1. Re: Metaphysics 2. Re: Digest Number 333
Message Date: Tue May 16, 2006 10:27 pm(PDT)
Subject: Re: Metaphysics
Hi Tahmidal,
Don't forget that for Europe to secularize its institutions during the Age of Enlightenment it borrowed considerably from the East. In fact, the West is largely now a culture of the East: ruled-based behavior raised to an impersonal discipline, physical and mental hygiene, atheism, strong State authority, as against the superstition and aristocracy of Old Europe.
We can find in Spinoza - who is the architect of the Radical Enlightenment, the basic idea of detachment. This is deeply Eastern.
Further, Hume's subjectivist philosophy served to defend the atomization and subjectification of the individual against feudal hierarchy and bigotry.
md_hannan_05@yahoo.com wrote:
Gary,
(I am not much knowledgeable about western philosophic tradition. So, it is a kind of impertinence that I am joining and giving my opinion. This is, I would like to say, a kind of realisation of the self of an eastern human in western way, that is, putting my self in a historical realisation process with which it is difficult to identify with.)
I remember that many days ago I read an article by A. N. Whitehead where Whitehead wrote that Spinoza did not follow the path contemporary western philosophers took. Instead of subjective thinking, he followed the objective way of philosophising, like ancient Greeks.
Now, Gary, the point I want to make (which Whitehead also made) that in his Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume determinedly differentiated between `natural philosophy/science' and metaphysics, in many cases, whenever his discussion seems to go beyond subjective thinking, he readily stops to continue on and justifies it by saying that, `but this is not a matter of us, this belongs to the field of natural philosophy bla bla bla.........'
On the other hand, this is not true about Spinoza's doctrine of knowing. But well, I have to admit that I have not fully comprehended Spinoza's doctrine of knowledge. What is knowledge? Making a system, connecting things in a system (by cause and effect, which has been described by Hume as nothing but a tendency of human mind)? Is this the way the modes come to know?-Tahmidal ---
In spinoza-ethics@yahoogroups.com, Gary Geiser wrote:
Hume starts from the state of his body, and applies rules (admittedly through custom and habit) to it, and never builds from there.
Hegel took Spinoza very seriously, and combined him with the dialectical method to produce very interesting results. And he did so to get beyond Kant's impasse.
It's curious that while Spinoza actually had a Buddhistic conception of detachment from bodily modifications, he embraced a hard Parmenidean ontology of Being, while Hume had a Buddhist ontology of subjectivity and accidents, yet was essentially concerned with breaking through every metaphysical standpoint, and just living life.
md_hannan_05@...> wrote:
Gary, I have not read Husserl. Therefore I thought I should read Husserl before continuing this discussion.
However, I think Hume's criticism of Spinoza is much relevant here. In Hume's `A Treatise on Human Nature : Part 1' he severely criticised Spinoza (and I believe it is all about knowledge). What do you think about it? - -Tahmidal
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