Baruch Spinoza
Dutch philosopher (1632–1677) / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Baruch (de) Spinoza[lower-alpha 2] (24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677), also known under his Latinized pen name Benedictus de Spinoza,[lower-alpha 3] was a philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin. As a forerunner of the Age of Reason, Spinoza significantly influenced modern biblical criticism, 17th-century Rationalism, and contemporary conceptions of the self and the universe, establishing himself as one of the most important and radical philosophers of the early modern period.[15] He was influenced by Stoicism, Maimonides, Niccolò Machiavelli, René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, and a variety of heterodox Christian thinkers of his day.[16]
Baruch Spinoza | |
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Born | (1632-11-24)24 November 1632 |
Died | 21 February 1677(1677-02-21) (aged 44) The Hague, Dutch Republic |
Other names | Benedictus de Spinoza |
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Spinoza was born in Amsterdam to a marrano family that had left the Iberian Peninsula for a more tolerant Amsterdam. He had a traditional education for a Jewish boy, learning Hebrew and studying the sacred texts. He was part of the wealthy Portuguese Jewish community, where his merchant immigrant father was a prominent member. As a young man, Spinoza was permanently expelled from the Jewish community for defying rabbinic authorities and disputing Jewish beliefs. After his expulsion in 1656, he did not affiliate with any religion, instead focusing on philosophical study. He had a dedicated clandestine circle of supporters, a philosophical sect, who met to discuss the writings he shared with them in his lifetime, and, immediately following his death, rescued his unpublished writings for posterity.[17]
Spinoza challenged the divine origin of the Hebrew Bible, the nature of God, and the earthly power wielded by religious authorities, Jewish and Christian alike. He was frequently called an atheist by contemporaries, although nowhere in his work does Spinoza argue against the existence of God.[18][19] This can be explained by the fact that, unlike contemporary 21st-century scholars, "When seventeenth-century readers accused Spinoza of atheism, they usually meant that he challenged doctrinal orthodoxy, particularly on moral issues, and not that he denied God’s existence."[20] His theological studies were inseparable from his thinking on politics; he is grouped with Hobbes, John Locke, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Immanuel Kant, who "helped establish the genre of political writing called secular theology."[21]
Spinoza's philosophy encompasses nearly every area of philosophical discourse, including metaphysics, epistemology, political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. With an enduring reputation as one of the most original and influential thinkers of the seventeenth century, Rebecca Goldstein dubbed him "the renegade Jew who gave us modernity."[22]
Family background
Spinoza's ancestors, adherents of Crypto-Judaism, faced persecution during the Portuguese Inquisition, enduring torture and public displays of humiliation.[24] In 1597, his paternal grandfather's family left Vidigueira for Nantes and lived as New Christians, eventually transferring to Holland for an unknown reason.[25] His maternal ancestors were a leading Oporto commercial family,[26] and his maternal grandfather was a foremost merchant who drifted between Judaism and Christianity.[27] Spinoza was raised by his grandmother from ages six to nine and probably learned much about his family history from her.[28]
Spinoza's father Michael was a prominent and wealthy merchant in Amsterdam with a business that had wide geographical reach.[29] In 1649, he was elected to serve as an administrative officer of the recently united congregation Talmud Torah.[30] He married his cousin Rachael d’Espinosa, daughter of his uncle Abraham d’Espinosa, who was also a community leader and Michael's business partner.[31] Marrying cousins was common in the Portuguese Jewish community then, giving Michael access to his father-in-law's commercial network and capital.[32] Rachel's children died in infancy, and she died in 1627.[33][32]
After Rachel's death, Michael married Hannah Deborah, with whom he had five children. His second wife brought a dowry to the marriage that was absorbed into Michael's business capital instead of being set aside for her children, which may have caused a grudge between Spinoza and his father.[34] The family lived on the artificial island on the south side of the River Amstel, known as the Vlooienburg, at the fifth house along the Houtgracht canal.[23] The Jewish quarter was not formally divided. The family lived close to the Bet Ya'acov synagogue, and nearby were Christians, including the artist Rembrandt.[35] Miriam was their first child, followed by Isaac who was expected to take over as head of the family and the commercial enterprise but died in 1649.[34] Baruch Espinosa, the third child, was born on 24 November 1632 and named as per tradition for his maternal grandfather.[1]
