I have started reading on Spinoza's Ethic. I have finished the first part ''Of God'' and it blew my mind. Intellectually difficult but once I understood (well, at least in my own way as guided by other authors who wrote on his works) his conceptions of monism and God as a Substance, I can't help but admire him. Admiration from the fact that to think that his work was published in a time in which religious institution ruled human lives (as the Calvinist did in the Dutch Republic) and that God was personify as an actual being, Spinoza got balls to laid out his philosophy in such a way. If God is Substance which is everywhere and in everything that necessarily exists and are conceived, what will be the point of religious texts, institutions and personnels (priests, pope etc) in the place of bringing salvation to the people, when they can use reason in understanding Substance in leading a happy life? yeah I can see why he was label an atheist and his work banned. Anyway this video is really good, keep it up bro!
Interestingly enough, throughout his book he puts god between quotation marks. And then in statement 29 he calls it 'godly' nature. This can be thought of as the laws of physics. That's why he has the titel (maybe unjustly) first atheist
@@Apollo67. exactly! and the law of physic can be interpolated into the realm of politics, society and individual ethics, (at least in a Spinozistic term,) the goods and bads can not be conceived just as an ideal categories/types; but instead of actual actions and ideas in relation to others as acted out by and between individuals and thus reverberating within society as a whole. Furthermore, if we are to take Spinoza's Materialistic view of the universe as being governed by the law of physics, then his quote holds true then that we need not worry about the afterlife, ( Havenly kingdom, hell, karma ectr) as death for us will be equivalent to the transfer of our conatus (will to live, consciousness to survive) to another matter (decompositions, disintegration). Hence his quote " a free man does not think about his death, his wisdom comes from his meditation and in reflections about life, not death". As such the conduct of good and bad, the maintenance of a good society will have to come from us, in this life even of is materialistic and has no otherworldy source of origin.
As a musician, I find this kind of background music too distractive. Tchaikowsky is great, but this piece is too pregnant and has a lot of structures going on that don't complement the text, so it's like listening to two paralell discourses. A more ambient-style music would be better.
Keep up the great work man, just gotta say be careful about mixing the music too loud, there's points in this vid and others of yours where the sound is drowning out your voice, other than it's great stuff
At 1:01: Please note the Latin pronunciation of "Sapere Aude." In 'sapere' the last 're' is lightly pronounced, somewhat like the end of the "Louvre." 'Aude" is pronounced like "ow-day."
I could listen to you explain the enlightenment all the day Edit: whether spinoza is a relativist or objectivist is quite a controversial issue. Yes he defines good as what is beneficial for us and this seems very relativist but he also says understanding god is always beneficial for us (and very likely one could deduce from this that therefore it is objectively good)
I normally like all of your video essays, probably one of my favorite 'youtubers,' but to present Spinoza as an atheist and materialist is misleading. He was the one who wrote "Deus sive Natura," that god and nature are equivalent in a single infinite substance (I know Karl Jaspers has an interpretation of this that qualifies it as atheistic, but it is largely an unconvincing fringe interpretation). His philosophy is an immanentizing of god into nature and vice-versa. It's a univocal and monistic pantheism that expands god to the all-pervading ground of reality, its core, unitary substance. How is that a non-existence? What kind of forced binary categorization of theology would present anything not theist as atheist, erasing all the rich alternatives and nuances of thought in between? It oddly mirrors Spinoza's own 17th century critics' misrepresentation of his philosophy. Also, Spinoza was a neutral or dual-aspect monist, with mind and extension being equally real modes of the one immanent substantia. Materialism gives an ontological priority or monopoly to matter, this is an entirely different philosophy of mind from Spinoza's . Once again, is this attribution of materialism a forced binary categorization in which anything that isn't dualism is materialism? I also have a problem with people who describe Deleuze as an unqualified materialist, when really as a Neo-Spinozist he was working within a similar framework of univocal immanence necessitating a sort of panpsychism. But that's a topic for another day...
Now I feel bad for leaving a long, raving comment on a youtube video. So I'll just add that I actually liked the way Spinoza was presented as a radical and a central figure of the enlightenment. He tends to be overshadowed so much by Descartes that people forget about him, and how huge of an influence he was on the shape of modernity. I even encounter philosophy grad students at my university that don't really know anything about him.
@@chasesaladino6669 Thanks for your comments, CS. Not raving at all. I have a slightly different take on the 'theism' problem. Spinoza's insistence on re-defining God as a dual-aspect monism or Substance (thought and extension) is the very heart of his thinking; all else follows from it. The fact is, his definition cancels out all anthropomorphic concepts of God. So, words such as theology, pantheism, panentheism, atheism, and all other terms that relate to the God(s) of any religion, simply do not relate to Spinoza's Substance. If anything he was an anti-theist (a term used by Christopher Hitchens to describe himself in preference to 'atheist'). I don't think we can escape the linguistic connection between theistic terms and the anthropomorphic God, and to think of Spinoza 'theologically' is simply misleading and confusing, given this logos problem. So, for what it's worth, and ignoring Spinoza's own objections, I think it best to stress his anti-theism as opposed to his atheism, as the word God is commonly used and understood. (I also like to think of his excommunication as retribution for literally destroying the God of his fathers, and with it the authority of religious and political leaders who claim 'god-like' powers over people).
5:42 I would say hos reading of Scripture is actually literal, in that he doesnt try to force meaning on it by "interpreting" it. He tries to get meaning from it, observing that Scripture is contradictory, that prophets differ, taking scripture at face value, and logically deriving conclusions from it. In the tractatus, he takes the Scriptures very seriously, not with reverence, but as a source of knowledge on what God might be to different people through the ages, i.e Scripture is a trace of people's particular experience of God
I always wondered what would God think if the world would start personifying ''reason as God'' and the results would ofc be more positive than a religious approach.
What's the best way to read Ethica by Spinoza if you are not really versed in philosophy? Are there any good commentaries to read alongside the book for a non-philosopher?
really curious how you come to the conclusion that spinoza rejects metaphysics, that his measure of ethics and morality is only man, and above all that his philosophy has anything to do with atheism? i highly recommend to folks watching this that they should just read the Ethics outright instead of watching videos about it and reading other philosophers takes. its a little heavy initially, but its perfectly logical and not esoteric at all, thats the beauty of it. it has an elegant simplicity and logical thought behind it. these kinda takeaways are what you get when you focus too much on other philosophers takes and not on the original text itself. i recommend just reading it, and bearing with Spinozas explanations, and instead of rejecting what he says just continuing with reading the propositions and demonstrations that follow whatever it is that initially doesn't make sense. Eventually it will click.
@@allseeingbot908 spot on, when i finished reading ethics i came away from it regarding spinoza's philosophy to have more in common with taoism than atheism as i was also reading tao te ching at the same time i was reading ethics and the concepts are very similar, although tao te ching being as old as it is uses less scientific and logical wording
nice first part but spinoza has really nothing to do with the linguistic turn... an important point : spinoza criticizes the idea of free will (rooted in cartesian dualism), which lead him to criticize not only the religious idea of soul but also morality in the way it was understood (good and bad, but also merit)
It is an insult to call him “Baruch”. That is the name he was given in the synagogue when he was born, and the name the synagogue used to curse and revile him when he was expelled and unjewed. But the name he chose, the name he used, the name he published under, and the name he was known by until recently, was Benedict. That is what we should call him.
A Jew can't be unjewed. He was separated from the Jewish community. Every few years in Tel Aviv they vote in whether or not to remove the excommunication of Spinoza. So far he still remains in excommunication, but he is and will always be a Jew, whether he likes it or not. It just one of those things.
Atheist attempts to frame Spinoza as one of their own is really unbecoming and shows they either don't understand his work at all or are willfully misinterpreting it.
J. Israel and your video is getting a tiny frame of a huge picture. Since enlightenment there has always been atempts to enlighten enlightenment (as Nietzsche later puts it). Communitarism against Liberitarians, Neo-aristotelians and so on.. the postmodern version is just the least intelligent one, cause trhey dont know shit about the history of philosophy (but hey have other important insides of course). The key here is Hegels critique of Kant. Any high intelligent problematization of enlightenment always comes back to this, always. But maybe thats a point not for popular books n youtube, but for people who read a lot think hard, n write....i gota stop commenting now(: keep it up and appologize my little english
u didn't really talk about his philosophy. this video would've frustrated me if i had seen it in 2017, instead of now in 2022 when u have a 52 minute video on spinoza 😆
Spinoza is rocking Paris --once again!-- and his radical championing of human freedom and liberal democracy is the only hope we have left to fight the new surge of authoritarian, far-right regimes in the Americas, Europe, and all over the globe (just think of Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro and consorts) www.nythamar.com/ethica.html
>"The Bible of Philosophy" >Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy Love your channel - incredibly invaluable to anyone studying philosophy - but that book is so heavily biased it strains credulity. Just a cursory glance at his treatment of Nietzsche and Hegel should provide ample survey of this claim. None of this is to say his OWN philosophical content is worthless or the entire book a waste, but it is commonly cited as one of the more directly slanted accounts of the history of philosophy on offer.
