Steven Nadler

Steven M. Nadler

The first complete biography of Spinoza in any language and is based on detailed archival research.

A Life

Spinoza

A unique combination of philosophy, biography, and art history. The philosopher, the priest, and the painter investigates the remarkable individuals and the circumstances behind a small portrait.

A Portrait of Descartes

The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter

Traces the development of modern philosophical and religious thought as influenced by the friendship shared by German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and philosopher-theologians Antoine Arnauld and Nicolas de Malebranche, who in spite of disparate views shared a passionate concern about the resolution of evil.

A Story of Philosophers, God, and Evil

The Best of All Possible Worlds

Spinoza's Ethics is one of the most remarkable, important, and difficult books in the history of philosophy: a treatise simultaneously on metaphysics, knowledge, philosophical psychology, moral philosophy, and political philosophy. It presents, in Spinoza's famous 'geometric method', his radical views on God, Nature, the human being, and happiness. In this wide-ranging 2006 introduction to the work, Steven Nadler explains the doctrines and arguments of the Ethics, and shows why Spinoza's endlessly fascinating ideas may have been so troubling to his contemporaries, as well as why they are still highly relevant today. He also examines the philosophical background to Spinoza's thought and the dialogues in which Spinoza was engaged - with his contemporaries (including Descartes and Hobbes), with ancient thinkers (especially the Stoics), and with his Jewish rationalist forebears. His book is written for the student reader but will also be of interest to specialists in early modern philosophy.

An Introduction

Spinoza's Ethics

The first of its kind, this essay collection offers an extensive examination of Spinoza's relationship to medieval Jewish philosophy.

Spinoza and Medieval Jewish Philosophy

C'est un combat de géants que nous peint Steven Nadler dans cet ouvrage. L'un fut le théologien et polémiste le plus célèbre de son temps, Arnauld; l'autre, le représentant le plus accompli de la philosophie dominante de l'époque, Malebranche; le troisième, l'esprit universel le plus brillant de son siècle, Leibniz. Plus de trois cents ans ont passé depuis leur rencontre et leurs échanges, souvent vifs, sur la justice divine et le sens de l'existence. Mais loin d'y voir un vestige de la pensée de la fin du Moyen Age, d'une mentalité encore centrée sur Dieu, bientôt détrônée par les penseurs du siècle des Lumières, Steven Nadler excelle à souligner l'importance de cet héritage. " Pourquoi y a-t-il quelque chose plutôt que rien? Pourquoi le malheur frappe-t-il ceux qui sont dans le droit chemin? Comment donner un sens à la souffrance et au mal? Autant de questions philosophiques qui n'ont pas fini, nous aussi, de nous tourmenter. " (Steven Nadler)

la rencontre entre Leibniz, Malebranche et Arnauld

Le meilleur des mondes possibles

An illuminating biography of the great Amsterdam rabbi and celebrated popularizer of Judaism in the seventeenth century Menasseh ben Israel (1604–1657) was among the most accomplished and cosmopolitan rabbis of his time, and a pivotal intellectual figure in early modern Jewish history. He was one of the three rabbis of the “Portuguese Nation” in Amsterdam, a community that quickly earned renown worldwide for its mercantile and scholarly vitality. Born in Lisbon, Menasseh and his family were forcibly converted to Catholicism but suspected of insincerity in their new faith. To avoid the horrors of the Inquisition, they fled first to southwestern France, and then to Amsterdam, where they finally settled. Menasseh played an important role during the formative decades of one of the most vital Jewish communities of early modern Europe, and was influential through his extraordinary work as a printer and his efforts on behalf of the readmission of Jews to England. In this lively biography, Steven Nadler provides a fresh perspective on this seminal figure.

Rabbi of Amsterdam

Menasseh ben Israel

Daniel Garber

Oxford University Press is proud to present the second volume in a new annual series, presenting a selection of the best current work in the history of philosophy. Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries--the extraordinary period of intellectual flourishing that begins, very roughly, with Descartes and his contemporaries and ends with Kant. It will also publish papers on thinkers or movements outside of that framework, provided they are important in illuminating early modern thought. The articles in OSEMP will be of importance to specialists within the discipline, but the editors also intend that they should appeal to a larger audience of philosophers, intellectual historians, and others who are interested in the development of modern thought.

Steven M. Nadler

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