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 ...

My attitude towards religion is the same as that of Spinoza, declared Professor Albert Einstein in a letter to the “Christliche Welt” in response to the latter’s inquiry. The inquiry was made ...

Baruch Spinoza’s life was a product of paradox. The 17th century, in Europe, was a time of both barbarous sectarianism and unprecedented human achievement. It was an era of new ideas — ideas that ...

40 pages into Ian Buruma’s fascinating biography of the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza, some very modern language leaps from the page. “When people are banished from their community,” Buruma ...

A few days ago, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust historian Elie Wiesel appeared on Lawrence O’Donnell’s TV program “The Last Word” to express his outrage at a practice of the Mormon Church. Apparently, ...