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A Study of Spinoza's Ethics

Philosophy 61 (235):125-128 (1986)

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  1. Mind-Body Parallelism and Spinoza's Philosophy of Mind.Ruben Noorloos - 2022 - Dissertation, Central European University
    Mind-body parallelism is the view that mind and body stand in the same “order and connection,” as Spinoza put it, or that corresponding mental and physical states have corresponding causal explanations in terms of other mental and physical states. This dissertation investigates the nature and role of mind-body parallelism, as well as other forms of parallelism, in Spinoza’s philosophy of mind. In doing so, it also considers how Spinoza’s views relate to current discussions. In present-day philosophy of mind, mind-body parallelism (...)
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  • God.Yitzhak Y. Melamed - forthcoming - In Karolina Hübner & Justin Steinberg (eds.), Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon. Cambridge University Press.
    In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel offers the following verdict on Spinoza’s ontology: “According to Spinoza what is, is God, and God alone. Therefore, the allegations of those who accuse Spinoza of atheism are the direct opposite of the truth; with him there is too much God” (Hegel 1995, vol. 3, 281-2). It is not easy to dismiss Hegel’s grand pronouncement, since Spinoza indeed clearly affirms: “whatever is, is in God” (E1p15). Crocodiles, porcupines (and your thoughts about (...)
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  • A causal ontology of objects, causal relations, and various kinds of action.Andrew Newman - 2022 - Synthese 200 (4):1-28.
    The basic kinds of physical causality that are foundational for other kinds of causality involve objects and the causal relations between them. These interactions do not involve events. If events were ontologically significant entities for causality in general, then they would play a role in simple mechanical interactions. But arguments about simple collisions looked at from different frames of reference show that events cannot play a role in simple mechanical interactions, and neither can the entirely hypothetical causal relations between events. (...)
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  • Spinoza on Expression and Grounds of Intelligibility.Karolina Hübner & Róbert Mátyási - 2022 - Philosophical Quarterly 72 (3):628-651.
    Recent literature on Spinoza has emphasized his commitment to universal intelligibility, understood as the claim that there are no brute facts. We draw attention to an important but overlooked element of Spinoza's commitment to intelligibility, and thereby question its most prominent interpretation, on which this commitment results in the priority of conceptual relations. We argue that such readings are both incomplete in their account of Spinozistic intelligibility and mistaken in their identification of the most fundamental relation. We argue that Spinoza (...)
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  • Spinoza’s Monism II: A Proposal.Kristin Primus - 2023 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 105 (3):444-469.
    An old question in Spinoza scholarship is how finite, non-eternal things transitively caused by other finite, non-eternal things (i. e., the entities described in propositions like E1p28) are caused by the infinite, eternal substance, given that what follows either directly or indirectly from the divine nature is infinite and eternal (E1p21–23). In “Spinoza’s Monism I,” “Spinoza’s Monism I,” in the previous issue of this journal. I pointed out that most commentators answer this question by invoking entities that are indefinite and (...)
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  • The Principle of Sufficient Reason and Libertarianism: A Critique of Pruss.Brandon Rdzak - 2021 - Philosophia 50 (1):201-216.
    Alexander Pruss’s Principle of Sufficient Reason states that every contingent true proposition has an explanation. Pruss thinks that he can plausibly maintain both his PSR and his account of libertarian free will. This is because his libertarianism has it that contingent true propositions reporting free choices are self-explanatory. But I don’t think Pruss can plausibly maintain both his PSR and libertarianism without a rift occurring in one or the other. Similar to the old luck/randomness objection, I contend that Pruss’s libertarianism (...)
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  • Spinoza's guise of the good: getting to the bottom of 3p9s.Matthew J. Kisner - 2021 - Philosophical Explorations 24 (1):34-47.
    In the Ethics, Spinoza famously wrote, “we do not seek or desire anything, because we judge it to be good; on the contrary, we judge a thing to be good because we endeavor it, will it, seek it and desire it.” This passage is widely recognized as asserting some of Spinoza's most important claims about the good, but the precise meaning of the passage is unclear, as interpreters have offered a wide variety of interpretations, often without noting (or even noticing) (...)
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  • Spinoza’s EIp10 As a Solution to a Paradox about Rules: A New Argument from the Short Treatise.Michael Rauschenbach - 2020 - Journal of Modern Philosophy 2 (1):12.
