Spinoza Entry Directory

by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]

Entry Directory for
Baruch Spinoza


[Thanks spinoza.blogse]

Ethics

Spinoza's Ethics, Entry Directory

Complicated Expression

Spinoza's Ontological Argument

Spinoza's Proof for an Infinity of Attributes of One Substance

Principles of Cartesian Philosophy

Descartes First Law of Nature and Second Law of Nature, and Spinoza's Proposition 28 and 29 of his Principles of Cartesian Philosophy

Spinoza, Principles of Cartesian Philosophy, Proposition 14, Part 2

Spinoza, Principles of Cartesian Philosophy, Proposition 21, Part 2

Improvement of the Understanding

Genetic Definition in Spinoza's Improvement of the Understanding §§91-97, with Deleuze's Commentary

Correspondences

Spinoza's Letters, Entry Directory

Letter on the Infinite

Letter on the Infinite Series, Directory

Commentary and Connections

Signs of Immanence in Husserl and Spinoza

Deleuze & Spinoza

Deleuze Cours Vincennes Entry Directory

The Positivity of Spinoza’s Semiology

Spinoza’s Expressions Extended to Three

Spinoza's Foci for Deleuze's Contraction

Deleuze & Spinoza: What Can a Body Do?

Deleuze & Spinoza: What Can a Body Do? Entry Directory

Hegel's Critique of Spinoza

Letter on the Infinite Series, Directory

Hegel's Critique of Spinoza in Science of Logic §§1179-1183, summarized

§§1287-1288 Hegel's Critique of Spinoza in Science of Logic §§1287-1288, summarized

Figure and Negation in Spinoza's Letter 50 to Jelles

Macherey's Hegel ou Spinoza, "Le fini et l'infini," summarized

Simon Duffy. The Logic of Expression: Quality, Quantity and Intensity in Spinoza, Hegel and Deleuze, Chapter 1, §4

Simon Duffy. The Logic of Expression: Quality, Quantity and Intensity in Spinoza, Hegel and Deleuze, Chapter 1, §5

Simon Duffy. The Logic of Expression: Quality, Quantity and Intensity in Spinoza, Hegel and Deleuze, Chapter 1, §6 "Omnis determinatio est negatio"

Simon Duffy. The Logic of Expression: Quality, Quantity and Intensity in Spinoza, Hegel and Deleuze, Chapter 1, §7 "Et determinatio negatio est"

Simon Duffy on Spinoza

Simon Duffy. Entry Directory. The Logic of Expression: Quality, Quantity and Intensity in Spinoza, Hegel and Deleuze

Kvond on Spinoza

Spinoza's Foci for Deleuze's Contraction

Deleuze and Dance Part II: At the Limit of What Bodies Can Do: Michael Jackson’s Fullness of Death, Under Spinoza's Microscope

Deleuze’s Dance, III. Wonders of Phenomena: The Infinite Grace of Bergson and Kleist; or the Nietzschean Dance of Deleuzean Dice

New Directions

1: Grinding Philosophies. As Lensmaker: A Quick Overview. [The Kvond Spinoza’s Foci Summary Series]

2: Borges and Spinoza: Ground Glass [The Kvond Spinoza’s Foci Summary Series]

3: Hands & Machines. Descartes and Spinoza: Craft and Reason and The Hand of De Beaune [The Kvond Spinoza’s Foci Summary Series]

5: Seeing Machines. Instrumentality and Perception in the Seventeeth Century. [The Kvond Spinoza’s Foci Summary Series]

6: Seeing Differences between Descartes and Spinoza. Some Observations on Spinoza’s Sight. [The Kvond Spinoza’s Foci Summary Series]

Ideas in Currency

Kvond Update, Ideas in Currency




Image credits:
Thanks Spinoza Blogse
http://spinoza.blogse.nl/log/karl-bauer-1868-1942-maakte-lithografie-van-spinoza.html

Kvond Update, Ideas in Currency

Summary of kvond’s ideas, by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Spinoza Entry Directory]

Kvond has been writing about the market-bubble nature of professional academics. I highly recommend these entries, which I am compiling here. I added this entry to the list:

Humanities and Ponzi: Just What Secures the Investment of Thought

Kvond quotes Philip Gerrans

"When people do not write directly about the world, it is hard to compare what they say against the world. So the main corrective mechanism in the humanities is reputation built on publication and, since publication is often based on reputation, the danger of a bubble is extreme. Someone who takes a supervisor’s advice to base a career on writing about Slavoj Zizek is in the position of an investor deciding to invest in Bear Stearns on the advice of Lehman Brothers. The price is high and predicted – by those who have a vested interest – to rise further…"

Ideas in Currency

Summary of kvond’s ideas, by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Spinoza Entry Directory]

Kvond at Frames / sing has been posting some really incredible and mind opening postings. He uses economic concepts to examine the creation and propagation of philosophical ideas.

