•  88
    Was Spinoza a Naturalist?
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 96 (1): 77-99. 2014.
    In this article I dispute the claim, made by several contemporary scholars, that Spinoza was a naturalist. ‘Naturalism’ here refers to two distinct but related positions in contemporary philosophy. The first, ontological naturalism, is the view that everything that exists possesses a certain character permitting it to be defined as natural and prohibiting it from being defined as supernatural. I argue that the only definition of ontological naturalism that could be legitimately applied to Spinoz…Read more
  •  84
    Spinoza and the Dutch Cartesians on Philosophy and Theology
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 51 (4): 567-588. 2013.
    In This Paper I Aim to Place Spinoza’s famous injunction in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, to separate philosophy from theology, in its historical context. I contend that in order to properly understand Spinoza’s views concerning the relationship between philosophy and theology, we must view his work in the context of philosophical discussions taking place during his time and in his country of residence, the Dutch Republic. Of particular relevance is a meta-philosophical thesis advocated by…Read more
  •  57
    Spinoza's ethics : A reader's guide
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 17 (3). 2009.
  •  48
    Quatenus and Spinoza’s Monism
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 56 (2): 261-280. 2018.
    spinoza holds that god is the only substance and that ordinary things are modes of that substance. Precisely what this entails as a metaphysical thesis is a matter of contention, but it has been criticized on logical grounds. Briefly, the criticism is as follows. Assuming that only a substance can be a proper subject of predication, it follows from Spinoza’s thesis that all predications correctly made of ordinary things must be properly made of God.1 This leads to contradiction. As some read him…Read more
  •  46
    Descartes's critique of the syllogistic
    History of Philosophy Quarterly 34 (4). 2017.
    This article presents a novel reading of Descartes’s critique of the traditional syllogistic. The reading differs from those previously presented by scholars who regard Descartes’s critique as a version of a well-known argument: that syllogisms are circular or non-ampliative and thus trivial. It is argued that Descartes did not see syllogisms as defective in themselves. For him the problem was rather that anyone considering a valid and informative syllogism must already know, by an intuition who…Read more
  •  38
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 20, Issue 1, Page 208-211, January 2012
  •  35
    Susan Stebbing’s Logical Interventionism
    History and Philosophy of Logic 42 (2): 101-117. 2021.
    We examine a contribution L. Susan Stebbing made to the understanding of critical thinking and its relation to formal logic. Stebbing took expertise in formal logic to authorise logical intervention in public debate, specifically in assessing of the validity of everyday reasoning. She held, however, that formal logic is purely the study of logical form. Given the problems of ascertaining logical form in any particular instance, and that logical form does not always track informal validity, it is…Read more
  •  33
    Christoph Wittich's Anti-Spinoza
    Intellectual History Review 24 (2): 153-166. 2014.
  •  32
    VII—Spinoza’s Unquiet Acquiescentia
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 120 (2): 145-163. 2020.
    For Spinoza, the highest thing we can hope for is acquiescentia in se ipso—acquiescence in oneself. As an ethical ideal, this might appear as a complacent quietism, a licence to accept the way you are and give up hope of improving either yourself or the world. I argue that the opposite is the case. Self-acquiescence in Spinoza’s sense is a very challenging goal: it requires a form of self-understanding that is extremely difficult to attain. It also involves occupying a daring and radical politic…Read more
  •  32
    Spinoza on Reason, by Michael LeBuffe
    Mind 127 (507): 929-937. 2018.
    Spinoza on Reason, by LeBuffeMichael. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp xi + 217.
  •  28
    Collingwoods Reading of Spinozas Psychology
    Collingwood and British Idealism Studies 18 (1): 65-80. 2012.
    Near the end of his Ethics, Spinoza develops a theory that '[a]n affect which is a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it.' Recent commentators have found this theory to be radically implausible in light of some of Spinoza's other metaphysical and epistemological commitments. I defend Spinoza on this point. Having done so, I examine R.G. Collingwood's reading of the theory, presented in The Principles of Art. Collingwood's reading proposes that passions…Read more
  •  25
    Spinoza’s Theophany - The Expression of God’s Nature by Particular Things
    Journal of Early Modern Studies 11 (2): 49-69. 2023.
