This article seeks to outline the main elements in the historiographical controversy over the significance of 'Spinozism' as an eighteenth-century Enlightenment category and the validity or otherwise of the concept of 'Radical Enlightenment' as well as the relationship between these two categories. Defining 'Radical Enlightenment' as the philosophical rejection of religious authority combined with a democratic tending system of social and political thought, and as a partly clandestine tradition that evolved in opposition to the moderate mainstream Enlightenment, it seeks to (...) sketch in the main features both of the 'negative critique' broadly opposing this way of understanding the Western Enlightenment and the 'positive critique' that accepts this classification in broad outline. (shrink)

Denis Diderot’s natural philosophy is deeply and centrally ‘biologistic’: as it emerges between the 1740s and 1780s, thus right before the appearance of the term ‘biology’ as a way of designating a unified science of life (McLaughlin), his project is motivated by the desire both to understand the laws governing organic beings and to emphasize, more ‘philosophically’, the uniqueness of organic beings within the physical world as a whole. This is apparent both in the metaphysics of vital matter he puts (...) forth in works such as D’Alembert’s Dream (1769) and the more empirical concern with the mechanics of life in his manuscript Elements of Physiology, on which he worked during the last twenty years of his life. This ‘biologism’ obviously presents the interpreter of Diderot with some difficulties, notably as regards his materialism, given that contemporary forms of materialism have on the contrary strongly rejected notions of emergence, vitalism, teleology and any concepts appealing to unique, irreducible features of organisms. In response, some have described him as a ‘holist’ (Kaitaro) while others have emphasized his materialist, naturalist project (Bourdin, Wolfe). In what follows I examine a little-known aspect of Diderot’s articulation of his biological project: his statement in favour of epigenesis within the short but suggestive Encyclopédie article “Spinosiste.” Diderot was, of course, a partisan of epigenesis (the developmental-biological theory opposed to preformation, according to which beings develop by successive adjunction of layers of matter), but why include a statement in favour of a particular biological (or developmental) theory within an entry dealing with a philosopher, Spinoza, who does not seem to have been concerned at all with the specific properties of living beings, how they grow from embryonic to developed states, and so on? By trying to answer this question I also try and locate Diderot’s biological project in relation to what will become, in the years after his death, the project for a science called ‘biology’, with figures such as Treviranus and Lamarck. For it is not clear that the two can be easily correlated or causally linked: Diderot’s ‘epigenetic Spinozism’ is a different conceptual entity from what we find in histories of biology. (shrink)

Spinoza'sEthicspromises a path for sweeping personal transformations, but his accounts face two sets of overarching problems. The first concerns his peculiar metaphysics of action and agents; the second his apparent neglect of the very category of persons. Although these are somewhat distinct concerns, they have a common, unified solution in Spinoza's system that is philosophically rich and interesting, both in its own right and in relation to contemporary work in moral philosophy. After presenting the core of the problem facing Spinoza's (...) action theory, I turn to his overlooked account of selves, one that can be illuminated by contemporary work on so-called deep-self theories. I then show how Spinoza's distinctive account of selves prevents his action theory from collapsing into metaphysical incoherence, and conclude with an implication for Spinoza's broader account of transformation. (shrink)

Some commentators maintain that Spinozistic active ideas are judgements. I shall call this view the common interpretation, since it is popular to interpret Spinoza as reacting against Descartes's theory of ideas. According to this reading, Spinozistic ideas are considered not as Cartesian ideas but as Cartesian judgements. One clear difference between Descartes and Spinoza is that Spinoza holds that ideas are active, while Descartes does not. According to the common interpretation, Spinoza and Descartes use the concept of activity in the (...) same way. Since Descartes holds that judgements are active, it is maintained that Spinozistic active ideas are like Cartesian judgements. I find this an overly superficial interpretation of Spinoza. I argue that, for Spinoza, activity denotes more than mere Cartesian activity. Whereas Spinoza wants to say that active ideas incorporate the property of truth or certainty, Descartes does not consider judgements in that way. In this way, Spinozistic active ideas can be called truth-expressing. (shrink)

