Looking for Spinoza (Paperback)

Damasio has found an historical figure he can identify with in the 17th-century philosopher Bento Spinoza--a Portuguese Jew living in Holland, who, without any of the benefits of neurobiological understanding, nevertheless did come to understand the unification of body and mind and the role of emotions in human survival and culture. As the title suggests, Looking for Spinoza, includes Damasio's personal exploration of what Spinoza achieved and his desire to bring this long forgotten hero of the mind back into view.

Damasio found himself coming face to face with patients with various kinds of localised brain damage. They could not feel particular emotions such as happiness or sadness in the way that they had been able to before the damage occurred. His was forced to conclude that different brain systems controlled different feelings. When patients lost the ability to express a certain emotion, they also lost the ability to experience the corresponding feeling. But the opposite was not true. Patients who had lost the ability to experience certain feelings could still express the corresponding emotion. Damasio had to ask himself whether emotion was born first and feeling second?

Looking for Spinoza is the third in Damasio's beautifully written trilogy (including Descartes' Error and The Feeling of What Happens) that combine accounts of his personal professional explorations of the mind and what it means to be human and how our ideas about humanity have evolved through the philosophical tradition. What always comes across is his compassion and humanity whilst still being a very practical medical scientist trying to do his best for real people with very real problems. Damsio's account of his researches that have built on Spinoza's ideas, using the hard data of modern science is never less than fascinating and thought provoking. It's the sort of book that frequently makes the reader pause and look into space as the implications of what Damasio has written slowly sink in. The "sciency" bits are perfectly managable (aided by appropriate diagrams) for the general reader and there plenty of backup notes for those who want to explore further. --Douglas Palmer --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description
Joy, sorrow, jealousy and awe - these and other feelings are the stuff of our daily lives. Presumed to be too private for science to explain and not be essential for comprehending human rationality and understanding, they have largely been ignored. But, not by the great seventeenth century Dutch philosopher Spinoza, and not by Antonio Damasio. In this book, Dr Damasio draws on his innovative research and on his experience with neurological patients to examine how feelings and the emotions that underlie them support the governance of human affairs.

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• Books > Health, Family & Lifestyle > Psychology & Psychiatry > Neuropsychology
• Books > Science & Nature
• Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Philosophy > Philosophers > Spinoza, Benedictus
• Books > Society, Politics & Philosophy > Psychology Textbooks

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