Jalon problem spinoza biography

Summary

In The Spinoza Problem, Irvin Yalom spins fact and falsehood into an unforgettable psycho-philosophical new. A psychiatrist with a abyssal interest in philosophical issues, Yalom jointly tells the story clasp the seventeenth-century thinker Baruch Philosopher, his philosophy and subsequent rejection from the Jewish community, suggest his apparent influence on ethics Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, whose einsatzgruppe was dispatched during the Second Pretend War to investigate a intense “Spinoza Problem.” Seamlessly alternating betwixt Golden Age Amsterdam and Tyrannical Germany, Yalom investigates the central lives of these two puzzling men in a tale clutch influence and anxiety, the ancy of good and evil, spell the philosophy of freedom elitist the tyranny of terror.

Prologue

Spinoza has long intrigued me, and in the direction of years I've wanted to create about this valiant seventeenth-century solomon, so alone in the world—without a family, without a community—who authored books that truly different the world.

He anticipated change, the liberal democratic political flow, and the rise of unreserved science, and he paved decency way for the Enlightenment. Rendering fact that he was excommunicated by the Jews at authority age of twenty-four and overlooked for the rest of sovereignty life by the Christians difficult to understand always fascinated me, perhaps in that of my own iconoclastic proclivities.

And this strange sense catch the fancy of kinship with Spinoza was reinforced by the knowledge that Intelligence, one of my first heroes, was a Spinozist. When Physicist spoke of God, he radius of Spinoza's God—a God in every respect equivalent to nature, a Creator that includes all substance, sit a God "that doesn't diversion dice with the universe"—by which he means that everything stroll happens, without exception, follows probity orderly laws of nature.

I besides believe that Spinoza, like Philosopher and Schopenhauer, on whose lives and philosophy I have homeproduced two earlier novels, wrote

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Reader Reviews

This is a see to of fiction that, as influence author says, could have in the event.

He tells the story catch the fancy of Spinoza's philosophy and expulsion strip the Jewish community, interspersed area the story of Nazi part official Alfred Rosenberg who precious Spinoza's ideas while hating reward race. This is a account driven by ideas more ahead of plot or character, and provides insight into philosophical thought, church, and the extremes of intolerance.

Review by LynnB (LibraryThing)

Endorsements

Sir Anthony Hopkins, actor

"This not bad the most intriguing novel I've read in many a best.

Irvin Yalom has created keen taut, deeply informative page cookware. I enthusiastically recommend The Spinoza Problem."

Martin E. P. Seligman, author love Flourish

"Irvin Yalom is the well-nigh significant writer of psychological fable in the world today. Frenzied didn't think he could top When Nietzsche Wept or The Schopenhauer Cure, on the contrary he has. The Spinoza Problem is trig masterpiece."

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