Carlisle, Clare. "Spinoza, Part 6: Understanding the Emotions." GUARDIAN March 14, 2011.

In the third book of the Ethics, Spinoza writes that he intends to consider human emotions "as if the surfaces of lines, planes or solids". Because the emotions are just as natural and as law-governed as all other modes, he suggests, they can be studied with mathematical precision. And this means that human behaviour, so often motivated by emotion, must be completely intelligible and explicable.Spinoza criticises people who, believing "that man rather disturbs than follows the order of nature, that he has absolute power over his actions", tend to adopt a misguidedly moralistic attitude. "They refer the cause of human weakness and inconstancy not to the common forces of universal nature, but to I know not what vice in human nature, which they therefore bewail, deride, despise, or more frequently detest." Spinoza thought that it was more fruitful to understand our emotions and actions than to hate or ridicule them.

According to Spinoza, we understand something fully when we know what causes it, and how. From the perspective of his philosophy this is rather a tall order, since everything is connected, and therefore the causes of any particular phenomenon are highly complex. In fact, understanding something ultimately means knowing the whole of which it is a part – in other words, knowing God. . . .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/mar/14/spinoza-understanding-emotions

Carlisle, Clare. "Spinoza, Part 5: On Human Nature." GUARDIAN March 7, 2011.

One of the central questions of philosophy is: what is a human being? And this question can be posed in a more personal way: who am I? As we might by now expect, Spinoza's view of the human being challenges commonsense opinions as well as prevailing philosophical and religious ideas. We are probably inclined to think of ourselves as distinct individuals, separate from other beings. Of course, we know that we have relationships to people and objects in the world, but nevertheless we see ourselves as autonomous – a view that is reflected in the widelyheld belief that we have free will. This popular understanding of the human condition is reflected in Cartesian philosophy, which conceives human beings as substances. In fact, Descartes thought that human beings are composed of two distinct substances: a mind and a body. 

For Spinoza, however, human beings are not substances, but finite modes. (Last week, I suggested that a mode is something like a wave on the sea, being a dependent, transient part of a far greater whole.) This mode has two aspects, or attributes: extension, or physical embodiment; and thought, or thinking. Crucially, Spinoza denies that there can be any causal or logical relationships across these attributes. Instead, he argues that each attribute constitutes a causal and logical order that fully expresses reality in a certain way. So a human body is a physical organism which expresses the essence of that particular being under the attribute of extension. And a human mind is an intellectual whole that expresses this same essence under the attribute of thinking. . . .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/mar/07/spinoza-philosophy-ethics-human-nature

Carlisle, Clare. "Spinoza, Part 4: All There Is, Is God." GUARDIAN February 28, 2011.

If, as Spinoza argues, there is only one substance – God – which is infinite, then there can be nothing outside or separate from this God. Precisely because God is a limitless, boundless totality, he must be an outsideless whole, and therefore everything else that exists must be within God. Of course, these finite beings can be distinguished from God, and also from one another – just as we can distinguish between a tree and its green colour, and between the colour green and the colour blue. But we are not dealing here with the distinction between separate substances that can be conceived to exist independently from one another.

Again, this is rather abstract. As Aristotle suggested, we cannot think without images, and I find it helpful to use the image of the sea to grasp Spinoza's metaphysics. The ocean stands for God, the sole substance, and individual beings are like waves – which are modes of the sea. Each wave has its own shape that it holds for a certain time, but the wave is not separate from the sea and cannot be conceived to exist independently of it. Of course, this is only a metaphor; unlike an infinite God, an ocean has boundaries, and moreover the image of the sea represents God only in the attribute of extension. But maybe we can also imagine the mind of God – that is to say, the infinite totality of thinking – as like the sea, and the thoughts of finite beings as like waves that arise and then pass away.

