This chapter proposes a very condensed overview of some three centuries of Spinoza reception in France, from around 1670 to 1970. Spinoza's presence in the history of French philosophy is pervasive, deep, and varied. The chapter presents some of the most important figures and stages in that inextricable double history of both Spinozism from the viewpoint of French philosophy and French philosophy from the viewpoint of Spinozism. The translation is a testimony to the depth with which the French libertine (...) tradition of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century sometimes appropriated Spinoza's philosophy for its own subversive purposes. One way of coming to grips with Spinoza's biblical scholarship was to drown his argument in a deluge of superior erudition. Spinoza's philosophy, by contrast, was universally condemned as fatalist and pantheist. (shrink)

Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise is a landmark both in democratic political theory and in the history of biblical interpretation. Spinoza championed liberty of thought, speech and writing by discrediting the Bible as the standard for truth and a source of public law. Applying a new historical criticism, he showed that biblical teaching and law were irrelevant for a modern pluralistic state and its intellectual life. J. Samuel Preus highlights Spinoza's achievement by reading the Treatise in the context (...) of a literary conflict among his contemporaries about biblical interpretation - a conflict fraught with political implication. Preus's exposition of neglected primary sources surrounding Spinoza's work offers evidence regarding his rhetorical strategy and intent in the Treatise. The book provides not only a valuable contribution to Spinoza scholarship but an important account of the origins of modern methods of biblical interpretation. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on philological and historical scholarship as applied to the Bible in late-seventeenth-century Dutch Calvinism. This theme has been overlooked due to the historiographical dominance of rationalist philosophy in the Dutch Early Enlightenment, as embodied by Spinoza. In that sense the historiography of the late-seventeenth-century Dutch Republic lags behind that of neighboring countries, notably England. Both the philosophical and philological implications of Spinoza’s biblical criticism provoked responses from his contemporaries and the first generations after his death. (...) The textual legacy, languages, antiquities, and historical context of the biblical texts were felt to complicate an adequate understanding of the Bible, as much so as shifts in the conceptualization of God, Creation, Providence, and Divine Law. The Bible as the foundation of the confessional state weakened, not only under the influence of Cartesian or Spinozist philosophy but also because it was studied as the textual vestige of a distant past. (shrink)

This new and complete translation of Spinoza's famous 17th-century work fills an important gap, not only for all scholars of Spinoza, but also for everyone interested in the relationship between Western philosophy and religion, and the history of biblical exegesis.

Pioneering biblical critic, theorist of democracy, and legendary conflater of God and nature, Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was excommunicated by the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam in 1656 for his "horrible heresies" and "monstrous deeds." Yet, over the past three centuries, Spinoza's rupture with traditional Jewish beliefs and practices has elevated him to a prominent place in genealogies of Jewish modernity. The First Modern Jew provides a riveting look at how Spinoza went from being one of Judaism's most (...) notorious outcasts to one of its most celebrated, if still highly controversial, cultural icons, and a powerful and protean symbol of the first modern secular Jew. Ranging from Amsterdam to Palestine and back again to Europe, the book chronicles Spinoza's posthumous odyssey from marginalized heretic to hero, the exemplar of a whole host of Jewish identities, including cosmopolitan, nationalist, reformist, and rejectionist. Daniel Schwartz shows that in fashioning Spinoza into "the first modern Jew," generations of Jewish intellectuals -German liberals, East European maskilim, secular Zionists, and Yiddishists- have projected their own dilemmas of identity onto him, reshaping the Amsterdam thinker in their own image. The many afterlives of Spinoza are a kind of looking glass into the struggles of Jewish writers over where to draw the boundaries of Jewishness and whether a secular Jewish identity is indeed possible. Cumulatively, these afterlives offer a kaleidoscopic view of modern Jewish culture and a vivid history of an obsession with Spinoza that continues to this day."--Jacket. (shrink)

Attributed in Christian scripture to Jesus’s very lips, the intriguing Aramaic phrase ‘Talitha, Kum!’ has emerged as an important refrain within gendered African theological scholarship. African women’s experiences in the hands of religion and culture do so resonate with the two tangled stories that comprise the phrase’s literary context. The resonance is such that African women’s Bible reading strategies have come to be referred to as ‘Talitha cum African women’s biblical hermeneutics’ or some variant thereof. The ensuing panegyric (...) by a male admirer engages the fresh ways whereby African women biblical hermeneutics (aka Talitha) are breathing new life into (African) biblical scholarship. In appreciation and tribute to African women theologians’ fragrant contributions to Christian life and reflection, the ode samples their work in a manner that in places feels intrusive whilst certainly nowhere near complete. (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. This first volume contains Spinoza's single most important work, the Ethics, and four earlier works: the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, the Short Treatise on God, Man, and His (...) Well-Being, Descartes' "Principles of Philosophy," and Metaphysical Thoughts. Also included are Spinoza's letters from the periods when these works were being written. 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. (shrink)

