In het kader van de Spinoza Leerstoel zal professor Moira Gatens op donderdag 22 april en donderdag 20 mei 2010 twee lezingen verzorgen.
De lezingen vinden plaats in de Aula van de Universiteit van Amsterdam, Oude Lutherse Kerk, Singel 411 (hoek Spui), Amsterdam. De zaal is geopend vanaf 19.30 uur en de toegang is gratis (reserveren is niet nodig).
Aanvang van de lezingen: 20.15 uur. De voertaal is Engels.
Brief CV Moira Gatens
Professor Moira Gatens is als Professorial Research Fellow verbonden aan het Departement Filosofie van de Universiteit van Sydney. Ze heeft internationale faam verworven op het gebied van de sociale en politieke filosofie, Spinoza-studies en feministische filosofie. Ze is auteur van drie monografieën, heeft de redactie verzorgd van vier boeken en heeft vele tijdschriftartikelen en bijdragen aan verzamelbundels geschreven. Boeken van haar hand zijn onder meer: Feminism and Philosophy (1991), Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality (1996) en (met Genevieve Lloyd) Collective Imaginings, Spinoza Past and Present (1999). Ze was gastredacteur van een speciale editie van het tijdschrift Angelaki over gender en genre (2008). Recentelijk verzorgde zij de redactie van de bundel Feminist Interpretations of Benedict Spinoza (2009). Professor Gatens was fellow aan het Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlijn (2007-08), Erskine Fellow aan de Canterbury University, Christchurch, NZ (2005), en gastprofessor aan de London School of Economics and Political Science (2003). Op dit moment is ze bezig met een project op het gebied van filosofie en literatuur, met een bijzondere nadruk op de verbanden tussen het gedachtegoed van Spinoza, Feuerbach en George Eliot.
Lecture 1 | Thursday, April 22, 2010, 20.15 hours
Spinoza’s Hard Path to Freedom (1): Imagining, Believing, and Understanding
Lecture One will defend the idea that Spinoza’s account of the different ways in which one can know the world affects, and is affected by, different ways of being in the world. These different ways of being can be described in terms of variations in virtue, power, perfection, or joy. In his political treatises, and in his Ethics, Spinoza traces out the path to be travelled by those who strive to become virtuous and joyful. He refers to this path as ‘hard’ and ‘difficult’ and to the attainment of freedom as ‘rare’. For Spinoza, an increase in power or perfection involves apprehending the workings of the imagination and the vicissitudes of the passions along with the processes of belief formation. But are there ways of being in the world that can block this endeavour to increase one’s power? It was in order to address this question that Spinoza interrupted his composition of the Ethics to work on the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. A consideration of ethical life, in other words, prompted his critique of theology and politics. This critique highlights the collective andsituated character of knowledge. Lecture One will conclude with the problem of the capacity of ordinary people (Lat. vulgus) to become free.
Lecture 2 | Thursday, May 20, 2010, 20.15 hours
Spinoza’s Hard Path to Freedom (2): Falsehood, Fiction, and Knowledge
Lecture Two will take up the theme of the accessibility of Spinoza’s path to freedom hrough a presentation of his views on the common falsehoods and shared fictions that prevent the development of human understanding. Do his views on falsehood and fiction imply that the imagination always is a hindrance to the development of reason and freedom, and that fictions always are deceptive? Several of the issues pertinent to these lectures converge on the place of fiction in the development of knowledge. I argue that the imagination can be conceived as an aid to understanding and that the associations between fiction and falsehood are often too swiftly drawn. Admittedly, fictions can be especially adept at engaging the imagination and in capturing affect. However, a fictional posit also may be understood as a hypothesis that enables experimental thought. Fictional posits have the potential both to facilitate and to impede the endeavour to become free. But is this approach to fiction consistent with Spinoza’s view? The problems treated in this lecture are contentious ones for Spinoza scholarship and their adequate resolution is critical to an assessment of the viability of Spinoza’s ethics today.
Spinoza Leerstoel
*2007 was het 375 jaar geleden dat Spinoza werd geboren. Daarom verzorgden 3 Spinozakenners een lezing.
De Spinoza Lezingen worden gegeven door spraakmakende denkers van deze tijd. Zij zijn bedoeld voor een breed publiek dat op de hoogte wil blijven van hedendaagse ontwikkelingen in de filosofie. De teksten van de Spinoza Lezingen worden gepubliceerd door Uitgeverij Van Gorcum.
