Foreign thinker
Michael LeBuffe
Michael LeBuffeEarly Modern Philosophy and Spinoza StudiesAmerican
Life and Thought
Michael LeBuffe is an American philosopher and the Baier Chair in Early Modern Philosophy at the University of Otago in New Zealand. He is a leading scholar of Spinoza's philosophy and works in the history of philosophy, ethics, philosophy of mind, and political philosophy.
Michael LeBuffe grew up in the United States and pursued his philosophical studies at Princeton University and then at the University of California, San Diego, receiving his PhD in philosophy in 2000. Before joining the University of Otago in 2014, he taught at Texas A&M University.
His main area of research is early modern philosophy, especially the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. In his works, LeBuffe shows how metaphysics, theory of mind, ethics, and politics are interconnected in Spinoza's philosophical system and how the concept of reason plays a fundamental role throughout Spinoza's intellectual system.
His major works include From Bondage to Freedom: Spinoza on Human Excellence, Spinoza on Reason, and Spinoza's Ethics: A Guide. These works address, respectively, human excellence, the role of reason, and an interpretation of the structure and main arguments of Spinoza's Ethics.
In his interpretation of Spinoza, LeBuffe emphasizes that Spinozistic ethics cannot be understood apart from his metaphysics, psychology, and politics. His research has also been published on Hobbes, Descartes, philosophy of mind, value theory, and the history of ethics, establishing his position as one of the important figures in contemporary Spinoza studies.
