Privacy is gravely endangered in the digital age, and we, the digital citizens, are its principal threat, willingly surrendering it to avail ourselves of new technology, and granting the government and corporations immense power over us. In this highly original work, Firmin DeBrabander begins with this premise and asks how we can ensure and protect our freedom in the absence of privacy. Can—and should—we rally anew to support this institution? Is privacy so important to political liberty after all? DeBrabander makes (...) the case that privacy is a poor foundation for democracy, that it is a relatively new value that has been rarely enjoyed throughout history—but constantly persecuted—and politically and philosophically suspect. The vitality of the public realm, he argues, is far more significant to the health of our democracy, but is equally endangered—and often overlooked—in the digital age. (shrink)

This important book examines Spinoza's moral and political philosophy. Specifically it considers Spinoza's engagement with the themes of Stoicism and his significant contribution to the origins of the European Enlightenment. Firmin DeBrabander explores the problematic view of the relationship between ethics and politics that Spinoza apparently inherited from the Stoics and in so doing asks some important questions that contribute to a crucial contemporary debate. Does ethics provide any foundation for political theory and if so in what way? Likewise, does (...) politics contribute anything essential to the life of virtue? And what is the political place and public role of the philosopher as a practitioner of ethics? In examining Spinoza's Ethics, his most important and widely-read work, and exploring the ways in which this work echoes Stoic themes regarding the public behaviour of the philosopher, the author seeks to answer these key questions and thus makes a fascinating contribution to the study of moral and political philosophy. (shrink)

Spinoza’s philosophy has bequeathed longstanding query and dispute regarding the meaning of several doctrines and elements of his system as well as the influences of his innovative, controversial project. Prominent among those debated aspects of Spinoza’s Ethics are its presentation in more geometrico and the goal toward which it purportedly directs us, a scientia intuitiva that will make us blessed, free, and eternal in some sense. In his book Meaning in Spinoza’s Method, Aaron Garrett maintains that the method and the (...) goal of Spinoza’s Ethics are mutually informative: we can only properly understand Spinoza’s method by viewing it in light of its ethical goal, Spinoza’s aim to “transform readers”. In turn, in elucidating Spinoza’s method, we can gain greater insight into what he means by our eternity. (shrink)