282 ideas
| 21875 | The wisdom of a free man is a meditation on life, not on death [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation on life, not on death. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 67) | |
| A reaction: Life and death are not so easy to separate. You could hardly be wise about life if you didn't incorporate its finite duration into your wisdom. |
| 17230 | If we are not wholly wise, we should live by good rules and maxims [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The best thing we can do, so long as we lack a perfect knowledge of our feelings, is to conceive a right rule of life, or sure maxims of life - to commit these to memory, and constantly apply these to particular cases. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the role of folk wisdom - to try to plant guidance in the heads of the not-so-wise. |
| 17200 | We must be careful to keep words distinct from ideas and images [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary that we should distinguish between ideas and the words by which things are signified. ...Images, words, and ideas are by many people altogether confounded. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) |
| 4840 | Reason perceives things under a certain form of eternity [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It is in the nature of reason to perceive things under a certain form of eternity ('sub quadam aeternitatis specie'). | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 44) | |
| A reaction: A wonderful, and justly famous, remark. If you don't feel the force (and poetry!) of this, you aren't a philosopher. It is not only appealing, but I don't see how it can fail to be true. Try producing good reasons which only have temporary force. |
| 17194 | Reason only explains what is universal, so it is timeless, under a certain form of eternity [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The foundations of reason are notions which explain those things which are common to all, and these things explain the essence of no individual thing, and must therefore be conceived without any relation to time, but under a certain form of eternity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 44) | |
| A reaction: You have to be totally inspired by this even if you totally disagree with it. |
| 17213 | In so far as men live according to reason, they will agree with one another [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men necessarily always agree with one another in so far as they live according to the guidance of reason. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: I think this was my earliest motivation for getting interested in philosophy. Oddly, the Socratic tradition of philosophy is to challenge and criticise, but the aim is agreement. I sort of believe this idea, despite its wild idealism. |
| 19807 | Both nature and reason require that everything has a cause [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Under the law of reason nothing takes place without a cause, any more than under the law of nature. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.04) | |
| A reaction: Is this the influence of Leibniz? Note that the principle is identified in two different areas, so in nature we may say 'everything has a cause', and in rationality we may say 'there is a reason for everything'. But are these the same? |
| 4819 | There is necessarily for each existent thing a cause why it should exist [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: There is necessarily for each existent thing a cause why it should exist. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 08 n2) | |
| A reaction: The obvious response is 'how do you know that?' It has to the sort of a priori commitment we expect from a rationalist philosopher. It seems to me quite an appealing candidate for an axiom of human understanding. |
| 21864 | Truth is its own standard [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Truth is its own standard. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 43S) | |
| A reaction: A gloriously bold solution to all the problems of epistemology. Read the whole of P43S to see the context. |
| 8018 | Spinoza's life shows that love of truth which he proclaims as the highest value [MacIntyre on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza's life unites philosophy and practice; he manifests that very impersonal love of truth which he proclaims in his writings as the highest human value. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: Spinoza has become a secular saint in our times. If the big three values are Beauty, Goodness and Truth, why should the third be given top status? I once heard a philosopher say that truth was the only value. |
| 5641 | For Spinoza, 'adequacy' is the intrinsic mark of truth [Spinoza, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: For Spinoza, the intrinsic mark of truth is the property which he calls 'adequacy'. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy §5.6 | |
| A reaction: This is presumably the sort of theory to which early rationalists were confined, and it seems to be no advance on Descartes' 'clear and distinct conceptions'. I take it that the coherence theory is a better account of what they were after. |
| 4816 | A true idea must correspond with its ideate or object [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A true idea must correspond with its ideate or object. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Ax 6) | |
| A reaction: Allowing for his usage of 'idea' and 'object', this seems to be a straightforward commitment to the modern correspondence theory, perhaps the earliest clear statement of it. I agree with him. |
| 20309 | If our ideas are adequate, what follows from them is also adequate [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Whatever ideas follow in the mind from ideas which are adequate in the mind are also adequate. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 40) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be Modus Ponens, and he calls it (in Sch 1) 'the foundations of our reasoning'. If 'adequate' ideas are knowledge, then this also seems to say that knowledge is closed under known implication. |
| 17185 | Mathematics deals with the essences and properties of forms [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Mathematics does not deal with ends, but with the essences and properties of forms (figures), …and has placed before us another rule of truth. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: Just what I need - a nice clear assertion of essentialism in mathematics. Many say maths is all necessary, so essence is irrelevant, but I say explanations occur in mathematics, and that points to essentialism. |
| 17222 | The sum of its angles follows from a triangle's nature [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It follows from the nature of a triangle that its three angles are equal to two right angles. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 57) | |
| A reaction: This is the essentialist view of mathematics, which I take to be connected to explanation, which I take to be connected to the direction of explanation. |
| 17197 | The idea of a triangle involves truths about it, so those are part of its essence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The idea of the triangle must involve the affirmation that its three angles are equal to two right angles. Therefore this affirmation pertains to the essence of the idea of a triangle. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) | |
| A reaction: This seems to say that the essence is what is inescapable when you think of something. Does that mean that brandy is part of the essence of Napoleon? (Presumably not) Spinoza is ignoring the direction of explanation here. |
| 17174 | Outside the mind, there are just things and their properties [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Outside the intellect, there is nothing but substances and their affections. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 04) | |
| A reaction: This is pretty close to the very sparse ontology espoused by modern philosophers who take their lead from the logic. |
| 17176 | The more reality a thing has, the more attributes it has [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The more reality or being a thing possesses, the more attributes belong to it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 09) | |
| A reaction: This commitment to degrees of existence (which I find baffling) is presumably to enable God to be the thing with infinite attributes, and an infinite degree of Being. What percentage of Being would you say you've got (on a good day)? |
| 17179 | There must always be a reason or cause why some triangle does or does not exist [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a triangle exists, there must be a reason or cause why it exists; and if it does not exist, there must be a reason or cause which hinders its existence or which negates it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: Hm. Spinoza is setting up a defence of the ontological argument, which seems to require that he lower his normal high standards of argument. |
| 17186 | Men say they prefer order, not realising that we imagine the order [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men prefer order to confusion, as if order were something in nature apart from our own imagination. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) |
| 20127 | Laws of nature are universal, so everything must be understood through those laws [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Nature's laws ....are everywhere and always the same; so that there should be one and the same method of understanding the nature of all things whatsoever, namely through nature's universal laws and rules. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pref) | |
| A reaction: Leiter calls this Methodological Naturalism, which says that the procedures and findings of philosophy should conform to those of science. I think I'm also a Substantive Naturalist, who says 'that's all there is'. |
| 4913 | Brain lesions can erase whole categories of perception, suggesting they are hard-wired [Carter,R] |
| Full Idea: The discovery that a single brain lesion can erase all knowledge of man-made artefacts, or all knowledge of animals, suggests that these categories somehow hard-wired into the brain - that we all have a set of 'memory pigeonholes'. | |
| From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p.190) | |
| A reaction: Presumably something can become 'hard-wired' through experience, rather than from birth. The whole idea of 'hard-wired' seems misleading about the brain. What matters is that the brain physically constructs categories. |
| 17170 | An 'attribute' is what the intellect takes as constituting an essence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By 'attribute' I understand that which the intellect perceives of substance, as if constituting its essence. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 4) | |
| A reaction: Note that we would call these 'properties', but Spinoza has a word reserved for the properties of essences. He also has 'modes' of a thing, which are different. |
| 17171 | A 'mode' is an aspect of a substance, and conceived through that substance [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By 'mode' I understand the affections [affectiones] of substance, or that which is in another thing through which also it is conceived. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 5) | |
| A reaction: The attributes actually make up the essential consitution of the thing, and then the modes are entirely dependent on that essence. This is thoroughly Aristotelian, even though 'substantial forms' had been given up by this date. |
| 17195 | Things persevere through a force which derives from God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The force by which each thing perseveres in its existence follows from the eternal necessity of the nature of God. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 45) | |
| A reaction: This I take to be an ontology of fundamental powers, but with divine backing, similar to that found in Leibniz. Modern powers theorists leave out God, since it doesn't seem to add anything. [Is this the idea of 'conatus'?] Darwin can't explain the force. |
| 17206 | The essence of a thing is its effort to persevere [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The effort by which each thing endeavours to persevere in its own being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing itself. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 07) | |
| A reaction: This is exactly the sort of thing that Leibniz frequently said. They were much more conscious of the active power of essences than in the scholastic tradition. This is Nietzsche's will to power. Spinoza talks of 'power' in his demonstration of this. |
| 17192 | The 'universal' term 'man' is just imagining whatever is the same in a multitude of men [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Confused notions called 'universal', such as 'man', have arisen because so many images of individual men are formed that they exceed the power of imagination, ...so it imagines that only in which all of them agree, ...expressed by the name 'man'. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 40) | |
| A reaction: [very compressed] This strikes me as correct. I don't see how you can discuss universals without bringing in the way in which human psychology operates. |
| 17188 | A thing is unified if its parts produce a single effect [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a number of individuals so unite in one action that they are all simultaneously the cause of one effect, I consider them all, so far, as one individual thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Def 7) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. If a mob burn down a town, is that one effect, making the mob one thing? If a ball breaks a window, is that one effect, or a multitude of knock-on effects? Spinoza's view is very coarse-grained. |
| 5639 | Spinoza implies that thought is impossible without the notion of substance [Spinoza, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Without the notion of substance, according to Spinoza, thought itself becomes impossible. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy §5.2 | |
| A reaction: Spinoza's strategy here looks like the right way to approach metaphysics. To what extent is it possible to change our conceptual scheme? Quine seems to imply that there is no limit; Davidson seems to imply that it is impossible. |
| 21857 | Substance is the power of self-actualisation [Spinoza, by Lord] |
| Full Idea: For Spinoza a substance is not a 'thing', but the power of actualising its own existence. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 08) by Beth Lord - Spinoza's Ethics 1 P11 | |
| A reaction: Does this say anything? |
| 4813 | Substance is that of which an independent conception can be formed [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By substance I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself; in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 3) | |
| A reaction: A striking blurring of epistemology and ontology. He eventually settles for it being a concept rather than a fact of nature. It still begs a thousand questions, but it probably leads to monads and logical atoms. |
| 4828 | The essence of a thing is what is required for it to exist or be conceived [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Many assert that that without which a thing cannot be nor be conceived, belongs to the essence of that thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: This is one Aristotelian idea that won't go away, despite the seventeenth century onslaught. It seems obvious that natural kinds, natural objects and human artefacts have properties that can be divided into essential and non-essential. |
| 17187 | Essence gives existence and conception to things, and is inseparable from them [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: To the essence of anything pertains ...that without which the thing can neither be nor be conceived, and which in its turn cannot be nor be conceived without the thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Def 2) | |
| A reaction: Note that essence concerns not only what things are, but also our ability to conceive them. |
| 17191 | Nothing is essential if it is in every part, and is common to everything [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: That which is common to everything, and which is equally in the part and in the whole, forms the essence of no individual thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 37) | |
| A reaction: I like this, because treating essences as mere necessary properties threatens to include utter trivia and universal generalities, just because they are necessary. Rejecting things as 'trivial' by stipulation won't do. |
| 17184 | All natures of things produce some effect [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Nothing exists from whose nature an effect does not follow. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 36) | |
| A reaction: I take it that this is because it is analytic that essences produce effects, since that is the point of the concept of an essence - as the source of the explanations of the effects. |
| 17205 | Only an external cause can destroy something [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing cannot be destroyed except by an external cause. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 04) |
| 17175 | There cannot be two substances with the same attributes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In nature there cannot be two or more substances of the same nature or attribute. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 05) | |
| A reaction: This is the Identity of Indiscernibles. |
