A free man's worship.--Mysticism and logic.--The place of science in a liberal education.--The study of mathematics.--Mathematics and the metaphysicians.--On scientific method in philosophy.--The ultimate constituents of matter.--The relation of sense-data to physics.--On the notion of cause.--Knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description.

Not long after the historian, Seeley, had defined ‘perfect liberty’ as ‘the absence of all government’, Oscar Wilde wrote that a man can be totally free even in that granite embodiment of governmental constraint, prison. Ten years after Mill's famous defence of civil freedoms, On Liberty, Richard Wagner declaimed:I'll put up with everything—police, soldiers, muzzling of the press, limits on parliament… Freedom of the spiriti is the only thing for men to be proud of and which raises them above (...) animals. (shrink)

Spinoza’s remarks on the exemplar or model of human nature, while few and brief, have far-reaching consequences for his ethics. While commentators have offered a variety of interpretations of the model and its implications, there has been near unanimous agreement on one point, that the identity of the model is the free man, described from E4P66S to E4P73. Since the free man is completely self-determining and, thus, perfectly free and rational, this reading indicates that Spinoza’s ethics sets (...) exceptionally high goals, aiming to make us purely active beings. While this conclusion has been embraced in some quarters—particularly by those who see his ethics as aiming to make us like God—it has also been criticized as intolerant of human weakness and vulnerability. Most work on this subject has been concerned to explain what it means for the free man to serve as the model. This is a difficult task, since Spinoza pointedly claims that it is impossible for human beings to become completely self-determining and, thus, free men. Consequently, it is unclear what implications his claims about the free man have for us, ordinary humans. This paper takes a different approach: I will show that reading the free man as the model of human nature, while intuitively appealing, does not stand up to close scrutiny. The argument for this claim has two prongs: the first asserts that there is not sufficient textual evidence to establish that Spinoza intended the free man to serve as the model; the second asserts that this reading is impossible to reconcile with Spinoza’s other philosophical commitments. In particular, Spinoza holds that we pursue the model of human nature, as well as the general ethical goals of attaining our good and perfection, under the guidance of reason. It would be inconsistent with this claim for Spinoza’s ethics to be founded upon attaining a goal that reason reveals as unattainable and, even, confused. In addition to this negative thesis, I will also defend a positive one: the model of human nature should rather be understood as representing the greatest possible perfection of our nature as it is revealed by reason. The free man meanwhile should be understood as working toward a different goal, determining what is good and bad in the emotions. In making this claim, we offer a very different picture of Spinoza’s ethical goals, for reason shows that our nature is conatus, which is a finite mode and, as such, necessarily determined by and passive with respect to other finite modes. Consequently, a model derived from reason will represent the perfection of this nature as passive to some extent. In this way, I provide a picture of Spinoza’s ethics that takes a more sympathetic view of human weakness and vulnerability. (shrink)

This paper examines the coherence of Spinoza’s combined account of freedom, reason, and the affects and its applicability to real humans in the context of the perfectly free man Spinoza discusses towards the end of part 4 of the Ethics. On the standard reading, the perfectly free man forms the model of human nature and thus the goal to which real humans should aspire. A recently proposed non-standard reading, however, posits that the perfectly free man should not (...) be considered the model of human nature. Consolidating FRA into a system of ten theses and outlining their intricate interconnections, I argue that under both the standard and non-standard readings of Spinoza’s perfectly free man, FRA founders when applied to real humans. While it is no big news that FRA may face deep problems when applied to real humans, the paper is innovative: in the specific tensions in FRA it exposes; in the strategy deployed to expose the latter; and in showing that a recent non-standard approach to resolving these tensions is unsuccessful. Depending on the specific reading of FRA that I suggest, my critical conclusions may not apply to every reading of FRA. They nonetheless pose a serious challenge to similar readings prominent within the literature. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Spinoza's 'model of human nature' in the Ethics, and especially his notion of the 'free man'. I argue that, contrary to usual interpretations, the free man is not an individual without passions and inadequate ideas but rather an individual who is able consistently to live according to the guidance of reason. Therefore, it is not an impossible and unattainable ideal or incoherent concept, as has often been claimed, but a very realizable goal for (...) the achievement of human well-being. (shrink)

