Benedict
de Spinoza 1632--1677.
Works:
Short
Treatise on God, Man and his Well-being, c. 1660 -only
discovered 100 years later;
On the
Improvement of the Understanding
The
Ethics - written over a number of years, published posthumously;
Theological-Political
Treatise, published anonymously in 1670.
Spinoza's
Philosophy:
Introductory:
·
.the end of philosophy: the attainment of
true happiness. Thus the title, The
Ethics. True happiness consists in the
knowledge, together with other individuals if possible, of the union existing
between the mind and the whole of nature =the "intellectual love of
God", to think in time my inherence in God, and the freedom which follows
from this. .
·
Two ways of getting into his philosophy:
1)historical -Spinoza as a more consistent and therefore more radical
elaboration of Cartesian insights; 2)starting with his understanding of
geometry -geometry as providing (a)the method and (b)the primary insight which
sets the system rolling. We will follow
the historical route.
Substance,
Modes, Attributes, God...
Descartes'
defn of substance: 'that thing, the nature of which can clearly
and distinctly be understood by itself".
Spinoza:
"that which is in itself and is conceived through itself: in other words,
that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception.
Already
in Descartes: the defn strictly speaking applies only to God, but may be
applied in a less strict sense to things which need only God in order to exist.
Spinoza:
yes, it does apply only to God.
Also
w.r.t. mode:
Descartes: "that which cannot be understood except by the concept of the substance to which it belongs"
Spinoza: applies to everything in the universe
except God. it is bodies and minds themselves, considered as existing in and
conceivable through something else, which are the modes.
So also
for the notion of attributes: each
substance, according to Descartes, has an essential attribute, expressing the
nature of the substance. Spinoza: the
attributes are not modifications of thought and extension but thought and extension
themselves. And such attributes are
diverse rather than opposites:.they don't limit each other, there is no
reason why something can't have both.
And there could be any number of other attributes of which we know
nothing.
God both
can be and is a substance consisting of an infinite number of infinite
attributes. And everything else are
modifications of this one substance in the various attributes: nothing in the
universe apart from God and his modifications.
W.r.t. God:
·
God, or; substance consisting of infinite
attributes, necessarily exists.
Why? because otherwise it would not be conceivable through itself but
only by reference to something else.
Since all
the attributes are already taken up, there can be only one substance: Whatever
is, is in God, therefore, and without God nothing can be or be conceived.
·
God has to create: to
produce an infinite number of things in an infinite number of ways, an infinite
number of modes in an infinite number of attributes. Why?
Because to be real is to do, to work, to be productive.
This is
necessity, but at the same time true freedom: that thing is called free
... of which the action is determined by itself alone. To be free = to be self-determined rather
than undetermined, and God of course is hardly determined by anything else.
Human
being, the attainment of freedom, and the parallelism of mind and body:
·
I am/ we are a mind, a modification of God
in the attribute of thought, which is itself the idea of a body, a modification
of God in the attribute of "extensions, the expression in the way of
thinking of a body and of the goings on in a body in the attribute of
extension. Beatitude is to realize this
and to will it, to determine ourselves to be what we are, which is at the same
time true freedom.
·
But how is a finite, self-determined being
possible? Because God is not another
thing, determining me from without -the power of a human being = the power of
God, expressed through the human being.
Everything has its own conatus essendi.
·
But I am not always free, not everything I
do has its source in the power or force which is me. Most of the time I am the
play of external forces, my thoughts and actions the product of passive
rather than active emotions.
Positive freedom is not just being ones own master but being master of
oneself, self-mastery, which is the product of self-knowledge: the activity of
someone who knows him/herself and nature and their place in nature and whose
action proceeds in line with this knowledge.
At a certain point in history certain people are determined to think
clearly and to have the free activity which goes with this and to endeavour to
instill clear thinking which leads to freedom in others.
·
Spinoza's solution to Cartesian dualism: -
Thought, Extension, two attributes of the one substance, diverse, not
opposites, they don't limit each other
They
don't interact, either, they move in parallel streams, whatever happens in one
is expressed in the other: parallelism
The human
mind and human body therefore have a fundamental unity.
Some
further issues:
(a) Is
Spinoza a pantheist?
Pantheism
: everything is God = either 1)each thing is God or 2)the totality of things is
God.
In
neither sense is Spinoza a pantheist.
"Deus sive Natura", but a distinction between
Natura
Naturans
and
Natura
Naturata.
Everything is in
God:
God is in
everything
but God is substance, everything is modes of substance, God is Natura Naturans, everything else is Natura Naturata.
However,
while more accurately described as a pan-en-theist (literally speaking, also a
theo-en-panist), he is about as pantheistic as technical philosophy gets in
modern Europe.
(b)
Is,God personal?
Not at
all: the source of personalities, people who can think and will, but these
exist at the level of modes. For similar
reasons, neither can it be said that God is extended.