Erasmus University Rotterdam
Conference program
Sunday, June 30th 2019
Polak building 1-07, Campus Woudestein, Rotterdam
10.15 – 10.30 Opening: Prof. dr. Wiep van Bunge
10.30 – 11.25 Prof. dr. Han van Ruler: ‘Metaphysics in-between Descartes and Spinoza’.
Descartes’ Epistemological Turn and Spinoza’s Need for Formal Causes
11.30 – 12.25 Dr. Daniel Schneider: ‘Spinoza on the Conditions of the Human Condition’.
The significance of the concept ‘Homo’ in Spinoza’s conception of ‘Homo Liber’.
12.30 – 13.00 Prof. dr. Henri Krop: ‘Spinoza’s Critique of metaphysics’.
Lunch break
14.00 – 14.45 Noa Lahav: ‘Essence, Change and Necessity in Spinoza’s Ethics’.
Spinoza’s two notions of essence (individual and shared) and the ways in which they admit, or deny, the possibility of change.
14.45 – 15.30 Harmen Grootenhuis: ‘Spinoza on the individuality of universals’.
A universal essence of finite modes as the cooperative union of the essences of individual finite modes that serve as its parts.
Tea / coffee break
16.00 – 16.45 Daffi Mark: ‘Humans’ Personal identity in Spinoza’s Ethics’.
The possibility of personal identity of humans as coming into being through a process of self-unfolding
16.45 – 17.40 Ohad Nachtomy: ‘Spinoza on the Capacities of the Body and the Wonders of the Mind’.
19.00 Conference dinner
Monday, July 1st 2019
Het Spinozahuis, Spinozalaan 29 Rijnsburg
10.00 – 11.00 Visit Spinozahuis & Marc Riese: ‘Spinoza’s Library: A Probabilistic Approach to Addressing Uncertainty Issues’. (participants only)
Lunch break (Lunch for participants in Brasserie De Burgt)
Brasserie De Burgt, Burgemeester Koomansplein 1, Rijnsburg
13.00 – 13.55 Noa Naaman-Zauderer: ‘Spinoza on Human Freedoms and the Eternity of the Mind’.
Apart from the absolute freedom applied exclusively to God, two distinct notions of human freedom are at work in the Ethics, in accordance with the second and third kinds of knowledge.
14.00 – 14:55 Pooyan Tamini Arab: ‘Spinoza after Evolution: On intransigence as a middle-ground between essentialism and anti-essentialism’.
Tea / coffee break
15.30 – 16.15 Jamie van der Klaauw: ‘Government and its subjects: Spinoza’s place in political theory’.
Assessing Spinoza’s advances in light of contemporary political theory.
16.15 – 17:00 Yoram Stein: ‘Spinoza’s Identity Politics’.
The Real Task: How to Unite Less than Perfectly Rational People in Such a Way that they are Supportive and not Destructive to the Stability in the State
17.00 – 17.55 Atsuko Fukuoka: Quest of Laws of Human Psychology: Spinoza’s Method and Jurisprudence
After every paper there will be about 15 minutes of discussion.
Late 20th Century French and Italian Spinoza scholarship focused upon the concept of Power. At the level of the modi there is an interplay of constantly changing power. Some commentators argue that this implies an anti-essentialism with respect to ordinary entities, such as bodies, persons, affects, virtue, communities and states. Recent Anglo and Finnish scholarship has challenged this anti-essentialist reading. In this conference we would like to address how these conflicting readings of Spinoza’s view of essences impact our understanding of Spinoza’s concept of identity in metaphysics, anthropology, and moral and political theory.