display all the ideas for this combination of texts
10 ideas
| 17190 | We can easily think of nature as one individual [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: We may easily conceive the whole of nature to be one individual. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Lem 7) |
| 4826 | Nature has no particular goal in view, and final causes are mere human figments [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Nature has no particular goal in view, and final causes are mere human figments. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: This is Spinoza's famous rejection of Aristotelian teleology, which was the last seventeenth century nail in the coffin of the great man. Spinoza substitutes God, but loss of faith in that concept then left us with no purpose at all, as in Hume. |
| 1587 | Spinoza strongly attacked teleology, which is the lifeblood of classical logos [Roochnik on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In his 'Ethics' Spinoza shows his enormous hostility to teleology, which is the lifeblood of classical logos. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.77 |
| 1588 | For Spinoza eyes don't act for purposes, but follow mechanical necessity [Roochnik on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle would be perfectly happy with the idea that the eyes are for the purpose of seeing. Spinoza would disagree. The objects of the world, including parts of living organisms, have purposes, but obey the laws of mechanical necessity. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.79 | |
| A reaction: My view is that eyes wouldn't exist if they didn't see, which places them in a different category from inorganic matter. |
| 12731 | Final causes are figments of human imagination [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: All final causes are nothing but human fictions. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: You can see why Spinoza was rather controversial in the late seventeenth century, when he says things as bold as this, even though he is echoing Descartes. The latter's proposal (Idea 12730) is methodological, whereas this idea is metaphysical. |
| 4821 | An infinite line can be marked in feet or inches, so one infinity is twelve times the other [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If an infinite line be measured out in feet, it will consist of an infinite number of such parts; it would equally consist of an infinite number of parts, if each part was only an inch; therefore, one infinity would be twelve times as great as the other. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 15) | |
| A reaction: This seems to anticipate Cantor. Spinoza's point seemed bewildering then, but is now accepted as a standard feature of the concept of infinity. |
| 17177 | In nature there is just one infinite substance [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In nature only one substance exists, and it is absolutely infinite. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to render the concept of 'substance' redundant, since all the interest is now in the attributes (or whatever) of this one substance, and we must work to discount the appearance of there being numerous substances (e.g. you and me). |
| 10398 | Natural kinds are not special; they are just well-defined resemblance collections [Abelard, by King,P] |
| Full Idea: In Abelard's view a natural kind is a well-defined collection of things that have the same features, so that natural kinds have no special status, being no more than discrete integral wholes whose principle of membership is similarity. | |
| From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Peter King - Peter Abelard 2 | |
| A reaction: I take a natural kind to be a completely stable and invariant class of things. Presumably this invariance has an underlying explanation, but Abelard seems to take the Humean line that we cannot penetrate beyond the experienced surface. |
| 4850 | A final cause is simply a human desire [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A cause which is called final is nothing else but human desire, in so far as it is considered as the origin or cause of anything. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pref) | |
| A reaction: A rather vicious swipe at Aristotle! It chimes in with the modern scientific view of the world (mostly associated with Hume), that nature has no intrinsic values or aims. On the large scale, Spinoza is right, but nature can still show us what has value. |
| 4815 | From a definite cause an effect necessarily follows [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: From a definite cause an effect necessarily follows. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Ax 3) | |
| A reaction: This encapsulate the view against which Hume was rebelling. However, nowadays no one thinks Spinoza is self-evidently wrong. How are we to distinguish between a cause and a coincident event? We must claim natural necessity. |