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, ...

because Spinoza’s Latin spirit fermented in an Ibn Tibbon Hebrew rebrew, a Marrano malt that neither is a single nor a double, but a triple, ale from three spirits which Spinoza’s mighty mind would ...

Thinking of buying shares in a great philosopher? The first question you need to ask is whether you’re interested in long or short-term investment. If you are looking long-term, then prepare yourself ...

Much of the diet business in the United States, claims Richard Watson, is ”a scam and an amusement: profitable to merchants, entertaining to customers, amusing to spectators.” In ”The Philosopher`s ...

I last reviewed Jonathan Israel’s Radical Enlightenment on this site in 2001 just after it came out in hardback. Why return to it now? The book itself would justify another review since it is a large ...

A passage in Or ha-Shem [Light of the Lord], the major work of Ḥasdai Crescas (1340-1410/11), the Jewish critic of medieval Aristotelianism, is adduced here as contributing to Spinoza's decisive step ...

Mr. Buruma is the author of “Spinoza: Freedom’s Messiah.” The Enlightenment philosopher Baruch Spinoza almost died for his ideals one day in 1672. Spinoza, a Sephardic Jew born in Amsterdam in 1632, ...

Rejected by his Jewish community in Amsterdam, Baruch Spinoza was living alone in a small village outside The Hague in Holland and earning his living by grinding lenses when he wrote one of the most ...

DR. ROTH has produced a scholarly book. The author rejects the view that Spinoza is originally a follower of Descartes and that the purpose of his speculation is to develop the logical consistency of ...