The CEU Department of Philosophy cordially invites you to a talk

(as part of its Departmental Colloquium series)

by

Yitzhak Melamed (Johns Hopkins University)

on

"Spinoza's Mereology"

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE TALK IS SCHEDULED ON

WEDNESDAY IN ROOM 311!!!!!!

Wednesday, 28 November, 2012, 5.30 PM, Zrinyi 14, Room 311

ABSTRACT

Mereology and the concept of part has a central role in Spinoza’s metaphysics and is closely related to many of his key notions, such as substance, Extension, power, infinity, infinite modes, parallelism, adequacy and inadequacy of ideas, individuals, and singular things [res singulares]. Yet, the topic has hardly been discussed in the existing literature. Mereology became a vital field in analytic metaphysics only relatively recently (roughly over the past two decades), and this could explain part of the scholarly neglect among historians of modern metaphysics who frequently follow the trends of contemporary metaphysics. Paucity of early modern primary resources discussing mereology was never an issue; most of Spinoza’s works include detailed discussions of part and whole. In fact, one of the major obstacles in the study of Spinoza’s mereology is finding a way to ease and reconcile the tensions among various claims of Spinoza, tensions that could be due to local inconsistencies, equivocal use of ‘part [pars]’, or genuine changes in Spinoza’s understanding of parts and wholes. Spinoza developed his philosophy over a period of almost two decades, and it is clear that he kept revising his views, including, as we shall see, some of his mereological assumptions.