Spinoza and the Cunning of Imagination / Eugene Garver.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Garver, Eugene, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Spinoza, Benedictus de, 1632-1677.

Spinoza, Benedictus de.

Spinoza, Benedictus de, 1632-1677. Ethica.

Imagination (Philosophy).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 307 pages)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Spinoza's Ethics, and its project of proving ethical truths through the geometric method, have attracted and challenged readers for more than three hundred years. In Spinoza and the Cunning of Imagination, Eugene Garver uses the imagination as a guiding thread to this work. Other readers have looked at the imagination to account for Spinoza's understanding of politics and religion, but this is the first inquiry to see it as central to the Ethics as a whole-imagination as a quality to be cultivated, and not simply overcome. ​Spinoza initially presents imagination as an inadequate and confused way of thinking, always inferior to ideas that adequately represent things as they are. It would seem to follow that one ought to purge the mind of imaginative ideas and replace them with rational ideas as soon as possible, but as Garver shows, the Ethics don't allow for this ultimate ethical act until one has cultivated a powerful imagination. This is, for Garver, "the cunning of imagination." The simple plot of progress becomes, because of the imagination, a complex journey full of reversals and discoveries. For Garver, the "cunning" of the imagination resides in our ability to use imagination to rise above it.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

First Part

Chapter 1. Adequate Ideas Are Infinite Modes

Chapter 2. Our Knowledge of God and Its Place in Ethics

Chapter 3. Spinoza's Will to Power: How Does the Conatus Become a Desire to Increase Power?

Second Part

Chapter 5. Conflicts among Emotions, among Ideas, and among People

Chapter 6. Hilarity and the Goods of Mind and Body

Chapter 7. The Strength of the Emotions and the Power of the Intellect

Chapter 8. Ethics and the Ethics: How Does Reason Become Practical?

Notes

Index of Names

Index of Passages in Spinoza's Works

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 22. Okt 2019)

ISBN:

9780226575735

022657573X

OCLC:

1053888213