Tracie M. Matysik

Baruch Spinoza, the seventeenth-century Dutch-Jewish philosopher of Portuguese descent, has been alternately labeled the instigator of the “radical enlightenment” (Jonathan Israel), the “renegade Jew who gave us modernity” (Rebecca Goldstein), the betrayer of the Jewish tradition (Hermann Cohen), a “savage anomaly” in the western intellectual tradition (Antonio Negri), and the theorist of the one kind of god in which a physicist of the twentieth century might conceivably believe (Albert Einstein).  In his own seventeenth-century Amsterdam context, his writings – and even mere rumor of them – were enough to earn him full excommunication from the Jewish community.  Yet in subsequent centuries those scandalous writings have become a crucial chapter in histories of western philosophy.  G. W. F. Hegel, for instance, would argue that only after Spinoza could one really begin to philosophize properly.  This course will introduce students to the core of Spinoza’s writings that have produced such diverse reactions over the centuries, as well as to exemplary moments in those reactions.  We will examine Spinoza’s refusal of a transcendent god or ideal, as well as of the mind-body dualism so prominent in western thought, understanding along the way the unique intellectual modernity he made possible. Reading

Baruch Spinoza, “Ethics”; “Theological-Political Treatise”; and “Political Treatise,” all in Spinoza: Complete Works, ed. Michael Morgan, trans. Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2002), ISBN: 0872206203.

Genevieve Lloyd, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Spinoza and the Ethics (New York:  Routledge, 1996), ISBN:  0415107822.

Grading (using the +/- rubric):

• 12- to 15-page paper: 45% (includes evaluation of outline and/or draft)
• Presentation: 20%
• Final Journal: 25% (includes credit for timely submission of quality response papers)
• Participation: 10% (includes attendance and regular and constructive contribution to class discussion)

Spinoza and Modernity

EUS 347, HIS 362G, JS 364, PHL 354, RS 357

Course Description:

Baruch Spinoza, the seventeenth-century Dutch-Jewish philosopher of Portuguese descent, has been alternately labeled the instigator of the “radical enlightenment” (Jonathan Israel), the “renegade Jew who gave us modernity” (Rebecca Goldstein), the betrayer of the Jewish tradition (Hermann Cohen), a “savage anomaly” in the western intellectual tradition (Antonio Negri), and the theorist of the one kind of god in which a physicist of the twentieth century might conceivably believe (Albert Einstein).  In his own seventeenth-century Amsterdam context, his writings – and even mere rumor of them – were enough to earn him full excommunication from the Jewish community.  Yet in subsequent centuries those scandalous writings have become a crucial chapter in histories of western philosophy.  G. W. F. Hegel, for instance, would argue that only after Spinoza could one really begin to philosophize properly.  This course will introduce students to the core of Spinoza’s writings that have produced such diverse reactions over the centuries, as well as to exemplary moments in those reactions.  We will examine Spinoza’s refusal of a transcendent god or ideal, as well as of the mind-body dualism so prominent in western thought, understanding along the way the unique intellectual modernity he made possible.     

Texts (subject to change)

•Baruch Spinoza, The Essential Spinoza: Ethics and Related Writings, trans. Samuel Shirley, ed. 

    Michael L. Morgan (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2006), ISBN:  0872208036.

•Baruch Spinoza, The Theological-Political Treatise, trans. Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis: 

    Hackett Publishing, 2001), ISBN:  0872206076.

•Genevieve Lloyd, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Spinoza and the Ethics (New York: 

    Routledge, 1996), ISBN:  0415107822.

•Warren Montag and Ted Stolze, eds., The New Spinoza (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota 

    Press, 2008), ISBN:  0816625417.

Grading:

12- to 15-page paper:     50%

Final Journal:            20%

Class Presentation:        20%

Class Participation:        10%