Talk:Causa sui
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There needs to be a god damned article here. Neither Spinoza, Freud nor Ernest Becker's pages even mention this rather central topic. Here, Translation of de.wikipedia. I'm not crazy, contrary to your #$@#$ encyclopedia, and this is a topic.
This is the first time I've ever seen wikipedia actually fail. And what a fuckup at that!
[edit] Cause of Itself
<Commenting on the following phrase in Causa sui—Causa sui (meaning 'cause of itself' in Latin) denotes something, which is generated within itself.>
From Parkinson's Ethics; ISBN: 0460873474; p. 260note2—Cause of Itself:
- To modern readers, the notion of a 'cause of itself' may seem strange, and indeed self-contradictory. We tend to think of a cause as preceding its effect in time, from which it would follow that a 'cause of itself' must exist before it exists. However, it later becomes clear in the Ethics {chain} that Spinoza does not think of causes in this way; rather, he thinks of the relation between cause and effect as logical {inseparable}, not temporal. For him, the cause of X is the reason for X, in the sense in which a triangle's being isosceles is the reason for its base angles being equal. This doctrine is encapsulated in his phrase "cause seu ratio' (cause, or, reason); 1P11. In effect, then, a 'cause of itself' is that whose existence is self- explanatory.
[edit] Conceived through Itself
<Commenting on the following phrase in Causa sui—This concept was central to the works of Spinoza.>
From Conceived through itself:
- A cow gives suck to its calf; I conceive of the cow by saying "she needs a calf to give suck to; likewise I conceive of the calf by saying it needs the mother cow to give it suck. But if I say both are inseparable parts (modes) of ONE infinite organism (G-D), I conceive the ONE "only through itself." The cash value of thinking (positing) it thus, is that I cannot abuse the cow without harming the calf, and vice versa, because they are bound-up in an organic interdependence. The same applies to the abuse any mode—idolatry. {See indivisible.}
From Richard Popkin's Spinoza; ISBN: 1851683399; p. 80—Conceived through itself:
- There has been a long tradition in philosophy and in Judeo-Christian theology of trying to explain the world in terms of what its causes may be, tracing it back to being an effect from an all-powerful deity. Spinoza's reading abolishes any distinction between the cause and the effect. Whatever is, is G-d (small d) (1P14) and is in G-D (1P15).
Yesselman 21:34, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
Galen Strawson's article dealing with causa sui and the subsequent necessity to be such in order to be ultimately responsible for one's actions [1]. Thought this might be an interesting addition.
- There is a more concise way of putting the point: in order to be ultimately responsible, one would have to be causa sui - the ultimate cause or origin of oneself, or at least of some crucial part of one’s mental nature. But nothing can be ultimately causa sui in any respect at all. Even if the property of being causa sui is allowed to belong unintelligibly to God, it cannot plausibly be supposed to be possessed by ordinary finite human beings. (Luck Swallows Everything, Galen Strawson)
