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Dr Sledge, my man, your intro - and indeed your work - is consistently divine. The inclusion of Billie Eilish in this video is the kind of subtlety and attention to detail that's just icing on the esoteric cake and, joking aside, part of what makes you stand out. I mean, 'habitual abyss-starer'? Brilliant - and if Nietzsche's 'stache isn't the epitome of nihilism, I don't know what is. Keep fighting the good fight. Thank you and God bless.
12:30 how do you deduct Spinoza his opus leads to nihilism. He clearly wrote us a nigh holy book in the form of something seeming a metaphysical manual.
If "God"=Truth, then yes, It is Nature (NTR), the one and only, unbending, "un-ending" and all-forgiving force in reality. Yes, it's "accuser", Samael, is atrophy.
Thank you sir. I had not read or knew about Spinoza till 1998. I am 68 now. Since, 1972 I believed that Nature is real power than any epical gods are gods created by people. Today, hearing you here, I feel good and comfortable .Thanks.
Excellent presentation of Spinoza. Years back I found a reprint of Richard McKeon’s 1928 “The Philosophy of Spinoza: The Unity of His Thought” at Powell’s Bookstore in Portland. It blew me away because McKeon presented Spinoza as the equivalent of Aristotle and avoided the stereotypical caricature of him as Pantheist or Atheist. The book in recent literature is rarely mentioned even though McKeon was a philosopher of the first rank. I would be deeply interested in what Esoterica has to say about this book. I was also happy to hear the Leo Strauss book mentioned, “Spinoza’s Critique of Religion.” In many ways it is a profound book and the point about Calvin’s theology of miracles overriding Spinoza’s rejection of miracles is incisive.
This channels content is the type of stuff I have been searching for (and making in my own way), for years. Love the esoteric focus and deep dives you do, Dr. Sledge.
There are so many religious tools available to work with in forming our own journey among the multiple paths to the Godhead. The tools created by earlier prophets and sages give us a foundation to build upon. Many are starting to wake up.
As ever, I find your work stunningly gentle and inspiring. This one got me through a rough day's news, and plotted a good course for research as I worked on my art and cooking. Thank you, so very much.
What a gift to have a thinker like Spinoza opened up for us this way. Just dazzling. The last version was my favorite reading. Absolutely titillating. It's an honor to share this platform with you and to have collaborated together, again. Thank you Justin.
I've relearned of Spinoza directly through the Swedish Weird Fiction/Fantastique podcast "Udda Ting"(translates to "Odd Things" or "Weird Things"). Henrik Möller, the anchor and producer of the podcast, had an episode that was all about Spinoza and it changed my life. I'm a descendant of Sámi Noaiddis of the region surrounding the town of Jokkmokk, in Northern Sápmi. Even though I wished that I could believe in the existence of my anscestor-deities like Biejvve or Tiermes or the Akkas, I can't because I have a strict materialistic stance to nature. Yet: I'm not an atheist. I would even call myself a theist in some sense. Spinoza's worldview(the little of what I've learned) is the closest thing to my own, even though we differ in our spiritual background. I want to learn more about Spinoza and see if his writing could help articulate my own spiritual perspective.
Spinoza was sure based. Would love a look at Bergson's intuitionism or Peter Kingsley's comparison of Parmenides and Empedocles to shamanic ritual and samadhi
One thing that really stands out to me as a linguist about the discussion about Spinoza is that this is a picture perfect example of Saussure's signifier and signified. Spinoza used a sign (God) to talk about his philosophy, and that sign evoked a very different image in the minds of the readers (perlocution) than the idea Spinoza was trying to communicate (illocution), and unfortunately this led to people criticising him on points he wasn't arguing for because of this level of miscommunication and misunderstanding
I like Spinoza's common name--His family and those with whom he chilled within the community called him "Bento." I live in Japan--have been here almost 30 years--so when I hear 'Bento' I think lunchbox and Max Ernst's Une Semaine Du Bonte. I also like the anecdote about how tolerant he was as a businessman. He got into some dispute with a customer who proceeded to take his hat and hit him over the head with it--or something to that effect--and Spinoza still kept his calm manner and managed the situation beautifully. Spinoza also grew up on the same block where Rembrandt's studio was located and it's nice to think that maybe he and R. had an acquaintance and that he might figure in a sketch or two. These items are from Steven Nadler's biography. There's also an interesting book about the face-to-face meetings of Spinoza and Leibniz--The Courtier and the Heretic, in which L. is presented--through his letters to Oldenburg--none too well as far as L's motivations in tracking down S and a copy of his final book. However, as you say, there's more speculation about S and those he associated with than evidentiary fact. Thank you for this great lecture!
