The Courtier And The Heretic Part 11

Of course, according to the proper, literal reading of such a text-in which one ascribes propositions to philosophers in the same way that one affixes attributes to substances-Leibniz here affirms that, according to the latest science, the universe in which we live has some astonis.h.i.+ng logical properties. "What a wonderful world!" he sings, like a Louis Armstrong of seventeenth-century metaphysics. This is Leibniz in his incarnation as the great optimist, always looking at the sunny side of G.o.d's creations, strutting blindly into Voltaire's satirical grasp.

But, according to a second, more compelling reading, the "world" Leibniz asks us to celebrate seems to be not the real one, but an imaginary one-the fairy-tale land of pregnant, windowless monads. Look at my monads, Leibniz seems to say. Aren't they beautiful? Wouldn't it be nice if the real world were so intricate, so well const.i.tuted, so harmonious with our innermost needs and desires? The City of G.o.d, as it appears in Leibniz's final writings, s.h.i.+nes ever more like an ideal, like a place just over the next hill, rather than a description of the world in which we live. And perhaps it is not too much to suppose that at some point in later life the philosopher came to accept that this ideal was an impossible one-the kind that marks the end point of fantasy rather than of action.

Indeed, the brilliance of Leibniz's metaphysical visions grew in direct proportion to his deepening gloom on the future of European civilization. By the time of his last, glowing thoughts on the monads, he despaired that Europe had fallen victim to a "spiritual epidemic." He foresaw anarchy and revolution. And he understood that his vision of a united Christian republic belonged to the past, not the future. The gap between the world he described in his monadological writings and the world such as he experienced it only grew with time, until at last perhaps even Leibniz could no longer entirely overlook it.

There was some sadness in this knowledge, an aftertaste more wistful than bitter. When in his final years he heard of the idealistic Abbe de St. Pierre's utopian plan for establis.h.i.+ng perpetual peace by means of continental federalism, for example, Leibniz told a friend that a better alternative would be to return the church to its medieval role as the central power of Europe: But it would be necessary at the same time for the ecclesiastics to resume their old authority and that an interdiction and an excommunication make kings tremble, as in the time of Nicholas I or Gregory VII. Here is a plan which will succeed as easily as that of M. l'Abbe de St. Pierre; but since it is permitted to write romances, why should we condemn the fiction which would recall the age of gold to us?

The best of all possible worlds, it seems, has no gold in it; ours is an age of lead. The grand project of unifying the churches-the task that had consumed the greatest part of his labors in the fifty years of his working life-Leibniz here reduces to little more than a pleasing diversion, an exercise in creative writing. The impression that the great monadologist was a Panglossian optimist turns out to be as thin as a coat of silver on the back of a mirror. He was in fact one of history's great pessimists.

Leibniz's philosophy, in the final a.n.a.lysis, was not of this world; it was a mirage that marked the end point of his ceaseless activity, an illusion of stasis conjured out of perpetual motion. Leibniz was that part of us that is always striving, the element of desire for something new, something better than what we have-something that usually ends up looking like a hologram of the past, the imaginary idyll of a youth that never was. He was the Great Gatsby of his time, always believing in the green light in the distance, the ever receding destination of all our efforts. Perhaps only in the last years of his life did he understand that the end was a fiction, and that the price paid for living too long in one's dreams was a kind of hollowness in the present.

Leibniz never quite lived in the world of monads; he always only aspired to. In the universe of the monads, there is nothing more permanent, sure of its ident.i.ty, and secure from material depredations than the individual self. In the grubby world in which the monadologist struggled for physical and political survival, however, there was nothing more fragile and less sure of its ident.i.ty than that same self. The great courtier of Hanover spent the better part of a decade underground in the Harz Mountains; he took on Sisyphean a.s.signments such as researching the genealogy of an inbred family of aristocrats; and he pressed frantically for new jobs and higher salaries with a pa.s.sion that others could describe only as greed-all because he did not believe that the self could withstand the merciless a.s.saults of material forces. He craved praise, brooked no contradiction, and tended to burst spontaneously into the kind of effusive self-congratulation that others could view only as the mark of extraordinary vanity-because at some level he did not believe that the self could otherwise preserve its precarious ident.i.ty in an indifferent world. He spared no effort to guard himself against "dangerous" philosophical views-such as, princ.i.p.ally, those of Spinoza-because he did not believe that the self would always remain true to itself.

