A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age [Steven Nadler] on leondumoulin.nl *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers.
Table of contents
- Download options
- A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age
- JSTOR: Access Check
A journey through the universe in search of conscio This book is a journey through the cosmos in search of consciousness. Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features: Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. Read reviews that mention forged in hell theological-political treatise laws of nature book forged nadler emphasizes that the book steven nadler church and state god is nature separation of church political thought united states early modern nature of god highly recommend free speech relevant today baruch spinoza true religion cambridge introductions labeled him as an atheist.
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Robin Friedman Top Contributor: About 25 years ago, I was engaged in serious graduate study in philosophy and preparing to write a dissertation on Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise I have had a lifelong interest in Spinoza and was interested in the Treatise because of the questions of how to interpret texts it raises in terms of its treatment of the Bible. Also, at the time, the Treatise was receiving far less attention than Spinoza's most famous work, the Ethics.
Download options
I never completed the dissertation but retained my interest in Spinoza and the Treatise. The Treatise has received substantial attention since the time I was closely engaged with it. Historian Jonathan Israel has writtent a trilogy of lengthy, difficult books showing the great influence of Spinoza and the Treatise on Enlightenment thought and on the French and American Revolutions. Philosophy and the Making of Modernity , Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights, Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age" is much more accessible than Israel's study and has a different focus.
Nadler's aim is to offer a study of the Treatise to a general readership rather than simply to an academic audience in order to explain the book, its teachings, and its significance. Nadler is the William H.
He is the author of many books on Spinoza including a biography, Spinoza: Nadler quite properly emphasizes the radical revolutionary charater of Spinoza's Treatise. The title of Nadler's book derives from one of the many criticisms levelled at the Treatise shorly after its publication. One Willem van Blijenburgh, who had been a correspondent of Spinoza's, wrote a lengthy book refuting the Treatise in which he said: More importantly, Nadler explains what it was in Spinoza's Treatise that so disturbed its contemporary readers.
The Treatise concerns the relationship between religion and government and between religion and philosophy, broadly contstrued to include all forms of intellectual inquiry. Spinoza was concerned with religious wars, limitations on thought, and clerics influence on civil government. In a way that manages to be both cautious and bold, the Treatise takes a naturalistic view of God and prophecy, denies the existence of miracles, and takes a historical approach to the composition and interpretation of Scripture.
Spinoza finds the Bible the work of human beings writing at particular times.
Religion's goals are ethical in that it teaches people to be kind to one another, but it does not have further cognitive or doctrinal teachings. In a free society, for Spinoza, people should be free to believe as they wish. As Nadler quotes the basic teaching of the Treatise: He also gives some important historical information about the Netherlands in Spinoza's day. Although there was in fact a larger degree of religious toleration in the Netherlands than in any other European community at the time, it was precarious and threatened by conflicts between monarchists and ecclesiastics on one hand and dissenting sects on the other hand.
Spinoza wrote against a backdrop which thus contained both elements of liberty and the threat of repression. His aim was to increase the former. While there are universal lessons to be drawn from the Treatise, Nadler emphasizes that the book is also the product of a particular time and place. For example, he writes: Moreover, while the Treatise remains of great relevance today, it is also a response to very particular and very complex historical exigencies, and we do not do it justice by trying to make it fit some transhistorical category of theories.
Nadler ties the teachings of the Treatise to the teachings of Spinoza's much more obscure Ethics.
A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age
Nadler also draws important parallels between Spinoza and other thinkers. Thomas Hobbes receives attention throughout, both in the way Spinoza followed and the way he differed from him. Nadler also pays attention to the great medieval Jewish thinker Maimonides and offers his views on what Spinoza learned from Maimonides and where he disagreed. Nadler compares Spinoza's treatment of miracles in the Treatise with the famous work on the subject by a subsequent philosopher, David Hume, as well as with medieval Jewish and Christian understandings of miracles.
