15
Spinoza’s Scepticism and Antiscepticism

The position developed in Spinoza’s challenge to revealed religion involves a thoroughgoing scepticism about religious knowledge claims, a scepticism that often goes beyond mere doubt to outright denial. Spinoza’s scepticism about revealed religion, which appears primarily in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, the appendix to book 1 of the Ethics, and some of his letters, grows out of his contact with Isaac La Peyrère’s ideas, and out of his application of Cartesian method to revealed knowledge. The result, as is well known, is a devastating critique of revealed knowledge claims, that has had an amazing effect over the last three centuries in secularizing modern man.1

At the same time that Spinoza was so sceptical of religious knowledge claims, he was completely antisceptical with regard to “rational knowledge,” that is, metaphysics and mathematics.

This attitude, the exact opposite of that of a fideist such as Spinoza’s contemporary Pascal, is not necessarily schizophrenic. In fact, a great many modern thinkers would pay homage to Spinoza for being the first to apply rational or scientific methods to religion with properly destructive results, and to refuse to apply the same methods to the scientific or rational world which is in some way self-justifying.

Obviously, Spinoza changed the locus of truth from religion to rational knowledge in mathematics and metaphysics. To accomplish this he had to start with a very critical analysis of the claims for revealed religious knowledge. In the preface to the Tractatus, Spinoza wrote that before anyone decides that Scripture is true and divine, there should be a strict scrutiny by the light of reason of this claim.2 When this examination is made, it will be discovered “that the Scripture does not in any way inhibit reason and has nothing to do with philosophy, each standing on its own footing.”³ Spinoza will show that this means there is no cognitive content to revelation. His case is developed partly by the use of La Peyrère’s Bible criticism and partly by applying the Cartesian method to religious questions and using some of the same points that Samuel Fisher raised about the status of Scripture.

Spinoza’s investigation starts out by analyzing a central knowledge claim of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, that of prophecy. The definition of this phenomena is that “prophecy, or Revelation is the sure knowledge of some matter revealed by God to man.”⁴ But what kind of knowledge can this be? Ordinary natural knowledge is open to everyone. We acquire it by our faculties, which depend on our knowledge of God and his eternal laws. Is prophetic knowledge some kind of secret, special knowledge that does not come through our faculties? After carefully analyzing the possibilities, Spinoza concluded that all the prophets except Jesus were using their imaginations and were not putting forth cognitive information that is not available to everybody employing his God-given faculties. To claim that what happened to the prophets to give them their supposed information is somehow the result of the power of God says nothing, because all events, including all human knowing, are the result of God’s power.⁵ Hence “it follows from the last chapter [on prophecy], as I have already stated, that the prophets were not endowed with a more perfect mind, but with a more vivid power of imagination.”⁶ Spinoza also suggested that kind of imagination “was fleeting and inconstant.”⁷

Then what can one learn from prophecy? Spinoza ruled out knowledge of natural and spiritual phenomena, since this can be gained by normal intellectual processes. On the other hand, the imaginative process does not “of its own nature carry certainty with it. In order that we may attain certainty of what we imagine, there has to be something in addition to imagination, namely reasoning.”⁸ (Here it begins to appear that Spinoza is applying the Cartesian method to biblical knowledge, as well as using, as he does in the same chapter, La Peyrère’s reason for doubting the text of Scripture.)

Prophecy per se, Spinoza then claimed, affords no certainty, and even the prophets themselves had, according to the Bible, to ask for a divine sign to be sure they had been given a divine message. “In this respect, then, prophecy is inferior to natural knowledge, which needs no sign, but of its own nature carries certainty.”⁹ At best, prophetic knowledge was morally certain, not mathematically certain, which, Spinoza explained, meant that the knowledge of the prophet did not follow from the perception of the thing but rested on the signs given the prophet.10 And these varied according to the opinions and capacity of each prophet. So a sign that would convince one prophet would not necessarily convince another. Then Spinoza went over conflicting prophetic claims and experiences, using some of La Peyrère’s data, and further denigrating biblical prophecy. “Prophecy did not render the prophets more learned, but left them with the beliefs they had previously held, and therefore, we are in no way bound to believe them in matters of purely philosophic speculation.”¹¹ After scrutiny of the claims of various prophets, Spinoza summed up his case that prophets have no special knowledge but that God adapted revelations to the understanding and opinions of the prophets. The prophets were ignorant of science and mathematical knowledge and held conflicting opinions. “Therefore knowledge of science and of matters spiritual should by no means be expected of them.”¹²

