Spinoza in Soviet Philosophy

A Series of Essays

George L. Kline, George L. Kline, George L. Kline

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000103953
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Originally published in 1952. This book collects numerous works on the revival of Spinoza scholarship in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 30's, including the emergence of conflicting Marxist schools of Spinoza interpretation. This work includes translations by Kline of seven major articles on Spinoza published from 1923-1932, with a lengthy introduction providing contextual references. These developments were generally unknown outside of Russia due to lack of prior translations into a Western European language. The Marxist view of Spinoza represents a break not only with the dominant traditions of Western scholarship, but also with those critical and negative views of pre-Revolutionary Russia. This book provides both the study of Spinoza in Soviet philosophy, and of Soviet philosophy through Spinoza.

INTRODUCTION

I

S OVIET RUSSIA, during the past quarter century, has witnessed a remarkable renaissance of interest in the philosophy of Benedict Spinoza. During this period Spinoza has received more attention from Soviet writers than any other pre-Marxian philosopher with the possible exception of Hegel; and Russian Spinoza literature has exceeded, in quantity if not in quality, that of any country in the West. In the period from 1917 to 1938, 55,200 copies of Spinoza’s works were published in the Soviet Union (as compared to 8,000 copies during the period from 1897 to 1916). These included: the Principles of Descartes’s Philosophy (1926), the Short Treatise (1929), the Correspondence (1932), the Ethics (1933), On the Improvement of the Understanding (1934), and the Theologico-Political Treatise (1935). The only major work which has not been issued, the Political Treatise,is available in a pre-Revolutionary Russian edition dating from 1910. (Generally speaking, interest in Spinoza’s political doctrines has been greater among non-Marxist than among Marxist writers in Russia.)

Available statistics on Soviet Russian Spinoza literature -are incomplete, but the following minimum list will give some idea of its extent during the past thirty years: Nine books on Spinoza have been published, totalling some thousand pages; 46 articles in philosophical and literary journals, totalling over 600 pages; 19 chapters or sections of books (histories of philosophy, collections of philosophical essays, etc.), totalling about 450 pages. Many reviews of Russian and foreign Spinoza literature have been published, together with a few translations of foreign commentaries. Examples of the latter are Diderot’s essay on Spinoza, and Feuerbach’s ‘Concluding Critical Remarks of 1847,’ which appeared in Pod znamenem marksizma (Under the Banner of Marxism)in 1923 and 1939, respectively. These figures do not include material published in Ukrainian, Armenian, and other Soviet national languages, of which there is a small but significant amount. One of the more recent books on Spinoza (Moscow, 1940) is a semi-popular treatment written by Ya. A. Milner, general editor of the Kratki filosofski slovar (Short Dictionary of Philosophy)and a co-author of the three-volume Istoriya filosofi (History of Philosophy).

A large part of this material was published during the jubilee years 1927 and 1932 (the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Spinoza’s death, and the tercentenary of his birth), both of which were widely celebrated in the Soviet Union. In 1927, special sessions of the various philosophical societies were held in Moscow, Minsk, Kiev, and other cities, and papers on Spinoza were read by A. M. Deborin (real name A. M. Ioffe), A. Thalheimer, S. Ya. Volfson, V. F. Asmus, and others. At the first All-Union Philosophical Conference, convened in Moscow on June 1, 1930, one of the four papers in the section on the History of Philosophy was devoted to Spinoza; it was read by I. K. Luppol.

On November 24,1932 (the anniversary of Spinoza’s birth), both Pravdaand Izpestia devoted full pages, including large portraits, to material on Spinoza: articles by Luppol, M. B. Mitin, et al., short biographical sketches, brief quotations from Spinoza’s writings, and lists of his major works. On December 1, 1932, the Presidium of the Communist Academy in Moscow, in conjunction with the Institute of Philosophy, held a special Spinoza Tercentenary Celebration, at which M. A. Savelyev, President of the Academy, delivered the introductory address. Mitin read a paper on ‘Spinoza and Dialectical Materialism,’ and Luppol read a paper on ‘The Historical Significance of Spinoza’s Philosophy.’ These papers, together with the introductory address, were published in Pod znamenem marksizma,No. 11–12,1932. (See Bibliography.) A translation of Luppol’s paper appears below, pp. 162–76.

On December 22, 1934, a panel discussion was held under the auspices of the Institute of Philosophy in Moscow, on the occasion of the publication of a new Russian edition of Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise.An abstract of this discussion was published in the Vestnik kommunisticheskoi akademi (Bulletin of the Communist Academy),No. 1–2, 1935.

That this development is generally unknown outside of Russia is to be explained largely by the fact that almost none of the Soviet literature in question has been translated into any Western European language, and none into English. One brief article by Deborin was reprinted in the Chronicon Spinozanum(The Hague, 1927) in the original Russian, with a German translation, and Deborin’s major essay on Spinoza was included in a small German anthology which appeared in 1928.¹ These seem to be the only published translations of any Soviet interpretation of Spinoza’s philosophy in a Western European language. The same condition prevails in the case of pre-Revolutionary and emigre Russian Spinoza scholarship, which has been entirely unavailable in English up to the present.

