Dr. Steven Nadler - The Life of Philosopher Baruch Spinoza (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_912)
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Summary
Stephen Nadler is a philosopher, author, essayist, and essayist. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Director of the Institute for Research in the Humanities at Setz University. He specializes in 17th century philosophy with a focus on Spinoza, Descartes, and Leibniz. In this episode, we talk about how he became interested in these thinkers, and why they were so important to him.
Transcript
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I'm delighted to report that I have joined, as a scholar, the Declaration of Independence Center
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for the Study of American Freedom at the University of Mississippi.
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The center offers educational opportunities, speakers, internship, and reading groups for
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the University of Mississippi community. It is named in honor of the United States founding
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document, which constitutes the nation as a political community and expresses fundamental
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principles of American freedom, including in the recognition of the importance of Judeo-Christian
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values in shaping American exceptionalism. Dedicated to the academic and open-minded exploration of
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these principles, the center exists to encourage exploration into the many facets of freedom.
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It will sponsor a speaker series and an interdisciplinary faculty research team.
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If you'd like to learn more about the center, please visit Ole Miss, that's O-L-E-M-I-S-S dot
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Hi, everybody. This is Gad Saad. Today, I have another fantastic guest, a philosopher. I'm going
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to read his bio shortly, but first, let me say hello. Professor Stephen Nadler, how are you
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Oh, I'm delighted to have you on. Actually, well, I'll say in a second how you came up,
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but before I do that, it's, you said Vilas, yes?
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Okay. So you are the Vilas research professor and the William H. Hay, the second professor
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of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. You're also the director of the Institute for
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Research in the Humanities at Setz University. You specialize in 17th century philosophy with a focus
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on Spinoza, Descartes, and Leibniz. Some of your books include, and this is a sample of all of your
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books, Spinoza, A Life. That's what drew me to you. Look at this baby. Here we go.
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What? Gorgeous book. Now we go to Rembrandt's Jews, 2003, The Best of All Possible Worlds,
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A Story of Philosophers, God and Evil, The Philosopher, The Priest, and The Painter,
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A Portrait of Descartes. Now, I don't have your book on Descartes, but you're ready, Stephen?
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I do. Yeah, that's a very early, well, relatively early biography.
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There you go. I've got this one. Are you getting impressed by my personal library yet?
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All right, wait up. And then, Why Bad Thinking Happens to Good People. Now, that's very close
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to my wheelhouse because I study human decision-making. I wrote a book called The Parasitic
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Mind, How Human Minds Can Be Parasitized. So, it'll be interesting to talk about that.
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And then you've got two forthcoming books, one on Maimonides. Read Maimonides today. Boom,
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Okay, so that one I read. And then finally, oh, and your other forthcoming books,
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Penielsa, Atheist. Now, I don't have a Leibniz biography, but I do have his nemesis,
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Isaac Newton, 1968. Now, I knew of those two guys because I studied mathematics, and so I knew
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about their attention. Maybe we'll get into that. But first, maybe we could start with
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Spinoza, apparently the original version of Christopher Hitchens. Tell us all about him.
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You mean Spinoza was the original version of Christopher Hitchens?
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Well, that's what I heard, that he was sort of the, you know, the combative, the, I mean,
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sort of... Yeah. No, actually, I don't think he, I think that's not really correct, because
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Spinoza was not a combative person. In fact, he says explicitly in one of his correspondence
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that he hates, he does not like scandal, he does not like confrontation, whereas Hitchens,
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I think, thrived on scandalizing us in confrontations. So, but, you know, Spinoza was a radical,
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especially for his time. He was born in 1632 in Amsterdam to a Portuguese Jewish family within
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the Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish community there, which was essentially a community of refugees,
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Iberian refugees from the Inquisition. And we know very little about his early life, but
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what we do know is the shocking ban or harem that he received in 1656 for what is called
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in the ban document his horrible heresies and abominable deeds. And so what we know is that
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at the age of 23, Spinoza was kicked out, ostracized by the Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish community.
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At the time, as far as we know, he hadn't written anything. And there was a lot of speculation
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about what were the reasons for the ban. But I think we should take the harem document at face value.
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It's for heretical ideas. And we know that around the time of the ban, Spinoza was saying
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some of the bold claims that appear in his mature philosophical treatises. For example, his view
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on God, his view about Judaism as religion, his claims about the Bible being merely a work
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of human literature, and especially his rejection of personal immortality. I think these are things
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that ordinarily would not get one a ban or a harem. But Amsterdam in the 1650s was just the wrong place
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in time to be holding such strong contrarian views on those matters. Then he would go on in the 1660s
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and 1670s to compose his mature philosophical treatises. He only published two in his lifetime.
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In 1663, he published a summary of Descartes' Principles of Philosophy. And that brought him
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a reputation in the philosophical world. And then in 1670, he published his theological political
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treatises in Latin and kept his name off the cover. But this was such a bold book regarding issues of
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religion and faith and the Bible and prophecy and miracles and the proper relationship between the church
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and the state. It caused an enormous scandal. And Spinoza was attacked by ecclesiastic authorities,
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civil authorities, academic authorities. One overwrought critic called it a book forged in hell
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by the devil himself. And then, you know, sadly, Spinoza died at a relatively young age,
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probably from respiratory problems. He was only 43 at the time in 1677.
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Now, so in the history of certainly Jewish thought, but more generally a religious thought,
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but let's stick to Jewish thought. There wouldn't have been anyone else that would have raised some of
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the, you know, similar issues prior to him? Is there something unique about how he constructed his
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arguments that allowed him to have the position that he has today in sort of the history of philosophical
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thought? Well, there were people before him and along with him who argued for toleration,
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for example, John Locke or Pierre Bale. And there were people who argued that the Hebrew Bible or
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especially the Torah was not all authored by Moses and not literally by God. But Spinoza took these views
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and especially his denial that miracles are possible and his identification of God with nature. He presents
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them in such a bold and philosophically compelling way that there's just no ignoring him, that he,
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despite the ban and despite the widespread critique of him personally and the banning of his books by
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authorities, especially the Dutch Republic, there was no ignoring him. And he became infamous
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for these ideas which were offensive not only to the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam and perhaps to,
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you know, Jews across Europe, but to Catholic and Protestant authorities in Europe as well.
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Would his position be one that would also be referred to as natural theology? Are those two
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synonymous with each other? What do you mean by natural theology? Natural theology would be,
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so for example, so I'm an evolutionist. Specifically, I'm an evolutionary behavioral scientist. So I study
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how you apply evolutionary biology to study the human mind and human behavior. And so whenever I get,
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let's say, a student who's totally into all the evolutionary stuff, but they come from a religious
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background and somehow they have to find a way to reconcile the two, I then will invoke an argument that
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comes from natural theology, which basically says, well, evolution itself is such an exquisite mechanism
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that it could be considered the work of the divine. So with one little swoop, you've managed to,
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you know, reconcile both of these worldviews together. Does that make sense?
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It does, but that's not going to be Spinoza's view, because there is no divine for Spinoza.
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And this is something that I'm arguing in my forthcoming books. I think Spinoza was an atheist.
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He was not a pantheist. He was not a pantheist. He's certainly not a theist in the traditional
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sense because Spinoza's God is not some transcendent creator who then at some point through an act of
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free will creates a world. That can't be Spinoza's God. He identifies God with nature. And by nature,
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he doesn't mean just the visible empirical world around us, but also the eternal infinite dimensions of
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of this world, namely the laws of nature, the essences of things and so on.
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But the pantheist and the atheist can agree that all there is, is nature. There is no supernatural for Spinoza.
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There's no transcendent God. But the pantheist would still say, to the extent that the pantheist
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sees that God is nature and nature is God and all things are in God, the pantheist, in order to really
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be a pantheism and not an atheism, would have to say that there's something divine about nature. That
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nature is therefore deserving of worshipful awe or reverence or adoration, some kind of religious
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attitude. There's none of that in Spinoza. Nature is not divine for him. It's not appropriate to
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approach nature with worship or adoration or prayer or awe. The only proper attitude to take towards
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nature is to investigate it scientifically, to try to understand its laws and its processes
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and the causal determinism that governs all things. So to me, no, it's not a natural theology. It's an
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atheism. However, no, no, please go ahead, finish your point. So there is theology for Spinoza because
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not everybody is going to be a philosopher and not everybody can come to a life of virtue and reason
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through the geometric method and through studying difficult philosophical works like the ethics. A lot
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of people are going to be inspired towards lives of virtue by reading inspirational stories and perhaps
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the best texts for inspiring people to lives of virtue are the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Gospels.
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Because their authors as prophets were both morally superb individuals and gifted storytellers with
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very vivid imaginations. And what theology consists in for Spinoza is determining from the Bible what
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things we should believe in order to be led, not through reason, but through our imaginations to be
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led towards a virtuous behavior. Would Spinoza have stated that notwithstanding all of the positions I'm taking,
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I still am leaning into my Jewish heritage. I can both be Jewish and Spinoza, the guy who is espousing
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these positions, or by espousing those positions, I reject my Jewish identity. And let me give you sort
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of the reason behind, I mean, the personal reason. I often will get people writing to me saying, well,
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you're someone who's very proud of your Jewish heritage, you defend all sorts of Jewish causes,
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but yet we also have seen you at various positions talk about the irrationality of some
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religious beliefs. Certainly as an evolutionist, it's hard to reconcile some of the, you know,
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the young earth creation and stuff. How could you be a non-believer and a Jew? So what would
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So one of the myths, and there are many about Spinoza, is that he envisioned and perhaps lived
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a kind of secular Judaism, a Judaism without really a divinity. I don't think that's right.
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I think for Spinoza, Judaism was the law. And to live a life outside the law, outside of normative
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Jewish observance and ritual and ceremony, is not to be Jewish. And here I disagree with him. I think
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there's more to Judaism than the law. There's more to Judaism than having certain beliefs. But in his
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mind, once the law disappears, so does Judaism.
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But those, the Jewish, you know, legal code, is he arguing that it's an earthly code or
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is it coming from some divinity? Because based on what you said, it can't have been, you know,
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given to us from some divine. So there's just some earthly mechanism that results in these
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laws being passed on to Jews and we shall all abide by them without invoking a divine origin to them?
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Well, within Judaism, a divine origin is invoked. And this was Moses's genius, because he had these
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tribes wandering, recently liberated from enslavement in Egypt. And he had to unite these tribes. He had
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to give them a kind of polity or state. And Moses realized the best way to do that was to make it a
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theocracy. And so being a wise lawgiver, Moses created these mitzvot, these laws that would allow the
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Jewish, the Israelites to govern themselves and be unified. So yeah, it's a very mundane origin. It's the,
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in Spinoza's view, Jewish halakha, and both in its strictly legal components and also in its moral
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components, was instituted at a particular historical juncture for a certain historical and political
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purpose. So very earthly reasons, basically. Yes. You know, it's funny because, so if I can link back to
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my evolutionary work, this is not my work, but certainly stuff that I, that I've written about,
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there are competing evolutionary explanations for why religion is so compelling for human minds.
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One argument is one that is based on an adaptive argument. The one who espoused it most famously is
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David Sloan Wilson, who's an evolutionary biologist. He wrote a book called Darwin's Cathedral.
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And then what he's arguing is that if you, if you take religious groups versus a religious group or
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non-religious groups, the ones who are religious will have greater communality, greater cooperation,
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greater cohesion, greater delineation between us versus them, that will result in a survival advantage.
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And so without caring whether God exists or not, merely being religious confers an adaptive
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advantage in being religious, then there is another argument that says, well, religion does have
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an evolutionary origin, but it's not because it's adaptive. It's actually an exaptation, meaning that
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it is a byproduct of other evolutionary mechanisms that have evolved. So for example, the fact that we have
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coalitional thinking as part of the architecture of the human mind, us versus them, well, it's easy to show how
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all Abrahamic faiths piggyback on that, right? There is the Goys and the Jews, the non-believers,
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the Kuffar, and so on. So can we incorporate either of those two evolutionary explanations within a Spinoza
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framework? Well, Spinoza actually does do that, not in the precise terms that you've described, but he does
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at the beginning of the theological political treatise, give us what we would now call a natural history of
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religion. Why do people become religious? Why do they believe that there is a providential God
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who's running things? In his case, it's not so much a story of evolution towards adaptation in a social
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context, but rather the development of certain beliefs in the face of the vagaries of nature, the ups and downs
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of fortune, that life is a risky and chancy thing. Things don't always go our way. And so in order to try
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through, in a sort of magical way, to control nature, we adapt these superstitious beliefs and then engage
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in ceremonies to try, superstitious beliefs about gods or a god, and then we engage in these superstitious
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rituals and ceremonies to try to get the gods on our side and make things go our way. But then when
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things are going well, we kind of drop, we kind of forget about those ceremonies and rituals. However,
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there are certain people who realize that they can achieve a good deal of power and respect and honor
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if they somehow institutionalize these superstitious practices, and that's where organized religion comes
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from. Very interesting. Do you think that the fact that he was wedded to an actual, you know, profession,
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he was a lens maker, allowed him to have a different philosophy than if he were the prototypical
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ivory tower completely decoupled from reality academic? And if so, how?
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No, I don't think so. I think a lot of the ideas that we find in his mature treatises were things he had
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been thinking about for a long time, well before he became a lens grinder. You know, there are some
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aspects of his philosophy that do, that clearly derive to some extent from his scientific work in optics and
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he had a really good understanding of the nature of light, refraction, reflection, and so on. And
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apparently he made very good lenses. So even a scientist like Christian Huygens praises Spinoza's
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telescopes and microscopes. But no, no, I really, I think Spinoza was on his way to where he was going,
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regardless of what profession he took up. Because once he was banned from the Amsterdam Jewish community,
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he, at the time he was running his parents, his family's importing business. But he couldn't do
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that anymore because to do that you had to be a part of the Jewish community. So he had to find a
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new way of making some money. But I think he had already formulated at least an embryonic shape,
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To be banned, as you mentioned at the start of our conversation, the haram. And in Arabic, you say,
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actually, Arabic is my mother tongue, you say haram, which is almost the same thing.
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Yeah, exactly. And I had sent you the fact, you know, when I sent you sort of the possible
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questions that we might discuss, I said, he might be one of the earlier instantiations of,
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That's true. Well, and Socrates, I guess, was also canceled.
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Fair enough. But, okay, so, but let's, so, what I once asked, actually, a Hasidic rabbi,
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who were very good friends, I said, well, you know, rabbi, I'm not into every single one of the,
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you know, the, the Jewish beliefs, but of course, I'm very much wedded to my Jewish identity.
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Judaism is a multi-factor construct, blah, blah, blah. Could I ever say anything
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that would somehow make me lose my Jewish card? And he said, no. So then, so now, if, if this,
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if Spinoza is being excommunicated, is that in an earthly sense that you could no longer be
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accepted in the community? Or are we revoking your Jewish card?
