I say that there pertains to the essence of a thing that which, when granted, the thing is necessarily posited, and by the annulling of which the thing is necessarily annulled; or that without which the thing can neither be nor be conceived, and, vice versa, that which cannot be or be conceived without the thing.
Monday 11 May 2009
From Ethics
I'm currently quite busy reading the magnum opus of the philosopher, mathematician, though largely undefinable, Benedictus Spinoza. It's entitled Ethics and appears to have been written without even the slightest acknowledgment of the principles of language. I bring you the following definition, upon 'The Nature and Origin of the Human Mind', which I hope you find extremely enlightening, just as I did. (The work continues in much the same vein for 90,000 words, so don't expect many posts in the near future.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
Ah, Spinoza. His necessatarian deterministic views and borderline atheistic pantheism rule.
Ah, if only it was that simple.
Yeah, Ethics is hard work to get involved with, only did the first couple of books I think.
The first two, on the necessity of God and the origin of the human mind, are the hardest to ingest. Things lighten up a little after those, moving on to the origin of human emotions. I feel as though this wealth of study warrants a blog post, but to be honest, I cannot think of anything that I could make sense of. I feel as though I need to discuss it with other people before I can refine my thoughts. It's epic.
Well, I'm pretty good on the first two books, moreso the ideas contained within than the original text. His method of writing is so painstakingly logical yet convoluted it can take ages to get to grips with even one idea.
Sorry, mate, I've realised I was inadvertently quite patronising when I responded to you.
I really can't get to grips with much of it - I think I would have to be taught a method of reading it along with some points of reference. It's so logical yet so conveluted. How does he derive his theorems from his simple beginnings? How do you even begin a work like that?
I'm struggling with the idea of atheitic pantheism though. Can such a distinction exist? Aren't the two mutually exclusive? So much of his definition seem to rely upon the notion of God, and he's fairly clear in his assertion that the bearded man in the sky cannot possibly exist, rather nature (or substance) is God. And yet, he talks of nature as if it exists through its own necessity, and is, therefore, eternal. Why then go the extra step and denote responsibility to God? Perhaps he felt forced to include God for fear of his work never being read. He had already been exiled from Holland by the time he finished Ethics...
Anyway, I'm going to trudge through his Letters and see what I can come up with. There must be a blog post in here somewhere. What do you think about atheistic pantheism? x
Yeah his method is the hardest thing to work around. He basically read Descartes and hated the whole dualistic point regarding the mind and body distinction and instead wanted to create a theory which was logically infallible whilst also including an eternal theory of God.
With regards to his atheistic pantheism it's hard to decipher. He states that God must exist by it's own necessity, though it is not a thinking being, nor does it have will, which are surely two key features when trying to prove God as a Christian. So much respect for him in the way that he decimated the Bible, which, though I may be wrong, was the reason he was excommunicated. Said that it should be treated with as much scepticism as any other text and the factors of what the circumstances under which the book was written had a great bearing on his interpretation of the messages within. He ultimately said that all it was good for was the moral lessons of 'love thy neighbour' etc. and dismissed most of it as fallacy. His theory of substance stems from his view of 'Deus, sive Natura' (God, or Nature).
He claims that there is one substance with infinite attributes, two of which are thought and extension, the only two we can have knowledge of. As opposed to Descartes' dualistic view of thought and extension he viewed it more as a parallelistic connection between the two, both as necessarily determined as one another, running in unison. Kind of like different instruments playing the same song. Of those attributes are infinite modes, whereby we are a mode of thought and extension. It's interesting to note, I feel, how his theory of infinite attributes actually corresponds to alot of what modern physics is trying to prove now, with the vast majority of matter and effective substance empirically unobservable to us.
Basically, he was an absolute genius.
Post a Comment