Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Is Spinoza's Ethics Metaethically Constructivist?Christos Kyriacou - 2022 - History of Philosophy Quarterly 39 (2):131-146.
    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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Human action and virtue in Descartes and Spinoza.Noa Naaman-Zauderer - 2018 - Philosophical Explorations 21 (1):25-40.
    In this paper, I argue that despite undeniable fundamental differences between Descartes’ and Spinoza’s accounts of human action, there are some striking similarities between their views on right action, moral motivation, and virtue that are usually overlooked. I will argue, first, that both thinkers define virtue in terms of activity or freedom, mutatis mutandis, and thus in terms of actual power of acting. Second, I will claim that both Descartes and Spinoza hold a non-consequentialist approach to virtue, by which human (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Spinoza on Emotion and Akrasia.Christiaan Remmelzwaal - 2016 - Dissertation, Université de Neuchatel
    The objective of this doctoral dissertation is to interpret the explanation of akrasia that the Dutch philosopher Benedictus Spinoza (1632-1677) gives in his work The Ethics. One is said to act acratically when one intentionally performs an action that one judges to be worse than another action which one believes one might perform instead. In order to interpret Spinoza’s explanation of akrasia, a large part of this dissertation investigates Spinoza’s theory of emotion. The first chapter is introductory and outlines Spinoza’s (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Affect, Desire, and Judgement in Spinoza's Account of Motivation.Justin Steinberg - 2016 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 24 (1):67-87.
    Two priority problems frustrate our understanding of Spinoza on desire [cupiditas]. The first problem concerns the relationship between desire and the other two primary affects, joy [laetitia] and sadness [tristitia]. Desire seems to be the oddball of this troika, not only because, contrary to the very definition of an affect, desires do not themselves consist in changes in one's power of acting, but also because desire seems at once more and less basic than joy and sadness. The second problem concerns (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Spinoza on Lying and Suicide.Steven Nadler - 2016 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 24 (2):257-278.
    Spinoza is often taken to claim that suicide is never a rational act, that a ‘free’ person acting by the guidance of reason will never terminate his/her own existence. Spinoza also defends the prima facie counterintuitive claim that the rational person will never act dishonestly. This second claim can, in fact, be justified when Spinoza's moral psychology and account of motivation are properly understood. Moreover, making sense of the free man's exception-less honesty in this way also helps to clarify how (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Spinoza’s Re-Evaluation of Humility.Josefine Klingspor - forthcoming - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie.
    Spinoza’s philosophy develops in striking ways over the course of his philosophical career. In his first work on metaphysics, the Short Treatise, Spinoza insists that humility is one of the highest virtues and that human beings have no power of their own. But in his final work on metaphysics, the Ethics, Spinoza bluntly declares that humility is not a virtue and argues that our essence simply consists in power. This essay demonstrates the interconnectedness and significance of these apparently distinct shifts. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Spinoza’s genealogical critique of his contemporaries’ axiology.Benedict Rumbold - 2017 - Intellectual History Review 27 (4):543-560.
    Among Spinoza’s principal projects in the Ethics is his effort to “remove” certain metaethical prejudices from the minds of his readers, to “expose” them, as he has similar misconceptions about other matters, by submitting them to the “scrutiny of reason”. In this article, I consider the argumentative strategy Spinoza uses here – and its intellectual history – in depth. I argue that Spinoza’s method is best characterised as a genealogical analysis. As I recount, by Spinoza’s time of writing, these kinds (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Spinoza’s Analysis of his Imagined Readers’ Axiology.Benedict Rumbold - 2021 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 103 (2):281-312.
    Before presenting his own account of value in the Ethics, Spinoza spends much of EIAppendix and EIVPreface attempting to refute a series of axiological ‘prejudices’ that he takes to have taken root in the minds of his readership. In doing so, Spinoza adopts what might be termed a ‘genealogical’ argumentative strategy. That is, he tries to establish the falsity of imagined readership’s prejudices about good and bad, perfection and imperfection, by first showing that the ideas from which they have arisen (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation