Oliver Toth

This volume gathers various contributions on the role of the human perspective and the human lifeform in Spinoza’s philosophy as well as on the resources that Spinoza provides for such a philosophy. Its aim is to draw attention to those parts of Spinoza’s philosophy where he is explicitly engaged in a reflection on human life or some peculiarity of it, and the texts collected here argue in various ways that notions such as ‘human being’, ‘human life’, and related notions play an important role in his thought in non-trivial ways. These hitherto neglected perspectives on Spinoza’s philosophy result in accounts of a Spinozistic universe that is no longer completely devoid of particulars and of all those features of reality that are usually taken to be fundamental to the human condition and experience, such as subjectivity or perspectivity, temporality, and emotional salience.

This chapter defends the claim that Spinoza had a theory of consciousness against Garber (2021). The claim that Spinoza’s idea of the idea is the form of the idea, not because it represents the formal reality of the lower-order idea (Bennett 1984), but rather because it refers to the way in which a subject’s mind takes a representation of some modification of her body as representing something external, is defended by a comparative close reading of E2p21s in the context of Descartes’s definition of idea. This reading can account for the apparently different uses of the term ‘consciousness’ in Spinoza’s Ethics identified by LeBuffe (2010). Following Newlands (2020), it is argued that consciousness plays a constitutive role in Spinoza’s theory of the self. If Spinoza’s philosophy is a philosophy for humans, then it is a philosophy of consciousness rather than a philosophy of being.

This volume gathers various contributions on the role of the human perspective and the human lifeform in Spinoza’s philosophy as well as on the resources that Spinoza provides for such a philosophy. While significant parts of the current scholarship tend towards ascribing an acosmist view, more recent interpretations have begun to consider human life and specifically human attitudes as being of fundamental concern to Spinoza. The aim of this book to draw attention to those parts of Spinoza’s philosophy where he is explicitly engaged in a reflection on human life or some peculiarity of it, and the texts collected here argue in various ways that notions such as ‘human being’, ‘human life’, and related notions play an important role in his thought and that they do so in non-trivial ways. These hitherto neglected perspectives on Spinoza’s philosophy result in accounts of a Spinozistic universe that is no longer completely devoid of particulars and of all those features of reality that are usually taken to be fundamental to the human condition and experience, such as subjectivity or perspectivity, temporality, and emotional salience. In doing so, this book provides new avenues for the study of Spinoza’s philosophy by highlighting the role of the human perspective for his metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of mind, epistemology, and social as well as political philosophy. Thus, the volume contains highly original contributions from leading scholars that is going to have an impact on the full breath of Spinoza studies.

Spinoza is usually understood to be internalist about the representation of adequate ideas and externalist about the representation of inadequate ideas. Existing readings of Spinoza's social epistemology do not challenge this view; they argue that the social context of the mind is an empowering enabling condition for acquiring knowledge. In this article, I argue that Spinoza is an externalist about the representation of both adequate and inadequate ideas: adequate ideas are constituted by the relation between the mind's real essence and real objects. Since the mind's essence is desire, the mind knows its own real essence if it desires its real effects, that is, what follows from the common order of nature. Having an adequate idea is a social practice in two senses. It presupposes taking into account the striving of every other being and to desire only what is compatible with those beings (in this sense, it is also epistemically just). It also amounts to participating in the most collective action that can be joined by every other being, that is, in bringing about the world that can be shared by every being.

This paper examines freedom and the determination of the will in §4 of Hegel’s Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, in light of Aristotle’s concept of leading arts (architektonikē technē) from Metaphysics A.1–2. Traditionally, intellect determines truth, while will determines action—a distinction central to Aristotle’s differentiation between theoretical and practical philosophy. Hegel, however, challenges this division, arguing that will is an extension of intelligence, integrating insight and goal-setting into a unified self-determination. By engaging with contemporary interpretations—Fulda, Pippin, and Pinkard—this paper explores the tension between theory and practice. While Fulda defends philosophy’s indirect political relevance, Pippin argues it lacks practical justification. Pinkard links philosophy to institutional self-understanding, grounding practical reasoning in human biology. Reassessing Hegel’s implicit use of Aristotle’s leading arts, this paper argues that freedom of the will in §4 should be understood as intersubjective self-determination—not a mere choice among possibilities, but an identification with a politically and normatively determined highest practical ground. This reading reconciles theory and practice while emphasizing the institutional and social dimensions of self-determination.

In this paper, I argue for a novel reading of Spinoza’s position in his exchange with Boyle about Boyle’s experiment with nitre. Boyle claimed to have shown through experiments that nitre ceased to be nitre after heating. Spinoza disagreed and proposed the alternative hypothesis that nitre has changed its state and not its nature. Spinoza’s position was construed in the literature as rational scepticism denying that experiments can yield knowledge of essences because all sensory experience is underdetermined and open to multiple interpretations. I argue for an alternative reading of Spinoza’s position which focuses on Bacon’s notion of crucial instance. According to this reading, Spinoza did not deny the possibility of knowing by experimentation whether nitre has changed its nature, he asked for a crucial instance, i.e. an experiment that would refute the hypothesis that nitre has changed merely its state. Spinoza’s argumentative strategy shows that, contrary to the mainstream reading, the representational content of sensory ideas can be determined even if it does not represent the essence of the object: we can know with absolute, rather than merely moral, certainty whether nitre ceased to be nitre without knowing what nitre is.

The immediate occasion for this special issue was Christia Mercer’s influential paper “The Contextualist Revolution in Early Modern Philosophy”. In her paper, Mercer clearly demarcates two methodologies of the history of early modern philosophy. She argues that there has been a silent contextualist revolution in the past decades, and the reconstructivist methodology has been abandoned. One can easily get the impression that ‘reconstructivist’ has become a pejorative label that everyone outright rejects. Mercer’s examples of reconstructivist historians of philosophy are deceased (P. F. Strawson, Margaret J. Osler, Richard Watson, and Bernard Williams), anonymous (the fans of philosopher* mentioned by Lisa Downing), or authors whose more recent work followed a contextualist methodology (Jonathan Bennett). The reconstructivist camp seems to have turned into a shadowy group, largely extinct by now, not unlike the Death Eaters in the fictional universe of Harry Potter. There are some figures who previously belonged to this group, but they have since reformed their ways – or so it seems. Sometimes it is rumoured that certain people may still have secret allegiance to it, but no one dares to fly its banner openly. We decided to create this special issue because we believe that reconstructivist methodology does not deserve this shadowy existence.

In this paper, we reconstruct the development of Spinoza’s theory of judgment against the backdrop of the development of his political views. In this context we also look at the difference between Descartes’ meta-act theory of judgment, which Spinoza criticises, and his own all-inclusive approach. By “meta-act theory” we understand the claim that content and judgment about the truth of the content are metaphysically really distinct mental items. By an “all-inclusive theory” we understand the claim that judgment and content constitute only one mental act. We show further how the core intuitions of this all-inclusive theory are developed by Spinoza in an increasingly radical manner and how the practical implications of his all-inclusive theory come to the fore in the Theological-Political Treatise: given that content and act are not really distinct, it is metaphysically impossible that human subjects can give up their ability to judge, which is why Spinoza can plausibly contend that everybody has an inalienable right to form their own judgment.

In this review of Dominik Perler’s book Eine Person sein, Perler’s reconstruction of the relationship between Thomas Aquinas’s unitarist position and his theory of incontinence is analyzed. Perler argues that the unitarist position of Thomas allowes him to conceive of incontinence as a weakness of the whole psychological system of the person. Unlike the mad person, the incontinent has responsibility because she has preserved a degree of rational control. Perler argues that the incontinent person is not responsible for the spontaneous emergence of desire, which is a natural process, only for the way in which she rationally controls it (or not). By analyzing Aquinas’s notion of naturality with respect to desires, I argue that the person is actually responsible for the emergence of a desire, just in case the content of the desire is constituted by a rational choice of end.

In this paper, I investigate whether Spinoza theory of intellect can be considered as an Averroistic, Themistian or Alexandrian theory of intellect. I identify key doctrines of these theories that are argumentatively and theoretically independent from Aristotelian hylomorphism and thus can be accepted by someone rejecting hylomorphism. Next, I argue that the textual evidence is inconclusive: depending on the reading of Spinoza's philosophy accepted, Spinoza's theory of intellect can or cannot be considered as an Averroistic theory.

Spinoza’s account of memory has not received enough attention, even though it is relevant for his theory of consciousness. Recent literature has studied the “pancreas problem.” This paper argues that there is an analogous problem for memories: if memories are in the mind, why is the mind not conscious of them? I argue that Spinoza’s account of memory can be better reconstructed in the context of Descartes’s account to show that Spinoza responded to these views. Descartes accounted for the preservation of memories by holding that they are brain states without corresponding mental states, and that the mind is able to interpret perception either as new experience or as memory. Spinoza has none of these conceptual resources because of his substance monism. Spinoza accounts for memories as the mind’s ability to generate ideas according to the order of images. This ability consists in the connection of ideas, which is not an actual property, but only a dispositional one and thus not conscious. It is, however, grounded in the actual property of parts of the body, of which ideas are conscious.

In this paper I argue, based on a comparison of Spinoza's and Descartes‟s discussion of error, that beliefs are affirmations of the content of imagination that is not false in itself, only in relation to the object. This interpretation is an improvement both on the winning ideas reading and on the interpretation reading of beliefs. Contrary to the winning ideas reading it is able to explain belief revision concerning the same representation. Also, it does not need the assumption that I misinterpret my otherwise correct ideas as the interpretation reading would have it. In the first section I will provide a brief overview of the notion of inherence and its role in Spinoza‟s discussion of the status of finite minds. Then by examining the relation between Spinoza‟s and Descartes‟ distinction of representations and attitudes, I show that affirmation can be identified with beliefs in Spinoza. Next, I will take a closer look at the identification of intellect and will and argue that Spinoza's identification of the two is based on the fact that Spinoza sees both as the active aspect of the mind. After that, I analyze Spinoza‟s comments on the different scopes of will and intellect, and argue that beliefs are affirmations of the imaginative content of the idea. Finally, through Spinoza‟s example of the utterance of mathematical error, I present my solution to the problem of inherence of false beliefs.