    The tenth proposition of Spinoza’s Ethics reads: ‘Each attribute of substance must be conceived through itself.’ Developing and defending the argument for this single proposition, it turns out, is vital to Spinoza’s philosophical project. Indeed, it’s virtually impossible to overstate its importance. Spinoza and his interpreters have used EIp10 to prove central claims in his metaphysics and philosophy of mind (i.e., substance monism, mind-body parallelism, mind-body identity, and finite subject individuation). It’s crucial for making sense of his epistemology (i.e., Spinoza’s (...)
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  • Reason and Knowledge in Spinoza.John R. T. Grey - 2015 - In Andre Santos Campos (ed.), Spinoza: Basic Concepts. Imprint Academic. pp. 71-83.
    This chapter investigates Spinoza's conception of reason, focusing on (i) the difference between reason and the imagination, and (ii) the difference between reason and intuitive knowledge. The central interpretive debate this chapter considers is about the scope of rational cognition. Some commentators have argued that it is only possible to have rational cognition of properties that are universally shared, whereas intuitive knowledge may grasp the essences of particular individuals. Another prominent interpretation is that reason differs from intuition only in virtue (...)
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  • On Some Leibnizian Arguments for the Principle of Sufficient Reason.Stephen Harrop - 2020 - History of Philosophy Quarterly 37 (2):143-162.
    Leibniz often refers to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) as something like a first principle. In some texts, however, he attempts to give positive arguments in its favor. I examine two such arguments, and find them wanting. The first argument has two defects. First, it is question-begging; and second, when the question-begging step is excised, the principle one can in fact derive is highly counter-intuitive. The second argument is valid, but has the defect of only reaching a nearly trivial (...)
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  • The three final doctrines of Spinoza: intuition, amor Dei, the eternity of the mind.Michaela Petrufová Joppová - 2020 - Pro-Fil 21 (1):41-50.
    The study deals with the matter of three of the most puzzling doctrines of Baruch Spinoza's system, the so-called 'final doctrines', which are intuitive knowledge, intellectual love of God, and the eternity of the (human) mind. Contrary to many commentators, but also in concordance with many others, this account strives to affirm the utmost importance of these doctrines to Spinoza's system as a whole, but mostly to his ethical theory. Focusing specifically on the cultivation of the human mind, the paper (...)
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  • Tamers, deniers, and me.Michael Della Rocca - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (4):1101-1119.
    This paper critically examines a prominent and perennial strategy—found in thinkers as diverse as Kant and Shamik Dasgupta—of simultaneously embracing the Principle of Sufficient Reason and also limiting it so as to avoid certain apparently negative consequences of an unrestricted PSR. I will argue that this strategy of taming the PSR faces significant challenges and may even be incoherent. And for my purposes, I will enlist a generally derided argument by Leibniz for the PSR which will help us to see (...)
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  • Explaining contingent facts.Fatema Amijee - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (4):1163-1181.
    I argue against a principle that is widely taken to govern metaphysical explanation. This is the principle that no necessary facts can, on their own, explain a contingent fact. I then show how this result makes available a response to a longstanding objection to the Principle of Sufficient Reason—the objection that the Principle of Sufficient Reason entails that the world could not have been otherwise.
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  • Principle of Sufficient Reason.Fatema Amijee - 2020 - In Michael J. Raven (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding. New York: Routledge. pp. 63-75.
    According to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (henceforth ‘PSR’), everything has an explanation or sufficient reason. This paper addresses three questions. First, how continuous is the contemporary notion of grounding with the notion of sufficient reason endorsed by Spinoza, Leibniz, and other rationalists? In particular, does a PSR formulated in terms of ground retain the intuitive pull and power of the PSR endorsed by the rationalists? Second, to what extent can the PSR avoid the formidable traditional objections levelled against it (...)
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  • Spinoza’s Substance Monism.Yakir Levin - 2012 - History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 15 (1):368-386.
    In Spinoza’s substance monism, radically different attributes constitute the essence of one and the same substance qua a strongly unified whole. Showing how this is possible poses a formidable Cartesian challenge to Spinoza’s metaphysics. In this paper I suggest a reconstruction of Spinoza’s notion of substance that meets this challenge and explains a major feature of this notion. I then show how this reconstruction can be used to resolve two fundamental problems of the Cartesian framework that pertain to Spinoza’s metaphysics. (...)
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  • Can the Berkeleyan Idealist Resist Spinozist Panpsychism?Graham Clay & Michael Rauschenbach - 2021 - History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 24 (2):296-325.
