Bibliographic Details
| Title: |
Singularity, similarity, and exemplarity in Spinoza's philosophy. |
| Authors: |
Gatens, Moira1 Moira.Gatens@sydney.edu.au |
| Source: |
Ethics & Education. May2020, Vol. 15 Issue 2, p200-212. 13p. |
| Subject Terms: |
*Human behavior, *Philosophy of education, Example, Uniqueness (Philosophy), Resemblance (Philosophy) |
| People: |
Spinoza, Benedictus de, 1632-1677 |
| Abstract: |
In the Preface to Part Four of the Ethics, Spinoza offers the reader an exemplar of human nature. However, Spinoza does not conceive of human nature as a universal in which each human being participates, simply by virtue of being human. Rather, each human being is conceived as singular. Thriving individual lives assume thriving communities composed of (somewhat) like-minded and (somewhat) like-embodied individuals. The model, or exemplar, then, may be considered to play the role of an enabling fiction in his educational and moral philosophy. The approach taken here is to explore Spinoza's notions of singularity, similarity, and exemplarity in relation to the distinctive human capacity to educate the senses and the passions and to cultivate reason, and thereby to flourish. The final section of the paper reads the education of Victor Frankenstein's 'monster' through the lens of Spinoza's philosophy of affect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
|
Copyright of Ethics & Education is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.) |
| Database: |
Education Research Complete |
