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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... Jewish Encounters is a collaboration between Schocken and Nextbook , a project devoted to the promotion of Jewish litera- ture , culture , and ideas . > nextbook PUBLISHED THE LIFE OF DAVID Robert Pinsky MAIMONIDES Sherwin B.
... Jewish Encounters is a collaboration between Schocken and Nextbook , a project devoted to the promotion of Jewish litera- ture , culture , and ideas . > nextbook PUBLISHED THE LIFE OF DAVID Robert Pinsky MAIMONIDES Sherwin B.
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... ideas but sought always to conceal his philosophical debt , and is on record as denouncing the philosopher . When a pro- fessor of rhetoric at the University of Utrecht , one Johan Georg Graevius , wrote to Leibniz , castigating the ...
... ideas but sought always to conceal his philosophical debt , and is on record as denouncing the philosopher . When a pro- fessor of rhetoric at the University of Utrecht , one Johan Georg Graevius , wrote to Leibniz , castigating the ...
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... ideas . It was a very close community , as you can well imagine , girls , since such hardship as they had suffered ... ideas began to emerge , so that his community began to be afraid for him and also afraid of him . Some of his former ...
... ideas . It was a very close community , as you can well imagine , girls , since such hardship as they had suffered ... ideas began to emerge , so that his community began to be afraid for him and also afraid of him . Some of his former ...
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... ideas got back to the rabbis , they were stricken with horror . Here was one of their most bril- liant students spouting ideas that not even the non - Jewish apikorsim would dare to contemplate . It was terrible to think that a boy who ...
... ideas got back to the rabbis , they were stricken with horror . Here was one of their most bril- liant students spouting ideas that not even the non - Jewish apikorsim would dare to contemplate . It was terrible to think that a boy who ...
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... ideas to himself , lest the Christian authorities learn of them and bring sanctions against the whole community . But appar- ently it did no good . The community met together in the synagogue . It was the parnassim , the community's lay ...
... ideas to himself , lest the Christian authorities learn of them and bring sanctions against the whole community . But appar- ently it did no good . The community met together in the synagogue . It was the parnassim , the community's lay ...
Contents
3 | |
17 | |
The Project of Escape | 67 |
Identity Crisis | 124 |
Epilogue | 258 |
Chronology | 265 |
Notes | 273 |
Acknowledgments | 285 |
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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 explain 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 lives Lurianic Maimonides Marranos means Messiah metaphysics mind Moses Moslem mystical Nachmanides nature noza one's oneself perfect faith personal identity philosopher pleasure Portugal Portuguese proofs publish question Rabbi Morteira rational reality reason religion religious Rijnsburg Sabbatai Zevi salvation Schoenfeld scholar sense Sephardic soul Spain Spanish suffering synagogue Talmud teacher thing thinker thought tion Torah true truth understand Uriel da Costa Voorburg words write yeshiva young