Opera Posthuma. Five parts in one: Ethica; Tractatus Politicus; Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione; Epistolae; and Compendium Grammatices Linguae Hebraeae.

(SPINOZA, BENEDICTUS DE).

J. Rieuwertsz)

(Amsterdam

1677

FIRST EDITION. Printer’s device on title.

Mehlman 1943; 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 Sephardic culture of Amsterdam, however his rebellion against traditional religious thought - propounding pantheism - ultimately led to rabbinic excommunication. Spinoza is considered today as one of Western philosophy’s most important thinkers, one of the great rationalists of the 17th-century, who laid the groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment. Published in the year of his death, the “Opera” was banned by the States of Holland for blasphemy. An engraved portrait of Spinoza was composed three years after his death, which was inserted by the publisher 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. “The Opera Posthuma has served to immortalize Spinoza’s name” (Printing and the Mind of Man, no. 153).