Spinoza (book)
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Spinoza (1951; second edition 1962; third edition 1987) is a book about Baruch Spinoza by the English philosopher Stuart Hampshire. The work includes a foreword by philosopher A. J. Ayer, while a new introduction was added to the 1987 edition. Spinoza has become a classic work about Spinoza and has received praise from philosophers. In 2005, Spinoza, along with Hampshire's other writings on the philosopher, was incorporated into a single volume, published as Spinoza and Spinozism.
Summary
Hampshire praises Spinoza as "the most ambitious and uncompromising of all modern philosophers" and discusses Spinoza's thought in its 17th century context, contrasting him with other rationalist philosophers such as René Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Hampshire believes that, while internally consistent, Spinoza's philosophy and especially his epistemology is "liable not to be appreciated" because it is simultaneously linked to two normally opposed traditions, nominalism and the coherence theory of truth.
In Hampshire's view, while Spinoza "deliberately effaced his own personality and wished his philosophy to stand alone", there is enough evidence to show that Spinoza was an "exceptional" man. He provides lengthy discussions of Spinoza's conception of mind and will. Hampshire compares Spinoza to Sigmund Freud. He sees a parallel between Spinoza's conatus and Freud's conception of libido: "both philosophers conceive emotional life as based on a universal unconscious drive or tendency to self-preservation; both maintain that any frustration of this drive must manifest itself in our conscious life as some painful disturbance."
Reception
Spinoza was a publishing success, with 45,000 copies being sold in the first three months. Philosopher A. J. Ayer praised the lucidity of Hampshire's exposition of Spinoza in his foreword to the book. Classicist Norman O. Brown wrote in Life Against Death (1959) that while Hampshire provides an acute comparison between Spinoza and Freud, there are important differences between the two, such as Freud's dualism, that Hampshire fails to recognize. Brown wrote in 1989 that Spinoza is the classic statement of the view that Spinoza's materialism and rejection of mind-body dualism are supportive of hope in scientific enlightenment and economic development. He criticized Hampshire for interpreting Spinoza's monism as a form of quasi-religious mysticism, thus creating an apparent contradiction between it and Spinoza's materialism. Brown argued that Spinoza's thought has communist implications that Hampshire ignores. Philosopher Edwin Curley described Spinoza as "an excellent general introduction to Spinoza's thought".
Philosopher R. S. Downie wrote in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (1995) that Spinoza is the key to understanding Hampshire's own views on freedom and the philosophy of mind. Philosopher Roger Scruton called Spinoza "the most succinct and rewarding" modern commentary on Spinoza. Hampshire wrote in his introduction to the 1996 Penguin Classics edition of Spinoza's Ethics that since the publication of Spinoza in 1951, "there have been large changes in the interests of English-speaking philosophers, and in expounding the Ethics emphasis will now tend to fall in different places to meet these contemporary concerns." Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio wrote that he agrees with Hampshire's view that Spinoza "deliberately wanted to purge his texts of personal feeling and rhetoric." Scruton wrote that while "path-breaking" Spinoza is now dated.
