Thursday, September 14, 2017

Tanner on Descartes and Spinoza

René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza (Tanner Luffman)


René Descartes (1596-1650)
Born on March 31, 1596 in La Haye, France to a family of minor nobility, René Descartes would later come to be considered one of the great 17th century philosophers and be named the parent of modern philosophy. He helped usher in the acceptance of science, technology and industry through his literary works, which helped change skepticism about the debate between scholastic authority versus the systematic search for truth into a positive agenda. Some of his theories helped lay the groundwork for future scientific feats, such as his detailed theory about rainbows eventually leading to Isaac Newton’s explanation about the breakdown of sunlight. Even today, some of his philosophical agendas remain relevant to today, such as the cogito (I think, therefore I am), dualism, and radical skepticism, and have even given rise to modern epistemology.
Descartes was a college graduate at the age of eighteen, and the recipient of a law degree by 1616, supposedly with the intention of following in the footsteps of his father, a man of parliament. Instead, in 1618 he spent the next 10 years travelling all around Europe as part of the military. During this time, Descartes met prominent intellectuals, such as physicist Isaac Beeckman, who encouraged his pursuits. He has a brief 1 year period at the University of Franeker, during the time he wrote his first draft on his philosophical work Meditations. He enrolled and stayed the next year at the University of Leiden before leaving for travels through Denmark and Germany the following year in order to meet other scholars. By 1933, he finished another work called The World, which was published in 1664 after his death due to the fear of public reprisal.
As his publications continued, revolving around controversial ideas for the time, Descartes garnered himself some fame, both the good and the bad, during his lifetime. He eventually took up a philosophy tutoring position for the Queen of Sweden in September 1649, before succumbing shortly after to pneumonia on February 11, 1650.

Notes:Epistemology: The branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge
Dualism: Mind something separate than the bodySources:


Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)
Born on November 24, 1632 in Amsterdam, Baruch was born to a Jewish family who had escaped persecution from Portugal because of the wave of anti-Semitism going on during the time. Because of the nature of anti-Semitism and Europe throughout history, especially during his time in life, his Jewish background defined him and played a major role on his life despite his loose association with the Jewish community throughout the majority his life. Nonetheless, he achieved critical acclaim after some posthumous publications; his radical views led him to be defined as one of the great rationalists of the 17th century.
Spinoza received a traditional orthodox Jewish education, but despite that he had an interest in the developments of science and philosophy. He was influenced by a wide range of cultures, ranging from contact with free-thinking Protestants to works from major Islamic philosophers like Al Ghazali (who promoted the philosophy of skepticism). These influences came from the unique culture that had manifested in Amsterdam because of the religious freedom that the Dutch allowed. His interests, beliefs and religious skepticism (he was anti-Maimodinean the majority of his life) went against the prevailing Jewish beliefs during the time, making him infamous among the Jewish community and eventually led to excommunication (called a Cherum) later on in his life, around 1656. Despite the Cherum, he became well-known in the 1660s and started meeting and conversing with other intellectuals like Gottfried Leibniz and Henry Oldenburg.
In terms of philosophy, Spinoza was also greatly influenced by some of the well-known thinkers of the time, such as Descartes, Euclid, and Hobbes. He was a supporter of pantheism panentheism*. Spinoza took Descartes’ rationalism and proposed that “God exists only philosophically” while others such as Leibniz tried to find a compromise between the transcendence of God and pantheism.
Spinoza eventually regretted his choices and reconciled, which led to writing pieces in favor of Moses Maimonedes and a rereading of the Torah. This led to him writing three of his famous treatises On the Improvement of the Understanding, Principles of Cartesian Philosophy, and A Theologico-Political Treatise. The public’s reaction to some of the anonymously published works were less than desirable. In response, he cauti0ously worked and held onto some of his other works until his death in February 1677 in order to be published posthumously. 


Notes:
Panentheism, also known as Monistic Monotheism, is a belief system which posits that the divine – whether as a single God, number of gods, or other form of "cosmic animating force" – interpenetrates every part of the universe and extends, timelessly (and, presumably, spacelessly) beyond it.
Pantheism is a doctrine that identifies God with the universe, or regards the universe as a manifestation of God.

Sources:




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