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It's mostly the former. You know, it, it depends who you ask and what they think about
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Jewish essentialism. You know, can you, if you're Jewish, you're Jewish. And one of the questions
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you sent me was, you know, can you be a Jewish atheist? Well, yeah. If you think of Judaism as
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both an ethnicity and also a way of finding your identity in a certain history related to certain
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events and certain texts. I do think that after the harem, Spinoza no longer saw himself as Jewish.
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That is, he being Jewish no longer played a role in his self-identity. But he's a part of Jewish
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history because he was Jewish. And the events of his life were events in Jewish history, even if he
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continued to refer to the Jews as a third person and had very unkind things to say about Jews,
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about, not about Jewish individuals, but about Judaism. So, you know, I, I do think
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why, I suppose one could renounce one's Judaism. Spinoza didn't officially do so,
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even though Judaism renounced him. And the harem document says you are expelled from the people
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of Israel. And that sounds like we're taking away your decoder ring and your membership card and all
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that. But in fact, you know, who has the authority to tell someone that they are not Jewish?
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Right, right. Well, I mean, if I remember, I'm going back now, maybe 30 years, if I remember what
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this particular rabbi told me, he sort of couched it in the language of a Jewish soul. So that makes
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it a bit more difficult to revoke the card, right? I mean, you are born, you have a Jewish soul,
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nothing could ever change that. So you could literally renounce your Judaism and that still
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wouldn't matter. You'd always be Jewish. In a sense, that's comforting because, you know, you feel like
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it is what it is. And nothing that I could ever do or say could take me out of the tribe. What made
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you... Well, you know, here's the real test is when the Nazis come knocking, are they going to come
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after you? As I was saying that, that's exactly what I thought, given my own personal history of
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putting on really good running shoes and escaping from the Muslim extremists who wanted to kill us.
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So you're right. It doesn't matter to those who want to kill me whether, you know, my card has been
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revoked or not. You're exactly right. So one of the things that I study is psychology of decision
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making. That was actually the topic of my doctoral dissertation. So I'm always fascinated by the sort
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of really important decisions that people make in their lives. So then in your case, you know, okay,
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fine, you want to be a philosopher, you want to be a professor of philosophy, there's a million things you
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could study. What leads you to decide, well, I'm particularly interested in 17th century philosophy
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and I'm interested in these three gentlemen. Now, obviously there's a link between them,
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but why these three? Why wasn't it somebody else? What's the mechanism that says these guys resonate
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with me? That's a good question. And I think the story goes way back to my very first undergraduate
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class in 1976. I went to Washington University in St. Louis. And for some reason, I had no idea what I
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was going to major in. And for some reason, I took a philosophy class my very first semester.
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And it was the first class that I attended, the first meeting. And the professor was so exciting,
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so enthusiastic, and he made it come alive. I immediately said, that's what I want to do.
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Wow. Did you ever tell that professor that exact story? He knows, or he knew, because we eventually
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became good friends after I graduated. I took a number of classes with him. I probably annoyed
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the hell out of him. And he became a lifelong mentor. He died a few years ago. He became a lifelong
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mentor. And he inspired me to go into philosophy. Why 17th century? Well, because I read a lot of his
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stuff. And I thought, this really resonates with me. I loved doing the historical work.
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I loved doing the philosophical work. I think there's a big difference between
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somebody who's an intellectual historian and someone who does history of philosophy.
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Because when you do history of philosophy, you're still doing philosophy. You're examining theses and
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arguments, questioning their validity and soundness, asking what this person could have said,
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should have said, given their premises, and so on. So you're doing philosophy. You're engaged in a
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philosophical dialogue with somebody. It just so happens that they're over 300 years dead.
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So it's actually hard then, because you have to keep up both sides of the conversation.
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Whereas I think intellectual history is a very different kind of enterprise.
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So anyway, I always admired the kind of work he did. And the more I got engaged in it,
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the more I decided that that's where I wanted to do my own scholarship. When I was a graduate student
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at Columbia in New York, Columbia University, I was working mainly on Descartes and Cartesianism.
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And my dissertation was on problems in the Cartesian philosophy, problems about knowledge and mental
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states. But then one evening, I was having dinner. I was living on 107th Street between Broadway and
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Riverside. I have an Orthodox sister who was living at 89th Street on West End Avenue. So just,
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you know, 15, 16 blocks away, 17 blocks away. And she invited me over for Shabbat dinner. And her
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rabbi was there. And he said, what are you working on? And I explained the topic of my dissertation.
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And he said, why are you working on those Goyesh philosophers? Somehow that stuck with me. I, you know,
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I went on, I continued to do my very technical work in 17th century philosophy on Cartesianism.
