I enjoyed this review, Laura, but please fix one little glitch: Rebecca Goldstein is at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, not Trinity College, Cambridge! See http://www.trincoll.edu/~rgoldste/teaching.htm

Laura Miller closes her most excellent piece on Spinoza by saying: "For reasons that may always remain an enigma, when we look deep into Spinoza's (famously beautiful) eyes, what we see is very often a reflection of ourselves, perhaps even our best selves." This, it has always seemed to me, precisely what Spinoza was trying, in his own passion, to explain to us: the God is Us and He is precisely the part of Us that we cannot see except in the eyes of others. Which may explain his lack of faith in romantic love: there are too many others to love, too much to love, to box ourselves in so.

Miller then, in the same breath, refutes the ultimate good in all that Spinoza urged us toward, namely that we do not start and do not end but, as "children" or the Universe, we always are, always have been and always will be, by saying: "If Spinoza was right about the universe, he's not around (anywhere) to either appreciate the irony of this or to rail against our solipsism. And that's just one more reason for us to love him so much."

It would seem that according to Spinoza, he is now more readily to be looked upon than when he was concretely with us. And that is the promise which was stolen by the first organized religion and has been by every one which has ever followed. Now to get back to that "quiet, pious life." Amen, good sir.

Jews don't think that "God is a person".

My husband loves Spinoza but I have always found him to some extent impenetrable. This article inspires me to try again and I'll buy Goldstein's book.

Reading about Spinoza's ideas about 'substance', and apprehending God through 'reason' I am struck by the similarity of words and vision with some of Mary Baker Eddy's writings on Christian Science. I wonder if she was influenced by Spinoza? Reading about his thoughts on romantic love, the 'specialness' of humans, let alone a race of humans or a particular human I am reminded of A Course in Miracle's warnings against 'the special relationship' of romantic love.

If these similarities are born out as I learn more then Spinoza, then he has been more of an influence in my life than I heretofore had realised.

A thoughtful discussion of these books. Of course people would see what they want when looking at Spinoza—or, for that matter, at any long-dead figure whose aura or shadow yet lingers over us "moderns." (Take Jesus, for example, as a man whose "philosophy" and life story have been revised ad nauseum in countless directions; everybody wants to claim him.) We humans are constantly reinventing our saints and revising our myths about those ancients whom we feel strongly drawn to. We do this purely out of an emotional need, a "religious" need (in the sense that in the US, Democracy is a secular religion): we need to keep our saints current, so we can look back and feel we have some guidance from our spiritual or philosophical predecessors, when, in fact, we are usually only thrusting ourselves back upon them.

It seems to me that to understand the man and his philosophy, one is better served by reading translations of his own words, reading about his times, reading other thought that he had access to, and then formulating one's own interpretations, rather than reading about how other modern, love-struck scholars wish he was, claiming him in order to legitimize some of their own pet notions about the world as they see it today. Scholarly works written by those who are thus "smitten" should be held as suspect.

In fact, one has to wonder how clearly these scholars are, in fact, looking at Spinoza. What strikingly never comes up in this discussion, is that Spinoza's monistic conception of god sounds uncannily as though it were taken directly out of ancient Eastern philosophy—ideas which predated him by over 2,000 years. (You can read this in the Upanishads.) I know I'm not the first to have noticed this; the similarity is much too blatant to escape anyone exposed to both. Coincidence? Or is it likely that a lettered man of his age might have been acquainted with some of these essential notions from Eastern philosphy, which had circulated at least in bits and parts via the Greeks, though he necessarily would have reinterpreted and fused those ideas with his own Western, rationalist worldview, and drawn them to some new conclusions. —Obviously, Spinoza was no Eastern mystic, and far be it from me to suggest such a thing. I merely point out that this is quite a lacunae is the discussion of anyone purporting to understand his influences and meanings.

My Zeyda (grandfather) never read Spinoza much less heard of him, I imagine he was too busy trying to survive and take care of his family both in "the old country" and in the States, like any eldest son of that time and that world did, to have much time to consider the idea that there really was no good or evil in God's eyes. However, this being said, as I've grown older I've come to the realization that, in many ways, he was a devout follower of Spinoza's thought. He proved this to me when, shortly before he died, he confided to me with the utmost conviction,

"Chosen people? I wish God would have chosen someone else."

Thanks for the article. Have been interested in Mr. Spinoza's thought since I first read the work of Isaac Bashevis Singer (whose characters quote prodigiously from Spinoza in many of his books,) and these too works seem like interesting and informative doorways in for us non-professional philosophers.

Usha writes: "Or is it likely that a lettered man of his age might have been acquainted with some of these essential notions from Eastern philosphy, which had circulated at least in bits and parts via the Greeks, though he necessarily would have reinterpreted and fused those ideas with his own Western, rationalist worldview, and drawn them to some new conclusions."

I do not think it is likely, and this idea has been suggested in other books for some time -- although it is possible, at least. However, it seems more likely that Spinoza could, by taking the current Cartesian substance metaphysics and applying the geometric method, come to similar conclusions as the "Easterns." Monism was already present since Parmenides, with whom Spinoza was no doubt familiar, while Spinoza's ethics has more than a little in common with Stoicism.

One crucial difference that separates Spinoza qua philosopher from any "mystics" is that the former offers arguments, albeit curious ones, while the latter give voice to usually hazy intuitions without bothering to give evidence besides their own "insight" to back them up.