********************** Enlightenment Betrayed ********************** ------------------- *The Dead Dog Marx* -------------------
If someone else wrote about Spinoza the way Jonathan Israel writes about Marx, then Israel would be livid. This is a shame, since Israel has contributed so much to rehabilitating Spinoza and the Radical Enlightenment legacy. Once, Israel saw Marx as an organic part of this legacy. In Radical Enlightenment , the first book of his series, Israel does not separate Marx (young or old) from Spinozism: “Hence Spinoza’s conception of truth, and the criterion for judging what is true, is ‘mathematical logic,’ and mathematical rationality universally applied provides, from Spinoza to Marx, the essential link between the Scientific Revolution and the tradition of radical thought.” 2 Israel also once compared the fear of Spinozism with Cold War fears about Marxism. In Radical Enlightenment , this analogy was offered to the reader as perfectly legitimate. But years have passed, and as Israel’s research approaches the French Revolution and the revolutions of 1848, his response to Marx and Marxism becomes as hostile as his response to Robespierre and Jacobinism. While Israel’s sympathies are for the young Marx, whom he fashions as a Radical Enlightenment liberal, the old Marx is plagued with the sins of Jacobinism. But not only this: Marx is also accused of being a “determinist,” granting little credence to moral agency and free will. This is particularly odd, given that Spinoza was criticized in the same manner by the German Enlightenment of Moses Mendelssohn and Immanuel Kant, not to mention clericalists who wrote Spinoza off as an immoral charlatan. Israel threatens to treat Marx as a “dead dog,” just as Friedrich Jacobi and Mendelssohn once treated Spinoza. (More at https://www.leftvoice.org/enlightenment-betrayed?fbclid=IwAR1xzpRZrr8iMVINNA6vuhkVSmX4UjcMTTtOkfiOKCMtbUEhknF_n5755_A ) Jim Farmelant http://www.linkedin.com/in/jim farmelant/ ( http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimfarmelant/ ) http://independent.academia.ed u/JimFarmelant ( http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant ) http://www.foxymath.com ( http://www.foxymath.com/ ) Learn or Review Basic Math -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#450): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/450 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/76226399/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES<br />#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.<br />#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.<br />#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
