Think least of death Spinoza on how to live and how to die

This reviewer frequently directs people to the dominant texts in the history of philosophy (often the skeptics, or existentialists) when they express questions about big problems of the human condition: What makes actions right or wrong? What do we owe to each other? But when the question is the meaning of one must point to Spinoza. However, owing to the complexity of philosophy--its writing and the obscurity of language--philosophy's central ideas are often obfuscated, leaving readers struggling to appreciate the subtlety and power of the arguments therein. This is the value of excellent and important books like Nadler's Think Least of Death: his analysis of Spinoza's answer to big, timeless problems is approachable for nonspecialists as well as specialists. Nadler (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison) focuses on connecting Spinoza's atheistic, determinist metaphysics to his ethics, an ethic that is not nihilistic as one would expect but rather defines a meaning of life based in happiness, well-being, and human flourishing that is stable, complete, and not subject to random chance. This book is accessible and yet academically rigorous, and the subject could not be more important. Summing Up: Essential. All readers. --Robert C Robinson, Georgia State University

A guide to the good life, courtesy of Baruch Spinoza via modern philosopher Nadler. Spinoza, a Sephardic Jew who lived in Holland in the 17th century, had no use for the deity as an imaginary being, less so as one who takes an interest in the daily affairs of human beings. "Such a divinity is a superstitious fiction, he claims, grounded in the irrational passions of human beings who daily suffer the vicissitudes of nature," writes Nadler, whose 1999 biography of Spinoza won the Koret Jewish Book Award. Furthermore, teleology is out: There is no purpose to nature, no end to which it directs human beings. So why bother? Spinoza proposes a different view of human well-being, in which nature is perfect and humans should strive for perfection, exercising "adequate," fully developed ideas in order to attain a certain kind of power. "A tree is striving to be a maximally powerful tree," writes Nadler, "and a giraffe is striving to be a maximally powerful giraffe." Humans should do the same. This idea has led some to consider Spinoza an "egoist," but it really insists that a wholly realized human being is free only to the extent that that human exercises reason and "want[s] nothing for themselves that they do not desire for other men." This implies a responsibility, Nadler adds, for the rational person to "strive to improve" the people around them, leading them to the realization that what is good contributes to "the power and perfection of the intellect." By Nadler's lights, this does make Spinoza a "psychological egoist." It doesn't rule out the possibility of altruism, but it is also a drive for self-interested knowledge, which includes the realization that life ends in death, a fact that is important to acknowledge. A helpful explication of the early modern philosopher's ideas about ethics, the afterlife, and human nature. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.