Gnosi ed esperienza della salvezza in Spinoza

My paper analyses the various forms of Spinoza’s theory of knowledge, examining them in the light of the highest model found within this theory – the third genre of knowledge – which according to Spinoza is exemplified by Christ, the philosopher “par excellence” as discussed in the Tractatus theologico-politicus and the Letters. The originality of Spinoza's biblical critique is significant with respect to science, as it includes in the Tractaus theologico-politicus the various instruments of deduction and induction («to conclude», «to extract» «to enumerate»), and draws on the practical disciplines of mechanics, optics, the study of motion and psychology. Deduction and induction, however, are also confronted with what the Ethics names intuitive science and the Tractatus considers beginning with Christ’s intuition of divine designs («de mente ad mentem»). Presented in the fifth part of the Ethics as the source of true beatitude for the mind and elevated in the Tractatus to the highest form of “gnosis”, intuitive science is directed by Spinoza against the chimeras produced by the imagination in the prophetic tradition. Intuition has singular essences as its object, which are inaccessible to abstract models of reason. Does intuitive knowledge therefore sanction a rupture with respect to the modalities of rational knowledge? Or, rather, putting them to the test with the highest contemplation of essences, does it not reassert them following the spinozian imperative of a «mathematical science of salvation»?