FREE BETRAYING SPINOZA: THE RENEGADE JEW WHO GAVE US MODERNITY PDF

Rebecca Goldstein | 304 pages | 11 Aug 2009 | Schocken Books | 9780805211597 | English | New York, United States Books similar to Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity

InAmsterdam's Jewish community excommunicated Baruch Spinoza, and, at the age of twenty-three, he became the most famous heretic in Judaism. He was already germinating a secularist challenge to religion that would be as radical as it was original. He went on to produce one of the most ambitious systems in the history of Western philosophy, so ahead of its time that scientists today, from string theorists to neurobiologists, count themselves among Spinoza's progeny. In Betraying Spinoza, Rebecca Goldstein sets out to rediscover the flesh-and-blood man often hidden beneath the veneer of rigorous rationality, and to crack the mystery of the breach between the philosopher and his Jewish past. Goldstein argues that the trauma of the Inquisition' s persecution of its forced Jewish converts plays itself out in Spinoza's philosophy. The excommunicated Spinoza, no less than his excommunicators, was responding to Europe' s first experiment with racial anti-Semitism. Here is a Spinoza both hauntingly emblematic and deeply human, both heretic and hero-a surprisingly contemporary figure ripe for our own uncertain age. On the face of things, reading a book about Baruch Spinoza is not an easy task for a religious Jew. After all, Spinoza is one of the great rationalist philosophers who started his "career" by annoying his Jewish community in Amsterdam so much that eventually it was decided to penalise him with the Jewish version of an excommunication. Spinoza went on to change his name to Benedictus Baruch in Hebrew and Benedictus in Latin mean "blessed"to learn Latin forbidden to Jews in those days and to develop a view of the world that equated God with nature, a big "no no" in Jewish theology. In many respects, Spinoza is considered to be the first secular Jew, or in the words of this book's subtitle: the renegade Jew who gave us modernity. Rebecca Goldstein is a Jewish professor of philosophy who wrote an autobiography of Spinoza. She opens the book by telling us about a childhood experience of hers: being "taught" about Spinoza by a religious teacher in her school. It was the understandably highly critical position of this teacher with regards to Spinoza that sparked her interest in the man and his work. Goldstein went on to study Spinoza in depth and teach courses about his philosophy and that of Descartes at university. She shares with the reader the love she has for the philosopher and her emotions at seeing her students slowly opening up to gain appreciation of his notoriously difficult writings. Most of this book tries to reconstruct Spinoza's life based on facts: what we know about him from his works and from what others have written about him. Goldstein introduces the reader to some of Spinoza's philosophy throughout the book and some parts are indeed heavy-going especially the discussion about his magnum opus: The Ethics. But it is towards the end of the book that her narrative turns to be really interesting. She breaks from the strictly academic approach and tries to imagine what Spinoza would have felt towards the end of his life. She uses a historical event - the opening of the main synagogue in Amsterdam - to tell us an imaginary tale about Spinoza coming back to watch the ceremony from a distance. We read about his throughts as he ruminated about the fate of this community of Portugese Jews who fled the inquisition in their country to find a new life in this relatively tolerant Protestant country. To me, the story of this community, which Goldstein explains at length and in vivid colours, was an eye-opener. It made a lot of what Spinoza wrote about clearer and put his philosophy in the right context. Betraying Spinoza, One Jew's journey for us all, Rebecca Goldstein has taken an interesting angle in her discussion on the rationalist Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, Baruch Spinoza. She has couched his work as a result of a specific Jewish journey, that of Jews who immigrated to Amsterdam during the Spanish Inquisition. Goldstein calls that journey a world that "had acquired its distinctive characteristics by way of centuries-long exposure to what can go so tragically wrong in our efforts to justify our beliefs. Spinoza, as Goldstein realizes, railed against the very absurdity of his ancestor Jews' conceit that they were the "chosen people". But, Goldstein drags him right back to that world, one even his own had cast him Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity from in his early adulthood. I say this, not Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity criticism of Goldstein's book, but more in irony. For, to tell the life of Sipnoza is to delve into that very Jewish world Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity which he came. This Goldstein demonstrates quite well and she does so in a very approachable way. She gives us just enough of Spinoza's main concepts of rational thought that one "gets" it, but not so much that the book seems a mere rehash of the philosopher's work. It is a very interesting and quick reading tome that is recommended to "place" Spinoza in his times. Goldstein sums Spinoza's philosophical quest as that which might explain the "tragedy" that was his community's experience. He sought ti prove that our common human nature revels why we must treat one another with utmost dignity, and, too, that our common human nature is itself transformed in our knowing of it, so that we become only more like one another as we think our way toward radical objectivity. I am not sure how much Spinoza's work influenced John Locke's work, but his thought process is a precursor to the flight of freedom and liberty that was launched in as Enlightenment influenced thinkers launched the American Revolution, but his ideas were certainly in sympathy with that era of thought. Goldstein penned a fine book that will take the reader on an interesting and very personal journey to enlightenment. I loved this book. Not only I am fascinated by Spinoza, but Rebecca Goldstein does a fantastic job introducing him as a person, philosopher and Jew. She aptly describes his environment growing up, providing biographic elements in a manner that illustrates her various assertions about the reasons and implications of Spinoza's work. Her style is approachable and fluid and yet scholarly. It is clear that she knows much about the subject matter. This book was also the first one I purchased in the Jewish Encounters series, and I am happy I did it. The series is amazingly diversified, and the publishing is flawless. Highly recommended. Part biography, part philosophy, this book attempts to deal with the vastness of the Spinoza legacy from a personal angle - a sense of connection made during the author's years in an Orthodox Jewish high school. As a young philosophy professor, she was asked to teach a class on Spinoza, and set out to examine his body of work, a style of philosophy metaphysical divorced from her own analytical. She displays a passion for her subject and a true eagerness to discover the real Spinoza thereby betraying him, as the title of Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity book implies, because he believed in the total loss of the self. In spite of her passion, and my deep seated interest in Spinoza, I find the book to drag at times, though I can't put my finger on just why. I found myself thinking, come on, let's move on, but I couldn't identify any lack in style of writing or nature of text that created this sensation in me. It was usually at those times when Spinoza Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity absent from the story, as she filled in necessary background information, so perhaps that was why. It is important to understand the time and place where Spinoza lived in order to understand the man, but I do think perhaps there was a bit more information than needed, some of it rather peripheral, though it did pertain to Jewish history, which is at some level Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity to the Spinoza story. Overall, a decent introduction, but I would have like Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity have seen more of his philosophy and perhaps a bit less of his daily history. Here at Walmart. Your email address will never be sold or distributed to a third party for any reason. Sorry, but we can't respond to individual comments. If you need immediate assistance, please contact Customer Care. Your feedback helps us make Walmart shopping better for millions of customers. Recent searches Clear All. Enter Location. Update location. Learn more. Report incorrect product information. Rebecca Goldstein. Walmart Book Format. Select Option. Current selection is: Paperback. Free delivery Arrives by Tuesday, Oct Pickup not available. Add to list. Add to registry. Goldstein argues that the trauma of the Inquisition's persecution of its forced Jewish converts plays itself out in Spinoza's philosophy. The excommunicated Spinoza, no less than his excommunicators, was responding to Europe's first experiment with racial anti-Semitism. About This Item. We aim to show you accurate product information. Manufacturers, suppliers and others provide what you see here, and we have not verified it. See our disclaimer. Part of the Jewish Encounter series InAmsterdam's Jewish community excommunicated Baruch Spinoza, and, at the age of twenty-three, he became the most famous heretic in Judaism. Here is a Spinoza both hauntingly emblematic and deeply human, both heretic and hero--a surprisingly contemporary figure ripe for our own uncertain age. Here is a Spinoza both hauntingly emblematic and deeply human, both heretic and hero—a surprisingly contemporary Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity ripe for our own uncertain age. Write a review See all reviews Write a review. Average Rating: 5. March 4, See more. Reviewed by MarkBeronte MarkBeronte. Written by a librarything. Average Rating: 4. September 14, Reviewed by ashergabbay ashergabbay. April 7, March 21, Reviewed by carioca carioca. Average Rating: 3. August 25, Ask a question Ask a question If you would like to share feedback with us about pricing, delivery or other customer service issues, please contact customer service directly. Your question required. Additional details. Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity | Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. Preview — Betraying Spinoza by Rebecca Goldstein. He was already germinating a secularist challenge to religion that would be as radical as it was original. In Betraying Spinoza, Rebecca Goldstein sets out to rediscover the flesh-and-blood man often hidden beneath the veneer of rigorous rationality, and to crack the mystery of the breach between the philosopher and his Jewish past. Here is a Spinoza both hauntingly emblematic and deeply human, both heretic and hero—a surprisingly contemporary figure ripe for our own uncertain age. Get A Copy. Hardcoverpages. More Details Original Title. Other Editions 8. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Betraying Spinozaplease sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Feb 01, BlackOxford rated it really liked it Shelves: philosophy-theologyamericanbiography-biographical. Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity was so obviously true to me. We are all the product of our cultures, including its religion. Meaningful thought about religion irritates people, including oneself. Baruch Spinoza is the epitome of such thought. What he created was a personal statement offered to others, inviting, not demanding, participation in the process of intellectual discovery that he considered religion to be. This statement is a modern formulation of Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity covenant of the nahala. The reason for this drastic action are unclear. Given that Judaism was not a state sponsored religion, there were no civil consequences. Spinoza may have regretted the expulsion but he neither protested it nor mourned the formal separation from his spiritual community. The synagogue rejected Spinoza but Spinoza did not reject the synagogue. According to biblical law, the nahala of Judaism is an irrevocable legacy shared by every Jew. It cannot be taken away or alienated. Historically the nahala was eretz Israelthe physical land. But over generations of dispersal, voluntary and Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, Jewish religious thought recognized that the abiding legacy of Judaism was cultural not geographical - the law, that is the rules of correct behavior, among people as well as between people and God. This covenant of the nahala had no fixed content. It evolved continuously as reflected in biblical documents. Each interpretation of the law provoked further interpretations, not only of the law, but also of the character of human identity, of the meaning of being human. It is, in a sense, the essence of Judaism, that the covenant demands an eternal search for its eternal object. Any attempt to limit this search by either law or social convention is a breach of the covenant. Spiritual learning inherits the past but it never stops transforming itself into a new inheritance. Spinoza understood the difficulties his co-religionists as well as the rest of the world had with this concept of the covenant. Most of us would Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity stability, intellectual stability as well as emotional and political stability. But such stability can only be purchased at the cost of hope. Religious faith seeks to restrict thinking to an established set of doctrines about the world. Religious hope projects thought into some unknown future with a confidence that is more profound than faith. He was the first to announce an epochal change - from the Age of Faith to the Age of Hope. To recognize that hope may not be enough to hope for is not betrayal; it is learning in the Spinozan and Jewish tradition. View all 7 comments. Feb 01, robin friedman rated it really liked it. A Highly Personal Meditation On Spinoza Rebecca Goldstein begins her study "Betraying Spinoza: "The Renegade Jew who Gave us Modernity" by asking why a book on Spinoza is appropriate for as series of books called "Jewish Encounters" which the publisher describes as "a project devoted to the promotion of Jewish literature, culture, and ideas. While some Jewis A Highly Personal Meditation On Spinoza Rebecca Goldstein begins her study "Betraying Spinoza: "The Renegade Jew who Gave us Modernity" by asking why a book on Spinoza is appropriate for as series of books called "Jewish Encounters" which the publisher describes as "a project devoted to the promotion of Jewish literature, culture, and ideas. While some Jewish thinkers have proposed over the years a symbolic, posthumous lifting of the excomminication, there are, for most readers, unbridgeable differences between Spinoza's thought and traditional Judaism. And Goldstein, a professor of philosophy, a distinguished novelist, and a MacArthur fellow, never suggests any such approach, to her credit. Why, then, an introductory book about Spinoza in a series devoted to "Jewish literature, culture, and ideas"? And why a book about "betraying" Spinoza? Goldstein's answers are a mixture of the personal, historical, and philosophical. Raised in an Orthodox Jewish family, Goldstein received her early education in an all-girls religious school in Brooklyn. Her "secular" education in the school included an overview of intellectual history in which her teacher impressed upon her charges a highly negative view of Spinoza as an atheist and apostate with a highly arrogant view of the power of human reason and a philosophy which was both Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity and untenable. Goldstein became fascinated with Spinoza. Goldstein chose to become a philosopher she does not tell us why in the analytical tradition which is, for reasons different from those offered by Goldstein's early mentor, also highly critical of Spinoza's attempt at metaphysics. She was assigned to teach a course in continental rationalism: Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz; and, she tells the reader, returned to the philosopher with fresh eyes. Thus, part of the answer to the question "why Spinoza" is personal, as the philosopher reminded Goldstein of the orthodox religion of her childhood and then became a figure Goldstein in adulthood grew to admire and to teach. Goldstein's answer also is in part historical. Much Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity her book is an exploration of the information that scholars have been able to discover about Spinoza's life and about the Amsterdam Jewish community in which he was raised. The Jewish community in Amsterdam were, for the most part, recent refuges from Portugal. They had fled to escape the terrors of the Inquisition. Many of the immigrants were Marranos who had on the surface converted to Christianity but remained internally Jewish. These "New Christians" were the target of the Inquisition and were at risk of a terrible death if they were discovered. Spinoza was raised among a community that was trying to recover its Judaism in Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity city, Amsterdam, of openness for its time. Goldstein traces various strands of Jewish thought, the rationalism of Maimonides and the Kabbalism that developed in response to it, shows how they were related to the persecution of the Jews by the Inquisition, and discusses their continued influence on Spinoza's own radical thinking. Goldstein's history is informed by her talents as a novelist. She tries to get inside the young Spinoza Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity to think about how we would have felt in realizing that he could not accept the teachings of his elders, in his excommunication, in a possible failed love affair, and in other Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity that scholars have given us of his inner life. Goldstein tries to see Spinoza's writings, chiefly the Ethics and the Tractatus, as memoirs and as personal documents. She is fully aware of the paradoxical character of this approach as no philosopher more that Spinoza tried to get beyond the personal and the idiosyncratic to find a truth "sub specie aeternitatis" that was the same for all people everywhere independent of personal foibles, ingrained prejudices, and beliefs. She gives a good introductory overview of Spinoza's religious critique in the Tractatus and of the exposition of his full philosophy in the Ethics while trying to tie them in to the history of the Marrano's and the Amsterdam Jewish community, to Spinoza's own life, to the development of a scientific world outlook, and to the tumultuous politics of the Amsterdam of Spinoza's day. And how does Goldstein see herself as "betraying" Spinoza? One might suppose that she would consider the Judaism of her youth and find a way of returning to and adopting it. Here again, this is not what Goldstein is about. She appears committed in a full, honest, and for me highly commendable way to modernity and to the secularism which Spinoza helped bring about. Goldstein "betrays" Spinoza by her commitment to the imagination and to the value of particularity as opposed to what she finds as Spinoza's cosmic and impersonal rationalism. She suggests that some of Spinoza is inconsistent with her feelings as a lover, mother, and novelist. And in her brief but good bibliography, Isaac Bashevis Singer's magnificent story "The Spinoza of Market Street", has the last word, as Goldstein quotes the words of its protagonist, a life-long student of Spinoza, saying under the power of love for a woman: "Divine Spinoza forgive me. I have become a fool. I have studied Spinoza for many years and learned a great deal from Goldstein's book. I appreciate her candor and refusal to Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity into sentimentality. Goldstein has written a thoughtful and highly personal account of a great philosopher that will be valuable to those who know his thought and to those coming to it for the first time. Robin Friedman View all 3 comments. Rebecca Newberger Goldstein: Books: Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave us Modernity

In his flat-cap, tweed jacket, and herring-bone bowtie, he was converted not by the Holy Spirit, but by a deductive syllogism. Envision the co- author of Principia Mathematica, which rigorously reduced all of mathematics to logic, suddenly being moved by the spirit. Derived by the medieval monk Anselm of Canterbury in his Proslogion, the ontological argument holds that since existence must be a property of perfection, and God is a priori defined as a perfect being, than quod erat demonstrandum: God must exist. Cosmology and evolution have overturned most others, making them seem primitive to the point of adorableness, but Anselm endures. If philosophy got Russell into this mess, then it also got him out. Born illegitimate, Hansmann was raised Jewish even though his father was Christian; a man who understood how being two things sometimes meant that you were seen as nothing, he also knew the strange freedom of how dictated faith is no faith at all. Similarly, Spinoza was a Sephardic Jew of converso background whose Portuguese ancestors practiced their Judaism in secret until Dutch freedom allowed them to reinvent their hidden faiths. Many of those slurred as swinish Marranos found it more honest to live by the dictates of their own reason. As a result, he is the primogeniture for a certain type of rational, secular, progressive, liberal, humane contemporaneity. Hansmann worked as a peddler on the Lower East Side, until the Homestead Act enticed him to Iowa, where he married a Huguenot woman who bore him 10 children, while he worked as a trader among the Native Americans. He refused to raise his children in any religion—Jewish or