A. THE TEXT The main importance of these two treatises lies in the insight they provide into Spinoza's conception of the relation between mathematics and certain disciplines not touched upon elsewhere in his major writings. The mathematics they involve are not the as those of the Ethics however, and the precise connection same between the geometrical order of this work and these excursions into optics and probability is by no means obvious. Add to this difficulty the knotty problems presented (...) by their editorial his tory, dating and scientific background, and it is not perhaps surprising that in spite of the fact that they provide such an excellent illustration of Spinoza's reaction to certain important developments in the history of physics and mathematics, they should not, so far, have attracted much attention. They were first published in 1687 by Levyn van Dyck (d. 1695), official printer to the town council in The Hague. Printing anything by Spinoza was not without its risks, and it is probably significant that during the same year van Dyck should also have published a lengthy and elaborate refutation of Spinozism by 1 the pious and eccentric physician ]. F. Helvetius. Spinoza's name was omitted from the title-page, possibly because the editor or publisher thought that his reputation as an atheist might prejudice the sale of the booklet, and it was not until 1860 that the Amsterdam bookseller Frederik Muller (1817-1881) identified him as its author. (shrink)

Arguably, no historical thinker has had as varied and fractious a reception within modern Judaism as Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza (1632-77), the seventeenth-century philosopher, pioneering biblical critic, and Jewish heretic from Amsterdam. Revered in many circles as the patron saint of secular Jewishness, he has also been branded as the worst traitor to the Jewish people in modern times. Jewish philosophy has cast Spinoza as marking a turning point between the old and the new, as a radicalizer of the medieval tradition (...) and table setter for the modern. He has served as a perennial landmark and point of reference in the construction of modern Jewish identity. This volume brings together excerpts from central works in the Jewish response to Spinoza. True to the diversity of Spinoza's Jewish reception, it features a mix of genres, from philosophical criticism to historical fiction, from tributes to diary entries, providing the reader with a sense of the overall historical development of Spinoza's posthumous legacy. (shrink)

Spinoza's Political Psychology advances a novel, comprehensive interpretation of Spinoza's political writings, exploring how his analysis of psychology informs his arguments for democracy and toleration. Justin Steinberg shows how Spinoza's political method resembles the Renaissance civic humanism in its view of governance as an adaptive craft that requires psychological attunement. He examines the ways that Spinoza deploys this realist method in the service of empowerment, suggesting that the state can affectively reorient and thereby liberate its citizens, but only if (...) it attends to their actual motivational and epistemic capacities. His book will interest a range of readers in Spinoza studies and the history of political thought, as well as readers working in contemporary political theory. (shrink)

"The Collected Works of Spinoza provides, for the first time in English, a truly satisfactory edition of all of Spinoza's writings, with accurate and readable translations, based on the best critical editions of the original-language texts, done by a scholar who has published extensively on the philosopher's work. The elaborate editorial apparatus--including prefaces, notes, glossary, and indexes--assists the reader in understanding one of the world's most fascinating, but also most difficult, philosophers. Of particular interest is the glossary-index, which provides (...) extensive commentary on Spinoza's technical vocabulary. A milestone of scholarship more than forty-five years in the making, The Collected Works of Spinoza is an essential edition for anyone with a serious interest in Spinoza or the history of philosophy." --Inside jacket flap. (shrink)

This paper aims at reconstructing the ethical issues raised by Spinoza's earlyTreatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. Specifically, I argue that Spinoza takes issue with Descartes’ epistemology in order to support a form of “ethical intellectualism” in which knowledge is envisaged as both necessary and sufficient to reach the supreme good. First, I reconstruct how Descartes exploits the distinction between truth and certainty in hisDiscourse on the Method. On the one hand, this distinction acts as the basis for Descartes’ (...) epistemological rules while, on the other hand, it implies a “morale par provision” in which adequate knowledge is not strictly necessary to practice virtue. Second, I show that Spinoza rejects the distinction between truth and certainty and thus the methodological doubt. This move leads Spinoza to substitute the Cartesian Cogito with the idea of God as the only adequate standard of knowledge, through which the mind can attain the rules to reach the supreme good. Third, I demonstrate that in theShort TreatiseSpinoza develops this view by equating intellect and will and thus maintaining that only adequate knowledge can help to contrast affects. However, I also insist that Spinoza's early epistemology is unable to explain why human beings drop conceive of the idea of God inadequately. Thus, I suggest that in his later writings Spinoza accounts for the insufficiency of adequate knowledge in opposing the power of the imagination and passions by reconnecting the nature of ideas with the mind's conatus. (shrink)

The Oxford Philosophical Texts series consists of authoritative teaching editions of canonical texts in the history of philosophy from the ancient world down to modern times. Each volume provides a clear, well laid out text together with a comprehensive introduction by a leading specialist, giving the student detailed critical guidance on the intellectual context of the work and the structure and philosophical important of the main arguments and explain unfamiliar references and terminology, and a full bibliography and index are also (...) included. -/- The series aims to build up a definitive corpus of key texts in the Western philosophical tradition, which will from a reliable and enduring resource for students and teachers alike. -/- Spinoza's Ethics is one of the classical texts of philosophy but is also one of the most difficult to understand because of the author's use of rigorous logical deduction and the geometrical framework within which his ideas are set. In Ethics, he discusses the nature of human beings and the way in which a rational person might live; the nature of God; and offers an account of true freedom and how it can be attained. -/- This latest text in the Oxford Philosophical Texts series includes a new, lucid translation of the Ethics by G.H.R. Parkinson along with a comprehensive guide to the understanding of Spinoza's work. An extensive introduction includes: a short biography of Spinoza himself; the form of his writing including his own particular uses of definitions; an introductory guide through the philosophy of Ethics; and a summary of the contents of Ethics itself. Further aids include a glossary of terms, extensive notes to the text. (shrink)

Spinoza is most often seen as a stern advocate of mechanistic efficient causation, but examining his philosophy in relation to the Aristotelian tradition reveals this view to be misleading: some key passages of the Ethics resemble so much what Surez writes about emanation that it is most natural to situate Spinoza's theory of causation not in the context of the mechanical sciences but in that of a late scholastic doctrine of the emanative causality of the formal cause; as taking a (...) look at the seventeenth-century philosophy of mathematics reveals, this is in consonance also with Spinoza's geometrical cast of mind. Against this background, I examine Spinoza's essentialist model of causation according to which each thing has a formal character determined by the thing's essence and what follows from that essence. In the case of real things this essential causal architecture results in efficacy, i.e. in bringing about real effects, the key idea being that without the essential, formally structured causal thrust there would be no efficacy in the first place. I also explain how this model accounts for efficient causation taking place between finite things. (shrink)

Among Spinoza’s principal projects in the Ethics is his effort to “remove” certain metaethical prejudices from the minds of his readers, to “expose” them, as he has similar misconceptions about other matters, by submitting them to the “scrutiny of reason”. In this article, I consider the argumentative strategy Spinoza uses here – and its intellectual history – in depth. I argue that Spinoza’s method is best characterised as a genealogical analysis. As I recount, by Spinoza’s time of writing, these kinds (...) of arguments already had a long and illustrious history. However, I also argue that, in his adoption of such strategies, we have good reason to think Spinoza’s primary influence was Gersonides. Elucidating this aspect of Spinoza’s critique of his contemporaries’ axiologies brings a number of explicatory and historical boons. However, regrettably, it also comes at a cost, revealing a significant flaw in Spinoza’s reasoning. Towards the end of this article, I consider the nature of this flaw, whether Spinoza can avoid it and its ramifications for Spinoza’s wider philosophical project. (shrink)

in his second letter to spinoza, William van Blyenbergh expresses his dissatisfaction with Spinoza’s approach to philosophical inquiry. He writes,Before I proceed to ask you to resolve certain other difficulties, you should know that I have two general rules according to which I always try to philosophize: the clear and distinct conception of my intellect and the revealed word, or will, of God.1Spinoza does not share Blyenbergh’s concern that the intellect may lead us astray from the divine truth. He responds,But (...) as for myself, I confess clearly and without circumlocution, that I do not understand Sacred Scripture, though I have spent several years on it. And I am well aware that, when I have found a solid... (shrink)

