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Published 14 July 2004

Benedictus de Spinoza

Aula University of Amsterdam

The Spinoza Lectures 2010 by Professor Moira Gatens

Lecture 1 Thursday, April 22, 2010, 20.15 hours
Spinoza's Hard Path to Freedom (1): Imagining, Believing, and Understanding
Lecture 2 Thursday, May 20, 2010, 20.15 hours
Spinoza's Hard Path to Freedom (2): Falsehood, Fiction, and Knowledge

Location Aula University of Amsterdam, Oude Lutherse Kerk, Singel 411 Amsterdam.

Professor Moira Gatens holds a Professorial Research Fellowship in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sydney. She enjoys an international reputation in social and political philosophy, Spinoza studies, and feminist philosophy.

Spinoza, Renati des Cartes Principiorum philosophiae pars I, & II. Accesserunt ejusdem Cogitata metaphysica (Amsterdam 1663), titelpagina. Spinoza presenteert zich hier als Amsterdammer. Collectie UB, UvA, sign. O 60-1109
Spinoza, Renati des Cartes Principiorum philosophiae pars I, & II. Accesserunt ejusdem Cogitata metaphysica (Amsterdam 1663), titelpagina

'Spinoza Amsterdammer'

Digital exhibition 'Spinoza Amsterdammer' (in Dutch)

Photo: Sijmen Hendriks

Life

Benedictus de Spinoza is Holland's greatest philosopher. He was born on 24 November 1632 in Amsterdam and died on 21 February 1677 in The Hague.

Spinoza grew up in a Jewish environment, but in the 1650s he came increasingly into conflict with dogmatic religion. In 1656 he was excommunicated from the Jewish community. Spinoza left Amsterdam, and from 1661 he lived successively in Rijnsburg, Voorburg, and The Hague. (His house in Rijnsburg is now a Spinoza Museum, while his last residence in The Hague has become a Spinoza Reading Room).

The 'despinoza.nl' site is dedicated to Spinoza. Among other things, it gives access to Dutch translations of his works.

For an extensive survey of the life and works of Spinoza, see the article Benedictus de Spinoza (1632-1677) by Piet Steenbakkers. (in Dutch)

Works

He wrote his most important works after he had left Amsterdam:

  1. Renati Des Cartes principiorum philosophiae pars I&II met Cogitata Metaphysica (1663), translated in 1664 by Spinoza's friend, Pieter Balling.
  2. Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670), of which two Dutch editions were published at the end of the seventeenth century, one by Henricus Koenraad (1693) and the other by Hans Jurgen von der Weyl (1694).
  3. In 1675 publication of the Ethica seemed unlikely. Spinoza decided to have his friends publish it after his death. In 1677 the Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata appeared as part of the
  4. Opera Posthuma, together with three unfinished treatises (Tractatus politicus, Tractatus de intellectus emendatione, Compendium grammatices linguae Hebraeae) and 75 letters. Simultaneously, his friends published the same texts (except the Hebrew grammar) in a Dutch translation. For an English edition of the Ethica see: The Ethics, translated from the Latin by R.H.M. Elwes (1883). Extremely useful is the logical index to the Ethica. See also the Latin hypertext version van Rudolf W. Meijer.

The history of the creation of the Ethica has been described by Piet Steenbakkers in his dissertation, Spinoza's Ethica from manuscript to print: studies on text, form and related topics (Utrecht 1994).
Spinoza's correspondence is also an important part of his works. The letters provide indispensable additional material to his philosphy, but they also contain all kinds of biographical details, giving us an impression of the kind of person Spinoza must have been.
Finally, the book Met iets van eeuwigheid, a selection from the work of the Neolatinist F. Akkerman, contains several chapters dedicated to Spinoza.

gevel Bibliotheek Bijzondere Collecties
Special Collections University of Amsterdam new location at Oude Turfmarkt 129

Libraries

The Rare books department and the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana of the University Library of Amsterdam, have a large collection of old editions of Spinoza, both in Latin and Dutch.
Besides the University Library of Amsterdam, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague (the National Library of the Netherlands) also holds important material, such as the two manuscripts of the Shorter Treatise. For this, see Spinoza in the description of the special collections of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek .
Also of interest are the collections of the Spinoza House in Rijnsburg, of the Spinoza Reading Room in The Hague, and the Spinoza collection of the University Library of Leiden.

Bibliographies

A good survey of early editions of Spinoza is:

  • Kingma, J. en Offenberg, A.K.:Bibliography of Spinoza's works up to 1800 . Amsterdam 1977

Other standard bibliographies are:

  • Linde, A. van der: Benedictus Spinoza bibliografie. 's-Gravenhage 1871 (second reprint Nieuwkoop 1965)
  • Oko, A.S.: The Spinoza Bibliography. Boston 1964
  • Préposiet, J.: Bibliographie Spinoziste. Annales Littéraires de l'Université de Besançon, nr. 154. Paris 1973
  • Werf, T. van der, Siebrand, H. en Westerveen, C.:A Spinoza Bibliography 1971-1983. Leiden 1984
  • Wetlesen, J.:A Spinoza Bibliography 1940-1970. Oslo 1968, with a supplement from1971
  • There are also current bibliographies. The most important one is published annually in the Archives de Philosophie.

Via the internet:

  • Index du Bulletin de Bibliographie Spinoziste literature by and about Spinoza tot 1999
  • Spinoza Bibliographie 2000 -

Spinoza House Association

Those interested in studying Spinoza's works can become a member of the The Spinoza House Association. This association organizes annual meetings on Spinoza, the lectures of which are later published in the series Mededelingen vanwege het Spinozahuis. There are also seminars on Spinoza's works. Together with the Institure for Philosophy in Leusden (ISvW) the association organizes Spinoza summer workhops.

Source: Lidie Koeneman
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