The status that Spinoza and Freud assign to law has some convergence, for both embrace the positivity, the mere conventionality and utility, of law and eschew any real or eternal moral norms (that is, they thoroughly reject the Natural Law tradition) that law might capture and embody. In addition, both put forth a biological account of human nature, rather than a theological one or even quasi-theological one, and that biological nature is the springboard in each case for defining the overall purpose of law. In addition, for both, human biology is a source of the sociality, the psychic attachments, that make an emotional union of individuals into a group possible. Nevertheless, it is in the specific elaborations of human biology that we can discern the beginning of a parting of the ways, for in their conceptions of human nature and the nature of nature Freud and Spinoza diverge in significant respects.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlp.2016.06.008 | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
Spinoza's Announcement of Psychological Practice.
Am J Psychoanal
September 2020
Kilmainham Congregational Church, Inchicore Rd., Dublin 8, Ireland.
Following Freud's admission of his own 'dependence on Spinoza's doctrine', the present paper extends psychoanalytic discernment of a bright line from Baruch Spinoza's natural philosophy across the evolution of natural and social sciences to Freud's development of psychoanalysis and forward, to contemporary psychoanalytic thinking. The lens through which these developments unfold is a close reading of Spinoza's first, incomplete methodological statement, the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. Tracking both the developing form and textual literary context from which this Spinozan inquiry proceeds, we recognize specific anticipations of contemporary psychoanalytic phenomena.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSpinoza to Freud: The unraveling of a psycho-analytical perspective on moral responsibility and law.
Int J Law Psychiatry
January 2018
Bates and Benjamin Professor of Classical and Religious Studies, Hamilton College Fellow in Neurophilosophy, Integrative Neurosciences Research Program (INRP) Visiting Professor of Philosophy, School of Marxism, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China. Electronic address:
The status that Spinoza and Freud assign to law has some convergence, for both embrace the positivity, the mere conventionality and utility, of law and eschew any real or eternal moral norms (that is, they thoroughly reject the Natural Law tradition) that law might capture and embody. In addition, both put forth a biological account of human nature, rather than a theological one or even quasi-theological one, and that biological nature is the springboard in each case for defining the overall purpose of law. In addition, for both, human biology is a source of the sociality, the psychic attachments, that make an emotional union of individuals into a group possible.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe presence of Spinoza in the exchanges between Sigmund Freud and Romain Rolland.
Int J Psychoanal
December 2009
La Tour, F-73800 Coise Saint Jean Pied Gauthier, France.
Although Freud recognized his profound affinity with Spinoza, we seldom find explicit and direct references to the philosopher in his works. The correspondence between Romain Rolland, the 'Christian without a church', and Freud, the 'atheist Jew', is full of Spinozian reminiscences that nourish their works of this period and are underpinned by their mutual transference. The Future of an Illusion is written according to a Spinozian blueprint and aims at replacing religion, qualified as superstition, by psychoanalysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn a recent paper Britton attempted to distinguish between a phantasy that has achieved the status of a belief and one that has not, and between a belief and knowledge. The author argues that, in the light of the seventeenth-century controversy between Descartes and Spinoza, both of these distinctions are untenable. Descartes argued, as Britton does, and as Freud did, that phantasies or ideas are not accepted as beliefs until they are tested against reality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWant AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!