The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World

The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World PDF Author: Matthew Stewart
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393071049
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
"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.

The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World

The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World PDF Author: Matthew Stewart
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393071049
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Get Book Here

Book Description
"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.

The Courtier and the Heretic

The Courtier and the Heretic PDF Author: Matthew Stewart
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300125078
Category : God
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Both Baruch de Spinoza and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz were at the centre of an intense religious, political and personal battle that gave birth to the modern age. Their characters and ways of life defined their philosophies, but Leibniz became obsessed with Spinoza's writings, leading to a titanic clash of beliefs.

Courtier and the Heretic

Courtier and the Heretic PDF Author: Matthew Stewart
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0393329178
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"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.

Spinoza's Critique of Religion and its Heirs

Spinoza's Critique of Religion and its Heirs PDF Author: Idit Dobbs-Weinstein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316300471
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
Spinoza's heritage has been occluded by his incorporation into the single, western, philosophical canon formed and enforced by theologico-political condemnation, and his heritage is further occluded by controversies whose secular garb shields their religious origins. By situating Spinoza's thought in a materialist Aristotelian tradition, this book sheds new light on those who inherit Spinoza's thought and its consequences materially and historically rather than metaphysically. By focusing on Marx, Benjamin, and Adorno, Idit Dobbs-Weinstein explores the manner in which Spinoza's radical critique of religion shapes materialist critiques of the philosophy of history. Dobbs-Weinstein argues that two radically opposed notions of temporality and history are at stake for these thinkers, an onto-theological future-oriented one and a political one oriented to the past for the sake of the present or, more precisely, for the sake of actively resisting the persistent barbarism at the heart of culture.

The Management Myth: Debunking Modern Business Philosophy

The Management Myth: Debunking Modern Business Philosophy PDF Author: Matthew Stewart
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393072746
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
"A devastating bombardment of managerial thinking and the profession of management consulting…A serious and valuable polemic." —Wall Street Journal Fresh from Oxford with a degree in philosophy and no particular interest in business, Matthew Stewart might not have seemed a likely candidate to become a consultant. But soon he was telling veteran managers how to run their companies. In narrating his own ill-fated (and often hilarious) odyssey at a top-tier firm, Stewart turns the consultant’s merciless, penetrating eye on the management industry itself. The Management Myth offers an insightful romp through the entire history of thinking about management, a withering critique of pseudoscience in management theory, and a clear explanation of why the MBA usually amounts to so much BS—leading us through the wilderness of American business thought.

Narrative Theology and the Hermeneutical Virtues

Narrative Theology and the Hermeneutical Virtues PDF Author: Jacob L. Goodson
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498505155
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Dr. Jacob L. Goodson will be doing a book signing for Narrative Theology and the Hermeneutical Virtues: Humility, Patience, Prudence at Eighth Day Books in Wichita, KS, on Saturday March 21, 2015, at 4:00pm. In Narrative Theology and the Hermeneutical Virtues: Humility, Patience, Prudence, Jacob L. Goodson offers a philosophical analysis of the arguments and tendencies of Hans Frei’s and Stanley Hauerwas’ narrative theologies. Narrative theology names a way of doing theology and thinking theologically that is part of a greater movement called “the return to Scripture.” The return to Scripture movement makes a case for Scripture as the proper object of study within Christian theology, philosophy of religion, and religious ethics. While thinkers within this movement agree that Scripture is the proper object of study within philosophy and religious studies, there is major disagreement over what the word “narrative” describes in narrative theology. The Yale theologian, Hans Frei, argues that because Scripture is the proper object of study within Christian theology and the philosophy of religion, Scripture must be the exclusive object of study. To think theologically means paying as close attention as possible to the details of the biblical narratives in their “literal sense.” Different from Frei’s contentions, the Christian ethicist at Duke University, Stanley Hauerwas claims: if Scripture is the proper object of study within Christian theology, then the category of narrative teaches us that we ought to give our scholarly attention to the interpretations and performances of Scripture. Hauerwas emphasizes the continuity between the biblical narratives and the traditions of the church. This disagreement is best described as a hermeneutical one: Frei thinks that the primary place where interpretation happens is in the text; Hauerwas thinks that the primary place where interpretation occurs is in the community of interpreters. In order to move beyond the dichotomy found between Frei’s and Hauerwas’ work, but to remain within the return to Scripture movement, Goodson constructs three hermeneutical virtues: humility, patience, and prudence. These virtues help professors and scholars within Christian theology, philosophy of religion, and religious ethics maintain objectivity in their fields of study.

Narratives of Secularization

Narratives of Secularization PDF Author: Peter Harrison
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351348957
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
It is increasingly clear that histories of secularization are not simply dispassionate descriptions of the decline of religious belief and practice in the West. Rather, such narratives often seek to celebrate secularization, promote some version of it, lament it, or otherwise oppose it in favour of a programme of desecularization or resacralization. The aim of this book is to identify some of the major genres of the history of secularization and to explore their historical contexts, normative commitments, and tendential purposes. The contributors to the volume offer different perspectives on these questions, not least because a number of them are themselves participants in the cultural-political programs described above. The primary purpose of this book, however, is the identification of such programs rather than their promotion. Overall, the collection seeks to bring analytical clarity to ongoing debates about secularization and help explain the co-existence of apparently conflicting stories about the origins of Western modernity. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Intellectual History Review journal.

Autonomous Nature

Autonomous Nature PDF Author: Carolyn Merchant
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317395875
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Autonomous Nature investigates the history of nature as an active, often unruly force in tension with nature as a rational, logical order from ancient times to the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. Along with subsequent advances in mechanics, hydrodynamics, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism, nature came to be perceived as an orderly, rational, physical world that could be engineered, controlled, and managed. Autonomous Nature focuses on the history of unpredictability, why it was a problem for the ancient world through the Scientific Revolution, and why it is a problem for today. The work is set in the context of vignettes about unpredictable events such as the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, the Bubonic Plague, the Lisbon Earthquake, and efforts to understand and predict the weather and natural disasters. This book is an ideal text for courses on the environment, environmental history, history of science, or the philosophy of science.

Action Philosophers

Action Philosophers PDF Author: Fred Van Lente
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
ISBN: 1630081558
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
This ain't your grandpappy's dusty old philosophy class! It's the philosophy seminar your college ethics professor wished he could teach! It's . . . the definitive tenth-anniversary edition of Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey's award-winning, best-selling Action Philosophers! Study the tenets of Plato, the wrestling superstar from ancient Greece, learn the lessons of Nietzsche, the original übermensch, and meditate on the messages of Bodhidharma, a kung fu master. Laugh, learn, laugh some more, and ponder the messages of history's great thinkers as Van Lente and Dunlavey deliver this comprehensive cartoon history from the pre-Socratics to Jacques Derrida!

The Writing of the Gods

The Writing of the Gods PDF Author: Edward Dolnick
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501198947
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
The fast-paced and “engrossing account” (The New York Times Book Review) of “one of the greatest breakthroughs in archaeological history” (The Christian Science Monitor): two rival geniuses in a race to decode the writing on one of the world’s most famous documents—the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone is one of the most famous objects in the world, attracting millions of visitors to the British museum every year, and yet most people don’t really know what it is. Discovered in a pile of rubble in 1799, this slab of stone proved to be the key to unlocking a lost language that baffled scholars for centuries. Carved in ancient Egypt, the Rosetta Stone carried the same message in different languages—in Greek using Greek letters, and in Egyptian using picture-writing called hieroglyphs. Until its discovery, no one in the world knew how to read the hieroglyphs that covered every temple and text and statue in Egypt. Dominating the world for thirty centuries, ancient Egypt was the mightiest empire the world had ever known, yet everything about it—the pyramids, mummies, the Sphinx—was shrouded in mystery. Whoever was able to decipher the Rosetta Stone would solve that mystery and fling open a door that had been locked for two thousand years. Two brilliant rivals set out to win that prize. One was English, the other French, at a time when England and France were enemies and the world’s two great superpowers. Written “like a thriller” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis), The Writing of the Gods chronicles this high-stakes intellectual race in which the winner would win glory for both himself and his nation. A riveting portrait of empires both ancient and modern, this is an unparalleled look at the culture and history of ancient Egypt, “and also a lesson…in what the human mind does when faced with a puzzle” (The New Yorker).