Sorry, you must be a member of the group to do that. Join this group.
Classics and the Western Canon discussion
Spinoza - Ethics
>
Part Three, Prop 41 to end of Part Three
date
newest »
newest »
Thomas wrote: "[I still don't get 2P1, which relies on the notion that God constitutes the essence of the human mind..."I think Spinoza is saying that God has the ability to think, and this ability is one of God's essential attributes. Just like how we think about things, God also thinks, but in an infinite and perfect way. All individual thoughts are just a small finite part of this infinite thinking ability of God. By thinking about thought itself, we can see that it must be an infinite quality, and thus, it is an attribute of God.
Furthermore, while all individual thoughts are part of God's infinite thinking ability, our human thoughts can be confused or inadequate due to our limited perspective and partial understanding. God's thoughts, however, are always perfect and complete. For example, an expert mechanic may be able to tell you exactly what that noise a car is making, but the non-car people would hear the same noise and not have any clue what is causing it. Perhaps it is that cat in the engine story making its rounds on the internet again?
So Spinoza remains consistent with traditional idea that God is perfect, humans are imperfect.
I am reminded of the cycle of depression.1. Depression causes low energy, fatigue, decreased interest.
2. low energy, fatigue, decreased interest cause decreased activity, neglect of responsibilities.
3. decreased activity, neglect of responsibilities bring about increased guilt, hopelessness, ineffectiveness.
4. increased guilt, hopelessness, ineffectiveness bring about depression and the cycle continues.
it seems apparent that to break the cycle, one just has to attack one of those points, e.g.., force oneself to go do something despite the resistance to doing it which will lessen the feelings of guilt, hopelessness, and ineffectiveness. Its not easy though.
The challenge for me is to remember Spinoza's assertion that mind and body to not actually cause responses in each other, but act in synchronized parallel, so along with depressive states going against conatus as you mentioned I am further confused when I think about how the cycle of depression would work in Spinoza's philosophy.
David wrote: "Furthermore, while all individual thoughts are part of God's infinite thinking ability, our human thoughts can be confused or inadequate due to our limited perspective and partial understanding."Is it fair then to say that Spinoza believes that human beings are in God, or are part of God? That has been my suspicion from the start, but in this case it also seems to me that the essence of the whole is something very different (and largely unknowable) from the essence of a part. There's a huge amount of room for ambiguity between the essence of God and the essence of a human being, It seems especially problematic when the whole is beyond our capacity for understanding. Or is it?
Thomas wrote: "Is it fair then to say that Spinoza believes that human beings are in God, or are part of God? "Yes, Spinoza's monistic view posits that there is only one substance, God, that entails everything that exists is some mode of God. God is the internet and we are but a webpage.
David wrote: "it seems apparent that to break the cycle, one just has to attack one of those points, e.g.., force oneself to go do something despite the resistance to doing it which will lessen the feelings of guilt, hopelessness, and ineffectiveness.."Maybe this breaking the cycle is a good way of thinking about how the body acts on an adequate impulse. There is something in the depressed person's body that forces it to act, and at the same time the mind creates a rationale for this action: because it will lessen the feeling of guilt, etc. Spinoza seems to think that intention is an illusion, but there's no reason why the body and mind can't work in tandem -- that is, if they are merely different aspects of the same thing.
(I find this truly bizarre, I have to say.)
Thomas wrote: "And as long as we are striving toward those ideas, we become more essentially who we are supposed to be in God's eyes,""I find that statement somewhat challenging. I haven't fully formulated my thoughts on it yet, but the idea that we are supposed to be something in God's eyes' seems at odds with Spinoza's impersonal God encompassing all of reality that includes us. Spinoza's God is not a creator God and I do not think that God made us for some purpose to fulfill, or extends hope that we level up to some standard, that would imply some scale of good and bad from God's perspective.
