Spinoza and Imaginative Ideas

Spinoza and Imaginative Ideas

Hybrid workshop

Human Abilities Center, Humboldt University Berlin

Room 4.17

Schönhauser Allee 10-11, 10119 Berlin

24–25 October 2026

24th of October

09:00-09:30 – Welcome coffee and breakfast

09:30–10:15 – Henry Kwok (Cornell): The Composition of Representational Content and Error in Spinoza

10:30–11:15 – Daniel Bella (Hamburg): Imagination and Disposition: Searching for an Objective Foundation

11:30–13:00 – Ursula Renz (Graz): On the Threshold to Modernity: Spinoza’s Views on History

13:00-14:15 – Lunch break

14:15–15:45 – Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam): Spinoza as a Machiavellian Comparative Modeler in the Political Treatise

15:45-16:15 – Coffee and tea break

16:15–17:00 – Kevin Jobe (Texas-Rio Grande Valley): Borders as Terminus: Spinoza's Political Epistemology of Images (online)

17:15–18:00 – Marie Wuth (Eichstätt-Ingolstadt): The Accursed Body Politic: Spinoza on Sacred Expulsion and Governmental Hate

18:15–19:00 – Johanna Alt (Aberdeen): Spinoza and the Problem of Attention

25th of October

09:00-09:30 – Welcome coffee and breakfast

9:30–11:00 – Kristin Primus (Berkeley): The Two Sides of an Imaginative Idea

11:15–12:00  – Aliza Ashraf (St Andrews): Why we need to be more imaginative: the case of 'pity' in Spinoza

12:15–13:00 – Andrew Lopez (Colorado State): Despising Beasts: Spinoza’s Antipathy Toward Animals

13:00-14:15 – Lunch break

14:15–15:00 – Luce deLire (Cologne): The Role of Imagination in Spinoza's Methodology

15:15–16:00 – Lois Niemeyer (Vienna): Spinoza and the Uncanny in Imagination: Futurity, Affect, Ambivalence

16:15–17:00 – Dafna Mark Ben Shabbat (UC San Diego): The conatus as an interactive power increase: how inadequate ideas are necessary for successful striving

17:00-17:30 – Coffee and tea break

17:30–19:00 – Martin Lenz (Hagen): Reading the Ethics: Geometrical Imagination and the Transformation of Readers

Organization: Leonardo Moauro (HU Berlin), Domenica Romagni (Colorado/HU Berlin), Oliver Toth (Heidelberg)

The conference is generously funded by ESEMP, Spinoza-Gesellschaft, DFG.

The conference is free and open to all. Please email us at [email protected] to register for in-person participation, and for the link for online participation.