    We argue that prevailing definitions of Berkeley’s idealism fail to rule out a nearby Spinozist rival view that we call ‘mind-body identity panpsychism.’ Since Berkeley certainly does not agree with Spinoza on this issue, we call for more care in defining Berkeley’s view. After we propose our own definition of Berkeley’s idealism, we survey two Berkeleyan strategies to block the mind-body identity panpsychist and establish his idealism. We argue that Berkeley should follow Leibniz and further develop his account of the (...)
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  • Spinoza on Composition, Monism, and Beings of Reason.Róbert Mátyási - 2020 - Journal of Modern Philosophy 2 (1):1-16.
    In this paper, I argue that Spinoza holds a perspectivalist view of mereological composition, a form of anti-realism. The paper has two parts: In the first half of the paper, I introduce interpretive puzzles for the standard realist reading of Spinoza’s mereology. In the second half of the paper, I discuss Spinoza’s positive view on mereological composition and present a perspectivalist reading that avoids the interpretive puzzles.
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  • 'An activity whereby the mind regards itself': Spinoza on consciousness.Michaela Petrufová Joppová - 2018 - Pro-Fil 19 (2):2-11.
    Baruch Spinoza’s philosophy of mind stirs up the disputes about the nature of body-mind relations with its rigorous and naturalistic monism. The unity of body and mind is consequential of his metaphysics of the substance, but the concept of the unity of the mind and its idea rightfully confuses Spinoza’s commentators. Many have been tempted to interpret this as a possible account of consciousness, but it still has not yet been fully understood. This paper attempts to introduce an interpretation of (...)
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  • Indefinite extensibility and the principle of sufficient reason.Geoffrey Hall - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (2):471-492.
    The principle of sufficient reason threatens modal collapse. Some have suggested that by appealing to the indefinite extensibility of contingent truth, the threat is neutralized. This paper argues that this is not so. If the indefinite extensibility of contingent truth is developed in an analogous fashion to the most promising models of the indefinite extensibility of the concept set, plausible principles permit the derivation of modal collapse.
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  • The Young Spinoza on Scepticism, Truth, and Method.Valtteri Viljanen - 2020 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50 (1):130-142.
    This paper offers a new interpretation of the young Spinoza’s method of distinguishing the true ideas from the false, which shows that his answer to the sceptic is not a failure. This method combines analysis and synthesis as follows: if we can say of the object of an idea which simple things underlie it, how it can be constructed out of simple elements, and what properties it has after it has been produced, doubt concerning the object simply makes no sense. (...)
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  • The principle of sufficient reason and necessitarianism.Kris McDaniel - 2019 - Analysis 79 (2):230-236.
    Peter van Inwagen presented a powerful argument against the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which I henceforth abbreviate as ‘PSR’. For decades, the consensus was that this argument successfully refuted PSR. However, now a growing consensus holds that van Inwagen’s argument is fatally flawed, at least when ‘sufficient reason’ is understood in terms of ground, for on this understanding, an ineliminable premiss of van Inwagen’s argument is demonstrably false and cannot be repaired. I will argue that this growing consensus is mistaken (...)
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  • A Critical Assessment of Spinoza’s Theory of Affect: Affects, Beliefs, and Human Freedom.Ahmet Aktaş - 2018 - Beytulhikme An International Journal of Philosophy 8 (1):251-272.
    Affects are intentional structures of beliefs and desires. Many philosophers have plausibly argued that Spinoza’s theory of ideas is a kind of theory of belief. Yet this claim has rarely been taken into account when it comes to Spinoza’s theory of affects, which is actually a part of his theory of ideas. This paper shows that if this point is taken seriously when regarding Spinoza’s theory of affects we reach significant results about the fifth part of Ethics. To show this, (...)
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  • Spinoza and the problem of other substances.Galen Barry - 2019 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 49 (4):481-507.
    ABSTRACTMost of Spinoza’s arguments for God’s existence do not rely on any special feature of God, but instead on merely general features of substance. This raises the following worry: those arguments prove the existence of non-divine substances just as much as they prove God’s existence, and yet there is not enough room in Spinoza’s system for all these substances. I argue that Spinoza attempts to solve this problem by using a principle of plenitude to rule out the existence of other (...)
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  • A Spinozist Aesthetics of Affect and Its Political Implications.Christopher Davidson - 2017 - In Gábor Boros, Judit Szalai & Oliver Toth (eds.), The Concept of Affectivity in Early Modern Philosophy. Budapest, Hungary: Eötvös Loránd University Press. pp. 185-206.
