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The true Spinoza of Market Street

Michael Strawser

To cite this article: Michael Strawser (2019): The true Spinoza of Market Street, Textual Practice,
DOI: 10.1080/0950236X.2019.1581682

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TEXTUAL PRACTICE
https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2019.1581682

The true Spinoza of Market Street

Michael Strawser
Department of Philosophy, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

ABSTRACT
Spinoza is commonly viewed as a rationalist philosopher emphasising abstract
metaphysical truth over concrete human emotions and relations. This view
permeates Isaac Bashevis Singer’s ‘The Spinoza of Market Street’, which
ridicules the intellectualism of Dr Nahum Fischelson, who had studied
Spinoza’s Ethics ‘for the last thirty years’ and provocatively asked Spinoza’s
forgiveness for becoming a fool after consummating his marriage. But is love
a thing for fools? Is it accurate to view Spinoza’s philosophy in this way? Here
I argue that Singer’s view of Spinoza is a misleading caricature, for it fails to
appreciate Spinoza’s emphasis on emotional well-being, which clearly involves
a recognition of love’s binding force. Spinoza’s perfectionist ethic not only
allows for a life of love and emotional commitment, as in marriage, but it
even goes further in showing us how noble love has the power to make us
truly free. Ultimately, I argue that the true Spinoza of Market Street is not Dr
Fischelson, but rather Black Dobbe, and that this reading rightly expresses the
progressive nature of Spinoza’s ethics of love and view of freedom.

ARTICLE HISTORY Received 8 October 2018; Accepted 5 February 2019

KEYWORDS Spinoza; Isaac Bashevis Singer; love; emotion; marriage

Introduction
Who is the ‘true Spinoza’ of Market Street? Is it Dr Nahum Fischelson, the
story’s main protagonist, who had studied Spinoza’s Ethics ‘for the last
thirty years’1 and concluded that ‘emotion was never good’2? Or, is it
instead the character in the story who performs deeds aimed at the good of
the other and acts on insights that show an intuitive recognition of the
emotional binding force of love and its power to make us truly free?
There are three main parts to my paper. In the first part I examine the ideal
of Spinoza found in Isaac Bashevis Singer’s masterful short story ‘The Spinoza
of Market Street’. This ideal, I will suggest, provides a false or inadequate
image of Spinoza’s philosophy. In the second part I explore what is arguably
the central force of Spinoza’s Ethics, namely his philosophy of ‘noble love’.3
Then, in light of this conception, I argue in the third part that the true

CONTACT Michael Strawser strawser@ucf.edu

© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 M. STRAWSER

Spinoza of Market Street is not, as commonly supposed, Dr Fischelson, but

rather Black Dobbe, for it is she who most clearly and distinctively enacts Spi-
noza’s ethics of noble love.

Singer’s Spinozistic ideal

Our story ends with the old intellectual Dr Nahum Fischelson uttering these
words: ‘Divine Spinoza, forgive me. I have become a fool’.4 Dr Fischelson
arrived at this point in ‘his declining days’ after marrying ‘someone called
Black Dobbe’ and consummating their marriage in a way that he found mir-
aculous and bewitching, a way Singer describes as follows: ‘Powers long
dormant awakened in him. Although he had only a sip of the benediction
wine, he was as if intoxicated. He kissed Dobbe and spoke to her of love’.5
For this act, Dr Fischelson deems himself a fool and misguidedly seeks
divine forgiveness from the damned Baruch Spinoza.6 But is love a thing
for fools? Or, is it rather the case that Dr Fischelson’s ‘new folly is wiser
than his old wisdom’,7 such that the mockery of Spinoza’s perfectionist
ideal8 with its ‘delicious stabs of satire against Spinoza’s intellectualism’9 is
unwarranted? Does ‘The Spinoza of Market Street’ truly represent the view
of ‘the philosopher of Amsterdam’, or do we rather encounter an attack on
a caricature of Spinoza’s philosophy?
Several scholars have commented on ‘the Spinoza theme’ found in Singer,
which has been described as the idea that ‘the flatulent, dyspeptic thinker must
be cured of his cerebral illness by sexual union with an unintellectual
female’.10 There are, however, reasons to doubt that ‘the Spinozistic ideal’11
involves a purely solitary pursuit of ‘the Amor Dei Intellectualis, which is
according to the philosopher of Amsterdam, the highest perfection of the
mind’.12 In what follows, I shall argue for a more radical interpretation of
the Spinozistic ideal, one that takes into consideration the activity of Dobbe
and suggests that it is she who best deserves the epithet ‘The Spinoza of
Market Street’.
One does not have to read too deeply into Singer’s short story to find
reasons that call into question whether Dr Fischelson rightly understood Spi-
noza’s philosophy. For although he had been studying Spinoza’s Ethics ‘for
thirty years’ and knew ‘every note by heart’, we also read this: ‘The truth
was that the more Dr. Fischelson studied, the more puzzling sentences,
unclear passages, and cryptic remarks he found’.13 A further cause for
raised eyebrows occurs later in the text when we learn that Dr Fischelson con-
sidered all other scholars of Spinoza’s philosophy to be ‘idiots, asses, or
upstarts’, for in his view, they ‘did not understand Spinoza, quoted him incor-
rectly, [and] attributed their own muddled ideas to the philosopher’.14
Perhaps in this way Singer intended to suggest that Dr Fischelson may not
accurately represent the views of ‘the divine Spinoza’, for it can hardly be
 TEXTUAL PRACTICE 3

