The philosophy of Baruch Spinoza was a source of inspiration and of significant influence on the development of German Idealism. Irrespectively of whether it was taken as a philosophical challenge to overcome, or as an essential starting point of thought, as Hegel puts it in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, the formative value of Spinoza’s thinking on the development of philosophy in the nineteenth century is evident.  The presupposition of our seminar is that the presence of Spinoza’s thought, whether explicitly or implicitly, in tradition of German Idealism, can both contribute to a renewed understanding of that tradition, as well as to the recognition of the power of Spinoza’s philosophy.

We will devote the meetings of the seminar to acquaint ourselves with central themes in Spinoza’s Ethics as well as to reading selected parts from writings of Lessing, Mendelsohn, Jacobi, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Goethe.

Seminar requirements: Class participation, Weekly readings, submission of two ‘responses’ during the term, and the submission of a seminar/course (referat) paper.