Knowledge of God, empowerment of the mind and transformation of the subject in Spinoza

Abstract

A central theme of Spinoza’s Ethica is the description of the individual’s exposition to the emergence of passions. Passions bring the individual to a condition of mental enslavement. Spinoza tries to find a way out of the passions: through the analysis of the structure of reality and through the inquiry into the structure of the individual’s mind, Spinoza shows that the de velopment of knowledge of reality in the mind is the solution to the process of liberation of the mind. The possibility, for the individual, to reach an authentic power of mind consists in the acquisition of the knowledge of reality. This acquisition needs to be developed through the appropriate education. The knowledge of the whole reality increases the power of the individual’s mind, thus contemporarily diminishing the influence of passions on the individual’s mind. Through the knowledge the individual can emendate his mind: thereby the individual becomes able to eliminate in his mind the already present con fused ideas on reality, on the one hand, and to oppose the formation of new confused ideas, on the other hand. The main text of our investigation will be Spinoza’s Ethica; we shall refer also to the Tractatus Theologico-Politicusand to the Tractatus Politicus.