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 ...

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, ...

When many scientists, including Albert Einstein, say that they believe in Spinoza’s God, they are referring to a conception of God that is very different from the traditional theistic view found in ...

The Hague, November 1676 -- Bento -- Gottfried -- A life of the mind -- God's attorney -- The hero of the people -- The many faces of Leibniz -- Friends of friends -- Leibniz in love -- A secret ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Socrates says in Plato’s Gorgias that there’s nothing more serious than “the question [of] how we ought to live.” We may aspire to live a good and happy life—but what does such a life consist in? Good ...

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 ...