Este esfuerzo por conseguir que cada cual apruebe aquello que uno ama u odia es, en realidad, ambición; y así vemos que cada cual apetece, por natura… - Benedictus de Spinoza

men are
mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up
of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the
causes by which they are conditioned. Their idea of freedom,
therefore, is simply their ignorance of any cause for their
actions. As for their saying that human actions depend on the
will, this is a mere phrase without any idea to correspond
thereto. What the will is, and how it moves the body, they none
of them know; those who boast of such knowledge, and feign
dwellings and habitations for the soul, are wont to provoke
either laughter or disgust. So, again, when we look at the sun,
we imagine that it is distant from us about two hundred feet;
this error does not lie solely in this fancy, but in the fact
that, while we thus imagine, we do not know the sun's true
distance or the cause of the fancy. For although we afterwards
learn, that the sun is distant from us more than six hundred of
the earth's diameters, we none the less shall fancy it to be near;
for we do not imagine the sun as near us, because we are
ignorant of its true distance, but because the modification of
our body involves the essence of the sun, in so far as our said
body is affected thereby.

Spinoza's thought is completely idealistic when it is presented as negative thought, when it develops the bourgeois utopia, living it in the extreme, abstract consequences of its spiritual idyll; it is, in contrast, completely materialistic as soon as it is reassembled in a constructive way, inverting the impossibility of an ideal world in the materialistic tension of its components and embracing these in a practical project, in a violent dynamism of worldly liberation. "Benedictus maledictus": never has a philosopher been more rightly hated by his times, a bourgeois and capitalist epoch.

«يُشير سِفر أخبار الأيام الأول (الإصحاح ٢١) إلى حدوث الوحي عن طريق الصُّوَر الحِسِّية وحدَها حيث يكشِف الله عن غضبه على داود فيُريه ملاكًا قابضًا سيفًا بيده،١٤ وقد حدث ذلك أيضًا لبلعام،١٥ صحيح أن ابن ميمون١٦ وآخرين يَرَون أنَّ هذه القصة ليست إلَّا مُجرَّد حلم (وكذلك كل القصص التي تروي ظهور ملك، مثل قِصَّة مانويه١٧ وقصة إبراهيم عندما رأى في منامه أنه يذبح ابنه١٨ … إلخ). وينكرون أن يكون أي إنسان قد استطاع رؤية ملك بعينَين مفتوحَتَين، ولكن هذا الرأي مُجرَّد ثرثرة، لقد كان هَمُّهم تأويل الكتاب ليستخلصوا منه تُرَّهات أرسطو وتخيُّلاتهم الخاصة، وهي في رأيي أكثر المُحاولات مَدعاةً للسخرية. وفي مُقابل ذلك، فإنَّ الله أوحى ليوسُف نصرَه المُؤزَّر مُستقبلًا، لا عن طريق صور حقيقية، بل بِصُورٍ من مُخيَّلة النبي نفسه»