Spinoza's world view brings to the fore two features of life: dependence and connectedness. Each wave is dependent on the sea, and because it is part of the sea it is connected to every other wave. The movements of one wave will influence all the rest. Likewise, each being is dependent on God, and as a part of God it is connected to every other being. As we move about and act in the world, we affect others, and we are in turn affected by everything we come into contact with. . . .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/feb/28/spinoza-god-infinite-eternal

Carlisle, Clare. "Spinoza, Part 3: What God is Not." GUARDIAN February 21, 2011.

Spinoza's Ethics is divided into five books, and the first of these presents an idiosyncratic philosophical argument about the existence and nature of God. We'll examine this in detail next week, but first we need to look more closely at how the Ethics challenges traditional Judeo-Christian belief in God.

The view that Spinoza wants to reject can be summed up in one word: anthropomorphism. This means attributing human characteristics to something non-human – typically, to plants or animals, or to God. There are several important implications of Spinoza's denial of anthropomorphism. First, he argues that it is wrong to think of God as possessing an intellect and a will. In fact, Spinoza's God is an entirely impersonal power, and this means that he cannot respond to human beings' requests, needs and demands. Such a God neither rewards nor punishes – and this insight rids religious belief of fear and moralism.

Second, God does not act according to reasons or purposes. In refusing this teleological conception of God, Spinoza challenged a fundamental tenet of western thought. The idea that a given phenomenon can be explained and understood with reference to a goal or purpose is a cornerstone of Aristotle's philosophy, and medieval theologians found this fitted very neatly with the biblical narrative of God's creation of the world. Aristotle's teleological account of nature was, then, adapted to the Christian doctrine of a God who made the world according to a certain plan, analogous to a human craftsman who makes artefacts to fulfil certain purposes. Typically, human values and aspirations played a prominent role in these interpretations of divine activity. . . .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/feb/21/spinoza-ethics-god-human-traits

Carlisle, Clare. "Spinoza, Part 2: Miracles and God's Will." GUARDIAN February 14, 2011.

At the heart of Baruch Spinoza's philosophy is a challenge to the traditional Judeo-Christian view of the relationship between God and the world. While the Hebrew Bible and the Christian scriptures share a conception of God as the creator of the natural world and the director of human history, Spinoza argues that everything that exists is an aspect of God that expresses something of the divine nature. This idea that God is not separate from the world is expounded systematically in the Ethics, Spinoza's magnum opus. However, a more accessible introduction to Spinoza's view of the relationship between God and nature can be found in his discussion of miracles in an earlier text, the Theologico-Political Treatise. This book presents an innovative interpretation of the bible that undermines its authority as a source of truth, and questions the traditional understanding of prophecy, miracles and the divine law. . . .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/14/spinoza-philosophy-god-nature-miracles

THE PHILOSOPHER'S ZONE: "An Atheist's God: the Paradox of Spinoza." June 4, 2011.

This week on The Philosopher's Zone, we meet Spinoza's god, which might seem an odd thing to do. Baruch Spinoza, one of the greatest philosophers of his day, was expelled from the Amsterdam synagogue in 1656 because of his unorthodox religious views. Ever since, he has been regarded as the great atheist of the Western tradition. Yet he mentions God very often throughout his writings. So this week, we try to reconcile the paradox in Spinoza between his perceived atheism and his constant references to the divine.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2011/3231566.htm

"Beyond Spinoza: Exploring the Presence of Early Modern Concepts in Contemporary Thought," Goldsmiths College, University of London, July 12, 19 and 26, 2011.

Tuesday 12th July 2011, 6 - 8pm

Introduction: Matthew Dennis (Co-Organiser), "The Contemporary Renaissance of Early Modern Philosophy"
Cesare Casarino (Minnesota), "The Expression of Time: Deleuze, Spinoza, Cinema"
Charlotte Knox-Williams (Winchester), "The Studio Transformed: the Expanded Monad as a Model for the Studio in Practice-based Research"

Tuesday 19th July 2011, 6 - 8pm

Guillaume Collett (Kent), "Deleuze and Spinoza: from Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza to The Logic of Sense"

Robin Dunford (Exeter), "Assemblage Theory and ‘Emergentic Spinozism’"

Tuesday 26th July 2011, 6 - 8pm

Simon O’Sullivan (Goldsmiths), "The Care of the Self versus the Ethics of Desire (or, Spinoza between Lacan and Foucault)"

Assunta Ruocco (Goldsmiths), "Monad and Multitude"

Concluding remarks: Nicole Osborne (Co-Organiser), "Spinoza and Contemporary Practice"

http://beyondspinoza.wordpress.com/

Goldstein, Rebecca. "Sell Descartes, Buy Spinoza ." PROSPECT MAGAZINE May 25, 2011.

Thinking of buying shares in a great philosopher? The first question you need to ask is whether you’re interested in long or short-term investment. If you are looking long-term, then prepare yourself for serious scholarship. Alternatively, short-term investment could merely involve comparing the battle over women’s hemlines on catwalks in Milan and New York to Wittgenstein’s language-games. Investors must also keep in mind a philosopher’s obscurity, as this allows room for interpretation. Counter-intuitive shock appeal is also a plus.

These ruminations were sparked by the broadcaster Alan Saunders’s comment that, were he dealing in philosophical shares, he would be selling off Descartes and buying Spinoza. I was surprised Saunders retained any substantial Descartes, which for decades have been rated as junk bonds. But he’s onto something in picking Spinoza as a hot stock.

The 17th-century rationalist, who made every claim for reason that has ever been made, was for many years considered too insignificant to refute (unlike Descartes). Obscure, yes. Counter-intuitive, yes. But there wasn’t fast bidding for a philosopher who argues that there is only one substance, which can be viewed alternatively as God or nature, and from whose essence each and every finite thing, or modification, follows. (As being unmarried follows from being a bachelor.) Those of us in Anglo-American philosophy looked askance at system-builders like Spinoza, setting our sights on more feasible problems (such as showing why, precisely, being unmarried follows from being a bachelor).

But Spinoza’s stock has risen, his symbol emerging in varied markets. Take the movement which calls itself “deep ecology,” distinguishing itself from that “shallow ecology” which seeks to redress pollution and other practices deleterious to humans. . . .

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2011/05/sell-descartes-buy-spinoza/

Carlisle, Clare. "Spinoza, Part 1: Philosophy as a Way of Life." GUARDIAN February 7, 2011.

Although Baruch Spinoza is one of the great thinkers of the European philosophical tradition, he was not a professional scholar – he earned his modest living as a lens grinder. So, unlike many thinkers of his time, he was unconstrained by allegiance to a church, university or royal court. He was free to be faithful to the pursuit of truth. This gives his philosophy a remarkable originality and intellectual purity – and it also led to controversy and charges of heresy. In the 19th century, and perhaps even more recently, "Spinozist" was still a term of abuse among intellectuals.

In a sense, Spinoza was always an outsider – and this independence is precisely what enabled him to see through the confusions, prejudices and superstitions that prevailed in the 17th century, and to gain a fresh and radical perspective on various philosophical and religious issues. He was born, in 1632, to Jewish Portuguese parents who had fled to Amsterdam to escape persecution, so from the very beginning he was never quite a native, never completely at home. Although Spinoza was an excellent student in the Jewish schools he attended, he came to be regarded by the leaders of his community as a dangerous influence. At the age of 24 he was excluded from the Amsterdam synagogue for his "intolerable" views and practices.

Spinoza's most famous and provocative idea is that God is not the creator of the world, but that the world is part of God. This is often identified as pantheism, the doctrine that God and the world are the same thing – which conflicts with both Jewish and Christian teachings. . . .

Visit: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/feb/07/spinoza-philosophy-god-world.

"Beyond Spinoza," Goldsmith's College, University of London, July 2011.