My essay explores the connections between Spinoza’s theory of biblical interpretation and his conception of prophecy, linking the two through what he calls “moral certainty.” The question of what prophecy conveys is connected to the question of how to read Scripture because readers are in a similar position to both the prophets, who attain sure knowledge of some matter revealed by God, and the audience of prophecy, who have access to this knowledge only through faith. Like prophets, readers are (...) interpreters of something that can not be known by way of reason alone; hence the effort to secure certainty involves factors other than purely rational ones (the history of the text, for readers; a vivid imagination, signs, and virtue for the prophet). But like the prophet’s audience, the knowledge of texts that we can attain is not always “sure,” since texts “transcend” us in a certain sense. That is, they introduce novelties---laws, customs, histories---that we wouldn’t know without reading them, and we therefore have to take their authors, prophets in this case, at their word-as it were, on faith. While most of the focus on Spinoza’s concept of biblical interpretation has centered on his maxim that “the method of interpreting Scripture is no different from the method of interpreting Nature,” I hold that it is just as crucial to investigate his claims concerning the nature of prophecy, and in particular to allow prophetic knowledge to shed light on Spinoza’s concepts of words, history, and the corruption and incorruptibility of texts. (shrink)

Dick Popkin and James Force have attended a number of recent conferences where it was apparent that much new and important research was being done in the fields of interpreting Newton's and Spinoza's contributions as biblical scholars and of the relationship between their biblical scholarship and other aspects of their particular philosophies. This collection represents the best current research in this area. It stands alone as the only work to bring together the best current work on (...) these topics. Its primary audience is specialised scholars of the thought of Newton and Spinoza as well as historians of the philosophical ideas of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. (shrink)

Kirsten Macfarlane’s Biblical Scholarship in an Age of Controversy: The Polemical World of Hugh Broughton (1549–1612) is a work of deep erudition, graceful narration, and trenchant argumentation. M...

An old question in Spinoza scholarship is how finite, non-eternal things transitively caused by other finite, non-eternal things (i. e., the entities described in propositions like E1p28) are caused by the infinite, eternal substance, given that what follows either directly or indirectly from the divine nature is infinite and eternal (E1p21–23). In “Spinoza’s Monism I,” “Spinoza’s Monism I,” in the previous issue of this journal. I pointed out that most commentators answer this question by invoking entities that are indefinite (...) and sempiternal, but argued that perhaps we should not be so quick to assume that in Spinoza’s system, an infinite and eternal substance could cause such indefinite, sempiternal entities. But if such eternal-durational causation is denied, then it seems harder to see how Spinoza’s system could be coherent: if Spinoza holds that the infinite, eternal substance cannot cause anything that is not infinite and not eternal, then how can he also hold that all things are modes immanently caused by substance (E1p15, E1p18, E1p25)? In this essay, I explain how Spinoza’s system could be understood in light of a denial of eternal-durational causation. On the interpretation I offer, God is the cause of all things and all things are modes because the essences of all things follow from the divine nature and all essences enjoy infinite, eternal reality as modes immanently caused by the infinite, eternal substance. The same non-substantial essences can also be conceived as enjoying non-infinite, non-eternal reality, but so conceived, they are enduring, finite (or sempiternal, indefinite) entities that cannot be conceived as modes caused by and inhering in the one infinite, eternal substance. I conclude by pointing out that if we take this interpretive route, we do have to understand Spinoza as committed to acosmism, or a denial of the reality of the world – at least the world of enduring, finite things. (shrink)

While Spinoza is often interpreted as an early secular or liberal thinker, this book argues that such interpretations neglect the senses of order and authority that are at the heart of Spinoza’s idea of God. For Spinoza, God is an organized and directed totality of all that exists. God is entirely immanent to this totality, to such an extent that all things are fundamentally of God. Appreciating the full extent to which God permeates and orders every aspect of reality, allows (...) the full sense of Spinoza’s theories of tolerance and the social contract to come into view. Rather than assuming that human beings involved in political relationships are independent, autonomous individuals, for Spinoza they are parts of a larger whole subject to distinct natural laws. Spinoza maintains that such laws manifest themselves equally and identically in the seemingly distinct realms of religion and politics. In this respect, Spinoza’s theories of religion and biblical interpretation are not properly secular in character but rather blur the standard boundary between the religious and the political as they try to recognize and codify the inviolable laws of nature - or God. (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)

