Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) has long appealed to skeptics and secularists. In the 18th century, “Spinozism” was a synonym for atheism. Shelley channeled him in his own arguments for atheism, George ...

Prospect receives commission when you buy a book using this page. Thank you for supporting us. What do we think we know about Baruch Spinoza? We know he was one of the greatest philosophers of the ...

For our first event in 2006, independent scholar Matthew Stewart discussed his new book, The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World. Stewart’s book ...

Gottfried Leibniz is remembered as a metaphysical Pollyanna, thanks to Voltaire's caricature -- the hapless Dr. Pangloss, who insists that all is for the best, even as he is afflicted with syphilis, ...

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Baruch Spinoza, a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish descent, challenged religious and political norms. His ideas on rationalism and pantheism influenced Enlightenment thinkers. Spinoza believed ...

Jewish Lights Publishing, 224 pages, $24.99. What does a 12th-century rabbi in Egypt, arguably the greatest thinker in Jewish history, have in common with a 17th-century Jewish philosopher in ...

Is there room for a novel about Baruch Spinoza in a publishing market crowded with supernatural creatures and kinky romance? Irvin D. Yalom thinks so. In fact, there’s plenty of room to describe the ...

The full-evening length and entire seriousness of David Ives’s Spinoza play, The New Jerusalem, may surprise people who think of Ives as either the creator of the amusing trifles collected in All in ...