A Companion to Spinoza E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Blackwell Companions to Philosophy
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1700

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

An unparalleled collection of original essays on Benedict de Spinoza's contributions to philosophy and his enduring legacy

A Companion to Spinoza presents a panoramic view of contemporary Spinoza studies in Europe and across the Anglo-American world. Designed to stimulate fresh dialogue between the analytic and continental traditions in philosophy, this extraordinary volume brings together 53 original essays that explore Spinoza's contributions to Western philosophy and intellectual history. A diverse team of established and emerging international scholars discuss new themes and classic topics to provide a uniquely comprehensive picture of one of the most influential metaphysicians of all time.

Rather than simply summarizing the body of existing scholarship, the Companion develops new ideas, examines cutting-edge scholarship, and suggests directions for future research. The text is structured around six thematically-organized sections, exploring Spinoza's life and background, his contributions to metaphysics and natural philosophy, his epistemology, politics, ethics, and aesthetics, the reception of Spinoza in the work of philosophers such as Kant, Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Hegel, and more. This unparalleled research collection combines a timely overview of the current state of research with deep coverage of Spinoza's philosophy, legacy, and influence.

Part of the celebrated Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series, A Companion to Spinoza is an ideal text for advanced courses in modern philosophy, intellectual history, and the history of metaphysics, and an indispensable reference for researchers and scholars in Spinoza studies.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Series Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Notes on Contributors

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Part I: Life and Background

1 Spinoza’s Life

1. Family

2. The Amsterdam Years (1632–ca. 1660)

3. Spinoza in Rijnsburg (ca. 1660/61–April 1663)

4. Spinoza in Voorburg (April 1663–Winter 1669/70)

5. Spinoza in The Hague (1669/70–1677)

6. Final Years (1675–1677)

References

Further Reading

2 Spinoza Philology

1. Introduction

2. Historical Background

3. Spinoza’s Works

4. The Development of Spinoza Philology in Outline

References

3 Avicenna and Spinoza on Essence and Existence

1. From Avicenna to Spinoza

2. Essence: The ‘Definition’

3. Essence and Existence: The Distinction

4. God’s Essence is Existence

5. Essentially Different?

6. Conclusion

References

4 Spinoza and Maimonides on True Religion

1. Definition of Religion

2. The Natural Divine Law and the

Summum Bonum

3. Two Maimonidean Examples of Divine Commandments

4. King Solomon on Wisdom or

Scientia

5. Why Does a Book on Ethics Begin with

Deus

?

6. Conclusion

References

5 Spinoza and Scholastic Philosophy

1. The

CM

as an Intervention in Scholastic Debates

2. The Inseparability of God’s Will and God’s Intellect

Acknowledgments

References

6 Spinoza and Descartes

1. Rewriting Descartes: The

Principles of Philosophy

2. Going beyond Descartes: Method and Metaphysics

3. Transforming Descartes: The Subject of Ethics

4. In the Wake of Descartes: The

libertas philosophandi

References

Further Readings

7 Spinoza’s Dutch Philosophical Background

1. Leiden Scholasticism

2. Dutch Cartesianism

References

Further Reading

8 Spinoza and Hobbes

1. Desire and Causation

2. Emotions and Human Nature

3. Value and the State

4. Conclusion

References

Part II: Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy

9 Spinoza’s Monistic Metaphysics of Substance and Mode

1. The Meaning of the Two Theses

2. Arguments for the Two Theses

3. Spinoza’s Uses of the Two Theses

4. Contemporary Applications of the Two Theses

References

10 Spinoza and Eternity

Acknowledgment

11 Spinoza on

Causa Sui

1.

Causa sui

in Descartes

2. Spinoza’s

Causa (efficiens) sui

3. Defending

Causa (efficiens) sui

4. Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

12 Spinoza’s Physical Picture

References

13 Spinoza’s Mereology

1. Modal Parts and Substantial Indivisibility

2. Spatial Quantity and Divisibility

3. Mereology in the Oldenburg Letter

References

14 Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Time

1. Eternity

2. Duration

3. Time

4. Eternity and geometrical construction

5. The Mind‐Eternity Paradox

6. Three Perspectives

7. The Time‐Eternity Barrier

8. Nested Perspectives

Acknowledgments

References

15 Spinoza’s Infinities

1. Introduction

2. Infinity as Perfection

3. Infinity as Negative Quality

4. Infinity as Positive Quality

5. Infinity as Universal Quantification

6. Summary and Open Questions

Acknowledgments

References

Further Reading

16 Spinoza on Diachronic Identity

1. The Leibnizian Challenge

2. Material Things and Their Identity

3. Mental Things and Their Identity

4. Conclusion

References

17 Spinoza on Relations

1. Introduction

2. Relations as Beings of Reason

3. Relations vs. Universals

4. Concluding Remarks

Acknowledgments

References

18 Spinoza on Numerical Identity and Time

1. Introduction

2. A Puzzle

3. Identity and Discernibility

4. Indiscernibility of Identicals

5. Conclusion

References

19 Spinoza on Universals

1. Spinoza’s Realism

2. Spinoza’s Nominalism

3. Good and Bad Universals

Acknowledgment

References

20 Spinoza’s Ontology of Power

1. E1p9: “The More Reality or Being Each Thing Has, The More Attributes Belong to It”

2. E1p10: “Every Attribute of a Substance Must be Conceived Through Itself”

3. E1p11s: Existence as the Power to Cause, or Produce Effects

4. Conclusion

References

21 Spinoza’s Modal Theory

1. God‐substance

2. Intelligible Necessity

3. Textual Evidence for a Non‐necessitarianist Reading

4. Necessity of Reflective Acts

References

Further Reading

22 Spinoza on Determination

1. Introduction

2. Determination

3. Conclusion

References

23 Spinoza’s Physics

1. Introduction

2. Extended Substance

3. Causation and Attribute‐Neutrality

4. The Power of God and the Power of Bodies

5.

Quantum In Se Est

6. Essences

7. Universality

8. Conclusion

References

Part III: Epistemology, Philosophy of Mind, and Psychology

24 Spinoza on Human and Divine Knowledge

1. Introduction: The Status of Human Knowledge

2. Epistemic Subjectivity and the Human Standpoint

3. Human Cognition at Work

4. God’s Intellect

References

25 Reflective Knowledge

1. Introduction

2. What Is an Idea of an Idea?

3.

Knowing

that One Knows

4. Knowing That One

Knows

5. Reasoning to Metaphysical Foundations

6. Intuiting Metaphysical Foundations

Acknowledgments

References

26 Spinoza Against the Skeptics

1. The Kinds of Skeptics Envisaged by Spinoza

2. The Common Core of Spinoza’s Responses to the Skeptics

3. Spinoza’s Epistemic Confidence

4. Conclusion: The Anti‐/Skeptical Character of Spinoza’s Philosophy

Acknowledgments

References

Further Reading

27 Spinoza on Ideas of Affections

Introduction

1. Sensation in TIE, KV, and CM

2. Ideas of Affections: Sensation or Imagination?

3. Conclusion

Acknowledgment

References

28 The Mind‐Body Union

1. The Nature of Mind and Body Union

2. The Equality between Body and Mind

References

29 Spinoza’s Non‐Theory of Non‐Consciousness

1. “C

onscious

”

and

“C

onsciousness

”

in the

E

thics

2. C

onsciousness

E

xamined

: T

heories of

C

onsciousness in

S

pinoza

3. R

eturning to

T

he

T

exts

4. C

oncluding

R

emarks

References

30 Spinoza on the Passions and the Self

1. Deconstructing the Self

2. The Affective Field

3. Beyond Self and Other

References

31 The Serpent and the Dove: Spinoza’s Two Paths to Enlightenment

1. Beginning the Path

2. Follow the Yellow Brick Road

3. The Serpent

4. The Dove

References

Part IV: Ethics, Politics, and Religion

32 Spinoza’s Moral Philosophy

1. Good and Bad

2. Motivation

3. Virtue

4. Happiness

5. Doing Unto Others

References

33 Spinoza on the Constitution of Animal Species

1. The Limits of Individual Natures

2. A First Argument: Commonality and Agreement

3. A Second Argument: The Right of Nature

4. Conclusion

References

34 Essence, Virtue and the State

1. Essence and Knowledge

2. Freedom and Unity

3. Conclusion

References

35 Law and Dissolution of Law in Spinoza

References

36 Spinoza’s Notion of Freedom

1. Imagination as a Power

2. Imagination, Emulation, and the Free Man

References

37 Spinoza’s “Republican Idea of Freedom”

1. Introduction

2. Spinoza’s Republican Critique of Hobbesian Sovereignty

3. Criticisms of the Republican Idea of Freedom

4. Spinoza’s Response to His Critics

5. Conclusion

References

38 Spinoza and Economics

1. Introduction

2. Spinoza and the Political Problem of Luxury

3. Spinoza’s Mechanism Design

4. Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

39 Spinoza and Feminism

1. Spinoza’s Anti‐Individualism

2. The Conatus Doctrine

3. Anti‐dualism

4. Conclusion

References

40 Spinoza and International Law

1. Introduction

2. Lauterpacht’s Arguments Against Spinoza’s Political Theory as a Robust Basis of International Law

3. Spinoza’s Statements on International Relations in Light of the Ethical Project

4. Concluding Remarks: Towards a Spinozistic Foundation of International Law

References

41 The Intellectual Love of God

References

42 Spinoza and Scripture

1. The Paradox of a Work Saturated with Scriptural References

2. Why Interpret the Bible?

3. The Method and Its Results

4. Evaluation

Bibliography

Part V: Aesthetics and Language

43 Spinoza’s Aesthetics

1. Introduction

2. Anti‐Realist Interpretations

3. Realist Interpretations

4. Conclusion

References

44 Following Traces in the Sand: Spinoza on Semiotics

1. Ontological Premises

2. The Semiosis of Imagination

3.Facies Totius Universi

References

45 Spinoza and the Grammar of the Hebrew Language

1. Sources

2. Structure and Contents of the Work

3. Philosophical Import of the CGH

References

Part VI: Spinoza's Reception

46 Leibniz and Spinoza on Plenitude and Necessity

1. Introduction

2. From Spinoza’s Attributes to Leibnizian Possible Worlds

3. Leibniz’s Reply to Necessitarianism:

per se

Possibility and Essence

4. Conclusion

References

47 Spinoza in France, ca. 1670–1970

1. Introduction

2. The Seventeenth Century

3. The Eighteenth Century

4. The Nineteenth Century

5. The Twentieth Century

6. Conclusion

References

48 Kant and Spinoza

1. Was Kant Engaged with Spinoza’s Philosophy?

2. Points of Convergence

Acknowledgments

Note on Kant References

References

49 Nietzsche and Spinoza

1. Introduction

2. Against Freedom of the Will

3. For Freedom as Self‐Determination

4. Teleology and “

Chaos sive Natura

”

