Philosophical chat isn’t really my thing, but having enjoyed Rebecca Goldstein’s book on Kurt Gödel (which I reviewed here), I read with interest the exchanges between Rebecca and Michael Weiss over at Jewcy.com.

But let me just say that Leibniz had very sound reasons for rejecting Spinoza’s proffered solution to the problem that occupied them both, which is basically: why is there something rather than nothing?

The starting point for the discussion is Rebecca’s new book Betraying Spinoza.

As to why there is something rather than nothing (a question actually posed, I thought, by one of the 20th century German eggheads), I just think it’s the wrong question. How about: “If there was nothing rather than something, then who’d be around to talk about it?” But as I said, I don’t really do philosophy.