Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity (Jewish Encounters) [Paperback]

Rebecca Goldstein (Author)

Book Description

Release date: August 11, 2009 | Series: Jewish Encounters

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.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This biography of 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) may seem out of place in the Jewish Encounters series, devoted to Jewish thinkers and themes, because Spinoza denied the importance of Jewish identity, and Amsterdam's Jewish community expelled him for heresy. But Goldstein, author of The Mind-Body Problem and Incompleteness and a professor of philosophy, reconstructs Spinoza's life and traces his metaphysics to his efforts to solve the dilemmas of Jewish identity. The philosopher grew up in a community of Jews who had fled the Spanish-Portuguese Inquisition. As Goldstein argues, Spinoza's "determination to think through his community's tragedy in the most universal terms possible compelled him to devise a unique life for himself, insisting on secularism when the concept of it had not yet been conceived." For Spinoza, "salvation" lay in achieving the radical objectivity of pure reason, which dissolves the contingent facts of one's personal history and religious and ethnic identity. Spinoza's effort to live as neither Jew nor Christian nor Muslim was unthinkable in the 17th century, but his arguments for political and religious tolerance were forerunners for the U.S. Constitution. In this admirable biography, Goldstein shows that Spinoza is paradoxically Jewish, "[f]or what can be more characteristic of a Jewish thinker than to use the Jewish experience as a conduit to universality?" (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“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

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Product Details

• Paperback: 287 pages
• Publisher: Schocken (August 11, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805211594
• ISBN-13: 978-0805211597
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #148,998 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #41 in Books > History > Europe > Netherlands
  • #88 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Philosophers

More About the Author

Rebecca Goldstein is a MacArthur Fellow, a professor of philosophy, and the author of five novels and a collection of short stories. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

119 of 128 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent in many dimensions June 13, 2006

By Daniel Shaw

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

"Betraying Spinoza" -- the first book I've dogeared and filled with margin notes in years -- is fascinating and fulfilling in many areas:

Philosophy -- I spun over Spinoza in a survey course decades ago, and am now surprised to discover that his oh-so systematic approach makes great sense once I see through his Euclidean screen. Goldstein barely hints that Spinoza's system resonates perfectly with today's brain science, though suffering the same shortfall when it comes to an explanation for consciousness. In any case, wholly unique and miles ahead of Descartes because free of the limits Christianity imposed at this dawn of the Age of Reason.

History -- Before reading this I was ignorant of the "Golden Age" of Jewish culture in Iberia under the Moslem occupation, of the lasting impact of the Spanish/Portugese Inquisition on those who faced the "convert or die" ultimatum and chose to convert.

I also knew very little about the history of Jewish thought during this time, the connection of the Inquisition to the rise of Cabbalism, etc. (Those more familiar with Judaica will have an easier time with some terminology.)

Theology -- Putting full trust in reason and God rather than the Bible, Spinoza is as relevant today as when he stood alone in a world that was trying to fine harmony between Christianity and science, and contorting both in the process. As Goldstein doesn't need to dwell on a statement of faith from Albert Einstein to demonstrate Spinoza's relevance today.

A "Great Read" -- This book also demonstrates that Goldstein is both a daring scholar and a damn fine writer. She lets you know before veering into speculation, not too often and each time a worthwhile expedition.

Highly recommended!

54 of 56 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars What price dissent? August 28, 2006

By Stephen A. Haines HALL OF FAMEVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

The era known as The Enlightenment is characterised by many breaks with tradition. Protestant Christianity had consolidated its gains against the monolithic Roman Church, raising national consciousness in the process. The printing press expanded the reach of knowledge and imperialism added new discoveries of nature. Although the religious wars that had racked Europe had subsided, an expanded view of the world had raised new challenges. If the world was so vast and varied, where was humanity's true place in it? One man brought many of the questions together and formulated a new version of faith. Baruch Spinoza, an Amsterdam Jew, instilled a religion based on reason. In this captivating account of the roots of Spinoza's thinking, Goldstein has done more than simply delineate his life. She firmly establishes that excommunicated as he was, Spinoza remained fundamentally Jewish. More so, perhaps, than any of his contemporaries or predecessors.

