International Conference
The Radical Enlightenment: The Big Picture and its Details
16-17 May 2013, University Foundation, Egmontstraat 11, B-1000
Brussels
Practical Information and Book of Abstracts
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The Radical Enlightenment: The Big Picture and its Details
16-17 May 2013, University Foundation, Egmontstraat 11, B-1000 Brussels
‘The Radical Enlightenment: The Big Picture and its Details’ is organized by the Centre for
Ethics and Humanism and the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, which are both part
of the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences at the Free University of Brussels (Vrije
Universiteit Brussel). The conference has been made possible by funding from the Research
Foundation – Flanders (Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek – Vlaanderen) and
VisitBrussels.
Conference organizers
Steffen Ducheyne (Free University of Brussels), Jean Paul Van Bendegem (Free University of
Brussels), Karl Verstrynge (Free University of Brussels), Else Walravens (Free University of
Brussels)
Scientific committee
Herman De Dijn (University of Leuven), Steffen Ducheyne (Free University of Brussels),
Jonathan I. Israel (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton), Willem Lemmens (University of
Antwerp), Eric Schliesser (Ghent University), Winfried Schröder (Philipps-Universität
Marburg), Jean Paul Van Bendegem (Free University of Brussels), Wiep van Bunge (Erasmus
University Rotterdam), Maarten Van Dyck (Ghent University), Geert Van Eekert (University of
Antwerp), Karl Verstrynge (Free University of Brussels), and Else Walravens (Free University
of Brussels).
Organizing committee
Patrick Allo (Free University of Brussels), Steffen Ducheyne (Free University of Brussels), Jens
Ottoy (Free University of Brussels), Jean Paul Van Bendegem (Free University of Brussels),
Yoni Van Den Eeden (Free University of Brussels), Stephanie Van Droogenbroeck (Free
University of Brussels), Wim Van Moer (Free University of Brussels), Karl Verstrynge (Free
University of Brussels), and Else Walravens (Free University of Brussels).
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Contents
Practical Information………………………………………………………………………..p. 3
Keynote Lectures: Abstracts (listed alphabetically)……………………………………….p. 6
Contributed papers: Abstracts (listed alphabetically)………………………...…………..p. 11
List of Participants…………………………………………………………………………..p. 41
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Practical information
Important venues:
The conference venue is in the building of the University Foundation (Egmontstraat/Rue
d’Egmont 11, B-1000, Brussels). The conference dinner will be on Thursday 16 May at the
Bozar Brasserie (Baron Hortastraat/Rue Baron Horta 3, B-1000 Brussels) at 8 p.m. For a map,
see page 5.
Directions:
From Brussels Airport to railway station Brussel-Centraal/Bruxelles-Central. Participants
are advised to fly into Brussels Airport (http://www.brusselsairport.be/en/). The train ride from
Brussels Airport to Brussel-Centraal/Bruxelles-Central takes about 17 to 20 minutes. There are
on average up to 4 trains/hour (see: http://www.belgianrail.be/en/Default.aspx; point of
departure: ‘Brussel-Nat-Luchthaven [NMBS/SNCB]’). It is useful to know that the railway
station at Brussels Airport is located at level -1.
Note: Some airlines fly into the airport of Charleroi, which is quite misleadingly called ‘Brussels
South (Charleroi) Airport’. Ground transportation to Brussels from Charleroi is more laborious:
the airport in Charleroi is at a distance of roughly 60 kilometres (or roughly 37 miles) from the
centre of Brussels. There is a shuttle service from the airport of Charleroi to railway station
Brussels-Zuid/Bruxelles-Midi which, depending on the traffic, takes about 60 to 90 minutes (see:
http://www.charleroi-airport.com/en/passengers/acces-and-parking/brussels-cityshuttle/index.html).
From railway station Brussel-Zuid/Bruxelles-Midi (Thalys and Eurostar terminals) to rail
station Brussel-Central/Bruxelles-Central. There are up to 20 trains/hour that take you to
Brussel-Central/Bruxelles-Central. The train ride takes about 3 to 5 minutes (see:
http://www.belgianrail.be/en/Default.aspx).
From railway station Brussel-Centraal/Bruxelles-Central to the conference venue
(Egmontstraat/Rue d’Egmont 11, B-1000 Brussels). Brussels has an intricate public
transportation network of buses, trams, and metros. On the website of the MIVB/STIB, the
public transport company that exploits the Brussels metro, tram, and bus lines, you will find a
journey planner (http://www.mivb.be/reisweg-itineraire.html?l=en; your stop of departure is
‘BRUXELLES CENTRAL’; your stop of arrival is ‘TRONE’; the trip by bus or metro takes
about 9 to 13 minutes).1 The stop ‘Troon/Trône’ is on walking distance from the conference
1
There are four alternative routes that will take you to Troon/Trône. By bus: take bus line 38 in the direction of
Helden/Héros and get off at Troon/Trône or take bus line 71 in the direction of Delta, get off at Hertog/Ducale and
walk to Troon/Trône. By metro: take metro line 1 in de direction of Stokkel/Stockel, get off at Kunstwet/Art-Loi
(Wetstraat/Rue de la Loi), walk to Kunstwet/Art-Loi (Kunstwettunnel/Tunnel Arts-Loi), take metro line 2 in the
direction of Simonis, and get off at Troon/Trône or take metro line 5 in the direction of Herrmann-Debroux, get off
at Kunstwet/Art-Loi (Wetstraat/Rue de la Loi), walk to Kunstwet/Art-Loi (Kunstwettunnel/Tunnel Arts-Loi), take
metro line 6 in the direction of Koning Boudewijn/Roi Baudouin, and get off at Troon/Trône.
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venue (ca. 300 metres). A healthy alternative is to walk from Brussel-Centraal/Bruxelles-Central
to Egmontstraat 11 (only 1.4 kilometres or ca. 20 minutes).
Accommodation:
http://visitbrussels.be/bitc/BE_en/sleep/hotels.do
http://maps.google.be/maps?um=1&ie=UTF8&q=hotels+brussels&fb=1&gl=be&hq=hotels&hnear=0x47c3a4ed73c76867:0xc18b3a6678730
2a7,Brussel&sa=X&ei=1C1cUc3YNOqM7AbljIHYBw&ved=0CJECELYD
http://www.booking.com/
General information on Brussels:
http://visitbrussels.be/bitc/front/home/display/clt/BE_en/section/visiteur.do
http://www.biponline.be/?q=bip-home
http://www.use-it.be/brussels/
Some things to do:
http://www.shopinbrussels.be/EN
http://atomium.be/?lang=en
http://www.fine-arts-museum.be/site/EN/default.asp
http://www.abconcerts.be/en
http://www.kunstberg.com/en/49
http://www.hortamuseum.be/Welcome.htm
http://www.visitbelgium.com/index.php/our-cities/brussels/brussels-highlights
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1. Brussel-Centraal/Bruxelles-Central is railway station closest to the conference venue.
2. The conference diner will be here on Thursday 16 May at 8 p.m. Address: Bozar Brasserie, Baron Hortastraat/Rue
Baron Horta 3, 1000 Brussels.
3. Lunchtime suggestion: Cafetaria Musée BELvue (salad bar). Address: Paleizenplein/Place des Palais 7, B-1000
Brussels. URL: http://belvue.be/fr/infos-pratiques/belvue-food.
4. Troon/Trône is the bus and metro stop closest to the conference venue.
5. The University Foundation is the conference venue. Some keynote speakers will stay in the Hotel of the
University Foundation. Address: Egmontstraat/Rue d’Egmont 11, B-1000 Brussels.
6. Some keynote speakers will spend the night here on Wednesday 15 May 2013. Address: Aqua Hotel Brussels, de
Stassartstraat/Rue de Stassart 43, 1050 Brussels. URL: http://www.aqua-hotel-brussels.com.
7. Lunchtime suggestion: Le Trappiste (traditional food). Address: Gulden-Vlieslaan/Avenue de la Toison d’Or 3,
B-1050 Brussels. URL: http://letrappiste.be/.
8. Lunchtime suggestion: Exki (sandwich bar). Address: Elsensesteenweg/Chaussée d'Ixelles 12, B-1000 Brussels.
9. Lunchtime suggestion: Eat Sushi (sushi!). Address: Marsveldplein/Place du Champs de Mars 5, B-1050 Brussels.
URL: http://www.eatsushi.be/.
10. Lunchtime suggestion: Break Time (sandwich bar). Address: Marnixlaan/Avenue Marnix 14C, B-1000 Brussels.
URL: http://www.snackbreaktime.be/cart.html.
11. Lunchtime suggestion: Pulp (sandwich bar). Address: Luxemburgstraat/Rue de Luxembourg 4, B-1000 Brussel.
URL: www.pulp.be.
12. Lunchtime suggestion: Al dente (Italian food). Address: Troonstraat/Rue du Trône 22, B-1000 Brussels. URL:
www.trattoriaaldente.be.
13. Lunchtime suggestion: El Verde (Latin American and Mediterranean food). Address: Troonstraat/Rue du Trône
39, B-1050 Brussels. URL: www.elverde.be.
The above map may be consulted online at:
https://maps.google.be/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=213949261974258011548.0004d9137e6344194f899&ie=UTF8&ll=
50.84004,4.364426&spn=0.012046,0.033023&t=m&z=16&vpsrc=6.
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Keynote Lectures: Abstracts (listed alphabetically)
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Radical Enlightenment: Monism and the Rise of Modern Democratic Republicanism
Jonathan I. Israel
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
At its culminating moment, the democratic republicanism of the early part of the French
Revolution before Robespierre’s totalitarian coup d’état and the onset of the Terror, i.e. the
democratic republican phase (1788-93), the democrats clearly saw the danger posed by totalitarian
tendencies in modern society embodied in Marat and Robespierre. The democratic republican
programme most clearly formulated by Condorcet, Brissot and Paine can be characterized as
follows: 1) the overriding need to enlighten the whole of society (and not just a small minority as
the moderate Enlightenment of Voltaire, Hume and Montesquieu would have it) and,
correspondingly, the need for a universal system of secular education; 2) severe curtailing of all
religious authority; 3) the need for a new universal secular morality as the basis of civics, law,
education and institutions that does not rely in any way on religion; 4) the need for full freedom of
thought, conscience and expression, including full freedom of the press; 5) the idea that basic
human rights have to be spelt out in a charter of human rights to protect basic freedoms; and, 6) the
need for a constitution to fix the political forms which will maintain democratic freedom.
Democracy was also an inherent part of the opening phase of the Radical Enlightenment, in
the later seventeenth century, in the thought of Spinoza particularly. The main object of this keynote lecture will be to focus on, explain and emphasize the underlying and fundamental connection
between the politics of Radical Enlightenment democracy and emancipation, on the one hand, and
the monism and one-substance philosophy of the Radical Enlightenment on the other. The most
important element here, I shall argue is the tendency of radical thought to eliminate the principle of
religious authority as society’s main guide, and especially to undermine the idea that divine
Providence guides and directs the course of human affairs together with the notion that moral truth
is a code divinely revealed to men through religious authority. The political programme of modern
democracy and equality resting on basic human rights can therefore be seen to rest on a
metaphysical-philosophical foundation that attempted to demonstrate its logical cogency and
correctness by basing itself on the findings of a purely secular science, scholarship and
understanding of nature.
What does Spinoza mean by equality in the Theological-Political Treatise?
Beth Lord
University of Aberdeen
It is claimed that one of Spinoza’s contributions to the Radical Enlightenment is his endorsement
of equality, usually taken in the moral or political sense. However, in the Theological-Political
Treatise his appeals to equality are ambiguous. Equality appears to be both natural and artificial,
both good for peace and bad for sovereignty. Our “equal right” extends from the state of nature
into the civil state, and yet no one should be compelled to “serve his equal”. The Ethics
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compounds the uncertainty over this matter. There, Spinoza’s metaphysics makes way not for the
moral equality of persons, but for their profound inequality, based on a hierarchy of our natural
powers. How should equality figure in politics and ethics if, as Susan James has recently argued,
the Theological-Political Treatise describes the society in which the ethical and liberating
purpose of the Ethics can be realized? What does Spinoza mean by equality, and what kind of
equal society – if any – does Spinoza think we should aim for? In this paper I will discuss the
meaning of equality in the Theological-Political Treatise, and suggest that understanding
equality in economic terms, rather than moral-political ones, can help us to address these
questions.
Spinoza and Enlightenment: Anti-Mathematics
Eric Schliesser
Ghent University
In this paper I show that Spinoza’s so-called letter on the infinite inspired and gave rise to a
number eighteenth century arguments that contested the epistemic and social status of (Newtonian)
mathematical sciences. I call these arguments ‘anti-mathematical’. By drawing on works by
Mandeville, Hume, Buffon, Diderot, amongst others, I distinguish between two kinds of antimathematical strategies: (a) global arguments, by which I mean that the epistemic and social status
of mathematical sciences in general is criticized; and (b) containment strategies, by which I mean
that the legitimacy and (epistemic) security of the application of mathematics is granted, but
limited to only very particular domains of inquiry (generally, astronomy and optics).
