display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
| 21870 | Music is good for a melancholic, bad for a mourner, and indifferent to the deaf [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: One and the same thing can, at the same time, be good and bad, and also indifferent. For example, music is good for one who is melancholy, bad for one who is mourning, and neither good nor bad to one who is deaf. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pref) | |
| A reaction: This sounds neat and obvious, but both the mourner and the deaf person might well acknowledge that music is a good thing, while failing to appreciate it at the time. I accept that a concert was good, even if I didn't attend it. |
| 4860 | Man's highest happiness consists of perfecting his understanding, or reason [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In life it is before all things useful to perfect the understanding, or reason, as far as we can, and in this alone man's highest happiness or blessedness consists. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IVApp 04) | |
| A reaction: I fear that only a highly intelligent person like Spinoza would suggest this. The genius of Jesus is to say that if you don't have a powerful intellect you can still be happy by having a pure and loving heart. The Spinoza route is better, if possible. |
| 4847 | Pleasure is a passive state in which the mind increases in perfection [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By pleasure I shall signify a passive state wherein the mind passes to a greater perfection. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: A rather bizarre definition! He seems to be defining it as a state and as a process in the same sentence. It sounds to me like both a hedonist's charter, and nonsense. I'm with Plato and Aristotle, that pleasure is dangerous as it warps the mind. |
| 4859 | Pleasure is only bad in so far as it hinders a man's capability for action [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Pleasure is only bad in so far as it hinders a man's capability for action. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 59) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the incipient epicureanism found in enlightenment figures who are drifting towards atheism (of which his contemporaries accused Spinoza). Sadism? Grief is good pain. I'm too happy to be cruel. |