The Continuum Companion To Spinoza Encyclopedia Of Spinoza And His Time PDF Download

From the 'Afterword as Foreword.' ...Professor Alexander has this afternoon placed his own distinctive interpretation on Spinoza's " Ethics." He has followed out this line of thought in the remarkable Gifford Lectures which he himself has recently published. Spinozism gets a fresh significance in the new atmosphere of Relativity, with which Einstein, yet another member of your community, has recently invested mathematical physics and our conception of the universe which appears to confront us. The doctrine of the space-time continuum yields a new outlook for science and philosophy alike, and Professor Alexander has seen this. I should not be candid if I did not say that for myself there seems to lie behind this conception a yet wider one, that of mind -- as I believe the principle of Relativity leaves us free to interpret it -- as being foundational to all reality. But that does not make me the less appreciative of the very important contribution which our lecturer of this afternoon has made, on this occasion as well as in his recent book, to our understanding of the meaning of what we call real. He has dealt more fully than Spinoza did with the meaning of Time as entering into the character of existence. The continuum in which it and Space have not yet been differentiated is for him the foundational fact of existence. Over this view many controversies will arise. Some of these are already well in sight. But the great point is to raise them distinctly, and this Professor Alexander has definitely done: already we have heard something of this in the address to which we have just listened, for my part, with deep interest. To this end no subject could have served better as an historical jumping-off place than the teaching of Spinoza, and this our lecturer has put before us with the freshness which we anticipated from his touch. Time received at the hands of Spinoza something less than justice. It is inseparable from Space. Apart from Space we cannot measure duration. Look at your watches and you will see why. The flight of time and its measurement are measured and made significant only by the spatial divisions through which the hands move, and which ascertain their progress. Space and Time here combine, and become phases of the yet more concrete actuality of motion or change in the relations of objects. But I did not rise to detain you. We must all desire now to go away in order that we may think over the remarkable paper to which we have listened, itself a fresh instance of the indebtedness of the public to your community for growth in ideas.