On Spinoza's Ethics Part 2 - Propositions 16 through 31

In our 20th episode we go back to our original orientation and ask the kind of questions that suit an introduction to philosophy, and that are found in Part 2 of Spinoza's Ethics.

How can the human mind be just the idea of the body, as Spinoza claims? Do we really have ideas of every single event that occurs in our bodies? How can one global idea - the mind - contain other ideas? Daniel Yslas, a student of philosophy at The American University of Paris, tells his unique story of how he got into the discipline.

On Part II of Spinoza's Ethics, Propositions 7 through 10.

Ol and Val get methodical with Spinoza's construction of human minds and the mind of God.

We explore Spinoza's absolute rationalism, his love of causal explanation, his arguments against multiple substances and how - going against our theological prejudices - he conceptualises an immanent God.

Luna ventures out into absolute substance, learning to equate a depersonalised God with Nature, Nature as the necessary unfolding of an intricate causal nexus. Val tries out the bad pantheistic hippy German idealistic reading of Spinoza but Luna rescues him because she is not a hippy but a punk.

Ol and Val find a back door into Book I of Spinoza's Ethics, making everything a lot easier with some context: the Appendix to Book I where Spinoza critiques our theological prejudices which lead us to imagine God as some kind of super human being.