Heterodoxy, Spinozism, and Free Thought in Early-Eighteenth-Century Europe: Studies on the Traité des Trois Imposteurs

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Silvia Berti, Françoise Charles-Daubert, R.H. Popkin
Springer Science & Business Media, Aug 31, 1996 - Philosophy - 532 pages
'the oldest biography of Spinoza', La Vie de Mr. Spinosa, which in the manuscript copies is often followed by L'Esprit de M. Spinosa. Margaret Jacob, in her Radical Enlightenment, contended that the Traite was written by a radical group of Freemasons in The Hague in the early eighteenth century. Silvia Berti has offered evidence it was written by Jan Vroesen. Various discussions in the early eighteenth century consider many possi ble authors from the Renaissance onwards to whom the work might be attributed. The Trois imposteurs has attracted quite a bit of recent attention as one of the most significant irreligious clandestine writings available in the Enlightenment, which is most important for understanding the develop ment of religious scepticism, radical deism, and even atheism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Scholars for the last couple of decades have been trying to assess when the work was actually written or compiled and by whom. In view of the widespread distribution of manu scripts of the work all over Europe, they have also been seeking to find out who was influenced by the work, and what it represented for its time. Hitherto unknown manuscripts are being turned up in public and private libraries all over Europe and the United States.
 

Contents

The Leiden Seminar
vii
HISTORY AND INTERPRETATION OF THE TRAITÉ DES TROIS IMPOSTEURS
1
LEsprit de Spinosa ses origines et sa première édition dans leur contexte spinozien
3
Une Histoire interminable origines et développement du Traité des trois imposteurs
53
History and structure of our Traité des trois imposteurs
75
LEsprit de Spinosa et les Traités des trois imposteurs rappel des différentes families et de leurs principales caractéristiques
131
AROUND THE TRAITÉ
191
Freethinking in early eighteenthcentury Protestant Germany Peter Friedrich Arpe and the Traité des trois imposteurs
193
THE THREADS OF A TRADITION
305
An eighteenthcentury interpretation of the Ethica Henry de Boulainvillierss Essai de métaphysique
307
Legislators impostors and the politic origins of religion English theories of imposture from Stubbe to Toland
333
Behold the fear of the Lord the Erastianism of Stillingfleet Wolseley and Tillotson
357
Jesus Nazarenus legislator Adam Boreels defence of Christianity
375
Johan Adler Salvius Questions to Baruch de Castro concerning De tribus impostoribus
397
The struggle against unbelief in the Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam after Spinozas excommunication
425
Worse than the three impostors? towards an interpretation of Theodor Ludwig Laus Meditationes philosophicae de Deo mundo homine
439

The English Deists and the Traité
241
Sallengre La Monnoye and the Traité des trois imposteurs
255
The politics of a publishing event the Marchand milieu and The life and spirit of Spinoza of 1719
273
Impostors and Revolution on the Philadelphie 1796 edition of the Traité des trois imposteurs
297
MARCHANDS ARTICLE IMPOSTORIBUS
475
Marchands article IMPOSTORIBUS
477
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