Download Free Spinoza Issues And Directions Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Spinoza Issues And Directions and write the review.

The proceedings of the first major international conference on the philosophy of Spinoza to be held in the United States are published here. Contained are papers on all aspects of Spinoza's thought by 31 distinguished scholars from the United States, Europe, Israel and Australia including Jonathan Bennett, Alan Donagan, Margaret Wilson, Amélie Rorty, Richard Popkin, Jean-Marie Beyssade, Alexandre Matheron, Étienne Balibar, Pierre Macherey, Emilia Giancotti, Hubertus Hubbeling, and Yirmiyahu Yovel. Topics discussed are Metaphysics, Epistemology and Philosophy of Mind, Psychology, Moral, Political and Social Philosophy, and Spinoza's influence,
This title was first published in 2002. This collection of essays aims to present a wide range of interpretations of central themes in Spinoza's philosophy. Philosophical interpretations of Spinoza divide into three general categories. The first sets Spinoza within what is taken to be his historical context. Special emphasis is laid here on aspects of his teaching that seem to bear the influence of Spinoza's own education (and self-education), either through concepts assimilated into his own thinking, or those he undertook to refute and displace. A second interpretative approach uses analytical tools in an attempt to reconstruct Spinozistic issues and theories critically. Finally, there are philosophers who explore Spinoza's texts in their own terms, attempting to present a coherent picture of one or more aspects of Spinoza's teaching. Given the broad span of issues with which Spinoza deals, the latter is often the most difficult track to follow. The 25 articles in this collection exemplify these three attitudes to Spinoza interpretation, though most avail themselves of more than one. In making the selection the editors preferred studies that treat their subject as a viable, endurable philosophical issue, whether the writer accepts Spinoza's presentation or highlights his difficulties. On each issue the articles critically analyze the texts, rather than simply portraying the Spinozistic ideas they express.
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.
Spinoza's philosophy has an undeserved reputation for being obscure and incomprehensible. But now, in this indispensable collection, Spinoza is portrayed in the manner he deserves--as a brilliant metaphysician who paved the way for an exciting new science. The volume focuses on several important areas, including monism, the concept of conatus, the nature of and the relation between mind and body, and Spinoza's relationship to Descartes and Leibniz. The new physics posed difficult questions about the existence and power of God; however, it was commonplace of seventeenth-century metaphysics to claim that all force was God's. In his philosophy, Spinoza solves this problem, identifying God with nature. But, what happens to individuals after that identification? And what is an individual for Spinoza? How does it act? How are its actions explained? This volume clearly addresses these and other fascinating questions. It explores Spinoza's account of the relationship between mind and body, along with his view on the ontology of values. Spinoza saw the threat of deterministic physics to mind-body interaction. How is it possible that minds act on bodies and vice versa? Furthermore, the volume examines the problem of the nature of values, asking is there room for an independent realm of values in the new philosophy? Finally, the collection investigates problems in the interpretation of Spinoza that stem from Spinoza's debatable place in seventeenth-century philosophy; it is often claimed that Spinoza's ideas evolved from Cartesian doctrines while profoundly influencing Leibniz. With a stellar group of contributors--including Michael Della Rocca, John Carriero, Richard Mason, Steven Barbone, Don Garrett, Olli Koistinen, Richard Manning, Peter Dalton, Charles Jarrett, Charles Huenemann, and Mark Kulstad--this volume serves as an excellent resource and represents the best work of a new generation of Spinoza scholars.
Contemporary philosophers frequently assume that Kant never seriously engaged with Spinoza or Spinozism-certainly not before the break of Der Pantheismusstreit, or within the Critique of Pure Reason. Offering an alternative reading of key pre-critical texts and to some of the Critique's most central chapters, Omri Boehm challenges this common assumption. He argues that Kant not only is committed to Spinozism in early essays such as "The One Possible Basis" and "New Elucidation," but also takes up Spinozist metaphysics as Transcendental Realism's most consistent form in the Critique of Pure Reason. The success -- or failure -- of Kant's critical projects must be evaluated in this light. Boehm here examines The Antinomies alongside Spinoza's Substance Monism and his theory of freedom. Similarly, he analyzes the refutation of the Ontological Argument in parallel with Spinoza's Causa-sui. More generally, Boehm places the Critique of Pure Reason's separation of Thought from Being and Is from Ought in dialogue with the Ethics' collapse of Being, Is and Ought into Thought.
Until recently, Spinoza's standing in Anglophone studies of philosophy has been relatively low and has only seemed to confirm Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's assessment of him as a dead dog. However, an exuberant outburst of excellent scholarship on Spinoza has of late come to dominate work on early modern philosophy. This resurgence is due in no small part to the recent revival of metaphysics in contemporary philosophy and to the increased appreciation of Spinoza's role as an unorthodox, pivotal figure - indeed, perhaps the pivotal figure - in the development of Enlightenment thinking. Spinoza's penetrating articulation of his extreme rationalism makes him a demanding philosopher who offers deep and prescient challenges to all subsequent, inevitably less radical approaches to philosophy. While the twenty-six essays in this volume - by many of the world's leading Spinoza specialists - grapple directly with Spinoza's most important arguments, these essays also seek to identify and explain Spinoza's debts to previous philosophy, his influence on later philosophers, and his significance for contemporary philosophy and for us.
This work examines the unique way in which Benedict de Spinoza (1632–77) combines two significant philosophical principles: that real existence requires causal power and that geometrical objects display exceptionally clearly how things have properties in virtue of their essences. Valtteri Viljanen argues that underlying Spinoza's psychology and ethics is a compelling metaphysical theory according to which each and every genuine thing is an entity of power endowed with an internal structure akin to that of geometrical objects. This allows Spinoza to offer a theory of existence and of action - human and non-human alike - as dynamic striving that takes place with the same kind of necessity and intelligibility that pertain to geometry. Viljanen's fresh and original study will interest a wide range of readers in Spinoza studies and early modern philosophy more generally.
Readers of Spinoza's philosophy have often been daunted, and sometimes been enchanted, by the geometrical method which he employs in his philosophical masterpiece the Ethics. In Meaning in Spinoza's Method Aaron Garrett examines this method and suggests that its purpose, in Spinoza's view, was not just to present claims and propositions but also in some sense to change the readers and allow them to look at themselves and the world in a different way. His discussion draws not only on Spinoza's works but also on those of the philosophers who influenced Spinoza most strongly, including Hobbes, Descartes, Maimonides and Gersonides. This controversial book will be of interest to historians of philosophy and to anyone interested in the relation between form and content in philosophical works.
Truth, adequacy and error, the Mind-Body relation and the meaning of "having" an idea are issues still at the center of philosophical debate. Spinoza belongs to those past masters whose work always inspires renewed insights on these as on other philosophical issues. This volume revolves around Part II of Spinoza's opus magnum, the Ethics where he offers his theory of knowledge and the human mind. Stuart Hampshire writes about "Truth and Correspondence"; Alexandre Matheron discusses "Ideas of Ideas and Certainty"; Alan Donagan writes on "Language, Ideas and Reasoning"; Jonathan Bennett tackles the difficult one substance — two attributes issue, and Yirmiyahu Yovel analyzes 'common notions' and error. Papers are also presented by Jean-Luc Marion, Pierre-François Moreau, Guttorm Fløistad, Wallace I. Matson, Wim Klever, Elhanan Yakira, Marcelo Dascal, Wolfgang Bartuschat, Amihud Gilead and Filippo Mignini. This book is based on the second Jerusalem Conference (1989). Each conference in this series, and the ensuing volume, focuses on a specific 'family' of issues: the first five follow Spinoza's own division in his Ethics, and the other two deal with Spinoza's social and political theory and his life and sources. An outcome of a long-standing interest in Spinozistic thought by a group of first-rate scholars, this volume is sure to join the first one as indispensable reading for Spinoza students and scholars.
This volume congregates articles of leading philosophers about potentials and potentiality in all areas of philosophy and the empirical sciences in which they play a relevant role. It is the first encompassing collection of articles on the metaphysics of potentials and potentiality. Potentials play an important role not only in our everyday understanding of objects, persons and systems but also in the sciences. An example is the potential to become an adult human person. Moreover, the attribution of potentials involves crucial ethical problems. Bioethics makes references to the theoretical concept "potential" without being able to clarify its meaning. However, despite its relevance it has not been made subject of philosophical investigation. Mostly, potentials are regarded as a subspecies of dispositions. Whilst dispositions are a flourishing field of research, potentials as such have not come into focus. Potentials like dispositions are modal properties. But already a first glance at the metaphysics of potentials shows that concerning their ascription potentials are more problematic than dispositions since "potential" means that an entity has the potential to acquire a property in the future. Therefore, potentials involve a time structure of the entities in question that is much more complex than those of dispositions. This handbook brings this important concept into focus in its various aspects for the first time. It covers the history of the concept as well as contemporary systematic problems and will be of special interest for philosophers in the fields of general metaphysics, philosophy of science and ethics, especially bioethics. It will also be of interest to scientists and persons concerned with bioethical problems.