My interest in Spinoza dates back a very long time, because although I didn't go to university I read an enormous amount when I was young. And I came across Spinoza quite early on. I sensed something in his writing which fascinated me and helped me to see, to look at life. If one wants to be very simple about it I suppose that fascination, or that secret, has to do with his rejection of the Cartesian division between the physical and the spiritual, between body and soul. Because Spinoza maintained that the two are indivisible and that the body is not a kind of machine, as Descartes suggested.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "My interest in Spinoza dates back a very long time, because although I didn't go to university I read an enormous amount when I was young. And I came across Spinoza quite early on. I sensed something in his writing which fascinated me and helped me to see, to look at life. If one wants to be very simple about it I suppose that fascination, or that secret, has to do with his rejection of the Cartesian division between the physical and the spiritual, between body and soul. Because Spinoza maintained that the two are indivisible and that the body is not a kind of machine, as Descartes suggested." in the context of "John Berger, On Bento's Sketchbook. An interview with John Berger, by Anderson Tepper. (The Paris Review, 22 November 2011)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.