Carlos Fraenkel - Philosophical Religions From Plato To Spinoza - Reason, Religion, and Autonomy-Cambridge University Press (2013)

more information - www.cambridge.
org/9780521194570
PHILO SO PHI C AL R E L I G I O N S FRO M
P L ATO TO SPI N O Z A
Many pagan, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim philosophers from

antiquity to the Enlightenment made no meaningful distinction
between philosophy and religion. Instead they advocated a philosoph-
ical religion, arguing that God is Reason and that the historical forms
of a religious tradition serve as philosophy’s handmaid to promote the
life of reason among non-philosophers. Carlos Fraenkel provides the
first account of this concept and traces its history back to Plato. He
shows how Jews and Christians appropriated it in antiquity, follows
it through the Middle Ages in both Islamic and Jewish forms, and
argues that it underlies Spinoza’s interpretation of Christianity in the
early modern period. The main challenge to a philosophical religion
comes from the modern view that all human beings are equally able
to order their lives rationally and hence need no guidance from reli-
gion. Fraenkel’s wide-ranging book will appeal to anyone interested
in how philosophy has interacted with Jewish, Christian, and Muslim
religious traditions.
c a r l o s f r a e n k e l is Associate Professor, Department of Philoso-

phy and Department of Jewish Studies, McGill University.
PHILOSOPHICAL RELIGIONS
FROM PLATO TO SPINOZA
Reason, Religion, and Autonomy
CARLOS FRAENKEL
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c Carlos Fraenkel 2012

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First published 2012
Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data

Fraenkel, Carlos, 1971–
Philosophical religions from Plato to Spinoza : reason, religion,
and autonomy / Carlos Fraenkel.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-521-19457-0
1. Philosophy and religion. 2. Philosophy – History.
3. Religions. I. Title.
bl51.f64 2012
210.9 – dc23 2012018820
isbn 978-0-521-19457-0 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or

accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to
in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such
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To Renato Fraenkel and Zeev Harvey
Contents
Preface page ix
Acknowledgments xvii
Translations, conventions, abbreviations xxi
Introduction: what is a philosophical religion? 1

Introduction 1
The concept of a philosophical religion 5
Towards a history of philosophical religions 24
Reason, religion, and autonomy: revising the conventional wisdom 28
1 Reason, divine nomoi, and self-rule in Plato 38
Introduction 38
Socratic politics 40
The rule of God as Reason 48
Why the philosopher’s life is best 51
Guiding non-philosophers: the handmaid of philosophy 58
From coercion to self-rule 69
The wisdom of non-philosophers 78
From cultural revolution to philosophical reinterpretation 82
Divine Law – one or many? 85
2 Moses, Christ, and the universal rule of
Reason in antiquity 87
Introduction 87
Appropriating the Platonic model: the evidence of Eusebius 91
Reinterpreting cultural traditions 100
From the divine nomoi of the Greeks to the divine nomoi of the Jews 103
Moses and Homer – philosopher-poets? 105
Judaism as a philosophical religion 108
Christianity as a philosophical religion 122
Philosophers in paradise 139
From Magnesia to a Christian world-state 141
vii
viii Contents
3 Communities of Reason in the Islamic world 144
Introduction 144
Plato and Aristotle 146
Al-Fārābı̄ on philosophy and the Divine Law 154
Averroes and Maimonides – disciples of al-Fārābı̄? 164
Islam as a philosophical religion 167
Leading non-philosophers out of the cave 181
Theocracy and autonomy 194
Medieval Jewish Enlightenment 202
Between Maimonides and Spinoza: Elijah Delmedigo 205
4 Christianity as a philosophical religion in Spinoza 213
Introduction 213
Spinoza’s early dogmatism 218
The evidence of Lodewijk Meyer for Spinoza’s early dogmatism 229
The concept of a philosophical religion in Spinoza’s later writings 232
Religion and the freedom to philosophize 254
From God as Reason to Deus sive Natura 262
Interpreting Christianity as a philosophical religion 265
Were the prophets philosophers after all? 270
Spinoza’s critique of religion 275
Epilogue: did the history of philosophical religions
come to an end? 282
Introduction 282
Disregarding Spinoza’s critique of religion from Lessing to Hegel 283
Philosophy’s new handmaid? Art as a pedagogical-political program 293
Making the handmaid redundant: equality as a moral-political value 295
Prospects of a philosophical religion 297
Bibliography 301
Index 319
Preface
In this book I lay the groundwork for understanding and tracing the his-
tory of what I call a philosophical religion. Proponents of a philosophical
religion conceive the relationship between reason and religion in a way
that at first looks unfamiliar. Since the Enlightenment religion’s critics
claim that religion is an obstacle to the emancipation of reason. Instead of
knowledge, religion promotes ignorance in form of fables and superstition.
Instead of autonomy it preaches submission to God by rousing irrational
fears of punishment and hopes for reward. If we choose to follow reason,
religious beliefs and practices have no place in our life. To proponents of a
philosophical religion these criticisms would sound strange. The projects
of reason and religion, they hold, cannot be meaningfully distinguished
at all. The core purpose of religion is to direct us to a life that is guided
by reason towards the perfection of reason. For the best and most blissful
life is the life of contemplation, culminating in knowledge of God. God
himself, they argue, is the perfect model of this life. Being pure Reason,
he eternally knows and enjoys the truth, unencumbered by hunger, pain,
ignorance, and other afflictions that come with being embodied. The task
of religion is to make us as much like God as possible. Plato marks the
beginning: laws, he contends, are divine if they direct us to “Reason who
rules all things” (Leg. 631d). The same idea is still echoed in Spinoza: while
human laws aim only at prosperity and peace, divine laws aim at “the
true knowledge and love of God” (TTP 4.3/50). Under ideal circumstances
there would be no need for laws at all: everyone would know what is right
and be motivated to do it by the desire to become like God through contem-
plation. In the ideal religious community, therefore, God’s rule and self-rule
coincide.
At first view a philosophical religion seems to have little in common
with the historical forms of religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
How can it accommodate their laws, stories, exhortations, and practices
of worship? And how does the concept of God as Reason square with the
ix
x Preface
God of Scripture who speaks, gives laws, performs miracles, gets angry, has
mercy, and so forth? Proponents of a philosophical religion reply that, alas,
not everyone is cut out for the philosophical life. Hence prophets must
put a pedagogical-political program in place that can offer guidance to
non-philosophers. This program’s role is to serve as philosophy’s handmaid.
It establishes beliefs, practices, and institutions that imitate philosophy to
give non-philosophers a share in the perfection that philosophy affords. On
this picture, the difference between the philosopher and the prophet comes
down to this: while both have knowledge of the good, the prophet is also an
accomplished legislator, poet, and orator, skills that allow him to convey the
good to non-philosophers and motivate them to do it. Think of a doctor’s
prescriptions for a healthy regime and the reasons he gives for following
these prescriptions. This is what a religion’s laws and narratives are like.
But is this not cheating? Must the prescriptions not be dictated by God to
count as divine? Although proponents of a philosophical religion recognize
that imagining God as a lawgiver is important for pedagogical reasons,
they consider it philosophically unsound. In fact, all anthropomorphic
features of God in the Bible or the Koran are educational devices for non-
philosophers. Yet philosophers agree with non-philosophers on the divine
nature of the laws. God is their source because all rational insight depends
on God, including the knowledge of the good that divine laws embody. In
this sense rational insight is revelation. And God is also their final cause,
the end “for the sake of which wisdom commands” as Aristotle puts it
(EE 8.3, 1249b14–15).
Must non-philosophers be coerced to obey divine laws? True, the best
possible religious community falls short of the ideal religious community in
which everyone is a doctor following his own prescriptions. But it strives
to realize this ideal as much as possible given that most of its members are
imperfectly rational. A core thesis of my book is that for proponents of a
philosophical religion one of religion’s main aims is to lead all members of
the religious community to the highest level of rational autonomy they can
attain. Consider the example of Plato’s Phaedrus: Socrates does not explain
to Phaedrus “what the soul actually is” (246a) but illustrates it through the
image of a charioteer with two horses. He then goes on to describe the
relation between the soul’s different parts on the basis of this image, and
explains what causes the embodiment of the soul and how different ways of
living influence the soul’s current state and its fate in the future. The story
thus provides non-philosophers like Phaedrus with a notion of the soul’s
structure and of the kind of behavior which, given this structure, is good
or bad for the soul. Although based on an image of Plato’s philosophical
Preface xi
psychology and its moral implications, it gives Phaedrus conceptual tools
with which he can decide on his own what the right thing to do is.1 The
Bible and the Koran, on this view, explain the order of things and our place
in that order in lay terms. Both the philosopher and the non-philosopher
thus know the reasons for the prescriptions they follow, only that the former
has expert knowledge, the latter lay knowledge.
One problem with this view is that the soul is not a charioteer with two
horses. If that is the model for prophetic parables they seem to be pedagog-
ically well-intentioned falsehoods. Is the God who speaks, gives laws, and
so forth nothing but a noble lie? To defuse this concern proponents of a
philosophical religion argue that only taken literally the parables are false.
Their allegorical content, by contrast, is true. In the case of the Phaedrus,
for example, the charioteer and the two horses stand for the three parts of
the soul: reason, spirit, and appetite. Or take the representation of God
as a king in the Bible: it allegorically indicates that God occupies the first
rank in existence. Allegorical interpretation thus rescues the truth of the
text.
A more serious problem is that, while Plato is a philosopher who puts
his poetic skills to philosophical use in the Phaedrus and elsewhere, the
same cannot be said for the historical founders of a religion, for example
Moses, Christ, or Muhammad. After all, the actual beliefs, practices, and
institutions of Jews, Christians, and Muslims lack a philosophical founda-
tion. When prophets describe God as a king they are not really teaching
metaphysics through parables. The question, then, is how a pedagogical-
political program, conceived by philosophers, should be related to the
non-philosophical contents of a religious tradition. One possibility is a
cultural revolution: the old beliefs, practices, and institutions are replaced
by those that the philosophers worked out. Most proponents of a philo-
sophical religion, however, opt for a less violent solution. The historical
beliefs, practices, and institutions, they contend, were in fact established
by philosopher-rulers. Hence they need not be replaced but only restored
to their original purpose. Proponents of a philosophical religion can then
engage in the philosophical reinterpretation of these beliefs, practices, and
institutions as if they had been put in place by philosopher-rulers with
the aim of ordering the community towards a philosophical concept of
the good. Since Spinoza, advocates of the historical-critical method object
to this kind of camouflage. It has, however, an obvious pay-off: widely
1 Note that most philosophers I discuss in this book consider Plato to be a model of prophetic
discourse.
xii Preface
accepted cultural-religious forms are turned into vehicles of enlighten-
ment.
Although daring, this interpretation of religion was by no means
marginal. It was set forth by pagan philosophers and their Jewish, Christian,
and Muslim heirs in many contexts from antiquity to the early modern
period. The divine laws of Magnesia – the fictional Cretan colony discussed
in Plato’s Laws – mark the starting point. They are based on the systematic
claim that a pedagogical-political program is necessary to guide imperfectly
rational members of the community and the empirical claim that exist-
ing Greek cultural forms, properly reinterpreted, fulfill this purpose. But if
Greek cultural forms can be reinterpreted in this way, why not the historical
forms of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? Consider Philo Judaeus whose
work represents the intellectual culmination of the encounter between
Greek culture and the Jewish Diaspora in ancient Alexandria. What Plato
does for the Greeks, Philo does for the Jews: he philosophically reinterprets
the Bible’s legal and narrative contents as if Moses had been an outstand-
ing philosopher-legislator. Although proponents of a philosophical religion
belong to different times and places, as well as to different linguistic and
religious communities, the question how to reconcile their philosophical
commitments with beliefs, practices, and institutions that lack philosoph-
ical content is a key question for all of them. They do not always carry
out the project of reinterpretation on as large a scale as Plato or Philo. But
they adopt the project’s underlying premises and portray their religion’s
laws, stories, exhortations, and practices of worship as philosophy’s hand-
maid which direct imperfectly rational members of the community to a
philosophically grounded concept of the good.
In ancient Alexandria Plato’s model is used in the first centuries of the
Common Era to interpret Judaism and Christianity as philosophical reli-
gions, most notably by Philo and Philo’s Christian students, Clement and
Origen. With the Christian version the project’s scope becomes universal:
the community to be ordered is no longer limited to Greeks or Jews, but
extends to humankind as a whole. An attempt to politically implement
Christianity as a philosophical religion is made by Eusebius of Caesarea
who tries to turn Constantine the Great into a philosopher-king. From
a fictional Cretan colony, then, we arrive at the concept of a Christian
world-state whose citizens strive for Godlikeness by living a life ordered by
reason towards the perfection of reason.
Al-Fārābı̄, Averroes, and Maimonides illustrate well how Plato’s model
is used in the early Middle Ages for interpreting Islam and Judaism as
Preface xiii
philosophical religions. The historical forms of a religious tradition, al-
Fārābı̄ argues, are an “imitation” of philosophy (Tah..sı̄l, 185/44) whose
purpose is to offer pedagogical-political guidance to non-philosophers. He
does not explicitly identify this concept of religion with Islam, but stresses
the possibility of a plurality of excellent religions that share a true core
embedded in different cultural materials. Each has its own couleur locale,
as it were. Al-Fārābı̄’s aim is to provide a general model that can be used
to philosophically reinterpret the beliefs, practices, and institutions of the
religious communities living side by side in the Islamic world. Averroes
and Maimonides, in turn, do just that: they apply al-Fārābı̄’s model to the
interpretation of Islam and Judaism as philosophical religions.
The reception of Greco-Arabic philosophy and science in Christian
Europe did not revive the interpretation of Christianity as a philosophical
religion. Although the relationship between philosophy and Christianity
took on different forms, philosophy never became the core of religion
in the way it did for Muslim and Jewish philosophers. Hence the last
champions of a philosophical religion on a large scale were Maimonides’s
Jewish students in medieval Europe. This tradition seems to come to a
close with Spinoza’s critique of religion in the Theological-Political Treatise.
The historical-critical method discloses an emperor without clothes. Read
on its own terms, Spinoza argues, the Bible contains no evidence for the
claim that the prophets were accomplished philosophers who set up a
pedagogical-political program to guide non-philosophers. Does Spinoza,
then, mark the end of the story? An important aim of my book is to
revise the received wisdom on Spinoza. His primary concern, I argue,
is to offer a philosophical reinterpretation of Christianity. His celebrated
critique of religion, on the other hand, is a secondary project. Indeed,
in a state based on Spinoza’s theological-political principles, bookstores
would arguably not sell the TTP. Why, then, did Spinoza remove the
cornerstone of religion by arguing that Scripture is not true? He seems
to have concluded that from the standpoint of a philosophical religion he
could not efficiently avert the threat posed by the Calvinist church to the
freedom of thought and expression in the Netherlands. At the same time
he remained convinced that religion as philosophy’s handmaid is crucial
to ensure God’s rule over imperfectly rational citizens. There is, then, an
unresolved tension in Spinoza’s approach to religion.
The hermeneutic strategies employed by proponents of a philosoph-
ical religion remain attractive well into the nineteenth century. Despite
Spinoza’s critique of religion, Lessing, Kant, and Hegel, for example, have
xiv Preface
no qualms about using them. Also the new science of the early modern
period cannot account for the demise of this approach to religion. Consider
the deism of Voltaire, one of religion’s fiercest critics: it surely is more, not
less, hospitable to the historical forms of religion than the austere con-
cept of God as Reason, let alone Spinoza’s Deus sive Natura. The main
objection against philosophical religions stems from a new moral paradigm
that emerges in the eighteenth century. According to this paradigm we
all “have an equal ability to see for ourselves what morality calls for and
are . . . equally able to move ourselves accordingly.”2 If the equality thesis is
true there is no justification for a pedagogical-political program based on
the ultimately paternalist premise that most of us are unable to fully rule
ourselves.
Had everyone heeded Kant’s call in What is Enlightenment to replace
books and priests with rational self-rule, the concept of a philosophical
religion would indeed be obsolete. There would be no need to engage
religious beliefs, practices, and institutions if secularization had gradually
purged the world of them. A look around us, however, is enough to reveal
that the secularization thesis is in trouble. Many citizens choose to live
according to God’s will as interpreted by their books and priests. A shift in
liberal political theory with respect to the justification of political norms is
instructive in this regard. A pressing question is how citizens who submit
to God’s will can be led to endorse the norms of a liberal state which
are only valid if its free and equal citizens consent to them. Appealing to
reason is not enough in the case of citizens for whom reason holds less
authority than God. A prominent alternative these days is the “overlapping
consensus”: secular citizens endorse freedom, equality, and tolerance for
secular reasons and religious citizens for religious reasons.3 This is where
the dilemma that Spinoza left us comes to bear. The historical-critical
method which the TTP’s critique of religion helped establish is our best
bet to get to the true meaning of religious texts. At the same time it
leaves us with no respectable option for interpreting religious texts in light
of intellectual commitments external to them. Attaining an overlapping
consensus, however, clearly depends on philosophical reinterpretation. For
let us be honest: the endorsement of freedom, equality, and tolerance are
not prominent features of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam in their historical
2 Schneewind (1998), 4.
3 The precise role of the overlapping consensus is disputed and its scope and content vary from author
to author. It is also just one of many attempts to reconcile a religious or cultural tradition with
beliefs, practices, and institutions external to it. See the epilogue for a more detailed discussion.
Preface xv
forms. To make Moses, Christ, and Muhammad teach freedom, equality,
and tolerance is, of course, no greater hermeneutic challenge than making
them teach the ideal of Godlikeness through contemplation. Yet at any
university in the Western world students who make either of these claims
would rightly fail their introduction to the Bible or the Koran.
Acknowledgments
Questions about philosophy and religion accompanied me from early on.

A former neighbor in Maria Veen, the small German town in which I spent
part of my childhood, recalls that her son and I discussed God’s existence
in the sandbox (unfortunately she does not remember who argued for and
who against it).
A more immediate context was three years of graduate studies at The
Hebrew University in Jerusalem in the 1990s. I was both puzzled and
intrigued by scholars who combined a Spinozistic mindset with strict
religious observance. In a sense this book is an attempt to solve what then
seemed like a paradox to me.
Along the way I had the privilege of finding many friends and colleagues
to share my puzzlements with. I am particularly thankful to Stephen Menn,
who accompanied this book from the beginning with his signature intel-
lectual curiosity, rigor, and generosity.
Much progress was made during the fall of 2007, which I spent as a
Friedrich-Solmsen fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at
the University of Madison-Wisconsin. I am grateful to Susan Friedman, the
Institute’s director; Loretta Freiling, the Institute’s administrative heart; and
a stimulating group of fellows who made the months in Madison pleasant
and intellectually rewarding. The opportunity to discuss Spinoza and other
things with Steven Nadler and his students was a much appreciated bonus.
Things started coming together in 2009–10 when I was a member of the
School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Prince-
ton. I warmly thank Jonathan Israel for many hours of probing discussions;
that my medieval Spinoza and his iconoclastic Spinoza sparred at times
made it all the more exciting. All the faculty members generously shared
their time and knowledge. I particularly benefited from conversations with
Patricia Crone, Avishai Margalit, Heinrich von Staden, and Michael Walzer.
I also learned much from my fellow members who worked on topics from
ancient Egypt to modern China (and everything in between). Most helpful
xvii
xviii Acknowledgments
for my immediate concerns were discussions with Julie Cooper, Sarah Hut-
ton, Yuval Jobani, Thomas Laqueuer, Michael Lurie, and Thomas Maissen.
While in the neighborhood I also took advantage of Daniel Garber’s vast
knowledge, as well as of the Early Modern Philosophy Workshop that he
organizes at Princeton.
Maurice Kriegel gave me the opportunity to present large parts of the
project to an academic audience in Paris, where I spent November and
December of 2010 as a visiting professor at the École des Hautes Études en
Sciences Sociales. One could not hope for a better and more stimulating
host than Maurice.
At McGill University where I have been teaching for more than a decade,
I found a supportive environment in my two home departments, philoso-
phy and Jewish studies. I benefited in particular from discussions with Larry
Kaplan, Torrance Kirby, Alison Laywine, and Calvin Normore. For a lively
intellectual setting I thank my colleagues from the McGill Research Group
on Transmission, Translation, and Transformation in Medieval Cultures:
Jamie Fumo, Cecily Hilsdale, Jamil Ragep, Faith Wallis, and Robert Wis-
novsky. The same goes for the co-organizers of the Montreal Workshop in
the History of Philosophy: Sara Magrin, Dario Perinetti, and Justin Smith.
I have been talking about philosophical religions for too long I fear.
Colleagues who invited me to lecture on this project or gave me feedback
on parts of it include Peter Adamson, Anna Akasoy and Guido Giglione,
Marcio Damin, Michael Della Rocca, Erik Dreff, Otfried Fraisse, Gad
Freudenthal, Rachel Haliva, Zeev Harvey, Dag Hasse, Klaus Herrmann,
Holger Klärner, Yitzhak Melamed, Ohad Nachtomy, and Richard Taylor. I
am also thankful to three graduate students who assisted me with technical
and substantive matters at the final stage of the manuscript: Alex Anderson,
Luis Fontes, and Bilal Ibrahim.
Hilary Gaskin of Cambridge University Press helped this book come
to light with exemplary patience, encouragement and, when needed, a bit
of pressure. Also a pleasure to work with was the team who oversaw the
last stages of the book’s realization – in particular Gillian Dadd, Jeremy
Langworthy, and Tom O’Reilly. From 2008–12 Canada’s Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council supported me with a generous grant
that I acknowledge with gratitude.
Half-cooked thoughts on various aspects of the project were published
in articles that I list in the bibliography. Given the project’s scope, things
will likely never feel quite à point, but I hope the book gives an idea of how
the pieces of the puzzle fit together.
Acknowledgments xix
Without family and friends the years spent on this book would have been
much less enjoyable. My wife, Anne, has been a delightful companion
over recent years, more than once saving me with a smile from getting
melancholic over the slow progress of this book. Although she is by training
a physician of the body, I found in her a spirited debater of pretty much
everything under the sun.
In 2009 my daughter Lara was born. While this led to a temporary
shift from dialectics to diapers, I have immensely enjoyed every minute
with her. When young colleagues, anxious to find out how children might
impact on their careers, asked me how many fewer articles I had written
since her birth I replied that I would happily have thrown in a couple of
edited volumes. We are now quickly making our way back to dialectics
and I look forward to discussing God’s existence and other things in the
sandbox with her.
I dedicate this book to my father, Renato Fraenkel, and to my teacher and
friend, Zeev Harvey. In different ways both helped to shape my questions
about philosophy and religion, and both are models of curiosity, integrity,
and generosity for me.
Translations, conventions, abbreviations
I have consulted existing translations of primary sources whenever they

were available, but I have often modified them for the sake of consistency,
style, and sometimes accuracy. All editions and translations are listed in the
bibliography. In references, the number before the slash indicates the page
in the original and the number after the slash the page in the translation –
for example Guide 1.26, 38/56. Occasionally original and translation have
the same page number – for example Fas.l, 10. When texts have a standard
pagination or text division that allows for easy identification of the quota-
tion, I do not indicate page numbers – for example Rep. 520c or Cels. 4.39.
When the number following the title is not separated by a comma, it does
not indicate the page but the unit in the standard division of the text – for
example Deus 60. Below I list – in alphabetical order of the authors – the
titles of primary sources to which I refer through common abbreviations:
al-fārābı̄
Fus.ūl = Fus.ūl muntazaa
H. urūf = Kitāb al-h.urūf
Ih..sā = Ih..sā al-ulūm
Jam = Kitāb al-jam bayna rayay al-h.akı̄mayn Aflāt.ūn al-ilāhı̄
wa-Arist.ūt.ālı̄s
Jawāmi = Jawāmi kitāb al-nawāmı̄s li-Aflāt.ūn
Mabādi = Mabādi arā ahl al-madı̄na al-fād.ila
Milla = Kitāb al-milla
Siyāsa = Kitāb al-siyāsa al-madaniyya
Tah..sı̄l = Tah..sı̄l al-saāda
aristotle
APo. = Analytica Posteriora
xxi
xxii Translations, conventions, abbreviations
EE = Ethica Eudemia
EN = Ethica Nicomachea
Metaph. = Metaphysica
Ph. = Physica
Prot. = Protrepticus
Pol. = Politica
augustine
C. acad. = Contra academicos
averroes
Bidāya = Bidāyat al-mujtahid
Comm. Metaph. = Long Commentary on the “Metaphysics”
Comm. Rep. = Commentary on the “Republic”
Fas.l = Fas.l al-maqāl wa-taqrı̄r ma bayn al-sharı̄a
wa-al-h.ikma min al-ittis.āl
Kashf = Kitāb al-kashf an manāhij al-adilla fı̄ aqāid
al-milla
Tahāfut = Tahāfut al-tahāfut
avicenna
Sı̄ra = Sı̄rat al-shaykh al-raı̄s
cicero
Tusc. = Tusculanae disputationes
clement
Paed. = Paedagogus
Prot. = Protrepticus
Strom. = Stromateis
diogenes laertius
DL = Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent
Philosophers
Translations, conventions, abbreviations xxiii
epicurus
Sent. = Sententiae (Kuriai doxai)
eusebius of caesarea
DE = Demonstratio evangelica
HE = Historia ecclesiastica
LC = Laus Constantini
PE = Praeparatio evangelica
gregory thaumaturgus
Or. pan. = In Originem oratio panegyrica
hegel
Enzyklopädie = Enzyklopädie der Philosophischen
Wissenschaften im Grundrisse
Geschichte der Philosophie = Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der
Philosophie
Philosophie der Religion = Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der
Religion
herbert of cherbury
De Veritate = De Veritate, Prout Distinguitur a
Revelatione, a Verisimili, a Possibili, et a
Falso
herodotus
Hdt. = Historiae
hesiod
Theog. = Theogony
josephus
Ap. = Contra Apionem
AJ = Antiquitates Judaicae
xxiv Translations, conventions, abbreviations
kant
Aufklärung = Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?
Religion = Die Religion in den Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft
lessing
Erziehung = Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts
Fragmente = Fragmente eines Ungenannten
Nathan = Nathan der Weise
maimonides
CM = Commentary on the Mishnah
Eight Chapters = CM, Introduction to Pirqe Avot.
Guide = Guide of the Perplexed
Iggerot = Iggerot ha-Rambam
Heleq = Pereq heleq (CM, Sanhedrin, chapter 10)
Madda = MT, Sefer ha-madda
Mant.iq = Kitāb fı̄ .sināat al-mant.iq
MT = Mishneh Torah
mendelssohn
Jerusalem = Jerusalem oder über religiöse Macht und Judentum
meyer, lodewijk
Interpres = Philosophia Sanctae Scripturae Interpres
narboni, moses
Comm. Guide = Commentary on the “Guide of the Perplexed”
origen
Cels. = Contra Celsum
Comm. in Io. = Commentarius in Iohannem
De Princ. = De principiis (Peri archôn)
Ep. Greg. = Epistula ad Gregorium Thaumaturgum
Translations, conventions, abbreviations xxv
philo
Abr. = De Abrahamo
Aet. = De aeternitate mundi
Agr. = De agricultura
Cher. = De cherubim
Conf. = De confusione linguarum
Congr. = De congressu eruditionis gratia
Cont. = De vita contemplativa
De somn. = De somniis
Dec. = De decalogo
Deus = Quod Deus sit immutabilis
Ebr. = De ebrietate
LA = Legum allegoriae
Mig. = De migratione Abrahami
Mos. = De vita Mosis
Op. = De opificium mundi
Plant. = De plantatione
Post. = De posteritate Caini
Praem. = De praemiis et poenis
Prob. = Quod omnis probus liber sit
Prov. = De providentia
QE = Quaestiones et solutiones in Exodum
QG = Quaestiones et solutiones in Genesim
Spec. = De specialibus legibus
Virt. = De virtutibus
plato
Ap. = Apologia
Criti. = Critias
Euthd. = Euthydemus
Euthphr. = Euthyphro
Grg. = Gorgias
Leg. = Leges
Men. = Meno
Phd. = Phaedo
Phdr. = Phaedrus
Plt. = Politicus
Prt. = Protagoras
xxvi Translations, conventions, abbreviations
Rep. = Respublica
Ti. = Timaeus
Tht. = Theaetetus
plotinus
Enn. = Enneads
presocratics
DK = Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker
proclus
In Remp. = In Platonis Rem publicam comentarii
reimarus
Apologie = Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer
Gottes
samuel ibn tibbon

PQ = Perush Qohelet
MYM = Maamar yiqqawu ha-mayim
schiller
Schaubühne = Die Schaubühne als eine moralische Anstalt betrachtet
spinoza
CM = Cogitata Metaphysica
E = Ethica
Ep. = Epistulae
KV = Korte Verhandeling van God, de Mensch en des zelfs
Welstand
PPC = Principia Philosophiae Cartesianae
TdIE = Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione
TP = Tractatus Politicus
TTP = Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
Translations, conventions, abbreviations xxvii
tertullian
Praes. haer. = De praescriptione haereticorum
thucydides
Th. = History of the Peloponnesian War
xenophon
Mem. = Memorabilia
Introduction
What is a philosophical religion?
introduction
When the medieval Muslim philosopher Averroes, who spent much of
his life explaining Aristotle, examined the relationship between Islam and
philosophy, he reached the following conclusion:
Since this Law [sharı̄a] is true and calls to the reflection leading to cognition of the
truth, we, the Muslim community, know firmly that demonstrative investigations
cannot lead to something differing from what is set down in the Law. For the truth
does not contradict the truth [al-h.aqq lā yud.ādd al-h.aqq]; rather, it agrees with it
and bears witness to it. (Fas.l, 8–9)
According to Averroes, “demonstrative investigations” are conducted by
philosophers. The results they reach cannot differ from the content of the
sharı̄a, because the truth of the former is the same as the truth of the
latter.1
It is instructive to compare Averroes’s assessment of the Islamic Law
with the assessment of the Law of Moses by Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron
d’Holbach, an important representative of the radical wing of the French
Enlightenment:
From the outset of the Bible we see nothing but ignorance and contradictions.
Everything proves to us that the cosmogony of the Hebrews is no more than
a composition of fables and allegories, incapable of giving us any [true] idea of
things, appropriate only for a savage, ignorant, and vulgar people, unfamiliar with
the sciences and with reasoning. In the remaining works attributed to Moses,
we find countless improbable and fantastic stories and a pile of ridiculous and
arbitrary laws. At the end the author describes his own death. The books following
Moses are no less filled with ignorance. . . . One would never come to an end if
1 This, at any rate, is Averroes’s intention. The thesis that the truth of philosophy does not contradict
the truth of religion is also compatible with the weaker claim, proposed, for example, by Thomas
Aquinas, that revelation contains truths that do not contradict philosophy, but are also not accessible
to it.
1
2 What is a philosophical religion?
one attempted to note all the blunders and fables, shown in every passage of
a work which people have the audacity to attribute to the Holy Spirit. . . . In
one word: In the Old Testament everything breathes enthusiasm, fanaticism,
and raving, often ornamented by a pompous language. Nothing is missing from
it, except for reasonableness, sound logic, and rationality which seem to have
been excluded stubbornly from the book that serves as a guide to Hebrews and
Christians. (Le Christianisme dévoilé, 87–89)2
To be sure, the Enlightenment’s attitude to religion is not monolithic.

Materialists like Julien de La Mettrie and d’Holbach who reject religion
altogether represent only one side of the spectrum.3 On the opposite side,
philosophers like Mendelssohn and Lessing try in different ways to recon-
cile their Enlightenment commitments with traditional forms of Judaism
and Christianity.4 In between are deists like Voltaire, Hermann Samuel
Reimarus, and Thomas Paine who can be as acerbic as d’Holbach when it
comes to the “fabulous theology” of traditional religions, “whether Jewish,
Christian, or Turkish,” while espousing what they consider the “true theol-
ogy” of reason.5 What the passage from d’Holbach illustrates well, however,
is the attempt by part of the Enlightenment to exclude religious beliefs and
practices from reason’s domain. The goal is to replace ignorance caused by
fables and superstition with knowledge and a life guided by arbitrary laws
with a life guided by reason.
Also Enlightenment thinkers who do not, like d’Holbach, dismiss tradi-
tional religion as “fantastic stories” and “arbitrary laws” object to it if they
see it as interfering with what is arguably at the heart of Enlightenment
concerns: the autonomy of reason. Even if religious prescriptions were
irreproachable, we would still lack autonomy if we simply obeyed them.
The problem is particularly salient if we consider religions like Judaism or
Islam. For at their heart lies a Divine Law – in the broad sense of torah in
Hebrew and sharı̄a in Arabic – which determines what we may and may
not do, promising reward for obedience and threatening punishment for
2 On the importance of d’Holbach for understanding the Enlightenment, see Israel (2010). Inter-
estingly, d’Holbach is aware that what he describes as the irrational content of the Bible can be
reconciled with philosophy by means of allegorical interpretation. See his reference to Origen’s and
Augustine’s allegorical reading of Genesis in the note on p. 88. This is precisely Averroes’s solution
for contradictions occurring between philosophy and the sharı̄a; see, for example, Fas.l, 9–10.
3 For de La Mettrie’s materialism, see in particular L’homme machine.
4 For Mendelssohn, see in particular Jerusalem. For Lessing, see, for example, Erziehung and my
discussion in the epilogue.
5 Paine, The Age of Reason, 6. For the opposition of “true and fabulous theology,” see the title page
of the first edition (1794). For Reimarus, see his Apologie; for Voltaire, see the relevant articles in
the Dictionnaire philosophique (for example “Église,” “Fanatisme,” “Religion,” “Superstition,” and
so forth).
Introduction 3
disobedience. It seems thus clear that not we, but God makes the rules.
According to Kant, the “motto” of the Enlightenment – “Sapere aude!
Dare to use your own reason [Verstand]” – is addressed to those who out of
“laziness and cowardice” follow “the guidance of others” (fremde Leitung):
the guidance of a “book,” for example, or the guidance of a “priest”
(Seelsorger) – literally someone who takes care of another person’s soul
(Aufklärung, 35/54). Submitting to the Divine Law is “counterfeit worship”
(Afterdienst). True worship, by contrast, is following the prescriptions of
reason (Religion 4.2, 167–68/164).6
Philosophers like Averroes would reject the opposition between true and
counterfeit worship.7 For one thing they take the actions that a rational
agent chooses to be the actions prescribed by God conceived as Reason. In
the ideal case, therefore, self-rule and God’s rule coincide. They distinguish,
moreover, between adequate and inadequate motives for doing what God
prescribes. Averroes’s Jewish colleague Maimonides, for example, criticizes
a person who acts from fear of punishment or hope for reward as “serving
God out of fear,” which he contrasts with “serving God out of love,”
the motivation of a rational agent (Madda, Laws Concerning Repentance
10.5). To be self-ruled, then, means to know the good and to be motivated to
act according to this knowledge. Note, however, that for Kant all human
beings are equally able to be autonomous if only they overcome their
laziness and cowardice and dare to use their own reason. Averroes and
Maimonides deny this: the rank of human beings is determined by their
degree of perfection which, in turn, determines their capacity for self-rule.
Critics of prophetic religion, like Celsus in antiquity and Abū Bakr al-Rāzı̄
in the Middle Ages, had already argued that all human beings should live
under the guidance of reason. Averroes and Maimonides agree, yet point
out that the Divine Law remains an indispensable guide for members of
the community who are unable to attain perfect self-rule. There are degrees
of self-rule, they contend, not true and counterfeit worship.8
In yet another way philosophers like Averroes and Maimonides challenge
widespread views about the relationship between reason and religion. For
6 At times, however, Kant qualifies his critique and attributes an educational purpose to traditional
religions as we will see in the epilogue.
7 They would also disagree with Kant’s concept of autonomy. My claim is that they advocate a
meaningful concept of self-rule, not that they agree with Kant’s.
8 Of course the main political concern in contemporary liberal democracies is not the citizens’ rational
self-rule but their freedom from external interference. Whether they base their life plans on rational
deliberation or not is up to them. Following Isaiah Berlin (1969) we can distinguish between a
concern with positive and a concern with negative liberty. Proponents of a philosophical religion
only appear to be committed to positive liberty. I discuss this issue in Fraenkel (forthcoming b).
them the Divine Law established by a prophet – for example Moses or
Muhammad – embodies the same philosophical principles as the divine
nomoi conceived by philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle.9 They could
not agree more with Plato’s claim that laws are divine if they direct the cit-
izens to “Reason [nous] who rules all things” (Leg. 631d).10 The same holds
for Aristotle’s claim at the end of the Eudemian Ethics that actions are good
if they contribute “to worshiping [therapeuein] and contemplating [theo-
rein] God” (8.3, 1249b20–21). Maimonides, for example, argues that the
goal of the Law of Moses is “the apprehension of God [idrāk Allāh], mighty
and magnificent, I mean knowledge [al-ilm] of him” (Eight Chapters 5,
164/75–76). This is the meaning of Deuteronomy 6:5: “And you shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul” – God’s com-
mandment to study “all the theoretical sciences” (al-ulūm al-naz.ariyya),
most importantly physics and metaphysics (Guide 3.28, 373/512 with 1.34,
50/75). For physics, the investigation of things in motion, leads via the
eternal motion of the celestial spheres to the apprehension of God, the first
cause of nature.11 The same idea is encapsulated in Averroes’s claim that
the “happiness” (saāda) to which the Islamic Law guides is “the knowledge
[marifa] of God, mighty and magnificent, and his creation” (Fas.l, 8) which
requires “rational inquiry [al-naz.ar] into the existing things and their con-
templation [itibāruhā] insofar as they are proof of the Maker” (Fas.l, 1).
Both Aristotle’s writings and Averroes’s commentaries on Aristotle can be
seen as the implementation of this program and thus as divine worship in
the sense of the Eudemian Ethics. But in Averroes’s case they are also the
fulfillment of his duty as a Muslim.12
Averroes and Maimonides, then, would have been surprised about radical
Enlightenment figures like d’Holbach who claim that religion has no place
9 As we will see in chapter 3, medieval Arabic philosophers usually adopt a strong version of the late
ancient view of the harmony of Plato and Aristotle.
10 For the conception of God as Nous in Plato’s later theology, see Menn (1995). As we will see in
chapters 2 and 3, both Eusebius of Caesarea and al-Fārābı̄ explicitly identify the Nous mentioned
in this Laws passage with the God of Scripture. Note that I will often use “God” in a loose way.
While all proponents of a philosophical religion are committed to a concept of God as Reason,
they do not always take it to be the only or even the highest divine principle. The differences in
their philosophical theologies, which I will sketch in the following chapters, do not affect my core
argument, however.
11 Cf. Aristotle, Physics 8.5–6 and Metaphysics 12.6–7. Maimonides refers to the Aristotelian proof as
“the greatest proof through which one can know the existence of the deity” (Guide 1.70, 121/175).
12 On the study of philosophy as a religious duty in medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy, see
Davidson (1974). Although the passage from the Eudemian Ethics nicely illustrates the continuity
between the ancient and the medieval position, it is unclear whether the work was known to
philosophers in the Muslim world.
in our lives if we choose to follow reason. From the Enlightenment, in turn,
it is possible to draw lines to modern attitudes to religion. They include
the nineteenth-century critiques of religion as alienation by Feuerbach and
Marx, and in a different way by Nietzsche, as well as the late Victorian topos
of a perpetual “warfare” between science and religion.13 This background
helps to understand the contemporary perception of the project of reason
as something fundamentally different from religion and often in conflict
with it.
Letting critics of religion define the framework of my introductory
discussion has a number of drawbacks. Obviously no historian of philos-
ophy or religion these days would speak of “warfare” and the like. More
importantly, my aim is not to say that only philosophers like Averroes and
Maimonides offer a respectable interpretation of religion while everyone
else is caught up in narrow-minded literalism. No such value judgment is
meant to be implied. What the contrast between Averroes and d’Holbach
helps bring into focus is that for the philosophers I discuss in this book
the projects of reason and religion cannot be meaningfully distinguished
at all. It is worth recalling, moreover, that the critique of religion did not
start with the Enlightenment. Proponents of the premodern position are,
in fact, in part responding to charges such as that religion consists in fables
and superstition or that religious authority prevents rational self-rule.14
the concept of a philosophical religion

Averroes and Maimonides advocate what I propose to call a “philosoph-
ical religion.” By this I mean a distinctively philosophical interpretation
of religions such as Judaism or Islam. My notion of religion thus roughly
corresponds to what is covered by the notion of the Divine Law for Jews
and Muslims: the comprehensive order of private and public life estab-
lished through the beliefs, practices, and institutions of the religious com-
munity. My main reason for using “religion” instead of “Divine Law” is
the contested place of laws in the Christian version of a philosophical
religion.
13 For Feuerbach, see, for example, Das Wesen des Christentums and Vorlesungen über das Wesen der
Religion; for Marx, see Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Einleitung; for Nietzsche, see, for
example, Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft, in particular paras. 125, 158–60, and Jenseits von Gut und Böse.
For the “warfare” thesis, see Draper, History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science and White, A
History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. The warfare thesis is currently enjoying
a revival in the invectives against religion brought forth by a self-stylized Neo-Enlightenment.
14 See the criticisms of Celsus and Rāzı̄ discussed in chapters 2 and 3.
In the sections below I lay out what I take to be the key concepts
informing this interpretation. Making the structure of a philosophical reli-
gion explicit is useful because the philosophers to be examined in the
following chapters interpret their religious traditions as philosophical reli-
gions, but do not provide an account of what a philosophical religion is.
In addition, my account is meant to explain how I use the notion of a
philosophical religion. Since philosophy and religion meet in many set-
tings, producing a wide range of configurations, this will help to distinguish
what counts as a philosophical religion and what does not on my use of
the notion. With respect to some features of a philosophical religion there
are variations which are not captured by the reconstruction offered below.
These variations will emerge more clearly from the subsequent historical
chapters.
Theocracy and the perfection of reason

At the center of a philosophical religion is the ideal of Godlikeness attained
through the perfection of reason. For one thing, intellectual perfection is
the goal to which all members of the religious community ought to be
directed. While this ideal can be realized to a greater or lesser degree, it is
realized most completely through philosophy, culminating in knowledge
of God. Thus philosophy is the highest form of worship. At the same
time, intellectual perfection is also religion’s foundation, because it is the
most distinctive trait of the founders and leaders of a religious community.
Christian philosophers push this view furthest: their Christ is not only a
perfect philosopher, but wisdom itself.
The key to understanding a philosophical religion is its moral-political
character. In a community based on a philosophical religion the life of all
members is ordered towards what is best. The beliefs, practices, and insti-
tutions that make up this order are divinely ordained. Such a community,
therefore, is best described as a theocracy, a community ruled by God. The
conceptual move from an excellent order to a divine order is based on two
steps: First, something ordered towards what is best – whether an organism
or the celestial spheres, a human life or a political community – is taken to
be rationally ordered. Second, the rational principle that accounts for
this order is identified with God. The conception of God as Reason is
the metaphysical foundation of a philosophical religion.15 Note that the
theocratic character of the religious community does not depend on the
15 For the loose way in which I use “God,” see above, n. 10.
rule of a specific social group, but is a function of its rational order. A
rationally ordered democracy, for example, would also count as a theocracy
on this view.16 In the ideal theocracy, as we will see, God’s rule and self-rule
coincide.
Although proponents of a philosophical religion from Plato to Spinoza
sometimes describe God metaphorically as “craftsman,” this should not
obscure the emphatically non-anthropomorphic character of their philo-
sophical theology.17 God does not act on the basis of deliberation and
choice, but through the causal necessity governing “the derivation of an
intellectum from an intellect” (Guide 2.20, 219/313).18 He also does not direct
things to a good outside himself. As the most perfect being, God is the
good towards which the universe is ordered. Things share in his perfection
as much as their place in that order allows. This order is emphatically non-
anthropocentric. It is best understood in terms of the principle of plenitude
that equates being with goodness or perfection: God brings “into being
everything whose existence is possible, existence being indubitably a good”
(Guide 3.25, 368/506). On the scale of perfection human beings occupy
an intermediate level. According to medieval Muslim and Jewish philoso-
phers, for example, they are above minerals, plants, and animals, but below
the celestial spheres and their incorporeal movers.19
Why is the best human life a life ordered towards attaining Godlikeness
through the perfection of reason? The metaphysical argument for this claim
is that reason is our nature’s distinctive feature in virtue of which we are
human, as well as our nature’s most valuable feature because we share it
with God. Since God is the ultimate standard of perfection we need to find
out how our nature falls short of God to determine what we must do to
attain Godlikeness. For one thing, we have only the capacity to know by
nature, unlike God who is actual knowledge. Hence the best life is a life
devoted to pursuing knowledge. We cannot, however, spend all our time
studying science and philosophy. For again unlike God, we are not pure but
embodied rational beings. As a consequence we are not self-sufficient, but
need many things to sustain ourselves. These needs give rise to non-rational
desires, the desire for “food, drink, and sex,” for example, or the desire for
16 Aristotle and Spinoza, for example, partly dissociate the value of the political order from the form
of government. A democracy, aristocracy, or monarchy are good if they promote the common good
and bad if they promote the good of the rulers; see Pol. 3.6–7 and the argument of the TP.
17 For Plato, see the Timaeus; for Spinoza, see KV 1.9.
18 Maimonides publicly criticizes, but esoterically endorses, this view as we will see in chapter 3.
19 A notable exception is Clement who stresses the world’s anthropocentric order; see, for example,
Paed. 1.2, 6.5–6.
“power, victory, and honor” (Rep. 580e–581a). Whereas the perfection of
reason is good without qualification because we share it with God, the
objects desired by the soul’s non-rational parts are good only as means to
perfecting reason. Since God has no body, he needs no food, drink, or
sex. And since he has no battles to fight or competitions to win he can do
without the desire for power, victory, and honor.20 We, on the other hand,
need external goods such as wealth and goods of the body such as health.
We need money, for example, to buy food, food to keep the body in good
health, and health to be able to study the sciences and philosophy which
we cannot do well if we are sick or hungry. And without the desire for
power, victory, and honor we would be unable to overcome the internal
and external obstacles that lie on our way to intellectual perfection because
we are part of the physical world. Given our embodiment, then, our non-
rational desires are necessary to create the conditions under which we can
devote ourselves to attaining Godlikeness.
One further implication of our embodiment is that, on account of our
many needs, we cannot achieve perfection without the help of others.
Absolutely speaking, the best life is not a political life. God, for example,
needs nobody to assist him in his endeavors. We, however, although we
may be able to survive on our own, must collaborate with others if we
want not only a life, but a good life – that is, a life in which our needs
are efficiently fulfilled and which leaves us leisure to fully achieve our
potential through cultural and intellectual pursuits. By dividing labor and
focusing on the tasks to which we are best suited, we both contribute to the
common good and ensure the realization of our own good. For proponents
of a philosophical religion assume that the best state of the community
coincides with the best state of each of its members. In a divinely ordered
community the production and distribution of instrumental goods is, of
course, regulated by the aim to bring about the greatest possible degree of
intellectual perfection.
Even if we know, however, that intellectual perfection is the objectively
best state for us, we still need to be motivated to actually study science
and philosophy instead of making food, drink, and sex, or power, victory,
and honor the focus of our life. In addition to the metaphysical argument,
proponents of a philosophical religion thus also offer a psychological argu-
ment for the claim that the best life is a life ordered towards the perfection
of reason: intellectual activity is the most pleasant activity and hence the
20 Strictly speaking, the same holds for bodies that are not subject to our limitations, for example the
celestial spheres according to Aristotelians.
thing we should most desire. It is both objectively and subjectively superior
to the goods aimed at by our non-rational desires.
Intellectual perfection as the goal of the best life provides the measure
for determining the right amount of instrumental goods such as food,
drink, and sex, or power, victory, and honor. Whatever takes away from
the contemplative life is either too much or too little. Observing the
right measure is also crucial for preserving the political order. Without it,
conflicts over material goods arise with the effect that some citizens get
more and others less than their due. This right measure with respect to the
individual and political management of our needs constitutes the moral
virtues, for example moderation, courage, and justice. To have a virtuous
character means to desire the appropriate amount of instrumental goods
for the attainment of intellectual perfection.
The desire to know leading to intellectual perfection by the same token
ensures the motivation for moral conduct. We seek sufficient food, drink,
and sex to keep in good health because good health is necessary for con-
templation. But we do not spend more time on these things than strictly
necessary. Hence we are moderate. We defend our community against its
enemies because we consider physical pain less harmful than being forced
to give up the contemplative life in the wake of defeat. But we will not reck-
lessly endanger ourselves for the sake of power, victory, or honor. Hence
we are courageous. We want our fair share of instrumental goods, but we
neither want more nor envy others the share due to them. Hence we are
just. Our non-rational desires thus are in harmony with the prescriptions
of reason.
In analogy to the prescriptions of medical science that aim at producing
health, we can describe the moral and political norms of a divinely ordered
community as prescriptions of a science of living well that aims at producing
Godlikeness. If we master this science and are motivated to follow its
prescription we have attained complete self-rule – a life in which all choices
are made by reason and supported by desire. In other words: we both know
the good and are motivated to act according to this knowledge. To be ruled
by reason means to be self-ruled because we are ruled by the distinctly
human part of our soul rather than by non-rational desires that we share
with plants and animals or by laws imposed on us from the outside. Self-
rule is thus contrasted with two forms of enslavement, one internal, the
other external.21 Some proponents of a philosophical religion claim that
in a state of complete self-rule conventional notions of “good” and “bad”
21 See, for example, Rep. 577d and 590c–d.

are no longer meaningful: we do not eat healthy food because it is said
to be good or avoid unhealthy food because it is said to be bad, but we
choose to eat what we know efficiently satisfies our current nutritional
needs. All choices come down to determining which course of action
under a particular set of circumstances is most conducive to intellectual
perfection.22
We can describe this form of self-rule as practical wisdom, in contrast to
theoretical wisdom which is the perfection we share with God. Theoretical
wisdom, however, is not only the goal towards which a life ruled by reason
is ordered. It also provides the knowledge of the order of things and our
place in that order required for self-rule.23 We must understand that God
orders nature towards what is best and determine what this means for us.
Since reason, as we saw, is both the feature that sets us apart from other
natural things (minerals, plants, and animals) and the feature we have in
common with God, we attain our distinctive perfection and contribute to
the perfection of the whole by perfecting reason. Once the goal is set by
theoretical wisdom, practical wisdom determines the path to the goal in
light of the particular circumstances under which we live. Since political
collaboration is a condition for attaining perfection, practical wisdom must
include knowledge of the political order. A shoemaker, for example, must
understand the order of the political community of which shoemaking is a
part and by which its purpose is determined. He could also be compelled
to produce shoes by the ruler, but if he understands how his craft is linked
to other crafts, the human need it fulfills, and how it contributes to the
common good, he will grasp the reasons why he does what he does and
in this sense rule himself. Consider the sovereignty of a ruler who directs
all activities in the political community towards the common good on
the basis of political science. The shoemaker example suggests that all
members of the community can share in this sovereignty and thus act in a
self-directed way to the extent they attain the ruler’s political science and
understand their particular task in its light.
God as the principle governing both the natural order and the good
moral-political order holds this body of theoretical and practical knowledge
together which self-rule demands. The ideal religious community thus
turns out to be a community of philosophers whose life is ordered by
reason towards the perfection of reason. God rules directly without the
22 See, for example, Maimonides, Guide 1.2 and Spinoza, E4p68.

23 The following paragraph paraphrases a passage in al-Fārābı̄ (Falsafat Arist.ūt.ālı̄s, 68/79) which I will
discuss in chapter 3.
need for prescriptions and institutions that put order into human affairs.
In this community, then, God’s rule and self-rule coincide.
The handmaid of philosophy

How do proponents of a philosophical religion explain that a religion of
the kind just described seems to have little in common with the historical
forms of religion such as Judaism, Christianity, or Islam? What is the
purpose of laws, stories, exhortations, and practices of worship? And how
does the concept of God as Reason square with the God of traditional
religion who speaks, gives laws, performs miracles, gets angry, has mercy,
and so forth? The answer to these questions is based on two claims: a
systematic claim that non-philosophical devices are necessary to order a
religious community towards what is best and an empirical claim that the
historical forms of a given religious tradition fulfill the role assigned to these
non-philosophical devices. The key premise to justify the systematic claim
is that we differ in our moral dispositions and intellectual potential. We
differ, moreover, not only from others, but also from ourselves at different
stages of our moral and intellectual development. According to proponents
of a philosophical religion, human beings occupy a peculiar place in the
natural order. We neither follow the directives of reason by nature – like,
for example, the celestial spheres – nor are we like animals just driven
by natural instincts. Instead we deliberate and choose between different
options. Unlike the life of the celestial spheres, therefore, our life is not
automatically divinely ordered. It depends on whether we choose to follow
reason or our non-rational desires. Given that intellectual activity is both
the best and the most pleasant state to be in, the choice would seem easy.
But as we saw, one difference between God and us is that human reason is
actualized only at a relatively late stage in life. After all, nobody is born a
philosopher. Whereas our non-rational desires are in place from the start
and require no particular skills to be satisfied, the desire to know needs
to be carefully cultivated and only attains its goal after rigorous training.
Left to our own devices we might never discover that there is a good above
food, drink, and sex or power, victory, and honor. Moreover, most of us
do not develop a strong taste for science and philosophy even when we
grow up. The upshot is that only a few human beings fulfill the moral and
intellectual conditions for a philosophical life. Most are non-philosophers.
Hence a community of accomplished philosophers is an ideal that cannot
be realized given the diversity of human nature.
The divine order of things human, then, is not a given, but requires a
good deal of pedagogical and political guidance. This is the task of the
founders and leaders of the religious community. As pedagogical-political
guides they mediate God’s rule to the moral-political realm by ordering the
community towards what is best on the model of the natural order. They
thus imitate God’s activity in nature. We can now see why a philosophical
religion must be grounded on intellectual perfection: only a person who
has perfected reason – that is, a philosopher – can ensure God’s rule over
human beings by establishing a rational and hence divine moral-political
order. Moreover, a philosopher who desires knowledge above all cannot
be corrupted by wealth or power. As a consequence he also has the moral
integrity to implement what he knows is best for the community.24 To
say that the founders and leaders of the religious community must be
philosophers need not contradict the claim that the order of the religious
community must be determined through revelation. For if God is the cause
of all knowledge, including the knowledge of the good towards which the
religious community is ordered, then philosophically determining the good
does not differ from determining it through revelation: rational insight and
revelation are the same.
Since the community’s members in need of guidance are non-
philosophers, however, intellectual perfection is a necessary, but not a
sufficient, condition for being a religious leader. In addition, pedagog-
ical and political skills are required: the skills of a legislator, poet, and
orator, who can convey the philosopher’s knowledge and motivation to
non-philosophers by translating the prescriptions of reason into laws, sim-
plifying and illustrating philosophical concepts, and providing incentives
to do what is right. The difference between the philosopher and the prophet
is that, while both know the good, the prophet also has the skills to convey
the good to non-philosophers and motivate them to do it. Going back
to the analogy between medical science and the science of living, we can
compare the non-philosophical devices used for this purpose to a doctor’s
prescriptions and the explanations he gives for why the prescriptions should
be followed.
Given that Godlikeness attained through intellectual perfection is the
highest good, the laws, stories, exhortations, and practices of worship that
make up a religious tradition must imitate practical and theoretical wis-
dom as much as the abilities of non-philosophers allow. Serving to convey
24 Note that unlike the philosopher’s knowledge, the philosopher’s moral integrity can be replaced by
a system of checks and balances.
philosophical contents to non-philosophers, their role is that of philoso-
phy’s handmaid. Since non-philosophers are subdivided into those who
have and those who lack the intellectual potential to become philosophers,
the program fulfills both a pedagogical and a political purpose, preparing
not-yet-philosophers for the philosophical life and replacing philosophy for
non-philosophers by nature. Its overall goal is to lead all members of the
community to the highest possible perfection while taking their temporary
or permanent limitations into account.
But must the legal and narrative contents of a religion not be dictated
by God to count as divine? Not according to proponents of a philosophical
religion. Although the concept of God as a lawgiver is important for peda-
gogical reasons, it is philosophically unsound. Philosophers can, however,
describe the pedagogical-political program as the implementation of divine
commandments if they adopt a distinction first made explicit by Aristotle:
the commandments are not divine because they were given by God, but
because God is the end “for the sake of which wisdom commands” (EE 8.3,
1249b14–15). Moreover, the philosophical concept of revelation described
above can accommodate non-philosophical elements of a religious trad-
ition: for if the philosopher’s knowledge of the good is revealed and then
imitated by the prophet’s laws, poetry, and oratory, the imitation depends
on that knowledge and can thus be described as part of the process of revela-
tion. In this way the concepts of revelation and divine commandments can
be retained to describe the source and nature of the pedagogical-political
program, although philosophers and non-philosophers will understand
them differently.
What is the philosopher-prophet’s motivation to set up a pedagogical-
political program? While the desire to know qualifies him to rule because
it makes him immune to the lures of wealth and power, it is not clear
why he would want to rule – that is, leave the contemplative life to put
order into human affairs. The standard answer given by proponents of
a philosophical religion relies on an ontological principle in the Platonic
tradition that can be described as ontological generosity: a perfect thing
“flows over,” that is shares its perfection with less perfect things. As Plato
says in the Timaeus: the goodness of the demiurge – that is, Divine Reason –
implies that he is “without envy” and hence wants “everything to become
as much like himself as possible” (29d–e). Proponents of a philosophical
religion apply this principle to the moral-political realm: the leaders of the
religious community not only imitate God in what they do – ordering
things towards what is best – but also in why they do it – because they are
“without envy” and want to share their perfection with the community.
A crucial question for proponents of a philosophical religion is how a
pedagogical-political program, designed by philosophers on the basis of a
philosophical concept of the good, should be related to the historical forms
of a religious-cultural tradition. After all, the actual beliefs and practices
of pagans, Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and the institutions that shape
them, lack a philosophical foundation. One solution is a cultural revolution
in which the old system of beliefs, practices, and institutions is replaced
through a new one designed by the philosopher. This is Plato’s proposal
in the Republic: the rulers must first “wipe clean” their “sketching slate”
(501a), by sending “everyone in the city over ten years old into the country,”
namely everyone whose beliefs and practices have been corrupted by the old
system. “Then they will take possession of the children . . . and bring them
up in their own customs and laws, which are the ones we have described”
(540e–541a). The children brought up under the new system turn into
the good citizens designed on the rulers’ sketching slate. In the Laws, by
contrast, Plato adopts a different strategy. The existing beliefs, practices,
and institutions, he contends, were, in fact, established by philosopher-
rulers. Only later was their purpose misunderstood. Hence they need
not be replaced but only restored to their original purpose. Plato can then
engage in the philosophical reinterpretation of Greek cultural forms as if they
were part of a pedagogical-political program designed by philosophers. As
a rule, later proponents of a philosophical religion follow Plato’s reform
approach, reinterpreting the historical forms of their religious tradition
as if Moses, Christ, or Muhammad had been accomplished philosophers
who established them for the guidance of non-philosophers. They thus
redirect the contents of their religious tradition to a concept of the good
supplied by philosophy. Sometimes revolution and reinterpretation are
combined. Thus Christian philosophers in antiquity reject pagan beliefs,
practices, and institutions as fundamentally corrupt and champion their
replacement through philosophically reinterpreted forms of Christianity.
One implication of the claim that the historical forms of a religious
tradition are an imitation of philosophy is that they are similar, but not
identical, to the philosophical doctrines they represent. Strictly speaking,
therefore, they are not true. Does this mean that the things the prophets
say – for example about a God who speaks, gives laws, and so forth –
are nothing but pedagogically well-intentioned falsehoods? To defuse this
concern proponents of a philosophical religion argue that only if taken
literally prophetic parables are false. Their allegorical sense, by contrast,
consists in sound philosophical doctrines. These doctrines can be disclosed
through allegorical interpretation. While taken literally a religious tradition
is pedagogically and politically useful but not true, taken allegorically it is
true but not pedagogically and politically useful. Philosophical doctrines
can thus be located in, but not learned from, a religious tradition. As a
consequence, the transition from the literal to the allegorical content can
only be made by someone with prior philosophical training. This, in turn,
implies that philosophy is not only the foundation and the goal of religion,
but also holds the key to its true content.
As we saw, the distinction between religion’s true and literal content
is a consequence of the division of human beings into philosophers and
non-philosophers. On the assumption that only philosophers have the
intellectual skills to understand the philosophical doctrines corresponding
to religion’s true content, proponents of a philosophical religion normally
oppose making philosophy and allegorical interpretations public. Non-
philosophers, they argue, would fall into nihilism if religion’s literal content,
on which their perfection depends, is called into question. Since they lack
the intellectual skills to move from philosophy’s imitation to philosophy
proper, they would end up without either.
The key features of religion as philosophy’s handmaid can be illustrated
through God’s representation as a king in Scripture. According to propo-
nents of a philosophical religion the founders of their religion conceived
this representation as a pedagogically and politically useful imitation of the
philosophical doctrine of God having the first rank in existence. On the
most basic level the metaphor invests laws with divine authority, suggesting
that God established them like a king who rewards obedience and pun-
ishes disobedience. But it also conveys an approximate idea of God’s rank
to non-philosophers who cannot understand the ontological order, but do
understand the political order. Taken literally, the philosopher rejects the
attributes of a king as an inadequate description of God. Allegorically, how-
ever, the prophetic representation and the philosophical doctrine of God
agree. Not-yet-philosophers, upon turning into actual philosophers, replace
the literal with the allegorical content. However, neither the philosophical
doctrine of God nor the corresponding allegorical content of Scripture
should be taught in public. For this would lead non-philosophers to reject
God’s representation as a king. And since they are unable to understand
the true doctrine of God, they would remain without a concept of God
altogether.
The distinction between philosophers and non-philosophers shows that
proponents of a philosophical religion are not committed to a notion of
substantive equality. The rank of human beings is determined by the degree
of perfection they attain. In some respects, however, a philosophical religion
is strikingly egalitarian.25 At the outset all members of the community have
an equal opportunity to reach the highest level of perfection. Moreover, all
members will be led to the highest level of perfection accessible to them.
Finally, since the goods desired by those at the high end of perfection –
the truths of science and philosophy – are not scarce, their rank does
not lead to an unjust distribution of resources. On the other hand, many
proponents of a philosophical religion think that the community attains its
greatest overall perfection if philosophers devote most of their time to study
and non-philosophers most of their time to providing for the community’s
material needs. In at least one case, however, this social teleology is rejected.
Maimonides argues that the community’s overall perfection is greater if all
members devote a small part of their time to working for their subsistence
and the remaining time to perfecting reason through study (Madda, Laws
Concerning the Study of the Torah 1.11–12, 3.10–11).
Philosophy and religion

Let me add three clarifications to the role I attribute to philosophy in the
context of a philosophical religion. First, the commitment to philosophy
must not entail an unqualified commitment to Greek philosophy, or a par-
ticular school of Greek philosophy. Some proponents of a philosophical
religion claim that the founder of their religious community is superior to
Plato or Aristotle. By this, however, they only mean that Moses, Christ,
or Muhammad were better philosophers than their Greek colleagues, not
that there is something in their teachings that reason can in principle not
grasp. Philosophy remains the primary path to perfection. When Jewish,
Christian, or Muslim philosophers disagree with their Greek colleagues,
therefore, the disagreement should be treated like Aristotle’s claim to hold
the truth in higher esteem than Plato (EN 1.6, 1096a15). By following the
better argument rather than Plato or Aristotle, proponents of a philosoph-
ical religion honor the truth they claim to be embodied in their religion.
Second, neither claiming that the founder of a religious community is
superior to Greek philosophers, nor claiming that a religious tradition is
unconditionally true has doctrinal implications. Although the allegorical
content of religious texts like the Bible or the Koran is said to coincide with
25 With respect to gender, proponents of a philosophical religion often adopt the egalitarian stance of
Plato in the Republic (see 451b–457c), including a number of medieval Aristotelians who side with
Plato against Aristotle on this issue. See Clement, Paed. 4, al-Fārābı̄, Mabādi 12.8, and Averroes,
Comm. Rep., 53–59.
true philosophy, true philosophy cannot be learned from studying these
texts. It can only be disclosed through interpretation by someone with prior
philosophical training. This also makes room for epistemological modesty.
Some proponents of a philosophical religion conceive philosophy as an
ongoing project, open to revision and refinement, that gradually leads
closer to the truth their religion contains.26
Third, if philosophical doctrines cannot be learned from religious texts,
it is not possible that these texts were the source of Plato’s and Aristotle’s
philosophy. The “dependency thesis” by which the philosophers discussed
in this book are often said to have justified the study of Greek philosophy is
less widely held than scholars have suggested.27 When it is held, it normally
refers to an alleged oral tradition of knowledge. To see that proponents of a
philosophical religion deny that studying religious texts can lead to wisdom
is crucial for understanding how they justify the place of philosophy in
their communities. For if the religious texts contain, but do not teach,
philosophy, nobody can blame the intellectually gifted members of the
community for turning to outside sources, for example Plato or Aristotle.
At least implicitly, therefore, proponents of a philosophical religion admit
that their religions lack the resources to ground their own truth.
Theocracy and autonomy

Did the eighteenth century witness a paradigm shift from “a conception
of morality as obedience” to “a conception of morality as self-governance”
as some scholars claim?28 At first view the purpose of religion as philoso-
phy’s handmaid seems to be captured well by this thesis: God orders the
life of non-philosophers towards what is best through laws, stories, exhor-
tations, and practices of worship. It thus seems that non-philosophers
can act rationally only on condition of heteronomy: if they submit to
the authority of religious guides, like patients following the instruc-
tions of a doctor. Proponents of a philosophical religion deny, however,
that the distinction between philosophers and non-philosophers can be
mapped onto a dichotomy of autonomy and obedience. Doing so would
be wrong for several reasons: First, obedience is indeed important, but
for philosophers and non-philosophers alike, since neither are capable of
rational self-rule as children. Moreover, shaping non-rational desires from
childhood on is a contribution of religion to autonomy. For by obeying
26 See, for example, Origen, Maimonides, and Delmedigo discussed in chapters 2 and 3.
27 See, for example, Ridings (1995). 28 Schneewind (1998), 4.
the rules imposed through religious authority, children are habituated to
act according to what is objectively right and wrong. When they grow up,
their non-rational desires will be in agreement with the prescriptions of
reason, instead of pushing them to act against their better knowledge.29
The representation of God as a lawgiver and king serves this educational
purpose: God’s laws replace the philosopher’s knowledge of the good, and
fear of punishment and hope for reward the philosopher’s motivation to
do what reason prescribes. But do grown-up non-philosophers not remain
excluded from knowledge of the good, as well as from the desire to perfect
reason that motivates philosophers to act according to this knowledge? We
saw that self-rule requires extensive knowledge about God, nature, and the
moral-political order. Proponents of a philosophical religion contend that
although explanations and arguments set forth by philosophy’s handmaid
are inferior to those set forth by philosophy itself, the difference is one
of degree, not of essence. Hence both philosophers and non-philosophers
have reasons for what they do, only the epistemic quality of the reasons
varies. Consider again the analogy between health and human perfection.
The rank of philosophers would correspond to doctors who are experts in
all fields of medicine. These doctors would always do, without any compul-
sion, what is best for their health on the basis of exact medical knowledge –
assuming that their non-rational desires have been properly shaped from
childhood on. Next come doctors with a more limited scope of expertise
who would need to consult experts with respect to health questions out-
side their area of competence. They would, however, still have a sufficiently
accurate understanding of the medical issues involved to be able to claim
that they know what they are doing and are not following another’s pre-
scriptions blindly or under compulsion. On the next rank are laypeople
with a strong background in biology and chemistry whose understanding
of the medical issues is again less accurate than that of the second group of
doctors and who would thus depend more strongly on expert advice. The
descent continues until we reach the lowest rank, occupied by children for
example, who only exercise or take medicine to avoid punishment or get a
reward. Everything below the exact knowledge of the first doctor is analo-
gous to the contents of religion which replace the philosopher’s knowledge
and give reasons to non-philosophers for doing what reason prescribes.
Since nobody is born wise, the explanations and arguments offered by
religion are a stepping stone to full rational self-rule for philosophers as
well. During the period of transition from being a potential philosopher
29 In Aristotelian terms, they will be virtuous rather than weak-willed or continent.
to being an actual philosopher, the understanding based on religion is
a placeholder for the comprehensive knowledge required for rationally
ordering one’s life. Without religion, therefore, not-yet-philosophers could
not pursue perfection in a self-directed way since the knowledge needed
for doing so is only acquired upon attaining perfection.
How are non-philosophers motivated to do what reason prescribes? Obe-
dience is only found at the bottom of the scale: at the level of children
and non-philosophers with unusual limitations who can only be motivated
to act rationally through fear of punishment and desire for reward. Since
the defining feature of human beings is reason and the narrative and legal
contents of religion embody reason, even a person who does what reason
prescribes on account of religious coercion is more self-determined (that
is, determined by reason) than a person who fails to act thus on account
of non-rational desires. Higher up on the scale the proposals for moti-
vating non-philosophers vary. Since for Plato there is no transition from
opinions derived from sense-perception and knowledge derived from the
intellectual apprehension of incorporeal Forms, Platonists often think that
non-philosophers cannot be motivated by the desire to know. They will
primarily pursue goals dictated by non-rational desires – that is, money or
honor – yet under the guidance of an imperfect form of practical wisdom.
For Aristotle, by contrast, all cognitions – from sense-perception to the
grasp of the first principles of being – are part of a continuum of know-
ledge and provide the pleasure of intellectual activity. Hence Aristotelians
are more inclusive. Although the highest perfection can only be attained
through demonstrative knowledge, the imperfect forms of understanding
accessible to non-philosophers count as approximations. For some Aris-
totelians these imperfect forms of understanding provide sufficient pleasure
to be able to become the main object of desire for non-philosophers. Hence
non-philosophers, too, can live a life that is not only ordered by reason,
but also aims at the perfection of reason. This view underlies Maimonides’s
claim that philosophers and non-philosophers alike should devote most of
their time to study.
Our degree of self-rule, then, depends on two variables: the stage of our
intellectual development and our overall intellectual potential. The crucial
point is that the legal and narrative contents of religion are employed
to maximize self-rule: to replace obedience based on coercion as much
as possible with self-rule based on informed consent. The concept of
degrees of self-rule shows that the simplistic dichotomy of philosophers
and non-philosophers which proponents of a philosophical religion at
times employ is in reality shorthand to indicate the first and the last level
of a spectrum with many levels in between. The rhetoric of intellectual
elitism should not obscure the fact that their considered position is a more
subtle model of gradation in which the boundaries between philosophers
and non-philosophers are permeable in various ways.
Contextualism and progress

The distinction between religion’s allegorical content, corresponding to the
doctrines demonstrated in philosophy, and religion’s literal content, which
imitates philosophy and serves pedagogical-political purposes, allows pro-
ponents of a philosophical religion to respond to an additional concern:
that a religious community’s claim to have a true religious tradition must
lead to violent conflict with other religious communities which make the
same claim. For the claim to truth must not entail a claim to exclusivity,
since the true content of religion can be imitated in different ways depend-
ing on particular natural and cultural circumstances. Hence proponents of
a philosophical religion can be universalists with respect to the true core of
their religion and the standard of perfection towards which the religious
community is ordered while being contextual pluralists with respect to the
laws, stories, exhortations, and practices of worship through which the true
core is imitated and perfection achieved. Recall the representation of God
as a king in Scripture: this representation can vary according to the varying
customs observed at courts in different cultural contexts. But while the
representations may be many, what they represent – that is, the concept of
God as the first cause – is always the same.
Some proponents of a philosophical religion link contextualism with a
concept of progress. Human beings, they argue, are by nature not disposed
to cultural revolutions and the founder of a religious community is not
acting in a cultural void. Hence he can only reform an existing cultural
framework, but not exchange it for a completely new one, designed in
light of philosophical ideals. Consider the sacrifices prescribed by the Law
of Moses. From a philosopher’s point of view it is absurd to sacrifice to a
God who is perfect. The puzzle of the inclusion of sacrifices in the Law
of Moses can be solved, however, if they are considered as part of Moses’s
response to paganism. While in Egypt the Hebrews became habituated to
the corrupt beliefs, practices, and institutions of their pagan masters. If
human nature is taken to resist radical change, Moses could only reform,
but not completely replace them. With respect to sacrificing to idols he
decided to eradicate idolatry and hold on to sacrifices, while redirecting
them to the one true God. A similar case can be made to explain the
anthropomorphic passages in the Law of Moses: here Moses’s compro-
mise was to establish God’s numerical unity without abolishing his repre-
sentation in human form. On this interpretation many religious beliefs,
practices, and institutions are not necessary elements of a philosophical
religion, but reflect contingent cultural circumstances. The nature of non-
philosophers is thus not the only constraint with which the founder of
a religious community must contend. The degree to which he can order
the community towards what is best is also limited by the beliefs, prac-
tices, and institutions under which the members of the community were
brought up. This implies, for one thing, that the excellence of religious
communities can vary depending on the circumstances under which they
were established. Moreover, religious communities can evolve through the
replacement of inadequate beliefs, practices, and institutions with adequate
ones in a process of gradual religious reformation. In the course of this pro-
cess the gap between non-philosophers and philosophers will narrow since
the former will progressively be habituated to the beliefs and practices
of the latter. This progressive habituation, in turn, allows for the gradual
public disclosure of both philosophical doctrines and religion’s allegorical
content.
A stronger egalitarian commitment linked to the concept of progress is
based on the doctrine of reincarnation.30 Plato, for example, argues that if
we live a virtuous life, our soul moves up on the scale of perfection from
one embodiment to the next. For Christian philosophers like Origen of
Alexandria all rational souls were equally united with Divine Reason in an
initial state of perfection. Turning away from Divine Reason – thus they
interpret the biblical “Fall” – leads to the embodiment of the souls. In suc-
cessive embodiments the souls gradually move further away from or back
up to Divine Reason depending on how virtuous a life they lead. Chris-
tianity’s mission is to turn humankind as a whole back to Divine Reason by
directing all human beings to perfection: philosophers by means of phil-
osophy and non-philosophers by means of philosophy’s handmaid. In the
course of several embodiments, however, non-philosophers, once turned
in the right direction, will also be able to gradually replace philosophy’s
imitation with philosophy itself. In this sense the advent of Christianity is
seen as a turning point in the history of humankind: it initiates the restora-
tion of the souls to the state of intellectual perfection which they had lost
through the Fall. Christian proponents of a philosophical religion thus
expect the ideal community of philosophers who live a perfectly self-ruled
30 For the following, see my discussion of Plato and Origen in chapter 2.

life ordered by reason towards the perfection of reason to arise at the end of
times.
Tensions in the concept of a philosophical religion

One tension in the concept of a philosophical religion concerns the valid-
ity of the pedagogical-political program. Consider the actions its laws
prescribe. Even if the laws were indeed given by a philosopher-prophet,
they could not be tailored to the particular requirements of each member
of the community but must be based on average considerations. Hence rea-
son and the Divine Law may at times be at odds. The Muslim philosopher
Avicenna, for example, describes how he uses wine as a means to further
his intellectual perfection:
Every time I was perplexed about a problem concerning which I was unable to
find the middle term in a syllogism, I would repair on its account to the mosque
and worship, praying humbly to the All-Creator to disclose to me its obscurity and
make its difficulty easy. At night I would return home, set the lamp before me and
occupy myself with reading and writing. Whenever I felt drowsy or weakening, I
would turn aside to drink a cup of wine to regain my strength and then I would
go back to my reading. (Sı̄ra, 28–30/29–31)
From the philosopher’s perspective the prohibition of wine (Koran 5:92)

has a sound rationale: drinking wine would be detrimental to the moral
and intellectual perfection of most members of the community because
they lack the self-control and discernment for its proper use. This does not
apply to Avicenna, however, who puts wine into the service of the Divine
Law’s goal (at least as the philosophers understand it).
More generally, the question arises whether philosophers are bound
by the prescriptions of their religion if they have attained the end for
which these prescriptions are pedagogical means. As a rule, proponents of
a philosophical religion assert that they are. One reason is that philosophers
are concerned for the perfection of non-philosophers which depends on
observing the laws. They thus have a strong incentive for setting a good
example. A second reason is that philosophers, like everyone else, are
embodied. From this two things follow: They are not continuously in a
state of perfection and thus must observe the laws to ensure that they do
not lose control over their body. And they depend on the community’s
social order for their own perfection which would be undermined if they
were to stop observing the laws and thereby encourage non-philosophers
to do the same. A third reason, finally, is that non-observance would expose
philosophers to the charge of impiety by non-philosophers.
The problem of the validity of the pedagogical-political program is
further compounded by the fact that it was not established by philosopher-
prophets and that philosophical reinterpretation is constrained by the actual
contents of the religious tradition. It can only bring these contents closer to
a philosophically sound pedagogical-political program but not transform
them completely. One way to address this problem is through the concept
of gradual progress that I described above. On this view many of the
historical forms of a religious tradition are determined by a particular
context. To the extent they are construed as not intrinsically rational but
concessions that the lawgiver made on account of the community’s corrupt
beliefs, practices, and institutions they can legitimately be replaced at a
later stage of the community’s development. This allows bringing the
historical materials gradually closer to a pedagogical-political program as
it would be if it had been established by philosopher-prophets under ideal
circumstances. The philosophical reinterpretation of beliefs, practices, and
institutions becomes a historical process that starts with the founder of the
religious community and continues with his successors.
Another source of tensions is those contents of a religious tradition that
resist integration into a philosophical religion to a greater or lesser degree.
As I pointed out above, a philosophical religion can accommodate a wide
range of non-philosophical devices through the concept of a pedagogical-
political program designed for the guidance of non-philosophers. But not
all beliefs, practices, and institutions can be accommodated equally well.
Consider, for example, doctrines of the afterlife which occupy an important
place in the religious traditions under consideration. It is not clear whether
all proponents of a philosophical religion are committed to the immortality
of the soul. And when they are, they often hold a concept of immortality
that does not fit well with traditional views. Even if medieval Aristotelians,
for example, take the actualized intellect to be immortal – a question
that has been the object of considerable scholarly dispute – this form of
immortality is impersonal and excludes non-philosophers.31 It thus hardly
captures traditional notions of the afterlife. Be that as it may, neither the
metaphysical nor the psychological argument for intellectual perfection as
the highest good depends on the soul’s immortality. Most human beings,
Spinoza argues, believe that if “minds die with the body” they should:
31 On skepticism about immortality, see Pines (1979) and (1981).

return to their natural disposition, and would prefer to govern all their actions
according to lust, and to obey fortune rather than themselves. These opinions
seem no less absurd to me than if someone, because he does not believe he can
nourish his body with good food to eternity, should prefer to fill himself with
poisons and other deadly things, or because he sees that the mind is not eternal,
or immortal, should prefer to be mindless, and to live without reason. (E5p41s)
Proponents of a philosophical religion, however, often do say things about
the afterlife and other difficult doctrines that are closer to traditional views
than one would expect. Such statements may not always be philosophically
motivated. In this book I have decided to avoid this murky terrain.
towards a history of philosophical religions

I turn now to a brief sketch of the scope and limits of my historical
project. While certainly daring, the interpretation of religious traditions
as philosophical religions was by no means marginal. It was set forth
by pagan philosophers and their Jewish, Christian, and Muslim heirs in
several contexts from antiquity to the early modern period. My goal in
this book is not to give an exhaustive account of this history. Instead I
will focus on a selection of representative cases that can be related to each
other in a coherent narrative. I start with the divine nomoi of Magnesia,
the fictional Cretan colony of Plato’s Laws, explaining their nature and
purpose and their place in Plato’s political philosophy. Then I show how
Philo of Alexandria (d. c.50 ce) reinterprets the nomoi of Moses on the
model of the nomoi of Magnesia and how Clement (d. 215) and Origen of
Alexandria (d. c.254) present Christ as extending the pedagogical-political
principles embodied in these nomoi to humankind as a whole. Next I turn
to al-Fārābı̄ (d. c.950), Averroes (d. 1198), and Maimonides (d. 1204) who
adopt the Platonic model in the early Middle Ages to reinterpret the Divine
Law of Muslims and Jews. My main narrative ends with Spinoza (d. 1677). I
argue that Spinoza’s interpretation of Christianity in important ways builds
on the medieval interpretation of Islam and Judaism and explain how it
is related to Spinoza’s critique of religion. In the epilogue I briefly show
that, Spinoza’s critique of religion notwithstanding, philosophers from
Lessing to Hegel continue to interpret the relationship between reason
and religion along the lines of a philosophical religion. Finally I argue
that the main objection against the concept of a philosophical religion
stems from the emergence of a new moral paradigm in the eighteenth
century according to which all human beings are equally able to rule
themselves.
Even in the cases that I do discuss, I will not offer a full account of the
sources. My thesis is that the conceptual framework established by Plato
provides the key to understanding how proponents of a philosophical reli-
gion worked out the relationship between philosophy and the historical
forms of their religious traditions. Platonic themes, however, were often
interpreted through an Aristotelian, Stoic, or Neoplatonic lens. I will only
highlight these developments if they illuminate how proponents of a philo-
sophical religion conceived their project. Completing the historical picture
and offering a more refined analysis of the sources must remain a task for
the future.
Let me, however, briefly outline what it would take to complete this task.
To begin with, a large part of ancient philosophy can be presented as a his-
tory of philosophical religions. A visitor to Hellenistic Athens would find
that all major philosophical schools – Platonists, Aristotelians, Epicureans,
Stoics, and even Pyrrhonian skeptics – take Godlikeness to be the highest
human perfection and promote their philosophy as the path to attain it.32
Particularly important for my project would have been an examination of
the connection between law and reason in the Stoics, both in relation to
Plato and as a source for the Alexandrians and Spinoza. Moreover, ten-
sions between philosophy and traditional religion, as well as attempts to
resolve these tensions, accompany philosophy from the beginning. Xeno-
phanes (sixth–fifth century bce), for example, rejects the anthropomorphic
representation of the gods in Greek poetry as incompatible with the philo-
sophical conception of the divine (see DK 21 B10–17). At the same time
his contemporary, Theagenes of Rhegion, tries to reconcile them through
allegorical interpretation (see DK 8.2). I will only examine these and other
issues to the extent they cast light on the main thread of my narrative.
Thus I will situate the project of the Alexandrians in the broader context
of philosophically reinterpreting cultural-religious traditions in antiquity
in chapter 2 and sketch a reading of Aristotle that explains why medieval
Muslim and Jewish philosophers could take him as endorsing the concept
of a philosophical religion in chapter 3. I will also no more than touch
on the later Platonic tradition which is likely the most significant omis-
sion in my account. Not only are the Alexandrians partly building on and
partly competing with this tradition, but it also provides an important
pagan parallel to their project, both in terms of the use to which Plato’s
32 See O’Meara (2003), 32–34; O’Meara does not mention Pyrrhonian skepticism, for which see DL
9.65.
political philosophy is put and in terms of the philosophical reinterpre-
tation of pagan religions. There is, moreover, considerable evidence that
the later Platonic tradition shaped the Platonism of medieval Muslim and
Jewish philosophers. My best excuse for omitting a more detailed treatment
of Platonism is that much of this work has been done by others. For one
thing some of the most intriguing parallels between the later Platonic tra-
dition and the authors I examine – in particular the view of Homer as an
accomplished sage and the allegorical interpretation of Homer – have been
studied at length by Robert Lamberton, building on earlier work by Buffière
and Pépin.33 Equally important for my purpose is a more recent study by
Dominic O’Meara who shows against conventional wisdom that Plato’s
political philosophy had an important place in Neoplatonism and that its
Neoplatonic interpretation helped to shape al-Fārābı̄’s project.34 O’Meara
also points out parallels between the Neoplatonic political program and
three later Patristic thinkers: Eusebius, Augustine, and Pseudo-Dionysius.
On the other hand, his study does not cover Hellenistic-Jewish and early
Christian philosophy which in important ways laid the groundwork for
the later developments in Patristic thought. Nor does he discuss Eusebius’s
Preparation for the Gospel which I take to be the key text for understanding
the role of Plato’s political philosophy in Philo, Clement, and Origen.
O’Meara also makes no attempt to work out the interpretation of Plato
that motivates the political project of the pagan, Christian, and Muslim
philosophers included in his study. In these respects I see my book as
complementing his.
A comprehensive examination of Patristic attitudes to the concept of
a philosophical religion may also cast light on one of the most vexing
questions for my project: why was the interpretation of Christianity as a
philosophical religion not revived when Christian philosophers in medieval
Europe began to study Greco-Arabic philosophy and science in Latin trans-
lation? The fact that Christian philosophers in antiquity did propose such
an interpretation implies that nothing in the nature of Christianity pre-
cludes it. Yet while the relationship between philosophy and Christianity
in the later Middle Ages took on different forms, the two always remained
identifiable as two distinct traditions. Thomas Aquinas, for example, argues
that central Christian doctrines such as the Trinity and Christ’s incarnation
are beyond the reach of reason. Latin Averroists even allow for philosophy
and Christian theology to contradict each other on core doctrines. This is
33 Lamberton (1986), Buffière (1956), Pépin (1958).

34 See O’Meara (2003). On al-Fārābı̄, see also Vallat (2004).
the exact opposite of the position advocated by Averroes with respect to
philosophy and Islam. The fact that in the medieval university philosophy
and theology were taught in different faculties bears witness to their separa-
tion on the institutional level as well. The tensions between philosophy and
Christianity culminated in the 1277 condemnation of 219 philosophical and
theological theses by Bishop Tempier in Paris which further entrenched
the division between Christianity and many of the teachings of the Greco-
Arabic philosophical corpus that had been translated into Latin. One could
point to the fact that the Platonic framework underlying the interpretation
of religious traditions as philosophical religions did not play a significant
role in the medieval Latin context. This, however, does not answer the
question, but only moves it up one level: since Christian appropriations
of this Platonic framework were available in Patristic literature, it remains
to be explained why it was not adopted for integrating Christianity with
Greco-Arabic philosophy in the Middle Ages.
Other traditions of Christian thought, too, should be investigated, rang-
ing from Byzantine Christianity to Arabic-Christian philosophers in the
Islamic world. Moreover, when Plethon and other Byzantine scholars intro-
duced Plato and later Platonists into Renaissance Italy, some of the inter-
pretative strategies of early Christian proponents of a philosophical religion
were used to integrate Platonism and Christianity – for example by Marsilio
Ficino, the main translator of Plato from Greek to Latin.
As for medieval Muslim and Jewish philosophers, a full account would
not only include additional authors from the classical period, such as Avi-
cenna in the East, and Ibn Bājja and Ibn Tufayl in the West. It would
also examine the post-classical philosophical tradition in the East that
begins with the integration of Avicenna’s philosophy into the curriculum
of traditional Islamic institutions of learning (the madrasa) and continues
until the nineteenth century. Thousands of philosophical works from this
period are extant whose scholarly study has only just begun.35 A compre-
hensive account would also include the Jewish philosophical tradition in
Christian Europe which unfolds in or responds to the framework estab-
lished by Maimonides. My brief discussions of Samuel ibn Tibbon in the
thirteenth century and Elijah Delmedigo in the fifteenth aim mainly to
clarify the positions to which Spinoza is responding. Concerning Spinoza’s
interpretation of Christianity, a more nuanced account would show that
he is not only engaged in a critical dialogue with medieval Muslim and
Jewish philosophy, but also with several other intellectual traditions – from
35 See Wisnovsky (2004).

the Neo-Stoicism of Justus Lipsius to the Quaker stance on the nature
of Scripture. Finally, the fate of the concept of a philosophical religion
after Spinoza’s critique of it also requires a much more comprehensive
examination than I can offer.
reason, religion, and autonomy: revising

the conventional wisdom
Although the interpretation of historical religions as philosophical religions
was set forth in a wide range of contexts from antiquity to the early modern
period, scholars have not recognized it as a distinctive way of thinking about
philosophy and religion. In the following sections I argue that in several
respects we should revise the conventional wisdom in light of the narrative
I propose.
An encounter between philosophy and religion?

One view challenged by the concept of a philosophical religion is that
medieval philosophy is best understood as an encounter between philoso-
phy and religion. There are two main ways of describing this encounter.
The first is the subordination thesis according to which philosophy became
the handmaid of religion. The standard version of this thesis asserts that
philosophy was used as a tool to clarify religious doctrines.36 According to
Harry Wolfson’s version, on the other hand, philosophy underwent a reli-
gious reinterpretation. Philo of Alexandria, Wolfson argues, revised “Greek
philosophic concepts” in light of Scripture. His interpretatio hebraica of
Greek philosophy became the model for subordinating philosophy to reli-
gion in all medieval intellectual traditions up to Spinoza.37 The second
way of describing the encounter between philosophy and religion is the
conflict thesis proposed by Leo Strauss and his students. According to
Strauss a sometimes cleverly disguised, yet irreconcilable conflict between
philosophy and religion is at the core of medieval thought.38
Despite the differences between these approaches, the model of the
encounter itself is rarely called into question.39 For my purpose it is
36 The description of philosophy as ancilla theologiae goes back to a passage in Peter Damian’s De
Divina Omnipotentia 7. For two classical statements of this view, see Baeumker (1927) and Gilson
(1929). This approach is also widespread among historians of Jewish philosophy. See the account of
Guttmann (1933) and Frank, Leaman, and Manekin (2000).
37 See Wolfson (1973), 60–70. Cf. Wolfson (1947), vol. 2, 439–60.
38 On Strauss’s approach, see below.
39 Of how little use it is for the study of Arabic philosophy has recently been stressed by Gutas (2002).
Reason, religion, and autonomy 29
sufficient to see that it is obviously inadequate for describing the project of
a philosophical religion. Let me stress that my contention does not refer to
its usefulness for a historical account of how this project came about. Here
it may prove helpful to adopt the distinction between outside perspective and
inside perspective used by ethnographers for the study of cultures.40 Philo,
Clement, and Origen, and al-Fārābı̄, Averroes, and Maimonides, of course,
thought about how philosophy relates to their religious tradition because
of the encounter between Greek philosophy and Judaism and Christianity
in antiquity and the encounter between Greek philosophy and Islam and
Judaism in the Middle Ages. Note, however, that an analogous case can
be made for pagan philosophers: Platonists, for example, who thought
about how philosophy relates to the poetry of Homer or to the Chaldean
oracles because of the encounter between Greek philosophy and pagan
cultural-religious traditions. Yet from the inside perspective of proponents
of a philosophical religion it makes no sense to look at philosophy and
religion as two distinct projects that came together in contingent historical
settings. Their aim is clearly not to produce a synthesis between philosophy
and religion, or to defend the one against the other, or to subordinate the
one to the other, and so forth. The distinction between philosophy and
religion is not meaningful to them: philosophy is the highest form of wor-
ship, the founders of religion were accomplished philosophers, religion’s
allegorical content is philosophy, religion’s historical forms are philosophy’s
handmaid, and moving from religion’s literal to its allegorical content is
only possible through studying philosophy!
On the other hand, the model of the encounter is useful for understand-
ing the inside perspective of the scholastic traditions in medieval Europe
which took shape after the translation of Greco-Arabic philosophy into
Latin. As I pointed out above, the integration of this corpus into Christian
contexts was not justified by the interpretation of Christianity as a philo-
sophical religion. Insofar as the historiography of philosophy is shaped by
the character of Christian philosophy, this also helps to explain why an
in-depth study of the concept and history of philosophical religions has
not been undertaken before.
When was autonomy invented?

According to Jerome Schneewind the eighteenth century witnessed a fun-
damental paradigm shift: it turned away from “a conception of morality
as obedience” to “a conception of morality as self-governance.” The “new
40 On the discussion of these concepts in the social sciences, see Headland, Pike, and Harris (1990).
outlook that emerged by the end of the eighteenth century centered on
the belief that all normal individuals are equally able to live together in
a morality of self-governance.”41 One key feature of the old conception
of morality is “the obedience we owe to God.” Another is the unequal
ability of human beings for moral agency. Since most “do not understand
the reasons for doing what morality directs,” they must submit to the
authority of divinely appointed guides with “threats of punishment as well
as offers of reward” ensuring “sufficient compliance to bring about moral
order.”42 While proponents of a philosophical religion certainly advocate
God’s rule, they clearly do not advocate “a conception of morality as obe-
dience.” In the ideal community all citizens enjoy perfect autonomy since
God’s rule and self-rule coincide. Although most proponents of a philo-
sophical religion think that this ideal community cannot be realized given
the diversity of human nature, they take one of religion’s principal aims
to be promoting rational self-rule – a community of “free men” in Plato’s
words (Leg. 720d). The simplistic dichotomy of autonomy and obedience is
replaced by a model of gradation according to which we can be more or less
autonomous. In a theocracy as envisaged by proponents of a philosophical
religion, maximizing autonomy is a central concern.
The Alexandrian project – between Athens and Jerusalem?

The prominent Philo scholar David Runia begins a programmatic paper
on “Philo, Alexandrian and Jew” as follows:
“What does Jerusalem have to do with Athens?” was the question posed by the
Church Father Tertullian in one of his powerful attacks on pagan culture. The
answer he expected his rhetorical question to receive was, of course: “nothing at
all”. Our answer in the context of this article might rather be: “Alexandria has to
do with them both”. . . . The aim of this contribution is to introduce the reader
to one of the most outstanding figures in the long history of Alexandria, the Jew
Philo. . . . This introductory account will chiefly concentrate on Philo’s thought as
seen from the perspective of the interaction between Greek and Jewish ideas that
takes place in his works.43
Runia is not the only scholar to quote Tertullian’s famous question. It
is invoked often to define the frame of reference within which scholars
discuss the nature of Hellenistic-Jewish and early Christian thought. The
assumption is that these intellectual traditions are best understood as an
encounter between Athens and Jerusalem, the two cities that, by metonymy,
41 Schneewind (1998), 4. 42 Ibid. 43 Runia (1990), 1.
represent philosophy and religion. Tertullian himself, as Runia notes, rejects
philosophy: it is the source of all Christian heresies, the “wisdom of the
world” of which Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:27 that it “is called foolishness
by the Lord” (Praes. haer. 7). For the most part, however, the attitude of
Hellenistic-Jewish and early Christian thinkers to Greek philosophy is less
antagonistic. Hence scholars often describe their work as a “synthesis” of
elements derived from Athens and Jerusalem. Henry Chadwick, one of the
foremost historians of Patristic thought, states the standard view as follows:
In a famous passage of high rhetoric Tertullian puts a question that has reverberated
down the centuries in the history of Western thought: “What”, he asks, “has Athens
to do with Jerusalem?” For his contemporary Clement of Alexandria and his junior
Origen, the answer is “Much in every way”. For they represent a coming together
of the categories of Biblical and Hellenic thinking, a synthesis which leaves an
indelible mark on subsequent theology.44
After setting up the basic framework in this way, scholars often go on to

examine how the elements from Athens and Jerusalem relate to each other
in a particular author, and then try to locate his “synthesis” on the two-city
map. Leaving aside the differences between the various proposals, my claim
is that the framework established by Tertullian is itself problematic. It is
on account of this framework that the works of philosophers like Philo,
Clement, and Origen are rarely studied from a distinctly philosophical
perspective.45 The philosophical perspective, however, is clearly the key
to understanding their project. Not only is it impossible to distinguish
their commitment to philosophy from their commitment to Judaism or
Christianity, but their model for explaining the nature and purpose of the
historical forms of their religion – that is, “Jerusalem” – is, in fact, dis-
tinctly “Athenian”! It is Plato’s concept of a pedagogical-political program
designed by philosophers for the guidance of non-philosophers. While
scholars generally agree that Plato had a significant influence on what they
describe as the “Athenian” side of the Alexandrians – their psychological,
cosmological, metaphysical, and ethical doctrines – I claim that Plato had
an even more significant influence on their interpretation of “Jerusalem”:
the laws, stories, exhortations, and practices of worship that make up
Judaism and Christianity. All of these, the Alexandrians argue, serve as
44 Chadwick (1966), 1.
45 There are, of course, important exceptions, for example Dillon’s chapter on Philo in his account of
Middle Platonism (Dillon 1977), or Boys-Stones’s examination of the Alexandrians in his account
of post-Hellenistic philosophy (Boys-Stones 2001).
philosophy’s handmaid. And they substantiate this claim through a philo-
sophical reinterpretation of the historical forms of their religion, modeled
on the philosophical reinterpretation of Greek cultural forms in Plato’s
Laws. Tertullian’s rhetoric, then, has done a considerable disservice to the
study of Jewish and Christian philosophy in antiquity. While the “Athens
versus Jerusalem” paradigm is useful for historical accounts from the out-
side perspective, it misrepresents how philosophers like Philo, Clement,
and Origen understood what they were doing.
Athens and Jerusalem – a perennial conflict?

