Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: In this response to Steven Nadler’s paper, I ask whether Spinoza views the transition from rational to intuitive knowledge as an individual or a collective project and conclude that it is largely a collective one. For Spinoza, our individual capacity to reason is underwritten by a social practice, an art of reasoning, which licences the rational conclusions on which intuitive knowledge rests. Equally, the pursuit of intuitive knowledge rests on a shared art of intuiting. Both kinds of knowledge are therefore collective achievements. If this is right, acquiring intuitive knowledge presupposes a certain kind of education. While it may be in principle available to everyone, as Nadler claims, it depends in practice on educational luck.
Source: Theory and Research in Education
Author: Susan James
Institutions: University of London, Birkbeck, University of London
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4404206946