(Actually, a new edition of Spinoza’s Ethics, translated by Jacob Klatzkin, had already been made available some time before. Here we can see how he stands in utter opposition to the other great stream of modern philosophy—existentialism. What befalls me from moment to moment no longer fills my whole horizon, no longer presents itself to me as a lone figure, but carries with it implications of the comprehensive oneness in which it resides. If we are wise, we shall apply solvent criticism especially to the beliefs that we find it most painful to doubt, and to those most likely to involve us in violent conflict with men who hold opposite but equally groundless beliefs. To begin with the intellectual virtues: The pursuit of philosophy is founded on the belief that knowledge is good, even if what is known is painful. “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” inculcates emotional generally; “ethical statements should not contain proper names” inculcates logical generally. Spinoza pushed the idea of the unity of God to its furthest reaches, and on it he erected one of the mightiest intellectual structures the world has ever seen. He seized on a certain philosophic possibility and, with unprecedented consistency, thought it through to the end. It is not to be supposed that young men and women who are busy acquiring valuable specialized knowledge can spare a great deal of time for the study of philosophy, but even in the time that can easily be spared without injury to the learning of technical skills, philosophy can give certain things that will greatly increase the student’s value as a human being and as a citizen. On these questions, too, Spinoza assumes a radical stance. What Hans Reichenbach, one of the best-known representatives of modern scientific logic, says on the subject in his book, The Rise of Scientific Philosophy, is a characteristic expression of great sympathy evoked by Spinoza the man and thinker, and a complete rejection of his logical deductions. He stands for a radical rationalism in metaphysics. The completeness and clarity of this intellectual structure truly exerts an effect like that of the starry heavens, tranquillizing and exalting. It is therefore natural to ask how modern logic feels about it. Not only in philosophy, but in all branches of academic study, there is a distinction between what has cultural value and what is only of professional interest. . Intellectual sobriety, therefore, will lead us to scrutinize our beliefs closely, with a view to discovering which of them there is any reason to believe true. Can mind dominate matter, or does matter completely dominate mind, or has each, perhaps, a certain limited independence? To endure uncertainty is difficult, but so are most of the other virtues. Who could understand a man who, as Descartes’ pupil, lifted himself, through mathematical and rabbinical learning, to the summits of thought, who to this very day still seems to represent the goal of all speculative endeavor?”, Spinoza’s system is a logical creation. Here, again, philosophy could not follow him. “Liquidate the capitalists and the survivors will enjoy eternal bliss.” “Exterminate the Jews and everyone will be virtuous.” “Kill the Croats and let the Serbs reign.” “Kill the Serbs and let the Croats reign.” These are samples of the slogans that have won wide popular acceptance in our time. Instead of studying the Anglo-Saxon kings over and over again at school, some attempt should be made to give a conspectus of world history, bringing the problems of our own day into relation with those of Egyptian priests, Babylonian kings, and Athenian reformers, as well as with all the hopes and despairs of the intervening centuries. What makes Spinoza’s love of God so different from the love which Buber, Rosenzweig, and the later Hermann Cohen understood as the true relation to God? 3. All doubt and paradox are shut up in these bristling axioms as in a fortress. From the American Republic’s beginning, the scope and limits of executive power have been fiercely debated. The more complete our knowledge becomes, the more fully it transforms itself into love. main types of philosophies that may help you to form your teaching philosophy and write your teaching statement - Perennialism, Essentialism, Romanticism and Progressivism. But we do retain another thing: the belief in this unity. How does Spinoza arrive at so radically rational a metaphysics? This does not seem to us to be the case; it was precisely the overemphasis on unity, the utter surrender to the “pan” in his theism, that first made the existential lack in his thought discernible. A perennial plant. Nevertheless, if you have the emotional capacity to feel distant evils acutely, you can achieve ethical generally through feeling. But it is only of philosophy, treated from a similar point of view, that I wish to write.