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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Troubled by the expansion of ecclesiastic power in the Dutch Republic, and especially the meddling of Calvinist preachers in public affairs and in the lives of private citizens, Spinoza recognized that one of their most effective tools for justifying their usurpations was the Bible.11”
― Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age

“The moral doctrine is the clear and universal message of the Bible, at least for those who know how to read it properly. But the question is, what is the proper way to read it?”
― Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age

“Spinoza argues, there is “true religion,” which does not demand any particular conception of God, or even any belief in God whatsoever, much less empty rituals and ceremonies. True religion consists only in the ethical behavior of loving one’s fellow human beings and treating them with justice and charity.”
― Steven Nadler, Spinoza, Atheist

“The unphilosophical masses, who need to see themselves as acting in “obedience” to God’s law, have to be moved to justice and loving-kindness by adopting those tenets of universal faith and by the morally edifying stories of the ancient prophets, with the very humanlike God character, as lawgiver, promising rewards for obedience and destruction for waywardness. For the philosopher, on the other hand, who lives “religiously” from understanding rather than “obedience” to some imagined lawgiver, true religion consists in nothing more than living virtuously according to the guidance of reason and doing good both for oneself and for others.”
― Steven Nadler, Spinoza, Atheist

“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

“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

“What Spinoza wants to see is a politics of hope (for eternal reward) and fear (of eternal punishment) replaced by a politics of reason, virtue, freedom, and moral behavior”
― Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age

“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