Although he wrote in the 17^thcentury in recent years the philosophy of Benedict Spinoza (1632–1677) has had an increasingly significant impact on Enlightenment history, political and ethical theory, metaphysics, and moral psychology, as well as cognitive psychology and neuroscience (Jonathan Israel; Steven Nadler; Susan James; Antonio Damasio). Many important artists and writers have been drawn to Spinoza's philosophy such as, Goethe, Mary and Percy Shelley, George Eliot, Gustave Flaubert, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Jorge Luis Borges. Yet, philosophers have denied or neglected the relevance of his philosophy to artistic practice. The philosopher James Morrison, for example, claims that Spinoza has no aesthetics, and his work is incompatible with aesthetics. This is despite the fact that engagement with the implications of Spinoza’s philosophy for aesthetic theory and practice can be traced back to Leibniz in the late 17^thcentury and is present in the writings of Kant and Hegel in the 18^thand 19^thcenturies, as well as in the work of thinkers such as Pater, Santayana and Bergson in the 19^thand 20^thcenturies (Ward; Sprigge; Cohen). In some cases, these thinkers were building on Spinoza’s thought and in others they were opposing it in order to develop their own positions. In recent years there has been a renewed interest in questions of how Spinoza’s thought — which engages with many aspects of human being, and offers theories of the affects and a relational understanding of cognition — might to be applied to literary history, literary form, and theoretical understandings of the capacities of art (Marjorie Levinson; Warren Montag).

The feminist philosopher and Spinoza scholar Moira Gatens has teamed with literary theorist Anthony Uhlmann in developing a project related to how Spinoza’s thought might be applied to the arts and the art of living. This panel will add to this work. Uhlmann here will summarise elements of the project in focusing both on how ideas that illuminate the capacities of thinking in literature might be drawn from Spinoza’s works, and consider the particular example of how they might be applied to a reading of James Joyce. Uhlmann will consider Joyce’s own comments on Spinoza, but further interrogate how Joyce’s reading of, and development of an aesthetics from the works of Saint Augustine can be drawn back into relation with Spinoza, who was conversant with the work of the medieval scholasticism (among many other sources). In this way Uhlmann's paper will touch both on how Spinoza might provide generalisable ideas that can be applied to literary practice, and how case studies of writers who have engaged with Spinoza might shed light on the manner in which his work and theirs resonate.

Uhlmann and Gaten’s work will then enter into dialogue with two other scholars who are also working on how Spinoza’s thought might be applied to readings of literature. Audrey Wasser’s paper, in moving between the theory of biblical exegesis articulated in the Theological-Political Treatise and the geometrical “style” of the Ethics, will outline a Spinozist theory of reading, one centered on an ever-present tension between the immanence of a process of meaning and the transcendence of a despotically ordained truth. It will consider the language of the Ethics in light of this tension, and in light of the way certain rhetorical figures function in the text, particularly irony and allegory. In conclusion, it will comment on the relationship between questions of textual interpretation and those of force and persuasion, taking this opportunity to consider the practice of interpretation in Spinoza as a unique exercise in the construction of shared norms.

Joe Hughes will address the question of Spinoza’s relation to literature from another angle, in interrogating the works of Spanish literature (as a native speaker of Spanish) Spinoza himself read. In a recent essay Filiipo Mignini asks why the young Spinoza felt "the need to build a new doctrine of method and, in particular, of the power and limits of fiction.” Mignini finds one reponse in the problems of Cartesian thought; Joe Hughes pursues another by unpacking Spinoza’s library. The ‘literary’ texts Spinoza owned were either classical or Iberian: next to Ovid and Terence were Cervantes, Gracian, Quevedo and Gongora. The collection marks a material and intellectual investment in the avant-guard of Baroque literature, the cutting edge of the literary arts in seventeenth century ’Spain', and their defining debates—one of which turned around the nature of fictionality. Hughes; paper explores the ways Spinoza’s early theory of fictions might be seen to draw on and develop Gracian and Cervantes’ reflections on the structures and limits of fictionality.

These three papers all offer new work in this field. They add to a growing body of literature (Uhlmann and Gatens have recently edited a special issue of Textual Practice on the topic, and a second special issue is soon to appear with Intellectual History Review later in 2019 or early 2020).

The papers will each run for 18 minutes with 15 minutes of discussion at the end of the session. Uhlmann will also act as chair of the session.