Abstract
This essay begins with some thoughts on the challenges and pitfalls of writing philosophical biography, on why biographies of philosophers tend to fall between the literary cracks, and on what makes for a successful biography of a philosopher. This is followed by a more specific discussion of the specific problems facing someone writing a biography of Spinoza, on whose life so little documentary material is available.
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Notes
- 1.
Stephen Gaukroger, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Geneviève Rodis-Lewis, Descartes: His Life and Thought (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999; this is a translation of her Descartes: Biographie [Paris: Calman-Lévy, 1995]); Richard A. Watson, Cogito Ergo Sum: The Life of René Descartes (Boston: David R. Godine, 2002); Desmond Clarke, Descartes: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); and A. C. Grayling, Descartes: The Life and Times of a Genius (New York: Walker and Co., 2005).
- 2.
Jack R. Vrooman, René Descartes: A Biography (New York: Putnam and Sons, 1970).
- 3.
Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
- 4.
Within Reason: A Life of Spinoza (London: Jonathan Cape, 1998). Earlier biographical studies of Spinoza include Stanislaus von Dunin-Borkowski, Der junge de Spinoza (Münster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1910), and Jacob Freudenthal, Spinoza: Seine Leben und Sein Lehre (Stuttgart: Fr. Frommans Verlag, 1904). However, these were written well before so much of the important research on Spinoza’s background in the Amsterdam Portuguese-Jewish community by I. S. Revah, Richard Popkin, Jonathan Israel, and others.
- 5.
E. J. Aiton, Leibniz: A Biography (Bristol and Boston: Adam Hilger, 1985); Maria Rosa Antognazza, Leibniz: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
- 6.
On Maimonides, see Herbert Davidson, Moses Maimonides: The Man and His Work (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Joel L. Kraemer, Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds (New York: Doubleday, 2008); and Sarah Stroumsa, Maimonides in His World: A Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). For recent efforts to write a biography of Socrates, see Luis E. Navia, Socrates: A Life Examined (New York: Prometheus Books, 2007); and Bettany Hughes, The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens, and the Search for the Good Life (New York: Knopf, 2010).
- 7.
The series includes the recent biographies of Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Kant noted above, as well as volumes on Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche.
- 8.
Descartes had a child, Francine, with Helena Fransdr, a woman who was a servant in one of the houses in which he lodged during his time in the Netherlands. The girl died at the age of five of scarlet fever; Descartes was heartbroken.
- 9.
Oeuvres de Messire Antoine Arnauld, 43 vols. (Paris: Sigismond d’Arnay, 1775).
- 10.
For a study of this episode, see Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973).
- 11.
See Ep. 33 (from Henry Oldenburg), in Spinoza Opera, ed. Carl Gebhardt, 4 vols. (Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsverlag, 1972 [1925]), vol. 4, p. 178.
- 12.
Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Spinoza’s Heresy: Immortality and the Jewish Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Rembrandt’s Jews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Spinoza’s Ethics: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); and A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).
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Nadler, S. (2015). Writing the Lives of Philosophers: Reflections on Spinoza and Others. In: Speight, A. (eds) Narrative, Philosophy and Life. Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9349-0_12
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