Xxxxxxx’x Naturalism Sample Clauses

Xxxxxxx’x Naturalism. Spinoza understood humans as part of nature. Humans, Spinoza wrote, are not empires within empires. 473 Humans are not exceptions. There are no special set of rules that govern human conduct and that allow humans to transcend Nature. Thus, Spinoza is committed to the unity of nature and the unity of science. Those who propose understanding humans as exceptional, for example the moral philosophers, 474 go on to use these exceptional qualities, their freedom of the will, to denigrate the natural affects and desires of humans. If one understands human freedom in this way, as the ability always to choose otherwise, to go against how one is naturally determined or even just inclined, then of course, one opens up a space for blame for reproach. Spinoza, however, was not interested in accusing human actions, but wanted rather to understand them. Spinoza’s project of reform, of naturalizing ethics also provided a naturalistic basis for political philosophy. When we can understand state power and individual power in the same terms, in terms of the affects of individuals, as Spinoza allows us to, we can use this understanding to diagnose and cure some of the problems of the state, which we can better understand as affective disorders. In the following section, I will provide a brief example of the ways that we can use Spinoza’s theory of the affects and the political principles which can be derived from it to improve our understanding of our own political problems. 473 TTP, Chapter 17. 474 This includes Descartes and the Stoics insofar as they used human’s ‘exceptional’ qualities of freedom and the will to prescribe an impossible standard of conduct for humans.