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3 - Emendative therapy and the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Aaron V. Garrett
Affiliation:
Boston University
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Summary

In the last two chapters I have discussed a number of issues preliminary to considering Spinoza's method. In chapter 1, I discussed the analogy of the worm in the blood and the problem of how we – natural beings – come to understand nature. In chapter 2, I considered a number of key concepts that all have bearing on the solution that Spinoza proposed to the worm's problem, specifically on Spinoza's definition of God. In this chapter and the three that follow it I will present what Spinoza and some philosophers who Spinoza drew on have to say about method. By “method” I understand what the Scholastics called a “via” and Spinoza calls a mos, a way or means to discover those truths “that can lead us, by the hand as it were, to the knowledge of the human Mind and its highest blessedness” (II “Preface”). For Spinoza this via is intertwined with what I call an “emendative therapy.” Why and that they are interconnected is the concern of this chapter.

The first two sections concern the idea of “emendation” in Spinoza's Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione. In these sections I will try to show that in the TIE Spinoza draws on and alters Francis Bacon's theory of mental tools, Gersonides' theory of emendation, and Descartes' account of innate ideas, and uses them for his own ends. The final section will emphasize that emendation is the crucial first step to understanding Spinoza's account of definition and the mos geometricus.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

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