ALEX HALL is disgusted by the misuse of ‘emotional narratives’ to justify uninformed geo-political prejudice
‘Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice’ - Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, 1670
GORDON PARSONS recommends a fine introduction to a philosopher who, like Marx, worked to help society to reject illusion and understand the realities of the human condition
Statue of Spinoza by Nicolas Dings in Zwanenburgwal, Amsterdam with the inscription "The objective of the state is freedom" (quote from Tractatus Theologico-Politicus)
SUE TURNER welcomes a thoughtful, engaging book that lays bare the economic realities of global waste management
JOHN GREEN welcomes an insider account of the achievements and failures of the transition to democracy in Portugal
SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MICK McSHANE rubs shoulders with Mod legend Steve Craddock and joins in with the joyous Glasgow choir
DENNIS BROE sifts out the ideological bias of the newest TV series offerings, and picks out what to see, and what to avoid
Spinoza: Freedom’s Messiah
Ian Buruma, Yale University Press, £16.99
IT has been observed that Baruch Spinoza does not rate very highly in the popular pantheon of world philosophers and yet, as much as many of his better-known analytical sages, along with Descartes his contemporary, he can be seen to fulfil Marx’s necessary demand that more than interpreting the world, philosophers should strive to change it.
Both were born in the 17th century “Dutch Golden Age,” when Amsterdam became the city at the centre of world trade, science and culture, unlike the rest of Europe where the straightjacket of religious control was imposed by Catholic and various Protestant sects. Indeed, this “city of refuge for Jews, Huguenots, Quakers and other victims of persecution was known as Vrijstad, meaning Freetown.”
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