Mary K. Peterson

Education

• 
  Expected 2024 - PhD Philosophy, University of Hamburg
  Dissertation titled
  “The Metaphysics of Will in Hobbes and Spinoza,”
  supervised by Stephan Schmid and Julia Borcherding (Cambridge)
• 2021 - MSc Philosophy, University of Edinburgh,
  DistinctionThesis titled
  “A Study of Willing in Descartes and Spinoza,”
  supervised by Pauline Phemister and
  Jennifer Marušić, second reader Jonathan Cottrell
• 2019 - BA Liberal Arts, The New School, Honors

Employment

• 2022 - Contributor, The New Historia project at the New School for Social Research
• Created a schema on Clarice Lispector, February 2022
• Created a schema on Lilli K. Alanen, March 2022
• Wrote an editorial, “Lilli Alanen (1941-2021) and Descartes’s Concept of Mind,” April 2022

Organisations

• American Philosophical Association Eastern Division
• The New Historia
• New Voices on Women in the History of Philosophy
• British Society for the History of Philosophy
• Committee Member (2021), Edinburgh University Philosophy Society
• People in Support of Women in Philosophy at the New School for Social Research

Dissertation Abstract
Historians of philosophy tend to see Thomas Hobbes’ relevance for Baruch Spinoza’s philosophy as primarily political (Curley 1991, Steinberg 2018, Verbeek 2003). By contrast, the relevance of Hobbes’ metaphysics for Spinozism remains under-explored by scholars. This dissertation fills that gap in Spinoza scholarship, starting from the premise that new insights into Spinoza’s metaphysics
can be gleaned from studying the similarities and divergences between the two thinkers’ accounts of will. In the first chapter, I argue that for Hobbes, will is a name for an appetite and mechanism in thought. I also argue, contra Paul Russell, that Hobbes should not be read with David Hume as an empiricist-compatibilist. In the second chapter, I interpret political will in Hobbes as the subset of
wills that are appetites for covenants, and argue that Hobbes and Mary Astell subscribe to the same Pauline ‘hierarchy of wills.’ In the third chapter, I argue that Spinoza’s conception of will should be understood as a development upon two Hobbesian ideas: the will as a mechanism and the doctrine of conatus. In the fourth chapter, I read Nicolas Malebranche beside Spinoza, arguing that both
thinkers try to answer problems with the Cartesian account of will and mind-body interaction by minimizing the causal power of the human subject and maximizing the metaphysical role of God.

Early Modern Philosophy, esp. Spinoza
Area of Competence: Feminist Philosophy

• University of Copenhagen, conference travel grant, September 2022
• Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, full doctoral funding, June 2022
• University of Edinburgh, conference travel grant, June 2021

Presentations & Workshops

• “Reading Spinoza Historically and Philosophically” ‘Ersti-Fahrt’ UHH Weekend Retreat,
  Bockholmwik, September 2022

• “Why Reading Spinoza as a Proto-Feminist is Cynical” ESEMP Young: New Perspectives on Early
  Modern Philosophy, University of Copenhagen, September 2022
• “Will in Astell and Hobbes” LMU Munich Grad Student Online Colloquium in Renaissance/Early
  Modern Philosophy, Ludwig-Maximilians University, June 2022 (Online)
• “Apricot Bonbons to a Free Man: Lispector and Spinoza” New Voices Conference, Paderborn
  University, February 2022 (Online)
• “Avicenna’s Proof for the Existence of God: Reading Against Davidson” 8th TMU Student
  Philosophy Conference, Tarbiat Modares University, December 2021 (Online)
• “Drawing the Line Between Contractualism and Particularism” Philosophy Students’ Symposium,
  University of Maribor, November 2021 (Online)
• “Genevieve Lloyd and Reason as Feminist Attainment” ‘In and Out – Questioning the Philosophical
  Canon’ Summer School, Institute of Philosophy, Zagreb, June 2021 (Online)
• “Ducks, Rabbits, and Progress in Science” International Conference for Students of Analytic
  Philosophy/EENPS, University of Belgrade, June 2021 (Online)
• “Reply to Genevieve Lloyd [on Will in Descartes and Spinoza]” ‘First Fridays’ Working Group for
  Early Modern Philosophy, University of Edinburgh, June 2021 (Online)
• “An Irony in History: Rorty and Bernstein on the Analytic Tradition” Warwick Continental
  Philosophy Conference, University of Warwick, March 2021 (Online)
• “The Finite Architect: Intelligence in Hume’s Enquiry and Dialogues” 7th Iranian Student Philosophy
  Conference, Tarbiat Modares University, December 2020 (Online)