Activities and Events

Abstract

Spinoza famously opposes political rebellion, or what we would call “revolution,” on the grounds that it reproduces, and may even worsen, just the conditions it was intended to replace. Yet Spinoza’s theoretical and practical philosophy is marked by philosophical rebellion and conceptual revolution: he invites, even demands, that we criticise and move beyond our usual horizons, lest we reproduce old problems. In this talk, Julie Klein considered Spinoza’s relation to scepticism and his practice of critique as a philosophical strategy. She focused particularly on his account of the freedom to philosophise in order to clarify his view of what makes philosophising possible.