Spinoza

Some of Spinoza's philosophical positions are:

* The natural world is infinite.
* Good and evil are related to human pleasure and pain.
* Everything done by humans and other animals is excellent and divine.
* All rights are derived from the State.
* Animals can be used in any way by people for the benefit of the human race, according to a rational consideration of the benefit as well as the animal's status in nature.
[from Wapedia]

Spinoza's philosophy has much in common with Stoicism inasmuch as both philosophies sought to fulfill a therapeutic role by instructing people how to attain happiness (or eudaimonia, for the Stoics). However, Spinoza differed sharply from the Stoics in one important respect: he utterly rejected their contention that reason could defeat emotion. On the contrary, he contended, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion. For him, the crucial distinction was between active and passive emotions, the former being those that are rationally understood and the latter those that are not. He also held that knowledge of true causes of passive emotion can transform it to an active emotion, thus anticipating one of the key ideas of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis.

Though Spinoza was active in the Dutch Jewish community and extremely well-versed in Jewish texts, some claim that his controversial ideas eventually led community leaders to issue a cherem (Hebrew: חרם, a kind of excommunication) against him, effectively dismissing him from that Jewish society at age 23, though most of his friends were Marranos (secret Jews, or Sephardic Jews). Prior to any action by the Dutch Jewish community, however, his books were put on the Catholic Index of banned books, and were burned by Dutch Protestants, for their humanistic take on the Bible. Some historians argue that the Roman Catholic Church influenced the nascent Jewish community of Marranos to enact this rare excommunication law. Historian Adri Offenberg and others argue that the Amsterdam Jewish Community, at the time in its infancy and struggling to secure its position in the Dutch republic, was placed under aggressive external pressure by the Dutch Reform and Roman Catholic Churches to unwillingly quell what was perceived as heresy in dominant Christian circles (Die Lebensgeschichte Spinozas).



But, the thing is, did he play ?   a Rationalist perhaps, but still a Human Being!






Glass eater Spinoza? should have remembered his Ethics! a world of 'Shards', indeed!