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Within Reason: A Life of Spinoza
Celebrates the life and work of the seventeenth century philosopher who believed that humans were part of nature and that God was synonomous with nature.
398 pages, Hardcover
First published January 6, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 4, 2025
A press release from St. Martin's Press which was inserted in the wrapping of the book I purchased announces that Gullan-Whur will show demonstrate that Benedictus Spinoza was "certainly the most rigorous of Rationalist philosophers" and tell the story of how he "came to be reviled by all religious authorities for claiming that humans were part of a unified nature, that God was identical with nature, and that reason nor revelation, supplied the truth of any aspect of God, or Nature." This is a highly misleading description.
The true strength of "Within Reason" is the intriguing portrait that it contains presents of the intellectual ferment in the Kingdom of the Netherlands during the Golden Age (i.e. the 17th Century). Gullan-Whur shows only bubble and froth emerging from the philosophical debates
Spinoza was an unlikely candidate to become a major philosopher in the Western tradition. He belonged to the Marrano (Portuguese Jewish) family in Amsterdam. His father was a successful merchant. He attended Jewish schools and learned Latin from tutors. His major works were nonetheless all written in Latin. Spinoza was not excommunicated from the Amsterdam Jewish community because of anything he wrote or said against Judaism but because he had sued a fellow Jew in a Dutch Republican rather than a Jewish court.
Spinoza was not formed intellectually in any mold. Moreover he was an extremely independent spirit disagreeing with everyone and looking down on all.
Although Reformed Christianity was the official religion, the Dutch Republic was religiously tolerant by the standards of the era. Jews, Mennonites, Reformed Christians and Catholics all promoted their views. Spinoza was a law unto himself. He promoted his own philosophy which many have called pantheism. He considered the Bible to be folklore and felt that God could be understood not through divine revelation by through reason.
Gullan-Whur notes that Spinoza was either lucky or had a good sense of how to avoid judicial sanctions. Several of his Mennonite friends were arrested, tortured and given lengthy prison sentences for the things that they published in Dutch. Gullan-Whur notes that Spinoza published works in Latin only but is not sure that this is the reason why the Dutch Republic never took action against him. She seems to be totally unaware of the possibility that he may have been ignored simply because he was not Christian. (He had been expelled from his Jewish community but had never converted to Christianity.) During the same era in the Russian Empire, the Sabbateans who constituted a very large group of Jewish heretics escaped persecution because as Jewish heretics they were considered to be outside of Tsar's jurisdiction.
Gullan-Whur briefly comments on the Sabbatean movement concluding that "Spinoza made no political or philosophical capital out of the Zevi (Sabbatean) episode." (p. 204) She fails however to have noted that in the 17th century, Judaic law and heresies were "ultra vires" in the courts of Christian governments. Unfortunately Gullan-Whur's handling of Spinoza's statues as Jewish apostate is typical of the overall book. Gullan-Whur consistently discusses historical issues that she understands poorly. Her book is more entertaining than enlightening.
The true strength of "Within Reason" is the intriguing portrait that it contains presents of the intellectual ferment in the Kingdom of the Netherlands during the Golden Age (i.e. the 17th Century). Gullan-Whur shows only bubble and froth emerging from the philosophical debates
Spinoza was an unlikely candidate to become a major philosopher in the Western tradition. He belonged to the Marrano (Portuguese Jewish) family in Amsterdam. His father was a successful merchant. He attended Jewish schools and learned Latin from tutors. His major works were nonetheless all written in Latin. Spinoza was not excommunicated from the Amsterdam Jewish community because of anything he wrote or said against Judaism but because he had sued a fellow Jew in a Dutch Republican rather than a Jewish court.
Spinoza was not formed intellectually in any mold. Moreover he was an extremely independent spirit disagreeing with everyone and looking down on all.
Although Reformed Christianity was the official religion, the Dutch Republic was religiously tolerant by the standards of the era. Jews, Mennonites, Reformed Christians and Catholics all promoted their views. Spinoza was a law unto himself. He promoted his own philosophy which many have called pantheism. He considered the Bible to be folklore and felt that God could be understood not through divine revelation by through reason.
Gullan-Whur notes that Spinoza was either lucky or had a good sense of how to avoid judicial sanctions. Several of his Mennonite friends were arrested, tortured and given lengthy prison sentences for the things that they published in Dutch. Gullan-Whur notes that Spinoza published works in Latin only but is not sure that this is the reason why the Dutch Republic never took action against him. She seems to be totally unaware of the possibility that he may have been ignored simply because he was not Christian. (He had been expelled from his Jewish community but had never converted to Christianity.) During the same era in the Russian Empire, the Sabbateans who constituted a very large group of Jewish heretics escaped persecution because as Jewish heretics they were considered to be outside of Tsar's jurisdiction.
Gullan-Whur briefly comments on the Sabbatean movement concluding that "Spinoza made no political or philosophical capital out of the Zevi (Sabbatean) episode." (p. 204) She fails however to have noted that in the 17th century, Judaic law and heresies were "ultra vires" in the courts of Christian governments. Unfortunately Gullan-Whur's handling of Spinoza's statues as Jewish apostate is typical of the overall book. Gullan-Whur consistently discusses historical issues that she understands poorly. Her book is more entertaining than enlightening.
November 19, 2019
This 'work' amounts to little more than a slur on Spinoza's name. Quite apart from demonstrating a lack of comprehension of Spinoza's philosophy, the author suffers from the misapprehension that it is legitimate to judge out of context and by applying the mores of one's own time to that of an earlier period. Avoid - and read Nader's 'Spinoza: A Life' instead.
January 30, 2025
If I was more familiar with Spinoza's publications, and 16th century Dutch politics, this might have been a better book. The author tells us up front that we can study philosophy if we want to know more about Spinoza's ideas.
I did learn about Spinoza, but the entire book felt disjointed. Even though the chapters are chronological, the author frequently referred to events in the past or even in the future.
The highlights are the references to other notables, philosophers like Descartes and scientists like Boyle.
My main complaint is that the author herself is a major character. She opens the book telling us how hard it was to translate texts and how her book will be the first to reveal new documents. She occasionally makes suppositions, and tells us how and why. The use of "I" was pretty common.
I was surprised that she didn't mention Jefferson as influenced. She claims Spinoza wasn't appreciated until the 19th century. She is British, so maybe Americans aren't important to her.
I did learn about Spinoza, but the entire book felt disjointed. Even though the chapters are chronological, the author frequently referred to events in the past or even in the future.
The highlights are the references to other notables, philosophers like Descartes and scientists like Boyle.
My main complaint is that the author herself is a major character. She opens the book telling us how hard it was to translate texts and how her book will be the first to reveal new documents. She occasionally makes suppositions, and tells us how and why. The use of "I" was pretty common.
I was surprised that she didn't mention Jefferson as influenced. She claims Spinoza wasn't appreciated until the 19th century. She is British, so maybe Americans aren't important to her.
March 3, 2021
This is an intense and convoluted book that gives an insight into the life of Benedict Spinoza in C17th Netherlands. There is a lot of surmising which is sometimes quite evocative. The author is like a erudite private detective trying to work out what might fill the gaps between the fragments of evidence that exist. The political context of the day is also drawn often in some detail.
The author both admires Spinoza and is exasperated by his non-rational misogyny which she hints at psychoanalytic explanations for in his lack of relationships with women, but this is somewhat speculative and inconclusive, as the prevailing attitude of the day was of keeping women out of intellectual and political affairs might have been reason enough.
What interests me about Spinoza in relation to the current crisis of knowledge, is his insistence on the unity of mind and body and what this implies for his attitude to the emotions, which are not set aside from knowledge but are to be seen as important objects for thought and rational analysis.
It seems to me that after Spinoza philosophy takes a cerebral course associating emotions with a non-intellectual life left by the working-class, women, black people and all inferior humans. In this Philosophy becomes enclosed by the dominant class and abrogates its global responsibilities. To me this creates a huge problem for academia and Western knowledge as it becomes divorced from emotion and things like empathy. Emotions become something to deny or suppress and leave out of the lecture room. It’s only with Harvey Jackin's extra curricula experiments with community co-counselling in the Seventies that we get any proper investigation of the physiological purpose of different emotions in relationship to their possible part in the healing of past hurts that have occurred to the integrity of human beings through oppression. (Yesterday I heard these 'hurts' referred to as 'weathering'.)
The author both admires Spinoza and is exasperated by his non-rational misogyny which she hints at psychoanalytic explanations for in his lack of relationships with women, but this is somewhat speculative and inconclusive, as the prevailing attitude of the day was of keeping women out of intellectual and political affairs might have been reason enough.
What interests me about Spinoza in relation to the current crisis of knowledge, is his insistence on the unity of mind and body and what this implies for his attitude to the emotions, which are not set aside from knowledge but are to be seen as important objects for thought and rational analysis.
