Spinoza, Life and Legacy 9780198857488, 0198857489

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Spinoza, Life and Legacy

Spinoza, Life and Legacy JONATHAN I. ISRAEL

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Jonathan I. Israel 2023 The moral rights of the author have been asserted All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2022950227 ISBN 978–0–19–885748–8 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198857488.001.0001 Printed and bound in the UK by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

Preface No account of Spinoza’s life and legacy can have much value unless it rests on an exhaustive analysis of his works and correspondence. But this in turn inevitably involves delving into the wider debates and polemics of his age, personages and texts he praised and (more often) against whom he aimed his critical barbs as well as friends and sparring partners with whom he debated during his life. Equally, there cannot be a comprehensive biography of Spinoza not enmeshed in analysis of the deep-seated religious and political tensions and conflicts of the Dutch Golden Age as well as the central issues debated by its philosophers, scientists, religious leaders, and statesmen. All considered, a great deal of preliminary research and publication of other documents and surviving material is requisite before it is at all feasible to attempt a comprehensive, documents-based biography that, hopefully, adds to the earlier picture that Steven Nadler, in particular, has given us. There is thus good reason to emphasize here the crucial role of the marked revival of interest, and surge of new research, in all aspects of Spinoza’s life and writings that followed in the wake of Nadler’s biography which appeared in 1999 in making possible a more detailed account of Spinoza’s contribution to the history of philosophy, the Enlightenment and of his age. “Given Spinoza’s continuing relevance and pervasive influence,” commented Frederick Beiser, in 1999, in response to Nadler’s Spinoza: A Life which he reviewed together with another less significant biography, Margaret GullanWhur’s Within Reason, both published in 1999, “it is surprising to find that there have been so few biographies of him.”¹ It is indeed “surprising,” and a phenomenon not easily explained, but certainly one factor, until recently, was the relative inaccessibility and where published, elusiveness, of much of what solid documentary material was available. In 2018, the Cambridge University Press brought out the revised edition of Nadler’s masterful biography which reflects many though not all the recent finds relating to Spinoza’s life. Nadler’s biography and mine present a different picture in some regards though not in others, and while I have tried to fill in more of the historical and cultural context of Spinoza’s life and early impact, I have remained conscious throughout of my enduring debt to Steve, my continuing debate with him, and the formidable and lasting value of his achievement.

¹ Beiser, “Homesick Hidalgo,” 4.

vi

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As Nadler mentions in his preface to the second edition of his biography, the completion of Edwin Curley’s landmark two-volume English edition of Spinoza’s writings with the appearance of the second volume in 2016 not only provides a fresh store of valuable notes and commentary on the writings but enables one to refer the reader to a single complete, consistent, and mostly reliable English rendering of Spinoza’s texts and letters. Curley’s edition of Spinoza’s Collected Works (2 vols., Princeton 1985 and 2016) the reader will find frequently referred to throughout. However, the best way of rendering into English Spinoza’s meaning from the original Latin or Dutch still often remains elusive or debatable and there are numerous points throughout this biography where, after careful consideration, I have opted to render some of Spinoza’s phrases and expressions rather differently from Curley and a great many slightly differently. The reader’s attention is drawn to this point. Rather than quoting Curley’s, or another translator’s rendering exactly, my policy throughout has been to refer back to the original Latin and compare the various renderings, frequently arriving at wording that diverges, sometimes significantly, from the wording in the sources quoted. Where I have preferred to avoid Curley’s understanding of the Latin, I have indicated this by referring to the Akkerman Dutch rendering or Maxime Rovere’s excellent recent French translation. Where this divergence seems significant I have indicated this either by referring directly to Carl Gebhardt’s classic four-volume Latin edition of Spinoza’s Opera (Heidelberg, 1925) or by referring to the extremely exacting scholarly bilingual Latin-French PUF editions of the texts by the team that produced the Traité Théologico-Politique (1999), Fokke Akkerman, Jacqueline Lagrée, and PierreFrançois Moreau, the Traité Politique (2005), Omero Proietti and Charles Ramond, the Premiers Écrits (2009), Filippo Mignini, M. Beyssade, and J. Ganault, and the Éthique (2020), Akkerman, Moreau, and Piet Steenbakkers. Since much of Spinoza’s correspondence was in Dutch, as also is the earliest surviving version of Spinoza’s Short Treatise on God, Man and his Well-Being, some of my translations of Spinoza’s remarks and expressions have relied on the modern Dutch editions of Spinoza’s letters by Akkerman, H. G. Hubbeling, and A. G. Westerbrink, of 1992 and of the early writings by Akkerman, Hubbeling, Mignini, M. J. Petry, and N. and G. van Suchtelen of 1982. However, though guided or influenced by these scholars, all the many English renderings in this volume wherever they do noticeably diverge from Curley’s wording, are my own. Steve Nadler has himself painstakingly continued adding to the research he originally did for his 1999 biography, and also since the appearance of the revised edition, and for the opportunities I have had to exchange information and views with him since (as well as before) 2018, I feel much additional gratitude. Meanwhile, a great deal of the most important and valuable research since the 1990s has been carried on in the archives and libraries of the Netherlands by Jeroen van de Ven, Piet Steenbakkers, Frank Mertens, Henri Krop, Wiep van Bunge,



vii

Eric Jorink, and Albert Goosjes. I am especially indebted for the opportunity to correspond frequently and exchange information with Van de Ven whose efforts to find new material and willingness to discuss his finds with others has proved inexhaustible and who has been of enormous help to me for which I shall always remain extremely appreciative. Van de Ven’s impressive bibliographical history of Spinoza’s writings, their clandestine publication, distribution, variant editions and translations is already proving a landmark event in Spinoza studies and so doubtless will be his (forthcoming) highly detailed chronological study of Spinoza’s life and circle with its very extensive discussion of the primary sources. I am grateful too to the much-lamented Michiel Wielema (1959–2018) another indefatigable archive researcher who came up with valuable finds. Without the labours and invaluable research contributions of these scholars it would not have been possible to provide anything like the factual ground-plan and extensive documentary basis that underpins this present biography. On a more personal level, my most important debts are to my wife, Annette Munt, who devoted much time to help me edit and refine the text of this biography and to the two scholars, Richard Popkin (1923–2005) and Wim Klever, who were my chief debating partners on the topic of Spinoza and Spinozism at an earlier stage, in the late 1980s and through the 1990s when I began researching on Spinoza. Additionally, through her many years of research in the archives and libraries of Italy, her publications and learned suggestions and comments, Pina Totaro whose work I much admire and with whom I have sporadically been in contact over the years, has greatly strengthened several aspects of what follows, and not least what might be termed the “Italian dimension.” A good deal is owed too for valuable information and comments to Sonja Lavaert, Mogens Laerke, Victor Tiribás, Winfried Schröder, Odette Vlessing, and Eric Jorink. Finally, to all these names I must add those of Ed Curley, Dan Garber, Maxime Rovere, Yosef Kaplan, Antony Mckenna, and Yitzak Melamed with whom I have enormously enjoyed lively debates about Spinoza and the world of late seventeenth-century clandestine philosophy over many years and to all of whom I again feel a vast debt of gratitude. As regards the growing documentary basis, in addition to what is noted above it is important to mention the greatly expanded two-volume edition of the collection of historical documents relating to the life, activities and friends of Spinoza, published in Germany in 2006 under the title Die Lebensgeschichte Spinozas edited by the eminent Spinoza scholar, Manfred Walther, at Hanover. This indispensable two-volume compilation is a landmark reworking and expansion of the work of Jakob Freudenthal whose contribution is explained further in the conclusion to this volume. Because all previous accounts of Spinoza’s life were based on limited, unsatisfactory, and often poorly edited sources, Freudenthal’s work represented a major shift. In conceiving and carrying out what Richard Popkin terms “a fundamental nineteenth-century study,” Freudenthal achieved something unique, the fruits of which have proved of lasting value.

