The Fiery Test of Critique: A Reading of Kant's Dialectic by Ian Proops (review)

Abstract

need not be true but merely believable (15). Here, I think we need to pay more attention to the exact relationship of imagination and reason and consider Spinoza’s acquaintance with Al-Farabi’s political philosophy via Maimonides and with Averroes’s ideas via Elijah Delmedigo. Even if dogmata and narratives are to be characterized as efficacious or useful rather than, strictly speaking, true, can they be divorced from the truth? To my mind, we need more clarity about the character of practical and political reason in Spinoza’s philosophy. Chapter 11, “The Right Concerning Sacred Matters,” draws the theological and political together in a comprehensive and subtle study of Spinoza’s view of church-state relations. Chapter 12, “Conclusion: The Dutch Public Sphere,” moves beyond the early modern contextualization of Spinoza’s thought to compare it to contemporary models, particularly Habermas’s influential account of the bourgeois public sphere and the development of consensus through public debate. Compared to Habermas, Spinoza is a robust defender of the freedom to disagree about crucial issues, and his political theory provides a model for managing disagreements among people who must cohabit. Amid contemporary crises about the meanings of liberty, the relations of religious and state institutions, crises of legitimacy and fraud, and the challenge of collective survival in a time of deep disagreement, Spinoza’s political philosophy merits our attention as a resource for and challenge to our reigning ways of thinking. Spinoza and the Freedom of Philosophizing is a learned, philosophically sharp, and carefully argued guide to its intricacies, offerings, and limitations. Elegantly constructed and written, Lærke’s study is well worth reading and rereading as a major contribution to the lively area of Spinoza scholarship. J u l i e R . K l e i n Villanova University