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Spinoza sinicus: An Asian Paragraph in the History of the Radical Enlightenment
- Journal of the History of Ideas
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Volume 68, Number 4, October 2007
- pp. 537-561
- 10.1353/jhi.2007.0037
- Article
- Additional Information
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Departing from Pierre Bayle's discussion of Spinoza in the entry 'Japan' in his Dictionaire, this article discusses how debates about the Far East functioned as a foil for the polemics generated by the Radical Enlightement. The central point of investigation is a debate between Gerard Vossius and Georg Hornius, integrating three main issues where ideas about the East challenged accepted European authority: sacred history, republicanism, and natural philosophy. The article demonstrates that the onset of radicalism involved a plethora of old, new and exotic ideas, from logic to linguistics and Hermeticism, before crystallizing into the scientific and political notions now associated with modernity.