Book Section
Ericka Marie Itokazu
Temporality and History in Spinoza
The Refusal of Teleological Thought
Spinoza’s philosophy is often characterized as a philosophy sub specie aeternitatis where time and temporality are notions without an expressive role. Consequently, understanding human history by means of the Ethics — using geometric demonstrations supported by metaphysical terms — and without the aid of the notion of time, can be considered as leading to an unsolvable problem. In this chapter, I draw upon Spinoza’s refusal of finalism to propose a renewed investigation about Spinozism and the issue of temporality, asking the question: could the absence of time in Spinoza’s work and his writings on efficient and immanent causality allow us to rethink a theory of history?
Keywords: finalism; causality; history; time; duration; Spinoza, Baruch
| Title |
Temporality and History in Spinoza
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| Subtitle |
The Refusal of Teleological Thought
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| Author(s) |
Ericka Marie Itokazu
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| Identifier | |
| Description |
Spinoza’s philosophy is often characterized as a philosophy sub specie aeternitatis where time and temporality are notions without an expressive role. Consequently, understanding human history by means of the Ethics — using geometric demonstrations supported by metaphysical terms — and without the aid of the notion of time, can be considered as leading to an unsolvable problem. In this chapter, I draw upon Spinoza’s refusal of finalism to propose a renewed investigation about Spinozism and the issue of temporality, asking the question: could the absence of time in Spinoza’s work and his writings on efficient and immanent causality allow us to rethink a theory of history?
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| Is Part Of | |
| Place |
Berlin
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| Publisher |
ICI Berlin Press
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| Date |
2 March 2021
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| Subject |
finalism
causality
history
time
duration
Spinoza, Baruch
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| Rights |
© by the author(s)
Except for images or otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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| Language |
en-GB
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| page start |
55
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| page end |
72
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| Source |
Materialism and Politics, ed. by Bernardo Bianchi, Emilie Filion-Donato, Marlon Miguel, and Ayşe Yuva, Cultural Inquiry, 20 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2021), pp. 55–72
|
References
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- Itokazu, Ericka, ‘Au-delà du temps mesure. La question du temps chez Spinoza’ in Ontologia e temporalità. Spinoza e i suoi lettori moderni, ed. by Giuseppe D’Anna and Vitorio Morfino (Milano: Mimesis, 2012), pp. 387–98
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- Morfino, Vittorio, Plural Temporality: Transindividuality and the Aleatory between Spinoza and Althusser (Leiden: Brill, 2014) <https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004270558>
- Morfino, Vittorio, Genealogia di un pregiudizio. L’immagine di Spinoza in Germania da Leibniz a Marx (Hildesheim: Olms, 2016)
- Spinoza, Benedictus de, The Collected Works of Spinoza, ed. and trans. by Edwin Curley, 2 vols (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985–2016)
- Tosel, André, Du matérialisme, de Spinoza (Paris: Kimé, 1994)
- Vinciguerra, Lorenzo, Spinoza et le signe. La Genèse de l’imagination (Paris: Vrin, 2005)
- Yovel, Yirmiyahu, Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Adventures of Immanence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989)
Cite as:
Ericka Marie Itokazu, ‘Temporality and History in Spinoza: The Refusal of Teleological Thought’, in Materialism and Politics, ed. by Bernardo Bianchi, Emilie Filion-Donato, Marlon Miguel, and Ayşe Yuva, Cultural Inquiry, 20 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2021), pp. 55-72 <https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-20_03>