Monty Cantsin
21st June 2005, 15:28
Passages confirming Marx's respect for Spinoza,
Marx's Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy 1839 6th Notebook
On the one hand, one could accept Baur's pronouncement that no philosophy
of antiquity bears so much the character of religion as the Platonic. But
it would only mean that no philosopher had taught philosophy with more
religious inspiration, that to no one philosophy had to a greater extent
the determination and the form, as it were, of a religious cult. With the
more intensive philosophers, such as Aristotle, Spinoza, Hegel, their
attitude itself had a more general form, less steeped in empirical feeling.
Marx Doctoral Dissertation 1841
Spinoza says that ignorance is no argument. [Spinoza, Ethics, Part I, Prop.
36, Appendix] If one was to delete the passages in the ancients which he
does not understand, how quickly would we have a tabula rasa!
Rheinische Zeitung July 1842.
Machiavelli and Campanella, and later Hobbes, Spinoza, Hugo Grotius, right
down to Rousseau, Fichte and Hegel, began to regard the state through human
eyes and to deduce its natural laws from reason and experience, and not
from theology.
German Ideology Chapter 3 1846
"Stirner" now has to introduce an empirical definition of right, which he
can ascribe to the individual, i.e., he has to recognise something else in
right besides holiness. In this connection, he could have spared himself
all his clumsy machinations, since, starting with Machiavelli, Hobbes,
Spinoza, Bodinus and others of modern times, not to mention earlier ones,
might has been represented as the basis of right.
A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY C 1850
Steuart remained even more of "a dead dog" than Spinoza appeared to be to
Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing's time.
Capital Vol 1 1867 Footnote to Chapter 24 Section 3
He is as much at home in absurd contradictions, as he feels at sea in the
Hegelian contradiction, the source of all dialectic. It has never occurred
to the vulgar economist to make the simple reftexion, that every human
action may be viewed, as "abstinence" from its opposite. Eating is
abstinence from fasting, walking, abstinence from standing still, working,
abstinence from idling, idling, abstinence from working, &C. These
gentlemen would do well, to ponder, once in a way, over Spinoza's:
"Determinatio est Negatio."
1873 Afterword to the Second German edition of Capital: in the course of
defiantly paying his intellectual dues to Hegel, Marx repeats his earlier
formula about the ridiculousness of calling Spinoza a dead dog:
The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty years
ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at
the first volume of "Das Kapital," it was the good pleasure of the peevish,
arrogant, mediocre 'Epigonoi who now talk large in cultured Germany, to
treat Hegel in same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing's time
treated Spinoza, i.e., as a "dead dog." I therefore openly avowed myself
the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter
on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him.
I have not attempted more explicit quotations from Engels, which exist in
addition.
Michael Hardt's comment about Marx and Spinoza was that Spinoza was a
communist before Marx.
Rather than "How Marxist was Spinoza?" which makes Marxism a standard of
truth, the question might be better posed as "How Spinozist was Marx?"
So far these quotes show that Marx respected Spinoza.
Having now read Stuart Hampshire's "Spinoza - An Introduction to his
Philosophical Thought", I am going to risk a few comments, and ask for
corrections of emphasis or accuracy from others.
Following his rediscovery by the German Romantics, Spinoza was understood
in his philosophy to advocate a sort of pantheism in which God was
synonymous with nature. However that was in a materialist sense. In his
struggle to distance himself from Judaism, Protestantism and Catholicism,
Spinoza focussed his philosphical approach on a fundamental metaphysical
comprehensive statement about the universe. This has the merit of avoiding
empricist approaches to scientific inquiry. I suggest it is much more akin
to Marx's comprehensive approach to data, than that of the English speaking
empiricists.
Spinoza emphasised the interconnections of all things, which is very much a
feature of dialectics. He also doubted the permanence of what we would
normally call things, another feature, although he did not talk of
contradictions.
His approach was a metaphysical approach inspired by the ideal of
mathematics. Although like Marx, he had a relative theory of knowledge, of
an ascent from limited to more complete knowledge, his metaphysical model
had no place for time. Spinoza was clearly influenced by the development of
philosophical thought, but according to Hampshire had no sense of human
society being shaped and altered by history. Thus he could not be a
forerunner of ideas of historical materialism.
Spinoza was rigorous enough to avoid the great philosophical compromise
between religion and scientific experimentation: that God created the
universe at the beginning, and scientists merely discover the objective
workings of that universe. Spinoza ruled out an act of initial creation.
Therefore if change were to come about, that would have to be through
developments in the eternally pulsating nature of reality itself. I would
suggest that his mathematical, timeless model actually prepares the ground
for such a theoretical development, which was superior to the compromise of
the Deists and their predecessors.
Although Spinoza is an important and progressive contributor to ideas of
bourgeois right, he interprets right as virtually synonymous with power.
Therefore he has a materialist approach to the struggle of interests that
make up the state. He also assumes that all humans have some power.
However he sees no historical progressive role for a working class, and has
an ambivalent attitude to the multitude. But perhaps Marx's ideas about
classes were more complex than some of his followers imply.
Spinoza's ontology is consistent with a universe made up of layered
semi-permanent units, in conformity with modern complexity theory. So IMHO
is Marx's perspective.
A fine human being, who was ahead of his time in seeing the implications of
bourgeois society at its best. But despite the fact that he had no sense of
historical development, still less of historical materialism, he was also
very much a product of his historical era.
Chris Burford
London
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Comments?
