Portrait of Baruch Spinoza from 1665. Provided courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Written by PJ Grisard
February 15, 2024
On page 40 of Ian Bluma’s fascinating biography of the 17th century philosopher Baruch Spinoza, very modern language jumps off the page.
“When people are ostracized from their communities, or ‘cancelled’ as we now call them, they can react in a variety of ways,” Bluma writes.
Bulma refers to a specific thing i am here, or banned, declared by the Jewish community of Amsterdam. His excommunication, not Spinoza’s, but perhaps the most famous one issued by the Jewish authorities, was that of Uriel da Costa, a wealthy Portuguese immigrant, who was also banned in Hamburg and Venice. In an attempt to lift the ban in 1640, da Costa was whipped and trampled as “a mob was crying out for crucifixion” in a Portuguese synagogue in Amsterdam. He later took his own life. Burma argues that the man’s death and abuse must have had an impact on Spinoza, then 8 years old, who was born in the same community. His own exile at the age of 24 forced him into a pagan world that would inspire his philosophical works that would define the Enlightenment.
Though he doesn’t directly mention it, Bulma himself was also “cancelled” in 2018. he quit his job as editor of new york book review Following the uproar over the work released by Canadian DJ Jian Ghomeshi, Ghomeshi falsely described numerous sexual assault allegations against him.
This book may be one of the “various ways” Bulma chose to respond to losing that prestigious post. (He said this at the time) “exposed in public”) Fortunately, this notion that Spinoza is the first victim of cancel culture dominates the text, with the exception of da Costa, Jesus, the man in the Garden of Eden, or various people whom God vanquished. I have not.
yes, Spinoza: Savior of Liberty, positions popular thinkers as champions of free thought. His ideas about the nature of God (God is nature) were highly controversial both within the Jewish circles that exiled him and among the Calvinist majority in his home country. His writings were subject to censorship both during his lifetime and after his death. Spinoza was cautious at the time not to be too outspoken or risk having his work published in Dutch. But most interesting to Bulma is his difficult 17th century Dutch background.
Bulma first establishes the precarious position and relative freedom of recent Marranos, such as Spinoza’s family. They left Portugal two generations ago and only recently began to rediscover their Jewish nature in the Netherlands. Bulma himself grew up in The Hague with a Jewish mother and a father who was the son of a Mennonite minister, and interspersed this account with his own memories, calling them “people called Van Nunes” (of Sephardic elitism). I’m reminiscing about how I grew up. Like Mendes de Leon. They were as snobbish as their Gentile peers at The Hague. ”
From there, he moves into the world of Spinoza when he is expelled from the temple, for reasons that are still unclear. It was a time of changing forms of government (Spinoza was a proud citizen of the Dutch Republic and opposed to the Royalists of the House of Orange), regional wars (Spinoza was a proud citizen of the Dutch Republic and opposed the Dutch Republic), Spinoza (Calvinists could not support Spinoza, even thinkers and clergymen), and the split in Protestantism (Calvinists could not support Spinoza, even thinkers and clergymen) (Many of the groups were liberals.)
This is a strange and adventurous account of Spinoza’s short life, including naval battles, invasions, and popular brutality. Spinoza seems not to have been a party to the actual violence, but some of it was directed against his associates who were too liberal with iconoclasm. Rather, while he continued to live an ascetic life, living on milk porridge and having no worldly luxuries other than his parents’ bed, which was carried from inn to inn, violence was occurring all around him. Ta. Despite all this genuine disconnection, Burma made the choice, after discussion of the poet Heinrich Heine, to position Spinoza as a martyr or Christ figure. i doubt it.
Mr. Bluma often writes about Japan and China, but since he is not a philosopher, his analysis of Spinoza’s works may seem a little sketchy. However, the story bounces from the subject detailing his admirers and detractors, while also supporting a non-monarchical government (a liberal, aristocratic rule called “true liberty”, which was somewhat insufficient). It depicts a vivid picture of a nation that is running idle. names) and the influence of these new political trends on the dissemination of Spinoza’s ideas.
The author devotes a chapter to “The Rage of the Mob,” in which Spinoza describes how the “lynch party” that brutally murdered Johan de Wit and Cornelis de Wit, the political rulers of the Netherlands at the time, I was shocked to hear that it was carried out so close to. relative freedom. Perhaps intentionally, the emphasis in this chapter reflects the fate of the “cancelled” da Costa. However, it has no direct connection to modern groupthink, yet.
Only the last page speaks critically of the contemporary reality that emphasizes identitarian “lived experience” as a precondition for truth (this idea clearly bears “dangerous similarities” to the ideology of Mao and Hitler). ). Bulma also revealed a previously unspoken concern that we are losing the “biological truth that there are distinct differences between male and female bodies.” There is. (He doesn’t like Trump or “fake news,” so you could say they’re even.)
“Spinoza should be seen as a model for these difficult times, when the very concept of reason is viewed with great suspicion by those who claim the primacy of moral beliefs,” concludes Bruma.
Maybe so. But the biography, which is otherwise enlightening, could stand well without these digressions. As Spinoza wrote, “Everything that is good is as difficult as it is rare.” For Bulma, avoiding the topic of wokeism is clearly difficult and requires rare self-control. And you know what that means for excellence.