Dall'origine della superstizione all'origine del movimento: lo strano caso della confutazione tolandiana di Spinoza

Abstract

Toland’s Letters to Serena proposes a confutation of Spinoza that is rather puzzling. Apparently, the theme of the confutation, which discusses the cause of movement and the activity of matter, is not linked with previous letters addressing the genealogy of religious prejudice. Moreover, the confutation as such seems grounded on a misunderstanding of Spinoza’s position. This paper aims to show that Toland’s attitude towards Spinoza can be better understood by considering it against the background of seventeenth-century debates on secondary causation and Occasionalism. First, I will show the continuity between the first three letters concerning prejudices and the confutation of Spinoza. Second, I will argue that Toland’s confutation as such is philologically mistaken and Spinoza himself may have been in sympathy with Toland’s own position on the activity of matter. Third, I suggest that Toland’s way of framing the entire discussion is deeply influenced by his attempt to counter a precise argument against body-body causation formulated by Louis de La Forge and reproduced by Antoine Le Grand. According to Toland, this Occasionalistic perspective has dangerous ethical- political consequences that Spinoza’s ontology is unable to deal with.