Abstract

In 1969, Edwin Curley published his Spinoza's Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation. It was a groundbreaking book in which Curley offers a bold and original account of Spinoza's metaphysical theses. In his highly unorthodox but hugely influential reading, he tries to mitigate some of the ontological oddity of Spinoza's claims that "whatever is, is in God," that "from God infinite things follow in infinite ways," and that mind and body are "one and the same thing," by giving them a strictly causal reading. For subsequent scholars, whether they agreed with Curley or not, there was no avoiding his interpretation.Samuel Newlands seeks likewise to transform our reading of Spinoza in an unconventional—and, as he...