Koistinen, Olli. Spinoza, Metaphysics, and the Possibility of Salvation: The Finite in the Infinite . New York / London: Routledge 2025, xiv + 219 pp.

In his new book, Olli Koistinen brings to bear decades of painstaking work on Spinoza's metaphysics to shed light on its governing theme: the possibility of salvation.Koistinen argues that salvation is the aim of Spinoza's philosophy and his works attempt to lead us to this state (1).This salvation consists in experiencing our union with God, normally obscured by various veils of perception or conception (8).Salvation, for Spinoza, is not just some kind of impersonal perseverance of our eternal ideas (as other commentators have argued), but "a kind of individual salvation that matters for us" (1).I believe we have reason to agree with the book's foundational premise, and as I hope will be evident from my critical engagement, Koistinen has given us rich material for thought and discussion on the ultimate end of Spinoza's philosophy.1Before going further into contents, a few general remarks on the book's organisation and approach.Its first three quarters develop a comprehensive interpretation of Spinoza's metaphysics (Chapters 1-3), with only the final sections addressing salvation directly (Chapter 4, Conclusion).Given the meticulous stage-setting, the book would have benefitted from expanding the eventual discussion of salvation.Further, the book's approach is purely systematic and offers little consideration of salvation in the philosophical and religious traditions known to Spinoza.Koistinen also only sparingly engages with pre-existing research, including recent work pertinent to the topic, such as Alexander Douglas' (2023) monograph on beatitude in Spinoza.Here, Koistinen's scholarly approach appears somewhat at odds with the spirit of Spinoza's commitment to salvation as a shared and universal pursuit.Finally, the book aspires to be a study of both the theoretical possibility and the practical attainment of salvation in Spinoza, yet offers little on the latter, as I shall explain.1. Spinoza's Metaphysics: The Finite in the Infinite.As the book's subtitle aptly indicates, the leitmotif of Koistinen's reading of Spinoza is "the finite in the infinite."Koistinen illustrates how the primacy of the infinite runs through Spinoza's metaphysics: to begin with, Spinoza believes we can give a true definition of God that expresses the reality of God's absolute infinity (18).Further, God's essence is equivalent to divine existence, which is infinite force or power (63).Finite things, on the other hand, can only be understood as contained in God's infinite force or power.Just as infinite individual points are contained in an infinite line without partitioning the line, so the powers of all individual things are already contained in the infinite power of God (75).Analogously, "[f]inite forces of singular things are parts, or degrees, of God's infinite force which is prior to these forces" (74).Thus, Koistinen insists, finite forces are not different from God's force; a finite thing, quite simply, "is God acting with a part of his force" (75).1 This review has much benefitted from a series of discussions with Rohini Ralby and substantive comments by Julia Borcherding, David Soud, and Aaron Ralby.