
I love academic Twitter! After sharing my last post on Spinoza and the Zhuangzi, I received responses from much more learned people, speculating on the possible historical connections.
So far I have only been using the Zhuangzi, and Daoism more generally, as a tool for understanding Spinoza’s philosophy. Edwin Curley once wrote that he read Spinoza through lenses ground by Moore, Russell, and Wittgenstein, just as Harold Joachim had read Spinoza through lenses ground by Hegel and Bradley. I guess I’m proposing to read Spinoza through lenses ground by Zhuangzi, although it’s hard to imagine Zhuangzi grinding lenses.
Continue reading “A Follow-up on Spinoza and the Zhuangzi (with help from friends)”