I came to make sense on whether Spinoza was an atheist or mystic. Had no idea this question was the premise of his entire work. I’m sorry to hear his exile. Thank you for the commentary Esoterica.
You definitely keep coming up with subjects that are to my liking. I read Ethics a long time ago and definitely enjoyed it, it has formed the basis for much of my personal philosophical system. I was studying math for a few years before, so the Ethics’ mode of presentation as a mathematical treatise felt more familiar than daunting. Deleuze’s comment about the Necronomicon is also interesting, knowing Lovecraft’s motif of “strange geometries” in his descriptions of the Elder Race constructions, it definitely harkens back to Spinoza’s strange use of geometry as a model for his main work.
This was an awesome piece of content. I've been fascinated by Spinoza, here these past few days, and this video really summed everything up phenomenally and elaborated on any curiosities that'd arisen for me that weren't covered by another video. If I ever have philosophical ponderings in the future (when, not if, really), I know what channel I'm checking to see if has covered the matter!
You are so great! I'm looking forward to reading Spinoza, because I've seen some really funny quote by him and I think it will expand on my thinking and understanding. Thank you for your work!
This is one of the best analyses of Spinoza I have encountered. Now, I'm dying to know, Dr. Sledge, what are your beliefs? I see that you wear a kippah on your head, but what are the personal thoughts about god and religion that circulate underneath it?
It's probably just the opposite that consciousness is God and consciousness gives rise to matter and life. Love your channel watching every single video as if I'm taking a course thank you!
Spinoza couldn't afford to be a hard atheist. The people of his time didn't look gently on those folks and he wasn't rich enough not to care. Free choice of religion didn't exist in Spinoza's world, yet. To look at it any other way is to be completely blind to historical reality.
Oh my God, I was thinking the whole video, this just sounds like a semantic argument: I could call myself a theist or an atheist, but I go with the former because I think "atheist" tends to be associated with strict materialist monism, where as I come from the perspective of... Panpsychism! Although I don't know how "early" I would call Spinoza's thought, considering that versions of what we today would call panpsychism go at least as far back as the ancient Greeks. Although perhaps it's fair to say it was the first systematic treatment? In any case, it makes perfect sense that this kind of thought gets called both theistic and atheistic: it's relational. A fundamentalist Christian may think of it more like atheism in comparison to their own mindset, while to the atheist, it's theist. Neither are wrong, they're just coming from different understandings of what we mean by "God." In a sense, I think the word "God" is unhelpful, because so many have been traumatized in its name.
Sabbatai Zevi would be an interesting topic for a video, certainly a derisive figure that I would love to see a more measured and scholastic take on, opposed to what usually is written about him.
I'm wondering if the link to Kabbalah comes [artificially] through Ramon Llull (who was thought to be "a Kabbalist" for a long time on account of pseudepigraphically attributed De Auditu Kabbalistico). Llull was eventually a huge part of Leibniz's PhD dissertation on the combinatorial arts, and I'm wondering if Llull's vision of God as an unfoldment of vicissitudes (through his combinatorial art) is lurking somewhere in all that historiographical speculation.
It's as a good a guess as any. Wachter first makes this argument in around 1699 in two texts, one of which only survives in a Russian translation, and seems to think that the Kabbalists held that God was Nature and that Spinoza is 'unveiling' this Kabbalistic ideas (better, error, to his mind) unto the world without all the trapping of Hebrew, etc. So far as I can tell this seems to misread Kabbalistic ideas more than it does Spinoza in the end. While the sefirot do 'reach down' to malkhut which is our cosmos, at least in some Kabbalistic schools, to my knowledge no Kabbalist I've ever read argues that God should be identified with nature. Even the later, more Hasidic linking of הַטֶבַע (ha-teva), Nature, and אֱלֹהִים (Elohim), God via gematria doesn't, to my knowledge, appear in the Zohar, Sha'Are Orah, Etz HaHayim, etc. I think its just more of Kabbalah functioning as a kind of cipher for X-tians to extract mystical secrets from when they want that or to blame as the origin of heresy and heterodoxy when that seems useful.
This is fantastic thank you very much! Regarding Bruno: have you read Cause Principle and Unity? It is a clear precursor to the Ethics, even if Spinoza never read it! It has the dual aspect monism and the same primordial unity from which matter and mind emerge. Some of the technical terms are the same. It’s a very similar vision! And readable and FUNNY like Plato’s dialogues ! But the Ethics seems perhaps supreme among all the classics from Plato through Bruno Spinoza Leibniz Kant and Schopenhauer…and I say that after having been infatuated with Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation for a bunch of years… Spinoza figured it all out! Though the mind matter connection still appears obscure, I think his account is most consistent with modern physics and with itself…
Been years since I have to dig out my books on the rationalists.i really wish I could afford to fund you,my income is fixed at $800 a month but I digress.This is brilliant dr. Not being able to read the original language results in such egregious errors!
@@georgeptolemy726060 years old, social security disability, 3 seperate heart issues one lung, pulmonary fibrosis, bone condition called aseptic osteo, necrosis, bones break, never heal.had tumors on my epiglottis, bilateral cataract surgery, with complication,3 quarter blind in left eye,now stomach cancer.If the fact that I'm " on the dole" makes you angry , no worries It's all good, can't last too much longer,we can hope.Be well,stay negative ( covid wise)
The loss of the mythic/religious dimension created by scientific rationalism via the enlightenment is explored quite aphoristically in E. F. Shumacher's book "A guide for the Perplexed". Spinoza seems a real challenge to explore without the correct background in philosophy? Thank you for the learned explanation!
As the famous theist philosopher Richard Swinburne puts it, a theist is one who believes that there is a God who is a ' person/mind without a body (i.e. a spirit) who is eternal, free, able to do anything, knows everything, is perfectly good, is the proper object of human worship and obedience, the creator and sustainer of the universe. This is how theism is understood in academic circles. So, Spinoza's pantheism/monism and atheism (the denial of theism) are fully compatible. Spinoza was an atheist, one of the greatest!
@@TheEsotericaChannel Yes, the body/god was nature itself. Only the word "god" is left there. When you strip from god all the features usually considered essential, you end up with atheism.
Excellent delivery on this episode. You must have really vetted what promised to be a tortured script here. How to do an intro and overview of Spinoza across time in 40min to a potentially unacquainted audience? *phew* Well done sir.
"The supposition of some, that I endeavour to prove in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus the unity of God and Nature (meaning by the latter a certain mass or corporeal matter), is wholly erroneous..." ~ Letter to Henry Oldenburg (November, 1675).
I've not read Spinoza but I have suffered through some Hegel, who was obviously inspired by him (and at the very least is a systemic idealist). Rather than Kabbalah, my view is that this conception of God borrows from Ibn Rushd, who was influential in Europe in his own right and particularly inspirational to Jews via Maimonides. If I'm on the right track there, conflation of God with nature itself would be imprecise. At least for Hegel, even in the broadest metaphysical sense nature is still subsumed by the ultimate absolute reality.
In his 1837 book "The Holy History of Mankind" Moses Hess gives an interesting view according to which history is divided into three eras. The first one started with Adam and culminated in establishement of the ancient Jewish state, especially its interest-free jubilee-based economy. The second age started with Jesus, and culminated in the spread of the idea of moral universalism and the brotherhood of mankind. Finally the third era started with Spinoza, and will culminate in the establishment of a global communist society. Hess's interpretation not just of Spinoza's significance, but also of Spinoza's thought is also interesting (as far as I remember and understand, he understood his monism as practically important in synthesizing the spiritual and the material, ie morality and politics).
proposition 1: the ground of being is not a being. proposition 2: the ground of being is beyond all language, thought or even concepts such as "being" and "nothing." conclusion: all religions and philosophies and the arts are poetic metaphors expressing human responses to the tension between our (seemingly) finite being and our non-finite being as modes of the ground of being beyond being ( including what I just wrote :-) ) corollary: metaphors are not "right" or "wrong" rather they are simply more or less interesting or useful to any particular person.
Is there someone who could help me find the precise quote where D&G links Spinoza’s Ethics with the Necronomicon? Can’t find it anywhere in the French version, at least. In English translation, maybe, for some reason?
Was thinking about grimoire-like books in relation to Dee and what he represented of the science of his day and Newton's Principia, which has its place in the lineage of grand grimoires.
Spinoza was absolutely one of the greatest western philosophers to ever live, closely followed by Deleuze (in my opinion). As a practitioner of Buddhist tantra, I find a lot of parallels between their work and the thinking of Buddhist philosophers like Nagarjuna and Atisha. They are all hesitant to classify themselves as panpsychists but they also affirm that the mind and its fabrications are fundamental parts of reality as a whole. Talk about a hard problem of consciousness!
@@truebomba it doesn't postulate a God in the western sense (or theistic Hindu sense) However its not materialistic which today is often analogous to atheism. It postulates a God shaped void if you will...
I have a problem at a neurological never mind philosophical level with the idea that there is such a thing as a unitary consciousness in the individual. Notwithstanding throughout our lifetimes and on different days of the week we can hold seemingly opposing opinions or convictions, I contend that all we think we are is what we think we are, that is to see that part of the external world and our internal functions that we are actually attending to at the moment. What we consider to be our firm ideas are like the water in Heraclitus river, ever changing only appearing to have similarities with its past. All we ever know is what we know at the moment, and if you are driving your car on a familiar route it is not the same thing as when you are reading a book on philosophy or being absorbed in a movie. Therefore contradictions are inevitable in any celebrated philosopher or scientist. Wittgenstein is a very good example as regards his earlier and later philosophy, but mores to the point you can declare yourself to be rational, objective and scientific, but still be wearing your lucky underpants or carrying that rabbits foot when you go into your viva.
Actually found the geometrical style easy to follow; think he prefigures later analytic thought in that he is emulating pure math; something that happens more and more in coming centuries. I doubt he is using the absolute as a smokescreen; his devotion to this idea comes through again and again in spite of his attempt to play down the emotions. could he be an early version of Spock ;) pantheism seems to always ocscilate b/w atheism/mysticism but this superposition may be the proof in the pudding. Perhaps our own logocentric urge to duality is at fault?
Fine introduction, approaching from 'a _dualism_ of science and religion'. But if *'immanence'* were the radical novum with Spinoza, the reception of *Aristotle* in the West as late as the 13th century would never have existed. In fact, the very genre of theological literature, conceived as 'textbooks for mathematics', preceeds 'Aristotelian Christianity' - as e.g. Alain de Lille's *'Theologicæ Regulæ'* . Raymond of Sabunde wrote a century later the *'Theologia Naturalis'* as a means to convert the 'scientifically' educated (medicine, mechanics, astronomy) Muslims of Moor Spain (see e.g. Ramon Llull's 'theological _schematics'_ ). I can still remember the disruption of intellectual habit to come from the cognitive _experience_ of Platonic 'universals' to Aquina's definition of 'man as a _composite_ of matter and form', ascribing the 'image of God', _recognizable_ in the _patterns_ of anthropology. Spinoza - despite being a Jew - didn't stand completely aside from these Iberian, 'Roman' traditions and as such was closer to *Christian Humanism* than he was to the 'Radical Enlightenment' that replaces to this day the politicized dogmas of the Roman See with it's secular, utopian 'social engineering'...
Please, help me out! I can find the reference that you gave here about "Jonathan Binet", Probably i didn't get ir correct, but I would love to study this work? Could someone help me out there please?
I feel that Baruch was in fact playing devil's advocate, by only giving both sides of the legal tender of church and state a salve for those that would later shift from Deist thought to a natural humanism made by the exertions of later writer's; Rousseau and Voltaire in plays like Candide, where moral objectivism was aligned with social determinism and individual will being the governing factors.
Wow , although this is as clear as anyone can explain Spinoza , it is still unclear to me , if he was a atheist who replaced God with nature or had some more deeper beliefs in god just not the ones monotheism holds 🤷🏻♂️
It all makes more sense if we realize that religion and the religious urge are basically emotional experiences and are therefore not understandable through reason and rational analysis. Two different realms.
Maimonides wrote that unfortunately an author cannot personally explain to all of his readers exactly what he means. If Spinoza could see what’s happened to his teachings he would certainly have agreed.
And isn't it so profoundly beautiful? From the quarks in all atoms to the unfathomable laniakea galactic supercluster which is where our own galaxy along with approximately 100,000 other galaxies exist.
Question.... would people throughout history really talk about all this occult or esoteric stuff like enlightenment, awakening magick without something really happening to them something profound like true blessedness idk i find it very hard to believe unless we as a species have been very very uneducated as a mass and yeah i can see that also but something is missing who is telling the secret to all this ? can anyone recommend modern reading or any reading that actually sheds some light on all this i am part of the mass of the uneducated but i can follow simple directions