Protestant—preferring rather that they should decide upon reaching adulthood. And so, a union was made between the Jewish and the Low Church Protestant, rejecting both baptism and bris, so that my grandmother born on the frontier had absolutely no religion at all. Born in Constantinople only six years after the Council of Nicaea convened there to define what exactly a Christian was, Julian the Apostate would mount a failed revolution. Julian was of a different perspective, seeing in the resurrection of Apollo and Dionysius, Jupiter and Athena, the rejuvenation of Rome. He bid his time until military success foisted him onto the throne, and then Julian revealed himself as an initiate into those Eleusinian Mysteries, a celebrant of Persephone and Demeter who greeted the morning sun and prayed for the bounty of the earth, quoted in W. Julian wanted this Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity to be a new faith, an organized, unified, consolidated religion that bore as much similarity to the cohesion of the Christian Church as it did to the rag-tag collection of rituals and superstitions that had defined previous Roman beliefs. In paganism, Julian approached origin, genesis, birth—less conversion than a return to what you should have been, but was denied. Christian thinkers had long commandeered classical philosophy, now pagan thinkers were able to apply the same analytical standards to their own beliefs, developing theology as sophisticated as that of Christianity. Vidal is most celebrated for calling the conservative founder of the National Review William F. The problem with a manifesto that defines itself entirely by anti-progress is that such a doctrine can be rather nebulous, and so many of the bright young things Buckley hired for the National Review, such as Joan Didion and Garry Wills, found themselves moving to the left. As people become harder of hearing and their bone-density decreases, movement from the left to the right does seem the more predictable Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity. But do we really know it? Do we feel it? For all their differences, Buckley and Vidal could at least agree on the martini. Cheever had lived up to the alcoholic reputation of two American tribes—High Church Protestants and Low Church writers. From the former he inherited both the genes and an affection for gin and scotch on a Westchester porch watching the trains from Grand Central thunder Upstate, and from the later he took the Dionysian myth that conflates the muse with ethanol, pining for inspiration but settling for vomiting in an Iowa City barroom. Cheever was one of the finest short story writers of the 20th century, his prose as crystalline and perfect as a martini. Such was the company of those other addicts, of Ernest Hemingway and F. The restoration of one man through the simple measure of not drinking was revelatory. Cheever—along with his friend Raymond Carver—is the happy exception Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity the fallacy that finds romance in the gutter-death of literary genius, and he got sober by doing the hard work of Alcoholics Anonymous. The central text of that organization was compiled by Bill W. We missed the reality and the beauty of the forest because we were diverted by the ugliness of some of its trees. When Cheever died, he had seven sober years—and they made all the difference. Conversion narratives are the most human of tales, for the drama of redemption is an internal one, played out between the protagonist and his demons. Certain tropes—the pleasure, the perdition, the contrition, the repentance, the salvation. Into that increasingly secular society would come an English preacher with a thick Gloucester accent named George Whitfield, who first arrived in the New World in Whitfield welcomed worshippers into a Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity tent—conversion as a means towards dignity and agency. He bemoaned the mistreatment of the enslaved, while he simultaneously advocated for the economic benefits of that very institution. Can we tighten this line. As different as they were, Whitfield and Malcolm X were both children of this strange Zion that allows such reinvention. Transformation defined his rejection of Christianity, his membership in the Nation of Islam, and then finally his conversion to orthodox Sunni Islam. If America is a land of conversion narratives, than The Autobiography of Malcolm X is ironically one of the most American. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an apostate in possession of a brilliant spiritual mind, must be in want of a religion. If none of the religions that already exist will do, then it becomes her prerogative to invent a better one and convert to that. For America is a gene splicing laboratory of mythology, an in vitro fertilization clinic of faith, and we birth gods by the scores. Drawing freely from Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and the free-floating occultism popular in 19th-century America, Ali became one of the first founders of an Afrocentric faith in the United States, his movement the original spiritual home to Wallace Fard Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam. Ali drew heavily from mystical traditions, combining his own idiosyncratic interpretations of Islam alongside Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism. Such beliefs held that the dead were still among us, closer than our very breath, and that spirits could interact with the inert