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
Page 4
... Portuguese Nation," as the Amsterdam Sephardim continued to identify themselves. Whereas others among the chastised had obediently — and sometimes desperately — sought reconciliation, Spinoza calmly removed himself from any further form ...
... Portuguese Nation," as the Amsterdam Sephardim continued to identify themselves. Whereas others among the chastised had obediently — and sometimes desperately — sought reconciliation, Spinoza calmly removed himself from any further form ...
Page 3
... Portuguese - Jewish community in which he had been raised and educated . It was a community of refugees from the Spanish - Portuguese Inquisition , a Jewish calamity whose tragic proportions would be exceeded only in the twentieth ...
... Portuguese - Jewish community in which he had been raised and educated . It was a community of refugees from the Spanish - Portuguese Inquisition , a Jewish calamity whose tragic proportions would be exceeded only in the twentieth ...
Page 4
... Portuguese Nation , " as the Amsterdam Sephardim continued to identify themselves . Whereas others among the chastised had obediently- and sometimes desperately - sought reconciliation , Spinoza calmly removed himself from any further ...
... Portuguese Nation , " as the Amsterdam Sephardim continued to identify themselves . Whereas others among the chastised had obediently- and sometimes desperately - sought reconciliation , Spinoza calmly removed himself from any further ...
Page 13
... Portuguese Inquisition , strug- gling to reclaim their Jewish identities . Having thrown off their enforced Christianity , they were trying , very con- sciously and deliberately , to shape their new identities as Jews . What other Jews ...
... Portuguese Inquisition , strug- gling to reclaim their Jewish identities . Having thrown off their enforced Christianity , they were trying , very con- sciously and deliberately , to shape their new identities as Jews . What other Jews ...
Page 14
... Portuguese Inquisi- tion had forced these questions into the forefront of the consciousness of Spinoza's Jewish community ( just as the Jewish calamity of the Holocaust has forced these questions back into an embarrassed silence ) . The ...
... Portuguese Inquisi- tion had forced these questions into the forefront of the consciousness of Spinoza's Jewish community ( just as the Jewish calamity of the Holocaust has forced these questions back into an embarrassed silence ) . The ...
Contents
3 | |
17 | |
The Project of Escape | 67 |
Identity Crisis | 124 |
Epilogue | 258 |
Chronology | 265 |
Notes | 273 |
Acknowledgments | 285 |
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