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Discussing Spinoza's Ethics (1677), books 1 and 2.
This is a 32-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 36-minute episode which you can buy at partiallyexaminedlife.com/store or get for free with PEL Citizenship (see partiallyexaminedlife.com/membership). You can also purchase the full episode in the iTunes Store: Search for "Partially Spinoza" and look under "Albums."
We mostly discuss his weird, immanent, non-personal conception of God: God is everything, therefore the world is God as apprehended through some particular attributes, namely insofar as one of his aspects is infinite space (extension, i.e. matter) and insofar as one of his aspects is mind (our minds being chunks or "modes" of the big God mind).
Also, if you're not going to sell out and go for a university position in philosophy, should you instead grind lenses in your attic without adequate ventilation? (Hint: no) Plus, the Amsterdam of yesterday, whose heady aroma drove people to write like Euclid, property dualism rears its ugly head, and Mel Gibson as Rousseau!
Read a free version online or purchase the book.
One place to read the earlier Spinoza book I refer to, A Short Treatise on God, Man, and his Well-Being (1660), is here. The Karen Armstrong book I keep referring to is The Case for God,
The dumbed down, non-geometric presentation of the Ethics that I talk about is here.
End song: "Spiritual Insect," by Mark Lint and the Fake from the album So Whaddaya Think? (2000).
Geoff says
August 24, 2010 at 11:36 pmSo, god is an infinitely extended, yet indivisible, hermaphrodite.
Geoff says
September 15, 2010 at 10:52 pmSo, I am back for listen number two. I am paying attention, I am nodding sagely, yep, yep, got it, yep…and then wham “Well you can’t really say we are ‘in’ god…” yeah, thanks Linsenmayer.
Damn it. Why can’t the metaphysical simple actually be ‘simple’.
Mike S. says
October 23, 2010 at 2:29 amHey,
I think that Spinoza is a pretty intelligent fellow.
I do however, think that Spinoza is un-knowingly parroting Nagarjuna. He’s just using different terms.
But i do find his arguments equally as persuasive. (i guess i would, since i believe them to be the same)
As with Nagarjuna, i wonder what someone like Spinoza would do with the knowledge of modern science.
Modern Neuroscience tells us that the way the brain makes decisions, is much like a symphony. Rather than their being one executive actor, different parts of the brain scream out their various decisions until one screams loud enough for an action to occur.
Personally,
I think this helps illuminate the delusion of what human beings really are. If the only reason we chose “this” over “that” is because “this” part of our brain was slightly louder than “that”, what does this say about who we are. If who we are, is based mostly on decisions made not by some “me”….but by a group of neurons that fired a little faster than a different group of neurons. What does it say, that those neurons only differed based on circumstances beyond our control. (genetics, physical trauma, diet, education).
Realistically, all heroes and villains can be attributed to an organic roll of the dice.
I wonder how Spinoza would frame the argument.
Anyways, another good podcast. Though i would have to disagree with Seth in the end. Spinoza isn’t really saying anything new and radical, atleast as far as what is implied by Nagarjuna hundreds and hundreds of years earlier.
Seth Paskin says
October 23, 2010 at 10:43 amI can’t agree that Spinoza is just expressing something implied by Nagarjuna. Spinoza is using an established Western concept of ‘substance’ (that which ‘is’, ‘has properties, attributes, etc.’) His radical and innovative move is to say that there is one substance rather many.
On my reading of Nagarjuna, ’emptiness’ voids the concept of ‘substance’ as there can be no ‘thing’ or ‘not thing’. I can see how you make a connection between everything being subsumed in God and an idea of Oneness, but I think metaphysically, the two are much further apart than you suggest.
–seth
Mark Linsenmayer says
October 23, 2010 at 2:17 pmAlso, even if you want to interpret Buddhism as saying there’s an underlying oneness to everything, i.e. we’re all part of God, still, the Buddhist is going to say that all the surface stuff of our experience is illusion, while Spinoza does not say that; in fact, for Spinoza, investigating the ordinary objects of the world, i.e. doing science, is investigating God, and so is holy, whereas for the Buddhist it seems like science might be useful for dealing with the conventional world but has no religious significance.
Craig says
August 10, 2012 at 9:10 amBingo! The last line kind of wraps up the primary distinction between Monism and Non-Dualism.
Spinoza reduces things down to a single substance. Buddhism is non-reductionist. It says that if you insist on going through the mental exercise of reducing things down, there is no substance there at all.
Mike S. says
October 23, 2010 at 9:59 pmTo me, Seth, you’re making a distinction without a difference.
Saying everything is an extentsion of, or saying everything is an illusion because it isn’t of……is really saying the same thing.
Saying that there is one substance rather than many, is not really all the different than saying that there is no substance, as any substance would merely be the residue of another substance.
I feel you’re getting hung up on the idea of “substance” being different than “no substance” or “not substance”.
As for Mark, i feel you’re a little too invested in Nagarjuna as a religious figure. Buddhism is a very broad term and i’m not trying to argue what Buddhism might see science as useful for.
When i say Spinoza is parroting what is implied by Nagarjuna, i’ll grant that i’m speaking quite hyperbolically.
I’m referring to the main essence or conclusion of his philosophy.
Anywho, looking forward to part 2.
Frank Callo says
January 4, 2013 at 9:36 amI can’t help but think that what got the Church Fathers’s panties in a bunch is that if God needs to be a person with an agenda to rationalize the political agenda of political leaders.
Frank Callo says
January 4, 2013 at 9:49 am@ 46:47 we come to Spinoza’s prescient refutation of the physicalist model of mind.
Kevin says
June 28, 2013 at 10:09 amFirst of all, how can anything be “self-created”? For something to be created implies it didn’t exist before its creation, so how could it create itself if it didn’t exist. The idea is a paradox. Also, how can we conceptualize God as infinite? Any concept has properties which separates it from other concepts, like “finite”. An infinite God cannot be separated from anything. The existence of infinity cannot even exist because it’s existence implies the existence of non-existence, which would again mean separation. We have to accept God is not infinite, it is paradox. Sorry Spinoza…
Ryan says
June 28, 2013 at 11:46 amA chair’s own existence implies the non-existence of itself as anything other than the chair. Your implication is that a ‘thing’ can only be created within the context of some dichotomy between the thing and its environment? Then take the situation of the created thing and its environment as being one thing in unison, and you can turn any matter of external forces in to one of internal drive. If you take every such situation in existence as a form of total unison then you have Spinoza’s conception of God. Spinoza would agree that God can not be separated from anything in that it is only precisely everything taken as one and nothing else beyond that idea.
Again, that existence “implies” non-existence is not only logical but simply mundane. Every thing’s existence is implicated with its own non-existence as everything else (except God, whose existence is implicated with the existence of non-existence, or the actual existence of nothing – nothing which stands outside of God). Creation does in a sense seem paradoxical, but you deceptively derive from this proposition that self-creation is some how any more paradoxical than external creation governed from outside. For something to be created at all as you originally point out is not a problem of self-creation but of creation in general.
Siouxsie says
January 23, 2019 at 9:16 pmI like the song at the end a lot
Working my way through the episodes as a new Citizen…thought Spinoza would help relate to the new Lucretious physics episode. Awesome.
: what is the Damasio book Wes mentions in passing at the end??
Wes Alwan says
January 24, 2019 at 9:43 amThanks for your support Siouxsie. It’s https://www.amazon.com/Looking-Spinoza-Sorrow-Feeling-Brain/dp/0156028719