(SPINOZA, BENEDICTUS DE)

J. Rieuwertsz)

(Amsterdam

1677

B.D.S. Opera Posthuma. Five parts in one: Ethica [Ethics]; Tractatus Politicus [Political Treatise]; Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione [On the Improvement of the Understanding, on philosophic method]; Epistolae [scientific correspondence] and Compendium Grammatices Linguae Hebraeae [Grammar of the Hebrew Language]

Mehlman 1943 (without portrait); Van der Linde, Spinoza Bibl. no. 22; Kingma & Offenberg 15

First edition of Spinoza’s highly influential philosophical work. Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) was educated in the Orthodox Sephardi culture of Amsterdam, however his rebellion against traditional religious thought - concepts such as pantheism, determinism, deism - ultimately led to rabbinic excommunication. Today, Spinoza is considered Western philosophy's most important thinkers, one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy, who laid the groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment and modern Biblical criticism. Published in the year of his death, the “Opera” was bannned by the States of Holland for blasphemy. An engraved portrait of Spinoza was composed three years after his death, which was inserted by the publlisher into those copies of this first edition that were still in stock (see E. Altkirch, Spinoza im Portraet, pp. 61-3 and as noted by Mehlman no. 1943). See A.K. Offenberg, Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana-Treasures of Jewish Booklore (1994) p. 31; JE, Vol. XI, pp. 511-20; EJ, Vol. XV, pp. 275-84 Another copy of Spinoza’s Opera was sold by Christie’s New York, “The Helmut N. Friedlaender Library,” 23rd April, 2001, Lot 181. “The Opera Posthuma has served to immortalize Spinoza’s name.” (Printing and the Mind of Man, no. 152)