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A biography of the boldest and most unsettling of the early modern philosophers, Spinoza, examining the man's life, relationships, career, and writings, while forcing us to rethink how we previously understood his reception in the fields of philosophy, religion, ethics, and political theory in his own time and in the years following his death.

Historical Dictionary of the Enlightenment, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 300 cross-referenced entries. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Enlightenment.

The Subversive Background of a Revolutionary Thinker -- Spinoza and the Origins of the Modern Revolutionary Consciousness (1650-1677) -- Orobio de Castro and the Enlightenment Myth of the Sephardic Universal Iconoclast -- The Destabilizing Reverberations of the Early Haskalah -- Maimon's Rebellion and Mendelssohn's Dilemma (1770-1800) -- David Nassy's New World Vistas (1770-1790) -- Zalkind Hourwitz (1751-1812) and the "Great Revolution" -- Jewish Revolutionaries and the Terror (1793-1794) -- Remaking the New World (1790-1820) -- The Dissident Jews of Felix Libertate (1787-1800) -- Napoleon and the Jews (1796-1815) -- Heine, Börne and the Post-Napoleonic Jewish Revolutionary Tradition (1810-1840) -- Moses Hess (1812-1875) and "The New Jerusalem" -- Karl Marx and the Socialist Revolution -- Conclusion: Jewish Revolutionaries (1650-1850).

Radical and conservative Enlightenment ideologies began to break apart as the desire for a fair society clashed with questions of religion and secularization. The Enlightenment that Failed shows how ideas promoting the interest of society as a whole came to be almost defeated by ideas buttressing the interests of the privileged few.

Historians of the French Revolution used to take for granted what was also obvious to its contemporary observers-that the Revolution was caused by the radical ideas of the Enlightenment. Yet in recent decades scholars have argued that the Revolution was brought about by social forces, politics, economics, or culture-almost anything but abstract notions like liberty or equality. In Revolutionary Ideas, one of the world's leading historians of the Enlightenment restores the Revolution's intellectual history to its rightful central role. Drawing widely on primary sources, Jonathan Israel shows h