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Finally, it remains only to thank in every way the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, to whose ever stimulating community, the scene of many a “Spinoza discussion,” I have been fortunate to belong now for a quarter of a century. I am especially grateful to Alexis May for her ever reliable support especially with organizing the illustrations and to Marcia Tucker and the Institute librarians who have helped organize our Library’s special Spinoza collection and have made our Institute’s library such a wonderfully stimulating place to research, ponder, and to rethink one’s views. These are the persons and resources who have chiefly enriched the raw material and documentary base, and helped shape the ground-plan for a biography that I have slowly been assembling since my intensive discussions in 1995 in Los Angeles, with Dick Popkin, with whom I first broached the feasibility of embarking on such a venture as this volume has since slowly evolved into. It has taken nearly three decades to put the plan into effect and all of those named above have left their mark in numerous ways on the final outcome.

Contents List of Illustrations List of Tables

xv xxi

PART I. SETTING THE SCENE 1. Introduction

3

2. Unparalleled Challenge 2.i Philosophy that Survived by a Thread 2.ii Banning Spinoza’s Books and Ideas 2.iii Spinoza and Europe’s Late Seventeenth-Century Intellectual Crisis

21 21 24 33

PART II. THE YOUNG SPINOZA 3. Youthful Rebel 3.i Caution and Audacity 3.ii Heretical Opinions 3.iii Expulsion from the Synagogue

49 49 65 71

4. A Secret Legacy from Portugal 4.i Crypto-Judaism and Religious Subversion 4.ii Vidigueira 4.iii Spinoza’s Mother’s Family 4.iv Absolutism Enthroned 4.v Exiles Fleeing Portugal 4.vi Revolutionary Subversion by Means of Philosophy

79 79 82 88 92 96 100

5. Childhood and Family Tradition 5.i From Brit Milah to Bar Mitzvah (1632–1645) 5.ii Spinoza’s Forebears, the Mechanics of Community Leadership 5.iii The Sephardic Cemetery at Ouderkerk 5.iv The Spinozas of Amsterdam and Rotterdam

111 111 118 128 132

6. Schooldays 6.i Ets Haim 6.ii Uriel da Costa 6.iii World Events Viewed from School 6.iv Last Years of Schooling 6.v Family Tensions

148 148 159 162 170 181

x

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7. Honour and Wealth 7.i Son of a Merchant 7.ii The First Anglo-Dutch War (1652–1654) 7.iii Spinoza Becomes Head of the Family 7.iv Collapse of the Family Fortune 7.v Renouncing his Inheritance

189 189 196 202 212 220

8. Teaching Skills: Van den Enden, Latin, and the Theatre (1655–1661) 8.i Disciple of a Schoolmaster 8.ii A Career in the Church Abandoned 8.iii Spinoza Embraces Cartesianism 8.iv Learning from the Roman Playwrights Terence and Seneca 8.v A New Form of Pedagogy

229 229 236 243 252 256

9. Collegiants, Millenarians, and Quakers: The Mid- and Late 1650s

261

10. “Monstrous Heresies”: Beyond Bible and Religious Studies 10.i First Writings 10.ii The La Peyrère Episode 10.iii Dr Juan (Daniel) de Prado (1612–1670) 10.iv Denounced to the Inquisition 10.v Eternal Things and their Unchangeable Laws

289 289 293 303 309 319

P A R T I I I . R E F O R M E R A N D S U B V E R T E R O F DE S C A R T E S 11. Forming a Study Group 11.i The Birth of a Philosophical System (1659–1661) 11.ii Translation, the Key to Making Philosophy Effective 11.iii Bridging the Gulf between Collegiants and Freethinkers 11.iv An Abhorred Clique

327 327 338 342 344

12. Rijnsburg Years (1661–1663) 12.i The Move to Rijnsburg 12.ii Meeting Oldenburg 12.iii Steno and Anatomical Dissection 12.iv Debating Cartesianism with the Leiden Cartesians

352 352 363 368 380

13. Spinoza and the Scientific Revolution 13.i Challenging Bacon and Boyle 13.ii Spinoza and Experimental Science 13.iii Mathematics and Scientific Truth

385 385 391 402

14. “Reforming” Descartes’ Principles

409

15. Writing the Ethics

439



xi

16. Voorburg (1663–1664) 16.i The Setting 16.ii Spinoza and Huygens 16.iii A Local Dispute 16.iv De Jure Ecclesiasticorum

456 456 461 468 480

17. Spinoza and the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1664–1667) 17.i Rivalry with England 17.ii Plague and the Outbreak of War

487 487 494

18. Invasion, Slump, and Comets (1665–1666) 18.i The Greatest Curse of Mankind 18.ii Are Comets Fearful Omens? 18.iii Descartes’ Laws of Motion

507 507 515 528

19. Spinoza, Meyer, and the 1666 Philosophia Controversy 19.i A Bitter Controversy 19.ii The Revolt of Johannes and Adriaan Koerbagh 19.iii The Philosophia and the Reformed Church 19.iv The Utrecht Collegie der Sçavanten

535 535 543 547 551

20. From the Jaws of Defeat (1666–1667) 20.i Faltering Dialogue with the Royal Society 20.ii The Sabbatian Frenzy (1665–1667) 20.iii Science and Miracles 20.iv The Sway of Kings

563 563 567 577 583

PART IV. DARKENING HORIZONS 21. The Tragedy of the Brothers Koerbagh (1668–1669)

599

22. Nil Volentibus Arduum: Spinoza and the Arts

624

23. Twilight of the “True Freedom” 23.i Last Years in Voorburg 23.ii The Move to The Hague 23.iii Ideological Conflict 23.iv Democratic Republicanism

