Spinoza S Epistemology Through A Geometrical Lens

This book interrogates the ontology of mathematical entities in Spinoza as a basis for addressing a wide range of interpretive issues in Spinoza’s epistemology—from his antiskepticism and philosophy of science to the nature and scope of reason and intuitive knowledge and the intellectual love of God. Going against recent trends in Spinoza scholarship, and drawing on various sources, including Spinoza’s engagements with optical theory and physics, Matthew Homan argues for a realist interpretation of geometrical figures in Spinoza; illustrates their role in a Spinozan hypothetico-deductive scientific method; and develops Spinoza’s mathematical examples to better illuminate the three kinds of knowledge. The result is a portrait of Spinoza’s epistemology as sanguine and distinctive yet at home in the new Cartesian and Galilean scientific-philosophical paradigm.

"Spinoza's Epistemology through a Geometrical Lens is a thrilling and distinctive study of Spinoza's epistemology. It's also a major study of Spinoza's relationship to the unfolding scientific revolution. In particular, Homan reopens and deepens the debate over Spinoza's ambivalent relationship to mathematization of nature by the mathematical sciences. In so doing he offers an elegant re-reading of Spinoza as a systematic philosopher. Homan's book will be of great interest to Spinozists and scholars of early modern philosophy, historians of science, philosophers of mathematics and epistemologists, especially those interested in affective ways of knowing." -Eric Schliesser, Professor of Political Science, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands "Matthew Homan has convinced me to reconsider my frequent exhortation against reading Spinoza as a Cartesian. Homan peels back thick and complicated layers in Spinoza's understanding and use of mathematical properties and geometric figures in science to reveal deep insights and controversial interpretations of Spinoza's epistemology and important connections and even bridges to his metaphysical project. Spinoza's Epistemology through a Geometrical Lens contributes to and even redirects many important ongoing discussions in scholarship on Spinoza." -Christopher Martin, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, USA This book interrogates the ontology of mathematical entities in Spinoza as a basis for addressing a wide range of interpretive issues in Spinoza's epistemology-from his antiskepticism and philosophy of science to the nature and scope of reason and intuitive knowledge and the intellectual love of God. Going against recent trends in Spinoza scholarship, and drawing on various sources, including Spinoza's engagements with optical theory and physics, Matthew Homan argues for a realist interpretation of geometrical figures in Spinoza; illustrates their role in a Spinozan hypothetico-deductive scientific method; and develops Spinoza's mathematical examples to better illuminate the three kinds of knowledge. The result is a portrait of Spinoza's epistemology as sanguine and distinctive yet at home in the new Cartesian and Galilean scientific-philosophical paradigm. Matthew Homan is Senior Lecturer of Philosophy at Christopher Newport University, USA.

This book is the fruit of twenty-five years of study of Spinoza by the editor and translator of a new and widely acclaimed edition of Spinoza's collected works. Based on three lectures delivered at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1984, the work provides a useful focal point for continued discussion of the relationship between Descartes and Spinoza, while also serving as a readable and relatively brief but substantial introduction to the Ethics for students. Behind the Geometrical Method is actually two books in one. The first is Edwin Curley's text, which explains Spinoza's masterwork to readers who have little background in philosophy. This text will prove a boon to those who have tried to read the Ethics, but have been baffled by the geometrical style in which it is written. Here Professor Curley undertakes to show how the central claims of the Ethics arose out of critical reflection on the philosophies of Spinoza's two great predecessors, Descartes and Hobbes. The second book, whose argument is conducted in the notes to the text, attempts to support further the often controversial interpretations offered in the text and to carry on a dialogue with recent commentators on Spinoza. The author aligns himself with those who interpret Spinoza naturalistically and materialistically.

The context within which Spinoza once developed his theory has clearly changed. However, most of Spinoza's general approach to conceptualizing the world can still be utilized, albeit with a slight change in terminology. Spinoza's approach has many advantages as compared with the approaches of his contemporaries, such as Descartes and Leibniz. Conceptualization today also requires taking fields such as physics and mathematics explicitly into account. This is very much in the sense of Spinoza's original intention that led him to speak in his main work of an ethics to be proved in geometrical order (which actually means: according to mathematical methods). This book is about a mathematical machinery which, is based on a strict logical structure, as well as on a not so strict hermeneutic structure - and is even representable in terms of algebraic expressions of a considerable symbolic quality. Eventually, this may be capable of shedding a completely new light on the ancient problem of the relationship between human beings and the rest of nature. As the book shows, the theory of evolutionary systems is a prime candidate for a conceptualization that might be useful in order to concretely develop this new insight.

A new, scholarly and accessible translation of this seventeenth-century philosophical text, including an introduction, glossary and chronology.

Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order (Latin: Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata), usually known as the Ethics, is a philosophical treatise written by Benedict de Spinoza. It was written between 1664 and 1665 and was first published in 1677.The book is perhaps the most ambitious attempt to apply the method of Euclid in philosophy. Spinoza puts forward a small number of definitions and axioms from which he attempts to derive hundreds of propositions and corollaries, such as "When the Mind imagines its own lack of power, it is saddened by it", "A free man thinks of nothing less than of death", and "The human Mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the Body, but something of it remains which is eternal."

This multidisciplinary study focuses on the creative state as the nucleus of the work of numerous poets, artists, and philosophers from twentieth-century Spain. Beginning with cognitive science, Gala explores the mental processes and structures that underline creative thinking, for poets like José María Hinojosa, Clara Janés, and Jorge Guillén.