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Spinoza's Critique of Cartesian Will

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Spinoza's Critique of Cartesian Will

Dunamis
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Posted 05/08/08 - 08:32 PM:	#26
unenlightened wrote: So we play a game of chess, and you feel a real joy at 'winning' an invented imaginary game. All I am saying is that that is one thing, the affect, and when you actually say to yourself, 'what a fine clever fellow I am to beat unenlightened', that is another, an inadequate idea of your joy. But what you have to understand is that for Spinoza, even the most illusionary Joys, are REAL increases in perfection (inproperly understood). Ultimately, there is no illusionary Joy, only illusionary understanding of Joy. Sorry, I wasn't clear. The 'little concern' is for the moment to moment transitions. Obviously, Spinoza's concern is for ideas. You'll have to educate me on this, but desire is surely both of these things; the body's needs on one side, and projections of experience as ideas on the other - that is there are two very different things which are called desire and confused. Where I see will is in the conflict between two ideas, one of which may be an idea of the body's needs and the other of the mind's projections. There are two aspects of desire in Spinoza. There is pure desire, which is just striving (conatus). It forms the essence of a man (or really any body). It is the very thing that causes things to perpetuate (couped with the horizontal causation of all modal expressions that bring it into existence); but then there is desire for this or that thing, desire projected onto the inadequate matrix of ideas organized around joy and sadness, love and hate. But desire itself, has no object, so in a sense, is not "represented". At least as I understand it.
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

unenlightened
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Posted 05/09/08 - 07:42 AM:	#27
I think we are in agreement; only ideas can be illusionary. But even illusionary ideas have real effects. wiki wrote: This resistance to self-destruction is formulated by Spinoza in terms of a human striving to continue to exist; and conatus is the word he most often uses to describe this force. I don't quite like the word 'striving' here, because it carries overtones of effort and will. But then I remember a story of a forester, trapped by a falling tree, who had to amputate his own leg to free himself - so perhaps it is appropriate after all. Are we again in the distinction between map and territory with all this? A human is an active part of the territory, but also a map of ideas. So on the one hand, the world does not at all depend on what we think, but on the other, what we think entirely controls our responses. So if I think that Jews are a cancer on the earth, I may well join the Nazi Party etc, but whatever I think will not (of itself) change the nature of Jewishness. My ideas about Jews lead to a negative affect when I encounter a Jew... but perhaps I am already confused in saying 'I' have an 'idea'. If instead I say that I am a body of ideas in relationship with something or someone, does that start to solve the problem? A body of ideas undergoes a transition, which is a change in affect; then the question of it being a cause does not really arise, because the affect is already part of that which it might be said to be a cause of. Does that make any sense?
_____________________ The observer is the observed. J Krishnamurti "Philosophy, to the Philistine, is an evolutionary process, watched over by some sort of brisk dynamic Providence, and culminating in the supreme insight of modern thought." John Cowper Powys

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Posted 05/09/08 - 08:05 AM:	#28
unenlightened wrote: I think we are in agreement; only ideas can be illusionary. But even illusionary ideas have real effects. This is Spinoza's core point in this. I don't quite like the word 'striving' here, because it carries overtones of effort and will. Spinoza uses the Latin word "conatus" which makes up the essence of man (and all things), and "striving" is a usual translation. This is how Lewis and Short define it: cōnātus , ūs, m. conor. I. Abstr., an effort, exertion, struggle, endeavor: ue ista hercle magno jam conatu magnas nugas dixerit, Ter. Heaut. 4, 1, 8: “quo majore conatu studioque aguntur,” Cic. Quint. 14, 47: “omnem sui tribunatus conatum in meam perniciem parare,” id. Fam. 5, 2, 6: “Genucius ad hostes magno conatu profectus,” Liv. 7, 6, 9: “in ipso conatu rerum circumegit se annus,” i. e. just as the affair was well begun, id. 9, 18, 15 Weissenb. ad loc.: “vixdum inchoatis rebus in ipso conatu gerendi belli,” id. 32, 28, 4.— B. Trop., an impulse, inclination, tendency: “dedit natura beluis et sensum et appetitum, ut altero conatum haberent ad naturales pastus capessendos, altero secernerent, etc.,” Cic. N. D. 2, 47, 122: “nulla est ullo in genere laus orationis, cujus in nostris orationibus non sit aliqua si non perfectio, at conatus tamen atque adumbratio,” id. Or. 29, 103: “se ad hostes contulit conatumque iracundiae suae morte sedavit,” id. Brut. 10, 42.