This is a recreation of Spinoza's study that I happened upon and liked. It's good to be able to put him into a context and imagine him sitting there at his desk working on his treatises.
I think Spinoza was a sociable, kind, generous man who was creative and had the intelligence of an Einstein. He was a free thinker, outward looking, keen to carry on learning and believed in tolerance towards others, their views and their respective religious belief. He earned a living from lens grinding but this only scratches the surface. He knew famous people and was friends with many of them, including the scientist Huygens, who was struck by Spinoza's technically brilliant lenses.
There are many contradictory views about Spinoza and he remains a controversial figure in philosophy. Some love him, some think him dangerous, much like in his own day, but I think he remained true to himself and to Judaism. His work is overshadowed by his excommunication from his synagogue but I think it unwise to read too much into that. He was a brilliant scholar and many wanted him to become a rabbi. He resisted this as he resisted being subsumed into an academic institution which would deny him academic freedom, something which is still an issue today, for this take a look at Catharine MacKinnon's book Butterfly Politics (2017 chapter 22 'On Academic Freedom: From Powerlessness to Power', 2002). The freedom to think was the cornerstone of Spinoza's philosophy. I think it is a freedom worth preserving at all costs!
I decided to start this blog as a way of showing how I go about research as an independent scholar. People often ask how many hours do I spend writing and how often. Do I stick to a strict timetable and so on but I found it was quite a complex process to explain so I thought it would be easier to set it out as a blog. There's no right way to go about research, it's whatever works for you and gets the job done.
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