Alexandre Matheron died on January 7, 2020.
His two great books, Individu et communauté chez Spinoza (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1969) and Le Christ et le salut des ignorants chez Spinoza (Paris: Éditions Aubier-Montaigne, 1971), plus his many articles, recently gathered in Études sur Spinoza et les philosophies à l’âge classique (Lyon: ENS Éditions, 2011), earned him a reputation as a master of seventeenth-century studies in France and internationally. He was, after Martial Gueroult, one of the best representatives of the structural method in the history of philosophy. His seminars gathered both French and foreign undergraduate and graduate students desiring to learn this method. Through his teaching at the École Normale Supérieure de Fontenay/Saint-Cloud he formed, directly and indirectly, a great number of Spinozists. He always encouraged young researchers and was always ready to listen to suggestions different from his own.
In 1977, he was among the founders of the Association des Amis de Spinoza of which he became the chair after the death of Jean-Toussaint Desanti. These last years, illness kept him away from active participation, but he always continued to support, through his reading and comments, the forthcoming new edition of the complete works of Spinoza.
- Pierre-François Moreau, via Mogens Laerke
spinoza research network 