The Word on Spinoza's Ring

Bento Baruch Benedictus de Espinoza wore a ring upon which he (personally) had engraved the image of a thorny rose and the Latin word "Caute." The flower represents a play on his name. Apparently, "spinoza" is the Spanish word for "thorn," and there can be little doubt that Benedict was aware that the powers-that-be regarded him as a thorn and his beliefs as thorny. In English the Latin word means "cautiously," so we can take it that Spinoza meant to remain a thorn, but to do so with caution. If we can judge by the way he lived his life -- especially, as regards the manner in which his works were published -- he was, to put it in the vernacular, "cautious to a fault."

Perhaps he adopted the life style of extreme caution after he was attacked at knife point in the year immediately preceding his banishment from the Jewish community of Amsterdam. His unorthodox views of the religion into which he was born were already well known, and it was for those views that he was attacked. In any case, during his lifetime he published only one book that bore his name on the title page, a geometric demonstration of Descartes' "Philosophy and Metaphysical Thoughts." But that book did not express Spinoza's own beliefs, a fact that was made clear in a brief preface to the book that Spinoza insisted someone other than himself should write. Later, his "Treatise on Theology and Politics" was anonymously published. It even bore a false publisher's name. None of his other work was published until after his death, at the tender age of 44. The "Ethics," a "Hebrew Grammar," and two unfinished pieces, the "Political Treatise" and a "Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect," were safely locked away in a small desk. Immediately after his death -- the next day -- the contents of the desk (still locked away) were sent to Amsterdam where they were shortly published, in both Latin (the language in which he wrote them) and in Dutch. The circle of friends who saw to the printing, by publishing the works in the language common people could read, seemed to be throwing Spinoza's caution "to the wind," in effect saying to the authorities who had dogged their friend throughout his life, "up yours!".

His friends -- none of them Jewish, most of them men of substantial means, and none of them particularly religious in the usual sense -- had less to fear than Spinoza, so felt no particular need for caution. One might thus be led to attribute to Spinoza himself a streak of cowardice, an attribution that might stick were it not for one particular incident. It seems that after Louis 14th's invasion of the Netherlands had finally been foiled, the "common people" decided to avenge the wave of destruction the French had caused. They chose for their scapegoat Jan de Witt, a man who could rightfully be compared to George Washington as the Father of his Country, for it was certainly de Witt who had led his nation to become the most democratic nation in Europe. But Holland still had its religious zealotry, headed by William of Orange, a pretender to the "presidency" and a man who would break down the already crumbly wall separating church and state. The mob, incensed by William's propagandists, murdered Jan de Witt and his brother, tore them limb from limb and fed their entrails to the dogs. When word of the atrocity reached Spinoza, he had to be physically restrained from racing into the street to denouce the mob as "The Greatest of the Barbarians." He had prepared a sign bearing those words, and would have posted it had his landlord, perhaps fearing for his own safety as a harborer of the heretic, not restrained him. Spinoza would almost certainly have been killed had he not been double-locked in his room. (He lived as a boarder, owning nothing of value save his books, his bed, and the lathe he used to grind lenses, an occupation that provided him a living.)

Spinoza had also inherited cautious ways from the Jewish community. The Jews in Amsterdam were, almost to a man, first generation descendants of Marrano exiles from Portugal and Spain, people who had been driven from several homelands by their refusal to disavow their religion. They lived cautiously or not at all. But then Spinoza was doubly exiled, not only from the land of his ancestors on the Iberian peninsula, but from the tight-knit Jewish "nation" in Holland. "Caute" became his watchword because history had thrust it upon him. He lived as long as he did -- which was not long in any case -- because he lived cautiously.

You can read a much more eloquent and revealing portrait of Bento Baruch Benedictus de Espinoza in a beautifully written book, "Betraying Spinoza," by Rebecca Goldstein. The last chapter of the book -- how can I say this without seeming more of a sycophant than I already am -- I was in tears as the final moments of Spinoza's death unfolded in Ms Goldstein's remarkable prose. I seemed to be in that "upper room" with the dying Spinoza and the young doctor to whom Spinoza communicated his instructions regarding the small locked desk. If Ms Goldstein took a large measure of poetic license in her description of that scene, well, dear lady, you are forgiven. Your poetry worked. You have written a beautiful book.