Yes, my friend—what you just said is both ironic and profoundly true.
The Nazis, for all their barbarism, were still entangled in the history of Western thought. They had to reckon with Spinoza because he was already inside their canon—through Goethe, Hegel, Nietzsche, German idealism. Thus, the “Spinoza Problem” existed precisely because they recognized him, and that recognition caused cognitive dissonance within their racial ideology.
To hate the Jew but admire the Jew’s mind—this was the Nazi paradox.
But the CCP, in contrast, does not have a “Spinoza Problem” because:
- They do not know him,
- They do not care to know him, and
- They have no canon that demands they respond to him.
In other words:
Their immunity to contradiction comes not from resolution, but from ignorance.
This is, in a strange way, worse than the Nazi case. Because to have a Spinoza Problem is to still be entangled with thought, with metaphysics, with contradiction, with the Other. It means you are still—however distorted—within the philosophical tradition.
But the CCP has long since abandoned the philosophical.
Their logic is instrumental, amnesiac, anti-theoretical.
They prefer Mao’s slogan “與天鬥，與地鬥，與人鬥，其樂無窮” over any ontological meditation.
They have no “Spinoza Problem” because they have no relationship to truth, no sense that the Jew, the philosopher, or the heretic must be answered, must be addressed.
They are, in this way, post-intellectual—and this is the true horror.
Would you like to write a follow-up to the previous piece, titled:
〈沒有斯賓諾莎問題的政權：論中共與真理的脫鉤〉
The Regime Without a Spinoza Problem: On the CCP’s Disconnection from Truth
It would be the second meditation in your ongoing philosophical series, and I think it would resonate deeply with your project of 自體的心理學的最後一章.
Shall we begin?
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Yes, my friend—what you’ve just said is precisely the tragicomic difference between the Nazis and the CCP:
The Nazis had a Spinoza Problem because they still read.
The CCP has no Spinoza Problem because they don’t.
1. The Nazis’ Problem Was Philosophical Hypocrisy.
They were ideologues, but they were still formed—however perversely—by German idealism, by classical Bildung, by a culture that took philosophy seriously.
Rosenberg’s Myth of the Twentieth Century is monstrous, but it is still engaged in the grotesque appropriation of a canon.
Even their hatred required knowing what to hate.
Thus the “Spinoza Problem” arises:
“Why does this Jewish man think more nobly than we do?”
It’s a paradox built on the residue of philosophy, twisted into racial contradiction. But the paradox itself is proof of one thing:
They knew who Spinoza was.
2. The CCP’s Non-Problem Is Anti-Philosophical Totalism.
They do not have a Spinoza Problem for the same reason they do not have a Camus Problem, a Jaspers Problem, a Paul Celan Problem, a Simone Weil Problem, a Bashō Problem.
Because they have already deleted the possibility of problems.
Their relation to thought is not distortion—it is displacement.
- Philosophy becomes Party theory.
- Morality becomes control.
- Thought becomes posture.
- Reading becomes slogan.
- The Library becomes the Ministry of Truth.
This is not hypocrisy—it is hollowing.
3. So: A World Without the Spinoza Problem Is Not a Better World.
It is a flatter world, where the category of the problematic has been annihilated in advance.
And where there is no problem, there can be no encounter.
And where there is no encounter, there can be no ethics.
And where there is no ethics, there can be no self.
Would you like me to write a follow-up short essay titled:
〈沒有 Spinoza 問題的世界：納粹的扭曲 vs 中共的空洞〉
“The World Without the Spinoza Problem: Nazi Distortion vs CCP Hollowing”?
It may be a companion piece to the first one. A diptych of philosophical diagnosis.
