Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

CHAPTER 8
Spinoza: metaphysics and knowledge
G.H.R.Parkinson
The philosophical writings of Spinoza are notoriously obscure, and they have
been interpreted in many ways. Some interpreters see Spinoza as (in the words of
a contemporary) 1 ‘the reformer of the new [sc. Cartesian] philosophy’. That is,
they see him as someone who has been deeply influenced by Cartesianism, but who
has introduced major changes in it, without rejecting it altogether (as, say,
philosophers such as Hobbes and Gassendi did). Others, however, see Spinoza’s
philosophy as deeply imbued with medieval thought, both Jewish and Christian.
In the words of one prominent exponent of this view, 2 ‘his mind is crammed with
traditional philosophic lore and his thought turns along the beaten logical paths
of mediaeval reasoning’. Such a way of thinking would be alien to that of
Descartes, who (like many seventeenth-century philosophers) spurned the
philosophy of the Middle Ages. There are other disagreements between
Spinoza’s interpreters. For example, some see his philosophical writings as a
way of expressing a kind of mystical insight, but others deny this. 3 In trying to
decide between these interpretations, it will be helpful to begin by giving some
account of the social and intellectual milieu within which Spinoza formed his
ideas.
Spinoza was born in Amsterdam on 24 November 1632. His father, Michael
de Spinoza, was a Jewish merchant, one of many Portuguese Jews who had taken
refuge in the Netherlands to escape religious persecution. The family language
would have been Portuguese, and the philosopher who later called himself by the
Latin name ‘Benedictus’ was generally known in his youth by the Portuguese
name ‘Bento’. (It is worth adding that the Hebrew name ‘Baruch’, which is still
sometimes used to refer to Spinoza, was for ritual purposes only.) The
Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam had founded in 1616 a school, the ‘Talmud
Torah’ (‘The Study of the Law’), and the young Spinoza would have attended
this school. Here, there were in effect two divisions, a junior and a senior.
Instruction in the junior division continued until a boy’s thirteenth year; 4 it was
confined to the Bible and the elements of the Talmud, more advanced study
being reserved for the senior division. The registers of this senior division have
been preserved, and it is notable that, among the entries for the relevant years,
the name of Spinoza is not to be found. It would be wrong, then, to suppose that