Spinoza's younger brother Gabriel was born in 1634, followed by another sister Rebecca. Miriam married Samuel de Caceres but died shortly after childbirth. According to Jewish practice, Samuel had to marry his former sister-in-law Rebecca.[36] Following his brother's death, Spinoza's place as head of the family and its business meant scholarly ambitions were pushed aside.[29] Spinoza's mother, Hannah Deborah, died when Spinoza was six years old. Michael's third wife, Esther, raised Spinoza from age nine; she lacked formal Jewish knowledge due to growing up a New Christian and only spoke Portuguese at home. The marriage was childless.[37] Spinoza's sister Rebecca, brother Gabriel, and nephew eventually migrated to Curaçao, and the remaining family joined them after Spinoza's death.[36]
Uriel da Costa's early influence
Through his mother, Spinoza was related to the philosopher Uriel da Costa, who stirred controversy in Amsterdam's Portuguese Jewish community.[38] Da Costa questioned traditional Christian and Jewish beliefs, asserting that, for example, their origins were based on human inventions instead of God's revelation. His clashes with the religious establishment led to his excommunication twice by rabbinic authorities, who imposed humiliation and social exclusion.[39] In 1639, as part of an agreement to be readmitted, da Costa had to prostrate himself for worshippers to step over him. He died in 1640, reportedly committing suicide.[40]
During his childhood, Spinoza was likely unaware of his family connection with Uriel da Costa; still, as a teenager, he certainly heard discussions about him.[41] Steven Nadler explains that, although da Costa died when Spinoza was eight, his ideas shaped Spinoza's intellectual development. Amsterdam’s Jewish communities long remembered and discussed da Costa's skepticism about organized religion, denial of the soul's immortality, and the idea that Moses didn't write the Torah, influencing Spinoza's intellectual journey.[42]
School days and the family business
Spinoza attended the Talmud Torah school adjoining the Bet Ya'acov synagogue, a few doors down from his home, headed by the senior Rabbi Saul Levi Morteira.[43][44] Instructed in Spanish, the language of learning and literature, students in the elementary school learned to read the prayerbook and the Torah in Hebrew, translate the weekly section into Spanish, and study Rashi's commentary.[45] Spinoza's name does not appear on the registry after age fourteen, and, likely, he never studied with rabbis such as Manasseh ben Israel and Morteira. Spinoza possibly went to work around fourteen and almost certainly was needed in his father's business after his brother died in 1649.[46]
Before the First Anglo-Dutch War from 1652-1654, England's capture of Dutch boats caused the Spinoza firm to lose ships and cargo, severely affecting the business. The business was saddled with debt by the war's end from voyages ending badly and lost cargo, and pillaged ships during the war led to the firm's decline.[47][48] Spinoza's father died in 1654, making him the head of the family, responsible for organizing and leading the Jewish mourning rituals, and in a business partnership with his brother of their inherited firm.[49] As Spinoza's father had poor health for some years before his death, he was significantly involved in the business, putting his intellectual curiosity on hold.[50] Until 1656, he continued financially supporting the synagogue and attending services in compliance with synagogue conventions and practice.[51] By 1655, the family's wealth had evaporated and the business effectively ended.[50]
When his sister Rebekah disputed his inheritance seeking it for herself, he sued her to seek a court judgment, won the case, but then renounced his claim to the court's judgment in his favor and assigned his inheritance to her.[52] In March 1656, Spinoza filed suit with the Amsterdam municipal authorities to be declared an orphan since he was still a legal minor. He sought relief through Dutch law instead of the Jewish authorities, from whom he had become increasingly estranged. He won the civil lawsuit, allowing him to inherit his mother's estate without it being subject to his father's creditors and devote himself chiefly to the study of philosophy, especially the system expounded by Descartes, and optics.[53][clarification needed]
Intellectual explorations
Sometime between 1654 and 1658, Spinoza began to study Latin with Franciscus van den Enden, a former Jesuit who was a political radical and likely introduced Spinoza to scholastic and modern philosophy, including Descartes.[54][55] Spinoza adopted the Latin name, Benedictus de Spinoza, began boarding with Van den Enden, and began teaching in his school.[54][55]
During this period Spinoza also became acquainted with the Collegiants, an anti-clerical sect of Remonstrants with tendencies towards rationalism, and with the liberal faction among the Mennonites who had existed for a century but were close to the Remonstrants.[56] Many of his friends belonged to dissident Christian groups that met regularly as discussion groups and typically rejected the authority of established churches and traditional dogmas.[57] In the second half of the 1650s and the first half of the 1660s Spinoza became acquainted with several persons who would themselves emerge as unorthodox thinkers: this group, known as the Spinoza Circle, included Pieter Balling, Jarich Jelles, Lodewijk Meyer, Johannes Bouwmeester and Adriaen Koerbagh.
Expulsion from the Jewish community
Amsterdam was tolerant of religious diversity so long as it was practiced discreetly. Jews were not legally confined to a ghetto, and the city presented economic opportunities.[58] This community would have been concerned with protecting its reputation and not associating with Spinoza lest his controversial views provide the basis for possible persecution or expulsion.[59] Spinoza did not openly break with Jewish authorities until his father died in 1654 when he became public and defiant. His break was not sudden but the result of lengthy and stressful religious, financial, and legal clashes involving his business and synagogue. Spinoza went against synagogue regulations by filing suit in a civil court rather than with the synagogue authorities to renounce his father's heritage.[53] Pierre Bayle recounts in Dictionnaire Historique et Critique that Spinoza was lightly wounded in a knife attack exiting a theater; the story is unlikely, but it shows how drastically his life was changing in 1655.[52][60]
On 27 July 1656, the Sepharadi Talmud Torah congregation of Amsterdam, which included Aboab de Fonseca,[61] issued a writ of herem against the 23-year-old Spinoza.[52][62][63] The Talmud Torah congregation routinely issued censures on matters great and small. Still, Spinoza's censure was unusually harsh, with language that does not appear in any other censure known to have been issued by the Portuguese-Jewish community in Amsterdam.[64] The exact reason for expelling Spinoza is not stated.[65] The censure refers only to the "abominable heresies [horrendas heregias] that he practised and taught", to his "monstrous deeds", and to the testimony of witnesses "in the presence of the said Espinoza". There is no record of such testimony, but there appear to have been several likely reasons for the issuance of the censure.[66] Even though the Amsterdam municipal authorities were not directly involved in Spinoza's censure itself, the town council expressly ordered the Portuguese-Jewish community to regulate their conduct and ensure that the community kept a strict observance of Jewish law.[67] Other evidence makes it clear that the danger of upsetting the civil authorities was never far from mind, such as bans adopted by the synagogue on public wedding or funeral processions and on discussing religious matters with Christians, lest such activity might "disturb the liberty we enjoy".[68] The issuance of Spinoza's censure was an exercise in self-censorship by the Portuguese-Jewish community in Amsterdam.[69]
Spinoza had already taken the initiative to separate himself from the Talmud Torah congregation and was criticizing Judaism through his philosophical works, such as the Part I of Ethics.[70] He had probably stopped attending services at the synagogue, either after the lawsuit with his sister or after the knife attack on its steps. He might already have been voicing the view expressed later in his Theological-Political Treatise that the civil authorities should suppress Judaism as harmful to the Jews themselves. Either for financial or other reasons,[71][55] he had in any case effectively stopped contributing to the synagogue by March 1656. Unlike most censures issued by the Amsterdam congregation, since the censure did not lead to repentance, it was never withdrawn. After the censure, Spinoza is said to have addressed an Apologia (defense), written in Spanish, to the elders of the synagogue, defending his views as orthodox, and condemning the rabbis.[72]
Spinoza's expulsion from the Jewish community did not lead to his conversion to Christianity. Spinoza took the Latinized name, Benedictus de Spinoza, maintained a close association with the Collegiants (a liberal Protestant sect of Remonstrants) and Quakers,[73] moved to a town near the Collegiants' headquarters, and was buried at the Protestant Church, Nieuwe Kerk, The Hague, since burial was a sectarian matter and he was ineligible to be buried in the Jewish cemetery.[74] Spinoza did not maintain a sense of Jewish identity because, in his view, being a secular and assimilated Jew was nonsense.[75] Spinoza scholar Yirmiyahu Yovel questioned whether Spinoza could be categorized as the first secular Jew since he was still regarded as a Jew despite not adhering to Jewish law or belonging to the Jewish community.[76]
Career as a philosopher
Spinoza has been called "the reticent radical", who proceeded cautiously for the next 22 years, quietly writing and studying as a private scholar.[77] He initially taught in the school of his Latin tutor, Franciscus van den Enden, with whom he boarded for a time. Later upon leaving Amsterdam, he earned a living as a lens grinder. He also received some financial assistance from supporters of his intellectual stance. After the herem, the Amsterdam municipal authorities expelled Spinoza from Amsterdam, "responding to the appeals of the rabbis, and also of the Calvinist clergy, who had been vicariously offended by the existence of a free thinker in the synagogue".
He spent a brief time in or near the village of Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, where the Portuguese Jews had been allowed to buy land to establish Beth Haim, a Jewish burying ground. Spinoza's parents and grandparents are buried there. Spinoza returned soon afterward to Amsterdam and lived there quietly for several years, giving private philosophy lessons and grinding lenses, before leaving the city in 1660 or 1661.[72] During this time in Amsterdam, Spinoza wrote his Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being, which he never published in his lifetime, assuming with good reason that it might get suppressed. Two Dutch translations of it survive, discovered about 1810.[72]
In 1660 or 1661, Spinoza moved from Amsterdam to Rijnsburg (near Leiden), the center of Dutch Remonstrants known as the Collegiants.[3] In Rijnsburg, he began work on his Descartes' "Principles of Philosophy" as well as on his masterpiece, the Ethics. In 1663, he returned briefly to Amsterdam, where he finished and published Descartes' "Principles of Philosophy", the only work published in his lifetime under his own name, and then moved the same year to Voorburg.
In Voorburg, Spinoza continued work on his magnum opus, titled posthumously Ethics, and corresponded with scientists, philosophers, and theologians throughout Europe. He published in Latin, anonymously, and with false printer information Theological-Political Treatise (TTP) in 1670, in defense of secular and constitutional government, and in support of Jan de Witt, the Grand Pensionary of Holland, against the Stadtholder, the Prince of Orange.
Spinoza deliberately chose to write in Latin, which meant that his message was restricted to those learned few who knew the scholarly language. Dutch philosopher and physician, Adriaan Koerbagh attempted to publish a work in Dutch questioning the Trinity as a concept, asserted that Jesus was a human being, and that the scripture was not divinely inspired, was proposing ideas that also appear in Spinoza writings in Latin. Koerbagh's "A Flower Garden of All Sorts of Delights" in Dutch came to the attention of the authorities, who incarcerated him to be followed by exile, but he died while in prison. Spinoza did not wish to die a martyr to his ideas and exercised caution by publishing his 1670 TTP anonymously in Latin and refraining from publishing any further works. Unlike Koerbagh, Spinoza died at home in his own bed.[78]
Leibniz visited Spinoza and claimed that Spinoza's life was in danger when supporters of the Prince of Orange murdered de Witt in 1672.[79] While the TTP was published anonymously, the work did not long remain so, and de Witt's enemies characterized it as "forged in Hell by a renegade Jew and the Devil, and issued with the knowledge of Jan de Witt". It was placed on the Catholic Church's Index of Prohibited Works in 1679.[80]
In 1670, Spinoza moved to The Hague, where he lived on a small pension from Jan de Witt and a small annuity from the brother of his dead friend, Simon de Vries.[81] He worked on the manuscript of what was later called Ethics, wrote an unfinished Hebrew grammar, began his Political Treatise (TP), left unfinished at his death, wrote two scientific essays ("On the Rainbow" and "On the Calculation of Chances"), and began a Dutch translation of the Bible (which he later destroyed).[81] Spinoza was offered the chair of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. He refused it, perhaps because of the possibility that it might in some way curb his freedom of thought.[82]
Spinoza also corresponded with Peter Serrarius, a radical Protestant and millenarian merchant. Serrarius was a patron to Spinoza after Spinoza was expelled from the Jewish community. He acted as an intermediary for Spinoza's correspondence, sending and receiving letters of the philosopher to and from third parties. Spinoza and Serrarius maintained their relationship until Serrarius died in 1669.[83]
By the beginning of the 1660s, Spinoza's name became more widely known. The Secretary of the British Royal Society Henry Oldenburg paid him visits and became a correspondent with Spinoza for the rest of his life.[84] In 1676, Leibniz came to the Hague to discuss the unpublished Ethics, Spinoza's principal philosophical work, parts of which apparently had circulated in manuscript form.[85]
Lens-grinding and optics
Spinoza earned a modest living from lens-grinding and instrument making, yet he was involved in important optical investigations of the day while living in Voorburg, through correspondence and friendships with scientist Christiaan Huygens and mathematician Johannes Hudde, including debate over microscope design with Huygens, favoring small objectives[86] and collaborating on calculations for a prospective 40-foot (12 m) focal length telescope which would have been one of the largest in Europe at the time.[87] He was known for making not just lenses but also telescopes and microscopes.[88] The quality of Spinoza's lenses was much praised by Christiaan Huygens, among others.[89] In fact, his technique and instruments were so esteemed that Constantijn Huygens ground a "clear and bright" telescope lens with focal length of 42 feet (13 m) in 1687 from one of Spinoza's grinding dishes, ten years after his death.[90] He was said by anatomist Theodor Kerckring to have produced an "excellent" microscope, the quality of which was the foundation of Kerckring's anatomy claims.[91] During his time as a lens and instrument maker, he was also supported by small but regular donations from close friends.[57]
Death and rescue of his unpublished writings
Spinoza's health began to fail in 1676, dying in The Hague on 21 February 1677 at age 44, attended by a physician friend, Georg Herman Schuller. Although he had been ill with some form of lung affliction, described as "ex phthisi [from consumption]", perhaps complicated by silicosis brought on by grinding glass lenses,[92] his death on that particular day was unexpected by himself or his landlord and landlady with whom he lived, and he died without leaving a will.[93][94] There were assertions that he had repented his philosophical stances on his deathbed, but all credible evidence points to his dying unrepentant and in tranquility.[95] The first biography of Spinoza,[96] by Lutheran preacher Johannes Colerus (1647-1707), was prompted to investigate Spinoza's last days.[97]
Spinoza was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) on the Spui four days after his death, on 25 February, inside the church, with six others in the same vault. At the time there was no memorial plaque for Spinoza. In the 18th century, the vault was emptied and the "remnants scattered over the earth of the churchyard." The memorial plaque visitors now see is outside, where some of his remains are part of the churchyard's soil.[98]
When he died, friends rescued his personal belongings and papers, most importantly his unpublished manuscripts. These were stored in a cabinet attached to his writing desk. His supporters swiftly took them away for safekeeping from seizure by those wishing to suppress his writings. They do not appear in the inventory of his possessions at death. Within a year of his death, his supporters translated his manuscripts written in Latin into Dutch, and subsequently into other vernacular languages. His works were banned by Dutch authorities and later the Roman Catholic Church.[99][100]
Spinoza published little in his lifetime and most of his formal writings were in Latin, which would have reached only a small number of readers. He actively told supporters not to translate his works, but following his death, his supporters published his works posthumously, in Latin and Dutch. Other translations to vulgar languages followed. A descriptive bibliography has been published that contextualizes all aspects of the publication history of Spinoza's writings from manuscript to print.[101]
The reaction to the anonymously published work, Theologico-Political Treatise (TTP)(1670), was extremely unfavorable. Spinoza abstained from publishing further, but his writings circulated among his supporters in manuscript form during his lifetime. Wary and independent, he wore a signet ring which he used to mark his letters and which was engraved with the word caute (Latin for "cautiously") underneath a rose, itself a symbol of secrecy.[102]
The Ethics and all other works, apart from the Descartes' Principles of Philosophy, which was published under his own name, and the Theologico-Political Treatise, published anonymously, appeared in print after his 1677 death. The Opera Posthuma was edited by his friends in secrecy to prevent confiscation and destruction of manuscripts. The Ethics contains many still-unresolved obscurities and is written with a forbidding mathematical structure modeled on Euclid's geometry and has been described as a "superbly cryptic masterwork".[103]
Correspondence
Few letters are extant for such an important intellectual figure and none before 1661. Practically all of them are of philosophical, technical nature, since "the political and ecclesiastical persecution of the time led the original editors of the Opera Posthuma his friends Lodewijk Meyer, Georg Hermann Schuller, and Johannes Bouwmeester—to delete personal matters and to disregard letters of a personal nature".[104] Spinoza engaged in correspondence from December 1664 to June 1665 with Willem van Blijenbergh, an amateur Calvinist theologian, who questioned Spinoza on the definition of evil. Later in 1665, Spinoza notified Oldenburg that he had started to work on a new book, the Theologico-Political Treatise, published in 1670. Leibniz disagreed harshly with Spinoza in his own manuscript "Refutation of Spinoza",[105] but he is also known to have met with Spinoza on at least one occasion[84][106] and his own work bears some striking resemblances to specific important parts of Spinoza's philosophy (see: Monadology). Leibniz was concerned when his name was not redacted from a letter to Spinoza that was printed in the Opera Posthuma.[107]
In a letter, written in December 1675 and sent to Albert Burgh, who wanted to defend Catholicism, Spinoza clearly explained his view of both Catholicism and Islam. He stated that both religions are made "to deceive the people and to constrain the minds of men". He also states that Islam far surpasses Catholicism in doing so.[108][109] The Tractatus de Deo, Homine, ejusque Felicitate (Treatise on God, man and his happiness) was one of the last of Spinoza's works to be published, between 1851[110] and 1862.[111]
Spinoza's philosophy is explicated in his two major publications originally written in Latin, the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP) (1670) and Ethics, published posthumously in Latin and Dutch. His incomplete Tractatus Politicus was also published posthumously.
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (TTP)
Despite its being published in Latin rather than a vernacular language, this 1670 treatise published in Spinoza's lifetime caused a huge reaction, described as "one of the most significant events in European intellectual history,"[112][113]
Ethics
The Ethics has been associated with that of Leibniz and René Descartes as part of the rationalist school of thought,[106] which includes the assumption that ideas correspond to reality perfectly, in the same way that mathematics is supposed to be an exact representation of the world. The writings of René Descartes have been described as "Spinoza's starting point".[103] Spinoza's first publication was his 1663 geometric exposition of proofs using Euclid's model with definitions and axioms of Descartes' Principles of Philosophy. Following Descartes, Spinoza aimed to understand truth through logical deductions from 'clear and distinct ideas', a process which always begins from the 'self-evident truths' of axioms.[114] However, his actual project does not end there: from his first work to his last one, there runs a thread of "attending to the highest good" (which also is the highest truth) and thereby achieving a state of peace and harmony, either in the metaphysical or political manner. In this light, the Principles of Philosophy might be viewed as an "exercise in geometric method and philosophy", paving the way for numerous concepts and conclusions that would define his philosophy (see Cogitata Metaphysica).[115]
Metaphysics
Spinoza's metaphysics consists of one thing, substance, and its modifications (modes). Early in The Ethics Spinoza argues that there is only one substance, which is absolutely infinite, self-caused, and eternal. He calls this substance "God", or "Nature". In fact, he takes these two terms to be synonymous (in the Latin the phrase he uses is "Deus sive Natura"). For Spinoza the whole of the natural universe consists of one substance, God, or, what is the same, Nature, and its modifications (modes).
