In part I of this paper I argue that on his theory of the mind as the idea of an actually existing body Spinoza is unable to account for the ability of the mind to have adequate knowledge, and I suggest that his theory of the eternity of the mind can be viewed as his solution to this problem. In part II I deal with the question of the meaning of ‘eternity’ in Spinoza, in regard both to God and the (...) human mind, and I sketch a line of thought which I believe may have provided him with further motivation for his theory that a part of the mind is eternal. (shrink)

It is argued, first, that although Spinoza's early Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect does show evidence of a foundationalist approach to the justification of knowledge, there are good reasons to think he came to find such an approach unsatisfactory; and second, that the Ethics notion of certainty as adequate knowledge of one's knowledge is a justificational concept which is holistic in that any instance of such certainty depends on knowledge of the entire basic metaphysical system. Finally it is (...) shown that Spinoza's having come to hold a nonlinear view regarding the justificational structure of knowledge explains why he chose to present his philosophy in the geometric form, and why he never succeeded in formulating a method of discovery. (shrink)

This brief text assists students in understanding Spinoza's philosophy and thinking so that they can more fully engage in useful, intelligent class dialogue and improve their understanding of course content. Part of the "Wadsworth Philosophers Series," (which will eventually consist of approximately 100 titles, each focusing on a single "thinker" from ancient times to the present), ON SPINOZA is written by a philosopher deeply versed in the philosophy of this key thinker. Like other books in the series, this concise book (...) offers sufficient insight into the thinking of a notable philosopher better enabling students to engage in the reading and to discuss the material in class and on paper. (shrink)

This article compares the social movement mobilization that led to reforms in police and judicial handling of battering in the United States to the movement ideology, organization, and tactics that resulted in analogous policy reform in the processing of dowry burnings and beatings in India. Using field notes and secondary sources from both countries, the article examines how both movements redefined violence against women in families as a public issue, then looks at how movement demands affected policy reform in each (...) country. The analysis questions the current conceptualization of social movement success. Social movements theory assumes that entry into the polity of liberal, democratic states constitutes success in the sense of social change. Yet the cases analyzed suggest that assumptions about the gender neutrality of state response to movements prevents researchers from critically examining the outcomes of social movement mobilization. Moreover, institutionalization of women's movement demands and organization may diminish the capacity of such movements to control the social construction of domestic violence against women by providing protection without empowerment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Feminist Studies 42, no. 3. © 2016 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 689 Elizabeth Jean Hornbeck Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?: Domestic Violence in The Shining At first glance, Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film The Shining seems to be a straightforward Gothic horror film. It starts with the Torrance family— Jack, Wendy, and Danny—moving from their Boulder, Colorado, apartment into the Overlook Hotel, where Jack (Jack Nicholson) has accepted (...) a job as the winter caretaker. By the film’s climax, an axe-wielding Jack says to his terrified wife and son (Shelley Duvall and Danny Lloyd), through the door to the bathroom where they are hiding, “Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in. Not by the hair on your chinny chin chin? Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in!”1 Jack assumes the role of the Big Bad Wolf, the nightmarish, predatory beast of fairy tales. These lines, along with Nicholson’s exaggerated performance as a crazed killer, parody the Gothic horror genre and slasher films and even children ’s fairy tales in what is, at its core, a story about domestic violence. In both Kubrick’s film and Stephen King’s 1977 novel, from which the film was adapted, the Gothic genre becomes a vehicle for a serious tale about violence within the family. The “discovery” of child abuse in the 1960s, “the creation of the wife-beating problem” in the 1970s, and 1. The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick (1980; Warner Home Video, 2007), DVD. The line is from the fairytale of The Three Little Pigs. Geoffrey Cocks discusses the sources and ramifications of the fairytale in The Wolf at the Door: Stanley Kubrick, History and the Holocaust (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2004), 33–38. 690 Elizabeth Jean Hornbeck the feminist movement allowed viewers to perceive domestic violence with a new level of understanding.2 It is my contention that The Shining comments on domestic violence in a way that has been mostly overlooked by critics. While most analyses of both the novel and the film have come from literary and cinema studies perspectives, I offer a sociological approach focused on the profound effect of changing social mores on cultural production. I draw also on feminist and queer theorizing of audience identification, gender, and erotic pleasure in horror films to explain the significant contributions made by King, Kubrick, Duvall, and screenwriter Diane Johnson to the film’s intervention in US public discourse about domestic violence.3 The first scholar who argued that Kubrick’s film is essentially a domestic abuse narrative was James Hala, who based his analysis on a close reading of critical reviews of the film and a discussion of the performances, with no reference to its social, political, or historical context.4 But it is important to note that both the novel and the film came at the end of a decade when the recognition of domestic violence as a social problem was still relatively new. Sociologists and the medical and legal professions did not take “wife beating” seriously until the mid-1970s, when the women’s movement brought public attention to spousal abuse.5 2. Kathleen J. Tierney, “The Battered Women Movement and the Creation of the Wife Beating Problem,” Social Problems 29, no. 3 (1982): 207–20; Stephen J. Pfohl, “The ‘Discovery’ of Child Abuse,” Social Problems 24, no. 3 (1977): 310–23. 3. The theoretical works that I have drawn on most heavily are Carol J. Clover, Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992); and David Greven, Representations of Femininity in American Genre Cinema: The Woman’s Film, Film Noir, and Modern Horror (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 4. James Hala, “Kubrick’s The Shining: The Specters and the Critics,” in The Shining Reader, ed. Anthony Magistrale (Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1990), 203–16. 5. In 1976, a national survey reported that “at least 1.8 million American women are severely beaten in their own homes every year.” Murray A. Straus, et al., Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family, as cited in “‘The Burning Bed’: TV... (shrink)

