Graag
wijs ik op het volgende. Recent heeft Kristin Primus, assistant professor in
the Department of Philosophy at UC Berkeley [cf.],
haar hoofdstuk
Kristin
Primus, "Scientia Intuitiva in the
Ethics". Chapter 8 in Yitzhak Y. Melamed (Ed.), Spinoza's Ethics. A Critical Guide [Camridge University Press, 2017
– cf. blog] op haar pagina bij academia.edu geplaatst – als enige tekst vooralsnog.
◾Abstract:
Cognition of the third kind, or scientia intuitiva, is supposed to secure
beatitudo, or virtue itself (E5p42). But what is scientia intuitiva, and how is
it different from (and superior to) reason? In this chapter, I suggest a new
answer to this old and vexing question at the core of Spinoza’s project in the
Ethics. On my view, Spinoza’s scientia intuitiva resembles Descartes’s scientia
more than has been appreciated. Although Spinoza’s God is not Descartes’s
benevolent, transcendent God, Spinoza agrees with Descartes that the highest
certainty requires that a cognizer correctly conceive of God and her causal
relation to God; it is only with cognition of the third kind that a cognizer
can be certain that her adequate (that is, clear and distinct) representations
of extramental things agree with formally real, extramental ideata, and so are
true. If this is right, a reading of Spinoza that has dominated scholarship
since the Ethics’ publication is misguided: for Spinoza, it is not always the
case that having (and recognizing that one has) a clear and distinct idea is
sufficient for knowing that that idea is true. I end the chapter by suggesting
why scientia is intuitive for Spinoza: Spinoza attempts to avoid
Cartesian-Circle-style circularity by insisting that a cognizer must intuit the
correct representation of God and God’s relation to things. [Cf.]
Ze
gaat o.a. ook in discussie met Sanem Soyarslan, met wie ze het op een aantal
punten niet eens is. Overigens niet met haar dissertatie [cf. blog], maar met haar artikel “The Distinction between
Reason and Intuitive Knowledge in Spinoza's Ethics,” [in: European Journal of Philosophy 24 (1) [2016], pp. 27-54], waarnaar
Primus overigens nergens volledig verwijst; ze volstaat met “The Distinction” –
en dan zoekt de lezer het maar uit [het is te
vinden op Sanem Soyarslan’s pagina op academia.edu].
De
website
van Kristin Primus.
* * *
Henk
Keizer zal het plezierig vinden haar aan zijn zijde te vinden (hoewel ze uiteraard
niet naar zijn artikel in TvF verwijst) over hoe zij schrijft over “formele en
actuele essentie”: “I disagree with Garrett’s proposal that formal and actual
essences are different kinds of essences” [p. 176, note 14] – “Formal and
actual essences are not different kinds of essence: an actual essence, which is
formally real, is a formal essence. Formal essences are not exclusively
eternal.” [p. 175]
Ze is het bepaald ook niet eens met Wilson voor wie “amazingly,
the human mind is able to achieve [a] God’s-eye understanding of the essences of
singular things, as they follow from the essence of God, thereby replicating
the insight into the divine creative power expressed in E1p16.”
in “Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge” p. 113.
Primus concludeert in haar lezing dat “it doesn’t require veridical
apprehension of the infinitely complex causal structure of nature.”
Zij
lijkt zich aanvankelijk sterk op de Cartesiaanse benadering te baseren met
vragen als: “But how can he know that his body, or any impinging bodies, have
formal reality?” En stelt de “question from the first-person point of view of
the reasoning cognizer: How can I be certain that objectively real
representations of bodies have formally real referents?” [p. 6 = 173]
Ze
komt meer en meer uit bij Spinoza: Spinoza’s scientia intuitiva neemt voor haar uiteindelijk de plaats in van
Descartes’s niet bedriegende God: “The way out of the circle is scientia intuitiva, which is an
immediate cognition of God that can be certain in the way reason cannot be.
[...] However, simply reading the Ethics
does not guarantee scientia intuitiva:
it is one thing to have the cognition that given some axioms, definitions, and
demonstrations, things must be modes caused by and inhering in the one
substance. It is an entirely different thing to immediately cognize those
things as modes caused by and inhering in the one substance.” [p. 185]
Al met al een interessante toevoeging aan de secundaire Spinozaliteratuur over de derde kennisvorm.
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