The paper consists of three main sections. First, I articulate the anti-mathematical arguments
of Spinoza’s letter on the infinite. These arguments concern the applicability of mathematics (and
the use of measures more generally) and the kind of knowledge this might generate. The main
argument can be captured as follows: by applying measure we create what we may call a limitation
of some part of the whole that is (without complete knowledge of the whole) arbitrary. A crucial
(anti-Cartesian) premise of the argument is that geometric number is not (to use an anachronistic
term) isomorphic with essential features of nature. This is why Spinoza associates mathematical
claims with (epistemically suspect) ‘abstraction’ (and imagination). This line of argument helps to
explain Spinoza’s scattered remarks about mathematical overconfidence despite his recognition
that mathematical sciences can be useful.
The main focus of the second section is to offer some examples of anti-mathematics. I focus
on David Hume's treatment in Treatise 1.2.4.17-33 (and 1.4.1-6) to illustrate what global
mathematics looks like in the context of Newtonian claims about the reliability of mathematical
natural philosophy. I argue that while Hume’s metaphysics is not Spinozistic, key features of his
argument (especially where it deviates from Berkeley’s related argument in De Motu) are similar to
Spinoza’s approach. Moreover, they are both motivated to deflate ‘scientific’ cosmogenies that
appeal to design. I use some arguments by Buffon and Mandeville to illuminate the nature of the
containment strategies available in the eighteenth century. Buffon (echoing Locke) grants that
mathematical approaches are appropriate for astronomy and optics, but only a useful subsidiary
means in natural history. Similarly, Mandeville argues that applied medical research (geared to
healing patients) has to be qualitative given the diversity of human nature and our lack of
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knowledge of micro-causes. (Mandeville also introduced a further set of arguments that deployed
what we might call the sociology of knowledge to deflate the status of mathematics as a signalling
device in recruiting patients.)
In the final section, I explore the enduring relevance of these discussion. In particular, by
drawing on Niewentijt’s relatively neglected work on Spinoza, I show that debates generated by
anti-mathematics encouraged the development of a new conception of the epistemic and
metaphysical status of applied mathematics.
De Sade: Heir of the Radical Enlightenment?
Winfried Schröder
Philipps-Universität Marburg
One would hardly expect the Marquis de Sade among the protagonists of the Radical
Enlightenment. However, de Sade – author of both pornographic novels and philosophical treatises
– piqued himself of being its boldest protagonist. He regarded his attack on the philosophical and
religious traditions as the most important contribution to the “progrès des lumières” and professed
his devotedness to the radical “philosophes” like the Baron d’Holbach (“[je suis son] sectateur
jusqu’au martyre, s'il le fallait”). In fact, lots of traces of their thought are present in his work,
among them key elements of Jonathan Israel’s concept of the Radical Enlightenment (materialism;
denial of a divine providence; atheism). As we know from the recently reconstructed catalogue of
his library, he was well acquainted with the main works of the French materialists and clandestine
radicals who are often quoted in his writings. On the other hand, De Sade’s aristocratism, moral
nihilism and other elements of his thought don’t, of course, go with the egalitarianism, humanism,
the democratic ideals and other key ideas of the Enlightenment (radical or moderate). This odd
example of an 18th-century thinker, who was distinctively radical (by Jonathan Israel’s standards)
in some respect and an opponent to the Enlightenment in others, raises several questions
concerning the concept of Radical Enlightenment. In particular, De Sade’s thought deserves a
closer analysis, because several recent critics of the Enlightenment and modernity (Lester Crocker,
Charles Taylor, and, of course, Horkheimer/Adorno) indeed regard him as an heir to the
Enlightenment and as a thinker, whose thought, as they put it, reveals the fatal consequences of the
‘philosophie des Lumières’.
The Waning of the Radical Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic
Wiep van Bunge
Erasmus University Rotterdam
When, in 1784, Friedrich Jacobi wanted to know more about Dutch Spinozism, his friend and
correspondent Frans Hemsterhuis sent him a copy of Abraham Cuffeler’s Specimen artis
ratiocinandi. This book had been published exactly a century before and had been written by a
lawyer from The Hague who must have known Spinoza personally. Cuffeler’s book was not the
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last specimen of Dutch Spinozism, but after Frederik van Leenhoff’s Den hemel op aarden (1703),
all we find in the Dutch Republic are mere – and often pretty ambiguous – traces of sympathy for
Spinoza (Smeeks, Sandvoort, Tyssot de Patot, Wyermars). There is, however, no evidence for any
sustained eighteenth-century ‘Dutch Spinozism’. In this lecture an attempt will be made to explain
why such a movement failed to develop.
The Radicality of Johann Christian Edelmann: A Synthesis of Progressive Enlightenment,
Pluralism and Spiritualism
Else Walravens
Free University of Brussels (VUB)
Both supporters and opponents frequently call Johann Christian Edelmann (1698-1767) a radical
thinker. In my lecture I will consider and evaluate the reasons why he is labelled that way. I will
discuss the following features of his attitude and thought: 1. his affinity with radical pietism and his
later alliance with freethinking; 2. the fearlessness of his attacks and the frank and often coarse and
even insulting language he uses in his writings; 3. his uncompromising criticism of ecclesiastical,
religious and, to a smaller degree, political authorities; 4. his drastic criticism of the Old and the
New Testament, and especially his unmasking of both orthodox and pietistic Christian belief as
inhuman and misanthropic; 5. his outspoken Spinozism (criticism of religion and pantheism) and
his alleged atheism; 6. his passionate plea in favour of freedom of thought and of speech.
From this assessment I will characterize the genuine nature of Edelmann’s (mature) thought.
It appears to be a combination of progressive Enlightenment, pluralism and spiritualism. My
reading of this position is that it is not a contradictory mixture of new and outdated views, but an
innovative synthesis.
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Contributed Papers: Abstracts (listed alphabetically)
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Multitude, Prophets and Philosophers, Public Opinion and State. Deconstructing and
Resituating Spinoza’s Radical Political Thought in the Context of Today’s Crisis of
Democracy
Emiliano Acosta
Ghent University
In this paper I explore some central elements of Spinoza’s political thought that use to be ignored
by the progressive and conservative interpretations of the “radical” Spinoza such as the real (in
opposition to the imaginary) multitude, the role of the a- or anti-political social actors and of the
State concerning the multitude and the administration of public opinion, and the anti/contrarevolutionary spirit of Spinoza’s reflexions on the political and the politics. My reading of
Spinoza’s conception of politics and the political, based principally on his TTP and TP, aims first
of all at showing that today’s dominant interpretations of the “radical Spinoza” in political
philosophy focus exclusively on what Spinoza has said about the individuals, their rights,
freedom and power and do not let us see the radical character of Spinoza’s reflexions on the
State, which even in our days –unlike other elements of his radical thought– can be considered as
radical, because of its controversial and challenging character. This paper consists of three parts.
In the first part, I deconstruct the left and liberal interpretations of Spinoza’s “multitude” by
showing that the real multitude in Spinoza’s political writings is not the subject of an
emancipation project, but rather the object of politics understood as a theory addressed to
politicians of how to conserve and increase power in order to guarantee social order. In the
second part, I first reconstruct the emergence of the main social actors in the transit from the
indeterminacy of the natural state to the establishment of a social and political order. Secondly, I
reconstruct the dynamic of social life conceived in terms of tensions between the different social
actors. Finally, I give a new interpretation of Spinoza’s mechanism of censorship arguing that it
is precisely here that we can find a radical conception of social and political life that still enjoys
critical potential in regard to today’s dominant discourse on social and political life. In the last
and third part, I suggest as a conclusion that Spinoza’s political thought, far from articulating an
emancipative (revolutionary) discourse, offers a conception of the tensions between the different
social actors and the State that can be used as a theoretic dispositive to make visible both the
inherent tensions between the different political and a-political actors in a democratic system,
and some central aspects in today’s political crisis such as the problem of the weakness of the
State and the politics in confronting today’s crisis of democracy.
Christiaan Huygens’s Cosmotheoros: A Dialogue between Science and Religion
Fabien Chareix
Université Paris-Sorbonne
It has often been said that Christiaan Huygens was merely a scientist, with nothing more in his
works than a pure and positive contribution to modern physics and mathematics. However, this
picture cannot account for the numerous manuscripts in which this natural philosopher deals with
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the very question of religion, namely: predestination, God’s interference with the actual and
foreseen composition of the universe, or the cosmological proof of God’s existence. In this
regard, the Cosmotheoros, last and influential piece of work from the discoverer of Saturn’s
rings, is worth a reappraisal. While reading it, a model for bridging science and religion can
emerge, a pattern that has been used, in the context of the Enlightenment.
Voltaire’s criticism of the metaphysical considerations assumed to aim at Leibniz’s
optimism, in Candide and Micromegas, turns out to be a misunderstanding of key arguments
found in Huygens cosmological book, further conveyed to the Enlightenment by Fontenelle’s
own account on the same topics. In the light of this second look at Huygens’ set of propositions,
we will see how Kant’s satire of the principles that ground Huygens and Fontenelle’s reasonings
sheds some light on how cosmology brings up intimate relations between religion and science.
In the context of the Enlightenment, this insight can help mapping the changes that have
occurred in religion as well as in science since the publication of the Cosmotheoros.
The Role of Jan Hendrik Glazemaker in Spinoza’s Network of Radical Thinkers
Patricia Cuoto
Universidade de Lisboa
I would like to call your attention to Jan Hendrik Glazemaker (1620-1682) assumed translator of
Spinoza and active member in the network composed by Mennonite, Collegiant, Cartesian and
Spinozist radicals. Glazemaker, who was born into a Mennonite family, was influenced by the
Collegiants, especially by the more rationalizing groups. He began translating in the 1640s and
after some years, he dedicated himself to the translation of Descartes and became more and more
involved in Spinoza’s network composed of radical freethinkers. Glazemaker was a professional
and highly productive translator. By analysing his choice of the books he translated and the
forewords he wrote, we become acquainted with his way of thinking and with his ideological
evolution. Glazemaker’s aim as a translator was to educate the common public. He was engaged
in emancipating the vernacular language that was the vehicle of clandestine heterodoxy.
Publishing in the vernacular enabled a non-academic audience to have access to new ideas and
form a critical mind. Glazemaker resorts to a common language that is simple, clear and
straightforward in opposition to the rhetorical language loaded with foreign loanwords. His
linguistic purism was a form of defending the common readers from another form of discourse
that was ideologically dominant but that they did not control. Glazemaker was an active adherent
of the “New Philosophy” and translated either works in accordance to the new scientific and
philosophical paradigm or works that he could adapt according to the new model of thinking.
The “New Philosophy” Glazemaker wanted to disseminate often could not be published in a
direct form: therefore, he resorted to various strategies from anonymous translations, the
compilation of an anonymous pamphlet to the manipulation of his translations. Another one of
Glazemaker’s features that becomes clear from his Livy translation at the beginning of his
career, is that he did not blindly obey his publisher’s orders. More often than not, Glazemaker
decided to take control: In his translation of Boxhorn, Glazemaker restructured the examples
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given in the source text.2 There are still other instances in which he acts not only as a translator,
but as a compiler and editor as well. The forewords written by Glazemaker are a way of
extending his translations and reflecting on his intentions. This was especially the case of the
passages in the forewords that were cryptic or obscure because their content was heretical and
could not be put forth openly. The meanings in those passages could only be detected by
insiders. From Glazemaker’s edition of an anonymous pamphlet (1673), his translations of
Spinoza (published in 1677 and posthumously in 1693), from his cryptic forewords and blatant
manipulation of some translations, it becomes clear that his project is that of a cultural
disseminator with an ideological and political agenda, an agenda that at that moment was
considered highly subversive and forbidden because his ideas came close to those of Spinoza.
The Counter Enlightenment: The Big Picture and its Details
Anthony DeSantis
University of South Florida
The paper I wish to deliver to the conference in Brussels on “The Radical Enlightenment: The
Big Picture and its Details” is this: “The Counter Enlightenment: The Big Picture and its
Details.” One simply cannot properly understand the Radical Enlightenment unless one also
learns what the Radical Enlightenment was fighting against (I have in mind here mostly the
biblical theological points of view of the Counter-Enlightenment). Indeed, in most respects,
many of the teachings of the Radical Enlightenment have their origins in this very reaction.
Therefore, the student of the Enlightenment who does not accurately understand Christianity and
its sources will not accurately understand the Radical Enlightenment.
