Jewish Philosophy and the Problem of Evil, or Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

press release: The latest lecture in our Scholar'd for Life series!

Steven Nadler, professor of philosophy

UW-Madison philosophy professor Steven Nadler will discuss how Jewish philosophers over the centuries have confronted the problem of theodicy and struggled to reconcile the existence of a benevolent, all-powerful God with the reality of evil in the world.  This lecture is part of the library's Scholar'd for Life series in which great professors share their favorite lectures.

Steven Nadler is the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy and Evjue Bascom Professor in Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. An expert in early-modern philosophy and Jewish thought, his books include Spinoza: A Life, which won the Koret Jewish Book Award, and Rembrandt's Jews, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Copies of Professor Nadler's latest book, Heretics! The Wondrous (and Dangerous) Beginnings of Modern Philosophy, will be available for purchase at the event courtesy of Princeton University Press.  Heretics! is an illustrated history of the seventeenth-century thinkers who challenged authority—sometimes risking excommunication, prison, and even death—to lay the foundations of modern philosophy.  Nadler's son Ben, a graduate of the Rhode Island Institute of Design, provided the illustrations for the book.

Registration is appreciated for this event.  Online here or by email at info@midlibrary.org.

Now in its second year, Scholar'd for Life is a lecture series presented by the Middleton Public Library in partnership with the UW Madison Speaker's Bureau.  Taking the "Wisconsin Idea" as its starting point, this series aims to promote lifelong learning, intellectual curiosity, and engagement between academics and the community as a whole.