This article aims to show that Spinoza proposes a universal religion, whose essence structurally is faith and functionally is to worship by practicing justice and charity to others. Since Spinoza’s politics is in favor of a democratic state, we must make an effort to understand the contribution of both politics and religion to the aim of democratization. Yet, Spinoza’s critique of theocracy should not make his readers question his ideas concerning the maintenance of the relationship between politics and religion, because, (...) from the beginning of chapter nineteen of the TTP, he had planned to add considerations on the limits of religious authority. We will see Spinoza deal with religion as an indispensable part of society, which is simultaneously a subordinate of politics. In addition, we will find that it is not cost-effective if political systems would be based on a specific religious sect. He held that the separation of political and religious authorities will not be so easy to achieve or to affect a peaceful coexistence of good willing believers and the state‏.‏. (shrink)

My dissertation lays out some of the chief philosophical precursors to Jonathan Israel's Radical Enlightenment. It investigates the principal question of Will Durant's The Age of Voltaire: "How did it come about that a major part of the educated classes in Europe and America has lost faith in the theology that for fifteen centuries gave supernatural sanctions and supports to the precarious and uncongenial moral code upon which Western civilization has been based?" The aim of this project is both broad (...) and specific: the first is to provide a general history of the philosophical precursors to the Radical Enlightenment up until the early modern period, and the second is to highlight one of these precursors in detail, which I do in the large Spinoza part. With the assistance of a great deal of scholarship in philosophy of religion, history of philosophy, theological analysis, biblical criticism, and historiography, my dissertation contends that the major philosophical precursors against orthodox faith in revelation and for the Radical Enlightenment have been derived primarily from several forces. I present some of the general arguments of some of the pre-Socratics and Greek philosophers, especially Socrates and Plato, emphasizing their rationalist and non-theological thinking. Then I point out how some of this Greek philosophical literature led to new philosophical and theological elements in some of the teachings of the Church Fathers, some of the medievals, and some of the scholastics, up to the early modern period. The core of my argument, however, begins to pick up steam at the Renaissance. With the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, and the early Enlightenment New Philosophy, everything changes. Renaissance textual criticism of ancient texts leads to the beginnings of some genuine biblical criticism. The explosion of naturalist-leaning explanations of nature via Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes and many others in the Scientific Revolution leads many to wonder if God is needed. The rejection of Aristotelian and Scholastic metaphysics by the New Philosophers, most notably, Descartes, undermine what for many provided the philosophical underpinnings for the Church and theology. And then "the most unkindest cut of all," the revolutionary historical and textual criticism of the Bible which utterly undermines and refutes Judaism and Christianity. (shrink)