Don’t Credit a Jewish Heretic with the Flourishing of Western Civilization

Reviewing a new, comprehensive account of the philosopher Benedict Spinoza’s life, thought, and intellectual legacy by the historian Jonathan Israel, J.J. Kimche finds it a work of “remarkable scope, granularity, and analytical depth.” The book, Kimche observes, adheres to a thesis Israel has stated repeatedly over the course of his career about the “centrality and lasting impact of what he terms the ‘radical enlightenment.’” The “radical thinkers” who belonged to this movement