Spinoza’s Analysis of his Imagined Readers’ Axiology
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Benedict Rumbold
Abstract
Before presenting his own account of value in the Ethics, Spinoza spends much of EIAppendix and EIVPreface attempting to refute a series of axiological ‘prejudices’ that he takes to have taken root in the minds of his readership. In doing so, Spinoza adopts what might be termed a ‘genealogical’ argumentative strategy. That is, he tries to establish the falsity of imagined readership’s prejudices about good and bad, perfection and imperfection, by first showing that the ideas from which they have arisen are themselves false. Many elements of this genealogy, however, remain unclear. First, both the nature of the metaethical prejudices Spinoza believes we have been labouring under, and the metaphysical prejudices that he takes to have given rise to them, continue to attract widespread disagreement. Although much less commented on, it is also not entirely obvious why Spinoza takes the one to have engendered the other. In this article, I attempt to clarify Spinoza’s reasoning in both of these respects, ultimately concluding that Spinoza offers us two accounts of how this process has occurred, the first beginning from an anthropocentric doctrine of divine providence, the second from more secular, perhaps more purely Aristotelian metaphysical tradition.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Articles
- Das Thothbuch: eine ägyptische Vorlage der platonischen Schriftkritik im Phaidros?
- Desire and Impulse in Epictetus and the Older Stoics
- Ideas and Explanation in Early Modern Philosophy
- Spinoza’s Analysis of his Imagined Readers’ Axiology
- Kant and Consequentialism in Context: The Second Critique’s Response to Pistorius
- Nietzsche’s English Genealogy of Truthfulness
- Book Reviews
- Karbowski, Joseph, Aristotle’s Method in Ethics: Philosophy in Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, xii + 275 pp.
- Sommer, Andreas Urs, Kommentar zu Nietzsches Zur Genealogie der Moral. Historischer und kritischer Kommentar zu Friedrich Nietzsches Werken. Band 5/2. Hrsg. von der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2019, xvii + 723 pp.
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Articles
- Das Thothbuch: eine ägyptische Vorlage der platonischen Schriftkritik im Phaidros?
- Desire and Impulse in Epictetus and the Older Stoics
- Ideas and Explanation in Early Modern Philosophy
- Spinoza’s Analysis of his Imagined Readers’ Axiology
- Kant and Consequentialism in Context: The Second Critique’s Response to Pistorius
- Nietzsche’s English Genealogy of Truthfulness
- Book Reviews
- Karbowski, Joseph, Aristotle’s Method in Ethics: Philosophy in Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, xii + 275 pp.
- Sommer, Andreas Urs, Kommentar zu Nietzsches Zur Genealogie der Moral. Historischer und kritischer Kommentar zu Friedrich Nietzsches Werken. Band 5/2. Hrsg. von der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2019, xvii + 723 pp.
