George Micheal a Natale, Brigitte Bardot a capodanno.
Se ho capito il meccanismo, Salvini ci lascerà a carnevale.

#spinoza

Things are looking up with #Spinoza. After some tricky passages on the nature and origin of the mind, today’s hot topics are titillation and cheerfulness. #philosophy

The Architecture of Resistance

The seventeenth-century Hague, the mid-twentieth-century Levant, and the digital terraforming of 2025 have a shared preoccupation with the “Average.” Whether it is the theologian’s way or predictive stats, control begins by smoothing out the landscape. The project of power is a project of cartography and illumination—an attempt to banish the dark corners where the unmapped might grow. Thus, the history of resistance, of being “against the world”, is less a history of rebellion than a history of seeking cover.

In Spinoza’a world, legibility was the cosmos in an ordered hierarchy. Meaning descended from an external judge and was mirrored by the terrestrial proxy of the King and more often the priest. Behavior was aligned to the “Scriptural Average.” A pre-written behavioral code that transformed the conatus—that primal drive to persist and expand—into the passive states of hope and fear. By removing the external judge, Spinoza suggested that freedom is found in the intellectual mastery of the causes that move us. A pushback against the “average pious subject,” asserting that every individual is a necessary, logical expression of an infinite substance. There is no error in the world, only the lack of a thick enough understanding to perceive the necessity of one’s own outlier status. 

With this position, and self assurance, Spinoza became illegible to his friends, his doting teacher, and his community. He was cast out, but his thoughts are the seeds of today’s world. 

In the Beirut and Damascus of the mid-twentieth century, the imposition of legibility took the form of the “Citizen-as-Monument.” It was a world of endings, where identity was a frozen artifact of nationalist scripts and religious orthodoxies. The poet Adonis, through Mihyar, pushes against this world not by asserting a new identity, but through a “movement of erasure.” If a stable interior is to form, it is to be quickly discarded. A stable interior is merely another coordinate, a dependable predictor, for the state to map. Mihyar becomes a “knight of strange words,” defined by the iltifat—the sudden turn away. By peeling back the layers of the social mask and embracing a radical anonymity, he counters the stagnant city. He exists as a hot wind, something that is felt through its movement and friction, yet remains entirely unsearchable by the collective grammar.

We have entered a third world, a digital landscape that functions as a terraformed plain. It is, in a sense, a Spinozan monism—all data is one substance—but it is a substance managed by a Leibnizian bureaucracy of optimization. The mechanism of control is no longer the scripture or the state monument, but the “Mechanical Harmony” of the statistical mean. A decade ago this was social media shaping votes. Today’s AI tools, perhaps inadvertently and perhaps not,  impose an “averageness” on thought itself, by providing the next likely response and hiding the outlier. This is a form of disindividuation disguised as efficiency, a smoothing of the world’s texture until it becomes a frictionless surface for the sake of searchability.

What emerges as a necessary response is the logic of the thicket. If the terraformed plain is the habitat of the tourist—where everything is predicted, optimized, and known—the thicket is the habitat of the explorer. It is a deliberate architecture of complexity, an insistence on terroir and the messy, non-replicable context of the local. To build a thicket is to re-introduce friction into a world too smooth. We are apes inhabiting the long tail. Like Spinoza, our conatus withers under the umbrella the statistical mean. If every response is predicted, the individual ceases to be a cause and becomes merely a consequence of the architecture.

To emerge, life itself needed discontinuities. The thicket provides the opacity necessary for the transforming process of the self to occur. It honors the uneven distribution of the world, providing a high-density environment of unique, complex encounters impossible in a flat plain. In this 2025 context, to be “against the world” is perhaps better understood as being a cultivator of these unsearchable spaces. The Dark Forest of the internet has created literal operating systems, habitats for our interconnected selves. Away from the violent imposition of the center, things can still happen by surprise. We seek cover in the thicket as a primal way of being where the emergent world remains deep enough to inhabit.

#Adonis #AI #AlgorithmicFlattening #AliAhmadSaidEsber #ArchitectureOfResistance #artificialIntelligence #Conatus #CulturalCritique #DigitalTerraforming #history #Iltifat #IntellectualHistory #LLMs #LogicOfTheThicket #MechanicalHarmony #MihyarTheDamascene #Monism #Noodiversity #OntologicalResistance #philosophy #philosophyOfTechnology #RadicalImmanence #Spinoza #StatisticalAverage #TheThicket #writing

Vers une écologie du déterminisme : entre structure, action et création

Le déterminisme n’est pas fatalité mais relation. De Bourdieu à Spinoza, de Nietzsche à Castoriadis : il se rejoue entre structure et action, contrainte et création. Social, biologique ou technique, il nous façonne autant que nous le transformons. Penser sa dualité, c’est rouvrir l’espace du possible. #Philosophie #Sociologie #Bourdieu #Spinoza #Nietzsche #Castoriadis #Technologie #Marx Le…

https://homohortus31.wordpress.com/2025/12/21/vers-une-ecologie-du-determinisme-entre-structure-action-et-creation/

Deleuze retrouvé
Una stanza piena. L'aria addensata dal fumo di sigaretta, i registratori coprono l'ufficio del filosofo.
E Deleuze, parlando di Spinoza, cinema, urla o rizoma.
Quei momenti unici se ne sono andati. Tornano oggi.