5. Conclusion

Note on Citation, Acknowledgments

References

50 Schelling with Spinoza on Freedom

1. Pantheism Controversy

2. Schelling’s defense of (Spinoza’s) Pantheism

3. Critique of libertarian freedom

4. Schelling’s Departure from Spinoza

Acknowledgments

References

51 Hegel on Spinozism and the Beginning of Philosophy

1. Hegel’s Conception of Philosophy and its Development

2. Spinoza’s Acosmism as the Basis of Philosophy

3. Hegel’s “Refutation” of Spinozism: The Transition from Necessity to Freedom

References

Further Reading

52 Schopenhauer’s Critique of Spinoza’s Pantheism, Optimism, and Egoism

1. Pantheistic and Monotheistic Optimism

2. The “Problem of Evil”

3. Denial of Personal Immortality

4. Ethical Consequences

5. Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

53 Spinoza and Popular Philosophy

1. Introduction

2. Jules Prat and Romain Rolland

3. Isaac Bashevis Singer and Bernard Malamud

4. Irvin D. Yalom

References

Index

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover Page

Series Page

Title Page

Copyright Page

Notes on Contributors

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

Index

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Notes on Contributors

Jean‐Pascal Anfray is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure, PSL University. His research focuses on late scholastic and early modern metaphysics. His recent publications include “The Unity of Composite Substance: Some Scholastic Background to the Vinculum Substantiale in Leibniz’s correspondence with Des Bosses” and “Leibniz and Descartes” (in the Oxford Handbook to Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy).

Dan Arbib is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure (Paris). He is the author of Descartes, la métaphysique et l’infini, the editor of Les Meditationes métaphysiques de Descartes. Objections et Réponses, Un commentaire, and the editor in chief of the Bulletin cartésien. He is also a specialist in Levinas and of the philosophy of Judaism, and is currently preparing a new French translation of the Theological‐Political Treatise.

Barnaby R. Hutchins is a postdoctoral research fellow at Ghent University, Belgium.

Clare Carlisle is Professor of Philosophy and Theology at King's College London. She is the author of several books, including Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard (2019) and Spinoza's Religion (2021), and she is also the editor of Spinoza's Ethics, Translated by George Eliot (2020).

John Carriero is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is author of Between Two Worlds: A Reading of Descartes’s Meditations (Princeton, 2009) and co‐editor, with Janet Broughton, of a Companion to Descartes (Blackwell, 2008). He is currently working on a book on Spinoza’s Ethics.

Emanuele Costa is Visiting Scholar in Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. His scholarship covers themes in early modern philosophy, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion. His publications include several articles on Spinoza, Leibniz, and Hans Jonas.

Luce deLire is a philosopher. She is interested in infinity, metaphysics, and contemporary politics. Find out more at: www.getaphilosopher.com

Moa De Lucia Dahlbeck is a postdoctoral research fellow at the School of Business, Economics and Law, Gothenburg University. She is the author of Spinoza, Ecology and International Law: Radical Naturalism in the Face of the Anthropocene. She currently investigates artificial intelligence and international humanitarian law from the perspective of Spinoza’s metaphysics and political philosophy.

Daniel Dragic´evic´ is a PhD student at the University of Hamburg. His main interests include Spinoza and the philosophy of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (especially German Idealism and Marx). He is about to finish a book titled “On God, Man, and His Freedom” which tries to unfold the nature of Schelling’s Spinozism.

Daniel Garber is the A. Watson Armour III University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. His principal interests are the relations between philosophy, science, religion, and society during the Scientific Revolution. In addition to numerous articles, he is the author of Descartes' Metaphysical Physics (1992), Descartes Embodied (2001), and Leibniz: Body, Substance, Monad (2009) and is co‐editor with Michael Ayers of the Cambridge History of Seventeenth‐Century Philosophy (1998).

Don Garrett is Silver Professor of Philosophy at New York University. He is the author of Cognition and Commitment in Hume’s Philosophy, Hume, and Nature and Necessity in Spinoza’s Philosophy. He is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza.

Zachary Gartenberg is a doctoral student in philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. His articles and reviews have appeared in the Journal of the History of Philosophy, Philosophers' Imprint, the European Journal of Philosophy, the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, and The Leibniz Review.

Moira Gatens is Challis Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. She is author of several articles on Spinoza's philosophy and is currently finishing a book on Spinoza and Art.

Guadalupe González Diéguez is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University de Montréal. She works on medieval Jewish thought, and on the cultural interactions among Jews, Muslims, and Christians in medieval Iberia. She has published a translation into Spanish of Spinoza’s Hebrew Grammar, Compendio de gramática de la lengua hebrea (Trotta, 2005).

