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Document Details : Title: Religie in een natuuralistisch perspectief Subtitle: De opvatting van Spinoza en Santayana Author(s): BURMS, Arnold Journal: Tijdschrift voor Filosofie Volume: 74 Issue: 2 Date: 2012 Pages: 269-285 DOI: 10.2143/TVF.74.2.2162470 Abstract : Both Spinoza and Santayana rejected all belief in supernatural powers and yet there is a conception of God at the core of Spinoza’s system and there is a conception of religion that has a central place in Santayana’s thinking. Why did Spinoza and Santayana not opt for a straightforward atheism? In this paper I approach this question by focusing on one important theme: religion as a response to human weakness. Spinoza’s rationalistic system allowed him to make sense of the idea that human beings can attain the highest fulfillment when they experience their individual activity as an expression of the infinite power of which they are a tiny part. I argue that it is possible to find in this view an insight that is true to human experience and not dependent on Spinoza’s rationalistic metaphysics. Santayana related the awareness of human impotence to an attitude of piety: the awareness that everything we cherish is embodied in matter and therefore essentially vulnerable, becomes religious when human imagination unifies external forces into the poetic figure of an omnificent God. For Santayana religion has to be non-literal: whatever could possibly reconcile us with the radical vulnerability of everything that is dear to us will inevitably have a symbolic or poetic character. |
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