By Franklin Harris
DAILY Assistant Metro Editor
fharris@decaturdaily.com · 340-2394

The past few years have seen renewed interest in Baruch Spinoza, including the publication of no fewer than three popularly marketed books on the philosopher and his ideas.

The most recent of these is Rebecca Goldstein's "Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity."

Even the book's title requires explanation. By "Betraying Spinoza," Goldstein, a novelist and philosophy professor, means examining Spinoza the man and the Amsterdam Jewish community of his youth to learn what influence, if any, they had on his views.

This is a task, she admits, Spinoza wouldn't have endorsed. The cornerstone of his philosophy is that truth is discovered through reason alone.

Thus, truth is equally accessible to all, regardless of individual circumstance.

'Renegade Jew'

"The Renegade Jew" is obvious to anyone familiar with Spinoza's thought. In his "Theological-Political Treatise," Spinoza (1632-1677) makes his case against superstition, organized religion, the Bible's veracity and divine revelation in general. As if that weren't enough, in "The Ethics," Spinoza "proves" the existence of God, but in a way few Jews (or Christians) can accept — he argues that God and nature are the same.

God is the universe, and everything in the universe is an aspect of God. God has no will of his own, hears no prayers and expects no worship. Thus, piety, for Spinoza, is simply using one's reason to understand nature.

Spinoza's pantheistic view of God was little more than atheism in his contemporaries' eyes. But it has since attracted adherents like Albert Einstein and Carl Sagan.

Radical views

In short, Spinoza's views were too radical even for his native Holland and especially for its thriving but wary community of Portuguese Jewish immigrants. In 1656, Amsterdam's Jewish community excommunicated the troublesome young heretic, an act Spinoza welcomed, as it freed him to get on with his philosophizing.

Which brings us to "Who Gave Us Modernity." While attacking revealed religion in his "Treatise," Spinoza also defended, before John Locke and other thinkers who directly influenced America's Founding Fathers, the principles of free speech and free thought enshrined in the First Amendment.

As one of the most radical of Enlightenment philosophers, Spinoza's ideas permeated revolutions from America to Europe, even if he was too controversial to cite directly.

(Spinoza was inconsistent in applying religious toleration, but so was almost every other political thinker of his day, including Locke.)

Goldstein gives readers an easy introduction to Spinoza's philosophy. This is appreciated because, while Spinoza makes his arguments with geometrical precision, they are, nevertheless, not for beginners. But is she successful in her task of looking to the man and his milieu to explain his ideas?

To paraphrase: "No philosopher is an island."

While Spinoza may have relied on reason alone to reach his conclusions, Goldstein leaves little doubt that Spinoza's experiences, and the experiences of his fellow Jews, gave him something against which to rebel. Would he have made his discoveries without this impetus? Who is to say?

Gripping story

In any case, the story of Spinoza's Jewish community, from its persecution under the Spanish Inquisition to its flight to Portugal and, later, to Holland, is gripping reading for its own sake.

Near the book's end, Goldstein completes her "betrayal" by describing, with some novelistic license, Spinoza's youth and growing disenchantment with his religious teachers. All this, while drawn from historical records and Spinoza's own, fragmentary accounts, isn't strictly the truth. Spinoza wouldn't have approved, Goldstein reminds us.

But her sympathetic portrait of the solitary philosopher, who loved his father enough to keep silent until his father's death, and his subsequent pursuit of the truth at the expense of friends and family, is both poignant and inspiring.

And if "Betraying Spinoza" encourages people to read Spinoza's own books, then Spinoza might have approved after all.

(This review appeared originally in the Sunday, Aug. 13, 2006, edition of THE DECATUR (Ala.) DAILY.)