In 1935 Leo Strauss argued that Plato’s political philosophy is the key
to understanding how medieval Muslim and Jewish philosophers from
al-Fārābı̄ onwards conceived the relationship between philosophy and reli-
gion. While I agree, of course, that Plato played an important role in the
medieval context, I disagree with how Strauss explains this role.46 Strauss’s
core argument invokes once again the “Athens versus Jerusalem” paradigm:
[Among] the experiences of the past . . . the broadest and deepest as far as we
Western men are concerned, are indicated by the name of the two cities Jerusalem
and Athens. Western man became what he is and is what he is through the coming
together of biblical faith and Greek thought.47
For Strauss Athens and Jerusalem are “incompatible.” While in Jerusalem
“the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord,” giving rise to a life of pious
obedience, in Athens “the beginning of wisdom is wonder,” giving rise to
a life devoted to rational inquiry. While both sides stress the importance
of morality, they do so for very different reasons. In Jerusalem morality is
the fulfillment of God’s will as set forth in the Divine Law. In Athens it is
a “condition” for “the quest for knowledge.”48 The approaches are incom-
patible because premodern philosophers hold that most human beings are
non-philosophers:
They believed that the gulf separating “the wise” and “the vulgar” was a basic
fact of human nature which could not be influenced by any progress of popular
education: philosophy, or science, was essentially a privilege of “the few.” They
46 For criticism of Strauss’s interpretation of medieval philosophy, see Harvey (2001), Tamer (2001),
Gutas (2002), and Davidson (2005).
47 Strauss (1967), 377. Elsewhere Strauss claims that “this conflict is characteristic of the West . . . in
the wider sense of the term, including . . . the whole Mediterranean basin” – that is, including the
Islamic world. Strauss (1981), 120–21.
48 Strauss (1967), 379–80, 403; cf. Strauss (1981), 118.
were convinced that philosophy as such was suspect to, and hated by, the majority
of men.49
If non-philosophers hate philosophy, they cannot be motivated to act

morally for the sake of contemplation. At the same time, philosophers reject
the theological foundation on which the morality of non-philosophers
depends: the belief in an anthropomorphic God who rewards obedience
and punishes disobedience.50 Hence it is impossible to be genuinely com-
mitted to both philosophy and religion. Whereas medieval philosophers
agree with religion’s modern critics on the philosophical case against reli-
gion, they insist on religion’s necessity for political reasons. Since the gulf
between “the wise” and “the vulgar” is “a basic fact of human nature,”
a community in which all citizens are guided by reason is out of reach.
Only religion can offer pedagogical-political guidance to “the vulgar.” If
the philosopher were to disclose his critique of religion in public, he
would subvert the community’s moral-political order and be persecuted
on the charge of impiety.51 Hence he conceals his true views behind “noble
lies” whose purpose is not to mislead, but to protect philosophy and the
moral-political order. The philosopher feigns to endorse a philosophical
concept of God that agrees with the religious views on which the moral-
ity of non-philosophers depends. Yet, through an esoteric art of writing
he at the same time signals his true views “between the lines” to poten-
tial philosophers – “the puppies of his race.”52 For it would be unjust to
prevent potential philosophers from actualizing their potential. As a con-
sequence the esoteric argument contradicts the exoteric argument. Strauss
suggests, for example, following an alleged “silence” of al-Fārābı̄, that Plato’s
arguments for the immortality of the soul in the Phaedo and elsewhere
are “accommodations to the accepted views” of “the vulgar” in fourth-
century Greece: “Fārābı̄’s Plato silently rejects Plato’s doctrine of a life after
death.”53
What are the implications of this narrative for the history of Platonism?
Plato is the first “political” philosopher in Strauss’s sense who concluded
49 Strauss (1941a), 34; cf. Strauss (1967), 398.

50 A “true philosopher,” according to Strauss, is a kind of skeptic for whom philosophy is “essentially
quest.” Strauss (1981), 122. The paradigmatic philosopher for Strauss is Socrates.
51 See Strauss (1941a), 36.
52 Ibid. Two classical examples of Strauss’s esoteric interpretation of medieval philosophical texts are
“The Literary Character of the Guide of the Perplexed” (Strauss 1941b) and “How Fārābı̄ Read Plato’s
Laws” (Strauss 1957). Note that both studies were placed in the middle of the essay collections in
which they were republished, an esoteric hint at their key importance for Strauss.
53 Strauss (1952), 13–15.
from the ill fate of Socrates that philosophy cannot be taught in public.
Since the Neoplatonists failed to grasp Plato’s true intention, they neglected
his political philosophy and developed the doctrines which he only pre-
tended to endorse, in particular his philosophical theology. Medieval
Muslim and Jewish philosophers, on the other hand, understood Plato’s
esoteric lesson. Hence they feigned to adopt the philosophical theology of
the Neoplatonists to persuade ordinary believers that their philosophy is in
agreement with the God of religion. In this way they protected themselves
from persecution and avoided subverting the Divine Law.54
There is no evidence that the medieval philosophers held Strauss’s
idiosyncratic notions of philosophy, religion, and their incompatibility.
On the contrary, they never tire to assert that philosophy and religion,
correctly understood, are in agreement. To make them endorse esoteri-
cally the opposite of what they say, Strauss introduces inflated notions of
persecution and the moral fragility of “the vulgar.” The one piece of evi-
dence that at first view seems to help Strauss is the view that philosophy
should not be taught in public. This is indeed a feature of the concept of a
philosophical religion as we saw. However, to concede that proponents of
a philosophical religion have the concept of an esoteric doctrine is a very
different thing from conceding that they esoterically hold the opposite of
what they say. Refraining from teaching philosophy in public is a measure
of caution to protect the beliefs of non-philosophers on which their perfec-
tion depends. While all citizens should be led as closely as possible to the
philosophical life, their individual strengths and weaknesses must be taken
into account. Strauss made much of al-Fārābı̄’s characterization of Plato
as an esoteric writer in the introduction to his Epitome of the “Laws”. In
order to prevent philosophy from falling into the wrong hands, al-Fārābı̄
argues, Plato normally speaks in parables, stating his true views only inter-
mittently. However, most proponents of a philosophical religion assert that
Plato speaks more prophetico which only shows how much their concept of
prophecy depends on Plato. The two works of which al-Fārābı̄ explicitly
says that they were written by Plato in this manner are the Timaeus and the
Laws. For Strauss this implies that al-Fārābı̄ correctly understood Plato’s
esoteric hint: the account of God as Nous ordering the universe and the
political community towards what is best is nothing but exoteric trapping.
Yet no textual evidence supports this claim. On the other hand, in both
54 See Strauss (1952). Muhsin Mahdi, a first-generation Straussian, calls the Neoplatonic legacy in al-
Fārābı̄ his “Platonism for the people” (Mahdi 2001, 3). Joshua Parens, a second-generation Straussian,
calls it “metaphysics as rhetoric” (Parens 1995).
the Timaeus and the Laws Plato is clearly reluctant to openly state that
the ordering cause of the universe and the excellent political community
is Nous. The few and careful references to the concept of God as Reason
perfectly illustrate what al-Fārābı̄ meant by his characterization of Plato
without doing violence to either author.55
Strauss’s narrative, however, not only lacks plausibility. It also makes the
concept of a philosophical religion look more unattractive than it needs
to. If Strauss is right, proponents of a philosophical religion were elitists
and notorious liars who held “the vulgar” in utter contempt. This is clearly
a distortion. To be sure, my intention is not to deny the elitist and non-
egalitarian features of their project. But these can be accounted for in a less
unpalatable way as we saw.
Spinoza – continuity or break?

In contemporary scholarship, Spinoza is often portrayed as marking a
fundamental break with the “Judeo-Christian” tradition. This break was
supposedly unavoidable because Spinoza’s philosophy cannot be reconciled
with the beliefs, practices, and institutions of Jews and Christians. How
can he identify God and Nature and hold on to the God of the Bible who
creates the world, performs miracles, talks to prophets, issues command-
ments, punishes and rewards, and incarnates in Christ? From Spinoza’s
excommunication to his critique of religion, evidence for the alleged break
seems to abound. One version of this story posits an encounter between
Greek philosophy and Judeo-Christianity at the beginning of the Com-
mon Era. In this encounter philosophy became the handmaid of theology
until Spinoza restored its independence and secular nature. Harry Wolfson
and Jonathan Israel, for example, agree on the main lines of this narrative.
But while Wolfson has some nostalgia for the subordination of philosophy
to religion, Israel celebrates Spinoza as philosophy’s liberator. For Wolf-
son, Spinoza’s work marks the end of “Philonic philosophy,” the period in
which philosophy served as ancilla theologiae:
Spinoza is daring, but he introduces no novelty. His daring consists in over-
throwing the old Philonic principles which by his time dominated the thought
of . . . religious philosophy for some sixteen centuries. But in overthrowing these
principles, all he did was to reinstate, with some modification, the old principles
of classical Greek philosophy. . . . Perhaps this is all one could expect of Spinoza
or of any other philosopher. For on all these religious issues there are only two
55 For a full discussion, see chapters 1 and 3.

alternatives. One was stated in the Hebrew Scripture, and the other in the various
writings of Greek philosophers. Thereafter, the great question in the history of
religious philosophy was whether to follow the one or the other, or to combine
the two. And in the history of religious philosophy, so conceived, two figures are
outstanding, Philo and Spinoza. Philo was the first to combine the two; Spinoza
was the first to break up the combination.56
Jonathan Israel describes the beginning of what he calls the “radical Enlight-
enment” as follows:
If philosophy itself was as old as pre-classical Greece . . . it had assuredly been
marginal to the life of society since the advent of the Christian empire in late
antiquity, from the time of Constantine the Great onwards. From then until
around 1650, philosophy remained the modest “serving-maid”, as some called it,
of theology. . . . It was only with the intellectual crisis of the late seventeenth-
century that the old hierarchy of studies with theology supreme and philosophy
and science her handmaidens, suddenly disintegrated. With this philosophy was
released from the previous subordination and became once again an independent
force potentially at odds with theology and the Churches. No longer the ancil-
lary of others, philosophers became a new breed, formidably different from the
subservient abstract theoreticians of former times.57
The protagonist of philosophy’s liberation is, of course, Spinoza. To be
sure, at the time of his excommunication Spinoza was saying harsh things
about religion that philosophers like Averroes and Maimonides would not
have tolerated.58 This, however, was an act of youthful rebellion from
which Spinoza quickly distanced himself. It is true also that Spinoza’s
critique of religion was momentous. After all he claimed that Scripture
is not true, something every Jew or Christian must take for granted –
whether Scripture’s truth is grounded on the intellectual perfection of the
religious community’s founders as Averroes and Maimonides argue, or on a
miraculous act of revelation as orthodox Christians held in Spinoza’s time.
In this way Spinoza helped to prepare the ground for dismissing Scripture
as a collection of “fantastic stories” and “arbitrary laws” by d’Holbach
and others. The main target of Spinoza’s critique of religion, however, is
the Calvinist church in the Netherlands which he perceived as a threat
to freedom of thought and expression. His critique is thus motivated by
historical circumstances rather than systematic concerns. It is not necessary
for Spinoza’s core argument for freedom of thought and expression and
56 Wolfson (1977), 64.

57 Israel (2001), 10. On Spinoza as “the key progenitor of the Radical Enlightenment,” see also Israel
(2010), 240.
58 For the following, see my argument in chapter 4.
was likely not part of the original plan of the Theological-Political Treatise.
On balance Spinoza was more concerned with reinterpreting Christianity
as a philosophical religion to ensure that non-philosophers follow the
prescriptions of reason. Nothing in his philosophy is incompatible with
this project. On the contrary: the relationship between philosophy, religion,
and politics in Spinoza is not intelligible if we fail to take his commitment
to the concept of a philosophical religion into account.
Spinoza did not resolve the tension between his philosophical reinter-
pretation of Christianity and his critique of religion. It is clear, however,
that throughout his writings – from the Cogitata Metaphysica to the late
correspondence with Henry Oldenburg – the concept of a philosophical
religion plays a prominent role in his thought. Although Spinoza is an
astute critic of this concept, he is also – and at least as importantly – its
last major representative. Spinoza thus joins Jewish and Christian philoso-
phers in antiquity – including, prominently, Philo! – as well as Muslim
and Jewish philosophers in the Middle Ages who did not turn philosophy
into the ancilla theologiae, but, on the contrary, reinterpreted the historical
forms of their religious tradition as ancilla philosophiae.
ch a p ter 1
Reason, divine nomoi, and self-rule in Plato
introduction
We expect philosophers to discuss matters of philosophical importance:
what distinguishes knowledge from belief, for example, what kinds of
things truly exist, whether there is a first cause, what makes a person
or a political arrangement just, and so forth. But why should they be
interested in establishing a detailed law code that regulates all areas of life –
from education, family, and government to trade, property, and crime?
Why should they spend time on setting up guidelines for composing
edifying stories? Or be concerned with speeches that employ more or less
sophisticated arguments to persuade citizens to follow the law? And why
should they care about where and how the gods are worshiped?
Many of the questions whose philosophical relevance is obvious were
first fully articulated by Plato. But Plato clearly also was very interested
in laws, stories, the power of persuasion, and the right way of worshiping
the gods. Although not prominent in the Socratic dialogues, these issues
are frequently discussed in dialogues of the middle and late period, for
example in the Republic, the Statesman, and the fictional historical-political
narrative of the Timaeus-Critias.1 Most importantly, much of Plato’s last
and longest dialogue, the Laws, is devoted to presenting them in a system-
atic manner. To understand why, consider the concept of justice, the key
moral and political concept in the Republic. Laws prescribe just actions
1 The Euthyphro, of course, discusses the nature of piety, as well as sacrifices and prayer, but Plato is not
concerned with prescribing particular practices of worship. For the chronological division of Plato’s
dialogues, see Brandwood (1990). I will refer to the dialogues according to the standard threefold
division into early, middle, and late dialogues. Note that I am not making any claims about the
historical Socrates when I speak of “Socratic” dialogues, “Socratic” politics, and so forth. I will argue,
however, that the philosophical-political project of the early dialogues differs from that in the middle
and late dialogues. The label “Socratic” is a convenient way to mark this difference. My argument
does not depend on a developmental model. It would work just as well on the assumption that
Plato deliberately laid out problems in the Socratic dialogues to which the later dialogues propose a
solution (or some variation of these options).
38
Introduction 39
and stories convey a notion of justice by telling about divine or human
exemplars of a just life. Persuasive speeches give reasons for doing what the
laws prescribe. Finally, worshiping the gods turns the attention to divine
things whose apprehension is the goal of a just person.2 But of what benefit
is all this to philosophers who live a life ordered by reason towards the
perfection of reason?3 They need no laws or persuasive speeches in order
to act justly since the philosophical life embodies justice for Plato. And
since they grasp the true nature of justice through dialectics, they also
need no stories representing the just life. Nor do they need to take part
in traditional forms of worship. Since the objects of knowledge are the
realm of the divine, a philosopher’s life, devoted to pursuing knowledge, is
itself the highest form of worship.4 Hence in a polis inhabited by perfect
philosophers there would be no need for laws, stories, persuasive speeches,
or non-philosophical forms of worship. The question Plato is dealing with,
then, is how to offer pedagogical-political guidance to non-philosophers. He
is clearly concerned with the beliefs, practices, and institutions that shape
the life of citizens inside the cave. The pedagogical-political program Plato
proposes for them is described as “divine nomoi” in the Laws, because it
consists of beliefs, practices, and institutions established by God through
the mediation of philosopher-rulers. The aim of divine nomoi is to make
the life of non-philosophers resemble as much as possible the life of philoso-
phers. As God orders nature towards what is best, philosopher-rulers do
the same for the polis.5 This does not mean that non-philosophers can only
share in the life of reason through obedience. The aim of divine nomoi is
a community of “free men” that embodies as much of the polis of perfect
philosophers as human nature allows.
Unlike the order of nature, however, whose excellence is only constrained
by deficiencies of the material, the deficiencies constraining the moral-
political order are both natural and cultural. The citizens are for the most
part non-philosophers by nature and grew up under beliefs, practices, and
institutions that lack a philosophical foundation. Whereas in the Republic
Plato proposes to replace the existing beliefs, practices, and institutions
2 As we will see below, this is not the only purpose of religious festivals and other forms of worship.
3 By “philosopher” I mean the idealized portrait of the “true philosopher” that Plato draws in particular
in the middle period. See, for example, the contrast between “true” and “counterfeit” philosopher in
Rep. 485d.
4 See Rep. 500b–d. In the Phaedo Plato appropriates the vocabulary of Greek mystery religions: “those
who have practiced philosophy in the right way” will become “purified and initiated” and “dwell
with the gods” (69c–d; cf. 81a).
5 Note that I do not mean to imply that Plato is a monotheist. For the concept of God that I attribute
to Plato, see my discussion below.
40 Reason, divine nomoi, and self-rule in Plato
through a cultural revolution, in the Laws he proposes to reinterpret them
in light of a philosophical concept of the good. This reinterpretation of
Greek cultural materials is presented as a model that can be adapted to
other cultural contexts:
[W]e should not forget anyone else who at some time may be faced with such
a choice and wish to adopt, according to his own way of life [kata ton heautou
tropon], what is dear [to philon] to him from his own native country. (Leg. 739b)
Adaptations of the Platonic program will be my concern in the following

chapters. Here I will examine how the distinction between philosophers
and non-philosophers is motivated in Plato and what its implications are
for Plato’s moral-political project. One caveat, however, before I begin:
there is no scholarly consensus on the interpretation of Plato. My interpre-
tation is informed by how Plato was understood by later proponents of a
philosophical religion. I think that this interpretation has much going for
it, but systematically situating and defending it in the context of modern
Plato scholarship is not my purpose in this book.
socratic politics
The distinction between philosophers and non-philosophers accompanies
philosophy from the beginning. At first it is mainly an epistemological
distinction. Philosophers claim to grasp the true nature of things which
radically differs from the beliefs of “the many” (hoi polloi). Heraclitus, for
example, complains that the many – stubbornly clinging to their imaginary
beliefs – “never understand” the Logos, the universal law of being, according
to which “all things happen” and “are one” (DK 22 B1, B2, B50). Similarly
Parmenides contrasts the true notion of being, which is undifferentiated
and timeless, to the hopelessly confused “opinions of mortals” (DK 28 B8).
This is how he describes their sorry state:
Helplessness guides the wandering thought in their breasts, and they are carried
along, deaf and blind at once, bewildered, undiscriminating hordes [tethêpotes
akrita phyla] who believe that to be and not to be are the same and not the same.
(DK 28 B6)
Socrates professes to “know nothing at all” about the true nature of things
and claims that this kind of investigation is irrelevant to human concerns
(Ap. 19c).6 He can thus disregard the epistemological distinction between
philosophers and non-philosophers. On the other hand, Socrates conceives
living well as a science in analogy to medicine whose object is health.7 This,
however, does not reopen the distinction between philosophers and non-
philosophers because the science of living is accessible to all members of the
political community. Since Socrates takes for granted that virtue and well-
being go together, the good life is both objectively good and the best life for
us.8 Moreover, knowing the good entails the motivation to do it and thus
is sufficient for living well. Since we cannot act against better knowledge
on account of a weak will, virtue and vice coincide with knowledge and
ignorance of the good. In order to live well, then, it is enough to master
what Socrates calls the “science of measurement” (hê metrêtikê technê) in
the Protagoras – that is, the ability to determine which action is best
(356d–e).9 All virtues are ultimately knowledge of the good instantiated in
different contexts. A person who acts on this knowledge will eat and drink
moderately, confront obstacles courageously, treat fellow-citizens justly, and
so forth.10
To know the good, however, is not only sufficient, but also necessary
for living well, because in Socrates’s view we can rely neither on traditional
concepts of the good nor on true beliefs about the good. Why does Socrates
dismiss tradition as a guide to the good – the view of Anytus, for example,
who was one of the prosecutors in Socrates’s trial? Moral values, Anytus
argues, are transmitted by “fine and good citizens” (kaloi k’agathoi) from
one generation to the next (Men. 92e–93a).11 For one thing beliefs about
the good obviously need not be true only because they were handed down
6 Cf. the account of Socrates’s “human wisdom” in Ap. 20d–23b. See also Xenophon, Mem. 1.1 11–14;
Aristotle, Metaph. 1.6, 987b1–2; Cicero, Tusc. 4.10.
7 The use of medical knowledge as a model for moral knowledge is frequent in Plato. See, for example,
Prt. 313e, Grg. 461b–465e, and the analogy between virtue and health in Rep. 444c–445b. For the
Phaedrus and the Laws, see my discussion below.
8 See Prt. 358b where all actions that lead to “living painlessly and pleasantly” are said to be “fine”
(kalai) and fine actions, in turn, are said to be “good” (agathon) and “beneficial” (ôphelimon). “Fine”
here means “morally good,” and “good” and “beneficial” mean “good for us.” Cf. 359e–360a. In
Laches 199d–e knowledge of the good is identified with “the whole of virtue,” a thesis argued in
detail in the last part of the Protagoras where the good and the harmful are identified with pleasure
and pain (see 351b ff.). For knowledge as “the only existing thing which makes a man happy and
fortunate,” see Euthd. 282c; cf. 292b.
9 Note that the “science of measurement” is introduced only for measuring pleasure. My account
assumes that pleasure and pain in this context stand in for good and bad.
10 Cf. the argument in the Protagoras for the claim that “everything is knowledge [epistêmê] – justice,
moderation, courage” (361b).
11 Cf. the account of the “Old Education” in Aristophanes, The Clouds, 961–83.
by tradition. In Socrates’s time, moreover, there was no tradition of undis-
puted authority. The transformation of Athens from an aristocracy into a
democracy, for example, produced new standards of virtue: courage, the
traditional virtue of the aristocracy, became less important for a successful
life than the ability to persuade in the assembly.12 From Herodotus we learn
how the encounter with other cultures led the Greeks to realize that local
customs and values were not universally recognized moral norms. Thus, a
burial ritual considered pious in Greece was considered an abomination in
India and vice versa (Hdt. 3.38). Thucydides, finally, gives a vivid account
of how established moral norms were discarded under extreme conditions
such as a plague or civil war, both of which Athens experienced in the
second half of the fifth century (Th. 2.52–53). He also describes the slide of
normative language, in particular how the impact of the civil war between
Athens and Sparta modified the meaning of moral predicates. Thus behav-
ior considered rash in times of peace came to be considered courageous in
times of war (3.81–84). In all three examples that which counts as virtue is
not always and everywhere the same, but is relative to a particular context
shaped by political, cultural, and other circumstances. The pressure on tra-
ditional norms is well captured in a passage from Plato’s Seventh Letter.13 In
his youth, Plato writes, Athens “was no longer guided by the customs and
practices of our fathers.” Then he explains why he did not enter politics:
And the corruption of our laws and our customs was proceeding at such amazing
speed that whereas at first I had been full of zeal for public life, when I noted these
changes and saw how unstable everything was, I became in the end quite dizzy.
(325d–e)
We can look at Protagoras and Socrates as proposing alternative responses
to this experience. Whereas Protagoras argues that morality is no more
than convention and “man the measure of all things” (Tht. 152a), Socrates
aims to replace the authority of tradition through knowledge of the
good.14
However, even if we cannot rely on the authority of tradition, why should
true beliefs about the good not be able to take the place of knowledge?
12 For the connection of courage in battle and aristocratic privileges, see, for example, Iliad 12, 310–21.
To the skills required in a democracy, on the other hand, the educational program of the sophists
bears witness; see, for example, Prt. 318a–319a. The model for success in democratic Athens is Pericles
rather than Achilles.
13 I am assuming the Seventh Letter to be authentic or at least to reflect authentic Platonic views.
14 The anonymous Dissoi Logoi, for example, written c.400 bce, presents a long list of things considered
good, proper, and so forth in one context, but bad, shameful, and so forth in another. Plato sums
up this position in Theaetetus 172a–b.
For practical purposes the former seem to be as good as the latter. To use
Plato’s own example from the Meno: if I intend to reach the city Larissa
in Thessaly I will choose the right way both if I know the way and if I
have a true belief about the way (97a–c). Likewise I will do the right thing
both if I know the good and if I have a true belief about the good. For two
reasons Socrates thinks that true beliefs are not enough. First, there is no
way to decide whether a belief is true, for example the explanation given
to us of the way to Larissa. Having true beliefs is a matter of luck – like
“blind people who happen to travel the right road” (Rep. 506d). Second, if
true beliefs are not “tied down” through reasons they can be easily replaced
with false ones:
For true beliefs as long as they remain, are a fine thing and all they do is good, but
they are not willing to remain long, and they escape from a man’s soul, so that they
are not worth much until one ties them down through an account of the reason
why [aitias logismos]. (Men. 97e–98a)
What if on our way to Larissa we meet another person who persuades us

that we are headed the wrong way and gives us new directions? In this case
one belief is substituted for another and in the end we may not arrive at
our destination at all. This problem does not arise if a set of true beliefs
is available whose authority is not in doubt. As we saw, however, Athens
in Socrates’s time was a place where the question how to live was much
disputed. Consider the case of Hippocrates, the young Athenian aristocrat
portrayed in the opening scene of the Protagoras (310b). Hippocrates was
likely brought up on the view that being good depends on the traditional
aristocratic virtue of courage. At present, however, he is most eager to
become a student of Protagoras who “promises to turn men into good
citizens” (319a). Hence his childhood belief is about to be replaced by
a new one: that virtue is the ability to persuade a democratic assembly.
Even if through luck Hippocrates hits on the true notion of virtue – for
example because Socrates tells him that virtue is justice – he will not be
able to hold on to it without “tying it down” through reasons. It will
“escape” his soul once a false belief about virtue is presented to him with
sufficient persuasion. This is why Hippocrates must become a “doctor of
the soul” who knows the good and thus can evaluate Protagoras’s teachings
(313e). In Hippocrates’s case, therefore, true beliefs clearly cannot replace
knowledge.
As long as the question how to live is contested we must all become
doctors of the soul, able to make our own prescriptions. For if we follow
the prescriptions of this or that authority, our life will only turn out
well through luck. Since for Socrates knowledge of the good entails the
motivation to do it, a doctor of the soul will also be motivated to follow
his prescriptions. What reason prescribes coincides with what he desires.
Hence Socrates’s case for knowing the good is also a case for rational
self-rule.
The key to knowledge of the good, according to Socrates, is philosophical
debate – the elenchos: if we hold a belief about the good that is refuted in
the debate, we are freed from the illusion of knowledge. If the belief is not
refuted, we have reason to consider it true. Each round in which a belief
remains unrefuted “ties it down” further.15 Since we always act on what we
believe to be good, the elenchos is our best bet to ensure that we pursue
what is good, rather than what only appears so. Hence Socrates’s claim that
he is able to bring true happiness, unlike an “Olympian victor” who only
“makes you think yourself happy” (Ap. 36d–e). Engaging in philosophical
debate, then, is at the heart of the Socratic project:
It is the greatest good [to megiston agathon] for man to discuss virtue every day and
those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and
others. For the unexamined life [ho anexetastos bios] is not worth living. (Ap. 38a)
But can the elenchos really accomplish all this? After all, Socrates famously
disavows knowledge, claiming that the only advantage he has over his fellow
citizens is to know that he knows nothing. If this is the outcome of a life
devoted to “testing myself and others,” how can Socrates claim that it is the
greatest good? It rather seems to lead to the paralysis that Meno experiences
who compares Socrates to a “torpedo fish” because his mind and tongue
became “numb” after Socrates refuted his beliefs about virtue (Men. 80a–b).
Socrates himself, however, clearly acts on beliefs about the good that were
tested in many elenchoi. Why, then, does he disclaim knowing how to live?
One way to solve this puzzle is to take knowledge of the good as an ideal
that we can approach by testing our beliefs about the good, yet never reach
because the elenchos cannot justify beliefs in an irrefutable manner. When
Socrates disclaims knowledge, therefore, he signals that even beliefs that
were tested many times remain in principle refutable. Socrates claims, for
example, not to know that doing injustice is worse than suffering injustice
while at the same time asserting that this belief is “held down and bound
15 In any case this is how Socrates seems to think that the elenchos works which is a notorious problem
in the Socrates interpretation. For the elenchos only shows that the belief under examination is either
inconsistent or consistent with other beliefs a person holds. For a classical statement of the problem,
see Vlastos (1983). As far as I know, no convincing solution has yet been proposed.
by arguments of iron and adamant” which nobody he ever met was able to
contradict “without being ridiculous” (Grg. 508c–509c).16
Is the Socratic project a political project? In the Apology Socrates says that he
deliberately stayed out of Athens’s public affairs because “a man who really
fights for justice must lead a private, not a public, life if he is to survive for
even a short time” (32a). In the Gorgias, however, he is praised as the only
Athenian to practice “the true science of politics [politikê technê]” (521d). If
becoming a doctor of the soul is the key to the good life, a good politician
would try to turn all citizens into doctors of the soul. And this is precisely
what Socrates does. His relentless effort on the marketplace of Athens to
direct his fellow-citizens to knowledge of the good by engaging them in
philosophical discussions bears witness to the eminently political character
of his project.17 In this respect Socrates leads a very public life, even if
he tries to avoid political office. Consider how he declines to give up his
philosophical mission in the Apology:
Citizens of Athens, I am grateful and I am your friend, but I will obey the God
rather than you, and as long as I draw breath and am able, I shall not cease to
practice philosophy, to exhort you and in my usual way to point out to anyone
of you [hostis hymôn] whom I happen to meet [entynchanô]: Good Sir, . . . are you
not ashamed of your eagerness to possess as much wealth, reputation, and honors
as possible, while you do not care for nor give thought to wisdom or truth, or the
best possible state of your soul? Then, if one of you disputes this and says he does
care, I shall . . . question him, examine him, and test him, and if I do not think
he has attained the goodness that he says he has, I shall reproach him because he
attaches little importance to the most important things and greater importance to
inferior things. I shall treat in this way anyone I happen to meet, young and old,
citizen and stranger. . . . Be sure that this is what the God orders me to do, and I
16 See also Crito 46b–e where Socrates is ready to test – and if necessary revise – his most basic
convictions at the end of his life.
17 Richard Kraut (1984) has assembled a number of passages that suggest the low esteem in which
Socrates held “the many” (196–97). According to Kraut these passages show “the permanent cor-
ruption of the many” (198) in Socrates’s view. But Kraut also attributes to Socrates the “aim . . . to
change the attitude of everyone in the city . . . , not just a few members of the upper class” (200–1).
This project, portrayed so vividly in the Apology, would be Sisyphean if Socrates thought that the
citizens were for the most part permanently corrupt. I think the reason for Socrates’s negative view
of the many is that they live an unexamined life in fact, not that it is impossible for them in principle
to live an examined life. For Kraut the comparison of the science of living to the science of breeding
horses (see Ap. 25a–b) implies that the former can only be mastered by a few experts (198). In my
view the comparison serves to stress the necessity of a science of living that the many lack. It is surely
not impossible for all citizens to learn to breed horses, although it would be silly. It is not at all silly,
on the other hand, for all citizens to learn how to live. For the question how to live is something
“that even a man of little intelligence would take more seriously than anything else” (Grg. 500c–d).
think there is no greater blessing for the city than my service to the God. . . . I was
placed in this city by the God . . . as on a horse, great and of noble birth, which
was sluggish because of its size and needed to be stirred up by a kind of gadfly. . . . I
never cease to stir up each and every one of you [heis hekastos], to persuade you
and reproach you all day long and everywhere I sit down [that is, like a gadfly on
a horse]. (Ap. 29d–31a; cf. 33b)
The Apology portrays Socrates as systematically examining the claims to

knowledge of the different social groups in Athens: politicians, artists,
and craftsmen, leading them to realize that they do not even know that
they know nothing (see 21b–23b). Many of Plato’s early dialogues present
Socrates carrying out the Apology’s program: he involves two generals
(Laches), a rhapsode (Ion), a diviner-priest (Euthyphro), young Athenian
aristocrats (Charmides), and other characters in elaborate philosophical dis-
cussions about virtue.18 For Socrates, then, all citizens can be directed to
knowledge of the good. This does not mean that all citizens are in some
fundamental way equal. For one thing we can only approach, but not
attain, knowledge of the good through elenchoi. And how close we come
depends on how well we do in testing our beliefs. The epistemic quality
of the citizens’ lives can accordingly vary. However, the ideal of Socratic
politics is a community of philosophers who have replaced their unex-
amined beliefs about the good through knowledge. All members of this
ideal community live outside the cave. As doctors of the soul they follow
their own prescriptions and thus need no pedagogical-political guidance
through laws, stories, persuasive speeches, and practices of worship.
Is Socrates’s project also a religious project? Although Socrates is accused of

atheism, Plato takes care to stress throughout the Apology that what he is
engaged in is an “investigation in the service of the God” (22a). However,
while Socrates does not dismiss the claim of the God that “no one is wiser”
than Socrates, he does not accept it on authority either. Instead he examines
it to find out whether it is true and what it means. The “examined life,”
18 It is true that the interlocutors are not randomly selected; most are in one way or another in
leadership positions. Although Socrates’s discussion with craftsmen is explicitly mentioned in the
Apology (22d–e), Plato does not include them among the characters of the early dialogues. Part
of Plato’s aim seems to be to show that the actual leaders, educators, and so forth do not have
the required expert knowledge for carrying out their tasks. But whatever the social status of the
interlocutors, it does not exclude them from the multitude, since the multitude is not confined to a
specific social or professional class (cf. Kraut (1984), 199–203). For my argument it is sufficient to see
that among the citizens subjected to Socrates’s examination are many who would be excluded from a
philosophical education according to the selection criteria of the Republic. Note that in Xenophon,
Socrates is less selective. His interlocutors include, for example, the hetaira Theodote (Mem. 3.11).
then, is neither in conflict with religion nor guided by religious authority.
We do not learn in the Apology what the nature of the “God” is who sent
Socrates on his gadfly mission. But Plato links the Apology dramatically to
the Euthyphro and the Phaedo which taken together provide clues for how
he proposes to interpret Socrates’s concept of the divine. The Euthyphro
takes place just before the trial described in the Apology. Socrates meets the
diviner-priest Euthyphro on his way to answer the charges of “impiety.” In
their discussion, he is clearly skeptical about the traditional representation
of the gods set forth by the poets: “And do you believe,” Socrates asks, “that
there really is war among the gods, and terrible enmities and battles, and
other such things as are told by the poets?” (Euthphr. 6b–c). This is borne
out in the Apology: Socrates defends himself only against the charge of not
believing “in gods at all,” not against the charge of not believing in “the
gods in whom the city believes” (26b–c). Finally, in the Phaedo, which is set
during the last hours before Socrates’s execution, Plato provides a fictional
account of Socrates’s intellectual concerns as “a young man.” Among others,
Socrates reminisces how:
one day I heard someone reading . . . from a book of Anaxagoras, and saying that
it is Reason [nous] who directs and is the cause of everything. I was delighted with
this cause and . . . thought that if this were so, the directing Reason would direct
everything and arrange each thing in the way that was best. (Phd. 97c)
When he actually reads Anaxagoras, however, Socrates is disappointed
because natural phenomena are explained in materialist-mechanistic terms,
rather than through the activity of Reason. Of course, this does not imply
that Socrates dismisses the concept of Reason ordering all things towards
what is best. What emerges from the three dialogues, then, is that Plato’s
Socrates was neither an atheist nor shared the religious beliefs of his fellow
citizens insofar as these were based on the false theology of the poets.
Instead he expresses enthusiasm for a concept that becomes central in
Plato’s later philosophical theology: the concept of God as Reason.19 This
concept fits well with the Socratic project in the Apology whose aim can be
described as establishing the rule of Reason in the moral-political realm by
converting all citizens into doctors of the soul and thus ordering the polis
towards what is best. The ideal of Socratic politics, then, is a community
in which self-rule and God’s rule coincide.20
Why is Socrates so keen on directing the lives of his fellow-citizens
to what is best through elenchoi? Why did he not opt for a private life
19 See Menn (1995). 20 See Cornford (1935).

“withdrawn from the many” (Epicurus, Sent. 14) in a setting like Epicurus’s
Garden where he could have spent his time discussing philosophy with
like-minded friends? According to Pericles citizens in democratic Athens
do not get “angry” at their “neighbor for doing what he likes [in private]”
(Th. 2.37). Socrates, however, deliberately rejects this option, citing his
obligation to “obey the God.” If we identify Socrates’s God with Reason,
as Plato invites us in the Phaedo, we may venture a guess how Plato would
answer the question of Socrates’s motivation. In the Timaeus the goodness
of God as Reason entails that he is “without envy” (aphthonos) and hence
wants “everything else to become as much like himself as possible” (Ti.
29d–e).21 Applied to the moral-political realm we could say that Socrates
not only imitates Reason in what he does – directing things to what is
best – but also in why he does it: because he is “without envy” and wants
to make all members of the political community “as much like himself as
possible.”
the rule of god as reason

Throughout the later dialogues, directing the citizens to what is best ought
to be the goal of the moral-political order according to Plato. Consider a few
examples. At the beginning of the Protagoras Socrates questions Protagoras’s
ability to make young Athenians like Hippocrates better (318c–d). He also
casts doubt on the competence of Athenian politicians like Pericles because
they fail to make their own sons virtuous (see 319e–320b). This criticism
is reiterated in the Gorgias: Pericles, Cimon, Miltiades, and Themistocles
were unable to turn the citizens into good citizens, in contrast to Socrates
who alone takes up “the true science of politics” (521d). Also in the Gorgias
Socrates denies that rhetoric as practiced by Gorgias and Callicles is a
science, since it only “guesses at what is pleasant with no consideration
for what is best” (465a). The true science of politics, by contrast, aims at
“what is best” by making the citizens just (464b–c). In the Republic, the
political community is ordered by philosopher-rulers towards what is best
(see 420b–421c; 500b–501c; 540a–b). In book 10, moreover, Plato criticizes
the poets, in particular Homer and Hesiod, because, just like the politicians,
they failed to make the citizens better (see 599c–600e). In the Statesman
“the truest criterion of right government” is whether the ruler does what is
“to the benefit of the citizens” (296e). A wise ruler ought “to bring it about
21 Cf. the Symposium where Plato mentions the desire to give birth to virtue in others as one response
to the experience of beauty (209c–e).
The rule of God as Reason 49
that [the citizens] become better than they were before” (297a–b). To this
end he must master the science of correctly weaving together the virtues in
the soul and the state (see 305e–311c). In the Laws, finally, “the science of
politics” is described as “fostering a good character” (650b) and the aim of
divine nomoi is to lead the citizens to “the highest virtue” (630a–631a).
Like Socratic politics, the moral-political order proposed in the later
dialogues can be described as theocratic: the goal is to establish the rule
of Reason through beliefs, practices, and institutions that order the com-
munity towards what is best.22 Something ordered towards what is best is
rationally ordered and hence divinely ordered on account of Plato’s concept
of God as Reason. As we saw, the project to explain the order of things
through the causality of Reason is already outlined in the Phaedo where
Reason is said to “direct everything and arrange each thing in the way that
is best” (97c).23 While Plato’s Forms offer an explanation of what things
are, they do not explain why they are ordered in the way they are ordered.
The Forms account, for example, for the defining features of water, air, fish,
and birds, but not for why fish are in water, air is above water, and birds
fly in the air. Explaining this is the role of Reason. Although the project
is not pursued further in the Phaedo, it remains a background assumption
from the middle dialogues onwards. In the Republic, for example, Plato
claims that a person who studies “the motions of the stars” will recognize
“that the craftsman [dêmiourgos] of the heavens arranged them and all that
is in them in the finest way possible for such things” (530a). Similarly in
the Laws he approves of those who say “that it is Nous who has ordered
everything in the heavens” (967b). In the Philebus Plato contends that
“all the wise agree . . . that Nous is king for us of heaven and earth” (29c).
But only in the Timaeus does he actually attempt to explain the natural
order through God as Reason. It is not surprising that Reason is referred
to through anthropomorphic representations, for example as “craftsman,”
since Plato declares from the outset that finding “the Maker and Father of
this universe is hard enough,” but declaring “him to everyone is impossible”
(28c). In a number of passages, however, he carefully signals that the crafts-
man is a stand-in for Reason, recognized, as we saw, by “all the wise” as
the “king . . . of heaven and earth.” Thus in 47e the work of the craftsman
is described as “that which was crafted through Nous” and similar refer-
ences occur in 39e and 48a. We will see that the representation of Reason
22 Note that the term “theocracy” was first used by Flavius Josephus in Against Apion 2.165–66. The
concept, however, is Platonic.
23 For the following, cf. Menn (1995).
as craftsman has pedagogical-political reasons. It should not mislead us,
however, into conceiving God’s activity in an anthropomorphic way. God
does not act on the basis of deliberation and choice. Rather, since God is
“good” and something good cannot “become envious of anything, . . . he
wanted everything to become as much like himself as possible” (29e). God,
in other words, is compelled by his nature to create the greatest possible
good. The world’s order, in turn, is best explained in terms of the prin-
ciple of plenitude that equates being and perfection. A perfect world is a
complete world for Plato – that is, a world that includes all things, from
the most perfect to the least perfect (see 30c–31b; 41b–c). Human beings
occupy an intermediate level on this scale: they are above minerals, plants,
and animals, but below the heavens and the world soul. Finally, since God
wants “everything to become as much like himself as possible,” the goal
towards which the world is ordered is not outside God, but God himself.
Turning to Plato’s political writings, already the Republic asserts that
“the thing that everyone has always believed to be best, namely Reason,”
should be “king” of the polis (607a).24 In the Laws the Athenian suggests
that the entire politeia should be called “after the God who truly [alêthôs]
rules over men who have nous,” thus clearly implying a theocracy ruled by
Reason (713a).25 What counts as nomos in this politeia – described as “divine
politeia” at 965d – is precisely “the ordering [dianomê] of Reason [nous]”
(714a; cf. 836a; 957c). The entire law-code should resemble parents “who
love and have nous,” not “some tyrant and despot” (859a). The criterion to
determine whether nomoi are divine, according to the Laws, is whether they
order the lives of the citizens towards what is best which means directing
them to “Reason [nous] who rules all things” (631b–d). Hence God as
Reason is not only the goal towards which nature is ordered, but the goal
towards which the citizens ought to be directed as well.
To say that Plato advocates a theocracy in the form of a community
ordered by Reason does not imply that Plato is a monotheist.26 The rela-
tionship between Reason, the Form of the good, and the remaining Forms
24 Note that Plato uses “logos” instead of “nous” in this passage. Cf. also 590d where Plato argues that “it
is better for everyone to be ruled by the divine [theion] and the reasonable [phronimon], preferably
within himself and his own, otherwise imposed from without, so that as far as possible all will . . . be
governed by the same thing.”
25 Cf. Laks (2005), 22.
26 As Michael Frede (2001) has persuasively argued, it is perfectly defensible to describe Plato (and
other pagan philosophers) as monotheists. The concept of the divine of philosophers like Philo,
Clement, or Origen is hardly more unified than Plato’s. However, nothing in my argument depends
on settling this question. If Plato were a decatheist, for example, and one of his ten gods were Reason
we could still describe a polis ordered by Reason as a theocracy.
is not clear from the dialogues.27 It seems that in Plato’s ontology Reason
is below the Form of the good which in the Republic is said to be “superior
to [being] in rank and power” (509b) and “the first principle of everything”
(511b). I take this to mean that the Form of the good is superior to being
beautiful or just for example – that is, it lacks features distinguishing it
from other things. At the same time it is all things as undifferentiated unity
and hence the most perfect being. Reason, by contrast, is and knows the
Forms and their order, thus providing the standard of perfection to all
things below it.28
The details of this sketch are the object of much scholarly dispute. To
describe Plato’s best political order as a theocracy, however, we only need to
accept that something well ordered is rationally ordered and hence divinely
ordered because Reason is something divine for Plato. My argument does
not depend on settling the question what the exact nature of Reason is and
how it is related to other divine things in Plato. Note also that the rule of
Reason does not require a specific form of government. For the Platonic
Socrates it is best realized in a community in which God’s rule and self-rule
coincide. In Plato’s later political philosophy it is established through the
rule of philosophers. Their power is unlimited in the Republic, but limited
through a system of checks and balances in the Laws. For my purpose the
details of the constitutional structure are not important, since any form
of government that ensures a rational political order is a theocracy in the
sense I use the term.
why the philosopher’s life is best

What is the good studied by the doctor of the soul? In the Apology Socrates
urges his fellow citizens not to care about “wealth, reputation, and honors,”
but about “wisdom” and “truth” in order to attain the “best state” of the
soul. In the later dialogues the good is clearly equated with the perfection
of reason, the feature of our nature on account of which we are human (see
Rep. 588c–d; cf. Ti. 42a). The more we perfect reason, in turn, the more
we share in the divine:
27 Note also that Reason delegates the fashioning of mortal living beings to lesser, created gods (Ti.
69c).
28 Reason of course knows the Forms which are its model for fashioning the physical world in the
Timaeus (29a). But Plato does not explicitly say that Reason also is the Forms. Already Middle
Platonists, however, identified the Forms with God’s intellecta as we will see in the next chapter.
Moreover, in the Republic the Forms are said to have been made by “the God” or “the craftsman”
(597b–d) which can be interpreted as implying that they are the products of Reason’s intellectual
activity.
[I]f a man has seriously devoted himself to the love of learning and to true wis-
dom, . . . then there is absolutely no way that his thoughts can fail to be immortal
and divine [phronein men athanata kai theia], should truth come within his grasp.
And to the extent that human nature can partake in immortality, he can in no way
fail to achieve this: constantly caring for his divine part as he does, . . . he must
indeed be supremely happy [diapherontôs eudaimôn]. (Ti. 90b–c)
The objects that we apprehend are the Forms and their order:
[The philosopher] as he looks at and studies things that are well-ordered and
always the same, . . . imitates [mimeisthai] them and tries to become like them
[aphomoiousthai] as much as he can. . . . Then the philosopher, by consorting with
what is divine and ordered . . . himself becomes as divine and ordered as a human
being can be. (Rep. 500c–d)
To apprehend the Forms means to apprehend the things that are one,
eternal, and immutable and hence have true being (beauty itself, justice
itself, and so forth), unlike their physical instantiations which are many,
subject to generation, change, and corruption and thus in between being
and not being (beautiful, just, and so forth). Whereas the Forms are appre-
hended through reason and are the objects of knowledge, their physical
instantiations are apprehended through the senses and are the objects of
opinion.29 Given that the Forms are superior to their physical instantia-
tions and knowledge is superior to opinion, Plato has both metaphysical
and epistemological reasons for claiming that the best life is the contem-
plative life. This life is also the highest form of worship. If God as Reason
is and knows the Forms and their order, we share in God to the extent
we apprehend the Forms. In light of this we can interpret the injunction
of the Theaetetus – “to become like God as much as possible” – as a call
to become like Reason by apprehending the Forms (176a–b).30 There is
some indirect evidence in support of this interpretation. The Theaetetus
passage is part of Plato’s response to the moral relativism attributed to
Protagoras. Whereas for Protagoras “whatever each city judges to be just”
is just, for Plato God is the absolute standard of justice (Tht. 172a–b;
176a–c). This claim is echoed in the Laws: “For us God is to the highest
degree the measure of all things, much more so than a man, as some people
29 See Rep. 474b–480a and the ontological and epistemological implications of the discussion of the
Form of the good in books 6 and 7; cf. Ti. 27d–28a. These distinctions are, in one way or another,
central for a wide range of Plato’s middle and late dialogues from the Symposium to the Timaeus.
30 Plato explains that becoming like God means becoming “just and holy [hosios] with wisdom
[phronêsis].”
claim” (716c). Since the God of the Laws is “Reason who rules all things,”
becoming like God means becoming like Reason.31
The dialectical method leading to knowledge of the Forms does not
seem to differ from the Socratic elenchos.32 In the parable of the cave
Plato describes the shedding of false beliefs as a “painful,” “dazzling,” and
“confusing” experience (Rep. 515c–516a; cf. 538c–d). A “dialectical” person
then replaces them with a true “account of the being [ho logos tês ousias] of
each thing.” Most important is a true account of the good:
Unless someone, setting apart the idea of the good, can distinguish it by means
of an account from everything else, surviving, as if in a battle, all refutations
[elenchoi], striving to examine [elenchein] things not in accordance with opinion
but in accordance with being, and can come through all this with his account
standing firm [aptôs], you will say that he does neither know the good itself nor
any other good. (Rep. 534b–c)
Does the Socrates of the Republic, then, agree with the Socrates of the
Apology that philosophical debate “is the greatest good for man”? To see
on what they agree and on what they differ we must look at what it
means to live well for Plato. One way to approach this question is to
examine how we fall short of God as Reason, the ultimate standard of
perfection. For one thing, human reason, unlike Divine Reason, has by
nature only the capacity to know, not actual knowledge. Since this lack
gives rise to the desire of the soul’s rational part for “learning,” it is called
“learning-loving and philosophical” (Rep. 581b). We cannot, however, study
all day long, since, again unlike Divine Reason, we are embodied rational
beings – that is, immersed in the realm of change. As a consequence
we are not “self-sufficient [autarkês], but . . . need many things” (369b; cf.
Ti. 70d–e). In Plato’s teleological account of the soul, this explains why,
besides reason, the soul also has a twofold “non-rational part” (alogiston):
“appetite” (epithymêtikon) and “spirit” (thymos), which Plato compares to
a “multicolored beast” and a “lion” (Rep. 588c–d).33 The needs we have on
account of “the body’s nature” give rise to the desire of the appetitive part
“for food, drink, sex, and all the things associated with them” (580e) and
the desire of the soul’s spirited part for “power, victory, and honor” (581a).
Whereas perfecting reason is good without qualification, because this is
31 Cf. Sedley (2000). Note also that in the Republic, the primary meaning of being just is perfecting
reason by apprehending the Forms. See my discussion below.
32 A convincing argument for the continuity of Plato’s philosophical method in the early and middle
dialogues is provided by Stemmer (1992).
33 For the tripartite structure of the soul, see Rep. 439d–e and Ti. 69c–72d.
how we become like God, the things desired by the soul’s non-rational
parts are only good as means for perfecting reason. Having no body, God
can do without the desire for food, drink, and sex, and having no battles to
fight or competitions to win he can do without the desire for power, victory,
and honor. We, on the other hand, need “human goods” (Leg. 631b) – for
example money to buy food and food to keep the body in good health, and
health to be able to perfect our knowledge of the Forms which we cannot
do well if we are sick or hungry (see 631b–d and 697a–c). We likewise need
the desire for power, victory, and honor to overcome internal and external
obstacles that lie on the way to perfecting reason in the world of change.
Given our embodiment, then, our non-rational desires are necessary to
create the conditions for perfecting reason.
Our lack of self-sufficiency has one further important implication: it is
the reason “a political community [polis] comes to be” (Rep. 369b). Whereas
God needs nobody to assist him in his endeavors, we have too many needs
to be able to achieve perfection without the help of others. Since “we
are not born alike, but each of us differs in nature from the others, one
being suited to one task, another to another,” we contribute most to the
common good if we divide labor and focus on the task we are best qualified
for (369e–370b). In this way we ensure at the same time the realization of
our own good, since for Plato the best state of the political community is
also the best state for each of its members.34
But why should we strive to perfect reason and inhabit the world of
Forms, rather than chasing after food, drink, and sex, or power, victory,
and honor in the world of change? Granted that the Form of beauty ranks
higher than its physical instantiations and that apprehending it brings us
closer to God. But is perfecting reason also something we can be motivated
to do, something we actually desire? Whereas Socrates assumes that the
objectively best life is also the best life for us, Plato in the Republic explicitly
argues for this thesis. The challenge he takes on is to show that a virtuous
34 At the beginning of Book 4 Plato argues that “in establishing our city, we are not aiming to make
any one group outstandingly happy, but to make the whole city so, as far as possible” (420b).
He also says, however, “that it would not be surprising” if all groups were “happiest just as they
are” (ibid.) and seems confident that “nature” will indeed “provide each group with its share of
happiness” (421b–c) in such a city. Note that Socrates is responding to Adeimantus’s objection that
the guardians in the best state lack “fine big houses” and “gold and silver and all the things that are
thought to belong to people who are blessedly happy” (419a). Since the conceptual groundwork for
refuting this notion of happiness has not yet been laid, Socrates – to advance the argument – appeals
to the need to set the good of the whole above the good of the part, a principle that he can expect
Adeimantus to endorse. On the question whether ruling takes away from the best life possible for
philosophers, see below.
life is not only good for its consequences, but also intrinsically good (357a–
358a). Plato describes things that are good only for their consequences as
“arduous” (chalepos) and “onerous” (epiponos). The antonyms of these are
“not troublesome” (eupetês) and “pleasant” (hêdus). To show that a virtuous
life is intrinsically good, then, also requires showing that it is not arduous
but pleasant (357c–358a and 364a). In book 6 Plato asserts that the “true
philosopher’s” desire for learning is motivated by “the pleasures of the
soul,” which are superior to the “pleasures that come through the body”
(485d). And in book 9 he offers elaborate arguments for the claim that the
philosophical life is better and more pleasant than a life centered on food,
drink, and sex or power, victory, and honor. Hence the good aimed at by
the learning-loving part of the soul is also subjectively superior to the goods
that our non-rational desires pursue.35 We do not only have metaphysical
and epistemological reasons to become like God; it should also be what we
most desire. Clearly, then, knowing the good remains a key to living well:
[The soul’s rational part must have] within it the knowledge of what is advanta-
geous for each part and for the whole soul, which is the community of the three
parts. (Rep. 442c; cf. Ti. 71a)
Unlike Socrates, however, Plato denies that knowing the good entails the
motivation to do it. The soul also has non-rational desires which may
conflict with the prescriptions of reason. We may, for example, want more
food, drink, and sex than reason has determined to be necessary to keep the
body in good shape for contemplation.36 To attain “wisdom” (phronêsis),
the virtue of reason, we must not only know the good, but also “rule”
the soul’s non-rational desires in light of this knowledge (441e). Imple-
menting reason’s rule, in turn, depends on two further virtues: “courage”
(andreia) and “moderation” (sophrosyne). We are courageous if spirit “pre-
serves through pains and pleasures the prescriptions of reason about what
is to be feared and what is not” (442c). And we are moderate “when the
ruler and the ruled [in our soul] believe in common that the rational part
should rule and don’t engage in civil war against it” (ibid.). While reason
is recognized as the overall ruler, spirit submits to reason and helps to rule
the appetites by carrying out reason’s instructions. “Justice” (dikaiosyne),
finally, is the right order or “harmony” of the soul, each part of the soul
relating to the other parts according to its place in this order and doing
35 Note that in the Laws, where philosophy and the Forms are only briefly mentioned at the end,
pleasure becomes crucial for motivating the choice of virtue; see 662b–663e and 732e–734e.
36 The experience of motivational conflicts is, in fact, Plato’s main argument for the divided soul in
the Republic; see 438d ff.
what it is supposed to do (443c–d). The complex structure of the soul,
then, also requires a complex structure of virtue.
What does a life ruled by reason look like? Since perfecting reason is
the only intrinsic good, all other things are only good as means to that
end. Hence perfecting reason determines how much food, drink, and
sex or power, victory, and honor we should pursue: whatever takes away
from contemplation is either too much or too little. Being moderate means
satisfying the appetites as much as required for undisturbed contemplation.
And being courageous means overcoming the obstacles that stand in the
way of the contemplative life. These considerations inform every decision
of a just person:
And when [the just person] does anything, whether acquiring wealth, taking care
of his body, engaging in politics, or in private contracts – in all of these, he believes
that the action is just and fine that preserves [the soul’s harmony] and helps attain
it, and calls it so, and regards as wisdom [sophia] the knowledge that oversees such
actions. And he believes that the action that destroys this harmony is unjust, and
calls it so, and regards the belief that oversees it as ignorance [amathia]. (Rep. 443e)
The non-rational desires that reason tells us to satisfy are of two kinds:
desires that we must satisfy for the sake of living and desires that we must
satisfy to be in the best state for contemplation. We cannot survive without
bread, for example, and we cannot sustain good health without a varied
diet (see 558d–559c). Unnecessary desires, by contrast, are “those whose
presence leads to no good or even the opposite” (559a).
The motivation to act virtuously comes from reason’s desire “to know
where the truth lies” (581b).37 A “true philosopher” desires “the pleasures
of the soul” above all and cares little for the “pleasures that come through
the body” (485d). Hence he “is moderate and not at all a money-lover”
(485e). He is also courageous and not “cowardly and slavish” because
he enjoys the company of eternal things and does “not consider human
life to be something important” (486a–b). The desire for the pleasure of
contemplation thus keeps the inferior desires in check. We desire as much
food, drink, and sex or power, victory, and honor as needed to best sustain
the contemplative life. For a “true philosopher,” then, conflicts between
knowledge and desire do not arise. If we are just, the things we desire are
the things that reason prescribes. The philosopher, however, is not just only
because of his well-ordered soul. He is also just in the ordinary sense when
he interacts with his fellow-citizens. For it is impossible, Plato argues, “that
37 For the following argument, cf. Phd. 67e–69d.

an orderly person, who is not money-loving, slavish, a boaster, or a coward
could become unreliable or unjust” (486b; cf. 442e–443b). He would not
ask for more than his share in material resources, for example, or envy
others the share due to them.
Plato makes no explicit distinction between practical wisdom – a life
lived wisely, that is ruled by reason – and theoretical wisdom – the perfec-
tion of reason through knowledge.38 Conceptually, however, the distinction
is important to understand several aspects of Plato’s argument. Note for one
thing that reason’s role as described in book 4 of the Republic significantly
differs from reason’s role as described in book 9. Whereas book 4 focuses
on practical wisdom, book 9 characterizes reason as the part of the soul
that “always wholly aims to know the truth wherever it lies” (581b). To see
that these are distinct, consider a philosopher who concludes that “what is
advantageous . . . for the whole soul” requires leaving his studies to attend
to the needs of the body – eating a meal, for example, or putting wood
into the fire. He knows that if he neglects these needs and ends up in poor
health, he upsets the soul’s “harmony” and can no longer devote himself
as much as possible to study. Practical wisdom thus demands interrupting
the pursuit of theoretical wisdom. In the Laws this distinction is hinted
at: “human goods” such as wealth and health are only good as means to
attain the four cardinal virtues defined in the Republic. Of these wisdom
comes first, followed by moderation, justice, and courage. However, also
the four virtues “look towards” something higher, namely “Nous who rules
all things” (631b–d). Hence wisdom here must refer to practical wisdom
which is subordinated to theoretical wisdom, the highest good, through
which we attain likeness to God. Theoretical wisdom, then, is the end
at which a life ordered by practical wisdom aims, and the desire to attain it
provides the motivation to do what practical wisdom prescribes – that is,
to be moderate, courageous, and just.
Since the philosopher both knows the good and is motivated to live
according to this knowledge, a just life for Plato, as for Socrates, is a self-
ruled life. Plato contrasts rational self-rule with two forms of enslavement:
For one thing the rule of reason means self-rule because the soul’s distinctly
human part is in charge, not appetite or spirit, the “multicolored beast”
and the “lion.” A person ruled by appetite or spirit has a “soul . . . full of
slavery [douleia] and unfreedom [aneleutheria]” which is “least likely to do
what it wants” (577d). Second, the philosopher is “ruled by the divine and
38 Unlike Aristotle who reserves phronêsis for the practical and sophia for the theoretical aspect of reason
in EN 6; see my discussion in chapter 3.
the reasonable . . . within himself and his own” unlike the “slave” (doulos)
on whom it is “imposed from without” (590c–d). To be a slave thus means
to be ruled by non-rational desires or to be coerced by laws – even if these
laws enforce prescriptions of reason.
As far as philosophers are concerned, then, the Socrates of the Republic
agrees with the Socrates of the Apology that philosophy is “the greatest good
for man.” It remains the key for establishing the rule of God as Reason
in the moral-political realm by directing the citizens to what is best. If all
members of the political community were perfectly just, there would be no
need for pedagogical-political guidance through laws, stories, persuasive
speeches, and practices of worship. In the ideal state – a state inhabited by
philosophers striving to become like God – God’s rule and self-rule still
coincide.
guiding non-philosophers: the handmaid of philosophy

Is Plato, then, only spelling out the Socratic position in light of his meta-
physics, epistemology, and psychology? To understand why Plato thought
Socratic politics failed, we must look at how the distinction between
philosophers and non-philosophers reemerges in the later dialogues. In
one sense we are all non-philosophers for Plato, since part of our imper-
fection is that we are not born wise:
[N]o animal to which it belongs to have reason [nous echein] after reaching per-
fection, has this faculty, or has it in the same measure, when it is born. During
this time in which it has not yet attained its characteristic wisdom [phronêsis], it is
completely mad and shouts without order, and as soon as it can get on its feet it
jumps around in equal disorder. (Leg. 672b–c; cf. Rep. 441a; Ti. 43a–44b)
The problem, then, is that as children we lack both the knowledge and
the motivation to put our lives in order. Instead our non-rational desires
are in charge. Subjecting children to elenchoi will surely not help them
to sort out their confused beliefs about the good and lead them to desire
the true good. If we want children to act rationally we need a pedagogical
program that can teach knowledge of the good and the motivation to
live according to this knowledge. Hence Plato describes the purpose of
education as habituating our non-rational desires to pursue the things we
would pursue if we were guided by reason:
[T]he earliest sensations that a child feels in infancy are of pleasure and pain, and
this is the route by which virtue and vice first enter the soul. . . . I call “education”
the initial acquisition of virtue by the child, when the feelings of pleasure and
love, pain and hatred, that well up in his soul are channeled in the right courses
before it can grasp the rational ground [logos lambanein]. Then, when it does grasp
it, [these feelings] agree with its reason through having been properly trained by
means of appropriate habits. Virtue is this general concord. But that which has
been correctly formed with respect to pleasure and pain, so that we hate what we
ought to hate from the beginning to the end, and love what we ought to love –
if you mark this part off in your account and call it “education,” according to me
you would be giving it its proper name. (Leg. 653a–c; cf. Rep. 401e–402a)
Through habituation we learn to associate pleasure with things approved

by reason and pain with things disapproved by reason, turning them into
objects of rightful love and hate. Failing this, reason and desire risk being
at odds when we become able to make rational judgments about good and
bad:
[This is the case] when a man considers something fine and good, but instead of
loving it, hates it and conversely when he loves and welcomes what he believes
is bad and unjust. I maintain that the discord between his feelings of pleasure
and pain and his rational judgment [hê kata logon doxa] constitutes the utmost
ignorance. . . . But the greatest and finest concord of all would most correctly be
called the greatest wisdom. (Leg. 689a–d)39
The aim of Plato’s pedagogical program, then, is to prepare non-

philosophers for the time when reason takes charge. It leads citizens “unwit-
tingly, from childhood on, to resemblance [homoiotêta], friendship [philia],
and concord [symphônia] with fine reason” (Rep. 401c–d).
Plato’s main worry about Socratic politics, however, does not concern
children but adults. For most citizens remain non-philosophers throughout
life. Although we all have a tripartite soul, Plato argues, the dominant part
varies from one soul to another:
Now, it is clear to everyone that the part with which we learn always wholly aims
to know the truth [pros to eidenai tên alêtheian . . . pan tetatai] wherever it lies
and that, of the three parts, it cares least for money and honor. . . . And does not
this part rule in some people’s souls, while one of the other parts – whichever it
happens to be – rules in other people’s? That’s right. And isn’t that the reason
we say that there are three primary kinds of people [ta prôta tritta genê]: wisdom-
loving, victory-loving, and profit-loving? That is it precisely. And also three forms
of pleasure, one assigned to each of them? Certainly. (581b–c)
39 Note that this must refer to the ignorance and wisdom of adult non-philosophers who have imperfect
practical wisdom as we will see. A philosopher, driven by the desire to know, cannot experience
discord in this way.
The distinction between three kinds of souls explains why for Plato most
citizens are unable to live the contemplative life. They are non-philosophers
by nature. Note that attaining knowledge of the good has become a much
more demanding task in the later dialogues. Plato no longer separates
human concerns from natural science and metaphysics as Socrates does
in the Apology. According to the Timaeus, we attain “the most excellent
life offered to humankind by the gods” if we “learn the harmonies and
revolutions of the universe, and so bring into conformity with its objects
our faculty of understanding” (90d). And since political collaboration
is a condition for attaining perfection, we cannot act in a self-directed
way without understanding the political order as well. The metaphysical
foundation of the natural and political order, in turn, are the Forms, led
by the Form of the good, “the first principle of everything” as we saw
(Rep. 511b). Moreover, since the “pleasure of studying the things that are
cannot be tasted by anyone except the philosopher,” non-philosophers find
learning “painful” and in the end “inevitably come to hate . . . that activity”
(Rep. 582c and 486c). Hence they also lack the motivation to do what reason
prescribes. Plato’s program, then, must not only offer pedagogical guidance
to not-yet-philosophers until reason takes charge, but also political guidance
to citizens who remain non-philosophers throughout life. In the Republic
Plato thus can no longer maintain what he asserted in the Apology: that “no
greater blessing for the city” exists than Socrates’s relentless effort to direct
the citizens to what is best through elenchoi. If God as Reason is to order
the polis, rulers need to establish a pedagogical-political program that can
replace the philosopher’s knowledge of the good and his motivation to live
according to this knowledge. A community of philosophers in which God’s
rule and self-rule coincide has become an ideal that cannot be attained given
Plato’s view of human nature.
Although doing philosophy remains necessary for attaining perfect justice,

imperfect forms of justice are accessible to non-philosophers as well. This
helps to explain why Plato’s account of justice in book 4 of the Republic
is concerned with practical wisdom, whereas the desire to know only comes
into focus with the portrait of the philosopher in books 5 and 6, and is
explicitly identified as reason’s characteristic desire only in book 9. In
book 4 Plato wants to offer an account of justice that is compatible with
both philosophers and non-philosophers. While the rational part of the
non-philosopher’s soul has no strong desire to know, it can be trained to
rule the non-rational desires and thus partake in practical wisdom. To be
sure, the wisely lived life of a philosopher greatly differs from the wisely
lived life of a non-philosopher, but both can attain self-rule under the
guidance of reason.
Despite Plato’s qualms about the Socratic approach to politics, ordering
the polis towards what is best still requires putting philosophers in charge:
Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings . . . adequately
philosophize – that is, until political power and philosophy coincide – . . . there
can be no happiness, public or private, in any city. (Rep. 473c–e)
Two things qualify philosophers to rule: they have knowledge of the good –
in contrast to the confused beliefs about the good of poets, politicians, and
orators. And they have the moral integrity to order the city in light of this
knowledge since their desire to know protects them from the corrupting
lure of money and honor:
A city whose prospective rulers are least eager to rule must of necessity be most
free from civil war. . . . If you can find a way of life that is better than ruling for
the prospective rulers, your well-governed city will become a possibility, for only
in it will the truly rich rule – not those who are rich in gold but those who are rich
in the wealth that the happy must have, namely a good and rational life. But if
beggars hungry for private goods go into public life, thinking that the good is there
for the seizing, the well-governed city is impossible, for then ruling is something
fought over. (Rep. 520d–521a)
Does the philosopher’s preference for contemplation over politics mean that
what is best for the polis is not best for him? Plato argues that philosophers
who benefited from the state’s education have a moral obligation to serve
the state as rulers in return (520a–d). He could, however, also have argued
that this is a prescription of practical wisdom. As we saw, on the individual
level “what is advantageous . . . for the whole soul” requires the philosopher
at times to interrupt his studies to attend to the needs of the body. The
same holds for the political level: since we are embodied and have many
needs, our perfection depends on collaborating with others. A community
ordered towards the perfection of reason is obviously a community in
which philosophers flourish most. Hence philosophers also have a selfish
motive for ordering the polis towards what is best.40 Is this also true for a
philosopher who can afford living a contemplative life with like-minded
friends in private? As we saw, this was not inconceivable in democratic
Athens. Plato concedes, in fact, that philosophers who owe “no debt” to
the city for their education “are justified in not sharing their city’s labors”
40 This is a standard argument in medieval Muslim and Jewish philosophy. See, for example, Averroes,
Tahāfut 2.4, 583/360.
(520a–b). However, to say that philosophers have no moral obligation does
not imply that they have no motivation. Socrates is a case in point. He
did not become a philosopher thanks to democratic Athens and he could
have chosen to pursue philosophy in private. And yet Socrates devoted
his life to directing his fellow-citizens to what is best as the city’s gadfly.
As I suggested above, Plato could explain this as a form of imitating the
God of the Timaeus who is “without envy” and hence wants “everything
else to become as much like himself as possible” (29d–e). A philosopher
like Socrates returns to the cave neither to fulfill a moral obligation nor
because his self-interest tells him to do so, but because he is “without
envy” and hence wants his fellow-citizens “to become as much like himself
as possible.”41 Plato’s description of how the philosopher-ruler orders the
polis certainly invites us to think of the Timaeus:
[T]he city will never become happy [eudaimonêseie] until its outline is sketched
by painters who use the divine model. . . . They would take the city and the
characters of human beings like painting tablets . . . and I suppose that, as they
work, they would look often in each direction, towards that which by nature
is just, fine, moderate, and the like, on the one hand, and towards that which
they are trying to put into human beings, on the other. And in this way they
would mix and blend the various ways of life in the city until they produced
a human image [andreikelon] according to what Homer too called “the divine
form and image [theoeides te kai theoeikelon]” when it occurred among human
beings. (Rep. 500e–501b; cf. 540a–b)
As God looks at the divine model in the Timaeus and establishes the natural
order, the philosopher-ruler looks at the divine model in the Republic
and establishes the political order. Plato, in fact, uses various devices to
dramatically connect the two dialogues. For one thing he suggests in the
Timaeus that the discussion of the Republic took place on the previous
day and recalls many of the best state’s features (17c–19b). Moreover, he
presents Critias’s speech that is to follow the speech of Timaeus as putting
together the cosmological and the political account. Whereas Timaeus’s
speech begins “with the origin of the universe” and concludes “with the
nature of human beings,” Critias’s speech portrays human beings in action
who were brought up under the political order described in the Republic
(Ti. 27a–b; Criti. 106a–107b).
41 This, too, is a standard argument in medieval Muslim and Jewish philosophy. See, for example,
Maimonides, Guide 3.53–54.
What distinguishes the work of Plato’s philosopher-ruler from the gadfly-
politics of Socrates is that much of it consists in offering pedagogical-
political guidance to non-philosophers. The ruler is a physician of the soul
who prescribes and explains what non-philosophers should do and provides
incentives to carry out his prescriptions. Although he cannot turn them
into physicians of the soul themselves, he wants everyone “to be ruled by
the divine and the reasonable” – as much as possible “within himself and
his own” and as little as possible “imposed from without” (Rep. 590c–d).
The aim of his pedagogical-political program, as we will see, remains a
community of “free men” (eleutheroi).
Since the best life for Plato is the philosophical life and the goal of the
pedagogical-political program is to enable non-philosophers to live a life
resembling the best life, this program should, as much as possible, convey
philosophy in a non-philosophical form. Although Plato nowhere expressly
lists the means to be used for this purpose, in a preliminary way we can
describe them as laws, stories, persuasive speeches, and practices of worship.
The components of the pedagogical-political program are sketched in
the Republic and, to a lesser extent, elsewhere in Plato’s middle and late
dialogues. Systematically, however, they are only developed in the Laws.
One of Plato’s main purposes in the Laws, I contend, is to work out a
pedagogical-political program to order the life of non-philosophers. Indeed,
the account of “our entire politeia” in the Laws is characterized as an
“imitation [mimesis] of the finest and noblest life” (817b).42 This surely can
be taken as a reference to the life of the philosopher.43
One way to capture the nature and purpose of Plato’s pedagogical-
political program is through al-Fārābı̄’s concept of religion as an “imitation
of philosophy” (Tah..sı̄l, 185/44). Al-Fārābı̄ argues that “through religion
the multitude is taught, educated, and given all that is needed to attain
happiness” (H . urūf 144). Religion both legally enforces and explains the
prescriptions of reason. To this end it conveys the “theoretical and practical
matters that have been inferred in philosophy, in such a way as to enable
the multitude to understand them by persuasion or imaginative repre-
sentation” (108). Hence religion is the “tool” philosophers use to make
philosophical contents accessible to non-philosophers (110). We will see
in chapter 3 that al-Fārābı̄ himself attributes this concept of religion to
42 In this sense the Athenian can present the Laws as “the finest and best” tragedy (ibid.). Compare
its earlier description as the “model work” to be used for the selection of educationally appropriate
literature in the state (811b–812a; see also 858d–859a).
43 Since “wisdom” and “reason” are the highest good in the Laws (631c–d; 688b; 963a), a life devoted
to attaining them clearly is “the finest and noblest life” for human beings.
Plato. At present I propose that al-Fārābı̄ can help us to better understand
how Plato’s pedagogical-political program works. Note that the practices
of worship outlined in the Laws are only one component of this concept
of religion. What al-Fārābı̄ means by religion is the comprehensive order
of practices, beliefs, and institutions that make up the divine nomoi of
Magnesia, the fictional Cretan colony discussed in the Laws. Magnesia’s
divine nomoi, in turn, offer al-Fārābı̄ a model for conceiving the Divine
Law of Muslims and Jews. In this context it is worth pointing out that
several scholars have recently attempted to explain the peculiar charac-
ter of the Laws as religious – starting with Herwig Görgemanns to the
more recent studies by Andrea Nightingale, André Laks, and Malcolm
Schofield.44 Nightingale describes the Laws as a “sacred text,” and Laks as
“le premier traité théologico-politique.”45 According to Schofield, religion
“pervades [the Laws] from beginning to end.”46 Consider a few examples:
The first word of the dialogue is “God” (theos). The Athenian Visitor, the
main character of the Laws, who takes on the role of philosopher-legislator,
turns to his task with the following prayer:47
Let us therefore call upon God as we undertake the founding of the city [Magnesia].
May he hear our prayer, and having heard it come graciously and in kindly concern
for us to join in establishing the ordering of the city and its laws. (Leg. 712b)
The first speech to be addressed to the prospective citizens of Magnesia

again begins with an invocation of God:
Men, according to the ancient story, there is a God who holds in his hands the
beginning and end and middle of all things, and straight he marches in the cycle of
nature. Justice, who takes vengeance on those who abandon the divine law [theios
nomos], never leaves his side. (Leg. 715e–716a)
A few lines later God is presented as the “measure of all things.” To

become “God’s friend,” citizens must become like God as much as they
can, since “like approves like” (716c–d). Note, finally, that the most elab-
orate philosophical argument in the Laws is the refutation of atheism in
book 10.
44 See Görgemanns (1960) who suggested that the Laws is a work of literature rather than philosophy
and addresses an audience of non-philosophers (for example 25).
45 Nightingale (1993), 279; Laks (2005), 22. 46 Schofield (2006), 283.
47 The Athenian Visitor has no official political role. However, in the Statesman Plato argues that being
a good ruler depends on having political expert knowledge, not on exercising actual political power
(259b and 293a). In this sense the Athenian Visitor can be described as a philosopher-ruler.
What is the content of the pedagogical-political program? On the most
general level its aim is to convey the philosopher’s knowledge of the good to
non-philosophers and to motivate them to live according to this knowledge.
In the Republic the philosophers are said to have grasped “the truth about
fine, just, and good things [kala te kai dikaia kai agatha]” (Rep. 520c) which
provides them with a “clear model in their souls” (484c). Like “painters”
they “look to what is most true, make constant reference to it, and study it
as exactly as possible” and then “establish here on earth customs [nomima]
concerning fine, just, and good things, when they need to be established,
or guard and preserve them, once they have been established” (484c–d).
According to the Laws the divine nomoi of Magnesia embody precisely the
“city’s customs [nomima] – that is, the things it considers just, good, and
fine.”48 Since the Athenian Visitor takes on the role of the philosopher-
legislator, the nomoi of Magnesia instantiate his knowledge of “fine, just,
and good things.” But why does Plato not explicitly say so? As the passages
quoted earlier show, he wants Magnesia’s nomoi to be grounded on the
authority of God. This is not just religious rhetoric. A community ordered
towards what is best is rationally ordered and hence divinely ordered. In this
sense it is indeed ruled by God as Reason. It would, however, be absurd
to take this to imply that God literally issues commands. At one point
Plato explicitly says “that it is impossible” to “get commands [epitaxeis]
from [God].” Hence a human lawgiver must suffice “with reason [logos]
alone to guide him” (Leg. 835c). At the same time this lawgiver “must try
to make everyone . . . believe” that his laws have “the backing of religion”
(838d–e). Like the anthropomorphic representation of God as a craftsman
in the Timaeus, the anthropomorphic representation of God as a ruler in
the Laws is part of the pedagogical-political program for non-philosophers.
This does not mean that Magnesia’s nomoi are not genuinely divine. For
one thing God is their source in the sense that God is the principle of
all knowledge and hence also of the philosopher-ruler’s knowledge of the
good which Magnesia’s nomoi embody.49 God, moreover, is also their final
cause: Plato would surely agree with Aristotle that “God is not a ruler
who gives commands [epitaktikôs archôn], but is that for the sake of which
48 Plato first claims that “a poet should compose nothing that conflicts with the city’s customs – that
is, the things it considers just, good, and fine” (801c–d) and later describes the divine nomoi of
Magnesia (“the finest and best . . . tragedy” according to 817b) as the “model work” for the selection
of pedagogically appropriate literature (811b–812a; cf. 858d–859a).
49 See Rep. 508d–e and 511b–e where Plato describes the Form of the good as the first principle of
knowledge, and 500e–501b where the philosopher-rulers are compared to “painters who use the
divine model.”
wisdom commands” (EE 8.3, 1249b14–15). In fact, he explicitly argues that
the nomoi of Magnesia are divine because they aim at “Reason who rules all
things” (Leg. 631d). Philosophers, then, can agree with non-philosophers
on the theocratic nature of Magnesia’s moral-political order, yet understand
God’s rule in a way that is philosophically sound.
The philosopher-ruler cannot convey his knowledge of the good to
non-philosophers by subjecting their confused beliefs about the good to
elenchoi. Only philosophers can be taught in this way. As we saw, they
attain knowledge of the good once they “can distinguish [the good] by
means of an account from everything else, surviving, as if in a battle, all
refutations, striving to examine things not in accordance with opinion
but in accordance with being” (Rep. 534b–c). For non-philosophers, on
the other hand, the ruler must translate the concept of the good into a
language they can understand. This is the language of the “imagination”
(eikasia), the mode of cognition prevalent in the cave.50 Plato indeed often
describes the work of the philosopher-ruler as a form of artistic creation.
According to the Republic he is a “craftsman of virtue” and “painter of
constitutions.” The divine nomoi of the Laws are compared to poetry: an
“imitation of the finest and noblest life” and “the finest and best . . . tragedy”
(Leg. 817b). In the Statesman it is the “art of rhetoric” which “in partnership
with kingship” and “through the telling of stories” is able to “persuade
people of what is just and so helps in steering through the business of cities”
(Plt. 304a–d).51 But does Plato not sharply criticize poetry and rhetoric – in
particular in book 10 of the Republic and in the Gorgias? For my purpose it
is crucial to see that Plato objects only to bad poetry and bad rhetoric. As
long as these are integrated into a philosophically grounded pedagogical-
political program, they are indispensable for directing non-philosophers to
what is best. When Plato speaks of the “old quarrel between philosophy
and poetry” (Rep. 607b) he means the poetry of Homer and Hesiod which
misrepresents the nature of the gods and how they relate to human beings,
and hence does not provide a model that non-philosophers can use to
order their lives. But surely his aim is not to eradicate poetry from the best
state altogether. In book 10 of the Republic, Plato criticizes poetry – and
50 At the end of the parable of the cave Plato says that it “must be fitted together with what we said
before” (517b), namely with the parables of the sun and the line. According to the parable of the
line, the lowest level of cognition is “eikasia” (511d–e). It corresponds to the shadows on the wall
seen by the cave dwellers (see 515a–b) which stand for the culturally mediated apprehension of the
world of becoming.
51 Compare the “rudder of persuasion” that is to be applied to the soul according to Critias 109c. Note
that poetry and persuasion are not consistently distinguished by Plato; see, for example, Gorgias
502c where poetry is characterized as a kind of persuasion.
art in general – because it is twice removed from the truth. Artists imitate
physical things which in turn imitate things that truly are – that is, the
Forms (597b–598c). This is not true for philosophical poetry, however, that
derives directly from the philosopher’s grasp of the Forms – “the truth
about fine, just, and good things” (520c). This distinction is made explicit
by Plotinus: true artists, he argues, do not imitate nature, but “go back
to the principles [logoi] from which nature derives” (Enn. 5.8.1; cf. 1.6.3).
Plato himself, of course, offers the best illustration of what this kind of
poetry looks like through the images and parables which he uses to convey
philosophical doctrines. Examples include the representation of the soul as
a charioteer with two horses in the Phaedrus; the interlocking parables of
the sun, the line, and the cave in the Republic; and the representation of
Reason as a craftsman in the Timaeus and as a ruler in the Laws.52 For the
best state to come into existence, then, it is not sufficient that philosophy
and political power join hands. To be able to direct non-philosophers to
what is best, the philosopher-ruler must also be an accomplished legislator,
poet, and orator. These, in turn, are precisely the skills of the prophet
according to al-Fārābı̄.53
The pedagogical-political program laid out in the Laws represents a shift
of focus, not however a departure from the political project of the Repub-
lic. The Republic begins with the question whether justice is intrinsically
good and concludes with the claim that it is. To answer this question,
however, Plato must first clarify what justice is. Hence much of the Repub-
lic discusses the nature of justice in both the soul and the state. As for
implementing justice, Plato is mainly concerned with how philosophers
must be brought up to become just and to rule others justly. Their edu-
cation begins with gymnastics and music – “music” in the broad sense of
the arts and literature inspired by the muses which Plato reinterprets in
terms of the philosophically grounded art that we just saw. This is followed
by intellectual training in mathematics and dialectics, as well as practi-
cal training in the state’s political offices. However, except for gymnastics
and music, with respect to which the education of not-yet-philosophers
and non-philosophers overlaps, we learn little about how the state will
52 Note that I do not intend to offer a general explanation of Plato’s use of myths; my claim is that
some myths serve to provide pedagogical-political guidance.
53 I suggest extending to the pedagogical-political program as a whole what Dodds (1951), 234–35,
n. 85 observed with respect to the religious character of the Laws: It is not “simply a pious lie, a
fiction maintained for its social usefulness. Rather it reflects or symbolises religious truth at the
level of eikasia at which it can be assimilated by the people. Plato’s universe was a graded one: as he
believed in degrees of truth and reality, so he believed in degrees of religious insight.” Cf. Schofield
(2006), 316.
order the life of non-philosophers.54 The remaining components of the
pedagogical-political program are only alluded to briefly, for example laws,
whose observance is motivated through the combined effect of coercion
and persuasion, or traditional practices of worship.55 A very different pic-
ture emerges from the Laws. For one thing Plato presupposes the outcome
of the discussion in the Republic. The question is no longer what virtue
is and whether it is intrinsically good, but how to direct the citizens of
Magnesia to virtue. In a key passage for my project Plato proposes a criter-
ion to determine whether nomoi are divine: nomoi are divine if they order
the community towards what is best. We already saw the rationale for this
criterion: something ordered towards what is best is rationally ordered and
hence divinely ordered on account of Plato’s concept of God as Reason.
The good that divine nomoi aim at is the good established in the Republic: it
includes “human goods” – health, beauty, strength, and wealth – as means
to “the highest virtue” which, in turn, consists in the four cardinal virtues
of the Republic aiming at the perfection of reason:
Wisdom is the leading divine good; second comes the moderate habit of a soul that
uses reason [nous]. If you combine these two with courage, you get justice as the
third; courage itself lies in fourth place. All these are by nature ranked above the
others [that is, the human goods], and the lawgiver must, of course, rank them in
this order. Then he must inform the citizens that the other commands [prostaxeis]
they receive have these goods in view: the human goods have the divine, and all
these in turn look towards Reason who rules all things [ho hegemôn nous sympanta].
(Leg. 631b–d)
Divine nomoi, then, enforce the prescriptions of a life ordered by reason
towards the perfection of reason: we pursue human goods virtuously – that
is, as much as is required to satisfy the needs of the body in a life directed
to attaining likeness to “Reason who rules all things.”56 The education of
philosophers, however, which is Plato’s main concern in the Republic, is
only briefly mentioned at the end of the Laws (see 968c–e). To be sure,
Plato says enough to suggest that the training of philosophers will roughly
follow the curriculum established in the Republic. It includes study of the
different branches of mathematics, explicitly excluded from the curriculum
of “the multitude,” as well as the dialectical study of the Forms (817e;
54 In fact, the education of the class of producers, in whose soul the love of money dominates, is not
discussed at all. I see no systematic reason, however, why Plato should exclude them from training
in music and gymnastics. In the Laws, at any rate, all citizens receive the same basic education.
55 For laws, see 519e–520a, 590c–591a, and 607e; for worship, see 427b–c.
56 As we will see in the following chapters, all later proponents of a philosophical religion claim that
their religion fulfills the criterion for divine nomoi established in the Laws.
cf. 967a). The guardians of the nomoi must learn to look at the “single
Form” (mia idea) of virtue, goodness, and beauty (965c and 966a) of which
they must know the “definition” (logos), not only the name (964a). Unlike
non-philosophers who “may be forgiven if they simply follow the voice
of the law,” guardians must have “real knowledge” of the “true nature” of
things (966b–c). Plato’s main concern in the Laws, however, is to work
out a pedagogical-political program for non-philosophers – citizens who
“follow the voice of the law” and can only achieve imperfect forms of
justice. In this respect the Laws can be seen as completing the project of
the Republic. Later proponents of a philosophical religion will argue that
the same concern accounts for the laws, stories, exhortations, and practices
of worship established by the founders of their religion.
from coercion to self-rule

What are the main components of Plato’s pedagogical-political program?
The best way to think of them is as a sequence of not rigidly delimited
levels culminating in dialectics. This is how they can provide guidance to
all citizens adjusted to the different stages of their development – from
birth to adulthood – and to the different patterns of their souls – from
a predominantly appetitive to a predominantly rational soul.57 On the
most basic level the philosopher’s knowledge of the good is translated into
legal prescriptions. When his “calculation” (logismos) of what is best “is
expressed as a public decision of a state, it receives the title law [nomos]”
(Leg. 644d).58 Hence Plato can explain the meaning of “nomos” as “the
ordering [dianomê] of Reason [nous]” (714a; cf. 836a; 957c). The purpose
of laws is to order the polis towards what is best. According to the Republic,
their aim is “to spread happiness throughout the city” (519e). According to
the Laws, “they will make our state happy and prosperous” with “the good
wishes of the gods” (718b). How can non-philosophers be motivated to do
what the laws prescribe? A last resort, Plato argues in both the Republic and
the Laws, is “coercion” (anankê) or “force” (bia): fear of “just punishment”
(dikê) keeps the non-rational desires in check which otherwise would push
57 Cf. Laks (2005), 76. Laks, however, does not consistently develop the concept of a scale and I have
some doubts about the usefulness of his notion of a “utopie législative” for explaining the supposed
tension in the Laws between the different forms of addressing the citizens (ibid., 74, 125). In my
view they are sufficiently motivated through the different developmental stages and patterns of the
soul that Plato introduces in the Republic.
58 Compare the “science of measurement” in the Protagoras (356d–e). Note that in the Laws passage,
too, what is calculated is pleasure and pain, which I take, however, to be a stand-in for good and
bad.
citizens to break the law (Rep. 520a; Leg. 718b). Although one non-rational
motive is overruled by another, the citizens at least do what is in accordance
with reason. Plato compares a legislator who uses “threat of punishment”
to motivate obedience to a “doctor of slaves” who “prescribes what he
thinks best . . . with the assurance of a tyrant” (Leg. 720c). While coercion
is legitimate to enforce the prescriptions of reason, it is clearly the least
attractive option in Plato’s view. The model he recommends instead is
the doctor of “free men” (720d). One important step from coercion to
freedom is the musical education whose aim, as we saw, is to lead citizens
“unwittingly, from childhood on, to resemblance, friendship, and concord
with fine reason.” In the Laws Plato describes how this education aligns
our desires with what the laws prescribe:
[E]ducation . . . is a process of attracting and leading children to accept that which

has been declared the right reason [logos orthos] by the law. . . . The soul of the child
has to be prevented from getting into the habit of feeling pleasure [chairein] and
pain [lypeisthai] in contradiction to the law and those who have been persuaded
to obey it. (Leg. 659d–e)
Thus citizens are set from the start “on the paths of goodness as embodied
in the law code” (809a). At this stage, the motivation to do what the laws
prescribe stems from the aesthetic effect of art:
[A]nyone who has been properly educated in music and poetry will sense it acutely
when something has been omitted from a thing and when it has not been finely
crafted or finely made by nature. And since he has the right distastes, he will praise
fine things, be pleased by them, receive them into his soul, and, being nurtured by
them, become fine and good. He will rightly object to what is shameful, hating it
while he is still young and before he can grasp the rational ground [logos labein],
but when reason comes the person educated in this way will welcome it most
because he recognizes its kinship [oikeiotês] with himself. (Rep. 401e–402a)
The beautiful and the ugly are deployed to habituate children to associate
pleasure with what is lawful and pain with what is unlawful, giving rise to
rightful love and hate. Consider the analogy Plato draws between aesthetic
education and treating “the sick and ailing”:
We have an analogy in the sick and ailing; those in charge of feeding them try to
administer the proper diet in tasty foods and drinks, and offer them unwholesome
items in revolting foods, so that the patients may get into the correct habit
of welcoming the one kind and hating the other. That is just what the right
legislator [ho orthos nomothetês] will persuade . . . the poet to do with his fine and
marvelous language: to compose correctly by portraying through choreography
and harmonies the gestures and tunes of men who are moderate, courageous, and
good in every way. (Leg. 659e–660a)
The aesthetic experience is thus put in the service of education. The
“souls of the young,” Plato argues, “are led to acquire virtue by means of
artistic imitations” (812c). Art’s most important feature is its “correctness”
(orthotês) which consists in “the imitation and successful reproduction
of the proportions and characteristics of the model” (668b). As we saw,
the paradigm of “correct” art are the divine nomoi themselves, “the finest
and best . . . tragedy,” embodying the philosopher’s knowledge of the good
(817b). In the Republic a number of “guidelines” (typoi) are defined for
“how one should speak about gods, heroes, daemons, and things in Hades”
(392a). They stipulate, for example, that the gods are good and the cause
only of good and that they can neither change nor deceive human beings.59
Guidelines for representing human beings are established in the Laws:
[Y]ou force your poets to say that the good man, because he is moderate and just,
is fortunate and happy, no matter whether he is big and strong, or small and weak,
or rich or poor; and that even if he is richer than Midas or Cinyras and has not
justice, he is a wretched person and lives a life of misery. (Leg. 660e)
Much of Homer’s and Hesiod’s poetry ends up in the best state’s dustbin
because it fails to conform to these guidelines. Art, then, becomes a vehicle
to convey philosophical contents to non-philosophers. The philosopher’s
knowledge of the good is instantiated in stories about gods, daemons,
heroes, and human beings. Although these stories cannot provide know-
ledge strictly speaking, they represent the good “correctly,” in contrast to
the poetry of Homer and Hesiod which is based on confused beliefs about
the good. As I suggested above, the philosopher’s stories are not twice
removed from the realm of true being. They are epistemically in between
knowledge of the good and mere opinions derived from sense perception.
In this sense Plato can claim that musical education is not complete “until
we know the different forms [eidê]” of the virtues and vices:
which are moving around everywhere, and see them in the things in which they
are, both themselves and their images, and do not disregard them, whether they
are written on small things or large, but accept that the knowledge of both large
and small letters is part of the same art and discipline. (Rep. 402c)
The analogy Plato draws is “with learning how to read” which enables
us to discern the letters of the alphabet in all combinations and sizes
59 See the discussion in 379a–392a.