Michah Gottlieb is Associate Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. His first monograph Faith and Freedom: Moses Mendelssohn’s Theological Political Thought (2011) focuses on Moses Mendelssohn’s reception of Spinoza and the political ramifications of the Pantheismusstreit. His forthcoming book The Jewish Reformation: Bible Translation and the Middle‐Class German Judaism as Spiritual Enterprise (2021) explores the axiological dimensions of bourgeois German Judaism.

Warren Zev Harvey is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of “A Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean” (1981) and Physics and Metaphysics in Hasdai Crescas (1998). He is an EMET Prize laureate in the humanities (2009).

Karolina Hübner is Associate Professor at the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University. She works primarily in the metaphysics of mind and has published extensively on Spinoza.

Erin Islo is a graduate student in philosophy at Princeton University. Her work focuses on Spinoza and other early modern thinkers, with special regard to the intersection of metaphysics, politics, and law.

Chantal Jaquet is Professor in Early Modern Philosophy at University Paris 1 Panthéon‐Sorbonne. Her research interests include early modern philosophy, philosophy of the body (smell), social philosophy (class‐passing). She has written five books on Spinoza including Affects, Actions and Passions in Spinoza, The Unity of Body and Mind (Edinburgh Press, 2018).

Susan James is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College London. Her main areas of interest are early modern philosophy, feminist philosophy, political philosophy, and the philosophy of art. Among her publications are Passion and Action: The Emotions in Early‐Modern Philosophy (Oxford 1997); Spinoza on Philosophy Religion and Politics: the Theological‐Political Treatise (Oxford, 2012); and Spinoza on Learning to Live Together (Oxford, 2020).

Denis Kambouchner is Professor Emeritus at University Paris 1 Panthéon‐Sorbonne. He is the chief editor of the Complete Works of Descartes (Gallimard, 8 vols, in progress). His publications include L’Homme des passions, Descartes et la philosophie morale, Descartes n’a pas dit and other studies on seventeenth‐century philosophy. He has also published several essays on culture and education, including L’École, question philosophique, and some books for young readers.

Olli Koistinen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Turku, Finland. He works on both early modern philosophy and contemporary metaphysics. His publications include Cambridge Companion to Spinoza’s Ethics (editor, Cambridge 2009), Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes (editor, with John Biro, Oxford, 2002) and many papers on Spinoza, as well publications on Kant and Descartes.

Henri Krop is a Lecturer in the History of Philosophy and Endowed Professor of Spinoza Studies at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is an author and editor of the Bloomsbury Companion to Spinoza and the Dictionary of Seventeenth and Eighteenth‐Century Dutch Philosophers. He has also published an annotated Dutch version of Spinoza’s Ethics.

Raphael Krut‐Landau received his PhD from Princeton University in 2017. Since then he has been a Teaching Fellow in the Integrated Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania. You can find him at plicat.io.

Mogens Lærke is senior researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), affiliated with the Maison Française d'Oxford (MFO) and the research centre IHRIM (UMR 5317) at the ENS de Lyon. Monographs include Leibniz lecteur de Spinoza (2008), Les Lumières de Leibniz (2015), and Spinoza and the Freedom of Philosophizing (2021).

Michael LeBuffe is Professor and Baier Chair of Early Modern Philosophy at the University of Otago. He has interests across early modern philosophy and the History of Ethics. His most recent book is Spinoza on Reason.

Juan Manuel Ledesma Viteri is an assistant professor and doctoral candidate at the Université Paris Nanterre. His field of interest includes metaphysics, ontology, logic, ethics, and political theory. He has mainly published articles on Spinoza.

Lia Levy is a professor of philosophy at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. Her research interests include metaphysics and theory of knowledge in early modern philosophy, with particular attention to Descartes and Spinoza. She is the author of the L'Automate spirituel. La naissance de la subjectivité moderne d'après l'Ethique de Spinoza.

Colin Marshall is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington, Seattle. Alongside various articles on Kant, Spinoza, and Schopenhauer, he is the author of Compassionate Moral Realism and the editor of Comparative Metaethics: Neglected Perspectives on the Foundations of Morality.

Yitzhak Y. Melamed is the Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He works on early modern philosophy, German idealism, medieval philosophy, and some issues in contemporary metaphysics and political philosophy. He is the author of Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance and Thought (Oxford University Press).

Pierre‐François Moreau is professor of philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon. He is the author of Spinoza. L’Expérience et l’éternité. He has also published articles and books on Lucretius, Hobbes, Kant, Victor Cousin, and the history of materialism.

John Morrison is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Barnard College, Columbia University. His research focuses on Spinoza’s metaphysics as well as contemporary debates in the philosophy of mind.

Steven Nadler is the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy and Evjue‐Bascom Professor in Humanities at the University of Wisconsin‐Madison. His authored books include A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age and Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die, and he is co‐editor of the Oxford Handbook to Descartes and Cartesianism.

Stephen R. Ogden is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America. His recent publications include “Avicenna's Emanated Abstraction” and “On a Possible Argument for Averroes’s Single Separate Intellect.” He is revising a book manuscript entitled Averroes on Intellect: From Aristotelian Origins to Aquinas’s Critique.

Dominik Perler is Professor of Philosophy at the Humboldt University, Berlin. His research focuses on medieval and early modern philosophy. His books include Feelings Transformed. Philosophical Theories of the Emotions, 1270–1670 (author), The Faculties: A History (editor) and Causation and Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy (co‐editor).

