Another Dialogue in the Tractatus: Spinoza on "Christ's Disciples" and the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

Spinoza is often portrayed as the secular saint and founding father of the Radical Enlightenment who draws on the new sciences. While this image is not wholly false, it has led to a neglect of the religious sources of his thought. In this chapter, I show that key elements of Spinoza's philosophy draw on ideas found in the religious ferment that accompanied the confrontation between Collegiant and Quaker thought in seventeenth-century Holland. Opposed to recent readings that turn Spinoza into a purely secular thinker, I argue that Spinoza’s profound and abiding influence on the European Enlightenment lies not so much in his critical assessment of revealed religion, as in his sustained attempt to bring the precepts of Scripture into dialogue with the teachings of philosophy