Caprice

This is in response to Faith.

Something said one day doesn’t sound as correct the next.

How to overcome this/take on grand projects?

For example, I look back on my old posts and cringe.  Then I read them again and feel a bit better.  But where is the correctness to be found?  I am currently reading Spinoza and he jabbers on and on about correct ideas and how damn clear they feel.  The high he gets off this obviousness escapes me.

But wait…

Spinoza gives a clear definition of what constitutes a correct idea.  Any idea that represents the essence of God (an eternal, infinite thing that exists because it is in its essence to exist) is considered “adequate.”  Any other idea is “inadequate.”

Wikipedia has this to say:

“Spinoza’s philosophy has much in common with Stoicism in as much as both philosophies sought to fulfill a therapeutic role by instructing people how to attain happiness (or eudaimonia, for the Stoics). However, Spinoza differed sharply from the Stoics in one important respect: he utterly rejected their contention that reason could defeat emotion. On the contrary, he contended, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion. For him, the crucial distinction was between active and passive emotions, the former being those that are rationally understood and the latter those that are not. He also held that knowledge of true causes of passive emotion can transform it to an active emotion, thus anticipating one of the key ideas of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis.”

Hmmmmmm…more to come on this guy.

Grabado de Goya de la serie Los Caprichos

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