What does a 12th-century rabbi in Egypt, arguably the greatest thinker in Jewish history, have in common with a 17th-century Jewish philosopher in Amsterdam who was â??expelled from the people of Israelâ? for â??abominable heresies and monstrous deedsâ? and who would go on to become the most radical philosopher of his time? And what could their philosophical differences and similarities possibly have to do with us, many centuries later?
Author: Steven Nadler is chair of the department of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of â??The Best of All Possible Worlds: A Story of Philosophers, God, and Evilâ? (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008).