Chapter one - not sure if he is agnostic or atheist he seems to bash religion. Might just be like Luther, very critical of it. The preface was deeply interesting how he said we turn to superstition when we are afraid. Damn.

I guess people here dislike Spinoza :D

Spinoza is cool but his system is not open to criticism. It was too well done.

Will keep that in mind as I read, thanks!

Chapter one - not sure if he is agnostic or atheist he seems to bash religion. Might just be like Luther, very critical of it. The preface was deeply interesting how he said we turn to superstition when we are afraid. Damn. — Dagny

Acosmist.

Lol, his philosophy as a system is very much open to criticism; only on a superficial or surface level does it appear to be too well done, but it’s actually quite illegitimate & reverts back to Cartesian dualism if properly understood.

Spinoza’s whole philosophy depends on the basis of his definition of “substance”; & if this is shown to be illegitimate, the entire edifice of his philosophy crumbles; so let’s focus on that.

Spinoza defines “substance” as “that which is in itself.” Yet, in stating this, he doesn’t actually explain what “that” is “which is in itself,” surely he doesn’t mean the word “substance,” insofar as being “in itself” isn’t an explanation of “what” a thing is but only “how” it is; also, replying that “that which is in itself” is “that which is in itself” is illegitimate as well, as this is merely tautological & likewise provides no knowledge of what “that” is “which is in itself” but just that it is as such; &, therefore, his foundational definition is an empty one & leaves us without a clue as to what “that” is “which is in itself” (again, surely he doesn’t mean the word “substance”).

Thus Spinoza’s empty foundational definition renders his whole philosophy just as void, & it’ll revert to Cartesian dualism if one speaks of “eternal attributes.”

I've not yet read the TTP but would like to soon. Which version are you reading?

Regarding your question as to whether Spinoza was an agnostic or atheist, you might keep in mind Spinoza's Letter 21, to Willem van Blijenburgh, in which he says, "My intellect does not extend so far as to embrace all the means God possesses for bringing men to love himself, that is, to salvation."

Part of Spinoza's goal in the TTP was to help people read scripture rightly. In his fine little book, Spinoza's Radical Theology, Charlie Huenemann points out that in the TTP Spinoza was committed to the following three interpretive principles:

1. Interpretations of passages should be as naturalistic as the text allows.
2. Attach significance to passages to the extent that they express scripture's core moral teaching.
3. Reject recalcitrant passages or interpretations as something corrupted.

I hope this helps in your reading. Best wishes. --Statilius

I guess people here dislike Spinoza — Dagny

Quite the contrary. Do not be too dismayed by either Spinoza or his detractors.

Acosmist. — 180 Proof

Though it is very easy and altogether understandable to characterize Spinoza as an acosmist, Yitzhak Y. Melamed takes a different view in his "Spinoza's Metaphysics: Substance and Thought." See Section 2 of Chapter 2: On the Reality of Modes: The Acosmist Reading of Spinoza, and Why it is Wrong.

https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195394054.001.0001/acprof-9780195394054

Spinoza’s empty foundational definition renders his whole philosophy just as void — aRealidealist

While your interpretation of Spinoza's substance is understandable and to an extent justifiable, many respectable and honorable scholars see it somewhat differently. For example, Valtteri Viljanen (Spinoza's Geometry of Power) when he says: “God-substance is an inexhaustible source of causal power to produce existence, capable of realizing not only himself (subsistence) but an infinite number of finite things (that inhere in God) as dictated by nature. Given that Spinoza equates God's power with his essence (Ip34), and given the close linkage between a thing and its essence (there is, at most, something akin to the distinction of reason between the two) it follows that Spinoza's God is, in essence, a power – the ultimate dynamic factor behind all existence (p. 70-71).”

Ip34: God’s power is God’s essence itself. It follows purely from the necessity of God’s essence that God is the cause of God (by 11) and (by 16 and its corollary) the cause of all things. So God’s power, by which God and all things exist and act, is God’s essence itself.