believed that Dr Fischelson alone had the right understanding, while all the
other professors of modern philosophy were wrong.15
What gives most pause, however, and may be a prime example of Dr
Fischelson’s (or Singer’s16) own muddled ideas being merged with Spinoza’s
philosophy, is the duality in which Dr Fischelson conceives reality.17 Section
II begins with a wonderful description of Dr Fischelson looking out through
his window and beholding two worlds, the rational world of the heavens and
the chaotic world of the earth, the latter of which was home to the bedlam of
Market Street and understood as ‘the very antithesis of reason’.18 The resol-
ution of this duality through the miracle of union is the focus of an article
by Morris Golden, where the miracle is ultimately understood as ‘the
primal Jewish miracle, the coming of the Messiah, who is to reveal universal
order, God’s rule, despite the apparent dominance of impassioned chaos’,19
and where Spinoza’s philosophy is seen as ‘a distant faith in order, pointless
acceptance of a cosmic harmony which negates both the individual and
society’.20 Such a view, however, seriously distorts Spinoza’s philosophy,
which forcefully rejects both duality and miracles. For Spinoza’s vision
begins with a unified view of the whole, and more importantly, although
not commonly appreciated, a powerful and integral philosophy of love in
which physical, aesthetic, ethical, and spiritual aspects are all at play. Had
Dr Fischelson, that supposedly most careful reader of Spinoza, been aware
of this and had he truly understood Spinoza’s active emotion of noble love,
he should not have been surprised when ‘he embraced Dobbe’ and ‘pressed
her to himself’ that his ‘pressures and aches stopped’, he ‘was again a man
as in his youth’.21 These considerations lead us to conclude that Dr Fischelson
is mistaken in his attitude of regret and act of repentance, an act which
according to Spinoza would make him ‘doubly wretched’.22 In order to
demonstrate the strength of this conclusion all the more forcefully, let us
now consider the philosophy of love central to Spinoza’s Ethics.

Spinoza’s noble love23

Spinoza’s Ethics offers readers a profound and practical ethics of life, but the
centrality of his philosophy of love in this vision has escaped far too many
readers, particularly those who have placed more emphasis on Spinoza’s
metaphysics and epistemology than his ethics. In this section, I shall
discuss Spinoza’s philosophy of love and attempt to justify the interpretation
of the active emotion of ‘nobility’ as ‘noble love’, for it is this expression of love
that is made manifest by Black Dobbe.
Spinoza’s philosophy is particularly tricky, and coming to terms with love
and human emotions is difficult, so it is not surprising to find that Spinoza’s
work presents readers with some puzzles and interpretive challenges. On the
surface at least, there is some ambiguity in Spinoza’s presentation of love in
4 M. STRAWSER

his Ethics.24 Careful readers will find that there are three seemingly distinct
conceptions of love at work within his text that are not clearly delineated
by Spinoza. Spinoza writes of love in the following three ways, which rather
obviously parallel his three kinds of knowledge,25 although he only makes
this connection with regards to the third kind of knowledge and the intellec-
tual love of God.26 First, the supposedly essential definition of love is given
early in Part III, where love is viewed as a passive emotion defined as ‘pleasure
accompanied by the idea of an external cause’.27 Second, and most significant
for the argument in this paper, at the end of Part III Spinoza makes a crucial
distinction between passive and active emotions, such that the 46 emotions
previously defined are marked as passive, and an active emotion of ‘nobility’
(generositas) – later to be equated with love – is posited. This ethical con-
ception of noble love is capable of conquering hatred28 and is defined as
‘the desire by which each person, in accordance with the dictate of reason
alone, endeavors to help [others] and join them […] in friendship’.29 Third,
there is a form of eternal love that comes about through understanding
God, and this is defined as ‘pleasure, accompanied by the idea of God as its
cause’.30 This ‘theological’ conception of love, known as the intellectual love
of God (Amor Dei Intellectualis), is the most mysterious and appears to be
the only positive view of love known to Dr Fischelson. Interestingly, as inter-
preted by Dr Fischelson, this conception of love does not involve a recognition
of other living beings, which he generally views with disdain. Instead, it
involves a view of himself as ‘a part of the cosmos, made of the same
matter as the celestial bodies’ and ‘to the extent that he was a part of the
Godhead, he knew he could not be destroyed’.31 Nevertheless, however allur-
ing Spinoza’s conception of the intellectual love of God and his related view of
the eternity of the mind may be, by Spinoza’s own account this is not central
to ‘what we would count as primary piety and religion’, for that is instead
‘everything shown in the Fourth Part to be related [to the active emotions]
of courage and nobility’.32 Let us now consider further details of Spinoza’s
philosophy of love in an effort to make this interpretation of the centrality
of noble love stick.
Although the term ‘love’ is not defined and directly discussed until Part
Three of Ethics, it first appears parenthetically in Part One, where it is
claimed to ‘be related to passive and not to active Nature’.33 ‘Love’ does not
appear again until the lengthy scholium that closes Part Two, a scholium
that is significant because here Spinoza projects themes that are central in
the last part of his work. In writing on the practical benefits of determinism,
Spinoza explains that
this doctrine, besides the fact that it makes the mind entirely calm, has the
further benefit that it teaches us in what our supreme happiness, or, our
 TEXTUAL PRACTICE 5

blessedness, consists: namely, solely in the knowledge of God, from which we

are led to do only those things which love and piety advise.34

So love advises. Love advises us to do only those things that will lead to our
blessedness. Consequently, this is clearly not a love that belongs solely to
our passive nature as initially mentioned in Part One and further explained
in Part Three. It is rather the kind of love that acts, rather than reacts, that
prevents or weakens the passive painful emotions of hate, anger, and envy.
Love advises us to help our neighbours and ‘in accordance with the gui-
dance of reason … join all others in friendship’.35 We do this by desiring
the good that we desire for ourselves for all other persons as well, and
the more we do this, Spinoza explains, ‘the more [we have] a greater knowl-
edge of God’.36
Apparently, our good Dr Fischelson was unaware of these characteristics of
the active emotion of love, for he interprets Spinoza as holding the view that
‘emotion was never good’,37 and he expresses nothing but contempt for other
people and living beings. For example, Dr Fischelson views insects buzzing
around a flame as ‘fools and imbeciles’,38 loitering cats as ‘ignorant savage
[s]’,39 the people of Market Street as ‘the very antithesis of reason’,40 and pro-
fessors of modern philosophy as ‘idiots … asses, [and] upstarts’.41 All the
while, he believes that he is striving to cultivate the intellectual love of God.
This cannot be the case, however, since he fails to recognise, let alone
express, the important point that the intellectual love of God is ‘one and
the same’ as ‘the love of God for [human beings]’.42
Spinoza’s positive philosophy of love is thus not principally focused on
love defined in Part Three as ‘pleasure accompanied by an external
cause’, which he later refers to as ‘ordinary love’.43 For this love is a
passive emotion, and while it is not bad or necessarily to be avoided,
since ‘pleasure is not directly bad, but good’,44 it is unstable, based on
imagination (the lowest form of knowledge), and when excessive it may
lead to defects such as jealousy, lust, or worst of all hatred.45 Significantly,
in ‘The Spinoza of Market Street’ there is nothing to suggest that either Dr
Fischelson or Dobbe are moved by this sort of passive love. On the con-
trary, given their vividly unattractive descriptions, it is highly unlikely –
and there is nothing in Singer’s short story to suggest – that either would
be attracted to the other based on ‘lust for generation that arises from
beauty’.46 Consider:
Dr. Fischelson was a short, hunched man with a grayish beard, and was quite
bald except for a few wisps of hair remaining at the nape of his neck. His nose
was as crooked as a beak and his eyes were large, dark, and fluttering like those
of some huge bird.47

