Abstract
Freethinking seems to be desirable because the human being is seen as an independently thinking being. However, as is well known, freethinking should not be taken for granted: ideological indoctrination, manipulation and propaganda, inter alia, are versatile tools for rulers and, in consequence, regularly repeated phenomena. One of the most drastic intellectual turning points in history occurred in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the incontestable religious world view of European civilization changed along with early modern science and the Age of Enlightenment. Although freethinking and religion do not have to be thought of as opposed, the period in question includes instances of complex and delicate phenomena, which in this article are termed intellectual purism and socio-intellectual control. The discussion includes how five thinkers (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Wolff, Kant) operated in a restrictive politico-religio-theological framework and how they manifest religious deviance.
Highlights
Religious deviance and a restrictive politico-religio-theological framework are manifested in this context by using methodo logical terms for analysis
Condemnation and sanctions, (4) sociointellectual control means a shared control of traditional ideas, rules and views, and (5) the restrictive politico-religio-theological framework means a wider restrictive setting of an intellectual activity with respect to a political, religious and theological background; (6) religious deviance is defined
In my opinion Descartes is not religiously deviant. It seems that his novel and partly radical philosophical views (Verbeek 2015b: 83) regarding, inter alia, his dualism and method of doubt, along with his sympathies for the Remonstrants led to objections from Voetius and Schook and caused them to perceive this as a case of religious deviance
Summary
212, 213; Voetius 1648: 117‒25 (‘gradus & species Atheorum’ (p. 117): grades and qualities of atheists, translated by V. In my opinion Descartes is not religiously deviant It seems that his novel and partly radical philosophical views (Verbeek 2015b: 83) regarding, inter alia, his dualism and method of doubt, along with his sympathies for the Remonstrants led to objections from Voetius and Schook and caused them to perceive this as a case of religious deviance. Spinoza is not explicitly an atheist, and he has ethical spirituality; he thinks that intellectual love for God, that is, the active and generative aspect of nature (Nadler 2004: 32), the impersonal Natura. The parnassim of the mahamad and the rabbis, including probably Morteira and Fonseca, represented spiritual authority with their Judaic traditions and observance of the Hebrew Bible intellectual purism. This aspir ation appeared early: when Leibniz was only 22 years old, he had a broad-minded
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