Dinesh's photos

The Holland of Spinoza’s day was a refuge for freethinkers -- among them Descartes, whose work greatly influenced Spinoza. Spinoza, too would not have been allowed to do his philosophical work in any other country. Jan Steen’s (1625-79) painting. Musical Company, conveys this mood of relative freedom.

Spinoza was born in Amsterdam into a distinguished Jewish émigré family that had fled Catholic persecution in Portugal. He studied non-Hebrew subjects. Such as mathematics and linguistics, privately plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza iep.utm.edu/spinoza www.gutenberg.org/files/3800/3800-h/3800-h.htm

Although the canvas is a very different sort of object from that which is being painted, the artist can represent the scene by his use of color so that the two share the same “logical form”. In the same way, Wittgenstein believed words can represent reality, if again both share the same logical form

This painting by Pierre Louis Dumesnil the Younger depicts Queen Christina and members of her court listening to Descartes giving a philosophy lesson. Christina insisted that the lessons he given at five O’clock in the morning, three days a week. The lessons lasted around five hours. The combination of early rising and the exceptionally harsh Swedish winter led to Descartes falling serious ill, and to his death from pneumonia on February 11, 1650

plato.stanford.edu/entries/hobbes

The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, founder of modern astronomy, proposed the idea that the sun, not the earth, is at the center of our solar system. The Copernican system, with the sun circled by the six known planets, is shown in this pring.

Galileo’s Dialogue On the Two Chief World Systems -- Ptolemaic and Copernican, published in 1632, argued for the new cosmology. As a result, Galileo was called before Inquisition to explain exactly why he was questioning traditional beliefs. Eventually, Galileo was forced to declare that the earth was the immovable center of the universe.

youtu.be/uqOMZP6HPP8?si=cnwEMcMCmCU1GkzM

Here we see Lady Philosophy wooing her student Boethius away from “strumpet muses” -- Lady Fortune who is turning a wheel of which four figures are ascending and descending.

CHOOSING DEATH OVER LIFE Suicide was not taboo for the Stoics. On the contrary, they believed in a man’s right to determine his own death as well as his own life.

In answer to the pagan challenge: “Why did your God create the universe at that arbitrary moment in time?” St. Augustine replied: “But that was when he created time too.” One of the most attractive personalities in the history of philosophy, Augustine was born in the town of Hippo in North Africa, in what is new Algeria, in AD 354. It was there that he died in AD 430, though between those two dates his travels took him far afield in the Mediterranean world. ~ Page 50 “LORD MAKE ME CHASTE, BUT NOT YET’ ~ St Augustine ~ Page 51 The most interesting philosophizing in the ‘Confessions’ -- appropriately for an authbiography is about nature of time: “If no one asks me [what time is] I know; if they ask and I try to explain, I don’t know.” . . . . Page 50 www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/hum100/augustinconf.pdf

ON THE NATURE OF THINGS Lucretius, the supreme Epicurean poet, is shown writing at his desk in this illuminated Christian edition of his pagan masterpiece. The accompanying text is the opening of the Book One, his paean of praise of Venus the Goddess of sexual love www.gutenberg.org/files/785/785-h/785-h.htm

BACCHUS AND MENAD Bacchus, or Dionysus was the god of the intoxicating powers of Nature. He was associated with orgies -- of which the Epicureans were often accused, but of which they actually disapproved. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysus

DIOGENES BEING VISITED BY ALEXANDER In a confrontation of two whole value systems, the conqueror of the world meets the philosopher who rejected worldly values, preferring to live like a dog.

PLATO AND ARISTOTLE -- PHILOSOPHY'S TWO WORLDS Plato on the left, holds the Timacus, a work of abstract metaphysics, and points to higher things. Aristotle clutches his Ethics , and says by his gesture that we should keep our feet on the ground. These two opposing tendencies in philosophy have been in conflict throughout its history The weak are always anxious for justice and equality. The strong pay no heed to either ~ Aristotle