Highlights

Not information nor explanation, but understanding
https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/2008/06/not-information-nor-explanation-but.html

• old Spinoza
  Why "old Spinoza"?

• Wienpahl suggests that we should not read the Ethics as a deductive system but as helping us to an insight into the notion of unity
  Why is it important it isn't treated as a deductive system?

What is a deductive system?

• scholia
  What is the "scholia"?

• Spinoza's propositions are not really to be thought of as propositions at all but descriptions of what is the case. He is simply "arranging what we have always known."

• We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place.

• The problems are solved, not by reporting new experience, but by arranging what we have always known.

• "Philosophy seeks not information nor explanation, but understanding"

• With some understanding of unity our view of what is changes drastically. Instead of seeing the world as made up of discrete things existing independently of each other, we see unity. In the language BdS provided, it is a unity of modes of being. There is Being and modes of being. A tree is an arboreal mode of being. You and I are modes of being, or, more simply human beings. What we have taken to be the real distinctions between things dissolve, and with them conceptual distinctions between "thing", properties, and actions. Loving, for example, which we commonly take to be an action that some one or thing performs can be seen as a mode of being. - That is easy to say, but with time potent in effect (Radical Spinoza p. 155).

• knowing that is loving

• understanding God (God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience)

• thinking is not some incorporeal thing but the activity of becoming conscious and living consciously.

• as liberals we have an intellectual heritage which means that we are finding it increasingly hard to commit to a (any) particular faith tradition without first having to hand an excess of information and explanation about its quasi-scientific truth value. This religious/philosophical modus operandi has to stop and we have to find effective ways back to living with understanding. Do realise that this doesn't actually mean giving up on information and explanation in its proper place - that is to say in the natural sciences.

• The key is to understand each mode of being as an Idea. We take a further step toward our roots when we recognize the source of these ideas as God.

• These three factors are related like the layers of a pyramid-shaped iceberg. Right view is below the water. Right action is the first level above the water. Right speech is the very tip of the iceberg.

• The point I want to emphasize with this metaphor is that every act of speech - whether hand-written, blogged, or spoken - is an action that reflects an underlying view. A view is said to be "right" in the Buddhist tradition when the behavioral consequences that flow from that view are consistent with the exemplary life of a Buddha (a model of human excellence in speech and character).

• A religious leader presents an oral teaching that is the capstone of a model of daily life that is in turn the embodied expression of a religious worldview.

• What model of daily life does a liberal religious leader uphold, in this day and age, for his fellow world citizens?

• If we apply our critical faculties to this question in relation to each and every aspect of our daily lives I think we will solidify a sane global constitution while avoiding the trap of excessive attachment to abstract, insubstantial, dogmatic orthodoxy.

• Wienpahl wrote two books on Zen Buddhism "The Matter of Zen" and "Zen Diary." His book on Spinoza, not incidentally, shows that there are some profound connects with a certain kind of Buddhism. Jon Wetlesen's book on Spinoza "The Sage and the Way" is another that looks even more explicitly at the connections.

• one can remain within a broadly speaking Judaeo-Christian framework (i.e. Spinoza) and yet commingle with Buddhist and Taoist outlooks without getting into a rather shallow pick-and-mix kind of religion.

• a strong argument can be made that liberal religion demands a cross-framework approach.

• I often wonder if, as liberal religious thinker, I am defending the gospel and example of Jesus, or if I am defending the best of 2000+ years of western civilization, of which not only the example of Jesus, but also the examples of Plato and our entire literary canon (secular and religious), are part?

• I think we are striving not only for a sane global constitution, but also the recreation of the Academy, in the garden-school atmosphere of Epicurus, with the compassion and active ministry of Jesus.

• Wienpahl's Spinoza book came after his Zen studies. If you go to one of links at the end of the original blog his "Unorthodox Lecture" signals his move into Zen after considerable dissatisfaction with academic philosophy. He went into a monastery for a while in Japan and then came back and resumed his work. I only know this through his three books and this brief obituary:

http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=hb1j49n6pv&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00110&toc.depth=1&toc.id=&brand=oac

• his philosophical studies prepared him in some way for his move into Zen practice.