Spinoza already told us good and bad are human constructs.
we do not endeavor, will, seek after or desire because we judge a thing to be good. On the contrary, we judge a thing to be good because we endeavor, will, seek after and desire it.A note in my edition spells it out more clearly
. . .in reality things are neither good nor bad; they just are and must be the way they are. Moralizing about nature is for [Spinoza] idle and empty, since it is based upon imagination, not the intellect.
David wrote: "Thomas wrote: "And as long as we are striving toward those ideas, we become more essentially who we are supposed to be in God's eyes,""I find that statement somewhat challenging. I haven't fully ..."
"God's eyes" was a bad way of putting it. Spinoza certainly doesn't believe in an anthropomorphic "God" -- though I still think there is something distinctly different about the infinite, different enough that he calls it "God" with all of the baggage that a religious name carries with it.
What I was trying to get at is the last part of the General Definition where he speaks of the "greater or lesser force of existing" which he understands as "the idea which constitutes the form of the affect affirms of the body something which really involves more or less of reality than before."
Is a greater force of existing not better? Is more "reality" better, or is this a matter of indifference for Spinoza? If there is no purpose to fulfill, what propels us forward? Is it only affections that bounce us around, or are human beings also capable of acting freely based on reason?
This seems to me to be the question that Spinoza is presenting, and he's hinting at the answer with this "greater and lesser force of existing" and more-or-less reality business. I expect the answer will be in the next couple parts, but he seems to be hinting at it here.
Thomas wrote: "Is a greater force of existing not better? Is more "reality" better, or is this a matter of indifference for Spinoza? If there is no purpose to fulfill, what propels us forward? "It is similar to the Stoic advice to 'live according to nature.' Spinoza repackages this idea by suggesting that understanding his conception of nature helps us live in accordance with nature, including our own nature.
For Spinoza, the purpose of existence seems to be to simply exist and to continue to exist, i.e., conatus, the inherent drive to persist and thrive.
An affect which is called a passion of the mind is a confused idea, by which the mind affirms of its body, or of some part of it, a greater or lesser force of existing than before, which, when it is given, determines the mind to think of this rather than that.
First, he reiterates that an affect, a passion of the mind, is "a confused idea." (He also calls these "inadequate ideas," and I think the terms are interchangeable.) The mind is only affected, or acted on, insofar as it has confused ideas. He refers back to Prop 3, which is crucial and not immediately obvious. In Prop 3 he states that "the actions of the mind arise from adequate ideas alone; the passions depend on inadequate ideas alone." Why is the mind able to act on adequate ideas and not inadequate ones?
Next, this confused idea is "that by which the mind affirms of the body or some part of it a greater or lesser force of existing than before"... All of our ideas come to us via the body, and are limited to what our bodies can tell us about the external world, and this includes our body itself when we look at it. If our instruments of perception are dull, our ideas of the world are going to be blurry. But by 2P1, the mind does not act on blurry ideas -- it is only acted on by them. Slight digression: (view spoiler)[I still don't get 2P1, which relies on the notion that God constitutes the essence of the human mind... the argument seems to be that our bodies are determined to be a certain way, and viewed from God's perspective, ideas of our bodies are adequate, unconfused, and true. Insofar as God is the only one who acts and is not affected by anything, we also act and are not affected when we have "adequate" ideas. (hide spoiler)] But in the case of affects, the mind is making decisions based on confused ideas, and these ideas make the body either better or worse.
I can't help but picture a depressed person unable to get out of bed, versus a happy person dancing. A depressed person exists with less force of existence than does a happy one. Does this have anything to do with conatus? The clearer the idea, the closer to perfection we are, or the closer to being what we are essentially supposed to be? (Presumably happy, and not depressed?)
And finally, this process results in the mind thinking about some things rather than others, along with the experience of the many varieties of happiness and sadness that go with a greater or lesser force of existing.
From this I take it that in order to be the best possible humans that we can be, we must have the most adequate ideas about the body as we can. And as long as we are striving toward those ideas, we become more essentially who we are supposed to be in God's eyes, and at the same time experience happiness of some kind. Maybe not the dancing kind though... fulfillment maybe?