Reading between the lines – Leo Strauss and the history of early modern philosophy 9783110424294, 9783110427493

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Winfried Schröder (Ed.) Reading between the lines

New Studies in the History and Historiography of Philosophy

Edited by Gerald Hartung and Sebastian Luft

Volume 3

Reading between the lines – Leo Strauss and the history of early modern philosophy Edited by Winfried Schröder

ISBN 978-3-11-042749-3 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-042429-4 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-042437-9 ISSN 2364-3161 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Table of Contents Winfried Schröder Introduction 1 Jonathan Israel Leo Strauss and the Radical Enlightenment Adrian Blau The Irrelevance of (Straussian) Hermeneutics Dietrich Schotte The Virtues and Vices of Leo Strauss, Historian A reassessment of Straussian Hermeneutics

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A. P. Martinich Leo Strauss’s Olympian Interpretation: Right, Self-preservation, and Law in The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes 77 Gianni Paganini Art of Writing or Art of Rewriting? Reading Hobbes’s De motu against the Background of Strauss’ 99 Interpretation Edwin Curley Resurrecting Leo Strauss

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John Christian Laursen Spinoza, Strauss, and the Morality of Lying for Safety and Peace Antony McKenna Pierre Bayle and the Red Herring Subject index Index of Names

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Introduction

The questions addressed in this volume are fundamental and by no means novel. They have always stirred controversy and are still unresolved: How are we to read early modern philosophical texts? There might be a fundamental difference between 17th- or 18th-century texts on the one hand and books written in the 20th or 21st century on the other. No one would doubt that what Wittgenstein, for example, wanted to teach in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is directly expressed in that book. But what about Hobbes’ Leviathan, Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise, or Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique? These authors lived long before the struggle for the libertas philosophandi succeeded. Hobbes, Spinoza, and Bayle did not enjoy the freedom of openly expressing their thoughts. A number of theses and theories had no place in the public philosophical arena. Denying the existence of God or of divine providence, calling into question the immortality of the soul, or rejecting the concept of free will were, of course, not options in a culture in which severe sanctions were imposed on those who entertained deviating views. So, isn’t it reasonable to suspect that these authors might have intended to deliver messages different from those they wrote? And isn’t it then the interpreter’s task to uncover those unexpressed – ‘esoteric’ – messages? If so, what are the risks of such a hermeneutical procedure? Well, there is as danger that we might produce an inadequate picture or even a caricature of the respective philosopher’s views. In the worst case, we might become guilty of a special kind of Whig history, i. e., we might ascribe our modern conceptions and the views we endorse today to authors of the past who didn’t share them at all. Thus, it follows that there can be no unlimited license to ascribe heterodox doctrines to early modern philosophers whose manifest teachings are in harmony with the orthodox positions of their time. But what are the limits imposed upon the reader by the explicit wording of the texts concerned? Very clearly, these are not novel problems. In fact, the opposing stances of two ‘grand old men’ of early modern scholarship – Paul Oskar Kristeller and Leo Strauss – are still paradigmatic. According to the latter, of course, we do enjoy a most extensive license in interpreting early modern authors by making explicit the esoteric teachings hidden between the lines of their writings. By contrast, Kristeller, back in the 1960s, wrote: “As historians we must stand on the written record. The secret thoughts of a person that are not expressed in his words are beyond the grasp of the historian […]. We must admit […] that the written record always represents only a partial and sometimes a misleading or false

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picture of a person’s […] thought. We should always keep this in mind, and hence appreciate a sceptical attitude”.¹ This is how Kristeller voiced his discontent with the hermeneutical licentiousness of scholars like Charbonnel² and others who claimed to have discovered radical heterodox and even atheistic tenets in the works of some 16th-century philosophers and established the “myth of Renaissance atheism”, as Kristeller put it. In the article just quoted Kristeller did not refer to Leo Strauss. But his warning seems to apply perfectly to the hermeneutics proposed in Strauss’s Persecution and the Art of Writing. Since then numerous studies have been published by historians of early modern philosophy unwilling to take Kristeller’s warning seriously, but readily following Strauss’s principles of interpretation. However, at least some of these studies – albeit by negative example – illustrate that Kristeller had made an important point indeed. A number of David Berman’s studies come to mind here. One hundred of the 250 pages of his History of Atheism in Britain are devoted to 17th- and 18th-century thinkers whom he labels as “atheists”. Berman ascribes atheistic convictions to authors in whose works we don’t find any atheistic confession. Although he is, of course, aware that the earliest documents of an “avowed atheism” date from as late as the 1780s,³ Berman claims that in the previous generations philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes⁴, Charles Blount or Anthony Collins did in fact – though not overtly – reject the existence of God.⁵ Recently Descartes’s Meditations were subjected to a distinctively Straussian reading by Anne Staquet. According to her, an adequate understanding of the Meditations must be based on the Cartesian device Larvatus prodeo: ‘My real philosophical convictions’, he wants to indicate with this metaphor, ‘are concealed behind a mask’. Staquet takes this device as an unequivocal invitation to look for arcane libertine tenets in Descartes’s work. Consequently, her aim is not to reconstruct the metaphysics of the Cartesian Meditations, but to decon-

 Kristeller, “The Myth of Renaissance Atheism and the French Tradition of Free-Thought”, p. .  Charbonnel, La pensée italienne au XVIe siècle et le courant libertin.  Berman, A History of Atheism in Britain from Hobbes to Russell, pp.  – .  Cf. Strauss, What is political philosophy?, p. : “Hobbes teaches ‘direct atheism’.”; Jesseph, “Hobbes’s atheism”, p. : “Hobbes […] was really a sly and ironic atheist who concealed his disbelief behind a screen of disingenuous theological verbiage while constructing a philosophical system that makes the concept of God inadmissible”. A more cautious reading is offered by Schotte, Die Entmachtung Gottes durch den Leviathan.  Berman, “Disclaimers as Offence Mechanisms in Charles Blount and John Toland”; Id., “Anthony Collins and the question of atheism in the early part of the eighteenth century”. Cf. Rappaport, “Questions of evidence: an anonymous tract attributed to John Toland”, who questions Berman’s theses.

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struct it: “déconstruire la pensée cartésienne”⁶. Encouraged to do so by both Jacques Derrida and Leo Strauss, she proceeds in a very peculiar manner. Textual evidence which tells against her understanding of Descartes as an antichristian libertine is easily put aside: Staquet acknowledges that Descartes emphatically expressed his commitment to a metaphysics compatible with and supportive of Christian dogma. But, according to her, these confessions are nothing but means of disguising his real views by strategies of writing: “stratégies de l’art d’écrire”⁷. And hence the Meditations are in fact a heterodox and subversive text: “un ouvrage […] hétérodoxe et […] subversif”⁸. Descartes employed the “pratique de la dissimulation et de l’équivoque”⁹ in order to shatter the foundations not only of Christianity, but of religion altogether: “en effet, Descartes y sape les fondements de la religion”¹⁰. It is not only the flamboyancy of such contemporary researchers which is apt to nourish doubts concerning the legitimacy of a Straussian ‘reading between the lines’. Early modern theologians and Christian philosophers, too, practiced such an excessive mode of reading, casting a most dubious light on this hermeneutical approach. In particular some protagonists of 17th-century anti-atheist apologetics stated and defended principles of interpretation analogous to Strauss’s method. In the early 17th century François Garasse, for example, did not hesitate to stigmatise several of his contemporaries as crypto-atheists, and he was convinced that he did so for good reasons. For atheists are used to expressing their thoughts with “ambiguity” and “subterfuge” (“ruses”). Hence it must be the first step of the apologetic enterprise to discover the monstrosity of atheism under these “ambiguités & sous-ententes”.¹¹ Ralph Cudworth later echoed this view: Atheists dare not speak out openly in public: “Atheists”, Cudworth states, “have commonly had their Vizards and Disguises; […] prudently chusing [sic] to walk abroad in Masquerade”.¹² So, orthodox confessions made by suspicious authors must be understood as cunning dissimulations. Therefore, according to Garasse and Cudworth, the guiding principle of interpreting a suspicious text can Staquet, Descartes et le libertinage, p. .  Ibid.  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Ibid., p. .  Garasse, La doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits de ce temps, ou pretendus tels, p. .  Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, ii., p. : “And as Epicurus so other Atheists in like manner, have commonly had their Vizards and Disguises; […] for the most part prudently chusing to walk abroad in Masquerade”; cf. Schröder, Ursprünge des Atheismus, p. ; Id., “Verteidigte Thesen und erschlossene Absichten. Probleme der Interpretation heterodoxer Texte der frühen Neuzeit”.

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not be the presumption of innocence of its author. It must be the presumption that the author in question is indeed guilty of heeding atheist convictions. It is very probable that some of the candidates accused by Garasse, Cudworth and their fellow apologists did hold heterodox and antichristian views. However, it is another question whether they were atheists in the strict sense of the word. What is more, other candidates were innocent of the ‘crime of atheism’ according to the unanimous judgment of modern scholars. Generally speaking, labelling a ‘suspicious’ text as a crypto-atheistic document is the lectio difficilior. The burden of proof is placed upon the reader who attempts to uncover hidden heterodox messages in texts which at the surface of their wording are ‘orthodox’. At any rate, the risks of a Straussian ‘reading between the lines’ are more than obvious. The somewhat trivial advice for the reader to proceed with the utmost caution and circumspection is not the only consequence to be drawn from these observations. The sources of the early modern period present us with a lot of evidence which tells in favour of Strauss’s approach. In the 17th and 18th centuries several authors were aware that what Strauss in 1954 called a “forgotten kind of writing”¹³ was by no means uncommon in their time. John Toland even devoted an essay of its own to this practice: his Clidophorus, or of the Exoteric and Esoteric Philosophy. ¹⁴ Before he published this text in 1720, he even claimed that the Bible offers a prominent specimen of esoteric writing. As Toland tried to show in his 1709 Origines Judaicae, Moses was in fact a proto-Spinozist, i. e. a pantheist.¹⁵ How close Toland came to the Straussian view can be seen in his Clidophorus. In this essay, Toland was mainly concerned with techniques of concealed writing in antiquity. As can be observed in Plato, Aristotle, Cicero or the neo-Platonists, this “was the common practice of all the antient [sic] philosophers”.¹⁶ But Toland also refers to the situation of his own time. In particular it is Claude Bérigard whose work – Circulus Pisanus (1643) – illustrates the impact of the ecclesiastical “persecution”¹⁷ on the ‘art of writing’ of heterodox early modern writers. The key passage which deserves to be quoted in full length reads as follows:

 Strauss, “On a Forgotten Kind of Writing”, and Clay, “On a Forgotten Kind of Reading”.  Toland, “Clidophorus; or of the Exoteric and Esoteric Philosophy”, part II of his Tetradymus, pp.  – . Cf. Patterson, “Reading Between the Lines”, pp.  and .  Toland, Origines judaicae, p. : “Mosem […]fuisse Pantheistam, sive, ut cum recentioribus loquar, Spinosistam”.  Toland, “Clidophorus”, p. .  Ibid., p. .

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“Persecution ends at length in the Inquisition, as the utmost perfection of this hellish Oeconomy of faith. […] daily experience sufficiently evinces, that there is no discovering, at least no declaring of Truth in most places, but at the hazard of a man’s reputation, imployment [sic], or life. These circumstances cannot fail to beget the woful [sic] effects of insincerity [and] dissimulation […]. [They] must of necessity produce […] ambiguities, equivocations and hypocrisy in all its shapes. [If a writers takes these] necessary cautions […] the most impious book shall pass current; witness […] Berigardus in his Circulus Pisanus […]. He endeavors [sic] even to prove, that the being of God cannot be known by reason, but onely by faith; and that the authority of the books of Scripture cannot be prov’d by history or reason, but implicitly and devoutly receiv’d. […] The short and the long of this is, that we must believe the Church rather than our own eys [sic] […]. I doubt not, for my part, but he made use of the Esoteric and Exoteric distinction, to save his bacon, as we say.”¹⁸

In Pierre Bayle we find some methodological reflections which in some respect come quite close to Strauss’s principles.¹⁹ According to Bayle, it would be naïve to suppose that a writer always expresses openly what he really thinks. Generally taking the orthodox statements of a philosopher at face value would therefore not be an appropriate hermeneutical presumption – in Bayle’s words: “lorsqu’on parle comme les autres on ne dit pas toujours ce qu’on pense”. But if in the work of a philosopher we find only a single statement deviating from the standards of orthodoxy we are entitled to take this statement as the true expression of his sentiments, and we have to understand it verbatim: “quoiqu’on dise une seule fois une chose contraire aux préjugés, il faut l’interpréter selon la rigueur de l’expression”.²⁰ These examples clearly show that during the period which Strauss primarily had in mind, several philosophers anticipated basic ideas of his Persecution and the Art of Writing. On the other hand, the risks of a Straussian hermeneutics avant la lettre are equally obvious, if we consider the excessive and unsubstan-

 Ibid., pp.  – .  Cf. Mori, Bayle philosophe, p. .  Bayle, Nouvelles de la république des lettres (juillet ) art. VIII, (Œuvres diverses, vol. I, p. b). Cf. Mori, Bayle philosophe, pp.  f. Quite plausibly this advice has been applied to Bayle’s works themselves by scholars who challenged the view that Bayle was in fact the Christian philosopher he professed to be shortly before his death in a letter to André Terson (december ), “je meurs en Philosophe Chrétien, persuadé et pénétré des bontés et de la miséricorde de Dieu”; cf. Labrousse, Pierre Bayle, vol. I, pp.  ff.; Mori, Bayle philosophe, p. ; Id., “Strauss, Skinner et Pierre Bayle”; McKenna, “Scepticism at Port Royal: the perversion of pyrrhonian doubt”, pp.  – .

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tiated way in which, for example, Garasse²¹ and other early modern apologists claimed to uncover heterodox and even atheistic messages by reading between the lines. It therefore seems appropriate to discuss Strauss’s principles of interpretation in a systematic way and to test their appropriateness in reference to those 17th-century philosophers who were and are mainly regarded as the great masters of esoteric writing in that period: Hobbes, Spinoza, and Bayle, who took a centre stage at the conference Reading between the Lines. Leo Strauss and the History of Early Modern Philosophy which took place at Marburg University in July 2013. The articles included in this volume are revised and augmented versions of the papers delivered on that occasion.

Bibliography Bayle, Pierre, Œuvres diverses, The Hague, 1727 – 1731. Cudworth, Ralph, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, London, 1678. Garasse, François, La doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits de ce temps, ou pretendus tels. Contenant plusieurs maximes pernicieuses à la religion, à l’estat, & aux bonnes mœurs, Paris, 1624. Bagley, Paul J., “On the Practice of Esotericism”, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (1992), pp. 231 – 47. Bagley, Paul J., “Spinoza, Philosophic Communication, and the Practice of Esotericism”, in: Id. (ed.), Piety, Peace and the Freedom to Philosophize. Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1999a, pp. 233 – 69. Bagley, Paul J., “The Hidden Message”, in: International Journal of Philosophical Studies 7 (1999b), pp. 225 – 42. Berman, David, A History of Atheism in Britain from Hobbes to Russell, London, Routledge, 1990. Berman, David, “Disclaimers as Offence Mechanisms in Charles Blount and John Toland”, in: Michael Hunter and David Wootton (eds.), Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1992, pp. 255 – 72. Berman, David, “Hume and Collins: Two Ways of Lying Theologically”, in: Lothar Kreimendahl (ed.), Aufklärung und Skepsis. Studien zur Philosophie- und Geistesgeschichte des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, Frommann-Holzboog, 1995, pp. 22 – 32. Berman, David, “Anthony Collins and the Question of Atheism in the Early Part of the Eighteenth Century”, in: Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 75C (1975), pp. 85 – 102. Charbonnel, J.-Roger, La pensée italienne au XVIe siècle et le courant libertin, Paris, 1919; reprint: Geneva, Slatkine, 1969.

 Cf. Kristeller, “The Myth of Renaissance Atheism”, pp. – ; Schröder, Ursprünge des Atheismus, p. ; Id., “’Hydra multiceps’ ou ‘negatio existentiae dei’? Garasse, Voetius et le concept d’athéisme”.

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Clay, Diskin, “On a Forgotten Kind of Reading”, in: Alan Udoff (ed.), Leo Strauss’s Thought, pp. 253 – 66. Enegrèn, André (ed.), Leo Strauss, historien de la philosophie [Revue de métaphysique et de morale, numéro spécial 94,3], Paris, PUF, 1989. Holmes, Stephen, “Wahrheiten für Wenige”, in: Merkur 44 (1990), pp. 554 – 69. Holzhey, Helmut, and Zimmerli, Walther Ch. (eds.), Esoterik und Exoterik in der Philosophie, Basel, Schwabe, 1977. Jaffro, Laurent et al. (eds.), Léo Strauss: art d’écrire, politique, philosophie. Texte de 1941 et études, Paris, Vrin, 2001. Jesseph, Douglas M., “Hobbes’s Atheism”, in: Midwest Studies in Philosophy 26 (2002), pp. 140 – 66. Kristeller, Paul Oskar, “The Myth of Renaissance Atheism and the French Tradition of Free-Thought”, in: Journal of the History of Philosophy 6 (1968), pp. 233 – 43. Labrousse, Élisabeth, Pierre Bayle. Vol. I: Du Pays de Foix à la cité d’Erasme, The Hague, Nijhoff, 1963. Lampert, Laurence, “Strauss’s Recovery of Esotericism”, in: Steven B. Smith (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 63 – 92. McKenna, Antony, “Scepticism at Port Royal: the Perversion of Pyrrhonian Doubt”, in: Gianni Paganini (ed.), The Return of Scepticism: From Hobbes and Descartes to Bayle, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 2003, pp. 249 – 65. Mori, Gianluca, Bayle philosophe, Paris, Honoré Champion, 1999. Mori, Gianluca, “Persécution et art d’écrire: Strauss, Skinner et Pierre Bayle”, in: L. Jaffro, B. Frydman, E. Cattin, A. Petit (eds.), Leo Strauss: art d’écrire, politique, philosophie, Paris, Vrin, 2001, pp. 197 – 219. Murley, John Albert, Leo Strauss and His Legacy: A Bibliography, Lanham, Lexington Books, 2005. Patterson, Annabel, Reading Between the Lines, London/New York, Routledge, 2004. Rappaport, Rhonda, “Questions of Evidence: an Anonymous Tract Attributed to John Toland”, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 68 (1997), pp. 339 – 48. Schotte, Dietrich, Die Entmachtung Gottes durch den Leviathan. Thomas Hobbes über Religion, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, Frommann-Holzboog, 2013. Schröder, Winfried, “‘Hydra multiceps’ ou ‘negatio existentiae dei’? Garasse, Voetius et le concept d’athéisme”, in: Sylvie Taussig and Pierre Lurbe (eds.), La question de l’athéisme au dix-septième siècle, Turnhout, Brepols, 2004, pp. 31 – 45. Schröder, Winfried, “Verteidigte Thesen und erschlossene Absichten. Probleme der Interpretation heterodoxer Texte der frühen Neuzeit”, in: Scientia poetica 6 (2002), pp. 147 – 52. Schröder, Winfried, Ursprünge des Atheismus. Untersuchungen zur Metaphysik- und Religions-kritik des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts [1998], second ed., Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, Frommann-Holzboog, 2012. Smith, Steven B. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009. Staquet, Anne, Descartes et le libertinage, Paris, Hermann, 2009. Strauss, Leo, “Persecution and the Art of Writing” [1952], in: Id., Persecution and the Art of Writing, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1988, pp. 22 – 38.

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Strauss, Leo, “Exoteric Teaching”, ed. Hannes Kerber, in: Martin D. Yaffe and Richard S. Ruderman (eds.), Reorientation. Leo Strauss in the 1930s, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp. 271 – 304. Strauss, Leo, What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies, Glencoe, Free Press, 1959. Strauss, Leo, “On a Forgotten Kind of Writing”, in: Id., What is Political Philosophy? Glencoe, Free Press, 1959, pp. 221 – 32. Toland, John, “Origines judaicae” (appendix to: Adeisidaemon, sive Titus Livius A Superstitione vindicatus. The Hague, 1709, pp. 99 – 199). Toland, John, “Clidophorus, or of the Exoteric and Esoteric Philosophy”, in: Tetradymus, London, 1720, pp. 61 – 100. Toland, John, Clidophorus; traduit de l’anglais et présenté par Tristan Dagron, Paris, Allia, 2002. Udoff, Alan (ed.), Leo Strauss’s Thought. Toward a Critical Engagement, Boulder/London, Rienner, 1991.

Jonathan Israel

Leo Strauss and the Radical Enlightenment Although Leo Strauss was not the first prominent modern German thinker or writer to employ the expression ‘radikale Aufklärung’ [Radical Enlightenment] to denote a particular strand of Enlightenment, unlike any predecessor, he developed a theory of ‘Radical Enlightenment’ that merits examination still today and requires locating in its relation to our contemporary discussion on this topic. The renewed historiographical debate on the theme ‘Radical Enlightenment’ in English commenced with Henry May, the historian of the American Enlightenment, (and subsequently Margaret Jacob), in the 1970s and 1980s, but it is a debate that needs contextualizing in relation to its earlier German background.¹ In German, important subsequent contributions were made in the 1960s and 1970s to the concept made by the historian Günter Mühlpfordt who had been personally denounced by the dictator Walther Ulbricht, for ‘anti-Leninist’ expressions and judgments in 1958,² and remained under a ban forbidding him to teach in the German Democratic Republic so-called, in force from then until 1989.³ By contrast, in French, the term Lumières radicales appears to have had no significant pre-history prior to the lively debate that first sprang up in the 1990s. In his paper Radical Enlightenment – and abstraction in the humanities, delivered at the Brussels conference ‘The Radical Enlightenment: The Big Picture and its Details’ (16/17 May 2013), the Danish scholar and editor Frederik Stjernfelt, stressed the usefulness of such abstract general categories in the humanities, remarking that the term ‘radikale Aufklärung’ in German apparently first emerged among liberal theologians of the Semlerian school in the late nineteenth century. Such scholars were anxious to separate their particular brand of reforming enlightened Protestantism from the irreligious Enlightenment. By contrast, Thomas Mann, in his Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen (1918), employed the term, also rather disparagingly, to designate such Leftist activism

 May in his The Enlightenment in America firmly established the distinction between ‘moderate Enlightenment’ and ‘revolutionary Enlightenment’ as fundamental to his account of – and to the general debate about – the American Revolution; Donald H. Meyer, although he does not use the term ‘Radical Enlightenment’ moved toward a similar broad distinction between a moderate Enlightenment that compromised with traditional ideas and a ‘democratic Enlightenment’ that did not, Meyer, The Democratic Enlightenment, pp. xiv-xxiv.  Mühlpfordt, Halle-Leipziger Aufklärung, , p. .  See, for instance, Mühlpfordt, ‘‘Bahrdt und die radikale Aufklärung’’; see also Israel, ‘‘Radikalaufklärung: Entstehung und Bedeutung einer fundamentalen Idee’’, p. .

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in Germany towards the end of World War I then deplored by Mann as “pazifistisch, humanitär und antinational, kurz: radikale Aufklärung”.⁴ Strauss employed the term rather differently, Stjernfelt points out, in a less extended sense than Mann, but also in a manner which, as we shall see, possesses a continuing relevance today.⁵ While Strauss was precisely a political philosopher rather than a historian, his ideas on the nature of the Enlightenment and the role of the Enlightenment in the genesis of the modern condition, possess an enduring historiographical as well as philosophical significance. Several features of his concept of ‘Radical Enlightenment’ as it crystallized in the later 1920s have a continuing bearing on our understanding of his distinctive approach to Hobbes, Spinoza, Bayle, and Enlightenment thought generally, and add perspective to today’s historiographical debate about the scope, meaning and significance of the ‘Radical Enlightenment’.⁶ A number of features of Strauss’s notion of ‘Radical Enlightenment’ invite examination and comment. First, Strauss identified Spinoza as a, but not necessarily the,⁷ pivotal figure looming at the commencement of the Enlightenment and the Enlightenment’s sustained campaign to liberate philosophy from ecclesiastical and theological tutelage, a campaign which he saw as exerting an overriding, continuing religious, cultural and political impact on the modern mind still in his own time. Second, Strauss viewed rebellion against revealed religion, especially against the dictates of religious orthodoxy, and the traditions that orthodoxy imposed on daily life and culture, as the essential core of the Enlightenment as a whole so that identifying ‘radikale Aufklärung’, for him, was largely a matter of discerning emphasis, intent and candour. Third, this meant that the decisive criteria for distinguishing different varieties or strands of Enlightenment, for Strauss, related mainly to how ideas are presented, and how far what he took to be a shared, common rebellion against religious authority, orthodoxy and tradition is pushed, so that, in his books, the ‘radical Enlightenment’ emerges as quintessentially just a more uncompromising, purer and more honest  For these insights I am much indebted to Frederik Stjernfelt who delivered his paper ‘Radical Enlightenment – and abstraction in the Humanities’ at the Brussels conference on ‘The Radical Enlightenment’ held on  and  May .  Further on the early development of the concept ‘radical Enlightenment’ see Israel, “An Answer to Four Critics”, pp.  – ,  – , .  As was pointed out several years ago by Nicolas Dubos, see Dubos, ‘‘Hobbes et Les Lumières radicales’’, p. .  Although, as Yakira implies when designating Strauss’s Spinoza ‘the founder of the “radical enlightenment”, there is some ambiguity; certain passages of early Strauss suggest that he did at times consider Spinoza ‘the’ rather than ‘a’ founder, Yakira, ‘‘Leo Strauss and Baruch Spinoza’’, p. .

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version of the Enlightenment as a whole. Fourth, freeing the mind from the shackles of prejudice and illusion, so as to render mankind happier and alleviate the ills of society is presented by Strauss as both the underlying motive of the Enlightenment in general and central feature of modernity, rendering the Enlightenment the overriding, key agenda shaping the dilemmas, trauma and tragedy of modernity. Finally, the thesis of those harmonizers and compromisers, like Moses Mendelssohn, claiming there is a state of concord that can be attained, a balance to be struck, an underlying essential harmony between religion and modernity, that faith and science are not in conflict but agreement, although no less agents of modernity and heirs to the Enlightenment than the radical enlighteners and Spinozists, atheists and Epicureans, philosophically were nevertheless in Strauss’s eyes little more than misguided camp-followers unwittingly serving the cause of the radicals. Strauss assigned this intellectually secondary status to the mainstream ‘moderate Enlightenment’ because the reconciling, harmonizing efforts of figures such as Locke, Leibniz, Montesquieu and Mendelssohn, seemed to him to be a secondary phenomenon, reacting to the radical tendency, as well as ultimately fruitless and in vain. Moderate enlighteners were foisting on modern society a fable convenue, a false consciousness being unable squarely to face up to and confront their own premises. Moderate Enlightenment, in Strauss’s eyes, represents a category of thought that is inherently debased and feeble philosophically and ultimately subordinate to the tendency commencing with Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza and Bayle. Strauss’s research into the philosophy and life of Spinoza began specifically in 1925 with the request of the director of the Akademie für Wissenschaft des Judentums, in Berlin, where he was then working, to undertake a close study of Spinoza’s Bible criticism. However, his engagement with the Aufklärung as a general and as a contemporary cultural issue, and the beginnings of his thesis that ‘rebellion against revealed religion is the origin of the Enlightenment’, reached back earlier, as he explains in the preface to the 1965 English translation of his Spinoza study. This preoccupation dated from the very inception of the Weimar Republic when in the wake of his own personal conversion to political Zionism he began wrestling with the question of modern secularism’s relation to tradition and religion. During Weimar’s initial years, an inner contest unfolded in his mind reflecting the clash between political Zionism and two other contemporary Jewish trends exerting a vigorous and wide appeal among Germany’s Jewish intelligentsia at the time. He was simultaneously drawn to ‘cultural Zionism’, on the one hand, with its incisive critique of Herzl and Herzl’s conception of a purely political Zionism, viewing the latter as an incomplete or self-contradictory vision that undermines itself by excluding Jewish tradition and culture, and, on

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the other, to the personal, individual religious existentialism of Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Buber with their call to revert to what Strauss came to view as a powerful but in the end truncated and inadequately grounded neo-orthodoxy. ‘Cultural Zionism believed it had found a safe middle ground between politics (power politics) and divine revelation’, commented Strauss in his 1965 preface, ‘between the sub-cultural and the supra-cultural, but it lacked the sternness of these two extremes’. In fact, according to Strauss, neither the cultural Zionists, nor Rosenzweig’s admirers, adequately tested and examined the critical claims of the Enlightenment against Revelation, miracles and religious authority. But the more convinced he became of this, the more he felt driven to inquire equally whether Enlightenment thinkers had sufficiently justified and examined the roots of their rebellion against revealed religion.⁸ Finding himself trapped personally in a spiritual and intellectual corner, compelled to choose between two mutually exclusive alternatives – orthodoxy or Spinoza, Strauss sought a way not to choose, or at least a way to avoid settling for the latter.⁹ He began attributing to the Enlightenment a certain evasiveness and resort to levity and mockery in the face of the deepest issues. Strauss’s critique of Spinoza and what he understood as ‘the Radical Enlightenment’, as well as his partially negative attitude to both, were undoubtedly colored throughout by what he called ‘a particularly striking act of celebration of Spinoza on the part of German Jews’.¹⁰ As he himself explains in his 1965 preface: if ‘the great revolt against traditional thought or the emergence of modern philosophy or natural science was completed prior to Spinoza’, Spinoza nevertheless emerged as uniquely pivotal later, in the Germany of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as a way of emancipating the mind from the forces of orthodoxy: ‘Spinoza became the symbol of that emancipation which was to be more than emancipation but secular redemption.¹¹ This ‘secular redemption’ underlying Weimar Liberalism, democracy and emancipation failed catastrophically to deliver on its promises especially in Germany. Liberalism was a product of the Enlightenment, and the essence of modernity, and yet, at the same time, proved powerless to end discrimination against and hatred of Jews or hinder the rise of the crassest authoritarianism and tyran-

 Tanguay, Leo Strauss, pp.  – , .  Yakira, ‘‘Leo Strauss and Baruch Spinoza’’, pp.  – , .  Strauss, ‘‘Preface’’, p. ; Goetschel, Spinoza’s Modernity. Mendelssohn, Lessing and Heine, pp.  – ; Wertheim, Salvation through Spinoza, pp. , .  Strauss, ‘‘Preface’’, pp.  – ; Goetschel, Spinoza’s Modernity. Mendelssohn, Lessing and Heine, p.  n. ; Wertheim, Salvation through Spinoza, pp.  – .

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ny. At the same time it left open the burning question of whether or not religion is a social tool that remains indispensable for the organization of politics, education and society, what Strauss called the ‘theologico-political predicament of Jews in Weimar Germany’.¹² The question of the Enlightenment’s meaning and significance for modernity became all the more urgent and pressing in Strauss’s eyes because, wrestling with Herzl, Rosenzweig and Buber, he had edged hesitantly and painfully to the conclusion that the problem of Jewish identity in the modern world is in some deep sense an insoluble one, its insolubility arising from the inevitable failure of Liberalism to create an effective divide between state and society, and between the public and private spheres, and hence inability to achieve its essential goals. Reflecting this failure, Liberalism proved ‘unable or even unwilling to prevent a pervasive “discrimination” against Jews by individuals or groups.”¹³ The ‘Spinoza’ at the core of Strauss’s modernity emerged in full force only with the great ‘Spinoza controversy’, or Pantheismusstreit, in Germany that began in the 1780s. It was then, contended Strauss (with some justification), that Spinoza first became central to German Idealism and the idol of a new kind of specifically modern, secular quasi-theology. Spinoza was embraced in the nineteenth century albeit with different degrees of fervor by both Christians and Jews, and most passionately by Heine, as the torch of modern secularism and the justified forsaking of religious authority and Revelation. ‘The Biblical God’, as Strauss expressed it, ‘forms light and creates darkness, makes peace and creates evil; Spinoza’s God is simply beyond good and evil. God’s might is His right, and therefore the power of every being is as such its right; Spinoza lifts Machiavellianism to theological heights. Good and evil differ only from a merely human point of view; theologically the distinction is meaningless.’¹⁴ Fascinated, Strauss clearly also felt a certain repugnance for this Christian-Jewish German embracing of science, irreligion and modernity through the medium of Spinoza: ‘compared with the fantastic flights of the Spinoza enthusiasts in the two camps, of the moralists and the immoralists, [Hermann] Cohen’s opposing campaign to diminish Spinoza’s standing [a disparaging critique which Strauss considered highly defective], his insistence that Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus was a form of revenge against the rabbis and Judaism in retaliation for his expulsion from the synagogue, ‘is sobriety itself.’¹⁵  Wertheim, Salvation through Spinoza, pp. , .  Strauss, ‘‘Preface’’, p. ; Wertheim, Salvation through Spinoza, p. .  Strauss, ‘‘Preface’’, p. .  Strauss, ‘‘Preface’’, p. ; Yakira, ‘‘Leo Strauss and Baruch Spinoza’’, p. ; Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity, pp.  – .

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A central problem of modernity, concluded Strauss, is mankind’s failure to face up to the true meaning and exigencies of faith, theology and religious authority. Screened from view but eroding the Enlightenment’s philosophical foundation is an historical failure, pervasive among historians and philosophers alike, to adequately grasp and appreciate the range and depth of religious orthodoxy, the full extent of its pre-modern hegemony over law, institutions and lifestyle. The common characteristic of all modern movements, whether they reject or embrace religion, is the tendency to mask, dilute, and denature the veritable face of religion. The seductive and widely subscribed to myth that faith and Enlightenment, Christianity and modern philosophy, religion and science, are compatible, Strauss came to see as a form of self-delusion, a means of soothing and comforting the intellectually lazy and feeble of mind. Reassuring on the surface, in the end the message of this moderate Enlightenment ‘myth’ did not differ fundamentally from that of the Radical Enlightenment itself, its intellectual and cultural consequences resembling the detaching and disorientating effects of the nineteenth century’s Romantic writers. For Strauss, the real, unadorned and unadulterated message, the Enlightenment’s genuine kernel, lodged exclusively in its radical tendency deriving from Machiavelli, Hobbes, Spinoza and, as he conceived it, also Bayle, Voltaire, and Reimarus. “This radical wing engaged in a struggle to the death against religious orthodoxy. In fact, it is this revolt against religious authority that unites these thinkers despite their other differences. They formed a united front in the battle against superstition and religious authority, against all manifestations of the “Kingdom of Darkness”. The basis of this anti-theological ire is, of course, a firm and uncompromising atheism.’ There was at all stages a defining, fundamental linkage in Strauss’s mind between ‘Radical Enlightenment’ and ‘atheism’, a term to which he attached much importance but nowhere precisely defines.¹⁶ In his ‘introduction’ to the English version of his Spinoza’s Critique of Religion (1965), Strauss re-examines the significance of treating the Bible as ‘a literary document like any other’ to be ‘studied and interpreted’ as any other literary document.¹⁷ Rejection of revealed religion – denying the Bible is a divinely inspired and given text – he maintained, ‘is the true foundation of Biblical science in the modern sense. It is for this reason and only for this reason that Spinoza’s work is of fundamental importance.’ Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, however, was less an intellectual revolution by and of itself, he argued, than

 Tanguay, Leo Strauss, pp.  – , citing Strauss, ‘‘What is Political Philosophy?’’, pp.  – .  Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, p. ; see also Smith, Spinoza’s Book of Life, p. .

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part of a broader context. ‘The context to which it belongs is the critique of Revelation as attempted by the radical Enlightenment. That critique in its turn is only one particular form, one particular stage of the critique of religion which originated in Greek antiquity and was continued and renewed in the age in which belief in Revelation predominated’ [der Zusammenhang, in den sie gehört ist die Offenbarungs-Kritik der radikalen Aufklärung, in deren Dienst sie entsteht. Diese Kritik ist ihrerseits nur eine Besonderung, eine besondere Stufe im geschichtlichen Ganzen der Religions-Kritik überhaupt, die im griechischen Altertum ihren Ursprung had und im offenbarungs-religiösen Zeitalter sich fortsetzt und erneuert.]¹⁸ Vividly articulated by this passage are three of the characteristic features of Strauss’s 1920s conception of ‘Radical Enlightenment’: first, his thesis that rejection of divine revelation, along with Creation and miracles, is the backbone of the radikale Aufklärung; second, his claiming this critique is just one stage, albeit an important one, in the philosophical demolition of religious authority which Strauss conceived as an immensely long process, reaching back to ancient Greek antiquity beginning with Epicurus; third, and crucially, his contention that there is an unproven fundamental assumption underlying the radical critique of religion which Spinoza shares with the entirety of this wider tradition of ‘Radical Enlightenment’.¹⁹ This alleged shared assumption underlying Spinoza’s critique of religion, Strauss returns to in his chapter V of Spinoza’s Critique of Religion where he develops this theme in connection with Albert Burgh’s reproach to Spinoza and all philosophers: ‘each philosopher has recourse to reason, and not one of them succeeds in convincing the other. Are there not, within philosophy, just as many sects unable to convince each other, as in revealed religion?’²⁰ Spinoza replies to Albert Burgh’s comprehensive challenge by asserting that ‘only positive science [i. e. Wissenschaft, translated by Strauss’s translator E. M. Sinclair as ‘scientific’ but actually employed here (as generally by Strauss) to denote wissenschaftlich (i. e. scholarly and scientific)], entitles philosophy and reason’ to submit its critical objections to the traditions of revealed religion. Only science and scholarship can provide a grounding that religious believers lack that is potentially universal and common to all men and that could in principle validate such a critique of revealed religion: ‘only to the extent that Spinoza is  Strauss, Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft, p. ; see also Roothaan, Vroomdheid, vrede, vrijheid, p. .  Strauss, ‘‘Preface’’, pp. , .  Burgh, ‘‘Albert Burgh to Spinoza’’, pp.  – , here pp.  – ; Strauss, Spinoza’s Critque of Religion, p. ; on this point see also Lloyd, ‘‘Spinoza and the Idea of the Secular’’, p. .

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determined to construct his system in the spirit of positive science, and as itself strictly scientific’, held Strauss, ‘and subjects himself to scientific [i. e. wissenschaftlich scholarly] scrutiny in consequence’, does he proceed and operate ‘with greater right than his opponents who believed in revealed religion’. This conviction that his opinion is more scholarly-scientific, argued Strauss, ‘thus precedes essentially the constitution of [Spinoza’s] philosophy, as appears also from the fact that it is common to the whole radical Enlightenment.’ Underlying the whole edifice of Spinoza’s philosophy and the Radical Enlightenment is the belief, which Strauss regards as unproven, that their standpoint is more objectively true and subject to scholarly verification than that of their opponents. Insofar as Spinoza focuses on contradictions within Scripture, between the different prophecies, he is assuredly doing something significantly different from merely pointing to disagreements among theologians and religious leaders. For Strauss, writing in the late 1920s, ‘Radical Enlightenment’ entails a critique of religion based on the idea that scholarly-scientific principles are fundamentally in conflict with religious belief and that there is much justification for this claim at a certain level. Nevertheless, Strauss regards the pretensions of the Radical Enlightenment, and Spinoza especially, as ultimately overstretched, overly ambitious and problematic. Science and learning, he maintained, cannot in the final analysis refute the proposition that God is omnipotent. Science and learning cannot directly rebut any fundamental tenets of revealed religion; and that this is why, he argues, ‘mockery came to play so great a role in critique of religion in the Age of Enlightenment. The Enlightenment, as Lessing put it, had to laugh orthodoxy out of a position from which it could not be driven by any other means.’²¹ ‘The assertion that God can perform miracles and did perform miracles’, reiterated Strauss insistently (but not very convincingly) cannot be refuted’.²² As has been aptly remarked by Steven Smith, there is an unmistakably ‘Pascalian’ or ‘Jacobian’ as well as Nietzschean flavor to Strauss’s dogmatic insistence – which Noel Malcolm seems not to have properly grasped – that a rational philosophy claiming to pass judgment on God, Creation, miracles and revelation rests on a mysterious act of faith and, in fact, retreats from looking truth in the face by evading the issue and refusing to acknowledge that it relies, as it seemed to him, on an act of will rather than on demonstration and proof.²³ Meanwhile, if Radical  Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, p. .  Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, p. ; Smith, Spinoza’s Book of Life, p. ; Bolduc, Spinoza et l’approche éthique du problème de la libération, pp.  – .  Smith, Spinoza’s Book of Life, p. ; Yakira, ‘‘Leo Strauss and Baruch Spinoza’’, pp.  – ; Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes, p. .

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Enlightenment refused to acknowledge that it arises simply from an outright choice in favour of atheism rather than orthodoxy, from an ungrounded act of will, the evasions pervading the moderate Enlightenment, in Strauss’s estimation, are far more glaring, troubling and vulnerable to critical scrutiny. Not unlike Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1793 – 1819), who had been the subject of Strauss’s university dissertation at Hamburg – “On the Problem of Knowledge in the Philosophical Doctrine of F. H. Jacobi”, supervised by Ernst Cassirer, Strauss contended that the choice facing us, between unbelief and orthodoxy, must ultimately rest on a leap of faith, either way, so that the honest intellect possesses no other option in the end but to declare – as a leap of faith – for either religion or uncompromising atheism. In-between positions are merely forms of self-deception and illusion or else deliberate evasion and misleading of others, a morally questionable and dubious approach to philosophizing to which he accused Voltaire and Hume of being excessively inclined.²⁴ Before the late nineteenth and twentieth century, in early modern society, saying straight out what one thought as an adherent of the ‘Radical Enlightenment’, as with the Averroist hidden enlightenment of the Middle Ages, was barely conceivable and hardly advisable. Hence, the use of deliberate dissimulation and the cultivation of esoteric messages and doctrines inevitably became an intrinsic feature of the ‘Radical Enlightenment’ as conceived by Strauss, albeit not quite to the same degree as requisite earlier in medieval philosophizing of Averroes and Maimonides. Strauss’s argument that Athens and Jerusalem were altogether, as well as fundamentally, incompatible, and that an esoteric secret sub-text is evident in the work of Spinoza as well as in key medieval thinkers such as Averroes and Maimonides, has been vigorously criticized and largely dismissed by an increasing number of scholars.²⁵ Yet, in the case of sixteenth and seventeenthcentury Italian and French libertinage érudit, the ground from which much of the radical tendency in the European Enlightenment arose, and not least as has been noted, François de la Mothe Le Vayer (1588 – 1672), as well as in Hobbes and more especially Pierre Bayle, as Gianluca Mori and Antony McKenna have conclusively demonstrated, and the late seventeenth-century German freethinker, Friedrich Wilhelm Stosch (1648 – 1704) and numerous others,²⁶ it seems undeniable that precisely the kind of philosophical evasion and dissimulation that

 Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, p. ; Smith, Spinoza’s Book of Life, pp.  – .  For an adverse general comment on this aspect of Strauss’s view of the history of philosophy, see Fraenkel, Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza, pp.  – .  On Stosch’s style of evasion see, Schröder, Urpsrünge des Atheismus, pp. ,  – .

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Strauss conjures up does actually operate, pervading their respective writings and oeuvres.²⁷ The late Bayle’s extended treatment of the ancient philosopher Strato and his adherents, an intervention regarded as highly subversive and dangerous by Leibniz, in his Theodicy (1710), seems a the perfect illustration of this characteristic feature (also so basic to the clandestine philosophical literature in French during the decades 1670 – 1730).²⁸ Furthermore, what has now been demonstrated to be Bayle’s systematic dissimulation and imposture significantly misled many eminent Bayle scholars in the past. Elisabeth Labrousse, Richard Popkin and others wrongly classified Bayle as a fideist and a skeptic, largely failing to grasp that when Bayle repeatedly qualifies as “fausse”, “très absurde” and “inconcevable” Strato’s materialist and atheistic conception of nature and reality which Bayle resoundingly denounces as ‘atheistic’, doing so even while his own actual argument nevertheless extensively and thoroughly vindicates Strato philosophically, he is deliberately conveying concealed messages between the lines.²⁹ Even in the case of Spinoza who is immeasurably more forthright and generally less given to circumlocution and evasion than Bayle, there are substantial grounds, despite the the many objections to Strauss’s argument here,³⁰ for inferring that his doctrine of Christ and targeting the Old rather than the New Testament as well as the frequent use of traditional theological terms such as ‘God’, ‘piety’, ‘religion’, ‘providence’ and ‘salvation’ – and possibly also his demeaning of Judaism, are to no modest extent tactical ploys designed to appeal to the mind-set as well as the prejudices of his Christian readership so as the more easily to carry them with him.³¹ Strauss further elaborated his conception of ‘Radical Enlightenment’ in his next major work Philosophie und Gesetz. Beitrage zum Verständnis Maimunis und seiner Vorläufer (Philosophy and Law) published in Berlin 1935, four years after his flight from an increasingly inhospitable Germany.³² Here again the basic distinction that emerges between radical and moderate Enlightenment is

 Paganini, Skepsis, pp.  – ,  – .  Leibniz, Theodicy, pp.  – ,  – ,  – , ; Israel, ‘‘Leibniz’s Theodicy as a Critique of Spinoza and Bayle – and Blueprint for the Philosophy Wars of the th Century’’, pp.  – .  Mori, Bayle Philosophe, pp.  – ; McKenna, ‘‘Pierre Bayle in the Twentieth Century’’, pp.  – .  See for instance, Lagrée, Spinoza et le débat religieux, pp.  – .  Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity, p. ; Yovel, Spinoza and other Heretics, pp.  – , ,  – ; Bolduc, Spinoza et l’approche éthique du problème de la libération, pp.  – ,  – ; Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell, p. .  Smith, Reading Leo Strauss, pp.  – .

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that the former seeks wholly to undermine religion and religious authority whereas moderate Enlightenment seeks, rather ineffectually, to “mediate between orthodoxy and radical Enlightenment, between belief in Revelation and belief in the self-sufficiency of reason” such as we find, for example, in Jewish thought, in the work of Moses Mendelssohn. The Radical Enlightenment proved its inherent superiority and greater robustness, contended Strauss, not with arguments, or because the moderate Enlightenment lacked wide appeal, but rather because history’s judgment, later thinkers, prove the moderate Enlightenment was less cogent and tenable, or rather, to be more precise, at bottom is altogether untenable. Recognizing the non-viability of the harmonizing moderate view, early twentieth-century Jewish thinkers like Rosenzweig and Buber, acknowledged that the battle between orthodoxy and Enlightenment could not be won on the level it had been previously fought on, shifting the debate to a supposedly ‘higher’ level where the foundation of tradition can be reestablished through an internalization and transmutation of traditional doctrines about Creation, miracles and Revelation. But in Strauss’s eyes this amounted merely to yet another and more elaborate form of evasion, yet another style of vacuous harmonizing synthesis between Enlightenment and orthodoxy. ‘In the end’, concludes Strauss, ‘these harmonizations [Vereinbarungen] always work as vehicles of the Enlightenment, and not as dams against it; for the radical Enlightenment, the moderate Enlightenment is the best friend.’³³ Critique of religion, for Strauss, was the ‘Radical Enlightenment’s defining characteristic. Nevertheless, like Thomas Mann in 1918, Strauss understood that the underlying motivation of the ‘Radical Enlightenment’, indeed all Enlightenment, was political and social, and chiefly concerned with transforming the character and meaning of human life. His insistence on ‘atheism’ as the root of the Radical Enlightenment was in no sense intended to confine the category to theological and religious issues. On the contrary, ‘interest in security and in alleviation of the ills of life’, he emphasized, ‘may be called the interest characteristic of the Enlightenment in general.’ Spinoza’s underlying motive, the freeing of philosophy and thought from the shackles of theology so as to free men from the chains of ‘superstition’, he declared to be that of the Enlightenment overall.³⁴ Even so, the special emphasis Strauss places on ‘atheism’, and on the attack on Revelation, as the backbone of the Radical Enlightenment leads him in some measure to marginalize Spinoza’s republicanism,³⁵ and

 quoted in Ranieri, Disturbing Revelation, p. .  Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, pp.  – .  Blom, Morality and Causality in Politics, p. .

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place Hobbes in an equivalent position of centrality, indeed one of possibly even of greater historical and philosophical significance than that of Spinoza,³⁶ a feature I shall argue here, which was incontrovertibly a serious, even arguably fatal, weakness in Strauss’s overall conception of ‘Radical Enlightenment’. I emphasize this not with a view, as La Vopa, Armenteros, Wright and my other critics suggest, to forcing a pre-set, or preconceived package of ingredients, creating an a priori definition arbitrarily excluding Hobbes from some allegedly reified or ‘hypostatized’ essence, but for an entirely different reason: Hobbes’ conception of sovereignty and opposition to democratic participation alienated most of the later Enlightenment, both moderate and radical, from his thought to the point that he had become almost completely irrelevant to political theoretical debate by 1789. Hobbes is simply not a continuing thread and presence debated during the era of the French Revolution, nor is he in any way capable of firmly connecting and anchoring the ‘Radical Enlightenment’ of the revolutionary era in the political (anti-monarchical), social (anti-aristocratic and anti-ecclesiastical), and philosophical radicalism of the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Strauss, in my view, compounded what is still today a fundamental category mistake regarding the relationship between Hobbes and Spinoza by overemphasizing what might be termed the latter’s ‘Averroist’ tendency and focusing too much on the issue of ‘atheism’. According to Strauss, Hobbes’s approach contrasted sharply even with the ‘theory of religion put forward by Spinoza, whose break with the immediately preceding tradition, in his view, was considerably less radical than that of Hobbes. Whereas Spinoza, who is in this respect fully in line with the Averroist tradition, indeed takes the trend of this tradition to its ultimate conclusion, could not but recognize religion as an essential means for the maintenance of the state, in Hobbes’ theory of the state there is no point of union which could serve for a similar defense of religion.’³⁷ Strauss mistakenly concludes that Spinoza separated science and religion less clearly and fundamentally than did Hobbes. Furthermore, as Yakira noted, Strauss failed fully to grasp not just how completely Spinoza emancipated philosophy from religion and theology but also the full implications of his subordination of theology to philosophy. Hobbes could rival Spinoza neither as the quintessential Enlightenment alternative to, nor as a widely resorted to ‘conqueror of religious authority and religion’.³⁸

 Dubos, ‘‘Hobbes et les Lumières radicales’’, pp.  – .  Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, p. ; Mack, ‘‘Towards an Inclusive Universalism’’, pp.  – ,  –  n. .  Yakira, ‘‘Leo Strauss and Baruch Spinoza’’, p. .

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Strauss’s great mistake was his failure to grasp that Hobbes’ absolutist conception of sovereignty with its inseparable corollary that sovereignty is not vested in the people became totally outmoded and irrelevant by the late eighteenth century, and the onset of the revolutionary era, whereas the ‘general will’ with its powerful undertones of Spinoza, Diderot, d’Holbach and Volney as well as of Rousseau and Sieyès, stood at the very heart of the discussion about sovereignty of the people and democratic participation down to the 1820s and 1830s, the age of Constant and Comte. Several participants in the 2013 Marburg Leo Strauss symposium elaborated on and highlighted the many and serious weaknesses of Strauss’s Hobbes’ analysis with regard to religion and religious authority. But the gravest consequence of Strauss’s defective approach to Hobbes for his theory of ‘Radical Enlightenment’, I would maintain, is rather the resulting tendency to obscure the massive chasm separating Hobbes’ general stance from sovereignty of the people, from the ‘enlightened’ tradition of Collins, Toland and the British deists, no less than from Van den Enden and Spinoza. At bottom, given his doctrine of sovereignty, Hobbes cannot really be construed as an enlightener any more than as a political anti-authoritarian or crypto-republican. ‘For Hobbes’, as Diego Lucci has aptly characterized this massive gulf, ‘reason did not aim to set mankind free from ignorance, superstition, and blind submission to the political as well as the ecclesiastical power – while deistic reason, like Spinoza’s reason, intended to assert freedom of thought. Besides, Hobbes’ hermeneutics placed itself at the established political power’s service, since Hobbes was anti-libertarian and absolutist and had an extremely pessimistic view of human nature.’³⁹ In short, the considerable prominence Strauss assigned to Hobbes locating him beside and eventually, in his later writings, even above Spinoza irreparably weakened his entire ‘Radical Enlightenment’ conception. A further obvious difficulty hampering Strauss’s conceptualization of the radikale Aufklärung from the 1920s onwards is that neither Hobbes, Spinoza nor Bayle, or for that matter Reimarus or Voltaire, claimed to be, or admitted to being, ‘atheists’; it is both philosophically and historically problematic to maintain that Spinoza or any of these others formally or actually denied the being and reality of ‘God’ as Strauss attempted to do by reducing Spinoza’s rhetoric of ‘God’ to atheism.⁴⁰ To accomplish this, Strauss extended his claims about Spinoza’s deployment of the esoteric, stretching his argument to the point that Spinoza’s ‘God’ is not God in any meaningful sense, an unacceptable conclusion. Strauss’s conception of ‘Radical Enlightenment’ is unviable in the last analysis,

 Lucci, Scripture and Deism, p. .  Yakira, ‘‘Leo Strauss and Baruch Spinoza’’, p. .

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then, primarily because of his unqualified, unrelenting insistence on ‘atheism’. As Strauss in his role as a political philosopher and Spinoza scholar should have recognized, the real issue philosophically – the real subversion practiced by Spinoza and Bayle, the veritable issue that confronts us when seeking out the true roots of the ‘Radical Enlightenment’ both as a historical phenomenon and a general category for research in the humanities in the sense proposed by Stjernfelt – is less whether the divine being and will exists but rather, as Leibniz emphasized in his extended critique of Bayle and Spinoza in his Theodicy, and as the French revolutionary leader Camille Desmoulins stressed in his powerful political pamphlet in August 1789, La France libre, whether a benevolent divine providence exists and established the moral order, whether the fate of the world, the course of history and mankind’s destiny is fixed and guided by divine governance of the world. What chiefly distinguished his ideology and the general democratic republican tendency promoted by Mirabeau, Brissot, Condorcet, from how most Frenchmen thought at the time, explained Desmoulins, one of the journalists regularly expounding ‘Radical Enlightenment’ concepts within the maelstrom of the French Revolution, and one of the Revolution’s most eloquent and uncompromising democratic republicans, was not questioning God’s existence as such, or even the issue of whether or not God created the world, but rather the question of whether and how, if divine Providence exists, it governs the world. The real issue segregating most of society, including Robespierre, from the parti de philosophie that made the democratic egalitarian Revolution of 1788 – 93 – in contrast to Marat, Robespierre and the authoritarian populists of the Montagne – was whether God is an authority to whom men can appeal. For God offers no sign, as Desmoulins put it; He does not show himself. It is in vain that men ask which cult is the most pleasing to Him. His natural power revealed in earthquakes, floods, and other calamities devastates churches no less than mosques or synagogues. Since God manifests the most perfect indifference to which cult men opt for, and His Providence does nothing whatever for Christians or Muslims in preference to others, why not, asked Desmoulins, replace the “dismal” cult the French had adhered to for fifteen centuries, a faith nurturing the Inquisition, kings, monks, and self-mortification, with a religion of joy, like that of the ancient Greeks, a cult friendly to pleasure, women, and liberty? It was the absolute denial of divine Providence, religious authority, and the claim that God governs the world that buttressed the radical enlighteners’ uncompromising rejection of Church privilege and power, and their belief that they were justified in

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eliminating monarchy and transforming the existing social, moral and legal order in every conceivable respect.⁴¹ Restoring the proper – that is the only historically and philosophically authentic – emphasis to the Radical Enlightenment’s critique of religion, as Desmoulins does in this pamphlet, not only creates room in this category for Unitarian non-atheists implacably opposed to instituted religious authority, like Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, John Jebb and Tom Paine to belong to our analytical category ‘Radical Enlightenment’ insofar as they too eliminate ecclesiastical power and privilege from law, society, education and politics, it also provides a clear, substantial reason why, when defining ‘Radical Enlightenment’, we need to place considerably more emphasis on Spinoza than on Hobbes, Bayle or Voltaire. In an age of confessionalized faith, Spinoza’s explanation for the hegemony of ‘error’ was both broader and more specifically targeted towards accounting for the despotic, intolerant and socially oppressive consequences of superstition, credulity, religious dogmatism, and pressure to suppress freedom of thought. Even more important, by eliminating religious authority and final ends, and rejecting teleology altogether to an extent neither Hobbes nor Bayle matched, Spinoza becomes more directly linked to modernity’s striving for freedom of expression, democracy, and hence political reform generally, above all the quest for an essentially libertarian, secular state. Leo Strauss was justified of course in raising the question: ‘was the Enlightenment successful in banishing religion’, as Steven Smith expressed it, ‘or at least pushing it to the very periphery of civilization? Has the progress of culture witnessed an abatement of hostility to philosophy? Is religion a permanent need of the soul, a permanent response to the human condition, or a lingering remnant left over from a pre-rational, pre-scientific age?’⁴² But Strauss failed to establish any clear link between what he claimed was the essential ‘atheism’ of the ‘Radical Enlightenment’ and its demolition of the existing moral, social and political order and this must be deemed a fatal weakness, the central inconsistency, philosophically and historically, in his conception of radikale Aufklärung. Besides placing an unwarranted emphasis on ‘atheism’ as such, as the root of his ‘Radical Enlightenment’, and misrepresenting the doctrines of Spinoza and Hobbes in some degree, two other features of his radikale Aufklärung curtailed his ability adequately to connect the radical enlighteners’ attack on religious authority with the democratic and ‘antinational’ as the nationalistic Thomas Mann of 1918 expressed it, the political and legislative as well as secu-

 Desmoulins, La France libre, pp.  – ,  – ; Israel, Revolutionary Ideas, pp. – .  Smith, Reading Leo Strauss, p. .

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larizing and irenicist implications of this European intellectual movement. These further objections to Strauss’s concept are, first, his claiming the ‘Radical Enlightenment’ preceded the moderate Enlightenment chronologically, and, second, his relentless insistence on tying Spinoza and ‘Radical Enlightenment’ to the Epicurean tradition. Paradoxically, where for Strauss ‘Radical Enlightenment’ was an early development that preceded the ‘moderate Enlightenment’, for Henry May, the first to introduce the concept of a radical enlightenment into English-language intellectual history, in 1976, the radical tendency was a belated development connected with, but strikingly different from what, to him, were ‘its predecessors, the Moderate Enlightenment and the Skeptical Enlightenment’.⁴³ May chiefly emphasized the political rather than the philosophical character of what he called ‘the Revolutionary Enlightenment’. ‘Revolutionary Enlightenment’ for him was above all ‘belief in the possibility of constructing a new heaven and earth out of the destruction of the old’. The radical tendency had its ‘beginnings with Rousseau and its culmination in Paine and Godwin.’⁴⁴ This kind of Enlightenment emerged late and effectively began with Rousseau, held May, although American revolutionary Enlightenment, he acknowledged, was prefaced by British radical Dissent and what he called ‘Whig radicalism’. Where Strauss failed to bring out sufficiently the social and political consequences of his radikale Aufklärung, indeed unhelpfully obscured them by mistakenly tying his category essentially to Hobbes, May, starting at the opposite end, had a far better grasp of the revolutionary sweep and political thrust of the radical tendency but largely failed to grasp that its philosophical and ideological underpinning lay in the attack on religious authority. If Strauss was seriously misled by his inadequate account of Hobbes, May’s ‘Rousseau’, it must be admitted, was scarcely less of a red herring. As for Strauss’s idea that the Radical Enlightenment’s rejection of orthodoxy belongs to an ancient tradition thriving among the philosophical underground during the Middle Ages, reaching back uninterruptedly to Epicurus and Lucretius, this is undoubtedly one of his most frequently repeated theses. Strauss routinely aligned the Enlightenment strikingly closely with the ancient tradition established by Epicurus and Lucretius almost to the extent of removing or diluting the Enlightenment’s originality and revolutionary character: although both Hobbes and Spinoza, according to Strauss, were essentially reviving a tendency that stretches back over the millennia to Epicureanism, ‘Spinoza stands incom-

 May, Enlightenment in America, pp.  – .  May, Enlightenment in America, pp.  – .

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parably closer to original Epicureanism, since he holds fast to the classical view of beatitudo and sees science as a means of attaining to beatitudo, a stable condition complete in itself.’ But here again Strauss goes astray by failing adequately to link the Radical Enlightenment’s elimination of divine providence and religious authority with the revolutionary moral, social and political consequences of a such a procedure.⁴⁵ Epicurus and Lucretius, deriving as they do all human ills directly or indirectly from fear, and especially fear of death, focus far more than Spinoza on seeking to persuade men that death is nothing to be afraid of and on showing how crime, lust and envy are aggravated by fear of death. At the same time, in Epicurus and Lucretius we do not find, and there was no reason to pursue, the abiding preoccupation with unmasking censorship, discrediting heresy-hunting and attacking organized despotism that we encounter in Spinoza and that must assuredly be considered central to any Radical Enlightenment category that adequately links the attack on religious authority with eighteenth-century reforming and revolutionary democratic social, educational and political agendas. In general, Spinoza’s philosophy represents a stronger spur to political activism and subversion than Lucretius’ broadly passive and far more individual, (or group separatist), and less politically engaged recipe for the good life. Epicurus’ and Lucretius’ philosophy, as has often been emphasized, pursued ataraxia, that state of inner tranquility and detachment cultivated by both Epicureans and Stoics which they held to stem from seeking refuge in the philosophical life and in the former case from “overcoming our illusions about the gods”. Lucretius’s preoccupation with ataraxia reflects his and Epicurus’ seeming lack of any sense of our possessing the power to ‘shape and fashion our world, natural and social’, as Charles Taylor aptly remarks, ‘actuated by some drive to human beneficence’. Epicureanism cultivated a thoroughgoing quietism.⁴⁶ The real ‘Lucretians’ of the early modern age, were figures like St. Evremond or Fontenelle standing completely aside from both the Christian faith and any commitment to creating a beneficent new order, thinkers content to retreat into ataractic tranquility. Even if one thinks this stress on the social and political quietism and passivity of ‘Lucretianism’ is sometimes exaggerated, it remains true that Spinoza provides a considerably wider platform for social and moral reformism and activism. In this respect he stands apart from Epicurus, Lucretius and Hobbes. His is a more explicit call to refashion the world by means of freedom to philosophize and publish and, by such instruments, to discredit reli-

 Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, pp. , , , .  Taylor, A Secular Age, pp. , ,  – ; Greenblatt, The Swerve, pp. , .

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gious authority, secularize government and base social and legal principles on a morality of reciprocity and equality, grounded in a particular kind of politics, namely democracy which he envisages as the most natural and useful and the least dangerous political form from the viewpoint of the majority. At bottom, Epicureanism was concerned with seeking an apolitical, ataractic tranquility of mind, the Radical Enlightenment with changing the world. Epicureanism, moreover, permanently remained outside or above politics: in this respect, it is perhaps not misplaced to designate ‘Lucretianism’, as Charles Taylor does, as one source of Nietzschean and other nineteenth-century atheistic ‘immanent Counter-Enlightenment’.⁴⁷ ‘Radical Enlightenment’ by contrast, and here Strauss was after all perfectly accurate and justified even if he personally refused to endorse it, never compromised or qualified its unrelenting commitment to science, learning and the primacy of autonomous reason – or recommending these as the principal tools in our pursuit of human happiness and the good life.

Bibliography Blom, Hans W., Morality and Causality in Politics. The Rise of Naturalism in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Political Thought, Utrecht, Universität Utrecht, 1995. Bolduc, Carl, Spinoza et l’approche éthique du problème de la libération. Critique du théologico-politique, Hildesheim/Zürich/New York, Olms, 2009. Burgh, Albert, ‘‘Albert Burgh to Spinoza, Florence 3, Sept. 1675”, in: Samuel Shirley (trans.): Benedict de Spinoza. The Letters, Indianapolis, Hackett, 1995, pp. 303 – 12. Desmoulins, Camille, La France libre, Paris, 1789. Dubos, Nicolas, ‘‘Hobbes et les Lumières radicales”, in: Jean Mondot and Catherine Larrère (eds.), Lumières radicales, radicalisme des Lumières [Lumières No. 13], Pessac, Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, 2009, p. 35 ff. Fraenkel, Carlos, Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza: Reason, Religion and Autonomy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012. Goetschel, Willi, Spinoza’s Modernity: Mendelssohn, Lessing and Heine, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2004. Greenblatt, Stephen, The Swerve: How the World became modern, New York, Norton, 2011. Israel, Jonathan, ‘‘Radikalaufklärung: Entstehung und Bedeutung einer fundamentalen Idee”, in: Jonathan Israel and Martin Mulsow (eds.), Radikalaufklärung, Berlin, Suhrkamp, 2014, pp. 234 – 75. Israel, Jonathan, ‘‘Leibniz’s Theodicy as a Critique of Spinoza and Bayle – and Blueprint for the Philosophy Wars of the 18th Century”, in: Larry M. Jorgensen and Samuel Newlands

 Taylor, A Secular Age, p. .

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(eds.): New Essays on Leibniz’s Theodicy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 233 – 44. Israel, Jonathan, Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution from the Rights of Man to Robespierre, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2014c. Israel, Jonathan, ‘‘An Answer to Four Critics” [Section replying to J. K. Wright], in: H-France forum. Vol. 9 (2015), Issue 1, no. 5, pp. 77 – 97. Lagrée, Jacqueline, Spinoza et le débat religieux, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2004. Leibniz, Gottfried W., Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil, Austin Farrer, La Salle, Illinois, 4th repr. 1993. Lloyd, Geneviève, Spinoza and the Idea of the Secular [Mededelingen vanwege Het Spinozahuis 102], Voorschoten, Uitgeverij Spinozahuis, 2013. Lucci, Diego, Scripture and Deism: The Biblical Criticism of the Eighteenth-Century British Deists, Bern (u. a.), Lang, 2008. Mack, Michael, “Towards an Inclusive Universalism: Spinoza’s Ethics of Sustainability”, in: Dimitris Vardoulakis, (ed.), Spinoza Now, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2011, pp. 99 – 134. Malcolm, Noel, Aspects of Hobbes, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002. May, Henry F., The Enlightenment in America, New York, Oxford University Press, 1976. McKenna, Antony, “Pierre Bayle in the Twentieth Century”, in: Wiep van Bunge and Hans Bots (eds.), Pierre Bayle (1647 – 1706), Le Philosophe de Rotterdam: Philosophy, Religion and Reception, Leiden (u. a.), Brill, 2008, pp. 253 – 68. Meyer, Donald H., The Democratic Enlightenment, New York, Putnam, 1976. Mori, Gianluca, Bayle Philosophe, Paris, Honoré Champion, 1999. Mühlpfordt, Günter, “Bahrdt und die radikale Aufklärung”, in: Jahrbuch des Instituts für Deutsche Geschichte der Universität Tel Aviv x, (1976), pp. 49 – 100. Mühlpfordt, Günter, Halle-Leipziger Aufklärung, Halle, Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2011. Nadler, Steven, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2011. Paganini, Gianni, Skepsis : Le débat des modernes sur le scepticisme, Paris, Vrin, 2008. Ranieri, John J., Disturbing Revelation. Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin and the Bible, Columbia, University of Missouri, 2009. Roothaan, Angela, Vroomheid, vrede, vrijheid: Een interpretatie van Spinoza‘s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Assen, van Gorcum, 1996. Schröder, Winfried, Ursprünge des Atheismus: Untersuchungen zur Metaphysik- und Religionskritik des 17. Und 18. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, Frommann-Holzboog, 1998. Smith, Steven B., Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1997. Smith, Steven B., Spinoza’s Book of Life, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2003. Smith, Steven B., Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2006. Stjeinfelt, Frederik, “Radical Enlightment – and Abstraction in the Humanities”, Paper delivered at Brussel Conference The Radical Enlightenment, 16./17. May 2013. Strauss, Leo, What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies, Glencoe, Free Press, 1959.

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Strauss, Leo, “Preface”, in: Id., Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. [English translation (1965); original edition: Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft: Untersuchungen zu Spinozas Theologisch-Politischen Traktat, Berlin, Akademie-Verlag, 1930](new edition; Chicago, University of Chicago, 1967). Strauss, Leo, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. [English translation (1965); original edition: Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft: Untersuchungen zu Spinozas Theologisch-Politischen Traktat, Berlin, Akademie-Verlag, 1930] (new edition; Chicago, University of Chicago, 1967). Strauss, Leo, Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft: Untersuchungen zu Spinozas Theologisch-Politischen Traktat. New edition with a foreward by Norbert Altwicker, Darmstadt, Olms, 1981. Tanguay, Daniel, Leo Strauss: An Intellectual Biography, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2007. Taylor, Charles, A Secular Age, Cambridge, Havard University Press, 2007. Yakira, Elhanan, “Leo Strauss and Baruch Spinoza: Remarks in the Margin of Strauss′s Timely Reflections”, in: Studia Spinozana xiii (1997), pp. 161 – 82. Yovel, Yirmiyahu, Spinoza and other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1989. Wertheim, David, Salvation through Spinoza: A Study of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany, Leiden, Brill, 2011.

Adrian Blau

The Irrelevance of (Straussian) Hermeneutics 1 Introduction¹ Many writers talk of Strauss’s “hermeneutic”. This term sounds innocuous. But it can be misleading, even dangerous, deflecting attention from the real issue – Strauss’s inadequate hypothesis-testing. Talking about hypotheses not hermeneutics makes it easier to see when Strauss does not test his claims properly: he looks for evidence which fits his suspicions, finds it, and stops. At stake is more than Strauss’s work: at stake is the methodology of textual interpretation itself. Although part of this chapter challenges talk of Strauss’s hermeneutic, my bigger concerns are the ideas and language of hermeneutics more generally. We need different principles and different terms, I will suggest. This chapter is structured as follows. Section 2 summarises my previously published critique of Strauss. Section 3 corrects, clarifies and extends that argument. Section 4 considers how Straussians could respond. Section 5 argues that talk of Straussian “hermeneutics” is too broad: it does not distinguish between methodological principles, empirical hypotheses and conclusions, hence making it harder to pinpoint Strauss’s ineffective hypothesis-testing. Section 6 suggests that the language of hermeneutics can weaken criticisms of Strauss, letting his defenders off the hook. Section 7 recommends dropping the language and ideas of hermeneutics, by questioning Ricoeur and especially Gadamer. There are better ways to work out if and how to read between the lines, I suggest. Section 8 briefly considers alternative forms of hermeneutics. Section 9 concludes with the suggestion – which of course I cannot demonstrate – that if there

 Acknowledgements: A very different version of this chapter was delivered at the “Reading Between The Lines” conference in Marburg,  –  July . I am grateful to those at the conference for comments and criticisms, especially Rob Howse, Winfried Schröder and Rudolf Schuessler. A more recent draft benefited greatly from the insights of James Connelly, Robin Douglass, Humeira Iqtidar, Simon Kaye, Peter Minowitz, Joanne Paul, Dietrich Schotte, and Colin Tyler. Special thanks to Peter Minowitz for challenging my  critique of Strauss. I have been developing the controversial arguments at the end of this chapter for several years, and in that context I thank Justin Blau, Kimberley Brownlee, Charles Devellennes, Robin Douglass, Jane Green, Christel Koop, Chrys Mantzavinos, Jon Parkin, Alan Renwick, and Colin Tyler, as well as participants at conferences and seminars at the universities of York, Reading, Durham and Kent.

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had been better methodological principles in the 1940s and 1950s, few people would now be discussing Strauss’s esoteric interpretations.

2 “Anti-Strauss” Leo Strauss was a wide-ranging political theorist, and I focus only on one part of his work: his “esoteric” interpretations, uncovering hidden doctrines in classic texts. According to Strauss, great philosophers could produce “perfect” writing,² so it would have been deliberate if they do not mention things which they knew and which were essential to their argument.³ Errors and contradictions should be treated as intended: perhaps the author is subtly trying to reject an idea.⁴ Writers may use numbers to give clues to careful readers: for example, if Machiavelli’s Prince has 26 chapters, we should examine the 26th chapter of the Discourses. ⁵ In January 2012, I published a paper with the ever so subtle title “AntiStrauss”. I argued that Strauss was a naive interpreter with a career-long tendency to read too much into what he sees and an unwillingness to test his claims rigorously. He looks for evidence that fits his hypotheses, finds it, ignores plausible alternatives, and states his conclusions without doubt. My two core principles were underdetermination and uncertainty. Underdetermination means that there are always at least two ways of interpreting any evidence.⁶ We should thus try to reduce uncertainty about our conclusions by carefully testing the strengths and weaknesses of the main alternative interpretations, and where relevant, indicating how confident we are in our conclusions.⁷ We should not see ourselves as reporting facts: we are telling our readers how well we think the evidence fits our hypotheses compared to the alternatives.⁸ Strauss’s interpretations often fall well short of these principles. Most critics only address Strauss’s esoteric phase. Importantly, there are also problems with Strauss’s pre-esoteric interpretations: his 1936 book on Hobbes sees significant overstatements based on little evidence.⁹ True, reading Hobbes

 Strauss, “On a New Interpretation of Plato’s Political Philosophy”, p. .  Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, pp.  – .  Ibid., pp.  – .  Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli, pp.  – .  Newton-Smith, “Underdetermination of Theory by Data”, pp.  – .  King, Keohane, and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research, pp. ,  – ,  – , , , .  Blau, “Anti-Strauss”, pp.  – .  Ibid., pp.  – .

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accurately is easier for us than for Strauss, as we can build on better scholarship – scholarship which Strauss’s book helped to spark. But even in 1937 Strauss was accused of stretching his evidence.¹⁰ My critique of Strauss’s Hobbes book, incidentally, has been far surpassed by A.P. Martinich’s chapter in this volume. So, examining Strauss’s pre-esoteric interpretations, not just his esoteric ones, suggests that he was an over-eager interpreter throughout his career; his discovery of esotericism simply gave him more opportunities to go wrong. I must stress that reading between the lines is perfectly legitimate, as Dietrich Schotte’s chapter in this volume successfully demonstrates. Clearly, writers hold views which they do not communicate directly,¹¹ and some almost certainly wrote esoterically.¹² The question is how these possibilities are investigated. “Anti-Strauss” challenged Strauss’s investigation of these possibilities in two ways. First, some of his methodological principles are flawed and overly dichotomous.¹³ Second, and more important, he does not probe his hypotheses adequately. For example, he suggests that key ideas are often central – the third example out of five, say, or an idea in the middle of a chapter – but he rarely notes when a key idea is not central or when an unimportant idea is central. Worse, so many things are central in one way or another that it is not surprising that key ideas are often central, simply by chance – especially when Strauss measures the centre in different ways and, rather naughtily, includes things which are merely near the centre, not actually at the centre.¹⁴ This is the Platonic Form of having your cake and eating it. Other arguments of Strauss’s look implausible too.¹⁵ Overall, I argued, the problem is not Strauss’s claims about esotericism but his inadequate testing of these claims: the problem is not Strauss’s esotericism, but Strauss’s esotericism.¹⁶ That is important for this chapter: I worry that many people see a “Straussian hermeneutic” as fundamentally different to other approaches, whereas I want to show that Strauss violates principles which should underlie all empirical investigations. “Anti-Strauss” concluded by suggesting that while most readers of

 Oakeshott, Hobbes on Civil Association, pp. ,  – .  Skinner, Visions of Politics. Volume I: Regarding Method, pp.  – .  Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England.  Blau, “Anti-Strauss”, pp.  – .  Ibid., pp.  – .  Ibid., pp.  – .  Ibid., p. .

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Strauss quickly spot his naivety, published critiques largely fail to identify precisely where he goes wrong.¹⁷

3 Extending “Anti-Strauss” I will now extend my critique by correcting two small and two larger errors in “Anti-Strauss”, then developing three ideas which need more emphasis: confirmation bias, falsification, and testing hypotheses by probing observational implications. One small error was to refer to Strauss’s The City and Man ¹⁸ rather than his The Crisis of Our Time. ¹⁹ I also wrote that “most of [Strauss’s] conclusions … are stated with excessive certainty”,²⁰ when I should merely have said that some of Strauss’s important conclusions are stated too strongly. My two bigger mistakes – highly pertinent to this chapter – involve the language with which I discussed Strauss’s problems. One error was to talk of his “epistemology”, his “epistemological” naivety, and so on.²¹ But this is methodology not epistemology. More importantly, I did not say enough about hypotheses and hypothesis-testing. Revealingly, I wrote about “theory” not “hypotheses”.²² And I referred to Strauss’s “method” when “hypotheses” would again have been more accurate, albeit more awkward²³– an equivalent slip to what I discuss in sections 5 and 6, below. As it is so central to this chapter, I should clarify what I mean by “hypothesis”. People use this term very differently. Following Carl Hempel,²⁴ I use it broadly, to mean an empirical claim about an empirical phenomenon. I do not restrict it to causal propositions,²⁵ relationships,²⁶ or claims derived from theories.²⁷ I want to focus on how we test any empirical claim, whether causal claims about many past and future cases (e. g. “corruption hinders development”), causal claims about a single past case (e. g. “an asteroid made the dinosaurs ex          

Ibid., pp. ,  – . Strauss, The City and Man, p. . Strauss, “The Crisis of Our Time”, p. ; see Blau, “Anti-Strauss”, p. . Blau, “Anti-Strauss”, p.  ; emphasis added by author. e. g. ibid., p. . See especially ibid., pp.  – . Ibid., p. . Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Science, p. . Van Evera, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science, p. . Hoover and Donovan, The Elements of Social Scientific Thinking, p. . Babbie, The Basics of Social Research, p. .

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tinct”), descriptive claims about many past and future cases (e. g. “all swans are white”), descriptive claims about a single past case (e. g. “Plato wrote the Seventh Letter”), and so on. Different hypotheses may be easier or harder to test but the same principles apply: scepticism, consideration of alternatives, and so on. I now wish to expand on these ideas. I will start by sharing a feeling I experienced while preparing my original critique of Strauss. Near the end of that paper I wrote a satire, mimicking Strauss’s style and parodying his esoteric techniques to “prove” that Hobbes hid secret messages about Beethoven’s music – even though Hobbes died 91 years before Beethoven was born.²⁸ Clearly we can find striking similarities even where they cannot have been intended. While writing this satire I suddenly felt a bit of what it may have been like to be Leo Strauss. I was spotting so many astonishing parallels between Hobbes and Beethoven that a thought started to flash into my head: “Is it possible that Hobbes was actually writing about Beethoven?”. I didn’t finish this thought: of course Hobbes could not have written about Beethoven. But it showed me how easily we can over-interpret coincidences. So much evidence fits Strauss’s suspicions that he may have felt sure he was right. The same might apply to his supporters. Strauss’s critics ignore such feelings at their peril. There is a tendency to portray Straussians as irrational²⁹ but my experience while writing the satire helped me see why many Straussians sincerely believe that Strauss “proves” his esoteric claims, in Thomas Pangle’s words.³⁰ He has so much evidence which shows so many parallels which are so striking: surely this cannot be coincidence? Strauss’s defenders also ignore such feelings at their peril: these feelings are treacherous. There is a widespread human bias to look for evidence which fits one’s ideas, or to interpret things to support one’s ideas – intentionally or unintentionally. This was described by Francis Bacon in 1620³¹ and is now called “confirmation bias”.³² Although most of us fall foul of it, it is rarely stated as a key problem for textual interpreters.³³ Textual interpreters must thus take care not just to look for evidence which fits our expectations. This applies to Strauss’s critics too. Consider Masoud Bonyanian’s attempt to show that Strauss influenced American neoconservatives

 Blau, “Anti-Strauss”, pp.  – .  e. g. Burnyeat, “The Studies of Leo Strauss: An Exchange”.  Pangle, Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy, p. .  Bacon, The New Organon, i., p. .  Nickerson, “Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises”.  One exception is Wootton, “John Locke and Richard Ashcraft’s Revolutionary Politics”, p. .

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in the Bush administration: according to Bonyanian, these neoconservatives lied about why they waged war with Iraq because Strauss had argued that politicians may need to tell a noble lie to hide truths from the masses.³⁴ A simple test of this claim is to ask if politicians not influenced by Strauss lie to cover up their actions. Call me cynical, but I think one or two have. Why, then, suppose that Strauss’s influence explains the alleged lies of American neoconservatives? Bonyanian needs to work far harder to show this. Straussians who agree with me about Bonyanian should ask if the same applies to Strauss. Of course, due to confirmation bias I may have overlooked some of Strauss’s engagements with other interpretations. But Straussians should, I suggest, be explicit that he often neglects plausible alternatives. Comparing different hypotheses is a key way in which we have learned to counter confirmation bias, individually and collectively. We also know not just to look for evidence which fits our expectations, not to assume that our evidence is necessarily reliable, not to assume that our “evidence” is necessarily evidence (sometimes patterns are coincidental), and so on. Since we often fall short, there are collective mechanisms for combating confirmation bias. For example, when natural scientists publish controversial findings, suspicious competitors try to see if the results really can be reproduced – a fine example of ambition countering ambition. Scepticism is thus vital in empirical research.³⁵ Even when we are convinced by our argument, we can take steps to justify it to our readers.³⁶ Convincing doubters is more important than preaching to the converted. The key is be a doubter oneself and test one’s claims accordingly. As Jon Elster puts it, one should “think against oneself”.³⁷ Many scholars think about these matters in terms of falsification. I now need to flesh out my brief comment in “Anti-Strauss” where I suggested that orthodox notions of falsification are not very effective when criticising Strauss.³⁸ The orthodox falsificationist’ view is that hypotheses can be disproved but never proved. “All swans are white” is unprovable, however many white swans we

 Bonyanian, Muslims’ Perceptions of the Bush Doctrine: Bridging the Gap With Islam, pp.  – .  King, Keohane, and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research, pp.  – .  Elster, Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences, pp.  – .  Ibid., p.; emphasis removed.  Blau, “Anti-Strauss”, p. , referring to Pocock, “Prophet and Inquisitor: Or, A Church Built Upon Bayonets Cannot Stand: A Comment on Mansfield’s ‘Strauss’s Machiavelli’”, p. ; Gunnell, “The Myth of the Tradition”, p. ; and Gunn, Book review, p. .

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see; but one black swan disproves it. The orthodox idea, then, is that we can falsify a hypothesis by finding contrary evidence. But underdetermination undermines falsification: all evidence has at least two explanations, and apparently falsifying evidence can be explained away.³⁹ We need, rather, a weak logic of falsification (which is nonetheless consistent with the spirit of the original). On this view, falsification is not about rejecting hypotheses which have been shown to be wrong, but about seeing which hypotheses still stand when we have done our best to knock them down. Where space and time permit – and often they do not – we should actively consider evidence that clashes with an interpretation as well as evidence that fits, we should take alternative interpretations seriously, and we should push hard at hypotheses by testing their “observable implications”.⁴⁰ If a hypothesis is right, what we would expect to see, and do we see it? What would we not expect to see, and do we see that? If a different hypothesis is right, what would we expect to see? And so on. This use of observable implications underpins Stephen Van Evera’s approach to hypothesis-testing.⁴¹ We can apply three of his tests to Strauss as follows. First, if Machiavelli wrote esoterically, we might see links between Machiavelli and esotericists living in Florence at the time. Strauss’s case is strongly supported if these links can be found and only mildly weakened if not (since Machiavelli could have developed these techniques independently) so his followers would lose nothing by applying this “smoking gun” test. Second, we should ask if Machiavelli actually needed to hide his messages. Would he really have been persecuted for being explicit about these allegedly hidden ideas? Or if he was trying to keep certain ideas from ordinary readers to protect them from harm and to stop them from harming him,⁴² were these expectations reasonable? Strauss’s case is mildly supported if the answer to either question is “yes” and strongly weakened if not, so this “hoop test” is vital. Third, and most crucial, we can ask if Strauss’s approach allows us to find esoteric messages in writers who presumably did not write esoterically (e. g. Graham Greene, J.K. Rowling), or if it suggests impossible results (e. g. claims about Adolf Hitler in the Old Testament or about Martin Luther King in Moby Dick). If we never see such things, this strongly suggests that Strauss’s findings are not coincidence. If we can easily

 Newton-Smith, “Underdetermination of Theory by Data”, pp.  – .  King, Keohane, and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research, pp.  – ,  – .  Van Evera, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science, pp.  – .  Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, p. .

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see such things, this strongly weakens his case. This “doubly decisive” test is a powerful antidote to confirmation bias.

4 Straussian responses It is perhaps surprising that Strauss’s followers have not pushed very hard at his work by asking these and similar questions.⁴³ The next generation of Straussians has a great opportunity to correct this, as long as their aim is to find out what is right, not to show that Strauss was right. (Why would a scholar have the latter aim?) Straussians might respond to my criticisms by showing that I am guilty of confirmation bias in my reading of Strauss (or Hobbes, Habermas, or other thinkers I have interpreted). I surely am. But obviously, a “tu quoque” response alone will not save Strauss. Another line could be that Strauss’s evidence is stronger than I imply. This response would be worthwhile but it is not enough, as discussed above: to avoid confirmation bias, hypothesis-testing should be about more than just finding evidence that fits a hypothesis. Perhaps someone could argue that we can test hypotheses properly just by looking for evidence that fits them, but I suspect that this would contradict too much that we think we know about methodology and psychology. Straussians could instead argue that non-Straussians do not take Straussian hypotheses sufficiently seriously. But this assumes that Straussian hypotheses are reasonable, and we still need more rigorous testing to show this. A stronger response would be to show that non-Straussians often test their hypotheses inadequately. I would welcome this response, as it is right. We need wider emphasis on hypothesis-testing in textual interpretation. I started this section by saying that it was “perhaps surprising” that Strauss’s followers have not probed his claims hard enough. In fact, some Straussians may not even think his interpretations are sincere: his errors are so obvious that he is primarily showing how to read between his own lines. This is certainly possible.⁴⁴ But the main reason, I suspect, is that most Straussians think his arguments are right and thus need no further testing.

 Blau, “Anti-Strauss”, p. .  Ibid., p. .

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Strauss’s critics may have exacerbated this situation. Many criticisms of Strauss are rather easy to deflect.⁴⁵ And it probably does not help when Straussians see titles like “Anti-Strauss”. Combined with confirmation bias and inadequate hypothesis-testing, it is no surprise that Straussians often reject criticisms of Strauss. But this problem in turn partly reflects the language with which many critics and defenders of Strauss discuss his work, as I now seek to show.

5 How talk of “hermeneutics” masks Strauss’s errors Our inadequate methodological vocabulary has helped to conceal Strauss’s problems. The next two sections thus argue that talk of Straussian “hermeneutics” averts attention from his ineffective hypothesis-testing. Even criticisms of Strauss can lose some or all of their force when expressed in terms of hermeneutics. I have two key concerns: Talk of Strauss’s “hermeneutics” often fails to distinguish between Strauss’s methodological principles and his empirical hypotheses. This may misleadingly imply that hypothesis-testing is not needed. Talk of Strauss’s “hermeneutics” sometimes fails to distinguish between Strauss’s empirical hypotheses and the results of testing those hypotheses. This may misleadingly imply that his hypothesis-testing was conclusive. Dropping the language of “hermeneutics” and focusing on hypotheses thus makes clearer that Strauss does not test his empirical claims properly. (Note that I will not separate out the above two claims in what follows.) Before examining these claims in more detail, I shall offer two quick examples of when talk of a “hermeneutic” is misleading. First, imagine a hypothetical textual interpreter called Charlotte Ann. When she is unsure what an author means by a particular word, she eats cheese until she falls asleep, and when she wakes up, she writes down a sentence about the dream she had. She then converts each letter of that sentence into numbers (A=1, B=2, up to Z=26), sums the numbers, and sticks a pin into that page of a dictionary; whatever word she sticks the pin into is the meaning that the author intended. Clearly this is so ludicrous that we would not take her seriously if she defended herself against critics by saying “well, you just have a different hermeneutic”. Such a claim already implies that her hermeneutic is reasonable. Nor can anyone defend Strauss simply by saying that he has a different hermeneutic to his critics.  see ibid., pp.  – .

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Second, consider the following analogy from political science. There is a large statistical literature on the causes and effects of corruption in different countries. This literature can be challenged in at least three ways: the data may be unreliable, the methods may be inappropriate for distinguishing causation from correlation, and the hypotheses may not be tested rigorously enough.⁴⁶ Political scientists criticising a study of corruption would indicate which of these is at fault, rather than rejecting the study’s “approach”. I seek similar precision in textual interpretation. I must stress that I am not criticising any author for talking about Strauss’s “hermeneutic”. Some authors use the term only in passing; mentioning hypotheses would often be irrelevant or unwieldy. But I need to show how our methodological language has concealed what is really happening, which has stopped Strauss’s critics from pinpointing his biggest problems while letting his defenders sidestep these problems. So, I hope that readers will excuse my somewhat pedantic analysis of how scholars have discussed Strauss. I start with innocuous uses, where “hermeneutic” means “interpretative”. I prefer the latter term, for reasons that will become apparent, but there is nothing wrong with referring to “the hermeneutic approaches of Strauss and Derrida”⁴⁷, or contrasting Strauss’s “hermeneutical” and non-hermeneutical texts.⁴⁸ Similarly, it is legitimate to say that Strauss’s distinction between interpretation and explanation⁴⁹ is “instructive for our understanding of Strauss’s hermeneutics”⁵⁰, as the interpretation/explanation distinction is a methodological principle. However, Walter Soffer makes it sound like a methodological principle when he “present[s] the hermeneutic for the reading of Spinoza employed by Strauss”, referring to a specific “rule” (Strauss’s term) for dealing with apparent contradictions by Spinoza.⁵¹ Actually, this “rule” is only a hypothesis which may or may not explain the contradiction: there are other possibilities which we should address. Soffer later stresses “the necessity of Strauss’s hermeneutic” if we are “to translate the exoteric presentation of Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise into

 Treisman, “What Have We Learned About the Causes of Corruption From Ten Years of CrossNational Empirical Research?”, p. .  Burns and Connelly, “Introduction: Straussian Voices”, p. .  Sharpe, “The Philosopher’s Courtly Love? Leo Strauss, Eros, and the Law”, p. , see also pp. , .  Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, p. .  Luz, “How to Read the Bible According to Leo Strauss”, p. .  Soffer, “Modern Rationalism, Miracles, and Revelation: Strauss’s Critique of Spinoza”, pp.  – .

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its esoteric teaching”⁵². This comment is understandable: we often understand a text better after testing a hypothesis, for example that Machiavelli was trying to get employment with the Medici or that Hobbes was implicitly attacking Aristotle. But it remains only a hypothesis which (if important) ideally needs testing; our answer remains only a suggestion. According to Robert Hunt, “[t]he Straussian hermeneutic … sees the course of intellectual history as an ongoing conversation about important philosophical questions”⁵³. But this is only a hypothesis, and there are reasonable alternatives. Straussians and non-Straussians who read texts like this should ideally not assume what needs testing. The same could be said of rational choice theorists, Marxists, anthropologists or journalists who “see” politics in a particular way. We can legitimately ask if they should “see” things differently; they can ask the same of us. To “see” a text in a particular way, then, is shorthand for having a hypothesis about it. That hypothesis needs testing, sooner or later. With Strauss’s hypotheses, we have passed the sooner and reached the later. So, when Clifford Bates “grant[s] the reasonableness of the Straussian hermeneutic”⁵⁴, the real issue is the reasonableness of how Strauss investigates his hypotheses. The same applies when Peter Levine, a critic of Strauss, mentions how Strauss “claimed to have learned his hermeneutic methods”⁵⁵. Strictly speaking Strauss did not learn a hermeneutic method but developed hypotheses about esotericism and tested them inadequately. This is not a method, it is poor research design. Similarly, Michael Frazer refers to Strauss’s “hermeneutic techniques”⁵⁶, but I would say that Strauss has hypotheses about other writers’ techniques and does not test these hypotheses well. It is of course entirely legitimate for Paul Gottfried to refer to Strauss’s way of reading texts as his “hermeneutic”⁵⁷, and to describe “Straussian hermeneutics” as a “methodology”, an “interpretative method”, “a way of studying political classics”⁵⁸. But this language might still mislead: at the heart of Strauss’s approach are certain hypotheses and ineffective tests thereof. Another critic, Shadia Drury, writes that Strauss “introduced a hermeneutic (i. e. a method of interpretation) intended to unearth the

 Ibid., p. .  Hunt, “Christianity, Leo Strauss, and the Ancients/Moderns Distinction”, p. .  Bates, Book review, p. .  Levine, Nietzsche and the Modern Crisis of the Humanities, p. , see also pp. , .  Frazer, “Esotericism Ancient and Modern: Strauss Contra Straussianism on the Art of Political-Philosophical Writing”, p. .  e. g. Gottfried, Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America: A Critical Appraisal, p. .  Ibid., pp. , .

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hidden thoughts of the philosophers”, focusing on numbers, centres, and silences, and likewise refers to Strauss’s “hermeneutics or methods of interpretation”, describes “his manner of approaching the texts” as “Straussian hermeneutics”, and equates “his special hermeneutic” with his “method of interpretation”⁵⁹. These comments are not wrong as such, but we should remember that what is special about Strauss’s “hermeneutic” is particular hypotheses and an inadequate way of testing them. Talk of “hermeneutics” turns us away from the crucial issue of hypothesistesting and thus helps Straussians ignore Strauss’s errors. For example, Steven Smith⁶⁰ mentions critics who have “attacked the methodological premises of Straussian hermeneutics. The method of esoteric reading … is said to be inherently arbitrary and nonverifiable.” Wording it like this, though, allows Smith to sidestep all of Strauss’s problems. The key issue is not the methodological “premises” of Strauss’s “hermeneutics” but how ineffectively he tests his hypotheses. The problem is not that the “method” of esoteric reading is “inherently” arbitrary but that Strauss sometimes picks evidence that suits his case and overlooks evidence which does not, as with his treatment of centres. It is entirely possible to test such claims less arbitrarily. Nor is Strauss’s approach inherently nonverifiable: the problem is precisely that Strauss tries to verify his findings rather than seeing both sides. Smith’s comments on Strauss, like those of many critics, do not zero in on Strauss’s biggest problems. Straussians should drop talk of hermeneutics, focus on hypotheses, and test Strauss’s hypotheses rigorously. If his claims are right then they should pass tougher tests, so Straussians who are confident in his claims have nothing to fear. If his hypotheses do not pass tougher tests, then the problem is not Strauss’s hypotheses about esoteric techniques but his inadequate testing of these hypotheses.

6 How talk of “hermeneutics” blunts criticisms of Strauss Our insufficiently fine-grained methodological vocabulary makes it harder to show where interpretations go wrong. Consider Samuel Chambers’s suggestion that the problem with Strauss’s “hermeneutic approach” is that “it becomes

 Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, p. lix, , , .  Smith, Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism, p. .

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very difficult to know when to take an author at his or her word”.⁶¹ But even without assuming esotericism, we are often unsure whether to take authors at their word. If Chambers had used the terminology I favour, he could hardly complain that Strauss’s hypotheses or his testing thereof make it hard to know when to take authors at their word; and if one writes that Strauss’s conclusions make it hard to know when to take authors at their word, this begs the question of whether the conclusions are justified – and that is where we should focus. Neil Robertson writes that “[t]he difficulties of directly refuting Strauss’s hermeneutic may be compared to the difficulties of refuting psychoanalysis”: both “point to” findings only uncoverable by those who already accept certain assumptions.⁶² But rephrasing this in terms of hypotheses invites talk of observable implications. Psychoanalytic hypotheses can actually be tested according to their observable implications.⁶³ So can Strauss’s hypotheses, as discussed above. Robertson’s talk of hermeneutics makes it sound as Strauss’s claims are harder to test than they are. Miles Burnyeat notes that “Strauss had to use Straussian hermeneutics on the Phaedrus to get that dialogue to justify using Straussian hermeneutics on other Platonic texts,” so pointing to the Phaedrus “does nothing to extricate the Straussian approach” from a “vicious circularity”.⁶⁴ This is nearly right. But all interpretations have some degree of circularity. This is why orthodox understandings of falsification somewhat miss the point.⁶⁵ Burnyeat is right to worry that the basis of Strauss’s approach is particularly questionable, but I think that talking of hypothesis-testing would sharpen Burnyeat’s criticism: Strauss proposed certain hypotheses about Plato’s techniques in the Phaedrus, looked for and found evidence consistent with those hypotheses, naively inferred that this confirmed the hypotheses, and thus proposed the same hypotheses and the same inadequate testing on other Platonic texts. Ultimately, the issue isn’t circularity: it’s one-sided hypothesis-testing. Another acute criticism is Drury’s comment that there is “really very little ‘method’ in Strauss’s hermeneutics. What is important about Strauss’s ‘method’ is not its form, but its content”, in other words “particular assumptions about the nature of the world, of philosophy, of human nature and of political

 Chambers, Book review.  Robertson, “Leo Strauss’s Platonism”, p. .  Grünbaum, “Precis of The Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique”, pp.  – .  Burnyeat, “The Studies of Leo Strauss: An Exchange”.  Blau, “Anti-Strauss”, pp. , .

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life”⁶⁶. But Strauss’s “assumptions” are really “hypotheses” or “claims”, and Drury’s insight would damage Strauss even more if she adds that he tests his claims inadequately. He is more like a lawyer making the case for his client than a judge trying to see both sides.

7 The irrelevance of hermeneutics Most readers will have been treating this chapter as a critique of Straussian interpretation. As may now be clear, it is also a critique of critiques of Straussian interpretation. And even that is not my main concern, as the parentheses in my chapter-title imply. I should now be explicit: showing where Strauss goes wrong, and highlighting inadequacies in our methodological vocabulary, has been laying the foundations for me to defend a science of textual interpretation. That may sound outlandish. Isn’t a science of interpretation a contradiction in terms? This section suggests otherwise. I will first briefly outline my position and then suggest that scientific ideas – properly understood – are more useful for us than ideas from the hermeneutics literature, which has itself sometimes caricatured science unfairly. Obviously, both positions need to be expanded in future writings. But please note that by “the irrelevance of hermeneutics” I merely mean that hermeneuticists have little to offer textual interpreters asking empirical questions, especially compared to how much we can learn from elsewhere. I will develop these points below. I will start by suggesting that textual interpreters often practise scientific ideas already. We regularly make the same assumptions as natural and social scientists without realising it. We think that there is a right answer to questions such as what Rousseau meant by “general will”, even though the answer cannot be known for sure, and even if the answer is “Rousseau himself did not fully know”. We know that inductive inference is dangerous: if Mill defines “utility” in one place, we should not assume that this must be what he always means by it. We criticize the failure to define key terms: we would not ask if Wollstonecraft is a “feminist” without defining “feminist”, even though we know that such concepts are human constructs. We may not think about “selection bias” but we know that scholars who only read the first parts of Leviathan may miss the importance of religion to Hobbes and thus misconstrue his intentions in writing it. We may not talk of “under-determination” but we all know the perils of interpreting ambiguous phrases and often take steps to tackle this problem. We may not

 Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, p. .

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refer to “triangulation” but we know that primarily textual or philosophical interpretations of texts are more convincing if contextual evidence also implies the same conclusions. We may not discuss hoop tests, smoking gun tests and doubly decisive tests, but we already have an intuitive sense of such ways of probing arguments. Further riches doubtless await us. So, there is much overlap between textual interpretation and scientific ideas. If (if) we start by assuming that there are right answers to empirical questions, and accept that evidence can always be interpreted differently, we know not just to look for evidence which fits our expectations, but instead to compare the strengths and weaknesses of different possibilities, testing hypotheses by probing their implications – arguing against ourselves as well as others. This is not rocket science. But it is science. The advantage of thinking about textual interpretation scientifically is that theorists and practitioners of natural and social science have developed sensible tactics for investigating empirical problems. Where textual interpreters do not already use such an approach, we can apply it to investigate problems more thoroughly, defend interpretations more convincingly, and show where certain scholars go wrong. I believe that this last option applies to Strauss. He shares the core scientific assumptions that there are right answers to empirical questions about what authors meant and that we can potentially work out these answers.⁶⁷ But his approach then falls well short of scientific ideals. To sceptics, I would thus ask: to the extent that you agree with my criticisms of Strauss’s methodology and his inadequate hypothesis-testing, what is the source of your agreement? Some people will see these “scientific” ideas simply as basic principles of good scholarship. But where do these principles come from? I believe they do not and can not come from orthodox hermeneutics. Philosophically important and valuable though this literature can be, it contributes surprisingly little to how we interpret texts. Leading hermeneuticists often lack precision at key moments, and important claims fail when analysed carefully.⁶⁸ Accordingly, hermeneuticists rarely help us with empirical questions such as whether Plato wrote the Seventh Letter, how Arendt understood “freedom”, how much Hume influenced Madison, or why Machiavelli wrote The Prince.

 e. g. Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, pp. , ; Id., “How to Study Medieval Philosophy”, p. .  Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, pp.  – ; Stegmüller, Collected Papers on Epistemology, Philosophy of Science and History of Philosophy: Volume , pp.  – ; Føllesdal, “Hermeneutics and the Hypothetico-Deductive Method”; Martin, “Taylor on Interpretation and the Sciences of Man”; Mantzavinos, Naturalistic Hermeneutics, pp.  – .

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Fully justifying my stance on hermeneutics is beyond the scope of the present chapter; I will merely offer one short example and one longer one. Consider first Paul Ricoeur’s discussion of how to validate guesses about textual meanings.⁶⁹ Ricoeur’s account is by no means bad but would probably give little help to scholars struggling over ambiguous passages in Aristotle or Kant, say. Its brief comments on falsification now look outmoded compared to the contributions of scholars who have thought more practically about pushing hard at hypotheses.⁷⁰ And it is too abstract, referring to other theorists rather than giving actual examples of textual interpretation.⁷¹ My longer example of the poverty of hermeneuticism involves Gadamer. Of course, Gadamer is a philosophical hermeneuticist, not a literary one: he is not primarily concerned with textual interpretation but with hermeneutics as understanding. Nonetheless, this philosophical analysis is highly pertinent to my current discussion, because an important theme of his book Truth and Method is that natural-science methods are not always appropriate elsewhere, including in the humanities and social sciences.⁷² This could be a significant obstacle to my argument. I thus wish to show that Gadamer’s understanding of science is too deficient to have value for us today. I am not trying to undermine Gadamer’s broader aims, including his insights about the universality of hermeneutics.⁷³ But his caricatures of science need to be corrected. And in the process I hope to show how scientific principles can help textual interpreters. In short, when science is properly understood – which is not the case with Gadamer – we can see its relevance for textual interpreters who wish to test their claims better than Strauss. Gadamer’s caricatures of science would not need correcting if they had already been corrected. However, many commentators repeat his claims or pass over their deficiencies in silence.⁷⁴ Non-Gadamerians often voice similar carica-

 Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning, pp.  – .  Elster, Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences, pp.  – .  See Stegmüller, Collected Papers on Epistemology, Philosophy of Science and History of Philosophy: Volume , p.  for similar criticisms.  e. g. Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. xx–xiii.  Ibid., pp. xvii–xix.  e. g. Grondin, Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, pp.  – ; Id., “Understanding as Dialogue: Gadamer”, pp.  – ; Taylor, “Gadamer on the Human Sciences, pp.  – ; Grondin, The Philosophy of Gadamer, pp.  – ; Sherratt, Continental Philosophy of Social Science: Hermeneutics, Genealogy and Critical Theory from Ancient Greece to the Twenty-First Century, pp.  – ; Wiercinski, “Hans-Georg Gadamer and the Truth of Hermeneutic Experience”, pp.  – ; Zimmerman, Humanism and Religion: A Call for the Renewal of Western Culture,

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tures.⁷⁵ In defending a science of interpretation I am thus battling against widespread misunderstandings of what science can offer. Some commentators do question Gadamer’s account of science. Richard Bernstein⁷⁶ and Georgia Warnke⁷⁷ rightly note that science has changed significantly since Gadamer wrote, while Joel Weinsheimer states that it was already changing beforehand.⁷⁸ Gadamer himself accepts that Truth and Method’s view of science is outdated: “the ideas for my book were developed in the 1930s”, when logical positivists were pushing “physicalism and the unity of science”⁷⁹. But logical positivism is a position developed by philosophers: Gadamer should say what scientists think and do. Unfortunately, despite referring to “modern science” almost 60 times in Truth and Method, he does not cite a single modern natural or social scientist.⁸⁰ He draws on 17th-century and 18th-century sources like Bacon, Descartes and Vico, and 19th-century sources like Mill, Droysen and Dilthey. No 20th-century scientist is mentioned. Perhaps Gadamer avoided going into detail about science because he wanted to keep his book short. The only person Gadamer cites who might be described as a modern scientist is Hermann von Helmholtz (1821– 1894), a wide-ranging experimental and theoretical biologist and physicist. Unfortunately, Gadamer’s treatment of Helmholtz is slipshod. Gadamer misquotes Helmholtz’s comment on “[t]he iron labour of conscious logical reasoning”, which is merely about hard work, to make it sound as if Helmholtz thinks that scientific conclusions are certain.⁸¹ Yet Helmholtz knows that inductive science never produces certainty.⁸² Gadamer thinks that Descartes’ four rules from his Discourse on Method constitute “the veritable manifesto of modern science”⁸³. But Descartes’ method was

pp. ,  – , ,  – , , ; Kiefer, “Hermeneutical Understanding as the Disclosure of Truth: Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Distinctive Understanding of Truth”, pp. , .  e. g. Greenfield and Ribbins, Greenfield on Educational Administration, pp.  – .  Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, pp.  – .  Warnke, Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason, p. .  Weinsheimer, Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of ‘Truth and Method’, pp. , .  Gadamer, “Reflections on My Philosophical Journey”, p. .  D’Amico, Contemporary Continental Philosophy, p. .  Compare Helmholtz, Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays, p.  and Id., “Über das Verhaltnis der Naturwissenschaflen zur Gesamtheit der Wissenschaft”, p.  with Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. ; Id., The Gadamer Reader: A Bouquet of the Later Writings, p. , and Id. Gesammelte Werke. Band : Wahrheit und Methode: Ergänzungen, Register, p. .  Helmholtz, Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays, p. ; see also Schiemann, Hermann von Helmholtz’s Mechanism: The Loss of Certainty. A Study on the Transition from Classical to Modern Philosophy of Nature, pp.  – .  Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. ; see also p. .

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deductive whereas most modern science is ultimately inductive.⁸⁴ Gadamer derives a worryingly simplistic view of scientific certainty from Droysen – “the clear unambiguity of what has been seen with one’s own eyes”⁸⁵ – and talks of “the certainty achieved by using scientific methods”⁸⁶. But such comments would be rejected by sensible scientists.⁸⁷ Science is precisely about dealing with uncertainty, and the tools that scientists have developed are relevant for textual interpreters, who face the same problem. The work of qualitative social scientists investigating single cases may be especially important for us, as with Van Evera’s tests in section 3 above. Gadamer implies that science is about uncovering laws and making predictions.⁸⁸ This might be true for much natural science, but not for all.⁸⁹ Gadamer’s own father may not even have done this in his own biochemical research.⁹⁰ Most contemporary social science mentions neither laws nor prediction, which are not necessary parts of scientific research.⁹¹ But Gadamer’s biggest problem – and the most important oversight for textual interpreters to take note of, especially in the context of Strauss’s interpretations – is that he does not seem to grasp the logic of scientific inference. He naively equates “scientific rigor” with “objectivity”⁹² but for most natural and social scientists, rigour depends crucially on the logic of inference, a central concern of my Strauss critique. Gadamer’s oversight here is most evident in his inadequate account of scientific experiments.⁹³ Apart perhaps from a few passing com-

 Helmholtz, Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays, pp. , ; King, Keohane, and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research, pp.  – , ; Valieia, Doing Science: Design, Analysis, and Communication of Scientific Research, pp.  – .  Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. .  Ibid., p. .  Compare ibid., pp. , , , with Helmholtz, Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays, p. ; King, Keohane, and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research, pp. ,  – , , ; and Chalmers, What Is This Thing Called Science?, pp.  – .  Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. , , , .  Carnap, Philosophical Foundations of Physics: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, pp.  – .  Meyer and Imming, “Benzylisoquinoline Alkaloids from the Papaveraceae: The Heritage of Johannes Gadamer (−)”, pp.  – , .  e. g. King, Keohane, and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research, pp.  – .  Gadamer, The Gadamer Reader: A Bouquet of the Later Writings, p. ; see also Id., Truth and Method, pp. , .  Gadamer, Truth and Method, pp. ,  – , ,  – , .

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ments,⁹⁴ I see no sign that he understands the crucial idea of a controlled experiment by which we assess the effect of one variable through trying to control other variables.⁹⁵ Accordingly, he does not grasp that many scientific experiments use Mill’s “method of difference”⁹⁶: if two scenarios have different outcomes, and only one explanatory variable differs, this explains the different outcomes. Political scientists who emulate this approach call it a “most similar systems design”⁹⁷. We can even find similar kinds of inference in many thought experiments in political theory.⁹⁸ The logic of inference also matters for textual interpreters. For example, Strauss’s treatment of centres is biased because he looks only at things which are central and important without adequately considering things which are central and unimportant, or important and non-central.⁹⁹ This is a kind of selection bias.¹⁰⁰ If you suspect that revolutions are caused by factor F and you find that factor F was indeed present wherever revolutions happened, you still need to look at non-revolutions: if factor F is present there too, the explanation is more complex than you first thought. Strauss’s treatment of centres is similarly flawed. Gadamer’s neglect of the logic of inference means he does not spot that even in 1862, Helmholtz describes what section 3 above characterised as hypothesistesting through the probing of observable implications. “This is a test which really never ceases”, he adds.¹⁰¹ Helmholtz is focusing on laws, but this kind of testing also helps scientists investigating single cases. For example, the extinction of the dinosaurs “does not fall neatly into a class of events that could be studied in a systematic, comparative fashion through the application of general laws”, but nonetheless “can be studied scientifically: alternative hypotheses can be developed and tested with respect to their observational implications”¹⁰².

 Ibid., pp. , ; Id., The Gadamer Reader: A Bouquet of the Later Writings, p. .  Valiela, Doing Science: Design, Analysis, and Communication of Scientific Research, pp.  – ,  – .  Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, book  chapter  sections  – , pp.  – .  Berg-Schlosser, “Comparative Studies: Method and Design”, pp.  – .  See Kamm’s account in Morality, Mortality. Volume II: Rights, Duties, and Status, pp.  – , although she does not spot the connection.  Blau, “Anti-Strauss”, pp.  – .  Geddes, “How the Cases You Choose Affect the Answers You Get: Selection Bias in Comparative Politics”.  Helmholtz, Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays, p. .  King, Keohane, and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research, pp.  – .

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Textual interpreters can take the same approach. For example, when Timothy Raylor¹⁰³ and Noel Malcolm¹⁰⁴ investigate whether Hobbes wrote the Short Tract, they ask what would we expect to see if he was the author, how the evidence fits other alleged authors, and so on. Similarly, in trying to resolve Hobbes’s ambiguous discussion of the “Foole”, Kinch Hoekstra asks which interpretations fit with what the text says, with its philosophical implications, with different passages, with different texts by Hobbes, and so on.¹⁰⁵ Importantly, Raylor, Malcolm and Hoekstra all examine different hypotheses, not just their favoured one. Just as there is far more to the natural and social sciences than careful observation, so too there is far more to textual interpretation than “careful reading”. Gadamer states that “[t]he ‘hermeneutical sciences’, or the Geisteswissenschaften [humanities], fall under the same standards of critical rationality that characterize the methodical procedures of all sciences, even though their angle of interest and procedures differ essentially from those of the natural sciences”.¹⁰⁶ I have suggested that empirical questions in textual interpretation are essentially the same as empirical questions in natural and social science, and some procedures are the same in terms of the logic of inference. With a more nuanced understanding of science, Gadamer would have seen much more overlap. We can dispute how scientific textual interpretation should be. Does its avoidance of laws and of prediction make it less scientific than much other science? I would resist that claim, as my notion of science prioritises the logic of inference about empirical issues, and treats laws and prediction as secondary. But I define science broadly because I wish it to include social science and aspects of textual interpretation; someone with a stricter definition of science will see things differently. I have no problem with this, or with talking about textual interpretation according to different paradigms (e. g. law, detective-work¹⁰⁷), or even with replacing my term “scientific” with “systematic” or “careful” – as long as the emphasis is on testing empirical claims by considering what does and does not fit different interpretations, and so on. So, what matters most is how we interpret texts. How we describe this is secondary. Secondary, but not unimportant: our language can influence what we do, and I fear that the language of hermeneutics – implicitly or explicitly contrasted to

    

Raylor, “Hobbes, Payne, and A Short Tract on First Principles”, pp.  – . Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes, pp.  – ,  – . Hoekstra, “Hobbes and the Foole”, pp.  – . Gadamer, The Gadamer Reader: A Bouquet of the Later Writings, p. . Blau, “History of Political Thought as Detective-Work”.

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science – has stopped many people from seeing that part of what they do is essentially scientific. This has made it harder to identify Strauss’s errors.

8 A scientific hermeneutics? Some scholars do in fact combine the languages of science and hermeneutics. This section briefly explains why I have not gone down this route. I will not discuss “objective hermeneutics”, developed by Ulrich Oevermann and others, as it is fundamentally sociological, not literary.¹⁰⁸ And Hans-Georg Soeffner’s “social scientific hermeneutics”¹⁰⁹ does not seem too social-scientific to me, at least as I depict social science. But to the extent that either approach is scientific, its scientific principles presumably come from science, not hermeneutics. In textual interpretation, Peter Tepe’s “cognitive hermeneutics” explicitly uses scientific principles.¹¹⁰ I have not yet seen this approach in practice, as Tepe’s work is mostly in German. But I myself would drop all talk of hermeneutics: it has too many unscientific and anti-scientific connotations. Chrysostomos Mantzavinos confronts these connotations head-on, advocating “naturalist hermeneutics”.¹¹¹ Aside from his use of the H-word, my main disagreement with Mantzavinos is simply that he, like some others, depicts textual interpretation as hypothetico-deductive.¹¹² In fact, these authors’ examples are all hypothetico-inductive: their predictions are merely reasonable expectations, not predictions which necessarily follow from the hypothesis.¹¹³ It could not be otherwise for textual interpreters. Even natural science is often hypothetico-inductive, as becomes clearer when scientists write informally.¹¹⁴ Messy, realworld hypothetico-inductive models of science are more apt for us than clean, textbook hypothetico-deductive models. My criticism here is small, especially

 Titscher, Meyer, Wodak, and Vetter, Methods of Text and Discourse Analysis et al., pp.  – ; Reichertz, “Objective Hermeneutics and Hermeneutic Sociology of Knowledge”, p. ; Wernet, “Hermeneutics and Objective Hermeneutics”, pp.  – .  Soeffner, Hans-Georg, “Social Scientific Hermeneutics”.  Tepe, “Cognitive Hermeneutics: the Better Alternative”.  Mantzavinos, Naturalistic Hermeneutics.  Ibid., pp.  – , ,  – ; Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, p. ; Føllesdal, “Hermeneutics and the Hypothetico-Deductive Method”, pp.  – ; Elster, Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences, pp.  – ,  – ,  – .  See Føllesdal, “Hermeneutics and the Hypothetico-Deductive Method”, pp. , ; Mantzavinos, Naturalistic Hermeneutics, pp.  – ; Elster, Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences, pp.  – .  e. g. Frazer and Hartel, “To Bloom or Not to Bloom?”, pp.  – .

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as Mantzavinos accepts that hypothetico-deductive analysis is only one scientific approach.¹¹⁵ But just as Gadamer is dismissive of a kind of science which is inappropriate for textual interpreters, some people defend a kind of science which is not quite right for us either. A science of textual interpretation thus requires careful thought about which scientific ideas are relevant (e. g. hypothesis-testing, observable implications) and which are not (e. g. laws, quantification). Like natural and especially social scientists, we must also adapt scientific principles to fit our subject-matter. Above, I defended a weak logic of falsification against orthodox notions of falsification, and elsewhere I have shown that uncertainty in textual interpretation is subjective whereas uncertainty in statistical analysis is objective.¹¹⁶ And in case anyone accuses me of “the scientistic claim that the natural sciences represent a model for all legitimate knowledge”,¹¹⁷ I would reply that much textual interpretation is primarily philosophical, for example when we ask if Mill’s conclusions are valid or if Plato depicted justice as act-centred and/or agent-centred. Indeed, thinking philosophically can help solve empirical puzzles: for example, Quentin Skinner incisively combines empirical and philosophical analysis in trying to work out how Hobbes understands freedom.¹¹⁸ Hobbes’s “Foole” passage, discussed in the previous section, probably cannot be understood unless one thinks it through philosophically. I am not sure if there is a scientific analogy here. But the goal remains the same: to try to get right answers to empirical problems – here, what Hobbes meant. And the safest approach, again, is to examine evidence for and against one’s interpretation, to consider different interpretations of the evidence, and so on. In short, scientific principles have a great deal to offer us. We do not usually think of textual interpretation as scientific, and many textual interpreters will strongly resist this idea. But in both cases this is sometimes a consequence of the inaccurate images of science voiced by hermeneuticists like Gadamer.

9 Conclusion When considering whether to read between the lines, talk of Straussian “hermeneutics” is irrelevant and often misleading: it deflects attention from what really matters, which is inadequate hypothesis-testing by Strauss and his followers.    

Mantzavinos, Naturalistic Hermeneutics, p. . Blau, “Uncertainty and the History of Ideas”, pp.  – . Madison, “Hermeneutics: Gadamer and Ricoeur”, p. . Skinner, Hobbes and Republican Liberty, pp. , , ,  – .

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More generally, the language and ideas of hermeneutics are largely irrelevant and often misleading for textual interpreters. I believe it is too late to revert to the original meaning of “hermeneutics” as the art or theory of textual interpretation. The term is now associated with writers who have not said enough about how to tackle empirical problems in textual interpretation, and whose misconceptions have held back clear thinking in this area. If scientific principles of textual interpretation had been widespread in the 1940 s and 1950 s, I suspect that few people would still be discussing Leo Strauss’s esoteric interpretations. Although they may help us to read between the lines of his own writings, his esoteric interpretations now serve mainly as a warning about what can go wrong when we do not read texts scientifically.

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Kamm, Frances, Morality, Mortality. Volume II: Rights, Duties, and Status, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996. Kiefer, Thomas, “Hermeneutical Understanding as the Disclosure of Truth: Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Distinctive Understanding of Truth”, in: Philosophy Today 57 (2013), pp. 42 – 60. King, Gary, Keohane, Robert, and Verba, Sidney, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1994. Levine, Peter, Nietzsche and the Modern Crisis of the Humanities, Albany, SUNY Press, 1995. Luz, Ehud, “How to Read the Bible According to Leo Strauss”, in: Modern Judaism 25 (2005), pp. 264 – 84. Madison, G.B., “Hermeneutics: Gadamer and Ricoeur”, in: Richard Kearney (ed.), Routledge History of Philosophy, Volume VIII: Twentieth-Century Continental Philosophy, London, Routledge, 1994, pp. 240 – 88. Malcolm, Noel, Aspects of Hobbes, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002. Mantzavinos, Chrysostomos, Naturalistic Hermeneutics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005. Martin, Michael, “Taylor on Interpretation and the Sciences of Man”, in: Michael Martin and Lee McIntyre (eds.), Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, (1994), pp. 259 – 79. Meyer, Achim, and Imming, Peter, “Benzylisoquinoline Alkaloids from the Papaveraceae: The Heritage of Johannes Gadamer (1867−1928)”, in: Journal of Natural Products 74 (2011), pp. 2482 – 7. Mill, John Stuart, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, London, Longmans, 1886. Newton-Smith, W. H., “Underdetermination of Theory by Data”, in: W.H. Newton-Smith (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Science, Oxford, Blackwell, 2000, pp. 532 – 6. Nickerson, Raymond, “Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises”, in: Review of General Psychology 2 (1998), pp. 175 – 220. Oakeshott, Michael, Hobbes on Civil Association, Indianapolis, Liberty Fund, 1975. Pangle, Thomas, Leo Strauss: An Introduction to His Thought and Intellectual Legacy, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Patterson, Annabel, Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1991. Pocock, J.G.A., “Prophet and Inquisitor: Or, A Church Built Upon Bayonets Cannot Stand: A Comment on Mansfield’s ‘Strauss’s Machiavelli’”, in: Political Theory 3 (1975), pp. 385 – 401. Raylor, Timothy, “Hobbes, Payne, and A Short Tract on First Principles”, in: The Historical Journal 44 (2001), pp. 29 – 58. Reichertz, Jo, “Objective Hermeneutics and Hermeneutic Sociology of Knowledge”, in: Uwe Flick, Ernst von Kardorff and Ines Steinke (eds.), A Companion to Qualitative Research, translated by Bryan Jenner, London, SAGE Publications, 2004, pp. 290 – 5. Ricoeur, Paul, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning, Fort Worth, Texas Christian University Press, 1976. Robertson, Neil, “Leo Strauss’s Platonism”, in: Animus 4 (1999), pp. 34 – 43. Schiemann, Gregor, Hermann von Helmholtz’s Mechanism: The Loss of Certainty. A Study on the Transition from Classical to Modern Philosophy of Nature, translated by Cynthia Klohr, Milton Keynes, Springer, 2009.

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Sharpe, Matthew, “The Philosopher’s Courtly Love? Leo Strauss, Eros, and the Law”, in: Law and Critique 17 (2006), pp. 357 – 88. Sherratt, Yvonne, Continental Philosophy of Social Science: Hermeneutics, Genealogy and Critical Theory from Ancient Greece to the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006. Skinner, Quentin, Visions of Politics. Volume I: Regarding Method, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002. Skinner, Quentin, Hobbes and Republican Liberty, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008. Smith, Steven, Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2006. Soeffner, Hans-Georg, “Social Scientific Hermeneutics”, in: Uwe Flick, Ernst von Kardorff and Ines Steinke (eds.), A Companion to Qualitative Research, translated by Bryan Jenner, London, SAGE Publications, 2004, pp. 95 – 100. Soffer, Walter, “Modern Rationalism, Miracles, and Revelation: Strauss’s Critique of Spinoza”, in: Kenneth Deutsch and Walter Nicgorski (eds.), Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish Thinker, Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 1994, pp. 143 – 73. Stegmüller, Wolfgang, Collected Papers on Epistemology, Philosophy of Science and History of Philosophy: Volume 2, Dordrecht, Reidel, 1977. Strauss, Leo, “On a New Interpretation of Plato’s Political Philosophy”, in: Social Research 13 (1946), pp. 326 – 67. Strauss, Leo, Persecution and the Art of Writing, Glencoe, Free Press, 1952. Strauss, Leo, Thoughts on Machiavelli, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1958. Strauss, Leo, The City and Man, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1964. Strauss, Leo, “The Crisis of Our Time”, in: Harold Spaeth (ed.), The Predicament of Modern Politics, Detroit, University of Detroit Press, 1964, pp. 41 – 54. Strauss, Leo, “How to Study Medieval Philosophy”, in: Interpretation 23 (1996), pp. 321 – 38. Taylor, Charles, “Gadamer on the Human Sciences”, in: Robert Dostal (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Gadamer, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 126 – 42. Tepe, Peter, “Cognitive Hermeneutics: the Better Alternative”, in: Discourse Studies 13 (2011), pp. 601 – 8. Titscher, Stefan, Michael Meyer, Ruth Wodak, and Eva Vetter, Methods of Text and Discourse Analysis, translated by Bryan Jenner, London, SAGE Publications, 2000. Treisman, Daniel, “What Have We Learned About the Causes of Corruption From Ten Years of Cross-National Empirical Research?”, in: Annual Review of Political Science 10 (2007), pp. 211 – 44. Valiela, Ivan, Doing Science: Design, Analysis, Communication of Scientific Research, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001. Van Evera, Stephen, Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1997. Warnke, Georgia, Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason, Cambridge, Polity, 1987. Weinsheimer, Joel, Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of ‘Truth and Method’, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1985. Wernet, Andreas, “Hermeneutics and Objective Hermeneutics”, in, Uwe Flick (ed.), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Analysis, London, SAGE Publications, 2014, pp. 234 – 46.

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Wiercinski, Andrzej, “Hans-Georg Gadamer and the Truth of Hermeneutic Experience”, in: Analecta Hermeneutica 1 (2009), pp. 3 – 14. Wootton, David, “John Locke and Richard Ashcraft’s Revolutionary Politics”, in: Political Studies 40 (1992), pp. 79 – 98. Zimmermann, Jens, Humanism and Religion: A Call for the Renewal of Western Culture, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012.

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The Virtues and Vices of Leo Strauss, Historian A reassessment of Straussian Hermeneutics

1 Leo Strauss, historian? Leo Strauss is notorious for his repeated claim that various thinkers of the past, especially the Great Old Ones among the political philosophers, practised what is often referred to as “exoteric writing”: when composing their texts, they carefully avoided presenting their true “teaching” in a straightforward and explicit way; instead, they treated publicly accepted doctrines in a peculiar, rather shrewd way, thus hinting at their denial of them while outwardly (“exoterically”) endorsing or even defending them. In other words: according to Strauss, the ‘true’ philosophers presented their own thoughts only “between the lines” of their texts, either to avoid persecution or to educate future philosophers by compelling them to read their texts attentively.¹ Not surprisingly, these statements and Strauss’ respective interpretations of Machiavelli, Spinoza, and Hobbes, to mention but the most prominent, have earned him a dubious reputation among historians of (political) philosophy. The hermeneutical principles, usually called “Straussian hermeneutics”, which he developed most explicitly in his “Persecution and the Art of Writing” (“PAW”) and “On a Forgotten Kind of Writing” (quoted as “FKW”) are often ignored in discussions about the methodology of the history of philosophy. And in the event that they are not ignored, either the justification of so-called ‘eso-

 As should be mentioned right at the beginning, there can be hardly any doubt that some thinkers, especially in the Early Modern and the Enlightenment, “wrote between the lines” and, apart from that, justified this with arguments that, to say the least, bear striking similarities to Strauss’ “Art of Writing”, see Zagorin, Ways of Lying. The most prominent example is, of course, John Toland’s Clidophorus, or, Of the Exoteric and Esoteric Philosophy of , cf. Bagley, “The Hidden Message”, p.  and Bagley, “On the Practice of Esotericism”, pp.  – . As Georg Kohler (“Esoterik und Wahrheitsinteresse”, pp.  – ) has pointed out, the distinction between “exoteric” and “esoteric” doctrines or teachings is in itself rather casual, being a distinction between a form of teaching for those already initiated in a certain religion or, for that matter, trade and those without the appropriate expertise (cf. Bagley, “On the Practice of Esotericism”, pp. : “the practise of teaching an identical doctrine in non-identical ways”).

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teric interpretations’ in general is accepted only to be quickly followed by the remark that one should certainly not do it ‘the Straussian way’;² or said principles are directly addressed – and are then considered altogether “notoriously lacking clarity and rigour”³ or as “less a means of finding what that thinker purports to say than for reading preconceived notions into his writing.”⁴ To quote from the latest attempt to destroy Straussian hermeneutics, Adrian Blau’s “Anti-Strauss”: A key conclusion is that the problem is not Strauss’s esoteric method, but Strauss’s esoteric method. There is nothing wrong with esoteric interpretations in general. But there is a lot wrong with Strauss’s particular interpretations […]. I will let others work out what is still standing when we have cleared the rubble. My point is that there is a lot of rubble.⁵

The attempt to defend Strauss’s interpretations against such scathing criticism by pointing out that they are, strictly speaking, not interpretations but rather “commentaries” upon the author’s arguments,⁶ wreaks even more havoc on the reputation of Strauss as a historian – and justly so: because to ‘comment’ upon an argument requires that one reconstructs (‘interprets’) it correctly in the first place. Nonetheless, against this widely acknowledged presumption that Straussian hermeneutics contributes nothing to the study of Early Modern philosophical texts, I will argue that it is even more than just a valuable tool: it is indispensable – at least for students of Early Modern philosophy.⁷ The main reason for this is that the Early Modern, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, was indeed as much an “Age of Persecution” as – in Kant’s famous phrase – an “Age of Enlightenment”⁸. The historical situation then demanded of those thinkers who supported revolutionary or otherwise ‘heterodox’ ideas that they adopt certain  Zagorin, Ways of Lying, pp.  – ; Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas”, pp.  – ; Sabine, “Review of Persecution and the Art of Writing by Leo Strauss”, p. ; Yolton, “Locke on the Law of Nature”, p. .  Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, p. .  McShea, “Leo Strauss on Machiavelli”, p. , cf. Kohler , “Esoterik und Wahrheitsinteresse”, p. .  Blau, “Anti-Strauss”, p. .  Cf. Clay, “On a Forgotten Kind of Reading”, pp.  – .  Widely acknowledged, that is, among those who engage with the subject of Straussian hermeneutics. Many historians of Early Modern philosophy seem to employ its (or similar) principles of interpretation without explicitly addressing its alleged problems, faults or false implicit assumptions, cf. e. g. Gawlick, “Einleitung”, p. XXVII.  Immanuel Kant, “Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?”, p. : “Wenn denn nun gefragt wird: Leben wir jetzt in einem aufgeklärten Zeitalter? so ist die Antwort: Nein, aber wohl in einem Zeitalter der Aufklärung.”