In the Empire of Reason Leibniz advocates in his political theory, the absolute truth sits on the throne; even G.o.d must answer to the immutable laws of justice, beauty, and reason. But in the political world Leibniz inhabited during office hours, nothing demonstrated less power than the unaided truth. From attempting to dupe the Poles into accepting a German king in 1669 to bedazzling Louis XIV with the prospect of Egyptian glory in 1672, from finessing the elevation of the House of Hanover by means of purportedly neutral intervention with the Holy Roman Emperor in 1692 to manipulating the English Succession by means of anonymous pamphlets later disowned in 1704, there was hardly a stratagem Leibniz pursued in his long and colorful political career that did not make use of deception. And this same lack of faith in the efficacy of the unvarnished truth seems to have penetrated to the core of his philosophical and theological work, too. In his eagerness to reunite a divided religious world, Leibniz did not scruple to lay at the foundation of the future church a number of doctrines in whose truth it is quite implausible to maintain he believed.

In the City of G.o.d that Leibniz glorifies in his philosophy, the principle of charity reigns supreme. But in Paris, Hanover, and the other cities in which he resided, Leibniz seems to have a.s.sumed that self-interest is the only reliable motivator of the human being. Whether the philosopher placed his personal good above the public good is perhaps a matter from which he may seek protection from epistemological barriers; that he acted on the a.s.sumption that other other people, as a rule, were inclined to do so, however, seems beyond dispute. Leibniz trusted no one. Indeed, he seems to have been so convinced that others would not support humanitarian quests such as his own that he was forced to take huge amounts of time off from those quests in order to secure for himself the money and power required to pursue them. Human beings are so self-interested, he insinuated, that without the promise of personal rewards and punishments in the afterlife, they can hardly be counted on to support the public good in this life. people, as a rule, were inclined to do so, however, seems beyond dispute. Leibniz trusted no one. Indeed, he seems to have been so convinced that others would not support humanitarian quests such as his own that he was forced to take huge amounts of time off from those quests in order to secure for himself the money and power required to pursue them. Human beings are so self-interested, he insinuated, that without the promise of personal rewards and punishments in the afterlife, they can hardly be counted on to support the public good in this life.

The stage on which Leibniz acted out his life belonged to another philosopher. The idea of the "self" he presupposed in his actions was not the permanent unity of his monadology, but the fragile collection of pa.s.sions that emerges from Spinoza's theory of mind. The political field within which he sought employment was not the Empire of Reason, but the secular order represented in Spinoza's works, according to which power is the first language of politics, and truth is spoken only rarely, and mostly in jest. And the premise of his daily practice was not the principle of charity, but Spinoza's doctrine that all people and all things act first and foremost out of self-interest. Like his G.o.d, Leibniz wanted to live only in the before and beyond; but like the rest of us, he never really left the present. The truth at the bottom of the great courtier's multifarious way of being is just this: Leibniz acted like a Spinozist Spinozist-and yet he was nothing like Spinoza Spinoza.

And therein lies the final clue to understanding the event that took place in November 1676. When Leibniz sat down with Spinoza in the house on the Paviljoensgracht, he acquired the kind of thing that philosophers have sought and for which they can only-in the fullness of time-be grateful: a form of self-knowledge. Spinoza showed him who and what he was. For Leibniz, it was a very hard kind of knowledge. In took forty years of life for it to percolate slowly through his being, until at last it expressed itself in a certain kind of acceptance. Leibniz was one of the great performers, a master of managing perceptions, of holding up the looking gla.s.s that allows us to flatter ourselves in flattering him. If, just before that final bow, the wig slipped off its perch, exposing something of the artist underneath, then we should imagine that he saved for us a sly wink and wan smile of farewell, comfortable at last in the role that was his to play.

