Philosophy 290-5

A study of Spinoza’s Ethics. Even attention will be paid to all five parts of the work, and special attention will be to the relationship between the metaphysical and ethical dimensions of the work. We will carefully make our way through the entire treatise, studying Spinoza’s account of God and the ways in which Spinoza’s arguments take us in the direction of naturalism (Part 1), his treatments of the human mind (Part 2) and our affective nature (Part 3), Spinoza’s arguments concerning the ways in which the affects either advance or hinder our wellbeing (Part 4), and what he says about the conditions for peace of mind and human blessedness (Part 5). Topics to be taken up along the way include Spinoza’s denial of free will and what follows from it, his account of the relation between mind and body, his theory of desire as striving (conatus), his alleged hedonism or psychological egoism and its fit with his views about benevolence and social harmony, and Spinoza’s apparent identification of theoretical and practical reason.