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 3
The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity Rebecca Goldstein. Prologue : Baruch , Bento , Benedictus B y what right is Benedictus Spinoza included in this series , devoted as it is to Jewish themes and thinkers ? Can the seventeenth ...
The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity Rebecca Goldstein. Prologue : Baruch , Bento , Benedictus B y what right is Benedictus Spinoza included in this series , devoted as it is to Jewish themes and thinkers ? Can the seventeenth ...
Page 12
... Baruch , Bento , and Benedictus . It is hard for us to appreciate the loneliness of Spinoza's secularized spirituality . For an individual of the early seven- teenth century to live outside the bounds of a religious identity to aim to ...
... Baruch , Bento , and Benedictus . It is hard for us to appreciate the loneliness of Spinoza's secularized spirituality . For an individual of the early seven- teenth century to live outside the bounds of a religious identity to aim to ...
Page 16
... Spinoza's community . The name Spinoza strangely suits . Spinoza , as a Jew , pre- sents himself to us adorned in a crown of eternally thorny questions . ။ In Search of Baruch The Senhores of the ma'amad Betraying Spinoza.
... Spinoza's community . The name Spinoza strangely suits . Spinoza , as a Jew , pre- sents himself to us adorned in a crown of eternally thorny questions . ။ In Search of Baruch The Senhores of the ma'amad Betraying Spinoza.
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The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity Rebecca Goldstein ။ In Search of Baruch The Senhores of the ma'amad , 1 having long known of the evil opinions and acts of Baruch de Espinoza , have endeavored by various means and promise , to ...
The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity Rebecca Goldstein ။ In Search of Baruch The Senhores of the ma'amad , 1 having long known of the evil opinions and acts of Baruch de Espinoza , have endeavored by various means and promise , to ...
Page 19
... SPINOZA The Ethics , Part IV , Appendix V first heard the name Baruch Spinoza uttered as an admoni- tion , a cautionary tale of unbridled human intelligence blindly seeking its own doom . This is what happens , the voice of my teacher ...
... SPINOZA The Ethics , Part IV , Appendix V first heard the name Baruch Spinoza uttered as an admoni- tion , a cautionary tale of unbridled human intelligence blindly seeking its own doom . This is what happens , the voice of my teacher ...
Contents
3 | |
17 | |
The Project of Escape | 67 |
Identity Crisis | 124 |
Epilogue | 258 |
Chronology | 265 |
Notes | 273 |
Acknowledgments | 285 |
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