IN EARLY NOVEMBER 1716, the philosopher's hands and shoulders seized up. He spent eight days lying in bed, attended by his secretary and his coachman, aggressively fending off suggestions that he should be seen by a doctor. On the ninth day he learned that a certain famous physician whom he had met previously at a spa and who was known for his able care of local aristocrats happened to be in Hanover. Starting to get delirious, he agreed to accept a house call. 1716, the philosopher's hands and shoulders seized up. He spent eight days lying in bed, attended by his secretary and his coachman, aggressively fending off suggestions that he should be seen by a doctor. On the ninth day he learned that a certain famous physician whom he had met previously at a spa and who was known for his able care of local aristocrats happened to be in Hanover. Starting to get delirious, he agreed to accept a house call.

The philosopher greeted the doctor with a lengthy lecture on the nature and genesis of his ailments. His discourse turned heated and incoherent. He began to use strange terms borrowed from alchemy and digressed at length on recent successes by a certain Florentine in converting half an iron nail into gold. "The patient's story...was a feverish fantasy about making gold," the doctor recorded gravely in his notes.

The doctor exchanged glances with the secretary, prescribed a few potions, and departed. The secretary, who later wrote down his version of events, suggested to the dying man that a pastor come to give him the last sacraments.

"Fool, what should I confess?" the philosopher scoffed. "I have stolen or taken from no one."

The secretary reminded his master that he would soon pa.s.s into eternity.

"Also are other men mortal."

The secretary left his master for the evening.

On the following evening, the secretary heard a noise in the philosopher's chamber. He rushed in to find the patient attempting to burn some papers in the candle flame. The exhausted philosopher closed his eyes and sank into his secretary's arms.

The secretary pleaded with him once again to accept the sacraments.

The philosopher opened his eyes wide but said nothing.

"Does my lord not recognize me?" the frightened a.s.sistant asked.

The philosopher opened his eyes wider. "I know you very well," he said calmly. He asked for his nightgown, and the secretary yelled for the coachman to bring it.

As the secretary struggled to pull the robe on his master's stiff body, the philosopher released a noxious cloud of gas. The smell was so evil that the secretary felt a sharp pain in his head. At last the philosopher relaxed, closed his eyes, and fell into a gentle sleep.

Leibniz died one hour later, at 10:00 P.M. P.M. on Sat.u.r.day, November 14, 1716. on Sat.u.r.day, November 14, 1716.

LEIBNIZ'S SOLE HEIR, his nephew Friedrich Simon Loeffler, arrived twelve days later, just in time for the official inquest. The examiners found among the deceased's possessions a large number of valuable books, a trove of ma.n.u.scripts and letters, the arithmetical calculating machine, and a little black box. Inside the box they found cash and securities valued at over 12,000 thalers. When Loeffler's wife heard the news, she was so astounded at their sudden good fortune that she fell to the floor in a frenzy and died of joy. his nephew Friedrich Simon Loeffler, arrived twelve days later, just in time for the official inquest. The examiners found among the deceased's possessions a large number of valuable books, a trove of ma.n.u.scripts and letters, the arithmetical calculating machine, and a little black box. Inside the box they found cash and securities valued at over 12,000 thalers. When Loeffler's wife heard the news, she was so astounded at their sudden good fortune that she fell to the floor in a frenzy and died of joy.

Eckhart took upon himself the funeral arrangements. He commissioned an elaborate coffin and issued invitations to the entire court of Hanover for the burial on December 14. King George and his friends, as it happens, were vacationing in a nearby hunting lodge, within easy reach of the cemetery.

None attended. No doubt Leibniz's disfavor with the King kept many of the courtiers away. According to Eckhart, though, they declined to attend because they had come to view the philosopher as an unbeliever. The absence of any signs of orthodox belief in his last hours, it seems, marked no change in behavior from the preceding decades. Leibniz never went to church, says Eckhart, despite being harangued on the subject regularly by the local ministers.

As neither the court nor Leibniz's rich and recently widowed heir thought it worth the trouble to memorialize the dead atheist, his remains were interred with little ceremony in an unmarked grave. (Eventually the omission was made good with a simple copper plate, in which is inscribed Ossa Leibnitii [The Bones of Leibniz].) There were no six state carriages or throng of followers such as ushered Spinoza into Hades. According to a young Scottish acquaintance who happened to be in Hanover at the time, the funeral rites were so meager that "you would have thought it was a felon they were burying, instead of a man who had been an ornament to his country."