Alison Peterman is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rochester. She works on metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind, especially from the early modern period. She has written about Spinoza, Cavendish, Newton, Leibniz, and others.

Kristin Primus is an assistant professor at University of California Berkeley. Her recent work on Spinoza has focused on the “infinite modes” and scientia intuitiva. She is currently writing a book on Spinoza's Ethics.

Ursula Renz is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Graz, Austria, and speaker of the working unit History of Philosophy. Her publications include the monographs Die Rationalität der Kultur (2002), The Explainability of Experience (2010 in German, 2018 in English), which won the JHP book prize, as well as Was denn bitte ist kulturelle Identität? Eine Orientierung in Zeiten des Populismus (2019). She has edited a number of volumes including, most recently, Self‐Knowledge: A History (Oxford University Press 2017).

Domenica G. Romagni is an Assistant Professor at Colorado State University. She specializes in early modern philosophy, philosophy of music, and history, and philosophy of science. Her current research focuses on philosophy perception in the seventeenth century, explanatory virtues and scientific theory‐building in the Early Modern period, and musical perception.

Michael A. Rosenthal is Grafstein Professor of Jewish Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is the co‐editor of Spinoza’s Theological‐Political Treatise: A Critical Guide, and the author of articles on early modern, Jewish, and German philosophy. He is currently working on a book on Spinoza’s political philosophy and critique of religion.

José María Sánchez de León Serrano is a research associate at the University of Hamburg. His publications include Zeichen und Subjekt im logischen Diskurs Hegels, and “The Place of Skepticism in Spinoza's Thought.”

Andrea Sangiacomo is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Groningen. He is the author of Spinoza on Reason, Passions, and the Supreme Good (Oxford 2019).

Eric Schliesser is Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. He is the author of Adam Smith: Systematic Philosopher and Public Thinker; and Newton's Metaphysics: Essays, both with Oxford University Press.

Tad M. Schmaltz is a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He specializes in early modern philosophy, and is the author of Malebranche's Theory of the Soul (1996), Radical Cartesianism (2002), Descartes on Causation (2008), Early Modern Cartesianisms (2017), and The Metaphysics of the Material World: Suárez, Descartes, Spinoza (2020).

Stephan Schmid is Professor of the History of Philosophy at the Philosophy Department at Universität Hamburg, Germany, where he is also co‐director of the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies: Jewish Scepticism. He works on epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind in the early modern and late scholastic periods.

Mor Segev is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Florida. His publications include Aristotle on Religion (Cambridge University Press) and “‘Obviously all this Agrees with my Will and my Intellect’: Schopenhauer on Active and Passive Nous in Aristotle’s De Anima III.5,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy.

Hasana Sharp is Associate Professor of the Department of Philosophy at McGill University. Among other works, she is author of Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization and co‐editor, with Yitzhak Melamed, of Spinoza’s Political Treatise: A Critical Guide.

Noa Shein is a senior lecturer in philosophy at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Her publications include “The False Dichotomy between Objective and Subjective Interpretations of Spinoza’s Theory of Attributes” and, more recently, “Not Wholly Finite: The Dual Aspect of Finite Modes in Spinoza.”

Jack Stetter is a visiting assistant professor of philosophy at Loyola University New Orleans. He is co‐editor, with Charles Ramond, of Spinoza in Twenty‐First Century American and French Philosophy (Bloomsbury Academic). He is also co‐editor, with Stephen Howard, of the forthcoming Edinburgh Critical History of Early Modern and Enlightenment Philosophy (Edinburgh University Press). He has published papers on Spinoza and Spinoza’s critics in several venues.

Piet Steenbakkers was a senior lecturer in the history of modern philosophy at Utrecht University, and holder of the chair of Spinoza Studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He retired in 2016 and is currently affiliated with Utrecht University as researcher. With Fokke Akkerman and Pierre‐François Moreau he coedited Spinoza’s Ethica.

Pina Totaro is Senior Researcher at the ILIESI‐CNR in Rome. Her books include: Spinoza, philosophe grammairien. Le Compendium grammatices linguae hebraeae, Paris 2019 (with Jean Baumgarten, Irène Catach); The Vatican Manuscript of Spinoza’s Ethica, Leiden‐New York 2011 (with L. Spruit); Instrumenta mentis. Contributi al lessico filosofico di Spinoza, Florence 2009.

Lorenzo Vinciguerra is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Bologna and Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Amiens. He is author of Spinoza and Sign. The Logic of Imagination and co‐author (with Pierre‐François Moreau) of Spinoza and Arts.

Jason M. Yonover is a dual PhD candidate (Philosophy and German) at Johns Hopkins University. He works primarily in the history of philosophy, with a focus on German thought and its engagement with Spinoza in particular. His work has been published in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy as well as the Goethe Yearbook, and is forthcoming in the European Journal of Philosophy and several other venues.

List of Abbreviations

Descartes’s Works

AT

Adam and Tannery (eds.),

Oeuvres de Descartes

CSM

Cottingham, Stoothoff, and Murdoch (ed. and trans.),

The Philosophical Writings of Descartes

(third volume edited by A. Kenny also)

Hobbes’ Works

EL

Elements of Law

DC

De Cive

(cited by chapter and paragraph)

L

Leviathan

(cited by chapter, page and line number in Malcolm’s edition)

DCo

De Corpore

(cited by part, chapter, paragraph)

Spinoza’s Works

CM

Cogitata Metaphysica

(an appendix to Spinoza’s DPP)

DPP

Renati des Cartes Principiorum Philosophiae Pars I and II

| Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy)

Ep.

