1. He was born to a family
prominent in the Jewish community in Amsterdam.
a. The Jewish community came to Holland, a place of much greater religious
freedom, to avoid persecution recently instituted in Portugal, where they had
moved to avoid persecution in Spain.
2. He was the Synagogue’s brilliant, leading, favorite student; but he started to move toward positions that were highly controversial.
a. On the one hand, the rabbis were upset that such a promising student was moving away from the faith of his ancestors.
b. On the other hand, they were fearful that spread of Spinoza’s views would jeopardize the standing of the Jewish community in Amsterdam by offending Christians as well.
3. In 1654, after the death of his father, his sister tried to claim the whole estate—at which point Spinoza took her to court, won the case, and then promptly turned everything over to her except for a bed.
4. In 1656, he officially was excommunicated from the Synagogue, with the customary curse and prohibitions accompanying the excommunication.
5. He lived a very frugal life and made a living by grinding lenses--while he wrote about philosophy and did some scientific experimentation.
6. On the Improvement of the Understanding (unfinished) was probably written during the early 1660s, although it was not published during his lifetime.
7. In 1670, he published, anonymously (although his authorship seems to have been well known), a controversial work, A Treatise on Theology and Politics.
a. At the time, he had the political protection of the brothers deWitt, who were political leaders in Amsterdam.
b. In 1672, when the deWitt brothers were assassinated in the street by a mob, Spinoza had to be restrained from going out in the street to denounce the mob.
c. The second edition of the Treatise, published in 1674, was banned.
d. By 1680, there were some 50 edicts by church authorities, banning the reading or circulating of Spinoza’s works.
8. He had begun the Ethics: Demonstrated in the Manner of Geometry in 1662; but it was not published until after his death.
a. He died of tuberculosis in February, 1677 and the Ethics was then published at the end of that same year.
9. Spinoza was a person of gentle disposition who passed up several opportunities to acquire money; he also passed up a professorship opportunity, in part, because he thought it might lead to his compromising the free development of his thought.
10. He is probably the only person who was ever accused both of being an atheist and of being drunk with God.
3. He continued the tradition of continental rationalism based upon clear and distinct ideas.
4. He developed an important solution to the mind-body problem--a metaphysical identity theory of the relation of the mind to the body (which I happen to favor myself--RY).
5. Although Spinoza works with medieval and 17th century terminology, his philosophical system is easily amenable to 20th century process philosophy (whose metaphysics I favor, although I tend to combine it with a lot of pragmatism--RY).
a. (mostly from my Philosophical Problems: God, Free Will, and Determinism--RY): Spinoza presents the following definition: “By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite--that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.” This definition may seem innocent enough and quite compatible with traditional ideas about God. “Substance,” though, is a key term in the definition. For Spinoza, substance exists in itself and is conceived through itself; that is, it is self-subsistent; it exists totally independent of anything else. Now the objects encountered in the world are never self-subsistent. For example, a human being is not self-subsistent--being dependent upon parents, oxygen, the sun, gravity, plants and animals for food, etc. Spinoza concludes that there is really only one substance, namely, the totality of all that exists. Only this totality exists of itself and is conceived through itself . The objects encountered in the world then are simply modes of this one substance's existence. Furthermore, this one substance is identifiable with God. The totality of all that exists is that “substance consisting in infinite attributes.”
b. Because tables, chairs, the sun, and, indeed, the entire physical universe are all modes of that one substance that is God, God for Spinoza is partially an impersonal being. In so far as God possesses an intellectual conception of what exists, God also is a conscious being. God is a personal being to the extent that God includes us as personal beings; but God, as God, does not seem to be a personal being—since the sensations and memory that produce our personal identity are not present in God. God’s consciousness might better be described as a Cosmic Consciousness.
c. Given Spinoza’s conception of God, the usual “religious” overtones associated with God disappear. A knowledge of God, that one substance which is the totality of all that exists, becomes our highest good; and an “intellectual love of God” becomes our highest aspiration. But prayer, miracles, Divine Providence, the divine authority of scripture, and regular church attendance are not going to provide that knowledge of God. Physics perhaps has more to do with ethics than reading scripture. (Of course, it does not follow from this that killing your neighbor is acceptable so long as you study physics.)
d. In so far as God includes the physical universe for Spinoza, God is immanent rather than transcendent.--That is to say, God does not exist wholly outside the natural world. In this sense, Spinoza is a pantheist.
e. God does not experience passions or desires.
1) Passions such as anger, hate, or joy are passive reactions; but God is pure activity; so God does not experience passions.
2) Desires always involve an object of desire and hence entail a lack of something; but God, being perfect, does not lack anything; so God does not have desires.
f. God’s intellect and will are different from our own. God is actively engaged in infinite, intellectual self-love (Ethics, Part V, Prop. 35).
g. Proofs of God’s existence (Ethics, Part I, Prop. 11) – The proofs are ontological-type arguments.
1) Proof (1): It is impossible to conceive that God’s essence does not involve existence; so God necessarily exists.
2) Proof (2): There is nothing outside God, that is, no other substance, that can prevent or annul God’s existence; so God necessarily exists.
3) Proof (3): Not being able to exist is a weakness; to say that God, an absolute infinite entity, does not exist is equivalent to saying God is weaker than finite entities that exist, an absurdity.
h. Rejection of teleological and design arguments for God’s existence – Assigning divine purposes to events are anthropomorphic projections from human experience and hence are merely human fictions.
1) If God has purposes for the universe, this would indicate that God lacks something (in the sense that more needs to be accomplished) and would hence be imperfect.
2) The folly of assigning Godly purposes to events is evident when people attribute natural disasters such as floods or earthquakes to God’s desire to punish wrongdoers—since the disasters harm both good persons and bad ones indiscriminately.
3) Final causes are just human fictions.
4) Likewise, claims of divine providence are human fictions.
a. God, the one and only substance, possesses infinite attributes; but human beings are capable of conceiving this one substance in terms of just two attributes--namely, extension (associated with the physical) and thought (associated with the mental).
b. Particular objects are not substances but rather are modifications of substance, or modes.
c. All the modes occur through a causal deterministic process.
d. This process as expressive of God can be conceived actively as natura naturans (literally, nature naturing) or passively as natura naturata (literally, nature being natured).
e. In the sense that there is just one substance, Spinoza can be interpreted as a monist; in the sense that there are two attributes, Spinoza can be interpreted as a dualist; and in the sense that there numerous modes, Spinoza can be interpreted as a pluralist.
a. Everything (including God) functions according to a deterministic causal process; and thus there is no free will in any ordinary sense.
b. On the other hand, God is free in the sense that God is not conditioned by anything external, that is, by anything outside God (Ethics, Part I, Prop. 17).
c. Somewhat similarly, human beings become free through an intellectual love of God by which they do not conceive any event to occur due to some external restraint that they do not want.
1) In other words, if human beings achieve the understanding associated with the intellectual love of God, then they do not want any event to occur in any way different than it does occur and hence they are free in the sense that they experience no constricting external constraint.
2) Human beings become free by escaping the bondage of the emotions and developing their intellectual understanding of God. That is why understanding physics is more important than attending church.
d. For both God and human beings, intellect and will are equivalent; so what one understands and wills are the same; hence understanding of a deterministic process entails willing that same process. (Although Spinoza does not work it out, I think that this distinction points toward a solution to the fact-value problem, if we associate what we understand through the intellect with fact and will with value. We then obtain an identity theory of fact and value, my own position--RY.)
a. For example, if we consider my getting out of bed this morning, there is just one event, namely, my getting out of bed; but we can describe the event in terms of brain function, neurophysiology, and kinesiology or in terms of thought. Neither description establishes a metaphysical priority over the other one.
b. Thought is as much a deterministic causal process as extension is.
c. Description and explanation in terms of the physical is characteristically passive, whereas they can be active in terms of the mental.
a. The mind can exercise imagination (associated with the senses) and memory only so long as the body exists. Accordingly, at death, the personal identity associated with imagination and memory is no longer possible.
b. To the extent however that the mind’s understanding has grasped things under a form of eternity (that is, has grasped some adequate knowledge—RY), the mind endures eternally.
c. So there can be immortality for the mind, but not a personal immortality.
a. Modes of Perception: hearsay, experience, inference of an effect from a cause or of one essence from another essence, perception of essence directly or through inference from a proximate cause
b. Hearsay and experience are unreliable and uncertain.
c. Inference of an effect from a cause or of one essence from another essence occur without error but still do not exemplify the adequate knowledge known through the fourth mode.
d. A true idea exhibits it truth internally through self-evidence rather than through establishment of a correspondence with that of which it is the idea (that is, it shows itself to be a clear and distinct idea—RY). For Spinoza, a true idea is one that agrees with that of which it is the idea (Ethics, Part I, Ax. 6); but it still exhibits its being a true idea internally.
a. Opinion or imagination, reason, and intuition.
b. Whereas opinion or imagination deal with the contingent and can be a source of falsity, reason and intuition deal with the necessary and true (and thus adequate ideas).
c. Translating the modes of perception into the Ethics:
1) Hearsay, experience, and inference from effects to causes(?) are equivalent to opinion or imagination.
2) Inference of one essence from another essence or inference of an effect from a proximate cause are equivalent to reason.
3) Direct perception of essence is equivalent to intuition.
a. Good and evil are not positive qualities of things in themselves but only with respect to human nature.
b. The knowledge of good and evil consists in the emotions of pleasure and pain, in so far as we are conscious of them.
1) This knowledge can be contingent or necessary.
c. In so far as a thing is in harmony with our nature, it is necessarily good; and obedience to reason, not to the passions or emotions, brings us into harmony with our nature.
d. “The mind’s highest good is the knowledge of God, and the mind’s highest virtue is to know God.” (Ethics, Pt. IV, Prop. XXVII)
a. Spinoza takes a rather Hobbesian approach agreeing with Hobbes on the chaotic danger of the state of nature and the need for a strong sovereign authority.
b. But he differs from Hobbes by showing his own primary interest in the establishment of civil society—namely, protection of the right to freedom of thought and conscience, with the tolerance such freedom demands. This primary interest makes sense, given his emphasis upon the knowledge of God as the highest good.
a. Scriptural miracles are natural events, since God cannot contravene the fixed and immutable order of nature without acting against God’s own nature.
b. Since prophecy is sure knowledge revealed by God to human beings, it includes knowledge gained through the natural faculties.
c. Biblical prophets perceived God’s revelation through imagination rather than reasoned knowledge.
1) Hence the use of parables and allegories
2) Prophecies varied according to the temperament, and eloquence of the prophet. So prophets of a cheerful temperament spoke of revelations about victories , peace and gladful events; prophets of a melancholy temperament spoke of revelations about wars, massacres, and calamities.
3) Prophecies reflected the character of the prophet. So generals had visions of armies, cultivated persons had visions of a cultivated God, and country people had visions of oxen and cows.
4) Prophecies reflected the opinions or state of knowledge of the prophets:
a) Adam did not know that God was omniscient and omnipotent—since he thought that he could hide his sin of eating the forbidden fruit from God.
b) Moses did not know that God was omni-present since he thought he had to go to the top of a mountain to communicate with God.
c) Joshua thought that the sun revolved around the earth.
d) Noah, in thinking that the whole human race would be destroyed, had no notion of the inhabitation of the earth.
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