ENLIGHTENMENT AND MODERNITY?

Jonathan DaviesPowerpoint will be on the website

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

Albert Einstein, “On Spinoza’s Ethics”

How much do I love that noble man, more than I could say with words.

Baruch Spinoza, Ethica Ordine Geometrico demonstrata(Amsterdam,

1677)

All the prejudices I here undertake to expose depend on this one: that men commonly suppose that all natural things act, as men do, on account of an end; indeed, they maintain as certain that God himself directs all things to some certain end, for they say that God has made all things for man, and man that he might worship God.

Spinoza, Ethics (Amsterdam, 1677), I, Appendix.

Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727)

Isaac Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)

This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being… Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done.

Isaac Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)

John Locke (1632-1704)

John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1689)