Celebrates the life and work of the seventeenth century philosopher who believed that humans were part of nature and that God was synonomous with nature.

On the last page of A Political Treatise Spinoza denies that women are subject to men by convention only. He excludes females from participation in politics on the grounds that they are “by nature … necessarily” (that is, by the logical and causal necessity which are for him equivalent) unequal to men “in strength of mind and intellectual ability”. This claim is examined in relation to four of Spinoza's foundational principles. It is found to be in tension with all four, (...) and with the psychological, social, political and moral deductions Spinoza makes from them, and is moreover an internally weak argument. (shrink)

My thesis seeks to reduce what may be a natural human antipathy to ageing and/or the elderly by working with one distinctive and consistently approved feature of some older people. This feature is a bold and cheerful struggle within a self‐chosen project. The argument opens by distinguishing short‐term gratification from lasting, fulfilling happiness, and showing the link between gratification and dependence. Three kinds of struggle (non‐voluntary, part‐voluntary and positive) are then outlined and exemplified. Gerontological and anthropological research suggest that attitudes (...) to struggle are fixed early in life, and while in the past they mitigated for or against successful survival, they now influence happiness and coping in later life. I argue that the negative effects of the first two kinds of struggle ‐ which are often misguided, grudging or ‘no‐win’ struggles ‐ are responsible for the rigidity, narcissism and resentment disliked in some older people. Self‐respect, contrasted with self‐righteousness, is shown to accrue only from the positive (voluntary and congenial) struggle that seems at any age to deflect or compensate for depression, disappointment, loneliness and illness. (shrink)