Theologico-Political Treatise

A new and complete translation in English of this modern text, with substantive apparatus to allow the student and serious reader to grapple in a meaningful way with this seminal text, which Dr. Yaffe describes in his Translator’s Remarks: “the philosophical founding-document of both modern biblical criticism and modern liberal democracy....” As such, “it is also the philosophical founding-document of modern liberal religion.”

Tools in the text for the serious reader include the translation, ample footnotes, Spinoza’s annotations, an interpretative essay, glossary and other indices.

【Table of Contents】

Translator's Remarks

Acknowledgements

Spinoza's Preface

THEOLOGICO-POLITICAL TREATISE

Spinoza's Annotations

Glossary

Interpretive Essay

Selected Bibliography

Indexes

Citations

Names

Terms

【Translator's Remarks】

The following translation of Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670)— the philosophical founding-document of both modern biblical criticism and modern liberal democracy—aims at the utmost literalness and consistency of terms which my own moderate ability and a proper and intelligible English allow. It is based on the Latin text found in Benedictus Spinoza, Opera, ed. C. Gebhardt (4 vols.; Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1925), III, 3-267, as corrected where necessary by Fokke Akkerman in Spinoza, Tractatus theologico-politicus / Traité théologico-politique, ed. F. Akkerman, trans. J. Lagrée and P.-F. Moreau (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999). Boldface numbers enclosed in curly brackets indicate the corresponding pages in Gebhardt’s edition; numbers enclosed in square brackets indicate the section numbers superimposed onto the text of the Treatise by C.H. Bruder in Benedicti de Spinoza Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. Bruder (3 vols.; Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, Jr., 1843-46), III, 1-271.

Spinoza’s text consists of a Preface and twenty chapters, including occasional footnotes by Spinoza, plus thirty-nine Annotations added by Spinoza to the margins of his manuscript of the Treatise after its first publication and appended by subsequent editors. I have surrounded with quotation marks each of Spinoza’s footnotes, along with footnote references to the Annotations, and placed them among my own translator’s footnotes at the bottom of each page. Gebhardt has supplemented the Latin text of the Annotations with interpolations drawn from early Dutch and French translations; I have instead followed the text established by Akkerman, which drops most of the interpolations and surrounds the remaining ones with angular brackets. I have also consulted Akkerman’s footnotes freely for the purpose of confirming or supplementing my translator’s footnotes concerning Spinoza’s literary sources, etc.

Spinoza’s numerous Hebrew and Aramaic quotations have been retained in their original fonts, as have the three Greek words found in Annotation 26. That same Annotation contains in addition four Syriac expressions; although Spinoza himself also transliterates them, I have retained their original fonts as well.

Here and there I have altered Spinoza’s occasional transliteration of Hebrew words, to fit the ear of the modern Hebrew-speaker.

Citations to classical Greek and Latin authors are to the Loeb Classical Library editions of their works. Unless otherwise indicated, citations to rabbinic commentators other than Maimonides are to Mikraot Gedolot (10 vols.; New York: Pardes, 1951).

Interpolations of my own, consisting of an English word or two added or repeated so as to convey the drift of Spinoza’s Latin, are occasionally indicated by a small circle immediately following the inserted expression—thus°.

Spinoza’s Latin is fairly straightforward in its sentence structure, but often subtle in its word choices. Throughout his argument, he imputes new meanings to old words or, what amounts to the same thing, relies on the double meanings of Translator’s Remarks those words to convey his gist. On the one hand, then, his Treatise is like a routine political pamphlet in that he limits himself by and large to oldfashioned theological and political terms whose meanings are familiar to his intended reader from routine usage. On the other hand, it is like an academic textbook in that during the course of his argument Spinoza endows many of those terms with newfangled meanings —sometimes explicitly (e.g., “prophet,” “law”), sometimes only implicitly (e.g., “worship,” “imperium”)—so as to support his innovative conclusions. That Spinoza invites his reader to connect the oldfashioned and newfangled meanings of important theological and political terms is another way of describing his argument as a whole. Often a single English equivalent will serve to translate Spinoza’s Latin puns (if that is the right word for them), but often not. Whenever I have been forced to choose which lexical meaning to bring to the surface and which to leave submerged—in the hope that it will somehow survive and reemerge in the larger flow of the argument—I have usually preferred an English equivalent that keeps to the Treatise’s rhetorical flow, albeit at the risk of departing from its conceptual precision. Where appropriate, I have tried to indicate that risk by a footnote that supplies an alternate translation or else refers the reader to the Glossary, or both. Occasionally, too, I have used a footnote to indicate where in keeping with the rhetorical flow I have had to sacrifice the literal meaning of a Latin term, or where in keeping with the literal meaning I have had to sacrifice the rhetorical flow by translating in a way that at first glance might appear jarring to the English reader.

I have also retained Spinoza’s habit, preserved by Gebhardt in his edition of the Latin text, of frequently capitalizing common nouns for emphasis.

To indicate further what I have seen in Spinoza’s Latin which has led me to try to preserve the consistency of important terms wherever possible, I have added an Interpretive Essay and, alongside Indexes of Citations and Names, an extensive Index of Terms.

Finally, Spinoza’s Latin is characterized by paragraphs and sentences of often considerable length. To ease the burden on the English reader and to facilitate references to Spinoza’s text, I have numbered each Latin paragraph, as well as each Latin sentence within that paragraph. I have then treated each numbered sentence as a separate paragraph and punctuated Spinoza’s Latin half-stops as English full-stops. As a result, the third Latin sentence of the second paragraph of Spinoza’s first chapter, say, is 1.2.3. An “A” instead of a Chapter-number in the citation refers to Spinoza’s Annotations, a “P” to his Preface, a “T” to a Chapter-title, and “TP” to the Title Page. To help the reader’s eye while scanning the Indexes, I have placed all Chapter-numbers (and the aforementioned letters) there in boldface.

【Reviews】

[Professor Yaffe's] learned study of the treatise and his interpretations of its significance are simply among the most intelligent studies that one may find - his devotion to researching the teachings of the treatise has encouraged the production of this new English translation of it which is unique and comprehensive...and is valuable to every reader of Spinoza at every level of ability. Indeed, I have every confidence that his translated edition of the treatise, together with the outstanding scholarly critical apparatus that it employs, will be acknowledged universally as the best English translation and edition of the work available.

-- Paul J. Bagley, President North American Spinoza Society

Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise edited by Martin Yaffe (Focus, 480 pp., $24.95) Anyone lacking Latin who is seriously interested in, among other things, the philosophical foundations of liberal democracy, the rise of the historical-critical approach to the Bible, and Leo Strauss owes Martin Yaffe a substantial debt of gratitude for his edition of Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise. Yaffe's edition of the Treatise far surpasses all its competitors in its faithfulness to Spinoza's peculiar manner of writing. It thus provides us fresh access to the late 17th-century work, which is at once "the philosophical founding document of both modern liberal democracy and modern biblical criticism."

Yaffe's excellent interpretive essay helps readers to see why Spinoza regarded his dual foundings--of liberal democracy and of a "critical" way of reading the Bible--as being inextricably linked. As for Yaffe's contribution to the study of Strauss, it consists not only of the way in which he follows Strauss's admonition to translators not to impose their own prejudices on a text, but also the way he keys his text to the Latin editions that Strauss employed in his great essay "How to Study Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise."

Yaffe thereby enables Latinless readers to investigate the hundreds of citations to the Treatise that Strauss provides throughout his essay. Because of his seriousness and because of his modesty--he does not confuse himself with a thinker of Spinoza's rank--Yaffe is a most able guide to Spinoza.

-- Steven Lenzner, Weekly Standard

Martin Yaffe’s remarkable new translation of the Treatise faces these issues in an explicit and engaging manner that is likely to attract new interest among students in Theology, Political Theory, and Philosophy. Rather than cover his tracks, he attempts to share with the reader the central decisions confronting a sensitive and careful translator. Throughout the text, he notes those occasions where the literal translation would simplify and distort the argument. In some cases, where the transformation of meaning is more dramatic, he chooses to retain the Latin original as, for example, with the term “imperium.” To shed further light on these decisions, he provides a glossary of key terms and a commentary on the entire text.

This decision to allow the reader to observe and participate in the process of translation is deliberate and reflects Yaffe’s thoughtful interpretation of the Treatise. Yaffe argues that the problems of translating the shifting meanings of Spinoza’s key terms and the relationship between theology and politics are really two sides of the same coin. In his view, Spinoza exploits the ambiguity of language to appeal to Christian readers, while at the same time, pushing them to reflect on the underlying basis of their theology. Indeed, at the very beginning of his argument, Spinoza asks his readers to consider “why human beings who boast that they profess the Christian religion – that is, love, gladness, peace, continence, and faith toward all – should clash in a more than inequitable spirit and exercise the bitterest hatred toward one another daily…” (preface, xviii). He goes on to suggest that Christianity has been hijacked and vulgarized by unscrupulous men who abuse its teachings in order to satisfy their ambitions for the wealth and power of ecclesiastical offices. Among their most insidious methods for obscuring and twisting the word of God is the importation of foreign or superstitious ideas into the Bible, particularly “the theories of Aristotelians and Platonists” (preface, xix). Spinoza invites us then, in this apparent spirit of piety, to rediscover the essential teachings of Christianity so that we may safeguard them in the future.

-- Steven Frankel, Interpretation 32.2 (Spring, 2005): 171-78.