Thread 24612321

Where do i start with Spinoza?
I know he was greatly influenced by Descartes. Is knowing the meditations enough or do i need to dig deeper into Descartes before attempting to grapple with Spinoza?

>>24612321 (OP)
Near the death of God. I'm sure his weak arguments reap the best when inapplicable

>>24612321 (OP)
One of the great ontological and causal flatteners who paved the way for totalitarianism, communism and elite managerial republics

>>24612321 (OP)
Just read the complete works, he did not write much really.

Be advised that he's quite wholesome but also reddit

>>24612321 (OP)
>where do I start
by skipping him and getting started with Kant

>>24612495
“Oh you’re interested in philosopher x?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you skip him entirely and read philosopher y, who is completely different from philosopher x.”

Thanks man, appreciate it.

>>24612516
You're welcome
I wish I had had a mentor like me as you do now when I was in college

>>24612530
I’m familiar with Kants philosophy. What I’m not, is familiar with Spinoza, hence the interest, buddy.

>>24612546
ask chatgpt for a 3 paragraph summary, thats about as much spinoza as you need
then crack open Critique of Pure Reason and get that noggin working

>>24612565
this is such a stupid post

>>24612321 (OP)
are you reading him in a translation or in latin?
If you're using a translation, which one are you using?

>>24612321 (OP)
Read both the Discourse on Method and the Meditations, which are both pretty breezy reads, then his Principles of Philosophy, and from there read Spinoza's book on Descartes, The Principles of Cartesian Philosophy.

Before you hop into the Ethics, make sure you pay attention to what Spinoza says about how philosophy is conducted in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (especially chs. 7 & 15), as well as his student’s preface to The Principles of Cartesian Philosophy, written with his approval.

>>24612565
This guy gets it. Spinoza isn't that useful.

>>24612321 (OP)
As someone very familiar with the work of Spinoza and Kant, as you mentioned you are too, I would recommend simply reading Descartes Meditations and Discourse on Method, then reading the Ethics. Shouldn't take long to read Descartes, at least to get a general feel for it. Pay close attention to what he means by clear and distinct ideas, and his dualism. The 'trademark argument' is also deceptively good, despite seeming a bit dumb. Look at how it works with the rest of the argumentative structure. I learned Spinoza with help from secondary literature. In fact I'm quite familiar with most of it. I say skip Curley and Hampshire, and any other British Idealists. If you are a true autodidact with little academic background or other training get Beth Lord's guide, it is written for laymen. Deleuze's shorter Spinoza book, Practical Philosophy is also excellent. I love Expressionism in Philosophy, though it is dense and arcane, but very good at connecting Spinoza to Descartes and connecting both to medieval scholasticism.
If you are happen to have a more religious background then the Theological Political Treatise may be a better start than the Ethics, but I strongly recommend beginning with the Ethics anyway.

>>24612638
Spinoza came up with transcendental logic before Kant in the Ethics. Bet you didn't know that.

>>24612570
Did you notice much difference in the translations? I've read several, even the George Eliot, and they all seemed similar enough that I deem them fungible.

>>24612372
Nietzsche saw through the disguise, you didn't though. Maybe someday you will learn what "the intellectual love of God" is.

>>24612321 (OP)
read the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect before you read The Ethics; Spinoza's letters are also useful, they illuminate different aspects of the Ethics. A very quick and dirty way to think about Spinoza is that he thought Descartes was on the right track but didn't go far enough

>>24612570
I’d be reading Spinoza in a german translation. As far as secondary literature is concerned, I’d be reading English as well.

>>24612606
>>24612640
>>24612678
Thank you for the advice.

>>24612678
Agreed. It could be helpful to describe Spinoza as radical Descartes or actually atheist Descartes. This is basically how Deleuze reads him in Expressionism in Philosophy. The difference lies in modal vs numerical distinction. Descartes grounds the numerically distinct substance self in the absent God, (creation happened, then daddy went out for cigarettes) whereas Spinoza adopts a positive God and a modally distinct self as a potency/capacity.

>>24612728
I can hear some of you already complaining, "How is that atheism then idiot? How can a 'positive' God 'not exist'?." Well, if God is positive or immanent and not an idea then we cannot hold to theology because God becomes indistinct from creation. Creation and God are one, therefore we cannot speak of God as existing. To exist is to have some negativity, such that one is determinable, as Heidegger noted about this etymology. "To stand forth, to emerge". God no longer stands forth, but is immanent, and this is the true atheism.

>>24612748
Holy shit, no one said anything, calm down you thin-skinned faggot, just clarify your point without sounding like an aggrieved woman

>>24612830
ἰδιώτης, one who thinks privately or individually. A layman.

>>24612830
Faggot- You. Your father.

>>24612863
>>24612886
I repeat: like an aggrieved woman. Calm down fag.

>>24612748
how do you pray to creation then in this true atheism lens, seemingly transcendental but it brings new probls. It's not as intuitive as predicted theoretically; for practically speaking; God's influence transcends creation itself; almost to be as if creation itself is anything in a body, but the head being the trinity.

>>24613307
>new problems
my own typo

>>24613307
>God's influence transcends creation itself
I might come up with something else to say later, but isn't this precisely what Kant warns us against when he decries Transcendental Illusion? What do you mean by "outside creation"? I like the head body analogy a lot, very clever. Nonetheless it seems impossible to talk meaningfully about things outside creation from a Christian perspective. I guess Aquinas thought similarly, since he said God's goodness was only analogous to human goodness, but isn't it still problematic to assign any qualifications or determinations to the outside? Furthering the problem is that we precisely deny the analogical model of being and equivocation in Spinozist metaphysics. Being is not made of analogous substances, rather there is univocity of powers. Perhaps the answer to prayer is the amor intellectualis Dei, which is a kind of immanent disclosive love which relates modality to the "Absolute". (Not a term Spinoza uses, but oh well)

>>24612748
>To exist is to have some negativity, such that one is determinable, as Heidegger noted about this etymology. "To stand forth, to emerge". God no longer stands forth, but is immanent, and this is the true atheism.
On the contrary, the issue is just the reverse. Spinoza's God is a formal universality and it absolutely is determinable, he determines it on the first page of the Ethica as I recall. The God of classical theology, on the other hand, is not determinable. It also does not 'exist', rather, to put in in Thomist terms, its existence is identical with its essence; or to put it in Plotinian terms, nothing can be said of it at all, certainly not 'it exists'. Lay off the Heidegger, he's a sort of philosophically communicable prion disease, actually an experimental bioweapon designed by Nazi scientists. Your conception of the 'true', 'chud' God as something existing or 'standing forth' beyond the world is risibly off base.

>>24612570
Why would you read Spinoza in Latin? It's babby-tier, scholastic slop, absolutely nothing will be lost in translation into any modern European language.

>>24613341
Doesn't Aquinas still say that God is good, and that God is infinite? Analogously, but still? Doesn't Plotinus say that The One is One? If I remember correctly at least he puts goodness in one of the 'first' emanations, but I am not super familiar with Plotinus.
As for the definition of God offered in Book 1 of the Ethics; you will hate this response, but those definitions are merely provisional. Spinoza's thought is about speed. We proceed from common definitions toward the true thought of God, but at a certain velocity. We cannot begin with the truth, it is manifested in or with time. Spinoza is properly modern, and this is the break (some place it with Descartes) with 'classical' metaphysics. So, sure, call him a liar, but those definitions are not actually God, but only very useful stepping stones towards the true idea of God which takes place temporally, at a certain speed. Deleuze makes this argument, and I merely relay it. Provocatively I would say we really don't get God until the fifth book, in which intellectual love of God is defined.

>>24613343
Cur umquam legatur translationes, cinaede?

>>24613341
To stand forth is to negate. God as bearer of analogies can ground numerical distinction and stable identity by relating negativity to self similarity. God is God is not created things. In Spinoza we have the axiom God is x is y is b is n... God is the identity of existence and essence, but essence stands beside existence and is related to it in time. At speed. This is the break with classical metaphysics, and was covered over by Kant, who revealed more than he concealed however.

>>24613356
>Doesn't Aquinas still say that God is good, and that God is infinite? Analogously, but still?
Completely opposed senses of the word 'infinite'. The Ethica is like a black mass parody of school theology. In scholasticism God's attributes are infinite as in 'that which cannot be measured' (like the voice is invisible). Spinoza famously and retardedly tries to say that God has an actual infinite extension.
>Doesn't Plotinus say that The One is One?
Yeah, all the time, he also says that any name he gives it, including One or the Good, is inadequate/misleading. I can't cite chapter and verse with Plotinus though his works are too disorganized, you'll just have to trust me on this one bro.
>If I remember correctly at least he puts goodness in one of the 'first' emanations, but I am not super familiar with Plotinus.
Nope, the Good is the One, and Intellect is Beauty (think of Hippias Major). Or the One is Chronus and Intellect is Zeus. Etc, he talks about them differently in different places.
>Deleuze makes this argument, and I merely relay it.
Deleuze thought you should re-read old philosophers in a way contrary to their intent. He also thought that philosophers like Aristotle and Hegel did not understand 'the different' even though they both did; Deleuze thinks everything is 'dominated' by concepts because he's retarded, or this is another one of his wacky, creative readings. I'm pretty sure he's actually retarded, though, in this case, or is too fundamentally perverse to understand positive philosophy. Deleuze is just the latest in a long line of edgy skeptics making the same two or three arguments over and over again in different words. The effect of his thought is to destroy thinking and destroy the possibility of social change. If Heidegger is a Nazi bioweapon, Deleuze is straight-up AIDS.

>>24613379
Quidnam dixisti modo mihi, cinaedule?

>>24613410
>Completely opposed senses of the word 'infinite'
All that matters here, as I see it, is that we relate negativity to self similarity so that God being infinite means that God is not-not infinite. The the whole system of binary divisions can follow. A=A does not equal B. Then time is banished and general logic can ensue, and the classical world can exist.

