<p>Spinoza and the Freedom of Philosophizing considers freedom of speech and the rules of engagement in the public sphere; good government, civic responsibility, and public education; and the foundations of religion and society, as seen through the eyes of seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher,Spinoza. During the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic, a new kind of public sphere emerged. Courtly structures of political advice made room for new, republican forms of public consultation between the sovereign powers and the general citizenry. Missing, however, were guidelines for how and when toaddress questions of public import and how to form unprejudiced citizens in possession of their own free judgment, capable and willing to speak up for themselves in public deliberations with the common interest in view. Mogens Laerke argues that Spinoza's freedom of philosophizing, and the systematicpolitical theory he developed to defend it in his 1670 Theological-Political Treatise, were conceived to provide just such guidelines. Laerke shows how Spinoza understood freedom of philosophizing as a collective style of reasoning and argument based on mutual teaching and advising, a model for thepublic sphere in a free republic.The volume studies the conditions under which such a public sphere of free philosophizing would flourish, how it would require popular reform of public education, and democratic reorganization of the relations between political counsel and sovereign command. It also shows how Spinoza designedtheological and political doctrines of universal faith and social contract in order to promote true religion and a sense of civic duty, and defended the state's right over sacred matters as a means to ensure mutual toleration in a multi-religious society.</p>

Spinoza and the Freedom of Philosophizing

Politics & Social Sciences

Lærke, Mogens

Philosophy

Oxford University Press

Spinoza: Reason, Religion, Politics: The relation between the Ethics and the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus

Garber, Daniel

Moreau, Pierre-François

Totaro, Pina

The Historical Dictionary of Spinoza and Spinozism relates the history of Spinoza and Spinozism through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds cross-referenced dictionary entries on significant persons, events, places, organizations.

Historical Dictionary of Spinoza and Spinozism (Historical Dictionaries of Religions, Philosophies, and Movements Series)

Steenbakkers, Piet

Scarecrow Press

Steno and the Philosophers offers an account of the life and works of the Danish scientist and theologian Nicolas Steno (1638-1686). Its aim is to study the intricate relations between philosophy, theology, and the emerging sciences (anatomy, medicine and geology in particular) in the early modern Republic of Letters through the biographical prism of one of its most fascinating members. Concentrating on Steno's contributions to natural philosophy and his relations to philosophers, the volume portrays Steno, not only as an influential scientist and theologian, but also as a natural philosopher who played a pivotal, albeit ambivalent, role in the intellectual networks amongst philosophers and natural scientists in the late seventeenth century.Contributors include Raphaële Andrault, Jakob Bek-Thomsen, Daniel Garber, Vasiliki Girgoropoulo, Eric Jorink, Troels Kardel, Mogens Lærke, Sebastian Olden-Jørgensen, Justin E. H. Smith, Frank Sobiech and Pina Totaro.

Steno and the Philosophers (Brill's Studies in Itellectual History, 276)

History

Europe

BRILL

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