Irvin D. Yalom - The Spinoza Problem: A Novel

Table of Contents

Spinoza has long intrigued me, and for years Ive wanted to write about this valiant seventeenth-century thinker, so alone in the worldwithout a family, without a communitywho authored books that truly changed the world. He anticipated secularization, the liberal democratic political state, and the rise of natural science, and he paved the way for the Enlightenment. The fact that he was excommunicated by the Jews at the age of twenty-four and censored for the rest of his life by the Christians had always fascinated me, perhaps because of my own iconoclastic proclivities. And this strange sense of kinship with Spinoza was strengthened by the knowledge that Einstein, one of my first heroes, was a Spinozist. When Einstein spoke of God, he spoke of Spinozas Goda God entirely equivalent to nature, a God that includes all substance, and a God that doesnt play dice with the universeby which he means that everything that happens, without exception, follows the orderly laws of nature.

I also believe that Spinoza, like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, on whose lives and philosophy I have based two earlier novels, wrote much that is highly relevant to my field of psychiatry and psychotherapyfor example, that ideas, thoughts, and feelings are caused by previous experiences, that passions may be studied dispassionately, that understanding leads to transcendenceand I wished to celebrate his contributions through a novel of ideas.

But how to write about a man who lived such a contemplative life marked by so few striking external events? He was extraordinarily private, and he kept his own person invisible in his writing. I had none of the material that ordinarily lends itself to narrativeno family dramas, no love affairs, jealousies, curious anecdotes, feuds, spats, or reunions. He had a large correspondence, but after his death his colleagues followed his instructions and removed almost all personal comments from his letters. No, not much external drama in his life: most scholars regard Spinoza as a placid and gentle soulsome compare his life to that of Christian saints, some even to Jesus.

So I resolved to write a novel about his inner life. That was where my personal expertise might help in telling Spinozas story. After all, he was a human being and therefore must have struggled with the same basic human conflicts that troubled me and the many patients Ive worked with over the decades. He must have had a strong emotional response to being excommunicated, at the age of twenty-four, by the Jewish community in Amsterdaman irreversible edict that ordered every Jew, including his own family, to shun him forever. No Jew would ever again speak to him, have commerce with him, read his words, or come within fifteen feet of his physical presence. And of course no one lives without an inner life of fantasies, dreams, passions, and a yearning for love. About a fourth of Spinozas major work, Ethics, is devoted to overcoming the bondage of the passions. As a psychiatrist, I felt convinced that he could not have written this section unless he had experienced a conscious struggle with his own passions.

Yet I was stumped for years because I could not find the story that a novel requiresuntil a visit to Holland five years ago changed everything. I had come to lecture and, as part of my compensation, requested and was granted a Spinoza day. The secretary of the Dutch Spinoza Association and a leading Spinoza philosopher agreed to spend a day with me visiting all the important Spinoza siteshis dwellings, his burial place, and, the main attraction, the Spinoza Museum in Rijnsburg. It was there I had an epiphany.

I entered the Spinoza Museum in Rijnsburg, about a forty-five-minute drive from Amsterdam, with keen anticipation, looking forwhat? Perhaps an encounter with the spirit of Spinoza. Perhaps a story. But entering the museum, I was immediately disappointed. I doubted that this small, sparse museum could bring me closer to Spinoza. The only remotely personal items were the 151 volumes of Spinozas own library, and I turned immediately to them. My hosts permitted me free access, and I picked up one seventeenth-century book after another, smelling and holding them, thrilled to touch objects that had once been touched by Spinozas hands.

But my reverie was soon interrupted by my host: Of course, Dr. Yalom, his possessionsbed, clothes, shoes, pens and bookswere auctioned off after his death to pay funeral expenses. The books were sold and scattered far and wide, but fortunately, the notary made a complete list of those books prior to the auction, and over two hundred years later a Jewish philanthropist reassembled most of the same titles, the same editions from the same years and cities of publication. So we call it Spinozas library, but its really a replica. His fingers never touched these books.

I turned away from the library and gazed at the portrait of Spinoza hanging on the wall and soon felt myself melting into those huge, sad, oval, heavy-lidded eyes, almost a mystical experiencea rare thing for me. But then my host said, You may not know this, but thats not really Spinozas likeness. Its merely an image from some artists imagination, derived from a few lines of written description. If there were drawings of Spinoza made during his lifetime, none have survived.

Maybe a story about sheer elusiveness, I wondered.

While I was examining the lens-grinding apparatus in the second roomalso not his own equipment, the museum placard stated, but equipment similar to itI heard one of my hosts in the library room mention the Nazis.

I stepped back into the library. What? The Nazis were here? In this museum?

Yesseveral months after the blitzkrieg of Holland, the ERR troops drove up in their big limousines and stole everythingthe books, a bust, and a portrait of Spinozaeverything. They carted it all away, then sealed and expropriated the museum.

ERR? What do the letters stand for?

Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg. The taskforce of Reich leader Rosenbergthats Alfred Rosenberg, the major Nazi anti-Semitic ideologue. He was in charge of looting for the Third Reich, and under Rosenbergs orders, the ERR plundered all of Europefirst, just the Jewish things and then, later in the war, anything of value.

So then these books are twice removed from Spinoza? I asked. You mean that books had to be purchased again and the library reassembled a second time?

Nomiraculously these books survived and were returned here after the war with just a few missing copies.

Amazing! Theres a story here, I thought. But why did Rosenberg even bother with these books in the first place? I know they have some modest valuebeing seventeenth-century and olderbut why didnt they just march into the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum and pluck a single Rembrandt worth fifty times this whole collection?

No, thats not the point. The money had nothing to do with it. The ERR had some mysterious interest in Spinoza. In his official report, Rosenbergs officer, the Nazi who did the hands-on looting of the library, added a significant sentence: They contain valuable early works of great importance for the exploration of the Spinoza problem. You can see the report on the web, if you likeits in the official Nuremberg documents.

I felt stunned. Exploration of the Nazis Spinoza problem? I dont understand. What did he mean? What was the Nazi Spinoza problem?

Like a mime duo, my hosts hunched their shoulders and turned up their palms.

I pressed on. Youre saying that because of this Spinoza problem, they protected these books rather than burn them, as they burned so much of Europe?