: The question of Kant’s relation to Spinozist thought has been virtually ignored over the years. I analyze Kant’s pre-critical ‘possibility-proof’ of God’s existence, elaborated in the Beweisgrund, as well as the echoes that this proof has in the first Critique, in beginning to uncover the connection between Kant’s thought and Spinoza’s. Kant’s espousal of the Principle of Sufficient Reason [PSR] for the analysis of modality during the pre-critical period committed him, I argue, to Spinozist substance monism. Much textual evidence (...) suggests that he was aware of this commitment. However, by transforming the PSR into a regulative principle the critical Kant has transformed his pre-critical proof into a regulative ideal. He is thereby committed, I argue, to regulative Spinozism. (shrink)

In this chapter I explore, in some cases for the first time, the significance of the ethical, liberatory dimension of Spinoza’s thought among a number of women philosophers across the long nineteenth century’s German tradition. I begin with brief discussions of Elise Reimarus and Charlotte von Stein. I then proceed to more in-depth treatments of Caroline Michaelis- Böhmer-Schlegel-Schelling and Karoline von Günderrode, stressing not only that we may learn about both in drawing out a link to Spinoza or Spinozism, but (...) likewise that we can deepen our understanding of Spinoza in bringing him into dialogue with each (in particular regarding, respectively, the importance of others for self-expression, as well as the metaphysical and ethical status of death, especially suicide). I conclude with a discussion of the turn-of-the-century thinkers Lou Salomé as well as Resa von Schirnhofer, Anna Tumarkin, and especially Elisabeth Schmitt—some of the first academic women philosophers in the German-language context, all closely engaged with Spinoza’s writings—before presenting final remarks concerning the status of Spinoza’s thought in the present context. (shrink)

Some commentators maintain that Spinozistic active ideas are judgements. I shall call this view the common interpretation, since it is popular to interpret Spinoza as reacting against Descartes’ theory of ideas. According to this reading, Spinozistic ideas are considered not as Cartesian ideas but as Cartesian judgements. One clear difference between Descartes and Spinoza is that Spinoza holds that ideas are active, while Descartes does not. According to the common interpretation, Spinoza and Descartes use the concept of activity in the (...) same way. Since Descartes holds that judgements are active, it is maintained that Spinozistic active ideas are like Cartesian judgements. I find this an overly superficial interpretation of Spinoza. I argue that, for Spinoza, activity denotes more than mere Cartesian activity. Whereas Spinoza wants to say that active ideas incorporate the property of truth or certainty, Descartes does not consider judgements in that way. In this way, Spinozistic active ideas can be called truth-expressing. (shrink)

I propose a new interpretation of Spinoza’s obscure but important concept of ‘expression’. Any account of Spinozistic expression must be able to fulfil two principal requirements. First, it must be...

In this chapter I explore, in some cases for the first time, the significance of the ethical, liberatory dimension of Spinoza’s thought among a number of women philosophers across the long nineteenth century’s German tradition. I begin with brief discussions of Elise Reimarus and Charlotte von Stein. I then proceed to more in-depth treatments of Caroline Michaelis- Böhmer-Schlegel-Schelling and Karoline von Günderrode, stressing not only that we may learn about both in drawing out a link to Spinoza or Spinozism, but (...) likewise that we can deepen our understanding of Spinoza in bringing him into dialogue with each (in particular regarding, respectively, the importance of others for self-expression, as well as the metaphysical and ethical status of death, especially suicide). I conclude with a discussion of the turn-of-the-century thinkers Lou Salomé as well as Resa von Schirnhofer, Anna Tumarkin, and especially Elisabeth Schmitt—some of the first academic women philosophers in the German-language context, all closely engaged with Spinoza’s writings—before presenting final remarks concerning the status of Spinoza’s thought in the present context. (shrink)

In Part 4 of his "Ethics," Spinoza puts forward and defends what might appear to be the controversial Hobbesean thesis that the desire to prolong one’s life is the basis of virtue (i.e., E4p22). Indeed there is a tradition of commentators offering an egoistic, Hobbesean interpretation of Spinoza’s ethical theory. In this paper, however, I argue that we should not understand Spinozistic self-preservation in the commonsense, empiricist sense of prolonging our lives. Instead I argue that, for Spinoza, self-preservation is a (...) matter of perfection-preservation and perfection-enhancement, which does not essentially involve extending the duration of an individual’s existence. (shrink)

This essay argues that Spinoza’s metaphysics offers a theoretical framework for dissolving the conceptual gap in contemporary consciousness studies. The conceptual origins of the gap have their roots in Cartesian substance dualism. If phenomenal experience is conceived as substantially distinct from correlated physical processes in the brain, an explanatory gap opens in our understanding of the mind/body relation. Spinoza’s metaphysics offers an ontology that preserves the qualitative difference between phenomenal experience and physiological processes while conceiving the ultimate numerical unity of (...) mind and its correlated physical processes. The notion of qualitative difference within substantial unity is deduced from Spinoza’s redefinition of the basic features of the Cartesian universe: substance, attribute, and mode. Redefinition results in a property dualism that is internally consistent and dissolves the conceptual gap in contemporary consciousness studies. This paper identifies and explains the central argument for qualitative distinction within substantial unity and recommends a framework for consciousness studies that views phenomenology and neuroscience as complementary disciplines. (shrink)

I investigate the meaning and significance of Spinoza’s elusive concept of “expression”. I do so by situating expression among his canonical relations of conception, causation, and inherence. I argue that, for Spinoza, expression necessarily corresponds to what is sufficient for conception, but implies neither causation nor inherence. This correspondence with sufficient conditions on conception and the pulling apart of expression from causation and inherence has important consequences for our grasp of the interconnections among Spinoza’s key metaphysical relations. But it also (...) has profound implications for our understanding of the essential structure of Spinoza’s ontology itself, and for the proper assessment of his rationalism. I explore these consequences by explicating Spinoza’s assertion that substance and each of its attributes are “conceived through themselves”, and by demonstrating that, on his view, the relation of conception is not to be accounted for in causal terms. A systematic treatment of the expression relation sheds new light on these issues. The result is a view of the underpinnings of Spinoza’s metaphysics that is as surprising as it is compelling. (shrink)

This volume consists of 21 papers delivered at an international Spinoza conference on Disguised and Overt Spinozism around 1700, held at the Erasmus University ...

다마지오는 정신을 탈신체화된 것으로 본 “데카르트의 오류”를 지적하고 정신을 신체화된 것으로 본 “스피노자가 옳았다”고 선언한 바 있다. 내가 보기에 스피노자는 정신이 알 수 있는 것을 신체가 할 수 있는 것을 통해 설명한다는 점에서 분명 체화된 마음의 선구자이지만, 신체가 무엇인지에 대해서는 다마지오와 입장이 다르다. 다마지오는 신체를 항상성 유지를 지향하는 합목적적 통일체로 보는 반면, 스피노자는 각 신체를 실체가 아니라 단지 양태적으로만 구별되는 단위로, 즉 운동 방식에 따른 부분들의 잠정적 통일체로 보는 기계론적 관점에서 벗어나지 않는다. 이 글에서 나는 심신관계(정신은 신체에 대한 관념)와 감정(신체 (...) 상태의 변화), 코나투스(항상성 유지의 경향) 등 스피노자 사상에 대한 다마지오의 신경생물학적 해석의 요점을 짚어보고, 이렇게 해석된 스피노자의 이론이 실은 다마지오가 비판하는 데카르트의 이론과 더 가까우며, 이런 오해의 뿌리에 ‘인간 신체’에 대한 관점 차이가 있음을 보여준다. (shrink)

This article suggests reasons why Donald Davidson’s work in philosophy of mind and metaphysics can be identified as Spinozist and also explores the significance of using proper names from the history of philosophy to describe contemporary projects. It argues that what makes Davidson’s work Spinozist is not just its internal features, but the role it occupies in relation to other positions identified as Kantian and Hegelian in today’s philosophical terrain. Finally, it suggests that the core animus at the heart of (...) Davidson’s Spinozism is its indifference to autonomy as a concept in need of metaphysical grounding or essential to normative commitment. (shrink)

