Spinoza: Mind of the Modern
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Baruch Spinoza
Like golden mist, the west lights up
The window. The diligent manuscript
Awaits, already laden with infinity.
Someone is building God in the twilight.
A man engenders God. He is a Jew
Of sad eyes and citrine skin.
Time carries him as the river carries
A leaf in the downstream water.
No matter. The enchanted one insists
And shapes God with delicate geometry.
Since his illness, since his birth,
He goes on constructing God with the word.
The mighties love was granted him
Love that does not expect to be loved.— Jorge Luis Borges,
translated by Yirmiyahu Yovelfrom Spinoza and other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason by Yirmiyahu Yovel, Princeton, 1989
Spinoza lives…
Spinoza
Not only lives but lurks in the near background of many of our conversations — on God and science, for instance, and political freedom, toleration, dissent, the pursuit of happiness and the good life. The outcast sage of 17th Century Amsterdam is a favorite of many of our favorites — including P. G. Wodehouse, Einstein, the brain scientist Antonio Damasio and the omni-critic Harold Bloom.
Wodehouse’s “mentally negligible” Bertie Wooster was forever interrupting his brilliant valet Jeeves with lines like: “I know you like to read Spinoza in a leafy glade… but I wonder if you could spare me a moment of your valuable time?”
Proust’s favorite metaphysician Henri Bergson (1859 - 1941) thought “every philosopher has two philosophies, his own and Spinoza’s.”
Bertrand Russell called Spinoza “the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers.” Bloom concurs to the extent that Spinoza “was surely one of the most exemplary human beings ever to have lived,” though Bloom also finds “an icy sublimity” in Spinoza. “He was greatly cold and coldly great.” It’s part of the problem, surely, that Bloom has been haunted for more than half a century, he says, by Spinoza’s admonition that “It is necessary that we learn to love God without ever expecting that he will love us in return.”
At the core of one big conundrum is Spinoza’s formulation (Propositions 14 and 15 in his Ethics) that: “Except God no substance can be granted or conceived,” and “Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can exist or be conceived without God.” To 19th Century Romantics Spinoza seemed a “God-intoxicated man,” fathering a religion of nature. In his time and ours, the hyper-rationalist philosopher who gave the intellect at work a virtually sacramental standing has also been deemed a pantheist and an atheist for “disappearing” God into His natural creation. Hence the most famous of the Einstein anecdotes, well told by the Harvard historian Gerald Holton:
In 1929, Boston’s Cardinal O’Connell branded Einstein’s theory of relativity as “befogged speculation producing universal doubt about God and His Creation,” and as implying “the ghastly apparition of atheism.” In alarm, New York’s Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein asked Einstein by telegram: “Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid 50 words.” In his response, for which Einstein needed but twenty-five (German) words, he stated his beliefs succinctly: “I believe in Spinoza’s God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.” The rabbi cited this as evidence that Einstein was not an atheist, and further declared that “Einstein’s theory, if carried to its logical conclusion, would bring to mankind a scientific formula for monotheism.” Einstein wisely remained silent on that point.
Gerald Holton, Einstein’s Third Paradise, 2003
In Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain Antonio Damasio, mapping the neural pathways of human emotion, rediscovered Spinoza’s virtually Euclidian geometry of human feelings and reclaimed Spinoza as a modern bridge over the age-old Mind/Body gap.
Damasio walked the alleys and canals of Amsterdam in search of Spinoza’s spirit, and brought him back alive for many of us amateurs. “Spinoza’s God was everywhere, could not be spoken to, did not respond if prayed to, was very much in every particle of the universe, without beginning and without end. Buried and unburied, Jewish and not, Portuguese but not really, Dutch but not quite, Spinoza belonged nowhere and everywhere.”
Rebecca Goldstein’s new book Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity establishes not least that Spinoza belongs at the center of Open Sourcery. Goldstein’s search here is for the Jewish foundations under the thinking of a man most famously expelled from the Amsterdam Synagogue, who saw no divinity in the Hebrew or Christian Bibles, who foreswore the Jewish love of Jewish history, and who minimized the value of “identity” of any kind — national, tribal, religious or individual. Does his thinking represent, in effect, a flight, Goldstein asks, from “the awful dilemmas of Jewish identity”?
And if this is so, then Spinoza is something of a Jewish thinker after all. He is, paradoxically, Jewish at the core, a core that necessitated, for him, the denial of such a thing as a Jewish core. For what can be more characteristic of a Jewish thinker than to use the Jewish experience as a conduit to universality?
Rebecca Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza, p. 178
The story of Spinoza the Jew — descended from Spanish “marranos” or forced converts to Catholicism, who reclaimed their faith and practice in the Dutch Republic — has been much discussed in reviews and the blogosphere. It is but one way into a multi-dimensionally alluring man who who said his project in life had been to “discover and acquire the faculty of enjoying throughout eternity continual supreme happiness.” Where shall we begin with this wonderfully heretical believer who wrote:
He who rightly knows that all things follow from the necessity of the divine nature, and happen according to the eternal laws and rules of Nature, will surely find nothing worthy of hate, mockery, or disdain, or anyone whom he will pity. Instead he will strive, as far as human virtue allows, to act well, as they say, and rejoice.
Spinoza in his posthumous Ethics.
Rebecca Goldstein
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Fellow, Radcliffe Institute
Author, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity Schocken, 2006
Antonio Damasio
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Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of Southern California
Author, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain Harcourt, 2003
- Extra Credit Reading
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Timothy Garton Ash, Islam in Europe, New York Review of Books, October 5, 2006: “One question that preoccupies Buruma in Murder in Amsterdam, a characteristically vivid and astute combination of essay and reportage, is: Whatever happened to the tolerant, civilized country that I remember from my childhood? (He left Holland in 1975, at the age of twenty-three.) What’s become of the land of Spinoza and Johan Huizinga, who claimed in an essay of 1934 that if the Dutch ever became extremist, theirs would be a moderate extremism?”
Pascal Bruckner, Enlightenment fundamentalism or racism of the anti-racists?, SignandSight.com, January 27, 2007: “Ayaan Hirsi Ali doesn’t only look beautiful, she also invokes Voltaire. This is too much for Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash, who call her an ‘Enlightenment fundamentalist.’ But their idea of multiculturalism amounts to legal apartheid.”
Shlomo Leib, Speaking of Spinoza, The Sentimental Heretic, January 30, 2007: “As a result of this unintended language barrier, we have some who believe that Spinoza was a mystic and others, like myself, find Spinoza to be a refreshing and definitive expression of materialism and determinism, much like philosophical Taoism was to eastern thought, but with the added features of rationalism and circular reasoning.”
Hugo, From Sudoku to Spinoza: The Hedonistic Side of Reasoning, AlphaPsi, January 30, 2007: “Spinoza is probably the epitome of philosophers who tried to built their entire system on pure reason. One of the reasons for this might be the strength of the hedonistic value reasoning had for him”
Carl Schroeder, Kalalau’s Korner, Spinoza, Galludet, and I, October 23, 2006: “I am a Spinoza guy, and I am also a Gallaudetian. Yes, I do crave such systems, and I act as if I know them. But they are impossible. Both Spinoza and Gallaudet are fascinating as the philosophical and educational, respectively, claims of the past, I also realized that, although such words of theirs may inspire me to no end, their work to encompass human knowledge in their categories can never be correct.”
6:12
I was taught that Spinoza’s grand metaphysical schemes — trying to deduce the nature of reality through pure reason alone, eschewing science and empircal observation — that this was delusion, that this was metaphysics in the worst sense of the word.
Rebecca Goldstein
11:16
There is this recognition of the reality of our biology . . . This man is, to a certain degree, what I would like to call a “protobiologist.” At a time when biology was in its infancy, he was able to think like a biologist.
Antonio Damasio
20:14
He always expressed dismay when he was described as an atheist.
Rebecca Goldstein
31:07
The very important concept of conatus — that this striving, this endeavor for each organism to maintain itself and to flourish in the world — there’s a dark side to that, also, that Spinoza emphasizes. One of the things that Spinoza is most concerned with is false beliefs . . . His burning concern was religious intolerance, and how the religion of reason that he was proposing could defang relgious intolerance. To the extent that we’re rational, we’re all going to agree, we’re all going to partake. It’s the same universe, the same eternal universe that we’ll be contemplating. That’s what our minds will be constituted of . . . to some extent we’ll all have exactly the same mind.
Rebecca Goldstein
40:13
This respect for reasoning and truth in oneself, together with the benefits of the democratic society in which you are inserted, are in fact paths for salvation in Spinoza. In other words there is a very sort of complex level of salvation that will come when you are really in that immense contemplation of God in his view. But it really passes through an earlier level that includes contains the democratic state, which protects you, and this enormous respect for reason and truth. And you cannot achieve salvation without those.
Antonio Damasio
47:53
There are many creatures behind this man, which correspond to his actually rather short life . . . and I don’t think we’re doing at all a disservice by enquiring about who he was and where he lived and how he lived.
Antonio Damasio
December 29th, 2006 at 10:59 pm
What a surprise! In “Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,†Ch. 5, Spinoza said common people believe God most clearly displays His power by extraordinary events. They think that while God merely observes the world, it works on its own, like a machine, in accordance with natural law. But the masses believe God occasionally suspends natural law to brings about the aforesaid extraordinary events, which evidently would include miracles. After reading this (I never got around to the other content in the Tractatus), I never forgot it. Eventually I realized that Spinoza actually drew the same conclusion I did, and evidently also David Hume: that there’s something naive in the idea of God occasionally intervening in the world. Hume told us that to establish the reality of a miracle would require providing proof exceeding that establishing the law of nature the miracle purports to violate. “The power of prayer†is just another way of stating Spinoza’s observation. Since Spinoza put his finger on such a critical spot, exposing the rest of his thinking seems like a great idea.
January 1st, 2007 at 10:28 am
They say that Judaism actively encourages us to question. This has to be a good thing if for no other purpose than to broaden the mind. The hair splitting accuracy of the dialectical method of arriving at “The truthâ€, as Alan Dershowitz points out was for him [Yeshiva] “Preparation for law schoolâ€. Interestingly, he and Noam Chomsky among others are also distained by members of the religious community.
Christians are not the only ones who suffer from excessive anthropomorphic literalism. In Judaism, it is expounded that we cannot possibly know or attempt to understand the mind of God, but yet we speak as if we know so much about what he wants. How is it possible to understand the language of the deity if we are in fact incapable of speaking that language? The usual answer is that he communicates with us in “symbolic termsâ€, and then we do our level best to figure out what he means.
It is true that the very logic we use needs to be wrapped in some sort of package, some garment, to humanize the process of a debate, lest we plunder into a dark abyss of the spirit; an Oriental-like hive mentality. OK so they got that one right. We are warned however that there are ‘four’ levels of scriptural interpretation. The literalistic male ego forgoes the harmony of the Matriarch and the Virgin Mother. Spinoza sought to destroy any differentiation of The Spirit that is based on the cultural underpinnings of the ego. He was a pacifist, a thinker, even a liberal, but not a nation builder. Like so many of us in his time and in ours, he lived and articulated the pain he felt caused by the intolerance of his particular culture. His excommunication amounts to the idea that his ‘thoughts’ were “idolatrousâ€. That’s insane. God is not a communist!
We all live under the same roof. Culture and tradition on the one hand can be a vehicle through which we grow into ourselves while perhaps learning to respect others, or it can capture and mold the ego into a selfish and sometimes destructive force. Both of these forces are at play in the universe with an almost even distribution. Progress is slow, but it is, nevertheless, progress.
Brian Tetefsky
January 3rd, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Doesn’t discussing Spinoza make us part of the War On Christmas?
Though much admired today by all the best thinkers, Spinoza still couldn’t get elected nationally, sing on Country radio, or pass muster with Fox News. I guess he’ll have to wait a few more centuries.
January 3rd, 2007 at 4:05 pm
I have two questions:
1) Do you have other reading recommendations beyond these two:
Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain
Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity
that would help up us become familiar with Spinoza and the appropriate philosophic/cultural context within which to interpret him?
2) Will you give us time to do this reading?
Thanks,
Allison
January 4th, 2007 at 7:24 am
Finally, a show on Spinoza! For such an important character he would have had some mention sooner. I am interested in Spinoza influence on actual political movements and figure in modern history. Specifically, David Ben Gurion reading Spinoza as a proto Zionist and his (Ben Gurion’s) repeated attempts to have the Chief Rabbinate of the State of Israel overturn his Ban from the Jewish Community after the creation of the state. Also worth noting, Spinoza was basically the last philosopher of the Medial Jewish Philosophy period, which included other philosophers such as Rambam (Maimonides), Judah Halevi, Solomon ibn Gabirol Gersonides as well as the influential Arab philosophers such as Al Farabi. Spinoza in certain ways simply canonized the progressive thought of the aforementioned.
January 4th, 2007 at 11:15 am
allison: For a good brief intro to Spinoza, have a look at the relevant chapter in Will and Ariel Durant’s The Story of Philosophy, which includes the terrifying writ of cherem or excommunication made against him. Memo to ROS: the cherem one of the most chilling, vindictive thngs I’ve ever read; you might give a thought to quoting it on air.
January 4th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Spinoza personally lived and suffered the pain of Jewish religious intolerance. He was caught in the middle of two irreconcilable cultures, one Christian, one Jewish. He could not lose himself in the light of modernity because modernity did not as yet exist. He had to create it. Nor would he short circuit medieval duality by some philosophical trickery. He was for real and he wanted something permanent. He had to invent what Yovel calls a “Third kind of knowledgeâ€, or simply a ‘synthesis’: a distillation of the otherwise isolated world views of the time. He “Minimized the value of identity†because he chose to depart radically from the ‘overwhelming distance’ (which is itself radical) placed between people by religion and tradition. He gave others the benefit of the doubt and chose not to hold them to pre proscribed notions of religion, culture, and nationality. He proved by the force of reason that people can love and respect one another in spite of their heritage. Instead of belonging at “The center of Open Sorceryâ€, our philosopher of pain would be more comfortable sitting at the center of ‘democracy’, wherever it may be. We still love you Baruch.
Daniel
January 4th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Thank you, Hurley.
January 5th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
For a thorough biography of Spinoza, I recommend Colerus. For an understanding of Spinoza’s impact, I recommend Jonathan Israel’s recent book, Radical Enlightenment. For a full understanding of Spinoza’s place in intellectual history, I recommend Constantin Brunner’s works, most of which are in German. There is, however, the English compilation Science, Spirit, Superstition which provides a good introduction. For a recent article by Rebecca Goldstein, try this: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/29/opinion/29goldstein.html (NYT reg. req.).
January 5th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Using the “Jewish experience as a conduit to universality†is nothing new. It is however a secular motif hijacked by religious Jews to “reel in†Jews who they believe “left the flock†or are “lostâ€. In The Satanizing of The Jews, 1992, Joel Carmichael characterized Jewish universality as “Disembodied intransigenceâ€, P. 143. Also referring to it as a “Practical boundlessness†and on the next page inserts a quote by Leon Trotsky. When asked if he defined himself as a Russian or Jew, Trotsky answered “Neither, I am a Social Democratâ€. In short, the physical and spiritual homelessness experienced by Jews upon fleeing the fascism of Europe, culminating on American shores in the New School tradition of Horace Kallen and John Dewey, was transformed into an industry of ideas: a ‘business’ of “cultural pluralismâ€, without any notion of loyalty to the land that gave them refuge.
Herein the Spinoza legacy can be utilized in two very distinct ways. First, we can think of him as a sort of “spiritual forefather†of the liberal tradition. Or we can think of him as the philosopher magnifique of personal pain: for those of us who can relate to how and why he shunned Jewish orthodoxy.
At this point it branches out into a more complex system of who and what is Western, and who and what isn’t, and how technology (which was not an issue in Spinoza’s day) has enabled those of like mind to act quickly to any threat to their way of life, and needless to say to their survival. Suffice it to say that it is possible to appreciate Judaism, be a conservative American, and an admirer of Spinoza not for his liberalism, but for his protest against the intolerance of orthodoxy, all at once.
Once again, Spinoza does not belong at “The center of Open Sorceryâ€, which is after all a euphemism for those who failed the test of the Enlightenment, but rather at the center of the Judeo-Christian ethic and democracy.
Daniel: BramGolah@gmail.com
January 8th, 2007 at 6:39 am
Though Spinoza was much more than his ethno-cultural background, this should not be overlooked any more than it should be over-stressed.
That said, here is a link to a symposium “dedicated to exploring the historical reasons, and current implications, of what many scholars consider the most notorious and repercussive excommunication in all of Jewish history.”
http://www.cjh.org/programs/programarchives.php
Here is a link to an interview with Rebecca Goldstein on her book Betraying Spinoza
http://www.nextbook.org/cultural/feature.html?id=263
Both the symposium discussions and the interview can be listened to with an mp3 player.
January 8th, 2007 at 6:46 am
ChaseEmDown wrote:
an Oriental-like hive mentality
http://www.radioopensource.org/spinoza-mind-of-the-modern/#comment-38944
Care to expand? Or, perhaps, to retract?
January 8th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
An Oriental-like hive mentality. ‘Communism’ … where the history and spirit of the West is washed away under the weight of a mechanized system: Lenin, Trotsky, Mao Tse-tung, even Rudolf Steiner. Simply, a totalitarian system under which the ability and creativity of the individual is crushed by some state machinery (or Putin-like mafia, or despot); a machinery similar to the one threatening to consume the judiciary in our country.
