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. |
From inside the book
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Page 6
... claims for reason that have ever been made. Some favors came his way. The University of Heidelberg, which had fallen from its perch of previous glory through the prolonged tribulations of the Thirty Years' War, had no prolessor ot ...
... claims for reason that have ever been made. Some favors came his way. The University of Heidelberg, which had fallen from its perch of previous glory through the prolonged tribulations of the Thirty Years' War, had no prolessor ot ...
Page 8
... established of reputations, well into the eighteenth century's so-called Age of Reason. In the 1780s, for example, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi launched a generalized arrack on Enlightenment thought by claiming that. Betraying Spinoza.
... established of reputations, well into the eighteenth century's so-called Age of Reason. In the 1780s, for example, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi launched a generalized arrack on Enlightenment thought by claiming that. Betraying Spinoza.
Page 6
... claims for reason that have ever been made . Some favors came his way . The University of Heidelberg , which had fallen from its perch of previous glory through the prolonged tribulations of the Thirty Years ' War , had no professor of ...
... claims for reason that have ever been made . Some favors came his way . The University of Heidelberg , which had fallen from its perch of previous glory through the prolonged tribulations of the Thirty Years ' War , had no professor of ...
Page 8
... repu- tations , well into the eighteenth century's so - called Age of Reason . In the 1780s , for example , Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi launched a generalized attack on Enlightenment thought by claiming that Betraying Spinoza.
... repu- tations , well into the eighteenth century's so - called Age of Reason . In the 1780s , for example , Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi launched a generalized attack on Enlightenment thought by claiming that Betraying Spinoza.
Page 9
... claiming that the late poet Lessing had been a closet Spi- nozist , a charge sufficient to compromise the entire move- ment for which Lessing had been a leading spokesman.3 Jacobi even went after Immanuel Kant and his successors ...
... claiming that the late poet Lessing had been a closet Spi- nozist , a charge sufficient to compromise the entire move- ment for which Lessing had been a leading spokesman.3 Jacobi even went after Immanuel Kant and his successors ...
Contents
3 | |
17 | |
The Project of Escape | 67 |
Identity Crisis | 124 |
Epilogue | 258 |
Chronology | 265 |
Notes | 273 |
Acknowledgments | 285 |
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