The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza (repost)
The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza
Cambridge University Press | 1995-10-27 | 465 pages | ISBN: 0521398657 | PDF | 24,2 MB
Cambridge University Press | 1995-10-27 | 465 pages | ISBN: 0521398657 | PDF | 24,2 MB
The Companion is almost certainly the best anthology on Spinoza's philosophy presently available, and his major work, Ethics, is naturally at its center. Among the high points in Jonathan Bennett's compendious essay on Spinoza's metaphysics is his discussion of "size neutrality"–the claim that small things differ from large ones only in size–which is memorably described as "a blank check that philosophers wrote on Nature's bank and that did not visibly bounce until late in the 19th century." Other essays on Ethics deal with Spinoza's views on epistemology, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of mind, and–unsurprisingly–ethics. Concerning other aspects of Spinoza's work, Edwin Curley's essay, delightfully titled "Kissinger, Spinoza, and Genghis Khan," argues that Spinoza's political philosophy is essentially Machiavellian; Spinoza's contributions to theology and Bible scholarship are carefully dealt with by the late Alan Donagan and Richard H. Popkin. –Glenn Branch