Why Was Spinoza Excommunicated? with Steven Nadler

Please register for this free online program.

In July 1656, Bento (Baruch) de Spinoza was given the harshest herem (ban or ostracism) ever issued by the Amsterdam Portuguese-Jewish community. The text of the ban rains curses down upon the young man, for his “abominable heresies and monstrous deeds”. Unlike other bans issued by the community in the period, it was never rescinded. But why was Spinoza excommunicated with such prejudice? He was only twenty-three years old, not yet the famous (and “scandalous”) philosopher he would later become. In this lecture, we will consider the circumstances of the ban and use them as a way of examining some of the major themes of Spinoza’s philosophy.

Steven Nadler is Vilas Research Professor and the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is currently director of the Institute for Research in the Humanities. His books include Spinoza, Atheist (Princeton University Press, 2026); Descartes: The Renewal of Philosophy (Reaktion Books, 2023); Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die (Princeton University Press, 2020); Menasseh ben Israel: Rabbi of Amsterdam (Yale University Press, 2018); The Philosopher, the Priest and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes (Princeton, 2013); A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age (Princeton University Press, 2011); Rembrandt’s Jews (Chicago University Press, 2003); and Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge University Press, 1999). He has also published, with his son Ben Nadler, the graphic book Heretics! The Wondrous (and Dangerous) Beginnings of Modern Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2017). 

This program is made possible by Mirka Knaster and Larry Jacobs.