Abstract
Regarding the enormous amount of pamphlets but also serious works that appeared both in Spinoza’s life-time but also later denouncing his philosophy as extremely critical of all religions which claim to be based on supernatural revelation, it is surprising to learn that the eighteenth century witnessed a theological reception of Spinoza’s works, mostly among Protestant thinkers, as indeed has been shown by W. Schmidt-Biggemann. Obviously, the key figure of this positive reception was Lessing, whose reaction to the ode to Prometheus by Goethe in Jacobi’s Spinoza-book came to be interpreted as a kind of Spinozistic Credo. Jacobi himself was of the opinion that Spinozism is fatalistic Pantheism, and therefore represents the most poisonous evil that must be overcome if our task is to establish a real Christian philosophy. This conviction became the point of departure for the post-Kantian thinkers who acknowledged the decisive importance of Spinoza’s thinking precisely by attempting to defuse it, as it were. The most interesting and at the same time the most enigmatic was Schelling’s attempt to reach this goal. In his Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom (Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit und die damit zusammenhängenden Gegenstände), he not only referred continuously to Spinoza but also made frequent mention of Lessing and cited his writings several times.
Keywords
- Contemporary Natural Philosophy
- Philosophical Investigation
- Ontological Argument
- Creative Power
- Absolute Identity
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I would like to express my gratitude to Thomas Buchheim for his profound and sometimes critical remarks on an earlier version of this text.
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- 1.
The quotations are taken from the following translation: Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, transl. by J. Love and J. Schmidt, New York: State University of New York Press, 2006. As usual, I will provide the reader with the page numbers of vol. VII of the edition prepared by Schelling ’s son. As for the German text, I made use of the critical edition: F. W. J. Schelling: Über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (Hg. von Th. Buchheim), Hamburg: Meiner Verlag, 1997 (PhB 503). The data of the motto are as follows: VII 343, Buchheim 15; Love-Schmidt 14 sk.
- 2.
Cf. especially his study “Veritas particeps Dei. Der Spinozismus im Horizont mystischer und rationalistischer Theologie” in his book Theodizee und Tatsachen. Das philosophische Profil der deutschen Aufklärung, Frankfurt a/M: Suhrkamp, 1988, 117–149.
- 3.
I quote Spinoza ’s Ethics from E. Curley’s translation: The Collected Works of Spinoza, Princeton: PUP, 1985, vol. 1. The present quotations is from Curley 498 sq, italics are mine.
- 4.
Cf. W. Röd: Der Gott der reinen Vernunft Ontologischer Gottesbeweis und rationalistische Philosophie, München: Beck,22009, 55–104.
- 5.
VII 345, Love -Schmidt 17.
- 6.
VII 347, Love -Schmidt 19.
- 7.
VII 350, Love -Schmidt 21.
- 8.
Ibid.
- 9.
VII 356, Love -Schmidt 26.
- 10.
VII 357, Love -Schmidt 29 f.
- 11.
Curley 417.
- 12.
Curley 439, the translation has been slightly modified.
- 13.
VII 357, Love -Schmidt 27.
- 14.
VII 351, Love -Schmidt 22.
- 15.
VII 358, Love -Schmidt 27.
- 16.
One might be tempted to add: negative potency.
- 17.
VII 358, Love -Schmidt 28.
- 18.
VII 359, Love -Schmidt 29.
- 19.
VII 359, Love -Schmidt 29.
- 20.
VII 359, Love -Schmidt 28.
- 21.
VII 360 f, Love -Schmidt 30.
- 22.
VII 359, Love -Schmidt 29.
- 23.
VII 361, Love -Schmidt 30.
- 24.
VII 361, Love -Schmidt 30 sq.
- 25.
Curley 96.
- 26.
VII 362, Love -Schmidt 31.
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Boros, G. (2017). Pantheistic Ways of Immediate Experience of God: Spinoza and the Early Schelling. In: Vassányi, M., Sepsi, E., Daróczi, A. (eds) The Immediacy of Mystical Experience in the European Tradition. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45069-8_15
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