The Courtier And The Heretic Leibniz Spinoza And The Fate Of God In The Modern World

"Exhilarating…Stewart has achieved a near impossibility, creating a page-turner about jousting metaphysical ideas, casting thinkers as warriors." —Liesl Schillinger, New York Times Book Review Once upon a time, philosophy was a dangerous business—and for no one more so than for Baruch Spinoza, the seventeenth-century philosopher vilified by theologians and political authorities everywhere as “the atheist Jew.” As his inflammatory manuscripts circulated underground, Spinoza lived a humble existence in The Hague, grinding optical lenses to make ends meet. Meanwhile, in the glittering salons of Paris, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was climbing the ladder of courtly success. In between trips to the opera and groundbreaking work in mathematics, philosophy, and jurisprudence, he took every opportunity to denounce Spinoza, relishing his self-appointed role as “God’s attorney.” In this exquisitely written philosophical romance of attraction and repulsion, greed and virtue, religion and heresy, Matthew Stewart gives narrative form to an epic contest of ideas that shook the seventeenth century—and continues today.

"Each chapter in this book explains a complex problem through moving, amusing and marvellous stories. Sašo Dolenc’s recurring theme is the elusive and often eccentric nature of inspiration; but in exploring it he covers an immense variety of subjects, from meteorology to microbiology, computer technology to market theory. His readers will gain a succinct and satisfying lesson on each topic, and a sense overall of the labour, genius and luck that science demands." — John Stubbs, author of John Donne: The Reformed Soul and Reprobates: The Cavaliers of the English Civil War "Great fun. Like Malcolm Gladwell, Dolenc writes about complicated science in a clear, accessible way that entertains and educates. The smarter and better the writer, the clearer and simpler he will make concepts that are difficult to grasp. Reading this book is a pleasure you can learn from." — Noah Charney, best-selling author of The Art Thief and Stealing the Mystic Lamb

"This book explores the seventeenth-century philosopher Spinoza's modernist humanism. There is little doubt that Spinoza was one of the principal founders of modernity, but his modernism is often thought to come at the expense of a humanism. Drawing attention to Spinoza's humanism, this book concentrates on politics, ethics, and psychology in order to understand Spinoza's conception of the human being, and why that conception endures into our own time with particular relevance. This introduction to Spinoza's thought proceeds in a reverse order from the usual treatment: rather than beginning with a consideration of Spinoza's metaphysics, the discussion culminates in an exploration of those concepts. In this way, this book is a deeper examination of what Spinoza himself thought, and allows the reader to consider more fully Spinoza's wider philosophy."--BOOK JACKET.

Michael Strawser provides a new reading of Spinoza as a philosopher of love for whom the ethically qualified conception of noble love is central. Strawser situates Spinoza’s philosophy of love within the Jewish and Cartesian traditions and shows how this active conception of love can conquer hatred and bring people together.

This book analyzes three often-debated questions of Spinoza's legacy: Was Spinoza a religious thinker? How should we understand Spinoza's mind-body doctrine? What meaning can be given to Spinoza's notions - such as salvation, beatitude, and freedom - which are seemingly incompatible with his determinism, his secularism, and his critique of religion. Through a close reading of often-overlooked sections from Spinoza's Ethics, Elhanan Yakira argues that these seemingly conflicting elements are indeed compatible, despite Spinoza's iconoclastic meanings. Yakira argues that Ethics is an attempt at providing a purely philosophical - as opposed to theological - foundation for the theory of value and normativity.

This volume offers an examination of varied forms of expressions of heresy in Jewish history, thought and literature. Contributions explore the formative role of the figure of the heretic and of heretic thought in the development of the Jewish traditions from antiquity to the 20th century. Chapters explore the role of heresy in the Hellenic period and Rabbinic literature; the significance of heresy to Kabbalah, and the critical and often formative importance the challenge of heresy plays for modern thinkers such as Spinoza, Freud, and Derrida, and literary figures such as Kafka, Tchernikhovsky, and I.B. Singer. Examining heresy as a boundary issue constitutive for the formation of Jewish tradition, this book contributes to a better understanding of the significance of the figure of the heretic for tradition more generally.

In this book Paul Hinlicky suggests that to the detriment of the church as a whole Martin Luther s legacy did not unfold as he himself would have hoped or expected. Paths Not Taken analyzes the unhappy fate of theology in the tradition of Luther through the pivotal early modern theological philosopher Gottfried Leibniz. Through this lens Hinlicky shows how the twofold intention of reforming the Church according to the gospel and providing a Christian philosophy of culture for a renewed Christendom diverged along the way. / In his conclusion Hinlicky considers three outstanding contemporary representatives of theology in Luther s tradition Pannenberg, Jngel, and Jenson and settles on a path to be taken by Lutheran theology after Christendom and after modernity.