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基本説明
Elijah Benamozegh was an uninvited guest at the philosophers' banquet. Self-taught in western philosophy and modern sciences, he was a stranger in the room of Parisian metaphysical debates. Born in Livorno in 1823 to a family emigrated from Marocco, his first education was done by his maternal uncle, Rabbi Yehuda Coriat, author of important kabbalistic works. This first schooling was only Hebraic, and included the complete reading of the Zohar. Thus read under the guidance of an authentic traditionist, the Zohar would remain the metaphysical inspiration of Benamozegh. This first schooling encompassing the vast span of Hebrew culture, which he shared with Spinoza, should have established his competence as a judge of the latter. But his 'Spinoza and Kabbalah', published in 1863 in the very parochial L'Univers Israélite, went almost unnoticed.
That the question of the influence of Kabbalah on Spinoza's ontology should be problematic is in itself a wonder. It never escaped the acuity of careful readers, Leibniz among them. After the most recent research in the field, it has become hardly deniable. The long obfuscation of the fact that the starting point of Spinoza's speculation on the absolute unity of ultimate Being and the production of the finite by the infinite lays in the kabbalistic books he owned and read, cannot be explained but by a conspiracy of ignorance and interest. Ignorance might be excused. Kabbalah literature has only started to be translated and studied. A cursory review of the interests at play is more interesting. Spinoza has long become the private preserve of enlightened Jewish scholars, for whom he is a personal model and a cultural hero. Compared to the subtlety and profundity of the ontological discussions among the kabbalists, Spinoza's simplification posing as rationalism might pale and show itself as a closure of the mind bordering on charlatanism. Even more curious, is the destiny of Spinoza as Prophet for some radical circles.
