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.
Possible for the already famous or fabulously wealthy, with enough preexisting prestige to make people care about their work prior to investigating its content.
That'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.
In 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...
"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."
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.
> 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.
I 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.
Many beautiful stories on inter-dependance. Many of these beautiful stories also happen to be true, in contrast with the attractive un-truths of independence.
I think that a so called "modern man" very often enjoys thoughts of independence, self-reliance etc, and is able to recognize that has them in very little amount, and that this amount he still got is constantly shrinking. Yet, in a vast majority, is incapable of action that would at least partially revert or improve his situation. Thus resentment for those who succeed, in any degree.
independence is a worthy goal, but we live in the real world and have to get out hands dirty for money if we want to live. it seems Spinoza did just that and it caused him to die too young sadly. yes i also dont understand the reflexive anti independence attitude, but w/e, we can all have opinions.
The word sacrifice doesn't appear, but TFA makes much of what Spinoza
thought was worth trading for speaking truth.
Excommunication, being "cursed" (cancelled). He boldly rejected all
traditional religious identities which he felt "no longer had any real
meaning, anyway". He 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"
In a sense, if truth is your guide, the more you lose, the more you
gain, and Spinoza lived that right to the edge of poverty and
non-existence that would have actually killed (starved) him.
Which takes it back to that line near the start of the TFA:
"Offending the wrong people, even for a moment, can blow up the
career of anyone from a Y.A. novelist to an Ivy League president"
What is a "career" (other than path that is out of ones control)?
Paradoxically perhaps, those happy with the simplicity and
independence of saying "fuck careers" have the greatest platform to
speak truth from. Extant wealth, power, and notoriety are the gag of
silence.
But I see a world filled with more and more young people who have not,
and have no hope of ever having a "career". That fills me with vast
hope that truth is on the march again.
> What is a "career" (other than path that is out of ones control)?
Why would a career be out of your control? You control what skills you learn, what companies/projects you apply to. Sure, you're not in control of which companies/project accept you, but that doesn't mean that your career is out of your control.
> But I see a world filled with more and more young people who have not, and have no hope of ever having a "career". That fills me with vast hope that truth is on the march again.
That sounds like you've confused fatalism with truth. But it's more truthful to say that we are in a partnership with the world around us. The world gets a choice and we get a choice. Neither necessary gets their first choice, but both are active actors.
Because that's what it means literally, as in "The car careered off
the road". It's a play in words, maybe a bit obscure for US Americans
where capitalist work values have almost totally displaced the earlier
meaning. But I'm not the first to point out the fact that "career"
means this is somewhat ironic.
> That sounds like you've confused fatalism with truth.
Not sure what you mean. Those are distinct concepts. I'd like to
explore that further if you'd like to clarify/expand. Thanks.
I've always heard "careened", is "careered" a British usage?
Regarding fatalism/truth, my thinking was that if you're "filled with vast hope that truth is on the march" because youth have no hope of a career, then it seems that what you're seeing as true is "one cannot control one's work trajectory". Being out of control of your life's trajectory is fatalism. But in my opinion the reality is that we have control over our trajectory. Perhaps not as much as we'd like, but it's a lot more than nothing. (It's not like we are only ever going to be a farmer or a blacksmith or a merchant because that's what our parents are, for instance.)
> I've always heard "careened", is "careered" a British usage?
Oh, could be. Maybe not so common in US, very much so here.
> Regarding fatalism/truth, my thinking was that if you're "filled
with vast hope that truth is on the [s] march" because youth have no
hope of a career, then it seems that what you're seeing as true is
"one cannot control one's work trajectory". Being out of control of
your life's trajectory is fatalism. But in my opinion the reality is
that we have control over our trajectory. Perhaps not as much as
we'd like, but it's a lot more than nothing. (It's not like we are
only ever going to be a farmer or a blacksmith or a merchant because
that's what our parents are, for instance.)
I see yeah. While I agree with that as fatalism, it wasn't quite what
I was hinting at.
