Spinoza’s Analysis of his Imagined Readers’ Axiology

Rumbold, Benedict

Abstract

Before presenting his own account of value in the Ethics, Spinoza spends much of EIAppendix and EIVPreface attempting to refute a series of axiological ‘prejudices’ that he takes to have taken root in the minds of his readership. In doing so, Spinoza adopts what might be termed a ‘genealogical’ argumentative strategy. That is, he tries to establish the falsity of imagined readership’s prejudices about good and bad, perfection and imperfection, by first showing that the ideas from which they have arisen are themselves false. Many elements of this genealogy, however, remain unclear. First, both the nature of the metaethical prejudices Spinoza believes we have been labouring under, and the metaphysical prejudices that he takes to have given rise to them, continue to attract widespread disagreement. Although much less commented on, it is also not entirely obvious why Spinoza takes the one to have engendered the other. In this article, I attempt to clarify Spinoza’s reasoning in both of these respects, ultimately concluding that Spinoza offers us two accounts of how this process has occurred, the first beginning from an anthropocentric doctrine of divine providence, the second from more secular, perhaps more purely Aristotelian metaphysical tradition.

Citation

Rumbold, B. (2021). Spinoza’s Analysis of his Imagined Readers’ Axiology. Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 103(2), 281-312. https://doi.org/10.1515/agph-2017-0099

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 19, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Oct 15, 2020
• Publication Date: May 29, 2021
• Deposit Date: Oct 23, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 16, 2021
• Journal: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie
• Print ISSN: 0003-9101
• Electronic ISSN: 0003-9101
• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 103
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 281-312
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/agph-2017-0099
• Keywords: Philosophy
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4986557
• Publisher URL: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/agph-2017-0099/html