Online research in philosophy

Machine generated contents note: Introduction: what is a philosophical religion?; 1. Reason, divine law, and self-rule in Plato; 2. Moses, Christ and the universal rule of reason in antiquity; 3. Communities of reason in the Islamic world; 4. Christianity as a philosophical religion in Spinoza; Epilogue: did the history of philosophical religions come to an end?.

This volume draws a balanced picture of the Rationalists by bringing their intellectual contexts, sources and full range of interests into sharper focus, without neglecting their core commitment to the epistemological doctrine that earned ...

Maimon once described the philosophical project underlying his Essay on Transcendental Philosophy as an attempt “to unify Kantian philosophy with Spinozism ”. But in the only reference to Spinoza in the Essay , he stresses that Spinoza was not the source of his argument. In this paper I will argue that, notwithstanding the disclaimer, Maimon's solution for the problems that in his view haunted Kant's theory of knowledge was indeed significantly influenced by Spinoza, as well as by the medieval Jewish (...) Aristotelian Maimonides. Since the key concept in the solution proposed by Maimon is the metaphysical doctrine of the “infinite intellect”, my focus will be on clarifying how this doctrine is related to Maimonides' doctrine of the divine intellect and to Spinoza's doctrine of Deus sive Natura . My main contention is that important aspects of Maimon's doctrine of the “infinite intellect” are based on a Spinozistic interpretation of Maimonides' doctrine of the divine intellect. (shrink)

: In this paper I explain how Spinoza's ontological monism is related to the monotheism of a distinct tradition in medieval Aristotelianism exemplified by Maimonides. My main contention is that Maimonides' God, conceived as intellectual activity has the same structure as Spinoza's Deus sive Natura. The main difference between them is that Maimonides' God is confined to cognitive activity, whereas Spinoza's God is extensive activity as well. I trace the impact of the medieval doctrine of God on Spinoza's thought from (...) the Cogitata Metaphysica to the Ethics, establishing conceptual parallels, literary links, and an explanation of the steps leading from the former to the latter. (shrink)