1st Edition

Reading Modernity, Modernism and Religion Today Spinoza and Van Gogh

By Patrick Grant Copyright 2025
110 Pages
by Routledge

110 Pages
by Routledge

110 Pages
by Routledge

Feelings of rootlessness, fragmentation and loneliness are endemic in today’s secular societies. In the late nineteenth century, Émile Durkheim described this kind of social malaise as anomie, a concept this book locates within a historical narrative of the emergence of Modernism from Modernity. The book focuses on two representative figures, Benedictus de Spinoza and Vincent van Gogh, on whose... Read more

Preface

Chapter 1       Introduction

-       The language mosaic

-       Dialogue, anomie and the conservation of gains

-       Spinoza and Van Gogh: narratives of transformation

Chapter 2       Spinoza’s Bad Dream

-       Spinoza in outline

-       Metaphysics, mystery and double reading

-       The critique of religion

-       Infinite series

-       Self-interest and seeking truth with others

-       Conclusion

Chapter 3       Interlude: From Modernity to Modernism

Chapter 4       Van Gogh and Modernism

-       Recapitulation and making new

-       The religious phase

-       An Enlightenment critique

-       Romantic self-fashioning and new challenges

-       Paris, Arles and St. Rémy: the “draughtsman’s fist” recovered

-       Conclusion

Chapter 5       Conclusion: Modernity, Modernism and the Religious Question

Index

Biography

Patrick Grant is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He has published widely on relationships amongst literature, religion and secularism. He has a special interest in literature of the English Renaissance, literary theory, and the literature and culture of modern Northern Ireland. He has published a series of books on the letters of Vincent van Gogh.