/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14784583]

For me, it’s Spinoza

[Anonymous No.14784587]

What's his philosophy in a nutshell

[Anonymous No.14784588]

[Anonymous No.14784590]

>>14784587
White people bad.

[Anonymous No.14784598]

>>14784587
traps are gay

[Anonymous No.14784608]

>>14784587
Body and thought are attributes of the only existing substance that is infinite which is God

[Anonymous No.14784616]

>>14784583
But why? He was wrong about god and wrong in the slipshod "logical" treatment which he purported to give to ethics, making things up as he pleased and then referring to them ad nauseum as if to construct a solid edifice. However, he did have correct insights on human nature, the real value of the work, which arose in spite of, and not because of, the purported logical system. Because Spinoza himself knew these things about human nature before he pretended to "discover" them a priori, or at least to explain them from first principles, by a mistaken system whose only allure it that it appears complex, and not because it is actually true.

Another jew, Marx, made a similar mistake when he endeavoured to impose materialist inevitability or teleology onto history, rejecting morality as "bourgeois". Somewhat like Spinoza's ethical (((system))), it was a false and unnecessary superstructure. Marx would have done much better to make normative statements about the suffering of the poor, and the moral imperative to ameliorate same.

[Anonymous No.14784617]

>>14784608
>attributes
>substance
woah woah woah.. can you define these terms geometrically?

[Anonymous No.14784618]

>>14784588
>the story about spiders is true because...yeah i dunno just trust me bro it's true

[Anonymous No.14784626]

where do i start with spinoza? by which i mean what is the best secondary material on spinoza? his actual writing seems too hard so i dont want to start there. i feel ashamed that I have put off reading him for so long since i am a fellow sephardic jew

[Anonymous No.14784628]

>>14784616
>He was wrong about god and wrong in the slipshod "logical" treatment which he purported to give to ethics
If you think this you did not understand the argument. Read it, read it as many times as it takes for your feeble brain to grasp his argument.

[Anonymous No.14784630]

>>14784626
>i am a fellow sephardic jew
are you the guy that takes every opportunity to seethe about Ashkenazim

[Anonymous No.14784634]

>>14784618
Even if it's true it's just an interesting fact about his life. Whoever wrote that essay is a massive fag.

[Anonymous No.14784636]

>>14784630
yeah, ive done that once or twice. i dont take "every opportunity" though. maybe there's another based sephardic poster? i dunno man

[Anonymous No.14784640]

>>14784636
based

[Anonymous No.14784643]

>>14784634
what's the essay about? have you read it? what point does he drive at?

[Anonymous No.14784644]

>>14784583
Is monist non-dualism subtly materialism as natura naturans can't create a set group of what opossed to beings in matter?

[Anonymous No.14784647]

>>14784628

You don't get to just arbitrarily designate "substance" as such-and-such in order to make your thing work and then jew it in a "demonstration" when you occasionally bring in other undefined terms (he does this). It is in fact you who are mistaken, you just want to be fashionable on the internet for liking a specific jew, that's all. I am right.

[Anonymous No.14784661]

so...can anyone recommend secondary material on spinoza? a good overview of some kind? something comparable to kaufmann's book on nietzsche or dreyfuss' book on heidegger

[Anonymous No.14784666]

>>14784647
>You don't get to just arbitrarily designate "substance" as such-and-such in order to make your thing work
Why not? He defines a thing in a specific way (really he was working off of Descartes's method) and then constructs the argument to draw out the implications of this definition. You can't define every single word, that's impractical. If something is undefined you should be able to interpret it in context. Defining anything is already rare in philosophy.
>I am right
kek

[Anonymous No.14784675]

>>14784661

So this guy called Deleuze wrote this little book, I hear it's worth a read. I'll even read my own copy some time.

[Anonymous No.14784692]

>>14784675
looks interesting, but doesn't seem to be the kind of overview im looking for

[Anonymous No.14784700]

>>14784583

[Anonymous No.14784716]

>>14784692

>recommend me thing X
>oh no not that thing X I have another thing with un-mentioned property Y in mind

It's like 150 pages, you don't have an excuse even if you "don't like it" for whatever reason.

[Anonymous No.14784717]

>>14784716
i didn't say that i didn't like it, anon. i would like to get to deleuze some time, but i looked that up and that doesn't strike me as what im looking for. i mentioned to examples of books, i want something comparable to those. dont take it personally, i appreciate the recommendation

[Anonymous No.14784720]

>>14784717
>to examples
two examples*

[Anonymous No.14784726]

>>14784626
Try Nadler's book

[Anonymous No.14784735]

>>14784726
...the biography?

[Anonymous No.14784746]

>>14784588
>feeding spider bros is cruel and sadistic
yeah, okay. Next you'll tell me he ate meat sometimes too.

[Anonymous No.14784747]

for me, you need to read more

[Anonymous No.14784751]

>>14784626
read the ethics. Very slowly and take notes.

