Hello everybody and welcome back to RevLeft Radio. On today's episode we're doing part three of our ongoing sub-series dialectics deep dive with Matthew Furnall.

So in previous instantiations of the series we covered the history and philosophy of dialectical materialism

and in the last one we covered the first part of Spinoza's ethics and this one will be covering part two of Spinoza's ethics and also Marshall McCluein and his work around media.

And this was such a long episode it was like a three and a half hour recording that we're going to break this part three into two.

So it'll be dialectics deep dive, part three A and part three B. Part three A is going to be on Spinoza, his conception of body and mind, Cartesian dualism, a bunch of stuff related to that.

And then in part three B we're going to talk about Marshall McCluein and at the end of that sort of tie everything together.

So this is fascinating deep philosophy as I've said in previous instantiations of the sub-series it can be challenging but it is among our absolute most profound and deepest episodes and our most profound and deepest sub-series that we've ever done on this show.

So the reward of really wrestling with this stuff and getting into it even if some of it goes a little over your head is really worth it and at time and time again as we've done throughout this series we try to bring examples and bring it down to earth.

Make it very understandable through examples and applicable through is how it caches out in the real world.

So although there'll be chunks of time where you're trying to get through some difficult philosophy we always try to wrap it up with some common sense examples and applications to really help people learn this stuff because it's important that you learn it.

So this again is part a to our part three of the broader series. All right without further ado here is my conversation with Matthew on Spinoza and his part two of his ethics. Enjoy.

Hey everyone it's Matthew once again in the 902 thank you to Brett and David for having me back and today we're just here to follow up on our previous episode which introduced by Rook Spinoza.

Also known as Benedict Spinoza also known as bentos Panosa and I just wanted to make sure all three of his names were heard because last time I tried to and unseat them on the file that clipped or something so Rook Spinoza is the subject of discussion today and we're going to look in particular at the book to or sorry part two of his his major work the ethics which is called of the nature and origin of the mind.

And as I indicated last time the interesting thing about this part of the ethics is that Spinoza spends a lot of the time in this part talking about the body bodies as such human bodies individually and collectively in the kinds of compositions that both human and non human bodies can come into together.

And this in itself is following up on the first episode that we did together which was just sort of a general overview of the concept of dialectical materialism in its history starting primarily from Mauset Dong's definition of dialectics in the paper on contradiction.

Looking ahead we have one more episode coming up in this sort of mini series about Spinoza and different thinkers today i'm going to be introducing the thought of the Canadian philosopher Marcel McCluen and his thoughts on media and the relationship of our bodies to media forms.

Because I think he offers a lot of useful analytical tools and insights to help us think about our bodily and psychic lives in the age of late late stage capitalism.

And next time we'll be returning to Spinoza probably to sort of run through books three four and five of the ethics and introduce two thinkers or sort of composite thinker that bread is expressed interest in talking about which is to say as you'll the lows and Felix part are you.

And talk about sort of what their contributions are what their limitations might be and to take a many cited critical look at their thinking and their activism and their lives.

Beautiful so that's the trajectory of this mini series which we have dubbed dialectics deep dive as as Matthew said the first one was the philosophy and history of dialectical materialism the last one was on Spinoza and this one is going to be on Spinoza ethics part two of his ethics as well as an introduction and a sort of you know connection with martial McCluen as you mentioned as well so.

Just I like to you know reiterate that up front because we are covering so much ground in this series and it's easy to sort of you know lose where we're at in that and we're making so many different connections but I'll link to the in the show notes to the previous to installments of this as well.

You know as always it's probably helpful to go back and listen to them in order but you don't have to especially if you have some baseline knowledge of thinkers like Spinoza McCluen you could probably dive in and then go back and check those out later everybody's different in that regard but it's awesome to have you back I love this series it's a it's a fascinating one I love spending time with Spinoza and on his thought and I'm excited to get into martial McCluen in the second half of this conversation.

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