CiNii Books - From bondage to freedom : Spinoza on human excellence

Spinoza rejects fundamental tenets of received morality, including the notions of Providence and free will. Yet he retrains 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.

Table of Contents

ABBREVIATIONS
INTRODUCTION
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX OF PASSAGES CITED
GENERAL INDEX

Volume: : pbk ISBN 9780199937691

Description

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.

Table of Contents

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

by "Nielsen BookData"

From bondage to freedom : Spinoza on human excellence

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

Available at 5 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Description and Table of Contents

Details

Export