To kick off Spinoza à Paris 8 in 2018, we will have the pleasure of welcoming Martin Lin, who will be giving a talk (in ENG) entitled: "What are Modes for Spinoza?" All are welcome, the more the merrier.

"According to Spinoza, every particular finite thing, including human bodies and minds, are modes of a single substance, God or Nature. But what does this curious doctrine mean? On the standard interpretation, modes are properties that inhere in and are predicated of substance. Human bodies and minds, however, are concrete particulars. How could they inhere in and be predicated of anything? In this paper, I argue that Spinozistic modes are not properties. Rather they are dependent concrete objects that inhere in but are not predicated of substance." ML

Martin Lin is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. He is the author of Being and Reason: an Essay on Spinoza's Metaphysics (forthcoming) and papers about metaphysics and philosophy of mind in the seventeenth century.

The talk will take place at Paris 8 on Thursday, February 8th, from 18H-20H (metro line 13, room J103).