Spinoza’s doctrine on god and religion in the light of Soviet philosophical thought

Abstract

It is axiomatic that the formation of the atheistic character of Marxism, among other things, was influenced by some of B. Spinoza’s ideas. However, the philosophical heritage of this thinker was always contradictory and always perceived ambiguously. He was considered a defender of the Catholic faith, an adherent of Judaism, a modernizer of religion, a pantheist, and finally an atheist. The last attitude became dominant in Soviet philosophy. We suggest that this was the result of a synthesis of the subjective apologetic position of Soviet atheists and objectively existing contradictions and vulnerable aspects of Spinoza’s philosophy. The transformation of the ideas of Spinozism in an atheistic key covered such aspects of the philosophy of the Dutch thinker: the original interpretation of the essence of God, the reasons for the appearance of ancient sacred texts, and the argumentation and evidence of the conventionality and symbolism of religious cults. Religion creates that minimum of moral culture, without which neither individuals nor society can do; a “true religion” is human wisdom, its main representative was Christ, whom the philosopher considered as a real historical person. Based on these views, Soviet philosophy presents two complementary approaches to understanding Spinoza’s judgments about religion and God: 1) the philosopher’s ideas move towards pantheism and atheism (V. Sokolov, I. Konnikov); 2) the philosopher is considered a materialist atheist (A. Deborin). The radicalism of the second approach was eventually overcome by V. Asmus, M. Belenky, E. Ilienkov, and I. Narsky, who proved that Spinoza, in trying to present his doctrine in the form of an undoubted, absolute truth, quite deliberately used the theological terminology prevailing in his time in as a kind of tool for introducing new ideas and concepts into the consciousness of contemporaries.