative. Nonetheless, Maimonides, toward the
end of the Guide, and Spinoza, toward the end of the Ethics, each
make a special point of stating this explicitly. "The exhortation
[to know God]," writes Maimonides, "always refers to intellectual
apprehensions, not to imaginings . . . . The aim of the
[intellectual] apprehension [of G o d ] . . . is to apply
intellectual thought in passionately loving Him always."s4 Spinoza,
similarly, writes that the love of God is not of the imagination,
but is amor Dei intellectualis, as
Spinoza's definition of "religion" in the Ethics as "whatever we
desire and do, of which we are the cause insofar as we possess the
idea of God, or insofar as we know God ''s6 echoes Maimonides'
description in the Guide of "the wor- ship of him who has
apprehended the true realities," that is, the worship "which can
only be engaged in after apprehension has been achieved. ''sT
Again, Spi- noza's definition of "piety" in the Ethics as "the
desire of w e l l d o i n g . . , gener- ated on account of our
living in accordance with the rule of reason ''88 echoes
Maimonides' description at the conclusion of the Guide of the
excellent individ- ual who, on account of his having apprehended
GOd to the extent that this is possible, walks in the ways of
"loving-kindness, justice, and righteousness. ''89 For Maimonides
and Spinoza, true religion is the love that attends to the intel-
lectual knowledge of God; and true piety is the performance of acts
of benefi- cience that results from that knowledge.
s3 Compare especially G., 1II, p. 59, I. 25-p. 61, 1.5, with
Foundations of the Law 1:1-4; 2:1- 2; 4:12; Repentance 10.
s4 Guide, III, 51, p. 621. ss Ethics, V, 32, cor. (G., II, p.
300, 11.25-27). M. Idel has recently remarked on the similarity
between Spinoza's phrase and the Hebrew ahabah elohit sikhlit
("intellectual divine love") found in Abraham Abulafia and Abraham
Shalom (Hebrew section, AJSreview, IV [1979], p. 6, n. 18).
86 ibid., IV, 37, sch. 1 (G., I1, p. 236 , 11. 17-19). s7 Guide,
Ioc. cit., esp. pp. 618, 620, 621. 88 Ethics, Ioc. cir. (11.20-21).
89 Guide, III, 54, p. 638.
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168 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
VII
The Malmonidean elements in Spinoza's psychology, epistemology,
ethics, and metaphysics had, as might be expected, ramifications in
his political theory. However, it is more difficult to distinguish
Malmonidean elements in Spinoza's political theory than it is in
those other areas. This is for two reasons. First, while
Maimonides' positions in psychology, epistemology, ethics, and
metaphys- ics usually contrast sharply with those of Spinoza's
contemporaries, and in particular with Descartes's, and thus are
easily distinguished from them, his position in political theory is
often close to Hobbes 's and thus is easily confused with it.
Second, while in psychology, epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics
Spinoza often arrives at Maimonidean conclusions on the basis of
Maimonidean premises, in political theory he generally runs his
Maimonidean premises to decidedly un-Maimonidean conclusions. I
should like here merely to call atten- tion to two elements in
Spinoza's political theory that are definitely not Hobbes- ian and
that seem to me to reflect an evident Maimonidean influence.
The first element concerns the political importance of the
distinction be- tween the intellectuals and the vulgar. For Hobbes,
the distinction has no politi- cal importance. 9~ For Spinoza, as
for Plato and Maimonides, it has great political importance. Thus,
a critical difference between Spinoza's political theory and Hobbes
's is that for Hobbes the state of nature is one of basic equality
among all men (with respect to wisdom even more so than with
respect to strength), 91 whereas for Spinoza there is a significant
distinction in it between the wise, who live according to ratio,
and the vulgar, who live according to appetitus.92 Ac- cording to
Hobbes, furthermore, the movement out of the state of nature is the
same for all men and requires of them all the very same changes and
sacrifices. 93 However, according to Spinoza, there is no such
equality. The state of nature, according to him, is dissolved by
the agreement of all men " to be guided by ratio alone, ''94 which
effectively means: the wise agree to continue to live according to
the same principle by which they had lived all along, while the
ignorant agree to renounce the principle by which they hitherto had
lived and to subject them- selves henceforth to that of the wise.
This inequalitarianism of Spinoza's may, I believe, be traced to
Maimonides. According to Maimonides, men by nature differ
enormously with regard to their passions, and as a consequence of
this it is a necessity o f nature for the wise to legislate
political law in order to restrain the
90 He ridicules it as deriving from "a vain conceipt of ones
owne wisdome, which almost all men think they have in a greater
degree, than the Vulgar; that is, than all men but themselves, and
a few others, whome by Fame, or for concurring with themselves,
they approve" (Leviathan, I, 13; and cf. his comments about
Aristotle in I, 15).