Beyond Spinoza invite proposals for 30 minute presentations which trace or explore the presence of Early Modern philosophical concepts in contemporary philosophy and psychoanalysic theory. These could include, but are not limited to:
Spinoza and French philosophy (Badiou, Deleuze),
Spinoza and psychoanalysis (Freud, Lacan),
Spinoza and politics (Balibar, Macherey),
Spinoza and self-transformation (Foucault, Lacan),
Spinoza and schizoanalysis (Guattari, Deleuze),
Leibniz and French philosophy (Deleuze, Gueroult),
Leibniz and contemporary art,
Leibniz and maths.

Beyond Spinoza is a collective of London-based postgraduate students who wish to enrich and deepen their understanding and enjoyment of contemporary philosophy by exploring its historical and conceptual roots.

The series will run once a week, for three consecutive weeks, at Goldsmiths College in July 2011. Each session will comprise two 30 minute presentations followed by discussion and drinks. The series will be followed later in the year by a publication of revised papers.

Boehm, Omri. Review of Michael Mack, SPINOZA AND THE SPECTERS OF MODERNITY. NDPR (October 2010).

Mack, Michael.  Spinoza and the Specters of Modernity: the Hidden Enlightenment of Diversity from Spinoza to Freud.  London: Continuum, 2010.

In the last ten years or so, the question of Spinoza's impact on Enlightenment thought has been opened anew. The thinker who up until recently was deemed "hardly to have had any direct influence on eighteenth-century thought" (Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, 187) is now being read as a major contributor -- perhaps the major contributor -- to Enlightenment thinking and politics. Jonathan Israel's Radical Enlightenment marks the founding moment of this trend -- a trend motivated not only by a historical interest, to uncover Spinoza's far-underestimated impact on the Enlightenment, but also by a normative project: to revive Enlightenment values -- the true ones, of 'radical', secular, anti-colonial modernity.

Michael Mack's Spinoza and the Specters of Modernity certainly belongs to this trend, extending it to the study of Herder (this is the book's core), Goethe, George Eliot and Freud. Herder's Spinozist radical Enlightenment is presented as an answer to the Enlightenment of Kant which is infected, on that reading, with an unwelcome baggage of Christian dualism, faith in teleology and even racism. I believe that there is little room for doubt that Spinoza's impact on Enlightenment thought indeed deserves the growing attention it now receives. But the belief that a remedy for modernity's malaise can be found in more Spinozism (and less Kantianism) seems to me questionable. I will review Mack's new contribution from that perspective.

The systematic question guiding Mack's project is the (often doubted) compatibility of Enlightenment universalism with the modern commitment to the value of diversity. Universalism is commonly judged as a symptom (or even the origin) of colonial European chauvinism. But by treating a non-exclusivist thinker like Herder as a true heir of the Enlightenment -- rather than as an anti-Enlightenment figure, as he will be remembered from Isaiah Berlin or more recently from Zeev Sternhell's The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition -- Mack challenges this common judgment.

The book's first two chapters are dedicated to Spinoza, whose philosophical position is presented as a conceptual framework enjoining universalism with diversity. . . .

Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=21769.

Pub: Michael Mack, SPINOZA AND THE SPECTERS OF MODERNITY.

Mack, Michael. Spinoza and the Specters of Modernity: the Hidden Enlightenment of Diversity from Spinoza to Freud. London: Continuum, 2010. Spinoza and the Specters of Modernity draws new theoretical conclusions from a study of Spinoza’s legacy in the age of Goethe and beyond, largely transmitted through the writings of Herder, that will have implications for the study of German intellectual history and, more broadly, the study of religion and literature. Michael Mack describes how a line of writers and thinkers re-configured Spinoza’s ideas and how these ideas thus became effective in society at large. Mack shows that the legacy of Spinoza is important because he was the first thinker to theorize narrative as the constitutive fabric of politics, identity, society, religion and the larger sphere of culture. Indeed, Mack argues for Spinoza’s writings on politics and ethics as an alternative to a Kantian conception of modernity. More information may be found here: http://www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?BookId=136565&SearchType=Basic.

Dockstadter, Nels. "Spinoza’s Epistemology." INTERNET ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY. Updated September 13, 2009.

The theory of knowledge, or epistemology, offered by the 17th century Dutch philosopher Benedict de Spinoza may yet prove to be the most daring in the history of philosophy. Not only does Spinoza claim to be able to know all the ways one can know something, he also claims to be able to know what everything is. Few philosophers besides Spinoza have sought and proclaimed possession of absolute knowledge quite like he had. Of the philosophers who have claimed absolute knowledge, only Spinoza has offered it, not as the reception of a divine revelation, and not as the fulfillment of a historical process, as in Hegel’s epistemology, but as a means for intuitively affirming the truth inherent within all of reality. Reality is susceptible to such an intuition, he said, because every being is a mode of it, or a way that it expresses itself. In other words, for us to come to know the “absolute” is for the absolute to come to know itself. There is thus something basically self-reflexive and introspective about Spinoza’s epistemology. At the same time, knowledge for Spinoza is always of what he calls God or Nature, which can also be understood as the universe itself. However, whether or not Spinoza’s epistemology is valid by any standard besides his own, remains a point of contention. Most philosophers believe that Spinoza’s epistemology wildly oversteps the limits of human finitude, while others believe that even if Spinoza certainly experienced something within himself that he called “the truth,” we have no real access to it ourselves. This article explores the role and function of knowledge in Spinoza’s philosophy as a whole and the methodology he uses to know things and to know knowledge. The article closely follows Spinoza’s threefold division of the different types of knowledge as presented in his Ethics. This threefold division is constituted by the distinctions among imagination, intuition, and the exercise of the intellect. . . . Read the rest here: http://www.iep.utm.edu/spino-ep/.

Malinowski-Charles, Syliane. Review of Olli Koistinen, ed. CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO SPINOZA'S ETHICS. NDPR (February 2010).

Koistinen, Olli, ed. Cambridge Companion to Spinoza's Ethics. Cambridge: CUP, 2009. This new Companion is in no way intended to replace the 1996 Cambridge Companion to Spinoza edited by Don Garrett. Rather, it is meant to complement it by providing more focused analyses of Spinoza's magnum opus at a time in which Spinoza studies have known a formidable explosion everywhere in the world, and particularly in North America during the last five years. Whereas the first Cambridge Companion covered many aspects of Spinoza's philosophy generally, this one offers analyses that will be useful to anyone teaching Spinoza's Ethics properly speaking, or to anyone trying to understand better the theories that Spinoza presented in it. Beyond only three articles referring mostly to the Ethics, specifically those devoted to Spinoza's metaphysics, to his theory of knowledge, and to his ethical theory, the reader of the first Companion also had the opportunity to learn about Spinoza's life and reception, his natural science, and his theology and biblical scholarship -- among other things. Here, by contrast, the articles follow the order of the Ethics and treat, one after the other and in depth, the main concepts that Spinoza put forth in the book in which he enclosed all his wisdom. In a nutshell, this is a much-needed Companion coming at a time when a growing number of English-speaking scholars have started to include a study of the Ethics in their classrooms, and have themselves been struggling with the difficulties of Spinoza's thought. It will provide conceptual tools as much for the more advanced as for the beginner in the study of this difficult but fascinating philosophy. Something particularly interesting about this book is the list of contributors, which includes a number of younger and very promising Spinoza scholars (e.g., Michael LeBuffe, Valtteri Viljanen, and Andrew Youpa), while also benefiting from the experience of more established academics such as Piet Steenbakkers, Susan James, and Don Garrett. This gives some fresh voices to the well-trodden themes already studied by older or more recognized contributors such as those who were included in the 1996 Companion to Spinoza, who had written the first important books on Spinoza at the time of the renewal of interest in his work in that decade as well as at the end of the preceding one -- crucial scholars such as Jonathan Bennett, Margaret Wilson, Alan Donogan, Edwin Curley, Richard Popkin, or Pierre-François Moreau. While their contributions remain jewels and a continued source of inspiration and knowledge for all Spinoza scholars, it is nice to see that some new names are being made known to readers. The choice of contributors is limited, of course, and many very valuable persons are left out, but it is an interesting start to a rather unusual practice for the Cambridge Companions. . . . Read the whole review here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=18907.