Spinoza's Mediate Infinite Mode TAD M. SCHMALTZ IN PART I of the Ethics, Spinoza argued that a modification is infinite just in case it either "follows from the absolute nature of any attribute of God" or "follows from some attribute of God, as it is modified by such a modification" that is infinite. 1 The main purpose of this argument is to bolster the claim later in this text that a finite modification can follow from a divine attribute only insofar (...) as that attribute is modified by another finite modification. 2 Thus it is understandable that in the section that contains the argument Spinoza did not actually affirm the existence of the two kinds of infinite modifications he mentioned, which following standard practice I call "immediate infinite modes" and "mediate infinite modes," respectively.3 Yet in this section he did 'E IP21,D-22,D, G II 65-66/Curley 429-3 o. In the text and notes of this paper I use the following abbreviations pertaining to Spinoza's writings: E: Ethics ; Ep.: Letters ; RDPP: Descartes' Principles of Philosophy ; CM: Appendix containing Metaphysical Thoughts ; KV: Short Treatise ; TdlE: Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect ; G: C. Gebhardt, ed., Spinoza Opera, 4 vols. , cited by volume and page; Curley: E. Curley, trans, and ed., The Collected Works of.. (shrink)

when reading spinoza’s Ethics,1 one comes upon a particularly disconcerting passage in Part Three. In an explication of two definitions of ‘favor’ (favor) and ‘indignation’ (indignatio), Spinoza writes,I know that in their common usage these words mean something else. But my purpose is to explain the nature of things, not the meaning of words. I intend to indicate these things by words whose meaning is not entirely opposed to the meaning with which I wish to use them. One warning of (...) this should suffice.2The passage cannot but give rise to some bewilderment. First, if Spinoza’s use of words is not “entirely opposed” to the (common) meaning of those words, one wonders to what degree his use of words is in fact .. (shrink)

Spinoza’s recognition of the unpredictable fortunes of individuals, explicable through the interplay between their intrinsic natures and their susceptibility to external causes, informs his account of political success and – what for him is the same thing – political virtue. Thus, a state may thrive because it has a good constitution (an internal feature), or because it was fortunate not to be surrounded by powerful enemies. Normally, however, it is the combination of both luck and internal qualities that determines the (...) fate of things. What is true about the fate of states holds equally of the fate of other types of individual, both human and non-human. In a sense, even the fate of a theory is determined by the interplay between its intrinsic virtues, and mere historical luck. A quarter century ago, shortly after I began my graduate studies in philosophy at Yale, I started thinking about writing a dissertation on Spinoza’s philosophy. A good and caring friend in my graduate cohort advised me against the idea, which he believed was tantamount to “professional suicide” given the oddity of Spinoza’s thought. Indeed, the environment of analytic philosophy in the mid- and even late-1990s was not particularly auspicious for the academic study of Spinoza. Spinoza was – rightly – considered as having little commitment to commonsense, and commitment to commonsense – the most stubborn of prejudices – was (and still is) considered by many a minimal requirement for entry into the club of “decent” philosophers. Yet, things have changed over the past twenty-five years. So much so, that recently a (non-Spinozist) early modernist colleague of mine complained to me about the futility of changing the description of an event he planned from a ‘Spinoza workshop’ into an ‘early modern philosophy workshop,’ since “one way or another, most of the submitted abstracts are going to deal with Spinoza.” Indeed, in many ways, the interest and intensity of the study of Spinoza’s philosophy in the Anglo-American world has eclipsed that of almost all other early modern philosophers, and we seem to be facing a circumstance in which Spinoza is gradually competing with, if not replacing, Kant as the compass of modern philosophy. One can list many reasons for these dramatic developments: from Spinoza’s radical naturalism, to his dismissal of the fairytales of anthropomorphic and anthropocentric religion – while Kant on these issues could at best be said to kick the ghosts from the front door while inviting them back as ‘ideas’ or ‘postulates of practical reason’ through the back door –- to his unequivocal rejection of the illusions of humanism. Still, we lack a full explanation of the recent Spinozist upheaval in North American philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter outlines the intellectual world of the Netherlands during Spinoza's lifetimes. It starts with Scholasticism, which dominated Leiden, the country's leading university, during the first half of the seventeenth century. The teaching of philosophy in the early years of Leiden University, established in 1575, was inspired by humanist ideals of education. It had an introductory and philological nature, and lacked metaphysical training. The chapter deals with Cartesianism, which inspired Spinoza, especially in its non‐academic forms. Cartesianism is both part of (...) Spinoza's historical context and a source of inspiration for him. Jelles wrote in his short biography that, after his theological studies, Spinoza discovered writings of the “noble philosopher Descartes”. The disbandment of scholastic theology implied a new view of Scripture. The main premise of Van Velthuysen's hermeneutics is the divine origin of Scripture. In the philosophical faculties, Cartesians tended to distinguish between moral and natural knowledge and to limit the scope of philosophy. (shrink)

This paper treats a recalcitrant problem in Spinoza scholarship, namely, how to reconcile the conception of 'power' in his political writings with that found in his Ethics. Some have doubted the capacity of Spinoza's political philosophy to yield an adequate normative theory. If he is unable to provide a normative ground for political philosophy then perhaps this exposes a problem in Spinoza's philosophy taken as a whole. I argue that the considerable normative resources of his ethical and political philosophy, (...) as well their continuing relevance today, are best appreciated through attending to his notion of the exemplar. (shrink)

The impermanence of human affairs is a major theme in Spinoza’s discussions of political histories, and from our present-day perspective it is both intriguing and ironic to see how this very theme has played out in the evolving fate of Spinoza’s association with atheism. While Spinoza’s contemporaries charged him with atheism in order to impugn his philosophy (and sometimes his character), in our times many lay readers and some scholars portray Spinoza as an atheist in order to commemorate his role (...) as a founder of modern secularism. In this paper, I will argue that Spinoza deserves neither vilification nor praise for being an atheist, for the simple reason that he was not one (unless one employs the term ‘atheism’ in a very peculiar sense). I have chosen the current topic as my contribution to a volume focused on the TTP, the Ethics, and their interrelations because it is precisely these two books which brought about the common reactionary accusation of atheism by Spinoza’s contemporaries. Addressing Spinoza’s 1663 book, Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy, Bayle writes: “Spinoza appears as orthodox in that book about the nature of God.” As we shall shortly see, Descartes too was accused of atheism by some of his contemporaries (though not so by Bayle). The latter designates his target quite explicitly: “[Spinoza’s] Tractatus Theologico Politicus, printed in Amsterdam, in the year 1670, is a pernicious and execrable book which contains all the seeds of the Atheism he plainly discovered in his Opera Posthuma.” François Lamy, in his 1696 Le nouvel athéisme renversé, also focused on the Ethics and the TTP in his attack on Spinoza’s atheism. Bayle’s reference to the Opera Posthuma is ostensibly targeting the Ethics at least primarily, if not uniquely. Even the most suspicious and distrustful mind would have to labor hard in order to find atheism in the Hebrew Grammar, or even in the Tractatus Politicus where Spinoza argues that it is not within the power, and hence right, of the commonwealth to induce people to adopt utterly absurd beliefs, such as “that the whole is greater than its part or that God does not exist.” The TTP and the Ethics are the works where Spinoza launches his merciless attack on anthropocentric thinking and anthropomorphic religion. Spinoza’s panentheism (“quicquid est, in Deo est”) constitutes the metaphysical foundation of the Ethics, and it is repeatedly and clearly alluded to in the TTP. Since it is these two elements – (1) Spinoza’s open assertions of panentheism and (2) his critique of andromorphic conceptions of God – which are the historical grounds for the atheism charge, it seems natural that the merit of this charge should be decided primarily by examination of these two foundational works. I will proceed in the following manner. In the first part of the paper, we will make our first acquaintance with the imputation of atheism by Spinoza’s contemporaries and Spinoza’s response to the charge (or lack thereof). In the second part, I discuss three broad strategies, or hermeneutic avenues, that have been pursued to impute atheism to Spinoza. The first of the three was dominant in Spinoza’s time, while the latter two were employed more recently. These strategies are not mutually exclusive and we can find occasionally various combinations of different shades of these three strategies. In this part, I will also raise some preliminary questions about the cogency of the hermeneutics employed by each strategy. In the third and fourth parts of the paper, I will discuss a small selection of key texts from the Ethics and the TTP, respectively, and argue that the atheist readings fail to make sense of these key passages (unless one adopts an extreme hermeneutics of suspicion which could allegedly find any view harbored in any text). Let me stress that this selection of passages is far from comprehensive, and that dozens of other passages can be adduced to establish the very same point. I hope by the end of the fourth part to convince the reader of the deep problems besetting the atheist readings. In the fifth and last part, I show that both panentheism and the critique of anthropomorphic religion and anthropomorphic conceptions of providence were quite common within rabbinic discourse. Thus, I will argue that if we are not in the business of announcing that both Maimonides and the Kabbalists were atheists, we should avoid the same imputation to Spinoza. Underlying my argument in this final part is the claim that at least some perceptions of Spinoza as an atheist are instances of what could be termed conceptual colonialism, i.e. the enforcement of the categories of a hegemonic culture (in this case, Western Christianity ) on minority cultures (in the current case, rabbinic Judaism). To be clear, this attitude need not be motivated by ill intentions or racism. It is always tempting and easy to explain the unfamiliar through the familiar, but conceptual stagnation and insistence on imposing the categories of the familiar on other cultures may quickly lead to deep distortion and blindness, despite one’s best intentions. Unless one is exceedingly careful to avoid the – completely natural – temptation to impose one’s own categories on a foreign culture (and to look for the coin only under the street light), one is likely to end up with distorted conceptions of the relevant alien culture, despite one’s best intentions. (shrink)

By focusing upon three figures: a trade unionist, who can no longer understand or reconcile himself with his past misogynist behaviour; Spinoza’s Spanish poet, who loses his memory and can no longer write poetry or even recognise his earlier work; and Spinoza’s lost friend, Burgh, who became a devout Catholic, I draw out Spinoza’s description of radical change in beliefs. I explore how, for Spinoza, radical changes that involve an increase in our powers of acting are conceived differently from those (...) changes that reduce our power. These transitions—which can be viewed as both personal and political—are not symmetrical because of the way in which they can be understood in relation to selfhood. To highlight the originality of Spinoza’s argument on personal change, I then compare it with that of his contemporary John Locke, who in Chapter 27 of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding famously theorises the maintenance of personal identity. I draw out one common aspect of the work of Étienne Balibar and of Janet Coleman to compare the ways in which Spinoza and Locke produce different answers to the same questions: how do we conceptualise our encounters with bodies and with ideas? How do these encounters affect our identity over time? In the final section, I switch from analysing personal (but also political) change to consider political change itself, by juxtaposing Warren Montag’s Spinozist analysis of the will, with Carole Pateman’s feminist critique of contract and consent. (shrink)

Proposal Information: In this paper it is argued that although Spinoza, unlike other great philosophers of the Enlightenment era, never actually wrote a philosophy of education as such, he did – in his Ethics – write a philosophy of self-improvement that is deeply educational at heart. When looked at against the background of his overall metaphysical system, the educational account that emerges is one that is highly curious and may even, to some extent at least, come across as counter-intuitive in (...) a contemporary setting. This is so because it grounds the greater social and political endeavors of humanity in the individual’s striving for an ever-increasing power of acting. Hence, education, for Spinoza, is a decidedly individualistic affair, but then again, so is the making of society. Since, for Spinoza, every instance of knowledge bears the unique mark of the individual body that expresses it, one might conclude that at the foundation of every social structure is an encounter between concrete bodies; each expressing a particular perspective from where to grasp the world. I would argue, based on this, that one of Spinoza’s main contributions to educational theory is his grounding of larger social endeavors in the striving of the individual. Hinged on the striving to be more rational, as dictated by the doctrine of the conatus, education appears to offer a way of grounding the structure of the human social world in the same principles as those guiding the individual. Spinoza’s doctrine of the imitation of affects thereby offers a way of linking the egoistic striving for power on behalf of the individual with the educational goal of building a sustainable society. It does so as it conditions self-improvement by the human characteristic to imitate what others desire. By being surrounded with people who desire to be more rational, one can utilize this desire for the good and become strengthened in one’s own striving for increasing one’s degree of existence. Consequently, the teaching situation is geared for guiding students towards a more rational life, at the same time as it is geared for the self-improvement of the teacher. This aspect of self-improvement is, ultimately, what will motivate the teacher in striving to enhance the lives of his or her students in the first place. Being unable to self-improve in isolation, the doctrine of the imitation of affects dictates that the rational person will be moved toward a life of generosity, not primarily for altruistic reasons, but out of a desire to become more rational and thus to gain in his or her own power of acting. The question that follows from this, of course, is how does one go about when inculcating a desire to be more rational in one’s students?Education, from a Spinozistic point of view, is ultimately about the cultivation of the potential that lies dormant in each individual, so that a person may live a happier life as a result of understanding, more adequately, their place in the natural world. The challenge, then, becomes one of overcoming the many obstacles that prevent a person from developing their potential. Pedagogy, from this point of view, may be understood in terms of the art of offering the right amount of resistance. This notion is based on the assumption that if a student encounters no resistance – or too much resistance – his or her potential remains just that – a potential. In order to develop this potential the student needs to overcome certain barriers. With regards to this, the role of the teacher may be conceived in terms of the one balancing the amount of resistance so that the student is properly challenged but at the same time not overwhelmed. Methodology or Methods/ Research Instruments or Sources Used: The paper makes for an attempt to outline a Spinozistic philosophy of education based on readings of Spinoza’s texts – primarily the Ethics – and some of the relevant secondary literature such as Della Rocca’s influential reading of Spinoza. As such it is a philosophical inquiry seeking to interconnect some key aspects of Spinoza’s philosophy with some of the major issues of education. Methodologically, this paper argues, in line with Melamed, that rather than turning to the history of philosophy in order to identify ‘precursors to [our] own views’, so as to validate what we already believe we know, it is more fruitful to turn to past philosophers in order to ‘challenge our most basic beliefs and intuitions by studying texts that are both well-argued and strongly opposed to our commonsense’. Accordingly, turning to Spinoza marks an attempt to revisit and reconceptualize some key aspects of educational thought. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings: A conclusion of this paper is that a Spinozistic philosophy of education would need to focus on resolving the tension between Spinoza’s egoism and education as a social project. To this end it identifies Spinoza’s doctrine of the imitation of affects as a possible link between the individual’s striving for power and the collective agenda of improving human well-being at large. It is also suggested that, in aspiring to inculcate a desire to be more rational in his or her students, the challenge for the Spinozistic teacher is to prompt the students to aspire to reach beyond the temporary satisfactions of the passions so as to acquire a more enduring sense of satisfaction and so that their well-being is more fully under their own command rather than under the command of various external influences. This, in turn, is connected with the notion of resistance in the sense that in experiencing the volatility of fortune – and thereby understanding the instability of relying on one’s passions – a person would appear to be more inclined to strive for a more enduring sense of happiness, even if this would mean giving up on some of the temporary pleasures that one has grown accustomed to. The resistance, then, may be conceived in terms of the overcoming of temporary pleasures that stand in the way of the developing of one’s potential. In this scenario the role of the teacher may be understood in terms of someone offering a well-balanced amount of resistance. This means that to accommodate one’s students – in the sense that one approaches them in terms of prospective customers, aspiring to satisfy their demands – is inimical to education insofar as the wants and desires of students are, generally speaking, caused by passive affects rather than their rational wills. References: Aloni, N.. Spinoza as Educator: From Eudaimonistic Ethics to an Empowering and Liberating Pedagogy. Educational Philosophy and Theory 40, pp. 531–544.Della Rocca, M.. Spinoza. New York: Routledge.Della Rocca, M.. Rationalism, Idealism, Monism, and Beyond. In: E. Förster & Y. Y. Melamed Spinoza and German Idealism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 7–26.Derry, J.. The Unity of Intellect and Will: Vygotsky and Spinoza. Educational Review, 56, pp. 113–120.Lloyd, G.. Spinoza and Educating the Imagination. In: A. O. Rorty Philosophers on Education: Historical Perspectives. London: Routledge, pp. 157–172.Melamed, Y. Y.. Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance and Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Nadler, S.. Eternity and Immortality in Spinoza’s Ethics. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 26, pp. 224–244.Poulimatka, T.. Spinoza’s Theory of Teaching and Indoctrination. Educational Philosophy and Theory 33, pp. 397–410.Spinoza, B.. The Ethics. In: E. Curley A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works. Princeton: Princeton Unive. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 130-131 [Access article in PDF] Steven Nadler. Spinoza's Heresy: Immortality and the Jewish Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, 2001. Pp. xvi + 225. Cloth, $35.00. Steven Nadler's Spinoza's Heresy opens with the following declaration: "It is a splendid mystery" (1). The mystery, of course, is how a gifted son of the Jewish community of Amsterdam, a young man (...) whom one might have expected to grow naturally into the role of a respected rabbi, came to be expelled from that community. What Nadler finds so mysterious is not the simple fact of Spinoza's expulsion—itself a common form of discipline among the Jews of Amsterdam—but the vehemence and finality with which he was expelled. The writ of expulsion accuses Spinoza of "abominable heresies" and "monstrous deeds" and goes on to heap layer after layer of curse upon him. It is, in Nadler's judgment, the harshest writ ever to be pronounced against a member of that community. What, then, were the views so abominable and the deeds so monstrous that account for this? What had Spinoza said and done to raise such ire among his fellow Jews? That is the mystery Nadler's book attempts to solve.Needless to say, Nadler is not the first to take up this challenge. The question of what lay behind Spinoza's expulsion has been of perennial interest to scholars, and what keeps it alive, in part, is its resistance to definitive resolution. Most importantly, Spinoza had not yet begun to write at the time of his expulsion, and his surviving correspondence is silent on the matter. Nevertheless, it is tempting to look to his Ethics and Theological-Political Treatise for clues. But if we are to do so, as Nadler encourages us to, we must not only determine which of the views they contain can be attributed to the young Spinoza, but show how his holding of them explains the events that transpired.Nadler begins with the documentary evidence. Although sparse, the sources point to three views at the root of Spinoza's troubles: that God exists only philosophically; that the Law is not true; and that the soul is not immortal. Acknowledging that each of these may have played a role in the expulsion, Nadler singles out the last for special scrutiny and concludes that it was decisive. His reasons for doing so emerge in the last chapter of the book. Despite broad latitude within the Jewish tradition as a whole, the Jews of Amsterdam were particularly sensitive on the issue of immortality and did not take kindly those who denied it. Indeed, they had a history of confrontation with "heretics" on this issue. This was partly a function of a general concern not to arouse unwanted attention from the politically powerful Calvinists within Dutch society. But it also stemmed from an intense interest in the afterlife among the Sephardim, who, being of Marrano heritage, were naturally concerned about the postmortem fate of Jewish converts to Catholicism. Though the community was divided on what that fate would be, the entire debate on the question was carried out on the shared assumption of personal immortality. This, together with a deep commitment to immortality on the part of each of its leading rabbis, conspired to make Jewish Amsterdam an inhospitable place for anyone holding views like those Spinoza was to express. In Nadler's words, immortality "was simply the wrong issue to pick on in Jewish Amsterdam in the 1650's" (156).Nadler's thesis is intriguing, and the light that he throws on the Spinoza affair in the course of developing it is considerable. However, a question remains. Although Nadler does an impressive job of clarifying why Spinoza's views on the afterlife would have been so volatile within the Amsterdam community, we might still wonder why the other two theses he is reported to have held do not merit equal consideration. This is particularly true of his denial of the authority of the Law. Whatever... (shrink)

