Spinoza's Ethics

Get an edition with decent notes, read something online about the Ontological Argument and its history, Parmenides (might as well read On Nature, takes five minutes), Descartes and his ideas and, well, get a general idea about where Spinoza placed himself/was placed by history's accident in the philosophical debate.

Read the first two parts slowly, go back and reread the propositions and axioms he refers, make your way through assimilating the system. Parts three, four and five are more easily readable - I also think they're the weakest half of the book, but it doesn't stop it from being incredible. Hope I've been of help.

>>8374568
Listen up. This book is the most profound thing I have ever read. By the end of it you will realize how to obtain intellectual love of God and transcend your casual existence. Pay attention and don't give up.

>>8374591
*Causal

>>8374568
yeah I agree with a lot of what >>8374589 said.

I found Spinoza pretty easy, but I had already read a lot of philosophy by the time I got around to him. I hope you've started with the Greeks bc if not some of your difficulty could just be that you don't have the same problems in mind that Spinoza did. either way, read the first two sections as slowly as you need to, and re-read. the last three are very easy by comparison.

use Nadler if you need him, but I think if you just get your head in the game and focus you'll find that it's really not a very difficult book.

>>8374589
Thanks for the advice, I've already done the reading you have mentioned, I spotted the referance to the ontological argument in the one of the first definitions (self-caused). How, though, does Parmenides tie in?
>>8374634
I've started with the greeks and have a pretty good grasp of the general history of the major arguments of philosophy before existentialism and ignoring scholasticism. I appreciate the encouragement!

>>8374665
>How, though, does Parmenides tie in?

monism

>>8374665
>How, though, does Parmenides tie in?
The wholeness and totality of Being. I first read Ethics while following a uni course, and my teacher was a former student of Emanuele Severino - an Italian philosopher who tried to bring Parmenides in contemporary philosophy. He makes an argument about the place of Becoming in Being as a self-revealing of Being to itself, instead of a real change in Being.

This just to point out how you can bring Spinoza into Parmenides or the opposite.

>>8374686
umm isn't that just Hegel?

>>8374794
My summary is probably too brief and too general to give you the correct idea - but he is one of Italy's most venerated philosophers and a university teacher, I'm fairly sure he'd have outed himself as Hegelian if he was one.

Also, I don't remember much about that particular essay so I can't really help you

On top of the suggestions already given, what I find helps is taking notes. Write down what you think Spinoza is trying to say, but in your own words. Use the definition of the words he uses to construct a reasonable interpretation of what each axiom is trying to say. Once you have the axioms understood if you put in the time to work through each proof you shouldn't have a problem with the various propositions.

Also, don't bother worry about why the axioms are true. They are just assumptions Spinoza is making.

>>8374568
>Plz /lit/, I want to believe in God.
Why the fuck would you read an atheist then?

>>8374850
Kant and Hegel though otherwise, the latter even saying he had "too much God in his system", and Goethe called him "theissimus". Just saying.

>>8374850
allow me to quote ethics, proposition XI: "god, or substance, consisting of infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality, necessarily exists."

>>8374868
His "God" is very different to the god of theism and from what I understand is equated with the universe and I see pantheism as romantic atheism.
Maybe I'm wrong on that one, but Spinoza is certainly not the philospher to read if you want to believe in God.

>>8374868
I feel like using this proposition as a justification for Spinoza advocating the existence of a christian god is misleading, as well as a poor understanding of what is being argued.

>>8374902
ctr+f "christian" huh, nothing there!

>>8374878
Well, while >>8374868 is disingenous in his use of the proposition, you can't say that reading the Ethics doesn't give an engaged reader a profound sense of oneness with the totality of Being - some kind of Immanent Ecstasy. That could constitute a fairly powerful spiritual experience for some, giving birth to some form of raw belief.

>>8374910
Please don't shit up the thread with this kind of idiotic "retort". That's being obnoxiously and willfully dense.

>>8374925
Sorry, for the admittedly idiotic response, I've been shitposting with political radicals all day on Facebook forgot to turn it off. That said,
OP here, what you described is what I'm looking for and what I knew Ethics described. Nowhere did I mean to insinuate a christian or otherwise theistic god.

>>8374959
>Nowhere did I mean to insinuate a christian or otherwise theistic god.
"God" usually supposed a theistic one. The very usage of the word implies it.

>>8374967
yeah I shouldn't have capitalized ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

>>8374959
No worries, I just wanted this likeable, decent thread not to turn into the usual religious shitposting.

>>8374967
I don't really agree, that's a preconception due to our (I assume) living in countries whose culture and language have formed around that notion - but that doesn't mean one could not be talking about another entity.

But it's a fair assumption, here and now on this board, to assume so like you did.

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>>8374568
Spinoza isn't that hard. He connects all of his points together very neatly. Just read very carefully, slowly, and make sure you understand the terms he is using. I read the Hackett edition and there was an explanation of terms at the beginning. He is using many of the same terms as the Scholastics. Consult the definitions frequently and take some notes if it suits you.

I got stuck on some parts for a short time, but I was able to figure them out on my own after a bit of thinking. There was a part or two where I had to Google a bit.

Keep in mind that Spinoza views even empty space as a substance, because that tripped me up.

Deleuze - Spinoza: Practical Philosophy
read this first

>>8375053
Thanks for the tip about empty space! Does anyone else have specific tips like that?

I'm currently on Prop. VIII, this is by far the farthest I have gotten and it is making a lot more sense this time with all the encouragement.

>>8375113
specifically more examples of what a "substance" might be. My current one in my head is that a "tree" is a substance, spruce and oak it's modifications, and the sensory experience of tree generalized into a form as it's attribute(s). My understanding is being challenged by the fact that substances must be self-caused, however.

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>>8375113
>>8375130
Descartes, like Aristotle, says that a substance is that which sustains its own existence. He says that there are many substances, but he concedes that, technically speaking, only God can be a substance since only God can sustain his own existence.

Spinoza takes this idea and runs with it, saying that God is the only substance that exists, period.

>>8374568
>Plz /lit/, I want to believe in God.
Why does this keep happening? Is this a fucking meme?

Spinoza was NOT a theist in most sense of the word. He basically believes in a 'one' from which everything emanates. See Plotinus

>>8375330
He did believe in God though.

>>8375338
Spinoza told everyone he believed in 'God' to keep the heat off him. He was under fire for being an atheist.

Read The Ethics and Theological-Political Treatise. Again, as I mentioned before, his philosophy in terms of 'God' bares a greater similarity to Plotinus than anything offered by the three monotheisms.

>>8375330
yeah he calls the one god though. Why'd ya have to go and throw the m-word into a perfectly pleasant thread?

>>8375342
He still has some idea of God though. Yes, it's not what is typically conceived to be God in the West, but it's some idea of God nonetheless. The fact that Substance is God and God is Substance is absolutely essential to his system.

>>8375330

Plotinus' Hypostasis and Spinoza's One are basically the philosophical image which originated the Catholic concept of God. I mean, The Father, The Spirit and The Holy Ghost are literally copy-pasted from Plotinus' works.

>>8375365
Absolutely. If OP meant that he wants to believe in the notion that we/earth/space are all modes of the same substance (God), than of course.

However, from his initial post, it seems he is longing to believe in a God that's a bit more involved. But perhaps I assumed.

>>8375374
Yeah I took a class on this. Tracing the lineage of the Trinity is fascinating as hell. You should read some Sloterdijk if you're interested in tracing theological constructs. God's Zeal is fantastic

>>8375377
OP here, the god thing was really just to add flavor to me post. The real reason I want to read Ethics is the endorsement of it from Will Durant who's writing I have deeply fallen in love with in the last few months.

>>8375382

Hm, I will check his works out. I really like studying the philosophic undertones in religions. Should I just begin with God's Zeal?

>>8375386
My apologies then. It's really a pretty straightforward read, but something that helped me a TON in my first read through was Charles Jarett's Spinoza: A Guide for the Perplexed. He goes through most of the various interpretations of the particularly tricky passages. If you go to uni I'm sure they will have it

>>8375395
Yeah, that's his work entered on religion. He has a wide variety of philosophical works. He's arguably Germany's best contemporary philosopher.

God's Zeal is also a relatively easy read. Really great stuff though. It illuminates all the areas in which Christianity ripped off Judaism, why the Quran is written the way it is, how isolation is imperative to the preservation of Jusaism, etc. it's essentialy a lot of stuff you probably intuitively know but haven't put together yet. Phenomenal work.