St Andrews Research Repository

St Andrews University Home
View Item 
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  •   St Andrews Research Repository
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
  • View Item
  • Login
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

Spinozistic expression as signification

Thumbnail
View/Open
Borge_2022_BJHP_Spinozistic_expression_CC.pdf (1.949Mb)
Date
01/01/2022
Author
Salgado Borge, Antonio
Keywords
Signification
Conceiving
Spinoza
Expression
Involving
B Philosophy (General)
T-NDAS
MCC
Metadata
Show full item record
Altmetrics Handle Statistics
Altmetrics DOI Statistics
Abstract
I propose a new interpretation of Spinoza’s obscure but important concept of ‘expression’. Any account of Spinozistic expression must be able to fulfil two principal requirements. First, it must be able to accommodate all the relevant cases of ‘to express’ (exprimire) posited by Spinoza in the Ethics. Second, it must be able to deal with the fact that for Spinoza all instances of ‘to express’ are instances of ‘to involve’ (involvere). By taking both ‘to express’ and ‘to involve’ as coextensive with ‘to conceive’, contemporary accounts of Spinozistic expression satisfy the latter requirement, but they fail to satisfy the former. In this article, I dispute the claim that for Spinoza ‘to express’ is coextensive with ‘to conceive’. I argue instead that Spinoza understands exprimire as natural signification: for Spinoza, ‘to express’ is coextensive with ‘to be a natural sign of’. I show that this interpretation is not only able to successfully deal with both requirements of Spinozistic expression, but also offers a novel and textually supported insight to Spinoza’s understanding and use of the elusive concept of ‘expression’.
Citation
Salgado Borge , A 2022 , ' Spinozistic expression as signification ' , British Journal for the History of Philosophy , vol. 30 , no. 1 , pp. 24-47 . https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2021.1953961
Publication
British Journal for the History of Philosophy
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2021.1953961
ISSN
0960-8788
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Description
Funding information: This work was supported by the National Council of Science and Technology, Mexico [grant number 2018-000032-01EXTF-00013].
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/26452

Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.

Advanced Search

Browse

All of RepositoryCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateNamesTitlesSubjectsClassificationTypeFunderThis CollectionBy Issue DateNamesTitlesSubjectsClassificationTypeFunder

My Account

Login

Open Access

To find out how you can benefit from open access to research, see our library web pages and Open Access blog. For open access help contact: openaccess@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Accessibility

Read our Accessibility statement.

How to submit research papers

The full text of research papers can be submitted to the repository via Pure, the University's research information system. For help see our guide: How to deposit in Pure.

Electronic thesis deposit

Help with deposit.

Repository help

For repository help contact: Digital-Repository@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Give Feedback

Cookie policy

This site may use cookies. Please see Terms and Conditions.

Usage statistics

COUNTER-compliant statistics on downloads from the repository are available from the IRUS-UK Service. Contact us for information.

© University of St Andrews Library

University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland, No SC013532.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter