A worm in the blood: some central themes in Spinoza'sEthics

Abstract

The Emmet's Inch & Eagle's Mile Make Lame Philosophy to smile. William Blake, Auguries of Innocence In order to understand why Spinoza embraced the geometrical method in the Ethics it necessary to reflect on the general contours of his philosophy. It is also important to have a sense of what Spinoza's method – geometrical or otherwise – is trying to get at, what Spinoza is seeking to discover with it. The purpose of this chapter and the next is to set the stage for the chapters that follow, while at the same time developing a few basic questions about Spinoza's method. The first section of this chapter provides a brief sketch of Spinoza's Ethics and introduces some of Spinoza's key definitions and concepts. The middle sections will present a problem in Spinoza's Ethics : “What does it mean to be a part of nature?” “Part of nature” is one of Spinoza's most potent concepts but it needs careful interpretation in order not to render it inconsistent with other aspects of Spinoza's philosophy, particularly his criticisms of anthropomorphism and teleology. The final section of the chapter will consider Spinoza's system from the “emmet's inch” or the bottom-up perspective, as opposed to the “eagle's mile” or top-down perspective of Part I of the Ethics and the first section of this chapter.