[Anonymous No.14784778]

Reminder Aztec teotl metaphysics (as interpenetrated by Leon-Portilla/James Maffie, there's some debate over if their interpretation is correct) beat Spinoza to the punch on Spinozan metaphysics.

>Mexica [[If you want me to explain Mexica vs Aztec let me know]] metaphysics embraces an ontological and constitutional monism. At the heart of Mexica metaphysics stands the ontological thesis that there exists at bottom just one thing: dynamic, vivifying, eternally self-generating and self-regenerating sacred power, force, or energy. The Mexica referred to this power as “teotl.” Reality, cosmos, and all existing things consist of teotl and are ultimately identical with teotl. Mexica metaphysics is also non-hierarchical, i.e. it denies any principled metaphysical distinction between transcendent and immanent, higher and lower, or supernatural and natural realities, degrees of being, or kinds of stuff.

>Mexica philosophy also embraces what Western philosophers call a process metaphysics. Process, becoming, change, and transformation define teotl. Processes rather than perduring objects, entities, or substances are ontologically fundamental. Reality is characterized by becoming — not by being or “is-ness.” To exist — to be real – is to become, to move, to change. Teotl and hence reality, cosmos, and all existing things are defined in terms of becoming. They are essentially dynamic: always moving, always changing. Mexica philosophers also embraced pantheism. Everything that exists constitutes a single, all-inclusive and interrelated sacred unity. This single all-encompassing unity is substantively constituted by teotl and ontologically identical with teotl. The unity is genealogically unified by teotl since it unfolds out of teotl. Teotl does not create the cosmos ex nihilo; rather, the cosmos emerges from teotl. Teotl is therefore not the “creator” ex nihilo of the cosmos in a theistic sense but rather the immanent engenderer of the cosmos. Teotl is not a minded or intentional agent, being, or deity. The history of the cosmos is nothing more than the self-unfolding and self-presenting of teotl.

See my explanation and how it ties into Aztec morality and sacrifice practices here:
desuarchive.org/his/thread/5495687/

And frankly people who are far more educated on this specific topic/philsophipical metaphysical models in general talking about it here:
>>/lit/thread/S11670156
https://archived.moe/lit/thread/13844831/#13846538
https://archived.moe/lit/thread/14380131

In fact if anybody from those threads is here, email me at [e-mail], I wanna exchange resources and such

And maffie himself here
http://dailynous.com/2014/05/20/pip-1-huebner-interviews-maffie/
https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/home/aztec-philosophy

[Anonymous No.14784794]

>>14784778
I mean, thanks, but it feels a bit off topic. Maybe make a separate thread?

[Anonymous No.14784880]

>>14784617
Anon is trying to be smart but it should be considered that Spinoza was a proficent lens grinder and his lenses sought after by astronomers.

[Anonymous No.14784895]

>>14784778
wow! thanks for posting this- I'm going to follow it further

[Anonymous No.14784929]

>>14784895
Keep in mind, as I say, maffie and leon-portilla's work isn't without criticism: A lot of leon-portilla's work argued for the existence of a god called ometeotl which probably never actually existed as we now know, and Maffie going even further into process metaphysics then leon-portilla did is criticized as well.

I'm admittedly not informed enough to give a full explanation of the controversery, but it's probably best to think of this stuff less as a definetitive "This is what Aztec philsophers thought" (unforantely, while we have some surviving poetry, moral adages, and know that said philosophers existed, it's not like we have long surviving philsophical treatsies) much less the average Aztec person, and moreso just a specific extrapolative lense to view what material we do have through: Sort of like how a modern analsysi of American culture might reveal some concepts which might describe broad trends in the American socio[political landscape, but isn't nessscarily indicative of any indivual American's views; or like how Feminist philosophy can describe some useful ideas about gender relations, but isn't "objectively true" and is just a potential lense to view these issues through and often has it's own failings (as we see these days) etc

Of course, you can always view primary sources yourself, but that becomes difficult if you don't know Spanish since a lot is untranslated, and there's some that's straight up only in Nahuatl or where the symbolism is really only apparent if you know the language's symbolic/metaphiscal conventions, pic related being a good example of this. Another is that I personally own a copy of book 6 of the florentine codex, but a lot of the adages go over my head because what I have is just a literal translation and without knowing nahuatl I can't really get the actual ethical notions or symbolsim it's trying to get across.

Anyways, you can see my suggestions on Mesoamerican literature https://desuarchive.org/his/thread/7803078/#7805378 and my general post of resources on Mesoamerican stuff here https://desuarchive.org/his/thread/8131157/#8136024

>>14784794
Yeah, sorry, sometimes I can be overzealous with trying to entice people with Mesoamerican stuff when tangentially related stuff comes up; since it's such a niche topic and making whole threads on it will just lead to them dying as a result.

