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9364The Causes of Our Belief in Free Will: Spinoza on Necessary, ‘Innate,’ yet False CognitionIn Spinoza’s Ethics: A Critical Guide, Cambridge University Press. 2017.This chapter will discuss Spinoza’s critique of free will, though our brief study of this topic in the first part of the chapter will aim primarily at preparing us to address the main topic of the chapter, which is Spinoza’s explanation of the reasons which force us to believe in free will. At times, Spinoza seems to come very close to asserting the paradoxical claim that we are not free to avoid belief in free will. In the second part of the chapter I will closely examine Spinoza’s etiological …Read more
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7208“Omnis determinatio est negatio” – Determination, Negation and Self-Negation in Spinoza, Kant, and HegelIn Eckart Förster & Yitzhak Y. Melamed (eds.), Spinoza and German Idealism, Cambridge University Press. 2012.Spinoza ’s letter of June 2, 1674 to his friend Jarig Jelles addresses several distinct and important issues in Spinoza ’s philosophy. It explains briefly the core of Spinoza ’s disagreement with Hobbes’ political theory, develops his innovative understanding of numbers, and elaborates on Spinoza ’s refusal to describe God as one or single. Then, toward the end of the letter, Spinoza writes: With regard to the statement that figure is a negation and not anything positive, it is obvious that matt…Read more
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5703The Building Blocks of Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance, Attributes and ModesIn Michael Della Rocca (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Spinoza, Oxford University Press. pp. 84-113. 2017.
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2878The Enigma of Spinoza's Amor Dei IntellectualisIn Noa Naaman (ed.), Descartes and Spinoza on the Passions, Cambridge University Press. pp. 222-238. 2019.The notion of divine love was essential to medieval Christian conceptions of God. Jewish thinkers, though, had a much more ambivalent attitude about this issue. While Maimonides was reluctant to ascribe love, or any other affect, to God, Gersonides and Crescas celebrated God’s love. Though Spinoza is clearly sympathetic to Maimonides’ rejection of divine love as anthropomorphism, he attributes love to God nevertheless, unfolding his notion of amor Dei intellectualis at the conclusion of his E…Read more
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1855Spinoza's Deification of ExistenceOxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy 6 75-104. 2013.The aim of this paper is to clarify Spinoza’s views on some of the most fundamental issues of his metaphysics: the nature of God’s attributes, the nature of existence and eternity, and the relation between essence and existence in God. While there is an extensive literature on each of these topics, it seems that the following question was hardly raised so far: What is, for Spinoza, the relation between God’s existence and the divine attributes? Given Spinoza’s claims that there are intimate conn…Read more
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1527Spinoza's Anti-HumanismIn Smith Justin & Fraenkel Carlos (eds.), The Rationalists, Springer/synthese. 2010.A common perception of Spinoza casts him as one of the precursors, perhaps even founders, of modern humanism and Enlightenment thought. Given that in the twentieth century, humanism was commonly associated with the ideology of secularism and the politics of liberal democracies, and that Spinoza has been taken as voicing a “message of secularity” and as having provided “the psychology and ethics of a democratic soul” and “the decisive impulse to… modern republicanism which takes it bearings by…Read more
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1453Cohen, Spinoza, and the Nature of PantheismJewish Studies Quarterly 171-180. 2018.The German text of Cohen’s Spinoza on State & Religion, Judaism & Christianity (Spinoza über Staat und Religion, Judentum und Christentum) first appeared in 1915 in the Jahrbuch für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur. Two years before, in the winter of 1913, Cohen taught a class and a seminar on Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. This was Cohen’s first semester at the Hochschule, after retiring from more than thirty years of teaching at …Read more
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1443Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Thought: Parallelisms and the Multifaceted Structure of IdeasPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 86 (3): 636-683. 2012.In this paper, I suggest an outline of a new interpretation of core issues in Spinoza’s metaphysics and philosophy of mind. I argue for three major theses. (1) In the first part of the paper I show that the celebrated Spinozistic doctrine commonly termed “the doctrine of parallelism” is in fact a confusion of two separate and independent doctrines of parallelism. Hence, I argue that our current understanding of Spinoza’s metaphysics and philosophy of mind is fundamentally flawed. (2) The clari…Read more
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1307Eternity in Early Modern PhilosophyIn Yitzhak Y. Melamed (ed.), Eternity: A History, Oxford University Press. pp. 129-167. 2016.Modernity seemed to be the autumn of eternity. The secularization of European culture provided little sustenance to the concept of eternity with its heavy theological baggage. Yet, our hero would not leave the stage without an outstanding performance of its power and temptation. Indeed, in the first three centuries of the modern period – the subject of the third chapter by Yitzhak Melamed - the concept of eternity will play a crucial role in the great philosophical systems of the period. The fir…Read more
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1220God-Intoxicated Man: The Philosopher who denied the WorldTLS: The Times Literary Supplement. 2020.