648 648 651 665 673

24. Revolution in Bible Criticism 24.i The Dutch Background 24.ii Ezra the Scribe 24.iii The Masoretic Age 24.iv Spinoza’s Critique of Meyer

684 684 691 702 708

25. Spinoza Subverts Hobbes 25.i Hobbes, Spinoza, and the Gospels 25.ii Hobbes and Spinoza on “Freedom” 25.iii Happiness and the “Highest Good” 25.iv From the “Highest Good” to the “General Will”

720 720 726 735 741

xii

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26. Spinoza Completes his Philosophical System 26.i Emancipating the Individual 26.ii Popular Sovereignty and the “General Will”

748 748 760

27. Publishing the Theological-Political Treatise 27.i First Steps to Suppress the TTP 27.ii A Text Left Unchallenged 27.iii Spinoza’s Clandestine Subversion of Religion 27.iv Steno Responds

770 770 784 791 799

28. Intensifying Reaction (Early 1670s) 28.i How Does One Refute the TTP? 28.ii Collegiant Uproar and the TTP 28.iii Encounter with Van Velthuysen 28.iv Remonstrants (Arminians) against the TTP

804 804 814 823 830

29. Spinoza’s Libertine “French Circle” 29.i Libertinage in the 1660s 29.ii Spinoza Confides: The First Phase 29.iii Spinoza’s Reformism: The Later Phases

835 835 842 846

PART V. LAST YEARS 30. Disaster Year (1672) 30.i Slump and Collapse 30.ii Salvaging the Republic 30.iii The Fullana Affair 30.iv Monarchy Lambasted

861 861 875 887 892

31. Denying the Supernatural

898

32. Entering (or Not Entering) Princely Court Culture (1672–1673) 32.i Contemplating Emigrating 32.ii The Offer of a University Chair at Heidelberg 32.iii The Court of Hanover

913 913 919 925

33. Creeping Diffusion 33.i The TTP’s Clandestine Editions 33.ii Spinoza “Invades” England 33.iii The Suppressed Dutch Version of the TTP

935 935 944 954

34. Mysterious Trip to Utrecht (July–August 1673) 34.i The Utrecht Collegie der Sçavanten 34.ii Portraying “Spinozism” in 1673 34.iii Across the French Lines 34.iv Chaotic Aftermath

963 963 982 987 997



xiii

35. Expanding the Spinozist “Sect” 35.i “Vile, Godforsaken Atheists” 35.ii “Spinozism” Far from Being a Vague Category 35.iii A Sect Bred in the Universities and Professions 35.iv A Disciple Rescued: Van Balen 35.v The Expanding Sect of the 1680s and 1690s

1003 1003 1014 1018 1026 1034

36. Amsterdam Revisited (1673–1675) 36.i The Orangist-Calvinist Reaction Intensifies 36.ii Summer Weeks in Amsterdam 36.iii Failed Attempt to Publish the Ethics 36.iv What is True in Christianity?

1039 1039 1048 1057 1064

37. Hebrew in Spinoza’s Later Life 37.i Studying Hebrew Grammar 37.ii Reconstructing Biblical Hebrew 37.iii Old Testament, New Testament: Jews and Christians

1074 1074 1079 1085

38. Encounter with Leibniz (1676) 38.i Leibniz and Spinoza 38.ii Discussing Spinoza in Paris 38.iii Leibniz Visits Holland 38.iv Leibniz’s Dual Approach to Spinozism

1092 1092 1095 1107 1111

39. Fighting Back 39.i The English Reception 39.ii Spinoza “Invades” France (1676–1680)

1119 1119 1131

40. Last Days, Death, and Funeral (1677) 40.i Reclusive but Contested Last Days 40.ii Funeral at the Nieuwe Kerk (New Church)

1143 1143 1156

41. A Tumultuous Aftermath 41.i The Battle of the Ethics (1677) 41.ii Spinoza’s Circle after 1677 41.iii Spinoza and the Glorious Revolution 41.iv The Emergence of the “Dutch” Spinoza

1164 1164 1183 1188 1194

42. Conclusion

1205

Bibliography Index

1223 1283

List of Illustrations 4.1 Spinoza family tree.

84

4.2 Dom António, Prior of Crato “king of Portugal” (1531–95), engraving. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

94

4.3 Antonio Pérez (c.1540–1611), portrait, oil on panel. Reproduction courtesy of Album/Alamy Stock Photo.

102

4.4 Philip II (1527–98) in 1565, oil on canvas. © Photographic Archive Museo Nacional del Prado.

104

5.1 Map of the Amsterdam Vlooienburg quarter (1625) by B. F. Van Berckenrode. Reproduction courtesy of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

116

5.2 Barge conveying mourners to the Sephardic cemetery at Ouderkerk, by Romeyn de Hooghe, paper etching. Reproduction courtesy of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

130

5.3 The Amsterdam Sephardic Synagogue the young Spinoza attended, by Jan Veenhuysen. Leiden University Library shelf mark COLLBN P 317 N 290.

143

6.1 Rabbi Isaac Aboab da Fonseca (1605–93), in 1681. © Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, Providence, RI.

153

6.2 Menasseh Ben Israel portrait etching by Rembrandt. © Jewish Museum London.

163

6.3 Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (1591–1655), portrait engraving by W. Delff after a painting by C. Duyster of 1628. Reproduction courtesy of The Picture ArtCollection/Alamy Stock Photo.

174

7.1 The Amsterdam Exchange in 1612 by Claes Jansz Visscher. Reproduction courtesy of Amsterdam City Archives.

191

8.1 The Athenaeum Illustre at Amsterdam in 1650, oil on panel. Reproduction courtesy of Teylers Museum Haarlem, the Netherlands.

246

10.1 Isaac de La Peyrère. Praeadamitae, Sive, Exercitatio Super Versibus Duodecimo, Decimotertio, & Decimoquarto, Capitis Quinti Epistolae D. Pauli Ad Romanos: Quibus Inducuntur Primi Homines Ante Adamum Conditi [Amsterdam: Louis and Daniel Elzevier], 1655. IAS Spinoza Research Collection.

295

11.1 Theodor Kerckring (1638–93), c.1670, by Jürgen Ovens, oil on canvas. Reproduction courtesy of bpk Bildagentur/Art Resource, NY/photo: Elke Walford.

348

xvi

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12.1 The house in which Spinoza lodged in Rijnsburg (1661–3). By courtesy of the Leiden City Archives.

355

12.2 Ruins of the Rijnsburg Abbey, c.1640–1645, by Aelbert Cuyp, DM/995/804, oil on panel, 48.9  73.3 cm. Dordrecht Museum, on loan from the Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis, The Hague 1995.

