Is There Oneself Abstract in the Origin of all Abstraction in Spinoza's Philosophy?

Abstract

Inserted in the historical context of the critique concerning the abstractions, Spinoza retakes the early modern tone of his own time and elaborate several warnings against abstraction itself. Nevertheless, the Spinozian critique shifts considerably from his contemporaries, whereas he also criticizes some of the philosophers that stand against the concept of abstractions. We believe, notwithstanding, that Spinoza’s distinctiveness occurs because he consider abstraction not only as some epistemic methodology, namely, the act of select, divide and disintegrate the objects of knowledge, neither the arbitrary foundation of principles for knowledge through the interference of Will in the Intellect, but rather as the productive mental force when it is not within itself, therefore, when the productive mental force isn’t what it should be as it naturally is; in other words:  when the mind has not the consciousness of its own making ”” it’s precisely this what we call self-abstraction. As if it were not enough, our article aims to approach this hypothesis and elaborate how exactly the concept of self-abstraction can help us comprehend some of the Spinozian thesis, so that we may focus on the rhetorical hypothesis that opens the Theological-Political Treatise.