Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

2 results

  • 6 - Spinoza’s Metaphysical Psychology

  • Edited by Don Garrett, New York University
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza
    Published online:
    14 October 2021
    Print publication:
    28 October 2021, pp 234-281

  • Summary

    This essay explores the metaphysical foundations of Spinoza's psychology. A particular focus is Spinoza's conatus principle according to which each thing strives not only to persevere in existence but also to increase its power of acting. This striving is, for Spinoza, the actual essence of each thing, and it forms the basis of the three fundamental affects desire, joy, and sadness--which are central to Spinoza's accounts of weakness of the will, self-deception, the imitation of the affects, egoism, altruism, and teleology. Throughout, the essay emphasizes the ways in which Spinoza's psychology manifests his naturalism, his view that everything –including human beings and their various affects or emotions – is governed by the same laws that are found throughout nature.

  • 7 - The metaphysics of the Theological-Political Treatise

  • Edited by Yitzhak Y. Melamed, The Johns Hopkins University, Michael A. Rosenthal, University of Washington
  • Book:
    Spinoza's 'Theological-Political Treatise'
    Published online:
    10 January 2011
    Print publication:
    18 November 2010, pp 128-142

  • Summary

    This chapter outlines the metaphysical views of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP). It discusses two methodological principles (principle of sufficient reason and the priority of the infinite) that play a central role in motivating Spinoza's metaphysics. The chapter then delves into the metaphysical issues of Spinoza's alleged pantheism, the identity of God's essence and existence, substance and attributes, and finally, the conatus. Spinoza's main reason for demanding that the proper order of philosophizing is to begin with God is primarily the need to avoid an anthropomorphic conception of God. The critique of anthropomorphic and anthropocentric thinking is clearly one of the major underlying themes of the TTP. The essence of God is the cause of all things. An effect is a property of the cause. Hence, all things are just God's properties that follow from his essence. As a result, Spinoza can say that whatever we know is nothing but God.