Philosophy (Tetsugaku)
Online ISSN : 1884-2380
Print ISSN : 0387-3358
ISSN-L : 0387-3358
Vision of the Inside and the Outside
An Approach to the Philosophy of Spinoza
Ichiro SATO
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2006 Volume 2006 Issue 57 Pages 93-111,6

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Abstract

According to Spinoza, the human mind is the idea, or knowledge of the human body. As the body is in the causal connection of the universe and is changing every moment, so is wavering the mind. The Affects occur in this state and form our usual condition. How was Spinoza considering the way to the firm preservation of oneself in this "flux"?
Although Spinoza in Ethics declares that he will consider the affects as natural things, he has treated them as born of the knowledge in his earlier work, Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being where the treatment of the affects is under the conspicuous influence of Descartes' Passions of the Soul. In consequence, the restraint of affects worked out in Short Treatise turns out, I think, insufficient.
However, in this treatise, Spinoza represents remarkable investigations into our knowledge about the inside and the outside which does not appear clearly in his mature work, Ethics. He uses the terms exemplar humanae naturae (a model of human nature) only in a single passage of Ethics. This passage appears inconsistent with his criticism of the universals and of the final cause and has caused the embarrassment among interpreters. We will receive this exemplar as it is, and understand it in the context of Short Treatise. As conclusion we intend to make clear the signification of Spinoza's investigation into the problem about the inside and the outside as his original philosophy.

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