"I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." Albert Einstein
Spinoza in Wikipedia, Sanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Dutch Republic in the 17th century
The problem of Free Will and Determinacy
Spinoza's philosophy encompasses nearly every area of philosophical discourse, including metaphysics, epistemology, political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. It earned Spinoza an enduring reputation as one of the most important and original thinkers of the seventeenth century.
Biography
Baruch Spinoza was a Sephardi Jew whose ancestors had moved to Holland to escape the Portuguese Inquisition. Despite popular notions, he was not being educated to become a Rabbi in his youth. He was, however, well educated; he could read and write Latin and Hebrew, knew many religious and philosophy writings, and was learned in science, especially in optics.
On July 27, 1656, the 23 year old Spinoza was ex-communicated from his Jewish community in Amsterdam in a harsh indictment of heresy. Spinoza chose a simple life of a lens grinder, Spinoza rejected honors and offers of prestigious teaching positions that would limit what he could say. In 1663, Spinoza published a book on Cartesian philosophy, the only one he would publish under his own name. Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (A Theological-Political Treatise), which claimed that the Bible was not the Word of God and which set forth Spinoza's views on religious toleration and government, was published anonymously in 1670. His masterpiece, Ethics, was published in 1677, a year after his death. Spinoza died at age 44 of a lung illness probably caused by inhaling glass dust while grinding lens.
Spinoza's Major Works:
Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata (Ethics, demonstrated in geometric order)
(1676, pub. posthum. 1677)
Theologico-Politicus Treatise (Theological-Political Treatise)
(1670, published anonymously)
Spinoza's other books include a work on epistemology, Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (On the Improvement of the Understanding) (pub. 1677), and a further work on political philosophy (Tractatus Politicus) that remained unfinished at his death.
Spinoza's influence:
It was long acknowledged that Spinoza influenced biblical criticism and a small number of religious thinkers and philosophers immediately after his death. Until recently, it wasn't thought that Spinoza had a major impact on the Enlightenment; his ideas were thought to be revived in the 19th century by German idealists and the Romantics. His impact on 20th century psychology is also appreciated.
Until 30 years ago, Spinoza's philosophy from Ethics was taught in universities, but his political thought was ignored. In the past 20 years, his political work has been revived. In particular, Johnathan Israel, a foremost historian of the Enlightenment, has divided the Enlightenment between moderate and radical thinkers, with radicals being the ones advocated the most social leveling (political egalitarianism) and has argued that Spinoza's influence was behind the radicals' philosophic beliefs.
Ethics (partial text)
1. God or Nature
Spinoza was a monist. He believed that there is one substance; God. God was infinite, self-caused, eternal and indivisible, therefore nothing exists outside of God. God is the totality of everything that exists. God and "nature" are one in the same. Everything that exists is a mode of God, conceived of by humans through an attributes of thought and extension.
For Spinoza, there are two sides of Nature. First, there is the active, productive aspect of the universe; God and his attributes, from which all else follows. This is what Spinoza, employing the same terms he used in the Short Treatise, calls Natura naturans (“naturing Nature”). Strictly speaking, this is identical with God. The other aspect of the universe is that which is produced and sustained by the active aspect, Natura naturata, “natured Nature”. "By Natura naturata I understand whatever follows from the necessity of God’s nature, or from any of God’s attributes, i.e., all the modes of God’s attributes insofar as they are considered as things that are in God, and can neither be nor be conceived without God."
Attributes and Modes:
Spinoza claimed that the objects of the world are modes of God. The totally of attributes is the whole of God. Modes are expressed in the attributes of thought and extension (“a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways”). Because of the fundamental and underlying unity of Nature, or of Substance, Thought and Extension are just two different ways of “comprehending” one and the same Nature. Every material thing thus has its own particular idea—an eternal adequate idea—that expresses or represents it.
"A circle existing in nature and the idea of the existing circle,
are one and the same thing, which is explained through different attributes.
Therefore, whether we conceive nature under the attribute of Extension,
or under the attribute of Thought, or under any other attribute,
we shall find one and the same order, or one and the same connection of causes,
i.e., that the same things follow one another."
are one and the same thing, which is explained through different attributes.
Therefore, whether we conceive nature under the attribute of Extension,
or under the attribute of Thought, or under any other attribute,
we shall find one and the same order, or one and the same connection of causes,
i.e., that the same things follow one another."
Spinoza contends that "Deus sive Natura" ("God or nature") is a being of infinitely many attributes. His account of the nature of reality treats the physical and mental worlds as intertwined, causally related, and deriving from the same substance. In Parts 3 through 4 of Ethics, Spinoza describes how the human mind is affected by both mental and physical factors. He directly contests (Descartes') dualism. The universal substance emanates both body and mind; while they are different attributes, there is no fundamental difference between these aspects. This formulation is a historically significant solution to the mind–body problem known as neutral monism.
Necessity/Determinism:
Spinoza's system envisages a God that does not rule over the universe by Providence in which God can make changes, but a God which itself is the deterministic system of which everything in nature is a part. Spinoza argues that "things could not have been produced by God in any other way or in any other order than is the case,"; he directly challenges a transcendental God which actively responds to events in the universe. Everything that has and will happen is a part of a long chain of cause and effect which, at a metaphysical level, humans are unable to change. No amount of prayer or ritual will sway God. Only knowledge of God, or the existence which humans inhabit, allows them to best respond to the world around them. Not only is it impossible for two infinite substances to exist (two infinities being absurd), God, being the ultimate substance, cannot be affected by anything else, or else it would be affected by something else, and not be the fundamental substance.
