Spinoza and the Specters of Modernity

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).

• 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.

"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