“Spinoza, the Mind/Body and Technology”
Nathaniel Bowditch, dean, School of Humanities and Social Science

The Department of Philosophy and the Philosophy Club cordially invite the AUC community to a talk with Nathaniel Bowditch on Spinoza.

Nowadays, Spinoza is usually treated as a significant figure in the narrative of the Western philosophical tradition, one to be interpreted and “made sense of,” but not one that has much to say to the contemporary world we occupy. Bowditch argues that this historicist view is mistaken, specifically that Spinoza’s conception of human nature and our modal status within the one substance that he calls “God or nature” is least suggestive when it comes to the issue of our relation to technology. Although Spinoza occasionally expresses ambivalence when it comes the mechanical substituting for or replacing the “free hand” (e.g. Letter 23 to Huygens), his metaphysics entails that technological progress amounts to nothing less than a conatus driven expansion — not metaphorically, but actually — of the mind/body unity that is a human being.

Sunday, March 30, 1 – 2 pm, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud Hall, Sullivan Lounge (Room 1058)
Refreshments will be served.

For more information
safinaz.saad@aucegypt.edu