The doctrine of error in Spinoza's philosophy: the problem of language

• Grant number: 18/19326-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: December 01, 2018
• End date: February 28, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Luís César Guimarães Oliva
• Grantee: Gabriel Frizzarin Ramalhães de Souza
• Supervisor: Chantal Annie Jaquet
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France
• Associated to the scholarship: 18/06934-9 - The doctrine of error in Espinoza's philosophy, BP.IC

Abstract

From our research called "The doctrine of error in Spinoza's philosophy", we present the research project about the relation between error and language in Spinoza's philosophy, to be developed in three months (03) of internship at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, under the advisory of Chantal Jaquet. On the one hand, the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect and Ethics II showed that, from a metaphysical stance, error is an absence of reality, whereas from an epistemological stance it consists in the privation of knowledge which inadequate (or mutilated and confused) ideas involve. On the other hand, the same writings also indicate that most errors consist only in our wrongful attribution of names to things; and in this case the mind does not err. Then, it must be asked: what is the nature of the connection between error and language? What Spinoza means by an error that is not related to the error of the mind? Is it associated only with the body, since words are composed by some dispositions of the body? In L'unité du corps et de l'esprit, Chantal Jaquet considers that this evinces a radical divergence between what goes on in the body and what goes on in the mind, but, according to her, the error with regard to words is only an appearance, since the body does not transcribe identically what the mind understands. Thereby, we propose: 1) a study, along with Chantal Jaquet, about her work on the theory of expression ruled by the principle of equality, in order to clarify the nature of the connection between error and language; 2) an investigation on the meaning of this error and the place it occupies on the metaphysical and epistemological stances, in an effort to place the error with regard to words in the light of the doctrine of error in Spinoza's philosophy. (AU)