The Marxist view of Spinoza represents a break not only with the dominant traditions of Western scholarship, but also with those of pre-Revolutionary Russia. Nevertheless, significant points of contact remain, and a general acquaintance with the pre-Revolutionary Russian literature is helpful for a full understanding of the Spinoza of Soviet philosophy. The necessarily sketchy and incomplete survey which follows is intended primarily as a background to such understanding.

II

Pre-Revolutionary literature on Spinoza in Russian is for the most part critical and negative. Spinoza’s philosophy is assailed on many counts, in a majority of cases from an idealistic or super-naturalistic viewpoint.² What non-Marxists consider his chief philosophical sins turn up later, in the Soviet Russian literature, as virtues and strong-points to be accepted and defended.

The first published work on Spinoza in Russian dates from 1819. That year was marked by the publication of the second volume of Professor A. I. Galich’s History of Philosophical Systems,a derivative work based largely on German sources. The author adopted the prevalent eighteenth-century view of Spinoza’s philosophy as an atheistic and immoral doctrine ‘wholly incompatible with the moral sense.’ ‘That men greeted this system with loathing,’ he wrote, ‘that they saw in it a subverter of faith and morals, that they called it atheism, pantheism, Jewish cabala … shows that its falseness was quickly perceived by everyone.’ Spinozism is too abstract and difficult, Galich concludes, ever to find adherents among a wide public; nevertheless, for the thinker it remains a ‘menacing … phenomenon which he cannot fail to view with alarm.’¹ Spinozism was in fact beginning to subvert traditional religious belief among certain of the Russian intelligentsia. The talented young members of the ‘Philosophers’ Society’, who met in Moscow between 1823 and 1825, studied Spinoza as well as Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, and one of them recalled later: ‘Christian doctrine seemed to us suitable only for the masses, not for philosophers like us. We prized Spinoza particularly highly and valued his works much above the New Testament and other holy scriptures.’²

¹ A. M. Deborin, ‘Spinozizm i marksizm’ (‘Spinozism and Marxism’), Chronicon Spinozanum, V (1927), pp. 140–50; ‘Die Weltanschauung Spinozas,’ in Spinozas Stellung in der Vorgeschichte des dialektischen Materialismus, Berlin, 1928, pp. 40–74.

² During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Russian professional philosophy was strongly influenced by German idealism. In approaching Spinoza, Russian writers as a rule took the analysis and critique of Kant, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer as their point of departure.

A strongly critical attitude toward Spinoza was also expressed in Archimandrite Gavriil’s six-volume History of Philosophy, published at Kazan during the 1830’s. The author attacks Spinoza’s determinism and his equating of right and power in political philosophy. He charges that Spinoza failed to reconcile infinite substance and finite modes; and he is indignant over Spinoza’s moral ‘indifferentism.’ For Spinoza, he writes, there is no difference between ‘a learned academy and a madhouse, a judge and an outlaw, ‘a devastating earthquake and the all-renewing spring’; they all follow with equal necessity from the one infinite substance. Gavriil concludes that Spinoza’s system is pantheistic—but ‘a pantheism of matter rather than an Eleatic pantheism.’³

The next Russian work on Spinoza of which we have a record appeared in 1862.⁴ This was a prize-winning essay written by S. Kovner, then a student at Kiev, which was published in the University Izvestiya for that year. It comprised a biographical sketch, based on the accounts of Colerus and Auerbach and on Spinoza’s correspondence, and an analysis of Spinozism patterned on that of Kuno Fischer. (‘Spinozism is a species of the genus pantheism,’ etc.) According to Kovner, Spinoza’s philosophy is neither atheistic, nor fatalistic, nor a cabalistic doctrine of emanation, but essentially naturalistic: for Spinoza all is nature and all things are united in a chain of causal connection … there is no supernatural.’¹

¹ A. I. Galich, Istoriya filosofskikh sistem (A History of Philosophical Systems), Vol. II, St. Petersburg, 1819, pp. 47–8.

² A. I. Koshelev, Zapiski (Journal),1889, p. 12. Besides Koshelev, the membership included Prince V. F. Odoyevski, I. V. Kireyevski (the celebrated Slavophile), and S. P. Shevyryov and M. P. Pogodin (who later became professors at Moscow University).

³ Istoriya filosofi (History of Philosophy), Kazan, 1839, Part III, pp. 150 f.

⁴ The first translation of Spinoza’s Ethics into Russian was also made during the 1860’s. However, this translation was destroyed, and the earliest surviving version dates from 1886.

Ten years later B. N. Chicherin in his History of Political Theories submitted Spinozism to a more critical analysis. He felt that, although Spinoza defended political and intellectual freedom, his system undermined the very foundation of such freedom since for him ‘the individual is only a modifi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Preface
• Contents
• Introduction
• Spinoza and Judaism
• Spinoza and Materialism
• Spinoza’s World-View
• Spinoza’s Substance and Finite Things
• Spinoza’s Ethical World-View
• Spinoza and the State
• The Historical Significance of Spinoza’s Philosophy
• Bibliography
• Index