2. The Human Being
The human body is significantly more complex than other bodies in its composition and in its dispositions to act and be acted upon. That complexity is reflected in its corresponding idea. The mind, then, like any other idea, is simply one particular mode of God’s attribute, Thought. Whatever happens in the body is reflected or expressed in the mind. In this way, the mind perceives, more or less obscurely, what is taking place in its body. And through its body’s interactions with other bodies, the mind is aware of what is happening in the physical world around it. But the human mind no more interacts with its body than any mode of Thought interacts with a mode of Extension. This is Spinoza's resolution to the mind-body problem.
3. Knowledge
Spinoza names three types of knowledge:
1) Opinion, derived either from vague sensory experience or from the signification of words in the memory or imagination, provides only inadequate ideas and cannot be relied upon as a source of truth.
2) Reason, which begins with simple adequate ideas and by analyzing causal or logical necessity proceeds toward awareness of their more general causes, does provide us with truth.
3) Intuition, in which the mind deduces the structure of reality from the very essence or idea of God, is the great source of adequate ideas, the highest form of knowledge, and the ultimate guarantor of truth.
Spinoza recommends a three-step process for the achievement of human knowledge: First, disregard the misleading testimony of the senses and conventional learning. Second, starting from the adequate idea of any one existing thing, reason back to the eternal attribute of god from which it derives. Finally, use this knowledge of the divine essence to intuit everything else that ever was, is, and will be. Indeed, he supposed that the Ethics itself is an exercise in this ultimate pursuit of indubitable knowledge.
4. Passion and Action
"By good I shall understand what we certainly know to be useful to us." Something is good when it aids in our desire to sustain our well being.
"By evil, however, I shall understand what we certainly know prevents us from being masters of some good." Something is evil when it is a detriment to our well being.
Affections and affects:
Affections can come from external sources (from the senses) or from internal courses (ideas). (e.g. A piece of chocolate cake, or the thought of a piece of cake, can make us desire the cake (cause the affect). Affections can cause us joy or sadness. Adequate knowledge of how affections can affect our long term well-being. These affects include ideas that cause envy, anger, self-pity and other emotional maladies.
5. Virtue and Happiness
Sometimes I am wholly unaware of the causes that underlie what I do and am simply overwhelmed by the strength of my momentary passions. But at other times I have adequate knowledge of the motives for what I do and can engage in deliberate action because I recognize my place within the grander scheme of reality as a whole.
Human "freedom" consists only in "blessedness;" the intellectual grasping the totality of God (the universe/reality) as a whole and understanding everything is necessarily the way it has to be. Through this, the mind is freed from confused, uncomfortable, and destructive passions.
Spinoza believed we should strive to be free from the passions—or, since this is not absolutely possible, at least to learn how to moderate and restrain them—and become active, autonomous beings. If we can achieve this, then we will be “free” to the extent that whatever happens to us will result not from our relations with things outside us, but from our own nature (as that follows from, and is ultimately and necessarily determined by the attributes of God of which our minds and bodies are modes). We will then be liberated from the troublesome emotional ups and downs of this life.
The way to bring this about is to increase our knowledge, our store of adequate ideas, and eliminate as far as possible our inadequate ideas, which follow not from the nature of the mind alone but from its being an expression of how our body is affected by other bodies. In other words, we need to free ourselves from a reliance on the senses and the imagination, since a life of the senses and images is a life being affected and led by the objects around us, and rely as much as we can only on our rational faculties. These principles are used in psychology.
Theological-Political Treatise
1. On Religion and Scripture
Spinoza denied prophesy and miracles. He denied the Bible was the Word of God, instead claiming that it was written by men for the purpose of social control. Miracles are convenient tools for manipulating the credulity of men.
God cannot "intervene" in the workings of the universe because God is the totality of that universe and its order.
Spinoza is claimed to be the father of biblical criticism. The practice developed over several centuries since his time. In 1992, Pope John Paul II legitimized the practice of biblical criticism to a certain extent in the catechism, saying that "In order to discover the sacred authors' intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current. For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression."
2. The State
Spinoza, like Hobbes, believed that human nature consists of preserving life. But. unlike, Hobbes, in the state of nature man has no rights (i.e. no right to preserve his own life), for rights only exist in a civil state. Rights are social constructs.
While Spinoza sees the state of nature and the need for government as Hobbes does, Spinoza sees democracy as the best solution for government. Spinoza did not work out the details of democratic government (this was probably the project of his unfinished final book). But he claims that democracy offers the best chances for political freedom (unlike Hobbes, he rejects the powers of the sovereign to censor ideas). Spinoza not only rejected monarchy as the best form of government, he also rejected aristocratic republics, like the Dutch Republic and the earlier republics in Italy. In this sense, Spinoza's ideas presaged the founders of the United States forming of a republic not based on titled class distinctions.
Spinoza does not fit into either the classical liberalism or classical republicanism form of democracy. (Classical liberalism seeks the maximum freedom of individuality for its citizens while classical republicanism aims at creating citizens who will perform the public good). Spinoza wants to increase individuals freedom and virtue, and this fits with his metaphysical beliefs that freedom is choosing the rational good and avoiding the undesirable passions, and that benefits society as a whole.
Spinoza advocated a state religion built on the simplest ideas of Christianity (e.g. love thy neighbor, don't be judgmental, etc). But, in Spinoza's state, people could not be punished for believing otherwise. And only the sovereign (and not the clergy) can dictate as to religious ceremonies). No citizen was required to observe them. Spinoza's commitment to freedom of expression was the most liberal of any 17th century philosopher.
Articles:
Spinoza's philosophy
Spinoza's Theory of Attributes
Spinoza's Modal Metaphysics from the Sanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Film: Spinoza: The Apostle of Reason (57 min)
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