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Spinoza: A Life

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It's hard to write a reliable biography of Baruch de Spinoza, which is probably why the effort has so rarely been attempted. Fortunately, Steven Nadler has given it a go. The result is as close to a definitive biography of Spinoza as we're likely to see for many years to come.

Naturally, much of the material on Spinoza himself is speculative (and clearly identified as such). But Nadler does a marvelous job of placing Spinoza into his historical context. The discussions of Dutch and Jewish history are fascinating in their own right, and Nadler's exposition of Jewish law is competent as well (a nice feature for obvious reasons). Moreover, Nadler doesn't hesitate to state his own opinions where the evidence warrants it, and more than once he speaks up against commonplace misconceptions that have crept into the "received account" of Spinoza's life.

I'm also very impressed by Nadler's transparent and engaging style. The art of expository prose is hardly noticed when it's done right, which is why I try to call attention to it whenever I encounter it. Nadler does it right. His sentences are well phrased and comfortably paced, and he doesn't obtrude himself with authorial tricks; he just tells the story clearly and well. This sounds easy and is not.

Be warned that, as other reviewers have noted, this is not (just) an intellectual biography of Spinoza. The narrative does cover the development of his philosophy, but in just enough depth to give the reader a sense of what it's about; for exposition of Spinozism, you'll want to read either Spinoza himself or Roger Scruton's little book on the subject. (Start with Scruton if you're new to Spinoza.)

Highly recommended to readers interested in Spinoza as well as to readers who simply enjoy a fine historical biography.

Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677) is one of the most influential philosophers in history. As a young man, her was excommunicated by the elders of the Jewish community in Amsterdam and subsequently came to be regarded by some as a "secular saint" and by others as an infamous atheist. Although there are many legends and myths about Spinoza's life, there has been no extended biography in English until Nadler's study. In fact, outside of brief accounts written shortly after Spinoza's death, this book is probably the first extended treatment of Spinoza's life in any language.

Given the scarcity of biographical information, Nadler does an excellent job in placing Spinoza's life in historical context. He discusses in detail how the Jewish community in Amsterdam became established, precariously, by immigrants from the Inquistion in Spain and Portugal. He describes the efforts the Jewish community made to win acceptance in Amsterday, the place of Spinoza's family in the Jewish community, and the rabbis and leaders of the community. Some of this material is well-known, others of it is less so. It is all valuable to getting to understand Spinoza.

There is a great deal of discussion of the history of the Dutch republic in Spinoza's time. Nadler's discussion includes both internal affairs (the tension between those who wanted a powerful monarch and those who wanted republican institutions) and the complex foreign wars and shifting alliances of the Netherlands during Spinoza's time. I never could make sense of this material before, but Nadler has discussed it well and in sufficient detail to provide a good backround in understanding Spinoza's political ideas.

Nadler's book is not itself a philosophical study. But he treats carefully and instructively the origin of Spinoza's works and he summarizes their complex ideas well. He does not limit his discussion to the Ethics. Instead, Nadler spends a great deal of time on the Theological-Political Treatise which he rightly views as a neglected masterpiece complementary to the Ethics. There are also good discussions of Spinoza's unfinished "Hebrew Grammar" and, particularly, of the Epistles, as well as of his other works.

Nadler has a good sense of Spinoza's naturalism encompassed be the famous phrase "deus, siva natura". He gives the reader a good feel for the revolutionary nature of Spinoza's thought and shows how and why Spinoza departed from the traditional religious belief of his day.

Nadler is a careful in his use of sources. He tells the reader what evidence from a record both complex and sparse he accepts, what he doubts, and why. When Nadler draws a conclusion that goes beyond the available evidence, he tells the reader that he has done so and why he has done so. This is measured, careful writing about a figure Nadler obviously admires.

There is much creative detail in this book as Nadler draws on recent scholarship to cast light on Spinoza and his times. For example, he relies substantially on the report made to the Inquisition of a person who knew Spinoza in Amsterdam. He discusses the Sabatti Zvi incident (a false Jewish Messiah who appealed to many people during Spinoza's lifetime) and Spinoza's possible knowledge of it. The book rebukes the myth of Spinoza as a recluse. One of the strongest features of the book is its picture of Spinoza's intellectual circle and of his relationship to many friends.

The book doesn't include a critical analysis of Spinoza's thought. Such studies are legion and there still is much to say and learn. Also, the book doesn't discuss the reception and influence of Spinoza through the years. Again, this is beyond the scope of the book. The book is an excellent biography of a seminal figure in Western philosophy. I came away from the book with a increased understanding of and appreciation for Spinoza's life and thought.

This exemplary study of an early Enlightenment figure is a superb analytical narrative. Nadler's account of Baruch Spinoza will stand for some time as the best introduction of a man of his own times and far beyond. Spinoza's philosophy has been sadly overlooked by scholars. Nadler's diminutive title is almost an injustice to the scope of his efforts. Yet, it perfectly summarises what Nadler does - recounts a life without overwhelming us with lengthy analysis or idle speculation. He places Spinoza firmly in the social, political and philosophical realms marking the Enlightenment's beginnings. With clear presentation skills, Nadler takes us through the life and times of a man whose thinking was far in advance of his contemporaries. That Spinoza was reviled and condemned by church and state, yet avoided the martyrdom typical of Bruno, Galileo and others, attests to his perception and behavioural qualities.

Spinoza was the descendent of one of the multitude of Jews driven from the Iberian Peninsula in the reign of the Catholic Monarchs credited with reconquering Spain from the Moors. Harassed by the Inquisition, many found refuge in the Calvinist Netherlands. Nadler shows how tolerance and dogma fought continuously in the Dutch Republic, reaching every facet of society. Politics and religion were deeply intertwined. Even a reclusive like Spinoza wasn't immune to the swaying fortunes of party politics. While the Dutch struggled for an independent existence surrounded by enemy states, Spinoza formulated his ideas on Nature and the role of the divine. He began these studies at an early age. Expressing them led to the most vehement statement of excommunication issued by the Amsterdam rabbinical leadership.
He spent the remainder of his life in near-seclusion, with occasional visits with friends and other thinkers. The time was spent in preparing what became his most significant work - The Ethics.

Spinoza, a deep scholar of Scripture and Nature, refused to countenance a human aspect for the deity. Instead, as Nadler explains, Spinoza merged the deity and Nature into one. Humans, he insisted, were merely part of the scheme, not something apart. To be good was part of the divine plan. Evil, while deplorable, was derived from natural causes. Evil should be controlled, it should not be condemned. The State must have a role, but it must be under the direction of an enlightened populace. He scorned Utopian ideas, but found much to admire in the Dutch Republic's scheme. To Spinoza, the worst aspect of Netherland politics was the intrusion of the Reformed Church in government affairs. Spinoza condemned all dogma and superstition - both being symbolic of the various churches, Christian or Jewish. He published but one major work in his lifetime. The Theological and Political Treatise was roundly condemned by most European theologians, who goaded the states to follow suit. There is a special irony in Spinoza escaping the martyrdom some suffered for lesser views. Instead, he appears to have perished from a combination of inherited susceptibility to respiratory ailments and inhaled dust from his lens grinding.

Nadler's account is sound scholarship presented confidently. There are no frills nor wild speculations. Where he tries to resolve an issue in question, he does it firmly and with good sources. Where evidence is lacking, and there is very little on Spinoza that can be considered reliable, he indicates this without apology. A good bibliography and a few illustrations grace the book. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Despite the paucity of source material, Steven Nadler's biography captures the essence of one of western philosophy's brightest minds. With almost nothing surviving to document his early life, the first third of the book on Spinoza's formative years is largely a history of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, and the Jewish immigrant community of Amsterdam to which Spinoza's family fled. I hadn't expected to read so much about these topics, but Nadler's presentation proved engaging, as it did throughout the book, including accessible summaries of Spinoza's thought and his major works. This is no intellectual history, so ideas are presented in their most general outline, but for someone new to Spinoza this might be just what you need to decide whether you'd like to explore further. This was my introduction to Spinoza. It was a good place to start.

What stays with me from Nadler's work is an image of the philosopher, a young man - he died still in his 40's - content with life and his place in it. He ate enough to survive, wore enough to stay warm, and kept only a few boxes of books and the lens grinding equipment with which he earned enough money to support his low-impact life. He never married and never traveled outside the Netherlands. He was offered prestigious academic positions, but turned them down. When confronted with the disputatious, he tried to find ways to avoid confrontation. He lived a quiet, interior life of reflection. If he was hungry for anything, it was ideas, what he called the search for truth. In all other ways, he seemed at ease in the world. And why not? For Spinoza the world is the sum of the long chain of cause and effect, a world that can't be otherwise, a world of perfect imperfections. In such a world, what is there with which to contend except oneself? And this Spinoza did, cleaving true to his vision of reality, a man of admirable honesty and simplicity.