Epistolae

| Letters

G

Spinoza Opera

, edited by Carl Gebhardt. 4 vols, 1925.

KV

Korte Verhandeling van God de Mensch en deszelfs Welstand| Short Treatise on God, Man, and his Well‐Being)

TIE

Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione

| Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect

E

Ethica

| Ethics

TTP

Tractatus Theologico‐Politicus

|

Theological Political Treatise

CGH

Compendium Grammatices Linguae Hebraeae| Compendium of Hebrew Grammar

NS

Nagelate Shriften

(1677 Dutch edition of Spinoza’s Works)

Vat

The Vatican Manuscript of Spinoza’s Ethics

, edited by Leen Spruit and Pina Totaro, Leiden, NL: Brill, 2011.

E PUF

Spinoza Oeuvres IV: Ethica

. Texte établi par Fokke Akkerman et Piet Steenbakkers. Traduction par Pierre‐François Moreau. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2020.

Passages in Spinoza’s Ethics are referred to by means of the following abbreviations: a‐(xiom), c‐(orollary), e‐(xplanation), l‐(emma), p‐(roposition), pref‐ (ace), s‐(cholium), and app‐(endix); “d” stands for either “definition” (when it appears immediately to the right of the part of the book) or “demonstration” (in all other cases). The five parts of the Ethics are cited by Arabic numerals. Thus “E1d3” stands for the third definition of Part 1 and “E1p16d” for the demonstration of proposition 16 of Part 1. Passages from DPP are cited using the same system of abbreviations used for the Ethics.

References to Spinoza’s original Latin and Dutch texts rely on the pagination of Spinoza Opera (ed. Carl Gebhardt, 1925) and follow this format: volume number/ page number/ line number. Hence “II/200/12” stands for volume 2, page 200, line 12.

Passages from Adam and Tannery (eds.), Oeuvres de Descartes, are cited by volume and page number. Thus “AT VII 23” stands for page 23 of volume 7 of this edition.

Introduction

The second half of the twentieth century witnessed a substantial surge of interest in Spinoza’s philosophy, first in France and in Europe more generally, and then, toward the end of the century, in North America as well. At present, Spinoza’s philosophical legacy seems remarkably full of promise in comparison with other major figures in the history of philosophy, and it is part of the aim of this Companion to exhibit the vitality, versatility, and vision of scholarly attention devoted to Spinoza in recent years.

As this volume is about to go to press, we read about the just street protest targeting statues of Enlightenment philosophers such as Hume and Kant due to their disturbing racial prejudices. Spinoza, too, was not wholly immune to such prejudice, whether as expressed in his lazy inference that since women are subjugated everywhere, this must be due to their nature (TP 11| III/360/14) – a claim one could expect from many philosophers, but not from one who relishes challenging commonly‐accepted‐yet‐poorly‐justified ‘truisms’ – or his occasional rehashing of anti‐Jewish and anti‐Muslim stereotypes. Still, I believe, it would be fair to say that in comparison with his contemporaries, Spinoza’s views on politics and human equality are far more decent and far less naïve. Indeed, in many ways, his progressive realism is more morally and politically respectable than prevailing attitudes of our time.

The past three centuries have exhibited a wide plurality of different Spinozisms. While Spinoza has been celebrated as a paragon or precursor of a great variety of political stances, none (so far) has been of the monstrous kind. Is it a mere coincidence that the Nazi Kantianism fostered during the Third Reich, has no Spinozist twin? I would like to be able to answer the last question with a solid “no,” but such an answer might be premature, and the question better be left hanging in the air.

The invitation to edit this volume came almost five years ago. At the time, I asked the Blackwell editors to postpone this project by a few years, in order to create a healthy distance between this volume and the Oxford Handbook of Spinoza which came out in 2017. During this long period – about as long as three elephant pregnancies – I have worked with several Blackwell editors: Charlie Hamlyn, Marissa Koors, Rachel Greenberg, Manish Luthra, and Mohan Jayachandran, and I would like to thank each and every one of them for their trust, care, and support.

There are several substantial editorial decisions I wish to explain here briefly. To facilitate diversity (of gender, geography, philosophical tradition, and stage of career development), I have decided to commission a larger number of chapters. This decision has also allowed the Companion to cover topics which are rarely addressed in similar publications. Yet, insofar as the length of the entire Companion had to be restricted within certain reasonable limits, most of the chapters had to be concise. Moreover, in order to recruit top scholars – who are frequently not tempted to write mere summaries and textbook entries – I invited contributors to use their chapters to develop new ideas and cutting‐edge research, rather than merely summarize existing scholarship. Thus, the contributors were placed – by me – in an uneasy and challenging situation: they were asked to provide a brief overview of their subject matter while presenting serious, original scholarship, all in a rather short space. While I do not wish to break the Talmudic rule that a “baker may not attest to the quality of his own loaf,” my personal feeling is that this challenge has been met even better than I could have hoped, and I would like to thank my collaborators in this volume for their immense investment, talent, and intellectual generosity.