9: Leviathan, I, 13, cf. 15. Cf. De Cive, I, 1. 92 T-PT, XVI
(G., III, p. 190, 11.6--10); Political Treatise, II, 5 (G., III, p.
277, 11.24-30). Cf.
Spin0za's comment about Hobbes and himself in Epistle 50 (to
Jelles) (G., IV, p. 238, 1.24-p. 239, 1.4, and 11. 19-24).
93 De Cive, I, 1-3; Leviathan, I, 13-15. 94 T-PT. loc. cit. (p.
191, !1.28-29).
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MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 169
agressive passions of the vulgar and to get them to live
according to reason. 95 Maimonides' political distinction between
the intellectuals and the vulgar, it is relevant to observe, is
rooted in his epistemological distinction between intellect and
imagination, a distinction which, as we have seen, was adopted by
Spinoza. The distinction between the intellectuals and the vulgar
figures significantly throughout Spinoza's political thought, as it
does throughout Maimonides', but this is not the place to
elaborate.
The second element is related to the first in that it too
concerns the political implications of the theory of the intellect.
In Spinoza's ideal political commu- nity, the passions cease to be
a moving force in human behavior, and the diver- sity of human
purposes (i.e., individuality) is replaced by intellectual unity.
96 This ideal has, of course, no parallel in Hobbes. 97 However, it
follows clearly from premises held by Maimonides and inherited from
him by Spinoza. Accord- ing to these premises, if all men lived in
accordance with their intellect, not their imaginations and
passions, they would have no differences betwen them, would
therefore never quarrel or harm one another, and would indeed be
one man.gS For Spinoza, as for Maimonides, the solution to the
political problem is the same as the solution to the
ethico-psychological problem: to live in accordance with the
intellect, not the imagination.
v i i i
Often historians of philosophy suppose Maimonides' influence on
Spinoza to have been merely "youthful ," or at best "formative."
This is misleading. While it is of course true that it was as a
young man that Spinoza first studied Maimon- ides intensively, it
is also true that he was exercising himself with the Guide even
during his mature years when he was writing the Ethics. There is
documen- tary proof of this in his explicit references (including
one long Hebrew quotation) to the Guide in his Theologico-Political
Treatise, which was published in 1670 in the midst of his working
on the Ethics. 99
Although throughout his works Spinoza again and again adopts
concepts, insights, and arguments from Maimonides, his mentions of
him by name are almost exclusively antagonistic. In the
Theologico-Political Treatise, he uses Mai- monides as his example
of those who subject theology to philosophy: he attacks his method
of philosophical exegesis of the Bible as "noxious, useless, and
ab- surd," and he accuses him of being "concerned with nothing
other than to extort from Scripture Aristotelian trifles and [his]
own figments," a practice than which
95 Guide, II, 40; III, 27; cf. Logic, XIV (see n. 45 above). 96
Ethics, IV, 18, sch. (G., II, p. 223, 11.4-18): IV, app. 12. But
such a community is, according
to Spinoza, unrealizable; cf. IV, 37, sch. 2 (p. 237, 11.29-31);
Political Treatise, I, 5 (G., III, p. 275, 11.21-25); II, 5 (p.
277, 11. 13-14); and cf. n. 46 above.
97 According to him, the possibility of man's coming out of the
state of nature is "partly in the Passions, partly in his Reason,"
the foremost passion being fear (Leviathan, 1, 13, cf. 14; of. De
Cive, I, I). In effect, Spinoza is arguing against Hobbes in
Ethics, IV, 63 (and cf. IV, app. 16).
98 See n. 40 above. On Maimonides' theory of the unity of the
intellect, see also Guide, II, Introduction, 16th, p. 237; III, 12,
ist, pp. 443-444; and on the utopian implications of the theory,
cf. III, 11, p. 441.
99 Cf. Roth, Spinoza, Descartes, & Maimonides, pp. 63-66;
Spinoza, pp. 34-35.