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1093Hegel, Spinoza, and McTaggart on the Reality of TimeInternationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus / International Yearbook of German Idealism 14 211-234. 2016.In this paper, I study one aspect of the philosophical encounter between Spinoza and Hegel: the question of the reality of time. The precise reconstruction of the debate will require a close examination of Spinoza's concept of tempus (time) and duratio (duration), and Hegel's understanding of these notions. Following a presentation of Hegel's perception of Spinoza as a modern Eleatic, who denies the reality of time, change and plurality, I turn, in the second part, to look closely at Spinoza's …Read more
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1088“Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Substance”In Garrett Don (ed.), Don Garrett (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming., Cambridge Up. pp. 61-112. 2021.‘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 mo…Read more
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1016The Sirens of Elea: Rationalism, Monism and Idealism in SpinozaIn Antonia Lolordo & Duncan Stewart (eds.), Debates in Early Modern Philosophy, Blackwell. 2012.The main thesis of Michael Della Rocca’s outstanding Spinoza book (Della Rocca 2008a) is that at the very center of Spinoza’s philosophy stands the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR): the stipulation that everything must be explainable or, in other words, the rejection of any brute facts. Della Rocca rightly ascribes to Spinoza a strong version of the PSR. It is not only that the actual existence and features of all things must be explicable, but even the inexistence – as well as the absence…Read more
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999Spinoza on Causa SuiIn Yitzhak Y. Melamed (ed.), Blackwell Companion to Spinoza, Blackwell. pp. 116-125. 2021.The very first line of Spinoza’s magnum opus, the Ethics, states the following surprising definition: By cause of itself I understand that whose essence involves existence, or that whose nature cannot be conceived except as existing [Per causam sui intelligo id, cujus essentia involvit existentiam, sive id, cujus natura non potest concipi, nisi existens]. As we shall shortly see, for many of Spinoza’s contemporaries and predecessors the very notion of causa sui was utterly absurd, akin to a Ba…Read more
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982"Spinoza's Metaphysics and His Relationship to Hegel and the German Idealists"An Interview with Richard Marshall. 3:AM Magazine. 2017.
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933Why Spinoza is Not an Eleatic Monist (Or Why Diversity Exists)In Philip Goff (ed.), Spinoza on Monism, Palgrave. 2011.“Why did God create the World?” is one of the traditional questions of theology. In the twentieth century this question was rephrased in a secularized manner as “Why is there something rather than nothing?” While creation - at least in its traditional, temporal, sense - has little place in Spinoza’s system, a variant of the same questions puts Spinoza’s system under significant pressure. According to Spinoza, God, or the substance, has infinitely many modes. This infinity of modes follow from…Read more
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895Charitable Interpretations and the Political Domestication of Spinoza, or, Benedict in the Land of the Secular ImaginationIn Justin Smith, Eric Schliesser & Mogens Laerke (eds.), The Methodology of the History of Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2013.In a beautiful recent essay, the philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong explains the reasons for his departure from evangelical Christianity, the religious culture in which he was brought up. Sinnot-Armstrong contrasts the interpretive methods used by good philosophers and fundamentalist believers: Good philosophers face objections and uncertainties. They follow where arguments lead, even when their conclusions are surprising and disturbing. Intellectual honesty is also required of scholars who in…Read more
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823“ ‘Let the Law Cut through the Mountain’: Salomon Maimon, Moses Mendelssohn, and Mme. Truth”In Lukas Muehlethaler (ed.), Höre die Wahrheit, wer sie auch spricht, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. pp. 70-76. 2014.Moses Maimonides was a rare kind of radical. Being a genuine Aristotelian, he recommended following the middle path and avoiding extremism. Yet, within the sphere of Jewish philosophy and thought, he created a school of philosophical radicalism, inspiring Rabbis and thinkers to be unwilling to compromise their integrity in searching for the truth, regardless of where their arguments might lead. Both Spinoza and Salomon Maimon inherited this commitment to uncompromising philosophical inquiry. But…Read more
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782Spinoza and the Kabbalah: From the Gate of Heaven to the ‘Field of Holy Apples’In Cristina Cisiu (ed.), Early Modern Philosophy & the Kabbalah, . forthcoming.In the first part of this paper we will consider the likely extent of Spinoza’s exposure to Kabbalistic literature as he was growing up in Amsterdam. In the second part we will closely study several texts in which Spinoza seems to engage with Kabbalistic doctrines. In the third and final part we will study the role of the two crucial doctrines of emanation and pantheism (or panentheism), in Spinoza’s system and in the Kabbalistic literature.
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717Hasdai Crescas and Spinoza on Actual Infinity and the Infinity of God’s AttributesIn Steven Nadler (ed.), Spinoza and Jewish Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 204-215. 2014.The seventeenth century was an important period in the conceptual development of the notion of the infinite. In 1643, Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647)—Galileo’s successor in the chair of mathematics in Florence—communicated his proof of a solid of infinite length but finite volume. Many of the leading metaphysicians of the time, notably Spinoza and Leibniz, came out in defense of actual infinity, rejecting the Aristotelian ban on it, which had been almost universally accepted for two millenni…Read more
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712Teleology in Jewish Philosophy: Early Talmudists till SpinozaIn Jeffrey K. McDonough (ed.), Teleology: A History, Oxford University Press. pp. 123-149. 2020.Medieval and early modern Jewish philosophers developed their thinking in conversation with various bodies of literature. The influence of ancient Greek – primarily Aristotle (and pseudo-Aristotle) – and Arabic sources was fundamental for the very constitution of medieval Jewish philosophical discourse. Toward the late Middle Ages Jewish philosophers also established a critical dialogue with Christian scholastics. Next to these philosophical corpora, Jewish philosophers drew significantly upon R…Read more
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647“Spinoza’s Respublica divina:” in Otfried Höffe (ed.), Baruch de Spinozas Tractatus theologico-politicus (Berlin: Akademie Verlag (Klassiker Aulegen), forthcoming).In Otfried Höffe (ed.), Baruch de Spinozas Tractatus theologico-politicus, Akademie Verlag (klassiker Aulegen). pp. 177-192. 2013.Chapters 17 and 18 of the TTP constitute a textual unit in which Spinoza submits the case of the ancient Hebrew state to close examination. This is not the work of a historian, at least not in any sense that we, twenty-first century readers, would recognize as such. Many of Spinoza’s claims in these chapters are highly speculative, and seem to be poorly backed by historical evidence. Other claims are broad-brush, ahistorical generalizations: for example, in a marginal note, Spinoza refers to his…Read more
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639Eternity a History (edited book)Oxford University Press USA. 2016.Eternity is a unique kind of existence that is supposed to belong to the most real being or beings. It is an existence that is not shaken by the common wear and tear of time. Over the two and half millennia history of Western philosophy we find various conceptions of eternity, yet one sharp distinction between two notions of eternity seems to run throughout this long history: eternity as timeless existence, as opposed to eternity as existence in all times. Both kinds of existence stand in sharp …Read more
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638Spinoza’s Metaphysics of SubstancePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 78 (1): 17-82. 2008.In his groundbreaking work of 1969, Spinoza's Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation, Edwin Curley attacked the traditional understanding of the substance-mode relation in Spinoza, which makes modes inhere in the substance. Curley argued that such an interpretation generates insurmountable problems, as had been already claimed by Pierre Bayle in his famous entry on Spinoza. Instead of having the modes inhere in the substance Curley suggested that the modes’ dependence upon the substance should…Read more
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638“ ’Scientia Intuitiva’: Spinoza’s Third Kind of Cognition”In Johannes Haag (ed.), Übergänge - diskursiv oder intuitiv? Essays zu Eckart Förster die 25 Jahre der Philosophie, Klostermann. pp. 99-116. 2013.I am not going to solve in this paper the plethora of problems and riddles surrounding Spinoza’s scientia intuitiva, but I do hope to break some new ground and help make this key doctrine more readily understandable. I will proceed in the following order (keep in mind the word ‘proceed’). I will first provide a close preliminary analysis of the content and development of Spinoza’s discussion of scientia intuitiva in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and the Ethics. In the second pa…Read more
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630Schopenhauer on Spinoza: Animals, Jews, and EvilIn David Bather Woods & Timothy Stoll (eds.), The Schopenhauerian mind, Routledge. 2023.Schopenhauer’s philosophical engagement with Spinoza spreads over many fronts, and an adequate – not to say, complete – treatment of the topic, should cover at least the following issues: Schopenhauer’s critique (and misunderstanding) of Spinoza’s pivotal concept of causa sui; Schopenhauer’s claim that Spinoza confused reason [ratio] and cause [causa]; the relationship between Schopenhauer’s and Spinoza’s monisms; the eminent role that both philosophers assign to causality; and finally, Scho…Read more
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609““Deus sive Vernunft: Schelling’s Transformation of Spinoza’s God”In G. Anthony Bruno (ed.), Schelling’s Philosophy: Freedom, Nature, and Systematicity, Oxford University Press. pp. 93-115. 2020.On 6 January 1795, the twenty-year-old Schelling—still a student at the Tübinger Stift—wrote to his friend and former roommate, Hegel: “Now I am working on an Ethics à la Spinoza. It is designed to establish the highest principles of all philosophy, in which theoretical and practical reason are united”. A month later, he announced in another letter to Hegel: “I have become a Spinozist! Don’t be astonished. You will soon hear how”. At this period in his philosophical development, Schelling had be…Read more
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574The metaphysics of the Theological-Political TreatiseIn Yitzhak Y. Melamed & Michael A. Rosenthal (eds.), Spinoza's 'Theological-Political Treatise': A Critical Guide, Cambridge University Press. 2010.
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Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
19th Century Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Metaphilosophy |
Metaphysics |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Political Theory |