argument

argument

1. God is nature

   • God does not act to achieve any ends and does not exist for any purpose. The order of things naturally flows from his essence (E)
     • B: Suggesting if we are part of god, do we not have free will
     • B fails to understand this conception of god as nature
       • B: If everything is a property of god, then if we sin does god sin?
         • Spinoza shifts his language to say god is the universal cause of things
         • S argues that there is nothing good in sin and evil and that they are privations
           • The notion of perfection:
             • - things are not more or less perfect because of the way the affect us
               • People see things as good or perfect related to their own well-being but they are actually judging the relation not the thing itself
                 • This is how S evil or sin is not related to the actual thing but the relationship between thing
                   • - B goes into the example of having sex with his wife (pious) compared to someone else (sinful). Sex with wife is a positive act as procreation in which god concurs while intercourse with another women is sinful so how can god concur in the act of one sex action compared to another, isn’t he then also concurring with the sin. What B fails to grasp is that what good and bad is the relation between bodies and not the act itself
                   • So in Spinoza’s view god concurs with all human actions in so far that they are acts o In so far as they express capacities and powers of nature in which we are part o The human meaning of those actions isn’t necessarily the essential meanings of those actions. The human meaning is that one act might be judged as pious (procreation with wife) and the other sinful. But the privation in the adultery concerns the failure of the adulterer to comply with certain laws rather than sin • They are privations of what we consider to be human beings
         • o S to B (letter 19): He doesn’t explain what evil is From Adam’s example: Spinoza assumes his definition of evil is will that is contrary to God’s prohibition
       • Letter 20: B will accept the revealed word of god He adds that when these contradicts, he chooses god’s words
   • God is not subject to the passions as he does not have a body or mind (E)
   • Changes interpretation of bible
     • The bible isn’t the literal word of god: but it has been written in the form of images so that people with little to no education can understand it. It’s written in terms of parables to instruct people
       • Adam's sin:
         • god’s will may concur with Adam’s eating of the apple as part of nature and positive of this degree. But god’s will doesn’t concur with Adam’s action in so far in that was a privation
           • The idea of Adam losing a perfection only exists in a fictitious inaccurate ideas of universals o In human perspectives of a perfect man until after the fall
             • This is because we comparing two conceptions of Adam from before (A fictional) model of the perfect man and after
       • • We need to stop seeing god under human projections as it limits our perception of God and his teachings
       • • Because God revealed means to salvation/destruction and creator of these o Represented him as king and lawgiver • Salvation/destruction are effects of the means o Represented this as reward/punishment ♣Actually merely revealed that the eating the apple causes death, not commanded it o To make one more perfect in knowledge

2. Our perception of the world are imprecise and only provide a relative and subjective of reality at a specific moment in time

3. Spinoza: free will and freedom

   • For Spinoza there is no free will
     • Willing is intrinsic to an idea, perception or passion o E.g. you don’t judge ice cream as good and then desire to eat it, you perceive the desire or will to eat the ice cream
     • For Spinoza you don’t desire things because they are good, you judge them to be good because you desire it
   • - But freedom is another matter for Spinoza o
     • Spinoza argues that it is a peculiarity of human consciousness that we experience effects as causes humans The feeling of freely willing is an illusion but an illusion innate to human consciousness • E.g. we are constructed in such a way that if we look on a sunny day a lake we will see the reflection as if there is a doubled world in there but yet it is not real
   • - Freedom is in innate prejudice and free will is based on an inadequate knowledge of the causes of things and our tendency to accord too much credibility to the way that things appear (the way that things outside ourselves affect us). o It’s a different conception of free will and not opposed to necessity but it depends on it

4. -

5. says our essential nature as our greatest power and activity is to think and the more we think the freer we are

   • Spinoza believes we are all naturally endwowed with the power to persevere in being
     • Difference between passions and actions
       • passions are the functions for which external things affect our powers or capacities.
         • When the cause of an event lies in our own nature (our understanding and knowledge), then the mind is acting
           • A virtuous person strives for maximum activity against passivity to achieve more power
             • The use of reasoning in forming rational ideas in an orderly manner elucidate the true essence of nature
               • One truly knows a thing when they see why the thing was determined to be and could not be otherwise, which stems through understanding in the necessity inherent in nature
                 • Evil and sin are privations in relation to a model or a model or exemplar idea
         • When something happens in us the cause of which lies outside of our nature, then we are passive and being acted upon
           • By controlling our passions we become more free as we are able to act
             • The path to restraining and moderating the affects is through virtue.
               • human virtue is the acquiring of knowledge, more particularly something eternal, a.k.a striving for the knowledge of god.
                 • Through intellectual inquiry in understanding nature one learns to understand god
                   • We learn to understan the deterministic necessity of all things as necesseraily following from the essence of matter.
                     • This knowledge weakens the power of the passions
                       • - a person is as perfect as he knows god, meaning: we express our essence more than we act than when we are acted on
                         • Spinoza’s conception of joy and sadness amount to the embodied awareness of these transitions on the active passive spectrum, the more active we are the more joyous we are
                           • results in self control and a calmness of mind
           • Privation is we are most deprived and unreal when things act on us instead of us acting on them
             • o A.k.a the most perfect thing is the most real thing and thus that makes god and nature the most perfect thing