Both men sat in silence for some time until Alfred said, “Yes, I understand. I give you my word that all of your comments will be held in confidence. And I can understand how you can’t feel safe if I get in an out-of-control state.”
“Right. So we must work more safely and strive to make us both feel safe?”
Friedrich took a closer look at his patient. Alfred was unshaved. Dark bags under his eyes gave testimony to sleepless nights, and his mournful countenance stirred Friedrich’s doctorly instincts; he tuned out his antipathy and got to work. “Tell me, Alfred, what’s our goal? I want to help. What would you like to get from me?”
Alfred hesitated for a several moments and then said, “Try this idea. These last weeks I’ve been reading a great deal.” He pointed to the stack of books littering the room. “I’m going back to the classics, especially Goethe. Do you remember my telling you about my problems with Acting Headmaster Epstein just before high school graduation?
“Refresh my memory.”
“Because of an anti-Semitic speech I had made as class president, I was required to memorize some passages in Goethe’s autobiography.”
“Oh yes, yes—it’s all coming back to me. Some passages about Spinoza. They assigned them to you because Goethe so admired Spinoza.”
“I was so frightened by the prospect of not graduating that I memorized them well. I could recite them even now, but for the sake of brevity let me summarize the major points: Goethe wrote that he was in a restless state,
and reading Spinoza gave him a remarkable sedative for his passions. Spinoza’s mathematical approach provided a wonderful balance for his disturbing thoughts and led to calmness and a more disciplined way of thinking that allowed him to trust his own conclusions and to feel free from the influence of others.”
“Well put, Alfred. And in reference to you and me? . . .”
“Well, that’s what I want from you. I want what Goethe got from Spinoza. I need all these things. I want a sedative for my passions. I want—”
“This is good. Very good. Stop for a moment. Let me jot this down.” Friedrich opened his fountain pen, a gift from his supervisor, and wrote “sedative for passions.” Alfred continued while Friedrich took notes: “Freedom from the influence of others. Balance. Calm, disciplined way of thinking.”
“Good, Alfred. It would be good for both of us to get back to Spinoza. And, what’s more, trying to implement his ideas may be well suited for a philosophically inclined mind like yours. Perhaps, too, it will keep us out of contentious areas. Let’s meet tomorrow at the same time, and in the meanwhile I’ll get to work and do some reading. May I borrow your Goethe autobiography? And do you still have your copy of the
Ethics
?”
“The same copy I bought when I was twenty. They say Goethe carried the
Ethics
in his pocket for a whole year. I haven’t kept it in my pocket. In fact, I haven’t picked it up for years. Yet I can’t bring myself to throw it away.”
Though only a few minutes before, Friedrich had been eager to leave, he now sat back down. “I see my task. I’ll try to locate passages and ideas that helped Goethe and may help you as well. But I think I need to know more about what precipitated this current bout of despair.”
Alfred described the self-analysis he had been conducting earlier that day. He told Friedrich of his lack of pleasure in his successes and how the
Mythus
, his greatest achievement, had caused so much torment. He poured out everything, especially how everything inexorably led back to Hitler. Alfred ended: “More than ever, I see now how my entire sense of self depends on Hitler’s opinion of me. I must get over this. I am a slave to the desire for his approval.”
“I remember your struggling with this issue when we last met. You told me how Hitler always preferred the company of others and never included you in the inner circle.”
“Now take the feeling I had then and multiply by ten, by a hundred. It’s a curse; it has seeped into every corner of my mind. I need to exorcise it.”
“I’ll do my best. Let’s see what Benedictus Spinoza has to offer us.”
The following afternoon, Friedrich entered Alfred’s room and was greeted by a better shaved and better dressed patient who stood up briskly and said, “Ah, Friedrich, I’m eager to begin. The last twenty-four hours I’ve thought of little else but our meeting today.”
“You look brighter.”
“I feel that way. I feel better than I’ve felt in weeks. How is this possible? Even though twice our meetings ended badly, still I profited from seeing you. How do you do it, Friedrich?”
