Charlie Huenemann e.a. over #Spinoza’s vrije mens

Spinoza spreekt in deel 4 van de Ethica: 4/66s – 4/73, over ‘de vrije mens’ [homo liber]. In dit blog wil ik het hebben over de diverse uitleggingen van Spinoza-scholars: over Charlie Huenemann, Steven Nadler, Don Garrett e.a. over Spinoza’s leer over de vrije mens. Ik doe dat vooral door naar hun artikelen en hoofdstukken te verwijzen.

In oudere teksten werd onder meer ook wel over de vrije mens’ geschreven, zoals b.v.

● Stuart Hampshire, “Spinoza's Theory of Human Freedom.” In: The Monist 55, 4 4 [Special: The Philosophy of Spinoza] (1971), pp. 554-566, tevens opgenomen in Eugen Freeman and Maurice Mandelbaum (eds.), Spinoza : Essays in Interpretation. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1975, pp. 35-73. Ook in Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza and Spinozism (Oxford University Press, 2007), waarin het de titel kreeg: “Spinoza and the Idea of Freedom.”

In datzelfde nummer verscheen ook

● G.H.R. Parkinson, “Spinoza on the power and freedom of man.” In: The Monist 55, 4 [Special: The Philosophy of Spinoza] (October 1971), pp. 527-553
Tevens opgenomen in: Eugen Freeman and Maurice Mandelbaum (eds.), Spinoza: Essays in Interpretation. La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1975, pp. 7-33
Ook in: Vere Chappell (ed.), Baruch de Spinoza. New York [e.a.]: Garland Publishing, 1992. - X, 411 pp. - (Essays on Modern Philosophers from Descartes and Hobbes to Newton and Leibniz; 10), pp. 285-311 [PDF te vinden bij BookSC]

● Elhanan Yakira, “Is the Rational Man Free?” In: Yirmiyahu Yovel and Gideon Segal (eds.), Spinoza on Reason and the "Free Man": Spinoza by 2000 - The Jerusalem Conferences, Ethica IV. New York: Little Room Press, 2004: 69-82.


van Daniel Garrber zijn te noemen:
● Daniel Garber, "Dr. Fischelson's Dilemma: Spinoza on Freedom and Sociability." In: Yirmiyahu Yovel & Gideon Segal (eds.), Spinoza on Reason and the "Free Man": Spinoza by 2000 - The Jerusalem Conferences, Ethica IV. New York: Little Room Press, 2004, pp. 183-207.
● Daniel Garber,  'A Free Man Thinks of Nothing Less Than Death: Spinoza on the Eternity of the Mind." In: Christia Mercer & Eileen O'Neill (eds.), Early Modern Philosophy: Mind, Matter and Metaphysics. Cambridge [e.a.] : Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 103-118.

Een belangrijk artikel, waarnaar veel verwezen werd en wordt en dat ook vaak besproken en soms bekritiseerd werd, is

● Don Garrett, 'A free man always acts honestly, not deceptively': Freedom and the Good in Spinoza's 'Ethics'. In: Edwin Curley & Pierre-François Moreau (eds.), Spinoza: Issues and directions: The Proceedings of the Chicago Spinoza Conference (1986: Chicago, Ill.). Leiden: Brill, 1990, pp. 221-238. Dit artikel waarnaar veel verwezen wordt is nu hier als PDF te vinden.

Ik heb het besproken in het blog van 11-04-2011: » De (onbestaanbare) homo liber of vrije mens en "het echte leven" «

Bekritiseerd werd het in ieder geval door

Andrew Youpa, “Spinozistic Self-Preservation.” In The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 41, 2003 [cf. academia.edu & cf. PDF op BookSC]
Youpa benadrukt dat het Spinoza wat betreft zelfbehoud niet zozeer gaat om het behoud van het tijdelijke dagelijkse leven, maar om het bereiken van perfectie.

Maar voor zover ik kon nagaan was Charlie Huenemann de eerste die een apart artikel wijdde aan Spinoza’s ‘Free Man’:

● Charlie Huenemann, “Spinoza’s Free Man,” in: Journal of Neoplatonic Studies, Vol VI, #1, Fall 1997, pp. 105 – 135 [cf. academia.edu, alwaar dit abstract:

“An examination of Spinoza's ideal of the free man, and its resonance with Neoplatonic and Stoic views.”

Daar de bij academia.edu gegeven scans niet eenvoudig te printen zijn of te lezen op tablet, heb ik de moeite genomen er een duidelijker document van te maken dat hier als PDF te vinden is.

