Abstract

Yovel's Spinoza is the first book in any language in which an author tries to do justice to the historical and social influences of the Marranos culture on Spinoza's thought and on later thinkers. The study is divided into two parts which can be read independently. In the first volume, The Marrano of Reason, Yovel seeks to place Spinoza's thought within the framework of the culture of the Marranos, Jewish converts to Christianity. The events of the years 1411-12 in Spain, when the Jews were forced to convert, created a mixture of Catholic and Jewish traditions, which along with the Marranos's later settlement in the Calvinist Netherlands, became, according to Yovel, the background for Spinoza's philosophy.