Yirmiyahu Yovel

"The Marranos were former Jews forced to convert to Christianity in Spain and Portugal, and their later descendents. Despite economic and some political advancement, these "Con-versos" suffered social stigma and were persecuted by the Inquisition. In this unconventional history, Yirmiyahu Yovel tells their story and reflects on what it means for modern forms of identity." "He describes the Marranos as "the Other within" - people who both did and did not belong. Rejected by most Jews as renegades and by most veteran Christians as Jews with impure blood, Marranos had no definite, integral identity, Yovel argues. The "Judaizers" - Marranos who wished to remain secretly Jewish - were not actually Jews, and those Marranos who wished to assimilate were not truly integrated as Hispano-Catholics. Rather, mixing Jewish and Christian symbols and life patterns, Marranos were typically distinguished by a split identity. They also discovered the subjective mind, engaged in social and religious dissent, and demonstrated early signs of secularity and this-worldliness. In these ways, Yovel says, the Marranos anticipated and possibly helped create many central features of modern Western and Jewish experience. One of Yovel's philosophical conclusions is that split identity - which the Inquisition persecuted and modern nationalism considers illicit - is a genuine and inevitable shape of human existence, one that deserves recognition as a basic human freedom." "Drawing on historical studies, Inquisition records, and contemporary poems, novels, treatises, and other writings, this engaging critical history of the Marrano experience is also a profound meditation on dual identities and the birth of modernity."--BOOK JACKET.

"The present book is meant to express the diversity of interpretation of Spinoza's theory and to examine critically the relevance of Spinoza's ideas to contemporary issues and debates (in philosophy, psychology, and even economics). Donald Davidson's essay, which offers a "Davidsonian" version of Spinoza's view of the affects and the mind-body relation, provides one such contemporary interpretation. The book also contains other attempts to reinterpret Spinoza in light of later problems and insights."--BOOK JACKET.

"The fourth volume in the Spinoza by 2000 series presents the reader with issues central to Part IV of Spinoza's Ethics. Readers of this text face one of the most difficult questions in Spinoza scholarship: Is Spinoza presenting a rational ethics, capable of making human beings free, or is he merely drawing an ethical ideal, never to be reached within the confines of reason alone? Indeed, 'freedom' is meant here mainly in the context of human bondage to the affects, but it is also addressed in connection with human sociability. Whether rational self-understanding is, in itself, sufficient for human emancipation is an open question. the participants of this volume help to clarify the various aspects of the problem, providing an indispensable guide both for Spinoza scholars and the general reader. This collection also links the previous volume in this series, on Spinoza's psychological theory, to the forthcoming volume, which concentrates on the culminating last part of the Ethics."--BOOK JACKET.