display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
| 4855 | If people are obedient to reason, they will live in harmony [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men insofar as they live in obedience to reason, necessarily live always in harmony with one another. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: A beautiful slogan for a belief which has gripped me since I was a child. It embodies the frustration of philosophers from Plato onwards, and it may well be childishly idealistic. Politics is the art of the possible, said R.A.B. Butler. |
| 21874 | The ideal for human preservation is unanimity among people [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Man can wish for nothing more helpful to the preservation of his being than that all should so agree in all things that the minds and bodies of all would compose, as it were, one mind and one body. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 18S) | |
| A reaction: There has never been a more glorious vision of a unified people than this, which epitomises Enlightenment optimism. It may be a little on the optimistic side. We might at least hope that rational education encourages the convergence. |
| 8020 | Only self-knowledge can liberate us [Spinoza, by MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: In Spinoza, self-knowledge, and only self-knowledge, liberates. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: Spinoza was a determinist, as far as ultimate inner freedom is concerned. The massive continental philosophers' effort of phenomenology and deconstruction seems to be premissed on this idea. Freedom seems to be their highest value. |
| 7412 | Spinoza extended Hobbes's natural rights to cover all possible desires and actions [Spinoza, by Tuck] |
| Full Idea: It was Spinoza who extended the idea of natural rights to cover all possible desires and actions, and he did so knowing that he was transforming Hobbes's theory. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: Hobbes had stuck to self-preservation. His problem was how to draw a line, saying that was a natural right, but there wasn't a natural right to a good bottle of claret. Spinoza's drastic solutions suggests that the whole approach is wrong. |