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NOTES TO PAGES 232–42

Levinas, Spinoza, and the Theologico-Political Meaning of Scripture, Hent de Vries

1. Those relevant for me in this context will be his 1955 ‘‘The Case of Spinoza’’ (‘‘Le Cas
   Spinoza’’) and 1966 ‘‘Have You Reread Baruch?’’ (‘‘Avez-vous relu Baruch?’’), plus an intervention
   presented during a Spinoza conference held in Jerusalem in 1977 in response to a lecture by the
   Chicago philosopher Richard McKeon, ‘‘L’Arriere-plan de Spinoza.’’ Emmanuel Levinas, ‘‘The Spi- noza Case’’ and ‘‘Have You Reread Baruch?,’’ in Levinas,Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, trans. Sea ́n Hand (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 106–10 and 111–18; ‘‘Re ́ponse au Professeur McKeon,’’ in Nathan Rotenstreich and Norma Schneider, eds.,Spinoza: His Thought and Work, Entretiens in Jerusalem, 6–9 September 1977(Jerusalem: Publications of the Israel Acad- emy of Sciences and Humanities, 1983), 47–52, also published as ‘‘L’Arriere-plan de Spinoza,’’
   inL’Au-deladu verset: Lectures et discours talmudiques(Paris: Minuit, 1982), 201–6; ‘‘Spinoza’s Background,’’ in Levinas,Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures, trans. Gary D. Mole (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 168–73. See also the remarks Levinas devotes to Jean Lacroix’sSpinoza et le probleme du salut, ‘‘Jean Lacroix: Philosophie et Religion,’’Noms propres
   (Montpellier: Fata Morgana, 1976), 119–30; ‘‘Jean Lacroix: Philosophy and Religion,’’Proper
   Names, trans. Michael B. Smith (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 80–89.
   Essays fromDifficult Freedomwill hereafter be cited by page number in the text, with the page
   number of the English translation preceding that of the French original. All translations have been
   modified where need be for purposes of the present discussion.


2. Sylvain Zac,Spinoza et l’interpre ́tation de l’E ́criture(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
   1965).


3. Levinas, ‘‘Jean Lacroix: Philosophy and Religion,’’ inProper Names, 84 / 124.


4. Ibid., 83 / 123.


5. Levinas, ‘‘Have You Reread Baruch?,’’Difficult Freedom,112 / 160. The quote is from Zac,
   Spinoza et l’interpre ́tation de l’E ́criture, 36.


6. Stuart Hampshire,Spinoza and Spinozism(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).


7. Jean-Francois Rey, ‘‘Levinas et Spinoza,’’ inSpinoza au XXe siecle, ed. Olivier Bloch (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993), 230. Rey notes further: ‘‘Levinas devotes himself to... an operation that consists, not in confronting Spinoza with a tradition that he did not recognize as his own, but rather in opposing Spinoza to Spinoza, that is to say, in his terms, to show the coexistence of Spinozism with an anti-Spinozism’’ (ibid., 227). See also Edith Wyschogrod, ‘‘Ethics as First Philosophy: Levinas Reads Spinoza,’’ inJournal of Eighteenth Century Studies40, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 195–205. For Deleuze, see hisSpinoza et le probleme de l’expression(Paris: Minuit, 1969);Expression-
   ism in Philosophy: Spinoza, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Zone Books, 1990), andSpinoza:
   Philosophie pratique(Paris: Minuit, 1981);Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley (San
   Francisco: City Lights, 1988), and numerous essays and scattered remarks throughout his writings.


8. The quote is from Zac,Spinoza et l’interpre ́tation de l’E ́criture, 99; see also 76, 97.


9. Levinas, ‘‘Spinoza’s Background,’’ inBeyond the Verse, 168 / 201.


10. Ibid., 168–69 / 201–2.


11. Ibid., 169 / 202.


12. Ibid., 172 / 205.


13. Ibid., 171, 173 / 204, 206.


14. Ibid.


15. For a discussion, see myReligion and Violence: Philosophical Perspectives from Kant to
    Derrida(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), chap. 1.

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