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Spinoza Studies

Experience and Eternity in Spinoza

By Pierre-Francois Moreau

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£190.00

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About this book

The first English-language translation of Pierre-François Moreau’s seminal study, which fundamentally transforms our inherited understanding of Spinoza’s philosophy
  • Presents a systematic reappraisal of Spinoza’s philosophical system around the enigmatic concept of experience
  • Demonstrates how Spinoza’s concept of experience is essential to an understanding of the Ethics, including such crucial concepts as necessity, infinitude and eternity
  • Bridges the divide in contemporary scholarship between Spinoza the affect theorist and Spinoza the hyper-rationalist

    • What could it mean to feel eternal? Through a detailed study of Spinoza’s concept of ‘experience’, Moreau shows how Spinoza extends the power of reason to domains frequently seen as irrational, from common life to history, language to the passions. Where previously Spinoza’s thought was identified exclusively with the geometrical method, Moreau demonstrates that by mobilising his unique account of ‘experience’, Spinoza is able to capture the singularity of individuals, their lives, languages, passions and societies.

    With readings of each of Spinoza’s most famous works, from the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect to the Ethics, but also unprecedented studies of minor writings such as the Hebrew Grammar, Moreau renews our understanding of Spinoza’s philosophy by showing us how his geometrical and experiential methods operate simultaneously. Finally, this new vision of Spinoza’s philosophy illuminates the enigmatic experience of eternity mentioned in Book V of Spinoza’s Ethics.

Reviews

Experience and Eternity is a masterwork. Pierre-François Moreau illuminates the fields of Experience in Spinoza: language, passions, history and eternity. He offers a novel interpretation of the relationship between Experience and Reason. No scholar working in the area of empiricism study can afford to ignore this extremely instructive book.
An accessible, engaging translation of a fascinating treatment of some of Spinoza’s most tantalising themes. On Moreau’s highly original reading, Spinoza’s affirmation of reason is inter-connected with serious attention to "ordinary" experience: a sense of the mind being itself "eternal" is at the heart of human experience of finitude.
Pierre-Francois Moreau’s Experience and Eternity in Spinoza not only ranks with the classic studies of contemporary French Spinozism. It outstrips them, dispensing with the binaries that have shaped the modern understanding of Spinoza’s philosophy. Challenging the idea that Spinoza’s rationalism involves a denigration of experience, Moreau shows the degree to which we have not yet begun to understand what Spinoza means by the term. Through rigorous and illuminating exegesis, Moreau discloses the forms of intelligibility proper to experience. He shows us, that far from being contrary to structure or knowledge, experience is their milieu, the site and home of thinking itself. In Robert Boncardo’s lucid translation, English readers finally have access to the work that launched the career of France’s leading living authority on Spinoza. In purporting to follow Spinoza in abstracting thought from experience, Moreau’s forebears risked abstracting Spinoza from history. With this major work, Moreau begins to restore historical sense to Spinozism, giving us a philosophy for our time, for all time.
Table of contents
Abbreviations; Translator’s Introduction: Can’t Stop the Feeling (of Being Eternal); Introduction; Part I: Certitudo, The Journey of Philosophy; 1. The Status of the Prologue; 2. The Stages of Certainty; 3. Common Life and Perishable Gods; 4. The True Good; 5. The ‘Animus’ and Love; 6. The Circles of Experience; Part II; 7. Determinations and Limits of Experience; 8. Fields of Experience: Language; 9. Fields of Experience: The Passions; 10. Fields of Experience: History; Part III: A Metaphysical Experience?; 11. An Experience of Forms? 12. The Soul and the Body; 13. The Experience of Eternity; Conclusion: The Constitution of Spinoza’s System; An Infinite Internal to the Finite: An Interview with Pierre-François Moreau on Experience and Eternity in Spinoza.
About the contributors

Pierre-Francois Moreau

Pierre-François Moreau is Professor of Philosophy at L’Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon. He is a world-renowned specialist in Spinoza. He is the author of Spinoza: L’expérience et l’éternité (1994), Spinoza: Etat et religion (2005) and Problèmes du spinozisme (2006), along with numerous other books and articles on Spinoza, Greek philosophy, early modern philosophy, the history of humanism and the methodology of the history of philosophy.

Robert Boncardo

Robert Boncardo is Sessional Tutor in the Faculty of Theology and Philosophy at Australian Catholic University. He completed his doctorate in French Studies at the University of Sydney and Aix-Marseille Université.

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