John Dunn

Reality is of our making

Sunday, 9 June 2024 at 21:55

Reality is of our making

It was Kant who led the revolution against Spinoza, describing his new ideas as Copernican in their likely impact upon established philosophical cosmologies. Kant would have been better calling his thought anti-Copernican, because he revolted against the cosmocentric and advocated instead an egocentric view of the universe. In the revolution, or the nascent Romantic reaction, Christian Renaissance Humanism was reasserted in secular terms, to conceive reality not as the limit of spirit but the same as spirit, which to be real must have everything inside itself. Kant’s revolutionary thesis was that objective reality, to be known at all, must conform to the subjective structure of the human mind. We know reality because it is of our making.

© John Dunn.

Kant attack

Friday, 7 June 2024 at 22:49

Kant attack

Locke, Berkeley and Hume retained the essence of Spinozist monism i.e. the elimination of the self, except that this apparent death was rather a coma, a state of limbo in a passive state of abject dualism. That which is, exists outside of the comatose subject, and only outside of the subject. This was the materialist metaphysics, the chink in the wall of the Spinozist citadel, which gave Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) something to attack.

© John Dunn.

The subject as nothing

Wednesday, 5 June 2024 at 23:42

George Berkeley

The subject as nothing

Ironically, it was the imperfect understanding of Spinoza by his followers that led to the rise of the subjectivist motive of certainty - the appeal to sense-certainty. Innate ideas are not certain, argued Locke, because they are not the product but the presupposition of experience. Sensation for Locke was therefore to be determined by an external world described in Newtonian terms. Mind, for Locke, was originally a passive thing, a tabula rasa. There is a presupposed world, or Nature, that is external to the sentient and inscribes itself upon the human mind. Berkeley’s immaterialism did not challenge what appeared to be its Lockean opposite, but rather confirmed its core principle. Berkeley’s God was Locke’s Nature by another name, imposing the same limits upon the constructive process of experience. Hume’s skepticism - that our belief in an external world cannot be rationally justified - showed that the experience which claims to be the most anti-dogmatic does in fact coincide with its contrary - pure dogmatism. The subject can do nothing.The subject is nothing.

© John Dunn.

Destruction of the self

Wednesday, 5 June 2024 at 23:33

Destruction of the self

Lurianic Tree of Life

Philosophically this ‘truth’ translated too readily into positivism and deference to the objective virginity of cold facts, untouched by any subjective intrusion from mind, and the modern world was transformed into an arid desert of reality. The Spinozist Counter-Renaissance onslaught against humanism was brutally effective. Tikkun and the enfolding of alterity (anti-inclusiveness) into Ein Sof demanded no less than the death of the self. Out of this came the modern phenomenon of slavery experienced as freedom. It was the elimination of a human experience apart from Ein Sof, the destruction of the self, that led Spinozism to deny free will and the value of the creative imagination. Man has nothing to add to nature, he is not even subsidiary to the original Substance, or an addendum to it. He is simply subsumed into Spinoza’s great presupposition, which is where Spinoza’s philosophy is reflective of Luriunic Kabbalah, in particular Tikkun, the process by which cosmic restoration and repair are to be accomplished.

© John Dunn.

'Truth' as enslavement

Tuesday, 4 June 2024 at 16:24

'Truth' as enslavement

To understand what the Romantic Movement was reacting against, you have to ask - what had Spinoza done? Where was the ground of Spinoza’s ‘truth’?Spinoza told us:

By substance I mean that which is in itself and is conceived through itself; that is, that the conception of which does not require the conception of another thing from which it has to be formed.

This was the great presupposition upon which the Spinozist position rests; it is the Ein Sof of Lurianic Kabbalah, the ultimate hypostasis. It is the great presupposition because it is prior to all else. ‘Substance is by nature prior to its affections.’ Given that the Substance, or God, is all-embracing, then thought does not need an extrinsic arbiter of truth, because it does not have truth outside of itself. Whilst a turn could have been taken at this point to a pure idealism, or subjectivism, the convictions of Spinoza’s kabbalism,and his Marrano resolution to return to pre-expulsion privilege and economic power, led him to a materialist monism in the opposite direction. Spinoza did not resolve truth (objective) into certainty (subjective) but certainty into truth. The subject became the slave rather than the master of truth. The ‘truth’ of the modern world became and remains an instrument of enslavement.

© John Dunn.

Trade, central banking and national debt

Monday, 3 June 2024 at 16:18

Marx in a Sabbatian fervour

Trade, central banking and national debt

The Age of Revolutions (recognised as the period up to and including 1848),heralded the modern age of trade, central banking and national debt secured against physically enforced taxation. Absolutist monarchies fell to constitutionalist states and republics. Freedom of internal trade and encouragements to technical innovation allied the state with commercial growth. Napoleon’s conquests cemented the spread of French revolutionary legislation to much of western Europe. The powers of the Roman Catholic Church, guilds, and manorial aristocracy came under the gun as the goal of an unimpeded borderless movement of money came into view. Traditions crumbled. ‘All that is solid melts into air’, wrote Marx in a Sabbatian fervour, ‘all that is holy is profaned’. Money was free to cross borders. Pre-Renaissance unimpeded economic activity returned. Spinoza had led his people home.

© John Dunn.

Heirs of Sarpi, Spinoza and Locke

Sunday, 2 June 2024 at 17:37

Paolo Sarpi

Heirs of Sarpi, Spinoza and Locke

Some Sabbatian-Frankists were active during the French Revolution, such as Moses Dobruška, a son of Frank's Sabbatian cousin in Offenbach Shendl Dobruska. However, the opposition to the ancient regime was on a far wider front than this and drew upon the philosophical and socio-economic legacy of Sarpi, Spinoza and Locke. Jonathan Israel has especially highlighted the specific influence of Spinoza’s philosophy in this context. However, I contend that the messianism and the Marrano heritage of crypto-identities and intrigue were crucial parts of this Enlightenment cultural milieu too. The metapolitical struggle in France was won by the heirs of Sarpi, Spinoza and Locke and their weapon of deception was the Encyclopedia, a complete alphabetical treatment of the whole field of human knowledge from the standpoint of the Enlightenment.

© John Dunn.