January 8th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
I assume Sidewinder is blissfully asleep (or just getting ready to wake up) in Japan, but I suspect his puzzlement had to do with the use of the “Oriental-like” modifier, rather than with “hive mentality” standing on its own.
January 8th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
sideWALKER is blissfully awake now. Thanks Sutter for pointing out my concern.
ChaseEmDown, care to try again?
Btw, would the US military industry also be an example of what you are talking about? Speaking of hive mentality, they use Hummers, don’t they? Also, there was an Operation Swarmer in Iraq, and military robots use swarm intelligence.
ROS, sorry to go off topic.
January 9th, 2007 at 12:11 am
Oops — sumimasen, SideWALKER!
January 9th, 2007 at 12:28 am
“ChaseEmDown, care to try again� No. It is painfully clear.
January 9th, 2007 at 12:35 am
Sutter answers ChaseEmDown’s response to Sidewalker. Sidewalker does not “confirm†Sutter’s suspicions, he simply thanks him for “Pointing out my concernâ€.
Far be it for me to complain about moral relativism. Someone may accuse me of being “opinionatedâ€. ‘Then’ what will I do? The fickle crowd gathers to tear at the flesh of their own mortality. What a wreck.
ChaseEmDown … when someone tries to have a “conversation†this way, by “speaking†through other people, they usually are up to no good. This is called ‘vicarious obfuscation’.
Daniel
January 9th, 2007 at 1:13 am
A recent book is The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World by Matthew Stewart.
I wonder what people think of the proposition that Spinoza’s metaphysical instincts were uncannily sound but his attempt to “logicize” his system in the Ethics is nearly a complete failure. Has anyone ever gotten through even a fraction of book 1 without wanting to hurl the book against a wall?
January 9th, 2007 at 1:59 am
ChaseEmDown, I was hoping it was not as clear as your choice of words indicates. Yes, PAINFUL it is.
January 9th, 2007 at 11:39 am
I’m about 1/3 of the way through Goldstein’s book, and have now dabbled in Russell’s and (later today) Durant’s write-ups, and I have to say this: While Spinoza may be a favorite of ROS’s favorites, and while I’m a novice, there actually seems to be some significant tension between Spinoza’s urge to universality and ROS’s own urge toward what might be called “thick pluralism.” Don’t get me wrong — I don’t see Spinoza as advocating a Stepford society of indistinguishable automatons. But if I’m reading the sources correctly (and no, I haven’t tried reading Spinoza in the original), Spinoza appears to believe that that which is most critical is universal — i.e., unencumbered reason, not inflected at all by the contingencies of history or culture. That’s a fine view, but it seems to be at odds with the ethos of this show (and maybe of this community?), which in my view believes that it is fruitless — and perhaps deeply harmful — to extract away such particularities. Put differently, I see ROS as celebrating pluralism, and thus far, I see Spinoza as cautioning somewhat against such celebration.
January 9th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Spinoza’s reason’(ing) was itself an escape from the oppressive intolerance of both Judaism and Catholicism. Some people have been known to become addicted to the reasoning process itself as a means of escape from reality. This can take many forms: reading (non-fiction only), games (Chess), math puzzles, or, as in our case: the formulation of ideas; ideas that exalt intellectually and emotionally which set the individual apart from the force driving him in that direction. Just like your favorite teacher once smiled at you at just the right moment before a test, there is a certain intimacy and romance attached to the ‘thing’ one chooses to embrace in the same way albeit more sublimely, than the ‘thing’ that has become the object of ones rejection. It is rejected not out of distain per say, but out of a desire to protect it from destruction.
They say that fish and company stink after three days. It is the same with pluralism. Pluralism is a necessary condition of modernity. A kind of pluralism is arguably a prerequisite for economic prosperity. “Pluralism†with respect not only to others, but to ones self and ones country is just as important. It is important to respect ones own history, culture, and sovereignty. And yes, to die for it if necessary.
It is imperative however that we keep in mind that neither Spinoza nor his fellow Jews had the luxury of “defending the landâ€. The “land†was not theirs i.e. they were homeless until 1948. Under those conditions only ‘ideas’ could be defended, not people. It is thus naïve to think that Spinoza and the Jews were subject to the same “Contingencies of history or culture†that, say, Catholic Europe was subject to.
Daniel
January 9th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
But you have fallen right into the Spinozaist trap. I.e., from Spiniza’s perspective (i.e., the view from eternity), Sponoza’s perspective (and that of his fellow dispossessed Jews) is irrelevant. To claim otherwise is to acknowledge the importance of contingency and context — of empirical evidence as opposed to pure reason — in rendering ethical judgment. This acknowledgement (at least based on my very brief acquaintance with his work) seems to defy Spinoza’s arguments.
January 9th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
As I mentioned earlier, Spinoza was using reason as a means of escape from reality; effectively claiming that reality “doesn’t count†because ‘he’ chooses to ignore it. OK, so ‘he’ spits in the face of reality. What about his contemporaries? What about the Jewish masses? What Spinoza thought and how he dealt with reality worked for Spinoza, the individual. That is not to say that those who could seek solace in some lofty system of thought did or did not. This loftiness or ‘universality’ as the case may be does not carry over to how governments (or even religions) behave toward one another. Mahatma Gandhi preached peace through non-violent resistance, but yet India and pakistan went to war in 1971. I don’t see how Spinoza’s aesthetics and the fate of the world are necessarily connected.
The Jewish suffering in Spinoza’s time was not “irrelevant†if you were Jewish. There is not one “absolute reality†that people must subscribe to. Perhaps a Reconstructionist or someone with an anti-Jewish agenda, or Spinoza himself would choose to short circuit reality in such a manner. Let’s not forget, please, that we are here referring to an ‘aesthetic value’, not some omniscient notion of the nature of “true realityâ€. There is a huge difference between how Spinoza dealt with the reality of his time on a personal level, and [key] whether or not his philosophy was a viable alternative to the conflicts of his day. However, his legacy is a strong one.
In connection to the Dutch settlers (and other progressive Protestant strands of thought) Spinoza’s philosophy of pluralism was strong enough to make it to the mass market, but not strong enough to create total peace everywhere.
It is too easy for Christians to make the mistake of judging too harshly (as they sometimes have a tendency to judge too harshly the prophets of the Old Testament) those Jews who claim to be able to “relate to Spinozaâ€, yet not for his ‘reasoning prowess’, but for the [Jewish/intramural] pain caused by his being shunned (excommunicated) by orthodoxy.
Daniel: BramGolah@gmail.com
January 9th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
GodzillavsBambi (a Monty Python reference?) says: The Jewish suffering in Spinoza’s time was not “irrelevant†if you were Jewish. There is not one “absolute reality†that people must subscribe to.
Given the use of quotes, I take it this is in reponse to what I said above (the rest of what you’ve written appears to be in reference to something other than what I wrote, so I will leave others to respond). Regarding your first sentence, you’ve taken me completely out of context: I didn’t say it was irrelevant generally, I said it was irrelevant, for Spinoza, from the perspective of deriving ethical dictates. Your second sentence suggests that those dictates will not be useful or compelling to those who believe in the salience of the historical particulars. I agree, and my point above was that I think this is an underlying belief of ROS itself.
Finally, I’m curious what you mean by this statement, in an earlier post: Once again, Spinoza does not belong at “The center of Open Sorceryâ€, which is after all a euphemism for those who failed the test of the Enlightenment, but rather at the center of the Judeo-Christian ethic and democracy.
January 9th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
Just to clarify — and perhaps rescue a bad pun — I have corrected the spelling above, putting Spinoza where so many have welcomed him: at the center of Open Sourcery.
January 9th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Sutter. You are correct. You were not speaking in general terms, neither was I quoting you (in the ‘following’ paragraph) when I put the one word “irrelevantâ€, in quotes. It could also read: from a mathematical perspective Spinoza’s aesthetics are useless or perhaps even antagonistic when it comes to defending Jewish dignity or Jewish life. The last paragraph is important. It cannot be overstressed that Christians use the prophets of the Old Testament to browbeat Jews and Israel. In the same way I feel some Christians browbeat Jews also for admiring Spinoza, but for the wrong reasons. I (‘we’ Jews) admire Spinoza not necessarily for what he thought, but for the personal pain caused by Jewish orthodoxy who justifies theologically their intolerance towards others.
Does not belong at “The center of Open Sorceryâ€. It is true, he does not. And this claim that he does is an example of Jewish religious intolerance causing pain (in my heart at least) and showing that some people, among others, ‘failed the test of the Enlightenment’, because they refused to accept the fact that their world view lost out to someone else’s. In the end all they can do is pedal dope in a attempt to “win souls†to resurrect the carcass of their weltanschauung.
