/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17475541]

Started reading this guy. What am I missing? Why do so many famous people love this guy so much? Am I reading the wrong book?

[Anonymous No.17475568]

>>17475541
One question per post please.

[Anonymous No.17475591]

>>17475568
Shut the fuck up pussy bitch

[Anonymous No.17475597]

>>17475541
He is overrated. Read Leibniz instead.

[Anonymous No.17475601]

>>17475541
>Why do so many famous people love this guy so much?
Because he was right.

[Anonymous No.17475639]

>>17475601
Right about what this shit isn't cool. Why the fuck do artists love this guy so much

[Anonymous No.17475823]

>>17475541
>Started reading
finish and then ask questions

[Anonymous No.17475845]

>>17475639
>this shit isn't cool

Well, that says it all.
SAGE
SAGE
SAGE
SAGE
SAGE

[Anonymous No.17475847]

>>17475597
you're supposed to read both, follow that with Locke if you can handle the language. Welcome to rational idealism 101.

[Anonymous No.17476126]

Spinoza is famous because around 1700 he became infamously associated with free-thinking, radical democratic sentiment, and above all pantheism, which for many contemporaries of the so-called "radical Enlightenment" persuasian was a compelling mixture. Love of Spinoza became a way to signal that you were of this persuasion, and hatred of Spinoza became a way of affirming religion and so on. This didn't necessarily mean dogmatic religion, since there were revival movements that simply found his godless logic-driven world offensive or unworthy of God's glory. One of the most famous figures of the Enlightenment, champion of free thought and hero to many, Lessing, was scandalously "exposed" as a spinozist after his death, which led to increased popularity of his ideas.

He's even more famous for the appropriation made of him by thinkers like Herder starting in the 1760s and 1770s, as part of this second wave of Spinoza interest. These thinkers mixed him with contemporary ideas of science and rising interest in idealist philosophy to create a kind of "God as infinitely creative nature" vision that Spinoza himself would not really have recognised as his philosophy. For example these thinkers had to deny Spinoza's emphasis on Cartesian "extension" as one of the two modes of God we have access to, since they were more interested in active forces, not static extension.

Herder is a chief representative of this second wave of Spinozism, and through him and his friend Goethe it filtered into the German romantic philosophy of Schelling, Hegel, et al. Fichte, another important figure in this group, was accused of spinozism (essentially atheism), and Goethe merely said of Fichte that "he had not used the customary tact," i.e., "we're ALL spinozists these days, but you're not supposed to just SAY it." Fichte's metaphysics appeared to his detractors as a subjective idealism, a godless pantheism in which spontaneous creativity always brought forth new forms. That is how Spinoza was received at that time.

Subsequent appreciation of Spinoza is usually deeply coloured by these romantic appropriations of him.

[Anonymous No.17477508]

>>17476126
Wow, fascinating post, I've saved it for my own reference. Any book recommendations on this matter?

[Anonymous No.17477645]

m o d a l c o l l a p s e
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[Anonymous No.17477726]

>>17477508
Expressionism in Spinoza by Deleuze

[Anonymous No.17478189]

>>17477726
Thank you.

[Anonymous No.17478245]

>>17475541
He gets shilled by the intelligentsia now because he’s Jewish

[Anonymous No.17478275]

>>17475541
He's the safest least controversial philosopher to praise publicly, inoffensive and they feel his logical language is unclouded by flowery style. Just like if you like to hate on salesmen you praise that Influence book by Robert B. Cialdini.

[Anonymous No.17479068]

>>17475541
Imagine learning mathematics and thinking about how easy things in philosophy would be if everything was necessary and everything followed from definition. That's what Spinoza did. It's necessitarianism pushed to the absolute extreme; it leaves no room for free will or metaphysical voluntarism. The man claimed he finally achieved absolute knowledge. It's autistic, but in a very endearing way.

[Anonymous No.17479123]

>>17477508
>Introduction to English translation of God: Some Conversations (40 pages)
>First chapter on expressivism in Charles Taylor's Hegel (50 pages)
>the chapter "Jacobi and the Pantheism Controversy" in Beiser's Fate of Reason
>the Herder chapter in Fate of Reason also
Would be good for a quick overview

For a basic overview of the romantic worldview try Berlin, I believe this is the original lectures comprising his Roots of Romanticism book (which is about 250 pages if you prefer that)
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBHxLhKiPKxBjK6Udz8i0QTlFZAXKzTtF

>Radical Enlightenment by Jonathan Israel
for the RE Spinoza. But really just google "radical enlightenment spinoza" and you will see lots of appraisals of it. Found this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xdgATa1Pr8

[Anonymous No.17479463]

>>17475597
>Spinoza was a brainle-
"Spinoza was offered the chair of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, but he refused it, perhaps because of the possibility that it might in some way curb his freedom of thought."
>Spinoza was a dirty jew-
"On 27 July 1656, the Talmud Torah congregation of Amsterdam issued a writ of cherem (Hebrew: חרם, a kind of ban, shunning, ostracism, expulsion, or excommunication) against the 23-year-old Spinoza."
>Spinoza was an athei-
"After stating his proof for God’s existence, Spinoza addresses who “God” is. Spinoza believed that God is “the sum of the natural and physical laws of the universe". He was frequently called an "atheist" by contemporaries, although nowhere in his work does Spinoza argue against the existence of God"
>He had very little influence on philosoph-
"Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said, "The fact is that Spinoza is made a testing-point in modern philosophy, so that it may really be said: You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all."