Betraying Spinoza: the renegade Jew who gave us modernityIn 1656, Amsterdam's Jewish community excommunicated Baruch Spinoza, and, at the age of twentythree, 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. InBetraying 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 heroa surprisingly contemporary figure ripe for our own uncertain age. From the Hardcover edition. |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - MarkBeronte - LibraryThingIn 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 ... Read full review
LibraryThing Review
User Review - KidSisyphus - LibraryThing"By decree of the angels and by the command of the holy men, we excommunicate, expel, curse and damn Baruch de Espinoza, with the consent of God, Blessed be He, and with the consent of the entire holy ... Read full review
Contents
Baruch Bento Benedictus | 3 |
n In Search of Baruch | 17 |
in The Project of Escape | 67 |
Copyright | |
4 other sections not shown
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Bibliographic information
| Title | Betraying Spinoza: the renegade Jew who gave us modernity Jewish encounters |
| Author | Rebecca Goldstein |
| Edition | illustrated, annotated |
| Publisher | Nextbook, 2006 |
| Original from | the University of Michigan |
| Digitized | Jun 11, 2009 |
| Length | 287 pages |
| Subjects | › › Biography & Autobiography / Philosophers Fiction / General History / Jewish Philosophy / General Philosophy / History & Surveys / Modern Social Science / Jewish Studies |
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