Baruch Spinoza was a radical and a rebel. His philosophic writing was boldly secular and rational, scintillatingly irreverent and irrepressibly critical, committed to friendship, and emancipated embodied experience. Today, with globalised capitalism in crisis, these principles are suddenly in question. Can Spinoza’s thinking help us gain agency to face our challenges today? Through the readings and discussions in the monthly Spinoza circles we hope to re-evaluate the status and prospects of the contemporary challenges.

At this coming Circles meeting we will continue our exploration of one of the most difficult but, in many ways most rewarding concepts in Spinoza’s writing ‘common notions’. We might image the common notions as the part of an organism which processes sense data (passions) into ideas, towards the functions of reason based on ‘adequate knowledge’. Katja DIefenbach tells us that the Ethics is almost entirely written in common notions, which is keeping with the political project of the Ethics, to provide a scaffolding for new forms of human community, stabilized and ordered through reasoned consultation.

We recommend Katja Diefenbach’s presentation at last year’s Symposium, http://westdenhaag.nl/thuistezien/2 and for a bit of a reiteration her article here From Spinoza, this Circle will start from where we left off, Ethics, Pt. 2 Prop. 40 or so and go to Prop. 49, after that we will jump to Pt. 4 from Prop. 28.

The sessions are convened by Baruch Gottlieb, and this month, hosted online. The Spinoza reading circle is open to anyone who would like to read Spinoza regardless of previous experience. Main language of discussion is English.

Sunday 26.04.2020, 14 hrs
Tickets 0,-/6,- euro
RSVP: https://onlinespinozacircle.eventbrite.nl