The landscape in the modern world changes every day. And if certain values are in the center of society right now, a hundreds of years ago it was religion. Discussing, arguing, praying, defensing and attacking it – everything could happen on daily basis. In this whirlwind of opinions and views, some were the revolutionaries of the century and others were more conservative and traditional.
Having in mind the differences between the ages they were living, along a continuum of most conservative to most radical with connection to Jewishness and Jewry, we can put Maimonides on first place, then Moses Mendelssohn and finally – Baruch Spinoza, each one for their own reasons, works and contexts.
Maimonides was born in Spain, around 12th century. After that, he and his family settled in North Africa. He had profound knowledge of Jewish law, worked as a physician, wrote works on medicine and diseases and was interested in science, philosophy, religion, as well as other subjects. Maimonides kept connection with international Jewish communities and his magnum opus Mishneh Torah remains one of the most important works in Jewish history and his Guide of the Perplexed remains well-discussed and read. He is a key figure in Jewish religious tradition, author of works discussing Jewish law and Jewish life and influenced heavily philosophers as Aquinas, Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza. Maimonides was both traditionalist and innovator. Despite of his works causing controversy, he never occupied an unquestioned position of reverence in the context of Jewish history. Maimonides works can be approached from different angles. For example, a traditional religious follower like Aquinas can say that there are issues (for example – creation) that can’t be overrun by demonstration and the attempts to anthropomorphize God are misguided. The issue comes the moment he rejects anthropomorphism, he is going way too far. If God bears no likeness to the created order, and if terms like wise, powerful, or lives are completely ambiguous when applied to God and us, the conception of divinity we are left with is too thin for the average worshipper to appreciate. On the other hand, for a naturalist like Spinoza, Maimonides is way too leaning on traditional ideas like divine volition and creation and dismissing science. Given the context of the age Maimonides was living in, this seems unreasonable, but Spinoza finds a good explanation. He says that if Maimonides had to accept the strongest argument wherever it leads, he would have to meet the concepts of new science, the eternity of the whole world and the necessity of everything happening in it. But in order to do this, he would have to give up on the Bible as a source of scientific and philosophic knowledge. Most probably, this would be a disaster for Maimonides. Even if he had to read the Bible just for the ethical context, the problem would remain as Maimonides is an elitist and closeness to God is measured by how much knowledge one gains every day. This results in that people whose situations prevent from pursuing studies in more advanced way, can never be close to God or love God. This idea offends modern views, which are much more acceptable and democratic. Finally for an atheist, Maimonides’ works show us what can happen if you remove all anthropomorphic content from the conception of God. You end up removing all content of any kind and in the end, you end up with a God you know nothing about. What is the value of something you know nothing in the contexts of philosophy or religion? Maimonides was influenced by Aristotle and his works. If we try to be sympathetic, Maimonides works and his elitism would satisfy few people. Despite not everyone agreeing in the history, there is no question Maimonides’ view has a long and discussed history and remains to this day a very powerful narrative.
Another creative and eclectic thinker is Moses Mendelssohn. He was born in Germany, in 18th century. His academic writings, political theories and theology, along with his Jewish heritage put him in central place of the German Enlightenment for more than 30 years. He was one of his age’s most accomplished literary critics, his works appeared in number of journals he co-edited. Mendelssohn massively contributed to the life of the Jewish community in Germany, campaigning for civil rights, translating the Pantaeuch and Pslams into German and the Bible too, with added Hebrew commentary called the Biur. He improved the connection between Jews and Christians, campaigning for tolerance, humanity and emancipation. He was one of the first people that tried to truly enculture the Jewish population. In result, he became the symbol of the Jewish Enlightenment, the Haskalah. From the beginning of his career to the very end, Mendelssohn consistently advocated for God’s existence. However, not all arguments were equally contributing to his views. In the Prize Essay he says that arguments for God's existence based upon order, beauty and design are more eloquent and edifying but less certain and convincing than strict demonstrations. He says the same thing in Morning Hours, but he cites the argument that the external senses' testimony to an outside world is unthinkable without a necessary, extra-worldly being, but with this kind of argumentation would hardly convince someone who identifies as an idealist, sceptic, or solipsist. However, according to Mendelssohn himself, there are at least two ways God’s existence can be established with certainty. The first way is through application of the principle of sufficient reason to the certain existence of contingent things. The inner testimony of one's own cogito attests to the existence of something contingent. Since the sufficient reason for the existence of contingent things must “indirectly” be a necessary being, a necessary being exists. Hence, Mendelssohn sums up this argument by saying: “I am, therefore there is a God.” (Philosophical Writings, p. 289; Gesammelte Schriften, 3/2, pp. 78, 83f). Mendelssohn's second way of proving God's existence is based upon consideration of the idea of God together with the conditions of nonexistence. If something does not exist, then it is either impossible or merely possible. To say that something nonexistent is impossible is to say that its intrinsic properties are contradictory, e.g., a square circle. As he sums up the inference: “A God is thinkable, therefore a God is also actually on hand [vorhanden]” (Morning Hours, p. 56 (translation slightly altered)/Gesammelte Schriften, 3/2, p. 78). Through his whole life, he believed that God actually exists, but he also recognized the need of multiple religions and respected each one. At the peak of his career, he was publicly challenged by Christian apologist, a Zurich pastor named John Lavater to defend Judaism over Christianity. From that point, Mendelssohn was defending Judaism in print. He believed that religions have no right to make people act in certain ways. The State’s right of coercion is not based on the innate authority of the government, but rather derives from the social contract. The State can make demands on its citizens is in order to preserve their rights. For example, my right to life–which derives from my need of life–imposes a concomitant duty on my fellow citizens not to kill me, and the State’s role is to guarantee this right, using coercion if necessary. But an omnipotent God by definition has no needs, and therefore has no rights. Duties towards him cannot be understood in terms of a contract; rather, they derive from love of God. Religion therefore lacks the contractual basis for the legitimate exercise of coercion. The question of religious observance becomes a matter for the individual believer. Furthermore, if the goal of religion is to boost morality by influencing people’s beliefs and values, it’s clear that this can only be achieved through persuasion and argument, not by force. All in all, Mendelssohn’s argument pushes in two directions simultaneously. On the one hand, he fights for liberalisation of Judaism and on the other, he calls on Jews to remain observant and faithful to the conservative tradition. He was caught in the dilemma between the new and the old, the radical and conservative, forever fighting between the two.
The most radical philosopher in our spectrum is the Dutch Jewish Baruch Spinoza. He was born in the 17th century as the middle son of a parents in the Amsterdam’s Portuguese-Jewish community. At the age of 20, he was expelled of the community. To this day, it is not confirmed why exactly this happened, but a guess can come quite easy. Surely he was giving utterance to the ideas that would soon appear in his philosophical works. In them, Spinoza claims the soul is not immortal and strongly rejects the notion of a transcendent, providential God – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and says that Law was neither literally given by God nor any longer binding on Jews. Can there be any mystery as to why one of history’s boldest and most radical thinkers was sanctioned by an orthodox Jewish community? His philosophy is summarized in the Ethics, his magnum opus and very abstract work, openly expressing none of the love of nature that might be expected from someone who identifies God with nature. Spinoza’s starting point is not nature or the cosmos or beyond, but a purely theoretical definition of God. The work then continues to prove its point by a method modelled on geometry, through rigorous definitions, propositions, axioms and corollaries. Probably in this way Spinoza hoped to build a solid statement, but the method and some of the arguments are often unconvincing. He believed everything that exists is God. However, he did not hold the converse view that God is no more than the sum of what exists. God had infinite qualities, of which we can perceive only two, thought and extension. Hence God must also exist in dimensions far beyond those of the visible world. Significantly, Spinoza titled his chief work The Ethics, which was published posthumously. He derived an ethic by deduction from fundamental principles, and so his ethics were closely linked to his view of "God or nature" as everything. The highest good, he asserted, was knowledge of God, which was capable of bringing freedom from tyranny by the passions, freedom from fear, resignation to destiny, and true blessedness. At first Spinoza was reviled as an atheist – and certainly, his God is not the conventional Judo-Christian God. The philosophers of the enlightenment ridiculed his methods – not without some grounds. The romantics, attracted by his identification of God with Nature, rescued him from oblivion. Spinoza was accused of being atheist because of his highly controversial works and views for his time and age – not only he believed God is nature, but also implied that neither intellect nor will can be ascribed to God. This shocked both Jewish and Christian people and they used all the opportunities to attack him. Spinoza denied all of the accusations, saying his life was devoted to the intellectual love of God. Theoretically, his view of religion had a lot of common with atheism, but the term carried very different meaning in Spinoza’s time and age and it was one of the most radical things someone could use against you. His views can also be seen as panentheism, the doctrine that all is in God. If the other theories treat God like something higher in the skies, away from our world, the panentheism implies that our world is inside God. All of this leads to Spinoza’s books being put on the Catholic Church’s Index of Forbidden books and his name to be remembered as one of the most controversial and important philosophical figures of early modern history.