Prophecy, one of the central religious knowledge claims on which the theological significance of the Bible rests, is reduced by Spinoza to uninteresting opinions of some people who lived long ago. While Spinoza was so blithely reducing prophetic knowledge to opinion, many theologians in Holland, France, and England were starting a new and vital movement that involved seeking the key to interpreting Scripture prophecies. Sir Isaac Newton belonged to this group, who were sure that when the key was found, one could understand the prophecies, especially those of Daniel and the Book of Revelation which have not yet been fulfilled.¹³ For Spinoza, who must have been cognizant of this great interest in prophetic interpretations among the theologians around him, the results of such inquiries could not produce any cognitive knowledge, because such knowledge could be gained by reason alone.

If prophecy produced no special knowledge, the second bastion of revealed religion, miracles, provided only misinformation and ground for superstition. Before taking up the cases of alleged miraculous action, Spinoza casts doubt on the possibility of miracles in general and of a special divine law known by religious information. On the latter front, Spinoza argued that natural divine law is “of universal application, or common to all mankind. For we have deduced it from human nature as such.”¹⁴ And such law “does not demand belief in historical narratives of any kind whatsoever. For since it is merely a consideration of human nature that leads us to this natural Divine law.”¹⁵ Hence no special law, like the Mosaic law, has to be sought by nonrational means. The divine laws for men can be found from the study of human nature.

With regard to miracles, which were employed by so many theologians as proof of a supernatural realm, Spinoza went beyond the simple sceptical position that was to be presented in the next century by David Hume. Hume argued that it was extremely improbable or implausible that any event is a miracle. Spinoza simply argued what amounted to an Academic sceptical claim, namely that the occurrence of miracles is impossible. The universal laws of Nature are decrees of God;¹⁶ “no event can occur to contravene Nature, which preserves an eternal fixed and immutable order.”¹⁷ So there cannot be an exception to natural divine order. There can just be ignorance of what is going on due to our lack of knowledge of aspects of the order. As we are supposed to realize from a rational understanding of God and Nature, there cannot be any real miracles. (If there were we would be living in an orderless, chaotic world.) It obviously follows that we cannot know God’s nature and existence and providence from miracles, but can know them from understanding the fixed immutable order of nature?18 Having settled the question of miracles in general, Spinoza then went on to account for the alleged biblical miracles in particular.

After denying or undermining the claims of those who have said that they have found special kinds of truth in the Bible, in chapter 7 Spinoza turned directly to the problem of interpreting Scripture. Some people, he pointed out, “ascribe to the Holy Spirit whatever their wild fancies have invented, and devote their utmost strength and enthusiasm to defending it.”¹⁹ Instead of going about interpreting Scripture this way, Spinoza took the most radical alternative, the employment of the Cartesian method. “Now to put it briefly, I hold that the method of interpreting Scripture is no different from the method of interpreting Nature, and is in fact in complete accord with it.”²⁰ For Spinoza, the method of interpreting Nature is basically the Cartesian method. So, therefore, what follows in Spinoza’s analysis of the Bible is a combination of a lot of sceptical points, many taken from La Peyrère, plus a Cartesian analysis of Scripture.

It is important to note that Descartes and his followers were very careful to restrict the domain in which the Cartesian method was useful and to exclude its employment in theology and religion. Descartes himself always answered charges that he was unfaithful in his religious views by insisting that he did not deal with religious topics, and that he accepted the views of the Catholic Church without question.²¹ Pascal read Descartes this way and blamed him for dealing only with the God of the philosophers and not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.²²

For a long time historians of philosophy assumed that the Cartesian revolution automatically, or necessarily, led to irreligion and that the reasons Descartes gave for rejecting Scholasticism would apply as well to the rejection of the Judeo-Christian picture of the world. On the other hand, twentieth-century French scholars such as Gilson, Gouhier, and Koyré have made people realize the possibility that Cartesianism and Christianity are compatible and that Descartes himself may well have been a real religious thinker, trying to ally religion and the new science in a new harmonious relationship.²³

Opponents of Descartes, especially among the Jesuits and Calvinists, saw potentially dangerous irreligious implications, if his method were applied to religion and theory.²⁴ Neither Descartes, nor those in the next generation who considered themselves Cartesians, made such an application, and they insisted they were orthodox in their religion.²⁵

It was Spinoza who was the first to take the drastic step of applying his version of Cartesianism to both theology and Scripture, thereby revealing the lack of ultimate principles on which to justify religion and religious texts. As was mentioned in the last chapter, the earliest opinion of Spinoza that we know of is the claim of Juan de Prado and himself that God exists, but only philosophically.²⁶ Taking this to heart, the method for studying God would be a philosophical one. There is no room left for studying him in terms of revelation or alleged supernatural data. Hence Spinoza’s method for studying anything, a development of the Cartesian method, applies as well to God himself.

On this basis, Spinoza worked his way through the Bible, examining scriptural statements to see if they agree with a rational analysis based on clear and distinct ideas of God or Nature. Since, he contended, most matters discussed in the Bible cannot be demonstrated, then they have to be interpreted in other terms, for example, philologically, historically, psychologically, in terms of scientific knowledge. This may explain why such items appear in the book, and why some people might believe them, though we are not able to tell if they are true. Spinoza, as is evident, quickly transformed Scripture from a source of knowledge into an object of knowledge by using the Cartesian criteria with regard to it. Scripture is then reduced to some odd writing of the Hebrews over two thousand years earlier, and is to be understood in this context.27

Taking scriptural statements literally, and judging them on the basis of clear and distinct ideas of God and the laws of Nature, Spinoza asked whether this process yields any demonstrably certain or morally certain information about reality. The most that could be found in Scripture on these criteria were basic moral truths that could also be found through philosophical examination.²⁸ (A lot of facts about what the ancient Hebrews did and thought could also be learned, but this was relevant to the study of history, not to the understanding of reality.)²⁹

In the all-important chapter 15 of the Tractatus, entitled “Theology is shown not to be subservient to reason, nor reason to theology: A definition of the reason which enables us to accept the authority of the Bible,” Spinoza made the results of his analysis quite clear. He began by outlining two alternatives that he was going to reject: scepticism and dogmatism. In this context, Spinoza took the sceptical view to be that reason should be made to agree with Scripture. This amounts to denying the certitude of reason. The other view, dogmatism, holds that “the meaning of Scripture should be made to conform with reason.”³⁰

The dogmatic view Spinoza saw as being represented by Maimonides and his followers, who alter and even violate the literal meaning of Scripture. They rewrote or reinterpreted passages to make them meet rational standards. Spinoza insisted, in almost fundamentalist fashion, that every text has to be taken at face value.

For Spinoza, the net result of his method of scriptural interpretation is that a lot of passages just would not make sense. Instead of cheating about it, as Spinoza contended Maimonides did,³¹ there was an at least equally dangerous possibility, that of accommodating reason to Scripture. This, the sceptical view, would destroy all rational criteria (since reason would have to be adjusted to fit a nonrational text, Scripture). “Who but a desperate madman would be so rash as to turn his back on reason, or to hold the arts and sciences in contempt, while denying the certainty of reason?”³²

Spinoza then resolved the problem at issue by insisting that philosophy and theology should be separated, rather than accommodated to each other. Philosophy is judged by rational criteria, by clear and distinct ideas. Theology is to be judged in terms of its one meaningful achievement, the teaching of piety and obedience. It cannot and does not offer proofs of the truth of its prescriptions. Theology, if kept to this role, will be in accord with reason, since what it asks people to do and to believe is supported by philosophical evidence. The truth of theological prescriptions will be decided by philosophy, and theology by itself cannot be considered true or false.

This entails a kind of total scepticism about theology and religion. Their propositions are outside the cognitive (except for those that can be supported by philosophy). It is pointless to question, or even doubt, theological or religious propositions, since they are outside the realm where these mental acts are relevant. As the logical-positivists in the early twentieth century declared that ethical discourse and aesthetic discourse were noncognitive, and not open to questions about the truth or falsity of value claims, similarly Spinoza had defused the power of theology and religion by removing it from philosophic (in the broad sense that Spinoza uses the term) or cognitively meaningful discussion.

After having so drastically demoted theology and religion, and having cast them out of the rational world, Spinoza tried to make it sound as if there were still a great role for theology and religion. He ended chapter 15 by declaring:

Before I go further I would expressly state (though I have said it before) that I consider the utility and the need for Holy Scripture or Revelation to be very great. For as we cannot not perceive by the natural light of reason that obedience is the path of salvation, and are taught by revelation only that it is so by the special grace of God, which our reason cannot attain, it follows that the Bible has brought a very great consolation to mankind. All are able to obey, whereas there are but very few, compared with the aggregate of humanity, who can acquire the habit of virtue under the unaided guidance of reason. Thus if we had not the testimony of Scripture, we should doubt of the salvation of nearly all men.33

Spinoza’s analysis of the Bible, using the sceptical points of La Peyrère about the Mosaic authorship, and so on, and applying the critical method of Cartesian science to the content of the document, played a vital role in launching modern Bible criticism. Spinoza denied that there was any special message in the Bible that could not be learned by philosophical means. And he insisted that much of the Bible can be better understood in terms of Jewish history, primitive psychology, and like subjects. Spinoza’s extension of Cartesian methodology to the evaluation of the scriptural framework for interpreting man and his place in the universe led Spinoza to conclude that Scripture had no place in the intellectual world. Instead, the Bible was just a source of moral action for those who were not capable intellectually of finding the rational basis of human conduct.

As extreme as Spinoza’s position may seem to be in driving religious questions out of the epistemic realm, and making the evaluation and interpretation of them primarily the task of the social scientist, nonetheless the greatest Bible scholar of the late seventeenth century, Father Richard Simon, adopted many of Spinoza’s techniques for Bible criticism. Simon’s first important work, The Critical History of the Old Testament (1678), went through the history of the documents as they passed from ancient times to the present, exploring the philological history of the Hebrew and Greek texts, and the anthropology of the early Jews. Simon was a far better scholar than his friend La Peyrère, or Spinoza. He insisted that he was not trying to create a Pyrrhonism about the Bible text, since he was sure that there was a message in the Bible if the text were corrected and properly understood. The tasks of correction and proper comprehension might take forever, but that did not deny the actual existence of the divine message. When Simon was accused of being a Spinozist, he replied that he agreed with Spinoza’s method of Bible study but not with his conclusion.34

Others found that they could not be so calm about it. The revolutionary implications of Spinoza’s biblical criticism were immediately apparent. The Tractatus, like the Prae-Adamitae fifteen years earlier, was banned in Holland. (Very few books achieved this distinction in Holland in the seventeenth century.) It circulated with false titles like Traitté des ceremonies superstitieuses des Juifs.³⁵ On the basis of the book, Spinoza came under attack as an archatheist. He apparently wearied of the attacks and decided not to publish the Ethics in 1675, when he finished it, because he did not want to become embroiled in a fight with the local pastors.³⁶

Some of Descartes’ opponents who were sure that Cartesianism would lead to infidelity and atheism found Spinoza proof of their fears. For example, Henry More, after he broke with Descartes, was sure that the latter’s theory was just a form of infidelity. He said that he had heard that in Holland there were Cartesians who were “mere scoffers at religion, and atheistical.”³⁷ Then along came “Spinoza, a Jew first, a Cartesian, and now an atheist.”³⁸ The Tractatus, More claimed, attacked the bases of biblical religion.

It was the case that even before the publication of the Ethics with its fullblown naturalistic metaphysics, many realized that scepticism about revealed religion was explicit in Spinoza’s writing, and realized that his way of treating the Bible would deny the validity or importance of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Tractatus plus the Ethics would allow for a totally new perspective on human experience. What Pascal decried as the misery of man without the biblical God was for Spinoza the liberation of the human spirit from the bonds of fear and superstition.

Spinoza’s scepticism about the values of the biblical world, and his view of how it would be replaced by the rational man, was far beyond what most mid-seventeenth-century thinkers could accept. For years after Spinoza, it was a pejorative insult to call anyone a Spinozist. It took about a century before someone could safely say that he was a follower of Spinoza, and some of the German Enlightenment figures who made this statement still got in trouble.³⁹ The extremely tolerant Pierre Bayle asserted that Spinoza “was a systematic atheist who employed a totally new method.”40 And, according to Bayle, the Tractatus was “a pernicious and detestable book”⁴¹ that contained the seeds of the atheism of the Ethics.

What Spinoza accomplished with regard to revealed religion cannot be called Pyrrhonian scepticism, or its theological version, agnosticism. Part of Spinoza’s case is carrying forward the doubts about the biblical text of La Peyrère. But much more of it is denying the cognitive content of Scripture in terms of prophecies, miracles, or anything else. This could be classified as negative scepticism or Academic scepticism. Spinoza did not merely doubt the truth claims of Scripture, he denied them except for a moral message. In this denial, it no longer makes sense to consider the contentions of revealed religion as being either true or false. They are outside the realm where proof and doubt apply. They can be studied as part of the history of human stupidity for what they represent historically, sociologically, or psychologically, but they cannot be studied in terms of their truth and falsity.

The denial of the worth of revealed religion soon got labeled “scepticism,” and theologians were fighting the sceptics and infidels. Probably the most common usage today of the term “sceptic” is a religious unbeliever.⁴² In this sense, with the qualifications of the last paragraph kept in mind, I think it is fair to count Spinoza as a sceptic about religion, even though his views go well beyond mere doubt to complete denial. If Spinoza was an irreligious sceptic, he was most un- or antisceptical in the areas of scientific and philosophical knowledge. As I shall try to show, this is not a sign of inconsistency but rather encompasses one of Spinoza’s basic knowledge claims that applies to all subjects including religion.

Spinoza obviously spent a good deal of time working through Descartes’ Meditations and his Principles, and thereby could not avoid coming into contact with sceptical ideas, and with the problem posed by the sceptics. Other than what he learned about scepticism from Descartes, Spinoza was aware of at least one classical sceptical source, Sextus Empiricus, who is quoted in one of Spinoza’s letters.⁴³ Pierro di Vona, in his article “Spinoza e lo scetticismo classico” explored the possibility that Spinoza knew other sources. Di Vona thought it more likely that Spinoza might have known of Cicero or Diogenes Laertius than that he knew of Sanches, Montaigne, or Charron.⁴⁴

For our purposes it does not matter how much Spinoza knew of the sceptical literature since his very negative view is basically found in terms of Cartesian concepts in The Principles of Descartes’ Philosophy, and the same or similar points are brought up elsewhere. Considering how serious la crise pyrrhonniene was in the middle of the seventeenth century, and especially how serious it was for Descartes, it is somewhat surprising to see how calmly Spinoza faced it, and how simple he found it was to dispose of it. The problem of scepticism comes up at least once in Spinoza’s major works. I think his conception of the problem may be discerned by starting with The Principles of Descartes’ Philosophy (1666), examining both what Spinoza said and what Descartes said on the same issue.

At the outset of the Principles, Spinoza omitted Cartesian doubt as one of Descartes’ means of searching for truth.45 Spinoza said the effect of Descartes’ method was that “he undertook to reduce everything to doubt, not like a sceptic, who apprehends no other end than doubt itself, but in order to free his mind from all prejudice.”⁴⁶ Descartes, we are told, hoped to discover the firm and unshakable foundations of science, which could not escape him if he followed the method. “For the true principles of knowledge should be so clear and certain as to need no proof, should be placed beyond all hazard of doubt, and should be such that nothing could be proved without them.”⁴⁷ It is the existence of such principles (and the intellectual catastrophe if there are none such) that Spinoza will appeal to in his skirmishes with the sceptics—skirmishes because he really wages no large battles with them. What removes all the Cartesian doubts is that one knows “that the faculty of distinguishing true and false had not been given to him by a supremely good and truthful God in order that he might be deceived.”⁴⁸ In discussing this, Spinoza made his fundamental basis of certainty clear.

For, as is obvious from everything that has already been said, the pivot of the entire matter is this, that we can form a concept of God which so disposes us that we cannot with equal ease suppose that he is deceiver as that he is not, but which compels us to affirm that he is entirely truthful. But when we have formed such an idea, the reason for doubting mathematical truths is removed. For then whenever we turn our minds in order to doubt any one of these things, just as in the case of our existence, we find nothing to prevent our concluding that it is entirely certain.⁴⁹

Spinoza went on to present Descartes’ theory, and in the course of the presentation made the centrality of the idea of God obvious. He claimed that there was no point in arguing with people who deny they have the idea. It is like trying to teach a blind man colors. “But unless we are willing to regard these people as a new kind of animal, midway between men and brutes, we should pay little attention to their words.”⁵⁰ The centrality is shown again as Spinoza presents the propositions that make up Descartes’ philosophy. The criterion of truth, “whatever we clearly and distinctly perceive is true,” follows after “God is utterly truthful and is not at all a deceiver.”⁵¹ Descartes had used the criterion to prove that God was not a deceiver. In Spinoza’s world the idea of God precludes deception and guarantees that clear and distinct ideas are true.

In Spinoza’s own attempt to develop his philosophy methodologically (in the Treatise on the Improvement of the Understanding),⁵² after he had developed his method for discovering certain truth, he stopped to consider the possibility that there yet remains some sceptic who doubts of our primary truth, and of all the deductions we make; taking such truth as our standard, he must either be arguing in bad faith, or we must confess that there are men in complete mental blindness, either innate or due to misconceptions—that is, to some external influence.⁵³ The classification of the sceptic as mentally blind had already occurred in Principles of Descartes’ Philosophy. One wonders what evidence Spinoza could give besides appealing to how clear and certain various truths were to him.

