Michael Dirda

Michael Dirda:
"Perhaps the closest we come to understanding the young Spinoza's intellectual restlessness lies in the practically confessional opening to one of his early treatises, On the Improvement of the Understanding . 'After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire . . . whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.' What a dreamer! Who expects 'continuous, supreme and unending happiness' in life? But in his Ethics , Spinoza ends with just such a vision of earthly serenity."