A 500-YEAR OLD MEMORY

A 500-Year-Old Memory

Another tragic date in Jewish history

by Rabbi Jules HarlowSpecial to the Jewish Week

1506 is a tragic date in Jewish history. Most people do not know why. 1492 is well known as the year when Jews were expelled from Spain.1948 is on our minds this year as we celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel. These are just three of the dates we must remember.

Remembering is an integral part of being Jewish. We are happy to recall 1948 not only because we celebrate Israel's independence, but because so many dates in Jewish history commemorate tragedy. I do not subscribe to what Professor Salo Baron derogatorily labeled the lachrymose theory of Jewish history, since we do have plenty to celebrate, much to be proud about. Nevertheless, it is essential to remember our tragedies as well as our triumphs, since they too are part of who we are.

Our tragedies include the destruction of the two ancient Temples in Jerusalem in 586 BCE and in 70 CE, the expulsion from Spain in 1492, a pogrom in Poland in 1648, Kristallnacht in 1938, and the overwhelming horrors of the Shoah multiple times in each year from the late thirties to the middle forties of the twentieth century.

In 1506, in Lisbon, Portugal, thousands of Conversos (Jews who had been forcibly baptized en masse as Catholics in 1497) were massacred in a public square near the Dominican Convent .The date is not familiar to most Jews throughout the world, and it seemed to have been absent from public awareness in the city of Lisbon. When you walk through this pubic plaza in the center of Lisbon, you would have no way of knowing about the horrors that were inflicted upon Jews on that very site.

This gap in memory was filled this year in Lisbon with the placement of a memorial marker near the site of the massacre. The memorial is a simple, inclined half-sphere designed by the accomplished Portuguese Jewish architect, Graca Bachmann. Here is a translation of the Portuguese text inscribed atop the marker within a Magen David:

1506-2008
In memory of the thousands of Jewish victims of fanatic religious intolerance,murdered in the massacre that began on the 19th of April, 1506, in this place.
5366-5768
A verse from Job (16:18), in Portuguese and in Hebrew, is inscribed on the square base that supports the sphere.
"Earth, do not cover my blood; let there be no resting place for my outcry!"

In 1506, the city of Lisbon suffered a plague accompanied by a drought. Those who could leave the city, including the royal court, left. Fear and hysteria pervaded Lisbon, whose citizens prayed daily for water and for compassion. Professor Yosef Yerushalmi's important monograph on the events of 1506 (Hebrew Union College Annual Supplement, Cincinnati, 1976) includes a description of the probable immediate cause of the massacre. The Dominican Convent in Lisbon attracted crowds who were praying for relief. A light that seemed to be emanating from a crucifix over the altar of a chapel was interpreted to be a divine sign. It attracted large crowds of citizens eager for a miracle. The crowd one day included "one of the Hebrews recently enlisted in the ranks of the baptized," a New Christian. He made a remark that was interpreted as blasphemy. According to one account, he asked, "How can a piece of wood work wonders?" An enraged crowd beat him to death, and his body was dismembered and burned in the square in front of the Convent. His brother, who complained about this outrage, met the same fate. This began a three-day massacre and burning of an estimated two to four thousand Conversos, also known as New Christians, Jews who had been forcibly baptized in 1497. The mobs of citizens who roamed through Lisbon violating and killing Jews were incited by Dominican friars, one of whom preached a sermon against the "Jews" that day, accompanied by outbursts from other friars that included: "Heresy! Destroy this abominable people!"

King Manuel, under whose authority thousands of Jews had been forcibly baptized in 1497, was not in the city at the time. Upon his return he arrested the two the Dominicans who had led the riot. They were executed, along with forty or fifty other conspirators. He then granted permission to all New Christians to leave Portugal, contradicting his order in 1497 that forbade any New Christian to leave the country. King Manuel also abolished legal discriminations against New Christians. The lives and the property of the New Christians (Conversos) who remained in Lisbon were never endangered during the remainder of his reign. After his death the persecution resumed.

In 2006, the 500th anniversary of the massacre, the Jewish Community of Lisbon proposed to the Lisbon City Council that a suitable memorial for the victims be placed at the site of the massacre, at the Community's expense. In 2008, the Lisbon City Council unanimously approved that proposal. The Council also approved a proposal of the Catholic Church to place a sculpture in the square commemorating the words of reconciliation pronounced by the Patriarch of Lisbon, Dom Jose da Cruz Policarpo, in the year 2000:

"The historical location in the center of Lisbon, where we meet in friendship, has in the past been the stage of intolerable acts of violence against the Hebrew people. We should not forget the sad fate of the Cristaos Novos: the pressures for their conversion, the popular uprisings, the suspicions, the denunciations, and the frightening Inquisition trials.

"As the community with a majority of believers in this city for the last thousand years, the Catholic Church fully recognizes that her memory is deeply stained by these words and this behavior ---so often carried out in her name--- which are unworthy of human dignity and of the Gospel she preaches."

On April 22, 2008, the Patriarch of Lisbon, who proclaimed those words, participated in the dedication ceremony together with the Rabbi of the Jewish Community, and representatives of other religious communities in the city.

Another important feature of the day was the dedication of a marker to be placed on the square by the Lisbon City Council proclaiming Lisbon "City of Tolerance."

April 22, the date chosen by the Lisbon City Council for the dedication ceremony, this year is the first Intermediate Day of the Holiday of Passover. The three-day-massacre in 1506 also began during the month of April, April 19 to be exact. Professor Yerushalmi has pointed out that, according to the normative Jewish calendar, Passover in 1506 began on April 9. But the Conversos in Lisbon postponed their own celebration until April 17, the day after the holiday had ended according to the Jewish calendar. Such postponements were not uncommon in the Converso, New Christian, community. They hoped to escape detection by gathering to observe a festival on "the wrong day."

Those in attendance at the memorial dedication will include a group of descendants of Jews persecuted in Portugal before and during the Inquisition. They call themselves bnei anousim, descendants of those who were forced to convert. They also refer to themselves as "survivors" ---"survivors of the Inquisition." During the past two years, my wife Navah and I have been teaching bnei anousim who want to become halakhic Jews, to return to the heritage that was so cruelly snatched from their ancestors. They turned to Masorti Olami, the international arm of the Conservative movement, for help and guidance. To date, eight of them have fulfilled all of the requirements and have come before the Masorti Beit Din in London for conversion. They will be among many others of similar background in the Jewish community who trace their families back to victims of religious persecution in Portugal because of their Jewish origins and who are now dedicated to maintaining and perpetuating Jewish life in Lisbon.

It is the hope and prayer of all people of good faith in Lisbon, as elsewhere, that the City of Tolerance will now be free of the intolerance of the past.

Rabbi Jules Harlow, founding editor of The Rabbinical Assembly, is editor and translator of Conservative liturgy.

BARUCH SPINOZA

Baruch or Benedict de Spinoza (Hebrew: ברוך שפינוזה‎, Portuguese: Bento de Espinosa, Latin: Benedictus de Spinoza) (November 24, 1632 – February 21, 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish origin. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death. Today, he is considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy, laying the groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism. By virtue of his magnum opus, the posthumous Ethics, Spinoza is also considered one of Western philosophy's definitive ethicists.

Spinoza lived quietly as a lens grinder, turning down rewards and honors throughout his life, including prestigious teaching positions, and gave his family inheritance to his sister. Spinoza's moral character and philosophical accomplishments prompted 20th-century philosopher Gilles Deleuze to name him "the absolute philosopher."[1] Spinoza died in February 1677 of a lung illness, perhaps tuberculosis or silicosis caused by fine glass dust inhaled while tending to his trade.

Biography

Family origins

Spinoza's ancestors were of Sephardic Jewish descent, and were a part of the community of Portuguese Jews that grew in the city after the Alhambra Decree in Spain (1492) and the Portuguese Inquisition (1536) had led to forced conversions and expulsions from the Iberian peninsula. [2] Some historians argue the Spinoza family had its remote origins in Spain; others claim they were Portuguese Jews who had moved to Spain and then returned to their home country in 1492, only to be forcibly converted to Catholicism in 1498[citation needed]. Spinoza's father was born roughly a century after this forced conversion in the small Portuguese city of Vidigueira, near Beja in Alentejo[citation needed]. When Spinoza's father was still a child, Spinoza's grandfather, Isaac de Spinoza (who was from Lisbon), took his family to Nantes in France. They were expelled in 1615 and moved to Rotterdam, where Isaac died in 1627. Spinoza's father, Miguel, and his uncle, Manuel, then moved to Amsterdam where they assumed their Judaism.[citation needed] Manuel changed his name to Abraão de Spinoza, though his "commercial" name was still the same.

Early life and career

Baruch Spinoza was born in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. His mother Ana Débora, Miguel's second wife, died when Baruch was only six years old. Miguel was a successful importer/merchant and Baruch had a traditional Jewish upbringing; however, his critical, curious nature would soon come into conflict with the Jewish community. After wars with England and France took the life of his father and decimated his family's fortune, he was eventually able to relinquish responsibility for the business and its debts to his brother, Gabriel, and devote himself to philosophy and optics.

Controversial ideas and Jewish reaction

Spinoza became known in the Jewish community for positions contrary to normative Jewish belief, with critical positions towards the Talmud and other religious texts. In the summer of 1656, he was issued the writ of cherem (Hebrew: חרם, a kind of excommunication) from the Jewish community, perhaps for the apostasy of how he conceived God, although the reason is not stated in the cherem. The terms of his cherem were severe.[3] He was, in Bertrand Russell's words, "cursed with all the curses in Deuteronomy and with the curse that Elisha pronounced on the children who, in consequence, were torn to pieces by the she-bears."[4] It was never revoked. Following his excommunication, he adopted the first name Benedictus, the Latin equivalent of his given name, Baruch; they both mean "blessed". In his native Amsterdam he was also known as Bento (Portuguese for Benedict or blessed) de Spinoza, which was the informal form of his name.

After his cherem, it is reported that Spinoza lived and worked in the school of Franciscus van den Enden, who taught him Latin in his youth and may have introduced him to modern philosophy, although Spinoza never mentions Van den Enden anywhere in his books or letters. Van den Enden was a Cartesian and atheist who was forbidden by the city government to propagate his doctrines publicly. Spinoza, having dedicated himself completely to philosophy after 1656, fervently desired to change the world through establishing a clandestine philosophical sect. Because of public censure this was only eventually realized after his death through the dedicated intercession of his friends.

During this period Spinoza also became acquainted with several Collegiants, members of an eclectic sect with tendencies towards rationalism. Spinoza also corresponded with Peter Serrarius, a radical Protestant and millennarian merchant. Serrarius is believed to have been a patron of Spinoza at some point.[citation needed] By the beginning of the 1660s, Spinoza's name became more widely known, and eventually Gottfried Leibniz and Henry Oldenburg paid him visits, as stated in Matthew Stewart's "The Courtier and the Heretic.".[citation needed] He corresponded with Oldenburg for the rest of his short life. Spinoza's first publication was his Tractatus de intellectus emendatione. From December 1664 to June 1665, Spinoza engaged in correspondence with Blyenbergh, an amateur Calvinist theologian, who questioned Spinoza on the definition of evil. Later in 1665, he notified Oldenburg that he had started to work on a new book, the Theologico-Political Treatise, published in 1670. Leibniz disagreed harshly with Spinoza in Leibniz's own published Refutation of Spinoza, but is also known to have met with Spinoza on at least one occasion[citation needed], and whose own work bears certain striking resemblances to certain key parts of Spinoza's philosophy (see: Monadology).

When the public reactions to the anonymously published Theologico-Political Treatise were extremely unfavourable to his brand of Cartesianism, Spinoza was compelled to abstain from publishing more of his works. Wary and independent, he wore a signet ring engraved with his initials, a rose and the word "caute" (Latin for "cautiously"). The Ethics and all other works, apart from the Principles of Cartesian Philosophy and the Theologico-Political Treatise, were published after his death in the Opera Posthuma edited by his friends in secrecy to avoid confiscation and destruction of manuscripts.

Later life and career

Spinoza's house in Rijnsburg from 1661-3, now a museum

Spinoza relocated from Amsterdam to Rijnsburg (near Leiden) around 1661 and later lived in Voorburg and The Hague respectively. He earned a comfortable living from lens-grinding. While the lens-grinding aspect of Spinoza's work is uncontested, the type of lenses he made is in question. Many have said he produced excellent magnifying glasses, and some historians credit him with being an optician (in the sense of making lenses for eyeglasses). He was also supported by small, but regular, donations from close friends. He died in 1677 while still working on a political thesis. His premature death was due to lung illness, possibly the result of breathing in glass dust from the lenses he ground. Only a year earlier, Spinoza had met with Leibniz at The Hague for a discussion of his principal philosophical work, Ethics, which had been completed in 1676. This meeting was described in Matthew Stewart's The Courtier and the Heretic. [5] Spinoza never married, nor did he father any children. When he died, he was considered a heathen anti-religionist by the general population, and when Boerhaave wrote his dissertation in 1688 he attacked the doctrines of Spinoza. He claimed later that defense of Spinoza's lifestyle cost him his reputation in Leiden and a post as minister.

Dutch Port cities as sites of free thought

Amsterdam and Rotterdam were important cosmopolitan centers where merchant ships from many parts of the world brought people of various customs and beliefs. It is this hustle and bustle which ensured, as in the Mediterranean region during the Renaissance, some possibility of free thought and shelter from the crushing hand of ecclesiastical authority. Thus Spinoza no doubt had access to a circle of friends who were basically heretics in the eyes of tradition. One of the people he must have known was Niels Stensen, a brilliant Danish student in Leiden; others were Coenraad van Beuningen and his cousin Albert Burgh, with whom Spinoza is known to have corresponded.

Philosophy

The opening page of Spinoza's magnum opus, Ethics

Substance, Attribute and Mode

"These are the fundamental concepts with which Spinoza sets forth a vision of Being, illuminated by his awareness of God. They may seem strange at first sight. To the question "What is?" he replies: "Substance, its attributes and modes". Spinoza, Carl Jaspers p.9

Spinoza's system imparted order and unity to the tradition of radical thought, offering powerful weapons for prevailing against "received authority." As a youth he first subscribed to Descartes's dualistic belief that body and mind are two separate substances, but later changed his view and asserted that they were not separate, being a single identity. He contended that everything that exists in Nature/Universe is one Reality (substance) and there is only one set of rules governing the whole of the reality which surrounds us and of which we are part. Spinoza viewed God and Nature as two names for the same reality, namely the single substance (meaning "to stand beneath" rather than "matter") that is the basis of the universe and of which all lesser "entities" are actually modes or modifications, that all things are determined by Nature to exist and cause effects, and that the complex chain of cause and effect is only understood in part. That humans presume themselves to have free will, he argues, is a result of their awareness of appetites while being unable to understand the reasons why they want and act as they do. The argument for the single substance runs as follows:

1 Substance exists and cannot be dependent on anything else for its existence

2 No two substances can share the same nature or attribute.

Proof: Two distinct substances can be differentiated either by some difference in their natures or by some difference in one of their alterable states of being. If they have different natures, then the original proposition is granted and the proof is complete. If, however, they are distinguished only by their states of being, then, considering the substances in themselves, there is no difference between the substances and they are identical. "That is, there cannot be several such substances but only one."[6]

3A substance can only be caused by something similar to itself (something that shares its attribute).

4 Substance cannot be caused.

Proof: Something can only be caused by something which is similar to itself, in other words something that shares its attribute. But according to premise 2, no two substances can share an attribute. Therefore substance cannot be caused.

5 Subtance is infinite.

Proof: If substance were not infinite, it would be finite and limited by something. But to be limited by something is to be dependent on it. However, substance cannot be dependent on anything else (premise 1), therefore substance is infinite.

Conclusion: There can only be one substance.

Proof: If there were two infinite substances, they would limit each other. But this would act as a restraint, and they would be dependent on each other. But they cannot be dependent on each other (premise 1), therefore there cannot be two substances.

Spinoza contended that "Deus sive Natura" ("God or Nature") was a being of infinitely many attributes, of which extension and thought were two. His account of the nature of reality, then, seems to treat the physical and mental worlds as one and the same. The universal substance consists of both body and mind, there being no difference between these aspects. This formulation is a historically significant solution to the mind-body problem known as neutral monism. The consequences of Spinoza's system also envisage a God that does not rule over the universe by providence, but a God which itself is the deterministic system of which everything in nature is a part. Thus, God is the natural world and He has no personality.

In addition to substance, the other two fundamental concepts Spinoza presents, and develops in the Ethics are

Attribute:

By attribute, I mean that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance.
and Mode:

By mode, I mean the modifications of substance, or that which exists in, and is conceived through, something other than itself.

Spinoza was a thoroughgoing determinist who held that absolutely everything that happens occurs through the operation of necessity. For him, even human behaviour is fully determined, with freedom being our capacity to know we are determined and to understand why we act as we do. So freedom is not the possibility to say "no" to what happens to us but the possibility to say "yes" and fully understand why things should necessarily happen that way. By forming more "adequate" ideas about what we do and our emotions or affections, we become the adequate cause of our effects (internal or external), which entails an increase in activity (versus passivity). This means that we become both more free and more like God, as Spinoza argues in the Scholium to Prop. 49, Part II. However, Spinoza also held that everything must necessarily happen the way that it does. Therefore, there is no free will.

Spinoza's philosophy has much in common with Stoicism in as much as both philosophies sought to fulfill a therapeutic role by instructing people how to attain happiness (or eudaimonia, for the Stoics). However, Spinoza differed sharply from the Stoics in one important respect: he utterly rejected their contention that reason could defeat emotion. On the contrary, he contended, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion. For him, the crucial distinction was between active and passive emotions, the former being those that are rationally understood and the latter those that are not. He also held that knowledge of true causes of passive emotion can transform it to an active emotion, thus anticipating one of the key ideas of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis.

Spinoza's philosophy seems to have also some traits in common with that of Advaita Vedanta, a sampradhya or school of thought in Hinduism, especially as expounded by Adi Shankara. These Indian philosophers from the 8th and 11th centuries respectively emphasize the notion of one reality (substance here), Brahman and the notion of attributes (which could be construed as an interpretation that is similar to that of Spinoza). Although Schopoenhaur was the first European to have access to Hindu scripture, the question arises as to whether Spinoza may have had access to Indian philosophical texts.

Some of Spinoza's philosophical positions are:

The natural world is infinite.

Good and evil are related to human pleasure and pain.

Everything done by humans and other animals is excellent and divine.

All rights are derived from the State.

Animals can be used in any way by people for the benefit of the human race, according to a rational consideration of the benefit as well as the animal's status in nature.[7]

Ethical philosophy

Encapsulated at the start in his Treatise on the Improvement of the Understanding (Tractatus de intellectus emendatione) is the core of Spinoza's ethical philosophy, what he held to be the true and final good. Spinoza held a relativist's position, that nothing is intrinsically good or bad, except to the extent that it is subjectively perceived to be by the individual. Things are only good or evil in respect that humanity sees it desirable to apply these conceptions to matters. Instead, Spinoza believes in his deterministic universe that, "All things in nature proceed from certain necessity and with the utmost perfection." Therefore, nothing happens by chance in Spinoza's world, and reason does not work in terms of contingency.

In the universe anything that happens comes from the essential nature of objects, or of God/Nature. According to Spinoza, reality is perfection. If circumstances are seen as unfortunate it is only because of our inadequate conception of reality. While elements of the chain of cause and effect are not beyond the understanding of human reason, our grasp of the infinitely complex whole is limited because of the limits of science to empirically take account of the whole sequence. Spinoza also asserted that sense perception, though practical and useful for rhetoric, is inadequate for discovering universal truth; Spinoza's mathematical and logical approach to metaphysics, and therefore ethics, concluded that emotion is formed from inadequate understanding. His concept of "conatus" states that human beings' natural inclination is to strive toward preserving an essential being and an assertion that virtue/human power is defined by success in this preservation of being by the guidance of reason as one's central ethical doctrine. According to Spinoza, the highest virtue is the intellectual love or knowledge of God/Nature/Universe.

In the final part of the "Ethics" his concern with the meaning of "true blessedness" and his unique approach to and explanation of how emotions must be detached from external cause in order to master them presages 20th-century psychological techniques. His concept of three types of knowledge - opinion, reason, intuition - and assertion that intuitive knowledge provides the greatest satisfaction of mind, leads to his proposition that the more we are conscious of ourselves and Nature/Universe, the more perfect and blessed we are (in reality) and that only intuitive knowledge is eternal. His unique contribution to understanding the workings of mind is extraordinary, even during this time of radical philosophical developments, in that his views provide a bridge between religions' mystical past and psychology of the present day.

Given Spinoza's insistence on a completely ordered world where "necessity" reigns, Good and Evil have no absolute meaning. Human catastrophes, social injustices, etc. are merely apparent. The world as it exists looks imperfect only because of our limited perception.

Pantheism controversy

Main article: Pantheism controversy

In 1785, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi published a condemnation of Spinoza's pantheism, after Lessing was thought to have confessed on his deathbed to being a "Spinozist", which was the equivalent in his time of being called an atheist. Jacobi claimed that Spinoza's doctrine was pure materialism, because all Nature and God are said to be nothing but extended substance. This, for Jacobi, was the result of Enlightenment rationalism and it would finally end in absolute atheism. Moses Mendelssohn disagreed with Jacobi, saying that there is no actual difference between theism and pantheism. The entire issue became a major intellectual and religious concern for European civilization at the time, which Immanuel Kant rejected, as he thought that attempts to conceive of transcendent reality would lead to antinomies (statements that could be proven both right and wrong) in thought.

The attraction of Spinoza's philosophy to late eighteenth-century Europeans was that it provided an alternative to materialism, atheism, and deism. Three of Spinoza's ideas strongly appealed to them:

the unity of all that exists;

the regularity of all that happens; and

the identity of spirit and nature.

Spinoza's "God or Nature" provided a living, natural God, in contrast to the Newtonian mechanical "First Cause" or the dead mechanism of the French "Man Machine."

Modern relevance

Tractus Theologico-Politicus, a name Wittgenstein later paid homage to in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Late 20th-century Europe demonstrated a greater philosophical interest in Spinoza, often from a left-wing or Marxist perspective. Notable philosophers Gilles Deleuze, Antonio Negri, Étienne Balibar and the Brazilian philosopher Marilena Chauí have each written books on Spinoza. Deleuze's doctoral thesis, published in 1968, refers to him as "the prince of philosophers."[8] Other philosophers heavily influenced by Spinoza include Constantin Brunner and John David Garcia. Stuart Hampshire wrote a major English language study of Spinoza, though H. H. Joachim's work is equally valuable. Unlike most philosophers, Spinoza and his work were highly regarded by Nietzsche.

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein evoked Spinoza with the title (suggested to him by G. E. Moore) of the English translation of his first definitive philosophical work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, an allusion to Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Elsewhere, Wittgenstein deliberately borrowed the expression sub specie aeternitatis from Spinoza (Notebooks, 1914-16, p. 83). The structure of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus does have certain structural affinities with Spinoza's Ethics (though, admittedly, not with the latter's own Tractatus) in erecting complex philosophical arguments upon basic logical assertions and principles. Furthermore, in propositions 6.4311 and 6.45 he alludes to a Spinozian understanding of eternity and interpretation of the religious concept of eternal life, stating that "If by eternity is understood not eternal temporal duration, but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present." (6.4311) "The contemplation of the world sub specie aeterni is its contemplation as a limited whole." (6.45) Furthermore, Wittgenstein's interpretation of religious language, in both his early and later career, may be said to bear a family resemblance to Spinoza's pantheism.

Spinoza has had influence beyond the confines of philosophy. The nineteenth century novelist, George Eliot, produced her own translation of the Ethics, the first known English translation thereof. The twentieth century novelist, W. Somerset Maugham, alluded to one of Spinoza's central concepts with the title of his novel, Of Human Bondage. Albert Einstein named Spinoza as the philosopher who exerted the most influence on his world view (Weltanschauung). Spinoza equated God (infinite substance) with Nature, consistent with Einstein's belief in an impersonal deity. In 1929, Einstein was asked in a telegram by Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein whether he believed in God. Einstein responded by telegram: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings."[1] Spinoza's pantheism has also influenced environmental theory. Arne Næss, the father of the deep ecology movement, acknowledged Spinoza as an important inspiration. Moreover, the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges was greatly influenced by Spinoza's world view. In many of his poems and short stories, Borges makes constant allusions to the philosopher's work, though not necessarily as a partisan of his doctrines, but merely in order to use these for aesthetic purposes--a common tactic in Borges's work.

Spinoza is an important historical figure in the Netherlands, where his portrait was featured prominently on the Dutch 1000-guilder banknote, legal tender until the euro was introduced in 2002. The highest and most prestigious scientific award of the Netherlands is named the Spinoza prijs (Spinoza prize). Spinoza's work is also mentioned as the favourite reading material for Bertie Wooster's valet Jeeves in the P. G. Wodehouse novels.

See also

Plane of immanence

Notes

1-^ Deleuze, 1990.
2-^ Magnusson, M (ed.), Spinoza, Baruch, Chambers Biographical Dictionary, Chambers 1990, ISBN 0550160418
3-^ Tel Aviv University: "Why Was Baruch De Spinoza Excommunicated?", by Asa Kasher and Shlomo Biderman
4-^ Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy Allen & Unwin (1946) New Ed.1961 p.552
5-^ Lucas, 1960.
6-^ Ethics, Pt. I, Prop. V, Proof.
7-^ Ethics, Pt. IV, Prop. XXXVII, Note I.: "Still I do not deny that beasts feel: what I deny is, that we may not consult our own advantage and use them as we please, treating them in a way which best suits us; for their nature is not like ours...." (Emphasis added to quotation.)
8-^ Deleuze, 1968.

References

Deleuze, G. (1968) Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Zone Books)

Deleuze, G. (1990) Negotiations trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press)

Lucas, P. G. (1960) "Some Speculative and Critical Philosophers", in I. Levine (ed.), Philosophy (London: Odhams)

Popkin, R. H. (2004) Spinoza (Oxford: One World Publications)

Morgan, Michael L. (ed.), "Spinoza: Complete Works", (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002). ISBN 0-87220-620-3

Bibliography

By Spinoza

ca. 1660. Korte Verhandeling van God, de mensch en deszelvs welstand (Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well-Being). [2].

1662. Tractatus de intellectus emendatione (On the Improvement of the Understanding). Project Gutenberg

1663. Principia philosophiae cartesianae (Principles of Cartesian Philosophy, translated by Samuel Shirley, with an Introduction and Notes by Steven Barbone and Lee Rice, Indianapolis, 1998). Gallica.

1670. Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (A Theologico-Political Treatise). [3]

Project Gutenberg: Part 1;Part 2;Part 3;Part 4

1675/76 Tractatus Politicus (Unfinished)

1677. Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (The Ethics) Project Gutenberg. Another translation, by Jonathan Bennett.

1677. Hebrew Grammar.

About Spinoza

Gabriel Albiac, 1987. La sinagoga vacía: un estudio de las fuentes marranas del espinosismo. Madrid: Hiperión D.L. ISBN 84-7517-214-8

Etienne Balibar, 1985. Spinoza et la politique ("Spinoza and politics") Paris: PUF.

Boucher, Wayne I., 1999. Spinoza in English: A Bibliography from the Seventeenth Century to the Present. 2nd edn. Thoemmes Press.

Boucher, Wayne I., ed., 1999. Spinoza: Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Discussions. 6 vols. Thoemmes Press.

Damásio, António 2003. Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, Harvest Books,ISBN-13: 978-0156028714

Gilles Deleuze, 1968. Spinoza et le problème de l'expression. Trans. "Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza".

———, 1970. Spinoza - Philosophie pratique. Transl. "Spinoza: Practical Philosophy".

Della Rocca, Michael. 1996. Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-509562-6

Garrett, Don, ed., 1995. The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza. Cambridge Uni. Press.

