What Are The Proper Relations Between Reason And Faith In Human Life?

Spinoza and Pascal

Spinoza's theological-political treatise (1670) is one of the most important philosophical works of the early modern period. It discusses Spinoza in length the historical circumstances of composition and transmission of the Bible, demonstrating the fallacy of both its authors and interpreters. He argues that free inquiry, not only in accordance with the security and prosperity of the state, but in fact much to them, and that such freedom flourishes best in the Democratic and Republican state where people are free while religious organizations are subject to secular power. His treatise has a profound effect on the subsequent history of political thought, "secret" of the Enlightenment or radical philosophy, Bible hermeneutics, and textual criticism in general.

Over the centuries, Spinoza was regarded by his enemies and his supporters in the scientific literature and the popular imagination as a "pantheist". It is not clear, however, that this is the correct way to look at his ideas about God. Of course, Spinoza is not the traditional theist, for whom God is transcendent being. But is the identification of Spinoza's God with nature means that he, like so many have insisted for so long, since the beginning of the eighteenth century through to the most recent edition of Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, a pantheist?

In general, the pantheism of the opinion that rejects the transcendence of God. According to a pantheist, God is in some way, coincides with the world. There may be aspects of God, which is ontologically and epistemologically distinct from the world, but to pantheism, this should not mean that God is essentially separate from the world. Pantheist, also likely to reject any anthropomorphizing of God, or ascribing divinity of psychological and moral characteristics of the model of human nature. Pantheist god is (usually) not a personal God(Spinoza, p. 124).

Within this general framework, we can distinguish two types of pantheism. First, pantheism can be understood as a rejection of any distinction between God and the natural world and the assertion that God is really identical to all that exists. "God is everything and everything is God." From this point of view, God the world and all its natural content, and anything opposed to them. This reductive pantheism. Secondly, pantheism can be understood as an assertion that God is distinct from the natural world and its contents, but nevertheless contained or immanent within them, perhaps in the way in which water is contained in a saturated sponge. God is everything and everywhere, in this version, due to the fact everything inside. It is immanent pantheism, it includes, who argue that nature contains, in addition to its natural elements inherent supernatural and divine element(Spinoza, p. 167).

The question of what God should be identified with the whole of nature (ie, Natura naturans and Natura naturata) or just part of nature (ie, Natura naturans alone), which has taken a lot of contemporary literature, can be regarded as a key issue alleged Pantheism of ...