J.,
“I'm not at all sure why you would want to say this of Spinoza. Given the immanence of Substance and the parallelism of the attributes, there is no 'spiritual' as such.”
I agree, Spinoza has a tremendous reputation for a non-transcendent approach, but what I suggest is simply that he is not consistent and in fact in his theory ideas are in tension. (For instance the outright contradictions regarding personal immortality in Part V, prop xxiii, which Scholars are still arguing over for even the simplest of meanings). In many ways Spinoza has been taken up by modern thinkers in order to deny transcendence, and in so doing, I believe they homogenize an inherent tension in his thinking).
The two adequate types of knowledge in Spinoza may be different ways of acquiring knowledge (i.e. the application of reason or intuition, the nature of which we could probably argue about all day but it isn't germane to my point), but they both yield the same knowledge.
They make use of the same knowledge, but do not yield the same knowledge. The use of reason only yields knowledge to the degree which it accesses adequate ideas, but intuition is the only thing that yields knowledge in its complete form. For instance, Part IV, p1.To follow your thinking empirical knowledge would yield the same knowledge as intuition, which for Spinoza clearly is not the case.
“This is not at all the same as the three ascending hypostases of Plotinus which, as I understand it, actually constitute differing levels of reality.”
This too seems the case with Spinoza wherein there are also gradations of Being.
The existence of God and his essence are one and the same. Part I prop xx
If a thing can be conceived as not existing, its essence does not involve existence. Part axiom vii.
The essence/existence of God works in the same fashion as Plotinus’ One, in that its essence and existence correspond. In discerning Spinoza one has to distinguish between the confused states in time, where essence and existence seem to part, and the coincidence of essence and existence sub specie aeternitatis. The propensity to read Spinoza as a non-transcendent thinker attempts to collapse this dimension into immanence, but like in Plotinus, this would simply be the view from within Time.
Substance is absolutely not the One
In many ways it acts much like the One. For instance it is called the “topos” of the world. This idea is also found in Talmudic-Midrashic literature, possibly derived from the Neo-Platonist Philo,
commenting on Gen. xxviii. 11 says, "God is called 'ha makom' (המקום "the place") because God encloses the universe, but is Himself not enclosed by anything" ("De Somniis," i. 11).
And idea that Spinoza repeated in saying that the Jews did not separate God from the world.
“and Spinoza famously scorns Plato in Letter 56.”
He does not seem to scorn Plato, as Plato, but Plato as an authority due only to his antiquity and in also specific reference to the belief in ghosts. His list of the scorned includes Aristotle and Socrates, and is in response a Hugo’s reference to “all the Stoics, Pythagorians, Platonists, Empedocles, Maximus Tyrius, Apuleius and others”. His quarrel is particularly with occult and “intentional species”, not something that plays a part in Plotinus.
“There is an argument to be had here about the conatus: Whilst it may well be a term hauled from Scholasticism where it is usually correctly interpreted as some sort of drive, it is not at all apparent that this is the case in Spinoza; a philosopher who radically reconfigured much of the Scholastic terminology which he approriated ('Deus' being the prime example).”
While he appropriated terms he used them with the force that they held. The Deus of your example is such an instance. He repeatedly denied his atheism via this word and was not playing word games. He saw his philosophy as a “true religion”, one in which God was loved in a free spirit.
“Consequently, the translation of 'conatus' as 'endeavour' or 'strive' can be very misleading.”
Misleading perhaps, or as Spinoza would suggest, confused. But the ‘impulse’ of the conatus does not seem to me separable from Augustine’s love of the knowing of existence, in fact it works in much of the same fashion. In both Ontology leads to Eudaimonia through it.
“The keypoint here is that, for Spinoza, positive and negative affects are always the result of external relations, i.e. the interaction of the finite modes.”
