I’m not familiar with his work, Idealism is all rather new to me still, but I took a quick look at his Wiki entry and saw this first thing:
“In a letter to Henry Oldenburg, Spinoza wrote: “as to the view of certain people that I identify god with nature (taken as a kind of mass or corporeal matter), they are quite mistaken”.[1] For Spinoza, our universe (cosmos) is a mode under infinite attributes, of which we can perceive two: Thought and Extension. God has infinitely many other attributes which are not present in our world.”
The phrase “God or Nature“, I suspect, is not asking one or the other, forcing a choice so to speak, but rather stating that you have God, the Will of Schopenhauer, on the one hand and Nature, the collapse of the wave function, the Representation of the Will, on the other. One one hand the (relative) order we know through perception and behind it, all around it, literally behind your head when you look in one direction and not another, the squirming, multisplendifferous Potentiality. I spend a few seconds a day swinging my eyes from side to side chewing over that notion, my field of vision like a flashlight that collapses the Multiplicity into the Particular, trying to peek around the edge of it.
So I don’t think Spinoza was an atheist and I don’t think that phrase indicates any kind of a conflict or contradiction. If that was where you were headed, sorry if I misinterpreted.
All of this wonderful discussion has kicked up an odd thought. Assume with me for a moment that Idealism is correct and that we are extensions of a Meta-consciousness. We have a particular relationship, time and space, that allows us to step back and look at Ourself. Is it not possible other relationships exist, different kinds of differentiated consciousnesses? Not just say different like that of a dog’s or a yeast mat or even an extraterrestrial entity but a completely different time and space from our own? We know it’s at least possible from our own example.
I’m not familiar with his work, Idealism is all rather new to me still, but I took a quick look at his Wiki entry and saw this first thing:
“In a letter to Henry Oldenburg, Spinoza wrote: “as to the view of certain people that I identify god with nature (taken as a kind of mass or corporeal matter), they are quite mistaken”.[1] For Spinoza, our universe (cosmos) is a mode under infinite attributes, of which we can perceive two: Thought and Extension. God has infinitely many other attributes which are not present in our world.”
The phrase “God or Nature“, I suspect, is not asking one or the other, forcing a choice so to speak, but rather stating that you have God, the Will of Schopenhauer, on the one hand and Nature, the collapse of the wave function, the Representation of the Will, on the other. One one hand the (relative) order we know through perception and behind it, all around it, literally behind your head when you look in one direction and not another, the squirming, multisplendifferous Potentiality. I spend a few seconds a day swinging my eyes from side to side chewing over that notion, my field of vision like a flashlight that collapses the Multiplicity into the Particular, trying to peek around the edge of it.
So I don’t think Spinoza was an atheist and I don’t think that phrase indicates any kind of a conflict or contradiction. If that was where you were headed, sorry if I misinterpreted.
All of this wonderful discussion has kicked up an odd thought. Assume with me for a moment that Idealism is correct and that we are extensions of a Meta-consciousness. We have a particular relationship, time and space, that allows us to step back and look at Ourself. Is it not possible other relationships exist, different kinds of differentiated consciousnesses? Not just say different like that of a dog’s or a yeast mat or even an extraterrestrial entity but a completely different time and space from our own? We know it’s at least possible from our own example.