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Philosophical Haiku

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

by Terence Green

Peering through life’s lens
God in nature is deduced:
The joy of being.

Baruch Spinoza was born in Amsterdam into a Jewish family that had fled persecution in Spain. He went into the family merchant business with his brother and was a respected member of the local synagogue – until, that is, he published ideas about God that were contrary to traditional Jewish teaching, ideas he refused to recant. For these heresies, he was cursed, excommunicated, and shunned. Leaving town (as you would), he ended up in the Hague, where he made earned a little money from his skill as a lens grinder.

In 1670 he published Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, and if there had been any doubts before that he wasn’t an orthodox believer, there were none now. All religions, he said, were essentially life-denying in teaching that our misery today is to be endured as part of our preparation for the life to come. This, Spinoza thought, was absurd. Instead, we should be aiming for a joyous existence in the present moment, the only moment we ever know. As always, quite how this joy is to be attained is not entirely clear, but we’re to seek a sort of mystical understanding of our place in the eternal cosmos and become one with God, or nature (for Spinoza, in some not entirely clear fashion, God and nature are one and the same).

Spinoza thought that religions rely on intolerance and superstition to maintain control over the faithful, while the ideal life was one of rational understanding that unites people in the contemplation of truth. He did, however, think that most people are probably too ignorant to achieve that kind of state, and thus religion can at least keep them in check morally. Spinoza apparently also liked to collect spiders, which he would unleash against each other in mortal combat. The joy of nature is evidently to be found in all sorts of places.

Terence Green is a writer, historian, and lecturer who lives in Eastbourne, New Zealand.