Dutch Philosophy During the Heyday of Liberalism (1848-1870): Opzoomer and Burger jr. Devotees of Spinoza

Abstract

1848 is a watershed in Dutch political and intellectual history. In the wake of liberalism positivism and empiricism dominated Dutch philosophy. In this paper it is argued that Spinoza’s philosophy played an important part in developing a liberal Weltanschauung. Dutch Spinozism started with the theological dissertation of Johannes van Vloten (1843), who from the 1860s onwards became the great pamphleteer of Spinozism. However due to his break with Christianity he remained an exception in Dutch intellectual life. The Utrecht professor of philosophy Cornelis Willem Opzoomer (1821–1892) and his friend the classical scholar D. Burger jr. (1820-1891), for example, propagated a liberal Christianity purged from its mythical elements. Adopting Schleiermacher’s example Opzoomer developed a morality inspired by Ethics V. In 1850 he turned to J. S. Mill and A. Comte. From that year onwards he justified the methodological unity of the natural and ‘moral’ sciences in Spinoza’s doctrine of the passions. According to Burger the Ethics contains an obsolete metaphysics, but due to its morality consistent with science the book deserves a large 19th-century readership. In 1858 he translated Spinoza’s main work into Dutch.