Research

Spinoza, Love, Eternal Minds, and Grief

I have a forthcoming paper (in the Journal of Modern Philosophy) on Spinoza’s accounts of the mind eternality, love, and knowledge. The thesis is that Spinoza’s system lets us to keep a loved one “with us,” so to speak, after their death. This is done by increasing knowledge of the loved one’s eternal “something” (as Spinoza calls it) during their life, and then reflecting on this knowledge once they have passed. I further argue that doing this is a Spinozistic good, wherein our joy is preserved or strengthened.

Spinoza and Suicide Research

My most complete research has been on Baruch Spinoza’s philosophy of suicide, and how it can encourage better practices in contemporary suicide research. Some of it has been published in the Journal of Spinoza Studies. This paper resolves remaining tensions in the general perception of Spinoza’s views of suicide, before briefly applying it to questions about contemporary suicide research.