The Berlin Society of the Sciences allowed its founder's death to pa.s.s unremarked, as did the Royal Society of London. Eventually, the Royal Academy of Paris, at the insistence of the d.u.c.h.ess of Orleans, made s.p.a.ce for Fontenelle's belated eulogy of the great philosopher.

Leibniz affected hundreds of lives during his seventy years; and even the harshest judgment of his career must allow that his work in furthering the sciences and arts has been of indirect benefit to countless millions more. Yet, to judge by his funeral, it would seem that he died, like a windowless monad, having touched no one very deeply at all.

18.

Aftermath Justice is no more a.s.sured in the history of thought than it is in the rest of human experience. In the crucial half century after his death-the crucible of modernity-Spinoza was arguably the most important philosopher in the world. Yet, his influence was mostly negative and almost always unacknowledged. The incalculable impact he had on Leibniz is only one example, albeit the finest, of the immense but nearly invisible power Spinoza wielded over his contemporaries.

Eventually, of course, the tide of history turned in Spinoza's favor, and the ideas first expressed in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and the and the Opera Posthuma Opera Posthuma suddenly became as ubiquitous as water. Other writers inevitably waded in, however, and claimed credit for having discovered the ocean. Soon, the old controversies were forgotten, and the new historians mistook the earlier, malign suppression of Spinoza for a form of benign neglect. The philosopher of The Hague, they concluded, vanished from history shortly after his death, his works read by few and understood by almost none. Even the omnipresent Leibniz, they noted, had little to say about the fellow philosopher with whom he had the pleasure of conversing for a few days in November 1676. suddenly became as ubiquitous as water. Other writers inevitably waded in, however, and claimed credit for having discovered the ocean. Soon, the old controversies were forgotten, and the new historians mistook the earlier, malign suppression of Spinoza for a form of benign neglect. The philosopher of The Hague, they concluded, vanished from history shortly after his death, his works read by few and understood by almost none. Even the omnipresent Leibniz, they noted, had little to say about the fellow philosopher with whom he had the pleasure of conversing for a few days in November 1676.

Leibniz was no more fortunate in his posthumous fate than his rival. In the years immediately following the great monadologist's demise, a young professor of mathematics named Christian Wolf found public favor in Germany with a shelf-bending series of works that were said to be inspired by Leibniz. Sadly, the Leibnizian-Wolfian philosophy, as it came to be called, mainly served to provide ample evidence in support of the truism that none can wreak more damage on a philosopher's reputation than his own followers. Wolf's philosophical works, as the Germans realized somewhat after the rest of Europe, were exceeded in their volume only by their ba.n.a.lity. Wolf managed to replicate most of the absurdities of the system of the pre-established harmony while removing all of the original author's elegance and panache.

In early years of the Enlightenment, Leibniz achieved popularity as the spokesperson of a soft-core version of the new faith in reason. In the eyes of many, his Theodicy Theodicy in particular seemed to promise a happy third way between the hard truths of science and the seemingly outmoded doctrines of orthodox belief. Unfortunately, popularity brought scrutiny, and scrutiny soon led to scorn. With Spinoza largely forgotten and the profound nature of the challenge he represented still poorly understood, Leibniz's metaphysical system baffled most of its readers. Like a dialogue with every other line removed, the monadology lay exposed to incomprehension and ridicule, which it promptly received in undue measure. In England, where resentments over the priority dispute with Newton still festered, Leibniz became the b.u.t.t of satire from wits such as Jonathan Swift. The unkindest cuts, however, came from France. "Can you really maintain that a drop of urine is an infinity of monads, and that each one of these has ideas, however obscure, of the entire universe?" scoffed Voltaire. in particular seemed to promise a happy third way between the hard truths of science and the seemingly outmoded doctrines of orthodox belief. Unfortunately, popularity brought scrutiny, and scrutiny soon led to scorn. With Spinoza largely forgotten and the profound nature of the challenge he represented still poorly understood, Leibniz's metaphysical system baffled most of its readers. Like a dialogue with every other line removed, the monadology lay exposed to incomprehension and ridicule, which it promptly received in undue measure. In England, where resentments over the priority dispute with Newton still festered, Leibniz became the b.u.t.t of satire from wits such as Jonathan Swift. The unkindest cuts, however, came from France. "Can you really maintain that a drop of urine is an infinity of monads, and that each one of these has ideas, however obscure, of the entire universe?" scoffed Voltaire.

As the Enlightenment stumbled through revolution and reaction, both Leibniz and Spinoza emerged from obscurity in strange new incarnations. Spinoza's most popular and enduring persona dates from an evening in 1765 when Gotthold Ephraim Lessing picked up a dusty copy of the Opera Posthuma Opera Posthuma and discovered between its covers a mystical pantheist. The most infamous atheist of the seventeenth century became the "G.o.d-intoxicated man" of Novalis. Even today, the dreamy, reclusive spiritualist dominates the public image of Spinoza. The political revolutionary who sought to overthrow theological tyranny and deconstruct the very idea of spirituality has long been forgotten. and discovered between its covers a mystical pantheist. The most infamous atheist of the seventeenth century became the "G.o.d-intoxicated man" of Novalis. Even today, the dreamy, reclusive spiritualist dominates the public image of Spinoza. The political revolutionary who sought to overthrow theological tyranny and deconstruct the very idea of spirituality has long been forgotten.

The battered ghost of Leibniz found new life, too-in a pair of separate and curiously incompatible incarnations. On the one hand, the author of the Monadology Monadology was celebrated as a "literary" philosopher, the inventor of "the unconscious," and the purveyor of a magical and romantic vision that could take us well beyond the limits of scientific rationality. On the other hand, somewhat later, Leibniz was hailed as a pioneering logician. Russell and others who sought to place the study of logic at the foundation of philosophy claimed to see in Leibniz's metaphysics an astonis.h.i.+ngly prescient and coherent application of fundamental principles of logic. was celebrated as a "literary" philosopher, the inventor of "the unconscious," and the purveyor of a magical and romantic vision that could take us well beyond the limits of scientific rationality. On the other hand, somewhat later, Leibniz was hailed as a pioneering logician. Russell and others who sought to place the study of logic at the foundation of philosophy claimed to see in Leibniz's metaphysics an astonis.h.i.+ngly prescient and coherent application of fundamental principles of logic.

In the histories of philosophy that dominate the trade, it was Immanuel Kant who sealed the fate of the two greatest philosophers of the seventeenth century. In his effort to tame philosophy into a discipline suitable for the modern academy, Kant trained his attention on the methods whereby philosophers purported to justify their claims to knowledge. He divided his immediate predecessors into two groups: the empiricists, who allegedly relied on sense experience to base their claims to knowledge, and the rationalists, who were said to derive their truths from pure reason. According to Kant's peculiar scheme, Leibniz and Spinoza wound up playing on the same side of history. Together with Descartes-the man Leibniz loathed and Spinoza regarded as seriously confused-they became the three rationalists. Leading the empiricist opposition was John Locke-the same whom Leibniz regarded as a wobbly crypto-Spinozist. He was joined by the Irish philosopher George Berkeley, whose view that physical objects are only ideas in the head strikes most readers as distinctly unempirical, and David Hume, whose ideas about the mind and causality look remarkably like those of Spinoza.

Hegel, who very much liked to see history move along in groups of three, strongly championed Kant's version of events; and the British, who were pleased to see a trio of their greatest philosophers of the period lined up against three continental musketeers, were more than happy to go along with the story, too. As a result, in philosophy cla.s.ses to the present, where irony tends to be a scarce commodity in any case, Spinoza and the man who dedicated his life to expunging Spinoza's name from the world's memory are presented as happy partners on the same side of a debate about the epistemological foundations of academic philosophy. Only very recently have scholars begun to rescue Leibniz and Spinoza from the revisionist schemes of their philosophical successors.

In the conventional histories of philosophy, Leibniz and Spinoza ultimately fall victim not to progress but to the idea of progress-an idea that first gained currency toward the end of the eighteenth century and that has since been taken up with gus...o...b.. all those who have a stake in presenting philosophy as a respectable, quasi-scientific discipline. Once we set aside suspect narratives of the history, however, it becomes clear that, far from being left behind by their modern successors, Leibniz and Spinoza remain unsurpa.s.sed today as representatives of humankind's radically divided response to the set of experiences we call modernity. Much of modern thought simply wanders in the s.p.a.ce between the two extremes represented by the men who met in The Hague in 1676.

