Skip to main content.

Sunday, May 28, 2006

Rebecca Goldstein, philosopher and novelist, has written a new book called Betraying Spinoza in which she argues that Spinoza rejects the idea of Jewish heritage as definitive of one's identity. In a written interview with Stephen Vider she says
For Spinoza, being a Jew is a problem to be solved. The continued identification of this people and their stubborn insistence on their difference has only brought woe on them, and the best way to solve this unbearable suffering that the Jews have been subjected to is to cure them of their beliefs in a difference. When he was a boy, there were stories of people who had gone back to Portugal and who were burned in the auto-da-f??an ongoing calamity, the worst calamity of the Jewish people until the Holocaust. These stories clearly made an impression. Spinoza's rationalism is a kind of answer to this tragedy, to the tragedy of all racist hatred?and the Inquisition wasn't just religious hatred but racial. It's saying that, to the extent that we're rational, none of the differences between us matter. To the extent that we're rational we actually share the same identity.

Part of our salvation?our secular salvation, as he sees it?is to deconstruct one's own identity. I believe that somehow he had indicated this even at an early stage of his philosophy, that being Jewish is not the essence of one's identity for those who are Jews; it's not ethically essential. That's a viewpoint I don't think that Judaism could tolerate?not in his time, not in ours.

There is also a podcast interview with Sara Ivry.
Nextbook: Free Radical

Comments

No comments yet

Add Comment

This item is closed, it's not possible to add new comments to it or to vote on it

TrackBack