It would be rather naive to expect an equal level of quality in his account of all those philosophers. I suggest you take the term bible in a more literal sense.
You mean thats realy one of the worste books about history of philosphy? Then you are right. It does not get a slice of German Idealism, n until now every thinking is still influenced in positive and antagonistic ways by Kant, Fichte an espacialy Hegel. Nowadys you can see how Russels analytical tradition is falling apart becaus of that
Just donated to your patreon 😊❤️ keep it up buddy
Thank you so much! It really means a lot :)
Alina Syed Just donated to your patreon 😊❤️ keep it up buddy
I’m out o
I have started reading on Spinoza's Ethic. I have finished the first part ''Of God'' and it blew my mind. Intellectually difficult but once I understood (well, at least in my own way as guided by other authors who wrote on his works) his conceptions of monism and God as a Substance, I can't help but admire him. Admiration from the fact that to think that his work was published in a time in which religious institution ruled human lives (as the Calvinist did in the Dutch Republic) and that God was personify as an actual being, Spinoza got balls to laid out his philosophy in such a way. If God is Substance which is everywhere and in everything that necessarily exists and are conceived, what will be the point of religious texts, institutions and personnels (priests, pope etc) in the place of bringing salvation to the people, when they can use reason in understanding Substance in leading a happy life? yeah I can see why he was label an atheist and his work banned. Anyway this video is really good, keep it up bro!
well i would say that this is exactly that wich our prophets have done. Laid out their vision and love of God without Reason.
Interestingly enough, throughout his book he puts god between quotation marks. And then in statement 29 he calls it 'godly' nature. This can be thought of as the laws of physics. That's why he has the titel (maybe unjustly) first atheist
@@Apollo67. exactly! and the law of physic can be interpolated into the realm of politics, society and individual ethics, (at least in a Spinozistic term,) the goods and bads can not be conceived just as an ideal categories/types; but instead of actual actions and ideas in relation to others as acted out by and between individuals and thus reverberating within society as a whole. Furthermore, if we are to take Spinoza's Materialistic view of the universe as being governed by the law of physics, then his quote holds true then that we need not worry about the afterlife, ( Havenly kingdom, hell, karma ectr) as death for us will be equivalent to the transfer of our conatus (will to live, consciousness to survive) to another matter (decompositions, disintegration). Hence his quote " a free man does not think about his death, his wisdom comes from his meditation and in reflections about life, not death". As such the conduct of good and bad, the maintenance of a good society will have to come from us, in this life even of is materialistic and has no otherworldy source of origin.
@@Apollo67.he put Latin in quotation marks? Haven't seen that anywhere in my Dutch or English translations 🤔
I'm Brazilian and I follow many philosophy channels. I appreciated your honesty regarding the commissions from the affiliated works. Great channel!
As a musician, I find this kind of background music too distractive. Tchaikowsky is great, but this piece is too pregnant and has a lot of structures going on that don't complement the text, so it's like listening to two paralell discourses.
A more ambient-style music would be better.
Hear, Hear! I was about to make the same complaint.
Keep up the great work man, just gotta say be careful about mixing the music too loud, there's points in this vid and others of yours where the sound is drowning out your voice, other than it's great stuff
Just discovered your channel and was pleasantly surprised. Great content, keep it up.
Air 5ŕddďŕģ q pokok ķk ki
You are criminally under-subscribed!
At 1:01: Please note the Latin pronunciation of "Sapere Aude." In 'sapere' the last 're' is lightly pronounced, somewhat like the end of the "Louvre." 'Aude" is pronounced like "ow-day."
Sapere Aude is latin. "Sapeh' owd" is strange to hear indeed.
I could listen to you explain the enlightenment all the day
Edit: whether spinoza is a relativist or objectivist is quite a controversial issue. Yes he defines good as what is beneficial for us and this seems very relativist but he also says understanding god is always beneficial for us (and very likely one could deduce from this that therefore it is objectively good)
I think going in God’s direction is wise!
With god he meant the nature of things, and understanding helps to prevent external influence of negative affect which leads to greater joy
I have spent awhile catching up on your site. Well done.
Just subscribed, first time I ran across your channel, and I’m very impressed.
I normally like all of your video essays, probably one of my favorite 'youtubers,' but to present Spinoza as an atheist and materialist is misleading. He was the one who wrote "Deus sive Natura," that god and nature are equivalent in a single infinite substance (I know Karl Jaspers has an interpretation of this that qualifies it as atheistic, but it is largely an unconvincing fringe interpretation). His philosophy is an immanentizing of god into nature and vice-versa. It's a univocal and monistic pantheism that expands god to the all-pervading ground of reality, its core, unitary substance. How is that a non-existence? What kind of forced binary categorization of theology would present anything not theist as atheist, erasing all the rich alternatives and nuances of thought in between? It oddly mirrors Spinoza's own 17th century critics' misrepresentation of his philosophy.
Also, Spinoza was a neutral or dual-aspect monist, with mind and extension being equally real modes of the one immanent substantia. Materialism gives an ontological priority or monopoly to matter, this is an entirely different philosophy of mind from Spinoza's . Once again, is this attribution of materialism a forced binary categorization in which anything that isn't dualism is materialism? I also have a problem with people who describe Deleuze as an unqualified materialist, when really as a Neo-Spinozist he was working within a similar framework of univocal immanence necessitating a sort of panpsychism. But that's a topic for another day...
Now I feel bad for leaving a long, raving comment on a youtube video. So I'll just add that I actually liked the way Spinoza was presented as a radical and a central figure of the enlightenment. He tends to be overshadowed so much by Descartes that people forget about him, and how huge of an influence he was on the shape of modernity. I even encounter philosophy grad students at my university that don't really know anything about him.
@@chasesaladino6669 Thanks for your comments, CS. Not raving at all. I have a slightly different take on the 'theism' problem. Spinoza's insistence on re-defining God as a dual-aspect monism or Substance (thought and extension) is the very heart of his thinking; all else follows from it. The fact is, his definition cancels out all anthropomorphic concepts of God. So, words such as theology, pantheism, panentheism, atheism, and all other terms that relate to the God(s) of any religion, simply do not relate to Spinoza's Substance. If anything he was an anti-theist (a term used by Christopher Hitchens to describe himself in preference to 'atheist'). I don't think we can escape the linguistic connection between theistic terms and the anthropomorphic God, and to think of Spinoza 'theologically' is simply misleading and confusing, given this logos problem. So, for what it's worth, and ignoring Spinoza's own objections, I think it best to stress his anti-theism as opposed to his atheism, as the word God is commonly used and understood. (I also like to think of his excommunication as retribution for literally destroying the God of his fathers, and with it the authority of religious and political leaders who claim 'god-like' powers over people).
palladin331 yup if he was alive today he would call himself a atheist
@@kadnan6111 As I said, my term would be anti-theist. But atheist is close enough.
To my mind, Spinoza had to be excommunicated or, become an atheist- to explain, the significance of a God!
For me, this video is VERY, VERY, VERY INTERESTING!
I find Jonathan Israel to be an endlessly illuminating read.
5:42 I would say hos reading of Scripture is actually literal, in that he doesnt try to force meaning on it by "interpreting" it. He tries to get meaning from it, observing that Scripture is contradictory, that prophets differ, taking scripture at face value, and logically deriving conclusions from it. In the tractatus, he takes the Scriptures very seriously, not with reverence, but as a source of knowledge on what God might be to different people through the ages, i.e Scripture is a trace of people's particular experience of God
Coming back after the hour long vid on Spinoza.
You can break with the past and still understand the historic currents that lead you to that break.
Can someone pls brief me on what was Spinoza's view on the Death penalty and politics in general? I just want a quick summary
I always wondered what would God think if the world would start personifying ''reason as God'' and the results would ofc be more positive than a religious approach.
What's the best way to read Ethica by Spinoza if you are not really versed in philosophy? Are there any good commentaries to read alongside the book for a non-philosopher?
Stefaan Debreuck
Thanks!
Beth Lord and Steven Nadler have books on the Ethics which are easy to read and useful.
@@robertcoltrane5602 Thanks!
Great video. Really well done
really curious how you come to the conclusion that spinoza rejects metaphysics, that his measure of ethics and morality is only man, and above all that his philosophy has anything to do with atheism?
i highly recommend to folks watching this that they should just read the Ethics outright instead of watching videos about it and reading other philosophers takes. its a little heavy initially, but its perfectly logical and not esoteric at all, thats the beauty of it. it has an elegant simplicity and logical thought behind it.
these kinda takeaways are what you get when you focus too much on other philosophers takes and not on the original text itself. i recommend just reading it, and bearing with Spinozas explanations, and instead of rejecting what he says just continuing with reading the propositions and demonstrations that follow whatever it is that initially doesn't make sense. Eventually it will click.
and the Tractatus!
Agreed. Great comment. I don't see how anyone who has actually read the first chapter of Ethics can possibly think Spinoza was an atheist.
