Itinerari dell'antispinozismo
2008
The research intends to evaluate the incidence and the effects of the appearance
in France of Spinoza’s Opera Posthuma (1677-1680), in order to underline historical
circumstances, cultural facts and theoretical fields by which the so-called ‘Spinozareception’
has come about – especially in Cartesian or post-Cartesian outlook.
Breaking into a cultural ground marked by lively theological and doctrinarian
controversies, Spinoza’s thinking seemed to point out those themes and problems of
Cartesianism subject to many interpretative pulls, or even put aside, in the
developments of Cartesian metaphysics itself. In fact, after the death of Descartes, his
followers often turned to emphasize their compatibility with the requirements of
Calvinistic or Catholic orthodoxy. The leading thread through the entire work is
therefore the convergence of Cartesianism and Spinozism, and in particular the
encounter between ‘Cartesianisms’ (theoretical tendencies into a Cartesian ground)
and Spinozism. The beginning section is devoted to the analysis of the first Cartesian
refutations of Spinoza (by Poiret, Lamy, Jacquelot, and Regis). Then, the ambiguous
critical strategy deployed by Pierre Bayle in the famous article «Spinoza» is
discussed. In the final part, the work is focused on the oblique confrontation of
Fenelon’s Cartesian metaphysics with the theoretical image of spinozisme. If, in a
historical view, the most important anti-spinozistic works came out from that
articulated and dislocated space which goes under the name of ‘Cartesianism’, in our
opinion the study of dynamics of connections of Cartesianism and Spinozism can
help to better understand the complex history of early European Spinoza-reception.
We find an a posteriori confirmation of it in the pages of the principal French learned
journal, Journal de Trevoux, whose chronological extent (1701-1767) actually
involved the majority of ‘mediate’ circulation of Spinozism. At the heart of the
controversies between supporters and opponents of Descartes, the encounter with
Spinoza brought to surface some common trends in both theoretical spaces, and some
shared features hard to remove. The latter will orient the peculiar modalities of
Cartesian criticism and confutation, through violent and misleading accusations, and
with clear omissions of perfectly Cartesian themes, but suspect of heresy
(antifinalism, divine omnipotence, free creation of eternal truths, determinism,
occasionalism and continuous creation…). If it is true that historically the
‘spinozism’ was a repulsive image, it also had the function to enable different
Cartesian positions to ‘elaborate’ their object - and, from this point of view, that
object was exactly the denial and the rejection of Spinoza. This Cartesian rejection
will pervade all the following history of anti-spinozism, across the journaux, through
Bayle’s dissembling sarcasm and Fenelon’s desperate elan, ending up with the
eighteenth-century Spinoza-renaissance, which already had almost a century of
battles behind him.
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