Benedict Spinoza - A Philosopher for Our Time

[@gerardrikken]

I took note of Spinoza's philosophy only recently and discovered that my personal convictions are in consonance with Spinoza's reasoning and thinking. I feel delighted that I am not alone in my way of thinking. I have abandoned organized religion.

[@CMVMic]

Spinoza is my favourite philosopher!

[@sanae.hassouni]

me too I love Spinoza💖💖💖💖

[@CosmicFaust]

+Oppositum What a legend! One of the most underrated and IMO, one of the greatest philosophers in the entire history of the human race. So many of his ideas are still being vindicated and make perfect sense in the world we experience; and yet he lived in the 17th century and was harshly oppressed by weaker minds for the willingness to push the boundaries and not be dogmatic. I wish, I could have met the man, and also wish he could have seen the ginormous ripples his works caused; from the enlightenment, to philosophical and metaphysical revolutions and even to many scientific revolutionary ideas. He is one of the main people to have the greatest effects on my mind and the work I do today, is in many ways, a tribute to Spinoza. *"I am utterly amazed, utterly enchanted! I have a precursor, and what a precursor!".* - Friedrich Nietzsche, in a postcard to Franz Overbeck, Sils-Maria (30 July 1881) as translated by Walter Kaufmann in The Portable Nietzsche (1954) *How much do I love that noble man* *More than I could tell with words* *I fear though he'll remain alone* *With a holy halo of his own.* - Albert Einstein, in "Zu Spinozas Ethik" (1920), a poem written in admiration of Spinoza, as quoted in Einstein and Religion (1999) by Max Jammer "Einstein's Poem on Spinoza" (with scans of original German manuscript) at Leiden Institute of Physics, Leiden University *"The fact is that Spinoza is made a testing-point in modern philosophy, so that it may really be said: You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all".* - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy (1896), Vol. 3, Ch. I : The Metaphysics of the Understanding, § 2 : Spinoza, p. 283 *"...thought must begin by placing itself at the standpoint of Spinozism; to be a follower of Spinoza is the essential commencement of all Philosophy".* - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, comparing Spinoza's philosophy to that of the Eleatics, in: Lectures on the History of Philosophy (1896), Vol. 3, Ch. I : The Metaphysics of the Understanding, § 2 : Spinoza, p. 257 *"Bruno and Spinoza are to be entirely excepted. Each stands by himself and alone; and they do not belong either to their age or to their part of the globe, which rewarded the one with death, and the other with persecution and ignominy. Their miserable existence and death in this Western world are like that of a tropical plant in Europe. The banks of the Ganges were their spiritual home ; there, they would have led a peaceful and honoured life among men of like mind".* - Arthur Schopenhauer, in: The World as Will and Representation (1818; 1844), Vol. I, p. 422, n. 2 *"Spinoza did not seek to found a sect, and he founded none" ; yet all philosophy after him is permeated with his thought".* - Will Durant, beginning with a quote of Sir Frederick Pollock in Life and Philosophy of Spinoza (1899) *"Spinoza is the Christ of philosophers, and the greatest philosophers are hardly more than apostles who distance themselves from or draw near to this mystery".* - Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy? (cited in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy) *"The noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers. Intellectually, some others have surpassed him, but ethically he is supreme".* - Bertrand Russell, in: The History of Western Philosophy, Ch. X, p. 569

[@Oppositum]

Well said :)

[@EinsteinKnowedIt]

True

[@vukadinstanisic4580]

i wonder who intellectually surpassed Spinoza?

[@CMVMic]

@@vukadinstanisic4580 I'm wondering the same thing lol

[@paulhanson1137]

Excellent. Thank you so much. I will use this with students. You might beef up the section on music. Get a really hard hitting, explosive thinker on Spinoza/Music to bring your point home.

[@paulhanson1137]

One might start at around 7 minutes

[@davidwilkie9551]

"Sub-stance and under-standing" words that underpin/support attitudes and approaches of orientation toward observations, "reflected upon", => substantiation In-form-ation. Fear of ignorance due to misinformation and disinformation could be useful. Closed, continuous connection of eternal time leaves no substantial gaps for gods to fill or bridge, except those due to the limitations of Human Anthropogenic perception and coherent comprehension, and that's why -> Political Ideals and their Representatives are imagined.

[@buddhismphilosophyscience4654]

When it came to Ethics and morality was Spinoza a moral egoist? Was he also a moral anti-realist by rejecting objective morality and would this have made him a moral relativist?

[@Oppositum]

Buddhism, Philosophy & Science Thanks for the good question. Spinoza is a moral egoist (or ethical egoist as it's also called), generally the view that x is moral/good if x promotes one's self-interests. But some context is in order here, as most people today may hear "moral egoism" and react with repugnance. Spinoza's egoism, like many of his moral contemporaries and predecessors in the moral traditions before him, were also moral egoists or sympathetic to it (e.g., Leibniz). The form of egoism in question wasn't anything like a theory telling people to trample others and that being selfish is morally good. Rather, it was a sort of enlightened egoism that recognized via reason that it is really in one's best interest to be kind, fair, honest, and virtuous (etc.) for it's own sake, as well as for the sake of one's life really going better by being so. Spinoza is in the tradition of virtue ethics, and that tradition, going back to Plato and Aristotle, is generally congenial to "enlightened egoism" as well. It's hotly debated whether (and to what extent) Spinoza is a realist about morality. But I thinks it's safe to say more scholars take him to be a realist. I do as well. While he is a harsh critic of traditional and folk morality, his ethics strikes me as a radical version of the realist ethics of Aristotle, Plato, and the Stoics. (My ethics playlist has more info if you're interested.)