@@allseeingbot908 spot on, when i finished reading ethics i came away from it regarding spinoza's philosophy to have more in common with taoism than atheism as i was also reading tao te ching at the same time i was reading ethics and the concepts are very similar, although tao te ching being as old as it is uses less scientific and logical wording
Love it, keep it going man!
I could not hear you speaking. I heard the Nutcracker music.
Thank you for your contribution.
Music’s way too loud, dude. Couldn’t focus on what you’re saying.
Gr8 channeling!
Kool. Spinoza was mentioned in the first episode of Star Trek, 1966 ...a very high commendation!
I like your videos. Keep it up!
Endarkenment Hoga agar hai dunia me enlightenment
nice first part but spinoza has really nothing to do with the linguistic turn... an important point : spinoza criticizes the idea of free will (rooted in cartesian dualism), which lead him to criticize not only the religious idea of soul but also morality in the way it was understood (good and bad, but also merit)
Great Video
great video
More...
Length or content?
Spinoza content. 👍
It is an insult to call him “Baruch”. That is the name he was given in the synagogue when he was born, and the name the synagogue used to curse and revile him when he was expelled and unjewed. But the name he chose, the name he used, the name he published under, and the name he was known by until recently, was Benedict.
That is what we should call him.
A Jew can't be unjewed. He was separated from the Jewish community. Every few years in Tel Aviv they vote in whether or not to remove the excommunication of Spinoza. So far he still remains in excommunication, but he is and will always be a Jew, whether he likes it or not. It just one of those things.
@@allenmoses110 If you define “Jew” as “child of a Jewish mother “, then this is trivially true.
@@robinharwood5044 trivial to some, not trivial to others. But excommunication in Judaism does not unJew, it just removes someone from the community.
@@robinharwood5044 also, excommunication in Judaism is very rare. I don't think anyone has been excommunicated since Spinoza, but I could be wrong.
Watched all of it 9:06
Great video. But "sapere aude" is Latin, not French. So you should pronounce it plainly, without eliding the letters.
Please live up the the Enlightenment, at 1:16 it is not "ek cetra" but "et cetera".
I love Spinoza- if a philosophy doesn't make the lives of average people, then it should be discarded.
Atheist attempts to frame Spinoza as one of their own is really unbecoming and shows they either don't understand his work at all or are willfully misinterpreting it.
J. Israel and your video is getting a tiny frame of a huge picture. Since enlightenment there has always been atempts to enlighten enlightenment (as Nietzsche later puts it). Communitarism against Liberitarians, Neo-aristotelians and so on.. the postmodern version is just the least intelligent one, cause trhey dont know shit about the history of philosophy (but hey have other important insides of course). The key here is Hegels critique of Kant. Any high intelligent problematization of enlightenment always comes back to this, always. But maybe thats a point not for popular books n youtube, but for people who read a lot think hard, n write....i gota stop commenting now(: keep it up and appologize my little english
u didn't really talk about his philosophy. this video would've frustrated me if i had seen it in 2017, instead of now in 2022 when u have a 52 minute video on spinoza 😆
Nothing atheistic about the man.
I was hoping to get a view of what might happen next ,but, I’m finding a lot of hogwash. I’m left with my guessing- given that man is so predictable!!
Peter GAY and Jonthan ISRAEL... so what's up with this names???
lol
Heh, more like Emmanuel Won't
Spinoza is rocking Paris --once again!-- and his radical championing of human freedom and liberal democracy is the only hope we have left to fight the new surge of authoritarian, far-right regimes in the Americas, Europe, and all over the globe (just think of Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro and consorts) www.nythamar.com/ethica.html
So now, monist materialism is enlightened? To defend against postmodernists? How irrelevant, and wasteful, just like any nonage.
What's the point of making this video, when you could just save our (and your) time by directing us to Jacob's essay in the London Review of Books?
>"The Bible of Philosophy"
>Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy
Love your channel - incredibly invaluable to anyone studying philosophy - but that book is so heavily biased it strains credulity. Just a cursory glance at his treatment of Nietzsche and Hegel should provide ample survey of this claim. None of this is to say his OWN philosophical content is worthless or the entire book a waste, but it is commonly cited as one of the more directly slanted accounts of the history of philosophy on offer.
It would be rather naive to expect an equal level of quality in his account of all those philosophers. I suggest you take the term bible in a more literal sense.
You mean thats realy one of the worste books about history of philosphy? Then you are right. It does not get a slice of German Idealism, n until now every thinking is still influenced in positive and antagonistic ways by Kant, Fichte an espacialy Hegel. Nowadys you can see how Russels analytical tradition is falling apart becaus of that