Spinoza's Nondualism. Clare Carlisle talks with Mark Vernon about her book, Spinoza's Religion

Baruch Spinoza is widely regarded as either a God-forsaking atheist or a God-intoxicated pantheist, but Clare Carlisle says that he was neither.
In her latest book, Spinoza’s Religion, she reads his masterpiece, the Ethics, to show that being-in-God lies at the heart of his nondual perception of reality.
The book unfolds a powerful philosophical vision for the modern age-one which Carlisle argues overcomes "philosophical pathologies", from reductive materialism to nihilistic atheism, as well as putting crucial questions centre stage, such as how to live a joyful, fully human life.
For more on Clare Carlisle - www.kcl.ac.uk/people/clare-ca...
For more on Mark Vernon - www.markvernon.com

[@johnvervaeke]

YAY!!!!

[@Joeonline26]

Loved Clare's discussion with John Vervaeke and can't wait to listen to this. Clare is one of my favourite writers. Thanks Mark and Clare!

[@lindacarroll5018]

Thank you both so much. This has been a wonderful conversation. I feel the joy that Mark expressed: A joy to celebrate this vision of God.

[@martinst8764]

Really enjoyed this - a wonderful endorsement for Claire's book. I really liked the fact that, verbally, Claire grapples and struggles even, to explain - but gets the points across in the end - I found this refreshing and engaging. These matters are much more nuanced than a lot of what passes as spiritual these days likes to imply.

[@bradrandel1408]

Amazing thank you guys so much she truly belongs in Our corner… Much love dialogue to understanding our true nature… “ WE”🦋🕊🌹

[@stephenwhite1372]

Thank you for this beautiful exposition of Spinoza. Much appreciated. 🙏🏼

[@lvincents]

Thank you both for the wonderful discussion! I've ordered Dr. Carlisle's book and very much look forward to reading it. I also saw Dr. Vervaeke's interview with her. Even just based on these two interviews, this reading of Spinoza strikes me as both insightful and timely, given the deep rethinking going on over the natures of God, consciousness, and reality.

[@paulkatz]

I love the way Clare thinks her way through the interview. I've recently begun to spend time with Spinoza and I share some of her excitement. I think that his philosophy is ripe for our moment- a universe suffused with meaning.

[@ramyafennell4615]

I found this totally brilliant...the questions were so good and answers so profound...all in easy to understand language. Important for me because I search ways how to talk to people about non dualism in the light of atheism and theism.. And here you expound it so well....I could listen again and again. Hope it gets big audience. Thank you

[@lawofuniverserealityanalyt3199]

Thank you Mark for introducing Clare to us. And thank you Clare for your "clareification" going back to Spinoza himself, it is always best to go to the horse's mouth itself, and for mentioning Kierkegaard, a fellow Dane, who was mentioned by a user of some software I had been involved in, decades ago. Recently I found William James's favorite Kierkegaard quote from Høffding, a friend of James: "We live forwards, but we understand backwards". This mechanism is what I see brings science and spirituality together. Thank you, looking forward to reading your books.

[@mortezaariana1444]

i love the fact that Spinoza brought up again. it's must also be mentioned the Spinoza thought system is heavily aligned with Eastern cosmology particularly with Advaita Vedanta. Thanks to both.

[@Terpsichore1]

Brilliant! Thank you both!

[@peterdoh3078]

Wow!

[@momsazombie1]

Some parallel here with what Kastrup writes about Schopenhauer

[@brendantannam499]

I think so too and wonder if we are working our way back to Hinduism.

[@jamesmill325]

Time is in a one way direction. You can’t rewind, pause, replay or fast forward the time. The future already exists. The connection of events is the same as the connection of ideas. There is only one past, one now, and one future. Everything that happens in the Universe is followed from prior events and causes. In so far human is part of nature, they do not have free will. Human is determined by nature to be ignorant and react to emotions with stronger emotions. Fear is the mother of all emotions.

[@petternss6267]

Does anyone know of a good guide on how to read the Ethics?

[@palladin331]

Perhaps this will help. Pretend you are Spinoza and you understand all the flaws and nonsense of religious dogma, including the endless, irrational conjecture about an entity called God. So you look for a better word. You come up with Nature, from which nothing can be excluded, even irrational and halucinatory thoughts. You see how religions are used by people to control other people. In other words, it is a power grab which finds its worst form when the state and the religion are one. You realize that religion and politics are ruled by the human psyche and human emotions, that what isn't physical or metaphysical reality is psychological reality. So, you start to write the Ethics: starting with metaphysics and ending with psychology. Once you grasp the metaphysics (substance, consisting of its two attributes thought and extension, for which there is no further reduction, and the infinite modes of substance coming into and out of 'present' existence eternally), you begin to find answers to all possible questions. All the great philosophers who came after realized what Spinoza did. But some of them went on to write nonsense and gibberish anyway. If reading the Ethics is too problematic (and I sympathize), by all means read the writings of Stephen Nadler, the great Spinoza scholar and biographer.

[@bayreuth79]

I am not sure how the Christian churches could have been hospitable to Spinoza given that he seems to have denied anything analogous to the personal in God and denied free will altogether (what then is 'sin' if we cannot avoid doing what we do- what then is the 'fall'- and so on?). It seems to me that Christians can (and have) accepted an pan-en-theistic conception of God (as Nicholas of Cusa said "divinity is the enfolding of the universe and the universe is the unfolding of God) but this has to go along with something analogous to personality in God and there has to be space for human free will (however this might be conceptualised).

[@goran586]

12:40 Maybe Panentheism would be a better designation than Pantheism. (or why not an Idealism such as Bernardo Kastrup presents it)

[@TheGuiltsOfUs]

Nothing "newage" or "nondual" about Spinoza's view (thankfully!)

[@palladin331]

Spinoza was an atheist, given his definition of God, as no such God is known in any theology or religion. Spinoza's metaphysics is not a theology, in spite of his frequent use of the word God, by which he means reality, nature and its laws -- in other words, the actual nature of nature. He created no religion. Just the opposite.

[@JS-ln4ns]

“All things, I say, are in God and move in God. ... However, as to the view of certain people that [my book] the Tractatus TheologicoPoliticus rests on the identification of God with Nature (by the latter of which they understand a kind of mass or corporeal matter) they are quite mistaken.” Spinoza in a letter to Henry Oldenburg. That settles it for me. Also, I didn’t hear anyone claim Spinoza invented a religion, or was doing ‘theology.’

[@palladin331]

@@JS-ln4ns Correct. Spinoza's letter to Oldenburg states it explicitly. Thanks for the quote.

[@aritovi]

Greettings. Theos=God, a=means, absent of. Atheist, absence of God. In Spinoza Ethics, he afirms that everything is God. In Part Five, he afirms that our salvation and real liberty comes from Loving God - Amor Dei. How can you claim that he is an atheist? I believe that's not a correct or a fair interpretation of his thought. Sure he doesnt have a traditional vision of God, as a personal being or as trancendent. But he claims that the existance of God is demonstrated by reason and it is a proven true proposition. Clearly he is not an atheist. He has singular conception of God, evidently. In the citation mentioned, he is saying that God is not just extension or matter and movement, that we can perceive. In what we delimitate as nature. God has infinite atributes. Extension is one of them and is also absolute infinite, per definition outside human delimitation.

[@palladin331]

@@aritovi Read my first sentence again: "Spinoza was an atheist, given his definition of God, as no such God is known in any theology or religion." Spinoza was a genius. He was also no fool. By defining God, he enabled himself to say he was not an atheist. This was a ruse to prevent the authorities from arresting him and probably hanging him. His definition of God holds true. In fact, it is the only definition of God that is true. But it literally denies all other definitions of God, and that makes Spinoza an atheist. There is no theology there. And that is genius.

[@aritovi]

@@palladin331 Thank you for your reply. But let me disagree with you. He was excomunicated from his sefardite community at young age, refused a job as a teacher in a respected university, kept his work secret for years, his Ethics was published by friends after his dead. His work as it is, will not prevented his hanging, and he knew that. Why do you think he is not saying what he really means? If he says love of God, he means love of God, not a absence of God.