Spinoza’s Liberal Republicanism and the Challenge of Revealed Religion

Bibliographic Data

ID6340327
AuthorsAaron L Herold (University of Richmond, Richmond, VA, USA, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume67
Issue2
Pages239-252
Publication date2014-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Research Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1065-9129 • E-ISSN: 1938-274X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1065912913510065
OpenAlexW2068668466
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited34

Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise is a foundational liberal work whose republican teaching also anticipates today’s communitarian critiques. Those critiques reopen the Treatise’s guiding question of whether politics must be grounded in a religious teaching, and they compel us to reconsider Spinoza’s claim that civic dedication can be rooted in an attachment to intellectual freedom. I assess Spinoza’s liberal republicanism by examining how it emerges from a critique of the Bible. I conclude that Spinoza’s attempt to reconcile individual liberty with civic dedication clarifies liberalism’s moral power and ultimate vulnerabilities—vulnerabilities which help explain why revealed religion has reemerged to challenge it

Classical liberalism · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Liberalism · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Law · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Political Theology and Sovereignty · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought

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