Don Garrett - The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO

SPINOZA

OTHER VOLUMES IN THE SERIES OF CAMBRIDGE COM PANIONS:

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ARISTOTLE Edited by JONATHAN BARNES

BACON Edited by MARKKU PELTONEN

BERKELEY Edited by KENNETH WINKLER

DESCARTES Edited by JOHN COTTINGHAM

EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY Editedby A.A. LONG

FICHTE Edited by GUENTER ZOELLER

FOUCAULT Editedby GARY GUTTING

FREGE Editedby TOM RICKETTS

FREUD Edited by JEROME NEU

GALILEO Edited by PETER MACHAMER

HABERMAS Edited by STEPHEN K. WHITE

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HOBBES Edited by TOM SORRELL

HUME Edited by DAVID FATE NORTON

HUSSERL Edited by BARRY SMITH and DAVID WOODRUFF SMITH

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The Cambridge Companion to

SPINOZA

Edited by Don Garrett

University of Utah

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Cambridge University Press
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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/0521392357

Cambridge University Press 1996

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1996
Reprinted 1996,1997

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

ISBN-10 0-521-39235-7 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-39865-7 paperback

Transferred to digital printing 2005

This volume is dedicated to the memory of Alan Donagan, our friend and colleague.

CONTRIBUTORS

JONATHAN BENNETT is Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University. He is the author of, among other works, two books on Kant, one on the British empiricists, and more recently A Study of Spinozas Ethics (1984). He has also, with Peter Remnant, edited and translated Leibnizs New Essays on Human Understanding (1981). His most recent book is The Act Itself.

EDWIN CURLEY is Prof essor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, the editor and translator of The Collected Works of Spinoza (Vol. I, 1985; Vol. II, forthcoming) and A Spinoza Reader (1994), the editor of Hobbess Leviathan (1994), and the author of Spinozas Metaphysics (1969), Descartes Against the Skeptics (1978), and Behind the Geometrical Method (1988).

MICHAEL DELLA ROCCA is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. He is the author of Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza (forthcoming from Oxford University Press) and of articles on Spinoza and on metaphysics.

The late ALAN DONAGAN was Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Professor of Philosophy at the California Institute of Technology; he was the author of The Later Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood (1962), The Theory of Morality (1977), Human Ends and Human Actions: An Exploration in St. Thomass Treatment (1985), Choices: The Essential Element in Human Action (1986), Spinoza (1988), and Philosophical Papers of Alan Donagan (two vols., 1994).

ALAN GABBEY is Prof essor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Barnard College, Columbia University, and is a Membre effectiv of the Acadmie Internationale dHistoire des Sciences. Among his publications are Force and Inertia in the Seventeenth Century: Descartes and Newton, in S. Gaukroger, ed., Descartes: Philosophy, Physics, Mathematics (1980), and Philosophiae cartesiana triumphata: Henry More 16461671, in T. Lennon et al., eds., Problems of Cartesianism (1982). He is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of the History of Philosophy and the monograph series International Archives of the History of Ideas.

DON GARRETT is Prof essor of Philosophy at the University of Utah. He is the author of numerous articles on Spinoza and early modern philosophy. He is also the author of Cognition and Commitment in Humes Philosophy (1996) and coeditor of the journal Hume Studies.

W. N. A. KLEVER IS Professor of Philosophy at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam (Netherlands) and cofounder and chief editor of Studia Spinozana. He published the recently discovered Vrye Politijke Stellingen of Spinozas master Franciscus van den Enden (1992) and is the author of Verba et sententiae Spinozae according to Lambertus van Velthuysen (1990), Zuivere economische wetenschap; een ontwerp on basis van Spinozistische beginselen (1991), and Zicht op Spinoza (1994).

PIERRE-FRANOIS MOREAU is Professor of Philosophy at the Ecole Normale Suprieure of Fontenay/Saint-Cloud and Chairman of the Groupe de Recherches Spinoziste (CNRS). He is the author of Le Rcit utopique. Droit naturel et roman de lEtat (1982), Hobbes. Science, philosophie, religion (1989), and Spinoza. LExprience et lEterniti (1994). He is the translator of Spinozas Tractatus politicus (1979) and (in collaboration with J. Lagre) L. Meyers Philosophia S. Scripturae Interpres (1988).

RICHARD H. POPKIN is Professor Emeritus, Washington University, St. Louis, and Adjunct Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of the History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza and many articles on Jewish and Christian intellectual history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

MARGARET DAULER WILSON is Prof essor of Philosophy at Princeton University, where she has taught since 1970. She has published a book, Descartes, as well as many papers on early modern philosophy. Among her previous publications are a number of essays concerned with Spinozas Ethics.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank Kelly Sorensen for assistance with preparation of the manuscript, including assistance with the bibliography; and my wife Frances for her invaluable support during the preparation of this volume.

METHOD OF CITATION

Where references are by author and year of publication, full reference information may be found in the Bibliography.

The following common abbreviations have been used in referring to Spinozas writings: