Abstract

This dissertation investigates the nature of imaginatio in the works of Spinoza. The first three chapters are devoted to explicating the ways imaginatio figures in Spinoza's accounts of the attributes, extensio and cogitatio. I show how both attributes are aspects of the same force in which substance perseveres through its essence, and how imaginatio is the key to understanding the movement from corpus to mente. In chapters 4 and 5, my work explores the place of imaginatio in the nature of each of these attributes, examining first the dynamics of extensio before turning to the distinctions essential to cogitatio. These two chapters also trace in great detail the ways in which Spinoza's account of imaginatio derives, on the one hand, from his critique of the principles of Descartes' physics and, on the other, from his critique of Maimonides' account of prophecy. Concluding chapters focus on the 'intensive-extensive' aspects of imaginatio insofar as Spinoza shows these to possess ethical/political implications for the constitution of the state and for human relations as the expression of historical, and a-historical, force