Taylor Sharpe, Wes Wynmor, Nick Depietro Spinoza Taylor Sharpe, Wes Wynmor, Nick Depietro

Background Belonged to the community of Jews from Spain and Portugal that fled the Inquisition Studied Latin and changed his name from Baruch to the Latin form Benedict. Excommunication from Jewish group in 1656 He was a lens grinder ( eventually caused his death)

Influences Influences Descartes Rejected his characterization of love (imagining ourselves joined to a loved object) His own: We have no control over our passions because it is “metaphysically impossible” for the mind to work in the way that Descartes describes. Stoics “sympathetic to their desire for escape from the passions” Hobbes “Like Hobbes, Spinoza takes what is essential to humans to be a kind of ‘endeavor’” “strives fundamentally for self-preservation and he deems passions an expression of this drive”

Sense Perception Spinoza thought “sense perception has its origin in the action of an external body upon one or another of the sensory organs of one’s own body.” “The major seventeenth-century rationalists-Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Leibniz-are named because they placed emphasis on reason or intellect, by contrast with the senses, for acquiring important truths. “ “They agreed that the basic truths of metaphysics are intellect acting alone, independently of the senses.”

Discussion! How realistic do you think Spinoza’s opinions of sense perception are? Do you think his background has any effect on his philosophical views?

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