Thornhill, John The somewhat provocative title I have given this article may surprise readers aware that from the beginning of my work as a theologian I have been proud to be known as a follower of Aquinas. I am glad for this opportunity to explain my position. The main purpose of this article, however, is giving an account of the significant developments I refer to and what they can contribute to the life of God's people.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.3 (2001) 463-482 [Access article in PDF] The "Antiquarianization" of Biblical Scholarship and the London Polyglot Bible (1653-57) Peter N. Miller The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the heroic age of the antiquaries. Roaming from text to context and back again, these scholars completed the revolution begun by the humanists who realized that Greek and Roman texts could never be understood (...) isolated from the men and societies that made them. These scholars, from Petrarch to Poggio, from Panvinio to Peiresc to Perizonius, looked beyond the page and collected, described, and compared the material remains of the ancient world. That these investigations transformed the understanding of the past and effected a revolution in the method of historical inquiry was insisted upon by Arnaldo Momigliano beginning half a century ago. 1 In recent years these antiquaries have also attracted the attention of historians of early modern art, science, archaeology, politics, and scholarship. 2 [End Page 463]This renewed focus on antiquaries as agents of late humanism has tended to concentrate on their contribution to understanding ancient Greece and Rome, but they were also responsible for the first generation of serious scholarship about the ancient and modern Near East. Drawing on the same methods to ask the same questions they had asked of classical antiquity these antiquaries directed their attention to the extra-European world. Like the study of the earlier Renaissance of Greece and Rome, that of Israel and Egypt was stimulated by a profusion of new materials, streaming back to scholars' studies from the missionaries, merchants, and diplomats traveling to the Ottoman East in greater and greater numbers. It is breadth of inquiry that characterizes this new approach--more texts in more languages--but also a much greater explanatory weight placed on objects as evidence and more confidence in using knowledge provided by people presently living in far-away places to shed light on those who lived there long ago. In this approach to a region and its culture as a whole early modern antiquaries created oriental studies.Because so much of the contemporary interest in the Near East was driven by the ingrained association of these lands and their peoples with the history narrated in the Bible, early oriental studies is inseparable from biblical scholarship. Pietro della Valle's letters from the East were, after all, signed "Il Pellegrino," and Fabri de Peiresc's efforts to recover the Samaritans and their history were triggered by his desire to contribute to the publication of their Pentateuch. It is because oriental studies like these were shaped by the ways and means of antiquaries that so much seventeenth-century biblical scholarship can be described as having been "antiquarianized." Like the earlier humanists who had given Virgil and Horace a context, those fascinated and obsessed with understanding every jot and tittle of the sacred text turned to the Bible's context for help: the history of the ancient Near East as it could be reconstructed from texts, objects, and the long-lived traditions preserved by marginal groups like the Samaritans or in out of the way places like the Coptic monasteries of Wadi Natrûn. This antiquarianization reflects the move from the word to the world that had begun with Petrarch. Early modern sacred philologists--the Englishman Thomas Fuller called this figure "The True Church Antiquary"--set out to prove, by the most sophisticated methods available, that sacred history was historical.At the heart of this inquiry lay a belief in historia sacra, understood as both a theory of providential history and a methodology of historical scholarship. The theory gave them the confidence to pursue with reason the truth of revelation because all had to reflect the plan of the One Creator. The practice encouraged scholars to recruit the evidence of history, philosophy, archaeology, and geography to the service of the sacred, all confirming the triumph of Christianity. They [End Page 464] were convinced that erudition could only amplify, and not undermine, the conclusions already reached by faith. 3 It was this... (shrink)

There are several reasons that have contributed to the neglect of the Treatise as a classic of modern democratic theory. In the first place, Spinoza's political theory is buried three quarters of the way through the Treatise and comes to light only after the reader has slogged through a long and painstaking discussion of biblical philology and criticism. Second, Spinoza's defense of democracy is undergirded by a naturalistic metaphysics that is more immoralist than Hobbes and scarcely to (...) the taste of most modern readers. And third, Spinoza remained wedded to certain premodern notions about the difference between the intellectuals and the vulgar which, it is believed, undercut his democratic commitments. (shrink)

Preface gives a synopsis of Spinoza, his life, and where he was at during this time period. The book gives a huge depth into Cartesian Philosophy which is the philosophical doctrine of Rene Descartes. It also speaks of metaphysics in relation to Spinoza and Cartesian Philosophy. Baruch or Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish origin. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death. Today, (...) he is considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy, laying the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism. By virtue of his magnum opus, the posthumous Ethics, in which he opposed Descartes' mind-body dualism, Spinoza is considered to be one of Western philosophy's most important philosophers. Philosopher and historian Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said of all modern philosophers, "You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all." All of Spinoza's works were listed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (List of Prohibited Books) by the Roman Catholic Church. Spinoza lived quietly as a lens grinder, turning down rewards and honors throughout his life, including prestigious teaching positions, and gave his family inheritance to his sister. Spinoza's moral character and philosophical accomplishments prompted 20th century philosopher Gilles Deleuze to name him "the 'prince' of philosophers." Spinoza died at the age of 44 of a lung illness, perhaps tuberculosis or silicosis exacerbated by fine glass dust inhaled while tending to his trade. Spinoza is buried in the churchyard of the Nieuwe Kerk on Spui in The Hague. (shrink)

Given the growing interest in Spinoza’s work in recent years, there is surprisingly little written on the subject of Spinoza and education. There are a handful of journal articles, such as Aloni’s “Spinoza as educator”, Derry’s “The unity of intellect and will”, Puolimatka’s “Spinoza’s theory of teaching and indoctrination” and Dahlbeck’s “Educating for immortality”, and a few notable anthology chapters, such as Genevieve Lloyd’s “Spinoza and the education of the imagination”, but overall the literature on Spinoza and education is quite (...) limited. This paper seeks to add to this work, focusing on initiating a discussion on some of the normative consequences of formulating a philosophy of education based on Spinoza’s ethics of self-preservation. In doing so, it connects with a recent trend in Spinoza scholarship focusing on the ethical core of his philosophy, such as LeBuffe’s From Bondage to Freedom, Kisner’s Spinoza on Human Freedom and Kisner and Youpa’s Essays on Spinoza’s Ethical Theory. (shrink)

With meticulous scholarship and an accurate, highly readable translation, this volume sheds light not only on Spinoza's debt to Descartes but also on the development of Spinoza's own thought. Appearing for the first time in English translation, Lodewijk Meyer's inaugural dissertation on matter --relevant for its comments on Descartes, Spinoza, and other thinkers of the time--is appended with notes and a short commentary. Cross-references to Descartes's _Principles of Philosophy_ are provided in an index, and there is an (...) extensive bibliography. (shrink)

This book interrogates the ontology of mathematical entities in Spinoza as a basis for addressing a wide range of interpretive issues in Spinoza’s epistemology—from his antiskepticism and philosophy of science to the nature and scope of reason and intuitive knowledge and the intellectual love of God. Going against recent trends in Spinoza scholarship, and drawing on various sources, including Spinoza’s engagements with optical theory and physics, Matthew Homan argues for a realist interpretation of geometrical figures in Spinoza; illustrates their (...) role in a Spinozan hypothetico-deductive scientific method; and develops Spinoza’s mathematical examples to better illuminate the three kinds of knowledge. The result is a portrait of Spinoza’s epistemology as sanguine and distinctive yet at home in the new Cartesian and Galilean scientific-philosophical paradigm. (shrink)

‘Substance’ (substantia, zelfstandigheid) is a key term of Spinoza’s philosophy. Like almost all of Spinoza’s philosophical vocabulary, Spinoza did not invent this term, which has a long history that can be traced back at least to Aristotle. Yet, Spinoza radicalized the traditional notion of substance and made a very powerful use of it by demonstrating – or at least attempting to demonstrate -- that there is only one, unique substance -- God (or Nature) -- and that all other things are (...) merely modes or states of God. Some of Spinoza’s readers understood these claims as committing him to the view that only God truly exists, and while this interpretation is not groundless, we will later see that this enticing and bold reading of Spinoza as an ‘acosmist’ comes at the expense of another audacious claim Spinoza advances, i.e., that God/Nature is absolutely and actually infinite. But before we reach this last conclusion, we have a long way to go. So, let me first provide an overview of our plan. In the first section of this paper we will examine Spinoza’s definitions of ‘substance’ and ‘God’ at the opening of his magnum opus, the Ethics. Following a preliminary clarification of these two terms and their relations to the other key terms defined at the beginning of the Ethics, we will briefly address the Aristotelian and Cartesian background of Spinoza’s discussion of substance. In the second section, we will study the properties of the fundamental binary relations pertaining to Spinoza’s substance: inherence, conception, and causation. The third section will be dedicated to a clarification of Spinoza’s claim that God, the unique substance, is absolutely infinite. This essential feature of Spinoza’s substance has been largely neglected in recent Anglo-American scholarship, a neglect which has brought about an unfortunate tendency to domesticate Spinoza’s metaphysics to more contemporary views. The fourth section will study the nature of Spinoza’s monism. It will discuss and criticize the interesting yet controversial views of the eminent Spinoza scholar, Martial Gueroult, about the plurality of substances in the beginning of the Ethics; address Spinoza’s claim in Letter 50 that, strictly speaking, it is improper to describe God as “one”; and, finally, evaluate Spinoza’s kind of monism against the distinction between existence and priority monism recently introduced into the contemporary philosophical literature. The fifth and final section will explain the nature, reality, and manner of existence of modes. We therefore have an ambitious plan; let’s get down to business. (shrink)

