Baruch Spinoza quotes - page 14
![He [Nicolas Malebranche] cannot give up the principles which the Catholic Church imposes on him. He carries forward that process of rationalisation in Christian ethics which Descartes began, and which, like the attempt to restore an older theology, finds its fulfilment in Spinoza. It is Spinoza who is the first to create a wholly metaphysical ethics, free from all trace of its theological origin. Spinoza thus completes for continental ethics the separation between morality and religion which English empiricism, in spite of many relapses, had effected under the leadership of Bacon. (Baruch Spinoza)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/48/baruch-spinoza-attempt-bacon-1015248.webp)
...[I]t was the Goethe problem. He [Alfred Rosenberg] worshipped Goethe. And Goethe worshipped Spinoza. Alfred could not rid himself of this cursed book because Goethe loved it enough to carry it in his pocket for an entire year. This obscure Jewish nonsense had calmed Goethe's unruly passions and made him see the world more clearly than ever before. How could that be? Goethe saw something in it that he could not discern.
Baruch Spinoza
Instead of engaging in this rather boring academic exercise of opposing Spinoza and Levinas, what I want to accomplish is a consciously old-fashioned Hegelian reading of Spinoza - what both Spinozeans and Levinasians share is radical anti-Hegelianism. My starting hypothesis is that, in the history of modern thought, the triad of paganism-Judaism-Christianity repeats itself twice, first as Spinoza-Kant-Hegel, then as Deleuze-Derrida-Lacan. Deleuze deploys the One-Substance as the indifferent medium of multitude; Derrida inverts it into the radical Otherness which differs from itself; finally, in a kind of "negation of negation," Lacan brings back the cut, the gap, into the One itself. The point is not so much to play Spinoza and Kant against each other, thus securing the triumph of Hegel; it is rather to present the three philosophical positions in all their unheard-of radicality - in a way, the triad Spinoza-Kant-Hegel does encompass the whole of philosophy.
Baruch Spinoza
Spinoza was the man I believed in always, as the alternative to Catholicism. And it is only in Spinoza's manner that I am a positivist at all. I believe in the real world, in the world of thought and extension, of psychology and physics. God or substance with Spinoza equals reality; and this reality, which may have countless forms, we find only in space and in (other men's) consciousness. I say in other men's, because Spinoza was too sane to care to discuss anything from the point of view of subjective idealism. When one prints a book to convince other people, one oughtn't to discuss in it whether they exist. But this is all by the way, although some other day I will discuss with you the question of Spinoza's hedonism.
Baruch Spinoza
...Goethe was the wisest of mankind; too wise, perhaps, to be a philosopher in the technical sense, or to try to harness this wild world in a brain-spun terminology. It is true that he was all his life a follower of Spinoza, and that he may be termed, without hesitation, a naturalist in philosophy and a pantheist. His adherence to the general attitude of Spinoza, however, did not exclude a great plasticity and freedom in his own views, even on the most fundamental points. Thus Goethe did not admit the mechanical interpretation of nature advocated by Spinoza. He also assigned, at least to privileged souls, like his own, a more personal sort of immortality than Spinoza allowed.
Baruch Spinoza
You compare Cardozo with Spinoza; but as far as I can judge by your book there is no intellectual comparison. Spinoza was not soft. I have been all my life long a fervent disciple of Spinoza precisely on account of his firmness, of his uncompromising naturalism. Yet even he leaves out the three traditions which, however false their cosmology, seem to me morally sound: the Greek, the Catholic, and the Indian. I am therefore not a disciple of Spinoza in his ideal of human life: It leaves out poetry, art, traditional religion, military and constructive patriotism. His society would be a tame society, where there would be no masters, but all would be voluntary slaves. Perhaps you feel something of my difficulty when you point out that "art" is an indispensable ingredient in everything human.
Baruch Spinoza
Not only Goethe's poetry but his science is Spinozistically motivated. Convinced of the oneness of nature, he approached it with a certainty to discover in it oneness, and his discovery of the os intermaxtllare in man, which influenced the development of comparative anatomy, is one of the by-products of his Spinozistic sentiments. In his theory of the metamorphosis of the plants, which he expounded scientifically and poetically, he also expressed a good deal of Spinozism. Spinoza enabled him to read the various pages of nature as one book. Goethe respected Kant and may be described as a Kant scholar, but he was a Spinoza adherent. His world-picture is Spinozistic and not Kantian.
Baruch Spinoza
The appearance of Spinoza, however, fundamentally changes the entire religious picture in the West. He emancipated philosophy from theology and taught man to think in metaphysical and universalistic rather than in theological and individualistic terms. He distinguished between the functions of recognition and piety. The aim of philosophy he says is truth, the recognition of things in their connection with one another and with God. The aim of theology is piety obedience to God's laws. Hence, there is but little difference between the Old and the New Testaments, for both, like all theology, have a content apart from recognition. They teach certain doctrines, such as a personal God, His attributes, His relationship to the world, His moral ends, the aim of creation, etc. As practical piety, even the theological content of the Bible is acceptable, but as theoretical philosophy or as objective truth it must be rejected.
Baruch Spinoza
...He [Lessing] even felt that the highest compliment he could confer on his friend Moses Mendelssohn, whom he greatly admired, was to call him a "second Spinoza." Mendelssohn, one of the fathers of the modern German enlightenment, was an adherent of Leibnitz. As such he could not be a follower of Spinoza, although he, too, admired his personality. Furthermore, he failed to understand Spinoza, for he could never free himself from Bayle's presentation of Spinoza's doctrine. Nevertheless, this very Mendelssohn, by his controversy with Jacobi about Lessing's relationship to Spinoza, was instrumental in making the latter a potent force in German letters. It is interesting to observe that even those thinkers who dedicated their lives to the cause of anti-Spinozism paid the highest tribute to his personality.
Baruch Spinoza
...The rise, triumph, and victory of Spinozism in Europe are reminiscent of the power of ancient Buddhism because both are religiosity rather than philosophy. Spinozism is religion even when it operates with bizarre formulas. Its starting-point is a dead God, who is reminiscent of Buddha's Brahma. It is man's metaphysical fear and not the idea of a living God which is the driving force in religiosity. True religiosity is not an understanding of how God is correlated to man and to the world but the feeling of man's insignificance in the cosmos, giving birth to a state of meekness, humbleness, compassion, and pity. Only when man is crushed and overwhelmed by the thought of his insignificance in this vast universe does he become truly religious. These feelings are as present in Spinozism as they are in Buddhism.
Baruch Spinoza
