A Metaphysics of Human Life. Towards a New Reading of Spinoza’s Philosophy

On a widespread view, Spinoza’s metaphysics is a system of principles by means of which all truth about the essences and existence of all beings, including ourselves, is derived. This system, so it is supposed, is more-or-less complete: it represents the universe from the view-point of an omniscient intellect, to the effect that the remedy that the Ethics provides against the daily sorrows of human life is an invitation to adopt some kind of divine viewpoint. This is no small promise: once wemanage to look at things, in particular our own lives, sub specie aeternitatis, we may find peace and quiet. I must confess, the longer I work on Spinoza the more I find this approach unsatisfying. To be sure, the Ethics does contain a conceptual framework that makes this escape from the human perspective a vivid option, although we may materialize it only step by step. Moreover, it does so in a manner that attracts quite different-minded people. I also do not deny that this outlook is important when it comes to comprehending how Spinoza’s metaphysics contributes to a better life. Yet I think there is more wisdom and subtlety in Spinoza’s metaphysical thought which, however, only comes to the fore if we begin to pay attention to other aspects that are not tied up with the notion of a system offering cognitive escape from the human perspective. My contention is that Spinoza’s metaphysics is also concerned with the many ways in which the human perspective shapes our lives. Spinoza gives us an understanding of human life as it may be derived from the notion of our having our very own viewpoint on the things and aims in our life. To appreciate the value of Spinoza’s system, it is not sufficient to reconstruct it in terms of a few guiding principles; wemust also show how it accounts for the reality of our human, irreducibly situated, historically embedded life. 2773-0107