ABSTRACT
Jon Wetlesen is a very competent Baruch Spinoza scholar and the whole circle of international Spinoza scholars is looking forward to his forthcoming book The Sage and the Way. Wetlesen’s paper is rich in content and tempts one to go into various details and not only in a critical way. Wetlesen’s interpretation of Spinoza is not convincing, for his basic arguments are insufficient. The parallelism he tries to show with a certain kind of Buddhist insight meditation is interesting and at first sight striking. In his interesting paper, ‘Body awareness as a gateway to eternity: a note on the mysticism of Spinoza and its affinity to Buddhist meditation’ Jon Wetlesen criticizes the interpretation of Spinoza that appeared in a previous paper of mine entitled ‘Logic and experience in Spinoza’s mysticism’.
