Synopses & Reviews
Part of the Jewish Encounter seriesIn 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.
Review
"Goldstein errs in adopting [an] over-personal approach, but she is obviously working hard to make a difficult thinker appealing to common readers." Washington Post
Review
"Goldstein uses biographical sketches of Spinoza's life to put forward the idea that, although his philosophy did not echo a Jewish viewpoint, it was influenced by the Jewish culture in which he was raised." Library Journal
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
A DIFFERENT WAY OF LOOKING AT HERITAGE: For the first time in a boxed set, a perfect addition to your familys library, are 3 of the remarkable titles in the Jewish Encounters series:
Betraying Spinoza,
Maimonides, and
The Life of David. Discover 3,000 years of Jewish life, history and culture with the series that
The Washington Post calls “lively and distinguished”.
The critically acclaimed Jewish Encounters series brings together writers of the first rank with people, ideas and events from the Jewish past.
About the Author
Rebecca Goldstein's novels include The Mind-Body Problem. A MacArthur Fellow and Whiting Award winner, she teaches philosophy, at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and lives in New York City.