I argue that in her first novel Near to the Wild Heart, Clarice Lispector puts forth a critique of Baruch Spinoza’s idea of freedom from Books IV and V of the Ethics. Although scholars have noted that Lispector was influenced by Spinoza, and that she quoted the Ethics in Near to the Wild Heart, none have yet explored her critical engagement with Spinozism. I argue that through the intimate relationship of two characters in Near to the Wild Heart, both of (...) whom strive to be free in Spinozist terms but fail, Lispector shows that freedom must depend on more than reason alone. For Lispector, I argue, freedom depends additionally on circumstances such as human relationships and societal structures. I give biographical background to establish Lispector’s stake in the question of what freedom means and how it can be achieved, then explore the ways her two respective characters, Otávio and Joana, strive yet fail to be free. (shrink)

According to Steven Nadler's novel interpretation of Spinoza's much discussed ‘free man’, the free man is not an unattainable ideal. On this reading, the free man represents an ideal condition not because he is passionless, as has often been claimed, but because even though he experiences passions, he ‘never lets those passions determine his actions’. In this paper, I argue that Nadler's interpretation is incorrect in taking the model of the free man to be an attainable (...) ideal within our reach. Furthermore, I show that Spinoza's moral philosophy has room for another ideal yet attainable condition, which is represented by the wise man. On my reading, becoming a wise man consists not in surmounting human bondage, but in understanding ourselves as finite expressions of God's power and, thereby, coming to terms with the ineliminability of bondage for us due to our very human or modal condition in the Spinozistic universe. (shrink)

While Ç ´Ò¿ µ methods for parsing probabilistic context-free grammars (PCFGs) are well known, a tabular parsing framework for arbitrary PCFGs which allows for botton-up, topdown, and other parsing strategies, has not yet been provided. This paper presents such an algorithm, and shows its correctness and advantages over prior work. The paper finishes by bringing out the connections between the algorithm and work on hypergraphs, which permits us to extend the presented Viterbi (best parse) algorithm to an inside (total (...) probability) algorithm. (shrink)

This paper examines feature selection for log linear models over rich constraint-based grammar (HPSG) representations by building decision trees over features in corresponding probabilistic context free grammars (PCFGs). We show that single decision trees do not make optimal use of the available information; constructed ensembles of decision trees based on different feature subspaces show signifi- cant performance gains (14% parse selection error reduction). We compare the performance of the learned PCFG grammars and log linear models over the same features.

Contents Include: Mysticism and Logic - The Place of Science in a Liberal Education - A Free Man's Worship - The Study of mathematics - Mathematics and the Metaphysicians - On Scientific Method in Philosophy - The Ultimate Constituents of Matter - The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics - On the Notion of Cause - Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description.

The life and work of Rousseau the musician and aesthetician has been largely neglected in the debate about Rousseau's views on women. In this paper, I shall introduce a new text and a new female figure into the conversation: Collette, the shepherdess in Le devin du village, an opera written by Rousseau in 1752. We see an ambiguity in Collette-the text often expresses one view while the music expresses another. When we take Collette's music seriously the following picture emerges: the (...) natural desire of women to be free, a fairly active female agency, an incipient rebellion against the social role of women, and a final acceptance of the role of wife. This view of Collette supports the thesis that for Rousseau women are not naturally subordinate to men but are taught to be subordinate because it is required for the maintenance of the patriarchal family, the cornerstone of civil society. We see many glimpses of Collette's true, unsocialized, nature, especially in the melodies she sings. It is in song, the first and hence most natural language of humans, that we see Collette's longing for freedom. But she ends by singing the praises of civil society, albeit a rural society, and thus implicitly accepting the subordination she is destined to suffer at Colin's hands. (shrink)