>The Ethica is like a black mass parody of school theology.
I'm glad you said it.

What Spinoza and Kant do is introduce time into thought by making essence stand beside existence such that it is related by time. A static synthesis. Kant does this in the synthetic relation of the I think which relates its passivity and activity. The self is given to itself in time, but eludes itself since we cannot represent our own spontaneity i.e. our capacity for thinking the object as the correlate of ipseity. Spinoza does this in the second book of the Ethics. There is an existing mode which is the body, and then there is a mode which is the idea of that body. They are completely distinct because modes are only in their own attribute, and the attributes of extension and thought are distinct. They are related in time to each other, and there is not an internal relation between essence and existence balanced by negativity. The not x. They are 'alongside' each other, but also open to other connections. Negativity becomes rests in the song of life. Spinoza is more amenable to this than Kant, (who only talks about this with the "I think") but make no mistake it is at work in both. Space becomes temporalised, first doubling. then there is the doubling of temporalisation, but not the doubling that we see in A=A which lies and falsely claims instantaneity. Only in time is thought actual.

>Deleuze is straight-up AIDS
How can Satan cast out Satan? And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end.

>>24612744
>>24613462
But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation. Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.

>>24613462
Cont.
The instantaneity of identity is replaced by the absolute speed of amor intellectualis Dei, wherein God's love of itself is related through the mode and relates that mode to itself through eternity. Short Circuit. Actual passage instead of possible identity.

>>24613462
>All that matters here, as I see it, is that we relate negativity to self similarity so that God being infinite means that God is not-not infinite. The the whole system of binary divisions can follow
But that isn't all that matters here. I pointed out that Spinoza and the scholastic use the word infinite in completely opposed senses and your response is, essentially, "who cares it's still opposed to everything else lol". It actually makes a lot of difference so much so that Spinoza is commonly read as an atheist. This runs through your whole post, and I'm not trying to insult or troll you, but I think you're Deleuze-brained and need to cut that shit out. You're drawing parallels that aren't really parallels and ignoring differences that are actually quite important to tell a neat and tidy interpretive story which is basically post-modern slop.
>They are completely distinct because modes are only in their own attribute, and the attributes of extension and thought are distinct. They are related in time to each other, and there is not an internal relation between essence and existence balanced by negativity.
Do I really need to explain the radical difference between Spinoza and Kant on this point? Why not, while you're at it, bring Plato in? You could handle his psychology in the same way and now you've got a nice big basket to work with.
>Spinoza is more amenable to this than Kant, (who only talks about this with the "I think")
He doesn't talk about this at all. What you (misleadingly, inaccurately) refer to as "essence" and "existence" in Kant are not "related" by time, rather the "essence" itself synthesizes experience in time. In that sense, by the letter of the text, Kant's subject is more like the scholastic God than Spinoza's God. Why? What's the difference? I shouldn't have to tell you this but Spinoza's God is not genuinely free. I really can't engage with you if you're going to throw this Deleuzian mumbo jumbo at me, it's not that it filters me, it's just actually nonsense, which is all you can expect from the author of Difference and Repetition.

>>24613544
You seem relatively smart. Yes, I am "Deleuze-brained". I wish I had received an actual education but all I got was postmodernism so here we are. I am aware that Kant and Spinoza are different. I still maintain that they are similar in their use of time and a 'static synthesis' which relates spontaneity and receptivity. I mean since you brought him up Plato in Timaeus calls the world the image of eternity, and this is similar. Still there are differences. I don't want to turn all philosophy into slop, I only want to talk about certain similar arguments. If you would describe how Kant differs from Spinoza on how temporalisation of space/ mentation of extension happens that would be helpful. And I honestly don't know how Spinoza's god isn't free, given that it is self causing. That seems almost definitionally true, but also yeah, those definitions are provisional, and substance is more activity or speed than whatever Spinoza says in Book 1.

>>24612642
firth

>>24612708
His Advancement of the Understanding isn't lengthy (100 pages or so) and it's worth the read. He offers 3 types of knowledge and 3 guides, it's good advice.

>>24612638
What philosopher is useful?

>>24614787
JSM

>>24613307
at the very least a pantheist or alchemist or hermitic frame or form is called for i really feel this afternoon that is what a good deal in the scandal with jacobi lessing involved semi professional sub sophistical disputes scribes arguing in an alleyway anyways heidegger was also brought up here somewhere along the forest trail i reckon that is an invitation to pull out an old notebook from 2007 where i cognized some about substance or why substance in the nothing ought to be rethought or thought about two times or something anyways in that context what is form in ontology for suarez though is the form subject as form has been thrown into grave doubt just by the insistence on it being an actual thing or understanding at what it could possible even mean or correspond in supposed reality supposed pantheistic cosmical reality that as it were also what even is gender in language what is the difference between gender or grammar is a grammar a grimoire
>>24614787
aquinas has a function in being very useful at times or places with disputes with the jesuits or dominicans or franciscans >>24613343
also in regard to the above as well or almost paradoxically a neoplatonism written in latin is distinct from a later practical aristotlianism