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De Achttiende Eeuw. Jaargang 41 (2009)

De Achttiende Eeuw. Jaargang 41

(2009)– [tijdschrift] Documentatieblad werkgroep Achttiende eeuw–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

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The Modernity of Radical Enlightenment
Wiep van Bunge

First I should like to express my gratitude for being invited to participate in this occasion, although I should admit that over the last few years I have been asked so many times to comment on Jonathan Israel's work that it might seem as if I were essentially a critic of Radical Enlightenment. I'm not, and I must admit that preparing the laudatio, now two years ago, when my own university awarded Jonathan an honorary doctorate, was much more fun than writing this little talk in which I'm supposed to express criticism.1 More in general, I feel admiration is underestimated by academics. In my view it's as least as important and as fruitful as criticism, but for one reason or another we never ask our students to write an essay on the reasons why they admire an author or a book. We always want them to find fault, to cast doubt, to express dissent. So be it.

Over the last forty years Spinoza-scholarship has been largely dominated by a ‘naturalist’ reading of both the Ethics and the Tractatus theologico-politicus. This line of interpretation was first developed by French commentators and subsequently adopted by most experts in Europe as well as in the US. This ‘new’ Spinoza comes close to the picture painted of his thought by his many early critics and detractors, who from the 1670s onwards had emphasised the Dutch philosopher's atheism and his determinism in particular. Both his early critics and his late twentieth century interpreters took their cue from the way in which in their view Spinoza reacted to the philosophies of Descartes and Hobbes.2 Arguably the most remarkable characteristic of this new Spinoza is the great internal coherence of his thought, and just as remarkable, from my point of view, is the length to which many experts have been prepared to go in defending Spinoza: many Spinoza-scholars consider themselves ‘Spinozists’. Clearly, Jonathan Israel's interpretation of Spinoza's philosophy, its first critics and its early supporters, owes much to the still relatively recent achievements of Spinoza scholars in France, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands.3

However, what sets Radical Enlightenment and Enlightenment Contested apart is their truly breathtaking scope and, of course, Jonathan Israel's highly specific interpreta-

tion of the part Spinoza played in the course the European Enlightenment took from the 1670s onwards. Precisely since these massive books present us with such a highly detailed and very ambitious analysis of ‘the Making of Modernity’, they also raise a wide variety of questions. One could argue about Israel's methodology, about his interpretation of the many hundreds of primary sources he discusses, about the way in which he reduces eighteenth century thought to a debate between the three ‘parties’ of the radicals, the moderates and the adherents of the ‘Counter-Enlightenment’, but on this occasion I should like to raise an issue concerning the interpretation of Spinoza and cast some doubt on the supposed ‘modernity’ of his thought. In the past we've had a few skirmishes already over the religious, that is Protestant component of the Radical Enlightenment and over Spinoza's assessment of religion as such, so this time I should like to concentrate on Spinoza's political philosophy.4

Crucial to Radical Enlightenment and its sequel is the idea that at the heart of Spinoza's philosophy a necessary connection exists between on the one hand the metaphysical removal of the supernatural and on the other the political agenda of democracy and the recognition of the essential equality of all men. As far as the premise is concerned, I fully concur. Recently, an attempt has been made to re-open the debate on Spinoza's metaphysics by arguing that Spinoza's use of the distinction between natura naturans and natura naturata does point to a transcendent element in Spinoza's view of substance.5 In brief: according to Spinoza's Ethics the whole of reality, or Nature, consists of an infinite substance, of a single substance, that is, a substance constituted by an infinite number of attributes, each of which expresses God's nature in its own distinctive way. Hence, God or Nature as single substance is constituted by an infinite number of different ‘natures’, each producing so-called ‘modes’. While a tree is a mode or a modification of the attribute of Extension, an idea of this same tree is a mode of the attribute of Thought. Since man is made up of a body and a mind, we know of two divine attributes, but once we have perceived that God is an absolutely infinite substance, we are committed to the conclusion that God must consist of an infinite number of attributes unknown to us.

