Spinoza on the Limits of Explanation

Hübner, Karolina

doi:10.1111/phpr.12711

Cited by 3 publications

References 33 publications

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Finding Oneself in God

Primus

2024

Spinoza: Reason, Religion, Politics

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This chapter argues that the cognition Spinoza calls “intuitive knowledge” (scientia intuitiva) is a confluence of two powerful intuitions, each of which can be understood as a Spinozistic version of a well-known Cartesian intuition. The first component intuition is an extension of Descartes’s Fifth Meditation ontological argument: that is, for Spinoza, given a clear and distinct idea of God, one does not just intuit, with the Cartesian Meditator, that God necessarily exists, but also that all of God’s effects are necessary, infinite, eternal modes, that perceived finite, enduring things and infinite, eternal modes are one and the same essences conceived in different ways, and that everything can be conceived under different attributes. The second component intuition modifies the Cartesian cogito, in which one proceeds directly from a first-personal experience of thinking to the knowledge that one exists as a thinking thing. For Spinoza, one can proceed from the first-personal experience of understanding the monist structure of reality (i.e. from the experience of having the first intuition) to the knowledge that one’s own mind, insofar as it understands, exists as an infinite, eternal mode in God. Scientia intuitiva is thus a metaphysically self-locating thought: one does not just understand a metaphysical structure—one has a first-personal understanding of oneself as within that structure. This interpretation helps clarify the different sorts of salvation Spinoza presents in the Ethics and TTP.

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Finding Oneself in God

Primus

2024

Spinoza: Reason, Religion, Politics

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Spinoza in the Light of Classical and Contemporary Western Philosophy

Kryshtop

Malla

2022

Vestn. Ross. univ. družby nar., Ser. Filosofiâ

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The article concerns the main lines of reception of the philosophical ideas of B. Spinoza. Estimates of the work of this thinker, his role and importance have undergone significant changes in the course of the development of Western European and Russian philosophical thought. It focuses on the study of the transformations occurred in the approach and nature of evaluations of the main philosophical ideas of Spinoza in the Western European philosophical space, primarily in Germany and France. At the same time, we can state that the peak of interest in the philosophy of Spinoza in these national traditions seriously diverges in time. Initially, we can talk about the predominance of interest in Spinoza’s philosophy on the part of German-speaking thinkers. For a long time, Spinoza’s philosophy was characterized as atheistic and, in connection with this, was subjected to fierce criticism. It is the German enlighteners who are credited with reviving interest in Spinoza’s philosophy at a new level. At the same time, the philosophical views of this thinker not only cease to be assessed as atheistic, but are sometimes perceived in the exact opposite way - as imbued with genuine religious faith. F. Schleiermacher can be considered here as a striking example of such an approach to Spinoza’s philosophy. In the future, interest in Spinoza’s philosophy was maintained in the German-speaking philosophical space due to the reception of his ideas by Hegel, Feuerbach, and Neo-Kantians. In French-language philosophy, interest in Spinoza wakes up much later - in the middle-second half of the 20th century, which is associated primarily with such name as Deleuze. However, this “French Renaissance” of Spinoza’s philosophy can be considered as no less significant than the Renaissance of the age of German Enlightenment. It was “French Spinozism” that brought the study of Spinoza’s philosophy to the international level, significantly expanding their conceptual framework.

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Spinoza’s Concept of God: Modern Interpretations

Malla¹

2023

Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Humanities (Philosophy of Being

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Spinoza devoted his philosophical system to clarifying the teachings of God. Spinoza is one of the most interested philosophers in the history of philosophy throughout the centuries. It is worth noting the study of the views of the German philosophers of the Enlightenment in the teachings of Spinoza: Goethe, Schelling, Fischer, Shevchenko, and Feuerbach. It is clear that one of the important issues in the history of philosophy that deserves mention in Spinoza is the doctrine of God, one of the most important and profound aspects of Spinoza's teachings. Spinoza developed other doctrines such as monism, materialism, free will, nature, and essence. Spinoza's teachings on God have theoretical, ideological, and methodological significance. Spinoza's interpretation of the concept of God is key to understanding his philosophy, is the primary, central category of the thinker's philosophy and is one of the most controversial concepts among Spinozists, also because it is associated with religious meanings. Spinoza's intellectual study includes the substance relating to the concept of God, in defining what Spinoza focuses on absolute eternity and infinity. Substance, consisting of an infinite number of attributes, each expressing an eternal and infinite essence, and the key to Spinoza's essence, as we shall see, is unity, that is, the unity of being between God and Nature. In the attached text, we will find that God is the doctrine of substance, nature and religious sense. Russian philosophy goes back in many ways to the traditions of German philosophy: Materialism to Feuerbach and Marxism to Hegel, Kant and Schelling, and we will see the philosophers' critique of materialism.

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Spinoza on the Limits of Explanation

Cited by 3 publications

References 33 publications

Finding Oneself in God

Finding Oneself in God

Spinoza in the Light of Classical and Contemporary Western Philosophy

Spinoza’s Concept of God: Modern Interpretations

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