Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell in high praise of philosopher Baruch Spinoza whom he calls ”... one of the wisest of men and who lived consistently in accordance with his own wisdom.”

”Spinoza, who was one of the wisest of men and who lived consistently in accordance with his own wisdom, advised men to view passing events ‘under the aspect of eternity’. Those who can learn to do this will find a painful present much more bearable than it would otherwise be. They can see it as a passing moment—a discord to be resolved, a tunnel to be traversed. The small child who has hurt himself weeps as if the world contained nothing but sorrow, because his mind is confined to the present.

A man who has learned wisdom from Spinoza can see even a lifetime of suffering as a passing moment in the life of humanity. And the human race itself, from its obscure beginning to its unknown end, is only a minute episode in the life of the universe.

What may be happening elsewhere we do not know, but it is improbable that the universe contains nothing better than ourselves. With increase of wisdom our thoughts acquire a wider scope both in space and in time. The child lives in the minute, the boy in the day, the instinctive man in the year. The man imbued with history lives in the epoch. Spinoza would have us live not in the minute, the day, the year or the epoch but in eternity. Those who learn to do this will find that it takes away the frantic quality of misfortune and prevents the trend towards madness that comes with overwhelming disaster.

Spinoza spent the last day of his life telling cheerful anecdotes to his host. He had written: ‘The wise man thinks less about death than about anything else’, and he carried out this precept when it came to his own death.”

— Bertrand Russell, The New York Times Magazine, 3 September 1950

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Background: Baruch Spinoza (4 November 1632 – 21 February 1677)

Baruch Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Sephardic Jewish origin and whose occupation was a humble lens grinder. The breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until many years after his death. By laying the groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism, including modern conceptions of the self and, arguably, the universe, he came to be considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy. Inspired by the groundbreaking ideas of René Descartes, Spinoza can rightfully lay claim as a leading figure of the Dutch Golden Age. His magnum opus, the posthumous Ethics, in which he opposed Descartes' mind–body dualism, has earned him recognition as one of Western philosophy's most important thinkers. Philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (G.W.F. Hegel) said of all contemporary philosophers, "You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all."

Spinoza argued that God exists yet is abstract and impersonal. He claimed that everything is a derivative of God, interconnected with all of existence. Although humans only experience thought and extension, what happens to one aspect of existence will still affect others. Thus, Spinozism teaches a form of determinism and ecology and supports this as a basis for morality. Spinoza was often considered to be an atheist because he used the word "God" (Deus) to signify a concept that was different from that of traditional Judeo–Christian-Islamic monotheism. Thus, Spinoza's cool, indifferent God is the antithesis to the concept of an anthropomorphic, fatherly deity who cares about humanity.

”If I had as clear an idea of ghosts, as I have of a triangle or a circle, I should not in the least hesitate to affirm that they had been created by God; but as the idea I possess of them is just like the ideas, which my imagination forms of harpies, gryphons, hydras, &c., I cannot consider them as anything but dreams, which differ from God as totally as that which is not differs from that which is.”

— Baruch Spinoza, Letter to Hugo Boxel (October 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58

Image: Detail from a portrait of a man (thought to be Baruch Spinoza) private collection.