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ad Spinnauzeam
Excommunication is the exclusion of an individual from the Catholic church. The excommunicated cannot receive official sacraments and loses social status within the church. The excommunicated is invited to repent as a precondition to return to full rites. During the height of Papal power, excommunication could also impacted civil (and mortal) status. This is because church and state organs were entangled. Spinoza argues that more democratic ("free" [1]) societies have dissolved the link between state politics and in-group sanctions such as excommunication. To argue for state preeminence over organized religion Spinoza falsified parts of the bible using Euclidean proofs. He emphasized the social interpretability of biblical stories and deferred to the divine manifestation of nature instead of written rules and resulting customs.
Spinoza's undermined the power of religious leaders who expected their moral guidance to impact civil society. But they had no rational response. The preeminence of scientific reason over biblical superstition is an important Enlightenment era transition toward democratic republicanism and away from feudal theocracy. A major contradiction between the two ideologies is that republicanism is falsifiable. Rules which are untrue become unpopular. Unpopular laws are changed through democratic mechanisms like republican elections. On the other hand, when religion is falsified by reasonable theorists it becomes unpopular. But there isn't a democratic mechanism for unpopular rules to realign with changing social reality. To remain in power entrenched leaders of the old mode become reactionary and anti-democratic. One reaction is excommunication or censure of heretics and dissenters from the group. It is hard to imagine an Enlightenment republic without democratic input. For this reason nominal republics that are functional theocracies are suspect.
Spinoza was never excommunicated but he was publicly denounced, "cherem", from Amsterdam's Jewish community in 27 July 1656. Cherem is the Sephardic analogue of Roman Catholic excommunication but it is not exactly the same. [2] The Jewish and Catholic exclusions are examples of excommunication broadly defined. [3] These function to exclude a former member from the group. Usually the offending member has violating a custom or rule. These exclusions may be conditional. They don't have to be permanent. The strength of a censure is affected by the excluding group's cohesion. A Spinozan argument separates the in-group censure from the state's unique set of exclusions, punishments and authorities. [4] In an Enlightenment republic violating god's law shouldn't result in earthly prison.
Spinoza was a Monist. He unified nature and god--Deus sive Natura[5]--of the same pantheistic substance with both metaphysical and physical manifestations. This means, studying nature is also the study of god. This is an idealistic worldview of nature that also has an oppositional binary that influenced Hegel's dialectic. Hegel put Spinoza's static natural-metaphysical binary into motion. The resulting idealist dialectic was observable as an historical Weltgeist unfolding through individuals and nations toward freedom. While Hegel's dialectic was moved by idealism, Marx found motion in material relationships instead of idealist ones. Marx' study of political-economy is the application of Hegelian dialectics possible after Spinoza separated the rational from the metaphysical. Looking backwards this narrative presents the evolution of a version of (post-classical?) materialist structuralism from (Enlightenment era) idealist rationalism.
The jettisoning of idealism for materialism is a process more than two hundred years along. This is why it feels anachronistic for nominal republics founded after Spinoza, Hegel and Marx to embrace something as primitive or barbarous as theocracy. Reactionaries within organized religion have a problem with the evolution of materialism which began with Spinoza. Organized religion fails to withstand rational scrutiny under the materialist regime. If there is no mechanism for popular change in the face of unpopular opinion then (outside of appeals to faith) a reactionary mechanism that organized groups use to maintain in-group solidarity is the purge. [6]
Being purged doesn't mean an excommunicated person is on the wrong side of history. Some were sanctioned for reasons social, political or theological. The compounding, conflation and ambiguity make it confusing. People like Napoleon or Fredrick Barbarossa were excommunicated because they threatened both the political and theological power of the Pope. The same is true for democrats and reformists like Wycliffe, Hus and Luther. Wycliffe's dissent was so abhorred by the Catholics that he was disinterred and burned post mortem. The Spiritual Franciscans were excommunicated for refusing to reform poverty rites,[7] the evolutionist Gregorio Chil y Naranjo for publishing evolutionary science and Padre Beto for supporting gay rights. It seems the traditional ideological church doctrine and its conservative leadership did not evolve alongside political economies, social mores and popular sentiment. The reaction of church leaders was not systemic liturgical investigation, popular referenda or new syntheses. Predictably, it was excommunication of dissenting heretical individual. Excommunication, specifically Cherem, was the case for Spinoza. Fr. Romolo Murri was excommunicated for trying to separate Italian (fascist) democracy from the church. Slovak heroic oligarch Matthew III Csák ignored holy laws like coronation all together. Mechanisms to address dissent contradict in post-Enlightenment era nominal republics and functional theocracies.