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170 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
"nothing seems more ridiculous. ''1~176 If there is a note of
ingratitude in Spinoza's attitude toward the Master, there is also
a note of hypocrisy in his attack on him. After all, Spinoza
himself is guilty of the very kind of philosophizing exegesis of
the Bible for which he criticized Maimonides (e.g., his adaptation
of Maimo- nides' philosophical allegory of the Garden of Eden
story; and see below regard- ing Christ); and, furthermore;
Spinoza's criticisms of Maimonides are directed against his
exoteric doctrine and ignore his esoteric doctrine, of which he
must have been more aware than he pretends, t~
Beyond his explicit attack on Maimonides in the
Theologico-Political Trea- tise, Spinoza broke irreparably with him
by breaking with the Synagogue. He broke with the Synagogue by
rejecting the authority of the Law of Moses. He refered to the
Scriptures of Israel as antiqui vulgi praejudicia, 102 and taught
that in any case the Law of Moses was abrogated with the fall of
the Jewish king- dom. 1~ The Jewish religion, according to him, is
not only obsolete but also effeminating. ~~ It was evidently this
explicit denial of the validity of the Law of Moses that in 1656
led the Jewish community of Amsterdam to place Spinoza, then
twenty-four, under the ban. tos He would not likely have been
placed under the ban for his ethical, epistemologieal, physical, or
metaphysical theories, which--even in the ripe form they were to
take in the Ethics--were no more subversive to Judaism than those
of Ibn Ezra, Maimonides, or a good many other mediaeval Jewish
philosophers.~~
Not only did Spinoza denigrate traditional Judaism, but,
although he never formally converted to Christianity, he embraced
its claim to have superseded
ioo T-PT, XV (G., III, p. 181, I. 1), VII (p. 116, 1. 10), I (p.
19, 11. 31-33); cf. Epistle 43 (to Ostens) (G., IV, p. 225, 1 I.
I-4, 20-23).
~o~ On both counts, see Pines, "Spinoza's Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus" (see n. 4 above). Regarding Spinoza's
philosophizing of Scripture, cf. Isaac Husik, "Maimonides and
Spinoza on the Interpretation of the Bible," Journal o f the
American Oriental Society, supplement no. 1 (1935), pp. 38-40
(reprinted in his Philosophical Essays [Oxford, 1952], pp.
157-159); and Sylvain Zac, Spinoza et l'interprdtation de
l'Ecriture (Paris, 1965), pp. 167-174 ("Salomon et Patti,
spinozistes?"), 190- 199 ("Le Christ est-il le 'Philosophe par
excellence'?"). Regarding Maimonides' esotericism, see n. 57
above.
i0~ T-PT, XV (G., III, p. 180, 1. 30). Cf. Strauss, Spinoza's
Critique, p. 254 (see n. 11 above). toJ T-PT, praef. (G., Ill, p.
10, 11.3-4); lII (pp. 47, 11.26t1".); cf. XVII. io4 Ibid., III (p.
57, 1.4). los According to The Oldest Biography of Spinoza, ed. A.
Wolf (London, 1927), Spinoza was
excommunicated because of his "contempt for the Law" (pp. 48,
100) or his "want of respect for Moses and for the Law" (pp. 53,
106).
Discussion of Spinoza's excommunication must take into account
the circumstances of seven- teenth-century Amsterdam Jewry, which
was concerned internally with the reintegration of Marranos into
Jewish life, and externally with maintaining its newly won
political and economic status in the Dutch republic. That the
Jewish community of Amsterdam was worried about heterodox opinions
concerning the authority of the Bible, the Talmud, and the
rabbinical courts may be gathered from Orobio de Castro's Epistola
Invectiva, written in 1663 or 1664 against Spinoza's fellow heretic
Dr. Juan de Prado (1. S. Rrvah, Spinoza et le Dr. Juan de Prado
[Paris, 1959], pp. 126-127, cL pp. 15-16).
~0~ Cf. Roth's contributions to Chronicon Spinozanum (see n. 2
above), and his Spinoza, pp. 224-225. To be sure, there were indeed
mediaeval Jews who did consider the theories of Ibn Ezra,
Maimonides, and other Jewish philosophers to be subversive to
Judaism. Nevertheless, it is on the whole true that since Judaism,
essentially a religion of deeds not beliefs, has no official list
of dogmas, the mediaeval Jewish philosophers were able to allow
themselves a broader freedom to philosophize than were their
Christian counterparts.
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MAIMONIDES AND SPINOZA 171
Judaism. ~~ The nature of Spinoza's Christianizing will be
illustrated by two examples concerning problems we have already
discussed. The first example concerns the Garden of Eden story,
which according to Maimonides' allegory is--as we recall--the story
of man's forsaking his intellect for his imagination. Now,
according to Maimonides, man can regain what he lost simply by
forsaking his imaginings for his intellect, that is, by pursuing
knowledge of God. This pursuit, according to Maimonides, is the aim
of the Law of Moses, whose first commandment, according to him, is
to know God. l~ Spinoza, having accepted Maimonides' allegory,
gives it a Christologicai twist: the idea of God that frees man
from the bondage of his imagination is, according to Spinoza, " the
spirit of Christ. ''1~ The second example also concerns the
intellect and the imagination. According to Maimonides, all the
prophets prophesied by means of their imagi- nation, except for
Moses, whose prophecy was wholly intellectual. ~ ~0 Spinoza, in his
Theologico-Political Treatise, follows Maimonides in his analysis
of the phenomenon of prophecy but again betrays him with a
Christological twist: "no one except Christ," writes Spinoza,
"received the revelations of God without the aid of the
imagination. ''tl~ The sum of both examples is the same: Spinoza
(despite his avowed anti-Maimonidean methodology of Bible
interpretation) ap- propriated Maimonides' philosophic exegeses of
the Bible, but where Maimon- ides had spoken about Moses and his
Law, Spinoza substituted Christ.
I do not, to be sure, mean to suggest that Spinoza truly
believed that histori- cal Christianity was superior to historical
Judaism. Certainly, both religions in their historical forms were
considered by him to be superstitions. 112 Moreover, there even is
some indication that he had more sympathy for the teachings of
Moses than for those of Jesus. ~13 His decision to present his own
universal religion in the costume of a reinterpreted Christianity
was evidently dictated by contemporary socio-political
considerations, and this decision required him to translate his
Maimonidean exegeses from Judaism into Christianity.
JOT See Hermann Cohen, "Spinoza iiber Staat und Religion,
Judentum und Christentum," Jiidische Schriften (Berlin, 1924), lII,
pp. 290-372; Strauss, Spinoza's Critique, pp. 1-31; Emmanuel
I_,6vinas, "Le cas Spinoza," Difficile Libertd (2nd ed., Pads,
1976, pp. 142-147).
los Book o f Knowledge, Foundations of the Law 1:1; cf. his
earlier work, Sefer Ha-Mi.svot ("The Book of the Commandments"),
positive commandment no. 1. On the connection between the Law of
Moses and the sin of Eden, see Guide, II, 30, p. 357. In his
well-known Commentary on the Guide, ad Ioc., the fourteenth century
Maimonidean Profiat Duran ("Ephodi") writes: "'When the Serpent
came to Eve, it cast pollution into her, i.e., when the imaginative
faculty became imprinted in the soul of man, it cast pollution into
it so that it be drawn after bodily lusts. The pollution of[ the
sons of] Israel who had been present at Mount Sinai came to an end,
as they received the command- ments and were purified with true
ideas . . . . "
~o9 Ethics, IV, 68, sch. (G., II, p. 262, I. 6). Cf. Epistle 73
(to Oldenburg) (G., IV, p. 308, l 1. 10-15, 27-32).
Ho Guide, II, 45, p. 403; cf. If, 35, pp. 367-368. See also Book
o f Knowledge, Foundations of the Law 7:6.
iij T-PT, I (G., IH, p. 21, 11.23-24). 1~2 Cf., e.g., Epistle 67
(to Burgh). i]3 Thus, e.g., he writes: "Moses labored to institute
a good republic . . . . [ T h e ] doctrine of
C h r i s t . . . of tolerating injuries has [no] p l a c e . .
, in a good republic" (T-PT, VII [G., III, p. 104, 11. 2-9]);
"Christ told his disciples to fear not those who kill the body
(vide Matthew 10:28). If this were said to everyone, government
would be founded in vain" (XIX [p. 232, 11.35-p. 233, 1.2]).
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172 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
IX The Spinoza who has been sketched (and, I admit, only
sketched) in the
preceding portrait was a Maimonidean in the sense that
fundamental elements of Maimonides' philosophy recur as fundamental
elements of his philosophy. This is true, as I have tried to show,
with regard to questions of psychology, episte- mology, ethics,
anthropology, politics, metaphysics, and true religion; that is
with regard to Spinoza's philosophy as a whole, including his
speculations about God and the true worship of him.
Spinoza's radical break with Maimonides was not on a point of
philosophy and not on a point of the true service of God, but on a
point concerning popular religion, namely, on the question of the
utility of traditional Jewish (biblical and rabbinic) Law.
Maimonides had held that the Law of Moses (properly interpreted)
legislates a popular religion that leads men to the true
intellectual service of God; and Spinoza rejected this proposition.
It may be that Spinoza thought that Mai- monides' arguments on
behalf of the Law of Moses had been valid given the socio-political
conditions of the twelfth century, but were no longer valid in
seven- teenth-century Europe; and it may be that he thought that
they had not been valid even in the twelfth century. This question
will not concern us here.
Spinoza has been hailed as the harbinger of many modern ideas
and move- ments. Seen as a Maimonidean, however, he represents the
end of a tradition. He was the last of the mediaeval Maimonideans.
He was, if you will, a decadent Maimonidean, as one might expect
from the end of the line, but he was nonethe- less a
Maimonidean.~4
Hebrew University, Jerusalem
t~4 This essay is based on a paper read in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, February 1977, at a meeting sponsored by the Harvard
Hillel Foundation and the department of philosophy of Harvard in
commemoration of the tricentennial of Spinoza's death.