[lbo-talk] Signs of the Times

[wrobert at uci.edu]

Yes, he had a very good knowledge.  He was involved in a lot of
conversations with a variety of protestant sects, and by all accounts he
also had a working knowledge of Islam.  It's important to keep in mind
that Spinoza was excommunicated at a fairly young age, and even before
that had very little interest in keeping his intellectual interests kept
within the fairly limited Jewish sectarian community of the Netherlands...

 The people that he in conversation and polemics were not people of the
middle ages, but of his time.  robert wood


> Did Spinoza actually know very much about the history of religious
> philosophy (that is, all of medieval European and Arabic philosophy)
> outside of the rabbinical tradition? Making religion into philosophy
> wasn't really what they were trying to do; they took religion as a datum
> and incorporated it into their thought, not substitute one for the other.
>
> --- On Wed, 9/16/09, wrobert at uci.edu <wrobert at uci.edu> wrote:
>
>> From: wrobert at uci.edu <wrobert at uci.edu>
>> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Signs of the Times
>> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>> Date: Wednesday, September 16, 2009, 3:39 PM
>> As to Catholicism, there was a lot of
>> good stuff going on during the 60's
>> and 70's, but that's been been taken care of.  No more
>> Vatican II
>> evidently.  As to protestantism, there is certainly an
>> impressive
>> intellectual tradition in its origins, but at this point,
>> the average
>> protestant where I'm from knows very little about the Bible
>> (which is
>> kinda depressing given the origins of protestantism) 
>> Although personally,
>> I agree with Spinoza that the core kernel of Christianity
>> is not terribly
>> complicated at all, and that the general attempt to make
>> religion into
>> philosophy is an act of mystification.  robert wood
>>
>
>
>
>
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