[D-G] relating Deleuze to your work

hwenk hwenk at web.de
Sun Dec 4 05:42:17 PST 2005


Hello,

I don't know which biography of Spinoza you use, in Europe the normal one is
the old one of Freudenthal. There is also a informative book of a Israeli an
scholar,
Yovel, called "Spionza and Immanence" (I read it in German) where he tried
to explain
that the genealogy of Spinoza from the so called "Marrans" in Portugal had a
strong
influence in turning the thinking towards the world, to the immanence, and
away from a
transcendental god - which is one of the scandals of Spinoza.

In the generation before Spinoza was born, the Jews in Spain and afterwards
in Portugal where forced
either to become catholic or to leave the country.

The Jews who stayed and converted to Catholicism where called "Marrans".
They were looked at very suspicious, for every thought or thought
advantageous
to express he thought that these people in reality stayed Jewish and where
catholic only by words.
This maybe have been the case, and as far as I remember Spinoza comes out of
a family which didn't
stand this pressure and left eventually, after being Marrans to the
Netherlands.

But the Marrans lost any believe in any help of a transcendental god, for he
didn't even protect them
of being forced to declare openly not to believe in him but in another god,
which is forbidden
by the ten commands of the old testament.


So they learned only to look at what people are really doing and things are
really causing - if we let
god - which one ever - aside.  That was the turn to the immanence.

Now if you probably know, the theologians were very angry about this, for
there was no pain in hell to make people afraid - a device that was the only
guarantee of morals in their eyes.

This is the point of actuality of Spinoza, why he is put up by Deleuze,
making joy and freedom possible
without fear.




The  relation of Spinoza to Machiavelli

Indeed for Spinoza the only thing acting is ontological power and no moral
law in any form.
So there is no place that a transcendental god will punish the evil and
award the good
in course of time, only the natural consequences of action will follow.
This seems to be related to Machiavelli, in literature the influence of
Hobbes - the Leviathan and especially
"de corpore" is much more emphasized and given evidence.

At this place I remind at a in my eyes a very important quote from
Jesus from the new testament, where he says, that what has no
award in this world will be awarded in heaven or the empire of god - which
of course is
transcendental.
In a certain way the Karma theory hold in the east, even in the buddhistic
form,
holds something in the way, that anything done, including the intention
of the doer, will have its effect in returning to the doer, establishing
a moral causality.

It is worth to note that this belief is still actual in wide parts of Asia
today, not only by
non educated people. How many people live there?


To go a little deeper, it seems to be grounded in  the idea, that suffering
is something which has to
paid back by happiness - or bliss - Spinoza knows bliss by knowledge of the
third kind and
ontological happiness by getting a greater quantity of reality or being,
called beatitude.

In western terms the moral law is outed by Nietzsche as the law of revenge -
more precise is to call it compensation.

In Indian philosophy there is also a variant which roots suffering in
ignorance and
binding bliss to knowledge.




De Witt


It was, that Spinoza was a adviser of the brothers De Wit, one of them was
chancellor in the Netherlands.
He was murdered by a riot, caused by the fear to have neglected the
development of  the military force
against the invasion of the Spaniards - which indeed took place and the
Netherlands were ruled
by Spain for a time.
At this occasion Spinoza was almost a victim of the riot himself,
writing a paper on the wall calling the murderers of deWitt "ultimii
barbarii", worst barbars.
This story was told by Spinoza to Leibniz very often, as he wished to hear
it
again and again.


Huygens

For a time Spinoza lived at the same time as Huygens in Rotterdam and he
visited him a few times. But they got struggle about a theoretical question.
Indeed Spinoza was not a good natural scientist and he seemed not to
have a taste for the mechanics developed by Huygens.
Nowadays Huygens name is tied in physics to the
spreading of waves in any form, especially the wave theory of light.
In his two volume commentary on Spinoza, Gueroult tried
To relate the physics of Spinoza in the second book of the Ethics
to Huygens. Not only in my eyes this is a little doubtful.


So far for today - the real scandal was the abolishing of
the punishing god, which leads to a unsurpassed condemmenes from the
theologians
- they really hated him.


Greetings Harald Wenk









-----Original Message-----
From: deleuze-guattari-bounces at lists.driftline.org
[mailto:deleuze-guattari-bounces at lists.driftline.org]On Behalf Of NZ
Sent: Dienstag, 29. November 2005 23:34
To: deleuze-guattari at lists.driftline.org
Subject: Re: [D-G] relating Deleuze to your work


spinoza and the sphinx, the oracle's head and the monsters body, was
spinoza a worshipper of Machiavelli? Is it true that he was a Jew,
excommunicated in 1656 for discovering infinite substance in the
universe?
In December Huygens invented the "pendulum clock", the most accurite
type of clock until 1930. in fact, the punduluum of scientific
momentum was in full swing during Spinoza's career. technical schools
were opening up all over England, many founded by haberdashers
(salesmen) and livery corp. to replace more traditional guild schools.
Cromwell re-admittd the jews to England and as a reward minted his
likeness upon the 50/- shilling coin!!! If Hitler was a failed artist,
then Harry S. Truman was a failed haberdasher. Even poland was getting
a taste of what was yet to come, with nearly every non-catholic empire
using its fertile land as a playground for their army-toys. eventually
the greco-roman catholic god stepped in to pax it up nicely.

But weren't a lot of Spinoza's texts printed post-homunously, by
DeWitt and other mathematician-turned-political financiers that were
not attached to a church? Fighting against the house of orange. The
dutch colonists were trying to protect their political banking system
from the Anglo attack, and spinoza provided a lot of secular spiritual
legitmacy back home.

Didn't Oedipus solve the riddle of the sphinx? successfully grafting
the head upon the body, and answering with moral delusion. Who
answered spinoza's sphinx?
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