The OZSW is delighted to announce that registrations for the Summer Schools ‘Spinoza in Context | The Dutch Republic and Radical Enlightenment’ & ‘Coming to Terms with Power’ are now open.

Summer School ‘Spinoza in Context | The Dutch Republic and Radical Enlightenment’
In the first part of this Summer School a great diversity of specialists will outline the social and intellectual context of Spinoza’s philosophy. The themes are: ‘The Dutch Republic as an anomaly’, ‘Coping with religious diversity’, ‘The Scientific Revolution reconsidered’, ‘The emergence of Biblical Scholarship’ and The case of Radical Enlightenment’. Additional sessions will be cover an outline of Spinoza’s life, works, the circle of his friends and the some main themes of his philosophy will be dealt with in the context of 17th century philosophical developments, such as the rivalry between humanism and Aristotelianism, their final break down, the emergence of Cartesianism and the arrival of Newtonianism at the end of the century. The second part of the course will be a close reading of the main texts of Spinoza, in which Ethics I-IV and TTP 16 and 20, will be examined.
Location: Erasmus University Rotterdam
Dates: 20 June – 1 July
Please visit the webpage for more information and registration

Summer School ‘Coming to Terms with Power’
The starting point for the summer school is the confrontation between two classic positions concerning the nature of the state’s power: Hobbes’s realistic decisionism and Kant’s normative approach. From the concrete case of applied state violence in the ‘war on terror’, we will try to think through the consequences of both positions. Subsequently, we open up a second line of research, by asking what differentiates and unites the so-called analytical and continental approaches in political philosophy, and how they (combined and/or contrasted) understand the Hobbesian and Kantian positions. We will do this by hearing introductory lectures from specialists, reading key texts, discussing case material and analyzing the different approaches, perspectives and positions.
Location: Hotel Sous les Églises, Beek (near Nijmegen)
Dates: 22-26 August
Please visit the webpage for more information and registration