Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison (1856 – 1931) schreef het lemma “Spinoza, Baruch” in de Encyclopædia Britannica



Andrews Seth, circa 1890
(courtesy of St. Andrews University Library)

Om te beginnen de openingsalinea van het artikel van Eugene Thomas Long, "The Gifford Lectures and the Scottish Personal Idealists" [In: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Dec., 1995), pp. 365-395], dat ik in het eerste blog over Willam Ritchie Sorley gebruikte. Het liet me een nieuwe zoektocht inetten naar Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison.

When Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison and Willam Ritchie Sorley entered Edinburgh University in the 1870s they were among the young Scottish philosophers who came under the influence of British Hegelianism. Idealism was at the time a growing force in British philosophy and it was the 1883 volume, Essays in Philosophical Criticism, edited by Pringle-Pattison and R. B. Haldane, which first made clear the range and scope of this movement. Pringle-Pattison and Sorley were among seven contributors to this volume who subsequently delivered the Gifford Lectures. However, by the time they gave their lectures, British Hegelianism had passed its peak and they, like many other idealists, were engaged in disputes with absolute idealism represented most notably by Francis Herbert Bradley and Bernard Bosanquet. Indeed, Rudolf Metz suggests that it was Pringle Pattison's Hegelianism and Personality (1887) that brought about a revolution in the Hegelian camp and called into being an opposition movement to the absolutism of Bradley and Bosanquet. It is the purpose of this essay to explore the philosophical theologies of Pringle-Pattison and Sorley in their historical context as an important part of the story of Scottish contributions to the Gifford Lectures. Their work, however, can be seen in a larger context. It helps illustrate much that went under the heading of natural or philosophical theology at the turn of the century when arguments for the existence of God were widely considered to be an antiquarian study, and just prior to the rediscovery of Kierkegaard and the veto of natural theology by the logical positivists and the positivists of revelation.

Verder zoeken op de naam Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison deed me ontdekken wat in de kop van dit blog staat.

Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison (1856-1931) was born in Edinburgh; was educated there and in Germany. He was professor of philosophy at University College, Cardiff (1883-87), and then professor of Logic,  Rhetoric, and Metaphysics at Saint Andrews (1887-91) and at Edinburgh (1891-1919). He added Pringle-Pattison to his name in 1898 to meet the conditions of a bequest. He was an influential teacher, and in his writings he examined philosophy through critical interpretations of the great philosophers. He wrote The Development from Kant to Hegel (1882), Scottish Philosophy: a comparison of the Scottish and German answers to Hume (1885), Hegelianism and Personality (1887), Man's Place in the Cosmos (1897; archive.org), The Idea of God in the Light of Recent Philosophy (1917; archive.org), Two Lectures on Theism (1897), The Idea of Immortality (1922), and Studies in the Philosophy of Religion (1930). [cf. vandaar ook zijn foto uit circa 1890; cf. The New International Encyclopædia]

By education, history and philosophical orientation, he represents, arguably, the culmination of the Scottish philosophical tradition, and was the first philosopher to give sustained critical scrutiny to that tradition under the label ‘Scottish Philosophy’. [cf. scottishphilosophy.org cf. wikisource]

Lemma Spinoza, Baruch
Hij was, zoals al in de titel gezegd, de auteur van het lemma Spinoza, Baruch in de Encyclopædia Britannica, (9th ed.). Edinburgh: Black, 1875-1889, Vol. XXII: pp. 399-404 [de 10e editie van 1903 is te vinden op hathitrust; de 11te editie van 1911 is te vinden op wikisource]

Het is de enige tekst over Spinoza die van hem genoemd wordt in de Duitse Bibliografie, waar tevens te lezen is dat de tekst later werd opgenomen In: Wayne I. Boucher (Ed.), Spinoza: 18th and 19th Century Discussions, Vol. 4: 1870-1880. Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1999, p. 117-125.

Het is best een gedegen geschreven lemma In plaats van het hele lemma dit blog binnen te halen, volsta ik met twee citaten:

“The histories of philosophy may quite correctly describe his [Spinoza’s] theory as the logical development of Descartes's doctrines of the one Infinite and the two finite substances, but Spinoza himself was never a Cartesian. He brought his pantheism and his determinism with him to the study of Descartes from the mystical theologians of his race.”
[..]
”Spinoza's philosophy is a thoroughgoing pantheism, which has both a naturalistic and a mystical side. The foundation of the system is the doctrine of one infinite substance, of which all finite existences are modes or limitations (modes of thought or modes of extension). God is thus the immanent cause of the universe; but of creation or will there can be no question in Spinoza's system. God is used throughout as equivalent to Nature (Deus sive natura). The philosophical standpoint comprehends the necessity of all that is — a necessity that is none other than the necessity of the divine nature itself. To view things thus is to view them, according to Spinoza's favourite phrase, sub specie aeternitatis. Spinoza's philosophy is fully considered in the article Cartesianism.

Dat artikel, Cartesianism, is van de hand van Edward Caird. Spinoza’s naam komt 87x voor (Descartes 89x - Malebranche 40x). Uitgebreid wordt The Philosophy of Spinoza behandeld, maar wordt zo wel in sterke mate als vorm van cartesianisme neergezet. Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, zoals hierboven aangehaald zegt stellig: “Spinoza himself was never a Cartesian."

Om iets van de eigen filosofie van Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison mee te krijgen neem ik hier de tekst over hem over uit John W. Cooper, Panentheism--The Other God of the Philosophers: From Plato to the Present. Baker Academic, 2006, p. 133 - books.google

Het lijkt alsof hij veel van Spinoza's benadering overnam, alleen maakte hij diens God persoonlijk.
___________________
 Cf.
Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison op de website van de Gifford Lectures
Gordon Graham, "Scottish Philosophy in the 19th Century," in: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Leslie Armour, "The Idealist Philosophers’ God." In: Laval théologique et philosophique 583 (2002): 443–455. Daar is onder meer te lezen:

“Close to this is what Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison called the primus inter pares view. The eternal consciousness is a self like us but fully developed. It is not different in kind and it co-operates with us. The moral and political results seem to be much like those of the dual consciousness theory, but religiously it is rather different. There is no being who can “lord it over us.” In Christian terms there can be a second and third person of the Trinity but no first person.” [p. 451]