Betraying Spinoza

The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity

Rebecca Goldstein

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English

Schocken Books
15 March 2010

Biography: religious & spiritual; Philosophy; History of Western philosophy; Judaism

Series: Jewish Encounters Series

A remarkable account of the most important modern Jewish philosopher.

Part 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.

By: Rebecca Goldstein
Imprint: Schocken Books
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 202mm, Width: 131mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 301g
ISBN: 9780805211597
ISBN 10: 0805211594
Series: Jewish Encounters Series
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 15 March 2010
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Reviews for Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity

Beautifully crafted. What seem like separate issues--Spinoza's pioneering advocacy of complete freedom of thought in religious matters; the turmoil in the Jewish community; the fateful events in Amsterdam in the closing years of Spinoza's life; the philosophical developments of the seventeenth century; Spinoza's idea of a philosophical religion utterly purged of all anthropomorphism, even to the extent of denying that God is a 'person' in any sense--come together as if by themselves (the sure sign of a fine artist!) to answer my puzzle: how to understand Spinoza the human being, a man for whom reason itself was a kind of salvation. --Hilary Putnam, New York Observer Beautifully crafted. What seem like separate issues Spinoza s pioneering advocacy of complete freedom of thought in religious matters; the turmoil in the Jewish community; the fateful events in Amsterdam in the closing years of Spinoza s life; the philosophical developments of the seventeenth century; Spinoza s idea of a philosophical religion utterly purged of all anthropomorphism, even to the extent of denying that God is a person in any sense come together as if by themselves (the sure sign of a fine artist!) to answer my puzzle: how to understand Spinoza the human being, a man for whom reason itself was a kind of salvation. Hilary Putnam, New York Observer