Kant (in this, also, agreeing with Leibniz) was very unhappy when he was compared with Spinoza. He, like Leibniz, wanted people to consider him (and they did indeed consider him) a Christian philosopher. But for all his piety, he could not accept the idea that God can and must be placed above the truths, that God can be sought and found in our world. Why was this idea unacceptable to him? And why, when he spoke of the “dogmatic slumber” from which his “critiques” had permitted him to escape, did it not occur to him to ask whether the certitude with which he affirmed the autonomy of the truth, as well as his hatred for “experience,” did not flow from the “dogma” of the sovereignty of reason, a dogma devoid of all foundation and one which is an indication not of slumber but of profound sleep, or even—perhaps—the death of the human spirit? It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God. But to submit to impersonal Necessity which (no one knows how) has been introduced into being—this is not at all terrible, this calms and even rejoices! But then, why did Kant need to distinguish himself from Leibniz, and why did both Kant and Leibniz need to distinguish themselves from Spinoza? And why, I ask once more, do the historians of philosophy—one might almost say, does the history of philosophy—continue up to our own day to guard so carefully that boundary which Kant drew between himself and his immediate predecessors, between his philosophy, on the one hand, and the medieval and ancient philosophy, on the other hand? His “critiques,” in fact, have not at all shaken the foundations on which the investigative thought of European man has rested. After Kant, as before Kant, the eternal truths continue to shine above our heads like fixed stars; and it is through these that weak mortals, thrown into the infinity of time and space, always orient themselves. Their immutability confers upon them the power of constraint, and also—if Leibniz is to be believed—the power of persuading, of seducing, of attracting us to themselves, no matter what they bring us or what they demand of us, while the truths of experience, whatever they may bring, always irritate us, just as does the “supreme being” (that is to say, deus ex machina) even when he wisely introduces into us eternal truths concerning what exists and what does not exist.
II
The critical philosophy did not overthrow the fundamental ideas of Spinoza; on the contrary, it accepted and assimilated them. The Ethics and the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus remain alive, though implicitly, in the thought of German idealism quite as much as in the thought of Leibniz: the Necessity which determines the structure and order of being, the ordo et connexio rerum, does not constrain us but persuades us, draws us along, seduces us, rejoices us, and bestows upon us that final contentment and that peace of soul which at all times have been considered in philosophy as the supreme good. “Contentment with one’s self can spring from reason, and that contentment which springs from reason is the highest possible.”5 Men have imagined, it is true—and certain philosophers have even supported them in this—that man constitutes in nature a kind of state within a state. “After men have persuaded themselves that everything that happens happens for their sakes, they must consider as most important in everything that which is for them most useful, and they must value most that by which they would be best affected.” Consequently, flent, ridunt, contemnunt vel quod plerumque fit, detestantur6 (they weep, laugh, scorn or—what happens most of the time—curse). It is in this, according to Spinoza, that there lies the fundamental error of man—one could almost say man’s original sin, if Spinoza himself had not so carefully avoided all that could recall the Bible even if only externally.
The first great law of thought which abolishes the biblical interdiction against the fruits of the tree of knowledge is non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere7 (not to laugh, not to lament, not to curse, but to understand). Everything is then transformed before our eyes. In contemplating life “in the perspective of eternity or necessity,” we accept whatever we encounter on our road with the same tranquility and the same feeling of good will. “Even if these things are inconvenient, they are nevertheless necessary and have determinate causes through which we seek to understand their nature, and the mind rejoices just as much over their true contemplation as over the knowledge of those things that are pleasing to the senses.”
In contemplating the necessity of everything that happens in the universe, our mind experiences the highest joy. How does this differ from the statement of Kant, who says that our reason aspires eagerly to universal and necessary judgments? Or from Leibniz’s affirmation that the truths not only constrain but persuade? Or even from the famous Hegelian formula, “All that is real is rational?” And is it not evident that for Leibniz, Kant and Hegel—quite as much as for Spinoza—the pretensions that man makes of occupying a special, privileged place in nature are ungrounded and absolutely unjustified, unless recourse is had to a “supreme being” who does not exist and has never existed? It is only when we forget all “supreme beings” and repress, or rather tear out of our soul, all the ridere, lugere, et detestari [laughing, lamenting, and cursing], as well as the absurd flere [crying] which flows from them and which comes to the ears of no one—it is only when we recognize that our destiny and the very meaning of our existence consist in the pure intelligere, that the true philosophy will be born.
Neither in Leibniz nor in Kant do we find, to be sure, the equivalent of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus which established what is now called “biblical criticism,” but this does not mean that they had taken any less care than Spinoza to protect themselves from the biblical contamination. If everything that Kant said about Schwarmerei and Aberglauben (fanaticism and superstition) or that Leibniz wrote on the same subject were brought together, one would completely recover the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. And conversely, all the effort of the Tractatus is bent to ridding our spiritual treasury of the ideas which Scripture had introduced there and which nothing justifies.
The non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere [not to laugh, not to lament, not to curse, but to understand] of Spinoza, who abrogated the ban placed by the Bible on the fruit of the tree of knowledge, constitutes at the same time a reasonable reply to the De profundis ad te, Domine, clamavi (out of the depths I cried unto Thee, O God) of the Psalmist. The Psalmist could cry to God, but the man qui sola ratione ducitur8 (who is led by reason alone) knows well that it is absolutely useless to cry to God from the depths. If you have fallen into an abyss, try to get out of it as best you can, but forget what the Bible has told us throughout the centuries—that there is somewhere, “in heaven,” a supreme and omnipotent being who is interested in your fate, who can help you, and who is ready to do so. Your fate depends entirely on the conditions in which chance has placed you. It is possible, in some measure, to adapt yourself to these conditions. You may, for example, prolong your earthly existence by working to earn your bread or by taking it away from others. But it is a question only of prolongation, for it is not given anyone to escape death. An ineluctable eternal truth says: “Everything that has a beginning has also an end.” The man of the Bible was unwilling to accept this truth; it did not succeed in “persuading” him. But this shows only that he did not allow himself to be led “by reason alone,” that he was deeply bogged down in Schwarmerei and Aberglauben [fanaticism and superstition]. The man who has been enlightened—a Spinoza, a Leibniz, a Kant—thinks quite otherwise. The eternal truths do not simply constrain him; they persuade him, they inspire him, they give him wings. Sub specie aeternitatis