_____________
Marx's Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy 1839 6th Notebook
On the one hand, one could accept Baur's pronouncement that no philosophy
of antiquity bears so much the character of religion as the Platonic. But
it would only mean that no philosopher had taught philosophy with more
religious inspiration, that to no one philosophy had to a greater extent
the determination and the form, as it were, of a religious cult. With the
more intensive philosophers, such as Aristotle, Spinoza, Hegel, their
attitude itself had a more general form, less steeped in empirical feeling.
Marx Doctoral Dissertation 1841
Spinoza says that ignorance is no argument. [Spinoza, Ethics, Part I, Prop.
36, Appendix] If one was to delete the passages in the ancients which he
does not understand, how quickly would we have a tabula rasa!
Rheinische Zeitung July 1842.
Machiavelli and Campanella, and later Hobbes, Spinoza, Hugo Grotius, right
down to Rousseau, Fichte and Hegel, began to regard the state through human
eyes and to deduce its natural laws from reason and experience, and not
from theology.
German Ideology Chapter 3 1846
"Stirner" now has to introduce an empirical definition of right, which he
can ascribe to the individual, i.e., he has to recognise something else in
right besides holiness. In this connection, he could have spared himself
all his clumsy machinations, since, starting with Machiavelli, Hobbes,
Spinoza, Bodinus and others of modern times, not to mention earlier ones,
might has been represented as the basis of right.
A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY C 1850
Steuart remained even more of "a dead dog" than Spinoza appeared to be to
Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing's time.
Capital Vol 1 1867 Footnote to Chapter 24 Section 3
He is as much at home in absurd contradictions, as he feels at sea in the
Hegelian contradiction, the source of all dialectic. It has never occurred
to the vulgar economist to make the simple reftexion, that every human
action may be viewed, as "abstinence" from its opposite. Eating is
abstinence from fasting, walking, abstinence from standing still, working,
abstinence from idling, idling, abstinence from working, &C. These
gentlemen would do well, to ponder, once in a way, over Spinoza's:
"Determinatio est Negatio."
1873 Afterword to the Second German edition of Capital: in the course of
defiantly paying his intellectual dues to Hegel, Marx repeats his earlier
formula about the ridiculousness of calling Spinoza a dead dog:
The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty years
ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at
the first volume of "Das Kapital," it was the good pleasure of the peevish,
arrogant, mediocre 'Epigonoi who now talk large in cultured Germany, to
treat Hegel in same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing's time
treated Spinoza, i.e., as a "dead dog." I therefore openly avowed myself
the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter
on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him.
I have not attempted more explicit quotations from Engels, which exist in
addition.
Michael Hardt's comment about Marx and Spinoza was that Spinoza was a
communist before Marx.
Rather than "How Marxist was Spinoza?" which makes Marxism a standard of
truth, the question might be better posed as "How Spinozist was Marx?"
So far these quotes show that Marx respected Spinoza.
Having now read Stuart Hampshire's "Spinoza - An Introduction to his
Philosophical Thought", I am going to risk a few comments, and ask for
corrections of emphasis or accuracy from others.
Following his rediscovery by the German Romantics, Spinoza was understood
in his philosophy to advocate a sort of pantheism in which God was
synonymous with nature. However that was in a materialist sense. In his
struggle to distance himself from Judaism, Protestantism and Catholicism,
Spinoza focussed his philosphical approach on a fundamental metaphysical
comprehensive statement about the universe. This has the merit of avoiding
empricist approaches to scientific inquiry. I suggest it is much more akin
to Marx's comprehensive approach to data, than that of the English speaking
empiricists.
Spinoza emphasised the interconnections of all things, which is very much a
feature of dialectics. He also doubted the permanence of what we would
normally call things, another feature, although he did not talk of
contradictions.
His approach was a metaphysical approach inspired by the ideal of
mathematics. Although like Marx, he had a relative theory of knowledge, of
an ascent from limited to more complete knowledge, his metaphysical model
had no place for time. Spinoza was clearly influenced by the development of
philosophical thought, but according to Hampshire had no sense of human
society being shaped and altered by history. Thus he could not be a
forerunner of ideas of historical materialism.
Spinoza was rigorous enough to avoid the great philosophical compromise
between religion and scientific experimentation: that God created the
universe at the beginning, and scientists merely discover the objective
workings of that universe. Spinoza ruled out an act of initial creation.
Therefore if change were to come about, that would have to be through
developments in the eternally pulsating nature of reality itself. I would
suggest that his mathematical, timeless model actually prepares the ground
for such a theoretical development, which was superior to the compromise of
the Deists and their predecessors.
Although Spinoza is an important and progressive contributor to ideas of
bourgeois right, he interprets right as virtually synonymous with power.
Therefore he has a materialist approach to the struggle of interests that
make up the state. He also assumes that all humans have some power.
However he sees no historical progressive role for a working class, and has
an ambivalent attitude to the multitude. But perhaps Marx's ideas about
classes were more complex than some of his followers imply.
Spinoza's ontology is consistent with a universe made up of layered
semi-permanent units, in conformity with modern complexity theory. So IMHO
is Marx's perspective.
A fine human being, who was ahead of his time in seeing the implications of
bourgeois society at its best. But despite the fact that he had no sense of
historical development, still less of historical materialism, he was also
very much a product of his historical era.
Chris Burford
London
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism-thaxis...u/msg00114.html (http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg00114.html)
Comments?
_____________