Judaism and Enlightenment » (1ST)

Adam Sutcliffe is Chaim Lopata Assistant Professor of European Jewish History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Investigates the philosophical and political significance of Judaism in seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe.

Introduction: disentangling Judaism and Enlightenment;
Part I. The Crumbling of Old Certainties: Judaism, the Bible and the Meaning of History:
1. The crisis and decline of Christian Hebraism;
2. Hebraic politics: Respublica Mosaiaca;
3. Meaning and method: Jewish history, world history;
4. The limits of erudition: Jacques Basnage and Pierre Bayle;
Part II. Judaism and the Formation of Enlightenment Radicalism:
5. Religious dissent and debate in Sephardi Amsterdam;
6. Judaism in Spinoza and his circle;
7. Spinoza: Messiah of the Enlightenment?;
8. Enlightenment and Kabbalah;
9. Judaism, reason and the critique of religion;
Part III. Judaism, Nationhood and the Politics of Enlightenment:
10. Utopianism, Republicanism, Cosmopolitanism;
11. Judaism and the invention of toleration;
12. The ambiguities of Enlightenment: Voltaire and the Jews; Conclusion: reason versus myth?