Benedict de Spinoza is one of the most controversial and enigmatic thinkers in the history of philosophy. His greatest work, Ethics (1677), developed a comprehensive philosophical system and argued that God and Nature are identical. His scandalous Theological-Political Treatise (1670) provoked outrage during his lifetime due to its biblical criticism, anticlericalism, and defense of the freedom to philosophize. Together, these works earned Spinoza a reputation as a singularly radical thinker. -/- In this book, Steinberg and Viljanen offer a concise (...) and up-to-date account of Spinoza’s thought and its philosophical legacy. They explore the full range of Spinoza’s ideas, from politics and theology to ontology and epistemology. Drawing broadly on Spinoza’s impressive oeuvre, they have crafted a lucid introduction for readers unfamiliar with this important philosopher, as well as a nuanced and enlightening study for more experienced readers. (shrink)

Spinoza's Political Psychology advances a novel, comprehensive interpretation of Spinoza's political writings, exploring how his analysis of psychology informs his arguments for democracy and toleration. Justin Steinberg shows how Spinoza's political method resembles the Renaissance civic humanism in its view of governance as an adaptive craft that requires psychological attunement. He examines the ways that Spinoza deploys this realist method in the service of empowerment, suggesting that the state can affectively reorient and thereby liberate its citizens, but only if (...) it attends to their actual motivational and epistemic capacities. His book will interest a range of readers in Spinoza studies and the history of political thought, as well as readers working in contemporary political theory. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that dispositions cannot be analyzed in terms of simple subjunctive conditionals (because of what are called “masked dispositions” and “finkish dispositions”). I here defend a qualified subjunctive account of dispositions according to which an object is disposed to Φ when conditions C obtain if and only if, if conditions C were to obtain, then the object would Φ ceteris paribus . I argue that this account does not fall prey to the objections that have been raised (...) in the literature. (shrink)

Priority monism is the view that the cosmos is the only independent concrete object. The paper argues that, pace its proponents, Priority monism is in conflict with the dependence of any whole on any of its parts: if the cosmos does not depend on its parts, neither does any smaller composite.

