Abstract

Pontiaan Van Hattem was a Dutch seventeenth century thinker who has, so far, been very largely ignored by historians of philosophy. This can be explained by the fact that, even during his lifetime, the Calvinist community in which he lived and worked as a clergyman stigmatized him as a heretic on account of his philosophical attitude. His work has, therefore, been a matter of concern to theologians rather than philosophers. What is more, his pupil Roggeveen, who published his works posthumously, was very selective in dealing with the manuscripts, edification and simplicity being his main criteria. Nonetheless, this edition contains some pieces in which Van Hattem develops an epistemological criticism of Spinoza's contention that man is capable of becoming conscious, at one and the same time, of himself, of God and of nature. This criticism has to be regarded as a radicalization of Spinoza's criticism of Descartes' assumption that, correlative to the absolute substance, there are relative substances, which have a provisional certainty concerning their own being through their being able to think. Van Hattem's epistemological refinement of the way in which Spinoza criticizes Descartes' ontology can be resolved into the requirement that anyone who endeavours to attain knowledge of the infinite substance of God should suspend his belief in the certainty of the judgements of the finite ego and deny that his own finite impressions are in any way essentialities. The ego has to be negated if the absolute is to be known. In this way, Van Hattem tried to solve a much criticized problem in Spinoza's Ethics : the validity of the claim that it is possible to show how the finite mind can come to know the infinite spirit