This rearrangement of Descartes' metaphysics has always produced confusion: well before the publication of the Ethics, besides the equation of God and Nature, in particular the relationship between God and his attributes and between the attributes and their modes provoked many questions even among some of his closest friends and followers. In order to clarify his metaphysics, Spinoza repeatedly made use of the scholastic distinction between Nature conceived of as cause - ‘natura naturans’ - and nature conceived of as effect: ‘natura naturata’. According to Spinoza God or the totality of all his attributes is ‘natura naturans’, while all modes together constitute ‘natura naturata’ (Ethics I, 29schol.). Recently it has been argued that this distinction entails a

transcendent element in Spinoza's conception of God for the simple reason that while this God is indeed identical to Nature as ‘natura naturans’, he transcends Nature as ‘natura naturata’, that is, as cause of all possible modes, since God or the totality of his attributes is never exhausted by all existing modes. I am afraid this line of interpretation will not hold, for all modes are not only produced by the attributes, they also exist ‘in’ these attributes, that is in God. What is more, just as modes are dependent on the attributes they are caused by, attributes also in a way depend on modes: being attributes they have to produce modes. It is not as if they are at liberty not to produce modes and to the extent that God causes Nature he does so by the necessity of his nature and, as Spinoza puts it himself, ‘as immanent cause’.

I will address the issue of Spinoza's political philosophy in a moment, but first, please allow me to make a more general observation on Spinoza's ‘modernity’, for in an important sense Spinoza never was part of the history of modern philosophy. If there is one common element in what has been written from the late 1960s onward on the ‘new’ Spinoza, it surely must be the shared insight that, according to the Ethics, man is not a substance.6 Man is a product of substance, a product of nature, just as clouds are and trees and rocks. Most philosophers, however, agree that from Descartes to Kant and from Kant to Hegel, the history of philosophy consists of a series of efforts to establish the extent to which man, or: ‘the subject’, is able to know the world, or: ‘the object’. And there is just as much agreement on what constitutes the modernity of this particular history, namely the shared conviction among seventeenth and eighteenth-century philosophers that it is the specific task of a philosophical enquiry into the accessibility of the objective world to start this enquiry with a reflection on the subject. For all modern philosophers of this period appear to agree that since all knowledge is produced by subjects, the key to understanding the very possibility of knowledge is to be found in the subject itself. Hence, the first truth arrived at in Descartes' metaphysics is the certainty of thought itself: Cogito. Hence, Locke was proud to style himself ‘an Under-Labourer’ as opposed to a ‘System-Builder’ and Hume set out for ‘a Science of Man’. Hence, Kant introduced the notion of a so-called ‘Transzendentalphilosophie’, in which the limits of reason were to be established - by reason itself. Now what makes Spinoza such a fascinating figure in the history of philosophy is his decision not to follow this trajectory, but instead to deduce the whole of reality, including man, from the concepts of ‘God’, ‘Substance’ or ‘Nature’. From a philosophical perspective not a ‘modern’ procedure at all.

But how about the political consequences to be drawn from Spinoza's metaphysics? Let's take a closer look at Spinoza's own analysis of democracy, and let's first agree on how unfortunate it is that Spinoza died, at the age of 44, shortly after he had started writing his chapter on Democracy in the Tractatus politicus, in view of the rather limited number of passages on democracy in the Tractatus theologico-politicus, I feel some caution is called for and I wonder whether we can really claim, as so many recent commentators have done, that Spinoza presents us with a convincing plea in favour of democracy which is modern and can still serve as a source of inspiration. To begin with, the last pages Spinoza wrote are dedicated to justifying the exclusion of women and slaves from political participation. Much ink has been spilt over these pages, since liberal and left-wing admirers of Spinoza have always felt slightly if not seriously embarrassed by these pages. ‘Women and slaves’, or so we are told, ‘are under the authority of men and masters’, just as ‘children and wards’, who ‘are under the authority of parents and guardians’.7 The reason for this, Spinoza continues, is to be found in the ‘weakness’ of women: ‘wherever on the earth men are found, there we see that men rule, and women are ruled’. As a consequence, women do not have the same rights men have: ‘women have not by nature equal right with men’, because they lack ‘force of character and ability in which human power and therefore human right chiefly consist.’8

