Spinoza, Life and Legacy

Daniel Johnson, The Critic Monumental...a brilliant biography... Jonathan Israel has more than done justice to this ultimately elusive genius

Andrew Robinson, Nature Definitive

Michiel Leezenberg, NRC Handelsblad This biography is a worthy conclusion to Israel's immense Enlightenment project.

Choice This monumental work should be added to the short list of modern biographies of Baruch Spinoza (1632-77)...Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty

Carlos Fraenkel, Times Literary Supplement Israel has done a great deal to illuminate Spinoza's unwavering rationalism, drawing out its revolutionary implications and charting its clandestine dissemination and profound impact on European thought.

Nicholas Morton, Marx & Philosophy Review of Books [A] tour-de-force... [a] meticulous survey of Spinoza's background, the Dutch political history, and his intellectual life in the seventeenth century.

Enrique Krauze, Project Syndicate With the publication of Spinoza, Life and Legacy, Israel has given us a book as vast as Spinoza's god... Israel, astonishingly prolix, passionate, and exhaustive, has created around Spinoza a vast fresco of an era, densely populated with characters, genealogies, situations, ideas, episodes, and conflicts.

Part I: Setting the Scene 1: Introduction 2: Unparalleled Challenge Part II: The Young Spinoza 3: Youthful Rebel 4: Secret Legacy from Portugal 5: Childhood and Family Tradition 6: Schooldays 7: Honour and Wealth 8: Teaching Skills: Van den Enden (1656-1661), Latin, and the Theatre 9: Collegiants, Millenarians, and Quakers: the Mid- and Late 1650s 10: 'Monstrous Heresies': Ties with Marrano Deists Part III: Reformer and Subverter of Descartes 11: Forming a Study Group 12: Rijnsburg Years (1661-63) 13: Spinoza and the Scientific Revolution 14: 'Reforming' Descartes' Principles 15: Writing the Ethics 16: Voorburg 17: Spinoza and the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1664-1667) 18: Invasion, Slump, and Comets (1665-66) 19: Spinoza, Meyer, and The 1666 Philosophia Controversy 20: From the Jaws of Defeat Part IV: Darkening Horizons 21: The Tragedy of the Brothers Koerbagh (1668-1669) 22: Nil Volentibus Arduum: Spinoza and the Arts 23: Twilight of the 'True Freedom' 24: Revolution in Bible Criticism 25: Spinoza Subverts Hobbes 26: Publishing the Theological-Political Treatise 27: Intensifying Reaction (early 1670s) 28: Spinoza's Libertine '"French Circle' 29: Reshaping the Republic: from Oligarchic to Democratic Republicanism Part V: Last Years 30: Disaster Year (1672) 31: Denying the Supernatural 32: Entering (or Not Entering) Princely Court Culture (1672-73) 33: Creeping Diffusion 34: Mysterious Trip to Utrecht (July-August 1673) 35: Expanding the 'Spinozist Sect' 36: Amsterdam Revisited (1673-75) 37: Hebrew in Spinoza's Later Life 38: Encounter with Leibniz (1676) 39: Fighting Back 40: Last Days, Death, and Funeral (1677) 41: A Stormy Aftermath 42: Conclusion: Philosophy integrated with Bible Critique and Political Theory