The highly abstract style of Spinoza’s philosophy has encouraged some interpretations of him as a thinker with little immediate connection with the whirl of social and cultural affairs around him. This article shows that all three major Western revolts - those of the Netherlands, Portugal and Aragon - against Philip II became in some sense internationally entwined and were intensely present in his life, which helps to understand that Spinoza was indeed a revolutionary.

'Thanks to sound methodology and fidelity to the orignal text, this will be an invaluable asset to the scholar.' Bulletin SpinozisteSpinoza's Ethics is a classic philosophy text but it is also one of the most difficult to understand. This latest text in the Oxford Philosophical Texts series includes a new, lucid translation of Ethics in which Parkinson provides a comprehensive guide to the understanding of Spinoza's work. An extensive introduction includes a short biography of Spinoza himself; the form of his (...) writing including his own particular uses of definitions; an introductory guide through the philosophy of Ethics; and a summary of the contents of Ethics itself. Further aids include a glossary of terms, notes to the text, and notes to the translation. (shrink)

A cursory review of studies of Spinoza’s thought discloses that diverse and often opposed religious, philosophical, historical, even literary traditions have claimed and disclaimed his debt to them as well as theirs to him. A Jewish, Christian, pantheist, and atheist Spinoza vies with a rationalist and a mystic, a realist and a nominalist, an analytic and a continental, an historicist and an a-historical one. And this list is far from exhaustive of the dazzling array of further, nuanced debates and interpretations (...) within each tradition. The irony exhibited by the history of Spinoza scholarship is especially poignant insofar as the debates and controversies surrounding his thought are rather heated or affective, this in relation to a thinker who strove to control, circumscribe, and transform the passions by the intellect. Following Spinoza’s motto caute, I shall attempt to evade the fray by disclaiming the possibility of a definitive interpretation not only because it is premature, but also and especially because I believe that Spinoza’s writings deliberately resist direct appropriation and translation into philosophically “respectable” language. In addition, while it is possible to identify Spinoza’s very few, explicit successors, e.g., Schelling, Lessing, Hölderlin, Hegel, and Nietzsche, it is exceedingly difficult to limit the list of his predecessors for two main reasons: he is both reticent to name and misleading in naming his predecessors—the latter only in the sense that he is sooner ready to identify an adversarial position than to acknowledge debt to the same thinker in other respects; and Spinoza’s debt to his varied predecessors is neither consistent nor systematic, for his diverse discussions are informed by different considerations, positions, and thinkers, at times only in a negative way. In fact, one of the common problems characterizing contemporary Spinoza scholarship is the resolve to ignore or dismiss the significance of such “negative” influences. For these reasons alone, we should be wary of attempts to systematize Spinoza’s thought or to regard him as a system builder, despite such attempts by his late-eighteenth and nineteenth century disciples, especially Schelling and Hegel. But, in addition, in the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione, Spinoza cautions the reader to refrain from judgments concerning the truth or falsity of philosophical discussions on the basis of some paradoxical statements. (shrink)

Scholars have begun to explore Baruch Spinozas critique of rationalism, largely because of his importance for later thinkers deeply concerned about the nature of body, including Nietzsche, Freud, Marx, Frankfurt school critical theorists, and feminists. Until now, however, Spinozas epistemological writings have not been properly addressed in this revival of interest in his materialism. My dissertation reconstructs Spinozas materialist method of knowing in an effort to reclaim it from Cartesian and idealist readings, offering instead a materialist reading of Spinozas (...) epistemological writings that shows him as the first serious critic of modern rationalism. Contrary to the predominant reading of Spinoza in Anglo-American philosophy, which presents him as a metaphysician dependent on Cartesian epistemology, I argue that Spinoza offers something separate, akin to an epistemology, that distinguishes him from the Cartesian model and allows him to critique it. The dissertation explores how Spinozas method of knowing must involve material conditions, including concrete history, psychology, society, and politics, that are experienced through the body and that render a purely mental criterion for knowledge impossible. (shrink)

ALTHOUGH THE LABEL of modernism is well-known for its elasticity, the usage may still seem stretched by the claims I shall be making here for that remarkable seventeenth-century modernist, Spinoza. But the connection can be demonstrated, I believe, at least with respect to the concept of interpretation which, whether at the level of theory or as it is applied to the "texts" of culture and experience, is an identifying mark of modernism in almost all the diverse accounts given of that (...) historical turn. Interpretation acquires not only a logical form but a constant origin and purpose in the work of Spinoza, specifically in the radical Tractatus Theologico-Politicus which Spinoza brought out anonymously, albeit still bravely, in 1670. I use the term "bravely" because Spinoza bases what we can now read as a general theory of interpretation on the dangerous text of the Bible. Spinoza's initial anonymity, moreover, did not, and could hardly have been expected to, protect him for very long from defenders of the faiths who claimed jurisdiction over authors even when they were not writing about the Bible. The Tractatus is radical because it asserts for the theory of interpretation a character which even now, three hundred years and much enlightenment later, has won only grudging acknowledgement--the view, that is, that interpretation presupposes or implies a political framework; in effect, that interpretation is itself a politics. (shrink)

There is, of course, one clear sense in which Spinoza’s axiomatic method is a method of presentation: this is the sense which contrasts a method of presentation with a method of discovery. In the Ethics, Spinoza is stating and explaining his views, not describing how he arrived at them or telling us how to make discoveries for ourselves. Nor does he elsewhere present the axiomatic method as a method of discovery. In the seventeenth century, the distinction between a method of (...) discovery and a method of presentation was often described as a distinction between "analytic" and "synthetic" method; Arnauld and Nicole write. (shrink)

Book synopsis: This volume brings together international scholars working at the intersection of Spinoza studies and critical and feminist philosophy. It is the first book-length study dedicated to the re-reading of Spinoza’s ethical and theologico-political works from a feminist perspective. The twelve outstanding chapters range over the entire field of Spinoza’s writings—metaphysical, political, theological, ethical, and psychological—drawing out the ways in which his philosophy presents a rich resource for the reconceptualization of friendship, sexuality, politics, and ethics in contemporary life. (...) The clear and accessible Introduction offers a historical sketch of Spinoza’s life and intellectual context and indicates how Spinoza’s philosophy might be seen as a rich cultural resource today. Topics treated here include the mind-body problem and its relation to the sex-gender distinction; relational autonomy; the nature of love and friendship; sexuality and normative morality; free will and determinism and their relation to Christian theology; imagination and recognition between the sexes; emotion and the body; and power, imagination, and political sovereignty. The essays engage in a rich and challenging conversation that opens new paths for feminist research. (shrink)

One of the most persistent and popular bourgeois myths about Spinoza is that of his unwillingness to participate in any kind of political struggle whatever. This myth is sustained particularly by those non-Marxist historians of philosophy who contend that the essence of Spinozism is the development of a new form of religiosity, free of the limitations of any national religion. Such a conception of the Dutch thinker is partially based on facts related by his first biographers, particularly Lucas. As we (...) know, Lucas, in his Life of Benedict Spinoza, written in French between 1678 and 1688, writes that the philosopher's father, Michael de Spinoza, lacking funds and being unable to establish his son in commerce, chose for him the career of a rabbi, and with this in mind placed the young Spinoza in the Amsterdam kheder, where he gained an excellent knowledge of classical Hebrew and studied to perfection the Old Testament and the considerably more voluminous Talmud. Even during his period of instruction, Spinoza, having found many contradictions in the Bible and Talmud, placed the rabbis who were his teachers in untenable positions and this subsequently led to a conflict between him and the leadership of the Amsterdam Jewish community. This report by Spinoza's first biographer suggests the idea that the young Spinoza had crystallized his ideas as early as his stay in the kheder. This we find stated in many of the non-Marxist studies devoted to him. Soviet writings on Spinoza also usually repeat Lucas' view entirely without criticism . However, certain foreign researches of recent decades, which have given consideration to documents and firsthand reports published in 1932 by the Dutch researcher Vaz Dias and, more recently, certain other documents have necessitated considerable corrections in the biographies both by Lucas and Colerus. In these works — of which the book by the French researcher Madeleine Francés, Spinoza dans les pays Neerlandais de la seconde moitié du XVII siècle, Vol. I, Paris, 1937, and that of the American researcher, Lewis Feuer, Spinoza and the Rise of Liberalism, Boston, 1958, are particularly worthy of mention — serious attempts are made to demonstrate the social roots and essence of Spinozism. The biographical data presented in these works contribute to a clarification of the real reasons for the conflict between the young Spinoza and the leadership of the Jewish community of Amsterdam. According to these writers, Spinoza's father was a wealthy man and, in all probability, did not intend to make a rabbi of his son. There can be no question that the young Spinoza attended the elementary classes of the Jewish school, but his name is not found in the lists of students in its higher grades, from which future rabbis emerged. Beginning approximately at the age of thirteen, Bento helped his father in his commercial and financial operations. However, after his father's death, Baruch himself took charge of these matters during the period 1654-1656 and, as these documents suggest, demonstrated considerable skill in commercial and financial affairs. However, the activities of merchant and financier did not appeal to the young man. The discrepancy between his intellectual interests and the nature of his occupation proved so irreconcilable that the future philosopher, who had established numerous scholarly and personal ties outside the Jewish community, drifted farther and farther both from his business and the community, until finally he was excommunicated, and broke with the community. (shrink)

This book is the author's second book-length exposition of Spinoza's thought. Like the earlier commentary, Salvation from Despair: A Reappraisal of Spinoza's Philosophy, it presents Spinoza's philosophy sympathetically and compellingly, for Harris has been much influenced by the master. But unlike Salvation from Despair, which was aimed at specialists, this book is geared to readers unfamiliar with Spinoza's work. Basing his analyses on the full range of Spinoza's writing, Harris devotes seven chapters to discussion of topics in Spinoza's metaphysics, philosophy (...) of mind, and epistemology; six chapters to explanation of issues in Spinoza's psychology, ethics, political theory, and critique of religion; and one chapter, the first, to description of Spinoza's current appeal. The appeal, Harris claims, derives from Spinoza's conception of the moral agent both as self-determined and as expressing and realizing divine causation through universal and objective law. According to Harris, contemporary philosophy misses this profound truth because of its relativist presuppositions. (shrink)

On 6 January 1795, the twenty-year-old Schelling—still a student at the Tübinger Stift—wrote to his friend and former roommate, Hegel: “Now I am working on an Ethics à la Spinoza. It is designed to establish the highest principles of all philosophy, in which theoretical and practical reason are united”. A month later, he announced in another letter to Hegel: “I have become a Spinozist! Don’t be astonished. You will soon hear how”. At this period in his philosophical development, Schelling had (...) been deeply under the spell of Fichte’s new philosophy and the Wissenschaftslehre. The text Schelling was writing at the time was the early Vom Ich als Prinzip der Philosophie, though his characterization of this text would much better fit the somewhat later work which is the focus of the current paper: Schelling’s 1801 Darstellung meines System der Philosophie (hereafter: Presentation). The Presentation is a text written more geometrico, following the style of Spinoza’s Ethics. While Spinoza’s influence and inspiration is stated explicitly and unmistakably in Schelling’s preface, the content of this composition might seem quite foreign to Spinoza’s philosophy, so much so, in fact, that Michael Vater—the astute translator and editor of the recent English translation of the text—has contended that “despite the formal similarities between Spinoza’s geometrical method and Schelling’s numbered mathematical-geometrical constructions, Schelling’s direct debts to Spinoza are few”. The Presentation is an extremely dense and difficult text, and while I agree that at first glance Schelling’s engagement with the concept of reason (Vernunft) and the identity formula ‘A=A’ seems to have little if anything to do with Spinoza (especially since Spinoza’s key terminology of ‘God’, ‘causa sui’, ‘substance’, ‘attribute’, and ‘mode’ is barely mentioned in the Presentation), I suspect that at a deeper level Schelling is attempting to transform Spinoza’s system by replacing God, Spinoza’s ultimate reality, with reason. Though this might at first seem bizarre, I believe it can be profitably motivated and explained upon further reflection. It is this transformation of Spinoza’s God into (the early) Schelling’s reason that is the primary subject of this study. I develop this paper in the following order. In the first part I provide a very brief overview of Schelling’s lifelong engagement with Spinoza’s philosophy, which will prepare us for my study of the 1801 Presentation. In the second part, I consider the formal structure and rhetoric of the Presentation against the background of Spinoza’s Ethics, and show how Schelling regularly imitates Spinoza’s tiniest rhetorical gestures. In the third and final part I turn to the opening of the Presentation, and argue that Schelling attempts there to distance himself from Fichte by developing a conception of reason as the absolute, or the identity of the subject and object, just as the thinking substance and the extended substance are identified in Spinoza’s God. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Vatican Manuscript of Spinoza’s EthicaSteven NadlerLeen Spruit and Pina Totaro. The Vatican Manuscript of Spinoza’s Ethica. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 205. Brill’s Texts and Sources in Intellectual History, 11. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2011. Pp. vi + 318. Cloth, $136.00.By any measure, it is a remarkable find. There was a small codex in the Vatican Library, marked Vat. Lat. 12838. It originally belonged to the Congregation of the (...) Holy Office, which in 1917 inherited the role of keeper of the Index of Prohibited Books. The codex had been transferred to the Library with other materials in 1922. The manuscript, originally acquired in 1677, bore no author’s name. According to the card catalogue it is a Tractatus theologiae, a five-part “Theological Treatise.” Its contents are described as follows: Pars prima de Deo: Definitiones. / 1. Per causam. / Des. Tam difficilia quam rara sunt.Sound familiar?We possess no autograph manuscripts of Spinoza’s philosophical writings (there are a couple of autographs of his letters). And the only philosophical manuscripts we do have are the two Dutch manuscripts of the Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being, both discovered in the nineteenth century but one of which almost certainly was composed in Spinoza’s lifetime from a Latin original. Thus, to discover a seventeenth-century Latin manuscript copy of the Ethics, even if it is not an autograph, is exciting news indeed. Since it was in the Vatican’s possession by September 1677, we know that it was written out while Spinoza (who had died only a few months earlier) was still alive; it may also be that, while the manuscript is not by Spinoza’s hand, he did look it over.What makes this last possibility even more likely is the fact that, as Leen Spruit and Pina Totaro—the discoverers of the manuscript—argue in their introduction to this volume, the manuscript may originally have belonged to a member of Spinoza’s circle of friends in Amsterdam, Walter Ehrefried von Tschirnhaus. Tschirnhaus was in Paris by 1676, and had in his possession a copy of the Ethics (which a suspicious Spinoza famously told him not to show to Leibniz, who was also in Paris at the time and wanted to have a look at the work). Tschirnhaus was in Rome within a year, where, Spruit and Totaro suggest, he may have made the acquaintance of Niels Stensen, erstwhile Lutheran scientist and friend of Spinoza, now a fervent Catholic convert and anti-Spinozist soon to be appointed Vicar Apostolic of Nordic Missions. Tschirnhaus, or possibly some other “Lutheran foreigner” (in Stensen’s words) to whom he, eager to spread the good word of Spinozism, had given the manuscript, passed it on to Stensen, who in turn handed it over to the Roman Inquisition, along with a denunciation of its author. Stensen’s intention was to have Spinoza condemned by the Church and his works placed on the Index. Spruit and Totaro also claim—on the basis of the handwriting—that the copyist of this manuscript is Pieter van Gent, a member of Spinoza’s circle who played a role in the posthumous publication of his works.While Spruit and Totaro wisely admit that this story behind the manuscript “cannot be established with certainty,” they also say that it is “rather likely.” Their plausible hypothetical reconstruction of the history of the manuscript and of its relationship to the publication history of the Ethics, as well as their account of other important contextual elements, is based on careful and informed scholarship, and makes for fascinating reading.As for the manuscript itself, it is not a revolutionary discovery (as, say, the discovery of the Short Treatise manuscripts were). It will not affect the reading of the Ethics in any major way. There are a variety of discrepancies between the Vatican manuscript and the text of the Ethics in the Opera Posthuma (OP) of 1678: differences in spelling, “rather insignificant” omissions and additions of words and phrases, probable scribal errors, changes in word order, and some noticeable differences in expression. To take just one nonetheless interesting example, the final clause of the... (shrink)

