ized, the celebrated Amor intellectualis Dei most appropriately enacts
itself as reverence.
Reverence, then, is Spinoza’s key, reverence above all for people thinking, sharing their thoughts, creating by their common effort that “
individual twice as powerful as each one singly.” As an attitude of mind this
reverence causes him to cherish above all things the shared search for
truth he understands as philosophy, to delight in the “bond of friendship
with sincere lovers of truth” associated in their quest for a knowledge
uniting finite human minds with the infinite Mind of God. As a demeanor brought to social life, the same reverence carries him to happy
intimacy with his friends and with the Van der Spyck family. Surely it
is this gentle regard for his fellows that makes him the most lovable of
philosophers, cherished by his friends and called “Blessed Spinoza” by
his barber.
It is a lovely image, an archetypal tableau—the great philosopher,
seated in conversation with his landlady, her new baby nursing or asleep
nearby, stands revealed as a seventeenth-century incarnation of the
Magi of old, gathered at another humble confinement in honor of another mother and child. The core of his wisdom is a grateful recognition
of everyday life’s miracle, Being itself an expression of divinity, a messianic infant nourished in every cradle. Strip the robe and crown from the
magus, provide him with a chair, move the scene from stable to house,
and Spinoza, Ida Margarete, and her baby stand in very nicely as the
Holy Family resettled in Holland. The daunting pages of the Ethics and
the homely reports of Colerus join in harmonious union. All it takes is
reverence.
Bibliographic Note
I am no philosopher. Nearly everything in this essay’s appreciation builds
upon the researches of others. The “best biographer” and my primary
guide to both the Ethics and the Tractatus is Steven Nadler [Spinoza: A
Life (1999); Spinoza’s Ethics: An Introduction (2006); A Book Forged in
Hell (2011)]. The student of Spinoza’s impact upon Leibniz is Matthew
Stewart [The Courtier and the Heretic (2006)]. The “closest examiner”
of the clandestine publication saga of Spinoza’s Opera Posthuma is Piet
Steenbakkers [Spinoza’s Ethica from Manuscript to Print (1994)]. Citations from the Ethics are from Samuel Shirley’s translation (1992); Shirley’s versions were also used for the Tractatus (1989) and for Spinoza’s
correspondence [Spinoza: The Letters (1995)]. The English translation
