Spinoza: Freedom's Messiah

Jewish Lives

De: Ian Buruma

Narrado por: Lee Beddow

Ian Buruma explores the life and death of Baruch Spinoza, the Enlightenment thinker whose belief in freedom of thought and speech resonates in our own time

Baruch (Benedictus) Spinoza (1632-1677) was a radical free thinker who led a life guided by strong moral principles despite his disbelief in an all-seeing God. Seen by many as Satan's disciple during his lifetime, Spinoza has been regarded as a secular saint since his death. Many contradictory beliefs have been attached to his name: rationalism or metaphysics, atheism or pantheism, liberalism or despotism, Jewishness or anti-Semitism. However, there is no question that he viewed freedom of thought and speech as essential to an open and free society.

In this insightful account, the award-winning author Ian Buruma stresses the importance of the time and place that shaped Spinoza, beginning with the Sephardim of Amsterdam and followed by the politics of the Dutch Republic. Though Spinoza rejected the basic assumptions of his family's faith, and was consequently expelled from his Sephardic community, Buruma argues that Spinoza did indeed lead a modern Jewish life. To Heine, Hess, Marx, Freud, and no doubt many others today, Spinoza exemplified how to be Jewish without believing in Judaism. His defense of universal freedom is as important for our own time as it was in his.

©2024 Ian Buruma (P)2024 Tantor

Very good book, but

too many mispronunciations, such as ‘disassemble’ for ‘dissemble’. The voice itself is quite fine, and maybe it is conventional in the UK to Anglicize words from Dutch, Hebrew, and German; I found it distracting

Disappointing book

The book, not the audiobook, offers a pedestrian, bourgeois interpretation of Spinoza. Rather than providing an intellectual biography that deepens the reader's understanding of his works and life, it presents a derivative and superficial analysis of Spinoza's philosophy and, more often than not, a very speculative take on the philosopher's life.