— II. Concr., an attempt, effort, undertaking, enterprise, endeavor. I think though that what Spinoza is attempting to do with such a notion is explain what is commonly taken for "Willing" and Freedom of Will, making of it an existential force which has no "proper" object. If instead I say that I am a body of ideas in relationship with something or someone, does that start to solve the problem? A body of ideas undergoes a transition, which is a change in affect; then the question of it being a cause does not really arise, because the affect is already part of that which it might be said to be a cause of. Does that make any sense? That makes some sense, as a way of putting it, a body of ideas. The affect is not really the cause, but rather the result/expression of a certain matrix of ideas and bodies, and what is expressed is a particular degree of freedom or power. The mix of adequacy, becomes a vector of power, which is experienced as Joy or Sadness (with our minds holding this thought or that thought). It is as if we can look at any "body" and examine its idea/matter composition in the way that we would examine a chemical composition, and the more matched the idea is to the body, the more consciously active it becomes. In the end, such an analysis directs us away from our own limited boundary, and enjoins us to see ourselves as the participate products of larger and larger wholes.
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

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Posted 05/09/08 - 12:35 PM:	#29
Dunamis wrote: It is as if we can look at any "body" and examine its idea/matter composition in the way that we would examine a chemical composition, and the more matched the idea is to the body, the more consciously active it becomes. In the end, such an analysis directs us away from our own limited boundary, and enjoins us to see ourselves as the participate products of larger and larger wholes. Ah, here I have to disagree with you, or Spinoza, I'm not sure which. Once I have seen the limited boundary for the arbitary unreal idea that it is, I am not going to be enjoined to see myself as more largely bounded, and then again more largely bounded; that is the foolishness of clan and nation, which is just the self again writ large. No, I will have no more boundries at all, or I will keep to this narrow body. My little self or infinite god, but no larger whole of church between.
_____________________ The observer is the observed. J Krishnamurti "Philosophy, to the Philistine, is an evolutionary process, watched over by some sort of brisk dynamic Providence, and culminating in the supreme insight of modern thought." John Cowper Powys

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Posted 05/09/08 - 01:04 PM:	#30
unenlightened wrote: I am not going to be enjoined to see myself as more largely bounded, and then again more largely bounded; that is the foolishness of clan and nation, which is just the self again writ large. Well then, you will have to disagree with Spinoza, since the "Self" writ large is for him nothing other than the Infinite (unbound) Totality, from whose perspective all nations, clans and selves are criticized. This is not a "Self" that is a self in a usual sense, but the maximalization of self, so to speak. No, I will have no more boundries at all, or I will keep to this narrow body. If this is your either/or, that is, you will not cooperate nor share with anything else other than your own private body, if you cannot immediately merge with the Infinite, I don't see how this is anything other other than death---Have you already joined the Infinite? If not, why are you typing out on a computer to disembodied others? More power to you.
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

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Posted 05/10/08 - 12:41 AM:	#31
Dunamis wrote: Well then, you will have to disagree with Spinoza, since the "Self" writ large is for him nothing other than the Infinite (unbound) Totality, from whose perspective all nations, clans and selves are criticized. This is not a "Self" that is a self in a usual sense, but the maximalization of self, so to speak. If this is your either/or, that is, you will not cooperate nor share with anything else other than your own private body, if you cannot immediately merge with the Infinite, I don't see how this is anything other other than death---Have you already joined the Infinite? If not, why are you typing out on a computer to disembodied others? More power to you. Well the self unbound would miss my criticism, clearly. It is not a self in the usual sense. But king and country, my race, my trade union, my religion, etc, etc, very much is the usual sense of self. But that is not to refuse to cooperate or share, but to refuse to identify with. So I am interested to discuss Spinoza, I like Spinoza, I want to understand Spinoza, but I am not going to become a Spinozist. Have I joined the infinite? What sort of question is that? How could I ever be separate from it?
_____________________ The observer is the observed. J Krishnamurti "Philosophy, to the Philistine, is an evolutionary process, watched over by some sort of brisk dynamic Providence, and culminating in the supreme insight of modern thought." John Cowper Powys

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Posted 05/10/08 - 12:58 AM:	#32
I have to take serious issue with claiming that there are Kabbalist influences in Spinoza. He certainly READ Kabbalists, and had probably read the Zohar, but his philosophy was not a Jewish philosophy, and nor was it a mystical one, and I would say that he was probably far more influenced by the Quakers (whom he hung out with and discussed things with extensively after his Writ of Cherem) than by the Kabbalists. ... I also think reading Spinoza through Deleuze is a terrible idea. The best way to read and understand Spinoza is simply to read him.

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Posted 05/10/08 - 01:31 AM:	#33
BDSpinoza wrote: ... I also think reading Spinoza through Deleuze is a terrible idea. The best way to read and understand Spinoza is simply to read him. Agreed. Reading primary sources, mindful of the context in which they were composed, mitigates the influence of subsequent (strong) misreadings. Familiarity with Spinoza's direct influences and his interpretations of them I've found to be far more helpful to understanding his work. unenlightened wrote: Have I joined the infinite? What sort of question is that? How could I ever be separate from it? Edited by 180 Proof on 05/10/08 - 01:38 AM. Reason: ...
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Posted 05/10/08 - 09:19 AM:	#34
unenlightened wrote: Well the self unbound would miss my criticism, clearly. It is not a self in the usual sense. But king and country, my race, my trade union, my religion, etc, etc, very much is the usual sense of self. Well, this is the thing about Spinoza. When you look through and analyze through his lens, the "usual sense of self" disappears. It disappears when you look at "the self" but it also disappears when you look at the kinds of things that seem to imply the usual sense of self "country, trade union, religion". Spinoza was quite interested in politics, in particular in democracy. One really doesn't have democracies until one has countries or cities. All the things that you distain because they are "very much the usual sense of self," are in Spinozist glasses, combinations of modal expressions of God, which can be analyzed along an index of Joy and Sadness, and the same becoming-more-active criteria that he brings to persons. As Spinoza defines a body as a communication of a ratio of parts in motion and rest. Just as persons are bodies, so are communities, countries, religions, trade unions, so on and so forth. The paths to activity that are open to individual persons, are also upon to social bodies. But that is not to refuse to cooperate or share, but to refuse to identify with. So I am interested to discuss Spinoza, I like Spinoza, I want to understand Spinoza, but I am not going to become a Spinozist. Who said anything about "identifying with" or "becoming a Spinozist"? What I said was: "In the end, such an analysis directs us away from our own limited boundary, and enjoins us to see ourselves as the participate products of larger and larger wholes." to which you said, " I am not going to be enjoined to see myself as more largely bounded, and then again more largely bounded; that is the foolishness of clan and nation, which is just the self again writ large." Participating in larger wholes, and thinking about the relative activity of those wholes does not mean being bounded by those wholes in any determined sense of identity. It means, I would think, the opposite. For instance if, instead of in your bounded, narrow self identity, you do not see your participation in an on-line forum ONLY as "I'm interested..."I like..." "I want..." "I'm not going to..." (the usual sense of self), but ALSO understand that you are a body/mind put on concert with other other body/minds, which form a new, shifting of boundaries body/mind, not only would your own motivations "I want...." rule your actions, but also this conception of combinatory freedom. This has nothing to do with a resultant "I am a Philosophy Forum Member" established identity, (though I suppose this could be a result). It actually works against any lasting and entrenched boundary, and puts this body, the body of on-line foruming, in communication with other bodies, in ways that would not be possible if only it were a conception of "I want..." and "I'm interested...." I agree that the usual sense of self plays a great deal in how we relate to social bodies, but Spinoza allows us to see how our combinations with other go beyond such thinking. And I think, makes out a path which readily expands the physical borders of the self, on a mission of Joy rather than Sadness. Just some thoughts. Have I joined the infinite? What sort of question is that? How could I ever be separate from it? Well, I don't know if you mean this in a vast, New Agey way, or in a Spiniza way. In a Spinoza way, you become separated from it in degrees. In such a conception you do not become separate as in "becoming an independent entity" but in you yourself having less being, becoming less active, becoming more Saddened. And for Spinoza, the way that this "separation" is done is by continuing to think in the usual, and for him reactive sense, "What I want..." "I like...." etc. etc. There is between a rock and a person a degree of difference. Whether you want to call that difference a degree of separation is I suppose an interesting question. Edited by Dunamis on 05/10/08 - 12:50 PM
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

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Posted 05/10/08 - 09:42 AM:	#35
180 Proof wrote: Agreed. Reading primary sources, mindful of the context in which they were composed, mitigates the influence of subsequent (strong) misreadings. Familiarity with Spinoza's direct influences and his interpretations of them I've found to be far more helpful to understanding his work. One wonders HOW one achieves this understanding of "influences"? It is always through contemporary lenses that we look back and value the context of a writer. If we make much of Descartes and Hobbes' influence on Spinoza it is in part because they have had great influence on philosophy, and we are interested in the philosophy of Spinoza. But I have no idea how you would be able to assess for instance, in strict a primary source manner, the Kabbalistic influences on Spinoza, given that our evidence is sparse. A Kabbalist influence indeed may be quite strong, or not really at all. It may have influenced him through specific texts, or it may have been through the entirety of a messianic sense of the Time, and the Jewish struggle with the notion of true Law in the conmmunity in which he grew up. To figure this "influence" out does one simply read the primary source Zohar, and come up with the answer, or does one read instead a secondary source, like Nadler's A Life, or even Werblowsky's Joseph Karo: Lawyer and Mystic and arrive at an informed answer? And while reading primary source is certainly a wonderful directive, I have always found that when people add that other writers and books should NOT be read, I have to wonder where this impulse to censor the mind comes from. I have read some, what seemed to me uninformative, or misdirected books on Spinoza, but none of them would I tell people not to read. Each person has a perspective and an argument, and reading even those you disagree with can strongly inform your own understanding. I suspect rather, when people say that certain authors should not be read, it is usually the case that they have not read them themselves. Personally, I have found the combination of historical biography and accounts, contemporary analysis (continental and analytic), and primary readings to be the best combination of approach. Each serves as an illumination of the other two. Edited by Dunamis on 05/10/08 - 12:38 PM
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

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1 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 05/11/08 - 05:17 AM: Subject: On grinding "contemporary lenses" ...	#36
Dunamis wrote: 'One wonders HOW one achieves this understanding of "influences"? It is always through contemporary lenses that we look back and value the context of a writer. It seems that in order to translate Basho's Haiku into English the translator must competently master (classical) Japanese; likewise, where one studies a late-17th century metaphysical-ethical text one should adopt -- as much as possible -- the hermeneutical stance of late-17th century "philosophical convention" (preferrably that of Holland, France & England). *Implied here is the old-fashioned notion of "authorial intention" made manifest (hermeneutically) as the semantic-conditions of a text's context of initial reception.* In the case of Spinoza, we have a strong sense of how his contemporaries struggled to grasp his ideas and respond to many of their revolutionary / heterodox implications from the extant correspondance. I am suggesting that a strong reading (or weak misreading) attempts to recover the shock or strangeness of those initial late-17th century encounters with Spinoza's texts, indicating the extent to which his expressions were understandable in his time as the best clue (we can hope for) as to what Spinoza endeavored to communicate (i.e. intended to say). We also have an inventory of his library, and particularly some suggestion of the weight he placed on various volumes from his remnant notes and letters. Not an exact science to be sure but exacting if scrupulously applied as classical philology, for instance, shows. This approach, I think, grants the best chance of attaining a hermeneutical "baseline" from (and against) which our contemporary commentaries can elucidate more than they obfuscate the primary sources. In short: the more we read Spinoza in his context, that is, the less familiar his ideas become to us and the more we have to tax our imaginative and intellectual resources to apprehend without domesticating them, the less disposed we are to distorting these "contemporary lenses" with our belated concerns and controversies (e.g. Deleuze, Negri, Balibar, Hardt, etc). If we make much of Descartes and Hobbes' influence on Spinoza it is in part because they have had great influence on philosophy, and we are interested in the philosophy of Spinoza. But I have no idea how you would be able to assess for instance, in strict a primary source manner, the Kabbalistic influences on Spinoza, given that our evidence is sparse ... To the extent Spinoza explicity shares, addresses and/or criticizes the philosophical concerns of e.g. "Descartes and Hobbes", they are significant influences on Spinoza's thinking and thereby of interest to (us) students of Spinoza. The same goes for Qabala. Extant documentation and perhaps reliable, contemporaneous testimony are the only explicit clues we have indicating what probably influenced Spinoza's work. Much of what he read and studied, like any other writer, did not significantly influence his work. Close reading of the author "intellectual biography", as well as the texts in question, seems the only careful way to sift important influences from merely interesting ones. (Btw, as far as I can tell, suggestions of Qabala-influence in Spinoza's work are exaggerated ...) And while reading primary source is certainly a wonderful directive, I have always found that when people add that other writers and books should NOT be read, I have to wonder where this impulse to censor the mind comes from. It seems quite a luxury, Dunamis, to have the time to rummage through mountains of derivative, secondary books and articles, especially when the primary source is so much more compelling and inexhaustible. One man's "censorship" might just be another man's good, discriminating judgment ... I have read some, what seemed to me uninformative, or misdirected books on Spinoza, but none of them would I tell people not to read. Really? But an informed reader, I would expect, is a discriminating reader, and as such, intellectual integrity demands more than just equivocating relativism. Wouldn't you tip off a drunken friend rummaging around your refrigerator as to which bowls, cartons, greasy bags, etc contained the moldy, month-old leftovers? Mental, like gastronomic, gargage needs to be tossed, don't you think? Each person has a perspective and an argument, and reading even those you disagree with can strongly inform your own understanding. I suspect rather, when people say that certain authors should not be read, it is usually the case that they have not read them themselves. Perhaps. You seem to be taking exception with (passing) criticism of Deleuze's reading of Spinoza. Well, I've studied most of Deleuze's writings, including those on Spinoza, and long ago concluded that his misreading is so strong as to render Spinoza's Ethics unrecognizable. I find no intelligible way of deriving a "materialist" or "neo-Marxist" or "schizoanalytic" interpretation from the [Substance[Attributes/Natura Naturans[Modes/Natura Naturata/Affects]]] geometrico mores anymore than I find a way of non-facetiously applying "homo-erotic" or "Maoist" or "feminist" interpretations to "Hamlet". This "deconstructive rubric" has shown itself to be self-indulgent rather than critical, parodistic instead of probitive, and agenda-imposing in lieu of agenda-exposing. Do you deny that Deleuze et al have appropriated Spinoza in exemplary postmodern (i.e. pastiche) fashion (much as Heidegger and Jung had appropriated Nietzsche in teuton-romantic (i.e. mythic) fashion)? Personally, I have found the combination of historical biography and accounts, contemporary analysis (continental and analytic), and primary readings to be the best combination of approach. Each serves as an illumination of the other two. I agree, Dunamis, but only to the extent that these elements of reading are ranked from lowest to highest level of "bias" they're likely to engender. For example, reading 1. primary text 2. historical/intellectual biographies 3. (contemporaneous) accounts (...) 6. contemporary analysis (analytic) 7. contemporary analysis (continental)
_____________________ If faith is irrational, then it is rational to dismiss "faith-based claims" out of hand. If faith is rational, then "faith-based claims" must be testable and/or sufficient -- but they are neither. If faith is a-rational, then "faith-based claims" are inexplicable and thus cannot explain anything.

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Posted 05/11/08 - 12:08 PM:	#37
180 Proof wrote: In short: the more we read Spinoza in his context, that is, the less familiar his ideas become to us and the more we have to tax our imaginative and intellectual resources to apprehend without domesticating them, the less disposed we are to distorting these "contemporary lenses" with our belated concerns and controversies (e.g. Deleuze, Negri, Balibar, Hardt, etc). This operates under the, I think, mistaken impression that Deleuze, Negri and Balibar are some how communicating a Spinoza that is "familiar" and easy to understand. In fact I think it is the opposite, having read them to a large degree. If anything, they do a tremendous job of bringing out the radical unfamiliarity of his thought. No, he is not simply forming some other opinion about Substance, different from Descartes but made superfluous by Frege (this is the "familiar" Spinoza), he is rather rewriting the world in a startling way, given how Cartesian it is. People largely did not understand Spinoza at all, in his time. Reading his letters one sees how he has to correct them on the most elementary of things, things they can hardly imagine. I think more than any other commentator group, the Deleuze-Negri line brings much of the same. (I have to ask, honestly, have you read ALL these authors you disapprove of?) To the extent Spinoza explicity shares, addresses and/or criticizes the philosophical concerns of e.g. "Descartes and Hobbes", they are significant influences on Spinoza's thinking and thereby of interest to (us) students of Spinoza. The same goes for Qabala. Extant documentation and perhaps reliable, contemporaneous testimony are the only explicit clues we have indicating what probably influenced Spinoza's work. Much of what he read and studied, like any other writer, did not significantly influence his work. Close reading of the author "intellectual biography", as well as the texts in question, seems the only careful way to sift important influences from merely interesting ones. (Btw, as far as I can tell, suggestions of Qabala-influence in Spinoza's work are exaggerated ...) This sounds like someone who has spent little time studying his historical period. I am absolutely unsure how you can draw such a conclusion from "explicit" source material. It is rather in the implicit understanding of his thought that such an influence, if it is there at all, would be found. It would be in the Neo-Platonic nature of his thought, for instance. Where did this come from? Is it from Augustine? Is it from the Kabbalah? Deleuze is the only writer for instance that I have seen, that points up the serious Plotinus-like frameworks of his thought, (and how divergent he is from them). Where did these core conceptions come from. I am agnostic to the issue of Kabbalah influence, so I don't know what "are exaggerated" means, exaggerated by everyone? By anyone who mentions them? Or by certain others you have in mind? Further, the very Judeo-messianic conditions of his community, the no-doubt-intense marrano and converso issue of Jewish identity that plagued this immigrant community, an issue attempted to be resolved through a codification and essentialization of the Law, must have dominated the arguments and concerns of his seniors. This process of codification and its relationship to the Kabbalah (for instance in the person of Karo), has firm parallel I would say, in the form of Spinoza's propositional reductive expression. I have no idea how one would divide all of this from the Kabbalah itself, based on some notion of "explicit" readings. (I remember when you yourself not too long ago used a Kabbalist, Solomon Maimon, to interpret just what Spinoza meant about the world; is this rejection of a Kabalist influence your own return from heretical apostasy?) It seems quite a luxury, Dunamis, to have the time to rummage through mountains of derivative, secondary books and articles, especially when the primary source is so much more compelling and inexhaustible. One man's "censorship" might just be another man's good, discriminating judgment ... What primary source do you keep referring to? Are you saying that you have read the Ethics all day and every day. Are you rummaging through his letters or his Emendation? You sound like someone who thinks of Spinoza's work as a holy text. One can take it that way, but there are different kinds of holy. I read things that bring Spinoza to light. I do not rummage. You sound like a good orthodox rabbi of Spinoza holy-work. Really? But an informed reader, I would expect, is a discriminating reader, and as such, intellectual integrity demands more than just equivocating relativism. Wouldn't you tip off a drunken friend rummaging around your refrigerator as to which bowls, cartons, greasy bags, etc contained the moldy, month-old leftovers? Mental, like gastronomic, gargage needs to be tossed, don't you think? Hmmm. Deleuze, who probably is historically responsible that either of us are discussing Spinoza at all, that is, he helped make Spinoza relevant to universities again, is a moldy left over piece of garbage? Where does this rhetoric come from? If Deleuze, and then Continental philosophy, (Lacan, Althusser), has not rescued Spinoza from the dustbin of history (yes, that is where he was) put there along with other