Sylvana Tomaselli

Moral Philosophy and Population Questions in Eighteenth Century Europe

For as soon as the vernalface of day is made manifest, and the breeze of the teeming west wind blows fresh and free, first the fowls of the air proclaim you, divine one, and your advent, pierced to the heart by your might. Next, wild creatures andfarm animals dance over the rich pastures and swim across rapid rivers: so greedily does one follow you, held captive by your charm, whither you go to lead them. Then throughout seas and mountains and sweeping torrents and the leafy dwellings of birds and verdant plains, striking alluring love into the breasts of all creatures, you cause them greedily to beget their generations after their kind.

Gender, Class, and Freedom in Modern Political Theory

are also in this final section a number of additions to Freudenthal’s collection of responses to and condemnations of Spinoza’s work, especially the TTP, including documents in 1670 from church leaders in Utrecht and Leiden and the 1679 inclusion of Spinoza’s writings in the Catholic Church’s Index of Prohibited Books. The photograph illustrations of handwritten documents and the maps are an extremely nice addition as well. Walther (and his publisher) has performed a wonderful service by reissuing Freudenthal’s documents and adding the new material (all accompanied by German translations). But there is more. Volume two contains Walther’s own extremely valuable commentary on the documents of volume one, including notes for many of the references in the early biographical material; annotation and analysis of the contents of Spinoza’s library; a brief chronology of Spinoza’s biography; an extensive, topically oriented bibliography devoted to sources and writings on Spinoza’s life; and even a genealogical chart for Spinoza’s family. The publication of these two volumes, over nine hundred pages altogether, is something to be celebrated not only by Spinoza scholars, but by anyone working in the history of ideas in the seventeenth century. There has been renewed attention over the last ten years to Spinoza’s role in the development of Enlightenment thought, especially its more radical wing. Walther’s project is thus an essential resource for scholars who need to consider the visceral reactions his ideas generated among his contemporaries.