Talk:Harry Austryn Wolfson

message: From Wolfson's "The Philosophy of Spinoza"; 1934, Reprint edition 1983, ISBN: 0674665953; Vol 1: p. xxvi
:Four acts of daring in establishing long-envisaged principle of unity of Nature by pressing old arguments to their logical conclusion.
  
::*(1) Attribution of extension {pantheism} to G-D, 
::*(2) Denial of design and purpose in G-D, 
::*(3) Insistence upon the inseparability of soul from body,
::*(4) Elimination of freedom of the will from human actions.
=== Possible Fifth Daring ===
 
From Wolfson's "The Philosophy of Spinoza"; 1934, Reprint edition 1983, ISBN: 0674665953; Vol 2: p. 347.     
:It is the anthropomorphisms and anthropopathisms of the Scriptures, which theologians tried to explain away, just as much as the monotheism, which they were so eager to justify, that constitute, historically, the essential character of the Scriptural God, and it was for this reason that theologians throughout the ages tried to save as much of these anthropomorphisms and anthropopathisms as possible, even though sometimes what they succeeded in saving was only the empty sounds of words. By depriving G-D of this kind of life, by exploding even the fiction that such a kind of life was attributed to Him when words to that effect {in G-D} were used, by openly disclaiming the need of maintaining such a fiction, Spinoza broke away from the traditional theology and started a new kind of theology and a new kind of rationalization. 
:Had this breaking away from tradition been deliberately intended as such by Spinoza it could have been regarded as a fifth act of daring on his part. But Spinoza seems to have been under the delusion that he was merely spinning on the traditions of religion and that he was only seeing in a truer light that which others before him had seen, to use his own expression, "as if  through a mist". The true nature of his new theology, however, was more accurately understood by others than by himself. The contemporaries of Spinoza, those theologians who openly attacked him in their writings, instinctively felt this departure, and hence they condemned him, ......
 
 
Yesselman 21:36, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Summary of what is New in [[Spinoza]] 

message: From Wolfson's "The Philosophy of Spinoza"; 1934, Reprint edition 1983, ISBN: 0674665953; Vol 2: p. 347.     
:It is the anthropomorphisms and anthropopathisms of the Scriptures, which theologians tried to explain away, just as much as the monotheism, which they were so eager to justify, that constitute, historically, the essential character of the Scriptural God, and it was for this reason that theologians throughout the ages tried to save as much of these anthropomorphisms and anthropopathisms as possible, even though sometimes what they succeeded in saving was only the empty sounds of words. By depriving G-D of this kind of life, by exploding even the fiction that such a kind of life was attributed to Him when words to that effect {in G-D} were used, by openly disclaiming the need of maintaining such a fiction, Spinoza broke away from the traditional theology and started a new kind of theology and a new kind of rationalization. 
:Had this breaking away from tradition been deliberately intended as such by Spinoza it could have been regarded as a fifth act of daring on his part. But Spinoza seems to have been under the delusion that he was merely spinning on the traditions of religion and that he was only seeing in a truer light that which others before him had seen, to use his own expression, "as if  through a mist". The true nature of his new theology, however, was more accurately understood by others than by himself. The contemporaries of Spinoza, those theologians who openly attacked him in their writings, instinctively felt this departure, and hence they condemned him, ......
 
 
Yesselman 21:36, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible Fifth Daring 

message: Is his middle name a variation of the word "Austrian"? Or is it derived from his birthplace, Ostrin?Lestrade (talk) 16:40, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Middle name