Metaphysicians by the logical positivists engaging in games of reference, analytical philosophy would hardly be considering him now. In fact that he has any analytic standing probably is due to the continental-inspired Rorty, and his own championing of Davidson, who owes much to Spinoza. Considering this contemporary lineage of focus, there is no book on Spinoza that I have felt was like eating garbage. Perhaps I am an omnivore that can grind down to nutrition any attempt to make Spinoza clear, and you are the effete connoisseur, who wrinkles his nose at any text that is not a choice cut from the loin of Spinoza's mind. Perhaps even there are cuts of Spinozist meat that you refuse to read, letters he has written that do not live up to your gastronomically sensitive mind. Perhaps there are even parts of the Ethics itself (there are people like this), that simply do not taste good to you, rather honing your elevated pallate on the same 25 or so propositions that are the most filet mignon to you. It has been my experience that when people deign to write on Spinoza in any thorough manner, they have something important to say (and hear). I have read an incredible variety of books on him, and at no time did I feel that I was reading garbage. For instance I recently read Kordelia's Surplus: Spinoza, Lacan (that's me, digging in the garbage can), which proposes that Spinoza actually discovered the significant thing about language that Lacan would make so imporant. I completely disagreed with the premise after about page 30, but reading the book was significant, since it put Spinoza in contact with a certain kind of discourse, it put them in communication. And helped me understand why Lacan (and some Lacanians) think of Spinoza the way that they do. I certainly would tell any fellow traveller what I thought of a particular food source, why I liked it, or didn't, and which were my favorites. It seems really that those that are gastronomicially elite, really have tasted very little, and thus really don't know what it is that they have tasted. You seem to be taking exception with (passing) criticism of Deleuze's reading of Spinoza. Well, I've studied most of Deleuze's writings, including those on Spinoza, and long ago concluded that his misreading is so strong as to render Spinoza's Ethics unrecognizable One doesn't have to buy what Deleuze is selling, in for instace A Thousand Plateaus to see that many of his observations are of value. For instance his conceptual connections between Spinoza and Nietzsche are of tremendous value, if only to bring Spinozist corrections to Nietzschean overloads of contemporary thought. I take this also mean, from your silence, that you have not read Balibar, nor Negri, nor I assume Genevieve Lloyd or Gatens, nor Montag. I suppose that this means that there is a school of thought which you find to be garbage and filth, that makes Spinoza less than "familliar" to you (unrecognizable). I have to say that whether I am reading Balibar or Della Rocca, I do not suffer the same dislocation. Perhaps it is because you are in possion of the TRUE reading of Spinoza. This could be. geometrico mores anymore than I find a way of non-facetiously applying "homo-erotic" or "Maoist" or "feminist" interpretations to "Hamlet". This "deconstructive rubric" has shown itself to be self-indulgent rather than critical, parodistic instead of probitive, and agenda-imposing in lieu of agenda-exposing. It has "shown itself". That is quite a thought. As I said, I have found rather valuable and insightful points made by Deleuze (not to mention the rest of the crew). Deleuze's argument that Spinoza had Plotinian affinities actually alerted me a power/being vector approach to epistemological difficulties that has a very long history in philosophy. My own investigative readings have "shown that", much of what I had mistakenly taken to be original to Spinoza, is in fact not at all. That is, it gave me a much more precise sense of what was original. I have found a line of thought: Plotinus--Augustine--Campanella--Spinoza which places degrees of being at the center of questions about what is true, something that Deleuze did not argue, but whose insights allowed me to find. Reading Spinoza's primary texts, or even those of his contemporaries, would never have given me this avenue of understanding. Nor would reading analytic accounts have allowed me to see this (in fact this would been completely obfuscated). And Deleuze's observation that Spinoza was employing a Duns Scotus formal distinction also does much to explain how Spinoza reconsiled and modernized the debates of Scholasticism, (one wonders how this would even have crossed the mind, reading only his "primary source" material). Off the top of my head, these two conceptual analysis points were of utmost value to me, no matter what else you might think of him. Aside from this conceptual analysis, Deleuze's explication of what Spinoza means by Affect, and inadequate idea, and how it manifests itself in everyday circumstances, everyday consciousness (for instance his lectures on Affect, or his treatment of the issue Evil in Practical Philosophy), are the most humanizing, most realistic applications of what most often in the mouths of others, sounds like an unrealistic idea of what feelings are, and where they come from. He, though capable of quite tortured texts, is also