For example, I read this essay of his just this past week:What points exactly do you disagree with? — John
How does this help to prove that the will is our essence?Schopenhauer argues that our essence is will by identifying willing with bodily movement. — Thorongil
Spinoza explains why it simply cannot be otherwise. Things which are contrary to one's nature cannot be part of one's nature, because then one's nature wouldn't even exist in the first place. So therefore one's nature - in order to be one's nature - must be aimed at seeking to preserve itself, simply because the opposite is a contradiction.Spinoza more or less just declares this to be so — Thorongil
When I referred to the expression of Substance, you then compared it to Hegel's notion of spirit expressing the world, noting the similarity of infinite/unity, etc.,etc, between the two concepts, suggesting that Spinoza was merely talking about what Hegel was, that there was really no disagreement between the two. — TheWillowOfDarkness
When "God causes" it doesn't not mean that a state of the acts to make the world one way or another. Rather, it means that, logically, given the world in-itself, no other outcome is possible. If I write this post, then is must happen, God necessitates it. By Substance, this state (me writing this post), cannot be anything else and so it amounts to the occurrence of this state over any other possible event. God is an expression rather than a casual actor. — TheWillowOfDarkness
Yes, I like to say, with Hegel, that the world is an expression of spirit. It makes no sense to say that spirit ( or mind) causes the world. But we have already cleared up this misunderstanding of yours, so I'm not clear why you're repeating it here. — John
For Spinoza, the spirit is an expression of the world.
This is a critical difference because it eliminates the world's logical dependence on spirit. For thinkers like Hegel, spirit is still acting as a creator. It treats the world like it's something spirit acts to make, as if the logical truths expressed by the world were finite rather than eternal. Eliminate spirit and it's supposed the logical forms expressed by the world cannot be formed.
Spinoza points out this is a misunderstanding of the infinite. Eternal truths are never created of made, not even by spirit. Being infinite, they are always true and defined in-themslves. Spirit an expression the world cannot be without. There is no possibility of "meaninglessness" that an act of spirit needs to avoid. — TheWillowOfDarkness
None of this has anything to do with what I have been saying, or even with what Hegel says. And I'm pretty sure that Spin doesn't even talk about spirit. — John
In a sense, yes. Not the one most people think of though, which is why Spinoza is so frequently misread as a pantheist (rather than recognised as acosmist). For Spinoza, God is not a body in the usual sense (distinct individual states of the world), but Substance, the infinite and unchanging truth.
When "God causes" it doesn't not mean that a state of the acts to make the world one way or another. Rather, it means that, logically, given the world in-itself, no other outcome is possible. If I write this post, then is must happen, God necessitates it. By Substance, this state (me writing this post), cannot be anything else and so it amounts to the occurrence of this state over any other possible event. God is an expression rather than a casual actor. — TheWillowOfDarkness
If you accept that the in itself or in Spinoza's terms 'the one substance' is both an infinite extension and an infinite mind (and an infinite number of other attributes, of which we can know only these two) then would not time, space and causality originate, just as we and our minds must be thought to, in that greater mind (and for Spinoza, body) that is God? So, even if time, space and causality are 'generated' by the human mind, since the human mind is 'generated' by God, they must also, ultimately be 'generated' by God, no? — John
I disagree that Being reveals itself through the subject but not also through the object. I also disagree that we as subjects create meaning - rather I think that meaning is always already in the world. I disagree with that entire anthropomorphism of his in metaphysics. I find that disgusting actually. But I agree on social philosophy and on ethical personalism — Agustino
"The fundamental problem of philosophy is the problem of man. Being reveals itself within man and through man"Can you point to exactly where in that text you think Berdyaev makes the claims you say he does? I couldn't see it. — John
How does this help to prove that the will is our essence? — Agustino
— John
"The fundamental problem of philosophy is the problem of man. Being reveals itself within man and through man"
"In man there is a twofold aspect: man is the point of intersection of two worlds, he reflects in himself the higher world and the world lower."
"Metaphysics is naught other, than a philosophy of human existence; it is subjective, and not objective, it rests upon symbol and myth. Truth and reality are not at all identical with objectification"
"Cognition bears a creative character and itself represents an act of positing meaning"
etc.
