A Response: Logic of the Superstitious, Logic of the Pious
Chantal Jaquet
Before all else, it is necessary to recognize the success of Daniel Garber’s profound reworking of an oral and provisional version of his chapter. Its initial title, The Political Uses of Superstition, has given way to its new one: Anthropomorphism, Teleology, and Superstition: The Politics of Obedience in Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Far from being a purely cosmetic change, this change reflects a modification in the chapter’s basic argument. Its subject now bears less on the positive use of superstition, and more on the transformation of the teleological prejudice and anthropomorphism into unexpected auxiliaries of religion and virtue. In effect, Garber solidly maintains that Spinoza “does not eliminate the anthropomorphic view of God completely, but, in a way, transforms it into something positive, something that will lead people to virtue and support the stability of society.” To motivate his claim, Garber first examines E1app and the genesis of the finalistic prejudice that turns to superstition. Moving to the Theological-Political Treatise’s Preface, Garber then analyzes the causes and nature of superstition, showing how superstition intertwines itself with the illusion of finality in Nature and with an anthropomorphic conception of God. In conclusion, Garber examines the dogmas of the universal faith and the teleological and anthropomorphic vision that sustains these dogmas in order to re-establish the kernel of positivity in the service of a politics of obedience.
Garber’s reformulation of his title and argument dissipates a possible ambiguity, which consisted in slipping from superstition to the finalistic prejudice and maintaining their identity in the framework of the dogmas of universal faith. This is why I wholeheartedly support the modifications Garber has made. The undeniable fact that superstition can be nourished by a teleological vision, and that superstition possesses a structure analogous to the structure of a finalistic mode of thinking, does not imply their assimilation. Similarly, although it is clear that the belief in the dogmas of universal faith, enunciated in chapter 14 of the Theological-Political Treatise, is sustained by a teleological and anthropomorphic vision of God, this belief does not constitute a form of superstition. In fact, Spinoza is careful to distinguish between what he calls, in the Theological-Political Treatise’s Preface,1 religio vana, illusory religion, which is indeed marked by credulity and superstition, and vera religio, true religion, which Spinoza associates with true faith and the word of God.2 Although the true faith does consist in piety and in the obedience to the true dogmas, and does not consist in possessing adequate ideas, the true faith is not, however, reducible to a form of superstitious credulity. The principal mechanism of this belief is not fear (as is the case with superstition), but, rather, confidence in the idea that the love of one’s neighbor, that is to say, the practice of justice and charity, assures salvation.
After this preliminary distinction, I will now propose a series of two reflections inspired by Garber, concerning, on the one hand, the logic of the superstitious, and on the other hand, the logic of the pious.
I. The Logic of the Superstitious
The originality of Garber’s approach consists in the fact that he does not merely maintain that as the light chases away the darkness, so does true knowledge chase away the prejudices that result from anthropomorphism, the belief in finality, and superstition, but, rather, that such prejudices remain partially irreducible, and that, moreover, they possess a positivity. The critique of erroneous conceptions does not lead to their systematic eradication. As Spinoza tells us, “Nothing positive which a false idea has is removed by the presence of the true insofar as it is true.”3 Superstition can very well be critiqued, although much as in the manner of one of Bacon’s Idols, it will never disappear once and for all.
Garber correctly notes that superstition is born from the fear of losing things that matter to us, and from the desire for the goods of fortune, and he shows how superstition becomes bound up with a teleological and anthropomorphic vision to become a complex of ingrained prejudices. As a complement to Garber’s analysis, I would like to underline the reasons for which superstition, despite its fragile and inconstant nature, cannot be totally eradicated, and in what respect it is by nature irreducible and resistant.
The causes of superstition’s persistence are to be found less in the fact that superstition is rooted in the finalistic prejudice than in the nature of fear, which is its true origin, and in the fact that man is necessarily subject to a logic of the possible. Superstition is the daughter of the fear bound to our uncertainty about the prospects of our insatiable desires. It is because we do not know whether our strongest desires will be satisfied, and it is because we cannot have a fixed opinion about the matter, that we adopt superstitious beliefs and practices. Suspecting the worst, their purpose is to predict and inflect the course of future events.
When we consider things with an indifferent attitude, our uncertainty surrounding their outcome does not provoke a superstitious attitude in us. If we know that the desired good is certain to be had, we are joyfully secure in our knowledge, and we do not fall prey to superstition. If we know that it is impossible to have the desired good, the fear that causes superstition gives way to sadness and despair. Consequently, if we knew that what we desire is either necessary or impossible, there would be no superstition. It is because we believe that our insatiable desires might possibly come to be or might possibly be prevented that superstition endlessly thrives.
In reality, there are only two known ontological modalities: being or non-being, necessity or impossibility; yet there are three lived modalities: to being and non-being, the ignorant man adds possible being. At E1p33s1, Spinoza specifies that contingent and possible are only appellations, or manners of speaking, grounded in a lack of knowledge. But this lack of knowledge does not lead Spinoza to do without these concepts that in fact become the object of definitions in Ethics Part 4:
I call singular things contingent insofar as we find nothing, while we attend only to their essence, which necessarily posits their existence or which necessarily excludes it. [E4d3]
I call the same singular things possible, insofar as, while we attend to the causes from which they must be produced, we do not know whether those causes are determined to produce them. [E4d4]
Modes that do not possess an internal contradiction can be said to be neither impossible nor necessary, in virtue of the fact that their essence does not involve existence. They can therefore be said to be contingent. The question of contingency is displaced onto the question of possibility, inasmuch as it is now a question of knowing whether there are causes that render the existence of things impossible or necessary, given that nothing in their essence settles the matter. Thus, we cannot do otherwise than to reason with the category of possibility so long as we do not know whether the causes that pose the existence of that which we desire are determined or not to produce it.
This results from our ontological status qua finite modes. We cannot know the infinite series of causes that are determined to produce (or not produce) some event. During the course of a life, it is necessary to consider things as possible. Spinoza says explicitly as much in chapter 4 of the Theological-Political Treatise:
Furthermore, we are completely ignorant of the order and connection of things itself, i.e., of how things are really ordered and connected. So for practical purposes it is better, indeed necessary, to consider things as possible.4
It is the necessary upkeep of the category of the possible that perpetuates superstition. Rather than appearing to us as necessary or impossible, things appear to us as possible, and as we are prey to the pangs of the fluctuatio animi, we try to foresee the unforeseeable to steady our fears. We attempt to tip the balance in our favor by adopting behaviors that defy the ordinary laws of events, because these laws do not give us the answer we want. We look for signs, omens, or miraculous wonders to determine whether there are causes that might possibly produce that which we desire or fear.
If the mechanism of miraculous wonders reproduces the teleological vision, it is not so much the finalistic prejudice that is at work in the structure of omens, as it is imaginative thought paired with an erroneous conception of causality, the latter basing itself in turn on analogies and associations with favorable or unfortunate past situations. “If, while fear makes them turn this way and that, they see something happen which reminds them of some past good or evil, they think it portends either a fortunate or an unfortunate outcome; they call it a favorable or unfavorable omen, even though it may deceive them a hundred times.”5 Confronted with the possible, we cannot but think with signs, because we ignore whether the causes that pose the existence of that which we desire are determined or not to produce it. Tormented by fear, we go so far as to inspect the entrails of animals for clues.
Superstition is rooted in our search for a form of power at the heart of our weakness, because we do not know what will happen and we cannot know what will happen. We act as if everything and its opposite were possible in order to satisfy our immoderate desires. The superstitious attitude constitutes, therefore, an inadequate version of our power of acting. Superstition possesses positivity, since it expresses our refusal to let ourselves be tossed about by blind fortune, but our search for control is grounded in a misapprehension and reinforces our weakness. In weakness, there is always a power of acting that affirms itself, yet this power is of a lessened or lesser degree, because the action becomes its own opposite. Superstition cannot cease to be, for it is ever reborn from its ashes, the future of our desires never being assured. We can go from one superstition to the next; we cannot go without superstition altogether.
This metaphysical situation explains why the wisest of men is never sheltered from superstition once fortune turns against him. It can also become the object of political exploitation and can precipitate the multitude into servitude, notably within the framework of a monarchical regime. Spinoza notes this in the Preface to the Theological-Political Treatise, when, under the authority of Quintus-Curtius, he writes: “Nothing governs the multitude more effectively than superstition. That’s why they are easily led, under the pretext of religion, now to worship their Kings as Gods, now to curse and loathe them as the common plague of the human race.”6 Although “faith is nothing now but credulity and prejudices,”7 Spinoza will nevertheless distinguish between illusory and true religion. The two are not subject to the same rules, the former obeying the logic of the superstitious, and the latter, the logic of the pious.
II. The Logic of the Pious
As Garber reminds us, “Faith requires piety more than it does truth.”8 The logic of the pious is not grounded in the norm of truth, but in obedience to the commandment to love one’s neighbor. Therefore, it can call both on true and totally erroneous dogmas, on the condition that “provided the person who accepts them does not know they are false.”9 The criterion of their admissibility consists in their aptitude to force man to obey the divine commandment. In this framework, prejudices can be permitted by virtue of their capacity to induce charitable and just behavior.
In this way, Garber brings to light a reversal of perspective that takes place in Spinoza’s work and that often passes unremarked. Garber shows how the teleological vision of the world and the anthropomorphic conception of God, critiqued in the Appendix to Ethics Part 1, can have salutary effects by becoming auxiliaries necessary for the moral well-being of men who do not live under the guidance of reason. Garber is right to underline that this recycling of prejudices in the service of the law to love one’s neighbor and to practice the cult of justice and charity is rooted in the fact that not all people are equally capable of conceiving of the rules of living as eternal truths, and that most conceive of such rules as commandments which they are beholden to obey. In virtue of this, we can only but agree with Garber, when he writes in conclusion:
But to be obedient, the imperfectly rational person requires faith, the belief in an omnipotent law-giver who imposes order on the world, who will reward those who obey his laws and punish those who violate them: this, in essence, is the teleological conception of nature and an anthropomorphic conception of God. Which is to say, obedience requires that the imperfectly rational person hold a teleological and anthropomorphic conception of nature.
In the spirit of Garber’s analysis, I would like to underline that not merely the teleological and anthropomorphic conception is positively reintroduced within the framework of the dogmas of universal faith, but also all the opinions and prejudices necessary for obedience. The logic of the pious is by essence a logic of the imagination, in virtue of the fact that everyone adapts the dogmas to their own understanding and interprets them according to his own mentality. Therefore, the entirety of the first kind of knowledge finds itself reinstated and restored to the degree that it can serve as an auxiliary to obedience. Far from banishing all imaginative ideas and opinions, Spinoza presents them as imperative necessities:
Each person is bound to accommodate [accommodare tenetur] these doctrines of faith to his own power of understanding, and to interpret them for himself, as it seems to him easier for him to accept them without any hesitation, with complete agreement of the heart, so that he may obey God wholeheartedly. For as we’ve already noted, the faith was originally revealed and written according to the grasp and opinions of the Prophets, and of the common people of that time. In the same way, everyone now is bound to accommodate it to his own opinions, so that he can accept it without any mental conflict and without any hesitation.10
Once more, we observe a reversal in Spinoza’s perspective: whereas in the Appendix to Ethics Part 1, the diversity of opinions is held to be a source of controversy and a bearer of discord, it becomes, in chapter 14 of the Theological-Political Treatise, the pre-requisite for efficacious obedience and a pillar of concord, thanks to the practice of justice and charity. As a consequence of this logic of the pious, therefore, there is a positivity to be found in the diversity of opinions, even with respect to the most fantastical and stupid opinions. Furthermore, this is the reason for which “each person must be allowed freedom of judgment and the power to interpret the foundations of faith according to his own mentality.”11 From the point of view of faith, little does it matter that some imagine salvation or perdition in the form of a heaven of houris or hellfire, or that some think, in agreement with Solomon, that the punishment of the ignorant is ignorance itself, so long as all obey the law to love one’s neighbor. At play here is the recognition of the fact that inherent in the imagination is an efficacy and performativity superior to the sort possessed by reason, in virtue of the fact that reason’s universal character has a lesser affect on the vulgar mind than do singular opinions adapted to its mentality. The best reasons do not always produce the best works. In the framework of the logic of the pious, this is why a good prejudice may be preferable to a true judgment.
Notes
Translated by Jack Stetter
1 TTP, pref., §9: “religionem veram aut vanam” [G III 7].
2 Cf. TTP, ch. xii, §2 [G III 159].
3 E4p1.
4 TTP, ch. iv, §4 [G III 58].
5 TTP, pref., §3 [G III 5].
6 TTP, pref., §8 [G III 6].
7 TTP, pref., §16 [G III 8].
8 TTP, ch. xiv, §33 [G III 179].
9 TTP, ch. xiv, §20 [G III 176].
10 TTP, ch. xiv, §§32–33 [G III 178–179].
11 TTP, pref., §28 [G III 11].