Spinoza on the Human Perspective

Although Spinoza developed his philosophical system in the 17th century, he presents a view of the world that is in some ways quite close to the picture held by modern natural science insofar as it maintains that every change in the world physical change, e.g. movement, as well as psychological change, e.g. emotions is explainable in purely scientific terms. This is in part due to the fact that Spinoza also holds that these explanations ultimately form a coherent set of laws that determines everything that happens in the world. This picture is opposed to a traditional as well as to a common-sense view of human affairs. For instance, it implies that humans do not have any free will whatsoever and that everything happens by necessity. Accordingly, many interpreters have argued that Spinozas philosophy reduces humans to being simply one of the many natural phenomena, fully explainable by natural science, and somewhat illusory as they are nothing but temporary modifications of one underlying thing, Nature. In opposition to this reductivist understanding of Spinozas thought, this volume gathers various contributions concerned with the role of the human perspective and the human lifeform in his philosophy, all of which show that and how human life and specifically human attitudes are of greatest concern to Spinoza. Thus, this book draws attention to those parts of Spinozas philosophy where he is engaged explicitly in a reflection on human life, or some peculiarity of it, and the texts collected here argue in various ways that notions such as human being and human life play a significant role in his metaphysical, ethical, and political thought, and that they do so in non-trivial ways. They thereby also show that what we would call today anthropology, cognitive psychology, medicine, and political science all have their place within this system. These hitherto neglected perspectives on Spinozas philosophy taken together amount to a view of the Spinozistic universe that is no longer completely devoid of those features of reality that are usually taken to be fundamental to the human condition and experience, such as subjectivity or perspectivity, temporality, and emotional salience. Rather, for Spinoza as well as for us, these features play a role in questions such as how we can think of human nature, of the relations between human beings, of human experience and consciousness, and of communal life. In tackling these questions, this book provides not only new avenues for the study of Spinozas philosophy, but it also unearths the relevance of Spinozas thought for our understanding of those aspects of the world that still concern us today and our place in this world.