Jesus therefore represented a liberation from the orthodoxy of Judaism. Jesus
preached a ‘religion of reason’ which valued love higher than all else. Spinoza
interpreted this as meaning both love of God and love of humanity. Nevertheless,
Christianity had also become set in its own rigid dogmas and outer rituals.”
“I don’t suppose these ideas were easy to swallow, either for the church or the
synagogue.”
“When things got really tough, Spinoza was even deserted by his own family.
They tried to disinherit him on the grounds of his heresy. Paradoxically enough, few
have spoken out more powerfully in the cause of free speech and religious tolerance
than Spinoza. The opposition he was met with on all sides led him to pursue a quiet
and secluded life devoted entirely to philosophy. He earned a meager living by
polishing lenses, some of which have come into my possession.”
“Very impressive!”
“There is almost something symbolic in the fact that he lived by polishing
lenses. A philosopher must help people to see life in a new perspective. One of the
pillars of Spinoza’s philosophy was indeed to see things from the perspective of
eternity.”
“The perspective of eternity?”
“Yes, Sophie. Do you think you can imagine your own life in a cosmic context?
You’ll have to try and imagine yourself and your life here and now ...”
“Hm ... that’s not so easy.”
“Remind yourself that you are only living a minuscule part of all nature’s life.
You are part of an enormous whole.”
“I think I see what you mean ...”
“Can you manage to feel it as well? Can you perceive all of nature at one
time—the whole universe, in fact— at a single glance?”
“I doubt it. Maybe I need some lenses.”
“I don’t mean only the infinity of space. I mean the eternity of time as well.
Once upon a time, thirty thousand years ago there lived a little boy in the Rhine val-
ley. He was a tiny part of nature, a tiny ripple on an endless sea. You too, Sophie, you
too are living a tiny part of nature’s life. There is no difference between you and that
boy.”
“Except that I’m alive now.”
“Yes, but that is precisely what I wanted you to try and imagine. Who will you
be in thirty thousand years?”
“Was that the heresy?”
“Not entirely ... Spinoza didn’t only say that everything is nature. He identified
nature with God. He said God is all, and all is in God.”
“So he was a pantheist.”
“That’s true. To Spinoza, God did not create the world in order to stand outside
it. No, God is the world. Sometimes Spinoza expresses it differently. He maintains
that the world is in God. In this, he is quoting St. Paul’s speech to the Athenians on
the Areopagos hill: ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’ But let us pursue
Spinoza’s own reasoning. His most important book was his Ethics Geometrically
Demonstrated.”
“Ethics—geometrically demonstrated?”
“It may sound a bit strange to us. In philosophy, ethics means the study of moral
conduct for living a good life. This is also what we mean when we speak of the ethics
of Socrates or Aristotle, for example. It is only in our own time that ethics has more or
less become reduced to a set of rules for living without treading on other people’s