Hillary Putnam reviews a new book on Spinoza in the New York Observer.

I have a longstanding fascination with Spinoza. As an undergrad I became obsessed with his writing and all the secondary literature I could get my hands on. Harry Austryn Wolfson’s book in particular (which sadly appears to be out of print) was very helpful to me in connecting his thought to ancient and medieval philosophy, especially certain forms of neoPlatonism.

Spinoza offered an entire system – a metaphysics, an epistemology, and an ethics, that in a lot of ways harked back to the ancient view of philosophy as a way of life. He was both a mystic – or a “God intoxicated” man as he has been called – and an arch rationalist, putting his philosphy into the form of a geometric-style proof. He pioneered a “historical critical” approach to the Bible and was accused of being an atheist and freethinker, ultimately being expelled from his Jewish community. But he was also described as “saintly,” making a simple living grinding lenses while he worked on his philosophy (and ultimately leading to his untimely death through the inhalation of glass dust!).

While no traditional theist can accept Spinoza’s conclusions, I think his attempt to purge god-talk of anthropomorphic concepts is an example of the useful corrective that “negative” theology can often offer.