“I’m transporting myself back to university days and listening to my philosophy professor’s lectures. I remember him saying that Spinoza was a towering figure in intellectual history. That he was one lonely man who was excommunicated by the Jews, whose books were banned by Christians, and who changed the world. He claimed that Spinoza introduced the modern era, that the enlightenment and the rise of natural science all began with him. Some consider Spinoza as the first Westerner to live openly without any religious affiliation. I remember how your father publicly scorned the church. Eugen told
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