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JamesJM
"Betraying Spinoza"... but long ago. and I mean LONG ago. I think the year it was published? I was troubled by it, as I am with any 'interpretation' that involves deciphering of motive. Not that it wasn't interesting, or her viewpoint shouldn't be considered... but it is a viewpoint, an opinion.
I would have been more receptive had I read Spinoza himself beforehand... which I did not. Not that it would have done any good... philosophy flies over my head like a neutrino.
Since time out of mind I have been reading, trying to get through, "Summa theologiae". But it's painstaking... one sentence and I'm, "huh? What? Who? where? How?".
Betraying Spinoza came out in 2006, and I read it right away. Just recently reread it, as mentioned, and still loved it. She's a philosophy teacher and a novelist, so what you may be remembering, as far as "motives," is when she wrote portions as if she were there. She prefaced this with it being her fictional take on his life . . . because, unfortunately, we don't know a lot about it. She basically invented what she thought might have happened in those periods of time when history is silent about Spinoza. I really liked that she situated him within the context of his time, and as a Jew, which usually isn't done. And the backstory regarding the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, the forced conversions, the Sephardic Jews fleeing first Spain, then Portugal, arriving in places like Holland, which was considered far more "tolerant" at the time. But even there, in relatively enlightened Holland, it could be extremely dangerous to publicly espouse non-orthodox views.
Spinoza had that problem at least twice-over: within the Jewish community itself, which banished him for his ideas, and the larger context of the Christian Netherlands. In the 17th century, you could lose your life in most of Europe if you pushed the envelope of "free thinking" too far.
Anyway . . . I hope you give it another chance.
As for Aquinas. Yes. He's definitely difficult. I haven't read him in a long, long time, or about him since the 1990s. That decade was probably my peak, as far as delving into philosophy. I remember reading an excellent analysis of Aquinas, but would have to reread it to say anything of substance regarding his interpretations, etc. Just remember really liking it.
Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry
Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Traditionby Alasdair MacIntyre
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undpress.nd.edu]
