At first sight, the philosophy of Spinoza may seem wholly alien to what is now generally regarded as philosophy in the English-speaking world. For some decades, the dominant trend in that philosophy has been linguistic and anti-metaphysical; the philosopher is held to be concerned with the analysis of language, and not with speculative system-building. Spinoza, on the other hand, is very much a system-builder; as to the analysis of language, he says explicitly that this is of no interest to him. (...) ‘It is not my intention’, he says, ‘to explain the meanings of words; it is my intention to explain the nature of things’. However, the paper which follows will attempt to show that Spinoza’s philosophy is not wholly without relevance today. It will try to do this by placing one of Spinoza’s most important doctrines, his theory of human freedom, within the context of recent discussions. (shrink)

Spinoza ' s understanding and understanding Spinoza -- Spinoza ' s understanding -- Understanding Spinoza -- The metaphysics of substance -- Descartes and substance -- Spinoza contra Descartes on substance -- Modes -- Necessitarianism -- The purpose of it all -- The human mind -- Parallelism and representation -- Essence and representation -- Parallelism and mind - body identity -- The idea of the human body -- The pancreas problem, the pan problem, and panpsychism -- Nothing but representation -- Representation, (...) will, and belief -- Skepticism -- Psychology : striving and self - preservation -- Conatus -- Desire, joy, and sadness -- Love, hate, and all that -- The ethics of the ethics -- The good notion of the good -- The right notion of the right -- Knowledge and morality -- Freedom and morality -- Helping others -- Lies and degrees of freedom -- The state, religion, and scripture -- Rights and power -- Religion and the state -- Scripture -- Prophecy and the truth of the Bible -- From PSR to eternity -- The aftermath of Spinoza -- Leibniz -- Bayle and Hume -- The pantheism controversy -- Hegel -- Nietzsche -- Prospects of spinozistic rationalism. (shrink)

This paper analyzes and evaluates Spinoza way of carrying out his naturalistic program in psychology. I begin by examining Spinoza’s general metaphysical doctrine according to which each thing strives to preserve itself. While this doctrine cannot be true in its unqualified form, it does receive some support from Spinoza’s views on the nature of complex individuals. I then explore the problematic way in which Spinoza applies the doctrine of self -preservation to human psychology. The paper goes on the investigate the (...) naturalistic character of Spinoza’s views on such topics as irrational action, prudence, altruism, mental causation and the nature and classification of affects. (shrink)