276°
Posted 20 hours ago

Ethics (Penguin Classics)

£4.995£9.99Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

In addition to providing etiological accounts intended to explain why people make the mistake of treating moral qualities as objective (and thereby to undermine the belief that they are objective), Spinoza develops two distinct arguments for his anti-realism. Much of our concern regarding environmental ethics today is based on our recognition that the environment is not an inexhaustible source of nourishment and wealth; to a seventeenth-century author, this possibility would have seemed bizarre. a b c d e f Especially valuable for these specific sections of Spinoza's thought as expounded in his Ethics, have been the online pages by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy at these four links [1], [2], [3], [4] — which respectively represent an interpretation and commentary of the philosopher's stance on "Modal Metaphysics", "Theory of Attributes", "Psychological Theory", "Physical Theory", and are currently cited as a reference within the present text. In this interpretation, premise (1) is Spinoza’s nod to the commonly held principle that ought implies can: you can be morally bound to do only something that you are able to do. Given Schopenhauer's respect for Hindu philosophy, comments like these indicate that he too felt intellectual kinship with Spinoza.

Spinoza claims that whenever we “form a clear and distinct idea” of a passion, it will no longer be a passion (E5p3). His first argument for anti-realism is that if moral qualities like evil or imperfection were objective, then it would be conceivable “that Nature sometimes fails or sins, and produces imperfect things” (E4pref, G II/207).Moreover, pity always involves sadness, a form of disempowerment, so considered in itself, it is evil.

appears on close and honest investigation to be a higher yet unjustified abstraction of the concept matter. Spinoza, accordingly, now restricted the term "substance" to the complete system, though he occasionally continued to use the phrase "substance or attribute", or described Extension as a substance. Spinoza's contemporary, Simon de Vries, raised the objection that Spinoza fails to prove that substances may possess multiple attributes, but that if substances have only a single attribute, "where there are two different attributes, there are also different substances". In this way, we will naturally tend over time toward rational affects and away from irrational ones. Hence, the principle of seeking one’s own advantage and preserving one’s being is “the first and only foundation of virtue” (E4p22c), and obeying this principle is the only pursuit that is good for its own sake (E4p25).

The good in question, which is supposed to trump all other goods, is not actually our own lives, but what those lives are best spent in obtaining—the knowledge of God. Many passages in the Ethics make it appear that Spinoza simply thinks that what is best for each of us is the continuation of our lives. It would be irrational to work to preserve the environment for its own sake, since what is good for the environment is not necessarily good for us.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment