Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity (Jewish Encounters Series) Paperback – August 11, 2009

My review title is not from Spinoza. It's the first and most fundamental 'proposition' of the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" by the 20th C philospher Ludwig Wittgenstein, a book obviously intended as a late response to Spinoza's "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus". The 'early' Wittgenstein was unquestionably influenced by Spinoza, but then, who wasn't? Wittgenstein continues: "The world is determined by the facts, and by these being all the facts. For the totality of facts determines both what is the case, and also all that is not the case. The facts in logical space are the world." Spinoza would, I think, be impressed. Here's the opening proposition of Spinoza's "Ethics": "By that which is self-caused (causa sui) I mean that of which the essence involves existence, or that of which the nature is only conceivable as existent." Causa sui! It is what it is! That which exists is what amounts to 'God'. (I might as well confess that I find Spinoza's 'God' an unnecessary semantic illusion, of the sort that Witgenstein would rail against.) But for Spinoza, it was the convenient and comfortable: deus sive natura.Rebecca Goldstein explicates thus: "Reality is determined by divine necessity in the stringest sense possible, since the necessity IS the divinity. What reality IS is the one and only system of necessary connections. That is the CAUSA SUI, the thing that explains itself, outside of which nothing can be conceived. It is logic itself, not its rules but its applications -- the vast and infinite system of logical entailments that are not merely abstract, as we usually conceive of them, but rather coated with the substance of being. Reality is ontologically enriched logic." Hmmm. Does that clarify things? Or do more words just complicate the insight? In fact, to my mind, Goldstein does a superb job of explicating Spinoza, though she needs several chapters of her book to do so. And there's no philosopher in European history whose thoughts are more important than Spinoza, so if you can grapple with him merely by reading this one 250-page book, you will surely be wise to read it.Earlier in her text, Goldstein discusses a general philosophical issue: the IF>IS>SHOULD BE progression. Spinoza, she claims, denies and dismisses the gap between IF and IS. (And so far, both Wittgenstein and I would modestly agree.) Spinoza's 'error', according to Goldstein, is his presumption that logic can carry the progression from IS to SHOULD BE. (Once again, Ludwig and I concur.) But oh my, dear reader! I shan't spoil the suspense for you by attempting to explain any of this. You'll have to read the book! And trust me, it's well worth reading!In what sense does Rebecca Goldstein BETRAY Spinoza? Not in her analysis of his thoughts, for sure. She does him conscientious justice as an exegete. Her 'betrayal' is in personalizing the philosopher, in attempting to find the 'personality' behind the logic, the biographical and social context of Spinoza's rigorously impersonal philosophy. And she 'betrays' him where it hurts; she attempts to identify the Jewish roots of Spinoza's mentality, that is, the habits and predispositions of thought which Spinoza 'inherited' with his Sephardic Jewish identity. Spinoza, as most people know, was expelled from the Jewish community of Amsterdam, but never aligned himself with the Christian or any other religion community in lieu of Jewry. He was arguably the first prominent 'secular' thinker of European history, and his secularism earned him fervid antagonism and ostracism. He was, and still is, reviled as an 'atheist.' Goldstein's examination of Spinoza's Jewish heritage and of his life experience constitutes a 'betrayal' of Spinoza's proud assertion that his ideas were universal, independent of any personal context.Goldstein is a highly digressive writer. A 'parenthetical' stylist. I have disliked her novels intensely, but I enjoyed every paragraph of "Betraying Spinoza", even when the paragra[hs gave me the impression that she'd scattered them down a stair case and then picked them up at random. More than half the text of this book is not specifically concerned with Spinoza or his philosophy, but rather with the history of Jewry and Judaism, especially of the Sephardic Jews who fled from Portugal and Spain to The Netherlands in the 17th C. I suspect that many readers will be more interested in Goldstein's history 'lessons' than in her exegesis of Spinoza. The history of the Sephardic diaspora is central to the history of the 17th C, to the amazing successes of the Dutch 'Golden Age', and eventually also to the whole course of history of Europe and the 'Middle East' over the centuries since.Oh really, you say? Well, here's an