John Dunn

A Republick of Merchants

Monday, 6 January 2025 at 17:44

Paolo Sarpi

A Republick of Merchants

Paolo Sarpi early in the seventeenth century had analysed the Venetian constitution as the expression of mercantile interests. ‘The Spaniards,’he wrote, ‘who have so little kindness for the Venetian Government have not a more odious name than to call it, ‘A Republick of Merchants’. Sarpi, like Spinoza, warned that democratic tendencies were deleterious to a merchants' aristocratic republic. ‘But all Assemblies of numerous Bodies are to be avoided as the Plague, because nothing can sooner overturn the Commonwealth, than the Facility the People may meet with in getting together to confer or debate about their Grievances...’ Sarpi's philosophy of government was a forerunner of Spinoza's anti-humanism. The Italian held ‘that all is just which is any ways necessary for the maintaining of the Government’, and he advised always feeding the peoplecheaply, ‘For the nature of the rabble is so malicious...’ Worldly-wise and struggle-weary political philosophers like Sarpi and Spinoza could not muster much enthusiasm for the common man. Sarpi, furthermore, felt that a common bond of economic interest and hostility to Spain joined the Venetian and Dutch Republics. ‘It is greatly for the interest of theRepublick, to cultivate a strict Friendship with the seven united Provinces of the Netherlands...’ Sarpi urged more trade with the Dutch, and felt that the wills of both commonwealths would easily be united because ‘they are eager Pursuers of Merchandise’.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Coleridge wrote

Sunday, 5 January 2025 at 21:29

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Coleridge wrote

In a notebook Coleridge wrote:

If like Spinoza, I had contemplated God as the infinite Substance (Substantia Unica) as the incomprehensible mindless, lifeless, formless Substans of all Mind, Life and Form—there would be for me neither Good nor Evil – Yet Pain, & Misery would be—& would be hopeless.

Dante had described just such a place where hope had been abandoned. ‘Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate’, ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Spinoza’s error

Saturday, 4 January 2025 at 19:04

Spinoza’s error

The Substance, the hypostasis, the underlying reality, is Spinoza’s great and unquestioned presupposition. Spinoza began his Ethics with definitions, starting with the ‘cause of itself’ or causa sui.Definition 3 says: ‘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.’

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), the Romantic poet and philosopher, long ago knew what was lost in these so-called Ethics.The ‘Sage of Highgate’ recognised the anti-humanism of Spinoza early on, lamenting that Spinoza’s ‘error consisted not so much in what he affirms, as in what he has omitted to affirm or rashly denied . . . that he saw God in the ground only and exclusively, in his Might alone and his essential Wisdom, and not likewise in his moral, intellectual, existential and personal Godhead’. In short, the Ethics lacked the theoretical basis for an ethics and, above all, lacked hope.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Religious reality

Thursday, 2 January 2025 at 21:14

Martin Buber

Religious reality

To Spinozists like Marx and Engels, the answer to ‘who am I?’ is - ‘you are what you have to be’. In Spinoza’s concept of God, or the One, or Ein Sof, subjectivity is subsumed within Substance, never allowing for a clear separation of the two. This was the reason why Martin Buber said that Spinoza left no room for dialogue with God. Spinoza, to whom the knowledge of God was everything, nevertheless deprived man of an essential element of religious reality: the ‘approachability’ of God or,as Buber called it, his ‘dialogue’ relation with God. And trust me, there is far more to this ‘dialogue relation’ than Buber or any other religionist would have you believe, as I hope will become apparent by the end of this book.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Uprighting Spinoza

Wednesday, 1 January 2025 at 17:22

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Uprighting Spinoza

For Hegel everything begins with the realisation that there is something exceptional and inescapable in Spinoza’s philosophy. He wrote ‘du hast entweder den Spinozismus oder keine Philosophie’ - you have either Spinozism or no philosophy at all. When Marx ‘turned Hegel on this head’, he was in reality ‘uprighting’ Spinoza, following Fichte's inversion.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

redland2

Tuesday, 31 December 2024 at 21:01

Marx’s strange upturning

Yes - there was always something strange in Marx’s upturning assertion about Hegel. The truth is that Marx espoused Spinozism, the denial of human will and creativity. Marx took much from Hegel, but Hegel too was a Spinozist, inheriting his concept of Absolute Spirit from Judaism and Kabbalah. For Hegel, the origin, substance, purpose and direction of the universe was the realisation of an infinite knowledge, consciousness, or mind. Like the Kabbalists, Hegel held that the world’s beginning, substance and end is to be found in an infinite, all inclusive, Absolute Being. This Absolute, which is analogous to the Kabbalist’s Ein-sof, is conceived of by Hegel as the Absolute Spirit, a notion that is itself present in many kabbalistic works.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Only Spinozism

Monday, 30 December 2024 at 17:14

Spinoza/Marx

Only Spinozism

Ilyenkov, the Soviet Marxist, fell under the evil curse of Spinoza. Parsifal might as well have chosen Klingsor as his guide to the Grail. Ilyenkov must have known that there is no such thing as Marxism - only Spinozism,which means without room for contingency, man has to understand necessity and subject himself to it.

In Spinozism, I came to a retrospective understanding of my own Marxist thinking - and there were two surprises. Firstly, what I had once thought of as dynamic and revolutionary in my attitude was essentially passive and static. Secondly, this state of passive acceptance has triumphed as the underlying principle of all thought in today’s world as it applies to ethical and scientific matters. In both instances, the animal soul has defeated the divine.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.