Spinoza's Modernity: Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine (Studies in German Jewish Cultural History and Literature) - Hardcover

"An extraordinary work with immense erudition and scholarship behind it. This has the potential to be a discipline-altering book." - Warren Montag, author of Bodies, Masses, Power: Spinoza and His Contemporaries

Spinoza's Modernity is a major, original work of intellectual history that reassesses the philosophical project of Baruch Spinoza, uncovers his influence on later thinkers, and demonstrates how that crucial influence on Moses Mendelssohn, G. E. Lessing, and Heinrich Heine shaped the development of modern critical thought. Excommunicated by his Jewish community, Spinoza was a controversial figure for centuries. Willi Goetschel shows how Spinoza's philosophy was a direct challenge to the theological and metaphysical assumptions of modern European thought. He locates the driving force of this challenge in Spinoza's Jewishness, which is deeply inscribed in his philosophy.