Matthew Stewart

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Maryland

Leibniz Spinoza and the Fate of God in the Modern World

"Exhilarating...Stewart has achieved a near impossibility, creating a page-turner about jousting metaphysical ideas, casting thinkers as warriors." --Liesl Schillinger, New York Times Book Review


Once upon a time, philosophy was a dangerous business--and for no one more so than for Baruch Spinoza, the seventeenth-century philosopher vilified by theologians and political authorities everywhere as "the atheist Jew." As his inflammatory manuscripts circulated underground, Spinoza lived a humble existence in The Hague, grinding optical lenses to make ends meet. Meanwhile, in the glittering salons of Paris, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was climbing the ladder of courtly success. In between trips to the opera and groundbreaking work in mathematics, philosophy, and jurisprudence, he took every opportunity to denounce Spinoza, relishing his self-appointed role as "God's attorney."

In this exquisitely written philosophical romance of attraction and repulsion, greed and virtue, religion and heresy, Matthew Stewart gives narrative form to an epic contest of ideas that shook the seventeenth century--and continues today.

Courtier and the Heretic

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Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World

Stewart contrasts the thinking of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), the toast of Paris and inventor of calculus, with that of Benedictus Spinoza (1632-77), who lived in The Hague as an outcast with a day job. In their ideas he finds the seeds both of modernity and of the conflicts that still rage through it. Annotation 2006 Book News, Inc., Po

Category - Fiction / Philosophy

Format - Paperback

Condition - Like New

Listed - A year ago

Views - 7

Ships From - Maryland

Est. Publication Date - Jan 2007

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The Courtier and the Heretic

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