Search

This paper forms part of a larger project which seeks to derive a theory of art from a close reading of Spinoza's work. It focuses on the importance of the aligned terms of ingenium and dispositio, which are both used to discuss the central importance of "dispostion" to our capacity to live well. While it is not possible to avoid affects, it is possible to order them in such a way that their negative impacts are lessened and their positive impacts are enhanced. We begin by underlining the importance of disposition to opening the way to understanding. We connect this to Spinoza's acknowledgement of the importance of art in helping to provide a plan for living. We turn to readings of ingenium in the work of Moreau and Balibar to further explore how the concept of disposition helps us to recognise the capacities of works of art to affect their audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Preface to Part Four of the Ethics, Spinoza offers the reader an exemplar of human nature. However, Spinoza does not conceive of human nature as a universal in which each human being participates, simply by virtue of being human. Rather, each human being is conceived as singular. Thriving individual lives assume thriving communities composed of (somewhat) like-minded and (somewhat) like-embodied individuals. The model, or exemplar, then, may be considered to play the role of an enabling fiction in his educational and moral philosophy. The approach taken here is to explore Spinoza's notions of singularity, similarity, and exemplarity in relation to the distinctive human capacity to educate the senses and the passions and to cultivate reason, and thereby to flourish. The final section of the paper reads the education of Victor Frankenstein's 'monster' through the lens of Spinoza's philosophy of affect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between honour and recognition in the context of normative heterosexuality, and the implications of this relationship for sustaining and transforming problematic sexual norms. Building on recent attempts to move beyond a narrow and restrictive focus on consent as a means of thinking through the ethics of heterosexual sex, we reflect critically on the concept of honour in this domain. Honour, in our approach, is a cluster concept that houses a number of related normative values and affective attitudes, including respect, self-respect, pride, dignity, esteem, integrity, trust, and honesty. We examine how honour is distributed by heterosexual imaginaries in ways that privilege men in the sexual encounter, and argue that part of cultivating ethical heterosexual relations is to imagine a sexual honour code where both men and women see themselves, and are seen by their counterpart, as entitled to sexual respect. To conclude, the paper examines and defends the cultivation of ethical, just, and honourable heterosexual relations as a necessarily embodied, intersubjective, and imaginative endeavour that involves challenges to, and shifts within, multiple imaginaries and (in)sensibilities that cluster to support damaging norms of sexual conduct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including the scope for social action and the shape of social relations, and institutional design to control human behavior.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including Dutch philosopher, Baruch Spinoza’s philosophy in relation to artistic practice; development of English and German Romanticism to German Idealism and French rationalism.

This paper reads Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, through the lens of three themes in Spinoza's philosophy. First, the bondage of the passions; second, the importance of the imitation of affects as grounding sociability; and, finally, the problematic relationship between human normative life and the rest of nature, posed by Spinoza's immanent ontology. Like Spinoza's exemplars in the Ethics and in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Shelley's presentation of the modern Prometheus is intended to provide her readers with a vivid salutary lesson: hubris and narcissism engender disastrous forms of sociability. In contrast, the ars vivendi of the wise person centres on strength of character (fortitudo) which consists in achieving a balance between the care of one's self (animositas) and the care of others (generositas). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a critical reading of Maxine Hong Kingston's novel, Woman Warrior, this paper addresses Amy Allen's criticism that Seyla Benhabib's conception of narrative agency involves the idea of a gender-neutral core self. Allen's criticism of Benhabib is found wanting and the notion of an ungendered self is judged incoherent. Rather, gender is one of a number of markers at work in the open-ended narrative construction of identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article considers the couple comprised of Marian Evans, who is better known as George Eliot, and her partner in life, George Henry Lewes, alongside the theorization of the genre of the English realist novel in the nineteenth century. It considers some of the rules and conventions that governed various kinds of coupling, between Evans and Lewes, between gender and genre, and between George Eliot and the realist novel. It is stated that Lewes acted as Eliot's agent or intermediary, with the publisher John Blackwood. It investigates the question of gender regarding the pen name George Eliot. Related issues are further discussed.

The article discusses the author's project which won him the Australian Professional Fellowship award through the Australian Research Council grant application. The author offers insights on some important characteristics the will lead to good research. He discusses the distinction between philosophical and literary texts. Furthermore, he gives details on the content of his project.

The article discusses topics published within the issue including one on the relationship between gender, genre and philosophical writing, another on the triadic relation between gender, theory and race, and one on the normative practices that function to hierarchize one genre over another.