Two priority problems frustrate our understanding of Spinoza on desire [cupiditas]. The first problem concerns the relationship between desire and the other two primary affects, joy [laetitia] and sadness [tristitia]. Desire seems to be the oddball of this troika, not only because, contrary to the very definition of an affect, desires do not themselves consist in changes in one's power of acting, but also because desire seems at once more and less basic than joy and sadness. The second problem concerns (...) the priority of desires and evaluative judgements. While 3p9s and 3p39s suggest that evaluative judgements are posterior to desires, Andrew Youpa has recently argued that passages in Ethics 4 indicate that rational evaluative judgements can give rise to, rather than arise out of, desires. I aim to offer solutions to these problems that reveal the elegance and coherence of Spinoza's account of motivation. Ultimately, I argue that whereas emotions and d.. (shrink)

A proposal for the biological grounding of intrinsic teleology and sense-making through the theory of autopoiesis is critically evaluated. Autopoiesis provides a systemic lan- guage for speaking about intrinsic teleology but its original formulation needs to be elaborated further in order to explain sense-making. This is done by introducing adaptivity, a many-layered property that allows organisms to regulate themselves with respect to their conditions of via- bility. Adaptivity leads to more articulated concepts of behaviour, agency, sense-construction, health, and temporality than (...) those given so far by autopoiesis and enaction. These and other implications for understanding the organismic generation of values are explored. (shrink)

This essay examines one of the cornerstones of Leibniz's defense of teleology within the order of nature. The first section explores Leibniz's contributions to the study of geometrical optics, and argues that his "Most Determined Path Principle" or "MDPP" allows him to bring to the fore philosophical issues concerning the legitimacy of teleological explanations by addressing two technical objections raised by Cartesians to non-mechanistic derivations of the laws of optics. The second section argues that, by drawing on laws such as (...) the MDPP, Leibniz is able to introduce a thin notion of teleology that gives him the resources to respond to the most pressing charges of his day against teleological explanations within natural philosophy. Finally, the third section argues that contemporary philosophers have been overly hasty in their dismissal of Leibniz's account of natural teleology, and indeed that their own generally thin conceptions of teleology have left them with few well-motivated resources for resisting his elegant position. (shrink)

In the perhaps most decisive reopening of philosophy in the twentieth century, Heidegger presented an existential analytic. This can be viewed as the highly complex analysis of one simple action: being-there. In the paper at hand, a Spinozist interpretation of this action is proposed. This implies a shift in the Aristotelian conceptuality, which, to a large extent, informs Heidegger’s analysis. The action of being-there is not a movement from potentiality to actuality. It is a force of existence. However, this force (...) is located right at the threshold between potentiality and actuality. Accordingly, it is not a matter of dismissing Aristotle’s concepts, but—with Heidegger—to observe carefully their deconstruction and pursue it to the point where these concepts become indistinct and where—beyond Heidegger—a Spinozian force of existence emerges. (shrink)

L’article entend montrer qu’à partir d’une conceptualité classique, héritée de Descartes, Spinoza parvient à contrer l’argument cartésien de liberté et l’argument aristotélicien du finalisme par une structure théorique impossible à classifier à son époque, faisant penser à une tentative de formaliser l’auto-organisation comme le fondement de l’intentionnalité. À partir d’une analyse du texte spinoziste et sa compréhension de la _contrainte_, l’article entend montrer que la reprise d’un certain nombre de notions et de termes entourant ce thème ont été redisposés par (...) Spinoza afin de solutionner un problème nouveau, invisible avant lui. (shrink)

A proposal for the biological grounding of intrinsic teleology and sense-making through the theory of autopoiesis is critically evaluated. Autopoiesis provides a systemic language for speaking about intrinsic teleology but its original formulation needs to be elaborated further in order to explain sense-making. This is done by introducing adaptivity, a many-layered property that allows organisms to regulate themselves with respect to their conditions of viability. Adaptivity leads to more articulated concepts of behaviour, agency, sense-construction, health, and temporality than those given (...) so far by autopoiesis and enaction. These and other implications for understanding the organismic generation of values are explored. (shrink)

In the Ethics, Spinoza famously rejects freedom of the will. He also offers an error theory for why many believe, falsely, that the will is free. Standard accounts of his arguments for these claims focus on their efficacy against incompatibilist views of free will. For Spinoza, the will cannot be free since it is determined by an infinite chain of external causes. And the pervasive belief in free will arises from a structural limitation of our self-knowledge: because we are aware (...) of our actions but unaware of their causes, we suppose that we alone must be responsible for them. Yet I argue that the standard accounts miss a further element of Spinoza’s arguments that also targets compatibilist views on which free will is consistent with a specific kind of determination—namely, self-determination in accordance with our value judgments. For Spinoza, we are misled not only in supposing that our actions lack external determination but also in thinking that they are determined by our representations of value. In fact, our actions are determined by our appetites, which are blind to our value judgments. And the pervasive belief that our actions are determined by such judgments arises from the projection of value onto the objects we seek. As he denies us free will, then, Spinoza also denies us a capacity central to agency—the capacity to determine our actions in accordance with our ideas of the good. This makes his arguments against free will more consequential, and more radical, than commonly assumed. (shrink)

The objective of this doctoral dissertation is to interpret the explanation of akrasia that the Dutch philosopher Benedictus Spinoza (1632-1677) gives in his work The Ethics. One is said to act acratically when one intentionally performs an action that one judges to be worse than another action which one believes one might perform instead. In order to interpret Spinoza’s explanation of akrasia, a large part of this dissertation investigates Spinoza’s theory of emotion. The first chapter is introductory and outlines Spinoza’s (...) categorisation of mental states and his conception of the relation between the mind and the body. The second chapter deals with Spinoza’s epistemology and the relation between cognitive mental states and states of the brain. The third chapter argues that Spinoza holds that emotions are non-cognitive mental states that are caused by cognitive mental states. The fourth chapter interprets Spinoza’s discussion of the emotions of Joy and Sadness insofar as they are mental states. The fifth chapter suggests that when Spinoza says that the power of our body is increased or decreased when we are joyful or sad, he means that when we are joyful or sad then, at the same time, our heart and perhaps the organs of our digestive system are affected in such a way that our bodily health is increased or decreased. The sixth chapter points to three problems that concern Spinoza’s definitions of the psychophysical states of pleasure, pain, cheerfulness and melancholy, and offers slightly altered definitions of these states. The seventh chapter interprets the various aspects of Spinoza’s conception of the emotion of Desire, both insofar as it is a state of the mind and insofar it is a state of the body, as well as the relation between the emotion of Desire and man’s striving for self-preservation. The eighth chapter discusses what Spinoza writes on the strength of emotions and the way in which we make value judgments in order to finally interpret why it is, according to Spinoza, that ‘we so often see the better for ourselves but follow the worse’. (shrink)