Description
Spinoza and the Specters of Modernity draws new theoretical conclusions from a study of Spinoza’s legacy in the age of Goethe and beyond, largely transmitted through the writings of Herder, that will have implications for the study of German intellectual history and, more broadly, the study of religion and literature.
Michael Mack describes how a line of writers and thinkers re-configured Spinoza’s ideas and how these ideas thus became effective in society at large. Mack shows that the legacy of Spinoza is important because he was the first thinker to theorize narrative as the constitutive fabric of politics, identity, society, religion and the larger sphere of culture. Indeed, Mack argues for Spinoza’s writings on politics and ethics as an alternative to a Kantian conception of modernity.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Spinoza’ alternative modernity
Chapter 1.
Descartes, Spinoza or the goal that destroys itself.
Chapter 2.
Spinoza’s conatus or the critique of political self-destruction
Chapter 3.
Herder’s Spinozist understanding of Reflection
Chapter 4.
From the Dissection theatre to popular philosophy or Herder’s Spinozist theology
Chapter 5.
From the National to the Transnational
Chapter 6.
Universalism contested: Herder, Kant and Race
Chapter 7.
Talking Humanly with the Devil: From Rosenzweig via Spinoza to Goethe’s hospitality in Faust and Iphigenia on Tauris
Chapter 8.
The Significance of the Insignificant: George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda and the Literature of Weimar Classicism
Chapter 9.
Conclusion: Freud and Spinoza or how to be mindful of the mind.
Author(s)
Michael Mack, Michael Mack (PhD. Cambridge) is Reader in Medical Humanities and English Literature at Durham University, UK. Formerly he has been a Visiting Professor at Syracuse University, a Fellow at the University of Sydney, and lecturer and research fellow at the University of Chicago. He is the author of German Idealism and the Jew (University of Chicago Press, 2003), which was shortlisted for The Koret Jewish Book Award 2004, and Anthropology as Memory (Niemeyer, 2001, Conditio Judaica Series).
Reviews
“In Spinoza and the Specters of Modernity Michael Mack traces the genesis of modern interpretations of culture to Spinoza's legacy and to its reception in the Enlightenment, as in the thought of Herder and Goethe, and in later periods. The insightful examination of the roots of universalism provides an original reassessment of the concept of culture which will be of value to all who work in the areas of German literature, Jewish studies, theology and philosophy. I believe that Michael Mack is one of the most promising young scholars of his generation.” – Jeffrey Andrew Barash, Professor of Philosophy, Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, France
,
"Michael Mack's study of the reception of Spinoza's removal of man from the center of the philosophical universe is extraordinary and important. The recent renaissance of interest in Spinoza has assumed that this major thinker has had little or no impact on the world of modern thought and of culture. From Herder to Freud, from George Eliot to Franz Rosenzweig, Mack illustrates how the reading of Spinoza served as the catalyst to new means of rethinking the centrality of man in nature. In such a world the natural order (or disorder) is not dependent on man; history is shaped by the world and its forces; fiction reflects man dependence on, not dominance of, nature. Mack's book is a vital, new rethinking of Spinoza's impact on modern thought." --
Sander Gilman,
Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences,
Emory University, USA, and
Professorial Fellow,
Birkbeck College, UK
,
“Spinoza and the Specters of Modernity is a work of central importance, and has the virtue of being genuinely interdisciplinary while being firmly rooted in philosophy and the history of European ideas. This is a measured and confident narrative, fully aware and apprised of contemporary critical debates and concerns about homogeneity and universalism. At the same time, it appeals to a literary tradition which includes such major figures as George Eliot in its focus on and study of Daniel Deronda. This is the work of a genuine scholar.” --
David Jasper, Professor in Literature and Theology, University of Glasgow, UK.
,
"Michael Mack's new book is an original and compelling intellectual history of modernity. Mack masterfully reveals the connective tissue linking such varied contributors to modernity as Spinoza, Herder, Goethe, Darwin, and Freud. The result is a distinctive portrait of mind and culture confronting the 21st century."
-- Berel Lang, Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Letters, Wesleyan University, USA
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