Random Spinoza and more.

Some of you know me. No longer posting my opinion, just the facts!
I intend to post quotes with hashtags that you can use with Grok to learn more about them.

[Random Spinoza and more. @urrwater]

#Spinoza
However, I will add a few remarks, in order to overthrow this doctrine of a final cause utterly. That which is really a cause it considers as an effect, and vice versâ: it makes that which is by nature first to be last, and that which is highest and most perfect to be most imperfect.

[Random Spinoza and more. @urrwater]

#Spinoza
If this be their theory, they would not, perhaps, be daunted by the fact that we find an infinite number of phenomena, far surpassing our imagination, and very many others which confound its weakness. But enough has been said on this subject. The other abstract notions are nothing but modes of imagining, in which the imagination is differently affected: though they are considered by the ignorant as the chief attributes of things, inasmuch as they believe that everything was created for the sake of themselves; and, according as they are affected by it, style it good or bad, healthy or rotten and corrupt.

[Random Spinoza and more. @urrwater]

#Spinoza
However, this is not the place to deduce these misconceptions from the nature of the human mind: it will be sufficient here, if I assume as a starting point, what ought to be universally admitted, namely, that all men are born ignorant of the causes of things, that all have the desire to seek for what is useful to them, and that they are conscious of such desire.

[Random Spinoza and more. @urrwater]

#Spinoza
Hence also it follows, that everyone thought out for himself, according to his abilities, a different way of worshipping God, so that God might love him more than his fellows, and direct the whole course of nature for the satisfaction of his blind cupidity and insatiable avarice. Thus the prejudice developed into superstition, and took deep root in the human mind; and for this reason everyone strove most zealously to understand and explain the final causes of things; but in their endeavor to show that nature does nothing in vain, i.e. nothing which is useless to man, they only seem to have demonstrated that nature, the gods, and men are all mad together.

[Random Spinoza and more. @urrwater]

#Spinoza
Thus it comes to pass that they only look for a knowledge of the final causes of events, and when these are learned, they are content, as having no cause for further doubt. If they cannot learn such causes from external sources, they are compelled to turn to considering themselves, and reflecting what end would have induced them personally to bring about the given event, and thus they necessarily judge other natures by their own.

[Random Spinoza and more. @urrwater]

#Spinoza
In the foregoing I have explained the nature and properties of God. I have shown that he necessarily exists, that he is one: that he is, and acts solely by the necessity of his own nature; that he is the free cause of all things, and how he is so; that all things are in God, and so depend on him, that without him they could neither exist nor be conceived; lastly, that all things are predetermined by God, not through his free will or absolute fiat, but from the very nature of God or infinite power.

[Random Spinoza and more. @urrwater]

#Spinoza
After men persuaded themselves, that everything which is created is created for their sake, they were bound to consider as the chief quality in everything that which is most useful to themselves, and to account those things the best of all which have the most beneficial effect on mankind. Further, they were bound to form abstract notions for the explanation of the nature of things, such as goodness, badness, order, confusion, warmth, cold, beauty, deformity, and so on; and from the belief that they are free agents arose the further notions of praise and blame, sin and merit.

[Random Spinoza and more. @urrwater]

#Spinoza
We must not omit to notice that the followers of this doctrine, anxious to display their talent in assigning final causes, have imported a new method of argument in proof of their theory—namely, a reduction, not to the impossible, but to ignorance; thus showing that they have no other method of exhibiting their doctrine.

[Random Spinoza and more. @urrwater]

#Spinoza
Herefrom it follows, first, that men think themselves free inasmuch as they are conscious of their volitions and desires, and never even dream, in their ignorance, of the causes which have disposed them so to wish and desire. Secondly, that men do all things for an end, namely, for that which is useful to them, and which they seek.

[Random Spinoza and more. @urrwater]

#Spinoza
Thus it comes to pass that they only look for a knowledge of the final causes of events, and when these are learned, they are content, as having no cause for further doubt. If they cannot learn such causes from external sources, they are compelled to turn to considering themselves, and reflecting what end would have induced them personally to bring about the given event, and thus they necessarily judge other natures by their own.

[Random Spinoza and more. @urrwater]

#Spinoza
I have now sufficiently explained my first point. There is no need to show at length, that nature has no particular goal in view, and that final causes are mere human figments. This, I think, is already evident enough, both from the causes and foundations on which I have shown such prejudice to be based, and also from Prop. xvi., and the Corollary of Prop. xxxii., and, in fact, all those propositions in which I have shown, that everything in nature proceeds from a sort of necessity, and with the utmost perfection.

[Random Spinoza and more. @urrwater]

Moved to Ethics Part 1 Appendix for a while.

[Random Spinoza and more. @urrwater]

#Spinoza
Further, as they find in themselves and outside themselves many means which assist them not a little in the search for what is useful, for instance, eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, herbs and animals for yielding food, the sun for giving light, the sea for breeding fish, &c., they come to look on the whole of nature as a means for obtaining such conveniences.

[Random Spinoza and more. @urrwater]

#Spinoza
The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but there remains of it something which is eternal.

[Random Spinoza and more. @urrwater]

#Spinoza
At length I pass to the remaining portion of my Ethics, which is concerned with the way leading to freedom.

[Random Spinoza and more. @urrwater]

#Spinoza
Although this love towards God has no beginning, it yet possesses all the perfections of love, just as though it had arisen as we feigned.

[Random Spinoza and more. @urrwater]

#Spinoza
But, notwithstanding, we feel and know that we are eternal. For the mind feels those things that it conceives by understanding, no less than those things that it remembers.

[Random Spinoza and more. @urrwater]

#Spinoza
Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself; neither do we rejoice therein, because we control our lusts, but, contrariwise, because we rejoice in it, we are able to control our lusts.

[Random Spinoza and more. @urrwater]

#Spinoza
In proportion as the mind is more capable of understanding things by the third kind of knowledge, it desires more to understand things by that kind.

[Random Spinoza and more. @urrwater]

#Spinoza
For instance, we have laid down among the rules of life, that hatred should be overcome with love or high-mindedness, and not requited with hatred in return.