Van Samuel Newlands gaat dit jaar verschijnen: Reconceiving Spinoza.

Samuel Newlands, de William J. and Dorothy K. O'Neill Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame [cf.] die velen vooral zullen kennen van het lemma “Spinoza’s Modal Metaphysics,” in de Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, schreef diverse artikelen over Spinoza: zoals b.v. in 2011 "Hegel's Idealist Reading of Spinoza," en "More Recent Idealist Readings of Spinoza", Hij noemt o.a. Michael Della Rocca die Spinoza als een soort idealist zou zien (cf. blog - NB de daar gegeven link naar 't PDF werkt niet meer; zijn artikelen zijn te vinden via zijn pagina bij de University of Notre Dame )  en droeg hoofdstukken bij aan de boeken over Spinoza die vorig jaar verschenen:

• Yitzhak Melamed (Ed.), Spinoza's Ethics: A Critical Guide, Cambridge University Press, 2017, Chapter 13: “Spinoza and The Metaphysics of Perfection.”

Matthew Kisner in zijn review bij de NDPR over dit hoofdstuk: Samuel Newlands takes up a related question about Spinoza's view on the reality of perfection. In the preface to Part 4, Spinoza claims that good and bad are nothing more than modes of thinking, which has provided much of the reason for reading Spinoza as defending a kind of moral anti-realism. In the same text, Spinoza makes parallel claims about perfection, which strongly suggests that perfection is not real but just an abstraction that exists only in our thoughts. However, Newlands argues that Spinoza does regard perfection as real. Newlands ultimately distinguishes two notions of perfection: (1) normative or moral perfection, which is not real and is judged in terms of what is pleasing and desirable to humans, and (2) metaphysical perfection, which is non-normative, non-moral and is judged from the nature and structure of things themselves. I do wonder how sharp the distinction is when judging human perfection, since our nature is our striving, which is identical to our desires and emotions -- joy and sorrow are transitions in our power of acting or the strength of our striving. Consequently, our metaphysical perfection includes the emotional states and attitudes that we use to make normative and moral judgments, including normative and moral judgments of perfection. In the second part of the chapter, Newlands provides a fascinating and innovative reading of Spinoza's view of metaphysical perfection as involving both ontological plenitude and parsimony. The result is that Spinozistic perfection ends up looking a lot like Leibnizian harmony. This reading allows Newlands to bring Spinoza into a surprising dialogue with both Leibniz and Jonathan Schaffer.

• Michael Della Rocca (Ed.), Oxford Handbook to Spinoza [Oxford University Press, 2017] Chapter 26: “Spinoza’s Relevance to Contemporary Metaphysics.

Della Rocca schrijft in zijn Inleidend hoofdstuk: “Samuel Newlands opens his penetrating and engaging chapter, "Spinoza's Relevance to Contemporary Metaphysics," by exploring ways in which a long-dead philosopher can be relevant to contemporary concerns in philosophy either as an outsider whose views—by virtue of their alienness—can open up new perspectives for us or as a ancestor whose views, as precursors to our own, make the philosopher well-suited to be a conversation partner with us. Newlands's own approach to Spinoza is a nuanced blend of both models. His chapter also manifests the conviction that, as he puts it, "there is no deep divide between studying philosophy and studying its history. This approach yields immediate benefits, for it enables Newlands to articulate ways in which Spinoza's systematicity and commitment to PSR-driven naturalistic explanation leads him to a distinctive form of monism in which the "One must give rise to the Many. Here, Spinoza's view that plenitude is a form of perfection is in play. The dependence of the Many on the One must, for Newlands, be a form of conceptual dependence that is more stringent than the kind of dependence now championed in many areas of contemporary metaphysics. This invocation of a nonpsychologistic type of conceptual dependence enables Spinoza to avoid the limitations of conventionalism and of idealism while also avoiding the inexplicabilities of a robust realism about modality that is attractive to many contemporary theorists. "
Such is the richness of Spinoza's thought that it not only, as Newlands shows, helps to shape and provide insight into contemporary analytical metaphysics, but it also is a continuing source of inspiration for literary endeavors. (p. 15-16) 

In mei van dit jaar zal naar aankondiging van OUP het eerste boek over Spinoza van zijn hand verschijnen

Samuel Newlands, Reconceiving Spinoza. Oxford University Press, 31 May 2018 (Estimated) - ISBN: 9780198817260 - £50.00 - een cover is er nog niet, wel deze beschrijving:

Samuel Newlands presents a sweeping new interpretation of Spinoza's metaphysical system and the way in which his metaphysics shapes, and is shaped by, his moral program. Newlands also shows how Spinoza can be fruitfully read alongside and through recent developments in contemporary metaphysics and ethics. Conceptual relations are seen as the backbone of Spinoza's explanatory project and perform a surprising and underappreciated amount of work in his metaphysics and ethics. Conceptual relations are the philosophical grease that keeps the Spinozistic machine running smoothly, allowing him to do everything from reconciling monism with diversity to providing non-prudential grounds for altruism within an ethical egoist framework. Furthermore, given Spinoza's metaphysics of individuals, a moral agent's interests and even self-identity can vary, relative to some of these different ways of being conceived. This will have the startling implication that Spinoza's ethical egoism, when combined with his concept-sensitive metaphysics, is ultimately a call to a radical kind of self-transcendence. Readers will thus be challenged to reconceive not only the world, but also Spinoza's project, and perhaps even themselves, along the way.

TOC

Introduction
 1.: The Desiderata of Perfection
 2.: Spinoza's Conceptualist Strategy
 3.: Conceptual Dependence Monism
 4.: Spinoza's Metaphysics of Modality
 5.: A Conceptualist Account of Essences
 6.: Elusive Individuals
 7.: Ethics, Motivation and Egoism
 8.: Moral Transformation and Self-Transcendence
 9.: The Nature of the Conceptual

Toevoeging 1 februari 2018. Zie hier op Newlands pagina bij de University of Notre Dame, de uitgebreidere inhoudsopgave en een deel van de Introduction - tot § 3 - ["You ’ll have to buy the book to read the rest!"]
Toevoeging 9 januari 2019 en 5 maart 2019,
cf. books.google
Samuel Newlands, “Eminence and other dubious attempts to avoid Spinozism” [PDF draft of a talk in 2010]
Samuel Newlands, "The Harmony of Spinoza and Leibniz." In:  Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2010 [PDF]
Samuel Newlands, "More Recent Idealist Readings of Spinoza. "In: Philosophy Compass, 2011[PDF]
Samuel Newlands, "Hegel’s Idealist Reading of Spinoza." In: Philosophy Compass, 2011 [PDF]

Samuel Newlands, "Leibniz and the Ground of Possibility." In: Philosophical Review, Vol. 122, No. 2, 2013, p 155-187 [PDF]
Samuel Newlands, "Spinoza's Modal Metaphysics" [Lemma in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
Samuel Newlands, "Spinoza's Early Anti-Abstractionism." Chapter 16 in: Yitzhak Y. Melamed ((ed.), The Young Spinoza: A Metaphysician in the Making. Oxford University Press, 2015
Samuel Newlands, "Relevance to Contemporary Metaphysics." In:  Michael Della Rocca (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Spinoza, OUP, 2017

Op zijn pagina met publicaties bij de University of Notre Dame geeft hij meerdere Pdf's.