The BSHP Antognazza Lecture (formally the Annual Lecture), features an accessible paper from a distinguished speaker in the history of philosophy. Attendance is free, and everyone is welcome. The Antognazza Lecture is named in memory of Prof. Maria Rosa Antognazza (1964-2023)

Professor Rutherford works at University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature (1995), editor and translator (with Brandon Look) of The Leibniz-Des Bosses Correspondence (2007), and editor ofThe Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy (2006). Currently, he is editor of Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy. A significant part of his recent work has been in the history of ethics and its intersection with metaphysics and religion.

The abstract for his lecture:

Spinoza’s Ethics has inspired generations of readers, yet it remains on the periphery of histories of ethics. One explanation is that while the language of the book suggests a view with close ties to classical theories, Spinoza’s naturalism undercuts assumptions about the ground of value and rational agency on which such theories rely. I argue that the main project of the Ethics is theoretical: Spinoza conceptualizes the mind’s affects and reason as causal powers; he reinterprets ethical propositions as truths about nature; and he restricts normative demands to a practical perspective afforded by the mind’s inadequate knowledge of itself. Although the Ethics invites us to consider the attractions of a “rational life,” it precludes the existence of authoritative reasons why any human being should pursue such a life. The greatest achievement of the book is its elaboration of a framework for understanding the basis of normative thought in a world in which every trace of providence, teleology, and value is eliminated from nature.

Find our more about the lecture here.