“Perhaps I bring hope?”
“That’s part of it. But there’s something else.”
“I believe it has much to do with your very human need for caring and connection. Let’s keep that on the agenda—it’s important. But for now let’s stay focused on our plan of action. I’ve picked out a few Spinoza passages that seem relevant. Let’s start with these two phrases.”
He opened his copy of the
Ethics
and read:
Different men can be affected differently by the same object.
The same man can be affected differently at different times by the same object.
Noting Alfred’s puzzled look, Friedrich explained. “I cite this only as a starting place for our work. Spinoza is simply saying that each of us can be differently affected by the identical external object. Your reaction to Hitler may be quite different from the reaction of other men. Others may love and honor him as you do, yet their entire well-being and self-regard may not be so entirely dependent on their experience of him. Not so?”
“Maybe. But I have no way of knowing others’ inner experiences.”
“I spend much of my life exploring that territory and see much evidence supporting Spinoza’s postulate. For example, my patients have varying responses to me even in their very first visits. Some distrust me, whereas others may have immediate confidence in me, while still others feel I’m out to do them injury. And in each instance I believe I am relating to them in the same
way. How can that be explained? Only by assuming there are different inner worlds perceiving the single event.”
Alfred nodded. “But what is the relevance to my situation?”
“Good. Don’t let me wander. I’m only making the point that your relationship to Hitler is
to some degree
a function of your own mind. My point is simple. We must start with the goal of altering yourself, rather than attempting to alter Hitler’s behavior.”
“I accept that, but I’m glad you added ‘to some degree’ because Hitler looms large to everyone. Even Göring, in a moment of uncharacteristic candor, said to me that ‘Everyone around Hitler is a yes-man because all the no-men are six feet under.’”
Friedrich nodded.
“But you have persuaded me that he looms excessively large for me,” Alfred continued, “and I want you to help me to change that. Does Spinoza have a proposal for procedure?”
“Let’s take a look at what he says about freeing oneself from the influence of others,” said Friedrich, scanning his notes. “That is one of the things Goethe learned from Spinoza. Here’s a relevant passage in Part 4, a section called ‘Of Human Bondage’: ‘When a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune.’ That describes what’s happening to you, Alfred. You’re prey to your emotions, buffeted by waves of anxiety, fear, and self-contempt. Does that sound right?”
Alfred nodded.
“Spinoza continues by saying that if your self-esteem is based on love from the multitude, then you will always be anxious because such love is fickle. He refers to this as ‘empty self-esteem.’”
“As contrasted with what? What is
full
self-esteem?”
“Goethe and Spinoza both insisted that we should never tie our fate to something corruptible or fickle. On the contrary Spinoza urges that we love something incorruptible and eternal.”
“That being?”
“That being God or Spinoza’s version of God, which is entirely equivalent to Nature. Recall Spinoza’s phrase that influenced Goethe so much: ‘Whosoever truly loves God must not desire God to love him in return.’ He’s saying that we live in folly if we love God in the expectation of receiving
God’s love in return. Spinoza’s God is not a sentient being. If we love God, we cannot receive love in return, but we do receive some other good.”
“Which other good?”
“Something that Spinoza refers to as the highest state of blessedness—
Amor Dei Intellectualis.
Here, listen to these lines from the
Ethics
:
Thus in life it is important before all things to perfect the understanding, or reason. . . In this man’s highest happiness consists; indeed blessedness is nothing else but contentment of spirit which arises from the intuitive knowledge of God.
“You see,” Friedrich continued, “Spinoza’s religious feeling seems to be a state of awe that is experienced when one appreciates the grand scheme of the laws of Nature. Goethe fully embraces that idea.”
“I’m trying to follow you, Friedrich, but I need something tangible, something I can use.”
“I don’t think I’m being a good guide. Let’s go back to your original request: ‘I want what Goethe got from Spinoza.’”
