Baruch Spinoza Quotes on Knowledge
Spinoza's Ethics distinguishes three kinds of knowledge of ascending adequacy. Imagination — knowledge from sense, hearsay, and disordered association — is inadequate and the ordinary source of human error and bondage to the passions. Reason — knowledge from common notions and adequate ideas of the properties of things — supplies the geometrical demonstrations of the Ethics itself. Intuitive knowledge (scientia intuitiva) — the third kind — proceeds from the adequate idea of the essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of singular things; it constitutes the intellectual love of God in which Spinoza locates the highest human freedom and blessedness.
Quotes
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Attributed to Baruch Spinoza:
“Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.”
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Attributed to Baruch Spinoza:
“He who would distinguish the true from the false must have an adequate idea of what is true and false.”
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“Letter 56 (60), to Hugo Boxel (1674)”
When you say that if I deny, that the operations of seeing, hearing, attending, wishing, &c., can be ascribed to God , or that they exist in him in any eminent fashion, you do not know what sort of God mine is ; I suspect that you believe there is no greater perfection than such as can be explained by the aforesaid attributes. I am not astonished ; for I believe that, if a triangle could speak, it -
“This impels me, before going into your reasons, to set forth briefly my opinion on the question, whether the world was made by chance . But I answer, that as it is clear that chance and necessity are two contraries , so is it also clear, that he, who asserts the world to be a necessary effect of the divine nature, must utterly deny that the world has been made by chance; whereas, he who affirms th”
Letter to Hugo Boxel (October 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54). -
“Beauty, my dear Sir, is not so much a quality of the object beheld, as an effect in him who beholds it. If our sight were longer or shorter, or if our constitution were different, what now appears beautiful to us would seem misshapen, and what we now think misshapen we should regard as beautiful. The most beautiful hand seen through the microscope will appear horrible. Some things are beautiful at”
Letter to Hugo Boxel (October 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54). -
“This I know, that between finite and infinite there is no comparison; so that the difference between God and the greatest and most excellent created thing is no less than the difference between God and the least created thing.”
Letter to Hugo Boxel (October 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54). -
“If I had as clear an idea of ghosts, as I have of a triangle or a circle, I should not in the least hesitate to affirm that they had been created by God; but as the idea I possess of them is just like the ideas, which my imagination forms of harpies, gryphons, hydras, &c., I cannot consider them as anything but dreams, which differ from God as totally as that which is not differs from that which i”
Letter to Hugo Boxel (October 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54). -
“I had hoped that out of so many stories you would at least have produced one or two, which could hardly be questioned, and which would clearly show that ghosts or spectres exist. The case you relate... seems to me laughable. In like manner it would be tedious here to examine all the stories of people, who have written on these trifles. To be brief, I cite the instance of Julius Caesar , who, as Su”
Letter to Hugo Boxel (October 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54). -
“Letter 21 (73) to Henry Oldenburg , November (1675)”
My opinion concerning God differs widely from that which is ordinarily defended by modern Christians. For I hold that God is of all things the cause immanent, as the phrase is, not transient. I say that all things are in God and move in God, thus agreeing with Paul , and, perhaps, with all the ancient philosophers , though the phraseology may be different ; I will even venture to affirm that I agr -
“A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.”
Ethics(1677) -
“I will not attempt to describe here the many lessons that I learned in the study of Spinoza, lessons that in several respects laid the foundation of my philosophy.”
George Santayana | George Santayana , in his book Persons and Places (New York: Scribners, 1944)