Phd in PHILOSOPHY

The research’s main objective is to define Spinoza’s position concerning the idea of toleration. The interest in the investigation is motivated by two remarks. First of all, the impossibility of simplistically disregarding the issue: although Spinoza does not express himself openly on the concept of toleration, both the political and religious context of the philosopher and the historical mediations on the issue relaunch the problem.
Secondly, just the study of the Dutch debate on toleration clarifies, on the one hand, the correlation between the concepts of toleration and religion and, accordingly, on the other, the Spinozian position on toleration with Spinoza’s idea of religion. Through a historical-theoretical perspective which takes into account historical sources, lexicon and mediations, the research aims to: reconstruct the debate on toleration in seventeenth century Holland; identify the specialised lexicon; analyse Spinoza’s autographed writings through comparative analysis with sources; marks of different paradigms of the idea of toleration by the study of historical theory; define Spinoza’s position concerning the concept of toleration in a new slant that is at the same time synchronic and diachronic.

keywords
Toleration; Holland of the seventeenth century; Baruch Spinoza; Jarig Jelles; Lodewijk Meyer; Pieter de la Courte; Gerardus Vossius; Gisbertus Voetius; history of philosophy; philosophy of religion.