Spinoza on Ethics and Understanding

"Peter Winch’s depth as a philosopher comes out in the depth of his engagement with Spinoza. Spinoza’s ethical concerns resonated with Winch’s own; and his lectures are wonderfully expressive of how he saw philosophy itself. Winch’s discussions of the complex relation between Descartes’s philosophy and that of Spinoza are among the most valuable features of this fine book." — Cora Diamond, Kenan Professor Of Philosophy Emerita, Department of Philosophy, University of Virginia

This book makes available lectures and seminars on Spinoza that Peter Winch gave in the eighties, at Swansea and then at King’s College London. There are six chapters and the volume contains a substantial essay by David Cockburn, Winch, Spinoza, and the Human Body, in which he reflects on the lectures and on the conceptual difficulties of Spinoza’s detaching the concept of ‘body’ from the moorings of our common understanding— which moorings would, of course, represent for Spinoza an inadequate idea. In that case, what kind of interior changes have to occur if we are to arrive at an adequate idea?—a question relevant to how we assess Spinoza’s view of the relation between metaphysics and ethics — Michael McGhee, University of Liverpool; Michael Campbell and Sarah Tropper; Philosophical Investigations 2022.