The Dutch Golden Age It was a period of great wealth for the Dutch Republic. International trade flourished with the Dutch East India Company (VOC). This attracted immigrants, so the growth of the most important ports and cities was also stimulated.
During this time, the 17th century, art and science flourished, as can be seen in the famous works of the Dutch masters: Rembrandt, Hals, Vermeer and Steen. And heterodox thinkers also arrived. The most iconoclastic of them all was, without a doubt, Spinoza. And that's how it changed our ideas of the natural world.
Spinosists
The most controversial philosopher of the time, Baruch Spinoza, he came to consider whether there is an ideal form of government, what is the responsibility of rulers towards their people, and other questions that seemed untouchable, such as the existence of God.
At the same time, it gained prominence Johan de Witt, a brilliant intellectual, a specialist in mathematics and law, who was also a very attractive boy. Despite coming from an aristocratic family, he was a fervent defender of republicanism. At 28, he was named Prime Minister of the Netherlands. De Witt longed for the country to be governed by the idea that the successors of kings and princes were those who were born from their wombs, but rather those who were chosen for their merits.
Those ideas were accepted with quite a bit of acceptance: not in vain, 30 % of all the books published in the world were published in Amsterdam. We were, therefore, facing a literate people and, furthermore, with a lot of editorial freedom.
But De Witt also had opponents: on the one hand, the orangers, who believed that every country needed a monarch; On the other hand there were the orthodox calvinists, who believed that all government needed to be founded on the Bible.
Spinoza idolized De Witt, and decided to leave his deepest philosophy behind to get down to work and support him with a new book intended for the general public. For the first time in history, someone declares that the basis of politics should be individual freedom, also adding that the democratic government was the closest to the state of nature and the most akin to said freedom. The book was published in 1670 and claimed things like the Bible was human and full of errors.
And, like religion, the government also had to abandon that mystical halo and submit to rational, scientific and secular principles.
The impact of the work was so profound and caused so many commotions that even De Witt had to join the voices that condemned him so as not to end up committing political suicide. However, De Witt was assassinated for espousing such unorthodox ideas. Spinoza could not believe how far human barbarism reached.
But, even though the attempt at a republican, humanist form of government, far removed from obeisance, had not finally caught on, those ideas did not completely die. They caused philosophical and political resonances in half the world. A new term even appeared: “spinosista”, from Spinoza, which meant subversive, extremist, dangerous, and even atheist. The Spinosists, however, were growing in number, and for them the term was synonymous with modern, rational, lucid, free of superstitions.
It was also a type of thought that fuels the trait of ambivalenceThat is, not being sure about everything, continuing to investigate, not proposing fixed recipes for complex problems. You can learn more about this feature, as well as its advantages and disadvantages, in the following video:
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The news
Spinoza was such a groundbreaking philosopher for his time that his followers were branded extremists, dangerous, and even atheists.
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.