Spinoza's Theory of Immanence Reconsidered *

Jean Axelrad Cahan Department of Philosopf?y, Universiry of Nebraska-Lincoln

I. Introduction

Even for those who hold religious beliefs, in the wake of powerful secular- izing forces and the unprecedented nature of recent wars, it is difficult to explain or describe the presence of God. In the course of the 20th century numerous writers have been concerned with reexpressing God's presence in the world and in the course of doing so have drawn in various ways on the philosophy of Spinoza. Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Mordecai Kaplan and Emil Fackenheim may be mentioned in this context. 1 It has become a commonplace-indeed it was one already in the 18th century, in both Jew- ish and Christian rationalist histories of philosophy-that Spinoza was a pantheist.2 Although there are a few exceptions to this view, it remains the predominant one. In this paper I shall argue that this entrenched interpretation of Spinoza as a pantheist should be overturned. The view that Spinoza was a pantheist has appeared in two forms. The first version takes Spinoza to identify God with the world without remainder. Such an interpretation may be found, for example, in Jonathan Bennett's study of Spinoza's Ethics, and in essays by Eliezer BerkovitS.3 I

• I would like to thank Barbara von Eckardt and Philip Hugly for valuable criticisms of an earlier version of this paper.

1 Martin Buber, Ich und Du (Koln: J. Hegner, 1966); Emil Fackenheim, To Mend the WOrld·founda- tions of future Jewish thought (New York: Schocken Books, 1982); (Mordecai Kaplan], Dynamic Judaism: The Essential Writings of Mordecai Kaplan. Edited by Emanuel J. Goldsmith and Mel Schult (New York: Schocken Books, 1985); Franz Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Brlosung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Ver- lag, 1988).

2 See for example: Julius Guttman, Philosophies of Judaism: The History of Jewish Philosophyfrom Bibli- cal Times to Franz Rosenzweig. Translated by David W. Silverman and edited by R. J. Zwi Werblowsky (New York: Sckocken Books, 1973); A1asdairMacIntyre, "Pantheism" in: The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1972); Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy. Vol- ume 4: Descartes to Leibniz (New York: Image Books, 1963).

3 Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); Eliezer Berkovits, Mqjor Themes in Modern Philosophiesof Judaism (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1974); Alan Donagan, "Substance, Essence and Attribute in Ethics I" in: Yirmiyahu Yovel (ed.), Spinoza hy 2000: TheJerusalem Conferences. Volume l- God and Nature: Spinoza's Metaphysics (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991). 81 82 Jean A. Cahan examine this interpretation in Section III, arguing that there are grounds on which to insist that there was indeed a "remainder" for Spinoza. Those grounds have to do with Spinoza's conception of immanent causation and of universals. It will emerge that while God's presence in the world is de- scribed through Spinoza's theory of immanent causation, this very theory is used by Spinoza to assert God's transcendence over the world. In this way Spinoza sought perhaps to put forward an original solution to the ancient Jewish perplexity as to how God could be both an immanent and a tran- scendent entity. The texts which are most relevant to this version of the pantheistic interpretation are Book I of the Ethics and the phrase "Deus sive Natura" (God or Nature) which occurs in Book IV and in the Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well-Being. The second version of the view that Spinoza was a pantheist relies on a somewhat different, but not unrelated understanding of God's presence in the world. In this version the emphasis is not on divine presence without remainder but on presence everywhere in the world, including places that are degrading, or tending to impugn God's dignity. This interpretation focuses on Spinoza's claim that God is extended being, which may be found in Propositions 14 and 15 in Book I of the Ethics; the study of Descartes' Principles of Philosophy, and even the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. On this interpretation Spinoza's identification of God with the natural world is treated, as it were, locally. It is 'fiot the totality of natural objects which is under discussion, but the thought that God might be identical with or inhere in any particular object. The objection is then made that God's immutability is destroyed. This line of thought was expressed by Spinoza's earliest critics, including Pierre Bayle and the participants in the 18th century Pantheismusstreit. I discuss this problem in Section IV, again employing the theory of immanent causation as well as Spinoza's concept of matter to refute the pantheistic interpretation. Broadly speaking, there are three reasons why pantheism has been ab- horred. First, as indicated above, it is seen as implying that God's nature is as imperfect and changeable as the items in the natural world. Second, by making God coextensive with nature and nature's laws, it removes freedom from God's exercise of power. Third, to the extent that humans are depen- dent on or "part of" divine being, it removes freedom from human re- sponses to God and responsibility for actions. To this rather standard set of objections I would like to add a fourth, which I believe has been present but scarcely articulated. The fourth objection is that pantheism encourages political instability: it provides a basis for modifying political relations in human society by reconceiving-and undermining-the authority relation between God and humanity; pantheism's forgetfulness or outright rejection of God's transcendence is suspected of justifying a weakening of existing hierarchies of authority.4 For example, it has been pointed out that, in the

4 This would be a positive rather than a negative development for some thinkers. Cf. Judith Plaskow, Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a feminist perspective (New York: Harper & Row, 1990); [Mordecai Kaplan], Dynamic Judaism.