| 17173 | Two substances can't be the same if they have different attributes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Two substances having different attributes have nothing in common with one another. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 02) | |
| A reaction: This is the contrapositive of Leibniz's Law (i.e of the Indiscernibility of Identicals). Same things must have same attributes, so if the attributes differ they can't be the same things. |
| 17183 | Things are impossible if they imply contradiction, or their production lacks an external cause [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing is said to be impossible either because the essence of the thing itself or its definition involves a contradiction, or because no external cause exists determinate to the production of such a thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: Is the contradiction in nature or in logic? How can he be sure that there doesn't exist some causeless thing? |
| 4299 | Contingency is an illusion, resulting from our inadequate understanding [Spinoza, by Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: The common notion of 'contingency' is for Spinoza an illusion, which derives from the fact that our view of reality is often inadequate and incomplete. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.8 | |
| A reaction: The crux is if there could another universe with different natural laws. Spinoza is in no position to deny the possibility. Cosmologists assume it is possible, and run computer simulations to test it. There is 'metaphysical' and 'natural' necessity. |
| 4839 | Reason naturally regards things as necessary, and only imagination considers them contingent [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It is not in the nature of reason to regard things as contingent, but as necessary; ..hence, it is only through our imagination that we consider things, whether in respect to the future or to the past, as contingent. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 44) | |
| A reaction: A very interesting claim, which seems to be central to rationalism. The empiricist response must be that imagination (which is founded on experience) is a better guide to metaphysical status than pure reason can ever be. |
| 4824 | We only call things 'contingent' in relation to the imperfection of our knowledge [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing can in no respect be called contingent, save in relation to the imperfection of our knowledge. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: A very good remark. Growing up is largely a realisation of the necessity of human affairs that you thought could be otherwise. (Forgive the pessimism!) As metaphysics, I find this appealing, too. |
| 4822 | Divine nature makes all existence and operations necessary, and nothing is contingent [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: All things are conditioned by the necessity of the divine nature, not only to exist, but also to exist and operate in a particular manner, and there is nothing that is contingent. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 29) | |
| A reaction: This obviously invites the response of the empiricist: how does he know that? Hume says he can't know it, and Leibniz says he knows it a priori. Traditionally, 'necessary' is the dubious term, but maybe it is 'contingent' which is meaningless. |
| 17182 | Necessity is in reference to essence or to cause [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing is called necessary either in reference to its essence or its cause. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: I like any proposal that necessity should be 'in reference to' something, rather than being free-standing. I like to add necessary 'for' something, which is often conceptual necessity. Roots are necessary for trees. |
| 4818 | People who are ignorant of true causes imagine anything can change into anything else [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Those who are ignorant of true causes make complete confusion - thinking that trees might talk just as well as men, that men might be formed from stones as well as seed, and imagine that any form might be changed into any other. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 08 n2) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza himself can be guilty of this, but it strikes me as a key idea. Humean scepticism about causation seems to me the product of eighteenth century ignorance about the mechanisms of cause and effect which have since been uncovered by science. |
| 20310 | Error does not result from imagining, but from lacking the evidence of impossibility [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind does not err from the fact that it imagines, but only insofar as it is considered to lack an idea which excludes the existence of those things which it imagines to be present to it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 17 s) | |
| A reaction: These may be the wisest words I have yet found on conceivability and possibility. My example is imagining a bonfire on the moon, which seems possible until you fully grasp what fire is. |
| 17208 | A horse would be destroyed if it were changed into a man or an insect [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A horse would as much be destroyed if it were changed into a man as if it were changed into an insect. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pref) | |
| A reaction: He has been referring to essences of things. What if a shire horse is changed into a Shetland pony? If you watched the horse transmute, it would be continuous in a way that two separate creatures are not. Some sort of sameness there. |
| 17209 | A thing is contingent if nothing in its essence determines whether or not it exists [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I call individual things contingent in so far as we discover nothing, whilst we attend to their essence alone, which necessarily posits their existence or which necessarily excludes it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Def 3) | |
| A reaction: So something could have an essence which determined that it could not exist, which is presumably a contradiction. That's a very strange sort of essence. Presumably all intrinsically contradictory essences are in some way the same. |
| 5640 | Spinoza's three levels of knowledge are perception/imagination, then principles, then intuitions [Spinoza, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: For Spinoza there are three levels of knowledge: first, sense perception or imagination, second, reasoned reflection leading to principles, and third (the highest), intuition, in which the adequacy of an idea is immediately known. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy §5.6 | |
| A reaction: This notion of rising levels of knowledge has an obvious background in Plato. The third level is clearly rationalist, where empiricists would probably never aspire to rise above level two. I share the empiricist suspicion of level three. |
| 17211 | Understanding is the sole aim of reason, and the only profit for the mind [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: All efforts which we make through reason are nothing but efforts to understand, and the mind, in so far as it uses reason, adjudges nothing as profitable to itself excepting that which conduces to understanding. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 26) | |
| A reaction: I wish philosophers would agree that the aim of their subject is to achieve broad and general understanding of reality - and nothing else. If you want to change the world, that isn't philosophy. If you think understanding is impossible, drop philosophy. |
| 21801 | Unlike Descartes' atomism, Spinoza held a holistic view of belief [Spinoza, by Schmid] |
| Full Idea: Unlike Descartes, who held an atomist theory of belief (that we can assent to a belief quite independently of our other beliefs), Spinoza endorsed a holistic theory of belief - that our degree of affirmation is essentially determined by our other ideas. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49S) by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: Since I am a fan of the coherence theory of justification, I seem obligated to accept a fairly holistic account of the acceptance of beliefs. Descartes is a foundationalist. |
| 21863 | You only know you are certain of something when you actually are certain of it [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Who can know that he understands some thing unless he first understands it? That is, who can know that he is certain about some thing unless he is first certain about it? | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 43S) | |
| A reaction: This seems to beg the question, which concerns how you get to the state of full understanding or certainty in the first place. Spinoza thinks only certainty counts as knowledge, which seems to derive from Descartes. I prefer Peirce. |
| 17199 | A man who assents without doubt to a falsehood is not certain, but lacks a cause to make him waver [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: When we say that a man assents to what is false and does not doubt it, we do not say that he is certain, but merely that he does not doubt, that is, that he assents to what is false, because there are no causes sufficient to make his imagination waver. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) | |
| A reaction: This is a seventeenth century rationalist desperate to say that the reason can deliver certainty, in the face of idiots who are totally certain about astrology, fairies and what not. Vain hope, I'm afraid. Fallibilist rationalism is required. |
| 17193 | True ideas intrinsically involve the highest degree of certainty [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: No one who has a true idea is ignorant that a true idea involves the highest certitude; to have a true idea signifying just this, to know a thing perfectly or as well as possible. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 43) | |
| A reaction: This wildly optimistic view is found in rationalists of the period. Rationalism only becomes tolerable if fallibilism is added to it. See Bonjour. |
| 5638 | 'I think' is useless, because it is contingent, and limited to the first person [Spinoza, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The proposition 'I think' was useless to Spinoza, because it expresses a merely contingent proposition, where certainty must be founded in necessity, and because it refers to the first person, when truth comes from rising above our own mentality. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: I find both of these criticisms very appealing. One might simply say that the starting point of philosophy is not the process of thinking, but the contents of thinking. Descartes' move is like astronomers becoming obsessed with telescopes. |
| 4831 | If the body is affected by an external object, the mind can't help believing that the object exists [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If the human body is affected in a manner which involves the nature of any external body, the human mind will regard the said external body as actually existing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 17) | |
| A reaction: This is like one of Hume's 'natural beliefs', and seems to me a powerful idea. One of the basic questions of epistemology is, apart from the question 'which beliefs can I justify?', also 'which beliefs can I never abandon?' Skip the scepticism? |
| 4910 | Sense organs don't discriminate; they reduce various inputs to the same electrical pulses [Carter,R] |
| Full Idea: Despite their variety, each sense organ translates its stimulus into electrical pulses; rather than discriminating one type of input from another, the sense organs actually make them more alike. | |
| From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p.174) | |
| A reaction: An illuminating observation, which modern 'naďve realists' should bear in mind. Secondary qualities are entirely unrelated to the nature of the input, and are merely 'what the brain decides to make of it'. Discrimination is in our neurons. |
| 4911 | The recognition sequence is: classify, name, locate, associate, feel [Carter,R, by PG] |
| Full Idea: The sequence of events in the brain for perceptual recognition is first identifying a rough class for the object, then a name, then a location, then some associations, and finally an emotion. | |
| From: report of Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p.181) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be one of those places where neuro-science trumps philosophy. You can't argue with empirical research, so philosophical theories had better adapt themselves to this sequence. The big modern discovery is the place of emotion in recognition. |
| 4865 | The eyes of the mind are proofs [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The eyes of the mind … are none other than proofs. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 23) | |
| A reaction: A wonderful slogan for rationalists! Technically it sounds a bit dodgy, as steps seem to be required for a proof, whereas the eyes of the mind presumably offer a priori intuitions, or clear and distinct conceptions. In essence, he is right. |
| 20306 | Once we have experienced two feelings together, one will always give rise to the other [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If the mind has once been affected by two affects at once, then afterwards, when it is affected by one of them, it will also be affected by the other. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr14) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as better expressed than Hume's version, which relies on examples. It is more generalised than Hume, since it will cover contiguity and resemblance and causation, all under the heading of the arising affects. |
| 4919 | There seems to be no dividing line between a memory and a thought [Carter,R] |
| Full Idea: It has become clear from research that there is no clear dividing line between a memory and a thought. | |
| From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p.308) | |
| A reaction: This always struck me as an obvious criticism of Descartes, when he claimed that memory was not an essential part of the 'thinking thing'. How can you think or understand without memory of the different phases of your thoughts? No memory, no mind! |
| 4835 | Anyone who knows, must know that they know, and even know that they know that they know.. [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a man knows anything, he, by that very fact, knows that he knows it, and at the same time knows that he knows that he knows it, and so on to infinity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 21) | |
| A reaction: A delightfully bold claim! This is 'super internalism', but it seems to require that we must be certain in order to know, whereas I think my own view is internalist but 'fallibilist' - I know, while admitting I could be wrong. |
| 20308 | Encounters with things confuse the mind, and internal comparisons bring clarity [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind has only a confused knowledge of itself, its own body, and external bodies, as long as it is perceived from fortuitous encounters with things, ...and not internally, from the agreements, differences and oppositions of a number of things at once. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 29s) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is a very nice expression of the commitment to coherence as justification, typical of the rationalist view of things. Empiricists are trapped in an excessively atomistic concept of knowledge (one impression or sense datum at a time). |
| 4312 | To understand a phenomenon, we must understand why it is necessary, not merely contingent [Spinoza, by Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: Adequate understanding of a phenomenon, for Spinoza, involves a complete understanding of its causes, and this in turn involves a dissolving of the illusion of contingency and a recognition of the necessity of its being thus and not otherwise. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.168 | |
| A reaction: This is the appeal of the rationalist dream. We want a god-like grasp of things, not a superficial perception of what seems to be going on. |
| 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) |
| 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. |
| 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) |
| 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. |
| 4908 | No one knows if animals are conscious [Carter,R] |
| Full Idea: No one knows if animals are conscious. | |
| From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p.155) | |
| A reaction: This is a report from the front line of brain research, and should be born in mind when over-confident people make pronouncements about this topic. It strikes me as important to grasp that animals MIGHT not be conscious. |
| 4915 | In primates, brain size correlates closely with size of social group [Carter,R] |
| Full Idea: Brain size in primates is closely associated with the size of the social group in which the animal lives. | |
| From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p.257) | |
| A reaction: Intriguing. Humans can have huge social groups because of language, which suggests a chicken-or-egg question. Language, intelligence and size of social group must have expanded together in humans. |
| 4902 | Pain doesn't have one brain location, but is linked to attention and emotion [Carter,R] |
| Full Idea: Scans show there is no such thing as a pain centre; pain springs mainly from the activation of areas associated with attention and emotion. | |
| From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p. 12) | |
| A reaction: Most brain research points to the complex multi-layered nature of experiences that were traditionally considered simple. We can be distracted from a pain, and an enormous number of factors can affect our degree of dislike of a given pain. |