In January 2020, the Maimonides Center at Hamburg University hosted a workshop in which a small group of the papers in this volume were presented, and I would like to thank the center and its co‐director, my friend, Stephan Schmid for this generous initiative. Finally, I wish to thank Jonathan Arking, Rosemary Morlin, and Shyamala Venkateswaran, for their outstanding assistance in the copyediting and production of this Companion.

Yitzhak Y. Melamed

Baltimore, MD

June 2020

Part ILife and Background

1Spinoza’s Life

PIET STEENBAKKERS

Apart from his works Spinoza did not leave many traces. Though certainly not a recluse, he led an inconspicuous life. Some periods in it are hardly documented, so that any biography of the philosopher must to some extent be lacunary. The following account of his life is as coherent as the historical material and the format of this Companion permit. This chapter is an extract from a substantially longer, footnoted version that will appear in Garrett (2021), to which I refer for corroboration of the details presented here. My work on Spinoza’s biography has profited greatly from a standing collaboration with Jeroen van de Ven, who is preparing a detailed chronicle of the philosopher’s life.

1. Family

Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632. He died in The Hague in 1677. As far as we know he never left the Dutch Republic. His mother was born in Amsterdam, but his father and his grandparents on both sides were from Portugal. From the end of the sixteenth century onwards, many Sephardic Jews came to Amsterdam to escape from the persecution they suffered in Spain and Portugal. Medieval Iberia (Sepharad in Hebrew) had been ruled by Muslims for a very long time, and though it was not free from oppression, it had allowed Jews to profess their religion. After nearly nine centuries, however, the situation changed dramatically: in 1492 Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile (known as los Reyes Católicos) conquered Spain, and immediately expelled the Jews. Most of them went to Portugal, but in 1497 the Portuguese king Manuel I married the daughter of the Spanish ‘Catholic Monarchs.’ On their insistence, he forced all Jews to convert to Christianity. Those who continued to practice Judaism were, however, not actively persecuted until half a century later. Then many conversos (or ‘New Christians’), who were indiscriminately suspected of Judaizing in secret, fled Portugal to escape the Portuguese Inquisition. In 1580 Spain and Portugal were politically united under Philip II of Spain, and in the decades that followed many Jews sought refuge abroad, often in seaports – so as to stay in touch with their network of overseas merchants. Thus they came to French harbor towns (Bordeaux, Nantes, Rouen) and to Antwerp and Amsterdam in the Low Countries. Many Sephardi immigrants settled on Vlooienburg, an embankment in the river Amstel created in 1593 as part of the urban expansion of Amsterdam.

Michael de Spinoza, the philosopher’s father, was born in 1587 or 1588 in Vidigueira, Portugal. In 1605 his parents, Pedro Rodrigues Espinosa and Mor Alvares, fled to Nantes with their three children. Michael moved to Amsterdam in the early 1620s. Around 1623 he married Rachel de Spinoza, a first cousin. They had two children, both stillborn. Rachel died in 1627. Michael then married Hana Deborah Senior, with whom he had five children: Miriam, Isaac, Bento (or Baruch), Gabriel, and Rebecca. Michael and Hana Deborah named their third child Baruch, after his maternal grandfather (who officially received that name only when he was circumcised after his death in 1647). As a child he was called Bento, the Portuguese translation of Baruch (‘blessed’). The philosopher himself seems not to have used the Hebrew version of his name: he signed legal documents as ‘Bento,’ letters as ‘Benedictus,’ or just the initial ‘B.’ Just before Bento turned six, on 5 November 1638, his mother died. Michael’s third and last marriage, with Hester de Spinoza, remained childless.

Spinoza’s family lived on the edge of Vlooienburgh. The house in which Bento was born and raised, a handsome merchant’s residence on the north quay of the Houtgracht, close to the old Amsterdam synagogue, was pulled down in the nineteenth century. On its premises the Mozes en Aäronkerk was built. The former island of Vlooienburgh has become a square, the Waterlooplein. Michael de Spinoza and his family stayed in the same house for decades, so Bento lived there from his birth on 24 November 1632 up to at least 1656, when he was expelled from the Portuguese‐Jewish community of Amsterdam.

2. The Amsterdam Years (1632–ca. 1660)

As a child Spinoza attended ‘Ets Haim’, a nearby cheder (elementary school). He received a solid Jewish education, though he did not attend the school’s highest forms. He was never trained to become a rabbi, but joined his father’s trading firm in his early teens. Michael de Spinoza was a respected and active member of the Jewish community in Amsterdam. He imported and exported commodities such as raisins, almonds, wine, and olive oil. Bento’s stepmother Hester died in 1652, and his father Michael in 1654. Isaac had died in 1649, Miriam in 1651, and Rebecca moved out in 1650, so after 1654 the two brothers Gabriel and Bento were the only remaining family members still living in the parental home on the Houtgracht. They took over their father’s firm, but it soon became clear that it was weighed down with debts as a result of severe losses in the years 1651–1653, owing to piracy and war. In order to escape bankruptcy, Bento, then 23 years of age, had himself declared a minor under Dutch law and placed under tutelage on 16 March 1656. By this maneuver he was released from the insolvent estate. Apparently Gabriel managed to continue the company on his own until October 1664: he then granted power of attorney to the merchant brothers Moses and David Juda Lion, and set off to Barbados.

