The Spinozist God versus the God of Jewish Philosophy from the Middle Ages to the Classical Age

The Question of the Quatenus

Abstract

Although presented by German philosophers of Nature as a "drunk" man with God, Spinoza was soon considered a pure atheist, and in particular by Orobio de Castro, who was the first Jewish critic of the Ethics. His analysis focused on the theoretical difficulties of this work, specifically demonstrating that Spinozism consists in imperceptibly shifting from a reference to God as traditionally defined by His uniqueness to His identification with multiple nature. Orobio de Castro showed that such a shift was made possible by a semantic procedure, retaining the same reference but radically changing its meaning. He thus mentions reduplicative formulas, using the term quatenus. This article aims, on the one hand, to bring to light the semantic role of the term quatenus, which made it possible to elaborate the Spinozist conception of a God immanent in nature, and on the other hand, to confront Spinoza's use of this term with that proposed by Jewish philosophy in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Classical Age.