5 results
1 - Spinoza’s Life
- Edited by Don Garrett, New York University
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza
- Published online:
- 14 October 2021
- Print publication:
- 28 October 2021, pp 12-60
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Summary
The way Spinoza lived and died has often played a part in the interpretation of his thought. Because his life is poorly documented, there is no lack of fictive anecdotes about his person and reputed character. This chapter offers an up-to-date scholarly account, based on a critical examination of the sources. After a discussion of method, issues, and background, it deals chronologically with the places where Spinoza lived. He was born (1632) and grew up in Amsterdam. In the years between his expulsion from the Jewish community (1656) and the earliest known correspondence (1661), Spinoza’s whereabouts are unknown. Apparently, he acquired renown as a philosopher in that period. From there we can trace the development of Spinoza’s oeuvre, as he moves from Amsterdam to Rijnsburg, where he wrote his first published work, Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy, thence to Voorburg, where he spent most of his time composing the Theological-Political Treatise, and eventually to The Hague. He had already started on his Ethics in Rijnsburg but only finished it in The Hague. In the year before Spinoza died, he began writing the unfinished Political Treatise. The chapter takes into account recent work on his health and demise (1677)
6 - Human dignity in Renaissance humanism
- from Part I - Origins of the concept in European history
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- By Piet Steenbakkers, Erasmus University Rotterdam
- Edited by Marcus Düwell, Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands, Jens Braarvig, Universitetet i Oslo, Roger Brownsword, King's College London, Dietmar Mieth, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Handbook of Human Dignity
- Published online:
- 05 March 2015
- Print publication:
- 10 April 2014, pp 85-94
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Summary
Renaissance humanism
As a topic worthy of sustained and systematic scrutiny, human dignity first appeared on the philosophical agenda in the Renaissance. An indication of this is the appearance, from the middle of the fifteenth century onwards, of several tracts about the dignity and excellence of man. Yet, in spite of this apparently straightforward state of affairs, the Renaissance treatment of human dignity has also given rise to confusion. The reason for this is that we tend to read our own conceptions of human dignity into Renaissance discussions of it. Moreover, the new interest in human dignity in the fifteenth century is related to the revival of classical culture known as ‘Renaissance humanism’. The tendency to conflate this movement with later systems that have been labelled ‘humanism’, too, has been pervasive since the middle of the nineteenth century. In order to clear the ground, I must first disentangle the different meanings of the elastic notion of humanism.
The word ‘Humanismus’ was coined in 1808 by the German theologian and pedagogue, Friedrich Niethammer, to denote the educational current that laid much store by the study of the classical languages and literature (Niethammer 1808). In the course of the nineteenth century, however, the word came to be applied to a variety of currents, positions and worldviews. Particularly influential was Georg Voigt's use of the term to label the Renaissance programme of restoring ancient learning (Voigt 1859). Though the Renaissance scholars and thinkers who brought this movement about did not call themselves ‘humanists’, the label caught on. Since that time, ‘Renaissance humanism’ refers to the educational and cultural project to re-establish the liberal arts or studia humanitatis of antiquity, the pursuit of which was considered to be the privilege of free persons (as distinct from slaves). But, apart from this well-defined acceptation, ‘humanism’ acquired a wide range of other (sometimes conflicting) meanings. Here is a suitably loose description that attempts to cover some of their common features: ‘Humanism is also [i.e. in addition to being the designation for the cultural movement of the Renaissance] any philosophy which recognizes the value or dignity of man and makes him the measure of all things or somehow takes human nature, its limits, or its interests as its theme.’ Since such features have also been perceived in the culture of the Renaissance, the different meanings have blurred.
2 - The text of Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
- Edited by Yitzhak Y. Melamed, The Johns Hopkins University, Michael A. Rosenthal, University of Washington
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- Book:
- Spinoza's 'Theological-Political Treatise'
- Published online:
- 10 January 2011
- Print publication:
- 18 November 2010, pp 29-40
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The issues in the textual history of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP) that deserve attention can be grouped under the following headings: the genesis of the work; the printing of the Latin text; the early translations; the "Annotations to the TTP"; and the later modern editions of the text. The TTP first came out, in quarto, late in 1669 or early in 1670. In the 1670s, the work was translated into Dutch, French, and English. Spinoza wrote all of his works in Latin, but his Dutch friends were active in getting them translated. The five annotations entered by Spinoza in his own hand constitute the authentic core of the so-called Adnotationes ad Tractatum theologico-politicum. A new critical edition by Fokke Akkerman, accompanied for the first time by a full critical apparatus, a judicious account of the editorial choices and an examination of all the evidence now available, was published in 1999.
1 - The Textual History of Spinoza’s Ethics
- Edited by Olli Koistinen, University of Turku, Finland
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza's <I>Ethics</I>
- Published online:
- 28 March 2010
- Print publication:
- 31 August 2009, pp 26-41
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Spinoza's Ethics has come down to us in a single version: the Latin text as it appears in the Opera Posthuma, published in Amsterdam in 1677, within a year after the philosopher's death. Spinoza himself had prepared the text for the press. He left a final version in his desk, and had given his landlord, Hendrik van der Spyk, and his friends (among them his publisher, the Amsterdam bookseller Jan Rieuwertsz) instructions to provide for its publication. Summarized thus, the textual history of the Ethics would seem to be relatively simple and unproblematic. There are, however, some complications. To begin with, the process of writing the Ethics was not straightforward. Spinoza originally planned to present his philosophy in a plain, discursive (rather than geometrical) form. The original Latin text of this early work is lost, but a contemporary Dutch translation of this unfinished Korte Verhandeling van God, de Mensch en Deszelvs Welstand (Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well-Being) survives. He then decided to recast the material rigorously 'in geometrical order'. The conversion of the older text to the Ethics proceeded well until 1665. Then Spinoza slowed down the work on the Ethics, or perhaps suspended it altogether, in order to write his other masterpiece, the Theological-Political Treatise. After the publication of that work in 1670, Spinoza took up the Ethics again, though exactly when he did so is unclear.
2 - The Geometrical Order in the Ethics
- Edited by Olli Koistinen, University of Turku, Finland
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza's <I>Ethics</I>
- Published online:
- 28 March 2010
- Print publication:
- 31 August 2009, pp 42-55
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Anyone who opens a copy of Spinoza's Ethics will immediately be struck by its unusual layout, modelled on the classic geometry textbook: the Elementa geometrica of Euclid (ca. 300 B.C.E.). Starting from a few definitions and axioms, propositions are derived by means of deduction and this continues until the entire philosophical system, from its metaphysical foundations up to an elaborate theory of human bondage and liberation, has been unfolded. Rather than offering a discursive elaboration of the argument, Spinoza breaks it down to a sequence of definitions, axioms, propositions, and proofs. To this basic framework he adds a variety of elucidations in the shape of comments (scholia), prefaces, and appendices. Though all of these elements serve as links in the chain (and may therefore be invoked in the subsequent reasoning), the elucidations are written in a looser style. Here Spinoza occasionally steps aside in order to comment on his own argument. By furnishing these scholia himself, he departs from his model: explanatory comments were added to Euclid's textbook only in later ages. It is mainly as an oddity that the Euclidean layout of the Ethics has won historical fame. In view of the high esteem in which mathematics has generally been held, this is remarkable. Apparently philosophy, by the mere act of donning the classical costume of Euclidean geometrical discourse, does not acquire the incontrovertible and scientific aura of its mathematical model.