The Two Eyes Of Spinoza Other Essays On Philosophers

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The Two Eyes of Spinoza & Other Essays on Philosophers

Author : Leszek Kołakowski
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis The Two Eyes of Spinoza & Other Essays on Philosophers by : Leszek Kołakowski

Download or read book The Two Eyes of Spinoza & Other Essays on Philosophers written by Leszek Kołakowski and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Known in the English-speaking world mainly as the author of Main Currents of Marxism (1976), and in France as the author of the monumental study Chrétiens sans Eglise (1966), in his Two Eyes of Spinoza and Other Essays on Philosophers Leszek Kolakowski offers the English-speaking reader for the first time a significant selection of his early writings. Originally written in Polish, German, and French, this collection is his first book ever in English on seventeenth-century thought, which subject he has been writing on since "Individual and Infinity: Freedom and Antinomies of Freedom in the Philosophy of Spinoza" was published in 1957. Included in Two Eyes of Spinoza are essays on "The Philosophical Role of the Reformation" and the "Mystical Heresy," on Uriel da Costa, Spinoza, Gassendi, and Pierre Bayle, but also on Freud, Marx, Avenarius, and Heidegger. Also included is Kolakowski's well-known essay "The Priest and the Jester," in which he considers the question of the theological heritage in contemporary thought.

The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza

Author : Michael Della Rocca
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0195335821
Total Pages : 713 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (953 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza by : Michael Della Rocca

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza written by Michael Della Rocca and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 713 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until recently, Spinoza's standing in Anglophone studies of philosophy has been relatively low and has only seemed to confirm Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's assessment of him as a dead dog. However, an exuberant outburst of excellent scholarship on Spinoza has of late come to dominate work on early modern philosophy. This resurgence is due in no small part to the recent revival of metaphysics in contemporary philosophy and to the increased appreciation of Spinoza's role as an unorthodox, pivotal figure - indeed, perhaps the pivotal figure - in the development of Enlightenment thinking. Spinoza's penetrating articulation of his extreme rationalism makes him a demanding philosopher who offers deep and prescient challenges to all subsequent, inevitably less radical approaches to philosophy. While the twenty-six essays in this volume - by many of the world's leading Spinoza specialists - grapple directly with Spinoza's most important arguments, these essays also seek to identify and explain Spinoza's debts to previous philosophy, his influence on later philosophers, and his significance for contemporary philosophy and for us.

When Spinoza Met Marx

Author : Tracie Matysik
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226822346
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (268 download)

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Book Synopsis When Spinoza Met Marx by : Tracie Matysik

Download or read book When Spinoza Met Marx written by Tracie Matysik and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023-01-23 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores concepts that bring together the thinking of Spinoza and Marx. Karl Marx was a fiery revolutionary theorist who heralded the imminent demise of capitalism, while Spinoza was a contemplative philosopher who preached rational understanding and voiced skepticism about open rebellion. Spinoza criticized all teleological ideas as anthropomorphic fantasies, while Marxism came to be associated expressly with teleological historical development. Why, then, were socialists of the German nineteenth century consistently drawn to Spinoza as their philosophical guide? Tracie Matysik shows how the metaphorical meeting of Spinoza and Marx arose out of an intellectual conundrum around the meaning of activity. How is it, exactly, that humans can be fully determined creatures but also able to change their world? To address this paradox, many revolutionary theorists came to think of activity in the sense of Spinoza—as relating. Matysik follows these Spinozist-socialist intellectual experiments as they unfolded across the nineteenth century, drawing lessons from them that will be meaningful for the contemporary world.

Practical and Theoretical Reason in Modern Philosophy

Author : Paniel Reyes Cárdenas
Publisher : Vernon Press
ISBN 13 : 1648898572
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (488 download)

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Book Synopsis Practical and Theoretical Reason in Modern Philosophy by : Paniel Reyes Cárdenas

Download or read book Practical and Theoretical Reason in Modern Philosophy written by Paniel Reyes Cárdenas and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2024-04-02 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present collection aims to examine this fertile period in the history of philosophy concerning its significance for understanding the relation between theoretical and practical reason, or, relatedly, facts and values. Our contributors have explored different important ways in which both the shortcomings and insights of the theoretical/practical distinction have shaped Western philosophy.