Daniel: BramGolah@gmail.com
January 9th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
GvB, my curiosity re: your response to “Open Sorcery” has to do, I think, with Chris’s clarification above. Chris intended it to mean “at the center of what we here at Open Source” do — a play on words (”sorcery” vs. open “sourcery”). He’s saying (if I may take some license) that Spinoza’s rationalism is closely linked to ROS’s attempt to cut through mysticism and to see reality. (Thus, he has since changed to “Open Sourcery” to clarify.) I think he’s right (though as noted above, I think ROS takes a more pluralist, empirical turn whereas Spinoza takes the other fork, toward the centrality of pure reason). I get the sense you thought he meant “sorcery” in its dictionary sense — i.e., that he is accusing Spinoza himself of mysticism. But that wasn’t the intent, as I read it.
Tell me, though, if I’ve misread you.
January 10th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
I did not recognize Chris’s misspelling (intentional or not) of the word “Sourceryâ€. Chris said that Goldstein’s new book “Establishes not least that Spinoza belongs at the center of Open Sourceryâ€. Surely Chris is not suggesting that Goldstein’s book is intentionally promoting the show Open Source. On the other hand if ‘typos’ are any indication of the misreading of historical events, then I commend Chris for leaving himself a way out. And lastly, if you guys intentionally misspell words here and there I don’t see any harm in that.
What ‘exactly’ do I mean by ‘failed the test of the Enlightenment’?
Goldstein starts off on the wrong foot by hijacking secular terminology to peruse a hidden religious agenda. Her finely calibrated arrogance is in full swing when she suggests that Spinoza’s coldness and aloofness are “responses against Jewish sufferingâ€. She cannot for one moment even contemplate the possibility that Baruch de Spinoza – our philosopher of pain – spoke out against the spiritual communism of Jewish orthodoxy.
About one hundred years after his death Spinoza was to become one of the forefathers of the Jewish Enlightenment: the Haskalah. A short time later in the early 1800’s in Germany an organised movement against Jewish orthodoxy gave birth to The Reform Movement. Some were ‘enlightened’, and others fell by the waistside to the forces of modernity and into the trash heep of histories losers. And they’ve been crying about it ever since.
Daniel: BramGolah@gmail.com
January 10th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
By the way, Spinoza is very popular in Israel because of the strong Sephardic lineage there. An enormously popular Israeli philosopher by the name of Yeshayahu Leibovitz, who partially promulgated the Spinozian tradition, who died in 1992, was vilified there by Ashkenazi Jews of Polish and German origin. Why? Because in the 1970’s he claimed that [The West Bank] would become “An untenable burden for the Jewish stateâ€. Therefore the fundamentalists went out of their way to ruin his reputation.
When Leibovitz was up for the Israel Prize, a prestigious lifetime achievement award for writers, a certain fundamentalist sect, the Haredi, raised such a ruckus by blocking traffic and throwing stones at cars, that Leibovitz declined the award to make peace. It is to ‘this’ intolerance, ‘this’ sickness, ‘this’ anachronism that Baruch de Spinoza’s legacy must be kept alive, and cherished. Do not for one moment believe the Jewish fundamentalist propaganda coming out of New York. Life is completely different in Israel.
Daniel: BramGolah@gmail.com
January 15th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Einstein, when pressed on the subject of whether or not he believed in God, finally answered that he believed in Spinoza’s God.
As an atheist, if I were pressed on the subject of what God I believed to be actually possible in this universe of ours, I would have to answer much the same: I do not believe in Spinoza’s God, but that God is the only one that I find remotely plausible.
What a great subject for Open Source! I can’t wait for the show to air.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Here’s a copy of Goldstein’s essay on the 350th anniversary of Spinoza’s cherem, prefaced by a good intro:
http://edge.org/3rd_culture/goldstein06/goldstein06_index.html
January 17th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Ed Curley is a faboulous Spinoza scholar. He introduced me to Spinoza, at the University of Michigan:
http://www.sitemaker.umich.edu/emcurley/curriculum_vitae
http://www.sitemaker.umich.edu/emcurley/spinoza
(Found on the latter, a great title for an article: “Kissinger, Spinoza and Genghis Khan”)
January 17th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
I recommend, too, looking at the European left’s turn to Spinoza. For example, Tony Negri, better known in the US for Empire, wrote an amazing Spinoza book while in prison, The Savage Anomaly. The Power of Spinoza’s Metaphysics and Politics. Gilles Deleuze wrote two books on Spinoza, and the latter appears throughout his other works, including the collaborations with Felix Guattari.
The New Spinoza (Stoltze, Ted and Warren Montag, eds.) is a good intro to this angle.
January 17th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
[I apologize if this is long…feel free to skip.]
To clarify a point: I think that what may be overlooked in the very thrust of the discussion is precisely what makes Spinoza a modern, or better, an archetypal modern. Perhaps what ties all modern thinkers together is their mutual distaste for useless and meaningless “metaphysics,” and “religion” and the desire to redefine “philosophy” as “politics”. In other words, the sphere of politics gains preeminence sometime between the 16th and 20th centuries, and it is precisely Spinoza’s task to effect that end, once and for all.
There seems to be two facets to his thinking which confirm the above point: first in the “Theologico-Political Treatise” (I have no texts here at work, so no citations…) the hermeneutical framework which he employs serves to de-contextualize sacred texts, thereby enabling a scientific (objective) and political (earthly end, as opposed to divine) interpretation of all such texts. What makes this move radical is the assertion from the outset that all divine texts are to be comprehended solely within the sphere of politics. This move simultaneously renders all sacred texts as the same (insofar as they are merely normative political statements), and therefore, all religions as merely one set of political statements among others. We need go no further to see that this is an essentially modern goal and notion.
The second facet to his thought that determines his modernity is what can only be called his “metaphysical” framework. This can be understood simply as the theory of reality that underpins the rest of his thought. As Nietzsche (and Heidegger) would point out, a metaphysics that seeks to undermine all metaphysics is still metaphysics. Spinoza is in this sense no different: his theory of reality guarantees that the totality of reality is the proper object of sciences. (I realize that I am skipping steps, but it’s been a while since I’ve read the Ethics) Since God is defined as Substance, and since all of nature is, properly speaking, in God, and since all of nature follows the laws of inertial motion….physics (the study of movement proper) has the sole claim to reality. All other sciences must remain subordinated to this preeminent science. Mathematics figures into this as well, but I’m pretty sure it is conceived as the foundation of physics. In any case, it is sufficient for our purposes to note that Spinoza justified metaphysically (in statements about how reality is) what he otherwise asserted in a political context: that religion (and all un-scientific endeavors) have no claim to reality, and therefore no claim to make normative (ethical) statements. The “Ethics” as a work is both an ethics proper, that is, it makes normative statements (or at least provides a framework within which to make them), and is a metaphysics. So it becomes clear that Spinoza comprehends ethics as metaphysics, and this is meant to produce a practical end. Medieval realpolitik…
In any case, what should light up is that modernity is less about the miracles of refrigeration, computers, and new political systems—and more about a distinct interpretation of humanity—stoic and compassionate, patiently bearing all slings and arrows, master of his own destiny. “Yes!” we say “That is us!” But don’t forget what Zarathustra was greeted with when he spoke to the people of the last man. They replied: “Show us this Last Man!”
Could Spinoza’s legacy be precisely what led to Nietzsche’s invective against modernity? Could Spinoza even recognize us as his legacy? Is the intoxicating power of the common sense (the democratic will-to-truth of the people) simply too much to allow us to even speak of “religion” and “faith” and “politics” and “science” in the same space without equivocation? Is equivocation precisely what was meant (religion, that is to say, politics)?
None of the foregoing was meant to be an answer.
January 30th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Goethe said:
renounce the self or destroy the self
January 31st, 2007 at 8:37 am
There are all kinds of Jews, but the only sect I have found that indulges in psychological proselytizing and the actual theft of another’s soul, are the fundamentalists from Brooklyn. Certain authors and thinkers believe that if they communicate their own personal experience from secularism to religion in an intellectual way they can bring “lost Jews†back to the flock. They think: how could they not possibly relate to the path I took that led me back to or into religious Judaism. And then if the person does not embrace for himself the personal journey conveyed by the author, he is labeled as “shallow†or “Paganâ€. This is a case of judging others by ones own standards. What works for one does not necessarily work for another. If you make it clear to these soul seekers that a religious lifestyle is not to your taste their whole demeanor and attitude changes. If you maintain or pretend to maintain interest in religious Judaism, you get smiles, phone numbers, favors, event planning and the works. But if for one moment one should cease to exhibit interest in things religious, not only will one no longer receive the positive feedback mentioned above, but one will no longer receive even eye contact.
The bottom line is that they will no longer treat you with the same respect they gave you during the time you expressed interest. Aside from failing the Enlightenment, this is the tragedy of religious Judaism. My Spinoza understood this. He couldn’t bare the hermetic environment of his heritage. He wanted to assimilate. He saw progress and he wanted to be a part of it. He wanted to be friendly to all people ‘without’ being chastised or ostracized by his own people. He wanted to share the “light†that his religion claims to possess. “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peopleâ€, Isaiah 56:7. Spinoza opened a door to that house, but the occupants weren’t ready. So they excommunicated him for it. This is the pain that Rebecca Goldstein will never understand. And this is the pain that our philosopher of pain understood. Spinoza was himself suffering, but his cries fell on deaf ears.
Daniel: BramGolah@gmail.com
January 31st, 2007 at 9:04 am
In effect, Spinoza said:
Spirituality reveals itself in the order in which all things exist
One must renounce the self to see the order.
The order is a gestalt: the ‘way in which’ spirituality is revealed.
January 31st, 2007 at 10:09 am
The reason how we know Spinoza suffered is because he spent most of his life designing a system to end suffering that is caused by religious intolerance. He had to endure the pain to figure out how to cure it. He cured it for himself and for others of rational bent.
Admittingly, the sacred geometry of Spinoza’s thought is not for everyone because it is devoid of the familiar Judeo-Christian imagery that permeated every aspect of life in those days, or even in our time. However, he was successful in illustrating that salvation can be attained through reason, and without the approval of others. Aut viam inveniam aut faciam … Baruch de Spinoza!
Daniel: BramGolah@gmail.com
January 31st, 2007 at 11:24 am
Godzilla:
“However, he was successful in illustrating that salvation can be attained through reason, and without the approval of others.”
This is precisely the meaning and intent of the Enlightenment project. I should say, in the interest of precision, that “salvation” is gained through the use of reason, but culminating in a political reality. This salvation is thus nothing individual or private, but rather has an entirely cosmopolitan thrust. It appears that one of the reasons for this discussion thread is to determine the extent to which this state of affairs has come about. Of course, we already know the answer: we are most certainly not living in a utopia. We must not forget that every single destructive and diabolical idiology in history has touted the advent of a paradise on earth. (Hugo Chavez being a current, second-rate example??)
With regard to the purported ‘individualistic spirituality,’ or whatever you might call it, that would seem to be at the heart of Spinoza’s thought: I believe that he would regard that kind of spiritual freedom as truly secondary to the freedom of reason to exercise the will rationally. Since evil is defined as the presence of suffering, and falsehood, the privation of truth, it can only be the use of reason (through the sciences) that can systematically and carefully bring about the alleviation of suffering. This has absolutely nothing to do with one’s right to have an opinion and religious choice precisely because holding such beliefs can cause pain and the dissemination of falsehood. The freedoms and benefits of and enlightened democracy are only able to safeguard religious freedom only if those beliefs can are bereft of any true import–remove the teeth, as it were, from religion. Of course, the upshot of carving out a space for religion is that it ceases to mean anything at all, since it structurally cannot have anything to do with life.
Truth (and universal pleasure), it seems, would take on a monolithic aspect. The authority to determine the truth and to afford pleasure and remove suffering would have to be delegated to whatever body is deemed the most rational–presumably the world would be goverened by scientists. This, of course, is nothing other than the general desire of the Enlightenment project–the removal of all supernatural motives from human action, and the replacement of those motives with the rational. Spinoza seemed to have attempted to infuse rationality with the gravitas of spirituality, thereby satisfying all of our needs.
The question is now: what is the state of this legacy?
January 31st, 2007 at 12:37 pm
The reason Spinoza is relevant today is that we are still trying to solve the problem of integrating the order of a free and rational individual mind with the seemingly irrational collective consciousness of humanity.
The potential for this ever happening is limited. In physics there are laws for small objects (the individual) and laws for large object (the masses). Until string theory is proven true, the laws governing small and large objects will not be integrated.
The attempt to make progress ordering the chaos of human existence is a cornerstone of Western thought and an ongoing process.
Ps. The enlightenment ended badly because there was no way to decide who would be the final arbiter of the contract between the individual and society. Again, which small object would have the decision power over the large objects?
January 31st, 2007 at 3:24 pm
An interesting approach to a thinker is to analyze each sentence separately, decide whether it is true, false, unknown, or unprovable — and then to move on to the next sentence. I once spent two days doing this with a relatively small selection of Spinoza (it was a Great Books excerpt). Examined at this extreme micro level, sentence after sentence made no sense or was demonstrably ridiculous. Has anyone else used this micro approach? I (frankly) gave up Spinoza as a total moron or a poet drifting in generalities, unable to clearly put a simple sentence down. It would be interesting (and this is NOT the venue) to go through a selection, sentence by sentence, examining and discussing each before moving on to the next sentence. (Unfortunately, the Great Books discussion quickly degenerated into a non-analytical ‘what I think/feel’ discussion, and all refused to engage in a micro-analysis of the text at the level of detail I would have been interested in….)
January 31st, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Thank you for inviting me into the discussion.
January 31st, 2007 at 9:36 pm
There have been some great comments and even better questions.
Spinoza’s substance monism is considered by many to be the Western expression of philosophical Taoism. Compare the first stanzas of the Tao Te Ching with the first of Spinoza’s propositions and a stark similarity appears. From there, however, they part company in method and implication. Lao Tzu will tell you that not everything is as it seems to be, and Spinoza, considering his dualist-moralist audience, wants everyone to know that things are exactly as they appear.
I don’t know exactly what is meant by ‘modernity’, and I cannot say what effects Spinoza did or did not have on it. With the exception of Leibniz and his perversion-plagiarism of Spinoza, Spinozism didn’t see much daylight until 150 years after his death, and even then, only among scholars. On could say that Spinoza was part of a chain of ‘modernity’ among the likes of Galileo, Da Vinci, Bruno, Uriel de Costa, and many others whose legacies and ideas likely disappeared during the Inquisition. To say that Spinoza had a marked effect would be true, but the strongest? No. I think Galileo gets that honor.
Spinoza wanted to change the langauge of religion, and thus of human ethics, from one of moral judgment (holy vs. evil) to natural ethic (good vs. bad). He used the story of Adam and Eve as a metaphor for this. “Had Adam”, Spinoza claims, “seen the apple as bad i.e. poison to his physical body (rather than as evil), then there would have no possible way for anyone to convice him to eat from it.” Now to break down the moral aspect one has to address the alleged source of morality, which was the common Judeo-Christian understanding of God.
Spinoza’s Judaism taught him that God is Infinite, Eternal, and yet, in spite of It’s expansive nature, takes a very personal and specific interest in human affairs. Spinoza was also taught that suffering and pain was part of Judaism, but that God had a plan which would lead to a Messianic Era and reward in the hereafter. Like Uriel de Costa before him, and with whom everyone is pretty sure Spinoza befriended at some point, the questions of national or personal suffering versus the loving and protecting God of Israel likely weighed heavy on the minds of many a Marranno. I imagine that a Spinoza would have asked many of the same questions we do today in terms of why bad things happen to good people, vice versa, or as to how Providence and free will coexist. A lot of conflict there to resolve.
Spinoza also took a more positive attitude regarding humanity. He posited a ‘positive freedom’ which he called ’self determinism”. Today, we might call it ’self empowerment’ or some other self-esteem boosting slogan. The secret to this self-determinism is awareness that comes through what he calls the “adequate idea”. I would sum it up into “Know the thing, know its effects, and know its source.” This is where Spinoza sees morality as hindering freedom, because a moral assumption does not consider evident cause and effects, it merely assumes an effect based upon an ‘opinion’, which Spinoza considers to be the lowest form of human understanding. In self-determinism, I know full well that I am being influenced by things beyond my control, yet the adequate idea allows my own degree of influence to increase in proportion to the adequacy of the idea held. (Think Social Cognitive Theory or Reciprocal Determinism of Albert Bandura.)
Spiritualists and philosophers today look to QM and Relativity as the apex of human understanding and possibilty, while trying to shove some philosophical or religious framework into modern science (Fritjof Capra is a good example.) For Spinoza, the highest science of his day, available to him, was Euclid. I bet that he had one question on his mind that plagued him to no end. It is a simple question at which many balk, but I think it was the most profound dilemma he encountered. The $64,000 question is ; “What must God be in order to be God?” This is where Euclid came in. Judaism itself gave Spinoza no tools to amswer that problem, and even the Kabala, which I believe he was exposed to early on, only provides a Platonic-hermetic apparatus for expanding the idea without ever directly addressing that question.
If I were asked to sum up my view of Spinoza in a sentence, it would be “If it isn’t natural, then it isn’t at all. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
Deus sive Natura!
(immoralism, naturalism, determinism, atheism)
February 1st, 2007 at 9:54 am
Modern should be defined in terms of Western Culture.
Western culture has moved towards the rights of the individual.
Inherent in that movement is one of the cornerstones of western culture: progress.
Most historians see progress interims of waves or movements and not individuals.
You can find this said about Spinoza:
“He is now seen as having prepared the way for the 18th century Enlightenment,…â€
What about others from the Age of Reason:
Descartes, Hobbes, Pascal
It is amusing how humans seek the absolute, pure, exclusive, one:
one god, one religion, one spouse, and etc.
In nature, it is integration that guarantees survival - not “onenessâ€
February 1st, 2007 at 10:19 am
Re: towards the rights of the individual
Yes, but only in theory. It’s a nice idea though.
Re: Descartes, Hobbes, Pascal
Well of course they count among the major influences. I was speaking more specifically in terms of science and naturalism. The name I should have also included, but did not, was NEWTON.
Re: integration
“That”, as Spinoza might say, “is a matter of necessity.” One is born out of integration.
Re: preparing the way
Not to downplay Spinoza, but do you think there may have been more powerful social and economic factors that allowed those ideas to spread? Maybe we are putting “Descartes before the horse” sort of speak. The diminishing power of the monarchy and the Church is likely the passive cause of the Enlightenment, which simply filled the subsequent void for many people.
That struggle is evident in Holland during Spinoza’s time. With the murder of the DeWitts, the conservative government cracked down on philosophy big time.
It would be nice to say that ideal and principles drive humanity and that we have the great thinkers to thank for progress, but I know too many people for whom BF Skinner would be very interested in studying. Most people operate from the practical, not the cerebral.
February 1st, 2007 at 10:21 am
mt said: “salvation†is gained through the use of reason, but culminating in a political reality.
This is right about when the Trickster shows up. Lest one be a scoundrel … “Salvation†has nothing to do with globalism, utopianism, communism, liberalism, or as some seem to be suggesting here and elsewhere with Spinoza’s ‘cosmopolitanism’. Himalayan monks achieve salvation without cosmopolitanism.
We all know that salvation can be attained through reason. The thing with Spinoza is that his system is mathematical and totalitarian in nature. If misunderstood it can lead to all sorts of “Universalist†notions and so forth (as mentioned elsewhere on this thread): “Disembodied intransigenceâ€, as it relates for example to the homelessness of pre-Zionist Judaism; providing some contemporary authors with a starting point to *entice* the common psychological motif of the “dispossessed Jew†and the “Diasporaâ€. This is more a matter of propaganda than anything else.
The point. There is no problem when an ‘individual’ uses Spinoza’s geometry in seeking and perhaps in finding salvation. But if this personal salvation is turned ‘outward’, then we run into all sorts of problems. It is only then that we are faced with questions of national identity, sovereignty, and ‘politics’. Such dilution of personhood and individual potential culminating into some sort of “collectiveâ€, or ‘state machinery’ such as communism, is a bad thing, I think. So what is to stop the ‘individual’ from gaining salvation through this method? Absolutely nothing. Salvation and the affairs of the State are mutually exclusive.
There seems to be an urge for absolutism on this thread i.e. an incessant need to apply mathematical formula to guide or interpret human events. There are absolutes when mixing potassium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal. But there are no absolutes when dealing with human experience. Then again nobody’s perfect.
Daniel: BramGolah@gmail.com
February 1st, 2007 at 1:18 pm
Great comments!
Re: We all know that salvation can be attained through reason.
(Really?)
Re: The thing with Spinoza is that his system is mathematical and totalitarian in nature.
(Not mathematical, but logically derived through a few basic principles of plane geometry, something a simple carpenter like myself can grasp. Well, I think I got the question right at least. Totalitarian? That you would have to explain to me. Please.)
Re: If misunderstood it can lead to all sorts of “Universalist†notions and so forth.
(Agreed somewhat. I would say the mistake is thinking that Spinoza was a mystic or even a pantheist.)
Re: But if this personal salvation is turned ‘outward’, then we run into all sorts of problems.
(Good point that politics is the outward expression of our psychology, but I disagree with your conclusion here. Spinoza, as far as politics goes, sees his version of salvation (self-determinism moving toward intellectual love of God/Nature) as most available and probable in an environment where the power of the individual to reason and act exists. In oppressive societies, the weight or influence of government censorship offers added hindrances to personal ’salvation’. Spinoza would rather live in world that promotes and acts from reason. ML King wasn’t the only man with a dream.)
Re: Absolutes in human hehavior
(Is this your way of rejecting Spinoza’s determinism? Even if one were to reject his determinism based upon QM or wave theory, human psychology and behavior is still quite predictable and does follow relatively absolute patterns. History has been a good teacher of that lesson.)
Deus sive Natura!
February 2nd, 2007 at 9:50 am
ShlomoLeib Says: Re: We all know that salvation can be attained through reason.
(Really?)
OK, my bad. I should have said: I am ‘guessing’ that the people who frequent this site are aware of the possibility that salvation can be attained through reason. I did not mean to suggest that they have “done itâ€, but just to say that they are aware that it is possible, within the context of Spinoza’s geometry. I was giving people the benefit of the doubt.
ShlomoLeib Says: logically derived through a few basic principles of plane geometry.
Totalitarian: in the sense that Spinoza’s (selective) geometry bypasses some facets of existence. In other words no distinction is made between immanence and transcendence. If one believes in creationism this distinction must be acknowledged and also embraced, not cut in half. To him it’s all the same. He thus short circuits transcendence (upon which those ‘irrational’ components of human consciousness is based), not least of which amounts to the Judaeo-Christian construct of religious aestheticism. He simply rules it out while laying the groundwork for the separation of church and state, secularism, or other variations such as atheism and fascism. Clearly this occurs ONLY when his precepts are turned outward, while we beat people over the head to adopt his views. The salvation works ONLY if we choose not to judge others by our own standards. Let’s change “Totalitarian†to ‘authoritarian’.
ShlomoLeib Says Re: Absolutes in human behavior (Is this your way of rejecting Spinoza’s determinism?
Yes. I recognize changes in context. I do not seek to impose my will on others or on the state, or to have the state impose its will on me. Positivists believe that logical precepts are constants without recognition to changes in context. However, there must be some convention with which to weigh ethical dilemmas against the notion of what is moral other than ‘sense perception’! Natural Law is a way to objectify intolerance. It allows the accuser to impose his own subjective view of reality by objectifying his own irrationality and holding others to that standard. Spinoza was a Natural Law theorist of sorts. I myself do not subscribe to Natural Law, or Positivism.
ShlomoLeib Says: Spinoza would rather live in world that promotes and acts from reason.
The problem with this is that different states may have different ideas (aesthetics) on what is ‘reasonable’ and what isn’t. Again … personal “salvation†is not dependent on the affairs of the state. This is not to suggest that “salvation†is unavailable from the state. It all depends on the seeker. Please recognize the difference between the state and the individual within the context of seeking “salvationâ€. The two are not synonymous.
ShlomoLeib Says: Good point that politics is the outward expression of our psychology.
I never said that! I did however say that once we begin to look outward i.e. to apply our newly acquired “salvation†in an outward fashion, onto other people, or worse onto other states, needless to say, we then IMPOSE OUR WILL into the situation through persuasion and perhaps violence, which in the end serves only as a self destructive mechanism because everyone is doing it to everyone else. Can you see the futility of such a system?
ShlomoLeib Says: In oppressive societies, the weight or influence of government censorship offers added hindrances to personal ’salvation’.
Too loose. I would point to Russian, Chinese, and Indian culture, or even to Islam. What is “oppressive†to one may be comfortable for another. Besides, one countries comfortableness, or oppression, or lack thereof has absolutely nothing to do with someone else in another country finding or not finding “salvationâ€.
Daniel: BramGolah@gmail.com
February 2nd, 2007 at 1:42 pm
///Natural Law is a way to objectify intolerance. It allows the accuser to impose his own subjective view of reality by objectifying his own irrationality.\\\
Galileo concluded that the human mind was above or outside nature -he came to this conclusion as a way to objectify his experiments.
Neurobiologists have concluded that the human brain has evolved and the mind is therefore part of nature.
As a part of nature, the human mind is ‘contextualizing’ the way natural systems do in order to survive. Natural law is the only rational view because any other view would be anti-survival or irrational.
February 2nd, 2007 at 5:38 pm
First of all, let me thank you for taking the time and effort to respond. Excellent comments as always. Secondly, forgive me for misunderstanding your postion here. I had thought perhaps you were explaining rather than critiquing (or maybe both?) In either case, I am happy to delve into this subject a little bit more. It also helps to clarify my own understanding.
re:selective geometry
I don’t know what you mean by ’selective’. Even if one argues that Spinoza’s method is lacking since it is limited to Euclidean geometry, the later development of a non-Euclidean system does not change the basis for Spinoza’s thesis; that a thing must have properties or characteristics that distinguish it from other things and have, by necessity, certain effects associated with its nature. The Mobius Strip, delicious as it is, changed nothing regarding Spinoza’s initial assertion.
re:no distinction is made between immanence and transcendence
Not exactly. Better put, Spinoza rejects transcendence as fantasy or at least as a distinction without a difference. If this God/Nature/Substance thing is everywhere, then there can be, by necessity, nowhere where it isn’t. And, if its Nature is Infinite, then by definition, that nasty ‘necessity’ once again, there is no longer the need for speaking in ‘heres or theres’. This is an ontological argument or tautology, I’ll grant you that, but to dismiss it would be to question whether or not we are here at all.
re:If one believes in creationism this distinction must be acknowledged and also embraced, not cut in half.
Interesting question. Can we assume that Spinoza was a creationist or enamationist? After all, what else would be have been? Did he even address the issue? It’s likely that he never considered the problem of beginnings, as Lao Tzu didn’t either and nobody pestered him about it. So I don’t know the answer to your question. I have my own answer, but I won’t presume to know how a Spinoza would respond. He speaks to the process, however, in terms of natura naturans (active creativity) and natura naturata (passive or secondary reshaping). Simply put “Nature natures naturally.”
re: Positivists believe that logical precepts are constants without recognition to changes in context.
You probably meant ‘Kantians’. Positivists worked within the framework of the scientific method. I am part positivist.
re: there must be some convention with which to weigh ethical dilemmas against the notion of what is moral other than ‘sense perception’!
Exactly right. This is why Spinoza calls for reason. Reason raises human knowing from the level of mere opinion to the ‘adequate idea’. Call it an ‘educated opinion’ if you wish.
re: Spinoza was a Natural Law theorist of sorts.
I dunno. Never thought about it that way. Spinoza considers man a capably rational and reasoning creature. So it would be ‘natural’ to have rationally based laws. This also depends on your defintion of Natural Law. Cicero saw natural law as a transcendent source of intuitive undertanding of rights and wrong, in line with Stoic/Cynic ethics and physics. Spinoza saw reason as the most ‘natural’ thing for a human to use. Teamwork, the social basis for our survival and success in the most basic evolutionary sense, depends on agreed upon principles of behavior for the betterment of the group. Spinoza asserts a system dictated by reason brings the greatest good to the greatest number by virtue of our being rational reasoning beings. Good for you, good for me, good for everybody, so lets do it.
I understand the slippery slope argument and the fear of totalitarianism, but I can assure you, a legal system based upon rational inquiry and reason is not one that you have to fear, unless your irrational views and behaviors become so distinct as to disrupt the others. You would find outlandish behavior isn’t tolerated anywhere. Besides, we already have a system now in the US that does the quite the opposite, attacking reason out of self-interest and fundamental religious dogma. I look forward someday to live in a world where the only thing anyone has to fear is behaving irrationally. I would gladly take my chances in Spinoza’s fantasy world.
re:we then IMPOSE OUR WILL into the situation through persuasion and perhaps violence, which in the end serves only as a self destructive mechanism because everyone is doing it to everyone else. Can you see the futility of such a system?
You just described every government, school board, labor union, and corporate board ever conceived. To govern means to control, and to control implies an imposition of will enforced if necessary through the use of force. I am not even tempted by anarchy or extreme libertarianism, in spite of their purist natures, which I tend to admire. Government by reason is to prevent goverment by irrationality and selfishness, in other words, applied reason in personal and communal affairs as a buffer to the less communally inclined tendencies of our ‘passions’, as Spinoza calls them.
Also, I am not doing democratic socialism or representative democracy TO you. I would be doing it WITH you.
re: What is “oppressive†to one may be comfortable for another.
Some make the same argument about spousal abuse. (Not to imply that you would.) Ultimately, whatever individuals feels regarding whatever it is they endure has no bearing on the consequences of suffering for most under its yoke. Humans find a way of coping as a matter of survival, and their ability to ‘transcend’ a given situation i.e. poverty does not sanction the situation as a sort of moral necessity i.e. vow of poverty. There is no virtue in oppression or poverty except in the religious irrational mind.
I am finding age and gravity to be particularly ‘oppressive’ these days.
re: salvation
Since the discussion seems to be centered around or toward salvation, let’s define what Spinoza means by it. Spinoza speaks of ‘blessedness’ which is the state on content that one reaches through the rational and intuitive understanding of the interplay of things. In this sense he kind of matches the Roman Stoic coping mechanism developed through a surrender to Providence. Maybe the Zen Budhist would call this sartori. Salvation for Spinoza is not salvation FROM, but a salvation WITHIN the entire framework of the determined physical universe. There is no escape. Reason is not messianic.
This takes us back to governments. The Age of Reason was the time reason became appreciated and valued so much, that societies made it almost mandatory to partake in it! A government’s role, and as a devout progressive I say this, is to make the best things possible for its citizens. This, I believe, is Spinoza’s dream.
What age are we in now?
Good discussion. Thanks.
February 3rd, 2007 at 7:57 am
ShlomoLeib Says: I don’t know what you mean by ’selective’.
Selective: within the context of circumventing transcendence. Spinoza got the immanence and the existentialism down pat, but when it comes to the aesthetics of Judaeo-Christian imagery he gets an F. Because we are human we must acknowledge that we are – at least to some extent – wired for faith, which is, essentially, irrational. Most philosophies take into account this irrational aspect of the human condition. Spinoza simply waves his wand and wishes it goodbye. It is therefore incomplete as a philosophical system, but, nevertheless, another possible path on the road to salvation.
ShlomoLeib Says: the later development of a non-Euclidean system does not change the basis for Spinoza’s thesis.
Nor did the Reformation prevent certain religious types from shunning The Age of Reason One Hundred and Fifty or so years later. One thing has nothing to do with the other.
ShlomoLeib Says: This is an ontological argument or tautology, I’ll grant you that, but to dismiss it would be to question whether or not we are here at all.
My point exactly.
ShlomoLeib Says: re: If one believes in creationism this distinction must be acknowledged and also embraced, not cut in half. “Interesting questionâ€.
It’s not a question. It’s a statement.
ShlomoLeib Says: re: It’s likely that he never considered the problem of beginnings, as Lao Tzu didn’t either and nobody pestered him about it.
If I was an Orientalist my conception of time would be quite un-Western to begin with. So forget about in six days I did such and such, Adam’s rib, Eve blames the snake, and there were Devils in my head and Angels in my eyes. Hell … this is how we measure time: by the birth of Jesus Christ, and in linear fashion at that. In any event, if Lao Tzu helps you along the path of “salvationâ€, be my guest. Take a wack at it why don’t ya. But don’t forget to mark the trail on the way in.
ShlomoLeib Says: This is why Spinoza calls for reason. Reason raises human knowing from the level of mere opinion to the ‘adequate idea’. Call it an ‘educated opinion’ if you wish.
True. However, no amount of reason can help you morn the death of a loved one. No amount of reason can “prove†that you love them. When asking God for forgiveness, one does not think in terms of geometry or the intellectual love of same. Reason cannot wipe clean the slate of human memory either. We are who we are. ‘Tis possible to become addicted to the reasoning process old friend, ‘tis highly possible that it can take from you your humanity!
To reiterate. Spinoza’s metaphysics severs transcendence, denying to us our aesthetic (Judaeo-Christian) appreciation of the divine. Or if not “denying itâ€, certainly assigning it to an insignificant roll in human affairs.
ShlomoLeib Says: an imposition of will enforced if necessary through the use of force.
Hitler, now that’s force. Mao Zedong, Lenin, Pol Pot, Juan Peron, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, etc. Take a look at English history from Magna Carta to the present. Is there not what seems to be an historical progression (dare I say an ‘organic historical process’) from beating each other over the head to constitutional democracy and the rule of law? But if I were an historical revisionist for example, or moral relativist, i.e. a Spinozist, I wouldn’t have to concern myself with such prosaic dribble drabble. I would just keep on looking for The Golden Bough.
ShlomoLeib Says: There is no virtue in oppression or poverty except in the religious irrational mind.
Then you admit that even under such harsh conditions “salvation†is possible? It is well known that in times of tribulation a person, or a people can seek solace, comfort, and hope in that most irrational of texts, the Bible. I am proud to be a descendant of those who invented hope. What a lofty notion. How abstract. OK so we (Jews) get credit for that.
ShlomoLeib Says: a government’s role, and as a devout progressive I say this, is to make the best things possible for its citizens. This, I believe, is Spinoza’s dream.
Spinoza was a sort of secularist. For him an individual’s identity was unimportant: we all just blend into some (rational) state machinery. Our memories, individual and collective, were also of no real consequence to him. He walked in between the raindrops and ignored mans quest to unite with his deity. Was his system a “Universalist†notion? Perhaps. To borrow a word from Joel Carmichael once more, he and his people were … “Disembodiedâ€, that is, from the ‘land’, and therefore decidedly unqualified to dictate to the indigenous population how they should live.
I do not admire Spinoza for what he thought. I admire him as a symbol against Jewish religious intolerance.
Thanks.
Daniel: BramGolah@gmail.com
February 3rd, 2007 at 1:28 pm
re: aesthetics of Judaeo-Christian imagery
Translated properly, that phrase should read “vivid imagination”.
re: wired for faith
I, too, have a very healthy imagination. Yet, I also have the ability to verify, via my senses and reason, if the imagined thing is real or fanciful. Now I might say that part of our emotional security comes from trusting, which is much different than faith. Trust is reliance that comes from experience. Faith is wishful thinking. I am amazed at how often the two are confused. Faith and denial are two sides of the same emotional coin.
For example, I do not have faith in the conclusions of science. I have TRUST in the method that science uses. Why? Because it has been proven relatively reliable, certainly enough to earn my trust. Thor, Isis, Jehovah, Mithras, or Zeus haven’t done much for me lately.
re: It’s not a question. It’s a statement.
No. It’s a question.
re: beginnings
“Nature does not work with an end in view.For the eternal and infinite Being, which we call God or Nature, acts by the same necessity as that whereby it exists. . . . Therefore, as he does not exist for the sake of an end, so neither does he act for the sake of an end; of his existence and of his action there is neither origin nor end.” If God/nature has no beginning or end, neither does anything else. So, why bring up the subject?
re: no amount of reason can help you mourn the death of a loved one.
Really? I find reason to have quite a sobering effect on the passions. My father was very ill before he passed on. His passing was easier for me because I knew he was ill, and calculated, albeit as a projection of what it might feel like, that his suffering was now over. Reason allows me to put each event in proper perspective without having to engage the assistance of any imaginary sky-fairies.
It works wonders and it works everywhere. No trail of crumbs necessary.
“The mind understands all things to be necessary and to be determined to existence and operation by an infinite chain of causes, therefore . . . it thus far brings it about, that it is less subject to the emotions arising therefrom, and feels less emotion towards the things themselves. [v.6]”
re: No amount of reason can “prove†that you love them
If your significant other is demanding ‘proof’ of love, dump them now. Love is a chemical reaction initiated by pleasurable thoughts of trust, good feeling, and security drawn from contact with another human being. Either you feel it or you don’t. This is also why people continue to believe that gods are real, because they have emotions that mimic those that occur through normal everyday human interactions. The emotion is real, but the source is not. same reason that a person can love someone who doesn’t or cannot love them back.(I’ve been there.)
Spinoza categorically denies the ability for God/Nature to love anyone.
re:When asking God for forgiveness
You know what they say “It’s always easier to beg forgiveness than it is to ask permission.”
re:Reason cannot
It appears you have unrealistic expectations of Spinoza’s notion of reason and salvation. Read the Spinoza’s Ethics and Emandation of the Intellect.
re: Spinoza’s metaphysics severs transcendence, denying to us our aesthetic (Judaeo-Christian) appreciation of the divine.
Something else to be thankful for I guess.
re: moral relativist, i.e. a Spinozist
You’re mistaken. Spinoza is an immoralist. He rejects morality for positive based ethics rooted in cause and effects. The danger of morality is that it asserts rules without tracing the effects. A good example is a matter of taste.
A king decides that he hates the color orange and word spreads of the king’s color preferences. Ministers now know that to gain the king’s ear they must never wear orange. Word spreads that the king hates orange and his armies also abandon the donning of orange uniforms and banners. Soon enough, the color orange comes to stand for anything and everything opposed to the monarchy and the nation. Criminals and social outcasts might even be forced to wear orange insignia as a sign of public shame.
Here’s the question. Does the color orange possess an intrinsic property that brings about such consequences or does what we think about, and thus behave around, the color orange cause them to happen? No doubt that someone further down the chain might actually believe that the color orange causes sedition! Now the color orange means more than just a color to some. It becomes a color that invokes an emotion based upon the caprice of a personal taste or preference.
For Spinoza morality is always an act of caprice performed by the one doing or dictating the morality. It has effects because we alter our behavior to please someone’s tastes, but there is no intrisic value to it beyond that. Spinoza believes that morality is not born of reason, but of passions or opinions and thus he rejects morality. (The above mentioned analogy was my own.)
re:I am proud to be a descendant of those who invented hope. What a lofty notion. How abstract. OK so we (Jews) get credit for that.
Hope? No. We Jews, like others, have mastered the art of survival at all costs, which is a biological function. I would not be too fast to take credit for what every other human culture has also generated. Jews like to give themselves credit for everything. As a former Chasidic Jew, I can tell you some funny stories about what they claim Jews have done for humanity.
I do agree with Victor Frankl’s idea that ‘hope’, in terms of goals and desires, gives us the added ‘UMPH’ that we sometimes need to stay focused. Spinoza believes that hope is negative emotion that springs from wishful thinking. I’m not so negative. I buy one lottery ticket per week ‘hoping’ and it doesn’t seem all that bad.
February 4th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
science vs. faith (belief)
You either have faith or you don’t.
Science is that which can be disproved. A Western concept, in that disproving leads to progress.
///Love is a chemical reaction initiated by pleasurable thoughts of trust, good feeling, and security drawn from contact with another human being. Either you feel it or you don’t. This is also why people continue to believe that gods are real,…\\\
Love is the constant act of overvaluation – I love nature, but don’t expect anything in return. How Spinozian is that?
February 4th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
What if the King ate something, got sick and then passed a dietary law prohibiting the consumption of that item.
Years later, we find the illness wasn’t intrinsic to the item. The illness was caused by the storage and preparation of the item.
So, there was no real Kingly cause and effect, yet many people were saved from illness until the knowledge base improved.
My point is that humans deploy a number of survival techniques to guarantee the success of the herd – rational thought is only one technique.
Isn’t Spinoza a modern mind because he questioned relationships?
Western culture is the dominate culture because it has the greatest insight into the structure of reality. ( Insight is the realization of a relationship.) For Spinoza to be a modern, he must have been actively seeking to understand and challenge the relationships that represented his world.
February 4th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Lumeire,
Great comments!
re: Years later, we find the illness wasn’t intrinsic to the item
Unintended consequences swing both ways it seems. That would be the best-case scenario.
re: Isn’t Spinoza a modern mind because he questioned relationships?
Quite correct. Anyone who approaches the status quo with tough questions fits that mold as well. This is the essence of his Geometric Proof and how it led him to Ethics. Yet it’s not an original method, as it was already mastered by the Pythagoreans and the Archemedians. Spinoza innovated in redefining the common assumptions of WHO or WHAT was involved in the relationships. Until his time no one dared question God, transcendence, or morality; much the same as no one dared bring up the zero, infinity, or irrational numbers to the Greeks until Hippasus and Zeno showed up.
peace
February 4th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
With this topic, I find myself desiring an ROS reading group.
February 5th, 2007 at 12:30 am
Shlomo
Re unity:
This is the one aspect of Spinoza’s philosophy I find agreeable.
His unity principle in nature is now called gravity.
Physicists are trying to resolve the problem of why gravity, an all pervasive force, is so weak.They have come up with Brane Theory (Brane is short for membrane).
It seems we are on a Brane that is farther away from the heavy gravity Brane. I listened to Lisa Randall give a convoluted example of how this works, but it is quite simply explained if you understand the way a lens works.
A lens has a plane of sharpest focus -that would be the heavy gravity Brane. As you move farther away from the plane of sharpest focus, the image becomes blurry, soft, or weak. Our universe is in the blurry area, which is why we can jump up and escape gravity even though it controls everything in the universe.
Do you get the irony here?
Spinoza was a lens crafter by trade!
February 5th, 2007 at 11:13 am
Gvb wrote:”“My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peopleâ€, Isaiah 56:7. Spinoza opened a door to that house, but the occupants weren’t ready. So they excommunicated him for it.”
GvB, you’ve placed this beautifully in the context of the Jewish experience, both for Spinoza and yourself. Thank you. What you explain about his need to be open to everyone feels very familiar, though I am not Jewish. I have mentioned before on one of these threads, that I find it difficult to connect to a community of spiritual practice, because all too often, the community is closed. In that closure, I feel trapped. I must leave a piece of my self hidden, or the eye contact stops.
Mt described that what makes Spinoza modern, is that he is trying to transform philosophy into politics. I think this means turning the purpose of a truth-seeking practice upside down - seeing any overarching connective tissue in the universe as a motivation to work for earthly goals, rather seeing the earthly work as a tool for seeking a metaphysical goal. I find that spiritual communities may try to practice their stated ethics in this world, but more for the purpose of protecting their own ’soul’ than for bettering this world. (after all, aren’t some pushing for Armageddon so that they can chosen?) When that is the motivation, one can transgress and feel that one is only risking oneself. There is not really a concern for the suffering of others.
So, is it modern to be open to praying/meditating/truth-seeking with anyone? To become comfortable with differences, even embrace them? To want to feel the connective tissue between people that exists no matter what we believe or espouse? And does this modernism include being open to sharing your beliefs and experiences in a community where it is safe to do so? Where you don’t have to feel threatened or unappreciated because parts of you may feel foreign to others? Is it modern to apply this truth-seeking toward the betterment of everyone in this earthly existence simply because that may be the only true joy we experience; the joy of one another? Is devoting your energies to the service of a metaphysical belief simply a spiritual bypass? Is this what Spinoza would embrace?