I propose a discussion on my PDF-PowerPoint "Spinoza on Mind's Slavery and Mind's Liberation".

I used this PDF-PowerPoint for the lecture held online on Friday, 22nd November 2024 at the National Scientific Conference with International Participation Dedicated to World Philosophy Day, 80 Years of SUB and 155 Years of BAS, organised by the Section "Philosophical Sciences" of the Union of Scientists in Bulgaria at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia (21-22 November 2024).

A central theme of Spinoza’s Ethica is the description of the individual’s exposition to the emergence of passions. Passions bring the individual to a condition of mental enslavement. Spinoza tries to find a way out of the passions: through the analysis of the structure of reality and through the inquiry into the structure of the individual’s mind, Spinoza shows that the development of knowledge of reality in the mind is the solution to the process of liberation of the mind. The possibility, for the individual, to reach an authentic power of mind consists in the acquisition of the knowledge of reality. This acquisition needs to be developed through the appropriate education. The knowledge of the whole reality increases the power of the individual’s mind, therewith contemporarily diminishing the influence of passions on the individual’s mind. Through the knowledge the individual can emendate his mind: thereby the individual becomes able to eliminate in his mind the already present confused ideas on reality, on the one hand, and to oppose the formation of new confused ideas, on the other hand. The main text of my investigation will be Spinoza’s Ethica; I shall refer also to the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and to the Tractatus Politicus.