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Michael LeBuffe [39]Michael Leon Lebuffe [1]
  1.  74
    From Bondage to Freedom: Spinoza on Human Excellence.Michael LeBuffe - 2009 - New York, US: Oxford University Press USA.
    Spinoza rejects fundamental tenets of received morality, including the notions of Providence and free will. Yet he retains rich theories of good and evil, virtue, perfection, and freedom. Building interconnected readings of Spinoza's accounts of imagination, error, and desire, Michael LeBuffe defends a comprehensive interpretation of Spinoza's enlightened vision of human excellence. Spinoza holds that what is fundamental to human morality is the fact that we find things to be good or evil, not what we take those designations to mean. (...)
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  2.  31
    Spinoza on Reason.Michael LeBuffe - 2017 - Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.
    Michael LeBuffe explains claims about reason in Spinoza's metaphysics, theory of mind, ethics, and politics. He emphasizes the extent to which different claims build upon one another so contribute to the systematic coherence of Spinoza's philosophy.
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  3. Theories About Consciousness in Spinoza's Ethics.Michael LeBuffe - 2010 - Philosophical Review 119 (4):531-563.
    Spinoza's remarks about consciousness in the Ethics constitute two theories about conscious experience and knowledge. Several remarks, including 3p9 and 4p8, make the point that self knowledge—an especially valuable good for Spinoza—is not available to introspection. We are, as a matter of course, conscious of ourselves, but we do not, as a matter of course, know ourselves. A second group of remarks, all of which occur in part 5 of the Ethics, emphasizes a different point about consciousness and knowledge: the (...)
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  4. The anatomy of the passions.Michael Lebuffe - 2009 - In Olli Koistinen (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza's Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 188--222.
     
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  5.  89
    Why Spinoza tells people to try to preserve their being.Michael Lebuffe - 2004 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 86 (2):119-145.
    It is puzzling that Spinoza both urges people to seek to preserve themselves and also holds that, as a matter of fact, people do strive to preserve themselves. I argue that the striving for self-preservation that characterizes all individuals grounds, for Spinoza, the claim that human beings seek only whatever they anticipate will lead to pleasure (laetitia). People desire ends other than self-preservation because they anticipate pleasure in those ends, and Spinoza urges people to seek to preserve themselves because he (...)
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  6. Change and the eternal part of the mind in Spinoza.Michael Lebuffe - 2010 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 91 (3):369-384.
    Spinoza insists that we can during the course of our lives increase that part of the mind that is constituted by knowledge, but he also calls that part of the mind its eternal part. How can what is eternal increase? I defend an interpretation on which there is a sense in which the eternal part of the mind can become greater without changing intrinsically at all.
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  7.  63
    Spinoza's psychological theory.Michael LeBuffe - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  8. Paul-Henri thiry (baron) d'holbach.Michael LeBuffe - 2014 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Paul Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach was a philosopher, translator, and prominent social figure of the French Enlightenment. In his philosophical writings Holbach developed a deterministic and materialistic metaphysics which grounded his polemics against organized religion and his utilitarian ethical and political theory. As a translator, Holbach made significant contributions to the European Enlightenment in science and religion. He translated German works on chemistry and geology into French, summarizing many of the German advances in these areas in his entries in Diderot's (...)
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  9. Spinoza’s Normative Ethics.Michael LeBuffe - 2007 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (3):371-391.
    Spinoza presents his ethics using a variety of terminologies. Propositions that are, or at least might be taken for, normative include only very few explicit guidelines for action. I will take this claim from Vp10s to be one such guideline:Vp10s: So that we may always have this rule of reason ready when it is needed, we should think and meditate often about common human wrongs and how and in what way they may best be driven away by nobility.
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  10.  23
    Spinoza's Rules of Living.Michael LeBuffe - 2015 - In Yitzhak Y. Melamed (ed.), The Young Spinoza: A Metaphysician in the Making. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 92 - 105.
    Chapter 5 addresses the provisional morality of the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE). The young Spinoza proposes that even as one works at emending the intellect, one should live by certain rules, which one must assume to be good. One should accommodate ordinary ways of speaking and living to the extent that one can without compromising one’s project. One should enjoy pleasures in moderation. Finally, one should seek instrumental goods only insofar as they are necessary for health (...)
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  11.  69
    Spinoza's summum bonum.Michael Lebuffe - 2005 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 86 (2):243–266.
    : As Spinoza presents it, the knowledge of God is knowledge, primarily, of oneself and, secondarily, of other things. Without this know‐ledge, a mind may not consciously desire to persevere in being. That is why Spinoza claims that the knowledge of God is the most useful thing to the mind at IVP28. He claims that the knowledge of God is the highest good, however, not because it is instrumental to perseverance, but because it is also the best among those goods (...)
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  12. Necessity and the Commands of Reason in the Ethics.Michael LeBuffe - 2014 - In Andrew Youpa Matthew Kisner (ed.), Essays on Spinoza's Ethical Theory. pp. 197 - 220.
    This essay focuses on Spinoza’s claim that ideas of reason are necessary. While Spinoza understands necessity to imply that something cannot be otherwise, the author shows that Spinoza employs a narrower notion of necessity that applies only to some things, what LeBuffe describes as omnipresence: existing at all times and in all places. This account of the sense in which the ideas of reason are necessary makes evident that such ideas have especially strong motivational power. Our affects are more powerful (...)
     
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  13. (1 other version)Spinoza and Hobbes.Michael LeBuffe - 2021 - In Yitzhak Y. Melamed (ed.), Blackwell Companion to Spinoza. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell. pp. 81-92.
    The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes directly influenced and, possibly, was also influenced by Spinoza. Hobbes and Spinoza were both aware of the advanced science of mid-seventeenth-century Europe and of the uncomfortable fit of that science with traditional moral and religious doctrines. Spinoza defines ‘appetite’ in terms of striving and ‘desire,’ in turn, in terms of appetite. The basis for Spinoza's theory of desire in an account of causation implies that the distinction between activity and passivity may be incremental. For both (...)
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  14. Hobbes on the origin of obligation.Michael LeBuffe - 2003 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 11 (1):15 – 39.
  15. Spinoza, Baruch.Michael LeBuffe - 2013 - International Encyclopedia of Ethics.
    Baruch, or Benedictus, Spinoza (1632–77) is the author of works, especially the Ethics and the Theological-Political Treatise, that are a major source of the ideas of the European Enlightenment. The Ethics is a dense series of arguments on progressively narrower subjects – metaphysics, mind, the human affects, human bondage to passion, and human blessedness – presented in a geometrical order modeled on that of Euclid. In it, Spinoza begins by defending a metaphysics on which God is the only substance and (...)
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  16. Citizens and States in Spinoza’s Political Treatise.Michael LeBuffe - 2021 - Mind 130 (519):809-832.
    In his Political Treatise, Spinoza repeatedly compares states to human beings. In this interpretation of the comparisons, I present a progressively more restrictive account of Spinoza’s views about the nature of human beings in the Ethics and show at each step how those views inform the account of states in the Political Treatise. Because, like human beings, states are individuals, they strive to persevere in existence. Because, like human beings, states are composed of parts that are individuals, states' parts also (...)
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  17.  60
    Spinoza's Epistemology through a Geometrical Lens.Michael LeBuffe - 2022 - Philosophical Quarterly 73 (3):859-861.
    This book concerns Spinoza's theory of knowledge and closely related issues: Spinoza's conceptions of geometrical figure or shape, number, and observational sci.
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  18.  21
    Holbach.Michael Lebuffe & Emilie Gourdon - 2019 - In Graham Oppy (ed.), A Companion to Atheism and Philosophy. Hoboken: Blackwell. pp. 28–42.
    Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach financed and contributed to Diderot's Encyclopedia. He hosted many of Europe's best minds in the eighteenth century. The first half of this chapter describes these roles with a focus on atheism in Enlightenment France. Holbach was also a prolific writer. The second half of this chapter defends an interpretation of his atheism. Holbach held that God does not exist and that the knowledge of this fact is a great benefit to those who come to have it.
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  19.  12
    Reason and body in Spinoza's Metaphysics.Michael LeBuffe - 2018 - In Beth Lord (ed.), Spinoza’s Philosophy of Ratio. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. pp. 19-32.
  20.  51
    A Sentimentalist Theory of Mind, by Michael Slote: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. xxiii + 243, £32.99.Michael LeBuffe - 2015 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (2):413-413.
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  21.  88
    Hobbes's reply to the fool.Michael LeBuffe - 2006 - Philosophy Compass 2 (1):31–45.
    The objection Hobbes raises in the voice of the Fool against his own argument is, apparently, that it is sometimes rational to break covenant. Hobbes's answer is puzzling, both because it seems implausible and also because it seems at odds with some of his own views. This article reviews several strategies critics have taken in trying to show that Hobbes's answer is more plausible than it seems and one attempt to show that the Fool's objection concerns the action of breaking (...)
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  22. Moral Philosophy.Michael LeBuffe - 2014 - In Daniel Kaufman (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Seventeenth Century Philosophy. New York: Routledge. pp. 451-485.
    Dramatic changes in the understanding of nature and turbulent debates in religion marked seventeenth century moral philosophy. Many of the most important works of the century were attempts to defend new moral concepts or to recast old ones, as a way of responding to new doctrines in religion, epistemology, ad metaphysics. Many others were attempts to show that traditional conceptions of value, or elements of them, did not after all require revision. Moral concepts depend, or might be taken to depend, (...)
