Jack Stetter

Spinoza and the Philosophy of War

Unlike several other figures in modern European philosophy from Grotius and Hobbes to Kant and Hegel, Spinoza remains largely absent from current work in the philosophy of war. Partly this is because Spinoza’s views on war and related topics have received inadequate scholarly attention. This is regrettable. Not only do we miss an opportunity to bring Spinoza into dialogue with important contemporary interdisciplinary research, but we also fail to appreciate the substantial significance of the topic of war to Spinoza’s philosophy. Thus, Spinoza’s theory of the passions and explanation of the causes of interhuman conflict, his argument that under reason’s guidance we desire peace, his identification of natural right with power and use of a civic republican conception of martial virtue, and his depictions of religious violence all come together to form a rich intervention in the philosophy of war. With this book project, I seek to establish an interpretation of Spinoza’s thought that assigns a central place to the topic of war while also demonstrating the enduring value of early modern philosophy for discussions in the philosophy of war.

Jack Stetter (PhD, Université Paris 8) works primarily on early modern philosophy with a special focus on Spinoza. His publications include articles for the Journal of Modern Philosophy, Modern Judaism, Crisis and Critique, the Revista Seiscentos, the Blackwell Companion to Spinoza, and the Springer Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. With Charles Ramond, he is co-editor of Spinoza in Twenty-First Century American and French Philosophy  (Bloomsbury, 2019). With Stephen Howard, he is co-editor of The Edinburgh Critical Guide to Early Modern and Enlightenment Philosophy (forthcoming).