Poem: The Philosopher's Life

I wrote this poem after reading Gilles Delueze's book on the philosopher Spinoza.  Spinoza, surrounded by negativity in the form of war, tyranny, reaction, and 'men who fight for their enslavement as if it were their freedom,' espoused a philosophy grounded in ethics that, unlike so many philosophers before him, took life not as a matter of theory, but as a way of being.  His most influential and famous work, Ethics, lays out a life-affirming treatise that works against what Spinoza calls 'satire'.  Delueze writes, "(S)atire is everything that takes pleasure in the powerlessness and distress of men, everything that feeds on accusations, on malice, on belittlement, on low interpretations, everything that breaks men's spirits" (13).  He presents instead a vision that de-anthropomorphizes God, presenting instead a monist vision in which God is an immanent cause (not transitive or emanative), and all physical beings and mental content are attributes of God, not to be distinguished substantially.  The goal of his philosophy was ethical: to remove the concepts of 'Good and Evil,' so espoused in the monotheistic traditions, in place of 'good and bad.'  To do something bad was not to do something forbidden, but to do something that decreased your joy and vision in the world (and the joy and vision of others, as they are essentially different modes of the same substance that you are).  To do something good would not be to do something decreed, but to increase your joy and vision in the world (and the joy and vision of others).  This was an effort to overthrow the presiding system of judgment and to inspire, in its place, critical attention to the idea of increasing one's power in the world.  Deleuze writes, "He wanted only to inspire, to waken, to reveal" (14).  


Spinoza ended up poor, property-less, undermined by illness and cut off from the Jewish community in Amsterdam.  Here is some text from the document cutting Spinoza off from the Jewish community: 


"By decree of the angels and by the command of the holy men, we excommunicate, expel, curse and damn Baruch de Espinoza, with the consent of God, Blessed be He, and with the consent of the entire holy congregation, and in front of these holy scrolls with the 613 precepts which are written therein; cursing him with the excommunication with which Joshua banned Jericho and with the curse which Elisha cursed the boys and with all the castigations which are written in the Book of the Law. Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lies down and cursed be he when he rises up. Cursed be he when he goes out and cursed be he when he comes in. The Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven. And the Lord shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law. But you that cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day."


Delueze puts it well: "Humility, poverty, chastity are his (the philosopher's) way of being a grand vivant, of making a temple of his own body, for a cause that is all too proud, all too rich, all too sensual.  So that by attacking the philosopher, people know the shame of attacking a modest, poor, and chaste appearance, which increases their impotent rage tenfold; and the philosopher offers no purchase, although he takes every blow" (3).  


Here is a poem I wrote, inspired by Deleuze's words and Spinoza's life:

The Philosopher’s Life (In Tribute of Spinoza)

When frost melted on the road less traveled,

It absorbed into the leaf-covered trail.

The molecules thereby became unraveled,

And seeped thoroughly into the shale.

Beneath the earth the moisture spread,

And from it seeds began to bud.

In so doing did life raise from the dead,

And the light of the sun drew the grass from the mud.

Such is the philosopher’s life.

Such is the way she lives.

Embracing poverty, chastity and strife,

She seeks to uncover pettiness and lies

That shackle the man embedded in politics,

Embedded in public opinions and expectations,

Who seek to replace the inane and bucolic,

With material production and senseless prostrations.

No, the philosopher’s is a life of virtue.

The act of making a temple of her own body,

Though appearing modest, poor and hirsute,

Though appearing bow-legged, chaste and wobbly.

But behind this mask lies an empowered being.

For such a life is lived as a cause, not an effect,

And thereby a vibrant source of Life is springing,

A life red with blood, a life erect.

A philosopher does not live according to means and ends,

But rather according to a spiritual production.

Thus analyzing the modern-day trends,

To uncover their root and cast out the unction.

Thereby the ethical life of the philosopher unfolds,

And not once has it ended at the pull of a noose,

For the masses don’t often approve of what’s told,

And the earth does bellow when water makes it loose.