[@buddhismphilosophyscience4654]

Interesting. So Spinoza was a predecessor to Ayn Rand's objectivism? From what I have read I'm guessing Spinoza was a liberal (in the classical sense) and defender of capitalism? Also, Spinoza claims that whenever we “form a clear and distinct idea” of a passion, it will no longer be a passion (E5p3). Since all passions are confused ideas-indeed, this is a core component of the definition of a passion-the most straightforward way to eliminate a passion is to eliminate the confusion that is the basis for that passion. In Spinoza’s view, the idea of an idea is not really distinct from the idea itself (E2p21s), so the clear and distinct idea we form of a passionate affect is not really distinct from that affect. But, since the clear and distinct idea is not confused, to conceive of it in this way is to eliminate the confusion from the original passion. Once we have eliminated this confusion, “the affect will cease to be a passion” (ibid). This approach to overcoming a passion does not eliminate the affect that constitutes the passion, but merely eliminates that feature of the affect in virtue of which it constituted a passion. The confusion a passionate affect involves is not intrinsic to that affect, in Spinoza’s view, and when that confusion is stripped away, the affect nevertheless remains. Spinoza does not say much to clarify how this procedure is supposed to work. However, in at least one of Spinoza’s accounts of confusion, to say that an idea is confused is to say that it is partly determined by external causes (E2p29s). Thus, to strip away the confusion from a passion would require one somehow to strip away some of its causes. But that possibility appears to be inconsistent with Spinoza’s conception of causation, according to which an effect must be understood through its causes. Isn't the "Changing Problem" a serious problem? Also, one of the philosophical problems with Spinoza’s version of ethical egoism has to do with whether, and to what extent, Spinoza’s view can really be a moral theory at all. Given the argument for the view, it is unclear how Spinoza can take the dictates of reason to be prescriptive. Spinoza treats the dictates of reason as adequate ideas that, when we possess them, cause us to act in ways that are conducive to our actual self-interest. If so, to follow the dictates of reason is just to be caused to behave in certain ways, which sits awkwardly alongside the thought that such dictates are prescriptive in any ordinary sense.

[@Oppositum]

I think Spinoza would be a liberal in a classical sense. I don't think much can be said about whether he would be a defender of capitalism, as the idea is anachronistic for his day. But I think some things could be said that indicate where he might have stood, and in relation to Rand. I'm not terribly familiar with Rand's philosophy, but from what little I know, her philosophy is generally criticized (or is ignored) because she lacked the rigor and plausibility that philosophers have looked for. In any case, there seem to be some parallels between her tenets and Spinoza's. There's emphasis on reason, rational self-interest, happiness, etc. But I think the differences are probably greater than their commonalities. Spinoza doesn't advocate an ethics of _selfishness_ as Rand does, if Rand uses that word in the way we think of it. And while Spinoza's politics place a great emphasis on autonomy and individual liberty like Rand does, Spinoza's emphasis is more on the intellectual and free-thinking aspects of autonomy and liberty, not necessarily on the socioeconomic aspects of them. Spinoza places great weight on the value of community and social holism, not to mention that he saw good in social programs to help those in need. That strikes me as at odds with Rand's views, so far as I know. Spinoza also denounces immoderate material wealth, a life of bodily pleasure or honors, and harshly condemns the greed and lust he probably saw all around him in Amsterdam. I think it would be safe to say that whatever Spinoza's views might indicate about capitalism, he would not be sympathetic to laissez-faire capitalist like Rand. What's more, as a metaphysical and epistemological rationalist, Spinoza denied free will, and thought reason and rational intuition (not sense perception like Rand) was the best means to knowledge, if I'm not mistaken about Rand. You raised an interesting point about whether what Spinoza is saying is that we need to strip away the causes of the passions in a way that is unclear. Spinoza's psychotherapy is hard. That's in part because he is very terse and abstract with everything; and he makes it even more difficult by hardly giving examples. I also am not the most well versed in the details of his psychotherapy (I've spent the most time studying his metaphysics). In any event, Spinoza may have taken the technique at E5p3 to be better and wider in scope than it really is. The idea is that acquiring knowledge of an affect that is a passion can help free us from it insofar as it is a passion. This is plausible in some cases. If someone believes that no one likes them on the basis that one person doesn't, then reflecting on their poor evidence for that belief, and in a sense acquiring knowledge about it, that can lead the person to be freed from the belief (since it doesn't at all follow that no one likes them just because one person doesn't). But it's hard to see how Spinoza's technique could help when the passion is, say, a love of bodily pleasure. Knowing its evolutionary development in human beings would probably not help release one from its hold. Normativity is another hotly debated issue in Spinoza literature. Some maintain that Spinoza has no room for prescriptions; all Spinoza can really say is that "if someone's smart enough and moderate in their desires, they'll see that my insights are right and live by them". Other deny this and argue that Spinoza has a robust basis of normativity. But as an egoist, Spinoza may also have a way to motivate people to be moral in an easier way than non-egoists: namely, that it is in one's self-interest. I don't really feel familiar enough with the details of this issue to give a responsible answer. But I would say that Spinoza himself, given the way he writes, seems to believe that reason and his ethics is prescriptive. It's another matter, however, whether he's entitled to say as much. I wish I could be more of a help, but I would highly suggest the work of Matthew Kisner and Michael LeBuffe on this issue.

