“A Book Forged In Hell”

About Spinoza and Steven Nadler’s Take on His Most Banned Book

I’m not a philosopher. Not by a long shot. I had only heard of Bento Spinoza through random comments until Esoterica made a video about him.

That was enough to get me to pick up “A Book Forged In Hell, Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age.”

This is a weird post in as much as it is a book about a book. Steven Nadler wrote “A Book Forged in Hell” to discuss the contents and reaction to Spinoza’s “Tracatus Theologica-Politicus.” That is Spinoza’s thoughts on religion and politics, and the advantages of putting a wall between philosophy and theology, as well as a wall between politics and theology.

The Tracatus As Described by Nadler

Nadler spends a significant chunk of “A Book Forged in Hell” going through the “Tracatus Theologica-Politicus” chapter by chapter. I think I can give an impression of the philosophical bent.

Spinoza’s describing God as the force behind Nature, not a ‘Him’ but an unfeeling ‘it’ that powers life but doesn’t do anything else, kind of feels like the basic idea of karma. It’s interesting that he insisted he wasn’t an atheist, but everyone kept labeling him as one. Buddhism has a similar debate: is it an atheist religion or not?

Actually, he sounds like the world’s first Deist. Spinoza wants to dispense with any kind of supernatural element. He denies miracles and plumps for unknown authors for the Bible.

Nadler examines Spinoza’s message and intent at every stage, which is handy, because the rest of the book is about Spinoza, the Dutch Golden Age, and how thoroughly banned the “Tracatus” was after publication. You want to know why even his Quaker friends flipped out about the “Tracatus.”

But it is good to keep in mind that Nadler is summarizing because he thinks Spinoza has gotten overlooked in the world of philosophy and political science.

Nadler’s Book

This is a deep dive into the Dutch Reformed church’s power in the Netherlands, the big theological thinkers of the 1600’s, the political situation in Holland and the Netherlands in the 1600’s, and everything else that could be backstory to Spinoza’s life. Thomas Hobbes and Maimonides get discussed, since Spinoza drew heavily from both. I always appreciate context.

It’s surprising that he manages to fit all of this, plus 20 pages of end notes, into less than 300 pages. Especially when the man never says anything once if he can’t say it twice.

It is readable, even to a layman such as myself, but it is definitely the work of scholar. Be prepared for long sentences and calling everyone involved in churches ‘ecclesiastics.’

It is ultimately a human story, full of hope and enthusiasm, both the author’s and his subjects’. That makes it a good read for anyone interested in philosophy or history.