Summary |
Scholarly interest in Spinoza's
philosophy of action today falls along three main axes. The first is
Spinoza's distinction between “actions” strictly speaking
(roughly, autonomous acts)
and “passions” (heteronomous acts). The second concerns Spinoza's
conception of “striving” (conatus), together with related concepts of “desire”, “appetite”, and “volition”.
Here the bulk of the debate centers on understanding the causality
of striving, and
especially determining whether or not some sort of teleology is
involved. This concern connects to a larger debate over the
scope and nature of Spinoza's criticism of teleology. The third main
topic of scholarly concern is Spinoza's criticism of Cartesian free
will, together with his own redefinition of “freedom” as
autonomy. Notions of passions and desire are also of great importance for
Spinoza's ethics; the active/passive distinction for his
epistemology. |