Inadequate and Adequate Ideas of Mind Inside The Ethics

This work presents the inadequate and adequate ideas of mind inside The Ethics, wrote by Dutch philosopher Benedictus Spinoza (1632 - 1677). We began from ontological fundamentals, known as Substance (God), attributes and modes, and we explained God as the indwelling cause for all things, and it consists of infinite properties, which expresses his eternal and infinite essence. The modes are emotions of God. In this manner, we had concluded: God, attributes, and modes are ontologically linked in one unique unity. The humans are admitted as one finite mode of God because they are constituted of mind and body, the finite modes of properties of thinking and extent. Because they are a finite mode, humans are determined by external causes and are subject to the meet emotions, where happens the exchanges of sad and happy emotions, compositions and decompositions, and so, the human action power is augmented or diminished. The body is the object of the idea that constitutes the mind and this is the idea of the body. Mind and body form the unity of the human being. The relationship between mind and body are simultaneous, this is, they act and suffer at the same time. What happens to the body, for it can affect and can be affected by the meet, the mind realizes with the idea about emotions. However this knowledge is inadequate because it belongs to the first genre of knowledge, that is the imagination, which knows only the effects of relations. In this way, we showed, throughout the problematic of inadequate ideas, alternatives for the human being conceives the adequate ideas. The adequate ideas are found in the second genre of knowledge, that is the reason, which has his fundament in the common notions, this is, what exists equally in the part and in the whole. By the second genre of knowledge, we know the causes of compositions and decompositions of a relationship. By the third genre of knowledge (intuition), we know the essence of the singular things. The way to conceive the adequate ideas is not, however, by the avoiding of meets, but by the approximation them, and so to know the causes of compositions and decompositions of relationships.

Renata Oliveira

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