What did Spinoza say about God and Nature?
Early in The Ethics Spinoza argues that there is only one substance, which is absolutely infinite, self-caused, and eternal. He calls this substance “God”, or “Nature”. In fact, he takes these two terms to be synonymous (in the Latin the phrase he uses is “Deus sive Natura”).
What was Spinoza’s conception of Nature?
The Human Being as Part of Nature. In the Preface to Part III, Spinoza states his view that all things alike must be understood to follow from the laws of nature: The laws and rules of nature, according to which all things happen, and change from one form to another, are always and everywhere the same.
Is God immanent in Nature Spinoza?
Spinoza argues that God is not prior to or outside the world – transcendent to creation – but wholly immanent within it. God is “an extended substance composed of an infinity of attributes that is purely immanent throughout nature” (Smith 18). Divinity is fully expressed in the world and without reserve.
What did Nietzsche say about Spinoza?
“By degrading Spinoza to a fainting theoretician of power preservation, Nietzsche wishes to gloss over Spinoza’s dangerous proximity to his own “will to power,” a concept he claims as his own original philosophical creation…Under no circumstances does he want to be mistaken for Spinoza.” (Urs Sommer 2012: 173).
What did Einstein think of Spinoza?
Albert Einstein stated that he believed in the pantheistic God of Baruch Spinoza. He did not believe in a personal God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings, a view which he described as naive.
What is Spinoza’s world view?
Instead, Spinoza argues the whole of the natural world, including human beings, follows one and the same set of natural laws (so, humans are not special), that everything that happens could not have happened differently, that the universe is one inherently active totality (which can be conceived of as either “God” or “ …
What was Spinoza’s philosophy?
Spinoza’s most famous and provocative idea is that God is not the creator of the world, but that the world is part of God. This is often identified as pantheism, the doctrine that God and the world are the same thing – which conflicts with both Jewish and Christian teachings.
Did Spinoza believe in the Bible?
He was frequently called an “atheist” by contemporaries, although nowhere in his work does Spinoza argue against the existence of God.
What is Spinoza’s idea of God?
Did Nietzsche read Spinoza?
Late in life he read Spinoza, whom he called his “precursor”, in particular for his criticisms of free will, teleology and his thoughts on the role of affects, joy and sadness.
Does Nietzsche think we have free will?
Power of will In Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche criticizes the concept of free will both negatively and positively. He calls it a folly resulting from extravagant pride of man; and calls the idea a crass stupidity.
What did Spinoza say God would say?
Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in the 17th century of a businessman father who was successful but not wealthy. To him, God would have said: “Stop praying and giving yourselves blows on your chests, what I want you to do is to go out into the world to enjoy your life.
Did Spinoza believe in prayer?
Throughout his text, Spinoza was keen to undermine the idea of prayer. In prayer, an individual appeals to God to change the way the universe works. But Spinoza argues that this is entirely the wrong way around.
Who was Nietzsche’s favorite philosopher?
He owed the awakening of his philosophical interest to reading Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation and later admitted that Schopenhauer was one of the few thinkers whom he respected, dedicating the essay “Schopenhauer as Educator” in the Untimely Meditations to him.
Was Nietzsche a fatalist?
Nietzsche is often classified and taught along with the “Existentialists,” mainly because he is (like Kierkegaard) so adamantly an “individual” and an early advocate of “self-making.” But Nietzsche also subscribes to a number of harsh doctrines that might be described as “fatalism” and a kind of “biological determinism …
Did Nietzsche believe in an afterlife?
Nietzsche first made this existentialist claim in The Gay Science (1882) via that old literary standby, the truth-speaking madman. Nietzsche opposed the idea of a single, all-knowing God, and wanted to focus people’s attention on earthly life as opposed to a future and a highly suspect heavenly afterlife.