As for Black Dobbe, who does not emerge until over halfway through the story
in section V, she is described as follows:
6 M. STRAWSER

Dobbe was tall and lean, and as black as a baker’s shovel. She had a broken nose
and there was a mustache on her upper lip. She spoke with the hoarse voice of a
man and she wore men’s shoes.48

Consequently, the love that emerges in our story is not passively imagined
‘pleasure accompanied by an external cause’, but rather it is an active noble
love that involves rationally desiring the good for another and joining with
the other to aid in the transition from a lesser state of perfection to a
greater one. Such is what Dobbe does for Dr Fischelson.
In the course of explaining the dynamics of love and hatred in Part Three
of the Ethics, Spinoza equivocates and moves beyond the passive notion of
love when he writes: ‘Proposition 43: Hatred is increased by reciprocal
hatred, and conversely can be destroyed by love’.49 This proposition should
give readers pause for at least two reasons: first, because of the powerful
idea expressed – there is a way to remove hatred – and second, because of
the use of ‘love’ here, for it seems obvious that we are now dealing with an
alternative conception of love. One cannot easily substitute Spinoza’s initial
definition into this proposition and have it make sense. Hatred begets
hatred, such that if two persons experience hatred for each other, then they
are both experiencing pain accompanied by the other as the external
cause.50 In such a situation, the passive expression of love as ‘pleasure
accompanied by an external cause’ would not be possible, for both parties
are experiencing pain. Thus, in order for the situation to change, it is necess-
ary for one person to rise above his hatred and instead actively desire the good
for the other that one desires for oneself, which at its most basic level would
involve an experience devoid of pain. In other words, one person needs to
control the pain involved in hatred and respond with love, which would
then affect the other person with pleasure such that his ‘hatred can be extin-
guished by love’ and pass over into love.51 Thus, the use of ‘love’ in E3p43 is
ambiguous, for the understanding of love as pleasure accompanied by an
external cause only makes sense from the point of view of the hate-filled
person who is responded to with love and thus passively experiences pleasure.
But it does not explain how one of the haters in this situation could change
and become a conqueror who is actively able to respond with love while
experiencing pain. So, when considered form the conqueror’s perspective a
different sort of love emerges, a love that is active rather than passive, and
this is the active emotion of love that Spinoza equates with nobility, and
which I have called ‘noble love’. Let us now chart the path through which
‘love’ comes to be understood as active ‘noble love’ in Spinoza’s Ethics.
After 57 propositions in Part Three that explain ‘the origin and nature of
the emotions’ and categorise 46 passive emotions,52 Spinoza writes only two
propositions which explain active emotions rather than passions. In the scho-
lium to the last of these, we find an expression of an active species of love.
 TEXTUAL PRACTICE 7

Spinoza writes that all active emotions are related to fortitude, which covers
two categories of emotions, courage and nobility, where the former concerns
being-for-oneself while the latter concerns being-for-others and is defined as
‘the desire by which each person, in accordance with the dictate of reason
alone, endeavors to help [others] and join them […] in friendship’.53 This
definition is remarkable for several reasons. First, it is remarkable for connect-
ing emotion and reason, as these are not viewed dualistically as was – and still
is – commonly the case, but rather we are told that there is an active emotion
that is rational or ‘in accordance with reason’, and further that this emotion is
connected to ‘desire’, which is the essence of a human being.54 Second, for
Spinoza it is essential for an active person to strive to help others, but we
get no impression that this is understood by the so-called ‘Spinoza of
Market Street’. Third, it is noteworthy that the notion of ‘friendship’ is not
that which we commonly consider, because it is not based on personal pre-
ferences (e.g. a friendship is formed because of shared interests in music).
It cannot be, since it is commanded by reason alone. For this reason a
friend (i.e. the other one joins and helps through the insight of reason
rather than passive personal preferences) parallels what the Judeo-Christian
tradition calls the neighbour in the sense that it is non-preferential or
unconditional.55
Perhaps some readers are thinking that ‘nobility has now been defined, but
what’s love got to do with it?’. Is it possible to ground this interpretation of
nobility as love in the text itself? Significantly, in Proposition 46 in Part
Four Spinoza writes: ‘Someone who lives in accordance with the guidance
of reason endeavors, as far as he can, to repay the hatred, anger, contempt,
etc. that another has for him with love, i.e. with nobility’ (amore sive genero-
sitate).56 Here Spinoza is developing a conception of love as an active emotion
that is now equated directly with nobility (and in the demonstration of this
proposition Spinoza refers readers to the initial reference to nobility as well
as the proposition that hatred can be extinguished by love57). This is the
kind of love that the wise person – whether husband, wife, friend, or foe –
is supposed to show towards the other, so that when joined with the other
both persons become stronger together by transitioning from a lesser state
of perfection to a greater one. Spinoza’s use of the Latin sive or seu, which
are sometimes misleadingly translated as ‘or’, ‘implies equivalence’, and as
Samuel Shirley further explains in his Translator’s Preface to Spinoza’s
Ethics, ‘Spinoza nearly always uses [these words] to indicate an alternative
expression for what he is trying to say, and this gives us a valuable insight
into the interlocking of concepts that characterizes his system’.58 A prominent
parallel example is Spinoza’s famous phrase Deus sive Natura, which is often
rendered ‘God, or in other words, Nature’, for by this expression Spinoza
intends to indicate that what he means by ‘God’ and ‘Nature’ are equivalent;
they are not to be understood as two distinct things. So, we can say that for
8 M. STRAWSER

Spinoza the word ‘love’ may also mean the active emotion of nobility – Amor
sive Generositas – and more importantly, that he holds a particular conception
of active love – or ‘noble love’, as I have suggested to help reduce the ambi-
guity – that plays a central role in his ethical philosophy. Consequently,
when we encounter the word ‘love’ in Spinoza’s Ethics, particularly in Parts
Four and Five, we should not take it to refer to a passion accompanied by
an external cause, but rather as an active, internal movement of the self
that is directed towards others. Following the command of reason, it is
clear that one shall love others, and through acts of love, one strengthens
and preserves one’s own being. Without love one lives miserably.59
In the final scholium in Part Four we read:
These and similar things that I have demonstrated about the true freedom of
man are related to fortitude, that is to courage and nobility. I do not think it
worthwhile to demonstrate here, one by one, that a free man hates no one, is
angry with no one, envies no one, is indignant with no one, despises no one,
and is far from being proud. For these, and all the things that relate to true
life and religion, are easily demonstrated from Props. 37 and 46 of this Part:
namely, that hatred is to be conquered by love, and that each person who is
led by reason desires that the good that he seeks for himself should also exist
for others.60

Here again we have a passage in which the concepts of nobility and love are
connected, as well as an expression of the idea that true freedom involves the
love that conquers hatred and desires the good for others.
Interestingly, the equivalence of love and nobility is also indicated in the
entry on ‘Generositas’ in The Bloomsbury Companion to Spinoza. ‘Generosity’
is said to be ‘identified with “love”’,61 and we also read the following:
In spite of its relatively rare occurrence, the concept [generositas] is of crucial
importance to Spinoza’s idea of man as a social and political being, as presented
in the fourth part of the Ethics. Since generosity conquers hate and thereby aids
social well-being through an increase of joy in others, this altruistic side of for-
titude will enhance political peace.62

As we have seen above, however, Spinoza initially explains that hatred is

‘destroyed by love’ and ‘hatred is to be conquered by love’, so here we also
find a clear indication that this conception of love is equivalent to nobility.63
A final passage from the Ethics will serve to solidify this interpretation of
Spinoza’s philosophy of love.64 In an important scholium in Part Five that
summarises the power of the intellect in ‘arranging and interconnecting the
affections of the body’, Spinoza again cites Proposition 43 from Part Three
while also linking this conception of love with the active emotion of nobility.
We read:
By this power of correctly arranging and interconnecting the affections of the
body we can bring it about that we are not easily affected by bad emotions.
 TEXTUAL PRACTICE 9

For (by Prop. 7, Part 5) a greater force is required to restrain emotions which
are arranged and interconnected in accordance with the order of the intellect
than to restrain those that are uncertain and inconstant. The best we can do,
therefore, as long as we do not have a perfect knowledge of our emotions, is
to conceive a right way of living, i.e. fixed rules of life, that are certain, and
to commit these to memory and apply them constantly to particular things
that often meet us in life, so that in this way our imagination is affected by
them and they are always at hand. For example, among the fixed rules of life
we have stated (see Prop. 46, Part 4, with its Scholium) that hatred is to be con-
quered by love, i.e. by nobility (amore seu generositate) but is not to be repaid
with reciprocal hatred. But so that we may have this precept of reason always at
hand when it is required, we need to think of and meditate upon the common
injuries of human beings, and how and in what way they are best warded off by
nobility.65

Given the significance of this scholium I have quoted it at some length, as it

very clearly shows the centrality of love – that is, nobility, in other words,
‘noble love’ – for Spinoza’s ethical philosophy or the ‘right way of living’.
Here, again, love is viewed as an active emotion and a ‘precept of reason’,
and it is the only ‘fixed rule of life’ that Spinoza refers to that would be
capable of restraining those passive emotions ‘that are uncertain and incon-
stant’ – which would, of course, include love understood as pleasure
accompanied by an external cause, sensual love, and lust. Thus, this active,
rational conception of ‘noble love’ is superior to passive expressions of love
(such as, for example, falling in love due to an ideal of external beauty or
getting married to have children) and is to be thought of and meditated
upon to ward off the dangers that such expressions can involve (e.g. the
pain involved in divorce). We are now justified in claiming that noble love
is central to Spinoza’s philosophy of love, if not his entire Ethics, and of the
two main characters in Singer’s ‘The Spinoza of Market Street’, it is Black
Dobbe who most clearly enacts this philosophy of love. Although she does
not appear until over halfway through the story and we find only a few
limited expressions of her thoughts and words, nevertheless we can see in
her deeds an expression of love conceived most distinctly as an active internal
movement whereby one acts to strengthen the other.

The true Spinoza of Market Street

Let us now return to Singer’s short story and consider who acted out of the
desire to do good for the other. Who strengthened whom? Who acted most
forcefully to move from slavery to freedom? Dr Fischelson, I suggest, is a
pseudo-Spinoza, for his awkward and hesitant encounter with Dobbe can
hardly be seen as approximating the actions of a moral exemplar. Consider
now the actions of Dobbe, who after all, wanted marriage to be on her own
terms, as she had repeatedly said to other women: ‘I don’t intend to be a
slave for any man. Let them all rot’.66 Is it not she who most fully
10 M. STRAWSER

approximates the Spinozistic ideal of noble love and can thus justifiably be
called the ‘true Spinoza of Market Street’?
For all his years of studying Spinoza, one would think that Dr Fischelson
would have realised that one of the major insights of Spinoza’s system is
the central role given to the emotions, which for human beings are essentially
unavoidable67 and far from all being bad. The free and wise person will
attempt to ‘bring it about that we are not easily affected by bad emotions’,68
for all bad emotions involve pain, but the emotions that involve pleasure
will be so ordered that the active, rational emotions are meditated on so as
to be always close at hand. As we have seen above, the only certain rule for
the right way of living is ‘love, i.e. nobility’ (amore seu generositate), which
means that this should pervade all our relationships with others, including
those with our partners or potential partners. Thus, could not Dr Fischelson
see that in this encounter with Dobbe she was endeavouring to help him and
bind herself to him, so that he might do the same with her? Remember that for
Spinoza we have no absolute rule over the passions, but two individuals in
union are more powerful than one.69
Perhaps one will object that the active emotion of nobility has nothing to
do with erotic love and marriage. But can we be so sure, and why would our
default assumption be that these are entirely separate meanings?70 Granted
the marriage between Dobbe and Dr Fischelson seemingly comes out of the
blue – it is announced at the beginning of section VII of the story, so it
comes as a surprise, and when announced, ‘the rabbi’s wife thought
[Dobbe] had gone mad’.71 But this event is preceded by a series of noble
acts of love which had the wondrous effect of preventing Dr Fischelson’s
death and can thus also be seen as a part of the causal series leading to the
miraculous effect of the consummation of their marriage.72
What are some examples of Dobbe’s acts of noble love? Readers may be
surprised that they appear to be quite simple, much simpler than the act of
comprehending life sub specie eternitatis, and yet overcoming one’s fear
and actually extending oneself in the endeavour to help another and desire
the other’s good may be one of the most excellent things that is as difficult
as it is rare. On their first encounter Dobbe fetched water for the sickly Dr
Fischelson; she assisted him out of bed, undressed him, and then ‘prepared
some soup for him on the kerosene stove’.73 She gave him the Ethics – ‘disap-
provingly’, since ‘she was certain it was a gentile prayer book’74 – and mopped
his floor. She then provided him with milk and kasha. Exactly how long their
encounters continued goes unstated, but Dobbe visited Dr Fischelson several
times a day, preparing him soup and tea, dusting and airing his books, and
they talked about the war and told each other stories about their lives.
Although illiterate, Dobbe shows that she has an inquisitive mind in their con-
versations, which become more intimate, as she asks whether Dr Fischelson is
a convert, and when he asks her whether she believes in God, she answers ‘I
 TEXTUAL PRACTICE 11

don’t know’.75 Throughout this period of visits Dr Fischelson’s health

improves, and one can see how they begin to join to each other in friendship
and take pleasure in each other’s company. Although ‘she couldn’t explain
why’, ‘the old man’s attic room attracted her’, and Dobbe ‘enjoyed talking
to Dr. Fischelson’.76
Surprisingly – and ‘Dobbe was surprised’ – Dr Fischelson asked her ‘why
she had not married’,77 but he does so without any apparent thought of the
view Spinoza presents of marriage in the Ethics. ‘As to what concerns mar-
riage’, Spinoza is quite specific:
it is certain that this agrees with reason, if the desire of sexual intercourse is not
engendered by beauty alone, but also by the love of begetting children and edu-
cating them wisely; and also if the love of each person … has as its cause, not
beauty alone, but above all the freedom of the mind.78

Here we find a view of love that involves a complex ordering of desires,

emotion, and reason. Passionate attraction has its place, as does the desire
to procreate, but perhaps most significantly, in a perfected union of lovers
each will be desirous of increasing the loving power (i.e. the active principle
of freedom) of the other. Although it appears as a relatively marginal
comment given in an appendix, Spinoza makes it clear that marriage is
rational provided that the love of the union has as its highest cause ‘the
freedom of the mind’. Spinoza is thus committed to the view that we
should promote the freedom of others to do what is best,79 and in his short
comment on marriage he offers a genuine insight into the democratic goal
of marital union.80 Notably, here in his Ethics Spinoza makes no distinction
between the sexes in leading the way to freedom, which in light of his time
and the tradition he inherited, is rather remarkable and places him far
beyond other rationalist medieval Jewish philosophers and the so-called
‘modern’ philosophers.81
Given this deeper insight as to what concerns marriage, perhaps now our
good Dr Fischelson can see that the true cause of his foolishness does not lie in
the consummation of his marriage to Dobbe, but rather in his thinking that
this action was without reason. For it may only be through this action that
our good Dr Fischelson can achieve perfection of the mind and fully appreci-
ate the love of God.
Consequently, if there is to be any request for forgiveness from Dr Fischel-
son to Spinoza it should be for misunderstanding his Ethics. More impor-
tantly, however, rather than asking Spinoza for forgiveness, Dr Fischelson –
and perhaps also Singer, his commentators, and the majority of his readers
– should consider asking Dobbe for forgiveness. For as Spinoza’s Ethics
helps us to conceive, it is her role in the story that has been overlooked, for-
gotten, or neglected. Cast as black, unattractive, and unintellectual, commen-
tators have focused on the ‘radical change’ undergone by Dr Fischelson ‘in
12 M. STRAWSER

moving from an intellectual to a physical love’,82 while forgetting that it is

Dobbe who is the active force in initiating a movement from the opposite
direction. Although her words in the story are few, it is through her actions
that she expresses Spinoza’s philosophy of ‘noble love’. While controlling
her passive emotions of fear and distrust, Dobbe takes it upon herself to
care for the sick body that is Dr Fischelson, with no cause other than the
desire to do good for the other. She helps to reinvigorate the physical and
then through her own free activity arranges the marriage, although how
this comes about is unknown, but it is clearly not done because of beauty
or the possibility of children, so we must reason that it is conceived or intui-
tively grasped as conducive to the right way of living, which leads to the
freedom of mind. Thus, the radical change that takes place is from the phys-
ical to the intellectual, and we may indeed consider Dobbe to be the true
‘Spinoza of Market Street’, since it is she who understands the importance
of marriage in strengthening both the other and oneself. Therefore, if we
want to understand the radical change in the story as a ‘miracle’ – to use
Singer’s word – what is truly miraculous is not the isolated subjective
change experienced by Dr Fischelson, but rather the radical change caused
by one individual unto another through free, active love (i.e. nobility):
Dobbe groped for Dr. Fischelson in the dark and kissed his mouth. ‘My dear
husband’, she whispered to him, ‘Mazel Tov’.83

