LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 21:6 June 2021
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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Benedict de Spinoza and E.V. Ramasamy Periyar: A Study

Dr. S. Sridevi

Abstract

This paper aims at studying how Benedict de Spinoza and E.V. Ramasamy Periyar have responded to their socio-economic-political environment, and have produced great thoughts of freedom, equality, and social justice. Both the thinkers were powerful rationalists who viewed religion only as a political power to oppress people. They seem to be responding to oppression created by religion’s social codes and have rebelled against the Establishment. Spinoza was writing against the system hiding his identity as repercussions were quite high in the Dutch Republic against texts that had content against the Establishment. Periyar was a reformer, thinker, and writer and hence, he boldly expressed his views and become the most controversial name during the twentieth century in Tamil Nadu, and his name continues to be used in controversies even now.

Keywords: Spinoza, Periyar, religion, caste, rationalism

Benedict de Spinoza was born in 1632 in Amsterdam. In Hebrew, his first name was Baruch and in Latin it was Benedictus. The name means ‘blessed.’ He was from a middle class Portuguese-Jewish family. He studied in the congregation’s Talmud Torah school. In 1656, Spinoza was issued the harshest writ of herem, ban or excommunication by the Sephardic community of Amsterdam; it was never rescinded. His philosophical treatises deny the immortality of the soul and the notion of a transcendent, providential God. He claimed that the commandments of the Torah were not literally given by God. Within a few years, he left Amsterdam altogether. In 1661, he worked on the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, an essay on philosophical method, and the Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well-Being. His exposition of Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy was the only work he published under his own name in his lifetime which was completed in 1663. By this time, he began writing his masterpiece Ethics. His philosophical masterpiece. He saw the principles of toleration in Holland being threatened by reactionary forces and political power of the Dutch Reformed Church and he stopped writing Ethics. He wrote Theological-Political Treatise and published anonymously. Spinoza died in 1677 and till then he was working on his “Political Treatise.” His friends published this text along with his other unpublished writings, including a Compendium of Hebrew Grammar (Nadler). The Ethics is a critique of the:

traditional philosophical and theological conceptions of God, the human being and the universe, especially as these serve as the foundation of the major organized religions and their moral and ceremonial rules. What Spinoza intends to demonstrate (in the strongest sense of that word) is the truth about God, nature and especially ourselves, and the most certain and useful principles of society, religion, and the good life. Despite the great deal of metaphysics, physics, anthropology, and psychology that take up Parts One through Three, Spinoza took the crucial message of the work to be ethical in nature. It consists in showing that our happiness and well-being lie not in a life enslaved to the passions and to the transitory goods we ordinarily pursue, nor in the related unreflective attachment to the superstitions that pass as religion, but rather in the life of reason. To clarify and support these broadly ethical conclusions, however, Spinoza must first demystify the universe and show it for what it really is. This requires laying out some metaphysical foundations, the project of Part One. (Nadler)

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Dr. S. Sridevi
Professor of English
CTTE College
Chennai 11
sridevisaral@gmail.com
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