The article proposes a new solution to the long-standing problem of the universality of essences in Spinoza's ontology. It argues that, according to Spinoza, particular things in nature possess unique essences, but that these essences coexist with more general, mind-dependent species-essences, constructed by finite minds on the basis of similarities that obtain among the properties of formally-real particulars. This account provides the best fit both with the textual evidence and with Spinoza's other metaphysical and epistemological commitments. The article offers new (...) readings of how Spinoza understands not just the nature of essence, but also the nature of being, reason, striving, definitions, and different kinds of knowledge. (shrink)

The pantheon of seventeenth-century European philosophy includes some remarkably heterodox deities, perhaps most famously Spinoza’s deus-sive-natura. As in ethics and natural philosophy, early modern philosophical theology drew inspiration from classical sources outside the mainstream of Christianized Aristotelianism, such as the highly immanentist, naturalistic theology of Greek and Roman Stoicism. While the Stoic background to Spinoza’s pantheist God has been more thoroughly explored, I maintain that Hobbes’s corporeal God is the true modern heir to the Stoic theology. The Stoic and Hobbesian (...) gods are necessitarian, entirely corporeal, and thoroughly intermixed with ordinary bodies, while also supremely intelligent, providential, and good. And both gods serve as the ultimate source of diversity and change in a material world divested of Aristotelian forms and causes. Unfortunately, scholars on both sides of the long debate about the sincerity of Hobbes’s theism have not taken very seriously his late articulation of a corporeal theology. One probable reason for this dismissive attitude is a lack of thorough investigation of the historical precedents for such an unusual godhead available to Hobbes. The first part of this article attempts to establish a close congruence between the Stoic and Hobbesian gods. The second part traces the likely sources for Hobbes’s Stoic theology in his intellectual context. (shrink)

Sir William Drummond (1770?-1828) enjoyed considerable notoriety in the early nineteenth century as the author of the Academical Questions (1805), a manifesto for immaterialism that is at the same time a creative synthesis of ancient and modern forms of scepticism. In this paper I advance an interpretation of Drummond's work that emphasises his extensive employment and adaptation of Hume's own ‘Academical or Sceptical Philosophy’. I also document the impact of the Academical Questions on the contemporary philosophical scene, including its decisive (...) influence on Shelley's philosophical development. (shrink)