Title: Spinoza's model of God: pantheism or panentheism?
Source document: Pro-Fil. 2023, vol. 24, iss. 1, pp. 1-12
Extent
1-12
-
ISSN1212-9097 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/pf23-1-32960
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/digilib.79828
Type: Article
Language
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Rights access
open access
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
The philosophical God of Spinoza is branded as a pantheistic God so often that, regarding at least Western philosophy and philosophical commentaries, Spinozism seems to be practically synonymous with pantheism. Since the times of German idealism, there have also been attempts at a panentheistic reading, which are still alive to this day. The article analyses both theological models in their core claims to adequately qualify Spinoza's theological system while considering the established levels of philosophical-theological interpretation. By identifying systemic pantheism and essentialist panentheism in his system, it is argued that both accounts or readings of Spinoza's theory might be correct in their own way, provided that the models behind them are correctly applied to their respective levels of thought.
References
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[28] Pines, S. (1963): Translator's introduction: The philosophical sources of The Guide of the Perplexed, in Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, Vol. I, transl. S. Pines, Chica-go/London: The University of Chicago Press, lvii–cxxxiv.
[29] Spinoza, B. (2002a): Ethics, in Spinoza: Complete Works, transl. S. Shirley, Indiana-polis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 213–382.
[30] Spinoza, B. (2002b): Short treatise on God, man, and his well-being, in Spinoza: Complete Works, transl. S. Shirley, Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 31–107.
[31] Spinoza, B. (2002c): The letters, in Spinoza: Complete Works, transl. S. Shirley, Indiana-polis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 755–959.
[2] Bracken, J. A. (2014): Panentheism in the context of the theology and science dialogue, Open Theology, 1(1), 1–11, available at: ˂ https://doi.org/10.2478/opth-2014-0001 >.
[3] Clayton, P. (2000): The Problem of God in Modern Thought, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
[4] Cooper, J. W. (2014): Panentheism: The Other God of the Philosophers. From Plato to the Present, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
[5] Culp, J. (2020): "Panentheism", in Zalta, E. N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2020 Edition) [online], [accessed 2020-07-07], available at: ˂ https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/panentheism/ >.
[6] Göcke, B. P. (2013a): On the importance of Karl Friedrich Krause's panentheism, Zygon, 48(2), 364–379, available at: ˂ https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12015 >.
[7] Göcke, B. P. (2013b): Panentheism and classical theism, SOPHIA, 52(1), 61–75, available at: ˂ https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-011-0292-y >. | DOI 10.1007/s11841-011-0292-y
[8] Göcke, B. P. (2016): There is no panentheistic paradigm, The Heythrop Journal, 57(6), 1–8, available at: ˂ https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.12314 >.
[9] Göcke, B. P. (2018): The Panentheism of Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781-1832): From Transcendental Philosophy to Metaphysics, Berlin: Peter Lang, available at: ˂ https://doi.org/10.3726/b13320 >. | DOI 10.3726/b13320
[10] Harris, E. E. (1995): The Substance of Spinoza, New Jersey, NY: Humanities Press Inter-national.
[11] Hustwit, J. R. (2013): Can models of God compete? in Diller, J. – Kasher, A. (eds.) Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities, Dordrecht: Springer, 907–913, available at: ˂ https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_75 >. | DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_75
[12] Kisser, T. (2011): The third category of knowledge and the rational love of God, in Hampe, M. – Renz, U. – Schnepf, R. (eds.) Spinoza's Ethics: A Collective Commentary, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 281–294. | DOI 10.1163/ej.9789004194250.i-380.83
[13] Levine, M. P. (1994): Pantheism: A Non-Theistic Concept of Deity, London/New York: Routledge.
[14] Levy, Z. (1987): The relation of Spinoza's concept of substance to the concept of Ultimate Reality, Ultimate Reality and Meaning, 10(3), 186–201. | DOI 10.3138/uram.10.3.186
[15] Maimonides (1963): The Guide of the Perplexed, Vol. I, transl. S. Pines, Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.
[16] Mason, R. (1997): The God of Spinoza: A Philosophical Study, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[17] Mason, R. (2016): Spinoza: Logic, Knowledge and Religion, London/New York: Routledge, available at: ˂ https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315242613 >.
[18] Mather, R. (2017): Judaism, panentheism and the intellectual love of God, PhilArchive.org [online], [accessed 2022-07-27], available at: ˂ https://philarchive.org/rec/MATJPA >.
[19] Melamed, Y. Y. (2012): Spinoza's deification of existence, in Garber, D. – Rutherford, D. (eds.) Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, Volume VI, 75–104, available at: ˂ https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199659593.003.0003 >. | DOI 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199659593.003.0003
[20] Melamed, Y. Y. (2013): Spinoza's Metaphysics: Substance and Thought, Oxford: Oxford University Press, available at: ˂ https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195394054.001.0001 >.
[21] Melamed, Y. Y. (2018a): A concise grammar of pantheism, Unpublished manuscript, Acade-mia.edu [online], [accessed 2020-07-07], available at: ˂ https://www.academia.edu/36909644/A_Concise_Grammar_of_Pantheism >.
[22] Melamed, Y. Y. (2018b): Cohen, Spinoza and the nature of pantheism, Jewish Studies Quarterly, 25(2), 171–180, available at: ˂ https://doi.org/10.1628/jsq-2018-0007 >.
[23] Mullins, R. T. (2016): The difficulty with demarcating panentheism, SOPHIA, 55(3), 325–346, available at: ˂ https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-015-0497-6 >. | DOI 10.1007/s11841-015-0497-6
[24] Nadler, S. (2010): Benedictus Pantheissimus, in Rogers, G. A. J. – Sorell, T. – Kraye, J. (eds.) Insiders and Outsiders in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, London/New York: Routledge, 238–256, available at: ˂ https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203871744 >. | DOI 10.4324/9780203871744
[25] Naess, A. (1983): Einstein, Spinoza, and God, in van der Merwe, A. (ed.) Old and New Questions in Physics, Cosmology, Philosophy, and Theoretical Biology, Boston: Springer, 683–687. | DOI 10.1007/978-1-4684-8830-2_46
[26] Norell, T. (2015): A Comprehension of Spinoza's God: Through the Dichotomy of Labels, Lunds Universitet: Centrum för Teologi och Religionsvetenskap.
[27] Peters, T. (2013): Models of God, in: Diller, J. – Kasher, A. (eds.) Models of God and Al-ternative Ultimate Realities, Dordrecht: Springer, 43–61, available at: ˂ https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1 >.
[28] Pines, S. (1963): Translator's introduction: The philosophical sources of The Guide of the Perplexed, in Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, Vol. I, transl. S. Pines, Chica-go/London: The University of Chicago Press, lvii–cxxxiv.
[29] Spinoza, B. (2002a): Ethics, in Spinoza: Complete Works, transl. S. Shirley, Indiana-polis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 213–382.
[30] Spinoza, B. (2002b): Short treatise on God, man, and his well-being, in Spinoza: Complete Works, transl. S. Shirley, Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 31–107.
[31] Spinoza, B. (2002c): The letters, in Spinoza: Complete Works, transl. S. Shirley, Indiana-polis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing, 755–959.