capable of incredible clear summations and examples. None of which are rotting garbage. Do you deny that Deleuze et al have appropriated Spinoza in exemplary postmodern (i.e. pastiche) fashion (much as Heidegger and Jung had appropriated Nietzsche in teuton-romantic (i.e. mythic) fashion)? Not at all. In fact Deleuze himself does not deny it (although "postmodern" is a particular position, and not just a slur, and Deleuze is not postmodern. He is an self-admitted metaphysician). Such appropriations (I'm surprised you are not calling them rapes), are what happens when a thinker is brought to answer questions which historically did not exist when that thinker wrote. So yes, it is very interesting to study just what Spinoza thought about the debates of his day, what makes that study significant is to apply his thought to the debates of our day. And I do not find Spinoza to be mythologized by let us say Balibar, who uses his thoughts and arguments on democracy (written at a time of early experiment in democracy), to analyze the rationality behind comtemporary democracy, (which may be a different kind of animal). I find it relevant when Zizek warns that we live in a Spinozist age of a surplus of knowledge, relevant not because his criticism is right, but that whatever brings him to say such a thing, likely gives us to look for Spinozist answers. And when someone like Gatens uses Spinoza to answer Hegelian descriptions and analyses of the world, I do not see this to be "mythic", but rather, thinking. What Spinoza has to say about "the multitude" at a time of increasing individual freedoms, and reactionary political crackdowns, is I think actually vital and informing. All of this is not crap. In fact if I had to say that someone here is "romanticizing" it is you, when talking about the supposed "romance" of others with Spinoza, that is, you have very little specific to say, and like to speak in huge rhetoric about greasy garbage. I agree, Dunamis, but only to the extent that these elements of reading are ranked from lowest to highest level of "bias" they're likely to engender. For example, reading 1. primary text 2. historical/intellectual biographies 3. (contemporaneous) accounts (...) 6. contemporary analysis (analytic) 7. contemporary analysis (continental) Other than you just having a rhetorical bias as to which is correct, this is exegetically pretty much how I take it (but contemporneous accounts are really subsumed by good biography and histories, unless you think that you are going to discover something others have not in the nasty things Leibniz had to say). Yet if one wants to understand the relevance of Spinoza to today, that is in analyzing present conditions, and paths to change, the kinds of thing that Spinoza himself would be concerned about if he were alive, given the concerns he showed when alive, number 7 would be placed much, much higher. One might read Della Rocca's pointed discussion of Spinoza's relationship between the body and belief, and come away with a very nice idea of what Spinoza was arguing, and even how it might relate to someone like Chalmers, but what this would have to say about let us say, China as a world superpower, or the role of media in American Democracy, would be lost. There is a tendency of those who favor an analytic reading, and really an anti-Continental reading, of Spinoza, to focus on and usually quote from the first two books of the Ethics. Sometimes they venture into the third. In fact most of the lasting mark that Spinoza left, until recently, comes from those two books. People seem to stop reading there. But Spinoza wrote five books, and he wrote all five for a reason, the last three after taking a lengthy break to concern himself with political issues. Books 3 and 4 in particular actually are much more amenable to the concerns and methods of Contenental thought, with questions of the psyche and history and sociability (questions that Marx and Freud, those garbage men, tried to answer). In truth really, if you want to understand the whole of the Ethics, the bredth of its concerns and arguments, you pretty much need both approaches, in my opinion. If listening to the reading recommendations of two people, and one person told that that this group of books (many of which they had not read) were a bunch of rotting garbage, a putrescence that had to be thrown out for the good of my mind, and the other person said that the same group of books had strengths and weaknesses and should be read in context with others that had other strengths and weakness, it would be my impression that the first person did not even really understand such a group of books in the first place (given that they had not even read them all, and had such a strong need to speak in rotting rhetoric). In fact, if such a person spoke in such terms, I probably would want to read the texts esspecially so. I can't say that such a person should be in charge of my, or really anyone's, mental diet. Edited by Dunamis on 05/12/08 - 08:34 AM
_____________________ Tractatus theologico-politicus [is a] work forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil and issued with the knowledge of Mynheer Jan de Witt. - Church Council of Amsterdam If no man ever thinks alone, then we might say that to know really is to think ever less by oneself - Balibar

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