    Spinoza rarely refers to art. However, there are extensive resources for a Spinozist aesthetics in his discussion of health in the Ethics and of social affects in his political works. There have been recently been a few essays linking Spinoza and art, but this essay additionally fuses Spinoza’s politics to an affective aesthetics. Spinoza’s statements that art makes us healthier (Ethics 4p54Sch; Emendation section 17) form the foundation of an aesthetics. In Spinoza’s definition, “health” is caused by external objects that (...)
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  • Is Spinoza’s theory of Finite Mind Coherent? – Death, Affectivity and Epistemology in the Ethics.Oliver Istvan Toth - 2017 - The Concept of Affectivity in Early Modern Philosophy.
    In this paper I examine the question whether Spinoza can account for the necessity of death. I argue that he cannot because within his ethical intellectualist system the subject cannot understand the cause of her death, since by understanding it renders it harmless. Then, I argue that Spinoza could not solve this difficulties because of deeper commitments of his system. At the end I draw a historical parallel to the problem from medieval philosophy.
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  • Ontología y física en la filosofía de Spinoza: un nuevo marco cosmológico para la Natura naturata.Daniel Álvarez Montero - 2017 - Endoxa 39:81.
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  • Field Metaphysic, Power, and Individuation in Spinoza.Valtteri Viljanen - 2007 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (3):393-418.
    Spinoza developed a highly interesting metaphysical theory of nature and individuality. In this paper, I endeavor to bring forward some ideas on how Spinozistic views on extended substance, physical world, and individuality can be approached using the concept of power as the basis of interpretation. Jonathan Bennett's ‘field metaphysical’ interpretation of Spinoza's doctrine of one extended substance has generated much discussion, and forms the other starting point of my paper. I believe that the field metaphysical interpretation enables one to deal (...)
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  • Conhecimento humano e a ideia de afecção na Ética de Espinosa.Levy Lia - 2013 - Analytica. Revista da Filosofia 17 (2): 221-247.
    A tese de que o conceito espinosista de ideia de afecção, introduzido na Ética, expressa o sentido mais preciso do que seja, para o autor, o conceito de ideia da imaginação. Este texto pretende problematizar essa leitura, procurando fornecer subsídios para a hipótese de que ela não é nem inequivocamente corroborada pelo texto da Ética, nem exigida pela doutrina aí apresentada. -/- It is widely accepted by scholars that Spinoza’s concept of idea of affection, introduced in the Ethics, states his (...)
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  • Theories About Consciousness in Spinoza's Ethics.Michael LeBuffe - 2010 - Philosophical Review 119 (4):531-563.
    Spinoza's remarks about consciousness in the Ethics constitute two theories about conscious experience and knowledge. Several remarks, including 3p9 and 4p8, make the point that self knowledge—an especially valuable good for Spinoza—is not available to introspection. We are, as a matter of course, conscious of ourselves, but we do not, as a matter of course, know ourselves. A second group of remarks, all of which occur in part 5 of the Ethics, emphasizes a different point about consciousness and knowledge: the (...)
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  • Essence as power, or Spinoza on heartbreak.Karolina Hübner - forthcoming - Journal of the History of Philosophy.
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  • Restricting Spinoza's Causal Axiom.John Morrison - 2015 - Philosophical Quarterly 65 (258):40-63.
    Spinoza's causal axiom is at the foundation of the Ethics. I motivate, develop and defend a new interpretation that I call the ‘causally restricted interpretation’. This interpretation solves several longstanding puzzles and helps us better understand Spinoza's arguments for some of his most famous doctrines, including his parallelism doctrine and his theory of sense perception. It also undermines a widespread view about the relationship between the three fundamental, undefined notions in Spinoza's metaphysics: causation, conception and inherence.
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  • Spinoza's Thinking Substance and the Necessity of Modes.Karolina Hübner - 2014 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89 (3):3-34.
    The paper offers a new account of Spinoza's conception of “substance”, the fundamental building block of reality. It shows that it can be demonstrated apriori within Spinoza's metaphysical framework that (i) contrary to Idealist readings, for Spinoza there can be no substance that is not determined or modified by some other entity produced by substance; and that (ii) there can be no substance (and hence no being) that is not a thinking substance.
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  • Spinoza on Essences, Universals, and Beings of Reason.Karolina Hübner - 2015 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 96 (2):58-88.
    The article proposes a new solution to the long-standing problem of the universality of essences in Spinoza's ontology. It argues that, according to Spinoza, particular things in nature possess unique essences, but that these essences coexist with more general, mind-dependent species-essences, constructed by finite minds on the basis of similarities that obtain among the properties of formally-real particulars. This account provides the best fit both with the textual evidence and with Spinoza's other metaphysical and epistemological commitments. The article offers new (...)
