Spinoza semble adopter une position pleinement nominaliste lorsqu'il discue des notions universelles dans l'Ethique, mais on y trouve aussi plusieurs arguments où, semble-t-il, des universaux sont présupposés. La solution avancé par plusieurs commentateurs, y compris Haserot, est que le système spinoziste est d'inspiration platoniste, et qu'il faut réinterpréter les passages d'apparence nominaliste pour les accorder avec le platonisme ou l'essentialisme. J'argumente qu'un tel procédé n'est justifié ni par le texte ni par la structure du système de Spinoza. L'interprétation du spinozisme (...) que je propose le place dans le cadre logique du nominalisme contemporain, à l'instar du système de Nelson Goodman, par exemple. (shrink)

Charles Jarrett and P. D. Zuk have argued on independent grounds that Spinoza's Ethics delineates a moral antirealist/constructivist position. I reconstruct their basic arguments, present their textual evidence, and suggest that the evidence is, in principle, compatible with moral realism. As I argue, Jarrett and Zuk have opted for an antirealist/constructivist interpretation of the adduced textual evidence because they tacitly rely on a mistaken metaethical assumption: that relational normativity entails moral antirealism/constructivism. I explain why this is not the case by (...) reference to Aristotle's virtue ethics, as well as by reference to various contemporary metaethical positions that conjoin relational normativity and moral realism. I conclude that the textual evidence Jarrett and Zuk rely on does not suffice to render Spinoza's Ethics unequivocally morally antirealist/constructivist and that the morally realist interpretation remains defensible. (shrink)

ABSTRACTI argue that Spinoza attributes to society the role of moral educator, a role that is to be carried out via Religion and Politics and hence also via an educational system. In his account, the social body is given the task of applying and transmitting a notion of virtue whose criterion is enhanced freedom, yet that freedom paradoxically must be acquired initially via authoritative coercive rules of praxis. The aim is to achieve an infinite broadening of perspective upon oneself and (...) upon the world and a consequent transformation of one’s motivations and desires from narrowly self-serving to infinitely inclusive. Intellectual virtue is exposed as the necessary and only true fulfillment of the virtue of moral models for it has achieved ‘the knowledge of the union that the mind has with the whole of Nature.’ Yet that intellectual virtue is not ready to hand but must be taught, and teaching necessarily entails an initial measure of authoritative transmission and even coercion, and hence moral models to be internalized. (shrink)