Op de website van New Jersey
Jewish News verscheen vanavond het volgende bericht:
David Brahinsky, zowel professor
of philosophy and comparative religion at Bucks County Community
College [in Newtown, Pa] en tevens singer-songwriter-guitarist die al
meer dan 30 jaar folk music brengt zal a.s. zondagmiddag 13 oktober
in het Jewish Heritage Museum van Monmouth County om 13:00 uur een
lezing geven over “Spinoza’s Influence on the Liberal, Democratic
Tradition”, gevolgd om 14:30 uur met een concert van zijn Roosevelt String Band een.
Maar waarom ik dit bericht hier
opneem is vanwege het volgende:
"Brahinsky told NJJN he
hopes to raise the profile of Baruch Spinoza, the 17th-century
Amsterdam-born Jewish philosopher who, he said, receives too little
credit for influencing America’s forefathers.
Brahinsky said it is more common
to link the ideas of England’s John Locke to those expressed in the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But Brahinsky plans
to discuss recent scholarship showing that Locke himself was inspired
by Spinoza, whose ideas of every individual’s claim to equality
through the power of reason still resonated a century after his
death.
Brahinsky said he has been
studying and teaching the philosophy of Spinoza since 1969, but it is
only within the last decade or two that the philosopher’s influence
on the fathers of American democracy has become known via works by
writers Jonathan Israel and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein."
Zou hij op de hoogte zijn van Wim Klevers LOCKE’S DISGUISED SPINOZISM? Dat staat al sinds januari 2009 op internet dus het zou inmiddels doorgedrongen kunnen zijn.