Jesus by Baruch Spinoza

Abstract

Spinoza's interest in the character Jesus is, fundamentally, the "Christ according to the spirit", since it is in his spirit that the "wisdom of God" has been manifested (= Nature, it is a god without a god, not transcendent), since the spirit ("kind of spiritual automaton") displays an autonomous order of its own ideas (TIE 85), as well as to propose it as a reference for coexistence (politically) and to suppress fear (TIE 1, E4P54 and P63E, TP fifteen). Ethics and TTP, with their political implications (adequate theory), should not and cannot be, in radice, based on metaphysical assumptions (divine Jesus and universal love), but on conatus. The creativity of the conatus makes its activity essential (praxic).