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Miracles
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Miracles
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Miracles
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Miracles

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Une partie de l’oeuvre de Spinoza consiste en une critique interne des Saintes Écritures. Les pages de ce Carnet sont des textes qu’il s’agit de lire comme tels, et non l’expression d’une inspiration divine. La démarche de Spinoza est à la fois rationnelle et critique. Ainsi les miracles ne sont-ils que le produit de notre imagination. Il faut se garder de ce qu’en disent les « métaphysiciens et théologiens ». Les miracles peuvent éblouir les simples si on ne les rapportent à ce qu’ils sont, non des manifestations de la transcendance – l’immanentisme de Spinoza interdit toute espèce de transcendance – mais des images que la langue utilise. De ce point de vue, l’analyse linguistique des textes bibliques peut être très précieuse.

Il s’agit moins pour Voltaire de critiquer les miracles que de s’interroger sur leur formation. L’approche est presque anthropologique. Pour essayer de comprendre la formation de l’idée de miracle, la façon dont elle s’impose à l’intellect, il faut suivre « la marche de l’esprit humain abandonné à lui-même ».
Ce qui intéresse Voltaire, c’est qu’un même esprit puisse produire des propositions vraies et des fariboles. Ainsi Newton, découvreur de la gravitation universelle et en même temps adepte des arcanes alchimiques. Cette coexistence du vrai et du faux dans une même intelligence le plonge dans des abîmes de réflexion.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 19, 2012
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Miracles
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Baruch Spinoza

Baruch or Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish origin. Born Benedito de Espinosa; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677, in Amsterdam, the son of Portuguese Jewish refugees who had fled from the persecution of the Spanish Inquisition. Although reared in the Jewish community, he rebelled against its religious views and practices, and at the age of 24 was formally excommunicated from the Portuguese-Spanish Synagogue of Amsterdam. He was thus effectively cast out of the Jewish world and joined a group of nonconfessional Christians (although he never became a Christian), the Collegiants, who professed no creeds or practices but shared a spiritual brotherhood. He was also involved with the Quaker mission in Amsterdam. Spinoza eventually settled in The Hague, where he lived quietly, studying philosophy, science, and theology, discussing his ideas with a small circle of independent thinkers, and earning his living as a lens grinder. He corresponded with some of the leading philosophers and scientists of his time and was visited by Leibniz and many others. He is said to have refused offers to teach at Heidelberg or to be court philosopher for the Prince of Conde. During his lifetime he published only two works, The Principles of Descartes’ Philosophy (1666) and the Theological Political Tractatus (1670). In the first his own theory began to emerge as the consistent consequence of that of Descartes. In the second, he gave his reasons for rejecting the claims of religious knowledge and elaborated his theory of the independence of the state from all religious factions. It was only after his death (probably caused by consumption resulting from glass dust), that his major work, the Ethics, appeared in his Opera Posthuma. This work, in which he opposed Descartes’ mind-body dualism, presented the full metaphysical basis of his pantheistic view. Today, he is considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy, laying the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism. Spinoza’s influence on the Enlightenment, on the Romantic Age, and on modern secularism has been of extreme importance. Dr. Dagobert D. Runes, the founder of the Philosophical Library, and Albert Einstein were not only close friends and colleagues; they both regarded Spinoza as the greatest of modern philosophers.

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