Goldstein's own introduction to Spinoza opens the narrative and is brought back many times to make various points. Her yeshiva teacher, in the best Orthodox tradition, berated the memory of Spinoza as a radical and atheist. Burning with questions she dared not utter, Goldstein went through university and to a teaching position of her own. Assigned a course on 17th Century thinkers, she was forced to delve into Spinoza's life and writings. Between her own reading and student questions, Goldstein was driven to better understand her subject. She found a man leading an isolated life, banished by his community, who still carried the heritage of his ancestors as part of his mental baggage. The dichotomy led Spinoza to consider that Europe's religions were under the thrall of a variety of man-made ideologies, dogmas and practices. The god, he declared, was all-pervasive and one with Nature. All intermediaries between humanity and the deity must be cast aside. No human can know or assess another. Hence, Goldstein concedes she's "betraying Spinoza" by trying to determine the roots of his thinking.

In explaining the origins of Spinoza's concepts, Goldstein takes us on a complex journey. She recounts the history of the Jews on the Iberian peninsula and their ouster at the restoration of the Catholic Monarchs. Jews had long been under pressure to convert in the Christian realm, perhaps nowhere more so than in Spain and Portugal. These "New Christians" developed tricks to retain their Jewishness while living in Catholic communities. Those who were driven out found a haven of sorts in The Netherlands. Amsterdam was a city of uneasy tolerance toward the Jewish community. Only because the Calvinists feared and despised the Roman Catholics more than the Jews were the latter allowed to practice their religion. Disturbances, such as contention over religious issues might shatter that fragile arrangement. Spinoza, although neither the first nor the only, threatened the stability of Jews in Amsterdam. To excise this threat, Spinoza, still only a young man, was excommunicated - permanently.

Goldstein notes that in the years prior to his exile, Spinoza had been a star pupil in the Amsterdam synagogue. Well versed in Jewish law and history, he was clearly not a dissident for simple reasons. His family's success had placed him in a strong position in the community. He might have simply remained with his brother engaged in commercial activities. Instead, he raised questions the rabbis didn't want to hear. Many of the traditional teachings, such as those of Maimonides - considered the greatest of Mediaeval Jewish thinkers - were rejected by Spinoza. The Thirteen Articles of Faith proposed by Maimonides were considered empty in Spinoza's view. Knowledge, not blind faith, was the young exile's answer. He contended that "my purpose is to explain, not the meaning of words, but the nature of things." Only in this way, he argued, can the deity be known and understood.

Spinoza's stance has led to his being considered the founder of modern philosophy. Certainly his views are a great departure from his contemporary, Descartes, who is credited with the same title by others. Spinoza, however, didn't arabesque around the existence or behaviour of the deity. He firmly insisted that observation and the application of proofs will render the deity accessible to those who persevere. That it all ends with death wasn't something Spinoza mourned, as Descartes did. A fulfilled life surmounts that grim termination.

Although this book is hardly a "life", its comprehensive approach, even if it seems overfocussed to the new reader, makes it a valuable contribution. There are a few good biographies of Spinoza available, but this work provides a fresh insight in the exile's thought. It is a fitting companion to any biography. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

55 of 58 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars a good read but ultimately not that satisfying February 21, 2007

By pandajama

Format:Hardcover

I think the author had a hard time deciding what she wanted this book to be. It makes a good start at a new historicist effort to understand Spinoza, but is too weak on his text to do that, so it ends up being just a history lesson (albeit an interesting one). It veers into memoir for a time, also interesting, but again too sparse to have much of a point. Then there is the explication of Spinoza's Ethics, but it's way too skeletal to be worth all the pages you have to read to get there. In the end the reader will have a good grasp of a sliver of European history, a decent idea of Spinoza's biography, and a wee bit of an understanding of his philosophy. If that's what you want, this book might be for you. But really it's a weak piece of popular philosophy that isn't going to be satisfying for a person who wants to grapple with Spinoza's thought.