The active response to modernity inaugurated by Spinoza has supplied the basic theory for the modern, liberal political order, as well as the underpinnings of modern science. Its aim is to show us how to be moral in a secular society, and how to seek wisdom where nothing is certain. In its religious or mystical moments, it is the experience of a new kind of divinity-or perhaps the revival of one that was lost to the western world during the period of theocratic rule. Its effects are easily discerned even in thinkers who publicly derided Spinoza-Locke, Hume, Voltaire, and Nietzsche, to name some examples.

And yet, although the world we live in is perhaps better and more originally described by Spinoza, the reactive form of modernity that began with Leibniz has in fact become the dominant form of modern philosophy. Anxious over the apparent purposelessness of the world revealed by modern science; bitter about the threatened demotion of humankind from its special place in nature; alienated from a society that seems to recognize no transcendent goals; and unwilling to a.s.sume personal responsibility for happiness-a needy humankind has reinvented the Leibnizian philosophy with abandon over the past three centuries.

Kant's attempt to prove the existence of a "noumenal" world of pure selves and things in themselves on the basis of a critique of pure reason; the nineteenth-century-spanning efforts to reconcile teleology with mechanism that began with Hegel; Bergson's claim to have discovered a world of life forces immune to the a.n.a.lytical embrace of modern science; Heidegger's call for the overthrow of western metaphysics in order to recover the truth about Being; and the whole "postmodern" project of deconstructing the phallogocentric tradition of western thought-all of these diverse trends in modern thought have one thing in common: they are at bottom forms of the reaction to modernity first instantiated by Leibniz.

All begin with the conviction that there is some vital aspect of experience which escapes modern thought. All maintain that the purpose of life begins where modernity ends. All claim to discover the special and elusive meaning of existence through an a.n.a.lysis of the putative failures of modern thought. And all remain indissolubly attached to precisely that which they oppose.

Leibniz's latter-day followers call the extramodern mystery at the core of existence any number of names: Being, Becoming, Life, the Absolute, the Will, nonlinear rationality, and more. But it is no different in principle from what Leibniz calls the principle of activity, the immortal soul, and, finally, the monad. The modern Leibnizians produce an equally diverse set of labels for that to which they are opposed: mechanism, instrumental reason, the Enlightenment, western metaphysics, phallogocentrism, and so on. But their nemeses are in the end the same thing that Leibniz calls materialism, the philosophy of the moderns, "the opinions of certain recent innovators," or, in moments of clarity, Spinozism.

LIKE ALL GOOD philosophers, Leibniz and Spinoza must eventually come to a rest somewhere outside of history. The two men who met in 1676 in fact represent a pair of radically different philosophical personality types that have always been part of the human experience. Spinoza speaks for those who believe that happiness and virtue are possible with nothing more than what we have in our hands. Leibniz stands for those convinced that happiness and virtue depend on something that lies beyond. Spinoza counsels calm attention to our own deepest good. Leibniz expresses that irrepressible longing to see our good works reflected back to us in the praise of others. Spinoza affirms the totality of things such as it is. Leibniz is that part of us that ceaselessly strives to make us something more than what we are. Without doubt, there is a little piece of each in everybody; equally certain is the fact that, at times, a choice must be made. philosophers, Leibniz and Spinoza must eventually come to a rest somewhere outside of history. The two men who met in 1676 in fact represent a pair of radically different philosophical personality types that have always been part of the human experience. Spinoza speaks for those who believe that happiness and virtue are possible with nothing more than what we have in our hands. Leibniz stands for those convinced that happiness and virtue depend on something that lies beyond. Spinoza counsels calm attention to our own deepest good. Leibniz expresses that irrepressible longing to see our good works reflected back to us in the praise of others. Spinoza affirms the totality of things such as it is. Leibniz is that part of us that ceaselessly strives to make us something more than what we are. Without doubt, there is a little piece of each in everybody; equally certain is the fact that, at times, a choice must be made.

