Part of this process, as we have emphasized, first requires overcoming false beliefs. He thinks such anthropocentric views are mere superstitions and give rise to childish passions and fears. Like the Epicureans, Spinoza sees such false metaphysical assumptions as leading to much human suffering.
A major focus of his Ethics then echoes the traditional Epicurean view that once we disabuse ourselves of false superstitious beliefs, we can better free ourselves from irrational passions.
While Spinoza is often viewed as a Pantheist, one must keep in mind that his view that Nature is God does not awaken in him a thirst for prayer or rituals or of religious experience as typically understood. He thinks our goal should be to rationally understand the world and our place in it.
This means rejecting the traditional views of religion and embracing rational reflection upon Nature. This is a fascinating and thought-provoking topic. Thanks to Professor Arnold for allowing his essay to be posted and for including the link to the Stanford Encyclopedia article. And thanks to Professor Messerly for reposting the essay.
Baruch Spinoza must have had a deep understanding of the scientific knowledge of his era. He seems to be constructing his definition of god and other elements of his worldview to be consistent with his scientific understanding. That got me wondering. My guess is that he would have immediately grasped that natural selection is one of those fundamental physical laws that cause the world to be as it is.
For some reason, I am reminded of Daniel Dennett, one of the greatest philosophers of our modern era, whose deep understanding of science informs his philosophy. Perhaps Baruch Spinoza was the Daniel Dennett of his era. Or maybe Dennett is the Spinoza of our era. Or maybe I need to read a little more most likely. As for Dennett, he is one of my favorite philosophers for precisely the reason that he has a good command of science.
Your email address will not be published. Notify me of new posts by email. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Liked it? Take a second to support Dr John Messerly on Patreon! In this book, Spinoza argues that the way to "blessedness" or "salvation" for each person involves an expansion of the mind towards an intuitive understanding of God, of the whole of nature and its laws.
In other words, philosophy for Spinoza is like a spiritual practice, whose goal is happiness and liberation. The ethical orientation of Spinoza's thought is also reflected in his own nature and conduct.
Unlike most of the great philosophers, Spinoza has a reputation for living an exemplary, almost saintly life, characterised by modesty, gentleness, integrity, intellectual courage, disregard for wealth and a lack of worldly ambition. According to Bertrand Russell , Spinoza was "the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers".
Although his ideas were despised by many of his contemporaries, he attracted a number of devoted followers who gathered regularly at his home in Amsterdam to discuss his philosophy. These friends made sure that Spinoza's Ethics was published soon after his death in This article is more than 10 years old. Clare Carlisle. For this 17th century outsider, philosophy is like a spiritual practice, whose goal is happiness and liberation.
Spinoza memorial at the New Church in The Hague. Spinozists must recognise that everything in nature thinks and that man is not the most enlightened or most intelligent modification of the universe.
They must therefore admit the existence of demons. When it is supposed that a supremely perfect spirit has pulled creatures from nothingness, without being determined by his nature to do so, but through a free choice and for his own pleasure, then one can deny that there are angels.
If you ask why such a creature has not produced other spirits than the soul of man, it will be answered that such was his pleasure, stat pro ratione voluntas his will is held to be reason.
No reasonable reply can be made to this, unless you prove the fact that there are angels. But when it is imagined that the Creator did not act freely and that he has exhausted the full extent of his powers, without choice or rules, and that moreover thought is one of his attributes, then it would be a mockery to maintain there are no such things as demons. One is forced to concede that the thought of the Creator has been modified not only in the bodies of men, but all over the universe too.
As well as the animals we know of, there must be an infinite number that we do not know of, and which surpass us in enlightenment and malice, as much as we surpass, in this respect, dogs and cattle. For it would be the least reasonable thing in the world to imagine that the mind of man is the most perfect modification that could be produced by an infinite being acting to the full extent of its powers. We can conceive no natural link between thinking and the brain, and that is why it is necessary to believe that a creature without a brain is as capable of thinking as a creature organised as we are.
What could have brought Spinoza to deny what is said of spirits? Why did he think that there is nothing in the world that is able to inspire in us the sight of a ghost, to make a noise in a bedroom, and to cause all the magical phenomena mentioned in books?
But such an idea would be ridiculous. The mass of flesh of which we are composed is less a help than a hindrance to spirit and force—I mean, mediating force, or the ability to apply instruments that are most apt to produce great effects. It is from this facility that the most surprising actions of man are born.
Thousands upon thousands of examples prove it. A thin and pale engineer, as small as a dwarf, can do more things than two thousand savages who are stronger than Milo.
A machine ten thousand times smaller than an ant could produce greater effects than an elephant. It could discover the inanimate parts of animals and plants and be placed at the heart of the deepest mainsprings of our brains and turn a switch so that we could see ghosts and hear noises.
If doctors knew about the basic cells and the hidden combination of parts in plants, minerals and animals, they would also discover the instruments that can disrupt them, and could apply these instruments as needed to produce new arrangements that would transform good meat into poison and poisons into good meat. Such doctors would be incomparably more skilful than Hippocrates; and if they were small enough to enter the brain and the human organs, they would cure whatever they wanted, and could bring about the strangest imaginable illnesses at will.
Everything comes down to this question: is it possible for an invisible modification to be more enlightened and more evil than man? If Spinoza replies in the negative, then he is unaware of the consequences of his own hypotheses and is arrogant and lacking in principles.
If his reasoning had been consistent, he would not have dismissed the fear of hell as a fantasy. You can believe as much as you like that the universe is not the work of God and that it is not ruled by a simple, spiritual nature that is independent of it, but at the very least you must admit that there are certain things that have intelligence and desires and which seek to preserve their power, which exercise their authority over others, ordering them to do this or do that, punishing them, mistreating them and taking terrible revenge on them.
Is the world not full of such things? To imagine that all the beings of this nature are to be found only on Earth, which is a mere speck in comparison with the universe, is obviously a completely irrational idea.
Reason, spirit, ambition and hate are supposed to be more common on Earth than elsewhere. Could anyone produce either a good or a bad explanation?
I think not. Our eyes teach us that the immense space we call the heavens , where such rapid and active movement takes place, is as capable as the Earth of producing human beings and as susceptible of being divided into different dominations as we are.
We do not know what happens in the heavens, but if we consult our reason alone, we are forced to concede that it is highly likely or at least possible there are powerful beings who spread both their empire and their light on our world.
Perhaps we are under their jurisdiction: they make laws, which they reveal to us by the guiding light of our conscience, and are violently angry with those who transgress them. It is enough for this to be possible to throw atheists into doubt. There is only one way to be without fear, and that is to believe in the mortality of the soul.
We would thereby escape the anger of these beings, for otherwise they could be more terrifying than God himself. At our deaths we might fall into the hands of some savage master, and it would be in vain for us to hope that a few years of torment would be enough.
A limited nature would have no sort of moral perfection and could follow his own whims and passions regarding the punishments he inflicted. He could very well resemble a Phalaris and a Nero, people capable of leaving their enemies in a prison cell for all eternity, if they could have possessed everlasting authority.
Could one hope that the evil being might not last forever? But how many atheists are there who claim that the sun never had a beginning and will never have an end? Let us recall that they are forced to admit there are modes that get angry with others, that obstruct them, that torture them, that make their torments last as long as they can, that condemn them to the galleys all their lives, and that would make such torture last forever if death did not intervene on both sides.
Tiberius and Caligula, two monsters hungry for carnage, are famous examples. Let us recall that a Spinozist invites ridicule if he simply admits that the universe is full of ambitious, sad, jealous and cruel modes. Let us remember, last of all, that the essence of human modes does not consist in bearing a heavy weight of flesh.
Socrates was Socrates from the day of his conception or soon afterwards; everything he had at that time could remain intact after a fatal illness had stopped the circulation of his blood and the beating of his heart in the material body in which he had grown up. He was therefore the same mode after his death as he was in life, if we consider only the essence of his person. Thus through his death he did not escape justice or the caprice of his invisible persecutors, who are able to follow him wherever he goes and mistreat him in all the visible shapes he might adopt.
To show their bad faith and their illusions on the subject, he says it is enough to point out that by rejecting the possibility of miracles, they are arguing that God and nature are the same being, so that if God did anything contrary to the laws of nature, He would be contradicting Himself, which is impossible.
Please speak clearly and unambiguously and say that the laws of nature are not the work of a free legislator who knew what he was doing, but are the result of a blind and necessary cause, and nothing can happen that is contrary to these laws! Your own thesis would then speak against miracles. This would be sophistry, but at least you would be speaking frankly. But let us leave these generalities and ask the Spinozists what they think of the miracles mentioned in the Scriptures.
They categorically deny everything that cannot be attributed to some sleight of hand. Let us pass over the effrontery needed to challenge facts of this nature, and let us attack them on their principles. Do you not say that the power of nature is infinite?
And would it be so if there were nothing in the universe that could make a dead man live again? Would it be so if there were only one way to create men, that of ordinary procreation? Do not pretend that our knowledge of nature is infinite.
You deny such divine understanding, in which, in your view, the knowledge of all possible beings is united. But by dispersing knowledge, you do not deny it is infinite. Therefore you must maintain that nature knows everything, in the same way that we say that mankind can speak all languages. One man cannot speak them all, but some men understand certain languages and other men understand others. Can you deny that the universe contains nothing that could understand how our bodies are made?
So if you wish to reason correctly, admit there is some modification that knows how to do it. Admit that it is perfectly possible for nature to resuscitate a dead man, and that your master contradicted his own ideas, ignoring the consequences of his principle claiming that if he could have been convinced of the resurrection of Lazarus, he would have smashed his own system to smithereens and would have embraced without repugnance the ordinary Christian faith.
This is enough to prove to the followers of Spinoza that they contradict their own hypotheses when they deny the possibility of miracles or—to speak without ambiguity—the very possibility of the events recounted in the Scriptures.
Bayle proved, but at the expense of this system, that he understood it perfectly well. He dealt it fresh blows that the Spinozists were unable to parry. This is how he reasons. I attribute to Spinoza the fact of teaching: 1. I now ask the Spinozists, did your master teach this or not? If he taught it, you cannot say that my objections have the error known as ignoratio elenchi , ignorance of the state of the question. Because my objections presuppose that such was his doctrine and I attack it only on those grounds.
I am therefore safe and sound, and it would be wrong if anyone claimed I have refuted what I have not understood. If you say that Spinoza did not teach the three theorems mentioned above, I ask you why did he so express himself as to give the impression that he wanted passionately to persuade his readers that he was teaching these very three things?
Is it laudable or fine to use a common style, without associating words with the same ideas as other men, and without warning us of the new meaning he has given them?
But to discuss this matter in more detail, let us try to find out where the misunderstanding might lie. I have admitted his supposition, that to earn the name of substance, something must be independent of all cause, or exist by itself necessarily and eternally. I do not think I could have been wrong in attributing to him the idea that only God has the nature of substance. If there were any misconception in my arguments, it could only consist in my giving to the words modalities, modifications, modes meanings which Spinoza did not intend.
Once again, if I mistook him, it would be his fault. I understood these terms as they are always understood. The general doctrine of the philosophers is that the idea of being contains within it two species, substance and contingency, and that substance exists by itself, ens per se subsistens , and contingency exists in another, ens in alio.
Now to exist by itself, in their view, means only to depend on some immanent subject, and as that is true, in their view, of matter, angels and the soul of man, they admit two sorts of substances, one uncreated and one created. They then subdivide created substance into two species. One of these is matter and the other is our soul.
As regards accident, in essence it depends so much on its immanent subject that it could not exist without it; that is its essential character. Descartes always understood it in this way. Now since Spinoza had been a great Cartesian, our reason dictates that we should understand that he gave these terms the same sense as Descartes did. If this is so, by modification of substance he simply means a way of being that has the same relation to substance through material shape, movement, rest, situation, etc, as pain, affirmation, love, etc has to the soul of man, since this is what Cartesians mean by modes.
But if we suppose that substance is what exists by itself, independently of all efficient cause, then Spinoza could not have meant that matter or men are substances; and since, following the common doctrine, he only divided being into two species, that is, into substance and modification of substance, he must have meant that matter and the soul of man were only modifications of substance, that there is only one substance in the universe, and that this substance is God.
The only question remaining would be to know if he subdivided the modification of substance into two species. If he adheres to this subdivision, and he considers one of the two species to be what the Cartesians and other Christian philosophers call created substance , and the other species to be what they call accident or mode , there will be no difference of opinion between them and him, and it will be easy to reconcile his system with orthodoxy and to make all his supporters faint, since people only want to be Spinozists because it is thought that he totally overturned the Christian system and the existence of an immaterial God who governs all things with sovereign liberty.