Charlie Huenemann, die we vooral kennen van Interpreting Spinoza. Critical Essays [Cambridge University Press, 2008] dat hij redigeerde, en van zijn Spinoza's Radical Theology [Routledge, 2013], had na zijn dissertatie in 1994 op “Three Essays on Spinoza’s Philosophy,” vroeg in zijn wetenschappelijke carrière dus uitgebreid studie gemaakt van wat Spinoza voor had met ‘de vrije mens’ [cf. zijn CV]

Des te merkwaardiger vind ik het dat in diverse boeken die vanaf ca. 2010 verschenen en die vooral Spinoza’s ethische theorie centraal hadden (de Ethica delen 3 t/m 5) en waarin het dus ook over de vrije mens gaat, geen ervan in de bibliografie of de tekst naar dit artikel van Huenemann verwijst. Ik denk aan boeken als:

● Michael LeBuffe, From Bondage to Freedom. Spinoza on Human excellence. Oxford University Press, 2010

● Matthew Kisner, “Reconsidering Spinoza's Free Man: The Model of Human Nature.” In: Daniel Garber & Steven Nadler (eds.), Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, Volume V. Oxford University Press, 2010 [PDF bij BookSC]

● Matthew J. Kisner, Spinoza on Human Freedom: Reason, Autonomy and the Good Life. Cambridge University Press, 2011 – books.google . Daarin Chapter 8: “The free man”

● Matthew J. Kisner_& Andrew Youpa, Essays on Spinoza’s Ethical Theory. Oxford University Press, 2014 [cf. PDF te vinden op BookSC]

Kissner heeft een opvatting die afwijkt van de meerderheid der Spinoza scholars; hij beschouwt wat Spinoza zegt over de vrije mens niet als model waarnaar volgens Spinoza gestreefd wordt of dient te worden. Daar dit daarin verschil duidelijk uit de verf komt, neem ik uit de inleiding van dit laatste boek hier een passage van de pagina’s 10 en 11, die een idee geeft van de vraag of Spinoza de ‘vrije mens’ als ‘model’ bedoelde (Kisner meent van niet, anders dan de meeste scholars).

[…] Central interpretative questions revolve around Spinoza’s model of human nature. As we have seen, the model plays a key role in Spinoza’s analysis of ethical judgment since4pref claims that it should be the basis for judging our good and perfection. However, apart from 4pref the Ethics contains no explicit mention of the model of human nature. Because Spinoza’s claims about the model of human nature resemble his earlier claims from the Treatise, Jonathan Bennett suggests that the discussion of a model in 4pref is a remnant of an earlier draft of the Ethics, which accorded a greater role to a model.[1] Most scholars, however, see Spinoza’s claims about models in 4pref as continuous with the text. Even though he does not mention the term ‘model of human nature’, the end of Part 4 offers an extended discussion of the free man, which is widely regarded as the model of human nature that Spinoza promised. Nevertheless, this position is not unproblematic since the discussion of the free man does not obviously accord with his claims about the model of human nature, as Kisner has argued.[2] In particular, 4pref claims that the model of human nature is the basis for judging our good and perfection, but Spinoza does not obviously use the free man in this way.

Furthermore, there is some difficulty in seeing precisely how the free man is intended to serve as a model. The free man is described, at least some of the time, as perfectly rational (4p67; 4p68), but humans cannot be perfectly rational. It appears, then, that we cannot be perfectly free. As a result, it is not obvious that we are supposed to model ourselves after the free man. And assuming that the free man is intended to serve as the model, it is not obvious how to go about modeling ourselves after an unattainable ideal. For instance, the free man does not deceive even to save his own life (4p72d). Following the free man’s example then would lead us to violate one of the most fundamental claims of his ethics, namely, that we ought to act in ways that promote our power. In response to this difficulty, some argue that Spinoza does not intend for us to act as the free man does, which presses the question of precisely how the model of human nature is intended to serve as a model.[3] On the other hand, others argue that the fact that the free man adheres to an unconditional truth-telling policy is a reason to think that the power that we ought to act to promote is not something that can be impaired or lost by a foreshortened durational existence,[4]  a view that Spinoza appears to express in 4pref: ‘Finally, by perfection in general I shall, as I have said, understand reality, i.e., the essence of each thing insofar as it exists and produces an effect, having no regard to its duration. For no singular thing can be called more perfect for having persevered in existing for a longer time’.

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[1] Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza’s Ethics [Study] (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1984), 296.

[2] Kisner, Matthew J., Spinoza on Human Freedom: Reason, Autonomy and the Good Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 164.

[3] Don Garrett, ‘ “A Free Man Always Acts Honestly, Not Deceptively”: Freedom and the Good in Spinoza’s Ethics’, in Spinoza: Issues and Directions, eds. Edwin Curley and Pierre-Francois Moreau (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990), 221–38; Daniel Garber, ‘Dr. Fischelson’s Dilemma: Spinoza on Freedom and Necessity’, in Ethica 4: Spinoza on Reason and the ‘Free Man’, eds. Yirmiyahu Yovel and Gideon Segal (New York: Little Room Press, 2004), 183–207; Kisner, Human Freedom, 162–78.

[4] R. J. Delahunty, Spinoza: The Arguments of the Philosophers (London and New York: Routledge, 1985), 226–7; Andrew Youpa, ‘Spinozistic Self-Preservation’, The Southern Journal of Philosophy 41, no. 3 (2003): 477–90. 

 

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De - naar ik aanvankelijk dacht - enige die wel naar het artikel van Charlie Huenemann verwijst en er iets over zegt is

Steven Nadler, » On Spinoza's ‘Free Man’.«  In: Journal of the American Philosophical Association, Vol 1, 2015 [PDF te vinden op BookSC]

In voetnoot 12 schrijft hij over Huenemann’s artikel: After claiming that ‘[the free man] is called “free” because he is free from the passions’ and that ‘Spinoza makes it perfectly clear that it is strictly impossible for us to become this free man’, he concludes that ‘[i]t is not only impossible for us to evolve into perfect humans, but it is also strictly impossible that there be a perfect finite object of any kind’.
Huenemann is een van degenen die Nadler bedankt voor zijn commentaar op een eerdere versie van zijn artikel; misschien heeft Huenemann hem bij die gelegenheid op zijn eigen artikel gewezen?

Maar wie ook - zo ontdekte ik later - het artikel van Huenemann noemt én verwerkt in een zeer lezens- en aanbevelingswaardig hoofdstuk (dat de auteur in een voetnoot als complementair aan het artikel van Nadler beschouwt), is

● Matthew Homan, "Rehumanizing Spinoza's Free Man." Chapter 4 in: Ursula Goldenbaum and Christopher Kluz (eds.), Doing without Free Will: Spinoza and Contemporary Moral Problems. Lanham [e.a.]: Lexington, 2015: 75-96.

Een derde (eerder) artikel mét aandacht voor Huenemann (dus wel beschouwd de eerste) was: 
● Andrew Youpa, “Spinoza’s Model of Human Nature.” In: Journal of the History of Philosophy 48, Nr 1 (January 2010), pp. 61–76. [cf. draft op academia.edu - cf. ook PDF bij BookSC]

Youpa schrijft in Note 21: Charles Huenemann arrives at the same conclusion I arrive at here, but by a different route than the one I have taken. Huenemann reaches the conclusion that the “free man is the conatus writ large” via Spinoza’s Preface to Part 4 analysis of a final cause as nothing more than a human appetite. According to Huenemann, the free man is equivalent to our appetite for freedom since the free man is the “final cause” of our striving for freedom. And the appetite for freedom is equivalent to our conatus. Huenemann concludes that the free man is our conatus, our conatus writ large. I do not find anything objectionable in Huenemann’s argument and see my own as complementary to it. In contrast with Huenemann’s, however, a strength of my case is that it remains close to the text, relying as it does on the appeal to the conatus doctrine in the demonstration of 4p4. See Huenemann, “Spinoza’s Free Man,” Journal of Neoplatonic Studies 6 (1997), 123–24.

●  Ericka Tucker, "Spinoza's Social Sage: Emotion and the Power of Reason in Spinoza’s Social Theory." In: Revista Conatus - Filosofia de Spinoza - Vol. 9, No 17 - Julho 2015 cf. academia.edu
Ze behandelt Spinoza's vrije mens - anders dan veel gebeurt - als sociaal; die ze typeert als de "Spinozan 'sage'".

Tot slot vermeld ik 

● Yakir Levin, “Rational Mastery, the Perfectly Free Man, and Human Freedom.” In: Philosophia 45(3) · April 2017

Abstract: This paper examines the coherence of Spinoza’s combined account of freedom, reason, and the affects (FRA) and its applicability to real humans in the context of the perfectly free man Spinoza discusses towards the end of part 4 of the Ethics. On the standard reading, the perfectly free man forms the model of human nature and thus the goal to which real humans should aspire. A recently proposed non-standard reading, however, posits that the perfectly free man should not be considered the model of human nature. Consolidating FRA into a system of ten theses and outlining their intricate interconnections, I argue that under both the standard and non-standard readings of Spinoza’s perfectly free man, FRA founders when applied to real humans. While it is no big news that FRA may face deep problems when applied to real humans, the paper is innovative: (a) in the specific tensions in FRA it exposes; (b) in the strategy deployed to expose the latter; and (c) in showing that a recent non-standard approach to resolving these tensions is unsuccessful. Depending on the specific reading of FRA that I suggest, my critical conclusions may not apply to every reading of FRA. They nonetheless pose a serious challenge to similar readings prominent within the literature. [researchgate] [Misschien brengt hij het nog eens naar zijn academia.edu]