This paper argues that Spinoza's main political writings are concerned, in part, with knowledge of essences as detailed in the Ethics. It is further argued that knowledge of the essences of states, and essential properties that belong to states, may be an example of the elusive scientia intuitiva or third kind of knowledge. The paper concludes by considering Spinoza's goals in his political writings and the importance of metaphysics and the theory of knowledge more broadly for early modern (...) political philosophers. (shrink)

In this essential rereading of Spinoza's (1632-1677) philosophical and political writings, Negri positions this thinker within the historical context of the development of the modern state and its attendant political economy.

In Ep. 50, Spinoza argues at length that “someone who calls God one or unique does not have a true idea of God, or is speaking improperly about him.” This text is striking, given the declarations in many writings, including the Ethics, that God is the one, unique substance. While recent commentators have attempted to render Ep. 50 consistent with the rest of Spinoza’s corpus, I instead argue that Spinoza’s stance on God’s oneness evolved over the course of his (...) career. This evolution, which in fact contains a number of twists and turns, is driven not only by consideration of the proper meaning of ‘one’ and ‘unique’ but also by the question of whether God’s essence and God’s existence are numerically identical. Regarding the latter, I argue that Spinoza came to reject this identity claim late in life, and that this explains his final change in viewpoint regarding God’s oneness in Ep. 83. (shrink)

Leo Strauss’s way of reading of Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise got changed after his rediscovery of exotericism. As early as in the comment article on Hermann Cohen’s analysis of Spinoza’s Bible science, Strauss put forward that the Treatise should not be understood on the basis of our readers’ own presupposes of Spinoza’s personal motives. Later, in Spinoza’s Critique of Religion (1930), Strauss indeed read the Treatise literally, trying to understand it on the basis of Spinoza’s explicit statements. After the rediscovery of (...) exotericism in 1930s, however, Strauss’s way of reading got changed. Strauss became very alert to Spinoza’s way of writing. Strauss found that Spinoza spoke with a view to the capacity of the vulgar and practiced exoteric writing. Some of Spinoza’s explicit statements were addressed to the non-philosophic majority and were not Spinoza’s true teachings. Based on this, Strauss regarded not all of Spinoza’s explicit statements, but those most opposed to what Spinoza considered the vulgar view, as well as those with an implication of a heterodox character, as expressing Spinoza’s true views. Strauss shows that “be alert to the art of writing” means two things. First, understand the author’s explicit statements. And second, try to find whether there are teachings that are different from or even opposed to the explicit statements. Keywords: Leo Strauss, exotericism, Spinoza, theologico-political treatise. (shrink)

Yitzhak Y. Melamed - Radical Protestantism in Spinoza's Thought - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.2 333-334 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Yitzhak Y. Melamed University of Chicago Graeme Hunter. Radical Protestantism in Spinoza's Thought. Aldershot, UK–Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005. Pp. vii + 196. Cloth, $89.95. If this book's announced and modest aim—"to present the Christian dimension of Spinoza's thought positively and directly" —were all the author meant to achieve, (...) he was clearly successful. Any reader of the Theological Political Treatise cannot fail to see that Spinoza engaged seriously with Christianity, its sacred texts, and its internal divisions and disputes. Throughout his mature life, Spinoza lived among the Collegiants, the radical Dutch reformers, and it is clear that his dialogue with this circle played a significant role in shaping his writing on religion, Judaism, and.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Mind's Eternity in Spinoza's EthicsSteven ParchmentIn the Emendation of the Intellect, Spinoza describes how he abandoned mundane pursuits of money, fame, and sensuality for the pleasures of philosophy and, by doing so, traded in merely temporary goods for a joy which is eternal (TdIE, G II/1-II/7).1 Given this motivating quest for eternal happiness, it is ironic that the section of the Ethics most frequently condemned by critics as (...) a hopeless muddle is just that section in which Spinoza attempts to demonstrate the possibility of the mind's eternal salvation. From the perspective of these critics, Spinoza has carefully constructed a deductive system of metaphysics, featuring a variety of intriguing theories such as the parallelism of mind and body, only to sully his achievement by tacking on a contradictory finale. In a vain effort to salvage immortality,2 Spinoza has placed himself in the embarrassing position of espousing both the mind's eternity and the body's limited duration, all the while maintaining that mind and body are one and the same thing. In the face of this and other seemingly blatant contradictions, some commentators have given up trying to make sense of Spinoza's remarks on the mind's eternity, preferring instead to speculate on how such a profound thinker could be led to such write such rubbish. Was it due to an overwhelming fear of death? Or perhaps a desperate leap into mysticism?3 [End Page 349]Other interpreters, of course, have been more charitable and have regarded this section of the Ethics as its rightful culmination. But the diversity of their interpretations belies, if not the inconsistency of Spinoza's position, at least the difficulty of understanding how, and in what sense, Spinoza's metaphysics can support a belief in the mind's eternity. In this paper, I examine four common answers to this question and, finding each interpretation inadequate in some way, venture a fifth. The first two sections of the paper outline and criticize the four interpretations. The last three develop an alternative reading of the mind's eternityæone, it is claimed, that is consistent with Spinoza's metaphysics.1. Interpretations of the Mind's EternityOne pivotal point by which various interpretations can be classified is how they account for the mind's eternity in relation to parallelism. The mind is the idea of the body (IIP13). Since an idea and its ideatum are "one and the same thing" (IIP7S), the mind and the body are one and the same thing, conceived under different attributes (IIP21S). But how then can Spinoza maintain that the mind is eternal, despite the destruction of the body (VP23)? One answer is that Spinoza is not literally referring to an eternal state of being; instead, he is metaphorically describing a state of knowing that is acquired in this life whenever the mind grasps sub specie aeternitatis truths about itself and its body. Thus, the eternity of the mind is compatible with parallelism, for its "eternal" life lasts no longer than the temporally limited life of the body. This view is called the epistemological interpretation. In contrast, the ontological interpretation is the view that, for Spinoza, the mind is literally eternal. Clearly, the onus falls upon advocates of the ontological interpretation to explain why the mind's eternal existence does not contradict parallelism. Generally, three types of explanations have been advanced. 1)The Episodic Ideatum Theory: Faced with the dilemma between parallelism and the mind's eternal existence, this theory qualifies the former. The mind is the idea of the body only for as long as the body endures; afterwards, the mind possesses an independent existence. 2)The Incremental Ideatum Theory: This theory maintains that the mind is the idea of a particular body only at the beginning of its existence. By reason and intuition, the mind expands its ideatum to such a point that it no longer reflects merely one finite body but rather the whole material universe. By doing so, it becomes united with God. 3)The Double Existence Theory: On this theory, the mind has an eternal existence, because the human body itself is, in some sense, eternal... (shrink)