Spinoza's account of belief entails that if A has two ideas, p and q, with incompatible content, A believes that p if the idea of p is stronger than the idea of q. This seems to leave little space for dominant non-beliefs, or cases in which there is discord between one's beliefs and one's affective-behavioral responses. And yet Spinoza does allow for two classes of dominant non-beliefs: efficacious fictions [fictiones] and ideas that conduce to akrasia. I show how Spinoza can (...) account for dominant non-beliefs within his model of cognition by distinguishing between the doxastic and the affective powers of ideas and by suggesting that doxastic power is best understood diachronically. While other scholars have stressed the elegance of Spinoza's account of ideas, this paper highlights the sophistication and flexibility of his account. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Technological advances introduce the possibility that, in the future, firms will be able to use big-data analysis to discover and offer consumers their individual reservation price. This can generate some interesting benefits, such as a better state of affairs in terms of equality of both welfare and resources, as well as increased social welfare. However, these benefits are countered by considerations of relational equality. This article takes up the market-failures approach as its basis to demonstrate what is wrong with using (...) big data to personalize prices. The article offers an improvement to the market-failures approach and argues that what is wrong with using big data to personalize prices is that it unfairly undermines consumers’ ability to benefit from the market, which is the very point of having a market. (shrink)

Almost 60,000 people in the United States with end stage renal disease are waiting for a kidney transplant. Because of the scarcity of organs from deceased donors live kidney donors have become a critical source of organs; in 2001, for the first time in recent decades, the number of live kidney donors exceeded the number of deceased donors. The paradigm used to justify putting live kidney donors at risk includes the low risk to the donor, the favorable risk-benefit ratio, the (...) psychological benefits to the donor, altruism, and autonomy coupled with informed consent; because each of these arguments is flawed we need to lessen our dependence on live kidney donors and increase the number of organs retrieved from deceased donors. An "opting in" paradigm would reward people who agree to donate their kidneys after they die with allocation preference should they need a kidney while they are alive. An "opting in" program should increase the number of kidneys available for transplantation and eliminate the morally troubling problem of "organ takers" who would accept a kidney if they needed one but have made no provision to be an organ donor themselves. People who "opt in" would preferentially get an organ should they need one at the minimal cost of donating their kidneys when they have no use for them; it is a form of organ insurance a rational person should find extremely attractive. An "opting in" paradigm would simulate the reciprocal altruism observed in nature that sociobiologists believe enhances group survival. Although the allocation of organs based on factors other than need might be morally troubling, an "opting in" paradigm compares favorably with other methods of obtaining more organs and accepting the status quo of extreme organ scarcity. Although an "opting in" policy would be based on enlightened self-interest, by demonstrating the utilitarian value of mutual assistance, it would promote the attitude that self-interest sometimes requires the perception that we are all part of a common humanity. (shrink)

US Supreme Court rulings concerning sanctions for juvenile offenders have drawn on the science of brain development and concluded that adolescents are inherently less mature than adults in ways that render them less culpable. This conclusion departs from arguments made in cases involving the mature minor doctrine, in which teenagers have been portrayed as comparable to adults in their capacity to make medical decisions. I attempt to reconcile these apparently incompatible views of adolescents’ decision-making competence. Adolescents are indeed less mature (...) than adults when making decisions under conditions that are characterized by emotional arousal and peer pressure, but adolescents aged 15 and older are just as mature as adults when emotional arousal is minimized and when they are not under the influence of peers, conditions that typically characterize medical decision-making. The mature minor doctrine, as applied to individuals 15 and older, is thus consistent with recent research on adolescent development. (shrink)

Much recent work on empathy assumes that one cannot give non-question-begging reasons for empathizing with others. In this article I argue that there are epistemic reasons for cultivating empathy. After sketching a brief general account of empathy, I proceed to argue that empathic information is user-friendly, fostering the achievement of widely held cognitive goals. It can also contribute to social knowledge and the satisfaction of democratic ideals. The upshot of my analysis is that there are strong, but defeasible, epistemic reasons (...) for empathizing with others. (shrink)

In recent years, insurance companies have begun tracking their customers’ behaviors and price premiums accordingly. Based on the Market-Failures Approach as well as the Justice-Failures Approach, I provide an ethical analysis of the use of tracking technologies in the insurance industry. I focus on the use of telematics in car insurance and on the use of fitness tracking in life insurance. The use of tracking has some important benefits to policyholders and insurers alike: it reduces moral hazard and fraud, increases (...) actuarial fairness, and incentivizes safe behavior. These benefits, however, are outweighed by significant moral objections. First, the use of tracking technologies significantly undermines the fairness of the interaction between insurance companies and policyholders. Specifically, the use of tracking eliminates information asymmetries, but in such a way that favors insurers exclusively. Furthermore, tracked behaviors and the ability to choose to behave safely are highly correlated with other variables such as income. Therefore, tracking-based insurance relies on and exacerbates existing inequalities and injustices, which undermines the benefits that tracking is supposed to introduce. (shrink)

