Moira Gatens is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney,where she was awarded an Australian Research Professorship in 2006.Gatens has published widely in social and political philosophy and infeminist studies, and is also internationally renowned as a Spinozascholar. Her books include Feminism and Philosophy (1991), ImaginaryBodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality (1996) and (with Genevieve Lloyd)Collective Imaginings, Spinoza Past and Present (1999). Most recentlyshe edited the collection Feminist Interpretations of Benedict Spinoza(2009). Gatens received many awards, among others a Fellowship atthe Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin in 2007-08 and a Visiting Professorshipat the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2003.Her current project is situated in the field of philosophy and literature,with a special focus on the relations between the thought of Spinoza,Feuerbach and George Eliot. In her two Spinoza Lectures "Spinoza'sHard Path to Freedom", Gatens presents insights from her currentresearch: she is interested in the intricate ways in which philosophyand literature, both in their specific ways, are concerned withunderstanding how ways of knowing the world are linked to, andaffected by, particular ways of being in the world. In her first lecture,Gatens offers a new reading of Spinoza's Ethics as well as the TractatusTheologico-Politicus by showing how a reflection on the ethical lifeprompted his critique of theology and politics, highlighting thecollective and situated character of knowledge and interpreting therole reason and imagination play in realizing freedom. In her secondlecture, Gatens interprets the 19th century novelist and translatorof Spinoza's Ethics George Eliot, and - more generally - the form of"deliberative fiction" her novels represent, as yet another way to "toenhance the collective power of human beings to become free". Indiscussing Spinoza and Eliot, Gatens not only opens up new historicalperspectives, but also a systematic understanding of the intimateconnection between knowledge, imagination, and fiction, therebypresenting us, in the form of both Spinoza's philosophy and Eliot'sliterature, two different paths to freedom.