Beschreibung
The present work is intended once again to draw the attention of readers to the resources opened up by Spinoza for the elucidation of the classical problems of philosophy. Today these problems are too often taken to be merely verbal, so that answers to them so far as these are metaphysical are confidently claimed to be "nonsense. " My labours will, therefore, seem to minds thus committed to have been untimely and funda mentally futile. Untimely they may have been, but unless also fu tile their untimeliness may render them the more exigent; and to judge them as futile is to claim a certainty not avaIlable to the honest sceptic. Vigorous attempts to discredit metaphysical investigation are no new thing, though the latest is, perhaps, the most thoroughgoing, and cer tainly the most self-confident. Yet it may well be argued that effective criticism of metaphysics is either itself a sort of metaphysics, or has for its foundation presuppositions that could only be metaphysically es tablished. "Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret. " Metaphysics survives, and can only survive as a true philosophia perennis, as the catalyst of scepsis and schism - neither as inexorabie dogma "once for all de livered," nor as "a plant that cometh of the lust of the earth, without a formal seed.
Autorenporträt
InhaltsangabeProlegomena.- I. The Human Predicament and Metaphysical Method.- (i) Datum and Analogy.- (ii) Knowledge and Reality.- (iii) Transcendence and the Human Predicament.- a. Self-Transcendence.- b. Other-Transcendence.- (iv) Ontology and Analogy.- II. Causation and Agency.- (i) 'Natural Cause' Incoherent.- (ii) Logical Ground Inefficient.- (iii) Spinozistic Cause: Agency and Conatus.- I. Nature.- I. 'Natura Creatrix'.- (i) Potency, Agency, and Essence.- a. Durational Potency, Conatus, and Becoming.- b. Eternal Potency, Actio, and Being.- (ii) Spinozistic Substance and Attribute.- II. 'Natura Creata'.- (i) Spinozistic Mode: Macrocosm and Microcosm.- (ii) The Individuation of the Macrocosm.- (iii) The Communitas of the Microcosms.- III. 'Natura Emanata'.- (i) The 'Bergsonian' Inchoation.- (ii) The Perceptual World.- a. Perceptual Time.- b. Perceptual Space.- c. Perceptual Quality or 'Objective Content'.- d. The Conatus of Perceptual Things.- IV. 'Natura Sophisticata'.- (i) The World of Science.- a. The Elimination of Action and Quality.- b. Cause and Probability.- (ii) 'Alexandrian' Space-Time.- a. Space, Time, and Space-Time.- b. Space-Time and Quality.- (iii) Pointer-Readings - the Nemesis of Sophistication.- V. The Dialectic of Finite Creation.- (i) In Utero Naturae.- (ii) The Birth of the Finite Self.- (iii) Its Pilgrimage.- (iv) In Civitate Dei.- II. Morality.- VI. Man, Nature, and Morality.- (i) The Union of Mind and Body.- (ii) Automatum Spirituale>.- a. The Automatic Machine.- b. Automatum and Pseudautomatum.- (iii) Morality, Indeterminism, and Choice.- VII. Good, Evil, and Perfection.- (i) Desire and Good.- (ii) Natural Good and Moral Good.- (iii) Divine Creation and Evil.- (iv) The Latent Key to Spinoza's Doctrine.- VIII. Obligation and Emendation.- (i) The Morality of Obedience.- (ii) The Pseudo-Morality of Sanctions.- (iii) The Liberty of Enlightenment.- (iv) Self-Determination and Self-Legislation.- IX. The Preconditions of the Moral Life.- (i) The 'State of Nature' 179.- (ii) The Civic State.- a. The Civic State as Absolute.- b. The Limitations of the Civic State.- 1. What is Impossible.- 2. What is Unsafe.- 3. What is Inadvisable.- (iii) Civility and Morality.- X. Morality and Salvation.- (i) Exemplary and Mutual Ethics.- (ii) Morality as Pseudo-Communitas.- (iii) The Modes of Pseudo-Communitas.- (iv) The Incidence of Salvation.- Indexes.- (i) References to the Works of Spinoza.- (ii) Personal Names.- (iii) Subjects and Catchwords.
