Thus, human blessedness for Spinoza means having adequate knowledge of the motives of what we do, which in turn leads us to engage in deliberate action. As we can see later, for Spinoza, the greatest goal of human life is to understand one’s place in the structure of the universe as a natural expression of the essence of God. The ultimate aim of the book, which is also the ultimate aim of his philosophy, is human blessedness, a blessedness that is inseparable from “knowledge of the union existing between mind and the whole of nature”. It is also important to note that The Ethics, which is Spinoza’s magnum opus, provides the key to understanding the entire system of Spinoza’s philosophy. Hence, in Spinoza, there is no dualism thought and extension are not existing independently from each other. In contrast to this view, Spinoza believes that thought and extension are parallel aspects of one and the same substance. Hence, in Cartesian philosophy, thought (or mind) and extension are two independent substances. We learned from Cartesian dualism that thought and extension are the essence of two causally interacting substances. However, Descartes and Spinoza differ on their understanding of thought and extension. In fact, Descartes was a great influence on Spinoza. Like Descartes, Spinoza was a rationalist. One can meaningfully make sense of Spinoza’s theory of knowledge if it is understood within the context of Descartes’ theory of knowledge. Free will and more ( Notes on Spinoza’s Theory of Knowledge.Spinoza’s Conception of Natural Right ().– The concept of God would be a concession to the times of a thinker too advanced for its time. – A hyper-rational approach to comprehensive explanation (it then puts forward the systemic side of his thinking by referring to the geometric method of Ethics) The various portraits of Spinoza is that atheists have in common is that they focus on two things: What remains about the concept of God after a double purification? In other words, what bring the positive conception of Spinoza’s God? In this view, Spinoza opposes the Cartesian mechanism (the beings does not refer to other things and other beings, effect or cause), and also designs a very deep psychological constraints and the Slavery within the passions. From this perspective, the universe becomes a system of signs, each event is an expression of divine intention for man (see the famous critique of teleology in the appendix to Book I of the Ethics). The Jewish God is a formidable entity at a time and negotiable (in prayer), a punisher and a retributive, that is to say a God essentially oriented toward men. Secondly, Spinoza opposes the Jewish conception of God angry, unpredictable, subject to fear, and yet subject to any negotiations.On the anthropological point of view, this means that man is ‘washed’ the original sin, rehabilitated himself in his ability to understand itself in the divine principle and out of it. Compared to the Christian problem, Spinoza operates a complete reversal: it restores the wild, not as full of beings, but as a process of generation of beings from a single principle. In Christian doctrine, the value of one is accompanied by a devaluation of nature (the inner nature of sinful man, and external nature, itself tainted by sin, and now subject to alterations of the time). God, conceived as a person, is distinct from finite beings: the figure of Christ that stands against those he taught and those that struggle. Firstly, Spinoza opposes the concept of a personal God.By operating this transmutation of our conception of God, I think Spinoza fight on two fronts: Contrary to the God of religion Spinoza’s God is not a person but a principle. Indeed, one of the important issues of Spinoza‘s philosophy is to understand the concept of a God “out of religion”.
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