The only point of my remarks is to show that, for some scholars, Spinoza's substance is not as 'empty' as might be thought, but, rather. for some, an "inexhaustible source of causal power", “the ultimate dynamic factor behind all existence.”

Thank you again for your views and understanding. I do appreciate and respect them, and am glad you posted them; they were helpful to me, as I hope these remarks will be to you and to Dagny and Zophie.

Best wishes to all, Statilius

References for Ip34

Ip11: God, or a substance consisting of infinite attributes each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists.

Ip16: From the necessity of the divine nature there must follow infinitely many things in infinitely many ways i.e. everything that can fall under an unlimited intellect. This proposition must be plain to anyone who attends to the fact that the intellect infers from a thing’s definition a number of properties that really do follow necessarily from it (i.e. from the very essence of the thing); and that •the more reality the definition of the thing expresses, i.e. •the more reality the essence of the defined thing involves, •the more properties the intellect infers. But the divine nature has absolutely infinite attributes (by D6), each of which also expresses an essence that is infinite in its own kind, and so from its necessity there must follow infinitely many things in infinite ways (i.e. everything that can fall under an unlimited intellect).

First corollary to Ip16: God is the efficient cause of all things that can fall under an unlimited intellect. [An ‘efficient cause’ is just what we today call a cause. It used to be contrasted to ‘final cause’: to assign an event a final cause was to explain it in terms of its purpose, what it occurred for.]

NB: Spinoza's formula is Deus, sive natura and not 'natura deus est'. :point:

Acosmist.
— 180 Proof

Though it is very easy and altogether understandable to characterize Spinoza as an acosmist, Yitzhak Y. Melamed takes a different view in his "Spinoza's Metaphysics: Substance and Thought." See Section 2 of Chapter 2: On the Reality of Modes: The Acosmist Reading of Spinoza, and Why it is Wrong. — Statilius

Yeah, I know, and I respectfully disagree with Prof. Melamed's 'pantheistic interpretation'. Without the Ethics on hand at the moment to cite chapter & verse, here's my quick & dirty: Spinoza claims that modes exist but not independently of substance, that all modes [natura Naturata] are caused to exist by substance [natura Naturans] (because, according to Spinoza, they lack existence as their essence) and therefore are not real, or self-causing. Only substance is real, that is, is causally independent, or has existence as its essence (i.e. the negation of substance - not any mode - is a self-contradicton); and, therefore, in Spinoza's conception, only substance is divine. Modes merely exist - they are not real - not divine. A 'pantheistic interpretation', however, implies that Both substance And its modes "must be divine", which is profoundly inconsistent with Spinoza's thought.

I am not following your logic. If everything that exists is the substance of God, the modes are not a subset of something existing under a different set of conditions.
I would appreciate a chapter and verse citation of the Ethics to claim otherwise.

Thanks much for your remarks; they are very helpful.

The following may have some bearing on these difficult and ambiguous questions:

Ethics IIp45: Each idea of each body, or of each particular thing that actually exists, necessarily involves an eternal and infinite essence of God. The idea of a particular thing x that actually exists necessarily involves both the essence of x and its existence (by corollary to 8). But particular things (by I15) can’t be conceived without God; indeed, (by 6) the idea of x has for a cause God-considered-as-A where A is the attribute under which x is a mode; so the idea of x must involve the concept of A (by IA4), that is (by ID6), must involve an eternal and infinite essence of God. ·E.g. your mind involves thought and your body involves extension; each of those is an attribute, and thus an eternal and infinite essence of God·. Note on 45: By ‘existence’ here I don’t mean duration, that is, existence conceived abstractly as a certain sort of quantity (·‘How long will it exist?’·). Rather, I am speaking of the very nature of existence, which is attributed to particular things because infinitely many things follow from the eternal necessity of God’s nature in infinitely many ways (see I16)—the very existence of particular things insofar as they are in God. For even if each one is caused by another particular thing to exist in a certain way, still the force by which each one stays in existence follows from the eternal necessity of God’s nature. Concerning this, see the corollary to I24

and from the Short Treatise:

Turning now to universal Natura naturata, or those modes or creatures which immediately depend on, or have been created by God . . . we say, then, that these have been created from all eternity and will remain to all eternity, immutable, a work as great as the greatness of the workman. (KV I.ix ; G i. 48/3-9)

And again, from the Ethics, II,p11c: "From this it follows that the human mind is a part of the infinite intellect of God."

