Time, Duration and Eternity in Spinoza

Chantal Jaquet is Professor of Philosophy at the Université Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne. She is the author of numerous books on Spinoza in French including Sub specie aeternitatis: étude des concepts de temps, durée et éternité chez Spinoza (1997), Spinoza ou la Prudence (1997), L’unité d corps et de l’esprit: Affects, actions, passions chez Spinoza (2004), Les expressions de la puissance d’agir chez Spinoza (2005), and Spinoza à l’oeuvre, composition des corps et force des idées (2017). Alexandre Matheron was formerly Professor of Philosophy at the Ecole normale supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud and the CNRS. His key works include The Individual and Community in Spinoza (Éditions de Minuit, 1968), Christ and the Salvation of the Ignorants in Spinoza (Éditions Aubier-Montaigne, 1971) and Anthropology and Politics in the 17th Century (Vrin, 1985). Eric Aldieri is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bridgewater State University. He has been published in Hypatia, Deleuze & Guattari Studies, and Derrida Today and The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. He has translated several works of French Spinozism into English, including Chantal Jaquet’s Time, Duration, and Eternity in Spinoza, published by Edinburgh University Press in 2023. His co-authored translation of François Zourabichvili’s Spinoza, A Physics of Thought: Form and Individuation will publish in March 2026, also with Edinburgh University Press.

Chantal Jaquet's impressive book decodes some of the most challenging concepts in Spinoza's philosophy. Her meticulous analysis of terms from across Spinoza’s corpus untangles the tightest knots in the final part of his Ethics. Jaquet's precision and care for philosophical language shine though in Aldieri’s translation.

• Abbreviations 2Notes on Translation and Acknowledgements 3Eternity: A Problem ‘that Remains’ by Eric Aldieri 5Foreword 10Preface by Alexandre Matheron 11Introduction 13Part One: Eternity or Eternities? 19Chapter One: The Ontological Status of Eternity from the Short Treatise to the Ethics 19Chapter Two: Eternity, Coeternity, and Aeviternity: The Status of Infinite Beings 42Chapter Three: Eternity and Immortality: The Status of Finite Modes 57Chapter Four: Sub Specie Aeternitatis 80Part Two: From Eternity to Duration 91Chapter Five: Eternity and Temporality 91Chapter Six: The Nature and Origin of Duration 104Chapter Seven: The Sphere of Extension of Duration 129Conclusion 139Bibliography