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?.

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.

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.

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

Despite his reputation as a heretic, Baruch Spinoza was one of the major heroes of the Jewish cultural Renaissance in Weimar Germany. This study traces Weimar Jewry's infatuation with Spinoza as it was manifested in scholarship, the popular press, and novels. It tells of how Jews, who found themselves oscillating between the social pressures to both assimilate and remain authentic, sought refuge in a thinker who epitomized both the rationality and liberalism of the Weimar Republic’s enlightened defenders as well as the mysticism of its neo-romanticist challengers. In recapturing this forgotten chapter in the history of Spinozism this book sheds an original light on Weimar Germany’s reknown Jewish culture.

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

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.