Tag Archives: Spinoza

Spinoza Passover Hebrew Republic

Posted on April 5, 2023 by zjb

This Passover at a time of global and religious reaction, let’s be done with political theology. And let’s remember Spinoza, the exodus from tyranny, and the blueprint of a Hebrew commonwealth, based on the Bible, in which religion and state … Continue reading →

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Spinoza Death Mask (Archive)

Posted on July 30, 2021 by zjb

This spectacular image was recently discovered in a box in an archive in a library at Columbia University, about which you can read here in this write-up by Marianna Najman-Franks (Barnard ’22). She found the death mask while working through … Continue reading →

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From Messianism to Real Estate (American Jews & Jewish Settlements in the West Bank)

Posted on June 22, 2020 by zjb

Too long a tale to tell here, the origins of the Jewish settlement project in the occupied West Bank after the 1967 Six Day War was an indigenous phenomenon ideologically rooted in the Israeli religious right and the messianic imagination. … Continue reading →

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(Spinoza Says) Enlightenment Now (Shut the Synagogues) (Coronavirus)

Posted on March 27, 2020 by zjb

[[Dutch Portuguese Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo arguing for the lifting of the ban on Baruch Spinoza, December 6, 2015. (Cnaan Liphshiz/JTA)]] About Enlightenment, post-secularism, and anti-liberal twaddle. Watching in real time and with some pleasure as the unfolding relationship between … Continue reading →

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Spinoza Serial Killer

Posted on January 31, 2019 by zjb

I realized today at the end of class. Spinoza was a serial killer. One thing after the next, the God of Israel, prophecy, miracle, law, election. Like him or not, but what’s left? He’s cold, not warm like Leibniz or … Continue reading →

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(Wicked) Radical Affects (Spinoza)

Posted on June 25, 2017 by zjb

“Everyone knows how it goes–a disgust with the present, a craving to make fundamental changes, uncontrolled anger, a scorn for poverty–these affects lead men to wickedness.” (Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, Chapter XVII) (thank you, Julie Klein for posting this on FB)

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Spinoza (Affect, Phenomenology, Politics)

Posted on April 18, 2015 by zjb

Excellent review, which you can read here, by Benjamin Wurghaft on 3 new Spinoza books: Hasana Sharp, Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization, Knox Peden Spinoza Contra Phenomenology: French Rationalism from Cavailles to Deleuze Antonio Negri, Spinoza for Our Time: … Continue reading →

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Science and Myth (Henri Atlan)

Posted on February 29, 2012 by zjb

(page from Stéphane Mallarmé, “A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance”) (found at: http://kottke.org/10/08/active-passive-or-playing Just finished reading Henri Atlan’s The Sparks of Randomness, vol1, Spermatic Knowledge.  Among the author’s many titles and honors, an incomplete list of Atlan’s … Continue reading →

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Dualism-Monism, Actual-Virtual

Posted on February 8, 2012 by zjb

  I was going over my notes for Deleuze’s Bergsonism. It was discussed on the first day of class at Gail Hamner’s Deleuze-Foucault seminar at SU, and I wanted to catch up. I realized how hard it is to get … Continue reading →

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Substance, Monism, Dualism

Posted on February 7, 2012 by zjb

http://politelyhomicidal.wordpress.com/2011/05/22/turtles-all-the-way-down/ A quick note about Deleuze’s Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, which I read through a couple of weeks ago. I found most helpful the difference that Deleuze makes between “real” (substantive) distinctions versus “modal” distinctions. As I read him, the … Continue reading →

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