Spinoza The
Ethics of an Outlaw
By: Ivan Segré
Translator: David Broder –
Published:
02-09-2017
Format: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Extent: 200
ISBN:
9781350016613
Imprint:
Bloomsbury Academic Dimensions:
29 Pond
About Spinoza
Spinoza is among
the most controversial and asymmetrical thinkers in the tradition and history
of modern European philosophy. Since the 17th century, his work has aroused
some of the fiercest and most intense polemics in the discipline. From his
expulsion from the synagogue and onwards, Spinoza has never ceased to embody
the secular, heretical and self-loathing Jew. Ivan Segré, a philosopher and
celebrated scholar of the Talmud, discloses the conservative underpinnings that
have animated Spinoza's numerable critics and antagonists. Through a close
reading of Leo Strauss and several contemporary Jewish thinkers, such as
Jean-Claude Milner and Benny Levy (Sartre's last secretary), Spinoza: the
Ethics of an Outlaw aptly delineates the common cause of Spinoza's contemporary
censors: an explicit hatred of reason and its emancipatory potential. Spinoza's
radical heresy lies in his rejection of any and all blind adherence to Biblical
Law, and in his plea for the freedom and autonomy of thought. Segré reclaims
Spinoza as a faithful interpreter of the revolutionary potential contained
within the Old Testament. –
Table of contents
Prologue
Part I: Election,
Hatred, and The Philosopher: Spinoza and "Bourgeois" Theorists
Introduction
1. Discourse on
Method
2. The Song of
the Sign
3. Kingship 4. On
Contradiction
Part II The Bible
Spinoza Introduction
1. The Manifesto
At Judaei
2. A Dispassionate
"Christ"
3. The Origin of the Act
4. True Otherness
5. The Masquerade
6. The Tree of
Knowledge
Epilogue
Apologue
The Manifesto of
the Spectrum
Notes
Index-
Reviews
-
“Ivan Segré's Spinoza: The Ethics of an Outlaw is a major
and long overdue contribution to our understanding of Spinoza's complex and
overdetermined relation not merely to Judaism, but to the great texts of the
Jewish tradition as Spinoza understood it. Segré possesses the ability to
follow Spinoza through the labyrinth of Maimonides' Guide and contextualize the
citations and criticisms whose orientation has escaped most readers. Of
particular interest is his demonstration that Christianity from Spinoza's
perspective is as concerned with the disposition of the flesh as the Judaism it
claimed to supersede: if circumcision is nothing, then so is the crucifixion.
Segré's Spinoza neither celebrates (a) religion nor does he demand its
suppression in favor of of a secularism that rests on a disavowed sacralization
of state sovereignty. His god is the collective power by which the Jews were
delivered from the House of Servitude. This is a powerful and original reading
that opens new areas of research and offers conclusive proof of Spinoza's
contemporaneity.” – Warren Montag,
Brown Family Professor in Literature,