Harman’s Speculative Bubble: The Runaway Capitalism of OOP

"As I heard audio lectures that followed my reading of his theory it seemed that indeed there was a kind of “debt” of explanation or coherence that Harman simply pushed into the future, a kind of doubling down into the next book (Latour) and a refinancing that went along with a method of repackaging. First his philosophy was part of a whole movement called “Spectulative Realism” (composed of thinkers who agree upon almost nothing), then it became “OOP” and had even spawned its own “splinter group” called OOO (insuring it the position of an imagined orthodoxy). One cannot help but feel with some force that this is running parallel to the dividend markets that simply cut and repackaged “risk” under new names creating a bubble of excitement which simply fed upon itself."

Harman’s Commodification of Paper Writing

"in the general sense that philosophers are in the business of selling their texts, one has to think about the “genuine” products of philosophers, what it is about the philosophical endeavor that gives it its importance, its foothold amid our more commercially vested institutions. When we write a paper, any such paper, what is it that we really would like to show? That is what matters."

Bourdieu on Blogging: Where to Find Symbolic Capital?

"If we may be monks, the conditions that allow our speculation are brought along with it, and if we really are pursuing, not just speculation for its pleasures of freedom and imagination, not just some kind of run-around of Institutional restraint, searching for cheaper prestige, but true ideas and ideas that inherently should matter to the world, the consequence of our ideas (politically, ethically, socially) must be embraced. In this way there is an epistemological mandate for our ontological speculation which immediately connects ethics to metaphysics."

Humanities and Ponzi: Just What Secures the Investment of Thought

Kvond quotes Philip Gerrans

When people do not write directly about the world, it is hard to compare what they say against the world. So the main corrective mechanism in the humanities is reputation built on publication and, since publication is often based on reputation, the danger of a bubble is extreme. Someone who takes a supervisor’s advice to base a career on writing about Slavoj Zizek is in the position of an investor deciding to invest in Bear Stearns on the advice of Lehman Brothers. The price is high and predicted – by those who have a vested interest – to rise further…

[To be continually updated]

6: Seeing Differences between Descartes and Spinoza. Some Observations on Spinoza’s Sight. [The Kvond Spinoza’s Foci Summary Series]

Summary of kvond’s ideas, by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Spinoza Entry Directory]

The Kvond Spinoza’s Foci Summary Series

[Kvond’s original work with Spinoza’s optics and lens craftsmanship has led me to see Spinoza’s ideas in a whole new way. If you have the chance, check out his blog, especially his work with Spinoza. He’s a world class Spinoza scholar.]

Seeing Differences

between Descartes and Spinoza

Kvond of Frames /sing

Spinoza’s Foci

Part I: The concept of the Philosopher as Lens Grinder

Some Observations on Spinoza’s Sight

How The Two Philosophers “See”

Kvond will comment on his earlier post, A Diversity of Sight: Descartes vs. Spinoza.

Occular metaphors pervade western thought. Spinoza's use of them could have profound implications for how we interpret his metaphysical ideas.

Kvond compares optical diagrams from Spinoza and Descartes.

Descartes' Ur Image: The Hyperbola

[Image obtained gratefully from the same kvond posting.]

Spinoza's Ideal Optical Eye

[Again, thanks]

The first diagram is a hyperbolic lens. It focuses to a point all the rays parallel to its central axis. It illustrates the rationalist ideal of focused, clear, and distinct thinking. Kvond writes:

it is best to understand that this image for Descartes is likely intuitive of directions for investigation, steering both his theories and empirical observations.

The second diagram of Spinoza's 'ideal eye' depicts a spherical lens that is "able to focus rays parallel to a variety of axes (in fact, an infinity of axes)" (kvond). But human vision is not panoptical in this way. However, the way we see things in our mind's eye could come closer.

Ideal mental vision, instead of being modeled upon a central point of focus, Spinoza conceives of as panoptical; that is, one “sees” as best as a human mind can the cross-section of rays as they converge from every direction upon the human being.

