Who — Corvus
I'm not sure why Spinoza chose the title "The Ethics" for his work, but it is above all a work of metaphysics. As far as I understand him, though, he believes that his metaphysical system actually entails ethical conclusions, and I think he was of the Socratic position that all philosophy was ultimately aimed at answering one question: how ought one to live? — jkg20
Well, and this is definitely not Spinoza's position, if you thought you could prove that the Abrahamic God exists exactly as described in the Torah and New Testaments, then the answer to the question "How should one live?" would be answered by appealing to the laws handed down directly from that god to human beings via Moses. So that would be one possible link between the questions "Is there a God?" and "How should one live?". Spinoza had a different conception of what God was, but he seems to think also that certain ways of living are to be preferred over others because they align more with the nature of the God that he supposed he had proved the existence of. I cannot possibly do justice to Spinoza's Ethics in a mere philosophy forum, and ultimately you'll have to answer for yourself the question "What, if any, moral implications follow from particular metaphysical systems?" — jkg20
Philosophical reflection on being begins with the intuition of being, and Maritain insists that one needs this "eidetic" intuition for any genuine metaphysical knowledge to be possible. The intuition of being that lies at the root of metaphysical enquiry is not "the vague being of common sense" (see Preface to Metaphysics, p. 78), but an "intellectual intuition" (Existence and the Existent, p. 28) or grasp of "the act of existing."
This intuition of being "is a perception direct and immediate … . It is a very simple sight, superior to any discursive reasoning or demonstration [… of] a reality which it touches and which takes hold of it" (Preface to Metaphysics, pp. 50-51); it is, Maritain says, an awareness of the reality of one's being — one which is decisive and has a dominant character. This view of intuition is not, then, that of a hunch or quick insight; neither is it (Maritain continues) the same as Bergson's. It has an intellectual character, is a grasp of something that is intelligible, and requires "a certain level of intellectual spirituality" (ibid., p. 49)*. Interestingly, Maritain claims that this intuition of being is something which escaped Kant (ibid., p. 48) and many subsequent philosophers until, perhaps, the arrival of the existentialists 1 .
...the structure of Kant’s argument is very simple:
No argument for the existence of God will work unless the Ontological Argument works.
The Ontological Argument does not work.
Therefore, no argument for the existence of God will work.
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