Dr. Luce deLire
Luce deLire is an Assistant Professor at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She completed her PhD at Johns Hopkins University with a dissertation on Spinoza’s Metaphysics of Infinity. Her research focuses on metaphysical questions, particularly but not exclusively within European Early Modern philosophy, with a special emphasis on the metaphysics of infinity and distinctions, as well as their contemporary relevance.
deLire is currently exploring Early Modern strategies of philosophical “trouble making” in Montaigne and Cavendish, alongside Early Modern metaphysics of gender and sexuality, particularly in Spinoza and Cavendish. A paper on Cavendish’s metaphysics of infinity is also in preparation.
Beyond her studies in the history of philosophy (on which more below), deLire has also published extensively on contemporary politics and trans philosophy, both in academic journals and public outputs such as Eflux, Stillpoint Magazine, Texte Zur Kunst and others.
Her first book, Property, Property, Property: Our Political Categories, will be published with DIVIDED in mid-2025. Her second book, Spinoza on Gender and Sexuality is scheduled for publication by Cambridge University Press in late 2025.
Notable papers in the history of philosophy include:
- “Spinoza’s Infinities” in The Blackwell Companion to Spinoza (2021), where she argues that Spinoza’s concept of infinity is a quantitative, creative force, distinct from perfection, indeterminacy, or universal quantification.
- “Spinoza’s Special Distinctions - And A Theory of Attributes as Cognitions Without Idea” in Journal for Philosophical Research (forthcoming, 2024), which offers a new framework for Spinoza’s so-called monism and distinguishes his views from Suarezian and Scotistic theories of distinctions.
- “Nature is a Transsexual Woman – Lucretian Metaphysics Reconsidered” in Classical Philology (2024), which contends that trans people and gender transitions play a surprisingly central role in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura – the definitive source for all European Early Modern materialisms.
- “Erotics as First Philosophy – Metaphysics and/of Desire between Aristotle, Avicenna, Cavendish and Spinoza”, in Libidinal Economies of Crisis Times (forthcoming), which argues that traditionally, erotics (the study of desire) and metaphysics (the study of being) show curious correlations. The text then advocates for a Cavendishian understanding of desire.
For more information, visit: www.getaphilosopher.com
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Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
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