Baruch Spinoza, Benedictus Spinoza

02 Mar 2004 18:26

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Dutch/Sephardic philosopher and lens-maker.

Recommended:
• Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650--1750 [Largely a treatise on Spinoza's influence]
• BS
  • Ethics [The most helpful translation I've seen in the one translated by Samuel Shirley and edited by Seymour Feldman. The classic Elwes translation is pretty good, though, and online]
  • Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect [The Elwes translation is online]
  • Letters
• Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Process of His Reasoning [A demonstration of Spinoza's massive debt to the scholastic philosophical tradition]

To read:
• Lewis Samuel Feuer, Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism
• Richard Mason, The God of Spinoza: A Philosophical Study
• Steven Nadler, Spinoza's Heresy: Immortality and the Jewish Mind
• Daniel B. Schwartz, The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image [Blurb]
• B.S.
  • Tractatus Politicus
  • Tractactus Theologico-Politicus