Nu
ik weer eens deze cover tegenkom [van hier– ik had eerder op 12-07-2016 dit blog over deze uitgave] wilde ik er eens iets meer
over weten en zocht naar een review.
Ik
stuitte op deze van ene R. McK. die verscheen in The Journal of Philosophy, [Vol. 31, No. 15 (Jul. 19, 1934), pp.
412-413].
We
komen heel wat interessants te weten.
Spinoza, e due Antecedenti Italiani
dello Spinozismo. FAUSTO MELI.
Prefazione di Guiseppe Saitta. (Studi di Lettere Storia e Filosofia. Publ.
dalla R. Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. III.) Florence: G. C. Sansoni. 1934.
viii + 199 pp. 18 Lire.
Fausto
Meli died in 1931 at the age of twenty-two, leaving behind him the memory of
great intellectual promise and three essays which are now published by one of
the professors to whom he acknowledged indebtedness. The first essay, "II
Pensiero Religioso e Politico di Fausto Socino," states the thesis which
all three essays illustrate: the Reformation, which arose from the spiritual
renovation of the Renaissance, nonetheless negated that spirit and involved
itself in contradictions which are resolved in the work of Fausto Socino, Jacopo
Aconcio, and in general in Spinozism. In Spinozism, or in its anticipations,
are contained the foundations of what is modern in philosophy. The revolt
against scholasticism still figures large in this version of the history of
philosophy, but the intellectual revolt is posterior to, and even directed
against, the work of the Reformation: Luther was the great hero of faith,
Melanchthon the most liberal and tolerant spirit, but it was Fausto Socino who
laid bare the foundations of human action, saw its effective value, revealed
the inner reason from which it flowed and laid the foundations of modern,
unprejudiced, autonomous culture (pp. 15-16). Socinianism resolved in the
philosophical monism, which was the great achievement of Humanism, the numerous
dualisms which the author finds in earlier thought: it abandoned a theology
which no longer corresponded to the effective needs of culture, it abandoned
the interminable discussions which smashed the vital germ of religion into
infinite sects, it unified the sphere of the divine with that of the human and
the world of grace with that of nature (pp. 42-43). In sum, it substituted a
rationalism, according to which truth is a process and a conquest, for the
medieval intellectualism, according to which it was a datum. Scholastic
intellectualism had defined its truths in fixed dogmas that led-as did the
Protestant reform-to intolerance; Socino, by casting off useless theology,
prepared the typically modern concept of tolerance. S. Meli can, therefore, find
numerous echoes of the Socinian doctrine, not only in the philosophies of Bruno
and Spinoza, but in the moral and religious ideas of the Cambridge Platonists
(who were called Socinians by their opponents) and in the political history and
organizations of Holland and England. The brief second essay, "Iacopo
Aconcio" (pp. 87-95), based on the Stratagemata
Satanae rather than the De methodo,
presents a similar philosophic vision of man, naturalistically conceived,
endowed with vices, passions, and errors, conquering a growing truth. When one
turns therefore from his predecessors to Spinoza himself (Parte II. "Sulla Metafisica Razionalistica dello
Spinoza"), it is to find the chief value of his philosophy not in a
dogmatic metaphysics, but in a method, which is real, concrete, and
rationalistic in this modern sense. The method is "cognitio
reflexiva," and therefore, S. Meli finds, emphasizes, no longer some cognizance
the mind may have of the system of reality, but rather the spontaneous and
productive activity of the mind. S. Meli labors with considerable ingenuity to
substantiate his idealistic version of Spinoza, and frequently the ingenuity
results in striking and fantastic interpretations. Thus he contrasts Thomas
Aquinas and Spinoza (p. 100) by arguing that for the former the metaphysical
object remains always extraneous to speculative thought, the object of faith
and intuition, of induction rather than of demonstration, whereas for Spinoza,
"thought seeks to adequate itself to its object by resolving the opacity
of its immediate position in the clarity of reason." This surprising
statement is substantiated by Spinoza's argument that God is Causa sui in refutation of Thomas's
objection to the a priori
demonstrations of the existence of God on the grounds that God has no cause!
But the interest of this book does not lie primarily in the historical or
philosophical accuracy of S. Meli 's interpretation. Rather it lies in the
insight it contributed to the history of thought by adding one more to the
interpretations of the modern spirit and its revolt against the frigidities and
rigors of the Middle Ages.
R. McK.
