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Spinoza on Religious Choice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Richar Mason
Richar Mason
Affiliation:
Madingley Hall, Cambridge
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Extract

Here are three sets of circumstances: (i) On 27 July 1656, at the age of 23, Spinoza was thrown out of his religious community–the Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam. During the remaining 21 years of his life it would have been easy enough for him to have returned, in practical if not in personal terms, but he chose not to do so. Despite close association with members of various Protestant sects, he chose to live without affiliation to any religious group. At that time, this was rare.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 69 , Issue 270 , October 1994 , pp. 443 - 458
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1994

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References

1 T = Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, trs. S. Shirley (Leiden: Brill, 1989) + page number.Google Scholar

2 This point is independent of any particular theory or account of truth. See B., Williams, ‘Deciding to Believe’ in his Problems of the Self (Cambridge University Press, 1973).Google Scholar

3 Most commentators believe that Parts I and II of the Ethics were written before the Theological-Political Treatise.Google Scholar

4 The Ethics and Selected Letters, trs. S., Shirley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1982).Google Scholar

5 For a full study:A., Matheron, Le Christ et le salut des ignorants chez Spinoza, (Paris: Abouier-Montaigne, 1971).Google Scholar

6 Proceedings of the British Academy, 46 (1960) and Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 64 (1964).

7 Pascal, Penseesi, trs. and ed. Krailsheimer, A. J. (Harmondswort: Penguin, 1966), p. 58, §110.Google Scholar

8 For Spinoza, reason and cause were the same: Ethics I, 11, Proof 2.Google Scholar

9 The Correspondence of Spinoza, trs. and ed. A., Wolf (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1928), Letter LXXVI, pp. 351 and 353.Google Scholar

10 Letter XLIII, Wolf, op. cit., p. 259Google Scholar

11 Henri, Laux considers Spinoza′s critique of Islam as the extreme point of his critique of religion. See Imagination et religion chez Spinoza (Paris: Vrin, 1993), p. 238.Google Scholar

12 The English version of Spinoza′s Critique of Religion (1930), (New York: Schocken, 1982), p. 29Google Scholar

13 Deliverance from Error, al-Ghazali, in The Faith and Practice of al- Ghazali, W., Montgomery Watt (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1953), p. 27.Google Scholar