COVID-19 and Climate Change: Re-thinking Human and Non-Human in Western Philosophy

The pre-conditions and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are inter-connected with those of climate change, prompting reflection on how to re-think the relations between human and non-human on a changing planet. This essay considers that issue with reference to the contrasts between the philosophies of Descartes and Spinoza, who offered radically different approaches to the conceptualization of human presence in Nature.

A clinical seminar on Spinoza and Bion: a conversation between Miller AND Koritar

The present transcript follows an online discussion held on April 3, 2022, between Ian Miller, author of Clinical Spinoza: Integrating His Philosophy with Contemporary Therapeutic Practice (2022), and Endre Koritar.

Evolution and Biogeography, and the Systems Measurement of Mammalian Biotas

Biological evolution is generally regarded as a stochastic or probabilistic process, per the ideas of Darwin in the nineteenth century. Even if this is true at the meso-scale, it still may, however, be impacted by overarching constraints that we have not yet identified. In this paper, we revisit the subject of mammal faunal regions with a mind to explore a potential kind of macroevolutionary influence. We first identify an optimum seven-region mammal faunal classification system based on spatial and phylogenetic data from a comprehensive 2013 review, and then examine the possibility that this classification provides supporting evidence for a Spinoza-influenced philosophical/theoretical model of the "natural system" concept developed by one of the authors in the 1980s. The hierarchical pattern of regional affinities revealed does do this.

Vygotsky's Emotions: Desire/Passion in Spinoza, Proposal/Proposition in Halliday, and Teaching Sexual Consent to Children in Korea

Some problems, unraveled, seem to resolve each other. The Soviet integrative psychologist Vygotsky bequeathed to us an unfinished paper on the emotions. But was it about the teachings of Spinoza, was it concerned with contemporaneous theories, or did Vygotsky have a teaching/theory of his own? Vygotsky called his approach "Spinozian but not Spinozist" in his notes, but in his actual writings this appears as a distinction without a difference. What did he mean by it? In many places, Vygotsky appears to be retracing his steps rather than proceeding to a conclusion, yet he was already considering a title and a dedicatee. Was it really finishable? This paper argues that Vygotsky intended to use the teachings of Spinoza to critique his colleagues and associates; that he turned the critique back on "Spinozism" itself, and that the theory he intended to construct would be properly called "Spinozian". In the end, however, only practice can resolve the Spinozist teaching on emotions into the kind of working Spinozian theory Vygotsky had in mind; only real data will help us tie up the last loose threads. To this end, a linguistic approach to the problem of how the concept of sexual consent develops in Korean children is proposed.

Tragic Affirmation: Disability Beyond Optimism and Pessimism

Tragedy is a founding theme in disability studies. Critical disability studies have, since their inception, argued that understandings of disability as tragedy obscure the political dimensions of disability and are a barrier facing disabled persons in society. In this paper, we propose an affirmative understanding of tragedy, employing the philosophical works of Nietzsche, Spinoza and Hasana Sharp. Tragedy is not, we argue, something to be opposed by disability politics; we can affirm life within it. To make our case, we look to an ongoing ethnography of two Canadian children's rehabilitation clinics. Looking to the clinical experience of Canadian boys and young men diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and those of their families, we show how this affirmative understanding of tragedy allows us to pursue the themes of disability politics within tragedy. Contrary to an optimism that would eschew tragedy at all costs or a pessimistic approach that declines to act in the face of tragic circumstance, we argue that a revised understanding of tragedy allows us to situate the occasionally-tragic clinical experience of disability in a philosophy of life. Both disability and tragedy point us to the shared entanglements that make life what it is.

Spinoza on the resistance of bodies

Commentators often claim that the bodies of Spinoza's physics resist the changes they undergo. But it's not always clear what they mean when they say this, or whether they are entitled to say it. This article clarifies what it might mean to for Spinoza's bodies to resist change, and examines the evidence for such a view. In the first half, the author argues that there is some limited evidence for such a view, but not nearly as much as people think. In the second half, the author proposes looking for a mental analogue to collision in the realm of ideas and argues that adequacy amounts to a meaningful concept of resistance in Spinoza, albeit one that is incomplete.

Hope and Optimism: A Spinozist Perspective on COVID-19

This essay discusses hope and optimism with reference to current rhetoric around COVID-19. It draws on Spinoza to suggest that much of that rhetoric rests on questionable assumptions about the supremacy of human reason within Nature.