Gatens, Moira, and Lloyd, Genevieve, 1999. Collective imaginings : Spinoza, past and present. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-16570-9, ISBN 0-415-16571-7

Gullan-Whur, Margaret, 1998. Within Reason: A Life of Spinoza. Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0-224-05046-X

Hampshire, Stuart 1951. Spinoza and Spinozism , OUP, 2005 ISBN-13: 978-0199279548

Jonathan Israel, The Radical Enlightenment, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

———, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670-1752, 2006 (ISBN 0-19-927922-5 hardback)

Lloyd, Genevieve, 1996. Spinoza and the Ethics. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-10781-4, ISBN 0-415-10782-2

Kasher, Asa, and Shlomo Biderman. "Why Was Baruch de Spinoza Excommunicated?"

Kayser, Rudolf with an introduction by Albert Einstein. Spinoza: Portrait of a Spiritual Hero. New York: The Philosophical Library, 1946.

Arthur O. Lovejoy, 1936. "Plenitude and Sufficient Reason in Leibniz and Spinoza" in his The Great Chain of Being. Harvard University Press: 144-82 (ISBN 0-674-36153-9). Reprinted in Frankfurt, H. G., ed., 1972. Leibniz: A Collection of Critical Essays. Anchor Books.

Pierre Macherey, 1977. Hegel ou Spinoza, Maspéro (2nd ed. La Découverte, 2004).

———, 1994-98. Introduction à l'Ethique de Spinoza. Paris: PUF.

Matheron, Alexandre, 1969. Individu et communauté chez Spinoza, Paris: Minuit.

Nadler, Steven, 1999. Spinoza: A Life. Cambridge Uni. Press. ISBN 0-521-55210-9

Antonio Negri, 1991. The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics.

———, 2004. Subversive Spinoza: (Un)Contemporary Variations).

Michael Hardt, trans., University of Minnesota Press. Preface, in French, by Gilles Deleuze, available here.

Pierre-Francois Moreau, 2003, Spinoza et le spinozisme, PUF (Presses Universitaires de France)

Stoltze, Ted and Warren Montag (eds.), The New Spinoza (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.

Smilevski, Goce. Conversation with SPINOZA. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2006.

Yovel, Yirmiyahu, "Spinoza and Other Heretics", Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1989.

External links

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Works:
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A Theologico-Political Treatise - English Translation
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A letter from Spinoza to Albert Burgh

ABRAHAM ZACUTO

Abraham Zacuto (Hebrew: אברהם זכות, Portuguese: Abraão ben Samuel Zacuto) (c. 1450 – c. 1510) was a Sephardi Jew astronomer, astrologer, mathematician and historian who served as Royal Astronomer in the 15th Century to King John II of Portugal. The Zagut crater on the moon is named after him.

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Life

Zacuto was born in Salamanca, Spain circa 1450. He studied astronomy at the University of Salamanca and taught there as well. He later was for a time teacher of astronomy at the universities of Zaragoza and then Cartagena. He was versed in Jewish Law, and was rabbi of his community.

With the general expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, Zacuto took refuge in Lisbon, Portugal. Already famous in academic circles, he was invited to court and nominated Royal Astronomer and Historian by King João II, a position which he held until the early reign of Manuel I. He was consulted by the King on the possibility of a sea route to India, a project which he supported and encouraged. Zacuto would be one of the few who managed to flee Portugal during the forced conversions and prohibitions of departure that Manuel I enacted, in order to keep the Jews in Portugal as nominal Christians for foreign policy reasons (see History of the Jews in Portugal).

He died in the Ottoman Empire, to where he had escaped, ca. 1510.

Work

Zacuto perfected the astrolabe, which only then became an instrument of precision, and he was the author of the highly accurate Almanach Perpetuum that were used by ship captains to determine the position of their Portuguese caravels in high seas, through calculations on data acquired with an astrolabe. His contributions were undoubtedly valuable in saving the lives of Portuguese seamen, and allowing them to reach Brazil and India.

While in Spain he wrote an exceptional treatise on astronomy/astrology in Hebrew, with the title Ha-jibbur Ha-gadol. He published in the printing press of Leiria in 1496, property of Abraão de Ortas the book Biur Luhoth, or in Latin Almanach Perpetuum, which was soon translated into Latin and Spanish. In this book were the astronomical tables (ephemerides) for the years 1497 to 1500, which were instrumental, together with the new astrolabe made of metal and not wood as before, to Vasco da Gama and Pedro Álvares Cabral in their voyages to India and Brazil respectively.

In 1504, while in Tunisia, he wrote a history of the Jewish people, Sefer Hayuhasin, since the Creation of the World until 1500, and several other astronomical/astrological treatises. The History was greatly respected and was reprinted in Cracow in 1581, at Amsterdam in 1717, and at Königsberg in 1857, while a complete edition was published by Filipowski in London in 1857.

External links

Short biography of Rabbi Abraham Zacuto
JewishEncyclopedia
Zacuto Foundation - an organization promoting the history, life and writing of Rabbi Abraham Zacuto
Freeily available downloadable copy of one of the earlier printings of Sefer HaYuchsin
A downloadable copy of Sefer haYuchsin printing from the middle 19th century

ANTÓNIO JOSÉ DA SILVA

António José da Silva (8 May 1705 – 18 October 1739), was a Portuguese-Brazilian dramatist, known as "the Jew" (O Judeu). The Brazilian spelling of his first name is Antônio.

Life

He was born in Rio de Janeiro, but came to Portugal at the age of eight.

His parents, João Mendes da Silva and Lourença Coutinho, were descended from Portuguese Jews (few of which still exist) who had emigrated to Colonial Brazil to escape the Inquisition, but in 1702 that tribunal began to persecute the Marranos in Rio, and in October 1712 Lourença Coutinho became a victim. Her husband and children accompanied her to Portugal, where she figured among the "reconciled" in the auto-da-fé of July 9, 1713, after undergoing the torment only.

Her husband, having then acquired a fixed domicile in Lisbon, settled down to advocacy with success, and he was able to send António to the University of Coimbra, where he matriculated in the faculty of law. In 1726 António was suddenly imprisoned along with his mother on August 8; on the 16th he suffered the first interrogation, and on September 23 he was put to the torment, with the result that three weeks later he could not sign his name. He confessed to having followed the practices of the Mosaic law, and this saved his life.

He went through the great auto-da-fé held on October 23 in the presence of King John V and his court, abjured his errors, and was set at liberty. His mother was only released from prison in October 1729, after she had undergone torture and figured as a penitent in another auto-da-fé.
Meanwhile António had gone back to Coimbra, and finishing his course in 1728–1729 he returned to Lisbon and became associated with his father as an advocate. He found an ignorant and corrupt society ruled by an immoral yet fanatical monarch, who wasted millions on unprofitable buildings though the country was almost without roads and the people had become the most backward in Europe. As his plays show, the spectacle struck António's observation, but he had to criticize with caution.

He produced his first play or opera in 1733, and the next year he married his cousin, D. Leonor Maria de Carvalho, whose parents had been burnt by the Inquisition, while she herself had gone through an auto-da-fé in Spain and been exiled on account of her religion. They had their first daughter in 1734, but the years of their happiness and of Silva's dramatic career were few, for on October 5, 1737 husband and wife were both imprisoned on the charge of "judaizing." A slave of theirs had denounced them to the Holy Office, and though the details of the accusation against them were trivial and even contradictory, António was condemned to death. On October 18 he was beheaded and his body burnt in an auto-da-fé; that same day one of his popular operettas was given at a Lisbon theatre.

Works

His dramatic works, which were produced at the Bairro Alto theatre between 1733 and 1738, include the following comedies, all played by marionettes:

Vida do Grande Dom Quixote de la Mancha e do Gordo Sancho Pança (1733)

Esopaida (1734)

Os Encantos de Medea (1735)

Amphitriio (May 1736)

Labyrintho de Creta (November 1736)

Guerras do Alecrim e Mangerona (carnival of 1737)

As Variedades de Proteo (May 1737)

Precipicio de Faetonte (1738)

Slight as these sketches are, they show considerable dramatic talent and an Aristophanic wit. The characters are well drawn and the dialogue full of comic strength, the scenes knit together and the plot skilfully worked out. Moreover Silva possessed a knowledge of stagecraft, and, if he had lived, he might have emancipated the drama in Portugal from its dependence on foreign writers; but the triple licence of the Palace, the Ordinary and the Inquisition, which a play required, crippled spontaneity and freedom. Even so, he showed some boldness in exposing types of the prevailing charlatanism and follies, though his liberty of speech is far less than that of Gil Vicente. His comedies give a truthful and interesting picture of 18th century society, especially his best comedy, the Alecrim e Mangerona, in which he treats of the fidalgo pobre, a type fixed by Vicente and Francisco Manuel de Mello.

His works bear the title "operas" because, though written mainly in prose, they contain songs which Silva introduced in imitation of the true operas which then held the fancy of the public. He was also a lyric poet of real merit, combining correctness of form with a pretty inspiration and real feeling. His plays were published in the first two volumes of a collection entitled Theatro comico portuguez, which went through at least five editions in the 18th century, while the Alecrim e Mangerona appeared separately in some seven editions. This comedy and the Don Quixote have been reprinted in a critical edition with a life of Silva by Dr Mendes dos Remedios (Coimbra, 1905).

Ferdinand Denis, in his Chefs-d'œuvre du théâtre portugais (pp. 365–496, Paris, 1823), prints liberal extracts, with a French translation, from the Vida de Dom Quixote, and F. Wolf likewise gives selections from Silva's various compositions. Silva is the subject also of several laudatory poems and dramas, one or two of which were composed by Brazilian compatriots.

References

Teófilo Braga, História do teatro português, a baixa comedia e a opera (Oporto, 1871)
F Wolf, Dom António José da Silva (Vienna, 1860)

Ernest David, Les Operas du juif António José da Silva, 1705–1739 (Paris, 1880)

Oliveira Lima, Aspectos de litteratura colonial Brazileira (Leipzig, 1896)

Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. xi. p. 341.

GA Kohnt, "Bibliography of Works relating to António José da Silva and Bibliography of Don António's Compositions" in the Publ. Am. Jew. Hist. Soc. No. 4, p. 181.

idem, "Martyrs of the Inquisition in South America," ib. p. 135.

M Grunwald, "José da Silva" in Monatsschrift (1880), xxix. p. 241.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

PEDRO NUNES

Pedro Nunes (pron. IPA: ['pedɾu 'nunɨʃ]; Latin, Petrus Nonius), (1502, Alcácer do Sal – August 11, 1578, Coimbra) was a Portuguese mathematician, cosmographer, and professor, born from a New Christian (of Jewish origin) family[1].
Pedro Nunes, considered to be one of the greatest mathematicians of his time, is best known for his contributions in the technical field of navigation, which was crucial to the Portuguese period of discoveries. He was the first to propose the idea of a loxodrome and was also the inventor of several measuring devices, including the nonius, named after his Latin surname.

Life

Little is known about Nunes' early education. He studied at the University of Salamanca, maybe from 1521 until 1522, and at the University of Lisbon (this University later become the University of Coimbra) where he obtained a degree in medicine in 1525. In the 16th century medicine used astrology, so he also learned astronomy and mathematics. He continued his medical studies but held various teaching posts within the University of Lisbon, including Moral, Philosophy, Logic and Metaphysics. When, in 1537, the Portuguese University located in Lisbon returned to Coimbra, he moved to the re-founded University of Coimbra to teach mathematics, a post he held until 1562. This was a new post in the University of Coimbra and it was set up to provide instruction in the technical requirements for navigation, clearly a topic of great importance in Portugal at this period when control of sea trade was the chief source of Portuguese wealth. Mathematics became an independent post in 1544.

