The Spinoza Problem

by Irvin D. Yalom

this valiant seventeenth-century thinker, so alone in the world—without a family, without a community—who authored books that truly changed the world.

the knowledge that Einstein, one of my first heroes, was a Spinozist.

When Einstein spoke of God, he spoke of Spinoza’s God—a God entirely equivalent to nature, a God that includes all substance, and a God “that doesn’t play dice with the universe”—by which he means that everything that happens, without exception, follows the orderly laws of nature.

I also believe that Spinoza, like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, on whose lives and philosophy I have based two earlier novels, wrote much that is highly relevant to my field of psychiatry and psychotherapy—for example, that ideas, thoughts, and feelings are caused by previous experiences, that passions may be studied dispassionately, that understanding ...

About a fourth of Spinoza’s major work, Ethics, is devoted to “overcoming the bondage of the passions.”

The ERR had some mysterious interest in Spinoza. In his official report, Rosenberg’s officer, the Nazi who did the hands-on looting of the library, added a significant sentence:

‘They contain valuable early works of great importance for the exploration of the Spinoza problem.’ You can see the report on the web, if you like—it’s in the official Nuremberg documents.”

What was the Nazi Spinoza problem?”

“So this old storybook has its own story to tell.”

In twenty years he will lay down his pen and grin triumphantly as he finishes the last page of his book,

The Myth of the Twentieth Century. Destined to become a million-copy best seller, it will provide much of the ideological foundation of the Nazi party and offer a justification for the destruction of European Jews. In thirty years his troops will storm into a small Dutch museum in Rijnsburg and confiscate Spinoza’s personal library of one hundred and fifty-one volumes. And in thirty-six years his dark-circled eyes will appear bewildered and he will shake his head no when asked by the American hangman at Nuremberg, “Do you have any last words?”

Late in that century, measures were passed in Germany to transform Jews into German citizens, and they were compelled to choose and pay for German names. If they refused to pay, then they might receive ridiculous names, such as Schmutzfinger or Drecklecker. Most of the Jews agreed to pay for a prettier or more elegant name, perhaps a flower—like Rosenblum—or names associated with nature in some way, like Greenbaum. Even more popular were the names of noble castles. For example, the castle of Epstein had noble connotations and belonged to a great family of the Holy Roman Empire, and its name was often selected by Jews living in its vicinity in the eighteenth century. Some Jews paid lesser sums for traditional Jewish names like

Levy or Cohen.

“Now your name, Rosenberg, is a very old name also. But for over a hundred years it has had a new life. It has become a common Jewish name in the Fatherland, and I assure you that if, or when, you make the trip to the Fatherland, you will see glances and smirk...

Foundations of the Nineteenth Century.”

“Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s book,”

replies Bento. “So I sit here hour after hour with nothing to do other than think and write.”

It is the mind that determines what is fearful, worthless, desirable, or priceless, and therefore it is the mind, and only the mind, that must be altered.”

He, too, regarded the mind and the pursuit of perfecting our powers of reason as the supreme and unique human project. Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics should be one of your next lessons.”

The time has come for you not only to know of Aristotle but to know him yourself.

I can place him within your understanding along with the world of his comrades, such as Socrates and Plato and many others.”

Trust no strangers with your deeper thoughts and doubts.

Goethe?” asked the headmaster. “He is the eternal German genius. The greatest of Germans. A genius of writing, and science, and art and philosophy. He is a genius in more fields than anyone.”

Goethe’s autobiography, and you are to write down every line that he

writes about his own personal hero, a man who lived a long time ago named Spinoza.

Religious professionals throughout the ages have always sought to be the sole interpreters of mysteries. It serves them well.”

Gabriel, remember that we are separate souls. Others here do not mistake you for me. They do not hold you responsible for your older brother’s aberrations.”

Goethe is saying that Spinoza taught him to free his mind from the influence of others. To find his own feelings and his own conclusions and then act upon them. In other words, let your love flow, and do not let it be influenced by the idea of the love you may get in return. We could apply that very idea to election speeches. Would Goethe make a speech based on the admiration he would get from others? Of course not! Nor would he say what others want him to say. You understand? You get that point?”

“Exactly. In other words it is not what you believe or say you believe, it is how you live that matters.

what did Goethe get from Spinoza?” “He said he got an air of peace and calmness. He also says he beheld the world more clearly. Those were the two main things.”

“I’m asking you, what does it mean to you that the man you admire above all others chooses a Jew as the man he admires above all others?”

How our reason, the highest part of our mind, is subdued by our emotions?”

To feel alone in your doubt. That must be terrifying.”

I believe the problem has its root in a fundamental and massive error, the error of assuming that God is a living, thinking being, a being in our image, a being who thinks like us, a being who thinks about us.

“The ancient Greeks understood this error. Two thousand years ago, a wise man named Xenophanes wrote that if oxen, lions, and horses had hands with which to carve images, they would fashion God after their own shapes and give him bodies like their own. I believe that if triangles could think they would create a God with the appearance and attributes of a triangle, or circles would create circular—”

Sometimes he was persuaded by Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s argument that Spinoza, like Jesus, was of the Jewish culture but did not possess one drop of Jewish blood. Or perhaps Spinoza was a Jew who stole thoughts from Aryan thinkers. Or perhaps Goethe had been under a spell, mesmerized by the Jewish conspiracy.

the entire Polytechnic Institute was moved to Moscow, where Alfred lived until 1918, when he handed in his final project—an architectural design for a crematorium—and received his degree in architecture and engineering.

Joy of our superiority over others is not blessed. It is childish or malicious.

I see nothing in the Torah that suggests that Jews are superior to other peoples. God is equally gracious to all.”

Once again I remind you: human beings choose, favor, help, value, expect. But God? Does God have these human attributes? Remember what I said about the fallacy of imagining God to be in our image. Remember what I said about triangles and a triangular God.”

So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.’”

Bento said. “That conclusion comes from your mind. But I do say that the words and ideas of the Bible come from the human mind, from the men who wrote these passages and imagined—no, I should better say wished—that they resembled God, that they were made in God’s image.”

“It’s obvious that any words in the Bible referred to as ‘God’s words’ originate only in the imagination of the various prophets.”

Bento answered readily: “I believe that the prophets were men endowed with unusually vivid imaginations, but not necessarily highly developed reasoning power.”

“Then, Bento,” said Franco, “you believe that miraculous prophecies are nothing more than the imagined notions of prophets?” “Exactly.”

Franco continued, “It is as though there is nothing supernatural. You make it appear that everything is explainable.” “That is precisely what I believe. Everything,...

“I believe that the more we can know, the fewer will be the things known only to God. In other words, the greater our ignorance, the more we attribute to God.”

“I am not available for a disputation that excludes reason.”

Once out of sight of Bento’s house, Jacob smiled broadly, put his arm around Franco, and grasped his shoulder, “We’ve got all we need now. We worked well together. You played your part well—almost too well, if you ask me—but I’m not even going to discuss that, because we have now finished what we had to do. Look at what we have. The Jews are not chosen by God; they differ in no way from other peoples. God has no feelings about us. The prophets merely imagine things. The Holy Scriptures are not holy but entirely the work of humans. God’s word and God’s will are nonexistent. Genesis and the rest of the Torah are fables or metaphors. The rabbis, even the greatest of them, have no special knowledge but instead act in their self-interest.”

remember the shock and disbelief toward Kant’s revelation that external reality is not as we ordinarily perceive it—that is, we constitute the nature of external reality by virtue of our internal mental constructs? You’re well acquainted with Kant, I imagine?”