The political philosopher Leo Strauss is famous for contending that any synthesis of reason and revelation is impossible, since they are irreconcilable antagonists. Yet he is also famous for praising the secular regime of liberal democracy as the best regime for all human beings, even though he is well aware that modern philosophers such as Spinoza thought this regime must make use of biblical morality to promote good citizenship. Is democracy, then, both religious and secular? Strauss thought that Spinoza (...) was contradictory in teaching that reason and revelation should be separated from each other while also insisting that a secular democratic politics still requires the biblical morality of charity. The paradox that liberal democracy is both religious and secular, which is central to Spinoza, was dismissed by Strauss as a Machiavellian subterfuge or the cynical attempt to use religion for political purposes. In order to adhere to his dualistic separation of reason and revelation, Strauss turned to ancient Greek political philosophy, particularly the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, as the true ground of liberal democracy since this classical tradition was never exposed to biblical revelation. Yet, the illiberal and hierarchical implications of Greek political thought, which clash with Strauss’s modern views on human individuality and dignity, ultimately take him back to the biblically based philosophies of Spinoza and Kierkegaard, who teach the paradox that the Bible is the true foundation of human freedom. (shrink)

This article examines a thread that runs through Martin Luther’s biblical and catechetical writings: his appropriation of a Messianic logic in light of a creedal interpretation of the whole of Scripture. Situating my case in relation to recent philosophical scholarship on the apostle Paul, I contend that this biblical hermeneutic may well be Luther’s signal ethical contribution for our age. Drawing on the solae and relating them to three themes central to his biblical hermeneutics—the Word of (...) God, Scripture, and the Creeds—I discuss how he develops a Messianic ethics that intrinsically links faith and love in relation to the biblical motifs of command and promise and the Christological themes of cross and incarnation. I conclude by discussing the relevance of Luther’s biblical hermeneutics for a post-secular age. (shrink)

In the introductory chapter to this collection, the editors point out that, until recently, most Anglophone Spinoza scholarship has been focused on the metaphysics and epistemology of the Ethics. But according to Kisner and Youpa, Spinoza thought that metaphysics and epistemology were significant chiefly because they are required for understanding the more important part of his project—the ethical doctrine developed in the last three parts of the work. Ethica was so-titled because it is a book about ethics.In recent years, (...) the scholarly community has begun to shift its attention to bring itself more in line with Spinoza's intentions—to focus more directly on his ethical views. The volume under review presents... (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)

The ontological and epistemological priority of the infinite has been extensively dealt with in Spinoza scholarship. However, Spinoza’s widely debated understanding of the infinite has not figured to the same extent in accounts of his therapy of the passions, the topic which this essay sets out to explore. My reasoning consists of six steps. First, I introduce Spinoza’s cognitive therapy, which claims that we can be healed from our passions by acquiring adequate ideas of them; second, I show that (...) Spinoza’s cognitive therapy is subject to the Affective Force Condition, i.e., the claim that only a stronger affect can defeat another affect ; third, I suggest that the one way an affect can be reliably weakened or strengthened is by us considering its intentional object as necessary or free, respectively; fourth, I argue that we can only adequately ascribe freedom to things if we regard them as absolutely infinite, and necessity to finite things if we can have an adequate idea of them as inscribed in an infinite causal nexus. This presupposes having an adequate idea of the infinite, and so fifth, I ask by which capacity, or from which perspective, we can acquire such an idea, on Spinoza’s view. Sixth, I finally ask whether the infinity of the causal history of a finite thing qualifies as the kind of infinity which we can adequately conceive, and give a tentative answer to this question by situating this infinity in Spinoza’s taxonomy of infinities. (shrink)

The Political Treatise is relatively overlooked in Spinoza's corpus. This is especially true in Anglo-American contexts, where scholarship has been slow to engage with Spinoza's political philosophy, at the expense of a correct understanding of his metaphysics. The reasons for the lack of interest in the Political Treatise are numerous. The immediate and most often cited reason is its incompleteness. Not only does it break off unfinished, but it does so at precisely the point that is essential (...) to its argument; the discussion of democracy. That Spinoza refers to democracy as the "completely absolute state" while leaving the chapter on democracy incomplete would seem to doom Spinoza's... (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)

