Seeing that both American and French approaches to Spinoza were particularly strong, it appeared to us that the time had come to bring them into discussion with one another. Broadly speaking, the volume’s contents can be grouped into four categories, each of which corresponds to a major domain in Spinoza’s philosophy: metaphysics, philosophy of mind, moral philosophy, and political philosophy. Each paper by an English-speaking philosopher is followed by a commentary by a French-speaking philosopher. The papers themselves are bold and rigorous statements in Spinoza scholarship, some of which are sure to elicit much further commentary down the line, hopefully on both sides of the Atlantic. The commentaries give the English-speaking reader a novel opportunity to discover the exciting state of Spinoza scholarship in France.
Under the heading of Metaphysics, we include five papers with five commentaries: (1) Edwin Curley’s paper, “Spinoza’s Metaphysics Revisited,” followed by Pierre-François Moreau’s response, “On Spinoza, Possible Worlds, and Pantheism”; (2) Michael Della Rocca’s paper, “The Elusiveness of the One and the Many in Spinoza: Substance, Attribute, and Mode,” followed by Pascal Sévérac’s response, “In What Way It Exists”; (3) Yitzhak Y. Melamed’s paper, “The Earliest Draft of Spinoza’s Ethics,” followed by Mogens Lærke’s response, “Accidents and Modifications: An Additional Note on Axioms 1 and 2 in Appendix 1 of the Short Treatise”; (4) Martin Lin’s paper, “Metaphysical Rationalism,” followed by Valérie Debuiche’s response, “Leibniz’s Principle of (Sufficient) Reason and Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles”; and (5) Simon B. Duffy’s paper, “The Transformation of Relations in Spinoza’s Metaphysics,” followed by Céline Hervet’s response, “Essence, Variations in Power, and ‘Becoming Other’ in Spinoza.”
Under the heading of Philosophy of Mind, we include three papers with three commentaries: (1) Alison Peterman’s paper, “Spinoza’s Two Claims about the Mind-Body Relation,” followed by Jack Stetter’s response, “A Puzzle in Spinoza’s Views on the Mind-Body Problem”; (2) Knox Peden’s paper, “Spinoza’s True Ideas: Suggestive Convergences,” followed by Pascale Gillot’s response, “Althusser, Spinoza, and the Specter of the Cartesian Subject”; and (3) Michael A. Rosenthal’s paper, “Spinoza on Beings of Reason [Entia Rationis] and the Analogical Imagination,” followed by Jacqueline Lagrée’s response, “Analogia and Ens Rationis.”
Under the heading of Moral Philosophy, we group two papers with two commentaries: (1) Steven Nadler’s paper, “Spinoza on Good and Bad,” followed by Lorenzo Vinciguerra’s response, “The Knowledge of Good and Bad”; and (2) Hasana Sharp’s paper, “Generosity as Freedom in Spinoza’s Ethics,” followed by Ariel Suhamy’s response, “A Generous Reading.”
Lastly, under the heading of Political Philosophy we group the three remaining papers and their commentaries: (1) Daniel Garber’s paper, “Anthropomorphism, Teleology, and Superstition: The Politics of Obedience in Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,” followed by Chantal Jaquet’s response, “Logic of the Superstitious, Logic of the Pious”; (2) Steven Barbone’s paper, “Individual and Community and Its American Legacy,” followed by Laurent Bove’s response, “Between Matheron and Spinoza, Something Happens …”; and (3) Jonathan Israel’s paper, “Spinoza’s Formulation of the Radical Enlightenment’s Two Defining Doctrines: How Much Did He Owe to the Dutch Golden Age Theological-Political Context?,” followed by Charles Ramond’s response, “Spinoza’s Paradoxical Radicalism.”