In most books on the Enlightenment, the Big Picture of the Counter Enlightenment is
usually presented in general terms; that is, the social facts of various church officials,
theologians, religious philosophers and government officials did all that they could to stop,
prevent, imprison, etc. those movements, books, etc. that were deemed heretical, ungodly, or
unorthodox. But the details of why they continually labored to counter the Enlightenment
however have not, at least in my estimation, been made sufficiently clear. The reason why I think
that this subject would be of interest to the conference is because in my review and study of the
scholarly literature on the Radical Enlightenment and early modern philosophy, there is a
deficiency regarding primary source explanations of the Counter-Enlightenment’s side of things;
and this includes works directly on the Counter Enlightenment by such historians as Darrin
McMahon’s Enemies of the Enlightenment and Jonathan Israel’s Democratic Enlightenment on
the anti-philosophes.
The neglect of expounding the foundations of the Radical Enlightenment’s enemy occurs,
I believe, for a number of reasons, including what the Radical Enlightenment itself has caused,
that is, its pervasive secularization of not only government and law, but of education, as well. In
the 21st century West, most people are educated in secular institutions of
learning. Consequently, students are no longer publicly taught to believe or even to study the
Bible or Church history as was the case in the early modern period. As a result, many
2
Erik de Bom, Een subtiele transformatie van Justus Lipsius’ Monita et exempla politica? De Staatkundige
vermaningen en voorbeelden van J.H. Glazemaker. De Zeventiende Eeuw, vol. 24, 2008, pp. 210-226.
14
Enlightenment scholars and historians of philosophy are simply not as educated or trained in the
things of Christianity as the 17th- and 18th-century Enlightenment proponents and opponents
were – especially regarding scripture and theology.
The status of the Eucharist or the Trinity is no longer a living issue that produces social
and political strife for many academics today as it most certainly was for those during much of
the Enlightenment. Contemporary scholars are understandably more interested in issues closer to
their field in contemporary philosophy, for instance. But how can one competently judge
Hobbes’s Leviathan or Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise, which are literally filled with
scriptural and theological argumentation, unless one knows the scriptures and theology well? I
make it a point in my paper to deal with this deficit by addressing the various CounterEnlightenments’ positions not only in general, wide-sweeping summations, but from multiple,
specific, and documented sources from their own scripture, church fathers, and key theologians
throughout their history up until the Radical Enlightenment.
Radical Atheism: Jean Meslier in Context
Charles Devellennes
University of Kent
In the past decade, the Radical Enlightenment has been the focus of numerous studies, most
notably Israel (2001) and Onfray (2006, Vol. 4). Though at times criticised for their grand
historical narratives, Israel and Onfray both open up significant areas of research on radical
thinkers in the history of ideas. In this paper, I argue that Jean Meslier, an author that both Israel
and Onfray include in their list of ‘radicals’ or ‘ultras’, is representative of a new position in the
history of ideas: that of atheism. He is, after all, the first self-avowed atheist of modern Europe,
and his place in the history of ideas needs to be revisited.
Through an examination of his atheism in his Memoirs (Meslier and Shreve 2009), I
argue that the country-side priest already proposes a subtle definition of atheism, with sharp
boundaries against some ‘cousin’ philosophies such as deism, pantheism, and scepticism. In
order to delve deeper into this crucial moment for the emergence of a particular philosophical
position, it is essential to place Meslier within the intellectual context of his time. In particular,
this paper shows that it is primarily through the Cartesian tradition that Meslier arrives at
atheism. Having read Descartes, Fénelon, and Malebranche, he was trying to articulate a
consistent atheistic position within this particular school of thought. Yet the very nature of his
argument pushed him outside the Cartesian school, and he found help in the philosophies of two
sceptics – Bayle and Spinoza. This eclectic mixture of sources, combined with the radical nature
of Meslier’s argument, make him a prime subject of intellectual history.
Meslier’s influence on later thinkers is scarcely noticed. There is relatively little that is
known about how much he was read, and how deep were his influences. Partly, it is because of
the nature of his work, which circulated only in clandestine circles. But the influence of the
curé’s work can be traced back, with some speculation. It is the edited publication by Voltaire of
Meslier’s works that is the most famous. But these editions, from 1762 and 1768, have deep
flaws within them. In Voltaire’s words, he ‘purged’ them of the ‘poison of atheism’, and it is
clear that he removed about four fifths of the text. The radical nature of Meslier’s argument was
15
lost. Yet some manuscripts had circulated from the 1730s onwards, and by tracing back the
influence of Meslier’s works on the French materialists of the mid-late eighteenth century, this
paper proposes to offer some in-roads for its reception. In particular, it is in the works of La
Mettrie, Diderot, and d’Holbach that one should start the investigation of the reception of the text
in the eighteenth century.
References
Israel, Jonathan I. 2001. Radical enlightenment: philosophy and the making of modernity, 1650-1750. Oxford/New
York: Oxford University Press.
Meslier, Jean, and Mike Shreve. 2009. Testament: Memoir of the thoughts and sentiments of Jean Meslier. Amherst,
N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
Onfray, Michel. 2006. Contre-histoire de la philosophie. 6 vols. Paris: Bernard Grasset.
Esoteric Reason and Occult Science: Seamless Pursuits in the Work and Networks of
Raimondo di Sangro, The Prince of San Severo
Clorinda Donato
California State University
Raimondo Di Sangro, the Prince of San Severo (1710-1771), founder of the first masonic lodge
in Naples is precisely the kind of pivotal figure whose ideas and activities may best be
understood from the vantage point of the radical enlightenment. In numerous works and
experiments, he pursued both esotericism and rational, scientific experiments as complementary
means to arrive at the same end, that of understanding and preserving life. Di Sangro’s forays
into the conjoined domains of alchemy and science co-existed with an abiding passion for
primitive languages, sign systems, alternative religions, and anatomy. His experiments on the
preservation of life through experimentation on cadavers and his interest in primitive languages
and sign systems, in particular, the Peruvian quipus known through Madame de Graffigny's
Lettres d'une Péruvienne have been immortalized in his writings, especially the Lettera
apologetica, 1750 as well as popular legend, not to mention the recent recognition accorded him
by anthropologists and archeologists for having preserved the quipus, the writing system of
threads and knots established by the Incas, as artifact.3
The Prince of San Severo, eighteenth-century Naples and the networks that connected
him with the proponents of other enlightenments hint at a wide spread range of inquiry in which
esoteric and scientific thought and experimentation were seamlessly practiced and promoted.
Indeed, the cleavage between the two has been imposed by the historiography of the 18th century,
having much to do with the canonical enlightenments of France and England, which are not
particularly pertinent to practices in Naples, Palermo, the German states and parts of Holland.
The Prince of San Severo’s career has always suffered from the esoteric-rational divide, for he is
alternately credited with galvanizing Neapolitan institutions with his support of Antonio
3
He did this by purchasing a manuscript from a Jesuit in Naples. It remained in his family until the early
twentieth century, when it was sold to Italian scholars in Piedmont. Today anthropologists can study the quipus
thanks to him. But there is far more material to discuss, including his book on the eternal light, a study he did for
the illuminati of Bayreuth, as well as his contacts with Dutch anatomists.
16
Genovesi and university reform and discredited as a dangerous and blood thirsty lunatic who
terrorized those in his employ, reputed as he was, to have used their cadavers in his experiments.
Yet, the well-respected astronomer, Jerôme Joseph de la Lande, visited him and wrote about him
in his Voyage en Italie (1768), deploring the treatment Di Sangro had received at the hands of the
ecclesiastical authorities for his experiments. The relationship between the two invites us to
think about the role of esotericism in the work of Lalande, as well. Lalande was a prominent
astronomer and Freemason who admired Di Sangro’s experiments. Indeed, science cohabitated
with esotericism in Italian Masonic lodges, where antiquarian pursuits, alchemy, and anatomical
science often formed a nexus that was exhibited and performed in Italian salon life
(conversazioni) and regional academies in which any number of grand-tour ex-patriots gladly
participated.
This paper will make a case for considering Di Sangro as a proponent of radical
enlightenment with writings and activities which lie fully within the radical enlightenment
framework.
Joining the Radical Enlightenment: Johann Konrad Franz von Hatzfeld and the
Importance of Belonging
J.P.T. Geerlings
Radboud University Nijmegen
In 1745, Johann Konrad Franz von Hatzfeld was arrested in The Hague for his radical work La
Decouverte de la Verité. The book furiously denounced Isaac Newton, severely criticized
organized religion, and reminded European potentates to listen to his advice in all matters
political, or fail. In the eyes of his contemporaries, Hatzfeld was an intolerable blasphemer, an
overambitious social climber and a scientific charlatan. To our modern eyes, Hatzfeld’s political
radicalism, deist worldview, and highly confrontational approach to controversy identify him as
a member of the Radical Enlightenment.
Yet, legitimate though it may be, what does it mean when we associate Hatzeld with the
Radical Enlightenment? As a concept, the Radical Enlightenment proved its great merits. It has
expanded our view of the Enlightenment world and allowed us to make more sense of thinkers
previously thought of as isolated curiosities, including Hatzfeld. However, recent critical
responses have emphasized that in reality, the Radical Enlightenment was a highly complex and
diffuse entity. It displayed an important degree of ideological diversity, with many different
coteries appropriating and reinterpreting its message for various purposes during the eighteenth
century.
These critiques have become mantras of the Enlightenment studies community, giving
force to the assertion that ‘Radical Enlightenment’ is an misleading concept which creates an
entity that never really existed. Some scholars have therefore reverted to arguing that there was
only one Enlightenment, others wish to pragmatically abandon the concept altogether. Yet, given
the very distinct nature of radical thinking compared to the moderate wing of the Enlightenment,
as well as the strong social and intellectual links between radical thinkers that various studies
have shown, neither approach seems to satisfy.
17
This paper will present one possible path out of this discussion. Using Hatzfeld as a test
case, it will explore the merits of approaching the Radical Enlightenment from the viewpoint of
radicals thinkers’ self-perception, self-styling and attitudes toward their intellectual context. How
did thinkers we would qualify as radicals conceive of themselves? Did they have a sense of
belonging to a larger, cohesive movement, and did membership of any societies or clubs
influence this? Or was being a radical a rather more individual project? What ways of
‘belonging’ were there, and what factors influenced individual’s decisions to adopt or reject the
ideas we associate with the Radical Enlightenment? If documents like the Freydencker-Lexikon
by Johann Anton Trinius were regarded as imperfect attempts to survey the intellectual
landscape even in their own time, what did that landscape look like for the radicals themselves?
In short, this paper outlines and examines an approach to the Radical Enlightenment from the
point of view of its ‘members’, and inquires specifically what this ‘membership’ entailed.
Radical Enlightenment and Revolution in 1790s Ireland: The Ideas of Theobald Wolfe
Tone
Ultán Gillen
Teesside University
Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-1798) is remembered today as the founder of the republican
tradition in Ireland. His grave remains a place of annual pilgrimages for several of Ireland’s
major political parties to this day. In the 1960s, the campaign for civil rights in Northern Ireland
emerged in large part as a result of a re-engagement with Tone’s thought by the Republican
Movement of the time. Several of his best-known phrases continue to play a prominent role in
contemporary political discourse, especially his dictum about the need to establish “the unity of
Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter”. Tone was the chief ideologue of the Society of United
Irishmen in their early years before his exile to America and then France, where he negotiated an
alliance with the Directory that saw the French mount several invasion attempts before and
during the 1798 United Irish Rebellion. Captured off the coast of Ireland on a French frigate in
1798, Tone was tried as a traitor rather than treated as the French adjutant-general he also was.
Sentenced to hang, he slashed his own throat rather than suffer what he considered to be a
dishonourable death. This paper examines his social and political thought within the context of
the Radical Enlightenment and revolutionary activism in the Atlantic world of the 1790s.
A poor country riven by a history of expropriation and by religious differences, and ruled
by a tiny Anglican elite dependent upon Britain and discriminatory laws for its power, Ireland
presented unique challenges for revolutionaries motivated by ideas of democracy and equality.
The social and political power of the Irish aristocracy, the influence and might of Britain, and the
deep divisions among the people caused by sectarianism would all have to be overcome to effect
a revolution. These were the problems Tone grappled with in his theory and practice during the
1790s.
Tone’s writings were primarily propaganda pieces aimed at mobilising the lower and
middle orders in support of his political programme at various stages in the 1790s. At bottom, his
political programme consisted of Irish independence and equal political rights for all Irishmen,
regardless of their religious background. Initially couched in reformist terms, his political
18
programme soon openly reflected a democratic and egalitarian republicanism, heavily influenced
by France.
This paper analyses how Tone deployed concepts associated with the Radical
Enlightenment such as criticism of religious orthodoxies, personal freedom, opposition to war,
and social equality to try and gain support for Irish independence and for democratic republican
politics. It traces how Tone made his case not just in pamphlets, but also in newspapers,
handbills and even in buttons he designed for his unit of Volunteers. It concludes by briefly
discussing the afterlife of Tone’s ideas. Tone’s ideas and activism, and his place in Irish political
culture provide a window into how the ideas of the Radical Enlightenment spread throughout
Irish society and helped shape Irish politics both during and after the age of revolution.
