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, ...

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 ...

Einstein’s answer to a New York rabbi clears things up a bit. The rabbi cabled him in 1929 to ask him if he believed in God. Einstein replied, “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in 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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

“One should not silence those who speak against Judaism, for to do so is an admission of weakness. Tell your opponent: Speak up as much as you want, say whatever you wish” (the legendary Maharal, ...

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 ...