Spinoza And Buddha: Visions Of A Dead God null
by S. M. Melamed (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars 3 ratings
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
ISBN-13: 978-1432557621
ISBN-10: 1432557629Why is ISBN important?
Product details
Publisher : Kessinger Publishing, LLC (March 1, 2007)
Language : English
Paperback : 404 pages
Kenneth Dorter
2.0 out of 5 stars Condemning Spinoza as a BuddhistReviewed in the United States on June 1, 2011
Melamed's book is a rebuttal to the "many commentators, critics, and historians [who] have cried that Spinoza's excommunication was not justified since his doctrine was traceable to Jewish sources" (136). He argues that there is a "line extending from the Upanisads to Buddha, St. Paul, St. Augustine, and Spinoza" (5, 299-363), and that mysticism was no part of traditional Judaism. For all his otherwise impressive erudition, however, Melamed never mentions the Zohar. He does mention Hassidism, but after acknowledging that it arose independently of Spinoza, he circumvents this counter-example to his thesis by means of a non-sequitur: "Chasidism - although it is not a consequence of, is a parallel to, Spinozism... [There is a] deep-rooted pantheistic tendency in Chassidism. In view of these facts, the assertion is justified that Spinoza's influence on the cultural process of his own race in modern times was almost as powerful as was his influence upon the general cultural process in the West" (146-7). Melamed's antipathy to Spinoza is continually in evidence (even apart from the book's subtitle): Spinoza was not only "the patron saint of Lenin's state" (30) and "the official philosopher of Red Russia" (31), "Spinoza was actually responsible for the cultural anti-Semitism of modern Europe" (147).
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miles secker
3.0 out of 5 stars love and hence to those values we must believe in ...Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 29, 2014
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Melameds Spinoza and Buddhism is a miserable and verbose rant. It contains very little evidence of familiarity with philosophy and a willingness to examine the Ethics for, say, the interdeduciblitity of the propositions, the relation of 'reason' to 'cause', the deducibility of social relations from primary emotions, the notion that adequate ideas of nature are occluded by passive emotions and inductive generalisation...etc..etc. Instead, Melamed has had his mind made up for him and deploys his unthinking loyalty to orthodox Judaism as a cudgel with which to smite Spinoza and the Buddha for their atheism or pantheism. For Melamed both Spinoza and Buddha are guilty of teaching a kind of passive, supine and indifferent attitude to the problems of life while Judaism, and to a lesser extent Christianity, since Christianity, Melamed claims, is infected by Buddhism, demands a commitment to belief in a God who is justice, mercy, love and hence to those values we must believe in order to live with any vitality and spirit. The truth is otherwise however. In his Theologico-Political Treatise and his Political Treatise Spinoza argued that Judaism and Christianity, in becoming harnessed to the apparatus of the state, to rank and status, had promoted superstition as a means of controlling the 'multitude' and, consequently, had become agents of injustice. Religion should therefore be subordinated to the rule of law in a democracy ('In a free state every man can think what he likes and say what he thinks': Ch. 22; TPT). Unlike Spinoza, with whom at least Melamed has some religious kinship, Buddha is completely alien. Melameds attacks on the harmless Buddha show Melamed is eaten up in incomprehension. He is beside himself with rage for the pacifist doctrine of the Buddha. He despises Buddha's doctrine of nature with it's absent God. At least Spinoza, writing in the 17th century when religious bigotry was defended by the state, was cunning enough to call 'nature', 'God'. Not so Buddha. Even the notion of God is emptied and 'blown out' ('nirvana'). Poor Melamed; a miserable and unhappy man. Not so Spinoza: 'The mind endeavours to think only of the things that affirm its power of activity' (Eth. III, Prop. 54) and 'Cheerfulness cannot be excessive. It is always good. On the other hand melancholy is always bad' (Eth. IV, Prop. 42) and the Buddha 'These three persons arise in the world for the welfare of the multitude, for the happiness of the multitude, out of compassion for the world, for the good, welfare and happiness of gods and humans....the Enlightened One (Buddha)...an arahant....a trainee practising the path...' (Itivuttaka 84; 78-79; quoted in: In the Buddha's Words Ed. Bhikku Bodhi; Wisdom Pub. 2005 pp 414-5.
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