Masterworks in the Western Tradition – serie

This book explores the seventeenth-century philosopher Spinoza’s modernist humanism. There is little doubt that Spinoza was one of the principle founders of modernity, but his modernism is often thought to come at the expense of a humanism. Drawing attention to Spinoza’s humanism, this book concentrates on politics, ethics, and psychology in order to understand Spinoza’s conception of the human being, and why that conception endures into our own time with particular relevance. This introduction to Spinoza’s thought proceeds in a reverse order from the usual treatment: rather than beginning with a consideration of Spinoza’s metaphysics, the discussion culminates in an exploration of those concepts. In this way, this book is a deeper examination of what Spinoza himself thought, and allows the reader to consider more fully Spinoza’s wider philosophy.

Aristotle’s Virtues focuses on Aristotle’s philosophical method and his conceptions of form and substance as a way to explicate the main elements of his ethical and political theorizing. This book shows how those highly general features of Aristotle’s thought have an important bearing on his conception of the best kind of life for a human being and the kind of political community needed to enable and encourage that kind of life. While explicating fundamental aspects of Aristotle’s philosophy of nature, metaphysics, and theory of knowledge, the discussion of them leads to a culminating account of the virtues of both individual and political life.