Thanks again. Your remarks were very helpful. Best wishes, Statilius

↪180 Proof
I am not following your logic. If everything that exists is the substance of God,... — Valentinus

It's your own logic you're not following, which has nothing to do not with mine or Spinoza's. "Everything that exists is the substance ..." is not what Spinoza says; rather everything that exists is caused to exist by substance (i.e. just as every wave is not the ocean but is caused by (currents in) the ocean).

↪180 Proof Thanks much for your remarks; they are very helpful. — Statilius

You're welcome.

It's your own logic you're not following, which has nothing to do not with mine or Spinoza's. "Everything that exists is the substance ..." is not what Spinoza says; rather everything that exists is caused to exist by substance (i.e. just as every wave is not the ocean but is caused by (currents in) the ocean). — 180 Proof

The following brief quotes from an article that appeared in the latest issue of The Times Literary Supplement may go some distance in almost clarifying this issue. It is written by Clare Carlisle and Yitzhak Y. Melamed:

Spinoza: “That all things are in God and move in God, I affirm with Paul, and … with all the ancient Hebrews, as far as we can conjecture from certain traditions, corrupted as they have been in many ways”

"He also argues that everything else that exists is a “mode” (or modification) of substance, and thus constitutionally and asymmetrically dependent on God. Substance is in se, “in itself” and caused by itself; modes are in alio, “in another”. Spinoza’s concepts of substance and mode lay the ground for his claim, a few pages into the Ethics, that “Whatever is, is in God”."

[My note: The critical word here is 'in'.]

“Despite many readings of the Ethics which make the phrase Deus sive Natura a cornerstone of Spinoza’s metaphysical system, to say that everything, including the world as a whole, is in God – a position now labelled “panentheism” – is quite different from claiming that the world is God, the view usually known as “pantheism”. Spinoza’s panentheism leaves room for the idea that God exceeds, or transcends, the sum total of all things (or “modes”). The God of the Ethics certainly transcends what we normally call “nature”. This is inseparable from the fact that Spinoza’s God transcends human knowledge and experience. God’s essence is expressed through an infinity of attributes (or distinct ways of being), and we have access to just two of these attributes: thought and extension.”

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/god-intoxicated-man-spinoza-philosophy-essay/

Your response underlines how difficult it is to see the world through Spinoza's eyes.
The notion that we have just two tools when the world is made up of other stuff is still germane.

This would be a good point to jump in with your chapter and verse.

By 'two tools' do you mean the two attributes or the two kinds of knowledge, reason and intuition?

reply="Statilius;412814"]
Yes. But the examination of emotions and their relation to personal effectiveness needs to be included if one is to cite "intuition."
Edit: To be clear, the two kinds of knowledge, not the attributes.

This is an area I am very uncertain about. I would like to work toward a better understanding of it. I think your point is well taken; it is very difficult. I wonder if Antonio Damasio's book "Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain" would be helpful (if I understand your question and frustration). Perhaps this is something I will look into. Maybe you are already familiar with it. If so, you could advise me whether or not to explore it. Best wishes, Statilius

I don't know about that book. I will check it out.
I am rereading Ethics presently. I am influenced by the various interpretations I have read. They help me understand more than I would in my tiny mind without help.
But the quality in the writing that is hard to make into a simple proposition is the urgency of his comments between propositions. That immediacy always struck me. I think it part of the message.