I won't reply further since i've already linked my resoure collections unless somebody else really wants me to

[Anonymous No.14784932]

>>14784929
>I won't reply further since i've already linked my resoure collections unless somebody else really wants me to
I was serious with the suggestion to make another thread. It's interesting, but deserves its own thread.

[Anonymous No.14784938]

>>14784778
>as interpenetrated by Leon-Portilla/James Maffie, there's some debate over if their interpretation is correct
debate, because they couldn't invent a written language, right?

[Anonymous No.14784967]

>>14784626
Deleuze's Spinoza Practical Philosophy

[Anonymous No.14784974]

Reminder that Kant btfo Spinoza's dogmatism and made him obsolete.

[Anonymous No.14784987]

>>14784932
Maybe I will tommorow

>>14784938
Not sure I understand your question, but email it to me with more clear wording to [e-mail] and I can try to get back to you when I have time (though that could be weeks, i'm bad at replying to emails in a timely fashion), since I don't wanna de-rail the thread further.

If you are just asserting they didn't have a written language; there was absolutely an Aztec script, albiet not a full/complete written language; it was pictosyllabic; primarily pictographic with some phonetic/syllabic elements. But we do know that they had formal intellectual insiutuition; with philsophers and poets teaching at elite academis and having their own intellectual circles, as well as basically research labs for crossbreeding, testing, and categorizing plants for medical and other uses. Straight up had binominal taxonomy for them, too.

[Anonymous No.14784992]

>>14784987
>Maybe I will tommorow
Please do

[Anonymous No.14785016]

>>14784987
>>14784938
shit forgot my file

Sorry for all the derailing posts OP

Also to be clear here other Mesoamerican civilizations had scripts of varying complieixites and degrees of phonetic/syllabic basis: The Maya script was a true, formal written language under even the strictest definition of the term, contrary to how it looks the glyphs are made up of subcharacters representing nearly every spoken sound in the language to form words (though there is a set of entirely logogrammic glyphs too), while the Epi-Olmec and Zapotec scripts are more in between Aztec and Maya in terms of how heavily they are based on the language; while Teotihuacano and Mixtec are even more purely pictographic AFAIK then Aztec

>>14784992
To be honest i'm not sure i';m informed enough on teotl metaphysics to sustain a long disscusion about it, but maybe me making a thread on it will get the other anons in the archived links I posted to show up

I guess I will

[Anonymous No.14785048]

>>14784987
>>14784938
shit forgot my file

Again, Sorry for all the derailing posts OP >>14784583

Also to be clear here other Mesoamerican civilizations had scripts of varying complieixites and degrees of phonetic/syllabic basis: The Maya script was a true, formal written language under even the strictest definition of the term, contrary to how it looks the glyphs are made up of subcharacters representing nearly every spoken sound in the language to form words (though there is a set of entirely logogrammic glyphs too), while the Epi-Olmec and Zapotec scripts are more in between Aztec and Maya in terms of how heavily they are based on the language; while Teotihuacano and Mixtec are even more purely pictographic AFAIK then Aztec

Alternatively, if you were asking "it's debatable up for interperation because they didn't have writing?"; then the answer to that is, well, I guess also the above, but moreso that most of the sources those researchers are pulling from were written in Nahuatl using European scripts, during the early colional period: The first 3-5 decades of the Spanish colional period still had Mesoamerican socities and political institution mostly intact (many city-states and kingdoms were also still unconquered), so you had a brief period where sort of like Japan you had traditonal societies modernizing and using European technologies but still keeping their prexisting social, cultural, etc traditions, though obviously there was some degree of Spanish cultural influence at play even during these early decades, such as distorting accounts about religion and their pantheon to have christanized elements such as associating Quetzalcoatl with jesus.

In any case there's literally hundreds of Nahuatl documents from this period.

>>14784992
To be honest i'm not sure i';m informed enough on teotl metaphysics to sustain a long disscusion about it, but maybe me making a thread on it will get the other anons in the archived links I posted to show up

I guess I will

[Anonymous No.14785126]

>>14784735
No, his book on the Ethics. Also check out Beth Lord's guide and Della Rocca's book about Spinoza.

[Anonymous No.14785130]

>>14785126
thanks, bro

[Anonymous No.14785138]

>>14785126
the della rocca one looks really good, thanks again. think i got what i was looking for

[Anonymous No.14785155]

>>14785138
You're welcome, senpai.

[Anonymous No.14785515]

>>14784588
>.... is not likely to please many persons
Why? It's quite endearing

[Anonymous No.14786447]

>>14784587
Atheism.

[Anonymous No.14787303]

>>14786447
no

[Anonymous No.14787371]

>>14784967
Pretty good as a deleuzian book; not as good as a spinozian book.

[Anonymous No.14788300]

Can any based effort posters give us some hot takes on Spinoza for me to screencap?