This book is about the lives and philosophy of Leibniz and Spinoza, it's history is rather accurate and the author brings a vivid picture of their lives, however, that may be the problem, it's excessive biography of the authors leaves one in want of a more comprehensive context both historically and philosophically. The author seems to want to establish certain premises throughout, making his claims presumptuous to a high degree. An OK pastime read ( )

A little too polemical on the side of Spinoza. I would have preferred some scholarly detachment. It's something that Frederick Beiser does in his writings on German Idealism without at all sounding like an academic discourse. ( )

This is an outstanding indruction to both Leibniz and Spinoza, the writer respects both of the philosphers and makes them alive ( )

I wanted more Math. I thought it went on & on. I don't know enough to know if what he was saying about Leibniz was true. I wonder if he exaggerated Leibniz position in the history of philosophy.

This book is a bit superfluous. It is written with a romantic bias: Spinoza as the great romantic, almost Nietzschean hero, and Leibniz as a coward conformer to the ideas and opinions of his masters. I do in fact agree with the description of Spinoza, but not with Leibniz': he is a much more original thinker than Matthew Stewart describes. ( )

Liebniz & Spinoza ( )

This is a book in the vein of Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter and Longitude and The Measure of all Things by Ken Alder, but where those books deal with the discoveries of physical science, this book deals more with philosophy and religion's response to those discoveries.

The approach of the modern world was very threatening to religion and the concept of God. Things which had previously been accepted on faith or because the Bible or the Church told us it was so were increasingly coming into question.

It is in this environment which Leibniz, Voltaire's model for Dr. Pangloss in Candide and Spinoza, the moral atheist, formulated their differing, yet intertwined, philosophies.

Stewart's argument is that Leibniz and Spinoza were both ahead of their time in understanding the portent of modernity but that they reacted to it very differently. Spinoza welcomed and embraced the shifting definition of God while Leibniz did all that he could to forestall the impending storm.

As a philosophical dilettante, I found this book hard and yet fascinating. Many a paragraph I had to read and reread, only to still not quite grasp its point. For all that, Stewart presents the conflict between the two men in an engrossing way which kept me reading through the depth.

I came away finding references to these two philosophers recurring around me and am inspired to read more. I've already started to reread Candide which is, in part, Voltaire's critique of Leibniz' theories. I'm also intrigued by Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion which draws on Spinoza and which was featured with an interview of Dawkins on Fresh Air the same night I finished this tome. ( )

This book covered some interesting material and did manage to revivify a dusty segment of European philosophical history, but I would have preferred something that tried a bit less hard to be a "page-turner" - ie., the "gotcha" rhetorical style, the belabored "colorful" metaphors - and that dug a bit more into the cultural context rather than trying to present Liebniz and Spinoza as moderns "avant la lettre". ( )

The contrast between the egotistical and striving Leibniz and the humble and content Baruch Spinoza was great when they met, near the Hague in about 1676. Leibniz created monads, free substances that do not interact with each other, each containing a universe, and undying. This was a way of preserving choice for God, while Spinoza’s god is the essence within the thing, and in no way free to act. The two philosophies are described clearly, although the prose is sometimes too inventive and has unfamiliar metaphors.
I did not side much with one or the other philosophy; concerns about the place of God are strangely alien to my world. ( )

An interesting review of their thought, modus operandi and characters. ( )

Stewart elegantly depicts the contrast between Spinoza and Leibniz, in both their lifestyles and their philosophies. He does so in an entertaining way and, while presenting a certain amount of speculation about the interaction between them, provides a lucid presentation of the portion of their lives and philosophies relevant to his project. I'm not sure I was convinced by all the speculation, but the book was a great read. ( )

The Courier and the Heretic is an incredibly interesting history of two of philosophy's most misunderstood practitioners. Similar in style to Wittgenstein's Poker (Edmunds & Eidenow), the book uses a visit Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz paid to Baruch (Benedictus) de Spinoza as a jumping point, then proceeds to weave a tapestry of the historical and philosophical connections between them. It is both a parallel biography of Spinoza and Leibniz, and a shrewd look at the views that earned them fame and infamy. ( )

The Courtier and the Heretic is a very good book. Stewart does a good job of describing the lives and careers and major philosophical thoughts of Leibinz (the courtier) and Spinoza (the heretic), two of the giants of the 17th century. They are juxtaposed in their lifestyles: Spinoza, driven out of his Jewish community as an atheist, lived a very simple life of the mind with no concern for worldly goods or possessions or even comforts; Leibinz was an inveterate social climber, a dandy, a political intriguer, a manipulator, always hungry for the good life, for recognition, for not just financial security but continually increasing financial success (Voltaire's Pangloss was a satire on Leibinz's unbridled optimism about living in the best of all possible worlds). The two men are contrasted in their philosophies: Spinoza with his hardheaded critique of revealed religion and his definition of a God that no one thought divine, which led to charges of atheism (in a time when people were killed for such views) and frantic efforts by the Vatican to stop the publication of his works, versus Leibinz who became the arch defender of the revealed God. Both men represented different responses to the winds of modernity that were shaking society in the 1600s. But were they really so different?

Leibinz was very much a renaissance man, erudite in a wide range of fields (including mathematics where he independently discovered calculus and set off a life-long dispute with Newton). In this, he was much broader than Spinoza, but Stewart argues that much of Leibinz's philosophical thinking has to be seen as a sometimes conscious, and more often unconscious, reaction to Spinoza. The two great philosophers met once, in November 1676, when Leibinz traveled to the Hague to meet with Spinoza, and they did exchange correspondence, usually through a third party, but later Leibinz downplayed, or even denied, his contacts with Spinoza. Stewart argues that Leibinz was heavily influenced by Spinoza's thinking and was, in fact, sympathetic to it, but he pulled back from the precipice of its implications and almost overcompensated in his fervour of defending an omnipotent, omniscient, judgmental God. Stewart describes Spinoza's divinity as one that inhabits the "here and now" while Leibniz's resides in the "before and beyond"; Spinoza finds happiness in loving God while Leibinz finds it in God loving us back. These are the essential differences and Stewart sees Leibinz as "a Spinozist who did not believe in Spinoza's God."

My sympathies and views on religion lie much more with Spinoza: "We see therefore that all the notions whereby the common people are wont to explain Nature are merely modes of imagining, and denote not the nature of anything but only the constitution of the imagination".

According to Stewart, the logic of Leibinz's arguments is that it is the belief in and not the fact of immortality that matters for our happiness; "even if the soul were mortal, we could still find a Leibnizian kind of bliss, provided we were able to convince ourselves otherwise". This, I think, describes pretty well the basis of religious belief today.

A book very much worth reading and contemplating. (Mar/06)

I lke it.