Steven Nadler: The Specter of Spinozism: Malebranche, Arnauld, Fénelon

Colloquium lecture by Steven Nadler (University of Wisconsin-Madison) organized by the Department of the History of Philosophy (Centre for GMEMT)

What might a French Bishop, a German Lutheran polymath, two unorthodox Catholic priests—both French, one an Oratorian Cartesian in Paris and the other a Jansenist on the lam in the Spanish Low Countries—and a Huguenot exile in the Dutch Republic, all contemporaries in the second half of the seventeenth century, possibly have in common?

The answer is not too difficult to find. François Fénelon, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Nicolas Malebranche, Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Bayle—like so many others in the period—all suffered from Spinozaphobia (although Bayle, at least, had some admiration for the “atheist” Spinoza’s virtuous life). Just as the specter of communism united Democrats and Republicans in the rough and tumble world of American politics in the 1940s and 50s, so the specter of Spinozism made room for strange bedfellows in the equally rough and tumble world of the early modern Republic of Letters.

Read full paper: The Specter of Spinozism: Malebranche, Arnauld, Fénelon

Handout

The meeting will take place online via googlemeets. Please send an email to Christian Henkel to receive the participation link.