Rethinking emotion as a natural kind: Correctives from Spinoza and hierarchical homology

It is commonly claimed that the folk category of emotion does not constitute a natural kind, due to the significant compositional differences between its members, especially basic and complex emotions. Arguably, however, this conclusion stems from the dualistic philosophical anthropology underlying the discussion, which presupposes a metaphysical "split" between mind and body. This is the case irrespective of whether a traditional or biological (homology-based) approach to natural kinds is adopted. Since the origins of this increasingly disputed anthropology can ultimately be traced to Descartes' substance dualism, its adverse effects can likewise be addressed using a contemporary theory of emotion developed from Spinoza, one of Descartes' earliest critics on this issue. Furthermore, a Spinozistic view of emotion accords with the recent shift to a hierarchical approach to homology, which recognises that the evolutionary lineage of complex biological units should be traced via relational qualities rather than physical characteristics. Both the Spinozistic approach to emotion and the hierarchical approach to homology show that the compositional variation in the folk category of emotion does not necessarily preclude it from constituting a natural kind.

Adriaen Verwer (1654/5-1717) and the first edition of Isaac Newton's Principia in the Dutch Republic

The Amsterdam-based merchant and mathematics enthusiast Adriaen Verwer (1654/5-1717) was one of the few in the Dutch Republic to respond to the first edition of Newton's Principia (1687). Based on a close study of his published work, his correspondence with the Scottish mathematician and astronomer David Gregory (1659-1708), and his annotations in his own copy of the first edition of the Principia, I shall scrutinize the impact of Newton's ideas on Verwer's thinking. The proposed analysis, which will add nuance to earlier findings, also has broader implications for our understanding of the introduction of Newton's ideas in the Dutch Republic, as will be shown.

Moral sensitivity revisited

Nurses find themselves in a unique position - between patient and physicians, and in close proximity to the patient. Moral sensitivity can help nurses to cope with the daily turmoil of demands and opinions while delivering care in concordance with the value system of the patient. This article aims to reconsider the concept of moral sensitivity by discussing the function of emotions in morality. We turn to the ideas of historic and contemporary authors on the function of emotions in morality to expand our understanding of moral sensitivity. Ancient philosophers and contemporary psychologists uphold different strategies on the orientation of morality being (a) personal growth or (b) community living, and the primordial function of (c) reason and (d) emotions in the creation of judgements about good and bad. The theoretical discussion on the function of emotions in morality shows that by focusing on reason alone, one leaves out an essential part of morality. The concept of moral sensitivity should (1) include an initial judgment of good and bad based on emotions, (2) hold the ability to reflect on the initial judgement and the associated emotions, (3) include the ability to understand other stakeholders' perspectives based on the ideal-types and (4) include a personal decision on the right course of action.

More evidence against the Spinozan model: Cognitive load diminishes memory for "true" feedback

We tested two competing models on the memory representation of truth-value information: the Spinozan model and the Cartesian model. Both models assume that truth-value information is represented with memory "tags," but the models differ in their coding scheme. According to the Cartesian model, true information is stored with a "true" tag, and false information is stored with a "false" tag. In contrast, the Spinozan model proposes that only false information receives "false" tags. All other (i.e., untagged) information is considered as true by default. Hence, in case of cognitive load during feedback encoding, the latter model predicts a load effect on memory for "false" feedback, but not on memory for "true" feedback. To test this prediction, participants studied trivia statements (Experiment 1) or nonsense statements that allegedly represented foreign-language translations (Experiment 2). After each statement, participants received feedback on the (alleged) truth value of the statement. Importantly, half of the participants experienced cognitive load during feedback processing. For the trivia statements of Experiment 1, we observed a load effect on memory for both "false" and "true" feedback. In contrast, for the nonsense statements of Experiment 2, we found a load effect on memory for "true" feedback only. Both findings clearly contradict the Spinozan model. However, our results are also only partially in line with the predictions of the Cartesian model. For this reason, we suggest a more flexible model that allows for an optional and context-dependent encoding of "true" tags and "false" tags.

[The controversy between Grotius, Hobbes and Spinoza on the jus circa sacra texts, pretexts, contexts and circomstances]

In this contribution, I sketch out a methodological framework for the study of controversies in the history of philosophy. It is built around four basic components: texts, contexts, pretexts and circumstances. I show how, once these four elements have been identified and systematically distinguished and distributed, a controversy has been localized and circumscribed. I show, moreover, how controversies are formally linked to each other through the migration of texts from one context to another. Next, I take as an example the controversy on the jus circa sacra, or "right of holy matters," a key controversy in the political philosophy of the early modern period, focusing in particular on the work by Grotius, Hobbes and Spinoza.

[Radicalism and feminism: The case of Poulain de la Barre]

Early modern radicalism and its criteria are described and defined by Jonathan Israel in various works. Poulain de la Barre, one of the first modern feminist thinkers, first is used by Israel as an example of the so-called radical Enlightenment and finally is rejected as such. This case study exhibed the necessity of questionning the coherence of the required criteria for defining a « radical » thinker, especially when examinating carefully the last paragraph of Spinoza's Political Treatise.

The education of Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (1651-1708)

Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus, mathematician, inventor, and correspondent of Spinoza, is often thought to have studied medicine at Leiden, though documentation of this fact has been lacking. Tschirnhaus' medical education is here documented, along with the nature of his medical practice.