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Spinoza and Dutch Cartesianism

Online ISBN:
9780191796722
Print ISBN:
9780198732501
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Spinoza and Dutch Cartesianism

Alexander X. Douglas
Alexander X. Douglas
Heythrop College, London
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Published online:
19 March 2015
Published in print:
12 February 2015
Online ISBN:
9780191796722
Print ISBN:
9780198732501
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

This book aims to understand Spinoza’s philosophy by situating it in its immediate historical context. It defends a thesis about Spinoza’s philosophical motivations and then bases an interpretation of his major works upon it. The thesis is that much of his philosophy was conceived with the express purpose of rebutting a claim about the limitations of philosophy made by some of his contemporaries. They held that philosophy is intrinsically incapable of revealing anything of any relevance to theology, or in fact to any study of direct practical relevance to human life. Spinoza did not. He believed that philosophy reveals the true nature of God, and that God is nothing like what the majority of theologians, or indeed of religious believers in general, think he is. The practical implications of this change in the concept of God were profound and radical. Many of his theories were directed towards showing how the separation his opponents endeavoured to maintain between philosophical and non-philosophical (particularly theological) thought was logically untenable.

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