Book
Brayton Polka. Hermeneutics and Ontology. Vol. 1 of Between Philosophy and Religion: Spinoza, the Bible, and Modernity. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2007.
Reviewer
Matthew Klaassen, University of Toronto
Hermeneutics and Ontology is the first part of two volumes intended to demonstrate and present the unity of Spinoza’s mature thought. The first volume deals with Spinoza’s hermeneutics and ontology, and the second will cover his politics and ethics. However, as Brayton Polka indicates, the unity of Spinoza’s work involves not just consistency among Spinoza’s claims but reciprocal interdependence. This is reflected in Polka’s refusal to divide Spinoza’s approach to issues by individual work; i.e., considering the Ethics as Spinoza’s ontology and ethics, and his other mature works as merely political.
The main theme of the overall two-volume work is that “to place ourselves with Spinoza between philosophy and religion is to be in the position of overcoming the paralyzing dualisms between modernity and the Bible and so between reason and faith, between the secular and the religious, and, ultimately, between the human and the divine” (viii).
Of the book’s four chapters, the first is an introduction and the fourth is a conclusion. The bulk of the exegetical labor is accomplished in the two long central chapters. The introduction helpfully sets outs the themes to which the book consistently returns: the ontological argument for the existence of God, Spinoza’s approach to Biblical hermeneutics, and their interrelation and mutual implication. The second chapter, based on a close reading of the first 15 chapters of the Theologico-Political Treatise (TTP), explains Spinoza’s separation of philosophy and theology. Against certain readings of Spinoza, Polka argues that this separation does not imply the subordination of faith to philosophy. On the contrary, only when they are separated can one understand the proper role of each and, paradoxically, their interdependence.
This separation is accomplished by distinguishing true religion from superstition. In the realm of biblical hermeneutics, this separation indicates that the Bible must be read “from itself” and be understood to reflect “accommodation” to the prejudices of its time. The Bible must be read in light of its fundamental norm – love of neighbor (a charity reflecting the hermeneutical charity that must be extended when in interpreting the biblical text) – in order for the religious core to be brought out of superstitious overlays.
The third chapter focuses on the significance of the ontological argument for the existence of God, as presented in first two parts of Spinoza’s Ethics. Against the “contradictory” ignorance of reality characterizing ancient philosophy, the ontological argument “constitutes the ontology of modernity by founding it on and showing that it founds the necessary relationship between thought and existence” (144). Spinoza’s ontological argument moves neither from the necessity of God for thought nor from the certainty of the self to God. Instead, it shows that God and humanity, existence and thought, self and other are reciprocally necessary.
The concluding chapter pulls the book’s various strands together. Spinoza shows that modernity does not involve a contradictory opposition between faith and reason, the Bible and philosophy, or God and the self, but rather a paradoxical interrelation between terms. Just as the ontological argument shows there is no thought without God or God without thought, Spinoza’s hermeneutics shows there is no interpretation of the sacred text without the reader, and the reader can only interpret the sacred text (or any text, as it turns out) properly by following the fundamental norm of the Scriptures – love of God and neighbor.
Polka’s passionately written book reflects enormous erudition that is nevertheless held in check in order to focus on the subject at hand. The decision to relegate discussion of secondary literature to two appendices (the first on secondary literature in general, the second a critique of Leo Strauss’s influential interpretation of Spinoza) helps Polka avoid the “commenting on the commentators” conundrum.
Polka’s interpretation will no doubt be controversial and important, not only for Spinoza scholars but for scholars concerned with the more general political, philosophical, religious, and ethical dimensions of modernity. Against critics of modernity claiming Spinoza represents the modern, secular destruction of the sacred, Polka argues Spinoza actually saves the sacred by making it accessible to the human mind. Against modernists claiming Spinoza as a representative of secularism’s rightful triumph over religious superstition, Polka’s Spinoza shows that modernity’s own roots lie in a biblical religion deeper than any superstition.
Whether Polka’s interpretation of Spinoza or the particular positions taken are defensible will be settled through the discussion I hope will emerge around this book and its sequel.