Ian Buruma On Spinoza And Free Thought
The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan
4.6 • 836 Ratings
🗓️ 7 March 2025
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ian is a historian, a journalist, and an old friend. He’s currently the Paul Williams Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College. He served as the editor of The New York Review of Books and as foreign editor of The Spectator, where he still writes. He has written many books, including Theater of Cruelty, The Churchill Complex, and The Collaborators — which we discussed on the Dishcast in 2023. This week we’re covering his latest book, Spinoza: Freedom’s Messiah.
For two clips of our convo — on cancel culture in the 17th century, and how Western liberalism is dying today — see our YouTube page.
Other topics: Ian’s Dutch and Jewish roots; the Golden Age of Amsterdam; its central role in finance and trade; when Holland was a republic surrounded by monarchies; the Quakers; Descartes; Hobbes; how sectarianism is the greatest danger to free thought; religious zealots; Cromwell; Voltaire; Locke; the asceticism of Spinoza; his practical skill with glasswork; the religious dissents he published anonymously; his excommunication; his lack of lovers but plentiful friends; how most of his published work was posthumous; his death at 44; the French philosophers of the Enlightenment shaped by Spinoza; how he inspired Marx and Freud; why he admired Jesus; Zionism; universalism; Socrates; Strauss’ Persecution and the Art of Writing; Puritanism through today; trans activists as gnostic; Judith Butler; the right-wing populist surge in Europe; mass migration; Brexit and the Tory fuckup; Trump’s near-alliance with Russia; DOGE; the rising tribalism of today; and thinking clearly as the secret to happiness.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Evan Wolfson on the history of marriage equality, Nick Denton on China and AI, Francis Collins on faith and science, Michael Lewis on government service, Douglas Murray on Israel and Gaza, and Mike White of White Lotus fame. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to [email protected].
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Hi there. Welcome to another fabulous dishcast. Thank you for subscribing. If you haven't |
| 0:36.5 | subscribed, this interview will, conversation will |
| 0:40.3 | peter out and you'll be incredibly frustrated that you can't listen to the rest of it. So if you |
| 0:44.6 | subscribe now, you will avoid that awful fate. We're doing great. We're usually around our |
| 0:51.8 | 20,000, nearly between 20 and 21,000 paid subscribers, |
| 0:57.0 | and we inch, inch, inch up towards 200,000 people getting this every week, |
| 1:01.8 | which is an immense privilege and can barely believe it. |
| 1:07.0 | Coming up, we have some really remarkable guests. |
| 1:10.4 | Michael Lewis, the great Michael Lewis, |
| 1:11.9 | has come in to talk about his new book, which is about your regular federal government employees, |
| 1:17.9 | the people currently under assault. What do they do? Who are they? Well, Michael, as you know, |
| 1:23.7 | is a wonderful reporter, and he's gone and he's talking to them, and he's talking, |
| 1:31.5 | give you a better idea of who we are firing on mass right now. |
| 1:36.6 | Evan Wilson is coming in to talk about the history of the marriage equality movement, |
| 1:42.2 | and we will also have an interesting debate at the end of that about the future and the current situation with the LGBTQ IA2S, TNG, CNB |
| 1:47.9 | plus, plus, minus community, and whether that's actually been a bit of a dead end. Nick Denton, |
| 1:55.5 | the great Nick Denton is going to come in, we're going to talk about China and we're going to |
| 1:59.1 | talk about AI. Francis X Collins is coming in to talk about faith and science. |
| 2:04.0 | Michael Gross on bodybuilding and muscle culture in America. |
| 2:08.9 | Mike White of the creator and writer of the White Lotus is also coming in. |
| 2:14.5 | A friend of the dish. |
| 2:16.5 | And Douglas Murray was also going to come in about, well, Israel |
... |
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