Michael Della Rocca Professor, Chair 401 CT Hall, 109 CT Hall (203) 432-2764, 432-1665 michael.della@yale.edu Education PhD 1991, UC Berkeley Areas of Interest History of Early Modern Philosophy (particularly rationalism), Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind Current or Recent Courses Taught * Spring 2001 Topics in Seventeenth Century Philosophy of Mind * Spring 2001, 2003, 2004, 2007, Directed Studies * Spring 2002, Fall 2005 Persistence and Possibility * Fall 2002, Fall 2007 Spinoza * Fall 2003 Necessity and Naming * Spring 2005 Descartes *Spring 2006, 2008, History of Early Modern Philosophy * Fall 2006 Causation in Early Modern Philosophy (with Ken Winkler) Selected Publications Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza, Oxford 1996 "Essentialists and Essentialism", Journal of Philosophy 1996 "Spinoza's Metaphysical Psychology," in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, Don Garrett (ed.), Cambridge, 1996. "Frankfurt, Fischer and Flickers" Nous 1998 "'If a Body Meet a Body': Descartes on Body-Body Causation" in New Essays on the Rationalists, Rocco Gennaro and Charles Huenemann (eds.), Oxford 1999 "Spinoza's Substance Monism", Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes, John Biro and Olli Koistinen (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2002. Review of Margaret Wilson's Ideas and Mechanism, Mind 2001. "Essentialism versus Essentialism", Gendler and Hawthorne (eds.), Imagination, Conceivabilty, Possibility, Oxford University Press, University Press, 2002. Entry on Descartes for the Blackwell Companion to Early Modern Philosophy "The Power of an Idea: Spinoza's Critique of Pure Will," Nous, 2003. "A Rationalist Manifesto: Spinoza and the Principle of Sufficient Reason," Philosophical Topics, 2003. "Descartes, the Cartesian Circle, and Epistemology without God," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2005 "Two Spheres, Twenty Spheres, and the Identity of Indiscernibles," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2006 "Descartes-Inseparability-Almog," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2005 "Will and Judgment" in The Blackwell Companion to Descartes' Meditations, Stephen Gaukroger (ed.), Blackwell 2006 "Explaining Explanation and the Multiplicity of Attributes[in Spinoza]" in Baruch de Spinoza: Ethik, ed. Michel Hampe and Robert Schnepf with the assistance of Ursula Renz, Berlin: Akademie Verlag (2006) "Spinoza and the Metaphysics of Scepticism", Mind, 2007. "Causation without Intelligibility and Without God in Descartes" in The Blackwell Companion to Descartes, Janet Broughton and John Carriero (eds.), 2008. “Rationalism Run Amok: Representation and the Reality of Emotions in Spinoza,” Interpreting Spinoza, ed. Charles Huenemann, Cambridge University Press, 2008. Spinoza, The Routledge Philosophers series, 2008. "The Identity of Indiscernibles and the Articulability of Concepts," Linguistics and Philosophical Analysis,2008. Works in Progress "Taking the Fourth: Steps Toward a New (Old) Reading of Descartes" “PSR” “Violations of the Principle of Sufficient Reason in Leibniz and Spinoza" "Getting his Hands Dirty: Spinoza's Criticism of the Rebel"