In addition to teaching he was appointed Royal Cosmographer in 1529 and Chief Royal Cosmographer in 1547 up to his death.

In 1531, King John III of Portugal charged Nunes with the education of his younger brothers Luís and Henry. Years later Nunes was also charged with the education of the king's grandson, and future king, Sebastian.

It's possible that while at the University of Coimbra, Christopher Clavius attended Pedro Nunes' classes, and was influenced by his works.

Work

Pedro Nunes lived in a transition period where science was changing from valuing theoretical knowledge (and thus where the main role of a scientist/mathematician was commenting on previous authors), to providing experimental data, both as a source of information and as a method of confirming theories. Nunes was above all one of the last great commentators, as his shown by his first published work, but he also acknowledged the value of experimentation.

In his Tratado da sphera he argued for a common and universal diffusion of knowledge.[2] Accordingly he not only published works in Latin, by then science's lingua franca, aiming for an audience of European scholars, but also in Portuguese, and Spanish (Livro de Algebra).

Much of Nunes' work related to navigation. He was the first to understand why a ship maintaining a steady course would not travel along a great circle, the shortest path between two points on Earth, but would instead follow a spiral course, called a loxodrome. The later invention of logarithms allowed Leibniz to establish algebraic equations for the loxodrome.

In his Treaty defending the sea chart Nunes argued that a nautical chart should have its parallels and meridians shown as straight lines. Yet he was unsure how to solve all the problems this caused, a situation that lasted until Mercator developed Mercator projection, the system which is still used.

Nunes worked on several practical nautical problems concerning course correction as well as attempting to develop more accurate devices to determine a ship's position. He created the nonius to improve the astrolabe's accuracy. It consisted of tracing a certain number of concentric circles on an instrument and dividing each successive one with one fewer divisions than the adjacent outer circle. Thus the outermost quadrant would have 90° in 90 equal divisions, the next inner would have 89 divisions, the next 88 and so on. When an angle was measured, the circle and the division on which the alidade fell was noted. A table was then consulted to provide the exact measure. The nonius was used for a while by Tycho Brahe who, considered it too complex. The method inspired improved systems by Christopher Clavius and Jacob Curtius.[3] These were eventually superseded by verniers.

Pedro Nunes also worked on some mechanics problems, from a mathematical point of view.
He was probably the last major mathematician to make relevant improvements to the ptolemaic system (a geocentric model), however this lost importance because Copernicus heliocentric system replaced it by then. Nunes knew Copernicus' work but he only made a short reference to it in his published works with the objective of correcting some mathematical errors.

He also solved the problem of finding the day with the shortest twilight duration, for any given position, and its duration. This problem per se is not greatly important, yet it shows the geometric genius of Nunes as it was, independently, tackled by Johann and Jakob Bernoulli more than a century later with less success. They could find a solution to the problem of the shortest day but failed to determine its duration, possibly because they got lost on details of differential calculus, still a recently developed tool (at that point in time). It also shows Nunes as a pioneer in solving maxima and minima problems, which only became common in the next century using differential calculus.

Most of Nunes' achievements were possible because of his profound understanding of spherical trigonometry and his ability to transpose Ptolemy's adaptations of Euclidean geometry to it.

Bibliography

Pedro Nunes translated, commented and expanded some of the major works in his field, and he also published original research.

Commented and expanded translations:

Tratado da sphera com a Theorica do Sol e da Lua (Treaty about the Sphere with Theory of the Sun and the Moon), (1537). From Tractatus de Sphaera by Johannes de Sacrobosco, Theoricae novae planetarum by Georg Purbach and the Geography by Claudius Ptolemaeus.

Original work:

Tratado em defensão da carta de marear (Treatise Defending the Sea Chart), (1537).

Tratado sobre certas dúvidas da navegação (Treatise about some Navigational Doubts), (1537)

De crepusculis (About the Twilight), (1542).

De erratis Orontii Finei (About the Errors of Orontii Finei), (1546).

Petri Nonii Salaciensis Opera, (1566). Expanded, corrected and reedited as De arte adque ratione navigandi in 1573.

Livro de algebra en arithmetica y geometria (Book of Algebra in Arithmetics and Geometry), (1567).

Some modern reprints:

Obras (6 vol.), Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Lisboa, 1940-1960 (No ISBN at the books' record at the Portuguese National Library)

Obras (3 vol.), Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisboa, 2002-?, ISBN 972-31-0985-9 and ISBN 972-31-1084-9 (more volumes are likely to be published)

Honours

The Instituto Pedro Nunes in Coimbra, a business incubator and a center of innovation and technology transfer founded by the University of Coimbra, is named after Pedro Nunes.

References

Mourão, Ronaldo Rogério de Freitas, Dicionário das Descobertas, Pergaminho, Lisboa, 2001, ISBN 972-711-402-4

Dias, J. S. da Silva, Os descobrimentos e a problemática cultural do século XVI (3rd ed.), Presença, Lisboa, 1988

Calafate, Pedro, Pedro Nunes, at Instituto Camões' site (in Portuguese)

Printed works of Pedro Nunes in the 16th century, at Portuguese National Library (in Portuguese)

Footnotes

1-^ Martins, Jorge, Portugal e os Judeus (3 vol.), Nova Vega, Lisboa, 2006, ISBN 972-699-847-6
2-^ «o bem, quanto mais comum e universal, tanto é mais excelente» quoted by Calafate, Pedro (see above)
3-^ Daumas Maurice, Scientific Instruments of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries and Their Makers, Portman Books, London 1989 ISBN 978-0713407273

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