Abstract
I put Spinoza in my title in order to signal my paper’s purpose. Instead of taking the Enlightenment to be, as it is usually understood, an early-eighteenth-century phenomenon, my intention is to show that Berkeley is to be included in that period of ferment, after Spinoza’s death, when the defence of free expression, the critique of religion and of language connected with “mysteries,” and the impertinence of any form of authority were openly considered. By contrast, before 1677, the defence of free-thinking was expressed only in clandestine clubs and coteries. Now, in his masterly work Radical Enlightenment, Jonathan Israel reveals the central role of Spinoza’s philosophy and its diffusion, as early as 1650, in sharpening the human desire for liberty.
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Notes
- 1.
J.I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment, Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750; 810 p., edit. O.U.P., 2001, Preface and ch. 33: English Deism and Europe. French translation: J.I. Israel, Les Lumières radicales, La philosophie, Spinoza et la naissance de la modernité (1650–1750) Editions Amsterdam, Paris, 2005.
- 2.
Letter to Percival, 06 September 1710, in The Works, edit. Luce/Jessop (LJ), vol. VIII, p. 36: “I am not at all surprised to find that the name of my book should be entertained with ridicule and contempt by those who never examined what was in it, and want that common justice of trying before they condemn.”
- 3.
On the equivocal reading of authors, see: Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 1952, 1980; Berkeley’s Alciphron. English Text and Essays in Interpretation, edit. 1732, coordinated by Laurent. Jaffro, Geneviève Brykman and Claire Schwartz, Olms-Verlag, 2010.
- 4.
The main marks of a direct acquaintance with Spinoza’s works are in Notebook A 622, 625, 824–827, 831, 835.
- 5.
Principles (Pr), 1710, LJ. I, §§ 66, 149; Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (DHP), 1713, LJ.II,.213–214; Alciphron (AL), 1732 , LJ. III, pp. 163, 281, 324–325; The Theory of Vision Vindicated and explained (1733), LJ. I, p. 254; Siris, § 354, LJ. V, p. 160.
- 6.
See D. Berman, A History of Atheism in Britain from Hobbes to Russell, ch. 3–4, London and New York, 1988; J.I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment cit, ch. 33; Geneviève Brykman’s Introd. to the French edit of Alciphron, P.U.F., 1992, vol. III, pp.13–26. In Alciphron, Berkeley represents the main free-thinker by the character of Alciphron (a name which has a Greek origin and means “strong head”). This character stands either for Shaftesbury, the Stoics, or Spinoza. Lysicles is sometimes a radical free-thinker and sometimes a radical sceptic, being an eponym for Toland, Mandeville, Collins and Spinoza.
- 7.
Notebook A: 622, 625, 824–827, 831, 835. Spinoza’s Letters II, IV, IX, X, XIX, XXI (édit. La Pléiade, Paris, 1954).
- 8.
Locke, An Examination of P. Malebranche’s Opinion of seeing all Things in God, in The Works, vol. 8, edit.1794, pp. 211–255; see Ch. McCracken, Malebranche and British Philosophy, Oxford, 1983, ch. 4 ( Locke’s Refutation of Malebranche), pp. 121–44.
- 9.
Malebranche is wrong: 230, 255, 257, 388, 424a, 548. Malebranche does not prove anything: 265, 288, 358, 424, 686, 686a, 800, 818.
- 10.
P. Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique, art. “Spinoza”, Introd. and Remark N; see: Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary, Selections, ed. by R. Popkin, New York, 1965, p. 288.
- 11.
Dictionary, ibid., pp. 296–297 and Remark N, pp. 300–302.
- 12.
Notebook A, 468, 584, 562, 586, 690, 868.
- 13.
Ibid., 690–691, 853, 858.
- 14.
Supra, notes 12–13.
- 15.
Dictionary, articles: “Anaxagore”, “Epicure”, “Pauliciens”, “Spinoza”, Remark.
- 16.
Letter LXXII: “I assert, as St. Paul and nearly all ancient philosophers said, though in another way, that all things are in God and move in God; and I dare even say that this assement was to be found in all ancient Hebrews.”
- 17.
Principles, 45–48, 60–62, 146–156; DHP2, LJ II pp. 210–213.
- 18.
Notebook A, 878, 886; pr ., 49.
- 19.
Ethics, Part. III, pr. 2, scholium.
- 20.
On similarities between Berkeley and Wittgenstein, concerning the basic principle: “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence” ( Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, trad. Pears, London, 1974, p. 74), see Geneviève Brykman, Berkeley et le voile des mots, Paris, Vrin, 1993, pp. 202–214.
- 21.
