Spinoza attributes mentality to all things existing in nature. He claims that each thing has a mind that perceives everything that happens in the body. Against this panpsychist background, it is unclear how consciousness relates to the nature of the mind. This study focuses on Spinoza’s account of the conscious mind and its operations. It builds on the hypothesis that Spinoza’s panpsychism can be interpreted as a self-consistent philosophical position. It aims at providing answers to the following questions: what is (...) consciousness, for Spinoza, and what are the causes that determine its presence in nature? How can human and non-human individuals be distinguished on account of their mentality? How can Spinoza conceive of the human mind as consisting entirely of conscious perceptions? And how, according to Spinoza’s mind-body parallelism, is the content of consciousness determined so that it reflects in thought the order and connection of the actions and passions of the body? To address these questions, I first determine what Spinoza’s notion of “consciousness” is and how he uses it. Then, I investigate whether he has a theory of recognition capable of accounting for specifically human behaviour and mentality. Further, I examine his description of memory and the way in which memory shapes the framework of human conscious thought. Finally, I look for an account of discursive reasoning, capable of explaining the existence of activities of the mind that, by operating on the content provided by memory, preserve themselves through time and change. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article, I examine whether Spinoza's account of blessedness can be identified with a contemplative ideal in the Aristotelian tradition. I first introduce the main features of the Aristotelian life of contemplation and its difference from the life of practically oriented virtues — a difference that is grounded in Aristotle's distinction between praxis and theoria. In highlighting the commonalities between Spinoza's two kinds of adequate cognition — that is, intuitive knowledge and reason — I show that there is (...) no room for a similar distinction in Spinoza, which will enable us to identify intuitive knowledge and its attendant blessedness exclusively with the theoretical activity. RÉSUMÉ Dans cet article, j'examine si la description spinozienne de la béatitude peut être identifiée à un idéal contemplatif dans la tradition aristotélicienne. Je présente d'abord les caractéristiques principales de la vie contemplative telle que définie par Aristote ainsi que sa différence avec la vie des vertus orientées vers la pratique — une différence fondée sur la distinction d'Aristote entre praxis et theoria. En mettant en évidence les points communs entre les deux types de connaissance adéquate de Spinoza — c'est-à-dire la connaissance intuitive et la raison —, je montre qu'il n'y a pas de place pour une distinction similaire chez Spinoza, ce qui permettra d'identifier la connaissance intuitive et la béatitude qui l'accompagne exclusivement avec l'activité théorique. (shrink)

Spinoza's Ethics promises a path for sweeping personal transformations, but his accounts face two sets of overarching problems. The first concerns his peculiar metaphysics of action and agents; the second his apparent neglect of the very category of persons. Although these are somewhat distinct concerns, they have a common, unified solution in Spinoza's system that is philosophically rich and interesting, both in its own right and in relation to contemporary work in moral philosophy. After presenting the core of the problem (...) facing Spinoza's action theory, I turn to his overlooked account of selves, one that can be illuminated by contemporary work on so-called deep-self theories. I then show how Spinoza's distinctive account of selves prevents his action theory from collapsing into metaphysical incoherence, and conclude with an implication for Spinoza's broader account of transformation. (shrink)

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 by this time 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, I shall strive to show that all affects depend on some sort of beliefs by analyzing Spinoza’s theory of affects in terms of his theory of ideas, and in particular an affirmation which an idea naturally involves. From this revelation, we will be able to see that Spinoza’s theory of affects appeared in third and fourth part of Ethics is inconsistent with the fifth part of Ethics in so far as three therapy methods given in the beginning of the fifth part of Ethics are considered. Additionally, and suitably to this assertion, I will also show that arguments by which soundness of these therapy methods are guaranteed seem actually logically invalid. Finally, I will try to revise Spinoza’s therapy methods by taking all errors and core ideas in Spinoza’s theory of affects into consideration. (shrink)

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.

Spinoza’s account of reason in the Short Treatise has been largely neglected. That account, I argue, has at least four features which distinguish it from that of the Ethics: in the Short Treatise, (1) reason is more sharply distinguished from the faculty of intuitive knowledge, (2) reason deals with things as though they were ‘outside’ us, (3) reason lacks clarity and distinctness, and (4) reason has no power over many types of passions. I argue that these differences have a unified (...) explanation, consisting of a principle that Spinoza accepts in both works and a central change in his views. The principle is that whatever we find in ourselves has more power over us than anything which comes from outside, and the change is in making the objects of reason common things or common notions. Understanding this, I claim, sheds important light on the psychological and epistemological motivations behind Spinoza's mature doctrines. (shrink)

1. Introduction: 1.1 Difficulties of Approach; 1.2 Philosophical Background. 2. The Context of Early Modern Theories of the Passions: 2.1 Changing Vocabulary; 2.2 Taxonomies; 2.3 Philosophical Issues in Theories of the Emotions. SUPPLEMENTARY DOCUMENTS: Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Theories of the Emotions; Descartes; Hobbes; Malebranche; Spinoza; Shaftsbury; Hutcheson; Hume.