It cannot be overemphasized how the rest of Spinoza's philosophy—his philosophy of mind, his epistemology, his psychology, his moral philosophy, his political philosophy, and his philosophy of religion—flows more or less directly from the metaphysical underpinnings in Part I of the Ethics.[116]
Substance, attributes, and modes
Spinoza sets forth a vision of Being, illuminated by his awareness of God. They may seem strange at first sight. To the question "What is?" he replies: "Substance, its attributes, and modes".
Following Maimonides, Spinoza defined substance as "that which is in itself and is conceived through itself", meaning that it can be understood without any reference to anything external.[118] Being conceptually independent also means that the same thing is ontologically independent, depending on nothing else for its existence and being the 'cause of itself' (causa sui).[118] A mode is something which cannot exist independently but rather must do so as part of something else on which it depends, including properties (for example colour), relations (such as size) and individual things.[119] Modes can be further divided into 'finite' and 'infinite' ones, with the latter being evident in every finite mode (he gives the examples of "motion" and "rest").[120] The traditional understanding of an attribute in philosophy is similar to Spinoza's modes, though he uses that word differently.[119] To him, an attribute is "that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance", and there are possibly an infinite number of them.[121] It is the essential nature which is "attributed" to reality by intellect.[122]
Spinoza defined God as "a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence", and since "no cause or reason" can prevent such a being from existing, it therefore must exist.[122] This is a form of the ontological argument, which is claimed to prove the existence of God, but Spinoza went further in stating that it showed that only God exists.[123] Accordingly, he stated that "Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can exist or be conceived without God".[123][124] This means that God is identical with the universe, an idea which he encapsulated in the phrase "Deus sive Natura" ('God or Nature'), which has been interpreted by some as atheism or pantheism.[125] Though there are many more of them, God can be known by humans either through the attribute of extension or the attribute of thought.[126] Thought and extension represent giving complete accounts of the world in mental or physical terms.[127] To this end, he says that "the mind and the body are one and the same thing, which is conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension".[128]
After stating his proof for God's existence, Spinoza addresses who "God" is. Spinoza believed that God is "the sum of the natural and physical laws of the universe and certainly not an individual entity or creator".[129] Spinoza attempts to prove that God is just the substance of the universe by first stating that substances do not share attributes or essences and then demonstrating that God is a "substance" with an infinite number of attributes, thus the attributes possessed by any other substances must also be possessed by God. Therefore, God is just the sum of all the substances of the universe. God is the only substance in the universe, and everything is a part of God. This view was described by Charles Hartshorne as Classical Pantheism.[130]
Spinoza argues that "things could not have been produced by God in any other way or in any other order than is the case".[131] Therefore, concepts such as 'freedom' and 'chance' have little meaning.[125] This picture of Spinoza's determinism is illuminated in Ethics: "the infant believes that it is by free will that it seeks the breast; the angry boy believes that by free will he wishes vengeance; the timid man thinks it is with free will he seeks flight; the drunkard believes that by a free command of his mind he speaks the things which when sober he wishes he had left unsaid. … All believe that they speak by a free command of the mind, whilst, in truth, they have no power to restrain the impulse which they have to speak."[132] In his letter to G. H. Schuller (Letter 58), he wrote: "men are conscious of their desire and unaware of the causes by which [their desires] are determined."[133] He also held that knowledge of true causes of passive emotion can transform it into an active emotion, thus anticipating one of the key ideas of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis.[134]
According to Eric Schliesser, Spinoza was skeptical regarding the possibility of knowledge of nature and as a consequence at odds with scientists such as Galileo and Huygens.[135]
Causality
Though the principle of sufficient reason is most commonly associated with Gottfried Leibniz,[136] it is arguably found in its strongest form in Spinoza's philosophy.[137] Within the context of Spinoza's philosophical system, the principle can be understood to unify causation and explanation.[137] What this means is that for Spinoza, questions regarding the reason why a given phenomenon is the way it is (or exists) are always answerable, and are always answerable in terms of the relevant cause(s). This constitutes a rejection of teleological, or final causation, except possibly in a more restricted sense for human beings.[137] Given this, Spinoza's views regarding causality and modality begin to make much more sense.