(402a–b). To be sure, the “forms” that we learn to discern through musical
education are not the same as the Forms that the philosopher apprehends.
But they come sufficiently close to serve as standards for judging the
goodness or badness of individual actions. Hence the beliefs about the
good derived from philosophically grounded stories about gods, daemons,
heroes, and human beings can replace the philosopher’s knowledge for
practical purposes. And the aesthetic response to the beautiful and the
ugly can replace the philosopher’s motivation to act according to this
knowledge. When not-yet-philosophers become actual philosophers, their
semi-accurate beliefs about the good are replaced with true knowledge, and
their attraction to the beauty of artistic representations with desire for the
truly beautiful and good. Musical education, then, brings us significantly
closer to self-rule: instead of following legal prescriptions enforced through
threat of punishment we make independent moral judgments in line with
the things we love and hate.
The next step is to ensure the informed consent of non-philosophers
through rational persuasion as Plato stresses in both the Republic (see 520a)
and the Laws (see 718b). What this means he explains in the Laws by further
developing the analogy between lawgiver and doctor:
The visits of the free doctor . . . are mostly concerned with treating the illnesses of
free men [eleutheroi]. He investigates these from their beginning and according to
nature, communing with the patient himself and his friends, and he both learns
[manthanei] something himself from the sick and, as much as he can, teaches
[didaskei] the one who is sick. He does not give orders until he has in some way
persuaded; once he has on each occasion made the sick person gentle by means of
persuasion [meta peithous], he attempts to lead him back to health. (Leg. 720c–d)
Hence the importance of “preludes” (prooimia) to the laws which give
reasons for doing what the laws prescribe:60
Should the person put in charge of the laws begin his laws with no such prelude?
Is he to declare straight away what must and must not be done, add the threat
of a punishment, and turn to another law, without adding a single word of
encouragement or persuasion to the laws he framed? (Leg. 719e–720a)
Plato presents the preludes to the laws as one of his most important
innovations. To “none of the lawgivers” had this idea occurred (722b–c).
By giving reasons for the laws, the preludes promote the self-rule of non-
philosophers in two ways: they do what the laws prescribe because they
60 On the importance of the preludes and their contribution to self-rule, see Bobonich (2002) and
Schofield (2006), chapter 7.3.
understand why this is good for them. And they make the beliefs about
the good, which were established in their souls through musical education,
more their own by “tying them down” in the sense of the Meno. Like
poetry, then, rhetoric – that is, the “persuasion” of the citizens through the
preludes to the laws – can be a legitimate means to guide non-philosophers
for Plato.
To better understand the kind of rhetoric Plato approves it will be helpful
to look at the discussion of rhetoric in the Phaedrus. The “art of rhetoric,
taken as whole,” is defined as “a way of directing the soul [psychagôgia] by
means of speech” (261a), aiming “to produce persuasion [peithô]” (271a).
According to the common understanding of rhetoric it does not matter
whether the soul is directed to a true or false belief. What counts is the
success of the speaker, for example in persuading a panel of judges of his
innocence even if he is guilty (see 272d–273c). For Plato, however, good
rhetoric is more than successful persuasion. For one thing he argues that
unless the orator “pursues philosophy properly he will never be able to
make a proper speech” (261a). For he needs to master three things:
First, you must know the truth concerning everything [to te alêthes hekastôn] you
are speaking or writing about. . . . Second, you must understand the nature of the
soul [psychês physis] along the same lines; you must determine which kind of speech
is appropriate to each kind of soul, prepare and arrange your speech accordingly,
and offer a complex and elaborate speech to a complex soul and a simple speech to
a simple one. Then, and only then, will you be able to use speech artfully . . . either
in order to teach [didaxai] or in order to persuade [peisai]. (Phdr. 277b–c)
While fulfilling these requirements ensures the efficiency of rhetoric, what

makes it good is the aim for the sake of which it is used. A “reasonable
man,” Plato argues, will not go through the “great effort” it takes to become
a skilled orator:
in order to speak and act among human beings, but to be able to speak and act in a
way that pleases the gods as much as possible. Wiser people than ourselves . . . say
that a man who has reason [noun echôn] must strive to be pleasant not to his fellow
slaves, though this may happen as a side effect, but his masters, who are wholly
good. So if the way round is long, don’t be astonished: we must make this detour
for the sake of things that are very important. . . . Yet surely whatever one must go
through on the way to fine things [ta kala] is itself fine. (Phdr. 273e–274b)
Using rhetoric in a way that “pleases the gods” for the sake of attaining
“fine things” can surely be interpreted as guiding the soul towards true
beliefs and virtue. In this sense Plato compares rhetoric to medicine:
Well, isn’t the art of medicine in a way the same as the art of rhetoric? How so?
In both cases we need to determine the nature of something – of the body in
medicine, of the soul in rhetoric. Otherwise, all we’ll have will be an empirical and
artless practice. We won’t be able to supply, on the basis of an art, a body with the
drugs [pharmaka] and diet that will make it healthy and strong, or a soul with the
proper reasons and rules for conduct [logoi te kai epitêdeuseis nomimoi] that will
impart to it the conviction [peithô] and virtue we want. (Phdr. 270b)
I suggest explaining the persuasive speeches, by which the doctor of free

men introduces the laws, in light of the model of philosophically grounded
rhetoric in the Phaedrus. The guardians of the law must not only have “real
knowledge” about the “true nature” of things, but also “be competent in
exposing them in speech” (Leg. 966b). They must, moreover, study the soul
of the person they are addressing, like doctors who study the condition of
the patient they treat. Finally, the aim of the persuasive speeches, like the
aim of the laws to which they are attached, are “fine things” – ordering the
polis towards what is best.
Of course, the same medicine will not work for every patient and the
same holds true for the treatment of the soul. In the Phaedrus, Plato
distinguishes between simple speeches used to persuade simple souls and
complex speeches used to teach complex souls. These are best understood as
the beginning and end of a scale with levels in between on which persuasion
gradually approaches teaching.61 I take “teaching” to mean instruction
through philosophical argument. On the highest level, therefore, rhetoric
is replaced through the “art of dialectic.” The “dialectician” who “has
knowledge of just, fine, and good things” carefully “chooses a proper soul
and plants and sows within it speeches accompanied by knowledge” (Phdr.
276c–277a). The Statesman works with a similarly schematic distinction:
rhetoric “persuades people of what is just . . . through the telling of stories
[mythologia], and not through teaching [didachê]” (304a–d). In the Laws,
by contrast, the preludes offer a more differentiated picture of the levels
of persuasion. In one passage Plato goes so far as to say that the legislator
“uses speeches that come close to philosophizing [tou philosophein engys]”
(857d). Some of the preludes indeed employ sophisticated arguments, most
notably the proofs for the state’s fundamental theological doctrines offered
in book 10 in response to the challenge of atheism. The arguments of other
preludes, however, are considerably less refined. Already in the opening
61 In the Republic Plato describes the stories employed for educational purposes as “fictional or nearer
to the truth” (522a) which implies that their epistemic quality varies.
address to the citizens of Magnesia, the Athenian Visitor appeals to the
authority of “an ancient story,” as we saw, and describes God’s justice as
reward for obeying and punishment for disobeying the “divine law” (715e–
716a). The first example of a prelude which introduces the prescription of
marriage to men “between the ages of thirty and thirty-five” gives reasons
that fall considerably short of a philosophical proof and assumes a notion
of immortality that clearly represents only one aspect of Plato’s considered
doctrine:
Mankind is immortal because it always leaves later generations behind to preserve
its unity and identity for all time: it gets its share of immortality by means of
procreation. It is never a holy thing voluntarily to deny oneself this prize, and he
who neglects to take a wife and have children does precisely that. (Leg. 721c–d)62
Other preludes directly appeal to the mythical imagination. The first of

the “agricultural laws,” for example, states that “no man shall disturb
the boundary stones of his neighbor, whether fellow citizen or foreigner”
because boundaries are protected by Zeus who is both “the God of kin” and
the “protector of foreigners.” If roused “in either capacity the most terrible
wars break out” (842e–843a). Elsewhere Plato appeals to the law of retribu-
tion to persuade citizens not to commit crimes like murder (see 870d–e).
A little further he describes the law of retribution as “the myth [mythos] or
explanation [logos], or whatever the right word is,” which “has come down
to us in unambiguous terms from the lips of priests of long ago” (872d).
These examples suffice to show that the lawgiver will employ reasons of
varying quality, ranging from myths to sophisticated arguments, to per-
suade the citizens to do what the laws prescribe. Even on the highest level,
however, where the arguments “come close to philosophizing,” persuasion
should not be confused with philosophy in the strict sense. As we saw, the
training of philosophers includes higher mathematics and the dialectical
study of the Forms which are part neither of musical education nor of the
persuasive speeches accompanying the laws. The preludes included in the
Laws give examples to the guardians of the law of how to tailor the argu-
mentative level of their speeches to the kind of citizen they are addressing.
As doctors of free men their aim is to promote the self-rule of all citizens
as much as they can. The citizens should not do what the laws prescribe
because they submit to the authority of the lawgiver for fear of punish-
ment, but because they understand why following these prescriptions is
62 For a series of philosophical proofs for the immortality of the soul, see the Phaedo.
good for them. Not every citizen, however, can attain perfect self-rule.
Although the citizens of Magnesia act on the basis of understanding, the
epistemic quality of their understanding varies. The beliefs of all citizens
are “tied down,” but the beliefs of some better than the beliefs of others.
The highest rank is that of the philosopher who does what reason pre-
scribes because he knows the good and is motivated to live according to
this knowledge. The lowest rank is that of the slave who does what reason
prescribes because he follows the law motivated by fear of punishment. In
between are the ranks of citizens who do what reason prescribes guided by
arguments adjusted to their varying ability to understand and motivated
by correctly habituated desires. In Plato’s community of “free men,” then,
self-rule is clearly a matter of degree.
Broadly speaking all components of Plato’s pedagogical-political pro-
gram can be described as religious: they are divine laws – beliefs, practices,
and institutions established by God. Practices of worship in the narrower
sense are only briefly alluded to in the Republic, but discussed in detail in
the Laws. They are tied in with the other components of the pedagogical-
political program and serve the same purpose: ordering the community
towards what is best. Consider the following passage from book 10, in
which the Athenian Visitor expresses frustration about citizens who reject
the theology of the state despite their poetic education intertwined with
religious worship:
Is it not necessary to feel irritation and hatred towards those . . . who are not
persuaded by the myths [ou peithomenoi tois mythois] they heard from nurses and
mothers when they were babies and sucklings? Charming myths . . . which they
heard as well in prayers at sacrifices and saw in acted representations of them, a
part of the ceremony a child always loves to see and hear, and they saw their own
parents praying with the utmost seriousness for themselves and their families in
the firm conviction that their prayers and supplications were addressed to gods
who really did exist. (Leg. 887d–e)
To achieve its purpose not every aspect of worship requires precise regula-
tion. In book 5, for example, Plato discusses sacred laws – that is, nomoi
relating to the establishment of shrines, temples, religious festivals, and, in
general, forms of communal worship. These nomoi, he argues, should be
accepted on the authority of tradition alone and not be changed by “the
legislator . . . in the slightest degree” (738b–c). For, despite their diversity,
the religious festivals and forms of communal worship in question all fit
equally well with an important aim of the lawgiver, namely promoting
mutual acquaintance and friendship between the citizens which, in turn,
ensure the right distribution of honor, political offices, and justice (see
738d–e).
All components of Plato’s pedagogical-political program I sketched are
thus integrated into the overall project of Plato’s political philosophy: they
direct non-philosophers to what is best – a second-degree likeness to God
that gradually approaches the first-degree likeness to God achieved by
philosophers.
One last important implication of the turn from Socratic politics to Plato’s
later political thought must be noted. Although the lawgiver recognizes
that he cannot turn all citizens into physicians of the soul, the community
of “free men” envisaged in the Laws embodies as much of the Socratic ideal
as human nature allows. In one sense, then, Plato can be said to continue
the Socratic project, albeit with other means. At the same time, however,
Plato also explicitly criticizes the gadfly politics of Socrates. Consider non-
philosophers whose beliefs about the good were shaped by stories about
gods, daemons, heroes, and virtuous citizens, as well as by persuasive
speeches accompanying the laws. They would neither be able to defend
these beliefs in a Socratic elenchos, nor derive benefit from the insight that
they do not fully know what they thought they knew, since they are unable
to replace the refuted beliefs through knowledge. In this sense Socratic
politics not only fails to direct non-philosophers to what is best. It also
is dangerous, because it can push non-philosophers into nihilism: they
lose the beliefs that are grounded in the philosopher’s knowledge of the
good, but cannot replace them through that knowledge and hence are left
without either:
We hold from childhood certain convictions [dogmata] about just and fine things,
in which we were brought up as by parents, obeying and honoring them. . . . There
are other ways of living, however, opposite to these that contain pleasures, flatter
our soul and attract it to themselves but which do not persuade sensible people,
who honor and obey the convictions of their fathers. . . . And then a question
[erôtêma] comes along and asks someone of this sort: “What is the fine [ti esti to
kalon]?” And, when he answers what he has heard from the lawgiver, the argument
refutes [exelenchê] him and by refuting [elenchôn] him often and in many places
strikes him down to the opinion that the fine is no more fine than shameful, and
the same with the just, the good, and the things he most held in honor. . . . Then,
when he no longer holds these convictions in honor and as akin to him as before
and cannot discover the true ones [ta alêthê], will he be likely to adopt any other
way of life than that which flatters him? No he will not. And so, I suppose, from
being law-abiding [ek nomimou] he becomes lawless [paranomos]. Inevitably. (Rep.
538c–539a)
Although philosophy still holds the key to the best life, Plato thinks that
it should not be practiced on the marketplace. Later proponents of a
philosophical religion connect this argument with the argument in the
Phaedrus against making philosophy accessible in writing. For once written
down, philosophy reaches “indiscriminately those with understanding no
less than those who have no business with it, and it does not know to
whom it should speak and to whom it should not” (275d–e).
the wisdom of non-philosophers

Can non-philosophers, then, attain an imperfect form of wisdom? Some
scholars argue that wisdom in the Republic depends on knowledge of
the Forms, in particular the Form of the good. This would mean that
non-philosophers could not attain wisdom and hence also not be just or
self-ruled. The only way for them to do what reason prescribes would
be as slaves.63 Although Plato considers coercion a legitimate last resort,
as we saw, most non-philosophers have wisdom without knowledge of
the Forms. Consider the characterization of non-philosophers in States-
man 309a–e: Plato first mentions non-philosophers who are incorrigibly
vicious and ought to be killed or sent into exile and non-philosophers
who, like “slaves,” must be coerced to act virtuously because of their “great
ignorance and baseness.” The majority of non-philosophers, however, are
led to virtue by means of a “divine bond” which fits “together that part
of their soul that is eternal.” This divine bond consists in beliefs “about
what is fine, just, and good” that are “really true and firmly settled [meta
bebaiôseôs].” They are brought about by the true lawgiver through musical
education. Although these beliefs fall short of knowledge attained through
dialectics, Plato does not hesitate to call a person who holds them “truly
wise” (ontôs phronimos) in a “political context.” The same holds for the
Republic. Plato explicitly speaks of “wisdom” (sophia) and “knowledge”
(epistêmê) when describing the outcome of musical education which shapes
the soul’s rational part through “fine speeches” (logoi kaloi) and “teachings”
(mathêmata) according to book 4 (441e; 442c; 443e). Moreover, when Plato
contrasts Sparta’s education “by force” with the education “by persua-
sion” of the best state described in the Republic, he mentions both the
use of “discussion and philosophy” and of “music and poetry” in the best
state (548b–c). In book 7, however, Plato denies that musical education
63 See Cooper (1999) and Bobonich (2002), for example 47–48.

can lead to “true philosophy” (521c) since it provides no “knowledge”
(epistêmê) and contains “no teaching [mathêma] concerning any such
good as you are seeking now” (522a). In book 9, moreover, Plato describes
the soul’s rational part as “wisdom-loving” because it is “always straining
to know where the truth lies” (581b) – a desire which non-philosophers
lack as we saw. Recall, however, the distinction between practical and
theoretical wisdom which I suggested above. Plato clearly thinks that the
pedagogical-political program provides sufficient practical knowledge to
enable reason to order a person’s life. This is precisely how “wisdom” is
characterized in book 4: it is the “knowledge of what is advantageous for
each part and for the whole soul” (442c) or “the knowledge that oversees
the actions” preserving the soul’s “inner harmony” (443e). Already Plotinus
proposed – correctly in my view – to distinguish between two kinds
of wisdom: All citizens in a well-ordered polis have “political” wisdom
which means that reason rules their non-rational desires (Enn. 1.2.1). This
Plotinus takes to be the meaning of wisdom in book 4 of the Republic.
Only select citizens, however, move on to wisdom properly speaking which
consists in “likeness to God” attained through the perfection of reason
(1.2.3). Plato’s ontology clearly permits predicating the same term in a
primary and in a derivative sense. Thus “beautiful” in the Symposium is
predicated of the Form of beauty, but derivatively also of bodies, souls,
laws, and so forth that have beauty because they partake in the Form
(210a–211c; cf. Rep. 476a ff.). Similarly we can predicate wisdom in
the primary sense of the philosopher’s knowledge of the good and
derivatively of the beliefs about the good established in the non-
philosopher’s soul through a philosophically grounded pedagogical-
political program.
To see how Plato’s pedagogical-political program can convey the rele-
vant practical knowledge, consider the account of the soul in the Phaedrus:
Socrates does not explain to Phaedrus “what the soul actually is,” but gives
a likeness of the soul in form of a story about a charioteer with two horses
(246a–b). He then goes on to describe the relation between the soul’s dif-
ferent parts on the basis of this story, explains what causes the embodiment
of the soul, as well as how different ways of living influence the soul’s
current state and its fate in the future. The story thus provides Phaedrus
with a notion of the soul’s structure and of the kind of behavior which,
given this structure, is beneficial or harmful to the soul. Although only a
likeness of Plato’s philosophical psychology and its moral implications, the
story gives Phaedrus a conceptual framework that allows him to discern
on his own what the right thing to do is. If, in addition, his desires are
directed to objects of rightful love and hate, he will, in fact, do what is right
and hence live wisely and justly. A similar case can be made for Glaucon
and Adeimantus, Socrates’s interlocutors in the Republic. They surely lack
knowledge of the Form of the good which, however, does not mean that,
like slaves, they must be coerced to act justly.64 As in the example of the
Phaedrus, the parables of the line, the sun, and the cave provide likenesses
of the relevant knowledge which are sufficiently accurate for practical guid-
ance. The same role can be attributed to the representation of God as a
craftsman in the Timaeus and as a lawgiver in the Laws: they are likenesses
which provide non-philosophers with an understanding – albeit imper-
fect in comparison to the philosopher’s knowledge – of the metaphysical
foundation of the natural and the political order. At least in part this also
explains the notorious “noble lie” which Plato says is necessary for political
purposes. It is, of course, not literally true that the soul is a charioteer with
two horses, that the Form of the good is the sun, that Reason is a craftsman
or lawgiver, and so forth. Yet these likenesses of true doctrines are part of
the wisdom that makes self-rule possible for non-philosophers.
To be sure, the knowledge required for rationally ordering one’s life ulti-
mately depends on the knowledge attained through philosophy since the
source of all knowledge is the Form of the good. But as long as philoso-
phers convey this knowledge through “fine speeches” and “teachings” – that
is, embodied in a pedagogical-political program – non-philosophers can
achieve a high degree of self-rule. When Plato says that non-philosophers
will have a more pleasant life if they follow “knowledge [epistêmê] and argu-
ment [logos]” under the guidance of the “philosophical part,” he is refer-
ring to the rational part of the non-philosopher’s soul, educated through
“fine speeches” and “teachings” as described in book 4 of the Republic
(586d–e).
The wisely lived life of a philosopher, of course, looks quite different
from the wisely lived life of a non-philosopher. For the philosopher act-
ing according to what is “advantageous for each part and for the whole
soul” means doing everything for the sake of perfecting reason. For the
non-philosopher, on the other hand, it means pursuing goals set by the
desires for money or honor that dominate his soul. Philosophers and non-
philosophers thus have different sources of motivation. On the one hand
this strengthens the citizens’ capacity for self-rule since the division of labor
in the best state assigns to each group the work they desire: producing and
64 Indeed, even Socrates himself expressly disavows such knowledge; see Rep. 506c.
trading goods to lovers of money, defending the polis to lovers of honor, and
contemplating and ruling to lovers of learning.65 Hence what the citizens
desire coincides with what reason prescribes. There is no question, however,
that for Plato the philosopher’s life is better than the non-philosopher’s life:
his grasp of the good is better, the things he desires are better, and the plea-
sure he derives from his activity is better. On epistemological, metaphysical
and psychological grounds, therefore, the philosopher’s life is the best life.
But non-philosophers, too, have much to gain from living wisely. For one
thing the pleasure they derive from their activity is superior to the pleasure
of non-philosophers who are not guided by reason:
[E]ven the money-loving and honor-loving parts that follow knowledge and argu-
ment and pursue with their help those pleasures that reason approves will attain
the truest pleasures possible for them, because they follow truth. (Rep. 586d–e)
Moreover, the beliefs about the good of non-philosophers in the best state
are surely epistemologically superior to the random beliefs about the good
acquired by non-philosophers who were not brought up under a philo-
sophically grounded pedagogical-political program. Finally, there is no
need to think of money and honor as the only sources of pleasure for non-
philosophers. They do not, after all, lack reason altogether. Their soul’s
rational part is only weaker than that of philosophers. This helps to resolve
what at first looks like a contradiction in Plato’s account of pleasure. For
Plato claims that “the pleasure of studying the things that are cannot be
tasted by anyone except a philosopher” which means that it is impossi-
ble for non-philosophers to taste it (582c). However, he also claims that
“even if” a money-lover or honor-lover “were eager to taste” the “pleasure of
learning the nature of the things that are . . . he couldn’t easily do so” which
means that it is difficult but not impossible for non-philosophers to taste it
(582b). The solution is simple: although it is impossible for non-
philosophers to taste the pleasure of learning as lovers of money or honor,
as weak lovers of learning they can taste it, yet only with difficulty. It is thus
important that in the Laws Plato includes basic mathematics in the edu-
cational curriculum for all citizens. And while non-philosophers take no
pleasure in higher mathematics and dialectics, they can surely enjoy reflect-
ing on the laws, stories, persuasive speeches, and practices of worship under
which they were brought up. This is, in fact, an important part of their
education according to the Laws. In contrast to unwise non-philosophers,
therefore, wise non-philosophers will not spend all their time pursuing
65 For the philosopher’s desire to rule, see my discussion above.

things related to money and honor, but will also derive pleasure from a
range of activities that can broadly be characterized as cultural-religious.
from cultural revolution to philosophical

reinterpretation
One important question remains to be addressed: how should the
pedagogical-political program that embodies the philosopher’s knowledge
of the good be related to existing beliefs, practices, and institutions that
lack a philosophical foundation? After all, the philosopher returning to the
cave does not enter a cultural void. In the Republic, Plato proposes resolv-
ing this problem through a cultural revolution. Recall that Plato compares
the philosopher-rulers who order the polis to “painters who use the divine
model” for their work:
They would take the city and the characters of human beings like a sketching slate
[pinax], but first wipe it clean [katharos], which is not at all an easy thing to do.
And you should know that this is the plain difference between them and others,
namely that they refuse to take either an individual or a city in hand or to write
laws, unless they receive a clean slate or are allowed to clean it themselves. (Rep.
501a)
How do they wipe the sketching slate clean?

They will send everyone in the city who is over ten years old into the country.
Then they will take possession of the children, remove them from the customs
[êthê] of their parents, and bring them up in their own ways [tropoi] and laws
[nomoi] which are the ones we have described. (Rep. 540e–541a)
The children brought up under the new beliefs, practices, and institutions
turn into what can be called “the divine form and image” when it is found
“among human beings” (501b). What are the historical beliefs, practices,
and institutions that Plato suggests replacing in the Republic? They include,
of course, the poetry of Homer and Hesiod, the foundational cultural
narratives of Greece as Plato is well aware; his fellow citizens:
praise Homer and say that he is the poet who educated Greece, that it is worth
taking up his works in order to learn how to manage and educate people, and that
one should order one’s whole life in accordance with his teachings. (Rep. 606e)
The same holds for the nomoi of existing Greek city-states, including those
of Crete and Sparta which are “praised by most people” because they aim
at virtue (544b). Although Plato agrees that nomoi must aim at virtue, the
From cultural revolution to philosophical reinterpretation 83
nomoi of Crete and Sparta aim at the wrong virtue: courage, the virtue of
the warrior, not wisdom, the virtue of the philosopher.
In the Laws, by contrast, Plato adopts a different strategy. The Athe-
nian Visitor, Plato’s spokesman, asks his two interlocutors – Clinias from
Crete and Megillus from Sparta – whether they attribute the nomoi of their
respective polis to “a god or a man” (624a). Both respond that the source
of their nomoi is a god – in Crete the nomoi of Zeus were established by
Minos and in Sparta the nomoi of Apollo were established by Lycurgus (see
624a–625b). The Athenian Visitor, however, does not recognize the nomoi
of Crete and Sparta as divine without qualification. When Clinias and
Megillus explain that the nomoi of their cities are excellent because they
make the citizens courageous and thus ensure victory in war, the Athenian
Visitor subjects their account to an elenchos and refutes it. The argument
shows that excellent nomoi do not aim at victory and courage, but at peace
and “the highest virtue.” As we saw, “the highest virtue” consists in the
four cardinal virtues defined in the Republic which, in turn, aim at “Reason
who rules all things” (630b–d). The important point for my purpose is that
Plato does not present the result of the elenchos as a refutation of the divine
character of the nomoi of Crete and Sparta. He presents it as a refutation
of the interpretation of these nomoi proposed by Clinias and Megillus. To
prove the divinity of their nomoi they must show how the beliefs, practices,
and institutions of Crete and Sparta promote the end at which divine
nomoi truly aim, namely “the highest virtue” according to the outcome of
the elenchos. The project of the Laws, then, is not the construction of philo-
sophically sound divine nomoi as a replacement for the historical nomoi of
Crete and Sparta. Instead, the project is the philosophical reinterpretation
of the nomoi established by Minos and Lycurgus to bring out their rational
character which alone justifies describing them as divine. This, moreover,
is not only the challenge that the Athenian poses to Clinias and Megillus.
It is also what he himself goes on to do in the ensuing discussion of the
nomoi of Magnesia. As Glenn Morrow noted, “outright invention plays
almost no part at all” in the Laws. Morrow summarized Plato’s method in
the Laws as follows:
Again and again we have seen Plato take in hand some familiar historical institu-
tion . . . or some deeply rooted tradition . . . and, in light of the larger end which
it is adapted to serve, make it over into a form fitted for his model city.66
66 Morrow (1960), 591. Note that, according to Morrow, Plato was above all concerned with Athenian
beliefs, practices, and institutions. Menn (2005) convincingly argued that Crete and Sparta are
The existing beliefs, practices, and institutions, Plato now suggests, were,
in fact, established by philosopher-rulers. Only later was their purpose
misunderstood. Hence they need not be replaced but only restored to their
original purpose. Plato can then engage in the philosophical reinterpreta-
tion of Greek cultural forms as if they were part of a pedagogical-political
program set up by philosophers. While in the Republic Plato explicitly
criticizes the nomoi of Crete and Sparta and presents the best state as an
alternative to them, in the Laws he presents the best state as the correct
interpretation of the nomoi of Crete and Sparta which had been misun-
derstood by Clinias and Megillus. Corrective critique is replaced through
corrective reinterpretation.67
While less violent than a cultural revolution, the method of philosoph-
ical reinterpretation comes at a price. For the philosopher-ruler must no
longer contend only with the natural limitations of the citizens – that is,
the fact that most of them prefer money or honor to learning. He must also
contend with the limitations of their cultural makeup – that is, the fact that
they were brought up under beliefs, practices, and institutions that lack a
philosophical foundation. Philosophical reinterpretation can remedy this,
but only up to a point. Also in their philosophically reinterpreted form,
existing beliefs, practices, and institutions will fall short of the pedagogical-
political program that the philosopher-rulers in the Republic paint on their
sketching slate. Hence Plato suggests a two-step procedure for establishing
a well-ordered state: in a first step the best, second-best, third-best, and
so forth moral-political order must be described; in a second step, the
person charged with founding a “political community” (synoikêsis) must
choose the best moral-political order that can be implemented under the
particular circumstances of his time and place (Leg. 739a). In the Laws, the
choice belongs to Clinias, portrayed by Plato as one of the commission-
ers entrusted with establishing the laws of Magnesia. Clinias chooses the
second-best model. One core difference between the best and the second-
best state is that in Magnesia private property will be permitted, while in
the Republic it “will have been everywhere and by every means completely
eliminated from life” in the guardian class (739c):
Everybody feels pleasure and pain at the same things, so that they all praise and
blame with complete unanimity. To sum up, the laws in force impose the greatest
the more likely frame of reference, in particular the literature praising the Spartan politeia such as
Xenophon’s Constitution of the Lacedaemonians.
67 Note that Plato does not rehabilitate Homer and Hesiod in the same manner. See my discussion in
the next chapter.
Divine Law – one or many? 85
possible unity on the state and you will never produce a better or truer criterion
of an absolutely perfect law than that. It may be that gods or a number of the
children of gods inhabit this kind of state: if so, the life they live there, observing
these rules, is a happy one indeed. And so men need look no further for their
ideal: they should keep this state in view and try to find the one that most nearly
resembles it. This is what we have put our hand to, and if in some way it could be
realized, it would . . . be second only to the ideal. (Leg. 739d–e)
I take the “gods” or “children of gods” who inhabit the best state to
be a reference to the citizens on the sketching slate of the Republic who
become what can be called “the divine form and image” when it is found
“among human beings.” Plato obviously takes the attachment to private
property to be very difficult to eradicate without a cultural revolution. He
does, however, not rule out that states falling short of the best state can
gradually approach it. For sending all citizens “over ten years old into the
country” is only “the quickest and easiest way for the city and constitution
we have discussed to be established” (Rep. 541a). This means that there is
also a slower and more difficult way: the gap between the best state and
less perfect states can be closed through successive stages of philosophical
reinterpretation.68 It is true that in the Laws Plato does not authorize the
rulers to change the laws as they please, since he no longer believes that
philosopher-rulers are incorruptible if given unlimited power (see 875b–d).
At the same time he works out various mechanisms that will allow revising
laws within a system of checks and balances. Under certain conditions, for
example, the intellectual exchange with philosophers of foreign countries
can be made useful to “strengthen the customs [nomima] of Magnesia
that are soundly based” and to “correct any [customs] that are defective”
(951c).69
divine law – one or many?

As we saw, Plato recognizes both the nomoi of Crete and the nomoi of
Sparta as divine on condition that they are appropriately reinterpreted.
They instantiate the same ideal, but under different natural and cultural
circumstances. From the outset Plato points out that specific Cretan nomoi
relating to “physical training” and “military equipment” are determined
by the properties of the Cretan territory which differs, for example, from
68 Like the Laws, the Timaeus-Critias belongs to Plato’s latest dialogues, suggesting that Plato did not
give up on the communist ideal. For ancient Athens is described as a state in which the guardians
live without private property as in the best state of the Republic.
69 For additional examples, see Bobonich (2002), 395–408.
the territory of Thessaly (625c–626b). Plato can thus say that what is
good military training in Crete would be bad military training in Thessaly
without having to accept the relativism of a sophist like Protagoras. In other
areas Plato takes pluralism to be entirely contingent. This is the case with the
sacred laws as we saw. They should be accepted on the authority of tradition
alone – either on the authority of oracles such as the oracle of Apollo in
Delphi, of Zeus in Dodona, or of the Egyptian god Ammon in Siwa, or on
the authority of “ancient sayings” wherever these take their persuasiveness
from. For despite their diversity, the sacred laws fulfill the purpose that
Plato assigns to them equally well (see 738d–e). We also saw that divine
nomoi can vary in excellence. The beliefs, practices, and institutions of
Magnesia, for example, are inferior to those of the best state described in
the Republic. It is clear, moreover, that multiple instantiations of the same
model are possible: that the military training in Crete differs from the
military training in Thessaly due to differences of territory, for example,
does not entail that soldiers in Crete will be more or less courageous than
soldiers in Thessaly. The analogy between the lawgiver and the doctor
helps to clarify how this form of pluralism works. While the goal of the
doctor is always the same – restoring health – the regime he prescribes
varies according to the particular condition of the patients. In the same
way the goal of different lawgivers may be the same: directing the citizens
to what is best, but the way they order the lives of the citizens towards this
goal will vary according to particular natural and cultural circumstances.
Plato’s conception of divine nomoi, then, combines contextual pluralism
concerning the beliefs, practices, and institutions required for attaining the
goal with universalism concerning the goal itself.
Although in the Laws it is Clinias who must choose the appropriate
model-state to be realized under the particular natural and cultural cir-
cumstances of Magnesia, Plato explicitly adds that:
we should not forget anyone else who at some time may be faced with such a choice
and wish to adopt, according to his own way of life [kata ton heautou tropon], what
is dear [to philon] to him from his own native country. (Leg. 739b)
Hence the philosophical reinterpretation of historical beliefs, practices, and
institutions in the Laws provides just one example of how such a program
can be carried out. In the next chapters we will see how philosophers
from antiquity to the seventeenth century took up Plato’s invitation to
philosophically reinterpret the beliefs, practices, and institutions “dear” to
them.
c h a p ter 2
Moses, Christ, and the universal rule of

Reason in antiquity
introduction
According to Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 339), Christianity’s first historian, the
nomoi of Moses pass Plato’s test for divine nomoi with flying colors: Moses
made the “human goods” into means for the “divine goods” and “referred
the divine goods to Reason [nous] who rules all things – that is, to the God
of the universe” (PE 12.16, 1). Using a Greek model to philosophically rein-
terpret the beliefs, practices, and institutions of Jews and Christians obvi-
ously requires some sort of justification. Hence Eusebius adds that Plato
“teaches the Law dear to Moses” (ibid.). If the divine nomoi of Magnesia
are modeled on the divine nomoi of Moses, and if Christ only extends their
moral-political order, with some improvements, to humankind as a whole,
it should not be surprising that all three embody the same philosophical
principles. Most importantly, they have the same metaphysical foundation:
Reason, who orders nature and the religious community towards what is
best. True, Jews and Christians often call Reason Logos instead of Nous. But
this is a change in name, not in meaning. Naturalizing Plato, then, takes
the edge off the fact that Jewish and Christian philosophers are borrowing
from the Greeks – their main cultural competitors in the ancient world
after all – no less than the framework for reinterpreting their religious
tradition.
Adopting the Platonic program allowed Jewish and Christian philoso-
phers to answer a number of pressing questions: What do Jews or Christians
have to gain from studying philosophy? Do the Law of Moses and the teach-
ings of Christ not provide a true account of God, nature, and humankind,
as well as a set of rules whose observance leads to blessedness and sal-
vation? And if philosophy provides a better guide to what their religion
teaches, why should they hold on to it? Or to which should they adhere if
the two contradict each other? Given the universal scope of the Christian
project, similar questions arise in relation to pagans: Why should they
87
88 Moses, Christ, and the rule of Reason in antiquity
abandon their ancestral traditions and embrace Christian beliefs, practices,
and institutions? And why should their philosophers leave the schools of
Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and Epicurus to become disciples of Christ? To a
degree Jews, too, had to deal with these questions. Although their aim
was not to convert pagans, they were keen to earn their respect: for Jew-
ish beliefs, practices, and institutions and for the wisdom of Moses, the
founder of their community.
In ancient Alexandria, Philo Judaeus and his Christian students Clement
and Origen were the first to work out a comprehensive Jewish and Christian
answer to these questions. The close intellectual connection between them
justifies speaking of a shared philosophical-religious project.1 Alexandria
was the center where Greek culture and the Jewish Diaspora met in the
Hellenistic period, and Philo’s work represents the intellectual culmination
of this encounter. By interpreting Judaism as a philosophical religion, Philo
made a case both for the excellence of philosophy to Jews and for the
excellence of Judaism to pagans. Philo’s answer, in turn, proved useful to
Christian philosophers. Their adaptation of this answer, however, not only
addressed the concerns of Christians and pagans, but also explained why
Jews should convert to Christianity.
Philosophers like Philo, Clement, and Origen are often described as

“apologists” – as if they were mainly concerned with defending their reli-
gious tradition. This is, however, only one aspect of what they do. They
are at least as much engaged in defending philosophy. And they surely are
not reinterpreting their religious beliefs, practices, and institutions only
to show off to pagans how much wisdom these contain. They are also
aligning them with the pedagogical-political ideals they attribute to Moses
and Christ in order to direct their communities to the concept of the good
which they endorse for philosophical reasons. Indeed, the real question for
philosophers like Philo, Clement, and Origen is why Jews or Christians
should value the historical forms of their religious tradition. For in a com-
munity of perfect Jewish or Christian philosophers, as in a community of
perfect Platonic philosophers, there is no need for laws, stories, exhorta-
tions, and practices of worship. A perfect Jewish or Christian philosopher,
like a perfect Platonic philosopher, has attained likeness to Reason, an
ideal for which Philo, Clement, and Origen find biblical support: because
human beings have reason they are said to have been created in God’s
1 For the impact of Philo on Clement and Origen, see Runia (1993), chapters 8–9 and Runia (1995).
See also van den Hoek (1988), (1997), and (2000).
Introduction 89
“image” and “likeness” (Gen 1:26). God’s “image” and “likeness” refer to
the Logos who is subordinated to God in roughly the same way as Nous
is subordinated to the Form of the good in Plato. According to Philo,
Clement, and Origen the Logos is God’s mind, constituted by the Forms
and their order. Since Clement and Origen further identify the Logos with
Christ, all human beings are by default Christians to the extent they live
a life ordered by reason towards the perfection of reason. Note, however,
that being created in God’s “image” only refers to reason’s potential. The
aim is to become God’s “likeness” by realizing this potential through study,
culminating in knowledge of God.
Humankind before the Fall is the model of human perfection – a com-
munity whose members, guided by reason, strive to become like Divine
Reason. In this community the Logos’s rule and self-rule coincide. The Fall
represents a conversion – from a life guided by reason and motivated by
the desire to know, to a life guided by the imagination and motivated by
non-rational desires. In Plato’s terms humankind moved into the cave, the
dwelling place of non-philosophers. Religion’s purpose is to repair – or at
least attenuate – the Fall. In two ways the Logos, mediated through Moses
and the historical Christ, orders the community towards what is best. As
paidagogos or guide for children, the Logos sees to the perfection of non-
philosophers.2 This refers to the pedagogical-political program Moses and
Christ set up as legislators, poets, and orators, or, which amounts to the
same thing, the therapy they prescribe as doctors of the soul. Plato’s dis-
tinction between philosophers and non-philosophers thus permits Jewish
and Christian philosophers to explain the need for the historical forms of
their religious tradition and respond to critics of religion like Celsus who
claimed that all human beings should live under “the guidance of reason”
(logikos hodêgos) alone.3 Note, however, that Moses and Christ, like the
rulers of Magnesia, are doctors of “free men” who strive to bring the rule
of the Logos as close to rational self-rule as human nature allows.
As didaskalikos or teacher, on the other hand, the Logos sees to the
perfection of philosophers. This refers to the philosophy of Moses and
Christ which they teach privately to the intellectually gifted members of
the community, but also include as allegorical content in their pedagogical-
political program. Religion’s allegorical content, then, is true philosophy of
which religion’s literal content is an imitation or shadow. As philosophy’s
2 I adapt Clement’s description of the Logos’s threefold role as protreptikos, paidagogos, and didaskalikos
in Paed. 1.
3 See Origen’s response to Celsus in Cels. 1.9.
handmaid it gives non-philosophers a share in the philosophical life
through laws, stories, exhortations, and practices of worship. Recovering
the philosophy of Moses and Christ, however, poses a problem. For one
thing there is no record of their private teachings. And Scripture’s allegor-
ical doctrines cannot be learned from Scripture but only disclosed through
an interpreter who already knows them. Thus Judaism and Christianity
fail to provide the resources necessary to grasp their own truth. To this end
Jews and Christians must turn to the educational curriculum of the Greeks:
the propaedeutic sciences (enkyklia paideia) and philosophy which roughly
correspond to the mathematical and dialectical training of philosophers in
the Republic.4 Hence a philosophical education derived from Greek sources
is the key for making the transition from being a good Jew or Christian to
being a perfect Jew or Christian. There is no other way back to paradise.
To be committed to Moses and Christ, however, implies only being
committed to true philosophy, not to a specific set of doctrines, let alone
to a particular Greek philosophical school. Like Plato and Aristotle, Philo,
Clement, and Origen hold that “no one is to be honored or valued more
than the truth” (Rep. 595b–c; cf. EN 1.6, 1096a16–17). All three criticize
Greek philosophers for following the authority of their school tradition
rather than the best argument. And all three claim to accept from each
school only those doctrines which, on balance, turn out to be well founded.
Scripture can offer no guidance in this regard since its literal sense lacks
authority and must be interpreted allegorically every time it conflicts with
reason. In this sense the Alexandrians can be described as “eclectic.” Their
eclecticism is meant to set an example for Jews and Christians of how
to become better philosophers than the Greeks. Not surprisingly, then, the
Alexandrians also disagree among each other on doctrinal issues. Philo, for
example, is a determinist, as we will see, whereas Origen argues against the
Gnostic dualism of good and evil that the cause of evil is free will. Such
disagreements, however, again do not affect the commitment to philosophy.
Indeed, as we will see, for Origen the search for true philosophy is a project
open to revision in light of better arguments. The Alexandrians’ use of
distinctly religious notions like piety (eusebeia) or faith (pistis) should not
mislead us, for the meaning of these notions is consistently redefined.
While piety, for example, is said to be the highest virtue, it means striving
to become like Divine Reason. And faith is only a preliminary stage on the
way to knowledge.
4 Clement explicitly identifies the enkyklia paideia with the mathematical sciences in the Republic
(Strom. 1.19, 93.4–5) and describes Plato’s dialectics as the only path to “true wisdom” (1.28, 176–78).
Appropriating the Platonic model 91
Is paradise, then, a place that admits philosophers only? Yes, but that
must not imply an exclusivist policy. Origen, for example, argues that souls
move up or down on the scale of perfection depending on whether they
choose virtue or vice in their current embodiment. Once the souls of non-
philosophers have been turned in the right direction thanks to Moses’s and
Christ’s pedagogical-political guidance, they, too, can, over the course of
several embodiments, replace philosophy’s handmaid with philosophy –
that is, advance from the literal to the allegorical content of religion. This
is part of a creative adaptation of the handmaid-of-philosophy theme that
inserts it into a concept of universal progress. The pedagogical-political
efforts of Moses and Christ are part of a larger pedagogical-political pro-
gram which, driven by the Logos, unfolds in history. This program gradually
advances reason until laws, stories, exhortations, and practices of worship
can be discarded altogether in favor of what Origen calls the “eternal
gospel” – that is, the gospel of reason (De princ. 3.6, 8; cf. Rev 14:6).
After having been lost through the Fall, therefore, the ideal community
of philosophers, who live a life ordered by reason towards the perfection
of reason, will be restored at the end of times. The historical Christ is a
turning point in this process since for the first time pedagogical-political
guidance based on true philosophy is extended to humankind as a whole.
The cave into which Christ descends, however, is not a cultural void. It
is inhabited by communities which, after the Fall, embraced idolatry –
that is, false beliefs about the divine, which, in turn, gave rise to corrupt
practices and institutions. Replacing these requires a cultural revolution.
As protreptikos, therefore, Christ must first convince pagans to abandon
the beliefs, practices, and institutions of their ancestors and embrace those
of the Logos, their “true” father. Only then can he guide them as paidagogos
and teach them as didaskalikos. Of all cultural traditions competing in
the ancient world, Christianity is thus presented as the one best suited to
turn every soul around from the shadows in the cave to the things that
truly are.
appropriating the platonic model: the evidence

of eusebius
If as philosophers the Alexandrians hold the truth in higher esteem than
Plato, as Jews and Christians they follow Plato’s lead. To be sure, other
sources are also important, in particular Stoic sources for their concept of
human perfection or for their concept of divine laws. However, my focus
in this chapter will lie on putting the puzzle together, not on tracking
down each piece’s sources. The most compelling evidence for the overall
Platonic framework, within which the Alexandrians interpret Judaism and
Christianity as philosophical religions, comes from Eusebius of Caesarea.
Eusebius clearly sees himself as part of the intellectual tradition whose main
representatives were Philo, Clement, and Origen. He draws their portrait
in the Ecclesiastical History and defends their project, among others, in
the Apology for Origen.5 Although Eusebius is not primarily a philosopher,
but a historian, he brings the Platonic model to light that underlies the
philosophical interpretation of Judaism and Christianity. In this way he
corroborates the less explicit evidence in Philo, Clement, and Origen.
In Book 12 of the Preparation for the Gospel Eusebius lists biblical par-
allels to a wide range of passages from the Laws and, to a lesser extent,
from the Republic and other Platonic dialogues. These parallels, Eusebius
claims, reveal how much Plato is indebted to the Law of Moses. What
he shows, in fact, is the opposite: how much the Alexandrian interpreta-
tion of the Law of Moses depends on Plato. To provide the context for
Eusebius’s discussion of Plato and Moses let me briefly sketch the project
of the Preparation for the Gospel which together with the Demonstration
of the Gospel forms a two-part exposition and defense of Christianity.6 In
the Preparation, Eusebius addresses educated readers who “do not know
what Christianity is” (1.1, 1). We have good reasons to choose Christianity
over competing cultural traditions, Eusebius argues.7 To prove this he first
refutes the beliefs, practices, and institutions of Phoenicians, Egyptians,
Romans and, most importantly, Greeks, who were vying with Christians
for cultural hegemony in the ancient world. These pagan traditions go
astray from the start: they are based on false beliefs about the divine. Books
1 to 6 accordingly offer a critique of pagan theologies and the corrupt
practices and institutions to which they give rise.8 After exposing the errors
of the pagans, Eusebius turns to establishing the truth of “the philosophy
and religion” of the “Hebrews” (7.1, 2). His account of Hebrew theology,
cosmology, psychology, and ethics, as well as of the politeia of Moses is
firmly rooted in the Alexandrian tradition. While his main authority is
5 See in particular the account of Philo’s writings in HE 2.18; the chapter on Pantaenus “the philoso-
pher,” described as the founder of the catechetical school in Alexandria and as Clement’s teacher
(5.10); and the chapter on Clement (5.11; cf. 6.6) and the list of his writings (6.13). Much of book 6
is devoted to Origen. Note that the Apology of Origen was a collaboration with Pamphilus.
6 See Eusebius’s own summary of the argument and its connection to the DE in PE 15.1.
7 See 1.1–5, 7.1, 10.4, 15.1. Portraying the choice of Christianity as a philosophical choice, as if Chris-
tianity were the best among competing philosophical schools, is common among early Christian
thinkers. See, for example, Justin Martyr’s account of his conversion in Dialogue with Trypho 2–8.
8 See the summary of Eusebius’s critique in 7.2.
Philo, he also quotes Aristobulus, Josephus, Origen, and others (books
7–8). To avoid seeing this account dismissed as apologetic, Eusebius seeks
to corroborate it through Greek testimonies from Theophrastus to Por-
phyry (book 9). Then he turns the tables on Hellenized pagans who look
down on Christians for having adopted the “barbarian” tradition of the
Hebrews. Everything in Greek culture, whether valuable or corrupt, was
appropriated from “barbarian” sources (book 10). The authenticity of the
Hebrew tradition, by contrast, is beyond doubt given the great antiquity of
Moses and the other prophets (10.9). Books 11 to 13 argue that what is true
in Greek philosophy is also contained in the Hebrew tradition. Since the
preeminent Greek philosopher is Plato, no other philosopher needs to be
examined (11, preface, 3). Eusebius’s endorsement of Plato seems unquali-
fied at first. Not only is he keen to demonstrate that Plato’s physics, ethics,
and logic – thus the standard division of philosophy in antiquity – are
in complete “agreement” (symphônia) with the “oracles of the Hebrews”
(Hebraiôn logia). He also makes considerable effort to show that Plato
holds doctrines that at first view do not look very Platonic, for example the
doctrine of the resurrection of the dead (11, preface, 3; 11.33–38). Only in
book 13 does Eusebius turn to an important objection of his pagan readers:
If Moses and Plato have philosophized in agreement, why should we not follow
the teachings of Plato, but those of Moses? We ought to do the opposite since in
addition to the doctrines being the same [isa dogmata], the Greek [philosopher]
would be closer to us Greeks than the Barbarian. (PE 13, preface)
This problem seems to have motivated a series of minor criticisms of Plato

at the end of book 13 (13.14–21; cf. 11, preface, 5). Ultimately the philosophy
of Moses comes out as superior to the philosophy of Plato, if only by an
insignificant margin. In the last two books Eusebius returns to the critical
project, this time rejecting philosophical doctrines from the Presocratics to
the Hellenistic schools which disagree with the philosophy of Moses and
Plato (14–15). However, if the philosophy of the Hebrews and the practices
and institutions to which it gave rise are indeed superior to all other cultural
traditions – why should pagans become Christians rather than Jews? This
question is taken up in the Demonstration of the Gospel where Eusebius
explains how Christianity is related to Judaism and why the new covenant
supersedes the old one. As we will see, his answer is a variation on the
theme of religion as philosophy’s handmaid.
Whereas book 11 establishes the “agreement” between Plato’s and Moses’s

teachings from logic to theology, book 12 turns to religion and politics.
Recall that directing citizens to what is best is at the core of Plato’s political
project. In the Laws Plato argues that nomoi can only count as divine if
they lead the citizens to “the highest virtue.” As we already saw, the nomoi
of Moses do precisely that according to Eusebius. In 12.16 he quotes two
long passages from the Laws (631a–632a and 632c–d) according to which
divine nomoi must impart all the “goods” required to attain perfection:
human goods – health, beauty, strength, and wealth – and divine goods –
the four cardinal virtues established in the Republic which, in turn, aim at
“Reason who rules all things.” Then Eusebius reveals Plato’s source:
Moses had made his entire legislation [nomothesia] and the constitution [politeia]
established by him dependent on the religion [eusebeia] of the God of the universe.
He had made the Demiurge of all things the starting point of the legislation. Then
he taught that from the divine goods the human goods proceed and referred the
divine goods to Reason who rules all things [ho pantôn hêgemôn nous] – that
is, to the God of the universe himself. Consider how the philosopher [that is,
Plato], walking on the same path, criticizes the legislators of the Cretans and the
Lacedaemonians, and teaches [ekdidaskei] the Law dear [areskonta] to Moses. (PE
12.16, 1)
Eusebius clearly identifies the God of the Bible with Nous who orders
nature and the polis towards what is best.9 Since something well ordered
is rationally ordered and hence divinely ordered the order established by
the nomoi of Moses is a theocracy. But how can Eusebius claim that Plato
“teaches the Law dear to Moses”? Although he points to a number of
parallels between the nomoi of Magnesia and the nomoi of Moses, he
cannot mean that the former is an exact copy of the latter. What he must
mean instead is that Plato adapted the philosophical principles underlying
the nomoi of Moses to the particular natural and cultural circumstances
of his own time and place. The striking implication is that Plato takes on
the role of a prophet modeled on Moses.10 Note how Eusebius bends the
project of the Laws to his purposes: rather than reinterpreting the nomoi
of Crete and Sparta, he claims that Plato criticizes them. By establishing
divine nomoi that direct the citizens to “Reason who rules all things,” he
follows the “barbarian” legislator Moses.
9 For the theological and cosmological use Eusebius makes of the Timaeus, see PE 11.9, 13, 16, 21, 23,
29, 30, 31, 32. See also 12.51 and 35 where Eusebius quotes the Philebus passage stating that “all the
wise agree . . . that Nous is king for us of heaven and earth” (29c). For the God of the Bible as the
cause of the universe’s rational order, see 7.9–10. For the identity of the God of the Bible and the
God of Magnesia, see the quotation from the first speech addressed to the prospective citizens of
Magnesia (Laws 715e–716b) in 11.13, 5.
10 The attribution of prophetic features to Plato shows how strongly the philosophical interpretation
of Judaism and Christianity depends on Plato.
How does God order the community towards what is best? Eusebius’s
claim that God is “the starting point of the legislation” surely does not mean
that God literally issues commands. He approvingly quotes a passage from
Philo that equates Moses’s philosophical insight with divine revelation (Op.
8, quoted in 8.13, 2). God thus is the source of the prophet’s knowledge
in the sense in which he is the first principle of all knowledge. And he is
Moses’s starting point as the final cause of wise laws – “that for the sake
of which wisdom gives commands” to quote Aristotle once more (EE 8.3,
1249b14–15).11
The prophets are models of human perfection for Eusebius. They with-
drew into “deserts and mountains and caves [cf. Heb 11:38] to attain the
summit of philosophy, attaching their thought to God alone” (PE 12.29, 1).
To describe their life, Eusebius quotes the digression on the philosopher
from the Theaetetus, which includes the call “to become like God as much
as possible” and contrasts the philosopher’s “divine and happy life” with the
“miserable life without God” (173c–177b, quoted in 12.29). If all members
of the community were able to attain this level of perfection, there would
be no need for nomoi at all. Like Plato, however, Moses realizes that most of
them cannot live a philosophical life. Hence the Law of Moses is needed as
philosophy’s handmaid to provide guidance to non-philosophers. Moses’s
pedagogical-political program, like Plato’s, prepares not-yet-philosophers
for the philosophical life and replaces philosophy for non-philosophers by
nature. Eusebius quotes the passage from the Laws in which Plato describes
the purpose of education as:
the initial acquisition of virtue by the child, when the feelings of pleasure and love,
pain and hatred, that well up in his soul are channeled in the right courses before he
can grasp the rational ground. Then when he does grasp it, [these feelings] agree
with his reason through having been properly trained by means of appropriate
habits. (Leg. 643d–644b, quoted in 12.18, 4)
According to Eusebius “you will find countless [myria] passages in the
Hebrew Scriptures” showing that Moses anticipated this concept of educa-
tion (12.18, 5). In general the narratives of Scripture were selected according
to the “guidelines” for pedagogically suitable poetry that Plato established
in the Republic. Parents and nurses recite these narratives to children “in
order to prepare them [proparaskeuês heneka] for the religion [theosebeia]
appropriate to adulthood” (12.5, 4). At this stage, religious teachings must
11 For Eusebius, God’s nature is “ineffable” (11.12, 1). The anthropomorphic representation of God
only serves pedagogical-political purposes (12.31, 2). This certainly includes God’s representation as
a lawgiver.
be accepted on the basis of “faith” (pistis) according to Moses and Plato,
because children have not yet developed the intellectual abilities that “con-
templation” (theoria) requires (12.1, 3).12
Most members of the community, however, are non-philosophers by
nature and thus retain childlike souls even when they grow up. Quoting a
passage from the pseudo-Platonic Second Letter, Eusebius interprets Plato
as saying that one should not “reveal [ekpherein] to everyone the holy
doctrines of the truth” (314a, quoted in 12.7, 1). The same view he finds
in Matthew’s prohibition to “give that which is holy to the dogs” and to
“throw pearls before swine” (Matt 7:6, quoted ibid.). Hence Moses does
not disclose philosophical doctrines to “the multitude” (hoi polloi) and to
“the common people” (to dêmôdes plêthos), but teaches them only what is
required for leading a “devout and moderate life” (11.7, 10–11; cf. 7.11, 1).
By ordering the community towards what is best, Moses establishes
God’s rule over the moral-political realm, imitating the natural order insti-
tuted by God directly.13 We saw that, according to Plato, this requires not
only the skills of the philosopher, but also the skills of the legislator, poet,
and orator. While the philosopher knows what is best for the community
and has the moral integrity to put it into practice, the legislator, poet, and
orator translate this knowledge into the language of the cave dwellers –
that is, the language of the “imagination” (eikasia). Moses fits this profile:
he is an outstanding philosopher with the required moral integrity (7.7,
1; 7.9, 1; 8.13, 2). In Exodus 4:13, for example, Moses pleads with God
to appoint someone else to be the leader of the Hebrews, thus showing
that he cannot be corrupted by political power (12.9, 1). He agrees with
Socrates against Thrasymachus that the ruler must promote the good of
the community, not his own good (Rep. 346e–347a, quoted in 12.9, 2–3).
As for the lawgiver, poet, and orator, a key passage is Republic 500c–501c
which Eusebius applies to Moses (12.19). “The philosopher,” according
to Plato, “who consorts with God [theos] and the well-ordered universe
[kosmos] becomes as divine and well-ordered as a human being can be.”14
Then he turns into a “craftsman” of virtue and a “painter of constitutions”
who orders the community according to “the divine model.” Exodus 25:40
and its interpretation in the Epistle to the Hebrews show that the Law
of Moses was crafted in this way (12.19, 1). In the Exodus passage, God
instructs Moses to make all things pertaining to the tabernacle “according
12 Throughout 12.1–6 “faith” refers to this imperfect form of religion.

13 On the divine order of the universe as a model for the divine order of the community, see 7.9–10.
14 Note that Eusebius’s version slightly differs from Plato’s which has “theios” and “kosmios.”
to the model [kata ton typon] which was shown to you on the moun-
tain.” According to Hebrews 8:5 this means that Moses ought to make “an
imitation and shadow [hypodeigma kai skia] of heavenly things.” Eusebius
disregards the context of both verses which refer to the construction of the
tabernacle. They show that Moses crafted “images [eikona] of the more
divine realities in the intelligible realm [en noêtois].” These “images” are
the literal content of the Law of Moses. As a philosopher, then, Moses
contemplates “the divine realities in the intelligible realm” – that is, the
Forms constituting God’s mind (11.23–25). As a “painter” of the Hebrew
constitution he puts laws, stories, exhortations, and practices of worship in
place which imitate “the divine realities in the intelligible realm” and order
the lives of non-philosophers towards what is best.
As an imitation of the objects of philosophical contemplation, the Law
of Moses is not, strictly speaking, true. Also on this point Plato agrees with
Moses as is clear from his claim in the Republic that children “must at
first be educated in falsehoods [en tois pseudesin]” (376e–377a, quoted in
12.4, 1). Much of the Law of Moses thus consists in “noble falsehoods” –
for example the many passages that represent God anthropomorphically
(12.31). This, however, does not undermine the validity of Moses’s teachings
which are true if we move up from the “images” to the true philosophy
which the images represent. This is the Law’s allegorical content:
And among the Hebrews . . . it is the custom to teach the narratives of the inspired
Scripture to those of childish souls [hoi nêpioi tas psychas] in a very simple
way just like stories [mythoi], but to teach those of a trained disposition the
deeper and systematic doctrines of the texts [hai tôn logôn bathuterai kai dog-
matikai theôriai] by means of the so-called second level interpretation [deuterôsis]
and explanation of the intelligible contents [noêmata] that are hidden from the
multitude. (PE 12.4, 2)
It is not difficult to see why Eusebius claims that Plato agrees with Moses,
although, in fact, Plato has no doctrine of allegorical interpretation: if the
Forms are the divine model of the pedagogical-political program crafted
by Plato’s philosopher-ruler, this program must in some way embody true
philosophy.
To make the transition from the literal to the allegorical content, how-
ever, the Law of Moses is not enough. This content is only disclosed to
“those of a trained disposition.” To get the training to move from their
childhood faith to true philosophy, not-yet-philosophers must turn to an
esoteric wisdom tradition: Moses left philosophical doctrines “to be inves-
tigated and taught in secret [en aporrêtois] by those capable of such an
initiation” (11.7, 12). Eusebius adduces no proof-text for his claim that
Plato agrees with Moses. He may well have had in mind Plato’s critique of
subjecting non-philosophers to elenchoi in the Republic and his critique of
making philosophy accessible in writing in the Phaedrus.15
Although philosophical doctrines can thus be disclosed in the Law of
Moses through allegorical interpretation, they cannot be learned from it.
Acquiring the “trained disposition” to access the Law’s allegorical content
requires studying philosophy. Since Eusebius’s claim about an oral tradition
of Hebrew philosophy “taught in secret” is a fiction, this provides an
excellent justification for Jews and Christians to study Greek philosophy.
It also explains why Eusebius does not accuse Plato of having derived his
philosophy from the Law of Moses. If Plato did learn philosophy from
Moses, then it was from the alleged oral tradition of Hebrew wisdom that
is not taught by the Law:
Yes, surely, also with regard to the teaching and contemplation of intelligible
and incorporeal things, it is manifest from his own words that the admirable
Plato followed the all-wise Moses and the Hebrew prophets: whether he learned
it from an oral tradition that reached him – since he is proved to have pursued
studies among the Egyptians at the time when the Hebrews, having been driven
a second time out of their own country by the Persian dominion, were settling
in Egypt – or whether by himself [par’ heautou] he hit on the nature of things,
or in whatever manner he was considered worthy of this knowledge [gnôsis] by
God. (PE 11.8, 1)16
Although Eusebius takes it for granted that Plato was familiar with the
Law of Moses, he only claims that Plato depends on it with respect to its
pedagogical-political content. The nomoi of Moses were Plato’s model for
the nomoi of Magnesia as we saw. Elsewhere Eusebius claims that Plato
copied the story of Adam’s Fall in his account of the birth of Eros in the
Symposium. Like Moses, Plato “is speaking allegorically [allêgorôn]” (12.11).
And the Symposium’s account of human beings, who were at first spherical
hermaphrodites and then cut into two halves, is based on a misunderstand-
ing of the biblical account of Eve’s creation from Adam (12.12).17 If Plato
15 See my discussion in chapter 1.

16 See also 10.1, 5 where Eusebius suggests more generally that the sound philosophical doctrines of
the Greeks may stem from “the impulse of innate ideas.”
17 Note that the same view is expressed by pagan Platonists: Plotinus, for example, takes the account
of the birth of Eros to be an allegory and explains it accordingly in Enn. 3.5, 2–10. Proclus contrasts
Plato’s mythoi which he takes to be suitable for pedagogical purposes with the mythoi of Homer
which he takes to be suitable for initiates alone (In Remp. 1.76–77, 1.79). Cf. Lamberton (1986),
180–97.
is an Attic Moses for Eusebius, it is not Plato the philosopher, but Plato
the author of divine nomoi and of philosophical poetry. He follows Moses
when he takes on the role of the prophet.
Eusebius does not explicitly claim that the preludes to Magnesia’s nomoi,
which aim to rationally persuade the citizens to do what the laws prescribe,
were derived from the Law of Moses. This is interesting, because he clearly
thinks that Moses wrote preludes with the same purpose. In book 7 he
gives a detailed account of “the philosophy which Moses teaches in the
preludes [prooimia] to the sacred laws” (7.10, 11). These preludes elaborate
on God and the order of nature to persuade the community that the laws
of Moses are as rational as nature’s laws and that both express the rule of
God (7.9–10). Then they explain human nature, stressing the importance
of perfecting “reason” (nous) on account of which human beings are said
to be created in God’s image (7.10, 9–12). They also set up models of
perfection by recording the virtuous lives of the forefathers from Enoch
to the patriarchs (7.7–8). Moses’s preludes thus contain everything from
theology to ethics that non-philosophers need in order to understand why
Moses’s prescriptions are good for them. Since Moses is addressing non-
philosophers, however, he does not use “syllogistic proofs” (syllogismoi) or
“probable arguments” (pithanalogiai), but speaks in a “more dogmatic and
didactic manner” (dogmatikôteron de kai didaskalikôteron) – that is, adjusts
the level of argumentation to his audience’s ability to understand (7.11,
1). Although non-philosophers thus fall short of attaining perfect rational
self-rule, they have good reasons for doing what Moses prescribes.
There is some tension between Eusebius’s Platonic reinterpretation of
the Law of Moses and his defense of Christianity. As a Christian Eusebius
argues that the nomoi of Moses are no longer valid (see DE 1.4). This
also helps to explain why he does not explicitly connect Moses’s preludes
with Plato’s. Recall that the purpose of preludes for Plato is to establish a
community of “free men.” Eusebius, however, wants to reserve “freedom”
to characterize the religion of the Hebrews before Moses. In contrast to the
“Jews” who were subject to the nomoi of Moses:
[they] attained a free and unconstrained [eleutheros kai aneimenos] form of religion,
being ordered towards a life in accordance with nature, so that, thanks to the
complete impassibility of their soul, they had no need of laws to rule them, but
had taken up the true knowledge of the doctrines concerning God. (PE 7.6, 4)
Christians are the heirs of this “free and unconstrained . . . religion” of

the ancient Hebrews (see DE 1.2). Although they remain loyal to the
fundamental intention of the Law of Moses, they are no longer bound
by all of its prescriptions. The religion of the ancient Hebrews, however,
does not sit well with the Platonic framework that Eusebius has been using
all along. And its description indeed relies heavily on Stoic concepts.18
Eusebius’s explanation of why Christians may disregard the nomoi of Moses,
on the other hand, is a creative variation of the handmaid-of-philosophy
theme:
[The Law of Moses] was like a nurse and governess of childish [nêpiai] and
imperfect [ateleis] souls. It was like a doctor to heal the whole Jewish race, worn
away by the terrible disease of Egypt. As such it offered a lower and less perfect way
of life to the descendants of Abraham, who were too weak to follow in the steps
of their forefathers. For through their long sojourn in Egypt, after the death of
their godly forefathers, they adopted Egyptian customs, and . . . fell into idolatrous
superstition. (DE 1.6, 31; cf. PE 7.8, 37–40)
According to the standard Platonic view childhood, either in the literal sense
or as the condition of non-philosophers, requires pedagogical-political
guidance. To these Eusebius adds a third form: temporary childhood caused
by adverse historical circumstances. As a Christian apologist, therefore,
Eusebius reduces the role of the nomoi of Moses to healing “the terrible
disease of Egypt.” Their aim is to enable the Jews to return to the “free and
unconstrained” religion of their forefathers whose true heir is Christianity.
reinterpreting cultural traditions

To scholars committed to the historical-critical method, Eusebius’s
symphônia of Moses and Plato may look like an exercise in camouflage.
What Plato allegedly discovered in the Law of Moses are the Platonic doc-
trines Eusebius read into it. This is not quite accurate, however. For when
the Law of Moses reaches Eusebius, it has already for centuries been rein-
terpreted along Platonic lines. The most important author in this regard is
Philo who is quoted many times in the Preparation’s account of “the phi-
losophy and religion” of the “Hebrews.” In fact, the resemblance Eusebius
sees between the nomoi of Magnesia and the nomoi of Moses tells us little
about Plato’s sources, but much about Philo’s. Eusebius finds a great deal
of Moses in Plato because philosophers like Philo used Plato to reinterpret
the Law of Moses.
For a Platonist it is perfectly legitimate that Philo does for the nomoi
of the Jews what Plato did for the nomoi of the Greeks. As we saw, Plato
18 On the political philosophy of the Stoics, see Schofield (1991).

Reinterpreting cultural traditions 101
expressly encourages adapting the program of the Laws to other cultural
contexts. His goal is not only to reinterpret Greek beliefs, practices, and
institutions, but also to teach the technique of reinterpretation. The use of
this technique is not uncommon in the ancient world. As in Eusebius, it is
usually justified by naturalizing Plato. Plato’s authority is often attributed
to a tradition of ancient wisdom which he supposedly recovered – that
of Homer, mediated through Pythagoras, for example, but also that of
a wide range of “Oriental” nations.19 A recent survey of Platonica orien-
talia presents Plato as studying Egyptian, Persian, Babylonian, Assyrian,
Phoenician, Hebrew, and Indian sources!20
The view that the same wisdom can be instantiated in beliefs, prac-
tices, and institutions of different cultural traditions is well documented
in Numenius of Apamea, a Platonist of the second century ce.21 A central
concern for him is to clarify Plato’s true doctrines, in particular against
what he considers the “apostasy” of the later Academy from Plato. But
Numenius is not interested in Plato because he considers him an original
philosopher. Rather, Plato provides the best access to the philosophy of
Pythagoras which, in turn, has its source in the ancient wisdom tradi-
tion of the Greeks – from Homer and Hesiod to the Eleusinian mysteries
(Fragments 31, 33, 34, 36, 55, 58). At the same time this wisdom is also
contained in the traditions of many other “nations held in high esteem”
(ta ethnê ta eudokimounta). They include “the Brahmans, the Jews, the
Persians, and the Egyptians,” as well as the Romans and Christians (Frag-
ments 1a, 10a, 31). Plato thus provides the means to recover the universal
wisdom instantiated in the cultural traditions of Greeks and Romans and
of several “Oriental” nations including Jews and Christians. A good exam-
ple of Numenius’s approach can be found in a passage of his allegorical
commentary on Homer’s “cave of the nymphs” (Fragment 30). According
to Numenius this episode of the Odyssey corresponds to Plato’s account
of the descent of the soul into the material world. The same doctrine
he finds in the Pythagoreans, who claim that “the souls settled upon the
waters which was god-inspired [theopnoon],” and in Genesis 1:2, accord-
ing to which the “Spirit of God moved over the waters.” Other witnesses
include Egyptian mythology and Heraclitus. All these sources represent
in different ways the same doctrine of the soul’s relationship to the world
19 See Boys-Stones (2001) on the reasons for the attempts to establish ancient wisdom traditions in
antiquity.
20 See Jeck (2004), part 1.
21 For a good account of what we know about Numenius, see Frede (1987).
of matter. Note that for Numenius the agreement between cultural tradi-
tions includes both “doctrines” (dogmata) and practices and institutions,
for example “initiations” (teletai) and “cults [hidryseis] performed in accord
with Plato” (Fragment 1a). To establish this agreement Numenius either
philosophically reinterprets the traditions in question (see Fragments 1c
and 10a) or builds on interpretations set forth by earlier authors. His claim
that the Jews are among the nations who take “God to be incorporeal”
(Fragment 1b), for example, presupposes an allegorical interpretation of
the Bible, as does his claim that Plato is nothing but “a Moses speaking
Greek” (Fragment 8). This only makes sense if Numenius has a Platonic
reinterpretation of Moses in mind along the lines set forth by Philo.22
Let me note in passing that this form of reinterpretation is not confined
to the Platonic tradition. Already before Plato Orphic traditions were rein-
terpreted in light of Presocratic doctrines.23 The Stoics try to recover ancient
wisdom from Homer and Hesiod, or, in the case of the Egyptian priest
and Stoic philosopher Chaeremon, from Egyptian hieroglyphs.24 Another
example is the reinterpretation of Roman beliefs, practices, and institu-
tions in Cicero.25 Although there are significant differences between these
projects, they point to a broader intellectual context in antiquity to which
the interpretations of Judaism and Christianity as philosophical religions
belong. Philo, as we will see, is not only aware of the reinterpretation of
Homer and Hesiod, but contributes to it himself. In fact, he credits a wide
range of pagan cultural traditions with ancient wisdom. To reconcile this
with his commitment to the superiority of Moses, he argues that Moses first
learned everything valuable from pagan cultures and then greatly surpassed
his teachers. The Law of Moses is thus not fundamentally different from
other cultural traditions in the ancient world. It only embodies wisdom
more perfectly. Whereas for Numenius cultural traditions are different, but
on the same level, Philo’s claim as to Moses’s superiority shows that the
projects of reinterpretation can also enter into competition. This becomes
particularly clear in Clement and Origen. While they stress Moses’s super-
iority like Philo, Christ for them is wisdom itself. Hence Christianity not
only surpasses all other cultural traditions, but is the source of their greater
or lesser share in wisdom. These superiority claims, however, stem from
apologetic rather than systematic concerns. Consider the polemics between
22 Note that the description of Plato as a Greek-speaking Moses does not entail the claim that Plato
derived his wisdom from Moses. As Frede convincingly argued, Numenius assumes two independent
wisdom traditions that agree with each other. Frede (1987), 1048.
23 See the Derveni Papyrus. 24 See the extant fragments of Chaeremon in van der Horst (1984).
25 See the De republica and De legibus.
Divine nomoi of the Greeks to divine nomoi of the Jews 103
pagan and Christian philosophers in which competition gives way to col-
lision: Celsus, Origen, Porphyry, and Eusebius engage in a series of attacks
and counter-attacks on each other’s cultural-religious tradition.26 Scholars
have long noted the paradoxical character of this exchange: each side claims
that the allegorical interpretation of its own tradition is legitimate while
rejecting the allegorical interpretation of the opponent.27 These polemics
reflect historical contingencies, in particular the expansion of Christianity
and its claim to cultural hegemony. They should thus not obscure the
shared techniques that philosophers with different cultural-religious affil-
iations use to reinterpret the beliefs, practices, and institutions of their
traditions.
from the divine nomoi of the greeks to the divine nomoi

of the jews
In the Hellenistic-Jewish community in Alexandria Plato was naturalized
early on. In the second century bce Aristobulus – the first known philo-
sophical interpreter of Scripture – claims that:
Plato followed [katêkolouthsen] the Law that we use, and he clearly worked through
[perieirgasmenos] everything that it contains. (Fragment 3)
The claim that the nomoi of Moses are divine according to Plato’s criterion
for divine nomoi is a topos in Hellenistic-Jewish literature: Moses ordered
the community towards what is best as did the lawgiver of Magnesia. The
difference between the nomoi of Moses and the nomoi of Magnesia is at most
one of degree: the nomoi of Moses are often portrayed as the best, not the
second-best, moral-political order. Consider the Jewish historian Flavius
Josephus (d. c.100 ce). In his defense of Judaism against pagan critics he
coins the term “theocracy” (theokratia) to describe the constitution of the
Jews. Dissatisfied with constitutions in which political power is invested in
a king, oligarchs, or the multitude, Moses gave the Jewish constitution:
the form of what – if a forced expression be permitted – may be termed a theocracy,
placing the rule [archê] and power [kratos] in God. To him he persuaded [peisas]
all to look, as the cause of all things that are good. (Ap. 2.165–66)
The God of Moses, according to Josephus, is the same as the God of the
Greek philosophers, including Anaxagoras and Plato who conceive God as
26 For an overview, see Kofsky (2000), chapter 1.

27 See Pépin (1958), in particular part 3, chapter 8.
Nous (2.168). God’s rule, then, means that the community, like nature, is
ordered towards what is best, which implies that it is rationally ordered and
hence divinely ordered. What sets the Mosaic constitution apart from con-
ventional monarchies, oligarchies, and democracies is that Moses, instead
of using his power to further his own “advantage” (pleonexia), promotes the
good of the community (2.158–59). Moreover, unlike the nomoi of Minos
in Crete and Lycurgus in Sparta, the nomoi of Moses aim at what is truly
good (2.161–63). They make all the virtues part of “piety” (eusebeia) – the
end towards which the community is ordered (2.188). These virtues are
the four cardinal virtues defined in the Republic (2.170–71).28 Hence “the
most excellent education” (to kaliston paideuma) is provided by the Law
of Moses (2.175). Moses succeeded in establishing divine nomoi because
he used both “practical exercise” (askêsis) and “arguments” (logoi) to edu-
cate the community, whereas other lawgivers relied on only one of these
methods (2.171–73). Like Plato’s lawgiver, therefore, Moses not only issues
commands, but also gives reasons for why they should be carried out. Jose-
phus expressly highlights features that the nomoi of Moses have in common
with the nomoi of Magnesia, for example the citizens’ obligation to study
their laws (2.175; cf. 2.257). To account for these shared features he claims
that Plato “imitated our lawgiver” (2.257). In a key passage for my purpose
Josephus reports that Greek statesmen made Plato the “object of jokes and
ridicule” because his best state is based on “impossible premises” (adynatai
hypotheseis). How much more, Josephus argues, would they have laughed
about Moses whose nomoi are even more demanding than the nomoi of
Magnesia (2.223–24). For Josephus, then, the Jewish theocracy is a stricter
version of Plato’s state!
Other Hellenistic-Jewish authors argue along similar lines for the divine
nature of the nomoi of Moses, showing that Philo’s project is part of a larger
Hellenistic-Jewish context.29 Almost all of his work can be described as a
grand attempt to substantiate the claim that the nomoi of the Jews were
established by an outstanding philosopher-ruler “to prepare and exhort us
to wisdom and justice and piety and the rest of the chorus of virtues” (Spec.
4.134). Their ultimate aim is knowledge of God, “the first and highest
good” according to Philo (Dec. 81). Philo, then, enthusiastically embraces
the Platonic program of philosophical reinterpretation.
28 But note that phronêsis is replaced by symphônia, the harmonious relationship between the members
of the community. Elsewhere, however, Josephus describes lawful actions and thoughts as “being
the only phronêsis and virtue” (2.183).
29 See, for example, 4 Macc 1:2–4 and 1:17–18; Wis 8:7.
moses and homer – philosopher-poets?

There seems, however, to be an important difference between Philo and
Plato. As a consequence of the cultural revolution that Plato proposes in
the Republic, most of the poetry of Homer and Hesiod, the foundational
narratives of Greek culture, end up in the best state’s dustbin because
they are pedagogically unsuited for the citizens.30 Instead of reinterpreting
Greek mythoi, Plato provides philosophical guidelines for composing new
ones. The problem of these mythoi is not that they are false. Pedagogically
suitable mythoi are also “false on the whole, though they have some truth
in them” (Rep. 377a). Taken literally, for example, Plato’s philosophical
parables are false – the representation of the soul as a charioteer with two
horses, the parables of the line, the sun, and the cave, or the representation
of Divine Reason as a craftsman and lawgiver. They are true, however, if
translated into the philosophical doctrines they represent. The reason for
Plato’s critique of Homer and Hesiod is that they say things in an “ugly
way” (mê kalôs). As we saw in the previous chapter, Plato puts the beautiful
and the ugly into the service of moral education. Art’s most important
feature is its “correctness” which consists in “the imitation and successful
reproduction of the proportions and characteristics of the model” (Leg.
668b). Ugly mythoi, by contrast, distort the objects they represent (Rep.
377e). Unlike philosophical parables like Plato’s, they convey pernicious
beliefs about the divine to non-philosophers. Such mythoi can also not be
saved through allegorical interpretation:
We will not admit stories into our city – whether with or without allegorical
meaning [hyponoia] – about Hera being chained by her son, nor about Hephaestus
being hurled from heaven by his father when he tried to help his mother, who
was being beaten, nor about the battle of the gods in Homer. The young cannot
distinguish what is allegorical from what is not, and the opinions they absorb at
that age are hard to erase and apt to become unalterable. (Rep. 378d)
Recall Plato’s guidelines for representing the gods: that the gods are good
and the cause only of good, for example, and that they can neither change
nor deceive human beings. On account of the second guideline Plato
criticizes a passage from book 17 of the Odyssey to which I will return
below: Odysseus, who returned to Ithaca disguised as a beggar, is hit by
Antinous, one of Penelope’s suitors. Another suitor objects because the
beggar could be a god in disguise: “the gods in the likeness of strangers
30 See books 2, 3, and 10.

from foreign lands, adopt every sort of shape and visit our cities” (17.485–
86). Homer here represents the gods as changing their shape in order to
deceive (see Rep. 381d).
Although Plato does not repeat his critique of Homer and Hesiod in
the Laws, he does not rehabilitate them either. Their case is thus different
from Minos and Lycurgus, the lawgivers of Crete and Sparta, whose nomoi
are criticized in the Republic, but rehabilitated in the Laws. On this point
Philo – and, in fact, all later proponents of a philosophical religion – clearly
part ways with Plato. They philosophically reinterpret the foundational nar-
ratives of their religious tradition as well. Whereas the allegorical content of
these narratives consists in true philosophy, their literal content is part of the
pedagogical-political program for non-philosophers. Note, however, that
Philo’s disagreement with Plato does not stem from systematic differences.
If the nomoi of Minos and Lycurgus can be rehabilitated by interpret-
ing them as if Minos and Lycurgus had been philosopher-legislators, why
should the poems of Homer and Hesiod not be rehabilitated by interpret-
ing them as if Homer and Hesiod had been philosopher-poets? This is
precisely what Philo does with the narratives of Moses: he interprets them
as compositions of a philosopher-poet, in the same way as Clement and
Origen interpret the parables of Christ.
There is nothing distinctly Jewish or Christian about this disagreement
with Plato. The Alexandrians take sides in a conflict that accompanies phi-
losophy from the beginning. Xenophanes (sixth–fifth century bce) rejects
the anthropomorphic representation of the gods in Greek poetry as incom-
patible with the philosophical conception of the divine (see DK 21 B10–17).
At the same time his contemporary, Theagenes of Rhegion, tries to rec-
oncile them through allegorical interpretation (see DK 8.2).31 After Plato,
Aristotle suggests that mythoi can be seen as allegorical statements of philo-
sophical doctrines (see Metaph. 12.8). The Stoics attempt to recover ancient
wisdom from Homer and Hesiod. And Heraclitus, the first century ce
author of the Homeric Allegories, explicitly takes Plato to task for criticiz-
ing Homer.32 Most important for my purpose is the embarrassment Plato
caused to later Platonists.33 Although they could not denounce Plato’s cri-
tique of Homer like Heraclitus, they were also not willing to give up on
a tradition of ancient Greek wisdom that could be traced back to Homer.
They thus portray Homer as an accomplished sage who conveyed his
31 On the allegorical interpretation of Greek myths, see Buffière (1956) and Pépin (1958).
32 See Homeric Allegories 4.
33 The standard account for the later Platonic interpretation of Homer is Lamberton (1986).
wisdom through parables. Indeed, authors like Numenius, as we saw,
ground Plato’s authority on the claim that he recovered Homer’s wisdom.
This interpretation of Homer has much in common with Philo’s interpre-
tation of Moses as an accomplished sage. What is more, Philo’s references
to the Odyssey imply that he was familiar with the allegorical interpretation
of Odysseus as a rational soul who passes through the world of matter and
then returns to his celestial home.34 Philo is, in fact, the first extant witness
of this interpretation which is elaborately worked out by later Platonists.
The same strategy he uses to defend the narratives of Moses thus also serves
him to defend Greek poetry. If one accepts “the principles of allegory or
hidden meanings,” Philo argues, the excellence of Homer and Hesiod is no
longer doubtful. The following passage reads like a rebuttal of Plato’s claim
that the mythoi of Homer and Hesiod cannot be saved through allegorical
interpretation:
If you apply the mythical story of Hephaestus to fire, and the account of Hera
to air, and what is said about Hermes to reason, and in the same way that which
is said of the others, following in order, in their theology, then, in fact, you will
become a praiser of the poets you have just been condemning, so that you will
realize that they have praised the divine in a most appropriate manner.
“Even if there are instances,” Philo continues, “where both [Homer and
Hesiod] seem to have erred, one should not blame them for these, but
should praise them for the many things they expressed accurately, by
which they became helpful in the conduct of life” (Prov. 2.42–43).35 Philo
thus takes the opposite view of Plato: the mythoi of the poets are to be
praised not only because they are mostly true on the allegorical level,
but also because they are “helpful in the conduct of life” – that is, they
offer appropriate pedagogical-political guidance.36 In one striking passage,
Odysseus is implicitly recommended by Philo as the moral exemplar to be
followed instead of Adam who brought death upon himself by preferring
34 See Lamberton (1986), 53. This is not to say that there are no differences. As we will see shortly,
Philo’s response to Plato’s critique of Homer and Hesiod in the Republic emphasizes that Plato
did not correctly assess the pedagogical-political utility of traditional Greek mythoi. Proclus, on the
other hand, while advocating the allegorical interpretation of the Greek poets like Philo, agrees with
Plato that their mythoi cannot be used for educational purposes. But instead of condemning them
for this reason, he distinguishes between educationally appropriate mythoi and mythoi “appropriate
with respect to holy laws.” The latter, he claims, are reserved for the initiates. See In Remp. 1.76–77,
1.79. Cf. Lamberton (1986), 180–97.
35 Cf. the allegorical interpretation of Hesiod’s account of the birth of the muses (Theog. 50 ff.) in
Plant. 127–31.
36 Note that the source of the allegorical interpretation of the Greek gods in De providentia is Stoic
whereas the allegorical interpretation of the Odyssey mentioned earlier is Platonic.
the created world, symbolized by the tree of knowledge, over the creator
(see De somn. 2.70). However, the most intriguing passage for my purpose
is part of Philo’s discussion of the anthropomorphic representation of God
in De somniis 1.232–37. Why does Moses attribute body, movement, and
emotions to God, Philo asks, although in truth he is incorporeal and
immutable? According to Plato this representation is not only false, but
also “ugly” because it distorts the true nature of God. According to Philo,
however, it aims at “the benefit” (to lysiteles) of “those who lack wisdom”
(hoi aphrones). Representing God as “inexorable in his anger” and equipped
with “shafts and swords and all other devices of vengeance against the
unrighteous” inspires the fear required for habituating non-philosophers
to moderate behavior. Philo begins the discussion by commenting on an
“old saying” (palaios logos) according to which:
the divine goes around in the cities resembling now this man now that man,
taking note of wrongs and transgressions. This may not be a true song, but it is
still beneficial and advantageous [lysitelôs kai sympherontôs]. (De somn. 1.233)
This “old saying” is clearly the same passage from the Odyssey which Plato
rejects in the Republic. Although taken literally it is false, it is not peda-
gogically pernicious according to Philo.37 Like Moses’s anthropomorphic
representation of God it is useful for the education of non-philosophers.
For Philo, then, the mythoi of both Jews and Greeks can be philosophically
reinterpreted. At stake in his disagreement with Plato is not a matter of
principle, but one of scope. Excluding foundational cultural narratives,
Philo objects to Plato, is arbitrary once we decide to reinterpret existing
beliefs, practices, and institutions rather than replacing them through a
cultural revolution.
judaism as a philosophical religion

Philo’s concept of the divine, like Plato’s, is complicated, but its key feature
for my purpose is Reason.38 Philo agrees with Plato that the Forms offer
an explanation for what things are, for example the defining features of
water, air, fish, and birds (Spec. 1.45–50, 327–29). They do not, however,
explain why things are ordered in the way they are ordered – why fish
37 See Jacobson (2004).

