Meet the hosts
Two voices.
A shared love of Spinoza.
Michah Gottlieb and Clare Carlisle bring years of teaching and reading Spinoza to an open, unhurried conversation. Together, they ask how his philosophy speaks to the experience of being human.
New York University
Michah Gottlieb
Associate Professor of Jewish Thought and Philosophy
I’ve been teaching philosophy and Jewish thought for almost 25 years, first at Brown and for the last two decades at NYU. I first encountered Spinoza during my doctoral studies at Indiana University. These studies culminated in my 2011 book Faith and Freedom where I explored how the Enlightenment philosopher Moses Mendelssohn developed a philosophy of modern Judaism in critical dialogue with Spinoza. In that book while I appreciated Spinoza, I sided with Mendelssohn against him. But a few years later amidst personal challenges, I reread Spinoza’s Ethics. This gave me great comfort and helped me bear my difficulties calmly and wisely. I also concluded that Spinoza had successfully solved the major questions about faith and reason which had previously plagued me. I regularly give a full year graduate seminar on Spinoza in which we read the Ethics line by line. I’m excited to share his teachings in conversation with Clare!
King’s College London
Clare Carlisle
Professor of Philosophy
Spinoza is my favourite philosopher, not only because his ideas are so exciting but also because the experience of reading him can be profound. I first read Spinoza around 1997, as an undergraduate student at Cambridge, where I was fortunate to be taught by the great Spinoza scholar Susan James. I did my doctoral work on Kierkegaard and after a few years lingering in the 19th century I made my way back to Spinoza by writing a series on his philosophy in the Guardian while I was on maternity leave in 2011. Since then I’ve never been far from Spinoza’s works. In addition to teaching a course on Spinoza and Leibniz at King’s, writing Spinoza’s Religion and editing George Eliot’s translation of Spinoza’s Ethics, I’ve published articles such as ‘Spinoza’s Acquiescentia’ and ‘Spinoza and India: The Question of Influence.’ My recent book Transcendence for Beginners, based on my 2024 Gifford Lectures, takes a longer view, following the effects of Spinozism through the last three centuries and asking what Spinoza can teach us about the nature and significance of a human life.