Spinoza has also been described as an "Epicurean materialist",[103] specifically in reference to his opposition to Cartesian mind-body dualism. This view was held by Epicureans before him, as they believed that atoms with their probabilistic paths were the only substance that existed fundamentally.[138][139] Spinoza, however, deviated significantly from Epicureans by adhering to strict determinism, much like the Stoics before him, in contrast to the Epicurean belief in the probabilistic path of atoms, which is more in line with contemporary thought on quantum mechanics.[138][140]
The emotions
One thing which seems, on the surface, to distinguish Spinoza's view of the emotions from both Descartes' and Hume's pictures of them is that he takes the emotions to be cognitive in some important respect. Jonathan Bennett claims that "Spinoza mainly saw emotions as caused by cognitions. [However] he did not say this clearly enough and sometimes lost sight of it entirely."[141] Spinoza provides several demonstrations which purport to show truths about how human emotions work. The picture presented is, according to Bennett, "unflattering, coloured as it is by universal egoism".[142]
Ethical philosophy
Spinoza's notion of blessedness figures centrally in his ethical philosophy. Spinoza writes that blessedness (or salvation or freedom), "consists, namely, in a constant and eternal love of God, or in God’s love for men.[143] Philosopher Jonathan Bennett interprets this as Spinoza wanting "'blessedness' to stand for the most elevated and desirable state one could possibly be in."[144] Understanding what is meant by "most elevated and desirable state" requires understanding Spinoza's notion of conatus (striving, but not necessarily with any teleological baggage)[citation needed] and that "perfection" refers not to (moral) value, but to completeness. Given that individuals are identified as mere modifications of the infinite Substance, it follows that no individual can ever be fully complete, i.e., perfect, or blessed. Absolute perfection, is, in Spinoza's thought, reserved solely for Substance. Nevertheless, modes can attain a lesser form of blessedness, namely, that of pure understanding of oneself as one really is, i.e., as a definite modification of Substance in a certain set of relationships with everything else in the universe. That this is what Spinoza has in mind can be seen at the end of the Ethics, in E5P24 and E5P25, where Spinoza makes two final key moves, unifying the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical propositions he has developed over the course of the work. In E5P24, he links the understanding of particular things to the understanding of God, or Substance; in E5P25, the conatus of the mind is linked to the third kind of knowledge (Intuition). From here, it is a short step to the connection of Blessedness with the amor dei intellectualis ("intellectual love of God").[citation needed]
Tractatus Politicus (Political Treatise) (TP)
This unfinished treatise in Latin expounds Spinoza's ideas about forms of government. As with the Ethics, this work was published posthumously by his circle of supporters in Latin and in Dutch. The subtitle is "In quo demonstratur, quomodo Societas, ubi Imperium Monarchicum locum habet, sicut et ea, ubi Optimi imperant, debet institui, ne in Tyrannidem labatur, et ut Pax, Libertasque civium inviolata maneat." ("In which it is demonstrated how a society, may it be a monarchy or an aristocracy, can be best governed, so as not to fall into tyranny, and so that the peace and liberty of the citizens remain unviolated").
Although Spinoza’s political and theological thought was radical on many ways, he held traditional views on the place of women. In the TP, he writes briefly on the last page of the TP that women were “naturally” subordinate to men, stating bluntly his women are “by nature” not by “institutional practice” subordinate to men. Both his major biographers in English remark on his view of women. Biographer Steven Nadler is clearly disappointed by Spinoza's only statement on women. “It is unfortunate that the very last words we have by him, at the end of the extant chapters of the Political Treatise, are a short digression … on the unsuitability of women to hold political power.”[145] Likewise Jonathan I. Israel says that Spinoza's views are “hugely disappointing to the modern reader” and that most that can be said in his defense is that “in his age rampant tyrannizing over women was indeed universal.” He goes on to say, "one may legitimately wonder why did Spinoza, if he was to be consistent, not apply his highly sceptical and innovative, for his time uniquely subversive, de-legtimizing general principle likewise to men's tyrannizing over women."[146] One scholar has attempted to rationalize Spinoza’s views excluding women from full citizenship.[147] But the topic has not attracted major consideration in Spinoza studies.
Spinoza was considered to be an atheist because he used the word "God" [Deus] to signify a concept that was different from that of traditional Judeo–Christian monotheism. "Spinoza expressly denies personality and consciousness to God; he has neither intelligence, feeling, nor will; he does not act according to purpose, but everything follows necessarily from his nature, according to law...."[148] Thus, Spinoza's cool, indifferent God differs from the concept of an anthropomorphic, fatherly God who cares about humanity.[149]
In 1785, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi published a condemnation of Spinoza's pantheism, after Gotthold Lessing was thought to have confessed on his deathbed to being a "Spinozist", which was the equivalent in his time of being called an atheist. Jacobi claimed that Spinoza's doctrine was pure materialism, because all Nature and God are said to be nothing but extended substance. This, for Jacobi, was the result of Enlightenment rationalism and it would finally end in absolute atheism. Moses Mendelssohn disagreed with Jacobi, saying that there is no actual difference between theism and pantheism. The issue became a major intellectual and religious concern for European civilization at the time.