• In my case I suspect it is the 2000+ years of western civilization that I am defending rather than Jesus per se. I often explore this thought with people via a story told by Wendell Berry in "Life is a Miracle" (2000, Washington DC, Counterpoint Press pp. 151-152)

• So one of my recurring concerns - in addition to the creation of a sane global constitution - is the maintenance of the western philosophical tradition with, of course, the hope that it can also reach out to and speak with other traditions. By western philosophical tradition I mean not academic philosophy but the kind of philosophy that helps one lead a life (Epicurus would be a perfect example of this

• helping people to access, over a whole life, a general culture - to help them understand that they are part of this procession. Indeed it is the only thing that enables them to engage with the world, themselves and others.

• It has often seemed to me that the recreation of garden-schools as the liberal alternative to church-type structures is the way we should - in fact probably must - go. I think Lucretius' "De Rerum Natura" is a key text for this project

• On the one hand, an outside-in approach based on a scientific reading of the canon is essential. On the other hand, an inside-out approach based on the radical empiricism of contemplative insight is also essential.

• The inside-out approach follows the same general formula across the ancient civilized world: 1) virtue practice; 2) imperturbability practice; and 3) critical inquiry eventually lead to 4) direct insights into the nature of reality. These insights in turn lead to improved ethical practice, meditation, and inquiry, in a spiral of upward growth.

• Academic philosophy is a misguided enterprise and source of great confusion to the extent it overlooks the inside-out empiricism of the above formula.

• I came to Epicurus via Hibler's "Happiness Through Tranquillity"

• Plato's Dialogues are to western philosophy what the New Testament is to Christianity.

• Hadot's "What is Ancient Philosophy," Evangeliou's somewhat polemic but otherwise excellent "The Hellenic Philosophy," and McEvilley's incredible "The Shape of Ancient Thought" all seem to provide necessary context for a fair reading of Plato

• Stanford Professor Robert Pogue Harrison's new book, "Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition," in which he shares a vision of the American university as Epicurean garden-school.

• When Wienpahl flags up a differnece between "the timeless realm of being" and "the relative world of becoming" and, in so doing, also states that knowledge of the relative world "is obtained by science" and, therefore, also implies that metaphysics is concerned to understand the timeless realm of being, he is, I think, making the very Spinozian point that reality (Deus sive Nature) has two aspects to it: Natura naturans (nature naturing) and Natura naturata (Nature natured). Ultimately there can be no difference between them; indeed he states quite clearly that the key step is to realise that "these two worlds are one."

• Getting involved in a philosophically inclined religious community - though not without real problems - at least opens up to me the possibilitiy of creating something like the garden-academy in the modern context.

• a need for religious learning communities situated entirely outside the university system, perhaps incorporating residential and cooperative economic features on a local level and Web-based community-building on a global level

• I am just beginning to explore how the local religious community might begin to incorporate residential, co-operative economic, and web-based community-building into its own outlook.

• There is, as I see it, also a sticky problem that arises from Wienpahl's assocation of science with control. Perhaps the only problem here is that Wienpahl left unsaid the application of his formula to the "control" side of the equation: if science does not lead to real cosmological understanding, but only to a one-sided grasp of reality, than the "control" that science appears to produce must also be merely one-sided (and so not really "control").

• We figure that when our little cell is far enough along on the path, join-up with other like-minded cells will follow naturally, or perhaps we will become a nucleus of sorts around which others may gather. I think a key is to allow the center to emerge organically, like a plant. We provide the inputs (our contemplative lifestyle in fellowship with friends and family) and the plant just grows.

Quotes

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Notes

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References

Brown, Andrew James. “Not Information nor Explanation, but Understanding.” Caute, 13 June 2008, https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/2008/06/not-information-nor-explanation-but.html.