FROM RADICAL MATERIALIST TO IDEALIST: THE HISTORY OF SPINOZISM IN THE NETHERLANDS
FROM RADICAL MATERIALIST TO IDEALIST: THE HISTORY OF SPINOZISM IN THE NETHERLANDS

Henri Krop, Spinoza, een paradoxale icoon van Nederand (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2014), ISBN: 978 90 351 38711, 821 pp.

Summary/Abstract: Henri Krop, the author of this impressive monograph, declares that he himself is ‘not a Spinozist’. Consequentially, anyone looking for an essentialist interpretation of Spinoza’s work should look elsewhere. Written in a contextualist manner, Krop’s work is a history of the way in which very different Dutch thinkers interpreted Spinoza’s work in the context of the intellectual climate of their own time.Thus, the almost 800 pages of this book offer a thorough reception history as well as an insightful exploration of the intellectual depth of Spinoza’s body of thought itself.Due to its vast subject matter the focus is, understandably, solely on the impact of Spinoza on the Netherlands. The work is also a history of ideas in the classical sense of the word. The author pays some attention to socio-economic and -cultural developments, but philosophy and theology are its main concerns.

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