CFP: Pli - Volume 27 - Philosophising in the Proper Order: Spinoza and Systematic Metaphysics

Pli invites submissions for its 27th volume:

‘Philosophising in the Proper Order: Spinoza and Systematic Metaphysics’

‘[A]s nothing that is not appearance can be an object of experience, it follows that the understanding
can never go beyond the limits of sensibility within which alone objects are given to us. Its principles
are merely rules for the exhibition of appearances; and the proud name of ontology, which presumes
to supply, in a systematic form, different kinds of synthetic a priori knowledge of things in themselves
[…] must be replaced by the more modest name of a mere analytic of the pure understanding.’

– Kant, CPR A246-A247/B303-B304

‘… they did not observe the [proper] order of philosophizing. For they believed that the divine nature,
which they should have contemplated before all else (because it is prior both in knowledge and in
nature) is last in the order of knowledge, and that the things which are called objects of the senses
are prior to all.’

– Spinoza, Ethics, IIp10s


The Critique of Pure Reason makes it clear that there is no place for systems such as Spinoza’s in the
new order inaugurated by Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Yet ever since this interdiction,
philosophies that situate themselves in a broadly post-Kantian tradition have repeatedly turned to
Spinoza to develop a variety of ontological, hermeneutic, and political systems. Focusing on Spinoza’s
metaphysical thought, the 27th volume of Pli invites papers that explore the various ways in which
Spinoza’s own system can be used to counter or accommodate Kantian strictures to ontology, as well
as the ways in which Spinoza’s conception of properly ordered philosophy influenced the broad sweep
of metaphysical Spinozisms to have emerged after Kant, while themselves being systems far-removed
from pre-Critical Rationalism.

Paper topics might include:

•       The possibility or desirability of revisiting pre-Critical metaphysics after Kant
•       History and conceptions of Post-Kantian Spinozism
•       Connections between Spinoza and German Idealism
•       Spinoza and the Leibniz-Wolff tradition
•       The influence of Pantheismusstreit on subsequent philosophical developments
•       Omnis determinatio est negatio – the place of negation in Spinoza’s system
•       Spinoza’s ‘method’ and ‘proper order of philosophizing’ and their relation to previous or
subsequent philosophy.
•       Possible influences on Spinoza – Kabbalism, Neo-Platonism, Scholasticism, Aristotelianism
•       The relation of Spinoza’s system to the question of a philosophical vs. a theological order of
philosophy
•       “From the necessity of the divine nature must follow [sequi debent] infinitely many things in
infinitely many modes” (IP16) – emanation, expression, propria, or other ways to understand sequi
debent.

The deadline for submission is 17th January 2015.

For more details, please see: