I like your essays. I might say two things. First, how might we go about dying for ideals, or sacrificing to them in general? I think optimistically with a little poking and prodding that most people are idealistic to sacrifice themselves for something like friends or family, and with a society that emphasizes honor and duty etc. more intangible long-term benefits like freedom and due process. There is not really in America however any obvious path towards fighting physically for freedom like there is in Ukraine. Neither is there any culture that really promotes universal or panhumanist ideals; I don't think we live in the Founders' America any more. It makes a fight for ideals hard when both fights and ideals are vague and translucent; and if so for us here in the literati, how much harder for the regular citizen who does not have time to think about this! Better to tweet and scroll TikTok and at most vote every two years, says one's subconscious. Second is that your use of Spinoza makes me think you literally believe in Spinoza's metaphysics instead of just using him as a device. If you do that's fine but you might benefit from looking at arguments against him, especially Bayle's article on him in his dictionary, as well as Berkeley and Hume. He's more solid in the context of scholastic/Cartesian philosophy than he is against later thinkers.
On your first point, I obviously agree that the situation is very difficult. Changing a populist culture to one that celebrates liberal democracy is a slow and hard process that doesn’t usually happen deliberately, something I want to write more about. And to be clear, I am certainly not advocating or encouraging violence of any kind.
But even in the Ukrainian case, the willingness to fight against tyranny was precipitated by the murder of Euromaidan protesters. I think there’s much greater courage in being willing to die than being willing to kill, and right now being willing to die in the midst of nonviolent resistance is far more important.
On your second point: I recall being unimpressed with Bayle’s arguments, but I don’t remember the substance of them off the top of my head, and I’m not sufficiently familiar with Hume or Berkeley to comment on them. But I’ll make a point of dealing with them in the near future.
My general position is I’m agnostic as to whether a system of metaphysics can be literally true in any sense (I may be closer to Hume here). Of the philosophy I’m familiar with, I find Spinoza’s metaphysics to be the most useful and the least internally inconsistent, but beyond that I don’t think it really means anything to say it’s true or false. That’s not a reason to dismiss it in my view-philosophy is essentially a series of very important and simultaneously unresolvable questions.
I like your essays. I might say two things. First, how might we go about dying for ideals, or sacrificing to them in general? I think optimistically with a little poking and prodding that most people are idealistic to sacrifice themselves for something like friends or family, and with a society that emphasizes honor and duty etc. more intangible long-term benefits like freedom and due process. There is not really in America however any obvious path towards fighting physically for freedom like there is in Ukraine. Neither is there any culture that really promotes universal or panhumanist ideals; I don't think we live in the Founders' America any more. It makes a fight for ideals hard when both fights and ideals are vague and translucent; and if so for us here in the literati, how much harder for the regular citizen who does not have time to think about this! Better to tweet and scroll TikTok and at most vote every two years, says one's subconscious. Second is that your use of Spinoza makes me think you literally believe in Spinoza's metaphysics instead of just using him as a device. If you do that's fine but you might benefit from looking at arguments against him, especially Bayle's article on him in his dictionary, as well as Berkeley and Hume. He's more solid in the context of scholastic/Cartesian philosophy than he is against later thinkers.
Great response.
On your first point, I obviously agree that the situation is very difficult. Changing a populist culture to one that celebrates liberal democracy is a slow and hard process that doesn’t usually happen deliberately, something I want to write more about. And to be clear, I am certainly not advocating or encouraging violence of any kind.
But even in the Ukrainian case, the willingness to fight against tyranny was precipitated by the murder of Euromaidan protesters. I think there’s much greater courage in being willing to die than being willing to kill, and right now being willing to die in the midst of nonviolent resistance is far more important.
On your second point: I recall being unimpressed with Bayle’s arguments, but I don’t remember the substance of them off the top of my head, and I’m not sufficiently familiar with Hume or Berkeley to comment on them. But I’ll make a point of dealing with them in the near future.
My general position is I’m agnostic as to whether a system of metaphysics can be literally true in any sense (I may be closer to Hume here). Of the philosophy I’m familiar with, I find Spinoza’s metaphysics to be the most useful and the least internally inconsistent, but beyond that I don’t think it really means anything to say it’s true or false. That’s not a reason to dismiss it in my view-philosophy is essentially a series of very important and simultaneously unresolvable questions.