Svetlana Krivtsova read for us the book of Irwin Yaloma “The Problem of Spinoza”.
Irwin Yalom always wrote smart books that make you think with him. Back in the 1980s, in addition to scientific and pedagogical talents, he discovered the talent of the writer and brilliantly used the opportunity in the format of the novel to comprehend the problems with which people came to psychotherapists. When in 1997 a small book “Treatment of Love” was published in Russian in Russian, we, together with its author, not only compassion for heroes, but also thought about the paradoxes of human emotionality, about what “good help to another person” is. Then he wrote the magnificent “when Nietzsche cried” and “Schopenhauer as a medicine” (Eksmo, 2006 https://mangalaminn.com/f1-star-charles-leclerc-trapped-in-the-crossfire-once-onlyfans-design-justifies-controversial-career-which-have-ferrari-confession/, 2012), in which he thought about ethics in psychotherapy and the fear of death. Approaching his 80th anniversary, Yalom writes “Peering into the Sun” (Eksmo)-a book whose theme is again-the fear of death. Writes as he could write a person who coped with his own fear and was spiritually prepared for care. It seems that Yalom already understood everything, the most important topics were considered thoroughly. But here is a new book. What remains unresolved?
This time is the fate of Barukha (Benedict) of Spinoza, a modest seller of spices from the Jewish community of Amsterdam of the 17th century, who has discovered outstanding mental abilities since childhood. The story of a person who could not help but think, and the price that he paid for it is one of the two lines of the novel. And the second line is the XX century, the life history of Alfred Rosenberg, one of the ideologists of the Nazi policy of the extermination of Jews. Two biographies on the pages of the novel are intertwined like a double spiral of DNA, connecting many bridges.
Both heroes are smart people. But how differently they use their mind! The novel captivates, plunging us into a thick spicy atmosphere of thought of Yalom. The two main topics worry him. One is the problem of unwillingness and inability to think, the big trouble of our time. Young people do not want to reason. And this is dangerous, because it is much easier to believe the authorities, folding and confidently interpreting for us. Yalom shows how a superficial attitude to life inevitably leads to tragedies – both social and personal.
The second topic is a relationship with God. Yalom, who often repeated that he did not believe in God, now talks about faith. His faith in God, in order, mind and the harmony of incomprehensibility, adhesively described by Spinoza, surpasses us. Perhaps the “Spinoza problem” is the best of the books he wrote. Nowadays, when independent critical thinking and sincere searches of God are not welcome, the elegant novel of the wise old man who knows the nature of man is a real dissident literature, due to the fact that talented.
About the author of the book
Irvin Yalom (Irvin Yalom), The largest psychotherapist of our time, an honorary professor of a medical school at Stanford University (USA), author of fascinating novels that have become bestsellers around the world. “Spinoza problem” Irwin Yalom Eksmo, 480 s..