357

12.3 Henry Oldenburg (1619–77), by Jan van Cleve, oil on canvas, 1668. © The Royal Society.

363

12.4 Nicholas Steno (1666–77) by Justus Sustermans. By courtesy of Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.

371

13.1 Robert Boyle (1627–91) by Johann Kerseboom, oil on canvas. The Royal Society.

392

14.1 René Descartes (1596–1650) by Jan Lievens, chalk on paper, 24.1  20.6 cm. Groninger Museum, loan from Municipality of Groningen, donation Hofstede de Groot, photo: Marten de Leeuw.

413

14.2 Spinoza, Renati Des Cartes Principiorum philosophiae Pars I, & II, More Geometrico Demonstratae. Spinoza; 1. Amstelodami: apud Johannem Riewerts, in vico vulgò dicto, de Dirk van Assen-steeg, sub signo Martyrologii, 1663. IAS Spinoza Research Collection.

423

14.3 Florentius Schuyl (1619–69) by Frans van Mieris the Elder, 1666. Reproduction courtesy of Mauritshuis, The Hague.

425

16.1 View of the village of Voorburg, showing the length of Kerkstraat, by Iven Besoet (1720–69). Reproduction courtesy of Artokoloro / Alamy Stock Photo.

459

16.2 The waterfront at Voorburg. Reproduction courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

459

16.3 Huygens’ residence “Hofwyck”, in Voorburg. Drawing by Christiaan Huygens (1629–95), Codices Hugeniani Online. HUG 14, ff. 05r. Brill Primary Sources Online through Leiden University Libraries.

462

16.4 Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676), after portrait by Nicolas Maes, late seventeenth century. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

473

17.1 King Charles II (1630–85), oil on canvas, c.1660–5. By courtesy of National Portrait Gallery, London.

489

18.1 Christiaan Huygens after unknown artist, line engraving, early to mid-eighteenth century. NPG D30754 © National Portrait Gallery, London.

511

18.2 Bernhard von Galen, Bishop of Münster (1606–78), on horseback by Wolfgang Heimbach, oil on canvas. Stichting Westerwolds Monumentenfonds.

514

  

xvii

18.3 Johannes Hudde (1628–1704), burgomaster of Amsterdam, 1686. By courtesy of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

523

19.1 Lodewijk Meyer, Philosophia S.Scripturae Interpres. Eleutheropoli: s.n., 1666. IAS Spinoza Research Collection.

536

20.1 Sir Robert Holmes sets fire to the Dutch merchant fleet off Terschelling, 19 August 1666, drawing by Willem van de Velde. Reproduction courtesy of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

583

21.1 Adriaan Koerbagh, Een bloemhof van allerley lieflijkheyd sonder verdriet, T’Amsterdam: Gedrukt voor den schrijver, 1668. IAS Spinoza Research Collection.

603

23.1 Daily activities along the Paviljoensgracht with the St. Jacobskerk in the distance. The Hague. Reproduction courtesy of ART Collection/Alamy Stock Photo.

653

23.2 View of the Heilige Geesthof at The Hague, paper etching after drawing by Gerrit van Giessen. Reproduction courtesy of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

655

25.1 Portrait of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) from Le Boë Sylvius, Totius Medicinae Idea Nova. IAS Spinoza Research Collection.

721

27.1 [Spinoza], Tractatus theologico-politicus. Hamburgi [i.e. Amsterdam] Apud Henricum Künraht [i.e. Jan Rieuwertsz], 1670. IAS Spinoza Research Collection.

774

28.1 Lambert van Velthuysen (1622–85) by Jan van Wijckersloot, 1665. Inv. no. 2260, Collectie Centraal Museum, Utrecht/© aankoop 1898.

824

28.2 Philippus van Limborch (1633–1712) at the age of 78, engraving. Reproduction courtesy of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

831

29.1 Charles de Saint Denis de Saint-Évremond (1613–1703), portrait from Pierre Desmaizeaux, Oeuvres Meslées de Mr. de Saint-Evremond: Publiées Sur Les Manuscrits de l’auteur. Seconde ed. Revue, Corrigée & Augmentée de la vie de l’auteur. A Londres Chez Jacob Tonson, 1709.

836

29.2 [Spinoza], Reflexions curieuses d’un esprit des-interressé sur Les Matieres les plus Importantes au Salut, tant Public que Particulier (at ‘Cologne’ [i.e. Amsterdam], 1678). IAS Spinoza Research Collection.

854

29.3 [Spinoza], La clef du santuaire [sic]. A Leyde [i.e. Amsterdam]: Chez Pierre Warnaer [i.e. Jan Rieuwertsz], 1678. IAS Spinoza Research Collection.

855

29.4 [Spinoza], Traitté des cérémonies superstitieuses des Juifs tant Anciens que Modernes. Amsterdam, 1678. IAS Spinoza Research Collection.

856

30.1 Louis XIV of France (1638–1715), in 1670 by Claude Lefèbvre. Reproduction courtesy of incamerastock/Alamy Stock Photo.

862

30.2 J.B., Sleutel Ontsluytende de Boecke-kas van de Witte Bibliotheeck. In ‘s Graven-Hage: By Nil Volentibus Arduum, 1672. IAS Spinoza Research Collection.

873

xviii

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33.1 [Jean-Baptiste Stouppe], La religion des Hollandois: Representée en plusieurs lettres écrites par un officier de l’armée du roy, à un pasteur & professeur en theologie de Berne. A Cologne: Chez Pierre Marteau, 1673. IAS Spinoza Research Collection.

936

33.2 [Spinoza], Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Hamburgi Apud Henricum Künrath [sic], 1670 [i.e. 1677 or 1678] see Table 33.1. IAS Spinoza Research Collection.

939

33.3 Franciscus de Le Boë Sylvius, Totius Medicinae Idea Nova Seu Francisci de Le Boe Sylvii. Medici Inter Batavos Celeberrimi Opera Omnia. Amstelodami: Apud Carolum Gratiani [i.e. Jan Rieuwertsz], 1673. IAS Spinoza Research Collection.

942

33.4 [Spinoza], Danielis Heinsii: Operum Historicorum Collectio. Editio 2. Lugd. Batav [“Leiden” i.e. Amsterdam]: Apud Isaacum Herculis, 1673. IAS Spinoza Research Collection.

943

33.5 [Spinoza], Tractatus Theologico-Politicus: Cui Adjunctus Est Philosophia S.Scripturae Interpres. Ab Authore Longe Emendator. [Amsterdam], 1674. IAS Spinoza Research Collection.

949

33.6 [Spinoza], De Rechtzinnige Theologant, of Godgeleerde Staatkundige Verhandelinge. Te Hamburg [i.e. Amsterdam], by Henricus Koenraad, 1693. IAS Spinoza Research Collection.

960

34.1 Johannes Baptista van Neercassel (1623–1686) with episcopal attributes, oil on canvas. By courtesy of Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht.