"Spinoza and Texts: Spinoza and the Arts and Humanities," Spinoza Research Network, Department of Philosophy, University of Dundee, April 7-8, 2010.

Speakers:

• Dimitris Vardoulakis (University of Western Sydney), “The Politics of the Text: Writing and Singularity in Spinoza”
• Peg Rawes (University College London), “Spinoza’s Architectural Passages: Drawing out Geometric Comportments”
• Nicholas Halmi (Oxford), “Coleridge’s Ecumenical Spinoza”
• Nick Nesbitt (Aberdeen), “Natura Naturans: the Spinozian Foundations of the Haitian Revolution”
• Simon Calder (Cambridge), “George Eliot, Spinoza, and the Ethics of Literature”
• Amy Cimini (New York University), “The Secret History of Musical Spinozism”

Registration: Attendance is free and lunch will be provided on Day 2. Advance registration is required. Please download and complete the registration form, and email it to mykeburns@gmail.com by March 29. Further information may be found here: http://spinozaresearchnetwork.wordpress.com/.

"The Philosopher and the Novelist." THE PHILOSOPER'S ZONE. January 9, 2009.

Moira Gatens is Australian Professorial Fellow in the philosophy department at the University of Sydney. And she has just been appointed to the very important Spinoza Chair for 2010 at the University of Amsterdam. This means, amongst presenting the annual Spinoza lecture at Spinoza House in Rijnsburg, where the benches on which Spinoza worked in the seventeenth century at his trade grinding optical lenses are still in place. This week, she talks about Spinoza and his influence on George Eliot, the author of Middlemarch and of The Mill on the Floss. . . .

Download the podcast here: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2010/2759558.htm.

Montag, Warren, et al. "Spinoza and Philosophers Today." KRITIKA AND KONTEXT 38-39 (2009).

Spinoza's rationalist philosophy was central to the "radical" Enlightenment of late seventeenth century Europe and a century later had a decisive impact on the development of German Idealism. At the beginning of the twentieth century, his critique of revealed religion was the focus of heated discussions among Jewish thinkers; and in the 1960s Marxist philosophers, including Althusser, saw Spinoza's understanding of the imagination as a forerunner to the concept of ideology. This strand of his thought was taken a step further by Hardt and Negri in their highly influential work Empire, while most recently António Damásio has argued that there are significant affinities between Spinoza's psychology and contemporary discoveries in neurophysiology. In the following interview, leading Spinoza experts discuss the seventeenth-century philosopher's relevance today. . . .

Read the interview here: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2009-11-30-spinoza-en.html.

Cfp: Sharp, Hasana, and Jason Smith, eds. HEGEL AFTER SPINOZA: A VOLUME OF CRITICAL ESSAYS.

