Some Remarks on Spinoza's Concept of Potentia Spinoza’s Ethics is, at its core, a philosophy of power or potentia — the ontological and immanent power of being, acting, persevering, and affecting or being affected. Conceptually distinct from the juridical and institutional power (potestas) detailed in the Theological-Political Treatise and the Political Treatise, potentia signifies the causal power intrinsic to existence itself. Potentia or being-able-ness Potentia derives f

Spinoza’s Hatchet and the Ethics of Objecthood “For the only perfection and the final purpose [...] of an instrument is to duly fulfil the duties that are assigned to them. For instance, when a carpenter finds himself best served by his hatchet in the construction of a piece of work, then has his hatchet attained its end and perfection; but if he were to think, ‘This hatchet has now served me so well that I will let it rest and not require any more service of it’, just

Money Is Everything No, I don’t wish to talk about money. In no way does it interest me. I seek an infinite leap beyond money. Even with my good eye I am blind to it. How awful for a soul reliant on the body for money. If something has value it is desired. Money has value because it is desired. Everything adds up to money. Money is conceived through itself. Its essence involves existence. Money is the index of everything that’s false. An artist can make many things But money

Under a Spinozan Lens: Israel, Zionism and Bob Dylan’s ‘Neighborhood Bully’ [Article originally published on academia.edu for Holocaust Memorial Day / Yom HaShoah on 27th January 2024.] Thus this prejudice became a superstition, and fixed its roots deeply in the mind — Spinoza, Ethics [1] A little forty years ago — October 1983 — singer-songwriter Bob Dylan unveiled his Infidels album, which featured the ironically-titled ‘Neighborhood Bully’, a song depicting the trials of t

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Itself in Mind for the Future We see the visible world as somehow inevitable, with all its ratios of movement & rest, its manifold shapes & ecstatic forms, not realising that nature is always busy, acting unseen in all its power, without external cause, producing within itself its own effects, differentiating this idea from that idea, bypassing one potential in favour of another, & making actual a particular mode of being (a mutation, a thing, a body, a colour), while keeping

Death of a House Sparrow Scraping his toes in the fine dirt, the handsome house sparrow lowered his whitish belly to the ground, deepening the depression of a crater arid from drought. Flapping dust under his wings, beak pressed to chest, he dry cleaned his colours in the earth, expressing in movement the joy and power of God’s nature. Perhaps it was a pain or a sorrow that made him stop still, every nerve in his body petrified to its tip. I stoo

To Spinoza nomads we traverse a flat shimmering world breeding images. signs & erratic/ erotic encounters; surfaces effacing depth...we killed being you and I – for what? for the sake of ecstatic form. modes counterfeit substance, producing a synthetic real. If being exists it does so as an effect of the imaginary, of imaging. so, not-being, not-at-all-being then, not even becoming.

Is Spinoza’s Pantheistic Ontology a Template for Authoritarianism? OVERVIEW: ● The pantheist ontology of Baruch Spinoza (b.1632 – d.1677) is an attempt to deny the accountability of political evil. ● Spinoza’s instinct for statist control and his distrust of the common man are displayed in Theological-Political Treatise (published 1670). His masterwork, Ethics (published posthumously in 1677), is a bold attempt (in the guise of ontology) to classify minds and bodies as attrib

Spinoza, Panentheism, and Mystical Judaism This paper elucidates Spinoza's panentheism by situating it within its Jewish mystical and philosophical contexts, particularly drawing on Kabbalistic and Hasidic traditions. It argues that Spinoza's conception of God as an infinite substance encompassing and transcending the world resists reductive pantheistic interpretations. Instead, Spinoza presents a nuanced metaphysics where modes exist in God without exhausting divine essence,

The Heterodox Judaism of Baruch Spinoza There is only one and unique substance in existence, a substance that is infinite, self-caused, and eternal. This substance is the spatio-temporal world. But it is also God, says Baruch Spinoza, the Sephardi Jew from Amsterdam excommunicated by the Talmud Torah congregation. The Heterodox Judaism of Baruch Spinoza Baruch Spinoza was born in 1632 in Amsterdam to a Sephardi Jewish family who had fled Portugal because of persecution by th

Spinoza's Hatchet For the sole perfection and the final end of a slave and of a tool is this, that they duly fulfill the task imposed on them. For example, if a carpenter, while doing some work, finds his Hatchet of excellent service, then this Hatchet has thereby attained its end and perfection; but if he should think: this Hatchet has rendered me such good service now, therefore I shall let it rest, and exact no further service from it, then precisely this Hatchet would fai