Jan. 24

Jason Maurice Yonover (Johns Hopkins University) 

Freedom, the One-and-All: Spinozism from Charlotte von Stein to Elisabeth Schmitt

Abstract: Although a great deal of work remains to be done regarding the engagement with Spinoza among canonical German thinkers from Herder to Nietzsche, the robust interest in Spinozism among women philosophers in the German tradition has been particularly neglected. In this paper I provide an overview, and with the aim of beginning to fill various gaps I dwell on several particularly fascinating cases. I begin with Weimar court assistant Charlotte von Stein, who read Spinoza intensively at the end of the 18th century (producing a text referred to in the literature as the “Study After Spinoza,” attributed to JW Goethe but in von Stein’s hand). Taking off from here, and via discussion of several German romantics such as Karoline von Günderrode as well as later 19th-century thinkers like Lou Andreas-Salomé, I show that the modern German engagement with Spinoza’s thought has consistently been mediated by women philosophers, and argue that Spinoza was attractive as a source of liberatory thinking in particular.

Jason M. Yonover is Dual PhD Candidate at Johns Hopkins University and incoming Desai Family Postdoctoral Researcher at Princeton University. He works primarily in the history of philosophy and German studies, with a focus on German philosophy and political thought in particular. He is co-editor of Spinoza in Germany: Political and Religious Thought across the Long Nineteenth Century, forthcoming with OUP, and the author of articles or chapters in the European Journal of Philosophy, the Oxford Handbook of 19th-Century Women Philosophers in the German Tradition, and the Blackwell Companion to Spinoza.

Click here to learn more about his work.

A recording of the session will be made available on the “Downloads” page for some time following the event.

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