This dissertation is a systematic study of Spinoza's ethical system as a virtue ethic. Spinoza's ethical theory has been under-appreciated in this regard and has therefore been virtually ignored by contemporary virtue ethicists who have looked almost exclusively to the ancients as a source of insight regarding the virtues. With my dissertation I aim both to contribute to Spinoza scholarship and to provide an historical resource to contemporary ethicists working in the area of virtue. ;The dissertation can (...) be divided into two parts. The first part, Chapters One thru Four, deals mostly with Spinoza's metaethic and the rudiments of Spinoza's normative ethic. These chapters include a discussion of spinozistic value, the dictates of reason and Spinoza's ethical intellectualism. These chapters lay the foundation for the more explicit discussion of Spinoza's virtue ethic that takes place in Chapters Five thru Seven. In these later chapters I focus on the following questions: To what extent is Spinoza's ethical theory properly a virtue ethic? What is the structure of his virtue ethic? Does it resemble any of the virtue ethics of the ancients? In what sense is, as Spinoza insists, virtue its own reward? Is Spinoza's intellectualist virtue ethic internally cogent? I argue, inter alia, that Spinoza's ethical theory is properly a virtue ethic, that it does differ in interesting ways---particularly methodologically---from most ancient virtue ethics and that Spinoza recognizes three distinct benefits for those who live virtuously. ;In the final chapter I treat what I take to be the central issue regarding the cogency of Spinoza's intellectualist virtue ethic. Does the intellectual state that Spinoza identifies with virtue and advocates cultivating deliver on what it promises in terms of the rewards of virtue? The answer, I argue, is that it does not. However, I further argue that Spinoza's ethical theory is not thereby devastated. There is room for a sympathetic spinozean to remedy this defect. The defect merely reveals that there is significant ethical theorizing, beyond what Spinoza himself provides, that needs to be done. (shrink)

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1972.

The two manuscripts of the Korte Verhanedling that were discovered in the mid-nineteenth century contain two appendices. These appendices are even more enigmatic than the KV itself, and it is the first appendix that is the subject of this study. Unfortunately, there are very few studies of this text, and its precise nature seems to be still in question after more than a century and a half of scholarship. It is commonly assumed that the appendices were written after the (...) body of the KV and I am not going to challenge this assumption. The first appendix is written in a geometric manner, and it contains seven axioms and four propositions. Strikingly, it does not include any definitions. This is in sharp contrast with Spinoza's Ethics and his 1663 book on Descartes' Principles of Philosophy, which are similarly written in a geometric manner but include both definitions and axioms. One could perhaps suspect that the text we currently have is merely a fragment from a more extensive work which included definitions. In my paper, I will show that this is not the case, and that the first appendix belongs to a genuine work of Spinoza that never contained definitions. I would further argue that the first appendix is most probably the earliest draft we currently have of Spinoza's magnum opus, the Ethics, but we have a long way to go before we reach that conclusion. (shrink)

These volumes in Bloomsbury's series of studies in continental philosophy arise from the editors' and authors' conviction that a study of Spinoza's views about authority can be productive politically. The volumes include works of scholarship, then, but scholarship with a purpose beyond that of understanding Spinoza. The editors and authors take Spinoza to have enduring relevance for the criticism of and resistance to harmful power structures in society today. The essays ought to be read as works themselves (...) on political philosophy and critical theory as well as works on Spinoza. (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)

In this dissertation, I explore the distinction between reason (ratio) and intuitive knowledge (scientia intuitiva) in Spinoza’s Ethics in order to explain the superior affective power of the latter over the former. In addressing this fundamental but relatively unexplored issue in Spinoza scholarship, I suggest that these two kinds of adequate knowledge differ not only in terms of their method, but also with respect to their content. I hold that unlike reason, which is a universal knowledge, intuitive knowledge descends (...) to a level of particularity, including the adequate knowledge of one’s own essence as it follows directly from God, which is a superior form of self-knowledge. Since, for Spinoza, there is an intrinsic relationship between the pursuit of knowledge and how we live our lives, my interpretation of these two ways of knowing is that they are at the same time two ways of living. (shrink)

Despite his importance in philosophical canon, as the editors of the volume under consideration observe, contemporary philosophers without a religious education are not in a great position to examine, for example, Spinoza's analysis of scripture, which comprises a substantial portion of his Theological-Political Treatise. Nevertheless,interest in Spinoza is growing and there is increased willingness to work through questions like "whether the apostles wrote their epistles as apostles and prophets, or as teachers." This is owed in no insignificant part to (...) recent studies in the history of ideas by Jonathan Israel, a contributor to this Critical Guide. Although we would be remiss not to acknowledge that feminist and French philosophers have long approached Spinoza's work synthetically and have sometimes meticulously analyzed his political works, the attentive, philosophical analyses contained in the Critical Guide are a very welcome addition to Spinoza scholarship. (shrink)

