Spinoza's Critique of Religion and its Heirs Marx, Benjamin, Adorno

Spinoza's heritage has been occluded by his incorporation into the single, western, philosophical canon formed and enforced by theologico-political condemnation, and his heritage is further occluded by controversies whose secular garb shields their religious origins. By situating Spinoza's thought in a materialist Aristotelian tradition, this book sheds new light on those who inherit Spinoza's thought and its consequences materially and historically rather than metaphysically. By focusing on Marx, Benjamin, and Adorno, Idit Dobbs-Weinstein explores the manner in which Spinoza's radical critique of religion shapes materialist critiques of the philosophy of history. Dobbs-Weinstein argues that two radically opposed notions of temporality and history are at stake for these thinkers, an onto-theological future-oriented one and a political one oriented to the past for the sake of the present or, more precisely, for the sake of actively resisting the persistent barbarism at the heart of culture.

Introduction: whose history, which politics?; 1. The theologico-political construction of the philosophical tradition; 2. The paradox of a perfect democracy: from Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise to Marx; 3. Judgment Day as repudiation: history and justice in Marx, Benjamin, and Adorno; 4. Destitute life and the overcoming of idolatry: dialectical image, archaic fetish in Benjamin's and Adorno's conversation; 5. Untimely timeliness: history, the possibility of experience, and critical praxis; Afterword: the possibility of political philosophy now.

Idit Dobbs-Weinstein is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee. She is the author of Maimonides and St Thomas on the Limits of Reason and coeditor of Maimonides and his Heritage (with Lenn E. Goodman and James A. Grady). Her work has appeared in such journals as Epoché and Idealistic Studies.