******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
The Radical Enlightenment starts with Baruch Spinoza’s materialist philosophy. There is a direct line from Spinoza to Marx and Engels via the French Revolution. Why Spinoza? Why does Jonathan Israel — and for that matter, many Marxists — consider Spinoza so central a philosopher? Why did the precursors of Marx, such as Feuerbach, call Spinoza, “the Moses of the modern free-thinkers and materialists,” and why did Heine even compare Spinoza to Christ?1 What accounts for all this celebration? It is that Spinoza’s philosophy represents the sharpest break with ancient and medieval worldviews, inaugurating a new beginning. Unlike the rationalism of René Descartes or Gottfried Leibniz, Spinoza’s was monistic; it rejected Descartes’s incomplete break with the Catholic Church, as well as Leibniz’s attempt to cloak theism in reason. The British empiricists, such as John Locke, likewise cut deals between knowledge and traditional faith. All these figures made concessions to God and throne. This was a shamefaced Enlightenment, ashamed of its own power of reason. Out of these early modern intellectuals, it was Spinoza who most clearly rejected all supernatural admixtures with reason. It is with him that philosophical modernity truly begins. (More at) https://tinyurl.com/y3g9t2e7 Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant http://www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math ____________________________________________________________ Sponsored by https://www.newser.com/?utm_source=part&utm_medium=uol&utm_campaign=rss_taglines_more Trump Exiles Clinton, Bush Portraits at White House http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/5f1451321f0c051317c4cst02vuc1 2 GOP Senators Honor the Wrong Black Congressman http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/5f1451323f53851317c4cst02vuc2 Olympics Figure Skater Dies at 20 in Moscow http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/5f1451325f91b51317c4cst02vuc3 _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
