Experience and Eternity in Spinoza

Experience and Eternity is a masterwork. Pierre-François Moreau illuminates the fields of Experience in Spinoza: language, passions, history and eternity. He offers a novel interpretation of the relationship between Experience and Reason. No scholar working in the area of empiricism study can afford to ignore this extremely instructive book. -- Chantal Jaquet, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
An accessible, engaging translation of a fascinating treatment of some of Spinoza’s most tantalising themes. On Moreau’s highly original reading, Spinoza’s affirmation of reason is inter-connected with serious attention to "ordinary" experience: a sense of the mind being itself "eternal" is at the heart of human experience of finitude. -- Genevieve Lloyd, Emeritus Professor in Philosophy, University of New South Wales
Pierre-Francois Moreau’s Experience and Eternity in Spinoza not only ranks with the classic studies of contemporary French Spinozism. It outstrips them, dispensing with the binaries that have shaped the modern understanding of Spinoza’s philosophy. Challenging the idea that Spinoza’s rationalism involves a denigration of experience, Moreau shows the degree to which we have not yet begun to understand what Spinoza means by the term. Through rigorous and illuminating exegesis, Moreau discloses the forms of intelligibility proper to experience. He shows us, that far from being contrary to structure or knowledge, experience is their milieu, the site and home of thinking itself. In Robert Boncardo’s lucid translation, English readers finally have access to the work that launched the career of France’s leading living authority on Spinoza. In purporting to follow Spinoza in abstracting thought from experience, Moreau’s forebears risked abstracting Spinoza from history. With this major work, Moreau begins to restore historical sense to Spinozism, giving us a philosophy for our time, for all time. -- Knox Peden, University of Queensland