Spinoza Liberalism And The Question Of Jewish Identity

Author : Steven B. Smith
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 1997-01-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0300076657

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Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity by Steven B. Smith Pdf

Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677)--often recognized as the first modern Jewish thinker--was also a founder of modern liberal political philosophy. This book is the first to connect systematically these two aspects of Spinoza's legacy. Steven B. Smith shows that Spinoza was a politically engaged theorist who both advocated and embodied a new conception of the emancipated individual, a thinker who decisively influenced such diverse movements as the Enlightenment, liberalism, and political Zionism. Focusing on Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise, Smith argues that Spinoza was the first thinker of note to make the civil status of Jews and Judaism (what later became known as the Jewish Question) an essential ingredient of modern political thought. Before Marx or Freud, Smith notes, Spinoza recast Judaism to include the liberal values of autonomy and emancipation from tradition. Smith examines the circumstances of Spinoza's excommunication from the Jewish community of Amsterdam, his skeptical assault on the authority of Scripture, his transformation of Mosaic prophecy into a progressive philosophy of history, his use of the language of natural right and the social contract to defend democratic political institutions, and his comprehensive comparison of the ancient Hebrew commonwealth and the modern commercial republic. According to Smith, Spinoza's Treatise represents a classic defense of religious toleration and intellectual freedom, showing them to be necessary foundations for political stability and liberal regimes. In this study Smith examines Spinoza's solution to the Jewish Question and asks whether a Judaism, so conceived, can long survive.

Author : Daniel B. Schwartz
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 291 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2013-12-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780691162140

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The First Modern Jew by Daniel B. Schwartz Pdf

Pioneering biblical critic, theorist of democracy, and legendary conflater of God and nature, Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was excommunicated by the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam in 1656 for his "horrible heresies" and "monstrous deeds." Yet, over the past three centuries, Spinoza's rupture with traditional Jewish beliefs and practices has elevated him to a prominent place in genealogies of Jewish modernity. The First Modern Jew provides a riveting look at how Spinoza went from being one of Judaism's most notorious outcasts to one of its most celebrated, if still highly controversial, cultural icons, and a powerful and protean symbol of the first modern secular Jew. Ranging from Amsterdam to Palestine and back again to Europe, the book chronicles Spinoza's posthumous odyssey from marginalized heretic to hero, the exemplar of a whole host of Jewish identities, including cosmopolitan, nationalist, reformist, and rejectionist. Daniel Schwartz shows that in fashioning Spinoza into "the first modern Jew," generations of Jewish intellectuals--German liberals, East European maskilim, secular Zionists, and Yiddishists--have projected their own dilemmas of identity onto him, reshaping the Amsterdam thinker in their own image. The many afterlives of Spinoza are a kind of looking glass into the struggles of Jewish writers over where to draw the boundaries of Jewishness and whether a secular Jewish identity is indeed possible. Cumulatively, these afterlives offer a kaleidoscopic view of modern Jewish cultureand a vivid history of an obsession with Spinoza that continues to this day.

Author : David Wertheim
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2011-09-20
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9789004209213

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Salvation through Spinoza by David Wertheim Pdf

This study chronicles Spinoza’s German-Jewish popularity during the years of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933), explaining it from the political moral and intellectual paradoxes with which Weimar Germany confronted its Jews.

Author : Jerome E. Copulsky,Dana Hollander,Eric Jacobson,Gregory Kaplan,Daniel Weidner,Daniel Brandes,Sarah Hammerschlag,Zachary Braiterman,Robert Erlewine,Oona Eisenstadt,Brian Britt,Bruce Rosenstock
Publisher : Indiana University Press
Page : 367 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2013-12-05
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780253010391

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Judaism, Liberalism, & Political Theology by Jerome E. Copulsky,Dana Hollander,Eric Jacobson,Gregory Kaplan,Daniel Weidner,Daniel Brandes,Sarah Hammerschlag,Zachary Braiterman,Robert Erlewine,Oona Eisenstadt,Brian Britt,Bruce Rosenstock Pdf

These essays propose “a new and richly detailed engagement between Judaism and the political” (Jewish Book World). Judaism, Liberalism, and Political Theology provides the first broad encounter between modern Jewish thought and recent developments in political theology, arguing in opposition to impetuous associations of Judaism and liberalism and charges that Judaism cannot engender a universal political order. The vexed status of liberalism in Jewish thought and Judaism in political theology is interrogated with recourse to thinking from across the Continental tradition. “This collection of essays, which examines political theology from the distinct perspective of Jewish philosophy, could not be timelier or more useful for scholars and students navigating what is often viewed as very dense and difficult material.”—Claire Elise Katz, Texas A&M University

