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L'intelligence de la pratique

L'intelligence de la pratique

Le concept de disposition chez Spinoza


La croisée des chemins



The Intelligence of Practice
The Concept of Disposition in Spinoza

If everyone has the power to live according to the guidance of reason, how is it that so few follow it, even though so many claim they do? Some see the best and do the worst, whereas others do the worst believing it is the best. All do everything they can and finally rejoice over what they are. The philosophy of Spinoza explains this human condition. All power is actual. He who can do the most cannot do less, and he who can do the least does so willingly, but cannot do more. Everyone is as perfect as they can be and acts the way they are disposed to, despite themselves, but readily. The concept of disposition, as it is developed in the Ethics, enables us to grasp the common practice of humans in a necessitarist and actualist context, from affective inconsistency to the regularity of habits, from passionate obsessions to education and emancipation. Human existence is not a comedy, even less a tragedy. With Spinoza, it has to be understood.