Spinoza Stories: Pantheists, Spinozists, Jews, and the Formation of German Idealism

The Pantheism Controversy was composed of a series of discussions and polemics that took place in Germany towards the end of the 18th century, and whose common denominator was the relationship between philosophy and religion. These discussions generated wildly varying pictures of the thinker whose works sparked the dispute: Baruch Spinoza. These varied pictures – pantheist, atheist, kabbalist, philosophical hero, and dead dog of philosophy – allowed the actors involved in the dispute to define and configure their own viewpoints.

This conference will take these images of Spinoza as its point of departure. By disentangling and exploring them, we will open a neglected point of access to the controversy and its crucial significance for the development of German philosophy and Modern Judaism. The battle over Spinoza’s dead body is less about what Spinoza ‘really said’ than about thinkers trying to find their own voice in a time of intellectual effervescence. Whether loved or hated, rejected or appropriated, Spinoza appeared as a figure every major German thinker had to come to terms with. Their attempts generated images of Spinoza which continue to shape philosophy and religious thought.