Online research in philosophy

Despite having been published over three hundred years ago, Spinoza's Ethics is a text that is still, even today, widely misunderstood. Two of the more common and persistent misunderstandings revolve around the accusations of some who have labeled his philosophy both atheistic and materialistic. These two misunderstandings date back to the first time the Ethics was published, immediately following Spinoza's death. In an attempt to not only address these accusations, but as well to clear up any misunderstandings surrounding them, this thesis will be split into four chapters that are divided into two main parts. The first half will deal with the question of whether or not Spinoza is an atheist. The second half will deal with the question of whether or not Spinoza is a materialist. In so doing this thesis will establish and defend the position that it is a misreading to characterize Spinoza's philosophy as atheistic and materialistic.

Building interconnected readings of Spinoza's accounts of imagination, error, and desire, Michael LeBuffe defends a comprehensive interpretation of Spinoza's ...

Spinoza's Ethics is one of the most remarkable, important, and difficult books in the history of philosophy: a treatise simultaneously on metaphysics, knowledge, philosophical psychology, moral philosophy, and political philosophy. It presents, in Spinoza's famous 'geometric method', his radical views on God, Nature, the human being, and happiness. In this wide-ranging introduction to the work, Steven Nadler explains the doctrines and arguments of the Ethics, and shows why Spinoza's endlessly fascinating ideas may have been so troubling to his contemporaries, as well as why they are still highly relevant today. He also examines the philosophical background to Spinoza's thought and the dialogues in which Spinoza was engaged - with his contemporaries (including Descartes and Hobbes), with ancient thinkers (especially the Stoics), and with his Jewish rationalist forebears. His book is written for the student reader but will also be of interest to specialists in early modern philosophy.

In the final chapter of the Tractactus Theologico-Politicus , Spinoza declares that “the purpose of the state is, in reality, freedom.” While this remark obviously purports to tell us something important about Spinoza’s conception of the civitas , it is not clear exactly what is revealed. Recently, a number of scholars have interpreted this passage in a way that supports the view that Spinoza was a liberal for whom civic norms are rather more modest than the freedom of the Ethics . Against this view, I provide an interpretation of Spinoza’s account of civil liberation that enables us to view the political writings as an extension of his larger ethical enterprise. Specifically, I show that, according to Spinoza, the state can promote robust liberty in a variety of ways, not least by influencing the behavioral patterns and affective dispositions of its citizens.

Written for students coming to Spinoza for the first time, Spinoza and the Ethics is the ideal guide to this rich and illuminating work. This GuideBook provides an overview of critical interpretations, relating the Ethics to its intellectual context, considers its historical reception; and highlights why the work continues to be relevant today. In addition, the most intriguing final sections of the Ethics , usually ignored in introductory commentaries, are given special attention and illuminated as the climax of the work.

I argue that Spinoza’s ethical theory may be viewed as a transformation of Aristotle’s teleological account which has been corrected of several fundamental flaws which Spinoza found in Aristotle. The result of Spinoza’s redefinition of ethical activity is a developmental account of ethics which has close kinship with the views of process theoreticians.

Spinoza and Judaism, by D.Rakhmian.- Spinoza and materialism, by L.I.Akselrod (Ortodoks) - Spinoza's world-view, by A.M.Déborin.- Spinoza's substance and finite things, by V.K.Brushlinski.- Spinoza's ethical world-view, by S.Y.Volfson.- Spinoza and the state, by I.P.Razumovski.- The historical significance of Spinoza's philosophy, by I.K.Luppol.

Spinoza scholars have claimed that we are faced with a dilemma: either Spinoza's definitions in his Ethics are real, in spite of indications to the contrary, or the definitions are nominal and the propositions derived from them are false. I argue that Spinoza did not recognize the distinction between real and nominal definitions. Rather, Spinoza classified definitions according to whether they require a priori or a posteriori justification, which is a classification distinct from either the real/nominal or the intensional/extensional classification. I argue that Spinoza uses both a priori and a posteriori definitions in the Ethics and that recognizing both types of definitions allows us to understand Spinoza's geometric method in a new way. We can now understand the geometric method as two methods, one resulting in propositions that Spinoza considers to be absolutely certain and another resulting in propositions that Spinoza does not consider certain. The latter method makes use of a posteriori definitions and postulates, whereas the former method uses only a priori definitions and axioms.

I outline Spinoza’s development of the concept of conatus in the Ethics, and attempt to define its role in his metaphysics. In light of this, I critique the theory based on the identification by modern physics of certain radioactive substances, e.g., curium. These substances, I argue, are by definition unstable individuals whose essences include finite durations (half-lives). As such, they are in direct contradiction to Spinoza’s metaphysics. I then advance and critique several defenses Spinoza might make for his theory of conatus.

This article studies a series of provocative references to Spinoza by Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben. For both contemporary philosophers, the context is discussions of eating, a subject matter that turns out to involve such central issues as subjectivity, nature, ethics, and teleology. Each situates Spinoza in a counter-history of philosophy and suggests that Spinoza constitutes an important resource for contemporary reflections. Through an analysis of the three philosophers' texts about eating, nutrition, and being metabolized, I argue that Spinoza's nonteleological, nonhumanistic conception of nature remains a radical possibility, even in the face of contemporary attempts to think outside the canonical discourses of transcendental subjectivity, technological reason, and teleological ethics. Spinoza's position is, in the end, more uncompromising than that of Derrida or Agamben.