My research concerns our idea of God and addresses the question: Should I be a Spinozist or a theist? Whereas Spinozists claim that God and the world are one, theists claim that God and the world are distinct. Our answer determines whether we see ourselves vanishing into the eternal substance (Spinozism) or asserting our independent existence as mortal beings (theism). You can watch a brief lecture for a broader audience about this project on YouTube here:
Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
I defend Spinoza's claim that extension is an attribute that an indivisible substance, such as God, could have. However, in order to explain why, we must abandon two long held orthodoxies in Spinoza scholarship. First, Spinoza acknowledges only parts that do not depend on their whole. Second, God, considered as natura naturans, has no parts of any kind. Against these orthodoxies, I show that having parts which depend on their whole, for Spinoza, does not entail divisibility and that God, considered as natura naturans, must have such parts in order to be extended. Along the way, we will have a closer look at Spinoza's mereology and address apparently conflicting statements that Spinoza makes about the relation of part and whole that have long vexed commentators.
History of Philosophy Quarterly 41 (3): 227-250. 2024.
This essay presents Mendelssohn's neglected vindication of theism through a refutation of Spinoza's philosophy in the Morgenstunden and highlights its relevance for discussions in contemporary philosophy of religion by (i) contextualizing Mendelssohn's argument within the reception of Spinoza's philosophy at the dawn of the 18th century, (ii) tracing the path of Mendelssohn's argument from Spinoza's philosophy to theism, (iii) and applying Mendelssohn's argument to Linda Zagzebski's account of divine omniscience showing that her account is not only incoherent but also undermines the theistic assumption that the world has an existence outside of God.
Works under review:
The Spector of Spinozism in Descartes’ Meditations
Expositors of Descartes have tried to adjudicate the issue of Spinozism by considering as to whether being extended would compromise the indivisibility of God. Various first order arguments have been launched over the years ranging from the question whether God could be formally extended to the question as to whether God could be eminently extended by means of some proxy property. However, this argumentative back and forth has obscured a more fundamental problem, namely how we conceive of extension in the first place. In this essay, I examine why Descartes, in contrast to Spinoza, concludes that God cannot have the attribute of extension despite holding, in agreement with Spinoza, the priority of the infinite. I argue that Descartes violates the priority of the infinite at a crucial juncture in his philosophical reasoning when contemplating the nature of extension in the Meditations by means of a finite piece of wax in order to determine as to whether God could have the attribute of extension. Thus misconceived, as Spinoza remarks in numerous places, extension could indeed not be an attribute of God.
The Cartesian Circle and the Cogito Argument
A vast literature has accumulated about the epistemic status of the cogito through the lens of the so-called Cartesian circle but little attention has been paid to how Descartes’ distinction between two method of presentation, namely analysis and synthesis, in conjunction with his affirmation of the principle that the finite can only be understood through the infinite might generate or the dissolve the appearance of circularity. I outline two tales about the proper foundation of indubitable knowledge in the Meditations - a cogito first and a God first reading - and give three reasons for the God first reading. (1) Descartes’ synthetic presentation of the Meditations starts with proofs for the existence of God. (2) Descartes says that the finite must be understood through the infinite. (3) Meditation 3 presents an augmented version of the cogito argument that not merely reveals our existence as a thinking substance but rather more specifically our existence as a finite thinking substance and was created by an infinite thinking substance, namely God. I conclude that disagreements about the proper foundation of knowledge stem from Descartes’s failure to make explicit and cleanly separate the analytic and synthetic presentation of the Meditations.
Mystics in rationalist clothing: A study of the epistemic foundations in Spinoza and Descartes.