Spinoza Appreciation Thread

Spinozo
>Proved the existence of God, defined as an infinite predetermined substance machine called the universe
>BTFO Plato's logic
>instead based his philosophy off of the Jewish ideal of God being beyond comprehension and following the eternal.
>Axiom 7 in the Ethics literally destroys the Hegelian dialectic

How can one man be so based?

>Spinozo

Everything I write is more or less connected to this guy's writings.

Can't wait to read what Deleuze has to say about him

Spinoza was an atheist.

That doesn't mean that he couldn't prove God's existence.

He was only an atheist in a spiritual since, and also didn't believe in the God of the hebrew bible.

Spinoza got Jewed by all of the other Jews despite being a Jew, just like Jesus.

He couldn't because just saying that the material world is God doesn't make that God.
He was a glorified atheist, like every pantheist is.

Dude you're an idiot. Have you even read Anselm?

He didn't just say the physical world is God, he built up to that with four axioms and elevn propositions (or something like that) - he perfected the ontological argument.

what axiom? if a thing can be conceived as not existing, its essence does not involve existence? assuming you meant axiom 7 part 1, I fail to see how this destroys the hegelian dialectic. care to elaborate?

He was almost hot

Jews are either super hot or super ugly. I really don't get it.

i have a question Veeky Forums.
how do you pronounce Spinoza? his family was portuguese...
so, the pronounce is could be Spinossa?

he rejected judaism...

Shpeenoza

Just bought the Ethics, but I live abroad and could only get the W.H. White translation (Wordsworth Classics). Can any one speak to de/merits of various translations?

Is this OC?

Still a jew

Get redpilled son

...

redpill?
go back to /pol/ scrub

Spinoza did say something to the effect of "one has rights in equal proportion to one's power", forget which of his works.

Nietzsche loved Spinoza for stuff like this and considered Spinoza the only person he had read in philosophy that was really on the same page on more things than not.

bump

>Proved the existence of God
>Despite being an atheist

Yeah no.

But he did, following several logic chains (bound by seven main axioms) he explained that God must exist as a result from the eternal nature of substance. I'm not going to "redpill you" on this, but the boiled down and then fried version of the argument is: the concept of the eternal exists, thus God must exist in that eternal.

Just read the Ethics.

Spinoza hardly destroys Hegel - in fact for much of his career Hegel was warding off accusations that he was a crypto-Spinozist (both from Schleiermacher and from August Tholuck and his followers).

He addresses this issue head-on in a number of places, but most succinctly in the introduction to his lectures on the philosophy of religion, both 1824 and 1827. What Hegel does is basically subsume the entire Spinozist position (i.e. patheism) into the infantile stages of an undifferentiated subjectivity.

He also levels a critique at Spinoza's conflation of inferential logic and intuition, which is basically how Spinoza connects his beautiful self-referential system as exemplified in the Ethics with God.

Anyway. Hegel had great admiration for Spinoza, was accused of being a Spinozist, and made great effort to show how his system both contained Spinozist pantheism, but also went beyond it.

He loved him in an earlier period, in a letter to a friend, but trashed him in Beyond Good and Evil.

His politics in the TTP suck and when you read them the Ethics is revealed to be ascetic tepid trash; books 1, 2, and 5 of the Ethics are pretty enjoyable on their own though.

But the thing he proved wasn't God at all.

Spinoza

The translucent hands of the Jew
Work in the penumbra, crystals
& the evening, dying, is dread & chill.
(Evenings to evenings are equal.)

The hands & space of hyacinth
Waning in the confines of the Ghetto
Almost do not exist for the man so quiet
Who is dreaming a clear labyrinth.

He’s not perturbed by fame, that reflection
Of dreams in the dream of another mirror,
Nor by the timorous love of maidens.

Free from metaphor & myth
He works a hard crystal: the Infinite
Map of That which totals His stars.

Ethics is one of the most uplifting books that were ever written, as well as one of the funniest

Spinoza and Diderot are my fucking bros.

That's a pretty common misunderstanding. Spinoza never said that the material world is God, just Nature, but Nature is identified with the substance which has extension (matter) only as an attribute and an attribute is "that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance". That being said, thought constitutes the essence of substance/Nature too and what this exposes about Spinoza's conception of God is that, in his aspect of Natura Naturans, Nature is "thinking" about each one of the particular things (thus having particular thoughts), as if it really was a "being", but not in the supersticious way conceived by creationists (that is, limited in thought and extension by comparing it to man). My opinion is that this "thinking" of Spinoza's God must be identified with a logical necessity which gives meaning to every event in the world and the interconnection of each one of these events as a Whole, which reminds us that, at the end God cannot be differentiated with humanity, and so the ways by which society gives meaning to the material events of the world contributes to modify reality itself and is an incomplete manifestation of God's thinking activity.

Bump

What should I write my Spinoza term paper about?

I really like this picture.

How Giallo movies are related to his philosophy, trust me, it's real.

This has to be a serious paper. About Spinoza, not movies.

I'm thinking maybe it will be about formal essences and/or the third kind of knowledge.

Bump

This guy actually reads, unlike op

Why does every thread about a non-meme philosopher have to say they "btfo" Hegel? Especially when most people here haven't read any Hegel and have no idea what his philosophy is like

bump

also bumping because curious

>Spinoza did say something to the effect of "one has rights in equal proportion to one's power", forget which of his works.
Can someone find the quote/section?

sephardic.

sump

Not OP, but I think what they meant was: In the Hegelian dialectic existents are brought into being and developed through sublation --- for sublation to occur the thing's concept must involve an inherent contradiction, thus 'propelling' the movement of the concept into actuality. If something can be conceived of as non-being, and if this (as spinoza says) means that its essence doesn't involve existence, then there will be no dialectical movement of the concept into being. The concept as non-actual will remain non-actual because its virtuality doesn't imply the possibility of existing.

(same poster) While this is my interpretation of OP, I don't think it 'destroys the dialectic'. As an axiom it couldn't destroy anything, since Hegel clearly doesn't accept any axiom that precludes the development of non-being. Hegel was a Spinozist, definitely, but he wasn't Spinoza...obviously.