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89. - Human Nature

from H

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2025

By
Sarah Tropper
Edited by
Karolina Hübner  and
Justin Steinberg
Karolina Hübner
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Justin Steinberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
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Summary

Human nature is a concept of metaphysical and ethical significance for Spinoza. Spinoza is, on the one hand, committed to a metaphysical gradualism according to which the general composition of individual humans, as he presents it in the Ethics, that is, as a body and its mind, does “not pertain more to man than to other individuals, all of which, though in different degrees, are nevertheless animate” (E2p13s). But he ascribes, on the other hand, a specific common nature to humans and to things of the same kind in general: “Nothing can agree more with the nature of anything than other individuals of the same species” (E4app, ii/268; see also E4p35c1–c2). But what this human nature is, so Spinoza, is not adequately understood by most people, since they form their conception of “man” by an erroneous process of abstraction and based on an excess of images, which they are incapable to differentiate sufficiently and therefore haphazardly group together under general terms. This process is unreliable because it yields different results depending on individual experience, such that

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Chapter
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The Cambridge Spinoza Lexicon , pp. 236 - 244
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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References

Recommended Reading

Bartuschat, W. (1992). Spinozas Theorie des Menschen. Meiner.Google Scholar
Gueroult, M. (1974). Spinoza, vol. ii: L’Ame (Éthique, 2). Aubier-Montaigne.Google Scholar
Hübner, K. (2014). Spinoza on being human and human perfection. In Kisner, M. J. and Youpa, A. (eds.), Essays on Spinoza’s Ethical Theory (pp. 124–42). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
James, S. (2021). Spinoza on the constitution of animal species. In Melamed, Y. (ed.), A Companion to Spinoza (pp. 365–74). Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Melamed, Y. (2011). Spinoza’s anti-humanism: An outline. In Fraenkel, C., Perinetti, D., and Smith, J. E. H. (eds.), The Rationalists: Between Tradition and Innovation (pp. 147–66). Springer.Google Scholar
Steinberg, D. (1984). Spinoza’s ethical doctrine and the unity of human nature. Journal of the History of Philosophy, 22(3), 303–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, M. (1999). ‘For they do not agree in nature with us’: Spinoza on the lower animals. In Wilson, , Ideas and Mechanism: Essays on Early Modern Philosophy (pp. 178–95). Princeton University Press, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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