Of
het alle moeite waard was weet ik nog niet – het ruim 400 bladzijden tellende proefschrift
heb ik nog slechts even globaal ingekeken – maar ik ben wel een beetje trots
dat ik het, door er gericht naar te zoeken, heb gevonden. Toen ik bezig was met
informatie verzamelen over Daniel Alan Forbes [cf.
blog] las ik in ‘zijn’
faculteitsblad, West Chester University
Philosophy Department Newsletter [Vol 16, Summer 2013, p. 7] bij
de naam Christina Rawls (MA, 2004)
“I am currently teaching in a one year position at
John Carroll University. I hope to defend my dissertation on Spinoza's dynamic
epistemology next Spring. I have published poetry, photography in the
interdisciplinary anthology Spinoza Beyond Philosophy, a book review in the New
School journal Critical Horizons on another interdisciplinary anthology on Spinoza
about to appear in August, and am working to publish several journal articles
this coming year, including on Hegel's Science of Logic, and on the importance
and often over-looked significance of Spinoza's theory on the imagination. I am
working with Samantha Noll (WCU, 2008) as co-coordinator of the Feminist
Philosophy Archive Project. It's all new and its short term goal is to collect
and permanently house the SWIP (Society for Women in Philosophy) archives,
among other things [cf.].
Dat
was voor mij voldoende aanleiding om naar méér te zoeken. Daarna vond ik nog een
vergelijkbare presentatie van een jaar eerder [cf.] en een korte voorstelling mét foto van vier jaar later
[cf.]
Toen ik Google haar naam ingaf +Spinoza kwam ik bij de site van de locatie waar haar dissertatieverdediging zou
plaats hebben en die de titel van haar dissertatie en een afbeelding van de
uitnodiging gaf. Ik geef hier de duidelijker versie ervan die ik later
tegenkwam op de facebookpagina van haar filosofieafdeling.
Spinoza's ethology: Recognizing dynamic
transitions between imagination, reason, and intuition
by Rawls, Christina, Ph.D., Duquesne
University, 2015, 439; 3739950 [cf.]
Abstract
(Summary). Ik geef die uit haar dissertatie die op enkele kleine onderdelen anders
luidt én een voetnoot heeft:
Seventeenth
Century lens grinder and Dutch philosopher, Benedictus Spinoza, illuminates a
rigorous and dynamic theory of knowledge and action in his major system the Ethics.
What we adequately understand by learning Spinoza’s epistemology is that within
it is a proto-physics of ideational force between the three kinds of knowledge
expressed by the attribute of thought and, simultaneously, expressed as ratios
of motion and rest, speed and slowness, intensity and transformation by the
attribute of extension. Such dynamic processes or ways lead to one’s
capacity for increased rational thought and action, increased uses of
creativity, and the enhanced ability to join with others in powerfully
effective, affirmative ways. This is Spinoza’s proto-physics of force. The
outcome of the enhanced ideational force and extensive action includes an
increase in one’s overall singular conatus, the capacity for continuous
understanding, and perseverance, joy and energy, not only for oneself but also
for the benefit of all of Nature. In the end, Spinoza rigorously demonstrates
that all of Nature is one organic substance with infinite varieties of
expressive power. We are singular, conscious expressions of that power
in our own determinate ways. Our mind does not have ideas, it is ideas,
and our ratios of motion and rest expressed in extension are multiple yet
maintain a homeostatic balance for bodily integrity and comportment. Combined,
the two attributes create affects that influence the increases and
decreases in our power of continued thought and action. Affects cannot be
explained by any theory of representation. Spinoza’s dynamic epistemology
requires such an understanding.
In
the end, Spinoza’s ethology involves an enhancement in our ability for
creativity and experimentation as well. Such expressions and affects are not
possible without other minds and bodies, but they are also not possible without
a singular power and enhanced capacity for increasing ideational power and
rational conscious reflection. As Paulo Freire writes, “Liberating education
consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information.”[1]
For Spinoza, acts of enhanced cognition (and thus action) are
increases in our overall conatus through continued understanding of
natural phenomena. Our love of Nature (or God) is transformed into actions of
real living experiences, joy and levity, peace of mind, and an acute interest
in all expressions of the laws of Nature. Still, we cannot possibly approach or
exhaust the totality of causal processes and effects in Nature. In our
awareness of this fact, we are transformed to create and understand our
individual human affects and relations with other bodies in our environments
towards freedom of thought, happiness, and safety while living amidst a
diversity of interests.
Op haar pagina bij academia.edu (waar ze alleen het 5e hoofdstuk van haar thesis brengt) gebruikt ze een stukje van een afbeelding die ik vervolgens helemaal vond: op 21 februari 2017 zou zij spreken over: Spinoza Beyond Philosophy: Revolución creativa by Dr. Christina Rawls [cf. facebook]
[1] Paulo Freire, pedagogy of the
oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York: Continuum Press, 1970), 79.
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