Antedatings of the OED Entries for ‘Spinozism, N.’ and ‘Spinozist, N.’
The Oxford Dictionary (OED) under Spinozism, n. states that the earliest recorded use of the term dates back to 1728, 1 appearing in Ephraim Chambers' (1647-1706) entry 'SPINOSISM' in his Cyclopaedia: Or, an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. 2 The same source is also cited for the earliest known occurrence of the noun 'Spinozist', as noted in the OED under Spinozist, n. 3 In this contribution, I draw on data from Google Ngrams to trace and date earlier uses of the nouns 'Spinozism' and 'Spinozist' than those recorded in the OED. 4 The earliest recorded instance of 'Spinozism' appears in the 1708 anonymous English translation of Suplement du commentaire philosophique sur ses paroles de Jesus-Chrit [sic], contsrain-les d'entrer (1688), written by the Rotterdam-based French philosopher Pierre Bayle (1647-1706). 5 In this work, Bayle remarks that a conception of God lacking the freedom to create the world in various ways is 'a Doctrine very little better than Spinozism'. 6 Another instance appears in a 1710 review pub-
Authors
- Steffen Ducheyne (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2694-3819)
Institutions
- Vrije Universiteit Brussel (BE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Notes and Queries
- Published
- 2025-09-09
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjaf098
- Primary Topic
- Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Fonds Spéciaux de Recherche