Kvond notes that this comparison is too simple to fully capture all the complexities and affinities involved. However, we still may draw probing philosophical conclusions:

For one, in that Descartes’ hyperbola inheritance may be traced to Kepler’s Paralipomena its conceptual framework should be viewed as grafted from that Neo-Platonic Ideal, opening up the question of what aporias arise under such a graft (for instance, a point of focus in a Neo-Platonic realm, does not operate with the same powers or meanings as a point of focus does within a Will-driven conception of the soul). Additionally, Spinoza’s rejection of the naturalization of the hyperbola, and the analogy of center-focused human vision, has far-reaching consequences for the reading of the place of the Self in his philosophy of power and affect. If Ideal vision occurs across a field of foci, the periphery has no less a “truth” than any center. The margin does not merely, as Kepler says, “serve” the axis - so goes the critique in so many postmodern attacks on a philosophy of Presence – hence the margin is the very place where a search for truth is made, whether it be the margin of society or a comprehensive Totality of Being. (kvond)

Kvond. Some Observations on Spinoza’s Sight. http://kvond.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/some-observations-on-spinozas-sight/

5: Seeing Machines. Instrumentality and Perception in the Seventeeth Century. [The Kvond Spinoza’s Foci Summary Series]

Summary of kvond’s ideas, by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Spinoza Entry Directory]

The Kvond Spinoza’s Foci Summary Series

[Kvond’s original work with Spinoza’s optics and lens craftsmanship has led me to see Spinoza’s ideas in a whole new way. If you have the chance, check out his blog, especially his work with Spinoza. He’s a world class Spinoza scholar.]

Kvond of Frames /sing

Spinoza’s Foci

Part I: The concept of the Philosopher as Lens Grinder

Instrumentality and Perception in the Seventeeth Century.

Often ideas are instrumentalized. Descartes, for example, divorced Mind from Body, and regarded phenomena in mechanistic terms. His perspective influenced the development of complex automated machines. The push for production-efficiency resulted as well in the slave trade replacing indentured servitude and sharecropping.

Consider metaphorically Descartes hyperbolic lens.

[Image obtained gratefully from the same kvond posting.]

It focuses light down to a point. In a similar way, we might lose sight of the big picture, and look only at how things relate causally on a very local level. Perhaps we obtain mathematically-expressed laws which allow us produce the things we want with optimal efficiency. But also, from this abstract and limited point of view, we might come to value even the use of slavery, given its productive efficiency. For, such a solution results from the clarity and distinctness of thought– admirable rational achievements. Kvond writes:

“There is something to the rise of the lens and the desire to see more and more clearly, in a blinkered sense, that grants priority to narrow focus.”

Spinoza was a lens grinder as well as a philosopher. He was also a rationalist who valued clear and distinct thinking. Nonetheless, he did not value ‘automated, instrumentalized productions.’ Kvond explains that Spinoza “was much more sensitive to the joining points between human beings and their actions, in particular to the kinds of ideas that were held by persons. One does not simply see better because one sees further, or more minutely.” We discussed previously Spinoza’s objection to automated lens grinding machines, “an uncraftsmanlike transfer of mathematics to form through measure and mechanism, which works with a kind of transcendental force, the device becoming invisible and unconscious.” Spinoza turns our attention back to the human hands which operate the machines, as well to the Ideas that we machine users have. We form assemblages with our instruments. And the quality of our ideas determines the power and perfection of our machinic interactions.

Consider how Descartes proposed his own notions of a transcendent God and free will. His sharp division between mind and body was essential for his project. Spinoza, however, reconciled the two [by means of his parallelism]. He was not so narrowly focused on abstract rational conceptions. He did not just design lenses for seeing things with greater focus. As well, he ground and polished them with his own hands. Ideas and their material instantiations cannot be divorced. In fact, kvond writes, “a calculation, for Spinoza, must be seen as an act, the mathematical point, as a relation and expression, and an instantiation, a persistence.” We do not just see, we see from a certain conceptual perspective. [Descartes saw the world mechanically. This perspective might view slaves as machines and not people.] Kvond puts it that we are always seeing-with. Hence, being concerned with local causation is not a fuller form of seeing the world:

the radii of causes, comprehensively taken, are the finer part of seeing, and one only takes the hand off the process, knowingly. There is a certain ecology of perception that Spinoza’s observations on the eve of the Instrument define. (Kvond)

Kvond. Instrumentality and Perception in the Seventeeth Century. http://kvond.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/instrumentality-and-perception-in-the-seventeeth-century/

3: Hands & Machines. Descartes and Spinoza: Craft and Reason and The Hand of De Beaune [The Kvond Spinoza’s Foci Summary Series]

Summary of kvond’s ideas, by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Spinoza Entry Directory]

The Kvond Spinoza’s Foci Summary Series

[Kvond’s original work with Spinoza’s optics and lens craftsmanship has led me to see Spinoza’s ideas in a whole new way. If you have the chance, check out his blog, especially his work with Spinoza. He’s a world class Spinoza scholar.]

