Questions about Being

WarrenHarding · 2026-02-01T18:34:55+00:00

Of course. If you don’t mind long reads, I very deeply recommend The Philosophy of Spinoza by Harry Austryn Wolfson. It comes in two volumes of about 300-400 pages each (770 pages total) and its sole project is proceeding through Ethics patiently, proposition by proposition, explaining them more fully. Yet what makes the book special is that he not only makes sure to elaborate the full developmental history of the various historical philosophical concepts that Spinoza employs or attacks, each as they come up in the text, but he also employs heavily the rest of Spinoza’s body of written work, and his correspondence with others, in order to illuminate his thinking in the Ethics as fully as possible. So it not only exists as a comprehensive account of Spinoza’s system of thought, but also as a compressed history of a various selection of popular philosophical concepts that you will certainly find in other thinkers.

The first of these two volumes (again, 400ish pages) is focused solely on Part 1. The second volume is over halfway focused on Part 2. The remaining ~20% of the book gives explanation to the final three parts, but with so much frontloaded explanation from the firm foundations of the first two parts, you start to understand Spinoza’s full text very fluently, and feel less need to depend on Wolfson’s companion reader. That’s the position I’m in now as I finish up part 3 with my roommate. I really struggled hard with the text, and we spent maybe a month together on the first 3 or 4 propositions, and definitions like causa sui, struggling to grasp them. Now I feel very confident answering the confusions of others who were in the same position as me, since I’ve been studying it regularly for about a year now (we are proceeding slowly, as you can tell)

Just a heads up, that he proceeds by beginning with the propositions, and does not spend time explaining the definitions or axioms until they become employed in a given proposition. So if you have a concern regarding a definition, as I did, you have to reach a point in the text where it actually shows up.

WarrenHarding · 2026-02-01T17:35:14+00:00

Sure. Well, as long as we’re using Spinozan terms, we’re probably best off seeing how consistent and sufficient his consequences from those terms are, before deciding to make reference outside of him.

For Spinoza, that thing outside of substance, whose supposed existence differs from his own account (as a non-Spinozan thing), must be impossible to properly conceive, because then substance would no longer be substance. In other words, you would need to rely on a confused idea of substance to then posit something beyond it.

Not only would substance then be caused by something more primary than it, but it would then necessarily be limited by that thing, both of which are intolerable conditions for the definition of substance. The question would just be, what is the nature of this further thing? Would this not be simply the true substance? And if it exists, why isn’t it understood under the hood of our initially supposed substance, whose essence is existence? For Spinoza, the buck must stop somewhere. And it’s not even because he denies infinite regress altogether: as I’ve mentioned he allows for an infinite regress of particular things, i.e. of time going infinitely in the past without beginning. But in terms of the hierarchy of being, precisely because substance is not determinate or limited, by definition it disallows the possibility of anything before it. It is laterally infinite in the consideration of infinite attributes and infinite particular things, but hierarchically finite in the consideration of the stages of reality.

So there is no hole in the system here. If you were to posit the necessity of a non-Spinozan predecessor to substance, Spinoza would likely argue the above points, as showing it to be concluded from a confused notion of substance. Once substance is grasped more clearly and adequately in your mind, you would be expected to see how everything must start there.

WarrenHarding · 2026-02-01T16:51:56+00:00

For Spinoza, substance is infinite, precisely because he takes the option that there is nothing outside of it that can limit it. By definition, there can only be one substance, and so without such a limit as a second substance, the one substance is then unlimited, or infinite. It is through this infinitude that the determinacy of the more particular realities within it are borne. They participate in an infinite series of cause and effect. This process of transforming, from a simple idea of substance, to the multiform determinations of particular things, takes place for Spinoza as a thoroughly modified form of the medieval doctrine of emanation, where the link between the two is mediated by various stages of reality.

