Spinoza’s Ethics

During his lifetime, Spinoza was reviled (or admired) as an atheist, and excommunicated from his Jewish community in Amsterdam for “wrong opinions and behavior.” By the turn of the 19th century he was lauded by the Romantics as that “god-intoxicated man,” and Spinozism itself described by the poet Novalis as a “supersaturation of the divine.” How did these contradictory receptions come about? In this class, we’ll read Spinoza’s posthumously published masterpiece, Ethics, Proved in Geometrical Order, exploring its metaphysical, epistemological, psychological, and ethical ideas. We’ll be particularly interested in how the text gave rise to such diverse interpretations, and how it has served as a Rorschach test for a wide spectrum of philosophical views, from post-Kantian idealism to late twentieth-century materialism. We’ll also plumb Spinoza’s attempt to undermine Descartes’ dualist vision of mind and body in favor of a monistic (single-substance) universe, a project summed up in one dizzyingly ambiguous phrase: Deus sive Natura—“God or Nature.”

Our questions will include: how did the name “Spinoza” and “Spinozist” become a secret password among his admirers and a pointed insult among his detractors? How does Spinoza arrive at his pantheistic monism (the word “pantheism” itself was invented as a way to describe his views)? How can we understand the relationship between the principle attributes of the single substance, thought, and matter? Why do emotions and affect play such a prominent role for Spinoza? How does his morality of “rational egoism” fit in with his metaphysical views? What does his “necessitarianism” mean for our conception of human freedom? What led German philosopher Dieter Henrich to describe the post-Kantian idealism of Schelling and Hegel as a “Spinozism of freedom”?

Course Schedule

Wednesday, 6:30-9:30pm ET
June 03 — June 24, 2026
4 weeks

$335.00

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