Spinoza in Soviet Philosophy by Kline George L.;

Author:Kline, George L.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2019-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

II

Having sketched the basic orientation of Spinoza’s thought, of necessity schematically and very briefly, we can now turn to the question of what the elements were which went into the formation of our philosopher’s world-view. A definite groove has been established in the literature of this subject. Some see in Judaism the source of Spinozism. Since Spinoza was a Jew and was trained to be a rabbi, since he studied the Talmud and its many commentators, and even cabala—the flat conclusion is drawn that Spinozism has its roots in Judaism. Without in the least denying that the great Jewish thinkers (such as Maimonides) had a certain influence on Spinoza, we nevertheless regard the assertion that our philosopher’s teaching came from the womb of Judaism as entirely erroneous. In particular, as far as cabala is concerned, Spinoza’s expressed opinion is extremely negative.

Others are inclined to see the source of Spinozism in scholastic philosophy. Still others regard Spinoza as a follower and pupil of Descartes. Of course, no one can deny Spinoza’s indebtedness to scholasticism, or Descartes’s enormous influence on our philosopher. Nevertheless, we should say that all of these judgments concerning the sources of Spinozism touch only the surface of the problem; for the scholars concerned lose sight of the currents and philosophical tendencies of the period in which Spinoza lived and worked. Surely it is strange and quite naive to imagine that the seventeenth century was some kind of vacuum in which no movement of thought was taking place. Furthermore, these conceptions are evidently based on the assumption that Spinoza was not a living human being, vitally interested in the problems which disturbed his contemporaries, but some kind of Egyptian mummy, immured within the four walls of his study, grubbing ceaselessly like a bookworm in the ancient folios of the scholastics or the mystical books of cabala. Yet surely such conceptions contradict all the known facts. We now know very well even the contents of Spinoza’s library. For this reason I consider that it is necessary for the elucidation of the sources of Spinozism to turn first of all to an investigation of the fundamental trends and tendencies in philosophy and science during the seventeenth century; for Spinozism was a product of its time. It was one of the philosophical attempts to solve the problems which were of commanding interest in the seventeenth century. Moreover, in my opinion, Spinozism was above all a synthesis of the materialistic tendencies of this period.

Of the many investigators of Spinozism, only Dunin-Borkowski,1it seems, has interested himself in the problem of the connection of Spinozism with contemporary currents of philosophical and scientific thought. And it should be said that, despite the fact that the author himself is a Catholic, idealist, and mystic who would very much like to treat Spinoza in this same spirit, he has been forced to admit at least one thing: Spinoza was actually a materialist at one time—during his youth, to be sure, and briefly; but there is no doubt that he was a materialist, indeed a mechanistic materialist.

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