The Spinoza Problem

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At sixteen, Alfred Rosenberg faces punishment for anti-Semitic remarks during a school speech, leading him to memorize passages about Spinoza from Goethe's autobiography. He is shocked to learn that his idol, Goethe, admired the Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza, which creates a profound internal conflict for Rosenberg. He grapples with the "Spinoza problem": how could a genius like Goethe be inspired by someone from a race he deems inferior and seeks to annihilate? Spinoza himself faced severe consequences for his beliefs, being excommunicated from the Amsterdam Jewish community at just twenty-four, leading a life of isolation while producing influential works. As Rosenberg ascends to become a prominent Nazi ideologue and a key architect of the Third Reich's racial policies, his obsession with Spinoza persists. The narrative imagines the unlikely intersection of their lives, with internationally bestselling novelist Irvin D. Yalom delving into the psyches of these two men, one a saintly secular thinker and the other a godless mass murderer, separated by three centuries yet connected by their complex legacies.