Author : Yirmiyahu Yovel
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 264 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 1989
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0691073449

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Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of reason by Yirmiyahu Yovel Pdf

This ambitious study presents Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) as the most outstanding and influential thinker of modernity--and examines the question of whether he was the "first secular Jew." A number-one bestseller in Israel, Spinoza and Other Heretics is made up of two volumes--The Marrano of Reason and The Adventures of Immanence. Yirmiyahu Yovel shows how Spinoza grounded a philosophical revolution in a radically new principle--the philosophy of immanence, or the idea that this world is all there is--and how he thereby anticipated secularization, the Enlightenment, the disintegration of ghetto life, and the rise of natural science and the liberal-democratic state. The Marrano of Reason The Marrano of Reason finds the origins of the idea of immanence in the culture of Spinoza's Marrano ancestors, Jews in Spain and Portugal who had been forcibly converted to Christianity. Yovel uses their fascinating story to show how the crypto-Jewish life they maintained in the face of the Inquisition mixed Judaism and Christianity in ways that undermined both religions and led to rational skepticism and secularism. He identifies Marrano patterns that recur in Spinoza in a secularized context: a "this-worldly" disposition, a split religious identity, an opposition between inner and outer life, a quest for salvation outside official doctrines, and a gift for dual language and equivocation. This same background explains the drama of the young Spinoza's excommunication from the Jewish community in his native Amsterdam. Convention portrays the Amsterdam Jews as narrow-minded and fanatical, but in Yovel's vivid account they emerge as highly civilized former Marranos with cosmopolitan leanings, struggling to renew their Jewish identity and to build a "new Jerusalem" in the Netherlands.

Author : Benedictus de Spinoza
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 528 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 1889
Category : Ethics
ISBN : UVA:X000372899

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The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza by Benedictus de Spinoza Pdf

Author : Harvey Mitchell
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2012-08-21
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781134002344

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Voltaire's Jews and Modern Jewish Identity by Harvey Mitchell Pdf

Harvey Mitchell’s book argues that a reassessment of Voltaire’s treatment of traditional Judaism will sharpen discussion of the origins of, and responses to, the Enlightenment. His study shows how Voltaire’s nearly total antipathy to Judaism is best understood by stressing his self-regard as the author of an enlightened and rational universal history, which found Judaism’s memory of its past incoherent, and, in addition, failed to meet the criteria of objective history—a project in which he failed. Calling on an array of Jewish and non-Jewish figures to reveal how modern interpretations of Judaism may be traced to the core ideas of the Enlightenment, this book concludes that Voltaire paradoxically helped to foster the ambiguities and uncertainties of Judaism’s future.

Author : Travis DeCook
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 223 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 2021-03-18
Category : History
ISBN : 9781108830812

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The Origins of the Bible and Early Modern Political Thought by Travis DeCook Pdf

Explores the cultural functions played in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by accounts of the Bible's origins.

Author : Anne O. Albert
Publisher : Liverpool University Press
Page : 400 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2023-01-15
Category : History
ISBN : 9781802070750

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Jewish Politics in Spinoza's Amsterdam by Anne O. Albert Pdf

This book untangles a web of ideas about politics, religion, exile, and community that emerged at a key moment in Jewish history and left a lasting mark on Jewish ideas. In the shadow of their former member Baruch Spinoza’s notoriety, and amid the aftermath of the Sabbatian messianic movement, the Spanish and Portuguese Jews of seventeenth-century Amsterdam underwent a conceptual shift that led them to treat their self-governed diaspora community as a commonwealth. Preoccupied by the question of why and how Jews should rule themselves in the absence of a biblical or messianic sovereign state or king, they forged a creative synthesis of insights from early modern Christian politics and Jewish law and traditions to assess and argue over their formidable communal government. In so doing they shaped a proud new theopolitical self-understanding of their community as analogous to a Christian state. Through readings of rarely studied sermons, commentaries, polemics, administrative records, and architecture, Anne Albert shows that a concentrated period of public Jewish political discourse among the community’s leaders and thinkers led to the formation of a strong image of itself as a totalizing, state-like entity—an image that eventually came to define its portrayal by twentieth-century historians. Her study presents a new perspective on a Jewish population that has long fascinated readers, as well as new evidence of Jewish reactions to Spinoza and Sabbatianism, and analyses the first Jewish reckoning with modern western political concepts.

Author : Wiep van Bunge
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 41,5 Mb
Release : 2012-08-03
Category : History
ISBN : 9789004233522

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Spinoza Past and Present by Wiep van Bunge Pdf

Spinoza Past and Present consists of twelve essays on Benedictus de Spinoza’s Jewish background, his views on metaphysics, mathematics, religion and society. Special attention is paid to the various ways in which Spinoza’s works have been interpreted from the late seventeenth century to the present day. In particular, Spinoza’s recent popularity among advocates of the Radical Enlightenment is discussed: Van Bunge proposes a new interpretation of Spinoza’s role in the early Dutch Enlightenment.

Author : Daniel R. Langton
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2010-03-22
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781139486323

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The Apostle Paul in the Jewish Imagination by Daniel R. Langton Pdf

The Apostle Paul in the Jewish Imagination is a pioneering multidisciplinary examination of Jewish perspectives on Paul of Tarsus. Here, the views of individual Jewish theologians, religious leaders, and biblical scholars of the last 150 years, together with artistic, literary, philosophical, and psychoanalytical approaches, are set alongside popular cultural attitudes. Few Jews, historically speaking, have engaged with the first-century Apostle to the Gentiles. The modern period has witnessed a burgeoning interest in this topic, however, with treatments reflecting profound concerns about the nature of Jewish authenticity and the developing intercourse between Jews and Christians. In exploring these issues, Jewish commentators have presented Paul in a number of apparently contradictory ways. The Apostle Paul in the Jewish Imagination represents an important contribution to Jewish cultural studies and to the study of Jewish-Christian relations.

Author : Winfried Schröder
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2015-11-13
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9783110424294

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Reading between the lines – Leo Strauss and the history of early modern philosophy by Winfried Schröder Pdf

Since its publication in 1952, Leo Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing has stirred considerable controversy, particularly among historians concerned with early modern philosophy. On the one hand, several scholars share his view that it would be inadequate to generally take at face value the explicit message of texts which were composed in an era in which severe sanctions were imposed on those who entertained deviating views. ‘Reading between the lines’ therefore seems to be the appropriate hermeneutical approach. On the other hand, the risks of such an interpretative maxim are more than obvious, as it might come up to an unlimited license to ascribe heterodox doctrines to early modern philosophers whose manifest teachings were in harmony with the orthodox positions of their time. The conributions to this volume both address these methodological issues and discuss paradigmatic cases of authors who might indeed be candidates for a Straussian ‘reading between the lines’: Hobbes, Spinoza, and Bayle.

Author : Shaye J. D. Cohen
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2005-09-06
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780520212503

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Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised? by Shaye J. D. Cohen Pdf

"This book represents engaged scholarship at its very best. Cohen presents the vast range of texts at his command with brevity and wit. Elegantly written, this is a very stimulating book that is sure to provoke admiration, discussion, and controversy."—David Biale, author of Cultures of the Jews "A distinguished and wide-ranging work of scholarship. Cohen’s definitive discussion of the covenant of circumcision enhances our understanding of Jewish identity formation, women’s status in Judaism, Jewish-Christian polemic, and the impact of diverse cultural environments on the evolution of Jewish tradition."—Judith R. Baskin, author of Midrashic Women

Author : P.J. Bagley
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 293 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2013-06-29
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9789401726726

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Piety, Peace, and the Freedom to Philosophize by P.J. Bagley Pdf

The 11 essays collected here have been composed by members of the North American Spinoza Society. They exhibit the fruits of the research, investigation and erudition of an array of established scholars and newer students whose interpretations of Spinoza's philosophical doctrines are receiving critical acclaim. This is the first collection in the English language dedicated exclusively to topics, problems or questions raised by the teachings found in Baruch Spinoza's Tractatus theologico-politicus. Divided into the themes of piety, peace, and the freedom to philosophize, the essays treat Spinoza's views on faith and philosophy, miracles, the light of Scripture, political power, religion, the state, the body politic, the idea of tolerance, and philosophic communication, as well as his connections to Walter Benjamin, Blaise Pascal, David Hume, and his Jewish heritage. Readership: An excellent collection for students and scholars studying Spinoza, the history of early modern philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and those concerned with theologico-political questions.

Author : Richard Mason
Publisher : Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Page : 252 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0754657345

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Spinoza by Richard Mason Pdf

Approaching the central themes of Spinoza's thought from both a historical and analytical perspective, this book examines the logical-metaphysical core of Spinoza's philosophy, its epistemology and its ramifications for his much disputed attitude towards religion. Opening with a discussion of Spinoza's historical and philosophical location as the appropriate context for the interpretation of his work, the book goes on to present a non-'logical' reading of Spinoza's metaphysics, a consideration of Spinoza's radical repudiation of Cartesian subjectivism and an examination of how Spinoza wanted religion to be understood in the context of his wider thinking and the influence of his non-Christian background. Mason also assesses Spinoza's significance and importance for philosophy now.