Religion and Spinoza in Jonathan Israel's Interpretation of The

Religion and Spinoza in Jonathan Israel’s Interpretation of the Enlightenment

Douglas H. Shantz

One of the great intellectual achievements of recent times is the interpretation of the Enlightenment by Jonathan Israel. Even his critics stand in awe of the vast erudition on display in the 2,538 page trilogy, completed in 2011.1 Central to Israel’s understanding of the European Enlightenment is his contention that its radical innovations were early, Dutch, and epitomized by Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677). Israel’s claim that “the European Enlightenment borrowed heavily from the intellectual milieu of the Netherlands” in the late seventeenth century challenges the traditional focus on Voltaire, Rousseau, La Mettrie, Condillac, d’Holbach, Diderot, Helvétius, and other members of the high Enlightenment in mid-eighteenth century France.2 What make Israel’s volumes a joy to read are the great questions he invites us to consider: how is the Enlightenment best approached and understood— from the discipline of the intellectual history of ideas or from a social and cultural historical perspective? Who set the agenda of the Enlightenment—early Dutch thinkers in the late 17th century or French Philosophes in the later 18th century? And which of these was the source of the French Revolution and its undermining of faith and monarchy? In a day when historians resist the grand narrative style of inquiry, Israel throws caution to the wind and invites us along for the ride. Alongside the important contributions of Israel’s work, however, are some significant problems, none more notable than Israel’s treatment of religion. Israel fails to offer an even-handed account of Spinoza’s religious convictions and does not take seriously the positive religious dimension of the Enlightenment, as a movement fundamentally inspired by and aligned with

1 Excluding the bibliographies, Israel’s Enlightenment trilogy adds up to 2,538 pages: Radical Enlightenment (2001), 718 pages; Enlightenment Contested (2008), 869 pages; Democratic Enlightenment (2011), 951 pages, all published by Oxford University Press. 2 Israel highlights “the extensive intellectual contributions that issued from the Low Countries in the late seventeenth century.” See Jeremy L. Caradonna’s Review of Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (New York: Oxford, 2001), available online: http://www.jeremycaradonna.com/Review%20of%20Jonathan%20 Israel.pdf. Also see Jeremy L. Caradonna, The Enlightenment in Practice: Academic Prize Contests and Intellectual Culture in France, 1670–1794 (Cornell, 2012).

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��4 | doi 10.1163/9789004273276_014 jonathan israel’s interpretation of the enlightenment 209 religion. The moderate Enlightenment, according to Israel, only deserves to be criticised for its conservative acceptance of traditional religion and its betrayal of the agenda of the Enlightenment movement. In this study, I argue that Protestant religion in the Netherlands and the German empire was remarkably innovative and creative in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and that a cultural-historical approach to the Enlightenment reveals its debts to Dutch and German religion. German Pietism and the Dutch Further Reformation both reacted to the shock of the Thirty Years War by promoting a Christianity that was socially and biblically engaged. Examples of this are the orphanage movements and Dutch and German Bible translation projects. This study will argue in the words of Jane Shaw that “Religion was shaped anew in the Enlightenment, and it was central to the whole project of modernity.”3

Jonathan Israel’s Intellectual History of the Radical Enlightenment

Jonathan Israel defines the Enlightenment as “the quest for human ameliora- tion occurring between 1680 and 1800, driven principally by ‘philosophy.’ ”4 It aimed to discard the ideas and traditions of the past and to bring about a revo- lutionary transformation of ideas, constitutions, and civil society. Its root causes were both intellectual and cultural. The Scientific Revolution, repre- sented in figures such as Copernicus, Galileo, and Isaac Newton, served to destabilize previous assumptions and ways of learning about the natural world. Among cultural causes, Israel points to the aftermath of the Thirty Years War and the religious stalemate that ensued. There was a growing need to acknowledge the fact of religious plurality in Europe and to tolerate Christian dissenters and Jews. Another cultural factor was the growth of cosmopolitan and dynamic cities with high levels of immigration, commerce, and trade. Cities such as Amsterdam, The Hague, London, Paris, Berlin, and Frankfurt became “the chief breeding-grounds of radical ideas” between 1650 and 1750. Following Jürgen Habermas, Israel points to the formation of “the Early Enlightenment public sphere,” in tea and coffee shops, which in turn promoted more fluid social relations, a new vernacular reading culture and conversa tional style, and a freer exchange of ideas.5

3 See Jane Shaw, Miracles in Enlightenment England (New Haven, 2006), p. 17. 4 Jonathan Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750– 1790 (Oxford 2011), p. 7. 5 Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment (Oxford, 2001), pp. 59–61, and Israel, Democratic Enlightenment (see above, n. 4), pp. 8, 9. Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit.