display all the ideas for this combination of texts
7 ideas
| 4833 | The human mind is the very idea or knowledge of the human body [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The human mind is the very idea or knowledge of the human body. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 19) | |
| A reaction: This is close to Aristotle's claim that the 'psuché' is the 'form' of the body. Spinoza is appealingly modern in his view. The mapping of the body (our prioprioceptic sense) strikes me as central to the nature of the mind. |
| 16198 | Knowledge is the essence of the mind [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The essence of our mind consists solely in knowledge. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 36 n) | |
| A reaction: This is in a context of discussing the human relation to God. See Keith Hossack's 'The Metaphysics of Knowledge' for an exploration of this idea. (@BenedictSpinoza came up with this one) |
| 17198 | Will and intellect are the same thing [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The will and the intellect are one and the same. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) |
| 17201 | The will is finite, but the intellect is infinite [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The will is distinguished from the intellect, the latter being finite, the former infinite. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) |
| 17196 | The will is not a desire, but the faculty of affirming what is true or false [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By the will I understand a faculty of affirming or denying, but not a desire; a faculty, I say, by which the mind affirms or denies that which is true or false. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 48) | |
| A reaction: This is to be compared with the empiricist tendency to say that there are nothing but desires. On the whole I'm with Spinoza here. Hobbes thinKs of actions in the world, but Spinoza sees the will as operating in the process of reasoning. |
| 21805 | Spinoza held that the mind is just a bundle of ideas [Spinoza, by Schmid] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza held a bundle theory of the mind, according to which our mind is but a bundle 'composed of a great many ideas'. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 15) by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply that the mind lacks unity, and also lacks a Self. Spinoza doesn't say much about this view. |
| 17204 | Animals are often observed to be wiser than people [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Many things are observed in brutes which far surpass human sagacity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 02) | |
| A reaction: Lovely - especially in an age when animals were being actively downgraded (e.g. by Descartes) in order to upgrade man. |