From which we can conclude in passing that the Spinozists and their adversaries agree perfectly well about the meaning of the words modification of substance. They all believe that Spinoza only used it to designate a being that has the same nature as what Cartesians call mode , and that by this word he never understood a being that would have the properties or the nature of what we call created substance.
If we are to go to the heart of the matter, then this is how we should argue with a Spinozist. Does the true and unique character of modification apply to matter in relation to God or does it not?
Before you reply, let me explain the intrinsic nature of modification with some examples. It must be inherent in a subject in the way that movement is in a body and thought is in the soul of man. It is not enough to be a modification of the divine substance, to subsist in the immensity of God, to be penetrated with him, surrounded on all sides, to exist by virtue of God, to be able to exist neither without him nor outside him.
Divine substance must also be the inherent subject of a thing, just as it is commonly said that the human soul is the inherent subject of feeling and pain, and the body is the inherent subject of movement, rest and the human form.
If however you say that Spinoza claimed that the divine substance is the inherent subject of matter and of all the diversity of extension and of thought, in the same way that according to Descartes, extension is the inherent subject of movement, the soul of man is the inherent subject of sensations and passions, then I have all I asked for. This is how I understood Spinoza and it is on this point that all my objections are based.
Should we consider it as the same thing as a created substance or understand it more in the sense it has in the system of Descartes? I think the latter solution is correct, since otherwise Spinoza would have recognised the existence of beings that are distinct from the divine substance, which would have been created either from nothing or from matter that was distinct from God. Now it would be easy to prove by a large number of passages in his books that he admits neither one of these things.
In his view, extension is an attribute of God. It follows that God essentially, eternally, necessarily is an extended substance and that extension is as much one of his properties as existence; from which it follows that particular forms of extension such as the sun, the Earth, the trees, the bodies of animals and the bodies of men are in God, as the schoolmen suppose that they are in primary matter.
Now if these philosophers suppose that primary matter is simple and perfectly unique, they would conclude that the sun and the Earth are really the same substance. Spinoza would therefore have to conclude the same thing. If he did not say that the sun is composed of the extension of God, he would have to admit that the extension of the sun was created from nothing; but he denies the creation, and is therefore obliged to say that the substance of God is the material cause of the sun, is what composes the sun, subjectum ex quo; and consequently that the sun is not distinct from God, that it is God Himself, and God in his entirety, since, in his view, God is not a being composed of different parts.
Let us suppose for a moment that a mass of gold had the power to convert itself into plates, dishes, chandeliers, bowls, etc. It would not be at all distinct from these plates and dishes. If we added that it is a simple and not a composite mass, then we would be certain that it is wholly present in each plate and in each chandelier, since if it were not wholly present, it would be divided into different pieces; it would therefore be composed of parts, which contradicts the supposition. So these reciprocal or convertible proportions would be true, the chandelier is the mass of gold, the mass of gold is the chandelier.
It is thus true to assert that the Earth is God, that the moon is God, that the Earth is God in his entirety, that the moon is too, that God is the Earth, that God in his entirety is the moon. These are the only three ways according to which the modifications of Spinoza are in God; but none of them corresponds to what other philosophers have said about created substance.
It is in God, they say, and in its efficient cause, and consequently it is truly and totally distinct from God. But, according to Spinoza , beings are in God, like the effect is in the material cause, or like contingency is in an immanent subject, or like the form of a chandelier is in the pewter it is made from.
The sun, the moon and trees, inasmuch as they are three dimensional, are in God as in the material cause of which their extension is composed. Thus there is an identity between God and the sun, etc. The same trees, inasmuch as they have a form that distinguishes them from stones, are in God, as the form of the chandelier is in the pewter.
To be a chandelier is only a form of being of the pewter. The movement of the body and the thoughts of men are in God, as the contingency of the Peripatetics is in the created substance. These are entities inherent in their subject, and that are not at all composed of them, and are not part of them.
An apologist for Spinoza would maintain that the philosopher does not attribute bodily extension to God, but only an intelligible extension, one which is not imaginable. But if the extension of the bodies that we see and that we imagine is not the extension of God, then where did it come from and how was it made?
If extension was produced from nothing, then Spinoza is orthodox and his system becomes null and void. If it was produced from the intelligible extension of God, then this is again a real creation, since intelligible extension, being only an idea, and not really having three dimensions, cannot supply the content or the matter of the extension formally existing outside of understanding. Bayle, as can be seen in everything we have said, mainly concentrated on the idea that extension is not a composite being, but a substance unique in number.
