Methodos (Apr 2004)

Corps et individualité dans la philosophie de Spinoza

  • Pascale Gillot

DOI
https://doi.org/10.4000/methodos.114
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 3

Abstract

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In this paper, we want to show that the theory of individuation, which is first inherent to physics, plays a crucial part in the spinozistic answer to the mind-body problem ; the mind-body union is thus conceived as a real identity, more particularly as the identity of one individual. In the first part of this study, we consider the spinozistic concept of individual, its origin in the science of nature and its close bounds with the category of complex body in the physics of Spinoza. Power degree or conatus, composition and individuation degree appear to be equivalent to one another. The analysis of the specific power of human body (what it is able to accomplish on its own, without any help from the soul) involves then the description of its proper individuality and complexity, which account for its spontaneous and determinate action, like an automaton. This is the issue of the second part of our paper. At last, in the third part, we insist on the importance of the spinozistic conception about the complex individuality of human body, as far as the determination of what the mind is able to do is concerned : the organization and power of the mind are directly proportional to the complexity of the body. In that respect, the spinozistic theory of human psycho-physical unity does involve, despite the causal independence between the mental and the physical, some kind of gnoseological priority (which is not an ontological one) of the body upon the human mind.

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