#substance monism

[yngwrthr]

Spinoza understood thought much more profoundly and, in essence, dialectically, which is why his figure presents special interest in the history of dialectics; he was probably the only one of the great thinkers of the pre-Marxian era who knew how to unite brilliant models of acutely dialectical thought with a consistently held materialist principle (rigorously applied throughout his system) of understanding thought and its relations to the external world lying in the space outside the human head. The influence of Spinoza’s ideas on the subsequent development of dialectical thought can hardly be exaggerated. ‘It is therefore worthy of note that thought must begin by placing itself at the standpoint of Spinozism; to be a follower of Spinoza is the essential commencement of all Philosophy’ [Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel].

Evald Ilyenkov, “Dialectical Logic, Essays on its History and Theory”, Part One, From the History of Dialectics, Chapter 2, Thought as Attribute of Substance (Spinoza), 1973.

[yngwrthr]

What Spinoza did not understand is thus that the initial, imperfect “intellectual tools” are the products of material labor, and not the products of nature. And in this — in nothing else — lies the weakness of his position. But he shares this weakness with Feuerbach. In no way should this shortcoming be called idealistic vacillations. It is simply an organic shortcoming of all old materialism.

Evald Ilyenkov quoted in Andrey Madainsky, “The Ilynekov Triangle: Marxism in Search of its Philosophical Roots”, in Stasis, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2017: Antiquity and Modernity of Soviet Marxism, p. 156.

[yngwrthr]

Jewish Spinoza expert named ‘persona non grata’ in Amsterdam’s synagogue

Spinoza was the famed Jewish philosopher who laid the intellectual foundations of the Enlightenment. He was excommunicated by Amsterdam’s Je

Spinoza’s pantheistic philosophy of substance monism offered the best chance, during the 17th century, of overcoming the difficulties associated with vulgar, mechanical materialism, subjective idealism, and the mind-body dualism a la Descartes. According to the substance monist position, the relationship between mind and body, being and thinking, spirit and nature etc. — the most basic question of all philosophy — can be explained in terms of one “substance” — Nature or God — with two different “modes” or “attributes”: (1) extended material stuff, and (2) non-extended aware/ thinking stuff. Without relying on Abrahamic “supernatural” monotheism, he accounted for the existence and interaction of non-spatial awareness and non-aware spatiality; i.e. how it is possible for the kind of stuff which is non-extended but thinking to interact with non-thinking material stuff like the natural world and the body. Spinoza’s essentially dialectical understanding was monumental in the struggle against the static and absolute conception of reality grounded in the traditional metaphysical religious worldview of the Feudal Middle Ages, so he was ex-communicated from the Judaic community.

[yngwrthr]

Substance is the cause of modes. Moduses, or individual transient forms, are the essence of the action of a substance. Thus, the relation of substantiality requires a relation of causality and, further, an interaction. Spinoza’s system outlines a fundamentally correct resolution of the problem of substance, causality, and interaction. “Interaction,” says Engels, “is the first thing that we observe when we begin to consider moving matter as a whole from the point of view of modern natural science. We observe a number of forms of motion: mechanical motion, light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical addition and decomposition, changes in the state of aggregation, organic life, which all — if we exclude organic life — transform into each other, condition each other, are the cause, the action there, and the cumulative sum of the movements with all changes of the form remains the same. Spinoza’s “substance is causa sui” expresses perfectly the interaction.”

Abram Deborin (and Engels) on Spinoza’s materialist and dialectical conception of causality, “Hegel and dialectical materialism”, 1929.

[yngwrthr]

In the argument between causal psychology and teleological psychology, in the argument between deterministic and nondeterministic conceptions of feelings, in the confrontation between spiritualistic and materialistic hypotheses, Spinoza must be placed on the side of those who defend the scientific conception of human feelings against the metaphysical. […] Thus, the crisis of contemporary psychology of emotions, having disintegrated into two irreconcilable parts that fight each other, demonstrates for us the historical fate not of Spinozist but of Cartesian philosophical thought.

Lev Vygotsky developing a materialist psychology based on Spinoza, from “The Teaching about Emotions”, 1932.

[yngwrthr]

I am fully convinced that Marx and Engels, after the materialist turn in their development, never abandoned the standpoint of Spinoza. This conviction of mine is based in part on the personal testimony of Engels. In 1889, while I was in Paris for the International Exhibition, I took the opportunity of going to London to meet Engels in person. I had the pleasure of spending almost a week in long discussions with him on various practical and theoretical subjects. At one point our discussion turned to philosophy. Engels strongly criticized what Stern rather imprecisely calls the ‘materialism in the philosophy of nature’. ‘So for you,’ I asked him, 'old Spinoza was right when he said that thought and extension were nothing but two attributes of one and the same substance ?’ 'Of course,’ Engels replied, 'old Spinoza was absolutely right.’

Georgi Plekhanov quoted by Lucio Colletti, “Teleology and Causation,” Bernstein and the Marxism of the Second International (1969)

[benevolentmale]

"The going out of existence of a pebble is like the going out of existence of a blush or a panic or a freeze -- nothing goes out of existence, but something alters."

(Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, 71)

[llort]

hmm