The names Hegel and Spinoza have come to represent two irreconcilable paths in contemporary philosophy. This opposition has taken different forms, but has its roots in mid- to late-20th century French philosophy. Althusser announced that he required a “detour” away from Hegel and through Spinoza in order to arrive at a genuinely materialist Marxism. Pierre Macherey staged a careful deconstruction of Hegel’s claim to have superseded Spinoza’s system in Hegel ou Spinoza, which concomitantly served as a defence of Spinozism against the Hegelianism dominant in France in the 1960s and ‘70s. Among the most influential articulations of this antagonism are the polemics of Deleuze celebrating the immanent and vitalist thinking of a materialist tradition beginning with Lucretius and passing through Spinoza to the present, to which he opposes the logic of totality, negativity, and contradiction found in Hegel. Spinoza, for Deleuze and others, stands for a rejection of negativity and lack as the foundation of philosophical and political thought, and as a salutary alternative to the negativity (in both the logical and existential senses) associated not only with Hegel, but with Hobbes, Freud, Sartre, Heidegger, and Lévinas as well. Feminists have likewise celebrated Spinoza as providing a joyful alternative to a tradition that emphasizes anxiety, mortality, and combat. This opposition, in its various expressions, underscores that reading Hegel has always been and remains a political act. We are seeking essays to contribute to an anthology on the relationship between Spinoza and Hegel that move beyond the stalemate of current debates in continental philosophy. The title we have proposed for this collection points toward a horizon that no longer opposes a “bad” Hegel to a “good” Spinoza; we seek essays that indicate how contemporary readings of Spinoza-no longer the thinker of absolute substance, but of immanent causality, singular connections, transindividuality, and the multitude-might illuminate otherwise less visible threads in Hegel’s thought, and open the way to a re-reading of Hegel, beyond the institutionalized figure we take for granted. How might a productive and mutually enlightening encounter be produced between these two great systematic thinkers? What political possibilities are opened up by reading Hegel and Spinoza as useful contrasts rather than moral alternatives? The anthology will be published in a series that treats historical topics in light of contemporary continental thought. We are open to a broad range of topics within this rubric, but are especially interested in new readings that avoid simply recapitulating either the pantheism controversy in 19th century Germany or the French polemics of the 20th century. Please send papers of 7,500-10,000 words toHasana Sharp (hasana.sharp_at_mcgill.ca) or Jason Smith (Jason.Smith_at_Artcenter.edu) by 15 June, 2010. (Crossposted from Public Reason)

"Spinoza and Bodies," Spinoza Research Network, Department of Philosophy, University of Dundee, September 10-11, 2009.

Speakers: Daniel Selcer (Duquesne), “Singular Things and Spanish Poets: Spinoza on Corporeal Individuation” Caroline Williams (Queen Mary University of London), “Reconfiguring Body and Mind: Thinking Beyond the Subject with/through Spinoza” Michael Mack (Nottingham), “Spinoza and Freud, or How to be Mindful of the Mind” Eric Schliesser (Leiden), “Spinoza’s Criticism of Mathematical Science” Anthony Paul Smith (Nottingham/DePaul), "The Ethical Relation of Bodies: Thinking with Spinoza Towards an Affective Ecology" Mateusz Janik (Polish Academy of Sciences), "Thinking the Future -Spinoza's Political Ontology Today" Visit the conference homepage: http://spinozaresearchnetwork.wordpress.com/events/.

"Thinking with Spinoza: Politics, Philosophy and Religion," Birkbeck College, University of London, May 7-8, 2009.

Does religious pluralism undermine political co-operation? Does religion differ from superstition? What is the scope of philosophical knowledge? Can it live alongside religious faith? How can states combine pluralism with solidarity? How deeply does political co-operation depend on imagined narratives? These and other themes of Spinoza’s seminal Theologico-Political Treatise will be discussed. Speakers: Etienne Balibar (Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities), "Spinoza’s Three Gods and the Modes of Communication" Aaron Garrett, (Boston University), "Knowing the Essence of the State"
 Don Garrett (New York University), "Spinoza’s ‘Promising’ Ideas: Contract and Covenant in the Theologico-Political Treatise"
 Moira Gatens (University of Sydney), "Compelling Fictions: Spinoza and George Eliot on Belief and Faith" 
 Susan James (Birkbeck College), "When does Truth Matter? The Politics of Spinoza’s Philosophy"
 Warren Montag (Occidental College), "Lucretius Hebraizant: Spinoza’s Reading of Ecclesiastes" Pierre-Francois Moreau (Ecole Normale Supérieure des Lettres et Sciences Humaines, Lyon), "From Scripture to Nations: Spinoza’s Theory of History in the Theologico-Political Treatise" Further attraction: Beth Lord (University of Dundee) will launch the Spinoza Research Network Visit the conference webpage here: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/bih/news/spinoza.