Steven B. Smith, Modernity
and Its Discontents. Making and Unmaking the Bourgeois From Machiavelli to
Bellow. Yale University Press, August 9, 2016 – books.google
Chapter 5 "What Kind of Jew Was Spinoza? p. 88-108
Steven B. Smith examines the concept of modernity, not as
the end product of historical developments but as a state of mind. He explores
modernism as a source of both pride and anxiety, suggesting that its most
distinctive characteristics are the self-criticisms and doubts that accompany
social and political progress. Providing profiles of the modern project’s most
powerful defenders and critics—from Machiavelli and Spinoza to Saul Bellow and
Isaiah Berlin—this provocative work of philosophy and political science offers
a novel perspective on what it means to be modern and why discontent and
sometimes radical rejection are its inevitable by-products.
Bespreking 26 aug. 2016 door James Miller in de New York
Times [cf.]
_____________
Aanvulling. Review door Christopher Atamian op 22 sept. 2016 in The Weekly Standard about this wonderfully erudite opus, nothing less than a short history and analysis of modernity itself. [Slechts deels te lezen]
