Albert Gootjes over de ‘georkestreerde’ en door Graevius geregisseerde Utrechtse aanval op de TTP

Graag signaleer ik hier het artikel dat Gootjes vorige maand publiceerde over de eerste aanval op de TTP van

J.M. V.D.M. [Johannes Melchior], Epistola ad amicum, continens censuram libri, cui titulus: Tractatus theologico-politicus.  C. Noenaert, 1671 - 48 blz.
[pas op 27 april 2016 door books.google gedigitaliseerd exemplaar uit de Biblioteca Angelica te Rome]

Albert Gootjes, “The First Orchestrated Attack on Spinoza: Johannes Melchioris and the Cartesian Network in Utrecht.” In: Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 79, Number 1, January 2018,  pp. 23-43 [muse.jhu.edu]

This article examines the immediate Dutch reception of the Tractatus theologico-politicus. Using newfound archival sources it demonstrates that the anti-Spinoza activity of the Cartesians in Utrecht extends far beyond the well-known writings of Lambertus van Velthuysen and Regnerus van Mansveld. Their Cartesian network not only produced the very first public refutation to appear, but also formed a center for coordinating much of the Dutch response to Spinoza. This engagement, it is argued in closing, must be accounted for in Spinoza reception history, and forms the background to the mysterious visit Spinoza paid to Utrecht in the summer of 1673.

Albert Gootjes (cf.) zette slechts 3 pagina’s van zijn stuk op academia.edu. Dat het ook anders kan laat ik hieronder bij Eric Jorink zien, die hele boeken uploadt.
Gootjes laat behoorlijk geloofwaardig zien dat er vanuit Cartesianen in Utrecht, samenwerkend in het Collegie der Scavanten en onder regie van de filoloog en historicus Johannes Georgius Graevius (1632–1703) een stevige aanval op Spinoza’s TTP werd opgezet. Niet wordt de belofte ingelost over “the background to the mysterious visit Spinoza paid to Utrecht in the summer of 1673”. Dit is enigszins misleidend, want daarover komt helemaal niets aan de orde.  

Ik citeer voor de achtergrond waartegen het artikel te lezen is, een passage uit:

Wiep van Bunge, From Stevin to Spinoza. An Essay on Philosophy in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic. BRILL, 2001 - 218 pagína’s – books.google - issuu

In 1671, the same year in which Van Velthuysen quarreled with Spinoza, the Calvinist theologian Johannes Melchior (1646-1689) published a short Epistola against Spinoza. Both the Remonstrants and the Cartesians were well under way in preparing their own—fiercely critical—commentaries on the Tractatus Iheologico-politicus. Curiously, both the Remonstrant minister Jacobus Batelier (1593-1672) from The Hague and the Cartesian Professor Regnerus van Mansvelt from Utrecht died before they could see their efforts through the press. Yet both Batelier's and Van Mansvelt's books were published: Batelier's Vindiciae Miraculorum in 1673, Van Mansvelt's Adversus in 1674. That very same year, moreover, Spinoza's old ac-quaintance Willem van Blyenbergh issued his refutation of the Tractatus theologico-politicus, after which the Collegiant Johannes Bredenburg (1643-1691) and the Socinian Frans Kuyper— the editor of the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum— completed the extremely hostile Dutch reception of Spinoza's first original publication by adding two more refutations of what was held to be Spinoza's 'atheism'.

Spinoza's atheism was deduced mainly from his comments in the Tractatus theologico-politicus on the identity of God's will and intellect, and from his identification of the power of God and the power of Nature. Van Velthuysen had already suggested that according to Spinoza 'Universum ipsum Deum esse'. Melchior wondered anxiously whether Spinoza was really of the opinion that apart from God, nothing else existed. Next, Batelier put the—rhetorical—question whether this 'new Philosopher' had indeed substituted God for Nature, after which Van Mansvelt boldly declared that the entire contents of the Tractatus theologico-politicus were the logical outcome 'ex absurdissimo illo quod fovet Mysterio, de Deo corporeo ab universo non distincto'. By the time Bredenburg had added a special section to his Enervatio in which he sought to show 'Naturam non Esse Deum', it must have been generally agreed that Spinoza was in fact an atheist. An atheist, that is, who had covered up his feelings, which consequently had to be revealed as swiftly as possible. The very title of Kuyper's contribution to the debate put it in a nutshell: Arcana Atheismi Revelata.

Hierna na nog een stukje uit

Jonathan Israel, “The Early Dutch and German Reaction to the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus: Foreshadowing the Enlightenment’s More General Spinoza Reception?” [In: Yitzhak Y. Melamed, Michael A. Rosenthal (Eds.), Spinoza's 'Theological-Political Treatise': A Critical Guide. Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp 72-100 – books.google]

Early in 1671, a theologian trained at Groningen under Maresius, Johannes Melchior (1646-89) seems actually to have been the first adversary of the TTP to publicly name and condemn its author, though owing either to a printing error or someone's confusion, his published rebuttal, namely J.M.V.D.M., Epistola ad amicum, continens censuram libri cui titulus: Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (Utrecht, 1671) utterly mangled Spinoza's name rendering it "Xinospa." Mcichior's Epistola focuses especially on Spinoza's refusal to regard the wording of Scripture as the word of God and his interpreting innumerable phrases and notions as only vague approximations to reality adjusted to  the ideas of the common people or as products of the "imagination" of the prophets. The effect of Spinoza's sophismata, held Melchior, is to question the very reality of miracles, thereby usurping the will and decree of God, and misleading people into imagining that every-thing necessary for human salvation can be provided by natural reason and intellect alone. Behind Spinoza's Bible criticism, Melchior grasped, lurked an entire philosophy sustaining a purely secular conception of the universe and human life and one which leaves no room for supernatural agency, theology, or ecclesiastical authority. For Spinoza, he concluded, the will of God "is nothing other than the power of nature" [non aliam esse quam naturae potentiam]. Consequently, Spinoza's "false   and absurd hypotheses" were far more likely, in his opinion, to destroy rather than stabilize the foundations of religion and the republic.

Over “Johannes Graevius en het Collegie der Scavanten” konden en kunnen we uitgebreid lezen in het 3^e hoofdstuk “Kometen: Het debat over de ‘wonder-tekenen in den hemel’” in Eric Jorink, Het ‘Boeck der Natuere’. Nederlandse geleerden en de wonderen van Gods schepping 1575-1715 [Primavera Pers, Leiden 2006 [te lezen bij DBNL en zelfs door Jorink geüpload naar academia.edu; ook de bij Brill in 2010 verschenen Engelse vertaling]

In Hans Willem Blom, Causaliy and Morality in Politics. The Rise of Naturalism in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Political Thought [Rotterdam, 1995 - PDF] kunnen we vanaf p. 244 lezen over het weinige dat Johannes Melchior als het ware in een PS schrijft over de vijf laatste, politieke hoofdstukken van de TTP.

20-03-2012 had ik het blog: "Joannes Georgius Graevius (1632-1703) Hoe bevriend met Spinoza zal hij geweest zijn?" Dit artikel van Albert Gootjes maakt het nog flink wat ongeloofwaardiger dat Spinoza zijn brief aan Graevius (Brief 49) echt oprecht eindigde met: "Vaarwel, edelachtbare heer, en blijf mij, uw vriend, gedenken, die ben met alle genegenheid en sympathie uw Benedictus despinoza".  

De verwijzing die Grootjes ook geeft naar Steven Nadler’s A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age (2011), doet mij dat boek weer eens ter hand nemen en misschien herlezen.