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techniques of publicly articulating these ideas – at least if they wanted to openly express them and avoid what Strauss calls “persecution”.⁹ My argument rests, however, on a premise that is likely to be challenged by both Straussians and Anti-Straussians, namely, that we can and should distinguish between ‘Straussian interpretations’ and ‘Strauss’ interpretations’. While I will argue that ‘Straussian interpretations’, i.e. interpretations which cautiously apply the principles of Straussian hermeneutics, are – in principle – justified, I will challenge Strauss’s own interpretations as being not only not cautious, but as actually violating the principles of Straussian hermeneutics.¹⁰ The task here is to prove that Straussian hermeneutics neither justify nor necessarily produce interpretations like those of Strauss.¹¹ To quote John Pocock’s critique: “The case against Straussian exegesis is not that it is inadmissible but that it is undisciplined.”¹² Evidently, this implies the claim that it is possible to reconstruct hermeneutical principles that (a) give the historian reliable criteria to identify “hidden messages” and that (b) can show why Strauss’ interpretations are flawed (if they so are). I will first sketch the principles of Straussian hermeneutics (2– 4) and then challenge Strauss’s interpretations of Hobbes, Spinoza and Locke on the basis of his own principles (5).¹³

 Cf. PAW, p. : writing between the lines “has all the advantages of private communication without having its greatest disadvantage – that it reaches only the writer’s acquaintances. It has all the advantages of public communication without having its greatest disadvantage – capital punishment for the author.”  Strauss fell into a kind of ‘esoteric rage’ after his “discovery” of esotericism, finding evidence for writing between the lines in virtually every writer he read. Some telling specimens of these ‘illuminations’ can be found in Lampert, “Strauss’s Recovery of Esotericism”, pp.  – .  This is important insofar as some critics of Strauss do not distinguish between Strauss’s hermeneutical principles and his own application of them, thus assuming that said principles cannot produce interpretations other than those of Strauss. See Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, pp.  – : “It is neither possible nor fruitful to use the method unless one has already accepted his [Strauss’] philosophical assumptions: assumptions about what is wise and foolish, noble and ignoble, true and false. […] The method is inseparable from Strauss’s philosophy; it contains particular assumptions about the nature of the world, of philosophy, of human nature and of political life.”  Pocock, “Prophet and Inquisitor”, p. .  One further cautious remark: I am not sure if the principles of Straussian hermeneutics as presented in this paper are in consequence more coherent, systematic or strictly organized than in Strauss’s own account. Since he himself developed them, at least in part, in different papers, usually while interpreting certain philosophers who (allegedly) wrote “between the lines”, this is indeed an open question. However, I take the liberty of treating Straussian herme-

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2 Justifying the application of Straussian hermeneutics In reconstructing the principles of Straussian hermeneutics it is important to distinguish between two consecutive questions: first, when is the assumption justified that a given text contains some “writing between the lines”? Then and only then does the second question need to be answered: what means (if any) do we have, what tools do we possess to identify the “hidden message”, i. e. how can we “read between the lines”? The first question is inevitable for historians of philosophy or ideas, even if they are wholly ignorant of Straussian hermeneutics and its problems. The simple reason for this is that we treat texts differently, given their style, composition, authors and situation of publication. In some (probably most) cases we treat the text as presenting the author’s opinion unveiled. Yet there are cases in which we, for different reasons, take the text to be ironical, ambiguous or a so-called argumentum ad hominem. However, the assumption that there is a difference in this regard between, e. g., Luther’s De servo arbitrio and the Epistolae obscurorum virorum, or between Spinoza’s Ethics and his Tractatus theologico-politicus, presupposes, at least implicitly, the existence of certain criteria by which we can judge if the statements of a given text are to be taken literally or not. The Epistolae are, of course, clearly an example of irony, as are the famous last sentences of chapter X of Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. ¹⁴ But why do we doubt the sincerity of the author of the Tractatus theologico-politics, but not that of author for the Ethics, who, unfortunately, happen to be the same person? Put differently: Which conditions does a given text have to meet, so that the assumption that it contains some “writing between the lines” is justified? From Strauss’s writings we can reconstruct at least three criteria that enable us to answer this question. The application of the principles of Straussian hermeneutics is justified by the fact that the argument of a given text is seriously flawed, that it entails evident contradictions, obvious logical mistakes or blurred

neutics as a definite body of hermeneutical principles since they are usually treated like this – not least by its critics.  Cf. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, p. : “So that, upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.”

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or otherwise seriously flawed lines of thought. But these features of a given text hint (!) at the existence of an esoteric message only under two conditions: first, they have to appear only within a certain thematic context, i. e. the text should in all other regards more or less satisfy the criteria of a “well-written” text (PAW, p. 29 – 30); second, the thematic context in which the text’s argument is seriously flawed must be a topic which was a matter of public interest at the time the text was published. Only if this is the case, does a need arise to “write between the lines” – because an open critique of matters of public interest is likely to result in the persecution of the critic. (PAW, p. 32) If these (necessary) conditions are met, Strauss tells us, we are obliged to look for an “interpretation” that can account for the flaws found in the text, i. e. we have to look for reasons the author had for making such obvious mistakes. Only if no such reasonable interpretation is possible are we allowed to give an “explanation” instead of an “interpretation”, i. e. to draw on causes for the author’s inability to argue coherently.¹⁵ Now, why would an author intentionally commit such “blunders as would shame an intelligent high school boy” (PAW, p. 30)? As Strauss explains, there are two possible reasons why authors might want to avoid a direct attack on certain matters of public interest: first, because they want to change their fellow men’s opinions concerning these matters of public interest. (PAW, p. 34)¹⁶ However, to effectively change their minds, their critique should be disguised as just another attempt to explicate, strengthen or even defend the public opinion (e. g. by way of an argumentum ad hominem). Second, the authors’ conviction is that matters of public interest are such as cannot be openly attacked without seriously destabilizing society. (PAW, p. 24)¹⁷ Such authors write “between the lines” because they want to avoid unsettling “the vulgar” and at the same time be able to address “the young men who might become philosophers”, the “puppies”, as Strauss calls them. (PAW, p. 36)¹⁸ The first concept of writing between the lines could be called

 Strauss, “How to study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise”, p. . This is a rather trivial assumption in reading philosophical works. Strauss has been charged that this would mean to illegitimately presume the ‘truth’ of all texts treated philosophically, e. g. by George Sabine (“Review of Persecution and the Art of Writing by Leo Strauss”). However, this is hardly more than a reminder of a justified presumption for every interpretation, which we have come to call the ‘principle of charity’.  Cf. Strauss, “Introduction”, pp. , .  Cf. ibid., pp.  – .  Cf. Strauss, “Political Philosophy and History”, pp.  – . See also Strauss, “How to study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise”, pp. , , where he attributes this view to Spinoza and speaks of the “duty” or the “social duties” of the philosopher not to challenge the “opinions” guiding the public or, more accurately, the “many”. For Strauss’s systematic arguments in favour of a distinction between the “few” and the “many”, or the distinction between

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the ‘Enlightenment’ concept, the second one the ‘Platonic’ concept. While proponents of the ‘Enlightenment’ concept “write between the lines” to influence and change public opinions, proponents of the ‘Platonic’ concept are, to the contrary, “writing between the lines” to ensure that public opinion is not changed while the future philosophers are addressed.¹⁹ In both cases, but especially in the latter, either the text in question or another text (or texts) by the same author must contain reasons for “writing between the lines”. (cf. PAW, p. 30) Consider the examples of Toland and Plato: the latter lets Socrates state that the “true” teachings are such as can and should only be supplied in spoken dialogue, but never in written word (Phaidros, 276b-277a); and does not Plato himself supply myths instead of a “logos” especially in the Republic (613a-621b) where the idea of the Good is mentioned but not explained – and this following a critique of myths in general which suggests that relying on myth as a supplement for philosophical argument simply cannot be a promising strategy (Republic, 598d-600c, 603b-607b)? We should add that we have trustworthy account of pupils and contemporaries of Plato about his lecture “On the Good”.²⁰ The minor problem with this distinction is that it presents ‘ideal types’. But there is a more weighty problem. And it doesn’t stop at the incorrectness of Blau’s claim that Strauss, especially in his own practice, “primarily addresses persecution.”²¹ The fact is that he more or less ignores the ‘Enlightenment’ concept in favour of the ‘Platonic’ concept (see note 11), this not least because it (seemingly) justifies his assumption that all (‘true’) philosophers at all times “took their social duties seriously” and therefore wrote between the lines, a presumption that is necessary for his own “big sweeping geistesgeschichtlich story”²²

those searching for “the truth” and those trailing after “opinion”, see Strauss, “What Is Political Philosophy?”, p. .  Adrian Blau (“Anti-Strauss”, p. ) distinguishes four reasons to “write between the lines” in Strauss: indoctrination, education, “to keep ideas from the masses” and “to avoid persecution”. The second and third are, as far as I can see, not clearly distinguished by Strauss and together constitute what I have dubbed the ‘Platonic’ concept. More importantly, Blau (“AntiStrauss”, p. ) states that “Strauss’s own theorizing primarily addresses persecution”. This, to my mind, is incorrect – Strauss primarily addresses (and endorses) the ‘Platonic’ concept, not the ‘Enlightenment’ concept, cf. Clay, “On a Forgotten Kind of Reading”, pp.  – ; Drury, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, pp.  –  and Lampert, “Strauss’s Recovery of Esotericism”, pp. , . See also Petit, “Leo Strauss et l’ésotérisme platonicien”, p. .  Cf. Gaiser, Platons ungeschriebene Lehre, pp.  – ,  – ,  – .  Blau, “Anti-Strauss”, p. .  Rorty, “The historiography of philosophy”, p. .

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of the decline of the west.²³ Effectively, while arguing that there exists “a necessary correlation between persecution and writing between the lines” (PAW, p. 32), Strauss pays little attention to the consequences of the ‘Enlightenment’ concept. It’s worth keeping in mind that from the long list of philosophers who figure in his list of ‘esoteric writers’, he does not treat the one who could be considered an excellent example for his theory: Pierre Bayle.²⁴ Moreover, Adrian Blau²⁵ is correct in criticising Strauss’s mutual linkage of persecution and “writing between the lines”, since also for proponents of the Enlightenment, an alternative did present itself: to publish the text anonymously or under false identity (like d’Holbach) or as clandestine literature, as was the case with the Traité des trois imposteurs or the Theophrastus redivivus. As to the minor problem: while we can have the ‘Enlightenment’ concept without such aspects of the ‘Platonic’ concept, it is not as evident that we can get the ‘Platonic’ concept without the persecution-criterion. To assume that one’s philosophical questioning would shatter the “opinion” leading the “vulgar” is to accept at least the possibility that these non-philosophers will react non-charitably to the philosopher’s critique of their prejudices (as they have done throughout history), i. e. the possibility of persecution.²⁶ Therefore, Adrian Blau is probably right that “persecution” is in fact the essential criterion for the application of Straussian hermeneutics; but it is then a simply stunning aspect of his ‘critique’ of Straussian hermeneutics that he attempts to ridicule it with his “(Satirical) Thoughts on Hobbes”, where he ‘uncovers’ Hobbes’s secret opinion about Beethoven.²⁷ Likewise, Hobbes’s serious errors in mathematics (his repeated boasting that he had succeeded in squaring the circle) are, given the criteria, no reason to suspect him of a secret agenda to expose the inherent contradictory nature of mathematics²⁸ – and hence no

 Against this interpretation of Strauss, Michael L. Frazer has argued that we should apply the techniques of “writing between the lines”, as given by Strauss, to his own text; it would then appear that Strauss endorses neither the ‘Enlightenment’ nor the ‘Platonic’ concept, cf. Frazer, “Esotericism Ancient and Modern”, pp.  – .  It is, of course, astonishing to find Descartes on that list, cf. PAW, p. . However, Strauss is not the only one questioning Descartes’s sincerity, see Lampert, “Strauss’s Recovery of Esotericism”, p. .  Blau, “Anti-Strauss”, p. .  But see PAW, p.  and FKW, p. .  Blau, “Anti-Strauss”, p.  – . This attempt to expose the alleged ‘true nature’ of Straussian hermeneutics would not be worthy of comment had Adrian himself not at remarked upon it at the Marburg conference – saying that while writing this part of his essay ‘he felt what it must be like to be Strauss’.  Martinich, “Interpretation and Hobbes’s Political Philosophy”, pp. , .

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counter-examples to Straussian hermeneutics, since Hobbes exposed himself to ridicule, not to persecution. A final remark is necessary. Strauss, as George Sabine²⁹ has correctly pointed out, blurs the distinction between “persecution” and “repression” or – to add a third kind of social sanction for the display of ‘unwanted behaviour’ – “social pressure” (cf. PAW, p. 32). He thereby (tacitly) argues that “persecution” in his sense is a necessary part of every society (cf. FKW, p. 223). This again, were it correct, would be an argument in favour of his assumption that all ‘true’ philosophers at all times wrote “between the lines”. But the situation of Spinoza and Hobbes, given their, well, distanced attitude towards Christianity, was very different from the situation of those self-proclaimed martyrs of truth in modern-day Western societies who usually claim ’to be silenced by the media, (or the public or some other group)’. The latter may perhaps face “social pressure” (and in many cases justly so), but the former faced lethal consequences: imprisonment, torture, and the rack.³⁰ As regards accusations and charges levelled against the author by contemporaries, it seems that the rule given by Paul Oskar Kristeller is correct: “The charge of polemists or the stories of gossip-writers are no valid evidence for the historian, as they are not for the judge.”³¹ It is correct, however, only as long as we take it as a presumption, not ignoring the possibility that at least some censors or inquisitors might be more intelligent than we are (and cannot as easily be accused of “perverse ingenuity”³² as Strauss). We can now state three criteria, of which the first two have to be met before even the assumption that a given text contains an esoteric teaching is justified: it has (1) to be “well-written” except for the passages addressing a certain topic; this topic must (2) be a matter of public interest on which an open attack will result in persecution; (3) there should exist either in this text or in another text by the same author some argument justifying or even admonishing “writing between the lines”.

 Sabine, “Review of Persecution and the Art of Writing by Leo Strauss”, p. .  The (sad but true) fact is that most of our self-proclaimed martyrs of truth, whatever their political creed, do in fact face none of the sanctions Early Modern critics of religion or absolutism faced; their books are usually published, bought and sold and discussed. The reluctance (or inability?) to distinguish between “persecution” and “critique”, as also present in Strauss, is a nuisance, to say the least.  Kristeller, “The Myth of Renaissance Atheism and the French Tradition of Free Thought”, p. .  Sabine, “Review of Persecution and the Art of Writing by Leo Strauss”, p. .

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One should mention, against the critique famously stated by Kristeller, that in this case it is exactly “the written record” on which we “stand”³³ – for it is the text itself, its arrangement and its ambiguous treatment of an orthodox, politically or socially relevant opinion that justifies reading “between its lines” (cf. PAW, p. 30).

3 How can we “read between the lines”? However, all this is rather useless if we lack the means necessary to find out what the author really wanted to argue, i. e. if we lack the means to “read between the lines”. This is no problem of the historian alone: both concepts of “writing between the lines” presuppose that there are means to ensure that the esoteric teaching reaches its addressees. From this it appears then, that certain techniques of “writing between the lines” should exist, techniques which, if applied, convey a message or an argument accessible to those who have the necessary competences to attentively read and reflect upon a philosophical text.³⁴ Strauss mentions, at various points, different techniques of “writing between the lines”.³⁵ The first and, I presume, best known is to include more or less obvious contradictions in one’s argument. This can be done in different ways: one can (repeatedly) state A in one’s text and then, as if in bypassing, state non-A at another point in the same text, or one explicitly states A and B, while B implies non-A, the contradiction being thus less obvious. The question is: which of the contradictory statements is a lead to the author’s ‘true’ opinion? As Strauss tells us, that which is (a) stated less often, which is (b) opposed to the ‘orthodox’ opinion or which, if repeated, is (c) stated ambiguously.³⁶ The outcome is a peculiar presentation of an orthodox doctrine, which does not (as its

 Kristeller, “The Myth of Renaissance Atheism and the French Tradition of Free Thought”, p. .  As with Strauss’s notion of “careful writers”, concerning which Adrian Blau (“Anti-Strauss”, p. ) has charged Strauss of making “an implicit and false dichotomy, between careful and non-careful writers”, since “there are degrees and kinds of carefulness. Likewise careful writers”, it seems that Strauss’s distinction between careful and non-careful readers is, even given the fact that there are, of course, degrees, less problematic than Blau takes it to be. We need only assume that to be able to read and scrutinize philosophical texts one needs certain competences which one is not born with, but which need effort and education. Just remember that many people don’t spot sarcasm even when it hits them. On this distinction see Clay, “On a Forgotten Kind of Reading”, pp.  – .  Cf. e.g Strauss, “The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed”, pp.  – ,  – , ; FKW, pp.  – ,  – .  Cf. Strauss, “The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed”, p. .

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author claims) strengthen it, but which in consequence draws the ‘able’ readers’ attention to its flaws and inconsistencies.³⁷ Consider the following example: In chapter six of Leviathan Hobbes defines as “True religion” that practice in which the “power” feared is “truly such as we imagine”.³⁸ But the only deity that exists is Hobbes’s “prime mover”, of which we can have no “idea or image”, as Hobbes tells us in chapter eleven of Leviathan. ³⁹ Without an image, however, we cannot “imagine” him, in other words: no religious practice can ever be called “True religion”.⁴⁰ Similarly, while Machiavelli in chapter XXVI of the first book of the Discorsi declares “cruelty” to be “unchristian and inhuman [modi crudelissimi e nimici d’ogni vivere non solamente cristiano ma umano]”, he immediately afterwards discharges this judgement by stating that to avoid it one should stick to “vivere private” – while everyone who enters the realm of politics cannot but draw upon it;⁴¹ but what is the worth of a moral standard that is useless and ineffective once one leaves the private sphere? Machiavelli’s treatment of Agathocles in chapter VIII of the Principe is equally ambiguous: Machiavelli states that his actions could not be called examples of “virtù”; but in the following sentence he speaks of “la virtù di Agatocle”⁴². One may add, that Machiavelli in the foregoing chapter VII applauds the actions of Cesare Borgia as signs of “virtù”, actions in no way less cruel than those of Agathocles. The obvious, but (seemingly) rejected conclusion would be that cruelty is a necessary element of “virtù”. Doubt about the validity of an orthodox doctrine can also be cast by ignoring or at least by not mentioning important aspects of it. An author can claim to defend an orthodox doctrine and cut out important parts of it – parts which either support arguments vital to the doctrine or which, if missing, make this doctrine look inconsistent, unconvincing, or maybe even ridiculous. Consider Pierre Bayle’s apology of his attacks on those attempts to defend “tenets” of Christian faith which draw on ‘arguments from natural reason alone’ in his Dictionnaire.⁴³ It was nothing else, he argued in the “Third Clarification”, than a pious attempt to humble the proud natural reason. Bayle thus portrayed himself as ‘just another

 Cf. Mori, “Persécution et art d’écrire”, who argues that these rules are not a mere invention of Strauss but have also been stated by Pierre Bayle.  Hobbes, Leviathan, p. .  Ibid., p. .  Cf. Schotte, Die Entmachtung Gottes durch den Leviathan, pp.  – .  Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca ti Tito Livio, p. .  Machiavelli, Il Principe, p. .  For a comprehensive account of Bayle and the problem of religion see Mori, Bayle: philosophe, for a brief account cf. Antony McKenna’s article in this volume.

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fideist’ like Pascal or Montaigne. However, under the cover of fideism Bayle also attacked key elements of the biblical revelation, as e.g. the Trinitarian dogma in his article on Faustus Socinus – although fideists like Montaigne never attacked the ‘revealed truths’. These they took to be the corrective for the ‘self-destructive’ and proud natural reason. Didn’t Bayle know, or did he simply forget this when he set out to publish his ‘fideist’ position? Or did an author skilled in philosophy as Bayle ‘simply misunderstand’ the obvious consequence of a fideist position which attacks the revelation? Which consequence is, of course, that there simply is no reason to believe in any element of the Christian faith. Another option is to present the orthodox doctrine at tiresome length and without any serious attempt to strengthen it while at the same time incorporating short but vigorous presentations of (officially: attacked) heterodox teachings. (cf. PAW, p. 24– 5) An author can e. g. incorporate quotes from proponents of the heterodox opinion and then present (feigned) counter-arguments which at no point reach the intellectual level of the attacked arguments or which simply fail to meet them. Gottsched, one of the first German translators of Bayle, seems to have acted this way. He attached to Bayle’s annotations to the articles of the Dictionnaire ‘annotations to the author’s annotations’ which seem to contain such pretended counter-arguments.⁴⁴ Another example might be Lessing’s publication of fragments from Reimarus’s unpublished Deist attack on every revealed religion, combined with Lessing’s own refutations (“Gegensätze”) of the Anonymous’ argument. As is the case with both Gottsched as well as with Lessing, the argument that the counter-arguments presented by the author only serve as a cover-up has to rely on other of their writings – because only then do we have evidence that they could have done better. But given this evidence, it is apparent that Gottsched’s sincerity is questionable, but not Leibniz’s who also treated the whole body of Bayle’s arguments against the moral goodness of God in his Theodicy (even if, as some would argue, Leibniz presents his own arguments at a rather tiresome length). The obvious problem is that in all these cases – as in those Strauss mentions which I ignored⁴⁵ – the application of such techniques to a given text is not as

 Cf. on Gottsched Quéval, “Deismus in Leipzig”.  Adrian Blau (“Anti-Strauss”, pp.  – ) has correctly pointed out the uselessness and, indeed, arbitrariness of Strauss’s technique of unearthing hidden meanings with resort to the positions of arguments in the text or to the number of the book or chapter they are presented in. The latter technique, by Robert J. MacShea (“Leo Strauss on Machiavelli”, p. ) called “number oddities”, is indeed doubtful – not least because Strauss’s (and, more’s the pity, many Straussians’) application of it leaves the impression of a conspiracy theorist who is trying to hunt down the Illuminati.

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easily demonstrated as my remarks so far might suggest. On the one hand, it should not be so, if the author is seeking a cover-up; as Paul Cantor put it: “A demonstrably esoteric text is a contradiction in terms”⁴⁶. On the other hand, no matter what particular reason the author has for writing “between the lines”, the foremost aim in doing so is to present enough arguments and evidence to show that the doctrine treated ambiguously is indeed wrong or flawed. It is only in cases where we possess external evidence, i. e. trustworthy documents that confirm the author’s true opinion, e. g. letters or testaments, that we can we be truly confident what message the author wanted to convey “between the lines”. Contrary to what Strauss’s own boldness in ascribing esoteric doctrines to the Great Old Ones would suggest, the esoteric interpretation of historical texts is as much case-law as its main argument is an inference to the best explanation. But then, as Strauss himself remarked (cf. FKW, p. 231), this is no feature of Straussian hermeneutics alone.

4 A caveat: what exactly can we “read between the lines”? To conclude: curious flaws of a given text can only be taken as intentional results of an application of such techniques if the three criteria are met. However, if there is no line of implicit argument whatsoever, then the supposition of an esoteric teaching must be taken to be false or at least its existence remains unproven. Also, as regards the content of the supposed ‘esoteric teaching’, it is not a case of anything goes – a point to which Strauss does not give due consideration. When considering what is “written between the lines” the historian should have a glance at the historical context and the heterodox doctrines available. To borrow a distinction from William James⁴⁷: we may find enough evidence to attribute to an author what was at her time a “living option”, but it is incredible to portray her as choosing what was then a “dead option”. For example: if we look at the evidence at hand, atheism certainly was a “living option” in the second half of the seventeenth century – as were pantheism, deism and various Christian confessions. But in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, as far as we know, atheism was a “dead option”, as was Islam to most Europeans in the seventeenth century.  Cantor, “Leo Strauss and Contemporary Hermeneutics”, p. .  James, The Will to Believe, p. .

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So, even if there a certain orthodox goal of critique or even ridicule can be traced in the text, one should not have Great Expectations concerning how much of the author’s own position we can actually read between the lines. Only external data like explicit confessions in confidential letters or testaments or in texts intentionally withheld from publication by the author can give us confirmation on what teaching she really wanted to convey “between the lines” (and even those can be rather disappointing for reason of being similarly ambiguous, as e. g. Hume’s Dialogues concerning Natural Religion). The best we may achieve, I’m afraid, is a not too broad-brushed sketch of this teaching (at least those of us who did not receive the benefit of hearing Plato’s lecture “On the Good”). We can, however, show which orthodox opinion the author opposed and even their reasons for doing so, i. e. which aspects of this opinion they took to be inconsistent and false. To demonstrate that a text contains an argumentum ad hominem is thus less problematic than to prove what the author’s (not the addressee’s) own position is.⁴⁸

5 Case studies: Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke “writing between the lines”? The question that clearly needs to be answered is: if Straussian hermeneutics is such a reasonable and indeed indispensable tool for the study of at least some philosophical texts, does that commit us to accepting Strauss’s interpretations as true? Put differently:⁴⁹ if Strauss’s own interpretations are false, biased or overstated (as has been claimed time and again) and if this is not due to his hermeneutical principles, then it should be possible, at least in certain cases, to prove him wrong by applying the criteria just mentioned. The case of Locke, who on Strauss’s account was a closet Hobbesian⁵⁰ and probably an atheist,⁵¹ is the easiest of the three cases. Strauss’s interpretation

 That’s certainly not to say that it is impossible. But we should be very cautious of attributing to an author an opinion on the sole basis of their critique of other opinions. Depending on the historical context and the opinions criticized, it may well be, of course, that only one “living option” is left.  To keep this section relatively short, I turn only to those of Strauss’s interpretations that he brought forward in relatively short essays; thus, I ignore e. g. Strauss’s Thoughts on Machiavelli. For a thorough (and devastating) critique of this book see Pocock, “Prophet or Inquisitor”. For similar reasons I bypass Strauss’s extensive work on Maimonides (and also, I must confess, due to the lack of expertise necessary to judge Strauss’s respective interpretations).  Strauss, “Locke’s Doctrine of Natural Law”, p. .

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rests mainly on some alleged peculiarities of Locke’s Essays on the Law of Nature, a text of the young Locke which was neither completed nor published during his lifetime. However, the texts Locke published later in his life, e. g. his Essay Concerning Human Understanding or The Reasonableness of Christianity as Deliver’d in the Scriptures, while presenting a quite unorthodox, most likely Socinian, creed, are in no way ‘seriously flawed’. So, even if there were those contradictions and flaws that could not “have escaped” the “notice” of such “a superior man” as Locke,⁵² given that Locke’s philosophical position as presented in his published works is as coherent as any other position, and given that he neither completed nor published the Essays on the Law of Nature, the best explanation would certainly not be that in this text Locke developed his ‘true’ opinion which he then set out to cover up. Were the Essays indeed the antithesis to Locke’s later writings (as Strauss claims), the best explanation would still be that the young Locke meddled with arguments and opinions which the mature Locke rejected. This, then, makes us turn to the cases of Hobbes and Spinoza. In both cases, religion in general and Christianity in particular were of course subjects of public interest. Also, the Tractatus theologico-politicus (TTP) as well as the Leviathan contain enough hints that the overtly and repeatedly stated pious conviction of their authors might be a disguise, given the similarly shrewd way in which Christianity (and, in the TTP, Judaism) are treated. Spinoza seems to be the easier case, because we have the published, ‘exoteric’ text (the TTP) as well as the unpublished text (the Ethics). Also, the Ethics contain an argument why “the sage” should not confuse the common people’s minds (and actions) by attacking their opinions: because “the sage” knows (a) that his personal “acquiescentia mentis” depends upon that of his fellows and (b) that this latter in most cases is not amenable to philosophical insight (since “the sages” are only a minority amongst men) but to wholesome faith in some (false) opinion.⁵³ This is why, as Spinoza states in the TTP, the prophets argued “ad captum vulgi”.⁵⁴ Strauss correctly points out Spinoza’s distinction between the “many” and the “few”. However, he also argues that Spinoza knew that no text is fit to trans-

 Ibid., pp.  – .  Strauss, “Locke’s Doctrine of Natural Law”, p. . For an argument that the Essays do not ‘contradict’ Locke’s later writing see Yolton, “Locke on the Law of Nature”, pp. ,  – . He also sheds light on Strauss’s highly suspicious, if not to say deceptive ‘Art of Citing’, cf. Id., “Locke on the Law of Nature”, pp.  – .  For a comprehensive account of this argument see Schotte, “The Sage in Public”.  See Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, p.  [chap. III],  [chap. V]; cf. Bagley, “ The Hidden Message” and the articles by Ed Curley and Chris Laursen on Spinoza in this volume)

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port true philosophical insights, which is why not only the TTP, but also the Ethics is an exoteric text and contains Spinoza’s true philosophy only “between the lines”. Taking for granted that every true philosopher is of like mind with Plato, Strauss plants the Platonic concept of “writing between the lines” on Spinoza.⁵⁵ So, Strauss is right when he argues that the TTP contains an argumentum ad hominem and hence not Spinoza’s true philosophy (at least not other than what is “written between the lines”). But he violates the basic rules of “Straussian hermeneutics” when he ignores Spinoza’s own explicit arguments for “writing between the lines” and argues that the Ethics also is only an exoteric text. So, let’s turn to the more controversial example: Hobbes. In his “On the basis of Hobbes’ philosophy” Strauss states his well-known thesis of Hobbes’ atheism, pointing to the more or less obvious contradictions in Hobbes’ argument concerning the case of religion.⁵⁶ As Sören Holm⁵⁷ pointed out, while Hobbes is a writer skilled enough to present his arguments in a transparent and logical manner, this competence seems to have left him once he comes to treat religion. Moreover, Hobbes argues in all three versions of his moral and political philosophy that everybody should “seek peace” and should do everything to preserve it, once it has been attained.⁵⁸ To stir up hatred and cause turmoil by directly attacking widely maintained religious opinions is therefore forbidden by the “moral laws”. However, to leave religious groups to their business of trying to gain political power and destabilize the state is also forbidden. Therefore, one should as much try to weaken the priest’s case as to strengthen that of the “lawful sovereign” while ‘flying below the radar’ of the public. A last hint is the explanation Hobbes gives for Aristotle’s metaphysics, which strike him as obviously false. After Hobbes has named the most important “errors” of Aristotle which the “schools” took up, he adds to his critique of these errors “which it may be he [Aristotle] knew to be false philosophy, but writ as a thing consonant to, and corroborative of,

 This is most evident when Strauss states that “Spinoza cannot have been ignorant of the obvious [sic!] truth […] that […] no written exposition can be strictly speaking esoteric”. (Strauss, “How to study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise”, p. , for a similar account cf. Sass, “Anmerkungen zur Vermutung von disciplina arcani in der Philosophie”, p. ). Since we don’t even find the basics of a philosophy of language in Spinoza, we have indeed reason to assume that Spinoza might have been ignorant even to the possibility of such a position.  On the following, see my more extensive treatment of Strauss’s and other scholars’ arguments in favour of Hobbes’s atheism in Schotte, Die Entmachtung Gottes durch den Leviathan, pp.  – , where evidence is given also for Strauss’s seriously flawed (if not to say manipulative) ‘Art of Citing’.  Holm, “L’attitude de Hobbes à l’égard de la religion”, p. .  Hobbes, Leviathan, p. .

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their religion – and fearing the fate of Socrates.”⁵⁹ In other words: Hobbes explicitly considered the possibility that certain errors in a given text were consequent to the author’s will to avoid persecution while preserving as much of his philosophy as possible. Therefore, the initial suspicion that at least the Leviathan contains some “writing between the lines” is justified. Strauss’ thesis that the Leviathan argues (“between the lines”) in favour of atheism, however, is not so. The “contradictions” that Strauss cites in advance of his interpretation vanish upon closer inspection. One is the example cited earlier on, namely that according to Hobbes no religion can be called “True Religion”. The problem here is: Strauss not only infers that this means that Hobbes rejected Christianity,⁶⁰ but he also infers that Hobbes was an atheist.⁶¹ This inference is invalid and results, or so I suppose, from one of Strauss’s own assumptions: that one is either a believer in a revealed religion or an atheist. Even a short glance at some contemporaries of Hobbes might have shown Strauss that atheism and Christianity were not the only “living options” available: Lord Herbert would have happily admitted that he had no high opinion of revealed religions and their followers, but to be called an atheist would no doubt have enraged him.⁶² So, we should follow John Plamenatz, who stated that “We may suspect him [Hobbes] of Atheism, but we cannot prove it against him.”⁶³ Since the evidence is indeed wanting, more than this cannot be said.

 Ibid., p. .  Which is, indeed, the case, cf. Schotte, Die Entmachtung Gottes durch den Leviathan, pp.  – .  Strauss, “On the Basis of Hobbes’s Political Philosophy”, p. .  As Robert Howse pointed out to me in the discussion following my presentation at the Conference, ‘atheism’ for Strauss is not (as is usually the case and as was certainly the case in the seventeenth century) the belief or conviction that no God or gods exist; instead, he understands as ‘atheism’ every position that denies the possibility of revelation (cf. Rosen, “Leo Strauss and the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns”, p. ). The problem in the respective article is that Strauss not only takes up Polin’s (orthodox) notion of atheism (cf. Strauss , “On the Basis of Hobbes’s Political Philosophy”, pp.  – ), but that he himself also clarifies what is at stake as the question of “God’s existence and other attributes” (Strauss, “On the Basis of Hobbes’s Political Philosophy”, p. ). I fail to see why a negative answer to this question should be called ‘mere unbelief’, even if Strauss uses the term “unbelief” as distinguished from belief in revelation in said paper (cf. Strauss, “On the Basis of Hobbes’s Political Philosophy”, p. ).  Plamenatz, “Mr. Warrender’s Hobbes”, p. . In discussing the presentation of this paper at Marburg, Adrian Blau argued that talking of a “proof” like Plamenatz was inadequate because no interpretation could arrive at more than an ‘inference to the best explanation’. Like Strauss, Plamenatz seems to employ the language of law consciously here and, I hold, rightly so. Re-

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6 Concluding remarks It seems then that the problem is not Straussian hermeneutics but Strauss the historian, or any other scholar who is not cautious in “reading between the lines” for whatever personal reasons. However, especially for historians of Early Modern philosophy, neglecting Straussian hermeneutics comes only at a high cost: ignoring the circumstances under which authors wrote in that time, we run the risk of misrepresenting them as rather incompetent writers and thinkers who made a lot of mistakes and argued in a seriously flawed way. In other words we are likely to misunderstand and in consequence misrepresent the argument of their texts.⁶⁴ After all, we should bear in mind Perez Zagorin’s concluding remark in his Ways of Lying: that we should call the Early Modern “the Age of Dissimulation”⁶⁵.

Bibliography Bagley, Paul J., “On the Practice of Esotericism”, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (1992), pp. 231 – 47. Bagley, Paul J., “The Hidden Message”, in: International Journal of Philosophical Studies 7 (1999), pp. 225 – 42. Blau, Adrian, “Anti-Strauss”, in: Journal of Politics 74 (2012), pp. 142 – 55. Cantor, Paul A., “Leo Strauss and Contemporary Hermeneutics”, in: Alan Udoff (ed.), Leo Strauss’s Thought: Toward a Critical Engagement, Bouldern/London, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991, pp. 267 – 315. Clay, Diskin, “On a Forgotten Kind of Reading”, in: Alan Udoff (ed.), Leo Strauss’s Thought: Toward a Critical Engagement, Bouldern/London, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991, pp. 253 – 67. Drury, Shadia B., The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, Houndmills et all, Macmillan, 1988. Frazer, Michael L., “Esotericism Ancient and Modern: Strauss contra Straussianism on the Art of Political-Philosophical Writing”, in: Political Theory 34 (2006), pp. 33 – 61.

member that in some case we do possess the ‘smoking gun’, as for example in the case of Reimarus after Lessing published his texts posthumously.  Seen this way, Straussian hermeneutics is definitely less ‘anti-contextualist’ than Strauss himself thought them to be (cf. e. g. Strauss, “The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed”, p. , see also Petit, “Leo Strauss et l’ésotérisme platonicien”, p. ). For similarly critical, while basically positive accounts see Mori, “Persécution et art d’écrire”, p.  and Jaffro, “De l’art d’écrire au sens commun”, pp.  – .  Zagorin, Ways of Lying, p. .

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Gaiser, Konrad, Platons ungeschriebene Lehre. Studien zur systematischen und geschichtlichen Begründung der Wissenschaft in der Platonischen Schule, Stuttgart, Klett-Cotta, 1963. Gawlick, Günter, “Einleitung”, in: Pierre Bayle, Historisches und Kritisches Wörterbuch: Eine Auswahl, Günter Gawlick and Lothar Kreimendahl (eds.), Hamburg, Meiner, 2003, pp. IX-LVII. Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan: With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668, Edwin Curley (ed.), Indianapolis, Hackett, 1994. Holm, Sören, “L’attitude de Hobbes à l’égard de la religion”. In: Archives de philosophie XII (1937), pp. 41 – 63. Hume, David, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: With A Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend in Edinburgh and Hume’s Abstract of A Treatise of Human Nature, Eric Steinberg (ed.), Indianapolis, Hackett, 1993. Jaffro, Laurent, “De l’art d’écrire au sens commun”, in: Laurent Jaffro, Benoît Frydman, Emmanuel Cattin, and Alain Petit (eds.), Leo Strauss: Art d’écrire, politique, philosophie. Texte de 1941 et Etudes, Paris, Vrin, 2001, pp. 147 – 65. James, William, The Will to Believe, in: Id., The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, Cambridge/London, Harvard University Press, 1979, pp. 13 – 34. Kant, Immanuel, “Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?”, in: Id., Werkausgabe, Vol. XI, Wilhelm Weischedel (ed.), Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp, 1977, pp. 53 – 65. Kristeller, Paul Oskar, “The Myth of Renaissance Atheism and the French Tradition of Free Thought”, in: Journal of the History of Philosophy 6 (1968), pp. 233 – 44. Kohler, Georg, “Esoterik und Wahrheitsinteresse oder: Die Verpflichtung der Philosophie, exoterisch zu werden und esoterisch zu sein”, in: Helmut Holzhey and Walter Ch. Zimmerli (eds.), Esoterik und Exoterik der Philosophie. Beiträge zu Geschichte und Sinn philosophischer Selbstbestimmung, Basel/Stuttgart, Schwabe, 1977, pp. 315 – 41. Lampert, Laurence, “Strauss’s Recovery of Esotericism”, in: Steven B. Smith (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 63 – 93. Machiavelli, Niccolo, Il Principe, in: Id., Il Principe e Discorsi sopra la prima deca ti Tito Livio, Sergio Bertelli (ed.), Milano, Feltrinelli Editore, 1960a, pp. 3 – 109. Machiavelli, Niccolo, Discorsi sopra la prima deca ti Tito Livio, in: Id., Il Principe e Discorsi sopra la prima deca ti Tito Livio, Sergio Bertelli (ed.), Milano, Feltrinelli Editore, 1960b, pp. 109 – 507. Martinich, Aloysius P., “Interpretation and Hobbes’s Political Philosophy”, in: Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 82 (2001), pp. 309 – 31. McShea, Robert J., “Leo Strauss on Machiavelli”, in: The Western Philosophical Quarterly 16 (1963), pp. 782 – 97. Mori, Gianluca, Bayle philosophe, Paris, Honoré Champion, 1999. Mori, Gianluca, “Persécution et art d’écrire: Strauss, Skinner et Pierre Bayle”, in: Laurent Jaffro, Benoît Frydman, Emmanuel Cattin and Alain Petit, (eds.), Leo Strauss: Art d’écrire, politique, philosophie. Texte de 1941 et Etudes, Paris, Vrin, 2001, pp. 221 – 39. Petit, Alain, “Leo Strauss et l’ésotérisme platonicien”, in: Laurent Jaffro, Benoît Frydman, Emmanuel Cattin and Alain Petit (eds.), Leo Strauss: Art d’écrire, politique, philosophie. Texte de 1941 et Etudes, Paris, Vrin, 2001, pp. 131 – 47.

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Plamenatz, John, “Mr. Warrender’s Hobbes”, in: K.C. Brown (ed.), Hobbes Studies, Oxford, Blackwell, 1965, pp. 73 – 89. Pocock, John, “Prophet and Inquisitor, or, A Church Built Upon Bayonets Cannot Stand: A Comment on Mansfield’s ‘Strauss’s Machiavelli’”, in: Political Theory 3 (1975), pp. 385 – 401. Quéval, Marie-Hélène, “Deismus in Leipzig. Johann Christoph und Lusie Viktorie Adelgunde Gottsched”, in: Winfried Schröder (ed.), Gestalten des Deismus in Europa. Günter Gawlick zum 80. Geburtstag, Wiesbaden, Harassowitz, 2013, pp. 255 – 63. Rorty, Richard, “The historiography of philosophy: four genres”, in: Rorty Richard, Jerome B. Schneewind and Quentin Skinner (eds.), Philosophy in History. Essays in the Historiography of Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984, pp. 49 – 76. Rosen, Stanley, “Leo Strauss and the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns”, in: Alan Udoff (ed.), Leo Strauss’s Thought. Toward a Critical Engagement, Bouldern/London, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991, pp. 155 – 69. Sabine, George H., “Review of Persecution and the Art of Writing by Leo Strauss”, in: Ethics 63 (1953), pp. 220 – 2. Sass, Hans-Martin, “Anmerkungen zur Vermutung von disciplina arcani in der Philosophie”, in: Helmut Holzhey and Walter Ch. Zimmerli (eds.), Esoterik und Exoterik der Philosophie. Beiträge zu Geschichte und Sinn philosophischer Selbstbestimmung, Basel/Stuttgart, Schwabe, 1977, pp. 362 – 86. Schotte, Dietrich, Die Entmachtung Gottes durch den Leviathan. Thomas Hobbes über Religion, Stuttgart/Bad Cannstadt, frommann-holzboog, 2013. Schotte, Dietrich, “The Sage in Public: Beneficial Lying in Spinoza”. Paper Delivered at Symposion zu Udo Thiel: The Modern Subject. Mainz, Germany, 21 – 23 November 2013. Skinner, Quentin, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas”, in: Visions of Politics, Vol. I: Regarding Method, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 57 – 90. Spinoza, Benedict de, Theological-Political Treatise, Jonathan Israel (ed.), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007. Strauss, Leo, “Introduction”, in: Id., Persecution and the Art of Writing, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1988, pp. 7 – 22. Strauss, Leo, “Persecution and the Art of Writing”, in: Id., Persecution and the Art of Writing, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1988b, pp. 22 – 38. Strauss, Leo, “The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed”, in: Id., Persecution and the Art of Writing, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1988, pp. 38 – 95. Strauss, Leo, “How to study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise”, in: Id., Persecution and the Art of Writing, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1988, pp. 142 – 203. Strauss, Leo, “What Is Political Philosophy?”, in: Id., What is Political Philosophy? And other Studies, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1988, pp. 9 – 56. Strauss, Leo, “Political Philosophy and History”, in: Id., What is Political Philosophy? And other Studies, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1988, pp. 56 – 78. Strauss, Leo, “On Classical Political Philosophy”, in: Id., What is Political Philosophy? And other Studies, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1988, pp. 78 – 95. Strauss, Leo, “On the Basis of Hobbes’s Political Philosophy”, in: Id., What is Political Philosophy? And other Studies, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1988, pp. 170 – 97.

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Strauss, Leo, “Locke’s Doctrine of Natural Law”, in: Id., What is Political Philosophy? And other Studies, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1988, pp. 197 – 221. Strauss, Leo, “On a Forgotten Kind of Writing”, in: Id., What is Political Philosophy? And other Studies, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1988, pp. 221 – 33. Yolton, John W., “Locke on the Law of Nature”, in: Philosophical Review 67 (1958), pp. 477 – 98. Zagorin, Perez, Ways of Lying. Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge/London, Harvard University Press, 1990.

A. P. Martinich

Leo Strauss’s Olympian Interpretation: Right, Self-preservation, and Law in The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes Leo Strauss’s early book, The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (Strauss 1936), remains important for at least three reasons. First, it is Strauss’s most complete and textually based treatment of Hobbes.¹ Since Strauss insists on close readings of texts, it is worth seeing how accurate his own reading is.² Second, some accomplished scholars think that Strauss has proven some of his central theses in it. Robert Kraynak writes, “As Strauss has shown, Hobbes’s whole system rests on the antithesis of vanity and fear”³; and, “as Strauss has shown … Hobbes’s whole political science rests on a prescientific moral attitude”⁴. Gregory Vlastos said that it ranks with the finest work on Hobbes produced in my lifetime. Its scholarship is solid from beginning to end, daring and provocative, but never eccentric. … I trust that … this first, powerful and eminently sane contribution to the history of ideas … may win for it many readers both in and outside the ranks of true believers.⁵

Included in the books that Vlastos refers to are those by Gauthier (1969), Peters (1956), Reik (1977), and Watkins (1973), a distinguished set of books. He wrote this in the same year that Gregory Kavka’s (1986) Hobbesian Moral and Political Philosophy and Jean Hampton’s (1986) Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition were published. Allan Bloom (1974) said Strauss’s book was “well argued”, “the one most reputed and uncontroversial in the scholarly community”, and its conclusions do not appear to be “outrageous”.⁶ One of the earliest reviewers, Michael Oakeshott praised the book:

 Strauss had not yet developed his theory of reading between the lines when he wrote The Political Philosophy. For a decisive refutation of that method see Blau.  Stauffer calls Strauss’s treatment of Hobbes in The Political Philosophy “a rigorous analysis.” (Stauffer, “Reopening the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns”, p. ) That is not quite the same thing as an accurate one.  Kraynak, History and Modernity in the Thought of Thomas Hobbes, p. .  Ibid., p. .  Vlastos, Sunstein, and Gordis, “Further Lessons of Leo Strauss”.  Bloom, “Leo Strauss: September ,  – October , ”, p. .

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I must express at once my admiration for the book as a whole, for the careful scholarship which has gone to make it, for the great subtlety of its argument, and for the brilliance of his exposition. It has the rare quality of presenting an original thesis and supporting it with an apparently conclusive argument, and … its ingenuity is stimulating and never misleading.⁷

While it reportedly became Strauss’s least favorite book, he did not indicate any reservations about what he said was the basis of Hobbes’s philosophy in the preface added to the American edition of 1952.⁸ However, he is not completely silent about its origin in “On the Basis of Hobbes’s Political Philosophy,” where he implied that Hobbes’s political philosophy is based on his moral view and “not … his natural science,” for which there is no need.⁹ Third, the book remains the object of important discussions of Strauss’s philosophy and has been described as “an excellent entryway into his thought”.¹⁰ Strauss had two main goals for Political Philosophy, goals that are indicated in its subtitle: Its Basis and Its Genesis. Of these two goals, I will say a little about the genesis before moving onto my main topic. According to Strauss, Hobbes rejected the method of philosophy by the time he left Magdalen Hall. While he retained the traditional moral and political philosophy of the ancient world, especially that of Aristotle, he adopted history as his method for discovering the nature of human beings. The reason for the methodological switch was Hobbes’s realization that the Aristotelian theory, especially as it had been modified in the sixteenth century, could not be “applied.” My guess as to what Strauss meant by the inapplicability of the theory is that Hobbes discovered that given what Aristotelians said about human nature and reason, there was no way to get people to act in ways that would establish a healthy polity. Aristotle’s theory fails because human passions move people to act, not reason. Hobbes, Strauss goes on, discovered this during his study of history. Strauss indicates that Hobbes’s introduction and translation of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War is decisive evidence for his hypothesis about the importance of history for Hobbes. Strauss was tempted to believe that there was more evidence for his view, namely the manuscript “Essayes,” which later appeared in Horae subsecivae, especially

 Oakeshott, “Dr. Leo Strauss on Hobbes”, p. ; see also Devigne, Recasting Conservatism: Oakeshott, Strauss, and the Response to Postmodernism, pp.  – .  Bloom, “Leo Strauss: September ,  – October , ”, p. ; see also Stauffer: “Reopening the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns”, p.  for references to Strauss. However, he did express some reservations about his interpretation of Hobbes’s anthropology in Strauss, Hobbes’ politische Wissenschaft in ihrer Genesis, p. .  Strauss, What is Political Philosophy?, p. ; see also p. ; for more on Strauss’s attitude about The Political Philosophy see Meier, Strauss: Hobbes’s Critique of Religion, pp.  – .  Stauffer, “Reopening the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns”, p. b.

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the essay on Tacitus.¹¹ He did not discuss the Essayes in any detail because he could not prove that they were authored by Hobbes. For Hobbes, the way to get a polity established is to exploit the desire for self-preservation. All of this was discovered before 1628; and Strauss proposed that this origin of Hobbes’s beliefs caused Hobbes to make them the basis of his moral philosophy. In 1629, Hobbes supposedly discovered Euclid’s geometrical method for the first time. In the 1630s, he met with Galileo and became committed to the resolutive-compositive method of the new science. Since the moral basis for Hobbes’s philosophy had been discovered before the discovery of natural science and since the resolutive-compositive method does not entail anything about the nature of human beings, Strauss concluded that that method contributed nothing to Hobbes’s political philosophy. Moreover, the method of the new science actually obscured the historical and humanist foundation of Hobbes’s theory; so at least in that way, it was pernicious.¹² I now turn to the other goal of Strauss’s book, the philosophical basis for Hobbes’s political philosophy. My thesis, baldly stated, is that Strauss’s view is fundamentally mistaken about the foundational concepts of Hobbes’s political philosophy.¹³ The easiest way to show this is to discuss three concepts that are central to Hobbes’s political philosophy, concepts that Strauss thinks are interlocked: right, self-preservation, and law.¹⁴ The first of these, right, is supposed to be the most important element. Its general importance for Strauss is evidenced by the title of what many consider his best book, Natural Right and History. So I will begin with Hobbes’s conception of right and then take up self-preservation and law.¹⁵

1 Rights In the Preface, Strauss makes a claim that will be important to him for the next forty years: modern natural law is grounded in natural right as “an absolutely

 Strauss , p. xvi–xvii, n.   Stauffer, What is Political Philosophy?, pp.  – .  Adrian Blau has appropriately pointed out that the standards of Hobbes scholarship were not high in the  s, and Strauss deserves credit for inspiring better work on Hobbes.  Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, pp. vii–viii; Strauss thinks that a fourth element, vanity, is central to Hobbes’s philosophy. For the purposes of presentation I need only the three mentioned. Vanity will be discussed in connection with self-preservation.  Blau thinks that Strauss’s misreadings are not restricted to The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes; and that Strauss is not a reliable interpreter (Blau, “Anti-Strauss”, pp.  – ).

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justified subjective claim” or in rights as “subjective claims,” which are “the justified claims (of the individual)”.¹⁶ Strauss’s construal of Hobbesian rights as claim rights comes out clearly when he says that what the fear of death justifies is “a right, a claim.” He then explains this idea in a footnote: The right is the minimum claim which as such is fundamentally just and the origin of any other just claim; more exactly, it is unconditionally just because it can be answered for in face of all men in all circumstances. A claim of this kind is only the claim to defend life and limb (Strauss: The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, p. 155, n. 2).

Setting aside for now precisely what sense ‘subjective’ has, I want to show that Strauss is wrong to think that Hobbes’s rights are normative.¹⁷ While claim rights, not to mention other kinds which confer institutional powers, are normative, they have nothing to do with the foundations of Hobbes’s philosophy. Normativity does not enter his philosophy before the introduction of the laws of nature, which comes after the discussion of the nature of rights in each of Hobbes’s presentations of his political philosophy.¹⁸ Rights in the state of nature are liberty rights. They make no demands on other people and do not limit their liberty. They are liberty rights because they are not constrained by any law and hence are nonnormative. In the natural condition, rights do not give any human being any claim against anyone else. If a person destroys or eliminates someone’s rights in what has been called the “primary state of nature”¹⁹, that person has not done anything unjust because that person’s liberty rights are unlimited, except by one’s own physical ability.²⁰ The other person has had her rights diminished, but that no more involves an injustice than does one’s beating another person in a race. All have the right to win, and none of the losers is wronged. Terminating the liberty rights of others is not unjust. Injustice is acting as if one has a right when one does not have it. Injus-

 Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, p. viii and p. .  In “On the Basis of Hobbes’s Political Philosophy” Strauss reports Raymond Polin’s view that Hobbes denied “all moral or juridical significance to the right of nature.” (Strauss, What is Political Philosophy?, p. ). Relevant to the point, he says that “Hobbes has recourse to the state of nature in order to determine not only the status or manner of being of justice or natural right, but its content or meaning as well natural right as determined with a view to the condition of mere nature, is the root of all justice” (ibid., p. ; see also p. ). The “right of nature [is] … a ‘subjective’ right” (ibid., p. ).  Part II, chapter  of The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic; chapter  of De cive; and chapter  of Leviathan.  Martinich, Two Gods of Leviathan, pp.  – .  More precisely, one’s liberty rights are limited by one’s power.

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tice is not defined in terms of obligation. Obligations arise when a person lays down one or more of their rights. An action in the primary state of nature cannot and need not be justified because justification can occur only within a normative system.²¹ The absence of justice and injustice is not the absence of good and bad as Hobbes understands those concepts. One of the striking features of Hobbes’s moral philosophy is that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ (or ‘evil’) are not moral terms.²² In The Elements of Law, Hobbes says that every “man, for his own part, calleth that which pleaseth, and is delightful to himself, good; and that evil which depleaseth him”.²³ In the diagram of sciences in Leviathan, ethics, the science of good and bad, is the study of the “consequences from passions of man” and separated from the science of unjust and unjust.²⁴ What is good is what is desired to happen. What is desired not to happen is bad. This is a wholly naturalistic analysis of good and bad. All chosen actions are good on Hobbes’s account – they are at least good in the near- or short-term – because every such action proceeds from a desire; and what is desired is good. The action A of a person P1 may be bad from the point of view of another person P2 if P2 desires that P1 not do A. Good and evil acquire a tincture of morality in the civil state. When subjects create their sovereign, they commit themselves to desiring the same things the sovereign desires for the sake of salus populi. Consequently, not to do what the sovereign requires breaks the third law of nature, “Keep your covenants.” Strauss’s attempt to begin modern political philosophy with Hobbes’s view about rights is misguided, I think, for two reasons. First, many modern theorists ultimately cared more about liberty or freedom than they did about rights. Rights are taken seriously because they are instrumental for ensuring liberty or freedom. If freedom could not be ensured by rights but could be ensured by something else, say, the existence of conscience or the greater happiness of everyone,

 Martinich, Two Gods of Leviathan, pp.  – ; Hobbes usually talks as if not fulfilling an obligation requires laws. However, technically a person can have a Hobbesian obligation without any laws at all, by gift. Gifting a right to do an action A has the consequence that if the gift-giver does A, then the gift-giver would be not fulfilling her obligation because she would be acting without right.  In De cive, Hobbes uses ‘boni’ and ‘mali’ to denote good and bad human beings, respectively (Hobbes, De cive, LW , p. ; Hobbes, “Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Society and Government”, p. ).  Hobbes, The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, ..  Hobbes, Leviathan, insert between p.  and ; see also Hobbes, De homine, .. It is a vexed question whether Hobbes should have divided science into three parts, as indicated by his tripartite work, Elementa Philosophica, or into two parts, as indicated by the two-fold division in the diagram in Leviathan. (See for example Sorell, Hobbes, pp.  – ).

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then they would have been. Other modern philosophers take the happiness of the greatest number of people as their goal; and talk about rights is considered nonsense. Second, Hobbes is not a champion of either rights or freedom. Rights cause conflict. He thinks that only a few rights can be exempt from possible prohibition in a civil state. Even when rights are not explicitly transferred to the sovereign, the sovereign has the authority to quash them by using the principle that whoever has right to an end has a right to the means to that end.²⁵ If freedom is more highly valued than rights, then the first modern would be someone who challenges an institution that restricts freedom. An obvious candidate, more obvious than the author of The Prince or the English apologist for property, is Martin Luther because he successfully challenged the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. Of course, Luther did not want people to have unbridled personal freedom. Since the will is in bondage to sin, individual freedom has to be bridled by the Holy Spirit; and his criterion for being bridled by the Holy Spirit was in effect agreement with his views. Catherine Zuckert gives the impression that Strauss later recognized the close connection between rights and liberty in Hobbes. Explicating the lecture, “Progress or Return?,” she writes that Strauss saw that for Hobbes, “‘rights’ were … seen to consist, fundamentally, in liberties”.²⁶ It is not clear to me what her basis for saying this is. In the same paragraph, she quotes Strauss as saying that for moderns “freedom gradually takes the place of virtue” and that “Man has no nature to speak of,” and then “He makes himself what he is”.²⁷ But while freedom may be necessary to make oneself what one is, this does not justify attributing to Strauss the idea that Hobbes saw a close connection between freedom (or liberty) and rights.

2 Self-preservation Let’s now consider Strauss’s interpretation of self-preservation in Hobbes’s philosophy. For Strauss, it is closely connected with reason. His most direct and extended discussion of self-preservation occurs in his explication of Hobbes’s claim, in the Dedication of De cive, that human nature can be summed up in

 Hobbes, Leviathan, ..  Zuckert, “Strauss’s Return to Premodern Thought”, p. .  Strauss, “Progress or Return”, pp.  – ; quoted by Zuckert, “Strauss’s Return to Premodern Thought”, p. .

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“two most certain postulates”.²⁸ The first postulate is natural appetite (cupiditatis naturalis); the second is natural reason (rationis naturalis). If a mathematician or philosopher sums up something in two postulates or principles in the right way, then those two principles are separate and do not mingle. One will not need or depend on the other. And there is every reason to think that Hobbes intends his two postulates to be separate. Just before asserting the two postulates, Hobbes explains how he came up with each of them. The postulate of natural appetite came from the fact that “from a community of goods there must needs arise contention, whose enjoyment should be the greatest”.²⁹ Competition, not vain-glory, Hobbes indicates, is the origin of the postulate of natural appetite. Hobbes does not bring vanity into the account and does not need to. The second postulate, natural reason, came from his realization that justice comes to exist when property comes to exist; and property comes to exist “not from nature, but consent”.³⁰ The first postulate denotes something that is common to human and nonhuman animals, namely, competition for goods that cannot be shared. It also is the source of human misery. When “men … have an appetite to the same thing; which very often they can neither enjoy in common, nor yet divide it,” they are at war.³¹ What is important here is that contrary to Strauss’s interpretation Hobbes does not bring vanity into the account; and he does not need to. As for the second postulate, it is supposed to solve the problem caused by the first postulate: “when I applied my thoughts to the investigation of natural justice, I was presently advertised from the very word justice (which signifies a steady will of giving every one his own), that my first enquiry was to be from whence it proceeded that any man should call anything rather his own, than another man’s.³² Although there may be no obvious logical connection between natural justice, property, and reason, there need not be because Hobbes is reporting the psychological sequence of how he discovered the two postulates. The postulates themselves are not to be proved; they are postulated. What is clear from Hobbes description of the genesis of the two postulates and the postulates themselves, natural appetite and reason, is that one principle of human nature causes a problem; the other one can solve that problem.

 Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. ; and Hobbes, /, Ep. Ded.; see also Cooper, “Reason and Desire After the Fall of Man”.  Hobbes, Philosophical Rudiments, ..  Ibid., p.  – .  Ibid., ..  Ibid., p.  – .

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Strauss interprets the two postulates very differently. When explaining the first postulate, natural appetite, he claims that it is reducible to predation and ultimately to vanity. While natural predation exists in the nonhuman animals, it alone is not sufficient according to Strauss to generate the war of all against all. Lions, for example, kill other animals within the strict limits of what satisfies their hunger. He says that Hobbes needs something else, another principle, in order to transmute the many natural appetites for finite things, into one infinite appetite. In order to establish his point, he introduces the concept of reason: “the specific difference between man and all other animals is reason,” because he wants to say that man is “the most cunning, the strongest, and most dangerous animal”³³ and “Human appetite is … different from animal appetite … by the fact that in the case of man appetite has reason at its service”³⁴. The cause of the “boundless desire” for unlimited power is that man comes to know by reason that he cannot preserve his present power “and the means to live well, without the acquisition of more,” in particular, without an infinite amount of power.³⁵ According to Strauss, Hobbes believes that all humans want “absolute rule over the whole world”.³⁶ Although Strauss sometimes denies that Hobbes ultimately relies on reason to generate the infinite desire for power, we have just seen that it is central to his explanation of the first postulate. Strauss’s belief that Hobbes appeals to the second postulate of human nature is a mistake. As our paraphrase indicated, Hobbes does not draw on reason for the first postulate at all. It would be wrong for him to do so because reason plays the central role in his discussion of the second postulate. Natural predation alone can generate a war of all against all for lions and other carnivores. If several hungry carnivores were placed in a small enclosed space with only a half-pound of meat, a war of all against all would break out. What is salient here is a moderate amount of population density and moderate scarcity, two elements that may be presupposed to exist in Hobbes’s state of nature. One might object that this criticism is ineffective if Hobbes made a mistake when he was elaborating his view about the two postulates. What is needed, Strauss’s defender may say, is a criticism of Strauss’s reasoning employed in the process of interpreting. However, my criticism is not that Strauss presented a fallacious argument but that his interpretation simultaneously does not fit Hobbes’s text and needlessly attributes to Hobbes a confused and philosophically defective understanding of his own two postulates. Hobbes said he discovered two postulates    

Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, p. . Ibid. Ibid., p. , and quoting Hobbes. Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, p. .

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and introduced each separately. And there is nothing in his text to justify introducing the second one in order for the first one to do its work. It is no good to object that Strauss is reading between the lines for two reasons. First, he had not yet adopted the tactics of reading between the lines when he wrote The Political Philosophy. Second, he held that those tactics were to be initiated only when the text itself involved some defect such as an inconsistency or a dangerous doctrine. But neither condition applies to this case. In particular, we shall see that even if all human beings were vain, Hobbes could have asserted this without danger. Perhaps Strauss realized at some level the importance of keeping the first postulate free of reason. This would explain why he calls that supposed desire of human beings “the irrational striving after power.” That is, reason breeds irrationality. Strauss may have been attracted to understanding Hobbes’s philosophy as a Hegelian dialectic. He often uses Hegelian language to explain Hobbes’s view. For example, he says that Hobbes’s “turn to history is ‘sublated’ in Hobbes’s later ‘unhistorical’, ‘rationalistic’, politics” and that the “significance of the antithesis between naturalistic and anthropological political philosophy … becomes fully apparent if one grasps that this antithesis is only the abstract form of a concrete antithesis in the interpretation of and judgment on human nature”.³⁷ He appeals to Hegel’s authority for his claim that Hobbes’s moral view is “specifically bourgeois”.³⁸ Aristocratic virtue and bourgeoisie virtue interact and give rise to a new virtue, which nonetheless retains the name ‘aristocratic’. Strauss holds that Hobbes creates something new by taking the human fear of death and making it self-conscious: people become reflectively conscious that they fear death.³⁹ Sometimes the transmutation of a concept occurs within Hobbes’s philosophy: “In the movement from the principle of honor to the principle of fear, Hobbes’s political philosophy comes into being”.⁴⁰ Strauss certainly enjoyed transmuting one concept into another, for example, natural appetite to vanity and, as we shall see, reason to self-preservation. Finite passion becomes infinite passion through the mediation of reason. Reason becomes irrational because it frustrates the desire of self-preservation, the desire it was supposed to satisfy. Reason, which the Western philosophical tradition had almost always treated as good, becomes bad. The dialectic can continue by detaching reason from vanity and transmuting it into to self-preservation to make reason good.

   

Ibid., p. Strauss, Strauss, Ibid., p.

. Hobbes’s Critique of Religion, p. . The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, pp.  – . .

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While Strauss’s judgment that natural appetite plus reason produces irrational striving may be attractive as part of a Hegelian dialectic, it not true to Hobbes’s text. The paradox is completely avoided by a straightforward interpretation of Hobbes’s text. Another way that Strauss may be hiding his use of the second postulate in his explanation of the first is by describing the infinite desire as “spontaneous” and as arising “out of the depths of man himself.” But spontaneity and the depths of human nature are not in Hobbes’s text; and Strauss did not use them when he argued for his interpretation.⁴¹ Strauss wants Hobbes’s natural appetite to be only one appetite because he wants it to be just one particular thing, vanity, rather than a variety of passions: “man’s natural appetite … has its basis in the pleasure which man takes in the consideration of his own power, i. e., vanity”.⁴² “The origin of man’s natural appetite is … not perception but vanity”.⁴³ He does not even try to explain how there could be a desire for infinite power before anything is perceived, before there is any perception of one thing moving another. While Strauss wants to place all the blame for war on vanity, he cannot legitimately infer that that was Hobbes’s theory as regards the first postulate. Hobbes always gave multiple causes for each of his political works. Hobbes presents at least three causes of war in the state of nature in his three great political works. In The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, the first cause of war, as mentioned above, is that “some are vainly glorious” and others are “moderate, and look for no more but equality of nature”.⁴⁴ The second cause of war is the tendency of people to act badly when they do not like something about other people; mixed in with this cause is the propensity of people to compare each other’s worth and think that they are the best.⁴⁵ The third cause is that “many men’s appetites carry them to one and the same end; which end sometimes can neither be enjoyed in common, nor divided”.⁴⁶ In De cive, they are: (1) “vain-glory”; (2) “the need [of a man who practices equality in nature] to defend his property and liberty against the other”; (3) the desire to want something that other people want “at the same time”; and possibly, (4) the desire for others to “form a high opin-

 Ibid., p. .  Ibid.; see also Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, pp.  – .  Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. .  Hobbes, The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, .; see also Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, p. .  Hobbes, The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, ..  Ibid., ..