Conflict, Power, and Multitude in Machiavelli and Spinoza

Author : Filippo Del Lucchese
Publisher : A&C Black
ISBN 13 : 1441153799
Total Pages : 363 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (411 download)

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Book Synopsis Conflict, Power, and Multitude in Machiavelli and Spinoza by : Filippo Del Lucchese

Download or read book Conflict, Power, and Multitude in Machiavelli and Spinoza written by Filippo Del Lucchese and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-10-20 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conflict, Power and Multitude in Machiavelli and Spinoza explores Spinoza's political philosophy by confronting it with that of Niccolò Machiavelli. Filippo Del Lucchese conducts a study of the relationship between Machiavelli and Spinoza from a perspective at once philosophical, historical and political. The book begins by showing how closely tied the two thinkers are in relation to realism. Del Lucchese then goes on to examine the theme of conflict as a crucial element of an understanding of Machiavelli and Spinoza's conceptions of modernity. The book concludes with an examination of the concept of 'multiplicity' and 'plural' expressions of politics, namely Machiavelli's popolo and Spinoza's multitudo. Overall, the Machiavelli-Spinoza axis offers a fruitful perspective through which to analyse the relationship between contending ideas of modernity from a historical point of view, and provides an original point of departure for discussing some key theoretical, political and juridical notions that have resurfaced in contemporary debates.

The Soul of Doubt

Author : Dominic Erdozain
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0199844615
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (998 download)

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Book Synopsis The Soul of Doubt by : Dominic Erdozain

Download or read book The Soul of Doubt written by Dominic Erdozain and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2016 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is widely assumed that science represents the enemy of religious faith. The Soul of Doubt proposes an alternative cause of unbelief: the Christian conscience. Dominic Erdozain argues that the real solvents of orthodoxy in the modern period have been concepts of moral equity and personal freedom generated by Christianity itself.

Voltaire's Jews and Modern Jewish Identity

Author : Harvey Mitchell
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134002343
Total Pages : 294 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (34 download)

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Book Synopsis Voltaire's Jews and Modern Jewish Identity by : Harvey Mitchell

Download or read book Voltaire's Jews and Modern Jewish Identity written by Harvey Mitchell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harvey Mitchell’s book argues that a reassessment of Voltaire’s treatment of traditional Judaism will sharpen discussion of the origins of, and responses to, the Enlightenment. His study shows how Voltaire’s nearly total antipathy to Judaism is best understood by stressing his self-regard as the author of an enlightened and rational universal history, which found Judaism’s memory of its past incoherent, and, in addition, failed to meet the criteria of objective history—a project in which he failed. Calling on an array of Jewish and non-Jewish figures to reveal how modern interpretations of Judaism may be traced to the core ideas of the Enlightenment, this book concludes that Voltaire paradoxically helped to foster the ambiguities and uncertainties of Judaism’s future.

Rethinking Philosophy in Light of the Bible

Author : Brayton Polka
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 073919318X
Total Pages : 187 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis Rethinking Philosophy in Light of the Bible by : Brayton Polka

Download or read book Rethinking Philosophy in Light of the Bible written by Brayton Polka and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rethinking Philosophy in Light of the Bible analyzes the ideas that are central to the philosophy of Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard in order to show that they are biblical in origin, both ontologically and historically. Brayton Polka argues that Schopenhauer has an altogether false conception of the fundamental ideas of the Bible—creation, the Fall of Adam and Eve, and covenantal love—and of Christianity, which leaves his philosophy irredeemably contradictory, as he himself acknowledges. The aim, then, is to show that our modern values, the values that constitute modernity, are biblical in origin. It is only when we come to understand that modernity is biblical from the beginning and that the Bible is modern unto the end that we are able to overcome the opposition, so evident today, between philosophy and theology, between reason and faith, and between the secular and the religious. Polka makes central the distinction that Kierkegaard draws between Christianity and Christendom: Christianity represents the coming into historical existence of the single individual; Christendom represents Christian values that are rationalized in pagan terms. As Kierkegaard shows us, if God has always existed eternally, then he has never existed eternally, then he has never come into historical existence for the single individual. The distinction between Christianity and Christendom is the distinction not between faith and reason, but between truth and idolatry. While theology and philosophy each represent the truth of Christianity, Schopenhauer’s idolatrous concepts of faith, no less than of reason, represent Christendom.

Paradox and Contradiction in the Biblical Traditions

Author : Brayton Polka
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 179363761X
Total Pages : 303 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (936 download)

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Book Synopsis Paradox and Contradiction in the Biblical Traditions by : Brayton Polka

Download or read book Paradox and Contradiction in the Biblical Traditions written by Brayton Polka and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-03-19 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The principal thesis that the author advances in this book is that paradox and contradiction constitute the two ways of the world. Paradox represents the way of the people of the Bible, and contradiction represents the way of all peoples who, having lived without knowledge of the Bible, have traditionally been known as gentiles or pagans. The two ideas that are central to the biblical way of life (as known historically by Jews, Christians, and Muslims) are creation and covenant, while the contradictory way of paganism has precisely been marked by the absence of these two concepts. In his book the author distinguishes the paradoxical way of the world from the contradictory way of the world through the examination of principal texts of four of the most significant early modern, European thinkers from the later sixteenth century to the earlier eighteenth century: Montaigne, Descartes, Spinoza, and Vico. He shows that each of these four authors, in distinctive yet fundamentally interrelated fashion, provides us with profound insight into how absolutely different the paradoxical way of the world as biblical is from the contradictory way of the world as found, primarily and specifically, in Greek and Roman antiquity.

Reason's Developing Self-Revelation

Author : Stephen Theron
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1443865079
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (438 download)

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Book Synopsis Reason's Developing Self-Revelation by : Stephen Theron

Download or read book Reason's Developing Self-Revelation written by Stephen Theron and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-07-24 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, the third of four in a series, coming after New Hegelian Essays, demonstrating how Hegel’s philosophy perfects the rational presentation of any and all religious representation, and its successor From Narrative to Necessity, showing the coincidence of the doctrines of Trinity, Creation and Incarnation with the humanist ideal, expounds religion, and Christianity in particular, as continuous unfolding in history of Reason’s Developing Self-Revelation, latterly in the crucible of Absolute Idealism, which is philosophy proper. A fourth book, on Hegel’s contribution to the reconciliation of cultures, explores the implications of Hegel’s thought for any possible ecumenism. Meanwhile, this third book opens with three chapters freeing Christian orthodoxy from all figurative representation, showing the connection with Hegel’s treatment of the logical forms under the heading of “The Subjective Notion” (see New Hegelian Essays, chapter seventeen) in his system of Logic. The book then progresses through several chapters of Hegelian Logic and metaphysics, concerning concepts of the self-explanatory, the one and the many, absolute simplicity, and coming, among other related topics, to a discussion of evolution philosophically viewed in relation to our knowledge and its possibility. By this route we come to a final question and chapter, “Christianity without (or within) God?” As God has to be self-determining, he cannot be given any finite name, but is the Absolute (loosed from all things, literally), or Pure Act, which is also, Idealism demonstrates, the Absolute Idea specifically. It follows that “Idea” adds no qualification to “Absolute”, since there is, by its concept, nothing outside of the latter, not even we ourselves. We are images and signs thereof, differentiated from it but not other than it.

On Poetry and Philosophy

Author : Brayton Polka
Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1666701262
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (667 download)

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Book Synopsis On Poetry and Philosophy by : Brayton Polka

Download or read book On Poetry and Philosophy written by Brayton Polka and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2021-11-04 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brayton Polka’s book, On Poetry and Philosophy: Thinking Metaphorically with Wordsworth and Kant, is unique in bringing poetry and philosophy together in a single study. The poet and the philosopher whom he makes central to his project are both revolutionary founders of modernity, Wordsworth of romantic poetry and Kant of critical philosophy. Both the poet and the philosopher, as the author makes clear in his study, found their principles, at once poetically metaphorical and philosophically critical, on the religious values that are central to the Bible—that all human beings are equal before God.

Narratives of Secularization

Author : Peter Harrison
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351348957
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (513 download)

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Book Synopsis Narratives of Secularization by : Peter Harrison

Download or read book Narratives of Secularization written by Peter Harrison and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is increasingly clear that histories of secularization are not simply dispassionate descriptions of the decline of religious belief and practice in the West. Rather, such narratives often seek to celebrate secularization, promote some version of it, lament it, or otherwise oppose it in favour of a programme of desecularization or resacralization. The aim of this book is to identify some of the major genres of the history of secularization and to explore their historical contexts, normative commitments, and tendential purposes. The contributors to the volume offer different perspectives on these questions, not least because a number of them are themselves participants in the cultural-political programs described above. The primary purpose of this book, however, is the identification of such programs rather than their promotion. Overall, the collection seeks to bring analytical clarity to ongoing debates about secularization and help explain the co-existence of apparently conflicting stories about the origins of Western modernity. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Intellectual History Review journal.

Fanaticism and the History of Philosophy

Author : Paul Katsafanas
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000990737
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (9 download)

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Book Synopsis Fanaticism and the History of Philosophy by : Paul Katsafanas

Download or read book Fanaticism and the History of Philosophy written by Paul Katsafanas and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-11-07 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Voltaire called fanaticism the "monster that pretends to be the child of religion". Philosophers, politicians, and cultural critics have decried fanaticism and attempted to define the distinctive qualities of the fanatic, whom Winston Churchill described as "someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject". Yet despite fanaticism’s role in the long history of social discord, human conflict, and political violence, it remains a relatively neglected topic in the history of philosophy. In this outstanding inquiry into the philosophical history of fanaticism, a team of international contributors examine the topic from antiquity to the present day. Organized into four sections, topics covered include: Fanaticism in ancient Greek, Indian, and Chinese philosophy; Fanaticism and superstition from Hobbes to Hume, including chapters on Locke and Montesquieu, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson; Kant, Germaine de Stael, Hegel, Nietzsche, William James, and Jorge Portilla on fanaticism; Fanaticism and terrorism; and extremism and gender, including the philosophy and morality of the "manosphere"; Closed-mindedness and political and epistemological fanaticism. Spanning themes from superstition, enthusiasm, and misanthropy to the emotions, purity, and the need for certainty, Fanaticism and the History of Philosophy is a landmark volume for anyone researching and teaching the history of philosophy, particularly ethics and moral philosophy. It is also a valuable resource for those studying fanaticism in related fields such as religion, the history of political thought, sociology, and the history of ideas.

Dictionary of Twentieth-Century British Philosophers

Author : Stuart Brown
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1441192417
Total Pages : 1246 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (411 download)

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Book Synopsis Dictionary of Twentieth-Century British Philosophers by : Stuart Brown

Download or read book Dictionary of Twentieth-Century British Philosophers written by Stuart Brown and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2005-06-01 with total page 1246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a two-volume work with entries on individuals who made some contribution to philosophy in the period 1900 to 1960 or soon after. The entries deal with the whole philosophical work of an individual or, in the case of philosophers still living, their whole work to date. Typically the individuals included have been born by 1935 and by now have made their main contributions. Contributions to the subject typically take the form of books or journal articles, but influential teachers and people otherwise important in the world of philosophy may also be included. The dictionary includes amateurs as well as professional philosophers and, where appropriate, thinkers whose main discipline was outside philosophy. There are special problems about the term "British" in the twentieth century, partly because of human migration, partly because of decolonialization and the changing denotation of the term. The intention has been to include not only those who were British subjects at least for a significant part of their lives (even if they mostly lived outside what is now the U.K.) but also people who spent a significant part of their lives in Britain itself, irrespective of their nationality or country of origin. In the first category are included, for instance, a number of people who were born and educated in Britain but who subsequently taught in universities abroad. In the second category are included those who were born elsewhere but who came to Britain and contributed to its philosophical culture.

