Religion and Power in Spinoza

The Tractatus Theologico-politicus was published anonimously in 1670, thereby challenging a moderately tolerant Dutch Republic (Pierre Bayle’s great arch of the refugees). The defence of libertas philosophandi (freedom of speech and thought) put forward by Spinoza, along with the underlying analysis of the fundamentals of religion and political power, were received as a radical proposal in Modern Europe, though despite prompting severe criticism and considerable amount of refutations, it circulated profusely and was translated into French, English and Dutch before the end of the century.

This volume analyzes into detail Spinoza’s line of reasoning, identifies its allies and its enimies, explores its more or less obvious connections with the Ethica, in order to shed light and reasess the value of this indispensable classic of theological and political thought for our time.

Josep Olesti is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Girona since 1992 and full member of the Institute of Catalan Studies. He paid attention mostly to the Early Modern Philosophy, mainly 17th century, and published papers on, among others, Hobbes, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Bayle and Kant. He translated into Catalan the Leibniz’ Nouveaux Essais sur l’enttendement humain (1997), Discours de métaphysique/Monadologie (2018) and Spinoza’s Ethica (2013)

Jörg Zimmer is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Girona since 1993. His main research fields are aesthetics, theory and history of dialectics and Classical German philosophy.