Steven Nadler


Steven Mitchell Nadler is an American academic and philosopher specializing in 17th-century philosophy. He is Vilas Research Professor and the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy, and was Max and Frieda Weinstein-Bascom Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is also director of their Institute for Research in the Humanities.
Nadler has written extensively on Spinoza, Descartes and Cartesianism, and Leibniz, and engaged with medieval and early modern Jewish philosophy.

Education and career

Nadler received his B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis in 1980 and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1981 and 1986. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison since 1988 and has been a visiting professor of philosophy at Stanford University, the University of Chicago, the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales and École normale supérieure in Paris, and the University of Amsterdam.
In November 2006, he presented at the "Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival" symposium. In 2007, he held the Spinoza Chair at the University of Amsterdam.
From 2010 to 2015 he was the editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy.
In April 2015, he was a Scholar in Residence at the American Academy in Rome. In the same year, he was invited to sit on an advisory board at a symposium held by the Amsterdam Talmud Torah congregation to discuss the lifting of the cherem on 17th-century Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza, which had been imposed in 1656 on account of his views on the God of the Torah, which were condemned as heretical.

Recognition

In 2020 Nadler was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Philosophical work

Nadler's research focus has been devoted to the study of philosophy in the seventeenth century, including Descartes and Cartesian philosophy, Spinoza, and Leibniz. His research also includes antecedents of aspects of early modern thought in medieval Latin philosophy and medieval Jewish philosophy.

Personal life

Nadler married Jane Carole Bernstein in 1984. They have a daughter, Rose, and a son, Ben. Rose is a social worker; Ben is an illustrator and writer, who illustrated and co-authored, with his father, the 2017 graphic novel, Heretics!.

Selected publications

Books

  • Editor,
  • Editor, Causation in Early Modern Philosophy .
  • Spinoza: A Life – Winner of the 2000 Koret Jewish Book Award. Second edition published in 2018.
  • Editor, The Cambridge Companion to Malebranche .
  • Editor, A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy .
  • Spinoza's Heresy: Immortality and the Jewish Mind .
  • Rembrandt's Jews – Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 2004..
  • Co-editor, Spinoza and Jewish Identity .
  • Co-editor, Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy .
  • Spinoza's Ethics: An Introduction .
  • The Best of All Possible Worlds: A Story of Philosophers, God, and Evil.
  • A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age.
  • Occasionalism: Causation Among the Cartesians .
  • The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes.
  • Editor, Spinoza and Medieval Jewish Philosophy.
  • Editor and Translator of Géraud de Cordemoy, Six Discourses on the Distinction Between the Body and the Soul and Discourses on Metaphysics.
  • With Ben Nadler, illustrator: Heretics! The Wondrous Beginnings of Modern Philosophy.
  • Menasseh ben Israel: Rabbi of Amsterdam Jewish Lives Series.
  • Spinoza: A Life .
  • Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die.
  • The Portraitist: Frans Hals and His World.
  • Descartes: The Renewal of Philosophy.
  • Spinoza e Aristotele sull'amicizia ISBN 9791222304359.

    Book reviews

Essays

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