John Dunn home page from Child of Encounter



Ugly word



It was through Ilyenkov’s struggle to reconcile freedom and necessity that I first became conscious of Baruch Spinoza’s world-changing role. Until then, I had always thought of Spinoza (1632-1677) as just one name amongst many on the family tree of philosophers. The prominence given to Spinoza in the later pages of this work means that it is important to get a Spinozist definition sorted out before we progress any further. The term to be defined is the Substance.



For Spinoza the Substance is that which was first, that which is infinite, that of which everything else is but an attribute. The Substance is the great cosmic presupposition. It is that which presupposes all else. The Substance may be referred to in other terms, for example, infinite Nature, the One, the Absolute. It was the entity that Spinoza thought of as God, or the kabbalistic Ein Sof, which translates from the Hebrew as unending, or infinity.



The Substance did hold a God-like connotation for Spinoza because of its infinite greatness, but care must be taken not to attribute a personhood to this thing or entity. Rather, Spinoza conceived of the universe as one inherently active totality, which can be conceived of as either ‘God’ or ‘Nature’. Spinoza’s point was that the one infinite Substance - God or Nature - is the only Substance that exists and that the immense variety of things that we see and experience, including ourselves, are but different emanations, or modes of being, of the one Substance. Furthermore, according to Spinoza, ‘in nature there is nothing contingent, but all things have been determined from the necessity of the divine nature to exist and produce an effect in a certain way’ and that ‘things could have been produced by God in no other way, and in no other order than they have been produced’.



Despite his talk of God, it is easy to see why Spinoza’s philosophy appeals to atheists and materialists (be they Marxist or of some other secular variety). In this philosophy, man is part of nature and is subject to its laws; man is determined by his material circumstances. As a result, the Spinozist credo that ‘freedom is the recognition of necessity’ could be shared by Marxist materialists such as Engels and Stalin. As a Marxist himself, Ilyenkov would have no problem relating to this - and neither did I. This whole Spinozist outlook can be summed up by the ugly word - necessitarianism.



© John Dunn.

Book sales

From the archive: Grail question 'Anti-entropic' and 'Smashing eggs'

'Anti-entropic'

As the highest expression of the anti-entropic development of the universe man is capable of continuing the creative development of the universe insofar as he the living image of the first Creator.

John Dunn



'Smashing eggs'

To accept a system as closed, to accept freedom as necessity, is to withdraw into nature, to return to Mother Nature, to Ananke and an amorphous state of pre-Eros, pre-Love and pre-Being. Closed systems are the path to entropic death.

John Dunn

Just a thought: So why did Ilyenkov turn to the necessitarian Spinoza in the search for a reconciliation between freedom and necessity and where does this leave my ‘who am I?’ question? (Child of Encounter) John Dunn The Oxford to Cambridge Arc 5

Further additions to the project, starting with the Bedford to Cambridge leg of Ogilby's 1675 Oxford to Cambridge route.

John Dunn

Turnpike* explorer 20th September 2020



The leaning tower of Cowbit. Thechurch is sinking due to land drainage and peat shrinkage. The buildingis even lower than the rest of the church grounds and the tower is leaning over at an angle; it appears to be tearing itself away from the nave.





I motorcycled to Lincolnshire to explore a few of the old turnpikes around Spalding and Boston.



At Crowland I joined the Spalding and Cowbit Bank Turnpike (1793). This later became part of the A1073, which once ran from Eye near Peterborough, passing through the centre of Crowland, to Spalding.



Today the route through Cowbit to Spalding has been completely by-passed by the A16.



At Spalding I sought out the old Spalding and Donington Turnpike (1764), which carried me northwards as far as Gosberton, before turning north eastward to Boston, passing through Sutterton and Kirton on the way. This old turnpike later became the A16, but again has been completely by-passed by the modern A16, which has been built on the deadstraight line of a disused railway between Spalding and Boston.



The new bridges and inner ring road were completed in Boston in May1979 after first being mooted in the early 1950s. Until that happened, traffic must have left the old turnpike to funnel down the impossibly narrow High Street, over the Town Bridge (1913), across the wide open Market Square, before leaving via the Spilsby Turnpike (1765), later theA16 - and so it remains.



*Turnpike trusts were established by acts of Parliament, with authority to collect tolls for maintaining the principal roads of Great Britin from the 17th to the 19th centuries. The turnpike trust system was adopted to manage roads across the British Empire (Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa) and in the United States. Turnpikes declined with the coming of the railways, but left a legacy of main roads that is still largely in tact.



© John Dunn. You are visitor number 1010075