The Spinoza Problem by Irvin D Yalom

The Spinoza Problem by Irvin D Yalom

Review by Jem11 

A biographical novel that connects two unlikely individuals such as Alfred Rosenberg (the ideological seer of Nazism) and Baruch Spinoza (a founder of modern western philosophy and early humanist) may seem somewhat contrived, not least because they lived 3 centuries apart. Yet Irvin Yalom uses a single incident, a visit to the Spinoza Museum in Holland by Alfred Rosenberg, and a passing Nazi reference to the "Spinoza Problem" to do just that. The 'problem' is the great German author Goethe's reputed admiration for Spinoza such that he carried a copy of the latter's 'Ethics' in his pocket.

The problem, for the Nazis (and especially for Rosenberg) was that Spinoza was a Jew. Yalom (a trained psychiatrist) uses fictional associates of each man to explore their inner motivations. To build parallel stories that link two such unlikely people as Spinoza and Rosenberg based on nothing more the latter's (inferred) anti-semitic obsession with the former, is nothing short of brilliant.

The novel also explores Spinoza's radical ideas on religion and science presaging modernity. Some of these appealed to Rosenberg also. The Nazis were of course as much a modernist movement as liberalism, socialism and communism. But what they showed was the darker recesses into which these themes of worship of progress, continuous technical improvement, eugenics, rejection of religious belief could be led. I don't think though that this is a theme that Yalom is particularly concerned to emphasise.