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Descartes was not interested in probabilities. He wanted absolute certainty. He had to be sure that indubitable knowledge, immune from skeptical attack, was possible.
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Steven Nadler |
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While some of his clerical opponents suggested that his proofs for God's existence are so obviously bad that they must have been designed by a devious atheist to in fact undermine the belief in God's existence, more secular-minded critics protested against Descartes's resorting to God as a deus ex machina to solve an epistemological quandary, and they questioned the propriety of relying on matters of faith in what should be a project of rat..
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Steven Nadler |
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When Mersenne circulated the manuscript of the Meditations among various philosophers and theologians to gather "objections," he included the English thinker Thomas Hobbes and the French materialist Pierre Gassendi, an early modern reviver of the philosophy of Epicurus."
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Steven Nadler |
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872f77b
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God made the world, but he also made it true that one plus one equals two. And just as he might have not made a world, so he might just as well have not made it true that one plus one equals two, or even have made it true instead that one plus one equals three. Similarly, "[God] was free to make it not true that all the radii of the circle are equal--just as free as He was not to create the world."34"
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Steven Nadler |
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God could have made mountains without valleys. And God could have made it the case that a triangle has interior angles whose sum is more or less than 180 degrees,
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Steven Nadler |
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we know a good deal about the free person, including many things about what he believes and how he acts. His desires are directed by reason and his deeds informed by virtue.
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Steven Nadler |
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A desire to do good for others and help them in their striving is generated by one's own living according to reason. "The desire to do good generated in us by our living according to the guidance of reason, I call morality"
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Steven Nadler |
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333dee6
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A man who is guided by reason" will have "strength of character." He "hates no one, is angry with no one, envies no one, is indignant with no one, scorns no one, and is not at all proud"; he will avoid "whatever he thinks is troublesome and evil, and moreover, whatever seems immoral, dreadful, unjust and dishonorable"
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Steven Nadler |
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b50d9b7
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Religion as we know it, Spinoza argues in the work's preface, is nothing more than organized superstition. Power-hungry ecclesiastics prey on the naivete of citizens, taking advantage of their hopes and fears in the face of the vicissitudes of nature and the unpredictability of fortune to gain control over their beliefs and their daily lives. The preface of the Treatise both makes clear Spinoza's contempt for sectarian religions and opens t..
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Steven Nadler |
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608ca85
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Isini ciddiyetle, canli ve gercek bir cosku ile ele al, yasaminin buyuk bolumunu aklini ve ruhunu gelistirmeye ada. (Spinoza)
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Steven Nadler |