Spinoza was obviously perplexed by his supposed sceptic. He went on to say that such a person could not affirm or doubt anything. He cannot even say that he knows nothing—in fact, he “ought to remain dumb for fear of haply supposing something which should smack of truth.”54 If these sceptics “deny, grant or gainsay, they know not that they deny, grant or gainsay, so that they ought to be regarded as automata, utterly devoid of intelligence.”⁵⁵

In all of Spinoza’s comments so far, it is basically an ad hominem argument about the mentality and character of the sceptic or doubter; Spinoza has yet to come to grips with the sceptic’s arguments, regardless of whether the sceptic is in a position to affirm or deny them. Later on in the Improvement of the Understanding, Spinoza made clear what is at issue. “Hence we cannot cast doubt on true ideas by the supposition that there is a deceitful Deity, who leads us astray even in what is most certain. We can only hold such an hypothesis so long as we have no clear and distinct idea.”⁵⁶ When we reflect on the idea of God, we know he can be no deceiver with the same certitude as we know that the sum of the angles of a triangle equals two right angles. Spinoza, also in the Improvement of the Understanding, brushed aside the possibility that the search for truth would lead to an infinite regress of seeking a method, and seeking a method for finding the method, and so on. Spinoza insisted that

in order to discover the truth, there is no need of another method to discover such method; nor of a third method for discovering the second, and so on to infinity. By such proceedings, we should never arrive at any knowledge of the truth, or indeed, at any knowledge at all…. The intellect, by its native strength, makes for itself intellectual instruments, whereby it acquires strength for performing other intellectual operations, and from these operations get, again, fresh instruments, or the power of pushing its investigations further, and thus gradually proceeds till it reaches the summit of wisdom.⁵⁷

In his later works, the Tractatus and the Ethics, Spinoza made even clearer his reasons for rejecting scepticism as a serious possibility in the rational world of philosophy. (It should be noted that Spinoza infrequently discussed scepticism, and when he did it was usually as an aside.) In the Tractatus, in dealing with the proof of the existence of God, Spinoza started off: “Since God’s existence is not self-evident”⁵⁸ and then added an important footnote that appears at the end of the book, in which he said: “We doubt the existence of God, and consequently everything else, as long as we do not have a clear and distinct idea of God, but only a confused idea. Just as he who does not rightly know the nature of a triangle, does not know that its three angles are equal to two right angles, so he who conceives the divine nature in a confused way does not see that existence pertains to the nature of God.” At the end of the note Spinoza declared that when it becomes clear to us that God exists necessarily, and “that all our conceptions involve God’s nature and are conceived through God’s nature, thus we can accept finally, that everything that we adequately conceive is true.”59

So one can be and is a complete sceptic until one has a clear and distinct idea of God. Everything is dubious (or confused) without the idea of God. Spinoza constantly compared the situation to the mathematical one where if one did not have a clear and distinct idea of a triangle, one would not know what other properties a triangle has. But the situation with the idea of God is far more significant, since all our clear ideas “involve themselves in the nature of God” and are conceived through him. And it is through knowing God that we know that all our adequate ideas are true.

Hence, before knowing the idea of God, we are, or can be, sceptical of everything. But to overcome this nasty situation does not require Descartes’ heroic efforts but just rational effort, and a rational sense for what is clear and certain, or clear and distinct. Spinoza went on in the text in the Tractatus:

[God’s existence] must necessarily be inferred from axiomatic truths which are so firm and incontrovertible that there can neither be, nor be conceived, any power that could call them into question [like Descartes’ demon or his deceiving God]. At any rate, once we have inferred from them God’s existence, we are bound to regard them as such if we seek to establish beyond all shadow of doubt; our inference from them to God’s existence. For if we could conceive that these axiomatic truths themselves can be impugned by any power, of whatever kind it be, then we should doubt their truth and consequently the conclusion following therefrom; namely God’s existence; nor could we ever be certain of anything.⁶⁰

Besides offering the argument from catastrophe, namely if we could doubt the fundamental truth that God exists, we could not be sure of anything, and would be reduced to being sceptics, Spinoza also presented a central thesis of his theory of knowledge. All knowledge comes from or is validated by our knowledge of God’s existence. This fundamental knowledge is self-validating, since one’s rational sense cannot entertain the possible sceptical gambit that God is a deceiver if one knows the idea of God, and one cannot be forced into an infinite regress about how one knows it. This idea immediately precludes the Cartesian sceptical possibilities because of what the idea is like, or because of what the idea conveys. If we do not have a clear idea of God, then it is not just that scepticism is possible but rather that it is the plight of man, since in this situation we “should never be able to be certain of anything.”

