Almost thirty years ago, I read about Spinoza for the first time, and he became one of my inspirations to dive deeper into the world of philosophy. Every now and then, I will get a reminder of why he inspires me so much, and this video is one of those.
I dare to say that without Spinoza, there would be no Nietzsche, maybe a little exaggerated, but not in my world where Nietzsche followed Spinoza. Here is a quote from Nietzsche from one of his letters.
“I am utterly amazed, utterly enchanted! I have a precursor, and what a precursor! I hardly knew Spinoza: that I should have turned to him just now, was inspired by “instinct.” Not only is his overtendency like mine—namely to make all knowledge the most powerful affect—but in five main points of his doctrine I recognize myself; this most unusual and loneliest thinker is closest to me precisely in these matters: he denies the freedom of the will, teleology, the moral world-order, the unegoistic, and evil. Even though the divergencies are admittedly tremendous, they are due more to the difference in time, culture, and science. In summa: my lonesomeness, which, as on very high mountains, often made it hard for me to breathe and make my blood rush out, is now at least a twosomeness.”
I enjoy thinking about all these abstract ideas about our minds, free will, and the limits of what we can know. I think about these things when I write in the evening and sometimes during the day, but I also have a normal job and have to interact with people who have no interest and probably have no clue about these thoughts I have. It is like having some obscure hobby; people like you to tell about it but not too much, and you probably have to use a lot of words to explain a detail while discussing with someone with the same hobby, a name and a nod will often be enough.
I can only write in the evenings, and often, a long day of work has taken most of my energy. I have tried to organize my work, and I have many lists with ideas and attempts. One philosopher I like is Benedict de Spinoza. I bought his book Ethics many years ago, not to read it but just to have it and maybe look up some quotes. He probably had the same problem that I have with organizing his thoughts. The difference is that he started systematically and didn’t quit. You can read on Wikipedia in more detail about his process, but, in short, he writes down propositions comes up with proofs, and connects all of these with each other. I wish I had the time to study it; maybe one day, I will.
The way I study philosophy, the way I got into it, was by reading general books about philosophy and, over time, books about philosophers. I later mixed this with books written by philosophers, but the main thing I learned from this approach is who is who and who is read by whom. Spinoza is one of those philosophers who is read by most philosophers after him, maybe not as much as the three famous Greek philosophers, but his thoughts were, and still are, important. Together with his contemporary philosophers like Rene Descartes and Gottfried Leibniz, he paved the way from ancient Greek thought to our modern, more rationalistic society. I cannot tell you in detail why he is important, but because he is highly regarded by his peers, I will also regard him highly. It is like admiring Einstein while only understanding 5% of why he should be admired.
Another challenge with studying philosophy this way is that I might have strong disagreements with, for example, Spinoza, but if many accomplished philosophers agree with him then I have to figure out why my criticism seems to be wrong. For me, this is a good lesson in humility but it is important to get a good overview of who is who in philosophy or whatever new field of knowledge you enter. That’s why I never recommend reading books written by philosophers at the beginning of your journey; you might not know that the first book you read is from a charlatan, or you might disagree with an expert in its field because you don’t recognize them as such.
You can read part of Spinoza’s book underneath and the rest at Gutenberg.org. I highlighted one part that I quoted in an earlier post. This is why I bought his book years ago: so I can place quotes I read in their contexts. These days, you can do all of this on the internet.
From Ethics (1677)
PROP. XXXV. Falsity consists in the privation of knowledge, which inadequate, fragmentary, or confused ideas involve.
Proof. — There is nothing positive in ideas, which causes them to be called false (II. xxxiii.); but falsity cannot consist in simple privation (for minds, not bodies, are said to err and to be mistaken), neither can it consist in absolute ignorance, for ignorance and error are not identical; wherefore it consists in the privation of knowledge, which inadequate, fragmentary, or confused ideas involve. Q.E.D.
Note. — In the note to II. xvii. I explained how error consists in the privation of knowledge, but in order to throw more light on the subject I will give an example. For instance, men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are conditioned. Their idea of freedom, therefore, is simply their ignorance of any cause for their actions. As for their saying that human actions depend on the will, this is a mere phrase without any idea to correspond thereto. What the will is, and how it moves the body, they none of them know; those who boast of such knowledge, and feign dwellings and habitations for the soul, are wont to provoke either laughter or disgust. So, again, when we look at the sun, we imagine that it is distant from us about two hundred feet; this error does not lie solely in this fancy, but in the fact that, while we thus imagine, we do not know the sun’s true distance or the cause of the fancy. For although we afterwards learn, that the sun is distant from us more than six hundred of the earth’s diameters, we none the less shall fancy it to be near; for we do not imagine the sun as near us, because we are ignorant of its true distance, but because the modification of our body involves the essence of the sun, in so far as our said body is affected thereby.
Every singular thing, or anything which is finite and has a determinate existence, can neither exist nor be determined to produce an effect unless it is determined to exist and produce an effect by another cause, which is also finite and has a determinate existence; and again, this cause can neither exist nor be determined to produce an effect unless it is determined to exist and produce an effect by another, which is also finite and has a determinate existence, and so on, to infinity. Spinoza
“Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are determined.”
Spinoza
Can we imagine a world where we first become conscious of what determines our actions and form our opinions accordingly?
I read Spinoza’s quote in the following way: we are conscious of shouting at another person and the anger we feel; consequently, our opinion is that we are angry at that person. What might have happened and caused your anger was the realization (at the crossroad of your conscious and unconscious mind) that you were caught in a lie, and you don’t want to admit it and protest loudly and angrily. And if the person was, in fact, insulting you, how does an insult actually hurt you? Most of the time, the feeling of anger has little to do with the person you are angry at but more with a complex history.
Another example is sports. If you catch a ball in mid-air, you might proclaim that you caught it, as in you guided your hand consciously to the ball by “telling” it where to go. The reality is that your hand can’t wait for your brain to make these decisions but has a shortcut to your eyes and other senses; we catch balls unconsciously, you might say. It’s the same with walking; we are not active in it, but it sure feels like we control every move. In reality, we merely point to a general direction and let our legs and the rest of our body do the rest.
Thinking about free will is hard. Try to think why you decided to get up and get some coffee. You might say you want some coffee, and that’s why, but where came that urge from? Why now coffee and not 5 minutes ago? Who and what in you “decided” that you want it now? You can say that the “I” that wants coffee we talk about here is (the whole of) you, including all your unconscious behaviors and needs. But most people feel some sort of central place within that is their “I”, the place where our thoughts come from. But then we must return to the quote above and use it to analyze this place we call “I”. Try it.
“The less the mind understands and the more things it perceives, the greater its power of feigning is; and the more things it understands, the more that power is diminished.”
“The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure.”
“I realised that all the things which were the source and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save in so far as the mind was influenced by them,”
Why do we feel free, unbounded when we make choices? What is it that moves our arm if we want to pick something up? Is it a soul or matter that gives us our identity? This is what we call the mind–body problem and it is still not satisfactory resolved.
Most people in this world believe that we have a soul and that the soul is you and makes the decisions separated from the physical body. The problem with a nonphysical soul is the way it interacts with our physical body, so it(you) can control what you do like making you walk and let you pick up things. Many philosophers have sought for solutions and others tried to find for a physical place in our body where the soul makes contact with our body, without success.
I am not in a position to disqualify the idea that we have a soul but the chance that we have one is minute if you look at all the knowledge we have now. The consensus between a wide variety of scientist is that our identity originates in the brain and disappears when we die. What chemicals, hormones and fluids are involved is now topic for debate between scientist but the rest of the world ignores this problem or dismisses it.
But imagine what it means for the world if we all believe that its over when we die, and religion is something you study in the history books.
Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are conditioned. Their idea of freedom, therefore, is simply their ignorance of any cause for their actions. As for their saying that human actions depend on the will, this is a mere phrase without any idea to correspond thereto.
Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.
“Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that, once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is preserved.”Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)
I have not done the research on how often politicians break their promises after elections, but it’s looks like it is part of the trade. Promises are often not lined up with reality out of fear that the truth will not be believed, wanted, or wished. These same politicians are in the spirit of the quote from Spinoza, the “interpreters of nature and the gods” and looked upon by the “mob”. All these lofty promises are thus dressed up in certainties, and proclaimed to be rules of nature or the will of god. The product they sell is not that what’s thought to be true but what ought to be true. Because of the nature of their promises it must be sold with deception and trickery.
If a candidate can win with a strong mandate, the people that voted for this person will forgive, if reality shows its face and leaves all the promises forgotten in the corner. If the candidate wins narrowly or must work with others, reality will be blamed on the other or the chest get pumped up one more time to make sure the “wonderment would” not “be taken away” and there will be a stalemate between this “wonderment” and reality.
This is one way you can interpret part of this quote but there is even a more sinister interpretation in it. In today’s (2017) politics we see a tendency to ridicule the opponent and deny excepted science. This practice is off coarse as old as that there are governments formed, but in a modern democracy it is normally done with a bit more class.
“Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature”
Times change, but we don’t, as individuals we can be great but as a group we’re still dumb as hell.
Nochrisis 