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  • ‘Use Them At Our Pleasure’: Spinoza on Animal Ethics.John Grey - 2013 - History of Philosophy Quarterly 30 (4):367-388.
    Although Spinoza disagrees with Descartes's claim that animals are mindless, he holds that we may nevertheless treat them as we please because their natures are different from human nature. Margaret Wilson has questioned the validity of Spinoza's argument, since it is not clear why differences in nature should imply differences in ethical status. In this paper, I propose a new interpretation of Spinoza's argument that responds to Wilson's challenge. We have ethical commitments to other humans only because we share the (...)
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  • Spinoza on essence and ideal individuation.Adam Murray - 2013 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 43 (1):78-96.
    My project in this paper is to fill a gap in Spinoza's theory of metaphysical individuation. In a few brief passages of the Ethics, Spinoza manages to explain his views on the nature of composition and the part-whole relation, the metaphysical facts which ground the individuation of simple bodies and the extended individuals they compose, and the persistence of one and the same individual through time and mereological change. Yet Spinoza nowhere presents a corresponding account of the individuation of simple (...)
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  • Causal and Logical Necessity in Malebranche’s Occasionalism.A. R. J. Fisher - 2011 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 41 (4):523-548.
    The famous Cartesian Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) espoused the occasionalist doctrine that ‘there is only one true cause because there is only one true God; that the nature or power of each thing is nothing but the will of God; that all natural causes are not true causes but only occasional causes’ (LO, 448, original italics). One of Malebranche’s well-known arguments for occasionalism, known as, the ‘no necessary connection’ argument (or, NNC ) stems from the principle that ‘a true cause… is (...)
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  • Russell on Spinoza’s Substance Monism.Pierfrancesco Basile - 2012 - Metaphysica 13 (1):27-41.
    Russell’s critique of substance monism is an ideal starting point from which to understand some main concepts in Spinoza’s difficult metaphysics. This paper provides an in-depth examination of Spinoza’s proof that only one substance exists. On this basis, it rejects Russell’s interpretation of Spinoza’s theory of reality as founded upon the logical doctrine that all propositions consist of a predicate and a subject. An alternative interpretation is offered: Spinoza’s substance is not a bearer of properties, as Russell implied, but an (...)
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  • Time, Duration and Eternity in Spinoza.Bruce Baugh - 2010 - Comparative and Continental Philosophy 2 (2):211-233.
    I use Jonathan Bennett’s, Gilles Deleuze’s and Pierre Macherey’s interpretations of Spinoza to extract a theory of time and duration from Spinoza. I argue that although time can be considered a product of the imagination, duration is a real property of existing things and corresponds to their essence, taking essence (as Deleuze does) as a degree of power of existing. The article then explores the relations among time, duration, essence and eternity, arguing against the idea that Spinoza’s essences or Spinoza’s (...)
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  • Ontic structural realism as a metaphysics of objects.Michael Esfeld & Vincent Lam - 2011 - In Alisa Bokulich & Peter Bokulich (eds.), Scientific Structuralism. Springer Science+Business Media. pp. 143-159.
    The paper spells out five different accounts of the relationship between objects and relations three of which are versions of ontic structural realism. We argue that the distinction between objects and properties, including relations, is merely a conceptual one by contrast to an ontological one: properties, including relations, are modes, that is the concrete, particular ways in which objects exist. We then set out moderate OSR as the view according to which irreducible relations are central ways in which the fundamental (...)
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  • Expression, Immanence and Constructivism: 'Spinozism' and Gilles Deleuze.Thomas Nail - 2008 - Deleuze and Guatarri Studies 2 (2):201-219.
    This paper is an attempt to explicate the relationship between Spinozist expressionism and philosophical constructivism in Deleuze's work through the concept of immanent causality. Deleuze finds in Spinoza a philosophy of immanent causality used to solve the problem of the relation between substance, attribute and mode as an expression of substance. But, when he proceeds to take up this notion of immanent causality found in Spinoza in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze instead inverts it into a modal one such that the (...)
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  • Spinoza on the problem of akrasia.Eugene Marshall - 2008 - European Journal of Philosophy 18 (1):41-59.
    : Two common ways of explaining akrasia will be presented, one which focuses on strength of desire and the other which focuses on action issuing from practical judgment. Though each is intuitive in a certain way, they both fail as explanations of the most interesting cases of akrasia. Spinoza 's own thoughts on bondage and the affects follow, from which a Spinozist explanation of akrasia is constructed. This account is based in Spinoza 's mechanistic psychology of cognitive affects. Because Spinoza (...)
