Spinoza’s ‘Atheism’, the Ethics and the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus

Abstract

Abstract This chapter argues that Spinoza deserves neither vilification nor praise for being an atheist, for the simple reason that he was not one. The first section of the chapter addresses the imputation of atheism to Spinoza and Spinoza’s response to the charge. The second section discusses three strategies that have been pursued to ascribe atheism to Spinoza. The third and fourth sections discuss some key texts from the Ethics and the TTP and argue that the atheist readings fail to make sense of these key passages (unless one adopts a hermeneutics of extreme suspicion which could equally find any view harbored in any text). The fifth section shows that both panentheism and the critique of anthropomorphic religion and anthropomorphic conceptions of providence were quite common within Jewish-Rabbinic discourse. Thus, the chapter argues that if we are not in the business of announcing that both Maimonides and the Kabbalists were atheists, we should avoid the same imputation to Spinoza.