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Steven Nadler has succeeded in writing an accessible and thoughtful biography of one of the great thinkers. His research is extensive and he has brought Spinoza to life. While there are many treatments and analyses of Spinoza's work, this biography is the only work addressed to Spinoza's life. It is a wonderful blend of philosophy and history and is an invaluable resource for understanding the forces and influences that shaped Spinoza's work.

This is a grand portrait of XVII-century Holland: not just a biography of the great philosopher, but a detailed description - almost a painting in the old classical Dutch style - of the world in which he lived.
Someone only interested in philosophy could even be disappointed by the great space given to history at detriment to the analysis of Spinoza's thinking and biography.

It was a long time I wanted to read this book and I did truly enjoy every page of it.
I'm not a specialist in Dutch history, but a few years ago had the chance to read that other superb portrait of Dutch Golden age under the title of "The Embarrassment of Riches" by Simon Schama, and later I red also the classical "The Dutch Revolt" by Geoffrey Parker and the much more focused "Tulipomania" by Mike Dash
So I did already know something about the time and the argument.
This book is different. Obviously it is more focused on the intellectual dimension of Dutch Golden Age, but also much more attentive to individual destinies, not just Spinoza's.

What is so special in this book?
First, of course, the portrait of Spinoza, a delicate and difficult task since the extant testimonies about his life are very thin and mostly connected with the thinker and not with the man. To recreate a so vivid portrait from so tiny fragments is probably the best achievement of this book.
Then the portrait of Amsterdam from the special point of view of the Jewish Sephardim community, the attention to the (truly fascinating) history and peculiarity of this community with its links with mainstream European Judaism, and the special interest in describing everyday life.
Not lastly the great harvest of anecdotic tales, so many of them to create the texture or a big canvas depicting the time), mostly connected with the main argument, but some of them with a life of their own - and many real gems.
I'm thinking especially about
- the case of Uriel Da Costa, a member of a prominent and respectable family in Amsterdam Sephardim Community (maybe even connected by family with Spinoza) who in 1640 - after having been excommunicated from the community after having lost his faith (the sad part is that he wanted, but was no more able, to believe in a personal God) - shot himself in the head.
- the history of one of the first Jewish (and to some extent Christian too) great awakenings at the call of the so-called Messiah of Smyrna, Sabbatai Levi in 1666: "Jews in various part of the Middle East and Europe were taken by a messianic frenzy...began selling their goods... preparing for their joint return to the Holy Land".
- the events following the conversion to Catholicism of Albert Burgh, the scion of a wealthy regent family of Amsterdam and former friend of Spinoza, who after a travel to Italy and a deep crisis of conscience regained his faith rejecting the impious Cartesian method and the Spinozist rationality.
- not last the story of the lynching and murder of the Grand Pensionary Johan De Witt, one of the greatest European intellectuals of the time, and this brother by the Orangist mob in 1672, the year of French invasion of Holland. That night Spinoza was prevented by his landlord "to go out at night and post a placard near the site of the massacre, reading ULTIMI BARBARORUM (roughly translated "You are the greatest of all barbarians")"

Sometimes imperfection in a book can be a great virtue.
This book creates as many questions as the answers it tries to give.
It left me a great curiosity to investigate on Spinoza's circle of friend and to inquire further in that special dimension (still not so distinct, as it will be a century later in Enlightenment Europe) that is the Republic of Letters of the XVII Century.
The greatest limit of the book is that it conveys the idea that the thinker was a kind of contemplative hermit. And yet it advances a great deal of evidence suggesting a totally different hypothesis: his wide net of correspondents, not least with Leibniz and Oldenburg (at the time Secretary of the Royal Society), the evidence of his ties with the De Witt clan and with many prominent regent families, not last the great "mystery" of his "trip behind the enemy lines" to meet the Great Conde (head of French army) in occupied Utrecht and the secrecy that clouds his death (according to the testimonies he died almost unexpectedly, assisted - or helped ? - by a mysterious unidentified man) are maybe a strong indication of a secretive and reserved mind.
Possibly the same fact of the so many people that visibly ignored (De Witt) or publicly defamed (the Cartesians, Oldenburg, Leibnitz, Stouppe,...) Spinoza and privately kept on having friendly relations with him, indicates a different condition, a double moral, widely - and shyly - practiced by others and an unshaken coherence, kept strictly private, from his side, ... a pale looming of a larger freer dimension that prepares the European Enlightenment.

Of course there are many other themes that are considered and explained: philosophical, religious and political... but remember that this is not a strictly philosophic analysis and its main effort has been directed to understand how the contemporary problems and events did shape the life and the environment around the man, and lastly contributed to the development of his particular philosophy.

Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677), an early figure of European Enlightenment like a Netherlands Descartes or Giordano Bruno, - he fought with his publications for the inauguration of modern times, influenced by sober reason - but still caught in the historical context of a society, which was ruled by the dictatorial interests of confessions and government cabals.

During Spinoza's lifetime (only 45 years) Amsterdam probably has been Europe's most alive, free and multi-cultural large city - the true mother of Nieuw Amsterdam = New York. As freely however, that anyone could philosophize, whatever he liked to sermonize - no, that wasn't possible staying completely unpunished.

Many of the perforce secret supporters of Spinoza (publishers, booksellers, authors) landed in the prison or in banishing. Most glaringly is the story of the brothers Johan and Cornelis de Witt, who had protected Spinoza, providing him with food, money and legal support: A furious mob of Monarchists and Calvinists in 1672 got them out of prison and carried out a lynching court in the style of that time: they mangled the bodies and pulled out the hearts, showing them full of triumph to the audience - many of the members of the aristocracy, sitting in carriages. A very anarchistic version of almost forgotten Inca- and Aztec-rites. Only with strive Spinoza's friends could prevent him from posting a placard near the site of the massacre, reading ULTIMI BARBARORUM (You are the greatest of all barbarians).

Spinoza's family, Jewish, harassed by the Inquisition, had escaped Spain like thousand others to find refuge in the Netherlands, which showed more toleration. Spinoza's first thinking results, which regarded the Bible as an historical writing collection of different humans (thus by no means written by God), led him to be excommunicated from the Dutch community of Portuguese Jews. The autocratic Sephardim rabbinical leadership wrote 1656 in beautiful calligraphic letters: "As to the judgement of the angels and statement of the holy we banish, curse, bewitch and condemn Baruch de Spinoza. Beware of operating with him verbally or in writing, beware of proving him the smallest favor, beware of reading his books..."

The remainder of his life (like an early forerunner of the famous Anne Frank, who was hidden by Amsterdam citizens from Nazi pursuance) Spinoza hid mostly in small grave chambers of rooms and he lost all the wealth of his family business. Secretly he was supported by friends. Additional he earned money by lens grinding (but the sharpening of glass caused an early death: the inhaled dust destroyed his lungs). Convinced of the correctness of his thinking he as long as possible continued writing, persistently and annoyingly - however anonymous.

He did not want to die in public at stake like his forerunner Giordano Bruno in Rome 1600. Spinoza was fascinated by the hypothesis of a Pantheism, first developed by the efforts of Giordano Bruno. In his "Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect" he defined God as ruled by the same causes like nature ("deus, siva natura"). At that time neither the Jews nor the Christians had been ready to accept such dogmatic changes or at least to tolerate such opinions (which of course weakened the religious authorities).

A large city is - today like at that time - characterized by the fact, that trends in different parts of the society are not simultaneous. The aristocratic, bourgeois, working class or religious circles always have different speeds. The intellectual circles, sympathizing with Spinoza, seemed to live already in the 18th century.

Because Spinoza, inspired by Hobbes, also risked to formulate basics of a democratic society, he came immediately into conflict with the Netherlands Orangists, who controlled the state. The mob, brought to a level of puppets as well by the princes as by the clerical - the mob was not enlightenmentable by the shy and sensitive considerations of a cautiously hidden publisher.

We would have to thank Spinoza (if it would be possible) for his persistance, which helped to develop modern constitutions of states and stabilized the opinion, that a religion must not be monopolized, but, in the contrary, has to follow individual interpretations as well. With regard to September Eleven and the US-reaction against fundamentalist assaults we faster could decide, how to response. I think: not using military, but using reason: no religion should lead us to a Crusade or a "Reverse Crusade" anymore. Monopolizing trends of denominations should be stopped. By the name of Spinoza!

Nadler has set the standard for such works. Anyone interested in the history of ideas or desiring to explore the thought of Spinoza in more than a cursory way must read this book. I am sure it will be the standard for years to come. Get it, read it and ponder the life and message of Spinoza.

Spinoza is, admittedly, a difficult thinker. And a rare one, too.But, as he himself says, in the closing words of his great "Ethics", "all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare".Professor Nadler's book is scholarly sober and, at the same time, one feels thar he is genuinely passionated for his subject. To anyone interested in learning more about Spinoza and his philosophy, this book is the point where you should begin!

Steven Nadler skillfully guides the reader not only through Spinoza's life but also through the turbulent times of the 17th century Holland. All the more useful ride to enable us to see the courage of an outstanding man, citizen, a brilliant philosopher who taught us that GOD is Nature and us. Great reading!