matter Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity our world, souls intermingled before the very atoms of our being. Among the important founders of the movement were the Fox Sisters of Hydesville, N. It is a very common delusion. Scott and Paschal Beverly Randolph embracing abolitionism, temperance, civil rights, suffragism, and labor rights. And of course Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity great American convert Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity a religion of his own devising is Joseph Smith. Smith rather made America itself his invented religion. Read cynically, this bible could be seen as a disingenuous use of Chinese terminology so as to make Christianity feel less foreign and more inviting, a Western wolf in Mandarin robes. More charitably, such syncretism could be interpreted as an attempt to find the universal core between those two religions, a way of honoring truth regardless of language. Conversion not between faiths, but above them. The earliest synthesis between Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Christianity is traceable to the seventh century. At the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, Gansu Province, a cache called the Jingjiao Documents penned during the Tang Dynasty and attributed to the students of a Syrian monk named Alopen were rediscovered in InAlopen was an evangelist to a pluralistic civilization that had a history that went back millennia. His mission was neither colonial nor mercantile, and as a religious scholar he had to make Christianity appealing to a populace content with their beliefs. And so, Alopen converted the Chinese by first converting Christianity. As with the translators of the Chinese Version Union bible, Alopen borrowed Taoist and Buddhist concepts, configuring the Logos of John as the Tao, sin as karma, heaven as Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity, and Christ as an enlightened Bodhisattva. Portuguese priest Alvaro Semedo, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity to the court as Xie Wulu, saw the stele as evidence of Christian continuity; other clergy were disturbed that the monument was from a sect that the Church itself had deemed heretical 1, years before. Ricci had taken to wearing the robes of a Confucian scholar, borrowing from both Confucius and Lao-Tzu in arguing that Catholicism was a form of those older religions. Maybe there is something fallacious in simply pretending all religions are secretly the same. We risk abandoning something beautiful if we reject the unity that Alopen and Ricci worked for, because perhaps there is a flexibility to conversion, a delightful promiscuity to faith. Examining one of the Chinese water-colors of Ricci, resplendent in the heavenly blue silk of the panling lanshan with a regal, heavy, black putou on his head, a Roman inquisitor may have feared who exactly was converting whom. Francis of Assisi. Kneeling in brown robes, the aristocrat is a penitent in some rocky grove, a hazy blue-grey sfumato marking the countryside visible through a gap in the stones. Some tome—perhaps The Bible? Suddenly the prurient grin on the stubbly face of Dashwood makes more sense. Francis, would mark the absurdity of such Societies; and in lieu of the austerities and abstemiousness there practiced, substitute convivial gaiety, unrestrained hilarity, and social felicity. Irreverent, impious, and scandalous though Dashwood may have been, such activities paradoxically confirm faith. A blasphemous conversion, it turns out, may just be another type of conversion. It discloses scenes of pleasure and laughter, and also some of the extremist horrors ever conceived. It introduces us to cults of the Natural, the Supernatural; to magic, black and otherwise. Fear not the blasphemer, for such is merely a cracked prophet of the Lord. God conquered — now I have only one doubt left—which of the twain was God? She was victim of a world collapsing in on itself, of the political, social, economic, and ecological calamities precipitated by the arrival of the very people whose faith she would convert to, one hand holding a bible and a crucifix, the other a gun—all Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity them covered in the invisible killing virus. Of her own accord, Tekakwitha meditated on the words of the Jesuits, her confessor Fr. Much controversy follows such conversions: are we to read Tekakwitha—who endures as a symbol of syncretism between Christianity and indigenous spirituality—as a victim? As a willing penitent? As some cross between the two? She is not an allegory, a parable, a metaphor, or an example—she is Tekakwitha, a woman. If we are to draw any allegorizing lesson from her example, it must be this—conversion, like death, is something that is finally done alone. Who can we be to parse her reasons for embracing that faith, just as how can we fully inhabit the decisions of Julian, or Spinoza, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity Hansmann, or Ricci? Nothing can be more intimate, or sometimes more surprising, than the turn of a soul, the conversion of a woman or man. Of her true form? Of the beatified face when it looks upon the creator-god Ha-wen-ni-yu? Converts, like saints, do not reconcile the chaos, they exist amidst it. In hagiography, we find not solution, but mystery—as sacred and holy as footprints on a virgin Canadian snow, finally to be erased as the day turns to night. Mentioned in: Essays. Get the best of The Millions in your inbox each week! Subscribe for free. Yes Please. Related Books:.