L'analyse minutieuse de ce texte difficile que Denis Kambouchner a menée ne comble pas seulement une lacune de la tradition critique. En faisant surgir du Traité des paysages thématiques ignorés, elle rend au dualisme cartésien.

The infamous inspiration for the novel which slowly corrupts Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray is translated by Robert Baldick with an introduction by Patrick McGuinness in Penguin Classics. A wildly original fin-de-siècle novel, Against Nature contains only one character. Des Esseintes is a decadent, ailing aristocrat who retreats to an isolated villa where her indulges his taste for luxury and excess. Veering between nervous excitability and debilitating ennui, he gluts his aesthetic appetites with classical literature and art, exotic jewels (with which (...) he fatally encrusts the shell of his tortoise), rich perfumes and a kaleidoscope of sensual experiences. Against Nature, in the words of the author, exploded 'like a meteorite' and has enjoyed a cult following to this day. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. (shrink)

Volumes I and II provided a completely new translation of the philosophical works of Descartes, based on the best available Latin and French texts. Volume III contains 207 of Descartes' letters, over half of which have previously not been translated into English. It incorporates, in its entirety, Anthony Kenny's celebrated translation of selected philosophical letters, first published in 1970. In conjunction with Volumes I and II it is designed to meet the widespread demand for a comprehensive, authoritative and accurate edition (...) of Descartes' philosophical writings in clear and readable modern English. (shrink)

This first extensive study of Spinoza's philosophy of mind concentrates on two problems crucial to the philosopher's thoughts on the matter: the requirements for having a thought about a particular object, and the problem of the mind's relation to the body. Della Rocca contends that Spinoza's positions are systematically connected with each other and with a principle at the heart of his metaphysical system: his denial of causal or explanatory relations between the mental and the physical. In this way, Della (...) Rocca's exploration of these two problems provides a new and illuminating perspective on Spinoza's philosophy as a system. (shrink)

The work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau is presented in two volumes, together forming the most comprehensive anthology of Rousseau's political writings in English. This second volume contains the earlier writings such as the First and Second Discourses, the publication of which signalled the power and challenge of Rousseau's thinking. Rousseau's influence was wide reaching and has continued to grow since his death: major landmarks in world history, such as the American and French Revolutions, were profoundly affected by Rousseau's writing, as were (...) cultural and intellectual movements such as Romanticism and Idealism. This volume, like its successor, contains a comprehensive introduction, chronology and guide to further reading and will enable students to obtain a full understanding of the writings of one of the world's greatest thinkers. (shrink)

In this first book-length examination of the Cartesian theory of visual perception, Celia Wolf-Devine explores the many philosophical implications of Descartes’ theory, concluding that he ultimately failed to provide a completely mechanistic theory of visual perception. Wolf-Devine traces the development of Descartes’ thought about visual perception against the backdrop of the transition from Aristotelianism to the new mechanistic science—the major scientific paradigm shift taking place in the seventeenth century. She considers the philosopher’s work in terms of its background in Aristotelian (...) and later scholastic thought rather than looking at it "backwards" through the later work of the British empiricists and Kant. Wolf-Devine begins with Descartes’ ideas about perception in the _Rules _and continues through the later scientific writings in which he develops his own mechanistic theory of light, color, and visual spatial perception. Throughout her discussion, she demonstrates both Descartes’ continuity with and break from the Aristotelian tradition. Wolf-Devine critically examines Cartesian theory by focusing on the problems that arise from his use of three different models to explain the behavior of light as well as on the ways in which modern science has not confirmed some of Descartes’ central hypotheses about vision. She shows that the changes Descartes made in the Aristotelian framework created a new set of problems in the philosophy of perception. While such successors to Descartes as Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume accepted the core of his theory of vision, they struggled to clarify the ontological status of colors, to separate what is strictly speaking "given" to the sense of sight from what is the result of judgments by the mind, and to confront a "veil of perception" skepticism that would have been unthinkable within the Aristotelian framework. Wolf-Devine concludes that Descartes was not ultimately successful in providing a completely mechanistic theory of visual perception, and because of this, she suggests both that changes in the conceptual framework of Descartes are in order and that a partial return to some features of the Aristotelian tradition may be necessary. (shrink)

Jacqueline Taylor presents an original reconstruction of Hume's social theory, which examines the passions and imagination in relation to institutions such as government and the economy. She goes on to examine Hume's system of ethics, and argues that the principle of humanity is the central concept of Hume's Enlightenment philosophy.

In his seminal _Philosophy of David Hume_, Norman Kemp Smith called for a study of Hume "in all his manifold activities: as philosopher, as political theorist, as economist, as historian, and as man of letters," indicating that "Hume's philosophy, as the attitude of mind that found for itself these various forms of expression, will then have been presented, adequately and in due perspective, for the first time." Claudia Schmidt seeks to address this long-standing need in Hume scholarship. Against the charges (...) that Hume holds no consistent philosophical position, offers no constructive account of rationality, and sees no positive relation between philosophy and other areas of inquiry, Schmidt argues for the overall coherence of Hume's thought as a study of "reason in history." She develops this interpretation by tracing Hume's constructive account of human cognition and its historical dimension as a unifying theme across the full range of his writings. Hume, she shows, provides a positive account of the ways in which our concepts, beliefs, emotions, and standards of judgment in different areas of inquiry are shaped by experience, both in the personal history of the individual and in the life of a community. This book is valuable at many levels: for students, as an introduction to Hume's writings and issues in their interpretation; for Hume specialists, as a unified and intriguing interpretation of his thought; for philosophers generally, as a synthesis of recent developments in Hume scholarship; and for scholars in other disciplines, as a guide to Hume's contributions to their own fields. (shrink)

When it was first published in France in 1961 as Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la Folie à l'âge Classique , few had heard of a thirty-four year old philosopher by the name of Michel Foucault. By the time an abridged English edition was published in 1967 as Madness and Civilization , Michel Foucault had shaken the intellectual world. This translation is the first English edition of the complete French texts of the first and second edition, including all prefaces and (...) appendices, some of them unavailable in the existing French edition. History of Madness begins in the Middle Ages with vivid descriptions of the exclusion and confinement of lepers. Why, Foucault asks, when the leper houses were emptied at the end of the Middle Ages, were they turned into places of confinement for the mad? Why, within the space of several months in 1656, was one out of every hundred people in Paris confined? Shifting brilliantly from Descartes and early Enlightenment thought to the founding of the Hôpital Général in Paris and the work of early psychiatrists Philippe Pinel and Samuel Tuke, Foucault focuses throughout, not only on scientific and medical analyses of madness, but also on the philosophical and cultural values attached to the mad. He also urges us to recognize the creative and liberating forces that madness represents, brilliantly drawing on examples from Goya, Nietzsche, Van Gogh and Artaud. The History of Madness is an inspiring and classic work that challenges us to understand madness, reason and power and the forces that shape them. (shrink)

First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Eugene Marshall presents an original, systematic account of Spinoza's philosophy of mind, in which the mind is presented as an affective mechanism that, when rational, behaves as a spiritual automaton. He explores key themes in Spinoza's thought, and illuminates his philosophical and ethical project in a striking new way.

Yitzhak Melamed here offers a new and systematic interpretation of the core of Spinoza's metaphysics. In the first part of the book, he proposes a new reading of the metaphysics of substance in Spinoza: he argues that for Spinoza modes both inhere in and are predicated of God. Using extensive textual evidence, he shows that Spinoza considered modes to be God's propria. He goes on to clarify Spinoza's understanding of infinity, mereological relations, infinite modes, and the flow of finite things (...) from God's essence. In the second part of the book, Melamed relies on this interpretation of the substance-mode relation and the nature of infinite modes and puts forward two interrelated theses about the structure of the attribute of Thought and its overarching role in Spinoza's metaphysics. First, he shows that Spinoza had not one, but two independent doctrines of parallelism. Then, in his final main thesis, Melamed argues that, for Spinoza, ideas have a multifaceted structure that allows one and the same idea to represent the infinitely many modes which are parallel to it in the infinitely many attributes. Thought turns out to be coextensive with the whole of nature. Spinoza cannot embrace an idealist reduction of Extension to Thought because of his commitment to the conceptual separation of the attributes. Yet, within Spinoza's metaphysics, Thought clearly has primacy over the other attributes insofar as it is the only attribute which is as elaborate, as complex, and, in some senses, as powerful as God. (shrink)

Why was the great philosopher Spinoza expelled from his Portuguese-Jewish community in Amsterdam? Nadler's investigation of this simple question gives fascinating new perspectives on Spinoza's thought and the Jewish religious and philosophical tradition from which it arose.

L'auteur, en suivant la voie d'une généalogie du signe, repense la théorie de l'imagination qui, selon Spinoza, s'enracine dans la puissance du corps, se révélant indissociable d'une herméneutique.

Descartes’s concern with the proper method of belief formation is evident in the titles of his works—e.g., The Search after Truth, The Rules for the Direction of the Mind, and The Discourse on Method of rightly conducting one’s reason and seeking the truth in the sciences. It is most apparent, however, in his famous discussions, both in the Meditations and in the Principles, of one particularly noteworthy source of our doxastic errors—namely, the misuse of one’s will. What is not widely (...) recognized, let alone appreciated and understood, is the relationship between his concern with belief formation and his concern with virtue. In fact, few seem to realize that Descartes regards doxastic errors as moral errors and as sins both because such errors are intrinsically vicious and because they entail notably deleterious social consequences. Reforming the Art of Living seeks to rectify this rather common oversight in two ways. First, it aims to elucidate the nature of Descartes’s account of virtuous belief formation. Second, it aims both (i) to illuminate the social significance of Descartes’s philosophical program as it relates to the understanding and practice not of science, but of religion and (ii) to develop a kind of Leibnizian critique of this aspect of his program. More specifically, it aims to show that Descartes’s project is “dangerous,” insofar as it is subversive not only of traditional Christianity but also of other traditional forms of religion, both in theory and in practice. (shrink)

This book deals with three major French thinkers of the seventeenth century, Descartes, Pascal, and Malebranche. It examines their influential critical accounts of the impact of the body and of social relationships on experience, and the need to correct this by reference to metaphysical or religious truth.

This spectacular discovery attracted a lot of media attention. This edition will be published in Brill's Texts and Sources on Intellectual History (BSIH) in August.

"This stunning work is without question a major contribution to Cartesian studies, to the field of early modern philosophy, and to general epistemology- ...

This book offers a new way of approaching the place of the will in Descartes' mature epistemology and ethics. Departing from the widely accepted view, Noa Naaman-Zauderer suggests that Descartes regards the will, rather than the intellect, as the most significant mark of human rationality, both intellectual and practical. Through a close reading of Cartesian texts from the Meditations onward, she brings to light a deontological and non-consequentialist dimension of Descartes' later thinking, which credits the proper use of free will (...) with a constitutive, evaluative role. She shows that the right use of free will, to which Descartes assigns obligatory force, constitutes for him an end in its own right rather than merely a means for attaining any other end, however valuable. Her important study has significant implications for the unity of Descartes' thinking, and for the issue of responsibility, inviting scholars to reassess Descartes' philosophical legacy. (shrink)

Oxford Philosophical Texts Series Editor: John Cottingham The Oxford Philosophical Texts series consists of authoritative teaching editions of canonical texts in the history of philosophy from the ancient world down to modern times. Each volume provides a clear, well laid out text together with a comprehensive introduction by a leading specialist, giving the student detailed critical guidance on the intellectual context of the work and the structure and philosophical importance of the main arguments. Endnotes are supplied which provide further commentary (...) on the arguments and explain unfamiliar references and terminology, and a full bibliography and index are also included. The series aims to build up a definitive corpus of key texts in the Western philosophical tradition, which will form a reliable and enduring resource for students and teachers alike. David Hume's aim in writing An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding was to introduce his philosophy to a European culture in which many educated people read original works of philosophy. He gives an elegant and accessible presentation of strikingly original and challenging views about the limited powers of human understanding, the attractions of scepticism, the compatibility of free will and determinism, and weaknesses in the foundations of religion. Hume's philosophy was highly controversial in the eighteenth century and remains so today. The text printed in this edition is that of the Clarendon critical edition of Hume's works. A substantial introduction by the editor explains the intellectual background to the work and surveys its main themes. The volume also includes detailed explanatory notes on the text, a glossary of terms, a full list of references, and a section of supplementary readings. (shrink)

This book provides a lucid, comprehensive introduction to this great philosophical school.

This influential study contrasts the practices of ancient Rome with those of the author's 16th-century contemporaries. Machiavelli's The Prince offers advice on ruling a kingdom; this treatise explains the structure and benefits of a republic. Topics include establishing a republic's internal structure, conducting warfare, and exhibiting leadership qualities.

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)

We call beliefs reasonable or unreasonable, justified or unjustified. What does this imply about belief? Does this imply that we are responsible for our beliefs and that we should be blamed for our unreasonable convictions? Or does it imply that we are in control of our beliefs and that what we believe is up to us? Reason Without Freedom argues that the major problems of epistemology have their roots in concerns about our control over and responsibility for belief. David Owens (...) focuses on the arguments of Descartes, Locke and Hume - the founders of epistemology - and presents a critical discussion of the current trends in contemporary epistemology. He proposes that the problems we confront today - scepticism, the analysis of knowlege, and debates on epistemic justification - can be tackled only once we have understood the moral psychology of belief. This can be resolved when we realise that our responsibility for beliefs is profoundly different from our rationality and agency, and that memory and testimony can preserve justified belief without preserving the evidence which might be used to justify it. Reason Without Freedom should be of value to those interested in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of mind and action, ethics, and the history of 17th and 18th century. (shrink)

In Perfection and Disharmony in the Thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jonathan Marks offers an interpretation of the philosopher's thought and its place in the contemporary debate between liberals and communitarians. Against prevailing views, he argues that Rousseau's thought revolves around the natural perfection of a naturally disharmonious being. At the foundation of Rousseau's thought he finds a natural teleology that takes account of and seeks to harmonize conflicting ends. The Rousseau who emerges from this interpretation is a radical critic of (...) liberalism who is nonetheless more cautious about protecting individual freedom than his milder communitarian successors. Marks elaborates on the challenge that Rousseau poses to liberals and communitarians alike by setting up a dialogue between him and Charles Taylor, one of the most distinguished ethical and political theorists at work today. (shrink)

This book explores Hume's concern with the destructiveness of religious factions and his efforts to develop, in his moral philosophy, a solution to factional conflict. Sympathy and the related capacity to enter into foreign points of view are crucial to the neutralization of religious zeal and the naturalization of ethics. Jennifer Herdt suggests that Hume's preoccupation with religious faction is the key which reveals the unity of his varied philosophical, aesthetic, political and historical works.

Epistemic deontology is the view that the concept of epistemic justification is deontological: a justified belief is, by definition, an epistemically permissible belief. I defend this view against the argument from doxastic involuntarism, according to which our doxastic attitudes are not under our voluntary control, and thus are not proper objects for deontological evaluation. I argue that, in order to assess this argument, we must distinguish between a compatibilist and a libertarian construal of the concept of voluntary control. If we (...) endorse a compatibilist construal, it turns out that we enjoy voluntary control over our doxastic attitudes after all. If, on the other hand, we endorse a libertarian construal, the result is that, for our doxastic attitudes to be suitable objects of deontological evaluation, they need not be under our voluntary control. (shrink)

