You might prefer Heidegger's interpretation — Metaphysician Undercover
Yet you presume to tell others that you know what they have or haven't read. — Wayfarer
In the Ethics (which I did study as an undergraduate) Spinoza finds lasting happiness in the intellectual love of God, which is the vision of the one infinite Substance (which could equally well be understood as Being) underlying everything and everyone. This is not the love of a subject in the personal sense, but the joyous recognition that all finite things, including our own minds, are expressions of the one infinite reality that is. — Wayfarer
I believe Spinoza was a materialist — Janus
What did I miss? — Wayfarer
Material states in this sense cannot be cognition. A materiel state is given by that it exists (mode of extension), never by how it appears in cognition. — TheWillowOfDarkness
This book argues that Western philosophy's traditional understanding of Being as substance is incorrect, and demonstrates that Being is fundamentally Relationality. To make that argument, the book examines the history of Western philosophy's evolving conception of being, and shows how this tradition has been dominated by an Aristotelian understanding of substance and his corresponding understanding of relation. First, the book establishes that the original concept of Being in ancient Western philosophy was relational, and traces this relational understanding of Being through the Neoplatonists. Then, it follows the substantial understanding of Being through Aristotle and the Scholastics to reach its crisis in Descartes. Finally, the book demonstrates that Heidegger represents a recovery of the original, relational understanding of Being.
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