Spinoza's Modernity: Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine

Willi Goetschel

Jan 2004 · Univ of Wisconsin Press

About this ebook

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 in his lifetime and for centuries afterward. 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 and defines the radical nature of his modernity.

About the author

Willi Goetschel is professor of German and philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Constituting Critique: Kant’s Writing as Critical.