| 4904 | Proper brains appear at seven weeks, and neonates have as many neurons as adults do [Carter,R] |
| Full Idea: The main sections of the brain, including the cerebral cortex, are visible within seven weeks of conception, and by the time the child is born the brain contains as many neurons - about 100 billion - as it will have as an adult. | |
| From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p. 17) | |
| A reaction: Of interest in the abortion debate, and also in thinking about personal identity. However, it seems clear that the number of connections, rather than neurons, is what really matters. A small infant may well lack personal identity. |
| 4917 | Consciousness involves awareness, perception, self-awareness, attention and reflection [Carter,R] |
| Full Idea: Awareness, perception, self-awareness, attention and reflection are all separate components of consciousness, and the quality of our experience varies according to which and how many of them are present. | |
| From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p.300) | |
| A reaction: Philosophers like to emphasise 'qualia' and 'intentionality'. This remark slices the cake differently. 'Attention' is interesting, dividing consciousness into two areas, with some experience fading away into the darkness. Hume denied self-awareness. |
| 17212 | To understand is the absolute virtue of the mind [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: To understand is the absolute virtue of the mind. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 28) | |
| A reaction: A possible epigraph for this website. Perhaps it should be required by law that this be printed on the frontispiece of every philosophy book ever published. |
| 4916 | There is enormous evidence that consciousness arises in the frontal lobes of the brain [Carter,R] |
| Full Idea: A huge volume of evidence suggests that consciousness emerges from the activity of the cerebral cortex, and in particular from the frontal lobes. | |
| From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p.298) | |
| A reaction: Dualists must face up to this, and even many physicalists have a rather vague notion about the location of awareness, but we are clearly homing in very precise physical substances which have consciousness as a feature. |
| 4905 | Normal babies seem to have overlapping sense experiences [Carter,R] |
| Full Idea: Connections in a baby's brain probably give the infant the experience of 'seeing' sounds and 'hearing' colours - which occasionally continues into adulthood, where it is known as 'synaesthesia'. | |
| From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p. 19) | |
| A reaction: A fact to remember when discussing secondary qualities, and the relativism involved in the way we perceive the world. If you have done your philosophy right, you shouldn't be surprised by this discovery. |
| 4918 | In blindsight V1 (normal vision) is inactive, but V5 (movement) lights up [Carter,R] |
| Full Idea: Scans show that a sub-section of the visual cortex called V5 - the area that registers movement - lights up during blindsight, even though V1 - the primary sensory area that is essential for normal sight - is not active. | |
| From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p.307) | |
| A reaction: The whole point of blindsight is to make us realise that vision involves not one module, but a whole team of them. The inference is that V1 involves consciousness, but other areas of the visual cortex don't. |
| 21804 | Faculties are either fictions, or the abstract universals of ideas [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Faculties are either complete fictions, or nothing but metaphysical beings or universals, which are used to forming from particulars (as 'stoneness' is to a stone). | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 48S), quoted by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: So they are, at best, the sources of our concepts. Does that mean one faculty for each concept, or one huge concept-generating faculty? |
| 4832 | If the body is affected by two things together, the imagining of one will conjure up the other [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If the human body has once been affected by two or more bodies at the same time, when the mind afterwards imagines any of them, it will straightway remember the other also. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 18) | |
| A reaction: Very interesting to see a great rationalist philosopher making an observation right at the heart of Hume's theory of knowledge (associationism). Clearly an associationist theory of psychology need not imply a materialist (connectionist) theory of mind. |
| 21869 | Our own force of persevering is nothing in comparison with external forces [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The force by which a man perserveres in existing is limited, and infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 03) | |
| A reaction: This states the obvious, but is important as a way of viewing things. I think Nietzsche's notion of Will to Power comes in here, as a unified account of both forces. |
| 20307 | As far as possible, everything tries to persevere [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its own being. ...[7] The striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 06) | |
| A reaction: This is covered by his word 'conatus'. Obviously this covers plants as well as sentient beings. Mountains have no power to persevere. Since Spinoza sees this as basic, he is not far from Nietzsche. |
| 21803 | The conatus (striving) of mind and body together is appetite, which is the essence of man [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: When striving [conatus] is related to the Mind it is called Will, but when related to the Mind and Body it is called Appetite. This Appetite is the essence of man, from whose nature there necessarily follow those things that promote this preservation. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 09S), quoted by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: Spinoza seems to see 'conatus' as a fairly unified thing, where Nietzsche sees the will to power as a combination of many competing 'drives'. I think Nietzsche is closer to the truth. |
| 4836 | The mind only knows itself by means of ideas of the modification of the body [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind does not know itself, except in so far as it perceives the ideas of the modifications of the body. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 29) | |
| A reaction: This is reminiscent of Hume's 'bundle of perceptions' report of introspection. It is in tune with a modern 'animalist' view of a person, and with a view of the mind as a map of the body and its environs. Is he a sceptic about personal identity? |
| 21861 | Self-knowledge needs perception of the affections of the body [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind does not know itself except in so far as it perceives the ideas of the affections of the body. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 23) | |
| A reaction: 'The ideas of the affections of the body' seems to be twice removed from the actual body, so I am not crystal clear what this says. The idea of knowing yourself with no involvement at all of the body seems absurd. |
| 17216 | The poet who forgot his own tragedies was no longer the same man [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Sometimes a man undergoes such changes that he cannot very well be said to be the same man, as was the case with a certain Spanish poet ...who was so oblivious of his past life that he did not believe the tales and tragedies he had composed were his own. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 39) | |
| A reaction: This seems to need Locke's distinction between 'man' and 'person', since the poor poet was clearly the same human being. Spinoza places huge emphasis on the intellect as the essence of the man. |
| 4814 | A thing is free if it acts by necessity of its own nature, and the act is determined by itself alone [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: That thing is called free which exists solely by the necessity of its own nature, and of which the action is determined by itself alone. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 7) | |
| A reaction: This points to the obvious thought that nothing is independent enough to achieve freedom. Our concept of nature is of almost endless interdependence. God seems the only thing that could possibly qualify, though some might say humans could. |
| 21802 | An act of will can only occur if it has been caused, which implies a regress of causes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Each volition can neither exist nor be determined to produce an effect unless it is determined by another cause, and this cause again by another, and so on, to infinity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 32), quoted by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: Acts of will are usually responses to situations, so it seems a bit simplistic to think that they are all spontaneous sui generis causal events. That argument won't work, of course, for a random volition that is out of context. |
| 4837 | 'Free will' is a misunderstanding arising from awareness of our actions, but ignorance of their causes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are conditioned. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: I have recently come to totally agree with this. The whole concept of free will seems to me incoherent, and Spinoza pinpoints the error. We aren't equipped to know the origins of the thoughts that arrive in our consciousnesses. |
| 4843 | Would we die if we lacked free will, and were poised between equal foods? Yes! [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It may be objected, if a man does not act from free will, what will happen if the incentives to action are equally balanced, as in the case of Buridan's ass? Will he perish of hunger and thirst. ..Personally I am ready to admit that he would die. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) | |
| A reaction: A nicely defiant way of demonstrating his rejection of free will. I have to agree with him. Even if there were such a thing as 'free will', it is hard to see how it could act as a tie-breaker. Which way would it freely decide? |
| 4844 | The mind is not free to remember or forget anything [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It is not within the free power of the mind to remember or forget a thing at will. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 02) | |
| A reaction: An interesting little corrective if you were thinking that your total control over you mind proved that you had free will. Once you face up to your lack of control of the memory process, you begin to realise how little of your mind even feels controlled. |
| 4311 | We think we are free because we don't know the causes of our desires and choices [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men think themselves free because they are conscious of their volitions and their appetites, yet never give a thought to the causes which dispose them to desire or to exercise the will as they do, since they are wholly unaware of them. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) | |
| A reaction: This encapsulates the determinist idea nicely. In the end we just choose, but we have no idea why we prefer one reason to another, or simply opt for one thing rather than another. |
| 7828 | The actual world is the only one God could have created [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: Said to be a "notorious" proposition. This is a key idea in philosophy because it represents (like solipsism) one of the extremes - there is no such thing as contingency, and that all things are necessary. It is daft not to take Spinoza seriously on this. |
| 21860 | Ideas and things have identical connections and order [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 07) | |
| A reaction: I hadn't registered until Beth Lord pointed it out that this is Spinoza's parallelism of the mental and the physicalism, which seems to be roughly the same as the views of Leibniz and Malebranche, but with a different explanation. |
| 4308 | Mind and body are one thing, seen sometimes as thought and sometimes as extension [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind and the body are one and the same individual which is conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) | |
| A reaction: I suppose we might now call this 'property dualism'. It is odd that when you examine one property, the other is nowhere to be seen. |
| 4846 | We are incapable of formulating an idea which excludes the existence of our body [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: An idea which excludes the existence of our body cannot be postulated in our mind, but is contrary thereto. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: A fascinating claim. At the heart of Descartes is an unspoken thought experiment exploring the possibility of a disembodied mind. This is a beautiful challenge to the very concept of such a thing, and points to a grealty superior theory of mind. |
| 4912 | Out-of-body experiences may be due to temporary loss of proprioception [Carter,R] |
| Full Idea: Out-of-body experiences may be due to temporary loss of proprioception. | |
| From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p.187) | |
| A reaction: This is only a speculation, but it is an effect which can be caused by brain injury, and dualists should face the possibility that this evidence (prized by many dualists) can have a physical explanation. |
| 4834 | Mind and body are the same thing, sometimes seen as thought, and sometimes as extension [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The idea of body and body, that is, mind and body, are one and the same individual conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 21) | |
| A reaction: This is an appealingly modern view, but a bit glib. Phenomenologically, the mind seen as thought and the body seen as extension are about as wildly different as it is possible to be. This needs explanation. |
| 4903 | Scans of brains doing similar tasks produce very similar patterns of activation [Carter,R] |
| Full Idea: The pattern of brain activation during, say, a word retrieval task is usually similar enough among the dozen or so participants who typically take part in such studies for their scans to be overlaid and still show a clear pattern. | |
| From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p. 17) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't surprise me, though it could be interpreted as supporting type-type identity, or as supporting functionalism. Armstrong and Lewis endorse a sort of reductive functionalism which would fit this observation. |
| 4920 | Thinking takes place on the upper side of the prefrontal cortex [Carter,R] |
| Full Idea: The nuts and bolts of thinking - holding ideas in mind and manipulating them - takes place on the upper side of the prefrontal cortex. | |
| From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p.312) | |
| A reaction: Keep this firmly in view! Imagine that the skull is transparent, and brain activity moves in waves of colour. Dualism would, in those circumstances, never have even occurred to anyone. |
| 23951 | Emotion is a modification of bodily energy, controlling our actions [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By emotion [affectus] I understand the modification of energy of the body by which the power of action is aided or restrained. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]), quoted by Robert C. Solomon - The Passions 3.4 | |
| A reaction: [no ref given] Solomon gives this as the earliest version of the 'hydraulic' model of emotions, later found in Freud and Jung. Very unusual to give a wholly physical account of these psychic states. |
| 4906 | Babies show highly emotional brain events, but may well be unaware of them [Carter,R] |
| Full Idea: Babies show emotion dramatically, but the areas of the brain that in adults are linked to the conscious experience of emotions are not active in newborn babies. Such emotions may therefore be unconscious. | |
| From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p. 19) | |
| A reaction: Traditionally, 'unconscious emotion' is a contradiction, but I think we should accept this new evidence and rethink the nature of mind. Not only might emotion be non-conscious, but we should even consider that rational thinking could be too. |
| 23990 | The three primary emotions are pleasure, pain, and desire [Spinoza, by Goldie] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza held that the three primary emotions are pleasure, pain, and desire | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III P59) by Peter Goldie - The Emotions 4 'Evidence' | |
| A reaction: If you are aiming for a minimal list, this is quite good. One active, one good passive, one bad passive. Output and input. |
| 4849 | The three primary emotions are pleasure, pain and desire [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I recognise only three primitive or primary emotions, namely, pleasure, pain and desire. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IIIEm Df 4) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, but hard to justify. Presumably one can analyse fear as desire for no pain, and grief as desire for the return of pleasure, etc. It is a nice exercise in introspective psychology, but I don't feel much wiser for it. |
| 17203 | Minds are subject to passions if they have inadequate ideas [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind is subject to passions in proportion to the number of inadequate ideas which it has. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 01) | |
| A reaction: An exceptionally intellectualist view of emotions! |
| 4864 | An emotion is only bad if it hinders us from thinking [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: An emotion is only bad or hurtful, in so far as it hinders the mind from being able to think. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 09) | |
| A reaction: This sounds sensible. It fits Spinoza's quasi-stoicism that he should be happy with emotion (as natural), but also that true 'living by nature' requires control by reason. Only a wild romantic would think emotion better than judgement as a guide. |
| 7832 | Stoics want to suppress emotions, but Spinoza overcomes them with higher emotions [Spinoza, by Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza says the only way to overcome emotions is with higher emotions, thus distinguishing himself from the Stoics, who argued that the only thing to do with the surly crowd of human emotions is to have them all shot. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: The modern view would certainly be that the Stoics were responsible for massive problems in European civilization (thought the Buddhist have similar views). Emotions are now seen as integral even to very pure reasoning. |
| 4863 | An emotion comes more under our control in proportion to how well it is known to us [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: An emotion becomes more under our control, and the mind is less passive in respect to it, in proportion as it is more known to us. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 03) | |
| A reaction: This may sound a little optimistic, but it is also obviously true, in the sense that the only proper control we have of our own behaviour is through thought and judgement, which presuppose awareness of what needs controlling. |
| 4909 | The only way we can control our emotions is by manipulating the outside world that influences them [Carter,R] |
| Full Idea: We try to manipulate our emotions all the time, but all we are doing is arranging the outside world so it triggers certain emotions - we cannot control our reactions directly. | |
| From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p.155) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to throw a very illuminating light on a huge amount of human behaviour, such as going to the cinema or listening to music. The romantic movement encouraged direct internal manipulation. Compare sex fantasies with viewing pornography. |
| 4914 | A frog will starve to death surrounded by dead flies [Carter,R] |
| Full Idea: A frog will starve to death surrounded by dead flies. | |
| From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p.195) | |
| A reaction: A nice warning against assuming that rationality is operating when a frog feels hungry and 'decides' to have lunch. We should take comfort from the fact that humans are NOT this stupid, and philosophers should try to accurately describe our gift. |
| 4841 | People make calculation mistakes by misjudging the figures, not calculating them wrongly [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: When men make mistakes in calculation, they have one set of figures in their mind, and another on the paper. If we could see into their minds, they do not make a mistake. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 47) | |
| A reaction: A wonderfully optimistic assertion of faith in reason! He seems to imply an infallibility in reason, which seems a bit implausible. If I make 7+6=14, MUST I have muddled the 6 with a 7? Presumably Spinoza was good at arithmetic. |
| 20311 | An idea involves affirmation or negation [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: An idea, insofar as it is an idea, involves an affirmation or negation. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49 sII) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza clearly distinguishes ideas from images, and here seems to identify ideas with propositions. Nowadays we say these are 'true or false', but Spinoza is more personal and psychological. I prefer his way of putting it. |
| 4830 | An 'idea' is a mental conception which is actively formed by the mind in thinking [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By 'idea', I mean the mental conception which is formed by the mind as a thinking thing (this is not a passive perception with regard to the object, but expresses an activity of the mind). | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Def 3) | |
| A reaction: This is interesting as a seventeenth century attempt to grapple with the nature of thought. Spinoza sees it as of the essence of mind, since it is what the mind contributes, rather than what happens to the mind when it experiences. |
| 21807 | Ideas are powerful entities, which can produce further ideas [Spinoza, by Schmid] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza conceives of ideas as intrinsically powerful entities, which have a capacity to produce further ideas. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 6 | |
| A reaction: Is the idea the source of the entire philosophy of Hegel? I find Hegel's claim to infer huge chains of ideas from very simple origins quite implausible. I also rather doubt whether a wholly isolated idea can produce a further idea. |
| 4842 | Ideas are not images formed in the brain, but are the conceptions of thought [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By ideas I do not mean images such as are formed at the back of the eye, or in the midst of the brain, but the conceptions of thought. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 48) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be equating 'ideas' with what we now call 'concepts', which presumably makes Spinoza less open to criticism than other philosophers of his time, for postulating baffling mental copies of the world. |
| 4309 | Spinoza argues that in reality the will and the intellect are 'one and the same' [Spinoza, by Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza argues that in reality the will and the intellect are 'one and the same'. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.159 | |
| A reaction: The 'will' is certainly a dubious concept, though it seems involved with desire and actual. In a sense, I suppose, all pursuits of reason are acts of will. |
| 4838 | Claiming that actions depend on the will is meaningless; no one knows what the will is [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Saying that human actions depend on the will is a mere phrase without any idea to correspond to. What the will is, and how it moves the body, no one knows. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: As so often, the rationalist Spinoza agrees with many empiricists about this one. If there is no such thing as the will, then there isn't much prospect of it being free, thought one might talk about 'freedom of thought' instead. |
| 20305 | Whenever we act, then desire is our very essence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Desire is man's very essence, insofar as it is agreed to be determined, from any affection of it, to do something. ...Desire is appetite, together with the consciousness of it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Def of Aff I) | |
| A reaction: [I think that is the gist of it!] This sounds a bit circular, but seems to say that actions are almost entireoy the expression of desires. |
| 21868 | We love or hate people more strongly because we think they are free [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Because men consider themselves to be free, they have a greater love or hate toward one another than toward other things. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 49S) | |
| A reaction: A very penetrating remark. If we abandon the concept of free will, I suspect that we will all become much more easy-going and tolerant, but the thought that feelings of love might also decline is a sobering one. |
| 17202 | We are the source of an action if only our nature can explain the action [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I say that we act when anything is done, either within us or without us, of which we are the adequate cause, that is to say, when from our nature anything follows which by that nature alone can be clearly and distinctly understood. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Def 2) | |
| A reaction: I like that one a lot. The point is to get a concept of responsibility that doesn't need free will, and to distinguish the thief from the kleptomaniac. Does kleptomania derive from a person's true nature? Essentialism in action. |
| 21865 | We act when it follows from our nature, and is understood in that way [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: We act when something in us or outside us follows from our nature, which can be clearly and distinctly understood through this alone. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Def2) | |
| A reaction: I like this, because it links actions to our essential natures, and because it focuses on understanding the action, which must involve explaining the action. This is the root of responsibility, not something called 'free will'. BUT SEE 17202. |
| 7235 | Without freedom of will actions lack moral significance [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: If you take away all freedom of the will, you strip a man's actions of all moral significance. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.4) | |
| A reaction: Rousseau is (in the context) guilty of the basic error of confusing freedom of action with freedom of the will. If the will has scope to act, it has freedom of action; if the will is not contrained in its decision by prior causes, it has freedom of will. |
| 21873 | Men only agree in nature if they are guided by reason [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Only insofar as men live according to the guidance of reason, must they always agree in nature. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: A nice expression of the guiding idea of the Enlightenment - that consensus is the defining characteristic of rationality. Spinoza's politics emerges from this idea. |
| 21872 | We seek our own advantage, and virtue is doing this rationally [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Acting absolutely from virtue is nothing else in us but acting, living, and preserving our being (these three signify the same thing) by the guidance of reason, from the foundation of seeking one's own advantage. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 24) | |
| A reaction: The influence of stoicism is obvious here, that we live according to our nature, but our nature is rational. Spinoza doesn't seem to understand the pure altruism of lovers and parents. |
| 17189 | The essence of man is modifications of the nature of God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The essence of man consists of certain modifications of the attributes of God. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: Not an idea you hear much these days! |
| 17207 | By 'good' I mean what brings us ever closer to our model of human nature [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By 'good' I understand everything which we are certain is a means by which we may approach nearer and nearer to the model of human nature we set before us. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pref) | |
| A reaction: Unusual, and I'm not sure I understand it. His ideal largely concerns the intellect ruling the emotion |
| 8019 | Along with his pantheism, Spinoza equates ethics with the study of human nature [Spinoza, by MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The counterpart of understanding God as identical with Nature is understanding ethics as the study not of divine precepts but of our own nature and of what necessarily moves us. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: As stated here, this seems wrong. We should approach ethics through Aristotle, but not through Freud. That is, virtues can be inferred from human nature, but the actual facts of human nature may be grubby and unpalatable. |
| 17229 | If infancy in humans was very rare, we would consider it a pitiful natural defect [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a number of human beings were born adult, and only a few here and there were born infants, everyone would pity the infants, because we should then consider infancy not as a thing natural and necessary, but as a defect or fault of nature. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 06) | |
| A reaction: A lovely example of the new objectivity about human beings that emerged in the Enlightenment. He could have said the same about old age. |
| 4845 | We don't want things because they are good; we judge things to be good because we want them [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In no case do we strive for, wish for, long for, or desire anything, because we deem it to be good, but on the other hand we deem a thing to be good, because we strive for it, wish for it, long for it, or desire it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 09) | |
| A reaction: Shocking, coming from a leading rationalist philosopher. It sounds more like Hume. Surely rationalism should put our capacity for judgement centre-stage? But Spinoza was a determinist. Is Kantian freedom of judgement required? Deterministic judgement? |
| 4848 | Love is nothing else but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Love is nothing else but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 13) | |
| A reaction: Not a definition to give us inspirational guidance! Sounds like grumpy old Hobbes. This is the 'love' of a heroin addict for a syringe. Personally I see love as having a rational aspect, which puts it 'under the aspect of eternity' (as Spinoza said!). |
| 17217 | Love is joy with an external cause [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Love is joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 44) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't seem to quite capture the pain that some people find in love. |
| 7833 | Spinoza names self-interest as the sole source of value [Spinoza, by Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza names self-interest as the sole source of value. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: This looks like a very seventeenth century view. There was a steady move from cynicism through to the optimism of the eighteenth century. I just don't agree that self-interest is the "sole" source of value, though we should never underestimate it. |
| 17224 | If our ideas were wholly adequate, we would have no concept of evil [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If the human mind had none but adequate ideas, it would form no notion of evil. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 64) | |
| A reaction: There is some sort of notion of the wholly rational and benign community here, where living well is the single communal thought. It's sort of true. Good people don't even think about wickedness. |
| 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. |
| 4907 | The 'locus coeruleus' is one of several candidates for the brain's 'pleasure centre' [Carter,R] |
| Full Idea: Noradrenaline is an excitatory chemical that induces physical and mental arousal and heightens mood. Production is centred in an area of the brain called the locus coeruleus, which is one of several candidates for the brain's 'pleasure' centre. | |
| From: Rita Carter (Mapping the Mind [1998], p. 30) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me very morally desirable that people understand facts of this kind, so that they can be more objective about pleasure. Pleasure is one cog in the machine that makes a person, not the essence of human life. |
| 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. |
| 4851 | Reason demands nothing contrary to nature, and so it demands self-love [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: As reason makes no demands contrary to nature, it demands that every man should love himself, should seek that which is useful to him. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 18) | |
| A reaction: Maybe nature seems to demand self-love, but I don't see why reason should demand it, only why reason should not deny it. There is no point in denying something unavoidable. However, if we don't love ourselves, no one else is likely to. |
| 17220 | Self-satisfaction is the highest thing for which we can hope [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Self-satisfaction is the highest thing for which we can hope, for no one endeavours to preserve his being for the same of any end. [Pr 53: Humility is not a virtue] | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 52) | |
| A reaction: You can sense here that Spinoza was not a family man. |
| 4852 | Both virtue and happiness are based on the preservation of one's own being [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The foundation of virtue is the endeavour to preserve one's own being, and happiness consists in man's power of preserving his own being. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 18) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza never actually says so, but this seems to me to point to a Hobbesian social contract account of virtue - that is, that virtue is not an ideal, but a strategy. Personally I prefer the Aristotelian view, that it is an ideal revealed to us by nature. |
| 17210 | All virtue is founded on self-preservation [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The endeavour after self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 22) | |
| A reaction: This fits in perfectly with modern evolutionary ethics. |
| 21871 | The more we strive for our own advantage, the more virtuous we are [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The more each one strives, and is able, to seek his own advantage, that is, to preserve his being, the more he is endowed with virtue. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 20) | |
| A reaction: Beth Lord says this is his key ethical idea. Our conatus (striving) is the essence of our nature, and virtue is the perfect expression of our essence. Presumably the destruction of others in competition is also bad for us. |
| 17214 | To act virtuously is to act rationally [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: To act in conformity to virtue is to act according to the guidance of reason. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 36) | |
| A reaction: This Kantian ideal always seems to be missing foundational values or feelings. If something is judged to be rubbish, I throw it away. |
| 4856 | To live according to reason is to live according to the laws of human nature [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Man acts absolutely according to the laws of his nature, when he lives in obedience to reason. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: This is pure stoicism, and shows that Spinoza is in many ways the culmination of the seventeenth century stoic revival (e.g. in the art of Poussin). I love the idea that right reason and nature are in perfect harmony. I wonder why? |
| 17221 | A man ignorant of himself is ignorant of all of the virtues [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The man who is ignorant of himself is ignorant of the foundation of all the virtues, and consequently is ignorant of all the virtues. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 56) | |
| A reaction: This would appeal to Aristotle, for whom the social virtues are an aspect of one's own character, and not a calculation made about externals. |
| 17225 | In a free man, choosing flight can show as much strength of mind as fighting [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Flight at the proper time, just as well as fighting, is to be reckoned as showing strength of mind in a man who is free; that is to say, a free man chooses flight by the same strength or presence of mind as that by which he chooses battle. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 69) | |
| A reaction: I wonder why showing 'strength of mind' is a virtue? |
| 17218 | People who live according to reason should avoid pity [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A man who lives according to the dictates of reason endeavours as much as possible to prevent himself from being touched by pity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 50) | |
| A reaction: Since pity seems to give rise to some thoroughly good actions, I am not quite clear how reason would give rise to those same actions unaided. The alleviation of another's pain seems to have no pure motivation, if there is no empathy. |
| 17219 | A person unmoved by either reason or pity to help others is rightly called 'inhuman' [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: He who is moved neither by reason nor pity to be of any service to others is properly called inhuman; for he seems to be unlike a man. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 50) | |
| A reaction: Calling someone 'inhuman' doesn't seem like much of a condemnation. Nietzschean aristocrats may take pride in being above the mere 'human'. We gather here that if reason failed to motivate helping others, then pity would be a good thing. |
| 4857 | Pity is a bad and useless thing, as it is a pain, and rational people perform good deeds without it [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Pity is a pain, and is therefore in itself bad; only at the dictation of reason are we able to perform any action, which we know for certain to be good; thus, in a man who lives under the guidance of reason, pity in itself is useless and bad. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 50) | |
| A reaction: This is the essence of both Kant's and Bentham's views. It is, however, unclear why a wholly rational and unfeeling person should be motivated to prevent other people's pain. It also don't think it follows that because it is painful it is bad. |
| 17223 | Pity is not a virtue, but at least it shows a desire to live uprightly [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Pity, like shame, although it is not a virtue, is nevertheless good, in so far as it shows that a desire of living uprightly is present in the man who is possessed with shame. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 58) | |
| A reaction: And yet, in so far as I am rational, it seems that I should endeavour to suppress pity and replace it with right reason. Does Spinoza feel loyalty to the human race, I wonder? |
| 17228 | Rational people judge money by needs, and live contented with very little [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IVApp 29) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza himself lived up to this, being incredibly austere in his personal life. |
| 4853 | Rational people are self-interested, but also desire the same goods for other people [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men who are governed by reason - that is, who seek what is useful to them in accordance with reason - desire for themselves nothing, which they do not also desire for the rest of mankind, and so are just, faithful and honourable in their conduct. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 18) | |
| A reaction: This is pulling a rather Kantian rabbit out of a very social contract hat. It chimes in with Aristotle's account of self-interest, which leads to good civic virtues. True Kantianism is self-abnegating, but Spinoza lets selfishness take the lead. |
| 4858 | A rational person will want others to have the goods he seeks for himself [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: He who lives under the guidance of reason, desires for others the good which he seeks for himself. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 51) | |
| A reaction: Obviously a very Kantian idea. It implies that all rational people desire similar goods, but it is rational to collect stamps but not want other people to do so as well. I don't think you should want what I want for Christmas. |
| 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. |
| 19791 | Natural mankind is too fragmented for states of peace, or of war and enmity [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Men are not naturally enemies, for the simple reason that men living in their original state of independence do not have sufficiently constant relationships among themselves to bring about either a state of peace or a state of war. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.4) | |
| A reaction: He sees people in a state of nature as more or less solitary, and certainly in groups any more organised than a small family. One might then be in a state of permanent feud, rather than war, but without settlements people can move away. |
| 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. |
| 20501 | Rousseau assumes that laws need a people united by custom and tradition [Rousseau, by Wolff,J] |
| Full Idea: Rousseau assumes that there should already be bonds of custom and tradition uniting a people before it is fit to receive laws. | |
| From: report of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 3 'Rousseau' | |
| A reaction: In unusual circumstances, such as the arrival of a large population at a new colony, it might be that the laws would create the missing customs and traditions. |
| 7237 | The act of becoming 'a people' is the real foundation of society [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The act by which people become 'a people' is the real foundation of society. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.5) | |
| A reaction: The difficulty with many older countries is that it is impossible to identify such an act. Mythologies are created to fictionalise such acts; in Britain we refer back to King Alfred, and to Magna Carta. I suspect 1660 is the key year. |
| 19792 | To overcome obstacles, people must unite their forces into a single unified power [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Men have no other means of maintaining themselves but to form by aggregation a sum of forces that could gain the upper hand over the resistance of obstacles, so that their forces are directed by means of a single moving power and made to act in concert. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.6) | |
| A reaction: I prefer the Aristotelian view, that men are naturally gregarious and social (like bees and ants), so this act of solidarity in superfluous. A human people is only broken up by violence or disaster, like kicking over an ants' nest. |
| 19812 | Human nature changes among a people, into a moral and partial existence [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The establisher of a people is in a position to change human nature, to transform each individual into a part of a larger whole from which the individual receives his life and being, to substitute a partial and moral existence for natural independence. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.07) | |
| A reaction: The 'partial' part is obvious, in the compromises of society, but he says we only become moral in a people, and even more so when that people constitute a state. In the state of nature, morality seems to be unneeded, rather than absent. |
| 19814 | A state must be big enough to preserve itself, but small enough to be governable [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Like a well-formed man, there are limits to the size a state can have, so as not to be too large to be capable of being well governed, nor too small to be capable of preserving itself on its own. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.09) | |
| A reaction: Geneva was his model, and it is close to the size of a Greek polis. Presumably even Scotland would be thought ungovernable, never mind the United States. Luxembourg might be his ideal nowadays. Thousands of them! |
| 19815 | Too much land is a struggle, producing defensive war; too little makes dependence, and offensive war [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Too much land makes its defence is onerous, its cultivation inadequate, and its yield surplus, which causes defensive wars. If there is not enough land, the state is at the discretion of its neighbours for what it needs as surplus, causing offensive wars. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.10) | |
| A reaction: This sounds much too simplistic, like the causes of squabbles in a kindergarten. Certainly inequalities between nations (such as the USA and Mexico) produces frictions. Advances in agriculture technology have transformed this problem. |
| 19822 | If the state enlarges, the creators of the general will become less individually powerful [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The ratio of the sovereign to the subject increases in proportion to the number of citizens. The larger the state becomes, the less liberty there is. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.01) | |
| A reaction: This is because we remain equally subjected to the state whatever its size, but have less power to influence if there are more citizens. In modern states we all feel pathetically powerless, because of the numbers. |
| 19823 | If the population is larger, the government needs to be more powerful [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: In order to be good, the government must be relatively stronger in proportion as the populace is more numerous. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.01) | |
| A reaction: This could either imply a larger government, or more powerful laws for a fairly small government. Rousseau implies an almost mathematical law (of ratios) which determines the size of the government. |
| 7232 | Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.1) | |
| A reaction: I've always liked the second sentence, though it may be wishful thinking. It is probably rather fun owning slaves. The idea that man is 'born free' strikes me as nonsense. Man is a highly social animal, which only flourishes if enmeshed in a culture. |
| 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. |
| 7234 | No man has any natural authority over his fellows [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: No man has any natural authority over his fellows. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.4) | |
| A reaction: This is, of course, specifically denying that superior strength is the same as a natural right. 'Right' might be a better word than 'authority'. If strength doesn't bestow a natural right, then presumably neither does weakness. |
| 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. |
| 19816 | A state's purpose is liberty and equality - liberty for strength, and equality for liberty [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The greatest good and purpose of every legislative system boils down to liberty and equality. Liberty because dependence takes force from the body of the state, and equality because liberty cannot subsist without it. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.11) | |
| A reaction: The idea of 'taking force' seems to cover the modern welfare state. Rousseau likes robustly self-sufficient citizens. To ensure equality, however, it may be necessary to restrict liberty. |
| 7247 | The greatest social good comes down to freedom and equality [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The greatest good of all, which ought to be the goal of every system of law, comes down to two main objects, freedom and equality. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.11) | |
| A reaction: He goes on the specify the nature of the equality (Idea 7248). A rival pair of goods might be security and opportunity. On balance, I think I prefer my pair to Rousseau's. |
| 19838 | The measure of a successful state is increase in its population [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The government under which, without external means, without naturalisations, without colonies, the citizens become populous and multiply the most, is infallibly the best government. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.09) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure if this was true in the eighteenth century. Birth control has entirely changed the picture, since affluent people seem less inclined to breed. Presumably poverty increased famine and infant mortality. |
| 19848 | The sovereignty does not appoint the leaders [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The election of leaders is a function of government and not of the sovereignty. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], IV.3) | |
| A reaction: The point is that the general will only establishes the form of government, and not its content. In Britain we accept leaders who are appointed by their own party, and not by the electorate. |
| 20567 | Rousseau insists that popular sovereignty needs a means of expressing consent [Rousseau, by Oksala] |
| Full Idea: Rousseau's idea of popular sovereignty is a much more radical idea of self-government, because he insists that the consent of the people has to have a real means of expression. | |
| From: report of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762]) by Johanna Oksala - Political Philosophy: all that matters Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: Presumably Hobbes's 'contract' is forgotten in the mists of time, and ceases to be of any interest to a ruler (such as Charles I, who thought God must have appointed him). Perhaps Britain needs an annual ceremony reaffirming the monarch. |
| 19801 | Sovereignty is the exercise of the general will, which can never be delegated [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Since sovereignty is merely the exercise of the general will, it can never be alienated, and the sovereign which is only a collective being, cannot be represented by anything but itself. Power can perfectly well be transmitted, but not the will. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.01) | |
| A reaction: Part of the post-Hobbesian revolution, which sees sovereignty as residing in the will or consensus of the people, rather than in a divine right, or a right of power. In 2016 this isn't going very well. A people choosing to obey is thereby dissolved. |
| 19805 | Just as people control their limbs, the general-will state has total control of its members [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Just as nature gives each man an absolute power over all of his members, the social compact gives the body politic an absolute over all its members, which is the power directed by the general will, and bearing the name sovereignty. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.04) | |
| A reaction: A highly organic view of the state, and his favourite political metaphor. Does the metaphor include disease and madness? In the 1930s Germany went insane. The man may be happy, but are his limbs happy? If I burn my hand? Etc. |
| 19818 | Political laws are fundamental, as they firmly organise the state - but they could still be changed [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The laws regulating the relationship of the sovereign to the state are political laws, which are also fundamental. There is one way of organising a state, and people should stand by it. ...But a people is always in a position to change its laws. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.12) | |
| A reaction: Constitutions take on a sacred and inviolable quality, but Rousseau clearly thinks 'the Sabbath is made for man'. I think the USA is crazy not to change its constitution on the subject of bearing arms. |
| 19790 | Force can only dominate if it is seen as a right, and obedience as a duty [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The strongest is never strong enough to be master all the time, unless he transforms force into right and obedience into duty. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.3) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the people only accept force as a right and obedience as a duty if they appear to be in the people's interests - because the alternative looks worse. In other words, they are terrified. |
| 7233 | The social order is a sacred right, but based on covenants, not nature [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The social order is a sacred right which serves as a basis for all other rights; and as it is not a natural right, it must be one founded on covenants. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.1) | |
