Commentary

• Behind the Geometrical Method

  - Curley, Edwin M. Behind the Geometrical Method. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
  From the Publisher: “This book is the fruit of twenty-five years of study of Spinoza by the editor and translator of a new and widely acclaimed edition of Spinoza’s collected works. Based on three lectures delivered at the Hebrew University of… More

• Spinoza: Practical Philosophy

  - Deleuze, Gilles. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Translated by Robert Hurley. San Francisco: City Lights Publishers, 2001.
  From the Publisher: “Spinoza’s theoretical philosophy is one of the most radical attempts to construct a pure ontology with a single infinite substance. This book, which presents Spinoza’s main ideas in dictionary form, has as its subject… More

• “Autonomous Autonomy: Spinoza on Autonomy, Perfectionism, and Politics”

  - Den Uyl, Douglas. “Autonomous Autonomy: Spinoza on Autonomy, Perfectionism, and Politics.” Social Philosophy and Policy 20, no. 02 (2003): 30–69. doi:10.1017/S0265052503202028.
  Abstract: “These epigraphs present us with part of the problem that is to be discussed in this essay. For Spinoza (1632–1677) there is no metaphysical freedom, except for God/Substance/Nature. The behavior of individual things, or modes, is… More

• Spinoza’s Book of Life: Freedom and Redemption in the Ethics

  - Smith, Steven B. Spinoza’s Book of Life: Freedom and Redemption in the Ethics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
  From the Publisher: “Most readers of Spinoza treat him as a pure metaphysician, a grim determinist or a stoic moralist, but none of these descriptions captures the author of the “Ethics”, argues Steven Smith in this book. Offering a new… More

• “The Physics of Spinoza’s Ethics”

  - Lachterman, David R. “The Physics of Spinoza’s Ethics.” Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 8, no. 3 (2008): 71–111.

• The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza’s Ethics

  - Koistinen, Olli, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza’s Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
  From the Publisher: “Since its publication in 1677, Spinoza’s Ethics has fascinated philosophers, novelists, and scientists alike. It is undoubtedly one of the most exciting and contested works of Western philosophy. Written in an austere,… More

• From Bondage to Freedom: Spinoza on Human Excellence

  - LeBuffe, Michael. From Bondage to Freedom: Spinoza on Human Excellence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
  From the Publisher: “Spinoza rejects fundamental tenets of received morality, including the notions of Providence and free will. Yet he retains rich theories of good and evil, virtue, perfection, and freedom. Building interconnected readings of… More

• Maimonides and Spinoza by Joshua Parens

  - Parens, Joshua. Maimonides and Spinoza: Their Conflicting Views of Human Nature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
  From the publisher: Until the last century, it was generally agreed that Maimonides was a great defender of Judaism, and Spinoza—as an Enlightenment advocate for secularization—among its key opponents. However, a new scholarly consensus has recently… More

• Spinoza’s Metaphysics by Itzhak Melamed

  - Melamed, Yitzhak Y. Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance and Thought. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
  From the publisher: Yitzhak Melamed here offers a new and systematic interpretation of the core of Spinoza’s metaphysics. In the first part of the book, he proposes a new reading of the metaphysics of substance in Spinoza: he argues that for Spinoza… More