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)