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I got the job I got at Wisconsin, been very happy here. And then when I got tenure, I realized,
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wouldn't it be, and we had kids, small children at the time. And I thought, well, if I'm going to
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squirrel myself away from playing with my children, it better be for something that more than 10 other
00:27:14.720
people are going to read. And so I thought, okay, I want to continue working on 17th century philosophy,
00:27:20.000
but I want to write something that will reach a broader audience. And then I also, that little,
00:27:26.000
that little kernel that that rabbi had planted started to grow into a full grown thought. I
00:27:32.560
thought, okay, so I want to work on 17th century. I want to write something for a broader audience.
00:27:36.800
And I want it to be on something of related to Judaism and my Jewish heritage. And then I realized
00:27:42.960
that Spinoza gives me all three. It's still 17th century philosophy. A biography of Spinoza had
00:27:49.600
never been written. And I thought Spinoza is quite a popular figure and a biography of Spinoza could
00:27:55.840
really reach a broad audience. And in a manner of speaking, it was a Jewish theme because I had to
00:28:02.000
investigate the Jewish world of 17th century Amsterdam. Now, when I was visiting that same sister,
00:28:09.280
who at the time was now ultra-Orthodox and living in Jerusalem, I went with her husband,
00:28:15.840
my brother-in-law to his yeshiva, and we were talking about my work. And there was an old rabbinic
00:28:22.080
figure in the corner. And he said, did I hear somebody mentioned Spinoza? And I said, yes,
00:28:27.280
I'm writing a biography of Spinoza. And he just went like this.
00:28:30.560
What a fantastic answer. You know, because oftentimes, if I were to ask other academics,
00:28:41.360
I mean, I don't want to say it's haphazard or accidental, but, you know, they'll say, oh, I
00:28:45.280
can't really identify the genesis of how I landed on this. Whereas, you know, you traced literally down
00:28:51.920
to, you know, the street corner of where you had the Shabbat dinner. So that's fantastic. How did that
00:28:59.840
book go? Let me put it up again so that people can see it. Well, I said, find stores everywhere.
00:29:04.480
It's actually, so that's the first edition. There's actually a second edition that I published
00:29:10.400
20 years later, because there was more material that we've discovered about his family background,
00:29:16.240
details about this or that aspect of his life. So the second edition is a little bit expanded from
00:29:22.640
the first. So for example, if you take, say, Stoicism, there's been a complete renaissance of
00:29:30.880
Stoic philosophy because all sorts of, you know, modern writers, many of whom may not be academics,
00:29:36.480
have taken an interest in it. And suddenly now you, you know, you hear Epictetus or Seneca or Marcus
00:29:42.560
Aurelius as if it's contemporary, you know, pop stars. Do you envision or hope that Baruch Spinoza
00:29:51.360
would ever become as popular as some of these guys, or is it a bit more difficult to make links
00:29:58.480
to the modern world? I think we're way past that point. Spinoza, unlike Descartes or Leibniz,
00:30:05.120
for example, Spinoza has really entered the public realm. There are, if you look, if you really did a
00:30:12.000
survey of novels, poems, theater pieces, operas, works of visual art, music, Spinoza is all over
00:30:24.960
there. They're dedicated works, films. Spinoza is all over the place in popular culture. Even,
00:30:31.520
so there's a grocery chain here in the United States called Trader Joe's. Have you heard of it?
00:30:35.440
Of course. Yeah. Well, they have these bagels that are called Spinoza bagels.
00:30:40.160
I didn't know that. There's a picture of Spinoza on the package. They're very bad bagels. I wouldn't
00:30:44.560
buy them. I like Trader Joe's, but I wouldn't buy them. You're speaking to somebody who's living in
00:30:48.560
Montreal, and Montreal bagels are known as the number one bagels in the world. So come on.
00:30:52.480
My family is from Montreal, and I totally agree. The best bagels, however, it depends. Are you a
00:30:58.880
Fairmount or a St. Vila person? Oh, look at you. I'm liking you more by the minute, although I'm a bit
00:31:03.840
insulted that you would ask such a question. Of course, it's St. Vila bagels. No, no, no, no, no.
00:31:08.880
That's not true. Well, so I think a good bagel has to have a crust that breaks, that crunches when
00:31:16.000
you bite into it. And I've always found the St. Vila bagels to be a little too soft. However,
00:31:22.000
they're the only Montreal bagels you can get delivered in the United States. And so I get my
00:31:26.800
monthly St. Vila bagels. So can I tell you a personal story? I don't think I've ever said this publicly.
00:31:33.680
Some of my earliest emails to my eventual wife, with whom I've been now almost 26 years,
00:31:43.040
were from the bagel shop on St. Vila. I had become friends with the gentleman who would
00:31:51.360
tend the place late at night. I used to live on Bernard Street in Outremont. And so I would go
00:31:57.200
after, say, a soccer match or something, or I taught a late class. I would go there and we'd hang out.
00:32:02.000
He'd give me some free bagels. And so I had just met my eventual wife. And it wasn't at a time when
00:32:09.120
we had cell phones and so on. This is in the 90s. And so he said, oh, why don't you go to the back of
00:32:15.520
the St. Vila bagel shop in my office? And you could send some emails there. Well, last year we
00:32:22.080
celebrated our 25th anniversary and she put together a montage of every single year that
00:32:27.360
we've had together. And she took a screenshot of two of the emails from our first year together.
00:32:34.320
And they come from St. Vila bagel. What do you think of that story, Steve?
00:32:37.280
That's lovely. And actually, most people I've talked to from Montreal, they all seem to prefer
00:32:43.360
St. Vila. I'm happy to stand by Fairmount. So my father is from Montreal. He grew up on St.
00:32:50.160
Urban Street in, I guess, the neighborhood that's now called the Plateau or the Mile End.
00:32:54.400
Yeah. And there are a number of things he instilled in me. First of all, he taught me,
00:33:01.600
the lesson he always told me was always be a mensch. Secondly, he taught me how to ice skate
00:33:06.800
and how to play hockey. Third, he took me to Schwartz's as a young boy for his smoked meat.
00:33:16.080
Although I think he preferred Ben's delicatessen, which is no longer in existence.
00:33:19.600
No, I'm going to go with Schwartz. Yeah. I'm going to go with Schwartz.
00:33:24.400
Yeah. And also a love for the Montreal Canadiens. Ah, yes. Wow. I didn't know you had the Montreal
00:33:30.560
roots. All right. So let's move. Although I love doing all this personal stuff, I think it adds a
00:33:35.680
human element. Let me bring you, let's go back to geeking out. What are your thoughts on other
00:33:42.400
philosophical strands? So for example, one of the guys that I love is Karl Popper because of,
00:33:47.840
you know, philosophy of science and so on, epistemology, so on. But I despise postmodernism.
00:33:54.640
As a matter of fact, in this book right here, in the yellow book, in the parasitic mind,
00:33:58.960
where I talk about certain idea pathogens and parasitic ideas, I argue that the granddaddy of
00:34:04.800
all parasitic ideas is postmodernism. Am I off? Am I too nasty to postmodernism? Or am I being too
00:34:13.680
charitable in saying that it is a form of intellectual terrorism? It's even worse than that.
00:34:18.800
So to me, postmodernism, so we're just talking about postmodernism in intellectual and literary
00:34:24.480
matters. Because I think in terms of visual art and architecture, it's a very interesting
00:34:30.320
set of developments. But in terms of philosophical thinking, I have no truck with it whatsoever.
00:34:36.640
And I think you would find very rare anybody in an Anglo-American philosophy department who's
00:34:44.640
interested in Derrida, Lacan, and all of the poststructuralist and postmodernist. To me,
00:34:53.040
life is too short to try to make sense of the opacity of their writings. And the whole project to me
00:35:00.800
seems impenetrable. And at my age, I'm not going to spend any time on it.
00:35:06.240
Well, I'm relieved to hear you say that. So here's a theory I have. And I'm asking you here
00:35:12.960
to speculate because I don't think you have any direct evidence, but hear me out in terms of my
00:35:18.000
theory. So I actually think that the way these guys began, it's a form of sexual signaling from,
00:35:25.280
I mean, literally from evolutionary theory. So I can get up, I'm speaking now as one of the
00:35:29.760
French postmodernists could be Jacques Lacan, it could be Jacques Derrida, it could be Foucault,
00:35:34.480
it could be all these idiots. Okay, and I get up in front of a crowd, I engage in some full
00:35:40.400
profundity that exactly sounds profound, because it is impenetrable. So I'm pulling here a nice,
00:35:46.880
you know, illusion magic trick, whereby the audience has one of two things they can do,
00:35:52.480
they can either say, I don't think what he's saying makes any sense, because I'm dumb,
00:35:57.600
or because he's a charlatan. Most people end up going for the former, it must be that this
00:36:03.040
professor who's standing up in front of the Princeton University crowd is so smart that it's
00:36:07.680
way above my head. And then those postmodernists realize that they can actually become super
00:36:13.920
prestigious and get all sorts of hot women, or in Michel Foucault's case, maybe hot guys. And off we
00:36:21.200
go with the train of bullshit. What do you think of this theory?
00:36:24.000
I think you've given it a lot more thought than I ever have. And you've subjected it to a much
00:36:28.720
deeper analysis. I might actually make an exception for Foucault, at least some of the things of some
00:36:34.480
of the early writings of his that I've read, like The Order of Things, which I think is a serious piece
00:36:40.000
of scholarship on language and categorization and ontology. But, you know, a lot of, I do think a lot
00:36:48.480
of what, to use the word charlatanism, I think is probably correct. But again, I haven't paid much
00:36:54.240
attention at all, just because I'm busy. I'm busy enough trying to make sense of people like Leibniz
00:37:00.000
and Spinoza and Maimonides and others, who I find deeply interesting and a constant source of wisdom.
00:37:08.000
Do you feel that at any point, you will have known all that there is to know about these three
00:37:15.120
individuals? I'm talking about Decaf, Leibniz, and Spinoza? Or is it, I mean, it's not an infinite
00:37:21.040
well, but you're only scratching the surface of what you could potentially know?
