Daniel Barenboim on Baruch Spinoza

“Spinoza helps me to see myself objectively. This makes life bearable even in experiencing suffering; and with the teachings from the Ethics the world is perceived as manageable.”

“The great Voltaire once accused Spinoza of ‘abusing metaphysics’. Is not the uncompromising nature of metaphysics more important today than ever? Has not liberated thinking become the most valued freedom at a time when political systems, social constraints, moral codes and political correctness often control our thinking?”

“There is no substitute for knowledge, self-knowledge, or a metaphysical understanding of the score and one's relationship to it; and no amount of talent or even training can compensate for the lack of all these elements. 'Man thinks,' says Spinoza, and this thinking is the result of a dialogue between the intellect, the emotions and the intuition. This is not only true of the thinking of each individual, but of groups of people and even of nations.”

“...We know at least since Spinoza that joy and its variant lead to a greater functional perfection, and that sorrow and related effects are unhealthy and should therefore be avoided. But music allows us to feel pain and pleasure simultaneously, both as players, and as listeners. [...] Music to me is sound with thought, and as Spinoza believed that rationality was the saving grace of the human being, then we must learn to look at music like this too.”

“I would not claim that Spinoza is the only philosopher who can help maintain equilibrium, but whenever I have been in a difficult situation, professional or personal, it has been Spinoza's emphasis on our ability to reason in everyday life that has come to my rescue. We must understand the possibility, even the necessity of negative aspects of our lives, such as depression, lack of energy or unhappiness. Reason can show us the difference between what is temporary, and what is permanent.”

“Spinoza had no particular interest in music. Nonetheless, his logic was influenced by his approach to music. My father, who studied philosophy, was the first to introduce me to Spinoza. He advised me to look at scores philosophically and rationally. Spinoza's principle that reason and emotion cannot be separated, became for me a primary approach to music. I believe that one can approach a concept and a piece of music only if the logical structure can be established simultaneously with the emotional content.”

“The Jewish tradition has two distinct tendencies: the more fundamental one, represented by the philosophers and poets and scholars who were interested only in Jewish issues and in the Jewish Weltanschauung; and the other tendency associated with great figures such as Spinoza or Einstein, and to a certain extent also Heinrich Heine, and which applied the traditions of Jewish thinking to other cultures, including German culture, and to other issues. It is not difficult to see how a double identity developed among Jews.”

“Spinoza would not tolerate restrictions, imposed by any political or religious system or by any moral attitude. He struggled for the ideal of free thought. Hardly any other philosopher made so many enemies. He was labelled ‘a troublemaking Jew’, banned from the synagogue and from the academic establishment. Even his pupils would acknowledge him in private. And when Karl Ludwig asked the impoverished lonely philosopher to lecture at the University of Heidelberg, he turned him down. Spinoza could not guarantee that his thinking would not threaten ‘widely accepted religious concepts’. The philosopher in him preferred the quiet retiring life to a bourgeois career.”

“...This awareness has become a kind of pre-Freudian self-analysis for me; Spinoza helps me to see myself and my surroundings objectively. This can make life bearable even throughout the experience of suffering; the teachings presented in the Ethics allow one to preceive the world as a manageable place. Freud himself once wrote in a letter to [Lothar] Bickel, 'I admit my dependence on Spinoza's teachings.' Conversely, Spinoza admits, foreshadowing Freudian analysis, that we cannot be in complete control over our emotions. [...] The ability to create emotional balance, though, is dependent upon the intellectual awareness of the problem. In this way Spinoza demands the integration of all human aspects in order to attain true freedom.”

“Spinoza suffered two experiences which are strongly evident today. Although a Jew, he was excluded from the Jewish community; he also became a victim of anti-Semitism. A recent survey in Germany exposed the reality that a majority of Germans believe that the Jews were the greatest risk to world peace. [...] It is significant that Spinoza's ideas had an influence on what is regarded as typical German thinking today – on Feuerbach, Wagner and Nietzsche. How could Richard Wagner become an anti-semite while influenced by Spinoza? Anti-semitism definitely formed part of the profile of a German nationalist in the nineteenth century. Why did Wagner pursue this idea with such fervour? He could not draw these ideas from his spiritual father, the heir to Spinoza, Feuerbach.”

“One of Spinoza's most important conclusions is that of the human being's necessity to overcome the contradiction between the finite and the infinite. Spinoza was able to express the very nature of the Judaeo-Christian way of thought and, at the same time, to remain outside it and even negate it. Both in the Jewish and the Christian traditions, God creates the world but is outside it. Spinoza, on the other hand, would not say that God creates the world, but that He produces it – in philosophical terms, He causes it. God, for Spinoza, is not outside the world and this view was the object of very harsh criticism by his contemporaries. The Jewish community in Holland even saw fit to excommunicate him. The God of Judeao-Christian thought, according to Spinoza, is an invention of man, who imagines that God thinks and acts as human beings do.”

“...So when you play five notes, if each note had a big ego it would want to be louder than the note before. And therefore I learned from this very simple fact, that no matter how great an individual you are, music teaches you that the creativity only work in groups, and the expression of the group is very often larger than the sum of the parts. And you can draw whatever conclusions you want from this, but I think that this is a not unimportant factor. And maybe in a strange way I've found some answers to all this, not in music but in philosophy, especially from reading regularly and for many years the Ethics of Spinoza. Spinoza was a religious scholar, a political architect, a philosopher, who aspired to geometric demonstration of the universe and the human being in it, and he was a biological thinker who advanced the science of emotion. And there lies of course one of the great difficulties of making music, the science of emotion.”

“I read Spinoza's Ethics for the first time when I was thirteen years old. Of course at school we studied the Bible – which for me is the ultimate philosophical work. However, reading Spinoza opened up a new dimension for me, which is the reason for my continuing dedication to his works. Spinoza's simple principle 'man thinks' has become an existential mindset for me; my copy of his Ethics has become dog-eared and torn. For years I took it with me on my travels and in hotel rooms or intervals in concerts became absorbed by many of its principles. Spinoza's Ethics is the best training ground for the intellect, above all because Spinoza teaches the radical freedom of thought more completely than any other philosopher. This Spinozan brand of freedom is not a release from discipline into arbitrariness of thought, but an active process. The more one is able to determine one's own thoughts – in fact, causing one's own thoughts, thereby creating one's own experience of reality – the more it is possible to become self-determined, to be truly free.”

“I think back to the last discussion I had with the great conductor Otto Klemperer. We talked about Spinoza and he said “Spinoza's Ethics is the most important book ever written”. Klemperer was, as we know, Jewish. At the age of 22 he converted to Christianity because he believed that only as a Christian could he conduct Bach's St Matthew Passion. Many years later, after the War, when Klemperer had already reached old age, he converted back to Judaism. And the reason he gave was Spinoza's Ethics. Perhaps the most important Jewish philosophy. Questions about Jewish ethics and morals and “What is being Jewish?” were long identified as being a minority. The traditional thinking and perceived identity of the Jewish people in its 2,000 year history was as a minority. Historically the Jews were integrated into social and cultural life but tragically persecuted under the Spanish Inquisition and the tyranny of Adolf Hitler. What is special about Spinoza's philosophy is that, despite persecution, abuse and alienation, his thinking was never based on the premise of Jews being a minority. That is precisely why his philosophy is so contemporary, now that the Jewish people have their own state, i.e. are no longer a minority. Spinoza's Ethics remains a potent formula for creating intellectual and moral unity among the Jews.”