example. In the Turkish Empire, in Istanbul, during Spinoza's lifetime, a Jew named Zevi Sabbatai announced that he was himself the long-awaited Messiah. Sabbatai was not an isolated figure; he stood in a tradition of Kabbalistic (Lurianic) thinkers derived from Sephardic Iberia. His claims were taken seriously as far away as Amsterdam; huge sums of money were committed to his 'cause' and huger expectations of the Millennium were excited. Spinoza was surely aware of the excitement, which he would have scorned as mere superstition. His chief correspondent and supporter in England was a man named Heinrich Oldenburg. At one point, Oldenburg wrote to Spinoza, asking about Sabbatai: "Here there is a wide-spread rumor that the Israelites, who have been dispersed for more than two thousand years, are to return to their homeland. Few herabout believe it, but many wish it... I am anxious to know what the Jews of Amsterdam have heard of it, and how they are affected by so momentous an announcement, which, if it is true, is likely to bring about a world crisis."A world crisis? As predicted by an obscure Englishman to a secular Jew in the 17th C?Spinoza was, of course, also an ethical philosopher, or rather a philosopher of ethics. Though Goldstein dismisses Spinoza's logical assertions of ethical principles, it's interesting to note that she (and I) conscientiously live by them. According to Spinoza, the ethical objective is to live happily. But Spinoza dismisses the sorts of happiness gained from hedonism, wealth, or romantic love, asserting that the most reliable and total source of happiness is intellectual, based on the measure of understanding a finite being like himself, or you or me, can achieve of the infinity of existence. And since we are ineluctably finite, and cannot hope to approach infinity, we need ethically to make the most of our finity, that is, of Life, and think as little as possible about Death, which is mere uninteresting Nothingness. Okay, Baruch! I'm cool with that.One more quick observation: Spinoza's assertion that the totality of existence, i.e. Nature, is the same thing as God might easily be perverted into the sort of balderdash known as "Intelligent Design." Spinoza, i think, would have scoffed; "the Design IS the Intelligence," he might have cried out. Spinoza was not a pantheist, not one who perceived God as immanent in Nature. His 'God' has no nature independent of Nature. His 'God' was not Aristotle's First Cause. The inherent weakness of Spinoza's logic, in the hindsight of 300 years of scientific learning, was its presumption of a constant state of being, of a stable universe. Spinoza lacked all the insights of "evolution". In fact, his 'existence' was timeless; he had no explanation of Time to offer. A 'timeless universe' does indeed look more like 'God' than an evolutionary one. By attempting to exclude 'contingency' from his infinite web of logic, Spinoza locked himself in pre-scientific metaphysics. But ..."If we see farther than Spinoza, it's because we stand on his shoulders."

Rarely has a book had a more apt and meaningful title than Betraying Spinoza. A philosopher who both personally and in his thought strove to eradicate all the particularities of human experience is grounded by Goldstein’s research and imagination in a particular place and time. In other words, his exultation of reason above all the idiosyncrasies of personal history is betrayed.Spinoza was born into a Sephardic Jewish community in Amsterdam that had just recently won the right to freedom of worship. They were still in the process of relearning Judaism from the veneer of Christianity they had been forced to outwardly profess in Portugal.Into this community comes a man radically influenced by the Cartesian revolution who has the intuition that the entire universe is ultimately explicable by reason. Of course, there is no need for revelation or a chosen people in such a cosmos.These, and related beliefs, caused the excommunication of Spinoza from his people. However, his unique stance that reason, purified of all biographical particularities, is the highest aspiration of humankind seems to predate rather than be an effect of this shunning.All of this is wonderfully told by Dr. Goldstein. I should emphasize that the book is not intended as an exposition of Spinoza’s philosophy. Instead it deals at length with the history of Dutch Jewry and Spinoza’s life. While not a full biography, the book does anchor Spinoza in his particular historical setting.If you have previously studied his thought, or are just curious about the life of a great figure, I highly recommend Dr. Goldstein’s imaginative effort to situate Spinoza. While this may be a “betrayal” of Spinoza’s philosophical project it is by no means a betrayal of the man whose personality and unique accomplishments are fully brought to life.