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Marija Brida on Spinoza’s methodology: Spinoza, The Non‐Mechanist Dialectician

The standard and practically universally accepted understanding of Spinoza is that of a mechanist, determinist, and rationalist. (In)famously, he explicated and attempted to prove his metaphysical and ethical theses about the world and humans by using the geometric method first introduced by Euclidus in his Geometry of deriving propositions that are purportedly entailed by definitions (or axioms). What I will do in this presentation is to present an unusual and interesting analysis and interpretation of Spinoza's methodology that was given by the Croatian woman philosopher Marija Brida (1912-1993) in her 1961 article "The methodological aspect of Spinoza's philosophy". In the aforementioned article she examined those parts of Spinoza's Ethics, his epistolary correspondence, and Treatise on the emendation of the intellect pertaining to his methodological and epistemological stances and assumptions. On her reading of Spinoza he emerges as not only a non-mechanist rationalist but also an anticipator of 19th century dialectical thought, a genuine dialectician, limited only by the reigning ideas of his time, that has a thesis, an antithesis, and a synthesis. What makes Brida's interpretation of Spinoza's thought of scholarly interest is that it resolves some of the contradictions surrounding the concept of a self-caused substance (casua sui) which is a central notion of Spinoza's philosophy.

Marija Brida, Spinoza, dialectics, mechanism, methodology, geometric method

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