In 2008 werd van 13 – 17 juli in de Universidad Pontificia Comillas te Madrid de 9e jaarlijkse Metanexus Conference gehouden over Subject, Self, and Soul: Transdisciplinary Approaches to Personhood.
Tien dagen geleden werd de interessante lecture van Rocco Gangle (Assistant Professor of Philosofphy School of Arts & Sciences, Endicott College, USA) op internet geplaatst. Zijn thema was: "Spinoza, Language, and Relational Identity."
Abstract en paper zelf zijn eveneens te raadplegen.
"Spinoza's philosophy shows how relationality and, in particular, the human capacity for language provides a model of human personhood in which individual subjectivity and identity exist only through mutually affective relations with the world and with others. Spinoza's Ethics offers definite ways to conceive and to implement interdisciplinary possibilities, particularly by applying the relational conception of personal identity more generally to the identities of collectivities and traditions. In this way, the concept of relational personhood opens out onto a more general framework for rethinking the constructive relationality of groups, traditions, disciplines and ways of life."
Inspirerend om te horen hoe zinvol Spinoza's Ethica te gebruiken is bij wetenschappelijke vraagstukken van de huidige tijd. Een lezing om eens goed naar te luisteren – een aanrader.
Rocco Gangle lecture on "Spinoza, Language, and Relational Identity" from Metanexus Institute on Vimeo.