/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11312389]

What is interesting in Spinoza? Why is everybody talking about him now?

[Anonymous No.11312396]

>>11312389
You're making things up again

[Anonymous No.11312407]

>>11312389
just read the Ethics; it makes Wittgenstein look like someone off the spectrum
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3800/3800-h/3800-h.htm

[Anonymous No.11312437]

>>11312389
>Why is everybody talking about him now?
what

[Anonymous No.11312594]

difficult boring stupid stuff

[Anonymous No.11312609]

He's legitimately brilliant, and he has a beautiful understanding of pantheism. He's one of the most important people in the history of western philosophy. That makes some retards on this site uncomfortable because he's Jewish, though.

[Anonymous No.11312628]

>>11312389
No one really talks about him except as a figure who strikes a lot of academics as being either fascinatingly wrong or incredibly lovable for a philosopher.

His thought is interesting because of his peculiar approach to "ethics" with it's mathematical presentation, his controversial "pantheism" (or, well, atheism where God = Nature, and there's no personal deity), his critical attack on the bible in his political treatise, and his substance monism which got taken up and transformed by figures like Leibniz, Hegel, and Nietzsche (in substantially different ways from each other). He's one of the most enigmatic of the early modern philosophers for holding as many strange and bold positions as he did.

Not especially deep, but a very sharp thinker.

[Anonymous No.11312634]

>>11312609
We don't like Spinoza because pantheism would do away with any ethics, let alone 'good' or 'evil'.

[Anonymous No.11312639]

>>11312389
No one is talking about him any more than they used to. Dumb thread, anon.

[Anonymous No.11312643]

>>11312634
That's complete fucking bullshit. Pantheism is basically the opposite of nihilism. If everything is interconnected, then everything you do matters. There's no holy place you're going to go to, this is it, this is all we have. So you need to live as fully as you possibly can, because you'll never be saved from the bad things you do.

Go take your priest's dick up your ass, you fucking retard.

[Anonymous No.11312656]

>>11312643
t. brainlet weed smoker

Pantheism does away with any conception of right or wrong, which must be immutable opposites for any kind of ethics or Godliness, which, by the way, is Spinoza's "aim".

>Go take your priest's dick up your ass, you fucking retard.
*tips unwashed foreskin*

[Anonymous No.11312658]

>>11312643
t. never read Spinoza

[Anonymous No.11312661]

>>11312634
He literally called his book The Ethics; he was one of the only philosophers to fully entwine his metaphysical and ethical system.

[Anonymous No.11312667]

>>11312639
>No one is talking about him any more than they used to.
spinoza > deleuze > land

[Anonymous No.11312668]

>>11312634
>pantheism would do away with any ethics
What the fuck am I reading? Pantheism doesn't do away with ethics, it means that the ethical approach is the naturalistic one.

[Anonymous No.11312670]

>>11312661
>dude the title
I know that. But he is a fraud, a dilletante, an obscurantist, and, in every sense of the word... a Dutchmen.

[Anonymous No.11312675]

>>11312656
That's not true, we have an innate sense of morality and reciprocation. I don't smoke weed.

>>11312658
I have read Spinoza.

[Anonymous No.11312676]

>>11312668
You're reading Kantianism, you buffoon, you hound, you paper-mache-savant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheism_controversy

[Anonymous No.11312684]

>>11312675
>>11312643
I should also mention, btw, I'm not a pantheist. I'm a panentheist.

[Anonymous No.11312691]

>>11312676
I'm not talking about the categorical imperative. The idea I'm talking about is much wider than that.

[Anonymous No.11312693]

>>11312656
>right or wrong, which must be immutable opposites for any kind of ethics or Godliness
How very Manichean of you. Spinoza didn't say that good and evil didn't exist, he said they existed as concepts which are not inherent to the things-in-themselves which are always perfect (i.e. God). He was more akin to a modern Epicurus (or even Augustine) than the caricature you paint of him.

[Anonymous No.11312697]

>>11312675
Then you would know that in the first part of the Ethics he says that his doctrine implies that there is no such thing as a will which could contravene God's, hence no "free will." He says that "good" and "evil" only have meaning to imperfect humans, and do not apply to the actions of God.

[Anonymous No.11312702]

>>11312697
Now you're mixing yourself up. I was talking about pantheism, not Spinoza's specific version of it.

[Anonymous No.11312708]

>>11312676
>posts about a controversy that ended in 1789
Wonderful. Read some Schopenhauer, bub.

[Anonymous No.11312709]

>>11312691
>I'm not talking about the categorical imperative.
You're an idiot, what does this have to do with CI? Is your understanding of Kant really that limited? He wrote on more theology, and ideas of mind and nature, than any of that little Dutch pseud could come up with that pale head of his.

[Anonymous No.11312711]

>>11312709
Now you're just being completely incoherent. You should kill yourself, you pseudo-intellectual dweeb. Calm the fuck down, stop sperging out.

[Anonymous No.11312716]

>>11312708
It ended because Kant btfo'd pantheism, dud. Read more than the wiki, it was only a frame of reference.

>>11312711
Ah, but you are the one who sperg-sperg-spergs as if a sperg who did sperg too much. I think the sperg doth sperg too much, eh?

[Anonymous No.11312720]

>>11312708
>Schopenhauer
Read some Metzinger.

[Anonymous No.11312725]

>>11312702
Spinoza's is the most complete pantheism and the post you responded to included
>We don't like Spinoza because pantheism
It doesn't say explicitly "his pantheism," but this is a Spinoza thread, so it was a safe assumption. Chatting about the half or fully baked pseudo-ideas of philosophy undergrads is not really appealing to me

[Anonymous No.11312727]

>>11312643
>Pantheism is basically the opposite of nihilism. If everything is interconnected, then everything you do matters
But that doesn't follow by any necessity? The interconnection of everything isn't enough to instill meaning; if the modern scientific project is able to produce the much desired "theory of everything" with what it has, how does that show meaningfulness?

The most revealing element of Spinoza's "pantheism" (which I'm convinced is atheism of the ancient sort; not a matter of belief or disbelief, but of rejecting personal civic deities) is that the high (the noble or the beautiful) is judged in light of the low (the base or ugly), i.e., we have as much meaning as worms and shit and dirt. His skill as a thinker and writer was in fooling some people into thinking that worms and shit and dirt must thereby be understood as holier or more divine than they had been hitherto, whereas what he showed was that what's considered holy or divine is worth as little.

Gotta go with >>11312656 on this.

[Anonymous No.11312728]

>>11312716
>Kant btfo'd pantheism
And Schopenhauer / Nietzsche btfo'd Kant. It's like you stopped reading philosophy before you got to the 19th century.

[Anonymous No.11312745]

>>11312728
Nietzsche never did any such thing as that. I've read the stupid little untermenschen say so, in their terrible analysis of a noumena and phenomena, and so on, and aye, I've read that Nietzsche too, and a tear did shed from mine eye (or was it two?)... And, by the way, Nietzsche isn't even disjunctive from most of Kant. I read Birth of Tragedy a few weeks ago and there was lots of stuff about mere appearances, maya, etc. that sound more like Kant's CoJ than Schopenhauer's little piss baby "welt as will und representation"

Schopenhauer was a disgusting little Proto-Joe Rogan. I would ne'er read him, sorry.

[Anonymous No.11312748]

>>11312661
"Ethics" is an ambiguous term that in Greek meant "character" (in the broad sense of characteristics of types of people) usually punned against the word habit which sounds similar. This is part of what Aristotle's doing. In Spinoza's case, note how seemingly amoral his conception of things is, and how carefully qualified or intentionally ambiguous his language is when he knows he can get in trouble for something. There's a reason Nietzsche found in him a kindred soul, even with his disagreements.

Tl;dr - the title doesn't mean "morals"

[Anonymous No.11312749]

>>11312727
>what are thought and extension vs. the infinite aspects of God
Oh wow, please get a refund from any philosophy courses you may have taken that involved Spinoza. Just screenshot your post, they will hand the cash over out of sheer embarrassment.

[Anonymous No.11312752]

>>11312748
t. atheist

[Anonymous No.11312758]

>>11312725
I literally didn't say that. You're strawmannirg me because you're retard.

>>11312727
This is just nonsensical.

[Anonymous No.11312770]

where to start with him?

[Anonymous No.11312774]

>>11312752
Sure, doesn't mean the characterization is wrong.

>>11312749
I hope the textbook you read didn't put you out by too much.
>infinite aspects of God
>infinite
>no chance of what's not finite meaning also what's undetermined
>naw, couldn't possibly mean that coming from the guy trying to btfo of revealed religion

[Anonymous No.11312775]

>>11312748
>note how seemingly amoral his conception of things is
this is again, a very low brow reading of Spinoza. You are speaking as if Spinoza wanted to do away with the "good" in favor of the "bad", which literally talking past the point at hand. There are no conceptions of "good" and "bad" in God; God is perfect. Descartes, Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas would all agree with him on this point (see Augustinian theodicy for more on this).
>intentionally ambiguous his language is when he knows he can get in trouble for something
He was published posthumously because he would have been put to death for the Ethics alone -- I don't think he was too worried about his phrasing at that point.

