This article is part of The Return of Metaphysics series, and was produced in partnership with the Essentia Foundation.Spinoza is having a moment. Previously dismissed as a speculative metaphysician, his metaphysical monism has been rehabilitated even in analytic-dominated Anglophone philosophy. But it’s his challenge to humanism and its commitment to human exceptionalism that’s most relevant today, and the hardest to accept, argues Yitzhak Y. Melamed. A few years ago, I took part in a conference at Bochum University, and partly out of respect for the university which hosts the illustrious Hegel-Archiev, I decided to present a paper in which I argued that, not unlike Hegel’s Encyclopedie, one can profitably read Spinoza’s Ethics as a circular text which ends just where it begins. The Q&A session after my talk was lively and joyou…
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