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Baruch Spinoza: Short Treatise
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Strauss subsequently proceeded to answer Cohen's question of how the interests of Judaism are affected by Spinoza's Bible science. Two years after the publication of Spinoza's Critique of Religion, where he had developed his thesis of the "Christian-European" character of the TPT in greater detail, Strauss wrote a short essay entitled "The Testament of Spinoza"[32], which I consider a quasi-Cohenian afterword to his book on Spinoza. "The Testament of Spinoza" focuses on Spinoza's attitude towards Judaism and provides an answer to Cohen's question about the relationship between the interests of Judaism and Spinoza's Biblical studies: it constitutes the further investigation whose task Strauss articulated at the conclusion of "Cohen's Analysis of Spinoza's Bible Science". Published in Bayerische Israelitische Gemeindezeitung, a Jewish periodical, "The Testament of Spinoza" is written for a Jewish public in the context of a Jewish culture, underscoring the importance of a "Jewish point of view" toward Spinoza. Furthermore, the essay begins and ends with a reference to Hermann Cohen: Cohen's question of whether Spinoza was responsible for a "humanly incomprehensible betrayal" frames Strauss's essay. Finally, although Strauss disagrees with Cohen on how this question should be answered, he ... points to the relevance of Cohen's legacy for his own philosophical reasoning.
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Spinoza did contemplate, very briefly, in the Theological-Political Treatise, what some have called a "proto-Zionist"solution to the anomolous situation of the Jews. But such a solution should be regarded as purely political, as Spinoza's argument in that book was to reduce Judaism to the Mosaic Law, and the law to the constitution of the (then defunct) Hebrew commonwealth.
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There are, Spinoza insists, two sides of Nature. First, there is the active, productive aspect of the universe — God and his attributes, from which all else follows. This is what Spinoza, employing the same terms he used in the Short Treatise, calls Natura naturans, "naturing Nature". Strictly speaking, this is identical with God. The other aspect of the universe is that which is produced and sustained by the active aspect, Natura naturata, "natured Nature".
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Short Treatise