The reason he gives is that Spinozists affirm that this is not in fact where the difficulty lies. They believe that they are on shakier ground when asked how thought and extension can be united in the same substance. There is something bizarre in this. If it is certain according to our general notions that extension and thought have no affinity with each other, then it is even more obvious that extension is composed of truly distinct parts. Nonetheless Spinozists understand the first difficulty better than the second, and they treat the latter as a mere bagatelle in comparison.
When Mr Bayle has beaten them so well at the heart of their system, where they thought they were in safe position, how will they counter attacks on their weak points? What is surprising is that Spinoza, who had so little respect for proof and reason, should have so many partisans and supporters of his system.
It is his specious method which has misled them, and not, as sometimes happens, an array of seductive principles. His followers believe that a philosopher who used geometry, who proceeded by axioms, definitions, theorems and lemmas, must have followed the progress of truth too well for them to discover errors instead.
They judged the content by the form—a hurried decision inspired by laziness. They did not see that his axioms were only very vague and uncertain propositions, that his definitions were inexact, bizarre and defective or that their leader ended up in the middle of paralogisms where his presumption and his fantasies had led him.
The first point in which Spinoza erred, the source of his mistakes, is found in the definition he gives of substance. I understand by substance, he says, what is in itself and is conceived by itself, that is, that of which the conception has no need of the conception of another thing from which it must be formed.
This is a meretricious definition, since it can have a true and a false meaning. Either Spinoza defines substance in relation to contingency or in relation to existence. But however he defines it, his definition is false or at least is of no use to him since 1. Now Spinoza cannot use such a definition to demonstrate that there is only a single, unique substance in the world.
It is obvious that trees, stones, angels and men exist independently of an immanent subject. If Spinoza defines substance in relation to existence, then his definition is again wrong. This definition, when correctly understood, means that substance is a thing of which the idea does not depend on another idea, and this supposes that nothing had formed it, but that it contains a necessary existence.
Now this definition is wrong, since by such mysterious language Spinoza means either that the very idea of substance or essence and the definition of substance is independent of all cause, or else that existing substance subsists so much by itself that it cannot depend on any cause.
The first meaning is so absurd and of such little help to Spinoza that one cannot believe he had it in mind, since it amounts to saying that the definition of substance cannot produce another definition of substance, which is ridiculous and impertinent. However logical Spinoza might be, I will never believe that he gave such a definition of substance to prove that one substance cannot produce another, as if it were impossible, with the pretext that a definition of substance cannot produce another definition of substance.
Spinoza must have meant, by his convoluted definition of substance, that substance exists so much by itself that it cannot depend on any cause. Now it is this definition that all the philosophers attack. They will tell you that the definition of substance is simple and indivisible, especially when considered in opposition to nothingness, but they will deny that there is only one substance.
It is one thing to say that there is only one definition of substance, and quite another to say that there is only one substance. Setting aside the ideas of metaphysics and the words essence, existence, and substance , which have no distinction between them, except in the various conceptions of understanding, we must speak intelligibly and in more human terms, and say that since there are two sorts of existence, one necessary and the other contingent, then there are also necessarily two sorts of substance, one that exists of necessity, which is God, and the other, which only borrows its existence and enjoys it thanks to the first being, and which are His creations.
It mixes up what must necessarily be distinguished: essence, which he calls substance , and existence. The definition he gives to prove that a substance cannot produce another is as ridiculous as the reasoning used to prove that a man is a circle: by man, I understand a round figure; a circle is a round figure; therefore man is a circle.
For this is how Spinoza reasons. By substance, I understand that which has no cause; now what is produced by something else has a cause, so a substance cannot be produced by another substance. The definition he gives of the finite and the infinite is no less unhappy.
A thing is finite, in his view, when it can be limited by something of the same nature. Thus a body is called finite because we can conceive something greater than it; so thought is limited by another thought. But a body is not limited by thought, as thought is not limited by a body. One can imagine two different subjects, one of which has an infinite understanding of an object and the other only a finite understanding.
The infinite understanding of the first does not exclude the finite understanding of the second. If one being knows all the properties and relations of a thing, then it does not follow that another cannot grasp at least certain relations and properties of it. But, says Spinoza , the degrees of understanding found in a finite being, when not added to the understanding that we suppose infinite, cannot be.
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