966

34.2 Johannes Georgius Graevius (1632–1703) by unknown artist. Reproduction courtesy of University of Amsterdam.

974

35.1 Dr Cornelis Bontekoe (1647–85), engraving. Reproduction courtesy of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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36.1 View of the new Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish Synagogue (on the left) inaugurated in 1675, engraving by Adolf van der Laan, c.1710, call no. A41.1.21.1. Reproduction courtesy of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

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36.2 Christophorus Wittichius (Christoph Wittich) (1625–87). © Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

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36.3 Abraham Heidanus (1597–1678), engraving after Jan André Lievens. Reproduction courtesy of The Picture Art Collection/Alamy Stock Photo.

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40.1 The New Church on the Spui (The Hague), in 1668 by C. Elandts. By courtesy of Collection of The Hague Municipal Archive, the Netherlands.

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41.1 [Benedictus de Spinoza]. B.d.S. Opera Posthuma. [Amsterdam], 1677. IAS Spinoza Research Collection.

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41.2 Spinoza. Reproduction courtesy of BTEU/RKMLGE/Alamy Stock Photo.

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41.3 Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), c.1675, by Louis Elle le Jeune, oil on canvas. Photo: Gérard Blot, © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, New York.

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42.1 Johannes Colerus, Das Leben des Bened. von Spinoza. Spinoza Frankfurt und Leipzig: s.n., 1733. IAS Spinoza Research Collection.

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List of Tables 7.1 The VOC share price on the Amsterdam Exchange 1648–59

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7.2 The imposta and finta payments (in guilders) to the Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish community by the head of the Spinoza family 1641–58

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12.1 Students and research assistants at Leiden whom Spinoza knew or who figured in his life-story

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29.1 The false titles of the clandestine French TTP

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33.1 Early clandestine editions of the quarto Latin TTP

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33.2 Octavo variants of the TTP (Amsterdam, 1673–4)

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33.3 The Dutch versions of the TTP

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PART I

SETTING THE SCENE

1 Introduction If one could measure the stature of a thinker by how many refutations of his work appeared in the three decades following his death, it would be a shrewd bet that Spinoza would win the prize.¹ No other thinker or writer of early modern times attracted so much hostility and recrimination. Although a few other front-rank miscreants of the world ran him close for being universally reviled and vilified in his own time, Philip II of Spain and Hobbes for example, no other personage of his era came even close to being so decried, denounced and condemned in weighty texts of exhaustive length, over so long a span of time, in Latin, Dutch, French, English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, and other languages. A curious reception indeed for someone who preached continually against prejudice, envy, and hatred and showed no desire whatever to gain coveted positions, honours, property, wealth, or power. Born in Amsterdam, in November 1632, Spinoza lived a relatively short life, dying nine months short of his forty-fifth birthday, in February 1677. For an ever curious, inquiring scholar of his aspirations and standing, he travelled remarkably little. Always anxious not to waste time, Spinoza was not one for frequent leisurely chats, jollification, or, as far as one can tell, for romance. He mostly eschewed quarrels, rarely sought publicity, and in the end had to abandon his efforts to get his masterpiece of pure philosophy, The Ethics (1677), published during his lifetime. He spent so much of his time buried in the solitary obscurity of his study, reportedly often working at night and sleeping during the day, that those who knew him best during his maturity went for months on end without seeing him at all. One might expect such a seemingly uneventful life would conduce to a nice, short biography. However, this is far from being the case. There are many reasons why a comprehensive, detailed biography of Spinoza is desirable. It is not simply because he figures among the dozen or so foremost Western philosophers since classical times or was prominent in the general history of intellectual culture, political thought, and Bible criticism as well as philosophy properly speaking, though those reasons alone suffice to justify any aspiring biographer devoting years of research to the task. A more detailed picture, made possible by the extensive and impressive new research of recent decades, is needed also for broader historical reasons. For despite the unparalleled hostility Spinoza’s

¹ Pitassi, “Un manuscrit genevois,” 180.

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philosophy provoked in his own time, there was also from the first fervent and highly influential enthusiasm for his views albeit until the 1780s exclusively in furtively secret, clandestine circles. Despite the high-pitched overwhelmingly negative reaction which only subsided to a more subdued level, noted a leading observer and critic of the early Enlightenment era, Jean le Clerc (1657–1736), from around 1725, certain strands of Spinoza’s philosophy powerfully promoting a wide range of key modern values diffused steadily if slowly and with difficulty, contributing in highly original fashion to laying the groundwork of present-day liberal democratic modernity. Chief among these key features of his thought were his stress on individual autonomy, separation of the moral sphere from organized religion, unrestricted religious toleration, full freedom of thought and expression, press freedom, and a conception of government’s responsibilities to society uncompromisingly insisting on the inherent superiority of the democratic republic over other forms of state, whether monarchy, aristocracy, oligarchic republic, or theocracy. A comprehensive account of Spinoza’s life also contributes to a broader understanding of early modern Europe, a clearer perception of how it was that despite the tide of fierce hostility surrounding his every move, he nevertheless mustered a remarkable amount of hidden, clandestine support. Measured in terms of what established philosophers in universities and academies then and later recognized as major new contributions to philosophy, Descartes, Locke, and Leibniz were undoubtedly the three most important philosophers of early modern times down to the high Enlightenment era, far outstripping Spinoza. Measured in terms of lasting long-term subversive impact on the foundations of early modern thought, religion, and political theory, it was undoubtedly Spinoza, far outstripping all of these, who exerted the greatest impact. This occurred first in Holland, then England, Germany, and France, and finally other lands, to such an extent that Spinoza must be considered the first founder of a major secular philosophical sect since classical times, since the rise of Stoicism, Neoplatonism, and Epicureanism, in a way that Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Locke ultimately could never rival, a movement that consciously set out to reform and, in effect, remake, that is to say revolutionize humanity and our world, helping drive the tendency historians now term “Radical Enlightenment.” Although, owing to the implications, many Enlightenment scholars today remain reluctant to admit the fact, a vast amount of evidence proves incontrovertibly that Spinoza was among the most important figures shaping not just the early Enlightenment, but the entire Western Enlightenment down to the nineteenth century. He was not just a major influence on, but a decades-long central obsession of, Leibniz, Bayle, Le Clerc, Toland, Diderot, Voltaire, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Kant, Goethe, Herder, Fichte, Schelling, and many a lesser figure. But this unique role and status was due not just to his innate philosophical talents but, to a great extent, to his life story and activities combining and distilling in

