Research

My research is in the history of philosophy with an emphasis on Spinoza in particular. I also work on metaphysics (e.g., on monism), on moral and political philosophy (e.g., on war), and on philosophical anthropology (e.g., on play). I have a budding interest in the philosophy of technology.

With Charles Ramond, I co-organize the ongoing seminar: Spinoza à Paris 8. I also am co-editor of Spinoza in Twenty-First Century American and French Philosophy. 

With Stephen Howard, I am co-editor of the forthcoming Edinburgh Critical History of Early Modern and Enlightenment Philosophy. The volume features over twenty contributors from around the world, and brings neglected philosophical figures into dialogue with canonical ones. 

Philosophy must engage the wider world: critically, dialectically, transformatively. Here I take my cue from Spinoza as well, who saw that doing philosophy means forging intellectual tools for the present. Some of my public-facing work can be read in venues like France Culture and The Philosopher.

For pre-prints of published articles and drafts of work in progress, please see my PhilPeople and/or Academia.edu pages. 

The follow topics are central to my scholarship thus far:

Spinoza and War

My current research project underway at the IRH, UW - Madison, examines the topic of war across Spinoza's philosophy: https://irh.wisc.edu/staff/stetter-jack/ 

See also: https://irh.wisc.edu/event/the-martial-virtue-of-states-in-spinozaspolitical-treatise/ 

I seek to establish an interpretation of Spinoza’s thought that assigns a central place to Spinoza's views on war. Unlike other figures in modern European philosophy from Grotius and Hobbes to Kant and Hegel, Spinoza remains absent from current literature in the philosophy of war. Partly this is because Spinoza’s views on war have not received adequate philosophical attention, despite increased study of Spinoza’s philosophy. Drawing on Anglo-American and Continental European Spinoza scholarship, my project repairs this lacuna and reveals the interest of Spinoza’s philosophy for conceptualizing war. The book will feature new accounts of Spinoza’s Ethics  (esp. the theory of how reason can pacify conflict), his Political Treatise (esp. the theory of the sovereign state’s power for war), and his Theological-Political Treatise (esp. the theory of the weaponization of religion), and aims to situate Spinoza’s thought in the context of the history of the philosophy of war and in discussion with thinkers such as Machiavelli, Grotius, Hobbes, Kant, Hegel, and Clausewitz.

Selected publications:

• Spinoza and War. Cambridge Elements Series on Spinoza. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (under contract).

• “Spinoza and Kant on War and Peace.” The Edinburgh Critical History of Early Modern and Enlightenment Philosophy (in press).

• “Spinoza and War.” Spinoza after Politics. Dan Taylor and Gil Moréjon (eds.), in The Philosopher (1923) (2024). Available online: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/post/spinoza-after-politics 

Spinoza's Metaphysics

Research done in connection with my doctoral thesis on Spinoza's metaphysics of substance monism: https://theses.fr/2019PA080042. Also connected to my earlier MA thesis on Spinoza's theory of singular things: https://philpapers.org/rec/STEDLN-2. Ongoing research extends these concerns to understanding the metaphysical basis of Spinoza's moral and political philosophy. 

Selected publications:

• "States as Minds in Spinoza's Political Treatise" (in progress)

• “Intuitive Science, Poetic Thought.” Australasian Philosophical Review. 7 (1): 71-76 (2024). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/24740500.2024.2364405

• “Spinoza’s Argument for Substance Monism.” Revista Seiscentos 1 (1): 193- 215 (2021). Open access: https://revistas.ufrj.br/index.php/seiscentos/article/view/47936 

Abstract: In this paper, I inspect the grounds for the mature Spinozist argument for substance monism. The argument is succinctly stated at Ethics Part 1, Proposition 14. The argument appeals to two explicit premises: (1) that there must be a substance with all attributes; (2) that substances cannot share their attributes. In conjunction with a third implicit premise, that a substance cannot not have any attribute whatsoever, Spinoza infers that there can be no more than one substance. I begin the inspection with the analysis of the first premise, which is provided in the form of the four proofs of God’s existence in Ethics Part 1, Proposition 11. While demonstrating how Spinoza adopts a progressive approach, where the fourth proof of God’s existence is more successful and persuasive than the third, which is more successful than the second, etc., I also unpack concepts central to Spinoza’s thinking here, including the concepts of reason (ratio) and power (potesta or potentia). I then analyze the second premise of the Spinozist argument for substance monism, as established by Ethics Part 1, Proposition 4 in conjunction with Ethics Part 1, Proposition 5. I take up and respond to the objection attributed to Leibniz that a substance p can have the attributes x and y and a substance q can have the attributes y and z, and thus that substances can share some attributes while remaining distinct. Throughout the study, my attention is focused on the argumentative procedures Spinoza adopts. This yields a close, internalist reading of the text where Spinoza effectively embraces substance monism. In conclusion to this study, I underscore to the originality of Spinoza’s argument for seventeenth century theories of substance. 

• “François Lamy’s Cartesian Refutation of Spinoza’s Ethics.” Journal of Modern Philosophy 1:7 (2019). Open access: https://jmphil.org/article/id/2133/ 

Abstract: François Lamy, a Benedictine monk and Cartesian philosopher whose extensive relations with Arnauld, Bossuet, Fénélon, and Malebranche put him into contact with the intellectual elite of late-seventeenth-century France, authored the very first detailed and explicit refutation of Spinoza’s Ethics in French, Le nouvel athéisme renversé. Regrettably overlooked in the secondary literature on Spinoza, Lamy is an interesting figure in his own right, and his anti-Spinozist work sheds important light on Cartesian assumptions that inform the earliest phase of Spinoza’s critical reception in the seventeenth-century. I begin by presenting Lamy’s life and the contentious state of Spinoza’s French reception in the 1680 and 1690s. I then discuss a central argument in Lamy’s refutation, namely the Cartesian objection that Spinoza’s account of the conceptual independence of attributes is incompatible with the theory of substance monism. Contrasting Lamy’s objection with questions put to Spinoza by de Vries and Tschirnhaus, I maintain that by exhibiting the direction Spinoza’s views on substance and attribute took in maturing we may accurately assess the strength of Spinoza’s position vis-à-vis his Cartesian objector, and I argue that, in fact, Spinoza’s mature account of God as an expressive ens realissimum is not vulnerable to Lamy’s criticism. In conclusion, I turn to Lamy’s objection that Spinoza’s philosophy is question-begging in view of Spinoza’s account of God, and I exhibit what this point of criticism tells us about the intentions of the first French Cartesian rebuttal of the Ethics.

• “L’État comme âme, le citoyen comme soumis et comme résistant.” Spinoza politique: Penser la puissance de la multitude. Hugues Poltier (ed.), in Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie, no. 147 (Lausanne): 185-205 (2015).  

Modern European Philosophy and Spinozism

Research on topics and figures at the intersection of modern European philosophy and Spinozism.

Selected publications:

• "The Lifelessness of Pantheism: Coleridge on Spinoza" (in progress)

• “Deleuze and Spinoza.” The Deleuzian Mind. Jeffrey Bell and Henry Somers-Hall (eds.) (London: Routledge) (in press).

• “Spinoza and Popular Philosophy.” Blackwell Companion to Spinoza. Yitzhak Melamed (ed.) (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell), 568-577 (2021). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119538349.ch53

Abstract: The study of highly imagistic representations of Spinoza's philosophy found in popular, extra-academic literature is essential for building a rational view on Spinoza's philosophy. Popular literature on Spinoza is an ineliminable condition of academic literature on Spinoza. The cementing of Spinoza's popularity belongs to a larger history of Spinoza's reception. This chapter examines two late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century works on Spinoza. Jules Prat's idiosyncratic blend of Spinozism and left-wing French Republicanism stands out as a historically and philosophically rich approach to Spinoza that has hardly been studied thus far. The chapter also examines the fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Bernard Malamud. One common feature to Singer and Malamud is the way that they root their Spinozists in a Jewish world. In this, they are forerunners of the ongoing popular preoccupation with Spinoza's own relation to Judaism.

• “Un homme ivre d’immanence: Deleuze’s Spinoza and Immanence.” Crisis and Critique 8 (1): 388-418 (2021). Open access: https://www.crisiscritique.org/past 

Abstract: Although Deleuze's work on Spinoza is widely known, it remains poorly understood. In particular, Deleuze's interpretation of Spinoza's immanentism has not been treated sufficient care; that is, with an eye to the context of its elaboration and the way in which it gradually takes on different characteristics. With this paper, I offer a synoptic analysis of Deleuze's views on immanence in Spinoza and examine how these change over the course of Deleuze's career. There are three ascending stages here: a first one, where Deleuze's attention is drawn to more recognizable issues in understanding Spinoza's views on the deep metaphysical structure of reality; a second, more experimental one, where Deleuze questions what it means to be a reader of Spinoza in light of Spinoza's theory of the body and affects; and a third, particularly iconoclastic stage, where Deleuze develops the theory of "the plane of immanence" as a way of articulating a meta-philosophical story about the place of non-philosophy at the heart of all philosophy. I trace each of these accounts, tie them together to tell a coherent and comprehensive narrative, and show what may be learned from this Spinoza that Deleuze portrays as drunk on immanence.

• “Spinoza and Judaism in the French Context: The Case of Milner’s Le sage trompeur.” Modern Judaism 20 (2): 227-255 (2020). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/kjaa004

Abstract: Jean-Claude Milner’s Le sage trompeur (2013), a controversial recent piece of French Spinoza literature, remains regrettably understudied in the English-speaking world. Adopting Leo Strauss’ esoteric reading method, Milner alleges that Spinoza dissimulates his genuine analysis of the causes of the persecution and survival of the Jewish people within a brief “manifesto” found at the end of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP), Chapter 3. According to Milner, Spinoza holds that the Jewish people themselves are responsible for the hatred of the Jewish people, and that the engine of their longevity is the hatred they engender. Additionally, claims Milner, Spinoza covertly insinuates that the solution to this persistent state of hatred consists in the mass apostasy of the Jewish people under the leadership of a Sabbatai Zevi-like figure. This article presents the Milner–Spinoza controversy to the English-speaking public along with the larger context of French-language scholarship on Spinoza’s relation to Judaism. While refuting Milner’s reading of Spinoza, I simultaneously clarify relevant elements of Spinoza’s discussions of Judaism in the TTP, such as Spinoza’s examination of Jewish identity and the nature of divine election, Spinoza’s understanding of the causes of national hatred, and Spinoza’s appeals to Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, and Turkish political history.

• “La modulation spinoziste: Pour se purifier de la pureté.” Modulation-Deleuze. Timea Gimsea (ed.) (Szeged: JATE Press), 49-58 (2017).