Spinoza: Freedom's Messiah
Jewish Lives
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Spinoza: Freedom's Messiah
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Narrated by:
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Lee Beddow
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By:
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Ian Buruma
About this listen
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 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 341
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 300
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 295
When it appeared in 1670, Baruch Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise was denounced as the most dangerous book ever published. In A Book Forged in Hell, Steven Nadler tells the fascinating story of this extraordinary book: its radical claims and their background in the philosophical, religious, and political tensions of the Dutch Golden Age, as well as the vitriolic reaction these ideas inspired.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Well researched, comprehensive intro to Spinoza’s work.
- By Tom on 01-27-22
By: Steven Nadler
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Ethics
- By: Benedict de Spinoza
- Narrated by: Antony Ferguson
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 255
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 205
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 205
Benedict de Spinoza's Ethics, first published in 1677, constitutes a major systematic critique of the traditional and religious foundations of philosophical thought. In it, Spinoza follows a logical step-by-step format consisting of definitions, axioms, propositions, proofs, and corollaries to create a comprehensive inquiry into the truth about God, nature, and humans' place within the universe. From these broad metaphysical themes, Spinoza derives what he considered to be the highest principles of religion and society and lays out an ethical system in which reason is the supreme value.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Now I understand "the God of Spinoza"
- By Gary on 07-31-16
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Think Least of Death
- Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die
- By: Steven Nadler
- Narrated by: Christopher Douyard
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 55
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 41
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 41
In 1656, after being excommunicated from Amsterdam's Portuguese-Jewish community for "abominable heresies" and "monstrous deeds", the young Baruch Spinoza abandoned his family's import business to dedicate his life to philosophy. He quickly became notorious across Europe for his views on God, the Bible, and miracles, as well as for his uncompromising defense of free thought. Yet the radicalism of Spinoza's views has long obscured that his primary reason for turning to philosophy was to answer one of humanity's most urgent questions....
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing
- By M.Biblioswine on 10-16-21
By: Steven Nadler
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The Folly of Realism
- How the West Deceived Itself About Russia and Betrayed Ukraine
- By: Alexander Vindman
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy, Alexander Vindman
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 34
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Story5 out of 5 stars 34
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, six US presidential administrations of both parties pursued policies for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia that emboldened Russia, playing into its imperialist, centuries-long mythos of regional hegemony. The result: military aggression and full-scale invasion. It was all too foreseeable. In The Folly of Realism, leading national security expert and bestselling author Alexander Vindman argues that America’s mistakes in Eastern Europe result from policymakers’ fixation on immediate, short-term problem-solving and misplaced hopes and fears.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Defining Realism in the Context of American Modern History
- By Amazon Customer on 04-13-25
What listeners say about Spinoza: Freedom's Messiah
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- tw22
- 04-21-24
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
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- H.H.
- 01-17-25
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.
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