The fourth volume in the Spinoza by 2000 series presents the reader with issues central to Part IV of Spinoza's Ethics. Readers of this text face one of the most difficult questions in Spinoza scholarship - Is Spinoza presenting a rational ethics, capable of making human beings free, or is he merely drawing an ethical ideal, never to be reached within the confines of reason alone? Indeed, 'freedom' is meant here mainly in the context of human bondage to the (...) affects, but it is also addressed in connection with human sociability. Whether rational self-understanding is, in itself, sufficient for human emancipation is an open question. The participants of this volume help to clarify the various aspects of the problem, providing an indispensable guide both for Spinoza scholars and the general reader. This collection also links the previous volume in this series, on Spinoza's psychological theory, to the forthcoming volume, which concentrates on the culminating last part of the Ethics. (shrink)

This book deals with the thorny issue of human rights in different cultures and religions, especially in the light of bioethical issues. In this book, experts from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Daoism, Hinduism and Confucianism discuss the tension between their religious traditions and the claim of universality of human rights. The East-West contrast is particularly evident with regards to human rights. Some writers find the human rights language too individualistic and it is foreign to major religions where the self does (...) not exist in isolation, but is normally immersed in a web of relations and duties towards family, friends, religion community, and society. Is the human rights discourse a predominantly Western liberal ideal, which in bioethics is translated to mean autonomy and free choice? In today's democratic societies, laws have been drafted to protect individuals and communities against slavery, discrimination, torture or genocide. Yet, it appears unclear at what moment universal rights supersede respect for cultural diversity and pluralism. This collection of articles demonstrates a rich spectrum of positions among different religions, as they confront the ever more pressing issues of bioethics and human rights in the modern world. This book is intended for those interested in the contemporary debates on religious ethics, human rights, bioethics, cultural diversity and multiculturalism. (shrink)

Understanding any problem of human existence, including the question of religious self-determination of the individual, outside the context of those processes that are taking place today at national and world levels, is very problematic. Religious choice, freedom of religion, as well as freedom of conscience as a whole, the legal mechanisms and possibilities for their practical implementation, in particular in Ukraine, are to some extent correlated with a qualitatively new poly-aspect, such as globalization. The latter in the scientific discourse is (...) regarded as "a set of tendencies that are aimed at forming a global interconnection between social phenomena and social actors". (shrink)

From the Editors:Such was the topic considered by members of a new discussion club, "The Free Word" [Svobodnoe slovo] , along with specialists from the Institute of Philosophy, USSR Academy of Sciences.

"A critical study of the interdependence of philosophy as critical theory and man as a free individual."--T.p.

That a science of human conduct is possible, that what any man may do even in moments of the most sober and careful reflection can be understood and explained, has seemed to many a philosopher to cast doubt upon our common view that any human action can ever be said to be truly free. This book, first published in 1961, into crucially important issues that are often ignored in the familiar arguments for and against the possibility of free (...) action. These issues are brought to light and examined in some detail. (shrink)

Purpose. The research is based on the comprehension of the anthropological tendencies of the metamodernism, which presupposes the consistent solution of the following tasks: a) explication of the content of post-postmodernism in modern philosophical literature; b) identification of the ideological basis of metamodernism anthropology; c) characteristics of the problem field of metamodernism anthropology and the state of man in the modern era. Theoretical basis. Anthropology of the metamodernism for the first time defines socio-cultural context through the hesitative state between the (...) values of modernism and their rejection by the postmodernism, which makes it possible to formulate the peculiarity of the time as a desire to reconstruct a Holistic Man, impartial to the dominant worldview attitudes of a social nature. Anthropology of the metamodernism is presented as the individualization of the socio-cultural space in the form of human self-reconstruction at all anthropological levels. An era without an unambiguously expressed moral guideline is based on the ethics of all-acceptance, the only justification of which is the existence of a universal right to beingness. Digitalization as a process of digital transformation of society creates conditions for the value realization of the free choice of metamodernism man, through which a Holistic Man is accomplished. Originality. It is substantiated that metamodernism as a descriptive position of the modern cultural dominant of the digitalized era is characterized by a state of hesitation between the values of modernism and postmodernism. The anthropology of the metamodernism manifests itself in the form of the reconstruction of the holistic man and the self-reconstruction of the inner man. The peculiarities of the human metamodernism are recognized as the mutual complete determinability of the individual and the mass. Conclusions. Metamodernism is the formulation of the problem of a man in a new perspective: what to be and how to survive between the extremes of semantic poles, without losing dignity and unique intrinsic value. Proceeding from this, the fate of a metamodernism man is determined in pursuit of the endlessly receding horizons of the anthropology of incompleteness, which is carried out through post-irony, naive sincerity, optimistic openness to the world. (shrink)

