[HN Gopher] Baruch Spinoza and the art of thinking in dangerous ...
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Baruch Spinoza and the art of thinking in dangerous times
Author : mitchbob
Score : 60 points
Date : 2024-02-08 19:25 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| mitchbob wrote:
| https://archive.ph/2024.02.05-142256/https://www.newyorker.c...
| fiforpg wrote:
| In addition to being a very independent philosophical thinker,
| Spinoza was deeply interested in more practical study of nature,
| something that may have had to do with his day job as a lens
| grinder. He published two short texts on probability and optics
| of the rainbow (the latter following Descartes).
|
| A philosopher interested in the real world: something that became
| quite a rarity in later times...
| lukan wrote:
| "There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not
| philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was
| once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to
| have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to
| love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of
| simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to
| solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but
| practically. The success of great scholars and thinkers is
| commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly."
|
| Henry David Thoreau
| csours wrote:
| > ... live [..] a life of simplicity, independence, ...
|
| Can one live a life of simultaneous simplicity and
| independence?
|
| It is commonly held that Thoreau faked it.
| lukan wrote:
| "It is commonly held that Thoreau faked it. "
|
| I think that is debatable and not concensus. But I actually
| do not know much about him besides the quote I shared. But
| I do know, that he tried to live his philosophy in real
| life and not just make nice sounding words, to make people
| think he is interesting.
|
| "Can one live a life of simultaneous simplicity and
| independence?"
|
| One can try. I know some people who succeded, but lots who
| failed.
| csours wrote:
| Maybe it is the effort and mindset that make the
| difference and not the outcome.
| beedeebeedee wrote:
| > It is commonly held that Thoreau faked it.
|
| That's pretty cynical and just a way to discard his (and
| others') beliefs. No human is independent categorically,
| but he did become much more independent in his beliefs and
| actions than most people. He might have done his laundry at
| his mom's house (or whatever facts people trot out to
| diminish him), but he did hike and paddle through the
| wilderness, and take deeply unpopular stands against war
| and other things. He is an admirable person who is worthy
| of paying attention to, and even emulating to achieve
| independent thought.
| csours wrote:
| > That's pretty cynical
|
| Yes
|
| > and just a way to discard his
|
| No
|
| > He might have done his laundry at his mom's house
|
| Removing his independence and adding making someone else
| responsible for complexity.
|
| It is a beautiful story. Lots of people have told
| beautiful stories. Some of those beautiful stories have
| been used in movements that have done a great deal of
| harm. Thus the cynicism.
|
| If a beautiful story resonates with you, by all means
| enjoy it.
| reubenmorais wrote:
| > Can one live a life of simultaneous simplicity and
| independence?
|
| Visit any place where family farming thrives and you'll see
| this is certainly possible.
| csours wrote:
| Modern farming is rather complex.
|
| Subsistence farming can be simple. Dying in childbirth is
| also pretty simple.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| The word sacrifice doesn't appear, but TFA makes much of
| what Spinoza thought was worth trading for speaking truth.
|
| Excommunication, being "cursed" (cancelled). He boldly
| rejected all traditional religious identities which he felt
| "no longer had any real meaning, anyway". He turned down an
| offer to "become a professor at the University of
| Heidelberg, on the ground that holding an official position
| would expose him to even more attacks"
|
| In a sense, if truth is your guide, the more you lose, the
| more you gain, and Spinoza lived that right to the edge of
| poverty and non-existence that would have actually killed
| (starved) him.
|
| Which takes it back to that line near the start of the TFA:
| "Offending the wrong people, even for a moment, can blow up
| the career of anyone from a Y.A. novelist to an Ivy
| League president"
|
| What is a "career" (other than path that is out of ones
| control)?
|
| Paradoxically perhaps, those happy with the simplicity and
| independence of saying "fuck careers" have the greatest
| platform to speak truth from. Extant wealth, power, and
| notoriety are the gag of silence.
|
| But I see a world filled with more and more young people
| who have not, and have no hope of ever having a "career".
| That fills me with vast hope that truth is on the march
| again.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Those things are not absolutes.
| slumberdisrupt wrote:
| Where exactly do you suppose philosophy went wrong? In any case
| I've heard this assertion from Neil deGrasse Tyson for years;
| it's philistine. The phrasing of the assertion totally gives
| away its limits: what is the real world, and who else but a
| philosopher is equipped to even ask that question? Then the
| question then becomes its opposite: where have the natural
| scientists gone who are interested in the real world?
| techno_tsar wrote:
| The assertion is not grounded in reality at all. It's a
| common myth among people who live in a STEM echo chamber.
| Personally, I don't know why people who haven't even done
| more than a cursory overview of philosophy feel entitled to
| make meta philosophical claims. My only explanation is that
| it's a way to defend a dogma of naive scientism. Why? I don't
| know, probably the same reasons why people cling onto
| religion.
| slumberdisrupt wrote:
| I brought up Tyson because I watched a video recently where
| this guy argues that this whole perspective is an
| especially American phenomenon:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD0S1rH8AiE
|
| I'm sympathetic to this even if this lethargic attitude
| goes back to the religious period as you say. We can at
| least find the roots of it in the Enlightenment with
| Newton's "hypotheses non fingo".
| nathan_compton wrote:
| > A philosopher interested in the real world: something that
| became quite a rarity in later times...
|
| Absolutely ridiculous. There are tons of contemporary, living,
| philosophers who are interested in literally every single one
| of the physical sciences. There are entire departments which
| specialize in philosophy of physics. There are philosophers
| that study biology, brains, computers, etc etc etc.
| toss1 wrote:
| Two ke strategies he employed:
|
| 1) >>Spinoza stuck to Latin, the language of the learned elite.
| In the preface to the "Tractatus," he declares that he is writing
| only for philosophers and discourages "the multitude, and those
| of like passions with the multitude," from reading the book: "I
| would rather that they should utterly neglect it, than that they
| should misinterpret it after their wont."
|
| 2) >>When the "Tractatus" provoked a hostile reaction anyway,
| Spinoza decided not to publish anything else. He also turned down
| an offer to become a professor at the University of Heidelberg,
| on the ground that holding an official position would expose him
| to even more attacks. All of his work, including the "Ethics,"
| was left in manuscript form for his friends to print after his
| death.
|
| Certainly playing the long game. And winning.
|
| Possible today?
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| Possible for the already famous or fabulously wealthy, with
| enough preexisting prestige to make people care about their
| work prior to investigating its content.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| > Spinoza decided not to publish anything else
|
| You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em
| csours wrote:
| Yes, people publish studies that never get seen all the time.
| xhevahir wrote:
| I really hope this Straussian stuff, which is basically
| obscurantism as public philosophy, doesn't come back into vogue.
| It was Strauss's disciples, like Paul Wolfowitz, who led us into
| Iraq with their noble lies. No, thank you.
| dvt wrote:
| I think this is an extremely uncharitable interpretation of the
| reality lived by Strauss and his contemporaries. I guess
| there's an argument to be made that the West's hawkishness
| isn't de facto moral (though there's a lot of work to be done
| here, considering the alternative, i.e., China, Iran, Saudi
| Arabia, and so on, are hardly bastions of moral virtue).
|
| I mention the "reality lived" as Strauss was a German Jew that
| had to flee Germany after Hitler took power. In fact, the most
| scathing critique of Strauss[1] (Altman's 600-page tome) is
| fairly universally regarded as being quite weak in its
| arguments (though, to be fair, incredible in its scholarship
| and research).
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/German-Stranger-Strauss-National-
| Soci...
| midiguy wrote:
| It took Europe a pretty long time to produce a thinker who would
| restate the pantheistic ideas that the Upanishads described
| vividly before the birth of Christ. I wonder if Spinoza had any
| exposure to Hindu thought.
| splintercell wrote:
| Are Upanishads pantheists or panantheists?
| comonoid wrote:
| Upantheists.
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