Insightful study of one of the great modern thinkers
Susan James explores the revolutionary political thought of one of the most radical and creative of modern philosophers, Baruch Spinoza. His Theologico-Political Treatise of 1670 defends religious pluralism, political republicanism, and intellectual freedom. James shows how this work played a crucial role in the development of modern society.
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Summary
Insightful study of one of the great modern thinkers
Susan James explores the revolutionary political thought of one of the most radical and creative of modern philosophers, Baruch Spinoza. His Theologico-Political Treatise of 1670 defends religious pluralism, political republicanism, and intellectual freedom. James shows how this work played a crucial role in the development of modern society.
Description
Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise is simultaneously a work of philosophy and a piece of practical politics. It defends religious pluralism, a republican form of political organisation, and the freedom to philosophise, with a determination that is extremely rare in seventeenth-century thought. But it is also a fierce and polemical intervention in a series of Dutch disputes over issues about which Spinoza and his opponents cared very deeply.Susan James makes the arguments of the Treatise accessible, and their motivations plain, by setting them in their historical and philosophical context. She identifies the interlocking theological, hermeneutic,historical, philosophical, and political positions to which Spinoza was responding, shows who he aimed to discredit, and reveals what he intended to achieve. The immediate goal of the Treatise is, she establishes, a local one. Spinoza is trying to persuade his fellow citizens that it is vital to uphold and foster conditions in which they can cultivate their capacity to live rationally, free from the political manifestations and corrosive psychological effects of superstitious fear. At the sametime, however, his radical argument is designed for a broader audience. Appealing to the universal philosophical principles that he develops in greater detail in his Ethics, and drawing on theresources of imagination to make them forceful and compelling, Spinoza speaks to the inhabitants of all societies, including our own. Only in certain political circumstances is it possible to philosophise, and learn to live wisely and well.
Awards
Winner of Winner of the Journal of the History of Philosophy Book Prize.
Critic Reviews
“"Susan James's book on Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise is a magnificent work of historical and contextually focused philosophical scholarship. Anyone interested in Spinoza, the Dutch Republic, or early modern philosophy would profit by reading it. James richly situates Spinoza's Treatise in its proper context and thereby illuminates Spinoza's thought in a profound way. The Spinoza that emerges here is not the abstract metaphysician of the Ethics, but a savvy political thinker addressing the particulars of his time and place. In all, this book should fundamentally alter the way we think of this great text and, more broadly, the issues it addresses." --Journal of the History of Philosophy”
`James's style is elegant, and her reading of Spinoza's text is both perceptive and thorough ... a serious and important work in which the author reads Spinoza's text very closely.'Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
About the Author
Susan James is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College London, and the author of several books, including Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, also published by Oxford University Press. Her main areas of interest are early-modern philosophy, feminist philosophy, political philosophy, and the intersections between these three subjects.
Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise is simultaneously a work of philosophy and a piece of practical politics. It defends religious pluralism, a republican form of political organisation, and the freedom to philosophise, with a determination that is extremely rare in seventeenth-century thought. But it is also a fierce and polemical intervention in a series of Dutch disputes over issues about which Spinoza and his opponents cared very deeply. Susan James makes the arguments of the Treatise accessible, and their motivations plain, by setting them in their historical and philosophical context. She identifies the interlocking theological, hermeneutic, historical, philosophical, and political positions to which Spinoza was responding, shows who he aimed to discredit, and reveals what he intended to achieve. The immediate goal of the Treatise is, she establishes, a local one. Spinoza is trying to persuade his fellow citizens that it is vital to uphold and foster conditions in which they can cultivate their capacity to live rationally, free from the political manifestations and corrosive psychological effects of superstitious fear. At the same time, however, his radical argument is designed for a broader audience. Appealing to the universal philosophical principles that he develops in greater detail in his Ethics, and drawing on the resources of imagination to make them forceful and compelling, Spinoza speaks to the inhabitants of all societies, including our own. Only in certain political circumstances is it possible to philosophise, and learn to live wisely and well.
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