Valtteri Viljanen
Postdoctoral Fellow (Turku Institute for Advanced Studies)

Department of Philosophy
University of Turku
20014 Turku
Finland

Telephone:
+358 (0)45 650 4656 (mobile)
+358 (0)2 333 5067 (office)

E-mail:
valvil@utu.fi

My primary field of interest is the history of philosophy, early modern philosophy in particular. In 2007, I obtained my Ph.D. on Spinoza’s metaphysics. I have also taught and published on the philosophy of the human sciences.

I am currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies (University of Turku). My project Moral Agents of Power, 1628–1889 studies philosophical theories of moral agency from Descartes to Nietzsche, focusing especially on the concept of power and related dynamic notions underlying those theories.

Some recent and forthcoming publications

• “Spinoza on Virtue and Eternity.” – M. Kisner & A. Youpa (eds.), Spinoza’s Moral Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
• “Spinoza’s Essentialism in the Short Treatise.” – Y. Melamed (ed.), The Young Spinoza. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
• (edited with Helena Siipi & Matti Sintonen) Ymmärrys [Understanding]. Turku: Reports from the Department of Philosophy, Vol. 25, 2012. [PDF] [Paperback]
• Spinoza’s Geometry of Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. [Review by Michael Della Rocca.] [Review by John Morrison.]
• “Causal Efficacy of Representational Content in Spinoza.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 27 (1), 2010: 17–34.
• “Spinoza’s Ontology.” – O. Koistinen (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza’s Ethics, 56–78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• “Spinoza’s Actualist Model of Power.” – J. Pietarinen & V. Viljanen (eds.), The World as Active Power: Studies in the History of European Reason, 213–28. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2009.
• (with Arto Repo) “Leibniz on Force, Activity, and Passivity.” – J. Pietarinen & V. Viljanen (eds.), The World as Active Power: Studies in the History of European Reason, 229–50. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2009.
• “Schopenhauer’s Twofold Dynamism.” – J. Pietarinen & V. Viljanen (eds.), The World as Active Power: Studies in the History of European Reason, 305–30. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2009.
• “On the Derivation and Meaning of Spinoza’s Conatus Doctrine.” Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy 4, 2008: 89–112.
• “Spinoza’s Essentialist Model of Causation.” Inquiry 51 (4), 2008: 412–37.
• “Field Metaphysic, Power, and Individuation in Spinoza.” The Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (3), 2007: 393–418.

Works in progress

• (with Justin Steinberg) Spinoza. Under contract with Polity Press (Classic Thinkers Series).