| A reaction: I think Rousseau is offering a contradiction here, when he suggests we have a 'sacred' right, which is nevertheless only based on 'covenants'. You can't have it both ways. This is an abuse of the word 'sacred'. |
| 19842 | The government is instituted by a law, not by a contract [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The act that institutes the government is not a contract but a law. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.18) | |
| A reaction: This is a law which implements the general will. There is nothing for citizens to make a contract with, since the sovereign is an abstraction, whereas a social contract is made between actual people. I like Rousseau's big idea. |
| 7239 | The social pact is the total subjection of individuals to the general will [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The essence of the social pact is that 'each one of us puts into the community his person and all his powers under the supreme direction of the general will; and as a body, we incorporate every member as an indivisible part of the whole'. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.6) | |
| A reaction: This is alarmingly like totally subjecting yourself to the 'Will of God', where the big problem is a bunch of priests (or worse) insisting that they know better than you do what that Will consists of. I have no idea what the current Will of Britain is. |
| 19793 | We need a protective association which unites forces, but retains individual freedom [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The problem is to find a form of association which protects with all common forces the person and goods of each associate, by means of which each one, while uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only himself and remains as free as before. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.6) | |
| A reaction: This is the clear purpose of Rousseau's famous concept of the General Will. The idea is that you submit to the general will because you helped formulate it, so you remain free. It is a lovely idea, but notoriously difficult to implement. |
| 7240 | To foreign powers a state is seen as a simple individual [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: In relation to a foreign power, the body politic is a simple entity, an individual. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.7) | |
| A reaction: This is strikingly contrary to the spirit of liberalism, in which I may be appalled by the foreign policy of my own government, and protest strongly against it. Rousseau might be considered as freedom's greatest champion, and greatest enemy! |
| 19795 | The act of association commits citizens to the state, and the state to its citizens [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The act of association is a reciprocal commitment of public and private individuals, and each individual, contracting with himself, is under a twofold commitment, as a member of the sovereign to individuals, and as a member of the state to the sovereign. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.7) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be expressed in modern terms as a mutual entailment of rights and duties. Where the traditional social contract is just between individuals, this seems to be a contract with a unified abstraction, of state commitment to citizens. |
| 19797 | Citizens must ultimately for forced to accept the general will (so freedom is compulsory!) [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: To avoid the general compact being an empty formula, it tacitly entails the commitment that whoever refuses to obey the general will will be forced to do so by the entire body. This means merely that he will be forced to be free. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.7) | |
| A reaction: Rousseau obviously enjoyed this paradox (which sounds like US foreign policy). Apart from anarchism, any political system will need a bit of force to back it up. Should democratic voting becoming compulsory, if the turnout declines too far? |
| 19796 | Individual citizens still retain a private will, which may be contrary to the general will [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Each individual can, as a man, have a private will contrary to or different from the general will that he has as a citizen. His private interest can speak to him in an entirely different manner than the common interest. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.7) | |
| A reaction: So why I accept the general will when these two clash (apart from threat of punishment - which may be capital if I am recalcitrant!)? Usually the general will is also for my good - but not always. Idealist love of the people? |
| 7244 | The general will is common interest; the will of all is the sum of individual desires [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The general will studies only common interest, while the will of all studies private interest, and is indeed no more than the sum of individual desires. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.03) | |
| A reaction: This invites the obvious liberal response (given later by utilitarians: Idea 3778) that there can be no more to any great 'will' than the sum of the individuals (which leads to Margaret Thatcher's famous 'there is no such thing as society'). |
| 19802 | The general will is always right, but the will of all can err, because it includes private interests [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The general will is always right. ....There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general will. The latter considers only the general interest, but the former considers private interest and is merely the sum of private wills. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.03) | |
| A reaction: Hence in order to get an expression of the general will, voters must exclusively focus on the general good. I do that in general elections, only to find that the people around me vote for their own interests. I wish we all did the same thing. |
| 19803 | If the state contains associations there are fewer opinions, undermining the general will [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: If there are partial association in the state ...there are no longer as many voters as there are men, but merely as many as there are associations. The differences become less numerous and yield a result that is less general. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.03) | |
| A reaction: This appears to entirely reject political parties, and similar groups, which he had seen forming in England. It goes with his interesting faith that the more separate views there are, the more the right choice will emerge. |
| 19804 | If a large knowledgeable population votes in isolation, their many choices will have good results [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: If, when a sufficiently informed populace deliberates, the citizens were to have no communication among themselves, the general will would always result from a large number of small differences, and the deliberations would always be good. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.03) | |
| A reaction: An obvious weak point in the electorate being well informed, if someone controls the sources of information. All the optimism of the Enlightenment is in this idea - that rational beings converge of the truth. All pubs closed in the month of an election? |
| 19808 | The general will changes its nature when it focuses on particulars [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Just as a private will cannot represent the general will, the general will, for its part, alters its nature when it has a particular object. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.04) | |
| A reaction: Is the general will, then, in danger of being much too general, because as soon as it gets close to anything practical it becomes distorted. It can design the constitution, but can it give a view on capital punishment, or is that too personal? |
| 7246 | The general will is always good, but sometimes misunderstood [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: By themselves the people always will what is good, but by themselves they do not always discern it. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.06) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a can of worms. It invites someone to step in as interpreter - a spin doctor, perhaps, or a newspaper proprietor. The first proposition strikes me as absurdly optimistic. Think of the people of Europe in August 1914. |
| 7250 | Laws are authentic acts of the general will [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The laws are nothing other than the authentic acts of the general will. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.12) | |
| A reaction: I wonder how you tell whether an act of the general will is 'authentic'? Nevertheless, in a modern democracy there seems a lot of truth in it; when controversial legislation is in the offing, governments have to be very attentive to the people. |
| 19844 | Assemblies must always confirm the form of government, and the current administration [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The opening of assemblies, which solely aim to preserve the social treaty, should always start with two separate propositions: 1) does it please the sovereign to preserve the present form of government?, 2) ...and to preserve the present administration? | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.18) | |
| A reaction: I would love it if the British people were allowed to discuss our form of government, but it now seems completely ossified. Being a monarchy, with the consequent patronage, almost guarantees this stasis. |
| 19846 | The more unanimous the assembly, the stronger the general will becomes [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The more harmony reigns in the assemblies, that is to say, the closer opinions come to unanimity, the more dominant too is the general will. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], IV.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems important, because the general will comes in degrees. A decision from the assembly would come with an index number indicating its strength. His dream is obviously to get close to unanimity on all decisions. Maybe! Brexit 52%! |
| 19817 | Citizens should be independent of each other, and very dependent on the state [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Each citizen should be perfectly independent of all the others and excessively dependent on the city. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.12) | |
| A reaction: Unlike many other of his pronouncements, this sounds a bit like a welfare state, though I doubt if he means that. Rousseau's state, founded by the general will, seems to have a quasi-religious quality, like a devotee's love of God. |
| 19840 | A citizen is a subject who is also sovereign [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The words 'subject' and 'sovereign' are identical correlatives, whose meaning is combined in the single word 'citizen'. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.13) | |
| A reaction: 'Citizen' was the favourite post-revolutionary label, probably based on this remark. I've heard foreigners tease Britons for being 'subjects' of the monarch, where they are pure citizens. But we are all subject to the law, made by others. |
| 19839 | The flourishing of arts and letters is too much admired [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Times in which letters and arts are known to have flourished have been admired too much. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.09 n9) | |
| A reaction: I assume most marxists would agree with this thought. Eighteenth century France is a good candidate for this judgement. The arts always needed patronage. |
| 19833 | Hereditary monarchy is easier, but can lead to dreadful monarchs [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Some crowns are hereditary. So by substituting the disadvantage of regencies for elections, an apparent tranquillity has been preferred to a wise election, the risk of having children, monsters or imbeciles for leaders is preferred to choosing good kings. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.06) | |
| A reaction: Henry VI is the prime English example. The regents feuded, and then when he grew up it became obvious that he was hopeless. How many English monarchs would have been elected? But we would have missed Good Queen Bess. |
| 19834 | Attempts to train future kings don't usually work, and the best have been unprepared [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: A great deal of effort is made to teach young princes the art of ruling. It does not appear that this education does them any good. It would be better to teach them the art of obeying. The most celebrated kings were not brought up to reign. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.06) | |
| A reaction: King Alfred is our prime example of a success, But if only we had had Charles I's late brother Henry, instead the untrained Charles. |
| 19798 | Ancient monarchs were kings of peoples; modern monarchs more cleverly rule a land [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Ancient monarchs called themselves King of the Persians or Scythians, regarding themselve merely as the leaders of men. Today's monarchs more shrewdly call themselves King of France or England. By holding the land, they are sure of the inhabitants. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.9) | |
| A reaction: This matches the Germans being earlier defined by speaking the language, and now defined by a territory. It is more to do with the rise of the modern state than to do with the shrewdness of the monarchs. |
| 19831 | The highest officers under a monarchy are normally useless; the public could choose much better [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Those who attain the highest positions in monarchies are most often petty bunglers, swindlers and intriguers, whose talents serve only to display their incompetence to the public. The populace is much less often in error in its choice than the prince. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.06) | |
| A reaction: Many monarchs have had famously good advisers, such as Lord Burleigh. The worst thing about bad leaders, at any level, is the bad appointments they make. |
| 19829 | Natural aristocracy is primitive, and hereditary is dreadful, but elective aristocracy is best [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: There are three sorts of aristocracy: natural, elective, and hereditary. The first is suited only to simple people; the third is the worst of any government. The second is the best; it is aristocracy properly so-called. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.05) | |
| A reaction: This seems like the modern idea of 'meritocracy'. The Chinese civil service exams, introduced into Europe in the nineteenth century. |
| 7249 | Natural aristocracy is primitive, hereditary is bad, and elective aristocracy is the best [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: There are three types of aristocracy, natural, elective and hereditary. The first is suited only to primitive peoples; the third is the worst of all governments; the second is the best, and this is aristocracy in the true sense of the word. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.05) | |
| A reaction: Presumably he means what we call 'meritocracy', and it seems a bit optimistic to hope that democracy will deliver that. I don't think Plato would expect a democracy to elect his Guardians. |
| 19830 | Large states need a nobility to fill the gap between a single prince and the people [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: With a large state in the hands of one man there is too great a distance between the prince and the people, and the state lacks cohesiveness. This requires intermediate orders of nobility to fill them. A small state is ruined by all these social levels. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.06) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This seems to be a justification for the French ancien regime. Presumably this bit was not quoted much in 1789. Why must the gap be filled by 'nobility'? What about an elected house of lords? |
| 19820 | The state has a legislature and an executive, just like the will and physical power in a person [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Every free action has a moral cause, the will, and a physical cause, the power to act. ...The body politic has the same moving causes, namely the legislative power, and executive power. Nothing should be done without their concurrence. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.01) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This terminology is now standard in political philosophy. An absolute monarch like Edward III presumably embodies both branches. |
| 19827 | Law makers and law implementers should be separate [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: It is not good for the one who makes the laws to execute them. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.04) | |
| A reaction: He doesn't give his reasons here, but this piece of wisdom is widely supported. There is a problem when the executive find themselves trying to enforce bad, discredited laws. Maybe the police know best what the law should say? Or not! |
| 19821 | I call the executive power the 'government', which is the 'prince' - a single person, or a group [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: I call 'government' or supreme administration the legitimate exercise of executive power; I call 'prince' or magistrate the man or body charged with that administration. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.01) | |
| A reaction: Whether the prince is one person or many is left up to the legislative body, which is the general will. Rousseau has no view on the matter. |