The attraction of Spinoza's philosophy to late 18th-century Europeans was that it provided an alternative to materialism, atheism, and deism. Three of Spinoza's ideas strongly appealed to them:
- the unity of all that exists;
- the regularity of all that happens;
- the identity of spirit and nature.[150]
By 1879, Spinoza's pantheism was praised by many, but was considered by some to be alarming and dangerously inimical.[151]
Spinoza's "God or Nature" (Deus sive Natura) provided a living, natural God, in contrast to Isaac Newton's first cause argument and the dead mechanism of Julien Offray de La Mettrie's (1709–1751) work, Man a Machine (L'homme machine). Coleridge and Shelley saw in Spinoza's philosophy a religion of nature.[57] Novalis called him the "God-intoxicated man".[103][152] Spinoza inspired the poet Shelley to write his essay "The Necessity of Atheism".[103]
It is a widespread belief that Spinoza equated God with the material universe. He has therefore been called the "prophet"[153] and "prince"[154] and most eminent expounder of pantheism. More specifically, in a letter to Henry Oldenburg he states, "as to the view of certain people that I identify God with Nature (taken as a kind of mass or corporeal matter), they are quite mistaken".[155] For Spinoza, the universe (cosmos) is a mode under two attributes of Thought and Extension. God has infinitely many other attributes which are not present in the world.
According to German philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883–1969), when Spinoza wrote Deus sive Natura (Latin for 'God or Nature'), Spinoza meant God was natura naturans (nature doing what nature does; literally, 'nature naturing'), not natura naturata (nature already created; literally, 'nature natured'). Jaspers believed that Spinoza, in his philosophical system, did not mean to say that God and Nature are interchangeable terms, but rather that God's transcendence was attested by his infinitely many attributes, and that two attributes known by humans, namely Thought and Extension, signified God's immanence.[156] Even God under the attributes of thought and extension cannot be identified strictly with our world. That world is of course "divisible"; it has parts. But Spinoza said, "no attribute of a substance can be truly conceived from which it follows that the substance can be divided", meaning that one cannot conceive an attribute in a way that leads to division of substance. He also said, "a substance which is absolutely infinite is indivisible" (Ethics, Part I, Propositions 12 and 13).[157] Following this logic, our world should be considered as a mode under two attributes of thought and extension. Therefore, according to Jaspers, the pantheist formula "One and All" would apply to Spinoza only if the "One" preserves its transcendence and the "All" were not interpreted as the totality of finite things.[156]
Martial Guéroult (1891–1976) suggested the term "panentheism", rather than "pantheism" to describe Spinoza's view of the relation between God and the world. The world is not God, but it is, in a strong sense, "in" God. Not only do finite things have God as their cause; they cannot be conceived without God.[157] However, American panentheist philosopher Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) insisted on the term Classical Pantheism to describe Spinoza's view.[130]
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spinoza's God is an "infinite intellect" (Ethics 2p11c) — all knowing (2p3), and capable of loving both himself—and us, insofar as we are part of his perfection (5p35c). And if the mark of a personal being is that it is one towards which we can entertain personal attitudes, then we should note too that Spinoza recommends amor intellectualis dei (the intellectual love of God) as the supreme good for man (5p33). However, the matter is complex. Spinoza's God does not have free will (1p32c1), he does not have purposes or intentions (1 appendix), and Spinoza insists that "neither intellect nor will pertain to the nature of God" (1p17s1). Moreover, while we may love God, we need to remember that God is really not the kind of being who could ever love us back. "He who loves God cannot strive that God should love him in return", says Spinoza (5p19).[158]
Steven Nadler suggests that settling the question of Spinoza's atheism or pantheism depends on an analysis of attitudes. If pantheism is associated with religiosity, then Spinoza is not a pantheist, since Spinoza believes that the proper stance to take towards God is not one of reverence or religious awe, but instead one of objective study and reason, since taking the religious stance would leave one open to the possibility of error and superstition.[70]
Similarities between Spinoza's philosophy and Eastern philosophical traditions have been discussed by many authors. The 19th-century German Sanskritist Theodor Goldstücker was one of the early figures to notice the similarities between Spinoza's religious conceptions and the Vedanta tradition of India, writing that Spinoza's thought was "... so exact a representation of the ideas of the Vedanta, that we might have suspected its founder to have borrowed the fundamental principles of his system from the Hindus, did his biography not satisfy us that he was wholly unacquainted with their doctrines..."[159][160] Max Müller also noted the striking similarities between Vedanta and the system of Spinoza, equating the Brahman in Vedanta to Spinoza's 'Substantia.'[161]