In existographies, Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677) (IQ:180|#53) (Cattell 1000:108) [RGM:157|1,500+] (Murray 4000:10|WP) [HD:6] [FA:50] [RMS:19] (EPD:M6) (GPhE:#) [CR:194] was a Dutch philosopher, and "celebrated atheist" (Holbach, 1770), noted for, in hmolscience, his 1676 posthumously-published Ethics: Demonstrated in Geometrical Order, a treatise on morality written, supposedly, in the style of Euclid's Elements, as a series of geometrical proofs of numerous philosophical points, accompanied by definitions, axioms, demonstrations, and corollaries, as well as intervening stretches of friendlier prose (scholia). “It is thus clearer than the sun at noonday that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, but by someone who lived long after Moses.”— Benedict Spinoza (1670), Theologico-Political Treatise (Ѻ)
“I shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids.”
“I believe in Spinoza’s god, who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists.”
“Spinoza does not prove the existence of god. Being is god. If others denounce him as an atheist for this, I wish to exalt him.”— Johann Goethe (c.1810), response to a book that labeled Spinoza as an atheist [18]
“All things happen according to the laws of nature.”
The following is one dismantling Aristotle's famed final cause:
“Nature has not fixed aim in view and all final causes are merely fabrications of men.”
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| A 2001 edition of Spinoza’s Ethics, the cover showing Dutch painter Maarten Heemskerck’s c.1550 “Geometry”, illustrating Spinoza's aim of reformulating human ethics geometrically, or using proofs. [11] |
“After seeking through the world in vain, to find a means of cultivation for my unusual nature, I at last fell upon the Ethics of this philosopher. If would be impossible for me to render an account of how much I drew from my perusal of the work itself and how much I myself read into it. Enough that I found in it a sedative for my passions, and that it seemed to open out for me a free and boundless view of both the sensible and the moral world. But what especially riveted me to him, was the utter disinterestedness, which glowed in his every sentence.”— Johann Goethe (1814), retrospect commentary on finding Spinoza’s Ethics in 1774-75 [3]
“There is in the mind no absolute faculty of willing or not willing but only particular volitions like this or that affirmation or this or that negation. Will and understanding are one and the same thing. Ideas are not dumb figures traced on a canvas; the assumption that they are is what prevents our seeing that every idea inasmuch as it is an idea contains affirmation or negation. There is not in the mind a will absolute and free; but the mind is so conditioned as to be caused to will this or that, by some cause which is determined by other cause, and this by another and so to infinity. So then the relation of the understanding and the will to this or that idea, to this or that volition, is that of stoniness to this or that stone, or that or humanness to Peter or to Paul. Will cannot be called ‘free cause’, but only ‘necessary cause’. The will is nothing else than a manner of thinking just as is the understanding. Men think themselves free, because they are conscious of their volitions and of their desires and are oblivious to the causes which dispose them do desire and to will.”This last part, i.e. “men think themselves free”, seems to have been paraphrased into Goethe’s famous P2:C5 quote on freedom:
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
“Spinoza says that if a stone which has been catapulted though the air had consciousness, it would think that it was flying of its own will. I only add that the stone would be right. That catapulting is for the stone what the motive is for me.”— Arthur Schopenhauer (1819), The World as Will and Representation (pg. #); cited by David Skrbina (2017), in Panpsychism in the West (pg. 142)
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| A portion of Spinoza's study room. |
“Nothing ought to be received as truth until it has been proved by good and solid reasons.”Spinoza, as a young man, ran with a crowd who were admirers of Descartes, but he personally admired Giordano Bruno.
“Spinoza’s Treatise on Theologico-Politics, has for its main objective the destruction of all religions, particularly the Jewish and Christian religions – which he thinks are altogether invented for public utility – and in their place to introduce atheism, libertarianism, and freedom, based on rational that people will keep themselves virtuous, not in the hope of compensation after death, but simply for the sake of excellency of virtue itself.”— Jean-Baptiste Stouppe (c.1660), La Religion des Hollandais [21]
“All our modern philosophers, though often perhaps unconsciously, see through the glasses which Spinoza ground.”— Heinrich Heine (c.1835), Publication [22]
“I am really amazed, really delighted! I have a precursor, and what a precursor! I hardly knew Spinoza: what brought me to him now was the guidance of instinct. Not only is his whole tendency like my own, to make knowledge the most powerful passion, but also in five main points of his doctrine I find myself; the most abnormal and lonely thinker is closest to me in these points precisely: he denies free will, purposes, the moral world order, the nonegoistical, evil; of course the differences are enormous. In summa: my solitariness which, as on the very high mountains, has often made me grasp for breath and lose blood, is now at least a solitude for two.”— Friedrich Nietzsche (c.1885), comment to close friend in his later yeas [15]
“The principle of plenitude had latent in it a sort of absolute cosmical determinism which attains its final systematic formulation and practical application in the Ethics of Spinoza.”— Arthur Lovejoy (1933), The Great Chain of Being (pg. 54)
“We must bear in mind that the terms good and evil are only applied relatively, so that the same thing may be called both good and bad according to the relations in view, in the same way as it may be called perfect or imperfect. Nothing regarded in its own nature can be called perfect or imperfect; especially when we are aware that all things which come to pass, come to pass according to the eternal order and fixed laws of nature.”— Benedict Spinoza (1662), “On the Improvement of the Understanding: Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect” (Ѻ) (Ѻ)
“The man who endeavors to find out the true causes of miracles, and who desires as a wise man to understand nature, and not to gape at it like a fool is generally considered and proclaimed to be a heretic and impious by those whom the vulgar worship as the interpreters both of nature and of the gods. For these know that if ignorance be removed, amazed stupidity—the sole ground on which they rely in arguing or in defending their authority—is take away also.”— Benedict Spinoza (c.1660) [19]
“I call him free who is led solely by reason.”— Benedict Spinoza (c.1660) (Ѻ)
“To take appeal to the will of god is to take refuge in the asylum of ignorance.”References— Benedict Spinoza (c.1660)
“All things are animate in varying degrees.”— Benedict Spinoza (1674), “Letter to Schuller”; cited by David Skrbina (2017), in Panpsychism in the West (pg. 142)
“All noble things are as difficult as they are rare.”— Benedict Spinoza (1676), Ethics [14]
“We must take care not to admit as true anything that is only probable. For when one falsity has been let in, infinite others follow.”— Benedict Spinoza (c.1670) [16]
“Nothing in nature is by chance. Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge.”— Benedict Spinoza (c.1660) (Ѻ)
“I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.”— Benedict Spinoza (c.1660) (Ѻ)
“Everyone should be free to choose for himself the foundations of his creed, and that faith should be judged only by its fruits.”— Benedict Spinoza (c.1670) (Ѻ)
“Nature abhors a vacuum.”— Benedict Spinoza (c.1670) (Ѻ)
“He who seeks equality between unequals, seeks an absurdity.”— Benedict Spinoza (c.1670) (Ѻ)
“The ordinary surroundings of life which are esteemed by men (as their actions testify) to be the highest good, may be classed under the three heads — ‘riches’, ‘fame’, and the ‘pleasures of sense’: with these three the mind is so absorbed that it has little power to reflect on any different good.”— Benedict Spinoza (c.1670) (Ѻ)
“That thing is called free, which exists solely by the necessity of its own nature, and of which the action is determined by itself alone.”— Benedict Spinoza (c.1670) (Ѻ)
