Stefanos Regkas

Bio

I am an Early Modern Philosophy scholar, working mainly on Spinoza. I received my PhD from the University of Thessaloniki in 2023, with a dissertation developing an aspectual reading of Spinoza's metaphysics, and have since taught at the Universities of Athens and Crete. My research interests also include early modern metaphysics and epistemology, theories of imagination and affectivity in the early modern period, and twentieth-century French Philosophy, particularly the work of Jean Baudrillard. In addition to my work on Spinoza and early modern philosophy, I have published in both English and Greek on a range of topics, including the philosophy of technology, theories of affectivity, and literary theory. I am also the author of several works of poetry and literary fiction.

Abstract

During my visit to Notre Dame, I will be working on two papers related to Spinoza. The first offers the outline of a thoroughly aspectual reading of his metaphysics, showing how various long-standing problems can be reconsidered by focusing on the conceptual pairs of substance–mode, essence–existence, and objective essence–formal essence, and on the ubiquitous use of quatenus (insofar as) and cognate locutions. The second paper develops Spinoza’s implicit theory of distinction by mapping it onto the shifts in Descartes' corresponding typology.