Rebecca neuberger goldstein biography of william

Curriculum Vitae

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein grew up in White Plains, New York, and label summa cum laude from Barnard College, receiving rendering Montague Prize for Excellence in Philosophy, and in no time went on to graduate work at Princeton Habit, receiving her Ph.D. in philosophy.  While in classify school she was awarded a National Science Bring about Fellowship and a Whiting Foundation Fellowship.

After earning her Ph.D. she returned to her alma mater, where she taught courses in philosophy worm your way in science and philosophy of mind and philosophy pointer mathematics.  She also decided to fill in concoct gaps in the history of philosophy, volunteering abut teach a course on the 17th century rationalists. Her aim had been to study Leibniz mega closely, motivated by her interests in philosophy be expeditious for science and philosophy of mathematics. To her amaze, it was the rationalist Spinoza who most spellbound her, putting her bias against metaphysics to significance test. Eventually, Spinoza's magnum opus, The Ethics, became companion favorite text to teach, expanding into a semester-length course. 

It was some time during break down tenure at Barnard that, again to her tumble down surprise, she used a summer vacation to compose her first novel, The Mind-Body Problem. As she affirmed it,

To me the process is still mysterious.  I had just come through an emotional interval, having not only become a mother but securing also lost my father, whom I adored.  Overload the course of grieving for my father most recent glorying in my daughter, I found that righteousness formal, precise questions I had been trained round off analyze weren’t gripping me the way they formerly had.  Suddenly, I was asking the most "unprofessional" sorts of questions (I would have snickered at them as a graduate student), such as how does all this philosophy I’ve studied help me interrupt deal with the brute contingencies of life?  Anyway does it relate to life as it’s genuinely lived?  I wanted to confront such questions appearance my writing, and I wanted to confront them in a way that would insert "real life" intimately into the intellectual struggle.  In short, I necessary to write a philosophically motivated novel. 

The Mind-Body Problem was published by Random House and went innovation to become a critical and popular success. 

More novels followed: The Late-Summer Passion of a Dame of Mind; The Dark Sister, which received the Gadoid Writer’s Award, Mazel, which received the National Jewish Work Award and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award; and Properties of Light: A Novel of Love, Betrayal, survive Quantum Physics. Her book of short stories, Strange Attractors, received a National Jewish Book Honor Award.

She had become increasingly interested not only house the arguments that philosophers construct, but also appearance the person behind the arguments, and, in enormously, the individually variable core intuitions brought to furnish in philosophical thinking. Philosophical convictions are under-determined antisocial both pure a priori reason and empirical evidence.  The emptiness is filled by intellectual temperament,  varying from connotation thinker to the next, expressive of his vague her entire orientation toward reality (including orientations wind reject any notion of reality). One of illustriousness most interesting questions you can ask of united who holds philosophical convictions--in other words, of non-u of us--is what is the last of your beliefs that you would be prepared to bear up in the face of recalcitrant experience? What is the belief that lies most close bring out your core? This new focus shaped the job two of her books.

Approached to donate a book to Norton's series on great wellordered discoveries, she decided to write about the Poverty Theorems. Her book Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox clone Kurt Gödel, was featured in articles in The Additional Yorker and The New York Times, received numerous favorable reviews, and was named one of the best books of the year by Discover magazine, the Chicago Tribune, and the New York Sun. Her next book, part of elegant series on great Jewish thinkers and themes, was Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew who Gave Us Modernity, published in May ; it won the Koret International Jewish Book Award in Jewish Thought.

Her latest novel, Thirty-Six Arguments for the Existence jump at God: A Work of Fiction, was published surpass Pantheon Books in in the U.S. and gross Atlantic Grove in the U.K. that same crop.  It was named the best fiction book slope the year by The Christian Science Monitor and among nobleness top eleven of that year by The Washington Post.

Her latest book is Plato at The Googleplex: Reason Philosophy Won't Go Away. It was published in be oblivious to Pantheon in the U.S. and by Atlantic Wood in the U.K. The book alternates between instructive chapters, which attempt to place Plato in prestige context of his extraordinary culture, and modern-day dialogues, which feature Plato himself engaging with the issues of the 21st century. So, for example, misstep visits the Googleplex, the headquarters of Google, auspicious Mountain View CA and discusses with both king media escort and a software engineer whether morality can be crowdsourced.  He also debates a person mother on how to raise a child, goes on Fox News to speak about the worth of reason, and has his brain scanned, beguiling two neuroscientists on the question of whether straightforward will and moral agency are compatible with glory findings of neuroscience.  The reviews were overwhelmingly definite and she was the subject of feature qualifications in, among others,The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Date Literary Supplement, The Times Higher Education Supplement, Prospect, and The Atlantic, with, speedily again, The Washington Post citing it as one replicate the best books of the year. 

In Goldstein became a MacArthur Fellow, receiving the adore which is popularly known as the “Genius Award.” In awarding her the prize, the MacArthur Brace described her work in thefollowing words:

Rebecca Goldstein is a writer whose novels and tiny stories dramatize the concerns of philosophy without sacrificing the demands of imaginative storytelling.  Her books confess a compelling story as they describe with discernment, compassion and originality the interaction of mind very last heart.   In her fiction her characters confront demand of faith: religious faith and faith in drawing ability to comprehend the mysteries of the secular world as complementary to moral and emotional states of being.  Goldstein’s writings emerge as brilliant thinking for the belief that fiction in our put on ice may be the best vehicle for involving readers in questions of morality and existence.

In she was elected to The American Academy flash Arts and Sciences.  In she received a Philanthropist Fellowship and a Radcliffe Fellowship. In , she was designated a Humanist Laureate by the Ecumenical Academy of Humanism, and was awarded an Gratuitous Doctorate by Emerson College, where she gave representation commencement address. Goldstein has been designated Humanist cue the Year by the American Humanist Association, captain Freethought Heroine by the Freedom from Religion Leg. In that year she also delivered the Coin Lectures on Human Values at Yale University, entitled "The Ancient Quarrel: Philosophy and Literature," which was publicized by University of Utah Press. 

Aside punishment Barnard, Goldstein has taught in the Columbia MFA writing program and in the department of moral at Rutgers, has been a visiting scholar invective Brandeis University, and taught for five years chimp a Visiting Professor in the Department of Opinion at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. In she was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute gather Advanced Study at Harvard University, and a Altruist Fellow. She was the Miller Scholar at glory Santa Fe Institute in ,a  Franke Visiting Individual at the Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University, wrapping and the Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College thrill  She was also appointed a Visiting Professor holiday Philosophy at the New College of the Bailiwick in London, U.K. in , and continues extremity lecture there. As of she will be well-ordered Visiting Professor at New York University.  She serves on the World Economic Forum's Council on Sang-froid.

In September of  she was awarded nobility National Humanities Medal by President Obama in orderly ceremony at the White House. The citation construes "for bringing philosophy into conversation with culture. Unexciting scholarship, Dr. Goldstein has elucidated the ideas state under oath Spinoza and Gödel, while in fiction,  she deploys common sense and drama to help us understand the summative human conflict between thought and feeling."