October 27

Sandra Shapshay (CUNY) & Dennis Vanden Auweele (KU Leuven)

‘To separate faith from philosophy’: Schopenhauer’s dialogue with Spinoza

Abstract: While many Germans of the early 19th century were loath to be associated with Spinoza due to the looming shadow of the pantheism controversy, Schopenhauer openly and frequently engages with Spinoza’s philosophy without fear of stigma. His sustained grappling with Spinoza’s oeuvre, including the Theological-Political Treatise, is evident from the copious annotations that Schopenhauer made to his two-volume set of Spinoza’s collected works in Latin, works he had acquired and read even before writing his dissertation in 1813. In his published work, Schopenhauer oscillates between significant praise and trenchant criticism of Spinoza’s views developed in the Theological-Political Treatise. In this essay, we assess Schopenhauer’s affinities with and departures from Spinoza’s thought largely through the illuminating prism of a particular chapter in Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation entitled “On Humanity’s Metaphysical Need.” We show that, in rejecting Spinoza’s moral thought, Schopenhauer must come to a different account of the utility of religion. For him, religion is an indispensable means for humanity since it provides truthful insight through symbol and allegory—like philosophy, it is a ‘metaphysics’ that has but one duty: to be true. Instead of inculcating piety and compassion through appeal to egoism, Schopenhauer believes, contra Spinoza, that religions can awaken insight into the oneness of reality and the ubiquity of suffering such that this insight leads one to compassion and loving kindness.

Sandra Shapshay is Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and the Graduate Center (CUNY). She works primarily on the history of ethics and aesthetics in the 19th c, with particular focus on Schopenhauer and Kant. She is the author of Reconstructing Schopenhauer’s Ethics: Hope, Compassion, and Animal Welfare (OUP, 2019), the editor of The Palgrave Schopenhauer Handbook (2017), and with Levi Tenen, co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism titled “The Good, The Beautiful, The Green: Environmentalism and Aesthetics” (2018).

Dennis Vanden Auweele is Lecturer in Philosophy at KU Leuven (University of Leuven). He specializes in 19th-century German philosophy, especially philosophy of religion. Recent publications include: Exceeding Reason: Freedom and Religion in Schelling and Nietzsche (De Gruyter, 2020); The Kantian Foundation of Schopenhauer’s Pessimism (Routledge, 2017) and the edited volume (with Miklos Vassanyi) Past to Present of Political Theology (Routledge, 2020).

A recording of the session will be made available for some time following the event.

(The “Downloads” page is password-protected, and the password is available to all members of the Spinoza and EMP Workshop email list.)

The Workshop thanks The Johns Hopkins Philological Society for its sponsorship of this co-organized event.