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highly original fashion a uniquely broad convergence (and clashing) of religious traditions, heretical sects, rival political cultures, languages, and scientific and philosophical approaches reflecting the fact that seventeenth-century Amsterdam and the whole urban core of Holland was at that time strikingly and challengingly more religiously, culturally, and linguistically diverse than Paris, Rome, Venice, London, Berlin, or Madrid, or indeed anywhere else on earth. No doubt a modern Englishman, Frenchman, or German would immediately assume that the Spanish Jewish Baroque poet and chronicler, Miguel Levi de Barrios (1635–1701), was absurdly exaggerating when remarking, in 1684, that not only was Europe in the seventeenth century the most dominant part of the world, but that Europe’s commercially most resplendent emporium, the “famous city of Amsterdam,” was also Europe’s greatest marvel in terms of cultural diversity eclipsing all the rest as the “Babel and Athens of different languages,” publishing, art, cultivation of the “new philosophy” (Cartesianism), and new kinds of humanist study.² This truth is also hard for modern historians to grasp. But during the seventeenth century, Paris, London, Berlin, Venice, Madrid, and all the era’s other great capitals were all religiously, linguistically, and culturally less pluriform, less multicultural, and less global than Amsterdam. On top of that, given that Descartes and Bayle as well as Spinoza spent most of their intellectually creative lives in Holland, the Netherlands until 1700 was also unquestionably the world’s then philosophical centre. The daunting task of writing a comprehensive, detailed biography of a man for whom philosophical striving was everything becomes more daunting still when we consider how limited were Spinoza’s correspondence and circle of long-term personal contacts. If other great philosophers of the age were eager for extensive networking, Spinoza was not. He practically never seems to have initiated a correspondence with someone he did not know. Leibniz, a titan of the panEuropean “republic of letters,” may have been altogether exceptional, leaving well over 20,000 letters. But Locke left around 3,650 and Bayle’s letters, note the editors of the now complete published Bayle correspondence, total around 1,740.³ Even Descartes, who left far fewer, only around 800 letters, bequeathed approximately nine times as many as Spinoza from whom we have a mere forty-eight letters with another forty addressed to him, totalling just eighty-eight in all.⁴ Yet, within the limitations imposed by a short life, poor health (at any rate by his early forties), and static existence, Spinoza led a quite extraordinary life. From a certain stage, deteriorating health and a gradually encroaching, at the time incurable, lung disease increasingly impeded his activities. Yet, despite his restricted circumstances and studied reclusiveness, his life can hardly be called

² Den Boer, Literatura sefardí, 13. ³ Bayle, Correspondance xiv, 1. ⁴ Steenbakkers, “Spinoza’s Correspondentie,” 7–8; Steenbakkers, “Spinoza’s Life,” 13; Spinoza, Collected Works (ed. Curley) i, 162.

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uneventful. Whatever else a biographer says about him, Spinoza’s life was no quiet, leisurely stroll to the grave past rows of scholarly volumes. Rather it provoked an unprecedented international uproar. That Spinoza’s philosophy constitutes a re-evaluation of all values was abundantly obvious to contemporaries as it is to us today. In his Ethics Spinoza analyses the working of the human passions and, thrusting aside all religious or theological underpinning for our moral order, lays down the principle that what “we call good, or evil, is what is useful or harmful to preserving our being in the sense of what increases or diminishes our power of acting,” a principle determined strictly by “reason” that in Spinoza is both individual and collective, bearing on how one leads one’s own life and on society as a whole. This principle, which he declares man’s sole true moral basis, was no recipe for personal or group selfishness. Rather, as he presents it, it stands in constant tension with, almost outright opposition to, our instinctive nature and personal impulses, feelings and judgements about what we desire, or do not desire. For these are, for the most part, not based on rational calculation but impulse and “appetite,” or rather whatever we individually momentarily imagine will bring us “happiness” or “sadness,” which much of time, according to Spinoza, is barely considered, highly imaginative, or seriously deluded. Man is irreversibly part of nature and cannot act otherwise than in accordance with his nature but doing so in the best and wisest way is an arduous, often painful, learning process in which everyone needs all the help educators, more experienced family, neighbours, and others, and good laws, as well as willingness to learn, can proffer. Spinoza defines “good” as “what we certainly know to be useful to us,” and “bad” as what we surely perceive prevents us from acquiring some “good.” “Virtue” Spinoza defines in a way that at first seems rather strange. But we soon come to see that he uses the term logically within his framework, presenting it as man’s “very essence” in the sense of being man’s power to bring about things, good rather than bad, in accordance with his specific nature. But although his ethical schema is based on a metaphysical relativity of “good” and “bad,” his moral doctrine clearly produces naturalistic social and political certainties and absolutes within the human context. His principles contradicted all existing religions and codes of conduct. What in effect Spinoza presented to the world was what the Dutch Calvinist preacher, the younger Frans Burman (1671–1719), denounced as a general overturning of all then accepted “grounds of truth and certainty, denying there is any God distinct from Nature and abolishing all natural obligation to obey His commandments and true morality.”⁵ Spinoza’s morality amounted to a new outlook on life, a new concept of what human happiness is, and undeniably stood in every way opposed to every Christian principle, belief, and tradition as taught

⁵ Burmannus, ‘t Hoogste goed, 3–4; Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 420.

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by the churches (albeit not to Christianity as reinterpreted by him), as well as all revealed religion of whatever kind, every hierarchical social order, all custom, tradition, and received morality. For any theologian, political leader, editor, or teacher of his time it was wholly impossible to openly endorse his views, and even being suspected of adopting them in a concealed, esoteric, and partial fashion carried serious risk. Spinoza was a philosopher who set out to reform philosophy, religion, politics, and society’s understanding of human happiness. It was, and is, natural enough to pour scorn on such a project. Spinoza was a “fanatic” a leading French savant and convener of scientists in Paris, Melchisédec Thévenot (c.1620–92) sarcastically remarked in 1674, “qui veut réformer le monde [who wants to reform the world],” an impossible, even insane ambition.⁶ But the most staggering fact about Spinoza’s life is that, against all the odds, gradually, unseen and clandestinely, he eventually partly succeeded. Although the real furore Spinoza universally provoked began only in 1670, during the last six or seven years of his life, more locally Spinoza met with fierce opposition on all sides from a much earlier stage. Such was its cogency that, behind the scenes, his philosophy attracted from the outset, gaining ground with each passing decade, a small fringe of intellectually inclined types ready to risk being shunned to embrace his philosophy in tiny clandestine groups. For the immense army of opposing academics, theologians, statesmen, law-makers, magistrates, schoolmasters, and pastors of his own country and neighbouring lands sworn to crush his system and coterie, his movement proved, both in his own day and for two or three centuries after, exasperatingly difficult to attack, persecute, and crush, partly due to its furtive way of organizing and diffusing its ideas and partly because Spinoza’s system of ideas was so rigorously and deftly worked out that it proved highly resistant to being rebutted on purely rational and evidential grounds. Spinoza by no means fits in the same category as Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz, Bayle, or Rousseau. These were all towering thinkers; but all of these lost their direct relevance to modern life within a few decades, or at any rate half a century, after their deaths, subsequently remaining meaningful mostly to scholars and those interested in the history and development of Western thought. But this is not the case with Spinoza. Spinoza’s relevance not only persisted but in much of the world has tended to increase and is today in many countries greater than ever, most strikingly in Latin America, North America, and the Far East. By no means all scholars today rejoice in this fact. But even those most unsympathetic to this only recently fully emerging historical reality—Spinoza’s long veiled but unparalleled centrality and historical impact during the Enlightenment era—find it impossible, much to their exasperation, to deny the facts. “Of all

⁶ RLC MS Thott 1266/part iv. Thévenot to Graevius, Paris, 28 Dec. 1674.

