How does Stewart go about proving this remarkable thesis? To show that Locke was an atheist, coached in the dark side by Spinoza, Stewart relies on an unpublished manuscript, “Apple and Worm,” sent to Stewart by an admirer in the Netherlands. There is a leaven of Gnosticism here as Stewart relies on secret wisdom conveyed by a secret text—a kind of Gospel of Thomas or a Second Treatise to the Great Seth. For scholars, such a secret document cannot, of course, have any credibility; they must rely on such evidence as Stewart publicly offers to prove a connection between Locke and Spinoza. Some of it is of the following variety: Locke lived in Amsterdam a few years after Spinoza’s death; or sentiments from Spinoza’s writings appear to agree with sentiments found at various places in Locke’s works, e.g., that the ancient Hebrews ascribed ordinary events to the intervention of God, that rebellion against tyrants was a natural right, and that the rule of law was necessary for the public good. Stewart then assumes that this limited commonality of ideas proves that Locke subscribed to all of Spinoza’s sentiments, including his religious ones.
[...]
There is a rich literature offering a variety of interpretations of Locke and different assessments of his relation to the American Founding. Stewart’s book has not benefited from it. He appears to believe that every mainstream scholar is a fraud. His favorite expression is “the common view gets the actual history of ideas almost exactly backwards” or “the common view” about the Enlightenment “amounts to a falsification of the history of ideas.” Page after page contains explanations of the folly of the “common view” or the “common conception.” Here, again, we encounter a whiff of Gnosticism which, according to Tobias Churton, holds that the received view conceals the truth and that a text has an “outer sense” for “ordinary” people and an “inner sense whose dimensions of meaning may be endless.” This attitude seems to have contributed to Stewart’s creation of a parallel universe in which atheists hijacked the American Revolution and “the contradictory impulses” of American religion today “belatedly converged along the path that begins with Spinoza and Jefferson.”
Monday, February 8, 2016
Hutson on Stewart
James H. Hutson on Matthew Stewart's book at Claremont Review of Books here. A taste:
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I guess that if Hutson had gotten this far, or was willing to provide a more full accounting, he’d have to acknowledge that scholars regularly communicate with one another outside of journals and that sharing unpublished research is less than diabolical. I was talking to a Spinoza scholar and philosophy professor about Klever’s “Disguised Spinozism” argument and he was both aware of the paper and a bit skeptical that the textural evidence was convincing in and of itself. But, it is not so easily completely dismissed either.
I am not defending the book in total but I bristle when a scholar disses another scholar for not being scholarly by being unscholarly.
Gregg Frazer published a list of “problems” as he saw them and that would be a good place to start for a real discussion of the points raised….IMHO. I printed this out and began going through Stewart’s book again before getting sidetracked with more mundane matters. And if John Locke specialists are to be engaged then so too should Spinoza scholars.
You had mentioned that you were putting Nature’s God on your reading list and I’m wondering if you’ve had the chance. Also, I look forward to your take on Hutson’s review.
If the first comment is hung in moderation then it or my last one can be eliminated.
Thanks
such evidence as Stewart publicly offers to prove a connection between Locke and Spinoza. Some of it is of the following variety: Locke lived in Amsterdam a few years after Spinoza’s death; or sentiments from Spinoza’s writings appear to agree with sentiments found at various places in Locke’s works, e.g., that the ancient Hebrews ascribed ordinary events to the intervention of God, that rebellion against tyrants was a natural right, and that the rule of law was necessary for the public good.
And as our loquaciously good and great friend "jimmiraybob" [no real name] was asked, how does Spinoza apply to the American Founding? His link to Locke is even questionable!
Matthew Stewart's "Nature's God" is a left-wing hoax, even worse than David Barton's because though Barton gets many details wrong, America's Christian heritage cannot be denied. Why does that upset our left-wing friends so much?
The answer is obvious. They have no claim to the American Founding. Which is fine. Just be honest about it. Spinoza is a red herring.
Jimmiraybob, this has been cited a dozen times on this blog. It's not that you're a left-winger, it's that like Matthew Stewart, you remain wilfully ignorant, and boring. This is the Founding:
In regard to religion, mutual toleration in the different professions thereof is what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practised, and, both by precept and example, inculcated on mankind. And it is now generally agreed among Christians that this spirit of toleration, in the fullest extent consistent with the being of civil society, is the chief characteristical mark of the Church. Insomuch that Mr. Locke has asserted and proved, beyond the possibility of contradiction on any solid ground, that such toleration ought to be extended to all whose doctrines are not subversive of society.---Sam Adams, 1772
You continue to impress.
