Was #Spinoza wel een “marrano of reason?”

N.a.v. de titel die voor de in maart 2019 te houden expositie in Amsterdam van kunstenaars die zich op Spinoza inspireerden, is gekozen - "Spinoza, Marrano of Reason” [cf. dit blog] - een titel die ontleend werd aan de boeken van Yirmiyahu Yovel:

Spinoza and Other Heretics. Vol. I: The Marrano of Reason. 244 pp. Vol. II: The Adventures of Immanence, 225 pp. Princeton University Press, 1989 [January 1990]

lijkt het me nuttig eens terug te zien naar besprekingen ervan, waardoor twijfel over de treffendheid van die titel kan ontstaan.

• George Steiner’s review in de London Review of Books Vol. 12 No. 8 19 April 1990] droeg de titel “Affinities”. Hij schreef o.a. "Baruch Spinoza has been a perennial source of imagery or fable." Dan vermoed je al welke kant ’t review op gaat. Yovel reageerde erop. Ik vind de volgende alinea uit die reactie wel een aardige verduidelijking van zijn opzet:

In calling Spinoza ‘the Marrano of Reason’ I make a claim, not about causality, but about analogies and recurrent patterns. I notice certain patterns of Marrano life and mentality that manifest themselves throughout two centuries of Marranism, and then recur in Spinoza’s case as well, transformed from the universe of historical religion into the opposite world of secular reason and immanence. These patterns include a break between the inner and the outer life; an intellectual quest, unrest and ambivalence; a knack for dual language, mask and equivocation; a tendency to religious scepticism in some – and also an aspiration to a more inward and spiritual religiosity in others; a career broken in two; and, above all, the pursuit of an alternative way to salvation, opposing the way of the ruling orthodoxy. ‘We are saved not by Christ, but by the Law of Moses,’ said the Judaising Marranos. ‘We are saved neither by Christ nor by Moses, but by reason and the “third kind of knowledge”,’ said Spinoza.

Er zijn vele commentaren op deze benadering van Yovel geschreven. Ik ga niet alle reviews opzoeken (onder noem ik er nog een paar), maar ik wijs vooral op die van

• Seymour Feldman, A DURABLE HERESY, in The New York Times [March 18, 1990] en vooral op zijn artikel dat n.a.v. een Symposium over Yirmiyahu Yovel's Spinoza and Other Heretics, verscheen:

• Seymour Feldman, “Spinoza: A marrano of reason?” In: Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 35 (1):37 – 53 (1992) [cf. PDF]. Feldman bestrijdt Yovel’s visie met heldere argumenten. Lezing warm aanbevolen.

Abstract: In the first volume of his Spinoza and Other Heretics entitled The Marrano of Reason, Yovel proposes a different cultural context for the study of Spinoza: the Marrano mentalité. Living as crypto‐Jews in a Catholic Iberian world, the Marranos developed a certain life‐style that had specific religious and literary modes of expression: heterodox tendencies, the use of equivocation, and the zealous search for salvation, which often assumed secular forms. These Marrano traits are, Yovel claims, found in Spinoza as well, who was the son of a Marrano and brought up in the Marrano milieu of the Amsterdam Jewish quarter. In this essay I challenge this interpretation of Spinoza by stressing both the generally orthodox character of Marrano religiosity and the significant differences between Spinoza and the few Marrano heretics by whom he was supposedly influenced. I argue that Spinoza not only rejected Marrano orthodoxy but was already inhabiting an intellectual framework that differed considerably from the marginal deviant Marrano pattern that Yovel focuses upon. [Cf.]

Verder noem ik nog:

• Richard H. Popkin, “Was spinoza a Marrano of reason?” In Philosophia, 20 (3):243-246 (1990), December, 1990 [cf. Springer – ’t PDF heeft gestaan op PhilPapers, maar is daar niet meer te vinden].

• Wim N. A. Klever, [Review] Spinoza and other heretics. Vol. I The Marrano of reason; vol. II The adventures of immanence by Y. Yovel. In: Studia Rosenthaliana Vol 25, January 1991 [cf. PDF]

• Edouard Roditi, [Review] EUROPE'S HIDDEN LEGACY || Spinoza and Other Heretics. Volume One: The Marrano of Reason; Volume Two: The Adventures of Immanence by Yirmiyahu Yovel. In: European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe, Vol 23, January 1990 [cf. PDF]

Aardig wat argumenten tegen Yovel’s visie zijn ook te vinden in de masterscriptie, Spinoza on the Spirit of Friendship, van David Belcheff aan de Arizona State University van april 2014, waarnaar ik in het blog van 18-02-2015 verwees.

Het is al met al zeer de vraag of Spinoza, net als de Marranen, een dubbele (inwendige en uitwendige) identiteit ontwikkelde en een dubbele (exoterische en esoterische) taal hanteerde. Zie daarover ook:

• Errol E. Harris, ‘Is There an Esoteric Doctrine in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus?’. In Mededelingen vanwege het Spinozahuis, 38. Leiden: Brill, 1978.