Metaphysics and Epistemology as Ethics in Spinoza:
Ethics as a Monistic Philosophical System
Marko J. Fuchs (Otto-Friedrich University Bamberg)
Time/Location
Monday, 15 February 2016
3:00-5:00 p.m.
Yale-NUS College
Elm College Office Conference Room (RC2-01-07C)
Campus Map (https://www.yale-nus.edu.sg/about/campus-map/)
Abstract:
Spinoza’s Ethics where he ingeniously develops his monistic and deterministic philosophy is acknowledged to be one of the most innovative and influential contributions to modern rationalism. Furthermore, this work is also appreciated as a treasure chest of interesting responses to many systematical questions that are still or again relevant in today’s philosophical discussions, e.g. the mind-body-dualism, the problem of the influence of emotion on cognition, and the foundation of social and political structures—to name just a few. This approach, however, tends to ignore that Spinoza’s major concern within the Ethics is genuinely ethical, that is, that the overall topic of Spinoza’s Ethics as a whole, not just of its last two books, is the question how finite rational beings, i.e. we, are able to pursue and achieve a succeeding and felicitous life. Furthermore, Spinoza is convinced that beatitude does not consist in some kind of activity outside philosophy, but that it is nothing else than philosophical cognition (as an activity) of the world and its principles, a cognition which finds its specific and adequate expression in a closed rational system. Thus, Spinoza’s metaphysics which he develops right at the beginning of his Ethics (in book I) and his epistemology in books II and III are not outside of Spinoza’s ethics but rather essential parts of it. In other words, metaphysics and epistemology according to Spinoza are ethics. In my talk I will try to explain this thesis by developing some of Spinoza’s arguments from the Ethics and discuss the question whether Spinoza’s conception of ethics as a closed rational philosophical system that involves metaphysics and epistemology as integral parts is systematically convincing.
About the speaker:
Dr. Marko J. Fuchs (Otto-Friedrich University Bamberg) works on theories of justice in antiquity and the Middle Ages; ethics and practical philosophy in late Scholastic and early modern European philosophy; theories of selfhood; and theories of friendship.