Sacrifice and Delight in the Mystical Theologies of Anna Maria van Schurman and Madame Jeanne Guyon

Author : Bo Karen Lee
Publisher : University of Notre Dame Pess
ISBN 13 : 0268085846
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (68 download)

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Book Synopsis Sacrifice and Delight in the Mystical Theologies of Anna Maria van Schurman and Madame Jeanne Guyon by : Bo Karen Lee

Download or read book Sacrifice and Delight in the Mystical Theologies of Anna Maria van Schurman and Madame Jeanne Guyon written by Bo Karen Lee and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2014-11-07 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this compelling study of two seventeenth-century female mystics, Bo Karen Lee examines the writings of Anna Maria van Schurman and Madame Jeanne Guyon, who, despite different religious formations, came to similar conclusions about the experience of God in contemplative prayer. Van Schurman was born into a Dutch Calvinist family and became a superb scriptural commentator before undergoing a dramatic religious conversion and joining the Labadist community, a Pietistic movement. Guyon was a French layperson whose thought would be identified with Quietism—a spiritual path that was looked upon with suspicion both by the French Catholic Church and by Rome. Lee analyzes and compares the themes of self-denial and self-annihilation in the writings of these two mystics. In van Schurman's case, the focus is on the distinction between scholastic knowledge of God and the intima notitia Dei accessible only by radical self-denial. In Guyon's case, it is on the union with God that is accessible only through a painful self-annihilation. For both authors, Lee demonstrates that the desire for enjoyment of God plays an important role as the engine of the soul's progress away from self-centeredness. The appendices offer facing Latin and English translations of two letters by van Schurman and a selection from her Eukleria.

Meyer Schapiro’s Critical Debates

Author : C. Oliver O’Donnell
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271085541
Total Pages : 172 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Meyer Schapiro’s Critical Debates by : C. Oliver O’Donnell

Download or read book Meyer Schapiro’s Critical Debates written by C. Oliver O’Donnell and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Described in the New York Times as the greatest art historian America ever produced, Meyer Schapiro was both a close friend to many of the famous artists of his generation and a scholar who engaged in public debate with some of the major intellectuals of his time. This volume synthesizes his prolific career for the first time, demonstrating how Schapiro worked from the nexus of artistic and intellectual practice to confront some of the twentieth century’s most abiding questions. Schapiro was renowned for pioneering interdisciplinary approaches to interpreting visual art. His lengthy formal analyses in the 1920s, Marxist interpretations in the 1930s, psychoanalytic critiques in the 1950s and 1960s, and semiotic explorations in the 1970s all helped open new avenues for inquiry. Based on archival research, C. Oliver O’Donnell’s study is structured chronologically around eight defining debates in which Schapiro participated, including his dispute with Isaiah Berlin over the life and writing of Bernard Berenson, Schapiro’s critique of Martin Heidegger’s ekphrastic commentary on Van Gogh, and his confrontation with Claude Lévi-Strauss over the applicability of mathematics to the interpretation of visual art. O’Donnell’s thoughtful analysis of these intellectual exchanges not only traces Schapiro’s philosophical evolution but also relates them to the development of art history as a discipline, to central tensions of artistic modernism, and to modern intellectual history as a whole. Comprehensive and thought-provoking, this study of Schapiro’s career pieces together the separate strands of his work into one cohesive picture. In doing so, it reveals Schapiro’s substantial impact on the field of art history and on twentieth-century modernism.

Kant’s Rational Religion and the Radical Enlightenment

Author : Anna Tomaszewska
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350195863
Total Pages : 233 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (51 download)

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Book Synopsis Kant’s Rational Religion and the Radical Enlightenment by : Anna Tomaszewska

Download or read book Kant’s Rational Religion and the Radical Enlightenment written by Anna Tomaszewska and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-07-28 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kant's defence of religion and attempts to reconcile faith with reason position him as a moderate Enlightenment thinker in existing scholarship. Challenging this view and reconceptualising Kant's religion along rationalist lines, Anna Tomaszewska sheds light on its affinities with the ideas of the radical Enlightenment, originating in the work of Baruch Spinoza and understood as a critique of divine revelation. Distinguishing the epistemological, ethical and political aspects of such a critique, Tomaszewska shows how Kant's defence of religion consists of rationalizing its core tenets and establishing morality as the essence of religious faith. She aligns him with other early modern rationalists and German Spinozists and reveals the significance for contemporary political philosophy. Providing reasons for prioritizing freedom of thought, and hence religious criticism, over an unqualified freedom of belief, Kant's theology approximates the secularising tendency of the radical Enlightenment. Here is an understanding of how the shift towards a secular outlook in Western culture was shaped by attempts to rationalize rather than uproot Christianity.