Spinoza’s philosophy of freedom

I really like this distinction between necessity and decision. It's a great philosophic contrast that inspires further thought, but to ascribe necessity or decision to something so complex as a human being seems extremely difficult to me.

Take for example a monk who has set himself on fire yet remains calmly seated on the ground. Out of necessity I would say that the average person would run around frantically while being engulfed by flames, however the monk has seemingly decided to ignore this instinctual response. But then one could counter that the monk is acting out of necessity born from years of cultivating emptiness within. Well then, did the monk decide to become a monk when he was a child, or did it happen due to the necessity of his circumstances?

I can't decide whether necessity or decision is necessarily true in a case like this. =P

I find reading Spinoza's rational idea of Ethics oddly resolves around the concept of love. I find that I first read Spinoza as the source for Spock in Star Trek.

First the idea of love for Spinoza is that truly free persons actively avoid love as in love is a passion.

Second that the "rational/noble" love of doing good to others ethically is the center piece of ethics.

Proposal 43 "Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love."

"For by “courage” I understand “the desire by which each person endeavors to preserve his being in accordance with the dictate of reason alone,” and by “nobility” I understand “the desire by which each person, in accordance with the dictate of reason alone, endeavors to help other men and join them to him in friendship.”" Page 73 of Ethics published in 1949 (Copy on my shelf)

When i talk about Spinoza in academic worlds I have the belief that Kierkegaard (Acts of Love in specific) and Spinoza are agreeing and talking about the same ethics of love. Though they disagree about everything else about love it is love that makes us be ethical to our neighbors. I try to make my children understand that we make those around us better because we care about their well-being and that while we disagree with people we do so with the idea that we care for them also.

I find Spinoza more understandable when substituting 'God = Nature' with 'God = Reality'. I believe that's closest to what he meant, in modern vernacular.

That equivalence was (and still is) anyhow a reasonable (i.e 'unmystical') starting point for carving out a sliver of understanding from existence in it's totality, including religious aspects.

I never understand the idea that Spinoza was an atheist. Sure his ideas of God were not Judeo-Christian but he did believe in the super-natural that we see in action through nature. Spinoza was 100% a theist and wrote about God and advocated for the evidence of a God. I almost laugh when agnostics try to use him as their champion. They are ramming their own beliefs into this Philosopher that it is not respectful to Spignoza's writing. My example is since he saved Ethics to be released on his death why wasn't he clear on the rejection of God or place more on Deist statements?

Prop. 28

"The mind's highest good is the knowledge of God, and the mind's highest virtue is to know God. ...The mind is not capable of understanding anything higher than God, that is, than a Being absolutely infinite, and without which nothing can either be or be conceived; therefore, the mind's highest utility or good is the knowledge of God. Again, the mind is active, only in so far as it understands, and only to the same extent can it be said absolutely to act virtuously. The mind's absolute virtue is therefore to understand."

On the general level, Objectivism and Rationalism differ because the former is a philosophical system encompassing metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics. Rationalism is a particular epistemological viewpoint, and not a system. So how does the Objectivist Epistemology differ from Rationalism? Rationalism in its strongest form is the position that reason is the only means by which to acquire knowledge. It is usually contrasted with empiricism, the view that our senses are the primary means of knowledge.

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