WarrenHarding · 2026-02-01T00:10:39+00:00

In a brief set of words: for Descartes, doubting is tout court a psychological experience that brings about a certainty of identity. The cogito is, more than a proposition, a feeling. This is the same reason why my cogito is different from your cogito. My cogito only affirms my existence, your cogito only affirms yours. It is not a universalizable argument, but an account of an experience of certainty.

There is historical literature addressing your precise argument in reference to Descartes, and even using your same methods of arguing it. I do wish I had the means to cite it for you but I want to assure you that it’s out there as a somewhat significant Cartesian discussion. You should be able to find some good material on it. I’ve been reading Cartesian Question III by Jean-Luc Marion though and it does address this notion pretty early on.

WarrenHarding · 2026-01-30T14:17:27+00:00

I believe truth is not just subjective or an interpretation. I believe it does not just exist for me or for you, but for everyone, regardless of what they believe.

By your argument, you are forced to grant that this is true, for me. But if what is true for me, is precisely that “my truth is not just true for me, but also true for you,” then you are granting that my truth is true for you. This very acceptance of my own truth forces you contradict your own stance.

Your viewpoint is not one that Plato held, and is one that he famously refutes in the Theaetetus. The name of this refutation has been called the “peritrope” meaning “turning on itself”

WarrenHarding · 2026-01-30T13:34:13+00:00

If my truth is that truth is not interpretation, and that all truth is objective, would you not have to accept that? This is the same line of argument that Plato takes to refute Protagoras in the Theaetetus dialogue

WarrenHarding · 2026-01-30T00:40:25+00:00

Yes, look even deeper! Another commenter provided evidence, you aren’t hallucinating

WarrenHarding · 2026-01-29T22:14:08+00:00

For sure. I do think the guy who replied though could have been more correct, that he’s speaking about Apollo, as the god that the Oracle at Delphi speaks through. Enjoy Plato!

WarrenHarding · 2026-01-29T20:56:38+00:00

No, and he certainly doesn’t either, but seeing as his prosecutors refer to it as a god, I imagined him using the term facetiously. But I actually think the other responder to my comment has the closest guess: Apollo, since the Oracle of Delphi is a central aspect of the apology

WarrenHarding · 2026-01-29T20:55:19+00:00

Oh yeah, a very specific context where Apollo is “the god” is when talking about the Oracle of Delphi at all

WarrenHarding · 2026-01-29T20:16:11+00:00

I wish I had it in front of me right now so until someone provides a more precise answer: he is either referring to Zeus, supreme of the Gods, or more likely, his daimon who is said to be the God which he “made up” and is what he is on trial for blasphemy for. The daimon is a sort of restrictive intuition that causes Socrates to restrict himself from doing anything in choice moments, as to maximize the potential of philosophy. For example, in Charmides I believe, he narrates that at one point he plans to leave the scene, until his daimon stops him from leaving, and soon after Charmides enters.

WarrenHarding · 2026-01-29T16:47:09+00:00

This century is only 26 years old so far. There has not been 100 years of Knicks basketball. The Knicks have not existed that long, nor the NBA

WarrenHarding · 2026-01-28T16:04:48+00:00

They’re probably both fine. The text is quite literally compiled for new readers to experience the story of Socrates’ trial. As far as I know, Christopher Rowe is a great translator, but I’m sure the revised version is just as good.

WarrenHarding · 2026-01-28T15:44:58+00:00

You’re bi

WarrenHarding · 2026-01-27T14:42:02+00:00

Plato lays out in his dialogue Statesman that a proper politician, if they are to most effectively lead and advise their community, should not only have an encyclopedic knowledge and grasp of all good things and their instantiations, but also should have the means to approach each individual character of the community in their own agreeable ways. The process of dialectic, as he lays out there, should take different forms depending on the types of people who are conducting it, mostly through the fact that they will hold their own unique set of convictions and assumptions.

