Human Nature in Spinoza’s Philosophy

Abstract Spinoza reflects extensively on human beings and their affairs in cognitive, corporeal, affective, and socio-political terms. Loath to elevate human beings above other entities, he characterizes us as partes naturae and analyses us in the same conative framework as all singular things. Curiously, Spinoza does not venture an “official” definition of the human. Following a suggestion by Matheron that Spinoza cannot offer a single definition of the human being and must instead offer two incomplete definitions that must be considered together, I argue that the question of human nature reveals the heterogeneous demands of theoretical science and practical reason in Spinoza’s philosophy. I argue for a nominalist approach to the question, and treat recent analyses by Hübner, Gatens, James, LeBuffe, and Rosenthal. Ultimately, I argue that Spinoza’s notion of “human nature” challenges us to widen our approach to imagination and reason as two of the three kinds of knowing.