We examine a contribution L. Susan Stebbing made to the understanding of critical thinking and its relation to formal logic. Stebbing took expertise in formal logic to authorise logical intervention in public debate, specifically in assessing of the validity of everyday reasoning. She held, however, that formal logic is purely the study of logical form. Given the problems of ascertaining logical form in any particular instance, and that logical form does not always track informal validity, it is difficult to see (...) how she could justify her belief in logical interventionism. Her answer to this problem is the contribution we explore here. It involves the view that although the logician’s expertise is not sufficient to assess arguments made in everyday contexts on its own, it nevertheless plays a unique role in giving systematicity and direction to the critique of such arguments, in particular, in public debate. (shrink)
Alexander X. Douglas situates Spinoza's philosophy in its immediate historical context, and argues that much of his work was conceived with the aim of rebutting the claims of his contemporaries. In contrast to them, Spinoza argued that philosophy reveals the true nature of God, and reinterpreted the concept of God in profound and radical ways.
I owe you a dinner invitation, you owe ten years on your mortgage, and the government owes billions. We speak confidently about these cases of debt, but is that concept clear in its meaning? This book aims to clarify the concept of debt so we can find better answers to important moral and political questions. This book seeks to accomplish two things. The first is to clarify the concept of debt by examining how the word is used in language. The (...) second is to develop a general, principled account of how debts generate genuine obligations. This allows us to avoid settling each case by a bare appeal to moral intuitions, which is what we seem to currently do. It requires a close examination of many institutions, e.g. money, contract law, profit-driven finance, government fiscal operations, and central banking. To properly understand the moral and political nature of debt, we must understand how these institutions have worked, how they do work, and how they might be made to work. There have been many excellent anthropological and sociological studies of debt and its related institutions. Philosophy can contribute to the emerging discussion and help us to keep our language precise and to identify the implicit principles contained in our intuitions. (shrink)
In this article I dispute the claim, made by several contemporary scholars, that Spinoza was a naturalist. ‘Naturalism’ here refers to two distinct but related positions in contemporary philosophy. The first, ontological naturalism, is the view that everything that exists possesses a certain character permitting it to be defined as natural and prohibiting it from being defined as supernatural. I argue that the only definition of ontological naturalism that could be legitimately applied to Spinoza's philosophy is so unrestrictive as to (...) tell us nothing about the content of his ideas. The second, methodological naturalism, is the view that the natural sciences are the best means of finding out substantial truths about the concrete world. I present some historical research showing that Spinoza's way of positioning himself with respect to other philosophers in the Dutch Republic casts very serious doubt on the claim that he was a methodological naturalist. This adds further weight to arguments that have already been made against the naturalist reading of Spinoza. (shrink)
For Spinoza, the highest thing we can hope for is acquiescentia in se ipso—acquiescence in oneself. As an ethical ideal, this might appear as a complacent quietism, a licence to accept the way you are and give up hope of improving either yourself or the world. I argue that the opposite is the case. Self-acquiescence in Spinoza’s sense is a very challenging goal: it requires a form of self-understanding that is extremely difficult to attain. It also involves occupying a daring (...) and radical political position, one that obstructs the psychological mechanisms by which political power is typically maintained. (shrink)
spinoza holds that god is the only substance and that ordinary things are modes of that substance. Precisely what this entails as a metaphysical thesis is a matter of contention, but it has been criticized on logical grounds. Briefly, the criticism is as follows. Assuming that only a substance can be a proper subject of predication, it follows from Spinoza’s thesis that all predications correctly made of ordinary things must be properly made of God.1 This leads to contradiction. As some (...) read him, Spinoza’s way out is to propose that various claims are true of God, not simpliciter, but only “insofar as” he is something specific.2 It is then assumed that what holds of God insofar as he is A need not hold... (shrink)
In This Paper I Aim to Place Spinoza’s famous injunction in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, to separate philosophy from theology, in its historical context. I contend that in order to properly understand Spinoza’s views concerning the relationship between philosophy and theology, we must view his work in the context of philosophical discussions taking place during his time and in his country of residence, the Dutch Republic. Of particular relevance is a meta-philosophical thesis advocated by a certain group of Cartesian philosophers and (...) theologians. Their thesis was developed in response to attacks on Cartesianism from more conservative authors, who saw it as a source of impiety. It stated that Cartesian .. (shrink)
Near the end of his Ethics, Spinoza develops a theory that '[a]n affect which is a passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it.' Recent commentators have found this theory to be radically implausible in light of some of Spinoza's other metaphysical and epistemological commitments. I defend Spinoza on this point. Having done so, I examine R.G. Collingwood's reading of the theory, presented in The Principles of Art. Collingwood's reading proposes (...) that passions, for Spinoza, are ideas of feelings that attempt to disown them--ideas that present one's own, wrongly, as not being one's own feelings. We form such ideas when, for some reason or other, we are psychologically resistant to accepting the reality of our effective condition. This, according to Collingwood, is what Spinoza means by calling passions 'confused' ideas of feelings. With the help of Collingwood's reading, I propose, Spinoza's theory may be made to appear very compelling and original. (shrink)
Most early modern philosophers held that our emotions are always passions: to experience an emotion is to undergo something rather than to do something. Spinoza is different; he holds that our emotions – what he calls our ‘affects’ – can be actions rather than passions. Moreover, we can convert a passive affect into an active one simply by forming a clear and distinct idea of it. This theory is difficult to understand. I defend the interpretation R.G. Collingwood gives of it (...) in his book, The Principles of Art. An affect, it turns out, is passive when it is ambiguous whether we or somebody else is the subject of the affect. An affect is active when we fully accept the affect as our own. Here, I outline Collingwood's interpretation and then develop it further. (shrink)
