270 / 298
Horst Steinke
270
Notes to Chapter 10
534
TTP
, Chapter 7, p. 91. Our reading of the «meaning-truth» duality is
therefore different from J. Mali: «Spinoza’s main argument in [
TTP
] is that the
authors of the Old Testament primarily composed it for political purposes,
seeking only to inculcate piety and obedience to their particular God, and
therefore we must not even seek in it any truths – whether religious, natural,
or historical» (Id.,
The Rehabilitation of Myth: Vico’s “New Science”
, Cambridge-
New York, Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 217). Not to belabor the
point, for Spinoza, «truth» is found only in the metaphysical realm of sub-
stance, attributes, modes, whereas in the «religious, natural, or historical»
spheres, only the first and second kinds of knowledge hold sway. To be sure,
Spinoza also uses the term “true/truth” colloquially at times, to denote plain
and simple factuality or correctness, discernible from the co-text.
535
TTP
, Chapter 4, p. 51; the Elwes translation has «truth of a historical
narrative» where Shirley uses the phrase «belief in historical narratives» in ren-
dering «
fides historiarum
» (
Theological-Political Treatise
, trans. by R. H. M. Elwes,
New York, Dover, 1951, p. 61). It may be noted that Mail’s gloss, at least
partly, is predicated on Elwes’ locution; the consequences for reading Vico are
not insignificant, by maintaining, on the one hand, that «[m]ore than anything
else, however, Vico owes to Spinoza his main heuristic principle – that the
meaning of the text is immanent and must be derived from its historical con-
text”, and, on the other hand, that Vico «sought to overcome [Spinoza’s] con-
venient distinction between what had really happened (truth) and what people
merely believed to have happened (meaning), by suggesting that in historical
reality the meanings that people have spun around real events have them-
selves become eventual […]» (Id.,
The Rehabilitation of Myth
, cit., p. 219, 220).
In this connection, also Levene’s perspective is to be noted, in “blurring”
the lines between Spinozan «meaning» and «truth»: «It is not that Spinoza
thinks history cannot be true, it is that, as with truth itself, the value is in what
one does with these histories, and in how one, […] makes sense of their par-
ticular thrust». Levene contrasts her reading with (a) «either he is seen as ban-
ishing all truth from the Bible by focusing on the meaning alone», or (b) «he is
seen as culling from its plethora of narratives the core truths that it most fun-
damentally teaches» (Id.,
Spinoza’s Bible
, cit., pp. 119, 120). It is evident that we
have argued for reading (a), provided that «truth» and «meaning» are associat-
ed to the third and second kinds of knowledge, respectively.
536
Levene rightly takes exception to a view of Spinoza that denies him
philosophical engagement with history: «Spinoza is often accused (by Hegel,