The paper studies the historical background for the ‘idealist’ reading of Spinoza usually traced back to British and German Idealism. Here, I follow this history further back than and focus on one earlier idealist reading, indeed perhaps the mother of them all. It can be found in the _Elucidarius cabalisticus, sive reconditae Hebraeorum philosophiae brevis et succincta recensio_ by Johann Georg Wachter, a kabbalist interpretation of Spinoza published in 1706. I am principally interested in the importance that Wachter’s book may (...) have had for German philosophy in the second half of the eighteenth century. Focusing on Moses Mendelssohn’s _Philosophische Gespräche_ of 1755, I argue that, via Mendelssohn, the Elucidarius cabalisticus is perhaps the earliest possible source of the idealist reading of Spinoza that dominated the German _Spinozabild_ from throughout the _Pantheismusstreit_ up to the second edition of Herder’s 1800 _Gott: Einige Gespräche_, culminating with Hegel’s ‘acosmist’ reading of Spinoza in the 1825–26 lectures on the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Stuart Hampshire, one of the most eminent British philosophers of the twentieth century, will be perhaps best remembered for his work on the seventeenth-century philosopher Spinoza, all of which is gathered now in this volume. Among the great thinkers of modern times, only Spinoza created a complete system of philosophy that rivals Plato's, with crucial contributions to every major philosophical topic. Hampshire's classic 1951 book Spinoza remains the best introduction to this thinker, and it is reprinted here. But what gives (...) particular interest to this new volume is the first publication of Hampshire's last work 'Spinoza and Spinozism', an extended presentation of a Spinozist philosophical worldview. Hampshire's influential 1962 essay 'Spinoza and the Idea of Freedom' is also included. Spinoza and Spinozism is thus an ideal companion to the study and interpretation of this great philosopher. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that Leibniz’s metaphysical commitments lead to Spinozist Necessitarianism, i.e., the view, in Spinoza’s words, that “Things could not have been produced by God in any way or in any order other than that in which they have been produced”. Leibniz comments on this passage as follows: “This proposition may be true or false, depending on how it is explained”. I suggest in this paper that what Leibniz means by this comment can be fleshed out by making (...) a distinction between what could have been actual and what is possible. I also address some potential objections to this distinction and attempt to elaborate it by means of comparing Leibniz’s and Alvin Plantinga’s approaches to modality. (shrink)

The question of Voltaire’s belief in (or lack of belief in) God is a vexed one. René Pomeau’s classic study of 1956 argued that Voltaire believed in a God who would punish and reward in the next life. More recently Gerhardt Stenger has shown that, at least after 1764, Voltaire adopted a moderated form of Spinozism. He consistently rejected a materialist atheism on the grounds that the universe showed evidence of intelligent design, and appealed to Spinoza against d’Holbach. This article (...) studies the evolution of Voltaire’s philosophical account of the deity, showing that he moved from a belief in a Newtonian creator God to a Spinozist monopsychism at least by 1756. But, under the influence of Warburton, he had come to reject Bayle’s concept of a society of atheists, and consequently held that the wider public must be encouraged to believe in a providential God, a view he pretended to hold himself. Reading Voltaire after 1756 it is thus essential to understand that he held a double truth theory, so that it is sometimes necessary to ‘read between the lines’ to discover his meaning. (shrink)

Kant’s Transcendental Ideal (TI) is presented in a notoriously obscure section of the Critique of Pure Reason. Many readers know that Kant’s principal purpose in the TI is to show how reason fallaciously derives its concept of God from its idea of the world. But this argument is clothed in a language that is unfamiliar even to skilled commentators on Kant’s work. In this essay, I present the historical context of the proof, conduct a detailed exegesis of the proof, and (...) argue that Kant formulated the Transcendental Ideal in such a way as to avoid Spinozism—a point Kant later seems to have doubted could be avoided. I develop my case in light of some comments made in a lesser-known essay that Kant wrote for the 1795 contest of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article I challenge a common reading of Benedict de Spinoza’s political philosophy, which holds that since his metaphysics is entirely positive or affirmative, his politics must be affirmative as well. In the first part, I show how this interpretation is found in the works of Gilles Deleuze and Antonio Negri. In the second part, I show that the negative has no ontological reality in Spinoza’s metaphysics. In the third, building on the work of Alexandre Matheron, I show (...) that there is nevertheless real and unavoidable negativity in Spinozist politics, and that according to Spinoza, sad passions and repression must lie at the heart of any political society. (shrink)

