Ethics (Penguin Classics)

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In the third chapter of that book, he stated that the word "God" means the same as the word "Nature". However, we are not best served by attempting to recreate the chain of reasoning that would lead us to act nobly when someone insults or harms us, but rather by having that maxim firmly committed to memory. Each Attribute, however, expresses itself in its finite modes not immediately (or directly) but mediately (or indirectly), at least in the sense to be explained now. Egyed also offers a suggestion about the possible relation of Schopenhauer's philosophy to two different strains of Buddhist philosophy: Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism.

Spinoza is making the metaphysical claim that each thing is possessed of an inner force, by which it continuously reasserts its own existence.So, for instance, he could not understand the reality of material objects and physical events without assuming the reality of a self-existing, infinite and eternal physical force which expresses itself in all the movements and changes which occur, as we say, in space. Thus, to strip away the confusion from a passion would require one somehow to strip away some of its causes. He starts with the proposition that "there cannot exist in the universe two or more substances having the same nature or attribute. The first published Dutch translations were by the poet Herman Gorter (1895) [29] and by Willem Meyer (1896).

In Spinoza’s view, the idea of an idea is not really distinct from the idea itself (E2p21s), so the clear and distinct idea we form of a passionate affect is not really distinct from that affect. In spite of his repeated objections and critical remarks, Schopenhauer incorporated some of Spinoza's fundamental concepts into his system, especially concerning the theory of emotions; there was also a striking similarity between Schopenhauer's will and Spinoza's substance. They take 'thought' to refer to the activity that is characteristic of minds, namely thinking, the exercise of mental power. Spinoza appeals to both of these pieces of theoretical machinery, along with a few interesting additions, when he presents his five remedies for overcoming or restraining the passions. This should be borne in mind when we turn, in section 3, to considering Spinoza’s account of how to overcome our passions.As Spinoza puts it: “For what constitutes the form of [such passions] is joy, or sadness, accompanied by an external cause… So if this is taken away, the form of love or hate is taken away at the same time. This article discusses four of them: the moral permissibility of suicide, of lying, and of causing harm to animals or to the environment. He concludes this part of the work with some claims “concerning the free man’s temperament and manner of living,” where the “free man” is understood to be someone who lives wholly according to the guidance of reason. For example, music is good for one who is melancholy, bad for one who is mourning, and neither good nor bad to one who is deaf” (E4pref, G II/208).