Di Etik.

AUCTION 54 | Wednesday, March 21st, 2012 at 1:00

Fine Judaica: Printed Books, Manuscripts Autograph Letters, Graphic & Ceremonial Art

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Lot 226

SPINOZA, BARUCH.

Di Etik.

<<First Yiddish edition.>> Translated by W. Nathanson. Frontispiece portrait of Spinoza tipped in. pp. 316. Brittle with few leaves loose. Original boards, detached. 4to.

Warsaw-Chicago: Kultur Liga-Naye Gezelshaft 1923

Est: $400 - $600

PRICE REALIZED $900

“Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometric Order,” first published in 1677, is one of the most important (and difficult) texts written by one of the more radical of modern philosophers, Baruch Spinoza. It is not directly about ethics so much as about theology, the place where Spinoza, the “God-intoxicated man,” develops his argument that God is all there is. Apart from one 19th-century Hebrew abridged paraphrase of the Ethics, it was not available in any Jewish language until W. Nathanson of New York produced this Yiddish translation in 1923. A Hebrew translation from the Latin by Jacob Klatzkin was published the following year.