Anthony Quinton on Spinoza and Leibniz: Section 1

The ideas of rationalist philosophers Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz are examined in this program by philosophy Anthony Quinton. Spinoza favors a pantheistic God who has matter and mind as two attributes, and who is the ultimate substance and explanation of the world. Leibniz sees the real world as consisting of an infinity of things purely spiritual, where everything, including space, is a phenomenon—a by-product of areal world with an infinite array of spiritual centers. Both philosophers construct a world that is very different form what the average person perceives, and both reject Cartesian duality.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Bryan
• Magee
• Anthony
• Quinton
• Philosophy
• Baruch
• Spinoza
• Gottfried
• Leibniz

[Stereolabdream]

Sadly, the BBC would never dream of making a programme such as this today. Even BBC 4 would require it to be hosted by a "celebrity intellecual" (You can add the name of your choice) and the idea of two people spending 25 minutes in discussion would be absurd.

How sad.

So this is a real gem!

Thanks to all concerned!

[mwells219]

it's a shame that we don't have intellectuals of this caliber on American television.

[BagarozziBoi]

@ogirv101 Good point, and an important distinction. Spinoza cannot be charged with nature-worship, his concept of divinity allows for immaterial/transcendent values such as truth, beauty and love to be admitted on an equal footing to purely material ones such as entropy, dominance and power. Nature herself is value-free with respect to any concept of the good, or persons as ends etc, and if Pantheism is taken to its logical conclusion you end up with little more than a death-cult.

[BagarozziBoi]

@Vandenbu Well if you insist on being pedantic, yes. Loosely speaking he does though, by refusing to give epistemic or ontological priority to either side of the internal/external or subject/object divide. Ok the whole question of complementary transcendental idealism and empirical realism, and where exactly Kant stood on these issues is a good deal more subtle than that, but what can you expect in a 25 minute TV program aimed at the informed layman...

[BagarozziBoi]

@Stereolabdream Sad but true, for me television is basically dead. Fortunately nowadays we have the internet.

[BagarozziBoi]

@lelouch3 Yes, Leibniz was truly bonkers, his ontological theory of monads is a case in point. I wouldn't be surprised to learn he was partial to various palliatives from the good ol' 17th C medicine cabinet!

[DeteriA]

@lelouch3 Well, he did think Calculus is proof of God...

[lelouch3]

Leibniz sounds like a whack job.

A brilliant one, mind you.

[TheNuncFluens]

That accent makes him 25% smarter.

[childericking]

@SarahStarmer I think it is Shostakovich's 8th, movement3. Not sure though

[SarahStarmer]

I like the music at the start does anyone know what it is?