On Leo Strauss's Critique of Spinoza
![handle is hein.journals/cdozo25 and id is 757 raw text is: ON LEO STRAUSS'S CRITIQUE OF SPINOZA
Steven B. Smith*
INTRODUCTION
In an essay from 1932 entitled Das Testament Spinozas, Leo
Strauss observed that the reception of Spinoza has undergone various
stages from condemnation as a soulless atheist and materialist, to
canonization by the German romantics who saw him as a mystical
pantheist and God intoxicated man, and finally to neutrality by
scholars who had come largely to accept the results of his historico-
critical approach to the Bible.' The official acceptance of Spinoza was
possible, Strauss writes, only once the famous querrelle des anciens et
des modernes had been decided in favor of'the modems and the
legitimacy of modem thought had long since been accepted. It was this
that permitted Spinoza to enter the small band of superior ninds that
Strauss, following Nietzsche, refers to as the good Europeans:
To this community belong all the philosophers of the seventeenth
century, but Spinoza belongs to it in a special way. Spinoza did not
remain a Jew, while Descartes, Hobbes, and Leibniz remained
Christians. Thus it is not in accordance with Spinoza's wishes that
he be inducted into the pantheon of the Jewish nation. Under these
circumstances it seems to us an elementary imperative of Jewish
self-respect that we Jews should at last again relinquish our claim on
Spinoza. By so doing, we by no means surrender him to our
enemies. Rather, we leave him to that distant and strange
community of neutrals whom one can call, with considerable
justice, the community of good Europeans.2
Department of Political Science, Yale University.
Leo Strauss, Das Testament Spinozas, reprinted in 1 GESAMMELTE SCHRIFTEN: DIE
RELIGIONSKRITIK SPINOZAS UND ZUGEHORIGE SCHRIFTEN 415-22 (Heinrich Meier, ed., 1996)
(1932). The English translation of this source can be found in Leo Strauss, The Testament of
Spinoza, in LEO STRAUSS: THE EARLY WRITINGS (1921-32) 216-23 (Michael Zanc ed., 2002)
(1932) [hereinafter The Testament of Spinoza].
2 The Testament of Spinoza, supra note 1, at 220. Nietzsche's use of the term good
European can be found in FREDERICH NIETZSCHE, BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL § 4 (Walter
Kaufmann trans., Random House 1966) (1886).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/cdozo25&div=35&collection=journals&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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On Leo Strauss's Critique of Spinoza
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