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

Matthew Stewart

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300114052 ISBN 13: 9780300114058

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2006

Synopsis

Philosophy in the late seventeenth century was a dangerous business. No careerist could afford to know the reclusive philosopher known as an "atheist Jew", Baruch de Spinoza. Yet the wildly ambitious young genius Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz became obsessed with Spinoza's writings, wrote him clandestine letters, and ultimately called on Spinoza in person at his home in The Hague. Both men were at the centre of the intense religious, political, and personal battles that gave birth to the modern age. One was a hermit with many friends; the other, a socialite no one trusted. One believed in a God whom almost nobody thought divine; the other defended a God in whom he probably did not believe. Their characters and ways of life defined their philosophies. In this exquisitely written philosophical romance of attraction and repulsion, greed and virtue, religion and heresy, Matthew Stewart dramatizes a titanic clash of beliefs that still continues today.

About this title

Review:

'...an absorbing book...[Stewart] has a gift for setting out abstract issues in clear and graspable ways...' -- The Sunday Telegraph, 22nd January 2006

'...gripping...a sound bottom of historical and philosophical scholarship...making the epoch and its seminal ideas accessible...a thoroughly good book' -- A C Grayling, Literary Review, May 2006

'Matthew Stewart has written a elegant and erudite book...superbly elegant and intelligent prose' -- Edward Skidelsky, The Saturday Telegraph, 4th February 2006

'Matthew Stewart's enjoyable...book does a fine job of making [Leibniz and Spinoza's] ideas accessible to the general reader.' -- Andrew Crumey, Scotland on Sunday, 19th February 2006

'[A] coherent and readable account...exemplary - clear, well structured, with just enough imaginative licence to capture the reader.' -- Rosalie Osmond, The Tablet, 29th July 2006

'[Stewart] lays the ground for a new genre: rigorous, readable intellectual history...' -- The Economist, 7th January 2006

About the Author:

Matthew Stewart received his doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University. He sold his management consulting firm so as to devote his time to higher things. He lives in New York.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0300114052
• ISBN 13: 9780300114058
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 351