Spinoza (The Routledge Philosophers)

This is a bad book. It is bad in two ways:First, it is a *low quality* book. I have the 2008 Routeledge paperback edition that costs nearly $40. It has a weak glue binding, cheap paper, and fuzzy printing. The typesetting and layout look like someone took a Wikipedia article and fed it through LaTeX. The inner margin is so near the gutter that you must constantly "read into the abyss" as the text curves around the page toward the spine. It's like a $4 travel-guide that you read in the hot tub and throw away when you get out.Second, and worse, the writing is *awful.* The style is a bizarre mixture of informal language (contractions and meaningless idioms abound - apparently Spinoza "went to town" with his definition of God and related notions), inane technical jargon (it seems that Cartesian Dualism is known to Della Rocca as "illegitimate bifurcations in reality"), and plain and simple poor grammar (I stopped counting the number of sentences that begin with "and," "so," and "but" - it seems that more do than don't - and we are often whisked away on rollercoasters of vaguely related sentence fragments chained together by commas). The biographical material at the end of the first chapter reads like a (bad) high-school book report on Nadler's "Spinoza: A Life." I'm astonished that this text was even published, let alone that it was emitted by a Yale professor (!) who is by all accounts a notable Spinoza scholar.I confess to being unable to continue reading past the first chapter. Random sampling throughout the remainder of the volume does not show any improvement.If you're going to turn to an oracle (i.e., a secondary source) to interpret the words of a philosopher, that interpretation must in some way exceed the original: it must tell you what (in this case) Spinoza said and meant more intelligibly or more concisely than Spinoza himself. This book fails, and fails badly, at this job.You would do better to read Nadler's Spinoza entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Nadler, Steven, "Baruch Spinoza", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/spinoza/>.) which is free, or the Spinoza section in Anthony Kenny's "A New History of Western Philosophy," which is expensive, but well-written! (Actually, a quick price check on Amazon shows that the HARDCOVER edition of Sir Anthony's work is slightly *less* expensive than the execrable work here under review. That is, in a word, insane.)Better yet, simply read Spinoza. Spinoza, philosophy's Great Explainer, believed that everything is intelligible. It is difficult to improve on Spinoza's own clarifying descriptions of reality. If Spinoza's geometric approach intimidates you, try Dr. Runes's de-Euclidized "The Ethics of Spinoza: The Road to Inner Freedom" as your first stop.

I've been a student of Spinoza's work for over 30 years now, and I can almost say without hesitation this is the best general study of Spinoza I've encountered. I say "almost" only because there have been so many other really, really good books on Spinoza appearing in the past decade, so using "best" here is not done lightly. Among these books are Steven Nadler's important studies of Spinoza, as well as--heaven forbid--more accessible, popular works by the likes of Rebecca Goldstein, Antonio Damasio, Jonathan Israel, and Matthew Stewart (The Courtier and the Heretic), not to mention the veritable cottage industry of scholarly articles on Spinoza's thought. The only reason I can think of for Della Rocca's lucid tome not getting more attention is it coming from an academic publisher without the same distribution clout and marketing savvy as the heavyweights. It is certainly not because of the work itself, which is highly recommended for both those new to Spinoza as well as for scholars versed in the Spinoza literature.Unlike the other mentioned works, this is a real work of philosophy focusing squarely on elucidating the essence of Spinoza's thought. What makes it different from other philosophical studies, however, is its eminently readable style. Della Rocca takes pains to make Spinoza's thought intelligible to the non-specialist, and in so doing helps us to understand why Spinoza is so important and relevant for us today. Unlike other studies of Spinoza, Della Rocca begins not by telling us how "difficult" Spinoza is, but rather by letting us know that, armed with a few key concepts, Spinoza is not only accessible, but also intellectually fascinating to read. Della Rocca dives right in with the first chapter by carefully outlining the key concepts in understanding Spinoza's "project"--concepts such as the principle of sufficient reason (or PSR), Spinoza'a naturalism, and intelligibility. As the previous reviewer notes, Della Rocca's exposition goes far in helping the reader to "get it", to reaching that "a-ha" moment of understanding the genius of a great thinker. In so doing Della Rocca is not simplifying, or dumbing down, Spinoza's thought for the reader; rather, he is providing us with a profoundly insightful interpretation that closely follows Spinoza's own thinking. This makes reading Della Rocca's study itself a delightful meditation on one of the three greatest thinkers of the modern era (along with Kant and Hegel).Spinoza indeed represents the intellectual foundation for the modern era, and for this reason making the effort to understand him is time well spent; as Hegel so correctly noted, all modern philosophy begins with Spinoza. If a beginning philosophy student were to ask me what five introductory books she should read, Della Rocca's study of Spinoza would be one of them.

Really this is an excellent discussion of Spinoza and is clarifying and helpful. I gave it four stars because it could be much clearer still with better editing and with less presumptions- Della Rocca does not always clearly explain his terms, even fundamental ones like "intelligibility", "principle of sufficient reason", "naturalism" and "rationalism". I also think he relied on simply ascribing Spinoza's views to "naturalism" or "the PSR" too often, when clear plain language explanation of the logic would create a better flow of reasoning.

Critics compared the works of the philosopher William James to those of his novelist brother, Henry, thus: "William James writes like a novelist, and his brother writes like a philosopher." It was not intended as a compliment to Henry, nor to philosophers. Well, for the most part, Michael Della Rocca - Chair of Philosophy at Yale - does NOT write like a philosopher. And what's equally important is that he offers a key - the "Principle of Sufficient Reason" - which has made understanding the core of Spinoza's philosophy much clearer for me.I would have given the book 5 stars except for those instances when Della Rocca (a philosopher himself, after all) falls back on the jargon. But those are few and have not deterred me from enjoying the book. If you are interested in, but struggling with, understanding the thinking of the ultimate rationalist, I recommend this book.