#baruch spinoza ethics

[sictransitgloriamvndi]

“We feel and know that we are eternal.” - Baruch Spinoza

[cinematic-literature]

Poor Things (2023) by Yorgos Lanthimos

Book title: Ethics, Demonstrated in Geometrical Order (Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata in Latin; 1677) by Baruch Spinoza

[philosophybits]

Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love.

Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

[quotessentially]

From Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics

[malachia-il-bibliotecario]

"please elaborate on the differences that you, the theorist of the concept of God Or Nature, believe exist between the concepts of God and Nature"

[philosophybitmaps]

[clownmoder]

this and a bunt

[tonreihe]

“The temptation which may arise is to take aesthetic things as a model in thinking of moral things.” (Jacques Maritain, An Introduction to the Basic Problems of Moral Philosophy.)

[the-ephemeral-ethereal]

The Inside Out Emotions Defined as The Affects in Ethics by Baruch Spinoza

Joy - "Joy is a man's passage from a lesser to a greater perfection."

2. Sadness - "Sadness is a man's passage from a greater to a lesser perfection."

3. Fear - "Fear is an inconstant sadness, born of the idea of a future or past thing whose outcome we to some extent doubt."

4. Envy - "Envy is hate insofar as it so affects a man that he is saddened by another's happiness and, conversely, glad at his ill fortune. To envy one commonly opposes compassion."

5. Anger - "Anger is a desire by which we are spurred, from hate, to do evil to one we hate."

6. Disgust - Spinoza does not explicitly address disgust, but in his definition of desire, it could be extrapolated that he might've described disgust as a sated appetite.

7. Ennui - Spinoza also does not explicitly address ennui or boredom, but again in his definition of desire, it could be extrapolated that he might've described ennui as the lack of desire.

8. Anxiety - Spinoza also does not explicitly address anxiety, but in his definition of fear, it could be extrapolated that he might've described anxiety as fear of a future without hope.

9. Embarrassment - Spinoza also does not explicitly address embarrassment, but he does define shame, which could be a very comparable emotional affect. He defines shame as follows: "Shame is a sadness, accompanied by the idea of some action [of ours] which we imagine that others blame."

[agora-bishoy]

يظن الناس أنفسهم أحرارًا لأنهم شاعرون بإرادتهم ورغباتهم، ولكنهم يجهلون الأسباب التي أفضت بهم إلى الإرادة والرغبة

باروخ سبينوزا | الأخلاق

[areadersquoteslibrary]

"Whoever loves God must not expect God to love him in return."

Baruch Spinoza

The Ethics

[girl-debord]

"[...] I do not know why matter should be unworthy of the divine nature, since there can be no substance external to God by which it can be acted upon. All things, I repeat, are in God, and all things that come to pass do so only through the laws of God's infinite nature and follow from the necessity of his essence."

- Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

[todaysjewishholiday]

26 Iyyar 5784 (2-3 June 2024)

Once again, we have a yahrzeit of two influential teachers centuries apart who shaped Judaism and demonstrate Jewish diversity and adaptability.

Saadia ben Yosef, Gaon of Sura, was born on the banks of the Nile in 4652, roughly 200 years after the Islamic conquest. Thus, rather than the Greco-Roman and Persian cultures of the Tannaim and Amoraim, he grew up in an Arabic speaking world shaped by a rival Abrahamic tradition. He was the first Jewish scholar to write primarily in Judeo-Arabic, the language later adopted by the Rambam Moshe ben Maimon. At the age of 20, Saadia began compiling a Hebrew dictionary. He soon went to eretz yisroel for further study, and after ten years there moved to Babylonia where he became a member of yeshiva of Sura, which had been in continuous operation from the time of the Amoraim. Within two years the Jewish exilarch appointed Saadia as Gaon of the academy.

From the start, Saadia’s career was shaped by disputation and sharp debate with those whose stances he found theologically or socially objectionable. The tenor of those disputes was shaped not only by Jewish tradition, but by the open conflict between Mutazilite and Mutakallamist scholars of Islam, who in Saadia’s time remained in dispute about whether the Quranuc text was a created object like other creations, or co-eternal with G-d and fundamental to the divine essence. Parallel debates about the Torah have raged in Judaism, but Saadia borrowed the shape of the qadi’s arguments rather than their content, engaging in sharp disputes about the proper way to calculate the Hebrew calendar and striving to defend rabbinic Judaism in fiery exchanges with Karaite scholars who accepted only the written Torah and rejected the oral traditions central to rabbinic practice. Saadia’s fiery temper and forceful personality soon put him at odds with his benefactor the Exilarch, and they spent several years in bitter conflict, each going so far as to issue cherem against the other. Their eventual reconciliation allowed Saadia to return to his position as head of the yeshiva of Sura, a position which carried great weight of authority for Jews throughout the Islamic world.

A prolific scholar, he composed numerous translations, publishing much of the Tanakh in Arabic translation, numerous linguistic texts on the Hebrew language, works of halakha, theology, and Jewish mysticism, and a large number of polemics against his various ideological opponents. He died in Sura in the year 4702 at the age of sixty, reportedly of severe depression from his many conflicts with the exilarch and others.

Moshe Chaim Luzzatto was born just over eight hundred years late than Saadia, in 5467, in the Venetian Ghetto (the first Jewish quarter to be called by that odious name). He received a wide Jewish and secular education, and may have attended the university of Padua. In his teens he began to compose poetry, including his own collection of 150 Hebrew psalms in full biblical style, and study Jewish mysticism. At the age of twenty he claimed he had been visited by a Malakh and began writing down mystical lessons from this heavenly mentor. This claim of divine tutelage shocked and offended the Venetian rabbinical establishment, and he was only saved by cherem by agreeing to cease his writing and teaching of mysticism. He then emigrated to Amsterdam where he continued his mystical explorations while working as a diamond cutter, thus following closely in the footsteps of a controversial Jew from a century before, Baruch Spinoza. Disappointed by the difficulties of life in Amsterdam, he traveled to eretz yisroel with his family three years before his death and established a shul in Acre. He died during a plague outbreak in Acre at the age of 39, leaving behind an immense body of poetry, drama, and theological, ethical, and mystical instruction despite the seizure and destruction of much of his early work by the Venetian Jewish authorities. His works were soon praised by the Vilna Gaon and became central to the Mussar movement, and his Hebrew poetry and blending of secular and Torah learning and literature became a major inspiration to the Haskalah. For his rabbinic teachings he is known by the acronym RaMCHaL, for Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto.

The twenty-sixth of Iyyar is also the sixth night of the sixth week of the Omer count. Yesterday was the fortieth day of the Omer. After tonight’s count, 8 days remain before Shavuot.

[philosophybits]

If anyone conceives that he is loved by another, and believes that he has given no cause for such love, he will love that other in return.

Baruch Spinoza, Ethics

[quotessentially]

From Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics

[opalid]

The mind can bring it about that all the body's affections, or images of things, are related to the idea of God.

— Baruch Spinoza, Ethics