Spinoza Problem

Product Description

When sixteen-year-old Alfred Rosenberg is called into his headmasters office for anti-Semitic remarks he made during a school speech he is forced as punishment to memorize passages about Spinoza from the autobiography of the German poet Goethe. Rosenberg is stunned to discover that Goethe his idol was a great admirer of the Jewish seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Long after graduation Rosenberg remains haunted by this Spinoza problem" how could the German genius Goethe have been inspired by a member of a race Rosenberg considers so inferior to his own a race he was determined to destroyspinoza himself was no stranger to punishment during his lifetime. Because of his unorthodox religious views he was excommunicated from the Amsterdam Jewish community in 1656 at the age of twenty-four & banished from the only world he had ever known. Though his life was short & he lived without means in great isolation he nonetheless produced works that changed the course of history. Over the years Rosenberg rose through the ranks to become an outspoken Nazi ideologue a faithful servant of Hitler & the main author of racial policy for the Third Reich. Still his Spinoza obsession lingered. By imagining the unexpected intersection of Spinozas life with Rosenbergs internationally bestselling novelist Irvin D. Yalom explores the mindsets of two men separated by 300 years. Using his skills as a psychiatrist he explores the inner lives of Spinoza the saintly secular philosopher & of Rosenberg the godless mass murderer."