The guidebook is meant to be read alongside the Ethics. It thus follows the order of Spinoza’s text and discusses sets of propositions as the development of various strands of argument. It instructs readers to pause and, for example, read Propositions 1-5 of Part 1 together, before moving on to a different component of his argument for the simplicity of substance. Lord dedicates more elaborate discussion to crucial but problematic propositions, like Proposition 11 of Part 1, Proposition 7 of Part (...) 2, etc. It thus serves as a good map for new readers, who are often bewildered by Spinoza’s geometrical method, in addition to explaining his major teachings. The book includes various study aids, including a glossary, suggestions for further reading, examples of questions students are likely to encounter, and even tips for students writing about Spinoza. (shrink)

This selection includes Spinoza's interpretation and comments on Descartes writings, together with Spinoza's Thoughts on Metaphysics. The translation reads easily and the introduction is genuinely useful.—S. A. E.

Writing to Henry Oldenburg in 1665, Spinoza says that he regards the human body as a part of nature. “But,” he adds significantly, “as far as the human mind is concerned, I think it is a part of nature too.” Genevieve Lloyd’s elegantly written book aims to investigate the meaning, implications and attractions of these characteristic Spinozistic claims.

there can be little doubt that in its influence on the development of post-Kantian German Idealism, Spinoza’s philosophy is second only to Kant’s. Important strands of philosophical debate within the idealist movement go back to the famous dispute on Spinozism that is triggered by Jacobi’s On the Doctrine of Spinoza. Idealists like Maimon, Schelling, and Hegel thoroughly engaged with Spinoza’s writings, and Schelling himself even adopts a version of Spinozism at some stages of his career. Yet, while a substantive (...) amount of scholarship has been devoted to Spinoza’s influence on the idealist movement,1 there is surprisingly little discussion in the literature about the idealists’ views on one of the most crucial... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Not Only Sub Specie Aeternitatis, but Equally Sub Specie DurationisA Defense of Hegel's Criticisms of Spinoza's PhilosophyJ. M. Fritzman and Brianne RileyIn what seem like halcyon days, when William Jefferson Clinton was America's President, James Carville wrote We're Right, They're Wrong: A Handbook for Spirited Progressives, arguing against the Republican Party's "Contract with America" (derided by the Left as a "Contract on America") and for progressivism. In the present (...) philosophical conjuncture, what is required is a precisely analogous intervention—"Hegel's Right, Spinoza's Wrong: An Article for Spirited Hegelians." Hegel criticizes Spinoza's philosophy at various places in his writings.1 Spinozists have made several major challenges to Hegel's criticisms.2 Although there have been explications of Hegel's criticisms, there has been no effective response to the Spinozists' challenges.3 Until now. This article defends Hegel's criticisms of Spinoza's philosophy and shows that the challenges to his criticisms fail.This article presents a précis of Spinoza's system and shows the senses in which Hegel is not wholly enamored with it. It defends Hegel's criticism of Spinoza's system as an acosmism from Parkinson's challenges to it. It considers both Myers's view that Hegel's system begins where Spinoza's system ends and McMinn's charge that the systems of Spinoza and Hegel are fundamentally identical. Myers and McMinn misunderstand Hegel's dialectical method, and so they incorrectly believe that the methods of Spinoza and Hegel are complementary. Hegel's dialectics can sublate the systematic pluralism that Myers and Armour propose as its alternative. The penultimate section discusses the modifications that must be made to Spinoza's system to advance from his substance to Hegel's subject.Clinton successfully appropriated what was worthwhile in the "Contract with America," but he also effectively argued that the "Contract" would be a disaster for America. Similarly, Hegel assimilates the truth in his predecessors' philosophies while demonstrating how those philosophies remain [End Page 76] one-sided and partial. This article concludes by showing how this happens to Spinoza's philosophy.Everybody Loves SpinozaSpinoza's philosophy is a metaphysical monism. That is, he thinks that there is only one basic substance. Although there is only one substance, it necessarily expresses itself through an infinite number of attributes, and an attribute is the essence of substance as experienced by the intellect.4 Humans are capable of knowing only two of these attributes: thought and extension. Objects, ideas, and relations—Spinoza refers to all of these as "modes"—are presented through some attribute or other. Spinoza denies that a thing presented through one attribute can cause or be affected by anything presented through another attribute. Rather, each thing which is presented through an attribute has an infinite number of counterparts presented through the infinite number of attributes. Indeed, those infinite counterparts are that thing, presented through the other attributes. Substance necessarily expresses itself through the attributes and modes, according to Spinoza, and everything that is possible is also actual.5Spinoza's substance expresses itself through its attributes and modes, but what occurs at the level of the attributes and modes has no reciprocal effect on substance. Like unrequited love, expression is a one-way street. Not e pluribus unum (out of many, one), but e unibus plurum (out of one, many). Unlike the relation of the states to the federal government, the attributes and modes do not possess a relative or circumscribed autonomy vis-à-vis substance.6 Substance expressing itself through its attributes and modes is nature, according to Spinoza, and nature in turn is God. Hence, Spinoza's God is wholly immanent within the world—for him, God is the world—and so he rejects that traditional God of theism, who transcends and is wholly independent from the world. Spinoza rejects as illusory all notions of purpose and intention.7 Although individuals generally believe that their actions are performed in order to fulfill some goal, Spinoza instead maintains that human actions are entirely determined and necessary and that the belief that actions are done to accomplish something is entirely mistaken. He believes that all happenings—physical... (shrink)

ABSTRACT“The first meaning of true and false”, writes Spinoza in a neglected passage of the Metaphysical Thoughts, “seems to have had its origin in stories”. Ideas are true when they “show” us things as they are; they are false when they do not, when they are fictional. In this essay, I argue that what appears at first sight to be a simple assertion of a correspondence theory of truth in fact opens onto broad historical transformations in the nature of meaning (...) that reshaped the very atmosphere of truth: the emergence of a new kind of fictionality, transformations in the sense of logical interpretation, and ultimately transformations in the structures and sources of the natural light, that “clarity” which constitutes for Spinoza, as for Descartes, an indispensable criterion for certainty. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 385-406 [Access article in PDF] Some Thoughts on What Spinoza Learned from Maimonides on the Prophetic Imagination Part Two:Spinoza's Maimonideanism Heidi M. Ravven 1. Spinoza's Maimonideanism Now it is precisely with the belief that the prophets were philosophers and the Bible offers veiled insights into the central doctrines of philosophy, so powerfully argued and deeply held by Maimonides that he included (...) it as one of his Thirteen Principles of Jewish Faith the acceptance of which is a necessary condition of a share in the World to Come, 1 that Spinoza took strong issue. 2 At the same time, however, Spinoza agreed with Maimonides' doctrine [End Page 385] of the a. imaginative (literary) character 3 and b. the political function 4 of the Bible and of its authors and of the major prophetic figures. The quite obvious influence of Maimonides' account of prophecy upon Spinoza's account in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP) has been widely recognized and commented upon. That is to say (although no commentator up till now, as far as I know, has made this point explicit), Spinoza adopted Maimonides' conception of prophecy as mimetic or productive and not only—or chiefly—as receptive. 5 The Maimonidean account of the (prophetic) imagination clarifies why the atomic fact model of the receptive function of the imagination is inapplicable to the TTP. The imaginative character of prophecy is not about picking up information (in a dream or otherwise) delivered from God; rather, it concerns how one understands (and presents) certain truths (in the case of Spinoza's notion of prophecy, namely, those of ethics and in Maimonides' those of science as well as of ethics) imaginatively rather than rationally, i.e., within a web of (narrative and symbolic) associations instead of within the deductive order of rational causal explanation. "Now we see," Spinoza, in the first chapter [End Page 386] of the Tractatus, 6 writes, echoing Maimonides (esp. Guide II, 47), "why the teachings of the prophets were nearly all in the form of parables and allegories, and why all spiritual matters were expressed in corporeal form, for this is more appropriate to the imaginative faculty." Prophecy does not consist in the simple reception of pieces of information transmitted directly from God. This is not what it is for Maimonides nor for Spinoza.Thus we find that Spinoza formally defines the prophet in the beginning of TTP, chapter i, as "one who interprets (interpretatur) God's revelations to those who cannot attain to certain knowledge of the matters revealed... For the Hebrew word for prophet is nabi, that is, speaker and interpreter (orator et interpres)." 7 The prophet is interpreter in imaginative terms, whether he reformulates belief imaginatively or instead merely understands it in that way himself to begin with. Prophecy is an imaginative (narrative, symbolic) rather than a philosophical (logical and demonstrable) type of understanding and presentation. If one looks at Spinoza's account of prophecy in TTP i, one finds that immediately after Spinoza defines prophecy, he then goes on to tell us what revelation is scientifically: "the nature of [the human] mind... is the primary cause of divine revelation." That is to say, the mind itself, whether rationally in intellectual thought or in its imaginative capacity and in both cases as itself a product of divine (i.e., natural) causes, supplies the content of revelation. 8 Spinoza then goes on to say that now that we have understood the true explanation of prophecy, we must return from this scientific understanding to the biblical account of prophecy. At that point he tells us that "the Jews never make mention of intermediate or particular causes nor pay any heed to them, but to serve religion and piety... they refer everything to God." Now this is a crucial passage and must be used as an interpretive principle for all that follows. (Spinoza illustrates the point in some detail at the end of the chapter where he lists the various... (shrink)

