Within Reason

Oct 8, 2024 8:38 AM

Author:Margaret Gullan-Whur

Within Reason

The seventeenth-century philosopher Spinoza was expelled from the Jewish community of Amsterdam the age of twenty-four for 'horrendous heresies', and was eventually reviled by all religious authorities for claiming that human beings are parts of a single, unified nature, that God is identical with nature, and that reason, not revelation, supplies the truth of any aspect of God. Undeterred, he made this thesis the basis for a rational crusade against superstition and prejudice. Dr Gullan-Whur's biography, the first for twenty-eight years, shows how Spinoza's central philosophical beliefs developed within the context of his own life. Drawing on very recent scholary research and making detailed reference to primary sources, some not previously explored, the author focuses on the philosopher's attempt to act solely through reason in the face of turbulent personal and national circumstances. This new approach demolishes the myth that Spinoza was a lofty ascetic. It exposes his emotional and sexual vulnerabilit arrogance and misogyny, yet shows his living philosophical experiment to be shrply relevant today.

Reviews

truly remarkable... Searingly honest… This book carries its readers to a place where inhibitions and fears about loss and death give way to something more hopefully and, in their own way, real

—— Peter Stanford , Daily Telegraph

Moving, challenging and hauntingly beautiful... This exquisite book chronicles the quest to process a grief that can never end. This is one I shall return to again and again

—— Bel Mooney , Daily Mail

This is a beautiful book, a remarkable, cadenced recollection of how grief lives in the body. It is poetry as a kind of dance. You have to read it

—— Edmund de Waal

Everything in Sleeping Letters tastes and smells of the authentic life. It’s a living example of what both religion and – especially in Jung’s wise hands – psychology are supposed to do and be. This tiny book is an enormous lesson in finding the sacred through our suffering, in always trusting the impossible, in remembering how to write and read while asleep

—— Peter Kingsley, author of Catafalque and In the Dark Places of Wisdom

Humanity glitters under her gaze in all its facets. Her prose is spectacularly good and her storytelling is a joy.

—— Philip Marsden, author of Rising Ground

A laudable attempt to record an endangered region and a disappearing way of life.

—— Times Literary Supplement

Exceptional.

—— BBC Wildlife

This is a book to make you feel.

—— Scotsman

In her captivating latest, Kassabova transports us to the Mesta River in her native Bulgaria... Kassabova finds hope that this ancient knowledge still has the power to heal us.

—— Bookseller, *Editor's Choice*

Extraordinary... She allows her book to grow and swell, like a symphony, expanding and deepening its themes until the traditional wisdom and life of the mountain envelopes you entirely. Rather like a spell, in fact.

—— Country Life

It soars with the luminous prose and unflinching honesty we have come to expect from this brilliantly gifted writer. Elixir is an extraordinary, profoundly moving book... Her prose is breathtaking, the stories heartbreaking.

—— Feminism and Religion

A joyous celebration of the Pomak community in southern Bulgaria.

—— Spectator, *Books of the Year*

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