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Baruch Spinoza and the art of thinking in dangerous times
- mitchbob 3y agohttps://archive.ph/2024.02.05-142256/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/02/12/baruch-spinoza-and-the-art-of-thinking-in-dangerous-times https://archive.ph/2024.02.05-142256/https://www.newyorker.c...
- fiforpg 3y agoIn addition to being a very independent philosophical thinker, Spinoza was deeply interested in more practical study of nature, something that may have had to do with his day job as a lens grinder. He published two short texts on probability and optics of the rainbow (the latter following Descartes). A philosopher interested in the real world: something that became quite a rarity in later times...
- lukan 3y ago"There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly." Henry David Thoreau
- csours 3y ago> ... live [..] a life of simplicity, independence, ... Can one live a life of simultaneous simplicity and independence? It is commonly held that Thoreau faked it.
- lukan 3y ago"It is commonly held that Thoreau faked it. " I think that is debatable and not concensus. But I actually do not know much about him besides the quote I shared. But I do know, that he tried to live his philosophy in real life and not just make nice sounding words, to make people think he is interesting. "Can one live a life of simultaneous simplicity and independence?" One can try. I know some people who succeded, but lots who failed.
- csours 3y agoMaybe it is the effort and mindset that make the difference and not the outcome.
- beedeebeedee 3y ago> It is commonly held that Thoreau faked it. That's pretty cynical and just a way to discard his (and others') beliefs. No human is independent categorically, but he did become much more independent in his beliefs and actions than most people. He might have done his laundry at his mom's house (or whatever facts people trot out to diminish him), but he did hike and paddle through the wilderness, and take deeply unpopular stands against war and other things. He is an admirable person who is worthy of paying attention to, and even emulating to achieve independent thought.
- csours 3y ago> That's pretty cynical Yes > and just a way to discard his No > He might have done his laundry at his mom's house Removing his independence and adding making someone else responsible for complexity. It is a beautiful story. Lots of people have told beautiful stories. Some of those beautiful stories have been used in movements that have done a great deal of harm. Thus the cynicism. If a beautiful story resonates with you, by all means enjoy it.
- u32480932048 3y agoI don't get the reflexive antipathy some people have towards any notion of independence or self-sufficiency. The most common class of comment is "tHeYrE nOt 100.0% sElF-rElIaNt, acktchually", which I'm not sure is an expectation that anyone actually has, as evidenced by the numerous discussions on buying gold, trade/barter, swap meets, etc. Any beautiful stories about dependence?
- verisimi 3y agoI like the quote, but except this bit which is terrible, and undermines it all: > Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. Living is still admirable. Professing without living is just so many words.
- slumberdisrupt 3y agoWhere exactly do you suppose philosophy went wrong? In any case I've heard this assertion from Neil deGrasse Tyson for years; it's philistine. The phrasing of the assertion totally gives away its limits: what is the real world, and who else but a philosopher is equipped to even ask that question? Then the question then becomes its opposite: where have the natural scientists gone who are interested in the real world?
- techno_tsar 3y agoThe assertion is not grounded in reality at all. It’s a common myth among people who live in a STEM echo chamber. Personally, I don’t know why people who haven’t even done more than a cursory overview of philosophy feel entitled to make meta philosophical claims. My only explanation is that it’s a way to defend a dogma of naive scientism. Why? I don’t know, probably the same reasons why people cling onto religion.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- slumberdisrupt 3y agoI brought up Tyson because I watched a video recently where this guy argues that this whole perspective is an especially American phenomenon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD0S1rH8AiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD0S1rH8AiE I'm sympathetic to this even if this lethargic attitude goes back to the religious period as you say. We can at least find the roots of it in the Enlightenment with Newton's "hypotheses non fingo".
- nathan_compton 3y ago> A philosopher interested in the real world: something that became quite a rarity in later times... Absolutely ridiculous. There are tons of contemporary, living, philosophers who are interested in literally every single one of the physical sciences. There are entire departments which specialize in philosophy of physics. There are philosophers that study biology, brains, computers, etc etc etc. I've literally been in rooms where you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a philosopher deeply interested in physical reality.
- mkoubaa 3y agoI disagree. Deeply interested in the idea of biology but not interested enough to work on biology puts you firmly out of the Spinoza category.
- nathan_compton 3y agoYou can work on biology without physically being in a lab. Many neuroscientist spend more time writing simulations and analyzing data than they spend in a lab. Like how much time in the lab do you require at a minimum to be a "bona fide" "serious" philosopher. Like I seriously want to know: how many philosophers have you personally met? How many conferences have you attended? How many papers did you read this year? Because only a person barely aware of what philosophers get up to could possibly believe that they aren't interested in reality.
- mkoubaa 3y agoI consider writing simulations and analyzing data as working on biology. I don't consider pontificating about biology to be.
- nathan_compton 3y agoExcuse my plain language, but it is dumb to baldly assert that all philosophy is pontificating.
- ramraj07 3y agoYeah I gave up after trying to ask this simple question in philosophy forums: is there a justification for eating meat? And for the most part the answers from actual academics is no. Then the simple follow up is are you vegetarian. The answer is very commonly no. So everything is just theory for them. Like a cardiologist with heart disease (also common). No wonder it's all gone south.
- bloat 3y agohttps://www.routledge.com/Why-Its-OK-to-Eat-Meat/Shahar/p/book/9780367172763 https://www.routledge.com/Why-Its-OK-to-Eat-Meat/Shahar/p/bo... Why It's Ok To Eat Meat By a philosophy professor at the University of New Orleans.
- eynsham 3y agoThere is more to philosophy than moral philosophy, and I don’t see why philosophical findings would be devalued by the moral failings of philosophers any more than cardiological findings would be devalued by the alleged unhealthiness of cardiologists.
- ramraj07 3y agoI totally see them being linked and as one of the reasons why there's a general failing of trust on expertise. Here's a clearer analogy; would you sign up with an obese personal trainer? I mean you might say that you personally would but the point stands that most people won't. It's not like I'm asking the philosopher's to cut a toe off to prove their mettle. This is such a simple lifestyle choice that millions of people take for ethical moral reasons anyway. Arguing that they're in a different branch of philosophy also sounds disengenous. I can try and give analogies for that we well but something tells there'll be mor nitpicking.
- eynsham 3y agoIf the only information I had about a personal trainer were their obesity, I wouldn’t. If I were satisfied that they had a long record of success, I would. Philosophers’ work can be and is best assessed by reading it. I do not think that pointing out the limited applicability of your point is remotely disingenuous. There is no guarantee that arguments you would give about other fields of philosophy would be convincing. That is not due to undesirable nitpicking but a general feature of argument.
- eynsham 3y agoWhat is the basis of your experience of philosophers? I know lots of philosophers who are well-versed and interested in, i.a., physics, mathematics, cognitive science, linguistics, biology, neuroscience, psychology, and history. Some of them even make contributions to those fields primarily of interest as works within the relevant field rather than of philosophical interest. This is considered a good thing in modern analytic philosophy. Armchair theorising is considered an important tool, but exclusive use thereof is considered unsound and unwise. I cannot speak for philosophy in general but the sort of milieu to which I've been exposed is not particularly small.
- kragen 3y agothe practical study of nature, including probability and optics, is part of philosophy — uncontroversially so in espinoza's time, however fashionable it may be to forget that in our own what would it even mean to be a scientist who does not prize knowledge?
- novosel 3y agoIf I am not wrong, De Iride (On rainbows) is considered lost.
- toss1 3y agoTwo ke strategies he employed: 1) >>Spinoza stuck to Latin, the language of the learned élite. In the preface to the “Tractatus,” he declares that he is writing only for philosophers and discourages “the multitude, and those of like passions with the multitude,” from reading the book: “I would rather that they should utterly neglect it, than that they should misinterpret it after their wont.” 2) >>When the “Tractatus” provoked a hostile reaction anyway, Spinoza decided not to publish anything else. He also turned down an offer to become a professor at the University of Heidelberg, on the ground that holding an official position would expose him to even more attacks. All of his work, including the “Ethics,” was left in manuscript form for his friends to print after his death. Certainly playing the long game. And winning. Possible today?
- IggleSniggle 3y agoPossible for the already famous or fabulously wealthy, with enough preexisting prestige to make people care about their work prior to investigating its content.
- jackcosgrove 3y ago> Spinoza decided not to publish anything else You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em
- csours 3y agoYes, people publish studies that never get seen all the time.
- cubefox 3y agoThat's the problem today. What use is it to not be persecuted for publishing politically incorrect information when the information is censored or ignored by the information amplifiers, like journals, the press, Wikipedia, social networks etc. There is so much information out there already that it is easy to drown some of it by denying it a platform.
- jan_Inkepa 3y ago( His Latin, fwiw, is quite friendly/readable from what I've seen of it! )
- xhevahir 3y agoI really hope this Straussian stuff, which is basically obscurantism as public philosophy, doesn't come back into vogue. It was Strauss's disciples, like Paul Wolfowitz, who led us into Iraq with their noble lies. No, thank you.