Per la prima volta, France Culture trasmette 16 le
https://differx.noblogs.org/2025/12/19/deleuze-retrouve/
#archivi #art #cinema #kritik #ricostruzioni #SegnaliEAzioni #cinema #Deleuze #FranceCulture #GillesDeleuze #lezioni #rizoma #Spinoza #Urlo #video

Rationalité partagée et immanence spinoziste : une démocratie qui s’auto-éduque

Et si une démocratie réelle était spinoziste sans le savoir ?Rationalité partagée par dissensus (Giddens, Rancière, Abensour) et rationalité immanente de Spinoza convergent : comprendre les causes pour accroître une puissance d’agir commune, contre l’accaparement oligarchique du savoir et du pouvoir. Sans auto-éducation populaire, la raison se fige en domination. 🧠⚖️ #Spinoza #Giddens…

https://homohortus31.wordpress.com/2025/12/18/rationalite-partagee-et-immanence-spinoziste-une-democratie-qui-sauto-eduque/

Riforma: per gli amministratori di condominio sarà necessaria la laurea.

I non laureati si dovranno accontentare di governare qualcosa di meno impegnativo, tipo l'Italia.

https://www.repubblica.it/economia/2025/12/17/news/riforma_condomini_morosi_pagamenti_amministratori_novita-425045582/

#spinoza

Maarten ‘t Hart over #Reinbertbio: ‘Derks verdient een pluim’

Net terug van vakantie is het leven meteen weer druk. Ik ben onder andere volop bezig met de voorbereidingen voor mijn reportages van het komende Festival Oude Muziek voor Radio 4. En afgelopen maandag had ik een zeer boeiend gesprek met Theo Loevendie over zijn nieuwe opera Spinoza. Deze gaat op 11 oktober 2014 in première in de NTRZaterdagMatinee, waarvoor ik de toelichting schrijf. Toen ik bij hem aanbelde, had Loevendie net de laatste noot van de partituur geschreven, hij was opgetogen. We maakten een selfie als ‘Theo & Thea’.

Theo & Thea, 25-11-2014

In de spaarzame momenten dat ik niet aan het werk was, heb ik de aflevering bekeken van VPRO Zomergasten met Reinbert de Leeuw van 10 augustus 2014. Een boeiende avond, waarin Reinbert op zijn bekende bevlogen manier vertelt over componisten als bijvoorbeeld Olivier Messiaen, Galina Oestvolskaja en Charles Ives, vaak in bijna exact dezelfde bewoordingen als in mijn biografie Reinbert de Leeuw, mens of melodie. Maar daarin komen uiteraard nog véél meer toondichters aan bod. Jammer dat Reinbert zich opnieuw misprijzend over mijn biografie uitliet en wederom ontkende dat ik hem het manuscript in januari 2013 ter correctie heb voorgelegd.

Enkele lezers stuurden mij links van recensies van deze aflevering van Zomergasten uitzending die ik niet zelf over het hoofd had gezien. Bas Paternotte bespreekt hem uitvoerig op The Post Online, onder de titel ‘Een bezield mens met een rauw randje en een kalasjnikov’. Hij roemt de bevlogenheid van De Leeuw en diens ‘avond-college over vernieuwers in de muziek’ en vindt het jammer dat hij niet zelf piano speelt, want de man ‘is muziek’. Over De Leeuws reactie op mijn biografie schrijft Paternotte:

Deze aardige welbespraakte – en –denkende zeventiger bleek namelijk met een brok rancune te kampen waar stervoetballer Robin van Persie nog een puntje aan kan zuigen. […]

Hier zat een man die zo min mogelijk over zijn privéleven kwijt wilde. De verwende kijker die méér wilde weten over de achtergrond van deze muzikale alleskunner kreeg het lid op de neus. U begrijpt, een deel van deze aflevering was dus een perfecte advertentie voor Derks’ biografie Reinbert de Leeuw, mens of melodie. Vandaag voor 23:00 uur besteld, morgen in huis.

De uitzending werd zelfs besproken door Henk Brussen op de website Geenstijl.nl. In zijn inleiding zet hij het programma neer als een speeltje van de elite dat zijn beste tijd gehad heeft en ‘waar geen hond naar kijkt’. Maar vervolgens erkent hij toch wel geboeid te zijn geraakt.

Ook Brussen reageert op De Leeuws uitlatingen over mijn biografie:

Zelden illustreerde iemand zo pijnlijk duidelijk wat ‘ongeautoriseerd’ betekent in de zin ‘een ongeautoriseerde biografie’. […]
“Ik vertrouw geen enkel citaat uit die biografie”, zei hij toen De Jong een vleiend citaat van een muze-actrice voorlas uit de biografie, waarmee hij alles over die biografie had gezegd.

