This major contribution to the history of European ideas investigates the philosophical and political significance of Judaism in the intellectual life of seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe. Adam Sutcliffe demonstrates how the enthusiastic fascination with Judaism that was prevalent around 1650 became contemptuous a century later. The intense responses of thinkers like Voltaire to Jewish topics are central to an understanding of the underlying ambiguities of the Enlightenment. The study interests scholars of Jewish history, the Enlightenment, and of the emergence of the modern...

This major contribution to the history of European ideas investigates the philosophical and political significance of Judaism in the intellectual life of seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe. Adam Sutcliffe demonstrates how the enthusiastic fascination with Judaism that was prevalent around 1650 became contemptuous a century later. The intense responses of thinkers like Voltaire to Jewish topics are central to an understanding of the underlying ambiguities of the Enlightenment. The study interests scholars of Jewish history, the Enlightenment, and of the emergence of the modern...