Signalement: Kristin Primus bracht haar hoofdstuk "Scientia Intuitiva in the Ethics" naar academia.edu - #Spinoza

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.

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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.