For many years now, I have had a big book by Spinoza called Ethics. It is written in a complicated way, with propositions, axioms, and definitions. It is philosophy in the form of an equation, you might say. I thought it might be interesting to feed some of my notes into a chatbot and have it present them using what is called the geometrical method, the way Spinoza writes in his book.
So you can read my thoughts, but in a form I could never produce myself at the moment. At the very least, it gives me hope that I can follow the way the book is structured, but it is still a lot of work.
Read his work here on Gutenberg.org
On Thought, Truth and Human Nature
An exercise in the geometrical method
Definitions
Definition I. By one’s own thought, I understand the way a person thinks, rather than the individual thoughts that occur to him.
Definition II. By common thought, I understand the ideas, values and conventions that a person inherits from the society in which he lives.
Definition III. By truth of one’s own, I understand a conviction that a person experiences as true, without this experience establishing its universal truth.
Axioms
Axiom I. No person chooses the circumstances into which he is born.
Axiom II. A person cannot think without being influenced by the world in which he lives.
Axiom III. The certainty with which something is believed does not determine whether it is true.
Axiom IV. Understanding a force that acts upon us does not necessarily free us from that force.
Axiom V. What humanity has created, humanity can, under different circumstances, create differently.
Proposition I
What a person considers his own thought necessarily contains common thought.
Demonstration.
By Axiom II, no person thinks independently of the world in which he lives. The language, knowledge and values through which he understands himself are already present before he begins to question them. Therefore, even what he experiences as his own way of thinking contains what he has inherited from others.
Scholium.
We may recognize this in other people more easily than in ourselves. Someone can understand why others think as they do and still believe that his own thinking is independent. Even the recognition of this contradiction does not free him from it.
Proposition II
The recognition of our conditioning does not place us outside it.
Demonstration.
By Axiom IV, understanding an influence does not remove it. And by Axiom II, our understanding is itself formed within the world whose influence we are trying to understand. Therefore, recognizing the machinery of our thinking cannot by itself place us outside that machinery.
Scholium.
A rocket can travel between planets by understanding and using gravity, but it does not escape gravity itself. Perhaps we can learn to move differently within our human world without ever escaping what makes us human.
Proposition III
No conviction can establish its own truth merely through being believed.
Demonstration.
By Axiom III, certainty is not a measure of truth. Therefore, however strongly a person believes something, his conviction alone cannot establish that what he believes is true.
Corollary.
The existence of conflicting convictions gives us reason to question our own, but does not demonstrate that all convictions are false.
Scholium.
Most people know that other people have different opinions. What surprises me is how few seem willing to take the consequences of that knowledge. We recognize uncertainty in others but often continue to experience our own opinions as something more than opinions.
Proposition IV
The boundaries within which people recognize responsibility for one another are not necessarily fixed.
Demonstration.
By Axiom V, human institutions and conventions can develop differently. The boundaries of a family, village, country or continent do not establish a necessary limit to human cooperation. Therefore, there is no reason arising from those boundaries alone why responsibility for others could not extend to humanity as a whole.
Scholium.
We already accept that people should help others whom they have never met. We organize societies around this principle. I see no reason why the idea should stop at a national border. That does not mean conflict will disappear, only that the boundaries through which we organize it are not necessarily unavoidable.
Proposition V
If human actions arise from causes that individuals did not ultimately choose, blame cannot be justified merely by the assumption that they could have chosen to become different people.
Demonstration.
By Axiom I, a person does not choose his original circumstances. If his subsequent development and actions are also determined by prior causes, then he cannot be the ultimate origin of the person he has become. Consequently, blame based on the assumption that he is such an origin is unfounded.
Corollary.
Society may still need to prevent harmful actions and impose consequences, but these can be justified by their practical effects rather than by a belief in ultimate moral guilt.
Scholium.
I don’t see why we should hate someone for becoming what his circumstances have made him. That does not mean we must accept everything he does. We still have to live together, and sometimes we have to protect ourselves from one another.
Spinoza wrote his Ethics (1677) using what is called the geometrical method, inspired by Euclid’s approach to mathematics. Instead of presenting his philosophy as an ordinary essay, he tried to demonstrate his conclusions through a sequence of definitions, axioms and logical arguments.
The terminology is as follows:
- Definition: Explains precisely what a particular term means within the argument.
- Axiom: A statement accepted as self-evident or as a starting assumption, without further demonstration.
- Proposition: A claim that the author intends to establish through reasoning.
- Demonstration: The logical argument intended to prove a proposition using earlier definitions, axioms and propositions.
- Corollary: A conclusion that follows directly from a proposition already demonstrated.
- Scholium (plural: scholia): An explanatory remark in which Spinoza elaborates on an argument, discusses its implications or gives examples.
The idea is that each proposition builds upon what has already been established, creating an interconnected philosophical system.
One important qualification for your blog: the definitions and axioms in the example I wrote from your observations were your ideas arranged in Spinoza’s form, not definitions or axioms taken from Spinoza himself. And unlike Spinoza’s intended rigorous demonstrations, some of my examples were simplified philosophical arguments rather than formal proofs.