Dr Peter Critchley plaatste een interessante inleiding in Spinoza’s Ethica op internet

Dr Peter Critchley is Alumnus van de Manchester Metropolitan University, Politics and Philosophy,

Hij schrijft over zichzelf op academia.edu waarnaar hij een behoorlijk groot aantal documenten heeft geüpload:

“Peter is an intellectual range rider, with a record of achievement in several subject areas. His research activity demonstrates an ambitious interdisciplinary approach, embracing a diversity of materials drawn from philosophy, history, political economy, urban studies and social and political ecology to develop notions of social, cognitive and ecological praxis. At the heart of Peter's work is a philosophical conception of ‘rational freedom’. This idea of 'rational freedom' holds that freedom is a condition of the appropriate arrangement of the cognitive, affective, interpersonal and intrapersonal dimensions of human life, incorporating essential human attributes from instinct to reason. The philosophers that Peter is most interested in within this rational tradition are Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, Fichte, Hegel and Marx.

Defining politics in the ancient sense of creative self-realisation, Peter seeks to realise the emancipatory themes contained in the 'Greco-Germanic’ tradition of 'rational freedom'. Originating in the critical appropriation of Plato and Aristotle on the modern terrain by Rousseau, Kant, Fichte and Hegel, the concept of ‘rational freedom’ is developed to affirm a socio-relational and ethical conception of freedom in which individual liberty depends upon and is constituted by the quality of relations with other individuals. Peter therefore stresses the intertwining of ethics and politics within a conception of the good life. Reason is developed in terms of its ethical component alongside its technical component.

Peter is now applying these themes to current environmental problems, developing the idea of the Ecopolis in terms of a moral ecology.

Supervisors: Professor Jules Townshend 1995-2001, Gary Banham en Lawrence Wilde

Eén van die documenten is:

Dr Peter Critchley, SPINOZA AND THE RULE OF REASON [academia.edu]

Enige citaten als mogelijke smaakmakers:

Spinoza affirmed no mindbody dualism; and claims that Spinoza makes for reason embrace both mind and body. From this perspective, Spinoza shows that theory is a pointless and delusive endeavour when detached from the body. In a condition of mind-body dualism, concepts necessarily falsify the nature of lived experience. Spinoza’s rationalism is not an abstracted theoreticism prioritising the mind but affirms that the only reality is that of the body as a complex ensemble of drives, impulses and ‘desiring machines’. Thus ‘whatsoever increases or diminishes, helps or hinders the power of activity in our body, the idea thereof increases or diminishes, helps or hinders, the power of thought in our mind’ (E II, P 2 note). [p. 6]

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In particular, the Aristotelian roots of Spinoza’s philosophy will be highlighted through the influence of Averroes and Avicenna. [p. 9]

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Spinoza can be seen as the realisation of the grand claims of classical philosophy, unravelling the controversies and antinomies of medieval thought to reconcile an Aristotelian theology with modern science. In this sense, Spinoza gave the modern scientific world a conception of human nature and of human happiness that served to vindicate the life of contemplation which for Aristotle was the highest good for man within a modern scientific understanding of the world as subject to human instrumental change and transformation. [10]

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Ironically, Spinoza’s boldness in demonstrating philosophically the extent to which the rational method contradicted religious orthodoxy can make it appear that his work possesses a more religious, theological and, indeed, medieval character than that of the more modern and scientific work of Descartes and Leibniz. The truth is that the more worldly, ambitious and hence cautious Descartes and Leibniz pulled their punches with respect to religion maintain an orthodoxy in public which enabled them to retain their positions with a minimum of controversy. In contrast, it is Spinoza’s determination to address the weightiest of theological and political issues in his ethics that gives his work a much greater depth, surviving the vicissitudes of scientific advance. [p. 14]

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To previous philosophers, the ontological argument demonstrated that at least one thing [God] exists. Spinoza’s originality lies in demonstrating that the argument shows that at most one thing, and hence that everything which exists is, in some sense, ‘in’ God. [p.17]