So scepticism is both possible and necessary if one does not know clearly the idea of God. Scepticism is not the result of tropes or arguments but of ignorance. It is not refuted but rather replaced by the world-shaking consequences of having a clear idea of God. And such an idea precludes Descartes’ further sceptical considerations, that God may be a deceiver. The true and adequate idea of God immediately eliminates that as a possibility.

The sceptic might still ask: How do you know when you have the clear and certain, or the true and adequate, idea of God? The idea, for Spinoza, will apparently be self-validating. It will be “so firmly and incontrovertibly true, that no power can be postulated or conceived sufficient to impugn them.” The person who does impugn the idea of God is just ignorant and does not really know what the idea is like. The person who does have the idea will realize it is true and cannot possibly be false no matter what sceptical considerations are introduced. And one of the reasons why it cannot be false is the argument from catastrophe, namely that this and everything else would become uncertain.

Near the end of book 2, the Ethics takes up scepticism more extensively, diagnosing it to be ignorance. Proposition 43 says: “He, who has a true idea, simultaneously knows that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt of the truth of the thing perceived.” In a note to this proposition, Spinoza said:

For nobody who has a true idea is unaware that a true idea involves absolute certainty. To have a true idea means only to know a thing perfectly, that is, to the utmost degree. Indeed, nobody can doubt this, unless he thinks that an idea is some dumb thing like a picture on a tablet, and not a mode of thinking, to wit, the very act of understanding. And who, pray, can know that he understands something unless he first understands it? That is, who can know that he is certain of something unless he is first certain of it? Again, what standard of truth can there be that is clearer and more certain than a true idea? Indeed, just as light makes manifest both itself and darkness, so truth is the standard both of itself and falsity.61

Spinoza disposed of one of the basic issues that generated scepticism in Montaigne and that Descartes tried to overcome. An idea is not a lifeless object that one tries to evaluate by criteria, which themselves require justification. Spinoza insisted an idea is a mode of thinking whose truth or falsity shows itself. No infinite regress of methods is required, because having a true idea is the same as knowing something perfectly, and this shows itself from the natural faculties of the intellect. There is no possible sceptical problem because one knows, and knows that one knows, or one is in ignorance. The sceptic who wants to debate Spinoza will just be sent to contemplate whether he knows or understands something perfectly (which amounts to clear and certain knowledge). If the sceptic doubts whether he has such knowledge, he is then dismissed as an ignoramus who does not know what is essential to the debate.

For Spinoza, no long elaborate proof against the sceptics is needed since he is claiming, contrary to Descartes, that the very act of understanding as such makes one aware that he knows and knows that he knows. Though the sceptic claims that such a person could be mistaken, Spinoza insisted this would be impossible if the person had a clear and certain idea. It would be its own criterion. As some of the earlier quotations indicate, the choice for Spinoza is either knowing God and all that follows from that knowledge, or knowing nothing. Since we know something, like that a triangle is equal to two right angles, a truth that shows itself in the act of knowing it, we do not have to bother with scepticism, but rather with analyzing our truth to discover what makes it true, namely God. The sceptic knows nothing, as he has all his purported doubts. He is in a state of ignorance that only a genuine knowing experience could cure. He may be in the state of suspending judgment, which means “that he is not adequately perceiving the thing.”62 As soon as he does he will give up his scepticism.

Spinoza did not see scepticism as the specter haunting European philosophy. The quotations I have used are almost the totality of his discussions of the matter. Unlike Descartes, who had to fight his way through scepticism to arrive at dogmatic truth, Spinoza simply began with an assurance that his system was true, and anyone who did not see this was either truth-blind (like colorblind) or was an ignoramus. The ignoramus can be helped if he can improve his understanding, and know something clearly and certainly, or adequately.

Spinoza’s epistemological dogmatism is probably the furthest removed from scepticism of any of the new philosophies of the seventeenth century. It is a genuine antisceptical theory trying to eradicate the possibility or meaningfulness of doubting or suspending judgment. Spinoza started his system at the point that others were trying to get to after they overcame the sceptical menace. Spinoza eliminated the sceptics by first propounding the axiom “A true idea must correspond with that of which it is the idea”⁶³ and later insisting that people have true ideas. The evidence for the latter claim is personal experience; for the former, nothing except that it is an axiom. As an axiom it obviates the need to build bridges from ideas to objects.

For Spinoza there are no real sceptics, only ignoramuses. With his tremendous assurance, based on his clear and certain, and true and adequate, idea of God, Spinoza could answer his former disciple, Albert Burgh, who had asked “How I [Spinoza] know that my philosophy is the best among all that have ever been taught in the world? ”⁶⁴ by saying: “I do not presume that I have found the best philosophy, but I know that what I understand is the true one.”⁶⁵ If Spinoza is asked how he knows this, his answer is that he knows it in the same way as he knows that the three angles of a triangle add up to two right angles; “that this suffices no one will deny who has a sound brain and does not dream of unclean spirits who inspire us with false ideas as if there were true. For truth reveals both itself and the false.”⁶⁶

Spinoza’s thoroughgoing antiscepticism about knowledge reinforced his scepticism about religious knowledge. Based on the true and adequate idea of God, which is clear and obvious when one understands it, it is evident that God cannot be the figure represented in popular religion. God’s judgments might have been claimed to far transcend our understanding. “Indeed, it is for this reason, and this reason only, that truth might have evaded mankind forever had not Mathematics, which is concerned not with ends but only with the essences and properties of figures, revealed to men a different standard of truth.”⁶⁷ Our clear and certain ideas show that God does not have motives, or act for the achievement of purposes. There are no value properties in nature that God is trying to augment. All of the nonsense people say on these matters

goes to show that everyone’s judgement is a function of the disposition of his brain, or rather, that he mistakes for reality the way his imagination is affected. Hence it is no wonder—as we should note in passing—that we find so many controversies arising among men, resulting finally in scepticism…. Men’s judgement is a function of the disposition of the brain, and they are guided by imagination rather than intellect. For if men understood things, all that I have put forward would be found, if not attractive, at any rate convincing, as Mathematics attests.68

Thus for Spinoza the religious controversies built on ignorance of the idea of God just lead to scepticism. If people approach the problem first through mathematical ideas and then through knowledge of God, they will see how false and how stupid popular religion is. The complete dogmatism of Spinoza then justifies a doubt and finally a negation of popular religion.

Spinoza thought that he had found a way to dispose of any force of scepticism while developing a (or the) completely certain system of philosophy. The God of his philosophy would provide the basis for a thoroughgoing scepticism or denial of popular religion, as well as of the theological systems of Judaism and Christianity. The God of his system, once known, would provide the bulwark against any sceptical challenge, since the challenge would be written off as a case of ignorance or truth-blindness. The sceptics could keep raising points like “How do you know X is true?” and Spinoza could say that truth is the index of itself, so the question is either asked in ignorance or stupidity.

Spinoza’s superrationalism and antiscepticism were attacked by only one sceptic. (Of course his scepticism with regard to revealed religion was attacked by theologians all over Europe.) Pierre Bayle in the Dictionnaire historique et critique devoted his longest article, in fact a book-length one, to Spinoza.⁶⁹ This article is usually glossed over as a simple misunderstanding of Spinoza’s categories, but Bayle was not one to purposely misread his opponents. To do justice to Bayle’s attack on Spinoza would require a very lengthy article, if not a book. For present purposes, I think one of his points is interesting, namely that Spinoza’s rationalism would justify the most irrational conclusions. In remarks Q and T, Bayle tried to show that if Spinoza had argued logically he would have seen that there is no philosopher who has less reason to deny the existence of spirits and of hell than Spinoza. Bayle tried to show that it followed from the unlimited nature of the Spinozistic deity that he could, and maybe did, create spirits, demons, and so on, as well as an underworld. Bayle’s point appears to be that the logic of Spinoza’s position cannot rule anything out as a possible component of the world.⁷⁰ Hence Spinoza’s vaunted rationalism would end up justifying all sorts of irrationalism.

Spinozism survived Bayle and many other attackers. The scepticism with regard to religion coupled with a dogmatic antiscepticism about knowledge became a model for many of the English deists and French Enlightenment thinkers who pursued the many sceptical points raised by La Peyrère and Spinoza until they had reached a point where they thought they had abolished traditional religion, and they tried to do so politically during the Reign of Terror.71 D’Holbach could, for instance, argue dogmatically for a naturalistic metaphysics at the same time the work The Treatise of the Three Impostors, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed or the Spirit of M. Spinoza was circulating, first in manuscript and then in printed copies, one done by D’Holbach himself.⁷²