The Use of Direct Democracy (Referenda and Plebiscites) in Modern Government
Israel, Egypt and Nuclear Policy
The Druze Minority in Israel in the Mid-1990s
The Druze are a minority within a minority in the State of Israel, an Arab-speaking community loyal to the state that has suffered hundreds of casualties in its defense, and whose men serve today in high-ranking and sensitive positions within the Israeli military and security forces.
The Druze Minority in Israel in the Mid-1990s
The Peace Process in the Middle East: A Stocktaking
The Jewish Polity: Options for the Future – Some Planning Guidelines
On the Unity of Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus by Paul Bagley
Power, Politics and Religion in Spinoza’s Political Thought
In this essay we seek to discuss the relationship between religion and politics in the political theory of Spinoza. Since Spinoza’s politics is grounded in power, we must make an effort to understand the contribution both politics and religion make to the power of the state. In this connection our starting point is not one of arguing that Spinoza first seeks to undermine religion for the sake of some secular project. Rather, Spinoza saw religion as a necessary feature of political life. The problem then becomes one of reconciling some of the central features of religion with those of politics. This process of reconciliation alters the character of both religion and politics, and we outline the elements of that alteration. The concepts of justice and charity play a critical role in this process. We also examine the way in which piety and salvation are reconstituted. Finally, some speculation on the implications of a transformed religion and politics are noted at the end of this essay.
The Histories and Successes of the Hebrews: The Demise of the Biblical Polity in Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise
Here it happens that human beings in their Chronicles and histories narrate their own opinions rather than the very things enacted, and that one and the same incident is nar rated so differently by two human beings who have different opinions that they seem to be speaking of two incidents, and finally that it is often not very difficult to investigate the
opinions of the Chronographers and historians from the histories alone.
The Use and Abuse of the Bible in Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus by Harvey Shulman
The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus is Spinoza’s great work directing us to his view of the superiority of the political-secular jurisdiction of the state over its religious dimension. For Spinoza, biblical exegesis and hermeneutics were autonomous scholarly endeavors, separate from traditional biblical homiletics. His theological political approach leads him to
hone and explicate the prophetic texts for their secular and political implications, undermining the belief that a definitive sacred history took precedence over the secular narrative. The Bible becomes a vehicle for affirming, or refuting, political interests, historically, and for Spinoza’s own time. Through his biblical commentary, Spinoza articulates a commitment to a secular, liberal, republican politics, where philosophers have the security and freedom to reflect on ideas, free from any religious dogma and interference. Spinoza’s use and abuse of the Bible are also an indictment of two millennia of Jewish scholarship and faith, and also implicitly undermines Christian beliefs about Christ’s divinity and sacred dogma.
Reading the Bible with Spinoza by George Gross
This essay explores several themes of biblical exegesis in Benedict de Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise. The essay aims to show that Spinoza’s critique of the Bible’s teachings on spirit, prophecy and miracles has its point of departure in the Bible’s own internal critique of these teachings. In passing, the essay sheds light on the Bible’s teachings regarding the exodus and the miracle at Joshua 10. It is proposed that Galileo’s teachings played a vital role in Spinoza’s framing of his ideas. The essay attempts to follow Spinoza as he readies
the Bible for its admission into the modern city, while not discounting Spinoza’s exegetical motivation in writing his Treatise.
Spinoza and the Bible
As a Jew, Spinoza had to raise a somewhat different set of questions than Hobbes and Locke. While the questions of the latter grew out of their lives safely ensconced in the relatively homogeneous majority of their own land and led to the development of the idea of civil society, Spinoza, a Jew seeking admission to the larger society from which he was excluded, provided the intellectual basis for liberal democracy. The first modern secular Jew, he championed the separation of religion and state and the development of a basically secular society in which Jews, Christians, and others could be accepted without regard to their religious or ethnic ancestry. To foster his goal he had to confront the Bible and either refute its claims or render them unimportant to civil society. The most knowledgeable of the seventeenth century philosophers when it came to Scripture because of the Jewish education of his childhood, he “invented” modern biblical criticism.
