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154. - Quakers

from Q

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2025

By
Steven Nadler
Edited by
Karolina Hübner  and
Justin Steinberg
Karolina Hübner
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Justin Steinberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
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Summary

The Quakers, or the Religious Society of Friends, is a dissenting Protestant sect, arising during the English Civil War, devoted to the idea that each human being has the ability, through “the light within,” to experience God in themselves and in others. Spinoza’s relationship with the Quakers in Amsterdam has long been a subject of speculation, primarily on the basis of the correspondence of William Ames, an Englishman leading the Quaker mission in Holland. Ames may have been referring to Spinoza when he wrote to Margaret Fell, often called “the mother of the Quakers,” in April 1657 that

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon , pp. 449 - 451
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Recommended Reading

Clausen-Brown, K. (2019). Spinoza’s translation of Margaret Fell and his portrayal of Judaism in the Theological-Political Treatise. The Seventeenth Century, 34(1), 89–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nadler, S. (2018). Spinoza: A Life. 2nd edn. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Popkin, R. (1985). Spinoza and Samuel Fisher. Philosophia, 15, 219–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Popkin, R. (1992). Spinoza’s relations with the Quakers in Amsterdam. In Popkin, , The Third Force in Seventeenth-Century Thought. Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Popkin, R., and Signer, M. (eds.). (1987). Spinoza’s Earliest Publication? The Hebrew Translation of Margaret Fell’s “A Loving Salutation to the Seed of Abraham among the Jews, wherever they are scattered up and down the Face of the Earth”. Van Gorcum.Google Scholar

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