Spinoza toch minder seculier en atheïst dan vaak gedacht, betoogt nieuw boek

Van Ferdie Fluitsma ontving ik weer enige tips over boeken over Spinoza die aangekondigd zijn; ik  gaf er al enige in vorige blogs door. Al in een blog van bijna een maand terug was 't kort vermeld, maar nu is het verschenen en wat er aan informatie over beschikbaar is bevalt mij wel:

Ben Stahlberg, Spinoza's Philosophy of Divine Order. New York/etc., Peter Lang Verlag [American University Studies. Series 7: Theology and Religion. Vol. 353], 2015, 210 pp.

Book synopsis While Spinoza is often interpreted as an early secular or liberal thinker, this book argues that such interpretations neglect the senses of order and authority that are at the heart of Spinoza’s idea of God. For Spinoza, God is an organized and directed totality of all that exists. God is entirely immanent to this totality, to such an extent that all things are fundamentally of God. Appreciating the full extent to which God permeates and orders every aspect of reality, allows the full sense of Spinoza’s theories of tolerance and the social contract to come into view. Rather than assuming that human beings involved in political relationships are independent, autonomous individuals, for Spinoza they are parts of a larger whole subject to distinct natural laws. Spinoza maintains that such laws manifest themselves equally and identically in the seemingly distinct realms of religion and politics. In this respect, Spinoza’s theories of religion and biblical interpretation are not properly secular in character but rather blur the standard boundary between the religious and the political as they try to recognize and codify the inviolable laws of nature – or God.

Contents: «The Face of the Whole Universe»: Spinoza’s Idea of God – «A Kingdom Within a Kingdom»: Spinoza on the Individual and the Idea of the Will – «Nothing More Useful than Man…»: Spinoza on Politics – «The Supreme Reward of the Divine Law»: Law and Religion in Spinoza.

About the author: Ben Stahlberg received his PhD from Syracuse University in New York. He is currently Senior Lecturer of Religion at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.

Het betreft zijn dissertatie uit 2009.