Persecution and the Art of Writing [antikvár]

REFACEThese essays are here collected into one volume primarily with a view to the fact that they all deal with one problem: the problem of the relation between philosophy and politics. In the Introduction, I have tried to state this problem from the side of philosophy. In the article "Persecution and the Art of Writing," I have tried to elucidate the problem by starting from certain well-known political phenomena of our century. As I state in the Introduction, I became familiar with the problem mentioned while studying the Jewish and the Islamic philosophy of the Middle Ages. The three last essays deal with the problem as it appears from the writings of the two most famous Jewish medieval thinkers (Halevi and Maimonides) and of Spinoza who has been called, not altogether wrongly, "the last of the me-dievals."For the Introduction I have made free use of my article "Farabi's Plato" (Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume, American Academy for Jewish Research, New York, 1945, 357-393). 'Ter-secution and the Art of Writing" was first published in Social Research, November, 1941, 488-504. "The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed" was first published in Essays on Maimonides, edited by S. W. Baron, Columbia University Press, 1941, 37-91. "The Law of Reason in the Kuzari" was first published in the Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, XIII, 1943, 47-96. "How to Study Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise" was first published in the same Proceedings, XVII, 1948, 69-131.I wish to thank the editors and proprietors of the above mentioned works or periodicals for their kind permission to reprint.L. S.