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 ...
Read More
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 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.
Read Less
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Very good. neat underlining p. 1-81, p. 150-163, 202-208, rest unread. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 264 p. Contains: Illustrations, black & white. Audience: General/trade.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Very good. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! Greener Books.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Fine. The pages of the text are clean, crisp, and unmarked. No creasing along the spine, and no bent page corners. The book is in excellent condition inside and out. All items guaranteed, and a portion of each sale supports social programs in Los Angeles. Ships from CA.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
PLEASE NOTE, WE DO NOT SHIP TO DENMARK. New Book. Shipped from UK in 4 to 14 days. Established seller since 2000. Please note we cannot offer an expedited shipping service from the UK.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
PLEASE NOTE, WE DO NOT SHIP TO DENMARK. New Book. Shipped from UK in 4 to 14 days. Established seller since 2000. Please note we cannot offer an expedited shipping service from the UK.
This book "The Marrano of Reason" is the first of two a two-volume study "Spinoza and Other Heretics" (1989) by the Israeli philosopher Yirmiyahu Yovel (1935 -- 2018). Yovel argues that Spinoza was a major figure in Western thought who developed what Yovel describes as a "radically new philosophical principle that I call the philosophy of immanence." In the first of many depictions of the philosophy of immanence, Yovel says that it "views this-worldly existence as all there is, as the only actual being and the sole source of ethical value. God himself is identical with the totality of nature, and God's decrees are written not in the Bible but in the laws of nature and reason." The first volume of the set, "The Marrano of Reason", describes the origins of Spinoza's philosophy of immanence in the Marrano culture from which he sprang. It is the volume under review here. The second volume "The Adventures of Immanence" traces the development of the philosophy of immanence through key figures of modern philosophy, including Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, and Einstein. Yovel's goal is to show how much of modern philosophy may be understood from the standpoint of Spinoza and the philosophy of immanence.
Yovel understands Spinoza as the "Marrano of Reason". The Marranos were Jewish people in Spain and Portugal who had forcibly been converted to Catholicism beginning in about 1391. Many of the converts remained Christian while others practiced Judaism, or a form of it, in secret to keep their identity alive. Marranos eventually traveled in Europe and some arrived in the liberal city of Amsterdam, Spinoza's home, where they worked hard to recover their heritage. Spinoza was a member of a temple in Amsterdam, from his birth, until he was excommunicated for his heretical views on July 27, 1656, age 23.
Yovel offers a historical and philosophical analysis of the Marranos, in Spain and Portugal and then in the Netherlands. He combines this with a broad-based study of Spinoza's life and thought. He develops in successive chapters a series of traits that Spinoza shared with and likely took from the Marranos while translating them into a "new, secular, and rationalistic context". These traits include,in Yovel's words, "a this-worldly disposition; a split religious identity; a metaphysical skepticism; a quest for alternative salvation through methods that oppose the official doctrine; an opposition between the inner and the outer life, and a tendency toward dual language and equivocation." Yovel calls Spinoza the "Marrano of Reason" because Spinoza transferred both in his thought and in his life the patterns of Marranism "from transcendent historical religion to the domain of reason and immanence."
The book moves back and forth between Spinoza and the Marranos. The first chapter begins with Spinoza's Excommunication and with Yovel's view of its background and causes. In the second chapter, Yovel develops briefly Spinoza's immanent philosophy and shows why Spinoza is entitled to be called the "Marrano of Reason".
In chapter 3, Yovel follows the course of other New Jews in Amsterdam, showing the "Split mind" of some of Spinoza's friends and contemporaries. The fourth chapter consists of a lengthy analysis of the famous work of an earlier converso, "La Celestina" (1499) by Fernando de Rojas. Yovel compares and contrasts Rojas with Spinoza finding that where Rojas's work lead to skepticism, Spinoza's immanence was "much more coherent and organized" in that Spinoza's world had "intrinsic meaning and unity, not a hybrid of two lost religions but a new, positive entity, a deified nature that inherits the absolute positivity, divinity, and sublimity of the old transcendent God."
Yovel's fifth chapter examines Spinoza's careful, equivocal use of language in the "Theological-Political Treatise", his circumspection, and his doubts that the majority of people would ever be able to think fully clearly and rationally. The sixth chapter "Knowledge as Alternative Salvation" has the most extended philosophical analysis in the book. examines the difficult Part V of Spinoza's "Ethics". In it, Spinoza developed his third, and highest form of knowledge based on intuition of the whole, which Yovel sees as leading to a form of "secular salvation." The Epilogue to the study. "Spinoza and his People" studies Spinoza's relationship to Judaism, with the diversification and rise of secular Judaism subsequent to Spinoza's time. Yovel questions the frequently-made claim that Spinoza was the "first secular Jew".
I read this book many years ago when seriously engaged in the study of Spinoza and was moved recently to re-read it. The book is inspiring and provocative in the treatment of my favorite philosopher and thoughtful in its discussion of a "philosophy of immanence." The book is learned in its discussion of the Marranos but does not always tie this discussion in with Spinoza in detail. The discussion of the details of Spinoza's difficult philosophy also is necessarily brief. The key insight of this book, that Spinoza is a "philosopher of immanence", however, seems to me largely correct and worth developing.
Serious students of Spinoza, philosophy, and Jewish history will benefit from this book and from its companion volume.