You're not reading very carefully... — Agustino
I also disagree that we as subjects create meaning - rather I think that meaning is always already in the world. — Agustino
How can truth and reality be identical with "objectification"? I take Berdyaev to be saying that without human experience and understanding there is no truth and reality. How could there be. We cannot even begin to say what there could be without human experience and understanding. This view is common to Kant, Schopenhauer, Hegel (as well as the other German idealists) and Heidegger; so I cannot see why you would, while remaining consistent with what I know of your philosophical preferences, disagree with Berdyaev here. — John
To say that there is a transcendent God and the world, ( and the relation between them: Father Son and Holy Spirit, perhaps) is not necessarily to say there is more than one substance. They are thought as 'three in one', but this thought is acknowledged to be inadequate to the Reality. God is certainly not universally considered to be the one substance in any case.It's the basic contention of Spinoza's philosophy-- one Substance (God), not two (transcendent God and the world). — TheWillowOfDarkness
But for example I believe in one substance because all other conceptions are incoherent. — Agustino
Okay, but it seems to me that this is no-way different than Spinoza proving objectively that the body cannot be anything other than conatus. Not merely because you experience it to be so, but because it simply could not exist if it was otherwise. Schopenhauer doesn't ground the will in the thing-in-itself the way Spinoza grounds the conatus in the Substance - he rather grounds it in your perception (but your perception could be wrong). That's why I say anthropomorphic.We experience our body in two different ways: externally as an object among other objects, but also internally, and unlike all other objects, as will. To know what our body is internally, subjectively, and in-itself is just to know its essence. So our essence is will. — Thorongil
I disagree - Being shows itself just as much in object as in subjectI take Berdyaev to be merely saying, much as Heidegger does, that being appears as such only within human experience. I think this is correct insofar as I doubt that animals have a concept of being. — John
Metaphysics must be both subjective and objective in order to be a complete description of Reality though. So yes, obviously only a subject can be conscious of it, but that doesn't change the fact.Metaphysics is necessarily subjective because only a subject can carry it out. There is no metaphysics without subjects. Again, I can't see why you, particularly as an admirer of Schopenhauer, would disagree with this. — John
Yeah, it's all about human beings... :s This is just anthropomorphism at its best, at least you should recognise that...I take Berdyaev to be saying that without human experience and understanding there is no truth and reality. — John
The view that there can be nothing without human experience isn't common to, for example, Schopenhauer.This view is common to Kant, Schopenhauer, Hegel (as well as the other German idealists) and Heidegger; so I cannot see why you would, while remaining consistent with what I know of your philosophical preferences, disagree with Berdyaev here. — John
I did provide a citation for this:I also disagree that we as subjects create meaning - rather I think that meaning is always already in the world. — Agustino
"Cognition bears a creative character and itself represents an act of positing meaning" — Agustino
Yes, this is Schopenhauer's point. Substance is non-dual.because the term 'unity' would seem to be as inapplicable as the term 'plurality' when referring to 'something' that is not part of what is experienced and may be investigated empirically. We are considering something here upon which none of our concepts can gain any purchase. — John
I already quoted you what Spinoza defined substance as - that which exists in itself and is conceived through itself. Now if you have an issue with that definition, then please explain what that is. Or indeed, please explain what "something more" could substance be?Do you think substance is something more than merely a logical expression or idea, for example? If so, then what? I would be content to say it is right to think it is something more, but that we cannot say what that something more" is. Can you say what it is? — John
Schopenhauer doesn't ground the will in the thing-in-itself the way Spinoza grounds the conatus in the Substance — Agustino
Kant bases the assumption of the thing-in-itself, although concealed under many different turns of expression, on a conclusion according to the law of causality, namely that empirical perception, or more concretely sensation in our organs of sense from which it proceeds, must have an external cause. — Agustino
So it seems that it may be most correct to say that what is a priori are the forms of space/time/causality, but the current conceptions we have of them, while logical and fitting with our current experience, could be wrong. However, we are always destined to have some conception of space/time/causality for the mere reason that they are forms of our perception - they are never given within perception, and we never perceive them, but we always perceive through them. "Everything about" them however is part of our conception whatever that happens to be, and it could turn out that this conception is wrong. But it can't turn up that we don't perceive mediated by space/time/causality. That is certain. — Agustino
Yes, but your explanation of it wasn't clear since you didn't address the status of the synthetic a prioris in relationship to space, time and causality. All that remains synthetic a priori is the form of space itself - perception mediated by space - and nothing else.Ha! You've finally come around to my position I see. — Thorongil
I disagree - Being shows itself just as much in object as in subject — Agustino
Yeah, it's all about human beings... :s This is just anthropomorphism at its best, at least you should recognise that... — Agustino
The view that there can be nothing without human experience isn't common to, for example, Schopenhauer. — Agustino
I also disagree that we as subjects create meaning - rather I think that meaning is always already in the world. — Agustino
I did provide a citation for this:
"Cognition bears a creative character and itself represents an act of positing meaning" — Agustino — Agustino
I already quoted you what Spinoza defined substance as - that which exists in itself and is conceived through itself. Now if you have an issue with that definition, then please explain what that is. Or indeed, please explain what "something more" could substance be? — Agustino
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