| 19824 | Large populations needs stronger control, which means power should be concentrated [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The government becomes slack as the magistrates are multiplied, and the more numerous the people the greater should be the increase of repressive force - ...so the number of leaders should decrease in proportion to the increase of the number of people. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.02) | |
| A reaction: This bit sounds Stalinist! A vast population seems to require a dictator. When his state is Geneva-sized Rousseau seems comfortable, but his plans for bigger states are a bit disturbing. |
| 19826 | Democracy for small states, aristocracy for intermediate, monarchy for large [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Democratic government is suited to small states, aristocratic government to states of intermediate size, and monarchical government to large ones. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.03) | |
| A reaction: Is he thinking of France for the large state? What would he have made of 1789? Does this progression go on to increase the power of the monarch as the state gets even larger, into dictatorship? |
| 19837 | If inhabitants are widely dispersed, organising a revolt is much more difficult [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The greater the area occupied by the same number of inhabitants, the more difficult it becomes to revolt, since concerted action cannot be taken promptly and secretly. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.09) | |
| A reaction: Revolutions since then have all occurred in large cities, which have become huge. The dispersal of the rest of the population (as in Russia) doesn't matter. |
| 19843 | The state is not bound to leave civil authority to its leaders [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The state is no more bound to leave civil authority to its leaders than it is to leave military authority to its generals. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.18) | |
| A reaction: He assumes that a meeting of the citizens can articulate a new expression of the general will, but this idea also endorses revolution, if the prince or magistrates refuse to call this national AGM. |
| 19825 | If the sovereign entrusts government to at least half the citizens, that is 'democracy' [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The sovereign can entrust the government to the entire people or to the majority of them. This is given the name 'democracy'. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.03) | |
| A reaction: Note that democracy is here a form for the executive, not for the legislature. I take it that the general will must come close to unanimity, and a mere 51% support for fundamental legislation would never do. Increase the percentage with the importance? |
| 19832 | Democratic elections are dangerous intervals in government [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Elections leave dangerous intervals and are stormy. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.06) | |
| A reaction: American presidential elections partially paralyse government for about nine months. In a settled democracy the process of election seems OK. The immediate aftermath can be worse. Losers may refuse to accept the result. |
| 7243 | Silence of the people implies their consent [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The silence of the people permits the assumption that the people consents. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.01) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a crucial principle for a democracy, because it says that the democratic way of life is much more than elections. Each citizen has a duty to bravely speak out; the more citizens willing to do this, the less bravery is required. |
| 7251 | The English are actually slaves in between elections [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during the election of Members of Parliament; as soon as the Members are elected, the people is enslaved. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.15) | |
| A reaction: Rousseau seems to be hoping for some sort of direct democracy. We could probably set up a direct democracy, by implementing regular voting over the internet, but I doubt if Rousseau would like that either. I certainly wouldn't. |
| 7238 | Minorities only accept majority-voting because of a prior unanimous agreement [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: If there were no earlier agreement, how could there be any obligation on the minority to accept the decision of the majority? The law of majority-voting rests on a covenant, implying at least one previous occasion of unanimity. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.5) | |
| A reaction: In Britain this points to the Reform Acts of 1832 onwards as crucial. However, whenever democracy is newly introduced into a country (Iraq being a current spectacular case) there is usually a minority opposed to it, who are forcibly overruled. |
| 19828 | Democracy leads to internal strife, as people struggle to maintain or change ways of ruling [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: No government is so subject to civil wars and internal agitations as a democratic or popular one, since there is none that tends so forcefully and continuously to change its form, or that demands greater vigilance and courage to keep its form. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.05) | |
| A reaction: We would like to think that a robust democracy, with a free press, can cope with all this strife and still survive. He may be thinking of the English Civil War. Democracies seem to be more conservative about the structure of government. |
| 19835 | When ministers change the state changes, because they always reverse policies [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Each revolution in the ministry produces a revolution in the state, since the maxim common to all ministers and nearly all kings is to do the reverse of their predecessor in everything. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.06) | |
| A reaction: Most parents bring up their children by trying to correct mistakes their own parents made. British democracy is rife with this desperate need for a new government to make its mark, because they want to win the next election. |
| 19849 | In early theocracies the god was the king, and there were as many gods as nations [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: At first men had no other kings but gods, and no other government than a theocratic one. ....By the mere fact that a god was placed at the head of every political society, it followed that there were as many gods as there were peoples. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], IV.8) | |
| A reaction: He must be thinking of the Old Testament histories here. (see Spinoza on that!). He says that the modern idea that these were all really the same god is ridiculous. |
| 17227 | Slavery is a disgraceful crime [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Slavery is a disgraceful crime. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IVApp 21) | |
| A reaction: Note the date of this - when the slave trade is just getting going, and long before it is threatened or criticised. |
| 19847 | We can never assume that the son of a slave is a slave [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: To decide that the son of a slave is born a slave is to decide that he is not a man. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], IV.2) | |
| A reaction: Obviously this is because men are 'born free', though I am not clear how that maxim can be reached. I take it for granted that African slaves in the Americas found themselves born into slavery. No justification was required. |
| 19841 | Sometimes full liberty is only possible at the expense of some complete enslavement [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: There are some unfortunate circumstances where one's liberty can be preserved only at the expense of someone else's, and where the citizen can be perfectly free only if the slave is completely enslaved. Such was the situation in Sparta. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.15) | |
| A reaction: Rousseau wrote just before the moment when it was seen that slavery in European empires might be abolished, but he was not in the forefront of thought on this one. Greek philosophy would probably never have happened without slavery. |
| 7242 | Appetite alone is slavery, and self-prescribed laws are freedom [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: To be governed by appetite alone is slavery, while obedience to a law one prescribes to oneself is freedom. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.8) | |
| A reaction: An interesting formulation, sitting somewhere between Aristotle and Kant. The problem is to find a metaethic which will justify the prescription and nature of the self-imposed law. |
| 19800 | The social compact imposes conventional equality of rights on people who may start unequally [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Instead of destroying natural equality, the fundamental compact substitutes a moral and legitimate equality to any natural physical inequality. ...so that men all become equal by convention and by right. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.9) | |
| A reaction: This does not pretend that equality is a natural right. The imposition of equality is virtually the main point of forming a state. Effectively, the state operates like an insurance company, treating all contributors as equal. |
| 7248 | No citizen should be rich enough to buy another, and none so poor as forced to sell himself [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Where wealth is concerned, no citizen should be rich enough to buy another, and none should be so poor as to be forced to sell himself. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.11) | |
| A reaction: Rousseau is thinking of slavery, but this also points to prostitution as a key indicator of social equality. In Victorian Britain it seems that extensive prostituion was unavoidable; nowadays it looks more like a voluntary choice (for indigenous Britons). |
| 19794 | If we all give up all of our rights together to the community, we will always support one another [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The social compact reduces to a single clause, namely the total alienation of each associate, together with all of his rights, to the entire community. Since this condition is equal for everyone, no one has an interest in making it burdensome for others. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.6) | |
| A reaction: He speaks elsewhere of basic natural rights which can never be alienated, such as self-defence. It is what small groups do all the time, if they start off as equals. Difficult to manage with large groups. Factions are the problem. |
| 7241 | In society man loses natural liberty, but gains a right to civil liberty and property [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and the absolute right to anything that tempts him; what he gains is civil liberty and the legal rights of propery in what he possesses. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.8) | |
| A reaction: It is an appealing idea that the purpose of society is to increase liberty, not to restrict it. That, on the whole, is my view. American libertarianism opens up the world to gun crime, vigilantes, pornographers and bounty-hunters. |
| 19806 | We alienate to society only what society needs - but society judges that, not us [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Each person alienates, by the social compact, only that portion of his power, his goods, and liberty whose use is of consequence to the community; but we must also grant that only the sovereign is the judge of what is of consequence. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.04) | |
| A reaction: The weakness here is how society sees its needs. He seems to assume that two societies will arrive at almost identical general wills, but Spartans, Prussians and Serbs may require the lives of your children for the state. |
| 19799 | Private property must always be subordinate to ownership by the whole community [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Each private individual's right to his very own store is always subordinate to the community's right to all, without which there could be neither solidity in the social fabric nor real force in the exercise of sovereignty. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.9) | |
| A reaction: This may sound a bit drastic, but every country practices this principle, seen in compulsory purchase orders (e.g. to build a railway line). In liberal democracies you expect good compensation. In communist Roumania you were just moved. Also taxation. |
| 19819 | The state ensures liberty, so civil law separates citizens, and binds them to the state [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The relationship of members to each other should be as small as possible, and as large as possible to the entire body. ...Only the force of the state brings about the liberty of its members. From this relationship civil laws arise. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.12) | |
| A reaction: I'm guessing that these laws could be said mainly to prescribe both our rights and our duties. His four types of law are political, civil, criminal, and customary. |
| 7245 | Natural justice, without sanctions, benefits the wicked, who exploit it [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The laws of natural justice, lacking any natural sanctions, are unavailing among men. In fact, such laws merely benefit the wicked and injure the just, since the just respect them while others do not do so in return. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.06) | |
| A reaction: This seems a very accurate observation, and points us towards either contracts, or a justification of the use of force by good people. |
| 19809 | We accept the death penalty to prevent assassinations, so we must submit to it if necessary [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Whoever wills the end also wills the means. ...The death penalty inflicted on criminals can be viewed from more or less this point of view. It is in order to avoid being the victim of an assassin that a person consents to die, were he to become one. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.05) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be roughly the spirit in which Socrates submitted to his death. I doubt whether many criminals agree with harsh punishments dished out to other criminals who get caught. |
| 19810 | A trial proves that a criminal has broken the social treaty, and is no longer a member of the state [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The legal proceeding and judgement are the proofs and the declaration that a criminal has broken the social treaty, and consequently that he is no longer a member of the state. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.05) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a plausible rationalisation of capital punishment, but what about lesser crimes. Is the interior of a prison a sort of temporary exile from the state? Hence the significance of whether prisoners are allowed to vote. But 19811. |
| 19811 | Only people who are actually dangerous should be executed, even as an example [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: There is no wicked man who could not be made good for something. One has the right to put to death, even as an example, only someone who cannot be preserved without danger. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], II.05) | |
| A reaction: This formulation implies that we could execute a dangerous person as a deterrent, even though they were not guilty of this particular crime. I suspect that Rousseau was too nice to go through with that. |
| 7236 | War gives no right to inflict more destruction than is necessary for victory [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: War gives no right to inflict any more destruction than is necessary for victory. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], I.4) | |
| A reaction: This is the principle at stake in discussion of the bombing of Germany in 1942-5. We all seem to agree with this principle, and are shocked by breaches of it, but I am not sure why. Destruction must be a fundamentally bad thing - a basic value. |
| 23607 | Wars are between States, not people, and the individuals are enemies by accident [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: War is something that occurs not between man and man, but between States. The individuals who become involved in it are enemies only by accident. A State can have as its enemies only other States, not men at all. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], p.249), quoted by Jeff McMahan - Killing in War 2.5 | |
| A reaction: This is the classic statement of the collectivist view, which goes on to assert that the morality of warfare is quite different from ordinary morality. McMahan argues against this view, very persuasively. |
| 19850 | By separating theological and political systems, Jesus caused divisions in the state [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: In separating the theological system from the political system, Jesus made the state to cease being united and caused internal divisions. Since this new idea of an otherwordly kingdom had never entered the heads of pagans, they saw Christians as rebels. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], IV.8) | |
| A reaction: This is the sort of stuff that made Rousseau a vast number of enemies, which embittered him. It is the sort of cool assessment which became commonplace in Germany sixty year later. |
| 19851 | Every society has a religion as its base [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: No state has ever been founded without religion serving as its base. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], IV.8) | |