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ions of oneself”.⁴⁷ I am not sure whether (1) and (4) are separate causes or not. In any case, (2) and (3) do not depend on vanity, and (3) is “the most frequent cause” of war. Independently of this issue, Hobbes introduces the issue of conflict in the state of nature by saying that men come into conflict in the state of nature “but not for the same reason”.⁴⁸ In Leviathan, the causes of war are competition, distrust of others, and the desire to seek fame (famam spectat) and the love of glory, not specifically vain-glory or vanity.⁴⁹ So it is not true that according to Hobbes only vanity was in Pandora’s box. When Strauss indicates that “in the three presentations of his [Hobbes’s] political philosophy,” vanity is the only cause of war, Hobbes supposedly identifies vanity with “man’s very nature”.⁵⁰ Strauss thinks that Hobbes made this clear in Leviathan when he wrote that “Pride and other passions” cause human beings to need government.⁵¹ Strauss simply ignores the phrase “other passions” and has pride, interpreted as vanity, do all the work. Strauss says that Hobbes decided to not “explicitly … take as his departure the reduction of man’s natural appetite to vanity”.⁵² Again, the text gives the lie to this interpretation. Hobbes explicitly does not take universal vanity as his departure in any of his political works. In Elements of Law, only some men suffer from vanity; others are moderate. In De cive, everyone is at war, but for different reasons. While some man, “according to that natural equality which is among us, permits as much to others as he assumes to himself; which is an argument of a temperate man, and one that rightly values his power”.⁵³ And “the most frequent cause why men want to hurt each other arises when many want the same thing at the same time, without being able to enjoy it in common or to divide it”.⁵⁴ In the crucial chapter 13, it is not vanity or vain-glory that is the third cause of war, but the love of glory (gloria) and the desire to seek fame (famam spectat)”.⁵⁵ Not all glory is vanity. Glory proceeds from “the imagination or conception of our own power above the power of him that contendeth with us”.⁵⁶ Someone who does not agree with one’s estimate of one’s own power refers to it as pride. The difference between glory and  Hobbes, On the Citizen, p. ; see also Hobbes, De cive, p. ; see also Hobbes, Leviathan, chapter .  Hobbes, On the Citizen, p. .  Hobbes, Leviathan, chapter .  Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, p. .  Ibid., p. .  Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. .  Hobbes, On the Citizen, ..  Ibid., ..  Hobbes, Leviathan, pp.  – ,  – ; Hobbes, Latin Leviathan in Leviathan, p. .  Hobbes, The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, ..

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pride, Hobbes suggests, is merely one of attitude. False glory is the kind of glory that “depends on one’s trust in the opinion of others … whereby one may think well of himself, and yet be deceived”.⁵⁷ Vain-glory in a person is built on “the flattery of others or only supposed by himself for delight in the consequences of it.” It is characteristic of “young men,” and, like dejection of mind, does not move a person to action.⁵⁸ So in his explicit treatment of vain-glory, it is not dangerous to others. Strauss claims that in Leviathan, “Hobbes could not make up his mind to treat the view which is in reality conclusive for him, that man’s natural appetite is vanity, unequivocally as the basis of his political philosophy” because if he had said that, then people would know that he believed that “man is by nature evil”.⁵⁹ This is supposedly why Hobbes “in the final presentation [of human nature] puts vanity at the end”.⁶⁰ He was trying to hide vanity. Just so. Since the vanity of some people is presented as the first cause of war in Elements of Law and De cive, it is odd that Strauss thinks that Hobbes felt he needed to hide vanity in his third treatment. Even if he wanted to hide vanity, it would not be because a belief in human evil was inflammatory. If Hobbes had had any worries about what seventeenth-century Christians would think, he could have said that he was taking the actual fallen condition of human beings as his starting point since all men are sinful. Moreover, in the guise of a Calvinist, a view shared during the Commonwealth by Presbyterians and Independents alike, he could have said that human beings were totally corrupted by the original sin.⁶¹ As for the likelihood that it was part of Hobbes’s philosophy that human nature was sinful, he explicitly denied it for good reasons, one of which is this: “the afflictions of the mind, which arise only from the lower parts of the soul, are not wicked in themselves”.⁶² Strauss was well aware of Hobbes’s denial; so he had to explain it away. His explanation depends on quoting part of the relevant text. But he omits quoting the part that undermines his interpretation:

 Ibid.  Hobbes, Leviathan, pp. , .  Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, p. .  Ibid. Later, Strauss implies that a person who kills someone in the state of nature is a murderer” (Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, p. ).  For the sake of argument, I am assuming here that Hobbes’s view of human beings originated from history or empirically. In fact, I think that the issue of the historical fall of human beings is irrelevant to Hobbes’s scientific presentation of human beings.  Hobbes, Philosophical Rudiments, “Preface”; Strauss, What is Political Philosophy?, p. .

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Some object that this principle [that except they be restrained through fear of some coercive power, every man will distrust and dread each other] being admitted, it would needs follow, not only that all men were wicked … but also wicked by nature, which cannot be granted without impiety. But this, that men are evil by nature, follows not from this principle. For though the wicked were fewer than the righteous, yet because we cannot distinguish them, there is a necessity of suspecting, heeding, anticipating, subjugating, self-defending, every incident to the most honest and fairest conditioned. Much less does it follow, that those who are wicked, are so by nature. For though from nature, that is, from their first birth, as they are merely sensible creatures, they have this disposition, [to] …do whatsoever is best pleasing to them; … yet are they not for this reason to be accounted wicked. For the affections of the mind, which arise only from the lower parts of the soul, are not wicked themselves; but the actions thence proceeding may be so sometimes, as when they are either offensive or against duty.⁶³

Hobbes gives here two reasons why he is not committed to the sinfulness of human nature. First, he does not need the strong premise that all people are sinful and therefore dangerous; he needs only the two modest and plausible premises that some people are dangerous and that we can’t always know which ones they are. Second, human nature would not be sinful even if every human being was actually vain because passions are not sins; only actions are. Hobbes says this in the Author’s Preface to the Reader of De cive (p. 100). It is particularly odd to make vain-glory the appetite that causes human problems, for vainglory is not a strong motivator of those who suffer from it: “Vain-glorious men … are enclined to rash engaging; and in the approach of danger, or difficulty, to retire hazard their honour, which may be salved with an excuse; than their

 Hobbes, Philosophical Rudiments, pp.  – . – “Objectum porro a nonnullis est, quod, admisso hoc principio, continuo sequatur homines omnes non modo malos, quod forte, etsi durum, concedendum tamen est; cum id clare dictum videatur in Scripturis sacris; sed etiam, quod concedi sine impietate non potest, natura malos esse. Illud vero, homines natura malos esse, ex hoc principio non sequitur. Nam etsi pauciores essent mali quam boni, quoniam tamen bonos a malis internoscere non possumus, necessitatis diffidendi, cavendi, anticipandi, subjugandi, quoquo modo se defendendi, incumbit perpetuo etiam bonis et modestis. Minus vero sequitur eos ipsos, qui mali sunt, ita factos esse a natura. Quamquam … a natura, hoc est, ab ipsa nativitate, ex eo quod nascantur, animalia hoc habeant, ut statim omnia quae sibi placent, cupiant faciuntque quantum possunt, ut quae impendent mala, aut metu fugiant, aut ira repellant, non tamen ob eam causam mala censeri solent: nam affectus animi qui a natura animali proficiscuntur, mali non sunt ipsi, sed actiones inde provenientes … confitendum est, posse homines a natura cupiditatem, metum, iram, caeteros affectus habere animales, ut tamen mali facti a natura non sint” (Hobbes, De cive, “Preface,” LW ; Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, pp.  – ).

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lives, for which no salve is sufficient”.⁶⁴ Vain-glory is the cowardly lion of passions. I have just now been discussing vanity in explaining why Hobbes does not believe that human nature is evil. But, as Strauss correctly points out, in this context Hobbes “does not mention vanity at all.” Strauss is again not reading between the lines. He is looking at the black ink of the text and saying that Hobbes does not say what one should expect him to say if Strauss’s interpretation is correct.⁶⁵ How then does he justify his interpretation that Hobbes puts everything on vanity? His evidence is the absence of evidence: “Natural vanity disappears in the caeteros affectus. It must vanish into them, it must be hidden by them, if man’s natural innocence is to be asserted”.⁶⁶ Although it is not clear to me whether Strauss is alluding to the position of vanity in Hobbes’s treatments of passions in chapter 6 of Leviathan or in his treatment of the state of nature in chapter 13, it does not matter which is the case. If it is the former treatment, then Strauss is mistaken about Hobbes’s purpose in analyzing so many passions. He wants to show that his metaphysics of motion is able to explain the most varied and complex of human phenomena. Vanity or vain-glory is not hidden. In addition to being discussed as others are, “Vain-glory” is noted in the margin. Hobbes had no reason to hide it because vanity is all too commonly observed. If, instead, Strauss is alluding to its treatment in chapter 13, vanity is not hiding. Vain-glory is a variant of glory; and glory is mentioned. Almost any other explanation would be more plausible than Strauss’s. We recently saw that Hobbes relies on various causes to explain war in the state of nature; and when he does mention vanity, he claims and needs to claim only that some people are vain. Some or many men may be vain all the time; but it is not part of human nature.⁶⁷ Let’s now focus more narrowly on Strauss’s discussion of the second postulate of human nature. Strauss says that reason is “reduced” by Hobbes to the desire for self-preservation.⁶⁸ In this case, a nonpassion supposedly becomes a passion. My guess is that Strauss wanted to convert Hobbes’s second principle, reason, into a passion because he thinks a thick conception of reason is characteristic of ancient thought. A thin conception of reason is characteristic of modern thought because, according to Strauss, modern political philosophy valorizes will. For Hobbes, the last passion or desire before action is will. So, since vanity     

Hobbes, Leviathan, p. . Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. . Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, p. . Hobbes, The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic; and Philosophical Rudiments, .. Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. .

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is a passion, Strauss has confirmed his view that Hobbes’s philosophy is basically a philosophy of will if by ‘reason’ Hobbes means the desire for self-preservation. For Strauss, the deep reality of the dichotomy of appetite and reason is the dichotomy of the passion of vanity and the passion for self-preservation. Strauss moralizes both vanity and self-preservation.⁶⁹ He claims the two postulates are “not the naturalistic antithesis of morally indifferent animal appetite (or of morally indifferent human striving after power) on the one hand, and morally indifferent striving after self-preservation on the other, but the moral and humanist antithesis of fundamentally unjust vanity and fundamentally just fear of violent death”.⁷⁰ If Strauss’s interpretation were right, then Hobbes would be a less impressive philosopher than he is generally credited as being, for part of the genius of his system is that he generates moral and political normative entities, laws and obligation, from nonnormative ones, appetites and reason. I don’t doubt that one can selectively harvest parts of Hobbes’s philosophy and end up with the philosophy Strauss attributes to Hobbes. But what one would have is not Hobbes’s philosophy but Strobbes’s.

3 Law Let’s now focus on the last of the three concepts, law. Let’s suppose with Strauss that medieval natural law theories make law independent of the human will.⁷¹ Hobbes’s natural law theory is the same. For Hobbes, the natural laws are not products of will. They are discovered by reason, not invented or created. They are eternal and unchanging. They always bind in foro interno no matter what an individual person should want or ‘wills’ with respect to when they bind in foro externo. If the laws of nature are in fact the commands of God, as Hobbes sometimes says, then there is an even stronger sense in which the laws of nature do not depend on human will.⁷² Strauss, along with a majority of scholars may find my claim wholly unconvincing. According to them, “The law of nature or the moral law as Hobbes conceives of it is not by itself … a law properly speaking”.⁷³ Typically, supporters of this position quote the following passage as if it were an explicit statement of that view:     

Strauss, The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, pp.  – . Ibid., p. . Ibid., p. viii. Hobbes, Leviathan, p. . Strauss, What is Political Philosophy?, p. .

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These dictates of reason men use to call by the name of laws, but improperly; for they are but conclusions or theorems concerning what conduceth to the conservation and defence of themselves; whereas law, properly, is the word of him that by right hath command over others.⁷⁴

In reply, I’ll make only three points. First, dictates of reason are not strictly identical with laws because counsels may be dictates of reason too.⁷⁵ Second, laws have to be commanded by someone with authority; so considered in abstraction from the command, the propositional contents are not laws; and, as theorems of reason, they are not laws. But from this, it does not follow that they are not laws simpliciter. Hobbes says that these dictates are “the undoubted word of God,” ⁷⁶ and that one of the ways that God speaks to humans is through reason.⁷⁷ Hobbes’s use of the phrase ‘dictates of reason’ makes clear that he is talking about the propositional content, independently of the force that it has as a law. If Strauss is right about the laws of nature, then Hobbes contradicted himself several times over. If I am right, he is saying what he ought to say. While Hobbes did contradict himself on several occasions, his contradictions should not be multiplied unnecessarily. It is no good to say that Hobbes was speaking metaphorically when he called the dictates of reason ‘laws’, for then he would be violating one of his basic principles of science: “metaphors and tropes of speech” can never be “true grounds of ratiocination”.⁷⁸ Even if my reply is not accepted, there are other reasons for holding that it would not be important if the laws of nature are not genuine laws. The science of the laws of nature is the “true moral philosophy”.⁷⁹ Since these so-called laws are independent of human will – they are deduced by reason – Hobbes’s morality is not based on will. Strauss presumably would accept my premises but deny my conclusion because he conceded that the sovereign “does not … determine the content of the moral law … [T]he moral law essentially precedes the sovereign: the obligation to obey the sovereign is a natural law obligation”.⁸⁰ As I understand Strauss’s comments on these latter quotations, he thinks that Hobbes’s doctrine is contradictory and that we need to choose which one is closest to his intentions. Because Strauss thinks that Hobbes is a modern and therefore  Hobbes, Leviathan, ..  Ibid., pp. ,  – .  The phrase “undoubted word of God” and similar phrases referring to the same thing were not unusual from  – . But they always referred to the Bible.  Hobbes, Leviathan, ./p. , ./p., . – /p. .  Ibid., ./p. .  Ibid., ..  Strauss, What is Political Philosophy?, pp.  – .

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someone who privileges will, he thinks that “the demand of civil obedience necessarily takes precedence” over objectivity, that is, that the sovereign’s will trumps everything else.⁸¹ I don’t see this. And I find his paradoxical comment that “by trying to give reasons for unqualified submission to authority, Hobbes makes impossible unqualified submission to authority” at best mystifying. There is definitely a problem with Hobbes’s philosophy here: the inalienable right of self-preservation can and does sometimes conflict with the commands of the sovereign.⁸² I believe he should have simply admitted this fact. No sovereign is so absolute that a subject never has a right to disobey a command. But this is a problem with absolute sovereignty. Proponents of limited sovereignty freely acknowledge that the individual and the sovereign may sometimes come into conflict. It is not accurate to say that the civil laws begin with a human being, if this is taken in the sense of a natural human being. Laws are commands of an artificial person. The sovereign is not identical with any human being or set of human beings. When it is said that Elizabeth Tutor or Charles Stuart was the sovereign, ‘is’ has the sense of constitution. The female Elizabeth and male Charles constituted the sovereign, just as gold constituted the ring of Gyges and bronze the shield of Achilles. So law as law is not to be identified with any natural human being’s natural will. The law is causally dependent on human beings, in that no sovereign can will anything unless at least one human being wills something. But it is a misleading oversimplification to say that civil law depends on the will of a human being. What I have said so far is consistent with a sense of ‘law’ in which the laws of nature depend on human nature. The laws of nature have the content that they do because of the way human beings are. It would be absurd for there to be laws applying to human beings at the most basic level if they were not connected in the right way with human nature. Think about why “Every human being has to master every theorem of mathematics before the age of five,” and “Every human being has to kill every other human being as soon after it is born as possible” cannot be laws of nature. How does what I am saying fit with the claim of many scholars that Hobbes is a voluntarist (or a legal positivist)? The answer depends on the interpretation of voluntarism. If a voluntarist is any philosopher who believes that law is command, Hobbes is one. But such voluntarists can consistently hold that genuine natural law is not arbitrary. Hobbes sometimes says that God commands the laws of nature. But that voluntaristic element is not the whole story about nat-

 Ibid., p. .  See Sreedhar, Hobbes on Resistance for a discussion.

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ural law as the original law. The command of law is not the content of the law; and the content is proved by reason, “the undoubted word of God,” as mentioned above.⁸³ What God says in virtue of reason is constrained by what reason yields. Reason cannot yield contradictions. They are the opposite of reason, namely, absurdity and irrationality. Reason cannot even yield contingent truths such as that monarchy is better than democracy or perhaps democracy is better than monarchy, because reason always expresses what is necessary and the negation of a necessary truth is a contradiction. But the negation of a contingent truth is not a contradiction but another contingent proposition. The laws of nature speak through reason in this way: Starting from the natural desire of self-preservation, reason calculates how self-preservation is necessarily achieved. Will only comes into Hobbes’s story when he gives his theory of action. Every act is caused by some desire; a will or a willing is the last desire before the action occurs. An act of will is part of the causal chain that ends in an action (that is not a passion). Will itself does not determine the content of a human being’s desires. The desire has a certain content: to live, to feed, to have shelter, to be not too hot and not too cold. But neither the desire nor the will determines the content in the relevant sense in which to determine something is to cause it. The connection between a desire and its content is a logical relationship. Most desires do not have self-preservation as their content because self-preservation is the dominant desire that requires many other desires as means to that end. The desire for self-preservation does not attach immediately to many actions or even attach at all to some, such as eating, drinking, or injecting known harmful substances. Strauss might object that there is a significant difference between ancient and modern natural law because Hobbes’s laws of nature are not genuine laws.⁸⁴ But that is beside the point. Strauss wanted to show that the foundation of law for Hobbes was subjective and based on will; and the laws of nature are neither. One might object that I have not gone back far enough or deeply enough to identify the foundation of law. The laws of nature, the objection continues, are deduced from self-preservation. A reply may begin by pointing out that the laws of nature in fact are deduced from the definition of ‘law of nature’, of which selfpreservation is a part, and not self-preservation itself. Perhaps a stronger reply is that if self-preservation is the foundation of law, then the foundation of baptism

 Hobbes, Leviathan, .; see also ..  Strauss, What is Political Philosophy?, p. .

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or (the sacrament of) penance is sin, and the foundation of the American Revolution was tyranny. Hobbes’s laws of nature are consonant with a sense of ‘law’ in which the laws of nature depend on human nature. They have the content that they do because of the way human beings are. It would be absurd for there to be laws applying to human beings at the most basic level if they were not connected in the right way with human nature. That is why “Always try to kill as many people as possible” could not be a law of nature. How does what I am saying fit with the claim of many scholars that Hobbes is a voluntarist or a legal positivist as regards civil law? I will give a reply only to voluntarism because the answer that applies to legal positivism is analogous. Whether Hobbes is a voluntarist or not depends on the definition of or the criterion for voluntarism. If a voluntarist is any philosopher who believes that law is the command of the sovereign, Hobbes is one. But such voluntarism is consistent with the proposition that civil laws are not unacceptably arbitrary. For Hobbes, civil law cannot contradict natural law, and the content of natural law is proved by reason, and a fortiori consistent with reason. Of course, no one has the right to judge that a putative command of the sovereign is in fact inconsistent with the laws of nature. The logic of sovereignty prohibits citizens from interfering with the sovereign’s job of governance. Here is a paradox in Hobbes’s theory: a sovereign’s putative command may not be a law in fact; but no citizen has the right to act on the belief that it is not.

4 Conclusion Strauss was wrong to think (i) that for Hobbes rights in the state of nature are claim rights; (ii) that the two postulates of human nature are vanity and selfpreservation; (iii) that reason is reducible to self-preservation; (iv) that vanity is the only cause of war in the state of nature; and (v) that laws for Hobbes are fundamentally subjective and grounded in will.⁸⁵ Why did Strauss go so far wrong in his interpretation? My guess is that such big mistakes are the result of his desire to confirm a big theory, the theory that modern political philosophy is significantly different in specific ways from the  Among the important, correct, and relatively novel claims that Strauss makes are first that the “fundamental distinction of bodies is that into bodies natural and bodies politic (Strauss, What is Political Philosophy?, p. ). This implication is that Hobbes never should have made De homine separate from De corpore. Second, Hobbes’s emphasis on self-preservation and a thin conception of reason greatly contrasts with the assumptions of classical philosophy.

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theory and practice of ancient political philosophy. Although he did not have the grand theory of Natural Right and History completely worked out in 1936, the last chapter of The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes sketches a general theory of history, in which Hobbes, the representative of modern philosophers, is contrasted with Plato and Aristotle, the representatives of classical philosophy. I think that Strauss’s desire to get Hobbes’s philosophy to fit his general theory caused him to misunderstand that philosophy. An alternative way for me to put the point is that Strauss’s interpretation of Hobbes and other political philosophers is Olympian. Seeing philosophical texts from a great height, he thought he saw a large pattern; but the pattern required adjusting some details in order to fit and taking little or no account of others. The god on high has favorites and enemies, and makes judgments about them accordingly.⁸⁶

Bibliography Blau, Adrian, “Anti-Strauss”, in: Journal of Politics 74 (2012), pp. 152 – 5. Bloom, Alan, “Leo Strauss: September 20, 1899-October 18, 1973”, in: Political Theory 2 (1974), pp. 372 – 92. Cooper, Kody, “Reason and Desire After the Fall of Man: A Rereading of Hobbes’s Two Postulates of Human Nature”, in: Hobbes Studies 26 (2013), pp. 107 – 29. Devigne, Robert, Recasting Conservatism: Oakeshott, Strauss, and the Response to Postmodernism, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1994. Drury, Shadia, The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1988. Gauthier, David, The Logic of Leviathan, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1969. Hampton, Jean, Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986. Hobbes, Thomas, The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic, 1640. (referred to by chapter and section number). Hobbes, Thomas, De cive, 1647 (referred to by chapter and section number). Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, London, 1651 (page references are to a Head copy). Hobbes, Thomas, De homine, 1658 (referred to by chapter and section number). Hobbes, Thomas, Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Society and Government, in: Id., Man and Citizen, Bernard Gert (ed.), Garden City, Anchor Books, 1972; 1st ed. 1647. Hobbes, Thomas, On the Citizen, Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthorne (eds.), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998. Hobbes, Thomas, Latin Leviathan in Leviathan: The English and Latin Texts, Noel Malcolm (ed.), Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2012.

 I want to thank Devin Stauffer for discussing my views about Strauss’s interpretation of Hobbes at an early stage, Kody Cooper and Eva Odzuck for their helpful comments, and Adrian Blau, whose comments were invaluable.

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Kavka, Gregory, Hobbesian Moral and Political Philosophy, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1986. Kraynak, Robert P., History and Modernity in the Thought of Thomas Hobbes, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1990. Martinich, A. P., Two Gods of Leviathan: Religion and Politics in Hobbes’s Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992. Martinich, A. P., Hobbes, London, Routledge, 2005. Oakeshott, Michael, “Dr. Leo Strauss on Hobbes”, in: Hobbes on Civil Association, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1975, pp. 132 – 49. Pangle, Thomas, Leo Strauss: An Introduction to his Thought and Intellectual Legacy, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Peters, Richard S., Hobbes, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1956. Reik, Miriam, The Golden Lands of Thomas Hobbes, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1977. Smith, Steven B., The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009. Sorrell, Tom, Hobbes, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986. Sreedhar, Suzanne, Hobbes on Resistance, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013. Stauffer, Devin, “Reopening the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns: LeoStrauss’s Critique of Hobbes’s ‘New Political Science’”, in: American Political Science Review 101 (2007), pp. 223 – 33. Strauss, Leo, The Political Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes: Its Basis and Genesis, Oxford, Clarendon Press; reprinted in 1952 by University of Chicago Press, with an additional Preface 1936. Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1952. Strauss, Leo, What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies, New York, The Free Press, 1959. Strauss, Leo, Hobbes’ politische Wissenschaft in ihrer Genesis, Neuwied am Rhein, Luchterhand, 1965a. Strauss, Leo, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, translated by E. M. Sinclair, New York, Schocken Books, 1965b; originally published (1930), Die Religionskritik Spinozas als Grundlage seiner Bibelwissenschaft. Strauss, Leo, “Progress or Return”, in: Thomas Pangle (ed.), The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1989, pp. 227 – 70. Strauss, Leo, Hobbes’s Critique of Religion, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2011. Tarcov, Nathan and Pangle, Thomas, “Epilogue: Leo Strauss and the History of Political Philosophy”, in: Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (eds.), History of Political Philosophy, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1987, pp. 907 – 38. Vlastos, Gregory, Sunstein, Paul, and Gordis, Robert, “Further Lessons of Leo Strauss: An Exchange”. [New York Review of Books], 1986, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1986/apr/24/further-lessons-of-leo-strauss-an-exchange, visited on 15 July 2013. Watkins, J. W. N., Hobbes, London, Hutchinson University Library, 1973. Zuckert, Catherine, “Strauss’s Return to Premodern Thought”, in: Steven B. Smith (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Leo Strauss, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 93 – 118.

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Art of Writing or Art of Rewriting? Reading Hobbes’s De motu against the Background of Strauss’ Interpretation

1 Looking into Hobbes’s files: De motu, loco et tempore and its aftermath As an opening work for Hobbes’s “first philosophy”, and the first in which he addressed the general questions of both his science and metaphysics, De motu, loco et tempore (hereafter DM) occupies a very special position in Hobbes’s corpus. Being obliged to follow his interlocutor, Thomas White on his ground, Hobbes could not escape the big theoretical issues raised by White’s scholastic theology.¹ He could not simplify or shorten the philosophical agenda, as he did later in De Corpore, excluding the field of theology from the competence of philosophy. However, the presence of this work in current Hobbes scholarship is very scant. Since it was written originally in Latin and barely addressed political issues, Anglo-Saxon scholars usually have avoided much engaging with it.² Most of the debate on Hob-

 I quote this work in the main text, indicating chapters and sections, according to the Latin edn. made by Jean Jaquot and Harold Whitmore Jones (Hobbes ). I consulted also Harold Whitmore Jones’ English transl. (), but I have often modified it to come closer to the Latin original. For the general characteristics of this work, left unpublished by Hobbes, features and history of the only extant manuscript, see Jaquot and Jones’s Introd. (pp.  – ), Paganini’s Introd. to his Italian transl. (Paganini, “Introduction”, in: Hobbes, Moto, luogo e tempo, pp.  – ), and Paganini, “How Did Hobbes Think of the Existence and Nature of God?: De Motu, Loco et Tempore as a Turning Point in Hobbes’s Philosophical Career”.  Curley is one of the most notable exceptions. See Curley, “‘I Durst Not Write So Boldly’ or how to Read Hobbes’ Theological-Political Treatise”, esp. pp.  – . Despite the theological import of DM, there are very scant references to it in Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics, esp. pp.  – , and they concern: a) the difference between “proof” and “demonstration” in the case of God (on this, see also Martinich, A Hobbes Dictionary, pp.  – ); b) the difference between the philosophical God and the Christian God, whose properties are impossible to demonstrate. As to a) Schuhmann, “La question de Dieu chez Hobbes”, p.  aptly remarked that “in Hobbes’ theory of science there is no such a distinction”. As to b), all the Christian tradition (including Luther and Calvin) meant that some sort of philosophical demonstration of God’s existence should be counted among the “preambles” of the faith in the Christian God.

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bes’s theological positions has turned on Leviathan and the last writings, for instance, the famous debate on Calvin and Hobbes between Curley and Martinich and, more recently, the discussion reaching back to Leviathan, but not much earlier, between Springborg and Martinich.³ After the first edition by Jacquot and Jones, it can be said that mainly European scholars (Pacchi⁴ even before the edition, and after, Schuhmann, Leijenhorst, Lupoli,⁵ and myself) plus the American Curley, have addressed this work and paid it the attention that it deserves. Yet DM was a decisive turning point⁶ in Hobbes’s intellectual history, both for the foundation of a new scientific ontology and for the bold attack it launched on the pretensions of philosophical theology. For, DM’s uniqueness in Hobbes’s corpus lies in the fact that it speaks against any possibility of rationally proving the existence of God. This is in sharp contrast to what is affirmed, for instance, in the Elements and De Cive; at the same time, Hobbes claims not to be irreligious, openly asserting that the only means to preserve religion from the attack of reason is to keep the two perfectly separate. For him, it is not the defeat of White’s arguments that paves the way to atheism; the true adversary of religion is White himself, who promises in vain to give a demonstration in forma even though he cannot resist rational criticism (see esp. DM XXVI, 1– 6). Interpreters are divided about the historical meaning of this work and its consistency with Hobbes’s other works. Pacchi termed this approach “fideistic skepticism”;⁷ Curley spoke of a “fideistic experiment”, bordering on a true “aberration” with regard to the remainder of Hobbes’s work, so that in Leviathan

 Recently the debate Springborg a – Martinich a,b has taken the place of the older one between Curley a,b and the same Martinich ; however, both debates focus on the theological positions of the later Hobbes. Two recent articles discuss the late theology of Hobbes, especially the issue of the corporeal God, and provide an accurate overview of the different positions: see Springborg, “Hobbes’s Challenge to Descartes, Bramhall and Boyle: A Corporeal God”; Gorham, “The Theological Foundation of Hobbesian Physics: A Defence of Corporeal God”. For an accurate examination of the status quaestionis on the whole of Hobbes’s theological thought see now the important book of Schotte, Die Entmachung Gottes durch den Leviathan. Thomas Hobbes über Religion, esp. pp.  – .  Pacchi, “Hobbes and the Problem of God”; Id., Scritti hobbesiani, esp. pp.  – .  Schuhmann, “La question de Dieu chez Hobbes”; Leijenhorst, The Mechanisation of Aristotelianism: the Late Aristotelian Setting of Thomas Hobbes’ Natural Philosophy; Lupoli, Nei limiti della materia. Hobbes e Boyle: materialismo epistemologico, filosofia corpuscolare e ‘dio corporeo’; Paganini, “Hobbes alla ricerca del primo motore: il De motu, loco et tempore”; Id., “Introduction”, in: Hobbes, Moto, luogo e tempo; Id., “How Did Hobbes Think of the Existence and Nature of God?: De Motu, Loco et Tempore as a Turning Point in Hobbes’s Philosophical Career”.  So DM is defined in Paganini, “How Did Hobbes Think of the Existence and Nature of God? : De Motu, Loco et Tempore as a Turning Point in Hobbes’s Philosophical Career”.  Pacchi, Scritti hobbesiani ( – ), p. .

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Hobbes abandoned this “strategy” that could have also “tactical disadvantages”, such as to bring him “dangerously close to the doctrine of double truth”.⁸ Schuhmann held that it was possible to resolve this conflict between reason and faith, and between DM and the other political works, by maintaining that the arguments about the existence of God which feature in the other works are not demonstrations in forma and that even the claim of God’s existence (the sole attribute that can properly be ascribed to Him, according to DM)⁹ would be an honorific and not an assertive predicate. Therefore, all religious language should be considered as “pious” and not “dogmatic”, expressing reverence and not affirming any philosophical truth.¹⁰ Cees Lejenhorst has followed more or less the same path,¹¹ but one should bear in mind the important caveat made by Patricia Springborg, according to whom this distinction between different kinds of language cannot be considered as the acknowledgment of “parallel truths”.¹² From the theoretical standpoint, Hobbes did not put forth any doctrine of “double truth”, not even in DM. What is above reason cannot go against it, but it could represent a recommendation or a warning (a counsel or an order) aimed at guaranteeing the “legal order”¹³. Springborg convincingly argues that, besides the assertive and the honorific discourse, there is in the Hobbesian discourse a third register to be taken into account: the legal and the authoritative one, which does not stem from a demonstration, but from a command, the goal of which is peace and not truth. However, the problem remains open of explaining how Hobbes could affirm, shortly before DM, (as Curley aptly remarked) that there is a God by the light of nature (DCi II, 21) or by natural reason (XIV, 19; XV, 14), and eight years later develop the famous argument from the first cause in Leviathan (XII, 6; cf. XI, 25)¹⁴ along the same lines which were sharply criticized and finally rejected in DM. So, if Leo Strauss had known this work, DM, which was totally unknown in his time, he would have raised the vexata quaestio of Hobbes’s consistency: how could Hobbes have taken up again in 1651 the same causal argument that he  Curley, “‘I Durst Not Write So Boldly’ or how to Read Hobbes’ Theological-Political Treatise”, pp.  – .  Several supporting passages in DM XXVII, ; XXXIV, ; XXXV,  (God is “Ens”). See also DCi XV, ; Lev. XXXI, .  See Schuhmann, “La question de Dieu chez Hobbes”; Leijenhorst, “Hobbes’s Corporeal Deity”.  Leijenhorst, “Hobbes’s Corporeal Deity”.  Springborg, “Hobbes’s Challenge to Descartes, Bramhall and Boyle: A Corporeal God”, pp. ,  – , which I follow on this point.  Ibid., pp.  – .  For a presentation of these arguments see the article “God” in Martinich, A Hobbes Dictionary, pp.  – .

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had already demolished in 1643? This is one of the incongruities, contradictions, or disjunctures that might legitimately hint at a double meaning, and accordingly need a double reading, of Hobbes’s texts, as Strauss believed. Yet, before addressing the issue of a possible Straussian reading of Hobbes (which I shall examine, with important qualifications, at the end of this article), I shall stay, for now, close to the letter of Hobbes’s text (DM) and after directly compare it to the other fully philosophical works, mainly De corpore. In so doing, I intend also to put forth the consequences that DM’s approach had on Hobbes’s later works.

2 De motu’s theological minimalism¹⁵ Even though it remained unpublished, DM had a seminal influence on Hobbes’s later works, indeed. Besides being an exercise in philosophical argumentation which provided nearly one fourth of the written text of De Corpore, DM acted as the “laboratory” where Hobbes tested the possible combination between his “first philosophy” and Galileo’s science, using White’s scholasticism as a reagent. This latter was the bad example in question when Hobbes asked what the philosopher would have done if he had to choose between “dissimilar mares” (i. e. science and religion, reason and faith) that would have dragged him in “opposite directions” (DM XIV, 7). In opposition to White, who mingled both religion and philosophy, Hobbes’s own approach would have been the good example of keeping the two domains rightly separate. However, in the field of theology, the final outcome of Hobbes’s attitude was actually much more destructive than constructive. The main advantage of a polemical work is the fact that the author is not required to produce his own arguments, but simply to refute those proposed by his interlocutor, who represents a distillation of the entire metaphysical and theological tradition. In reality, the final result of this sort of deconstruction is very scant, from the theological point of view. For Hobbes, in DM: A) There is no possible demonstration of the existence of God, even though His sole “true” attribute is supposed to be just existence. B) The only philosophical argument that Hobbes might have accepted (an argument based on the cause of motion in the universe) must end up by showing the irreconcilability of motion with the supposed immateri I adopt this nice formulation from Springborg, “Calvin and Hobbes: A Reply to Curley, Martinich and Wright”, p. . Also Wright, Religion, Politics and Thomas Hobbes, pp.  – , agrees on a certain anti-theological import of Hobbes’s work, even while placing him in the history of the “theology of repristination” of the original Christian simplicity (p. ). Neither author specifically refers, however, to DM.

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ality of the first mover. C) Any analogy with the action of the human soul either is out of place or even risks extending materiality also to substances that should be immaterial (Hobbes’s whole psychology is entirely materialistic, in DM as well as in the other works). D) Ultimately, any attempt to apply philosophical arguments to the problem of God’s relationship to the universe cannot but lead to inextricable contradictions or to a concept of a corporeal first mover perpetually in motion. E) As an alternative, Hobbes leaves open the way to an infinite chain made up of causes and effects all brought about by means of motion, which implies once again their absolute materiality. This is a short summary of the main anti-theological theses developed in DM that exemplify the audacity of this work, despite all the efforts displayed to separate faith and philosophy, and to preserve the former from the corrosive action of the latter. Even though Hobbes does not explicitly state in DM a doctrine of a corporeal God (as he will do in the Appendix to the Latin Leviathan), nor a flat rejection of incorporeal spirits (as in the English Leviathan), one could say that the author of DM laid the main foundations to achieve these results.¹⁶ This can be easily seen by a quick cross-referencing from DM to Leviathan and De Corpore. Indeed, it seems that DM established the range of possibilities and impossibilities Hobbes would later have either to develop or to eliminate. After a closer study of DM, we shall be able to draw up a tabula absentiae et praesentiae of these different arguments in the larger span of Hobbes’s work.

3 Deconstructing the theological argument in De motu However, before analysing the consequences of DM, I have to present the way in which Hobbes first deconstructs and then reconstructs the theological argument used by his interlocutor, Thomas White, an argument that is a combination of the first and the second “ways” developed in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae. ¹⁷ Hobbes’s intention is to show that this argument is very far from achieving the result White wishes, and that by contrast it points in the opposite direction. Going back to the original source, Aristotle, Hobbes at first tries to rewrite the

 For a deeper analysis of the extremely problematic situation of theology that comes out in DM see Paganini, “How Did Hobbes Think of the Existence and Nature of God?: De Motu, Loco et Tempore as a Turning Point in Hobbes’s Philosophical Career”, esp. p. .  For a fuller analysis of this argument and Hobbes’s treatment of it, see Paganini, ibid., pp.  – .

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argument, yet starting from his own new philosophical “nomenclature” (established at the beginning of this same chapter: DM XXVII, 1– 7). This is the reason why his treatment of the subject takes the form of a rewriting: instead of writing a new demonstration, or even a counter-demonstration, Hobbes limits himself to rewriting Aristotle’s and White’s argument, but using his own method of demonstration and, what is more, imposing new meanings on the old metaphysical terms. This rewriting is preliminary to a close examination whose outcome is in reality a plain destruction. In this connection, Hobbes’s intentions are rather deflationary than constructive. Therefore, Hobbes does not need in DM any “art of writing”, in the sense of Strauss: he never hides nor conceals between the lines the substance of his position, all the more so because he has no true demonstration to put in the place of the false one. Furthermore, he can consider himself safe from theological accusations, having shown that what harms religion is not his attitude of sharp separation, but instead White’s philosophical ambitions, which turn out to be entirely deceiving. I spoke about rewriting, but I might also use the metaphor of translation. In order to assess the real import of White’s arguments, Hobbes must first translate the argument from the old language of metaphysics into the new language of his own “first philosophy”. Of course, the novelty does not consist in using new words, but in using the same terms with new meanings. Hobbes’s reconstruction reads as follows. Aristotle and White would have reached their “truth” (the existence of an ultimate mover) starting from two basic principles (“axioms”) which – he says – would be known by “induction”. The first is plainly in conformity with Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, indeed: Quicquid movetur, movetur ab alio (everything that is moved is moved by another), while the second principle: Quicquid movet, movetur (anything that moves is in turn moved) actually overlaps White’s second, but it is reinterpreted by Hobbes in the light of Galileo’s physics, even though he passes it off as Aristotelian (DM XXVII, 18). The importance of having completely changed the meanings of his philosophical “nomenclature”, from an Aristotelian frame to a mechanistic one, cannot be overlooked. Just to take one significant example: since the first and main proof is a “way from motion” (“via motus”), the fact of transforming in depth the notion of movement (see DM XXVII, 7– 12) cannot but change the nature, structure, and also the aim of this particular demonstration (the only one that Hobbes seems to be ready to take into consideration, indeed). Moreover, Hobbes does not say that the second axiom should apply exclusively to secondary causes, and not to the first mover (this is what Aristotle meant). According to Aristotle, the mover can be “first” if and only if it moves

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the heavens by operating not as an efficient, but as a final, cause – that is, without moving itself, whence the denomination of unmovable mover. Obviously, this reserve was not due to an oversight on Hobbes’s part,¹⁸ yet to a deliberately taken position. The ultimate result is turning the argument upside down; the least one can say is that “via motus” does not prove what Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and White meant it to prove, namely the existence of an unmoved and therefore spiritual first mover. Let us first examine the argument as it features in DM XXVII, 18: After seeing that the bodies constituting the finite world are finite in number, Aristotle derived from any one of them that was moved the motion of the second, and from the motion of this the motion of the third, until he reached the last. Now, because it was clear, in accordance with the second axiom, that the body was in movement, since it had moved the next-to-last, and, in accordance with the first axiom, that it was moved by another one, he saw that he had to postulate the existence of an incorporeal mover.

Yet, in Hobbes’s reconstruction, the combination of the two axioms produces something that is very opposite to this reassuring conclusion. In actual fact, the passage goes on thus: However, Aristotle ought to have added that, from the second axiom, this incorporeal mover is also moved, and from the first axiom that it is also moved by something else.

In other words, even the ‘first’ mover needs moving by another one, so that it cannot be truly ‘first’. Instead – it is just an implicit, but clear entailment – one could think of an infinite series of movers, which is to be explicated in the subsequent De Corpore. Or, the second alternative will be outlined in De corpore and is already clear in DM: the first mover must also be in movement, which implicitly implies that it cannot be but material, because from a strictly philosophical point of view only a body can move and be in movement.¹⁹ And

 In at least one passage Hobbes was referring exactly to the correct Aristotelian doctrine: “quicquid enim movet aliud, id ipsum et movetur (excepto primo motore Deo inconceptibili) (TOII IV, ). In DM VII,  he acknowledges that the idea of God as a unmoved mover is “not natural”: “Quod enim Deus moveat immotus, id non est naturale sed supra naturam; atque etiam supra captum humanum, & concedendum fide in honorem Dei, cuius naturae aliquid à nobis conceptibile attribuere, nisi figuratè fas non est”. This means that of a motionless mover one cannot have any philosophical notion, but only a dogma of faith: it can only be “believed in honour of God”.  In DM Hobbes also insinuates other ideas very far from being ‘orthodox’: from the thesis of coeternity of God and world (which was admitted by some theologians sub specie of eternal creation) to the idea of eternal matter, until the insinuation that this eternal, possibly divine, matter

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since every causality ultimately consists in motion, also the second way “ex ratione causae efficientis” falls into the same difficulties, reaching a dead end too. It is true that in this very passage, following White’s argument, Hobbes examines a third possibility, which is perfectly Aristotelian: “to postulate an incorporeal mover”; yet he adds immediately after that, given the new Galilean framework, this must imply that one be able to show “how incorporeal things, even though not moved, can yet move” (DM XXVII, 18; see also 20). In the Aristotelian and Scholastic view, this is not a big problem and in fact White simply refers to the example of “the soul in animals” (DM XXVII, 18) and shortly after to the human soul (DM XXVII, 20). Unfortunately, all this does not make sense in Hobbes’s psychology that is entirely mechanistic and materialistic; for him, “there is no need to take refuge in an incorporeal mover”, or in a “motionless mover” in order to explain the real functioning of the psychological operations. DM’s mechanistic psychology is wholly made of material structures like heart, brain, nerves, sense organs, spirits (in the physiological meaning of this term: subtle, speedy and extremely active portions of matter), so that that there is no place for an immaterial mover like the traditional, spiritual soul. (DM XXVII, 19). The entire description of human life, including mental life, obeys the principles of the new physics, even though Hobbes is not able yet to develop the details of this functioning, except for some conjectural and very rough hypotheses. However, what he knows and says is already enough to reject White’s metaphysics of the soul. This is also the reason why he cannot accept the analogy outlined by White between the human soul and God as the two types of spiritual movers supposed to move without any movement and without being themselves moved (DM XXVII, 19 – 20). White’s spiritualistic psychology seems to Hobbes a perfect example of the plain absurdities into which metaphysics must fall, and he despises his adversary evoking the mockeries of Lucian addressing “the whole mob of metaphysicians: O Lucian, I wish you were alive” (DM XXVII, 20). Besides this highly rhetorical coup de theatre, it is the very core of White’s reasoning that is ridiculed by Hobbes and reduced to nonsense. All the complex argumentation put forth by White was meant to show that, “being unmoved, the soul moves itself”; yet, this affirmation amounts in DM to a plain contradiction. Ironically, Hobbes remarks that it seems that in metaphysics “we are allowed to pronounce contradictory statements about spiritual nature”, whereas the same “is not allowed as regards corporeal nature.” (DM XXVII, 19). Behind the mock-

plays the role of the first cause eternally in motion: exactly the second alternative outlined in DC XXVI,  (the first one is the infinite series of movers). See DM XXIX, ; XXXIII, ).

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ery, for Hobbes the theological mover and the psychological one are on a par, yet with consequences that are contrary to White’s. Even though it is not clearly stated, it is hinted clearly enough that Hobbes’s materialist psychology necessarily implies, at least from a philosophical standpoint, a similar materialist theology, as will become clear in his later works. Since for White the human soul and God are supposed to share the same spiritual nature, at least in some measure (by “analogy”, White says), overthrowing the former Hobbes ends up by turning upside down the Aristotelian theology as well: the infinite regress of movers cannot be stopped by a first spiritual mover, just as in psychology we do not need any incorporeal mover external to the body.²⁰

4 Anti-theological cross-references from De motu to De corpore It is time now to see the consequences of DM in Hobbes’s later works, evaluating the impact exerted by this unpublished manuscript on the books he brought out in the next dozen years. It is notable that this work had an important influence in three different directions, at least: first, in scientific matters, where Hobbes confirmed his adherence to Galileism; secondly, in the field of “first philosophy”, where the author carried out his polemic against Aristotelian metaphysics, in favour of a new scientific philosophy; thirdly, in deepening the gulf between sound philosophy and the unsound pretensions of theology. I shall concentrate on the follow-up in this third domain, where the sharp separation between faith and reason took on the form, in the end, of the expulsion of theology from the very field of philosophy. Thus, theological minimalism became more and more an anti-theological strain. a) Once dismantled in DM, the theory of an unmovable spiritual mover was not taken up again by Hobbes in the properly philosophical works (the case is a

 Given this connection, it is not an oddity that Hobbes introduces his own materialistic and mechanistic psychology in the same theological chapter that is devoted to the problem of the first mover. Hobbes’s psychology is fully developed in DM XXX,  –  and almost entirely adopted in DC. An excerpt of this mechanistic psychology was published by Mersenne in his Ballistica () and it will be largely reprised in the first part of the anthropological argument (“Of Man”) of Leviathan. On Hobbes’s psychology in connection with Gassendi’s, see Paganini, “Hobbes, Gassendi e la psicologia del meccanicismo”.

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little different for the “popular” works that are aimed at political or religious topics where the immateriality of God is rescued at least as a sign of “honour”)²¹. b) By contrast, after being implicitly suggested in DM, the possibility of an infinite regress is also considered in De Corpore, where Hobbes affirms that a regress ad infinitum does not result in a logical impossibility, but just in psychological discomfort, which brings the philosopher, or simply man, a sense of weariness (defatigatus) in going back through the chain of causes. Hobbes hinted at this very idea of an uninterrupted chain of causes in another passage of De Corpore, where, referring to the cause of the universe, he speaks of it indifferently in the singular and the plural: “one eternal cause or more causes” of the universe. This section of DC takes up again the examination of the two possible proofs of the existence God as a first mover or a first cause (which means for Hobbes the same, because any causation is made by motion) exactly at the same point where he had left them in DM; yet, the later work is much more explicit than the former, so that it is worth quoting in full. The first phrase of De corpore adds a new qualification that makes of the infinite regress just a psychological and not a logical impossibility: “And though a man may from some effect proceed to the immediate cause thereof, and from that to a more remote cause, and so ascend continually by very correct ratiocination [raciocinatione rectissima] from cause to cause; yet he will not be able to proceed eternally, but wearied [defatigatus] will at last give up, without knowing whether it were possible for him to proceed to an end or not”.

 It seems that the idea of a “corporeal God” was already at the heart of an early long letter ( pages) of Hobbes to Descartes ( November ), which is no longer extant, even though we can reconstruct its contents from the correspondence between Descartes and Mersenne. On this early episode and the later phases of Hobbes’s philosophical career, especially referring to the problem posed by the corporeal God see the excellent overview in Springborg . She considers and discusses a lot of recent research by several scholars (especially Leijenhorst,”Hobbes’s Corporeal Deity”; Schuhmann, “La question de Dieu chez Hobbes”; Lupoli, Nei limiti della materia. Hobbes e Boyle: materialismo epistemologico, filosofia corpuscolare e ‘dio corporeo’; Weber, Hobbes et le corps de Dieu; Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics; Id., “On Hobbes’s English Calvinism: Necessity, Omnipotence,and Goodness”; Id., “Epicureism and Calvinism in Hobbes’s Philosophy: Consequences of Interpretation”; Curley, “‘I Durst Not Write So Boldly’ or how to Read Hobbes’ Theological-Political Treatise”; Id., “Calvin and Hobbes, or Hobbes as an Orthodox Christian”; Calvin, “Reply to Professor Martinich”) on the late attempts made by Hobbes to suggest that God could be a “fluid substance”, with all the problems of consistency between theology and his philosophy that this hypothesis raises. This late Hobbes is beyond the scope of this article, which mainly addresses the early work of the philosopher, trying to show that some premises of these later developments were already laid at the time of DM.

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Hobbes explains that no absurdity will follow in either hypothesis, which is enough to admit the possibility of an infinite regress. What comes after is even more important, because now in De Corpore Hobbes makes explicit what in the parallel passage of DM was still implicit: more an entailment than a clear affirmation. De Corpore reads thus: “Besides, though from this, that nothing can move itself, it may rightly be inferred that there was some eternal first mover; yet never can be inferred what people are used to inferring, namely that that mover was eternally immoveable, but rather eternal motion [aeternum motum]. For as it is true, that nothing is moved by itself; so it is true also that nothing is moved but by that which is already moved [ita etiam verum est nihil moveri nisi a moto]” (DC XXVI, 1).²²

One can easily recognize at work here both the axioms of which DM had already spoken (DM XXVII, 18) and that we analysed before. It is also absolutely astonishing that in this very section of De corpore, when referring to the final outcome of the causal argument, Hobbes speaks indifferently of “one or many eternal cause or causes” (“ad causam aliquam aeternam unam vel plures”), singular and plural on a par. c) In the last period, the “corporeal god” which is always in motion reappears in the Appendix of the Latin Leviathan and in the Answer to The Catching of Leviathan. This “corporeal god” seems legitimately derived from the second axiom of DM’s “via motus”, which is about a mover continually moving. By making Galileo’s physics foundational for any ontology, Hobbes implies that nothing but body can act by motion. This is already clear in DM, even though he hesitated there between the thesis of a unique corporal mover (singular, as in the Latin Leviathan) and the possibility of a chain of several and potentially infinite causes (plural), which was not excluded either in DM or in De Corpore. ²³ d) The affirmation, firmly established in DM (see esp. XXVI, 1– 6), that the theological argument does not have the formal status of demonstration,²⁴ explains the reason why the so-called “proofs” (better: arguments) scattered throughout Hobbes’s subsequent political works appear to be so loose and rough. In fact, they are not, and cannot be, demonstrations in forma, rather being some pieces of rhetorical discourse directed at a wider and non-professional audience; their aim is not an exercise in proper philosophical argumentation, but rather to recommend obedience towards authorities, which are at the  For the original Latin text see Schuhmann’s critical edn., Schuhmann, “La question de Dieu chez Hobbes”, p. .  For this last phase of Hobbes’s theology see the literature mentioned above, n. .  Cf. Paganini, “Introduction”, in: Hobbes, Moto, luogo e tempo, pp.  – .

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same time civil and religious. In that connection, affirmation of the existence of God constitutes a crucial piece of the theological-political complex, representing the basis of political obligation, yet it is not matter of properly philosophical investigation. e) On the other hand, much emphasis has been put by some scholars on the causal argument that is presented in Leviathan (Lev. XII, 6). Referring to those passages, some interpreters have claimed that, besides an “informal belief in God”, Hobbes maintained a real “proof for the existence of God. Hobbes believes that there is such a proof, and again his belief fits into a long and honourable tradition” that goes back to the “causal argument” laid by Aquinas.²⁵ As we have seen, in fact this causal argument had been already dismantled by Hobbes in his polemic against White almost ten years earlier. So, it is surprising to read that this argument can be considered at least as a “proof”, whereas Hobbes claimed in DM that there cannot be any true philosophical demonstration of God’s existence or any other theological topic.²⁶ Perhaps, one could reply (like Martinich) that the objections raised by Hobbes against White are just arguments ad hominem, which are addressed to scholastic metaphysics, and not to philosophy at all.²⁷

 Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics, p. . Most likely, this affirmation depends on the fact that Martinich neglects the crucial importance of DM’s argument on this point (see his Chapter  “God”); this author refers to DM mostly in the Appendix A (pp.  – ) and in Martinich, A Hobbes Dictionary, pp.  – ; both times, he distinguishes between “demonstration” and “proof”. See contra this argument Schuhmann, “La question de Dieu chez Hobbes”. Also according to Schotte, Die Entmachung Gottes durch den Leviathan. Thomas Hobbes über Religion (see esp. his valuable section on “Die Erkenntnis Gottes: Der Schluss auf die eine erste Ursache”, pp.  – ), there is in Hobbes no real “proof” of God’s existence, rather “an analysis of a psychological proceeding”, which ends by postulating the existence of a first cause. For Hobbes, the existence of a “first mover” would be “plausible” and “free from contradictions”, even though it would be more the premise than the justification of the causal description of the world (see esp. p. ). In his analysis of this point, Schotte mainly focuses on Hobbes’s major works, whereas a deeper examination of DM’s peculiarities might question (as we have shown) all this supposed “plausibility” and “absence of contradictions” in God’s notion.  Martinich admitted this point in his subsequent work: Martinich, A Hobbes Dictionary, p. .  Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics, p.  goes much further trying to show that Hobbes is a good Protestant (even though a “nonstandard” one), not only for separating theology from philosophy (p. ), but also for criticizing philosophers from the standpoint of the Bible: “Any Reformer might have said something similar” (p. ).

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This possible objection does not take into account that Hobbes qualifies simply as proceeding aphilosophos (unphilosophically) any way of applying philosophy to religious issues, i. e. of doing philosophical theology (DM XXVI, 1), even if it is true that Hobbes primarily presents his thoughts on the causal argument and “via motus” as a critique of White’s scholastic reasoning. Furthermore, it is also true that the so called “proof” of Leviathan is basically the same as Aquinas’s second way (as it is acknowledged also by Martinich)²⁸, which in turn comes down to the first way (“via motus”), according to Hobbes’s mechanistic conception of causality: so, what hits White in DM XXVII, 18 should by the same token hit the argument in Lev. XII, 6. However, instead of reading between the lines or guessing secret intentions, I prefer remarking for now the “disjuncture”.²⁹ This should not prevent us from acknowledging the different registers of the two kinds of text that tell the difference between the popular and political works (such as Leviathan), on the one hand, and the more sophisticated and philosophically professional works, such as DM and De Corpore, on the other. In these latter, Hobbes felt free to call in question what he apparently had allowed in the former. As Patricia Springborg has rightly remarked, “it is not necessary to adopt wholesale the Straussian doctrine about secret writing to concede this point”;³⁰ it is just recommended to realize that different topics (pure philosophy, politics, and religion) needed different registers and addressed different audiences. Their respective aims and targets were not always the same. f) None of the other theological arguments used by White (“necessary being”, infinite, “being a se”, first change) or by Descartes (ontological argument, ideological proof, “causa sui”) was taken up again by Hobbes in the subsequent works, either to be discussed or to be refuted.³¹ It seems that after their deconstruction in DM and in the Objections against Descartes’s Meditations, they fell once and for all into disrepute for Hobbes. g) The most spectacular and also profound change from DM to De Corpore can be found, however, up-river of theology, and consists in no less than a radical shift in the definition of philosophy as such. This shift is a consequence of the decision in De Corpore to exclude theology from the very sphere of philoso-

 Ibid., p. .  I adopt this nice expression from Springborg, “Calvin and Hobbes: A Reply to Curley, Martinich and Wright”.  Ibid., p. .  On these different arguments, esp. in DM, see Paganini, “Introduction”, in: Hobbes, Moto, luogo e tempo, pp.  – ; Id., “How Did Hobbes Think of the Existence and Nature of God?, pp.  – ; Id., “Significato ed errore in Hobbes”.

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phy. In this work, philosophy, esp. “first philosophy”, is no longer defined as a general science of being, according to the definition that Hobbes had taken from Aristotle, for once agreeing with his scholastic adversary. In DM, philosophy is defined as the “science of the general theorems” whose “truth can be demonstrated by natural reason”, whereas “first philosophy” specifically demonstrates “theorems about the attributes of being in general”(DM I, 1; cf. IX, 16).³² In this work, Hobbes rehabilitates the original Aristotelian phrase “first philosophy” (which will be retained in DC, Part II), while rejecting the spurious name of “metaphysics”, to which he imputes all the mistakes of the scholastic tradition. This latter claimed to provide metaphysicians with “a doctrine of the supernatural kind,” as if they were “able to transcend the limits of their nature.” (DM IX, 16). In De corpore, by contrast, philosophy is considered as knowledge enjoying a narrower scope: its domain covering only “effects or appearances” that can be “generated”, i. e. caused³³ – in other words, not being in general, which would include being par excellence, God, but only accidents of the bodies. Bodies in themselves are impossible to create or destroy, except by an intervention of divine omnipotence, so that what is properly caused or generated cannot be but their accidents (already in DM: see DM XII, 5; XII, 8; XIII, 9; XXXV, 1; XXXVII, 1; XL 1 and 8). It is also notable that in De corpore Hobbes does not provide the reader with a proper definition of “first philosophy”, even though the second part bears this title. In the list of the “main parts of philosophy”, with which the first chapter of De corpore ends, “first philosophy” is not even mentioned, whereas it is said that philosophy in general is divided into “Naturalis et Civilis” (DC I, 9). However, from the list of the subjects treated in the second part (place and time, body and accident, cause and effect, potency and act etc.), it becomes clear that, in comparison to the wider definition of DM, the proper object of “first philosophy” in De Corpore is tantamount to a general theory not of being, but of body.³⁴

 For this characterization of philosophy, and esp. “first philosophy”, which Hobbes opposes to “bad” metaphysics, considered as a Scholastic degeneration, see Paganini, “Introduction”, in: Hobbes, Moto, luogo e tempo, pp.  – . In reality, Hobbes transforms the list of “categories” into a kind of philosophical and scientific “nomenclature” (see DM V, ; XIV, ; for a commentary Paganini, “Introduction”, in: Hobbes, Moto, luogo e tempo, pp.  – ).  See De Corpore, Schuhmann edn. I, , p. : “Philosophia est effectuum sive phenomenon ex conceptis eorum causis sive generationibus, et versus generationum, quae esse possunt, ex cognitis effectibus per rectam ratiocinationem acquistita cognitio”. The Leviathan definition is similar (Lev. XLVI, ), yet adding a reference to technical utility of philosophy and science.  For this shift from DM to DC see my Introd. (Paganini, “Introduction”, in: Hobbes, Moto, luogo e tempo, pp.  – ); on the connection with the annihilatory hypothesis (which is just hinted at in DM) see Paganini, “Hobbes, Gassendi und die Hypothese der Weltvernichtung”.

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Whereas in DM Hobbes showed appreciation for the function of the “categories”, when they are meant as “appellations” (“names or denominations of things” DM V, 2), in De corpore he claims not to see “great usefulness” in the “predicaments” of philosophy (DC II, 16). Therefore, philosophy excludes, for epistemological reasons, those things for which it is impossible to “search out the properties of bodies starting from their generation, or their generation from their properties.” Thus philosophy will not talk about angels, nor about supposedly incorporeal entities,³⁵ and above all, not about God and theology, which is the field of the “ingenerable” (“the doctrine of God, eternal, ingenerable, incomprehensible, and in whom there is nothing neither to divide nor compound, nor any generation to be conceived” (DC I, 8). Thus, “first philosophy” is reduced not only de facto as in DM but also de iure to a general theory of the body, its position in time and space, its action, cause, quantity etc. (DC VII-XIV). Philosophy ought not to deal with “immaterial” and “immobile” substances, which had constituted an important and privileged part of Aristotelian and scholastic metaphysics³⁶. In De corpore, theology, including natural or “rational” theology and not only revealed or positive theology, does not belong to philosophy any more. Whereas God could be treated in DM under the general label of being, now in De Corpore He cannot be, given that philosophy is restricted to what can be divided or compounded, i. e. to the effects of which one can seek the causes. This new dislocation of theology in relation to philosophy can be considered as a direct consequence of the anti-theological critique in DM. Once DM has shown the dangerous consequences of keeping faith and reason together, De Corpore develops a strategy of immunization, excising theology from philosophy. The embarrassing outcome of DM comes down to this: the only meaningful assertion one can make about God is that He exists, even though this existence cannot either be logically demonstrated or empirically established. In De Corpore, the straightforward exclusion of theology from philosophy seems to be the most viable alternative once the complete deconstruction of philosophical theology in DM has been made. De Corpore actually ends up by excluding theology from philosophy, yet only after DM had strongly put them in opposition.

 Philosophy does not treat of natural and political history either, because they are given by experience and not by demonstration in terms of causes of their generation. Nor will it talk about revelation and religious worship, even less of “false” doctrines such as astrology (ibid.).  I have extensively dealt with the status of philosophy (comparing DM and DC) in the introduction to my edition of DM: Paganini, “Introduction”, in: Hobbes, Moto, luogo e tempo, pp.  – .

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5 A new developmental picture of Hobbes’s philosophical career Might this shift from DM to De Corpore be explained in a Straussian way, as a strategic move to avoid the clash between philosophy and theology, or even as a trick aimed at avoiding dangerous topics in an age of oppression? As we already said, Leo Strauss did not know the existence of DM, which was discovered at the beginning of the 1970s and published only in 1973. However, it is important to ask what impact DM could have on the famous Straussian thesis and vice versa, or if and how the Straussian method is possibly applicable to a work such as DM. As Curley has aptly remarked, Strauss did not always think that Hobbes was a covert atheist, and sometimes he presented him as a philosopher sympathetic to natural religion.³⁷ However, Strauss always assumed Hobbes to have been under pressure of censorship and constrained to conceal his true opinions about religious matters. Can our present knowledge of DM shed new light on the whole question of Hobbes’s writing in the age of persecution? If one compares DM’s more engaged approach on the one hand, and on the other De Corpore’ s disengagement from burning theological questions, it would be tempting to think that the former is a hidden and esoteric work, and the latter

 See Curley, “‘I Durst Not Write So Boldly’ or how to Read Hobbes’ Theological-Political Treatise”, p. , for a careful analysis of these different presentations of Hobbes’s ideas. The main texts of Strauss to be considered are: Strauss, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, pp. ,  (Hobbes is not a believing Christian, but sympathetic to natural religion); Id., Natural Right and History, pp.  –  (Hobbes is presumably an atheist). The considerations of Strauss, Die Religionskritik des Hobbes. Ein Beitrag zum Verständnis der Aufklärung (written however in  – ), esp. pp.  – ,  – , contain a more-in-depth study. According to Strauss, in Hobbes’s opinion revelation cannot be recognized with certainty either by one who receives it directly (the impossibility of distinguishing between true and false prophets) or by one who receives it from intermediaries (raising all the problems concerning authenticity, canon, historicity, meaning etc. of Scripture). Besides, according to Strauss, Hobbes insinuates a ‘discreet rejection of miracles’, suggesting simply that ‘it is very difficult to verify miracles’ (pp.  – ). Equally critical theses about revelation, prophecy, miracles, the authority of Scripture, etc., are attributed to Hobbes by Curley, “‘I Durst Not Write So Boldly’ or how to Read Hobbes’ Theological-Political Treatise”, pp.  – . In Strauss’s work Hobbes is basically a representative of the Epicurean tradition for his materialism, his profound humanism, the reject of the fear of death as well as of gods etc. (see esp. pp.  – ). In comparison with the original Epicureanism, Hobbes’s critique of religion is presented as “a post-Christian modification of Epicureanism” (p. ); on the whole, Hobbes would be the closest author both to Socinianism and Epicureanism (p. ). For the general frame of Strauss’ interpretation see Strauss , where Hobbes is just touched on as one of the many authors who suffered from persecution of their ideas (p. ).