It seems to me that after Spinoza philosophy takes a cerebral course associating emotions with a non-intellectual life left by the working-class, women, black people and all inferior humans. In this Philosophy becomes enclosed by the dominant class and abrogates its global responsibilities. To me this creates a huge problem for academia and Western knowledge as it becomes divorced from emotion and things like empathy. Emotions become something to deny or suppress and leave out of the lecture room. It’s only with Harvey Jackin's extra curricula experiments with community co-counselling in the Seventies that we get any proper investigation of the physiological purpose of different emotions in relationship to their possible part in the healing of past hurts that have occurred to the integrity of human beings through oppression. (Yesterday I heard these 'hurts' referred to as 'weathering'.)
December 27, 2023
Ik heb me doorheen dit boek geploegd, maar dat was een vergissing en een verspilling van tijd. Normaal leg ik zo'n boek dan na 100 bladzijden aan de kant, maar gelet op mijn fascinatie voor het onderwerp en het de-aanhouder-wint-principe dan toch stug volgehouden en het van kaft tot kaft uitgelezen. Helaas niets gewonnen, want het hele boek hangt aan elkaar met 'wellicht', 'misschien', 'men kan zich voorstellen dat', 'ongetwijfeld zal' enz. enz. Kortom, vele tientallen veronderstellingen die elke grond missen. Wel lezenswaardig is het deel rond de uitgesproken, negatieve vooringenomenheid van Spinoza tegenover vrouwen - een aspect dat in de literatuur toch wel wat met de mantel der liefde bedekt wordt.
October 2, 2017
Spinoza worked on his philosophy in the belief that, provided it was constructed on entirely rational lines, in accordance with the model set by Euclid’s geometry, then it would be accepted without doubt by educated readers and would be approved by the political leaders of his day. In practice, his work fell far short of that ideal and today we have Gödel to thank for showing its intrinsic impossibility. Euclid himself was toppled from his throne a century later. Indeed Spinoza’s own work admitted the possibility of reaching mutually conflicting views from the same starting point. In particular, it was apparent that people may on the one hand be motivated by Reason, so that error and dispute could be traced to mistakes in the reasoning process, but they could also be motivated by passion, with very different outcomes. The first shaped his Ethics, the second his Politics. If Spinoza’s philosophy had in fact attained logical perfection it would still have been rejected by his contemporaries. This became increasingly evident even to Spinoza himself. Knowing that, he deferred publication of his Ethics until after his death.
The author is not impressed by Spinoza’s claim to have relied strictly on Reason in his philosophy because it incorporates so much that is clearly no more than the reiteration of contemporary prejudices, of which she is most aggravated by his strident misogyny. I found her comment on this more than witty; arguments used to show that women are unfit to rule would make better sense if they were used to show that men are unfit to rule.
"Spinoza took care not to let his theory of mind be trapped in contemporary empirical theory... He was interested only in working from those laws of nature that could be taken as unarguably true – common notions governing all instances of a kind... According to Spinozistic principles then, any claim about the nature of women must be derived from an axiom or common notion and any claim made about women which could not be inferred from such a notion was suspect... Spinoza gives no demonstration of his view of women’s mentality in Ethics. He merely asserts that certain mental weaknesses are womanly... Yet in Ethics Part 3, and in later writings, the superstition and bias that strangled the rational faculties of women could also grip men in insane passion. ... Further, males are shown to be weakened by a humiliating affect traditionally associated with their gender. ‘Nor are they thought to be less mad who burn with Love, and dream, both day and night, only of a lover... Men generally judge [women’s] ability only by their beauty.’ Spinoza made men victims of female seduction. He claimed that women induced irrationality and distorted political decisions... Yet he used this male weakness as evidence for his view that women, not men, were unfit to rule.” It is a delight to observe a woman skewering Spinoza’s misogyny using his own methods.
This book traces many examples where the content of Spinoza’s philosophy is attributable to and explained by contemporary events. Indeed, the book’s objective is really to identify these links. The associated account of Dutch history would be fascinating in its own right, were it not mercilessly selective. Instead, it is largely confusing, not least because detailed accounts of some events are set beside total silence on others. The upshot, nevertheless, is that his writings cannot be viewed as the dispassionate work of a timeless thinker. Happily, this does not have to be as big a problem as it might appear, because what can be rescued is not the content, the material that is so obviously of its own time and place, but the methodology and the attitude which are arguably of lasting value and absolutely relevant to our own time.