Radical Consciousness in Spinoza and the Case of C. Pamblekis in Greece
Vasiliki Grigoropoulou
University of Athens
My paper has two sections: the first focuses on consciousness in Spinoza’s system; the second
concerns the relationship between Pamblekis (1733-1793), a Greek philosopher excommunicated
by the Orthodox Church, and the philosophy of Spinoza.
I. Following J. Israel’s interpretative approach to Radical Enlightenment and the role of
Spinoza, I argue that a radical theory of consciousness emerges from the work of Spinoza,
despite the fact that this crucial conception is not defined as other basic terms in his system.
However, this is so because the concept of consciousness is developed over his entire Ethics, in
which he arrives at the consciousness of the wise man, who is conscious of himself, of God and
of things. My claim will be that two separate foundations are put forward for consciousness:
first, in the ontology of the first Part of the Ethics and, second, in the theory of the emotions,
which is based on the notion of conatus. The latter conveys the concept of power, which Spinoza
endows with a distinctive and unique meaning. In the first Part of the Ethics consciousness
appears only as the adjective “conscious” in the Appendix. There, as I argue, one finds allusions
to a kind of “false” consciousness through which people reverse the order of things and of
concepts based on their personal appetites and selfish designs. Spinoza’s project in his Ethics is,
from the outsetg, to bring about an inversion of this inversion by introducing a rational concept
of God. My hypothesis is that this concept is the primary and most basic condition for the
reconstruction of consciousness. This primary grounding does not suffice, however, for
consciousness to be reconstructed and reformed. There must also be a refinement of the
emotions, based par excellence on the concept of conatus, or power, and pertaining both to the
body and the mind. Spinoza defines the mind as an idea of the body. Just as consciousness is an
idea of the idea, that is to say an adjunct of the human mind, so the human mind has an idea of
every idea that comprises it. Consciousness is to be understood in terms of ideas, which are
analogous to the ideas of things. Consciousness may be compared to the body, making it the
spiritual cognate of the body in its immense complexity but also to its activity, an issue that links
the ontology of consciousness to political praxis and practical conscience.
II. The second Part of this paper draws from work in progress on Christodoulos Pamblekis,
the most systematic philosopher of Modern Greek Enlightenment. Pamblekis, also a
19
distinguished mathematician, was extremely well versed in 17th century philosophy and the 18th
century French philosophers. After his incisive critique of religion and the hypocrisy of the
clergy, he was excommunicated. His teacher, E. Voulgaris, published a condemnation of his
work. But his excommunication, in which he was regarded as a follower of Spinoza, did not
prevent distribution and study of his work. However, to this day Pamblekis’ work has not been
systematically studied by philosophers in Greece, but only fragmentarily and primarily by
historians. I propose that there are common points between Pamblekis’ critique of religion and
conception of God, and the Spinoza’s critique. Yet, Spinoza and Pamblekis should not be
identified. For instance, it is not clear that he espouses the monism of Spinoza regarding the
relation between mind and body. Instead, he elaborates a theory that draws on Descartes and
Leibniz, among others. The diversity of the influences he had assimilated has contributed to the
reputation he has acquired, among some scholars, of being a radical theorist. Yet others have
regarded him as a moderate, even as regards questions of theology.
The Radical Enlightenment and Direct Democracy in the Haitian Revolution
Scott Henkel
Binghamton University
From 1791 to 1804, ex-slaves in the former French colony Saint Domingue rebelled against
several of the Atlantic world’s great powers, eventually declaring their independence and
renaming their newly founded nation Haiti. It is history’s only example of a successful national
slave insurrection, one which led to the founding of a state that was not based on the privilege of
a select few. As Nick Nesbitt writes in Universal Emancipation: The Haitian Revolution and the
Radical Enlightenment, the Haitian Revolution scandalized the North Atlantic Enlightenment
powers because it was essentially an affirmation of true democracy: the proper and logical right
of anyone, absolutely anyone, to rule. The scandal of the Haitian Revolution is to have affirmed
the right to rule on the part of those with absolutely no qualification beyond their human capacity
to judge and act autonomously (37).
This is a ground-breaking idea, and it deserves further elaboration. In my paper, I suggest
that a useful way to understand this situation is by reinterpreting what Nesbitt call “true
democracy” as direct democracy: situations where a demos, people, express their kratos, power,
directly, without filtering that power through a representative. I do so through an examination of
C. L. R. James’ history of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins, and also the later lectures
that James gave about his book. In those lectures, delivered to the Institute of the Black World in
1971, James stated that, if he had the chance to rewrite the book, he would have altered his
emphasis away from key figures like Toussaint L’Ouverture and Jean Jacques Dessalines and
reframed the book around the actions of the ordinary men and women whom James thinks are
the key protagonists of the revolution, whom he calls, in a type of shorthand, 2,000 leaders. He
says, “I am concerned with the two thousand leaders who were there. That is the book I would
write. […] If I were writing this book again, I would have something to say about those two
thousand leaders” (108). When James wrote The Black Jacobins, he felt that he had to prove the
autonomy of the ex-slaves; when he reflected back on writing the book, he indicated that he
wished he had minimized the role of revolutionary leadership, assumed the autonomy of the ex20
slaves, and built from that foundation. This changed emphasis, I argue is a dramatic step toward
an understanding of direct democracy.
I suggest that the link between direct democracy and autonomy is vital, and that the
implications of that link are profound: if the assumption is that there are some people who do not
possess the autonomy required to rule themselves, they will need to be ruled by others. If the
reverse is true, it leads to revolutionary possibilities. The history of the Haitian Revolution and
its place in larger conversations about the Radical Enlightenment show how old arguments
against the capacity of ex-slaves to govern themselves are analogous to current arguments
against the capacity of ordinary women and men to govern their own communities, workplaces,
unions, or other groups.
The Unknown Printer of Spinoza Finally Identified
R. Jagersma and G.W.H. Dijkstra
University of Amsterdam
The identity of the printer of Spinoza remained a mystery to historians for centuries. The
Amsterdam based publisher Jan Rieuwertsz is often referred to as the printer of Spinoza’s works.
Even though he is positively identified as Spinoza’s publisher, there is no concrete evidence that
Rieuwertsz ever even owned a printing press. He appears to have been a publisher only, who
outsourced the printing of his projects. In the works of Spinoza, published by Rieuwertsz, the
name of the printer does not appear in the books themselves. This was not uncommon for books
published by Rieuwertsz. Concerning the controversial content of Spinoza’s works, it is not
surprising that the printer was reluctant to identify himself. This because being involved in the
distribution of Spinoza’s ideas could result in prosecution.
In a biography of Spinoza, written in 1705 by the Dutch preacher Colerus, the printer
Christoffel Cunrades was mentioned as Spinoza’s printer. Cunrades had proclaimed himself as
such and showed Colerus some copies of Spinoza’s work to confirm his claim. Seemingly, the
question of the identity of Spinoza’s printer had been answered. However, recent findings by
Johan Gerritsen have disproved Colerus’ claim.4 Gerritsen discovered that the typographical
materials from Cunrades’ printing shop did not match those used in the production of Spinoza’s
works, like the Tractatus theologico-politicus (1670). Unfortunately, the typographical evidence
was not sufficient for Gerritsen to identify the actual printer of Spinoza’s works.
The identity of printers can be established their usage of printing types, initials and
ornaments.5 This method, otherwise known as analytical bibliography, is a state-of-the-art
research method. By comparing materials of known printers to unidentified samples, anonymous
works can be ascribed to a certain printer. Especially in cases where there are specific damages
to the materials, the identity of anonymous printers can been established with high certainty.
Seventeenth century books often use a decorated initial to start the text. This initial belongs to a
certain printer and by comparing different prints of similar initials in detail, small differences can
4
Gerritsen, J. ‘Printing Spinoza - some questions.’ In: Spinoza to the letter: Studies in words, texts and books
(Leiden, 2005), pp. 251-262.
5
Dijstelberge, P., De beer is los!: Ursicula: een database van typografisch materiaal uit het eerste kwart van
de zeventiende eeuw als instrument voor het identificeren van drukken (Amsterdam, 2007).
21
be found. These differences can be caused by damages of the printing initial, such as small
cracks. If these differences are consistent over different prints, one can claim certain works are
printed by the same printer.
By applying analytical bibliography we were able to identify Spinoza’s anonymous printer.
This discovery is a major contribution to the research on the Radical Enlightenment, in which
Spinoza played such a crucial role. This study addresses what analytical bibliography is and how
this method was applied to identify Spinoza’s printer. Additionally, we will analyze the printer’s
entire body of printed works in order to establish his role in the spread of the Radical
Enlightenment. Spinoza’s printer has been unknown for centuries, but now his identity is finally
revealed.
The German Idealist Response to the Radical Enlightenment and its Influence: From
Fichte to the Frankfurt School
David James
University of Warwick
Johann Gottlieb Fichte initially adopted the kind of determinist standpoint commonly associated
in Germany at the time with Spinoza’s metaphysics. This early connection with the radical
Enlightenment was, however, broken as a result of Fichte’s engagement with and increasing
commitment to Kant’s moral philosophy, especially its emphasis on freedom. While it would be
an exaggeration to cast Fichte as a representative of counter-Enlightenment, his opposition to
other recognisable features of the radical Enlightenment, such as materialism and an emphasis on
utility as opposed to intrinsic meaning and value, finds clear expression in his public lecture
series Grundzüge der gegenwärtigen Zeitalters, which were delivered in 1804-5 and published in
1806. In this paper I show how Fichte’s characterisation of the Enlightenment is reproduced in
strikingly similar terms in the section on the Enlightenment found in Hegel’s Phänomenologie
des Geistes, which was published in 1807. Rather than examining the issue of whether there is
any evidence that Fichte’s lectures may have influenced Hegel’s characterisation of the
Enlightenment, I intend to focus on the origins of this common German idealist understanding of
the Enlightenment in Kant’s views on pure practical reason, and I ask to what notion of reason
this conception of reason is meant to stand opposed. My answer to this question will turn on
Fichte’s and Hegel’s emphasis on the concept of utility, as opposed to the non-instrumental form
of reason that can be identified with Kant’s notion of moral duty, as a defining feature of
Enlightenment reason which, on the one hand, promises to revolutionise existing social and
political conditions but, on the other hand, makes self-interest into the primary source of
motivation, thus subverting this same end. This will in turn allow me to explore the issue of the
extent to which this understanding of the Enlightenment may have shaped the critique of the
Enlightenment associated with the Frankfurt School, by focusing on the connections between
Fichte’s and Hegel’s emphasis on the concept of utility and Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s
emphasis on instrumental reason as a defining feature of the Enlightenment. In both cases, the
radical Enlightenment is viewed as having promised much in virtue of its critical mode of
thinking, but also as being dialectically unable to fulfil this promise on account of its conception
of reason. Whether this view of the radical Enlightenment is true or not, I show that it was
22
integral to the German idealist understanding of the Enlightenment which in turn finds echoes in
the Frankfurt School’s critique of the Enlightenment.
Radical Enlightenment, Enlightened Subversion, and the Reversal of Spinoza
Sonja Lavaert
Free University of Brussels (VUB)
In this paper I will focus on the revolutionary significance of Spinoza’s immanent ontology. I
defend the thesis that the immanent view in Spinoza’s texts shows its political subversion in its
analogy and familiarity with the texts of Machiavelli and at a further level Dante. Both these
philosophers subverted the focus from the theological plan with its hierarchy and linear time
development to the world we live in, in which human actions are contingent and forces are
constantly striving to find a place in time without any support from beyond. A world that, in this
view, is governed by conflicting perspectives, relativity and change. It is presupposed that all
humans are equal, also in their having particular ideas, which they express in different ways.
What follows is a displacement of focus from terms to relations, the procedure of the reversal as
an exemplary tool, and language practice seen as a power. The immanent thought of Spinoza
makes itself clear while using the Machiavellian paradigm of time. The theory of the two
conflicting perspectives shows its meaning and consequences in light of the distinction between
power of the multitude and the institutional power of authorities. This leads to reflections on the
necessity of free thought and speech, and disobedience. I want to illustrate this thesis in three
ways. First, I refer to some subversive texts written by friends of Spinoza, fellow thinkers or
political allies who influenced him or who were influenced by him, political treatises/pamphlets
by Van den Enden and De la Court, and dictionaries and grammars by Meyer and Koerbagh.
Second, I shall refer to Spinoza’s TTP and TP with a particular attention to the matter of
language. Third, I confront them with two confutations written by adversaries of Spinoza, both in
Dutch, which clarify in an exemplary way the political nature of the polemics. I will confront the
TP with the confutation of the Ethics (1683) by the trader/linguist/jurist Verwer who, based on
the principle of independence that functions as a watershed in history of thought between two
radically opposed political perspectives, with Spinoza on the same side as Machiavelli, focuses
on Spinoza’s presumed atheism. Thirdly, I will confront the TTP with the confutation of the TTP
(1674) by the grain trader Blyenberg (a book found in the personal library of Spinoza and, so is
my hypothesis, used to sharpen his arguments in the TP). Blyenberg wants to reverse Spinoza’s
reversals, redress free will and morality, restore the fear of punishment as the basis for politics,
stop the reduction of humans to animals, disconnect the reason from power and lust, and abolish
the permission ‘to feel what one wants and to say what one feels’. The question then arises who
benefits from one theory or the other. If my presumption is correct that the TP can be seen as
Spinoza’s powerful, paradigmatic and clear answer to this confutation, then its arguments sustain
an ethical political, immanent ontology.
23
John Toland’s Origines Judaicae: Speaking for Spinoza?
Ian Leask
Dublin City University
In his sweeping depiction of the early, radical, Enlightenment as being fundamentally
Spinozistic, Jonathan Israel has placed John Toland within the vanguard emanating from Spinoza
and in turn disseminating a largely unadulterated Spinozism across the ‘Republic of Letters’.
Israel may be quite right to depict Toland as “a creative Spinozist;” but fully to appreciate the
complex, variegated, nature of that creativity, we need to look beyond Israel’s own account.
Accordingly, this paper will focus mainly upon one of Toland’s least known but most radical
works – the Origines Judaicae (OJ), of 1709 – to try to illustrate the way in which Toland both
continues and intensifies the naturalistic ‘demythologizing’ of Spinoza’s Theological-Political
Treatise (TTP).
As we shall see, the OJ presents an uncompromising portrayal of Moses as essentially a
statesman for whom religion was an expedient political device: the OJ does not just provide a
non-providential account of biblical events and personae; it is more like an anti-providential
account, in which the Bible is relegated completely, and, instead, classical commentary is offered
as the sole source for Mosaic history. Accordingly, with sacred narrative debarred, it seems that
Moses can only be treated as ‘another historical figure’ in a pantheon of important ancient
political leaders: by following Strabo, not Scripture, Toland gives us a Moses of Egyptian origin
who uses religious notions for wholly political purposes, and who ‘in reality’ subscribes to a
proto-Spinozistic pantheism! The reconfiguration of Moses is thus brought to a new, heightened
level.
However, the extent of Toland’s Spinozism is not just apparent in the detail of the case he
makes here. What we also need to attend to is the main target of the OJ: Pierre-Daniel Huet
(1630-1721), the renowned savant who, as standard-bearer for conservative Christianity, had
devoted massive intellectual effort to an attempted refutation of the ‘Disputator TheologoPoliticus’. Determined to counter the ‘horrible’ and ‘insane’ impiety of Spinoza’s TTP, Huet had
depicted Moses as the archetype of all human wisdom, and the source of all the other deities of
the ancient world: any aspect of any ancient ‘belief-system’ worth any kind of attention had to be
based on Mosaic foundations, Huet had tried to establish; and so Spinoza’s sacrilegious assault
might be nullifed. Toland’s OJ offers itself, not solely as an anti-providential Mosaic history, but
also as a critique of Huet’s critique of Spinoza: the ‘occasion’ for Toland’s text is an all-out
attack on the “hugely learned” Huet and his advocacy of Moses as vir archetypus.
Overall, then, when we conjoin a) what Toland’s case states and b) awareness of the
opponent against whom it is stated, the overall Spinozistic ‘texture’ of OJ – and, indeed,
Toland’s overall Spinozism – becomes far more apparent. The dying Spinoza’s last surviving
letter makes plain his (unrealized) hope to tackle Huet himself. Toland’s OJ, it seems, offers a
posthumous response on Spinoza’s behalf.
Exorcising Demons: Critiques of Religion from Hobbes and Bekker
Alissa MacMillan
24
Institute for Advanced Study, Toulouse
Thomas Hobbes devotes several chapters of Leviathan to a careful critique of belief in, and the
uses and abuses of, demons, ghosts, and spirits. But his broader views on religion remain one of
the more contested areas of his thought. Scholars disagree over whether he engages theology
authentically, whether he is concerned about religion only secondarily, or if he is actively
ushering in atheism through a subtle but significant critique. In light of the disagreement about
his views on religion, Hobbes’s role in the “radical enlightenment,” so some of the real force of
his work on religion, remains unclear.
A thoroughgoing opposition to demons and ghosts was also one of the primary objectives
of Dutch theologian Balthasar Bekker, a figure whose central role in the historical narrative on
atheism is well defended and accounted for in Jonathan Israel’s Radical Enlightenment (Oxford:
2002). Bekker was loudly declared an atheist of the worst sort, that is, of the Hobbesian or
Spinozist sort. Although Bekker denied he had read Hobbes’s Leviathan before penning half of
his famous book, The World Bewitch’d, in his time the two were often mentioned together.
Unlike Hobbes, Bekker was operating from the pulpit, rooted in the Reform tradition and
engaging in theological conversations within that tradition. But both Hobbes and Bekker seem to
take on demons and demonology, and other claims of the kind, in a similarly critical way, both
earning their reputations, at least in part, because of these engagements.
But, a close analysis of their respective treatments of demons and ghosts helps to make
clear several of the real differences in their work and serves as a means to clarifying some of the
subtler details of Hobbes’s account of religion. This paper engages an analysis and comparison
of their accounts of the uses and misuses of ghosts and demons, specifically in Leviathan and
The World Bewitch’d, arguing that Hobbes’s so-called atheism, on the surface one quite similar
in spirit to that of Bekker, is indeed the more “radical” when considered in light of some of his
views on the human being, his epistemology and its connection to language, and his perspective
on religious authority. This paper clarifies some of the real force and implication of Hobbes’s
account in particular by comparing the substance of their respective epistemologies, Hobbes’s
materialism and empiricism and aspects of Bekker’s Cartesian rationalism, their accounts of
God, and their views on the role of the Church. This comparison will elucidate the differences
between their accounts and the philosophical views underlying those accounts and, in doing so,
serve to clarify and make sense of Hobbes’s own much-debated views on religion.
Alongside Bekker, the innovative elements of Hobbes’s critique of religion become
especially clear. An analysis of their respective work on demons and ghosts helps to elucidate the
truly radical elements to Hobbes’s views on religion, elements worth reconsidering in the context
of his political thought and as an important contribution to the narrative of secularization in the
modern West.
Friedrich Hölderlin and the Secret Order of the Illuminati: History of a Missed Chance
Laura A. Macor
Università di Padova
25
The proposed paper aims to deal with a severely neglected aspect of Friedrich Hölderlin’s
involvement in his historical and intellectual period, namely, his relationship with the secret
order of the Bavarian Illuminati. The society was founded in 1776 and, although it was officially
banned in 1784 and 1785, continued to shape politics, philosophy and literature in the following
years, since the publication in 1787 of significant confiscated documents regarding the secret
activities of the organization gave rise to a fierce controversy over the very nature of the
Illuminati’s political project. This public debate represented a point of no return in prerevolutionary German thought and in some ways prepared minds for the greater event to come.
There is indeed some evidence that the arguments formulated for the first time during the
Illuminati controversy represent the very basis for the interpretation of the radical turn in the
French Revolution which began with the September Massacres in late 1792 and the subsequent
fall of the Girondins. The region Hölderlin came from (Württemberg) was one of the most active
colonies of the organization, as was the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, where Hölderlin lived
in 1794 and 1795, as it is proved by the fact that in 1785 the Duke briefly considered offering a
chair at Jena University to the Illuminati’s leader, Adam Weishaupt. The same is true of almost
every other city Hölderlin happened to live in (Frankfurt am Main, Homburg vor der Höhe). It
was therefore not merely coincidental that Hölderlin was personally acquainted with many
Illuminati and read some important writings connected to the order; it can further be proved that
he moved in clandestine circles. This enabled him to gain a fairly thorough insight into the
nature, goals and limitations of this clandestine organization, which had been capturing public
attention for so many years. It is, therefore, not surprising that in his novel Hyperion (1797–
1799) he entrusted a secret league with the political task of renewing society thereby permitting
pre- and post-revolutionary conquests to superimpose one another. In spite of the evidence of
these elements, Hölderlin scholars have not grasped the relevance of the Illuminati revival which
has been taking place in historical scholarship since the 1970s, nor have they followed the major
trends within closely related research fields, such as those regarding Schiller and Hegel, which
likewise suggest that the legacy of the Illuminati lay at the very core of the German reception of
the French Revolution. On the contrary, Hölderlin scholarship kept dealing with Hölderlin’s
political theories as if nothing had happened before 1789 and in 1971 let the only voice
expressing the need for such a new investigation go unheard, thus causing this plea to be
reiterated no less than thirty-two years later. The proposed paper aims to trace the history of this
missed chance.
Less Radical Enlightenment: A Christian Wing of the French Enlightenment
Eric Palmer
Allegheny College
Historians have recently focused upon differences between theist Enlightenment leaders (such as
Locke) and deist philosophes and atheist libertines – the latter pair identified by Jonathan Israel
as the moderate and radical wings of the Enlightenment. By their own lights, the latter pair did
battle against what Voltaire would call l’infâme, or, as Hume characterized it more transparently,
“stupidity, Christianity, and ignorance.”
This presentation will sketch traces of a third Christian wing to supplement Jonathan
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Israel’s characterization of moderate and radical wings of the Enlightenment: a third wing that
was a productive and prominent participant in the French Enlightenment during the second
quarter of the 18th century. The movement contained key literary leaders (Pierre Desfontaines,
Claude Pierre Goujet, and the young Elie Fréron), who developed a literary culture in several
journals and occasional publications. These journalists supported narrower and deeper
intellectual work by the likes of Noël Pluche and Jean-Henri-Samuel Formey, two authors whose
work was widely read within broad popular culture of the time. The third wing encouraged
particular topics of scientific study and presented a literary culture that reflected, and sometimes
promoted, Christian theology and broadly Christian and politically conservative values. These
last aspects of their agenda served to motivate initial efforts at marginalization of these authors
by others from within other Enlightenment wings, especially in the second half of the eighteenth
century.
There were differences, but this third wing played well with the moderates and radicals,
as evidence from the culture of French journals shows. Initial efforts at marginalization of the
third wing grew in intensity in the third quarter of the century, most particularly at the flashpoint
of the Abbé de Prades controversy, and the vitality of this wing thereafter ebbed. Fréron in
particular shifted to a confrontational Counter-Enlightenment strategy, to which Diderot and
Voltaire responded energetically. The Encyclopédie and Buffon’s Histoire Naturelle eclipsed the
earlier grand success of Pluche’s Spectacle de la Nature. Consequently, earlier Enlightenment
contributions from the third wing entered the shadows as the moderate wing consolidated its hold
and the divide between philosophe and Christian that Hume observed was struck. Finally, the
sharp divide was read retrospectively into the history of the Enlightenment, both by participants
such as Hume and, more recently, by historians. The thesis of this presentation, then, is that the
French Enlightenment in the early seventeenth century was actually not so very radical; rather, it
became so at mid-century, and in retrospect, it now appears more radical than it was.
Radicalism and Feminism: The Case of Poulain de la Barre
Marie-Frédérique Pellegrin
Université Jean Moulin-Lyon 3
Early modern radicalism and its criteria are described and defined in various works by Jonathan
Israel. Poulain de la Barre, one of the first modern feminist thinker, is considered by Israel as
being part of the so-called Radical Enlightenment, but ultimately he is, quite hesitantly, rejected
as an exponent of it. In this talk I will consider the case of Poulain de la Barre as a means of
questioning the coherence of Israel’s criteria for considering a thinker as being “radical”. I shall
focus, more particularly, on the question of whether seventeenth-century feminism is part of the
Radical Enlightenment. Three main aspects of Poulain’s thought, which Israel underscores, will
be considered. First, the issue of marriage, chastity and pleasure; secondly, the theoretical matrix
which underlies Poulain’s egalitarian feminism, namely his Cartesianism; and, finally, his
religious views: his Christian rationalism.
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How much Radicality can the Enlightenment tolerate? The Case of Gabriel Wagner (Realis
de Vienna) Reconsidered
Arnaud Pelletier
KU Leuven
The main justification of the term “radical Enlightenment” comes from the necessity to grasp a
number of texts and authors considering that the “mainstream Enlightenment” was too moderate
as regards both the criticism of traditional authorities and the promotion of new sciences. But
how radical can Enlightenment be without overthrowing itself in some arrogant cynicism that
abandons any pretention to Enlightenment? In other words: is not a too radical Enlightenment
opposed to the very project of Enlightenment? The aim of this paper is to raise this issue by
considering the case of Gabriel Wagner.
Gabriel Wagner (about 1660 - about 1717) obviously shared many characteristic features
with radical Enlightenment thinkers. He taught the (crypto-Spinozist) doctrine that the world
itself is God and that everything happens according to pure necessity and without any
consideration of the good. He rejected the belief in the soul and, as he told Leibniz, he intended
to destroy the whole metaphysics and to replace the scholastic logics with the new, real sciences
that inspired his pseudonym (Realis de Vienna). Finally, he contested the two key figures that are
at the roots of German Enlightenment: on one side, he attacked Christian Thomasius in all his
publications and, on the other side, he resisted Leibniz who tried to divert him from his
“dangerous opinions”.
This resistance is at best displayed in the written obligational dispute about six
philosophical theses that he pursued with Leibniz in 1698. The manuscripts of this dispute are
still partly unpublished and reveal at best how Wagner refuses to follow Leibniz’s analysis of the
concepts at stake, among others the concepts of space and of world’s contingency. The
investigation of Wagner’s defence of world’s necessity – as well as of other unpublished
manuscripts defending that “space is the soul of the world” – will be the occasion to address the
issue of his radicality: does Wagner advocate a purist form of Enlightenment that Leibniz’s
Enlightenment cannot (under-) stand? Or does he display a form of arrogant cynicism –
according to Z. v. Uffenbach’s expression – that goes beyond the very project of Enlightenment
and ultimately amounts to a form of Counter-Enlightenment?
Hume and Spinoza on Imagination: Evaluating Ruptures in the Enlightenment
Nastassja Pugliese
University of Georgia
Jonathan Israel gave a new strength to the studies of Early modernity with his thesis of a Radical
Enlightenment. The thesis main claim is that there is a distinction between a moderate
enlightenment characterized, among others, by the philosophies of Kant and Hume, and a radical
enlightenment that has its origin in the philosophy of Spinoza. One way of evaluating Israel’s
thesis is to try to disprove it, showing the lack of evidence for the radical enlightenment. Another
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way is to investigate whether Spinoza’s philosophy endures the test of radicalness. Since lack of
evidence is a negative proof pointing to a void or an absence, this method of evaluation is
insufficient as a proof strategy. Also, it disregards the thorough historical work offered by Israel
in his book Radical Enlightenment. The second method is more fascinating because it allows one
to check whether the philosophy of Spinoza deserves the place in the history of philosophy that
Israel gives him, so this is how this investigation will proceed.
In this paper I will propose a test to check whether Spinoza’s theory of knowledge is
radical, that is, whether his theory is capable of a ground-breaking or paradigmatic change in the
field of epistemology. In order to do that, I will compare the Hume’s and Spinoza’s concept of
imagination. Hume’s theory of imagination is at the core of his mitigated scepticism and
although it is rarely studied as central in his theory of knowledge, a few commentators recognize
it as the “supreme Humean faculty” (Streminger, Salmon). Spinoza’s theory of imagination, on
the other hand, has been commonly studied as a minor thought process that leads to error.
However, few recent commentators (Aphun, Mignini) interpret imagination in Spinoza as a
positive power that leads to higher kinds of knowledge and enhance human’s capacity for active
emotions. In this paper, I will use Hume as a paradigmatic case of a moderate conceptualization,
that is, a concept that retains most of the influence of former philosophies and is still under the
umbrella of the theories of representation of the XVII and XVIII century. Afterwards, I will
describe and evaluate Spinoza’s theory of imagination looking for the degrees or levels of
separation between his understanding of imagination and Hume’s. This analysis is going to work
as a case-study for the thesis of a radical enlightenment and the goal of the paper is to try to find
out a principle of radical change in Spinoza’s theory of imagination that makes it distinct in
nature from other early modern theories. The topic of imagination plays a special role in this
context because it only until recently that the problem of imagination has been recognized as an
important question in epistemology.
The inner-light and the Process of Religious Rationalization in the Dutch Collegiants
Rosa Ricci
Universität Leipzig
In observing the big picture of the Radical Enlightenment, the themes of tolerance, equality and
rationality represent the dominants dyes. With a second and attentive look it is possible to
discover the multiple nuances of these concepts and ask oneself about their provenience and
development.
The term Enlightenment is the consequence of a long religious debate about the idea of
light and its rational and mystical implications. This term achieves its gradual secularization only
in the 18th century, while, only a century earlier, the religious field was a battleground for the
formulation of the term light. In the 17th century, the exceptional freedom and tolerance, which
distinguished the United Provinces from all other European Countries and its lively religious life,
generated a religious movement like the Collegiants.
The intention of my speech is to focus on this particular moment of the early
Enlightenment in order to grasp the first formulation of the distinction between a purely religious
understanding of the light and its progressive rationalization and secularization. Catching the
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nature of this change can be useful not only to describe the radical roots of the term
Enlightenment, but also to understand which role religious movement plays in this shift. The
reflection about the inner light and the blend between rational and mystical elements is present in
most of Collegiants’ texts. We find mystical elements tied to rationalism in the "moderate
spiritualism” of the Korte Verhandeling by Galenus Abrahamsz and in Boreel's Concatenatio
aurea christiana where the author describes the rational route to follow to reach a mystical and
constant union with God. The radical dispute about inner light with the Quakers changes the
Collegiants' approach to this theme. The pamphlet that - more than others - forces this passage
leaning in favor of the rational vision is Balling’s Het licht op den Kandelaar.
In my speech, I shall analyse this pamphlet, its Cartesian and Spinozian influences, and I'll
present it as an outcome of the Collegiants’ debate about rationalism and religion. This debate
was both internal (with the Bredenburgsche Twisten) and external to the movement manifesting
itself in the preoccupation with discerning between an affective (sentiment of faith) and a
rational conception of religion.
From these discussions emerges a fundamental question about the way to consider religion:
as an obedience machine that applies and develops its power on human sentiments and
irrationality or as a rational moment. Deeply influenced by Descartes’ philosophy and upset by
Spinoza’s consideration about religion and Bible exegesis, the Collegiants, as profoundly
religious, didn't seem to will renounce to the irrationality of the faith. It results in an ambivalent
and oscillating position between the spiritual and rational choice but also one of the most radical
criticisms against Church organization and authority. What follows is one of the most interesting
practices of horizontal organization of religious life.
The history of this movement, far from being marginal, proposes an actual and pressing
theme: how is it possible to reach rationality after appealing to a means that reproduces
emotional impulse.
Between Spinozism and Materialism: Buddeus’ Place in the Early German Enlightenment
Paola Rumore
University of Turin
The paper focuses on the role played by the Lutheran theologian Johann Franz Buddeus (16671729) in the struggle of the early German Enlightenment against the radical trends represented
by Spinozists and freethinkers, paying a special attention to the question of materialism. General
aim of the paper is to cast light on one aspect of the strong reaction of German early
Enlightenment against radical thinking. Buddeus, one of the most influential representatives of
the Thomasian eclectic, plays indeed a peculiar role within this struggle; he is one of the main
pioneers of the German opposition to Spinozism (and thereby to atheism and materialism), but
he is at the same time charged with patrocinium materialismi by his main philosophical
opponent, i.e. Christian Wolff (Ausführliche Nachricht, 1726, § 208). The paper aims therefore
at clarifying this apparent inconsistency in two steps.
1. The first section presents very briefly Buddeus’ main criticisms against Spinozism, both
to be found in his Dissertatio de Spinozismo ante Spinozam (1701) – a historical comparison
between the main theses of pantheism and the bases of ancient atheism – and in the later Theses
30
theologicae de atheismo et superstitione (1717; German 1717, French 1740) – where he states
that, unlike ancient atheism, Spinozism presents a systematic exposition of atheistic convictions
by means of an original method. In Buddeus’ understanding, Spinozism involves a form of
fatalism, which precludes any possibility of a free will, as well as an evident inclination to
materialism, that he considers one of the dogmas of atheism. In this view Spinozism represents a
danger, both for morality and religion.
2. The second section focuses more closely on the problem of materialism and presents
Buddeus’ refutation of this philosophical position. The Theses contain the first sketch of a
history of materialism in modern western philosophy – from Dicaearchus, Epicurus, Democritus
and Lucretius up to Hobbes and Spinoza – even if their author doesn’t possess yet terms as
“materialismus/materialista”, which will appear in the German philosophical terminology only a
few years later, with Kohler’s translation of the correspondence between Leibniz and Samuel
Clarke, prefaced by Wolff (1720). And it’s precisely within the harsh controversy between Wolff
and the pietistic theologians of Halle that Buddeus opposes against Wolff’s fatalism, with its
related certainty about the necessity of essences of things, the thesis of the impossibility to
determinate their real internal constitution. Buddeus’ opinion that it is impossible to know the
real essence of things comes from Locke’s Essay, and orients the debate with Wolff on the
notorious hypothesis of a thinking matter. Buddeus rejects Wolff’s logical and ontological
principle of sufficient reason, which is meant to be the ground of the dangerous nexus rerum
fatalis, as well as the basis of the belief that a matter which thinks would constitute a
contradiction in terms. On the other front, Wolff rejects Buddeus’ thesis of the impossibility of
knowing the real essences of things, which implies that God could have provided matter with the
capacity of thinking without falling in any contradiction.
The Transgressive Enlightenment: The Critique of the Present and the Sadeian Order
Julio Seoane-Pinilla
Universidad de Alcaná
My aim in this article is simply to situate Sade among enlightenment thinkers. To do so, I offer
an “innocent” reading of his works which does not fall prey to the allure of their marginality or
eccentricity but rather stakes a claim for them as one more key to understanding our past (and,
perhaps, our present). In short, my aim is introduce a philosopher who, transgressor or not,
provides interesting insights into our own modernity.
Although Sade is an atheist and a materialist that is not why he is interesting; his interest
stems from the proposals he makes on the basis of those assumptions. The fact of the matter is
that if we read Sade simply, of course we notice that we are in the presence of an atheist and a
materialist; but above all we are aware of someone who having rejected God and decided that
our life must be simply human. That should be the point of departure for any reading of Sade, for
with no place in the Cosmos and in the belief that Nature is the mere materialisation of chaos and
chance, all we are left with is life—a life that is realised in the pleasure of living it, in pleasure,
in so far as a life without pleasure is not worth living. That is what sex is, and that is why we are
atheists: not because God prohibits sexual pleasure, but because sex is life lived in the present
with no thoughts at all for what might lie beyond.
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In the present? Yes, Sade affirms that all time is present because life has only to subject
itself to its current and continuous movement. The Sadean libertine’s concern to construct the
tale of himself is not to unite past and future in one life but, more simply, to tell himself in the
present by means of a biography which is to recount one event after another exhaustively. Time
and again we have no choice but to expose ourselves to coupling (which never means synthesis)
with no chance of finding repose in a definitive (auto)biography. Nonetheless, and despite
everything, the subject is not erased for, on the contrary, dispersion is not just disorder and
fragmentation; it is an on-going struggle to ensure that things do not cease to happen: it does not
matter what those things are or what they are like as long as they happen.
The Sadean narrative is tremendously human: one life cannot be composed therefrom; but
we might have scope to try and tell what happens to us each time. Thus is the effort to life
humanly; and that is why the Sadean hero never ceases to talk. Because Sade claim that word
and action are the same thing, then libertine’s speech is the continuous life of sex.
The Emergence of the “Radical Enlightenment” in Humanist Scholarship
Frederik Stjernfelt
Aarhus University
It is often claimed humanists do not – as opposed to scientists – aim at general explanations in
their scholarship (cf. the Neo-Kantian idea of ‘nomothetic’ versus ‘idiographic’ sciences). This
paper takes Radical Enlightenment as a counterexample – an important general concept
developed in recent humanist scholarship.
The paper traces the appearance of the notion of ‘Radical Enlightenment’ as a hypostatic
abstraction – an abstraction given the shape of an autonomous object of thought, referring, in
turn, to a particular aspect of historical reality. It follows the rise and development of the notion
of ‘Radical Enlightenment’ during the nineteenth century, finally to coalesce around the idea that
it refers to a specific undercurrent of Enlightenment more broadly. Once this reference is fixed,
the scene is set for further investigation of and struggle around the concept. One concerns its
reference: where did it take place, when did it occur, which persons and institutions may be
subsumed under the headline of Radical Enlightenment? Another concerns its meaning: which
philosophical and political positions should be counted among those characteristic for Radical
Enlightenment?