This contradiction is internal and external. For instance, the theocratic republic of Israel has to maintain its non-Jewish population to keep a majority for elections. This is a process they called "mowing the grass."[8] The internal result is ethnic cleansing and external is settler colonialism. These are barbarous methods which predate the Enlightenment philosophy of Spinoza. This anachronism causes dissonance which is painfully slow to resolve. The Jewish state is surrounded by Islamic theocracies. The resulting conflict is based upon hundreds of years of unfalsifiable chauvinism that predate the UN style rules based order. The way to overcome this animosity is to speed the transition from theocratic states into something that doesn't clash so violently with the period's balance of power, regional hegemons or (god-forbid) international opinion. The inverse would also relieve the dissonance but few want to dismiss the whole of the Enlightenment's other contributions so Israelis can steal land promised by an unfalsifiable book from the Bronze Age.
Another example is the American republic. The stat was founded by Enlightenment era free religion Deists who were familiar with Spinoza. [9] Over the centuries the state's civil rules variably affected by in-group influence from religious (and foreign) leaders without democratic oversight regardless of public opinion. During Abolition, New England Theology, antinomianism, rejected laws for morality. Another generation of Protestant reformers explicitly merged state politics and Christian morality for the Social Gospel of the Progressive Era. The Second Great Awakening also continues in the segregationist Southern Baptist convention of Reconstruction and Jim Crow. These are all interpretations of the same scripture even though they are at odds. This is suspect. The Progressive Era embraced democratic education and women's suffrage; but also eugenics and social Darwinism. Born of the same impulse for democratic reform merged with metaphysical morality the results are incongruous and suspect. Popular opinion informed by rationality (dialectics) manifest as in material change is how these suspects are synthesized in an Enlightened republic. Not excommunication.
Periodically, the nominally republican American civics are sometimes overcome by contradictions like Manifest Destiny, chattel slavery and the Monroe Doctrine that need to synthesize--this determines it's democratic foundations. A modern stress on America's republican state is the political and theocratic alliance between American Evangelical Christians and the state of Israel mediated by the Israel Lobby. [10] Israel is a post-holocaust projection of Nakba propaganda: a Land without a People that never reconciled the displaced Palestinian population. The Evangelical Dispensationalists are generations removed from the Second Great Awakening that incongruously spawned abolition, apartheid and modern American Zionism. This movement's incongruities make it suspect.
The ideological alliance between the Evangelicals and Israeli has scriptural implications both the Jews and Christians concerning the location of temples, the return of different versions of messiahs and other metaphysical stuff. Greater Israel is a modern (ancient) version of manifest destiny--or lebensraum--which enables settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing and imperialism.
Of course, to people familiar with Spinoza Et al, this interpretation is irrational based on unfalsifiable scripture and unreliable narrators. A Hegelian might be confused to see parts of the Welt folding back in and becoming less free. A materialist analysis of Israel is clear. The post-WWII settler colonial project to ethnically cleanse Palestinians; funded by America and populated by Eastern Europeans; which replaced the British colonial mandate of Palestine as that empire receded; is a rogue state enabled by the security council of the UN; which runs global espionage operations and has nuclear weapons. This is realpolitik dressed as a theocratic struggle between Mohammad and David.
