Spinoza's 364th Anniversary

Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677)

On this day in 1656 at the age of 23, Baruch Spinoza, the Dutch-born son of Portuguese Jewish parents who would soon become a world-famous philosopher and a founder of the Enlightenment, was excommunicated from his synagogue in Amsterdam. It was the most tolerant city in the world, but obviously not tolerant enough. Spinoza did not object; he Latinized his name to Benedict. No specific reason was given for the harsh cherem, the excommunication decree; he was merely accused of unspecified "abominable heresies ... and ... monstrous deeds. He had not yet published his work showing that "God" is nothing more than eternal law-governed impersonal nature (which can neither hear nor answer prayers); that the immortal soul is a fiction; and that the Bible was not divinely inspired. He was, above all, a champion of reason, virtue, total freedom of conscience, and political freedom -- the first to call for separation of religion and state. Perhaps he was the first liberal in the original sense of that word. He was certainly among the earliest Enlightenment philosophers. 

What follows is 19-century American freethinker Robert G. Ingersoll's remarks on Spinoza. I'd take issue with a few things here. Spinoza was no pantheist. Despite his God-talk, he was an atheist: God is nature, and that's it. And contrary to what Ingersoll says, Spinoza enjoyed the camaraderie of other liberals in the Netherlands after his excommunication. He was no loner. Enjoy!

One of the greatest thinkers was Benedict Spinoza, a Jew, born at Amsterdam, in 1632. He studied medicine and afterward theology. He endeavored to understand what he studied. In theology he necessarily failed. Theology is not intended to be understood,—it is only to be believed. It is an act, not of reason, but of faith. Spinoza put to the rabbis so many questions, and so persistently asked for reasons, that he became the most troublesome of students. When the rabbis found it impossible to answer the questions, they concluded to silence the questioner. He was tried, found guilty, and excommunicated from the synagogue.

 

By the terrible curse of the Jewish religion, he was made an outcast from every Jewish home. His father could not give him shelter. His mother could not give him bread—could not speak to him, without becoming an outcast herself. All the cruelty of Jehovah, all the infamy of the Old Testament, was in this curse. In the darkness of the synagogue the rabbis lighted their torches, and while pronouncing the curse, extinguished them in blood, imploring God that in like manner the soul of Benedict Spinoza might be extinguished.

 

Spinoza was but twenty-four years old when he found himself without kindred, without friends, surrounded only by enemies. He uttered no complaint.
He earned his bread with willing hands, and cheerfully divided his crust with those still poorer than himself.

 

He tried to solve the problem of existence. To him, the universe was One. The Infinite embraced the All. The All was God. According to his belief, the universe did not commence to be. It is; from eternity it was; to eternity it will be.
He was right. The universe is all there is, or was, or will be. It is both subject and object, contemplator and contemplated, creator and created, destroyer and destroyed, preserver and preserved, and hath within itself all causes, modes, motions and effects.

 

In this there is hope. This is a foundation and a star. The Infinite is the All. Without the All, the Infinite cannot be. I am something. Without me, the Infinite cannot exist.

 

Spinoza was a naturalist—that is to say, a pantheist. He took the ground that the supernatural is, and forever will be, an infinite impossibility. His propositions are luminous as stars, and each of his demonstrations is a Gibraltar, behind which logic sits and smiles at all the sophistries of superstition.

 

Spinoza has been hated because he has not been answered. He was a real republican. He regarded the people as the true and only source of political power. He put the state above the church, the people above the priest. He believed in the absolute liberty of worship, thought and speech. In every relation of life he was just, true, gentle, patient, modest and loving. He respected the rights of others, and endeavored to enjoy his own, and yet he brought upon himself the hatred of the Jewish and the Christian world. In his day, logic was blasphemy, and to think was the unpardonable sin. The priest hated the philosopher, revelation reviled reason, and faith was the sworn foe of every fact.

 

Spinoza was a philosopher, a philanthropist. He lived in a world of his own. He avoided men. His life was an intellectual solitude. He was a mental hermit. Only in his own brain he found the liberty he loved. And yet the rabbis and the priests, the ignorant zealot and the cruel bigot, feeling that this quiet, thoughtful, modest man was in some way forging weapons to be used against the church, hated him with all their hearts.

 

He did not retaliate. He found excuses for their acts. Their ignorance, their malice, their misguided and revengeful zeal excited only pity in his breast. He injured no man. He did not live on alms. He was poor—and yet, with the wealth of his brain, he enriched the world. On Sunday, February 21, 1677, Spinoza, one of the greatest and subtlest of metaphysicians—one of the noblest and purest of human beings,—at the age of forty-four, passed tranquilly away; and notwithstanding the curse of the synagogue under which he had lived and most lovingly labored, death left upon his lips the smile of perfect peace.