Yitzhak Y. Melamed

Acosmism or Weak Individuals?: Hegel, Spinoza, and the Reality of the Finite

Like many of his contemporaries, Hegel considered Spinoza a modern reviver of ancient Eleatic monism, in whose system “all determinate content is swallowed up as radically null and void.” This characterization of Spinoza as denying the reality of the world of finite things had a lasting influence on the perception of Spinoza in the two centuries that followed. In this article, I take these claims of Hegel to task and evaluate their validity. Although Hegel’s official argument for the unreality of modes in Spinoza’s system will turn out to be unsound, I do believe there is one crucial line in Spinoza’s system—Spinoza’s rather weak and functional conception of individuality—thats provides some support for Hegel’s reading of Spinoza.

Spinoza on Inherence, Causation, and Conception

In this paper I suggest a new interpretation of the relations of inherence, causation and conception in Spinoza. I discuss the views of Don Garrett on this issue and argue against Della Roccas recent suggestion that a strict endorsement of the PSR leads necessarily to the identification of the relations of inherence, causation and conception. I argue that (1) Spinoza never endorsed this identity, and (2) that Della Roccas suggestion could not be considered as a legitimate reconstruction or friendly amendment to Spinozas system because it creates several severe and irresolvable problems in the system.In the first part of the paper, I present the considerations and arguments that motivated Don Garretts and Della Roccas interpretations. In the second part, I present and examine several problems that result from Della Roccas reading. In the third and final part, I (1) present my own view on the relation among inherence, causation, and conception; (2) offer a new interpretation of the conceived through relation in Spinoza; and finally, (3) defend and justify the presence of (non-arbitrary) bifurcations at the very center of Spinozas system.

Spinoza’s Anti-Humanism: An Outline

In this paper, Yitzhak Melamed argues that Spinoza was the most radical anti-humanist among modern philosophers. Spinoza rejects any notion of human dignity. He conceives of God’s—and not man’s—point of view as the only objective perspective through which one can know things adequately, and it is at least highly questionable whether he allows for any genuine notions of human autonomy or morality.

Spinoza's conception of law: metaphysics and ethics

The God of the Hebrew Bible is a sovereign lawgiver to the Jewish people. God commands his people to act, or not to act, in certain ways and holds them responsible for their actions, punishing disobedience and rewarding obedience. Within the religious traditions that descend from Judaism, the idea of divine law is conceived of as a set of dictates or commands that God issues to all human beings—commands that establish inescapable obligations, on the basis of which humans are held accountable for their actions. One of Spinoza’s primary goals in the TTP is to offer a reinterpretation of the idea of divine law, according to which it is understood not as the literal command of a sovereign being, but as a law taught by the “natural light of reason” (III/10/7) and “inferred from the consideration of human nature alone” (III/61/24-25). In the TTP, this interpretation is developed against the background of a general analysis of the concept of law that has wide-ranging consequences for Spinoza’s philosophy. In what follows I focus on two of these consequences: Spinoza’s endeavor to use the notion of law (including divine law) to bridge the divide between the natural and the normative, and the role he assigns to the concept of law in underwriting the systematic unity of his ethical theory.

“A Substance Consisting of an Infinity of Attributes”: Spinoza on the Infinity of Attributes

At the opening of the Ethics Spinoza defines God as a substance consisting of infinitely many attributes. Still, the reader of the Ethics will find only two of these attributes discussed in any detail in Parts Two through Five of the book. Addressing this intriguing gap between the infinity of attributes asserted in E1d6 and the discussion of merely the two attributes of Extension and Thought in the rest of the book, Jonathan Bennett writes: “Spinoza seems to imply that there are other [attributes] – he says indeed that God or Nature has “infinite attributes.” Surprising as it may seem, there are reasons to think that by this Spinoza did not mean anything entailing that there are more than two attributes.” In this paper I show that Bennett’s claim is fundamentally wrong and deeply misleading. I do think, however, that addressing Bennett’s challenge helps us better understand Spinoza’s notion of infinity. I begin by summarizing Bennett’s arguments and then turn to examine briefly the textual evidence for and against his reading. I respond to each of Bennett’s arguments, and conclude by pointing out some theoretical considerations that, I believe, simply refute his reading.

Daniel B. Schwartz. The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. 288 pp.

Moroccan academy, including a reassessment of Morocco’s role in WWII, normalization with Israel, Berber activism, etc. Along similar lines, Boum’s attention to Muslims’ “memories of absence” also complements an important body of work by Israeli anthropologists (Shlomo Deshen, André Levy, Alex Weingrod, et al.) who have studied how Moroccan Jews remember Moroccan Muslims in Israel, based on relationships (real or imagined) that are likewise recalled in the absence of “the other.” Several films have also tackled this topic, one that Boum himself has written about elsewhere. This book was a somewhat painful personal reminder of the limitations of archival research in Morocco carried out by an “outsider.” Of course, being an “insider” carries its own significant burdens, and the author, an American professor of Moroccan Haratine background, deals with these in a straightforward way so that they become an important part of the story. Memories of Absence also includes an innovative historiographic discussion, especially valuable in its weighing of the advantages and dangers of colonial scholarship. A great part of this book’s overall value comes from its deep contextualization of the life of Jews in the societies in which they lived. While this approach is indicative of a well-established “pro-diasporic” turn in Jewish studies, few scholars working today have the local knowledge and skill set to apply it to the Arab-Islamic world. (Judging by student interest in the topic, though, those numbers may be growing.) At the same time, the author does not shy away from asking and answering hard questions about the nature of “Moroccanness” on the local, regional, and national level—what it consists of, who it encompasses and why, its internal contradictions, and its changing definitions. By bringing his expertise and innovative scholarly approach to an understudied population in an understudied area of Morocco, by bridging the respective challenges of outsider and insider status, Boum has made an important contribution to the study of Moroccan Jews, and, more broadly, of Moroccan history.