See the entries 779–780, 782, 784–786, 790, 794–805, 816–823, 841–848.
- 22.
Ibid., 824–827, 831, 844–845.
- 23.
In a pair of articles in the Guardian, Berkeley imagines that he was furnished with a snuff «which, if taken in a certain quantity, would not fail to disengage [his] soul from [his] body. Then, his soul was at liberty to go wherever she pleases and to enter the pineal gland of learned philosophers and men of pleasure” ( LJ VII, pp. 186–187).
- 24.
Ethics, Part I, Appendix; Part II, prop. 35, schol.; V, Preface: “This opinion […about a complete command over our emotions] is not a little favoured by Descartes, for he held that the soul or mind is particularly united to a certain part of the brain, called the pineal gland, by means of which it feels all the movements that take place in the body and external objects and which the mind, by the very fact that it wishes, can move in various ways. […] I cannot sufficiently wonder that a philosopher, who clearly stated that he would deduce nothing save from self – evident bases of argument, and that he would assert nothing save what he perceived clearly and distinctly – one, moreover, who reproves the Schoolmen for wishing to explain obscure things by means of occult qualities, should take an hypothesis far more occult than all the occult qualities.”
- 25.
Ethics, Part I, Appendix.
- 26.
Ethics, Part II, prop. 35, scholium: “For that which they say, that human actions depend on the will, are words they do not fathom.”
- 27.
An Essay Toward a New Theory of Vision (NTV, 1709). On the natural illusion of a perception of distance by sight, see §§ 41, 43–48, 51, 64; Berkeley stressed it in § 74, asking: “what is it can put this cheat in the understanding?”; on the quick and sudden suggestions of imagination: §§ 51, 66, 95, 126,145–146, 159.
- 28.
NTV, § 41.
- 29.
NTV, §§ 49, 61, 97, 111, 121, 129, 139, 147–148, 152; Berkeley sometimes describes the order between visual and tactual ideas, as Spinoza does for the common order between attributes: see § 111 and DHP 3, LJ II, 241: “This connexion of sensations with corporeal motions means no more than a correspondence, in the order of Nature, between two sets of ideas or things immediately perceivable.”
- 30.
Ibid., § 129.
- 31.
NTV, §§ 51, 61, 64, 94–95, 110, 120,140–147, 152.
- 32.
Ibid., § 51.
- 33.
Principles, §§ 52–57, 72–75, 108–110, 150–153; DHP3, LJ2, 261–262.
- 34.
LJ II, p. 261.
- 35.
Locke, Essay, Book, II, ch. 11, §§ 9–11; Book, III, ch. 3, §§ 6–14.
- 36.
Principles, Introd., LJ, II 25–40; Manuscript Introd., edition diplomatica by B. Belfrage, Oxford, 1987.
- 37.
Ethics, II, 49, scholium 2.
- 38.
Essay, Book III, ch. 3.
- 39.
Essay, III, ch. 3, § 6.
- 40.
Ethics, II, prop.17–18; prop. 40, scholium 1.
- 41.
Ethics, II, prop.40, scholium 1.
- 42.
Notebook A, 812: “The properties of all things are in God I.E. there is in the Deity Understanding as well as Will. He is no Blind Agent & in truth a blind agent is a contradiction”. Spinoza, Ethics, II, prop. 43, scholium; prop. 48–49 and scholium.
- 43.
DHP3, LJ2, 244: Philonous: “I am not for changing things into ideas, but rather ideas into things”.
- 44.
Descartes to Elisabeth, June 28, 1643.
- 45.
Berkeley, Principles, § 89.
- 46.
DHP3, LJ II, pp. 250–57; Letter to Percival, LJ VIII, p. 37.
- 47.
DHP3, LJ II, pp. 261–262.
- 48.
Alciphron, 7, LJ III, p. 322.
- 49.
Alc.7, p. 324.
- 50.
Ibid., 324. This statement is made by Criton, who states that, in Spinoza’s works, “are to be found many schemes and notions much admired and followed of late years: such as undermining religion under the pretence of vindicating and explain it; the maintaining that it is not necessary to believe in Christ according to the flesh; the persuading men that miracles are to be understood only in a spiritual and allegorical sense; that vice is not so bad a thing as we are apt to think; that men are machines impelled by a fatal necessity”. I should like to express my gratitude to Katherine and Charles McCracken for their careful examination of the English version of my text and for their expert advices concerning the transposition of Berkeley’s quotations.
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Brykman, G. (2010). Berkeley, Spinoza, and Radical Enlightenment. In: Parigi, S. (eds) George Berkeley: Religion and Science in the Age of Enlightenment. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 201. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9243-4_11
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