Golsdstein describes the style of this book as a memoir, which captures well enough the way it weaves together a biography of Spinoza, an introduction to his philosophy, an attempt to place this in the context of his times and his particular cultural history as a Jew in the 17th Century, and some personal reflections on her own, personal introduction to him. What she does very well, I think, is to demonstrate how The Ethics really is concerned with finding a way to live well in the face of suffering. To this end it is not helpful to state in a bald manner the propositions of Spinoza's finished work, because they lose their impact without a connection both to his life and to ours. She supplies these connections - which ultimately are emotional and not purely rational - by the way she merges his propositions into other material.

For example, she depicts very nicely and humorously the way her Jewish school teacher warned against being seduced by the dreadful (and naturally never understood or even considered, because they are heretical) teachings of this renegade, whom the Jewish community of his time had excommunicated, and then jumps to an account of the arguments used by "Analytic Philosophers" to discourage reading of metaphysics and the Rationalist tradition to which Spinoza belongs. "Let the name of Benedictus Spinoza serve as a warning to you against the folly of metaphysics, which can only end in a systematic semantic nonsense, compounded by the fallacy of ignoring the is-ought gap!' [p56] In a later chapter, she explores Spinoza's very challenging ideas about our personal identities by means of an exploration of the barbaric experience of Spanish and Portuguese Jews in the face of the terrible and centuries long torment of the Inquisition, which was still ongoing in his day. She asks, as he must have done, what it means to be "A Jew" and makes abundantly clear the awful nature of the choices, and the very real risks, Spinoza confronted in his rejection of and excommunication from the Jewish community. At the same time she demonstrates that his philosophy owes much of its nature to the fact that he was indeed a Jew.

These and other conjunctions are not arbitrary or superficial - they impose on the reader a very urgent sense that the ideas Spinoza presented could not be more profound or more immediately relevant. This is philosophy that takes us by the throat.

The free man thinks least of all upon death, and his life is a meditation not on death but on life." The Ethics IV.LXVII

Our inability to realistically contemplate our own demise accounts, for Spinoza, for the otherwise incomprehensible power that the superstitious religions exert on us. Only reason, as rigorous as we can muster it, can truly save us, both give us the truth and also deliver us from our primal fear of the truth. This is the state of blessedness towards which The Ethics will, through its severe formal proofs, try to deliver us. [p163]

The ecstatic impulse in Spinoza's rationalism distinguished him from the other two figures with whom he shares equal billing in such courses as the one I teach: "Seventeenth Century Rationalism: Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz." But then, Rene Descartes and Gottfried Leibniz were mambers of the European majority. They were Christians. They were rationalists who had the luxury of taking their own religious ideas for granted. Neither Descartes nor Leibniz had to solve, as Spinoza did, ... the wrenching problem of Jewish identity, of Jewish history and Jewish suffering. Only Spinoza had to fight his way clear of the dilemmas of Jewish being, fighting all the way to ecstasy. [p186]

It was a sort of Cartesian kabbalism he was contemplating now: The Cartesian methodology applied to the fundamental questions of the kabbalah and all of it laid out in the proofs that replicate something of the logical structure of reality. [p220]

The denial of a thing's explicability is tantamount to the denial of that thing's reality. To be is to be explicable. p235

"He who counts himself more blessed because he alone enjoys well-being not shared by others, or because he is more blessed and fortunate than others, knows not what is true happiness, and blessedness, and the joy he derives thereform, if it be not mere childishness, has its only source in spite and malice." Spinoza in Tractatus Chapter 3 [p239]

"I have often wondered that men who make a boast of professing the Christian religion, which is a religion of love, joy, peace, temperance, and honest dealing with all men, should quarrel so fiercely and display the bitterest hatred towards one another day by day, so that these latter characteristics make known a man's creed more readily than the former. Matters have long reached such a pass that a Christian, Turk or Jew or heathen can generally be recognised as such only by his physical appearance or dress, or by his attendance at a particular place of worship, or by his profession of a particular belief and his allegiance to some leader. But as for their way of life, it is the same for all." From the Preface of Spinoza's Treatise. [p120]

The mystery of human suffering, its inevitability and extravagance - he had contemplated it often enough ... But the mystery is no mystery. The world was not created with a view towards human well being. Logic entails what it does, despite our parochial wishes. It is not surprising that out of the vastness of logical implications there are a profusion that threaten our endeavour to persist in our being and to thrive. So nature will produce such illnesses and disasters to make men's lives a misery. And so, too, men will through their bondage to their emotions compound the misery of their own lives and those of others. It is only reason that can save us. Why then, we might ask, did not God make men more reasonable? That is what the problem of evil comes down to: the stubborn stupidity of mankind. Why did God make men so stubbornly stupid? "Things are not more or less perfect, according as they delight or offend human sense, or according as they are serviceable or repugnant to mankind." [From Ethics 1 Appendix] [p247]

This book is succinct, accessible and well constructed. Godel's Incompleteness Theorems are so significant in the history of ideas that it is essential to have a decent grasp of just what they are and why they mattered and this book supplies that need for general readers. It gives a good enough explanation of Godel's findings and deals with the reactions of other major names to his theories, which sheds interesting light on their work too.

