Spinoza, Life and Legacy

Spinoza, Life and Legacy PDF Author: Jonathan I. Israel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192599437
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1336

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Book Description
A biography of the boldest and most unsettling of the early modern philosophers, Spinoza, which examines the man's life, relationships, writings, and career, while also forcing us to rethink how we previously understood Spinoza's reception in his own time and in the years following his death. The boldest and most unsettling of the major early modern philosophers, Spinoza, had a much greater, if often concealed, impact on the international intellectual scene and on the early Enlightenment than philosophers, historians, and political theorists have conventionally tended to recognize. Europe-wide efforts to prevent the reading public and university students learning about Spinoza, the man and his work, in the years immediately after his death in 1677, dominated much of his early reception owing to the revolutionary implications of his thought for philosophy, religion, practical ethics and lifestyle, Bible criticism, and political theory. Nevertheless, contrary to what has sometimes been maintained, his general impact was immediate, very widespread, and profound. One of the main objectives of the book is to show how early and how deeply Leibniz, Bayle, Arnauld, Henry More, Anne Conway, Richard Baxter, Robert Boyle, Henry Oldenburg, Pierre-Daniel Huet, Richard Simon, and Nicholas Steno, among many others, were affected by and led to wrestle with his principal ideas. There have been surprisingly few biographies of Spinoza, given his fundamental importance in intellectual history and history of philosophy, Bible criticism, and political thought. Jonathan I. Israel has written a biography which provides more detail and context about Spinoza's life, family, writings, circle of friends, highly unusual career and networking, and early reception than its predecessors. Weaving the circumstances of his life and thought into a detailed biography has also led to several notable instances of nuancing or revising our notions of how to interpret certain of his assertions and philosophical claims, and how to understand the complex international reaction to his work during his life-time and in the years immediately following his death.

Spinoza, Life and Legacy

Spinoza, Life and Legacy PDF Author: Jonathan I. Israel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192599437
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1336

Get Book Here

Book Description
A biography of the boldest and most unsettling of the early modern philosophers, Spinoza, which examines the man's life, relationships, writings, and career, while also forcing us to rethink how we previously understood Spinoza's reception in his own time and in the years following his death. The boldest and most unsettling of the major early modern philosophers, Spinoza, had a much greater, if often concealed, impact on the international intellectual scene and on the early Enlightenment than philosophers, historians, and political theorists have conventionally tended to recognize. Europe-wide efforts to prevent the reading public and university students learning about Spinoza, the man and his work, in the years immediately after his death in 1677, dominated much of his early reception owing to the revolutionary implications of his thought for philosophy, religion, practical ethics and lifestyle, Bible criticism, and political theory. Nevertheless, contrary to what has sometimes been maintained, his general impact was immediate, very widespread, and profound. One of the main objectives of the book is to show how early and how deeply Leibniz, Bayle, Arnauld, Henry More, Anne Conway, Richard Baxter, Robert Boyle, Henry Oldenburg, Pierre-Daniel Huet, Richard Simon, and Nicholas Steno, among many others, were affected by and led to wrestle with his principal ideas. There have been surprisingly few biographies of Spinoza, given his fundamental importance in intellectual history and history of philosophy, Bible criticism, and political thought. Jonathan I. Israel has written a biography which provides more detail and context about Spinoza's life, family, writings, circle of friends, highly unusual career and networking, and early reception than its predecessors. Weaving the circumstances of his life and thought into a detailed biography has also led to several notable instances of nuancing or revising our notions of how to interpret certain of his assertions and philosophical claims, and how to understand the complex international reaction to his work during his life-time and in the years immediately following his death.

Spinoza

Spinoza PDF Author: Steven M. Nadler
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108425542
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 459

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Book Description
A fully updated new edition of the prize-winning and now standard biography of the great seventeenth-century philosopher Spinoza.

A Book Forged in Hell

A Book Forged in Hell PDF Author: Steven Nadler
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069113989X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
When it appeared in 1670, Baruch Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise was denounced as the most dangerous book ever published. Religious and secular authorities saw it as a threat to faith, social and political harmony, and everyday morality, and its author was almost universally regarded as a religious subversive and political radical who sought to spread atheism throughout Europe. Steven Nadler tells the story of this book: its radical claims and their background in the philosophical, religious, and political tensions of the Dutch Golden Age, as well as the vitriolic reaction these ideas inspired. A vivid story of incendiary ideas and vicious backlash, A Book Forged in Hell will interest anyone who is curious about the origin of some of our most cherished modern beliefs--Jacket p. [2].