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instead a public and exoteric one. Accordingly, one should read DM as the true bearer of Hobbes’s convictions and De Corpore, by contrast, as a compromise between his intimate thoughts and the constraints of censorship. In fact, however, DM was not a clandestine manuscript, addressed to a hidden and heterodox audience. All the evidence is against this thesis, even though both the author’s name and the title of the work are missing in the manuscript. First, the only extant manuscript, which probably came from Mersenne’s convent and belonged to Le Tellier’s library, is not the autograph copy, but a fair copy made in two different scribal hands. It seems that this was the final copy prepared for the press, and indeed it shows traces of Mersenne’s careful editing made with a view to publication. Second, Mersenne himself is the main witness for the authorship and title of the work, since he mentioned it with the title De motu, loco et tempore, at the same time attributing it to Hobbes, and quoting some excerpts from the manuscript.³⁸ In fact, the copy of DM that still survives was just one step from being published. So, we can imagine that, at least for a while, Hobbes intended to get it out and not to keep it hidden. We do not know why the author finally gave up on publishing the manuscript, but it is unlikely that this happened for fear of censorship. Third, it seems that Mersenne was not particularly struck by the audaciousness of the contents. In his excerpts from the chapter on mechanistic psychology, he simply skipped over the passages that assimilated men and animals and challenged the traditional conception of human freedom by denying the most usual notion of free will.³⁹ Given the lack of any documentary evidence, we can only speculate about the abandoning of what appears to have been a text ready for the publication. Far from hinting at the risk of a possible persecution, Hobbes’s change of mind could have been due to the fact that he was quickly engaged in writing a new work in sua propria persona, De corpore, and therefore lost interest in publishing a polemical work that had had to follow White’s agenda, and not his

 See Jaquot and Jones’s introd. to their edn.; Paganini, “Introduction”, in: Hobbes, Moto, luogo e tempo, pp.  – .  See Mersenne, “Praefatio utilis ad lectorem” (p. not numbered). Mersenne introduces thus the summary of Hobbes’s psychology, stressing its mechanistic feature: “Cum  prop. Ball. plura iuxta subtilissimi Philosophi Thomae Hobbes attulerimus, et quasdam Philosophiae quam exornat partes legerim, quae omnia fere per motum localem explicant, velim etiam addere modum quo nostrarum facultatum operationes ex eodem motu concludit, ut lector perspiciat num quaecumque fiunt in nobis ad vim Ballisticam referri possint, ut obiecta per sensus exteriores irruentia tot iaculis quot motibus nos inpetere, hucque et illuc impellere videantur, perpetuamque Ballisticam exerceant”. At the end of this summary, Mersenne writes as follows: “Quod philosophiae genus si tibi arrideat, precibus autorem urgeas ut corpus universum posteritati non invideat”. This summary is a good synthesis of DM XXX,  – .

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own, as was the case with DM. In deciding to give up a work already finished in favour of one in progress, Hobbes probably underestimated the time that it would take to finish De Corpore. We know that at times during the production of his magnum opus Hobbes made a similar mistake in forecasting the timing of its completion.⁴⁰ In fact, De Corpore took twelve more years to finish. Commenting on DM’s text, Edwin Curley observed that this work would be enough to undermine the previously assumed developmental picture, according to which Hobbes passed from an earlier phase (Elements, De Cive), when he believed that natural reason could demonstrate the existence of God, to a later stage (De Corpore), when he became skeptical of the soundness of these arguments and shifted to a fideistic form of theism.⁴¹ In reality, reading DM, we can see that a complete deconstruction of philosophical theology was already achieved twelve years earlier, in DM, and, as we have shown, the disengagement from theology that one can see in De corpore is rather the consequence or the aftermath of that previous work; the same can be said about the shift from a broad to a narrower and more explicitly materialistic definition of philosophy itself. We can also add that the discovery and the study of DM does not make it necessary to “read Hobbes between the lines”, according to Strauss’ famous phrase. In DM everything is said, and clearly said, within the lines. On the other hand, the decline of the Straussian way of reading does not necessarily mean the rise of a more or less “orthodox” Protestant Hobbes, a good “English Calvinist” in Martinich’s opinion, or a more Lutheran one in Wright’s case.⁴² As a

 See the abundant documentation gathered by Noel Malcolm in his edn. of Hobbes’s Correspondence.  Curley, “‘I Durst Not Write So Boldly’ or how to Read Hobbes’ Theological-Political Treatise” , p. .  See Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics, esp. pp.  – ; Wright, Religion, Politics and Thomas Hobbes, p. . In Martinich’s view, Leviathan is, literally, to be taken as “a Bible for modern man” (Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics, p. ); he quantifies “at least  percent of Hobbes’s remarks about religion” as “consonant with orthodox Christianity” (p. ). However, it is extremely unlikely that one can find a sympathizer of Calvinism (Martinich) or Lutheranism (Wright), who affirms like Hobbes these three theses all together: a/ it is impossible to demonstrate the existence of God and any attempted proof is flawed; b/ God is corporeal and affirming the opposite (like Bramhall and any ‘orthodox’ theologian) comes down to atheism; c/ the human soul is also material and it is equal to the mechanical life of the body: it is nothing but matter and motion. Despite the attempt to explain Hobbes’s “historic materialism” as an aim “at returning Christianity to its authentic, ‘primitive’ forms”, or at separating “Jerusalem from Athens” (Wright, Religion, Politics and Thomas Hobbes, pp. , ), Hobbes’s whole project is much more inspired by the new science than by “a theology of repristination” (ibid.): the former is the leading impulse, the latter just a consequence or an adaptation. In fact, despite their tenden-

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matter of fact, the nature and position of God and of the spirits in general, that emerge from DM, are extremely problematic, even from a protestant viewpoint. In fact, a developmental picture of Hobbes’s philosophical career turns out again to be possible, even though it must be reshaped; however, the new perspective that results does not lead in the direction of “protestant” interpretations of the reason-faith conflict, because of the importance of the scientific context that Hobbes’s thought takes on. Hobbes’s emphasis on semantic consistency increases after DM, because from then on he had at his disposal at least one strong model of meaningful discourse structured around a solid “nomenclature”: Galileo’s physics and cosmology. This was a “mathematical” discourse, in the broader meaning of this term indicated by Hobbes himself – a discourse in which unequivocal meanings are established, and this not simply ex hypothesi, but with all the evidence of demonstration and empirical knowledge. From the start of DM, Hobbes underlines the necessity that philosophy, which for him includes “every science”, ought to be treated “logically”, in order “to know the necessity of consequences and the truth of universal propositions” (DM I, 3). Arithmetic and geometry represent for Hobbes the perfect pattern of any science and they are usually combined under the name of “mathematics”: as he says, “likewise from manthanein, that is [in Greek] ‘to learn’”, since “their pupils were said not only to have heard, but also for sure to have learnt something”, whereas none of the other disciplines “has taught anything that was not open to question” (DM I, 1). Long before Leviathan and De Corpore, then, DM was the first systematic work to include science and “first philosophy” together, endowing philosophy with all the exactness of modern science; a project revealed not only in choosing meanings that could be precisely defined, but also in organizing these same meanings in a whole discourse free from internal contradictions and open to check by experience. From DM on Hobbes progressively extended these strong “scientific” requirements for selecting or reshaping sound meanings coming from all kinds of discourse, both philosophical and religious, even while retaining the residual possibility of a “pious” discourse as a “gesture” of worship or honorific sign that does not imply any declarative statement, in the proper sense of this word.

cy to make of Hobbes a much more “orthodox” figure than is usual, both Martinich and Wright are obliged to seriously qualify their description of him as a good protestant: the former speaks about his “nonstandard religious views” (Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics, pp.  – ); the latter, in his Afterword, depicts Hobbes as “derived from and supportive of Christianity”, but also adds that he was “no less radical” than “traditional” (Wright: Religion, Politics and Thomas Hobbes, p. ). It is a little difficult to adjust both the adjectives to the same author.

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It is precisely thanks to DM’s “linguistic turn” and its concern with a correct “nomenclature” fitting the needs of the Galilean science, that Leviathan could go a step further from the simple opposition of philosophy and theology.⁴³ In DM Hobbes still thought he could find a safe refuge for the special status of religious discourse, declaring that, when the investigation about “the nature and cause of motion” reaches conclusions that seem to contradict faith, the philosopher can manage to reconcile faith with “free inquiry”, or at least to avoid their clash, saying of the proposition “already held by the Christian faith”: “I do not understand under what meaning of terms that proposition is true”, since the terms involved in a religious proposition refer to objects that are not imaginable (DM XXVI, 7). I have called this kind of solution, which is put forth exclusively in DM, a “linguistic (or semantic) compromise” between the requirements of the correct philosophical nomenclature, enounced in the same work, and the needs of religious discourse.⁴⁴ It is clear that it is an extremely fragile compromise, which rests on two premises present throughout Hobbes’s work: the conventional stipulation of meanings and the emphasis on the relative autonomy of religious discourse, especially when it is considered rather as a sign of honour and worship than as declarative language. Nevertheless, due to its frailty, this “compromise” will be abandoned in Leviathan and Hobbes will never return to it, not even in the last phase of his materialistic theology. What is more, in Leviathan Hobbes overthrows this approach to the status of religious statements. Instead of saying that “mystery” and “incomprehensibility can be a safe harbor when it is a matter of faith”, he admits now that even in this field “enjoining belief in impossibilities” or “enjoining belief in contradictories” would be a remedy much worse than the damage inflicted by incredulity. In fact, appealing to mystery and incomprehensibility, putting faith not only over, but also against, reason, would be at the origins of the very kind of disbelief that discredited the reputation of religion, undermining its credibility (Lev. XII, 25). Accepting incomprehensibilities eventually leads to the contestation and rejection of beliefs that are impossible to be believed (Lev. XII, 24), because a “revelation a man may indeed have of many things above, but nothing against natural reason” (Lev. XII, 25).⁴⁵ What was once called in DM “incomprehensible”, is now qualified in Leviathan as a plain “absurdity”.⁴⁶

 I have developed much further these aspects in Paganini, “Introduction”, in: Hobbes, Moto, luogo e tempo, and Id., “How Did Hobbes Think of the Existence and Nature of God?”.  See Paganini, “Significato ed errore in Hobbes”.  This is seen in the famous opening of Part III of Leviathan, where it is said that we cannot and must not renounce either our senses or experience or “our natural reason”, even when the subject of discourse is the prophetical word of God. In the word of God there can be “many

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This is the reason why Hobbes in Leviathan is no longer satisfied with religious meanings that he previously had considered as just apophatic or negative expressions, or purely performative utterances (like signs of honour: Lev. XII, 7), as it happened before in Elements of Law or DM. It is true that he still mentions the utility of signs of honour, especially referring to God, when he lists the “attributes of divine honour” (Lev. XXXI, 14– 28), but – as Martinich aptly remarked – this is done concerning “what is honourable to say about God and not what is descriptively true”.⁴⁷ Starting from the principle that “immaterial substance” is self-contradictory (Lev. XII, 7), in Leviathan Hobbes is looking now for positive meanings, which could be in line with the “nomenclature” outlined in DM and later confirmed in DC. And this search is now on display in the field of religious discourse, too. All that explains a great shift that passes between DM and Leviathan, and can be summarized roughly thus: many of the notions that in DM were isolated from the effects of philosophical criticism and then maintained as “incomprehensible” (such as the notion of spiritual substances) from Leviathan onwards will be denounced as “absurdities”, and this move will lead to the attempt to understand spirits as corporeal substances, according to one only of the two kinds of entities classified in DM, the imaginable ones.

6 Might De motu be read in a Straussian way? To conclude, the rediscovery and the analysis of DM posit in new terms the problem of applying Strauss’ hermeneutics to Hobbes’ thought. At first, it seems that this methodology is “legitimate”, since many of the conditions established by Strauss himself ⁴⁸ are found also in the discussion present in DM about the impossibility of demonstrating God’s existence: first, the obvious existence of a state of persecution and censorship; secondly, a blatant contradiction between the central thesis of DM (i. e. the impossibility to philosophically demonstrate God’s existence and theological arguments) on the one hand, and the appeal

things above reason (that is to say, which cannot by natural reason be either demonstrated or confuted), yet there is nothing contrary to it.” Thus it seems that “the fault is either in our unskillful interpretation or erroneous ratiocination” (Lev. XXXII, ). This attitude is also present in Hobbes’s doctrine of the Trinity and is deeply influenced by the humanistic critique of Lorenzo Valla in particular.  Paganini, “How Did Hobbes Think of the Existence and Nature of God? : De Motu, Loco et Tempore as a Turning Point in Hobbes’s Philosophical Career”, pp.  – .  Martinich, A Hobbes Dictionary, p. .  See Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, chap. , pp.  – .

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to the causal argument on the other, under focus in the political work; thirdly, the full consciousness, on Hobbes’s side, of the clash between the scientific approach he employs (which can be summarized in the ‘nomenclature’ of DM) and the professions of orthodoxy in the other works; fourth, the impossibility of reducing these professions to pure inaccuracy, precisely because of the prominent position accorded in DM to the accusation of being ‘a-philosophical’ addressed to theology. It is rather the causal arguments (like the one employed in Lev. XII, 6) that are to be considered conventional and philosophically hardly relevant. However, the very nature of a work such as DM also requires notable modifications to Strauss’ model, which seems too rough to take into account DM’s complexity. The main modifications that are necessary to adopt are as follows: a) Strauss’ rigid distinction between esoteric and exoteric works appears to fit pre-modern times – the classical and medieval traditions – better than modernity.⁴⁹ In the case of authors like Hobbes, Bayle, Spinoza etc. it is more appropriate to differentiate between literary genres addressed to different types of readerships. This distinction sometimes does not depend on or overlap with the exoteric-exoteric dichotomy. As we have seen, DM is neither an “occult” nor a “clandestine” work (even if it remained unpublished), but its particular traits depend on the fact that it is intended for a readership of professional philosophers. Therefore, this work is strictly ‘scientific’ and ‘rational’ in scope, it does not address any practical purpose and is not meant to be persuasive, contrary to political or theological-political works. The great divide does not pass between secrecy and public sphere, but rather between ‘professional’ and ‘popular’ works: both share in the open debate, more or less wide, even though the audiences are totally different. b) Roughly put, Strauss imagined that in the case of his authors “under persecution”, text and sub-text would run parallel to each other, following paths that would never meet. He talked explicitly of “two doctrines”: one popular and edifying, staying on the surface of the text, and the other secret and subversive; one for “the vulgar”, another for “the wise” or “the initiated”.⁵⁰ Moreover, in order to expound the contrasts between the “two doctrines” in the writings of

 Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, p.  identifies two types of esoteric writers. Both groups try to conceal doctrines, which might lead to their persecution. Strauss distinguishes them according to the fact that they consider or not that “the gulf separating ‘the wise’ and the ‘vulgar’ was a basic fact of human nature”. For the moderns, it would be just a provisional situation to be overcome by means of education.  For a parallel, but also a contrast, with similar considerations by Oakeshott, see the interesting article of Boyd, “The Lion and the Ox: Oakeshott’s engagement with Leo Strauss on Hobbes.”, esp. pp.  – , which regards only issues concerning Hobbes’s political philosophy.

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an author, Strauss did not usually recur to considering the development of an author’s thought; he rarely viewed the texts in a succession, which could explain the points of disjuncture in the arguments without necessarily implying the presence of hidden meanings. Put in simple terms, in Hobbes’s case this approach led Strauss on the one hand to imagine an original nucleus, already almost perfectly shaped, and with a clear materialistic and atheistic tendency, and on the other hand, to assume a series of adaptations according to the circumstances, guessing dissimulation and simulation, irony and insinuation of concealed meanings, without imagining substantial changes in the sub-text or the true thought of the author.⁵¹ In fact, once DM has been integrated within the broader picture, one can see a real development of Hobbes’s thought itself. On the superficial level, one can detect a certain permanence of ‘orthodox’ statements lato sensu (basically, the causal argument is put forward, on its own or combined with the “via motus”). But, on a deeper level, from a philosophical standpoint, there is a real and remarkable evolution that consists of different phases. DM marks, so to speak, the initial conditions of this evolution, which will remain almost unaltered: the equivalence of substance and body, the correct “nomenclature” and the scientific approach to first philosophy, the impossibility to demonstrate philosophically the theological argument, and the drastic conflict of reason with faith. Moreover, DM gives directions to the successive developments too, representing the first of four phases, which it is impossible to understand without reference to the initial clash of reason and faith, as it is displayed in DM. The other phases are: second, the realignment of theology with philosophy with regard to the spiritual substances or separate essences (mainly in the English Leviathan); third, the changes in the definition of philosophy and the exclusion of theological issues from philosophy (De corpore); fourth, the extension of this realignment to the corporeal God (from the Latin Leviathan onwards).⁵²

 Starting from an opposite methodology (he does not share Strauss’ concern with strategies of concealment), Wright, Religion, Politics and Thomas Hobbes, reaches nearly the same conclusion about the stability of Hobbes’s thought: “he did not greatly change the address of his studies”, even if Wright acknowledges that Hobbes got more and more explicit about his materialism: “he likely long suppressed his true views regarding the materiality of God for fear of social opprobrium and religious persecution. He did not change his views, however, as it is evident in his avowal and defense of them late in life” (Wright, Religion, Politics and Thomas Hobbes, p. ).  Regarding this last phase, see the excellent study by Springborg, “Hobbes’s Challenge to Descartes, Bramhall and Boyle: A Corporeal God”, with a careful examination of the abundant and recent literature focused on Hobbes’s later theology.

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c) Against Strauss’ tendency to emphasize the ‘secret’ as a technique to vehicle hidden meanings, and against the ‘illegitimate usages’ deriving from the attempt to penetrate the intentions of the authors (that are by definition private in nature), it is more sensible to follow two fundamental precautions.⁵³ First, the texts are to be read literally; second, the sincerity of Hobbes’ statements must be assumed, if there are no proofs to the contrary. This is what I tried to do also with DM. These indications remain valid even if one takes seriously, as Strauss did, the “danger of free thought” in an age of persecution. Indeed, there are good reasons to believe that Hobbes incurred greater dangers not through omissions, ambiguities and tacit implications, but rather because of the explicit and direct character of his statements. It is difficult to think that in the second half of the 17th century it should have been less perilous to state that God is corporeal (as Hobbes will do in his last phase), or to accuse of atheism the pious ecclesiastics who predicate spirituality (as Hobbes objected to Bramhall), rather than to make frank profession of atheism (as Hobbes denied to have done, rebutting this presumption over his enemies). In any case, for a potential censor it would have been a difficult dilemma to decide which of the two kinds of behavior would be more condemnable.⁵⁴ A different way of applying to DM a methodology similar to Strauss’, yet not exactly the same, has been put forth by Edwin Curley, when he considered Hobbes’s “fideism” in this work as a rhetorical strategy, even if an ‘experimental’ one (a kind of “thought experiment”). According to Curley, it is a question regarding presentation that can be detected at the basis of DM: how can a doubtless ‘radical’ position such as the one Hobbes puts forward in polemic with White, be presented without incurring dangers for the author himself and without encountering oppositions to the doctrine? All in all, this manuscript would arguably be “an attempt to work out what sort of position on natural religion it would be best for him to take when he decided to discuss those issues in public”.⁵⁵ The reasons for not publishing the manuscript would thus depend on the fact that the expedient revealed itself not to be satisfying, as well as going into the dangerous territory of antirational theses similar to that of the ‘double truth’.

 For a sharp criticism of Strauss’ methodology, criticism which limits damages but does not eliminate the issue itself of interpreting texts written under persecution, see the already classical study: Skinner: “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas”, esp. pp.  – .  On Hobbes’s “intellectual courage” see Martinich’s apt considerations: Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics, pp.  – .  Curley, “‘I Durst Not Write So Boldly’ or how to Read Hobbes’ Theological-Political Treatise”, p. .

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From all these considerations, however, it should not be supposed that Hobbes had already reached a fully defined and complete philosophical position in 1642/43, and that therefore the problems would have arisen only from the strategic aspect of presenting the doctrine, and from envisaging the possible reactions of the readership. Nor should his position in DM be described as an implicit atheism, but as the perfect realization of the strong clash between the requirements of scientific discourse and faith’s inadequacy in front of it. As we have seen, DM shows that Hobbes already had at the time strong philosophical convictions (the chapters on “nomenclature” and on “first philosophy” are complete pieces, striking for their clarity). Moreover, he already mastered a method and a scientific praxis adopted from the school of Galileo; yet, he still seemed to define in positive and not only polemical terms, the relationship with theological conceptions, especially when they were presented in philosophical guise and belonged to a way of defining philosophy that at the time of DM was also Hobbes’s own. From this point of view, DM was a true ‘laboratory’ in which Hobbes explained to himself, more than to others, the dramatic contrasts caused not by politics, but rather by the modern conception of science in connection with philosophy and theology. A situation that he perfectly knew, because he addressed nearly the same issue to White, asking him what he would do if he had to choose between science and religion, reason and faith that would drag him in “opposite directions” (DM XIV, 7).⁵⁶ Due to the enormous tension between these two contrasting demands, the approach employed by Hobbes in DM cannot be reduced either to a vague protestant orthodoxy, or to the art of deceitful writing. Acknowledging that Hobbes’s view of God is “nonstandard”, A. Martinich suggested, as an alternative interpretation to that of possible crypto-atheism, that Hobbes recognized the challenge issued by modern science, which tries to explain everything in terms of matter and movement. In fact, Hobbes – Martinich says – would have resolved to “meet that challenge”, “reconceptualizing many Christian propositions.”⁵⁷ The reconstruction I have been making of DM shows that in this early work Hobbes went deeper than that: he analyzed the philosophical foundations of the traditional doctrine, without bringing about any “double doctrine”, in Strauss’ meaning. Rather than using a special “art of writing”, in DM Hobbes got involved in a

 Criticizing White, Hobbes alludes here to a Greek myth. To avoid leaving Penelope and going to war, Odysseus pretended to be insane. Yoked together with a horse and a bull he plowed the beach and sowed it with salt. However, Odysseus’s trick was uncovered by Palamedes who placed Telemachus, in the way of the animals, so that the father could not push ahead and revealed himself to be sane.  Martinich, A Hobbes Dictionary, p. .

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complex attempt at “rewriting” the old metaphysics (which he brought back to the original denomination and meaning of “first philosophy”) – an explicit and deliberate attempt, devoid of “hidden meanings” and by contrast very clear about the new meanings involved in his own philosophical nomenclature. On the other hand, it is the destructive criticism displayed in DM, with the intention of building a new scientific philosophy on the ruins of the old metaphysics, that gives Hobbes’s thesis about God’s incomprehensibility the tones of strength and radicalism that go much further than any Christian fideism, including that of Calvinism; just as the flat affirmation of the last phase– “God is a body”–cannot be reduced to the Cristian antecedents (e. g. Tertullian) to which Hobbes still appeals. Even the supporters of an interpretation of Hobbes pretending to be on the whole “religious” have to recognize that he was in any case a “transitional figure” and a “modernist”.⁵⁸ Yet, one cannot understand either phrase without thoroughly realizing how deep was the break with the orthodox tradition in DM.

Bibliography Editions and Abbreviations of Hobbes’s Works (I quoted Hobbes’s works by part, chapter, section, without indicating the page number, when it is possible.) OL Thomae Hobbes Malmesburiensis Opera Philosophica Quae Latine Scripsit Omnia in Unum Corpus Nunc Primum Collecta studio et labore Gulielmi Molesworth, 5 vols. (London, 1839 – 1845; reprint Aalen, Scientia, 1962– 1966). EW The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Now First Collected and Edited by Sir William Molesworth, 11 vols. (London, 1839 – 1845; reprint Aalen, Scientia, 1962– 1966). EL The Elements of Law Natural and Politic. Edited with a preface and critical notes by Ferdinand Tönnies (London, Smipkin, Marshall, and Co., 1889). Ob. III Objectiones Tertiae cum responsionibus Authoris in: René Descartes, Oeuvres de Descartes, 11 vols., ed. by C. Adam and P. Tannery (Paris, Vrin, 1976), vol. VII, pp. 171– 96.

 Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics, pp.  – ,  – .

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TOII

Tractatus opticus, Harley Ms. 6796, prima edizione integrale a cura di Franco Alessio, Rivista critica di storia della filosofia, 18 (1963): 147– 228. DCi De cive. The Latin Version, ed. by Howard Warrender, (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1983). DM De motu, loco et tempore = Critique du De mundo de Thomas White. Introduction, texte critique et notes par Jean Jaquot et Harold Whitmore Jones (Paris, Vrin, 1973). See also the English transl.: Thomas White’s “De Mundo” Examined, ed. by Harold Whitmore Jones (London, Bradford University Press and Crosby Lockwood Staples, 1976). I have often modified the English translation to come closer to the Latin original. Lev. Leviathan with Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668, ed. by Edwin Curley (Indianapolis-Cambridge, Hackett, 1994). I have collated the new critical edition by Noel Malcolm (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2012). DC De corpore. Elementorum Philosophiae Sectio Prima. Edition critique, notes, appendice et index par Karl Schuhmann (Paris, Vrin, 1999). HE Historia Ecclesiastica. Critical edition, including text, translation, introduction, commentary and notes by Patricia Springborg, Patricia Stablein and Paul Wilson (Paris, Honoré Champion, 2008). Correspondence The Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes, edited by Noel Malcolm, 2 vols. “The Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes”, vol. VI-VII (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994).

Other primary Literature Galilei, Galileo, Le Opere di Galileo Galilei. Edizione Nazionale, Florence, Barbera, 1890. Mersenne, Marin, Ballistica et Acontismologia. In qua Sagittorum, Iaculorum, & aliorum Missilium Iactus, & Robur Arcuum explicantur, Paris, A. Bertier, 1644; included in the anthology, Id. (ed.), Cogitata physico matematica. In quibusdam naturae quàm artis effectus admirandi artissimis demonstrationibus explicantur, Paris, A. Bertier, 1644. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae. La somma teologica, Italian Dominicans (eds.), with Latin text and Italian transl., Florence, Salani, 1964. White, Th., De mundo dialogi libri tres, Paris, D. Moreau, 1642.

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Secondary Literature Boyd, Jonathan A., “The Lion and the Ox: Oakeshott’s engagement with Leo Strauss on Hobbes”, in: History of Political Thought 29 (2008), pp. 690 – 716. Brandt, Fritjof, Thomas Hobbes’ Mechanical Conception of Nature (Engl. Transl.). Copenhagen/London, Levin & Munksgaard-Hachette, 1928. Curley, Edwin, “‘I Durst Not Write So Boldly’ or how to Read Hobbes’ Theological-Political Treatise”, in: Daniela Bostrenghi (ed.), Hobbes e Spinoza, Naples, Bibliopolis, 1992, pp. 497 – 593. Curley, Edwin, “Hobbes versus Descartes”, in: Roger Ariew and M. Grene (eds.), Descartes and His Contemporaries: Meditations, Objections and Replies, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995, pp. 97 – 109. Curley, Edwin, “Calvin and Hobbes, or Hobbes as an Orthodox Christian”, in: Journal of the History of Philosophy 34 (1996a), pp. 257 – 71. Curley, Edwin, “Reply to Professor Martinich”, in: Journal of the History of Philosophy 34 (1996b), pp. 285 – 87. Foisneau, Luc, Hobbes et la toute-puissance de Dieu, Paris, PUF, 2000. Foisneau, Luc, “Hobbes’s First Philosophy and Galilean Science”, in: British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (2011), pp. 795 – 809. Gorham, G., “The Theological Foundation of Hobbesian Physics: A Defence of Corporeal God”, in: British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21 (2013), pp. 240 – 61. Jesseph, Douglas M., “Hobbes’s Atheism”, in: Midwest Studies in Philosophy 26 (2002), pp. 140 – 166. Jesseph, Douglas M., “Galileo, Hobbes, and the Book of Nature”, in: Perspectives on Science 12 (2004), pp. 191 – 211. Jesseph, Douglas M., “Hobbesian Mechanics”, in: Daniel Garber and Steven Nadler (eds.), Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 119 – 52. Leijenhorst, Cees, The Mechanisation of Aristotelianism: the Late Aristotelian Setting of Thomas Hobbes’ Natural Philosophy, Leiden/Boston/Köln, Brill, 2002. Leijenhorst, Cees, “Hobbes’s Corporeal Deity”, in: Luc Foisneau and George Wright (eds.), New Critical Perspectives on Hobbes’s Leviathan upon the 350h Anniversary of Its Publications¸ special number of Rivista di Storia della Filosofia 59 (2004), pp. 73 – 95. Lupoli, Agostino, Nei limiti della materia. Hobbes e Boyle: materialismo epistemologico, filosofia corpuscolare e ‘dio corporeo’. Milan, Baldini Castoldi Dalai, 2006. Malcolm, Noel, Aspects of Thomas Hobbes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2002. Martinich, Aloysius P., The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992. Martinich, Aloysius P., A Hobbes Dictionary, Cambridge, Blackwell, 1995. Martinich, Aloysius P., “On the Proper Interpretation of Hobbes’s Philosophy”, in: Journal of the History of Philosophy 34 (1996), pp. 273 – 83. Martinich, Aloysius P., “On Hobbes’s English Calvinism: Necessity, Omnipotence, and Goodness”, in: Philosophical Readings (Online Journal) 4 (2012a), pp. 18 – 30. Martinich, Aloysius P., “Epicureism and Calvinism in Hobbes’s Philosophy: Consequences of Interpretation”, in: Philosophical Readings 4 (2012b), pp. 3 – 15. Pacchi, Arrigo, “Hobbes and the Problem of God”, in: G. A. J. Rogers and A. Ryan (eds.), Perspectives on Thomas Hobbes, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 171 – 88.

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Pacchi, Arrigo: Scritti hobbesiani (1978–1990), ed. by Agostino Lupoli.Milano: Angeli 1998. Paganini, Gianni, “Hobbes, Gassendi e la psicologia del meccanicismo”, in: Hobbes oggi, international conference promoted by A. Pacchi, ed. by G. Canziani and A. Napoli, Milan, F. Angeli Editore, 1990, pp. 351 – 446. Paganini, Gianni, “Hobbes among ancient and modern sceptics: phenomena and bodies”, in: Gianni Paganini (ed.), The Return of Scepticism. From Hobbes and Descartes to Bayle, Dordrecht/Boston/London, Kluwer, 2003, pp. 3 – 35. Paganini, Gianni, “Hobbes, Gassendi und die Hypothese der Weltvernichtung”, in: Martin Mulsow and Marcelo Stamm (eds.), Konstellationsforschung, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, 2005, pp. 258 – 339. Paganini, Gianni, “Hobbes’s Critique of the Doctrine of Essences and Its Sources”, in: Patricia Springborg (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan, Cambridge/New York, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 337 – 57. Paganini, Gianni, Skepsis. Le débat des modernes sur le scepticisme. Montaigne-Le Vayer-Campanella-Hobbes-Descartes-Bayle. Paris, Vrin, 2008, esp. on Hobbes: chapt. IV, pp. 171 – 227. Paganini, Gianni, “Hobbes alla ricerca del primo motore : il De motu, loco et tempore”, in: Rinascimento 48 (2009), pp. 527 – 41. Paganini, Gianni: “Introduction”, in: Hobbes, Moto, luogo e tempo, Italian transl. with comm. by Gianni Paganini, Turin, UTET, 2010, pp. 9 – 126. Paganini, Gianni, “How Did Hobbes Think of the Existence and Nature of God? : De Motu, Loco et Tempore as a Turning Point in Hobbes’s Philosophical Career”, in: Sharon A. Lloyd (ed.), The Bloomsbury Companion to Hobbes. London, Bloomsbury, 2013, pp. 286 – 303. Paganini, Gianni, “Significato ed errore in Hobbes”, in: Emanuela Scribano (ed.), I volti dell’errore nel pensiero moderno da Bacone a Leibniz (forthcoming), special issue of Rivista di Storia della Filosofia. Pécharman, Martine, “Le Vocabulaire de l’être dans la philosophie première: ens, esse, essentia”, in: Yves-Charles Zarka (ed.), Hobbes et son vocabulaire, Paris, PUF, 1992, pp. 31 – 59. Popkin, Richard H., The History of Scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003. Schotte, Dietrich, Die Entmachung Gottes durch den Leviathan. Thomas Hobbes über Religion, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, Frommann-Holzboog, 2013. Schuhmann, Karl, “La question de Dieu chez Hobbes”, in: Michel Fichant and Jean-Luc Marion (eds.), Hobbes, Descartes et la métaphysique, Paris, Vrin, 2005, pp. 121 – 54. Skinner, Quentin, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas”, in: History and Theory 8, pp. 3 – 53; reprinted in J. Tully (ed.), Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1969. Southgate, B. C, “Covetous of Truth”. The Life and Works of Thomas White, 1593 – 1676, Dordrecht/Boston/London, Kluwer, 1993. Springborg, Patricia, “Hobbes and Epicurean Religion”, in: Gianni Paganini and Edoardo Tortarolo (eds.), Der Garten und die Moderne: Epikureische Moral und Politik vom Humanismus bis zur Aufklärung, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, Frommann-Holzboog, 2004, pp. 161 – 214.

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Springborg, Patricia, “Hobbes’s Theory of Civil Religion”, in: G. Paganini and E. Tortarolo (eds.), Pluralismo e religione civile, Milano, Bruno Mondatori, 2003, pp. 61 – 98. Springborg, Patricia (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan, Cambridge/New York, Cambridge University Press, 2007. Springborg, Patricia, “Calvin and Hobbes: A Reply to Curley, Martinich and Wright”, in: Philosophical Readings, 4 (2012a), pp. 3 – 17. Springborg, Patricia, “Hobbes’s Challenge to Descartes, Bramhall and Boyle: A Corporeal God”, in: British Journal for the History of Philosophy 20 (2012b), pp. 903 – 34. Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1950. Strauss, Leo, Persecution and the Art of Writing, Glencoe, The FreePress, 1952. Strauss, Leo, Political Philosophy of Hobbes, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1963; first publ. 1936. Strauss, Leo, Die Religionskritik des Hobbes. Ein Beitrag zum Verständnis der Aufklärung (1933 – 1934), in: Id., Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 3, Heinrich und Wiebke Meier (eds.), Stuttgart, J. B. Metzlersche Verlagbuchhandlung und Carl Ernst Poeschel, 2001. Weber, Dominique, Hobbes et le corps de Dieu, Paris, Vrin, 2009. Wright, George, Religion, Politics and Thomas Hobbes, Dordrecht, Springer, 2006. Zarka, Yves-Charles, “First Philosophy and the Foundations of Knowledge”, in: Tom Sorell (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 62 – 85.

Edwin Curley

Resurrecting Leo Strauss¹

In his recent book on the Theological-Political Treatise (TTP) Steven Nadler comments that “Spinoza never subjects the New Testament to the kind of rigorous and extended textual and historical critique that he gives to the Hebrew Bible.”² I propose to speculate about his reasons for that omission, and ask if there isn’t more in the TTP than meets the eye. To ask this question is to suggest that the answer might be “yes”. And to do that is to raise the evidently terrifying spectre of Leo Strauss, who claimed that there’s an esoteric philosophy in the TTP, which we need to ferret out by reading between the lines. In the past I’ve often expressed sympathy with Strauss’s approach.³ I’ll do that again here. I’ve also expressed reservations about it.⁴ I’ll do that again, too. But I do think Strauss was on to something important in Persecution and the Art of Writing.⁵ And sometimes I feel that when I support Strauss, I’m swimming against the tide of a reaction against him which has gone too far. Recently Jacqueline Lagrée has written that the wiser course is to read the TTP à la lettre, to presuppose that Spinoza writes what he thinks and thinks what he writes.⁶ In A Book Forged in Hell, Nadler quotes this passage with qualified approval, saying cautiously that he thinks Lagrée is “closer to the truth” than Straussians like Steven Smith.⁷ Nadler concedes that

 This is the July  version of a paper I’ve presented twice now: first at a conference on the TTP in Toronto in October , and subsequently at conference on Leo Strauss’s hermeneutics in Marburg in July . The paper has evolved considerably over the course of these presentations, and I’m much indebted to those who gave me comments on them.  Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell, p. . Susan James made a similar observation in Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion and Politics: The Theological-Political Treatise, p. .  For example in Curley, “‘I Durst Not Write So Boldly’, or How to Read Hobbes’ ‘TheologicalPolitical Treatise’”; Id., “Homo Audax: Leibniz, Oldenburg and the ‘Theological-Political Treatise’”; Id., “Calvin and Hobbes, or Hobbes as an orthodox Christian”.  For example, in Id., “The Problem of Professor Caton’s Sincerity”; Id., “The Root of Contingency”; and Id., Descartes Against the Skeptics, Ch. . Some of these works criticize, not Strauss himself, but followers like Caton, or historians like Russell, who wrote quite independently of Strauss, but in a similar spirit.  Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing.  See Lagrée, Spinoza et le débat religieux, p. .  Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell, p. , n. . He has in mind Smith’s Spinoza, Liberalism and the Question of Jewish Identity. Sometimes Nadler puts his rejection of Strauss in much stronger terms. Cf. Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell, pp.  –  and the attached notes.

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Spinoza doesn’t say everything he thinks.⁸ But he insists that pulling your punches doesn’t amount to insinuating an esoteric message. Now that’s certainly true. But if Spinoza ’wrote between the lines,’ as Strauss would put it – that is, wrote in a way which required his readers to read between the lines – that does seem to be one way of trying to convey an esoteric teaching, a doctrine intended for those readers smart enough to draw the conclusions the author wanted them to draw, but not for readers of lesser intelligence. In this paper I intend to argue that that’s a method Spinoza used in the TTP when he dealt with the New Testament.

1 Some Things Strauss Got Wrong Before I try to show that, I need to make it clear that I don’t endorse everything Strauss seems to have had in mind when he talks about an esoteric doctrine in the TTP. Some of the reaction against him is well-justified. For example, he suggests that the religious teaching evident on the surface of the TTP is conventional and orthodox, intended for the vulgar, and that only by reading between the lines can we who are not vulgar – we philosophers – bring to light the radical teaching beneath the surface. (Strauss 1988, “How to study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise” pp. 162– 63, 177– 78) Among many dubious things Strauss wrote about Spinoza, this may be the most clearly false. There’s too much unorthodox doctrine plainly on the surface of the TTP. Here are three examples: (i) in Ch. IV Spinoza argues that God cannot properly be conceived as a lawgiver; (ii) in Ch. VI he argues that if miracles are understood as events contrary to the laws of nature, there are and can be no miracles. (iii) in Ch. XII he says that the text of the Bible which has come down to us is “faulty, mutilated, corrupted, and inconsistent,” that “we have only fragments of God’s word,” and that “the original text of the covenant God made with the Jews has been lost.”⁹

 So does Lagrée, “Il me paraît plus sage de lire le Traité théologico-politique à la lettre, de présupposer que Spinoza écrit ce qu’il pense et pense ce qu’il écrit, même s’il n’écrit sans doute tout ce qu’il pense.” (p. ). Similarly Alexandre Matheron writes that a guiding principle of his inquiry is that “Spinoza, conformément à l’idée qu’il se fait du philosophe, s’interdit de mentir; s’il lui arrive, assez souvent, de ne pas dire tout ce qu’il pense, il ne dit jamais ce qu’il ne pense pas.” (Matheron, Le Christ et le salut des ignorants, p. ).  References to the TTP are made by chapter and Bruder section number, followed by the Gebhardt volume and page numbers. The quotes here come from xii, , III/. The translation is

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These are all highly unorthodox statements. You don’t have to read between the lines to find Spinoza saying these things. They’re right there on the surface, argued for openly and forcefully, not hidden at all. But the fact that Spinoza is willing to be candid about some of his heterodoxies should not lull us into a false sense of security, thinking that he has no fear of what the consequences would be if he were completely candid. In spite of what he sometimes says, Strauss doesn’t ultimately deny that the supposedly ‘esoteric’ philosophy is explicitly stated in the Treatise. He claims that the work also contains orthodox statements conflicting with the heterodox, that the orthodox statements are more prominent than the heterodox, and that their prominence muddies the waters, permitting the unorthodox statements to be missed by all but the most careful readers. Strauss’s Spinoza frequently (and deliberately) contradicts himself. The rule for interpreting him, for discerning which of two contradictory statements expresses his true view, is that the one contradicting the common view is his serious view. (Strauss 1988, “How to study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise” p. 177) He would say, moreover, that Spinoza expected ‘vulgar’ readers to miss his unorthodox statements, and wanted them to. He counts censors among the vulgar, and thinks they’re too stupid to detect the subtlety he attributes to Spinoza.¹⁰ There’s an unpleasant elitism about this which seems to me to grossly exaggerate the difficulty of reading the TTP. You’d have to be a very obtuse reader to miss the three claims I’ve mentioned. And though there may well be contradictions in the TTP, as there are apt to be in any author, I don’t see that Spinoza ever contradicts these claims.¹¹ There are other complaints I might make about Strauss if I had un-

mine. My edition of this work will give the Bruder section numbers, which I find an extremely convenient way of making references.  Strauss, “How to study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise”, p. . “A careful writer of normal intelligence is more intelligent than the most intelligent censor, as such.” (Strauss, “Persecution and the Art of Writing”, p. ) This is just silly. There certainly have been cases where the censors were, if not actually obtuse, then at least insufficiently vigilant. I discuss one example in Curley, “Skepticism and Toleration: The Case of Montaigne”. But authors less adroit than Montaigne – i.e., most of us – would be unwise to rely on the stupidity of censors.  Strauss cites several examples of supposed contradictions in Spinoza (“How to study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise” p.  ff.), but the statements I’ve mentioned don’t seem to be among them. Errol Harris’s rebuttal of Strauss focuses on these allegations that Spinoza contradicts himself. See Harris, Is there an esoteric doctrine in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Strauss is not at his best in this part of his work.

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limited time and space. But since my goal is to resurrect, if not Strauss himself, then at least one Straussian idea, I’ll relegate other criticisms to a note.¹²

2 What Strauss Got Right Whatever his faults may have been, Strauss was right about one, very important thing: when an author holds unorthodox, dangerous opinions, and is writing in a time and place where he might be persecuted for openly saying what he thinks, he has to be careful what he says. He has to make nice judgments about what he can say without getting himself into more trouble than he’s willing to accept. People who don’t hold such unorthodox opinions seem to find it difficult to appreciate the situation of the unorthodox, who may choose to communicate some of what they want to say by indirect methods, requiring the reader to do more work than would be required in reading other texts, whose orthodoxy makes it easy for their authors to say what they think. The indirect method I have in mind goes like this: sometimes Spinoza says things which he knows should raise questions in the minds of intelligent, critical, well-informed readers. But because raising these questions openly would add unacceptably to the grief he can expect, he only hints at those questions, and at the answers he would favor, leaving it for the reader to raise the questions herself, and to try to work out a reasonable answer to them. If Spinoza is doing that, then he is indeed ‘writing between the lines’ and suggesting a message he’s not willing to state plainly. I don’t claim that all his heterodoxies are disguised in this way. But I do think some are, and that he is particularly apt to use this strategy when he’s dealing with Christianity, a delicate subject for a Jewish author.¹³

 As one example, I reject Strauss’s claim that according to Spinoza the Bible – the whole work, mind you, not just particular passages in that work – is a ’hieroglyphic’ work, where that’s supposed to mean that it is “essentially unintelligible. “ (Strauss, “How to study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise”, , ) What Spinoza does say is that there are parts of the Bible which are hieroglyphic. But all that means is that they are not easy to understand, and intelligible only by those who approach them with the proper interpretive methods. Spinoza’s use of the term hieroglyphicum in other contexts will confirm this understanding of his language. See TTP i, , ii, , and vii, . Glazemaker’s translations are instructive. I also reject Strauss’s claims that Spinoza wrote only for potential philosophers, not actual philosophers (Strauss, “How to study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise”, pp. 162– 63), only for (potential) Christian philosophers (pp. 163, 167, 168), and only for posterity, not his contemporaries (p. 153).  In spite of the excommunication, Spinoza’s Christian contemporaries thought of him as a Jew. Note how frequently Leibniz and his correspondents refer to Spinoza as a Jew in Curley,

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One more preliminary: I need to defend my Straussian assumption that Spinoza was writing in a situation where he might be persecuted for expressing unorthodox opinions. Some have thought this false. For example, Alan Donagan wrote that Spinoza might reasonably fear harassment, but not persecution.¹⁴ In support of this view he might have appealed to the legendary tolerance of 17th Century Dutch society, and might have cited Spinoza’s own testimony to show that he was not writing under the threat of persecution. In the Preface to the TTP, Spinoza writes that we have the rare good fortune (rara felicitas) of living in a Republic in which everyone is granted complete freedom of judgment, and is permitted to worship God according to his own mentality, and in which nothing is thought to be dearer or sweeter than freedom. (TTP, Preface, §12, III/7)

The Latin I’ve put in parentheses alludes to a well-known line from Tacitus, who boasted that he enjoyed “that rare good fortune of the times (rara temporum felicitate), when it is permitted to think what you like and to say what you think.”¹⁵ But if you believe Spinoza would not say that his republic allowed its citizens complete freedom of judgment unless he believed this, you’re missing his irony. This passage expresses Spinoza’s hope for what the Dutch Republic could be, not his judgment of what it was. Nearly two years before the publication of the TTP a good friend of Spinoza’s, Adriaan Koerbagh, was confined in a very nasty prison, for publishing a book (Een ligt schynende in Duystere Plaatsen) which expressed Spinozistic ideas less cautiously than Spinoza himself did.¹⁶ Conditions in that prison being what they were, Koerbagh contracted an illness there and died shortly before the TTP was published. However great the freedom of the Dutch Republic may have been – and it was considerable compared with that of most other European societies at that time – Spinoza’s Amsterdam was not a place where you could say whatever you thought – not without putting yourself in danger of pay-

“Homo Audax: Leibniz, Oldenburg and the ‘Theological-Political Treatise’” (above, n. ). Even ‘friends’ like Huygens and Oldenburg did this, as their correspondence illustrates.  Cf. Donagan, Spinoza, p. .  Histories I, i, . I take it that Hume was also engaging in irony when he chose this line as the epigraph for his Treatise of Human Nature. I’ve discussed Spinoza’s and Hume’s use of this quote in Curley, “Rara temporum felicitas: Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise”, forthcoming in Censorship Moments, ed. by Geoff Kemp, to be published by Bloomsbury Academic.  Not only did Koerbagh present the Bible as a work of human authorship (A light shining in dark places, p. ), and deny the existence of miracles (pp.  – ), he also denied the divinity of Jesus (p. ). See Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell, pp.  – .

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ing a price high enough to discourage candor. Christian interpreters of Spinoza sometimes seem oblivious to the measures their religion has traditionally taken to shield itself from criticism.¹⁷ One reason Koerbagh got in trouble was that he published his book in Dutch, under his own name. Spinoza knew better than to do that. He published the TTP only in Latin, and discouraged friends who wanted to publish a Dutch translation.¹⁸ Not only did he publish it anonymously, the title page gave false information about the publisher and place of publication. If Spinoza had believed what he wrote about the complete religious freedom of the Dutch Republic, he would have felt no need for such precautions. So much for the comforting proposition that Spinoza need not worry about persecution. When Spinoza wrote to Oldenburg in Letter 30, explaining his aims in writing the TTP, he said he sought to expose the prejudices of the theologians, to rebut the accusation that he was an atheist, and to defend the freedom of philosophizing and saying what we think: I want to protect this in every way. Here the preachers suppress it as much as they can with their excessive authority and aggressiveness. (IV/166/27– 29)

In the Dutch Republic of Spinoza’s day, the preachers did not have the power to decide what actions the state might take against unorthodox writings. But they did have an influence on the state’s decisions which Spinoza clearly thought he needed to combat. These facts about the fate of Spinoza’s friend, the publishing history of the TTP, and Spinoza’s own explanation of his reasons for writing it should be enough to put an end to any illusions that Spinoza felt completely free to say what he thought, and that he never said things he didn’t believe.¹⁹

 This appears, I think, in the tendency Christian historians have to argue that Straussian interpretations impugn the moral character of the philosophers who are supposed to have written between the lines. Cf. Harris, Is there an esoteric doctrine in the tractatus theologico-politicus?, which argues that Strauss’s interpretation implies a lack of integrity on Spinoza’s part. In reply, it seems enough to repeat something I’ve said earlier, regarding Geach’s attack on Straussian interpretations of Hobbes: “If there is any moral fault to be found in these situations, it lies with those who made plain-speaking dangerous.” The quote is from Curley, “‘I Durst Not Write so Boldly’…” pp.  – , which in turn quotes Leslie Stephen.  See Letter , to Jarig Jelles,  Feb. .  If further confirmation is needed, another passage – this time in one of the annotations – provides it: “I have preferred to pass over these things in silence, for reasons which the oppressiveness of our times does not permit me to explain.” (ADN. XXI, attached to TTP x, ) “These things” apparently refers to the genealogy of King Jeconiah given in I Chronicles . One of our sources for this note indicates that instead of “oppressiveness” (gravitas) Spinoza originally

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3 Why Spinoza Will Not Examine the New Testament Critically Now to my main topic: Spinoza’s decision not to examine the New Testament critically, in the same way he had the Old Testament. At the end of TTP X, concluding his account of the composition of the Hebrew Bible, Spinoza writes: It would now be time to examine the books of the New Testament in the same way. But because [i] I’m told that this has been done by men most learned both in the sciences and especially in the languages, because [ii] I do not have such an exact knowledge of the Greek language that I might dare to undertake this task, and finally, because [iii] we lack the original texts of the books written in the Hebrew language, I prefer to refrain from this difficult business… (x, 48, III/150 – 51, bracketed numbers mine)

This should rouse suspicion. Spinoza says he’s been told that men learned in the sciences and the relevant languages have already examined the New Testament in the way his method requires, by constructing a ‘history’ of the text. That’s vague, and apparently based on hearsay, a kind of evidence even readers unfamiliar with Spinoza’s epistemology will know is not generally reliable. Who are these men? In Ch. VII, where Spinoza sets out his method for interpreting Scripture, he gives the impression that he’s offering a new method: To … free our minds from theological prejudices, and to stop recklessly embracing men’s inventions as divine teachings, we must treat the true method of interpreting Scripture and discussing it. As long as we’re ignorant of this, we can’t know anything with certainty about what either Scripture or the Holy Spirit wishes to teach. (TTP vii, 6, III/98)

In this passage Spinoza presents himself as writing for an audience ignorant of the proper method of interpreting Scripture. Are we to believe that some people had previously discovered Spinoza’s method, and been applying it to the New Testament before he ever explained it? This seems unlikely. In any event, so far I have not been

wrote “injustices and reigning superstition” (injuriae et superstitio regnans). On the status of the annotations, see below, pp. nn. [= pp.  ff.] Nadler’s A Book Forged in Hell gives a good account of the limitations on freedom of the press in the Dutch Republic at that time and of the measures taken against the TTP. See also Israel, “The Banning of Spinoza’s Works in the Dutch Republic (1670 – 1678)”.

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able to discover any previous writer who constructed a history of the New Testament which would do for that work what Spinoza did for the Old.²⁰

4 Spinoza’s Precursors Spinoza did, of course, have precursors. To some extent they laid the groundwork for a properly spinozistic examination of the New Testament. For example, in the 15th Century Lorenzo Valla undertook to compare Jerome’s ‘Vulgate’ Latin translation of the NT with the Greek mss. available to him, and to make corrections in it based on his knowledge of Greek and Latin.²¹ This was a bold thing to do. At that time, the Catholic Church held that the Vulgate was the definitive version of the New Testament, preferable to the Greek mss. on which it was based. The theory was that Jerome, who had to deal with Hebrew and Greek mss. which did not always agree (as well as with earlier Latin translations), had been divinely inspired in making his judgments about what text to translate and how to translate it.²² Valla, in taking on this task, aimed to help readers of scripture to deal with the texts in the original languages, one of the requirements of a properly Spinozistic ‘history of scripture.’ A history of scripture, Spinoza says, must contain “an exact knowledge of the original languages in which the books of scripture were written and which its authors were accustomed to speak.” (TTP vii, 15) Valla never published his Annotations on the New Testament. They circulated in ms. form and influenced later editions of the Bible, like the Complutensian  Here I cite a book I cannot recommend as a whole: David Dungan’s A History of the Synoptic Problem, Anchor Bible. Dungan’s virtue is that he recognizes Spinoza’s originality in formulating the historical-critical method of interpreting scripture, and applying it to the New Testament. Among his faults: he is extremely unsympathetic to that method, and fails to see the power of Spinoza’s case for it. Further, he seeks to discredit it as motivated by a political agenda. For another example of this reactionary criticism, see Hahn and Wiker, Politicizing the Bible: The Roots of Historical Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture  – . There’s no doubt that Spinoza saw his Biblical criticism as supporting freedom of thought and expression, and in that sense had a political agenda. But his method of interpretation can be defended without appeal to that agenda, and has seemed sensible of many scholars who do not share Spinoza’s religious radicalism. See, for example, Kugel, How to Read the Bible.  On Valla’s contribution to New Testament scholarship, see Bentley, Humanists and Holy Writ, New Testament Scholarship in the Renaissance, ch. .  The Council of Trent reaffirmed the traditional status of Jerome’s translation, proclaiming that his translation, which “by the lengthened usage of so many years, has been approved of in the Church, [must] be, in public lectures, disputations, sermons and expositions, held as authentic; no one is to dare, or presume to reject it under any pretext whatever. “Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, The Fourth Session, . (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgate)

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Polyglot edition of 1520.²³ But they didn’t see print until Erasmus read the ms. and arranged for its publication in 1505. Over the next ten years Erasmus extended Valla’s work, making a more thorough search for and comparison of the Greek mss. than Valla had, and using them as a basis for his own edition of the text (1515) and a new Latin translation based on that edition (1516). The textual criticism of Valla and Erasmus was a major advance on previous studies of the NT, but it left much to be desired.²⁴ For our purposes the most significant defect of their biblical scholarship was that neither of them satisfies the second and third requirements for a proper spinozistic ‘history’ of the New Testament. Neither of them gives us a subject index of the text, organizing all the passages which discuss the same subject, and noting those which seem inconsistent with each other. (TTP vii, 16 – 17, III/100) What is more crucial, neither of them systematically asked the necessary questions about the provenance of the texts: who wrote them? when did those authors write? for what audience? for what purpose? in what language? how were the books first received? who preserved them? how faithfully did they transmit them? and finally, who decided they were sacred?²⁵ So I’m skeptical of Spinoza’s claim that others had already done the work of compiling a critical history of the New Testament. I suggest that he intended to provoke his readers to ask: who did this work? what conclusions did they reach? And if his readers found no previous scholar who had done everything Spinoza’s method of interpretation required, they might also ask: what remains to be done? In what ways is our New Testament scholarship deficient? What sciences and languages must we master to compile such a history? Perhaps Spinoza’s claim

 On the Complutensian Polyglot see Bentley, Humanists and Holy Writ, ch. .  Valla did not make a thorough search for Greek mss. Erasmus improved on him in this respect. But subsequent scholars have thought that his search too was not as thorough as necessary, and that his judgment of the quality of the mss. was not as sound as we might wish. That his text of the Greek New Testament came to be regarded, for a long time, as ‘the received text’ created problems which took a long time to correct. On this, see Bentley, Humanists and Holy Writ, Chapters IV and V, and Dungan, A History of the Synoptic Problem, Chapters XIV and XV.  TTP vii,  – , III/ – . Hobbes asked some of the questions Spinoza’s method calls for. He rightly gets credit for being one of the founders of modern biblical criticism because he questioned the traditional assumption that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, along with the traditional theories of the authorship of the other Old Testament books. See Leviathan xxxiii,  – . But when he comes to the New Testament, he becomes quite conventional: “The writers of the New Testament lived all in less than an age after Christ’s ascension, and had all of them seen our Saviour or been his disciples, except St. Paul and St. Luke. Consequently, whatsoever was written by them is as ancient as the time of the apostles. “Leviathan xxxiii, . For the consensus of modern scholarship on these issues, see Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament.

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was also intended to invite those readers who couldn’t find that the work has been done, and think they’re competent to do it, to take up the challenge.²⁶

5 What is the Original Language Anyway? The other reasons Spinoza offers for not pursuing a critical history of the New Testament seem no more satisfactory. He says he doesn’t know Greek well enough to undertake the task, and then adds that he refrains from it because “we lack the original texts of the books written in the Hebrew language.” (TTP x, 48, III/ 150 – 51) But he evidently knows enough Greek to make intelligent use of the Septuagint translation when he thinks it can shed light on the Hebrew of the OT, and to challenge existing translations of the Greek NT into Latin.²⁷ And how many of the NT books does he think were actually written in Hebrew anyway? In Chapter X he doesn’t say. Earlier he’d cited the gospel of Matthew and the epistle to the Hebrews as examples. (TTP vii, 64, III/110) But if those are the only works problematic for this reason – and those were the only books traditionally thought to have been written in Hebrew²⁸ – then this justification for not undertaking a critical examination of the New Testament is pretty weak. The canonical version of the NT contains twenty-seven books. If only two of them are translations of a (lost) Hebrew original, that still leaves twenty-five books whose history might be examined without worrying about the lack of the original text. But in fact it seems that Spinoza thinks most – if not all – of the books of the NT were written, not in Hebrew exactly, but in a closely related language nowadays usually called Aramaic. We see this in one of the notes Spinoza added to the TTP in the last months of his life. There are thirty-nine such notes, known from

 Perhaps this is the way Richard Simon saw his work in his Histoire critique du texte du Nouveau Testament. If so, I think it’s fair to say that he didn’t fully appreciate what the task required. From a spinozistic point of view he relies far too heavily on tradition in his arguments. Questions of authorship are largely resolved by appeal to the consensus of the church fathers, the churches founded by the apostles, and the churches derived from them. This ignores the import of Spinoza’s dictum that “our knowledge of Scripture must be sought from Scripture alone. “(TTP Preface, p. ) Neither Spinoza nor any other Biblical scholar can avoid using data from outside Scripture. Spinoza does this, for example, when he makes claims about what the native language of the apostles was. But his experience with the Hebrew Bible had taught him that tradition is an unreliable guide to answering questions about authorship. His own Old Testament scholarship relies primarily on internal indications. For his application of this method to the Hebrew Bible, see Curley, “Spinoza’s Contribution to Biblical Scholarship”.  Cf. Adnotation XXI, attached to TTP x, , and Adnotation XXVI, attached to TTP xi, .  The traditions stem from Eusebius, Church History, III, xxiv, ; III, xxxix, ; and VI, xiv,  – .

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several different sources – in some cases from a copy of the TTP in which five notes were written in the margin in Spinoza’s own hand; in other cases from copies of his work which apparently circulated privately among his friends. These notes did not appear in any edition of the TTP published in Spinoza’s lifetime. But most of them were published shortly after his death, in a French translation of the TTP by St. Glain.²⁹ The note which concerns us deals with the translation of a passage in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Spinoza considers two possible translations into Latin, and prefers one to the other because, he says, it agrees best with the Syriac text. For the Syriac translation – if indeed it is a translation, which is doubtful, since we don’t know the translator, or when [the supposed translation] was circulated [vulgata], and the native language of the Apostles was Syriac – renders this text of Paul thus etc.³⁰

I’m not interested now in the question of how to translate Paul’s letter. What I’m interested in is Spinoza’s justification for giving heavy weight to the Syriac translation in evaluating the translation he rejects.

6 A Confusion of Tongues Before we can see why this note is important, we need to clear up some mistakes Spinoza makes here.³¹ First, what is now normally called Syriac, and is the lan-

 For a discussion of the sources of the notes and the textual problems they present, see the recent French edition of the TTP: Tractatus Theologico-Politicus/Traité théologico-politique, texte établi par Fokke Akkerman, traduction et notes par Jacqueline Lagrée et Pierre-François Moreau, PUF, , pp.  – . That Spinoza wrote the notes in the last months of his life is indicated by these facts: the one source for the notes which is firmly dated – the copy of the TTP which Spinoza gave to Jacob Klefmann, with the notes added in his own handwriting – bears a dedication to Klefmann dated  July . That source contains only five notes, the last of which bears on a passage in Ch. IX. So it appears that when Spinoza gave Klefmann this copy of the TTP, he had only begun the process of adding notes to it. The remaining thirty-four notes, most of which are attached to later passages, must have been written in the last seven months of his life. These later notes include the one discussed in the text.  Note , attached to TTP xi, , III// – , my emphasis.  On the claims made in this paragraph and those immediately following it, see the Cambridge History of the Bible, The West From the Reformation, p. ; Metzger and Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament, Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration, pp.  – ; Meyer, Jesu Muttersprache: Das Galiläische Aramäisch in seiner Bedeutung für die Erklärung der Reden Jesu und der Evangelien überhaupt, Ch. ; and Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel, Ch. .

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guage of the translation Spinoza is referring to, is a dialect of Aramaic. The native language of the apostles (and of most Jews in 1st Century Palestine) was also a dialect of Aramaic. So far so good. But the Aramaic commonly spoken in Palestine in the 1st Century was a different dialect of Aramaic than the one used in the Syriac translation. If Spinoza thinks, as he seems to, that the Syriac translation may give us what the apostles actually wrote, he’s wrong. This would not be an unintelligible mistake to make. When Widmanstadt published the first printed edition of the Syriac New Testament in 1555, it seems that he and many scholars thought the Syriac text might give us the original of Matthew and Hebrews. Some also argued that Syriac (i. e., the dialect of Aramaic used in the ‘Syriac’ translation) was the language spoken by Jesus. This seems to have been one motivation for Tremellius’ translation of the Syriac NT into Latin in 1569.³² We now know that the text Widmanstadt published, known as the Peshitta version of the New Testament, was an early 5th Century translation from the Greek into Syriac, not the original text of the NT. For a long time there was confusion about what to call (or how to classify) the various Near Eastern languages involved in the transmission of the NT. When the 2nd Century bishop Papias – the source of the tradition reported in Eusebius³³ – said that Matthew had originally written his gospel in Hebrew, the language he was attributing to Matthew was pretty certainly the Palestinian dialect of Aramaic, not what we would now call Hebrew. What Papias seems to have meant was that Matthew had originally written his gospel in the language spoken by the Hebrew people in 1st Century Palestine.³⁴ By the first century that language was no longer Hebrew, but Palestinian Aramaic. Biblical Hebrew was so little understood in 1st Century Palestine that observant Jews needed a translation of the Torah into Aramaic if they were to understand the requirements of the law. This led to the creation of the Targums, Aramaic paraphrases of the an-

 Tremellius was a th Century Jewish convert to Christianity, who translated the Bible into Latin. When he translated the OT, he translated from Hebrew; when he translated the NT, he translated from Syriac. See Kenneth Austin’s biography, From Judaism to Calvinism: the life and writings of Immanuel Tremellius.  See Eusebius’ Church History III, xxxix, .  Richard Simon understood this. See his Histoire critique: “On ne peut pas nier, à moins que de s’opposer à toute l’antiquité, que Saint Matthieu n’ait écrit son Evangile en Ebreu, c’est-à-dire, dans la langue que parloient alors les Juifs de Jerusalem, qui étoit Caldaique ou Syriaque.”, p. , my emphasis; (“Chaldaic”, like “Syriac”, refers to a dialect of Aramaic.) It seems that in the late th Century Joseph Scaliger began the process of sorting out the different dialects of Aramaic, and that Grotius continued this work in the th Century. (On this, see Meyer, Jesu Muttersprache, Ch. ) But it seems from Simon’s account of the debate over the existence of a Hebrew original for Matthew that even late in the th Century the distinctions were not widely understood.

