IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB564753509

Consciousness, Ideas of Ideas and Animation in Spinoza’s Ethics (2017)

British Journal for the History of Philosophy
Volume: 25
Issue: 3
Pages: 506-525
Publication date: 2017
Language: English

URI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2017.1322038

DOI: 10.1080/09608788.2017.1322038

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Free will and determinism Theories of knowledge Philosophy Consciousness Ethics 17th century Spinoza, Baruch

In the following article, I aim to elucidate the meaning and scope of Spinoza’s vocabulary related to ‘consciousness’. I argue that Spinoza, at least in his Ethics, uses this notion consistently, although rarely. He introduces it to account for the knowledge we may have of the mind considered alone, as conceptually distinct from the body. This serves two purposes in Spinoza’s Ethics: to explain our illusion of a free will, on the one hand, and to refer to the knowledge we have of our mind as something eternal, on the other. I contend, therefore, that we should not confuse Spinoza’s technical use of the notion of ‘consciousness’ with the ‘degrees of animation’ that he also evokes in the Ethics. Consciousness, for Spinoza, is neither a faculty, nor a property specific to certain minds or ideas. Furthermore, consciousness does not come in degrees. Indeed, Spinoza’s account of consciousness is not intended to differentiate kinds of minds in terms of awareness of their respective ideas.

...More

Included in

Article Federico Boccaccini; Anna Marmodoro (2017) Powers, Abilities and Skills in Early Modern Philosophy. British Journal for the History of Philosophy (pp. 435-442). unapi

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB564753509

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Chapter Gaukroger, Stephen; (2009)
The Unity of Knowledge: Natural Philosophical Foundations of Spinoza's Politico-Theology (/p/isis/citation/CBB001021829/)

Article Di Giovanni, Piero; (2017)
Spinoza e la teoria delle affezioni (/p/isis/citation/CBB366755733/)

Article Michael LeBuffe; (2015)
The Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms: Miracles, Monotheism, and Reason in Spinoza (/p/isis/citation/CBB525797691/)

Book Alexandre Koyré; Andrea Cavazzini; (2023)
Scritti su Spinoza e l’averroismo (/p/isis/citation/CBB295676571/)

Article Jeremy Dunham; (2015)
Idealism, Pragmatism, and the Will to Believe: Charles Renouvier and William James (/p/isis/citation/CBB687579261/)

Article Lines, David A.; (2013)
Rethinking Renaissance Aristotelianism: Bernardo Segni's Ethica, the Florentine Academy, and the Vernacular in Sixteenth-Century Italy (/p/isis/citation/CBB001201605/)

Book Perry, John; (2001)
Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness (/p/isis/citation/CBB000631011/)

Article Selcer, Daniel; (2014)
From scientia operativa to scientia intuitiva: Producing Particulars in Bacon and Spinoza (/p/isis/citation/CBB001451722/)

Chapter Carlos Fraenkel; (2010)
Spinoza on Philosophy and Religion: The Averroistic Sources (/p/isis/citation/CBB006389757/)

Book Maxwell, Nicholas; (2001)
The Human World in the Physical Universe: Consciousness, Free Will, and Evolution (/p/isis/citation/CBB000358380/)

Article Douglas, Alexander; (2014)
Christoph Wittich's Anti-Spinoza (/p/isis/citation/CBB001451728/)

Article Andrea Sangiacomo; (2015)
The Ontology of Determination: From Descartes to Spinoza (/p/isis/citation/CBB003679171/)

Chapter Roger Ariew; (2010)
Ethics in Descartes and Seventeenth Century Cartesian Textbooks (/p/isis/citation/CBB025433700/)

Book Deborah Boyle; (2017)
The Well-Ordered Universe: The Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish (/p/isis/citation/CBB558770454/)

Article Ragland, C. P.; (2006)
Descartes on the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (/p/isis/citation/CBB000670333/)

Book Davenport, Anne Ashley; (2006)
Descartes's Theory of Action (/p/isis/citation/CBB000775216/)

Article Bradshaw, G. A.; (2010)
An Ape Among Many: Animal Co-Authorship and Trans-species Epistemic Authority (/p/isis/citation/CBB001023610/)

Article Feder, Helena; (2010)
Introduction (/p/isis/citation/CBB001023609/)

Article Kathryn Tabb; (2018)
Madness as Method: On Locke’s Thought Experiments About Personal Identity (/p/isis/citation/CBB500354678/)

Book Timothy M. Harrison; (2020)
Coming To: Consciousness and Natality in Early Modern England (/p/isis/citation/CBB273148572/)