00:37:26.080
Yeah, it's going to be endless. The thing about Spinoza is that, and I think this is true of Maimonides as
00:37:31.120
well. Once they get their talons in you, that's it. You're done. You're captured. And I'm teaching
00:37:37.920
a course this semester, History of Modern Philosophy. We're doing Spinoza right now. And I tell the
00:37:43.120
students, I've read The Ethics so many times. And every time I read it, it's more difficult,
00:37:49.520
because things you thought you understood, you realize you don't really understand.
00:37:54.080
You come at it with new questions that hadn't been answered yet. And so I think reading and rereading
00:37:59.760
and studying Spinoza and Leibniz, whose output was enormous, and such a difficult text as Maimonides'
00:38:07.360
Guide to the Perplexed, I think it's a lifelong project. And if you think you've answered all the
00:38:12.880
questions and you understand it all, then you haven't been reading it closely enough.
00:38:17.200
It almost sounds like Richard Feynman's famous quote, if you think you understand quantum physics,
00:38:22.720
you don't understand quantum physics. So it's almost like that. All right, let me ask.
00:38:27.120
I do think I understand Spinoza. But I don't think I've fully understood it.
00:38:32.640
Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. I did include this as one of the list of things I want to ask
00:38:38.800
you. It's kind of a bit more fun. Hopefully, you'll enjoy playing along. So you've been tasked
00:38:45.360
to invite the top 10 historical people to that party of yours. Who are they going to be? You don't
00:38:50.880
have to go through all 10, but you give me the people that absolutely have to be there. I'm
00:38:55.200
guessing those three will be there. Who else are we bringing to the party?
00:38:59.120
Well, yeah, Leibniz is a little kooky. So yeah, definitely Spinoza, definitely Maimonides,
00:39:12.000
Yeah, I don't think Aristotle would be much fun. Plato would be interesting,
00:39:15.280
but I'd rather hear from Socrates. And I'm afraid Plato would just take up the conversation
00:39:19.120
away from Socrates. Do they have to be philosophers?
00:39:22.480
They don't. I mean, you could tell me if you want whatever, some singer, but I was thinking
00:39:28.960
since I've got an esteemed intellectual, maybe we could restrict them to the cerebral life.
00:39:38.880
Yes. Because, well, you know, he's a prophet of freedom and emancipation, despite, you know,
00:39:47.280
there's not a single American president that doesn't have blood on his hands. And I'm not
00:39:50.720
just talking about the Civil War. I'm talking about Lincoln's policies towards indigenous people. But
00:39:55.680
say what you will, Lincoln was Lincoln. And I would be, there are so many questions. I mean,
00:40:01.360
the reason why I want these people there is just because I have so many questions for them,
00:40:05.760
as well as what would be wonderful to see them interact with each other. So we have Socrates,
00:40:10.800
we have Maimonides, we have Lincoln, we have Spinoza, maybe Leibniz if we're feeling generous.
00:40:19.120
David Hume, I think would be a good person to have. A nice, I think he's a very sociable guy,
00:40:24.480
which means I wouldn't invite Kant because Kant would just deaden all the fun. Lincoln,
00:40:30.080
possibly Thomas Jefferson, because I want to ask him about his slave holding. Pete Seeger,
00:40:37.760
one of my personal heroes. I'm not very familiar with him. Oh, Pete Seeger is one of the great
00:40:45.200
songwriters and civil rights activists of the 20th century. Okay. I'm sure you know his songs.
00:40:52.000
You know, I came close to inviting Burt Bacharach on my show. Is that, does that count as adjacent to
00:41:02.720
Burt Bacharach would put us to sleep. Pete Seeger would have us all singing. Okay. Wow.
00:41:08.240
I'm a huge fan of Simon de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. Oh, okay.
00:41:12.960
I wouldn't mind having them there. Um, no, no King Solomon, no Jesus, no, none of these kinds of guys.
00:41:22.160
Um, no, maybe, I don't know. Uh, not, not really. You know who I'd like to have, and this is,
00:41:28.160
this is an additional thing my father instilled in me. Um, I'd like to have Mordecai Richler there
00:41:32.800
because I think it would be really entertaining. From Montreal. From Montreal, a novelist with such a
00:41:38.880
keen eye for human fallibility and our peccadilloes. Uh, no Charles Darwin?
00:41:47.360
No. I mean, I admire Darwin, but, but he's not, he's not your guy. Okay. Well, he certainly,
00:41:51.520
we're talking about an entertaining dinner party. I think, uh, Jane Austen would be very interesting
00:41:56.080
here given her sensitivities to, uh, social relationships. I would love, I would love to
00:42:01.520
have her there. I think we, you know, we certainly need to include some women. Um, it's funny that you
00:42:07.520
mentioned Jane Austen because my previous guest guest, I haven't, I haven't posted the chat yet.
