Betraying Spinoza; The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity
by Rebecca Goldstein
New York: Schoken, 2006

I have just finished this luminous appreciation of Spinoza. I say “appreciation,” but that does not do justice to Goldstein’s insights into Spinoza’s system of philosophy and to the writing itself, which–in many parts–is extraordinary. What Goldstein does is attempt to enter the private space of Spinoza–that part which lies behind the tapestry of history–as the King in Nachman of Breslov’s famous parable–and attempt to divine the nature of Spinoza’s private self using biography, historical fact, and the shared experience of orthodox Judaism. Her narrative gifts are considerable, imparting warmth to what so many now see as a set of extraordinary exercises in abstract reasoning, which have been relegated (perhaps too quickly) to the museums of Western Thought. In the final section of the book, Goldstein sews the hints, the history, into her own narrative tapestry, and we see Spinoza on his death bed, where we enter the very mind of the philosopher:

“Still there is that which will remain of him. Not the personal self, this cluster of modifications endeavoring to preserve its identity, to prosper and flourish, even now, gasping for breath, unable of itself to keep from desperately trying to persist in its own being. He knows what it is in him that will persist, the view of himself that he gains when out of himself, in the deepest and most blissful grasp of the whole, the intuitive intimation of full infinity by a finite modification that cannot possibly grasp it all. That particular finite modification that he will soon be no more. But the thoughts that he has thought that were most true, that have pointed beyond themselves to the great vast system that entails them, as each of us points, however obscurely we may apprehend it, beyond ourselves to the vastness that entails us: this will remain for eternity.” (Pgs 255-256).

I can’t help but think that Goldstein, like the wise man in Nachman’s parable, through her wide-ranging recitation, coaxes the hidden King to peer out from behind his tapestry, and quickly sketches the true face of this man Spinoza. At least the likeness is close enough that it merits–in this reader’s opinion–the reproducation of Spinoza’s signature at its end.