engleski

Man as an Island and as Part of Universal Nature Philosophy and the Meaning of Life in Spinoza and Stoic Philosophy

What is it that conjoins human beings to one another and makes us one humanity? What unites each of us to all the others, and makes any attempt to separate oneself, individually or as a group, from the common lot and destiny of humankind a kind of self-deception? Nature appears to be the common and universal basis which unites human beings, but a nature which manifests itself in a variety of meanings and roles. What is the common nature of human beings and how does it unite us? By nature, human beings strive for the good and for happiness. As Aristotle says in the Nichomachean Ethics (1095a), all human activity, all study and every undertaking, is directed to the attainment of some good, and human beings agree that the greatest good is "happiness, " conceiving happiness to be the same as ‘the good life’ or ‘doing well.’ What constitutes happiness remains, however, a matter of dispute: some identify happiness with pleasure or wealth, some with honour. Often the same person says different things at different times, eg. when he is sick, health when he is poor, wealth. Philosophers, on the other hand, affirm that "there exists another Good, that is good in itself, and stands to all those goods as the cause of their being good" (Aristotle) and that it is to this to which all things by nature aim. Despite the differing objects at which human striving aims, the proper and natural good for human beings, is, according to the philosopher, the life of virtue, and it is this life which constitutes human beings' true nature and happiness. Because of their insistence on ideas like these, philosophers from Ancient times to the present appear as "atopoi", strange or out of place. The love of wisdom makes the philosopher a stranger in the world, for wisdom is foreign to it. Wisdom, as Diotima says in Plato's Symposium, "is not a human state", but "a state of perfection of being and knowledge that can only be divine." In Philosophy as a Way of Life, P. Hadot attempts to describe this phenomenon. For although it might seem that "Philosophy is found everywhere, " in Ancient thought as today, "in speeches, novels, poetry, science, art, " true philosophizing is separated from normal life "by an abyss." In fact, throughout history, to be a philosopher "implies a rupture" means to set oneself off from day-to-day life, "what the skeptics called bios." The aim of philosophy nevertheless is the common aim of humankind, that of the eleutherios or free man, a condition in accordance with our true or original nature. Nature namely may be considered from the perspective of an immanent or an external necessity. As external necessity it represents the lawfulness of that which I am not and of which I am not the author, to which I am subordinated in my being and acting by the facticity of being myself "part of nature". As immanent necessity or the necessity dictated by my own nature, on the other hand, my nature is virtue, i.e. a manner of being in accordance to the dictates of reason, which aims to realize the original unity, integrity and end of our own nature. This paradox - how to attain by intentional practice or exercise the nature proper to human beings, is at the heart of every ethical theory which takes the full realisation of our humanity as its goal. As the condition and basis for the realisation of the virtue proper to human beings, we can differentiate among several aspects of objectivity which enable our participation in universal nature. Nature in the usual sense may be described as an objectivity "beneath" or around us, the sphere of our theoretical cognition and our ordinary activity. In this sense, nature manifests itself as the channel or path of communication between ourselves and an interiority analogous to our own, providing something like the "open market between two spontaneities" (Fr. v. Baader). There is namely also an objectivity "opposite" me, which manifests itself as "an eye seeing my eye", a manifestation of a spontaneity analogous to my own ; and an objectivity "above" me, manifest in the phenomenon of conscience as a consciousness of being recognized, known, loved as I am, and which is the object of my own admiration, love, devotion. The attainment of virtue as participation in our true nature requires in Spinoza and the Stoics a kind of therapy of emotions by which they are transformed from the reflex reaction to the forces of an external nature to our participatory cooperation in a nature of which we are originally an integral and productive part, their reconciliation or harmonization with the universal law of reason. Emotions namely can be passions or actions. As the first, they subject me to an external necessity, to a condition of nature not characterised by freedom of reflection. According to Spinoza, only adequate knowledge of the causes of emotion can liberate us from dependency on the causality of nature of which we are not ourselves the authors and transform emotions which are passions into emotions which are actions. Corresponding to the transformation of passive into active emotions is a transformation of the role of eikasia or imaginatio, from the passive reception of sense impressions, through their reproduction as the basis of memory, to productivity of imagination for the purpose of higher forms of reflection. In this role, imagination serves as a proactive source of experience, as Plato foresaw in the highest stages of cognition described by the analogy of the Line, where "by ideas, through ideas with the help of ideas we advance toward ideas" not so much as technicians for the purpose of subjugating nature to the attainment of the "goods" of pleasure, wealth or honour, but as "artists" in order that we may actively participate in and cooperate with nature in her original production for the attainment of our ultimate good, in analogy to unification with the original production of all things, in a progressive "becoming like God" (homoiosis theou), described by Spinoza as the unity of scientia intuitiva and Amor Dei intellectualis.

Spinoza; Stoicism; universal nature; human nature; virtue; happiness; good; end; aim; philosopher; the good life

nije evidentirano