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cient Hebrew text, which came to play an important role in medieval Jewish liturgy and Biblical studies, and were commonly printed in the polyglot editions of the Bible which began to appear in the 16th Century.³⁵ Spinoza’s knowledge of these Targums and the reasons why they were created no doubt helped him to see that the language of the Apostles must have been a dialect of Aramaic. In any event, though Paul would have known Palestinian Aramaic, no competent scholar would now think that he wrote his epistle to the Romans in that language (or Syriac). He was a Jew of the diaspora, not Palestine, born and raised in the Jewish community in Tarsus, a city in the south central region of modern Turkey. He wrote good Greek, quoted the Hebrew Scriptures from the Septuagint translation, and on his visit to Athens addressed the Athenians in Greek. If Greek was not his native language, it was at least a language in which he felt perfectly at home, and certainly the language he would have used in writing to the Christian community in Rome.³⁶ Greek was the lingua franca of the Roman Empire, and surely the language in which all his epistles were written. So Spinoza was mistaken if he thought that the Syriac version gave us the original text of the NT, mistaken (though not far off) in thinking that the apostles spoke Syriac, and very much mistaken in thinking that Paul might have written his letter to the Romans in Syriac. But he is close to grasping some important truths: the native language of the (Palestinian) apostles – those apostles who had personally experienced the ministry of Jesus – was not Greek, but a dialect of Aramaic, which had replaced Hebrew as the common language of Jews in 1st Century Palestine. What’s more, Palestinian Aramaic was almost certainly the native language of Jesus. Since this was also the native language of most of his audience, Palestinian Aramaic was almost certainly the language he would have used in his preaching. ³⁷

 On the Targums, see the Anchor Bible Dictionary VI,  – . (ABD) The Buxtorf Bible, which Spinoza owned, reproduced these paraphrases, along with selections from the most prominent medieval commentaries.  On this see Raymond Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, pp.  – .  I say “almost certainly” because there is still some dispute about the languages Jesus can be presumed to have known and used. I suppose this is likely to remain the case as long as the possibility that he preached in Aramaic seems to threaten our confidence that we can know exactly what he said. But I take it that Meier’s statement of the situation is not only well-argued, but also represents the consensus of objective scholars qualified to address the issue: that Jesus “regularly and perhaps exclusively taught in Aramaic, his Greek being of a practical, business type, and perhaps rudimentary to boot.” (Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, pp.  – ) Meier contends that Jesus would have known enough Hebrew to debate Scripture with the scribes and Pharisees, but that he would not have used it in preaching to Palestinian Jews, because most of his audience would not have understood Biblical Hebrew. Though

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7 Why This Matters These facts have significant implications. At a minimum they imply that whenever the English text of the gospels reports what are supposed to be the words of Jesus – those words which these Bibles often emphasize by printing them in red – what they give us is not the very words of Jesus, but an English translation of a Greek translation of a lost Aramaic original. Not necessarily an Aramaic original text, because the authors of the gospels may have been relying on oral sources when they reported what Jesus is supposed to have said. But if they were reporting an oral tradition, at the origin of that tradition were utterances in Aramaic. So even if the gospel authors could rely on the testimony of eyewitnesses for their knowledge of what Jesus said – even if they themselves were eyewitnesses³⁸ – at some point in the composition of the NT text there is a translation from Aramaic into Greek, a translation whose accuracy we cannot now verify in the way we might ordinarily verify the accuracy of a translation, since we have no copy of the original text being translated.³⁹ Latin was used by the Roman officials ruling Palestine, it was apparently not widely used among ordinary Palestinians. See also Casey, Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of his Life and Teaching, pp.  – .  The traditional view was that the gospels of Matthew and John were written by eyewitnesses (two of the original twelve disciples), Mark by an author who got his information from an eyewitness (Peter), and Luke by an associate of Paul’s who made a conscientious search for reliable sources. Modern critical scholarship has cast doubt on most of these assumptions, particularly on the assumptions that the authors of Matthew and John were eyewitnesses, and that Mark essentially reported what Peter told him. For a sober summary, see Brown, op. cit., pp.  – ,  – ,  – ,  – .  In two provocative works – Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel, cited above, and An Aramaic Approach to Q, Sources for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke – Maurice Casey has argued that it is possible, at least in favorable cases, to reconstruct the Aramaic texts which must have underlain the Greek of the NT. He distinguishes reconstructing the lost Aramaic from simply translating the Greek back into Aramaic. What principally distinguishes these processes is that reconstruction requires recognizing when the differences between the two languages might make it extremely difficult to translate from one to the other, and when the normal habits of bilingual translators might make them prone to certain characteristic mistakes. I’m doubtful that this can be done with complete certainty. But even if it can, I think it’s clear from what Casey has written that reconstructing a lost original requires a high level of competence in both languages. Prior to the discovery and publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which added greatly to what we know about that dialect, that level of competence was unattainable for st Century Palestinian Aramaic. If this is correct, then (a) (in spite of the observations made above on p. ) Spinoza may well have been right to say that his knowledge of Greek was not up to the task of examining the NT,

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This fact would seem to warrant a certain caution in drawing conclusions about what Jesus said from what the gospels report him as having said. Of course we also have the normal uncertainties which arise whenever we take one person’s word for what another person said: is he giving us, in good faith, the most accurate account he can of what the person said? did he understand what was said when it was said? how good is his memory of this utterance? did he make a contemporary record of what he heard? is his account influenced by what others who were also present told him about what they remember having heard? or by his beliefs about what the person is likely to have said in those circumstances? But in addition to these normal uncertainties, we have an uncertainty arising from the need at some point for a translation by an unknown person whose competence in the relevant languages we cannot evaluate.

8 Hints of These Problems Now so far I’ve been commenting on a brief note which did not appear in any version of the TTP published in Spinoza’s lifetime, but was added to the text not long before his death, and was first published shortly after his death. Spinoza may not have intended it for publication in his lifetime. Nevertheless, there are, in versions of the TTP published in his lifetime, passages which at least hint at the conclusions I’ve drawn from this note. For example, in explaining the first element in the history of scripture he calls for, Spinoza writes that it must contain the nature and properties of the language in which the books of Scripture were written, and which their authors were accustomed to speak. For in this way we’ll be able to find out all the meanings each utterance can admit in ordinary conversational usage. And because all the writers, both of the Old Testament and the New, were Hebrews, it’s certain that the history of the Hebrew language is necessary above all others, not only for understanding the books of the Old Testament, which were written in this language, but also for understanding those of the New. For though they’ve been made available in other languages, nevertheless they’re expressed in a Hebrew manner.⁴⁰

and (b) at the time he wrote, it would have been quite reasonable for him to regard reconstructing the Aramaic text as impossible.  TTP vii, , III/ – . The Latin for that last sentence reads: quamvis aliis linguis vulgati fuerint, Hebraizant tamen. I note that Spinoza says here that the books of the NT were vulgati in other languages. I’ve translated that as “made available.” We might also translate: “circulated” or “published.” What Spinoza does not say is that they were written in other languages. I take it that this reflects his belief that they may well have been written in ‘Syriac’ (i. e., Aramaic).

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I take it that Spinoza’s insistence on regarding the NT as a document which gives evidence of Jewish ways of thinking comes from his awareness that the Greek of that work contains many Hebraisms or Aramaisms, ways of speaking natural in one of these semitic languages, but not natural in Greek. He mentions no specific examples, but readers familiar with Tremellius’ translation of the Syriac text would have found its annotation a source of many examples.⁴¹ Spinoza’s quotational practices also suggest his attitude toward the Greek text. When he quotes the Hebrew Bible, he typically gives the Hebrew text first, and then makes his own translation into Latin. When he quotes the New Testament, he doesn’t give the Greek at all, and the text he quotes is Tremellius’s Latin translation of the Syriac text. He calls our attention to his use of Tremellius’ translation at the end of Chapter IV, when he quotes a passage from Romans in which Tremellius’ version differs from the Vulgate. He doesn’t say there why he prefers that translation, or explain anywhere why that is the translation he routinely uses. But his quotational practices, in conjunction with his emphasis on the importance of knowing the original language of the text, naturally invite the question: why this difference in his practices regarding the two testaments? Perhaps Spinoza did not have had a firm opinion about the original language of the NT. In Annotation 26 he doesn’t actually say that the Syriac version gives us the original language; he just says it’s doubtful that it’s a translation from the Greek. And he gives us a reason for thinking that the Greek text was probably not the original: that wasn’t the native language of the apostles. Doubt about what the original language of the NT actually was – inability to say, with confidence, whether it was Greek or Syriac/Aramaic – might be reason enough for Spinoza not to want to get into an extended discussion of the history of the NT, particularly if he was inclined to the view that its original language wasn’t Greek. But he might also have wished to avoid the criticism he was apt to receive if he came out strongly for a non-Greek original text.

 See Austin, From Judaism to Calvinism, Ch. . An interesting example would be the phrase ho huios tou anthrōpou, commonly translated “the son of man,” which Jesus frequently uses to refer to himself, and which, because of the theological weight attached to it, has been the subject of much discussion. This is apparently a very unnatural expression in Greek. But the Aramaic it probably translates, bar (e)nash(ā), is evidently a quite ordinary Aramaic term for ‘man.’ See Casey, Jesus of Nazareth, An Independent Historian’s Account of his Life and Teaching, pp.  – . Meier (A Marginal Jew, I, pp.  – ) gives other examples of Aramaisms.

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9 Debates About the Original Language Though Spinoza represents the claim that Matthew originally wrote his gospel in ‘Hebrew’ as “the common opinion,” this view was actually quite controversial.⁴² Some argued that if the original had been in Hebrew, the church would have been careful to preserve it. But none of the church fathers claims to have even seen it. They also argued that Matthew must have written in Greek, because an audience of Palestinian Jews would not have understood a work written in Hebrew (as if knowledge of Greek was so widespread in 1st Century Palestine that a work in Greek would have had a wider audience). Though this view had prominent Catholic defenders, like Erasmus and Cajetan, most of its advocates were Protestant (most notably, Calvin). Richard Simon, a Catholic priest, replied that Papius’ testimony was not contradicted by any of the church fathers, that when Papias said the gospel was written in ‘Hebrew,’ he didn’t mean Biblical Hebrew, but Palestinian Aramaic, and that when Jerome reports having consulted “the Gospel of the Nazarenes” in preparing his Vulgate translation, what he’s referring to is the lost ‘Hebrew’ original of Matthew. The arguments for a Greek original of Matthew are so weak, Simon thinks, that they should embarrass the defenders of that view. The real reason for their position is their fear that acknowledging that the original version of Matthew has been lost would lead people to conclude that we don’t have ‘the true gospel’ of Matthew. In the case of Protestants, committed to regarding Scripture as the ultimate authority in deciding matters of religious dispute, it would be embarrassing to admit that our record of the teachings of Jesus is based even in part on a translation of a lost original. Imagine the fuss Spinoza would have stirred up if he had said, publicly, that we don’t have the originals of any of the gospels, at least insofar as they claim to report what Jesus said. ⁴³

 I discuss here only a few of the arguments pro and con. For a fuller summary see Simon, Histoire critique du texte du Nouveau Testament, Ch. .  The issue of a lost Aramaic original does not affect only the gospel reports of what Jesus said. There will also be a question about those portions of the gospel which report what he did. If the gospel authors depended on eye-witnesses for their narratives of what happened in the life of Jesus, and if the eye-witnesses were Aramaic speakers who knew little or no Greek (as most of the original apostles presumably were), there will have to have been translation at some point in the process of getting from the eye-witness reports to the Greek gospel narrative.

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10 Skeptical Implications of the Method Earlier I inferred from Annotation 26 that if the Greek text of the NT was a translation of a lost Aramaic original, that might properly encourage skepticism about our ability to know exactly what the teachings of Jesus were. In versions of the TTP published in his lifetime Spinoza does not go quite so far as that. But he does hint at such a result. Toward the end of Ch. VII, he considers various objections which he thinks people might make to his method of interpreting scripture: There’s one final difficulty in interpreting certain books of Scripture according to this method: we don’t possess them in the same language in which they were first written. For according to the common opinion, the Gospel of Matthew, and no doubt also the Letter to the Hebrews, were written in Hebrew. Nevertheless, the [original texts] are not extant. Moreover, regarding the book of Job there is doubt about what language it was written in. In his commentaries Ibn Ezra affirms that it has been translated from another language into Hebrew, and that this is the reason for its obscurity. (TTP vii, 64, III/110 – 11)

Now if Spinoza thinks the Syriac version of the NT gives us the original text of the books it includes, he has an easy solution to this objection, at least as regards the NT. He could say that we do possess the texts of the NT in the language in which they were first written. That language is just not the Greek it has generally been thought to be. So his method does not really face this difficulty. But Spinoza does not take that way out. Perhaps he regards it as too uncertain just what the original language of the NT was. Or perhaps he doesn’t mind conceding the objection. At any rate, he accepts the common opinion, at least for the sake of the argument – that only Matthew and Hebrews were written originally in Hebrew, the rest having been written in Greek – and he accepts the skeptical implications his methodology leads to on that theory. So in response to the objection quoted above he writes: I consider [the objections which might be raised against this method] so great that I don’t hesitate to say this: in a great many places either we don’t know what Scripture really means or we’re just guessing about its meaning without any certainty. (TTP vii, 65, III/111)

And though this concession might be very provocative, it might not be quite as troubling to a Christian who thought the lack of an original text raised problems only for two books in the NT (one of the four gospels and one of the twenty-one epistles) as it would to a Christian who thought it raised problems for all four gospels (and any epistles written by Palestinian apostles).

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11 Did the Apostles Speak as Prophets? I turn now to two passages in the TTP which come as close to a critical history of the New Testament as anything you will find in that work. The first is Chapter XI, where Spinoza takes up the question whether the apostles wrote their letters as prophets or as teachers? Spinoza begins by saying that no one familiar with the NT can doubt that the apostles were prophets. (TTP xi, 1, III/151) The only question is whether they were acting as prophets when they wrote their letters, or whether they wrote their letters merely as teachers. The argument is fairly straight-forward: if we compare the characteristic style of the prophets with that of the apostles in their letters, we find them to be quite different. The prophets don’t typically reason with their audience; they make authoritative judgments. They claim to speak on behalf of God. “Thus says the Lord” is the typical way a prophet begins his prophecy. The apostles, on the other hand, don’t speak that way. They reason with the people they’re writing to. Sometimes they express uncertainty about what they’re saying. They may apologize for their boldness. They don’t claim to speak with authority.⁴⁴ I say this argument is “fairly straightforward”. It does raise certain questions: if the apostles never spoke with the authority of a prophet, how do we know they were prophets? Granted, prophets don’t always speak from revelation. But if they don’t sometimes speak from revelation, why should we believe that they are prophets?⁴⁵ I see nothing in Spinoza’s text which would give us a reason to think this. It seems possible that his intent was just to raise the question, and let us decide for ourselves whether there is a good answer to it. Again, all of Spinoza’s examples of apostolic style come from letters attributed to Paul. He gives no examples from other New Testament letter writers. So what he says is the characteristic style of the apostles may just be the characteristic style of Paul. I make no attempt to decide that now. Even if the style Spinoza attributes to all the apostles is just the style of Paul, that’s a significant point. The main purpose of Chapter XI seems to be to weaken the authority of the apostles by arguing that they were just trying to work out the truth using their own  Among the examples Spinoza cites are Romans :, :,  Cor. :, :, :, :.  In fact, it seems not to be true that the apostles never spoke with prophetic authority. In  Thessalonians : Paul writes: “For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died.” (my emphasis) Unless otherwise stated, I quote Biblical texts from the New Revised Standard Version, as given in the HarperCollins Study Bible. The HCSB annotation comments that the italicized phrase probably refers to “a special revelation from the risen Christ; no such saying of Jesus survives in the Gospels.”

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human capacities, not acting as spokesmen for God. If it succeeds only in weakening the authority of Paul, that would not be a trivial result. Paul, or someone claiming to be Paul, wrote most of the letters in the New Testament. Many of those letters are now generally thought to have been written by someone else.⁴⁶ But the ‘Pauline’ letters – that is, the letters written either by Paul or by someone claiming to be Paul – are undoubtedly the ones which exercised the greatest influence on the subsequent development of Christianity and the churches which gave it institutional form.

12 Disagreements Among the Apostles The most interesting point of this chapter, though, comes at the end, where Spinoza discusses the conflict between Paul and James over the path to salvation. The text is important enough to quote rather fully: If we survey these letters attentively, we’ll see that in religion itself the Apostles indeed agree. But they differ greatly in the foundations. For to strengthen men in religion, and show them that salvation depends only on God’s grace, Paul taught that no one can boast of his works, but only of his faith, and that no one is justified by works (see Romans 3:27– 28)… James, on the other hand, taught… that man is justified by works and not by faith alone (see James 2:24). Setting aside all Paul’s arguments, he expressed succinctly the whole doctrine of religion.⁴⁷

This disagreement about the foundations of religion, Spinoza says, is the source of the many disputes and schisms which have tormented the church incessantly from the time of the Apostles to the present day, and will surely continue to torment it forever, until at last someday religion is separated from philosophic speculations and reduced to those very few and very simple doctrines Christ taught his followers.⁴⁸

 According to Brown, of the thirteen letters traditionally ascribed to Paul only seven –  Thessalonians, Galatians, Philippians, Philemon,  and  Corinthians, and Romans – are now generally accepted as actually having been written by Paul. The other six –  Thessalonians, Colossians, Ephesians, Titus, and  and  Timothy – are thought not to be by Paul, though presumably they were written by authors who took themselves to be expressing Pauline ideas. Spinoza’s examples come almost exclusively from the seven letters scholars regard as genuinely Pauline.  TTP xi, , III/.  TTP xi, , III/ – .

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Though Spinoza often seems to be sympathetic to Paul,⁴⁹ here he identifies himself with James, who “expressed succinctly the whole doctrine of religion” when he rejected Paul’s position, and taught that man is justified by works. Spinoza criticizes Paul for having introduced philosophical speculations into religion, as part of his effort to accommodate the unfamiliar gospel message to his Gentile audience (citing 1 Corinthians 9:19 – 20). The other apostles, who were preaching only to a Jewish audience, unreceptive to philosophizing, did not engage in such speculations. “How happy our age would surely be now”, he concludes, “if we saw religion again free of all superstition!” Here Spinoza moves from suggesting that Paul’s teaching is ‘philosophical speculation’ to calling it a form of superstition. But he doesn’t say explicitly what particular teachings he objects to. He leaves that for us to figure out.

13 What Paul Taught Let’s try to do that, focusing on passages where Paul seems to provide reasons for thinking that our salvation depends on faith, not works, the point at issue between him and James. Essentially what Paul argues in his epistle to the Romans is that we are all woefully sinful; so if we had to depend for our salvation on our works – on our compliance with God’s law – a just God would condemn us to damnation; fortunately for us, God is merciful; so he’s provided another way, the way of faith. If we have the right faith, we will be saved. Let’s examine this reasoning a little more closely. First, the doctrine that sin is universal: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Rom. 3:23) This might mean no more than that everyone fails to achieve perfection, not that everyone is profoundly wicked. It’s easy enough to

 Nadler remarks (A Book Forged in Hell, p. ) that “Spinoza holds Paul in especially high esteem.” He’s not alone in that judgment. Yitzhak Melamed has gone so far as to describe Paul as “Spinoza’s true Biblical hero”, in Melamed, “‘Christus secundum spiritum’: Spinoza, Jesus, and the Infinite Intellect”, p. . Similarly Hunter, Radical Protestantism in Spinoza’s Thought, pp.  – . I suggest that we need some nuance here. Spinoza is certainly sympathetic to some of the things Paul says. E. g., he frequently comments favorably on Rom. 9:10 – 18, a key text for the doctrine of predestination. (Cf. TTP ii, 51, iv, 36, xvi, 53, ADN. XXXIV, and Letters 75 and 78.) He also likes very much Paul’s doctrine that there is no sin before the law, which he interprets to mean that there is no sin in the state of nature. (Cf. TTP xvi, 6, with Romans 4:15) But as TTP xi, 21– 24, demonstrates, he’s not sympathetic to the doctrine of justification by faith. Nor can he be if he wishes to defend religious liberty. As I’ll argue below, that doctrine is central to the traditional Christian argument against religious liberty.

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believe that much. Our common experience of the world suggests that everyone who reaches adulthood is guilty, at some point, of some transgression against the commandments. I presume most people don’t commit murder. I will not speculate about how many commit adultery. Reliable information seems hard to come by in that area. But many steal. And many children fail to respect their parents. And how many of us, children or adults, consistently refrain from coveting our neighbors’ possessions? Still, some people’s transgressions seem to be few and relatively minor, compared with the horrendous crimes others commit. It would be consistent with holding that we are all sinful, in the sense of failing to achieve perfection, to add that there are still some people, perhaps many, who do the right thing most of the time, and who, when they do the wrong thing, don’t do anything truly awful. Call that the cheerful interpretation of the doctrine that sin is universal. Paul’s version of the doctrine is not cheerful: 3:9… we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin,⁵⁰ 10 as it is written, “there is no one who is righteous, not even one, 11… there is no one who seeks God. 12 All have turned aside, together they have become worthless; there is no one who shows kindness, there is not even one.”

Paul goes on in this vein for several more verses (3:13 – 18), which I won’t quote here. Suffice it to say that this passage seems to express a deep pessimism about our moral nature. Paul would deny, it seems, that there is anyone who does the right thing most of the time, and even that there is anyone who genuinely seeks God, or demonstrates his love for his fellow men by sometimes showing them kindness. We are all worthless. It’s not so easy to believe that everyone is that wicked. So scholars are divided about how Paul could have come to accept such an extreme view of human sinfulness. Brown writes that “Paul’s view of the universality of sin and death stems from observing the existing world.” (p. 580) Sanders, on the other hand, argues that “both the Gentile and the Jewish worlds contained ‘saints,’ people whose lives were largely beyond reproach. It is unlikely that Paul’s view

 There are translation issues here. The King James version is more literal: “we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin.” (my italics) More recent translations introduce the notion of being under the power of sin. (Cf. the RSV and NRSV, or Joseph Fitzmyer in the Anchor Bible edition of Romans, Doubleday, ) Sanders defends these translations (Anchor Bible Dictionary VI, ) pointing to a number of passages in Romans  –  in which Paul treats sin as an active power which has ‘dominion’ over us, enslaves us, and alienates us from God.

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of universal heinous transgression rested on empirical observation.”⁵¹ That seems plausible. But if empirical observation won’t support such pessimism, how did Paul come to embrace it?

14 How Paul Became a Pessimist I’ll sketch here the answer which seems to me to emerge most naturally from Paul’s letters. It’s a pretty traditional answer, I think, though not one which seems popular among NT scholars nowadays. The first point is that in Romans 3: 9 – 18 Paul supports his doctrine that sin is universal by appealing to various Biblical passages. Both in the verses I quoted, and in the continuation I omitted, Paul is citing scripture, mostly the Psalms, though Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and Isaiah all provide some of his quotes. So the dark view of human nature expressed in Romans 3:9 – 18 is not peculiarly Paul’s. It’s a view he finds expressed frequently in the Hebrew Bible.⁵² It may not be the consistent view of the Bible. Sanders contends that In the Jewish view, God had created the world and declared it good, a teaching which is not easily reconcilable with the view that Sin is a power strong enough to wrest the law from God’s control or to render humans powerless to do what is good. (Paul, p. 43)

Let’s suppose this is broadly true. Still, the argument Paul uses in the immediate context of Romans 3:9 shows him responding to a different, darker side of the Jewish religion. So why is Paul drawn toward the dark side of scripture? The best answer I can find is that at some point Paul came to believe in his own sinfulness, as measured by what he had come to think was the appropriate standard. Later in Romans he will write: 7:14… I am of flesh, sold in bondage to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For I do not do what I want to do, and what I detest, that I do. 16 Yet if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But as it is, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. 18 I know that no good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. I can desire what is good, but I cannot carry

 The quote comes from Sanders, Paul, p. . The emphasis is mine. He expressed a similar view in his article on “Sin, Sinners (NT)” in the Anchor Bible Dictionary. In both these works Sanders offers suggestions about how Paul could have come to his pessimism about our moral nature. I hope to say something about these suggestions later.  Specifically, Eccles. :, Ps. : – , :, :, :, Isa. : – , Prov. :, Ps. :b. See the Anchor Bible Romans, pp.  – . The article on “Sin, Sinners (OT)” in the Anchor Bible Dictionary demonstrates that there are many other passages he might have cited.

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it out. 19 For I do not do the good I desire, but instead the evil that I do not desire. 20 Yet if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. 21 So I discover this principle at work: when I want to do right, evil is ready at hand. 22 For in my inmost self I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law in my members battling against the law that my mind acknowledges, and making me captive to the law of sin that is in my members. 24 Wretch that I am, who will rescue me from this doomed body?⁵³

This passage is well-known, and central to the interpretations of Paul which dominated Christian theology for a long time. Recent discussions of Paul have argued that the traditional interpretation profoundly misunderstood him. I am rather old-fashioned in reading it as expressing what Krister Stendahl called “the anguish of a plagued conscience.”⁵⁴ Stendahl himself doesn’t think Paul actually suffered this anguish, pointing out that in Philippians he had written: 3:4 … If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel… as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. (my emphasis)

Stendahl observes that the statements in Romans “about the impossibility of fulfilling the Law stand side by side with the one just [quoted].” (p. 81) On this reading Paul did not think the law impossible to fulfill, because he believed he himself had fulfilled it. But if Paul did not think the law impossible to fulfill, and did not feel that he personally had great difficulty obeying it, why did he think sin – serious sin – was universal? Here’s a possible answer: it’s not true that these statements literally “stand side by side”. They occur in different letters, and there seems to be no consensus about their relative dates. Romans is generally thought to be one of Paul’s last letters, if not the last. Philippians is apparently hard to date.⁵⁵ Maybe it’s later

 Here I use Fitzmyer’s translation from the Anchor Bible edition of Romans, but mainly for stylistic reasons. I don’t see any substantive difference between it and the RSV/NRSV.  Stendahl, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West”, p. . Brown (An Introduction to the New Testament, p. n) describes this article as “an essential corrective” to interpretations which see Paul as “reflecting on his preChristian struggles observing the Law.” Among the recent works influenced by Stendahl’s interpretation are Sanders’ Paul and Garry Wills’ What Paul Meant. Wills writes that Paul “says repeatedly that he has done nothing for which his conscience could reproach him,” citing a number of passages to that effect, the most pertinent of which (apart from Phil. :) is  Cor. :.  Brown’s suggested dates for Philippians range from  to  CE, depending on where Paul is thought to have written that letter. (p. ) His suggested dates for Romans cover a narrower range, from  to . (p. ) Without attempting to be specific about dates, Wills suggests a

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than Romans. Maybe it’s earlier. But if it is earlier than Romans, it could represent a different stage of Paul’s thought about sin, where he is optimistic, not only about his own ability to fulfill the law, but about the ability of the Philippians as well: 2:14 Do all things without murmuring and arguing, 15 so that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine like stars in the world.

Here blamelessness appears to be a condition the Philippians can attain by doing the right thing in the right spirit: without murmuring and arguing. Paul does not think this is easy. If the Philippians behave as he recommends, they will be rare specimens of virtue. Still, it’s possible for them to be blameless and innocent. Does Paul, then, at this stage of his career, think sin is universal? On the hypothesis I propose he started out as a comparative optimist, and ended as a deep pessimist.

15 Interiorizing the Law But why the change of heart? Earlier I suggested that in Romans Paul was conscious of his own sinfulness as measured by what he had come to think was the appropriate standard. What I had in mind was that Paul may have come to think that when he declared himself blameless, he wasn’t setting the bar high enough. By this I don’t mean that he came to recognize that the moral requirements of the law were more crucial than its ceremonial requirements, that everyone is obliged not to kill, say, but that not everyone (or not every male) needs to be circumcised. What I’m postulating is a more significant change: Paul may have come to think that fulfilling the moral requirements of the law would take more than just correct external behavior. In the passage leading up to that description of his inner conflict, he focuses attention on one commandment in particular: the commandment not to covet. 7:7 … If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’

chronology for Paul’s letters which makes Romans the last of the genuine Pauline letters (pp.  – ). The HCSB proposes an essentially similar chronology (p. ). Sanders says that Romans “may be” Paul’s last surviving letter – “‘may be’ because Philippians and Philemon… cannot be dated.” (Sanders, Paul, pp.  – ).

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Now some of the commandments seem to require nothing more than a certain external behavior: “you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal.” The commandment not to covet looks like it requires more than that. What is it to covet? It is to desire, especially, to desire strongly, to long for. This aspect of the tenth commandment is particularly clear in the version given in Deuteronomy: 5:21 Neither shall you covet your neighbor’s wife. Neither shall you desire your neighbor’s house, or field, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

You can’t fulfill this commandment merely by not sleeping with your neighbor’s wife and not stealing his possessions. You have to not want to do those things. And this looks like much more of a challenge than avoiding the external acts would be. The Sermon on the Mount, for many Christians, is the epitome of Jesus’ teaching. There Matthew reports him as saying: 5:27 You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

In his life of Jesus Sanders comments that these verses – and others in that context – illustrate an “idealistic perfectionism” which “marks substantial portions of the Sermon on the Mount.”⁵⁶ And he questions whether Jesus ever said such things: The reader of Mark and Luke would not know that Jesus prohibited anger and lustful thoughts. Admonition to eliminate feelings that are common to humanity is not a characteristic of Jesus’ teaching generally, but occurs only in this section of Matthew… the overall tenor of Jesus’ teaching is compassion towards human frailty. (ibid., p. 202)

I don’t wish, at this point, to get into the difficult business of sorting out which of the teachings attributed to Jesus in the gospels actually go back to Jesus. I’ll limit myself to three points. First, whatever Jesus himself may have taught, and whatever Paul may have believed that Jesus taught,⁵⁷ the interiorization of the moral law we find in the

 See Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus, p. .  It’s an interesting question what Paul’s sources for knowledge of Jesus’ teachings were. The picture I derive from Brown is that Paul died sometime between  and , and that the most likely date of the earliest gospel, Mark, would be between  and . Brown thinks the next ear-

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Sermon on the Mount is not entirely foreign to the Jewish tradition. As we’ve seen, it’s present in the Torah itself, even if not strongly emphasized. Second, if Paul did come to think of the law as requiring the absence of certain desires, then it becomes much easier to understand why he might also have come to think that he was in bondage to sin. By that standard, it’s so hard to be good that one might easily think it impossible. Third, if Paul did think of the law as making these demands on our desires, it’s easier to understand why empirical observation of people would not settle the matter for him. Let’s stipulate that our everyday experience of others would probably lead us to believe that most of them are not horrendously wicked, and that some even leads lives which are “largely beyond reproach.”⁵⁸ But what we see is only what is external. By introspection we learn that blameless external behavior can co-exist with desires a strict moralist would condemn. We may be able to conceal these desires from human judges. But in the end we will have to answer to God for our secret thoughts. (Rom. 2:14– 16) Paul’s recognition of this point would explain why he might not regard everyday observation of others as dispositive.

16 Philosophical Speculation So far I don’t think we find anything in Paul which deserves to be called ‘philosophical speculation.’ He believes that sin is universal, that everybody sins frequently and seriously, and (if my interpretation of this is correct) that part of the explanation for the ubiquity of serious sin is that the law makes demands on us which ordinary human beings will frequently fail to fulfill, demands even saints will often find challenging. To the extent that this view is not based on empirical observation, it seems to be based at least partly on introspection, and partly on scripture. Perhaps it is also based partly on literary and philosophical accounts of human experience. In his Metamorphoses, Ovid gives Medea the following lines: A new force drags me against my will; desire urges one thing, my mind another; I see the better and approve it; but I choose the worse. (Metamorphoses VII, 19 – 21)

The act she contemplates in this version of the story is betraying her father by helping Jason steal the golden fleece. Euripedes attributed a similar sentiment

liest gospel, Matthew, was probably written between  and . So it seems unlikely that Paul knew any of the gospels, though he must have been familiar with some of their sources.  Even the story of Noah, which on the whole favors a rather dark view of man’s moral nature, does present Noah, initially, at least, as “a righteous man, blameless in his generation.” (Gen :).

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to his Medea, though in a different, and more troubling context, where what she was on the point of doing was unambiguously appalling.⁵⁹ Ironically, if we interiorize the moral law, it does not matter what Medea chooses. She is condemned merely by having the desires she does. Ovid did not invent the problem of weakness of will. He merely gave crisp epigrammatic expression to a common human weakness which philosophers had puzzled about since Plato’s Protagoras, a weakness explored most influentially in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. So far I think Spinoza might have had some sympathy with Paul’s view. He himself holds a moderate, secularized form of the view. He can’t accept the traditional notion of sin. He thinks it’s unintelligible to conceive God as a lawgiver (TTP iv, 23 – 37). If sin is defined as a transgression of the laws of God, he will deny that there is such a thing as sin. (Cf. E IV P37S2 with TP ii, 18) But he proposes to redefine “sin” as disobedience to the laws of the state. In that sense there is no doubt that sin is possible and all too common, if not universal. And because he thinks the state is an institution whose function is to enable people to pursue their rational self-interest – giving them additional incentives to engage in cooperative behavior and avoid anti-social behavior⁶⁰ – he will sometimes equate sin with irrational behavior. (Cf. TP ii, 20 – 21 with E IV P54S) Suppose we think of sin as irrational action, action in which reason succumbs to the passions, yielding anti-social action contrary to the agent’s interests, broadly understood. On that conception, I think Spinoza would grant that sin is universal, frequent in the life of most, though not all, human beings. In the Political Treatise he writes that “it’s not in anyone’s power to always use reason and be at the highest peak of human freedom.” (TP ii, 8) We are all subject to affects like anger, envy, or some other form of hatred. These pull us in different directions, and make us naturally enemies to one another. (TP ii, 14) This is not to say that no one is virtuous. But Spinoza does think that the truly virtuous – that is, those who are guided by reason most of the time – are very few: Everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, has always been the same. In every age virtue has been extremely rare. (TTP xii, 7, III/160)

 Euripedes, Medea,  – : “The evil done to me has won the day. / I understand too well the dreadful act / I’m going to commit, but my judgment / can’t check my anger, and that incites / the greatest evils human beings do.” There the act is avenging Jason’s betrayal of her by killing their children.  Incentives and disincentives which go beyond those nature provides, and should make it clearer what it is in our interest to do.

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We may have an allusion here to Romans 3:9. But if so, Spinoza has moderated Paul’s pessimism. He does not join Paul in saying with the Psalmist that no one is righteous, not even one.

17 Where Paul Went Astray If Spinoza accepts a more moderate version of Paul’s teaching, what is the philosophical speculation he thinks so unfortunate? I think it lies in Paul’s account of the ultimate cause of sin. Paul may not have fully articulated the doctrine of original sin which the Church subsequently adopted, but he did a great deal to get it started. The traditional doctrine maintains that God created us with free will, with an ability either to sin or not to sin, but that the first man, Adam, chose to sin, and that as a result of his choice, sin passed to all his descendants, who were henceforth unable not to sin.⁶¹ Though those descendants might now be under the power of sin, unable to order their lives as they should, or as they would wish, the fact that they lack this power is a consequence of an act of Adam’s which he could have avoided. When the church fathers offered scriptural support for this view, they emphasized a passage in Romans which the Vulgate translation rendered: …as through one man sin entered the world (and through sin death), and so [death] passed into all men, in whom all have sinned.⁶²

 Unless cleansed by baptism. See, for example, Denzinger, Sources of Catholic Dogma, entries in the Systematic Index for “Original Man”, “Original Sin” and “Fallen Man”. For an Augustinian statement of the doctrine, see Id., City of God, XII, xxii; XIII, i-iii, xiv; and XIV, i-iii, xi-xvi.  Romans :, as translated by Deferrari in Denzinger, Sources of Catholic Dogma, my emphasis. This is a pretty literal translation of the Vulgate, which still has some currency, though it is problematic on both linguistic and philosophical grounds, and most subsequent translations read differently. The Vulgate puts all the responsibility on Adam, not only for his own sin, but also for those of his descendants, in a way many moderns find uncomfortable. The RSV, which we can take as representative of most recent translations, assigns responsibility for the descendants’ sins, and consequent death, to the descendants themselves: “As sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men have sinned.” Fitzmyer has argued forcefully that both these translations face linguistic difficulties and that the context does not permit us to evade the philosophical issue by amending the Vulgate translation of Romans 5:12: “No matter how one understands 5.12d, the universal causality of Adam’s sin is presupposed in 5.15a, 16a, 17a, 18a, 19. Hence it would be false to the thrust of the whole Pauline paragraph to interpret 5.12 as though it implied that the sinful human condition before Christ’s coming were due solely to individual personal conduct, as Pelagius advocated, in imi-

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It’s not clear what this verse means, but Augustine offered a way of reading it which became official church doctrine for a long time. He took the italicized phrase as a reference to Adam, the ‘one man’ mentioned in the first clause, who brought sin into the world. His idea was that the first sin, Adam’s sin, involved all of his descendants, who somehow sinned in his act of sin. Hence the lines in the New England Primer: “In Adam’s fall we sinnèd all.” Augustine put the matter as follows: God, who is the author of natures, and certainly not of vices, created man morally upright. But man, corrupted willingly, and justly condemned, produced corrupted and condemned descendants. For we were all in that one man, since we all were that one man, who fell into sin through the woman who was made from him before they sinned.⁶³

Here we have what can only be described as philosophical speculation. To say things like “we were all in that one man… we all were that one man” is to make metaphysical claims which it’s very hard to know how you would establish. And these seem to be philosophical speculations foreign to the Old Testament tradition, which does not need to engage in them, because however much the Hebrew Bible may believe in the universality of sin, it does not try to explain its universality by a doctrine of inheritance from Adam.⁶⁴ The problem of explaining human sinfulness – in the secular sense in which Spinoza can accept the idea of sin – is central to the latter parts of his Ethics. Part IV is called “Of Human Bondage”, a phrase Spinoza glosses as “man’s lack of power to moderate and restrain [his] affects”, manifested in the fact that often, though he sees the better, he cannot help but follow the worse. That allusion to the words of Ovid’s Medea occurs in the Preface to Part IV, and the passage is quoted in E IV P17S. Spinoza’s project is to account for our irrationality through natural causes, through the laws of nature, “according to which all things happen.” (E III Pref) In the Ethics he avoids polemic against the traditional religious explanation. In the Political Treatise he is more confrontational: The theologians don’t remove this difficulty [that people don’t organize their lives wisely, but are carried away by blind desire] when they claim that the cause of this weakness is a vice of human nature, or a sin, originating in the fall of our first ancestor. If the first man had it in his power to either stand firm or fall, and if he was in possession of his fac-

tation of Adam.” See Fitzmyer, “The Consecutive Meaning of EΦ’ Ω in Romans 5:12”. This much seems right, whatever one may think of Fitzmyer’s own alternative translation.  Augustine, City of God, XIII, xiv, my emphasis, my translation.  See the article cited above, “Sin, Sinners (OT)” in the Anchor Bible Dictionary.

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ulties and unimpaired in his nature, how could he have fallen, knowingly, and with eyes open?… They say he was deceived by the Devil. But who deceived the Devil?… And how could that first man, who was of sound mind and the master of his will, be seduced and undergo the loss of his mental faculties? If he had the power to use reason correctly, he couldn’t be deceived. He necessarily strove, as far as he could, to preserve his being and keep his mind sound. It’s supposed that he had this in his power. So he must have kept his mind sound and could not have been deceived. The story of the first man shows that this is false. So it must be granted that it wasn’t in the first man’s power to use reason correctly. Like us, he was subject to affects. (TP ii, 6)

In the end, Paul, Augustine, and the long line of theologians who follow them have no explanation for Adam’s sin.

18 What Christ Taught Spinoza contrasts the philosophical speculations Paul engaged in with “the very few and very simple doctrines Christ taught his followers.” (TTP xi, 22) By this I take it he’s referring to a quite short list of ethical teachings hardly anyone would object to. Sometimes he identifies the true religion with the commandments to practice justice and love your fellow human beings. (TTP xix, 9, III/230) I can understand a Christian objecting that this list is too short, that these are mere platitudes, which everyone might agree with, but which are not meaningful without more specifics about what constitutes being just and loving your fellow human beings.⁶⁵ Spinoza might concede that. But toward the end of Chapter XII, he responds to this objection in advance. He has just claimed that the most important requirements of scripture are the commandments “to love God above all else, and to love your neighbor as yourself.” (TTP xii, 34) This recalls the saying attributed to Jesus in Matthew: 22:35 One of [the Pharisees], a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is greatest?” 37 He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”⁶⁶

 I take it that Dungan makes a version of this objection in Dungan, History of the Synoptic Problem, pp. , , .  There are alternative versions of this story in the other synoptic gospels (Mark : –  and Luke : – ), with interesting variations. These gospel passages, of course, go back to various passages in the Hebrew Bible: Deut. : – , : – ; Lev. :.

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This last verse suggests that the rest of the law can be derived from these two commandments. So does Spinoza: The remaining moral precepts must be held to be no less uncorrupted,⁶⁷ since they follow with utmost clarity from this universal foundation: to defend justice, to aid the poor, to kill no one, to covet nothing belonging to another, and so on. (xii, 37, III/165)

Spinoza will certainly allow that the short list can be expanded. But not indefinitely. The principle governing the expansion – that things which follow clearly from the universal foundation are part of the moral law – also limits it. Things which don’t follow clearly from that foundation are without justification and not required.

19 The True Religion Spinoza thinks that a short list is crucial to the claim of Christianity to be the universal religion. Before Jesus the prophets preached the true religion, relying on the covenant Moses entered into at Mt. Sinai, but they preached it only to the people of Israel, as the law of their country. After Jesus the Apostles also preached the true religion, but preached it to everyone, as a universal law. (xii, 24, III/163) If the religion Jesus and the apostles preached was the true religion, and the religion Moses and the prophets preached was also the true religion, then both the prophets and the apostles preached the same religion. So no doctrine peculiar to either Testament can be part of the true religion. Even if we had fewer books than we do, either of the Old Testament or of the New, we would still not be deprived of the word of God, by which we ought to understand the true religion. (xii, 25, III/163)

One crucial implication of this is that insofar as the books of the New Testament teach doctrines not present in the Hebrew Bible, they don’t teach anything essential for salvation. Spinoza’s principle – that even if we had fewer books of the Bible than we do, we wouldn’t be deprived of God’s word – entails that if we lacked one of the present four gospels, we wouldn’t lack anything essential for our salvation:

 That is, we need not worry that the text of Scripture which has come down to us has been corrupted in the places where these doctrines are taught.

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It’s true that some things are contained in one gospel which are not there in another, so that one often aids in understanding the other. Still, we should not conclude from that that everything related in these four works was necessary for men to know… (xii, 30, III/164) To see why this is important, let’s compare the gospels to see how they bear on the issue between Paul and James: is salvation by faith or by works? This will be an application of Spinoza’s historical-critical method, which requires us to “collect the sayings of each book and organize them under main headings, so that we can readily find all those concerning the same subject… noting all those which are ambiguous or obscure or seem inconsistent with one another.” (TTP vii, 16, III/100)

20 Salvation in the Synoptics Suppose a thorough examination of the gospels yields the following result: three gospels agree, roughly, in telling the same story: the path to salvation is by works, obeying the command ments; one gospel rejects that answer, arguing that faith in Jesus is both necessary and sufficient for salvation. On that gospel’s view, obedience to the commandments would be a very good thing, if it were possible; but it’s not possible, and so not necessary for salvation. On Spinoza’s principle that no one gospel is essential to our determining the word of God, we should reject the outlier and follow the three gospels which agree in recommending salvation by works. So our hypothetical examination would wind up supporting Spinoza’s preference for James over Paul. I can’t attempt here a thorough examination of the gospels on this issue. But I can discuss, briefly, a few relevant texts. Consider the following story, told in Matthew, Mark and Luke. To make comparison easier, I’ll put the different versions of the story side by side: Mark 10:17 As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; you shall not commit

Matthew : Then someone came to him and said, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?”  And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.”  He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder;

Luke : A certain ruler asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.  You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false wit-

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adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’” 20 He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” 21 Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” 22 When he heard this he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. 23 Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” 24 And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God. 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness;  Honor your father and mother; also, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  The young man said to him, “I have kept all these; what do I still lack?”  Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.  Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.  Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

ness; Honor your father and mother.’”  He replied, “I have kept all these since my youth.”  When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” But when he heard this he became sad; for he was very rich.  Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!  Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

One reason the three gospels here excerpted are called the Synoptics is that they lend themselves to this kind of side-by-side comparison. They often tell different versions of the same story. Sometimes the differences seem slight and insignificant. Sometimes they clearly aren’t. In this case we have differences of both kinds, which I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide about. What’s most pertinent to my argument is a similarity: each version of the story presents a path to eternal life which achieves that goal through obedience to the commandments – plus (for some, at least) extraordinary generosity to the poor. The contention at the end of each version, that it’s very hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven, seems intended to reassure us that extreme generosity is not required of those who are not rich. From those to whom more is given, more is expected. For most of us what’s required for salvation is simply

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obedience to the commandments. (Hard enough, you might think, if obedience to the commandments requires not coveting.) Jesus seems to regard this obedience as a realistic possibility. When his interlocutor claims to have kept all the commandments since his youth, Jesus accepts what he says, and tells him he needs to do just one thing more: give all he has to the poor. In these passages at least the synoptics favor James.

21 Salvation in John The gospel of John, on the other hand, clearly sides with Paul. It provides the principal, perhaps the only, support in the gospels for the view that what’s required for salvation is faith and only faith. The text which states this most clearly and concisely is John 3: 16 God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life… 18 Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the only Son of God.

Belief in Jesus – presumably that means belief in Jesus as God’s son, whose sacrificial death on the cross redeemed mankind from sin, not just belief in Jesus as a wise and charismatic preacher in 1st Century Palestine, who taught a message of love – is both necessary and sufficient for salvation. There are a number of other passages in John which endorse a similar view.⁶⁸ These passages epitomize John’s gospel. So far as I can see, there are no similar passages in the synoptic gospels.⁶⁹ Now it might be objected that we don’t need Spinoza’s principle – if it’s in only one gospel, it’s not essential – to exclude John from consideration when we’re trying to determine what Jesus taught about salvation. There are many reasons, well-known to biblical scholars, for regarding John as unreliable. Evaluating the primary sources for our knowledge of Jesus, Sanders concludes that John’s picture of Jesus is so different from that offered in the synoptics that

 See, for example, John : – , :.  A prima facie counter-example occurs in what is known as ’the longer ending of Mark’: “The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned.” But the longer ending of Mark is “missing from the earliest, most reliable Greek manuscripts.” (HCSB, p. n.) Textually conscientious Bibles bracket it as dubious. Alas, not all Bibles are conscientious about the texts they give us.

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… for the last 150 or so years scholars have had to choose. They have almost unanimously, and I think entirely correctly, concluded that the teaching of the historical Jesus is to be sought in the synoptic gospels and that John represents an advanced theological development, in which meditations on the person and work of Christ are presented in the first person, as if Jesus had said them. (Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus, p. 71)

Sanders goes on to say that John is aiming at a different kind of truth, which is not synonymous with historical accuracy. This seems to be a diplomatic way of saying: if you want a serious attempt to tell the historical truth about the life and teachings of Jesus, the place to go is to the synoptic gospels; if you don’t care that much about the historical accuracy of the narrative, but enjoy theological speculation, you will find that in John. By and large I’m happy to concede this objection, but would add that the force of tradition, and the investment so many have in defending the existing canon, make it desirable to have as many arguments at our disposal as possible.⁷⁰

22 Why Spinoza Matters I began this paper by suggesting that there might be more than meets the eye in Spinoza’s discussion of the New Testament. I’ll conclude by explaining why I think it’s important to try to go beneath the surface of Spinoza’s text. Spinoza’s argument – putting together things both explicit and implicit – goes like this: 1) In understanding any substantial text, it’s important to understand its provenance: who wrote it? when? for what audience? for what purpose(s)? in what language? in what historical context? and so on. 2) It’s also important to read the text, if possible, in its original language, with a good understanding of how that language works. 3) For the most important books in the New Testament, the gospels, the original language was Aramaic; the original texts of the gospels have not come down to us; what we have are Greek translations of lost Aramaic originals, done by persons unknown, whose qualifications as translators are also unknown.

 Extremely interesting in this connection is Casey’s analysis of the reasons why the scholarly community, which has largely accepted the arguments against the historicity of John, has been unwilling to make those arguments accessible to the general public. See discussion of John, in the appendix to Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian’s Account of his Life and Teaching, pp.  – , also helpful because it summarizes the principal arguments of Id., Is John’s Gospel True? and responds to critics of that book.

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4) As a result, we can’t hope to understand the gospels as well as we might a text for which we had better textual information; in many cases we can’t understand the text at all. 5) But the following consideration saves us from total skepticism: where two or more of the gospels substantially agree in what they report about the teachings of Jesus, then it’s likely that what they report is (at least roughly) what he taught. 6) One important teaching which is substantially the same in the three synoptic gospels is that if we obey God’s commandments, we will be saved, and that if we don’t, we won’t. The gospel of John teaches that faith in Jesus is both necessary and sufficient for salvation, but this message is difficult to find in the synoptics, and probably not taught by Jesus. This result is interesting enough in itself. But it’s also important because of its consequences for the problem of religious liberty. Historically the belief that having a certain faith is essential to salvation has been central to arguments for using coercion against nonbelievers. Sometimes the argument was that coercion, suitably employed, could be instrumental in saving the soul of the nonbeliever by bringing him to the true faith. Sometimes the thought was that even if coercion didn’t work on the people immediately coerced, it still might have indirect benefits. Hypocrisy has its uses. Among them is the fact that a heretic or apostate who must pretend to be orthodox doesn’t have the same opportunities to corrupt others. This idea underlay Thomas Aquinas’ argument justifying the use of coercion in religious matters.⁷¹ Since the benefits of correct belief and the costs of incorrect belief were thought to be infinite, it was easy to justify using harsh measures to get agreement.⁷² Spinoza develops a theological argument for religious liberty in Chapters XIII-XV of the TTP, arguing that Scripture aims only at obedience, and that obedience is enough to meet the requirements of scripture. This opens up the possibility of salvation to members of any organized religion – or for that matter, to

 Cf. Augustine, Letter , with Aquinas, Summa theologiae II-II, Qu. , Art. ; Qu. , Art. . In a book I hope to write, on the rise of religious liberty in early modern philosophy, I intend to discuss not only Augustine and Aquinas on this topic, but also Luther and Calvin. In general I think discussions of religious liberty too often fail to discuss seriously the arguments of those who opposed religious liberty. Some of the articles which I think of as draft chapters for that book are available on my website: http://www.sitemaker.umich.edu/emcurley/files/emory_religious_liberty_march__revision.pdf See particularly the article Curley, “From Augustine to Spinoza and Locke”.  The reasoning here is, of course, analogous to the reasoning in Pascal’s wager, which Augustine anticipates. See Curley, “From Augustine to Spinoza and Locke”.

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adherents of no organized religion – so long as they obey the basic moral requirements Spinoza identifies at the end of Ch. XII: they must love God above all else, love their neighbors as themselves, defend justice, help the poor, kill no one, and so on.⁷³ It’s a crucial part of this argument that in xiv, 13, Spinoza defines faith in terms of obedience to God. Faith, on this account, is thinking such things about God that if you had no knowledge of them, obedience to God would be destroyed, whereas if you are obedient to God, you necessarily have these thoughts. (xiv, 13, III/175)

To anyone who comes to Spinoza with a knowledge of the Reformation debates about the relative importance of faith and works, this may seem a breathtakingly simple way of resolving the conflict between Paul and James in favor of James. Spinoza does go on to support his definition by appealing to passages in the epistles, including epistles traditionally ascribed to John.⁷⁴ But his way of understanding “faith” must entail a rejection of the fourth gospel, and of the theological tradition deriving from Paul. For a long time I felt Spinoza did not show adequately that obedience to certain basic moral requirements is (according to the NT) sufficient for salvation, and in particular, that he did not deal sufficiently with those passages in the NT which seem to require orthodox belief for salvation. I think I now see how he could make that argument, how he perhaps would have made that argument, if the oppressiveness of his times had not prevented him from being fully candid. Adequately understanding Spinoza’s argument for freedom of thought and expression requires understanding his treatment of the New Testament. And understanding his treatment of the New Testament, I think, requires reading between the lines in the TTP, seeing at least the fundamental points Spinoza

 In Curley, “Spinoza’s Exchange with Albert Burgh” I’ve argued, on the basis of the exchange with Burgh, that Spinoza was a religious pluralist in this sense: that he thought salvation was possible in many religions. I think my interpretation entails that he thought it would also be possible in an individual religion, outside all organized religions. As is true of most of my articles on Spinoza, this one is also available on the website mentioned above.  In xiv, , he quotes James’ statement that faith without works is dead (James :), probably the most frequently cited of the NT passages favoring justification by works. In subsequent sections he follows that up with a number of quotations from ‘John’:  John : – ,  John :, and  John : – . The traditional view about this letter was that it was written by the author of the fourth gospel. You might think that if Spinoza had been willing to subject the New Testament to the kind of critical discussion he gave the Hebrew Bible, the prima facie conflict between the teaching of this letter and the teaching of the fourth gospel might have been used to raise questions about that traditional view. But Spinoza abstains from that inquiry.

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would have made if he had provided us with a critical history of the NT. Reading between the lines is thus really essential to understanding Spinoza’s defense of religious liberty. In that regard, Strauss’s hermeneutics are vindicated.

Bibliography Austin, Kenneth, From Judaism to Calvinism: the Life and Writings of Immanuel Tremellius, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2007. Bentley, Jerry H., Humanists and Holy Writ: New Testament Scholarship in the Renaissance, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1983. Brown, Raymond Edward, An Introduction to the New Testament, New York, Doubleday, 1997. Casey, Maurice, An Aramaic Approach to Q: Sources for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002. Casey, Maurice, Aramaic Sources of Mark’s Gospel, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998. Casey, Maurice, Is John’s Gospel true?, London/New York, Routledge, 1996. Casey, Maurice, Jesus of Nazareth: an Independent Historian’s Account of his Life and Teaching, London, T & T Clark, 2010. Curley, Edwin, “Calvin and Hobbes, or Hobbes as an orthodox Christian”, in: Journal of the History of Philosophy 34 (1996), pp. 257 – 71. 285 – 87. Curley, Edwin, Descartes Against the Skeptics, Oxford, Blackwell, 1978. Curley, Edwin, “From Augustine to Spinoza and Locke: Answering the Christian Case against Religious Liberty”, online at http://www.sitemaker.umich.edu/emcurley/files/emory_reli gious_liberty_march_2011_revision.pdf Curley, Edwin, “Homo Audax: Leibniz, Oldenburg and the ‘Theological-Political Treatise’”, in: Ingrid Marchewitz and Albert Heinekamp (eds.), Studia Leibnitiana Supplementa: Leibniz’ Auseinandersetzung mit Vorgängern und Zeitgenossen, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlag, 1990, pp. 277 – 312. Curley, Edwin, “‘I Durst Not Write So Boldly’ or How to Read Hobbes’ ‘Theological-Political Treatise’”, in: Daniela Bostrenghi (ed.), Hobbes e Spinoza, scienza e politica: atti del convegno internazionale, Urbino, 14 – 17 ottobre, 1988, Naples, Bibliopolis, 1992, pp. 497 – 593. Curley, Edwin, “Rara temporum felicitas: Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise”, forthcoming in: Geoff Kemp (ed.), Censorship Moments, to be published by Bloomsbury Academic. Curley, Edwin, “Skepticism and Toleration: The Case of Montaigne”, in: Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy 2 (2005): pp. 1 – 33. Curley, Edwin, “Spinoza’s Contribution to Biblical Scholarship”, in: Baruch de Spinoza, Theologisch-politischer Traktat, Otfried Höffe (ed.), Berlin, Akademie-Verlag, 2014. Curley, Edwin, “Spinoza’s Exchange with Albert Burgh”, in: Yitzhak Melamed and Michael Rosenthal (eds.), Spinoza’s Theological- Political Treatise: A Critical Guide, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 11 – 28. Curley, Edwin, “The Problem of Professor Caton’s Sincerity”, in: Independent Journal of Philosophy 5/6 (1988), pp. 10 – 15.

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Curley, Edwin, “The Root of Contingency”, in: Harry Frankfurt (ed.), Leibniz, a collection of critical essays, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1976, pp. 69 – 97. Denzinger, Heinrich, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, tr. by Roy Deferrari, Fitzwilliam, NH, Loreto Publications, 2007. Donagan, Alan, Spinoza, New York, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1988. Dungan, David Laird, A History of the Synoptic Problem: the Canon, the Text, the Composition, and the Interpretation of the Gospels, New York, Doubleday, 1999. Euripedes, Medea, translated by Ian Johnston, online at ttps://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/euripides/medea.htm. Fitzmyer, Joseph, “The Consecutive Meaning of EΦ’ Ω in Romans 5:12”, in: New Testament Studies 39 (1993): 321 – 39. Greenslade, Stanley L. (ed.), The Cambridge History of the Bible: Volume 3, The West from the Reformation to the Present Day, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987. Hahn, Scott, and Wiker, Benjamin, Politicizing the Bible: the Roots of Historical Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture 1300 – 1700, New York, Crossroad, 2013. Harris, Errol E., Is There an Esoteric Doctrine in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus?, [Mededelingen vanwege het Spinozahuis 38], Leiden, Brill, 1978. Hunter, Graeme, Radical Protestantism in Spinoza’s Thought, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2005. Israel, Jonathan, “The Banning of Spinoza’s Works in the Dutch Republic (1670 – 1678)”, in: Wiep van Bunge and Wim Klever (eds.), Disguised and Overt Spinozism Around 1700: Papers Presented at the International Colloquium, Held at Rotterdam, 5 – 8 October 1994, Leiden, Brill, 1996, pp. 3 – 14. James, Susan, Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion, and Politics: the Theologico-Political Treatise, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012. Koerbagh, Adriaan, A light shining in dark places, to illuminate the main questions of theology and religion, ed. andtransl. by Michiel Wielema / Wiep van Bunge. Leiden, Brill, 2011. Kugel, James L., How to Read the Bible: a Guide to Scripture, Then and Now, New York, Free Press, 2008. Lagrée, Jacqueline, Spinoza et le débat religieux : lectures du “Traité théologico-politique”, Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2004. Matheron, Alexandre, Le Christ et le salut des ignorants chez Spinoza, Paris, Aubier Montaigne, 1971. Melamed, Yitzhak ,”‘Christus secundum spiritum’: Spinoza, Jesus, and the Infinite Intellect,” in: Neta Stahl (ed.), Jesus Among the Jews: Representation and Thought, London/New York, Routledge, 2012, p. 140 – 51. Metzger, Bruce Manning, and Ehrman, Bart D., The Text of the New Testament, Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005. Meier, John P., A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, New York, Doubleday, 1991. Meyer, Arnold, Jesu Muttersprache: das galiläische Aramäisch in seiner Bedeutung für die Erklärung der Reden Jesu und der Evangelien überhaupt, Freiburg i. B., Mohr 1896. Nadler, Steven, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2011. Sanders, E. P., Paul, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991. Sanders, E. P., The Historical Figure of Jesus, London, Penguin Books, 1995.

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Simon, Richard, Histoire Critique Du Texte Du Nouveau Testament: Où l’on établit la Verité des Actes sur lesquels la Religion Chrêtienne est fondée, Rotterdam, Leers, 1689. Smith, Steven B., Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1997. Stendahl, Krister, “The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West”, in: Id., Paul among Jews and gentiles: And other essays, Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1976; originally in the Harvard Theological Review 56 (1963). Strauss, Leo, “Persecution and the Art of Writing” [1952], in: Id., Persecution and the Art of Writing, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1988, pp. 22 – 38. Strauss, Leo, “How to study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise”, in: Id., Persecution and the Art of Writing, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1988, pp. 142 – 203. Wills, Garry, What Paul Meant, New York, Penguin, 2006.

John Christian Laursen

Spinoza, Strauss, and the Morality of Lying for Safety and Peace This paper is an exploration of the morality of lying for safety and peace in the work of two important thinkers. Benedict de Spinoza proposed a minimal credo of seven fundamental tenets that every one should accept, even if that means interpreting the language in a way that would mislead other people. And Leo Strauss is well known for making the case that a number of famous philosophers, including Spinoza, “wrote between the lines”, or dissimulated their messages. The purpose, in both cases, is individual safety and social peace. The question here is, does safety and social peace justify lying? As a preliminary matter, I observe that few or no scholars have broached this issue in quite this way with respect to these two thinkers. This is a curiosity in itself: why aren’t more people put off by the recommendation that one lie in order to protect oneself and to create social peace? Do we want a social and political order based on lying? Of course, the answer might be, “yes”. As we shall see below, some have argued that forms of lying such as hypocrisy are actually liberal virtues, helping hold society together. But others have argued that policies such as “Don’t ask, don’t tell”, requiring people to lie by omission for protection, are violations of human dignity.

1 Spinoza’s fundamental tenets One of Spinoza’s strategies for obtaining religious toleration can be understood as encouraging lying.¹ This is his assertion, in chapter 14 of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, of seven fundamental tenets of faith “that no one can fail to realize” are essential for obedience to God’s law.² He claims that “every man is in duty bound to accept” these tenets (TTP 222). Now, what if your religion does not coincide exactly with these tenets, and how could an atheist accept such “tenets of faith”? It is true that Spinoza allows a great deal of flexibility in interpreting

 Laursen, “Spinoza on Toleration: Arming the State and Reining In the Magistrate”, pp.  – ; some of the following materials are drawn from Id., “Spinoza on Lying for Toleration and His Intolerance of Atheists”, pp.  – .  Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus [hereafter cited as TTP and by page number in the text], p. .

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these tenets: “Every man is in duty bound to interpret them for himself in whatever way makes him feel that he can more readily accept them with full confidence and conviction” (TTP 225). So if your religion has different tenets, you use your interpretive leeway to make these tenets consistent with them. An atheist could interpret the language of these tenets as metaphorical or symbolic, perhaps understanding “God” as a synonym for “Nature”. But isn’t this lying? Isn’t it a lie, or at least a mental reservation, for someone to mouth the creed, but then admit to oneself that one does not mean what other people mean by the words? One would know that one was misleading other people. Spinoza’s fundamentalia are the “dogmas of a universal faith, the basic teachings which Scripture as a whole intends to convey” (TTP 224). Briefly, they are: 1. God, that is, a Supreme Being, exists, 2. God is one alone, 3. God is omnipresent, 4. God has supreme right and dominion over all things, 5. Worship of God and obedience to him consists solely of justice and charity, or love toward one’s neighbors, 6. All and only those who obey God by following this way of life are saved, and 7. God forgives repentant sinners (224– 5).³ This is an abstract, simplified Christianity, to which many Christians could agree. But what if they wanted to flesh it out a bit more, and insist that there is much more to their faith than this? If they have to say that this is all that is important, aren’t they being forced to lie? And wouldn’t Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and members of other religions see this requirement as forcing them to lie concerning one point or another? But I want to focus here on atheists. I think that Spinoza’s tenets would be rejected in toto by a conscientious atheist. If there is no God, he or she cannot be described by all of these dogmas. So if an atheist subscribes to Spinoza’s seven dogmas, he or she is probably lying. There are at least two ways in which this credo can be understood as lying. One is that he is counseling lying by making it clear that one can “interpret” the dogmas in any way whatsoever, even against the meaning of ordinary language. The other is that the last four tenets are very Christian, and if indeed Spinoza was the atheist or pantheist that contemporaries accused him of being, then he is lying about his own beliefs in proposing a Christian credo.

 For an in-depth study of this credo, see Lagrée, La raison ardente: religion naturelle et raison au XVIIe siècle.

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2 Strauss on Spinoza and writing between the lines Leo Strauss does not seem to have thought that there was much of a moral problem with lying in order to avoid persecution. He seems to take it as natural, a sensible recourse if one is to live as a philosopher. Indeed, in Persecution and the Art of Writing of 1952 Strauss developed an interpretive strategy that makes a virtue out of lying.⁴ Strauss observes that Spinoza knew that it was dangerous to tell the truth to most people, so he wrote his most important messages “between the lines” so that they would only be understood by the few potential philosophers. This may very well be a useful strategy in some situations, and help a writer evade persecution. But at least some people will recognize that it is lying or deliberate dissimulation designed to mislead some readers. Strauss reads Spinoza’s commentary on the Bible as justification for Spinoza’s own ruses. If what Spinoza does is “morally questionable”, then Spinoza is imputing “to the author or authors of the Bible a morally questionable practice” (PAW 179). But Strauss observes that “whatever may be the sound moral rule, Spinoza had certainly no compunctions to refrain from ‘confessing the truth’, or to reveal his views while hiding them behind more or less transparent accommodations to the generally accepted opinions. When he says that the wise man will never, not even in the greatest danger, act dolo malo, he does not mean that the wise man will never employ any ruses; for he explicitly admits that there are good or legitimate ruses” (PAW 179). It is worth noting that rather than openly spelling out throughout the work that this is lying, Strauss gives the practice some light rhetorical cover by referring to it as “ruses” and “caution or thrift in communicating” (PAW 179, 183).⁵ He seems to revel in the superiority of the philosopher over the benighted ignorant, and implicitly invites the reader to join the elite. But atheists who do not want to have to lie about their atheism, and who do not gain any satisfaction by justifying lying on the basis of their intellectual superiority, may feel uncomfortable with lying like this to buy toleration.

 Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, passim [hereafter cited as PAW].  Arthur Hyman writes that “It is my impression that Leo Strauss… interprets the dogmas” as “politically useful ‘lies’” in “Spinoza’s Dogmas of the Universal Faith”, p. .

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3 Beneficial lies? The discomfort of the atheists who feel they are being forced to lie by Spinoza’s requirement of acceptance of the seven dogmas can be situated in the context of broader debates about dissimulation and lying. By his time there had already been a long theological and philosophical debate about the merits of lying for good purposes. On the one hand, there was a long-standing debate about “pious lies” or “beneficial lies”. A German scholar once surveyed 93 Church Fathers, 73 pre-scholastics and early scholastics, 21 theologians from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and more, with only scant attention paid to non-Catholics, concerning the merits of lying for well-intentioned purposes.⁶ Church father Jerome defended such lies, Augustine opposed them, and each had their followers down through the ages.⁷ On the other hand, the practice of lying to protect oneself from religious persecution also goes back a long way. It spawned a large vocabulary: Nicodemism, crypto-Judaism, mental reservations, and more. The Bible refers to Nicodemus (John 3:1– 2), who dissimulated his Christian sympathies and gave his name to Nicodemism, a term for hiding one’s views in order to avoid trouble.⁸ Calvin strongly opposed lying, even for good purposes, but later Protestants sometimes praised it.⁹ It is well known that the Jews in Spain, forced to convert, often lied about their new faith and continued to practice Judaism in secret.¹⁰ And in both Catholicism and Protestantism there was a great deal of thinking and writing about recourse to mental reservations and equivocation when questioned about faith under duress.¹¹ Some made a distinction between lying (a sin) and dissimulation (not a sin) for protection. But Spinoza makes no such distinction and it is hard to see how one would be consistent with his philosophy (as we will see below). Strauss situated his understanding of the lies of philosophers in the history of philosophy. He cites Plato’s Timaeus and Seventh Letter for the point that philosophers “must conceal their opinions from all but philosophers, either by limiting themselves to oral instruction of a carefully selected group of pupils, or by writing about the most important subject by means of ’brief indication’” (PAW 35n.). The passage he cites from the Timaeus mentions that “the father and

 Müller, Die Wahrhaftigkeitspflicht und die Problematik der Lüge.  Zagorin, Ways of Lying, pp.  ff.  Ibid., pp.  – .  E.g. Labrousse, “Plaidoyer pour le nicodémisme”, pp.  – .  See the brief discussion in Zagorin, Ways of Lying, pp.  – .  Ibid.,, pp.  ff.

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maker of all this universe is past finding out, and even if we found him, to tell of him to all men would be impossible” (28c), and the passages from the Seventh Letter mention the danger of telling Dionysius the truth: “we did not put it so plainly—that was not safe” (332d); “I certainly did not set forth to him all my doctrines” (341ab). Strauss also refers to what Plato says in the Seventh Letter concerning writing a philosophical treatise: “I do not, however, think the attempt to tell mankind of these matters a good thing, except in the case of some few who are capable of discovering the truth for themselves with a little guidance. In the case of the rest to do so would excite in some an unjustified contempt” (341de). And the last passage Strauss cites asserts that “no serious man will ever think of writing about serious realities for the general public so as to make them a prey to envy and perplexity” (344c).¹² As Strauss puts it in the Introduction to Persecution and the Art of Writing, it was the medieval Jewish and Islamic writers, Averroes, Avicenna, and especially Al-Farabi among the Islamic philosophers, and Maimonides among the Jewish, who made it clear to him that philosophers often had to hide what they thought, and express it indirectly (PAW 2, 9 ff.). Strauss refers to this practice as “accommodation” (PAW 15). Strauss also points out that it was the study of medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophy that turned him to the study of the sociology of philosophy, or the reasons why philosophers had to hide their real meanings (PAW 8). Two of the three chapters dedicated to a single thinker in Persecution and the Art of Writing are dedicated to the Jewish philosophers Maimonides and Halevi. The third one is dedicated to Spinoza. Among the moderns, Strauss cites Thomas More, Hugo Grotius, Blaise Pascal, and Jeremy Taylor (PAW 35n.). More had written of the “ductus obliquus”: “you must strive to influence policy indirectly, handle the situation tactfully”, says the More character, and that seems to include lying by omission.¹³ Raphael Hythloday answers by denying that he ever gave advice “that could not and should not be said anywhere and everywhere”, arguing for honesty (26). Grotius’s discussion of the law of war canvases opinions pro and con. Some say that fraud “is not evil, when a man by dissimulation preserves either his own, or another’s”, and that “we are not obliged to discover to others all we

 Strauss returns to the matter of Plato’s recommendation of lying frequently in The City and Man; e. g. “in a well-ordered society it is required that one tell untruths of a certain kind to children and even to the grown-up subjects”, p. ; see also pp. , , , , , ,, – , , etc.  More, Utopia, p. .

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know”.¹⁴ He contrasts Holy Writ and Aristotle, against lying, with philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and the Stoics, who defend it (1204– 1207). One argument Grotius makes might apply to the atheists who swear to Spinoza’s tenets: “in things sworn it is necessary that our words be true in that sense, in which we sincerely believe those to whom we swear, understand them” (1226). Toward the end of his chapter, the arguments against lying seem to outweigh the arguments in favor. Pascal’s Provincial Letters (1656 – 7) exposed the practices of the Jesuits such as mental reservations and omissions in confession as lies with the purpose of bringing them into disrepute.¹⁵ Jeremy Taylor’s Ductor Dubitantium spends twenty five dense pages proving that “it is not lawful for a guilty person to defend himself by calumny, or a lie, from the penalty of the law”.¹⁶ So on the whole all of these early-modern thinkers are advising against lying, while Strauss is arguing in favor of it. Strauss also supplies a list of philosophers who have been persecuted, and thus have an incentive to lie: Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, Avicenna, Averroes, Maimonides, Grotius, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Bayle, Wolff, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Lessing, and Kant (PAW 33). He makes it clear that one of the figures who tipped him off to the role of lying was Hobbes. According to Strauss, Hobbes was of the type that only “concealed their views only far enough to protect themselves as well as possible from persecution”, in contrast to those who thought the gulf between the wise and the vulgar could never be bridged (PAW 34; see also 183). Heterodox people such as libertines and materialist philosophers have also long been accustomed to using lies and subterfuge in self-defense. Spinoza’s advice about interpreting his dogmas would seem to fit quite well within the tradition of figures such as Cesare Cremonini (1550 – 1631), known for the slogan intus ut libet, foris ut moris [think what you like but conform outwardly to customs].¹⁷ Acceptance of this way of living implies that lying is acceptable. Silence is one form of lying for toleration. Jean Baptiste Morvan de Bellegarde wrote a book titled Conduite pour se taire et pour parler [How to keep quiet and to talk] in 1696.¹⁸ This was a book about keeping quiet, about not saying everything you could. One of the reasons for this was the maintenance of religious peace: if one can control oneself and not express everything one thinks, one can avoid persecution and intolerance. The author points out than “in general, one risks less by     

Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace, p.  [hereafter cited in the text]. Pascal, The Provincial Letters, esp. letters IX and X. Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, Book III, ch. , Rule , pp.  – . Zagorin, Ways of Lying, pp.  f. Bellegarde, Conduite pour se taire et pour parler.

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remaining silent than by talking” (65 – 66, 139). Not everyone agreed in full with this. When the abbé Dinouart plagiarized much of Bellegarde’s text three quarters of a century later, he added that “Silence is necessary in many occasions, but it should always be sincere; one can keep some thoughts to oneself, but one should not disguise any of them. There are ways of being silent without closing one’s heart… of hiding some truths without covering them with lies”.¹⁹ From this we can see that Dinouart thought that Bellegarde came too close to recommending lying by silence. Leo Strauss was comfortable with lying by silence, and thought that Spinoza was, too. He quoted Spinoza quoting Ibn Ezra: “He who understands should be silent” (PAW 181). In his interpretation of Spinoza, “It is of the essence of the wise man… that he is able to live without ever expressing those of his thoughts whose expression happens to be forbidden” (PAW 180). The issue of lying and dissimulation can be found at the origins of modern philosophy. Descartes was following up on medieval debates when he imagined the problem of a deceiving God, and could only resolve it by stipulation that God cannot lie; and Pierre Bayle stirred the waters of these debates about lying in his Dictionaire historique et critique.²⁰ Shortly afterward Pierre Ricotier and Jacques Saurin defended beneficial lies in sermons and debates in London and the Netherlands.²¹ They justified such lies on the ground that God and Jesus can be understood as lying in various Biblical texts, always for good purposes. Spinoza’s and Strauss’s stances can be understood as taking the pro-lying position in these debates. At different times, Jean-Jacques Rousseau took opposite stands on the debate. In La Nouvelle Hëloise, Wolmar is portrayed as behaving well by attending church, even though he is an atheist, in order to prevent trouble for his family. But in the Social Contract Rousseau calls for death for the fakers who pretend to go along with the communal religion but do not really believe it.²² After Rousseau, Benjamin Constant wrote an essay in 1797 allowing the use of beneficial lies, which spurred Immanuel Kant to take the hard-line position against lying for any purposes.²³ That two of the founding figures of modern liberal political thought took opposite stances on this issue suggests that a vigorous debate

 Dinouart, L’Art de se taire, p.  [hereafter cited by page number in the text].  See Paganini, Skepsis, esp. pp.  –  and chapter on Bayle.  See Laursen, “The Beneficial Lies Controversy in the Huguenot Netherlands”, pp.  –  and Id., “Impostors and Liars: Clandestine Manuscripts and the Limits of Freedom of the Press in the Huguenot Netherlands”, pp.  – .  Cited in Villaverde, “Rousseau, a False Apostle of Tolerance”, pp.  – .  Constant, “Des réactions politiques”, pp.  – ; Kant, “Über ein vermeintes Recht, aus Menschenliebe zu lügen”, pp.  – .

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about Spinoza’s and Strauss’s calls for lying for social peace may be expected within modern liberalism. Atheists who do not mind lying will not mind swearing to Spinoza’s seven tenets. But if they believe the anti-lying arguments, they will not want to be required to lie. They may conceive of it as a form of persecution. A plausible example of this is the Jewish philosopher Salomon Maimon, who wrote a little more than a century after Spinoza that he was ready to convert to Christianity if they would allow him to interpret its tenets as allegorical, etc., but that if not, he “must give up all claim to a religion which enjoins me to lie, that is, to deliver a confession of faith which contradicts my reason”.²⁴ Recent democratic theorists have also argued for a sincerity condition in public debate, ruling out lying by advancing public arguments that you do not believe.²⁵ As one scholar puts it, Spinoza’s opposition to moral legislation is based on the principle that “people cannot be expected to be morally upright and trustworthy if they must devote so much effort to concealing their true beliefs”.²⁶ Then how can Spinoza justify making them conceal their views about God behind specious interpretations?

4 Spinoza’s “thought crimes” A lot is at stake here. Elsewhere, I have written that Spinoza’s insistence on subscription to the seven dogmas “sounds like a call for intolerance of atheists and members of religions that disagree with [his] points, regardless of whether in fact they practice justice and charity and love their neighbors”.²⁷ In chapter 14 of the TTP Spinoza does not spell out what should happen to anyone who does not subscribe to his seven tenets. He does say things like that he has established the “limits of individual freedom of opinion in regard to faith” (TTP 221). He writes that “faith must be defined as the holding of certain beliefs about God such that, without those beliefs, there cannot be obedience to God” (TTP 222). In response, an atheist might say that one need not obey a God who does not exist. But Spinoza makes it a legal obligation: his seven tenets are “essential if all men, without exception, are to be capable of obeying God as prescribed by the law… for if any one of these beliefs is nullified, obedience is also nullified” (TTP 225). It also seems to be a moral obligation: Spinoza writes that a “universal faith must not contain any dogmas that good men may regard as contro   

Maimon, An Autobiography, p. . Schwartzman, “The Sincerity of Public Reason”, pp.  – . Steinberg, “Spinoza’s curious defense of toleration”, p. . Laursen, “Spinoza on Toleration”, p. .

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versial”, and claims that his seven tenets meet that standard (TTP 224). That implies that anyone, such as an atheist, who regards his dogmas about God as controversial, must not be a good man. Later chapters follow up on the implication that one cannot be a good citizen without subscription to the seven tenets. Chapter 19 holds that “right over matters of religion is vested entirely in the sovereign”, as the chapter title puts it (TTP 280). The chapter repeats the point, insisting that religious leaders serve at the behest of kings or sovereigns. He does not refer to the seven tenets here, but presumably the sovereign may require public subscription to them if the sovereign judges that they are useful for public purposes. Then, if one can only subscribe to the seven by lying or with mental reservations, one might be accused of subverting the sovereign’s laws. Alternatively, one could understand one’s lie here as in accordance with note 32 to chapter 16 of the TTP. That note reads that “in a civil state, where what is good and what is evil is decided by the right of the whole community, it is correct to make a distinction between deception with good intent (dolus bonus) and deception with malicious intent (dolus malus)” (TTP 307). If the whole community has decided that lying about the seven tenets is dolus bonus, then a recalcitrant atheist’s reluctance to lie could be the crime of rejecting or overriding that decision. Spinoza also does not spell out the relationship between the seven tenets of chapter 14 and chapter 20, which is titled: “In a free commonwealth every man may think as he pleases, and say what he thinks”. On the one hand, that chapter title sounds quite liberal in the sense of allowing a great deal of liberty. But the chapter also refers to a category of crimes in which the mere holding of an opinion may be taken to “violate the pledge tacitly or expressly given to the sovereign” (TTP 294). Not only can “words… be treasonable as well as deeds” (TTP 292), but a seditious “action is implicit” in the holding of some opinions (TTP 294). Disagreeing with one or more of the seven tenets, which Spinoza has said “every man is in duty bound to accept” (TTP 222, 224), could be just such a seditious “thought crime”. If the purpose of a protester’s objections to such a law “is to accuse the magistrate of injustice and to stir up popular hatred against him… he is nothing more than an agitator and a rebel” (TTP 293). If a magistrate requires subscription to Spinoza’s seven tenets and anyone protests, he or she may fall afoul of laws against rebellion. Traditionally, those laws have been draconian.

5 Unphilosophical atheists Spinoza’s fundamentalia are listed in a chapter that he presents as “An analysis of faith, the faithful, and the fundamental principles of faith” (TTP 220). The title

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of the chapter adds that “Faith is finally set apart from philosophy” (TTP 220). “Philosophy” seems to be used interchangeably with the study of nature, so the big distinction is between faith and philosophy or what we would call natural science. This has been taken to imply that philosophers or scientists may be excused from the credo of faith, and thus are not held to the requirements of this chapter, which covers only those who are incapable of anything more than faith, or who understand themselves as faithful. Thus, María José Villaverde argues that the dogmas are not required of everyone.²⁸ This would mean that atheists who disagree with the tenets but may also be characterized as philosophers would not have to agree to them and thus not have to lie. But I cannot find a specific exception in Spinoza’s text, and I do find him saying several times that “all men” must subscribe to his tenets (TTP 222, 224, 225; all quoted above). Philosophers, scientists, or atheists are not excepted from the universal faith. Introductory remarks about the fundamentalia base them on a “common faith of mankind” and purport to derive “all the tenets of faith that every man is in duty bound to accept” (TTP 221– 2). If I were an atheist, I would hope Spinoza would say that I am excused from this common and universal faith. But I would not find any such exception. He says “every man”. And not all atheists have been philosophers or natural scientists. Carlo Ginzburg’s account of the Friulian miller, Menocchio, of the late sixteenth century reports that he had worked out his own understanding of the world that compared it to a cheese from which angels, humans, and God himself emerged spontaneously like worms.²⁹ He was a poorly educated peasant who had no training as a philosopher nor had he read anything which Spinoza would recognize as philosophy. Perhaps he was not so wholly atheist that he could see nothing sacred in the world, but his anti-clericalism and unorthodox understandings of God drew the charge of atheism from church authorities. The key point here is not to decide whether or not Menocchio was an atheist, but to observe that he did not want to lie. If he had been required to subscribe to Spinoza’s tenets, he might have had to lie. And in fact he had been advised to lie to the Inquisition, to hide his opinions. But he was so pleased with them that he could not: in his first trial, his garrulousness was “guided by anything but caution or dissimulation” (TTP 65). He clearly wanted to express himself; he was proud of his ideas; he wanted to share them. Lying would have diminished him, repressed his self-expression. In the second trial, he may have recognized

 Villaverde, “Spinoza’s Paradoxes”, pp.  – .  Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms, pp. ,  [hereafter cited by page number in the text].

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that “it was better to dissemble” (TTP 106). By that time it was too late, and they did not believe his dissemblings. He was burned at the stake. Even if burning at the stake is not the punishment Spinoza would provide for failure to subscribe to the seven dogmas, his logic would seem to justify severe enough punishment to cause the unphilosophical atheist a lot of trouble. Thought crimes in which seditious “action is implicit” have traditionally been punished severely. He has been described as a democrat, even by Strauss (PAW 35n.), but Spinoza is not a friend of the unphilosophical demos in this respect.

6 The philosophical atheist And now let us turn to philosophical atheists. One of the first texts we have from a modern philosophical atheist is the Theophrastus redivivus of 1659.³⁰ Written just before Spinoza’s floruit, the author never revealed his name. I want to point out that anonymity is a form of lying by omission, and in this case he surely did it to avoid persecution. By refusing to take responsibility for his work, he avoided punishment. But covering up his identity in order to express himself safely is a sort of lie, and couldn’t an author see it as a sort of persecution that he has to hide his authorship? In this case he was surely hiding from the authorities of church and state. But if he lived in a Spinozist republic, he might have to lie as well in subscribing to the seven tenets. Another anonymous author, and therefore a liar, later identified as Denis Veiras, published what Jonathan Israel calls a “Spinozistic novel” in the years 1675– 79.³¹ The History of the Sevarambians reported that in the utopia of Sevarambia, people “are indulg’d a full Liberty of Conscience” and “it is permitted to every body to profess what Religion they please”.³² But most of the people are expected to agree with “one sort of external worship” (301) and “no one makes any difficulty in assisting at the publick Assemblies, and joining in the Sacrifices, Prayers, and Hymns” (307). This latter may imply something like Spinoza’s seven dogmas. So despite one’s liberty of conscience one is expected to mouth the sacrificial chants, prayers, and hymns. If one does not really agree with them and thinks they are hypocritical or idolatrous, one can simply keep that to oneself. But a scrupulous person might think that is a form of lying by omission.  Canziani and Paganini (eds.), Theophrastus redivivus; see Gengoux (ed.), Entre la Renaissance et les Lumières: Le Theophrastus redivivus.  Israel, Radical Enlightenment, pp.  – , .  Veiras, The History of the Sevarambians, pp. ,  [hereafter cited by page number in the text].

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Veiras’s story includes a discourse by a “learned and eloquent man” by the name of Scromenas who may be interpreted as a kind of atheist. The universe is eternal and infinite (ruling out Creation), and both material and spiritual (353). Humans are mortal (355), ruling out immortality of the soul and traditional ideas about salvation. There is a “God of Nature” (355) which might pass for Spinoza’s God, but we mortals cannot understand his providence, which also rules out knowing anything about salvation or forgiveness. By some seventeenth century definitions, he would be an atheist. The author teases the reader by remarking that Scromenas said “several strange Things not proper to be recited here” (356). But my conclusion is that Scromenas might have been unable to subscribe to Spinoza’s seven dogmas without lying. Veiras reports that the Sevarambians “do not trouble anyone for his opinions, while he yields an exterior Obedience to Authority, and conforms to the Constitution and Customs of the Country, in things relating to the Good of the Society” (301). Now, a lot will depend on the interpretation of these terms. If the customs or constitution of a country require subscription to Spinoza’s seven-dogma recipe for obedience to the laws, a law-abiding atheist will have to subscribe to it even if it requires lying, or he or she will be “troubled” in a place like Sevarambia. In addition to the author of the Theophrastus redivivus and Veiras, other contemporaries of Spinoza such as John Milton, John Locke, and Pierre Bayle also excluded atheists from religious toleration, sometimes on the claim that their oaths could not be trusted. But this exclusion is exactly what has been described by later thinkers as a blind spot in early toleration theory.³³ It is arguable that Spinoza as author of the TTP could not subscribe to the seven tenets of chapter 14 without lying. As Strauss points out, he deliberately raises questions from the Bible about the omnipotence of God and the salvation of other nations, and some of the other dogmas that he endorses (TTP 196). At the very least, his reading of the Bible in the TTP undermines some of them. Many scholars have taken for granted that Spinoza was himself an atheist: Julie Henry writes that he “was a systematic atheist, a methodical atheist, and finally, a politically virtuous atheist”.³⁴ But if this is so, to be consistent he should include himself in his requirement that atheists lie about their real opinions. Then why did he publish the TTP instead of concealing its message? Daniel Garber has argued that by his own stand-

 Laursen, “Blind Spots in the Toleration Literature”, pp.  – .  Henry, “Freedom of conscience in Spinoza’s Political Treatise”, p. ; Id., “Spinoza, Bayle et la méthode de la politique”.

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ards he should not have published it because of its possible effect on the obedience to the law of most people.³⁵ And yet he did. There are also good reasons to believe that Spinoza as author of the Ethics could not have subscribed to the tenets of the TTP. In his Ethics, he holds it as a Proposition that “A free man always acts honestly, not deceptively”.³⁶ As Dietrich Schotte has pointed out, in the scholia he presses that point: the prohibition of deceptive behavior holds even if the free man is in present danger of death.³⁷ His reasoning is that if reason required us to break faith in time of danger, we would all do so, and then “men would be better advised to agree only in words, and be contrary to one another in fact. But this is absurd” (586). But isn’t Spinoza’s requirement of acceptance of the seven tenets coupled with interpretation in any way you want, similar to agreeing only in words, and not in fact? Can Spinoza have his cake and eat it, too? One scholar has pointed out that despite his reputation as a hard-line, almost inhuman, foe of lying, some of Kant’s texts would allow for lying in times of fear on the understanding that one is not making lying a maxim.³⁸ But surely Spinoza is not arguing here that the requirement of subscribing to these tenets should create fear, and that fear would justify lying to conform to them. It would in any case be anachronistic to assume that Spinoza drew on some kind of Kantian exception to the no-lying rule. It may be granted that Spinoza does not spell it out that one must lie for peace and safety: he does not say, “Let us all agree to lie to each other about the seven tenets”. But he pretty much pushes the conscientious atheist into the position of having to lie to protect himor herself along with protecting the public peace. There does not seem to be much room for a distinction between lying and protective dissimulation: in most ordinary use, those are the same thing.

7 Spinoza scholars on lying about the seven dogmas Let me observe that few scholars seem to have recognized what I have been bringing out. Richard Popkin’s introductory remarks about the TTP in Spinoza describe it as “defending complete freedom of speech, thought, and belief”,

   

Garber, “Should Spinoza have published his philosophy?”, pp.  – . Spinoza, “Ethics”, pp. , . Schotte, “The Sage in Public: Beneficial Lying in Spinoza”. Schüssler, “Kants ethisches Lügenverbot – der Sonderfall der Lüge aus Furcht”, pp.  – .

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with no mention of his “thought crimes”.³⁹ Popkin recognizes that Spinoza’s seven tenets are presented as a “basic religion for rational people” (71), but he does not explore whether and how an atheist could go along with them. He remarks that Pierre Bayle later used Spinoza as an example of a virtuous atheist (73 – 4), but that does not settle the question of whether Spinoza was really an atheist who lied about it, and would recommend to atheists that they go ahead and subscribe to the seven tenets while maintaining reservations. Some scholars have taken for granted that Spinoza is advocating lying. Sébastien Charles has observed that Spinoza is merely following Hobbes in proposing that one can always adapt one’s interior faith to any external cult, and this will not be hypocrisy in any negative sense.⁴⁰ Michael LeBuffe describes Spinoza as advocating a noble lie, and adds that “the seven tenets may best be understood as problematic, exceptional, and –despite their prominent place in the Treatise– aberrant texts”.⁴¹ Jonathan Israel does not observe that failure to subscribe to the seven dogmas might be one of the “thought crimes” that Spinoza identifies. When he discusses the seven dogmas, he seems to accept Spinoza’s characterization of them as something that any “rational person will approve”.⁴² He admires the interpretive flexibility which Spinoza allows, such that one can interpret them any way one wishes: Spinoza’s comments about this flexibility are “astounding”.⁴³ Israel interprets Spinoza as an atheist, but one who is ready to subscribe to the dogmas by “interpreting” them in his own way. But he does not face up to the possibility that rather than interpreting the dogma of the existence of God in some metaphorical way, one could want to deny that a God exists. He gives no indication that he would sympathize with such an atheist who does not want to lie. “Just mouth the words, and think whatever you want” would seem to be his response. Michael Rosenthal is one of several Spinoza scholars who argue that Spinoza was not an atheist. In his interpretation, Spinoza was trying to show that “proper faith establishes a solid foundation for the state”: “Thus the state has an interest not in abolishing religion but in fostering it within the bounds of the universal dogmas”.⁴⁴ They will see that they have “some crucial common beliefs” that jus-

 Popkin, Spinoza, p.  [hereafter cited by page number in the text].  Charles, “Tolerancia activa y pasiva según Voltaire”, p. .  LeBuffe, “Spinoza’s Noble Lie and Atheism”.  Israel, Enlightenment Contested, pp.  – ; Id., Radical Enlightenment, pp.  – .  Israel, Radical Enlightenment, p. ; Id., Enlightenment Contested, p. .  Rosenthal, “Spinoza’s Dogmas of the Universal Faith and the Problem of Religion”, p.  [hereafter cited by page number in the text]; Id., “Why Spinoza is Intolerant of Atheists: God and the Limits of Early Modern Liberalism”, pp.  – .

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tify mutual toleration (69). But what about atheists? As long as they do not mind expressing their ideas in this universal idiom, “the idea of repentance could be understood by the philosophically enlightened person as the beneficial effects of the emendation of one’s intellect” (67). Those “who are outside of” religion can be persuaded “that it abides by at least some universal norms” (69). But the atheist could well ask: why do I have to express my ideas in their theological language? Why can’t they be required to express their ideas in my philosophical language, which would provide a different set of universal dogmas? As already mentioned, some scholars say that the seven dogmas are intended mostly for non-philosophers. Steven Nadler interprets the dogmas as intended “for those who will find their motivation for virtuous behavior in the Bible rather than in the demonstrations of the Ethics”.⁴⁵ He puzzles over the point that “strictly speaking – that is, Spinozistically speaking – several of them are false”, meaning that a philosophical Spinozist would have to lie to subscribe to them (184). As he says, “to claim that these propositions are necessary for faith might appear inconsistent with Spinoza’s own views that some people can be led toward virtue and true religion through philosophical reflection” (185). “How can these beliefs, amounting as they do to a very traditional, even anthropomorphic conception of a providential deity, be essential for obedience and salvation” (185), he asks? One answer is that “The philosophically gifted person… does not really ‘obey’ a command to love God and to act with justice”: rather, it comes naturally (185). “The person guided by reason knows that, in truth, God (or Nature) is not a lawgiver and does not issue commands” (186). But then will not a requirement to subscribe to these anthropomorphic tenets require the philosopher to lie? Hasana Sharp’s perspicuous analysis of Spinoza suggests the understanding that speech should be evaluated from the point of view of relationships and the combined strength of humans in nature.⁴⁶ One should consider ideas in terms of their force, vitality, and power rather than primarily in terms of truth and falsity (57). The strongest ideas are not the truest, but the ones supported by others (71, 75). Truth is not particularly important if the outcome is cooperation, strength, and peace, so lying about your religious beliefs should not be a concern. Caring about lying is a form of moralism, and Spinoza is an anti-moralist (110, 200, 205). On this reading, no one should mind lying if the upshot is toleration and peace. But not every atheist will accept this analysis.

 Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell, p.  [hereafter cited by page number in the text].  Sharp, Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization [hereafter cited by page number in the text].

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8 Contemporary political philosophers Late twentieth and early twenty-first century political thinkers have also been proponents of lying for the public benefit. In 1984, Judith Shklar wrote that hypocrisy was one of the “ordinary vices” which help modern liberalism maintain stability and peace.⁴⁷ Just recently, Martin Jay has reasserted the claim that political hypocrisy is the best alternative to the violence of those who claim to know the truth: for him, lying is a democratic virtue.⁴⁸ His main idea seems to be that one can be excused from lying if one’s lie avoids provoking the violent.⁴⁹ If endorsement of public lies and hypocrisy can be associated with modern liberalism (may we call it “hypocritical liberalism”?), then it is not a surprise that Spinoza has often been associated with the rise of modern liberalism.⁵⁰ Perhaps an atheist who thinks like Shklar and Jay would be satisfied to subscribe publicly to Spinoza’s seven tenets. But at least one contemporary political scientist has drawn attention to the deleterious social consequences of public lies.⁵¹ And then there are the liberal moralists. A moral atheist might join other moralists like Sissela Bok, who draws on Kant and his predecessors to oppose lying except in the most serious and grave cases.⁵² Moralism has been criticized as just as bad as hypocrisy in recent work, but it is still a position held by some modern liberals.⁵³ Not all admirers of the truth have been labeled liberals. Michel Foucault’s later lectures reveal his strong sympathy for the ancient Cynics and later truth-speakers.⁵⁴ Charles Taylor criticizes Foucault and others for too much authenticity, too much focus on their own truths.⁵⁵ He would apparently approve of lying for the sake of community. If, as I think, Spinoza is suggesting lying for the sake of community, then Taylor belongs in his camp. I think it is safe to say that the issues have not changed much. If atheists agree with the morality of beneficial lying, of liberal hypocrisy, of defensive

 Shklar, Ordinary Vices.  Jay, The Virtues of Mendacity.  It is arguable, however, that lying does not help where both sides of a violent conflict lie.  e. g. Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity.  Kuran, Private Truths, Public Lies.  Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life.  see Bennett and Shapiro (eds.), The Politics of Moralizing; Coady (ed.), What’s Wrong with Moralism?  Foucault, Le Gouvernment de soi et des autres; Id., Le courage de la verité; Id., Fearless Speech.  Taylor, C., The Ethics of Authenticity.

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speaking, they would have no problem mouthing the words of Spinoza’s seven tenets. But if the atheists resent being forced to lie about their real beliefs, claim the moralistic high ground and insist on telling the truth, they may be subject to the persecution that Spinoza authorizes for thought crimes. The hypocritical liberals might well say that, “yes, Spinoza is tolerant (because all you have to do is lie)”, and the moralistic liberals might answer that “no, he is not tolerant (because he wants to make us lie)”.

9 More from Strauss And now let us return to Strauss. It is worth noting that he had not fully developed his understanding of Spinoza’s subterfuges at the time he wrote his first book on the philosopher, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion (1930). As he wrote in the Preface to the English edition dated 1962, “I understood Spinoza too literally because I did not read him literally enough”.⁵⁶ To read him literally enough means to appreciate that when, in chapters 5, 14, and 15 of the TTP, he says that the common people are not qualified to judge and that philosophers will not tell them everything they think, he is describing his own situation (PAW 35). That is, he is writing between the lines, with one message for philosophers and another for other people. Strauss charges Hermann Cohen with making the same mistake, not reading Spinoza literally enough and thus too literally, which means not understanding that Spinoza often lies to the dangerous public and tells the truth indirectly (Preface, 26). Thus, Cohen is wrong to “deny that in Spinoza’s time the freest minds were compelled to withhold and to deny the truth” (Preface, 25). But Strauss underestimates his own understanding in Spinoza’s Critique of Religion. The chapter on “The State and the Social Functions of Religion” repeatedly insists upon the importance of cunning and deceit in politics (PAW 226, 236). In many places throughout the book he takes it for granted that political leaders will have to lie. Strauss does seem to recognize the import of the objection to lying at one point in Persecution and the Art of Writing, and his answer seems to be that free, liberal societies have the luxury of telling the truth, but that most societies in the past, including Spinoza’s, did not. He recognizes that “every decent modern reader is bound to be shocked by the mere suggestion that a great man might have  Strauss, “Preface”, pp.  –  [hereafter cited as Preface and page number]. German version in Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, vol . pp.  – . In a letter to Gershom Scholem, Strauss described this preface as “as close to a autobiography as is compatible with propriety”: Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. , p. .

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deliberately deceived the large majority of his readers” (PAW 35). But then he goes on to relativize the achievement of modern liberal societies by suggesting that what the earlier thinkers might have thought of as “lying nobly” is what we today think of as “considering one’s social responsibilities” (PAW 36).⁵⁷ Any such practice assumes that “there are basic truths which would not be pronounced in public by any decent man, because they would do harm to many people who, having been hurt, would naturally be inclined to hurt in turn him who pronounces the unpleasant truths” (PAW 36). Such writing “is then essentially related to a society which is not liberal” (PAW 36). That seems to imply that the “modern liberal societies” are not really liberal. Elsewhere, Strauss mentioned that both Senator McCarthy and “ceratin academic ‘liberals’ or ‘scientific’ social scientists” were examples of illiberal elements in modern American society.⁵⁸ There is another passage of interest. At the very beginning of the chapter titled “Persecution and the Art of Writing” in the book of that title, Strauss writes that it is the case that “in a considerable number of countries which, for about a hundred years, have enjoyed a practically complete freedom of public discussion, that freedom is now suppressed and replaced by a compulsion to coordinate speech with such views as the government believes to be expedient, or holds in all seriousness” (PAW 22). I suspect he cannot mean the then-Soviet Union or its satellites, because they did not have a hundred years of free public discussion behind them. It is the liberal countries of the West who seem to fit the bill. Strauss may be implying that the self-proclaimed liberal societies, beholden to “social responsibilities” and government-defined “expedience”, are not really free. He may be saying that in the 1950’s, and perhaps by extension the 2010’s, there are still parts of our society that are not liberal, would punish speaking the truth, and thus justify lying. It is quite likely that he is right about the first point. Our question is, is he right about the second? By now, I trust it is clear that any answer to this point requires taking a stand in an age-old debate.

Bibliography Bellegarde, Jean-Baptiste Morvan de, Conduite pour se taire et pour parler. Par Mr l’Abbé de Bellegarde, Paris, Simon Bénard, 1697.

 Note that this term was of continuing interest for Strauss. In a letter to Gershom Scholem of November , , he wrote: “I would be very grateful if you would let me know whether there is a cabalistic teaching regarding the noble lie” (Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. , p. ).  Strauss, “On a Forgotten Kind of Writing”, p. .

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Bennett, Jane, and Shapiro, Michael (eds.), The Politics of Moralizing, New York, Routledge, 2002. Bok, Sissela, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, New York, Random House, 1989¸1st ed. 1978. Canziani, Guido and Paganini, Gianni (eds.), Theophrastus redivivus, Florence, La Nuova Italia, 1981. Charles, Sébastien, “Tolerancia activa y pasiva según Voltaire”, in: John C. Laursen and María J. Villaverde (eds.), Forjadores de la Tolerancia, Madrid, Tecnos 2011, pp. 202 – 223. Coady, Tony C.A.J. (ed.), What’s Wrong with Moralism?, Oxford, Blackwell, 2006. Constant, Benjamin, “Des réactions politiques”, in: Id., Écrits et discours politiques, Paris, Pauvert, 1964, pp. 68 – 70. Dinouart, Abbé, L’Art de se taire. in: Jean-Jacques Courtine and Claudine Haroche (eds.), Paris, Millon, 1987. Foucault, Michel, Fearless Speech, Los Angeles, Semiotexte, 2001. Foucault, Michel, Le Gouvernment de soi et des autres, Paris, Gallimard, 2008 [The Government of the Self and Others, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010]. Foucault, Michel, Le courage de la verité, Paris, Gallimard, 2009 [The Courage of Truth (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)]. Garber, Daniel, “Should Spinoza have published his philosophy?”, in: Charlie Huenemann (ed), Interpreting Spinoza: Critical Essays, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp. 166 – 187. Gengoux, Nicole (ed.), Entre la Renaissance et les Lumières: Le Theophrastus redivivus, Paris, Honoré Champion, 2014. Ginzburg, Carlo, The Cheese and the Worms, New York, Dorset, 1989 [orig.: Il formaggio e i vermin, Torino, Einaudi, 1976)]. Grotius, Hugo, The Rights of War and Peace, Richard Tuck (ed.), Indianapolis, Liberty, 2005. Henry, Julie, “Freedom of conscience in Spinoza’s Political Treatise”, in: Reformation & Renaissance Review 14 (2012), pp. 8 – 22. Henry, Julie, “Spinoza, Bayle et la méthode de la politique”, in: Pierre Bayle et la pensée politique de son temps, ed. Antony McKenna, Paris, Honoré Champion, 2014. Hyman, Arthur, “Spinoza’s Dogmas of Universal Faith in Light of their Medieval Jewish Background”, in: Alexander Altmann (ed.), Biblical and Other Studies, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1963, pp. 183 – 95. Israel, Jonathan, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650 – 1750, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001. Israel, Jonathan, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670 – 1752. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006. Jay, Martin, The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics, Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 2010. Kant, Immanuel, “Über ein vermeintes Recht, aus Menschenliebe zu lügen”, in: Karl Vorländer (ed.), Kleinere Schriften zur Geschichtsphilosophie, Ethik und Politik, Hamburg, Meiner, p. 199 – 206. Kuran, Timur, Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1995. Labrousse, Elisabeth, “Plaidoyer pour le nicodémisme”, in: Conscience et conviction, Oxford, Voltaire Foundation, 1996, pp. 259 – 68.

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Lagrée, Jacqueline, La raison ardente: religion naturelle et raison au XVIIe siècle, Paris, Vrin, 1991. Laursen, John C., “The Beneficial Lies Controversy in the Huguenot Netherlands”, in: Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 319 (1994), pp. 67 – 103. Laursen, John C., “Impostors and Liars: Clandestine Manuscripts and the Limits of Freedom of the Press in the Huguenot Netherlands”, in: John C. Laursen (ed.), New Essays on the Political Thought of the Huguenots of the Refuge, Leiden, Brill, 1995, pp. 73 – 108. Laursen, John C., “Spinoza on Toleration: Arming the State and Reining In the Magistrate”, in: Cary J. Nederman and John C. Laursen (eds.), Difference and Dissent: Theories of Toleration in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield, 1996, pp. 185 – 204. Laursen, John C., “Blind Spots in the Toleration Literature”, in: Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 14 (2011), pp. 307 – 22. Laursen, John C., “Spinoza on Lying for Toleration and His Intolerance of Atheists”, in: John C. Laursen and María J. Villaverde (eds.), Paradoxes of Religious Toleration in Early Modern Political Thought, Lanham, Lexington Books, 2012, pp. 39 – 52. LeBuffe, Michael, “Spinoza’s Noble Lie and Atheism”, paper presented at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois. Maimon, Salomon, An Autobiography. [orig.: Lebensgeschichte, 1793], Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 2001. More, Thomas, Utopia, New York, Norton, 1992. Müller, Gregor, Die Wahrhaftigkeitspflicht und die Problematik der Lüge, Freiburg, Herder, 1962. Nadler, Steven, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2011. Paganini, Gianni, Skepsis. Le Débat des modernes sur le scepticisme, Paris, Vrin, 2008. Pascal, Blaise, The Provincial Letters, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1967. Plato, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (eds.), Princeton, Princeton University Press 1963. Popkin, Richard, Spinoza, Oxford, One World, 2004. Rosenthal, Michael, “Spinoza’s Dogmas of the Universal Faith and the Problem of Religion”, in: Philosophy & Theology 13 (2001), pp. 53 – 72. Rosenthal, Michael, “Why Spinoza is Intolerant of Atheists: God and the Limits of Early Modern Liberalism”, in: The Review of Metaphysics 65 (2012), pp. 813 – 39. Schotte, Dietrich, “The Sage in Public: Beneficial Lying in Spinoza”. Paper given at Symposion zu Udo Thiel: The Modern Subject. Mainz, Germany, 21 – 23 November 2013. Schwartzman, Micah, “The Sincerity of Public Reason”, in: The Journal of Political Philosophy 19 (2011), pp. 375 – 98. Schüssler, Rudolf, “Kants ethisches Lügenverbot – der Sonderfall der Lüge aus Furcht”, in: Philosophisches Jahrbuch 120 (2013), pp. 82 – 100. Sharp, Hasana, Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2011. Shklar, Judith N., Ordinary Vices, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1984. Smith, Steven, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1997.

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Spinoza, Baruch, “Ethics”, in: The Collected Works of Spinoza. Fourth Part, translated by Edwin Curley (ed.), Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1985. Spinoza, Baruch, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, translated by Samuel Shirley, Leiden, Brill, 1991. Steinberg, Justin, “Spinoza’s Curious Defense of Toleration”, in: Yitzhak Y. Melamed and Michael A. Rosenthal (eds.), Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise: A Critical Guide, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 210 – 30. Strauss, Leo, Persecution and the Art of Writing, Glencoe, The Free Press, 1952. Strauss, Leo, “On a Forgotten Kind of Writing”, in: Id., What is Political Philosophy? Glencoe, Free Press, 1959, pp. 221 – 32. Strauss, Leo, The City and Man, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1977; orig. 1964. Strauss, Leo, “Preface”, in: Id., Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, New York, Schocken Books, 1982; pp. 1 – 31, German orig. 1930. Strauss, Leo, “Vorwort”, in: Id., Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 1. Wiebke Meier and Heinrich Meier (eds.), Stuttgart, Metzler, 1996, pp. 5 – 54. Strauss, Leo, “Letter to Gershom Scholem”, in: Leo Strauss, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 3, Wiebke Meier and Heinrich Meier (eds.), Stuttgart, Metzler, 1996, p. 746 – 747. Taylor, Charles, The Ethics of Authenticity, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1991. Taylor, Jeremy, Ductor Dubitantium, or, The rule of conscience in all her general measures, London, Royston, 1660. Veiras, Denis, The History of the Sevarambians, John C. Laursen and Cyrus Masroori (eds.), Albany, State University of New York Press, 2006. Villaverde, María J., “Rousseau, a False Apostle of Tolerance”, in: John C. Laursen and María J. Villaverde (eds.), Paradoxes of Religious Toleration in Early Modern Political Thought, Lanham, Lexington Books, 2012a, pp. 159 – 76. Villaverde, María J., “Spinoza’s Paradoxes”, in: Paradoxes of Religious Toleration in Early Modern Political Thought, Lanham, Lexington Books, 2012b, pp. 9 – 38. Zagorin, Perez, Ways of Lying: Dissimulation, Persecution, and Conformity in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1990.

Antony McKenna

Pierre Bayle and the Red Herring Everyone recognises that there are contradictions in Bayle’s texts and yet everyone persists in recognising him as one of the most astute philosophers at the end of the 17th century. At the same time, it is very rare for two readers to agree on their interpretation of Bayle’s thought, on his real convictions and intentions, and that battle of interpretation is as lively now as it was three centuries ago. The contradictions are so blatent that they need interpretation or explanation: otherwise they relegate Bayle to a minor status. I prefer to think of him as an astute philosopher, whose intention is revealed by an analysis inspired by the general lines of Leo Strauss’ Persecution and the art of writing. ¹ But perhaps it is necessary to establish first that Bayle himself thought he was writing under the pressure of persecution. To do that, I need only to refer to the notorious Avis aux réfugiés. Although the anonymity was pretty flimsy, as G. Mori has shown, Bayle refused to recognise that he was the author of that pamphlet, even to his closest friends, the Basnage brothers. He apprehended being shut out of the Huguenot community altogether – a community in which he had already been isolated by Jurieu’s political and theological harrassing. On the philosophical and theological levels of which I shall be speaking, he obviously risked that redoubted exclusion. Among the contradictions, a hidden strategy is therefore feasible.² How have the contradictions been treated hitherto? Richard Popkin chose to privilege pyrrhonism and fideism because they were the philosophical movements that most interested him³: the moral rationalism which he recognised in discussion is absent from his written commentaries and he projects that scepticism and fideism on Bayle’s whole philosophical career. Elisabeth Labrousse, well aware of the contradictions, chose to give weight to Bayle’s most “frequent” assertions,⁴ which is, methodologically, in the light of Strauss’ writings,⁵ a fragile approach. G. Paganini argues in favour of the influence of Erasmus’ modica theologia in the elaboration of a conciliatory position defined by a “religion without theology”, a Latitudinarian faith founded on a spirit of moderation and on a “hypothet-

 Strauss, Persecution and the art of writing.  See Strauss, Persecution and the art of writing, pp. ,  sqq.  Popkin, “Pierre Bayle’s Place in th-Century Scepticism”; Popkin, The High Road to Pyrrhonism; Id., The History of Scepticism.  Labrousse, Pierre Bayle, vol. I, Du Pays de Foix à la cité d’Érasme, II, p. , n. ; Id., Notes sur Bayle; Id., Conscience et conviction.  Strauss, Persecution and the art of writing, p. .

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ical” theology.⁶ He finds in the works of Melanchthon, Grotius and even Hobbes the premisses of Bayle’s position, which rejects as adiophora all intrinsically theological beliefs and reduces religion to a moral code. In this analysis, not far from my own, I am nevertheless tempted to ask if the term “religion” has any substantial sense since, as G. Paganini has amply demonstrated in his own work and as Bayle himself makes clear (CPD, chap. 20), as soon as we try to define more closely the God in which we “believe”, we plunge into the mire of theological subtleties. H. Bost examines the contradiction between reason and faith in Bayle’s works and analyses them as two epistemological pathways, contradictory but equally valid.⁷ The conflict between reason and faith is “asymmetrical”, the difference between the two approaches being “incommensurable”, each having its own specific rights, to be maintained in “anxious coexistence”. Although Bayle admits the rational self-evidence of moral principles, religious mysteries are admitted as irrational by definition and this irrationality has its own inviolable prerogatives. The difficulty here seems to me to be the chronology of Bayle’s successive positions: after declaring, in the Commentaire philosophique, the rationality of moral principles and the compatibility of Christian faith with those principles – compatibility which, indeed, conditions our acceptance of Christian doctrine as a revealed religion – he then declares, in the Dictionnaire historique et critique, that Christian doctrine overthrows natural morality: the articles of Original Sin, predestination and the salvation of the elect few convince us that we have only relative ideas of justice and honesty (“Pyrrhon”, rem. B). Thus, morals do not escape the irrationality of religious mystery at this stage. And then, in his last works, he returns to moral rationalism: moral principles are valid whether or not God exists (RQP, III, §29); morals do not depend on faith (CPD, §151), and religious faith brings with it a fanaticism which is incompatible with the principles of rational (or natural) morality. As we shall see in more detail in the following analysis, these successive positions are irreconcilable and cannot be summed up in a coherent philosophy, be it that of “double truth”. G. Mori – following Strauss’ suggestion – chose to follow the coherence of Bayle’s metaphysics on the assumption that, if his intention were surreptitious or subversive, then we must give weight to his rare expressions which lend coherence to a hidden philosophy: “Stratonist” materialism.⁸ For my part, I consid Paganini, “‘Fidéisme’ ou ‘modica theologia’? Pierre Bayle et les avatars de la tradition érasmienne”; Id., “L’Eclaircissement sur les manichéens et les déterminations philosophiques de l’idée de Dieu”; Id., Analisi della fede e critica della ragione nella filosofia di Pierre Bayle.  Bost,”Remarques sur le conflit herméneutique autour des ‘Éclaircissements’”.  Mori, “Interpréter la philosophie de Bayle”; Id., Bayle philosophe.

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er G. Mori’s study to be perfectly coherent and, if I choose another approach, it is simply because I believe that there are other reasons for not regarding Bayle as a minor philosopher. I would like to examine his positions in chronological order and thus pinpoint the circumstances in which his personal opinion seems to have wavered. But first, I must deal with the red herring of Pyrrhonian scepticism. A red herring – or perhaps it is a wild goose or blaue Ente as Luther would have it – is a metaphorical animal which leads you in circles until you are fed up with hunt and – in our field – ready to accept the conventional reading which you set out in the first place to call into question. Bayle’s pyrrhonism plays this role admirably. In his article on Zeno of Elea, he shows by dialectic argument that we have no clear idea of time or space. His arguments are not new, but they are effective, and I see no reason to doubt that such (Gassendist) scepticism was Bayle’s position throughout his career. But I distinguish that general philosophy – which requires us to avoid cars that appear to be coming at us and to be content with the probability of converging testimony – from the particular question of the relations between reason and faith – especially on the question of rational and revealed moral principles. On this latter question, Bayle’s assertions differ widely and it is that question which seems to me decisive in appreciating his real philosophical intention. In his philosophy course at Sedan (between 1675 and 1677), Bayle gives strong expression to moral rationalism: Although [original] sin has largely obscured human reason, God did not wish that light to be entirely dimmed. There exists a certain law of nature that all men understand without rules and precepts, and which marks the difference between good and evil. Concerning moral behaviour, there exist therefore certain principles which can be recognised as true by natural light alone.⁹

Rationalism thus founds his professed belief in natural morals: these are selfevident, by definition. Bayle may appear to be begging the question, so emphatic is his insistance on moral rationalism: Natural morals are nothing other than a certain light which shines in the soul, by which no man can fail to recognise the first principles of morals without need of any instruction […]

 “Bien que le péché ait fort obscurci la raison humaine, Dieu n’a pourtant point voulu permettre que sa lumière fût éteinte tout à fait. Il y a une certaine loi de la nature, que les hommes entendent tous sans règles et sans préceptes, et qui met de la différence entre le bien et le mal. Il y a donc par rapport aux mœurs quelques principes dont la lumière naturelle suffit pour connaître la vérité.” (Cours, Morale, OD , IV, ).

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this natural light by which we approve moral principles is called conscience […] acquired morals derive from natural morals […] moral laws and precepts attain justice in so far as they are in conformity with that sovereign reason by which God wished everything to be governed…¹⁰

Some years later, in the Pensées diverses sur la comète (1682– 83), reason is the guide in the demonstration that “comets are not the omens of any misfortune” and that “judicial astrology” is founded on irrational principles. The whole work is composed as a relentless logical argument against the popular superstition of astrology and that argument is punctuated by self-evident “reasons”: §3: “That the conception of comets as omens has no reasonable foundation”; §9: “First reason against comets as omens: It is very probable that they do not have the power to cause any effect on earth”; §16: “Second reason: If comets had the power to cause effects on earth, these could be beneficial as well as harmful”; §17: “Third reason: Astrology, which founds those specific predictions about comets, is the most ridiculous thing in the world”; §23: “Fourth reason: Even if comets had always been followed by dire effects, we would still have no grounds to claim that they caused or announced those effects”; §24: “Fifth reason: It is false that more unhappiness has occurred in the years following the passage of a comet than at any other time”; §45: “Sixth reason: General popular opinion is of no weight to prove the bad influence of comets”; §57: “Seventh reason drawn from theology: If comets were omens of unhappiness, then God would have accomplished miracles to confirm idolatry”; §79: “Eighth reason: The opinion that comets are omens of public disaster is an old pagan superstition which has been introduced and maintained in Christianity because of prejudice in favour of ancient tradition”. Despite numerous deviations, Bayle is not distracted from his reasons: §89: “Factual proof of the transplantation of pagan errors into Christianity”; §98: “Refutation of French historians who claim that there were omens of the death of Henri IV”; §99: “New proofs of Christians’ inclination to believe in miracles and portents”; §101: “Convincing proof of the error concerning portents”; §102: “First objection…”; §103: “First reply…”; §104: “Second reply…”; §106: “Third reply…”; §114: “Fourth reply…”; §115: “First proof…” […] §133: “Seventh proof…”; §138: “An example that proves…”; §140: “Second  “La morale naturelle n’est rien autre chose qu’une certaine lumière qui brille dans l’âme, par la force de laquelle il n’y a point d’homme qui ne reconnaisse les premiers principes généraux des mœurs sans avoir besoin qu’on l’en instruise […] cette lumière naturelle par laquelle nous approuvons les principes des mœurs est appelée conscience […] c’est de la morale naturelle que dérive la morale acquise […] les loix et les préceptes de la morale empruntent leur justice de leur conformité à cette raison souveraine par laquelle Dieu a voulu que tout fût réglé…” (Ibid., pp.  – ).

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proof…” […] §158: “Seventh proof…”, and so on. His whole argument is thus founded on self-evident reasons pitted against the objections, prejudices, gratuitous suppositions and vicious circles of the superstitious and it suffices, in his own eyes, to show the logical absurdity of a superstitious belief in order to regard it as definitively refuted and ridiculed. After that work, the Philosophical Commentary (1686) gives new expression to Bayle’s rationalism in the field of morals: he adopts Malebranche’s rationalism, developed in the Traité de morale (1684), and Bayle presents it provocatively as a Socinian position: God forbid that I should extend this principle as far as the Socinians do, but while there may be some limitations as far as speculative truths are concerned, I do not think it should have any limitation concerning the practical and general principles of morals. I mean that, without exception, all moral laws must be submitted to that natural idea of equity which, as well as metaphysical light, illuminates all men who come into this world. ¹¹

Recourse to reason in this field – as in others – is natural and necessary: I know there are Axioms against which the clearest and most express letter of the Scriptures can avail nothing, such as: ‘that the Whole is greater than its part; that if from equal things we take things equal, the remainder will be equal; that it is impossible that contradictory statements should be true; or, that the accidents of a Subject should subsist after the destruction of the subject.’ Should the contrary be shown a hundred times over from Scripture, should a thousand times as many miracles as those of Moses and the Apostles be accomplished in confirmation of a doctrine repugnant to these universal principles of common sense, Man, as his faculties are made, is incapable of believing it, and would rather convince himself either that the Scripture speak only by contradictions, or only in metaphors, or that these miracles were accomplished by the power of the Devil, than that the oracles of reason were false in these instances.¹²

Bayle underlines the rational self-evidence of first moral principles and assimilates them to logical axioms:  Bayle, Commentaire philosophique, first part, chap. , pp.  –  [my italics].  “Je sais bien qu’il y a des axiomes contre lesquels les paroles les plus expresses et les plus évidentes de l’Écriture ne gagneraient rien, comme que le tout est plus grand que sa partie; que si de deux choses égales on ôte choses égales, les résidus en seront égaux; qu’il est impossible que deux contradictoires soient véritables, ou que l’essence d’un sujet subsiste réellement après la destruction du sujet. Quand on montrerait cent fois dans l’Écriture le contraire de ces propositions; quand on ferait mille et mille miracles, plus que Moïse et les apôtres, pour établir la doctrine opposée à ces maximes universelles du sens commun, l’homme fait comme il est n’en croirait rien; et il se persuaderait plutôt, ou que l’Écriture ne parlerait que par métaphores ou par contre-vérités, ou que ces miracles viendraient du démon, que de croire que la lumière naturelle fût fausse dans ces maximes.” (Ibid., p. ).

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Every attentive philosophical mind clearly conceives, that this bright and distinct light which attends us at all seasons and in all places, and which shews us “That the whole is greater than its part, that it is honest to be grateful to benefactors, not to do to others what we would not have done to our selves, to keep our word, and to act by conscience;” he conceives, I say, very clearly, that this light comes forth from God, and that this is natural revelation: How then can we imagine, that God should afterwards contradict himself, and blow hot and cold, by speaking to us outwardly himself, or sending his messengers to teach us things directly repugnant to the common notions of reason?¹³

And he attributes a privileged status to first principles or common notions: common notions [are] the original revelation and the original and basic rule of everything on which we have to pass judgement.¹⁴

This moral rationalism founds his defence of the rights of conscience in the Philosophical Commentary. Bayle seeks to develop his commentary on “more general principles than those of philology or theology”: If I were composing this commentary as a theologian, I would not need to reason any further; I would have the right to suppose that Scripture is the first rule of morals, and that to go against Scripture is, without any other proof, manifestly to commit a crime. But since I am writing as a philosopher, I am obliged to go back to the basic and original rule, which is natural light.¹⁵

 “Un esprit attentif et philosophe conçoit clairement que la lumière vive et distincte, qui nous accompagne en tous lieux et en tous temps, et qui nous montre que le tout est plus grand que sa partie, qu’il est honnête d’avoir de la gratitude pour ses bienfaiteurs, de ne point faire à autrui ce que nous ne voudrions pas qui nous fût fait, de tenir sa parole, et d’agir selon sa conscience; il conçoit, dis-je, clairement que cette lumière vient de Dieu, et que c’est une révélation naturelle: comment donc s’imaginera-t-il que Dieu vienne après cela se contredire, et souffler le chaud et le froid, en parlant lui-même à nous extérieurement, ou en nous envoyant d’autres hommes, pour nous apprendre tout le contraire des notions communes de la raison? (Ibid., pp.  – ).  “Les notions communes [sont] la révélation primitive et la règle matrice et originale de tout ce sur quoi nous devons porter jugement.” (Ibid., II, iv, p. ).  “Si je faisais ce Commentaire en théologien, je n’aurais pas besoin de monter plus haut; je supposerais de plein droit que l’Evangile est la première règle de la morale, et que n’être pas conforme à l’Evangile, c’est sans autre preuve être manifestement dans le crime; mais comme j’agis en philosophe, je suis contraint de remonter jusques à la règle matrice, et originale qui est la lumière naturelle” (Ibid., I, , p. ).

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Thus, his first chapter is entitled: That natural light, or the general principles of our knowledge, are the basic and original rule of any interpretation of Scripture, especially as regards morals.¹⁶

The reader is deemed incapable of renouncing the ideas inspired by natural light without renouncing his human nature. A great number of texts attest that, for Bayle in this period, “neither Scripture, nor the Church, nor miracles are of any weight against the self-evident light of reason” (ibid.). This natural light necessarily founds all our judgements: The Supreme Tribunal which passes judgement in the last resort, without appeal, on every proposition is reason which expresses itself in the axioms of natural light, or metaphysics.¹⁷

And he insists on the status of natural light in the field of morals. A moral judgement, “rational” and “natural”, determines our approbation of the Evangelical ethic. It is because the New Testament conforms to natural and rational morals that we can regard it as divine. I even know some people who have no greater difficulty in believing God to be the author of the Mosaic Law and of all the revelations which have caused so many massacres, than that they observe them to be contrary to the purest notion of equity; finally, they say, common notions being the initial revelation and the basic rule of everything on which we pass judgement, how can it come about that God who reveals to us by natural light that we should not force conscience, should also reveal to us through Moses or Elijah that we should kill those who hold such and such a conviction on questions of religion?¹⁸

 “Que la lumière naturelle, ou les principes généraux de nos connaissances, sont la règle matrice et originale de toute interprétation de l’Ecriture, en matière de mœurs principalement”.  “Le Tribunal suprême et qui juge en dernier ressort et sans appel de tout ce qui nous est proposé, est la raison parlant par les axiomes de la lumière naturelle, ou de la métaphysique” (Ibid., p. ).  “Je connois même des gens qui n’ont point de plus grandes difficultez qui les empêchent de croire que Dieu soit l’auteur des loix de Moïse, et de toutes les révélations qui ont fait faire tant de carnages, que de voir que cela est si contraire aux idées les plus pures de l’équité; car enfin, disent-ils, les notions communes étant la révélation primitive, et la regle matrice et originale de tout ce sur quoi nous devons porter jugement, quelle aparence que Dieu nous révele d’un côté par la lumiere naturelle qu’il ne faut point forcer la conscience; et de l’autre, par la bouche d’un Moïse et d’un Elie, qu’il faut tuer ceux qui n’ont pas un tel ou un tel sentiment, en matiere de religion?” (Ibid., II, iv: OD II, p. ; éd. J.-M. Gros, p. ).

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In this sense, natural light authorises the evangelical precept “to do unto others as you would that they do unto you”¹⁹. Bayle thus confirms that his doctrine of tolerance is not deduced from scepticism but from natural right self-evident to all men and he maintains the distinction between rational morals and the ethic of the New Testament when he resumes the message of the Philosophical Commentary: “all force is vicious and contrary to reason and to Scripture” (p. 84). Indeed, God conforms necessarily to our idea of His infinite perfection, of His justice and His goodness: He is infinitely just, or He doesn’t exist; He is infinitely good, or He doesn’t exist. No trace of pyrrhonism here: reason is a reliable guide and it is on reason that we found our judgement of divine nature and of Biblical doctrine. At the time of composition of the Philosophical Commentary, Bayle adheres fully to Valerian Magni’s rationalism: he violently rejects submission of reason which would lead us to “submit our understanding to faith to the point that we doubt and even believe false in some cases the rule of judgement that nature has given us”, since, “in so doing, we ruin faith necessarily”: “goodbye to all faith”, “it would be the most abominable chaos and the most execrable pyrrhonism imaginable”; “we must necessarily conclude that any particular article of faith, advanced as being contained in Scripture or otherwise, is false if it is refuted by the clear and distinct ideas of natural light, principally with regard to morals”²⁰. No place here for scepticism or Pyrrhonism, if we understand those terms to designate a doctrine according to which reason leads to no certainty but is reduced to question itself endlessly, calling into doubt its apparent certainties and even its own doubts. Moral rationalism founds the doctrine of tolerance, which is not deduced from human uncertainty but, on the contrary, from the self-evident rational conviction of the necessity of the golden rule of respect for others. Any attempt to encroach on another’s beliefs, to oblige him by force to abandon his most intimate convictions, to go against the voice of his conscience, is thus manifestly in contradiction with the basic rule of rational and natural morality. Of course, such a rationalism does not imply that a given principle, self-evident in Bayle’s eyes, will be immediately adopted by all his readers. Self-evidence, says Gassendi, is a degree of persuasion. Bayle is conscious that, in order to discover the self-evidence of a given proposition, we must resist the effects of education, custom and prejudice and that men stick to their prejudices with all the force of their passions. Thus, he enumerates, in the first part of the  “Tout ce que vous voulez que les hommes fassent pour vous, faites-le vous-même pour eux, car c’est la loi et les prophètes” (Matthieu ,); “Ce que vous voulez que les hommes fassent pour vous, faites-le pour eux pareillement” (Luc ,).  Bayle, Commentaire philosophique I, i: OD II, p. ; éd. J.-M. Gros, pp.  – .

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Philosophical Commentary, all the reasons which found his conception of tolerance, and, in the second part, all the rational arguments which combat his opponents’ objections, reticence and prejudice. He is sensitive to the fact that we adopt convictions because they seem obvious to us and that there is no easy rule to distinguish between true and false convictions. To be a rationalist does not imply to be obsessed by the illusion of perfect transparence and self-evidence, but simply designates confidence in the coherence of logical arguments: despite the weight of passions and prejudice, despite their “taste” for unfounded opinions and despite the zeal these inspire, men are able to recognise the coherence of arguments which avoid begging the question and contradictions in terms… and Bayle develops a battery of arguments – just as he had done in the Pensées diverses – to conclude that “an erring conscience has the same rights as a conscience that does not err”. Above all, we should take seriously his distinction between moral principles and “speculative truths”, in other words between “common notions” in the field of morals and “particular truths” in the field of theology. It is true that Bayle repeats after Gassendi that “self-evidence is a relative quality”, but he takes care to draw a frontier: it is going too far to claim that the questions raised in theological controversy are as clear as daylight, everyone knows or should know that self-evidence is a relative quality; that is why we cannot claim, except concerning common notions, that what seems self-evident to us should appear so to others.²¹

This distinction is crucial in the Philosophical Commentary. It confirms an observation made in the Pensées diverses, where Bayle underlines the futility of speculative questions in the field of theology – beyond the scope of the vast majority of believers – and emphatically lends priority to morals: I claim that we all form, both on the nature of God and on his commandments, a thousand judgements as false as falsehood itself: I claim that all our common people are anthropomorphites and Nestorians, and that there is no peasant who, having learnt that God is a spirit and that Jesus-Christ is God and man in one person, does not form ideas absolutely contrary to what he repeats parrot-fashion […] I claim that these errors are no offense to God and that the slightest calumny is a greater crime than all these lies. And the reason is that these errors are absolutely involuntary and that we form these murky opinions with-

 “c’est trop s’avancer que de dire que les matières controversées sont claires et évidentes comme le jour, chacun sait ou doit savoir que l’évidence est une qualité relative; c’est pourquoi nous ne pouvons guère répondre, si ce n’est à l’égard des notions communes, que ce qui nous semble évident le doit paraître aussi à un autre.” (Ibid., II, i, éd. J.-M. Gros, p. ; my italics).

