In the 17th-century Dutch Republic, the rise of early modern rationalism – as a highly systematic school of philosophy in its own right for the first time in history – exerted an immense and profound influence on modern Western thought in general,Gottlieb, Anthony: The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy. (London: Liveright Publishing [W. W. Norton & Company], 2016)Lavaert, Sonja; Schröder, Winfried (eds.): The Dutch Legacy: Radical Thinkers of the 17th Century and the Enlightenment. (Leiden: Brill, 2016) with the birth of two influential rationalistic philosophical systems of Descartes Arthur Schopenhauer: "Descartes is rightly regarded as the father of modern philosophy primarily and generally because he helped the faculty of reason to stand on its own feet by teaching men to use their brains in place whereof the Bible, on the one hand, and Aristotle, on the other, had previously served." (Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real) [original in German] Friedrich Hayek: "The great thinker from whom the basic ideas of what we shall call constructivist rationalism received their most complete expression was René Descartes. [...] Although Descartes' immediate concern was to establish criteria for the truth of propositions, these were inevitably also applied by his followers to judge the appropriateness and justification of actions." (Law, Legislation and Liberty, 1973)Loeb, Louis E.: From Descartes to Hume: Continental Metaphysics and the Development of Modern Philosophy. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1981) (who spent most of his adult life and wrote all his major work in the United Provinces of the Netherlands)Russell, Bertrand: A History of Western Philosophy. (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1946). Bertrand Russell: "He [Descartes] lived in Holland for twenty years (1629–49), except for a few brief visits to France and one to England, all on business. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of Holland in the seventeenth century, as the one country where there was freedom of speculation."Nyden-Bullock, Tammy: Spinoza's Radical Cartesian Mind. (Continuum, 2007) and Spinoza Georg Friedrich Hegel: "The philosophy of Descartes underwent a great variety of unspeculative developments, but in Benedict Spinoza a direct successor to this philosopher may be found, and one who carried on the Cartesian principle to its furthest logical conclusions." (Lectures on the History of Philosophy) [original in German] Hegel: "...It is therefore worthy of note that thought must begin by placing itself at the standpoint of Spinozism; to be a follower of Spinoza is the essential commencement of all Philosophy." (Lectures on the History of Philosophy) [original in German] Hegel: "...The fact is that Spinoza is made a testing-point in modern philosophy, so that it may really be said: You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all." (Lectures on the History of Philosophy) [original in German] Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling: "...It is unquestionably the peacefulness and calm of the Spinozist system which particularly produces the idea of its depth, and which, with hidden but irresistible charm, has attracted so many minds. The Spinozist system will also always remain in a certain sense a model. A system of freedom—but with just as great contours, with the same simplicity, as a perfect counter-image (Gegenbild) of the Spinozist system—this would really be the highest system. This is why Spinozism, despite the many attacks on it, and the many supposed refutations, has never really become something truly past, never been really overcome up to now, and no one can hope to progress to the true and the complete in philosophy who has not at least once in his life lost himself in the abyss of Spinozism." (On the History of Modern Philosophy, 1833) [original in German] Heinrich Heine: "...And besides, one could certainly maintain that Mr. Schelling borrowed more from Spinoza than Hegel borrowed from Schelling. If Spinoza is some day liberated from his rigid, antiquated Cartesian, mathematical form and made accessible to a large public, we shall perhaps see that he, more than any other, might complain about the theft of ideas. All our present‑day philosophers, possibly without knowing it, look through glasses that Baruch Spinoza ground." (On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany, 1836) [original in German] Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: "Spinozism dominated the eighteenth century both in its later French variety, which made matter into substance, and in deism, which conferred on matter a more spiritual name.... Spinoza's French school and the supporters of deism were but two sects disputing over the true meaning of his system...." (The Holy Family, 1844) [original in German] George Henry Lewes: "A brave and simple man, earnestly meditating on the deepest subjects that can occupy the human race, he produced a system which will ever remain as one of the most astounding efforts of abstract speculation—a system that has been decried, for nearly two centuries, as the most iniquitous and blasphemous of human invention; and which has now, within the last sixty years, become the acknowledged parent of a whole nation's philosophy, ranking among its admirers some of the most pious and illustrious intellects of the age." (A Biographical History of Philosophy, Vol. 3 & 4, 1846) James Anthony Froude: "We may deny his conclusions; we may consider his system of thought preposterous and even pernicious, but we cannot refuse him the respect which is the right of all sincere and honourable men. [...] Spinoza's influence over European thought is too great to be denied or set aside..." (1854) Arthur Schopenhauer: "In consequence of the Kantian criticism of all speculative theology, the philosophisers of Germany almost all threw themselves back upon Spinoza, so that the whole series of futile attempts known by the name of the post-Kantian philosophy are simply Spinozism tastelessly dressed up, veiled in all kinds of unintelligible language, and otherwise distorted..." (The World as Will and Idea, 1859) [original in German] S. M. Melamed: "The rediscovery of Spinoza by the Germans contributed to the shaping of the cultural destinies of the German people for almost two hundred years. Just as at the time of the Reformation no other spiritual force was as potent in German life as the Bible, so during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries no other intellectual force so dominated German life as Spinozism. Spinoza became the magnet to German steel. Except for Immanuel Kant and Herbart, Spinoza attracted every great intellectual figure in Germany during the last two centuries, from the greatest, Goethe, to the purest, Lessing." (Spinoza and Buddha: Visions of a Dead God, University of Chicago Press, 1933) Louis Althusser: "Spinoza's philosophy introduced an unprecedented theoretical revolution in the history of philosophy, probably the greatest philosophical revolution of all time, insofar as we can regard Spinoza as Marx's only direct ancestor, from the philosophical standpoint. However, this radical revolution was the object of a massive historical repression, and Spinozist philosophy suffered much the same fate as Marxist philosophy used to and still does suffer in some countries: it served as damning evidence for a charge of ‘atheism’." (Reading Capital, 1968) [original in French] Frederick C. Beiser: "The rise of Spinozism in the late eighteenth century is a phenomenon of no less significance than the emergence of Kantianism itself. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Spinoza's philosophy had become the main competitor to Kant's, and only Spinoza had as many admirers or adherents as Kant." (The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte, 1987)Förster, Eckart; Melamed, Yitzhak Y. (eds.): Spinoza and German Idealism. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)–namely CartesianismVerbeek, Theo: Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reactions to Cartesian Philosophy, 1637–1650. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992)Douglas, Alexander X.: Spinoza and Dutch Cartesianism: Philosophy and Theology. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)Strazzoni, Andrea: Dutch Cartesianism and the Birth of Philosophy of Science: A Reappraisal of the Function of Philosophy from Regius to 's Gravesande, 1640–1750. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018) and Spinozism.Hampshire, Stuart: Spinoza and Spinozism. (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) It was the 17th-century arch-rationalistsHuenemann, Charles; Gennaro, Rocco J. (eds.): New Essays on the Rationalists. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)Pereboom, Derk (ed.): The Rationalists: Critical Essays on Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999)Phemister, Pauline: The Rationalists: Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz. (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2006)Fraenkel, Carlos; Perinetti, Dario; Smith, Justin E. H. (eds.): The Rationalists: Between Tradition and Innovation. (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011) like Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz who gave the "Age of Reason" its name and place in history.Hampshire, Stuart: The Age of Reason: The 17th Century Philosophers. Selected, with Introduction and Commentary. (New York: Mentor Books [New American Library], 1956)
In the 17th-century Dutch Republic, the rise of early modern rationalism – as a highly systematic school of philosophy in its own right for the first time in history – exerted an immense and profound influence on modern Western thought in general,Gottlieb, Anthony: The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy. (London: Liveright Publishing [W. W. Norton & Company], 2016)Lavaert, Sonja; Schröder, Winfried (eds.): The Dutch Legacy: Radical Thinkers of the 17th Century and the Enlightenment. (Leiden: Brill, 2016) with the birth of two influential rationalistic philosophical systems of Descartes Arthur Schopenhauer: "Descartes is rightly regarded as the father of modern philosophy primarily and generally because he helped the faculty of reason to stand on its own feet by teaching men to use their brains in place whereof the Bible, on the one hand, and Aristotle, on the other, had previously served." (Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real) [original in German] Friedrich Hayek: "The great thinker from whom the basic ideas of what we shall call constructivist rationalism received their most complete expression was René Descartes. [...] Although Descartes' immediate concern was to establish criteria for the truth of propositions, these were inevitably also applied by his followers to judge the appropriateness and justification of actions." (Law, Legislation and Liberty, 1973)Loeb, Louis E.: From Descartes to Hume: Continental Metaphysics and the Development of Modern Philosophy. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1981) (who spent most of his adult life and wrote all his major work in the United Provinces of the Netherlands)Russell, Bertrand: A History of Western Philosophy. (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1946). Bertrand Russell: "He [Descartes] lived in Holland for twenty years (1629–49), except for a few brief visits to France and one to England, all on business. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of Holland in the seventeenth century, as the one country where there was freedom of speculation."Nyden-Bullock, Tammy: Spinoza's Radical Cartesian Mind. (Continuum, 2007) and Spinoza Georg Friedrich Hegel: "The philosophy of Descartes underwent a great variety of unspeculative developments, but in Benedict Spinoza a direct successor to this philosopher may be found, and one who carried on the Cartesian principle to its furthest logical conclusions." (Lectures on the History of Philosophy) [original in German] Hegel: "...It is therefore worthy of note that thought must begin by placing itself at the standpoint of Spinozism; to be a follower of Spinoza is the essential commencement of all Philosophy." (Lectures on the History of Philosophy) [original in German] Hegel: "...The fact is that Spinoza is made a testing-point in modern philosophy, so that it may really be said: You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all." (Lectures on the History of Philosophy) [original in German] Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling: "...It is unquestionably the peacefulness and calm of the Spinozist system which particularly produces the idea of its depth, and which, with hidden but irresistible charm, has attracted so many minds. The Spinozist system will also always remain in a certain sense a model. A system of freedom—but with just as great contours, with the same simplicity, as a perfect counter-image (Gegenbild) of the Spinozist system—this would really be the highest system. This is why Spinozism, despite the many attacks on it, and the many supposed refutations, has never really become something truly past, never been really overcome up to now, and no one can hope to progress to the true and the complete in philosophy who has not at least once in his life lost himself in the abyss of Spinozism." (On the History of Modern Philosophy, 1833) [original in German] Heinrich Heine: "...And besides, one could certainly maintain that Mr. Schelling borrowed more from Spinoza than Hegel borrowed from Schelling. If Spinoza is some day liberated from his rigid, antiquated Cartesian, mathematical form and made accessible to a large public, we shall perhaps see that he, more than any other, might complain about the theft of ideas. All our present‑day philosophers, possibly without knowing it, look through glasses that Baruch Spinoza ground." (On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany, 1836) [original in German] Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: "Spinozism dominated the eighteenth century both in its later French variety, which made matter into substance, and in deism, which conferred on matter a more spiritual name.... Spinoza's French school and the supporters of deism were but two sects disputing over the true meaning of his system...." (The Holy Family, 1844) [original in German] George Henry Lewes: "A brave and simple man, earnestly meditating on the deepest subjects that can occupy the human race, he produced a system which will ever remain as one of the most astounding efforts of abstract speculation—a system that has been decried, for nearly two centuries, as the most iniquitous and blasphemous of human invention; and which has now, within the last sixty years, become the acknowledged parent of a whole nation's philosophy, ranking among its admirers some of the most pious and illustrious intellects of the age." (A Biographical History of Philosophy, Vol. 3 & 4, 1846) James Anthony Froude: "We may deny his conclusions; we may consider his system of thought preposterous and even pernicious, but we cannot refuse him the respect which is the right of all sincere and honourable men. [...] Spinoza's influence over European thought is too great to be denied or set aside..." (1854) Arthur Schopenhauer: "In consequence of the Kantian criticism of all speculative theology, the philosophisers of Germany almost all threw themselves back upon Spinoza, so that the whole series of futile attempts known by the name of the post-Kantian philosophy are simply Spinozism tastelessly dressed up, veiled in all kinds of unintelligible language, and otherwise distorted..." (The World as Will and Idea, 1859) [original in German] S. M. Melamed: "The rediscovery of Spinoza by the Germans contributed to the shaping of the cultural destinies of the German people for almost two hundred years. Just as at the time of the Reformation no other spiritual force was as potent in German life as the Bible, so during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries no other intellectual force so dominated German life as Spinozism. Spinoza became the magnet to German steel. Except for Immanuel Kant and Herbart, Spinoza attracted every great intellectual figure in Germany during the last two centuries, from the greatest, Goethe, to the purest, Lessing." (Spinoza and Buddha: Visions of a Dead God, University of Chicago Press, 1933) Louis Althusser: "Spinoza's philosophy introduced an unprecedented theoretical revolution in the history of philosophy, probably the greatest philosophical revolution of all time, insofar as we can regard Spinoza as Marx's only direct ancestor, from the philosophical standpoint. However, this radical revolution was the object of a massive historical repression, and Spinozist philosophy suffered much the same fate as Marxist philosophy used to and still does suffer in some countries: it served as damning evidence for a charge of ‘atheism’." (Reading Capital, 1968) [original in French] Frederick C. Beiser: "The rise of Spinozism in the late eighteenth century is a phenomenon of no less significance than the emergence of Kantianism itself. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Spinoza's philosophy had become the main competitor to Kant's, and only Spinoza had as many admirers or adherents as Kant." (The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte, 1987)Förster, Eckart; Melamed, Yitzhak Y. (eds.): Spinoza and German Idealism. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)–namely CartesianismVerbeek, Theo: Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reactions to Cartesian Philosophy, 1637–1650. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992)Douglas, Alexander X.: Spinoza and Dutch Cartesianism: Philosophy and Theology. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)Strazzoni, Andrea: Dutch Cartesianism and the Birth of Philosophy of Science: A Reappraisal of the Function of Philosophy from Regius to 's Gravesande, 1640–1750. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018) and Spinozism.Hampshire, Stuart: Spinoza and Spinozism. (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) 17th-century arch-rationalistsHuenemann, Charles; Gennaro, Rocco J. (eds.): New Essays on the Rationalists. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)Pereboom, Derk (ed.): The Rationalists: Critical Essays on Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999)Phemister, Pauline: The Rationalists: Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz. (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2006)Fraenkel, Carlos; Perinetti, Dario; Smith, Justin E. H. (eds.): The Rationalists: Between Tradition and Innovation. (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011) such as Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz gave the "Age of Reason" its name and place in history.Hampshire, Stuart: The Age of Reason: The 17th Century Philosophers. Selected, with Introduction and Commentary. (New York: Mentor Books [New American Library], 1956)
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