Steven Nadler > Quotes

“Descartes was not interested in probabilities. He wanted absolute certainty. He had to be sure that indubitable knowledge, immune from skeptical attack, was possible.”
― Steven Nadler, The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes

“Religion as we know it, Spinoza argues in the work’s preface, is nothing more than organized superstition. Power-hungry ecclesiastics prey on the naïveté of citizens, taking advantage of their hopes and fears in the face of the vicissitudes of nature and the unpredictability of fortune to gain control over their beliefs and their daily lives. The preface of the Treatise both makes clear Spinoza’s contempt for sectarian religions and opens the way for his reductive and naturalistic explanations of central doctrinal and historical elements of the Judeo-Christian traditions.”
― Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age

“While some of his clerical opponents suggested that his proofs for God’s existence are so obviously bad that they must have been designed by a devious atheist to in fact undermine the belief in God’s existence, more secular-minded critics protested against Descartes’s resorting to God as a deus ex machina to solve an epistemological quandary, and they questioned the propriety of relying on matters of faith in what should be a project of rational inquiry.”
― Steven Nadler, The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes

“God made the world, but he also made it true that one plus one equals two. And just as he might have not made a world, so he might just as well have not made it true that one plus one equals two, or even have made it true instead that one plus one equals three. Similarly, “[God] was free to make it not true that all the radii of the circle are equal—just as free as He was not to create the world.”34”
― Steven Nadler, The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes

“God could have made mountains without valleys. And God could have made it the case that a triangle has interior angles whose sum is more or less than 180 degrees,”
― Steven Nadler, The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes

“When Mersenne circulated the manuscript of the Meditations among various philosophers and theologians to gather “objections,” he included the English thinker Thomas Hobbes and the French materialist Pierre Gassendi, an early modern reviver of the philosophy of Epicurus.”
― Steven Nadler, The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes

“Spinoza took the historical study of Scripture, and especially the question of its mundane authorship, much further than earlier thinkers. More than anyone else, Spinoza, with his willingness to go wherever the textual and historical evidence led, regardless of religious ramifications, ushered in modern biblical source scholarship.”
― Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age

“The more each one strives, and is able, to preserve his being, the more he is endowed with virtue”
― Steven M. Nadler, Spinoza's 'Ethics': An Introduction

“A man who is guided by reason" will have "strength of character." He "hates no one, is angry with no one, envies no one, is indignant with no one, scorns no one, and is not at all proud"; he will avoid "whatever he thinks is troublesome and evil, and moreover, whatever seems immoral, dreadful, unjust and dishonorable”
― Steven Nadler, Spinoza's 'Ethics': An Introduction

“what Spinoza offers is a contextual reading, one that looks at Scripture for what it is: a very human document composed at a particular time for very human purposes.”
― Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age

“Spinoza insists—in yet another audacious statement that must have incited the rage of his critics—that any book can be called divine, as long as its message is the proper one and it is effective in conveying it. “Books that teach and tell of the highest things are equally sacred, in whatever language and by whatever nation they were written.”93 Thus, it is still true, in a sense, that God is “the author of the Bible—not because God willed to confer on men a set number of books, but because of the true religion that is taught therein.”
― Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age

“His freedom consists precisely in the fact that the adequate cause of what he thinks, what he desires, and what he does lies within him, namely, his adequate ideas and his power of persevering.”
― Steven M. Nadler, Spinoza's 'Ethics': An Introduction

“The state can pursue no safer course than to regard piety and religion as consisting solely in the exercise of charity and just dealing, and that the right of the sovereign, both in religious and secular spheres, should be restricted to men’s actions, with everyone being allowed to think what he will and to say what he thinks.”34 This sentence, a wonderful statement of the principle of toleration, is perhaps the real lesson of the Treatise, and should be that for which Spinoza is remembered.”
― Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age

“It is only when one can transform oneself from this forlorn condition of passivity to something like an active and self-sufficient existence that one can claim to be free, happy, and, ultimately, blessed.”
― Steven M. Nadler, Spinoza's 'Ethics': An Introduction

“they imagine God’s power to be like the rule of some royal potentate, and Nature’s power to be a kind of force and energy. Therefore unusual works of Nature are termed miracles, or works of God, by the common people; and partly from piety, partly for the sake of opposing those who cultivate the natural sciences, they prefer to remain in ignorance of natural causes, and are eager to hear only of what is least comprehensible to them and consequently evokes their greatest wonder.”
― Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age

