Jacqueline Lagrée

Grotius: Natural Law and Natural Religion

Grotius is generally considered as the founder of modern natural law, that is to say, a natural law both subjective and rational.1 He was also one of the major theorists of natural religion in the seventeenth century as well as one of the great exegetes of the Bible. These two aspects of Grotius frequently have been studied as if they belonged to two different persons2, or, as Corsano did, by juxtaposing “the humanist, the theologian and the jurist.”3 However, the theorist of the law of war and peace cites the Apostles or the Fathers of the Church, as well as orators and jurists, to support his theses, and in his learned annotations of the Bible, as in his theological treatises, the ideological/political implications of a variety of theological or ecclesiastical positions are not forgotten. Finally, an analysis of the Prolegomena of the De jure belli ac pacis 4 shows how close Grotius remains to the scholastic method, and notably to the De legibus of Suarez.

Religion naturelle et scepticisme religieux

RésuméDans von livre sur l’Histoire du scepticisme d’Érasme à Spinoza, Richard H. Popkin présente la théorie de la vérité proposée par Edward Herbert de Cherbury dans leDe veritate comme une machine de guerre lourde et impuissante dirigée contre le scepticisme religieux de l’âge classique. L’article entend montrer que le lourd dispositif conceptuel duDe veritate ne constitue pas le cœur de la réponse cherburienne au scepticisme mais seulement le fondement théorique d’un perspectivisme religieux immédiatement corrigé par la défense d’un credo minimum stable et universel. Par là, Cherbury accomplit le programme du pragmatisme religieux de Sextus Empiricus, en recherchant non pas la religion la plus vraie mais la meilleure pour permettre aux hommes de vivre en paix dans le respect mutuel de leurs croyances.AbstractIn theHistory of scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, Richard H. Popkin presents Edward Herbert of Cherbury’s theory of truth as a heavy and unsuccessful weapon against the religious scepticism of the seventeenth century. This paper claims to show that this heavy conceptual device is not the very heart of the Cherburian response to scepticism but precisely the theoretical foundation of a religious perspectivism which is immediately corrected by a minimal credo which is universal and stable. In doing so, Cherbury fulfills the religious pragmativism’s program of Sextus Empiricus for he does not try to find the truest religion but the best one, the one which allows men to live in peace, in a mutual respect of their beliefs.ZusammenfassungIn seinem Buch überDie Geschichte des Skeptizismus von Erasmus bis Spinoza präsentiert Richard H. Popkin die Edward Herbert von Cherbury inDe veritate vorgestellte Theorie der Wahrheit als eine schwerfällige und wirkungslose Waffe im Kampf gegen den religiösen Skeptizismus des 17. Jahrhunderts. In diesem Artikel wird gezeigt, daß die umständliche Argumentation inDe veritate nicht den Kern von Cherburys Antwort auf den Skeptizismus darstellt, sondern nur die theoretische Begründung eines religiösen Perspektivismus bildet, der unmittelbar darauf durch die Verteidigung eines minimalen, allgemeingültigen und unumstö\lichen Kredo korrigiert wird. Auf diese Weise vollendet Cherbury das auf Sextus Empiricus zurückgehende Programm eines religiösen Pragmatismus, indem er nicht nach der Religion mit dem größten Wahrheitsgehalt fragt, sondern nach derjenigen Religion, die am besten dazu geeignet ist, den Menschen ein friedliches Leben auf der Grundlage eines gegenseitigen Respekts der Glaubensüberzeugungen zu ermöglichen.

Leibniz Et Spinoza

One could characterize the two systems of Spinoza and Leibniz as philosophies of Being. But it is clear that this is not the same God, nor of the same substance previously. Despite significant correspondence between the power of philosophy (Spinoza) and a philosophy of force (Leibniz), the confrontation of the two religious philosophies may well moderate the radical opposition asserted by Leibniz; it can not reach a conciliation. Spinoza claims to have found the true philosophy and faith leaves the task of persuading everyone that salvation is possible by way of obedience to the rule of justice and charity. Leibniz seeks to build rational discourse about God that will be worth universally as the foundation of all positive theological discourse. The original text of the chapter is in French. Keywords: Leibniz; philosophies of being; religious philosophies; salvation; Spinoza; positive theological discourse

Irrationality with or without Reason

In “Les avatars de l’interpretation de l’Ecriture chez Spinoza”1 Sylvain Zac returns to a question already raised in his book Spinoza et l’interpretation de l’Ecriture: Spinoza’s refutation of the allegorical method of Scriptural interpretation proposed by Maimonides. This refutation is set forth in Chapter XV of the Tractatus Theologico-politicus, which also contains the critique of another allegorical interpretation, that of Rabbi Alpakhar. Dismissing on equal terms those who deny reason any role at all in Scriptural interpretation and those who accord it full authority, Spinoza undertakes to show in this chapter that “theology is not subservient to reason, nor reason to theology.’2 In the preamble to this chapter Spinoza reverts to one of the classic topics in the history of philosophy since the doxographers and, in particular, Sextus Empiricus: the distinction between sceptics and dogmatists. He applies it to the way we conceive the adaptive relationship (accmodari) between reason and theology or, to be more precise, between reason and the meaning of Scripture (sensus Scripturae). Those whom Spinoza qualifies here as sceptics, those who deny the certitude of reason, hold that reason must adapt itself to Scripture, while th ”dogmatics“ maintain that the meaning of Scripture must be accommodated to reason.