Dr. Michael Rosenthal

Biography

Michael A. Rosenthal holds the Grafstein Chair in Jewish Philosophy and is associated with the Department of Philosophy and the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. He previously taught Philosophy and Jewish Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. His areas of expertise include early modern philosophy, ethics, political philosophy, and Jewish philosophy, with a specific research focus on the works of Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza. Rosenthal is investigating themes related to Spinoza’s political republicanism in the Theological-Political Treatise, his theory of imagination in the writings on ethics, and the reception of Spinoza's arguments regarding religious toleration and church-state relations among subsequent Jewish thinkers. Furthermore, he explores philosophical interpretations of prophecy, particularly in the context of German-Jewish thinkers from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. He has held fellowships at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften at Goethe University Frankfurt Main, the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, and the Maimonides Centre for Advanced Studies at Hamburg University. In 2017, he was invited to give the Martin Buber Lecture on Intellectual History and Philosophy in Frankfurt. He is also a recipient of the SSHRC Insight Grant for his ongoing project on Spinoza’s Arguments for Religious Toleration and the Problem of Jewish Modernity. Currently, he coordinates the activities of the History of Early Modern Philosophy and Jewish Philosophy Research Groups.

Research Interests