Questioning mechanism: Fénelon’s oblique Cartesianism

Cartesianism appeared inexorably to produce disparate theoretical tendencies inside itself, and Spinoza’s philosophy was one of the most outrageous and strangest result of those tendencies. This explains why so many Cartesians felt the urge to deal with the thought of the Dutch philosopher, from time to time labelled as ‘monism’, ‘pantheism’, or ‘atheism’. The case of Fénelon, the Quietist theologian, tutor of the Princes of France and brilliant Cartesian philosopher, highlights the difficulties of such an operation. The Archbishop of Cambrai devotes not only various letters to the criticism of Spinoza, but even a whole section of the Démonstration de l’existence de Dieu – his most ambitious work, from a theoretical point of view. For apparently no reason, the Réfutation du spinozisme was inserted in the middle of the second part of the Démonstration, the more specifically philosophical (and Cartesian) section. This paper aims to show how Fénelon actually wanted to criticize Descartes’ radical tendencies by attacking them where they were to be found inside Spinoza, without directly compromising Cartesianism – or, first and foremost, his own ‘apologetic’ Cartesianism.     

A Spinozan lens onto the confusions of borderline relations

In this paper the author describes how, in his analytic work with difficult personality disorders, he uses a neo-Spinozan position or attitude of alpha-thinking and functioning to understand, clarify, and so to manage confused and confusing psychosomatic 'body-mind' and emotional relations, both internally and inter-personally. Two case examples are given, followed by reflections on technique and on the limits of mourning, transformation and irony. The author suggests that a private, ideational double-aspect, mind-body position may be helpful in working with these analysands. This analytic mode may create a radically different understanding by incorporating a relational system of containment, self-containment, observation and memory. In addition, the author gives his own version of the aetiology and dynamics of borderline states and relations, and weaves the two cases he reports on into reflections on his countertransferential responses, reactions, inter-actions and 'reverie' through the lens of a neo-Spinozan conceptual system.     

Spinoza and the Feeling of Freedom

We seem to have a direct experience of our freedom when we act. Many philosophers take this feeling of freedom as evidence that we possess libertarian free will. Spinoza denies that we have free will of any sort, although he admits that we nonetheless feel free. Commentators often attribute to him what I call the ‘Negative Account’ of the feeling: it results from the fact that we are conscious of our actions but ignorant of their causes. I argue that the Negative Account is flawed. The feeling of freedom also depends on a vacillation of the mind. When the mind forms too many incompatible associations, it vacillates between them. When we act, the mind vacillates back and forth between the kinds of actions that we associate with our present mental state. We then mistake this subjective vacillation for an objective feature of ourselves—namely, the power to do otherwise.     

Spinoza on Lying and Suicide

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 Spinoza should, and indeed does, recognize the possibility of rational suicide.     

Affect,Desire, and Judgement in Spinoza's Account of Motivation

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 (3d3; 3 General Definition of the Affects), 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 the priority of desires and evaluative judgements. While 3p9s and 3p39s suggest that evaluative judgements are (necessarily) posterior to desires, Andrew Youpa has recently argued that passages in Ethics 4 indicate that rational evaluative judgements can give rise to, rather than arise out of, desires. I aim to offer solutions to these problems that reveal the elegance and coherence of Spinoza's account of motivation. Ultimately, I argue that whereas emotions and desires stand in a non-reductive, symmetrical relationship to one another, evaluative judgements must be understood as asymmetrically dependent on, and reducible to, emotions or desires. This interpretation sheds light on our understanding of Spinoza's cognitivist account of emotion. For Spinoza, while emotions are representational, they are not underpinned by evaluative judgements. Rather than inflating emotions to include evaluative judgements, he deflates evaluative judgements, treating them as emotions, or valenced representations, and nothing more.     

Wisdom as a Meditation on Life: Spinoza on Bacon and Civil History

In letter 37 to Johannes Bouwmeester, Spinoza identifies a historiola mentis à la Bacon as an important tool for distinguishing more easily between adequate and inadequate ideas. This paper contends that Spinoza's advice is to take into account Baconian-style ‘Civil History’ as providing instructive material for contemplating the variety, complexity, and persistency of human passionate behaviour. Specifically, it argues that Baconian civil history forms an integral part of Spinoza's reflections on provisional morality. Although for Spinoza, philosophical beatitude ultimately demands understanding affects through their first causes – the intuitive perception of things sub specie aeternitatis – in the realm of everyday Spinoza allows for a different, more pragmatic approach to morality. This paper argues at this stage that a philosophical understanding of the mind and its affections is not needed. Spinoza, following Bacon, holds that conduct of practical affairs is particularly improved when those so engaged acquire historical knowledge of the human condition and apply it. Specifically, both authors place special emphasis on a history of men's characters, actions, and vices as providing the material basis for concrete, directly applicable moral and civil precepts.     

The Russian Spinozists

The article deals with the history of Russian Spinozism in the20th century, focusing attention on three interpretations of Spinoza's philosophy – by Varvara Polovtsova, Lev Vygotsky,and Evald Ilyenkov. Polovtsova profoundly explored Spinoza'slogical method and contributed an excellent translation of histreatise De intellectus emendatione. Later Vygotsky andIlyenkov applied Spinoza's method to create activity theory,an explanation of the laws and genesis of the human mind.     

Monism and individuation in Anne Conway as a critique of Spinoza

ABSTRACT

In chapter IX of the Principles, Anne Conway claims that her metaphysics is diametrically opposed to those of Descartes and Spinoza. Scholars have analyzed her rejection of Cartesianism, but not her critique of Spinoza. This paper proposes that two central points of Conway’s metaphysics can be understood as direct responses to Spinoza: (1) the relation between God, Christ, and the creatures in the tripartite division of being, and (2) the individuation of beings in the lowest species. I will argue that Conway, in criticizing Spinoza’s identification between God and nature, defends a paradoxical monism, and that her concept of individuation is a reductio ad absurdum of Spinoza’s criterion of identity in the individuation of finite modes.     

Spinoza’s Christology A Brief Summary

Abstract

This article summarizes a number of Spinoza texts relating to his Christology and soteriology based on his Christology. The texts show that Spinoza’s Christology underpins his formulation of human nature or the constitution of the essence of the human mind. Considering Spinoza’s texts concerning God or Nature, “Christ according to the spirit”, the spirit or mind of Christ, and human salvation or blessedness; this article illustrates that given the texts, the study of Spinoza’s Christian religion is skewed and ought to be more balanced. The author’s reading of Spinoza and its application to his work presented in this article provides a coherent and tenable understanding of Spinoza’s efforts “to commend and establish the authentic purpose of the Christian Religion”.     

Spinoza and the problem of other substances

Most of Spinoza’s arguments for God’s existence do not rely on any special feature of God, but instead on merely general features of substance. This raises the following worry: those arguments prove the existence of non-divine substances just as much as they prove God’s existence, and yet there is not enough room in Spinoza’s system for all these substances. I argue that Spinoza attempts to solve this problem by using a principle of plenitude to rule out the existence of other substances and that the principle cannot be derived from the PSR, as many claim.

Abbreviation: PSR: Principle of Sufficient Reason