INQ-120 | True Freedom

Full Title: Spinoza: The Ethics of Experimentation

Topic Description:

This course understands Spinoza’s ethics as an “experimentalism.” Despite the fact that Spinoza died over 300 years ago, his writings remain remarkably prescient for a wide variety of disciplines from religion to neuroscience. The source of this prescience, however, comes from Spinoza’s recasting ethical theory in terms of how we might live rather than in terms of how we should live. Freedom in every aspect of life from the personal to the political to the religious is dependent on a particular way of engaging with the world. This engagement takes the form of an experiment to see if what we engage with results in an increase or a decrease in our capacity to affect and be affected by the world. True freedom, for Spinoza, lies in increasing our capacities.

Counts as Global? No

Topic Approved: October 2009