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 34
... continued to believe in it was as naïve as the Jews of Moses ' time . This is how it often is , girls — that the vilest accusations against the Jews come from irreligious Jews themselves . It is as if , betraying the special task of ...
... continued to believe in it was as naïve as the Jews of Moses ' time . This is how it often is , girls — that the vilest accusations against the Jews come from irreligious Jews themselves . It is as if , betraying the special task of ...
Page 45
... continued , and he seized on these apparent con- tradictions so that he would not have to recognize the authority of any mind over his , not even Ha - Shem's . Atheism always comes down to arrogance . Remember that , girls . It might ...
... continued , and he seized on these apparent con- tradictions so that he would not have to recognize the authority of any mind over his , not even Ha - Shem's . Atheism always comes down to arrogance . Remember that , girls . It might ...
Page 127
... continued to insist on their essential Jewishness . A Sephardic friend tells me his grandfather used to tell him a joke that perhaps goes back to Marrano times . A Jew has undergone a conversion process , in the course of which the ...
... continued to insist on their essential Jewishness . A Sephardic friend tells me his grandfather used to tell him a joke that perhaps goes back to Marrano times . A Jew has undergone a conversion process , in the course of which the ...
Contents
Baruch Bento Benedictus | 3 |
In Search of Baruch | 17 |
The Project of Escape | 67 |
Copyright | |
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Aboab argue Baruch Spinoza believe with perfect Benedictus Benedictus Spinoza born Catholic century chief rabbi Christian Church claim conceived continued conversos course death Descartes Deus sive natura divine Dutch Ein Sof emotions essence eternal Ethics excommunication existence experience explanations fact father final causes finite friends girls Ha-Shem halakha Hebrew heretic holy Ibid ideas infinite system Inquisition Israel Jan de Witt Jewish Jewish community Jewish identity Jews of Amsterdam Judaism kabbalah kabbalistic kherem knowledge laws Leibniz lived Lurianic Maimonides Marranos means Messiah metaphysics mind Moses Moslem mystical Nachmanides nature noza one's oneself perfect faith philosopher pleasure Portugal Portuguese proofs publish question Rabbi Morteira rational reality reason religion religious Rijnsburg Sabbatai Sabbatai Zevi salvation Schoenfeld scholar sense Sephardic soul Spain Spanish suffering synagogue Talmud teacher thing thinker thought tion Torah Tractatus Theologico-Politicus true truth understand Uriel da Costa Voorburg words write yeshiva young