We need to grasp Godel's theories accurately because we need to be aware of the way others not only use but also misrepresent them. For example, William Barrett, in a famous book which I greatly enjoyed: Irrational Man: A Study in Existentialist Philosophy, 1962, concluded from his account of Godel that "mathematics has no self-subsistent reality independent of the human activity that mathematicians carry on." Godel believed pretty much the direct opposite of this fashionable assertion.

This is a very widespread problem. Goldstein gives another example in the way many serious minded people assume from Einstein's Theory of Relativity that there is no absolute reality, since everything depends on the subjective point of view of an observor. On the contrary, Einstein was quite satisfied that the purpose of science is to obtain an accurate account of a reality that is authentic and independent of any observor.

How is the general reader to avoid being sucked into false and sometimes dishonest positions based on misrepresentation? Paradox plays a major role in the story of this book. For a general reader like myself, one paradox might arise if we are asked to rely on Goldstein as an authority and to reject the opinions of other authorities, not least Wittgenstein. The solution cannot possibly be to elevate her in that way - instead, she invites us to join the debate about Godel and stop observing passively from the sidelines. Godel will start to be important to us when we start using his ideas in our own thinking and when we can do that in a credible way: based on understanding and not preconceptions.

4.5 stars rounded down.

 

By page 10, I found the use and placement of words in sentences and paragraphs cunning. I would often find myself go back to savior a well structured turn of phrase.

 

Reading this when sick, perhaps not the best idea.

 

If you enjoy the philosophy of physics, quantum physics, tantric / kundalian sex, or wave function (psi), you will find something in this book. 

 

This will require a 2nd reading when I am "of sound mind". I have determined to add a contemporary philosophy section to my bookshelves, wherever and whenever they are set up.

A series of essays that read like an ode to science. Good poetry makes you feel your way to understanding, and these essays let you understand by feeling and just gives enough to whet you curiosity on the topic and give you further ideas for further listening.

This book would make a great first science book for the listener since it covers wide areas of science by making the listener feel the topic but not enough to fully understand or assimilate. As for me, the book makes a great last book in science to listen to because it summarizes superbly the 100 or so science books I've listened to (and reviewed) over the last 3 years. Now, I finally realize it's time for me to move on to other kinds of books to discover about our place in the universe.

One of the narrators of this book, Peter Berkrot, read "Confessions of a Crap Artist". You know it's a great narrator when your mind goes back to something he had read (over six months ago) and you give the narrator that personality he had from the other book. That character in "Crap Artist" makes the truly bizarre the normal, and his reading of the strange in science by making it normal made the listening experience all the more enjoyable.

Reading Plato was by far my favorite part of studying philosophy in college, and it was sheer delight to encounter him again in this book. Author Rebecca Goldstein, both a philosophy professor and a novelist, poses an interesting question: Now that the sciences have advanced  so far in explaining the inner and outer worlds of our universe--from the subatomic level, to the farthest galaxies, from the genetic codes for life, to the structures of the brain that support thought, emotion, and morality--is there any role left for philosophy? Some scientists think there is not, but it won’t be giving away much to say that Goldstein disagrees. Then there is also the question: Has philosophy since the time of Plato made the same kinds of advances as other fields of knowledge? And: What would Plato make of our modern world--would he have anything to tell us, or, since we’re talking about Plato, it might be more accurate to phrase that question what would Plato ask us to think deeply about?

 

Goldstein approaches these questions with two methods, used in alternate chapters. First there are the expository chapters, well written discourses examining the questions that have been posed, including any new questions that come up along the way, and also providing some fascinating background history. These take a satisfying amount of mind exercise and it felt good to rejoin the philosophical discussion around a theoretical seminar table, but it’s the chapters following the expository ones that are the real reward for all that thought work. Because in them Plato is back, here in our modern world, and like Socrates he is engaging everyone he meets in dialogue, allowing them all to take another look at their unexamined assumptions.

Plato doesn’t do one-sided lectures, of course, and in these back and forths he is learning too--how to avoid using sexist language for instance. People Plato delves into discussion with include a Google software engineer who thinks crowd-sourcing is the most reliable way to attain information which he equates with wisdom, a book tour escort who is sure she knows how best to live her own life, a Fox news host who’s proud of his rigid beliefs about religion and morality, a neuroscientist who doesn’t believe in conscious free will, and a tiger mom and psychoanalyst who debate with each other and Plato about how best to raise a child. These sections are as substantive as the expository chapters, but they are also sometimes laugh out loud funny. Goldstein has put the fun back into philosophy while making a strong, well reasoned case that it still has relevance in today’s world.