Spinoza and Medieval Jewish Philosophy

Description

Over the last two decades there has been an increasing interest in the influence of medieval Jewish thought upon Spinoza's philosophy. The essays in this volume, by Spinoza specialists and leading scholars in the field of medieval Jewish philosophy, consider the various dimensions of the rich, important, but vastly under-studied relationship between Spinoza and earlier Jewish thinkers. It is the first such collection in any language, and together the essays provide a detailed and extensive analysis of how different elements in Spinoza's metaphysics, epistemology, moral philosophy, and political and religious thought relate to the views of his Jewish philosophical forebears, such as Maimonides, Gersonides, Ibn Ezra, Crescas, and others. The topics addressed include the immortality of the soul, the nature of God, the intellectual love of God, moral luck, the nature of happiness, determinism and free will, the interpretation of Scripture, and the politics of religion.

Steven Nadler is the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he is also a faculty member of the Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies. His previous publications include Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge, 2001), Rembrandt's Jews (2003), Spinoza's 'Ethics': An Introduction (Cambridge, 2006), Volume 1 of The Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy (co-edited with T. M. Rudavsky, Cambridge, 2009) and A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age (2011).

'This is a book which will obviously interest students of Spinoza, but it also represents a valuable scholarly contribution to the study of Jewish philosophy's greatest figure, Moses Maimonides.' Menachem Kellner, Hebrew University of Jerusalem 'This is a solid collection of essays. It is as important for what it forces one to understand about how to do philosophy in a historically interesting and revisionist way, as it is in presenting Spinoza both as a spoiler of what preceded him and as a foundational figure for what followed in his train.' Daniel Frank, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews