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103. - Islam

from I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2025

By
Michael A. Rosenthal
Edited by
Karolina Hübner  and
Justin Steinberg
Karolina Hübner
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Justin Steinberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
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Summary

Spinoza’s complex relation to Islam and the Islamic world can be charted in several ways. Although we do not have direct evidence of the influence of Islamic philosophy in Spinoza’s texts, scholars have argued for possible influence through his direct engagement with medieval Jewish philosophers. Some have argued for a wide-ranging set of parallels (Wolfson ); others have argued for specific influences. One of these latter would be the idea, attributed to Ibn Rushd (Averroes), that there is one intellect shared by all humans, which is a view that seems to have a parallel in Spinoza’s claim that minds are modes of the infinite divine attribute of Thought and “parts” of the divine infinite intellect (E2p11c).

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Chapter
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The Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon , pp. 285 - 286
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Recommended Reading

Fraenkel, C. (2013). Reconsidering the case of Elijah Delmedigo’s Averroism and its impact on Spinoza. In Akasoy, A. and Giglioni, G. (eds.), Renaissance Averroism and Its Aftermath: Arabic Philosophy in Early Modern Europe (pp. 213–36). Springer.Google Scholar
Israel, J. (2001). Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malcolm, N. (2019). Useful Enemies: Islam and The Ottoman Empire in Western Political Thought, 1450–1750. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wolfson, H. A. (1934). The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes of His Reasoning. 2 vols. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar

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