Spinoza Returns! Yom Kippur! And Hegel!
Hi SW readers.
Here is a new, revised Spinoza In Plain English essay. This one begins a series of essays on the second book of Spinoza’s ethics, which deals with the nature of the body and mind.
Tomorrow Yom Kippur begins. Between the beginning of the month of Elul and Yom Kippur we engage in over a month of a kind of theatre- we blow a rams horn, review our last year, acknowledge the rule of the Divine, and then engage in ten days of teshuvah- return to ourselves, turning around, transformation. At the end of the ten days, mythologically speaking, the gates of heaven shut. We’ve had our chance and now the karma of the year ahead will unfold as it has been set. Then we build little huts in our backyards (or visit those of others) and eat, and look at the sky through the cracks in the roof, and reflect on the fragility and impermanence and joy of being conscious beings in this strange universe.
Until tomorrow we wish each other- G’mar Chatima Tovah! May you be sealed for a good year ahead. To all of my readers, that’s my wish for you.
In other news:
Times are hot and heavy, eh? Here’s some German metaphysics to cool you down:
AOBAG
Lessons From Hegel About The Danger (And Promise) of Polarized Times
Which is kind of always. An essay from 2018.