Institutionally, such disputes cash out in terms of 1) book titles (Margaret Jacob, Jonathan
Israel, etc.), 2) conferences (like the present ones), 3) new editions of central figures (Israel and
Silverthorne's Tractatus edition), 4) special studies addressing individual figures now
reinterpreted under the headline of Radical Enlightenment (Nadler 2000 on Spinoza, Anderson
2000 on B. Franklin, Socher 2006 on Maimon, Mulsow 2011 on Reimarus, etc.), 5) special
studies addressing particular aspects of Radical Enlightenment (determinism, Spinozism,
atheism, etc.), 6) the comparison of Radical Enlightenment with related or opposed currents
(moderate Enlightenment, radical protestantism, philology, atheism, freemasonry, Oriental
Enlightenment, radical feminism, etc.); 7) the means of spreading and communicating Radical
Enlightenment (republic of letters, book studies Darnton 1995, Goldgar 1995), 7) the
actualization of Radical Enlightenment with reference to our time (Bronner (2006), Reclaiming
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The Enlightenment; Israel (2009), A Revolution of the Mind), 8) critical Auseinandersetzungen
with proposed descriptions of Radical Enlightenment (referring to the beliefs of a particular
doctrine or rather to loosely-connected currents of thought with remote family resemblances
only), 9) critical attacks on the very notion (Mulsow (2012) proposing the sociological notion of
“Wissensprekariat” as a counter-candidate).
All these important developments in our understanding of Enlightenment Age thought
(and its repercussions in the understanding of Antiquity and Medieval thought as well as later
intellectual history) are made possible by the initial crystallization of bundles of empirical
observations into the abstract notion of ‘Radical Enlightenment’. Thus, it forms an important
actual case for the relevance of abstractions in the humanities – in itself an Enlightenment
standard vis-à-vis the insistence of counter-enlighteners on the terror inherent in abstract and
universal concepts.
Tzedekah: The True Religion of Spinoza’s Tractatus
Anya Topolski
KU Leuven
It should come as no surprise that the meaning of justice is a significant source of debate
amongst philosophers, politicians and activists as the word itself, at least in its Hebraic origin,
has quite a convoluted conceptual history. It is for this reason that the notion of ‫( צדק‬tzedekah,
tzadik, tzedek), most often translated as justice, righteousness, charity, or loving-kindness is
fundamental to any initiative that seeks to investigate the ideas central to Jewish thought. In this
contribution, I would like to focus on Spinoza’s use of ‫ צדק‬as the ultimate end of true religion.
“That the worship of God and obedience to him consist only in Justice and Loving-kindness, or
in the love of towards one’s neighbor” (Curley - Jan 2013: XIV, 22, 197). While several Spinoza
scholars have considered the connection between justice and charity, it is only by re-connecting
these Latinized notions, cited 16 times in the TTP, to the Hebraic root ‫צדק‬, referred to explicitly
4 times in the TTP, that one can make proper sense of the meaning of true religion. Contrary to
common readings of Spinoza that equate true religion with a purified Christian morality, I would
like to firmly root the notion of true religion in terms of Jewish philosophical theology. At the
same time, this exploration of the richness of the notion of ‫צדק‬, which takes Spinoza as its Virgil,
also has as its goal to re-introduce the Judaic notion of ‫ צדק‬to the wider debates on global justice,
redistribution, charity and political action.
In order to define true religion, Spinoza proposes to separate it “from philosophic
speculation and reduce to those very few and very simple doctrines Christ taught his followers”
(Curley - Jan 2013: XI, 22, III/158). Did Jesus teach his followers to act according to the doctrine
of tzedekah or is Spinoza once again engaging in esoteric teachings? Or should we read the
Tractatus charitably and interpret this claim as Spinoza’s way of telling us that he defines true
religion to be tzedekah as it was understood in the time of Jesus. What this would entail is a clear
separation of this term from its previous etymological roots in the Torah, as well its Judaic or
Pauline interpretations so prominent in the Reformation debates on justice and charity. The
whole foundation of true religion is intended to encourage one to love G-d and the other as
oneself, articulating the latter by means of charity and justice, or more precisely by means of
33
tzedekah, “which is everywhere commended in the highest degree in both Testaments” (Curley Jan 2013: 166). It is my claim that Spinoza’s true religion is inspired by the Judaic notion of
tzedekah and it is thus paramount to explore the richness of this notion for a proper
understanding of the TTP as well as for the notion of true religion which has a philosophical
history that goes far beyond the 17th century.
In part 1, I situate ‫’צדק‬s usage in Spinoza’s notion of true religion. According to Spinoza,
‫ צדק‬provides a solid foundation for true religion because it can be easily emulated. This, as
chapter thirteen aims to explain, is exactly what purpose it serves; it is a model for obedience.
Thus while exact knowledge of God is not shared by all, obedience, “the knowledge of his divine
justice and charity [tzedekah]” (158), is. Obedience is thus an easily imitable non-philosophical
understanding of tzedekah. In part 2, I consider the etymological and semantic roots of ‫צדק‬,
which will already provide us with a first connection between justice and charity. In addition,
this usage of ‫ דקצ‬clearly connects to Spinoza’s notion of blessedness, and the notions of reward
and merit in the Torah. In part 3, I look at the usage of ‫ צדק‬in the Second Temple Period and
specifically in the book of Daniel and the Pauline hermeneutic. The major contention with regard
to this period is whether ‫ צדק‬is a relationship between humans or between humans and G-d, a
debate that later reappears in the TTP. In part 4, I consider – as it relates to Spinoza’s usage of
the term, the contributions of Rashi and Rambam, contributions that have been overlooked in the
Spinoza scholarship and that help connect true religion to the question of redistributive justice
and righteousness. In part 5, I look at the usage of ‫ צדק‬in the period just prior to the publication
of the TTP and specifically the controversial debates concerning indulgences that led Luther to
reignite the controversy between works and faith in Paul, a controversy that centred upon a
proper understanding of ‫צדק‬. The purpose of this historical exploration of the notion of ‫ צדק‬is
both to reconnect Spinoza’s notion of true religion to its Judaic root, and to re-open the door to a
reconsideration of the richness of the notion of ‫צדק‬.
The Temple of Jerusalem in Picture and Detail: Biblical Antiquarianism and the
Construction of Radical Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic, 1670-1700
Jetze Touber
Utrecht University
Biblical criticism was part and parcel of the Radical Enlightenment.6 Yet the biblical criticism of
philosophers such as Lodewijk Meyer and Spinoza was methodologically heterogeneous,
branching off in metaphysics, textual criticism and biblical history.7 Accordingly, it provoked
variegated responses in all of these areas. In this paper we explore how one seemingly harmless
strand of biblical scholarship, the antiquarian investigation of the Bible, got caught up in
hermeneutical debates engendered by radical critics. We follow a discussion on the Temple of
6
J. Israel, Radical enlightenment. Philosophy and the making of modernity 1650-1750 (Oxford: OUP, 2001),
pp. 197-217; idem, Enlightenment contested. Philosophy, modernity, and the emancipation of man 1670-1752
(Oxford: OUP, 2006), pp. 409-435.
7
R. Bordoli, Ragione e Scrittura tra Descartes e Spinoza: saggio sulla ‘Philosophia S. Scripturae Interpres’
di Lodewijk Meyer e sulla sua recezione (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1997); J. Samuel Preus, Spinoza and the irrelevance
of biblical authority (Cambridge: CUP, 2001); S. James, Spinoza on philosophy, religion, and politics: The
Theologico-political treatise (Oxford: OUP, 2012).
34
Jerusalem to illustrate how in the second half of the seventeenth century antiquarian studies had
the potential to deflate the sacred status of Old Testament Israel.8
The paper will focus on Willem Goeree (1635-1711), no cleric or academic, but a book
trader and dilettante biblical antiquarian.9 Goeree produced an impressive oeuvre of antiquarian
works on the biblical Hebrew Republic, culminating a four volume work in folio on the history
of the religion of the Jews of the Old Testament.10 Goeree’s piety notwithstanding, his prolific
editorial activities aroused disgruntlement among some of the Reformed shepherds of the soul.
The artisan became involved in a dispute about the Temple of Solomon, initiated by two
academically trained theologians. Goeree’s contribution, capitalizing on his expertise in
architecture, went down badly as it seemed to deny God the design of the Temple.
The reconstruction of the Temple of Jerusalem is not an obvious issue to become
associated with radical biblical criticism. For Spinoza, for instance, the appearance of the temple
would have been irrelevant to the salvific content of the Bible, as testified by the Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus (1670).11 However, I will show how in the final decades of the seventeenth
century Reformed theologians feared that even the contextualization of the architectural reality
of the Old Testament Jews would be grist to the mill of spinozists and likeminded atheists.
Imprudent application of the knowledge of pagan culture would clear the way for godless
propositions concerning state, church and religion. The ‘Temple-affair’ reveals that in the
decades leading up to 1700, historical research into biblical materials was easily besmirched by
the catch-all charge of Spinozism.
My paper illustrates three aspects of biblical history and antiquarianism: (1) the ever
more elaborate study of biblical history and antiquities, while stemming from the pious intent to
gain better insight in the world of the Old Testament, inadvertently laid bare problems that
compromised the conception of the Jews as a unique, divinely elected people; (2) delicate and
controversial questions surrounding biblical history and antiquities became tainted by association
8
In the words of Jonathan Sheehan: ‘Antiquarian scholarship had the potential both to erode and to buttress
the authority of Scripture and, at various times, served both functions.’, J. Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible
(Princeton, NJ, 2005), p. 23.
9
Mulder, ‘Goeree (Willem)’ in: NNBW, VII, cc. 479-480; E.O.G. Haitsma Mulier, G.A.C. van der Lem,
Repertorium van geschiedschrijvers in Nederland 1500-1800 (The Hague: Nederlands Historisch Genootschap,
1990), 152-153. For his father: ‘Goeree, Hugo Willem’ in: A.J. van der Aa e.a., Biographisch woordenboek der
Nederlanden (Haarlem: J.J. van Brederode, 1852-1878) VII, pp. 250-251. Willem Goeree has been studied mainly
as a theorist of architecture and graphical art impressive, at the expense of his impressive production in biblical
history and antiquarian studies: C. van den Heuvel, ‘Willem Goeree (1635-1711) en de ontwikkeling van een
algemene architectuurtheorie in de Nederlanden’, Bulletin: bulletin van de Koninklijke Nederlandse Oudheidkundige
Bond 96:5 (1997), pp. 154-176, 188; G.M. van de Roemer ‘Regulating the arts: Willem Goeree versus Samuel van
Hoogstraten’ in: Eric Jorink and Bart Ramakers ed., Art and science in the early modern Netherlands = Kunst en
wetenschap in de vroegmoderne Nederlanden (Zwolle: WBOOKS, 2011), pp. 184-207. For Goeree as a libertine
with spinozist leanings: Inger Leemans, ‘De weg naar de hel is geplaveid met boeken over de bijbel. Vrijgeest en
veelschrijver Willem Goeree (1635-1711)’, Nederlandse Letterkunde 9 (2004), pp. 255-273.
10
Petrus Cunaeus, De republyk der Hebreen, of gemeenebest der joden, trans. Hugo Willemz. Goeree, ed.
Willem Goeree (Amsterdam: W. Goeree, 1682); Hugo Willemsz. Goeree, De republyk der Hebreen, of gemeenebest
der joden [...] vervolgd op de drie boeken van de heer Petrus Cunaeus, ed. Willem Goeree (Amsterdam: W. Goeree,
1683); Hugo Willemsz. Goeree, Derde deel, of tweede vervolgh op de Republyk der Hebreen, of gemeenebest der
joden, ed. Willem Goeree (Amsterdam: W. Goeree bookseller, 1683); Willem Goeree, Voor-bereidselen tot de
bybelsche wysheid, en gebruik der heilige en kerklijke historien (Amsterdam: W. Goeree, 1690); Willem Goeree,
Mosaize historie der Hebreeuwse kerke (Amsterdam: W. and D. Goeree, 1700).
11
Spinoza did repeatedly point to the charged significance of the temple for the Jews’ collective identity (e.g.
Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (Amsterdam: J. Rieuwertsz, 1670), pp. 194, 203), but details such as the
dimensions of its walls or the number of its antechambers were outside the purview of his biblical criticism.
35
with Spinoza’s historicizing approach of the Bible; (3) by the end of the seventeenth century
discussions about the nature of the religion and the holy texts of the Old Testament Jews, far
from being abstruse scholarly debates, were carried on in the vernacular by dilettantes, who
revelled in novel and audacious approaches to Antiquity.
Marked Subjectivities, Or the View from Somewhere
Marc Van den Bossche
Free University of Brussels (VUB)
The reception of Immanuel Kant’s Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? by Michel
Foucault in his Qu'est-ce que les Lumières? is remarkable for several reasons. Given Foucault’s
criticisms of the Enlightenment in general and his criticism of Kant in particular, it is surprising
that he, in the aforementioned essay, seems to want to inscribe himself into a Kantian tradition.
First, I will consider the problems that Foucault’s interpretation of the Enlightenment engender.
Second, I focus on what elements from the Enlightenment tradition Foucault wants to preserve
and how he intends to apply them in a positive way. In a third step, I wish to criticize the
interpretation of Foucault’s work as such from a contemporary feminist perspective. This will
lead me to a conception of radical Enlightenment that starts from the idea of ‘a view from
somewhere’.
