“Let’s take a look at what he says about freeing oneself from the influence of others,” said Friedrich, scanning his notes. “That is one of the things Goethe learned from Spinoza. Here’s a relevant passage in Part 4, a section called ‘Of Human Bondage’: ‘When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune.’
‘Whosoever truly loves God must not desire God to love him in return.’
“Something that Spinoza refers to as the highest state of blessedness—Amor Dei Intellectualis. Here, listen to these lines from the Ethics: Thus in life it is important before all things to perfect the understanding, or reason. . . In this man’s highest happiness consists; indeed blessedness is nothing else but contentment of spirit which arises from the intuitive knowledge of God. “You see,” Friedrich continued, “Spinoza’s religious feeling seems to be a state of awe that is experienced when one appreciates the grand scheme of the laws of Nature. Goethe fully embraces that idea.”
It was this view of an orderly universe with predictable, mathematically derived laws, a world with an infinite explanatory power, that offered Goethe a sense of calmness.”
“I’m sure he would have said that you are subject to passions that are driven by inadequate ideas rather than by the ideas that flow from a true quest for understanding the nature of reality.” “And how does one rid oneself of these inadequate ideas?” “He states explicitly that a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a more clear and distinct idea of it—that is, the causative nexus underlying the passion.” Alfred fell silent and slouched in his chair with a pinched face that looked as though he had tasted curdled milk. “There is something disturbing about this. Highly disturbing. I think I’m beginning to see the Jew in Spinoza—something flaccid, pale, weak, and anti-German. He denies the will and labels passions as inferior, whereas we modern Germans take the opposite viewpoint. Passion and will are not things to be eliminated. Passion is the heart and soul of the Volk, whose trinity is bravery, loyalty, and physical force. Yes, there is no doubt: there is something anti-German about Spinoza.”
“Explanation soothes. It relieves the anguish of uncertainty.
Yet, given Spinoza’s sentiment that “the notion that God took upon himself the nature of man seems as self-contradictory as would be the statement that the circle has taken on the nature of the square,” a conversion seems highly unlikely.
After all, as André Gide said, “History is fiction that did happen. Fiction is history that might have happened.”