Notes
1. Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Spinoza of Market Street (New York: Farrar, Strauss,
Giroux, 1961), p. 4. ‘The Spinoza of Market Street’, the first short story in this
collection, is translated by Martha Glicklich and Cecil Hemley.
2. Singer, ‘The Spinoza of Market Street’, p. 9.
3. This refers to the active, rational emotion of ‘nobility’ (generositatem) that
Spinoza identifies in a scholium at the end of Part Three of the Ethics
(E3p59s) and then explicitly equates with ‘love’ (amore) in Parts Four
(E4p46) and Five (E510s). This will be explained further in Part II below.
Note that throughout this paper I shall refer to G. H. R. Parkinson’s translation
of Spinoza’s Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) and follow the stan-
dard style for citing Spinoza’s Ethics, where ‘E’ stands for the part of Ethics, ‘p’
for proposition, ‘s’ for scholium, ‘c’ for corollary, ‘app’ for appendix, and ‘DE’
for ‘Definitions of the Emotions’.
4. Singer, ‘The Spinoza of Market Street’, p. 24.
5. Ibid., p. 23.
6. In 1656 Spinoza was excommunicated from the Jewish community at the age of
24. In the formal record of the Herem pronounced against him he was vehe-
mently condemned:
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 pardon him; the
 TEXTUAL PRACTICE 13

anger and wrath of the Lord will rage against this man, and bring upon
him all the curses which are written in the Book of the Law, and the Lord
will destroy his name from under the Heavens.
See A. Wolf (ed.), The Oldest Biography of Spinoza (London: George Allen &
Unwin, 1927), p. 146.
7. Edward Alexander, Isaac Bashevis Singer: A Study of the Short Fiction (Boston,
MA: Twayne Publishers, 1990), p. 56.
8. The case for considering Spinoza as part of the perfectionist tradition has
recently been made by Michael LeBuffe. His argument is helpful in orienting
this investigation:
The central idea of perfectionism is that we ought to be guided in how we
lead our lives by the project of improving ourselves. Because improve-
ment may be understood in many ways, this view might encompass
many very different ethical views. Traditionally, however, perfectionist
moral theories have understood the relevant improvement to be an
improvement of the respects in which we are fundamentally human.
Spinoza adopts precisely this notion in his discussion of a model of
human nature in the Preface to Part 4 of the Ethics. … Moreover,
Spinoza develops his view in response to other perfectionist theories as
well as adopting their fundamental assumptions. His intellectualism,
and indeed his uneasy pairing of physical well-being with intellectualism,
clearly owes a debt to the arguments of Maimonides, who takes perfec-
tion of the intellect to be the superior of two human perfections. … In
addition, Spinoza refers repeatedly to Aristotelian views of human func-
tion and complete goods in developing the account of Part 4. These
points suggest strongly that Spinoza belongs to the perfectionist
tradition.
Michael LeBuffe, From Bondage to Freedom: Spinoza on Human Excellence
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 170–1.
9. Alexander, Isaac Bashevis Singer, p. 56.
10. Ibid., pp. 39–40. Alexander attributes this label to Morris Golden in his article
‘Dr. Fischelson’s Miracle: Duality and Vision in Singer’s Fiction’, in Marcia
Allentuck (ed.), The Achievement of Isaac Bashevis Singer (Carbondale, IL:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1969).
11. Alexander, Isaac Bashevis Singer, p. 55.
12. Singer, ‘The Spinoza of Market Street’, p. 7. Also, in contrast to Singer scholars,
Spinoza scholars have not paid much attention to Singer’s work. A notable
exception is Daniel Garber’s ‘Dr. Fischelson’s Dilemma: Spinoza on Freedom
and Sociability’, in Yirmiyahu Yovel and Gideon Segal (eds.), Ethica IV:
Spinoza on Reason and the ‘Free Man’ (New York: Little Room Press, 2004),
pp. 183–207. While there are some important points of agreement between
Garber’s work and the present essay – such as Dr Fischelson’s problematic
understanding of Spinoza and the significance of nobility – Garber focuses
on the important theoretical problem involved in the idealisation of freedom
and sociability, while this essay emphasises the significance of the practical
ethics of love and the agency of Black Dobbe.
13. Singer, ‘The Spinoza of Market Street’, p. 4.
14. Ibid., p. 11.
14 M. STRAWSER

15. Be this as it may, while we cannot determine Singer’s understanding of Spino-

za’s philosophy with certitude, and while Singer’s own intentions in writing this
short story, even if they could be known, would not affect the argument pre-
sented here, it is nevertheless highly unlikely that Singer was being ironic
and did not actually intend for Dr Fischelson to be seen as the Spinoza of
Market Street, for there are no indications to suggest this specific point as it
would clearly undermine the common theme of this story.
16. Further, as noted above, although it is impossible to determine with certainty
Singer’s own view of Spinoza’s philosophy through a fictional short story, it
is reasonable to assume, as several commentators have, that he interpreted Spi-
noza’s philosophy in a similar way as Dr Fischelson, and thus that through this
story he intended to illuminate or poke fun at the foolishness of Dr Fischelson’s
Spinozism. In which case my argument suggests that only a caricature of Spi-
noza’s philosophy is being undermined, but not the power of his true ethical
philosophy.
17. Morris Golden writes that ‘the critical consensus on Singer, to which his Com-
mentary interview (November, 1963), seems to lend his agreement, under-
stands him as often a dualist’. See Morris Golden, ‘Dr. Fischelson’s Miracle’,
p. 26.
18. Singer, ‘The Spinoza of Market Street’, p. 9.
19. Golden, ‘Dr. Fischelson’s Miracle’, p. 27.
20. Ibid., p. 42.
21. Singer, ‘The Spinoza of Market Street’, p. 23.
22. See Spinoza E4p54, where he writes: ‘Repentance is not a virtue, or does not
arise from reason; but he who repents of an action is doubly wretched or
infirm’. Nevertheless, in the scholium to this proposition Spinoza explains
that insofar as we are affected by negative emotions, this one is more beneficial
than others, as it brings more good than harm.
Daniel Garber also agrees with the faultiness of Dr Fischelson’s plea for for-
giveness, as he writes: ‘Were the Divine Spinoza around to hear such a plea, he
would consider it completely inappropriate, I should think’ (Garber, ‘Dr.
Fischelson’s Dilemma’, p. 204).
23. The initial presentation of this interpretation of Spinoza’s philosophy of noble
love appeared in my article ‘The Ethics of Love in Spinoza and Kierkegaard and
the Teleological Suspension of the Theological’, Philosophy Today, 51.4 (Winter
2007), pp. 438–46.
24. Other examples of ambiguously used terms are ‘freedom’ and ‘emotion’.
25. Spinoza’s three kinds of knowledge are opinion or imagination, reason, and
intuition. See Spinoza E2p40s2.
26. Spinoza E5p33.
27. Spinoza E3p13s and E3DE6.
28. See Spinoza E3p43 and E4p46.
29. Spinoza E3p59s.
30. Spinoza E5p32c. Note that this definition parallels the definition of passive love
given in E3p13s, but given that it involves understanding it must be conceived
as active and ‘God’ must be viewed as an immanent, internal cause, rather than
an external cause.
31. Singer, ‘The Spinoza of Market Street’, p. 7.
32. Spinoza E5p41.
33. Spinoza E1p31.
 TEXTUAL PRACTICE 15

