ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to present a style of reasoning other than that informing post-enlightenment western approaches, through an exploration of the writings of Spinoza. These writings, the authors argue, offer resources for thinking differently in ways that can acknowledge the significance of embodied relationality, an open-endedness to what may come, and the significance of the imagination. Some possible implications of this theoretical approach for RE are considered, together with an exploration of ways in in which this tradition of inquiry has been taken up in the more recent work of Foucault on ethical self-formation.
