Radical Enlightenment, Enlightened Subversion, and Spinoza

Abstract

An important philosophical turn that took place in seventeenthand eighteenth-century Enlightenment thought was the abandonment of transcendence, the strict separation of religion and philosophy, and the rise of a one-substance immanent ontology. It has been argued that this ‘radical’ turn brought about the philosophical foundation for democracy. According to the thesis I will defend in what follows, immanent ontology indeed has a political subversive meaning. Inspired by the texts and ideas of Machiavelli, it entailed a radical change of focus: from a theologicalhierarchical structure to the horizontal structure of the world in which we live and in which all humans are equal. This radical change had consequences at the level of the civil state: e.g., the necessity of free thought and free speech, which may lead to resistance, refusal, and disobedience. I will argue that this Spinozistic radicalism can only be adequately understood if we take into account the radical thought of fellow thinkers from his circle, on the one hand, and the subversive image of Spinoza as constructed by his opponents on the other.