[Xmca-l] Re: Отв: Re: Ilyenkov, Marx, & Spinoza

[Ivan Uemlianin]

Dear David

Sorry to quibble, but your email (4th para) doesn't seem to be using "mode" in the same way as Spinoza (in the Ethics). In the Ethics, Substance has infinite Attributes, two of which (the only two humans can be affected by) are Extension and Thought. Modes are finite particulars (eg tables and ideas).

How Spinoza would categorise the laws of thermodynamics is a whole nother question.

Best wishes

Ivan
@ilyenkov_et_al


--
festina lente


> On 27 Jul 2017, at 22:26, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Actually, Andy, there are people who defend Spinoza's formulation of a
> single substance with two modes. Halliday is one. I am another.
> 
> Consider the way in which you read Hegel. You don't actually use the term
> for an explanatory principle which he chose, namely "Geist" or  "Spirit".
> Sometimes you use Leontiev's term, "Activity", and sometimes you use your
> own, much more Spinozan, term: "project".
> 
> Spinoza actually TELLS us how to read his explanatory principle "Deus Sive
> Natura", or "God, that is to say, Nature". So the is one substance, and we
> can call it "Nature". Culture has to be understood as an emergent part of
> that nature.
> 
> The two modes are matter, of course, and a form of organization of that
> matter, a kind of countercurrent to entropy, we can call "meaning". Meaning
> matter that has been organized in some way to stand for something that is
> not itself. Nature is one substance, with two modes: matter, that is
> subject to the laws of thermodynamics (laws which do indeed distinguish
> between past and future, just as Peter does), and meaning, which is matter
> that has granted itself temporary surcease from them.
> 
> David Kellogg
> Macquarie University
> 
> PS: I always thought that the great advantage of "project" over "activity"
> was that it demystifies how this temporary surcease might work among
> humans. To understand Spinoza's idea of "God"as a semiotic version of
> "Nature" all we really have to do is to ask ourselves what "projects" might
> look like among non-human, non-sentient, and non-living entities: colonies,
> ecologies, and systems.
> 
> dk