    What does Spinoza mean when he claims, as he does several times in the Ethics, that particular things are expressions of God’s nature or attributes? This article interprets these claims as a version of what is called theophany in the Neoplatonist tradition. Theophany is the process by which particular things come to exist as determinate manifestations of a divine nature that is in itself not determinate. Spinoza’s understanding of theophany diverges significantly from that of the Neoplatonist Jo…Read more
  •  21
    The philosophy of debt
    The Philosophers' Magazine 72 43-44. 2016.
  •  21
    Spinoza, money, and desire
    European Journal of Philosophy 26 (4): 1209-1221. 2018.
    In the context of Spinoza's psychological and political theory, money appears as a profound social problem. I agree with Frédéric Lordon and André Orléan that Spinoza's psychological theory can explain how multiple agents can converge on a single monetary good as a means of payment. I disagree, however, with their further claim that this convergence brings an end to rivalrous conflict among those agents. Instead, I argue, it intensifies and concentrates this rivalry, threatening the very bonds t…Read more
  •  19
    Spinoza’s Theophany
    Journal of Early Modern Studies 11 (2): 49-69. 2022.
    What does Spinoza mean when he claims, as he does several times in the Ethics, that particular things are expressions of God’s nature or attributes? This article interprets these claims as a version of what is called theophany in the Neoplatonist tradition. Theophany is the process by which particular things come to exist as determinate manifestations of a divine nature that is in itself not determinate. Spinoza’s understanding of theophany diverges significantly from that of the Neoplatonist Jo…Read more
  •  17
    How to Make the Passions Active: Spinoza and R.G. Collingwood
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 85 237-249. 2019.
    Most early modern philosophers held that our emotions are always passions: to experience an emotion is to undergo something rather than to do something. Spinoza is different; he holds that our emotions – what he calls our ‘affects’ – can be actions rather than passions. Moreover, we can convert a passive affect into an active one simply by forming a clear and distinct idea of it. This theory is difficult to understand. I defend the interpretation R.G. Collingwood gives of it in his book, The Pri…Read more
  •  12
    Public Economics
    The Philosophers' Magazine 76 47-52. 2017.
  •  11
    Work Cut Out For Us
    The Philosophers' Magazine 90 44-49. 2020.
  •  11
    The Collected Works of Spinoza, Vol. 2 (review)
    The Leibniz Review 26 199-206. 2016.
  •  9
    Alexander X. Douglas situates Spinoza's philosophy in its immediate historical context, and argues that much of his work was conceived with the aim of rebutting the claims of his contemporaries. In contrast to them, Spinoza argued that philosophy reveals the true nature of God, and reinterpreted the concept of God in profound and radical ways.
  •  7
    Can philosophy be a source of hope? Today it is common to believe that the answer is no - that providing hope, if it is possible at all, belongs either to the predictive sciences or to religion. In this exciting and simulating book, however, Alexander Douglas argues that the philosophy of Spinoza can offer something akin to religious hope. Douglas shows how Spinoza is able, without appealing to belief in any traditional afterlife or supernatural grace, to develop a profound and original theory o…Read more
  •  5
    The idea that our economic institutions should be designed meritocratically is back as a hot topic in western academic circles. At the same time political meritocracy is once again a subject of philosophical discussion, with some Western philosophers embracing epistocracy and Confucianism being revived among Eastern philosophers. This survey has the ambition, first, of putting differing strands of this literature into dialogue with each other: the economic with the political, and the Western wit…Read more
  •  5
    The Philosophy of Debt
    Routledge. 2015.
    I owe you a dinner invitation, you owe ten years on your mortgage, and the government owes billions. We speak confidently about these cases of debt, but is that concept clear in its meaning? This book aims to clarify the concept of debt so we can find better answers to important moral and political questions. This book seeks to accomplish two things. The first is to clarify the concept of debt by examining how the word is used in language. The second is to develop a general, principled account o…Read more