Within Reason: A Life of Spinoza

In defiance of Spinoza's 17th-century rationalism, which taught that all knowledge follows with mathematical precision from universal ideas of reason, Gullan-Whur attempts to locate the origins of Spinoza's thought in his largely undocumented personal and psychological life. Her chief sources are the philosopher's writings, mainly the Theologico-Political Treatise and Ethics, and his extant correspondence. Out of this biographically unpromising fare, she constructs a portrait of a man divided between need for love and solitude, sexual feeling and self-discipline, reasoned and mystical approaches to God. Her method is to judiciously juxtapose quotations from Spinoza's works with descriptions of his social setting, his friends and the historic events of his time, to suggest the impact of these on his thought. Unlike Steven Nadler, whose recent biography (Spinoza, 1999) is more accessibly written, Gullan-Whur devotes special attention to Spinoza's disparaging remarks about women, locating them in the unequal sex roles prescribed by 17th-century Dutch Jewish society. Embedded within her dense arguments about Spinoza's personality (which was, she says, mainly arrogant and ascetic), are helpful insights into his thought, such as his unusual view of self-propelled motion. Though, at their best, these extrapolations of personality, feeling and mood resemble a Henry James novel, they also convincingly reveal Gullan-Whur's impressive gifts as an interpreter of texts. It's less clear, however, that they reveal truths about Spinoza's character. Photos not seen by PW. (Mar.)