Spinoza In Germany

Spinoza in Germany presents fifteen newly commissioned essays examining the legacy and influence of Spinoza on German thought in the long nineteenth century. The volume illuminates both the nature of Spinoza's philosophical contribution, as well as novel aspects of the philosophical lineage from idealism to Marxism, psychoanalysis, and beyond.

Spinoza in Germany presents fifteen newly commissioned essays by a distinguished set of international experts examining the legacy and influence of Spinoza on German thought in the long nineteenth century. The focus on Spinoza's influence illuminates both the nature of his philosophical contribution, as well as novel aspects of the philosophical lineage from idealism to Marxism, psychoanalysis, and beyond. The chapters are at the cutting edge of research on modern German thought, not only concerning canonical figures like Herder, Kant, and Marx, but also thinkers whose importance has since been neglected such as Salomon Maimon and Lou Salom?.

There can be little doubt that without Spinoza, German Idealism would have been just as impossible as it would have been without Kant. Yet the precise nature of Spinoza's influence on the German Idealists has hardly been studied in detail. This volume of essays by leading scholars sheds light on how the appropriation of Spinoza by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel grew out of the reception of his philosophy by, among others, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Jacobi, Herder, Goethe, Schleiermacher, Maimon and, of course, Kant. The volume thus not only illuminates the history of Spinoza's thought, but also initiates a genuine philosophical dialogue between the ideas of Spinoza and those of the German Idealists. The issues at stake - the value of humanity; the possibility and importance of self-negation; the nature and value of reason and imagination; human freedom; teleology; intuitive knowledge; the nature of God - remain of the highest philosophical importance today.

Explores the powerful continuing influence of Spinoza's metaphysical thinking in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German philosophy.

An extensive examination of the profound impact of Spinoza's philosophy on the German Idealists.

This study chronicles Spinoza’s German-Jewish popularity during the years of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933), explaining it from the political moral and intellectual paradoxes with which Weimar Germany confronted its Jews.