Reading & the Good Life
Join the conversation! Every Friday at Noon EST (Register here), Perennial Meditations readers are welcome to gather for Reading & the Good Life (a space for connection, contemplation, and conversations on the art of living). This Friday, we begin an exploration we’re calling How to Live — Like Spinoza through selected passages of Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction. Check out the bookshelf below for upcoming (and previous) reading!
Who is Spinoza?
In my interview with Stephen Nadler (the author of Think Least of Death) on In Search of Wisdom, he explained, “Something is fascinating, mysterious, complex, and engaging about Spinoza, partly because he’s so difficult to understand. And every time I read him, it gets more difficult. But the other attraction of Spinoza is that he’s a rebel. He’s a radical who was punished by the community that raised him. And everybody loves a radical, especially somebody who suffers at the hands of the authorities.” According to Nadler, there may be no philosopher in history (with the possible exceptions of Socrates and Nietzsche) who has received greater attention in artistic, literary, and popular culture than Baruch de Spinoza.
Life and Character
In Spinoza: A Very Short Introduction, the editor and translator Roger Scruton described his life and character this way,
Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677) was born, lived and died in Holland, where his family, who were Jews from Portugal, had come as refugees from the Inquisition. He was brought up in the Jewish faith, but was anathematized for his heretical opinions, which had been acquired during a study of Descartes (1596–1649), the founding father of modern philosophy. …
In response to this confrontation with authority, Spinoza went to live in retirement among dissenting Christians. He retained an interest in politics, and made several hazardous forays into public life. He also began work on a second political treatise that he never finished. But he published nothing further, and his masterpiece, the Ethics, which had been circulating among eager students for some years before his death, appeared posthumously, and was promptly banned.
Spinoza led a chaste and studious life, refusing the offer of a professorship at Heidelberg, and developing his thought through correspondence with other scientific and philosophical writers. He had wide-ranging interests, in politics, law, biblical scholarship and painting, as well as in mathematics and physical science. […]
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