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.
