The lives and thoughts of Spinoza and Leibniz

Baruch de Spinoza (1632 - 1677) is another philosopher I've known about but not known, which is why I read The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World by Matthew Stewart. I didn't care about Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz ((1646–1716), but with two intellectual giants in one book, how can you go wrong?

Spinoza, of Portuguese-Jewish origin, was born and lived in the Dutch Republic and lucky for him that he did. Given the religious conflicts within Europe at the time, his philosophy could have meant his death. 

He received a traditional Jewish education, learning Hebrew and studying sacred texts within the Portuguese Jewish community, where his father was a prominent merchant. As a young man, Spinoza challenged rabbinic authority and questioned Jewish doctrines which led the rabbis to expel him from the community in 1656 when he was 23 years old. He never married but devoted himself to philosophy and supported himself by grinding lenses (and the glass dust probably contributed to his early death). Despite being a non-person in Jewish eyes and a Jew in Christian, Spinoza was able to find a wide circle of friends and diciples.

Leibniz, a German polymath, was active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist, and diplomat. He created calculus independently—but 10 years after Newton. He was active in many other branches of mathematics, such as binary arithmetic and statistics. He's been called the "last universal genius" due to his expertise in many fields. He wrote works on philosophy, theology, ethics, politics, law, history, philology, games, music, and other studies. Leibniz also made major contributions to physics and technology, and anticipated notions that surfaced much later in probability theory, biology, medicine, geology, psychology, linguistics and computer science. He met Spinoza briefly in 1676.

Spinoza argued (among other things) that nature is God and God is nature. Leibniz argued that the God of the Bible is God and that Spinoza was an atheist. Because Leibniz believed that God would not—could not—create a flawed or imperfect world, this is the best of all possible worlds. (Voltaire satirized him in Candide.) After meeting Spinoza, Leibniz spent considerable time and thought refuting the older man's philosophy.

The Courtier and the Heretic tells general readers the outlines of their lives (with an excellent bibliography if you want to know more), their philosophies, and the worlds in which they lived. I am not enough of a scholar or specialist to tell whether Matthew Stewart has omitted key biographic or philosophic information. For me, his book fascinating and satisfying. What more can you want?