Spinoza: Liberator of God and Man & Against the Rabbis

“(Spinoza’s) ratiocination is deft and measurable persuasive; it will be found lyrically displayed in the DeCasseres book.”—New York Times
Celebrating the 300th birthday of his relative Benedict Spinoza (1632 – 1677) saw Benjamin DeCasseres release two volumes about the man and his work. The first was Spinoza: Liberator of God and Man in 1933, and the second was Spinoza Against the Rabbis in 1937. This new edition combines them both for the first time, newly typeset and designed.Written in the luminous, piercing style that has made Benjamin DeCasseres famous, you see in this book the mighty struggle of Spinoza with Intolerance, the serene pantheist at work polishing his lenses, and, above all, the interior of a mind, in eleven chapters, that is like an excursion of the Spirit of Man in high mental altitudes.
Benjamin DeCasseres brings to the light in this book hitherto unknown aspects of the doctrines of Spinoza: his liberation of God from the shackles of anthropomorphism, his glorification of the Will-to-Power, and his divinization of the Ego of the individual man.In the chapter entitled “Anathema!” DeCasseres has with a dramatic power only equaled in the pages of Victor Hugo or Merejkovsky pictured the excommunication from the Jewish Church of Benedict de Spinoza.Spinoza, at last, lives in this book. For it is the drama of a great soul written by a man who has the blood of Spinoza in his veins.
Benjamin DeCasseres (1873-1945) was an Ironist, Critic, Poet, Epigrammist, Polemicist, God. He announced his candidacy for mayor of New York as a “Cubist Candidate” in 1913, vowing to “legalize human frailties,” among other fine ideas. He was a comrade of H.L. Mencken, Charles Fort, James Huneker, George Sterling, Don Marquis and is a distant relative of Spinoza. His writing was published in a wide range of periodicals from Benjamin Tucker’s radical anarchist Liberty, to the mainstream Life. He could be found in the pages of the New York Times, among other newspapers.