Spinoza on Learning to Live Together

Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-0-19-896629-6
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 240 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 233 mm, Gewicht: 372 g

Philosophising, as Spinoza conceives it, is the project of learning to live joyfully. Yet this is also a matter of learning to live together, and the surest manifestation of philosophical insight is the capacity to sustain a harmonious way of life.

Here, Susan James defends this overall interpretation of Spinoza's philosophy and explores its bearing on contemporary philosophical debates about issues such as religious toleration, how we use our knowledge, and the environmental emergency. Part I focuses on Spinoza's epistemology. Philosophical understanding empowers us by giving us access to truths about the world and ourselves, and by motivating us to act on them. It gives us reasons for living together and enhances our ability to cooperate. Part II takes up Spinoza's claim that, to cultivate this kind of understanding, we need to live in political communities. It explores his analysis of how states can develop a co-operative ethos. Finally, living joyfully compels us to look beyond the state to our relationship with the rest of nature. The concluding section of this book focuses on some of the overarching virtues this requires.

Autoren/Hrsg.

James, Susan

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction: Philosophy as the Art of Living Together

- Part I. Learning to Live Together

- Creating Rational Understanding: Spinoza as a Social Epistemologist

- When Does Truth Matter? The Relation Between Theology and Philosophy

- Spinoza on Superstition: Coming to Terms with Fear

- Narrative as a Means to Freedom: Spinoza on the Uses of Imagination

- Responding Emotionally to Fiction: A Spinozist Approach

- Part II. The Politics of Living Together

- Law and Sovereignty in Spinoza's Politics

- Natural Rights as Powers to Act

- Democracy and the Good Life in Spinoza's Philosophy

- Freedom, Slavery and the Passions

- Freedom of Conscience and Civic Peace: Spinoza on Piety

- Part III. Philosophical Communities

- Freedom and Nature: A Spinozist Invitation

- The Affective Cost of Philosophical Self-Transformation

- Fortitude: Living in the Light of our Knowledge

Über Autor(innen)

Susan James is Professor Emerita at Birkbeck College London and Visiting Professor of Philosophy at King's College London. She has written on a range of themes in early modern philosophy, including political philosophy, philosophical psychology and the philosophy of art. Among her publications are Passion and Action: The Emotions in Early Modern Philosophy (Oxford, 1997) and Spinoza on Philosophy Religion and Politics: The Theologico-Political Treatise (Oxford 2012).