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  • Spinoza's Essentialist Model of Causation.Valtteri Viljanen - 2008 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 51 (4):412 – 437.
    Spinoza is most often seen as a stern advocate of mechanistic efficient causation, but examining his philosophy in relation to the Aristotelian tradition reveals this view to be misleading: some key passages of the Ethics resemble so much what Surez writes about emanation that it is most natural to situate Spinoza's theory of causation not in the context of the mechanical sciences but in that of a late scholastic doctrine of the emanative causality of the formal cause; as taking a (...)
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  • Spinozas Metaphysics of Desire.Martin Lin - 2004 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 86 (1):21-55.
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  • From nihilism to monism.Jonathan Schaffer - 2007 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (2):175 – 191.
    Mereological nihilism is the view that all concrete objects are simple. Existence monism is the view that the only concrete object is one big simple: the world. I will argue that nihilism culminates in monism. The nihilist demands the simplest sufficient ontology, and the monist delivers it.
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  • Spacetime the one substance.Jonathan Schaffer - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 145 (1):131 - 148.
    What is the relation between material objects and spacetime regions? Supposing that spacetime regions are one sort of substance, there remains the question of whether or not material objects are a second sort of substance. This is the question of dualistic versus monistic substantivalism. I will defend the monistic view. In particular, I will maintain that material objects should be identified with spacetime regions. There is the spacetime manifold, and the fundamental properties are pinned directly to it.
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  • Spinoza and consciousness.Steven Nadler - 2008 - Mind 117 (467):575-601.
    Most discussions of Spinoza and consciousness—and there are not many— conclude either that he does not have an account of consciousness, or that he does have one but that it is at best confused, at worst hopeless. I argue, in fact, that people have been looking in the wrong place for Spinoza's account of consciousness, namely, at his doctrine of "ideas of ideas". Indeed, Spinoza offers the possibility of a fairly sophisticated, naturalistic account of consciousness, one that grounds it in (...)
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  • Autopoiesis, adaptivity, teleology, agency.Ezequiel A. Di Paolo - 2005 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 4 (4):429-452.
    A proposal for the biological grounding of intrinsic teleology and sense-making through the theory of autopoiesis is critically evaluated. Autopoiesis provides a systemic language for speaking about intrinsic teleology but its original formulation needs to be elaborated further in order to explain sense-making. This is done by introducing adaptivity, a many-layered property that allows organisms to regulate themselves with respect to their conditions of viability. Adaptivity leads to more articulated concepts of behaviour, agency, sense-construction, health, and temporality than those given (...)
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  • Spinoza’s Monism I: Ruling Out Eternal-Durational Causation.Kristin Primus - 2023 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 105 (2):265-288.
    In this essay, I suggest that Spinoza acknowledges a distinction between formal reality that is infinite and timelessly eternal and formal reality that is non-infinite (i. e., finite or indefinite) and non-eternal (i. e., enduring). I also argue that if, in Spinoza’s system, only intelligible causation is genuine causation, then infinite, timelessly eternal formal reality cannot cause non-infinite, non-eternal formal reality. A denial of eternal-durational causation generates a puzzle, however: if no enduring thing – not even the sempiternal, indefinite individual (...)
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  • Hegel and Spinoza on the philosophy of nature.James Kay - 2020 - Dissertation, University of Warwick
    This study argues that the exploration of Hegel and Spinoza’s philosophies of material Nature yields a more compelling critique of Spinoza’s thought than either Hegel himself or commentators have recognised. Rather than attempting a full comparison of Hegel and Spinoza’s accounts of material Nature, this study focuses on elaborating a critique of the deficiencies found, from a Hegelian standpoint, in Spinoza’s account of extended Nature. This study argues that the Hegelian critique of Spinoza’s theory of extended Nature takes at least (...)
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  • Citizens and States in Spinoza’s Political Treatise.Michael LeBuffe - 2021 - Mind 130 (519):809-832.
    In his Political Treatise, Spinoza repeatedly compares states to human beings. In this interpretation of the comparisons, I present a progressively more restrictive account of Spinoza’s views about the nature of human beings in the Ethics and show at each step how those views inform the account of states in the Political Treatise. Because, like human beings, states are individuals, they strive to persevere in existence. Because, like human beings, states are composed of parts that are individuals, states' parts also (...)
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