In this respect I fully agree with Miriam van Reijen, who can hardly be accused of a lack of empathy with Spinoza's work, but who has demonstrated that however unfortunate we may find this passage, it does fit in both with Spinoza's equation of force or power and right and with a concept that lies at the heart of his metaphysics, for the use Spinoza makes of the crucial notion of conatus seriously undermines the egalitarian tendency of Spinoza's ‘horizontal’ metaphysics.9 While it is certainly true that once all men are considered finite modes of the same substance, political inequality cannot be justified by taking recourse to any vertical, ‘Platonic’ ontology, it is also true that according to Spinoza all finite modes are characterised by their ‘power’, that is by the extent to which they succeed in persevering in their existence (Ethics III, 6). And if we take seriously Spinoza's comments on the relationship between physical and mental power, it becomes difficult to turn him into a principled egalitarian, for Spinoza was a nominalist: concepts such as ‘humanity’ or ‘mankind’ to his mind were ‘entia rationis’, they do not in any way reflect really existing objects. Individual men and women exist, ‘mankind’ doesn't, as far as Spinoza is concerned.10

This may not be the place or the occasion to discuss this matter at length, but as far as I can see, Spinoza's refusal to admit the reality of a notion like ‘mankind’

seriously complicates the part he played in ‘the making of Modernity’ as does his insistence that there are no genuine ‘rights’ beyond ‘power’. I am afraid that what often has been termed Spinoza's ‘realism’ entails a somewhat conservative tendency, for according to Spinoza it is no accident that women in general do not take part in the political process. Indeed, his refusal to take a normative perspective in matters of moral and political philosophy prohibits him from concluding that women should play an active part in politics. In my view, however, a principled defence in favour of equality at one stage or another just has to have recourse to the kind of normative stance Spinoza refuses to take. Consider also Spinoza's comments in Chapter 18 of the Tractatus theologico-politicus on the dangers of changing existing political regimes. To put it differently, what Spinoza-scholars like to call Spinoza's realism prevents him, for example, from subscribing to Rousseau's famous opening lines of Le Contrat social: man is born free, but wherever you look, he lives in chains. For according to Spinoza, empirical facts can never really be called ‘wrong’, let alone ‘evil’. Perhaps Spinoza is right, I don't know, perhaps it is naïve to argue in favour of ‘human rights’, but it is modern, and I'm afraid that in this respect Spinoza isn't.11

A second aspect of Spinoza's politica that in my view makes it difficult to regard him as an essentially ‘modern’ philosopher concerns his very notion of ‘Democracy’. Although he constantly returns to the necessity of granting individual members of society ‘liberty’, and more in particular ‘the liberty to philosophize’, Spinoza held highly specific views both on the nature of democracy and of real freedom. In Chapter 16 of the Tractatus theologico-politicus he calls democracy - and I'm happy to quote Jonathan Israel's own translation of this text -‘the supreme natural right [of a society] over all things, i.e. supreme power, which all must obey, either of their own free will or through fear of the ultimate punishment.’ This strikes me as a very strange definition since it only refers to the weight of political power, and not to its source, its justification. But he also calls it ‘a united gathering of people which collectively has the sovereign right to do all that it has the power to do so.’ As a consequence, ‘sovereign power is bound by no law and everyone is obliged to obey it in all things’ and ‘we are obliged to carry out absolutely all the commands of the sovereign power, however absurd they may be.’12 It is only reasonable to do so, Spinoza claims, since it increases one's freedom: ‘The only free person is one who lives with his entire mind guided by reason.’ And democracy is reasonable and therefore conducive to real freedom, since in a democracy ‘a subject is one who does by command of the sovereign what is useful for the community and consequently also for himself.’13

In short: freedom equals obeying reason, while democracy essentially consists of obeying the sovereign. Don't get me wrong: I don't need to be told that both Spinoza's

analysis of freedom and his theory of democracy are part of a brilliant philosophy, and yes, I can see its anti-monarchical and anti-ecclesiastical potential. Moreover, the idea that a democracy is the most natural form of government, since in it the interests of the state and its subjects concur, is a fascinating one. But still: how modern can Spinoza's view be called that democratic sovereign power ‘is bound by no law and everyone is obliged to obey it in all things’? In what sense can this insight serve to inspire current debates on the future of democracy? In Chapter 17 of the TTP Spinoza links his discussion of democracy as the most reasonable form of government to the story told in Exodus: when the Hebrews transferred all their rights to Moses, who alone was deemed capable of communicating with God, and when as a consequence a real theocracy was established, a situation was created that according to Spinoza resembled a democracy: ‘all gave up their right equally, as in a democracy, crying with one voice: “We shall do whatever God shall say” (..) It follows that they all remained perfectly equal as a result of this agreement’.14 Perfectly equal, for equally perfectly powerless. Apparently, all it takes to recognise the democratic essence of theocracy is the ability to grasp its rationality.

Again, Spinoza may be right, but still: does he articulate a modern point of view? Much as I admire Spinoza myself, I have always considered him an essentially seventeenth century thinker, who indeed at least during the early Enlightenment made a much bigger impact on European scholars and philosophers than had been recognized for a long time. But as far as I can see, his philosophy is simply unable to accommodate a number of closely related developments that were just as crucial to ‘the Making of Modernity’ as Spinoza's secular rationalism may have been. In the end it is I suppose his insistence that the right use of reason will produce a single, all-encompassing truth concerning the structure of the universe as well as man's moral psychology and the foundations of democracy on which all truly rational human beings will necessarily agree - Ethics IV, 35dem: ‘insofar as men live according to the guide of reason, they must always agree amongst themselves’ - that does not strike me as a constitutive element of modernity. And to the extent that it was, it remains to be seen how helpful it still is.

I have always been struck by Spinoza's lack of what Peter Reill only recently called a certain ‘epistemological modesty’ typical of so many other Enlightenment thinkers. In the making of modernity both the accommodation of intellectual pluralism and of some degree of scepticism appear to me to have been essential, and both are alien to Spinoza's philosophy, or so it would seem to me. I feel that Peter Reill's conclusion that the eighteenth-century Enlightenment was ‘a process of critical enquiry rather than a set of fixed propositions’, carries great wisdom, not only as a description of some of the main trends of eighteenth-century thought, but especially as a source of inspiration for current debates.15 For let's face it: in the end, the decision to present

the Enlightenment and the Radical Enlightenment in particular as constitutive of Modernity is itself a political one.16

About the author
Wiep van Bunge (1960) is Professor in the History of Philosophy and Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam. He publishes mainly on the history of philosophy in the Dutch Republic.
E-mail: vanbunge@fwb.eur.nl

Sources and Literature

Wiep van Bunge, ‘Spinoza en de Nederlandse canon’, Mededelingen vanwege Het Spinozahuis 93 (2007) 11-23.
Wiep van Bunge, ‘Spinoza Past and Present’, in: Jill Kraye, G.A.J. Rogers, Tom Sorrell, (ed.), Insiders and Outsiders in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (New York 2009) 223-237.
Wiep van Bunge, ‘“Geleerd” spinozisme in Nederland en Vlaanderen, 1945-2000’, Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 71 (2009) 11-36.
Wiep van Bunge, ‘Redefining Radical Enlightenment: A Dutch Perspective’, in: Jonathan Israel and Martin Mulsow (ed.), Redefining Radical Enlightenment (Princeton forthcoming).
Herman de Dijn, ‘De God van Spinoza’, in: Cis van Heertum (ed.), Libertas philosophandi. Spinoza als gids voor een vrije wereld (Amsterdam 2008) 125-137.
Huib Hubbeling, Spinoza's Methodology (Assen 1964).
Jonathan Israel, ‘Unité et diversité des Lumières radicales. Typologie de ses intellectuels et de ses racines culturelles’, in: Catherine Secrétan, Tristan Dagron, Laurent Bove (ed.), Qu'est-ce que les Lumières “radicales”? Libertinage, athéisme et spinozisme dans le tournant philosophique de l'âge classique (Paris 2007) 37-59.
Alexandre Matheron, Individu et communauté chez Spinoza (Paris 1988 (1969)) 9-78.
Warren Montag and Ted Stolze: The New Spinoza (Minneapolis-London 1997).
Christopher Norris, Spinoza and the Origins of Modern Critical Theory (Oxford 1991).
Miriam van Reijen, Spinoza. De geest is gewillig, maar het vlees is sterk (Kampen 2008).
Peter Reill, ‘Rethinking the Enlightenment. Nature and Culture in the High and Late Enlightenment’, Burgerhartlezing 1 (2008).
Benedict de Spinoza, A Theologico-Political Treatise and A Political Treatise, translated from the Latin with an Introduction by R.H.M. Elwes (New York 1951).
Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, Jonathan Israel (ed.), translated by Michael Silverthorne and Jonathan Israel (Cambridge 2007).
Theo Verbeek, ‘Spinoza on Natural Rights’, Intellectual History Review 17 (2007) 257-275.

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