Though Spinoza's definition of God at the beginning of the Ethics unequivocally asserts that God has infinitely many attributes, the reader of the Ethics will find only two of these attributes discussed in any detail in Parts Two through Five of the book. Addressing this intriguing gap between the infinity of attributes asserted in E1d6 and the discussion merely of the two attributes of Extension and Thought in the rest of the book, Jonathan Bennett writes: Spinoza seems to imply that (...) there are other [attributes] – he says indeed that God or Nature has “infinite attributes.” Surprising as it may seem, there are reasons to think that by this Spinoza did not mean anything entailing that there are more than two attributes. In this paper I will argue that Bennett’s claim is fundamentally wrong and deeply misleading. I do think, however, that addressing Bennett’s challenge will help us better understand Spinoza’s notion of infinity. I will begin by summarizing Bennett’s arguments. I will then turn to examine briefly the textual evidence for and against his reading. Then I will respond to each of Bennett’s arguments, and conclude by pointing out theoretical considerations which, I believe, simply refute his reading. (shrink)

Spinoza’s relation to history is considered here as relation to the history of philosophy. The matter is not to research sources or influences of the doctrine, but to analyse the singular way that Spinoza as a philosopher recalls philosophy’s past. Can one legitimately call “historical” the use he makes of this past? Do evocation, correction or refutation reveal, in Spnoza’s writing, a form of historicity of philosophy? The idea put forward here is the following: the successive examining of philosophers, words, (...) and of the motivations at work behind the writing of the Principia reveals, despite the appearances, no genuine history, but a variety of discursive strategies (drawing lines, narrating, constituting) meant to establish the elements of a “true” philosophy, and thereby to situate oneself through distanciation and the promotion of a singular thought. (shrink)

Spinoza's writing style has been judged, by various commentators, alternatively as excessively dry or lavishly rich, depending on the precise text that these scholars had in mind when making such judgments. This chapter offers an overview of a selected list of Scholastic debates intersecting the CM. It highlights how Spinoza consciously intervenes in them, showing a certain awareness of the intricacies of Scholastic discourse. Spinoza opens the CM with a discussion of the term “being,” claiming that “being is badly divided (...) into real being and being of reason”. The chapter focuses on how Spinoza can be interpreted as responding to the canonical thought of Francisco Suárez, since the Leiden Scholastics interacted especially with the Escuela de Salamanca. One of Spinoza's main piéces de résistance is the doctrine of the inseparability between the will and intellect of God. Spinoza has a much stronger thesis regarding the “external” identity of God's intellect, power, and will. (shrink)

in a recent article entitled “Hume on the Passions,” Stephen Buckle opens with the claim that Hume’s theory of the passions has largely been neglected. “Apart from a couple of famous sections in the Treatise concerning the sources of action,” he writes, “the subject matter has rarely excited interest.”1 His analysis of why the subject of the passions in Hume has been uninspiring points to the fact that readers have largely misunderstood the point of Hume’s theory. They usually regard the (...) account as yet another mechanistic analysis of the passions in the vein of seventeenth-century science, alongside the offerings of Malebranche, Hobbes, and Spinoza. Buckle is right to point out that there is a.. (shrink)

A key moment in Spinoza reception, Heine's writing gains sharper theoretical contours when read with careful attention to the way in which he appropriates Spinoza. Heine's portrayal of Spinoza in his On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany does not only represent a critical intervention in the project of intellectual history writing that argues for Spinoza's thought to be constitutive for modernity, but Spinoza's presence can also be traced in his poetry and fiction. Heine's original appropriation of Spinoza (...) stages a new way to read Spinoza in the conjunction of Jewish emancipation and German idealism that allows him to advance the claim for both Spinoza's radical critical role in modernity and to legitimate his own poetic project. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 276-277 [Access article in PDF] Wiep Van Bunge. From Stevin to Spinoza: An Essay on Philosophy in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Pp. xii + 217. Cloth, $80.00 By 1660 there were probably more followers of Descartes in the Dutch Republic, population 1.4 million, than in France, population 20 million. Protestantism and prosperity encouraged high rates of literacy and (...) the universities of Leiden and Utrecht were among the liveliest in the world. This vibrancy infused the metaphors that Descartes put into his great Discours de la methode published first in Leiden in 1637. In it he spoke about the beauty of cities that looked as if they had been built by a single architect and of the freedom to be found among people so busy with their business as to leave thinkers to their pursuits. Indirectly he spoke about his adopted homeland where he found many followers—some more eager than loyal. By the 1640s disputes raged in the Republic and the anti-Cartesian forces were led by the Aristotelian and anti-Copernican Gisbertus Voetius. What has been missing in our scholarship up to now has been any convincing account as to why these disputes occurred, and how they resonated within the Dutch context. Wiep Van Bunge's book takes a big step toward closing that knowledge gap.Van Bunge convincingly argues that the vibrancy of the stadtholder-less period up to 1672 produced a willingness to entertain new ideas. It also did not hurt to have Descartes on the scene and active on behalf of his mechanical philosophy, even to the point of addressing the Utrecht magistrates publicly and asking that his critics be chastised. What is remarkable—especially given the resistance to Descartes seen at Oxford and Cambridge—was the speed with which Cartesian ideas entered the Dutch classrooms where as many as a third of the students came from abroad. Again Van Bunge provides context when he starts with the Dutch engineer Simon Stevin and demonstrates the vitality of mathematics for a commercial society but also for a militant one. (The Netherlands was at war with Spain up to 1609.) A recent exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, April to July 2002, also illustrates another aspect of mathematics in the Republic. Precisely in the 1630s when Descartes was putting the finishing touches on his Discours, Pieter Saenredam applied geometry to the interiors of the elegant Utrecht churches so as to give his paintings a regularity and precision worthy of the Cartesian dream of order and clarity. The Dutch commitment to discipline and order also made their army one of the most accomplished in the world. It was perhaps over-determined that Descartes, who had trained with it, would find such a sympathetic audience in the Republic.One of the more fascinating aspects of Van Bunge's detailed study, first of Cartesianism and then of Spinozism in the Republic, concerns the political and ideological meanings to be extracted from the new philosophy. Hobbes also finds a place in the narrative, surprisingly taken up by republicans eager to construct a state that could control the passions. Abraham van Berkel, who put Hobbes's Leviathan into Dutch in 1667, gave the allegiance of his text and himself to Jan de Witt and the cause of the regents and the estates. We can only wonder what Hobbes would have made of the association. The republican affiliations of the mechanical philosophy in the Republic provide a distinctively Dutch context to the [End Page 276] political writings of Spinoza, the most famous and outrageous Cartesian of the century. Van Bunge is especially deft in finding Spinozists and providing far more evidence than I could back in 1981 when I argued for a radical enlightenment within the late seventeenth-century Dutch context (see The Radical Enlightenment. Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans [London: 1981]). None of these positions with their deeply heretical implications could be taken lightly or without danger. Men lost... (shrink)