One of the usual jests about the study of philosophy is that you need a "day job," that philosophy doesn't undergird any remunerative employment. I recently saw a post on QUORA that constitutes a species of this genus. Someone asked, "What kind of jobs did philosophers like Rene Descartes and Spinoza do when they weren't philosophizing?" What was their day job? Descartes was well born, and at one point in his life he sold real estate, presumably inherited, and invested it in bonds, which allowed him to be comfortable for years thereafter. In later years, when he was famous for his philosophy, he supplemented his bond income with tutoring and, apparently, some military engineering. Spinoza was not as fortunate in his birth. He made a living grinding lenses. But it is worth noting that this activity was not unrelated to his philosophizing. Lenses, the microscope and the telescope, were at the time opening new worlds. A lens grinder was at a critical jun...
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In yesterday's entry I outlined Spinozistic philosophy in six points. The sixth of these concerned Biblical exegesis. I'm returning to that today only to provide two quotes that illustrate the attitude I mentioned there. Everything italicized below is in the words of Spinzo, the quotation marks are the words of the scriptures as he is quoting them. In order to understand, in the case of miracles, what actually took place, we ought to be familiar with Jewish phrases and metaphors; anyone who did not make sufficient allowance for these, would be continually seeing miracles in Scripture where nothing of the kind is intended by the writer; he would thus miss the knowledge not only of what actually happened, but also of the mind of the writers of the sacred text. Scripture makes the general assertion in several passages that nature's course is fixed and unchangeable. In Ps. 148:6, for instance, and Jer. 31:35. The wise man also, in Eccles. 1:10, distinctly teaches th...
Just to practice concision. 1) In anthropology, Spinoza emphasized what we are not. We are not a "kingdom within the kingdom." We are a subject of nature, which is the only kingdom. 2) In metaphysics, Spinoza is remembered for his naturalized God, or for his deification of nature. They work out to be the same thing, which is the point. This has the odd-seeming but predictable consequence that he has been called an atheist by some commentators and a "God-intoxicated man" by others. 3. In epistemology, Spinoza believed in "geometrical order." The best way to approach truth was to start with a small number of premises that are recommended by their clarity and the difficulty of seeing how things could be otherwise, and to spin out their logical consequences. 4. In ethics, Spinoza believed that the real problem was the confusion and frustration that comes our way when we think we ARE a kingdom with the kingdom, and the solution is just to learn better...
This is poignant stuff. I recognize when I'm outclassed. I can think of no improving commentary on what follows. So I'll simply steal it from The Irish Times where it first appeared. An Irish philosopher is writing about her infatuation with the long dead Dutchman. However, I realised in that moment that all of the serious relationships I had had in my early 20s were with long-dead philosophers and were conducted entirely inside my own head. Fortunately for me, that didn’t constitute any diagnosable mental-health condition that there was an existing medication to cure. It’s simply the case that no young man I had ever encountered was sufficient competition to threaten my devotion to Baruch Spinoza. Of all the gin joints he could have sauntered into, he had to choose mine. That certainly isn’t to imply that he physically did anything much at all. Dying in 1677 will limit you that way. However, with liquid brown eyes that implied his parents were a giraf...
SLATE recently republished an article that first appeared in LINGUA FRANCA 14 years ago , the story about a wealthy man who wanted to shake up the world of academic philosophy, and in particular to argue about Being on the intellectual/historical plane of Spinoza or Hegel. The 'millionaire metaphysician' was Marc Sanders, and the L.F. piece makes THAT the big story. Sanders, whose photo you see here, had originally created a fog of anonymity around himself while appealing under his pen name to well credentialed philosophers, like Jan Cover of Purdue, to review his manuscript. Cover wrote: " One would be hard-pressed to locate a richer, deeper contemporary approach to the most fundamental questions of metaphysics ." So Sanders certainly succeeded in drawing attention. Reporter Ryerson wrote the story largely around the question "Who is this person?" The question, "What is his proposal as to the nature of Being" incident was secondary, a...
Thomson Reuters is putting an end to what until days ago remained of HedgeWorld. Excuse me while I shed an inward tear. HedgeWorld, founded in 1999, was the first news operation to focus squarely, full time, upon the hedge fund industry. The founders lit this candle soon after the self-destruction of Long-Term Capital Management created a broad public desirous of information on this subject. Better to light that one candle, after all, than to curse the darkness. I was the first hire of those founders -- they brought me on board in the spring of 2000. HedgeWorld had a complicated corporate history, but in time it was captured by Reuters, and it was run as a semi-autonomous operation beneath that broad Reuteronian sky. Then, alas, Reuters merged with Thomson, and the Bigs of the two operations put their pointy heads together and decided where they could make cuts. They closed down HW as a news gathering operation in the fall of 2008. That was the end of my in...