[@buddhismphilosophyscience4654]

Thanks for the detailed response! I have a question about Spinoza's concept of substance and attributes. I was wondering about how each attribute can be the defining characteristic of one and the same substance given that the attributes are supposed to be distinct from each other.

[@Oppositum]

No problem at all. This is also a good question. Spinoza's idea that substance can in effect have multiple essences is one of his most original, if not bizarre, ideas. To say of a substance that it is extended and thinking, for example, is intuitively suspicious-sounding, and perhaps even liable to come off as self-contradictory. But Spinoza offers some surprising reasons to think it's coherent. I'll start with Spinoza's definition of God (E1d6). Spinoza thinks the essence of God is absolutely infinite being. What this seems to amount to is that God is by nature a substance that exemplifies every possible fundamental way of being and every possible derivative way of being. The former are attributes (e.g., extension, thought) and the latter are modes within the attributes (e.g., human bodies, human minds). Attributes are defined by Spinoza as what the intellect understands to constitute the essence of substance (E1d4). To put all this in other words, God is a being not only infinite within a given kind of being (e.g., exemplifying every possible _extended_ way of being), but infinite within all kinds. Spinoza thinks this must be so if God has no limitations; God "involves no negation" for Spinoza, and expresses only positive being. We may be tempted to think that God can be defined as an extended substance, or as a thinking substance, and so forth, since extension and thought are each attributes. But this seems to be a mistake since God is absolutely infinite, not infinite within a kind. For Spinoza, it doesn't seem accurate say that an attribute can be the defining characteristic of substance (God) _tout court_ . However, we can say in a qualified manner that an attribute is a defining characteristic of substance _insofar as_ a kind goes. My point here is that a given attribute is not the defining characteristic of God _simpliciter_; rather, it seems that for Spinoza, all the attributes are. Spinoza often says things to the effect that all of the attributes constitute the essence of God. That probably only addresses some of your concern. You main concern may be how Spinoza's one substance (God) could have multiple attributes or essences. Here's how. The way Spinoza thinks of substance is as independent and self-conceived (E1d3), and so the concept of an attribute won't depend on or involve the concept of any other attribute (E1p10). Crucially, attributes for Spinoza are _positive_ fundamental ways of being and involve no negation. Now, all this seems to permit Spinoza to ascribe many attributes to substance. The concept of the attribute of thought, for example, won't depend on or involve the concept of the attribute of extension, by definition; and so there is no conflict with one and the same substance being thinking and extended, etc. Put another way: by definition, it cannot be the case that an exhaustive description of thought contains or entails a proposition with the _negative_ predicate "is not extended". If that were so, thought would "involve negation" as well as involve the concept of another attribute (not to mention that one could say of the thinking substance that "it is not extended"). But since the attributes are wholly positive ways of being whose concept don't involve any other, there is no contradiction or incompatibility in saying of substance that it is thinking, extended, and so forth. So far so good. But I am not sure how far Spinoza can go with his so-called "identity thesis". It seems to go farther than what I've just explained by saying of substance that each of its attributes are just different ways of conceiving of one and the same God. If Spinoza is saying that God _qua_ extended thing is identical to God _qua_ thinking thing, it's not clear how that's supposed to go. By Leibniz's law, x is identical to y if and only if x and y have all the same properties. But extension is not identical to thought, and so it looks like God _qua_ extended thing cannot be identical to God _qua_ thinking thing. This is one of the most difficult areas of Spinoza scholarship, so I'm afraid I don't have much to add. But here are a couple brief thoughts. Some have suggested that Spinoza rejects Leibniz's law in an unqualified manner. Another scholar (Michael Della Rocca) has suggested that since the attributes cannot preclude one another by definition, then nothing can prevent their identity in a single substance. I don't know how promising these are tbh.

[@thenorthernspinozist397]

But Einstein got Spinoza wrong.

[@stephenhogg6154]

Spinoza writes: 'Superstition has cloaked itself in the mantle of science'. I like the corollary of this: 'The mantle of science is a cloak for superstition'.

[@lewisalmeida3495]

To understand Spinoza, the mind must be awakened. It is impossible to take on new knowledge when we are filled with misconceptions. Learn how… WayofSpinoza.com

[@stephenhogg6154]

@@lewisalmeida3495 What happened? Did you have a heart attack mid-sentence?