Spinoza Research Network

The Spinoza Research Network will be a group of researchers in multiple disciplines working on Baruch Spinoza, a major philosopher of the seventeenth century and one of the most important thinkers in the history of European thought.

Spinoza developed a complex theory of being and knowledge on which he based a radical system of ethics and politics. A Portuguese Jew born in Amsterdam, whose work was banned for its subversive critiques of the establishment, his outlook is historically as well as philosophically important. But his significance is not restricted to the realm of academic philosophy, history of ideas, or esoteric studies of early modern texts. Spinoza is one of the most original and important thinkers in Western thought beyond philosophy: his ideas involve science, politics, and theology, and are relevant today in fields that include psychology, medicine, law, gender studies, and literature.

This project is important today because it is only in the last twenty years that Spinoza's significance outside of academic philosophy has been recognized. In recent years Spinoza has reached an interdisciplinary and popular audience through, e.g., Damasio's Looking for Spinoza, which links Spinoza to contemporary neuroscience, and Stewart's study of Spinoza's radical politics, The Courtier and the Heretic. These developments mean that Spinoza's works are studied today not only for their philosophical arguments, but as literary texts, theological critiques, political manifestos, and scientific programmes. Throughout the UK, researchers in numerous disciplines work on Spinoza without a network or society that enables them to develop research collaboratively. The Spinoza Research Network will bring these researchers together, enabling us to exchange and advance new interdisciplinary areas of research.

The Spinoza Research Network will bring researchers together through two conferences and a website. Conferences will include papers from academics and research students, enabling us to exchange knowledge and find out how people are using Spinoza within and beyond disciplines. The questions we aim to answer are: how are people within and outside philosophy using Spinoza? What is the contemporary relevance of Spinoza, beyond philosophy and outside academia?

Each conference is set around a theme, with the intention that a core interdisciplinary group will attend both. The first is on 'Bodies', incorporating Spinoza's uses in ethics, politics, law, and the sciences. The second is on 'Texts', looking at Spinoza's importance for theology, literature, and history, and assessing the popular reception of Spinoza's work, both historical and contemporary. Determining how Spinoza is currently being studied and used, both within and outside university disciplines, will enable us to set further research questions and to initiate joint projects on Spinoza as an interdisciplinary thinker. The two conferences will result in an edited collection of papers on 'Interdisciplinary Spinoza'.

The website will provide a home for the Network and will offer resources to researchers, students, and the interested public. We will encourage student and public participation in the Network through online conference papers, a resource area, links to e-texts and related networks internationally, and interactive elements such as a blog.

After the two-year project is over, the Spinoza Research Network will remain active as the UK Spinoza Society. Scholarly societies on Spinoza exist in a number of other countries, but none currently exists in the UK. The purpose of the Society will be to foster further interdisciplinary research of the kind established by the network, and to contribute to building a stronger research culture in history of philosophy in the UK.