Volume 45, Issue 3, September 2005
Steven Frankel
Pages 309-325
Spinoza’s Response to Maimonides
A Practical Strategy for Resolving the Tension between Reason and Revelation
Spinoza resolves the tension between reason and revelation by granting reason complete authority and autonomy in all philosophical and natural matters, and by denying revelation any claims to knowledge. Despite this dramatic partisanship, he attempts to make this solution attractive to believers by creating a hermeneutic that allows a limited claim to knowledge for revelation. This article attempts to explain how he arrived at this strategy and why he believed it would succeed.