"No, your honor. I didn't know who or what he was when I first came across the book -- they don't exactly love him in the synagogue, if you've read the story of his life. I found it in a junkyard in a nearby town, paid a kopek, and left cursing myself for wasting money hard to come by. Later I read through a few pages and kept on going as though there were a whirlwind at my back. As I (...) say, I didn't understand every word but when you're dealing with such ideas you feel as though you were taking a witch's ride. After that I wasn't the same man. That's in a manner of speaking, of course, because I've changed little since my youth.". The speaker is Yakov Bok, the unlikely hero of Bernard Malamud's The Fixer. At this point, early in the novel, Yakov speaks truthfully when he says that he has changed little since his youth. But over the next two and a half years (the time-period covered in the novel), he will undergo profound change and impressive moral growth. He suffers; he learns; he grows. Spinoza's name and ideas appear again and again at crucial moments in the course of the hero's moral development. Yakov Bok's verbal account of Spinoza's ideas is often comically primitive, but his understanding far outstrips his ability to articulate. By the end of the novel, his sufferings have led him to a deep grasp of certain of Spinoza's ethical and political doctrines. (shrink)

One vexing strand of Spinozism asserts that God's nature is more expansive than traditionally conceived and includes properties like being extended. In this paper, I argue that prominent early moderns embrace metaphysical principles about causation, mental representation, and modality that pressure their advocates towards such an expansive account of God's nature in similar ways. I further argue that the main early modern escape route, captured in notions like “eminent containment,” fails to adequately relieve the metaphysical pressures towards Spinozism. The upshot (...) is that those sympathetic with these early modern projects must embrace a costlier option if they are to successfully escape the orbit of Spinoza. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to explicate the relationship between Spinozist expressionism and philosophical constructivism in Deleuze's work through the concept of immanent causality. Deleuze finds in Spinoza a philosophy of immanent causality used to solve the problem of the relation between substance, attribute and mode as an expression of substance. But, when he proceeds to take up this notion of immanent causality found in Spinoza in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze instead inverts it into a modal one such that the (...) identity of substance may be said only of the difference of the modes. Complicating this further, Deleuze and Guattari claim in A Thousand Plateaus that substance, attribute, and mode are each, themselves, multiplicities. What is Philosophy? takes up immanent causality once again, this time through a constructivist lens aimed at resolving the question of the relation between philosophical multiplicities: ‘plane,’ ‘persona,’ and ‘concept.’ By following the different formulations of immanent causality in these works this essay hopes to discover the relationship between Spinozist expressionism and philosophical constructivism in Deleuze's work. (shrink)

'the oldest biography of Spinoza', La Vie de Mr. Spinosa, which in the manuscript copies is often followed by L'Esprit de M. Spinosa. Margaret Jacob, in her Radical Enlightenment, contended that the Traite was written by a radical group of Freemasons in The Hague in the early eighteenth century. Silvia Berti has offered evidence it was written by Jan Vroesen. Various discussions in the early eighteenth century consider many possi ble authors from the Renaissance onwards to whom the work might (...) be attributed. The Trois imposteurs has attracted quite a bit of recent attention as one of the most significant irreligious clandestine writings available in the Enlightenment, which is most important for understanding the develop ment of religious scepticism, radical deism, and even atheism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Scholars for the last couple of decades have been trying to assess when the work was actually written or compiled and by whom. In view of the widespread distribution of manu scripts of the work all over Europe, they have also been seeking to find out who was influenced by the work, and what it represented for its time. Hitherto unknown manuscripts are being turned up in public and private libraries all over Europe and the United States. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Mary Shelley (1797–1851) developed a ‘Romantic Spinozism’ from 1817 to 1848. This was a deterministic worldview that adopted an ethical attitude of love toward the world as it is, must be, and will be. Resisting the psychological despair and political inertia of fatalism, her ‘Romantic Spinozism’ affirmed the forward-looking responsibility of people to love their neighbors and sustain the world, including future generations, even in the face of seeming apocalypse. This history of Shelley’s reception of Spinoza begins with the (...) fragment of the otherwise lost translation of the Theologico-Political Treatise (1670) on which she collaborated. It extends through her journals, letters, poetry, and her second great work of speculative fiction after Frankenstein (1818): a post-apocalyptic novel set in the year 2100, The Last Man (1826). Through a creative synthesis of Spinoza with Plato, Cicero, Wollstonecraft, and Glasite Christianity, Shelley developed an anti- apocalyptic conception of love as apocatastasis: a cyclical restoration of an ethical attitude of stewardship toward the whole world and its necessity. Through this recovery of a vital chapter in the history of European ideas, Shelley emerges as a central figure in Spinozan philosophy, especially the ethics and political philosophy of love. (shrink)

I am not a pantheist and I don’t believe that pantheism is consistent with Christianity. My preferred speculation is what I call the Swiss Cheese theory: we and our artefacts are the holes in God, the only Godless parts of reality. In this paper, I begin by considering a world rather like ours but without any beings capable of sin. Ignoring extraterrestrials and angels we could consider the world, say, 5 million years ago. Pantheism was, I say, true at that (...) time. That is my qualified endorsement of pantheism. I then use the Sin premise, namely that we are capable of sinning, to argue that beings like us are not parts of God and I examine some consequences. (shrink)

Depuis le milieu des annees 1960, les etudes spinozistes ont pris un nouvel essor sous l'impulsion du courant marxiste qui a vu dans le programme de liberation des collectivites pense par Spinoza le projet politique le plus apte ä assurer une reponse ä la crise de legitimite du marxisme. Dans la foulee de certaines intuitions de Althusser, et ä la lumiere de la conceptualite spinoziste, plusieurs penseurs (notamment Deleuze, Negri, Macherey, Matheron et Virno) ont ainsi propose un nouveau modele d'organisation (...) de la vie en commun. Ces acteurs de la renaissance spinoziste redigent, en quelque sorte, le chapitre conclusif de la derniere ceuvre de Spinoza (i.e. le Tratte politique reste inacheve) en definissant les nouvelles conditions de la democratic ä l'heure de la deterritorialisation generalisee marquee par l'abolition des frontieres nationales (economie mondiale, reseaux informatiques, etc.). Ce contexte offre l'occasion de repenser la politique en radicalisant les propos de Spinoza et en faisant jouer les notions de "puissance" et de "multitude" non seulement contre les concepts de "pouvoir" et de "peuple" qui en sont venus ä dominer le champ de la reflexion en philosophic politique, mais egalement contre les philosophies de l'histoire fondees sur la dialectique et la teleologie. Apres avoir decrit brievement quelques-uns des principaux enjeux de la politique spinoziste et avoir presente les nouveaux ennemis du spinozisme (neo-liberalisme et marxisme ideologique), nous ferons une genealogie de la refondation neo-spinozienne de Marx (Althusser, Deleuze, Negri) avant de repondre ä la question "Que faire?". II s'agira alors de determiner le role de l'Etat et de situer cette pensee politique par rapport ä l'utopie revolutionnaire. Ce parcours contribuera ä mieux definir les fondements et les implications de la democratic non-representative qui est au cceur des revendications de la renaissance spinoziste. (shrink)

Traditional commentaries on Cavaillès’ philosophy acknowledges its Spinozist legacy. But it is generally content with Cavaillès’s statements to Raymond Aron, without identifying the elements that illustrate this link or, above all, those that contradict it. The authority of a friend, Georges Canguilhem, who took up Raymond Aron’s testimony at an official ceremony, and Gilles-Gaston Granger’s article “Cavaillès ou la montée vers Spinoza”, established for a long time the idea that everything had been said. This article questions the meaning and significance (...) of Cavaillès’s ‘I am a Spinozist’ in the promotion of the philosophy of the concept. (shrink)

