everything that happens happens for their sakes, they must consider as most important in everything that which is for them most useful, and they must value most that by which they would be best affected.” Consequently, flent, ridunt, contemnunt vel quod plerumque fit, detestantur6 (they weep, laugh, scorn or—what happens most of the time—curse). It is in this, according to Spinoza, that there lies the fundamental error of man—one could almost say man’s original sin, if Spinoza himself had not so carefully avoided all that could recall the Bible even if only externally.
The first great law of thought which abolishes the biblical interdiction against the fruits of the tree of knowledge is non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere7 (not to laugh, not to lament, not to curse, but to understand). Everything is then transformed before our eyes. In contemplating life “in the perspective of eternity or necessity,” we accept whatever we encounter on our road with the same tranquility and the same feeling of good will. “Even if these things are inconvenient, they are nevertheless necessary and have determinate causes through which we seek to understand their nature, and the mind rejoices just as much over their true contemplation as over the knowledge of those things that are pleasing to the senses.”
In contemplating the necessity of everything that happens in the universe, our mind experiences the highest joy. How does this differ from the statement of Kant, who says that our reason aspires eagerly to universal and necessary judgments? Or from Leibniz’s affirmation that the truths not only constrain but persuade? Or even from the famous Hegelian formula, “All that is real is rational?” And is it not evident that for Leibniz, Kant and Hegel—quite as much as for Spinoza—the pretensions that man makes of occupying a special, privileged place in nature are ungrounded and absolutely unjustified, unless recourse is had to a “supreme being” who does not exist and has never existed? It is only when we forget all “supreme beings” and repress, or rather tear out of our soul, all the ridere, lugere, et detestari [laughing, lamenting, and cursing], as well as the absurd flere [crying] which flows from them and which comes to the ears of no one—it is only when we recognize that our destiny and the very meaning of our existence consist in the pure intelligere, that the true philosophy will be born.
Neither in Leibniz nor in Kant do we find, to be sure, the equivalent of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus which established what is now called “biblical criticism,” but this does not mean that they had taken any less care than Spinoza to protect themselves from the biblical contamination. If everything that Kant said about Schwarmerei and Aberglauben (fanaticism and superstition) or that Leibniz wrote on the same subject were brought together, one would completely recover the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. And conversely, all the effort of the Tractatus is bent to ridding our spiritual treasury of the ideas which Scripture had introduced there and which nothing justifies.
The non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere [not to laugh, not to lament, not to curse, but to understand] of Spinoza, who abrogated the ban placed by the Bible on the fruit of the tree of knowledge, constitutes at the same time a reasonable reply to the De profundis ad te, Domine, clamavi (out of the depths I cried unto Thee, O God) of the Psalmist. The Psalmist could cry to God, but the man qui sola ratione ducitur8 (who is led by reason alone) knows well that it is absolutely useless to cry to God from the depths. If you have fallen into an abyss, try to get out of it as best you can, but forget what the Bible has told us throughout the centuries—that there is somewhere, “in heaven,” a supreme and omnipotent being who is interested in your fate, who can help you, and who is ready to do so. Your fate depends entirely on the conditions in which chance has placed you. It is possible, in some measure, to adapt yourself to these conditions. You may, for example, prolong your earthly existence by working to earn your bread or by taking it away from others. But it is a question only of prolongation, for it is not given anyone to escape death. An ineluctable eternal truth says: “Everything that has a beginning has also an end.” The man of the Bible was unwilling to accept this truth; it did not succeed in “persuading” him. But this shows only that he did not allow himself to be led “by reason alone,” that he was deeply bogged down in Schwarmerei and Aberglauben [fanaticism and superstition]. The man who has been enlightened—a Spinoza, a Leibniz, a Kant—thinks quite otherwise. The eternal truths do not simply constrain him; they persuade him, they inspire him, they give him wings. Sub specie aeternitatis vel necessitates9 [in the perspective of eternity or necessity]—how solemnly these words resound in Spinoza’s mouth! And his amor erga rem aeternam (love of what is eternal)—does not one feel ready to sacrifice for this the entire universe, created (if one may believe the doubtful, or rather, quite frankly, false teachings of this same Bible) by God for man? And then there is Spinoza’s “we feel and experience that we are eternal,”10 and the statement which crowns his Ethics: “Happiness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.”11 Are these words not worth our abandoning all the passing and changing goods which life promises us?
We touch here precisely upon that which deeply distinguishes the biblical philosophy, the biblical thought—or, better, the mode of biblical thought—from the speculative thought that the vast majority of the great philosophers of historic humanity represent and express. The ridere, lugere, and detestari, along with the accompanying flere that are rejected by Spinoza, the most audacious and sincere of these philosophers, constitute that dimension of thought which no longer exists, or more accurately, which has been completely atrophied in the man “who is led by reason alone.” One could express this still more strongly: the prerequisite of rational thought consists in our willingness to reject all the possibilities that are bound up with ridere, lugere, et detestari and especially with flere. The biblical words “And God saw that it was very good” [valde bonum] seem to us the product of a fantastic imagination, as does the God who reveals Himself to the prophet on Mount Sinai. We, enlightened men, put all our trust in autonomous ethics; its praises are our salvation, its reproofs our eternal damnation. “Beyond” the truths which constrain, “beyond” good and evil, all interests of the mind come, in our opinion, to an end. In the world ruled by “Necessity” the fate of man and the only goal of every reasonable being consist in the performance of duty: autonomous ethics crowns the autonomous laws of being.
The fundamental opposition of biblical philosophy to speculative philosophy shows itself in particularly striking fashion when we set Socrates’ words, “The greatest good of man is to discourse daily about virtue” (or Spinoza’s gaudere vera contemplatione—“to rejoice in true contemplation”) opposite St. Paul’s words, “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” The precondition of Socrates’ “greatest good,” or of Spinoza’s “true contemplation,” is the willingness of the man “who knows” to renounce God’s “blessing” by virtue of which the world and everything that is in the world were destined for man’s use. The ancients already had seen the “eternal truth” that man is only one of the links of the chain, without beginning or end, of phenomena; and this eternal truth—constraining, of course, and coming from the outside—in antiquity already had at its disposal the power of constraining the philosophical intelligence and also of seducing it, or, as Leibniz puts it, persuading it. And it is here that there arises the essential philosophical question, which unfortunately did not attract the attention of philosophers—neither of Leibniz nor of all those who, before or after him, considered implicite or explicite that the eternal truths not only constrain but also persuade. It is the question of knowing what is essential in our relationship to the truths: is it the fact that they constrain or the fact that they persuade? To put the matter in another way: if the truth which constrains does not succeed in persuading us, does it thereby lose its status as truth? Is it not enough for the truth to have the power of constraining? As Aristotle says of Parmenides and the other great philosophers of antiquity, they are “constrained by the truth itself.” (hyp’ autes aletheas anankazomenoi). It is true that he adds, with a sigh, tên anankên ametapeiston ti einai, “Necessity does not allow itself to be persuaded,” as if he were replying in advance to Leibniz, who said that the truth does more than constrain, that it persuades. But Aristotle
