Posts Tagged Baruch Spinoza

Spinoza Stock on the Rise!

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Web Detritus on June 14, 2011

“Investors take note: this Dutch rationalist is a hot stock.”

Thanks for Michael Benedikt for informing me of this article, which says a few words about how Spinoza (a favorite of Schleiermacher, don’t you know) fits into today’s landscape of ideas.

-Mark Linsenmayer

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Clare Carlisle’s Spinoza Walk-Through (via The Guardian)

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Other (i.e. Lesser) Podcasts, Web Detritus on March 29, 2011

I just stumbled across an 8 part series on Spinoza (discussed by us here), completed today and begun here on 2/7/11, written by U. of Liverpool lecturer Clare Carlisle, who I see has written some books on Kierkegaard,which will give you some idea where she’s coming from.

I’ve not read the whole series, but it seems pretty clear and cogent, and will remind you (or fill you in on) terms like “conatus,” that were dropped in our podcast, i.e. the striving to persevere in existence, and to enhance its own power, that constitutes the essence of every individual being.”

Part 7, for instance, is about a topic that will be relevant to your enjoyment of our soon-to-be-posted Hegel discussions on the self:

Unlike many other philosophers, Spinoza does not think that living an ethical life involves overcoming our natural self-centredness. For Spinoza, the main obstacle to virtue is not egoism, but ignorance of our true nature. When we are subject to strong emotions, which we attribute to imagined causes, we are unlikely to act in a way that is good for ourselves, or for other people. Add to this our misguided belief in free will, and the messy, antagonistic reality of human relationships seems inevitable.

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Philippe Goldin on Emotions

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Things to Watch on September 21, 2010

Here’s a talk from 2008 by Phiippe Goldin (now at Stanford) about the neuroscience of emotions, aimed at non-scientists, specifically Google employees:

Watch on youtube.

We’ve not talked a lot about on the podcast so far about the differences in approach between current psychology and philosophy. In this lecture, we get references to specific studies of external behavior, of discussion of observable capacities in people, and attempts to correlate these to brain states: all methods that, according to the consensus on our philosophy of mind episode, are going to miss something essential about emotional experience and so not constitute a full account. Still, this method doesn’t restrict the subject matter (he mentions re. the subject of empathy that ten years ago, scientists wouldn’t touch it) and is geared towards providing not only clinical benefits, but insights to help people live their lives (i.e. what the humanities are supposed to address).
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Spinoza Roundtable

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Things to Watch on September 13, 2010

Haven’t had enough Spinoza? Watch a panel of Spinoza scholars weigh in via a two-hour Philoctetes Center roundtable.

The video is configured so that I can’t embed it here; check it out on youtube here: http://youtu.be/v29FVZ0rry8

The discussion is rambling and badly needs editing. The panelists all monologuize (worse than we do on the podcast) and (particularly near the beginning of the discussion) barely respond to each other (or when they do, it’s often 20 minutes later, so you’ve lost the thread). So use your progress bar on this one to jump ahead (skip the first 3.5 minutes, for one; there’s nothing interesting there) and check out each of the speakers, who include: Read the rest of this entry »

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Episode 25: Spinoza on Human Nature

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on September 10, 2010

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:37:48 — 89.6MB)

Discussing Books II through V of the Ethics. Continues the discussion from Ep. 24.

What is the relation between mind and body? How do we know things? What are the emotions? Is there an ethical ideal for us to shoot for? What is our relationship to God?

Our rational nature prevails over urges to scream, sleep, or slap each other as we plow to the end of this strange and thorny text.

Read a free version online or purchase the book.

End song: “When I Think of You” from The MayTricks’ Happy Songs Will Bring You Down (1994).

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“The Universe is in Us:” Science and Religious Awe

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Things to Watch on September 1, 2010

To present another perspective on the “we are one with the universe” trope, here’s astrophysicist and science popularizer Neil Tyson, who is not a “reverend” so far as I can tell.


Watch on youtube: http://youtu.be/XLvh64sMrWY

According to Tyson, because of the Big Bang and the consequent commonalities among all matter, we and the rest of the universe are all from the same stuff, and this is supposed to make us reflect upon our oneness with the universe “with wonder,” i.e. in something like a religious sense. Read the rest of this entry »

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Spinoza and Leibniz: Anthony Quinton and Bryan Magee

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Things to Watch on August 26, 2010

We talked a bit on Ep 24 about Spinoza’s relationship to Leibniz, and here’s the first of a series of videos that gives more detail on that relationship:

To watch this on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmbGbo-oyKc

McGee’s introduction for the first three minutes or so just repeats biographical information we gave on the podcast. Quinton focuses on the metaphysics of the two figures, casting Spinoza’s view as radically unitary: Read the rest of this entry »

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Episode 24: Spinoza on God and Metaphysics

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on August 24, 2010

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:36:01 — 88.0MB)

Discussing Spinoza’s Ethics (1677), books 1 and 2.

We mostly discuss his weird, immanent, non-personal conception of God: God is everything, therefore the world is God as apprehended through some particular attributes, namely insofar as one of his aspects is infinite space (extension, i.e. matter) and insofar as one of his aspects is mind (our minds being chunks or “modes” of the big God mind).

Also, if you’re not going to sell out and go for a university position in philosophy, should you instead grind lenses in your attic without adequate ventilation? (Hint: no) Plus, the Amsterdam of yesterday, whose heady aroma drove people to write like Euclid, property dualism rears its ugly head, and Mel Gibson as Rousseau!

Read a free version online or purchase the book.

One place to read the earlier Spinoza book I refer to, A Short Treatise on God, Man, and his Well-Being (1660), is here. The Karen Armstrong book I keep referring to is The Case for God,and at the end Wes recommends Matthew Stewart’s The Courtier and the Heretic. Seth also brings up Giles Deluze’s Spinoza: Practical Philosophy.
The dumbed down, non-geometric presentation of the Ethics that I talk about is here.

End song: “Spiritual Insect,” by Mark Lint and the Fake from the album So Whaddaya Think? (2000).

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