1. Michel Foucault distinguishes two forms of Kantian criticism. The first he sees present
in the three Critiques, and he regards it as an analytics of truth. The perspective here is
transcendental and looks for universal structures of knowledge or of moral action. The question
here, as is well-known, is which limits cannot be surpassed in this quest. In short: Foucault
rejects the possibility of universal claims to truth and universal values.
2. The second form of Kantian critique Foucault describes as an ontology of the present or
an ontology of the self. It is about a search for possible transformations in the present. Foucault
sees Kant as the first philosopher who views the present as a philosophical problem and who
questions, from there on, the role of the philosopher. Foucault, then, problematizes the
contingency of how we became who we are, in other words, how we have become subjectified.
He goes on to demand the possibility of a different thinking and acting and a different conception
of subjectivity. This I’d like to describe as a radical form of Enlightenment and as a sharpening
of Kants Sapere aude.
3. Feminists like Nancy Hartsock review some of the criticisms of Foucault of a particular
interpretation of the Enlightenment. They also consider the ‘God-trick’ as problematic, i.e., the
idea that there exists a view from nowhere, and they formulate a critique of the idea that there is
a conception of reason that could, except for being disembedded, also be disembodied, and that
could lead us to objective knowledge. Even though this is a criticism that Foucault would
endorse wholeheartedly, he would not have gone far enough according to this feminist
perspective. Or at least: he would have had no alternative. His criticism of the idea that one can
see everything from nowhere makes him decide that there is nothing to see at all. His attitude,
like that of Rorty, is described by Hartsock as satiric and parodic. Foucault sees knowledge as a
product of power and as a way of subjectifying. Ultimately this means, however, that Foucault
keeps holding on to one form of epistemology, especially the masculine and Eurocentric version
36
thereof. Hartsock, on the contrary, argues for a plurality of epistemologies that depart from
marked subjectivities, and strives for local forms of emancipation.
From this I wish to conclude that this view, which takes into account minority views of all
kinds, is consistently in line with a radical Enlightenment thinking, in which the critical
questioning of the ontology of actuality takes central stage.
Enlightenment Discourses of Natural Equality and Racial Classification
Devin Vartija
Max Planck Institute for Human Development
This paper explores the tension between the development of the modern racial classificatory
system and the notion of universal, natural equality during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment.
It traces these ideas in four encyclopedias: Ephraim Chambers’ 1728 Cyclopaedia published in
London, the 1753 Supplement to Chambers’ work, Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s
Encyclopédie (1751-1772) published in Paris and Neuchâtel, and Bartolomeo De Felice’s
Encyclopédie d’Yverdon (1770-1780) published in the Swiss town of Yverdon. These
encyclopedias were closely linked and contributed significantly to the cross-national
communication of knowledge in the burgeoning eighteenth-century Republic of Letters.
Comparing these works chronologically reveals that the ‘science of racial classification’
flourished toward the end of the eighteenth century, as European naturalists such as Buffon and
Blumenbach applied the systematic classificatory methodology of natural history to humanity.
This discourse was often imbued with notions of the superiority of Europeans and the inferiority
of all others. However, the growth of the idea of universal, natural equality, as well as the
widespread idea of the influence of climate on racial differences prevented the development of a
rigid and immutable racial hierarchy in these influential eighteenth-century encyclopedias.
To manage the immense size of the primary sources consulted, this paper focuses on
European conceptions of Africans and Americans in particular. The tension between the
development of modern ‘racial thinking’ and the secular notion of natural equality is placed
centre-stage. Articles on specific groups of indigenous peoples in Africa and the Americas are
given significant attention, as well as articles such as ‘Humanité,’ ‘Égalité naturelle,’ and ‘Droit
humaine.’ Entries on slavery and the slave-trade, where issues of race and equality were
particularly pertinent, are also thoroughly analysed. The ways in which notions of equality (and
therefore inequality) informed the discourse on non-European societies and peoples inform the
present analysis.
Each encyclopedia stemmed from a distinct religious or philosophical position, and thus
this research allows for an investigation of the influence of ‘Radical’ and ‘Moderate’
Enlightenment views on understandings of race and equality in the eighteenth century. This
affords an additional contribution of the present paper to contemporary debates among
Enlightenment studies scholars. Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopaedia and Supplement favoured
deism, Diderot’s Encyclopédie had an atheistic philosophical core, and De Felice’s
encyclopaedia gave prominence to liberal Protestant theology. Some historians, such as Jonathan
Israel, argue that the eighteenth century anti-colonial, anti-racist critique could only be
coherently derived from philosophers committed to a monist (Spinozist), atheistic philosophy.
37
Others, on the contrary, argue that the collapse of a Genesis-inspired anthropology during the
Enlightenment fuelled the growth of ‘philosophically respectable’ racial theories amongst atheist
materialists. In contrast to these historians, the present findings demonstrate that religious and
philosophical beliefs and viewpoints did not correspond to a particular racial worldview in any
simple or direct way, although considerations of doctrinal preferences were nonetheless
important. This systematic investigation of modern discourses of equality and race adds a new
perspective on the political and philosophical legacies of the Enlightenment.
Modern Greek Enlightenment: Radical Enlightenment per se
George N. Vlahakis
Open Hellenic University
During the so called long eighteenth century Greek scholars formed gradually an intellectual
movement with particular strength and influence among the populations of South-eastern
Europe. This movement arose as a response to an imperative need for the revival of the
humanities and the sciences in the region which was still under the political administration of the
Ottoman Empire. During the twentieth century pronounced historians of ideas called this
movement as Modern Greek or Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment (M.G.E.). More recent studies have
been proved that M.G.E. was not uniform and isotropic but was consisted by several currents
with distinctive characteristics. Nevertheless a central aim of the scholars who played a
significant role in the context of M.G.E. was the construction, somehow from its very beginning,
of a Greek or better a Hellenic national identity among the Orthodox Christian and Greek
speaking populations of South Eastern Europe. In addition, several social, philosophical and
ideological problems became subject of discussion, sometimes leading to interesting and ardent
debates. Debates which took place not only between members of the M.G.E. but also between
Greek Enlighteners and those who defended more conservative or even counter-enlightenment
positions and were mainly high rank clerics or people closely connected with them. This
situation was, among others, a factor for the formation of what we define as Radical Modern
Greek Enlightenment (R.M.G.E.), Radical having the connotation given to the word if connected
to the Enlightenment by Jonathan I. Israel in his relevant publications. In our study we aim to
give a rough but adequate picture of R.M.G.E and its role compared to the mainstream M.G.E.
Of particular interest would be to see the arguments of its members on subjects related with
science and religion, especially if we have in mind that religion, expressed mainly by the Greek
Orthodox Church, had a completely different role in the life of the people than that in Europe.
Radical Greek Enlighteners on the one hand criticized severely religion in philosophical and
social terms and on the other supported strongly the materialistic character of science. Naturally
their sources were the works of European materialists for this reason they were accused by the
official cleric circles as heretics or even atheists. Two case studies will be examined the works of
Iossipos Moissiodax (1730-1800) and Christodoulos Pamplekis (1733-1793). They are
characterized of a polemic writing against the rotten and vicious past and present of the society
and declare the need for a continuous fight for a better future. Usually, the radicals loose the
battle and the Greek radical enlighteners failed to be the exception to the rule. But how could be
winners when even the moderate mainstream Enlightenment defeated as well?In any case
38
Radical Modern Greek Enlightenment did not condemn to oblivion, though this was the intention
of its rivals. It played a significant role in the context of the Modern Greek Enlightenment and
still it is considered as one powerful pool of alternative philosophical and ideological ideas even
after the establishment of the independent Greek State.
Late enlightenment materialism in Germany. The case of Christoph Meiners and Michael
Hißmann
Falk Wunderlich
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
The paper deals with two German materialist philosophers, Christoph Meiners (1747-1810) and
Michael Hißmann (1752-1784) who have hardly been studied in detail so far. Unusual for
materialists, they were able to obtain academic positions, both at the Georgia Augusta university
in Göttingen where Hißmann was first a student of Meiners and closely collaborated with him
later. The image of Meiners has somewhat been distorted by the fact that he became a
conservative or reactionary in later years and also returned to substance dualism in his 1786
Grundriß der Seelenlehre. But this is not true of his earlier years as his 1776 article
“Psychologisches Fragment über die Verschiedenheiten des innern Bewustseyns“ demonstrates.
Here, he criticizes the common refutations of materialism as well as dualistic understandings of
the identity of persons. Hißmann, however, advances his materialism more straightforwardly and
systematically. In his Psychologische Versuche (1777), he states: “According to the experiences I
rely on I believe I have to assume that our brain is endowed with the power of thought.” (p. 252)
His rhetoric is more radical as well, for instance regarding the “silly claims of ignorant church
fathers” enlightened Europe has sucessfully overcome (ibid., p. 14).
The paper will briefly address the question of how materialism was possible at a university
and then concentrate on determining the nature of Meiners’ and Hißmann’s materialism. Despite
radical rhetoric, this materialism is restricted to an empiricist basis (common among most 18th
century materialists). Hißmann, for instance, states that we have no direct experiential access to
the mind, and that there can be no demonstrations regarding its nature but we can only weigh
probabilities. With these reservations, though, Hißmann and Meiners do think that the materialist
option is the more probable one.
I will proceed to argue that Meiners’ and Hißmann’s materialism is a moderate one in the
sense that they explicitly hold that materialism does not necessarily deny the immortality of the
soul. They consider it possible that there is a material soul separate from the body (and
independent of it to some extent). Hißmann argues that God could superadd immortality to such
a material soul similar to how he could super-add thought to matter (as Locke had famously
argued). Göttingen materialism, thus, is also restricted to the mind-body relationship and not
extended to a general materialistic monism: Whereas the soul is probably material, there seem to
be no doubt for Meiners and Hißmann that God exists as an almighty, immaterial being. These
considerations suggest that Meiners and Hißmann ally themselves more with British materialism
than with the French one that is often accompanied with atheism. Numerous reviews both
published, as well as Hißmann’s correspondence (where he explicitly subscribes to Socinianism),
support this claim and show that Priestley was the most influential philosopher for them, while at
39
the same time they had a rather low opinion on the author of the Système de la nature, still
unknown by then.
40
List of Participants
Name
Acosta, Emiliano
Chareix, Fabien
Couto, Patricia
DeSantis, Anthony
Devellennes,
Charles
Dijkstra, G.W.H.
Donato, Clorinda
Ducheyne, Steffen
Geerlings, J.P.T.
Gillen, Ultán
Grigoropoulou,
Vasiliki
Henkel, Scott
Israel, Jonathan I.
Jagersma, R.
James, David
Lavaert, Sonja
Leask, Ian
Lord, Beth
MacMillan, Alissa
Macor, Laura A.
Palmer, Eric
Pellegrin, MarieFrédérique
Pelletier, Arnaud
Affiliation
Ghent University
Université ParisSorbonne
Universidade de
Lisboa
University of South
Florida
University of Kent
E-mail
[email protected]
[email protected]
Page n°
12
12
[email protected]
13
[email protected]
14
[email protected]
15
University of
Amsterdam
California State
University
Free University of
Brussels (VUB)
Radboud University
Nijmegen
Teesside University
University of Athens
[email protected]
21
[email protected]
16
[email protected]
-
[email protected]
17
[email protected]
[email protected]
18
19
[email protected]
20
[email protected]
7
[email protected]
21
[email protected]
22
[email protected]
23
[email protected]
24
[email protected]
7
[email protected]
24
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
25
26
27
[email protected]
28
Binghamton
University
Institute for Advanced
Study, Princeton
University of
Amsterdam
University of
Warwick
Free University of
Brussels (VUB)
Dublin City
University
University of
Aberdeen
Institute for Advanced
Study, Toulouse
Università di Padova
Allegheny College
Université Jean
Moulin-Lyon 3
KU Leuven
41
Pugliese, Nastassja
Ricci, Rosa
Rumore, Paola
University of Georgia
Universität Leipzig
University of Turin
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
28
29
30
Schliesser, Eric
Schröder, Winfried
Ghent University
Philipps-Universität
Marburg
[email protected]
[email protected]
8
9
Universidad de Alcalá
[email protected]
31
Stjernfelt, Frederik
Topolski, Anya
Touber, Jetze
Van Bendegem,
Jean Paul
Van Bunge, Wiep
Aarhus University
KU Leuven
Utrecht University
Free University of
Brussels (VUB)
Erasmus University
Rotterdam
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
32
33
34
-
[email protected]
9
Van den Bossche,
Marc
Vartija, Devin
Free University of
Brussels (VUB)
Max Planck Institute
for Human
Development
Free University of
Brussels (VUB)
Hellenic Open
University
[email protected]
36
[email protected]
37
[email protected]
-
[email protected]
38
[email protected]
10
[email protected]
39
Seoane-Pinilla,
Julio
Verstrynge, Karl
Vlahakis, George
N.
Walravens, Else
Wunderlich, Falk
Free University of
Brussels (VUB)
Johannes GutenbergUniversität Mainz
42