It was more about the way a "career" is taken to be something you
have, rather than something you live. In that way it can be held over
people as a threat - something that can be taken away if you speak
your mind. As in;
"You'll never work as a fisherman in this town again,
Mr. Hemmingway!"
Since the Gen-Zs don't hae that security (nor even of a home to live
in), they've less to lose and so honesty can come more readily. Hope
that makes sense. sorry for late reply, respects.
This idea that “Thoreau faked it” comes from people fundamentally misunderstanding what Thoreau was trying to do.
His goal was to critically evaluate how you spend your time and energy, and focus it on what really deeply matters to you, and nothing else: to live deliberately and cut out the BS.
He got tons of regular help and support for his unusual lifestyle experiment from his community and friends, and his cabin was not way out in the wilderness. And he is totally honest and up front about all of that- he was trying to live simply, not trying to win an episode of Naked and Afraid as New Englands most badass survivalist as people somehow seem to assume.
What it means to live deliberately is different for each person, what would it even mean to “fake it?”
I blame kids that were forced to read Walden in school, but lacked the life experience to comprehend it, for this common, but absurd misconception.
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.
>Can one live a life of simultaneous simplicity and independence?
Don't they go hand-in-hand? Dependence necessarily involves social intrigue, considering others' needs alongside your own (if only so as not to bite the hand that feeds); an intricate web of considerations arises. This also opens the door to leverage relationships and the circumstances that are created by their dynamism; the complexity of society is in the interdependence of agents within it. Someone who is socially-independent is limited to simplicity.
Even in nature, independence is simple: removed from the supportive natural infrastructure that your physiology depends on (e.g., in space), you quickly die. A very simple life indeed.
> 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.
Only a moron would consider the distinction material. Is Carlo Rovelli a theoretical physicist or a philosopher of physics. He would say "both" and would probably say that the two disciplines cannot be pursued independently. Was Ernst Mach, whose interests extended well beyond physics but whose basic philosophical questions about relationalism produced general relativity, count as a scientist, a physicist, or a philosopher? All three. What about Julian Barbour, head of the shape dynamics research program and noteworthy independent scientist, who is inspired by Mach to elaborate on purely relational theories of gravity? What about Terrance Deacon, whose (flawed by comprehensive) book on the distinction between living and non-living systems is probably the most cogent analysis of the subject I've ever read? Definitely a philosopher, but also clearly working on entirely physical material. What about Scott Aaronson? I could go on and on listing people who work in both physics and philosophy departments.
The idea that "philosophers" don't think about reality is just absurd. There are thousands of philosophers thinking directly about reality.
You 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.
I agree, that would be really dumb. While I am prone to saying and doing dumb things, I think it'd be sloppy to suggest that I made that assertion.
There's a set of things that include lab work, simulation, data analysis, etc that I consider doing biology, and another set of things that I consider philosophy of biology. The latter set includes pontification but also more analytical and serious work.
But it is still wrong to compare Spinoza's interest in optics to a contemporary philosopher of biology's interest in biology unless that person also does biology.
I don't hold philosophers to the impossible standard of classical polymaths, but I still don't feel a mere philosopher of X is as deeply interested in X as a practitioner of X.
What 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.
Where 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?
The 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.
I 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
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".
Yeah 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.
There 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.
I 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.
If 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.
Of course there's a justification. Meat contains a lot of calories per gram, specifically in the form of proteins and fats, as well as a bunch of other micro nutrients.
the 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?
It 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.
Not very likely. Spinoza lived in the 1600s, and European knowledge of classical and pre-classical Indian thought didn't really take off until about the late 1700s. On the Upanishads in particular, there was apparently a translation of some of them into Persian in the 1600s, but Spinoza would have had no exposure to that. A translation into Latin came along in the late 1700s.
I'm not sure if Spinoza did or did not have access to Hindu/Buddhist thought but at least Schopenhauer was influenced by the Upanishads. I also think it is reasonable to see connections in some themes in the Upanishads to the transcendental idealism of Kant.
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_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
My 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.
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
minor 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
I 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.
I 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).
Agreed – 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.