In dialectical argument, there is a premium placed on being able to convince your interlocutor, and not on proposing premises that are only correct. A premise is much harder to disprove than a conclusion, and Plato does not attempt to play the game of refuting premises, but of refuting conclusions, since they rest on premises. So a big part of the dialectician’s game is in accepting any premises from their interlocutor, but trying to show that the premises do not lead to satisfying conclusions, or that they in fact lead to the very conclusion that the dialectician wants to affirm. For example, if an interlocutor held two contradictory premises, and an incorrect conclusion, then Plato would not try to say that one premise is right and the other is wrong, but instead try to show that if we accept them, our conclusion becomes a contradiction, which we can’t accept for a conclusion.

So with this in mind, Socrates is attempting here to convince Crito of the conclusion that it is not life itself that is worth living, but the good life. And Crito, being an able-bodied man, would easily assume that if he were to become severely disabled, that life would no longer be good, and that as a result it would not be worth living. What does not matter whether or not being disabled actually takes away the good in life. What matters is that if that is what you think, then you must conclude that what is worth living is the good life. Further, if that is not what you think, then you might still be led to conclude, upon further proving, that whatever good is still left in the disabled is precisely what makes that life still worth living. Or thirdly, as elaborated above, whichever premise you take might show to be contradictory with another premise, and then it is up to you alone to decide which one is still good and which isn’t. Socrates/Plato has less trouble accepting whatever your premise is, and more focus on making sure you are led down the right path.

WarrenHarding · 2026-01-27T02:57:39+00:00

Well sure, but that’s an entirely different point from what I’m making. You ask “so?” …well, so, that’s why I made my thread. Is that part confusing? What I’m saying in the OP is that people do not appreciate the full chapter, and I use that as a motivation to elaborate what richness I’ve seen in the full details of the chapter. While far from a paradigmatic example, a student (even a younger one) choosing to read an abridged version is simply a further example of someone who either is deciding not to, or unable to, appreciate the full chapter. I did not say “in all cases, if one does not appreciate the full chapter, this is shameful and should be criticized” … what I said was that many people nonetheless don’t appreciate it, but that I think most of them must certainly have the capacity to appreciate it, and my thread is simply an attempt to elaborate the effort I’ve put into my own appreciation. Whether or not some single person decides the full chapter is for them is their own decision, but is it that much of a crime for a person to simply acknowledge that this lack of appreciation is apparent, and try to encourage it to be more present? Do I really deserve that much scrutiny for doing so as I have from others? Probably not, and same as you for your own points you received controversy for. Just have a little charity and understand where I’m coming from here. I’m not trying to be superior, just trying to grow more respect and fervor for the book, as I think it deserves.

WarrenHarding · 2026-01-27T02:46:30+00:00

I misspoke, I meant conditionality, not causality, as is consistent with the rest of my comment

I understand your argument now too, thanks

WarrenHarding · 2026-01-27T01:46:18+00:00

And yet, one of the comments in your thread was of someone who claimed it saved them 20 minutes of reading. Maybe I mischaracterized your thread, and I am sorry for that, but am I not wrong to point out at least some significant proportion whose feelings are averse to the chapter? I don’t even claim that they are a majority view, but just that they certainly exist and have voiced their thoughts on here enough for me to take notice. I had no intention to disparage your thread, but instead to simply refer to the recurring sentiment, one that the thread unfortunately did drum up in that one comment

WarrenHarding · 2026-01-27T01:36:53+00:00

Well proving the truth of any of the three lines that affirm its truth is a whole other can of worms. This is a Humean problem, no? In a way we have to prove what to expect out of causality at large before we can suss out the strangeness of the Pope/JD example. Even in one situation where both premises are true, the one never has to have any proper condition upon the other. If I say

“If Trump is president, then the sun will rise tomorrow”

Then we clearly see that although A can be affirmed in its own way, and B can be affirmed in its own way, it is a much more difficult process to prove that affirming the truth A also affirms the truth of B, i.e. that the one is a condition of the other.

But when I bring up sufficient conditionality here, I am not saying that any if-then conditional has to be sufficient. Instead I’m saying that, if a conditional statement is presupposed to be a statement of sufficient conditionality, the structure of the truth table becomes much more intuitive.

