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Few philosophers have been so mythologised as the 17th century Jew, Baruch Spinoza. Legends abound regarding his life, thought and character. He has been claimed as hero and as villain by both secular and ecclesiastical authorities. During his life he was widely attacked for his 'blasphemous' and 'heretical' opinions on God, the bible, and religion, even suffering one of the most vitriolic cherem ever issued by the Amsterdam Portuguese-Jewish community. But after his death he was appropriated by others who believed that within his complex writings could be found a deeply religious instinct. To German Romantics like the poet Novalis, he was "a God intoxicated man", while Goethe called him simply theissimus, 'most theistic'. So what was Spinoza's attitude to God? Certainly no one who read his work thoroughly could argue that he held a traditional theistic conception of a divine being, the providential God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In the Ethics, his philosophical masterpiece, Spinoza says that God is 'immanent' in nature, not some supernatural entity beyond the world. But does this mean that we can describe him as a pantheist, as someone who believes that God is revealed in every aspect of the natural world that lies around us? This was certainly a popular interpretation. (en) |
