IGOR MATHEUS DE SOUZA SANTOS

This project turns to the reading of E IV, prop. 39, where Spinoza introduces an unusual definition of death, by which we are to understand that the body dies when its component parts are arranged in such a way that they obtain another proportion of movement and rest between them. To illustrate this, he uses an example and an analogy: the case of the amnesiac poet and the passage from childhood to adulthood. The example of the amnesiac poet would illustrate that nature can undergo such changes that it is not easy to say that the individual remains the same. Through this example, we would be persuaded of the most immediate implication of that definition: nothing obliges us to reduce it to the transition of the body into a corpse. The analogy, on the other hand, consists of comparing the poet's change to that between a baby and an old man, which means that it is also a change of nature, i.e. the destruction of the body, which separates childhood from adulthood. We intend to develop and list some difficulties that arise from reading this text, by which we can orient ourselves in future research on the themes of death, childhood and individuation in Spinoza.