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The Philosophy of Benedict Spinoza




TABLE OF CONTENTS


I.


II.


III.


IV.


V.


VI.


General
Notions


Life
and Works


Metaphysics


Man
and Ethics


Politics


Conclusion




I. General Notions


Of the
two problems left unsolved by Descartes (the determination of the relationship
God and the world and between the soul and the body), Spinoza answers the first
by affirming the unity of substance and reducing the world to a modification of
this single substance. Neo-Platonic thought and the definition of substance
given by Descartes (that which so exists as to need no other for its existence)
justify, as far as Spinoza is concerned, the abolition of all duality, and the
affirmation of the oneness of substance. This accomplished, he logically and
inexorably develops all the pantheistic consequences implicit in the oneness of
substance.


The
second problem left by Descartes (the relationship between the soul -- "res cogitans" -- and the
body -- "res extensa")
remains open and unsolved in Spinoza. He reduces these two Cartesian substances
to two attributes; and to explain their mutual dependence he is obliged to
affirm dogmatically the existence of the psycho-physical law, in virtue of
which what happens in the "attribute" of the soul automatically finds
its correlative in the "attribute" of the body.


II. Life and Works


Baruch
(or, as it was often rendered in its Latin equivalent, Benedictus)
Spinoza (picture) was
born in Amsterdam in 1632 of Jewish parents who
had emigrated to Holland from the Iberian Peninsula. He received his early
education in the Jewish academy of Amsterdam, where he acquired a knowledge of Scripture and of medieval Hebrew philosophy.
The rationalism of his thinking while he was a student for the rabbinate
resulted in his being invited to retract certain heterodox views. But in 1656,
when he refused to make the retraction, he was expelled and excommunicated from
the Synagogue of Amsterdam, and exiled from the city by the Protestant
authority.


After
a brief period of wandering, he settled down at The Hague, where he lived quietly,
absorbed in the formulation of his system of thought. He provided for his
limited material needs by preparing optical lenses. A small group of friends
also gave him aid. During this time he refused a professorship at Heidelberg rather than compromise his
freedom of thought. Wasted away by tuberculosis, he died at The Hague on February
21, 1677.
His worldly possessions were barely sufficient to pay the debts contracted
during his illness.


His
principal works are: Tractatus brevis de Deo, De homine et ejus Felicitate
(Short Treatise Concerning God, Man and His Happiness); Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus (Theological-Political
Treatise), which is unfinished; and Ethica
More Geometrico Demonstrata
(Ethics Demonstrated Through the Method of Geometry), his greatest work, which
was published posthumously.


III. Metaphysics


Spinoza
begins with the Cartesian concept of substance: that
which exists by itself and which is conceived by
itself -- which means, that thing whose concept has no need of the
concept of any other thing in order to be formed. Spinoza logically and
rationally develops the latent pantheism of this Cartesian teaching to its
extreme consequences.


For
Spinoza, substance is the unconditioned, the
absolute, God. It is unique and embraces all reality (this is pure
pantheism); it is eternal, outside the limits of time, infinite, endowed with
infinite attributes or perfections.


Of
this infinity of attributes we know only two, thought
and extension. Thus Spinoza abolished
the Cartesian duality of substance ("res extensa" and "res cogitans"), reducing them to two perfections or
attributes of the single substance.


Substance
and its attributes constitute the "Natura naturans," God. From God conceived of as "Natura naturans" necessarily
proceed, as the unfolding of God's very nature, man and the world of things,
which Spinoza calls modes or modifications of the substance of God (Natura naturata"). The modes
are determinations, temporal and finite aspects, of the divine attributes,
thought and extension. They can be likened to the whitecaps on the ocean; they
appear for a moment, only to be reabsorbed by the same waters that have
produced them. We are thus in the realm of pure
monistic-immanentist pantheism, whose terms are
represented by substance, attributes and modes.


The
supreme law which governs Spinoza's reality is necessity:
ironbound laws bind God to His attributes, and also determine these attributes
in their modes of realization. God is free in the sense that nothing can impede
the necessary and spontaneous unfolding of His nature, and not in the sense
that He can choose different means of self-determination. Causality in God is a
natural and necessary process which excludes all purpose or finalism.


Another fundamental law of Spinoza's metaphysics is that of
psycho-physical parallelism,
which regulates the world of attributes, both in the divine substance and in
its derived modes. The attributes of thought and extension are irreducible,
according to the Cartesian concept, and any transition from one to the other is
impossible.


Still,
the series of phenomena manifesting themselves in thought coincides perfectly
with the series of phenomena of extension. In other words, the order of ideas
coincides with the order of bodies. This coincidence is guaranteed by the unity
of substance of which such phenomena are the appearances or manifestations.
Granted the irreducibility of thought to extension, no interaction between soul
and body is possible; but granted psycho-physical coincidence or agreement,
every manner of being and of operation of thought finds its equivalent in the
being and operation of extension. Thus on the one hand there is the idea of a
circle and on the other hand, corresponding to it, the actual existing circle.


In
virtue of this psycho-parallelism and of the irreducibility of thought to
extension, truth for Spinoza does not
consist in the agreement of the mind with the
thing, but in the correspondence of
the mind of the knowing subject with the mind of the known subject.


IV. Man and Ethics


In a
pantheistic metaphysics such as that of Spinoza, in which there is a single
substance and all things are but finite and temporal modifications of this
substance, there is no place for the traditional concept of man as a separate
substance existing in himself and composed of a rational soul and a material
body. Man, for Spinoza, is a derived
mode of the attributes of God; the spirit is a mode of the attribute
of thought, and the body a mode of the attribute of extension. Granted the
principle of the mutual independence of thought and extension, it would be
impossible to have any action of the spirit on the body.


Nor is
there place in the metaphysics of Spinoza for an ethics in which the end of man
is attained through human actions proceeding from free will. Free will is
denied by Spinoza as impossible. Acts of the will can be reduced to cognitive
acts, because by virtue of the psycho-physical law every act of knowledge has
its corresponding act in the practical sphere.


Even
though Spinoza denies the existence of the soul and the freedom of man, he
recognizes various psychical activities in both the rational and the physical
order. He envisions three stages of knowledge: As a further application of his
psycho-physical law, he believes that there is complete parallelism between
these three stages of knowledge, their three practical consequences, and the
three degrees of morality corresponding to them. He explains this as follows:
1. Sensible
cognition
is a subjective, inadequate and imperfect method of knowledge. It
apprehends the world in the multiplicity of individual beings and not in
relation to the eternal, to God. In this stage, man considers all beings
as absolutes, contending with each other and opposing him. The practical
aspect of this grade of knowledge is passion,
for man is here in a state of passivity in his relation to things. Errors
appear when man believes that he can make things different from what they
actually are, that he can act upon them. The moral condition corresponding
to this stage is slavery, for
man lives in actual dependence as regards the external world.
2. General
rational knowledge
embraces things in their indissoluble bond which, at the summit of the
chain of causality, connects them with God. Things are known "sub
specie aeternitatis." This is the stage of
science. In its practical aspect, such knowledge frees us from passion.
Man is in a state of contemplation
of the impassible and imperturbable order of the universe. The moral attitude
here is Stoicism.
3. Intuition is the knowledge of the
finite essences in their origin through the consideration of the necessary
and immutable order of the infinite essence of God. On this level, the
diversity of beings is known in the unity of the divine substance, and
man, while he is still limited by time, quantity and number, is freed from
the consequences of the mutations and imperfections of nature. This mode
of knowledge corresponds in the practical order to intellectual love of God, which is joy
and enthusiasm deriving from the knowledge of a particular thing, together
with the knowledge of its cause, God. For Spinoza, this love of man for
God is returned by God, not as love between persons (for personality is
excluded from his metaphysics), but inasmuch as man is identical, in a
pantheistic sense, with God. This is a moral state of perfection in which the love of man for
God is identical with the love of God for man, as it is merely love of God
for Himself.


V. Politics


Spinoza
treated the political problem and the religious problem in his Tractatus theologico-politicus.


The
methods of government of state and Church, for Spinoza, are not conducive to
the elaboration of a rational philosophy. Actions performed in view of the
temporal and eternal punishments threatened by the state or by the Church
depend on fear and hope, which for Spinoza are irrational passions. For
Spinoza, too, the ultimate end of man is, as we realize, for him to know God
through reason and to act in conformity with this knowledge. The state must aid
man in this rational knowledge of God.


Spinoza
holds that the state arose from a pact entered into by men, who at first lived
in a condition of irrational nature and in perpetual war. Through this pact the
members now composing the state renounced the use of force and violence in
favor of authority or a sovereign who is the center of the state. The sovereign
may use violence and force against the irrational instincts of his subjects.
But this use of force is limited by rationality. Thus, if it should happen that
the subjects are more rational than the sovereign, then
by psycho-physical parallelism the state would fall, to give place to the rise
of another state more rational than the first. Thus, according to Spinoza, has
come about the passage from the natural state to the rational state, with a
tendency to perfect rationality.


VI. Conclusion


Spinoza
developed Cartesian Rationalism to its extreme consequences. He begins with the
concept of substance, which, because it does not require another concept in
order to be understood and to exist, is a clear concept and must be one. But he concludes with the most absolute
pantheism.


Spinoza's
system did not meet with good reception at first, perhaps because it was not
understood. Idealism took it over because it found in it the principal
lineaments for a metaphysics in the idealist sense.


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