Dissertatie van Daryl de Bruyn, ”Spinoza’s Concept of Emending the Intellect”

Proponent Daryl de Bruyn [foto en info van hier]
                                                              
Op 18.10.2014 promoveerde Daryl de Bruyn bij professor Olli Koistinen van de Filosofische Afdeling van Turku, terwijl Julie Klein van Villanova University fungeerde als opponent.
Titel van de dissertatie


Daryl de Bruyn, SPINOZA’S CONCEPT OF EMENDING THE INTELLECT
A CRITICAL INVESTIGATION INTO SPINOZA’S METHOD OF EMENDING THE INTELLECT WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE TRACTATUS DE INTELLECTUS EMENDATIONE. University of Turku, Finland, 2014 [PDF]

Graag wijs ik hierop: zoveel wordt er niet over de TIE gepubliceerd. Het gaat de auteur om het essentie-begrip. Daarom geef ik het hier graag door. Om een indruk te krijgen neem ik hierna een passage uit de inleiding van het eerste hoofdstuk over:

"I contend that Spinoza’s philosophy is based on a platonic-like distinction between the realms of eternal and temporal being. The former refers to an immanent divine essence, hidden from the senses, but clearly discernible to the intellect and the latter to the durational world of existing particular things, known mostly inadequately by means of our sensory ideas. In Spinoza, the very nature or essence of our existence is the creative and concurring power of God on which all things intimately depend for their essence and existence and without which nothing can be or be conceived. For Spinoza the adequate understanding of the essential difference between these two orders and how they relate to one another leads to a sense of well-being in humans. His project of acquiring certain knowledge must therefore start with the discovery of true ideas of God’s eternal and infinite essence, in which true light the essence of all other things can be understood. For Spinoza human happiness originates in the clear understanding of our place and union with the world, i.e. by understanding and consenting that all things are necessarily contained in and follow from God’s essence and continually depend on his sustaining power. In Descartes and Spinoza, the basis for this belief was a new appreciation of the human mind’s given ability to know this inmost essence of things adequately. I will show that the concept of essence, and specifically the notion of essence monism, plays an all-important role in Spinoza’s task of attaining certain knowledge of our world and in ontologically and conceptually unifying the eternal and temporal orders, referred to above. In my view, Spinoza’s Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TdIE), which receives much attention in this work, was written to develop the best method of discovering this new kind of knowledge."