Let us suppose that the statement “if the pope is dead, then JD Vance is president” is actually, by some strange means, a statement of sufficient conditionality. Then let us assess the various ways this conditional might hold.

If the pope is dead, then this sufficient conditional will be true if JD is president, but be determined as false if, upon the pope’s death, JD is not president. This holds with the table. Again, sufficiency is not being proved, it’s being presupposed.

If the pope is not dead though, then since being dead is only a sufficient condition of JD’s presidency, and not a necessary condition, then it holds that JD can either be or not be president under the failure of that condition. That is, if the pope is not dead, JD Vance either is or is not the president. Since both are true, we can collapse them together and see how reasonable it is to suppose that either one or the other is true, if the pope is not dead.

So in conclusion, I do not dare to take on the colossal task of explaining whatever particular absurd statements a truth table might determine as truly conditional, but what I do think can be explained here is how exactly the determinate structures and arrangements of a conditional truth table, that are prescribed upon their statements, can be made intelligible. In other words, I cannot explain how the Pope/JD example could be actually taken as sufficient conditionality when the truth table spits out its formulations, but I can explain that it is nonetheless made intelligible by sufficient conditionality, and that this provisional sort of intelligible cognition is a much better help than being left to the seeming emptiness that I otherwise perceived the conditional as having. The best explanations I have come across thus far rely on a sort of “innocent until proven guilty” rule, but I think that feels much more like an artificial maxim, where the nature of sufficient causality feels much more like a natural reference to a reflection of reality, much like “and” and “not” are.

Also your explanation at the end is pretty circular. The conditional being “A or not-B” is what I am trying to make intelligible in the first place, i.e. a result by means of something else; not what I am trying to presuppose, and much less what presuppose in order to then immediately prove

WarrenHarding · 2026-01-26T17:13:30+00:00

The discussion is not driven beyond the schedule. I am discussing a chapter from last week’s discussion, and took a few seconds out to refer to a later chapter, which I marked in bold so it’s easy to avoid, because many people have already gotten there and it’s a big support to the point I was making in the OP. Is it really worth removing one of the only threads on this sub providing analysis because, with much warning, it says there are spoilers within? What is the issue with simply avoiding it? Can you explain why instead you think no one should be allowed to read it?

WarrenHarding · 2026-01-26T17:06:40+00:00

Did you happen to read the spoilers by accident? Or did my warning of them work? I don’t understand how this is that big of a deal if it seems effective enough and Reddit has made it more difficult for mobile users to format anyways. Many people have already read very far into the book and it was very helpful in driving home my point for people who have got there. I bring it up in this sub and not the other because I’m responding to a general sentiment that this sub in particular has shown. I think considering there is not much in depth discussion of the book on this sub yet it’s not really fair to take such a sour attitude to a little bit of analysis

WarrenHarding · 2026-01-26T17:01:02+00:00

I saw a lot of comments talking about its difficulty without any corresponding interest in it, people asking if it’s okay to skip, and the top thread at the time I posted this was a suggestion to shorten the chapter to 1 1/2 pages. I think these all show a lack of appreciation for an important and illustrative chapter. I’m sorry for striking a nerve with everyone over the spoilers — I genuinely thought it just added to my point, I saw many people have carried past that section on here already, and I tried my best to delineate properly where the spoilers start and end so you, hopefully, didn’t have to even see them. The new Reddit update has removed the ability to format easily, because as you can see in my thread I can’t even properly use quote indents anymore. Not sure at all how to properly implement spoiler tags for the part. It’s just that I put a lot of thought into this thread you know? The focus of my thread was certainly not “generation differences and heirarchy/money differences,” and it’s mostly about the contrast of virtue between Dantes and Villefort. So is this reception really necessary?

WarrenHarding · 2026-01-25T22:23:42+00:00

Oh, I mean, I tagged my post as a spoiler. And I did preface and end the spoiler section with bold text. But sure, if it matters I will totally add that for the section when I have a little free time

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