Spinoza’s remarks on the exemplar or model of human nature, while few and brief, have far-reaching consequences for his ethics. While commentators have offered a variety of interpretations of the model and its implications, there has been near unanimous agreement on one point, that the identity of the model is the free man, described from E4P66S to E4P73. Since the free man is completely self-determining and, thus, perfectly free and rational, this reading indicates that Spinoza’s ethics sets exceptionally high goals, (...) aiming to make us purely active beings. While this conclusion has been embraced in some quarters—particularly by those who see his ethics as aiming to make us like God—it has also been criticized as intolerant of human weakness and vulnerability. Most work on this subject has been concerned to explain what it means for the free man to serve as the model. This is a difficult task, since Spinoza pointedly claims that it is impossible for human beings to become completely self-determining and, thus, free men. Consequently, it is unclear what implications his claims about the free man have for us, ordinary humans. This paper takes a different approach: I will show that reading the free man as the model of human nature, while intuitively appealing, does not stand up to close scrutiny. The argument for this claim has two prongs: the first asserts that there is not sufficient textual evidence to establish that Spinoza intended the free man to serve as the model; the second asserts that this reading is impossible to reconcile with Spinoza’s other philosophical commitments. In particular, Spinoza holds that we pursue the model of human nature, as well as the general ethical goals of attaining our good and perfection, under the guidance of reason. It would be inconsistent with this claim for Spinoza’s ethics to be founded upon attaining a goal that reason reveals as unattainable and, even, confused. In addition to this negative thesis, I will also defend a positive one: the model of human nature should rather be understood as representing the greatest possible perfection of our nature as it is revealed by reason. The free man meanwhile should be understood as working toward a different goal, determining what is good and bad in the emotions. In making this claim, we offer a very different picture of Spinoza’s ethical goals, for reason shows that our nature is conatus, which is a finite mode and, as such, necessarily determined by and passive with respect to other finite modes. Consequently, a model derived from reason will represent the perfection of this nature as passive to some extent. In this way, I provide a picture of Spinoza’s ethics that takes a more sympathetic view of human weakness and vulnerability. (shrink)

Doxastic voluntarism is the philosophical doctrine according to which people have voluntary control over their beliefs. Philosophers in the debate about doxastic voluntarism distinguish between two kinds of voluntary control. The first is known as direct voluntary control and refers to acts which are such that if a person chooses to perform them, they happen immediately. For instance, a person has direct voluntary control over whether he or she is thinking about his or her favorite song at a given moment. (...) The second is known as indirect voluntary control and refers to acts which are such that although a person lacks direct voluntary control over them, he or she can cause them to happen if he or she chooses to perform some number of other, intermediate actions. For instance, a person untrained in music has indirect voluntary control over whether he or she will play a melody on a violin. Corresponding to this distinction between two kinds of voluntary control, philosophers distinguish between two kinds of doxastic voluntarism. Direct doxastic voluntarism claims that people have direct voluntary control over at least some of their beliefs. Indirect doxastic voluntarism, however, supposes that people have indirect voluntary control over at least some of their beliefs, for example, by doing research and evaluating evidence. This article offers an introductory explanation of the nature of belief, the nature of voluntary control, the reasons for the consensus regarding indirect doxastic voluntarism, the reasons for the disagreements regarding direct doxastic voluntarism, and the practical implications for the debate about doxastic voluntarism in ethics, epistemology, political theory, and the philosophy of religion. (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)

“Why did God create the World?” is one of the traditional questions of theology. In the twentieth century this question was rephrased in a secularized manner as “Why is there something rather than nothing?” While creation - at least in its traditional, temporal, sense - has little place in Spinoza’s system, a variant of the same questions puts Spinoza’s system under significant pressure. According to Spinoza, God, or the substance, has infinitely many modes. This infinity of modes follow from the (...) essence of God. If we ask: “Why must God have modes?,” we seem to be trapped in a real catch. On the one hand, Spinoza’s commitment to thoroughgoing rationalism demands that there must be a reason for the existence of the radical plurality of modes. On the other hand, the asymmetric dependence of modes on the substance seems to imply that the substance does not need the modes, and that it can exist without the modes. But if the substance does not need the modes, then why are there modes at all? Furthermore, Spinoza cannot explain the existence of modes as an arbitrary act of grace on God’s side since Spinoza’s God does not act arbitrarily. Surprisingly, this problem has hardly been addressed in the existing literature on Spinoza’s metaphysics, and it is my primary aim here to draw attention to this problem. In the first part of the paper I will present and explain the problem of justifying the existence of infinite plurality modes in Spinoza’s system. In the second part of the paper I consider the radical solution to the problem according to which modes do not really exist, and show that this solution must be rejected upon consideration. In the third and final part of the paper I will suggest my own solution according to which the essence of God is active and it is this feature of God’s essence which requires the flow of modes from God’s essence. I also suggest that Spinoza considered radical infinity and radical unity to be roughly the same, and that the absolute infinity of what follow from God’s essence is grounded in the absolute infinity of God’s essence itself. (shrink)

Why, when asking oneself whether to believe that p, must one immediately recognize that this question is settled by, and only by, answering the question whether p is true? Truth is not an optional end for first-personal doxastic deliberation, providing an instrumental or extrinsic reason that an agent may take or leave at will. Otherwise there would be an inferential step between discovering the truth with respect to p and determining whether to believe that p, involving a bridge premise that (...) it is good to believe the truth with respect to p. But there is no such gap between the two questions within the first-personal deliberative perspective; the question whether to believe that p seems to collapse into the question whether p is true. (shrink)

The main thesis of Michael Della Rocca’s outstanding Spinoza book (Della Rocca 2008a) is that at the very center of Spinoza’s philosophy stands the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR): the stipulation that everything must be explainable or, in other words, the rejection of any brute facts. Della Rocca rightly ascribes to Spinoza a strong version of the PSR. It is not only that the actual existence and features of all things must be explicable, but even the inexistence – as well (...) as the absence of any feature of any thing – demands an explanation. Della Rocca does not stop here, however. He feeds his PSR monster with some more powerful steroids and suggests that Spinoza advocates what he terms “the twofold use of the PSR.” It is not only that everything must be explained and made intelligible, but it must ultimately be explained in terms of explainability or intelligibility itself. This twofold use of the PSR is the key to the entire book. Della Roca’s strategy throughout the book is to argue that any key feature of Spinoza’s system – be it causality, inherence, essence, consciousness, existence, rejection of teleology, goodness or political right – must be explained, and ultimately it must be explained in terms of intelligibility. “Spinoza single-mindedly digs and digs until we find that the phenomenon in question is nothing but some form of intelligibility itself, of explicability itself” (Della Rocca 2008a: 2). Della Rocca’s book came out together with a cluster of articles in which he develops in detail his new reading of Spinoza. In one of these articles, he warns the reader: “Don’t let me start” (Dell Rocca 2010: 1). The train that is about to embark leads to very bizarre terrain, and thus one should think twice before embarking on the “PSR Express.” In this paper I argue that the train was hijacked. This was a perfect crime: without anyone noticing it, the engine driver diverted the train to a new route, and as with other perfect crimes, it is none but the criminal himself who is capable of, and indeed will, bring about his own demise. As I will later argue, Della Rocca’s “PSR-on-steroids” will eventually cripple reason itself. But let us not run too fast, and start at the very beginning. I happily – or at least, so I think - board the “PSR Express.” I believe Spinoza is strongly committed to the PSR and makes very significant use of this principle, but, unlike Della Rocca, I do not think the PSR is the key to all mysteries Spinozist, nor do I believe Spinoza was committed to the reductionist program of explaining all things through intelligibility (i.e., the second use of the PSR). (shrink)