38 Philo would endorse the interpretation of Plato I sketched in the previous chapter according to
which Reason is below the “first principle of everything” (Rep. 511b). Whereas the Form of the good
is all things as undifferentiated unity, Reason is and knows the Forms and their order. On Philo’s
philosophical theology, see Fraenkel (2009a).
are in water, air is above water, or birds fly in the air. Explaining this is
the role of Reason. For Philo, Reason is not distinct from the Forms and
their order – they are God’s intellecta, the content of God’s mind.39 Note
that Philo often calls Divine Reason Logos and sometimes Sophia instead of
Nous.40 Since Logos also means “speech,” this choice may reflect the biblical
account of creation where God’s speech brings all things into existence.41
The use of Sophia, on the other hand, is based on Proverbs 8:22 where God
is said to have created “wisdom” at the “beginning of his works” (Ebr. 31;
LA 1.43). Comparing God’s creative activity to that of an architect, who
first conceives the city’s different buildings in his mind, then puts the city’s
plan together and finally executes the plan “in stone and timber,” Philo
writes:
Similarly must we think about God. When he was minded to found the Great
City, he first conceived the forms of its parts, out of which he put together the
intelligible world [kosmos noêtos], and, using that as a model, he also brought to
completion the sensible world [kosmos aisthêtos]. (Op. 19)
The image of the architect is, of course, modeled on the image of the
craftsman, the “Father and Maker of all,” in the Timaeus.42 God, then,
orders nature towards what is best and in this sense is the “only King
of the universe” (Post. 101). Establishing God’s kingship over the religious
community, however, requires a philosopher-ruler who knows the good and
orders the community in light of this knowledge. Paraphrasing Republic
473c–d, Philo argues that Moses was such a philosopher-ruler:
For some say not wrongly that cities can only advance to a better state if either kings
philosophize or philosophers rule. But Moses will be found . . . to have exhibited
these faculties – the kingly and the philosophical – to an extraordinary degree.
(Mos. 2.2)
How does this make God into the source of divine nomoi? Since he is the
source of all knowledge, he is also the source of the knowledge of the good
that the nomoi of Moses embody. Philo, in fact, explicitly equates rational
insight with divine revelation: Moses “reached the summit of philosophy
and was taught [anadidachtheis] through oracles [chrêsmoi] the greater and
39 Pagan Platonists, too, read Plato in this way; see, for example, Alcinous, Didaskalikos 9.
40 Not always, however; see, for example, Op. 9; Spec. 3.1.
41 See, for example, Op. 20, 24–25. Note that the Septuagint uses eipein, not legein, in Genesis 1. But
see Wis 9:1–2.
42 See the implicit reference to the Timaeus in Op. 21–22.
most essential truths of nature” (Op. 8).43 When the Bible says that he
entered “the darkness where God was” (Exod 20:21), it means that he
entered “the unseen, invisible, incorporeal, and paradigmatic essence of
existing things” (Mos. 1.158). At the summit of philosophy, then, Moses
apprehends the Forms and their order in God’s mind. Hence the model
that God used to order nature is the same that he uses to establish the
moral-political order. At the same time God is also the final cause of the
Law of Moses. Since knowledge of God is “the first and highest good”
(Dec. 81), it must be the aim of a community ordered towards what is
best.
How did Moses attain the summit of philosophy? He first was taught
by a group of teachers coming “from various places” according to Philo:
Arithmetic, geometry, the theory of rhythm, harmony, and meter, and the entire
field of music . . . were transmitted to him by learned Egyptians. They further
instructed him in the philosophy conveyed through symbols, which they display
in the so-called holy characters. . . . Greeks taught him the rest of the propaedeutic
sciences [enkyklia paideia], and scholars from the bordering countries taught him
Assyrian letters and the Chaldean science of the heavens. . . . And when he had
learned with precision from every nation both that on which they agree and that
on which they disagree, avoiding polemics and strife, he sought the truth [tên
alêtheian ezêtei], since his mind was incapable of accepting anything false, as is the
habit of sectarians, who maintain the doctrines proposed, whatever they happen
to be, without examining whether they are trustworthy. (Mos. 1.23–24)
Moses thus learns everything he can from the nations credited with ancient
wisdom in Philo’s time. Note that he accepts only what is true from his
teachers. From the Chaldeans, for example, he adopts the “notion of the
sympathetic communion of the world’s parts,” but rejects their astrological
fatalism, as well as “their opinion concerning God” (Mig. 178–81). It is
striking that Philo does not include Jews among Moses’s teachers – despite
the latter’s illustrious ancestors, for example Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who
were “living and rational laws” according to Philo (Abr. 5). The reason for
not portraying Moses as a disciple of Jewish wisdom is obvious: Philo wants
to justify the study of non-Jewish sources. What counts is not an author’s
cultural-religious affiliation, but the truth of what he says. Thus Moses is
a model philosopher, unlike “the crowd [plêthus] of so-called philosophers
who pretend to be seeking unerring clarity in things,” but in fact submit to
the authority of their school tradition. They are Platonists, Aristotelians,
43 See also the identification of “true and genuine philosophy” with the “utterance and word of God”
in Post. 102.
Stoics, or Epicureans rather than genuine philosophers. This is why they
“are divided into battalions . . . and propound doctrines that are discordant
and frequently opposed” (Ebr. 198).
After Moses learned everything worthwhile from earlier wisdom tradi-
tions, he quickly outgrew his teachers, “for great natures open up new fields
of knowledge [epistêmê]” (Mos. 1. 22). Moreover, when getting ready for
his mission to deliver Israel from Egypt, Moses continued studying on his
own. For he had:
a teacher [aleiptês] within himself, good reason [logismos], by whom he had been
trained for the best ways of life, the theoretical and the practical. He worked hard,
always unraveling philosophical doctrines, discerning them readily in his soul and
committing them to memory, never to be forgotten. (Mos. 1.48)
The Law of Moses, then, is neither the only nor the most ancient wisdom
tradition. It is, however, the most perfect among them.
Moses’s education follows the curriculum Philo outlines in the allegor-
ical interpretation of Abraham’s relationship to Hagar and Sarah. Hagar,
the Egyptian maid, represents the enkyklia paideia – the propaedeutic sci-
ences that Abraham must study before he can join Sarah who represents
philosophy and virtue. Virtue is “the greatest of all subjects” since “it is
concerned with . . . the entire life of man.” Hence it will “employ no minor
preludes, but grammar, geometry, astronomy, rhetoric, music, and all the
other branches of intellectual study [logikê theoria]” (Congr. 11). Sarah,
however, is not the student’s final goal either:
Just as the propaedeutic sciences contribute to the acquisition of philosophy,
so does philosophy to the attaining of wisdom. For philosophy is the pursuit of
wisdom [epitêdeusis sophias], and wisdom is the science of things divine and human
and their causes. Therefore just as the preliminary studies are the servant [doulê]
of philosophy, so is philosophy the servant of wisdom. (Congr. 79)
The concept of philosophy as a progression culminating in wisdom stems
from Plato’s Symposium.44 The first cause “of things divine and human”
for Philo is, of course, God. Elsewhere he describes how the human mind
explores the different parts of the world through the “arts” and “sciences”
until it is seized by “love of wisdom” (erôs sophias) carrying it up to the
apprehension of the “intelligible world” and finally toward “the great King
himself” (Op. 69–71).
44 See Diotima’s speech on “desire” (erôs) and “philosophy” as motive forces of the ascent to divine
wisdom in Symposium 201d–212c. Note that the source of Philo’s definition of philosophy and
wisdom is Stoic; cf. Seneca, Letter 89.4.
Moses had both objective and subjective reasons to climb up to philos-
ophy’s summit. For one thing perfecting reason leads to “likeness to God”
which the “wise man” takes to be “his end [telos]” (QG 4.188). This claim
has a firm biblical foundation in Genesis 1:26: since being created in God’s
“image” means that “reason [nous], the ruler of the soul” is an image of
Divine Reason – that is, God’s Logos – the more we perfect reason the more
we become like the Logos (Op. 69). At the same time perfecting reason is
also something we desire: whereas “the limit of happiness [eudaimonia] is
the presence of God” (QE 2.51), the separation “from the contemplation
of the Existent One is the most complete of evils” (QG 4.4). Philo inter-
prets Moses’s dialogue with God in Exodus 33:12–23 as the paradigmatic
expression of the erôs driving the “search for the true God” (Spec. 1.41–50).
Since this erôs keeps the non-rational desires in check and provides the
motivation to follow reason’s prescriptions, Moses is perfectly virtuous:
he always acts “in harmony” with his knowledge of the good (Mos. 1.48).
Moses, then, represents the ideal of the wise man:
[whose] wealth is bestowed by wisdom through the doctrines and principles of
ethics, logic, and physics. And from these arise the virtues which rid the soul of
extravagance and create in it the love [erôs] of contentment and frugality. (Virt. 8)
While God has no needs at all, being “entirely self-sufficient,” the wise
man attends only to those needs that he must satisfy “because his body is
mortal” (Virt. 9–10).
If all members of the community were able to live under the guidance
of reason, Moses never would have had to abandon the contemplative life.
Everyone would find:
delight and festivity in the contemplation [theoria] of the universe and its contents
and in following nature and bringing words into harmony with deeds and deeds
with words. (Spec. 2.52)
Life would resemble life in paradise before the Fall:

If only the vices had not flourished and dominated the thoughts about beneficial
things, removing them from each soul – if instead the power of the virtues had
remained altogether unconquered, then the time from birth to death would be
one continuous festival, and houses and cities, dwelling in safety and peace, would
have been full of all good things. (Spec. 2.42)
Given human nature, however, only “a small number” are truly virtu-
ous – “like an ember of wisdom to smolder, that virtue may not be
completely extinguished” (2.47). Most members of the community are
non-philosophers who require pedagogical-political guidance. Not only
do all members of the community lack wisdom at birth, but they also
differ in nature: while some “have been favored with good natural endow-
ments” (Deus 61) others “are of a dull [nôthestera] and obtuse [ambleia]
nature” (Deus 63) and hence remain non-philosophers throughout life.
To deal with the imperfectly rational members of the community Moses
must take on the role of “supreme doctor” (aristos iatros) of the soul (Deus
67). Seeing to their perfection is another aspect of becoming like God. For
“the Father and Maker is good” and hence:
did not envy [ouk ephthonêsen] the perfection of his own nature to a sub-
stance having of itself nothing lovely. . . . For of itself it was without order . . . full
of . . . discord and disharmony; but it admitted a turning . . . to the best, the con-
trary of all these, to order, . . . concord, and harmony. (Op. 21–22)
Moses, who “was named God [theos] and king [basileus] of the whole
nation,” is the exemplar of the virtue Philo calls “love of humankind”
(philanthrôpia) – the willingness to “imitate God” by sharing perfection
(Virt. 51–52 and 168–69). As philanthrôpos Moses orders the community
towards what is best. Putting a pedagogical-political program in place,
however, requires more than knowing the good and political power. This is
why, in addition to the “kingly and the philosophical [faculties],” Moses had
“also three others, one of which is concerned with legislation, the second
with the high-priesthood, and the last with prophecy” (Mos. 2.2.). These
skills enable Moses to convey his wisdom to non-philosophers through
laws, stories, exhortations, and practices of worship. They constitute a
pedagogical-political program that imitates true philosophy:
[T]he words of the oracles [that is, of Scripture] are as it were shadows [skiai] cast
by bodies, whereas the meanings [dynameis] therein revealed are the things that
truly are. (Conf. 190)45
The willingness to share perfection, however, is not enough to produce
either the natural or the moral-political order. It must be balanced through
self-limitation:
For creation is unable in its nature to receive the good in the same way that it is the
nature of God to bestow it, since his powers exceed all bounds, whereas creation,
being too weak to take in their abundance, would have broken down under the
effort to do so, had not God weighed and appropriately measured out the portion
which is due to each. (Op. 23)
45 Cf. the similar analogy of the Law’s body and soul in Cont. 78.
The need to bestow perfection in proportion to the capacity of the recipient
also explains why Moses translates his knowledge of the good into laws,
stories, exhortations, and practices of worship:
Do you not see that God does not utter oracles in keeping with the greatness
of his own perfection, but always according to the capacity of those to be bene-
fited? . . . This seems to be indicated most truthfully by those who say to Moses:
“You speak to us, and let not God speak to us, lest we die” (Exod 20:19). For they
recognized that they possess in themselves no worthy organ when God is framing
laws for his congregation. Were he to exhibit his own wealth, not even the entire
earth with the sea made into land could contain it. . . . On this account, wishing
that we should profit from the gifts he grants, he measures out the things given
according to the strength of those who receive them. (Post. 143–45)
In his role as legislator, priest, and prophet, then, Moses “acts as God’s
interpreter” (Post. 1). He does not teach God’s word, but a pedagogical-
political translation of it that is suitable for non-philosophers, since “he
who seeks to establish the best laws must have one goal, to benefit all those
who come into contact with them” (Deus 61). Describing God as judging,
rewarding, and punishing our freely chosen actions, for example, benefits
non-philosophers more than the true doctrine of God as the immutable
cause of all things. The latter doctrine, which rules out that we freely
choose what we do, must be concealed from those “who have not yet
been initiated into the great mysteries about the sovereignty and authority
of the Uncreated and the exceeding nothingness of the created.”46 The
general rule Moses follows is to “let all learn the falsehoods [ta pseudê]
that will benefit them, if they are unable to come to their senses through
truth” (Deus 64). Moses thus agrees with Plato that philosophy ought not
to be taught to everyone. Although good in itself, it becomes destructive
if disclosed to non-philosophers. Had Moses addressed a congregation of
philosophers, by contrast, he would have taught them “true and genuine
philosophy” – the “royal road” to God, since, strictly speaking, this is what
“the Law” calls “the utterance and word of God” (Post. 102).
Although the Law of Moses thus does not teach philosophy it contains
true philosophical doctrines on the allegorical level. Consider Genesis 4:16
according to which “Cain went forth from the face of God”:
Let us here raise the problem whether we ought to understand the content of the
books in which Moses acts as God’s interpreter allegorically [tropikôteron], since
46 Fragment of LA 4 in Harris (1886), 8. For Philo’s determinism, see Cher. 128 and Winston 2001,
chapter 10.
the immediate impression made by his words is far from being in accord with the
truth. For if the Existent has a face, and he who wishes to forsake it may remove
elsewhere most easily, why do we deprecate the impious views of the Epicureans,
or the godlessness of the Egyptians, or the mythical tales of which life is full? (Post.
1–2).
Only “in the interpretations from the allegorical sense [hyponoiai] the
mythical vanishes and the truth becomes manifest” (Agr. 97). To alert the
philosophers among his readers to Scripture’s allegorical content, Moses
occasionally includes “openings” – for example verses which are literally
true (Conf. 190). This accounts for apparent contradictions in Scripture.
According to Numbers 23:19, for example, “God is not a man.” Yet through-
out Scripture God is represented in anthropomorphic terms. Whereas “the
former is guaranteed by the most certain truth, the latter is introduced for
the instruction of the multitude [tôn pollôn disdakalia]” (Deus 54). Clar-
ifying the two kinds of readers that Moses has in mind thus resolves the
contradiction: the first statement about God is addressed to “lovers of the
soul, who are able to associate with intelligible and incorporeal natures”
and “do not compare the Existent to any form of created things” (Deus 55).
By contrast:
those who have concluded treaties and truces with the body are unable . . . to see a
nature uniquely simple and self-sufficient in itself. . . . They therefore conceive of
the universal Cause precisely as they do of themselves. (Deus 56)
The principle of self-limitation also helps to explain the difficulty of recov-

ering the philosophical doctrines that Philo attributes to Moses in his
biblical commentaries. By alluding to, rather than systematically develop-
ing, these doctrines, he is following the model of Moses for the benefit of
his readers. Philo’s commentaries encourage all readers to imitate Moses
and become like the Logos as much as they can. At the same time he
gives sufficient hints to the philosophers among his readers to reconstruct
Moses’s genuine philosophical doctrines.47
However, even if Philo’s commentaries do not amount to a system-
atic exposé of the philosophy of Moses, they still disclose a considerable
amount of Scripture’s allegorical content. How does he justify making
teachings public that Moses concealed to protect the weaker members of
the community? An important clue to how Philo might respond to this
question lies in his characterization of the lovers of the body as “ill-bred
47 These are, of course, the, broadly speaking, Middle Platonic doctrines that Philo holds; see Dillon
(1977) and (1995).
[anagôgoi] and foolish [aphrones] slaves” (Deus 64). They are not only “of
a dull and obtuse nature,” but were also “badly served in their early educa-
tion” (63). Philo is likely alluding to the condition of the Hebrews who had
been brought up under the corrupt beliefs, practices, and institutions of
the Egyptians. As “supreme doctor,” therefore, Moses not only had to con-
tend with natural, but also with cultural, constraints. To cure “the passions
and diseases of the soul” (67) he introduced the crude anthropomorphic
concept of a punishing God. For Philo these cultural constraints no longer
apply, since Jews in his time are brought up under the beliefs, practices,
and institutions established by Moses. Hence the community’s capacity to
attain perfection has grown. This allows Philo to take the project of Moses
one step further and elevate the community as a whole to a higher level
of perfection by partly disclosing Scripture’s allegorical content. On this
reading, Philo provides a Jewish parallel to the concept of progress that
Christian philosophers use to justify the replacement of the old covenant
by the new one and of which we saw a version in Eusebius.48
The Law of Moses, then, offers pedagogical-political guidance on the
literal level and true doctrines on the allegorical level. It does not, however,
provide the resources to make the transition from the “shadows” to “the
things that truly are.” To this end not-yet-philosophers must turn to non-
Jewish sources. This implies no disloyalty to God, since every philosopher
who has a true insight, by the same token has received the word of God.
The “true and genuine philosophy,” which “the Law” calls the “utterance
and word of God,” is:
the philosophy that the ancient [archaios] band of devotees [askêtai] achieved
with great effort, turning away from the bland charms of pleasure, honorably and
rigorously engaged in the study of the good. (Post. 101)
This “ancient band of devotees” surely includes “the most holy Plato”
(Prob. 13) whom Philo elsewhere calls “one of the ancients [tôn archaiôn]”
(Op. 21). If there is overlap between the doctrines of Moses and Plato, this
does not imply that Plato depends on Moses. In fact, Philo nowhere claims
that Moses is the source of Plato’s philosophy. In the entire De opificio
mundi there is only one indirect reference to Plato despite the paramount
influence of the Timaeus on Philo’s exposition of the creation account (Op.
21).49 This would be difficult to explain if Philo intended to justify his
48 Compare also Maimonides’s argument discussed in chapter 3. As I suggested in chapter 1, Plato

seems to allow for gradually closing the gap between the best state and less-perfect states which were
established under particular cultural constraints.
49 On Philo’s use of the Timaeus, see Runia (1987).
use of Plato through the dependency claim. Although he contends in De
providentia 1.22 that Moses anticipated Plato by teaching the existence of
water, darkness, and chaos before the creation of the world, he does not say
that Plato learned this doctrine from Moses. Philo’s acknowledgment that
philosophers can independently have the same true insight also explains
his claim that the Stoics Boethus of Sidon and Panaetius were “seized by
God” (theoleptoi) when they abandoned a view at odds with the cosmology
of Moses (Aet. 76). Philosophers thus can adopt doctrines in agreement
with Moses because their philosophical quest brought them into contact
with God and hence with the truth.
Since Moses did not record his doctrines in philosophical treatises, Jews
have no choice but to study God’s word in the philosophical literature
of the Greeks. At the same time they must follow Moses’s example and
make every effort to separate the true from the false in the teachings of the
philosophical schools whose disagreements are stressed by Philo as we saw.
Philo’s own eclecticism illustrates this intellectual attitude.50 The Law of
Moses, on the other hand, is not the kind of book whose study can lead to
wisdom. Philo himself clearly did not turn to it for this purpose:
When first I was aroused by the goads of philosophy to desire her, I consorted
while yet quite young with one of her servants [therapainides], grammar, and all
that I engendered by her – writing, reading, and inquiry into the writings of the
poets – I dedicated to her mistress [despoina]. And again I kept company with
another, namely geometry, and though I admired her beauty . . . still I appropriated
none of her offspring but brought them as a gift to the lawful wife. I was also eager
to keep company with a third . . . and her name was music. (Congr. 74–76)
Like Moses, Philo starts out with the “propaedeutic sciences” – that is,
philosophy’s “servants.” His courtship of the “lawful wife,” he describes as
follows:
There was a time when I devoted myself [scholazôn] to philosophy and the
contemplation [theoria] of the universe, . . . when I enjoyed the beauty . . . of
its Reason [nous], when I consorted always with divine principles [logoi] and
doctrines [dogmata] wherein I rejoiced with a joy that was insatiate and
unceasing. (Spec. 3.1)
The Law of Moses plays no part in this. On the contrary, when Philo
describes the state of philosophical inspiration, “the ideas descending like
snow” on him, he stresses how “under the impact of divine possession
[katochê entheos]” he became “ignorant of everything,” including “what
50 For a good account of Philo’s place on the doctrinal map of Middle Platonism, see Dillon (1977).
was said and what was written [ta graphomena]” (Mig. 35). Studying the
Law of Moses simply is not part of the higher education that Philo outlines
in his allegorical interpretation of Abraham’s relationship with Hagar and
Sarah.51
Although Philo does not turn to the Law of Moses to attain wisdom,
he discloses its wisdom through allegorical interpretation – in order to
promote the perfection of the community as we saw, but also for apolo-
getic purposes. After falling from the heights of philosophy into “the vast
sea of civil cares,” Philo mentions how his “fondness for knowledge” led
him “to peer into each of [the sacred interpretations of Moses] and to
disclose [diaptyttein] and make known [anaphainein] what is unknown to
the multitude” (Spec. 3.6). The “vast sea of civil cares” is likely a reference
to the conflicts between Jews and gentiles in Alexandria in the second half
of the first century ce, for which Philo’s two historical works – On Flaccus
and The Delegation to Gaius – are important testimonies. Philo was one
of the leaders of the Jewish delegation to Gaius – the Roman emperor
Caligula – which went to Rome to resolve the conflicts in Alexandria.
Among the leaders of the gentile delegation was Apion who according to
Josephus “said many blasphemous things against the Jews” (AJ 18.8).52
The portrait of Moses as an accomplished philosopher-ruler and of the

Divine Law as a pedagogical-political program for non-philosophers pro-
vides the framework for Philo’s reinterpretation of Jewish beliefs, practices,
and institutions. Since the philosopher knows the good and is motivated
to live according to this knowledge, his actions instantiate the virtues:
he eats and drinks moderately, confronts obstacles courageously, interacts
with his fellow citizens justly, and so forth. He does, in other words, what
an embodied rational agent must do to perfect reason. The first task of
Moses as “supreme doctor” is to translate the prescriptions of reason into
laws.53 Philo discusses the order and purpose of the nomoi of Moses in great
detail in On the Decalogue, in the four books On the Special Laws, and in
On Virtues. The Decalogue, Philo argues, provides the general categories
into which the many specific laws can be ordered. The laws promote the
perfection of the soul, enabling us not only “to live,” but “to live well”
51 See also Cher. 98–105.

52 Apion’s anti-Jewish polemics are documented in Josephus’s Against Apion. Eusebius preserved two
fragments of a lost work by Philo which was written “in defense of the Jews against their accusers”
(PE 8.5).
53 On the relationship between Philo’s interpretation of the nomoi of Moses and the divine nomoi of
Magnesia, see also Annas (2010).
(Dec. 17). The “highest good” (ariston telos) is “knowledge [epistêmê] of the
truly Existent, who is the first and most perfect good” (81). The common
aim of all laws is to convey:
the virtues of universal benefit. For each of the ten pronouncements [chrêsmoi]
separately and all in common prepare and exhort us to wisdom and justice and
piety and the rest of the chorus of virtues, bringing together sound words with
good deliberations [boulai] and good actions with the words, so that the soul’s
instrument may consistently play in tune to produce harmony of life and an
unassailable concord. (Spec. 4.134)
The challenge for Philo is to explain how the nomoi of Moses contribute
to the goal that the great philosopher-ruler supposedly aimed at. In fact
this means reinterpreting them in light of Philo’s own philosophical con-
ception of the good. Thus the tenth commandment – you shall not covet
your neighbor’s house, wife, and so forth (see Exod 20:17) – offers Philo
the opportunity to explain how Moses aimed at restraining “appetite”
(epithymia) through laws conducive to “moderation” (sophrosynê). The pur-
pose of the entire range of dietary laws, for example, is to curb the appetite
for “food and drink” (Spec. 4.95–97).54
Besides legislating, Moses must also motivate the members of the com-
munity to do what the laws prescribe. At the most basic level, he ensures
obedience through “fear” (phobos):
For ill-bred and foolish slaves a despotic master [despotês] who frightens them is
beneficial, since in dread of his threats . . . they involuntarily accept rebuke through
fear. (Deus 64)
Unlike “lovers of the soul” who follow the Law because they love God,
“lovers of the body” follow the Law because they fear God. This accounts
for the crude anthropomorphic representation of God in Scripture. To hold
the non-rational desires of “lovers of the body” in check Moses describes:
the First Cause as employing threats, wrath, and implacable anger, and also
using weaponry for his assaults on the unjust. For only thus can the fool be
rebuked. (Deus 68)
Ensuring obedience through fear of punishment, however, is only a last
resort. A better way to offer pedagogical-political guidance is the poetic
representation of exemplary good and bad lives in the “historical” part of
the Law of Moses which precedes the legislation.55 Most important are
54 See the full discussion of the tenth commandment in Spec. 4.79–131.

55 On the tripartite structure of the Law of Moses, see Abr. 6 ff.; Mos. 2.47 and Praem. 2.
the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are “living and rational laws”
according to Philo:
These are such men as lived unassailable and good lives, whose virtues stand
permanently recorded in the most Holy Scriptures, not only to sound their praise,
but to exhort the readers and to lead them to aspire to the same. (Abr. 4)
Philo attributes the same model-role to Moses who recorded his life like a
work of art:
Bringing himself . . . into public view like a well-crafted painting, he has set before
us an all-beautiful and godlike work as a model [paradeigma] for those willing to
imitate [mimeisthai] it. (Mos. 1.158)56
Note that Philo distinguishes between good and bad poetry: the stories of
Moses “are no mythical fictions, such as poets and sophists delight in, but
ways of making models [typoi] visible” (Op. 157).
Like the nomoi of Moses, biblical narratives must be reinterpreted to fit
Philo’s purpose. Good examples for how he does this are the treatises on
the patriarchs, of which only On Abraham is extant, and the two volumes
On the Life of Moses. Although these stories cannot provide knowledge
of the good in the strict sense, they convey a sufficiently accurate notion
of the good on the basis of which non-philosophers can order their lives.
Non-philosophers thus move up from obedience through fear to emulating
exemplary instantiations of the good.
In addition to bringing the laws poetically to life, however, Moses also
wants to rationally persuade the members of the community that what the
laws prescribe is good for them. As we saw, Plato presents the “preludes”
to the laws as one of his most important innovations: to “none of the
lawgivers” had this idea occurred, Plato contends (Leg. 722b–c). Philo
disagrees; the first to address his community as a community of “free men”
rather than “slaves” was Moses:
Moses thought that . . . issuing commandments without persuasion [aneu para-
muthias], as if addressing not free men [eleutheroi], but slaves [douloi], savored
of tyranny and despotism. . . . In his commandments and prohibitions he advises
and exhorts rather than orders, trying to show the way to the many and necessary
things [to be observed] with preludes [prooimia] and epilogues [epilogoi] in order
to exhort rather than to force. (Mos. 2.50–51)
The most important prelude in the Law of Moses is the account of creation
(see Mos. 2.48). While falling short of a philosophical cosmology, it provides
56 Cf. the summary of the Law’s historical part in Praem. 8–56 which includes Moses among the
exemplars of life.
an account of the world’s order and the place of human beings in that
order that explains why following the prescriptions of Moses is in the
community’s best interest:
Moses . . . introduced the laws with an admirable and most impressive prelude
[archê], neither stating abruptly what ought or ought not to be done, nor, given
the necessity of molding in advance the rational faculties [hai dianoiai] of those
who were to live under the laws, fabricating myths or assenting to those framed
by others. His prelude is . . . most admirable, since it encompasses the creation of
the world in order to show that the world [kosmos] and the law [nomos] are in
mutual accord and that a man who is law abiding is thus immediately constituted
as a citizen of the world guiding his actions aright according to nature’s intention
[boulêma], according to which also the entire world is governed. (Op. 2–3)
Hence non-philosophers, too, can attain a considerable degree of rational

self-rule, acting on beliefs about the good that Moses “ties down” through
reasons. The “lovers of the body” and the “lovers of the soul” only represent
the lowest and the highest level on the scale of perfection. Since the aim
of the Law is to elevate all members of the community to the highest
perfection they can attain, most of them will be on an intermediary level.
As in Plato, the laws, stories, exhortations, and practices of worship that
make up the Law of Moses help make the practical wisdom of philosophers
accessible to non-philosophers. Unlike Plato, however, Philo suggests that
they also give non-philosophers a share in theoretical wisdom, since they
allegorically represent true philosophy. Philo claims, for example, that
“from their laws and customs” Jews attain “knowledge [epistêmê] of the
highest and most ancient Cause” (Virt. 65), or that “in the school of Moses
it is not one man alone who . . . learned the beginnings of wisdom [sophia],
but an entire nation” (Deus 148), or again that the whole of Israel sees “the
truly Existent . . . for Israel means seeing God” (Congr. 51). He cannot mean
“knowledge” or “wisdom” in the strict sense, since these require rigorous
training in the propaedeutic sciences and philosophy which the Law of
Moses does not provide. In a derivative sense, however, “knowledge” and
“wisdom” can refer to the perfection attained through apprehending an
imitation of true philosophy.
Reinterpreting the literal content of the Law of Moses as a pedagogical-
political program for non-philosophers raises the question why philoso-
phers should consider themselves bound by it. If the purpose of the dietary
laws, for example, is to discipline the appetite for food and drink, why
should we observe them once we attain moderation? Why should we read
the stories of the patriarchs if our life is guided by practical wisdom?
Or study the account of creation if we master natural philosophy? And
why should we participate in traditional forms of worship if we are able
to contemplate the Forms in God’s mind?57 Philo offers several arguments
against “frivolously neglecting the letter” of the Law:
Such people I, for my part, should blame for their irresponsibility. . . . As if liv-
ing alone by themselves in a wilderness, or as if they had become bodiless souls
[asômatoi psychai], knowing neither city nor village nor household nor any com-
pany of humans at all, transcending what is approved by the multitude, they
seek the truth in its naked self. These men are taught by Holy Scripture to be
concerned with public opinion, and to abolish no part of the customs ordained
by inspired men, greater than those of our own day. . . . We ought to look on the
outward commandments as resembling the body, and their allegorical meanings
[hyponoiai] as resembling the soul. Just as we then provide for the body, inasmuch
as it is the abode of the soul, so we must attend to the letter of the laws. If we
keep these, we shall . . . in addition . . . escape the censure and accusations of the
multitude. (Mig. 89–93)
As long as we are embodied, Philo argues, we are also tied to the body of
the Law. For one thing we are not self-sufficient and thus depend on col-
laborating with others to attain perfection. If the philosophers in the com-
munity no longer observe the laws, they encourage non-philosophers to
do the same which would subvert the good moral-political order on which
everyone’s perfection depends. Or they risk being persecuted for impiety
by non-philosophers. “Holy Scripture,” moreover, teaches philosophers to
follow the model of Moses and care for the good of non-philosophers.
Hence they must respect the authority of the Law of Moses which orders
the life of non-philosophers towards what is best. Finally, philosophers are
not in a continuous state of perfection either and thus remain vulnerable
to the weaknesses of the body.58 To ensure that the non-rational desires
remain under control when they attend to the needs of the body, they must
do what the Law of Moses prescribes.
christianity as a philosophical religion

Whereas Reason is Nous for Plato and Logos and Sophia for Philo, Clement
and Origen also identify it with Christ.59 They can thus naturalize Hebrew
57 Philo may have discussed these kinds of questions with his nephew, Tiberius Julius Alexander, who
according to Josephus did “not remain true to his ancestral practices” (AJ 20.101). Alexander appears
as Philo’s interlocutor in De providentia 1 and 2 and in De animalibus.
58 Cf. Cont. 78 where Philo argues that philosophers “are able by a slight jog to their memory to view
the invisible through the visible.” This “slight jog” is provided by the letter of the Law.
59 Like Philo, however, they also occasionally use Nous; see Prot. 10.78–79; Cels. 3.21 and 4.54.
and Greek wisdom by portraying Christ as the source of both: whereas
Moses and Plato were accomplished lovers of wisdom, Christ is wisdom;
whereas Moses and Plato sought to apprehend the Forms in God’s mind,
Christ is God’s mind. Exegetically this step was facilitated by a number
of biblical texts, most importantly the Prologue to John where Christ
is identified with the Logos by which God created the world.60 In his
interpretation of John 1:1, for example, Origen appropriates Philo’s image
of the architect which, in turn, is modeled on the image of the craftsman
in the Timaeus:
See if we can take the verse “In the beginning was the Logos” according to this
meaning: all things are created according to the wisdom and the guidelines [typoi]
of the system of concepts [noêmata] in the Logos. For I think that just as a house
and a ship are built . . . according to the guidelines of the architect, the house
and the ship having as their beginning the guidelines and thoughts [logoi] in the
craftsman, so all things have come to be according to the thoughts of what will
be that were prefigured by God in wisdom: “For he made all things in wisdom”
[Psalm 104:24]. (Comm. in Io. 1.19, 113–14)61
Christ thus is the Forms constituting God’s mind according to which God
orders nature towards what is best.
Clement and Origen agree with Philo that being created in God’s
“image” and “likeness” means that human reason is an image and like-
ness of Divine Reason which, in turn, is an image and likeness of God.62
For them, of course, human reason is also an image and likeness of Christ.63
Since they take “image” to refer to reason’s potential and “likeness” to the
realization of this potential, they can connect Genesis 1:26 to the telos for-
mula of the Theaetetus – “to become like God as much as possible.” The
goal is to move from “image” to “likeness” (Strom. 2.22, 131, 6; De princ.
3.6, 1). The Christian ideal, then, like the Platonic ideal, is a life ordered
by reason towards the perfection of reason. Indeed, everyone who follows
60 The relevant passages in the New Testament, as well as in other texts included in the Christian Bible
such as the Wisdom of Solomon, in part stem from the same intellectual milieu as Philo. See Runia
(1993), chapter 4.
61 Cf. 1.39, 288 and the chapter on Christ, De princ. 1.2. See also the reference to John 1:1 in Clement,
Prot. 1.6, 3 and the description of Christ as the “new song” who orders the universe, as well as man’s
soul and body in Prot. 1.5, 3. Both Clement and Origen identify the Logos with the “Father and
Maker of all” in the Timaeus; see Prot. 6.68, 1 and Cels. 7.42.
62 As Clement explains in Strom. 2.19, 102, 6, the verse does not refer to “likeness with respect to the
body” but to “likeness with respect to reason [nous] and thought [logismos].” Cf. Prot. 1.6, 4; 4.59,
2; Cels. 6.63.
63 See, for example, Comm. in Io. 1.105.
the prescriptions of reason by the same token follows Christ’s prescriptions
and with every true insight increases his share in Christ.64
The naturalization of Plato is particularly clear in Clement who first
appropriates Philo’s Platonic interpretation of Moses and then argues that
Moses is the source of Plato’s concepts of divine nomoi and God. Accord-
ing to Clement, Moses is an accomplished philosopher-ruler (Strom. 1.24,
158.1). Following Philo, he describes how Moses studies the “propaedeutic
sciences” with teachers from all nations credited with ancient wisdom (1.23,
153).65 Clement explicitly identifies the enkyklia paideia with the mathe-
matical training of prospective philosophers in the Republic (1.19, 93.4–5).
Then Moses turns to philosophy, culminating in knowledge of God. This
is the “initiation [epopteia] of which Plato says that it belongs to the truly
great mysteries” (1.28, 176, 2). For Clement dialectic “alone” (monê) is able
to lead to “true wisdom.”66 In the story about Abraham’s relationship to
Hagar and Sarah, Moses gave an allegorical account of the curriculum that
leads from the propaedeutic sciences to philosophy and from philosophy to
wisdom. Unlike Philo, however, Clement describes wisdom also as “resting
in Christ” (1.5, 32.4; cf. 1.5, 28.3). The same replacement is made by Origen:
But I would like that you use all the power of your natural dispositions having
as the goal Christianity [telikôs eis ton christianismon]. The means that I wish you
to use is to take from the philosophy of the Greeks everything that can serve as
encyclical instruction or propaedeutic for introducing to Christianity. . . . And in
this way, what the philosophers say about geometry, music, grammar, rhetoric,
and astronomy as being the servants with regard to philosophy, this we say about
philosophy itself with regard to Christianity. (Ep. Greg. 1; cf. Cels. 3.58)
This does not mean, of course, that Clement and Origen subordinate
reason to faith. What a perfect Christian apprehends does not differ from
what Philo’s Moses or a perfect pagan philosopher apprehends, since Christ
is the Forms constituting God’s mind – that is, the rational order of nature,
comparable to the plan of a building in the mind of an architect.
To become like the Logos means not only to perfect oneself, but also
“to do good” (euergeteô) to others “as much as possible in word and deed”
(Strom. 2.19, 97.1). As God shares perfection with his creatures, we ought to
make “those near us virtuous and good” by directing them to moderation,
courage, wisdom, and justice – that is, to the four cardinal virtues that Plato
defines in the Republic (2.18, 96.4). This is precisely the goal that Moses
set himself in the Law: ordering the community towards what is best by
64 On the Logos’s universal reach, see Prot. 6.68, 2–3; Cels. 1.4.
65 Cf. Origen, Cels. 3.46. 66 Compare Rep. 534b–c with Strom. 1.28, 177.
directing its members to courage, moderation, wisdom, and justice, cul-
minating in “piety,” the worship of “the highest and most exalted Cause of
all things” (2.18, 78.1).67 For Clement “piety” consists in perfecting reason:
Moses’s call to “follow the Lord your God and keep his commandments”
in Deuteronomy 13:4 means the same as Plato’s call “to become like God
as much as possible” in the Theaetetus (2.19, 100.3–4). To show how this
works, Clement makes copious use of Philo’s reinterpretation of the nomoi
of Moses (see 2.18–20). At times he goes into considerable detail, for exam-
ple in his explanation of how the dietary laws contribute to moderation
(see 2.20). To motivate obedience Moses uses “fear,” as does Plato in the
Laws.68 But he also employs “more rational” (logikôteros) means when this
is suitable for his audience (Prot. 1.8, 2). As Origen stresses, Moses adapts
his teachings to his audience’s capacity to understand:
In his five books Moses acted like an excellent orator who pays attention to
outward form [schêma] and everywhere sets forth the concealed meaning [diploê]
of his words with due caution. To the multitude of the Jews under his legislation
he gives no occasion to come to moral harm; to the few who are able to read with
more understanding he does not present a text lacking in speculation [theoria] for
those able to seek his intention. (Cels. 1.18)
Clement justifies his Platonic reinterpretation of the Law of Moses through

the claim that key concepts in Plato stem from the Hebrew tradition,
most importantly the concept of divine nomoi and the concept of God
as Reason: “As to your [Plato’s] laws, insofar as they are true, and your
belief about God, you have been helped by the Hebrews” (Prot. 6.70, 1).
Thus, “after having learned from the teachings of Moses about legislation,”
Plato “censures the constitution of Minos and Lycurgus for aiming only at
courage” at the beginning of the Laws (Strom. 1.25, 165.1). Against Minos
and Lycurgus he agrees with Moses that nomoi must aim at the perfection of
reason:
For the goal of the ruler and of the person who lives according to the law is
contemplation [theoria]. Hence it is necessary to govern correctly. But the best
thing is doing philosophy. For the person who has reason [nous] lives in such a
way as to direct everything in his power to knowledge [gnôsis], guiding life to good
deeds, despising bad ones, and pursuing the sciences [mathêmata] that contribute
to the truth. (Strom. 1.25, 166.2–3)
67 On the identity of the God of Magnesia and the God of Moses, see below.
68 For Plato’s use of fear, see Strom. 2.22, 132.3.
To illustrate Plato’s dependence on Moses, Clement quotes several key pas-
sages from the Laws in which the Athenian Visitor stresses the theological
foundation of the nomoi of Magnesia, for example the beginning of the
first speech to Magnesia’s prospective citizens:
The God who, as also an ancient saying goes, comprises the beginning, middle,
and end of all things, walks on the straight path because he follows the course
of nature. And justice always accompanies him, who punishes those who deviate
from the Divine Law. (Leg. 715e–716a quoted in Strom. 2.22, 132.2)
The “ancient saying” is a reference to the Law of Moses according to

Clement (2.22, 133.2). This does not mean that Plato copied the nomoi
of Moses. Clement’s claim is that Plato studied the philosophical princi-
ples embodied in the nomoi of Moses and applied them to the nomoi of
Magnesia.
The reinterpretation of Moses sets the stage for the reinterpretation of

Christ who continues and completes Moses’s project. Of course, a commu-
nity of perfect Christians would not require pedagogical-political guidance
by either Moses or Christ. According to Origen, God first creates a com-
munity of purely rational souls who are united with the Logos through the
love of wisdom.69 Since in this community Christ’s rule and self-rule coin-
cide, no laws, stories, exhortations, and practices of worship are needed.70
The “Fall” means the turning away of the rational souls from the Logos,
leading to embodiment and non-rational desires which, in turn, require
the creation of the physical world. The history of humankind after the Fall
is driven by the Logos’s efforts to restore the initial state of perfection.71 This
is one distinctive trait of the pedagogical-political program as conceived
by Christian philosophers: it is also a process unfolding in history, culmi-
nating in Christ’s incarnation. As God’s Logos, however, Christ is at work
all along – not only through Moses, but also through Plato and everyone
else who managed to get a glimpse of the truth.72 We should, of course,
not anthropomorphically misrepresent the Logos as actually intervening in
history. He is the source of the knowledge of Moses, Plato, and others
insofar as he is the source of all knowledge. This includes the knowledge
69 See De princ. 1.5 on the “rational creatures”; cf. Clement, Prot. 1.6, 4.
70 For a Platonic version of the self-rule theme, see Clement’s identification of “reason” (to logistikon)
with the “inner man” who rules “spirit” (to thymikon) and “appetite” (to epithymetikon) and is, in
turn, ruled by “God,” that is, Divine Reason.
71 This is the core argument of Origen’s On First Principles; cf. Clement’s summary in Prot. 11.
72 See, for example, Strom. 1.5, 28–29.
of the good embodied in their pedagogical-political efforts which, in turn,
aim at the Logos as their final cause. It is, on the other hand, useful to
portray the Logos as the author of the pedagogical-political program to
persuade non-philosophers to comply with it. According to Clement, the
“stories” that Plato and others tell about the divine revelation of Greek
laws (Minos, as we saw, is said to have received his laws from Zeus and
Lycurgus from Apollo) suggest that they want to “extol the credibility of
Greek legislation as divine according to the model of Mosaic prophecy”
(Strom. 1.26, 170.3–4).73
The role of Christ’s predecessors was to prepare for Christ: philoso-
phy “educated the Greeks for Christ as the Law [educated] the Hebrews”
(Strom. 1.5, 28.3). Although Christ takes things to a new level, he only
differs from Moses and Plato by degree, not in essence. To see this, con-
sider how Christ as God’s Logos is related to the embodied Christ of the
Gospel. The shortest chapter in On First Principles, Origen’s systematic
exposé of Christian philosophy, clearly betrays his puzzlement about the
doctrine of the incarnation (2.6). Given his philosophical commitments,
the explanation on which Origen settles contains nothing that contradicts
reason: the embodied Christ had a “human and rational soul” (humana
et rationabilis anima) whose nature “is the same as that of all other souls”
(2.6, 4). Hence Christ is merely one of the “rational creatures” created in
the beginning, who share in the Logos in proportion to the strength of their
love for him (2.6, 3). What sets Christ’s soul apart from other souls is that it
is more perfectly united with the Logos on account of “its perfect love” and
“its virtues” (2.6, 4). None “of the other souls that descended into human
bodies had a pure and genuine image [similitudo] of the archetype [that
is, the Logos] in it” (2.6, 3). Yet while this makes Christ into the greatest
of all philosophers, his soul does not differ essentially from other rational
souls.74 Unlike them, however, Christ’s soul did not take on a body because
73 Cf. the discussion of the laws of Crete and Sparta at the beginning of the Laws. As we saw in the
previous chapter, Plato expressly denies that laws can be literally revealed, but encourages “making
everyone . . . believe” they were; see Leg. 835c and 838d–e.
74 This is a controversial reading. Origen’s Christology was and continues to be a battlefield. See, for
example, the first five accusations to which Pamphilus of Caesarea responds in the Apology of Origen,
88–121, in particular the third; for a contemporary discussion, see Edwards (2002). I cannot find
strong textual evidence in 2.6 that for Origen the unity of Christ’s soul with the Logos means identity.
He clearly says that Christ’s soul contains a “pure and genuine image” of the Logos. Elsewhere he
describes their relation as that of iron heated in fire to fire, of a vessel to oil, or of a shadow to a
body (2.6, 6–7). Concerning the union of Christ’s soul with the Logos Origen says that they “are
more in one flesh than man and woman” (2.6, 3; cf. Matt 19:5–6). With reference to 1 Cor 6:17,
moreover, he compares this union to the union attained with Christ by those who “imitate” him
(ibid.). All this suggests that Christ’s soul and the Logos are united in a way that does not entail
of the Fall. Why, then, did he interrupt contemplating the Forms in God’s
mind and come down into the world to put order into human affairs? Like
Moses, Christ not only has perfection, but is also willing to share it. In this
sense he can be described as “loving humankind” (philanthrôpos):
Just as there is no light that does not give light, . . . there is no good [agathon] that
does not benefit and lead to salvation. (Paed. 1.3, 9.3)
Christ’s task in the world is to establish a definitive moral-political order
which directs not only Jews or Greeks, but all of humankind to what is best.
This universal scope is another distinctive trait of the Christian version of
a philosophical religion.
In a very general sense, Christ’s appearance is the work of divine prov-
idence. Since God is the ultimate cause of all good, “no benefit comes to
humankind without God’s action.” Hence even “a doctor who has healed
[therapeusas] the bodies of many, or improved their condition, does not
heal without God’s action” (Cels. 1.9). All the more this holds for Christ:
who healed, converted, and improved the souls of many, and attached them to the
supreme God, and taught them to refer every action to his good pleasure . . . down
to the most insignificant of words or deeds. (Cels. 1.9)
Since a life ordered in this way is perfectly virtuous, Origen also describes
Christ’s aim as imparting the four cardinal virtues: moderation, courage,
wisdom, and justice (see 2.79). The ultimate goal, however, is “to elevate
the soul in every way to the Creator [dêmiourgos] of the universe” until it
apprehends the Forms constituting God’s mind:
[M]en ought . . . to do all they can to attain fellowship with God and the contem-
plation [theoria] of intelligible and invisible things [noêta kai aorata] and to attain
the blessed life with God and with the friends of God. (Cels. 3.56)
Christ’s project is in essence the same as the therapeutic projects of Greek
philosophers from Socrates to the Stoics who tried to convert their disciples
identity. That this union differs in degree and not in essence from the union of other souls with
the Logos is equally suggested by the metaphors mentioned above. Thus the heat transmitted by
the fiery iron to other souls is not essentially different from the heat caused by the fire in the iron
itself. Likewise the odor reaching other souls is not essentially different from the oil contained in
Christ’s soul. While other passages may support a more orthodox interpretation, it cannot be ruled
out that they reflect dogmatic corrections in light of the Nicene Creed made by Rufinus in his Latin
translation of Origen’s work (cf. Studer 1972). In my view the issue cannot be conclusively settled on
textual grounds. If the choice is between philosophical consistency and orthodoxy, preference must
be given to the former in my view. Someone who, like Origen, takes the Logos to be the rational
order of nature will hardly concede that the doctrine at the heart of Christianity is not accessible to
reason.
from a life ruled by non-rational desires to a life ruled by reason. Christ
was, however, immensely more successful:
The critics of Christianity do not see in how many people the passions [pathê] are
suppressed and the flood of vice [kakia] is restrained . . . by reason of the Gospel.
They should have confessed their gratitude to the Gospel when they observe its
services to the community. (Cels. 1.64)
Under ideal circumstances Christ would have achieved this simply by
teaching philosophy:
[I]f every man could abandon the business of life and devote himself
[scholazein] to philosophy, nobody should pursue another course than this one
alone. . . . However, if this is impossible, since, partly because of the necessities of
life and partly because of human weakness, very few people turn eagerly to reason
[logos], what better way of helping the multitude [hoi polloi] could be found than
that given to the nations by Jesus? (Cels. 1.9)
To be an outstanding philosopher is thus not enough to direct humankind
to what is best. For most human beings are non-philosophers, busy with the
needs of embodied life and driven more by love of money and honor than
by love of wisdom. To offer them pedagogical-political guidance, Christ,
like Moses, must have the skills of a legislator, poet, and orator. He must,
in other words, speak in the language of the cave dwellers: the language
of the imagination. According to Clement this means laying down rules
and providing “images” (eikones) that guide us to “choose the good and
imitate it or condemn the bad and avoid it” (Paed. 1.1.2).75 For “images
and examples [eikones kai hypodeigmata] are the chief component of correct
instruction” (3.8).
Clement and Origen go out of their way to defend the intrinsic goodness
of philosophy. Origen, for example, explains Paul’s critique of “the wisdom
of the world” which is “foolishness to God” (1 Cor 3:19) as referring “to all
philosophy that holds false opinions.” By contrast, Paul’s wise man who
appears “foolish in this world” (ibid. 3:18) is wrongly criticized for holding
true doctrines:
It is as if we were to say that the Platonists, in believing in the immortality of
the soul and what is said about its reincarnation, accepted foolishness because
the Stoics ridicule assent to these doctrines, and because the Peripatetics babble
75 See also Cels. 1.48 where Origen accounts for biblical metaphors and parables by the same faculty
through which “people form images [eikones] in their minds” when they dream. The prophets and
Christ translate rational insights into the language of the imagination by representing incorporeal
things through things that can be apprehended through the senses.
about Plato’s “twitterings” [referring to the Forms], and because Epicureans accuse
of superstition those who introduce providence and set a God over the universe.
(Cels. 1.13; cf. 3.47, 7.46)
The “doctrines” which Christians “call best,” Origen stresses, are “those
which are true” (3.49). Both the Law of Moses and the Gospel encourage
the pursuit of wisdom and provide models of wise men – for example
David and Solomon (see 3.45). Paul’s “catalogue of divine gifts” in 1 Cor
12:8–10 describes an epistemic hierarchy with “wisdom” (sophia) at the top,
“knowledge” (gnôsis) based on miracles in the middle, and “faith” (pistis) at
the bottom (3.46). This is not surprising given that “the Son of God” is “the
very Logos and wisdom and truth” (3.41). At the same time true doctrines
can be as destructive for non-philosophers as feeding a newborn solid
food. Hence “the Logos . . . becomes nourishment for each man according
to his capacity to receive him” (4.18; cf. 7.41). When addressing non-
philosophers, Christ does not speak as a “teacher” (didaskalikos) but as a
“guide of children” (paidagogos) – not only children in the literal sense, but
everyone unable to live under the guidance of reason:
At the beginning . . . we exhort sinners to come to the words which teach not
to sin, and the unwise to hear words which will implant in them understanding
[synesis], and children to advance to a manly character, and those who are simply
unhappy [kakodaimones] to happiness. (Cels. 3.59; cf. 7.41)76
As paidagogos Christ does for the soul what a doctor does for the body:
Just as a good doctor, in dealing with diseased bodies, uses poulticing for some,
rubbing for others, and bathing for others; some he cuts with a knife, others he
cauterizes, and in some cases he even amputates . . . , so the Savior uses many
tunes and many devices in working for the salvation of men. (Prot. 1.8; cf. Cels.
3.61–62)
This is necessary because among Christ’s audience one “is a beginner,”
another “has made a little progress, or is considerably advanced, or has
nearly attained virtue, or has in fact attained it” (Cels. 4.16). To cure the
variously deficient souls Christ’s pedagogical-political program must be
accordingly multilayered. This program imitates true philosophy. Accord-
ing to Origen, the Gospel, taken literally, “teaches a shadow [skia] of the
mysteries of Christ” (Comm. in Io. 1.39). He can thus distinguish “the
Gospel which is perceptible by the senses from the intelligible or spiritual
Gospel” (1.44).
76 Note the range of additional meanings of “children” that Clement discusses in Paed. 1.5.
Given its universal scope, Christ’s pedagogical-political program cannot
be implemented without a cultural revolution. For the cave of humankind
into which Christ descends is not a cultural void. After falling away from
the Logos, human beings developed beliefs, practices, and institutions based
on idolatry – the confusion of God with things that are not God. Attaching
them “to the supreme God” and teaching them “to refer every action to his
good pleasure . . . down to the most insignificant of words or deeds” thus
requires first detaching them from worshiping idols and from the beliefs,
practices, and institutions to which idol worship gave rise. Achieving this
conversion is Christ’s task as protreptikos, a difficult task because the better
argument is often defeated by the force of “custom” (ethos). According
to Clement, pagans “fled from our arguments” like “stubborn horses that
refuse to obey the reins” (Prot. 10; cf. Cels. 1.52). Much of Clement’s
Protrepticus thus consists in a critique of pagan culture.77
Only after Christ’s work as protreptikos is done can he take on the
role of paidagogos. One important component of his pedagogical-political
program is philosophical poetry. According to Origen the Logos makes
sure to conform to the guidelines for pedagogically appropriate poetry
laid down by Plato. Christians “truly have reverence for the name of God
and the names of the beautiful things which he has created, so that we
do not accept any myth which might harm the young even if it is to be
understood allegorically” (Cels. 4.48). Hence Plato would have no reason to
ban Scripture’s narratives from the best state, unlike the poetry of Homer
and Hesiod:
[I]t is the myths of the Greeks which are not only most foolish, but also most
impious. For our Scriptures also have regard to the multitude of the simple-
minded, something to which the authors of the fictitious stories [plasmata] of the
Greeks paid no attention. Hence it was not mere ill will which led Plato to cast
out from his city myths and poems of this character. (Cels. 4.50)
The pedagogical-political usefulness of the Logos’s poetry does not imply

that it is true. It belongs, however, to the kind of “deceit and lying” which
Plato considers legitimate “as a medicine.” Such noble lies are used by the
Logos “with the purpose of bringing salvation,” according to Origen, “since
some characters are reformed by doctrines which are more false than true”
(4.19). Criticizing Christ for employing noble lies would be as wrong as
criticizing Plato. If readers were to take the allegorical account of the birth
of Eros in the Symposium literally:
77 Cf. also the argument of the PE discussed above.

they would ridicule the myth and make a mockery of so great a man as Plato.
But if they could discover Plato’s intention by examining philosophically what he
says in the form of a myth, they would admire the way in which he was able to
hide the great doctrines evident to him . . . on account of the multitude, and yet
to express them as one must for those who know how to discover from myths the
true intention of the author. (Cels. 4.39)78
Let me note in passing that Christians were not alone in Alexandria in com-
paring biblical stories to Plato’s mythoi and describing them as a replacement
for the philosopher’s knowledge of the good. Clement’s contemporary, the
pagan physician and philosopher Galen, makes the following comments
on Christians in a passage of his Summary of Plato’s “Republic” preserved
only in Arabic:
The multitude is unable to understand a chain of demonstrative arguments. Hence
they need parables [rumūz] from which they benefit. Concerning this we now see
the people called Christians who draw their faith from parables and miracles and
yet act like those who philosophize. For their lack of fear of death and of what
follows death is something we see every day, and likewise their moderation in
relation to sexual intercourse. Among them is a group, including not only men,
but also women, who abstain from sexual intercourse their entire life. Another
group’s moderation concerning food and drink, and strong desire for justice are
such that they are not deficient compared to true philosophers.79
Philosophical poetry, however, is not the only component of Christ’s
pedagogical-political program. Christ must first translate the “science of
living” (technê peri ton bion) guiding a good Christian life into a set of
rules for the imperfectly rational members of the community (Paed. 2.2,
25.3). Although it is best to follow the prescriptions of one’s own reason,
following the prescriptions of another’s reason is better than not following
reason at all (see 3.8, 42). Clement’s treatise on the rules for embodied
life, which Christ supposedly laid down as paidagogos, is a straightforward
account of the virtuous life based on Platonic and Stoic sources. Topics
discussed range from food, drink, and sex to wealth, the social life, and
physical beauty (Paed. 2 and 3). The key principle is that we should not
desire more of these goods than necessary to satisfy the needs of the body.
Although we do not live to eat, for example, we still must eat to live. Hence
moderate wealth is useful to avoid hunger and sickness which, in turn, is
78 Origen compares Plato’s account to the Genesis account of the serpent’s seduction of Eve. Plato
may have come up with a similar story on his own, Origen surmises, or appropriated the biblical
story with some modifications when he met Jewish scholars in Egypt. For Clement’s view of Plato’s
allegories, see Strom. 5.9.
79 Walzer (1949), 16; cf. Cels. 7.48.
useful for undisturbed study and thus for attaining likeness to the Logos.
This usefulness provides the “measure” (metron) for instrumental goods
(2.3, 37.1).80
Perfect Christians desire neither more nor less than what reason pre-
scribes because their love of wisdom keeps their non-rational desires in
check. But how can imperfect Christians be motivated to follow the pre-
scriptions of reason? One option is to overrule non-rational desires through
fear and hope. Although these are not rational either, they can motivate
actions that conform to what reason prescribes. Hence Christ uses “threats
of punishments” and “promises of what is in store for those who have lived
good lives” for “the improvement of humankind” (Cels. 4.10; cf. Paed. 3.8,
45). This explains, for example, why Scripture attributes anger and wrath to
God, although in truth he has no human emotions (see Cels. 1.71; 4.71–72).
In fact, the punishments which God is said to inflict on sinners are just the
effects caused by vice: “each man brings this on himself by his sins” (4.72).
For Clement and Origen, too, motivating obedience through fear is
only a last resort. Although Christ knows that not everyone can become
a perfect Christian for whom the rule of the Logos and self-rule coincide,
his aim is to guide humankind as close as possible to this ideal. Scripture’s
philosophical poetry already represents considerable progress. It teaches, as
we saw, through “images and examples” what it means to obey Christ’s rules
and live well, or to disobey them and live badly, thus providing imperfect
Christians with standards for independent value judgments which go a
considerable way to replacing the practical wisdom of perfect Christians.81
The emphasis put on “faith” (pistis) is distinctive of Christian philoso-
phers, although Clement also claims to find this concept in the Laws.82
Having faith in the Logos “whom we accept as our teacher” is a necessary
step on the way to perfection in the same way as we must initially submit
to the authority of a master to learn carpentry or navigation (Strom. 2.4,
16.1–2). Since we are not born wise, we are at first unable to live under the
guidance of reason. However, if we do not live wisely we will also not reach
the stage at which reason can take charge. The only way to break the vicious
circle is to submit to the prescriptions of another’s reason. For Clement
and Origen this should, of course, be the Logos, the supreme paidagogos.
Before we can know that the Logos’s prescriptions are right, we must accept
80 Cf. the quotations from the Laws in 2.3, 35.1, and 36.3.
81 See Prot. 10.84 where Clement describes the virtues as “divine writings [theia grapha] stamped deeply
into the soul.” They are the wisdom that turns men into good fathers, good sons, good husbands,
and good masters of slaves.
82 See the quotation from the Laws in Strom. 2.4, 18.1; cf. 2.5, 23, 1–5.
them on faith. At this stage, therefore, faith takes the place of reason. As we
advance, however, we must, as much as possible, replace faith with reason,
for “it is far better to accept doctrines with reason and wisdom than with
mere faith” (Cels. 1.13). Clement describes this process as follows:
knowledge [gnôsis] becomes faith [pistis] and faith becomes knowledge according
to a divinely established succession and reciprocal implication [akolouthia kai
antakolouthia]. (Strom. 2.4, 16.2)83
While in the best case beliefs based on faith are replaced through beliefs
based on demonstrations, they can also be “tied down” in less definitive
ways. As we saw, Paul places knowledge based on miracles in between faith
and wisdom according to Origen, who considers miracles an important
device to persuade non-philosophers (see Cels. 1.46). As the degrees of
perfection vary, the quality of the arguments employed by the Logos varies
as well.
In addition to his role as paidagogos, Christ also teaches philosophy as
didaskalikos. Mindful of the destructive effect that true doctrines can have
on non-philosophers, however, he does not teach philosophy in public:
[T]he crowds of believers [pisteuontes] hear the parables as if they were outside
and worthy only of the exoteric doctrines. But the disciples privately learned the
explanation of the parables. For privately, to his own disciples, Jesus expounded
all things, honoring above the crowds those judged worthy of his wisdom. (Cels.
3.46; cf. 3.21)
Clement claims to be part of this oral tradition of Christian wisdom going
back to Christ’s private lessons. His teachers:
who preserved in their integrity the true tradition of the blessed teaching, coming
directly from the holy apostles Peter, Jacob, John, and Paul and passed on contin-
uously from father to son . . . indeed came to us with God’s help to lay down in us
the apostolic seeds inherited from the fathers. (Strom. 1.1, 11.3)84
Since this oral tradition is fictional, however, it obviously cannot provide
access to Christ’s philosophy. The only alternative is to study Scripture’s
83 Cf. Cels. 1.9: Christians must rely on “simple faith” until “they can devote themselves to the study of
rational arguments.” Clement’s discussion of pistis in Book 2 of the Stromateis is long and tortuous
(chapters 2–17). Against Gnostics who claim that perfection requires special knowledge Clement
sometimes argues that all Christians are perfect from the moment they are baptized (cf. Paed. 1.6).
This does not sit well with the idea of progress from simple faith to wisdom. I take Clement’s
considered view to be the same as Origen’s: there are grades of perfection and a Christian who has
replaced pistis with gnôsis is more perfect than a Christian who relies on pistis alone. See in particular
Strom. 6 and 7 on the true Christian Gnostic.
84 Cf. Eusebius, HE 6.13, 9.
allegorical content. Making the transition from the literal to the allegorical
content, however, requires training in the propaedeutic sciences and phi-
losophy. Hence Clement’s defense of Greek education against Christians
who argue that “only faith” is required for perfection and who oppose
studying philosophy or even claim that it was invented by the devil (1.9,
43.1 and 44.4).85
The most eloquent testimony for the key role of a Greek education
in becoming a perfect Christian is provided by Origen. He not only rec-
ognizes “any good teachings” as valid, “even if their authors are outside
the [Christian] faith” (Cels. 7.46), but also encourages “young men” to
listen to “teachers who give preparatory teaching in philosophy and train
in philosophical study” (3.58). Only then:
would I try to lead them on to the exalted height, unknown to the multitude, of
the profoundest doctrines of the Christians who discourse about the greatest and
most advanced truths, proving and showing that this philosophy was taught by
the prophets of God and the Apostles of Jesus. (Cels. 3.8)86
This passage matches the detailed description of Origen’s teaching practice
in the Address of Thanksgiving to Origen by Gregory Thaumaturgus who
studied with Origen in Caesarea in the 230s. According to Gregory, Origen
first examined his soul to determine whether he could be guided to the
life of a perfect Christian (Or. pan. 7.95). Then he cured the “ailments”
(pathêmata) of Gregory’s soul through “arguments and speeches” (7.100).
Gregory’s philosophical education begins with “dialectic,” the training of
“the part of our soul which judges . . . words and arguments.” This is of
great importance “for all who debate any matter whatsoever and seek to
avoid being misled” (7.106 and 108). Next Gregory turns to physics where
he learns how God ordered nature towards what is best. Mathematics
prepares him for the transition to the study of incorporeal things (see
8.109–14). Of these the first is the human soul, the foundation of moral
philosophy. The aim is not only to learn in what the soul’s good order
consists, but also to put Gregory’s soul in good order. By “reaping” the
“fruits of philosophy, the divine virtues,” Gregory becomes “disciplined
and tranquil and godlike and truly happy” (9.115–16). The virtues include
85 Clement’s claim in the Protrepticus that we no longer need to go to Athens to study philosophy since
“the whole world has become an Athens . . . through the Logos” (11) is rhetorical. Had Christ made
philosophy available everywhere, Clement would not have needed to defend Greek philosophy in
the Stromateis.
86 Cf. Eusebius, HE 6.18. According to HE 6.3, 8–14 Origen’s own education proceeded along these
lines: the study of Scripture’s literal sense was followed by the study of Greek philosophy which, in
turn, was followed by the study of Scripture’s allegorical sense.
“practical wisdom” (phronêsis), the virtue of reason, which enables us to
judge whether things “belong to goods or evils.” When reason is in charge,
Gregory notes, the soul is “the ruler of itself” (kratoun eph’ heautês) with
moderation, courage, and justice ensuring that reason’s prescriptions are
executed (9.119 and 122). The aim of a life ordered by reason is “piety”
(eusebeia), the “mother of all virtues.” Piety does not mean submission
to religious authority, but striving to become like the Logos by perfecting
reason. Having discovered “divine reason” (theios nous) in itself, the soul
understands that:
the goal [telos] of all men is nothing but coming to God and remaining in him by
attaining likeness to him through the purity of reason [nous]. (Or. pan. 11.142 and
12.149)
For this purpose “the most necessary” thing is “knowledge [gnôsis] of the
Cause of all things” (13.150). To attain this knowledge Origen does not
direct Gregory to Scripture, but to a rigorous study of “all the writings of
the ancient philosophers,” admonishing him to be:
neither biased in favor of one nation or philosophic doctrine, nor prejudiced
against it, whether Greek or barbarian, but listening to all. (Or. pan. 13.151 and 153)
The aim of this exercise is to confront Gregory with a range of conflicting

positions which force him to think through the arguments for and against
them on his own, retaining “everything which is useful and true from each
of the philosophers” while dismissing “what is false” (14.172–73). The point
had already been made by Clement:
When I speak of philosophy, I do not mean Stoic, Platonic, Epicurean, or Aris-
totelian philosophy, but all valid ideas maintained in each of these schools which
teach justice together with pious knowledge. This selection [of valid ideas] I call
philosophy. (Strom. 1.7, 37.6)
As Gregory stresses, Christians must become better philosophers than their

Greek colleagues:
Our noble Greeks, so outstanding in their speeches and investigations, did philos-
ophy in this way: driven by some impulse each declared true only those doctrines
which he happened to encounter at the start, while [dismissing] all the doctrines
from other philosophers as deception and nonsense. He does no more support
his doctrines with argument [logos] than each of the other philosophers set forth
their own, for there is no need to change and revise a doctrine on account of
demonstration [anankê] or persuasion [peithos]. (Or. pan. 14.162)
This criticism echoes a passage in Against Celsus in which Origen replies to
Celsus’s charge that Christians follow religious authority rather than reason.
Not Christians, but Greek philosophers follow authority, Origen contends,
because they embrace their school doctrines without examination (see Cels.
1.10).87
Only after this comprehensive philosophical training, leading from
dialectics to metaphysics, does Gregory turn to the study of Scripture’s
allegorical content and learn to interpret “the dark and enigmatic places,
of which there are many in the sacred words” (Or. pan. 15.174). Having
perfected reason, he can now discern the philosophy concealed in Christ’s
public teachings.
The study of Scripture adds no new content to Gregory’s knowledge.
Since the literal sense of Scripture has no authority for determining its
true content, Scripture can never overrule a sound philosophical doctrine.
The concept of Christ as Reason requires that every conflict between rea-
son and Scripture is resolved by reinterpreting Scripture.88 It is true that
the disagreement between philosophers on metaphysical issues suggests to
Origen “that [complete] knowledge of God is likely beyond the capacity of
human nature” (Cels. 7.44). True also that for Origen Christ had complete
knowledge of God since his soul was perfectly rational before descending
into the body, unlike human souls which must struggle to regain some
measure of perfection after the Fall. Since Christ’s true teachings are not
available, however, this does not translate into fideism.89 If anything, Ori-
gen’s moderate skepticism turns the search for Christ’s true doctrines into
an open-ended project which can always be revised in light of better argu-
ments. This is corroborated by the often tentative conclusions presented in
On First Principles.90 At the end of his discussion of Christ’s incarnation,
for example, Origen writes that “if someone could find something better”
than the solution he proposed, “then his words rather than ours should be
accepted” (De princ. 2.6, 7).
On First Principles, however, also raises a puzzle. Origen calls on Chris-
tian teachers to follow the example of Christ and teach philosophy only
privately to an “intelligent audience.” When addressing “those of a simpler
mind,” on the other hand, they should “conceal and pass over the more
87 Cf. Galen’s similar remarks in De ordine librorum suorum 1.19, 50.

88 See the hermeneutic principles set forth in De princ. 4.
89 The same holds for the philosophy of Moses who was a much better philosopher than Plato
according to Origen (see Cels. 1.19).
90 If definitive knowledge can be attained through God’s grace as Origen suggests at times (cf. Cels.
7.44), the style of On First Principles suggests that he himself did not lay claim to this privilege.
profound truths” (Cels. 3.52; cf. 5.29). The philosophical training described
by Gregory clearly corresponds to what Origen thought Christ did with his
Disciples in private. His extensive homilies on the Bible, on the other hand,
bring out the pedagogical intentions of the Logos’s public teachings. Both
Origen’s biblical commentaries and On First Principles, however, seem to
reveal what the Logos deliberately concealed to protect non-philosophers.
While the commentaries make Scripture’s allegorical content public, On
First Principles gives a systematic account of Christ’s philosophy. The solu-
tion to this puzzle may lie in a lost letter to Fabian, bishop of Rome,
in which Origen reportedly charges “Ambrose with over haste in mak-
ing public what was meant only for private circulation.”91 As we learn
from Eusebius, Origen was urged to write his biblical commentaries by
Ambrose, a wealthy Alexandrian, who provided him with ample means for
this purpose, including seven secretaries (HE 6.24). It is likely, then, that
Origen did not intend to publish either his biblical commentaries or On
First Principles.
The same concern for non-philosophers also helps to explain the esoteric
style of Clement’s Stromateis, a “patchwork” of deliberately disorganized
notes which “skillfully wish to hide the seeds of knowledge . . . because
great is the danger of betraying the truly ineffable teaching of the true
philosophy” (Strom. 1.2, 20.4–21.2). Clement first lays out Christ’s program
as paidagogos whose purpose is to prepare for the life of the perfect Christian.
Attaining perfection, however, requires grasping the doctrines which Christ
sets forth as didaskalikos. Since most Christians are unable to advance
from the paidagogos to the didaskalikos, Christ’s true teachings cannot
be disclosed in public. The style of the Stromateis accommodates these
constraints. With reference to Plato’s critique of writing in the Phaedrus,
Clement explains that oral instruction allows the teacher to determine his
audience’s level of perfection and then choose the appropriate mode of
exposition (1.1, 9.1; cf. Cels. 3.51). A published text, by contrast, is equally
accessible to all and in the wrong hands can be as harmful as “a dagger” in
the hands of a child (1.1, 14.3–4). This can be remedied, however, through a
practice of esoteric writing which allows only intelligent readers to discern
the author’s true intention:
Let our notes be, as we often said, because of those people who light upon them
carelessly and ignorantly, patched together in a motley fashion as the name itself
[Stromateis] declares, continually dropping one subject for another, suggesting one
91 The reference is preserved in Jerome, Letter 84.9.

Philosophers in paradise 139
thing in the course of discussion and declaring another. For seekers after gold,
says Heraclitus, dig much earth and find a little gold. But those who really are of
golden stock, mining for what is akin to them, will find much in a little. For the
writing will find one reader who will understand it. The patchwork [stromateis]
of notes work together for the recollection and the declaration of truth for those
who can rationally inquire. (Strom. 4.2, 4).
Clement can thus convey Christ’s true teachings to the philosophically

gifted students without subverting the beliefs of non-philosophers.
If true philosophy can only be disclosed in Scripture, but not learned
from it, this explains why Origen, like Philo, never accounts for the over-
lap between Scripture’s true doctrines and Greek philosophy through the
dependency thesis. Clement’s stance on this is surely more ambiguous.92
But also he has no problem explaining true doctrines in Plato as stemming
either from his own insight or from his contact with an oral wisdom tradi-
tion (see Strom. 2.19, 100.3). If studying Scripture could lead to perfection,
Clement’s and Origen’s defense of a philosophical education derived from
Greek sources would make no sense at all.
philosophers in paradise
At the end of his studies under Origen, Gregory claims to have entered
what is “truly paradise” (Or. pan. 15.183).93 Christian philosophers thus
recover the state of perfection that was lost through the Fall. Although
paradise is indeed a place that admits philosophers only, Christians miti-
gate the intellectual elitism characteristic of proponents of a philosophical
religion. As we saw, for Origen all souls were equally united with the Logos
in an initial state of perfection. In successive embodiments after the Fall
they gradually move further away from or back up to the Logos depending
on whether they chose “virtue” or “vice” (De princ. 1.7, 5). The task of the
historical Christ is to turn all of humankind back to the Logos: philosophers
by means of philosophy and non-philosophers by means of philosophy’s
handmaid. Over the course of successive embodiments, however, non-
philosophers, too, once turned in the right direction, can replace the guid-
ance of the Logos as paidagogos by the teachings of the Logos as didaskalikos.94
92 See Ridings (1995). The matter requires a more detailed discussion.

93 Cf. Origen’s description of paradise in De princ. 2.11, 6.
94 For the descent and the different ranks of the rational souls, see in general De princ. 1.5–8 and the
testimonies in the appendix to 1.8. For the ascent of the souls, see 2.11, 6–7 and 3.6, 8. Whether
Origen is, in fact, committed to a doctrine of reincarnation is controversial. At times he appears to
endorse it (for example Cels. 1.13, 1.32), at times he appears to reject it (for example Cels. 1.20, 4.17,
Hence a version of the ideal community of philosophers, who live a life
ordered by reason towards the perfection of reason, will arise at the end of
times.
It is possible to derive this concept of progressive perfection over succes-
sive embodiments from Plato. In the Republic Plato argues that “education”
(paideia) does not mean “putting knowledge [epistêmê] into souls that lack
it, like putting sight into blind eyes.” Rather:
the power [to learn] and the instrument with which each one learns is present in
everyone’s [hekastos] soul. And just as it is impossible to turn the eye from darkness
to light without turning around the entire body, so [the soul’s eye] must be turned
around with the entire soul from the things that become, until the soul is able to
bear contemplating [theaomai] that which is and the brightest of that which is,
namely what we say is the good. (Rep. 518b–d)
How can education lead everyone’s soul to knowledge of the Forms, includ-
ing the Form of the good, if most citizens are non-philosophers? Is not the
best life that non-philosophers can attain an imitation of the philosopher’s
life and a second-degree likeness to God? One solution to this puzzle is
that Plato is speaking of the effect that a good education can have over
several embodiments. He seems to hint at this possibility in a reference to
Socrates’s debate with Thrasymachus which was the starting point of the
argument in the Republic:
We will not relax our efforts until we either convince [Thrasymachus] and the
others or, at any rate, do something that may benefit them in a later embodiment,
when, reborn, they happen upon these arguments again. (Rep. 498d)
Elsewhere Plato argues that souls move up and down on the scale of per-
fection in accordance with how well or badly they live during their present
embodiment.95 Since our upbringing is a key factor in how we live, we can
see how Origen can argue on Platonic grounds that a non-philosopher who
in his present embodiment benefits from the Logos’s pedagogical-political
guidance will be able to grasp the Logos’s true teachings a few embodiments
down the road. To be sure, getting from Plato to Origen requires a number
of modifications and additions that I cannot discuss here. For my purpose,
however, it is sufficient to see that even the most distinctive traits of the
8.30). My sense is that Origen only disagrees with Plato’s claim that human souls can reincarnate
as non-rational animals, but the matter requires further examination. At any rate, I cannot see how
Origen can explain the soul’s descent and ascent without some version of the reincarnation doctrine.
95 See the discussion of the soul in Phdr. 245c–249d; cf. Rep. 614b–621b, Ti. 90e–92c.
Christian version of a philosophical religion do not imply a fundamental
break with Plato’s concept of a pedagogical-political program.
Like Philo’s interpretation of Judaism, then, the interpretation of Christian-

ity as a philosophical religion hinges on the concept of the Logos which,
with some modifications, corresponds to Plato’s Nous. The Logos orders
not only nature towards what is best, but also humankind – mediated
through Moses and everyone else who contributed to the advancement
of reason. This process culminates in the historical Christ who lays the
groundwork for reason’s universal triumph. Fitting the historical contents
of Christianity into this framework through reinterpretation is not as great
a challenge as fitting the historical contents of Judaism into it. For align-
ing Christian beliefs, practices, and institutions with the philosophical
concept of the good endorsed by Clement and Origen does not require
the comprehensive reinterpretation of the nomoi of Moses that we saw in
Philo. These nomoi, Christian philosophers argue, reflect the particular
constraints under which Moses set out to restore the moral and intellectual
integrity of the Hebrews after their enslavement in Egypt. Once they ful-
filled this purpose, Moses’s nomoi were no longer literally binding. The laws
“about meat and drink and feasts and new moons and sabbaths” were just
a “shadow” of “the good things to come” (Cels. 2.2). Clement, as we saw,
restates the instructions that Christ supposedly set forth as paidagogos in
the form of a fairly straightforward summary of Platonic and Stoic ethics.
At the same time, the homilies, biblical commentaries and philosophical-
theological works of Clement and Origen all contribute to the project of
reinterpreting Christian beliefs, practices, and institutions in light of their
pedagogical-political ideals and philosophical commitments.
from magnesia to a christian world-state

The interpretation of Christianity as a philosophical religion does not end
with Clement and Origen. Prominent later proponents include Augustine,
in particular in the early days after his conversion, and Pseudo-Dionysius.96
Augustine, for example, is confident at the time of his conversion that what
he finds in the “Platonists . . . does not contradict our Holy Scriptures [sacris
nostris non repugnet].” Studying the Platonists will best satisfy his “desire
to apprehend the truth – not only as someone who has faith [credens],
96 See O’Meara (2003), chapters 12.3–4 and 13.1.

but also as someone who understands [intelligens]” (C. acad. 3.20, 43).
Scripture’s literal content, on the other hand, is a pedagogical-political
program for “souls that have been blinded by the manifold shadows of
error and rendered forgetful by the deepest filth from the body.” To cure
these souls, “God the highest, on account of a certain compassion with the
multitude [clementia popularis], humbled and submitted the authority of
the divine Intellect even to the human body itself” (3.19, 42).
One of the most interesting later developments brings us finally back
to Eusebius. We saw that according to Clement and Origen Christ not
only offers pedagogical-political guidance to Jews and Christians, but to
humankind as a whole. The Christianization of the Roman Empire under
Constantine the Great provided an opportunity to champion an actual
Christian world-state along Platonic lines. Eusebius seized this opportunity
in his Praise of Constantine, a speech he gave in the emperor’s presence in 336
on occasion of the tricentennial of Constantine’s reign.97 The speech por-
trays Constantine as the perfect “philosopher-king” (philosophos basileus)
who, in the footsteps of Moses and Christ, continues the Logos’s project
of ordering humankind towards what is best (LC 5.4). Having perfected
reason through knowledge of things divine and human, he apprehends
“the archetypal Form” (archetypos idea) on which he models himself, thus
becoming “perfectly wise, good, just, courageous, pious, and God-loving”
(1.3, 3.5, 5.4). Constantine not only imitates the Logos by perfecting himself,
however, but also by perfecting others, following the example of the Logos
who spreads “his Father’s favors without envy to all” (3.6; cf. 2.5). As the
Logos orders nature towards what is best, Constantine does the same for
humankind (see 2.2). His “indescribable longing” for knowledge makes
him resistant to the lures of power and money, thus ensuring his moral
integrity as a ruler (5.5–7). Since human beings are said to have been created
in God’s image because they have reason, directing them to what is best
means, above all, directing them to the perfection of reason (see 6.7 and
3.6). Constantine’s “rules of worship,” for example, instruct citizens “to
raise their outstretched hands above toward heaven while fixing the eyes
of the mind [dianoia]” on the Logos (9.10). What they apprehend through
the eyes of the mind corresponds to the allegorical content of Scripture
(see 6.20). To succeed in this enterprise, however, Constantine must first
defeat Christ’s pagan enemies and their idolatrous beliefs, practices, and
institutions (see 7–10).
97 See ibid., chapter 12.1–2.

From Magnesia, then, we have arrived at the ideal of a Christian world-
state in which all citizens strive to become like God by living a life ordered
by reason towards the perfection of reason:
Yes, this is surely the greatest miracle – that so great a king has cried out at the top
of his voice to the whole world and, like some interpreter of the All-Ruling God,
has called all under his care to knowledge [gnôsis] of True Being [ho ôn]. (LC 10.4)
c h a p ter 3
Communities of Reason in the Islamic world
introduction
A key passage for my project is Plato’s claim that the ultimate goal to which
divine nomoi direct citizens is “Reason [nous] who rules all things” (Leg.
631d). As we saw in the previous chapter, Eusebius identifies Plato’s Nous
with “the God of the universe” in Genesis. The Alexandrians in general
take Nous to be the Logos, God’s mind, which Clement and Origen further
equate with Christ. In his Epitome of the “Laws,” al-Fārābı̄ renders Nous
as “the face of God [wajh Allāh], mighty and magnificent” (Jawāmi 1.7).
Averroes and Maimonides use variations of this formula to describe the
aim of the Divine Law of Muslims and Jews. According to Averroes the
“happiness” (saāda) to which the sharı̄a calls, is “the knowledge of God
[al-marifa bi-Allāh], mighty and magnificent, and his creation” (Fas.l, 8).
Maimonides describes the highest good aimed at by the Law of Moses as
“the apprehension of God [idrāk Allāh], mighty and magnificent, I mean
knowledge [al-ilm] of him” (Eight Chapters 5, 164/75–76).
Al-Fārābı̄, Averroes, and Maimonides illustrate well how Islam and
Judaism were interpreted as philosophical religions in the early Middle
Ages. Like the nomoi of Magnesia, the laws, stories, exhortations, and
practices of worship that make up the sharı̄a and the torah direct the
community to what is best – a life ordered by reason towards the per-
fection of reason, culminating in the apprehension of God. According to
Maimonides, Scripture, too, teaches that this is the best life: to be cre-
ated in God’s image according to Genesis 1:26 means to have perfected
reason, the feature human beings have in common with God. God con-
ceived as Reason orders nature towards what is best, and, mediated through
philosopher-prophets, the religious community as well. In the ideal reli-
gious community God’s rule does not require laws, stories, exhortations,
and practices of worship. Since most human beings are non-philosophers,
however, God’s rule must be established through philosophy’s handmaid: a
144
Introduction 145
pedagogical-political program that provides guidance to non-philosophers.
Like Jewish and Christian philosophers in antiquity, therefore, medieval
Muslim and Jewish philosophers appeal to Plato’s distinction between
philosophers and non-philosophers to explain the need for the historical
forms of their religious traditions – partly in response to critics of reli-
gion like Abū Bakr al-Rāzı̄ (d. 925) who argued that there is no need for
prophetic guidance since all human beings can live under the guidance of
reason. This does not mean that for al-Fārābı̄, Averroes, and Maimonides
non-philosophers can only share in the life of reason through obedience.
Like the nomoi of Magnesia, the sharı̄a and the torah aim at a commu-
nity of “free men” that comes as close to the ideal religious community as
human nature allows. Becoming a perfect Muslim or Jew, able to grasp the
allegorical content of the Divine Law, requires studying Greco-Arabic phi-
losophy, most importantly physics and metaphysics, which Maimonides
calls “pardes,” literally paradise, a Talmudic term referring to the esoteric
teachings of the Law of Moses. As in Alexandria, therefore, philosophy
holds the key to paradise. Within this framework the historical forms of
Judaism and Islam can be reinterpreted as if Moses and Muhammad had
been accomplished philosopher-prophets. There are thus good reasons to
study the Alexandrians and the early medieval philosophers as represen-
tatives of the same project: both use the Platonic model to explain how
philosophy is related to their religious tradition.
Al-Fārābı̄, Averroes, and Maimonides are representatives of falsafa, the
main school of Arabic philosophy from the ninth century onwards. The
members of this school adopt the label “philosophers” (falāsifa) as an
intellectual trademark: it identifies them as the heirs of the philosophy of
Plato and Aristotle and sets them apart from other intellectual currents
in the Muslim world, most importantly “theology” (kalām) which they
dismiss as mere religious apologetics. There are several reasons why I chose
to focus on al-Fārābı̄, Averroes, and Maimonides. Al-Fārābı̄ saw himself,
and was seen by those who followed him, as the founder of falsafa who
revived Greek philosophy in the context of Islam. At the same time he
proposed a model for conceiving the relationship between falsafa and the
Divine Law on which later Muslim and Jewish philosophers based their
interpretation of Islam and Judaism. Averroes and Maimonides were the
last two important representatives of falsafa in Muslim Spain. Averroes
devoted three philosophical-theological treatises to the question of the
relationship between falsafa and Islam. Although written reluctantly in
response to al-Ghazālı̄, who argued that central tenets of falsafa cannot be
presented as a legitimate interpretation of Islam, Averroes’s treatises are the
146 Communities of Reason in the Islamic world
only extant comprehensive discussion of this question. Maimonides, the
most influential Jew among the falāsifa, made the largest-scale effort to
philosophically reinterpret a religious tradition during the early medieval
period. His project, like Philo’s, can be described as a grand attempt to
substantiate the claim that the Divine Law of the Jews was established by an
outstanding philosopher-prophet with the aim to direct the community to
a philosophically grounded concept of the good. Averroes and Maimonides
were educated in the same cultural milieu and share the same philosophical
concerns which allows for a fruitful comparison between them. Finally,
they were, in part directly and in part indirectly, the two main medieval
influences on Spinoza’s discussion of the relationship between philosophy
and religion to which I will turn in the next chapter.
plato and aristotle

The transmission of Plato’s philosophy to the Islamic world took place
through various channels which have been amply documented in the schol-
arly literature.1 Some dialogues may have been available in their entirety
in Arabic, although no conclusive evidence for this has yet emerged. In
part the medieval philosophers depend on summaries by Galen and in part
on Neoplatonic texts. Since al-Fārābı̄’s philosophical teachers were Syrian
Christians, the Platonic interpretation of Christianity may have had an
influence as well. It is clear, in any case, that multiple points of contact
existed between the ancient and the medieval intellectual context.
It is less clear, by contrast, why the falāsifa turned to Plato’s political
philosophy in the first place. In late antiquity Plato gradually emerged as
the leading philosophical authority. The high esteem in which the Alexan-
drians hold Plato is one testament to this. In some circles Aristotle’s work
was merely considered a prolegomenon to Plato. The opposite, however,
is the case in medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophy. Although Plato and
Aristotle are normally taken to be in agreement, Aristotle’s work is seen
as the definitive statement of philosophy. Why, then, did the falāsifa draw
on Plato rather than Aristotle in political philosophy? The most obvious
reason is the absence of Aristotle’s Politics from the corpus of Greek philoso-
phy translated into Arabic, most likely by historical accident.2 Muslim and
1 See, for example, Walzer (1962), Klein-Franke (1973), Rosenthal (1990), Walker (1994), Reisman
(2004).
2 See the discussion in Pines (1975).
Jewish philosophers could argue, moreover, that in practical philosophy
Plato is not inferior to Aristotle. The latter’s advantage over Plato stems
from his scientific method. According to al-Fārābı̄, Plato’s conclusions are
based on dialectical inferences. Only in Aristotle’s time was “scientific spec-
ulation completed,” reaching the stage of “burhān” (demonstration), the
method set forth in the Posterior Analytics. Aristotle stresses, however, that
practical philosophy is not an exact science. Its premises and conclusions are
only “generally” (epi to polu) and not necessarily true (EN 1.3, 1094 b21–22).
For the falāsifa this means that practical philosophy by its nature cannot
generate more than dialectical inferences.3 Hence in practical philosophy,
Plato is as good as Aristotle. Finally, the way Plato conceives the relation-
ship between philosophy and politics in a virtuous city and philosophy’s
role in the pedagogical-political guidance of the citizens arguably provides
a better framework for interpreting Islam and Judaism as philosophical
religions than Aristotle’s Politics.
At the same time it is doubtless a simplification to say that the medieval
concept of a philosophical religion is derived from Plato. For one thing,
a wide range of Aristotelian concepts are integrated into the Platonic
framework: the process of prophecy, for example, is explained in terms of
Aristotle’s psychology, the character of the pedagogical-political program in
terms of a late ancient version of Aristotle’s Organon, and the effectiveness
of the Divine Law in terms of Aristotle’s theory of habituation. In addition,
the Platonism informing the medieval project was significantly shaped by
the Neoplatonic reception of Plato’s political thought.4 And Christian Pla-
tonism, as already mentioned, may have played a role as well. As we will
see, the Aristotelian elements led to some interesting modifications in the
concept of a philosophical religion, most importantly to a more inclusive
concept of knowledge that allows non-philosophers to share in the perfec-
tion and pleasure derived from contemplation. It is also worth pointing
out that the general attitude to Greek philosophy changed. Whereas the
Alexandrians stress their intellectual independence as disciples of Moses
and Christ, the falāsifa normally identify true philosophy with the philos-
ophy of Plato and Aristotle and equate it with the allegorical content of
3 See the distinction between “necessary” (hekhrahi) and “general” (meodi) drawn in Averroes’s Middle
Commentary on Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics,” 60–61. In the Incoherence of the Incoherence Averroes
writes that no “demonstration [burhān] for the necessity of action exists” (2.4, 584/361). The same
consideration underlies Maimonides’s claim that “truth and falsehood” can only be predicated of
“what is of necessity,” but not of “generally accepted things” (al-mashhūrāt) in Guide 1.2, 16/25.
4 See O’Meara (2003), chapter 14 and Vallat (2004).
their religious tradition. On the whole, however, the features shared by the
ancient and medieval version of a philosophical religion are substantive
enough to describe them as two instantiations of the same project.
Is the overall Aristotelian framework of the falāsifa compatible with the

concept of God as Reason who orders nature and the religious community
towards what is best? It is surely not impossible to read Aristotle as endorsing
the core elements of the Platonic picture. This was made easier, moreover,
because the falāsifa relied primarily on what Aristotle says about politics
in the Nicomachean Ethics while ignoring the more complicated picture
emerging from the Politics.5 A full discussion of how Plato and Aristotle
are related in the falāsifa’s project would require a separate book, but let me
briefly sketch how I think they would have described the common ground
between them. According to Metaphysics 12 God conceived as Nous is the
“principle [archê] on which heaven and nature depend” (12.7, 1072b14) and
the good towards which they are ordered (see 12.10). At the same time God
can also be described as the cause of a good moral-political order, mediated
through a philosopher-ruler. A ruler must have political science whose
object is the “human good” (EN 1.1, 1094b7; cf. 10.9, 1180b23–25). In light
of this knowledge he lays down nomoi which order the polis towards what is
best – like an architect directing the construction of a building (1094a26–
b7; cf. 6.8, 1141b25–26).6 For political science “is dedicated above all to
making the citizens . . . good and doers of fine things” (1.9, 1099b30–32).7
The purpose of wise nomoi is to direct the citizens “to aretê from childhood
on” (10.9, 1179b31–32). The highest virtue is sophia: the perfection of reason
through theoria (1.7, 6.13, 10.7–8). That contemplation is objectively best
follows from physical and metaphysical considerations: reason is both the
feature that sets us apart from other living beings in nature and the feature
that we share with God (1.7, 10.7–8).8 At the same time contemplation
is also subjectively best, since it is accompanied by “pleasures amazing in
5 Both al-Fārābı̄ and Averroes wrote commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics; Maimonides quotes
the Nicomachean Ethics (Guide 2.36, 3.43), as well as al-Fārābı̄’s commentary (Guide 3.18). Note that
al-Fārābı̄’s commentary is lost.
6 The analogy between ruler and architect stems from Plato’s Statesman 259e–260c. Since the human
good depends on social collaboration, it cannot be attained without coordination of the activities in
the polis. Likewise the construction of a building requires coordinating the activities of the workers.
7 Cf. 1.13, 1102a7–11 and the praise of “Cretans and Spartans” at 1102a11–12; cf. 10.9, 1180a25–29. See
also Pol. 7.2, 1324a23–25.
8 Note also that nous and theos are the only two examples of essentially good things in Aristotle’s
discussion of the meaning of “good” (1.6, 1096a25).
purity and stability” (10.7, 1177a25–26).9 Indeed, “happiness” (eudaimonia)
is proportional to contemplation:
But of the other animals none is happy, since there is no respect in which they
share in contemplation. So happiness, too, extends as far as contemplation does,
and to those who have more of contemplation more happiness belongs too. (EN
10.8 1178b28–31)10
If we were on the “Isles of the Blest,” Aristotle argues in the Protrepticus,

we would engage only in contemplation (52.2–15). Aristotle can thus say,
echoing Plato, that instead of thinking “human” and “mortal” thoughts
we should “as far as possible” strive “to become like the immortals” (EN
10.7, 1177b33–34).11
While “everything about practical doings . . . will obviously be petty and
unworthy of the gods” (10.8, 1078b17–19), the same is not true for human
beings. For unlike God we are not pure, but embodied rational agents.
Properly managing our embodied life is the task of phronêsis, practical wis-
dom, which Aristotle distinguishes more clearly than Plato from sophia,
its theoretical counterpart.12 The virtues of character arise when our non-
rational desires are habituated to the prescriptions of phronêsis that express
“right reason” (orthos logos).13 On account of the virtues of character we
reliably seek neither too much nor too little of the goods that belong to
embodied life. Even the finest practical activities such as making war and
governing are only good as means to create the conditions for contempla-
tion: “we busy ourselves in order to have leisure, and go to war in order
9 Like Plato in Republic 9 Aristotle argues that a person prefers the pleasures of the body only if he
“had no taste of refined and civilized pleasure” (10.6, 1176b20; cf. 10.9, 1179b15–16). On intellectual
erôs as a source of motivation, see also Aristotle’s explanation of the motion of the celestial spheres
in Metaphysics 12.7.
10 Does this imply that actions expressing the virtues of character – moderation, courage, generosity,
and so forth – have no genuine value? One way to avoid this conclusion, which seems to contradict
much of what Aristotle says in the Nicomachean Ethics, is to look at ethical actions as an imitation
of contemplation: like the celestial spheres which imitate Nous through eternal circular motion
(cf. Metaph. 12.7), human beings imitate Nous through a well-ordered life in the sublunar world.
Hence ethical actions have genuine value which depends, however, on contemplation. See, for
example, Lear (2004). The falāsifa do not adopt this line of argument. The only “unconditional
good” is the “ultimate perfection,” namely intellectual perfection attained through theoria, whereas
“the rest of what is chosen is chosen only for the sake of its usefulness to attain” intellectual perfection
(al-Fārābı̄, Fus.ūl 28; cf. Maimonides, Guide 3.27).
11 Cf. Tht. 176a–b and Ti. 90b–c. 12 See EN 6 on the “intellectual” virtues.
13 On the divided soul, see 1.13 and 6.1. Aristotle stresses that the soul’s non-rational part can learn
to obey reason – that is, to desire things in accordance with reason’s prescriptions. On the virtues
of character as “intermediate states,” see book 2. In 6.1 Aristotle describes the intermediate state as
that which the orthos logos prescribes and in 6.13 the orthos logos as that which is “in accordance with
phronêsis” (1144b24).
to live at peace” (10.7 1177b5–6). Hence the right amount of instrumental
goods is determined by what furthers contemplation, culminating in the
contemplation of God:
God . . . is that for the sake of which practical wisdom [phronêsis] gives com-
mands. . . . So whatever choice and acquisition of naturally good things – whether
goods of the body, or wealth, or friends, or other goods – will most produce
the contemplation [theoria] of God that is the best, and this is the finest stan-
dard. And if anything, through defect or excess, prevents us from worshiping
and contemplating God [ton theon therapeuein kai theoreı̂n], that is bad. (EE 8.3,
1249b13–20)14
The virtues of character instantiate phronêsis in the different realms of

embodied life: being moderate, for example, means satisfying the appetites
as much as is required for contemplating God. Although the virtues are
not “kinds of phronêsis” as Socrates thought, they involve phronêsis (EN
6.13, 1144b18–31). For to be virtuous means both to know and to desire
what right reason prescribes.15 A key function of the character virtues is to
enable social collaboration. Since we are not self-sufficient, we must work
together to fulfill the many needs that arise from being embodied: our
“well-being is inseparable from managing a household and from political
organization” (6.8, 1142a9–10).16 Hence phronêsis must include knowledge
of the political order to make prescriptions that take our position in that
order into account.17
The prescriptions of reason are also divine prescriptions. For one thing
God is their final cause – that “for the sake of which phronêsis gives com-
mands” according to the Eudemian Ethics. But God can also be described
as their source. For in De anima 3.5 Aristotle explains the acquisition of
knowledge as the transition of the human intellect from potentially know-
ing to actually knowing and the agent causing this transition as the “agent
intellect” (nous poiêtikos). If the nous poiêtikos is God, God would be the
cause of all knowledge, including the knowledge of the human good which
is derived, as we saw, from physical and metaphysical considerations. And
14 On God as the highest object of knowledge, see also Physics 8 and Metaphysics 1.2 and 12.7 and 9.
15 In the practical realm “what issues from reason must be true and the desire must be correct for the
decision to be good” (6.2, 1139a24–25).
16 Cf. Pol. 1.2, 1254a25–40. This is the realm of justice in the broad sense of EN 5 which encompasses
the entire range of virtuous actions prescribed by the laws of a well-ordered state “in relation to
another person” (5.1, 1129b27).
17 This explains why the investigation of the “human good” is the object of political science as Aristotle
argues in 1.2. Also according to the Rhetoric “the enquiry regarding matters of character . . . is rightly
called politics” (1.2.1, 356a26–27).
the human good, which consists in the perfection of reason through theoria,
is, in turn, the aim of the prescriptions of phronêsis.18
If all members of the polis were perfectly rational, God’s rule and self-rule
would coincide: every citizen would have the physical, metaphysical, and
moral-political knowledge to determine what is right and the motivation
to do it thanks to the “pleasures amazing in purity and stability” that make
contemplation into the highest object of desire. Most citizens, however,
are imperfectly rational. Hence the importance of a philosopher-ruler who
translates the prescriptions of reason into laws.19 For one thing, non-
rational desires, not reason, rule us in childhood and youth:
This is why we must have been brought up in a certain way from childhood on,
as Plato says, so as to feel pleasure [chairein] and pain [lypeisthai] about the things
we should; this is what the correct education [orthê paideia] consists in. (EN 2.3,
1104b11–13)20
The nomoi must habituate citizens to be “attracted by the fine and repulsed
by the shameful” as if they were guided by reason (10.9, 1179b31–36). Only
then can they become fully virtuous once reason takes charge – that is,
when they acquire phronêsis and thus no longer need the guidance of
nomoi that embody the phronêsis of the philosopher-ruler.21 The task of
nomoi, however, is not only pedagogical, but also political:
[I]t is not enough that people should be brought up . . . correctly when they are
young. Since they also must pursue these things . . . after growing up, there must
be laws . . . covering the whole of life. For the multitude [hoi polloi] is governed
more by compulsion [anankê] than by argument [logos] and by penalties more
than by what is fine. (EN 10.9, 1180a1–6)
For imperfectly rational citizens, then, nomoi and fear of punishment
replace the philosopher’s phronêsis and motivation to do what phronêsis
18 See again 6.13, 1145a7–11. In 10.7 Aristotle describes nous as the “element that is thought to naturally
rule and guide” (1177a15) which I take to mean that nous rules and guides as final cause. On nous as
the end of the quest for knowledge, see 6.7, 1141b2–3 and APo. 2.19, 110b6–19.
19 Good laws prescribe virtuous actions according to Aristotle; see 5.1, 129b20–26; 10.9, 1180a34–35.
On following the phronêsis of someone else as a second-best option, see the quotation from Hesiod
in 1.4, 1095b10–13.
20 Cf. Republic 401e–402a and Laws 653a–c and 659d–e discussed in chapter 1. In the last passage
Plato describes “education” as the “process of attracting and leading children to accept that which
has been declared the logos orthos by the law” and preventing them “from getting into the habit of
feeling pleasure and pain in contradiction to the law.”
21 “Before he acquires virtue,” Aristotle says, “a person must in a way already possess a character akin
to it” (10.9, 1179b29–30). As we saw above, to be virtuous means both to know and to desire what
right reason prescribes. A person who has been correctly habituated fulfills only the second of these
two conditions.
prescribes. At the same time Aristotle agrees with Plato that rational per-
suasion can replace coercion for “those whose habits have been decently
developed” (1180a6–14). There are thus intermediary stages between the
philosopher’s self-rule and “the inferior character whose desire for pleasure
needs forcible constraint by pain like a yoked animal” (1180a12–13).22
If most citizens are imperfectly rational and if happiness is proportional
to theoria – does this not exclude the majority from attaining happiness?
Note that the passage quoted above implies that happiness and contempla-
tion admit of degrees. When Aristotle says that “worshiping and contem-
plating God” is the end “for the sake of which phronêsis gives commands”
he likely means both the highest form of “worshiping and contemplating
God,” which is reserved to philosophers, and lower forms of “worshiping
and contemplating God,” such as the participation in religious festivals,
which is open to all citizens.23 That promoting public worship is an impor-
tant goal of a well-ordered polis is suggested by a passage in the Nicomachean
Ethics: to say that phronêsis “gives commands” to sophia, rather than “for
the sake of it,” Aristotle argues, is as absurd as saying “that politics rules
over the gods, because it gives commands about everything in the city,”
including public worship (6.13, 1145a6–11). In the Politics, moreover, Aris-
totle approvingly cites Plato’s critique of the Spartan politeia which “has
regard to one part of virtue only – the virtue of the soldier which gives
victory in war” while completely neglecting “the arts of peace” which are
“higher than war” (2.9, 1271b1–7). The “arts of peace,” of course, include
the sciences and philosophy (cf. Metaph. 1.1), but also public worship and
other cultural-religious practices through which non-philosophers can par-
ticipate in theoria. This inclusive concept of theoria which allows all citizens
to attain some degree of intellectual perfection is grounded in Aristotle’s
epistemology. Plato posits an epistemological gap that cannot be bridged
between opinions about the corporeal world based on sense-perception
and knowledge of incorporeal Forms based on intellectual apprehension
(see Ti. 27d–28a). According to Aristotle, by contrast, all cognitions –
from sense-perceptions and their association through the imagination to
the grasp of the first principles of being – are part of a continuum of
knowledge and provide the pleasure of intellectual activity (Metaph. 1.1–2;
cf. Apo. 2.19). Hence “all human beings” not only “desire to know [eidenai]
22 Aristotle, like Plato, contrasts self-rule and enslavement: we are slaves if our life is ruled by non-
rational desires (see 1.5, 1095b20) or, as in the passage just quoted, by laws imposed on us. We are
“free men” (eleutheroi), by contrast, if we follow a rational life-plan (Metaph. 12.10, 1075a18–22).
23 See Prot. B44 where Aristotle juxtaposes traveling to Olympia and to the Dionysia “for the sake of
the spectacle itself” with “the contemplation of the universe.” See also Kraut (2002), 6.3–4.
by nature” (Metaph. 1.1, 980a21), but are also able to satisfy this desire to a
greater or lesser degree.24
The “rationality” (logos) of good nomoi is derived “from a kind of practical
wisdom [phronêsis] and reason [nous]” (EN 10.9, 1180a18–24). I take this to
refer to the efficient and final cause of the nomoi: they embody the lawgiver’s
phronêsis and direct the polis to the perfection of reason.25 The rule of such
nomoi is explicitly equated with the rule of “God and Reason” (ho theos
kai ho nous) in Politics 3.16, where the “kai” is epexegetic, implying that
theos and nous are two names for the same thing.26 A well-ordered political
community, then, is both rationally and divinely ordered and in this sense
can be described as a theocracy.
Relying on Aristotle’s statements about politics in the Nicomachean
Ethics, the falāsifa thought that in the Politics Aristotle had worked out a
politeia that orders the polis towards what is best along the lines of what
Plato does in the Republic and in the Laws. According to Averroes, for
example, political philosophy is divided into a theoretical part, which gives
an account of the virtuous person, and a practical part, which explains how
citizens are made virtuous.27 Whereas the theoretical part is the object of
the Nicomachean Ethics, the practical part is the object of both Aristotle’s
Politics and Plato’s Republic. The Republic, Averroes says, “we intend to
explain, since Aristotle’s book on governance has not yet fallen into our
hands” (Comm. Rep., 21–22/4).
The falāsifa not only adopt, but also naturalize the concept of God as
Reason (aql in Arabic) who orders nature and the religious community
towards what is best. Both Averroes and Maimonides claim that this is
the God inferred by Abraham from the eternal motion of the celestial
spheres – Averroes on the basis of Koran 6:75 and Maimonides on the basis
of Midrashic traditions.28 Al-Fārābı̄ traces the origin of philosophy back
to Mesopotamia where Abraham was born. From there it was transmitted
to “the people of Egypt,” then “to the Greeks where it remained until it
was transmitted to the Syrians and then to the Arabs” (Tah..sı̄l, 181/43).
Tellingly, Spinoza, who first encountered the concept of God as Reason in
24 For a way to integrate ethical activity into this picture, see above, n. 10. 25 See above, n. 18.
26 Cf. EN 10.9, 1180a23–25 where the contrast between human authority and the authority of laws
suggests that the latter stems from their divine nature.
27 Cf. again Aristotle’s statement in Rhetoric 1.2.1, 356a26–27. See also Bodéüs (1982) who argues that
the Nicomachean Ethics is addressed to lawgivers.
28 See Averroes, Comm. Metaph., 1634 and Fas.l, 2; Maimonides, Madda, Laws Concerning Idolatry
1.3 and Guide 3.29, 376/516. For the identification of God and Reason in al-Fārābı̄, see, for example,
Mabādi 1.6 ff.
the writings of Jewish philosophers, refers to it as the God “of some of the
Hebrews” (quidam Hebraeorum)!29
al-fārābı̄ on philosophy and the divine law

From the eighth to the tenth century a large part of Greek philosophy and
science was translated into Arabic.30 Among the competing responses to the
encounter with Greek philosophy, that proposed by al-Fārābı̄ prevailed and
shaped the identity of classical Arabic philosophy.31 In the Book of Letters
al-Fārābı̄ offers an account of the development of human knowledge of
which the last two stages are associated with Plato and Aristotle. While at
“the time of Plato” knowledge reached the degree of certainty that can be
achieved through dialectics (H . urūf 142), in Aristotle’s time:
scientific speculation [al-naz.ar al-ilmı̄] is completed and all its methods are distin-
guished, theoretical philosophy and universal practical philosophy are perfected,
and no object in them remains to be investigated. [Philosophy] becomes an art
that is only learned and taught. (H . urūf 143)
True philosophy, al-Fārābı̄ claims, “was handed down to us by the Greeks
from Plato and Aristotle alone” (Tah..sı̄l, 196/49). This does not mean that
true philosophy flourished only in Greece. Elsewhere al-Fārābı̄ traces the
origin of philosophy back to Mesopotamia as we saw. Since he wrote most
of his works in Baghdad, this suggests that he is merely returning phi-
losophy to where it originally came from.32 Al-Fārābı̄’s claim to inherit
and continue Greek philosophy is made most clearly in On the Appearance
of Philosophy where he describes the transmission of philosophy through
a long chain of intermediaries from Aristotle to himself.33 While Chris-
tian authorities prohibited teaching parts of the philosophical curriculum
because they perceived them as a threat to Christian doctrine, he is the first
to restore philosophy to its full scope after the arrival of Islam.34 Al-Fārābı̄’s
portrait of his role in the transmission of philosophy was adopted by later
29 See E2p7s discussed in more detail in the next chapter.

30 For a good account of the translation movement, see Gutas (1998).
31 See Gutas (1998), 95–104 on the rise of the “ideology of rationalism” in the ninth century.
32 On this motive, see Gutas (1998), chapter 2. There is, however, some tension between the two
accounts: whereas one describes philosophy as the result of the evolution of knowledge in Greek
culture, the other claims that philosophy was transmitted to Greece from Mesopotamia and Egypt.
33 The text is attributed to him by Ibn Abı̄ Us.aybia in Uyūn, 2:134–35.
34 On the anti-Byzantine stance reflected in the assessment of the Christians, see Gutas (1998), chapter
4.2. The issue seems to hinge on the teaching of the Posterior Analytics containing Aristotle’s theory
of the scientific syllogism. For al-Fārābı̄ this is, of course, crucial given his concept of philosophy as
a demonstrative science.
falāsifa who take him to be the foremost philosophical authority after
Aristotle.35
Unlike the Alexandrians, al-Fārābı̄ did not encounter Greek philosophy
as a living tradition. His first task, therefore, is to bring the Greek texts that
had been translated into Arabic back to life by explaining the importance of
philosophy, introducing its methods and subjects, and commenting on its
canonical works. Ensuring the continuity of philosophy is crucial, because,
according to al-Fārābı̄, philosophy is the key to the best life. His second
task is to clarify the relationship between philosophy and the Divine Law.
Al-Fārābı̄ rejects a number of views that had been proposed on this matter.
On one end of the spectrum is a group of mutakallimūn that al-Fārābı̄
describes in the Enumeration of the Sciences: because human reason is “too
weak” (yad.uf) to guide us, they argue, we must rely on the supernatural
revelation received by the prophets (Ih..sā 5, 108/28). On the opposite
side of the spectrum Muslim freethinkers like Abū Bakr al-Rāzı̄ deny the
need for prophetic guidance altogether, since God has bestowed reason
on all human beings.36 The plurality of prophetic religions, moreover,
and their claim to exclusive validity only give rise to religious strife in
Rāzı̄’s view.37 The first Arabic philosopher, al-Kindı̄ (d. c.870), occupies a
middle ground. He modified philosophy to suit Islam in an unacceptable
manner according to al-Fārābı̄, which is why he omits al-Kindı̄ in his
account of the “appearance of philosophy” in Islam.38 Similarly Christian
35 Avicenna, for example, al-Fārābı̄’s most important successor in the Muslim East, relates in his auto-
biography how he studied Aristotle’s Metaphysics many times, but only succeeded in understanding
it when he read it with al-Fārābı̄’s commentary (Sı̄ra, 32–34/33–35). For the Muslim West, see
Maimonides’s praise of al-Fārābı̄ in his letter to Samuel ibn Tibbon: “All that al-Fārābı̄ wrote . . . is
entirely without fault . . . for he excelled in wisdom [haya muflag be-hokhmah]” (Iggerot, 553). For the
appreciation of al-Fārābı̄’s works on logic by Averroes and his students, see Ibn Tumlūs, Madkhal
li-s.ināat al-mant.iq (Introduction to the Art of Logic), 14–15.
36 Note, however, that Rāzı̄ in some texts, notably in his philosophical Apology, appears to subscribe
to intellectual elitism. See Stroumsa (1999a), 112–14. Unlike Stroumsa, I do not think that this is
incompatible with the view that initially all human beings are equally endowed with reason. For in
the Timaeus, a main source of Rāzı̄’s thought, souls can ascend or descend on the scale of perfection
because of physical and cultural conditions beyond their control (see 41d–42d with 86b–87c). In
this sense initial equality and subsequent inequality would be compatible.
37 Rāzı̄’s anti-prophetic works are not extant. The most important source for establishing their content
. ātim al-Rāzı̄ in his Alām al-nubuwwa (The Signs of
is the refutation of Rāzı̄ by the Ismāı̄lı̄ Abū H
Prophecy). For a French translation of the relevant parts of the debate, see Brion (1986). For a good
reconstruction of Rāzı̄’s views, see Stroumsa (1999a), especially chapter 3. We know that al-Fārābı̄
wrote a refutation of one of Rāzı̄’s works, the Kitāb al-ilm al-ilāhı̄ (Book of Divine Science); see Ibn
Abı̄ Us.aybia, Uyūn, 2:608. Unfortunately neither Rāzı̄’s work nor al-Fārābı̄’s response are extant,
but quotations from Rāzı̄ by later authors suggest that the book contained aggressive anti-prophetic
statements. On al-Fārābı̄ and Rāzı̄, see Stroumsa (1999a), 188–92.
38 On al-Kindı̄, see Adamson (2006); on al-Kindı̄ and al-Fārābı̄, see in particular 14–18.
authorities prohibited teaching parts of the philosophical curriculum as
we saw. Thus several questions arise: Should prophetic guidance replace
reason or, conversely, reason prophetic guidance? Must the teachings of
reason at least be modified or partially prohibited to fit into a religious
framework?39
Reviving the project of ancient philosophy requires, first of all, clarifying
what this project is.40 According to al-Fārābı̄’s general outline in the Attain-
ment of Happiness, its central concern is an inquiry into the constituents of
human perfection or “happiness” (saāda, translating Aristotle’s eudaimo-
nia), and into how to attain and disseminate it. In the Philosophy of Plato
and the Philosophy of Aristotle, al-Fārābı̄ explains how this project informs
the writings of Plato and Aristotle. Of course, the question arises whether
Plato and Aristotle pursue the same project in the first place. Although Aris-
totle is superior to Plato, al-Fārābı̄ stresses that the “purpose” (gharad.) of
their philosophy is the same (Tah..sı̄l, 196/50). To corroborate this he writes
a treatise harmonizing their views on issues of apparent disagreement.41
Then al-Fārābı̄ establishes the order of the philosophical curriculum, most
prominently in the Enumeration of the Sciences. A number of introduc-
tory works exhort or prepare for the study of philosophy.42 After all these
preliminary steps, the strictly philosophical work can begin: explaining
Aristotle. Since Aristotle agrees with Plato and at the same time is superior
to him, no explanation of Plato is needed. The Greek philosophers left
an outline not only of philosophy, but also of “the methods [t.uruq] to it
and of the methods to reestablish it when it becomes confused or extinct”
(Tah..sı̄l, 196/50). By “the methods” al-Fārābı̄ certainly means Aristotle’s
logic. Since his goal is to ensure the continuity of philosophy, providing
the “toolkit” for establishing and transmitting it is obviously a central con-
cern to him. He thus commented on all parts of the Organon in the version
inherited from the late ancient Alexandrian tradition – from Porphyry’s
39 Al-Fārābı̄’s twofold task reflects challenges specific to introducing philosophy into the Muslim world.
While historians of Islamic philosophy broadly agree that al-Fārābı̄’s intellectual outlook was shaped
by the late Alexandrian tradition of Neoplatonic commentators on Aristotle, the continuity between
the philosophical curriculum in late ancient Alexandria and early medieval Baghdad accounts only
partly for al-Fārābı̄’s project.
40 I do not claim that the following account corresponds to the chronological order in which al-Fārābı̄
wrote his works, or that it reflects a preconceived plan which he systematically executed. What I
propose is an interpretation of how several parts of al-Fārābı̄’s corpus fit together.
41 See his The Harmonization of the Opinions of the Two Sages, Plato the Divine and Aristotle.
42 See, for example, Exhortation to the Path of Happiness; for a comprehensive study of this genre’s
place in al-Fārābı̄’s work, see Jaffray (2000).
Eisagôgê to the Rhetoric and the Poetics.43 Much of al-Fārābı̄’s authority for
philosophers like Averroes and Maimonides rests, in fact, on his contribu-
tion to logic.44 But he also commented on the philosophical sciences prop-
erly speaking, both theoretical (mathematics, physics, and metaphysics)
and practical (ethics and politics).45
To understand how al-Fārābı̄ conceives the relationship between phi-
losophy and the Divine Law we must look at his political philosophy. He
accepts Plato’s premise that human beings are unequal by nature, divided
into a minority of philosophers and a majority of non-philosophers (see
Tah..sı̄l, 177–78/41) He also is clearly aware of the difference between Socratic
politics and Plato’s later political philosophy to which the inequality thesis
gives rise:
[Plato] investigated how and by which method the citizens of cities and nations
ought to be instructed in this science [the theoretical science of the Timaeus] and
their character formed [tadı̄b] by those ways of life [the virtuous ways of life of the
Laws], whether by the method used by Socrates or the method that was the method
of Thrasymachus. Here he described once again Socrates’s method for realizing
his aim of making his own people understand through scientific investigation the
ignorance [al-jahl] they were in. He explained Thrasymachus’s method and made
it known that Thrasymachus was more able than Socrates to form the character
of the youth and teach the multitude [tadı̄b al-ah.dāth wa-talı̄m al-jumhūr] and
that Socrates only had the ability to conduct a scientific investigation of justice
and the virtues, and a power with respect to love, but did not have the ability
to form the character of the youth and the multitude. And the philosopher, the
king, and the lawgiver ought to be able to use both methods: the Socratic method
with the elect [al-khawās..s], and Thrasymachus’s method with the youth and the
multitude. (Falsafat Aflāt.ūn, 21–22/66–67)
Al-Fārābı̄ does not say which of Plato’s dialogues he is summarizing, and
it is unclear why he calls the method contrasted with the Socratic method
“the method of Thrasymachus.” He may have had information about the
Clitophon and interpreted it in light of what he knew about Plato’s position
in the Republic and in the Laws.46 On the other hand, his account of “the
philosopher, the prince, and the lawgiver,” who uses philosophical meth-
ods to teach philosophers while forming the character of non-philosophers
43 On the inclusion of the Rhetoric and Poetics in the Organon and its philosophical implications, see
Black (1990).
44 For Averroes, see Ibn Tumlūs, Madkhal, 14–15. For Maimonides, see Iggerot, 553.
45 For a convenient bibliography of al-Fārābı̄’s writings, see Vallat (2004). I will discuss below how his
comprehensive independent works fit into his project.
46 Cf. Rosenthal and Walzer in the note on section 30 of the Latin translation of the text, 27–28.
through non-philosophical methods, is clearly based on Plato’s account of
the philosopher-ruler.47 Note also that al-Fārābı̄’s non-philosophers com-
prise the two groups of non-philosophers which led Plato to propose
a pedagogical-political program: not-yet-philosophers (“the youth”) and
non-philosophers by nature (“the multitude”).
From al-Fārābı̄’s Epitome of the “Laws” we know that, at a minimum, he
was familiar with the main traits of Plato’s pedagogical-political program.48
Although he does not claim, like the Alexandrians, that the nomoi of
Magnesia were modeled on the nomoi of Moses, he does claim that Plato
speaks more prophetico: to prevent “science” (ilm) from falling into the
wrong hands, Plato uses parables, stating his true views only intermittently
(Jawāmi, preface, 2).49 As we saw in chapter 1, Plato indeed often uses
parables to convey philosophical doctrines, for example the representation
of the soul as a charioteer with two horses in the Phaedrus, the parables of
the line, the sun, and the cave in the Republic, and the representation
of Nous as a craftsman in the Timaeus and as a ruler in the Laws. We
also saw that in the Timaeus and in the Laws Plato is, in fact, reluctant
to state openly that the ordering cause of the universe and of a virtuous
political community is Nous.50 Later falāsifa, too, portray Plato as a prophet.
Maimonides, for example, claims that Plato’s writings consist of “riddles
[amuqot] and parables [meshalim]” (Iggerot, 553).51 As in the case of the
Alexandrians, this shows how much the falāsifa’s concept of prophecy
depends on Plato. Indeed, following the same logic, al-Fārābı̄ attributes an
esoteric writing practice to Aristotle as well. In contrast to Plato, however,
who uses “parables and riddles,” Aristotle resorts to “obscurity, difficulty,
47 See also the similar distinction between two methods of instruction in al-Fārābı̄’s summary of the
Phaedrus: “the method of rhetoric and another method called dialectic” (16/62).
48 Whether al-Fārābı̄ read the Laws or only a summary by Galen is disputed among scholars. In my
view it is very unlikely that he knew the dialogue itself. See Steven Harvey (2003), the most recent
contributor to the debate.
49 Note that Avicenna seems to describe Plato’s Laws as a work on “prophecy” (nubuwwa) and “Divine
Law” (sharı̄a) in Fı̄ aqsām al-ulūm al-aqliyya, 118. The interpretation of the relevant passage has
recently been disputed by Tamer (2001), chapter 2. I think that the traditional interpretation is
defensible, but I cannot discuss the matter here.
50 These are also the two dialogues of which al-Fārābı̄ explicitly says that they were written more
prophetico; see Tah..sı̄l, 185/45 and Jawāmi, preface.
51 For Maimonides this implies that Plato’s work does not need to be studied since Aristotle restated
the same content more clearly. This does not mean that Maimonides considered parables irrelevant.
Plato’s parables, however, are addressed to a Greek audience, while the relevant parables for Mai-
monides are those of the Law of Moses. Occasionally the parables of Plato and Moses overlap as
Maimonides suggests in Guide 1.17.
and complexity” to conceal his philosophy from non-philosophers (Jam,
84/131).52
Al-Fārābı̄’s general definition of “religion” (milla) alludes to the discus-
sion of divine nomoi at the beginning of the Laws:
Religion consists of opinions and actions, determined and limited by conditions
[muqadarra muqayyada bi-sharāit.], which are prescribed to the community by
their first ruler who strives to attain a particular goal [gharad. mah.dūd] either with
respect to the [members of the community] or by means of them through their
practice of [the prescribed opinions and actions]. (Milla 1)
We saw that for Plato the divinity of nomoi depends on the goal they
aim at. The same holds for al-Fārābı̄ who renders Plato’s “divine nomoi”
as a “virtuous [fād.ila] religion.” A virtuous religion orders the religious
community towards what is best: “the ultimate happiness [al-saāda al-
qus.wā] that is truly happiness” (ibid.). For Plato this means directing the
community to “Reason who rules all things,” which in al-Fārābı̄ becomes
“the face of Allāh, mighty and magnificent” as we saw. The only “good
without qualification” for al-Fārābı̄ is “the ultimate perfection” – that is,
intellectual perfection, culminating in the apprehension of God (Fus.ūl 28).
Unlike God, however, human beings also must satisfy the needs of the body
and to that end collaborate with others (see Mabādi 15.1). Everything they
pursue for this goal is “good only when it is useful for achieving” true
happiness (Fus.ūl 28; cf. 29). Hence the “first condition” for establishing a
well-ordered community is to put philosophers in charge who know what
true happiness is and “every action by which happiness can be attained”
(Mabādi 15.11; cf. Fus.ūl 30). This failing, the community’s order will be
based on “ignorance” of the true good. Instead of perfecting reason, its
members will collaborate for the sake of goods dictated by the needs of
the body: things that are “necessary for a human being’s constitution,
subsistence, and preservation of life” (Fus.ūl 28), including “honor, wealth,
and pleasures” (31).
Like the Alexandrians al-Fārābı̄ identifies the pedagogical-political pro-
gram required to attain true happiness with the historical forms of a virtu-
ous religion and describes these as an “imitation [muh.ākiya] of philosophy”
(Tah..sı̄l, 185/44). To establish a virtuous religious community it is thus not
sufficient for the ruler to be a philosopher. He must also be a legislator
52 Maimonides makes the same distinction in Guide 1, introduction, 4/8, but without explicitly
associating the two esoteric writing styles with Plato and Aristotle.
“able to direct people well on the right path to happiness and to the actions
through which happiness is attained,” and a poet and orator “able to rouse
the imagination [takhyı̄l] through well-chosen words” (Mabādi 15.11). At
the most basic level this means translating the prescriptions of reason into
laws. But the ruler also teaches the philosophers in the community through
“demonstrative methods” and the non-philosophers through “dialectical,
rhetorical, or poetical methods” (H . urūf 142). The latter methods which are
“public” (ibid.) convey “theoretical and practical matters that have been
inferred in philosophy, in such a way as to enable the multitude to under-
stand them by persuasion [that is, rhetoric and dialect] or imaginative
representation [that is, poetry]” (108). As the “tool” (āla) of philosophy
(110), religion fulfills the role of Plato’s pedagogical-political program: it
gives “the multitude . . . all that is needed to attain happiness” (144), mak-
ing philosophical contents accessible to non-philosophers through laws,
stories, exhortations, and practices of worship.
Al-Fārābı̄ thus makes explicit what is implicit in Plato: to order the
community towards what is best, the philosopher-ruler must also have
the skills of the prophet.53 Indeed, when al-Fārābı̄ introduces the con-
cept of religion as an “imitation of philosophy,” the only example he
gives is the use of parables in the Timaeus (see Tah..sı̄l, 185/45). The dif-
ference between the philosopher and the prophet is explained in terms
of Aristotle’s psychology: the prophet not only perfects reason, but also
has a perfect imagination.54 And one of the imagination’s functions is pre-
cisely “to imitate” things (Mabādi 14.2). Through the imagination the
prophet is thus able to translate philosophical contents into the language
of the cave dwellers. The late ancient version of Aristotle’s Organon, which
distinguishes between demonstrative, dialectical, rhetorical, and poetical
modes of argumentation, is integrated into this Platonic framework: to
philosophers the prophet presents things like God, angels, or celestial
spheres as they truly are and then leads them to assent through demon-
strations. To non-philosophers he presents mostly poetic imitations of
these things and then leads them to assent through rhetorical or dialectical
arguments.55
In which sense is God the source of a virtuous religion? A well-
ordered religious community is rationally ordered and hence divinely
ordered because God is Reason. Unlike nature, however, whose order God
establishes directly, a virtuous moral-political order is mediated through
53 Cf. Walzer (1957). 54 On the imagination, see Mabādi 14.

55 See, for example, Tah..sı̄l, 184/44; cf. Black (1990).
philosopher-prophets. Yet God is its final cause since “the face of Allāh,
mighty and magnificent” is what a virtuous religion aims at. And God is
also its source. Recall that in De anima 3.5 Aristotle describes the acquisi-
tion of knowledge as the transition of the human intellect from potentially
knowing to actually knowing and the cause of this transition as the “agent
intellect.” Building on an interpretative tradition of the relevant passages
in the De anima that combines Aristotelian and Neoplatonic concepts,
al-Fārābı̄ does three things: he identifies the ultimate source of knowledge
with God, describes God’s agency as “emanation” (fayd.), and makes the
transition from potentially knowing to actually knowing into the founda-
tion of prophecy. Thus the “intellectual emanation” from “God [Allāh],
mighty and magnificent,” which actualizes the human intellect, is “divine
revelation” (wah.y) for al-Fārābı̄ (Mabādi 15.10). While the recipient of
divine revelation becomes “a wise man [h.akı̄m] and philosopher [faylasūf]”
through the actualization of his intellect, he becomes a “prophet” (nabı̄)
by translating the intellectual contents into laws, stories, exhortations, and
practices of worship through his imagination (ibid.).56
Why does the prophet leave the contemplative life to order human
affairs? Because to become like God means not only to perfect oneself, but
also to perfect others. God’s “generosity” (jūd) is the cause of the existence
and good order of nature (Mabādi 2.2):
So, too, should [the prophet] set down in the cities and nations the . . . arts,
voluntary traits, and dispositions, so that the voluntary good things may be fully
realized . . . in order for the communities of nations and cities to arrive thereby at
happiness in this life and in the afterlife. (Milla 27)
One implication of conceiving religion as an “imitation” of philosophy is

that much of its content is false if understood literally. God, for example, is
not really a king as he is poetically represented in Scripture. The represen-
tation is true, however, if understood as a metaphor for God’s ontological
rank. The truth of a religious text thus consists in its allegorical content.
That al-Fārābı̄ holds this is clear from his claim that philosophers, after
realizing that the “parables” (mathalāt) of their religion represent true doc-
trines, must “rid” non-philosophers of “their assumption that religion is
in conflict with philosophy” by “making them understand that what their
56 On the conceptual and historical links that I briefly sketched, see Walzer’s commentary on chapters
13–15 in his edition of the Mabādi. I have deliberately omitted the separate intellects which mediate
the intellectual emanation from God to the human intellect and which the falāsifa identify with
angels. For my purpose it is not necessary to discuss the falāsifa’s understanding of Aristotelian
cosmology.
57
religion contains are parables” (H . urūf 149). If true religion coincides with
true philosophy on the allegorical level, then the difference between them –
which seemed to be implied in the notion of “imitation” – disappears.
Al-Fārābı̄ can now address the concerns about reason and prophetic
guidance of both the mutakallimūn and Abū Bakr al-Rāzı̄. Although reason
is not too weak to guide us, this does not mean that the literal content
of the prophetic teachings is redundant since God did not bestow reason
equally on all human beings. As a consequence, reason on its own is not
sufficient to lead humankind to perfection and happiness. And al-Fārābı̄
can respond to al-Kindı̄ and Christian censors that there is no need to
modify philosophy or prohibit parts of the philosophical curriculum, since
a virtuous religion, correctly understood, is in complete agreement with
philosophy.
Two further aspects of al-Fārābı̄’s concept of non-philosophers are
important. For one thing, al-Fārābı̄ subdivides non-philosophers into a
majority which is guided by dialectical, rhetorical, and poetic arguments
and a minority which grasps things “according to their true nature,” but is
led to assent to them through trust in the authority of philosophers rather
than through demonstrations (Mabādi 17.2; cf. Tah..sı̄l, 179–81/42). This
is also important to understand the structure and purpose of al-Fārābı̄’s
comprehensive independent treatises – The Principles of the Opinions of
the Citizens of the Virtuous City and The Political Regime – which contain
a systematic account of his philosophical doctrines, but without formal
demonstrations: from God as the first cause, the order of the universe, and
the body and soul of human beings to the political community, the role
of prophecy, and the purpose of religion. These treatises thus provide an
outline of the philosophy that coincides with religion’s allegorical content
and that religion’s literal content imitates. They were presumably addressed
to an audience that al-Fārābı̄ expected to trust the authority of a philoso-
pher like himself – that is, not an audience of fully trained philosophers –
but an audience sufficiently educated to understand the basic concepts
of philosophy. As Richard Walzer has argued, this audience was likely the
sophisticated economic and political ruling class of the Abbasid caliphate.58
Persuading this class that philosophy coincides with the true content of
57 The context of this claim is al-Fārābı̄’s consideration of what happens when a community adopts
both a virtuous religion and the philosophy which that religion imitates from another community.
In this case neither the philosophers nor the non-philosophers know that their newly acquired
religion is an imitation of their newly acquired philosophy and as a consequence will perceive them
as being in conflict.
58 Mabādi, Translator’s Introduction, 5.
religion would, of course, significantly bolster the legitimacy of philosophy
in the Muslim world.
The second point is that the distinction between philosophers and non-
philosophers is not static for al-Fārābı̄. Since nobody is born a philosopher,
potential philosophers, like non-philosophers, will at first be educated
through the dialectical, rhetorical, and poetical contents of religion. Unlike
non-philosophers, however, not-yet-philosophers will reject the parables
imitating philosophy as false when they advance in their studies and grasp
things according to their true nature. These are the “seekers of the right
path” (al-mustarshidūn):
It is not impossible that among those who know these things through imitating
parables, there is someone who puts his finger on the grounds for objection to
those parables and holds that they are inadequate and false. There are different
kinds of these people: first those who seek the right path. When one of them
rejects anything as false, he will be elevated [rufia] towards a better parable which
is nearer to the truth and is not open to that objection; and if he is satisfied with
it, he will be left where he is. When that better parable is also rejected by him
as false, he will be elevated to another rank. . . . Whenever a parable of a given
standard is rejected by him as false, he will be elevated to a higher rank, but when
he rejects all the parables as false and has the strength to understand the truth, he
will be made to know the truth and will be placed into the class of those who take
the philosophers as their authorities. If he is not yet satisfied with that and desires
philosophical wisdom [tashawwaqa ilā al-h.ikma] and has the strength for it, he
will be made to know it. (Mabādi 17.4)
Hence the leader of the virtuous religious community must not only teach
philosophers through demonstrations and make philosophy accessible to
non-philosophers through dialectical, rhetorical, and poetical arguments.
He must also gradually “elevate” not-yet-philosophers advancing on the
“right path” from the imitation of philosophy to the allegorical content of
religion in order to prevent them from denouncing their childhood faith
and thus undermining the community’s moral-political order. For the
“seekers of the right path” fail to realize that their religion is an imitation
of philosophy and hence reject it as false on account of its literal sense.
Once they recognize it as an imitation and its allegorical content as true,
the reason for rejecting their religion is removed.
Al-Fārābı̄ uses traditional religious vocabulary to signal how religious
doctrines can be philosophically reinterpreted. Thus “divine revelation,”
for example, can be reinterpreted in terms of the human intellect’s transition
from potentiality to actuality as we saw. Note, however, that al-Fārābı̄ never
explicitly identifies Islam with the philosophical religion resulting from this
reinterpretation. Like Numenius, moreover, he stresses the possibility of
multiple virtuous religions which share a true core embedded in different
cultural materials. In the Epitome of the “Laws” al-Fārābı̄ traces this plural-
ism back to Plato: Plato mentions the nomoi of both Crete and Sparta “in
order to explain that there are many nomoi [nawāmı̄s] and that their mul-
tiplicity does not invalidate them [kathrathuhā lā tubt.iluhā]” (1.2). As we
saw in chapter 1, this is indeed a plausible interpretation of Plato’s position.
This pluralism is also reflected in al-Fārābı̄’s definition of religion that we
saw above. For “the opinions and actions” constituting a religion are “deter-
mined and limited” by the natural and cultural “conditions” under which
the religion was established. Hence a virtuous religion allows for multiple
instantiations each of which is valid in its particular context. Their true
core is:
reproduced by imitation for each nation and for the people of each city through
those parables which are best known to them. But what is best known often varies
among nations, either most of it or part of it. Hence these things are expressed
for each nation in parables other than those used for another nation. Therefore
it is possible that virtuous nations and virtuous cities exist whose religions [milal]
differ, although they all have as their goal one and the same happiness. (Mabādi
17.2).
Like Plato and Numenius, then, al-Fārābı̄ combines contextual pluralism
concerning the laws, stories, exhortations, and practices of worship required
for attaining the goal with universalism concerning the goal itself. This
allows him to give an answer to Rāzı̄’s charge that multiple prophetic
religions give rise to religious strife. On al-Fārābı̄’s view their claim to truth
clearly must not entail a claim to exclusivity. Al-Fārābı̄ thus provides a
model for philosophically reinterpreting the religious traditions existing
side by side in the Islamic world.
averroes and maimonides – disciples of al-fārābı̄?

In a sense Averroes and Maimonides do just that: they apply al-Fārābı̄’s
model to the interpretation of Islam and Judaism as philosophical religions.
Lawrence Berman called Maimonides “the disciple” of al-Fārābı̄ because,
according to Berman, he took al-Fārābı̄’s general theory of the relationship
between philosophy and religion and applied it to Judaism.59 The same
can be said about Averroes’s interpretation of Islam. This claim, however,
59 Berman (1974). For the high esteem in which Averroes and Maimonides held al-Fārābı̄, see above,
n. 35.
Averroes and Maimonides – disciples of al-Fārābı̄? 165
requires qualification. Unlike al-Fārābı̄, Averroes and Maimonides could
no longer simply equate falsafa with the allegorical content of their reli-
gion. For after al-Fārābı̄ the falāsifa found an astute critic in al-Ghazālı̄
who argued not only that core doctrines of falsafa were incompatible with
true Islam, but also made a strong case for the failure of the falāsifa to
demonstrate these doctrines. Al-Ghazālı̄’s attack focused on three main
issues: first, the God of the falāsifa is not an agent endowed with will who
creates the world and miraculously intervenes in it. He is a first cause,
compelled by his nature to eternally emanate the world. Second, the God
of the falāsifa does not know particulars and hence cannot interact with
individual human beings, for example exercise providence or communi-
cate with prophets. Third, the falāsifa have only a concept of intellectual
immortality, but deny the resurrection of the body.60 These criticisms were
reiterated in Jewish circles, most prominently by the poet and intellectual
Judah Halevi.61 Averroes and Maimonides are keenly aware of al-Ghazālı̄’s
challenge to al-Fārābı̄’s proposal for conceiving the relationship between
philosophy and religion. Whereas Averroes reiterates the compatibility of
falsafa and Islam in the Decisive Treatise and attempts to refute al-Ghazālı̄’s
arguments in the Incoherence of the Incoherence, scholars are divided in
their assessment of Maimonides.62 Some think that he took up al-Ghazālı̄’s
project and attempted to defend core Jewish beliefs against the philoso-
phers, for example the creation of the world and the concept of God as
a voluntary agent.63 Others think that Maimonides, like the falāsifa in
general, equates religion and philosophy, but conceals some philosophical
doctrines out of concern for non-philosophers. I agree on the whole with
the second interpretation. In my view Maimonides, like Averroes, took
al-Ghazālı̄’s criticisms seriously, but thought it possible to respond to them
philosophically. Like Clement, Maimonides expressly says that his chief
philosophical-theological work, the Guide of the Perplexed, is written in an
esoteric manner. My interpretation of Maimonides assumes that he belongs
to the falāsifa and that the elaborate defense of doctrines like the creation
of the world and the concept of God as a voluntary agent is part of the
Guide’s exoteric argument.
60 See the extended discussion in the Incoherence of the Philosophers and the summary in the Deliverance
from Error, 84–107/29–43.
61 See Kuzari 1.1 and 1.4. On the controversy about the resurrection of the dead in Maimonides’s
lifetime, see Stroumsa (1999b). The precise nature of al-Ghazālı̄’s and Judah Halevi’s relation to
falsafa is a matter of considerable scholarly dispute. Here I am only interested in how they were
perceived by the falāsifa.
62 On the main divisions in the interpretation of Maimonides, see Ravitzky (1990).
63 See, for example, Guide 2.25.
A comparison between Averroes and Maimonides appears promising for
several reasons: both were born in Córdoba and received their philosophi-
cal training in the context of the Andalusian school of Arabic philosophy.
Both were not only philosophers, but also prominent doctors and experts
in religious law. They dealt with the same philosophical problems which
included, besides al-Ghazālı̄’s criticisms of falsafa, the incompatibility of
Ptolemaic astronomy and Aristotelian celestial physics and the questions
arising from the skeptical epistemology that al-Fārābı̄ is reported to have
set forth in his lost commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics.64 Finally,
Maimonides read Averroes’s commentaries on Aristotle and recommended
them to his students.65 If, then, Averroes and Maimonides were indeed dis-
ciples of al-Fārābı̄, and took up his legacy under comparable circumstances,
we should expect a comparison between them to yield many similarities. A
look at their writings, however, suggests that the opposite is the case. The
great majority of Averroes’s works are commentaries on Aristotle. They
come in different formats and serve different purposes, but all of them
reflect what clearly is Averroes’s central concern: understanding Aristotle.
Averroes also wrote medical treatises and treatises on Islamic Law. They
are, however, marginal in comparison to his work on Aristotle. As for his
three works on the relationship between philosophy and Islam, he states
expressly that he would not have written them if al-Ghazālı̄ had not chal-
lenged the legitimacy of falsafa.66 The impressive series of commentaries
on Aristotle is therefore at the heart of Averroes’s project.
Maimonides, by contrast, did not compose a single work that strictly
speaking can be described as philosophical. The authenticity of the one
that comes closest is disputed: his Treatise on the Art of Logic that he is
said to have written in his youth.67 But even if Maimonides did, in fact,
compose it, it falls into the genre of “introductions to philosophy” that
goes back to Porphyry’s Eisagôgê. It leads to the threshold of philosophy, as
it were, but not to philosophy properly speaking. Maimonides is, on the
other hand, a prominent commentator too. His commentaries, however,
do not explain Aristotle, but the Law of Moses. His first important work is
the Sirāj (Light), a commentary on the Mishnah. His last important work is
64 See Sabra (1984); Pines (1978); Pines (1979).
65 In a letter to Joseph ben Judah, Maimonides writes that he has received Averroes’s commentaries on
Aristotle except for the commentary on De sensu et sensibili, and that he has “read enough to perceive
that [Averroes] has hit the truth with great precision.” In the letter to Ibn Tibbon, quoted above, he
recommends Averroes’s commentaries on Aristotle next to those of Alexander of Aphrodisias and
Themistius (Iggerot, 553). There is, however, no conclusive evidence that Maimonides’s works were
influenced by Averroes. See the section on “Averroes” in Pines (1963), cviii–cxxiii.
66 See Fas.l, 23 and Kashf, 184–85/70–71. 67 See Davidson (2005), 313–22.
the Guide of the Perplexed, which is presented as a book of biblical interpre-
tation. According to the introduction, Maimonides’s goal is to explain “the
meanings of certain terms,” as well as “very obscure parables occurring in
the books of the prophets” in order to show perplexed Jewish intellectuals
that no real conflict exists between the teachings of the prophets and the
teachings of the philosophers (Guide 1, introduction, 2/5–6).68 In addition
to explaining the Law of Moses as a commentator, Maimonides also puts
order into it as a legal scholar, most importantly in the Mishneh Torah,
his fourteen-volume code of Jewish law. But although Maimonides’s focus
lies on explaining and systematizing the Law of Moses, this does not mean
that he is not also concerned with Aristotle. In fact, Maimonides’s most
orthodox exposé of Aristotelianism occurs in the opening four chapters
of the Book of Knowledge, the first book of the Mishneh Torah, in which
the Laws Concerning the Foundations of the Torah are stated. As the
“Foundations of the Torah,” it turns out, Maimonides legislates a set of
beliefs that amount to a summary of Aristotle’s metaphysics and physics:
from the existence of God, inferred from the eternal motion of the celestial
spheres, all the way down to the four elements of the sublunar world. But
to find Aristotle here of all places hardly mitigates the sense that the project
of the commentator on Aristotle and that of the commentator on Moses
markedly differ. We will see, however, that the difference between them
is mostly one of focus. Although Maimonides’s concept of a philosophical
religion has a number of features that set it apart from the standard ver-
sion of the falāsifa, reading Averroes and Maimonides as two proponents
of a philosophical religion who apply al-Fārābı̄’s framework to Islam and
Judaism is a good way to make sense of them.
islam as a philosophical religion

It is not difficult to see that Averroes’s commentaries on Aristotle take up
al-Fārābı̄’s project of ensuring the continuity of philosophy. Averroes shares
al-Fārābı̄’s high opinion of Aristotle. In his Long Commentary on the “De
anima” he writes that Aristotle “was a model in nature and the instantiation
that nature found for showing the highest human perfection” (433). And
like al-Fārābı̄, Averroes holds that philosophy is the key to the best life.
At the same time, Aristotle’s work and Averroes’s commentaries are an
68 Compare also the programmatic statement in Guide 2.2. The Guide is, of course, a complex book
and gave rise to much debate about its nature and purpose. But my goal in this chapter is to explain
why it is presented as a work of exegesis.
expression of the highest form of worship. In Averroes’s case, moreover,
they are also the fulfillment of his duty as a Muslim. To understand why we
must examine how Averroes conceives the relationship between philosophy
and Islam.
Averroes adopts the Platonic interpretation of religion that we saw in
al-Fārābı̄. How Plato and al-Fārābı̄ blend is particularly clear in the Com-
mentary on the “Republic” where Averroes often quotes long passages from
al-Fārābı̄. He explains Plato’s concept of musical paideia, for example, in
terms of al-Fārābı̄’s concept of a pedagogical-political program based on the
logical modes of the Organon: musical paideia is put into practice through
the dialectical, rhetorical, and poetical methods used for the guidance of
non-philosophers. Averroes then quotes a passage from the Attainment
of Happiness in which al-Fārābı̄ explains how the doctrines of theoretical
philosophy should be poetically imitated – for example God who is the
first principle of being through the king who is the first principle of the
political community (Comm. Rep., 29–30/17–19). For the application of
this conceptual framework to the interpretation of Islam we must turn
to Averroes’s philosophical-theological treatises, of which the most impor-
tant is the Decisive Treatise and Determination of the Relationship between
the Divine Law and Philosophy. According to Averroes, Islam fulfills the
criterion of a virtuous religion proposed by Plato and al-Fārābı̄: it orders
the community towards what is best, namely “happiness” culminating in
“knowledge of God, mighty and magnificent, and his creation” (Fas.l, 8).
This goal cannot be attained without “philosophy” (falsafa) which Averroes
defines as “the rational inquiry [al-naz.ar] into the existing things and their
contemplation [itibāruhā] insofar as they are proof [dalāla] of the Maker
[al-s.āni]” (1). Philosophy, in turn, requires the study of logic whose rela-
tion to philosophy is like the relation “of tools [ālāt] to work” (3). Hence
philosophy, far from being prohibited, is an Islamic duty. This is what the
Koran teaches – for instance, through the example of Abraham: “And in
this way we made Abraham see the kingdoms of the heavens and the earth,
that he might be one of those who have certainty” (6:75, quoted in Fas.l, 2).
Averroes’s commentaries on Aristotle are proof that he followed Abraham’s
model and did what is necessary to become a perfect Muslim.
Islam and philosophy fully agree according to Averroes:
Since this Law [sharı̄a] is true and calls to the reflection leading to cognition of the
truth, we, the Muslim community, know firmly that demonstrative investigation
cannot lead to something differing from what is set down in the Law. For the truth
does not contradict the truth [al-h.aqq lā yud.ādd al-h.aqq]; rather, it agrees with it
and bears witness to it. (Fas.l, 8–9)
Since Averroes, like al-Fārābı̄, equates divine revelation with philosophy,
he can claim that “wisdom [h.ikma] has never ceased among the people of
divine revelation [ahl al-wah.y], and that it is, therefore, the truest of all say-
ings that every prophet is wise [h.akı̄m]” (Tahāfut 2.4, 583/361).69 Averroes
knows, of course, that the literal sense of the sharı̄a is often at odds with
philosophy. The reason for this is that there is an important “difference in
human nature” (ikhtilāf fit.rat al-nās), namely that between philosophers
and non-philosophers (Fas.l, 10), and that the Divine Law is not addressed
to philosophers only, but to all Muslims. To reach all Muslims, the prophet
calls on philosophers to pursue knowledge on the basis of demonstrations.
In addition, he translates the prescriptions of reason into laws and teaches
non-philosophers by means of rhetorical, dialectical, and poetical argu-
ments. This is the literal content of the sharı̄a whose main purpose is
“the instruction [talı̄m] of the multitude” (Tahāfut 2.4, 582/360). As a
consequence, contradictions arise between philosophy and the literal sense
of the Divine Law. They can be resolved through “interpretation” (tawı̄l)
which discloses the Divine Law’s “allegorical sense” (bāt.in).70 In contrast to
al-Fārābı̄, however, Averroes expressly confines allegorical interpretation to
philosophers. Nothing in Averroes corresponds to the educated audience to
whom al-Fārābı̄ says philosophy can be disclosed in a non-demonstrative
manner. For Averroes only philosophers have access to the truth through
demonstrations and only philosophers have access to the allegorical content
of the Divine Law.
This strict exclusion of non-philosophers from access to religion’s true
content is typical for Arabic philosophers in Muslim Spain. In H . ayy
ibn Yaqz.ān, for example, a philosophical allegory written by Ibn Tufayl
(d. 1185), the protagonist fails to elevate non-philosophers from their reli-
gious “parables” (amthila) to the “truths” (h.aqāiq) which the parables
represent (144/157). At first H . ayy is surprised that the prophet refrained
from “disclosing” (mukāshafa) the truth to all members of the religious
community since a literal understanding of the parables gives rise to false
beliefs, including “the great error of attributing corporeality [tajsı̄m]” to
69 Note that Averroes suggests that divine revelation contains more than what can be deduced by
reason. All religions, Averroes argues, contain contingent features that do not follow from universal
principles, but from the particular conditions under which they were established. Averroes mentions
in particular “the principles of action” which “must be taken on authority [taqlı̄d]” – that is, the
realm of practical wisdom whose truths, unlike the truths of theoretical wisdom, are only valid within
a particular context. The same holds, of course, for religion’s dialectical, rhetorical, and poetical
teachings. Averroes’s intention seems to be that prophets appeal to divine revelation to provide the
contingent features of religion, which are not deduced by reason from universal principles, with the
required authority in the eyes of non-philosophers. See Tahāfut 2.4, 584/361.
70 For this argument, see in particular Fas.l, 8, 19, 24–25; cf. Kashf, 132–35/16–19.
God (146/158). But when he attempts to remove the false beliefs to which
the community is habituated and “to lay bare the truth [ı̄d.āh. al-h.aqq]
before them” (147/158) they begin “to feel ill at ease in his presence [and] to
feel in their souls an abhorrence [tashmaizzu nufūsuhum] for what he told
them” (150/159). H . ayy’s conclusion is the same as Plato’s in his critique of
the Socratic elenchos – that trying “to elevate” (rufiat) non-philosophers:
to the height of true vision [istibs.ār] will upset their present order without enabling
them to reach the level of the happy ones. They will waver and suffer a relapse,
ending in evil. (H. ayy ibn Yaqz.ān, 154/161)
For Averroes, too, pointing out in public that the literal sense of the Divine
Law is false and disclosing its allegorical content would undermine the
intention of the prophet. To explain this he draws an analogy between the
lawgiver and a doctor:
Someone intends [to go] to a skilled doctor who aims to preserve the health of all
people and to remove sickness from them by setting down for them prescriptions
to which there is common assent [mushtarakat al-tas.dı̄q] about the obligation of
practicing the things that preserve their health and remove their sickness. . . . He is
not able to make them all become doctors, because the doctor is the one who knows
by demonstrative methods [al-t.uruq al-burhāniyya] the things that preserve health
and remove sickness. Then [the allegorical interpreter] goes out to the people
and says to them: “These methods that this doctor has set down for you . . . have
interpretations.” Yet they do not understand [these interpretations] and thus come
to no assent as to what to do because of them. (Fas.l, 27–28)71
To the “health” in the parable corresponds the perfection to which the
prophet intends to lead all members of the community. The doctor’s
“prescriptions” represent the Divine Law. Like Ibn Tufayl, Averroes argues
that removing the traditional beliefs of non-philosophers risks pushing
them into nihilism because they are unable to replace them with true ones.
They will thus no longer follow the guidance of the lawgiver on account of
either the literal or the allegorical sense of the Divine Law. They lose, for
example, their belief in God as a king whom they ought to revere because
of his nobility, yet at the same time are unable to understand how God as
the first cause relates to a virtuous life. Hence they lose both their belief
in God and their belief in the goodness of living virtuously. Time and
again Averroes criticizes Muslim theologians who “strayed and led astray”
71 Note that Averroes not only criticizes a person who discloses the Law’s allegorical content, but (in
the sentence omitted in the quotation) also a person who rejects the Law as false altogether. This
may well be an implicit reference to freethinkers like Rāzı̄ who denied that the Divine Law is true.
See also Tahāfut 2.2, 582–83/360.
for “revealing their allegorical interpretation to the multitude” (s.arrah.ū bi-
tawı̄lihim li-l-jumhūr) thus disregarding the “difference in human nature”
(29–32).72 Among the beliefs that ought not to be called into question
in public, Averroes explicitly includes the “belief in [God’s] corporeality
[jismiyya]” (20).73 According to Averroes:
the interpretation of the Divine Law [al-shar] and the desire to assimilate it to
philosophy . . . is an error. The Divine Law ought to be read according to its literal
sense [z.āhir], and the agreement [al-jam] between the Divine Law and philosophy
should not be divulged to the multitude. . . . One must observe the limit which
the Divine Law has set with respect to the instruction appropriate for each class
of people and not mix up the two kinds of instruction, destroying thereby the
wisdom of the lawgiver and prophet. (Kashf, 183/69 and 191/77)
Averroes’s commentaries on Aristotle, however, seem to subvert the strict

separation of philosophy and religion that he advocates in his philosophical-
theological treatises. To the extent that the commentaries contain true
philosophical doctrines, they coincide with the allegorical content of the
Divine Law. Writing these doctrines down in books that can be read
by non-philosophers thus appears to transgress the strict prohibition of
making philosophy and the Divine Law’s allegorical content public. It also
appears to undermine the esoteric writing practice that al-Fārābı̄ attributes
to Aristotle. After all, the purpose of the commentaries is to clarify the –
according to al-Fārābı̄ deliberate –“obscurity, difficulty, and complexity”
of Aristotle’s works. Averroes is clearly aware of this objection. His reply
is that books which “use demonstrations are accessible only to those who
understand demonstrations” (Fas.l, 21). In other words, Averroes takes his
commentaries on Aristotle to be inaccessible to non-philosophers because
of their logical structure. Averroes thus adds a new form of esoteric writing
to the two kinds mentioned by al-Fārābı̄.
As we saw, Averroes explains the narrative content of Islam in terms of al-
Fārābı̄’s adaptation of the Organon: the prophets use dialectical, rhetorical,
and poetical arguments that imitate philosophy. How does he explain the
legal content of Islam, namely the sharı̄a in the strict sense? For Plato
and Aristotle good laws which embody the ruler’s practical wisdom play
a crucial role in habituating the citizens to virtue – to being “attracted by
the fine and repulsed by the shameful” as if they were guided by reason
72 According to Kashf, 132–33/16–17, one of the main achievements of the Fas.l al-maqāl is to have shown
that tawı̄l is strictly reserved for philosophers. Averroes reiterates his critique of the mutakallimūn
in Kashf, 179–85/65–71.
73 Cf. the long discussion in Kashf, 168–91/54–77.
(EN 10.9 1179b31). Philo claimed that the nomoi of Moses do just that:
they direct the members of the Jewish community to the entire “chorus of
virtues” established by the philosopher. According to Averroes, the same
is true for the Islamic law. At the end of the Bidāyat al-mujtahid, his
compendium of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), he claims:
It is necessary . . . to know that the laws concerning actions [al-sunan al-mashrūa
al-amaliyya] aim at the virtues of the soul [al-fad.āil al-nafsāniyya]. (Bidāya, 57.6,
2:434/2:572)74
Like Philo, Averroes goes on to connect categories of Islamic law with

moral virtues, namely moderation (iffa), justice (adl), courage (shujāa),
and generosity (sakhā). The laws regulating food, drink, and marital affairs,
for example, aim at habituating Muslims to moderation, the laws regulating
ownership (amwāl) aim at “the attainment of the virtue which is called
generosity and the avoidance of the vice [radhı̄la] which is called miserliness
[bukhl],” and so forth (ibid.). Islamic Law not only orders the life of the
individual, but also of:
society [al-ijtimā] which is a condition for the life of man and for the preservation
[h.ifz.] of his ethical and intellectual virtues [fad.āiluhu al-amaliyya wa-l-ilmiyya].
(Bidāya, 57.6, 2:435/2:572)
One aim of the laws is to instill “love and hate” (al-mah.abba wa-l-baghd.ā)
for what reason prescribes and prohibits – as Averroes interprets the Islamic
principle of “commanding what is right and prohibiting what is wrong” (see
Koran 3:110). The other aim is to promote “social collaboration” (taāwun).
The laws regulating worship (ibādāt), however, have a different purpose:
they are “conditions” (shurūt.) for the strengthening of the moral virtues
(ibid.). Averroes elaborates on this point in his general discussion of religion
in the Incoherence of the Incoherence:
[T]he practical virtues can only become strong through the knowledge and exalta-
tion of God by the forms of worship prescribed by the laws to [the members of the
community] in each religion [fı̄ milla milla], like sacrifices, prayers, supplications,
and similar utterances by which praise is rendered to God, exalted be he, the
angels, and the prophets. (Tahāfut 2.4, 581/359)
Averroes may have had something like the lower forms of “worshiping
and contemplating God” in mind through which non-philosophers can
participate in the perfection and pleasure of theoretical wisdom according
74 On the literary genre, method, and content of the Bidāya, see Brunschvig (1962).
to Aristotle. As we will see below, the desire to engage in these activities
provides non-philosophers with the motivation to act virtuously, in the
same way as the desire for contemplation in the strict sense provides
philosophers with the motivation to do what reason prescribes. It is clear,
at any rate, that Averroes is recasting the purpose of Islamic law in terms of
the Platonic-Aristotelian pedagogical-political program – as if Muhammad
had been a philosopher-ruler whose aim was to habituate Muslims to the
moral virtues and direct them to intellectual perfection culminating in
“knowledge of God, mighty and magnificent, and his creation.”
Averroes’s general discussion of religion in the Incoherence of the Inco-
herence, from which I just quoted the passage on practices of worship,
shows that he, too, allows for multiple virtuous religions. Like al-Fārābı̄,
he takes the laws, stories, exhortations, and practices of worship that make
up virtuous religions to be contingent, yet aiming at the same goal. As
we saw in chapter 2, this pluralism is compatible with progress. Christian
philosophers argue that although the Law of Moses and the Gospel have
the same goal, Christians are no longer bound by the Jewish law whose
purpose, in Eusebius’s words, was healing “the terrible disease of Egypt.”
The greater the constraints under which a religious leader is operating, the
less excellent is the religion which he establishes. Future religious leaders
can build on the work of their predecessors. Thus Christ builds on the
work of Moses according to Christians, and Muhammad builds on the
work of Christ according to Muslims. Since Averroes, unlike al-Fārābı̄, is
writing expressly from the standpoint of Islam, he endorses the traditional
Muslim view. A “wise man” (h.akı̄m) must:
choose the best religion of his time, even if they all are true for him, and believe
that the better one will be abrogated [yunsakh] through one that is even better. For
this reason the wise men who were teaching the people in Alexandria converted
to Islam when the religion of Islam reached them, and the wise men who were
in the Roman Empire converted to Christianity when the religion of Jesus, peace
be upon him, reached them. And nobody doubts that among the Israelites were
many wise men, as is clear from the books . . . attributed to Solomon. (Tahāfut
2.4, 583/360–61)
A little further Averroes claims that “in our religion” practices like prayer
and beliefs like the doctrine of the hereafter fulfill the purpose of a virtuous
religion “more perfectly” (atamm) than comparable practices and beliefs in
other religions (584/361).
Averroes is also aware of the challenge posed by members of the com-
munity who, in al-Fārābı̄’s words, are “seekers of the right path” – that is,
not-yet-philosophers who turn into philosophers and risk rejecting their
childhood faith:
A necessary part of the virtue [of the wise man] is that he should not deride [the
religious beliefs and practices] in which he was brought up and that he should
interpret them in the best way. (Tahāfut 2.4, 583/360)
If philosophers were to subvert the religious order they would act against
God and the prophets whose aim is to make all members of the community
as perfect as possible. For “religions . . . lead towards wisdom in a way shared
by all human beings,” whereas “philosophy only leads the intellectuals
among the people to the grasp of happiness” (582/360). At the same time
philosophers also have a selfish motive to preserve the religious order on
which social collaboration depends: “the existence of the wise class is only
perfected and its happiness attained through participation [bi-mushāraka]
with the class of the multitude” (ibid.).
Averroes does not reinterpret the historical forms of Islam on as large
a scale as Plato reinterprets Greek cultural forms and the Alexandrians
reinterpret the historical forms of Judaism and Christianity. The main
focus of his work lies in explaining Aristotle, as we saw. He is, however,
clearly aware of the importance of this project. At the end of his Exposition
of the Methods of Proof Concerning the Foundations of Religion which, like
the Decisive Treatise, deals with the relationship between philosophy and
Islam, he expresses his desire to ensure the correct interpretation of Islam’s
narrative content:
And you know . . . about my desire to attain this goal with respect to all the
utterances of the Divine Law: that we discuss what must and what must not be
interpreted, and if it is to be interpreted, who may interpret it, with respect to
every problem [mushkil] in the Koran and the H . adı̄th. (Kashf 249/131).
Had Averroes carried out this project, it would surely have been guided
by his interpretation of Islam as a philosophical religion. As for Islam’s
legal content, we saw that he tries to connect the Islamic law to the moral
virtues established by Plato and Aristotle. To some extent the reinterpre-
tation of the legal framework in light of philosophical commitments also
seems to have shaped the body of the Bidāya. One of Plato’s most provoca-
tive proposals in the Republic is that in the best state gender will not
affect access to social positions and that men and women will receive the
same education (451b–457c). Qualified women, for example, can become
philosopher-rulers as much as qualified men. Averroes not only endorses
Plato’s position, claiming that “the nature of women and men” is “of one
kind” (ehad be-min), but also expresses strong indignation about the treat-
ment of women in Muslim Spain who “often resemble plants” because they
“are not prepared for any of the human virtues” (Comm. Rep., 53–54/57–
59).75 Averroes’s legal decisions concerning women in the Bidâya, in turn,
attempt to direct the Islamic law towards his philosophical position.76
judaism as a philosophical religion

Although Maimonides takes up the project of reinterpretation on a much
larger scale than Averroes, this should not obscure how much they have in
common. For Maimonides, too, a Divine Law is defined by its goal. Like
al-Fārābı̄, he distinguishes between merely human laws and a Divine Law.
Human laws are established by a skilled politician who lacks insight into
true happiness, but is able to motivate the members of the community to
collaborate for the sake of “something believed to be happiness” (Guide
2.40, 271/383) – that is, goods dictated by the needs of the body. A Divine
Law, by contrast, aims at wisdom, the virtue of reason. For reason is
not only the distinctive feature of human beings, but also the feature on
account of which they are said to have been created in “God’s image” in
Genesis 1:26 (see 1.1). Wisdom consists in knowledge of nature’s causal
order, culminating in the apprehension of God, the first cause of nature.77
Hence a Divine Law aims:
to convey [i.tā] correct beliefs [ārā .sah.ı̄h.a] with regard to God, may He be
exalted, in the first place, and with regard to the angels, and desires to make man
wise [tah.kı̄m], to give him understanding [tafhı̄m], and to awaken his attention
[tanbı̄h], so that he should know the whole of that which exists in its true form.
(Guide 2.40, 271/384)
The lawgiver knows, of course, “that a man cannot represent to himself
as intelligible . . . if he is in pain or is very hungry or is thirsty . . . or is
very cold” and that satisfying the needs of the body depends on social
collaboration (3.27, 372/511). Hence a Divine Law must also order embodied
75 Al-Fārābı̄, too, claims that the cognitive faculties of men and women – sense perception, imagination,
and reason – “do not differ” (Mabādi 12.8).
76 See the evidence discussed in Belo (2009); cf. Brunschvig (1962), 67 who also notes other examples
of what he calls Averroes’s “liberalism” in the Bidāya. Note that Averroes mentions plans of writing
further legal treatises (for example 53.4, 2:353/2:468), and refers to his treatise on the principles of
jurisprudence (us.ul al-fiqh) which is, however, not extant (2.2.1.2.1, 1:89/1:112).
77 See the first meaning of wisdom in Guide 3.54; on God as the first cause, see Guide 2.48.
life by abolishing “reciprocal wrongdoing” and ensuring “the acquisition
of a noble and excellent character” (ibid.). To be “healthy and in the best
bodily state,” however, is only a means to “the perfection of the soul” (ibid.).
Although a person should not be hungry, thirsty, or sexually dissatisfied,
the right amount of food, drink, and sex is determined by the soul’s need
to find “its instruments healthy and sound in order that it can be directed
towards the sciences and towards acquiring the moral and rational virtues”
(Eight Chapters 5, 164/75–76; cf. Madda, Laws Concerning Character
Dispositions 3.3). A Divine Law embodies knowledge of the good translated
into a pedagogical-political program through the imagination. Hence “the
true reality . . . of prophecy” is an:
emanation, emanating from God, . . . towards the rational faculty in the first place
and thereafter toward the imaginative faculty. (Guide 2.36, 260/369)
The need for a pedagogical-political program stems from “the insufficiency

of the minds of all human beings at their beginnings” and of most human
beings throughout life because of “obstacles” in their nature, “paucity of
training,” or the many “objects that distract” them (Guide 1.34, 49/73).
The Law of Moses, Maimonides argues, is a perfect instantiation of the
Divine Law. The end towards which it directs the community is:
the apprehension of God [idrāk Allāh], mighty and magnificent, I mean knowledge
[al-ilm] of him, insofar as this lies within man’s power. He should direct all his
actions . . . and all his conversation towards this goal so that none of his actions is
in any way frivolous. . . . This is what the Exalted requires . . . when he says: “And
you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul” [Deut
6:5]. He means, set the same goal for all the parts of your soul, namely, “to love
the Lord your God.” (Eight Chapters 5, 164/75–76)
Apprehending God is not only the objectively best state for us, but also
that which we should most desire:
What is the appropriate love of God? It is to love God with a great and exceeding
love, so strong that one’s soul is tied up with God through love and always
enraptured [shogeh] by it, like a love-sick person whose mind is never free from his
love for a certain woman and who is always enraptured by it, whether he is sitting
or standing, eating or drinking. Even greater than that should be the love of God
in the hearts of those who love him. (Madda, Laws Concerning Repentance 10:3)
The biblical account of the deaths of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam through a
“kiss” of God is a metaphor “to indicate that the three of them died in the
pleasure of this apprehension [of God] due to the strength of passionate love
[ishq]” (Guide 3.51, 463/628).78 The intellectual love of God also provides
the motivation to do what reason prescribes in the realm of embodied life:
to seek no more food, drink, and sex, for example, than necessary to keep
the body in good health which, in turn, is a condition for undisturbed
contemplation.
Why did Moses interrupt his love affair with God to order the religious
community towards what is best? Because according to Maimonides, too,
becoming like God means not only to perfect oneself, but also to per-
fect others. The philosopher-prophet imitates God’s attributes of “loving-
kindness, judgment, and righteousness” through which God creates and
orders the world (see 3.53–54). The aim of the patriarchs and Moses:
was to bring into being a religious community that would know and worship
God. . . . Thus it has become clear to you that the end of all their efforts was to
spread the doctrine of the unity of the Name in the world and to guide [irshād]
people to love him, may he be exalted. (Guide 3.51, 460/624).
Only a false anthropocentric conception of the natural order can lead to
doubting its goodness:
an error of man about himself and his imagining that all that exists, exists because
of himself alone . . . and ignorance of what is primarily intended – namely the
bringing into being of everything whose existence is possible, existence being
indubitably a good. (3.25, 367–68/505–6)
As all acts of God in nature are rational because they aim at perfecting being,
all contents of the Law of Moses are rational because they aim at human
perfection (see 3.26). Like Averroes, Maimonides connects the Jewish law
with the moral virtues which “are acquired and firmly established in the
soul by frequently repeating the actions pertaining to a particular moral
habit [khalq] over a long period of time” (Eight Chapters 4, 159/68). The
actions which give rise to the virtues are the actions prescribed by the Law
of Moses.79 The narrative content of the Law, in turn, imitates philosophy
through dialectical, rhetorical, and poetical arguments.80 This is meant by
78 The ultimate source of the concept of ishq is Plato’s description of erôs in the Symposium (see 201d–
212c). A more immediate source is Avicenna’s Treatise on Love (Risālā fı̄ al-ishq). Both Avicenna
and Maimonides also appropriate Sufi terminology to describe the love of God.
79 See also Madda, Laws Concerning Character Dispositions. As we will see below, there is a significant
shift in Maimonides’s explanation of the rationality of the Law’s legal and narrative contents from
his early to his later works.
80 See the discussion of dialectical, rhetorical, and poetical syllogisms in Mant.iq 8. In the Guide
Maimonides claims that in the Law of Moses “we are told [khūt.ibnā] about these profound matters
[that is, the doctrines of physics and metaphysics], which divine wisdom has deemed necessary to
convey to us [li-mukhāt.abatinā] in parables and riddles” (1, introduction, 5/9). While the words
the Talmudic phrase “And the Torah speaks in the language of man” (bT
Yebamoth, 71a), which Maimonides explains as “the imagination of the
multitude” (Guide 1.26, 38/56). The language of the Law of Moses, then, is
the language of the cave dwellers. This is, however, not the only language it
speaks as Maimonides explains on the basis of Proverbs 25:11: “A word fitly
spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver” (1, introduction, 7/11).
The “settings of silver” refer to the literal content of the Law of Moses and
the “apples of gold” to its allegorical content:
Their literal sense [z.āhir] contains wisdom that is useful in many respects, among
which is the welfare of human societies. . . . Their allegorical sense [bāt.in], on the
other hand, contains wisdom that is useful for beliefs concerned with the truth as
it is. (Guide 1, introduction, 8/12).
As mentioned above, Maimonides identifies physics and metaphysics, the
content of theoretical wisdom according to Aristotle, with the “Account of
the Beginning” and the “Account of the Chariot,” two esoteric doctrines in
the Talmud which interpret the creation account in Genesis and the vision
of the chariot in Ezekiel (bT Hagigah, 11b and 13a, quoted in 1, introduction,
3/6–7). The entire body of esoteric doctrines is “pardes,” literally “paradise,”
another rabbinic term referring to esoteric teachings that Maimonides
appropriates for his purpose.81 Although the Law of Moses thus contains
wisdom, it is not possible to learn wisdom from it. Only “the perfect man
who already knew [qad alima] will grasp” its allegorical content (5/9). The
Divine Law establishes moral, political, and intellectual conditions that
are conducive to attaining the highest perfection, but it cannot provide
this perfection itself. Like the Alexandrians, Maimonides argues that the
transition from the literal to the allegorical content of the Law of Moses is
only possible through the study of philosophy. Deuteronomy 6:5 – “And
you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul”
– is a “call” to acquire “all the . . . correct opinions concerning the whole of
being – opinions that constitute the numerous kinds of all the theoretical
sciences [al-ulūm al-naz.ariyya] through which the opinions forming the
ultimate end are validated” (3.28, 373/512). The “theoretical sciences” are
mathematics, physics, and metaphysics, preceded by the study of logic as
the “tool” of philosophy (1.34, 50/75; cf. Epistle Dedicatory). Although
translated as “we are told” and “to convey to us” derive from the same root as the word for rhetoric
(khit.āba), “parables and riddles” are poetic compositions.
81 See Madda, Laws Concerning the Foundations of the Torah 4.10–13; for the meaning of “pardes,”
see Hagigah 14b.
the prophets attained a higher level of intellectual perfection than the
philosophers according to Maimonides (see 3.51, 456/619–20), this has no
implications for the study of philosophy. For one thing “none of the secrets
of the Torah [could] have been set down in writing and been made accessible
to the people” (1.71, 121/176). For disclosing philosophical doctrines to
non-philosophers has the same effect as feeding a newborn bread, meat,
and wine (see 1.33, 48/71). Hence “they were transmitted by a few men
belonging to the elite to a few of the same kind” (1.71, 121/176). However,
“the length of the time that has passed” and “our being dominated by the
pagan nations” led to “the disappearance of these great roots of knowledge
from the nation” (121/175–76).Thus Jews who want to make the transition
from being a good Jew to being a perfect Jew in Maimonides’s time must
turn to Greco-Arabic philosophy, starting with Aristotle “whose intellect
represents the highest achievement of the human intellect,” and continuing
with Aristotle’s Greek and Muslim students from Alexander of Aphrodisias
to Averroes (see Iggerot, 553). Since the wisdom of the prophets is lost, the
only key left to paradise is Greco-Arabic philosophy.
Maimonides is aware of al-Fārābı̄’s concept of religious pluralism which
he adapts to explain differences within the Jewish tradition. On the basis of
the rabbinic view that Ezekiel’s and Isaiah’s apprehension of the divine char-
iot had the same content, Maimonides claims that they represent the same
philosophical doctrines in different ways because of the different audiences
they were addressing: Ezekiel spoke to uncultivated desert nomads, Isaiah
to educated city dwellers (see Guide 3.6). The different representations thus
reflect different cultural contexts. Yet surprisingly at first view, Maimonides
denies the possibility of multiple virtuous religions. The Law of Moses is
the only conceivable instantiation of the Divine Law: “Hence, according
to our opinion, there never has been a Law and there never will be a Law
except the one that is the Law of Moses our master” (2.39, 268/379). Even if
Moses attained the highest level of perfection, however, it remains at least
in principle possible for another lawgiver to reach the same level and hence
to establish a Law equal in excellence to the Law of Moses. To rule this out,
Maimonides must attribute superhuman perfection to Moses that he alone
attained through God’s miraculous intervention. Interpreting Exodus 34:28
for example – “And [Moses] was there with the Lord forty days and forty
nights; he did neither eat bread nor drink water” – Maimonides claims that
Moses’s “intellect attained such strength that all the gross faculties in the
body ceased to function” (3.51, 456/620; cf. Heleq, Thirteen Principles 7).
However, as we will see later, Maimonides also offers an argument for the
contingency of the Law of Moses that is incompatible with his claim that
no other Divine Law is conceivable. This puzzle can be solved if we take
the exclusivity claim to be motivated by strategic rather than philosophical
considerations. Maimonides was, after all, defending the excellence of the
religion that both Christians and Muslims dismissed as superseded. As an
apologetic strategy in a polemical setting it is understandable why Mai-
monides gives more credit to the Law of Moses than he can philosophically
justify.
Attributing superhuman intellectual power to Moses, however, also
serves a philosophically more interesting purpose. Like Origen, Mai-
monides is a moderate skeptic:
Matter [mādda] is a strong veil preventing the apprehension of that which is

separate [from matter] as it truly is. . . . This is alluded to in all the books of
the prophets, namely that we are separated by a veil from God and that he is
hidden from us by a heavy cloud, or by darkness . . . , and similar allusions to our
incapacity to apprehend him because of matter. (Guide 3.9, 314/436–37)82
If Moses miraculously overcame the barrier of matter, Maimonides can

claim that the Law of Moses is grounded on a definitive grasp of the
truth. This does not lead to fideism, because Moses’s alleged superhuman
knowledge is the allegorical content of the Law to which we have no
immediate access. It allows, on the other hand, portraying the search for
Moses’s true doctrines as an open-ended project which can be revised in
light of better scientific theories or better philosophical arguments.83
The framework sketched above justifies the philosophical reinterpreta-
tion of Jewish beliefs, practices, and institutions, to which most of Mai-
monides’s work is devoted. In particular the Guide and the Mishneh Torah
are two complementary sides of this project. Whereas the Guide offers a
Platonic explanation of the nature and purpose of the Law of Moses, the
Mishneh Torah reinterprets its beliefs, practices, and institutions to show
that they indeed fulfill Plato’s criterion of a Divine Law.84 Although there is
much scholarly debate on the precise content and structure of the Mishneh
Torah, it is uncontroversial that Maimonides wants to exhibit the thor-
oughgoing rationality of the Law of Moses as the perfect embodiment of
the Divine Law.
82 Cf. also 1.31 and Pines (1979) and (1981).

83 For Maimonides’s doubts about the correctness of Aristotelian cosmology, for example, see Guide
2.19 and 2.24; see also Harvey (1997).
84 Cf. Harvey (1980).
leading non-philosophers out of the cave

Maimonides’s concept of a philosophical religion also has a number of
features that set it apart from the standard version of the falāsifa. Recall
that the Guide is presented as a book in which biblical terms and parables
are interpreted for the “perplexed.” In the introduction to the Guide, the
perplexed is characterized as a Jewish intellectual who has “studied the
sciences of the philosophers” and hence feels “distressed by the literal
meanings [z.awāhir] of the Law.” He is:
in a state of perplexity and confusion as to whether he should follow his intel-
lect . . . and consequently consider that he has renounced the foundations of the
Law. Or he should hold fast to his understanding . . . and not let himself be drawn
on together with his intellect . . . while at the same time perceiving that he had
brought loss to himself and harm to his religion. He would be left with those imag-
inary beliefs [al-itiqādāt al-khayāliyya] to which he owes his fear and difficulty
and would not cease from heartache and great perplexity. (Guide 1, introduction,
2/5)
Like al-Fārābı̄’s “seekers of the right path,” perplexed Jewish intellectuals
object to the literal sense of the Divine Law. The Guide purports to be
a response to this problem. By explaining “the meaning of certain terms”
and “very obscure parables occurring in the books of the prophets” (2/5–6),
Maimonides elevates Jewish intellectuals from the literal sense which offers
pedagogical-political guidance to the allegorical sense which corresponds
to the “truth as it is.” However, neither philosophy nor the Divine Law’s
allegorical content ought to be disclosed in public:
Know that to begin with [divine science] is very harmful. In the same way,
it is also harmful to make clear the meaning of the parables of the prophets
and to draw attention to the figurative senses of terms . . . of which the books
of prophecy are full. It behooves rather to educate the young [al-as.ghār] and
to give firmness to the deficient in capacity [al-muqas..sirūn] according to the
measure of their apprehension. Thus he who is seen to be perfect in mind and
to be formed for . . . demonstrative speculation . . . should be elevated step by step
[unhid.a awwalan awwalan], either by someone who directs his attention or by
himself, until he achieves his perfection. If, however, he begins with the divine
science, it will not be a mere confusion in his beliefs that will befall him, but
rather absolute negation [ta.tı̄l mah.d.]. In my opinion, an analogous case would be
that of someone feeding a suckling with wheaten bread and meat and giving him
wine to drink. He would undoubtedly kill him, not because these foods are bad or
unnatural for man, but because the child that receives them is too weak to digest
them. . . . This is the cause of the fact that the Torah . . . is presented in such a
manner as to make it possible for the young, the women, and all the people . . . to
learn it. Now it is not within their power to understand these matters as they
truly are. Hence they are confined to accepting tradition [taqlı̄d] with regard to
all sound opinions. . . . When, however, a man grows perfect “and the secrets of
the Torah are communicated to him” [bT Hagigah, 13a] either by somebody else
or because he himself discovers them . . . he represents to himself these matters,
which had appeared to him as imaginings and parables, in their truth. (Guide 1.33,
47–48/70–72)
As in al-Fārābı̄, the leader of the religious community must offer
pedagogical-political guidance to non-philosophers and “elevate” not-yet-
philosophers “step by step” to philosophy and the allegorical content of the
Divine Law. Unlike al-Fārābı̄, however, Maimonides claims that a capable
student can also attain this goal “by himself.”85 We saw that the adverse
circumstances of exile “necessitated the disappearance” of wisdom from
the Jewish community according to Maimonides’s (fictional) historical
account. Whereas in antiquity the intellectual elite transmitted philosophy
and the Divine Law’s allegorical content from generation to generation,
Maimonides can no longer learn them from a Jewish teacher. He thus has
to take matters into his own hands. By contrast, in the “Epistle Dedica-
tory” which prefaces the Guide Maimonides portrays himself in the role
of the teacher: he instructs his beloved student, Joseph ben Judah, in the
philosophical sciences and initiates him into “the secrets of the prophetic
books” (1/3). Every time “a [biblical] verse or some text of the sages was
mentioned in which there was a pointer [tanbı̄h] to some strange notion, I
did not refrain from explaining it to you” (1/4). Maimonides thus models
his relationship to Joseph on the way he claims wisdom was transmitted
in the Jewish community of ancient times. While Joseph fits al-Fārābı̄’s
description of the “seekers of the right path,” the case of perplexed Jewish
intellectuals is slightly different: they have studied philosophy on their
own, but fail to understand the relationship between philosophy and the
Divine Law.
If making philosophy and the Divine Law’s allegorical content public
leads non-philosophers to the “absolute negation” of beliefs held on the
authority of tradition, we would expect Maimonides to oppose doing so
as strictly as Averroes. Resolving the perplexity of Jewish intellectuals,
however, requires disclosing the Divine Law’s allegorical content. The
challenge Maimonides faces is like the challenge faced by Clement of
Alexandria: both want to set down the true teachings of their religion in
writing. Since publishing these teachings can be as harmful as “offering a
85 The paradigmatic autodidact in the literature of the falāsifa is Ibn Tufayl’s H

. ayy ibn Yaqz.ān.
dagger to a child” (Strom. 1.1, 14.3–4), Clement composed the Stromateis
as a “patchwork” of deliberately disorganized notes, “skillfully” hiding
“the seeds of knowledge” to prevent “true philosophy” from falling into
the wrong hands (1.2, 20.4–21.2). Hence only intelligent readers can make
sense of the Stromateis. Maimonides claims to have done the same in the
Guide through deliberate disorder and contradictions:
[M]y purpose is that the truths be glimpsed and then again be concealed, so as not
to oppose that divine purpose . . . which has concealed from the multitude those
truths especially requisite for [God’s] apprehension. (Guide 1, introduction, 3/6–7;
cf. 9–13/15–20).
It is thus all the more surprising that in much of the Guide Maimonides
discloses the allegorical meaning of biblical terms and parables without
any precautions. Particularly prominent are explanations of anthropomor-
phic passages in the Bible which Maimonides reinterprets as describing
features of an incorporeal God.86 God’s incorporeality is a key doctrine of
metaphysics which Maimonides identifies with the esoteric teachings of
the Talmudic “Account of the Chariot” as we saw.87 Maimonides, then,
has no qualms about revealing what the prophets and rabbinic sages took
great care to conceal. As mentioned, moreover, Maimonides opens the
Mishneh Torah by legislating the core teachings of Aristotle’s metaphysics
and physics: from the existence of God to the four elements of the sublu-
nar world. Making philosophical doctrines public through interpretation
and legislation, however, is clearly at odds with the Platonic commit-
ments of the falāsifa. To justify this departure, Maimonides argues that
non-philosophers, too, must be elevated from the literal to the allegorical
content of the Divine Law. For they can be habituated to beliefs that cor-
respond to the true nature of things and thus coincide with the knowledge
that philosophers acquire through demonstration. The power of habitua-
tion is highlighted in Maimonides’s analysis of the “causes of disagreement
about things.” One of these causes:
is habit [ilf] and upbringing [tarbiyya]. For man has in his nature a love . . . for, and
the wish to defend, beliefs to which he is habituated [mutādātuhu] and in which
he has been brought up and has a feeling of repulsion for beliefs other than those.
For this reason also man is blind to the apprehension of the true realities. . . . This
happened to the multitude with regard to the belief in his corporeality [al-tajsı̄m]
86 See Guide 2.25 for a statement of the program which is carried out in the Guide.
87 For the philosophical proofs of God’s incorporeality, see Guide 2, introduction, and 2.1–2. For the
inclusion of God’s incorporeality in the “Account of the Chariot,” see Madda, Laws Concerning
the Foundations of the Torah 1.8–12 and 4.13.
and many other metaphysical subjects as we shall make clear. All this is due to
people being habituated to, and brought up on, texts . . . whose external mean-
ing is indicative of the corporeality of God and of other imaginings with no
truth in them, for these have been set forth as parables and riddles. (Guide 1.31,
45/67)
If human beings can be habituated to false beliefs, there is no reason why

they cannot be habituated to true beliefs as well, as Maimonides argues
with respect to the doctrine of God’s incorporeality. This doctrine:
ought to be inculcated in virtue of traditional authority [taqlı̄d] upon children,
women, stupid ones, and those of a defective natural disposition, just as they
adopt the notion that God is one, that he is eternal, and that none but he should
be worshiped. For there is no profession of unity [tawh.ı̄d] unless the doctrine of
God’s corporeality is denied. (Guide 1.35, 54–55/81)
The false belief that God is corporeal is replaced by the true belief that God
is incorporeal. In both cases the belief stems from habituation. Habitua-
tion thus can be an obstacle as much as a vehicle for spreading the truth.
The falāsifa normally distinguish between the demonstrative, dialectical,
rhetorical, and poetical method for disseminating knowledge. To these
Maimonides adds a new method that is not derived from the same frame-
work: “inculcation in virtue of traditional authority.” This is the method of
the Almohads, the “professors of God’s unity” (muwah.h.idūn), who made
the strict understanding of tawh.ı̄d – God’s unity as entailing God’s incor-
poreality – into the official doctrine of the Almohad kingdom that all
Muslims were forced to endorse.88 There is much evidence for the per-
vasive influence that the political-theological program of the Almohads
had on Maimonides who lived under Almohad rule from 1148 to 1165.89
Most important for my purpose is the Almohad murshida or aqı̄da, a
catechism of fundamental religious doctrines legally enforced on all Mus-
lims, of which the doctrine of God’s incorporeality was a cornerstone.
Since the Almohads identify the anthropomorphic representation of God
with idolatry, and Maimonides takes the eradication of idolatry to be the
“foundation” (as.l) and “pivot” (qut.b) of the Law of Moses (3.29, 380/521),
it is indeed likely that his zeal to impose God’s incorporeality on all mem-
bers of the Jewish community is inspired by the Almohads. Avoiding the
charge of idolatry clearly was more important to Maimonides than the
88 See the programmatic text Tawh.ı̄d al-bāri (The Unity of the Creator) by Ibn Tūmart, the founder
of the Almohad movement.
89 See the convincing case made by Stroumsa (2009), chapter 3.
pedagogical concerns which he also seems to have had about disclosing
this well-guarded secret of the Divine Law.90
The doctrine of God’s incorporeality, however, is at odds with much of
what the Law of Moses has to say about God:
When people have received this doctrine, are habituated to it [alifūhu] and edu-
cated . . . in it, and subsequently become perplexed [tah.ayyarū] over the texts of
the books of the prophets, the meaning of these books should be explained to
them. They should be elevated to the knowledge of the interpretation of these
texts [unhid.ū li-tawı̄lihā], and their attention should be drawn to the equivocality
and allegorical sense of the various terms – the exposition of which is contained
in this treatise – so that the correctness of their belief regarding the oneness of
God and the affirmation of the truth of the books of the prophets should be safe.
(Guide 1.35, 54–55/81)
After having been habituated to the doctrine of God’s incorporeality, non-

philosophers will also be perplexed about the literal meaning of anthro-
pomorphic passages in the Law of Moses. Hence they must “be elevated
to the interpretation of these texts,” which is precisely what Maimonides
claims to have accomplished “in this treatise.” It turns out, therefore, that
much of the interpretative program of the Guide aims not only at resolving
the perplexity of philosophers, but the perplexity of non-philosophers as
well!
Maimonides’s stance on God’s incorporeality and its interpretative
implications is not an isolated deviation from the Platonic tradition of
concealment.91 It is part of a broad project of habituating non-philosophers
to true beliefs which clearly breaks with the framework of Platonism. This
project is not just a variation of the catechism of fundamental religious
beliefs enforced by the Almohads. It is embedded in the larger context
of Maimonides’s sociology of religion. According to Maimonides, God’s
wisdom is not only manifest in the teleological order of nature or in the tele-
ological order of the parts of an animal, but also in goal-oriented processes
such as the biological development of an organism or the cultural-religious
development of societies. God’s wisdom provides what is required to sustain
each stage of the process until the goal is achieved:
90 See Guide 1.26 where Maimonides explains that “attributes indicating corporeality have been pred-
icated of [God] in order to indicate that he, may he be exalted, exists, inasmuch as the multitude
cannot at first conceive of any existence save that of a body alone” (37/56).
91 Note, however, that in Guide 1.35 Maimonides makes a distinction between God’s incorporeality
and other doctrines which “are truly the mysteries of the Torah” (54/80). I suggest that the latter
doctrines are those that cannot yet be publicly disclosed, but may be disclosed in the future.
God made a wily and gracious arrangement [talat..tafa] with regard to all the
individuals of the living beings that suck. For when born, such individuals are
extremely soft and cannot feed on dry food. Accordingly breasts were prepared for
them so that they should produce milk with a view to their receiving humid food,
which is similar to the composition of their bodies, until their limbs gradually and
step by step [awwalan awwalan] become dry and solid. (Guide 3.32, 384/525)
Applying this model to the cultural-religious development of societies yields
a picture that is in interesting ways similar to the Alexandrian concept of
a pedagogical-political program which, driven by the Logos, unfolds in
history, gradually advancing reason until laws, stories, exhortations, and
practices of worship can be discarded in favor of the eternal gospel of reason
(cf. Origen, De princ. 3.6, 8).92 Recall how Eusebius justifies abrogating
the Jewish law by comparing it to “a nurse and governess of childish and
imperfect souls.” Its purpose was to restore the moral and intellectual
integrity of the Hebrews who had “adopted Egyptian customs, and . . . fell
into idolatrous superstition” because of “their long sojourn in Egypt” (DE
1.6, 31). Maimonides provides an ontological foundation to this concept of
gradual reform:
For a sudden transition from one opposite to another is impossible. And therefore
man, according to his nature is not capable of abandoning suddenly all to which
he was habituated [alifa]. (Guide 3.32, 384/526)
This principle allows Maimonides to explain much of the legal and narrative
content of the Law of Moses. From the Arabic literature on paganism
Maimonides construes a portrait of the beliefs, practices, and institutions
of the “Sabians,” who are not a distinct religious community for him, but
represent pagan religions as a whole.93 In the time of Moses the religion
of the “Sabians” was practiced in “the whole world” (3.32, 84/526). It was
thus also the religion of the ancient Egyptians under which the Jews were
brought up while being slaves in Egypt. Given the inertia of human nature
and the moral and intellectual corruption of the Jews who had become
habituated to the beliefs and practices of the “Sabians,” Moses realized that
he could not simply replace the old and false religion with a new and true
one. This would have had the same effect as feeding a newborn bread,
meat, and wine. Unless he were to send all members of the community
“over ten years old” into exile as Plato proposes in the Republic, he thus
92 On Maimonides’s possible Christian sources, see, for example, Pines (1976); Funkenstein (1970);
(1986), 227–39; and (1998). On divine accommodation in general, see Benin (1993).
93 See Guide 2.29–30, 2.32. For a detailed account of Maimonides’s study of this literature and its role
in his sociology of religion, see Stroumsa (2009), 84–111.
had to take the path of gradual reform. The paradigmatic example for the
compromises which this path required are the laws of sacrifice. At the time
when the Jews were slaves in Egypt:
the way of life generally accepted [mashhūra] and habitual [malūfa] in the whole
world and the universal service upon which we were brought up consisted in
offering various species of living beings in the temples in which images were set
up, in worshiping the latter, and in burning incense before them. . . . His wisdom,
may he be exalted, and his gracious ruse [talat..tuf] which is manifest in regard to all
his creatures, did not require that he give us a Law prescribing the rejection . . . of
all these kinds of worship. For one could not then conceive the acceptance of
[such a Law], considering the nature of man which always likes that to which
it is habituated [al-malūf]. At that time this would have been similar to the
appearance of a prophet in these times who, calling upon the people to worship
God, would say: “God has given you a Law forbidding you to pray to Him, to fast,
to call upon Him for help in misfortune. Your worship should consist solely in
meditation without any works at all.” Therefore he, may he be exalted, suffered the
above-mentioned kinds of worship to remain, but transferred them from created
or imaginary and unreal things to his own name, may he be exalted, commanding
us to practice them with regard to him, may he be exalted. . . . Through this divine
ruse it came about that the memory of idolatry was effaced and that the grandest
and true foundation of our belief – namely, the existence and oneness of the
deity – was firmly established, while at the same time the souls had no feeling
of repugnance [lam tanfur] and were not repelled [lā istawh.ashat] because of the
abolition of modes of worship to which they were habituated [alifat]. (Guide 3.32,
384–85/526–27)
Sacrifices, therefore, have only instrumental, not intrinsic, value as a way

of worshiping God. They are a concession Moses had to make to the
stage of the Jews in their cultural-religious development at the time of
the exodus from Egypt. Their role is analogous to that of milk for the
newborn. At the same time, Maimonides sketches what the path to the
goal of the process could look like: sacrifices which are a necessary form of
worship in the historical context of Moses’s legislation are replaced by less
inadequate forms of worship such as praying and fasting which ideally are
replaced by meditation without works.94 If it were possible to reach this
stage, God would be worshiped adequately not only relative to a partic-
ular historical context, but absolutely. The underlying assumption is that
94 Or, more precisely, since sacrifices, praying, and fasting coexisted, only the less inadequate forms of
worship are retained at the second stage. The issue requires further investigation, however, because
Maimonides also holds that sacrifices will resume in the Messianic era. See MT, Book of Judges, Laws
Concerning Kings and Wars 11.
inadequate habits of worship can be gradually replaced by more adequate
habits.
While the laws of sacrifice are a paradigmatic example, Maimonides
applies the same type of historical explanation to a wide range of other
laws throughout his discussion of the reasons for the commandments in
Guide 3.25–49. While many of these laws seem to lack a rationale at first
view, it can be supplied once they are considered in historical perspective.
Maimonides applies the developmental model not only to practices,
but also to beliefs. This explains why the Divine Law’s allegorical content
can be disclosed step by step to non-philosophers.95 Concerning beliefs
the paradigmatic example is God’s corporeality. Moses habituated the Jews
to the belief in God’s “existence and oneness” thus turning them away
from Sabian polytheism. Since “a sudden transition from one opposite
to another is impossible,” however, Moses could not impose the belief
in God’s incorporeality as well. In Maimonides’s time the commitment
to God’s existence and oneness could not only be taken for granted, but
God’s incorporeality became a doctrine legally enforced in the cultural-
religious context of the Jewish community in which Maimonides lived.
Hence he felt authorized to take the reform project one step further by
legislating God’s incorporeality in the Mishneh Torah and disclosing it
through allegorical interpretation in the Guide. As in the case of the laws
of sacrifice, the belief in God’s corporeality is only a paradigmatic example
for the working of God’s pedagogical “ruse” in history. Already in the
passage from Guide 1.31, quoted earlier, God’s corporeality is said to be one
of many “metaphysical subjects” concerning which non-philosophers had
been habituated to false beliefs. A second example is the belief in reward
and punishment. According to the “Sabians,” who believed in astral gods,
worshiping stars and planets leads to the:
prolongation of life, a warding-off of calamities, the disappearance of infirmi-
ties, the fertility of the sowing, and the thriving of the fruits. Now inasmuch
as these notions were generally accepted . . . , and as God, may he be exalted,
wished in his pity for us to efface this error from our minds . . . , Moses our mas-
ter . . . informed us in his name, may he be exalted, that if the stars and the planets
were worshiped . . . rains will cease to fall, that the land will be devastated, that
circumstances will become bad, that bodies will suffer from diseases, and that
lives will be short; whereas a necessary consequence of the abandonment of their
worship and the adoption of the worship of God will be rainfall, the fertility of
95 As I suggested in chapter 2, the same reasoning likely underlies Philo’s allegorical interpretation.
the land, good circumstances, health of the body, and length of life. (Guide 3.30,
382/523)
In this case, one false belief concerning reward and punishment is replaced
by another false belief which, however, is closer to the truth: that there
is no reward and punishment at all in the traditional sense. For the
belief:
that [God] will procure us benefits if we obey him and will take vengeance on us if
we disobey him, . . . this too is a ruse [h.ı̄la] used by him. (Guide 3.32, 386/528–29)
As in the case of prayers and fasting, the belief in reward and punishment
is only an intermediate stage on the path to the true conception of the
relationship between human beings and God. The false beliefs that Mai-
monides describes as “necessary” in Guide 3.28, are therefore necessary only
for a certain stage of the Jews’ cultural-religious development. At this stage
the belief that God “has a violent anger against those who do injustice,”
for example, or that God “responds instantaneously to the prayer of some-
one wronged or deceived” are “necessary for the abolition of reciprocal
wrongdoing or for the acquisition of a noble moral quality” (3.28, 374/514).
Ultimately, as we will see, Maimonides wants all members of the commu-
nity to serve God “out of love,” rather than to avoid punishment or receive
reward.
We can see the scope of Maimonides’s ambition with regard to habitu-
ating non-philosophers to true beliefs in the first four chapters of the Laws
Concerning the Foundations of the Torah. They illustrate his new method
to convey philosophical doctrines: instead of demonstrative, dialectical,
rhetorical, or poetical arguments, Maimonides legislates a summary of
Aristotelian metaphysics and physics – that is, of the “Account of the Char-
iot” and the “Account of the Beginning.” The Hebrew “yesodei ha-torah”
(Foundations of the Torah) likely translates the Arabic “us.ūl al-dı̄n,” sug-
gesting that the Almohad catechism mentioned above was Maimonides’s
model.96 The long-term goal of Maimonides’s Aristotelian catechism was
to habituate non-philosophers not only to God’s incorporeality, but to all
basic concepts of a sound philosophical worldview. Once these concepts
take root in the minds of the members of the community, the disclosure of
the Divine Law’s allegorical content will have to follow suit. Maimonides’s
work can thus be seen as one stage in a larger historical process. What he did
96 See Stroumsa (2009), 70.

for God’s incorporeality, his successors will have to do for other allegorical
doctrines of the Divine Law.97 Whereas al-Fārābı̄ holds that some non-
philosophers can be “elevated” from poetic imitations to grasping things
“according to their true nature through the insight of the philosophers, fol-
lowing them, assenting to their views, and trusting them,” Maimonides’s
hope seems to be that all adult non-philosophers can attain this stage over
a long period of time.
Plato and most of the falāsifa think that if the traditional beliefs of
non-philosophers are challenged they fall into nihilism because they can-
not replace them through true ones. According to Maimonides avoiding
nihilism is possible if true beliefs are gradually imposed through habitua-
tion. Maimonides would argue that Ibn Tufayl’s H . ayy ibn Yaqz.ān did not
fail because he tried to remove false beliefs and “lay bare the truth,” but
because he tried to do so all at once. Had he and his successors instead
proceeded step by step, the members of the community would not have
felt “in their souls an abhorrence for what he told them.”
The contrast between philosophers who assent to true beliefs on the basis
of demonstrations and non-philosophers who embrace true beliefs on the
basis of habituation is, however, less clear-cut than I have presented it thus
far. Recall how Maimonides describes the goal of the Law of Moses: it aims
“to convey correct beliefs with regard to God, may he be exalted, in the
first place . . . and desires to make man wise.” Conveying “correct beliefs”
through the Law and making “man wise” are, in fact, two distinct goals.
First “correct beliefs” are accepted “on the basis of traditional authority
[taqlı̄d]” which Maimonides calls “the science of the Law.” Then traditional
authority ought to be replaced by “wisdom,” namely “the verification of
the opinions of the Law through correct speculation” (3.51, 455/616 and
3.54, 467/633–34). According to Maimonides, “speculation concerning the
fundamental principles of religion” is part of Talmud, and studying Talmud
is obligatory for all members of the community. Consider Maimonides’s
example of a “craftsman” in the Laws Concerning the Study of the Torah:
the craftsman should spend three hours a day working for his living and nine
hours studying Torah – a work–study proportion that clearly represents
Maimonides’s ideal:
97 Maimonides has, moreover, prepared the ground for the next stage in the Guide. For the “Account
of the Beginning,” see Guide 2.30 and for the “Account of the Chariot,” see Guide 3, from the
introduction up to and including chapter 8.
The time assigned to study should be divided into three parts. One third should be
devoted to the written Law, one third to the oral Law, and the last third to under-
standing [yavin] and intellectually apprehending [yaskil] inferences, deducing one
thing from another and comparing one thing to another. . . . This is called “Tal-
mud.” . . . The words of the prophets are contained in the written Law and their
interpretation in the oral Law. The subjects called “pardes” [that is, the “Account
of the Beginning” and the “Account of the Chariot”] are included in the Gemara.
This rule applies to the beginning of a person’s studies. But once he makes progress
in wisdom [hokhmah] and no longer needs to learn the written Law or be occupied
with the oral Law all the time, he should, at fixed times, read the written Law and
the oral Law, so as not to forget any of the rules of the Law, and should devote
all his days to the study of Talmud alone according to his breadth of mind and
maturity of intellect [rohav libo ve-yishshur dato]. (Madda, Laws Concerning the
Study of the Torah 1.11–12)
Since “Talmud” means that all members of the community must study
the philosophical foundations of the Law included in pardes, replacing
traditional authority through wisdom is a universal obligation; everyone
is required to enter “the antechambers” of the king’s palace, according to
Maimonides’s parable in Guide 3.51 which equates degrees of perfection
with degrees of proximity attained by subjects striving to come as close as
possible to their king (455/619). The palace’s antechambers represent the
fifth degree of perfection, above “jurists” who hold true opinions based
on authority, yet below “men of science” and prophets who have attained
perfect knowledge.
Maimonides’s Aristotelian catechism confirms that guiding all mem-
bers of the community to the palace’s antechambers is indeed his aim.
Although it legally enforces philosophical doctrines, Maimonides often
sketches proofs for them, for example the proof for God’s existence, unity,
and incorporeality based on the eternal motion of the celestial spheres.98
While these sketches fall short of fully elaborated demonstrations, they
provide starting points for further reflection, showing that Maimonides’s
intention is not only to impose doctrines, but to persuade the commu-
nity by means of rational argument. In the end everyone should share in
intellectual worship and “serve God out of love”:
Hence, when instructing the young, women, or the uneducated generally, we teach
them to serve God out of fear [la-avod mi-yirah] or for the sake of reward, until
their knowledge increases and they have attained a large measure of wisdom. Then
we reveal to them this secret little by little [the secret that there are no reward
and punishment in the traditional sense], and habituate them to it slowly until
98 See Madda, Laws Concerning the Foundations of the Torah 1.5 and 1.7.
they have grasped and comprehended it, and serve God out of love [ve-yaavduhu
me-ahava]. (Madda, Laws Concerning Repentance 10.5; cf. 10.1)
This does not mean that for Maimonides all members of the commu-
nity can become philosophers in the strict sense: those who enter the
king’s “antechambers . . . indubitably have different ranks” (3.51, 455/619;
my emphasis). Yet while the quality of their understanding varies accord-
ing to their intellectual abilities, all of them ought to substitute wisdom
for authority as much as they can.
Maimonides’s optimism about the ability of non-philosophers to share
in theoretical wisdom led him to adopt a significantly more egalitarian
position with respect to human perfection than was common among the
falāsifa. In the early Commentary on the Mishnah he still offers a teleological
justification for social hierarchy: a community cannot subsist if all its
members live the contemplative life. The purpose of the “common people”
(am ha-aretz) is to satisfy the material needs of the wise and to keep them
company (CM, Introduction to Seder Zeraim, 119–31). Different versions
of this teleological view were widely held by the falāsifa and can ultimately
be traced back to Plato’s tripartite state in the Republic.99 In the Mishneh
Torah, however, Maimonides revises his position. As we saw, all members
of the community should spend a small amount of time working and
most of the time studying. Even the greatest sage, Maimonides argues,
ought to do manual work and decline taking money for studying the
Law.100 Maimonides must have concluded that this division of labor leads
to greater overall perfection than the division of labor advocated in the
Commentary on the Mishnah. Hence it is a more adequate political mirror
of God’s perfection revealed in nature. With the exception of Christian
philosophers like Origen, whose eschatological vision of a community of
philosophers relies on the doctrine of reincarnation, Maimonides is the
most egalitarian proponent of a philosophical religion.
We saw that for Maimonides the Law of Moses is rational throughout:

God orders the Jewish community towards what is best through the medi-
ation of Moses, the most accomplished philosopher-prophet of all time.
Maimonides’s explanation of what this means in his early works represents
the standard view of the falāsifa. Like Averroes, he argues that the legal
content of the Divine Law promotes the moral virtues while its narrative
99 See, for example, al-Fārābı̄, Mabādi 15.4–6; Averroes, Comm. Rep., 23–24/6–9.
100 On this second point Maimonides did not change his mind; see CM, Avot 4.5 and Madda, Laws
Concerning the Study of the Torah 3.10–11.
content translates philosophical doctrines into “the language of human
beings” through dialectical, rhetorical, and poetical arguments. The histor-
ical explanation of Jewish beliefs, practices, and institutions in the Guide,
on the other hand, marks a significant shift. Like the nomoi of Magnesia
which are not best absolutely speaking, but best in a particular cultural
context, the Law of Moses is best only if we take the “Sabian” beliefs, prac-
tices, and institutions into account under which the Jews were brought up
in Egypt. This contextualist turn makes room for progress: while Averroes
conceives progress as a succession of increasingly virtuous religions, in line
with the view that Islam supersedes Judaism and Christianity, Maimonides
suggests that the same virtuous religion can be gradually reformed. How
far did Maimonides think this process could lead? Surely not to a commu-
nity of philosophers who need no laws, stories, exhortations, and practices
of worship altogether. In one form or another these will remain in place
to offer pedagogical guidance to children and political guidance to non-
philosophers. The Mishneh Torah not only codifies the entire body of the
Jewish law, but suggests that sacrifices – the paradigmatic case of histori-
cally contingent practices as we saw – will resume in the messianic era.101
There thus appear to be tensions in Maimonides’s project. Yet it is safe
to say that a community of philosophers is the ideal which Jewish leaders
should strive to realize as much as historical circumstances allow, and that
Maimonides did all he could to incorporate as much as possible of this
ideal into the reality of the Jewish community.
Finally, we must reconsider Maimonides’s claim that the Law of Moses
is the only perfect instantiation of the Divine Law. For one thing, the
historical explanation of its rationality implies that – to use al-Fārābı̄’s
definition of religion – the “opinions and actions” which it prescribes were
“determined and limited” by particular circumstances. Since Maimonides
argues that key cultural constraints of the time of Moses are no longer
in place, he, in fact, radicalizes the claim of the Divine Law’s historical
contingency. Not only do equally or more perfect instantiations of the
Divine Law become possible, but Maimonides seems to suggest that if
Moses had returned in his own time, he would have replaced the old
Law with a new Law, adjusted to the improved cultural conditions of the
Jews. This new Law would neither require sacrifices nor attribute corporeal
features to God. Maimonides’s apologetic claim that no other Divine Law
is conceivable besides the Law of Moses thus does not pose a philosophical
challenge to the religious pluralism proposed by al-Fārābı̄.
101 See MT, Book of Judges, Laws Concerning Kings and Wars 11.
theocracy and autonomy

Like Plato and the Alexandrians, the falāsifa are advocates of theocracy.
The sharı̄a and the torah order the community towards what is best, as we
saw, and something well ordered is rationally ordered and hence divinely
ordered on account of the concept of God as Reason. In the ideal reli-
gious community God’s rule and self-rule coincide with no need for laws,
stories, exhortations, and practices of worship. Maimonides, for example,
portrays Adam before the Fall as the model of human perfection: to be
created in God’s image means that Adam has perfected reason (see Guide
1.1). Since his life is completely determined by reason, no laws are required
for identifying certain types of actions as good and other types of actions
as evil, and Maimonides indeed denies that Adam was able to understand
the meaning of “good” and “evil” (see Guide 1.2).102 As we saw, however,
the falāsifa recognize that most members of the community are imperfectly
rational. Hence an excellent community differs from the ideal community:
its members do not reach the highest perfection absolutely speaking, but
only the highest perfection that is in their nature to attain. Like Plato and
the Alexandrians, the falāsifa take God’s rule to be conducive to rational
self-rule, conceived as knowledge of the good and the motivation to live
according to this knowledge. Also for them a life ruled by reason is a
self-ruled life because the defining feature of human beings is reason. If
most members of the community are imperfectly rational, however, how
can they share in the rule of reason unless by obeying God and doing
what the philosopher-prophet prescribes? To see why this does not fol-
low, consider the analogy between legislation and medicine that we saw
in Plato and that the falāsifa, too, frequently draw.103 The expertise of the
leader of the community about what is best must be as well founded as
the doctor’s expertise about health. As the patient follows the instructions
of the doctor for the sake of health, so the members of the commu-
nity follow the Divine Law for the sake of their perfection. This analogy
seems to confirm that non-philosophers are excluded from rational self-
rule. Upon closer examination, however, we will see that things are more
complicated.
For one thing, there are many doctors who do not abide by the rules
that prescribe what is best for their health. They fail to observe a healthy
102 Spinoza restates Maimonides’s portrait of Adam in the Ethics to illustrate the proposition that “free
men” (homines liberi) do not conceive the notions of good and evil as long as they are free (E4p68s).
103 See, for example, al-Fārābı̄, Fus.ūl 1–5; Averroes, Fas.l, 27–28; Maimonides, Eight Chapters,
chapter 1.
diet, for example, or do not keep in good shape through regular exercise.
If left unattended, the soul’s non-rational impulses will not only conflict
with reason, but may end up gaining control over a person’s behavior, as
in the examples of a weak will just described. Shaping the non-rational
impulses of the soul from childhood on in such a way that they later
collaborate in implementing the prescriptions of reason is the first way
in which the Divine Law contributes to self-rule. As we saw, the falāsifa
explain this in terms of Aristotle’s theory of habituation: the Divine Law
shapes the character of the members of the religious community in such
a way that they are attracted to things considered objectively good and
fear things considered objectively bad.104 Later, when they grasp why these
things are good or bad, their non-rational desires will be in agreement with
their rational insight. Even if all human beings could become philosophers,
therefore, the Divine Law would still be indispensable for children. Thus
a perfect philosopher like Adam before the Fall would not have been able
to reach this stage of perfection had his character not been formed by the
Divine Law.105
We saw, however, that according to the falāsifa only very few human
beings actually turn into philosophers. Must a theocracy thus not remain
intolerably paternalistic for everyone who does not advance to this stage?
The falāsifa’s response is in part directed against the critique of prophetic
religions by Muslim freethinkers such as Abū Bakr al-Rāzı̄. Recall that for
Rāzı̄ prophetic religions are redundant, because God endowed all human
beings with reason which is sufficient to guide them in life. Human beings
do not comply with God’s will by obeying the Divine Law, but by following
the authority of reason. Submitting to “religious authority” (taqlı̄d) is the
consequence of laziness: human beings follow taqlı̄d:
because they fail to reflect, not because of some [inborn] deficiency. . . . Had they
made an effort [law ijtahadū] and concerned themselves with what helps them,
they would have been equal in intellect and in resolution.106
In principle, then, all human beings are equally capable of rational self-
rule according to Rāzı̄, whose ideal, like Socrates’s, leaves no role for the
pedagogical-political guidance offered by laws, stories, exhortations, and
104 See, for example, al-Fārābı̄, Fus.ūl 6–21; Averroes, Bidāya 57.6; Maimonides, Eight Chapters 1–7;
Madda, Laws Concerning Ethical Dispositions.
105 Maimonides does not mention this in his discussion of Adam. Spinoza, however, points out that
it is impossible for a person to be born free (E4p68s).
106 Quoted by Abū Hātim al-Rāzı̄ in Alām al-nubuwwa, 3–5.
practices of worship.107 We know that al-Fārābı̄ wrote a refutation of
one of Rāzı̄’s works containing aggressive anti-prophetic statements.108
Moreover, a number of distinctive features in Maimonides’s portrait of
Jewish heretics are most likely derived from the polemics against Muslim
freethinkers.109 The falāsifa, of course, agree with Rāzı̄ that everyone ought
as much as possible to be guided by reason. But they take the Divine Law
to be indispensable for achieving this goal because an ideal community – a
community of accomplished philosophers like Adam – is impossible given
the reality of human nature. Al-Fārābı̄ would likely have raised the same
objection against Rāzı̄ that we saw him raise against Socrates: he was only
able “to conduct a scientific investigation of justice and the virtues . . . but
did not possess the ability to form the character of the youth and the
multitude.”
How, then, does the Divine Law contribute to the rational self-rule
of non-philosophers? We saw that the falāsifa take “happiness” to be the
highest good which they identify with intellectual perfection. This is,
however, not self-evident, al-Fārābı̄ argues. Although human beings desire
by nature to know, they also desire the well-being of their body and senses.
How these desires are to be ranked and organized in a human life is itself
a question to be examined. The answer depends on clarifying in what
human nature and its perfection consists and by what kind of activity this
perfection is achieved. This, in turn, requires understanding the order of
things as a whole of which human beings are a part. Al-Fārābı̄ illustrates
the point through a comparison: Understanding the nature, perfection,
and proper activity of shoemaking requires understanding the order of the
political community of which this craft is a part and by which its purpose is
determined. The shoemaker could simply be compelled to make shoes by
the lawgiver. But if he understands how his craft is linked to other crafts,
the human need it fulfills, and how it contributes to the common good,
he will grasp the reasons why he does what he does and in this sense attain
rational self-rule (see Falsafat Arist.ūt.ālı̄s, 68/79). Both Plato and Aristotle
stress the sovereignty of the ruler who, on the basis of political science,
directs all activities in the polis towards the common good.110 Since we
depend on social collaboration to fulfill the many needs that arise from
being embodied, Aristotle, as we saw, argues that practical wisdom must
107 Note, however, that Socrates’s attitude to the Delphic oracle suggests that, unlike for Rāzı̄, self-rule
and religious guidance are not in conflict for him.
108 See n. 37 above. 109 See Stroumsa (1999a), 221–38.
110 See Statesman 259e–260c and EN 1.2; cf. Metaph. 1.1, 981a13–981b7.
include knowledge of the political order to make prescriptions that take our
position in that order into account. Al-Fārābı̄’s comparison suggests that
all citizens can become sovereign and act in a self-directed way to the extent
they attain the ruler’s political science and understand their particular task
in its light. The case for understanding human perfection is analogous:
[I]f the human being is a part of the world, and if we wish to know his end, activity,
advantage, and rank, first we have to know the end of the whole world so that it
will become clear to us what the end of the human being is and that the human
being is a necessary part of the world because through his end the ultimate end of
the world is attained. If, therefore, we wish to know the thing for which we must
strive, we need to know the end of the human being and the human perfection
for which we must strive. For this reason we must know the end of the world in
its entirety; and we cannot know this without knowing all the parts of the world
and their principles: what it is, how it is, from what it is, and for what it is. And
this [we need to know] concerning the whole world and concerning each of the
parts of which it is composed. (Falsafat Arist.ūt.ālı̄s, 68–69/79–80)
Without understanding the order of things, then, human beings cannot

pursue their perfection in a self-directed way. Understanding the human
good requires comprehensive training in natural science and metaphysics:
grasping that the world’s purpose is the perfection of all its constituents
and that reason is both the feature that distinguishes human beings from
other natural things (minerals, plants, and animals) and the feature they
have in common with God. Thus by perfecting reason human beings
attain their distinctive good and contribute to the perfection of the whole.
Al-Fārābı̄’s chief systematic works give a detailed outline of the compre-
hensive knowledge that all members of a religious community must have.
They begin by discussing God as the first cause, the causation and order of
the world, the place of human beings within this order, and the perfection
of human beings. Then they examine the political conditions under which
citizens attain or fail to attain perfection.111 Human beings, however, “are
equipped by nature for different approaches to truth and for . . . having
it established in their souls by different kinds of knowledge” (Falsafat
Arist.ūt.ālı̄s, 78/87). Only philosophers have access to the truth through
demonstrations. Non-philosophers, by contrast, approach it through the
dialectical, rhetorical, and poetical arguments that make up the narrative
content of the Divine Law. The “different kinds of knowledge” established
in the souls of philosophers and non-philosophers thus play a role similar
to the two kinds of wisdom that Plotinus attributes to Plato as we saw
111 See Mabādi and Siyāsa.
in chapter 1. According to Enneads 1.2, all citizens in a virtuous city have
wisdom in the political sense, which means that reason orders their lives.
But only a few citizens move on to wisdom properly speaking, attaining
“likeness to God” through intellectual perfection. It is now clear why the
falāsifa attribute so much importance to the fact that the Divine Law con-
veys an understanding of God and nature in a non-scientific form and on
the basis of non-scientific arguments. We saw that for Maimonides a Law
is divine if it aims “to make man wise, to give him understanding and
to awaken his attention, so that he should know the whole of that which
exists in its true form” (Guide 2.40, 271/384). Similarly, Averroes praises
the Divine Law for leading “towards wisdom in a way shared by all human
beings,” unlike philosophy in the technical sense which is accessible only to
“the intellectuals among the people” (Tahāfut 2.4, 582/360). The falāsifa –
like Plato and the Alexandrians – are thus committed to a concept of
degrees of autonomy. The actions of non-philosophers will be guided by a
less accurate understanding of God, the world, and their place in it, based
on arguments whose epistemic quality is inferior to demonstrations. But
only at the lowest rank of the scale will they accept things on account of
mere religious authority. This point is brought out clearly by Averroes:
It is not impossible that there may be some people whose intellect is so slug-
gish . . . that they do not understand anything of the religious proofs [al-adilla
al-shariyya] which the Prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, has set up for the
multitude. But this is most rare [aqall al-wujūd]. However, if there are such people
they would be obligated to believe in God by way of authority [al-asmā]. (Kashf,
135/19)
Al-Fārābı̄ suggests that one way of ranking citizens is in accordance with

their increasing capacity for self-rule. At the bottom of the hierarchy is “the
slave by nature.” At the top is the completely autonomous person, capable
of conceiving a goal on his own and choosing the right means to attain it.
Most members of the community, however, are on an intermediate level
(Fus.ūl 60). This fits well with al-Fārābı̄’s concept of the Divine Law as
composed of several levels which gradually approach philosophy and thus
address the members of the religious community in a way suited to their
intellectual rank and capacity for self-rule (see Mabādi 17.4).
The concept of degrees of knowledge also helps to explain a con-
tention made by both Averroes and Maimonides that at first view is puz-
zling. In the opening argument of the Decisive Treatise Averroes reaches
the conclusion that philosophy and logic are not only permitted from
the standpoint of Islam, but are a legal obligation. How can philosophy
and logic be obligatory for everyone if the great majority of Muslims are
non-philosophers? Recall Averroes’s definition of the philosophy which
Muslims are called to pursue: “the rational inquiry into the existing things
and their contemplation insofar as they are proof of the Maker” (Fas.l, 1).
This definition is so vague that it is compatible with both demonstrative
proofs and non-demonstrative proofs of God. It fits, for example, Aristo-
tle’s physical proof from the motion of the universe which is, according
to Averroes, the principal demonstrative proof of God’s existence. But it
fits equally the teleological proof and the proof from causation which are
the two non-demonstrative proofs described by Averroes.112 These proofs
belong to what Averroes calls “religious proofs” in the passage quoted above.
A similar distinction applies to logic which includes both demonstrative
and non-demonstrative arguments, the latter being dialectical, rhetorical,
or poetical as we saw. Averroes thus must be using the term “philosophy”
in a non-technical sense at the beginning of the Decisive Treatise. Insofar
as it refers to non-demonstrative proofs and arguments, it refers to the
degree of understanding that can be attained through the narrative con-
tent of the Divine Law.113 If Averroes had meant philosophy as a strictly
demonstrative science, his claim that philosophy is a universal Islamic obli-
gation would have been inconsistent with his view that most Muslims are
non-philosophers. A similar problem occurs in Maimonides. According to
the Mishneh Torah, the following is the first commandment of the Law of
Moses:
The foundation of the foundations and the pillar of the sciences is to know [leyda]
that there is a First Existent, and it is he who brings into existence everything that
exists. . . . To know this is a positive commandment for it is said: “I am the Lord
thy God” [Exod 20:2]. (Madda, Laws Concerning the Foundations of the Torah
1.1)
The demonstrative proofs for God’s existence are a central part of meta-
physics, according to Maimonides, and metaphysics cannot be taught to
“the multitude,” but only to “a few solitary individuals of a very special
sort” (Guide 1.34, 53/79). How, then, can knowledge of God’s existence
112 See Kashf, chapter 1.

113 Note that Averroes is very careful in his formulation. Although the “Law makes it obligatory
[awjaba] to reflect upon existing things . . . by means of intellectual syllogisms,” it only “calls for
[daā] and urges [h.aththa]” to do so by means “of the most complete kind of syllogism” which “is
the one called demonstration [burhān]” (Fas.l, 2–3). The latter thus is the best mode of reasoning,
but not a universal obligation.
be a universal obligation? If “knowledge” in this passage means “demon-
strative knowledge,” this would have the absurd consequence that the
great majority of Jews would be forced to transgress the most fundamen-
tal commandment of the Law of Moses. Here again the solution lies in
the assumption that Maimonides is using “to know” in an inclusive way,
comprising the “different kinds of knowledge” which, according to al-
Fārābı̄, are established in the souls of human beings “equipped by nature
for different approaches to truth.”114
Additional evidence for the falāsifa’s view that the purpose of the Divine
Law is to maximize rational self-rule, is their unanimous critique of mem-
bers of the religious community whose motivation to observe the Divine
Law is not insight into the goodness of what the Law prescribes, but fear
of punishment or desire for reward. Averroes, it is worth noting, criticizes
Plato for including the “myth of Er” in the Republic – an eschatological
myth suggesting that a moral life is rewarded and an immoral life punished
after death (see Comm. Rep., 105/148). Maimonides, as we saw, describes
this kind of inadequate motivation as “serving God out of fear” which he
opposes to “serving God out of love” – that is, doing what the Divine Law
prescribes on account of knowing why it is beneficial and desiring it for
that sake (Madda, Laws Concerning Repentance 10.5). Fear of punishment
and desire for reward are legitimate motives only at the stage of habituation
and should be replaced as much as possible by rational insight.
The importance of the Divine Law is not limited to enabling non-
philosophers to share in rational self-rule. As a stepping stone to full rational
self-rule it plays an important role for philosophers as well. For there is, of
course, a period of transition during which potential philosophers cannot
yet do what reason prescribes because they have not yet reached the stage
at which reason can take charge. During this period they must rely on the
lawgiver’s wisdom as embodied in the Divine Law for guidance. When they
advance in their studies, this pre-philosophical understanding is gradually
replaced through knowledge.115
114 Cf. Maimonides’s twofold notion of wisdom (h.ikma) referring to the literal and the allegorical
sense of the Law of Moses (1, introduction, 8/12). See also Guide 1.63 where Maimonides portrays
Moses as providing proofs of God’s existence to both the community as a whole and “the men
of knowledge” among them (106/155); the proofs for the community as a whole must have been
non-demonstrative according to Maimonides.
115 On “elevating” not-yet-philosophers, see again al-Fārābı̄, Mabādi 17.4 and Maimonides, Guide
1.33. Compare the concept of “faith” (pistis) discussed in chapter 2. Unlike Christian philosophers,
however, the falāsifa would not describe the transition as one from faith to knowledge, but as one
from imperfect to perfect knowledge.
If the highest good consists in the perfection of reason, culminating in
the apprehension of God, this not only seems to exclude most members of
the community from achieving perfection, but it would also be perverse
if the Divine Law provided them with an understanding of God, nature,
and their place in the order of things which enables them to grasp what
the perfection is that by nature they are unable to attain. Moreover, if the
motivation to do what reason prescribes depends on the desire to know –
the intellectual love of God in Maimonides’s words – it is unclear how
non-philosophers can make the transition from serving God out of fear
to serving God out of love. The falāsifa respond to these objections on
the basis of their Aristotelian epistemology. Recall that for Aristotle all
cognitions – from sense-perceptions to the grasp of the first principles of
being – are part of a continuum of knowledge and provide the pleasure of
intellectual activity. Hence “all human beings” not only “desire to know by
nature” but are also able to satisfy this desire to a greater or lesser degree.
Al-Fārābı̄, for example, argues that intellectual perfection includes various
levels of which demonstrative knowledge and the pleasure derived from
it is only the highest. Below it are a wide range of experiences that can
be described as cultural-religious. Like demonstrative knowledge, they are
“cognitions and apprehensions [maārif wa-idrākāt] that are sought only
for the sake of apprehension and the pleasure of apprehension, not for the
sake of being utilized” to attain other goals. They constitute the highest
good for non-philosophers. These experiences include:
tales and traditions, as well as histories of . . . nations, which human beings use
and listen to only for the sake of enjoyment. For the meaning of “joy” is nothing
but attaining comfort and pleasure. Likewise, watching actors and listening to the
words by which they imitate things, listening to poems and going through what
one understands of the poems and the tales that are recited or read – all these are
used by the person who finds joy and comfort in them only for the sake of the
pleasure derived from what he understands. The more certain the apprehension
of what he apprehends, the more perfect his pleasure. The more excellent and
perfect [afd.al wa-akmal] in himself the person who apprehends, the more perfect
and complete [akmal wa-atamm] is the pleasure in his apprehension. (Falsafat
Arist.ūt.ālı̄s, 61/73)
Hence the perfection derived from demonstrative knowledge and the per-
fection derived from non-demonstrative forms of understanding do not
differ in kind, but only in degree. The same consideration underlies Mai-
monides’s call on all members of the Jewish community to devote most of
their time to study and only a small portion of it to work. Although the
quality of their insights and the pleasure derived from them will vary, the
difference here, too, is one of degree.
While a community of philosophers in which God’s rule and self-rule
perfectly coincide cannot be attained according to the falāsifa, the sharı̄a
and the torah, like the nomoi of Magnesia, aim at a community of “free
men” that embodies this ideal as much as the diversity of human nature
allows.
medieval jewish enlightenment

In the thirteenth century Maimonides’s Jewish students in Christian Europe
devoted themselves with religious zeal to teaching philosophy to the gen-
eral public.116 The literary genres they used for this purpose included not
only study aids such as dictionaries of technical terms and philosophical
encyclopedias, but also distinctly Jewish genres, from commentaries on the
Bible to synagogue sermons.117 As a consequence, the Jewish communities
in medieval Europe witnessed what was likely the most comprehensive
attempt before the Enlightenment to bring philosophy into every liv-
ing room! At the same time, however, Maimonides’s students also held
that access to philosophy must be restricted to the select few.118 Given
Maimonides’s approach to enlightening non-philosophers, this should no
longer strike us as a puzzle. A brief look at Samuel ibn Tibbon (d. c.1232),
the founder of Maimonideanism in medieval Europe, will show how Mai-
monides’s disciples take up his project.119
Ibn Tibbon agrees with Maimonides that the Divine Law has two sides: a
secret side directed towards philosophers and a public side directed towards
non-philosophers. Like Maimonides he characterizes these two sides by
means of Proverbs 25:11 – “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in set-
tings of silver” – and conceives the relationship between them as dynamic.
Jewish sages have a twofold task: on the one hand, teaching philosophy and
disclosing the Divine Law’s allegorical content to philosophically talented
students; on the other, reconfiguring the Law’s public teachings according
to the scientific culture of their time and place which determines the ability
to understand of non-philosophers. Also according to Ibn Tibbon, Moses
had to resort to God’s pedagogical ruse in history to counteract the beliefs,
practices, and institutions of the Sabians, for “Moses gave the Torah at a
116 See Freudenthal (1993); Fraenkel (2010a); Robinson (2012).

117 See Robinson (2012). 118 See Ravitzky (1977); (1981); (1990).
119 On Ibn Tibbon, see Fraenkel (2007) and Robinson (2007).
Medieval Jewish Enlightenment 203
time when the community of the Sabians encompassed the entire world”
(PQ 335/309).The Sabian context shaped the Divine Law’s “settings of sil-
ver,” which cover the “golden apple” – that is, the Divine Law’s allegorical
content. However, through the small “holes” in the silver settings readers
can catch a glimpse of the golden apple. The next stage in the process of
gradually disclosing the allegorical content of the Divine Law is the period
of King David, traditionally considered the author of Psalms, and King
Solomon, traditionally considered the author of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and
the Song of Songs (see 18/16; MYM 22, 174). These books reconfigure the
relationship between the Divine Law’s secret and public side in response to
a more advanced scientific culture: David and Solomon “widened the holes
in the settings of silver with which [Moses] had covered his apples of gold.”
They replace “obscure words with different words that point more clearly
to their purpose” (PQ 52–53/48–49), thus giving non-philosophers access
to previously concealed allegorical doctrines. After David and Solomon,
additional stages in the process of “widening the holes in the settings of
silver” are the prophets, the rabbinic sages, Maimonides, and Ibn Tibbon
himself (17–23/15–20; cf. MYM 22, 174–75). Ibn Tibbon’s account of this
process, while fuller and more systematic than the account in the Guide,
remains within Maimonides’s conceptual framework. Consider how he
describes Maimonides’s own contribution:
And when . . . the divine philosopher and Torah scholar, our master Moses [Mai-
monides] saw that only a few were left who understood the indications [ha-
remazim] made by those who spoke through the holy spirit, the prophets, and
the rabbinic sages who widened [the settings of silver] with regard to the Law’s
secrets he, in turn, added to their indications an explanation, likewise by means
of indications, in many places, explaining openly that [God] is not a body and
not subject to any of the properties and accidents of bodies. . . . In the same way
he also proceeded with regard to the reasons for the commandments, for he saw
the great need to reveal them because of the nations which interpret all of them
allegorically. (MYM 22, 174–75)
Ibn Tibbon identifies the two key elements in Maimonides’s account of

the gradual reform of Jewish beliefs and practices: God’s incorporeality
and the historical explanation of the reasons for the commandments. With
regard to God’s incorporeality Ibn Tibbon was surely aware of the Almo-
had context that prompted Maimonides’s stance.120 He can thus argue
120 Samuel’s father, Judah ibn Tibbon, was like Maimonides a Spanish refugee from the Almohads
who had abolished the protected status of religious communities normally recognized under Islam
as “people of the book,” most importantly Jews and Christians.
that Maimonides was able to “widen the holes in the settings of silver”
because non-philosophers in his time, who grew up under Almohad rule,
had been habituated to the doctrine of God’s incorporeality. The main
difference between Maimonides’s and Ibn Tibbon’s concepts of habitu-
ation to true beliefs is that for Maimonides habituation is the effect of
legislation, while for Ibn Tibbon it is a function of the scientific cul-
ture of the non-Jewish environment. For Ibn Tibbon, therefore, all stages
of the process are contingent upon the changing intellectual contexts of
Jewish history. For Maimonides, by contrast, only the stage of Moses is
shaped by the beliefs, practices, and institutions of the Sabians, whereas
later stages are the outcome of the reform efforts of Moses’s successors like
himself.
From the Muslim world in the twelfth century to Christian Europe
in the thirteenth, the cultural conditions of understanding changed again
sufficiently to require that Maimonides’s reconfiguration of the Divine
Law’s silver settings be replaced with a new configuration adapted to Ibn
Tibbon’s own time and place:
I revealed, therefore, . . . what I revealed concerning [things] that nobody had
revealed before, so that we may not become a disgrace in the eyes of our neigh-
bors. . . . And the truth that will be apprehended through [this treatise] is the
knowledge of the true God. (MYM 22, 175)
For a contemporary of Ibn Tibbon, therefore, the right way to approach

the Divine Law’s allegorical content is no longer through the Guide,
nor through the canonical Jewish texts preceding the Guide from the
Bible to the Talmud, but rather through Ibn Tibbon’s works of biblical
interpretation. Of these the most important is his Treatise ‘Let the Waters
be Gathered’ in which Ibn Tibbon “widens the holes in the settings of
silver” covering the “Account of the Beginning” and the “Account of the
Chariot” – that is, physics and metaphysics according to Maimonides.
It should now be clear how the framework worked out by Maimonides
and further developed by Ibn Tibbon justifies what can be called the
medieval Jewish Enlightenment, in particular the use of distinctly Jewish
genres for disseminating philosophy. All this is part of “widening the
holes in the settings of silver.” Unlike Averroes’s interpretation of Islam,
therefore, Maimonides’s interpretation of Judaism can address not only
Jewish concerns about studying philosophy in a religious setting, but also
Platonic concerns about teaching philosophy to the general public. Moses
Narboni, a fourteenth-century Maimonidean, bears eloquent witness to
the continuity of this distinctive conception of a philosophical religion:
The master [Maimonides] of blessed memory briefly hints at what we reveal to
you at length, for times and generations naturally change. As a consequence, with
respect to scientific truths, we can make the holes in the settings of silver wider
than they were in the past, because in this time, the beliefs accepted on the basis of
authority [ha-mefursam] are no longer at odds with scientific doctrines [ha-muskal]
as it was in the past. And the master [Maimonides] of blessed memory was the
first cause of this. (Comm. Guide 2.19, 34a)
between maimonides and spinoza: elijah delmedigo

In the next chapter I will argue that Spinoza interprets Christianity as a
philosophical religion and that this interpretation is in important respects
modeled on the philosophical interpretation of Islam and Judaism pro-
posed by the falāsifa. While Spinoza had no first-hand knowledge of
Muslim philosophy, he carefully studied Maimonides and other Jewish
philosophers. However, where Maimonides and his medieval disciples dif-
fer from Averroes, Spinoza consistently sides with the latter. He clearly
rejects the legislation of philosophical doctrines, opposes the allegorical
interpretation of Scripture, and in general stresses the independence of
philosophy and religion in a way that has much in common with Aver-
roes. Although Spinoza did not read Averroes’s philosophical-theological
treatises, it is very likely that he was familiar with their main claims. For
these were taken up by the Jewish Renaissance Averroist Elijah Delmedigo
(d. c.1493) in his Hebrew treatise, Examination of Religion, a copy of which
was in Spinoza’s library. All parallels between Spinoza and Averroes can
be explained on the assumption that Spinoza read Delmedigo’s treatise.121
Clarifying Delmedigo’s relationship to Averroes and Maimonides, which
has been persistently misrepresented in the scholarly literature, is thus
important to understand the medieval background to Spinoza.
To see how Delmedigo appropriates key ideas of Averroes, a good starting
point is his explanation of the purpose of the Law of Moses:
And we say that adherents of religion who are correct in their views do not doubt
that the purpose of the Law of Moses is to guide us in human affairs and in good
deeds, as well as in true opinions insofar as this is possible for the entire people,
and according to the nature of the select few [ha-yehidim] with respect to what is
their exclusive domain. Hence the Law of Moses and the prophets set down certain
fundamental principles by way of tradition and by way of rhetorical and dialectical
explanations in accordance with the method of assent [mishpat ha-immut] that is
characteristic of the multitude. And [the Law of Moses] stirred the select few to
121 On Averroes, Delmedigo, and Spinoza, see Fraenkel (2010a) and Fraenkel (forthcoming c).
investigate according to the method of assent characteristic of them [that is, the
demonstrative method] concerning these issues. . . . Thus the following becomes
clear . . . that the Law of Moses aims at the perfection of every adherent of religion
insofar as possible to him. And since demonstrative science is impossible for the
multitude as a whole, while it is possible for the select few – for this reason the
Law of Moses requires both these things [that is, assent on the basis of rhetorical
and dialectical arguments and assent on the basis of demonstrative arguments].
(Behinat ha-dat, 76)122
Like Averroes, Delmedigo concedes that the methods used by the Divine
Law for the guidance of non-philosophers – for example rhetorical and
dialectical arguments – lead to contradictions with philosophical doc-
trines. Delmedigo stresses from the outset that methods vary significantly
from one discipline to another. The same biblical text, for example, will
be studied in different ways by a Talmudist whose goal is to arrive at
a legal decision, by a grammarian whose goal is to provide evidence for
a grammatical rule, and by an exegete whose goal is to clarify the text’s
meaning (see 75). The inference Delmedigo wants the reader to draw is
clear: a prophet whose goal is political – ordering the religious community
towards what is best – will speak differently about things like God, angels,
or providence than a philosopher whose goal is scientific – establishing what
is true and false.123 While the prophet’s methods are dialectical, rhetorical,
and poetical, the philosopher uses demonstrations. These goal-dependent
differences in method can, but need not, lead to contradictions. There is,
for example, no contradiction between prophetic and philosophical claims
about God’s existence and unity (see 76–78). For the prophet, however, the
scope of true beliefs, which he can convey, and the quality of the proofs,
on which he can ground them, are limited by his overall goal: to order
the religious community made up of philosophers and non-philosophers
towards what is best. If the goal-dependent differences in method give rise
to contradictions, one way to resolve them is through allegorical interpre-
tation. There are cases in which “a thing has an interpretation reserved
to the select few” (77). One such case is angels: for philosophers they are
entities “assumed to be separate from any body and corporeal attribute”
(93) – that is, the incorporeal intellects of the supralunar world as conceived
by medieval Aristotelians. In the Bible, by contrast, angels are described as
entities “apprehended through sense-perception as we apprehend bodies”
122 Cf. 98 on the goal of the Law of Moses.

123 On the difference in method between the Law of Moses and philosophy, see in particular
92–94.
(ibid.). This is a concession to non-philosophers who cannot grasp the
philosophical demonstrations for the existence and attributes of incorpo-
real intellects. If the prophet concludes that in order to attain his overall
goal it is required to convey a notion of angels to non-philosophers, he
must present them within a conceptual framework that they can under-
stand. Like Averroes, Delmedigo harshly criticizes the disclosing of such
allegorical interpretations in public:
Many of those who philosophize among the people of our nation have in my
opinion strayed from the method of the Law of Moses and its intention. And
this is because they sought to change all the literal meanings of the verses [peshate
ha-pesuqim] which are [found] in most of the branches and stories of the Law,
as if they wished to make the words of the Law more beautiful and to ground
them on the meanings [inferred by] scientific syllogism [ha-heqqesh ha-sikhli].
And they did not succeed in either this or that . . . and I think that this should
not be done at all. . . . My method, therefore, is very different from the method
of many who philosophize in our nation. They changed the goal both of the
Law and of philosophy and mixed the two [kinds] of investigation – the theological
and the speculative [ha-torani ve-ha-iyyuni] – together, as well as the universal
and the particular method [ha-derekh ha-kolel ve-ha-miyyuhad]. And they are
like intermediaries between the theologians [ha-medabberim] among the religious
people and the philosophers. (Behinat ha-dat, 93–94)
Delmedigo explicitly mentions Maimonides as someone who “walked on

the way” he criticizes, although he stresses what he surmises were Mai-
monides’s noble motives (84). As we saw, Delmedigo attaches great impor-
tance to the distinct goals and methods of philosophy and prophecy.
While the method of the philosopher is “universal” – establishing what
is true and false on the basis of demonstrations which are valid always
and everywhere – the method of the prophet is “particular” – ordering
a religious community towards what is best under particular natural and
cultural circumstances. If the prophet judges that circumstances require
presenting angels to non-philosophers in corporeal terms, his purpose
would be undermined by a philosopher who publicly discloses that the
prophet’s account, correctly understood, refers to incorporeal intellects.
The philosopher would be disregarding the political considerations that
led to the allegorical representation in the first place.124 First habituating
non-philosophers to philosophical doctrines and then disclosing them in
124 According to Delmedigo, the disclosure of the allegorical interpretation of angels led to conflict
and strife between philosophers and kabbalists in the Jewish community (93–94). His account of
the conflict is clearly modeled on Averroes’s description of the emergence of factions in Islam as a
consequence of the disclosure of allegorical interpretations; see Fas.l, 29–32.
the Law of Moses through allegorical interpretation, as advocated by Mai-
monides and medieval Maimonideans like Samuel ibn Tibbon, is thus
clearly not in line with Delmedigo’s Averroism. Like Averroes, Delmedigo
stresses the danger of disclosing the allegorical content of the Law of Moses
to non-philosophers:
When we tell these deep things [eleh ha-amuqot] as they truly are to the multitude,
we do not benefit them, for they do not understand them, but we cause them
great damage. (Behinat ha-dat, 96)
It would, therefore, be a mistake to publicly interpret passages in the Law
of Moses that conflict with demonstrated philosophical doctrines. But this
does not mean that contradictions cannot in principle be resolved through
allegorical interpretation.
Many scholars, however, have argued that Delmedigo is not commit-
ted to the fundamental principle that for Averroes defines the relationship
between philosophy and religion – that “the truth does not contradict the
truth.” Instead, Delmedigo is said to have adopted a “double truth” doc-
trine, allegedly set forth by Christian Averroists.125 What scholars mean by
Delmedigo’s “double truth” doctrine is that he recognizes the existence of
contradictions between philosophical and theological propositions. In such
cases theology overrules philosophy – that is, the philosophical proposition
is taken to be false and the theological proposition true. If this were the
case, it would pose a problem to my claim that Delmedigo’s Examina-
tion of Religion helps explain the Averroistic traits of Spinoza’s conception
of the relationship between philosophy and religion. For Spinoza, as we
will see, stresses, like Averroes, that “the truth does not contradict the
truth.”
The case Delmedigo considers is the conflict between two propositions
of which neither can be conclusively demonstrated.126 In such a case a
philosopher ought to choose the side which is most likely in light of the
available evidence. Since the available evidence may change as a conse-
quence of scientific progress, the position that was less likely at one point
may become more likely at another. The question is what to do if such a
conflict occurs between a philosophical proposition – established by sound
scientific methods and hence most likely given the available evidence – and
a fundamental principle of the Law of Moses. According to Delmedigo,
125 See Guttmann (1927); Geffen (1973–74), 74; Ross (1984). I have shown elsewhere that this interpreta-
tion is not defensible. The following paragraph summarizes the discussion in Fraenkel (forthcoming
c).
126 What follows is my interpretation of Behinat ha-dat, 77–85.
fundamental principles of the Law of Moses are principles without which
the purpose of the Law cannot be achieved. It is, for example, not possible
to order the community through a Divine Law unless there is a God who
is the source of the Law. Hence God’s existence is a fundamental principle
of the Law of Moses. While there is no conflict between the Law and
philosophy in this case, in other cases a conflict may arise. Such conflicts
cannot be resolved on scientific grounds since the available evidence sup-
ports the philosophical position and contradicts the principle of the Law.
They also cannot be resolved by reinterpreting the Law, because funda-
mental principles are necessary for achieving the Law’s goal and hence are
not open to reinterpretation. Since the Jewish philosopher, insofar as he
is a scientist, must rely on sound scientific methods, he is led to assent
to the philosophical position. At the same time, he is committed to the
truth of the Law of Moses insofar as he is a Jew, and thus remains con-
vinced that once all evidence becomes available, the Law of Moses will be
vindicated. Philosophical and religious commitments can therefore be at
variance temporarily on account of the contingent state of scientific knowl-
edge. Absolutely speaking, however, they must be in agreement. It is true
that Averroes did not consider such a case. Delmedigo’s most likely model
is Maimonides’s account of the conflict between the Law of Moses, which
claims that the world is created, and the Aristotelian tradition, which claims
that the world is eternal. For Maimonides, neither claim can be conclu-
sively demonstrated. Although it is possible to interpret the Law of Moses
allegorically according to the Aristotelian position, this would lead to the
subversion of the Law’s fundamental purpose (see Guide 2.25). The conflict
is thus set up exactly like the conflicts considered by Delmedigo. Unlike
Delmedigo, however, Maimonides attempts to resolve the conflict scientif-
ically. Although Aristotle, according to Maimonides, agrees with him that
neither position can be conclusively proven, he considered the eternity
thesis more likely on account of the scientific evidence available to him.
Maimonides’s reexamination of the problem leads him to conclude that
the creation thesis is more likely in light of new scientific discoveries made
since Aristotle’s time. Hence the position of the Law of Moses cannot only
be explained in light of political considerations, but is also more plausible
from a scientific point of view.127 Why is Delmedigo opposed to settling the
conflict in the way proposed by Maimonides? On Maimonides’s account
a Jewish scientist in Aristotle’s time, even if he had carefully examined all
127 See Guide 2.13–25. For the concept of scientific progress, see in particular 2.19 and 2.24. For
considerations of probability, see 2.23.
available evidence, would have agreed with Aristotle that eternity is more
plausible than creation. For this is how Maimonides construes the case:
given the available evidence, Aristotle’s choice of eternity over creation was
scientifically sound. Had the Jewish scientist in Aristotle’s time tried to
resolve the conflict scientifically, the consequences would have been disas-
trous: either he would have rejected the Law of Moses, or reinterpreted it in
light of the philosophical position, or rejected philosophy as incompatible
with his religious commitments. If Maimonides is right that assessments
of likelihood can change on account of scientific progress, they cannot
be relied on for securing the fundamental principles of religion. At times
the available evidence may support the Law of Moses, at other times it
may support the position contradicting it. Attempting to settle the dis-
pute scientifically in these cases thus risks causing fatal damage to either
the religious or the philosophical project. On this picture, Delmedigo’s
recommendation to keep the two projects apart has nothing to do with a
“double truth” doctrine. It simply means that a Jewish scientist, like every
scientist, should resolve scientific disputes in light of the best available
evidence. If this leads him to a position at odds with the Law of Moses,
he can rest assured that he is mistaken, while knowing that his inference is
scientifically sound. He will leave it to future scientific progress to provide
the evidence that will tip the scale in favor of the Law of Moses. This is
how Delmedigo himself proceeded:
Therefore I did not choose in my treatises devoted to scientific investigation [ha-

limmud ha-sikhli] to dispute with the philosophers on issues on which they disagree
with us by means of the philosophical method; for scientific investigation cannot
[resolve such disputes]. Instead I relied on prophecy and the true tradition. And
I think that earlier members of our religious community who wished to clarify
these things through scientific investigation changed the methods of investigation
which are unique for each object of study. (Behinat ha-dat, 83)
It should now also be clear why, according to Delmedigo, a fundamental

principle that is in conflict with a philosophical proposition “can only be
verified by the method of the Law” (78). If it cannot be established on
scientific grounds, it must be inferred as a necessary condition for attaining
the goal of the Law of Moses. Within this political framework the principle
is intelligible. There is thus no need to attribute to Delmedigo a “double
truth” doctrine which allows for genuine contradictions between philoso-
phy and religion and which requires reason to submit to the authority of a
superrational revelation.
Delmedigo’s considerations about the relationship between philosophy
and the Law of Moses give him additional reasons to be cautious about
allegorical interpretation. Not only is the public disclosure of allegorical
doctrines harmful to non-philosophers, but the political purpose of the Law
of Moses may under no circumstances be undermined. “We are perplexed,”
Delmedigo writes:
about the difficulty to decide . . . which of these issues should be interpreted alle-
gorically and which should not. . . . And we say that the man who truly knows
the fundamental principles of the Law and its purpose, knows which of the issues
contained in the Law are fit to be interpreted and which are not. . . . And those
who stand out in the religious community [he-hashuvim me-anshe ha-dat] ought
to reflect deeply about these issues and be on their guard when it comes to their
own reasoning [ve-lahshod sikhlam]. (Behinat ha-dat, 93)
The great caution Delmedigo urges when it comes to dealing with possible
conflicts between philosophy and the Law also helps to explain a second
point on which he departs from the Averroistic position. In the Decisive
Treatise, Averroes not only argues that every contradiction between the
Divine Law and philosophy can in principle be resolved through allegori-
cal interpretation, but also that the philosopher must resolve them in this
manner (see Fas.l, 9–10 and 19–20). One may ask what benefit can be
derived from engaging in this interpretative exercise, given Averroes’s strict
prohibition on disclosing allegorical interpretations in public. Why is it
not sufficient if the philosopher is in principle committed to the agree-
ment between the Divine Law and philosophy? While Delmedigo allows
for allegorically resolving contradictions as long as they do not involve
fundamental principles of the Law, he is clearly not enthusiastic about
doing so. The best way to study the Law of Moses is in light of its own
peculiar method and purpose. The aim should be to understand how the
Law’s contents are necessary for or contribute to promoting the perfection
of the religious community. Instead of working out, for example, how the
anthropomorphic representation of angels allegorically refers to incorporeal
intellects, the question should be which political considerations motivated
Moses to represent angels anthropomorphically in the first place. Seeking
for the allegorical content of the Law of Moses would mean studying it
with the aim of establishing the truth. This, however, is the aim of phil-
osophy. It would be just as pointless as pursuing the aim of prophecy in
a philosophical treatise by making dialectical, rhetorical, or poetical argu-
ments to convey its content to non-philosophers. It is thus not surprising
that Delmedigo casts doubt on the philosopher’s obligation to provide alle-
gorical explanations. Even when no fundamental principles of the Law are
concerned, the philosopher should only “perhaps” (ulai) interpret passages
which, taken literally, contradict philosophical doctrines (93). Delmedigo
thus puts even more stress than Averroes on the methodological indepen-
dence of philosophical and prophetic discourse. He remains committed to
the core assumption of medieval Muslim and Jewish philosophers about
the unity of the truth – the assumption that grounds the authority of the
Law of Moses for a philosopher who does not recognize a superrational
source of validation. Given the distinct methods and goals of philosophy
and prophecy, however, Delmedigo sees no point in working out this unity
in practice by proving religious principles philosophically or by interpret-
ing the Bible allegorically, whether in public or in private. As we will now
see, the same is true for Spinoza.
c h a p ter 4
Christianity as a philosophical religion in Spinoza
introduction
Spinoza was no less wary than Socrates of the charge of impiety. In a letter
to Jacob Ostens he writes:
Does that man, pray, renounce all religion, who declares that God must be acknow-
ledged as the highest good, and that he must be loved as such in a free spirit? And
that in this alone does our supreme happiness and freedom consist? (Ep. 42, G iv,
220/879)1
Proponents of a philosophical religion would surely be delighted to find in

Spinoza a fellow-advocate of the intellectual worship of God. They would
be equally delighted about his claim to have shown in the Theological-
Political Treatise that this form of worship is “the core [summa] of the Divine
Law . . . and its supreme commandment” and “that God revealed this very
Law to his prophets” (223/880). Like the nomoi of Magnesia according to
Plato, and like the beliefs, practices, and institutions of Jews, Christians, and
Muslims according to the Alexandrians and the falāsifa, Spinoza’s Divine
Law directs the community to what is best – a life ordered by reason
towards the perfection of reason, culminating in the apprehension of God.
Like Christian philosophers, moreover, Spinoza identifies this divine order
with Christianity. To be created in God’s image, he claims, means to have
reason. And since Christ is Reason – or, in Spinoza’s terminology, God’s
“infinite intellect” – all human beings are Christians to the extent they
live under the guidance of reason. The more they perfect reason the more
they share in Christ. The model of human perfection is Adam before the
1 G = Gebhardt’s edition of Spinoza’s works. Note that references to the TTP are to Akkerman’s
edition. I use the following abbreviations in references to the Ethics: a = axiom; app = appendix; c =
corolarium; d = demonstration; da = definition of an affect; def = definition; p = proposition;
pref = preface; s = scholium.
213
214 Christianity as a philosophical religion in Spinoza
Fall. He stands for a community of “free men” in which God’s rule and
self-rule coincide. Since most human beings live under the guidance of the
imagination, however, God’s rule must be established through philosophy’s
handmaid: a pedagogical-political program that provides guidance to non-
philosophers, yet aims to realize the community of free men as much as
human nature allows.
Nobody denies, of course, that Spinoza has much to say about God. In
the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect he describes his decision to
pursue philosophy as a conversion from inferior goods – “wealth, honor,
and sensual pleasure” – to God (TdIE 3). The Ethics begins with a part
entitled On God and ends with an account of human perfection attained
through knowledge and love of God. Already in his lifetime, however,
Spinoza was reviled as an atheist, a view that has recently regained currency.
Only that this time Spinoza’s alleged atheism is not a curse word, but
reason for praise among scholars who portray Spinoza as a founding figure
of modernity – from secular humanism to liberal democracy. What gave
rise to this perception? Since Spinoza’s philosophy leaves no room for a
transcendent God, it seems incompatible with what we mean by biblical
religion. How can Spinoza identify God and Nature and hold on to a
God who creates the world, performs miracles, responds to prayers, talks
to prophets, issues commandments, punishes and rewards, or incarnates
in Christ? The story in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect,
we are tempted to conclude, is about Spinoza’s conversion to the God
of the philosophers, not the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – to use
Pascal’s famous distinction. This seems to be corroborated by Spinoza’s
critique of religion in the TTP. If we look at what the Bible literally says,
Spinoza argues, we find fantastic stories about the God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob who creates the world, performs miracles, and so forth. They
bear witness to the vivid imagination of the prophets, but tell us nothing
about God’s true nature as demonstrated in philosophy. Hence churchmen
cannot appeal to the Bible to suppress free philosophical inquiry. Add to
this Spinoza’s experience of violence perpetrated in the name of the God
of the Bible – from Europe’s wars of religion to his excommunication from
Amsterdam’s Jewish community. Could he not expect to usher in a new
age of toleration by showing that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is
just a figment of the prophetic imagination? Spinoza, then, seems to have
had excellent theoretical and practical reasons for rejecting the God of the
Bible. Consider, finally, how well all this seems to fit with the evidence we
have about Spinoza’s views at the time of his excommunication. The Law
Introduction 215
of Moses “is not true,” he is reported as saying, “nor is there a God except
philosophically.”2
As attractive as many may find this narrative, it is by and large without
foundation. It is also by no means undisputed in the reception history
of Spinoza. The counter-narrative begins with Lodewijk Meyer, Spinoza’s
doctor and friend, who assisted him with the publication of his works.
In a treatise on Bible interpretation Meyer announces Spinoza’s Ethics as
the “infallible norm” provided by philosophy for correctly interpreting
Scripture. The lack of an infallible norm gave rise to many false interpre-
tations that, in turn, led to divisions and conflicts in Christianity. Meyer
thus expected the Ethics to pave the way to no less than Christianity’s
reunification!3 Jarig Jelles, another close friend from Spinoza’s Collegiate
circle, defends the Christian nature of Spinoza’s philosophy throughout his
preface for Spinoza’s Opera Posthuma. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, whose
disclosure as a closet Spinozist by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi triggered the
pantheism controversy in eighteenth-century Germany, equates the “eter-
nal gospel of reason” with the true core of Scripture.4 Finally, the view
of German Romantics is expressed well in Goethe’s characterization of
Spinoza as “theissimus and christianissimus.”5 Since then, as Carl Gebhardt
noted in 1932, nobody “has failed to appreciate the religious character of
Spinoza’s philosophy.”6
So is Spinoza an atheist or a Christian? The first thing to note is a puzzle:
Spinoza both rejects and affirms that the God of the philosophers is the
God of the Bible. According to the first two chapters of the TTP the God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is clearly not the God of the philosophers
because neither the patriarchs nor the prophets had clear and distinct
knowledge of God, but conceived God through the imagination. Else-
where, however, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob clearly is the God
of the philosophers. Consider Spinoza’s interpretation of Adam’s Fall in the
scholium to E4p68 as a parable for man’s fall from freedom into bondage.
The freedom Adam lost, Spinoza argues:
2 I discuss this and other testimonies below.

3 See my discussion of Meyer below. 4 See my discussion in the epilogue.
5 Letter to Jacobi, June 9, 1785. Similarly members of the Haskalah – the Jewish Enlightenment – try
to appropriate Spinoza for an intellectually respectable interpretation of Judaism, for example Meir
Letteris and Shlomo Rubin. See Schwartz (2007), chapter 5, and Fraenkel (2009a). It is hard to see,
however, how Spinoza can be recruited for a Jewish agenda.
6 Gebhardt (1932), 339.
the patriarchs [that is, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob] later regained under the guidance
of the spirit of Christ, that is the idea of God [idea Dei], on which alone it depends
that a man should be free and should desire for mankind the good that he desires
for himself.
The idea Dei is God’s “infinite intellect” who apprehends “God’s attributes
and his affections” (E2p4d). If the patriarchs were guided by God’s infinite
intellect to freedom, they must have had clear and distinct knowledge of
God.
Spinoza, then, seems to engage in both the critique of biblical religion
and its philosophical reinterpretation. Even more puzzling is that the for-
mer entails the rejection of the latter. All ties between philosophy and
religion must be cut, Spinoza argues in the theological part of the TTP.
Properly understood philosophy and religion each has its own goal and
method and does not interfere in the other’s sphere. While the goal of phi-
losophy is to determine what is true by means of demonstrations, the goal
of religion is to ensure obedience to the law by means of biblical narratives
appealing to the imagination. Spinoza’s critique of religion leads to the
rejection of two alternative ways of conceiving the relationship between
philosophy and religion: “dogmatism” which subjects Scripture to rea-
son, and “skepticism” which subjects reason to Scripture. By “dogmatism”
Spinoza means the philosophical reinterpretation of a religious tradition
which he illustrates through Maimonides’s interpretation of Judaism.
What is the solution to this puzzle? I will argue that Spinoza is primar-
ily concerned with a philosophical reinterpretation of Christianity. Taken
literally, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is part of a pedagogical-
political program for non-philosophers. Allegorically, however, he is Deus
sive Natura. Spinoza’s celebrated critique of religion, by contrast, is a sec-
ondary project. It is not necessary to defend his views on religion and politics
in the TTP, it accounts for some of the main flaws in the TTP’s argument,
and quite possibly was not part of the TTP’s original plan. Indeed, its
inclusion in the TTP is so much at odds with Spinoza’s theological-political
principles that in a Spinozistic state bookstores would arguably not sell the
TTP.7 It would have been easier to recognize that Spinoza’s approach to
religion is a version of what he calls dogmatism, had he not used Mai-
monides to illustrate this approach. As we saw in the previous chapter,
Maimonides deviates in important respects from the standard version of
a philosophical religion advocated by the falāsifa, since he adopts the
7 Cf. Garber (2008).

Introduction 217
Almohad program of enforcing philosophical doctrines by law and dis-
closing them in Scripture through allegorical interpretation. Maimonides’s
version of a philosophical religion, unlike the standard version, is thus
incompatible with Spinoza’s concept of freedom of thought and expres-
sion. Where Maimonides deviates from the standard version, Spinoza sides
with the latter, in particular with the Averroism of Elijah Delmedigo.
If Spinoza is at heart a dogmatic, why did he write a critique of religion
that entails a critique of dogmatism? Defending the freedom of thought
and expression is the key purpose of the TTP. At some point Spinoza seems
to have concluded that from the standpoint of dogmatism he could not
efficiently avert the threat posed by the Calvinist church to this freedom in
the Netherlands. An efficient defense, he reasoned, requires showing that
Scripture contains no truth. Although the truth of Scripture means very
different things to the Calvinist church and to proponents of a philosoph-
ical religion, neither position is defensible if it is denied altogether. Thus
by bringing down the one Spinoza could not help but also bring down the
other.8 Spinoza’s critique of religion, then, is motivated by, but not necessary
for, the TTP’s defense of freedom of thought and expression. At the same
time Spinoza remained convinced that religion as philosophy’s handmaid
is crucial to ensure God’s rule over imperfectly rational citizens. There is
thus an unresolved tension in Spinoza’s approach to religion.
Like ancient and medieval proponents of a philosophical religion,
Spinoza chose the philosophical reinterpretation of existing beliefs, prac-
tices, and institutions over a cultural revolution. Since he is writing in a
Christian context and for a Christian audience, it is not surprising that
the outcome of his effort is a version of Christianity. As scholars have
noted, the vocabulary and concepts Spinoza uses for this purpose were in
part shaped by the dialogue with his Christian audience – above all Col-
legiate and other progressive Protestant groups in the Netherlands.9 The
distinctive features of this interpretation, however, have no counterpart in
contemporary Christian circles. They are best understood in light of the
philosophical interpretation of Judaism and Islam, in particular as set forth
by Maimonides and Averroes. Spinoza became familiar with this interpre-
tation through his study of Jewish philosophy and substantially revised it
on the basis of his own philosophical and Christian commitments. Both
Lodewijk Meyer and Jarig Jelles point out similarities between Spinoza’s
8 Note that Spinoza even then continues to maintain that Scripture contains moral truth, however
with dubious arguments as we will see.
9 See Meinsma (1983 [1896]); Gebhardt (1932); Matheron (1971); Hunter (2005).
interpretation of Christianity and the interpretation set forth by Christian
proponents of a philosophical religion in antiquity, for example Origen.10
If the historical thesis for which I argue in this book holds, these simi-
larities bear witness to a shared Platonic legacy. Spinoza’s Christianity is
similar to Origen’s because Origen instantiates the same Platonic program
as Spinoza’s medieval Jewish and Muslim sources.
To appreciate the force of my argument in this chapter, perhaps it is best
to forget – or at least bracket – the critique of religion in the TTP until
reaching the chapter’s last section. I first show that in the writings prior
to the TTP Spinoza consistently advocates dogmatism. Then I outline
the dogmatic interpretation of religion set forth in his later writings, in
particular in the TTP. I contend that recognizing Spinoza’s dogmatism is
indispensable for understanding how philosophy, religion, and politics are
related in his thought. Finally, I discuss Spinoza’s critique of religion and
propose an explanation for why he chose to undermine his philosophical
interpretation of Christianity.
spinoza’s early dogmatism

The thesis that Spinoza endorsed dogmatism gives rise to an immedi-
ate problem. Although we lack direct evidence, we have a great deal of
indirect evidence suggesting that Spinoza rejected Scripture as a source
of truth at the time of his excommunication from Amsterdam’s Jewish
community in 1656.11 According to the testimony preserved by Gottlieb
Stolle, for example, Spinoza was claiming that “the books of Moses were
a man-made book [ein Menschlich Buch], and never written in this way
by Moses.”12 According to his interrogation by members of Amsterdam’s
Jewish community, recorded in Lucas’s Spinoza biography, he was claim-
ing that God is conceived as “a body” in the Bible, since “God is great as
the King-Prophet says [cf. Psalm 48:1], and it is impossible to understand
magnitude [grandeur] without extension [étendue].” Angels are conceived
as “mere phantoms,” being “invisible only because of their very fine and
diaphanous matter.” The soul is mortal: “It would be useless to search [in
Scripture] for something that would support its immortality. As for the
contrary view, it may be seen in a hundred places, and nothing is easier
10 See Meyer, Interpres 45 and 57; Jelles, Belydenisse des algemeenen en christelyken geloofs, 42.
11 For a detailed discussion of Spinoza’s excommunication, see Nadler (1999), chapter 6, and Nadler
(2002), chapter 1.
12 Freudenthal (1899), 222.
than to prove it.”13 These claims presuppose a literal interpretation of the
Bible like the one Spinoza will later advocate in the TTP. Consider, finally,
the testimonies of the Augustinian Monk Tomas Solano y Robles and of
Captain Miguel Perez de Maltranilla about things Spinoza was allegedly
saying when they met him in 1658. According to Brother Tomas, Spinoza
claimed that at first he had been “circumcised and kept the Jewish Law,”
but later had “changed his mind” because now it seemed to him “that the
said Law was not true, . . . nor was there a God except philosophically” (no
hera verdadera la dicha Ley . . . ni havia Dios sino filosofalmente). Captain
Miguel reports Spinoza’s claim that he “had been Jewish and professed
their Law,” but had “withdrawn from it because it was not good and was
false [no hera buena y era falsa].”14
My argument by no means depends on disputing the credibility of these
sources. It would be wrong, however, to connect them directly with the
TTP’s critique of religion. They are no more than the testimony of an
act of youthful rebellion from which Spinoza obviously quickly distanced
himself.15 For in his writings up to 1665 – the year in which he started work-
ing on the TTP – Spinoza consistently adheres to dogmatism whenever he
discusses the character of Scripture.
What dogmatism means for Spinoza becomes clear from his critique of it
in the TTP. As already mentioned, he illustrates dogmatism through Mai-
monides’s philosophical interpretation of Judaism. Spinoza first describes
Maimonides’s method of interpreting Scripture:
Maimonides . . . held that every passage of Scripture admits of various – and even
contrary – senses, and that we cannot be certain of the true sense of any passage
unless we know that, as we interpret it, there is nothing in that passage that does
not agree with reason, or is contrary to it [quod cum ratione non conveniat, aut
quod ei repugnet]. If in its literal sense it is found to be contrary to reason, then
however clear the passage may appear . . . he would not have hesitated to distort
13 Freudenthal (1899), 5–6. 14 See the documents in Revah (1959), 61–68.

15 It is tempting in this context to speculate about the content of a lost treatise by Spinoza whose
Spanish title, according to later sources, was Apologia para justificarse de su abdicacion de la sinagoga.
Parts of the Apologia may have been reworked in the TTP which suggests some continuity between
the TTP and Spinoza’s earlier views. For a discussion of the available evidence on the Apologia
and its relation to the TTP, see Gebhardt (1987), 224–28. The TTP, however, contains plenty of
material that would have justified Spinoza’s break with the synagogue without requiring his critique
of religion. Note also that according to Gebhardt, Lodewijk Meyer’s treatise on Bible interpretation
bears witness to “a striking familiarity with Spinoza’s views which can only be explained on the
assumption that he knew the Apologia” (226). If this is true, the Apologia must have endorsed
dogmatism. For as we will see, Meyer defends dogmatism in the belief to be in agreement with
Spinoza.
and explain away Scripture [Scripturam torquere et explicare] until it appeared to
teach the same doctrine.
Then Spinoza explains how Maimonides justifies his method and rejects
this justification:
But let us examine more closely the view of Maimonides. In the first place,
he assumes that the prophets were in agreement on all matters, and that they
were outstanding philosophers and theologians [summi Philosophi et Theologi]; for
he holds that they based their conclusions on scientific truth. But in chapter 2 we
have shown that this is false. Then again, he assumes that the sense of Scripture
cannot be established from Scripture alone. For scientific truth is not established
from Scripture itself (which demonstrates nothing, nor teaches the things of which
it speaks by means of definitions and from first causes). And therefore, according
to Maimonides, neither can Scripture’s true sense be established from itself, nor
should it be sought from it. But it is evident from this chapter that this point,
too, is false. For we have shown . . . that the sense of Scripture is established from
Scripture alone, and should be sought only from Scripture even when it is speaking
of matters known by the natural light of reason. (TTP 7.20–21/103–5)
Spinoza clearly understood the key claims on which Maimonides’s inter-
pretation of Judaism as a philosophical religion is based: that the prophets
were accomplished philosophers, that disagreements between the Divine
Law’s literal content and philosophical doctrines can be resolved through
allegorical interpretation, and that the purpose of the Divine Law’s literal
content is to offer pedagogical-political guidance to non-philosophers. As
Spinoza puts it elsewhere in the TTP: the dogmatic approach turns religion
into the “handmaid of philosophy” (ancilla philosophiae).16
Prior to the TTP, Spinoza consistently adhered to dogmatism whenever
he discussed Scripture. The most explicit statements occur in the Cogitata
Metaphysica, published in 1663 as an appendix to Spinoza’s exposition of
Descartes’s Principia Philosophiae, and in Spinoza’s correspondence with
Willem van Blyenbergh. Chapter 2.8 of the Cogitata discusses God’s will.
Since will, intellect, and essence are identical in God, God’s will, like
his essence, is eternal and immutable.17 This appears to be at odds with
16 See the title of TTP 15.

17 For God’s eternity and immutability, see CM 2.1 and 2.4. Spinoza stresses the identity of God’s will
and intellect in the TTP as well (see TTP 4 and 6). His considered position, however, is that will and
intellect belong to God’s modes; see E1p31. In either case, God’s causal activity is immutable. For an
explanation of doctrinal differences between the Ethics and the TTP, see below. Note that in CM
2.8 Spinoza says that “we fail to understand” how God’s essence, intellect, and will are distinguished
from one another. He notes that theologians use “the word personality . . . to explain this matter,”
the “meaning” of which “we do not know.” This is Spinoza’s polite way of signaling that his view is at
odds with an orthodox religious doctrine. Instead of outright dismissing the doctrine of the Trinity,
Scripture, according to which “God hates some things and loves other
things.” Taken literally these statements imply that God’s will is affected
by created things. Hence there seems to be a contradiction: God’s will is
immutable according to philosophy, but mutable according to Scripture:
But when we say that God hates some things and loves others, this is said in
the same sense Scripture uses in maintaining that the earth disgorges men, and
other things of that kind. That God is angry with no one, that he does not love
things as the multitude [vulgus] believes, can be sufficiently derived from Scripture
itself. For this is in Isaiah and more clearly in Paul’s Epistle to the Romans,
chapter 9. . . . Finally, if any other passages which give rise to doubts still occur in
the Holy Scriptures, this is not the place to explain them. For here we are only
inquiring after those things that we can grasp most certainly by natural reason
[ratio naturalis]. It suffices that we demonstrate those things clearly for us to
know that Holy Scripture must also teach the same things [ut sciamus Sacram
paginam eadem etiam docere debere]. For the truth does not contradict the truth
[veritas veritati non repugnat], nor can Scripture teach such nonsense [nugas] as
the multitude imagines. . . . Let us not think for a moment that anything could
be found in Holy Scripture that would contradict the natural light [quod lumini
naturae repugnet]. (CM 2.8, G i, 264–65/330–31)
The conflict between the philosophical doctrine and Scripture is resolved in
the way every proponent of a philosophical religion would resolve it: God’s
love and hate in Scripture cannot be taken literally as the vulgus understands
them. Moreover, the correct understanding of God’s love and hate can be
found in both the Hebrew Bible (Isaiah) and in the New Testament (Paul).
Whether a passage in Scripture must be understood literally or allegorically
clearly depends on whether it agrees with the corresponding philosophical
doctrine. Scripture requires explanation because it does not teach things
more philosophico – that is, in the way we grasp them by “natural reason.”
But since the truth of reason is the same as the truth of Scripture, we
can rest assured that they agree.18 In this passage Spinoza clearly adopts
the “dogmatic” approach: the philosopher determines the true sense of
Scripture in light of what has been demonstrated by “natural reason.”
Can we be sure that Spinoza is speaking in his own name in this passage?
The question to what extent the Cogitata Metaphysica express Spinoza’s
he cautiously claims to be agnostic. Cf. his discussion of human freedom in CM 2.11. Spinoza rejects
Christian doctrines in their orthodox form if these conflict with his philosophical commitments.
See, for example, the discussion of the incarnation and resurrection in his late correspondence with
Oldenburg, Letters 71–79. Spinoza’s interpretation of Christianity as a philosophical religion permits
no fideistic compromises.
18 Note that Spinoza commits himself to a stronger thesis in this passage: everything demonstrated by
reason is also taught by Scripture.
views remains disputed. Is the work more than a summary of late scholastic
and Cartesian doctrines that Spinoza wrote to establish his philosophical
credentials by showing that he is up to date with the philosophy of his
time?19 For my purpose we need not settle this question. It is sufficient to
note that there is neither a scholastic nor a Cartesian model for the dogmatic
approach set forth in Cogitata 2.8. For one thing, the dogmatic interpre-
tation of religion was not part of the medieval Latin tradition.20 As for
Descartes, consider the programmatic statement in Principia Philosophiae
1.76 which expressly allows for contradictions between reason and Scrip-
ture. When such contradictions occur, Descartes argues, Scripture always
overrules reason.21 This is a version of what Spinoza calls “skepticism” in the
TTP. We will see, moreover, that in his correspondence with Blyenbergh
Spinoza explicitly refers to the passage in the Cogitata as his own view.
A second question is whether Spinoza is setting forth his genuine view
or one he adopts for strategic reasons. Spinoza sometimes makes claims
for strategic reasons in the Cogitata, for example that it is impossible to
know how human freedom and divine providence can be reconciled (CM
2.11). In his correspondence with Blyenbergh he first declares that human
freedom in a sense that conflicts with divine providence does not exist (see
Ep. 19). After recognizing that he has misjudged Blyenbergh’s philosophical
disposition, however, Spinoza asserts that he should have maintained the
agnostic position put forward in the Cogitata (Ep. 21).22 It is indeed likely
that Spinoza’s motivation to endorse dogmatism in part stems from the
first rule of living that he recommends in the Treatise on the Emendation
of the Intellect: “to speak according to the power of understanding of the
multitude” (ad captum vulgi loqui) from which he expects, among others,
that the multitude “will give a favorable hearing to the truth” (17). Spinoza
surely could have expected his readers to give “a favorable hearing to the
truth,” if he succeeded in persuading them that the truth of reason is the
same as the truth of Scripture. As Spinoza explains in a letter to Olden-
burg, one purpose of publishing his exposition of Descartes’s Principia and
the Cogitata was precisely to pave the way for making his own writings
“available to the public without risk of trouble” (Ep. 13, G iv, 64/793). The
19 See appendix 3 in Fraenkel (2006). 20 See my discussion in the introduction.
21 “But above all we must imprint in our memory as the highest rule that the things revealed by God
to us [nobis a Deo revelata], must be believed as more certain than everything [ut omnium certissima
esse credendam]. And however strongly the light of reason appears to suggest to us something else,
even if it is most clear and evident, our faith should be put in the sole divine authority, rather than
in our own judgment” (AT 8.1, 39).
22 See also my suggestion above, n. 17, concerning Spinoza’s claim in CM 2.8 that “we fail to understand”
how God’s essence, intellect, and will are distinguished from one another.
correspondence with Meyer who was preparing the publication of the two
works reveals Spinoza’s concern to avoid anything that could be perceived
as offensive. His aim is “to make this little work welcome to all [omnibus
gratum sit]” and to invite “men in a benevolent spirit to take up the study
of the true philosophy” (Ep. 15, G iv, 73/800; cf. Ep. 12). As we will see
shortly, however, Spinoza also maintains the dogmatic position when he
thinks that he can speak unreservedly about highly contentious philosoph-
ical issues. In this period, then, Spinoza advocates dogmatism not only
publicly, but also in the private circle of his philosophically open-minded
friends.
Spinoza’s correspondence with Willem van Blyenbergh took place between

December 1664 and March 1665 with a last short letter from Spinoza from
June 1665, in which he puts an end to their exchange. From the outset
Spinoza adheres to dogmatism, including explicit references to the passage
in Cogitata Metaphysica 2.8. This is important because from Blyenbergh’s
first letter Spinoza gained the mistaken impression that he was dealing
with a “pure philosopher who . . . has no other touchstone for truth than
the natural intellect [praeter naturalem intellectum]” – something that “is
granted by many who consider themselves Christians” Spinoza adds, stress-
ing that being a pure philosopher must by no means be at odds with being
a Christian (Ep. 23, G iv, 146/832). Spinoza describes his impression of
Blyenbergh as follows:
I understood from [your letter] your deep love for the truth [intensus tuus veritatis
amor] and that you make [the truth] the only aim of all your endeavors. Since I
myself turn to nothing else, this has determined me . . . to unreservedly grant your
request to answer to the best of my intellectual abilities the questions which you
have already sent me and which you will send me in the future. . . . For my part,
of all things that are not under my control, I value nothing more than to enter
into a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth. (Ep. 19, G iv, 86–87/807)
It is clear, therefore, that in matters of philosophical argument, Spinoza

writes without reservations in this first letter. He does not hesitate, for exam-
ple, to explain his genuine view concerning human freedom to Blyenbergh,
rather than claiming to be agnostic as he does in the Cogitata. Spinoza’s
endorsement of dogmatism in this letter thus implies that he did not con-
sider it an obstacle to the philosophical pursuit of the truth. A similar
case can be made for the addressees of the Short Treatise which Spinoza
concludes with the following admonition: “And as you are . . . aware of the
character of the age in which we live, I would ask you urgently to be very
careful about communicating these things to others” (2.26, G i, 112/150).23
Although the Short Treatise thus was meant to circulate in manuscript
only among a small circle of friends to whom Spinoza thought he could
speak openly about philosophical issues, he takes care to indicate the place
of a philosophical Christology in his philosophy by calling the mode of
thought immediately dependent on God – that is, God’s “intellect” – the
“Son of God” (KV 1.9, G i, 48/92). Also among friends sympathetic to his
philosophy, therefore, Spinoza holds on to dogmatism.
Blyenbergh’s question concerns the existence of sin and evil. After study-
ing Spinoza’s Principia Philosophiae Cartesianae and Cogitata Metaphysica,
he concluded that for Spinoza sin and evil either do not exist or that
God himself is their cause. Since God is the cause of a substance and of
every motion of that substance, he is both the cause of the mind and of
every “motion of the mind which we call the will” (Ep. 18, G iv, 82/806).
Thus God must be the cause of the motion in Adam’s soul that led him
to transgress the commandment not to eat from the tree of knowledge.
Adam’s transgression is, therefore, either no sin, or God himself is respon-
sible for it. In response, Spinoza denies that “sin and evil are anything
positive” (Ep. 19, G iv, 88/808) and explains why it is that according to
the Bible God commanded Adam not to eat from the tree of knowledge,
although according to the philosopher he determined his will to transgress
that command:
I say that Scripture, because it is particularly adapted and useful to the multitude
[plebs], always speaks in human fashion [more humano], for the multitude is unable
to understand the higher things. For this reason I believe that all that God has
revealed to the prophets as necessary for salvation is set down in the form of laws
[legum modo]. On this account the prophets invented entire parables [integras
parabolas prophetae finxerunt] representing God as a king and lawgiver, because
he revealed the means [leading to] salvation and perdition and is their cause.
These means, which are nothing but causes, they called laws and wrote them
down in the form of laws. Salvation and perdition, which are nothing but effects
necessarily resulting from these means, they described as reward and punishment,
putting their words more in accordance with that parable than with the truth,
constantly representing God as human, now angry, now merciful, . . . now jealous
and suspicious. . . . So philosophers and likewise all who have risen to a level
beyond law – that is, all who pursue virtue not as a law but because they love
23 By contrast, the PPC and the CM are exoteric works, originally dictated to Spinoza’s student
Caesarius about whom he writes the following to Simon de Vries: “No one is more troublesome to
me, and there is no one with whom I have to be more cautious [cavere curavi]. So I should like to
warn you and all your friends not to communicate my views to him until he has reached greater
maturity” (Ep. 9, G iv, 42/781).
it as something very precious – should not find such words a stumbling-block.
Therefore the command given to Adam consisted solely in this, that God revealed
to Adam that eating of that tree brought about death, in the same way that he
also reveals to us through the natural intellect [naturalis intellectus] that poison is
deadly. (G iv, 92–94/809–10)
By “revelation” Spinoza means the prophet’s knowledge of the means

leading to salvation and perdition of which God is the cause – as a scientist
knows “through the natural intellect that poison is deadly.” What the
prophet grasps thus corresponds to the content of the Ethics in which
Spinoza shows how perdition follows from enslavement to the passions
(part 4), how salvation follows from the power of reason (part 5), and how
God is the cause of both (parts 1–5). Were the prophet to address a group
of philosophers, he would explain all this more geometrico, in the same way
as a scientist would offer a causal explanation for the effect of poison at
a scientific meeting. But since the prophet is addressing non-philosophers
he must speak more humano, namely “in the language of human beings”
as Spinoza puts it, alluding to the Talmudic phrase used by Maimonides
to characterize the purpose of the Divine Law’s literal content. Hence he
composes a parable of God as a king and lawgiver.24 Let me note in this
context that in both the Ethics and the TTP Spinoza presents the entire
account of Adam’s Fall as a philosophical parable as we will see below.
Whereas from the passage in the Cogitata Metaphysica we learned that
Scripture’s anthropomorphic representation of God must be understood
allegorically by philosophers, from the letter to Blyenbergh we learn how
non-philosophers benefit from a literal understanding of this representa-
tion. By speaking of God more humano and translating causal relations into
laws associated with rewards and punishments, Scripture replaces reason
as a guide to virtuous action.25 Adopting dogmatism thus allows Spinoza
to preserve the authority of Scripture which can then be reinterpreted as a
pedagogical-political guide for non-philosophers.
From Blyenbergh’s reply, Spinoza learned that he had thoroughly mis-
judged Blyenbergh’s philosophical inclinations: “When I read your first
letter, I thought that our views were nearly in agreement. From your sec-
ond letter, however, . . . I understand that this is far from being so, and I see
24 Cf. TP 2.22 where Spinoza explicitly identifies that which is “revealed to the prophets in the form
of laws” with “the dictates of reason.”
25 As we will see below, for Spinoza, too, serving God out of fear – to use Maimonides’s terminology –
is only the lowest level of the pedagogical-political program which aims to guide all members of the
community as much as possible to serving God out of love.
that we disagree not only in the conclusions to be drawn from first prin-
ciples, but also in those very same first principles” (Ep. 21, G iv, 126/822).
Blyenbergh first explains:
the two rules, according to which I always venture to philosophize. One is the clear
and distinct conception of my intellect, the other is the revealed word, or will, of
God. In accordance with the one, I try to be a lover of truth [een beminner vande
waeheyt], while following both I try to be a Christian philosopher [Christelijck
philosoph]. (Ep. 20, G iv, 96–97/811)
To be a “Christian philosopher” for Blyenbergh means that we must follow

God’s “revealed word” and not our “natural knowledge,” whenever there is
a conflict between them, for what derives from the “finite intellect” cannot
override what derives “from the highest and most perfect God” (ibid.).
Blyenbergh thus defends a version of what Spinoza calls “skepticism” in
the TTP – that is, the position that turns reason into the “handmaid of
theology.” It comes as no surprise, then, that Blyenbergh has little sympathy
for Spinoza’s explanation of sin and evil. More important for my purpose,
however, is his critique of Spinoza’s explanation of divine commandments.
Whereas for Spinoza the Bible’s literal content derives from the need of the
prophets to address non-philosophers more humano, for Blyenbergh the
Bible’s literal content is its true content:
For if we maintain that God communicated his word to the prophets, we thereby
maintain that God appeared to the prophets, or spoke with them in a miraculous
way [op een extraordinaire wyse]. If now the prophets composed parables from the
communicated word – that is, gave it a meaning different from that which God
wanted them to give – God must have so instructed them. Again, it is impossible
with regard to the prophets as it is contradictory with regard to God, that the
prophets could have understood a meaning different from that which God wanted
them to understand. (Ep. 20, G iv, 119/819)
If the Bible’s literal content were not God’s genuine word, either God
would have instructed the prophets to say something different from what
he revealed to them, which is absurd since God reveals whatever he wants
the prophets to say. Or the prophets deviated from God’s word because they
were deficient, which is equally absurd since God could not have ignored
that he was speaking to a deficient person. Hence for Blyenbergh the
relationship between revelation and prophetic parables as Spinoza conceives
it results in a contradiction. There is, moreover, little evidence to support
Spinoza’s account of revelation according to Blyenbergh:
I also see very little proof [seer weynich bewys] that God revealed his word in
the manner you indicate, namely that he revealed only salvation and perdition,
decreeing the means that would be certain to bring this about, and that salvation
and perdition are no more than the effects of the means decreed by him. For surely
if the prophets had understood God’s word in that sense, what reasons could they
have had for giving it another sense? (Ep. 20, G iv, 119–20/819)
Blyenbergh thus rejects the dogmatic assumption according to which God

revealed philosophical doctrines to the prophets which they translated into
parables for non-philosophers.
In his reply, Spinoza makes no effort to dissuade Blyenbergh from sub-
mitting reason to Scripture:
If it is your conviction that God speaks more clearly and efficiently through Holy
Scripture than through the light of the natural intellect which he . . . preserves
strong and uncorrupted through his divine wisdom, you have good reason to
adapt your intellect to the opinions which you attribute to Holy Scripture. (Ep.
21, G iv, 126/822)
Spinoza himself, however, holds on to the dogmatic position as set forth

in the Cogitata Metaphysica:
I am conscious that when I have a solid demonstration, I do not entertain such
thoughts that could cast doubt on it; for this reason I completely acquiesce in what
the intellect shows me without any suspicion . . . that Holy Scripture – even if I
do not investigate it – could contradict it [ei contradicere posse]; because the truth
does not contradict the truth [veritas veritati non repugnat] as I have already clearly
indicated earlier in my Appendix [that is, in CM 2.8]. (Ep. 21, G iv, 126/822)
This does not mean that Spinoza attributes less truth and authority to
Scripture than Blyenbergh:
I do not attribute to Scripture the truth which you think is in it, and yet I think
that I ascribe to it as much authority if not more, and that I make sure in a much
more careful way than others not to attribute to it childish and absurd opinions
[pueriles quasdam et absurdas sententias affingam], which nobody can achieve who
did not well understand philosophy or receive divine revelations [Philosophiam
bene intelligit, vel Divinas habet revelationes]. For this reason I am little impressed
with the explications of Scripture given by common theologians, in particular
when they are from the kind who always take Scripture literally and according to
the external sense [semper juxta litteram, sensumque externum sumant]; and yet I
have never seen . . . a theologian so stupid as not to perceive that Holy Scripture
very often speaks of God in human fashion [Sacram Scripturam creberrime more
humano de Deo loqui] and expresses its sense through parables. (Ep. 21, G iv,
132/826)
Spinoza clearly reiterates the dogmatic position: the truth of Scripture is
the truth of reason which constitutes Scripture’s allegorical content. Since
for Spinoza there is no truth above reason, he credits Scripture with more,
not less, authority than Blyenbergh.
According to Spinoza, Blyenbergh’s notion of parables is “quite different
from what is generally accepted.” This accounts for the contradictions he
finds in the way Spinoza relates parables to revelation:
Who has ever heard that he who expresses his concepts in parables goes astray from
his intended sense? When Micah told King Ahab that he had seen God sitting
on his throne and the celestial hosts standing on his right hand and on his left
hand, and that God asked them who would deceive Ahab [cf. 1 Kings 22], that was
surely a parable by which the prophet sufficiently expressed the most important
of what on that occasion (which was not one for teaching the sublime doctrines
of theology) he was charged to make manifest in God’s name. So in no way did
he stray from his intended sense. Likewise the other prophets by God’s command
made manifest to the people the word of God in this way, as being the best means –
not, however, a means that God commands – for leading people to the primary
aim of Scripture [scopus Scripturae primarius] which according to Christ himself
consists of loving God above all things and your neighbor as yourself. Sublime
speculations in my view have very little to do with Scripture. For my part I have
never learned, nor could I have learned, any of God’s eternal attributes from Holy
Scripture. (Ep. 21, G iv, 132–33/827)26
Spinoza again appeals to dogmatism. Micah’s parable is meant to provide

guidance to King Ahab in a way that takes the king’s intellectual limi-
tations into account. It is part of a pedagogical-political program whose
aim is to promote human perfection – “loving God above all things and
your neighbor as yourself.” Spinoza’s claim that we cannot learn God’s
attributes from Scripture is consistent with his outline of dogmatism in
TTP 7: “scientific truth is not established from Scripture,” since Scripture
“demonstrates nothing, nor teaches the things of which it speaks by means
of definitions and from first causes.” Like all proponents of a philosophical
religion Spinoza holds that philosophical doctrines can only be disclosed
in Scripture by an interpreter who already knows them.
Finally, Spinoza addresses Blyenbergh’s objection that he provides “very
little proof” for his claim about Scripture’s true content. Spinoza takes
Blyenbergh to be challenging him to show that despite Scripture’s literal
sense “the prophets made manifest the word of God” in form of true
26 Note that Spinoza does not respond to Blyenbergh’s objection. Blyenbergh did not claim that the
prophet deviates from his own intention but from God’s intention. The disagreement between
Blyenbergh and Spinoza stems from their different notions of revelation, not from their different
notions of parables as Spinoza suggests.
The evidence of Lodewijk Meyer 229
doctrines, “because the truth is not contrary to the truth” (quoniam veritas
veritati non est contraria). Hence “it only remains for me to prove . . . that
Scripture, as it stands, is the true [verus] revealed word of God” – that is,
not just a collection of parables that serve pedagogical-political purposes
(G iv, 133/827). Here Blyenbergh has identified the most vulnerable point
of the dogmatic position. For one thing, advocates of dogmatism cannot
point to evidence in the text, since Scripture’s supposedly true content is its
allegorical content. Moreover, Scripture nowhere suggests that the prophets
were, in fact, philosophers. The project of philosophical reinterpretation
thus seems to rely on a premise that has no support. Spinoza himself will
exploit precisely this weakness in his critique of dogmatism in the TTP. In
his reply to Blyenbergh, however, he concedes only that he cannot provide
“a mathematically exact proof” for his claim:
A mathematically exact proof can be attained only by divine revelation. I, therefore,
said, “I believe, but I do not know in a mathematically exact way that the prophets
etc.” because I firmly believe, but do not know in a mathematical way, that the
prophets were the trusted counselors and faithful messengers of God. (Ep. 21,
G iv, 133/827)
Only “divine revelation,” can offer a “mathematically exact proof” – that

is, only the prophet himself knows with certainty whether his parables rep-
resent philosophical doctrines. Blyenbergh’s objection thus forces Spinoza
to admit that his position relies on a premise that he accepts on the basis
of “firm belief.”
The passages from the Cogitata Metaphysica and the Blyenbergh correspon-
dence clearly show that Spinoza endorsed a version of the dogmatic position
that he rejects in the TTP. The prophets were accomplished philosophers
who addressed non-philosophers more humano. Taken literally their teach-
ings are “childish and absurd,” yet useful for pedagogical-political purposes.
Although it is not possible to learn philosophy from Scripture, the philoso-
pher can locate true doctrines in it. On the allegorical level, therefore,
Scripture and reason agree.
the evidence of lodewijk meyer for

spinoza’s early dogmatism
Supporting evidence for Spinoza’s early dogmatism we find in Lodewijk
Meyer, his doctor and friend, who assisted him with the publication of his
works. Meyer not only defends a version of dogmatism in his Philosophia
Sanctae Scripturae Interpres, written in the first half of the 1660s, but also
announces the Ethics as the “infallible norm” provided by philosophy for
the correct interpretation of Scripture. Although Spinoza uses Maimonides
to illustrate dogmatism in the TTP, we know from his correspondence that
Lodewijk Meyer was his target as well.27 He presumably does not mention
Meyer, because he does not want to publicly criticize a close friend, which,
of course, he had all the more reason to avoid since he himself had earlier
endorsed Meyer’s position.
For Meyer the lack of an infallible norm to determine Scripture’s true
content led to false interpretations that, in turn, gave rise to the various
divisions and bitter conflicts in Christianity. Hence he saw the Ethics as
paving the way to no less than the reconciliation of the Christian church:
And such things will appear about God, the rational soul, man’s supreme felicity [de
Deo, anima rationali, summa hominis felicitate], and other such things concerning
the achievement of eternal life which will complete the interpretation of Scripture
[in Scripturis interpretandis paginam absolvent] and straighten and prepare the way
on which the church of Christ, until now divided and continuously torn through
schisms, will gently come together and reunite in friendship [in amicitiam suaviter
coeat ac confluat], firmly bound by friendship’s tightest and sweetest bonds. United
and unanimous, [the church] in the future will be strong, flourish, and grow on
this earth . . . and finally triumph blessed in the heavens. (Interpres, 115)
Meyer’s claims are based on two premises that he had good reasons to
believe Spinoza shared at the time: that Scripture’s true core coincides
with the doctrines demonstrated in philosophy and that the Ethics would
become the definitive statement of true philosophy. Spinoza’s assessment
of his philosophical accomplishment is well known: “I do not claim to have
found the best philosophy, but I know that I understand the true one [sed
veram me intelligere scio]” (Ep. 76, G iv, 320/949). The Interpres consists
in an extended argument for giving philosophy unconditional authority
over the interpretation of Scripture, and thus establishes the hermeneutical
framework for the project Meyer expected to be carried out on the basis of
the Ethics.
The work about God, the rational soul, and man’s supreme felicity men-
tioned by Meyer has normally been understood as a reference to Spinoza’s
Short Treatise on God, Man and Man’s Wellbeing.28 It is, however, more
27 See letters 42 and 43. Walther (1995) showed in detail that Maimonides’s position, as restated in the
TTP, corresponds to Meyer’s. The three notes on TTP 15 (Adnotationes 28–30) signaling parallel
passages in the Interpres were probably not written by Spinoza. See Gebhardt in G iii, 383 ff., and
Gebhardt (1987), 127–29.
28 See Gebhardt’s introduction to his editorial comments (G i, 408); Lagrée and Moreau (1988), 13–14.
The evidence of Lodewijk Meyer 231
likely a reference to an early draft of the Ethics. From Letter 2 to Olden-
burg we learn that already in 1661 Spinoza was reworking his metaphysical
doctrines into an exposition according to the geometric method.29 In
Letter 6, written in late 1661 or early 1662 to Oldenburg, Spinoza states
that he has completed the Short Treatise, is “occupied with transcribing
and correcting it,” but has “not as yet any definite plan for its publication,”
because he fears the negative reaction of “the theologians of our time”
(G iv, 36/776). From Spinoza’s exchange with Simon de Vries in early 1663
(Ep. 8 and 9) we learn that a draft of the first part of the Ethics was being
studied by a circle of his friends, and in Letter 28, written in June 1665
to Johan de Bouwmeester, Spinoza refers to the third part of his “Phi-
losophy” which apparently included parts 3–5 of the final version of the
Ethics (G iv, 163/841). By that time, then, Spinoza clearly had abandoned
the plan to publish the Short Treatise and decided to replace it with a geo-
metric exposition of his philosophy that would become the Ethics. Since
Spinoza addresses Bouwmeester as a potential translator in Letter 28, he
must already have had plans for publishing the new work.30 If parts 1 and
2 of the 1665 draft correspond roughly to parts 1 and 2 of the final version
of the Ethics, and part 3 to Ethics 3–5, the title mentioned by Meyer would
describe the draft’s three parts more accurately than the two parts of the
Short Treatise.31 Since Meyer wrote the epilogue, in which the reference to
Spinoza’s work occurs, a few years after the body of the Interpres – that
is, close to the publication of the treatise in 1666 – he must have been
familiar with Spinoza’s advanced draft of the Ethics and with his plans for
publishing it. Meyer’s key to the correct interpretation of Scripture and to
the reconciliation of the Christian church, we may conclude, is indeed the
magnum opus of the same philosopher who in the TTP explicitly rejects
the use of philosophy for the interpretation of Scripture!
While scholars agree that Spinoza is aiming at Meyer’s Interpres when he
criticizes Maimonides’s dogmatism in the TTP, they failed to explain how
a member of Spinoza’s closest circle of friends could advocate a position
that Spinoza explicitly rejects in the TTP.32 This is all the more puzzling
29 The geometric exposition of four propositions, added as an appendix to the Short Treatise, also bears
witness to Spinoza’s first experiments with the geometric method.
30 Spinoza did not go ahead with the publication at the time because he decided to interrupt his work
on the Ethics to write the TTP.
31 Note that the title of the second part mentioned by Meyer (De anima rationali) is clearly closer to
the title of Ethics 2 (De Natura et Origine Mentis) than to part 2 of the Short Treatise (Man and his
Wellbeing).
32 Note that Klever (1995) called the scholarly consensus into question. Walther (1995) showed con-
vincingly that none of Klever’s arguments holds.
because Meyer – clearly unaware of any disagreement with Spinoza – is con-
fident that he can use the Ethics for the hermeneutic project laid out in the
Interpres. Moreover, the Interpres contains evidence that Meyer discussed
the interpretation of Scripture with Spinoza. In chapter 11 he criticizes a
view that corresponds closely to what Spinoza describes as the “skeptical”
approach to Scripture in TTP 15 (see Interpres, 75). Spinoza’s model of
skepticism is the medieval Jewish scholar Judah Alfakhar whose views are
extant in an exchange of letters with the Jewish philosopher David Kimchi
from the beginning of the thirteenth century. Meyer surely did not study
the Hebrew correspondence between Alfakhar and Kimchi, but must have
learned about Alfakhar’s views from Spinoza.33 The most plausible solu-
tion to this puzzle is that at the time Meyer wrote the Interpres, Spinoza
still endorsed the dogmatic position. Although the Interpres was only pub-
lished in 1666 – that is, some time after Spinoza started working on the
TTP whose final version includes the critique of Meyer’s dogmatism – we
know that the body of the work was written earlier, since Meyer remarks in
the epilogue that for various reasons he delayed the publication of the trea-
tise for several years (see Interpres, 107). He thus wrote the Interpres during
the first half of the 1660s – that is, precisely during the period for which
the evidence reviewed above attests that Spinoza endorsed the dogmatic
position. It is certain, moreover, that Meyer was familiar with Spinoza’s
dogmatism as outlined in Cogitata 2.8, since he not only prepared the
Principia Philosophiae Cartesianae and the Cogitata Metaphysica for pub-
lication, but also corresponded with Spinoza about precisely this chapter
(see Ep. 12 A). Meyer, we may conclude, wrote the Interpres in the belief
that he was championing an approach to Scripture that Spinoza approved.
Spinoza may even have encouraged Meyer to carry out this project at a time
when he had not yet decided that the only way to efficiently defend the
libertas philosophandi was through a direct attack on Scripture as a source of
truth.
the concept of a philosophical religion in

spinoza’s later writings
Until 1665 Spinoza’s position on the relationship between philosophy and
religion is a version of what he rejects as “dogmatism” in the TTP. Since he
33 As Gebhardt (1987), 226–27 has already pointed out, Meyer’s account follows Spinoza’s interpretation
of Alfakhar, not the original text. Another likely reference to Spinoza occurs in Interpres, 109 where
Meyer discusses the corruption of the biblical text as reflected in the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts.
Philosophical religion in Spinoza’s later writings 233
endorses dogmatism both in public and among his philosophically minded
friends, he clearly did not consider it an impediment for doing philosophy.
Nor did he take dogmatism to conflict with the Ethics, a tripartite draft of
which had been completed by 1665 as we saw. After 1665 the issue becomes
more complicated. From the correspondence with Henry Oldenburg in
the autumn of that year we learn that Spinoza started working on the TTP
which sets forth his celebrated critique of biblical religion, including the
rejection of dogmatism. This does not mean that Spinoza at any point gave
up on dogmatism. In February 1676, just a year before his death, he is still
debating with Oldenburg which parts of Scripture must be reconciled with
reason through allegorical interpretation. One question Oldenburg raises
concerns the religious implications of determinism. Exactly as in Cogitata
Metaphysica 2.8 Spinoza argues “that all things happen in accordance with
[God’s] will.” Hence:
Scripture, when it says that God is angry with sinners, that he is a judge who
takes cognizance of the actions of men, decides, and passes sentence, is speaking
in merely human fashion [more humano] according to the accepted beliefs of the
multitude [vulgus]. (Ep. 78, G iv, 327–28/952–53).
Another of Oldenburg’s questions concerns Spinoza’s position on Christ’s

resurrection. True to dogmatic form Spinoza responds: “The passion, death,
and burial of Christ I accept literally, but his resurrection I understand in
an allegorical sense [allegorice].” Spinoza concedes “that the Evangelists
themselves believed that the body of Christ rose again and ascended to
heaven to sit on God’s right hand.” However, “Paul, to whom Christ
also appeared later, rejoices that he knows Christ not after the flesh, but
after the spirit” (G iv, 328/953). Spinoza’s view, then, is not only in line
with his philosophy, but also with the teachings of St. Paul. Like many
other passages that we will see below, these passages cannot be justified
through the method of interpretation that Spinoza promises to adopt in
the TTP: “to neither affirm anything of [Scripture] nor to admit any-
thing as its doctrine which I did not most clearly derive from it” (TTP,
preface, 10/5).
Spinoza’s critique of religion notwithstanding, his later writings contain a
fully worked out interpretation of Christianity as a philosophical religion.
Recognizing this is crucial for understanding how philosophy, religion,
and politics are related in his thought. To be sure, Spinoza’s metaphysics,
epistemology, and psychology, as well as his moral and political theory differ
in important respects from those of ancient and medieval proponents of
a philosophical religion. Although I think that a critical dialogue with
some of them helped to shape his views, my argument does not depend on
substantiating this claim. Instead of hunting for Spinoza’s sources, I will
present his interpretation of Christianity on its own terms while drawing
attention to the features that set his concept of a philosophical religion apart
from that of his predecessors. Pinpointing these differences is complicated
by the fact that in the TTP Spinoza does not argue on the basis of the
monistic ontology that is at the core of the Ethics. Thus many of the TTP’s
most provocative claims – for example the critique of the conception of
God as a lawgiver in TTP 4 and the critique of miracles in TTP 6 – are not
derived from the monism of the Ethics, but from the identity of intellect
and will in God. While Spinoza shares this view with ancient and medieval
proponents of a philosophical religion, his considered view in the Ethics is
that intellect and will are modes of God (see E1p31). Similarly the identity
of mind and body that follows from the monism of the Ethics is absent from
the TTP. Spinoza contrasts the desires of mind and body in terms familiar
since Plato: the intellectual love of God is set against the appetites of the
flesh.34 Spinoza’s main reason for “hiding” his true views is not political
caution. He simply omits technical philosophical argument that is not
required for achieving the aims of the TTP. Creating the intellectual and
political conditions for teaching philosophy is one of these aims. Teaching
philosophy, on the other hand, is the task of the Ethics.35 An important
consequence for my purpose is that the ancient and medieval concept
of a philosophical religion fits better with the TTP than with the Ethics.
Translating this concept into the conceptual framework of the Ethics thus
requires not only translating it from the conceptual framework used by
Spinoza’s predecessors, but also from the conceptual framework Spinoza
himself uses in the TTP.
The TTP was published in 1670, but we know from Spinoza’s correspon-
dence with Henry Oldenburg that he started working on it as early as 1665.
It is likely that the critique of religion was not part of the TTP’s original
34 See, for example, TTP 4.

35 In Maimonides’s terms, the conceptual differences between the TTP and the Ethics stem from “the
fifth cause” of contradictions: to make his point the author sometimes must use premises that
are at odds with his considered views if these cannot yet be introduced for pedagogical reasons
(see Guide 1, introduction, 17–18). Since Spinoza’s argument in the TTP is meant to make the
study of his philosophy possible, he cannot presuppose the reader to already have studied his
philosophy.
plan. Consider the three reasons Spinoza gives to Oldenburg for writing
the TTP:
1. The prejudices of theologians. For I know that these are what mostly
prevent men from devoting their minds to philosophy. So I apply myself
to disclosing [patefacere] such prejudices and removing [amoliri] them
from the minds of sensible men [prudentiores].
2. The opinion of me held by the multitude [vulgus], who do not cease to
accuse me of atheism. I am driven to avert [this accusation] as far as I
can.
3. The freedom to philosophize [libertas philosophandi] and to say what
we think. This I desire to secure [asserere] in every way, for here it is
suppressed as it were by the excessive authority and the impertinence of
preachers. (Ep. 30, G iv, 166/844)
The first and third reasons describe two aspects of the same project: defend-
ing the “freedom to philosophize.” This notion is awkward, but likely
deliberately chosen to convey Spinoza’s twofold aim. In the intellectual
sense, “freedom to philosophize” refers to philosophy properly speaking.
As we learn from the TTP’s preface the “one obstacle” preventing poten-
tial philosophers from doing philosophy is the belief “that reason must
be the handmaid of theology” (15/8) – that is, the view Spinoza describes
as “skepticism” in TTP 15. Ensuring that “sensible men” can follow their
philosophical vocation thus requires “removing” this “prejudice” from their
“minds.” In the political sense, “freedom to philosophize” refers to the right
of all citizens to think and say what they please which includes, of course,
the philosopher’s right to do so. As we will see below, the freedom to
philosophize in neither sense requires Spinoza’s critique of religion. More
important for my present purpose, however, is Spinoza’s second reason.
The only way Spinoza could hope to avert the charge of atheism was by
showing that the God he affirms as a philosopher is the same as the God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Demonstrating that his case for philoso-
phy does not undermine biblical religion was thus one of the three original
motives for writing the TTP. Hence the goals of the TTP, as set out in 1665,
are not only compatible with dogmatism, but require it. Spinoza’s critique
of religion, on the other hand, is incompatible with his defense against
the charge of atheism. It is thus unlikely that in 1665 Spinoza intended to
include it in the TTP.
Also in the TTP’s final form, however, clarifying the nature and purpose
of biblical religion is clearly of great importance to Spinoza. I propose
describing this project as the interpretation of Christianity as a philosoph-
ical religion. At the center of this interpretation is the ideal of intellectual
perfection:
Since the intellect is the better part of us, it is certain that, if we wish to seek what
is definitely to our advantage, we should strive [conari] above all to perfect it as
far as we can, for in its perfection must consist our highest good. (TTP 4.4/51; cf.
E4app4)
Why is intellectual perfection “our highest good” and why does God
command us to pursue it? Like all things, human beings are determined by
their striving for self-preservation (conatus), the “supreme law of nature”
(TTP 16.2/179). The more power we have, the better we are able to preserve
ourselves. Hence we pursue what we think increases our power and avoid
what we think decreases it. A thing’s perfection, then, is determined by
its power, which is measured by the range of effects of which it is the
cause. God’s power is absolutely infinite: “From the necessity of the divine
nature there must follow infinite things in infinite ways” (E1p16). All things
caused by God express God’s power “in a definite and determinate way”
(E1p25c; cf. E1p36d) – that is, their power is limited to varying degrees.
Spinoza’s view that perfecting the intellect is the most empowering activity
for us follows from his epistemology. Since “knowledge of an effect depends
on, and involves, the knowledge of the cause” (E1ax4) and since “God is
absolutely the first cause” (E1p16c3), “nothing can be . . . conceived without
God” (E1p15). If we are to know anything at all, knowledge of God must be
innate. Hence Spinoza’s striking claim “that God’s infinite essence and his
eternity are known to all” (E2p47s). The way our mind involves knowledge
of God roughly corresponds to the way propositions in Euclidean geometry
involve the axioms from which they are deduced. One of the things God
causes is the “infinite intellect” whose knowledge of God and of all things
caused by God consists in infinite ideas deduced from God’s essence insofar
as he is a “thinking thing” (see E2p3–4). The human mind is a subset of
the ideas constituting the infinite intellect and in this sense involves God’s
essence from which these ideas are deduced.
The doctrine of the mind’s innate knowledge of God is also taught by
Scripture: “the prophets and the apostles clearly proclaim that God’s eternal
word” is:
divinely inscribed . . . in the human mind, and that this is the true handwriting of
God which he has sealed with his own seal – that is, the idea of himself [sui idea]
as the image [imago] of his divinity. (TTP 12.1/149)
Spinoza is clearly alluding to the creation of man in God’s image according
to Genesis 1:26. To be created in God’s image, then, refers to the idea Dei
in our mind.
Our “highest good and perfection,” however, not only “depends solely
on the knowledge of God,” but also “consists entirely” in this knowledge
(TTP 4.4/51; cf. E4p28). Since God is not the external, but the “immanent
cause . . . of all things” (E1p18), “whatever is, is in God” (E1p15). Hence the
more things we know, the more we know God:
[Given that] the knowledge of an effect through its cause is nothing other than the
knowledge of some property of that cause, the greater our knowledge of natural
things, the more perfect is our knowledge of God’s essence which is the cause of
all things. (TTP 4.4/51)
To fill the innate idea Dei with content, we must deduce the effects of
God’s causal activity from it.36 Some do this more successfully than others,
which accounts for the differences in intellectual perfection. Spinoza thus
holds – like the Alexandrians and Maimonides – that being created in
God’s image is not an achievement but a potential that we must realize
by increasing our knowledge of God. We can now see why perfecting the
intellect is the most empowering activity. Recall that a thing’s power is
measured by the range of effects of which it is the cause. Since everything
we know is deduced from the idea Dei in us, it is an effect of which we are
the cause. Hence the more we know, the more powerful we are. According
to Spinoza, we experience an increase in power as “joy” and a decrease
in power as “sadness” (E3def3 and E3da2 and 3). Closely connected to
joy is love: it arises when we experience joy together with the idea of the
cause of joy. Since we represent God as the cause of the increase in power
and the concomitant joy derived from intellectual perfection, we will also
love him (see E5p32c). Hence Spinoza can say that our “highest good and
blessedness” consists in “knowledge and love of God” (TTP 4.4/51).
If we rationally pursue what is to our advantage, perfecting the intellect
through knowledge and love of God is the “end [finis] of all human actions”
(ibid.; cf. TdIE 16). The things that reason prescribes for this purpose
Spinoza calls “God’s commands [jussa]” (ibid.). For knowledge of what
contributes to our perfection, like all knowledge, is deduced from the idea
Dei in us. Hence the prescriptions of reason “are prescribed to us by God
36 Cf. E2p47s: Since “all things are in God and are conceived through God, it follows that we can
deduce from this knowledge [that is, adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God
or the idea Dei] a great many things which we know adequately.” See also E2p10s about the “proper
order of philosophical inquiry.”
himself, as it were, insofar as he exists in our mind” (ibid.). Moreover, since
knowing and loving God is the end for the sake of which reason makes these
prescriptions, God is also their final cause. Given that it originates in God
and aims at God, this “rule of life” (ratio vivendi) is “best called the Divine
Law” (ibid.). What does the Divine Law prescribe? Above all, of course,
knowing and loving God. Since we are finite beings, however, we cannot
live from contemplating God alone. In order to preserve ourselves we need
many things – food, clothes, shelter, and so forth. And moderate physical
and aesthetic pleasures, too, can enhance our ability to contemplate –
if they provide an agreeable environment, for example, or appropriate
occasions for relaxation:
It is the part of a wise man . . . to refresh and restore himself in moderation with
good food and drink, with scents, with the beauty of green plants, with decoration,
music, sports, the theater, and other things of this kind, which anyone can use
without injury to another. (E4p45c2s)
While the things that enable a life centered on contemplation are thus
legitimate objects of desire, they are not intrinsically good. God or reason
only commands them “insofar as they assist man to enjoy the life of the
mind” (E4app5).37
On our own, however, we are unable to supply everything we need to
live and attain perfection:
All men are not equally suited to all activities, and no single person would be
capable of supplying all his own needs. Each would find strength and time fail
him if he alone had to plow, sow, reap, grind, cook, weave, stitch, and perform all
the other numerous tasks to sustain life, not to mention the arts and sciences which
are also most necessary for the perfection of human nature and its blessedness.
(TTP 5.7/64)38
Hence collaborating with others in a political community on creating the

material, cultural, and intellectual conditions that promote perfection is
“absolutely necessary” for us (ibid.). As Spinoza puts it in the TdIE: the goal
of forming “society” is “that as many as possible may attain [perfection]
as easily and surely as possible” (14). All the “sciences” for example – from
37 On the meaning of “good” and “evil,” cf. E4pref and def 1 and 2; on the instrumental value of things
other than intellectual perfection, see TdIE 17, rules 2 and 3 and E4p45s.
38 Note that the finiteness of our power provides not only a positive, but also a negative, reason for
establishing a political order. For this order also protects us against the aggressions of our non-
rational fellow citizens (see TTP 16). The positive reason was first set forth by Plato and Aristotle.
The negative reason is usually associated with the social contract theory of Hobbes. Note, however,
that Maimonides, like Spinoza, mentions both reasons (see Guide 2.40 and 3.27).
the “theory of education” to “medicine” and “mechanics” – ought to aim
at “the achievement of the highest human perfection” (ibid. 14–16). This
is why the Divine Law includes not only an individual “rule of life,” but
also “the fundamental principles of the best state” (TTP 4.4/51). Caring
about the perfection of others is not an altruistic obligation, but is based
on self-interest: “nothing is more useful to man in preserving his being and
enjoying a rational life than a man who is guided by reason” (E4app9).
For the more rational the citizens are, the more they agree on the nature
of the good and the more efficiently they collaborate to achieve it. Making
our fellow-citizens as perfect as possible is thus one of “God’s commands.”
Indeed, it is the second pillar of the Divine Law: to love our neighbor as
ourselves.39
If we are perfectly rational, however, it is only in a metaphorical sense
(“speaking more humano”) that we can be said “to obey” God’s commands
(TP 2.22). In reality we enjoy complete autonomy, since everything we do
follows necessarily from our rational nature. The “love of God,” Spinoza
writes, “arises from true knowledge by the same necessity as light arises
from the sun” (TTP, note 34). We have thus attained the rank of the
“free man” described in parts 4 and 5 of the Ethics. To be free means to
fulfill the two conditions required for autonomy according to proponents
of a philosophical religion: knowing the good and being motivated to do
it. A free man will not give in to the “fleshly appetites” of “carnal man”
(TTP 4.5/52), because the increase of power and joy derived from satisfying
these appetites is much smaller than the increase of power and joy derived
from perfecting the intellect. According to Spinoza’s moral psychology, “no
affect can be restrained except by an affect stronger than and contrary to the
affect to be restrained” (E4p37s2). This explains the free man’s motivation
to do what he knows is best: “because the mind enjoys this divine love or
blessedness, it has the power of restraining the lusts” (E5p42). For the free
man, therefore, God’s rule and self-rule coincide. Hence Spinoza can say
that if we pursue our perfection and the perfection of our fellow citizens
“insofar as we have the idea Dei” and live “by the guidance of reason” we
have “religion” and “piety” (E4p37s1). After all, we are carrying out God’s
commands.
Like all proponents of a philosophical religion, Spinoza takes a com-
munity ordered according to the prescriptions of the Divine Law to be
a community in which the life of the citizens is ordered towards what is
39 For the two core commandments that make up the Divine Law, see TTP 12; on the second
commandment, see also E4p37, E4p46, and E4p73s.
best. A divinely ordered community is the same as an excellent political
community: the prescriptions of reason are not only the prescriptions of
God but also “the laws of the best state” (TP 2.21). Politics thus ought to
aim at a community of “free men.” As Spinoza puts it succinctly in the
Ethics: “citizens are to be governed and led, not so that they may be slaves,
but that they may do freely what is best” (E2p49s). In the TTP the point
is elaborated in greater detail:
It is not . . . the end [finis] of the state to transform men from rational beings into
beasts or puppets, but rather to enable them to develop the faculties of their mind
and body in safety, to use their free reason and not to compete on account of
hatred, anger, or deceit or to confront each other in a hostile spirit. Thus the end
of the state is, in fact, freedom. (TTP 20.6/232)40
Clearly “freedom” in this passage refers to the rational self-rule described in
the Ethics. This is confirmed by Spinoza’s characterization of the “best state”
in the Political Treatise in which the life of the citizens “is characterized
not just by the circulation of the blood and other features common to all
animals, but most of all by reason, the true virtue and life of the mind”
(TP 5.5).
Spinoza’s best state, then, can be characterized as a theocracy, or, to use
Spinoza’s own term, as “God’s kingdom”: it is ordered by the “precepts
[documenta] of true reason, as we showed in our discussion of the Divine
Law in chapter 4 – that is, the very precepts of God” (TTP 19.4/220). Like
all proponents of a philosophical religion, Spinoza denies that this implies
an anthropomorphic concept of God as a lawgiver:
[T]he divine precepts revealed by the natural or prophetic light do not acquire
the force of command from God directly; they must acquire it . . . through the
intermediary of those who have the right to command . . . and consequently it is
only by their mediation that we can conceive of God as reigning over men. (TTP
19.8/222)
What scholars sometimes refer to as Spinoza’s “Erastianism” – the view that
the state should be in charge of religion as Spinoza argues in TTP 19 – thus
needs qualification. For Spinoza, establishing laws is the sole right of the
sovereign which includes the ius circa sacra – the right to regulate religious
practice. Since all laws are divine in a well-ordered state, however, the laws
governing religious practice are just one subset of divine laws. Hence the
separation of state and religion is not only incomplete in a well-ordered
state. They are, in fact, one and the same!
40 This passage has often been interpreted as Spinoza’s endorsement of “negative” freedom – wrongly
as Steinberg (2009) showed.
Note, however, that the core commandments of the Divine Law – loving
God above all and one’s neighbor as oneself – cannot be the object of
political legislation according to Spinoza. They are the fundamental goods
at which political legislation should aim. For knowing and loving God
and loving one’s neighbor simply are not things we can do on command
(cf. TP 3.8 and 3.10, as well as TTP 13). A state can, however, promote
them – for example by establishing an excellent education system and
making school attendance obligatory, or by ensuring a fair distribution of
goods through taxation. The taxpayer does what a person who loves his
neighbor would do on account of charity (cf. TP 3.10).
We saw that for proponents of a philosophical religion, describing the
best state as a theocracy does not specify a form of government. A state is
a theocracy on account of its rational order, not on account of the ruling
group. Spinoza explicitly leaves it open whether the right to enforce the
prescriptions of God and reason is delegated “to the whole community, or
to a number of men, or to one man” (TTP 19.4/220). The ideal state, of
course, not only aims at, but is, a community of free men. In such a state
God would rule directly – that is, without the intermediary of any political
institutions, whether democratic, aristocratic, or monarchic: “if men were
so constituted by nature as to desire nothing but what is indicated by true
reason, society would stand in no need of laws at all” (TTP 5.8/64). Since
the conventional notions of good and bad as defined by legal prescriptions
would have no meaning in an ideal state, Spinoza can say that “if men were
born free they would form no concept of good and evil so long as they
remain free” (E4p68). Following Maimonides, Spinoza finds an allegorical
representation of this ideal in the biblical story about Adam before the Fall:
Adam was a “free man” who lived in perfect rational harmony with Eve
before eating from “the tree of good and evil” (E4p68s).41
Spinoza, of course, was never under the illusion that an ideal state can
come into existence given the reality of human nature:
[Those] who persuaded themselves that the multitude or those who are distracted
by public business can be led to live according to what is prescribed by reason
alone are dreaming of the poets’ golden age or of a fairy tale. (TP 1.5)
Even under optimal political and educational conditions most citizens will
not be able to attain perfect freedom, for “the road . . . leading to this goal”
is “very difficult” (E5p42s). Hence also the best state falls short of the ideal
state. This is a point on which Spinoza insists throughout his works and
41 The same interpretation is suggested in TTP 4 where Spinoza takes the prohibition to eat from the
tree of good and evil as an allegorical representation of life guided by the natural Divine Law.
which clearly sets him apart from Enlightenment optimists. Living under
the guidance of reason is not just a matter of overcoming “laziness and
cowardice” as Kant claimed (Aufklärung, 35/54). Most of us are unable to
be free men by nature: “there are only a few – compared to the whole of
humankind – who acquire a virtuous disposition under the guidance of
reason alone” (TTP 15.10/178). As for the “multitude” (vulgus), Spinoza
writes:
I know that they are unchanging in their obstinacy, that they are not ruled by
reason, and that their praise and blame is at the mercy of impulse. (TTP, preface,
15/8; cf. E5p41s and TP 2.18)
For one thing, nobody is born a free man:42
[A]ll men are born in a state of complete ignorance, and before they can learn
the true rule of life [ratio vivendi] and acquire a virtuous disposition, even if they
have been well brought up, a great part of their life has gone by. Yet in the
meantime they have to live and preserve themselves as far as in them lies, namely
by the urging of appetite alone, for nature has . . . denied them the actualized
power to live according to sound reason. (TTP 16.3/180; cf. E5p39s)
Even in a well-ordered state, then, all citizens start out life under the
guidance of non-rational desires. While some grow up to become free men
– they are not-yet-free men as it were – most remain in this state throughout
life. As a consequence, spelling out what the ideal state would look like is a
futile exercise for Spinoza. He is full of scorn for philosophers who “conceive
men not as they are, but as they would like them to be” and develop political
theories that can only “be put into effect in Utopia or in that golden age of
the poets” (TP 1.1). His own political theory, by contrast, is derived “from
human nature as it really is” (TP 1.4). This does not mean that Spinoza
dismisses the ideal of a community of free men. It only means that he will
not waste his time describing such a community, but will clarify how a
political order can be achieved that comes as close as possible to this ideal
while being compatible with human nature. This becomes clear if we look
at the two factors determining the excellence of an actual state according
to Spinoza: the end of the political order and the distribution of goods.
Concerning the end, Spinoza’s main distinction is between “human laws”
which aim at security and material prosperity and “divine laws” which aim
at “knowledge and love of God” (TTP 4.3/51). Since for Spinoza knowledge
and love of God is the only intrinsic good, security and material prosperity
42 Hence in the scholium to E4p68 Spinoza expressly says that the “hypothesis” of the proposition (“if
men were born free”) is “false.”
can only be good as means to that end. Hence a state governed by human
laws which pursues them as ends is inferior to a state governed by divine
laws. Concerning the distribution of goods, Spinoza distinguishes between
ruling for the sake of the good of the sovereign and ruling for the sake of the
common good (see TTP 16.10). The latter is clearly superior given that our
true advantage requires promoting the perfection of our fellow-citizens.
Hence ruling for the sake of the common good is not only better for the
ruled, but also for the ruler. The best state, then, is a state that promotes
the true perfection of all citizens and hence embodies the theocratic ideal
to the greatest possible extent. Such a state, Spinoza argues in the TTP,
is a democracy. While the good of the rulers is also the good of the ruled
in a democracy, articulating the good sharpens the minds of citizens with
conflicting interests who participate in “the give and take of discussion and
debate” (TP 9.14).43 Moreover, a democracy is also the most stable form of
government in the long run. We are by nature – that is, prior to joining
a political community – free and equal and thus averse to submitting to
the rule of our fellow men. This freedom and equality is best preserved
in a democracy which is, therefore, more stable than oppressive forms of
government (see TTP 5.8–9 and 16.11). A democracy, however, requires
citizens who can make autonomous decisions and engage in self-motivated
collaboration for the common good.44 Hence it cannot be realized under
all circumstances. The Hebrews, for example, “were at liberty” to adopt
any political order “they wished” after the exodus from Egypt:
However, what they were least capable of was establishing a wise system of laws
and keeping the government in the hands of the whole community; for they were
of almost brutish character and worn out by the wretched condition of slavery.
(TTP 5.10/65)
Under these circumstances Moses had no choice but to establish a monar-

chy. The excellence of a state, then, is not only constrained by human
nature, but also by particular cultural and natural circumstances – “the
character of the people” and “the nature of [the state’s] territory” (TP 10.7).
These constraints explain why Spinoza discusses all forms of government –
monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy in the Political Treatise. He wants
43 Although the passage comes in Spinoza’s discussion of aristocracy, it applies to a democracy as

well.
44 In TTP 19.6 Spinoza says that in a democracy “all by common consent resolve to live only by
the dictates of reason” (221). As we will see below, such consent does not require all citizens to be
perfectly rational.
to show how a state can be organized to promote the citizens’ perfection
even under adverse external circumstances. Spinoza is thus committed to
a contextualism of the kind typical for proponents of a philosophical reli-
gion, which allows for multiple as well as more or less perfect realizations
of the Divine Law. While every state whose laws promote the ends of the
Divine Law – loving God and one’s neighbor as oneself – counts as a state
ruled by God, theocracies can vary according to circumstances and some
may be superior to others.
Who establishes a political order that counts as “God’s kingdom”? Fol-
lowing Plato, proponents of a philosophical religion argue that this cannot
be done unless the ruler is a philosopher, since they take knowing the
good to be necessary for establishing a good political order. Given that the
“precepts of God” for Spinoza are the “precepts of true reason” we would
expect him to wholeheartedly endorse this claim. However, a tenacious –
and in my view mistaken – scholarly tradition sets Spinoza against Plato.
Recall Spinoza’s scorn for philosophers who write about utopian states
inhabited by men “as they would like them to be.” They are the reason
why “no men are regarded as less fit for governing a state than theoreticians
or philosophers” (TP 1.1). Spinoza is not saying that philosophers are unfit
to rule. He is saying that because of a certain type of philosopher – that is,
philosophers who write useless utopian treatises – this is how philosophers
in general are “regarded.” Whether a true philosopher will do everything
in his power to promote the perfection of his fellow-citizens is, in fact, not
a normative question. It follows necessarily from the philosopher’s rational
nature. Indeed, every “good citizen” should attempt to persuade the gov-
ernment to enact rational laws. If he thinks “that a certain law is against
sound reason,” he should “advocate its repeal” by submitting “his opinion
to the judgment of the sovereign power” (TTP 20.7/232). The TTP’s argu-
ment for freedom of thought and expression which Spinoza judiciously
submits “to the scrutiny and judgment of my country’s government” (TTP
20.18/238) is a case in point: it is meant to come to the rescue of a rational
law that Spinoza felt was under threat in the Dutch Republic. And Spinoza
would certainly welcome rulers who studied the Ethics and governed in
accordance with its principles. According to the TdIE “moral philosophy”
is the first science to which “attention must be paid” if the goal is “to form a
society” that promotes the citizens’ perfection (14). Spinoza explicitly says,
moreover, that a state “which is founded and governed mainly by men of
wisdom and vigilance” is superior to a state governed by “men who lack
these qualities” (TTP 3.5/38). This does not mean that philosophers should
have absolute power. On the contrary, a well-ordered state:
must be so organized that those who administer it cannot be induced to
betray their trust or to act basely, whether they are guided by reason or by
passion. (TP 1.6)
As much as possible, then, rationality – that is, “God’s commands” –

should be institutionalized. However, if “the laws of the best state” consist
in prescriptions of reason, I cannot see how they can be put in place
without a process of rational legislation that gradually implements “God’s
commands” – that is, “the rule of life” and “the fundamental principles of
the best state” that direct the citizens to the “highest good and blessedness”
(TTP 4.4/51).
As we saw, Spinoza, like all proponents of a philosophical religion, holds

that we cannot live under the guidance of reason as children and that
most of us remain unable to do so throughout life. To be sure, a state
ordered by the Divine Law will heavily invest in the education system to
lead as many citizens as possible to perfection.45 However, Spinoza’s grim
assessment of the “multitude” suggests that even under optimal political
and educational conditions most citizens will remain imperfectly rational.
The problem Spinoza’s concept of biblical religion is meant to solve is how
imperfectly rational citizens can be made to follow the prescriptions of
reason. Failing to secure this would have disastrous political consequences.
Consider Spinoza’s notion of the “slave” (servus) – the human condition
opposed to the “free man” on the scale of human perfection. A person
“who lives under pleasure’s sway, unable to see and to do what is to his
advantage, is a slave to the highest degree” (TTP 16.10/184). Driven by the
conatus slaves will:
seek their own advantage, but by no means from the dictates of sound reason. For
the most part the things they seek and judge to be beneficial are determined by
fleshly desire, and they are carried away by the affects of the soul which take no
account of the future or of other considerations. (TTP 5.8/64)
Whereas the free man acts under the guidance of reason and is motivated by
the intellectual love of God, the slave acts under the guidance of the imag-
ination and is motivated by passive affects. The affects are passive because
they are caused by things he randomly encounters in his environment.
His imagination turns these affects into value judgments by association: he
45 See TdIE 14–15 where Spinoza stresses how important “the theory [doctrina] of education of children”
is for “the achievement of the highest human perfection.”
considers good whatever increases his power and hence causes him plea-
sure, and bad whatever decreases his power and hence causes him pain (see
TTP 17.4). However, not everything we subjectively judge to be good is
also objectively advantageous, since we frequently miscalculate the effect
things have on our overall constitution or on our long-term interests. Thus a
“desire that arises from . . . a passive affect is called blind” (E4p59s). Guided
by the imagination, slaves cannot agree on the good, since the things that
cause pleasure and pain vary as much as the constitutions of human beings.
Hence by “the laws of appetite all men are drawn in different directions”
(TTP 16.5/181). The disagreements give rise to violent conflicts and make
collaboration for the common good impossible. In the “state of nature” –
a state prior to any political order – life would indeed “be most wretched”
(ibid.), since very few if any would follow reason in the absence of the
institutionalized rationality of laws.
Spinoza’s solution to this problem by and large agrees with that proposed
by the falāsifa: while non-philosophers cannot act from the prescriptions
of reason, they can be made to act according to them through the rational
management of their imagination.46 Although the imagination frequently
misleads us, it does not do so necessarily. In the Ethics Spinoza illustrates
how the imagination works through the example of “merchants” who solve
a mathematical problem by applying a rule that they discovered through
experimenting with “very simple numbers” or “heard from their teachers
without any demonstration” (E2p40s2). They reliably reach the correct
conclusion without knowing the mathematical theory from which it is
deduced. The aim, then, is to lead the imagination of non-philosophers
to endorse the same prescriptions that philosophers deduce from the idea
Dei in their mind. We already saw the key psychological law that must
be observed for this purpose: “no affect can be restrained except by an
affect stronger than and contrary to the affect to be restrained” (E4p37s2).
The resources of the imagination are sufficient to motivate the transition
from the state of nature to a political order. For “there is nobody who does
not desire to live in safety free from fear.” Since this is impossible amidst
“feuds, hatred, anger, and deceit,” everyone “will try to avoid” the state of
nature “insofar as he can” (TTP 16.5/181). Delegating the natural right to
do whatever is in our power to a sovereign in exchange for security is thus
an attractive trade-off even from the point of view of the imagination. The
desire to avoid the pain we suffer from others “restrains” the desire to do
as we please.
46 For this distinction, cf. Steinberg (2009), 46.

If we are rational, however, we want more than a “secure” life. We
want a “good life” which includes “the cultivation of reason” (ibid.). The
prescriptions that must be followed for this purpose can no longer be
motivated by the imagination alone. One way to get non-philosophers
to comply with them is by establishing an association between breaking
the law and punishment in their imagination. Fear of punishment thus
“restrains” the desire to commit crime (see E4p37s2). No state, Spinoza
argues, “can subsist without . . . coercion . . . to control men’s lusts and their
unbridled urges” (TTP 5.8/64). Citizens thus will either “voluntarily or
constrained by force . . . live as reason prescribes” and “do what is in the
interest of their common welfare” (TP 6.3). Like other proponents of a
philosophical religion, Spinoza justifies the use of force by pointing out
that this is how non-philosophers would act if they were free in the sense
of rationally self-determined (see TTP, note 33). Although fear is a non-
rational motive, we are freer when we do what is rational than when we do
what is not rational on account of a non-rational motive:
And so that state whose laws are based on sound reason is the most free, for
there everybody . . . can live whole-heartedly under the guidance of reason. (TTP
16.10/184)
This form of coercion does not turn citizens into slaves but “subjects”
(subditi) who can be compared to children: “Although children are in duty
bound to obey all the commands of their parents, they are not slaves; for
the parents’ commands have as their chief aim the good [utilitas] of the
children” (TTP 16.10/184–85). The case of subjects is analogous:
A subject is one who, by command of the sovereign power, does what is good
[utilis] for the community and therefore also for himself. (TTP 16.10/185)
Like all proponents of a philosophical religion, however, Spinoza considers

coercion only a last resort. The “end of the state,” as we saw, “is not . . . to
transform men . . . into beasts or puppets.” A person who does what is right
from fear “of punishment . . . cannot be called a just man” (TTP 4.2/50).
Moreover, a state based on coercion is unstable in the long run, since:
rule that depends on violence has never long continued. . . . For as long as men
act only from fear, they are doing what they are most opposed to doing, taking
no account of the usefulness [utilitas] and the necessity of the action to be done,
concerned only not to incur capital or other punishment. (TTP 5.8/64)
Far superior to coercion are the narratives of Scripture. Although they can-
not give “clear knowledge” of “what God is and in what way he sustains
and directs all things and cares for men,” they “can still teach and enlighten
men as far as suffices to impress on their minds obedience and devotion”
(TTP 5.16/68). It “was to make the people do their duty from devotion
rather than fear,” that “Moses, by his divine power and authority, intro-
duced a state religion” (TTP 5.11/66). For the same reason, Spinoza stresses
“that knowledge of these writings and belief in them is in the highest degree
necessary for the multitude which lacks the ability to perceive things clearly
and distinctly” (TTP 5.16/68). For:
the process of deduction solely from intellectual axioms usually demands the
apprehension of a long series of connected propositions, as well as the greatest
caution, acuteness of intelligence, and self-control, all of which qualities are rarely
found among men. (TTP 5.14/67)
Hence a legislator whose goal is to teach “an entire nation” or even “the
whole of humankind” must not speak more geometrico, but more humano:
[H]e must rely entirely on an appeal to experience, and he must above all adapt
his arguments and the definitions relevant to his doctrines to the understanding
of the multitude [ad captum plebis] which forms the greatest part of humankind.
He must not set before them a logical chain of reasoning. . . . Otherwise he will be
writing only for the learned. (TTP 5.14/67–68)
Logical deduction must be replaced by an appeal to experience, because
the imagination construes its concepts by associating impressions caused
by the things we randomly encounter around us. The concept of God is a
good example. Since Spinoza claims, as we saw, that adequate knowledge
of God is innate, he must explain why non-philosophers represent God in
a confused manner:
[This] comes from the fact that they cannot imagine God, as they do bodies, and
that they have joined the name “God” to the images of things which they are
used to seeing. Men can hardly avoid this, because they are continually affected
by bodies. (E2p47s)
Like all proponents of a philosophical religion, Spinoza can thus explain
why the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at first view greatly differs from
the God of the philosophers: because Scripture’s “language and reasoning
is adapted to the understanding of the multitude” (TTP 5.16/68). We can
now see how Scripture’s legal and narrative contents complement each
other: while the former ground laws that promote the love of God and of
one’s neighbor, the latter ensure that non-philosophers follow these laws by
instilling in them obedience and devotion. To do so efficiently, Scripture
must enlist the service of theology. For prophets and Apostles composed
their narratives for audiences of a long time ago. To speak to contemporary
audiences they are in need of adaptation:
But the multitude is not itself qualified to judge of these narratives, being more
disposed to take pleasure in the stories and in strange and unexpected happenings
than in the doctrine contained in the narratives; and, therefore, besides reading
the narratives they also need pastors or ministers of the church to instruct them
in a way suited to their limited intelligence. (TTP 5.18/69)
The core doctrines taught by Scripture to instill obedience make up what

Spinoza calls the “catholic or universal faith” (TTP 14.9/166). Everyone
agrees, he argues, “that Scripture was written and disseminated . . . for all
men of every time and race” (TTP 14.3/164). Hence Scripture’s core doc-
trines cannot include any “that good men [honesti] may regard as con-
troversial” (TTP 14.9/166). These doctrines are not derived exegetically
from Scripture but analytically from the concept of obedience. They are
conditions “without which . . . obedience is absolutely impossible” (TTP
14.9/167). The “basic teachings which Scripture as a whole intends to
convey” are seven:
1. God, that is a Supreme Being, exists, supremely just and merciful, the
exemplar of true life. He who knows not, or does not believe, that God
exists, cannot obey him or know him as a judge.
2. God is one alone [unicus]. No one can doubt that this belief is required
for supreme devotion, reverence, and love towards God; for devotion,
reverence, and love arise only from the preeminence of one above all
others.
3. God is omnipresent and all things are open to him. If it were believed
that things could be concealed from God, or if it were ignored that he
sees everything, one might doubt the uniformity of the justice by which
he directs all things.
4. God has supreme right and dominion over all things. . . . All are required
to obey him absolutely, while he obeys none.
5. Worship of God and obedience to him consist solely in justice and
charity, or love towards one’s neighbor.
6. All who obey God by following this rule of life [ratio vivendi] are saved;
others, who live under the rule of the pleasures, are lost. If men did not
firmly believe this, there is no reason why they should obey God rather
than their desires.
7. Finally, God forgives repentant sinners. There is no one who does not
sin, so that without this belief all would despair of salvation. (TTP
14.10/167)
If these doctrines – conveyed through Scripture with the help of theology –
shape the imagination of the citizens from childhood on, they will believe
in an omniscient and omnipotent God and associate obeying God with
reward and disobeying him with punishment. The hope for reward and
the fear of punishment will in most cases be powerful enough to “restrain”
illicit desires – though not uniformly so as the last doctrine concerning “the
repentant sinner” implies. At times Spinoza suggests that faith is the only
alternative to knowledge for ensuring the enactment of the Divine Law.
Since a non-philosopher cannot attain knowledge, “he would necessarily
[necessario] be a rebel” (TTP 14.8/166) were he to lose his faith. Elsewhere,
however, Spinoza qualifies this thesis:
[H]e who is neither acquainted with these biblical narratives nor has any knowledge
from the natural light, if he is not impious or obstinate, is inhuman and close to
being a beast, possessing none of God’s gift. (TTP 5.16/68)
I take the beast-like condition to refer to coercion through fear of “capital

or other punishment” that we saw above: citizens do what reason prescribes
like cattle fearing the whip. Even if coercion does provide an alternative
to “biblical narratives” and “the natural light” it is clearly greatly inferior.
We can thus see the key moral-political role that Spinoza assigns to Scrip-
ture and theology: they translate the free man’s religion of reason into
a pedagogical-political program accessible to the imagination. Laws and
narratives order the life of non-philosophers towards what is best, medi-
ating the prescriptions of reason and providing the motivation to follow
them. This program not only replaces the guidance of reason for non-
philosophers. It also prepares not-yet-philosophers for the philosophical
life. This is one reason why prophets “commended so greatly” non-rational
affects like hope and fear. For:
those who are subject to these affects can be guided far more easily than others, so
that in the end they may live from the guidance of reason – that is, may be free to
enjoy the life of the blessed. (E4p54s)
Or, as Spinoza describes this transformation elsewhere: “obedience forth-

with passes into love” (TTP, note 34).47
In Spinoza’s fourfold typology of agents, the pious man occupies the second
rank: below the free man, but above the beast-like man who acts from fear
47 Cf. Maimonides’s description of the transition from fear to love as motives for worshiping God
discussed in the previous chapter.
of punishment and the man enslaved to his passions.48 However, while
the fear of divine retribution may be more efficient for ensuring long-term
obedience than the fear of punishment through the state, it does not seem to
imply greater perfection. As we saw, Spinoza expressly says in the TTP that a
person who obeys on account of fear “cannot be called just” (TTP 4.2/50).
And is the pious man not barred by nature from sharing in knowledge
and love of God – that is, the highest good towards which a theocratic
state is ordered? For the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is adapted
to the confused notion of God that he formed in his imagination. Since
for medieval Aristotelians knowledge begins with sense-perception, the
difference between the God of the Bible and the God of the philosophers
can be construed as one of degree. Hence non-philosophers can have a
share in intellectual perfection. Spinoza’s epistemology, on the other hand,
like Plato’s, cannot bridge that gap: whereas the imagination’s concept of
God is derived from experience, clear and distinct knowledge of God must
be deduced from the idea Dei. Spinoza did, however, consider it possible
to replace fear as the pious man’s primary motive for doing what reason
prescribes through a form of love of God which, although remaining in
the realm of the imagination, goes hand in hand with a higher level of
self-rule:
A state whose subjects are deterred from taking up arms [against each other] only
through fear should be said to be not at war rather than to be enjoying peace.
For peace is not just the absence of war, but a virtue which arises from strength
of mind [fortitudo animi]; for obedience is the steadfast will [constans voluntas] to
carry out orders enjoined by the general decree of the state. (TP 5.4)
Can non-philosophers be elevated from obedience derived from hope and

fear to obedience derived from “strength of mind”? For Spinoza “strength
of mind” is the key virtue of free men on account of which they do what
reason prescribes (E3p59s). It is subdivided into “courage” (animositas)
and “nobility” (generositas), referring to actions that promote one’s own
perfection and the perfection of one’s fellow citizens (ibid.). Elsewhere,
as we saw, Spinoza describes the pursuit of these intertwined goals as the
free man’s religion and piety. The free man’s strength of mind is a rational
virtue: it accounts for “all actions that follow from affects related to the
mind insofar as it understands” (ibid.). However, the same virtue can also
be grounded on the religious imagination. Hence strength of mind is the
point at which the religion and piety of the philosopher overlaps with the
48 For the argument of the following section, see also Steinberg (2009).
religion and piety of the non-philosopher. This also explains how Spinoza
can describe true peace as consisting in “the union and harmony of minds”
(TP 6.4). Although perfect harmony would only be possible in a community
of free men, a lower level of harmony can be attained in a community of
both free and pious men who share strength of mind. Spinoza speaks with
considerable admiration of how the state religion established by Moses
served “to strengthen the mind [animos firmare] of the Hebrews,” leading
them to carry out their duty “with singular steadfastness [constantia] and
virtue [virtus]” (TTP 17.24/205). Habituated to obedience from childhood
on, desire and duty coincided to the point that obedience “appeared to be
freedom rather than slavery” (TTP 17.25/206). Moses thus achieved what
all rulers should aim at: governing the citizens “in such a way that they
do not think of themselves as being governed but as living as they please”
(TP 10.8). Note that the ancient Hebrews did not obey the laws because
they expected to be rewarded or punished in the afterlife. In “return for
their obedience” God promised “them nothing other than the continuing
prosperity of their state and material advantages” (TTP 3.6/38) – things
like “fame, victory, riches, life’s pleasures, and health” (TTP 5.3/61). It
was not only “good fortune,” according to Spinoza, but also the well-
ordered “society” of the Hebrews which did, in fact, ensure their political
independence, security, and prosperity over a long period (TTP 3.6/38).
Hence there was a true causal link between obeying the law and enjoying
the fruits of an empowering political order. Although the Hebrews did not
know how Deus sive Natura brought these things about, they imagined that
it was the doing of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Hence they loved
God as the cause of the joy which they experienced on account of their
increased power. In a well-ordered state, then, which reliably satisfies the
expectations of its citizens in return for their obedience, non-philosophers,
too, act out of love of God. They willingly do what objectively benefits
them and their fellow-citizens – not because they fear punishment by the
state or by God, but because they take joy in the empowering effects of their
actions which stem from the state’s good order. Although it is “impossible”
for “most men” to be “eager to live wisely,” it is possible for them to be
“guided by such [positive] affects as will conduce to the greater good of
the community” (TP 10.6). Given the alignment of what they desire with
what the law prescribes, they attain a considerable level of self-rule. In such
a state, then, free men and pious men will share a great deal of goods and
be united by strength of mind and love of God – based on reason for the
former and on the imagination for the latter. “He who abounds” in the
“fruits” stemming from actions according to reason – namely:
charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-
control . . . whether he be taught by reason alone or by Scripture alone, is in truth
taught by God, and is altogether blessed. (TTP 5.20/71)
Hence non-philosophers, too, will love God as the cause of their increasing
power and joy. And since God is, in fact, the cause of their increasing power
and joy – he is, after all, the cause of everything – the same true conclusion
is attained through both reason and the imagination.
As we saw, the excellence of the state established by Moses was signifi-
cantly constrained by the “wretched condition” of the Hebrews after the
exodus from Egypt. In a democracy, in which citizens govern themselves,
the perfection of non-philosophers would rise even higher. For they would
be compelled to think through the relationship between laws, their own
interests, and the interests of their fellow-citizens and would thus better
understand the causal link between doing what the laws prescribe and the
increase in power they experience. Although their understanding would
still fall short of knowledge in the strict sense because it is not deduced
from the idea Dei, they would grasp part of the chain of causes and effects
and to that extent share in the knowledge of the free man. The more they
understand the less they need to conceive God as a lawgiver who rewards
and punishes them for their behavior. As a consequence, the gap between
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the God of the philosophers
narrows. Hence pious men in Spinoza’s best state are not a uniform group,
but include different levels of perfection which gradually approach the
rank of the free man. This said, there is no mistake that Spinoza – like
Plato – thinks that non-philosophers will always be primarily motivated by
the “love of gain” and the “desire for glory” (TP 10.6). These desires must
be satisfied to ensure that the citizens live in harmony. On the other hand,
there is no reason to think that the merchant or general will not experi-
ence some measure of intellectual joy by thinking through the relationship
between the political order and the citizens’ well-being. And in Spinoza’s
best state surely both religion and the education system would promote
intellectual activity as the supreme cultural value and do everything in their
power to instill reverence for it in all citizens. In this way a political order
based on “human nature as it really is” would be compatible with the end
of divine laws – “that as many as possible may attain [perfection] as easily
and surely as possible” (TdIE 14).
Unlike some Enlightenment philosophers, then, Spinoza never thought
that the best state can do without the guidance that Scripture’s legal and
narrative contents provide to non-philosophers. Belief in an omnipotent
and omniscient God who rewards obedience and punishes disobedience,
combined with an empowering political order, is Spinoza’s recipe for ensur-
ing that non-philosophers do what reason prescribes. The best way to think
about Spinoza’s religion is along the lines of the multilayered model pro-
posed by al-Fārābı̄. According to this model, Scripture can be interpreted
in more or less enlightened ways corresponding to the citizens’ varying lev-
els of perfection – from the anthropomorphic God of fear who legislates,
punishes, and rewards to the God of the philosophers who is the causal
order of nature.
religion and the freedom to philosophize

As is clear from the Political Treatise, the “catholic or universal faith” laid
out in the TTP was meant to be adopted as both the “national religion”
of the state and as the religion of the sovereign (TP 8.46). Is this compat-
ible with the “freedom to philosophize” in the two senses I distinguished
above – the freedom to do philosophy without fear of contradicting Scrip-
ture and the general freedom of thought and expression?
Spinoza’s main argument for the freedom of thought and expression is
presented in the political part of the TTP (chapters 16–20). Since Spinoza
equates right and power, the right of the citizens to hold and express the
beliefs they consider true must be grounded in their power to do so. If a
citizen believes that God is a lawgiver who rewards obedience and punishes
disobedience, for example, it is impossible to coerce him through threat
of punishment to believe that God is the causal order of nature. Beliefs
simply do not yield to political power. This is Spinoza’s core argument
for freedom of thought. The sovereign does, on the other hand, have the
power to coerce citizens to profess beliefs they do not hold. However,
doing so is against the sovereign’s interest to preserve his power in the
long run. For it creates duplicity (for example citizens who hold one belief
about God but profess another), resentment against the sovereign, and
eventually rebellion, thus weakening and finally overturning his power.
Hence by suppressing freedom of expression the ruler acts against his
own striving for self-preservation. From this perspective the argument
against politically enforcing religious orthodoxy is just one instantiation
of the argument for freedom of thought and expression in general. It
does not in any way depend on settling the question whether Scripture is
true. Enforcing religious doctrines, whether true or false, is impossible for
the same reason that enforcing any doctrines is impossible. And coercing the
citizens to profess religious doctrines, whether true or false, undermines the
sovereign’s power for the same reason that coercing the citizens to profess
any doctrines undermines it.
As we saw, Spinoza claims to “know that I understand the true [phi-
losophy]” (Ep. 76, G iv, 320/949). His case for freedom of thought and
expression is thus not motivated by skepticism about the truth. On the
contrary, in light of what we learned about the best state so far, it will surely
do everything in its power to lead all citizens to that same knowledge –
that is, to disseminate Spinoza’s philosophy as widely as possible. In a com-
munity of free men there would be no need for the toleration of dissent.
Given the reality of human nature, however, creating such a community
is not in the state’s power: nobody is born free and most of us remain
non-philosophers throughout life – even under optimal educational and
political conditions. Hence “it is impossible that all should think alike and
speak with one voice” (TTP 20.7/232). In the best state, then, freedom to
philosophize in the political sense is the freedom of non-philosophers to
make mistakes!
We can now see why Spinoza rejects Maimonides’s adaptation of the
Almohad theological-political program of legislating philosophical doc-
trines. Recall that for Maimonides doctrines conclusively demonstrated in
philosophy “ought to be inculcated in virtue of traditional authority in
children, women, stupid ones, and those of a defective natural disposition”
(Guide 1.35, 54/81). Spinoza disagrees:
Men, women, and children, can all equally obey by command, but not be wise by
command. Now if anyone says that, while there is no need to understand God’s
attributes, there is a duty to believe them simply without demonstration, he is
plainly talking nonsense. In the case of things invisible which are objects of the
mind alone, demonstrations are the only eyes by which they can be seen; therefore
those who do not have such demonstrations can see nothing at all of these things.
So when they merely repeat what they have heard of such matters, this is no
more . . . indicative of their mind than the words of a parrot or a puppet speaking
without mind and sense. (TTP 13.5–6/159–60)
Moreover, enforcing true doctrines is not only futile, but undermines the
power of the sovereign, as we saw. For Spinoza, then, philosophy is the
exclusive domain of philosophers. This is one important point on which
Spinoza firmly sides with the Averroistic critique of Maimonides in Elijah
Delmedigo’s Examination of Religion discussed in the previous chapter.49
As mentioned, Delmedigo’s work was in Spinoza’s library and a significant
49 On Averroes, Delmedigo, and Spinoza, see Fraenkel (2010a) and Fraenkel (forthcoming c).
amount of evidence suggests that he carefully read it. We will see shortly
that this is not the only feature of Spinoza’s dogmatism revealing a distinctly
Averroistic character. Although we have no reason to think that Spinoza had
first-hand knowledge of Averroes’s works, his “Averroism” can be accounted
for on the assumption that he was familiar with Delmedigo’s treatise.
If knowledge of God “is a divine gift” (TTP 13.9/162), however, reserved
to citizens who were allotted sufficient intelligence by God or Nature, this
leads us back to the question how non-philosophers can be made to act
according to the prescriptions of reason. Given religion’s crucial role for
ensuring obedience, the doctrines of the universal faith “which Scripture
as a whole intends to convey” set limits to the freedom of thought and
expression. If “obedience is absolutely impossible” without these doctrines,
rejecting them as false in the name of freedom of thought and expression
would “necessarily” lead to rebellion and obstinacy (TTP 14.8/166). Hence
those who “teach such beliefs as promote obstinacy, hatred, strife, and
anger” are rightly condemned by “faith . . . as heretics and schismatics”
(TTP 14.13/169). Since “the best state grants to every man the same [eadem]
freedom to philosophize as we have seen is granted by religious faith” (TTP
20.9/234) – that is, neither more nor less – such troublemakers would also
be criminally prosecuted. But does the state have the power to enforce
the core doctrines of Scripture? Although “the sovereign power” cannot
enforce doctrines “by direct command,” Spinoza argues:
minds are to some degree under the control of the sovereign power who has many
means of inducing the great majority to believe, love, hate etc. whatever he wills.
(TTP 17.2/192; my emphasis)
The means at the state’s disposal surely include the education system and
organized religion – the “pastors or ministers of the church” who, Spinoza
argues, are needed to explain the narratives of Scripture to the “multitude.”
How much does the universal faith constrain the freedom to philoso-
phize? At first view it seems that a great deal in the formulation of the seven
doctrines is in conflict with philosophy. This would mean that we are not
free to pursue philosophy without fear of contradicting Scripture. Spinoza
stresses, however, that no doctrine is included “that good men may regard
as controversial.” Surely philosophers are part of the class of “good men.”
And at closer inspection Spinoza’s phrasing of the seven doctrines turns out
to be deliberately ambiguous in a way that allows both non-philosophers
and philosophers to endorse them. The following passage clearly implies
that the doctrines can be construed in a philosophical sense:
As to the question of what God, the exemplar of the true life, is, whether he is
fire, or spirit, or light, or thought, and so forth, this is irrelevant to faith. And so
likewise is the question as to why he is the exemplar of true life, whether this is
because he has a just and merciful character, or because all things exist and act
through him and consequently we, too, understand through him, and through
him we see what is true, just, and good. On these questions it matters not what
beliefs a man holds. Nor, again, does it matter for faith whether one believes that
God is omnipresent in essence or in potency, whether he directs everything from
free will or from the necessity of his nature, whether he lays down laws as a ruler
or teaches them as being eternal truths, whether man obeys God from free will or
from the necessity of the divine decree, whether the rewarding of the good and
the punishing of the wicked is natural or supernatural. (TTP 14.11/168)
The universal faith – and hence also Scripture – can thus be interpreted
according to both the imagination and reason.50 If Spinoza identifies the
interpretation according to reason with Scripture’s true content – as all
proponents of a philosophical religion do – this would offer a simple
solution to the problem of the freedom to philosophize in the intellectual
sense which is one of the main aims of the TTP as we saw: philosophers need
not fear conflicts with Scripture and theology because – to use Spinoza’s
formula from Cogitata Metaphysica 2.8 – “the truth does not contradict the
truth.” Hence defending the freedom to philosophize in the intellectual
sense does not require rejecting the truth of Scripture.
Although the universal faith and Scripture can be interpreted philo-
sophically, Spinoza is strictly opposed to imposing this interpretation on
non-philosophers. Here again, Spinoza sides with Delmedigo’s Averroism
50 Cf. Matheron (1971), 94–127. Note that this claim is controversial. For a different view, see Garber
(2008). The doctrine most resistant to philosophical interpretation is the sixth which Spinoza later
restates as “men may be saved simply by obedience” (TTP 15.7/174–75). According to Spinoza “reason
cannot demonstrate the truth or falsity of this fundamental principle of theology” (TTP 15.7/174).
Although Spinoza goes on to argue that, while we cannot have “mathematical” certainty, we can
have “moral” certainty that this doctrine is true, I doubt that he believes in it. While obedience in a
well-ordered state is indeed rewarded through empowerment and joy, “salvation” here seems to refer
to reward in the afterlife. It is important to note that a doctrine of salvation in the afterlife does not
seem to be required to ensure compliance with the prescriptions of reason. For one thing, Spinoza
argues in the Ethics that it is better to live virtuously irrespective of whether the doctrine of the
eternity of the mind is true (see E5p41s). Hence philosophers would live virtuously even if the mind
were not eternal. But non-philosophers, too, do not need to believe in reward and punishment in
the afterlife. As we saw, the ancient Hebrews are models of obedience for Spinoza, although God
did not promise them anything but prosperity and security in this life. Some interpreters have tried
to make philosophical sense of the doctrine of salvation through obedience, for example Matheron
(1971), chapters 3–5. My sense is that in a Spinozistic state the sixth doctrine would be tuned down,
since in a well-ordered state reward in this life is sufficient to motivate obedience. In the TTP,
however, Spinoza refrained from openly making such a claim. This is understandable given how
sensitive the issue of the immortality of the soul was at the time; see Nadler (2002), chapter 7.
against Maimonides who had argued that non-philosophers, after hav-
ing been “habituated” to philosophical doctrines, “should be elevated to
the knowledge of the [allegorical] interpretation” of Scripture (Guide 1.35,
55/81). If this were right, Spinoza contends:
it would follow that the multitude, which for the most part does not know
demonstrations or has no leisure for them, could admit of Scripture only that
which is derived from the authority and testimony of philosophers. . . . This would
indeed be a novel form of ecclesiastical authority, with a new kind of priests or
pontiffs, more likely to excite the multitude’s ridicule than veneration. (TTP
7.20/104)
Separating philosophy from Scripture and theology is as important to

Spinoza as it was to Averroes and Delmedigo. Already in his correspondence
with Blyenbergh Spinoza had stressed this point:
Furthermore, I should like it here to be noted that while we are speaking philo-
sophically [Philosophice loquimur], we ought not to use the language of theology.
For since theology has usually, and with good reason, represented God as a perfect
man, it is therefore appropriate that in theology it is said that God desires some-
thing, that God is affected by anger through the deeds of the impious and delights
in those of the pious. But in philosophy, where we clearly perceive that to ascribe
to God those attributes which make a man perfect would be as wrong as to ascribe
to a man the attributes that make perfect an elephant or an ass, these and simi-
lar words have no place, and we cannot use them without utterly confusing our
concepts. So, speaking philosophically, we cannot say that God wants something
from somebody, or that something angers or delights him. For these are all human
attributes, which have no place in God. (Ep. 23, G iv, 147–48/833).51
Maimonides, by contrast, devotes much of the Guide to harmonizing

the God of the philosophers with the God of the Bible through alle-
gorical interpretation, thus “mixing together” philosophy and theology
as Delmedigo laments. Note, however, that Spinoza’s disagreement with
Maimonides does not imply a critique of dogmatism. As in the case of
Averroes and Delmedigo, Spinoza’s stance is perfectly compatible with the
view that Scripture’s allegorical core is true. The purpose of Scripture’s
narratives, however, is not to teach philosophy, but to ensure the obedi-
ence of non-philosophers to the prescriptions of reason – that is, to “God’s
commands.” Hence the criterion of a good interpretation is not its truth
but what Spinoza calls its “piety” – that is, its efficiency in moving “the
heart to obedience” (TTP 14.8/166). Every citizen is free to interpret the
doctrines of the universal faith “in whatever way makes him feel that he can
51 Cf. PPC 2.13 and CM 2.12.

the more readily accept them with full confidence and conviction” (TTP
14.11/168). The literal sense of Scripture’s narratives carries no authority in
this regard. For one thing, these narratives are themselves adaptations of
the universal faith to different audiences shaped by particular beliefs and
practices. Hence Scripture does not present one, but many interpretations
of its core doctrines which are, moreover, often inconsistent – when the
teachings that move one audience to obedience conflict with those that do
the same for another. In this sense, religious pluralism is already inscribed
in Scripture itself. Moreover, since these narratives reflect beliefs and prac-
tices belonging to cultural contexts of a long time ago, they can, in fact,
not be adopted without reinterpretation for contemporary audiences. This
is precisely why “pastors or ministers of the church” are needed. None
of this is in any way incompatible with dogmatism since the differences,
inconsistencies, and outdated features of Scripture all concern its surface
teachings, namely what it says in the language of the imagination of its
original audiences, and not its true core, namely what it says in the uni-
versal language of reason. The same holds for what Spinoza says about
the difficulty of establishing the literal meaning of Scripture and the vicis-
situdes of its textual transmission which led to the corrupt state of the
biblical text we now have (see TTP 7–10). As Spinoza stresses throughout
TTP 12–14, these problems in no way affect the clarity of Scripture’s core
legal and narrative teachings – that is, the commandments to love God and
one’s neighbor and the seven doctrines of the universal faith which can be
interpreted in accordance with both reason and the imagination (cf. TTP
12.10–12/155–56).
Removing the authority of Scripture’s literal sense does, on the other
hand, create space for multiple and conflicting interpretations. Any inter-
pretation ensuring that its adherents obey the law is valid. Enforcing the
universal faith as state religion, then, is compatible with a fairly broad reli-
gious pluralism. However, lest we exaggerate Spinoza’s religious liberalism,
it is important to stress that the state is not neutral in religious affairs. Apart
from the “national religion,” Spinoza argues, “large congregations should
be forbidden.” Hence:
while those who are attached to another religion are to be allowed to build as many
churches as they wish, these are to be small, of some fixed dimensions, and some
distance apart. But it is important that churches dedicated to the national religion
should be large and costly. (TP 8.46)
The seven doctrines of the universal faith are the only constraint on freedom
of thought, but not the only constraint on freedom of expression. Recall
that an interpretation of the universal faith must not be true, but pious.
However, even if it conveys false beliefs, it is of paramount importance:
that he who adheres to them knows not that they are false. If he knew that they
were false, he would necessarily be a rebel, for how could it be that one who seeks
to love justice and obey God should worship as divine what he knows to be alien
to the divine nature? (TTP 14.8/166)
What does this imply for the public critique of religious beliefs? If the
critique is based on a competing interpretation of the universal faith derived
from the imagination, a Spinozistic state would have no reason to oppose
it. For even if a believer rejects his old faith and converts to a new one, he
would still be obedient. The case is different, however, if the critique comes
from a philosopher. Consider a philosopher who publishes a polemical
pamphlet in which he argues that God is the causal order of nature, not
a lawgiver who rewards obedience and punishes disobedience, and that
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob must be reinterpreted accordingly.
In a Spinozistic state publishing such a pamphlet would threaten the
stability of the state and would thus be as unwelcome as applying the
Socratic elenchos to non-philosophers is unwelcome in the Republic. Since
it causes non-philosophers to lose the traditional beliefs in which they
were brought up, Plato argues, and since they lack the ability to replace
them through “true ones,” they “become lawless” (538e–539a). A non-
philosopher just cannot convert to the philosopher’s religion of reason.
If he rejects the religion of the imagination, he remains with no religion
at all. A Spinozistic state would thus have to monitor how philosophers
use their freedom of expression. While not imposing legal constraints, an
author whose writings can be proven to have stirred up a rebellion would be
liable to criminal charges. Ideally, Spinoza seems to suggest, philosophers
should “write only for scholars [docti] and appeal to reason alone” (TTP
20.15/237).52 As Averroes observed, books which “use demonstrations are
accessible only to those who understand demonstrations” (Fas.l, 21). This
is, of course, as true for Averroes’s commentaries on Aristotle as it is for
Spinoza’s Ethics. Spinoza, we may conclude, would have had good reasons
to insist on the separation of philosophy from Scripture and theology
without having to reject dogmatism. Most of what he says in TTP 15 about
their independence and their respective ends and means – philosophy uses
demonstrations to determine the truth whereas Scripture and theology use
52 Note that Spinoza does not establish this as a rule. He says that this is how authors “usually write”
whose works are condemned as heretical.
narratives that appeal to the imagination to ensure obedience – is perfectly
plausible within an Averroistic framework.
If I am right about the constraints on the freedom of expression, the
education system in a Spinozistic state would have to include a mechanism
to ensure that not-yet-philosophers do not reject Scripture and theol-
ogy once they become actual philosophers. This mechanism would lift
up newly graduated philosophers from an interpretation of the universal
faith according to the imagination to an interpretation of the universal
faith according to reason. In their childhood, not-yet-philosophers, too,
are motivated to obey through the belief in God as a lawgiver who rewards
obedience and punishes disobedience. Once they learn that God is the
causal order of nature, however, they will likely reject their childhood
faith, unless they learn how to reinterpret it. This is exactly what happened
to Spinoza: at first he had been “circumcised and kept the Jewish Law,”
but later he “changed his mind” because now it seemed to him “that the
said Law was not true, . . . nor was there a God except philosophically.” As
I argued in the first part of this chapter, Spinoza quickly distanced himself
from this youthful rebellion. In a Spinozistic state, making such claims in
public would likely lead to criminal prosecution given that those whose
teachings “promote obstinacy, hatred, strife, and anger” are rightly con-
demned by “faith . . . as heretics and schismatics” and given that “the best
state” imposes “the same” constraints on the freedom to philosophize as
“religious faith.” The pedagogical mechanism in question would, of course,
also help not-yet-philosophers of the opposite kind who believe they must
reject philosophy because of the “skeptic” prejudice that reason is Scrip-
ture’s “handmaid.” As we will see, parts of the TTP can be read as designed
precisely to facilitate the transition to a philosophical interpretation of
Scripture.
If the philosophical critique of false religious beliefs in public is unwel-
come in a Spinozistic state, this raises, of course, troubling questions about
the critique of superstition and the critique of religion in the TTP and
in the appendix to the first part of the Ethics. It is very important not to
confuse superstition and religion for Spinoza. After stating that “divine
revelation can be based solely on wisdom of doctrine,” Spinoza explains
that:
the chief distinction I make between religion and superstition is that the latter is
founded on ignorance and the former on wisdom. (Ep. 73, G iv, 307–8/942)
In the preface to the TTP and in the appendix to the first part of the Ethics
Spinoza explains the psychological causes of superstition, the false beliefs
about God and nature to which superstition gives rise, and how superstition
is manipulated by religious impostors to further their selfish goals. Spinoza’s
aim is clearly not to eradicate superstition, since “the multitude can no more
be freed from their superstition than from their fears” (TTP, preface, 15/8).
Rather, his aim is to explain how the manipulation of superstition leads
to the suppression of the freedom to philosophize. A religious impostor,
who claims that he can protect the superstitious from what they fear and
help them to attain what they hope for by interceding on their behalf
with God, will do everything to maintain the power superstition lends
him. Since “men’s readiness to fall victim to any kind of superstition
makes it correspondingly difficult to persuade them to adhere to one and
the same kind” (TTP, preface, 5/2) the impostor will try through “pomp
and ceremony” and through “mass of dogma” to “gain such a thorough
hold on the individual’s judgment” as to “leave no room in the mind
for the exercise of reason, or even the capacity to doubt” (TTP, preface,
6/3). To silence critical voices, moreover, dissenting “beliefs are put on
trial and condemned as crimes” (TTP, preface, 7/3). Spinoza’s critique of
superstition can thus be understood as addressed to the sovereign, since it
is “of the first importance” for the rulers, who should adopt the universal
faith of the TTP, “to guard . . . against becoming victims of superstition,
seeking to deprive their subjects of the freedom to say what they think”
(TTP 8.46). Given that eradicating superstition is impossible, common
citizens may, of course, hold superstitious beliefs as long as these pose no
threat to the freedom to philosophize.
Below we will see that Spinoza’s critique of religion cannot be reconciled
with his theological-political principles in this manner. My present aim
is only to show that defending the freedom to philosophize in both the
intellectual and the political sense does not depend on rejecting dogmatism.
While Spinoza’s discussion of religious pluralism and toleration reflects
concerns typical for an early modern philosopher, his conclusions remain
compatible with the concept of a philosophical religion. Indeed, since
Spinoza’s goal in the TTP is not only to defend the freedom to philosophize
but also to counter the charge of atheism, it is not clear how he could have
succeeded without insisting that, taken allegorically, the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob is the same as the God of the philosophers while, taken
literally, he provides pedagogical-political guidance to non-philosophers.
from god as reason to deus sive natura

Is Spinoza’s philosophical religion as I have sketched it so far compatible
with the metaphysics of the Ethics? As we saw, a well-ordered state can be
From God as Reason to Deus sive Natura 263
described as “God’s kingdom” according to Spinoza because it is ordered
by the “precepts of true reason” which are “the very precepts of God.” In
contrast to “human laws,” which aim only at security and prosperity, “divine
laws” aim at “our highest good,” namely intellectual perfection attained
through knowing and loving God. The distinction between human and
divine laws is clearly modeled on Maimonides’s political definition of
the Divine Law and its distinction from conventional laws in Guide 2.40.
Spinoza thus appears to inscribe himself squarely into the Platonic tradition
that takes nomoi to be divine if they aim at “the highest virtue” – that is,
intellectual perfection – by directing the citizens to “Nous who rules all
things.” Plato’s Nous, as we saw, was identified with the God of Judaism and
Christianity by philosophers like Philo, Clement, and Origen in antiquity
and with the God of Islam and Judaism by philosophers like al-Fārābı̄,
Averroes, and Maimonides in the Middle Ages. But this gives rise to
a puzzle: Spinoza seems to adopt the notion of divine laws typical for
proponents of a philosophical religion, yet shares neither their concept of
God nor their concept of human nature on which this notion depends. For
his predecessors an excellent political order is a rational order and hence
a divine order because they conceive God as Reason. And intellectual
perfection is the supreme good, because it is the perfection of the soul’s
immaterial part which we share with God and which is opposed to the
body and its non-rational desires. Spinoza’s God is thought, too, but he is
also extension and an infinite number of other things unknown to us. On
the most basic ontological level they are one and the same thing conceived
under different attributes such as thought and extension. This is Spinoza’s
substance monism. The human mind and the human body, in turn, are
modes of thought and extension. They, too, are one and the same thing on
the most basic ontological level. Hence the perfection of the mind is the
same as the perfection of the body. Let me note in passing that Spinoza
does not see his substance monism as a fundamental break with the God
of medieval proponents of a philosophical religion.53 For he argues that:
some of the Hebrews [quidam Hebraeorum] appear to have seen [the unity of
thought and extension] as if through a cloud [quasi per nebulam], who maintain
that God, God’s intellect, and the things by him intellectually cognized are one
and the same. (E2p7s)
Looked at more closely, Spinoza’s God of “some of the Hebrews” turns out
to be the divine Nous of the Greeks. Hence Spinoza must have had Jewish
philosophers like Maimonides in mind who reinterpreted the former in
53 Cf. Fraenkel (2006).

light of the latter. This God is indeed almost identical with nature. His
essence, as Profiat Duran, a fourteenth-century commentator on the Guide,
puts it, “is one form which comprises all existents.”54 For Spinoza the main
difference between Maimonides’s God and his own concerns the clarity of
their perception: what he sees clare et distincte, Maimonides saw only “as if
through a cloud.”
This notwithstanding, the puzzle remains: neither Spinoza’s concept of
God nor his concept of human nature seem compatible with the TTP’s
notion of divine laws. As I pointed out earlier, Spinoza omits unnecessary
technical argument in the TTP. Hence translating the notion of a philo-
sophical religion into the conceptual framework of the Ethics requires not
only translating it from the conceptual framework of ancient and medieval
proponents of a philosophical religion, but from the conceptual framework
of the TTP as well. The key concept on which this translation hinges is the
concept of power. As we saw, a thing’s perfection for Spinoza is not deter-
mined by its rationality but by its power. And a thing’s power is measured
by the range of effects of which it is the cause. God’s power is absolutely
infinite: “From the necessity of the divine nature there must follow infinite
things in infinite ways” (E1p16) or, as Spinoza also puts it, “all things that
can fall under the infinite intellect” (E1p16c1). Spinoza thus is commit-
ted to a version of the principle of plenitude: God causes all conceivable
things ranging from the most powerful, namely God himself who is causa
sui, all the way down to the least powerful modification of his essence
(cf. E1def1 and E1p7). All things below God express God’s power “in a
definite and determinate way” (E1p36d) – that is, their causal agency is
limited to varying degrees. Since Spinoza equates being with perfection –
“it is a perfection to exist, and to have been produced by God,” while the
“greatest imperfection of all is not being” (KV 1.4, G i, 37/82; cf. E2def6
and E4pref ) – God maximizes perfection. Spinoza’s concept of God’s causal
agency is, of course, emphatically non-anthropomorphic. God does not act
on the basis of deliberation and choice but from the necessity of his nature.
And the perfection of God’s effects is emphatically non-anthropocentric,
as Spinoza stresses in his reply to the question why God created things that
from a human perspective appear as imperfections:
I answer only because he did not lack material to create all things, from the highest
degree of perfection to the lowest; or, to speak more properly, because the laws of
his nature have been so ample that they sufficed for producing all things which
can be conceived by an infinite intellect. (E1app, G ii, 83/446)
54 Commentary on Guide 3.21, 31b.

This, however, does not change the fact that a thing’s Godlikeness is
determined by its power: the greater a thing’s power, the more it is like
God. Considered under the attribute of thought, we become more pow-
erful the more we perfect our intellect through knowing and loving God.
The power of the state, in turn, is just the sum of the power of its citi-
zens. Hence considered under the attribute of thought, the state’s power
increases the more it promotes the intellectual perfection of its citizens.
And considered under the attribute of thought, an order that promotes
perfection is a rational order. This is where Spinoza’s concept of a philo-
sophical religion and the traditional concept converge. For Spinoza, how-
ever – at least in the Ethics – the perfection of the intellect is the same
as the perfection of the body, and the rational order deduced from the idea
Dei is the same as the order of bodies governed by the laws of motion
and rest. Hence human imperfection, which on the traditional view is
attributed to embodiment, on Spinoza’s view follows from the finitude of
our power. However, if we limit ourselves to the perspective of the attribute
of thought, Spinoza can indeed call a rationally ordered state “God’s king-
dom.” Through its rational order God, as it were, maximizes the citizens’
perfection.
interpreting christianity as a philosophical religion

How is Spinoza’s concept of a philosophical religion distinctly Christian?
The first thing to note is that divine laws are also Christian laws because
the idea Dei which is both the source and the goal of the prescriptions of
reason is Christ according to Spinoza. This is the key claim of Spinoza’s
philosophical Christology from the Short Treatise to his late correspondence
with Henry Oldenburg. While the terms he uses vary, the entity they refer
to is always the same. In the Short Treatise he calls God’s infinite mode of
thought the “Son of God” (KV 1.9, G i, 48/92). This corresponds to the
“infinite intellect” in the Ethics who is identified with the idea Dei and
apprehends the “attributes of God and his affections” (E2p4d). In the TTP
Christ is the “wisdom of God” (TTP 1.18/14) and in the correspondence
with Oldenburg he is “the eternal son of God” and “God’s eternal wisdom”
(Ep. 73, G iv, 308/943). To the extent we are rational, therefore, we are
Christians, and the more we know, the more we participate in Christ, who,
as God’s infinite intellect, is the sum total of knowledge. Likewise, a state
is a Christian state to the extent it is rationally ordered.
At first view this philosophical Christianity seems to have little in com-
mon with its historical counterpart. It is a universal religion of reason
grounded in human nature whose prescriptions are followed by everyone
who rationally strives to preserve himself. Spinoza, however, insists that
this “universal religion” is “revealed by the natural and the prophetic light”
(Ep. 43, G iv, 225/881). And throughout the TTP he stresses that the goals
promoted by the Divine Law are the core teachings of Scripture:
From Scripture itself we see without any difficulty and ambiguity that its message
is in essence this: to love God above all, and one’s neighbor as oneself. (TTP
12.10/155)
Indeed, since Scripture “teaches true religion [vera religio], of which God is
the eternal author,” it “is called the word of God” (TTP 12.7/153). Although
at the beginning of TTP 4 the concept of Divine Law is derived from philo-
sophical premises, at the end Spinoza quotes a series of Scriptural passages
from Moses to St. Paul to support his claim that “Scripture unreservedly
commends the natural light and the natural Divine Law” (TTP 4.12/59).
Spinoza can describe the philosophical deduction of the prescriptions of
reason from the idea Dei as “prophecy or revelation,” since these are defined
as “the certain knowledge of some matter revealed by God to man.” This
includes “natural knowledge . . . , for the knowledge that we acquire by
the natural light of reason depends solely on knowledge of God and his
eternal decrees” (TTP 1.1–2/9). With respect to the historical Christ, this
is precisely what Spinoza says. To be sure, Spinoza is unorthodox by the
Christian standards of his time – not, however, by the standards of ancient
Christian philosophers like Origen – because he declines to fully identify
“Christ according to the flesh” with the idea Dei – that is, “the eternal son
of God” or “God’s eternal wisdom” (Ep. 73, G iv, 308/943). Like all human
beings, “Christ according to the flesh” has a finite intellect, whereas “the
eternal son of God” is the infinite intellect. And claiming that the infi-
nite becomes finite is for Spinoza as absurd as claiming “that a circle has
taken on the nature of a square” (ibid.; cf. TP 2.8). Spinoza’s Christology,
then, includes nothing that contradicts reason. He stresses, on the other
hand, that “God’s eternal wisdom” – that is, God’s infinite intellect, “mani-
fested itself . . . most of all in Christ Jesus,” namely in the finite intellect
of “Christ according to the flesh” (ibid.). Hence, while falling short of the
infinite intellect, the historical Christ comes as close to it as a human being
can. Spinoza thus portrays the historical Christ as the most accomplished
philosopher of all times. This is corroborated by the description of what
was revealed to Christ in TTP 4:
With regard to Christ . . . we must maintain that he perceived things truly and
adequately. . . . It was through the mind of Christ . . . that God revealed certain
things to humankind. . . . Therefore, to maintain that God adapted his revelations
to Christ’s beliefs . . . would be the height of absurdity, especially so since Christ
was sent to teach not only the Jews but all of humankind. Thus . . . his mind had
to be adapted to the beliefs and doctrines held in common by all of humankind –
that is, to those notions that are common and true. (TTP 4.10/55)
Since Spinoza was confident to have found the “true philosophy,” his
portrait of Christ implies that Christ deduced the teachings of the Divine
Law through the same chain of logical inferences by which they are deduced
in the Ethics.55
The description of Christ offered in TTP 1, however, at first view seems
at odds with my claim that the historical Christ for Spinoza is merely
an outstanding philosopher. Taken at face value, this description encour-
ages an orthodox interpretation of the historical Christ as the miraculous
incarnation of God’s superhuman wisdom:
Nevertheless, a man who can perceive by his mind alone that which is not contained
in the basic principles of our cognition and cannot be deduced therefrom, must
necessarily have a mind whose excellence far surpasses the human mind. Therefore
I do not believe that anyone has attained such a degree of perfection surpassing all
others, except Christ. To him God’s ordinances [placita] leading men to salvation
were revealed . . . directly, so that God manifested himself to the apostles through
the mind of Christ. . . . In that sense it can also be said that the wisdom of God –
that is, wisdom that is more than human – took on human nature in Christ, and
that Christ was the way of salvation [via salutis]. (TTP 1.18/14)
Since Spinoza’s philosophical commitments preclude any miraculous dis-
ruption of the eternal order of nature – for example a human mind attaining
knowledge that cannot be attained by the human mind or wisdom that is
more than human – he cannot endorse an orthodox interpretation of this
passage. However, while the passage allows for an orthodox interpretation,
it must not be interpreted in this way. Consider Spinoza’s explanation of
what he meant to Henry Oldenburg:
[T]o disclose my meaning more clearly, I say that for salvation [salus] it is not
altogether necessary to know Christ according to the flesh; but with regard to the
eternal son of God – that is, God’s eternal wisdom, which has manifested itself
in all things, and mostly in the human mind, and most of all in Christ Jesus
– a very different view must be taken. For without this [wisdom] no one can
attain a state of blessedness, since it alone teaches what is true and false, good
and evil. And since, as I have said, this wisdom has been manifested most of
all through Jesus Christ, his disciples have preached it as far as he revealed it to
55 Cf. Pines (1968), 19.

them. . . . As to the additional teaching of certain churches, that God took upon
himself human nature, I have expressly indicated that I do not understand what
they say. Indeed, to tell the truth, they seem to me to speak no less absurdly than
one who might tell me that a circle has taken on the nature of a square. (Ep. 73, G iv,
308–9/943)
We can now see how the passage in TTP 1 can be read without conflicting
with Spinoza’s philosophical commitments. Recall that as idea Dei, Christ
is the infinite intellect which apprehends the “attributes of God and his
affections.” God, according to Spinoza, is a “substance consisting of an
infinity of attributes, of which each one expresses eternal and infinite
essence” (E1def6). Although Spinoza claims, as we saw, “that God’s infinite
essence and his eternity are known to all” (E2p47s), the human mind can
know only two of God’s “infinity of attributes” that express “eternal and
infinite essence,” namely thought and extension. Christ, on the other hand,
insofar as he is the infinite intellect, knows all of God’s infinite attributes.
Hence he knows things that can indeed “not be deduced” from “the basic
principles of our cognition.” If a person could know what the infinite
intellect knows, he would obviously “possess a mind whose excellence far
surpasses the human mind.” This, however, is impossible. Only Christ as
idea Dei “attained such a degree of perfection.” Since the infinite intellect
knows all things directly, he also knows “God’s ordinances leading men to
salvation . . . directly.” With respect to this knowledge, Christ as idea Dei
and the mind of the historical Christ overlap. And through the mediation
of the latter God conveys his ordinances to the Apostles. God’s wisdom
is “more than human,” because it is the infinite, not the finite human
intellect, and it did indeed take on “human nature in Christ,” however
not all of it, but only that part of which the historical Christ attained
knowledge.
The deliberate ambiguity of this passage is motivated by the same consid-
erations that led to the deliberately ambiguous phrasing of the doctrines of
the universal faith. Taken literally, these doctrines, too, contain much that is
at odds with Spinoza’s philosophy. In their case, however, Spinoza explicitly
indicates how to interpret them according to reason. His restatement of the
doctrine of the incarnation can likewise be interpreted according to both
reason and the imagination. And the imagination of Spinoza’s audience
was, of course, shaped by the orthodox understanding of the incarnation.
Spinoza did not include the doctrine of the incarnation among the doc-
trines of the universal faith because it is neither a necessary condition
for obedience, nor a doctrine agreed upon by all “good men.” Jews, for
example, can be obedient while denying that God’s eternal wisdom incar-
nated in Christ. Spinoza, however, is writing in a Christian context for a
Christian audience. Hence he must offer an account of the foundational
doctrine of Christianity as a historical religion that could be endorsed by
both non-philosophers and philosophers in a Christian society.
As a historical religion Christianity is not only a universal religion of
reason taught by Christ more geometrico. It also is a pedagogical-political
program that includes laws, parables, and ceremonies through which Christ
and the Apostles adapted the prescriptions of reason to the imagination of
non-philosophers in their time. When Christ “proclaimed” the things he
“perceived truly and adequately . . . as law”:
he did so because of the people’s ignorance and obstinacy, . . . adapting himself

to the character of the people. So although his sayings were somewhat clearer
than those of the other prophets, his teaching of things revealed was still obscure
and quite often took the form of parables, especially when he was addressing
those to whom it had not yet been granted to understand the kingdom of heaven
[cf. Matt 13:10 ff.]. (TTP 4.10/55–56)56
Historical Christianity, then, instantiates the universal religion of reason

in a context constrained by human nature and particular cultural circum-
stances. In this respect, the Hebrew Bible differs only in clarity from the
New Testament. Although in contrast to the New Testament, the prophets
of the Hebrew Bible did not teach “God’s eternal word” as a universal
religion, but “as the law of their own country” (TTP 12.8/153), this does
not mean that they did not grasp its universal character. They only had to
adapt it to the “wretched condition” of the Hebrews after the exodus from
Egypt. To “the early Jews religion was transmitted in the form of writ-
ten law, because at that time they were just like children” (TTP 12.2/149).
Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, the Psalmist, and Solomon are among the wit-
nesses Spinoza quotes to confirm that the true religion of the Hebrew Bible
is universal. Thus already Moses “told [the Hebrews] of a time to come
when God would inscribe his law in their hearts” (ibid.). Likewise “it is
only what is inscribed in the heart, or mind, that the Psalmist calls God’s
law” (TTP 5.2/61). And:
of all of Isaiah’s teachings nothing is clearer than this, that the Divine Law, taken in
an unconditional sense, signifies . . . the universal law [lex universalis] that consists
in the true rule of life [ratio vivendi]. (TTP 5.2/60)
56 On the adaptation of Christ’s teachings through the Apostles, see TTP 11.
The difference between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, then,
can be accounted for through tougher cultural constraints: due to their
enslavement in Egypt, the moral and intellectual limitations of the Hebrews
were particularly severe.57
were the prophets philosophers after all?

We would expect Spinoza to explain the fact that the Hebrew Bible con-
tains the prescriptions of reason which make up the Divine Law in the
same way in which he explained that they were taught by Christ: the
patriarchs, Moses, and the rest of the Hebrew prophets were accomplished
philosophers who deduced these prescriptions from the idea Dei. They
are the content of “prophecy or revelation” in the sense in which these
notions apply to “the knowledge that we acquire by the natural light of
reason.” There are a number of reasons why this is what we would have
expected Spinoza to say. For one thing, it is the assumption underlying the
dogmatism of his early writings. Moreover, it is a standard argument used
by Christians to secure the unity of the two Testaments: the wisdom of the
prophets is how they participate in Christ who is “God’s eternal wisdom.”
Spinoza could simply have said that the prophets deduced the prescriptions
of reason from the idea Dei in their mind and hence from Christ. And this
is what he, in fact, says about the patriarchs: as we saw, Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob regained the freedom Adam lost “under the guidance of the spirit of
Christ, that is the idea Dei.” Spinoza also frequently attributes philosoph-
ical doctrines to the Hebrew Bible. We saw that he interprets Adam’s Fall
as an allegory for the fall from freedom into bondage. We also saw that
“some of the Hebrews” apprehended the substance monism of the Ethics
“as if through a cloud.” Another core thesis of Spinoza’s metaphysics that
he claims to share “with all the ancient Hebrews” (cum antiquis omnibus
Hebraeis) is that God is the “immanent cause” of all things (Ep. 73, G iv,
307/942; cf. E1p18). The Tetragrammaton he takes to “indicate the absolute
essence of God without relation to created things” (TTP 13.5/159) while
the term “glory in the Holy Scriptures” refers to the reciprocal “intellectual
love” between human beings and God (E5p36s).
However, the most striking evidence is Spinoza’s discussion of three
crucial religious concepts in TTP 3–6: election, Divine Law, and miracles.
In all three cases he first gives a philosophical account of these concepts and
then goes on to prove that Scripture teaches the same thing. We already
57 This is precisely Lessing’s view in the Education of Humankind; see my discussion in the epilogue.
saw Spinoza’s claim in TTP 4 that “Scripture unreservedly commends the
natural light and the natural Divine Law.” And although he unequivocally
rejects the traditional understanding of election in TTP 3 and of miracles
in TTP 6 and offers a naturalistic reinterpretation of these concepts, he
claims to be doing so in complete agreement with Scripture. Consider the
case of miracles. In the traditional sense a miracle means the disruption of
the natural order through God’s will (splitting the Red Sea, for example,
or making the sun stand still). For Spinoza, by contrast, God is nature and
the effects caused by the eternal and immutable laws of nature are God’s
will. Hence a miracle in the traditional sense would be a contradiction:
God would will and not will that the sun follows its natural course. What is
perceived as a miracle, Spinoza explains, is simply a natural event for which
the observer has no causal explanation. Hence he appeals to the will of
God – the “asylum of ignorance” as Spinoza puts it in the Ethics (E1app, G
ii, 81/443). The “prophets,” Spinoza stresses, “take the same view as I” (TTP
6.23/86; my emphasis). Thus, after having made his case against miracles
in the traditional sense “from basic principles known by the natural light
of reason,” he goes on to demonstrate from Scripture:
that God’s decrees and commands, and consequently God’s providence, are in
truth nothing but nature’s order [ordo naturae]; that is to say, when Scripture
tells us that this or that was accomplished by God or by God’s will, nothing
more is meant than that it came about in accordance with the laws and order of
nature, and not, as the multitude believes, that nature for that time suspended her
action. (TTP 6.12/79)
Spinoza then goes through a long list of biblical passages that he takes to
prove his point, concluding that:
all these passages clearly convey the teaching that nature preserves a fixed and
immutable order, that God has been the same throughout all ages that are known
or unknown to us, . . . and that miracles seem something strange only because of
man’s ignorance. These, then, are the express teachings of Scripture [Haec igitur
in Scriptura expresse docentur]. Nowhere does it say that something can happen in
nature that contradicts her laws or that cannot follow from her laws; so neither
should we attribute such a fiction to Scripture. (TTP 6.22/86)
Why, then, does Scripture so frequently portray natural events as miracles?

Because its purpose is not to instruct philosophers, but to offer pedagogical-
political guidance to non-philosophers:
[I]t is not the part of Scripture to explain things through their natural causes;
it only relates those things that greatly occupy the imagination, employing such
method and style as best serves to excite wonder, and consequently to instill piety
in the mind of the multitude. (TTP 6.13/80; my emphasis)
For the same reason that God cannot perform miracles, he also cannot
choose a nation and confer special benefits on it. A nation for Spinoza is
not a separate ontological entity: “nature creates individuals, not nations,
and it is only difference of language, of laws, and of established customs
that divides individuals from nations” (TTP 17.26/207). Things “worthy
of desire,” according to Spinoza, are either intellectual or moral perfection
or natural goods – living in “security and good health” (TTP 3.5/38).
The “means that directly serve for the attainment” of intellectual and
moral perfection, Spinoza argues, “lie within the bounds of human nature”
(ibid.) – for example intelligence and temperament, on which the degree
of intellectual and moral perfection we can attain partly depends. With
regard to these factors individual differences exist, but not differences
between nations. Hence “these gifts are not peculiar to any nation but have
always been common to all of humankind” (ibid.). Goods like “security
and good health,” by contrast, depend to a considerable degree on “external
circumstances” which can also be called “the gifts of fortune” (ibid.) because
we often ignore the chain of causes and effects that account for them. A
weak state may enjoy peace and security over a long period, for example,
because it had the good fortune not to be conquered by a stronger state.
External circumstances therefore are one factor that shapes the fate of a
nation. The other is the quality of its laws. With respect to these two
factors, “nations differ from one another” (TTP 3.6/39). To the extent they
are successful on account of good fortune and good laws they can lay claim
to be chosen by God:
Thus the Hebrew nation was chosen by God before others not by reason of its
intellect or its mental composure, but by reason of its society and the good fortune
by which it achieved supremacy and retained it for so many years. (TTP 3.6/39)
This naturalistic reinterpretation of the concept of election is, of course,

based on Spinoza’s philosophical views and thus presented by him as
“proven by reason” (TTP 3.7/41). It is, on the other hand, surprising that he
goes on to claim that this concept of election “is also well established from
Scripture” (ibid). As far as “blessedness” is concerned, Spinoza takes the
Hebrew Bible to agree with him that “God is equally gracious to all” (TTP
3.8/41). At the same time, Spinoza stresses that this concept of election
concurs with the Christian doctrine of predestination as set forth in Paul’s
Epistle to the Romans. To say that “God is equally gracious to all” with
regard to “blessedness” only means that God does not privilege one nation
over another. Differences in intelligence and temperament, by contrast,
which are the effect of the eternal laws of nature – and hence of God’s
will in Spinoza’s sense – of course significantly determine the degree of
blessedness a person can attain. With Romans 9:20–21, Spinoza can thus
say that human beings “are in God’s hands as clay in the hands of the
potter, who from the same lump makes vessels, some to honor and some
to dishonor” (Ep. 75, G iv, 312/945; cf. TTP, note 34; TP 2.22). In this
sense “true knowledge of God” – which, as we saw, constitutes intellectual
perfection and hence our “highest good” – can be described as “a special
gift [from God] granted only to some of the faithful” (TTP 13.5/159) –
that is, to those who were enabled by Deus sive Natura to attain such
knowledge. Spinoza, then, claims that his concept of election agrees with
both the teachings of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian doctrine of
predestination!
To explain why the traditional understanding of election, the Divine
Law, and miracles is so markedly different from what he takes to be the
consensus of reason and Scripture, Spinoza relies on a topos in Christian
anti-Jewish polemics: he blames the “Pharisees.” They misinterpreted the
concepts of election and Divine Law and in the case of miracles they may
even have sacrilegiously altered the biblical text.58
Why is Spinoza so keen to show that reason and Scripture agree? As I
suggested above, parts of the TTP seem to be designed to ensure that not-
yet-philosophers who turn into philosophers reject neither Scripture nor
philosophy. The rebellious not-yet-philosopher learns how Scripture can
be reinterpreted according to reason while the timid not-yet-philosopher
learns that reason must not submit to Scripture understood according to
the imagination. The examples of election, the Divine Law, and miracles
illustrate the general claim Spinoza makes in the preface to the TTP: that he
“found nothing expressly taught in Scripture that was not in agreement with
the intellect [cum intellectu non conveniret] or that contradicted [repugnaret]
it” (10/6).59
58 On election, see TTP 3.10/44; on the Divine Law, see TTP 5.3/61; on miracles, see Spinoza’s reference
to “sacrilegious men” in TTP 6.15/82 (cf. TTP 7.1/88); on the identification of the Pharisees with
the sacrilegi, see Gebhardt (1987), 43–44.
59 Note, however, that Spinoza does not consistently argue that Scripture and reason are in agreement
in TTP 3–6. In a number of passages he takes the opposite view, reflecting his critique of biblical
religion. Thus in TTP 4 Spinoza attributes the false beliefs about God as a lawgiver and of the
Divine Law as a body of prescriptions to the inadequate knowledge of the prophets, not to their
pedagogical-political intention; see 9/54–55. Similarly, Spinoza sometimes describes the miracle
stories in the Bible not only as adapted to the intellectual limitations of the prophet’s audience, but
The claim that the prophets were philosophers would not have com-
mitted Spinoza to endorsing the entire body of laws in the Hebrew Bible
as prescriptions of reason. For one thing, Spinoza’s critique of biblical reli-
gion – to which I will turn shortly – never questions the authority of the
prophets in practical matters. Moreover, plenty of models for declaring the
Jewish law invalid without dismissing the authority of prophecy were avail-
able to him: the critique of “ceremonial” laws set forth by later prophets
like Isaiah, for example, the Christian concept of divine accommodation of
which we saw examples in chapter 2, or the contextualism of Maimonides
that we saw in chapter 3. And Spinoza indeed uses all of these models.
Isaiah, as we saw, identified the Divine Law with “the universal law that
consists in the true rule of life.” Alluding to Colossians 2:16–17 Spinoza
describes the Jewish law as “mere shadows” (TTP 4.6/53). For Christians
this meant that as a “shadow” of Christ the Jewish law was true allegorically,
but no longer literally valid. Finally, the prophets only taught “God’s eter-
nal word” as “the law of their country” because of the “wretched condition”
of the Hebrews after the exodus from Egypt.
If anything it would have been surprising if Spinoza’s philosophical re-
interpretation of Christianity had not included the rejection of the Jewish
law. Since Spinoza has removed the authority of the literal sense of Scrip-
ture’s narratives as well, his interpretation of Christianity as a philosophical
religion does not commit him to accepting the authority of any historical
content of Scripture. At the same time, every state whose laws promote
the love of God and of one’s neighbor can lay claim to be a Christian state
and use the cultural authority that Scripture’s narratives have to further
the citizens’ perfection. This I take to be the key role that Spinoza wants
Christianity to play.
Note, finally, that Spinoza’s philosophical reinterpretation of Christian-
ity is compatible with the religious pluralism characteristic of proponents
of a philosophical religion. If historical Christianity is just one instantiation
of the universal religion of reason, adapted to a particular context, other
instantiations, adapted to other contexts, are possible as well. Spinoza says
as much in Letter 43. On the assumption that:
Mahomet, too, taught the Divine Law and gave sure signs of his mission as did
the other prophets, there is certainly no reason . . . to deny that Mahomet was a
true prophet. As for the Turks and the other Gentiles, if they worship God by
as reflecting the limitations of the prophets themselves; see TTP 6.11/79 and 6.18–20/82–83. These
oscillations require further investigation.
the exercise of justice and by love of their neighbor, I believe that they possess the
spirit of Christ and are saved. (Ep. 43, G iv, 225–26/881)
Had Spinoza lived in a Muslim country, we may speculate, he would have

worked out a philosophical reinterpretation of Islam!
spinoza’s critique of religion

We are, then, led to expect that Spinoza will portray the prophets as
accomplished philosophers whose teachings agree with reason as long as
we beware the distortions of the Pharisees. And yet, Spinoza unequivo-
cally rejects the view that the prophets were philosophers. They were not
“endowed with a more perfect mind, but with a more vivid power of imag-
ination” (TTP 2.1/22) and “perceived God’s revelations with the aid of the
imaginative faculty alone” (TTP 1.27/20). Hence they did not translate
what they deduced from the idea Dei in their mind into the language of
the imagination because they were addressing the “multitude.” They were
non-philosophers themselves. When the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
conflicts with the God of the philosophers, this is due to the ignorance of
the prophets.
The representation of things through the imagination is determined
through psychological, physiological, and cultural factors: the mood of the
prophet, his temperament, and, most importantly, the superstitious beliefs
and prejudices that shaped his cultural upbringing. The beliefs of the
prophets about God and nature vary accordingly. They have in common,
however, that for the most part they “are false” when judged by “reason
and philosophy” (TTP 15.4/173). Hence:
we are in no way bound to believe [the prophets] in matters of purely philosophic

speculation. (TTP 2.12/27)
The contrast between the intellect and the imagination on which Spinoza’s
account of prophecy is based draws on and at the same time subverts the
philosophical psychology underlying Maimonides’s account of prophecy.60
Maimonides, as we saw, claims what we would have expected Spinoza to
claim that the prophets were accomplished philosophers who spoke in
the language of the imagination to offer guidance to non-philosophers.
The overwhelming textual evidence in the Bible supports, of course, what
60 See Kreisel (2001), chapter 7 for the contrast between Maimonides and Spinoza.
Spinoza actually claims.61 His argument in TTP 7 is straightforward: inter-
preters of Scripture should not “extort . . . their own arbitrarily invented
ideas” from it and “claim divine authority” for them (7.1/88). We cannot
simply assume that Scripture contains the views we happen to hold true
and then reinterpret it in their light. This also holds for views that are, in
fact, true – that is, demonstrated by reason. To establish Scripture’s “true
sense” we must read it on its own terms and deviate from what it literally
says only if compelled to do so on internal grounds. The method Spinoza
proposes for establishing Scripture’s “true sense” involves two steps. The
first consists in meticulous philological and historical work: we must learn
the language of Scripture, systematically order its statements, and draw a
profile of its authors to gain access to their imagination. Since Scripture is
a compilation of texts by different authors dating from different times and
places which were, moreover, redacted and revised in the course of their
transmission, drawing a profile of the authors also requires establishing
the history of the biblical books. Only after “having extracted the true
sense [of Scripture], we must necessarily resort to judgment and reason”
(TTP 15.3/171) – that is, determine whether a Scriptural claim is true or
false. Since it reliably turns out to be false, Spinoza can conclude that
Scripture has no authority in theoretical matters. The consequences of this
method for the dogmatic approach to Scripture are devastating. Its core
assumption – that the prophets were “outstanding philosophers” whose
philosophical views are the allegorical content of a pedagogical-political
program for the guidance of non-philosophers – must be dismissed for
lack of textual evidence.
The case against “skepticism” – which Spinoza illustrates through the
medieval Jewish scholar Judah Alfakhar who, in turn, is a stand-in for the
Calvinist church – is more complicated.62 For the skeptic is in principle
willing to play by Spinoza’s interpretative rules to establish the true sense of
Scripture. His “universal rule” is “that whatever Scripture teaches . . . quite
expressly is to be admitted as absolutely true on its own authority” (TTP
15.2/171). The skeptic does not, however, recognize reason as the arbiter
of Scripture’s truth. If reason and Scripture are at variance, reason must
be dismissed. For the skeptic, the truth of Scripture does not depend on
the premise that the prophets were “outstanding philosophers.” It follows
from a miraculous act of revelation. Since human reason – that is, the
61 See Pines (1963), 100. Note that according to Harvey (1988), Maimonides esoterically agrees with
Spinoza that the prophets were not philosophers.
62 On the identity of skepticism and “orthodox Calvinism,” see Gebhardt (1987), 82.
“natural light” – has been corrupted through Adam’s Fall, it cannot, on
its own, guide us to blessedness and salvation. God in his grace offered
us an alternative guide: the supernatural light disclosed through revelation
which, in turn, can only be correctly understood by those who partake in
it on account of their faith.63 Both the revelation and the interpretation
of God’s will in Scripture thus depend on God’s miraculous intervention
in the natural order. Spinoza cannot refute skepticism on textual grounds
alone. He must rely on his philosophy to argue that reason can guide
us to “blessedness” and “salvation” (see E5p42 with scholium), and that
miracles, including a supernatural light, are metaphysically impossible,
leaving reason as the only arbiter of the truth of Scripture. Only then can
Spinoza claim that reason is “the greatest of all gifts and a light divine”
(TTP 15.3/172) and that a person who submits reason to Scripture “accepts
as divinely inspired utterances the prejudices of a common people of long
ago which will gain hold on his mind and darken it” (TTP 15.1/170).
In TTP 1, 2, 7, and 15, then, Spinoza launches a momentous attack
on the foundations of biblical religion which surely helped to prepare the
ground for the critique of religion of the radical Enlightenment. Whereas
the first line of argument led us to expect that Spinoza would portray
the prophets as accomplished philosophers, the second line leads us to
expect that Spinoza will dismiss biblical religion altogether and call for
its replacement with a religion of reason. Spinoza, however, surprises us
again. He goes out of his way to preserve the practical authority of the
Bible as a pedagogical-political program ensuring that non-philosophers
obey the law. Here we can clearly see the tensions to which the two lines
of argument give rise. Since Spinoza can no longer ground the practical
authority of the prophets on the claim that they deduced the prescriptions
of reason from the idea Dei in their mind, he must provide an alternative
foundation. This foundation is highly implausible. Spinoza argues that the
prophets stood out through their moral virtue on account of which they
grasped the teachings of the Divine Law. Since they did not philosophically
deduce them, however, they lacked subjective certainty about the truth of
what they grasped. Such certainty they attained through a miracle – a
“sign” from God (TTP 2.3/23). This is obviously a bad alternative to the
dogmatic foundation of the truth of prophecy. For one thing, it is not clear
how the prophets could have stood out through their moral virtue. Virtue
63 See, for example, Calvin’s Institutio Christianae Religionis 1.6 on the “weakness” of “the human
mind” that is “altogether unable to come to God if not aided and upheld by his sacred word.”
Spinoza had the 1597 Spanish translation of the Institutiones; see Freudenthal (1899), 160, no. 27.
consists in following the prescriptions of reason – either our own if we are
philosophers or those of others on account of religious authority or fear
of punishment if we are non-philosophers. Thus both philosophers and
non-philosophers can develop “strength of mind” – that is, “the steadfast
will” to obey the law. In neither sense the prophet can have virtue: he is
not a philosopher, nor can he derive virtue from obeying the laws of which
his virtue is supposed to be the cause. Things get worse when we turn to
miracles as the alleged reason for the prophet’s subjective certainty. Here
Spinoza explicitly contradicts himself: as we saw, in TTP 6 he claims that
the prophets “take the same view as I” on the impossibility of miracles.
This is not the only drawback of Spinoza’s critique of religion. It obvi-
ously undermines his case against the charge of atheism since he can no
longer claim that the God he affirms as a philosopher is the same as the
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob according to Scripture’s allegorical sense.
Indeed, none of the dogmatic features that we saw in Spinoza’s writings can
be justified by the rules of interpretation laid out in TTP 7. To briefly recall
the most salient of them: Christ’s spirit is the idea Dei and the historical
Christ an accomplished philosopher; the core of Scripture is the Divine
Law aiming at intellectual perfection and its narratives convey the seven
doctrines of the universal faith which can be interpreted according to both
reason and the imagination; the ancient Hebrews came close to appre-
hending the unity of thought and extension in God and conceived God as
the immanent cause of all things; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob recovered the
freedom of Adam under the guidance of Christ; finally, Scripture, properly
interpreted, teaches the philosophical concepts of election, Divine Law,
and miracles.
And there is more: Spinoza undermines the theological-political prin-
ciples of a Spinozistic state.64 For as we saw, freedom of expression is
constrained by the need to protect the subjective conviction of non-
philosophers that their pious beliefs are true. Since these beliefs are derived
from Scripture, they cannot be held true without believing in the truth of
Scripture. The author of the TTP’s critique of religion would thus right-
fully be condemned as one of the “heretics and schismatics . . . who teach
such beliefs as promote obstinacy, hatred, strife, and anger.” Unlike the
critique of superstition, the critique of religion cannot be reconciled with
Spinoza’s theological-political principles by taking it to be addressed to
the sovereign. For Spinoza explicitly says that the rulers should adopt the
universal faith of the TTP and serve “as ministers of the churches and as
64 Cf. Garber (2008).

guardians and interpreters of the national religion” (TP 8.46). Spinoza’s
critique of religion, then, undermines not only the faith of the ruled, but
also the faith of the ruler.
While Spinoza has strong textual support for his critique of religion, it
undermines his carefully crafted case for the authority of Scripture as a
pedagogical-political program. To shed light on this puzzle we must ask
how Spinoza’s critique of religion is motivated. He clearly thought of it
as a key component of his defense of the freedom to philosophize in the
twofold sense I proposed. It is crucial to see that the position Spinoza is
targeting is skepticism, not dogmatism which in its Averroistic form poses
no threat to the freedom to philosophize as we saw. For one thing Spinoza
is addressing “sensible” readers who are prevented “from devoting their
minds to philosophy” (Ep. 30, G iv, 166/844) because they were led to
embrace skepticism – the view “that reason must be the handmaid of the-
ology” (TTP, preface 15/8). The critique of religion obviously removes this
“obstacle” (ibid.) by showing that Scripture has no authority “in matters
of purely philosophical speculation” (TTP 2.12/27). Spinoza wants, more-
over, to defend the freedom of thought and expression against the political
enforcement of religious orthodoxy – what he calls the “excessive authority
and egotism of preachers” in the letter to Oldenburg. His immediate target
is the reformed church in the Netherlands which had built an alliance with
the monarchist supporters of the House of Orange and aimed to become
the church of the state.65 This would have given it the power to impose
Calvinist orthodoxy. Spinoza understood the justification for the reformed
church’s political ambitions along the lines of skepticism: only the faithful,
namely the members of the reformed church, have access to the super-
natural light contained in Scripture whose guidance is necessary to attain
blessedness and salvation. All dissent is a symptom of corruption and must
be suppressed before it attracts others to the path of perdition. Against this
threat Spinoza wants to defend the relatively liberal and tolerant Dutch
Republic under Johan de Witt. In the preface to the TTP he stresses his
“rare good fortune”:
to live in a state where freedom of judgment is fully granted to each citizen and he
may worship God as he pleases, and where nothing is esteemed dearer and more
precious than freedom. (TPP, preface, 8/3; cf. 20.15/236).
65 For the general historical setting, see Israel (1995), chapter 30, in particular 785–95 where the
composition of the TTP is situated against the background of the period’s conflicts and tensions.
For a more detailed account of the historical circumstances under which Spinoza composed the
TTP, see Nadler (1999), chapter 10.
More generally, any group trying to enforce religious orthodoxy in a Chris-
tian context will use a variation of the skeptic argument, appealing to the
truth of Scripture and claiming to have exclusive access to this truth. By
showing that Scripture contains no truth and that its true sense can be
established by reason which all human beings share, Spinoza expected to
remove the cornerstone of the justification for the political enforcement of
religious orthodoxy.
While Spinoza’s critique of religion is thus motivated by the aim to
defend the freedom to philosophize, it is not necessary for it, since his
political argument for freedom of thought and expression does not require
settling the question of the truth of Scripture. Beliefs of any kind, whether
true or false, cannot be enforced, because the sovereign lacks the power
to enforce them as we saw. It is, in principle, possible to attack skepti-
cism from a dogmatic standpoint. This is what Lodwijk Meyer tried to do
in chapter 11 of his Philosophia Sanctae Scripturae Interpres. The advocate
of dogmatism denies that revelation is a miraculous act and that Scrip-
ture’s content derives from a supernatural light to which the natural light
must submit. Spinoza’s correspondence with Blyenbergh, however, which
I examined above, likely taught him how inefficient the dogmatic critique
of skepticism is. For Blyenbergh, a skeptic through and through, perspicu-
ously points out that Spinoza has “very little proof” for dogmatism. In the
end Spinoza reluctantly admits that he indeed lacks “mathematical proof”
for the view that the teachings of Scripture and reason agree. The TTP only
radicalizes Blyenbergh’s point: dogmatism not only lacks a mathematical
proof, Spinoza now concedes, but has no textual support at all. The public
scandal caused by Meyer’s defense of dogmatism, published in 1666, may
have further persuaded Spinoza that dogmatism offers shaky grounds for
defending the freedom to philosophize against the threat of skepticism.
More promising than a dogmatic defense of the freedom to philosophize is
a comprehensive attack on the truth of Scripture, based on a method that
raises its study to the same level of empirical objectivity that Francis Bacon
claimed to have achieved for the study of nature.66 While not necessary,
then, Spinoza concluded that attacking the foundations of biblical religion
is a more efficient way to defend the freedom to philosophize. Albeit in very
different ways, skepticism and dogmatism both depend on the premise
that Scripture is true. Hence Spinoza’s critique of religion could not strike
down the one without also striking down the other. To defeat skepticism
66 In TTP 7 Spinoza deliberately construes his exegetical method in analogy to Bacon’s “historia
naturae” (7.2/89). Cf. Zac (1965), 31.
Spinoza was willing to pay the price of undermining his interpretation of
Christianity as a philosophical religion.
When Spinoza started working on the TTP, defending himself against
the charge of atheism was still one of his main aims. The evidence for
an elaborate philosophical reinterpretation of Christianity in the TTP and
elsewhere, which is compatible with the freedom to philosophize, sug-
gests that this is the way he originally intended to go. His attempt to save
Scripture’s authority as a source of moral truth shows that, the critique
of religion notwithstanding, he continued to consider religion indispens-
able as a pedagogical-political guide for non-philosophers. However, the
integration of the philosophical reinterpretation of Christianity with the
critique of religion in the TTP is clearly flawed. In the long run having
it both ways proved impossible. The rules Spinoza proposed for read-
ing Scripture eventually gave rise to the historical-critical method which
became the scholarly paradigm for studying the Bible. This surely is an
important contribution that the TTP made to the secularization of the
West. While this method remains our best guide to the true meaning of
a religious text, it undermines any attempt to reinterpret a religious or
cultural tradition in light of intellectual commitments not derived from
the text. As we will see in the epilogue, this gives rise to a dilemma that is
still with us.
Epilogue
Did the history of philosophical religions
come to an end?
introduction
The last comprehensive attempt to interpret a religious tradition as a philo-
sophical religion was made by Jewish philosophers in Christian Europe
within the conceptual framework established by Maimonides. This is a
historical fact. Does it imply that a philosophical religion is no longer
defensible? If one thing is not responsible for its demise, it is the new
philosophy and science of the early modern period. Many of religion’s
fiercest critics in the eighteenth century – for example, Voltaire, Hermann
Samuel Reimarus, and Thomas Paine – are comfortable with a deism that
proponents of a philosophical religion would dismiss for lack of philosoph-
ical rigor. They are committed to the existence of a perfectly good God
who exercises providential control over the world, expects human beings
to fulfill their moral duties, and rewards the good and punishes the wicked
either in this world or in the hereafter. This “religion of reason” is more,
not less, hospitable to the historical forms of a religious tradition than the
austere concept of God as Reason, let alone Spinoza’s Deus sive Natura.
Moses Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem is just one prominent example of how the
Enlightenment’s “religion of reason” could be reconciled with the historical
forms of Judaism.
If I am right about Spinoza, he, too, does not mark the end of the
history of philosophical religions. He did, however, create an impasse
for it. Recall that the justification for interpreting a religious tradition as
a philosophical religion is based on two claims: a systematic claim that
non-philosophical devices are necessary to order a religious community
towards what is best and an empirical claim that the historical forms of a
given religious tradition fulfill the role assigned to these non-philosophical
devices. As a philosopher, Spinoza is committed to the systematic claim
that a pedagogical-political program is necessary to ensure that imperfectly
rational citizens follow the prescriptions of reason. As a critic of religion,
282
Disregarding Spinoza’s critique of religion 283
however, he rejects the empirical claim that the historical forms of a religious
tradition are a pedagogical-political program designed by philosophers for
the guidance of non-philosophers. One way out of the impasse is Plato’s
proposal in the Republic, namely putting a new system of beliefs, practices,
and institutions in place through a cultural revolution. Spinoza, however –
surprisingly at first view – sides with the alternative suggested in the Laws:
he offers a philosophical reinterpretation of Christian beliefs, practices,
and institutions. This he could only do at the price of being inconsistent
given that he had rejected the hermeneutical premises of the program of
philosophical reinterpretation. How did philosophical religions fare after
Spinoza?
disregarding spinoza’s critique of religion

from lessing to hegel
Spinoza is not the only one to bracket his critique of religion as a way
out of the impasse. One interesting example in the eighteenth century is
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (d. 1781), a leading intellectual of the German
Enlightenment before Kant. In a famous conversation reported by Friedrich
Heinrich Jacobi, he declared “that there is no other philosophy than the
philosophy of Spinoza.”1 At the same time Lessing has no qualms about
using the concept of a philosophical religion to deal with issues such as the
deist critique of historical religions, the foundation of religious tolerance,
and the guidance of humankind to self-rule and perfection. He thus shows
that the concept of a philosophical religion remains a live option for
addressing concerns at the heart of the Enlightenment.
Lessing responds to the deist critique of historical religions as set forth
by Hermann Samuel Reimarus (d. 1768) in his Apology or Defense of the
Reasonable Worshipers of God. Reimarus himself did not dare to publish the
work. Lessing decided to publish excerpts after Reimarus’s death, anony-
mously, however, in order to protect the author’s family. Through the
Fragments of an Unnamed Person his aim was to trigger a public debate in
Germany about the theological problems raised by Reimarus’s critique of
religion.2
According to Reimarus, the universal “religion of reason” (vernünftige
Religion) is incompatible with “revelation” (Offenbarung), the content of
1 Jacobi, Über die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn, 23/187.
2 On Lessing’s motivation, see Klein (2009), 169–81.
284 Did the history of philosophical religions end?
the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.3 The latter is not universal and
abounds in errors. It contradicts experience, reason, and morality, and is
a testament to folly, deceit, enthusiasm, selfishness, and crime. Lessing’s
disagreement with Reimarus is twofold. First, although both are committed
to a “religion of reason,” they mean different things by this. Reimarus
endorses standard deist doctrines – a benevolent God, divine providence,
and an immortal soul – while rejecting Spinoza as a paradigmatic atheist.4
Lessing, by contrast, appears to have embraced Spinoza’s monism. Evidence
for this is Jacobi’s report of his conversations with Lessing, as well as passages
in some of Lessing’s works, for example in the fragment On the Reality of
the Things outside God which includes the key Spinozistic doctrine that all
things are necessarily and immanently caused in God (see 401–2/30–31).
More important for my purpose are Lessing’s objections to Reimarus
concerning the relationship between the “religion of reason” and “reve-
lation.” Lessing’s defense of revelation hinges on the crucial distinction
made by proponents of a philosophical religion between religion’s true core
which agrees with reason and religion’s literal content which serves as a
pedagogical-political program for non-philosophers. Lessing restates this
distinction as that between religion’s “spirit” (Geist) and “letter” (Buch-
stabe) and explains the literal content as the adaptation of the true core to a
particular historical context (Fragmente, 312/63). The pedagogical-political
purpose of this adaptation is stressed in Lessing’s short treatise On the Gen-
esis of Revealed Religion. The universal religion of reason, Lessing argues,
consists in “knowing God” (Gott erkennen) and referring “all our actions
and thoughts” to the worthiest notions we have formed of him (423/35).
This religion is universal since it is shared by all human beings insofar as
they are rational. In an ideal religious community everyone would practice
the universal religion of reason and live according to its necessary truths.
Since our intellectual abilities differ, however, beliefs about God and the
actions derived from them differ as well, as long as we remain in the state of
nature in which we are free to live by our own lights (see ibid.). These dif-
ferences would make the creation of “civil society” (bürgerliche Verbindung)
impossible Lessing claims (ibid.). Hence the founder of a religious com-
munity must “modify” the universal religion of reason according to the
“natural and contingent circumstances” (natürliche und zufällige Beschaf-
fenheit) of a given time and place (424/36) by adding “conventional” beliefs
and practices to it that become the foundation of the social order (423/35).
The validity of these conventional elements, then, is not derived from the
3 See the prologue to the Apology, 54–55. 4 See his The Most Noble Truths of Natural Religion.
necessary truths of the universal religion of reason, but from the need to
establish social order under particular historical circumstances. The invest-
ment of the conventional elements with divine authority by the religion’s
founder is “revelation” according to Lessing (424/36). All historical reli-
gions consist in a combination of the universal religion of reason and the
conventional beliefs and practices determined by a particular context. As
much as circumstances allow, a historical religion’s conventional elements
order the community towards “knowing God” – that is, towards the intel-
lectual worship of universal religion. Historical religions can vary in rank
depending on how close they come to the universal religion of reason (see
424–25/36). In light of this notion of “revealed” religion, Lessing’s response
to Reimarus is simple: he failed to distinguish between the true core of
the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament and the conventional elements
contained in them – that is, between their “spirit” and their “letter.”
Lessing’s contextualism with respect to the “letter” of revealed religion
and his universalism with respect to its “spirit” are also the basis of the
argument for toleration in his theater play, Nathan the Wise. Nathan, the
Jewish sage, is challenged by Saladin, the Muslim ruler, to tell him which of
the three Abrahamic religions is “the true one” (die wahre), since only one of
them can be true according to Saladin (Nathan 3.5, 553/243). Given Nathan’s
wisdom, Saladin argues, his commitment to Judaism cannot be due to
the accident of birth, but must be the outcome of rational deliberation.
Nathan’s answer is the famous Ringparabel (3.7). An heirloom ring with
the magical ability to render its owner pleasant in the eyes of God and
humankind has been passed on for generations from father to the most
beloved son. When it comes to a father who loves his three sons equally, he
promises the ring to all of them. Looking for a way to keep his promise, he
has two replicas made, which are indistinguishable from the original, and
on his deathbed gives a ring to each of the sons.
On my reading, the three indistinguishable rings represent the true core
embodied in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. To Saladin’s objection that
the three religions differ in many respects, Nathan replies that the dif-
ferences are merely due to “history” (Geschichte), based on writings and
traditions (3.7, 557/250). In other words, the distinctive features of each
religion correspond to the conventional elements in a revealed religion –
that is, the elements added to the universal religion of reason when it is
adapted to a particular historical context. With respect to these conven-
tional elements, Lessing suggests, one religion is as good as another. Our
attachment to one of them is indeed due to the accident of birth and
upbringing: we happen to trust most those people amidst whom we were
brought up. “How,” Nathan asks, “can I trust my forefathers less than you
yours? Or the other way around?” (558/250). Intolerance and religious strife
arise when the universal validity of religion’s “spirit,” with respect to which
all three Abrahamic religions agree, is attributed to their “letter,” with
respect to which they differ. Lessing thus allows for a plurality of excellent
religions: Jews, Christians, and Muslims should tolerate each other because
their religions share the same true core embedded in different historical
materials
Lessing’s theory of religion is filled with more content in his chief
philosophical-theological work, The Education of Humankind, which also
attempts to solve the tension between religious authority and autonomy,
a concern at the heart of the Enlightenment. Judaism and Christianity
in their historical forms, Lessing argues, are two stages in the education
of humankind. Only upon completion of this education will humankind
become perfectly rational and self-ruled. The childhood of humankind
is represented by the moral and intellectual condition of the Hebrews
after the exodus from Egypt. In this state, Lessing claims, the Hebrews
were the “most uncultivated” (das ungeschliffenste) and “most savage” (das
verwildertste) of all nations (Erziehung 8). This particular historical context
determined the literal content of the Hebrew Bible which is “perfectly
adapted” to the “knowledge, abilities, and inclinations of the Hebrews
at that time” (23). Moses can teach neither God’s true unity (see 15) nor
the immortality of the soul (see 17) and has to motivate moral behavior
through threats of punishment and promises of reward in this life (see
ibid.). At the same time, he includes a wide range of pedagogical devices in
the Hebrew Bible. Thus the doctrine of punishment and reward in this life
serves not only to secure obedience, but is also a pedagogical ruse given that
it is constantly contradicted by experience. Seeing the virtuous suffer and
the wicked flourish leads to the recognition that God’s justice requires an
immortal soul whose compensation takes place in the hereafter (see 28–30).
The doctrine of immortality is, moreover, hinted at in a variety of ways in
the Hebrew Bible which also teaches philosophical doctrines in the form
of parables and stimulates philosophical reflection through the allusiveness
and ambiguity of its style (see 43–50). Although most of the Hebrew Bible’s
literal content thus consists in religion’s conventional elements, it also leads
towards and allegorically contains the universal religion of reason.
Christianity represents the second stage in humankind’s education at
which the immortality of the soul can be explicitly taught (see 58). Although
humankind is now on a higher level of moral and intellectual perfection,
the content of Christianity remains subject to considerable constraints.
Its teachings are accepted on account of miracles, not on the basis of
philosophical demonstrations (see 59–60), and moral behavior continues
to be motivated by the prospect of punishment and reward, however now
occurring in the hereafter (see 61). The “mysteries” of Christianity (76),
such as the doctrines of the Trinity (see 73) and of original sin (see 74)
are “revealed truths” (geoffenbahrte Wahrheiten) that coincide with “truths
of reason” (Vernunftwahrheiten), yet unlike the latter are not presented as
philosophical inferences (70–71). Lessing compares the “revealed truths”
to the conclusions of mathematical exercises which the teacher gives to
his students as a “guideline” while they are working out the steps of the
demonstration. The literal content of the New Testament thus contains
fewer conventional elements and more of the universal religion of reason
than the literal content of the Hebrew Bible.
The goal of humankind’s education, however, is the third stage. In
the future Christianity will be replaced by the “new eternal gospel” (86)
which is no longer based on revelation, but on reason alone. At this
stage humankind will reach moral and intellectual perfection – “complete
enlightenment . . . and that purity of heart . . . that enables us to love virtue
for its own sake” (80). All human beings will apprehend God’s unity and
the immortality of the soul, which are the core doctrines of the universal
religion of reason, and act according to the moral norms that follow from
these doctrines, doing “the good because it is the good and not because
arbitrary rewards are connected with it,” whether in this life or in the
hereafter (85). At this point an ideal religious community will arise, a com-
munity of philosophers united by the intellectual love of God whose order
no longer depends on the conventional elements of historical religions –
that is, their laws, stories, exhortations, and practices of worship.
Like Christian philosophers in antiquity, Lessing links the concept of
moral and intellectual progress with a commitment to egalitarianism on the
basis of the doctrine of reincarnation. Moral and intellectual perfection are
not the privilege of those who are born at the end of history, but all souls go
through the entire educational process in successive embodiments (see 93–
100). In contrast to Christian philosophers like Origen, however, Lessing
does not conceive this process as circular, starting with an initial state of
perfection that is restored at the end. He also secularizes the eschatological
vision: the final state is not one in which disembodied rational souls are
reunited with Divine Reason, but one in which humankind as a whole has
attained self-rule and perfection. The Christian version of a philosophical
religion is thus reinterpreted on the basis of an Enlightenment conception
of progress.
From the many questions to which Lessing’s account of religion gives
rise, let me address the two most interesting for my purpose. Whereas
Nathan’s parable of the ring suggests that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
are of equal excellence, Islam disappears in The Education of Humankind
while Christianity is superior to Judaism and, in turn, inferior to the eternal
gospel of reason. Perhaps this tension can be resolved if we read Lessing
as an advocate of enlightened pluralism: he envisions citizens who have
embraced the eternal gospel of reason living side by side with citizens who
hold on to their philosophically reinterpreted religious traditions. This
would also explain why he rejects critics of religion like Reimarus who
insist on reading the Bible according to the literal sense, thus precluding
its reinterpretation.
The second question is how Lessing could consistently advocate the
concept of a philosophical religion despite Spinoza’s incisive critique of
“dogmatism” with which he was undoubtedly familiar. Lessing’s distinc-
tion between religion’s literal content which serves pedagogical-political
purposes and its true core, the universal religion of reason, clearly is a
version of dogmatism. As Spinoza had argued at length, there is no evi-
dence for the key dogmatic assumption that Scripture agrees with reason
if it is read according to the historical-critical method laid out in TTP 7.
Given Spinoza’s own inconsistency with respect to dogmatism, however,
we cannot say that Lessing broke with Spinoza on this point. It would be
more accurate to say that Lessing sided with the dogmatic Spinoza against
Spinoza’s critique of dogmatism. In this respect Lessing’s position is simi-
lar to that of nineteenth-century representatives of the Jewish Enlighten-
ment (Haskalah), most importantly Shlomo Rubin who produced the first
Hebrew translation of the Ethics and the TTP. Rubin portrayed Spinoza
as the new “guide of the perplexed” who restated the true core of Judaism
in a philosophical language appropriate for modern times.5 In Lessing
and Rubin, therefore, as already in Lodewijk Meyer, Spinoza’s philosophy
becomes the hermeneutic key to the true content of religion.6
If students of Spinoza like Lessing and Rubin could hold on to dogmatism

despite Spinoza’s critique of religion, we should not be surprised to find
5 On Rubin’s interpretation of Spinoza, see Schwartz (2007), chapter 5.

6 Note, however, that some of Lessing’s views – God’s educational plan for humankind, for example,
or the doctrine of reincarnation – do not sit well with his alleged Spinozism. I cannot examine this
question here.
versions of dogmatism elsewhere too. Kant, for example, praises Christ as
a philosopher superior to Epicureans and Stoics:
Epicurus wanted to give a motive for virtue and took from it its inner value. Zeno
wanted to give virtue an inner value and took from it its motive. Only Christ gives
it inner value and also a motive.7
Kant’s categorical imperative provides reason with a principle to determine
the norms presented as divine commandments in Scripture. The religion
of reason, however, is superior to “ecclesiastical faith” based on revelation.
Whereas the former is universal, shared by all rational beings, the latter is
confined to those who have access to its historical documents (see Religion
3.7, 115/122). Why do we need revelation if it adds nothing to the norms
established by reason and is inferior to it? As “the faith of the common
people [Volk],” Kant argues:
ecclesiastical faith . . . cannot be ignored, since no doctrine exclusively based on
reason [Vernunft] would seem to the common people to make an unalterable norm;
they demand divine revelation [göttliche Offenbarung]. (Religion 3.6, 112/120)
Hence “the authority of Scripture” is “at present the only instrument for
the union of all human beings into one church” (ibid.). Like Origen and
Lessing, Kant combines the pedagogical-political purpose of “ecclesiasti-
cal faith” with a concept of gradual progress in the course of which the
“historical vehicle” (3.7, 115/122) becomes “bit by bit dispensable” until
humankind is able to “put away childish things” (121–22/127) for good
(cf. 1 Cor 13:11). This “transition,” according to Kant, “is the Coming of
the Kingdom of God” (115/122). It gives rise to the ideal community of
philosophers in which “equality arises from true freedom,” for everyone
obeys the law “which he prescribes to himself ” (122/127). This law coin-
cides with “the will of the World-Ruler [Weltherrscher] as revealed to a
person through reason, and this Ruler invisibly binds all together, under
a common government, in a state inadequately represented and prepared
for in the past through the visible church” (122/127–28).
Kant, then, recognizes the need for a pedagogical-political program, at
least while we await the “Kingdom of God.” He is, moreover, a pluralist: the
universal religion of reason is instantiated in different “ecclesiastical faiths”
(115/122). The differences can be accounted for through the particular
historical circumstances under which each revelation took place. How
does Kant substantiate the empirical claim that historical religions embody
7 Akademie-Ausgabe 19, 176, no. 6838; cf. Schneewind (1998), 544.

his moral philosophy in a way adapted to a particular context? He proposes
to philosophically reinterpret the “empirical faith which chance, it would
seem, has tossed into our hands” – that is, to which we belong by the
accident of birth (3.6, 110/118):
To unite the foundation of a moral faith . . . with such an empirical faith . . . we
require an interpretation [Auslegung] of the revelation we happen to have . . . in
a sense that harmonizes with the universal practical rules of a pure religion of
reason. . . . This interpretation may often appear to us as forced [gezwungen] if we
consider the text (of the revelation) and often, in fact, is forced; yet if the text can
at all bear it, it must be preferred to a literal interpretation that either contains
absolutely nothing for morality or even works counter to its incentives. (Religion
3.6, 110/118)
Kant firmly maintains that moral norms should not be derived from the
Bible but that the Bible should be made to conform to the moral norms
established by reason. He illustrates this through the “prayer for revenge”
in Psalm 59:11–16 which, taken literally, is clearly at odds with the norms
of practical reason. Kant suggests several interpretations of the revenge
motive, among them that it does not refer:
to corporeal enemies but, symbolized by them, to the invisible ones which are
more pernicious to us, namely the evil inclinations which we must wish to bring
under our feet completely. (Religion 3.6, 110/118)
To justify the philosophical reinterpretation of the Bible, Kant points
out that since antiquity a wide range of religions have been successfully
reinterpreted in this way:
We shall also find that this is how all types of faith – ancient and new – . . . have
always been treated, and that wise and thoughtful teachers of the common peo-
ple [vernünftige, wohldenkende Volkslehrer] have kept on interpreting them until,
gradually, they brought them, as regards their essential content, in agreement with
the universal principles of moral faith. The moral philosophers among the Greeks
and, later, among the Romans, did exactly the same with their legends concerning
the gods. They knew in the end how to interpret even the coarsest polytheism
as just a symbolic representation of the properties of the one divine Being [das
einige göttliche Wesen]; and how to invest all sorts of depraved actions, and even
the wild yet beautiful fancies of their poets, with a mystical meaning that brought
popular faith (which it would never have been advisable to destroy, for the result
might perhaps have been an atheism even more dangerous to the state) close to
a moral doctrine intelligible to all human beings and alone beneficial. The later
Judaism and even Christianity consist of such in part highly forced interpreta-
tions [sehr gezwungene Deutungen], yet, in both cases [this is done] for the sake of
ends undoubtedly good and necessary to every human being. The Mohammedans
know very well . . . how to inject a spiritual meaning in the description of their
paradise, otherwise dedicated to every sensuality, and the Indians do the same with
their Vedas. (Religion 3.6, 110–11/119)
A second interesting example is Hegel who presents his philosophical sys-

tem as a restatement of the content of Christianity. Reason and revelation
are again connected through a notion of progress, this time the dialectical
development of “absolute spirit” (absoluter Geist), the metaphysical princi-
ple at the heart of Hegel’s philosophy. Hegel stresses the affinity between
his concept of absolute spirit and the concept of God as Reason by quoting
Aristotle’s account of Nous in Metaphysics 12.7 after describing the structure
of absolute spirit at the end of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences
(see 577). At the same time he identifies absolute spirit with the Trini-
tarian God of Christianity. “The Christian religion,” according to Hegel,
“is the perfect, absolute religion in which is revealed [offenbar] what spirit,
what God is” (Philosophie der Religion, 87).8 In Hegel’s monistic ontol-
ogy absolute spirit unites the order of nature and the history of cultural
forms which are the objective and subjective stages on God’s dialectical
path to self-consciousness. In both Christianity and Hegel’s philosophy,
God’s absolute reality becomes manifest. Revelation, according to Hegel,
has nothing to do with a miraculous act of God, but is precisely this mani-
festation (see 88). Hence Hegel can assert that “reason [Vernuft] is the
place of the spirit where God reveals himself to man” (50). Religion and
philosophy have the same object:
The object of religion and philosophy is the eternal truth in its objectivity itself,
God and nothing but God and the explication of God. . . . Philosophy only makes
itself explicit by making religion explicit. . . . Thus religion and philosophy fall
into one; indeed, philosophy itself is service of God [Gottesdienst], is religion.
(Philosophie der Religion, 28)
To pursue philosophy in this way, Hegel argues, is “the highest and abso-
lute command [Gebot] of the Christian religion” (43). For according to
Christianity:
we ought to know [erkennen] God, his nature and his essence, and regard this
knowledge as the highest perfection [das Allerhöchste]. (Philosophie der Religion,
44)
8 For Hegel’s account of Christianity as “the absolute religion,” see part 3 of his Philosophy of Religion.
To confirm this Hegel quotes the New Testament: “You shall be perfect as
your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matt 5:48). The difference between
Christianity and philosophy is thus not one of content but of form.
Whereas in Christianity, God is manifest in the preconceptual mode
of “representation” (Vorstellung), in philosophy he rises to the level of
“concept” (Begriff ). Philosophy “indeed does nothing but conceptualize
[begreifen] this idea of Christianity” (Geschichte der Philosophie, 409).9 To
justify this philosophical restatement of religious contents, Hegel points
to the model of Christian philosophers in Alexandria. He counters the
objection that they recast Christianity in Platonic terms by asserting that
“it does not matter where this doctrine [die Lehre] comes from; the only
question is whether it is true in and of itself ” (Philosophie der Religion, 46).10
The historical content of Christianity, then, reflects a less perfect form of
the self-consciousness of God than Hegel’s philosophy. As a consequence it
contains much “of which we know that it cannot be understood literally [im
eigentlichen Verstand],” for example the notions of “son” or “creator” which
represent a logical relationship in anthropomorphic terms. The same holds
for the representation of God: “when God’s anger, repentance, or revenge
are mentioned, we know that they cannot be taken literally, that they
are only a simile, a metaphor” (141–42). Also more elaborate parables like
the story of the tree of knowledge in Genesis and historical events like the
life of Jesus must be approached in this way. The latter, for example, makes
religion accessible:
to the consciousness in its common form [gewöhnlich]. It is a content that presents
itself at first to the senses [sinnlich], a sequence of actions, concrete determinations,
which follow each other in time and then coexist in space. (Philosophie der Religion,
143)
Besides the literal content, however, the story of Jesus’s life also has a “divine
content”:
divine activity, timeless events, absolute divine action. And this is the inner, true,
substantial core of this story, and this is what constitutes the object of reason
[Vernunft]. (Philosophie der Religion, 142).
Hegel’s philosophy makes the true core of Christianity explicit and hence
marks the end point on the dialectical path of God. Christianity, however,
9 On the relationship between religion and philosophy with respect to absolute spirit, see also the
final paragraphs of the Encylopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, 561–77.
10 On Hegel’s appreciation of the achievement of the Church Fathers, see also the introduction to part
2 of the History of Philosophy.
Art as philosophy’s new handmaid? 293
has a pedagogical advantage over Hegel’s system: it contains “the truth
for all men” – that is, it makes it accessible to non-philosophers as well
(Encyclopedia, 573). As “Tertullian says: now children know of God what
only the greatest sages of Antiquity knew” (Geschichte der Philosophie, 498).
What Lessing, Kant, and Hegel have in common is that they disregard
the hermeneutical principle through which Spinoza proposes to put the
interpretation of Scripture on firm grounds: “to neither affirm anything
of [Scripture] nor to admit anything as its doctrine which I did not most
clearly derive from it.” Instead, they make use of strategies that belong
to the stock in trade of proponents of a philosophical religion. These
depend on assumptions for which the evidence is as scarce as for those
underlying Maimonides’s interpretation of the Bible that Spinoza rejects in
the TTP. Recall d’Holbach’s assessment of the Bible which I quoted in the
introduction: the Bible consists in a collection of fables, superstitions, and
arbitrary laws which have no place in a life guided by reason. To these and
similar criticisms of religion, set forth from the Enlightenment onwards,
Lessing, Kant, and Hegel would reply that they stem from a confusion of
the “letter” and the “spirit” of the Bible.
philosophy’s new handmaid? art as a

pedagogical-political program
A different way out of Spinoza’s impasse is to propose an alternative to
the historical forms of religion for the role of the pedagogical-political
program. The most prominent candidate for this role is art. Lessing can
again serve as a first example. He did not write a philosophical treatise on
tolerance but a theater play, Nathan the Wise. Moreover, in the play the
core thesis on tolerance is set forth as a parable, for “we do not feed tales
[Märchen] to children only” but also to adults who, like Saladin, lack a
philosophical education. Literature thus can take the place of religion as
the handmaid of philosophy. In Lessing’s case it is put into the service of
disseminating Enlightenment ideas.
The most elaborate case for art as a pedagogical-political program was
made by the German poet Friedrich Schiller (d. 1805) in On the Aesthetic
Education of Man in a Series of Letters (1794). Although Schiller’s philosophy
of art is complicated, the most important points for my purpose were
made succinctly in an earlier essay on “The Theater Considered as a Moral
Institution” (1784). In this essay Schiller explains why a “wise lawgiver”
would put theater at the center of his pedagogical-political efforts. He
explicitly compares it to religion and argues that theater can fulfill religion’s
role more efficiently, in particular since religion’s images – for example the
depiction of “heaven and hell” – have lost much of their power in his
time. The key achievements of theater include “moral education” (sittliche
Bildung) and the “enlightenment of reason” (Aufklärung des Verstandes).
With respect to “moral education” Schiller describes theater as a “school
of practical wisdom.” From the “pure fountain” of “wisdom and religion,”
theater:
draws its lessons and examples, and clothes stern duty in a charming and alluring
robe. How it fills our soul with great emotions, resolves, passions, how it sets up
for us divine ideals for imitation [Nacheiferung]! (Schaubühne, 147)
And conversely, “in the theater’s fearsome mirror, the vices are shown to
be as ugly as virtue is lovely” (ibid.).
Schiller’s account of the “enlightenment of reason” makes it even clearer
how the function assigned to religion’s historical forms by proponents of a
philosophical religion is transposed to art:
The theater is the common channel through which the light of wisdom [Licht der
Weisheit] streams down from the thinking, better part of the people, from there
spreading in milder beams throughout the entire state. More correct notions,
unadulterated principles, purer emotions flow from here through all the veins of
the people; the fog of barbarism and dark superstition disperse; night yields to
triumphant light. (Schaubühne, 115)
Among the examples for the successful mediation of ideas through the-
ater Schiller mentions Lessing’s Nathan the Wise. Lessing’s and Schiller’s
conception of theater as the handmaid of philosophy is taken up by later
authors, for example Bertold Brecht, who uses “epic theater” to convey
Marxist ideas to the proletariat.
To say that art takes on some of the functions previously assigned to
religion suggests a somewhat misleading dichotomy, however. For propo-
nents of a philosophical religion explain the role of religion as philosophy’s
handmaid precisely in terms of the pedagogical-political use of art: from
Plato’s “musical” education in the Republic and the claim that the divine
nomoi of Magnesia are the city’s model “tragedy” to the view of medieval
Muslim and Jewish philosophers that poetry and oratory are the distinc-
tive skills of the prophet and the imagination the distinctive prophetic
faculty.
Making the handmaid redundant 295
making the handmaid redundant: equality as a

moral-political value
The main challenge to the concept of a philosophical religion stems from
a new moral-political paradigm that emerges in the early modern period.
According to this paradigm all human beings are equally able to rationally
rule themselves. Hence no pedagogical-political program is required to
order the lives of non-philosophers towards what is best. One version of
this challenge is already present in Lessing: once we arrive at the stage of
the “new eternal gospel” in the tripartite scheme of humankind’s progress,
religion’s historical forms retain no more than antiquarian value. Similar
teleological considerations can be found in Kant and are, of course, at the
heart of Hegel’s system. Already in the eighteenth century Mendelssohn
objected to Lessing’s narrative of progress. There is, he argued, no empirical
evidence for such a view:
I, for my part, cannot conceive of the education of humankind as my late
friend Lessing imagined it under the influence of I-don’t-know-which historian of
humankind. One pictures the collective entity, the human race, as an individual
person and believes that providence sent it to school here on earth, in order to raise
it from childhood to manhood. . . . That we should again and again resist all theory
and hypotheses, and want to speak of facts [Thatsachen], to hear nothing but of
facts, and yet should have the least regard for facts precisely where they matter most!
You want to divine what designs [Absichten] providence has for humankind? Do
not frame hypotheses; only look around you at what actually happens and, if you
can survey history as a whole, at what has happened since the beginning of time.
This is fact, this must have been part of the design. . . . Now, as far as humankind
as a whole is concerned, you will find no steady progress in its development that
brings it ever closer to perfection. . . . Individual man advances, but humankind
continually fluctuates within fixed limits, while maintaining, on the whole, about
the same degree of morality in all periods – the same amount of religion and
irreligion, virtue and vice, happiness and misery. (Jerusalem, 162–64/95–97)
Narratives of progress, however, are only one form in which this challenge
is presented. Another version of it is the deist claim that we can do without
Scripture’s guidance altogether because the religion of reason is equally
accessible to all. According to Herbert of Cherbury (d. 1648), for example,
the metaphysical and moral concepts of “natural religion” are “common
notions” which every human being can grasp through reason:
I firmly maintain that it is and always has been possible for all men to reach the
truths [of natural religion]. (De Veritate, 305)
Mendelssohn makes a similar case for “common sense” (Menschenverstand).
In To Lessing’s Friends (1785) he uses the 1733 mission of the Moravian
church to Greenland as a setting to stress the universal access to “natural
religion”:
It seems to me that the evidence of natural religion is as clearly obvious, as
irrefutably certain, to uncorrupted common sense that has not been misled, as
is any proposition in geometry. At any stage of life in which man finds himself,
at any level of enlightenment, on which he stands, he has sufficient information
and capability, opportunity and power, to convince himself of the truths of the
religion of reason [Vernunftreligion]. The argument of the Greenlander who was
walking on the ice with a missionary one beautiful morning, saw the dawn flashing
forth between the glaciers, and said to the Moravian: “Behold, brother, the new
day! How beautiful must be he who made this!” – this argument, which was
so convincing to the Greenlander, . . . is still convincing to me. It has the same
strength for me as the simple, straightforward argument of the Psalmist: “He who
planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see? He who
teaches man knowledge, the Lord, knows the thoughts of man” [Psalm 94:9–11].
This natural inference, childishly easy [kinderleicht], carries for me all the evidence
of a geometric axiom . . . and victorious power of an apodictic demonstration. (An
die Freunde Lessings, 197–98/164)11
The optimism about the ability of all human beings to attain rational self-
rule that gains momentum in the early modern period shares a number of
features with the position I attributed to Socrates, Celsus, and Abū Bakr
al-Rāzı̄. It is expressed succinctly in Kant’s claim that we only submit to the
guidance of “books” and “priests” because of our “laziness and cowardice”
(Aufklärung, 35/54). In principle, therefore, we can rule ourselves, if only
we dare to use reason. According to Jerome Schneewind, Kant’s view is
“centered on the belief that all normal individuals are equally able to live
together in a morality of self-governance. All of us, on this view, have
an equal ability to see for ourselves what morality calls for and are in
principle equally able to move ourselves accordingly.”12 This view also
has important political implications as Schneewind notes. It provides “a
conceptual framework for a social space in which we may each rightly claim
to direct our own actions without interference from the state, the church,
the neighbors or those claiming to be better or wiser than we. . . . The early
modern moral philosophy . . . thus made a vital contribution to the rise of
the Western liberal vision of the proper relations between individual and
11 Mendelssohn thus would reject the falāsifa’s hierarchy of logical proofs that underlies their distinction
between the knowledge of philosophers and the knowledge of non-philosophers.
12 Schneewind (1998), 4.
society.”13 Many factors from the sixteenth century onwards contributed
to establishing equality and freedom as the core moral and political values
of the West. Here is not the place to examine the reasons for this shift. It
should be clear, however, that the equality thesis subverts the concept of a
philosophical religion. A philosophical religion is based on the ultimately
paternalist premise that only philosophers are capable of perfect rational self-
rule whereas non-philosophers must follow their prescriptions in order to
live well – preferably on the basis of consent, but if necessary also through
coercion. Spinoza’s critique of religion only questions the legitimacy of
interpreting the historical forms of a religious tradition as a pedagogical-
political program designed by philosophers for non-philosophers. If, on
the other hand, some version of the equality thesis is true, there is no need
for a pedagogical-political program in the first place: all human beings
attain rational self-rule at the end of humankind’s moral and intellectual
progress, for example, or just follow “common sense” which is “childishly
easy” in Mendelssohn’s words. More than any scientific revolution in the
early modern period, this new moral-political paradigm accounts for why
the concept of a philosophical religion looks strange to us today.
prospects of a philosophical religion

On my reading, Socrates, Celsus, and Abū Bakr al-Rāzı̄ held a version of
the equality thesis: pedagogical-political guidance is not necessary since all
human beings are capable of rational self-rule. Proponents of a philosoph-
ical religion thus were aware of the challenge outlined above. Would they
continue to defend the concept of a philosophical religion if they were to
take part in a debate about religion today? A full answer to this question
would require situating and defending the elements of a philosophical reli-
gion in a wide range of philosophical debates: metaphysics, epistemology,
ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of law, and philosophy of reli-
gion. This I cannot take on here. But I want to briefly examine the key
feature of a philosophical religion as a hermeneutic project: the philosoph-
ical reinterpretation of religious traditions. Had everyone heeded Kant’s
call to replace books and priests through rational self-rule, reinterpreting
religious traditions would have become obsolete. Why should we engage
religious beliefs, practices, and institutions if secularization gradually rid
the world of them?14 A look around us, however, quickly reveals that the
13 Ibid., 4–5. 14 See Weber (1919), 16–17.

secularization thesis is in trouble.15 Many citizens choose to live according
to God’s will as interpreted by their books and priests. In this context, it
is instructive to consider an important shift in liberal political theory with
respect to the foundation of political norms.16 A pressing question these
days is how citizens who submit to God’s will can be led to endorse the
norms of a liberal state which are only valid if its free and equal citizens
consent to them. Appealing to reason is not enough in the case of citizens
for whom reason holds less authority than God. One prominent proposal
to get all citizens on board is the “overlapping consensus”: secular citizens
endorse freedom, equality, and tolerance for secular reasons and religious
citizens for religious reasons.17 Among Christians, for example, a key move
to this end is the claim that our creation in God’s image according to Gen-
esis 1:26 means that all human beings have dignity which, in turn, is the
foundation of freedom, equality, and tolerance. Consider the interpretation
proposed by Joseph Ratzinger:
Human life stands under God’s special protection, because each human being,
however wretched or exalted he or she may be, . . . however good-for-nothing or
important . . . is God’s image. This is the deepest reason for the inviolability of
human dignity, and upon it is founded ultimately every civilization.18
Ratzinger adds that this supposedly biblical concept of human dignity is
well captured by Kant who derives it from “moral freedom.” As we saw,
proponents of a philosophical religion offer a quite different interpretation
of Genesis 1:26 based on Platonic and Aristotelian commitments: since God
is Reason, to be created in God’s image means to have reason. However, on
their interpretation the biblical verse refers only to reason’s potential which
must be realized through study, culminating in knowledge of God. Hence
to be created in God’s image does not in itself confer value on human
beings. Indeed, Maimonides quotes Psalm 49:13 to describe Adam’s loss of
15 See, for example, Casanova (1994).
16 Compare, for example, Rawls (1971) with (1993) and see the introduction to the latter for a discussion
of one version of the shift I have in mind.
17 See Rawls (1993), part 2.4. For an attempt to extend both the content and the scope of the overlapping
consensus, see Nussbaum (2000). Nussbaum argues that the key features of a flourishing human
life can be the object of an overlapping consensus among all cultures, not only cultures shaped by
liberal-democratic political institutions. For strategies of reinterpreting Catholicism, Confucianism,
and Islam to achieve an overlapping consensus on human rights, see Cohen (2004), 201–10. The
precise role of the overlapping consensus is disputed. For Rawls it does not seem to be a condition
for the legitimacy of enforcing laws, but only for stability: it provides citizens with reasons to follow
the laws from within their diverse comprehensive doctrines. For my argument it is not necessary to
settle this question, since either way the overlapping consensus depends on reinterpreting religious
or cultural traditions in light of commitments not derived from them.
18 Ratzinger (1986), 78.
intellectual perfection: “Adam, unable to dwell in dignity [bi-yeqar], is like
the beasts that speak not” (Guide 1.2, 17/26). Proponents of a philosophical
religion would thus reject Ratzinger’s claim that human beings have dignity
no matter how “wretched or exalted” they are. Bible scholars, finally, who
follow the historical-critical method, would reject both the Kantian and
the Platonic-Aristotelian interpretation of Genesis 1:26. They would point
out that in the ancient Near East a king was often described as an image
of the divine to indicate that his rule was divinely sanctioned. The author
of the biblical creation story extends this concept to all human beings: as
God rules the world, human beings “rule the fish of the sea, the birds of
the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep
on earth” as the second part of Genesis 1:26 elaborates.
This, then, is the dilemma that Spinoza left us: the historical-critical
method which the TTP’s critique of religion helped to establish is our best
bet to get to the true meaning of religious texts. At the same time it leaves
us with no respectable option for interpreting religious texts in light of
intellectual commitments external to them. Attaining an overlapping con-
sensus, however, clearly depends on philosophical reinterpretation. For the
endorsement of freedom, equality, and tolerance are not prominent fea-
tures of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam in their historical forms, at least not
in the sense in which these concepts are used in contemporary political dis-
course. To make Moses, Christ, and Muhammad teach freedom, equality,
and tolerance is, of course, no greater hermeneutic challenge than making
them teach the ideal of Godlikeness through contemplation. Spinoza’s cri-
tique of the philosophical reinterpretation of religious traditions, however,
applies equally to both of them.
The overlapping consensus is, of course, just one of many contexts in
which this problem arises. In State Islamic Universities in Indonesia, for
example, science classes are co-taught by an expert in the relevant academic
discipline and an Islamic scholar who points out ways to reconcile the
scientific contents with the Muslim tradition. Another example are First
Nations communities in Canada: after centuries of colonial oppression
they are trying to rebuild their ancestral cultural traditions while at the
same time reinterpreting them to make them suitable for the world they
now live in.19 Ultimately any attempt to integrate new beliefs, practices,
and institutions with existing religious and cultural traditions will have to
rely on hermeneutic strategies similar to those used by the philosophers
19 See my forthcoming book, Teaching Plato in Palestine.

examined in this book. While advocates of the historical-critical method
will view such attempts with suspicion, to effect change they remain an
attractive alternative to the cultural revolution proposed by Plato in the
Republic and, in a different way, by radical Enlightenment thinkers like
d’Holbach.
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Index
Aaron (Moses’s brother) 176 Philosophy of Aristotle 156

Abbasid caliphate 162 Philosophy of Plato 156
Abraham (biblical patriarch) 110, 120, 168, 278 political philosophy of 157–59
and Hagar and Sarah 111, 118, 124 The Political Regime 162
Account of the Beginning 178, 189, 190n, 191, The Principles of the Opinions of the Citizens of
204 the Virtuous City 162
Account of the Chariot 178, 183, 189, 190n, 191, on prophecy 67, 158, 160–61
204 and the reception of Greek philosophy 154–56
Adam 98, 107, 224–25, 278 on religion as a pedagogical-political program
before the Fall 194–96, 213, 221, 241 for non-philosophers 158–60
see also the Fall and religious pluralism 164, 179, 193
afterlife 23 on virtuous religion 63–64, 159–64
Alexander of Aphrodisias 179 Al-Ghazālı̄ 145, 165–66
Alexandrian philosophers 30, 88, 90, 103, 106, Al-Kindı̄ 155, 162
118, 144–47, 174, 178, 186, 194, 198, 213, allegorical and literal content
237, 292 of the Bible 89–91, 106, 111, 114–16, 118, 135,
and al-Fārābı̄ 155–56, 158–59 205–7, 212, 219–21, 225–29, 233, 241,
and Platonic interpretation of Judaism and 258–59, 270, 274, 276, 278, 286, 288, 290
Christianity 92 of Homer and Hesiod 107
and the Stoics 91 of the Islamic Law 169–71
Alfakhar, Judah 232, 276 of the Law of Moses 97–98, 114–15, 118–21,
Al-Fārābı̄ 24, 26, 29, 144–47, 153, 155n, 156n, 169, 178, 180–83, 188–90, 208–9, 211, 274,
173, 175, 181–82, 190, 197–98, 200–201, 202–3, 225
254, 263 see also reinterpretation, philosophical
vs. al-Kindı̄ 155, 162 Almohads 184–85, 203–4, 217, 255
vs. al-Rāzı̄ 196 Al-Rāzı̄, Abū Bakr 3, 145, 155, 162, 164, 195–96,
Attainment of Happiness 156, 168 296–97
Book of Letters 154 Ambrose, Bishop of Milan 138
influence on Averroes and Maimonides Anaxagoras 47, 103
164–68 anthropocentrism 7, 177
on Divine Law 157 Apion 118
Enumeration of the Sciences 155–56 appetite see desire
Epitome of the “Laws” 34, 144, 158, 164 Aquinas, Thomas 26
on happiness as the end of philosophy 156 Aristobulus 93, 103
on levels of parables 163 Aristophanes 41n
between the mutakallimūn and al-Rāzı̄ 155, The Clouds 41n
162 Aristotle 16–17, 19, 25, 41n, 65, 90, 95, 106, 110,
on non-philosophers 158, 161–62 145, 149n, 178–79, 196, 209–10, 291, 298
On the Appearance of Philosophy 154 Aristotelian epistemology 201
on Plato 32–35 Aristotelian logic 156
on the philosophical curriculum 156–57 Aristotelian metaphysics 183
319
320 Index
Aristotle (cont.) Incoherence of the Incoherence 165, 172–73
Aristotelian physics 166–67, 183 on the Islamic Law 3, 166, 168–73, 175
as authority for falāsifa 154–56, 160–61, Long Commentary on the “De anima” 167
166–67 compared with Maimonides 166, 175, 177,
Averroes’s commentaries on 4, 167–68, 171, 182
174, 260 on the relationship between falsafa and Islam
De anima 150, 161 165–66, 168–71, 174
on divine nomoi 4, 148, 151, 153 on virtuous religion 1, 3, 5, 27, 36, 168–70,
esoteric writing practice of 158–59, 171 173
Eudemian Ethics 4, 150 Avicenna 27
on God 13, 148, 150 on wine 22
on habituation 195
on happiness 148–50, 152 Bacon, Francis 280
medieval Aristotelianism 206, 251 Berlin, Isaiah 3n
Metaphysics 41n, 148, 149n, 150n, 291 Berman, Lawrence 164
Nicomachean Ethics 57n, 148, 149n, 152–53, the best life
166 as philosophical/contemplative life 7–9, 41,
Organon 147, 156, 160, 168, 171 63, 78, 81, 144, 155, 167
Physics 150n as virtuous life 54–55
agreement with Plato 146, 148, 156, 160 and worship 52
Poetics 157 Bible 1, 2, 16, 36, 95, 110, 206, 212, 214–15,
Politics 146–48, 152–53 217–18, 224, 248–50, 254, 256–61, 265,
on politics 150–53 269–81, 284–90, 292–93, 295
Posterior Analytics 147 Colossians 274
on practical wisdom (phronêsis) 57n, 149–53 Corinthians 289
Protrepticus 149 Deuteronomy 125, 178
as proponent of philosophical religion 25, Ecclesiastes 203
148–53 Exodus 96, 179
Rhetoric 150n, 157 Ezekiel 178
on theoretical wisdom (sophia) 57n, 148, 152 Genesis 101, 112, 114, 123, 144, 175, 178, 237,
art 292, 298–99
as substitute for religion 293–94 Hebrews 96–97
atheism John 123
and Socrates 46–47 Numbers 115
and Spinoza 214–15, 235, 262, 278, 281, Proverbs 109, 178, 202–3
284 Psalms 203, 218, 290, 298
Plato on 64 Romans 272–73
Athens 42–43, 45, 48 Song of Songs 203
and Jerusalem 25, 30–32 Blyenbergh, Willem van 220, 222–29, 258,
and Sparta 42 280
Augustine 26, 141 Boethus of Sidon 117
autonomy see self-rule Bouwmeester, Johan de 231
Averroes (Ibn Rushd) 24, 61n, 144–46, 153, 169n, Brecht, Bertold 294
179, 198–99, 199n, 200, 204–9, 211–12, Buffière, Félix 26
217, 255–58, 260–61, 263, 279 Byzantium 27
and al-Fārābı̄ 157, 164–67
Bidāyat al-mujtahid 172, 174–75 Caligula 118
Christian Averroism 26, 208 Calvin and Calvinism 36, 217, 276, 279
commentaries on Aristotle 167–68, 171, 174, Celsus 3, 89, 137, 296–97
260 Chadwick, Henry 31
Commentary on the “Republic” 168 children see non-philosophers and
corpus of 166 not-yet-philosophers
Decisive Treatise 165, 168, 174, 198–99, 211 Christ 14, 24–25, 35, 87–91, 102, 106, 173, 214,
Exposition of the Methods of Proof Concerning 270, 274–75, 299
the Foundations of Religion 174 as didaskalikos 89, 91, 130, 134, 138–39
Index 321
as doctor of the soul 130 Delmedigo, Elijah 27, 205–7, 207n, 208–12, 217,
as God’s infinite intellect 213, 224, 265, 268, 255–58
278 not advocating double truth doctrine 208–10
historical 266–68, 278, 292 Examination of Religion 205, 208, 255
incarnation of 26, 35, 126–27, 137, 267, as source of Spinoza’s Averroism 205, 255–58
269 democracy 3, 42–43, 48, 61–62, 104, 214, 241, 253
as Logos 123, 126–27 as theocracy 7, 243, 253
as Nous 122 demonstration (Aristotelian) 154, 160, 162,
as paidagogos 89, 91, 130–34, 138–39, 141 170–71, 183–84, 190, 197–201, 206–7,
parables composed by 106 216, 260
as philosopher 266–67, 289 Descartes, René 220, 222
as protreptikos 131 Principia Philosophiae 220, 222
resurrection of 233 desire
as wisdom 6, 102, 123–24 non-rational 54–57, 89, 119, 122, 133, 195–96,
Christianity 2, 14, 16, 24, 31, 87–103, 106, 116, 238–39, 242, 245–46, 250, 252–53, 263
213, 215–17, 223, 272–73, 280, 285–88, necessary vs. unnecessary 56
290–92, 298–99 rational/for the pleasure of contemplation 56,
and apologetics 93, 100 111–12, 152–53, 173, 196, 272
Arabic 27 dialectic 53, 67–69, 74–75, 78, 81, 90, 124, 135,
Byzantine 27 137, 154, 160, 162, 168, 177, 193, 197, 206,
and Divine Law 5 211
early 30, 31 Hegelian 291–92
and Greek philosophy 31 see also elenchos
opposed to philosophy 31 dialectical method see dialectic
philosophical reinterpretation of 233–34, 236, dialectical, rhetorical, and poetical arguments
257, 261, 274 160, 162–63, 168–69, 171, 177, 184, 189,
as philosophical religion 11, 26, 92, 102, 193, 197, 199, 206, 211
122–39, 141, 205, 216, 218, 233, 236, contrasted with demonstrative arguments 160,
265–70, 274, 281 164, 169, 184, 189, 197, 199, 206
and Platonism 27 Dissoi Logoi 42n
as turning-point in history 21 Divine Law 194–96, 198–201
Cicero 41n, 102 Delmedigo on 206, 209, 211
Tusculanae disputationes 41n Maimonides on 175–76, 202–4, 225
Clement of Alexandria 24, 26, 29, 31, 32, 50n, 89, as pedagogical-political program for
90n, 92, 102–3, 106, 126n, 127, 129, non-philosophers 176
132–36, 138–39, 141–42, 144, 165, 182–83, Spinoza on 213, 238–45, 250, 264–67, 270–71,
263 273–74, 277–78
as apologist 88 as aiming at wisdom 175
on Christ’s philosophical teachings 138–39 divine nomoi 24, 49, 64, 65, 65n, 66, 68, 68n, 71,
on the embodied life 132–33 85–86, 94, 159, 213, 263, 294
on faith 133–34 and Law of Moses 103–4, 109, 158
and the philosophical reinterpretation of the as pedagogical-political program for
Law of Moses 125–26 non-philosophers 76
on Plato’s debt to Moses 124–26 division of labor 54, 80, 192
Protrepticus 131 doctor of free men see doctor of the soul
Stromateis 138, 183 doctor of the soul 43, 45–47, 51, 63, 75, 77, 89,
coercion 69–70, 119, 133, 151, 191, 200–201, 247, 170
250, 254–55, 260–61, 268, 278, 286 Christ as 130
Collegiants 215, 217 Moses as 113, 116
Constantine the Great 142 Dodds, E. R. 67n
cultural revolution 14, 20, 40, 82, 84–85, 91, 105, dogmatism 288
108, 131, 217 and Maimonides 216, 230–301
and Spinoza 217–32, 276–80
David (biblical king) 130, 203 Duran, Profiat 264
deism 282–84, 295 Dutch Republic 244, 279
322 Index
education 18, 32, 38, 46n, 58–59, 61, 67–68, on Plato 146
71–72, 75–76, 78, 81, 90, 95, 104–5, 107n, Summary of Plato’s “Republic” 132
108, 198, 111, 116, 118, 135, 139–40, 151, Gebhardt, Carl 215
174, 239, 241, 245, 253, 255–56, 261, Gnosticism 90, 134n, 135n
286–88, 293–95 God 206, 209, 230, 250, 254, 264, 266–69,
see also pedagogical-political program for 271–73, 282, 287, 291–92, 298
non-philosophers of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob 214–15, 235, 248,
egalitarianism/equality 16n, 21, 243, 287, 289 251–53, 260, 262, 275, 278
vs. elitism 15–16, 35, 155n, 157, 192, 243, anthropomorphic representation of 21, 65, 97,
297–99 108, 115–16, 119, 169, 171, 183–85, 188–89,
elenchos 44–45, 46–47, 53, 60, 66, 77, 98, 260 225, 240, 254
Enlightenment 202, 282–83, 293, 300 as architect 109, 148
French 1 of the Bible 94n, 214–15, 249, 251–52, 258, 277
and Kant 3, 242, 283 as craftsman 80
medieval Jewish 202–5 as the final cause of a political community 12,
radical 1, 36, 277 17, 110, 265
and religion 2, 5, 253, 286–87 as the final cause of the world 7, 10, 50, 104,
Enoch 99 238
Epicurus 25, 48, 88, 111, 289 as the first cause of things divine and human
esoteric and exoteric content see allegorical and 20, 111, 168, 197, 261
literal content human beings as the image of 89, 99, 112–13,
esoteric teaching/writing practice 7n, 33–34, 97, 142, 194, 213, 236–37
138, 145, 158, 159n, 165, 171, 178, 183, 276n intellectual love of 176–77, 213, 237, 245, 265,
Eusebius of Caesarea 26, 87, 92–94, 94n, 95n, 285, 287
95–100, 116, 138, 142, 144, 173, 186 as lawgiver 13–15, 18, 76, 80
Apology for Origen 92 of Moses 103
on the agreement of Moses and Plato 92–100 or Nature 214, 216, 252, 256, 273, 282
on a Christian world state 142–43 as ordering things towards what is best 104
on Constantine the Great as philosopher-king of the philosophers 214–15, 248, 251, 253–54,
142 258, 261–62, 275
Demonstration of the Gospel 92 Plato on 49–51
Ecclesiastical History 92 proof for existence of 4, 168, 191, 199–200,
Praise of Constantine 142 206
Preparation for the Gospel 26, 92, 100 rule of 51, 104, 109, 239, 241, 244, 263, 265
Tetragammaton 270
Fabian, Bishop of Rome 138 of the Timaeus 62, 109
falsafa and the falāsifa 145, 155, 158, 165–68, 181, see also Reason/Nous (Divine)
183–84, 190, 192, 194–96, 198, 200–202, Godlikeness 88, 113, 265, 299
205, 213, 216, 246 degrees of 77
Fall, the (of Adam or humankind) 21, 89, 91, 98, as the perfection of reason 51–52, 57, 79, 112,
112, 126, 128, 138, 215, 225, 270, 276–77, 198
298–99 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 215
Feuerbach, Ludwig 5 good, the 176, 194, 244
Ficino, Marsilio 27 the Form of 50–51, 52n, 60, 78, 89, 140
Forms 19, 49, 50, 52–54, 68, 75, 78, 140 for human beings 197, 230, 237, 239, 243,
and God’s mind 97, 109–10, 122 245–46, 263, 273
order of 52 see also Godlikeness
vs. their instantiations 52 Görgemanns, Herwig 64
founder and leader of religious community 4, 12, Gregory Thaumaturgus 135–39
14, 20, 23 Address of Thanksgiving to Origen 135
difference from philosopher 12 on Christian philosophers in paradise 139
motivations of 13 on Origen’s educational curriculum 135–38
pedagogical and political skills 12
habituation 58–59, 70, 95, 151, 171–73, 183–85,
Galen 188–90, 195, 200, 204, 252, 258
on Christian parables as Platonic mythoi 132 Halevi, Judah 165
Index 323
handmaid of philosophy, religion as the 63, medieval Jewish Enlightenment 202–5, 288
89–91, 93, 160, 214, 217, 220, 244 as philosophical religion 11, 92, 102, 108–22,
Hebrew Bible see Bible 144, 164, 167, 204–5, 216–17
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 24, 295 justice
on Christianity as a philosophical religion perfect and imperfect forms of 60
291–93
Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences 291 Kant, Immanuel 3, 242, 283, 289–90, 293,
Heraclitus 40, 101 295–98
Heraclitus (1st cent. CE) categorical imperative 289
Homeric Allegories 106 on Christ as philosopher 289
Herbert of Cherbury 295 and the coming of the Kingdom of God
Herodotus 42 289
Hesiod 48, 66, 71, 82, 101–2, 105–7 and the philosophical reinterpretation of
Holbach, Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron de 1, 2, 36, religious traditions 290–91
293, 300 and religious pluralism 289
Homer 26, 48, 66, 71, 82, 101–2, 105–7 Kimchi, David 232
Iliad 42n Koran 16, 168, 174
Odyssey 101, 105, 107
House of Orange 279 Laks, André 64
human reason see reason (human) Lamberton, Robert 26
La Mettrie, Julien de 2
Ibn Bājja 27 Law of Moses 24, 94, 96, 172–73, 184–85, 192,
Ibn Rushd see Averroes 194, 199–200, 202, 215, 261
Ibn Sina see Avicenna allegorical and literal content of 97–98,
Ibn Tibbon, Samuel 27, 202–5, 208 114–15, 121, 174
as founder of Maimonideanism 202 and Christianity 99–100
Treatise ‘Let the Waters be Gathered’ 204 as Divine Law 175–77, 179–80, 193
Ibn Tufayl 27, 169–70, 190 as image of philosophy 97, 177
H. ayy ibn Yaqz.ān 169 as handmaid of philosophy 95, 100
imagination not leading to wisdom 116–18
faculty of 152, 214, 216, 245–48, 250–53, 257, and levels of argumentation 99
259–61, 268–69, 271, 273, 278 as pedagogical-political program for
language of 96, 129, 178, 225, 248, 259, 275 non-philosophers 116, 118–19, 205–12
and prophecy 160–61, 176, 275, 294 and Plato 92–100
intellect see reason (human) as Platonic divine nomoi 87, 103–4, 109,
Isaac (biblical patriarch) 110, 120, 278 158
Isaiah (biblical prophet) 221, 274 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 2, 24, 215, 283–89,
Islam 1, 2, 14, 16, 24, 145, 285, 288, 290, 299 293–95
medieval Islamic philosophy 26, 32, 34, 37 defense of revealed religion 284–86
as philosophical religion 5, 11, 144, 164, on the education and progress of humankind
167–68, 204–5, 217 286–87
Islamic Law 3, 157, 166, 168–75, 194, 198, 202 The Education of Humankind 286, 288
Israel, Jonathan 35–36 Fragments of an Unnamed Person 283
Nathan the Wise 285, 293–94
Jacob (biblical patriarch) 110, 120, 278 On the Genesis of Revealed Religion 284
Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich 215, 282–84 On the Reality of the Things outside God 284
Jelles, Jarig 215, 217 vs. Reimarus 283–86
Jewish constitution see Law of Moses and religious pluralism 285–86, 288
Joseph ben Judah 182 on the universal religion of reason 284
Josephus, Flavius 49n, 93, 103–4, 118 Lipsius, Justus 28
Against Apion 49n Logos 91, 115, 122, 144, 186
Judaism 2, 14, 16, 24, 145, 282, 285–86, 288, 290, and Christ 123–24, 126–27, 131, 133, 138
299 and Nous 50n, 87, 89, 109
and apologetics 118 rule of 89, 133
Hellenistic 30, 31 see also Reason/Nous (Divine)
Jewish Diaspora 88 Lucas, Maximilian 218
324 Index
Maimonides 3–5, 19, 24, 29, 36, 62n, 144–46, 153, Miriam (Moses’s sister) 176
158n, 166n, 185n, 198–200, 200n, 201, Morrow, Glenn 83
205, 207, 209–10, 216–17, 219–20, Moses 4, 14, 16, 145, 173, 179, 218, 266, 270, 299
230–31, 237, 241, 255, 258, 263, 274–75, as doctor of the soul 113, 116, 118
282, 298 emulation of 115, 120
and al-Fārābı̄ 157, 164–67 as God’s interpreter 114
on Aristotle 167 and habituation of the religious community
compared with Averroes 166, 175 186–88
Book of Knowledge 167 and monarchy 243
Commentary on the Mishnah/Sirāj 166, 192 philosophical doctrines of 115, 117
concept of a philosophical religion different philosophical education of 109–11
from that of the falāsifa 181–93 as philosopher-lawgiver 95–97, 202, 204, 248,
corpus of 166–67 252–53
on Divine Law 175–76, 225 as philosopher-poet 106–8
on division of labour 192 as philosopher-prophet 177, 192
esoteric and exoteric doctrines of 165 as philosopher-ruler 109–18, 177
on gradual reform of religious beliefs and agreement with Plato 92–100, 114, 116
practices 186–90, 193 as having superhuman intellect 179–80
Guide of the Perplexed 62n, 165–67, 180, see also Law of Moses
182–89, 191, 193, 203–4, 258, 263–64 Muhammad 4, 14, 16, 145, 173, 274, 299
on habituating non-philosophers to true as philosopher-ruler 173
beliefs 183–85, 188–89 musical education 70–73, 78, 95, 130–31, 294
and the Jewish philosophical tradition 27 and religious worship 76, 169
and medieval Jewish Enlightenment 202–5 see also habituation
on the Law of Moses 3, 4, 166–67 mutakallimūn 155, 162
as Divine Law 176–77, 179–80, 193
as superior to all other religious traditions Narboni, Moses 204
111, 176–80, 192–93 Neoplatonism 24, 26, 34, 146–47, 156n, 161
on leading Jews to intellectual perfection New Testament see Bible
191–92 Nietzsche, Friedrich 5
Mishneh Torah 166–67, 180, 188, 192–93, 199 noble lie
on Moses as having a superhuman intellect and Christ’s teachings 131
179–80 and Law of Moses 97, 114
parable of king’s palace 191–92 and Plato 80
on Plato as prophet 158 nomoi
on religious pluralism 179–80, 193 of Magnesia see divine nomoi
Treatise on the Art of Logic 166 of Moses see Law of Moses
Maltranilla, Captain Miguel Perez de 219 non-philosophers and not-yet-philosophers
Marx, Karl 5, 294 66–67, 95–96, 113–14, 116, 122, 179, 182,
Matthew (New Testament author) 96 189–90, 194–201, 208, 211, 213, 225,
Mendelssohn, Moses 2, 282, 295–97 255–57, 260, 269, 273, 275, 278, 281,
on common sense and equal ability for 282–84, 293, 295
self-rule 296–97 and the non-rational soul 59, 89
criticism of Lessing’s concept of progress 295 before reason takes charge 72
Jerusalem 282 and pedagogical guidance 58–59, 251, 258, 261
To Lessing’s Friends 295 distinction from philosophers 40–41, 58, 202,
Meyer, Lodewijk 215, 217, 280, 288 206, 252–53
Philosophia Sanctae Scripturae Interpres and political guidance 59–60, 90, 204, 206,
229–32, 280 246–48, 250–51, 254, 276
on Spinoza’s philosophy as the key to the and practical wisdom 60–61, 79–80, 121
right interpretation of the Bible and the and temporary childhood 100
reconciliation of the Christian church and theoretical wisdom 81, 121, 192
215, 229–32 Nous 50, 57, 263, 291
Middle Platonism 51n, 115, 117 and Logos 50n
Midrash 153 see also Reason/Nous (Divine)
Index 325
Numenius of Apamea 101–2, 107, 164 Pépin, Jean 26
on religious and cultural pluralism 101–2 Pericles 48
Philo Judaeus 24, 26, 28–32, 35–37, 50n, 89,
obedience see coercion 92, 102–4, 107n, 108n, 122n, 146, 172,
Oldenburg, Henry 37, 222, 231, 233–34, 265, 267, 263
279 and the allegorical content of the Bible 111,
Old Testament see Bible 114–16, 118–19
O’Meara, Dominic 36 as apologist 88, 118
Origen of Alexandria 21, 24, 26, 29, 31–32, 50n, De animalibus 122n
89, 91–93, 122–28, 127n, 128n, 129–31, The Delegation to Gaius 118
132n, 133, 135–39, 139n, 144, 180, 192, 218, De opificio mundi 116
263, 266, 287, 289 De providentia 117, 122n
Against Celsus 137 De somniis 108
as apologist 88 as a determinist 90
on the Christian epistemic hierarchy on divine revelation 95, 109
130–31 on God 108–9
on Christ’s incarnation 127 and the study of Greek philosophy 117
on Christ’s philosophical teachings 137–38 on Homer and Hesiod as philosopher-poets
on the Fall 126, 139 107–8
and the education of Gregory Thaumaturgus on Moses as philosopher-poet 106–8
135–38 on Moses as philosopher-ruler 109–18
On First Principles 127, 137–38 on the order and purpose of the nomoi of
on successive embodiments and progress in Moses 118–19
perfection 139–40 On Abraham 120
Orpheus 102 On the Decalogue 118
Ostens, Jacob 213 On Flaccus 118
On the Life of Moses 120
paganism 14, 20, 26, 131 On the Special Laws 118
Sabians 186, 188, 203–4 On Virtues 118
Paine, Thomas 2, 282 philosophical education of 117
Panaetius 117 on Judaism as a philosophical religion 100,
parables 132, 169, 225, 269, 292 108–22
al-Fārābı̄ on 161–64 philosopher-ruler 61–63, 65–67, 96–97, 109–18,
of Christ 106, 134 173, 177, 244
of Plato 105, 158, 160 phronêsis see wisdom, practical
of the prophets 181, 224, 226–29 physician of the soul see doctor of the soul
Parmenides 40 Plato 16, 17, 25–26, 30, 41n, 42–43, 46, 48, 49–51,
Pascal, Blaise 214 52–57, 89–90, 110, 144–45, 194, 196, 198,
Patristics 26–27, 31 200, 213, 218, 234, 244, 251, 253, 260, 263,
Paul (New Testament author) 31, 129–30, 134, 283, 292, 294, 298, 300
221, 233, 266, 272 and al-Fārābı̄ 154–60, 164
pedagogical-political program for agreement with Aristotle 146, 148, 156,
non-philosophers 65, 182, 186, 193, 271, 160
276–77, 279, 281–84, 288, 293, 295 Apology 41n, 45–47, 51, 53, 60
of al-Fārābı̄ 158–60 on cultural revolution 82, 105, 108, 186
of Christ 89, 91, 129–34, 269 Charmides 46
and community of free men 63, 202 Clitophon 157
as imitation of philosophy 113, 121 Critias 38, 66n
and literal content of the Bible 89, 106, 176, Crito 45n
225 Euthydemus 41n
and literal content of the poets 106 Euthyphro 46–47
of Moses 89, 91, 95, 113–14, 121 Gorgias 41n, 45, 48, 66
Plato on 58–82, 158 Ion 46
and practical wisdom 79 Laches 41n, 46
religion as 76, 89, 216, 250 and the Law of Moses 92–100
326 Index
Plato (cont.) al-Fārābı̄ on 158, 160–61
Laws 14, 24, 32, 34–35, 38–40, 41n, 49–51, Averroes on 169–70, 174
52–53, 55n, 57, 63n, 64, 66–72, 74–77, Maimonides on 176–77, 179
80–81, 83–86, 92, 94–95, 101, 106, 153, as model of human perfection 95
157–59, 283 and Moses 113
Meno 43, 73 and parables 181, 183
not a monotheist 50 and the philosopher-ruler 160
and Moses 92–100, 103–4 as philosophers 274–76
and Numenius 101–2 Plato as 94, 99, 158
Oriental sources of 101 and reason 156
on a pedagogical-political program for Spinoza on 266, 270–71
non-philosophers 58–82, 158 Protagoras 52
Phaedo 33, 39n, 47–49, 75 Protestantism 217
Phaedrus 41n, 67, 73–74, 78–79, 98, 158 Pseudo-Dionysus 26, 141
Philebus 49 Pyrrho 25
on the poets and poetry 48, 66–67, 71, 95, Pythagoras 101
105–7
Protagoras 41, 41n, 42n, 43, 48 Quakers 28
Republic 14, 38–39, 41n, 46n, 48–51, 53n, 54,
55n, 57, 60, 62, 65–69, 71–72, 74, 76, rational persuasion 72, 99, 120, 191
78–80, 82–85, 92, 94–96, 98, 104–6, see also preludes to the laws
108–9, 140, 153, 157–58, 174, 186, 192, Ratzinger, Joseph 298–99
200, 260, 283, 294, 300 Reason/Nous (Divine) 49, 50, 50n, 51, 117, 144,
on rhetoric 66–67, 73 216, 287
and philosophical reinterpretation of Greek Anaxagoras on 47
culture 29, 14, 32, 83–86, 101 becoming like 48, 52–53, 68
Seventh Letter 42, 42n, 96 as Christ 265
vs. Socratic politics 58–63, 77–78, 157, 170 as craftsman 49–50, 67
Statesman 38, 48, 64n, 66, 73, 78 and the Forms 50–51, 109
Symposium 48n, 52n, 79, 98, 111 and the Form of the good 50–51
Theaetetus 42n, 52, 95 God as 3, 6, 7, 10–11, 13, 21, 34, 47–49, 52–53,
Timaeus 13, 34–35, 38, 48–49, 51n, 52n, 60, 62, 58, 65, 68, 94, 103–4, 144, 194, 263, 282,
67, 80, 109, 116, 158, 160 291, 298
transmission to the Islamic world 146–47 human beings as image of 112
pleasure 245–46 as Logos 87, 89, 109
of contemplation 148, 151–52, 172, 176, 201 as ordering things towards what is best 47, 49,
of the soul vs. of the body 55 50, 51n, 109
Plethon, Georgius Gemistus 27 rule of 47, 49–51, 53, 66, 68, 87, 94, 263
Plotinus 79, 98n, 197 as Sophia 109
Enneads 198 reason (human) 230, 268, 276, 280
poetic education see musical education compared to Divine Reason 53
poetry 294 and desire for knowledge 56, 60, 111–12
Plato on 66–67, 71, 95 vs. faith 132–33
the poets as handmaid of theology 226, 235, 261, 279
Plato against 48, 105–7 vs. imagination 253, 257, 259, 278
theology of 47 life of 39, 56–58, 129, 194, 213, 238, 240, 247
Porphyry 93, 156, 166 and non-rational parts of the soul 55, 56,
Eisagôgê 157, 166 58–59, 70, 79, 112
preludes (to the laws) 72–75, 99, 120–21 perfection of 6–9, 12–13, 16, 19, 39, 51, 53–54,
Presocratics 93, 102 56–57, 61, 68, 112, 144, 151–53, 173, 179,
principle of plenitude 7, 50, 264 196–98, 201, 213, 236–37, 239, 251, 263,
principle of self-limitation 113, 116 265, 272–73, 278, 287, 299
prophecy and prophets 147, 155, 206–7, 214, rules/prescriptions of 55, 57–58, 60–61, 63, 70,
224–29, 277–78, 280, 283, 294 112, 118, 132–33, 149–51, 169, 172, 177, 195,
Index 327
237–38, 240–42, 244–46, 250, 252, 254, degrees of 3, 19, 76, 198, 250–54
256, 258, 263, 265, 269–70, 274, 278 contrasted with enslavement 9, 57–58, 70, 76,
and self-rule 2, 44, 57, 61, 195–96, 200 78, 120, 152n, 198, 240, 245, 252
Reimarus, Hermann Samuel 2, 282–85, 288 and knowledge of the good 44, 78
Apology or Defense of the Reasonable and the Law of Moses 121
Worshippers of God 283 maximizing 30
reinterpretation, philosophical 87, 90 and musical education 72, 72n
of the Bible 137, 183, 212, 215, 219, 225, 229–32, of non-philosophers 75–76, 80, 251–52
258–62, 272–73, 288, 290 and reason’s rule 2, 57, 61, 195–96, 200, 240,
of Christ 126 286
of Christianity 217–18, 233–34, 236, 257, 261, and religion 17–19
268, 274, 281, 283 skepticism 217, 226, 232
of the Greek cultural tradition 101, 105–8 Socrates 34, 40–48, 51, 53–54, 57–58, 60–61, 196,
of Islam 168, 171, 174, 217 213, 296–97
of the Jewish tradition 118 and Anaxagoras 47
of the Law of Moses 92, 99–100, 103, 119–21, and atheism 46–47
125, 175, 185, 210, 217 on elenchos/philosophical debate 44–45
of pagan religions 26 as key to the good life 44–45
tradition of in antiquity 101–3 as political project 45–46
see also allegorical and literal content as religious project 46–47
religion 210, 277, 280 as gadfly 46–47, 62–63
of the ancient Hebrews 99–100 as imitating God’s goodness 47–48
as image/imitation of philosophy 63, 97, 159, and Moses 96
161–63, 171, 177 public vs. private life 45
philosophical religion 7, 11, 25–26, 92, 100, and the true science of politics 45, 48, 157
102, 108–39, 141, 152, 164, 167–68, 205, Solomon (biblical king) 130, 203
213, 217–18, 233–34, 236, 239, 241, soul 263
245–50, 265, 274, 281–84, 294–95 immortality of 23–24, 33, 52, 75, 129, 218,
universal faith 256–61, 266, 268–69, 274, 278, 257n, 284, 286–87
284–86, 298n Plato on 53, 79
virtuous religion 1, 3, 5, 27, 36, 159–64, Spinoza, Benedictus de 146, 153, 212, 219n, 220n,
168–70, 173, 193 234n, 257n, 273n, 283, 293
Renaissance 27 and atheism 214–15, 235, 262, 278, 281, 284
revelation see prophecy and Averroism 205, 255–58
rhetoric correspondence with Blyenbergh 220,
and musical education 73 223–29
Plato on 66–67 break with Judeo-Christian tradition 35–37
Robles, Tomas Solano y 219 and Christianity 27, 35–37, 205, 265–70, 274,
Rubin, Shlomo 288 281
Runia, David 30–31 Cogitata Metaphysica 37, 220–25, 227, 229,
232–33, 257
Schiller, Friedrich 293 on the conatus 236, 245, 254
on art as a substitute for religion 293–94 critique of religion 35–37, 214, 216–18, 233,
On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series 235, 261–62, 274–83, 288, 297, 299
of Letters 293 critique of utopianism 241–44
“The Theater Considered as a Moral and Delmedigo 205, 255–58
Institution” 293 on Divine Law 213, 238–45, 250, 253, 264,
Schneewind, Jerome 29–30, 296 266–67, 270–71, 273–74, 277–78
Schofield, Malcolm 64, 67n, 72n vs. human law 242–43, 263
scholasticism 29 and dogmatism 218–33, 235, 256, 258–60, 262,
Scripture see Bible 270, 276–80
self-rule/autonomy 283, 287 epistemology of 236, 251
coincidence with God’s rule 3, 7, 11, 30, 47, 51, Ethics 214–15, 225, 230–34, 239–40, 244, 246,
58, 60, 151, 194, 202, 213, 239 260–62, 264–65, 267, 270–71, 288
328 Index
Spinoza, Benedictus de (cont.) Talmud 145, 190–91, 206, 225
and freedom 213, 215–16, 240–41, 243, 245, teaching see dialectic
251–52, 254, 278 Tempier, Bishop Étienne 27
of expression/of thought/to philosophize Tertullian 30–32, 293
214, 217, 235, 244, 254–62, 278–79, Theagenes of Rhegion 25, 106
280–81 theocracy 3, 6–7, 17, 30, 49, 49n, 50–51, 66, 94,
on human nature 214, 242–43, 253–54, 103–4, 194–95, 240–41, 244, 251
263–64, 269 and autonomy/self-rule 7, 17–20, 30, 194–202
on Maimonides’s interpretation of Scripture as democracy 7, 243
219–20, 230–31, 241 as rational political order 51, 153
metaphysics of 262–65, 270 Theophrastus 93
and Lodewijk Meyer 229–32 Thucydides 42
on Moses 252–53 Torah 178–79, 181, 202
Opera Posthuma 215 tradition (authority of ) 41–42, 76, 86, 182, 184,
on the pious non-philosopher 250–54 190–91
on philosophical religion 7, 205, 233–34, Trinity 26, 287, 291
236, 239, 241, 245–53, 257, 262–65, true belief 185, 189–90, 204, 260, 280
281–82 vs. knowledge 42
compared with Plato 251, 253 and luck 43
Political Treatise 240, 243, 254 tying down of 43–44, 73, 76, 121, 134
on power 264–65
Principia Philosophiae Cartesianae 224 Voltaire 2, 282
on religion vs. superstition 261–62, Vries, Simon de 231
278
on religious pluralism 259, 262, 274 Walzer, Richard 162
Short Treatise on God, Man and Man’s wisdom 6, 17
Wellbeing 223–24, 230, 265 imperfect forms of 78
and skepticism 216, 226, 232, 276–77, political see practical
279–80 practical 10, 12, 19, 57, 59n, 60–61, 79, 121, 133,
and Stoicism 25 136, 149–53, 169n, 171, 196, 294
on theocracy as democracy 7, 243, 253 practical vs. theoretical 57, 79, 121
Theological-Political Treatise 37, 213, 215–19, theoretical 10, 12, 57, 73, 121, 169n, 172, 175,
219n, 222, 225–56, 228–34, 234n, 235, 178, 192
240, 243–44, 251, 254, 257, 259–62, Witt, Johan de 279
264–68, 270–71, 273, 276–81, 288, 293, Wolfson, Harry 28, 35–36
299
Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect 214, Xenophanes 25, 106
222, 238, 244 Xenophon 41n, 46n, 84n
Stoicism 25, 106, 111, 128–29, 132, 289 Constitution of the Lacedaemonians 84n
Neostoicism 28 Memorabilia 41n
Stolle, Gottlieb 218
Strauss, Leo 28, 33–35 Zeno of Citium 88, 289

Carlos Fraenkel - Philosophical Religions From Plato To Spinoza - Reason, Religion, and Autonomy-Cambridge University Press (2013)

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Many pagan, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim philosophers from

c a r l o s f r a e n k e l is Associate Professor, Department of Philoso-

c Carlos Fraenkel 2012

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

First published 2012

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

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Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or

Introduction: what is a philosophical religion? 1

Questions about philosophy and religion accompanied me from early on.

I have consulted existing translations of primary sources whenever they

samuel ibn tibbon

To be sure, the Enlightenment’s attitude to religion is not monolithic.

the concept of a philosophical religion

Theocracy and the perfection of reason

21 See, for example, Rep. 577d and 590c–d.

22 See, for example, Maimonides, Guide 1.2 and Spinoza, E4p68.

The handmaid of philosophy

Philosophy and religion

Theocracy and autonomy

Contextualism and progress

30 For the following, see my discussion of Plato and Origen in chapter 2.

Tensions in the concept of a philosophical religion

From the philosopher’s perspective the prohibition of wine (Koran 5:92)

31 On skepticism about immortality, see Pines (1979) and (1981).

towards a history of philosophical religions

33 Lamberton (1986), Buffière (1956), Pépin (1958).

35 See Wisnovsky (2004).

reason, religion, and autonomy: revising

An encounter between philosophy and religion?

When was autonomy invented?

The Alexandrian project – between Athens and Jerusalem?

After setting up the basic framework in this way, scholars often go on to

Athens and Jerusalem – a perennial conflict?

If non-philosophers hate philosophy, they cannot be motivated to act

49 Strauss (1941a), 34; cf. Strauss (1967), 398.

Spinoza – continuity or break?

55 For a full discussion, see chapters 1 and 3.

56 Wolfson (1977), 64.

Reason, divine nomoi, and self-rule in Plato

Adaptations of the Platonic program will be my concern in the following

What if on our way to Larissa we meet another person who persuades us

The Apology portrays Socrates as systematically examining the claims to

Is Socrates’s project also a religious project? Although Socrates is accused of

19 See Menn (1995). 20 See Cornford (1935).

the rule of god as reason

why the philosopher’s life is best

37 For the following argument, cf. Phd. 67e–69d.

guiding non-philosophers: the handmaid of philosophy

Through habituation we learn to associate pleasure with things approved

The aim of Plato’s pedagogical program, then, is to prepare non-

Although doing philosophy remains necessary for attaining perfect justice,

The first speech to be addressed to the prospective citizens of Magnesia

A few lines later God is presented as the “measure of all things.” To

from coercion to self-rule

[E]ducation . . . is a process of attracting and leading children to accept that which

59 See the discussion in 379a–392a.

While fulfilling these requirements ensures the efficiency of rhetoric, what

I suggest explaining the persuasive speeches, by which the doctor of free

Other preludes directly appeal to the mythical imagination. The first of

the wisdom of non-philosophers