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HT @JasonMauriceY: Yitzhak Melamed& #39;s Blackwell Companion to Spinoza is about to appear. I am honored to be in it with such good company. This is my 3rd Spinoza paper, "Spinoza& #39;s Economics" (although a better title would be "Spinoza& #39;s Political Economy"--let me explain). 1/
Although I was repeatedly nudged into doing a PhD on Spinoza, I never read Spinoza& #39;s Ethics until I was asked to do an on campus interview at USF. This included, in addition to a job talk, a guest lecture. I was assigned Spinoza& #39;s Ethics. I read it on the flight down. 2/
When I landed I was ready to give the students a wonderful neo-platonic Spinoza. I didn& #39;t get the job--but they ended up hiring Ariew and Jesseph eventually, so I can& #39;t say they made the wrong choice! 3/
I got a gig in Leiden, and started to teach Spinoza regularly (and semi-regularly at Ghent.) I really love teaching Spinoza to first year students; it& #39;s the most gratifying teaching experience possible (although Ibn Tufayl comes close), especially being so close to Rijnsburg. 4/
Anyway, my first Spinoza paper on Spinoza& #39;s metaphysics was (despite Michael Della Rocca& #39;s comments at SPAWN in Syracuse--one of the highlights of my career) a bit of a dud. It was published in a volume edited by Tom Stoneham. Reviewers were either mystified or underwhelmed. 5/
I mention Michael because he published my second paper (which incorporated material for a last minute comment on Susan James at the Aristotelian Society) on "Spinoza and Science" in his Oxford Handbook. That& #39;s been gratifying; the paper has been much cited, and discussed. 6/
It was also fun because as I was finishing up, I discovered that @alison_peterman and @alexxdouglas independently hit on related ideas, and so I felt confident that I might have hit on the truth and be part of a school of thought! (And made two wonderful friends.) 7/
I stopped working on Spinoza because my PhD student, @JoVanCauter, wrote on Spinoza and Bacon. I have a policy not to write on topics my PhDs are writing on. (In grad school I witnessed some ugly incidents.) Jo has a TT job in Utrecht (!), I am free to write on Spinoza again.
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This "Spinoza and Economics" paper almost didn& #39;t happen. I wrote a few blogs to try out some ideas, and sent them to Melamed. The core idea was to treat Spinoza as a critic of utilitarianism (based on TIE). Melamed was (rightly) not encouraging. 9/
Last Summer, in lockdown, I decided to re-read all of Spinoza. This is actually not a lot of material. And to my amazement, I saw a lot of new themes I had not noticed all these years I had taught him. Crucially, I saw a way how Ethics, TTP, and TP fit together: 10/
These center on Spinoza& #39;s account of the collapse (or corruption) of political systems by demagogues and luxury. (Yes, no surprise I noticed that in the last year of Trump regime.) This ties Spinoza much more closely to the republican tradition. 11/
And Spinoza offers a response!, Especially in TP, by way of mechanism design and institutional structure. And much to my amazement this anticipates much between Mandeville and Kant (including Kant& #39;s account to rational devils). There is a lot of proto-Montesquiu and Hume. 12/
It also prefigures public choice theory (something Buchanan and Tullock themselves announce in the appendix to Calculus of Consent). Even more amazing, I found evidence that Wicksell (who is major influence on public choice) clearly knew his Spinoza. 13/
I am really excited about the volume and my contribution. I hope when it appears you will agree. I thank René Brouwer, Wiep van Bunge, @alexxdouglas, Daniel Schneider, Hartmut Kliemt, Jo Van Cauter, and Yitzhak Melamed for comments. And @lastpositivist for encouragement. finis
