Spinoza is one of the most important philosophers—and certainly the most radical—of the early modern period. His thought combines a commitment to Cartesian metaphysical and epistemological principles with elements from ancient Stoicism and medieval Jewish rationalism into a nonetheless highly original system. His extremely naturalistic views on God, the world, the human being and knowledge serve to ground a moral philosophy centered on the control of the passions leading to virtue and happiness. They also lay the foundations for a strongly democratic political thought and a deep critique of the pretensions of Scripture and sectarian religion. Of all the philosophers of the seventeenth-century, perhaps none have more relevance today than Spinoza.
—His ethics are very similar to Aristotle’s in content and in being eudemonistic.
—He holds a reductionist and arguably naturalistic understanding of the human being.
—He denies the freedom of the will and transcendent values.
—He tends to subsume the practical under the theoretical.
Method of Epistemology:
The admission that there are a variety of ways one can have knowledge.
There is a definitively adequate way for knowing this variety of ways.
—Spinoza’s method has two aspects; one that is formal and another that is more concerned with the concrete perspectives that define the different ways one can have knowledge.
The admission that there are a variety of ways one can have knowledge.
There is a definitively adequate way for knowing this variety of ways.
—Spinoza’s method has two aspects; one that is formal and another that is more concerned with the concrete perspectives that define the different ways one can have knowledge.
Knowledge — :
Adequate vs. Inadequate ideas
3 Types of knowledge
-Imagination: disorganized accumulation of experience
- Reason : logical deductions made based on an understanding of the nature of space (e.g. geometry) or of the nature of thought (e.g. logic, psychology)
-intuition: the intuitive grasp of a particular thing on the basics of ration
3 Types of knowledge
-Imagination: disorganized accumulation of experience
- Reason : logical deductions made based on an understanding of the nature of space (e.g. geometry) or of the nature of thought (e.g. logic, psychology)
-intuition: the intuitive grasp of a particular thing on the basics of ration
Ethics:
—The polemic against traditional ethics:
-Against free will
-Against absolute normative terms
-Against teleology —The naturalistic replacement:
-The human being as conatus
-The redefinition of “freedom,” “good,” and “bad”
-A special brand of hedonism
-Resemblance to Aristotelian virtue ethics
-Akrasia and moral knowledge
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