Empassive is devoted to exploring Spinoza’s religious sensibility by engaging with topics in philosophy, literature, and the arts. Although the poet Novalis famously called Spinoza ‘God-intoxicated’, he’s rarely been taken seriously as a religious thinker. This is arguably because his vision of the religious life occupies a strange place somewhere between traditional religion and secular atheism—so much so that it can seem unrecognizable as a religious view at all. Nevertheless, the conviction guiding my writing here is that this vision is not only distinctive, but essentially correct.

For a more detailed explanation of Empassive‘s aims, you can read the blog mission statement.

To read my ongoing series of posts entitled The Cosmic Impulse in Literature, click here.

To access my commentary for students on Heidegger’s Being and Time, click here.