Friedrich glanced at his notes. “Here’s what you said you wanted: ‘peace of mind, balance, independence from influence of others, and a calm, disciplined way of thinking leading to clarity of vision of the world.’ Your memory is excellent, by the way. Last night I reread Goethe’s comments about Spinoza in the autobiography, and you’ve cited him very accurately. Though he considers Spinoza as a noble, remarkable soul who lived an exemplary life, and credits Spinoza with altering his life, unfortunately, for our purposes he offers no specific details of the manner in which Spinoza helped him.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“Here’s what I suggest. Let me offer some informed guesses about how Spinoza influenced him. First, keep in mind that Goethe had already formed certain Spinoza-like ideas before he encountered Spinoza—the connectedness of everything in Nature, the idea that Nature is self-regulatory, with nothing beyond or above it. Thus Goethe felt much affirmation when reading Spinoza. Both men were brought to a state of extreme joy by grasping the connectedness of everything in Nature. And remember that, for Spinoza, God was equivalent to Nature. He does not refer to the Christian or Jewish
God, but a universal religion of reason in which there would no longer be any Christian, Jew, Muslim, or Hindu.”
“Hmm, I hadn’t appreciated Spinoza wanted to eliminate all religions. Interesting.”
“He was a universalist. He expected conventional religions to fade away as greater and greater numbers of men devoted themselves to seeking the fullest understanding of the cosmos. We talked about some of this years ago. Spinoza was the supreme rationalist. He saw an endless stream of causality in the world. For him there is no such entity as will or will power. Nothing happens capriciously. Everything is caused by something prior, and the more we devote ourselves to the understanding of this causative network, the more free we become. It was this view of an orderly universe with predictable, mathematically derived laws, a world with an infinite explanatory power, that offered Goethe a sense of calmness.”
“Enough, Friedrich, my head is spinning. I feel only dread in this natural orderliness. This is so abstruse.”
“I’m merely following your inquiry about how Goethe got help from Spinoza and your desire to reap those same benefits. There is no single technique in Spinoza’s work. He doesn’t offer a single exercise like confession or catharsis or psychoanalysis. One has to follow him step by step to arrive at his all-encompassing view of the world, behavior, and morality.”
“I am tormented about Hitler. How would he suggest I alleviate it?”
“Spinoza took the position that we can overcome torment and all human passions by arriving at the understanding of the world as woven out of logic. His belief in this is so strong that he says”—Friedrich flipped through the pages—“‘I shall consider human actions and feelings just as if it were a question of lines, planes, and bodies.’”
“And me and Hitler?”
“I’m sure he would have said that you are subject to passions that are driven by inadequate ideas rather than by the ideas that flow from a true quest for understanding the nature of reality.”
“And how does one rid oneself of these inadequate ideas?”
“He states explicitly that a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a more clear and distinct idea of it—that is, the causative nexus underlying the passion.”
Alfred fell silent and slouched in his chair with a pinched face that looked as though he had tasted curdled milk. “There is something disturbing about this. Highly disturbing. I think I’m beginning to see the Jew in Spinoza—something flaccid, pale, weak, and anti-German. He denies the will and labels passions as inferior, whereas we modern Germans take the opposite viewpoint. Passion and will are
not
things to be eliminated. Passion is the heart and soul of the
Volk
, whose trinity is bravery, loyalty, and physical force. Yes, there is no doubt: there is something anti-German about Spinoza.”
“Alfred, you’re jumping to conclusions too quickly. Remember how you threw the
Ethics
down because the first few pages were crammed with abstruse axioms and definitions? To understand Spinoza, as Goethe did, we have to familiarize ourselves with his language and step by step, theorem by theorem, follow the construction of his worldview. You’re a scholar. I am certain you spent years of historical research in writing your
Mythus
. And yet you refuse to give Spinoza, one of the greatest minds in history, more than a passing glance at his chapter headings. The great German intellectuals delved deep into his work. Give him the time he deserves.”
“You always defend the Jews.”
“He doesn’t represent the Jews. He espouses pure reason. The Jews cast him out.”