## Metadata - Author: [[Rebecca Goldstein]] - Full Title: Betraying Spinoza - Category: #books ## Highlights - In fact, in the panoply of Western philosophers, Spinoza stands out as having made the strongest claims for the powers of pure reason, unassisted by empirical observation and induction. ([Location 606](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000S1LTEW&location=606)) - The putative divide between the descriptive and the normative is famously referred to as the “is-ought gap.” The putative divide between the conceptual and the descriptive might be dubbed, though so far as I know no one ever has, the “if-is gap.” ([Location 626](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000S1LTEW&location=626)) - What he will assert, in fact, is that logic itself is the world, which can be conceptualized alternatively as God or nature. The world is self-aware logic. ([Location 720](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000S1LTEW&location=720)) - The story is told of four who went into the garden or orchard (it is the Persian word pardes) of mystical study. One went mad, one became an apostate, and one took his life. Only one came out whole, and this was Rabbi Akiva. Again the Talmud cautions that no one should study kabbalah who has not yet attained the age of forty, marriage, and a full belly—a degree of mundane ballast to safeguard against being “blasted by ecstasy” (as in Ophelia's speech). ([Location 1157](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000S1LTEW&location=1157)) - The Inquisition gave prominence to the question of Jewish identity. In its cruelest interpretation, the Inquisition insisted that Jewishness is part of the personal identity of the Jew, and one that is passed on through the blood. There was no outward act that would transform the substantive essence. Wafers and wine could be transformed into the flesh and the blood of Christ, but no rite or ritual could turn a Jew into a Christian. ([Location 1629](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000S1LTEW&location=1629)) - He is someone who knows, from the very beginning, what a good explanation is. Nobody taught him this. He simply knows. He loves it when an explanation fits firmly into place, leaving no space at all. ([Location 2480](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000S1LTEW&location=2480)) - Reality is ontologically enriched logic. It is a logic that is animated, alive with thought, infinitely aware of its own infinite self. And it is, simultaneously, a logic that is embodied, a logic that generates itself in space, resulting in the material world. ([Location 2910](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000S1LTEW&location=2910)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - And there can be nothing inexplicable in the universe—this is the beating heart of Spinoza's rationalism—no arbitrary elements that are simply there for no reason at all. The denial of a thing's explicability is tantamount to the denial of that thing's reality. To be is to be explicable. ([Location 2914](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000S1LTEW&location=2914)) - The world is the all-embracing web of necessary truths, intelligible through and through—and our own individual salvation rests in our knowing this. Our own personal salvation, motivated by our essential commitment to our own individual survival and well-being, consists in achieving the most impersonal of worldviews. When we have attained an adequate knowledge of the infinite system that is the one and only self-explanatory substance, Deus sive natura, and by doing so transformed our very selves, purging our own minds of the illusions of contingency, reconstituting our minds with the divine necessity, then only peace will be possible within each of us, the peace of acquiescence, and only peace will be possible among us, the peace of unity of purpose. And then there will be blessedness. ([Location 2928](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000S1LTEW&location=2928)) - And how different from the rational worship of religion are the superstitious ways of carrying on, the pleading and groveling, that pass in most superstitions as worshiping God. Men worship as if it is an arbitrary and exceedingly vain tyrant whom they must placate and flatter, each religion declaring itself more worthy of His favor. ([Location 2961](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000S1LTEW&location=2961)) - This is how the religions all distinguish themselves from one another— Jews, and Christians, and Turks. Like children fighting for their parents’ attention, they never realize that everyone's true happiness and blessedness consists solely in the enjoyment of good, not in priding himself that he alone is enjoying that good to the exclusion of others. ([Location 2963](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000S1LTEW&location=2963)) - It is this very thought that men cannot think, the thought of this no more. One's entire nature repels this thought from entering. And in the repulsion people become confused, forming beliefs that lead them so far astray, into confusion and confusion's child, cruelty. Frightened, ([Location 3185](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B000S1LTEW&location=3185))