This may be the key point for you, but this is only to see thing from the diachrony, which inherently is the state of confused and inadequate ideas. Permeating the diachrony is the synchrony of essences, such that the conatus, through intuition, can achieve a degree of relative “freedom” or “activity”. It is the conatus, in seeking to become more active, seeking to persist, that discovers the power of adequate thoughts.
This would indicate that the conatus, far from being a drive, is simply a descriptive marker for the stable state of a finite mode.
If this were so, I would agree. But Spinoza lays great emphasis on the will to persist. See in particular the central role it plays in the first quote I gave (Ethics Part IV Appendix xxxii). More than a marker, it becomes an engine, central to the progress from passive to active states. The unhappiness and impotence of inadequate ideas are the very things that, given the impulse of the conatus, lead to adequate ideas. If there were no drive to power there would be no ascension of knowledge (and there is an ascension of knowledge in Spinoza).
“This is very different to your quote from Augustine: For Spinoza, a stone moves because it is pushed not because it is carried by its weight.”
Each would agree that the stone is carried by its essence in relation to other essences. To see the stone as simply pushed would for Spinoza be an inadequate, fragmented idea. It's movement is the sum of an infinite set of relations.
“Likewise, left to their own devices things simply persist. Admittedly this is not possible in reality because modes are always interacting; so we need to eat because stuff wears us out, not because we have an essential drive to preserve ourselves.”
It is man’s presence in the diachrony and his will to persist that leads him from inadequate to adequate ideas, which essentially is the move from the diachrony to the synchrony. This fundamental themes is the structure of Augustine’s (and Plotinus’) progression of Being.
This is made most apparent in Book IV when he talks about a man (and therefore that man's conatus) altering so much that he is no longer the same man.
Harking back to your original question, Mark is corect about the distinction between eternity and duration negating the possibility of an end-of-time redemption,
The end-of-time redemption is posited simply by bringing eternity into the fray and marking adequate ideas as intuitions of that form. The intuition of essences is a primary hurdle for anyone who wishes to collapse Spinoza into pure diachrony. The key to Spinoza seems rather to be that he makes something of a report on Eternity from the point of view of fragmented Time.
so Deleuze certainly hasn't discarded that. Deleuze discards God, which may or may not be a good thing depending upon your perspective.
What do you mean by a 'historical unfolding of the modes'? If you mean that there is the possibility of development over duration, that is certainly correct. If you mean there is some sort of hard teleology at work, I don't see any evidence for it.
It is not a hard teleology, but it is more an interpenetration of the One. Think of it in terms of music. In a playing of notes, single notes may appear to be in harmony with the melody, and certain notes are not. This would be the diachrony. As the music unfolds, notes that at the time of their playing appeared dissonant are recaptured by higher patterns which integrate them into the scheme. When the last note has been played, one realizes that there have been no false notes. Spinoza’s view is that there are no false notes, but there are notes that can and will seem to break the harmony of our particular line of music. But our conatus with the aid of adequate ideas allows us to see the music that contextualizes us, such that there are no false notes. Fundamentally this is a faith, for we can never hear the end of notes, but under the form of eternity, all notes find their place. A teleos implies the goal of a last note. A last note only completes the eternal form, but the teleos is found in all of its moments. Like in music, the relationship between notes is immanent, but adequate ideas reveal the structure of the whole, outside of a particular moment in Time.
I suspect that Spinoza was attempting a fusion of the diachrony with an imagined synchrony, probably reflecting Kabbalah ideas of the fallen world, where the En Sof (One) has broken into the manifest sefirot. While rejecting the occult aspects of the Kabbalah, he seems to have retained its fundamental structure. Our fragmented existence is but a poor reflection of the One. Our existence is an immanent one, where the “end” is ever present and occurring, yet also exists outside of Time. The desire for modern interpreters to use Spinoza as a non-transcendent thinker is to homogenize the tension which produced his work. He was a devout secularist. To remove the “devout” is in the end to misread “secularist” I believe.
in thanks, autophoron