 Susman’s essay is a pointed intervention in the lasting controversy around the place of Spinoza in the history of philosophy as well as in Judaism and suggestively argues for his thought’s enduring significance in highlighting the constitutive role love plays in his system. Offering a provocative way of distinguishing two opposed metaphysical dispositions, Susman challenges the dominant narrative that yokes Western philosophy to a Greco-Christian legacy. She highlights the specifically Jewish moment that informs an alternative tradition of metaphysical thinking and argues for an inner tension that pits two different religious worldviews against each other, a tension she will go on to present in her work as a tension constitutive of the modern world.