Imagination and passivity in Spinoza
With regards to the treatment given by Spinoza to imagination, its possibility of reabilitation as a human virtue for an active and free use has been frequently pointed out as a differential of the Ethics towards his other works. Otherwise, this research intends to investigate how the study of limited and limiting aspects of imagination also had a conceptual input in the Ethics. That will initially require to stabilish in which sense it is legitimate to affirm such limitation, related to the passivity on the shaping of ideas of body’s affections, whose causes surpass the mind’s power. From this point forward will follow an exam of how different modes of imagination can be related to the force of passions, a problem raised by the reading of Ethics Part 4.