Why Was Spinoza Excommunicated? (Steven Nadler)

In July 1656, Bento (Baruch) de Spinoza was given the harshest herem (ban or ostracism) ever issued by the Amsterdam Portuguese-Jewish community. The text of the ban is full of curses upon the young man, for his “abominable heresies and monstrous deeds”. Unlike other bans issued by the community in the period, it was never rescinded. But why was Spinoza excommunicated with such prejudice? He was only twenty-three years old, not yet the famous (and “scandalous”) philosopher he would later become. In this lecture, we will consider the circumstances of the ban and use them as a way of introducing some of the major themes of Spinoza’s philosophy.
Steven Nadler is the Vilas Research Professor and William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die (Princeton, 2020), A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age (Princeton, 2011), The Philosopher, the Priest and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes (Princeton, 2013), Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge, 1999; 2nd ed. 2018; winner of the Koret Jewish Book Award for Biography), and Rembrandt's Jews (Chicago, 2003, which was named a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction). He also published, with his son Ben Nadler, the graphic book Heretics! The Wondrous (and Dangerous) Beginnings of Modern Philosophy (Princeton, 2017). He has been a visiting professor at Stanford University, the University of Chicago, the University of Amsterdam, the Ecole des hautes études en science sociales (Paris), and the Ecole normal supérieure (Paris). He has also been a scholar-in-residence at the American Academy in Rome. His biography of Menasseh ben Israel was published in the "Jewish Lives" series (Yale University Press) in the fall of 2018. In 2020 he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

[@annalink4351]

Thank you for this informative, comprehensive presentation. I am left with the impression that Spinoza was brilliant, and courageous. His prescient ideas are still relevant, especially in the light of current events.

[@lewisalmeida3495]

Steven Nadler gives us much information about Spinoza’s philosophy; however more clarity is needed. As a private teacher and student of Spinoza’s Ethics, I understand that free will is an illusion and that the laws of necessity and self-preservation govern and direct all of existence. Also, intuition is required to understand his Ethics, reason alone will not help you. His philosophy is to be lived and understood; otherwise, it becomes abstract and only entertaining.

[@eapretto]

Spinoza vehemently denied he was an Atheist. He could have been an Agnostic, but certainly not an Atheist.

[@fulviomaina5062]

It's more accurate to call him an atheist than a agnostic since he talks about deus sive natura (God or Nature). So for sure not an agnostic . That being he did deny being an atheist but it's way of being a theist way closer to what we call atheism today than what we call theism.