This paper explores a methodological lineage among French Spinoza scholars which can be traced back to texts written by Victor Delbos (1862–1916), which later branched out into two diametrically opposed orientations in the work by Martial Gueroult (1891–1976) and Paul Vernière (1916–1997), only to be reunited reflexively in the more recent work by Pierre-François Moreau (1948-). The aim is mostly to offer an original reconstruction of the way in which Delbos’ historical programme was inherited by subsequent Spinoza scholars. While retracing (...) this lineage, my focus will be on a specific historiographical principle first formulated by Delbos. In the conclusion, however, I briefly turn to Spinoza himself, arguing how this reconstituted family of twentieth century French historians of philosophy can be characterized as a form of ‘Historiographical Spinozism’. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:I argue that Baumgarten's rich and once influential Metaphysica contains an ontology that pushes him toward a Spinozistic conclusion, one that he fiercely sought to avoid. After examining Baumgarten's distinctive account of the core of Spinozism, I present his path as a series of independently motivated steps, focusing on his general ontology and his accounts of the world and God. Baumgarten himself would not be happy with these results, and I concede that some of his efforts to thwart Spinozism look (...) promising. But there is one route to Spinozism that he fails to block, and at a key juncture, he inadvertently aids the Spinozist's cause. I conclude with an epilogue on how Baumgarten's path also foreshadows the next Spinozism flare-up heading into the German pantheism controversy. (shrink)

This book provides a new interpretation of Kants critical work that shows Kants deep connection to Spinoza, and reveals new directions for thinking about Kant in relation to contemporary European philosophy.

This paper considers A. W. Moore’s treatment of Hegel in his book The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things. The paper begins by setting out the context that Moore gives to his discussion of Hegel, and the themes that he focuses on. It then considers the ways in which Moore judges Hegel to fall short, showing how they relate to Moore’s reading of Spinoza and of Deleuze. It is argued that there are ways of conceiving of Hegel’s position (...) that could be said to escape Moore’s objections, but at the very least he shows how they can be pressed against some important parts of Hegel’s text, if not others; thus one of the many ways in which Moore’s book is significant is in underlining the importance of this challenge. (shrink)

Cet article tente d’articuler la conception de l’agir humain dans Jacques le fataliste, à travers l’épisode du Père Hudson. A la lumière de l’ontologie de la trace et de l’impression proposée par Vinciguerra dans sa reconstruction du spinozisme, l’acte-modèle mis en scène à travers cet épisode apparaît comme consistant à écrire, prescrire, contre-écrire, méta-écrire les comportements d’autrui. Les différents niveaux où se déroulent ces phénomènes de écriture permettent de réinstaurer un « là-haut », et donc de justifier la formule de (...) Jacques : tout ce qui nous arrive ici-bas est bien écrit là-haut, dans les niveaux supérieurs de surcodage et de stratégisation des machinations humaines. On conclut en essayant de montrer, en contraste avec Léger-Marie Deschamps, comment une telle définition de l’agir humain permet à Diderot de tenir le pari d’une philosophie à la fois moniste et néanmoins radicalement pluraliste. This article reconstructs Diderot’s fundamentally Spinozist conception of human agency through a close analysis of the episode of Jacques the Fatalist devoted to Father Hudson. This conception is presented as an ontology of writing which redefines agency in terms of scripting, pre-scripting, counter- and meta-scripting the other agents’ behaviours. Jacques’ motto, according to which everything that happens down here was written “up there”, is reinterpreted and proven accurate : human agency has to be approached in terms of a hierarchy of strata, according to the level of meta-scripting which determines the scripted acts performed down here. A concluding section stresses the pluralist nature of this ontology of writing sketched in Jacques the Fatalist. (shrink)

Andrew Chignell and Omri Boehm have recently argued that Kant’s pre-Critical proof for the existence of God entails a Spinozistic conception of God and hence substance monism. The basis for this reading is the assumption common in the literature that God grounds possibilities by exemplifying them. In this article I take issue with this assumption and argue for an alternative Leibnizian reading, according to which possibilities are grounded in essences united in God’s mind (later also described as Platonic ideas intuited (...) by God). I show that this view about the distinction between God’s cognition of essences as the ground of possibility and the actual world is not only explicitly stated by Kant, but is also consistent with his metaphysical picture of teleology in nature and causality during the pre-Critical period. Finally, I suggest that the distinction between the conceptual order of essences embodied in the idea of God and the order of the objects of experience plays a role in the transition into the Critical system, where it is transformed into the distinction between the intelligible and the sensible worlds. (shrink)