Spinoza (book)

Spinoza

Cover of the first edition
Author Stuart Hampshire
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Subject Baruch Spinoza
Published 1951 (Faber & Faber h/b
Pelican Books p/b)
Media type Print (hardcover and paperback)
Pages 237 (1962 Penguin Books edition)
ISBN 978-0140202533

Spinoza is a book about Baruch Spinoza by the English philosopher Stuart Hampshire, first published in 1951, with a revised edition in 1962,[1] and an edition with a new introduction in 1987.[2] It has become a classic work about Spinoza. In 2005, Spinoza, along with Hampshire's other writings on the philosopher, was incorporated into a single volume, published as Spinoza and Spinozism.[2]

Summary

Hampshire praises Spinoza as "the most ambitious and uncompromising of all modern philosophers" and discusses Spinoza's thought in its 17th century context, contrasting him with other rationalist philosophers such as René Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Hampshire believes that, while internally consistent, Spinoza's philosophy and especially his epistemology is "liable not to be appreciated" because it is simultaneously linked to two normally opposed traditions, nominalism and the coherence theory of truth.[3]

In Hampshire's view, while Spinoza "deliberately effaced his own personality and wished his philosophy to stand alone", there is enough evidence to show that Spinoza was an "exceptional" man. He provides lengthy discussions of Spinoza's conception of mind and will.[4] Hampshire compares Spinoza to Sigmund Freud. He sees a parallel between Spinoza's conatus and Freud's conception of libido: "both philosophers conceive emotional life as based on a universal unconscious drive or tendency to self-preservation; both maintain that any frustration of this drive must manifest itself in our conscious life as some painful disturbance."[5]

Reception

Spinoza was publishing success, with 45,000 copies being sold in the first three months.[2] The work has been praised by philosophers such as A. J. Ayer, who commended the lucidity of Hampshire's exposition of Spinoza,[6] Roger Scruton, who called it "the most succinct and rewarding" modern commentary on Spinoza,[7] and Edwin Curley, who described it as "an excellent general introduction to Spinoza's thought".[8]

Classicist Norman O. Brown writes in Life Against Death (1959) that while Hampshire provides an acute comparison between Spinoza and Freud, there are nevertheless important differences between the two, such as Freud's dualism, that Hampshire fails to recognize.[9] Brown has also written that Spinoza is the classic statement of the view that Spinoza's materialism and rejection of mind-body dualism are supportive of hope in scientific enlightenment and economic development, and criticized Hampshire for interpreting Spinoza's monism as a form of quasi-religious mysticism, thus creating an apparent contradiction between it and Spinoza's materialism. Brown argues that Spinoza's thought has communist implications that Hampshire ignores.[10]

Spinoza has been seen by R. S. Downie as the key to understanding Hampshire's own views on freedom and the philosophy of mind.[11] Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio agrees with Hampshire's view that Spinoza "deliberately wanted to purge his texts of personal feeling and rhetoric."[12] Spinoza has sometimes been seen as outdated; Scruton writes that while "path-breaking" it is also "now somewhat dated."[13] Hampshire himself comments that since the publication of Spinoza, "there have been large changes in the interests of English-speaking philosophers, and in expounding Spinoza's Ethics emphasis will now tend to fall in different places to meet these contemporary concerns."[14]

References

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Hampshire 1962. p. 4.
  2. 1 2 3 Margarlit 2015.
  3. ↑ Hampshire 1962. pp. 11, 14-26, 116
  4. ↑ Hampshire 1962. pp. 64-5, 128-9, 227.
  5. ↑ Hampshire 1962. pp. 141-4.
  6. ↑ Hampshire 1962. p. 7.
  7. ↑ Scruton 1996. p. 118.
  8. ↑ Curley 1994. p. xxxiv.
  9. ↑ Brown 1985. p. 47.
  10. ↑ Brown 1991. pp. 127-8.
  11. ↑ Downie 2005. p. 358.
  12. ↑ Damasio 2003. pp. 263, 300, 328.
  13. ↑ Scruton 2002. p. 299.
  14. ↑ Hampshire 1996. p. vii.

Bibliography

Books
  • Brown, Norman O. (1991). Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-07298-7. 
  • Brown, Norman O. (1985). Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 0-8195-6144-4. 
  • Curley, Edwin; Spinoza, Benedict de (1994). A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-00067-0. 
  • Damasio, Antonio (2003). Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. Orlando: Harcourt Books. ISBN 0-15-100557-5. 
  • Downie, R. S. (2005). Honderich, Ted, ed. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-926479-1. 
  • Hampshire, Stuart (1962). Spinoza. London: Penguin Books. 
Online articles
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