Written by Benedict Spinoza (formerly known as Baruch Spinoza) Anybody else read this? Introduced me to the world of philosophy and aware from fundie-ism.
Yes, I've read it. It's wrong, but it's still very impressive. It's really a very ambitious project, to derive a system of metaphysics and ethics from a basic set of axioms in the same way Euclid derived geometry from a small set of axioms. It's also one of those books that, when you get to a main point and it all sort of clicks, you experience one of those "Whoa!" feelings. As far as the rationalists go, I always thought Spinoza was the best.
Well, you at least have to know the basics of Spinoza's argument. So, it goes something like this: Spinoza was trying to do for ethics and metaphysics what Euclid did for geometry, specifically to derive an entire system from a small set of self-evident axioms and postulates. http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ne/spinoza.htm In doing so, however, Spinoza inherits a lot of Descartes' concepts and definitions. Spinoza was a rationalist, after all, and he wanted his philosophy to answer a question Descartes' couldn't: How is it that the mind and body can interact? His solution is to replace Cartesian dualism with monism and pantheism. But I think Spinoza is wrong because I don't believe in a priori knowledge, certainly not synthetic a priori knowledge. I mean, it's fairly obvious from just looking at some of those axioms that they're not quite as self-evident as Spinoza would have us believe. And as it turned out, Euclid's axioms weren't terribly self-evident, either. In fact, his fifth postulate is not necessarily true, which is why it's possible to construct non-Euclidean geometries. But of course, Spinoza wouldn't have known that back in the 17th century.
Yes I particularly liked the part about how there is no sin in the world because everything we do is from pain or numbness in our brain, derived from emntal illness. I agree sin can't exist because pain can't say that it wants more pain-we only want pleasure.All bad always connects with pain and all good with pleasure, we cannot say we want pain only that we want pleasure. People derive their pleasure in different ways and when it is deviant it is simply deviant-not a sin.