Een andere vriend stuurde me een filmpje waarin Maarten ‘t Hart mijn biografie aanprijst, samen met Van Bach tot Bernstein van Thierry Baudet en Arie Boomsma. Hij noemt Reinbert de Leeuw ‘een nurkse man, een Einzelgänger’, en vindt mijn boek ‘juist zo leuk, omdat het een mooi, afgerond portret schetst van een fanaticus […] Ik vind dat mevrouw Derks een pluim verdient.’

Gistermiddag werd ik in het programma ‘Matinee’ geïnterviewd door RTV Apeldoorn over mijn lezing volgende week donderdag 4 september bij boekhandel Nawijn & Polak in Apeldoorn.

#ArieBoomsma #FestivalOudeMuziek #GeenstijlNl #HenkBrussen #NawijnPolak #NJOZomeracademie #NTRZaterdagmatinee #ReinbertDeLeeuw #RTVApeldoorn #Spinoza #TheaDerks #TheoLoevendie #ThierryBaudet #VPROZomergasten

¿Se imaginan que #Juana_de_Asbaje y Baruch #Spinoza hubiesen tenido un (par de) crío(s)? 🧠 🤓 🪶 https://inv-cl2.nadeko.net/companion/latest_version?id=3_cG4Z1Xock&itag=18&local=true&check=XJgA8Y5yz4qdKUbY6nc2ezriad-h6SrtPe_gu0B-oZE=

Spinoza dit qu’on se trompe… parce qu’on va trop vite.
On attrape une info, un morceau d’image, et on croit savoir. Lui propose l’inverse : remonter aux causes, compléter le puzzle avant de juger.
#Spinoza
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc5-2UdbjQ0

Currently reading Spinoza's "Ethics".

Challenging, stimulating, at times baffling. I expect I'm going to have to reread this after consulting some of the secondary literature.

#Philosophy #Spinoza #Ethics #EarlyModern #17thCentury #Netherlands

You’ve heard of #ElfOnTheShelf. But have you considered . . . ? #philosophy #Spinoza #Hanukkah

(Time for the annual round of Elf on the Shelf rewrites. Bring ‘em on.)

"He procurado diligentemente no reírme de las acciones humanas, ni lamentarlas, ni detestarlas, sino comprenderlas"

Baruch Spinoza

#Spinoza #BaruchSpinoza #cnv #comunicaciónnoviolenta #practicasnarrativas

Happy birthday to my favorite neighbour (November 24th, 1632 - February 21, 1677)

The home of #Spinoza was probably in the same block where I live, or the nearby church of Moses and Aaron.

Nobody knows for sure because he was kicked out of Amsterdam for heresy, and nobody bothered to ever pay homage to his home, or even put a memorial plate, like we did with all the other fathers of Western philosophy.

The Portuguese synagogue that he used to attend, the one that eventually pushed for his exile for daring to criticize centuries of blind Jewish dogma, is still standing here near my house.

He was harassed both by Jewish and Christians during his life for daring to read their sacred texts from a rational perspective, and for putting in doubt the Mosaic authorship of the Torah.

He was simultaneously accused of being an atheist and a pantheist obsessed with god.

When I first visited the Waterlooplein area in Amsterdam I was confused. I could clearly see Rembrandt’s house always surrounded by tourists, but I couldn’t see any tourists around Spinoza’s house. Actually I couldn’t even see Spinoza’s dwellings anywhere. Then I discovered that the place where he was born was most likely unceremoniously flattened when the church was built (or perhaps it was on the very grounds where my house currently is). And all we’ve left of one of the greatest and most influential thinkers to ever live is an ugly statue on the other side of the square. Because those who dared to be heretic four centuries ago don’t get the luxury of having their memories preserved even today, even in a progressive place like Amsterdam.

On #ThisDayInHistory in 1632, #Dutch and #Jewish philosopher #BaruchSpinoza was born. His geometric writing style and complex argumentation disguised some huge intuitive leaps and assumptions, but #Spinoza's #monism helped make #Enlightenment rationalism and #deism possible.

on his birthday, https://www.outsidelight.online/journal/spinoza-and-the-theatre-of-repetition-excerpting-rebecca-goldsteins-betraying-spinoza/
#philosophy #Spinoza #happybirthday

Come ogni 24 novembre, auguri a Baruch Spinoza, un uomo mite che ha vissuto poco più di quarant'anni, ma che ha scritto pagine profondissime, difendendo la libertà religiosa e la libertà di pensiero #storia #filosofia #tolleranza #libertà #ricorrenze #anniversari #24novembre #spinoza https://lisavagnozzi.altervista.org/vita-da-filosofi-baruch-spinoza/

⓪ The proof of the infinity of attributes
https://www.outsidelight.online/digest/digest-the-proof-of-the-infinity-of-attributes/
#philosophy #Spinoza #Bergson #intelligence

You don’t need to control your emotions — you need to see them.
Deconstruction reveals how emotion isn’t truth but the machinery of imagination defending an identity.
Once you see it, control becomes unnecessary.
Read Part 2: The Practice of Deconstruction
👉 https://zurl.co/MJxUH
#Philosophy #Psychology #MartinButler #Realism #Spinoza

Calenda si tatua il simbolo dell’Ucraina sul polso. Poi lo copre con il Rolex.

#spinoza