From Pulitzer Prize-finalist Steven Nadler, an engaging guide to what Spinoza can teach us about life's big questions. In 1656, after being excommunicated from Amsterdam's Portuguese-Jewish community for 'abominable heresies' and 'monstrous deeds,' the young Baruch Spinoza abandoned his family's import business to dedicate his life to philosophy. He quickly became notorious across Europe for his views on God, the Bible, and miracles, as well as for his uncompromising defense of free thought. Yet the radicalism of Spinoza's ...
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From Pulitzer Prize-finalist Steven Nadler, an engaging guide to what Spinoza can teach us about life's big questions. In 1656, after being excommunicated from Amsterdam's Portuguese-Jewish community for 'abominable heresies' and 'monstrous deeds,' the young Baruch Spinoza abandoned his family's import business to dedicate his life to philosophy. He quickly became notorious across Europe for his views on God, the Bible, and miracles, as well as for his uncompromising defense of free thought. Yet the radicalism of Spinoza's views has long obscured that his primary reason for turning to philosophy was to answer one of humanity's most urgent questions: How can we lead a good life and enjoy happiness in a world without a providential God? In Think Least of Death, Pulitzer Prize-finalist Steven Nadler connects Spinoza's ideas with his life and times to offer a compelling account of how the philosopher can provide a guide to living one's best life. In the Ethics, Spinoza presents his vision of the ideal human being, the 'free person' who, motivated by reason, lives a life of joy devoted to what is most important-improving oneself and others. Untroubled by passions such as hate, greed, and envy, free people treat others with benevolence, justice, and charity. Focusing on the rewards of goodness, they enjoy the pleasures of this world, but in moderation. 'The free person thinks least of all of death,' Spinoza writes, 'and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.' 'A helpful explication of [Spinoza's] ideas about ethics, the afterlife, and human nature.' - Kirkus Reviews
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In Proposition 67 of Part IV of the "Ethics", Spinoza writes "A free person thinks least of all of death. and his wisdom is a meditation on life, not on death." Spinoza scholar Steven Nadler adopts Spinoza's proposition as the title and theme of his new book "Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die". (2020) Unlike many book on Spinoza, which focus on the difficulties of Spinoza's metaphysics and epistemology, Nadler's book studies the guidance Spinoza offers in leading a good and a happy life. In other words, Nadler takes the title of Spinoza's great book, the "Ethics" seriously. Thus, early in his study, Nadler points to a question from a friend posed suddenly during a bicycling trip as suggesting the theme of the book: "So, what is the relationship between Spinoza's metaphysics and his ethics?"
Nadler argues that Spinoza is concerned throughout with the nature of freedom. In the "Theological-Political Treatise" which Nadler discussed in his earlier study, "A Book Forged in Hell" Spinoza explored freedom in the context of thought and speech. In the "Ethics", Nadler finds that Spinoza develops an internal concept of freedom which, "consists in being an active and self-governing agent." Nadler continues:
"The free person .... is in control of his life. He acts rather than reacts. He will certainly do what he wishes but what he wishes is guided from within, by knowledge rather than by imagination, sentiment, or feeling. The free person is led by reason, not by passion. The life of the free person is, in short, the model life of the human being."
Nadler guides the reader through the "Ethics" in developing the nature of freedom. He begins with Spinoza's rejection of the anthropomorphic God of the Abrahamic religions, replacing it with the pantheism (or atheism) of one infinite substance, "God or Nature". He discusses the broad deterministic character of Spinoza's thought and develops Spinoza's concept of human nature expressed in the difficult term "conatus" or the tendency of every being to persist in and develop its own nature.
The body of Nadler's study explains Spinoza's development of his ethics -- his understanding of the good life for persons, expressed in Parts III, IV, and V of his book, "Ethics". Nadler's discussion explores the relationship between reason and the passions for Spinoza. Nadler works to help the reader see how Spinoza developed his concept of human freedom in the face of the strict determinism of his metaphysics. He explores broad questions ranging from Spinoza's understanding of human nature, the nature of virtue and of human happiness, self-esteem and self-love, fortitude, honesty, friendship, whether suicide is ever permissible, and death, and the free man's attitude towards life and death.
Unlike Spinoza's notoriously difficult writing, Nadler writes with grace and simplicity. The book is written as a guide to lay readers as well as a text for those versed in Spinoza's thought. The book discusses Spinoza's text and tries to explain it sympathetically. Various scholarly nuances and alternative readings are mentioned in the text and discussed in the endnotes and in the bibliography. Nadler draws on Spinoza's writings and letters in addition to the "Ethics". His account is enhanced by biographical and historical detail -- he discusses the contents of Spinoza's library, for example; and in discussing Spinoza's view of death, Nadler points out the plague that raged in his lifetime, an eerie reminder of the pandemic of today. Nadler draws insightfully of philosophers who influenced Spinoza, including Aristotle, the Stoics, Maimonides, and Descartes to give the reader context for Spinoza's thought while also drawing apt comparisons between Spinoza's ethics and the ethics of Kant. He also takes the reader back several times to an early work in which Spinoza explained the reasons which lead him from a relatively comfortable, conventional mercantile life to a philosophical life in search of understanding and the good. In a work called "The Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect" Spinoza had written:
"After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that is ordinarily encountered in daily life, and I realized that all the things that were the source and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofar as the mind was influenced by them, I resolved at length to enquire whether there existed a true good, one which was capable of communicating itself and could alone affect the mind to the exclusion of all else, whether, in fact, there was something whose joy and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity."
The search for the good and for understanding set out in this early autobiographical sketch culminated in the understanding of philosophy and of the part of wisdom set forth in the "Ethics".
I found Nadler's book inspiring in bringing me to think again about Spinoza. "Think Least of Death" will be of value to readers interested in the nature of philosophy as a guide to life and, in particular, to readers who wish to engage with Spinoza.