00:42:13.200
He's an evolutionary anthropologist from Oxford. His name is Robin Dunbar. And as we were talking
00:42:19.440
about creating consilience between the social sciences, the natural sciences and the humanities,
00:42:25.200
and how you could, you know, study literature from a Darwinian perspective, he, he specifically
00:42:30.160
referred to Jane Austen as sort of the, one of the original evolutionary psychologists, right? Because
00:42:35.760
in your ability to write such, uh, you know, works of fiction, you have to understand human
00:42:42.400
nature to do so. So you may not be called an evolutionary psychologist, but you are an
00:42:46.320
evolutionary psychologist. So that's, that's interesting. You know what I would do with her
00:42:50.000
is after everybody else has left, I'll have her stay behind and ask her to give me her assessment of
00:42:55.840
all the people that were at the party. I love that. But wait a minute, you're breaking one of those
00:43:00.080
edicts in Judaism about not gossiping. Well, it says you should never repeat Lashon Hara,
00:43:05.600
which means you could say it once. Fair enough. Very good. All right. What are some things? So I
00:43:12.080
know that you've got a couple of, I'm just, I want to be mindful of the time. Uh, I know that you've got
00:43:16.560
these two forthcoming books that, uh, we mentioned earlier, another one on Spinoza and one on Maimonides.
00:43:23.520
What are some other things that are making you wake up in the morning and rubbing your hands with
00:43:28.000
anticipation? Well, I'm about to become a grandfather twice. So for the first time,
00:43:33.120
twins, uh, no, our daughter is due in two weeks and our daughter-in-law is due in January.
00:43:38.560
Oh, amazing. Congratulations. That's what's keeping me distracted from all things philosophical,
00:43:43.680
although I'm trying to be very philosophical about it. But if you meant, um, other, other things,
00:43:49.520
um, I, you know, I still, I maintain, I wrote a book some years ago called Rembrandt's Jews,
00:43:54.000
which is about, I've always been fascinated with 17th century Dutch art. Um, and then a couple of
00:43:59.440
years ago, I published a biography of Frans Hals, the great Dutch portraitist from the 17th century.
00:44:04.480
I see a painting behind you that speaks to this. Um, that's, isn't that, isn't he?
00:44:10.160
Oh, that, yeah. That's the Vermeer. Yeah. That's from the, uh, Maury's house exhibit. Yeah. That's
00:44:15.120
the Vermeer girl with the pearl earring. Yeah. Um, yeah. And so I'm all, I also have a thought of
00:44:20.880
slowly working on a book about, uh, another Dutch painting. Um, also in the Maury's house,
00:44:26.720
where the girl with the pearl earring is, uh, the painting is it's the goldfinch. And there was
00:44:30.480
a novel some years ago by, Oh, I, I, I saw the movie based on it by, yeah, by Donna Tartt.
00:44:35.840
Amazing. But the, the history of that painting and the painter who painted it in Delft, uh,
00:44:41.120
is just a fascinating story. So I think, um, slowly I'm working on a book about that as well.
00:44:47.200
Should we expect Hollywood to call you as the executive, uh, consultant for a biography on,
00:44:55.440
uh, Baruch Spinoza. And then when they're looking for an extremely good looking version of Baruch
00:44:59.760
Spinoza, I will be the lead actor. Can we expect that? I don't think either of us should hold our
00:45:04.640
breath. Fair enough. Well, you know, there was, there is a Dutch director, Rudolf Vandenberg,
00:45:10.560
um, who was, who had scripted and has a production, uh, maybe even finished filming,
00:45:16.960
um, uh, a, um, uh, a film about Spinoza, a scripted film about Spinoza, not a documentary.
00:45:25.520
Uh, really sadly, he died, uh, suddenly two months ago, but I understand that the production company is
00:45:32.160
still, uh, wrapped, trying to get things, uh, in completed form. Would this be the, I mean,
00:45:37.840
I'm, I'm unaware. I can't think of another English speaking. I don't know if that, this is an English
00:45:42.000
one, but have there been many other biographies or any sort of, uh, works of art, visual art that
00:45:48.640
have had Spinoza as a central figure? Oh, lots. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, not films, but you know,
00:45:55.440
I, I have a list somewhere of sculptures, um, works of performance art, paintings, um, all to some,
00:46:04.800
in some way or other, uh, devoted to or inspired by Spinoza. Oh, very, yeah, but I was thinking,
00:46:10.880
go ahead. This goes back to what I was saying before, that he really has entered, you can walk
00:46:14.560
down the street and you won't find any Cartesians or Leibnizians, but you might run to somebody who
00:46:19.520
thinks of themselves as a Spinozist. Yeah. Very interesting. So there was a film, there was an
00:46:24.560
Israeli film, I think from the early nineties, maybe late eighties. It's a terrible film, but it's called,
00:46:31.680
um, in Hebrew, in Hebrew, uh, the film is called infinite joy, the life of B Spinoza as told by his
00:46:39.600
neighbors, very weird movie, but it's a movie about Spinoza. So should I even track it down or is it a
00:46:46.800
useless endeavor? Yeah, no, I think you should judge for yourself. Okay. Fair enough. Steven, what a
00:46:51.600
pleasure to have you stay on the line so we could say goodbye offline. I hope you've enjoyed yourself
00:46:55.680
and, uh, I'll let you know once it is posted. Thank you so much for coming on. Thanks so much for