Leibniz was a man whose failings were writ as large as his outsized virtues. Yet it was his greed, his vanity, and above all, his insatiable, all too human neediness that made his work so emblematic for the species. With the promise that the cruel surface of experience conceals a most pleasing and beautiful truth, a world in which everything happens for a reason and all is for the best, the glamorous courtier of Hanover made himself into the philosopher of the common man. If Spinoza was the first great thinker of the modern era, then perhaps Leibniz should count as its first human being.

Spinoza, on the other hand, was marked from the start as a rara avis rara avis. Given his eerie self-sufficiency, his inhuman virtue, and his contempt for the mult.i.tudes, it could not have been otherwise. Yet the message of his philosophy is not that we know all that there is to know; but rather that there is nothing that cannot be known. Spinoza's teaching is that there is no unfathomable mystery in the world; no other-world accessible only through revelation or epiphany; no hidden power capable of judging or affirming us; no secret truth about everything. There is instead only the slow and steady acc.u.mulation of many small truths; and the most important of these is that we need expect nothing more in order to find happiness in this world. His is a philosophy for philosophers, who are as uncommon now as they have always been.

Notes.

Full biographical information for most sources cited in these notes can be found in the following section. For lists of abbreviations used for primary texts, see pages 33233. Thus, for example, in the first note below the source is Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Samtliche Schriften und Briefe Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Samtliche Schriften und Briefe ("A"), series II, volume 1, page 535. ("A"), series II, volume 1, page 535.

1. The Hague, November 1676 "the most impious...": Antoine Arnauld, cited by Leibniz in A II.i.535.

"that insane and evil man...": Bishop Pierre-Daniel Huet, cited in Friedmann, p. 204.

"horrible" and "terrifying": A II.i.172.

"intolerably impudent": To Thomasius, A II.i.66.

"I deplore that a man...": A I.i.148.

"When one...compares one's own small talents...": Diderot, Encyclopedie Encyclopedie.

"It is so rare for an intellectual...": Orleans, p. 282.

His limbs, it was said: For these and other colorful descriptions of Leibniz in person, see Guhrauer, especially the final chapter.

"He is a man who, despite...": Klopp ii.125; Muller, pp. 27ff.

13 "I love this man...": Sophia Charlotte, cited in Guhrauer ii.248.

"To be a follower of Spinoza...": Hegel, iii.257.

he famously replied: "I believe in Spinoza's G.o.d": Clark, pp. 413ff.

"well-formed body": Freudenthal, p. 3.

"beautiful face": Freudenthal, p. 59.

"pleasing physiognomy": Freudenthal, p. 237; see also Nadler (1999), p. 155.

"so that one might easily know...": Freudenthal, p. 59.

"a few hours": To Ernst von Hessen-Rheinfels, A II.i.535.

"anecdotes concerning the affairs of those times": Theodicy Theodicy, sec. 376.

"waste time in refuting": Theodicy Theodicy, sec. 173.

"many times and at great length": To Gallois, A II.i.379.

"You know that I once went a little too far...": A VI.vi.73.

2. Bento "the kind of monster...": Limborch, cited in Meinsma (1909) p. 532.

For the history of Jews in Spain and Portugal, see Nadler (2003) and Raphael.

"in a free and unimpeded way": See Nadler (1999) and (2003) on the Portuguese Inquisition.

Isaac's in-laws: For Spinoza family history, see especially Gullan-Whur.

"the most beautiful city in Europe": Freudenthal, p. 3.

"love nothing so much as their freedom": Israel (1995), pp. 1ff.

"It is hardly to be imagined...": Temple, p. 106.

"This simulacrum simulacrum of liberty...": A IV.i.357ff. of liberty...": A IV.i.357ff.

"From Spain came the Portuguese Jews...": A IV.i.358, 357.

"Ritch merchants, not evill esteem'd off...": Gullan-Whur, p. 8.

"I saw giants in scholars.h.i.+p...": Nadler (1999), p. 61.

"Nature endowed him...": Freudenthal, p. 36 "He was not yet fifteen...": Freudenthal, p. 24.

When he was around ten: Freudenthal, p. 20.

"a celebrity among the Jews...": Freudenthal, p. 4.

the offending rabbi off to Brazil: See Nadler (1999) and (2003) for interesting detail on Morteira and the Jewish community in Amsterdam.

"He admired the conduct...": Freudenthal, p. 4.