34. Spinoza E2p49s.

35. Spinoza E4p37s1. It is interesting to note here that this passage repeats the idea
of the rational desire to join others in friendship, which had been referred to as
generositas in E3p59s, but is here called honestas (honour or probity). As noted
above, generositas is later equated with amor (E4p46), so this variance suggests
that Spinoza was struggling with the language to express precisely the active
emotion directed towards others that I have called ‘noble love’, but which
could perhaps also be called ‘honourable love’.
36. Spinoza E4p37.
37. Singer, ‘The Spinoza of Market Street’, p. 9.
38. Ibid., p. 4.
39. Ibid., p. 9.
40. Ibid., p. 9.
41. Ibid., p. 11.
42. Spinoza E5p36c. As I have argued elsewhere, an adequate conception of Spino-
za’s active emotion of love should also lead to the love of non-human animals.
See Michael Strawser, ‘On the Specter of Speciesism in Spinoza’, North Amer-
ican Spinoza Society Monograph, 15 (2011), pp. 3–30.
43. Spinoza E5p20s. The Latin expression here is communi amore.
44. Spinoza E4p41.
45. Spinoza writes that ‘meretricious love – that is lust for generation that arises
from beauty, and in absolute terms all love that recognizes some cause other
than freedom of mind – easily passes into hatred’ (E4app19).
46. Spinoza E4app19.
47. Singer, ‘The Spinoza of Market Street’, p. 3.
48. Ibid., p. 14.
49. Spinoza E3p43.
50. Spinoza E3p13s.
51. Spinoza E4p46.
52. Of the 48 emotions listed in the ‘Definitions of the Emotions’, at the end of Part
Three, only the first two listed, desire and pleasure, can also be considered as
actions. This is clear from proposition 58: ‘Besides the pleasure and the
desire which are passions, there exist other emotions of pleasure and desire
which are related to us in so far as we act’.
53. Spinoza E3p59s.
54. Spinoza E3DE1.
55. Thus, it should come as no surprise that Spinoza willingly refers to the spirit of
Christ (Christi spiritum) as ‘the idea of God, on which alone it depends that a
man is free, and that the good that he desires for himself he desires for all other
men’ (E4p68s).
56. Spinoza E4p46. My italics.
57. That is E3p43.
58. Samuel Shirley, ‘Translator’s Preface’ to Baruch Spinoza’s The Ethics, Treatise
on the Emendation of the Intellect, and Selected Letters (Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett Publishing Company, 1992), p. 24.
59. Spinoza E4p46s.
60. Spinoza E4p73s.
61. H. van Ruler, ‘Generositas’, in Wiep van Bunge, Henri Krop, Piet Steenbakkers,
and Jeroen van de Ven (eds.), The Bloomsbury Companion to Spinoza (London:
Bloomsbury, 2014), p. 224.
16 M. STRAWSER

62. Van Ruler, ‘Generositas’, p. 224. My italics.

63. In the Appendix to Part Four of the Ethics both terms are used when Spinoza
writes: ‘But minds are conquered, not by arms, but by love and nobility’
(E4app11).
64. Additional evidence of this interpretation of ‘love’ (amore) as an active, ethical
emotion equated with nobility and leading to virtue can be found in Spinoza’s
correspondence to Blyenbergh on 12 December 1664, where he writes that the
good worship God through ‘their nobleness (generositate), patience, love
(amore)’ and concludes that philosophers ‘are above the law’, because they
‘follow after virtue, not in obedience to law, but through love’ (non ut Legem
sed ex amore). See Benedict de Spinoza, On the Improvement of the Under-
standing, The Ethics, Correspondence, trans. R. H. M. Elwes (Mineola, NY:
Dover Publications, 1955), p. 334.
According to Ivan Segré, Spinoza presents us with an ethics ex amore, and
this expression (non ut Legem sed ex amore) is ‘the decisive formula; the one
which we must know, because we cannot obey it’. See Ivan Segré, Spinoza:
The Ethics of an Outlaw, trans. David Broder (London: Bloomsbury, 2017),
p. 64. See also note 75 below.
65. Spinoza E5p10s. My italics.
66. Singer, ‘The Spinoza of Market Street’, p. 15.
67. See, for example, Spinoza E4p7. Here Spinoza’s view is fundamentally ‘modern’
in contrast to the ancient and medieval philosophical traditions. Thus, Des-
cartes’ view of the ‘passions’ is more medieval than modern, and this gives
us another reason for agreeing with Wolfson that Spinoza is the first modern
philosopher.
68. Spinoza E5p10s.
69. Spinoza E4p18s.
70. In an important contemporary work in the philosophy of love, Jean-Luc
Marion writes:
Every concept of love is weakened and compromised as soon as one
allows oneself to distinguish competing divergent, or indeed irreconcil-
able, meanings – for example, by opposing from the outset, as if it
were an unquestionable evidence, love and charity, supposedly possessive
desire and supposedly gratuitous benevolence, rational love (of the moral
law) and irrational passion. A serious concept of love distinguishes itself
by its unity, or rather by its power to keep together significations that
nonerotic thought cuts apart, stretches, and tears according to the
measure of its prejudices.
See Jean-Luc Marion, The Erotic Phenomenon, trans. Stephen E. Lewis
(Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 5.
Although Spinoza does not discuss the question of how the various mean-
ings of love found in the Ethics might be related, in striving to understand
his ethical ideal would it not be more perfect to attempt to harmonize the
various aspects of love (pleasure, acting on behalf of the other, and the intellec-
tual love of God) in one experience? And could we not view Dobbe as having
grasped this insight, in which case it may have been through intuition, the third
and highest kind of knowledge?
71. Singer, ‘The Spinoza of Market Street’, p. 20.
 TEXTUAL PRACTICE 17

