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Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 199.492
EAN: 9780805242096
ISBN: 0805242090
Label: Schocken
Manufacturer: Schocken
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: May 30, 2006
Publisher: Schocken
Release Date: May 30, 2006
Studio: Schocken
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Editorial Review:
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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Betraying Spinoza
This is a wonderfully written book by an amazing author. Anything she writes is worth reading.
Rating: - This Book Is the Reason Why Books Exist
This book is the reason why books exist. So many books are either light reading with little reward, or too dense with endless little facts that leaves one feeling overwhelmed.
Not so this book. I could tell by reading it what a fantastic philosophy professor this author must be. I learned so much by reading this book. It brought together so much of who I am as well as my interests, such as Judaism, philosophy, psychology, biography, and history. The book explained Spinoza's ideas ... Read More
Rating:  - Too much speculation
Overall, I liked the book. I enjoyed the story Goldstein had to tell, particularly her own experience encountering and teaching Spinoza. However, I think the book fell short of my expectations and was, at times, too superficial of a presentation.
I was expecting more development of the connection between Spinoza's thought and the Marrano/Jewish tradition. Also, I was looking for more development of her argument that Spinoza played a major role in "giving us modernity".
The connections ... Read More
Rating: - When philosophy become a voyage
This is a very nice (sometimes auto-)biographical novel about a philosophical voyage. The traveller is Baruch Spinoza whose influential ideas about God and separation between God and the State is narrated in a very engaging style. Rebecca Goldstein melts autobiographical, historical and philosophical levels of narration in in an enjoyable way. You are entertained and invited to think about a set of observations including Inquisition, diasporas, jews theology, Teens' life in the Big apple during the 60s, logic and ... Read More
Rating: - Doubting jew
A great introduction to a fascinating man and his philosophy. I want to read more Spinoza now
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