Joseph Heath (2014) argues that the contribution of competitive markets to Pareto-efficiency generates moral constraints that apply to business managers. Heath argues that ethical behavior on the part of management consists in avoiding profit-seeking strategies which, under conditions of perfect competition, would decrease Pareto-efficiency. I argue that because (1) such conditions do not obtain; and (2) the most efficient result – under imperfect conditions – is not achieved by satisfying the largest possible set of the remaining conditions; it is (3) (...) impossible to draw any substantive ethical guidelines from Heath’s approach. (shrink)

More and more, we face AI-based products and services. Using these services often requires our explicit consent, e.g., by agreeing to the services’ Terms and Conditions clause. Current advances introduce the ability of AI to evolve and change its own modus operandi over time in such a way that we cannot know, at the moment of consent, what it is in the future to which we are now agreeing. Therefore, informed consent is impossible regarding certain kinds of AI. Call this (...) the problem of radical ignorance. Interestingly, radical ignorance exists in consent contexts other than AI, where it seems that individuals can provide informed consent. The article argues that radical ignorance can undermine informed consent in some contexts but not others because, under certain institutional, autonomy-protecting conditions, consent can be valid without being (perfectly) informed. By understanding these institutional conditions, we can formulate practical solutions to foster valid, albeit imperfectly informed consent across various decision contexts and within different institutions. (shrink)

In IVP50S, Spinoza claims that “one who is moved to aid others neither by reason nor by pity is rightly called inhuman. For (by IIIP27) he seems to be unlike a man” (IVP50S). At first blush, the claim seems implausible, as it relies on the dubious assumption that beings will necessarily imitate the affects of conspecifics. In the first two sections of this paper, I explain why Spinoza accepts this thesis and show how this claim can be made compatible with (...) his account of representation. In the third and final section I offer an auxiliary defense of the thesis, showing that, according to Spinoza, to be human is to sociable, and sociability depends on the imitation of the affects. (shrink)

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of families in the United States and across the world, impacting parent mental health and stress, and in turn, the parent-child relationship. Music is a common parent-child activity and has been found to positively impact relationships, but little is known about music’s role in parent-child interactions during a pandemic. The current study utilized an online questionnaire to assess the use of music in the home of young children and their parents (...) in the United States and Canada during Covid-19 and its relationship with parents’ affective attachment with their child. Musical activity was high for both parents and children. Parents reported using music for both emotion regulation and to socially connect with their children. Parent-child musical engagement was associated with parent-child attachment, controlling for relevant parent variables including parent distress, efficacy, education, and parent-child engagement in non-musical activities. These results indicate that music may be an effective tool for building and maintaining parent-child relationships during a period of uncertainty and change. (shrink)

One of the central puzzles in ontology concerns the relation between apparently innocent sentences and their ontologically loaded counterparts. In recent work, Agustín Rayo has developed the insight that such cases can be usefully described with the help of the ‘just is’ operator: plausibly, for there to be a table just is for there to be some things arranged tablewise; and for the number of dinosaurs to be Zero just is for there to be no dinosaurs. How does the operator (...) relate to another prominent notion that is frequently put to similar use: metaphysical grounding? In this paper I show that despite what has been argued in the literature the ‘just is’ operator can be spelled out in terms of grounding: roughly, as having the same ultimate grounds. This is good news for Rayo, for it broadens his target audience. It is even better news for the friends of ground. For it exemplifies the immense fruitfulness of the notion of grounding in its ability to incorporate philosophically highly significant subtheories. (shrink)

The constitutional monarchy of present-day Britain hardly seems the same sort of institution as fourteenth-century feudal kingdoms, but Dante’s Monarchia (c. 1313) and Walter Bagehot’s The English Constitution (1872) share fundamental assumptions about what the purpose and strengths of monarchy are. In the Monarchia, Dante lays out the essential attributes of monarchy that endure even today: authority, impartiality, and unity. Dante values and promotes monarchy as final arbiter of conflicts, sole just judge without cupidity, and unifying will. More than 550 (...) years later, Bagehot, despite his distrust concerning the Crown’s actual effectiveness, conceives of monarchy in surprisingly similar terms. The monarch is ‘the regulating wheel of our Constitution’, an authority outside and above partisan politics, and the ‘dignified’, ‘intelligible’, unifying element of government. In both cases, the monarch functions as the government’s source of impartial, unifying authority – whether monarch or Parliament ultimately wields that authority. The broad outlines of monarchy are surprisingly similar for both writers, suggesting a basic continuity in the conceptualization of monarchy from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century (and beyond) and an abiding store of reserve symbolism within the monarchic concept that writers, thinkers, and politicians throughout those centuries are able to tap at will. (shrink)

Two priority problems frustrate our understanding of Spinoza on desire [cupiditas]. The first problem concerns the relationship between desire and the other two primary affects, joy [laetitia] and sadness [tristitia]. Desire seems to be the oddball of this troika, not only because, contrary to the very definition of an affect, desires do not themselves consist in changes in one's power of acting, but also because desire seems at once more and less basic than joy and sadness. The second problem concerns (...) the priority of desires and evaluative judgements. While 3p9s and 3p39s suggest that evaluative judgements are posterior to desires, Andrew Youpa has recently argued that passages in Ethics 4 indicate that rational evaluative judgements can give rise to, rather than arise out of, desires. I aim to offer solutions to these problems that reveal the elegance and coherence of Spinoza's account of motivation. Ultimately, I argue that whereas emotions and d.. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Spinoza’s political theory gives us a model for how he might have approached a treatise on moral education. Indeed, his account of the method and aims of politics resembles Renaissance humanist rhetorical approaches to pedagogy – particularly, the work of sixteenth century Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives – so strongly that it is hardly an exaggeration conclude that, for him, politics is education writ large. For Spinoza and for Vives, the governor-or-instructor must study the (...) prevailing character, or ingenium, of the subject and adopt means that promote the cognitive and emotional development of the subject, which can be accomplished only to the extent that subjects willingly participate in their own governance-or-instruction. Spinoza joins this rhetorical procedure to a Hobbesian scientific approach to studying ingenia, resulting in a political method that is part science, part art. (shrink)

Cancer has long been a cultural touchstone: a metaphor of devastation and a spectre of social as well as bodily anomie and loss. Yet recent years have witnessed significant transformations in perceptions of cancer, particularly in perceptions of the cancer patient. This paper is concerned with the ‘struggles of subjectivity’ emergent in this transvalued cancer culture. Explored from the standpoint of the ‘bad patient’, and drawing on media and cultural methodologies, the paper will consider the convergence of medicine, morality and (...) popular iconography as they are embedded in the imageries, imaginaries and representational economies of the cancer culture industry. Of particular concern in this context are the (re)composures of the patient, as liminal figure, caught between clinical imperative and cultural fantasy. (shrink)

In this paper, I maintain—contrary to those commentators who regard him as a principled republican—that at the core of Spinoza’s political theory is an instrumental, rather than an intrinsic, defense of democratic procedures. Specifically, Spinoza embraces democratic decision procedures primarily because they tend to result in better decisions, defined relative to a procedure-independent standard of correctness or goodness. In contemporary terms, Spinoza embraces an epistemic defense of democracy. I examine Spinoza’s defense of collective governance, showing not only how it differs (...) from other accounts of his time but also how it might contribute to current debates about the epistemic standing of popular governing bodies. In the opening section I defend the thesis that has been contested in recent years that Spinoza was, in fact, a consistent democrat. The second section focuses on procedural (i.e., intrinsic) defenses of democracy, paying particular attention to the republican version of proceduralism that was prominent in Spinoza’s time. And in the final section I present my case for reading Spinoza as an epistemic democrat, comparing his epistemic defense with contemporary versions. What we find are not only striking anticipations of contemporary arguments, but also largely neglected lines of argumentation that reveal both the potential epistemic advantages and disadvantages of democracy. (shrink)