- dvt 3y agoI think this is an extremely uncharitable interpretation of the reality lived by Strauss and his contemporaries. I guess there's an argument to be made that the West's hawkishness isn't de facto moral (though there's a lot of work to be done here, considering the alternative, i.e., China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and so on, are hardly bastions of moral virtue). I mention the "reality lived" as Strauss was a German Jew that had to flee Germany after Hitler took power. In fact, the most scathing critique of Strauss[1] (Altman's 600-page tome) is fairly universally regarded as being quite weak in its arguments (though, to be fair, incredible in its scholarship and research). [1] https://www.amazon.com/German-Stranger-Strauss-National-Socialism/dp/0739147382 https://www.amazon.com/German-Stranger-Strauss-National-Soci...
- everybodyknows 3y agoIs there any actual evidence that Strauss considered deceiving the public a legitimate political tactic?
- katabasis 3y agoAgreed – I enjoyed this article, but the conclusion (that philosophers or intellectuals may need to come to terms with self-censorship or obscurantism to avoid drawing the ire of the masses) strikes me as very pessimistic. We've gained a lot of freedoms since Spinoza's era and we shouldn't be so quick to surrender them.
- AniseAbyss 3y ago[dead]
- midiguy 3y agoIt took Europe a pretty long time to produce a thinker who would restate the pantheistic ideas that the Upanishads described vividly before the birth of Christ. I wonder if Spinoza had any exposure to Hindu thought.
- splintercell 3y agoAre Upanishads pantheists or panantheists?
- comonoid 3y agoUpantheists.
- midiguy 3y agoInterpretations of the Vedas vary widely. Name any 'eism' and you will find groups of Hindus adhering to it.
- kragen 3y agothey're books, not people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upanishads https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upanishads espinoza didn't have access to them directly (he didn't speak sanskrit, and as far as we know nobody had yet translated them into any of the four languages he did speak) but of course the upanishads have influenced western thought indirectly since before classical times. the upanishads deeply shaping the worldviews of the gymnosophists and later of the romani people and, to a smaller extent, the medieval european philosophers whose learning derived from the islamic golden age. khayyam, who brought us a new conception of numbers, at least outwardly endorsed sufism, which has profound and well-known connections with vedic doctrines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu%E2%80%93Islamic_relations#Sufism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu%E2%80%93Islamic_relation... i'm not claiming that the flow of ideas was one-way, and because much of it happened before written history (which began rather late in india) or otherwise outside the written record (consider consultations with romani fortune-tellers today, and try to extrapolate to centuries before gutenberg) it's difficult to tell which direction each idea flowed. but clearly there was an enormous amount of philosophical interchange, and at least some of it however, espinoza's ideas don't seem to have been especially influenced by the upanishads; if anything, he was going in the opposite direction
- aj7 3y agohttps://drive.google.com/file/d/1wqc0g5UGkz2YVIET4hnA3le_iP7R2APz/view?usp=drivesdk https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wqc0g5UGkz2YVIET4hnA3le_iP7...
- falseprofit 3y agoWhat is this, a private file?
- aj7 3y agoNo, I unprotected it so people could read it. I guess I’ll have to be more explicit.
- zw123456 3y agoMy grandfather wrote something one could only describe as a manifesto while he was in prison in the 1930's for moonshining, which he was doing to save the family farm during the depression. He sighted Spinoza multiple times which is when I first discovered Spinoza. He included it in his memoir and it really influenced me in a lot of ways. So, thanks to the poster for throwing this up.
- potsandpans 3y agoPost manifesto
- flashfaffe2 3y agoPrévois thread on Spinoza here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37150843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37150843
- kragen 3y ago> No American has to fear Adriaan Koerbagh’s fate this is utter foolishness eugene v. debs emma goldman margaret sanger junius scales martin luther king, jr. fred hampton benjamin chavis geronimo ji-jaga pratt mumia abu-jamal aaron swartz julian assange gurpatwant singh pannun when we rightly celebrate the progress that liberalism has made in places like the united states, we must remember that preserving that progress requires continued vigilance. rather than publishing such self-congratulatory nonsense, we must recognize how much progress still remains to be made
- kragen 3y agominor correction: espinoza's possible silicosis would not have been caused by inhaling particles of glass, which are comparatively harmless, but particles of quartz used as an abrasive to cut the glass. that is why bead-blasting with glass beads is so much safer than sandblasting with quartz sand