Uploaded June 2026 | Updated September 2026, 13 hours ago
Heresy, Witch Hunts, and Political Persecution: The Problem of Speech from the Enlightenment to the Present
In 1783 the German philosopher Moses Mendelsohn published his monumental work Jerusalem – Or on Religious Power and Judaism where he laid out his blueprint for Jewish political and religious life. At the very center of Jerusalem was the idea that all human beings should be granted the ability to think and speak without religious coercion or censorship. To prove his point, Mendelsohn recuperated the legacy of the most infamous and detested heretic on the Continent, Barukh Spinoza, the so-called “atheist” and political “libertine.”
In this conversation, the philosopher Jason Stanley (Toronto) and the historian Eliyahu Stern (Yale) discussed the relevance of Mendelssohn’s and Spinoza’s views on heresy and the freedom of speech to the threats facing American political life and Jewish communities and institutions today.
Heresy, Witch Hunts, and Political Persecution: The Problem of Speech from the Enlightenment to the Present
In 1783 the German philosopher Moses Mendelsohn published his monumental work Jerusalem – Or on Religious Power and Judaism where he laid out his blueprint for Jewish political and religious life. At the very center of Jerusalem was the idea that all human beings should be granted the ability to think and speak without religious coercion or censorship. To prove his point, Mendelsohn recuperated the legacy of the most infamous and detested heretic on the Continent, Barukh Spinoza, the so-called “atheist” and political “libertine.”
In this conversation, the philosopher Jason Stanley (Toronto) and the historian Eliyahu Stern (Yale) discussed the relevance of Mendelssohn’s and Spinoza’s views on heresy and the freedom of speech to the threats facing American political life and Jewish communities and institutions today.
