Online research in philosophy

: Spinoza claims that God is extended and corporeal, but he resists identifying God with the extended, corporeal world. How then are we to understand the relation of God to the physical world? This essay first critically examines interpretations offered by Schmaltz and Woolhouse which claim that Spinoza's God is not actually extended, but a nonextended essence of extension. It is then suggested that Spinoza's God can be understood as something akin to (a modified version of) scholastic prime matter. On this view, Spinoza's God is actually extended, but cannot be identified with the corporeal world, which is changeable and variegated in a way that prime matter is not.

The philosophy of Spinoza is increasingly recognised as holding a position of crucial importance and influence in early modern thought, and in recent years it has been the focus of a rich and growing body of scholarship. In this volume of essays, leading experts in the field offer penetrating analyses of his views about God, necessity, imagination, the mind, knowledge, history, society, and politics. The essays treat questions of perennial importance in Spinoza scholarship but also constitute new and critical examinations of his worldview. Scholars of modern philosophy will welcome this volume as a collection of some of the very best recent work done on Spinoza's philosophy.