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seventeenth-century philosophers,” notes Frederick Beiser, a leading expert on the history of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German thought, in 1999, “Spinoza has come closest to the mentality of the modern age.”⁷ By the late eighteenth and the nineteenth century, Spinoza’s status as a unique re-evaluator of all values began to assume a positive, and for some, such as Goethe, Heine, Shelley, and George Eliot, even heroic glow. It did also, at least during his middle period, for that other great modern re-evaluator of all values and prophet of “modernity”— Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Nietzsche, while diverging from Spinoza in several significant ways, to an extent also avowedly echoed his predecessor.⁸ Among the salient features of this debate about Spinoza’s historical and current role is disagreement about his political thought, one of the most important dimensions of his philosophy. Until Spinoza’s time there had never been any prominent thinker in the West or East who prioritized the democratic republic over all other forms of state. “Doubts have been expressed as to whether Spinoza was really a democrat,” observed the eminent Dutch historian E. H. Kossmann, in 1960, “but the text of his work gives no reason for doubt.” Whatever other philosophers ancient, medieval, or early modern concluded about reality and politics, Spinoza’s “intellectual convictions led him,” as Kossmann put it, to conclude that “democracy was the original and, so long as it was designed properly, the best form of government.”⁹ (Spinoza was all too aware that it is prone not to be designed properly.) Many scholars oppose Kossmann’s view. For many, it is extremely difficult to concede that the first powerful and influential expression of modern democratic thought in no way derived from or found inspiration in, the Anglo-American world. Again, a fact extremely exasperating for many scholars (who until a few decades ago, preferred to omit Spinoza from the canon of major modern political thinkers entirely), but established in recent decades as undeniable historical reality. Considerable distaste arises too from Spinoza’s obvious scorn for whatever is commonly and popularly accepted. Spinoza was not the kind of revolutionary who sought to stir up the common people and provoke violent dissension or mass revolt. For the opinions of “the multitude,” for the accepted view of things, not just of ordinary people but nearly all people at every level including kings, princes, statesmen, churchmen, academics, preachers, and aristocrats, Spinoza showed astoundingly scant deference or respect. But while inclined to think practically all humans in his own time lacked a realistic understanding of the universe they inhabited, he solemnly vowed to regard humanity’s collective ignorance and proneness to superstition, as he viewed it, as a universal natural blindness, a reality humanity cannot easily escape, a formidable burden afflicting everyone collectively rather than something merely deserving contempt. ⁷ Beiser, “Homesick Hidalgo,” 4. ⁹ Kossmann, Political Thought, 75–6.

⁸ Garrett, “Spinoza’s Ethical Theory,” 308.

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Even Machiavelli and Hobbes, then, massive though their impact was, could not rival the sheer scope or intensity of blanket negative reaction that Spinoza incurred. In the Netherlands, exclaimed the Franeker professor and preacher Johannes Regius (1656–1738), in 1713, the world of godlessness, atheism, and impiety was dominated intellectually not by Machiavelli, nor Hobbes or Bayle, despite the impact of these thinkers, but specifically the figure of Spinoza.¹⁰ The same could be said for early Enlightenment France and Germany, and even, startlingly, once one gets past the early 1680s, for England, the major European land where Spinoza’s modern reputation has always counted for least. Certainly, by Spinoza’s time, Machiavelli had long been regarded throughout Europe as a highly impious and immoral influence, but one could hardly cite him as an outright, systematic denier of Revelation or the divine status and character of Scripture. Hobbes, no less than Spinoza, was everywhere deemed an “atheist” and often seen as no less dangerous, malevolent, and anti-Scripturalist than Spinoza. Among those who had made it their business to “disparage the Holy Scriptures, and revealed religion,” commented Richard Kidder (1633–1703), bishop of Bath and Wells, in 1694, “three writers have denied Moses wrote the Pentateuch: Hobbes, in his Leviathan, the author of the Praeadamitae [La Peyrère] and Spinoza.”¹¹ Neither Hobbes nor anyone else, however, so comprehensively subverted confidence and belief that the Scriptures are divine revelation and are the true foundation of mankind’s moral code or did so by employing such a rigorous system of Bible exegesis and historical argument. No one else went so far in severing theology from philosophy, wholly secularizing ethics, rejecting the very possibility of miracles and revelation and denying supernaturalia of every kind, all credence in spirits, demons, devils, angels, ghosts, magic, alchemy, divinely inspired prophecy, and sorcery. Furthermore, some of the greatest minds of post-1700 modern humanity including Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Shelley, George Eliot, Heine, Nietzsche, Freud, and Einstein considered Spinoza’s philosophy the most inspiring guide in their personal lives. For them, this was sometimes less a question of persuasive argument than Spinoza’s rare ability to uplift, enlighten, and refine the most inquiring and poetic leanings, assisting individuals place their own existence on a higher, more meaningful level. If Freud had a notoriously low opinion of philosophy and philosophers in general, “I readily admit my dependence on Spinoza’s doctrine,” he wrote: “throughout my long life I sustained an extraordinarily high regard for the person as well as the thought achievement [Denkleistung] of the great philosopher Spinoza.”¹² Einstein, we know, read Spinoza’s greatest work, the Ethics, several times, commencing well before securing his first paid job, at the age of twenty-three, at the patent office in Bern, ¹⁰ Regius, Beginselen, 359–68. ¹¹ Kidder, Commentary on the Five Books i, preface. ¹² Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics, x; Whitebook, Freud, 93, 397–8.

