De verbinding die Spinoza lijkt te maken tussen het
naturalistische en religieuze/mystieke vraagt a.h.w. om een oplossing, wat
meestal niet in weinige woorden zoals van een Bennett kan worden afgedaan.
Een voorbeeld van duiding om met beide aspecten in het reine te komen, is te
vinden bij
Yirmiyahu Yovel in
Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason (1989):
Reason thus inherits the supreme goals and ambitions that
were traditionally assigned to mysticism and to historical religion. The
pursuit of rationality does not end in knowledge but in beatitude, eternity,
and rational love. For this purpose however, reason cannot be mere ratio (as in
the second kind of knowledge), but must, as in the third, take the shape of
scientia intuition; it cannot be merely analytic and discursive, but must be
also construed as synoptic and intuitive. The distinction between these two
types of rationality—between the second and third kinds of knowledge—is thus
tightly related to the absolute task of reason, to serve not only as a way to
knowing the world, but to the supreme ethical and spiritual goals that religion
calls salvation.