“Thus, our ordinary approach to labeling natural things as 'perfect' or 'imperfect' derives "more from prejudice than from true knowledge of those things.”
― Steven M. Nadler, Spinoza's 'Ethics': An Introduction

“Thus, Spinoza can say that while good and evil will remain relative to some standard, the standard itself is not relative to just anyone's conception of what the good life is but is in conformity with human nature itself.”
― Steven M. Nadler, Spinoza's 'Ethics': An Introduction

“The virtuous person is able to determine what is truly conducive to his well-being and what is not.”
― Steven M. Nadler, Spinoza's 'Ethics': An Introduction

“It is a life guided by reason and based in knowledge and understanding, where an individual does only what is truly useful for himself but also aids others in their own pursuit of perfection. The resulting moral philosophy is virtue-oriented. What matters most is not the actions that one performs, or even the intentions that one has, but above all the kind of person one is and the character one possesses.”
― Steven M. Nadler, Spinoza's 'Ethics': An Introduction

“A desire to do good for others and help them in their striving is generated by one's own living according to reason. "The desire to do good generated in us by our living according to the guidance of reason, I call morality”
― Steven Nadler, Spinoza's 'Ethics': An Introduction

“we know a good deal about the free person, including many things about what he believes and how he acts. His desires are directed by reason and his deeds informed by virtue.”
― Steven Nadler, Spinoza's 'Ethics': An Introduction

“In Spinoza’s philosophy, in other words, God is not the providential, awe-inspiring deity of Abraham. Rather, God just is the fundamental, eternal, infinite substance of reality and the first cause of all things. Everything else that is belongs to (or is a “mode” of) Nature.²¹”
― Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age

“For this reason, Spinoza insists—in yet another audacious statement that must have incited the rage of his critics—that any book can be called divine, as long as its message is the proper one and it is effective in conveying it. “Books that teach and tell of the highest things are equally sacred, in whatever language and by whatever nation they were written.”
― Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age

“The end of philosophy is truth and knowledge, the end of religion is pious behavior, or “obedience.” Reason, therefore, must not be the handmaiden of theology, or vice versa, and religion oversteps its bounds when it tries to limit intellectual inquiry and the free expression of ideas.”
― Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age

“When a person achieves a high level of understanding of Nature and realizes that he cannot control what it brings his way or takes from him, he becomes less anxious over things, less governed by the affects of hope and fear over what may or may not come to pass. No longer obsessed with or despondent over the loss of his possessions, he is less likely to be overwhelmed with emotions at their arrival and passing away. Such a person will regard all things with an even temper and will not be inordinately and irrationally affected in different ways by past, present, or future events. His life will be tranquil and not given to sudden disturbances of the passions. The result is self-control and a calmness of mind.”
― Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age

“Since all individuals, in the quest for survival and flourishing, are striving to maintain and even augment their own power, there will naturally be conflict, particularly when this striving is governed by the passions and directed at external goods coveted by others. People will experience envy, jealousy, love, hate, hope, and fear as they compete for the things they value. The virtuous person who is governed by reason, however, will not only see that these transitory goods contribute nothing to real happiness but will also recognize that his own well-being is best fostered when he is surrounded by other virtuous people who are living according to reason—that is, other people who know what the true goods are and pursue them, and who therefore are flourishing.”
― Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age

“By “Scripture alone” (sola Scriptura), Spinoza certainly means to exclude both the Maimonidean-rationalist recourse to an external philosophical canon and Calvin’s appeal to special divine illumination (the Holy Spirit).”
― Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age

“True religion, then—as opposed to sectarian religion—is about nothing more than moral behavior. It is not what you believe but what you do that matters.”
― Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age

“There is one group, however, for which the Treatise was definitely not intended: the masses. Or, at least, so Spinoza says.

"I know that the masses [vulgus] can no more be freed from their superstitions than from their fears. . . . I know that they are unchanging in their obstinacy, that they are not guided by reason, and that their praise and blame is at the mercy of impulse. Therefore I do not invite the common people to read this work, nor all those who are victims of the same emotional attitudes. Indeed, I would prefer that they disregard this book completely rather than make themselves a nuisance by misinterpreting it after their wont.”
― Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age

“Waving the Bible was (and still is) a powerful means of persuading the masses, not to mention the ruling elites, that the way of the predikanten—sectarian, intolerant, and (in terms of Dutch politics) conservative as it is—is God’s way.”
― Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age