72. Given that Dr Fischelson’s death seemed immanent, a cynical interpretation

that Dobbe was only helping him for selfish reasons could not be made to
stick, since she was wary of him and herself uncertain that he would get
better. Consider:
In the evening Dobbe came again. A candle in a brass holder was burning
on the chair next to the bed. Reddish shadows trembled on the walls and
ceiling. Dr. Fischelson sat propped up in bed, reading a book. The candle
threw a golden light on his forehead which seemed as if cleft in two. A
bird had flown in through the window and was perched on the table.
For a moment Dobbe was frightened. This man made her think of
witches, of black mirrors and corpses wandering around at night and ter-
rifying women. Neverthess, she took a few steps toward him and
inquired, ‘How are you? Any better?’. (Singer, ‘The Spinoza of Market
Street’, p. 16)
73. Singer, ‘The Spinoza of Market Street’, p. 16.
74. Ibid., p. 16.
75. Ibid., p. 16.
76. Ibid., p. 16.
77. Ibid., p. 18.
78. Spinoza E4app20.
79. See, for example, Spinoza E2p49s.
80. It is relevant to note that in Spinoza: The Ethics of an Outlaw, trans. David
Broder (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), Ivan Segré reads Spinoza’s comment on
marriage as also having great significance in showing that Spinoza presents
us with an ethics ex amore, in which amore is understood in the virtuous,
noble sense explained here as central to Spinoza’s philosophy of love. Segré
writes:
The ethics of the worker theorist of the name ‘Jew’ is thus an ethics ex
amore, in the sense that Spinoza writes that ‘the love of both, to wit, of
the man and of the woman, is not caused by bodily beauty only, but
also by freedom of soul’. (p. 156)
See also note 59 above.
81. The argument presented in this paper agrees on several points with many of the
articles in Moira Gatens (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Benedict Spinoza
(University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009). For
example, as Genevieve Lloyd explains in ‘Dominance and Difference:
A Spinozistic Alternative to the Distinction Between “Sex” and “Gender”’, in
Spinoza ‘reason must be naturally equal also in men and women’ (p. 35).
Further, Amelie Rorty shows in ‘Spinoza on the Pathos of Idolatrous Love
and the Hilarity of True Love’, how Spinoza presents a view of ‘love that is
an expression of wisdom and mutual flourishing’ (p. 15), as ‘Spinoza thinks
that liberated love is superior to bonded love: Wise lovers are not only more
joyous, but more effective and beneficent than enlightened lovers’ (p. 84).
And as David West points out in ‘Reason, Sexuality, and Self in Spinoza’,
‘there is no reason to suppose that a sexual interaction should not attend to
the whole of another person’s body and, indeed, mind as well’ (p. 119), for
only a ‘dualist and teleological conception of sexuality’ would suggest otherwise.
On the other hand, the contributions in this volume by Alexandre Matheron
18 M. STRAWSER

and Moira Gatens call into question Spinoza’s view on the equality of the sexes
by showing that he did not consider women and men equal in power or right.
In ‘Spinoza and Sexuality’ Matheron argues that although men and women are
equal in their capacity for reason, the inferior positions of women make them
less powerful, and this appears quite clearly to be the case for Black Dobbe, a
spinster who lived alone and was now struggling to make ends meet by
selling cracked eggs in the market place. Although Matheron’s focus is on sexu-
ality or lust rather than love – or amor meretricious, which is translated as
‘sensual love’ although the literal meaning is ‘love of a prostitute’ – he shows
that for Spinoza ‘sexuality is a necessary moment … of our individuality and,
because joyful, is good in itself’ (p. 91; see E4p41). This is a significant point
for my argument, as it lends further support to the wrongheadedness of Dr
Fischelson’s Spinozism, for he should hardly have considered himself a fool
or been surprised by his increased power to act following the consummation
of his marriage to Black Dobbe.
In ‘The Politics of the Imagination’ Gatens points to the conflicting view that
Spinoza expresses at the end of the Political Treatise, which she rightly explains
is ‘a perplexing view for Spinoza to uphold’ (p. 204). In Section 4 of Chapter 11,
the last unfinished chapter on democracy, Spinoza argues that ‘it is not possible
for both sexes to have equal rule’. Surprisingly, this view is not based on reason
or intuition, but rather experience and history, as he explains that since we
cannot find any instances of women governing in history, then ‘one is fully
entitled to assert that women do not naturally possess equal right with men’.
He also expresses the view ‘that men generally love women from mere lust’,
and the final line of this incomplete work is ‘But I have said enough’. Unfortu-
nately, Spinoza had said too much, but these puzzling comments on historical
experience need not detract from the power of the philosophy of love that is
intuitively sound and rationally defended in his Ethics. See Baruch Spinoza, Pol-
itical Treatise, in Spinoza: Complete Works, trans. Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis,
IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2002), pp. 753–4.
82. Grace Farrell Lee, From Exile to Redemption: The Fiction of Isaac Bashevis
Singer (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), p. 102.
83. Singer, ‘The Spinoza of Market Street’, p. 22. Is it not the case that both love’s
pleasure and its desire for the good of the other can be heard in Dobbe’s wise
and elegant whisper?

Acknowledgements
This contribution is a refined and significantly revised paper developed from a pre-
viously published article devoted to a broader theme. See Michael Strawser, ‘Erotic
Perfectionism in Jewish Rationalist Philosophy’, Soundings: A Journal of Interdisci-
plinary Humanities, 96:2 (2013), pp. 189–213. I would also like to thank two reviewers
for their important and detailed comments, which contributed greatly to the revisions
of my paper.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.