Spinoza and the Case for Philosophy [Hardcover]

This book analyzes three often-debated questions of Spinoza's legacy.This book analyzes three often-debated questions of Spinoza's legacy: Was Spinoza a religious thinker? How should we understand Spinoza's mind-body doctrine? What meaning can be given to Spinoza's notions  such as salvation, beatitude, and freedom  which are seemingly incompatible with his determinism, his secularism, and his critique of religion.This book analyzes three often-debated questions of Spinoza's legacy: Was Spinoza a religious thinker? How should we understand Spinoza's mind-body doctrine? What meaning can be given to Spinoza's notions  such as salvation, beatitude, and freedom  which are seemingly incompatible with his determinism, his secularism, and his critique of religion.This book analyzes three often-debated questions of Spinoza's legacy: Was Spinoza a religious thinker? How should we understand Spinoza's mind-body doctrine? What meaning can be given to Spinoza's notions  such as salvation, beatitude, and freedom  which are seemingly incompatible with his determinism, his secularism, and his critique of religion. Through a close reading of often-overlooked sections from Spinoza's Ethics, Elhanan Yakira argues that these seemingly conflicting elements are indeed compatible, despite Spinoza's iconoclastic meanings. Yakira argues that Ethics is an attempt at providing a purely philosophical  as opposed to theological  foundation for the theory of value and normativity.Part I: 1. Spinoza and the question of religion; Part II. Mind and Body: 2. The exegetic inadequacy of parallelism; 3. The context; 4. Ethics II, propositions 1-13; Part III: 5. Bodies and ideas - a few general remarks; Part IV: 6. The norm of reason: adequacy, truth, knowledge, and comprehension; 7. Man, a mode of the substance; Instead of a conclusion: Salus sive Beatitude sive Libertas.