Spinoza’s Challenge to Jewish Thought

Spinoza’s Challenge to Jewish Thought PDF Author: Daniel B. Schwartz
Publisher: Brandeis University Press
ISBN: 158465712X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Arguably, no historical thinker has had as varied and fractious a reception within modern Judaism as Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza (1632–77), the seventeenth-century philosopher, pioneering biblical critic, and Jewish heretic from Amsterdam. Revered in many circles as the patron saint of secular Jewishness, he has also been branded as the worst traitor to the Jewish people in modern times. Jewish philosophy has cast Spinoza as marking a turning point between the old and the new, as a radicalizer of the medieval tradition and table setter for the modern. He has served as a perennial landmark and point of reference in the construction of modern Jewish identity. This volume brings together excerpts from central works in the Jewish response to Spinoza. True to the diversity of Spinoza’s Jewish reception, it features a mix of genres, from philosophical criticism to historical fiction, from tributes to diary entries, providing the reader with a sense of the overall historical development of Spinoza’s posthumous legacy.

Spinoza on Learning to Live Together

Spinoza on Learning to Live Together PDF Author: Susan James
Publisher:
ISBN: 019871307X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
Philosophising, as Spinoza conceives it, is the project of learning to live joyfully. This in turn is a matter of learning to live together, and the most obvious test of philosophical insight is our capacity to sustain a harmonious way of life. Susan James defends this interpretation and explores Spinoza's influence on contemporary debates.

A Revolution of the Mind

A Revolution of the Mind PDF Author: Jonathan Israel
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691152608
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Declaration of Human Rights.

Spinoza

Spinoza PDF Author: Gilles Deleuze
Publisher: City Lights Books
ISBN: 9780872862180
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
Spinoza's theoretical philosophy is one of the most radical attempts to construct a pure ontology with a single infinite substance. This book, which presents Spinoza's main ideas in dictionary form, has as its subject the opposition between ethics and morality, and the link between ethical and ontological propositions. His ethics is an ethology, rather than a moral science. Attention has been drawn to Spinoza by deep ecologists such as Arne Naess, the Norwegian philosopher; and this reading of Spinoza by Deleuze lends itself to a radical ecological ethic. As Robert Hurley says in his introduction, "Deleuze opens us to the idea that the elements of the different individuals we compose may be nonhuman within us. One wonders, finally, whether Man might be defined as a territory, a set of boundaries, a limit on existence." Gilles Deleuze, known for his inquiries into desire, language, politics, and power, finds a kinship between Spinoza and Nietzsche. He writes, ""Spinoza did not believe in hope or even in courage; he believed only in joy and in vision . . . he more than any other gave me the feeling of a gust of air from behind each time I read him, of a witch's broom that he makes one mount. Gilles Deleuze was a professor of philosophy at the University of Paris at Vincennes. Robert Hurley is the translator of Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality.

Spinoza: Complete Works

Spinoza: Complete Works PDF Author: Baruch Spinoza
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 1603846921
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 992

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Book Description
The only complete edition in English of Baruch Spinoza's works, this volume features Samuel Shirley’s preeminent translations, distinguished at once by the lucidity and fluency with which they convey the flavor and meaning of Spinoza’s original texts. Michael L. Morgan provides a general introduction that places Spinoza in Western philosophy and culture and sketches the philosophical, scientific, religious, moral and political dimensions of Spinoza’s thought. Morgan’s brief introductions to each work give a succinct historical, biographical, and philosophical overview. A chronology and index are included.

The God of Spinoza

The God of Spinoza PDF Author: Richard Mason
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521665858
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
This book is the fullest study in English for many years on the role of God in Spinoza's philosophy. Spinoza has been called both a 'God-intoxicated man' and an atheist, both a pioneer of secular Judaism and a bitter critic of religion. He was born a Jew but chose to live outside any religious community. He was deeply engaged both in traditional Hebrew learning and in contemporary physical science. He identified God with nature or substance: a theme which runs through his work, enabling him to naturalise religion but - equally important - to divinise nature. He emerges not as a rationalist precursor of the Enlightenment but as a thinker of the highest importance in his own right, both in philosophy and in religion.

Spinoza

Spinoza PDF Author: Michael Della Rocca
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134456360
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
Renowned for his metaphysics, Spinoza made significant contributions to understanding the human mind, the emotions, moral philosophy, and political philosophy. Beginning with an overview of Spinoza's life, Michael Della Rocca carefully unpacks and explains Spinoza's philosophy: his metaphysics of substance and argument at the center of his whole system that God is the sole independent substance; his account of the human mind and its relation to the body; his theory that human beings tend towards self-preservation and his most famous work, the Ethics, including the problem of free will; and his writings on the state, religion and scripture. Della Rocca concludes with a chapter on Spinoza's legacy and how modern philosophers, Hume, Hegel, and Nietzsche, responded to Spinoza's challenge. Ideal for those coming to Spinoza for the first time as well as those already acquainted with his thought, Spinoza is essential reading for anyone studying philosophy.