Spinoza's views on tolerance and free speech are compared and contrasted with the views of John Locke, John Milton, and of the First Amendment to the United States constitution. The book considers Spinoza's alleged role as the first "secular Jew" which Nadler rejects and Spinoza's role as the founder of a philosophy of secularism and of secular government which Nadler accepts.
Although long relegated to obscurity, the Treatise has been a book of pervasive and lasting influence. As Nadler concludes p. More than any other work, it laid the foundation for modern critical and historical approaches to the Bible. And while often overlooked in books on the history of political thought, the Treatise also has a proud and well-deserved place in the rise of democratic theory, civil liberties, and political liberalism.
The ideas of the Treatise inspired republican revolutionaries in England, America, and France, and it encouraged early modern anticlerical and antisectarian movements. Readers with a broad interest in philosophy and in ideas will benefit from Nadler's book and perhaps receive encouragement to read Spinoza's own book for themselves.
Nowadays, when politicians lead with their religion, and clerics and the otherwise "religious" meddle in secular life, Spinoza's "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" is as timely now as it was years ago. The patient and persistent reader, however, is similarly rewarded. There are three outstanding features I would like to mention.
From these fundamental categories of reality, Spinoza develops his ideas of God, psychology, cause and effect, the virtuous life which leads to blessedness or salvation. Second, Nadler repeats many of the basic ideas contained in the TTP throughout his book in a way that I found quite useful. Finally, Nadler provides us some valuable and entertaining, expert, and insightful breathing room with a behind the scenes account of the political, social, historical, theological, philosophical and cultural forces swirling around Spinoza and throughout early modern Europe, in particular Amsterdam and the Dutch States.
I'm in my early 60s and I don't want to be hyperbolic, but this is one of the half-dozen most worthwhile books I've read in my life. Spinoza's thought is as heavy and complex as it is true and finding a text that gets it across reasonably priced easily is no mean task. Leo Strauss's Spinoza's Critique of Religion is very good, but I was more than 3 weeks in getting through it in my leisure reading time.
Nadler's is far more approachable, but no less thoughtful. Anyone desiring a background understanding of the enlightened ideas in our First Amendment, particularly freedom from religious establishment should-- indeed must read this wonderful book. In the face of lethal religious fundamentalists -- Mohammedan, Christian or otherwise, rational and intelligent citizens should realize that Spinoza is our redeemer and Nadler is a pretty good prophet.
Spinoza pondered the role of religion in society as well as freedom of thought and speech nearly four centuries ago. And, his critical thought is relevant today as our world struggles with religious bias and strife, as well as civil liberties. Spinoza was among the first to challenge the fundamentalist rigidity of organized religion. However, he did to conclude that there was no God or no purpose to life. Rather he held that our world was an expression of an infinite essence, somewhat similar to the ideas of Taoism.
He felt that the laws of nature are an attribute of God. By understanding how nature works, we can learn the principles that will help us each flourish in life.
See all 79 reviews. Most recent customer reviews. Published 10 hours ago. Published 1 month ago. Published 6 months ago. Published 1 year ago. Published on June 12, Published on May 15, And architects architecture frieze.
- Categories and Sheaves: An Introduction to Ind-Objects and Derived Categories: 332 (Grundlehren der !
- The Plagued Cottage (Nightmares Book 1);
- Miracle at St. Anna.
- .
- The Complete Investor.
- See a Problem??
Published on May 5, Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway. Set up a giveaway. Customers who bought this item also bought.
JSTOR: Access Check
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server Configure custom proxy use this if your affiliation does not provide a proxy. A Book Forged in Hell. Princeton University Press, A Book Forged in Hell: Rosenthal - - Journal of the History of Philosophy 51 1: Immortality and the Jewish Mind. Steven Nadler - - Oxford University Press. Whatever is, is God": Substance and Things in Spinoza's Metaphysics.
Steven Nadler - - In Charles Huenemann ed. The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, And: Nadler - - Journal of the History of Philosophy 35 1: Steven Nadler - - Topoi 34 2: Steven Nadler - - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Steven Nadler - - Journal of the History of Ideas 70 3: