Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Texts and editions
- Introduction
- 1 A worm in the blood: some central themes in Spinoza's Ethics
- 2 A few further basic concepts
- 3 Emendative therapy and the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione
- 4 Method: analysis and synthesis
- 5 Maimonides and Gersonides
- 6 Definitions in Spinoza's Ethics: where they come from and what they are for
- 7 The third kind of knowledge and “our” eternity
- Bibliography
- Index of passages referred to and cited
- General index
1 - A worm in the blood: some central themes in Spinoza's Ethics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Texts and editions
- Introduction
- 1 A worm in the blood: some central themes in Spinoza's Ethics
- 2 A few further basic concepts
- 3 Emendative therapy and the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione
- 4 Method: analysis and synthesis
- 5 Maimonides and Gersonides
- 6 Definitions in Spinoza's Ethics: where they come from and what they are for
- 7 The third kind of knowledge and “our” eternity
- Bibliography
- Index of passages referred to and cited
- General index
Summary
The Emmet's Inch & Eagle's Mile
Make Lame Philosophy to smile.
William Blake, Auguries of InnocenceIn order to understand why Spinoza embraced the geometrical method in the Ethics it necessary to reflect on the general contours of his philosophy. It is also important to have a sense of what Spinoza's method – geometrical or otherwise – is trying to get at, what Spinoza is seeking to discover with it. The purpose of this chapter and the next is to set the stage for the chapters that follow, while at the same time developing a few basic questions about Spinoza's method. The first section of this chapter provides a brief sketch of Spinoza's Ethics and introduces some of Spinoza's key definitions and concepts. The middle sections will present a problem in Spinoza's Ethics: “What does it mean to be a part of nature?” “Part of nature” is one of Spinoza's most potent concepts but it needs careful interpretation in order not to render it inconsistent with other aspects of Spinoza's philosophy, particularly his criticisms of anthropomorphism and teleology. The final section of the chapter will consider Spinoza's system from the “emmet's inch” or the bottom-up perspective, as opposed to the “eagle's mile” or top-down perspective of Part I of the Ethics and the first section of this chapter.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Meaning in Spinoza's Method , pp. 20 - 49Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003