| A reaction: It is not clear to me that the ancient Greek cities had religion as a 'base', though they all had a religion, and expected conformity. Religion doesn't figure much in Thucydides. Communist Russia was the first explicitly atheist state, I think. |
| 19852 | Civil religion needs one supreme god, an afterlife, justice, and the sanctity of the social contract [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Dogmas of civil religion should be simple. The existence of a powerful, intelligent, beneficent divinity that foresees and provides; the life to come; the happiness of the just; the punishment of the wicked; the sanctity of the social contract and laws. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], IV.8) | |
| A reaction: Notice that he gratuitously makes the social contract sacred (even though it can be voluntarily abandoned, and the general will can be changed). Presumably the foundation of any society, such as the ballot box, has to be sacred. |
| 19853 | All religions should be tolerated, if they tolerate each other, and support citizenship [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Tolerance should be shown to all religions which tolerate other religions, so long as their dogmas contain nothing contrary to the duties of a citizen. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], IV.8) | |
| A reaction: Quite a good guideline for the attitude of western countries to middle eastern religious practices which arrive in their midst. Rousseau says the state has a minimal core religion (Idea 19852), which thus tolerates most other religions. |
| 19836 | The amount of taxation doesn't matter, if it quickly circulates back to the citizens [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: It is not on the basis of the amount of taxation that the burden is measured, but on the basis of the path they have to travel in order to return to the hands from which they came. If circulation is prompt and regular, the amount one pays is unimportant. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], III.08) | |
| A reaction: So the problem is when the government wants to build up a surplus, or pay off debts (or is corrupt, or even if it is suspected of corruption). |
| 17226 | The best use of talent is to teach other people to live rationally [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: There is nothing by which a person can better show how much skill and talent he possesses than by so educating men that at last they will live under the direct authority of reason. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IVApp 09) | |
| A reaction: Speaking as a retired philosophy teacher, I think this is an excellent idea, but then I would, wouldn't I? What if you turn a nice warm-hearted friendly young person into a chillingly detached heartless reasoner? |
| 4854 | It is impossible that the necessity of a person's nature should produce a desire for non-existence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: That a man, from the necessity of his own nature, should endeavour to become non-existent, is as impossible as that something should be made out of nothing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 20) | |
| A reaction: At first glance this is very paradoxical, but it fits with evolutionary theory, which seems to make it almost inconceivable to naturally desire suicide. The desire to live is universal, and only circumstances can create an artifiical contradictory desire. |
| 17215 | Animals feel, but that doesn't mean we can't use them for our pleasure and profit [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I by no means deny that brutes feel, but I do deny that on this account it is unlawful for us to consult our own profit by using them for our own pleasure and treating them as is most convenient for us, inasmuch as they do not agree in nature with us. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 37) | |
| A reaction: Something a bit chilling about this. What if I decided that some people did 'not agree with my nature'? Presumably pleasure includes hunting? What was his attitude to bear-baiting? |
| 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). |
| 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. |
| 7835 | The key question for Spinoza is: is his God really a God? [Stewart,M on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The single most important question that can be raised about Spinoza's philosophy is: Is his God really a God? | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.13 | |
| A reaction: Novalis called Spinoza a "God-intoxicated man", but this question shows why many of Spinoza's contemporaries (and later) considered him to be an atheist. The general modern answer by commentators to the question appears to be 'No!'. |
| 7571 | Spinoza's God is not a person [Spinoza, by Jolley] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza's God is not a person. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: This will be the central reason why Spinoza was so controversial, because such a view instantly makes religion pointless, despite retaining a core of theism. |
| 12928 | Spinoza's God is just power and necessity, without perfection or wisdom [Leibniz on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The Spinozist view allows God infinite power only, not granting him either perfection or wisdom, and dismisses searches for final causes and explains everything through brute necessity. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Gottfried Leibniz - New Essays on Human Understanding 73 | |
| A reaction: It takes a genius like Leibniz to explain so clearly what Spinoza was up to. Some call Spinoza 'God-intoxicated', but others say he is an incipient atheist. The latter is probably closer to the truth. |
| 4823 | God does not act according to the freedom of the will [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: God does not act according to the freedom of the will. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 32) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am struck by the idea that even if God had 'free will', I can't see how He would be sure of the fact (the unperceived puppetmaster!). However, I have actually come to the conclusion that a fotally 'free' will is an incoherent concept. |
| 19435 | God is not loveable for producing without choice and by necessity; God is loveable for his goodness [Leibniz on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: There is nothing loveable in a God who produces without choice and by necessity, without discrimination of good and evil. The true love of God is founded not in necessity but in goodness. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 28) by Gottfried Leibniz - Comments on Spinoza's Philosophy | |
| A reaction: This responds to Spinoza's claims about an 'intellectual' love of God. But why do we love people. It is possible that it is always for their goodness, but might we not love a great mathematician, simply for their wonderful mathematics? |
| 7609 | God is the sum and principle of all eternal laws [Spinoza, by Armstrong,K] |
| Full Idea: For Spinoza God is simply the principle of law, the sum of all the eternal laws in existence. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Karen Armstrong - A History of God Ch.9 | |
| A reaction: This seems at variance with the usual view, that Spinoza identifies God with the single substance which makes up nature, and that he is hence a pantheist. Compare the above idea with Idea 4829, for example. Spinoza's God seems close to Aristotle's. |
| 17172 | God is a substance with infinite attributes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By God, I understand Being absolutely infinite, that is to say, substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 6) |
| 17231 | God feels no emotions, of joy or sorrow [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: God is free from passions, neither is He affected with any affect of joy or sorrow. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 17) | |
| A reaction: The general Christian view is that God has great compassion for human suffering, as Jesus appears to have had. Spinoza was very very intellectual. |
| 4314 | God is wholly without passions, and strictly speaking does not love anyone [Spinoza, by Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: God, asserts Spinoza, is wholly without passions, and strictly speaking does not love anyone. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.179 | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a much more plausible conception of God than the anthropomorphic one of him as the perfect parent who dotes on his offspring. |
| 21859 | God has no purpose, because God lacks nothing [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If God works to obtain an end, He necessarily seeks something of which he stands in need. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: The point is that a being with infinite attributes cannot be in need of anything, and hence God merely exists, but does not have a purpose. Hence falling in line with God's purposes cannot be an aim of a human religion. |
| 4825 | To say that God promotes what is good is false, as it sets up a goal beyond God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Those who maintain that God acts in all things with a view of promoting what is good are very far from the truth. For they seem to set up something beyond God, which does not depend on God, but which God looks to as an exemplar or goal. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: That is, Spinoza agrees with Euthyphro, and disagrees with Socrates (see Idea 337). Personally I agree with Socrates, but then I am not 'intoxicated with God' as Spinoza was. If God isn't good, why worship Him? |
| 21856 | Spinoza says a substance of infinite attributes cannot fail to exist [Spinoza, by Lord] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza does not argue from the concept of God to his existence; he argues that a substance of infinite attributes cannot not exist. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 6) by Beth Lord - Spinoza's Ethics 1 P11 | |
| A reaction: Lord is explicit that this is NOT the argument used by Anselm and Descartes. I'm not clear why there has to be a substance of infinite attributes, but presumably that is explained somewhere. |
| 17178 | Denial of God is denial that his essence involves existence, which is absurd [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: God, or substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists. If this be denied, conceive that God does not exist. But then his essence does not involve existence, which is absurd. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: Not a very powerful version of the ontological argument. Gaunilo offered an island which has existence as part of its essence, which would pass the same test. |
| 21858 | God is being as such, and you cannot conceive of the non-existence of being [Spinoza, by Lord] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza argues that you cannot conceive the non-existence of God because you cannot conceive the non-existence of being. God, or a substance of infinite attributes, is being as such. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 11) by Beth Lord - Spinoza's Ethics I P11 | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why I cannot conceive of nothing whatever existing. I can conceive of my fridge being empty, so conceiving non-being is not off limits. Not that inconceivability is an infallible guide to impossibility… |
| 4820 | God must necessarily exist, because no reason can be given for his non-existence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing necessarily exists if no cause or reason be granted which prevents its existence. No cause can be given which prevents the existence of God, or which destroys his existence, so we must conclude that he necessarily exists. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: I can't think of any reason why there shouldn't be a giant rat which fills a large proportion of the universe. Indeed, it may be the missing 'dark matter'. So presumably it has necessary existence. Proving non-existence is obviously tricky. |
| 17169 | Some things makes me conceive of it as a thing whose essence requires its existence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By cause of itself, I understand that, whose essence involves existence; or that, whose nature cannot be conceived unless existing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 1) | |
| A reaction: Obviously he has God in mind, but might this apply to abstract existence. Can I conceive of the number seven, while also conceiving that there is no such number? Compare Pegasus. |
| 4817 | If a thing can be conceived as non-existing, its essence does not involve existence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a thing can be conceived as non-existing, its essence does not involve existence. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Ax 7) | |
| A reaction: This points straight at the modern question of whether conceivability is a sufficient test for possibility. Personally I am close to Hume on this one. Necessary existence may not be ridiculous, but it is beyond human capacity to assert its occurrence. |
| 4827 | Priests reject as heretics anyone who tries to understand miracles in a natural way [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Anyone who seeks the true cause of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is denounced as an impious heretic by those whom the masses adore as interpreters of nature and gods. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: A rather bitter personal remark, by someone who was driven out of Amsterdam as a heretic. Presumably the heresy is not aggressive a priori naturalism, but mere openness to the possibility of natural explanations of miracles. |
| 17180 | Everything is in God, and nothing exists or is thinkable without God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can either be or be conceived without God. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 15) | |
| A reaction: Presumably atheists are not very good at conceiving, because they don't understand properly. This is the pantheism for which Spinoza became famous, or notorious. Critics said he was a closet atheist. |
| 17181 | God is the efficient cause of essences, as well as of existences [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: God is not only the efficient cause of the existence of things, but also of their essence. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 25) | |
| A reaction: This is close to Leibniz's view that the so-called 'laws of nature' are not imposed by God from outside, but are rooted with nature, in the essences of what has been created (which is modern scientific essentialism). |
| 12757 | That God is the substance of all things is an ill-reputed doctrine [Leibniz on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: That God is the very nature or substance of all things is the sort of doctrine of ill repute which a recent writer, subtle indeed, though profane, either introduced to the world or revived. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I) by Gottfried Leibniz - On Nature Itself (De Ipsa Natura) §08 | |
| A reaction: This is clearly a comment on Spinoza. Leibniz seems to have spent his whole life in shock after his meeting with Spinoza. |
| 4829 | The human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: What is the difference between being a part of something which totally fails to communicate with the whole, and being separate from the whole? Spinoza's proposal strikes me as daft. |
| 7836 | In Spinoza, one could substitute 'nature' or 'substance' for the word 'God' throughout [Spinoza, by Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: In Spinoza's 'Ethics' one can substitute the word "Nature" (or "Substance", or even simply an X) for God throughout, and the logic of the argument changes little, if at all. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.13 | |
| A reaction: This claim, if correct, is the clearest statement of why we should really consider Spinoza one of the first atheists, despite his endless use of the word 'God'. |
| 7252 | A tyrant exploits Christians because they don't value this life, and are made to be slaves [Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: The Christian spirit is too favourable to tyranny for tyranny not to take advantage of it. True Christians are made to be slaves; they know it and hardly care; this short life has too little value in their eyes. | |
| From: Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract (tr Cress) [1762], IV.8) | |
| A reaction: This is strikingly close to Nietzsche's verdict on Christianity, that it is the essence of slave morality. It has certainly been my experience that Christians tend to be much more reluctant than other people to stand up to authority. |
| 21876 | After death, something eternal remains of the mind [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but something of it remains which is eternal. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 23) | |
| A reaction: This sounds contrary to Spinoza's monism of mind and body, but he seems to mean little more than that minds are reabsorbed into the whole. See Beth Lord's commentary [p.146]. Compare stoics on the subject. |
| 7831 | Spinoza's theory of mind implies that there is no immortality [Spinoza, by Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: A final (and for his contemporaries, dreadful) consequence of Spinoza's theory of the mind is that there is no personal immortality. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: For Spinoza's view of the mind, see Idea 4308. The denial of immortality would also seem to be a consequence of modern emergentist views of the mind, which is espoused by religious people looking for a compromise between dualism and science. |