Was Spinoza Actually An ATHEIST?

Kenneth Novis says the case hinges on how you define 'God'.

- Kenneth Novis

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), lens-grinder and part-time philosophical genius, lived a deeply tumultuous life. He was afflicted not only by grinding poverty (sorry) but also by spiritual alienation. In 1656 he was expelled by his synagogue and the Sephardic community of Amsterdam shunned him for his heretical views, including his denial of the immortality of the soul and of the divine provenance of Scripture. Despite this, Spinoza is best remembered today as a tolerant pantheist, deeply devoted to his God. However, in his celebrated 1930 book Spinoza's Critique of Religion, the Chicago political philosopher Leo Strauss (1899-1973) - himself Jewish posed a question to interpreters of Spinoza which continues to incite vigorous debate today. Despite his veneer of reverence for God, could Spinoza have actually been an atheist?

At a first glance, the case to be made for Spinoza's atheism is a patently weak one. In his posthumously published magnum opus, the Ethics (1677), a substantial portion of the first part is devoted to demonstrating God's existence. Furthermore, the work's conclusion is that the good life is nothing other than the intellectual love of God (amor dei intellectualis). This seems pretty compelling evidence that Spinoza believed in God.

The case becomes significantly complicated, however, once we expand our analysis of Spinoza to encompass his other works and the conceptual machinations that undergird his arguments in the Ethics. This is the approach taken by the German Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), who preceded Strauss in arguing for the existence of a hidden, secret doctrine in Spinoza's works.