Notes on Spinoza
This is just notes I have collected about Spinoza
Dates: 1632–1677
Definitions
Substance - that which is understood in itself, and conceived in itself. You can think of it in isolation. (Descartes) That which a conception can be formed independently of anything else. No dangling implications. Has two aspects/attributes: both thought and extension.
attribute - is a quality of a substance.
Modes - The infinite mode of extension is nature. The infinite mode of thought is God. Finite modes of thought are yours and mine. But these are not substances separate from the body, nor separate from God. We are finites modes of being God. You do think God's thoughts.
God & Nature
Most famously Spinoza sees God and Nature as the same thing. God is more the logic (logos) side, while Nature is more the operational, matter in motion side of it. Everything is God, and God is everything. So everything that is happening is happening inside God. This is essentially pantheism.
Follows Descartes, however Descartes was a dualist which Spinoza rejects. He is a Metaphysical Monist (Plotinus, and Parmenides) and the Dual-Aspect Monism (God / Nature) like the Stoics. Mind and Body are same thing.
There can be no revealing of religion, because if God is everything, there is nothing to reveal to. God is immanent. Immanentistic theology.
One video said: "God is the underlying reality in which the processes of Nature occur"
Universals
He is a conceptualist, not a realist and not a nominalist. Do really think in universal terms in abstract terms. But there are no universals that are separate from particulars. (Stoic)
Epistemology
He is a rationalist. How do we know our knowledge is knowledge. Three kinds of knowledge:
- Opinion or imagination or hearsay - fragmentary awareness of particulars
- Reasoning - symbols and words arouse in the imagination, notions common to all men. Universal truths that are commonly known.
- Intuition - an adequate idea of the absolute essence of attributes of god, to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things. Absolutely certain beyond all doubt. Clear and distinct ideas.
Things that are self-caused are things for which their essence involves existence. Their nature is only conceivable as existent. For example God. (Consider the ontological argument).
One God, one substance, God and nature. (god or nature)
Religion
Criticized the Catholics for not allowing other ways of thinking, and being belligerant.
True happiness can only come from the pursuit of knowledge. Three rules of conduct: 1. comprehensible to others 2. preserve health 3. seek only minimum money required.
Our mind in so far as it understands, is an external mode of thinking which is determined by anothe rmode of thinking, and so on recursively ultimately embodying the infinite.
Ethics
Don't expect to understand until you have pondered the whole work.
Problem of Evil: good and evil are anthropocentric delusions, objective assertions. For the spider to live, the fly must die. For the fly to live, the spider must starve. Bad is not bad to the laws of nature, but to laws of our own nature taken separately.
Free Will
There is no free will. Everything is determined. We think we are free because we are conscious of our desires.
Happiness
Defines as the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain. Pleasure and pain are transitions from states of perfection.
Power is a virtue. Joy comes when our power increases. Emotions are good or bad only in they impact our power.
Passion should come secondary to reason.
Politics
Original state was individual. We came to live together, and morals are a necessity to the survival of the whole. Social organization: not to dominate, but to free people. Preference for democracy. But there is a tendency to elect demagogues.
Ethics
Causality- Something that is the cause of itself. It is the cause of itself. Its existence is wrapped up with the conditions which make it possible. In accordance with its will. Existences is aligned with its essence. Any effect without a cause would be purely spontaneous, it would like God itself did it.
Finity - Finite things have things outside of themselves. Thoughts are limited by other thoughts, but not by the body. Can't have a mind without a body, intertwined.
Free/Necessary -
Eternity - existence is an eternal truth. (What about things that begin to exist?)
Remove from our minds the idea that god does things. God simply exists. God does not "care" about us.