Spinoza's Modernity: Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine

Front Cover
University of Wisconsin Press, 2004 - History - 351 pages
Spinoza’s Modernity is a major, original work of intellectual history that reassesses the philosophical project of Baruch Spinoza, uncovers his influence on later thinkers, and demonstrates how that crucial influence on Moses Mendelssohn, G. E. Lessing, and Heinrich Heine shaped the development of modern critical thought. Excommunicated by his Jewish community, Spinoza was a controversial figure in his lifetime and for centuries afterward. Willi Goetschel shows how Spinoza’s philosophy was a direct challenge to the theological and metaphysical assumptions of modern European thought. He locates the driving force of this challenge in Spinoza’s Jewishness, which is deeply inscribed in his philosophy and defines the radical nature of his modernity.

From inside the book

Contents

The Scandal of Spinozas Jewishness
3
The New Metaphysical Framework of Ontology
23
Spinozas
33
Copyright

16 other sections not shown

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2004)

Willi Goetschel is professor of German and philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Constituting Critique: Kant’s Writing as Critical.

Bibliographic information