Spinoza, Hegel and Marx outlined the method to combat this conflation. First, separate organized religion from rational politics. Then apply reason to the remaining material conditions. Finally, repeat this consciously over time to understand reality and ultimately effect historical change. This is rational science where failure is addressed and not shunned. The irrational and unscientific way to combat the evolving dialectic is excommunication. This censure is the only way to combat rationality and materialism without engaging in democracy or synthesis.
The full text of Spinoza's Cherem from the Amsterdam Jewish community exists. His transgression was falsifying the unfalsifiable. For example, he undermined the Torah by suggesting a mosaic of authors and stories were compiled and interpreted over time. This contradicted Judaeo-Christian teaching of divine revelation. In Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Spinoza wrote about Israel, liberal and secular democracy, free speech and the primacy of the state. He used geometric proofs to understand prophecy, divine law and ceremony, specific books of the bible , miracles, apostles and church teachings. This was his application and development of Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order (1677) to the contemporary Dutch philosophical milieu. Ethics... was itself an adaptation of Euclidean geometry to philosophy which includes the banger, "a free man thinks of nothing less than death..." and often meditates upon and proofs what free men do. The final six chapters of TTP are explicitly about the state. They separate faith from philosophy, theology from reason and define the difference between theocratic and free states. The final chapters concern the historic theocratic "Hebrew State." [11]
"Lords of the ma'amad" and "Chachamin" of the Sephardic Jews denounced the "evil opinions...acts...ways" and the "abominable heresies...monstrous deeds" attributed to Spinoza's writing. He was "excommunicated and expelled [from the] people of Israel" by "decree of the Angels [and] command of the holymen." There is very little room to negotiate with dialectics--Spinozan universal, Hegelian idealist or Marxist historical--when confronted ad hominem by both holy men and angels. The censure's conditions are "no one should communicate with [Spinoza] orally or in writing, or show him any favor, or stay with him under the same roof, or read anything composed or written by him." A Spinozan would critique religious leaders who call for civic action--that "no one" should talk to him--as overstepping. The result is less civic freedom added to the religious sanction. [12]
Many modern republics conflate theocratic and democratic values which result in historical anachronism and dissonance. The result has been Crusade[13] style conflict in the twenty-first century. Disentangling the interpretations from the universal; understanding the ideological synthesis of the conflict; and creating a more democratic society through scientific socialism is the method for ending this Crusade provided by our dialectical ancestors.
notes:
[1] Spinoza "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" (1670).
"...the most tyrannical government will be one where the individual is denied the freedom to express and to communicate to others what he thinks, and a moderate government is one where this freedom is granted to every man." (TTP, XX:1-4).
[2] Dr. Yitzhak Y. Meland "Why wasn't Spinoza excommunicated? a talk by Professor Yitzhak Melamed (of Johns Hopkins University)" Shepherdic Geneological Society, January 2022 via .youtube
It is pedantic but true to point out that it is not the same, but similar. It was "not precicley an excommunication..." (1:09 and 2:21); "public legend" Spinoza was excommunicated. He was cherem.
[3] Other notable communal exclusions include the Amish shun, capitalist blacklist, imperial sanction, de facto (but not de jure) social exclusion and cancel culture.
[4] Some recent American de jure exclusions include reservations, concentration camps, medical quarantine, immigration laws, apartheid and incarceration.
[5] This is central to Ethics (1677).
[6] Purging is unscientific and irrational. It was also practiced effectively on the state level by great Soviet dialecticians Lenin (politically vs the Mensheviks) and Stalin (vs everybody). National Communist parties are effective when strict but they undermine democratic fundamentals like the dictatorship of the proletariat and rule like old world monarchs. States that purge people do not act democratically. There is a distinction between Debs' American federal charge, Trotsky's extralegal assassination and the the Leibnicht/Luxembourg's fascistic murder. All were socialist entryists who ran afoul of state ideologies and were censured in violent ways by the state--or with state sanction. More democratic societies address dissent through mechanisms like elections and not violence. This is why separating civil society (where synthesis comes from multiple opinions) from the unfalsifiable rules (like 100% American capitalism or Stalinist totalitarianism) is democratic and Spinoza-esque while chauvinist and one-party states are not.
[7] Umberto Eco Il nome della rosa Italy: Bompiani, 1980
[8] Jewish Home Chairman Neftali Bennett (quoted by ynet) Herzliya: Institute for Counter terrorism Policy at the Interdisciplinary Center, 9 April 2018.
"Whoever doesn't mow the grass, the grass mows it" and ""We were in Lebanon and the enemy did not grow. In Judea and Samaria, we are in continuous contact like a lawnmower. "And in Gaza we lost contact and a monster grew.". This is settler colonialism of Islamic lands justified by the Torah.
[9] Jefferson's library had three books by author "Spinosae" tractatus theologico politics and theological and political discourses (1670) and opera posthuma (1677). That doesn't mean he read them.
[10] John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
[11] Spinoza "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" (translated by John Irvine Israel and Michael Silverthorne) UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Spinoza "Ethics" Part 4, proposition 67 (1677) Andrew Boyle (translator) 1910, pg 187.
The full proposition is, "A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life..." and it is proved by "A free man, that is, one who lives according to the dictate of reason alone, is not led by the fear of death (Prop* 63, Part IV.), but directly desires what is good (CorolL, same Prop.), that is (Prop. 24^ Part IV.), to act, to live, and preserve his being on the basis of seeking what is useful to him. And therefore he thinks of nothing less than of death, but his wisdom is a meditation of life."
This is typical of Spinoza's application of Euclidean geometry and psychological affects to the broadest philosophical questions in Ethics. TTP is more specific to Dutch Golden Age political philosophy with a goal of disentangling organized religion from the state political structure. To avoid the spirit of censorship, Spinoza published TTP was anonymously and Ethics was published posthumously. This is not uncommon for political and philosophical dissidents (it is important keep the two seperate). But, it is evidence of a state or culture that lacks freedom. Rationalists argue that the freedom to question is how truth is discovered.
[12] "The Excommunication of Baruch Spinoza" 27 July 1656 via Prof. Ron Bombardi's webpage hosted by Middle Tennessee State University (mtsu.edu) for History of Modern Philosophy PHILO 4020, created 10 August 2012, accessed 28 May 2026.
full text:
"The Lords of the ma’amad, having long known of the evil opinions and acts of Baruch de Spinoza, have endeavord by various means and promises, to turn him from his evil ways. But having failed to make him mend his wicked ways, and, on the contrary, daily receiving more and more serious information about the abominable heresies which he practiced and taught and about his monstrous deeds, and having for this numerous trustworthy witnesses who have deposed and born witness to this effect in the presence of the said Espinoza, they became convinced of the truth of the matter; and after all of this has been investigated in the presence of the honorable chachamin, they have decided, with their consent, that the said Espinoza should be excommunicated and expelled from the people of Israel. By the decree of the angels, and by the command of the holy men, we excommunicate, expel, curse and damn Baruch de Espinoza, with the consent of God, Blessed be He, and with the consent of all the Holy Congregation, in front of these holy Scrolls with the six-hundred-and thirteen precepts which are written therein, with the excommunication with which Joshua banned Jericho, with the curse with which Elisha cursed the boys, and with all the curses which are written in the Book of the Law. Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lies down, and cursed be he when he rises up; cursed be he when he goes out, and cursed be he when he comes in. The Lord will not spare him; the anger and wrath of the Lord will rage against this man, and bring upon him all the curses which are written in this book, and the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven, and the Lord will separate him to his injury from all the tribes of Israel with all the curses of the covenant, which are written in the Book of the Law. But you who cleave unto the Lord God are all alive this day. We order that no one should communicate with him orally or in writing, or show him any favor, or stay with him under the same roof, or within four ells of him, or read anything composed or written by him."
[13] "This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while." George W. Bush (16 September 2001).
George W. Bush's "view of the world is Manichean. He sees his mission as ridding it of evil-doers. He believes American values should be universal values." UK Ambassador to the US Sir Christopher Meyer (December 2002).