On 27 July 1656, just a few months after Spinoza’s spectacular legal escape from the family business, he was ritually expelled from the Amsterdam Jewish community, with a formal ban (herem) pronounced in the synagogue of the Talmud Tora congregation. The exact reasons for the ban are not specified in the archival record we have of it – presumably a summary (in Portuguese) of a lost official text in Hebrew. It states that the synagogue’s board of governors (the Mahamad) expelled ‘Baruch espinoza’ because of his evil opinions and activities, and of the horrible heresies he had practiced and taught, as well as the monstrous acts he had committed. As far as we know, Spinoza had not yet published anything at the time when the herem was promulgated. Yet the wording of its record indicates that teaching heretical ideas was among the abominations he was accused of. To all appearances, Spinoza’s philosophy was already gestating in the middle of the 1650s, in some form or another. As the earliest letters show, he had acquired a reputation as a redoubtable philosopher by 1661. He obviously flourished in the heterodox circles in which he moved in the latter half of the 1650s. Unfortunately, this formative period in Spinoza’s life is very poorly documented. That his philosophical views had something to do with the heresies imputed to him is also asserted in testimonies of two Spanish travelers who had associated with Spinoza in Amsterdam in 1658–1659. Tomás Solano, an Augustinian monk from Tunja (in Colombia, then part of the Spanish empire) and Captain Miguel Pérez de Maltranilla were part of a group that frequently gathered in the residence of Joseph Guerra, a nobleman from the Canary Islands, who was in Amsterdam to be cured of leprosy. Spinoza and another excommunicated Jew, Juan de Prado, often attended these gatherings. In August 1659, Solano and Pérez de Maltranilla were interrogated by the Spanish Inquisition in Madrid, primarily about a Spanish actor who had converted to Judaism in Amsterdam. They also told the Inquisition about their meetings with Spinoza and Prado; according to them these men had been expelled from the Jewish community because of their rejection of Jewish law. Solano in addition mentioned their views that the soul is mortal and that God exists only philosophically.

It would have been possible for Spinoza to be readmitted to the community, if he had made amends. That was a price he did not want to pay. Spinoza accepted the herem as a fact: for him, the break with Judaism was definitive. He never joined another religious denomination either. There are some indications that he reacted to the ban with a written statement, a vindication of his dissent from Judaism. If that is true, it is tempting to assume that part of it may have found its way into his works, particularly the Theological‐Political Treatise.

The five years after Spinoza’s excommunication from the synagogue are shrouded in haze. All contacts with relatives (including his brother and business partner Gabriel) and Jewish acquaintances were severed. It is unlikely that he could have continued to live in the parental home on the Houtgracht with Gabriel. Just what he did in Amsterdam after 1656 and where he lived is a mystery. We know that he associated with freethinking Christians and apostate Jews. He had already befriended Jarig Jelles, Pieter Balling, and Simon Joosten de Vries – Mennonite merchants he had met while still in business. He became acquainted with his future publisher Jan Rieuwertsz, and with Jan Hendriksz Glazemaker, the professional translator who was to translate most of Spinoza’s works. At the age of 25, in 1657–1658, Spinoza attended the private Latin school run by the former Jesuit Franciscus van den Enden. The story that he fell in love with the teacher’s daughter Clara Maria (then 15 years old) has been eagerly exploited in biographical accounts and (more appropriately) in works of art and fiction about the philosopher, but it has an air of romanticized hearsay about it.

In the period between 1656 and 1661, Spinoza was setting out on a new course. One gets the impression that he left Vlooienburgh after the herem and found temporary accommodation with various friends. Thus, he may have lived as a boarder in Van den Enden’s school. His talents burgeoned. By the time he moved to Rijnsburg, Spinoza had gained renown as a philosopher, had mastered the art of grinding lenses, and was proficient in Latin, the international language of scholarly and scientific communication. The genesis of his early works, the Treatise of the Emendation of the Intellect and the Short Treatise of God, Man and his Well‐Being, can be dated from the years before 1662. If the Treatise of the Emendation of the Intellect is indeed, as present‐day scholarship is inclined to assume, the earliest of his extant works, it is likely to have been written during his last years in Amsterdam. Throughout his life, he entertained thoughts of revising and finishing it, but eventually he never updated the manuscript. When his friends decided to publish it as part of his posthumous works in 1677, they revised and polished the unsophisticated or perhaps even awkward Latin in which this early text was written.

In the remaining years in or around Amsterdam, Spinoza moved in various circles, with the common denominator that they were heterodox and tolerant. Quite a few of the people he associated with in the latter half of the 1650s stayed in touch with him and remained loyal friends. When Simon de Vries died in 1667, he remembered Spinoza in his will, leaving him a yearly pension of 250 guilders. Many of his old friends were actively involved in getting Spinoza’s works published: Lodewijk Meyer oversaw the publication of his Principia philosophiae & Cogitata metaphysica in 1663, Pieter Balling supplied a Dutch translation in 1664, and Johannes Bouwmeester and Hendrick van Bronckhorst contributed dedicatory poems. Jan Rieuwertsz published all of Spinoza’s works, both in Latin and in Dutch. Jan Hendriksz Glazemaker translated the remainder of the Latin texts. In 1677 Jarig Jelles, Bouwmeester, Meyer, and Rieuwertsz took care of Spinoza’s philosophical legacy.