I find reading Spinoza's rational idea of Ethics oddly resolves around the concept of love. I find that I first read Spinoza as the source for Spock in Star Trek.
First the idea of love for Spinoza is that truly free persons actively avoid love as in love is a passion.
Second that the "rational/noble" love of doing good to others ethically is the center piece of ethics.
Proposal 43 "Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love."
"For by “courage” I understand “the desire by which each person endeavors to preserve his being in accordance with the dictate of reason alone,” and by “nobility” I understand “the desire by which each person, in accordance with the dictate of reason alone, endeavors to help other men and join them to him in friendship.”" Page 73 of Ethics published in 1949 (Copy on my shelf)
When i talk about Spinoza in academic worlds I have the belief that Kierkegaard (Acts of Love in specific) and Spinoza are agreeing and talking about the same ethics of love. Though they disagree about everything else about love it is love that makes us be ethical to our neighbors. I try to make my children understand that we make those around us better because we care about their well-being and that while we disagree with people we do so with the idea that we care for them also.
Is important to be aware that the word love has lost its meaning throughout the ages. Love for the ancient and medievals was akin to the word passion, which means literally suffering. Its meaning was like "suffering for someone or something else", which we would call altruistic. Modern love is more akin to "like", and has a general meaning of "mutual affinity". Like many concepts in the modern world, it acquired a individualistic connotation that didn't exist in the past.
I find Spinoza more understandable when substituting 'God = Nature' with 'God = Reality'. I believe that's closest to what he meant, in modern vernacular.
That equivalence was (and still is) anyhow a reasonable (i.e 'unmystical') starting point for carving out a sliver of understanding from existence in it's totality, including religious aspects.
I was 16 when I first read Spinoza's Ethics. I didn't understand much by then, what I did though radically changed my conception of the world. It's not an easy philosophy. It creates havoc in our conception of human society. No free-will, thus no sin nor merit, for example.
Spinoza is also a great philosopher for people not used to the "canonical" philosophical methodology. The treaty looks and works like a formal mathematical proof with definitions, axioms, and propositions systematically proved by pure logic.
I take issue with this is a rather rigid classification of things, that isn't useful, and I hear a lot out of various modern scientist/philosophers.
> There is nothing supernatural; there is nothing outside of or distinct from Nature and independent of its laws and operations.
It's pretty common to associate supernatural with magical because super-natural sounds like beyond the rules of nature, when it can just as easily mean beyond the known rules of nature. If you can't explain events under natural law (rules, whatever), it's practically and effectively supernatural. That doesn't necessarily exclude a future explanation, just because people have been averse or ignorant, to investigate in the past. Straight from history, countless supernatural events have been brought in to the fold.
Otherwise, this guy sounds like he had some contemporary beliefs shared by rationalists.
That definition of supernatural, as just the as-yet unknown natural, is a bit contentious and I've not seen it commonly (ever) espoused by anyone else. Most people who use the term really do seem to mean, on questioning, something beyond and different from the knowable natural world and it's forces. Sometimes they will even classify it as things by definition unknowable to science.
I do agree that many if not most 'supernatural' phenomena have been explained by science. However I don't think that it's all that useful to classify them as supernatural at a previous time and natural now. They haven't changed.
About the enigma of why he was cursed and expelled of the jewish community:
"If we think that God is like us, an agent who acts for the sake of ends and who, by issuing commands, makes known his expectations and punishes those who do not obey, we will be dominated by the passions of hope and fear: hope for eternal reward and fear of eternal punishment. This will, in turn, lead us towards submission to ecclesiastic authorities who claim to know what God wants
The resulting life is one of “bondage” – psychological, moral, religious, social and political enslavement – rather than the liberating life of reason."
.. well, if he said something like this before and in a way, that people listened to him, than this was a direct assault to the priests, the Rabbis, of the community. And also to the general foundations of jewish religion - so they probably saw it as a existential threat - therefore their harsh reaction.
And yet, in light of Spinoza’s mature philosophical writings, which he began working on less than a decade after the herem, the mystery of the ban begins to dissipate.
In a letter
of October or November, 1674, Spinoza writes:
Thus, I call a thing free that exists and acts out
of the pure necessity of its nature; and I call it compelled, if its existence and activity are determined
in a precise and fixed manner by something else.
Thus God, for example, though necessary, is free,
because he exists only out of the necessity of his
nature. Similarly, God knows himself and everything else freely, because it follows from the necessity of his nature alone that he should know
everything. You see, then, that I locate freedom not
in free decision, but in free necessity.
Let us, however, descend to created things,
which are all determined to exist and to act in fixed
and precise ways by outside causes. To see this
more clearly, let us imagine a very simple case. A
stone, for example, receives a certain momentum
from an external cause that comes into contact with
it, so that later, when the impact of the external
cause has ceased, it necessarily continues to move.
This persistence of the stone is compelled, and not
necessary, because it had to be established by the
impact of an external cause. What applies here to
the stone, applies to everything else, no matter how
complex and multifaceted; everything is necessarily determined by an outside cause to exist and to
act in a fixed and precise manner.
Now please assume that the stone, as it moves,
thinks and knows that it is trying, as much as it
can, to continue in motion. This stone, which is
only conscious of its effort and by no means indifferent, will believe that it is quite free and that it
continues in its motion not because of an external
cause but only because it wills to do so. But this is
that human freedom that all claim to possess and
that only consists in people being aware of their
desires, but not knowing the causes by which they
are determined. Thus the child believes that it
freely desires the milk; the angry boy, that he freely
demands revenge; and the coward flight. Again,
drunkards believe it is a free decision to say what,
when sober again, they will wish that they had not
said, and since this prejudice is inborn in all
humans, it is not easy to free oneself from it. For,
although experience teaches us sufficiently that
people are least able to moderate their desires and
that, moved by contradictory passions, they see
what is better and do what is worse, yet they still
consider themselves free, and this because they
desire some things less intensely and because some
desires can be easily inhibited through the recollection of something else that is familiar.
Because this view is expressed clearly and definitely, it
is easy to discover the fundamental error in it. Just as a
stone necessarily carries out a specific movement in response to an impact, human beings are supposed to carry
out an action by a similar necessity if impelled to it by any
reason. Human beings imagine themselves to be the free
originators of their actions only because they are aware of
these actions. In so doing, however, they overlook the
causes driving them, which they must obey unerringly.
The error in this train of thought is easy to find. Spinoza
and all who think like him overlook the human capacity
to be aware not only of one’s actions, but also of the causes by which one’s actions are guided.
>>The error in this train of thought is easy to find. Spinoza and all who think like him overlook the human capacity to be aware not only of one’s actions, but also of the causes by which one’s actions are guided.
I dunno. I see a lot of people who take sole credit for their actions and outcomes and don't give a thought to the fact that they didn't choose their parents, place of birth, genetic makeup, talents and temperaments or simply the role of luck.
IMHO. There is no error. A person who is aware of their actions but not the causes by which their actions are guided, are not free. A human may have the capacity, but it may not be exercised, and if it is not, they are not free.
I really like this distinction between necessity and decision. It's a great philosophic contrast that inspires further thought, but to ascribe necessity or decision to something so complex as a human being seems extremely difficult to me.
Take for example a monk who has set himself on fire yet remains calmly seated on the ground. Out of necessity I would say that the average person would run around frantically while being engulfed by flames, however the monk has seemingly decided to ignore this instinctual response. But then one could counter that the monk is acting out of necessity born from years of cultivating emptiness within. Well then, did the monk decide to become a monk when he was a child, or did it happen due to the necessity of his circumstances?
I can't decide whether necessity or decision is necessarily true in a case like this. =P
Spinoza was to the medieval Europe what Socrates had been to the Ancient Greece. Their ideas came to free human mindset from the enslavement the religious. Those ideas were a threat to the establishment of their days that were using gods to prey on the masses. No wonder Socrates has to be sentenced to death. Spinoza found refuge in the then tolerant Netherlands.
Coincidence or not? Spinoza middle name is Benedictus => the Title of current Pope .... Hope the latter turns a modern days Spinoza...
I never understand the idea that Spinoza was an atheist. Sure his ideas of God were not Judeo-Christian but he did believe in the super-natural that we see in action through nature. Spinoza was 100% a theist and wrote about God and advocated for the evidence of a God. I almost laugh when agnostics try to use him as their champion. They are ramming their own beliefs into this Philosopher that it is not respectful to Spignoza's writing. My example is since he saved Ethics to be released on his death why wasn't he clear on the rejection of God or place more on Deist statements?
Prop. 28
"The mind's highest good is the knowledge of God, and the mind's highest virtue is to know God. ...The mind is not capable of understanding anything higher than God, that is, than a Being absolutely infinite, and without which nothing can either be or be conceived; therefore, the mind's highest utility or good is the knowledge of God. Again, the mind is active, only in so far as it understands, and only to the same extent can it be said absolutely to act virtuously. The mind's absolute virtue is therefore to understand."
Edit: Pope Benedictus XVI served as Pope from 2005 to 2013. The current Pope is Francis. Bear with my ignorance of the world's current news. I don't watch TV, nor Facebook-too distractive-. I'm a Hacker News addict. I come here on average 5 times/day.
On the general level, Objectivism and Rationalism differ because the former is a philosophical system encompassing metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics. Rationalism is a particular epistemological viewpoint, and not a system.
So how does the Objectivist Epistemology differ from Rationalism?
Rationalism in its strongest form is the position that reason is the only means by which to acquire knowledge. It is usually contrasted with empiricism, the view that our senses are the primary means of knowledge.
Interesting how the judeo- Christian concept of immortality is so clearly harmful, while the Greek/ eastern concept of the transmigration of souls is so socially useful. For a Christian, at least, the world is a sinking ship. But for a Hindu, you will inherit the good and bad you do in this life in the next. Though, of course, that can lead to a different kind of fatalism in terms of treatment of the poor.
> For a Christian, at least, the world is a sinking ship.
That isn't universal and as a Theological student it isn't even what is written in the scriptures. In fact you can't read anywhere in the scriptures where people go to heaven, but it talks about people living here on earth.
[+] [-] baldfat|7 years ago|reply
First the idea of love for Spinoza is that truly free persons actively avoid love as in love is a passion.
Second that the "rational/noble" love of doing good to others ethically is the center piece of ethics.
Proposal 43 "Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love."
"For by “courage” I understand “the desire by which each person endeavors to preserve his being in accordance with the dictate of reason alone,” and by “nobility” I understand “the desire by which each person, in accordance with the dictate of reason alone, endeavors to help other men and join them to him in friendship.”" Page 73 of Ethics published in 1949 (Copy on my shelf)
When i talk about Spinoza in academic worlds I have the belief that Kierkegaard (Acts of Love in specific) and Spinoza are agreeing and talking about the same ethics of love. Though they disagree about everything else about love it is love that makes us be ethical to our neighbors. I try to make my children understand that we make those around us better because we care about their well-being and that while we disagree with people we do so with the idea that we care for them also.
[+] [-] coliveira|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stareatgoats|7 years ago|reply
That equivalence was (and still is) anyhow a reasonable (i.e 'unmystical') starting point for carving out a sliver of understanding from existence in it's totality, including religious aspects.
[+] [-] HippoBaro|7 years ago|reply
Spinoza is also a great philosopher for people not used to the "canonical" philosophical methodology. The treaty looks and works like a formal mathematical proof with definitions, axioms, and propositions systematically proved by pure logic.
[+] [-] teawithcarl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CoolAndComposed|7 years ago|reply
> There is nothing supernatural; there is nothing outside of or distinct from Nature and independent of its laws and operations.
It's pretty common to associate supernatural with magical because super-natural sounds like beyond the rules of nature, when it can just as easily mean beyond the known rules of nature. If you can't explain events under natural law (rules, whatever), it's practically and effectively supernatural. That doesn't necessarily exclude a future explanation, just because people have been averse or ignorant, to investigate in the past. Straight from history, countless supernatural events have been brought in to the fold.
Otherwise, this guy sounds like he had some contemporary beliefs shared by rationalists.
[+] [-] simonh|7 years ago|reply
I do agree that many if not most 'supernatural' phenomena have been explained by science. However I don't think that it's all that useful to classify them as supernatural at a previous time and natural now. They haven't changed.
[+] [-] koolhead17|7 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism
[+] [-] hutzlibu|7 years ago|reply
"If we think that God is like us, an agent who acts for the sake of ends and who, by issuing commands, makes known his expectations and punishes those who do not obey, we will be dominated by the passions of hope and fear: hope for eternal reward and fear of eternal punishment. This will, in turn, lead us towards submission to ecclesiastic authorities who claim to know what God wants The resulting life is one of “bondage” – psychological, moral, religious, social and political enslavement – rather than the liberating life of reason."
.. well, if he said something like this before and in a way, that people listened to him, than this was a direct assault to the priests, the Rabbis, of the community. And also to the general foundations of jewish religion - so they probably saw it as a existential threat - therefore their harsh reaction.
[+] [-] solipsism|7 years ago|reply
And yet, in light of Spinoza’s mature philosophical writings, which he began working on less than a decade after the herem, the mystery of the ban begins to dissipate.
[+] [-] givan|7 years ago|reply
Thus, I call a thing free that exists and acts out of the pure necessity of its nature; and I call it compelled, if its existence and activity are determined in a precise and fixed manner by something else. Thus God, for example, though necessary, is free, because he exists only out of the necessity of his nature. Similarly, God knows himself and everything else freely, because it follows from the necessity of his nature alone that he should know everything. You see, then, that I locate freedom not in free decision, but in free necessity. Let us, however, descend to created things, which are all determined to exist and to act in fixed and precise ways by outside causes. To see this more clearly, let us imagine a very simple case. A stone, for example, receives a certain momentum from an external cause that comes into contact with it, so that later, when the impact of the external cause has ceased, it necessarily continues to move. This persistence of the stone is compelled, and not necessary, because it had to be established by the impact of an external cause. What applies here to the stone, applies to everything else, no matter how complex and multifaceted; everything is necessarily determined by an outside cause to exist and to act in a fixed and precise manner. Now please assume that the stone, as it moves, thinks and knows that it is trying, as much as it can, to continue in motion. This stone, which is only conscious of its effort and by no means indifferent, will believe that it is quite free and that it continues in its motion not because of an external cause but only because it wills to do so. But this is that human freedom that all claim to possess and that only consists in people being aware of their desires, but not knowing the causes by which they are determined. Thus the child believes that it freely desires the milk; the angry boy, that he freely demands revenge; and the coward flight. Again, drunkards believe it is a free decision to say what, when sober again, they will wish that they had not said, and since this prejudice is inborn in all humans, it is not easy to free oneself from it. For, although experience teaches us sufficiently that people are least able to moderate their desires and that, moved by contradictory passions, they see what is better and do what is worse, yet they still consider themselves free, and this because they desire some things less intensely and because some desires can be easily inhibited through the recollection of something else that is familiar.
Because this view is expressed clearly and definitely, it is easy to discover the fundamental error in it. Just as a stone necessarily carries out a specific movement in response to an impact, human beings are supposed to carry out an action by a similar necessity if impelled to it by any reason. Human beings imagine themselves to be the free originators of their actions only because they are aware of these actions. In so doing, however, they overlook the causes driving them, which they must obey unerringly. The error in this train of thought is easy to find. Spinoza and all who think like him overlook the human capacity to be aware not only of one’s actions, but also of the causes by which one’s actions are guided.
A Philosophy of Freedom - Rudolf Steiner
[+] [-] maroonblazer|7 years ago|reply
I dunno. I see a lot of people who take sole credit for their actions and outcomes and don't give a thought to the fact that they didn't choose their parents, place of birth, genetic makeup, talents and temperaments or simply the role of luck.
[+] [-] meric|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amarte|7 years ago|reply
Take for example a monk who has set himself on fire yet remains calmly seated on the ground. Out of necessity I would say that the average person would run around frantically while being engulfed by flames, however the monk has seemingly decided to ignore this instinctual response. But then one could counter that the monk is acting out of necessity born from years of cultivating emptiness within. Well then, did the monk decide to become a monk when he was a child, or did it happen due to the necessity of his circumstances?
I can't decide whether necessity or decision is necessarily true in a case like this. =P
[+] [-] DEADB17|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kenji|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NoB4Mouth|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baldfat|7 years ago|reply
Prop. 28
"The mind's highest good is the knowledge of God, and the mind's highest virtue is to know God. ...The mind is not capable of understanding anything higher than God, that is, than a Being absolutely infinite, and without which nothing can either be or be conceived; therefore, the mind's highest utility or good is the knowledge of God. Again, the mind is active, only in so far as it understands, and only to the same extent can it be said absolutely to act virtuously. The mind's absolute virtue is therefore to understand."
[+] [-] zambal|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NoB4Mouth|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krylon|7 years ago|reply
He lived in the 1600s, that is not medieval, it's Renaissance. (Sorry for nitpicking.)
[+] [-] dEnigma|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ezequiel-garzon|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WC3w6pXxgGd|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haZard_OS|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baldfat|7 years ago|reply
https://atlassociety.org/commentary/commentary-blog/4107-rat...
[+] [-] samirillian|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baldfat|7 years ago|reply
That isn't universal and as a Theological student it isn't even what is written in the scriptures. In fact you can't read anywhere in the scriptures where people go to heaven, but it talks about people living here on earth.
It's hard to make universal statements.