Spinoza’s moral philosophy is trending. This is the fourth book written in English in six years devoted to various aspects of it; that may not qualify as viral, but it is progress. The volume’s five essays cover moral responsibility, akrasia, moral realism, and Spinoza’s model of human nature: the free man. Hence its subtitle is misleading. There is nothing uniquely contemporary about the issues discussed, as is evident from the essays themselves. Also, the moral problems are not the type (...) one might expect. You will not find an analysis of Spinoza’s position on the moral status of non-human animals, for example. What you will find is an effort to bring Spinoza into contemporary debates. In their introduction... (shrink)

Our freedoms in cyberspace are those granted by code and the protocols it implements. When man and machine interact, co-exist, and intermingle, cyberspace comes to interpenetrate the real world fully. In this cyborg world, software retains its regulatory role, becoming a language of interaction with our extended cyborg selves. The mediation of our extended selves by closed software threatens individual autonomy. We define a notion of freedom for software that does justice to our conception of it as language, sketching the (...) outlines of a social and political philosophy for a cyborg world. In a cyberspace underwritten by free software, political structures become contingent and flexible: the polity can choose to change the extent and character of its participation. The rejection of opaque power is an old anarchist ideal: free software, by making power transparent, carries the potential to place substantive restrictions on the regulatory power of cyborg government. (shrink)

The article analyzes the features of poetic reflection in the work of A. Krymsky in the relation "man-nature". Coverage of this problem in the conditions of postmodern philosophical discourse requires appropriate embeddedness in the national and cultural experience. Moreover, the poetry of A. Krymsky manifests the deep experiences of the Ukrainian man's ties with the natural world, which includes the actualization of the inner nature of man. The author seeks to "write out" the laws of the "moral constitution" according to (...) which a person is worthy of his purpose of being in nature "has the right" to love according to the vocation of his convictions, his needs and inclinations. On the one hand, the author seems to call us to abide by these "laws", but, on the other hand, his thoughts divert from such categoricalness into the space of "identity" and confessional repentance. As follows from the above, the dignity of a person consists in the awakening and strengthening of an independent, responsible, formed on the path of enriching the inner life of a spiritual personality and the search for a free egress. And in this, in fact, the highest value of the relevance of postmodern self-communication in the interpretation of the poetic work of A. Krymsky is developed. (shrink)

The present article discusses the Socinian views on free will based on fragments of Johann Völkel’s treatise, De Vera Religione Libri Quinque. Quibus praefixus est Johannis Crelli Franci Liber De Deo et Ejus Attributis ita ut unum cum illis opus constituat, published by Typis Sebastiani Sternacii, Raków, 1630 (bk. 5, chap. 18). This work is considered the most comprehensive systematic presentation of the Socinian doctrine. The article focuses on two questions: first, the way in which Völkel argues for the (...) existence of free will; and second, the manner in which he disproves the arguments of his opponents who claim that man forfeited the freedom of his will as a result of the Fall of Adam. (shrink)

“The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which man shall fly long distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration of any physical fact to be.” Simon Newcomb, Professor of Mathematics, John Hopkins University, 1901 Abstract Free will is described in terms of the useful properties that it could confer, explaining why (...) it might have been selected for over the course of evolution. These are: exterior unpredictability; interior rationality; and social accountability. A process is described that might bring it about when deployed in a suitable social context. It is suggested that this process could itself be of an evolutionary nature – that free will might “evolve” in the brain during development. This mental evolution effectively separates the internal and external contexts, whilst retaining the coherency between individual’s public accounts of their actions. This is supported by the properties of evolutionary algorithms and possesses the three desired properties. Some objections to the possibility of free will are dealt with by pointing out the prima facie evidence and showing how an assumption that everything must be either deterministic or random can result from an unsupported assumption of universalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Last Man by Mary ShelleyJennifer A. Wagner-LawlorMary Shelley. The Last Man. 1826. Edited by Chris Washington. Norton Critical Editions. New York: W. W. Norton, 2023. xxiv + 571 pp. Paperback, ISBN 9780393887822.New critical editions of well-known literary works serve several important functions, and those designed specifically for students serve two of the most important: to introduce readers to texts that were overlooked during and since the author’s (...) time, but that might find greater favor today; and to re-introduce to a new generation of students classic texts that have lost critical favor or been neglected. Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826) is a novel long overshadowed by brilliance and resilient legacy of her first novel, Frankenstein (1818), written at a mere eighteen years of age. As so often happened to nineteenth-century women who published under their own names, both Frankenstein and The Last Man were hammered critically by male reviewers (and often by the few female ones) unable to believe any woman, and certainly no “good” woman, could compose these stories. And by 1826, Mary Shelley had already gained notoriety thanks to her association with the radical politics and “free-loving” Shelley-Byron circle). No wonder then that contemporaneous reviewers—even as they brought themselves to compliment the narratological and formal accomplishment the novel represents—could not countenance either its content or its author, as the novel “violated” certain forms of literary and gender propriety: indeed, the novel was deemed the product of a “diseased imagination” (The Monthly Review).Modern assessments of the novel are far more admiring of Shelley’s sophisticated examination of national and cultural mythic structuralizations, and receptive to the boldness of Shelley’s profoundly ironical assessments of them. In this new Norton Critical Edition of The Last Man, Chris Washington comes to the text with a refreshingly undeferential approach to Shelley’s Romantic forebears and immediate companions. Not because they [End Page 582] deserve being knocked off their pedestals, but because—granting all that—Shelley’s text has a lot more to give to us. This is the first time the Norton Critical Edition series has produced an annotated critical edition of The Last Man (Broadview’s appeared in 1996), and it is therefore both welcome and well overdue. For this reader, The Last Man is in some ways arguably superior to Frankenstein, certainly better written and developed. Frankenstein packs the greater punch, but The Last Man picks up and reweaves, on a much larger loom, the same thematic threads: justice and judgment; hospitality and generosity; family love and ethical obligation to community and nation; “civilized” and “wild” spaces. These themes are figured not only in terms of landscape but also in terms of geopolitical organization (i.e., the West vs. “the East,” presumed source of the virus); the bounded- vs. unbound-ness of the creative imagination (also tied to cultural notions of civilization and wilderness); solitude and loneliness; alienness and otherness; alienation and self-alienation and/as dehumanization; the human and the posthuman. While part of Frankenstein’s greatness is its narrative concision and stylistic spareness, the greatness of The Last Man, written by the more mature writer, intellectually and technically (and without the interference of Percy Shelley), is how fully Shelley “fleshes out” those entanglements in this later novel.Setting aside therefore the inclusion of “the usual suspects” (xx) of earlier editions, Washington gives space to critical approaches that are not focused so intensely on the influences of Shelley’s biography. In an excellent introduction Washington emphasizes the various ways in which this novel opens up to (still) intractable political and human rights issues: slavery, imperialism, nonheteronormative genders and sexualities, and precarious lives.Washington addresses particularly what Shelley’s text has to offer—and does offer—to today’s students. He shares his own experience of teaching this novel during COVID times, finding the students, used to speed of communication and multimedia delivery, resistant initially to the narrative’s pacing, and reintroducing them to the pleasures of the slow build-up of plot and setting, as well as the excruciating tension of watching a slow-burn approach to seemingly unavoidable catastrophe. But Washington rejects... (shrink)