Kvond of Frames /sing

Spinoza’s Foci

Part I: The concept of the Philosopher as Lens Grinder

Descartes and Spinoza: Craft and Reason and The Hand of De Beaune

In La Dioptrique, Descartes designs an automated machine for grinding hyperbolic lenses.

[Image obtained gratefully from this same Frames /sing entry]

He charged Florimond De Beaune to build it. But the craftsman wounded his hand so much in that effort, that he would have to abandon the project altogether. Kvond writes:

Descartes’ craftsmanless, all-turning machine could not be achieved. It is as if its “reason” had chewed up even the best of earth’s craftsman. (kvond)

Descartes assesses the failure to Constantijn Huygens Sr., father of Christiaan Huygens:

“Do you think I am sad? I swear to you that on the contrary, I discern, in the very failure of the hands of the best workers, just how far my reasoning has reached” (Descartes and the Hyperbolic Quest, 70).

Spinoza expresses a different attitude about such matters of safety, in the letter 32 to Oldenberg, when discussing Christiaan Huygens' lens grinding.

Experience has sufficiently taught me, that the free hand is better and more sure than any machine for polishing spherical moulds. (R. H. M. Elwes, Transl.)

Huygens it seems shares this appreciation for working class craftsmanship. He considered Rembrandt’s skills to be a product of his working class family background.

Descartes, however, thought that his feats of reason could lift him into a higher class. His machine would allow him to manufacture lenses without the use of his hands. And he seemed to even enjoy the idea that a technically-adept craftsman cut his hands trying to build the machine, as if proving Descartes’ higher social place. Spinoza, however, did not wish for “a rationality so clear that it would distance itself from the hands that were to manifest it.” Kvond continues, “Perhaps Spinoza keeps in his mind the hand of De Beaune.”

Spinoza. The Letters. from the R. H. M. Elwes translation, available online at:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/phi/spinoza/corr/corr12.htm

2: Borges and Spinoza: Ground Glass [The Kvond Spinoza’s Foci Summary Series]

Summary of kvond’s ideas, by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Spinoza Entry Directory]
[Borges, Entry Directory]

The Kvond Spinoza’s Foci Summary Series

[Kvond’s original work with Spinoza’s optics and lens craftsmanship has led me to see Spinoza’s ideas in a whole new way. If you have the chance, check out his blog, especially his work with Spinoza. He’s a world class Spinoza scholar.]

Kvond of Frames /sing

Spinoza’s Foci

Part I: The concept of the Philosopher as Lens Grinder

2: Borges and Spinoza: Ground Glass

One of kvond’s original insights is that Spinoza’s lens grinding influenced his conception of what Ideas are, especially in regard to how Spinoza’s theories are fundamentally different from Descartes'. Kvond explains that he first obtained this insight from Borges’ sonnet on Spinoza. In this poem, Borges relates Spinoza’s lens grinding to how he “polished” his propositions. Kvond offers both the original poem, plus his literal translation. [please see his entry for their original presentation.]

Spinoza

Las traslúcidas manos del judío

labran en la penumbra los cristales

y la tarde que muere es miedo y frío.

(Las tardes a las tardes son iguales.)

Las manos y el espacio de jacinto

que palidece en el confín del Ghetto

casi no existen para el hombre quieto

que está soñando un claro laberinto.

No lo turba la fama, ese reflejo

de sueños en el sueño de otro espejo,

ni el temeroso amor de las doncellas.

Libre de la metáfora y del mito

labra un arduo cristal: el infinito

mapa de Aquel que es todas Sus estrellas.

Spinoza

The translucent hands of the Jew

Work in the penumbra, crystals

& the evening, dying, is dread & chill.

(Evenings to evenings are equal.)

The hands & space of hyacinth

Waning in the confines of the Ghetto

Almost do not exist for the man so quiet

Who is dreaming a clear labyrinth.

He’s not perturbed by fame, that reflection

Of dreams in the dream of another mirror,

Nor by the timorous love of maidens.

Free from metaphor & myth

He works a hard crystal: the Infinite

Map of That which totals His stars.

Spinoza is a finite being. But his philosophical “crystal” is infinite. Kvond then quotes Borges as remarking about this poem:

“In that sonnet, I refer specifically to the philosopher Spinoza. He is polishing crystal lenses and is polishing a rather vast crystal philosophy of the universe. I think we might consider those tasks parallel. Spinoza is polishing his lenses, Spinoza is polishing vast diamonds, his ethics.”

Kvond notes that Spinoza would appreciate his philosophy begin characterized as a material process. Kvond ends by writing:

If Spinoza argues for a liberation, it would seem to be a liberation which understands freedom to be the most material of things, and his Ethics to be material construction. The internal paradoxes of such an aim, the clarity of its labyrinth, are the things which make it possible. (kvond)