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out malice and without liberty to do otherwise; whereas there is no moral vice, from the greatest to the smallest, which we do not commit voluntarily and in full awareness of the wrong we are about to commit.²²

In the field of “common notions”, an identical self-evidence imposes itself on all men, and moral principles are assimilated to “common notions”, to logical axioms. Ignorance of these notions derives necessarily, by definition, from negligence or malice (p. 296): it is inexcusable (p. 297). The obscurities of Scripture concern almost exclusively speculative articles of faith: moral principles, being more necessary for the conservation of society and in order to prevent vice from extinguishing the remaining sparks of virtue, have remained intelligible to everyone.²³

In the field of the “particular truths” of the Christian religion, on the other hand, each person will follow his/her own conviction and can err in good faith and innocently: in other words, these questions are adiophora. Bayle thus underlines the necessary harmony between reason and faith in the field of morals. Other articles of faith are relegated, so to speak, to the field of opinions determined by education, habit, “taste” and “zeal”: we believe in such opinions if we wish to, and if we wish to, then they appear true. Let us pay attention, he suggests to the kind of creature to which God teaches the truths of religion, by which means and with what degree of intelligence. These creatures are souls united with bodies which, for many years, have no glimpse of reason and no capacity to discern truth from falsehood, nor to suspect that those who teach them are leading them into error; thus, at this early age, they believe everything they are told, and are not rebutted by obscurity, incomprehensibility or absurdity. […] The passions and the habits of childhood, the prejudices of edu-

 “Je soutiens que nous formons tous et sur la nature de Dieu, et sur ses décrets, mille jugements aussi faux que la fausseté même: je soutiens que tous nos peuples sont anthropomorphites et nestoriens, et qu’il n’y a point de paysan, qui après avoir ap[p]ris par cœur et que Dieu est un esprit, et que Jésus-Christ est Dieu et homme tout ensemble en unité de personne, ne forme des idées toutes contraires à ce qu’il dit comme un perroquet. […] tous ceux-là, dis-je, errent sans offenser Dieu, et il n’y a si petite calomnie, qui ne soit un plus grand crime que tous ces mensonges. Dont la raison est, que ces erreurs sont tout à fait involontaires, et que l’on forme ces jugements ténébreux, sans malice aussi bien que sans liberté; au lieu qu’il n’y a point de vice moral depuis le plus grand jusqu’au plus petit, où l’on ne se porte avec liberté, et avec connoissance du mal que l’on va commettre.” (Bayle, Pensées diverses, §, p. – ).  “Les obscurités de l’Écriture ne tombent guère que sur les dogmes de la spéculation: ceux de la morale ayant été plus nécessaires pour la conservation des sociétés, et pour empêcher que le vice n’éteignît entièrement ce qui reste de vertu, sont demeurés plus intelligibles à tout le monde.” (Bayle, Commentaire philosophique, I, x, p. ).

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cation take a hold on us, before we become conscious of what we are letting enter into our mind. All this renders the search for truth extremely difficult.²⁴

In the field of “speculative truths”, we cannot attain certainty: We must add something that everyone recognises by indubitable experience, i. e. that God has not given to the truths which He reveals to us, to most of them at least, a mark or sign by which we can clearly distinguish them; for they are not self-evident as are metaphysical or geometrical truths; they do not produce in our soul a persuasion which is more robust than that inspired by falsehood; they do not stimulate any passions that falsehood does not similarly provoke. […] That being so, it would be incomprehensible if God, when he requires man to believe real truth, did not thereby require him to believe putative truth]; or, to express myself bluntly, we cannot consult our conception of order without understanding distinctly that the only law that God, in his infinite wisdom, could have imposed on man with regard to truth, is to love that which appears true to him, after employing all his intelligence to distinguish that truth.²⁵

To most of them at least: what is the restriction introduced here? It designates the moral principles of Christian doctrine, which are confirmed by those principles that we grasp by reason as being self-evident: moral rationalism creates an exception, a set of truths invulnerable to the uncertainty which affects all other articles of faith. Bayle underlines this distinction:

 “[Prenons garde] à quelle sorte de créatures Dieu apprend les vérités de la religion, par quels moyens, et avec quel degré de lumière. Ces créatures sont des âmes unies à un corps qui pendant quelques années n’ont aucune raison, ni aucune force de discerner le vrai et le faux, ni de soupçonner que ceux qui les instruisent, leur apprennent des choses fausses; de sorte qu’elles croient à cet âge tout ce qu’on leur dit, sans se rebuter d’aucune obscurité, incompréhensibilité, ou absurdité. […] Les passions et les habitudes de l’enfance, les préjugés de l’éducation, s’emparent de nous, avant que nous ayons le temps de savoir ce que c’est que nous laissons entrer dans notre esprit. Tout cela nous rend la recherche de la vérité très pénible.” (Ibid., II, x, pp.  – ).  Il faut joindre à cela une chose que nous savons par une expérience indubitable, c’est que Dieu n’a pas imprimé aux vérités qu’il nous révèle, à la plupart du moins, une marque ou un signe auxquels on les puisse sûrement discerner; car elles ne sont pas d’une clarté métaphysique et géométrique; elles ne produisent pas dans notre âme une persuasion plus forte que les faussetés; elles n’excitent point des passions que les faussetés n’excitent. […] Cela étant, on ne comprendra jamais que Dieu impose à l’homme la nécessité d’aimer la vérité réelle, qu’il ne lui impose aussi la nécessité d’aimer la vérité putative; et pour dire la chose sans détour, on ne peut guère consulter l’idée de l’ordre, sans comprendre distinctement, que la seule loi que Dieu, selon son infinie sagesse, ait pu imposer à l’homme à l’égard de la vérité, est d’aimer tout objet qui paraîtrait véritable, après avoir employé toutes ses lumières pour le discerner.” (Ibid., p. ).

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It is impossible, in our present state, to be certain that what appears true to us (I speak here of the particular truths of religion, and not of the properties of numbers nor of the first principles of metaphysics, nor of geometrical demonstrations) is absolute truth […]²⁶

We can grasp here the importance of his assimilation of moral principles to axioms of mathematics and “common notions”: these principles are thus invulnerable to doubt. They are put forward as a common ground for the reconciliation of the various refomed currents of thought – Arminians and Socinians – against the followers of Jurieu, proponent of enthusiasm and zeal.²⁷ Thus, in his definition of the rights of conscience, Bayle designates those articles of faith for which we have no certain criterion of truth: where doubt is permitted (adiophora), each person can follow his/ her conscience without restriction. But that uncertainty does not endanger the self-evident principles of rational or natural morals, and that liberty does not encroach on the moral obligations imposed by those principles.²⁸ Bayle thus maintains the balance. He declares in his early works the harmony of reason and faith in the field of morals: reason authorises and legitimises faith in the fundamental principles of Christian morals. At the same time, he concedes that, in the field of “speculative truths” – or “particular truths” – men hold to their faith not by reason but by education and habit, by “taste” and by zeal. This point is essential to my present argument: at the time of the publication of the Philosophical Commentary, Bayle puts forward as common ground between reformed currents of thought the only field – that of morals – in which faith is founded in reason. Moreover, if there were disagreement between faith and natural light in that field, then faith would be disqualified. Now, it is perhaps important to note that, when he wrote the Philosophical Commentary, Bayle was under the protection of Adriaan Paets, an eminent member of the Rotterdam town-council, a “republican” and an Arminian. It was on Paets’ initiative that the Rotterdam town-council had created the Illustrious School in which Bayle had found refuge after the closure of the Sedan reformed academy by a measure heralding the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Bayle

 “Or il est impossible, dans l’état où nous nous trouvons, de connaître certainement que la vérité qui nous paraît (je parle des vérités particulières de la religion, et non pas des propriétés des nombres, ou des premiers principes de métaphysique, ou des démonstrations de géométrie) est la vérité absolue […]” (Ibid., p.  – ; my italics).  See O’Cathesaigh, “Bayle’s Commentaire philosophique, ”, who situates Bayle in relation to reformed rationalists and Arminians (Amyraut, Pajon, Paets, Isaac Papin, Duker, Meyer, Clifford, Popple) and to the “orthodox” such as Huber and Le Blanc de Beaulieu, led by Jurieu.  “Nous sommes divisés sur des points qui n’aggravent, ni n’exténuent le joug de la morale chrétienne.” (Ibid., p. ): Bayle quotes as examples of “particular truths” which admit contradictory opinions, transsubstantiation and Trinity (Ibid., pp.  – ).

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had quickly become the friend and intellectual “confident” if his “patron” and had been accepted into Paets’ family with great trust, as is testified by the fact that Elisabeth van Berckel, Paets’ wife by a second marriage, bequeathed to Bayle, in a will established on the 8th of February 1682 (three months after his arrival), the sum of 2,000 florins (four times his annual salary). The intellectual, political, religious and philosophical alliance between Bayle and Paets at this period is a key to the events which followed. In particular, we notice that, as long as Paets was alive, Bayle never expressed an opinion on the relations between reason and faith which was opposed to his patron’s Arminian rationalism. Paets published a Letter on the recent “troubles” in England, pleading the cause of James II in the name of a doctrine of religious tolerance founded on Arminian rationalism. What is the nature of faith according to this doctrine? It is so true that faith cannot be commanded that it is not even voluntary. The consent or affirmation of our soul depends much more on the self-evidence of the object on which judgement is passed than on the degree of attention of the mind, and thus it is obvious that we cannot believe what we want. It is a disposition of nature that, just as our eye well-disposed can see only by means of light, our soul, however well-disposed it may be, can only accept a proposition if it feels its clarity. Now, since this clarity is derived from the very nature of the proposition, who can be blind to the feeble power of the will over understanding? (my italics)²⁹

Thus, Paets expresses his conviction that the truths necessary to salvation are self-evident: What! should we then admit nothing but what is so clearly contained in Scripture that it is impossible to doubt it? Certainly, when it is to be admitted as necessary for salvation; because in such cases, we require an assurance which preserves us from any mistake and which is founded, not only on the explicit and infallible authority of the Church, but on self-evidence accompanied by the help of the Holy Spirit.³⁰

 “Il est tellement véritable que la foi ne se commande point, qu’elle n’est même pas soumise aux ordres de la volonté. Le consentement ou l’affirmation de l’âme dépend beaucoup plus de l’évidence des objets que de l’attention de l’esprit, et par conséquent il est manifeste qu’il ne dépend pas de nous de croire ce que nous voulons. C’est un ordre de la nature que comme l’œil le mieux disposé ne discerne les objets que par le moyen de la lumière; ainsi notre âme, quelque bien disposée qu’elle soit, ne consent à une proposition que lorsqu’elle en sent la clarté. Or, comme cette clarté vient de la nature même de la chose proposée, qui ne voit le peu de force de la volonté sur l’entendement?” (Paets, Lettre à Monsieur B[ayle] sur les derniers troubles d’Angleterre, pp.  – ; my italics).  “Et quoi! faudra-t-il rien admettre qui ne soit clairement contenu dans l’Écriture, qu’il ne soit pas possible d’en douter? Assurément, lorsqu’il faut l’admettre comme nécessaire au salut; car en fait de ces points-là, nous demandons une assurance qui nous mette à couvert de toute er-

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Faith is founded in self-evidence: So it is with the assurance that persuades us, when we consider the light of common notions and eternal truths, that we cannot be mistaken concerning them. It is true that these first principles fill our minds with their natural light much more than the truth of a text which derives from the organisation of certain words whose meaning is derived from usage and not from nature. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that there is such great clarity in the passages of Scripture whose understanding is necessary to salvation that they become clearly intelligible to both ignorant and learned as soon as they are contemplated with an attention reinforced by the Holy Spirit³¹

Bayle’s “Socinian” formulae in the Philosophical Commentary hardly extend – in the field of morals – beyond the limits of Arminian rationalism as expressed by Paets. According to this doctrine, faith is perfectly compatible with moral rationalism. This period is also that of the “Glorious Revolution”, which, undoubtedly, traumatised Bayle, as we can see by his two anonymous publications: the Réponse d’un nouveau converti à la lettre d’un réfugié (mi-février 1689) and the Avis important aux réfugiez sur leur prochain retour en France […] par M. C.L.A.A.P.D.P. (mi-avril 1690)³². In his eyes, the invasion of England by William of Orange – motivated by political and economic interest – revealed the true nature of the charity and tolerance professed by the reformed community. The conversion of James II Stuart to catholicism served as the pretext for the Stadhouder to realise his political ambitions, – and the cohorts of zealous Huguenots in exile followed in his footsteps.³³ In his early works, the Pensées diverses (1682, 1683) and the pamphlet entitled Ce que c’est que la France toute catholique (1686), Bayle had attacked the fallacious nature – violent and hypocritical – of catholic morals, illustrated by the persecution of the huguenots. In 1689, he holds the proof that the tolerance preached by protestant theologians is simply the posture of a minority church, that it is founded on an appreci-

reur, et qui soit fondée non pas sur l’autorité parlante et infaillible de l’Église, mais sur une évidence accompagnée du secours du saint Esprit.” (Ibid., pp.  – ).  “Il en va comme de l’assurance qui nous persuade lorsque nous considérons la clarté des notions communes et des vérités éternelles, que nous ne pouvons être trompés à leur égard. Il est vrai que ces premiers principes remplissent tout autrement notre esprit de leur lumière naturelle que l’évidence d’un passage, qui vient de l’arrangement de quelques mots dont la signification dépend de l’usage, et non pas de la nature. Mais néanmoins on ne peut nier qu’il n’y ait une si grande clarté dans les passages de l’Écriture dont l’intelligence est nécessaire au salut qu’ils deviennent nettement intelligibles tant aux ignorants qu’aux savants dès qu’on les médite avec une application favorisée du Saint Esprit…” (Ibid., p. ).  See the edition of these texts by Mori and Id., “Politique et religion dans l’œuvre de Pierre Bayle”.  See Israel, The Anglo-Dutch Moment.

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ation of the balance of political power and that it is no different in nature from the political policy of the Vatican. Whether it be the death of Paets in October 1685 and Bayle’s exclusion from the Illustrious School of Rotterdam, which freed Bayle from his burden of gratitude towards his patron, or the “Glorious Revolution”, which revealed the true nature of Christian morals, protestant and catholic alike – or a combination of these factors – things changed radically in 1693 when Bayle launched into the composition of the Historical and Critical Dictionary. He then refused any kind of agreement between reason and faith. In the articles “Manichéens” and “Pauliciens”, he demonstrates that the existence of Evil is incompatible with the existence of God as we conceive Him. Faith implies a “scandal” inexplicable by reason. To better explain this “scandal”, Bayle turns to Pyrrhonism and explains all the “advantages” that faith may expect from a philosophy of uncertainty (article “Pyrrhon”, rem. B). As he amply explains in the words of an abbot designated as a “good philosopher”, the Christian mysteries of Trinity, Incarnation, Transsubstantiation destroy our elementary notions of unity, identity, person, substance. So far, nothing new, since Bayle had always maintained that “speculative truths” are the object of a faith founded on education, habit, taste and zeal. But now, in the crucial field of morals, the mystery of Original Sin and the existence of Evil undermine our elementary notions of Justice, Goodness and Honesty. Christian doctrine thus reduces us to Pyrrhonism and Pyrrhonism reduces us not only to doubt as to the existence of bodies and minds but also to admit that we have only a relative idea of what is good and just. In other words, this philosophy reduces us to nonsense: any rational discourse becomes impossible and it is in this sense, says Bayle, that it prepares us for faith. It is a great step towards the Christian Religion that we should expect to learn from God what we should believe and how we should act: religion requires us to submit our understanding in obedience to faith.³⁴

But this faith is reduced by the Pyrrhonian philosopher to a few incomprehensible formulae, that we can repeat but to which we cannot attach any precise idea – be it of person or of substance, or of good and just. In other words, our abbot designated as a “good philosopher” has demonstrated to his colleague “who knows only scholastic routine” that his faith is a hollow expression in which he can declare that he believes, but which he is incapable of explaining and

 “C’est un grand pas vers la Religion Chrétienne que nous attendions de Dieu la connoissance de ce que nous devons croire, et de ce que nous devons faire: elle veut que nous captivions notre entendement à l’obéissance de la Foi.” (“Pyrrhon”, rem. C).

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even of understanding. Pyrrhonism has served to reveal the true nature of faith: it is perfectly irrational; it is wholly incompatible with reason. The same argument appears in the article devoted to Faustus Socinus, where Bayle insists on the irreducible opposition between the mysteries of the Christian doctrine and human reason, wondering why the Socinians did away with mysteries. It is generally thought that they did so in order to get rid of articles of doctrine which constituted so many obstacles to popular faith: the Trinity, hypostatic union, Original Sin, absolute predestination and so on are incomprehensible and thus might seem to prevent people from adhering to Christian doctrine. But Bayle rejects this supposition: mysteries do not make religion more difficult for people to believe; on the contrary… But we can reply that they would have been very stupid and unworthy of their Italian education, if they had taken this path of trickery. The speculative mysteries of religion hardly upset the people: they do indeed weary a professor in theology who contemplates them with attention in order to explain them and to reply to heretical objections. Some other scholars who regard them with great curiosity, can also be wearied by the resistance of their reason; but all other men are perfectly tranquil on this account: they believe or believe they believe whatever is said and remain happily persuaded. […] They are much happier with a mysterious doctrine that is incomprehensible and raised above our understanding: we admire much more what we can’t understand; we have a more sublime idea of it, and it gives us more consolation. All the aims of religion are better fulfilled by things we cannot understand: they inspire more admiration, more respect, more fear, more confidence. […] In a word, it must be admitted that in certain matters, incomprehensibility is an advantageous quality.³⁵

Mystery is here designated as the characteristic trait of popular religion: “they believe or believe they believe”: this laconic expression calls implicitly into

 “Mais on peut répondre qu’ils eussent été bien sots, et bien indignes de l’éducation italienne, s’ils eussent pris cette voie de fourberie. Les mystères spéculatifs de la religion n’incommodent guère les peuples: ils fatiguent à la vérité un professeur en théologie, qui les médite avec attention pour tâcher de les expliquer et de satisfaire aux objections des hérétiques. Quelques autres personnes d’étude, qui les examinent avec une grande curiosité, peuvent aussi être fatiguez de la résistance de leur raison; mais tout le reste des hommes sont là-dessus dans une parfaite tranquillité: ils croient, ou ils croient croire, tout ce qu’on en dit, et ils se reposent doucement dans cette persuasion. […] Ils s’accommodent beaucoup mieux d’une doctrine mystérieuse, incompréhensible, élevée au dessus de la raison: on admire beaucoup plus ce que l’on ne comprend point; on s’en fait une idée plus sublime, et même plus consolante. Toutes les fins de la religion se trouvent mieux dans les objets qu’on ne comprend point: ils inspirent plus d’admiration, plus de respect, plus de crainte, plus de confiance. […] En un mot, il faut convenir que dans certaines matières l’incompréhensibilité est un agrément.” (“Pyrrhon”, rem. C; my italics).

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doubt our ability to believe what we cannot understand. Popular faith, blind faith, the faith which inspires admiration, respect, fear and confidence, is reduced to a “popular and superstitious faith” according to Bayle’s own terms in the article “Charron (Pierre)”: people repeat incomprehensible formulae without giving them any specific meaning and persuade themselves that they “believe”, although this very term is now devoid of any specific meaning. The very foundations of rationalist theology are thus undermined. And Bayle concludes: You have to choose between Philosophy and Scripture: if you want to believe only what is self-evident and conforms to common notions, then take Philosophy and abandon Christianity: if you wish to believe the incomprehensible mysteries of religion, then take Christianity and abandon Philosophy; for to possess both self-evidence and incomprehensibility is impossible. […] You have to choose…³⁶

We have thus attended two crucial moment in Bayle’s expression of the relations between reason and faith: reason is compatible with faith according to the Arminian doctrine of Adriaan Paets and according to Bayle’s first writings while under the protection of the republican regent; after Paets’ death and after his expulsion from the Illustrious School, after the traumatism of the “Glorious Revolution”, Bayle insists on the opposition between reason and faith: they are absolutely incompatible: “You must necessarily choose one or the other…” This radical refusal of rationalist theology was a hard blow to many reformed theologians. Questioned by the council of the Rotterdam Walloon church, Bayle composed the Eclaircissements which make up his defence. His argument on the relations between reason and faith can be quickly resumed. Nothing is more necessary than faith, and nothing is more important than to understand the value of that theological virtue.³⁷

It is not sufficient to believe the articles of faith according to dubious philosophical reasons:

 Il faut nécessairement opter entre la Philosophie et l’Evangile: si vous ne voulez rien croire que ce qui est évident et conforme aux notions communes, prenez la Philosophie et quittez le Christianisme: si vous voulez croire les Mystères incompréhensibles de la Religion, prenez le Christianisme, et quittez la Philosophie; car de posséder ensemble l’évidence et l’incompréhensibilité, c’est ce qui ne se peut […] Il faut opter nécessairement … (Eclaircissement sur les pyrrhoniens, Dictionnaire (), p. ).  “Rien n’est plus nécessaire que la foi, et rien n’est plus important que de bien connoître le prix de cette vertu théologale.” (Éclaircissement sur les pyrrhoniens, p. ).

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[The essence of faith] consists in our attachement to revealed truth by strong persuasion, and in our remaining attached to it by the sole virtue of divine authority. Those who believe in the immortality of the soul for philosophical reasons are orthodox, but in so doing thay have no part in the faith of which I speak. They partake in it only in so far as they believe that article of faith because God revealed it to us and in so far as they humbly submit to God’s Word everything that Philosophy presents as most plausible to persuade them of the soul’s mortality.³⁸

And he finally defines the merit of faith as proportional to the effort required to surmount philosophical objections: Thus the merit of faith becomes greater as the Truth in question surpasses our understanding; for, as its incomprehensibility increases by the multiplication of the maxims of natural reason that go against it, we must sacrifice to God’s authority the greater resistance of our reason, and thus we show ourselves to be more submissive with regard to God and we give him better tokens of our respect than if the Truth in question were only moderately difficult to believe.³⁹

And he draws the logical conclusion: The faith of the highest value is that which, on divine testimony, embraces the truths most opposed to reason.⁴⁰

In other words (as Bayle returns incessantly to the same argument): “far from being the characteristic trait of [religious] truths that they be in agreement with philosophy, on the contrary it is of their essence to be in disagreement with philosophical rules” (p. 630). Faith is opposed to self-evidence, according to saint Paul. Faith is by definition obscure, and, by definition, it cannot be

 “[L’essence de la foi] consiste à nous attacher par une forte persuasion aux veritez révélées, et à nous y attacher par le seul motif de l’autorité de Dieu. Ceux qui croient par des raisons philosophiques l’immortalité de l’ame sont orthodoxes, mais jusques-là ils n’ont nulle part à la foi dont nous parlons. Ils n’y ont part qu’en tant qu’ils croient ce dogme à cause que Dieu nous l’a révélé, et qu’ils soumettent humblement à la voix de Dieu tout ce que la Philosophie leur présente de plus plausible pour leur persuader la mortalité de l’âme.” (Ibid.)  “Ainsi le mérite de la foi devient plus grand à proportion que la Vérité révélée qui en est l’objet surpasse toutes les forces de notre esprit; car à mesure que l’incompréhensibilité de cet objet s’augmente par le grand nombre de maximes de la lumiere naturelle qui le combattent, il nous faut sacrifier à l’autorité de Dieu une plus forte répugnance de la raison, et par conséquent nous nous montrons plus soumis à Dieu, et nous lui donnons de plus grandes marques de notre respect que si la chose étoit médiocrement difficile à croire.” (Ibid.)  “La foi du plus haut prix est celle qui sur le témoignage divin embrasse les véritez les plus opposées à la raison.” (Ibid., p. ).

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founded in reason. Bayle quotes the maxims of modern theologians who confirm this position. His formula is complex but revealing: Roman Catholics and Protestants agree to affirm that we must shun reason when we have to pass judgement in a controversy on [religious] mysteries. That boils down to this: that we should never admit that, if the literal sense of a passage in Scripture contains incomprehensible articles of faith, which go against the most self-evident maxims of logic and metaphysics, it will be declared false and that reason and philosophy, natural light, will be the rule that we should follow in preferring one interpretation of Scripture rather than another. Not only do they declare that we must reject all those who stipulate such a preliminary condition in debate, but they also declare that such people are following a path which inevitably leads to Pyrrhonism, deism or atheism: so that the barrier most necessary in order to maintain the religion of Christ is the obligation to submit to divine authority and to humbly believe the mysteries that He has been pleased to reveal to us, however inconceivable they may be and however impossible they may appear to our reason.⁴¹

This passage – in which the ironic conclusion is drowned in double negations – seems crucial to me since who stipulated that “condition” (if the literal sense of a passage in Scripture contains incomprehensible articles of faith, which go against the most self-evident maxims of logic and metaphysics, it will be declared false), if not Bayle himself in the Philosophical Commentary, by denouncing the Augustinian – literal – interpretation of the banquet parable “Force them to enter” as being in contradiction with the maxims of natural and rational morality – as well as with those of Scripture? And who thus enters into the path of Pyrrhonism, deism and atheism if not Bayle himself according to Jurieu? In this sense, this sole passage is a clue and a key to reading the Eclaircissements: Bayle will stifle us with fideist authorities and quotations – from saint Paul to Saint-Evremond – but we should not lose sight of that landmark.

 “Les Catholiques Romains et les Protestants s’accordent à dire, qu’il faut récuser la Raison quand il s’agit du jugement d’une controverse sur les mystères. Cela revient à ceci, qu’il ne faut jamais accorder cette condition, que si le sens littéral d’un passage de l’Ecriture renferme des dogmes inconcevables, & combattus par les maximes les plus évidentes des logiciens, et des métaphysiciens, il sera déclaré faux, et que la raison, la philosophie, la lumière naturelle, seront la règle que l’on suivra pour choisir une certaine interprétation de l’Ecriture préférablement à toute autre. Non seulement ils disent qu’il faut rejetter tous ceux qui stipulent une telle chose comme une condition préliminaire de la dispute, mais ils soutiennent aussi que ce sont des gens qui s’engagent dans un chemin qui ne peut conduire qu’au pyrrhonisme, ou qu’au déisme, ou qu’à l’athéisme: de sorte que la barrière la plus nécessaire à conserver la religion de Jésus Christ est l’obligation de se soumettre à l’autorité de Dieu, et à croire humblement les mystères qu’il lui a plu de nous révéler, quelque inconcevables qu’ils soient, et quelque impossibles qu’ils paroissent à notre raison.” (ibid., p. : my italics).

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And yet he continues imperturbably to present fideism, mystery, as the only solid defence of faith: its articles are incomprehensible to reason; they have been revealed by God; we must therefore believe them without understanding them. It should be noticed that Bayle thus adopts a very solid defence, simply because this definition of faith as “voluntary” and not “rational” is precisely the one proposed by his enemy Pierre Jurieu: “the certainty of faith, declares the zealous theologian, is not grounded in rational self-evidence” (Jurieu: Le Vray Système de l’Église et la véritable analyse de la foi. chap. 21): I believe the mysteries of the New Testament, not by conviction, but because I want to believe them, and I want to believe them because they are of utmost importance for the glory of God and for my salvation. A wordly man wants to believe that the pleasures of the flesh are a true good; it’s not that he has any reason to believe so, but he believes it because he wants to, and he wants to because his passions want to and captivate his will. Thus it is certain that the will determines understanding much more frequently than understanding determines the will. In all things that are self-evident, it is the understanding that determines the will: but in the field of of faith, which is obscure, as in the field of error, it is the will that determines understanding.⁴²

Any concession to reason in the definition of religious conviction appears to him to be a dangerous tendency towards Pyrrhonism, deism and atheism. Bayle pushes this doctrine to its paroxysm in the Éclaircissements. In so doing, he takes shelter behind what he calls “Charron’s shield”. Charron had indeed denounced popular superstition by indicating that all men falsely claim to receive their religion from God: but, he declares, “to tell the truth, without flattery or deception, that is not so. Whatever they may say, men derive their religion from human hands and means”⁴³. However, “if you object that he  “Je crois les mystères de l’Évangile, non par conviction, mais parce que je les veux croire, et je les veux croire parce que je crois que cela est de la dernière importance pour la gloire de Dieu et pour mon salut. Un mondain veut croire que le plaisir charnel est un vrai bien; ce n’est pas qu’il ait aucune raison de le croire, mais il croit parce qu’il le veut, et il le veut parce que les passions le veulent et entraînent sa volonté. Ainsi il est certain que la volonté détermine l’entendement beaucoup plus souvent que l’entendement ne détermine la volonté. Dans toutes les choses qui sont évidentes, c’est l’entendement qui détermine la volonté: mais dans les choses de foi, qui sont obscures, ou dans les choses fausses, c’est la volonté qui détermine l’entendement.” Jurieu: Le Vray Système de l’Église et la véritable analyse de la foi, p. . See also the stringent commentary of Henri Basnage de Beauval in his Examen de la doctrine de M. Jurieu (). In: Bayle, Œuvres diverses, V, , op. cit., pp.  – , and particularly, on this passage of Jurieu, pp.  and .  “Il faut que les religions soient apportées et baillées par révélation extraordinaire et céleste, prises et reçues par inspiration divine, et comme venant du Ciel. Ainsi aussi disent tous qu’ils la tiennent et la croient, et tous usent de ce jargon, que non des hommes, ni d’aucune créature,

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is making comments that will harm religion and which testify that he accords more faith to his own comments than to the religious truths that they undermine, he will reply”: I would be true to that portrait if I were governed by the dim light of my own reason; but I do not trust such a guide, I submit to God’s authority, I captivate my understanding to faithful obedience.⁴⁴

In Bayle’s own terms, as he defends this position for the first time in the article “Charron” (added to the second edition of the Dictionary), “these words can protect him like a shield against all the thrusts of his enemies” (ibid.). Indeed, this defence proved efficient. Jurieu’s attacks were contained since he could not demonstrate Bayle’s imposture, although he was convinced of his insincerity. The accusations raised by the Walloon Church council also subsided, and Bayle had a free hand to write his last philosophical works. However, far from reading in them the fruits of his sudden conversion to “fideism”, we observe that he then returns to the moral rationalism of his first works – to that rationalism of which he had just declared that it was incompatible with Christian faith. Now he declares once again that God necessarily conforms to our conception of His justice and goodness: the obligation of moral law is rational and not simply imposed by divine will: Let us put that article aside [God’s existence], let us even deny it, we will nevertheless judge that a circle is not a triangle, that a sophism is a bad argument, that the conclusion of a good syllogism is true if the two premisses are true, that it is worthy of man to follow his reason, etc. […] that betrayal of a friend is a bad moral quality and that loyalty to a friend is a good moral quality.⁴⁵

ains de Dieu. Mais à vrai dire, sans rien flatter ni desguiser, il n’en est rien. Elles sont, quoi qu’on dise, tenues par mains et moiens humains.” (“Charron”, rem. L.)  “Je serois tel que vous dites si je me réglois sur les petites lumieres de ma raison; mais je ne me fie point à un tel guide, je me soumets à l’autorité de Dieu, je captive mon entendement à l’obéissance de la foi.” (Ibid.)  “Qu’on fasse abstraction de ce dogme-là [de l’existence de Dieu], qu’on le nie même, on ne laissera pas de juger que le cercle n’est point un triangle, qu’un sophisme est un mauvais raisonnement, que la conclusion d’un bon syllogisme est vraie si les deux prémisses sont vraies, qu’il est digne de l’homme de se conformer à la raison, etc. […] que la trahison d’un ami est une mauvaise qualité morale et que la fidélité pour son ami est une bonne qualité morale.” (RQP, III, §).

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Bayle maintains this rationalist definition of moral obligation despite the theological difficulties that it raises⁴⁶: If there are eternal truths that are such by their very nature, and not by divine institution, if they are not true by a decree of His free will, but if on the contrary He knows them to be necessarily true, because such is their nature, that is a kind of fatum to which He is subjected, that is an absolutely insurmountable natural necessity.⁴⁷

The status lent to common notions imposes a limit on God’s almighty power, but, true to Malebranche, Bayle rejects the Cartesian doctrine of the creation of eternal truths: just as God was not free to create matter, man, a circle without giving them their essential qualities as we know them, in the same way, He could not have “given man a Law directly opposed to the Ten Commandments” (CPD, §152). God cannot therefore contravene our conception of His justice and goodness, a conception which becomes a criterion of judgement on His nature and actions. Defined as reason, conscience regains all its rights: it is “a judgement of the mind which incites us to do certain things because they are in conformity with reason, and which turns us away from other things because they are contrary to reason”⁴⁸ and the acts which follow that judgement are accompanied by pleasure or pain according to their conformity with our conception of our moral duty. Morals are therefore no longer founded on Scripture but on the light of reason: If there are certain immutable rules for the operations of the mind, there are others which govern the actions of the will. The rules which govern such acts are not all arbitrary: some of them derive from natural necessity and impose an indispensable obligation; and just as it is a fault to reason against the rules of the syllogism, so also it is a fault to want something which is not in conformity with the rules governing acts of the will.⁴⁹

 “Y compris sur la question de la doctrine cartésienne des animaux-machines: celle-ci est la seule qui permette de concilier les souffrances apparentes des animaux avec notre conception de la Justice divine; elle est néanmoins, aux yeux de Bayle, une doctrine ridicule, manifestement contredite par l’expérience…: voir le Dictionnaire, art. “Pereira”, (RQP, III §, et le commentaire de G. Mori, op. cit., p. ).  “S’il y a des propositions d’une éternelle vérité qui sont telles de leur nature , et non point par l’institution de Dieu, si elles ne sont point véritables par un décret libre de sa volonté, mais si au contraire il les a connuës nécessairement véritables, parce que telle était leur nature, voilà une espèce de fatum auquel il est assujetti, voilà une nécessité naturelle absolument insurmontable.” (CPD, §).  “un jugement de l’esprit qui nous excite à faire certaines choses parce qu’elles sont conformes à la raison, et qui nous détourne de quelques autres choses, parce qu’elles sont contraires à la raison.” (RQP, III, § xxix).  “S’il y a des règles certaines et immuables pour les opérations de l’entendement, il y en a aussi pour les actes de la volonté. Les règles de ces actes-là ne sont pas toutes arbitraires: il y en qui éma-

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And he gives a few examples of such principles in the field of morals: The most general of these rules is that a man must want what is in conformity with right reason, and everytime he wants something that is not in conformity with reason, he goes astray from his duty. There is no more self-evident truth than that it is worthy of a rational creature to conform to reason, and that it is unworthy of that creature not to confrom to reason. Thus, anyone who knows that it is in conformity with reason to honour one’s father, to observe the clauses of a contract, to assist the poor, to feel gratitude, etc. will know by the same token that those who follow these precepts are praiseworthy and that those who do not follow them are worthy of blame. He will thus know […] that this is a necessary judgement since conformity with reason is no less an indispensable duty for the acts of the will than for the acts of the understanding. He will thus perceive that there is in virtue a natural and inherent honesty, and in vice a dishonesty of the same kind, and thus that virtue and vice are two naturally and morally different qualities.⁵⁰

There therefore exists a natural and rational moral code, independent of Christian doctrine. Bayle thus returns to the philosophical position of his first writings. The situation becomes more complicated again when Bayle’s philosophy in the Dictionary is attacked by rationalist theologians: he has to defend himself in particular against Jean Le Clerc, Isaac Jaquelot and Jacques Bernard, by demonstrating that their rationalist arguments misfire and lead to the ruin of the religion that they claim to defend. Thus, in the Entretiens de Maxime et de Thémiste, his last unfinished work, he once more makes himself vulnerable in the emphatic demonstration of the bankruptcy of rationalist theology and has recourse, once again, to the “shield of Charron”. He can thus demonstrate with impunity

nent de la nécessité de la Nature et qui imposent une obligation indispensable; et comme c’est un défaut de raisonner d’une manière opposée aux règles du syllogisme, c’est aussi un défaut de vouloir une chose sans se conformer aux règles des actes de la volonté.” (CPD, §).  “La plus générale de ces règles-ci est qu’il faut que l’homme veuille ce qui est conforme à la droite raison, et que toutes les fois qu’il veut ce qui n’y est pas conforme, il s’écarte de son devoir. Il n’y a point de vérité plus évidente que de dire qu’il est digne de la Créature raisonnable de se conformer à la raison, et qu’il est indigne de la Créature raisonnable de ne se pas conformer à la raison. Ainsi tout homme qui connaîtra qu’il est conforme à la raison d’honorer son père, d’observer les conventions d’un contrat d’assister les pauvres, d’avoir de la gratitude, etc., connaîtra pareillement que ceux qui pratiquent ces choses sont louables et que ceux qui ne les pratiquent point sont blâmables. Il connaîtra donc […] que c’est une nécessité de juger de cette manière puisque la conformité avec la raison n’est pas un devoir moins indispensable dans les opérations de la volonté que dans celles de l’entendement. Il verra donc qu’il y a dans la vertu une honnêteté naturelle et intérieure, et dans le vice même déshonnêteté de la même espèce, et qu’ainsi la vertu et le vice sont deux espèces de qualités naturellement et moralement différentes.” (CPD, §).

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that reason leads to atheism while protecting himself against his opponents’ accusations of unbelief. Bayle has thus exerted pressure on the weak point of Malebranche’s Christian rationalism; he has shown its fragility by demonstrating rational principles to be incompatible with Christian faith: “You must necessarily choose between Philosophy and Scripture…”. According to this same logic, he gives a definition of the “Christian philosopher” which is precisely opposite to that of Malebranche: Christian Philosophers who speak sincerely declare bluntly that they are Christian either by the force of education of by the grace of divine faith, but that the chains of philosophical and demonstrative reasons could only render them sceptical all their lives with regard to faith.⁵¹

His reader must therefore grasp the substance of his main argument and not be distracted by his emphatic protestations according to circumstances: in the Pensées diverses, Bayle has demonstrated by A + B that astrology is a ridiculous superstition because it contradicts elementary logic; in the Dictionary, he demonstrates that Christian doctrine also contradicts elementary logic. Sheltered behind “Charron’s shield” in the Eclaircissements, he composes his last works, in which he reaffirms moral rationalism. Faith thus appears as blind frenzy, an effect of enthusiasm and zeal: “superstition puts everything out of order and raises itself to absolute monarchy in men’s minds” (RQP, III.10). What Christianity has committed in the way of violence, either to banish pagan idolatry, or to stifle heresy, or to maintain sects which tended to separate from the main branch, cannot be expressed. Its history inspires horror: if one is the slightest bit honest, then one trembles with shame; a good soul cannot read such histories and maintain his innocence, he cannot hold back from cursing the memory of those who caused such catastrophes.⁵² […] it is certain that a man who would have been only moderately vindicative if he had had no religion, becomes a tiger when a false zeal takes possession of his conscience.⁵³

 “Les Philosophes Chrétiens qui parlent sincèrement disent tout net qu’ils sont Chrétiens, ou par la force de l’éducation, ou par la grâce de la foi que Dieu leur a donnée, mais que la suite des raisonnements philosophiques et démonstratifs ne serait capable que de les rendre sceptiques à cet égard toute leur vie.” (Bayle to Naudis, le  septembre ).  “Ce que le christianisme a commis de violences, soit pour extirper l’idolatrie païenne, soit pour étouf[f]er les hérésies, soit pour maintenir les sectes qui se séparoient du gros de l’arbre, ne sauroit être exprimé. L’histoire en inspire de l’horreur: on en frémit pour peu qu’on soit débonnaire: une bonne ame ne peut lire innocemment cette sorte de relations, elle ne sauroit s’empêcher de maudire la mémoire de ceux qui ont eté cause de ces incendies.” (RQP, III.).  “[…] il est sûr que tel homme qui n’aurait été que médiocrement vindicatif s’il n’eût point eu de religion, devient un tigre lorsqu’un faux zèle s’empare de sa conscience.” (RQP, III.).

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Is a conscience of this kind not more fearsome than irreligion for those who have to deal with such a person? How can we count on people who regard themselves as exempt from obedience to oaths and dispensed from the duties of equity when dealing with heretics, or whenever the interests of divine truth are at stake?⁵⁴ Bayle’s last works ridicule “zeal” as a simple prejudice and express without ambiguity his rejection of superstition. They throw stark light on his argumentative strategy in the Pensées diverses, in the Philosophical Commentary, in the Dictionary and in the Eclaircissements. The reader must then draw his own conclusions. Lastly, a word on Bayle’s attitude towards his own argumentative strategy. He had indeed envisaged his own contradictory postures and explains quite simply the motivations of an author who assumes the contradictions within his works: We thus commit a contradiction; for in order to contradict our adversary’s intention, we denied his premiss bluntly and absolutely, but today, because we need that premiss, we designate it as indubitable, this affirmative appearance being necessary, since those who deny or affirm something with a dubious attitude do more harm to their argument than if they remained silent.⁵⁵

Of course, confronted with such contradictions, a man with “all the good faith and prudence that an author should possess” will abandon his premisses, but, declares Bayle, “not everone is capable of abandoning a present good in order to avoid an uncertain evil”: It is a present good to reply to objections raised by our opponents; we cannot do so without saying things that contradict what we have said elsewhere. Never mind, we say, let’s reply nevertheless; who will notice the contradiction? Two or three persons, perhaps, among a hundred who will not notice it and who will admire our reply. And as for our adversaries, if they accuse us of contradiction, we can simply declare that they haven’t well understood our reflexions. Who will take pains to compare the documents?⁵⁶

 “Une conscience de cette nature n’est-elle pas plus redoutable que l’irréligion à ceux qui ont à traiter avec de pareilles gens? Quel fond peut-on faire sur des personnes qui se croient dispensé[e]s de leurs serments et des lois de l’équité par rapport aux hérétiques, ou toutes les fois qu’il s’agit des intérêts de la vérité céleste?” (Ibid.).  “Nous tombons donc en contradiction; car pour rendre inutile le dessein de notre adversaire, nous lui avions nié son principe simplement et absolument, et aujourd’hui que nous en avons besoin, nous parlons de ce même principe comme d’une chose indubitable, cet air décisif étant nécessaire, parce que ceux qui nient ou affirment quelque chose d’un ton mal assuré, se font plus de tort que s’ils gardaient le silence.” (Bayle, Nouvelles lettres critiques, lettre II, O.D., II, p. b).  “C’est un bien présent que de répondre à des objections qui nous pressent: nous n’y pouvons répondre qu’en disant des choses contraires à ce que nous avons dit ailleurs. N’importe, disonsnous, répondons toujours à bon conte [compte]; qui s’apercevra de notre contradiction? Deux ou

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This “realism” is precisely the posture Bayle adopts in the Eclaircissements when he has recourse, after his first rationalist writings, to Charron’s “shield”, declaring unashamedly that he “captivates his understanding to obedience to faith” even so far as to call into doubt natural light and even to believe erroneous that “rule of judgement that nature gave us”. He expresses elsewhere in the same article “Charron” what inspires the confidence with which he adopts this strategy: The problem and the great disorder is that, among a hundred thousand readers, there are hardly three in whichever century you choose, who can reason with the necessary discernment when they have to judge a work in which ideas founded on a precise and metaphysical argument are opposed to the most commonplace opinions.⁵⁷

Indeed, the Church council procedures got bogged down; Bayle had taken shelter from public scandal by means of Charron’s shield, and he now faced only a few adamant enemies: Pierre Jurieu, Jean Le Clerc, Isaac Jaquelot, Jacques Bernard, who would “take pains to compare the documents”, and he was to defend himself untiringly until his death, always ready to brandish, if need be, Charron’s shield of blind faith.

Bibliography Bayle, Pierre, Nouvelles lettres critiques: Nouvelles lettres de l’auteur de la Critique générale de l’Histoire du calvinisme de Mr Maimbourg, Villefranche, P. Le Blanc, 1685. [OD II, 161 – 335]. Bayle, Pierre, (PDC) Pensées diverses écrites à un Docteur de Sorbonne, à l’occasion de la comète qui parut au mois de décembre 1680, Rotterdam, R. Leers, 1683. [OD, III, 3 – 160]. Bayle, Pierre, (Commentaire philosophique) Commentaire philosophique sur ces paroles de Jésus-Christ: contrain-les d’entrer […] traduit de l’anglois du sieur Jean Fox de Bruggs par M.J.F., Cantorbéry, T. Litwel [Amsterdam, A. Wolfgang] 1686, J.-M. Gros (ed.), Paris, Honoré Champion, 2006.

trois personnes peut-être parmi cent qui ne verront rien, et qui admireront nos réponses. Et pour ce qui est des adversaires, s’ils nous accusent de nous être contredits, nous en serons quittes pour dire qu’ils ne comprennent pas notre pensée. Qui s’amusera à confronter les pièces justificatives?” (Bayle, Nouvelles lettres critiques, lettre II, O.D., II, p.b).  “Le mal est, et le grand désordre, que de cent mille lecteurs, à peine y en a-t-il trois dans quelque siècle que l’on choisisse, qui soient capables du discernement qu’il faut faire lorsqu’il s’agit de juger d’un livre où l’on oppose les idées d’un raisonnement exact et métaphysique aux opinions les plus communes. (“Charron (Pierre)”, in corp.)

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Bayle, Pierre, (Dictionnaire) Diction[n]aire historique et critique, Rotterdam, Reinier Leers, 1697, 1702; Amsterdam/Leiden/ The Hague /Utrecht, Libraires associés, 1740. Bayle, Pierre, (RQP) Réponse aux questions d’un provincial, Rotterdam, Reinier Leers, 1704 – 1706. Bayle, Pierre, (CPD) Continuation des Pensées diverses écrites à un Docteur de Sorbonne, Rotterdam, R. Leers, 1705. Bayle, Pierre, (OD) Œuvres diverses de Mr Pierre Bayle, professeur en philosophie et en histoire à Rotterdam, The Hague, P. Husson et al., 1727 – 1731. Bayle, Pierre, Avis important aux réfugiez sur leur prochain retour en France […] par M. C.L.A.A.P.D.P., Gianluca Mori (ed.), Paris, Honoré Champion, 2007. Bost, Hubert, “Remarques sur le conflit herméneutique autour des Éclaircissements”, in: Hubert Bost and A. McKenna (eds.), Les ‘Éclaircissements’ de Pierre Bayle, Paris, Honoré Champion, 2010, pp. 377 – 407. Israel, Jonathan (ed.), The Anglo-Dutch Moment. Essays on the Glorious Revolution and its world impact. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, 2003. Jurieu, Pierre, Le Vray Système de l’Église et la véritable analyse de la foi, Dordrecht, 1686. Jurieu, Pierre, Traité de la nature et de la grâce, Utrecht, 1687. Labrousse, Élisabeth, Conscience et conviction. Études sur le XVIIe siècle, Paris, Oxford Universitas/The Voltaire Foundation, 1996. Labrousse, Élisabeth, Notes sur Bayle, Paris, Vrin, 1987. Labrousse, Élisabeth, Pierre Bayle, vol. I, Du Pays de Foix à la cité d’Érasme, La Haye, M. Nijhoff, 1963; Pierre Bayle, vol. II, Hétérodoxie et rigorisme, The Hague, M. Nijhoff, 1964. Mori, Gianluca, “Interpréter la philosophie de Bayle”, in: Hubert Bost and P. de Robert (eds.), Pierre Bayle, citoyen du monde. De l’enfant du Carla à l’auteur du Dictionnaire, Paris, Honoré Champion, 1999a, pp. 303 – 24. Mori, Gianluca, “Politique et religion dans l’œuvre de Pierre Bayle”, in: X. Daverat and A. McKenna (eds.), Pierre Bayle et le politique, Paris, Honoré Champion 2014, p 79 – 95. Mori, Gianluca, Bayle philosophe, Paris, Honoré Champion, 1999. O’Cathesaigh, Sean, “Bayle’s Commentaire philosophique, 1686”, in: SVEC 260 (1989), pp. 159 – 82. Paets, Adriaen, Lettre à Monsieur B[ayle] sur les derniers troubles d’Angleterre, où il est parlé de la tolérance de ceux qui ne suivent point la religion dominante, Rotterdam, Reinier Leers, 1686. Paganini, Gianni, “‘Fidéisme’ ou ‘modica theologia’? Pierre Bayle et les avatars de la tradition érasmienne”, in: Hans Bots (ed.), Critique, savoir et érudition à la veille des Lumières: le “Dictionnaire historique et critique” de Pierre Bayle, 1647 – 1706. Amsterdam/Maarssen, APA-Holland University Press, 1998, pp. 389 – 409. Paganini, Gianni, “L’Eclaircissement sur les manichéens et les déterminations philosophiques de l’idée de Dieu”, in: Hans Bost and A. McKenna (eds.), Les “Éclaircissements” de Pierre Bayle, Paris, Honoré Champion, 2010, pp. 331 – 346. Paganini, Gianni, Analisi della fede e critica della ragione nella filosofia di Pierre Bayle, Florence, La Nuova Italia, 1980. Popkin, Richard H., “Pierre Bayle’s Place in 17th-Century Scepticism”, in: P. Dibon (eds.), Pierre Bayle, le philosophe de Rotterdam, Amsterdam/Elsevier/Paris, Vrin, 1959, pp. 1 – 19. Popkin, Richard H., The High Road to Pyrrhonism, San Diego, Austin Hill Press, 1980.

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Popkin, Richard H., The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle, Oxford, OUP, 2003. Strauss, Leo, Persecution and the Art of Writing, Chicago/London, University of Chicago Press, 1952.

Subject index accommodation 171, 173 ambiguity 3, 5, 10, 42, 46, 65, 122 – ambiguités & sous-ententes 3 apostle 137 – 140, 144 – 149, 160 Arminianism 202 – 204, 207 atheism 2 – 4, 14, 19, 21, 23, 68 – 73, 100, 114, 116, 120, 122 – 123, 134, 169 – 186, 209 – 214 Averroism 17, 20, 173 Bible, Holy Scripture 14, 129 – 166, 183, 196 – 198, 207, 214 – Hebrew Bible, ‘Old Testament‘ 135 – 138, 143, 158, 160 – New Testament 18, 129 f., 135 – 146, 164, 197 f., 210 Bible criticism 11, 136 f. Calvinism 88, 100, 102, 108, 116, 123, 140, 144 f., 172 catholicism 136, 145, 172, 204 f., 209 censorship 31, 114 f., 119 Christianity 64, 70, 72, 116, 160, 170, 194, 206 f., 214 – Christian morals 202, 205 clandestine literature 63 – Theophrastus redivivus 179 deception 177, 181, 186, 210 déconstruction 3 deism 209 – 10 dissimulation 3, 5, 17 f., 73, 121, 169 – 173, 175, 181 dolus bonus / dolus malus 177 double truth 101, 122, 192 ductus obliquus 173 Enlightenment 11 f., 63 – radical Enlightenment 9 – 26 – radikale Aufklärung 10 – moderate Enlightenment 19, 24 Epicureanism 24 – 26, 114

esoteric – exoteric 4 f., 17, 30 – 41, 57 – 68, 71, 120, 129 – 133 Exoteric and Esoteric distinction 5 faith

70, 101 – 103, 105, 107, 113, 117 f., 121 – 123, 148 – 9, 160 – 166, 178, 203 f., 206 – 208, 210 – fundamental tenets of faith (Spinoza) 169 ff., 176 ff. Fall of man 157 f. fideism 18, 67, 100, 116, 116, 122 f., 191 f., 209, 211, freedom – religious freedom 134, 164 – 166 – freedom of thought / speech / philosophizing 21, 23, 25, 133 f., 136, 166, 176, 181 – freedom / liberty 81 f. – freedom of the press 134 French Revolution 22

Glorious Revolution 204 f. God 5, 13, 16, 21 f., 72, 91 ff., 100 ff. – Biblical God 13 – lawgiver 91 – 93, 130, 156, 164, 169, 183, 197, 199 – corporeal God 107, 109, 121 – 123 – incorporeal mover 106 – proofs of the existence of God 102 – 107, 109 – incomprehensibility 118, 123 – immateriality 197 – God and nature 170, 180 – corporeal God 107, 109, 121 – 123 – omnipotence 16, 112, 180, 212 – coeternity of God and the world 105 grace 148, 214 heresy, heretic 206, 214 f. hermeneutics 26 – 51 heterodoxy 3 – 6, 67 f., 132 hypocrisy 5, 179, 182, 184 f.

222

Subject index

incarnation 205 Inquisition 4, 178 insincerity 5 intolerance 174, 176 intus ut libet, foris ut moris Islamic philosophy 173 Judaism 13, 18, 70, 172

protestantism 9, 110, 116 f., 123, 145, 148, 172, 204 f., 209 providence 18, 22, 25, 180 pyrrhonism 191 – 3, 198, 205 – 207, 209 f. 174

law 91 – 95 liberalism 12 f., 169, 175 f., 184 f. libertinage érudit 3, 17 lies, beneficial lies 172 ff. Lutheranism 99, 116 Machiavellianism 13 Masquerade 3 materialism 103, 106 f., 114, 116, 118, 120 f., 192 metaphysics, metaphysicians 106 miracles 12, 15 f., 19, 60, 114, 130, 133, 194 f., 197 morality, moral principles 192 mysteries 118, 192, 205 – 207, 209 f. natural law 79, 91 – 95 Nicodemism 172 original sin 88, 157, 192 f., 205 f. orthodoxy 5, 10 – 12, 14, 16, 18 – 20, 24, 66 – 72, 116, 119, 121, 130 – 132, 134, 165 f., 202, 207 f. pantheism 4, 68, – Pantheismusstreit 13 persecution 4, 63 f., 121 f., 174, 204 philosophy – first philosophy 102 – 104, 107, 111 – 113, 117, 121 – 123 – political philosophy 78 – 95 – moral philosophy 92 – Exoteric and Esoteric Philosophy 4 predestination 148, 192, 206 prophets 70, 114, 146 – 148, 159 – 160

redemption 163 religion 66, 148 – 151, 159 – true religion 66, 72, 160, 183 – revealed religion 10 – 12, 14 – 16, 67, 72 – natural religion 114, 122 – religion and morality 192 republicanism 19, 21 f. revelation, revealed religion 10, 12 f., 15 f., 18 f., 67, 72, 112, 114, 118, 147, 196 f., 210 rights 79 – 82 right over matters of religion 177 salvation 148 f., 160 – 166, 180, 183, 192, 203 f., 210 scepticism 191, 193, 198 self-preservation 82 – 91 sin 149, 151, 156 – 158 Socinianism 70, 114, 195, 202, 204, 206 soul, mortality / immortality 180, 207 f. Spinozism 4, 10 f., 133 Stratonism 18, 118, 192, 202, 205 f. theology 14, 19 f., 99 – 102, 106 – 111, 113 – rationalist theology 202, 207, 211 213 thought crimes 176 – 179 tolerance, toleration 131, 133, 169, 171, 174 – 176, 180, 183, 198 f., 203 f. transsubstantiation 202, 205 trinity 67, 118, 202, 205 f. unitarianism 23 unwritten doctrines (Plato) vanity, vain-glory 86 – 91 Whig history 1 Zionism

11 ff.

62 f., 172 f.

Index of Names Adam 157 – 159 Agathocles 66 175 Al-Farabi 175 Anaxagoras 176 Aquinas, Thomas 103 – 105, 110 f., 165 Aristotle 4, 39, 71, 78, 96, 103 – 105, 112, 156, 176 Armenteros, Carolina 20 Augustine 158 f., 165, 174 Averroes 17, 175 f. Avicenna 175 f.

Charron, Pierre 209, 212 f., 215 f., 218 Cicero 4 Cohen, Hermann 13, 187 Collins, Anthony 2, 21 Condorcet, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de 22 Constant, Benjamin 177 Cremonini, Cesare 176 Cudworth, Ralph 3 f. Curley, Edwin 70, 99 – 102, 108, 111, 114, 116, 122

Bacon, Francis 33, 45 Basnage, Henri 193, 212 Basnage, Jacques 193 Bates, Clifford 39 Bayle, Pierre 5 f., 10 f., 14, 17 f., 21 – 23, 63, 66 f., 120, 176 f., 182, 184, 193 – 220 Bellegarde, Jean Baptiste Morvan de 176 f. Berckel, Elisabeth van 205 Bérigard, Claude 4 f. Berman, David 2 Bernard, Jacques 215, 218 Bernstein, Richard 45 Blau, Adrian 58, 62 f., 65, 67, 79 Bloom, Allan 77 f. Blount, Charles 2 Bok, Sissela 186 Bonyanian, Masous 33 f. Borgia, Cesare 66 Bost, Hubert 194 Bramhall, Robert 100 f., 116, 121 f. Brissot, Jacques Pierre 22 Buber, Martin 12 f., 19 Burgh, Albert 15, 166 Burnyeat, Miles 33, 41

Derrida, Jacques 3, 38 Descartes, René 2 f., 45, 63, 100 f., 108, 111, 121, 176 f. Desmoulins, Camille 22 f. Diderot, Denis 21 Dilthey, Wilhelm 45 Dinouart, Joseph Antoine Toussaint 177 Donagan, Alan 133 Droysen, Johann Gustav 45 f. Drury, Shadia 39 – 42

Cajetan, Thomas 145 Calvin, Johannes 99 f., 145, 165, 174 Cantor, Paul 68 Cassirer, Ernst 17 Chambers, Samuel 40 f. Charbonnel, J.-Roger 2 Charles, Sébastien 184

Elijah 199 Elster, Jon 34, 44, 49 Enden, Franciscus van den 21 Epicurus 3, 15, 24 f. Erasmus of Rotterdam 137, 145, 193 Euclid 79 Eusebius of Caesarea 138, 140 Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de 25 Foucault, Michel 186 Frazer, Michael 39, 49, 63 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 29, 44 – 48, 50 Galilei, Galileo 107, 109, 117 f., 123 Garasse, François 3 f., 6 Garber, Daniel 182 f. Gassendi, Pierre 107, 112, 195, 200 f. Gauthier, David 77 Ginzburg, Carlo 180 Godwin, William 24 Gottfried, Paul 39

224

Index of Names

Gottsched, Johann Christoph 67 Grotius, Hugo 140, 175 f., 194

Kraynak, Robert 77 Kristeller, Paul Oskar

Hampton, Jean 77 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 85 f. Heine, Heinrich 13 Helmholtz, Hermann von 45 – 47 Hempel, Carl 32 Henri IV 195 Henry, Julie 182 Herbert of Cherbury, Lord Edward 72 Herzl, Theodor 11, 13 Hobbes, Thomas 2, 10 – 25, 30 – 33, 36, 39, 42, 48 – 50, 59, 63 f., 66, 69 – 72, 77 – 96, 99 – 124, 129, 134, 137, 176, 184, 194 Hoekstra, Kinch 48 Holbach, Paul Henri Thiry d’ 21, 63 48 Holm, Sören 71 Hume, David 17, 60, 69, 133 Hunt, Robert 39 Hythloday, Raphael 175

La Vopa, Anthony J. 20 Labrousse, Élisabeth 5, 18, 174, 193 Lagrée, Jacqueline 18, 129 f., 139, 172 La Mothe Le Vayer, François de 17 LeBuffe, Michael 184 Le Clerc, Jean 215, 218 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 18, 22, 67, 132 Leijenhorst, Cees 100 f., 108 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 16, 67, 73, 176 Le Tellier, Michel 115 Levine, Peter 39 Locke, John 111, 33, 58 f., 69 f., 176, 182 Lucci, Diego 21 Lucian 106 Lucretius 24 f. Luke (biblical writer) 137, 142, 154 Lupoli, Agostino 100, 108 Luther, Martin 60, 82, 99, 165, 195

Ibn Ezra 146 177 Israel, Jonathan 135, 181, 184, 206

Machiavelli, Niccolò 111, 13 f., 30, 34 f., 39, 43, 57 f., 66 f., 69 Madison, G.B. 50 Magni, Valerian 200 Maimon, Salomon 178 Maimonides 17, 69, 175 f. Malcolm, Noel 16, 48, 116 Malebranche, Nicolas 197, 214, 216 Mann, Thomas 9 f., 19, 23 Mantzavinos, Chrystos 29, 43, 49 f. Marat, Jean Paul 22 Mark (biblical writer) 142 Martinich, Aloysius P. 63, 99 – 102, 108, 110 f., 116 f., 119, 122 – 124 Matthew (biblical writer) 142, 154 May, Henry 9, 24 McKenna, Anthony 5, 17 f. Medea 155 f., 158 Melanchthon, Philipp 194 Mendelssohn, Moses 11 f. 19 Menocchio 180 Mersenne, Marin 107 f., 115 Mill, John Stuart 42, 45, 47, 50 Milton, John 182

Jacob, Margaret 9 Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich 16 f. Jacquot, Jean 100 James (biblical writer) 148 f., 161, 163, 166 James, Susan 129 James, William 68 James II 205 f. Jaquelot, Isaac 215, 218 Jason 155 f. Jay, Martin 186 Jebb, John 23 Jerome 136, 145, 174 Jesus 133, 140, 142 – 147, 154, 159 – 165, 177, 201 f. John (biblical writer) 142, 163 – 166 Jones, Harold Whitmore 99 f., 115 Jurieu, Pierre 193, 204, 211 – 213, 218 Kant, Immanuel 58, 176 f., 183, 186 Kavka, Gregory 77 Klefmann, Jacob 139 Koerbagh, Adriaan 133 f.

1 f., 6, 64 f.

Index of Names

Mirabeau, Honoré Gabriel de Riqueti, comte de 22 Montaigne, Michel de 67, 131 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, Baron de 11, 176 More, Thomas 175 Mori, Gianluca 5, 17 f., 66, 73, 193 – 195, 206, 214 Moses 4, 137, 160, 197, 199 Mühlpfordt, Günter 9 Nadler, Steven 18, 129, 133, 135, 149, 185 Nicodemus 174 Oakeshott, Michael 31, 77 f., 120 Oevermann, Ulrich 49 Oldenburg, Heinrich 129, 133 f. Ovid 155 f., 158 Pacchi, Arrigo 100 Paets, Adriaan 204 – 209 Paganini, Gianni 17, 177, 181, 193 f. Paine, Tom 23 f. Pangle, Thomas 33 Papias of Hierapolis 140, 145 Pascal, Blaise 16, 67, 165, 175 f. Paul (biblical writer) 137, 139, 141 f., 147 – 159, 161, 163, 166 Peters, Richard 77 Plamenatz, John 72 Plato 4, 30 – 33, 41, 43, 50, 62 f., 69, 71, 73, 156, 174 – 176 Pocock, John 34, 59, 69 Popkin, Richard 18, 183 f., 193 Price, Richard 23 Priestley, Joseph 23 Protagoras 176 Raylor, Timothy 48 Reimarus, Hermann Samuel 14, 21, 67, 73 Ricoeur, Paul 29, 44, 50 Ricotier, Pierre 177 Roberson, Neil 41 Robespierre, Maximilien de 22 Rosenthal, Michael 184 Rosenzweig, Franz 12 f., 19 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 21, 24, 42, 177

225

Sabine, George 58, 61, 64 Saint-Evremond, Charles de 25, 211 Saint Glain, Gabriel 139 Sanders, Ed Parish 150 – 154, 163 f. Saurin, Jacques 177 Schotte, Dietrich 2, 31, 100, 110, 183 Schuhmann, Karl 99 – 101, 108 – 110, 112 Sharp, Hasana 185 Sharpe, Matthew 38 Shklar, Judith 186 Sieyès, Emmanuel Joseph 21 Simon, Richard 138, 140, 145 Sinclair, E. M. 15 Skinner, Quentin 31, 50, 58, 122 Smith, Steven B. 13 f., 16 – 18, 23, 40 129, 186 Socinus, Faustus 67, 208 Socrates 62, 72, 176 Soeffner, Hans-Geog 49 Soffer, Walter 38 Spinoza, Baruch de 1, 10 – 26, 38, 57, 59 – 64, 69 – 72, 86, 129 – 167, 171 – 188 Springborg, Patricia 100 – 102, 108, 111, 121 Staquet, Anne 2 f. Stendahl, Krister 152 Stjernfelt, Frederik 9 f., 22 Stosch, Friedrich Wilhelm 17 Strato of Lampsacus 18, 194 Stuart, Charles 17 Tacitus 79, 133 Taylor, Charles 25 f., 44, 186 Taylor, Jeremy 175 f. Tepe, Peter 49 Toland, John 2, 4, 21, 57, 62 Tremellius, Immanuel 140, 144 Valla, Lorenzo 119, 136 f. Van Evera, Stephen 32, 35, 46 Veiras, Denis 181 f. Vico, Giambattista 45 Villaverde, María José 177, 180 Vlastos, Gregory 77 Volney, Constantin François 21 Voltaire 14, 17, 21, 23, 176, 184

226

Index of Names

Warnke, Georgia 45 Watkins, John William Nevill 77 Weinsheimer, Joel 45 White, Thomas 99 f., 102 – 107, 110 f., 115, 122 f. Widmanstadt, Johann Albrecht 140 William of Orange 206 Wolff, Christian 176 Wollstonecraft, Mary 42

Wright, George 102, 116 f., 121 Wright, Johnson Kent 20, 27 Xenophon

176

Yakira, Elhanan

10, 12 f., 16, 20 f.

Zagorin, Perez 57 f., 73, 174, 176 Zeno of Elea 195 Zuckert, Catherine 82