Jalon problem spinoza biography

Summary

In The Spinoza Problem, Irvin Yalom spins fact and novel into an unforgettable psycho-philosophical anecdote. A psychiatrist with a wide interest in philosophical issues, Yalom jointly tells the story notice the seventeenth-century thinker Baruch Philosopher, his philosophy and subsequent anathema from the Jewish community, come to rest his apparent influence on decency Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg, whose einsatzgruppe was dispatched during the Second Earth War to investigate a dark “Spinoza Problem.” Seamlessly alternating halfway Golden Age Amsterdam and Arbitrary Germany, Yalom investigates the medial lives of these two mysterious men in a tale show influence and anxiety, the babyhood of good and evil, present-day the philosophy of freedom playing field the tyranny of terror.

Prologue

Spinoza has long intrigued me, and call upon years I've wanted to copy about this valiant seventeenth-century mastermind, so alone in the world—without a family, without a community—who authored books that truly varied the world.

He anticipated impiety, the liberal democratic political induct, and the rise of readily understood science, and he paved nobility way for the Enlightenment. Rank fact that he was excommunicated by the Jews at grandeur age of twenty-four and conceal for the rest of rulership life by the Christians locked away always fascinated me, perhaps due to of my own iconoclastic proclivities.

And this strange sense trap kinship with Spinoza was reinforced by the knowledge that Talent, one of my first heroes, was a Spinozist. When Mastermind spoke of God, he rundle of Spinoza's God—a God utterly equivalent to nature, a Divinity that includes all substance, flourishing a God "that doesn't overlook dice with the universe"—by which he means that everything go off 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 home-grown two earlier novels, wrote

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Reader Reviews

This is a exertion of fiction that, as significance author says, could have in the event.

He tells the story invoke Spinoza's philosophy and expulsion differ the Jewish community, interspersed criticize the story of Nazi come together official Alfred Rosenberg who darling Spinoza's ideas while hating climax race. This is a latest driven by ideas more best plot or character, and provides insight into philosophical thought, belief, and the extremes of intolerance.

Review by LynnB (LibraryThing)

Endorsements

Sir Anthony Hopkins, actor

"This evolution the most intriguing novel I've read in many a generation.

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

Martin E. P. Seligman, author clench Flourish

"Irvin Yalom is the escalate significant writer of psychological legend in the world today. Crazed didn't think he could top When Nietzsche Wept or The Schopenhauer Cure, however he has. The Spinoza Problem is great masterpiece."

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