In this essay I consider what grounds Spinoza’s defense of the freedom to philosophize, considering why Spinoza doesn’t think that we should attempt to snuff out irrationality and dissolution with the law’s iron fist. In the first section I show that Spinoza eschews skeptical, pluralistic, and rights-based arguments for toleration. I then delineate the prudential, anticlerical roots of Spinoza’s defense, before turning in the final section to consider just how far and when toleration contributes to the guiding norms of governance: (...) peace and empowerment. Once we see how the defense of toleration is anchored in these norms, we form a clearer picture of Spinoza as a liberal perfectionist for whom the bounds of political toleration depends on pragmatic and circumstance-specific assessments of what conduces to the flourishing of the state. This will help to illuminate what is distinctive—and, perhaps, distinctively commendable—about Spinoza’s form of liberalism. (shrink)

The role of possible worlds in philosophy is hard to overestimate. Nevertheless, their nature and existence is very controversial. This is particularly serious, since their standard applications depend on there being sufficiently many of them. The paper develops an account of possible worlds on which it is particularly easy to believe in their existence: an account of possible worlds as pleonastic entities. Pleonastic entities are entities whose existence can be validly inferred from statements that neither refer to nor quantify over (...) them as a matter of conceptual necessity. Definitions are proposed that ensure that this is the case for possible worlds. (shrink)

This introductory article provides a contextual and theoretical overview to this special issue of Body & Society. The special issue presents five selected case studies – focusing on the contexts of transplantation, psychiatry, amputation and war, and a transvalued media ecology of cancer – to offer meditations on a number of interlinked questions. The first of these is the entanglement of biomedical governance – political/economic as well as self-disciplinary – with the nexus of estrangement, which can denote both the distancing (...) of otherness and self-division. Second is the realm of feeling, of phantasmatic projection and of the ways in which the biopolitical becomes reciprocally, discursively, enmeshed in a wider cultural imaginary. Third is the shifting terrain of gender and feminist politics, a key dimension of which is the necessary reworking of feminist thought in the wake of a radically altered biomedical and biotechnological landscape. Under the rubric of Estranged Bodies, the collection considers themes of dissolution and the fragility of the body/subject read through bodily catastrophe, radical body modification and extreme medical intervention. Also considered is the notion of assemblage – the provisional coming together of disparate parts – which encourages a rethinking of questions of reconstituted, displaced and re-placed bodies. (shrink)

Spinoza's use of the phrase “sui iuris” in the Tractatus Politicus gives rise to the following paradox. On the one hand, one is said to be sui iuris to the extent that one is rational; and to the extent that one is rational, one will steadfastly obey the laws of the state. However, Spinoza also states that to the extent that one adheres to the laws of the state, one is not sui iuris, but rather stands under the power [sub (...) potestate] of the state (TP 3/5). It seems, then, that to the extent that one is sui iuris, one will not, in fact, be sui iuris. In this paper, I offer an interpretation of Spinoza's notion of being sui iuris that enables us to overcome this paradox and sheds light on Spinoza's relationship to the republican tradition. I work towards this goal by distinguishing between two ways in which Spinoza uses the locution, which correspond to two different conceptions of power: potentia and potestas. This distinction not only allows us to save Spinoza from internal inconsistency, it also enables us to see one important way in which Spinoza stands outside of the republican tradition, since he conceives of liberty not as constituted by independence, or citizenship in a res publica, but as being sui iuris in the first sense described above: being powerful. (shrink)

(2002). Clinical Research Should Not Be Permitted to Escape the Ethical Orbit of Clinical Care. The American Journal of Bioethics: Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 27-28.

In the final chapter of the Tractactus Theologico-Politicus , Spinoza declares that “the purpose of the state is, in reality, freedom.” While this remark obviously purports to tell us something important about Spinoza’s conception of the civitas , it is not clear exactly what is revealed. Recently, a number of scholars have interpreted this passage in a way that supports the view that Spinoza was a liberal for whom civic norms are rather more modest than the freedom of the Ethics (...) . Against this view, I provide an interpretation of Spinoza’s account of civil liberation that enables us to view the political writings as an extension of his larger ethical enterprise. Specifically, I show that, according to Spinoza, the state can promote robust liberty in a variety of ways, not least by influencing the behavioral patterns and affective dispositions of its citizens. (shrink)

In a series of papers, Christian Nimtz argues for the view that the semantic notion of paradigm termhood lies at the heart of Kripkean philosophy of language and metaphysics. According to Nimtz, th...