Quick interpretive question regarding Spinoza: Philosophy Forums

Quick interpretive question regarding Spinoza

Arsonade
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Posted 10/19/09 - 04:24 PM: Subject: Quick interpretive question regarding Spinoza	#1
"The more we understand individual things, the more we understand god" - Spinoza This is a relatively common quotation, and I feel as if I grasp what is being said, but I would like to make sure. Spinoza is a pan-theist essentially, so can the above implication imply that to know one thing completely is to know everything? Or is this too brash? perhaps "To know one thing completely is to know a part of everything"? Both implicate connectivity essentially, but I suppose it's a question of what degree is implied here. Accepting the quote, would this mean that if I completely understood a Gadfly, would I completely understand the universe, or would I understand a part of everything in the the universe? Is the substitution of 'God' with 'everything' wrong here even given Spinoza's Pantheism? -Adam
-Ralph Waldo Emerson "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." He said ironically...

makerowner
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Posted 10/20/09 - 05:38 AM:	#2
Yes, to know one thing completely means to know everything, ie. God. Since "the knowledge of an effect depends on the knowledge of the cause, and involves it" (Ethics I, Axiom IV), I can only completely know this particular thing if I also know its cause, and I can only know the cause if I know its cause, etc. all the way to God/Nature which is cause of itself (exists neccessarily). But also, each individual thing is a part of God/Nature, eg. the human mind is "God insofar as he has the idea of the human body" (throughout Ethics II), so knowing any particular thing, even without its series of causes, is knowing a part of God/Nature. "Is the substitution of 'God' with 'everything' wrong here even given Spinoza's Pantheism?" No, it's not wrong, but it's important to remember that God/Nature has an infinite number of modes, of which extension and thought are only two. So the 'everything' Spinoza has in mind is much broader than what we usually mean by 'everything', and is essentially incomprehensible to the human mind. By the way, where is that quote from?
For philosophy, Socrates, if pursued in moderation and at the proper age, is an elegant accomplishment, but too much philosophy is the ruin of human life. Even if a man has good parts, still, if he carries philosophy into later life, he is necessarily ignorant of all those things which a gentleman and a person of honour ought to know.

Arsonade
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Posted 10/24/09 - 02:08 PM:	#3
Thank you, this was exactly what I was looking for. And as for where the quote is from, I actually have no idea, my father has a 'zen companion' booklet thing that has hundreds of quotes from western and eastern philosophy, that one from Spinoza was my favorite, but I'm not certain where he said it.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." He said ironically...

treemanshope
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Posted 10/24/09 - 03:26 PM:	#4
Its a confusing quote to say the least. Individual things have to be carved out of the background. In order to know an individual thing you have to determine what it is not. On the other hand if you begin to truly understand a thing you realize it is not a thing but a process and then its no longer an individual thing, and the thing begins to fade back into the background because where the thing begins and ends is no longer determined. I think Heisenberg said it better " the Universe is made of music not matter."
The words of peace are just words, it is man that gives them flesh. Bring peace into the material world. Or, bring something else. treemanshope.

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