Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Adventures of Immanence, Vol. 2

By Yovel, Yirmiyahu
Princeton University Press, 1991, Paperback, 248 pp., ISBN: 0691020795, $26.95

Called by Yovel the first important philosopher of immanence, Spinoza considered God and nature to be identical, a new doctrine that broke radically with Judaism and Christianity.

Yovel finds the origin of Spinoza's heterodoxy in the Marranos, from whom he was descended. The Marranos were Spanish Jews who converted to Christianity under compulsion but secretly continued to practice Judaism. The conflicting pressures of following two religions sometimes led to a total collapse of faith, and Yovel describes in a masterly way a tradition of Marrano skepticism. He also illuminates Spinoza's influence on later thinkers. Yovel shows that some of the most unorthodox and innovative figures in the past two centuries -- including Goethe, Kant, Hegel, Heine, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Einstein -- were profoundly (if sometimes implicitly) influenced by Spinoza and shared the essentials of his philosophy of immanence: immanent reality is all there is, it is the only source of valid social and political norms, and absorbing this recognition is a precondition to whatever liberation or redemption is in store for humans.

He does not completely clarify the meaning of “immanence'' and also assumes without much argument that the immanentist position is correct. Nevertheless, this is clearly a work of major significance. Library Journal and the publisher