Spinoza on Knowledge and the Human Mind: Papers Presented at the Second Jerusalem Conference (ETHICA II)

✍ Scribed by Yirmiyahu Yovel (editor)

• Publisher: Brill Academic Pub
• Year: 1993
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 257
• Edition: Illustrated
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Truth, adequacy and error, the Mind-Body relation and the meaning of "having" an idea are issues still at the center of philosophical debate. Spinoza belongs to those past masters whose work always inspires renewed insights on these as on other philosophical issues. This volume revolves around Part II of Spinoza's opus magnum, the Ethics where he offers his theory of knowledge and the human mind. Stuart Hampshire writes about "Truth and Correspondence"; Alexandre Matheron discusses "Ideas of Ideas and Certainty"; Alan Donagan writes on "Language, Ideas and Reasoning"; Jonathan Bennett tackles the difficult one substance -- two attributes issue, and Yirmiyahu Yovel analyzes 'common notions' and error. Papers are also presented by Jean-Luc Marion, Pierre-François Moreau, Guttorm Fløistad, Wallace I. Matson, Wim Klever, Elhanan Yakira, Marcelo Dascal, Wolfgang Bartuschat, Amihud Gilead and Filippo Mignini.
This book is based on the second Jerusalem Conference (1989). Each conference in this series, and the ensuing volume, focuses on a specific 'family' of issues: the first five follow Spinoza's own division in his Ethics, and the other two deal with Spinoza's social and political theory and his life and sources. An outcome of a long-standing interest in Spinozistic thought by a group of first-rate scholars, this volume is sure to join the first one as indispensable reading for Spinoza students and scholars.

✦ Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Abbreviations and Bibliographical Information
Preface
Truth and Correspondence in Spinoza
Eight Questions about Spinoza
The Metaphysics of Substance and the Metaphysics of Forms
Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge and the Part-Whole Structure of Nature
Language, Ideas and Reasoning in Spinoza, Ethics II
Spinoza on Beliefs
Ideas of Ideas and Certainty in the Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione and in the Ethics
The Second Kind of Knowledge and the Removal of Error
The Truth of Error: A Spinozistic Paradox
Aporias and the Origins of Spinoza’s Theory of Adequate Ideas
Ideas of Nonexistent Modes: Ethics II Proposition 8, its Corollary and Scholium
Unfolding the One: “Abstract Relations” in Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge
The Infinite Intellect and Human Knowledge
The Indispensability of the First Kind of Knowledge
The Potency of Reason and the Power of Fortune
Notes on Contributors
Index