[Anonymous No.11312776]

>>11312770
Korte Verhandeling van God, de mensch en deszelvs welstand

[Anonymous No.11312780]

How does Spinoza's ethical system (in which acts leading to a higher degree of possible affects are 'good') differ in practice from vulgar utilitarianism?

[Anonymous No.11312784]

>>11312758
You didn't say what? "We don't like Spinoza because pantheism..."? I know you didn't say that, the post you responded to said that, that's what I indicated. You never specified which pantheism you were talking about. You know what, why don't you do that now?

[Anonymous No.11312785]

>>11312745
You sound like some insufferable Jesuit scumbag. Kantian ethics are over, my friend, and have been for some time now.

>No one is responsible for a man's being here at all, for his being such-and-such, or for his being in these circumstances or in this environment. The fatality of his existence is not to be disentangled from the fatality of all that has been and will be. Human beings are not the effect of some special purpose, or will, or end; nor are they a medium through which society can realize an "ideal of humanity" or an "ideal of happiness" or an "ideal of morality." It is absurd to wish to devolve one's essence on some end or other. We have invented the concept of "end": in reality there is no end. A man is necessary, a man is a piece of fatefulness, a man belongs to the whole, a man is in the whole; there is nothing that could judge, measure, compare, or sentence his being, for that would mean judging, measuring, comparing, or sentencing the whole. But there is nothing besides the whole. That nobody is held responsible any longer, that the mode of being may not be traced back to a primary cause, that the world does not form a unity either as a sensorium or as "spirit" — that alone is the great liberation. With that idea alone we absolve our becoming of any guilt. The concept of "God" was until now the greatest objection to existence. We deny God, we deny the responsibility that originates from God: and thereby we redeem the world.
Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

[Anonymous No.11312788]

>>11312776
whut?

[Anonymous No.11312789]

>>11312780
It's basically Epicureanism that focuses on mental and spiritual well-being over pleasure.

[Anonymous No.11312796]

>>11312784
Why don't you learn to write a coherent sentence, you literal retard.

[Anonymous No.11312812]

>>11312758
Maybe you just don't actually like Spinoza? Not saying I agree with him, but he totally doesn't think there's meaning the way you want him to.

>>11312775
>You are speaking as if Spinoza wanted to do away with the "good" in favor of the "bad"
That's both not what I said, and that's not what amoralism is.

>There are no conceptions of "good" and "bad" in God; God is perfect
Exactly, but you know very well that, with the possible exception of Descartes, that the theologians all consider God morally good, and that they'd find Spinoza contemptible on that point of difference.

>He was published posthumously because he would have been put to death for the Ethics alone
Exactly, and he didn't want his treatises to be destroyed outright afterward. But this applies to a work like the Theologico-Political Treatise as well, where he makes ample use of ambiguity.

[Anonymous No.11312816]

>>11312785
You're a retarded cunt. Go read the Critique of Judgement, Book II, right now. I'm sure you're some unwashed schwein who has never felt the negative pleasure of a sublime nature, which at first frightens us with its magnitude that we cannot cognise. But, then, using our reason we are able to mathematically imagine these tall mountains, and are able to lift ourselves up from the brutishness that is mere sense. I doubt you have even felt the supersensible realm for which we can never truly know. I have no idea why you people think I'm even talking about the ethics of Kant from Practical Reason. He wrote other shit, you know.

[Anonymous No.11312819]

>>11312796
What I posted was fairly straight forward. How often do you read things that aren't part of a "feed"?

[Anonymous No.11312821]

>>11312812
I think you just fundamentally don't understand what I'm getting at. I was responding to the claim that pantheism is amoral. I think that position's idiotic, and I especially think the claim that all morality comes from dualistic religions like Christianity is idiotic. I wasn't talking about Spinoza or his views on morality, I was talking about the idea that pantheism is amoral.

[Anonymous No.11312825]

>>11312819
More than you, apparently.

[Anonymous No.11312837]

>>11312825
Ok. I'm still waiting for you to explain what you mean by pantheism other than "lol G0d's everything bro xD." Try to fix your attention for more than ten seconds, if you can.

[Anonymous No.11312839]

>>11312812
>that the theologians all consider God morally good
in the strict sense that good is more perfect than evil, yes, and in this regard Spinoza's God is just as perfect as theirs. Perfection is the key here, as it always has been for the ontological arguments; as such evil is hand waived by far more people than Spinoza. In this sense, I suppose that most Catholic theologians are amoralist too, but again the conception seems pretty weak when suddenly any faith that believes God is perfect can be considered amoral.

[Anonymous No.11312842]

>>11312816
A priori knowledge is a fiction. How can Kantian ethics survive then?

[Anonymous No.11312843]

>>11312839
God is unknowable

[Anonymous No.11312848]

>>11312843
Spinoza would agree; we are but worms in the blood of God.

[Anonymous No.11312850]

>>11312842
>A priori knowledge is a fiction.
How do you know about geometry my niugga hahahahaha

[Anonymous No.11312895]

>>11312780
>>11312789
Another problem I have (or maybe I misread him):
if proper action is to be dictated by an increase of affects, does this in any way account for a sort of deferred accumulation? For example, action A will lead to 'n' affects immediately; action B will lead to '2n' but only after a period of time. My reading of Spinoza's ethical system was that it was akin to the pleasure principle, with its drive for immediate fulfillment, and neglects the reality principle of ego investment.

[Anonymous No.11312902]

>>11312821
>I was responding to the claim that pantheism is amoral
I didn't say that, because I wasn't talking about pantheism generally, but Spinoza's position, which is popularly called pantheism (which I'm not convinced is his position). *Spinoza's* position is amoral; at bottom, there's just physic for him, and he's an example of an early enlightenment thinker bold enough to almost suggest it, while withholding the extent of his position just enough to not get him killed.

You make clear that you're not talking about Spinoza's position, but I was clearly limiting myself to Spinoza's position.

>>11312839
>in the strict sense that good is more perfect than evil, yes, and in this regard Spinoza's God is just as perfect as theirs
That's not an agreement with what I said except by sidestepping the matter to some degree. Good is an ambiguous term that can mean moral goodness (in the sense in which either religion or politics might use it), or it can mean functionality, or completeness of form or function or development, etc. etc. Spinoza's does not mean moral goodness; if he and the theologians agree that goodness and perfection (=completeness) are related, they don't agree about where morality comes in if at all.

>I suppose that most Catholic theologians are amoralist too, but again the conception seems pretty weak when suddenly any faith that believes God is perfect can be considered amoral.
Do you mean that the conception of amoralism would be weak in that case? If so, I think you'd have to slow down and look at the theologians case by case, since they all consider God to be a moral being, but I think I agree that a certain position on the ontological argument doesn't necessitate it (Descartes relies on this in his own rhetorical use of the ontological argument, but it looks like Aquinas doesn't think it's sufficient in itself, and Anselm makes a point of following up his initial argument by looking at the moral characteristics of God (his justice, mercy, etc.).

Spinoza here is an outlier.

[Anonymous No.11312920]

>>11312850
Geometry is not eternal. Nothing warrants it as proof of a priori knowledge.

[Anonymous No.11312951]

>>11312902
>Spinoza's [God] does not mean moral goodness
It does not mean anthropomorphized moral goodness. What human's consider good and evil is a product of a necessarily imperfect view of reality. This only does away with human notions of good and evil. For Spinoza, God is perfect and therefore nothing he creates is evil. This only does away with God's goodness the way hand-waving evil in the Catholic tradition does, it removes the contrast but (at least in their view (both Catholics and Spinoza)) goodness is the necessary surplus resulting from that removal.

[Anonymous No.11313020]

>>11312920
What about the proof of space in the Transcendental Aesthetic?

[Anonymous No.11313045]

>>11312951
I think I agree with you on your analysis, and I'm not sure where exactly we disagree, if we disagree.

>For Spinoza, God is perfect and therefore nothing he creates is evil.
That seems fine, but note then that this makes him a kind of amoralist in comparison to most Christians, Jews, and Muslims (and their secularized variants to greater or lesser degrees). At least all I'd want to emphasize is that this transforms or redefines "good" in a way similar to how he redefines "God"; God becomes a single substance that we aren't properly separable from, and while this might be a perfectly valid definition to provide to a primary ontological cause, *from the perspective of revealed religion* it's atheism, and similarly, his good is amoral in comparison to the stance of believers.

Or am I still speaking past you? Where do you see our disagreement?

[Anonymous No.11313103]

>>11313045
>this transforms or redefines "good" in a way similar to how he redefines "God"[...] *from the perspective of revealed religion* it's atheism, and similarly, his good is amoral in comparison to the stance of believers
I can agree with this