One of the central issues of Spinoza scholarship focuses on the status of the attributes. The issue has divided scholars into two groups, which I shall call the objectivists and the subjectivists. Objectivists maintain that the attributes in fact constitute the essence of Substance and that our ideas of these attributes comprise an adequate knowledge of that essence. Subjectivists hold that the attributes are merely inventions of the human intellect which we ascribe to Substance as if they constitute its (...) essence, although our ideas of the attributes do not conform to the actual nature of Substance. The issue is quite complex, and the long history of its discussion has seen the development of a host of arguments for each side. It is not my purpose here to review the entire debate, in part because such a review would be beyond the scope of an article and in part because a very insightful sketch of the most basic arguments has already been produced. Professor Haserot has provided us with a battery of forceful reasons for preferring the objectivist interpretation. In this note I shall merely discuss two heretofore unmentioned arguments from the Short Treatise which corroborate the evidence assembled by the objectivists and which seem to constitute decisive evidence against the subjectivist interpretation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 417-418 [Access article in PDF] Heidi M. Ravven and Lenn E. Goodman, editors. Jewish Themes in Spinoza's Philosophy. Albany: The State University of New York Press, 2002. Pp. ix + 290. Cloth, $78.50. Paper, $26.95.The current anthology presents an important contribution to the study of Spinoza's relation to Jewish philosophy as well as to contemporary scholarship of (...) class='Hi'>Spinoza's metaphysics and political theory.In the opening essay, Lenn Goodman takes upon himself the ambitious task of evaluating Spinoza's positions as to several central disputes throughout the history of philosophy. In this rich and extensive essay Goodman argues that Spinoza's radical rationalism makes him pursue syntheses between traditionally opposed poles. Lee Rice's article, "Love of God in Spinoza," carefully analyzes Spinoza's concept of love and suggests the existence of three kinds of love parallel to the three kinds of knowledge. Warren Montag addresses the unresolved issue of Spinoza's relation to the Kabbalah. Montag sides with Deleuze against the association of Spinozism with the Neo-Platonic theory of emanation, arguing that unlike the Neo-Platonists and Kabbalists, Spinoza's view of God rules out any hierarchy, and does not assume a descent from primal simplicity into complexity. Edwin Curley contributes a beautiful reading of the story of Job and of Maimonides' interpretation of the story. Curley follows Maimonides' discussion of the various positions regarding the question of divine providence and his attempt to identify the speeches of the characters of the book of Job with each of these positions. Following a sensitive consideration of various attempts to [End Page 417] recover Maimonides' own rather concealed view about providence, Curley concludes that "[W]hatever you think Maimonides' final word on Job is, our examination of him certainly supports [Spinoza's] claim that [Maimonides] reads Scripture in terms of Platonic or Aristotelian speculations" (170).Warren Zev Harvey's essay addresses Spinoza's most neglected work, the Compendium of the Grammar of the Hebrew Language. Apart from providing an outline of Spinoza's work as a Hebrew grammarian ("a noun-intoxicated grammarian") and pointing out some of Spinoza's more eccentric views about the nature of the Hebrew language, Harvey makes a compelling case for the importance of the book for the study of Spinoza's metaphysics. He points out a fascinating analogy which Spinoza draws between the parts of speech: (proper) noun, adjectives, and participles, and Spinoza's key metaphysical terms: substance, attributes, and modes. (Think about the weighty implications of this analogy for Curley's interpretation of the substance-mode relation.) According to Harvey, Spinoza's claim that all Hebrew words are derived from nouns is a linguistic parallel to Spinoza's pivotal metaphysical doctrine which makes all things be in the substance (or God). Kenneth Seeskin's article discusses the views of Maimonides and Spinoza on the question of creation and God's relation to the world. Seeskin reconstructs an interesting critical dialogue between these two philosophers. According to Seeskin, both philosophers held that an effect must be similar to its cause. Maimonides' commitment to Negative Theology and to the denial of any common measure between God and finite things forced him to deny causal or explanatory relation between God and the world. What Maimonides can suggest instead is rather to prove that the emergence of the world ex nihilo and according to the divine will, is possible, and even likely given certain astronomical facts of medieval science. Thus, Maimonides would hold that "although we have grounds for believing that creation occurred, we will never be in a position to say how" (120). For Spinoza, such a view constitutes nothing but a "sanctuary of ignorance." Thus, according to Seeskin, Spinoza affirms a clear causal relation between God and the world of finite things insofar as God is said to explain the world. While I tend to agree with most aspects of this analysis, it is important to note that Spinoza also claims that "between the finite and infinite there is no relation" (Letter 54). This... (shrink)

God Never ChangesOr does he? God has been getting a makeover of late, a "reinvention" that has incited debate and troubled scholars and laypeople alike. Modern theological sectors as diverse as radical feminism and the new “open theism” movement are attacking the classical Christian view of God and vigorously promoting their own images of Divinity.God Under Fire refutes the claim that major attributes of the God of historic Christianity are false and outdated. This book responds to some increasingly popular alternate (...) theologies and the ways in which they cast classical Christian theism in a negative light. Featuring an impressive cast of world-class biblical scholars, philosophers, and apologists, God Under Fire begins by addressing the question, “Should the God of Historic Christianity Be Replaced?” From there, it explores issues as old as time and as new as the inquest into the “openness of God.” How, for instance, does God risk, relate, emote, and change? Does he do these things, and if so, why? These and other questions are investigated with clarity, bringing serious scholarship into popular reach.Above all, this collection of essays focuses on the nature of God as presented in the Scriptures and as Christians have believed for centuries. God Under Fire builds a solid and appealing case for the God of classical Christian theism, who in recent years—as through the centuries—has been the God under fire. (shrink)

Books reviewed:John Barton and John Muddiman, The Oxford Bible CommentaryLuke Timothy Johnson and William S. Kurz, The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A Constructive ConversationDavid R. Bauer, An Annotated Guide to Biblical Resources for MinistryDavid Martin, John Orme Mills and W. S. F. Pickering, Sociology and Theology: Alliance and ConflictRichard K. Fenn, The Return of the Primitive: A New Sociological Theory of ReligionJoseph Blenkinsopp, Treasures Old and New: Essays in the Theology of the PentateuchJohn Jarick, 1 ChroniclesMartin (...) Hengel, The Septuagint As Christian Scripture: Its Prehistory and the Problem of Its CanonTricia Gates Brown, Spirit in the Writings of John: Johannine Pneumatology in Social‐Scientific PerspectiveFrederick H. Cryer and Thomas L. Thompson, Qumran between the Old and New TestamentOtto Kaiser, The Old Testament Apocrypha: An IntroductionDavid A. deSilva, Introducing the Apocrypha: Message, Context, and SignificanceMarie E. Isaacs, Reading Hebrews and James: A Literary and Theological CommentaryUwe Michael Lang, Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical PrayerWendy E. Sproston North, The Lazarus Story within the Johannine TraditionAlan Kreider, The Origins of Christendom in the WestBernard Hamilton, The Christian World of the Middle AgesH. E. J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085G. R. Evans, The Medieval Theologians: An Introduction to Theology in the Medieval PeriodNicholas Vincent, The Holy Blood: King Henry III and the Westminster Blood RelicRichard Dutton, Alison Findlay and Richard Wilson, Theatre and Religion: Lancastrian ShakespeareHoward Kreisel, Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish PhilosophyHeinz Halm, Shi'ism Carl W. Ernst, Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary WorldMark D. Meyerson and Edward D. English, Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Spain: Interaction and Cultural ChangeBruce Masters, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of SectarianismMatthew Dillon, Girls and Women in Classical Greek ReligionJane E. A. Dawson, The Politics of Religion in the Age of Mary, Queen of Scots: The Earl of Argyll and the Struggle for Britain and IrelandSteven Nadler, Spinoza: A LifeDabney Townsend, Hume's Aesthetic Theory: Taste and SentimentImmanuel Kant, Theoretical Philosophy after 1781Felicity McCutcheon, Religion Within the Limits of Language Alone: Wittgenstein on Philosophy and ReligionEmyr Vaughan Thomas, Wittgensteinian Values: Philosophy, Religious Belief and Descriptivist MethodologyTerry Nardin, The Philosophy of Michael OakeshottKirk Ludwig, Donald DavidsonMartin Heidegger, Off the Beaten TrackFrank Lambert, ‘Pedlar in Divinity’: George Whitefield and the Transatlantic RevivalsDeclan Marmion, A Spirituality Of Everyday Faith: A Theological Investigation of the Notion of Spirituality in Karl RahnerHugh Rayment‐Pickard, Impossible God: Derrida's TheologyJoseph Pearce, Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc. (shrink)

"Of Children, Fools, and Madmen: Spinoza's Scientific Method and the Constraints of Fact" Spinoza has been largely ignored in the history of the scientific method in the seventeenth century. Such neglect is unjustified insofar as Spinoza deliberately circumscribed with scientific method both Biblical hermeneutics (TTP), a field which he deserves credit for founding, and political theory (TP). Although he wrote no discrete discourse on method, he wove his scientific methodological principles into the fabric of his philosophical treatises.

The theme of the conflict between the different interpretations of Spinoza’s philosophy in French scholarship, introduced by Christopher Norris in this volume and expanded on by Alain Badiou, is also central to the argument presented in this chapter. Indeed, this chapter will be preoccupied with distinguishing the interpretations of Spinoza by two of the figures introduced by Badiou. The interpretation of Spinoza offered by Gilles Deleuze in Expressionism in Philosophy provides an account of the dynamic changes or transformations of (...) the characteristic relations of a Spinozist finite existing mode, or human being. This account has been criticized more or less explicitly by a number of commentators, including Charles Ramond. Rather than providing a defence of Deleuze on this specific point, which I have done elsewhere, what I propose to do in this chapter is provide an account of the role played by “joyful passive a affections” in these dynamic changes or transformations by distinguishing Deleuze’s account of this role from that offered by one of his more explicit critics on this issue, Pierre Macherey. An appreciation of the role played by “joyful passive affections” in this context is crucial to understanding how Deleuze’s interpretation of Spinoza is implicated in his broader philosophical project of constructing a philosophy of difference. The outcome is a position that, like Badiou in the previous chapter, rules out “intellect in potentiality” but maintains a role for the joyful passive affects in the development of adequate ideas. (shrink)