Catherine Malabou: Spinoza and Symbolic Necessity

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Time: 6.00pm - 8.00pm
Venue: Chelsea Lecture Theatre, University of the Arts London, John Islip Street, London SW1P 4JU
Price: free
Speaker(s): Catherine Malabou (CRMEP)

Please join the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) for their 2016/17 research series.

In Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze contrasts philosophy and revelation. Expressionism is the privileged modality of immanence and intelligibility, opposed to ‘knowledge by signs' that characterizes the domain of revelation and is supposedly meant to foster faith in ignorant people. The ontological dimension of revelation - that is, its necessity - is dismissed by Deleuze's reading. Emmanuel Lévinas, following an apparently inverted logic, reproaches Spinoza for having subjected revelation to an overly rigid ontological necessity, thus missing its ‘signifying' value. Do we find too many or too few signs in Spinoza?  By focusing on Spinoza's method of interpretation, Catherine will challenge these approaches, showing how the issue of the symbolic inscribes itself in Spinoza's project, and offering her own account of the symbolic.

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Contact: Eric-John Russell
Email: k1543754@kingston.ac.uk