The Spinoza Problem

The Spinoza Problem by Irvin D. Yalom
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

From the first pages I sensed some artificiality in this book. I did not feel real action and characters, it looked more as author trying to illustrate certain ideas and situations.
After reading about the author HERE I got clear picture.
Irvin Yalom, a psychiatrist, wanted to demonstrate a case study of a person experiencing alienation in the society. He selected two cases -
- B. Spinoza, Jewish philosopher, who did not accept religion of his community. As a result he has been excommunicated for the Jewish society.
- A. Rosenberg, a main Nazi racial theorist, whose works were highly appreciated by Germany leaders, but at the same time he was shunned by them.
Looks like the author used such technique before - books inspired by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.
As I am not interested in Rosenberg theories and life story, I concentrated on Spinoza, but here I was also disappointed. I got impression, that the author is reusing over and over just one point - god and nature are one and we, humans, should live life free of any emotions and relations with others.
At that time I concentrated mainly on Spinoza's theories, but here I

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