Steven Nadler

April 23, 2019
Spinoza Matters More than Ever
In July 1656, the 23-year-old Bento de Spinoza was excommunicated from the Portuguese-Jewish congregation of Amsterdam. It was the harshest punishment of herem (ban) ever...
March 20, 2019
Why Spinoza Was Excommunicated
Bento de Spinoza was a young merchant in Amsterdam, one of many Sephardic Jews in that city involved in overseas trade in the early 1650s. The specialty of his family's firm, which...
January 24, 2019
Who Tried to Kill Spinoza?
In the pantheon of great dead philosophers, few have been the subject of as much imaginative literary invention as Spinoza. Because so many biographical details are hidden, both his...