From Bondage to Freedom

Spinoza on Human Excellence
Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-0-19-993769-1
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 266 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 409 g

Spinoza rejects fundamental tenets of received morality, including the notions of Providence and free will. Yet he retains rich theories of good and evil, virtue, perfection, and freedom. Building interconnected readings of Spinoza's accounts of imagination, error, and desire, Michael LeBuffe defends a comprehensive interpretation of Spinoza's enlightened vision of human excellence. Spinoza holds that what is fundamental to human morality is the fact that we find things to be good or evil, not what we take those designations to mean. When we come to understand the conditions under which we act-that is, when we come to understand the sorts of beings that we are and the ways in which we interact with things in the world-then we can recast traditional moral notions in ways that help us to attain more of what we find to be valuable.

For Spinoza, we find value in greater activity. Two hazards impede the search for value. First, we need to know and acquire the means to be good. In this respect, Spinoza's theory is a great deal like Hobbes's: we strive to be active, and in order to do so we need food, security, health, and other necessary components of a decent life. There is another hazard, however, that is more subtle. On Spinoza's theory of the passions, we can misjudge our own natures and fail to understand the sorts of beings that we really are. So we can misjudge what is good and might even seek ends that are evil. Spinoza's account of human nature is thus much deeper and darker than Hobbes's: we are not well known to ourselves, and the self-knowledge that is the foundation of virtue and freedom is elusive and fragile.

Zielgruppe

Historians of Early Modern philosophy, historians of ethics, moral philosophers, graduate students and advanced undergraduates in these fields, as well as graduates and advanced undergraduates in Jewish studies and in the history of ideas.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lebuffe, Michael

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Geschichte der Westlichen Philosophie Westliche Philosophie: Neuzeit
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Ethik, Moralphilosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter One: God, Individuals, and Human Morality in the Ethics
Chapter Two: Spinoza's Explicit Prescriptions and the Imagination
Chapter Three: Representation
Chapter Four: Imagination and Error
Chapter Five: The Striving to Persevere in Being
Chapter Six: The Human Mind as an Adequate and as an Inadequate Cause
Chapter Seven: Consciousness and Desire
Chapter Eight: Descriptions of the Good
Chapter Nine: Formal Theory of Value
Chapter Ten: Spinoza's Normative Ethics
Chapter Eleven: Spinoza's Summum Bonum
Chapter Twelve: Eternity and the Mind
Notes
Bibliography
Index of Passages Cited
General Index

Über Autor(innen)

Lebuffe, Michael
Michael LeBuffe is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Texas A&M University.