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Switzerland, in 1902: “I think [Spinoza’s] Ethics,” he wrote to his cousin Else, his future wife, thirteen years later, in September 1915, “will have a permanent effect on me.”¹³ Einstein’s life-long devotion to strict determinism, universal causality, and the unity of the universe in its determined causality, including in the subatomic sphere of particles and their supposedly uncertain movements, closely chimed at a fundamental level with a philosophy which insists, as Spinoza expresses it in the Ethics, Part One, “that in nature there is nothing contingent, but all things are determined from the necessity of the divine nature to exist and to act in a certain way.”¹⁴ In particular, Einstein’s insistence on the universal character and unity, the Einheitlichkeit, of the universe fitted with Spinoza’s determinism, universalism, and general approach, something alien to all medieval philosophy, even Maimonides who, in other respects evinces significant affinities with parts of Spinoza’s system. Einstein’s drive to establish the principles of the universe driven by a pervasive Verallgemeinerungsbedürfenis, or need to universalize, remained an overarching constant throughout his life-long striving to renew the basis of modern physics. Throughout his triumphant years developing relativity theory and subsequent unsuccessful final years of his scientific efforts at the Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein endeavoured to uncover, prove, and explain the oneness of the laws of physics at all levels in the shape of his “unified field theory.”¹⁵ The drive to generalize and unify our vision of reality infused not only Einstein’s scientific efforts but also his social ideals and view of politics which rested on deep, emotional aversion to all forms of fascism and chauvinistic nationalism. Characteristically, he insisted on calling himself a “European” rather than a “German.” Equally, the drive to unify shaped his distinctive view of religion and the relationship of science to religion. Is not the essence of what is best in all the great religions better than any one religion? Is it not better to view Moses, Jesus, and Buddha as equally valid prophets than to insist on one? Like Spinoza, Einstein was convinced there is such a thing as “true religion,” but that this true religion has little to do with what most people understand by “religion.”¹⁶ Consisting of an ethical core, basically justice and charity, it is infused with a sense of wonder and awe at the unimaginable grandeur and unity of the universe. When anxiety first arose among the public, in 1929, as to whether or not the man acknowledged as the world’s greatest scientist of the age might be an “atheist,” Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein famously sent Einstein an urgent telegram: “Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid, fifty words. Stop.” Often sparing with words, Einstein needed only thirty for his reply: “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who

¹³ Holton, “Einstein’s Third Paradise,” 33. ¹⁴ Spinoza, Ethics I, Prop. 29. ¹⁵ Jammer, Einstein and Religion, 45–7; Holton, “Einstein’s Third Paradise,” 29–30. ¹⁶ Carlisle, Spinoza’s Religion, 142–4; Carlisle’s is the outstanding book-length discussion of Spinoza’s “true religion.”

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reveals Himself in the law-governed harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns Himself with the fate and doings of mankind.”¹⁷ “We followers of Spinoza,” he added, in a private letter, a few months later, “see our God in the wonderful order and lawfulness of all that exists and in its Beseeltheit [inspired animation], as it reveals itself in man and animal.”¹⁸ Einstein believed not only that this “cosmic religious feeling” of awe was the strongest and noblest motive driving scientific research in modern times but also that humanity generally is slowly but gradually moving towards what he envisaged as this new higher conception of religion. As mankind’s awe before the unity and coherence of the universe grows together with the impulse to renew human society on the basis of justice and charity, it would give birth to a new universal “true religion” stripped of all superstition, dogma, intolerance, hatred, and bigotry that will ultimately replace all the scriptures, priests, rabbis, gurus, cardinals, and mullahs of the world with the collected and integrated findings of philosophers and scientists. Spinoza’s family settled in Amsterdam having emerged from a clandestine crypto-Judaism in the Iberian peninsula locked in constant and irresolvable combat with Spanish and Portuguese royal absolutism, the Catholic Church, and especially the Inquisition, the ultimate symbol of oppression, persecution, theological narrowness, and extreme dogmatic intolerance in Spinoza’s day, the constant ominous shadow over his own forebears in Portugal. The Inquisition was a powerful institution that for well over three centuries imprisoned, tortured, and executed literally thousands of martyrs. This dark Iberian context was a crucial factor in Spinoza’s background, early life, and formation and likewise an essential dimension for understanding his thought generally. The contrast between Spinoza’s Ibero-Jewish background and the Dutch social context in which he lived fed his passionate yet cautious involvement in the political scene of his day, his tenacious defence of certain encouraging features of his immediate milieu. No matter how wretched and oppressive the circumstances of men living under brutal and relentless tyranny, a much better human context is conceivable and achievable. He remained acutely aware throughout his life that he and those around him were less at risk in their activities and persons in the Dutch Republic than anywhere else at the time. Publishing their views may have been forbidden, teaching them to students impermissible, openly debating their views with others inadvisable. Yet, despite these barriers, he and his circle enjoyed “the rare happiness of living in a republic where every person’s liberty to judge for himself is respected, everyone is permitted to worship God according to his own mind, and nothing is thought dearer or sweeter than freedom.”¹⁹ This passage is undoubtedly tinged with sarcasm. But while he is here criticizing the limitations and incompleteness of seventeenth-century Dutch freedom, he was nevertheless also ¹⁷ Jammer, Einstein and Religion, 48–50; Holton, “Einstein’s Third Paradise,” 32. ¹⁸ Quoted in Jammer, Einstein and Religion, 51. ¹⁹ Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, 6.

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expressing a deeply felt positive emotion. Indeed, Spinoza never ceased to place a high value on the Dutch Republic during its Golden Age. However imperfect, it offered a greater degree of religious liberty and freedom of conscience and thought than any other society at the time, including Britain prior to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Indeed, the England of Cromwell and Charles II figured among the specific targets of his political criticism, even if substantially less so than Philip II’s Spain and Louis XIV’s France. There is an important sense in which the Dutch Republic was, as one historian called it, the first “modern society” and this is doubtless why its greatest thinker was, in Beiser’s sense, the “first modern philosopher.” But while he valued it, Spinoza remained acutely aware of the limitations of Dutch freedom in his day, of its precariousness and instability, the constant threat to the religious liberty and political freedom he enjoyed there, emanating from what he considered the oppressive role of the clergy and angry resentment of the monarchically-inclined Orangist political faction among the Dutch public and regents. But most basic of all as a threat to liberty and personal fulfilment, he maintains, was the ignorance, intolerance, theological dogmatism, the uncomprehending notions and allencompassing “superstition” of the great mass of society (kings, princes, aristocrats, and academics included). Spinoza’s distinctive interpretation of what human “superstition” is was directly linked to his own family’s long and complex encounter with the Inquisition. To Spinoza’s mind “superstition” and false belief form the most powerful, pervasive, and dangerous force in human life, in politics, religion, and education, and are by no means the outcome merely of ignorance. Rather, as with the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition, its most obnoxious fruit, “superstition” for Spinoza is credulity forged into politically empowered oppressive dogma, laws, and institutionalized practice. He envisaged mankind’s greatest foe as a product of our inability to understand the nature of things powered by universal desperation laced with our unending expectation that a good life can after all be salvaged from the wretchedness and misery engulfing most of humanity, albeit without most men having the slightest idea how. For Spinoza believes that it is by manipulating humanity’s rudderless fear and hope that the cunningly self-seeking are able to sway the masses into applauding and embracing not just the crassest notions but also despotic, exploitative control, forging their own servitude. In Spinoz