Philosophy Club Meeting September 30: What You Always Wanted to Know about Spinoza

Philosophy Club - Meeting September 30: What You always Wanted to Know about Spinoza

Isn't it strange that " the philosopher's philosopher " and "the most lovable philosopher" should be so reviled? Ousted and cursed by the Jews, repudiated by the Catholic and Protestant establishments, his anonymously published treatise banned, Spinoza died at 44 as the state’s apparatus closed in. By then, however, the radical underground movement he had set in motion was spreading throughout Europe. His friends laid careful plans, outwitted the authorities, and brought his views to light, though his posthumous volume was also banned. Over fifty years later, books and sermons continued to demonize him. One Protestant preacher complained that Spinoza’s ideas were so easily grasped that even illiterates were seduced by them: “the identification of God with the universe, the rejection of organized religion, the abolition of Heaven and Hell, together with reward and punishment in the hereafter, a morality of individual happiness in the here and now, and the doctrine that there is no reality beyond the unalterable laws of Nature and, consequently, no Revelation, miracles, or prophecy.” In 1881, Nietzsche exclaimed, “I have a precursor, and what a precursor!” and noted, “this most unusual and loneliest thinker is closest to me precisely in these matters: he denies the freedom of the will, teleology, the moral world order, the unegoistic, and evil.” I look forward to discussing anything about Spinoza and his views that anyone would like to bring up.