Andrea Moresco
Alma Mater Studiorium – Università di Bologna (andrea.moresco2@unibo.it)
For practical use: the function of the exemplar in Spinoza’s Ethics
Abstract: This article examines the notion of the exemplar in Spinoza›s Ethics, highlighting its transformation from a metaphysical ideal to a practical tool of reason. While the exemplar is dismissed in Part I as an inadequate idea rooted in finalism and imagination, it is reintroduced in Part IV as a model of human nature (exemplar humanae naturae) serving an ethical function. The author argues that this model is a content of reason (an adequate idea of human condition) that is expressed in the imaginative form of the model. Reason intervenes in the realm of imagination and recovers its tendency to assume a role model. Spinoza proposes an imaginative and eminently practical use of an idea of reason, hence its problematic character and the difficulty of conceiving it within the Spinozian system of thought. The article ultimately shows how Spinoza reconciles reason and imagination, using the model as a mnemonic and affective aid for the ethical transformation of the self, culminating in the figure of the homo liber, the free man.
Keywords: Spinoza; Model; Imagination; Free Man; Memory.