My 1st comment that remains above is the second part of a longer comment that I'd posted, having cut the original in two so as not to violate a space limitation. I have made numerous attempts to re-post the first half but it keep disappearing. Otherwise the second part is something of a dangler. I will assume that this blockage is caused by natural processes and will retry.
This is the first part of the first part of the first comment above. Assuming that this comment isn't being intentionally blocked then maybe some part of what keeps disappearing contains something that is causing a problem (no external links are attached and there is no profanity so we'll see).
As I previously mentioned, this is less a scholarly review and more a peeved clobbering.
Hutson would like his readers to know that Stewart is no more than a modern day Gnostic spreading the mysteries via a secret text; a text, with the curious title “Apple and Worm” as Stewart says in the introduction on page 2 of his introduction to Nature’s God. Hutson tells the reader that the mystery text was provided by an anonymous admirer in the Netherlands. Geez, this sound shady. But, if Hutson had flipped to page 4 of the introduction, he would find that Stewart reveals the “mysterious Dutch stranger to be Wim Klemer, “a professor emeritus at Erasmus University in Rotterdam” who has “devoted a lifetime to the study of Dutch Enlightenment, early modern philosophy, and Spinoza, in particular.”
When I first leaned at this blog of Stewart’s Nature’s God I assumed that it would be, at least, a provocative work and immediately bought a copy (as a lot of the new work on the Enlightenment is). I spent the next several months slowly working my way through the book while fact checking and exploring claims. Now, Google gets derided fairly often, and often for good reason, but it can also be an invaluable tool for the lay reader, or interested scholar for that matter, to get to other scholarly materials. After reading the first few pages of the introduction I had a copy of the mystery document.
I also recently checked and, as Stewart said he would do, there is a link to Klever’s Locke’s Disguised Spinozism at Stewart’s author’s website. Klever’s paper uses textual evidence to make the case and there’s a lot of it to wade through but, at the very least it provides a compelling case that Locke and Spinoza often used very similar phrasing and ideas which would strongly suggest that Locke was at least engaging, if not Spinoza directly, the Spinozist-like ideas circulating in Amsterdam at the time of Locke’s stay there.
That Locke's Spinosaism is "disguised" is where the historical rubber meets the road. The Straussians argue that Locke was really a Hobbesian in disguise.
The point is that it's philosophical trivia; neither have a claim on American history because the American Founders understood him in the traditional natural law tradition that runs through Aquinas, not Spinoza.
"I shall, henceforth, begin to make some allowance for that enmity, you have discovered to the natural rights of mankind. For, though ignorance of them in this enlightened age cannot be admitted, as a sufficient excuse for you; yet, it ought, in some measure, to extenuate your guilt. If you will follow my advice, there still may be hopes of your reformation. Apply yourself, without delay, to the study of the law of nature. I would recommend to your perusal, Grotius, Puffendorf, Locke, Montesquieu, and Burlemaqui. I might mention other excellent writers on this subject; but if you attend, diligently, to these, you will not require any others.
There is so strong a similitude between your political principles and those maintained by Mr. Hobb[e]s, that, in judging from them, a person might very easily mistake you for a disciple of his. His opinion was, exactly, coincident with yours, relative to man in a state of nature. He held, as you do, that he was, then, perfectly free from all restraint of law and government. Moral obligation, according to him, is derived from the introduction of civil society; and there is no virtue, but what is purely artificial, the mere contrivance of politicians, for the maintenance of social intercourse. But the reason he run into this absurd and impious doctrine, was, that he disbelieved the existence of an intelligent superintending principle, who is the governor, and will be the final judge of the universe."--Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775
http://americancreation.blogspot.com/2009/04/primer-on-natural-law.html
You argue against Klever's title. Have you read or studied his paper?
Did you read what I wrote? Apparently not. Show us Spinoza in the Founding that can't be attributed to other, more mainstream sources.
Did you read what lever wrote? Apparently not. Unfortunately for your thesis that Aquinas had any influence on the founding there is even less evidence of that than Spinoza's influence. Of course we know that you will outright reject any evidence that conflicts with your entrenched narrative.
Should be: Did you read what Klever wrote?
The review makes a passable case that the author's a crank.
"The review makes a passable case that the author's a crank."
Defamation accomplished.
Did you read what lever wrote? Apparently not. Unfortunately for your thesis that Aquinas had any influence on the founding there is even less evidence of that than Spinoza's influence.
Aquinas>Suarez>Grotius>Hamilton [see quote above]
http://americancreation.blogspot.com/2009/04/primer-on-natural-law.html
Of course we know that you will outright reject any evidence that conflicts with your entrenched narrative.
We're begging you to present some but instead you just keep mouthing off. Floor's yours, tough guy.
"Floor's yours, tough guy."
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