     
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  23. Principles of Spinoza's Philosophy.Michael LeBuffe - 2017 - In Peter R. Anstey (ed.), The Idea of Principles in Early Modern Thought: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. New York: Routledge. pp. 172 - 193.
     
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  24.  51
    Reconceiving Spinoza.Michael LeBuffe - 2019 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (3):635-636.
    Volume 97, Issue 3, September 2019, Page 635-636.
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  25.  32
    Reply to Yitzhak Melamed.Michael LeBuffe - 2011 - The Leibniz Review 21:161-164.
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  26. Spinoza and the Power of Reason.Michael LeBuffe - 2017 - In Yitzhak Y. Melamed (ed.), Cambridge Critical Guide to Spinoza’s Ethics. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. pp. 304 - 319.
  27.  50
    Spinoza's Ethics: a guide.Michael LeBuffe - 2023 - New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press.
    This guide has an introduction and five chapters, one for each of the parts of Spinoza's Ethics. The Introduction includes background material necessary for productive study of the Ethics: advice for working with Spinoza's geometrical method, a biographical sketch of Spinoza, and accounts of important predecessors: Aristotle, Maimonides, and Descartes. The chapters that follow trace the Ethics in detail, including accounts of most of the elements in Spinoza's book and raising questions for further research. Chapter 1, "One Infinite Substance," covers (...)
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  28.  82
    Spinoza on Human Freedom: Reason, Autonomy, and the Good Life.Michael LeBuffe - 2012 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 20 (1):195 - 198.
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 20, Issue 1, Page 195-198, January 2012.
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  29.  72
    Spinozistic Perfectionism.Michael LeBuffe - forthcoming - History of Philosophy Quarterly.
  30.  90
    The Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms: Miracles, Monotheism, and Reason in Spinoza.Michael LeBuffe - 2015 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 23 (2):318-332.
    Spinoza insists in the Theological Political Treatise that philosophy and theology are two separate kingdoms. I argue here that there is a basis in the psychology of the Ethics for one of the major components of the doctrine of the two kingdoms. Under the kingdom of theology, religion's principal function is to overcome the influence of harmful passion that prevents people from living life according to a fixed plan: people can live according to a fixed plan because they can obey. (...)
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  31.  28
    The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza ed. by Michael Della Rocca.Michael LeBuffe - 2018 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 56 (4):755-756.
    Della Rocca's edited volume offers notable contributions to our understanding of Spinoza and his place in the history of philosophy. It will be a valuable resource for students and scholars alike. Its twenty-seven chapters are impossible to survey in a short review. I will focus here on a few exceptional entries.Among essays that introduce students to particular topics, Yitzhak Melamed's account of the central notions of Spinoza's metaphysics and Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's contribution on Spinoza's influence on literature stand out. Although (...)
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  32.  69
    The Spiritual Automaton: Spinoza’s Science of the Mind by Eugene Marshall.Michael LeBuffe - 2014 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 52 (4):846-847.
  33.  59
    (1 other version)Virtue as Power.Michael Lebuffe - 2011 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 35 (1):164-178.
  34. Review of Michael Della Rocca, Spinoza[REVIEW]Michael LeBuffe - 2009 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (2).
  35.  37
    On Arash Abizadeh, 'Hobbes and the Two Faces of Ethics'. [REVIEW]Michael LeBuffe - 2018 - European Hobbes Society 2018:NA.
    I would like to begin by congratulating Arash Abizadeh. Hobbes and the Two Faces of Ethics is a splendid book. Even where I have disagreed with Abizadeh, the book has been a great help to me in framing central issues and in setting out pressing questions for different interpretations. I am sure that it will be a valuable resource for students of Hobbes for many years. -/- Here I will discuss Abizadeh’s views on the science of morality in Hobbes, and (...)
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  36.  41
    Review of Steven Nadler, Spinoza's Ethics: An Introduction[REVIEW]Michael LeBuffe - 2006 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (11).
  37.  19
    Review of Spinoza's Authority (2 Vols.), eds. A Kiarina Kordela and Dimitris Vardoulakis. [REVIEW]Michael LeBuffe - 2018 - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
    These volumes in Bloomsbury's series of studies in continental philosophy arise from the editors' and authors' conviction that a study of Spinoza's views about authority can be productive politically. The volumes include works of scholarship, then, but scholarship with a purpose beyond that of understanding Spinoza. The editors and authors take Spinoza to have enduring relevance for the criticism of and resistance to harmful power structures in society today. The essays ought to be read as works themselves on political philosophy (...)
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