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233Theories About Consciousness in Spinoza's EthicsPhilosophical Review 119 (4): 531-563. 2010.Spinoza's remarks about consciousness in the Ethics constitute two theories about conscious experience and knowledge. Several remarks, including 3p9 and 4p8, make the point that self knowledge—an especially valuable good for Spinoza—is not available to introspection. We are, as a matter of course, conscious of ourselves, but we do not, as a matter of course, know ourselves. A second group of remarks, all of which occur in part 5 of the Ethics, emphasizes a different point about consciousness and…Read more
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122Hobbes on Resistance: Defying the Leviathan, by Susanne SreedharMind 121 (484): 1128-1131. 2012.
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146Review of Michael Della Rocca, Spinoza (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (2). 2009.
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1The anatomy of the passionsIn Olli Koistinen (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza's Ethics, Cambridge University Press. pp. 188--222. 2009.
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99Spinoza’s Normative EthicsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (3): 371-391. 2007.Spinoza presents his ethics using a variety of terminologies. Propositions that are, or at least might be taken for, normative include only very few explicit guidelines for action. I will take this claim from Vp10s to be one such guideline:Vp10s: So that we may always have this rule of reason ready when it is needed, we should think and meditate often about common human wrongs and how and in what way they may best be driven away by nobility.
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101Hobbes on the origin of obligationBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 11 (1). 2003.This Article does not have an abstract
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80Why Spinoza tells people to try to preserve their beingArchiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 86 (2): 119-145. 2004.It is puzzling that Spinoza both urges people to seek to preserve themselves and also holds that, as a matter of fact, people do strive to preserve themselves. I argue that the striving for self-preservation that characterizes all individuals grounds, for Spinoza, the claim that human beings seek only whatever they anticipate will lead to pleasure (laetitia). People desire ends other than self-preservation because they anticipate pleasure in those ends, and Spinoza urges people to seek to preser…Read more
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36Review of Steven Nadler, Spinoza's Ethics: An Introduction (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (11). 2006.
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79The Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms: Miracles, Monotheism, and Reason in SpinozaBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 23 (2): 318-332. 2015.Spinoza insists in the Theological Political Treatise that philosophy and theology are two separate kingdoms. I argue here that there is a basis in the psychology of the Ethics for one of the major components of the doctrine of the two kingdoms. Under the kingdom of theology, religion's principal function is to overcome the influence of harmful passion that prevents people from living life according to a fixed plan: people can live according to a fixed plan because they can obey. Through a serie…Read more
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27Spinoza’s Normative EthicsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (3): 371-391. 2007.Spinoza presents his ethics using a variety of terminologies. Propositions that are, or at least might be taken for, normative include only very few explicit guidelines for action. I will take this claim from Vp10s to be one such guideline:Vp10s: So that we may always have this rule of reason ready when it is needed, we should think and meditate often about common human wrongs and how and in what way they may best be driven away by nobility.
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77Hobbes's reply to the foolPhilosophy Compass 2 (1). 2006.The objection Hobbes raises in the voice of the Fool against his own argument is, apparently, that it is sometimes rational to break covenant. Hobbes's answer is puzzling, both because it seems implausible and also because it seems at odds with some of his own views. This article reviews several strategies critics have taken in trying to show that Hobbes's answer is more plausible than it seems and one attempt to show that the Fool's objection concerns the action of breaking covenant only indire…Read more