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Name/date: Major work: Keywords: Key figures: (subsequent) Aphorism: Political aspect: Associations: |
Benedict
de Spinoza
(Baruch) The
Ethics Conatus,
causality, determination, God, extension, attribute, infinity, substance Descartes Giles
Deleuze, Guattari, Antonio Negri, Althusser,
Balibar, Macherey, Scruton? “All
things follow with inevitable necessity from the nature of God” Rationalist
theologian, materialist |
Roger Scruton provides a very
simple introduction to Spinoza in the past masters series. Need to
understand Spinoza’s theology to understand his materialism and why he has
become a cause celebre for recent (French) philosophy. For Deleuze, Guattari,
Balibar and Althusser
the rejuvenation of Spinoza was more or less an explicit attempt to find an
alternative to Hegel on which to ground materialist philosophy.
What Spinoza’s philosophy
represents, especially for a thinker like Negri, is a
radically immanent theory. That is to say the reality of things is not given by
some transcendent higher power, a God external to the world. Things are causa
sui, the result of themselves, and God is the primary cause of all things, but
God exists in the world, and is substance of infinite attributes – that is to
say infinite number of ideas and means of conceiving him. He is “supremely
perfect and absolutely infinite”.
Spinoza’s method is one of presenting
propositions, axioms and definitions that are then proven. Hegel argues that in
Spinoza’s thought there lies no internal coherence between these proofs. Yet
Spinoza’s philosophy is holistic and some have argued that the organic
interdependence of the parts is the basis of his philosophy. What distinguishes
it from someone like Hegel is all things are evident or deducible from the
primary cause and do not progress through contradiction as in dialectics. Parts
of the whole pre-exist it (how does this square with God as absolute?) so the totality
is of the Cartesian variety, especially in respect to the ultimate concord
between the parts, they agree with one another.
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On
this site |
On
other sites |
Rating |
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Read essay |
Spinoza’s
anti-modernity – by A.Negri |
Philosophical treatment
of Spinozian foundations of Deleuze’s thought (PDF) Dedication to Spinoza's
insights – Power and desire in the
political ontology of Spinoza and Deleuze/Guattari Spinoza
and Marx – thought experiment The antagonistic ground
of constituitive power; an essay on the thought of Antonio Negri – by
Jason Read (PDF) Spinoza;
Thought as Attribute of Substance – Chapter 2 of Ilyenkov’s Dialectical
logic |
Good Useful Ok V.good |
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Resources Bookmarks |
Spinoza.net (kind of esoteric and
mainstream at the same time!) |
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Bibliography |
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Reference
(people)
Back to: reference
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