Book Criticism: Jewish Themes in Spinoza’s Philosophy

In this article, the book titled Jewish Themes in Spinoza’s Philosophy is introduced, studied, and criticized. State University of New York Press published this book under the title of Jewish Themes in Spinoza’s Philosophy with the edition of two prominent experts in Spinoza and Jewish studies: Heidi Ravven and Lenn Goodman in 2002. Many outstanding critics believe that this book is the first serious attempt to understand Spinoza’s thought and to show its place in the history of Jewish philosophy. In this book, the custom tradition of similar books on this subject is not observed, and for the first time, the important issues of Spinoza’s philosophy and its Jewish themes have been examined. The aim of this book was to introduce Spinoza as a Jewish philosopher. However, the chief editors did not succeed to choose the unified articles whether regarding the subject or the technical content. The lack of a chapter as conclusion is indicating to some extent that these articles do not reach to a unified agreement on relating Spinoza to Judaism.