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HT @JasonMauriceY: Yitzhak Melamed'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's Economics" (although a better title would be "Spinoza's Political Economy"--let me explain). 1/
Although I was repeatedly nudged into doing a PhD on Spinoza, I never read Spinoza'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'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't get the job--but they ended up hiring Ariew and Jesseph eventually, so I can'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'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's metaphysics was (despite Michael Della Rocca'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'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'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'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'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
