Spinozism

Spinozism is originally a philosophical battle cry of the 18th century and a derogatory term for the teachings of the Dutch philosopher Baruch de Spinoza. With a polemical accent the adjective is used Spinozist, whereas spinozisch or spinozanisch is usually worth in a neutral context. However, the connotation of the term was historically, in the wake of increasingly empty philosophical debates, which explains why the term in the literature rarely finds in the sense of polemical catchphrase since the 19th century.

Statements of Spinozism

In his major work, the Ethica more geometrico demonstrata, Spinoza constructed a world view, according to which God is nothing but a substance which excludes any existence in and outside of which may be otherwise. Consequently, spirit and matter are not separate substances, as it is believed in Cartesianism, but rather two properties ( attributes) of a substance (God). Humans and all other finite things in the world, however, are merely determinations (modes ) in which expresses the essence of God. The spinoza African system is thus pantheistic nature; Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi called it even as the only consistent pantheism.

Atheismusvorwurf

Since the concept of an elementary substance differences to all the traditional images of God had to followers of spinozischen system faced in the 18th century with intractable Atheismusvorwürfen. Any sympathy with the teachings of Spinoza, was representative denounced for pantheism per se, as atheism. The certainly most famous thinkers, which this has been blamed as part of the sensational Pantheismusstreits, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was.

In the course of German Idealism and the subsequently increasingly relaxed to even benevolent consideration of the spinozischen belief the concept of Spinozism lost most of its clout. The Atheismusvorwurf was criticized not only as excessive and reckless, but sometimes reversed; some voices just emphasized the particular religiosity, which was the all-embracing concept of God inherent.