Prior to a short review I would like to relate a story about Spinoza and the IM who, like his teacher, IM Boris Kogan, should have been a GM, Stuart Rachels.
Long story short, former US Chess Champion IM Rachels became a Philosophy professor, like his father, James. There was a time when playing in a Chess tournament in the Great State of Alabama, where the Rachels resided, that James and I began talking about Philosophy between rounds. As we talked other players began listening, with many bringing folding chairs to gather around and listening. There were at one time or another maybe a couple of dozen people and not one of them said anything, which was amazing.
“How did you become interested in Philosophy?” asked James. The question was answered by informing him the reason I began playing Chess was a college Professor, Dr. James Doig who had been a Jesuit priest, but had left the order to be married. The last time I saw the man he handed me a book, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers, by Will Durant, saying, “If you read this book you will know more about philosophy than 99 44/100% of the people on the planet.” What can I say, other than, like he knew it would, my appetite had been whetted for MORE, and I’ve been reading philosophical books all my life.
When Stuart was at Emory University I once asked him at a Chess tournament, “What do you think of Spinoza?” Obviously flummoxed, Stuart replied, “We haven’t gotten to him yet.”
Here are a few of the previously books recalled concerning Spinoza:
A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age; Spinoza: A Life, and Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die, all by Steven Nadler.
Then there was the following book, which I recall being very good and interesting:
Looking for Spinoza : joy, sorrow, and the feeling brain by Antonio R. Damasio.
SPINOZISM
“The term Spinozism has almost invariably been used, by both defenders and detractors, to refer to doctrines held or allegedly held by Benedict de Spinoza. Unlike “Platonism,” for example, it has not generally been used to refer to a developing doctrine arising out of Spinoza’s philosophy. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the term was frequently used to disparage various types of atheistic doctrines that were held to be attributable to Spinoza. For almost a century after his death, his work was neglected by philosophers, execrated by orthodox theologians of diverse denominations, and slighted even by freethinkers. It is not always possible, however, to distinguish between those genuinely opposed to Spinoza’s alleged atheism and those who really espoused atheism while pretending to disparage it.” (https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/spinozism)
Chapter 9 Mob Rage
“Spinoza was in the finishing stages of his Theological-Political Treatise in the fall of 1669, when he moved from the relative seclusion of Voorburg to the hurly-burly of The Hague. The first year there he lived in the house of a lawyer’s widow named Van der Werve, in the same second-floor rooms whee his biographer Johannes Colerus would settle twenty years later. But the rent was steep, so Spinoza moved to a house around the corner, on the Paviljoensgracht, owned by the master painter Hendrick van der Spyck. Spinoza was, by all accounts, an easygoing, accommodating lodger who would often go days without emerging from his room. He had an ivory chess set, a game that was considered rather upper class at the time (most people preferred cards), and he amused himself by watching spiders fight in a little box; this made him laugh.” Pg 123
Throughout history many people have been killed because of their belief, if it were deemed to differ from the belief of the majority. That is the main reason most people prefer to ‘go along to get along.’ After reading what follows you will understand why…
“Cornelis got himself involved in a murky affair that was never entirely cleared up. He was visited in his home by a barber with an unsavory reputation, who supposedly offered to kill the stadtholder for the right price. There is no evidence that Cornelis agreed to this proposal, but when the story came out, he lied and said that he had never even met the man. This was reason enough for the Orangists to have him arrested as a traitor. He was flung in jail in The Hague, where he was tortured for three and a half hours while crowds milled outside the prison gate. Cornelis was hung upside down, his shoulders were dislocated, his ankles broken, his forehead squeezed in a vise, and he was soundly whipped. But he confessed to nothing. Still, a court sentenced him to banishment from Holland for life.
A sign appeared beside the door of the New Church, where Spinoza would later be buried. It read: “Beelzebub writes from hell that Kees [short for Cornelis] de Witt is coming/he is expected there soon/but not before his head comes off.” Preachers were no less vicious in their sermons, which called for the devil to be driven out to restore God-fearing virtue to the land. The usual rabble of armed militias and violent townsmen threatened to drag Cornelis out of his cell when a rumor started that he was about to flee. In fact, he was in his bed reading a play by Moliere, while Johan was reading the Bible by his side. The crowd, incited by a silversmith named Verhoeff, was banging on the prison gate, screaming, “Up with Orange, down with De Witt!” Possibly ordered to do so by officers n the prince’s side, official armed forces withdrew from the scene, leaving the center of The Hague in the hands of the mob. Prince William refused to go in person to calm the crowd down.
Finally, the prison doors were forced open, and the brothers were dragged out to face a pack of screaming people pointing rifles, swords, knives, and halberds at them. Johan was shot in the back, and Cornelis was beaten to death by a butcher and a fishmonger. This was only the beginning. The two corpses were suspended upside down from the gallows. Fingers were hacked off, tongues ripped out, and the innards were exposed by butchers. Verhoeff, the silversmith, carried the brothers’ hearts in triumph through the streets. One man tried to bite off Cornelis’s testicles. Women danced in a frenzy after wrapping themselves in the slippery intestines. Nipples, fingers, ears, and noses were grabbed as souvenirs. More and more people came to gawk at the grisly scenes.
Spinoza, whose rooms were only a short walk away from the lynch party, was beside himself when he heard what was happening. Lucas relates that Spinoza wept at the idea of “his felloe-citizens tearing the man who was a father to them all to pieces. Even though he knew better than anyone what men are capable of, he still shuddered at this terrible an cruel spectacle.” Spinoza later told people that his landlord, Hendrick van der Spyck, had to physically restrain him from going out that night to place a placard at the site of the crimes that read “ultimi barbarorum,” meaning “the lowest of the barbarians.” A good thing too, for even though most common people, led by their passions, wouldn’t have been able to read those words in Latin, enough would, and Spinoza would not have come back alive.
This was clearly not the right time to publish his Ethics.”
Clearly! Fortunately for humanity they were published later. There is so much more that could be written about this remarkable book, but this will suffice for a review.
After reading the above you can understand why there were two rules at the Atlanta Chess and What Game Center, aka, the House of Pain. If anyone wanted to discuss religion or politics they were politely asked to “Take it outside.” The rules were enforced after one strident wrong winger became upset enough to ball up his fist and slam it onto the plexiglass display case, shattering the glass. That particular cretin was, fortunately, never again seen at the House of Pain.
Armchair Warrior 