Does Judaism really need animal sacrifices? Would it not be better off without them? After all, the sacrificial cult seems to compromise Judaism. What does a highly ethical religion have to do with ...

An authoritative edition of George Eliot's elegant translation of Spinoza's greatest philosophical work In 1856, Marian Evans completed her translation of Benedict de Spinoza’s Ethics while living in ...

The beguiling Dutch philosopher’s life and work is prone to misunderstandings and misreadings. A recent biography goes so far as to recruit him into the culture war. Ad Policy A portrait of Benedict ...

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 ...

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, ...

As the world becomes, to all appearances, a discordant, chaotic jungle inhabited by trees with glass shard leaves and strange, growling nocturnal beasts, it might seem counter-intuitive to seek ...

Listen to more stories on the Noa app. Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out. Imagine that you had dedicated yourself to helping others ...

Part of the Pennsylvania State University and a division of the Penn State University Libraries and Scholarly Communications, Penn State University Press serves the University community, the citizens ...

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 ...