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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LibraryThing Review
User Review - drbrand - LibraryThingThe world is the all-embracing web of necessary truths, intelligible through and through―and our own individual salvation rests in our knowing this. Goldstein writes a deeply engaging biography of ... Read full review
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
Contents
Baruch Bento Benedictus | 3 |
In Search of Baruch | 17 |
The Project of Escape | 67 |
Copyright | |
6 other sections not shown
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Common terms and phrases
Amsterdam answer argue arrived asked Baruch become believe body born brought called cause century chief rabbi Christian claim conceived continued converted Costa course death Descartes emotions Ethics excommunication existence experience explanations fact faith father feel final follow forced former friends girls Hebrew human ideas identity imagination infinite Inquisition interest Jewish Jews Judaism kabbalistic knowledge known laws learning least letter lived logic Marranos matter means mind Morteira nature never offered once one's opening particular perhaps philosopher pleasure proofs publish question rabbis rational reality reason reference religion religious salvation seems sense Sephardic sort soul Spain Spanish Spinoza suffering synagogue Talmud teacher thing thought tion Torah true truth understand University whole write young
Bibliographic information
| Title | Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew who Gave Us Modernity Jewish encounters |
| Author | Rebecca Goldstein |
| Contributor | Nextbook (Organization) |
| Edition | illustrated, annotated |
| Publisher | Nextbook, 2006 |
| Original from | the University of Michigan |
| Digitized | Jun 11, 2009 |
| ISBN | 0805242090, 9780805242096 |
| Length | 287 pages |
| Subjects | › Biography & Autobiography / Philosophers Social Science / Jewish Studies |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |