This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Finishing Ethics marks the end of our metaphysical era in philosophy book club, started in the summer of 2025 when we read Hume. Can't say I'll be entirely sad to see it go, but I've learned a lot, and have been humbled (although Spinoza would say that's an evil emotion) by my weak grasp of logic.
This book did not start off very well for me; I remember texting my friend Amanda about how much I hated the first chapter. Ethics presented me with two challenges: the geometrical proof style of philosophy which often made Spinoza's reasoning a bit difficult to follow, as well as his appropriation of colloquial language to mean something different from what we understand it to be (the most confusing of these is probably the word God, which would maybe be better understood to mean nature or the universe, at least according to Schopenhauer). These two challenges, combined with some of Spinoza's assumptions, like the existence of cause and effect, made the beginning of this book frustrating and unconvincing. However, as we got into the nature of the mind, and then human psychology, and finally Spinoza's view of human freedom I began to like this tragic Jew of Amsterdam more and more.
Spinoza posits God as the one supreme substance that makes up the entirety of the universe and existence. Contained within the umbrella of God are the mental and physical planes, which are separate, but not independent like Decartes thought, but rather perfect reflections of each other. Everything that happens in the physical world has its equivalent in the mental plane and vis-versa. Human beings, not being God and having limited knowledge, have an incomplete understanding of this connection and of the world in general. The more complete our understanding of the world and ourselves is, the greater the power that we have to act in the world (rather than be acted on by external forces including our own emotions) and the more joyful we will be. Spinoza posits all the primary emotions in relation to the change in this power level: we feel sadness when it is diminished, and joy when it increases, and other emotions derive from these two in relation to other people, our desire (also a primary emotion) and the environment. Thus to be happy, according to Spinoza, is to maximize our own power in the world. While this might sound libertarian AF, just like Epicureanism sounds a little bit like luxury space communism, it actually isn't at all, as a truly rational being recognizes that his or her powers are at their strongest in a society of like-minded rational beings and strives to bring that reality about. Happiness, for Spinoza, as it will be for Nietzsche 250 years later, is about self-knowledge and actually taking action in the world. As I like to say, seek strength, and the rest will follow.
However, that doesn't mean I agree with everything Spinoza is saying. He seems to have a blind spot about non-human intelligence: despite admitting that everything has a mind, he states that non-human animals are fair game for complete exploitation because they do not have the same nature as humans, despite the fact that by his own logic they probably share quite a bit of that nature. This is a dangerous attitude that can serve as justification of rapacious exploitation of the natural world, something that Spinoza would probably find abhorrent. And as previously mentioned there is the problem of some of his axioms, which will not be fully solved until Kant successfully integrates Hume's critique of the rationalists almost a hundred years later.
This is interesting to me. For one, as a particularly close comparison, some deeper Mormon doctrine teaches that God created the entire world spiritually before He created it physically, and holds that at least some of God's power is sourced from His more complete understanding of the laws of the universe (physical and otherwise). Basically, very similar to the mirror idea. It's really fascinating where Spinoza seems to take this idea instead. It also reminds me a little bit of that one "Psychocybernetics" book, where it's claimed perception leads to power, and action is guided by your (accurate?) self-image. I think in both cases, it seems there is broad agreement that most of what you need to be happy and satisfied and strong comes mostly from rejecting bad beliefs and finding more accurate ones - although I don't know enough about philosophy to say if this is really all that unique, it certainly appeals to me. I have long felt that a surprising amount of human behavior and attitude is related to how much control one feels they have (the perception of control though, to be clear, not necessarily actual control). Although in my case, I tend to think that some degree of humility is necessary as clearly our own agency and life's circumstances will always have some limits we will come very clearly up against.
I'm curious as to how it followed that Spinoza claims that humility is an evil emotion? Is the implication that humility is a false pretense, and thus an inaccurate way of viewing the world, or something else like it being wholly extrinsic to our actual selves? Or is it more about the control and power point, where humility is too closely related to a sort of passivity and acceptance of one's fate being imposed on them?
(It's interesting that you instantly highlight animals as a connection, or maybe that was original to Spinoza; that wouldn't really have occurred to me as immediately related. We Mormons also have a follow-on belief that animals do have spirits, and that killing animals without need is immoral. With that said the more practical implications of this are not really all that commonly expressed beyond a recommendation, rarely followed, that it is good to eat meat only sparingly. That is not to say that we were ever encouraged to be vegetarian or never eat domesticated animals, that's more famously the Seventh Day Adventists)
Just as a nitpick/sidebar, it's "vice versa", it's Latin and apparently you can pronounce it two ways, both acceptable: as it looks (two separate words, "vyse ver-suh") or as "vy-suh ver-suh" because the e would be pronounced alone in Latin, this is considered slightly more fancy. "Vy-see ver-see" or any variant thereof, flat wrong. I pronounce it the first way because a) it's more accessible and doesn't make me feel as silly, and b) the alleged Latin way to pronounce it is like, wrong. It's the academic Latin reconstruction, so effectively modern, not even the ecclesiastical one, and certainly not the original Roman one, so might as well just go whole hog and use a modern English pronunciation.
If we're going to stay faithful to actual latin pronunciation, apparently it would be "weekeh wersah" because latin "v" is pronounced like an english "u" and latin "c" is pronounced like "cat" not "cell."
Of course, as a proper anglophone of the 21st century, I find this abhorrent, and never actually use it. It's "Veni, Vidi, Vici" not "Wenny, Weedy, Weeky" damn it!
That would be the pronunciation in classical Latin, but ecclesiastical Latin would be different. I believe there it would be more like 'vee-chay ver-sa', the way you pronounce ce in Italian.
Or we just stick with the traditional English pronunciation and be done with it. It is kind of strange that the 19th century trend of pronouncing Latin as Italian still has such wide-spread acceptance today.
Why is this strange? Italian is the closest living language to Italian.
Because for hundreds of years, different nations had their own native pronunciations of Latin. This style survives in English in legal Latin (“de jure,” “bona fide,” “prima facie,” etc.), in the pronunciation of Latin loanwords (agenda, species, index, camera, “et cetera,” etc.), and in common names and titles (Caesar, Cicero, Julius, Tacitus, etc.).
Besides, if you want an artificial, unified pronunciation, why pick Italian, rather than just using the reconstructed classical pronunciation?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link