Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew who Gave Us ModernityPart of the Jewish Encounter series In 1656, Amsterdam's Jewish community excommunicated Baruch Spinoza, and, at the age of twenty-three, he became the most famous heretic in Judaism. He was already germinating a secularist challenge to religion that would be as radical as it was original. He went on to produce one of the most ambitious systems in the history of Western philosophy, so ahead of its time that scientists today, from string theorists to neurobiologists, count themselves among Spinoza's progeny. In Betraying Spinoza, Rebecca Goldstein sets out to rediscover the flesh-and-blood man often hidden beneath the veneer of rigorous rationality, and to crack the mystery of the breach between the philosopher and his Jewish past. Goldstein argues that the trauma of the Inquisition' s persecution of its forced Jewish converts plays itself out in Spinoza's philosophy. The excommunicated Spinoza, no less than his excommunicators, was responding to Europe' s first experiment with racial anti-Semitism. Here is a Spinoza both hauntingly emblematic and deeply human, both heretic and hero--a surprisingly contemporary figure ripe for our own uncertain age. |
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Page 227
... Amsterdam's Portuguese Jews , a merchant prince , has offered his entire fortune of several million to the Messiah ... Jews are even preparing to dig up the corpses in the cemetery in Ouderkerk so that they can transport them to ...
... Amsterdam's Portuguese Jews , a merchant prince , has offered his entire fortune of several million to the Messiah ... Jews are even preparing to dig up the corpses in the cemetery in Ouderkerk so that they can transport them to ...
Page 267
... Amsterdam ; con- tinue to hide their Jewish faith 1590s Michael de Spinoza , Baruch Spinoza's father , flees Portugal as a child with his family , arriving in Amsterdam 1596 René Descartes is born 1614 Jews in Amsterdam buy 267.
... Amsterdam ; con- tinue to hide their Jewish faith 1590s Michael de Spinoza , Baruch Spinoza's father , flees Portugal as a child with his family , arriving in Amsterdam 1596 René Descartes is born 1614 Jews in Amsterdam buy 267.
Page 268
... Jews in Amsterdam buy land for cemetery outside Amsterdam ; at least two Jewish congregations already functioning covertly in the city 1615 Jewish settlement in Amsterdam officially recog- nized ; Jewish worship still forbidden by city ...
... Jews in Amsterdam buy land for cemetery outside Amsterdam ; at least two Jewish congregations already functioning covertly in the city 1615 Jewish settlement in Amsterdam officially recog- nized ; Jewish worship still forbidden by city ...
Contents
Baruch Bento Benedictus | 3 |
In Search of Baruch | 17 |
The Project of Escape | 67 |
Copyright | |
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