De sluwheid van de verbeelding bij #Spinoza volgens Eugene Garver

Er verscheen [verschijnt] weer een boek over de Ethica. De uitgever claimt dat dit het eerste boek is dat het centrale belang van de imaginatio in de Ethica aan de orde stelt: de verbeelding zou niet zozeer voorbijgestreefd moeten worden, maar juist worden gecultiveerd. Of die claim terecht is, is voor mij de vraag als je ziet hoe juist de laatste jaren veel boeken en artikelen verschenen waarin vooral aandacht wordt gegeven aan de ethische kant van de Ethica en de delen 3 t/m 5 centraal staat [ik denk aan Matthew Kisner, Eugene Marshall, Michael LeBuffe en anderen]. Daarin wordt – bij de een nadrukkelijker dan bij de ander – erop gewezen dat het model van de ideale mens, de ‘naturae humanae exemplar' en het ideaalmodel van ‘de vrije mens’, juist een uitdrukkingsvorm van de verbeelding zijn - waarmee we ons helpen in onze streving naar ware kennis en het loskomen van de macht van de passies en zo gelukkiger te worden. Enfin, dit om te wijzen op de verschijning van dit nieuw boek [ik had de komst van het boek al aangekondigd in het blog van 16 mei 2018]:

Eugene Garver, Spinoza and the Cunning of Imagination.  University of Chicago Press, okt. 2018- 320 pagina's [verschijnt 12 oktober volgens deze site of 30 oktober volgens amazon] – books.google

[Uitgeverstekst:] "Spinoza’s Ethics, and its project of proving ethical truths through the geometric method, have attracted and challenged readers for more than three hundred years. In Spinoza and the Cunning of Imagination, Eugene Garver uses the imagination as a guiding thread to this work. Other readers have looked at the imagination to account for Spinoza’s understanding of politics and religion, but this is the first inquiry to see it as central to the Ethics as a whole—imagination as a quality to be cultivated, and not simply overcome.

Spinoza initially presents imagination as an inadequate and confused way of thinking, always inferior to ideas that adequately represent things as they are. It would seem to follow that one ought to purge the mind of imaginative ideas and replace them with rational ideas as soon as possible, but as Garver shows, the Ethics don’t allow for this ultimate ethical act until one has cultivated a powerful imagination. This is, for Garver, “the cunning of imagination.” The simple plot of progress becomes, because of the imagination, a complex journey full of reversals and discoveries. For Garver, the “cunning” of the imagination resides in our ability to use imagination to rise above it."

Contents

Acknowledgments
 Introduction

 First Part
 Chapter One - Adequate Ideas Are Infinite Modes
 Chapter Two -  Our Knowledge of God and Its Place in Ethics
 Chapter Three - Spinoza’s Will to Power: How Does the Conatus Become a Desire to Increase Power?
 Chapter Four -  False Pleasures and Romantic Love

 Second Part
 Chapter Five -  Conflicts among Emotions, among Ideas, and among People
 Chapter Six - Hilarity and the Goods of Mind and Body
 Chapter Seven - The Strength of the Emotions and the Power of the Intellect
 Chapter Eight - Ethics and the Ethics: How Does Reason Become Practical?

 Notes
 Index

De cover maakt van Spinoza een beetje een heilige…

 

De auteur, Eugene Garver, geeft in deze PDF (waaruit zijn foto) nog een iets helderder abstract.

Hier artikelen over Spinoza van Eugene Garver, waaruit blijkt dat hij altijd wel met het thema van zijn boek is bezig geweest en dat het dus een lange voorgeschiedenis heeft.

De Duitse Spinoza Bibliografie noemt nog van hem:

• Eugene Garver, « Why Can't We All Just Get Along: The Reasonable vs. the Rational According to Spinoza. » In: Political Theory 38, 6 (2010), 838-858

Spinoza presents a picture of the good human life in which being rational and being reasonable or sociable are mutually supporting: the philosopher makes the best citizen, and citizenship is the best route to philosophy and adequate ideas. Crucial to this mutual implication are the roles of religion and politics in promoting obedience. It is through obedience that people can become "of one mind and one body" in the absence of adequate ideas, through the presence of shared empowering imaginations and emotions [cf. Hij geeft op zijn academia.edu wel ‘n stukje van ‘t ‘abstract’, maar heeft niets geüpload]

• Eugene Garver, « Spinoza’s Democratic Imagination. » In: The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms 19, 7 (2014), 833-853

Spinoza is the great philosopher of the imagination and the first great philosopher of democracy. Rather than seeing democracy as a form of government that has overcome the need for imagination and symbols, he shows in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus that an enlightened state depends on three myths: the myth of the sovereignty of the people so as to reconcile democracy as rule by the people with each individual living as he or she wants to live; the myth that we are a people, emotionally and morally tied to some people more than to others; and, finally, the myth that the people comprises individuals who are responsible for their own destinies. The democratic imagination differs from earlier forms of politics in that the people construct the social imaginary for themselves and are guided by it without deception. It is the social imaginary thus created, or these three myths, that make room for freedom of thought and therefore for democracy. [cf.]

De Duitse Spinoza Bibliografie heeft niet de volgende artikelen:

• Eugene Garver, « Spinoza and the Discovery of Morality. » In:  History of Philosophy, Volume 23, #4, October 2006. [PDF hier te vinden]

• Eugene Garver, « Spinoza's “Ethics". Don't Imitate God; There's a Model of Human Nature for You. » In: Philosophy and Theology, 24 (2): 155-190. 2012.

The Preface to Part 4 of Spinoza’s Ethics claims that we all desire to formulate a model of human nature. I show how that model serves the same function in ethics as the creed or articles of faith do in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, the function of allowing the imagination to provide a simularcrrum of rationality for finite, practical human beings. [cf.]