Abstract
Throughout his philosophical career, Peter Winch had a particular interest in the philosophy of Spinoza, as is evidenced not only by a variety of references on a diverse range of issues in his works, but also by several lectures and seminars he delivered on this thinker. A reconstruction of his interpretation of Spinoza’s system, which unites epistemological, metaphysical and ethical considerations as mutually dependent, brings to the fore Winch’s interest in the individual not only as an important epistemological, but equally as a moral agent, who is embedded in a web of circumstances that shape her view on the world and the possibilities and options she is able to entertain. Moreover, in his reading of Spinoza, the focus on the irreducibility of the individual’s standpoint is also connected to the philosophies of Wittgenstein and Simone Weil, a connection which adds at the same time an emphasis on a fundamental limitation of moral philosophy in general.
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Notes
- 1.
The version I will quote from is derived from transcriptions of Peter Winch’s seminars, supplemented by his unpublished lecture notes. See Peter Winch (2019). Lectures on Spinoza: Ethics and Understanding. Ed. by Michael Campbell and Sarah Tropper (Unpublished manuscript). For the original material, see the Peter Winch Collection at King’s College London Archives, Reference Code GB 0100 KCLCA K/PP171.
- 2.
Abbreviations for the Ethics (=E) in the following are Roman numerals indicating the individual parts of the Ethics, p = proposition, s = scholium, pref = preface (hence EIIp43s is Ethics, Part 2, Proposition 43, Scholium).
- 3.
For an overview of interpretations concerning the import of the ‘geometrical order’, see Steenbakkers 2009.
- 4.
This driving notion of ‘understanding’ in Winch might be best contrasted with Della Rocca’s interpretation of Spinoza’s system as a “rationalism on steroids”: According to Della Rocca, everything is for Spinoza in principle understandable because of his adherence to the Principle of Sufficient Reason and the uniformity of laws according to which all things behave, which is itself connected to that principle. On this reading, our understanding of the world is itself a consequence of another principle rather than being the driving principle. (Della Rocca 2008, 4–6). Closer to Winch’s approach seems to be Ursula Renz’s, who summarizes her general claim regarding Spinoza’s system as follows: “subjective experience is explainable, and its successful explanation is of ethical relevance because it makes us wiser, freer, and happier” (Renz 2018, 1).
- 5.
Winch invokes EIIp43s in support of this reading: “For no one who has a true idea is unaware that a true idea involves the highest certainty. For to have a true idea means nothing other than knowing a thing perfectly, or in the best way. And of course no one can doubt this unless he thinks that an idea is something mute, like a picture on a tablet, and not a mode of thinking, viz. the very [act of] understanding. And I ask, who can know that he understands some thing unless he first understands it? I.e., who can know that he is certain about some thing unless he is first certain about it? What can there be which is clearer and more certain than a true idea, to serve as a standard of truth? As the light makes both itself and the darkness plain, so truth is the standard both of itself and of the false” (Spinoza 1985, 479).
- 6.
Winch has here probably Spinoza’s comments on skeptics in Treatise on the Emendation on the Intellect in mind (see Spinoza 1985, 22).
- 7.
To see what motivates this assessment, see Winch 1958.
- 8.
See EIVpref: “Man’s lack of power to moderate and restrain the affects I call Bondage. For the man who is subject to affects is under the control, not of himself, but of fortune, in whose power he so greatly is that often, though he sees the better for himself, he is still forced to follow the worse” (Spinoza 1985, 543).
- 9.
See also Winch 1989, 134–36.
- 10.
EIIIp9s: “From all this, then, it is clear that we neither strive for, nor will, neither want, nor desire anything because we judge it to be good; on the contrary, we judge something to be good because we strive for it, will it, want it, and desire it” (Spinoza 1985, 500).
- 11.
Winch is referring here to Zettel 320 in Wittgenstein 1967, 59.
- 12.
See also Christensen 2011, 798.
- 13.
I would like to thank the FWF (Austrian Science Fund) for its support of the research project P 29072 ‘Spinoza on the Concept of the Human Life Form’ and its project leader Ursula Renz, as well as Michael Campbell for his careful reading and helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
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Tropper, S. (2020). The Identity of Man – Winch Between Spinoza, Weil, and Wittgenstein. In: Campbell, M., Reid, L. (eds) Ethics, Society and Politics: Themes from the Philosophy of Peter Winch. Nordic Wittgenstein Studies, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40742-1_9
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