”...examination of Spinoza’s life and character serve to confirm that certain logical flaws are integral to his thinking and are therefore ineradicable. ... We may today get the most from Spinoza if we take the ... approach of appealing not to ‘the letter’ of his work, but to his general treatment of issues which concern us. Then, I believe, we find answers which spring from the mainstream of his philosophical thought – his metaphysical theory of the interrelatedness within nature of all natural phenomena, physical and mental – from which he believed deductions concerning particular cases should be made. Many such deductions are shockingly relevant to current affairs and contemporary personal situations... His requirement was that we reason out our predicament either by investigating its causes or by appealing to some common notion. While it would be satisfying to be able to intuit the truth of our situation, the bulk of Spinoza’s doctrine dictates that this option is not available to us. Instead, our decision making procedures must consider each experience of pain, loneliness, guilt, fear, obsession, appetite and financial or other anxiety as an event of kind so-and-so, taking into account our own internal drive. Moral dilemmas and practical choices are with equal profit examined against this grid. ... We should look at our ...predicaments not only in terms of what the harm or good in doing x must be when any human, considered independently of a specific historical or cultural domain, does x, but in terms of what is the harm or good for a person of our disposition. It must not be forgotten that Spinoza, stunningly, vests the ultimate obligation of any individual wholly in that individual, reasoning self.”
The author is not impressed by Spinoza’s claim to have relied strictly on Reason in his philosophy because it incorporates so much that is clearly no more than the reiteration of contemporary prejudices, of which she is most aggravated by his strident misogyny. I found her comment on this more than witty; arguments used to show that women are unfit to rule would make better sense if they were used to show that men are unfit to rule.
"Spinoza took care not to let his theory of mind be trapped in contemporary empirical theory... He was interested only in working from those laws of nature that could be taken as unarguably true – common notions governing all instances of a kind... According to Spinozistic principles then, any claim about the nature of women must be derived from an axiom or common notion and any claim made about women which could not be inferred from such a notion was suspect... Spinoza gives no demonstration of his view of women’s mentality in Ethics. He merely asserts that certain mental weaknesses are womanly... Yet in Ethics Part 3, and in later writings, the superstition and bias that strangled the rational faculties of women could also grip men in insane passion. ... Further, males are shown to be weakened by a humiliating affect traditionally associated with their gender. ‘Nor are they thought to be less mad who burn with Love, and dream, both day and night, only of a lover... Men generally judge [women’s] ability only by their beauty.’ Spinoza made men victims of female seduction. He claimed that women induced irrationality and distorted political decisions... Yet he used this male weakness as evidence for his view that women, not men, were unfit to rule.” It is a delight to observe a woman skewering Spinoza’s misogyny using his own methods.
This book traces many examples where the content of Spinoza’s philosophy is attributable to and explained by contemporary events. Indeed, the book’s objective is really to identify these links. The associated account of Dutch history would be fascinating in its own right, were it not mercilessly selective. Instead, it is largely confusing, not least because detailed accounts of some events are set beside total silence on others. The upshot, nevertheless, is that his writings cannot be viewed as the dispassionate work of a timeless thinker. Happily, this does not have to be as big a problem as it might appear, because what can be rescued is not the content, the material that is so obviously of its own time and place, but the methodology and the attitude which are arguably of lasting value and absolutely relevant to our own time.
”...examination of Spinoza’s life and character serve to confirm that certain logical flaws are integral to his thinking and are therefore ineradicable. ... We may today get the most from Spinoza if we take the ... approach of appealing not to ‘the letter’ of his work, but to his general treatment of issues which concern us. Then, I believe, we find answers which spring from the mainstream of his philosophical thought – his metaphysical theory of the interrelatedness within nature of all natural phenomena, physical and mental – from which he believed deductions concerning particular cases should be made. Many such deductions are shockingly relevant to current affairs and contemporary personal situations... His requirement was that we reason out our predicament either by investigating its causes or by appealing to some common notion. While it would be satisfying to be able to intuit the truth of our situation, the bulk of Spinoza’s doctrine dictates that this option is not available to us. Instead, our decision making procedures must consider each experience of pain, loneliness, guilt, fear, obsession, appetite and financial or other anxiety as an event of kind so-and-so, taking into account our own internal drive. Moral dilemmas and practical choices are with equal profit examined against this grid. ... We should look at our ...predicaments not only in terms of what the harm or good in doing x must be when any human, considered independently of a specific historical or cultural domain, does x, but in terms of what is the harm or good for a person of our disposition. It must not be forgotten that Spinoza, stunningly, vests the ultimate obligation of any individual wholly in that individual, reasoning self.”
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May 27, 2019Very interesting combination of personal, historical and philosophical biography of Spinoza. It's an inspiring story about the Enlightenment and a key person in that development.
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