Spinoza's Heresy

Immortality and the Jewish Mind
Erscheinungsjahr 2004
ISBN: 978-0-19-926887-0
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 242 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 350 g

At the heart of Spinoza's Heresy is a mystery: why was Baruch Spinoza so harshly excommunicated from the Amsterdam Jewish community at the age of twenty-four?

In this philosophical sequel to his acclaimed, award-winning biography of the seventeenth-century thinker, Steven Nadler argues that Spinoza's main offence was a denial of the immortality of the soul. But this only deepens the mystery. For there is no specific Jewish dogma regarding immortality: there is nothing that a Jew is required to believe about the soul and the afterlife. It was, however, for various religious, historical and political reasons, simply the wrong issue to pick on in Amsterdam in the 1650s.

After considering the nature of the ban, or cherem, as a disciplinary tool in the Sephardic community, and a number of possible explanations for Spinoza's ban, Nadler turns to the variety of traditions in Jewish religious thought on the postmortem fate of a person's soul. This is followed by an examination of Spinoza's own views on the eternity of the mind and the role that that the denial of personal immortality plays in his overall philosophical project. Nadler argues that Spinoza's beliefs were not only an outgrowth of his own metaphysical principles, but also a culmination of an intellectualist trend in Jewish rationalism.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nadler, Steven

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Nicht-Westliche Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsphilosophie, Philosophische Theologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Religionsphilosophie, Philosophische Theologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- 1: Cherem in Amsterdam

- 2: Abominations and Heresies

- 3: Patriarchs, Prophets, and Rabbis

- 4: The Philosophers

- 5: Eternity and Immortality

- 6: The Life of Reason

- 7: Immortality on the Amstel

- Conclusion

- Notes; Bibliography; Index

Über Autor(innen)

(University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA)