A Theologico-Political Treatise

by Benedict de Spinoza

Overview

Men would never be superstitious, if they could govern all their circumstances by set rules, or if they were always favoured by fortune: but being frequently driven into straits where rules are useless, and being often kept fluctuating pitiably between hope and fear by the uncertainty of fortune's greedily coveted favours, they are consequently, for the most part, very prone to credulity. The human mind is readily swayed this way or that in times of doubt, especially when hope and fear are struggling for the mastery, though usually it is boastful, over-confident, and vain.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781515414490
Publisher:	Dancing Unicorn Books
Publication date:	01/22/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Martin Yaffe is Professor of philosophy in the Department of Religion and Philosophy at the University of North Texas. He has published widely in areas of philosophy and history of philosophy and the interconnectedness of philosophy, religion, Judaism, literature and modern thought.

Editorial Reviews

Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise edited by Martin Yaffe (Focus, 480 pp., $24.95) Anyone lacking Latin who is seriously interested in, among other things, the philosophical foundations of liberal democracy, the rise of the historical-critical approach to the Bible, and Leo Strauss owes Martin Yaffe a substantial debt of gratitude for his edition of Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise. Yaffe's edition of the Treatise far surpasses all its competitors in its faithfulness to Spinoza's peculiar manner of writing. It thus provides us fresh access to the late 17th-century work, which is at once "the philosophical founding document of both modern liberal democracy and modern biblical criticism."

Yaffe's excellent interpretive essay helps readers to see why Spinoza regarded his dual foundings—of liberal democracy and of a "critical" way of reading the Bible—as being inextricably linked. As for Yaffe's contribution to the study of Strauss, it consists not only of the way in which he follows Strauss's admonition to translators not to impose their own prejudices on a text, but also the way he keys his text to the Latin editions that Strauss employed in his great essay "How to Study Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise."

Yaffe thereby enables Latinless readers to investigate the hundreds of citations to the Treatise that Strauss provides throughout his essay. Because of his seriousness and because of his modesty—he does not confuse himself with a thinker of Spinoza's rank—Yaffe is a most able guide to Spinoza.

— Steven Lenzner, Weekly Standard

From the Publisher