Twee voorafgaande blogs, die van vandaag, 22 juli 2017 over “Spinoza over goed en kwaad” en die van
gisteren, 23 juli 2017 over “Spinoza over internationaal recht”, worden
enigszins met elkaar in verband worden gebracht, via een duidelijke tekst (waarin
ook Susan Neiman weer even voorbij komt) uit het volgende werk van:
Renée Jeffery, Evil
and International Relations: Human Suffering in an Age of Terror.
[Palgrave] Springer, 2007 – books,google
[Verwijzingen laat ik achterwege - daarvoor verwijs ik naar
het boek]
In attempting to reconcile the goodness of God with the
existence of evil in the world, Leibniz invoked a monist understanding of
theodicy. In general terms, monism maintains that "the universe forms an
ultimate harmonious unity [and] ... that evil is only apparent and would be recognized
as good if we could see it in its full cosmic context." First attributed
to Epicurus, this pattern of thought exists in both theistic and secular forms,
finding its most prominent articulation in the works of Benedict de Spinoza
(1632-1677). Referred to as the "virtuous atheist" by Bayle, in
adhering to a monist woridview "Spinoza saw reality as forming an infinite
and perfect whole—perfect in the sense that everything within it follows by
logical necessity from the eternal divine nature—and saw each finite thing as
making its own proper contribution to this infinite perfection.." Within
this perfect whole, evil—and for that matter, good—is not conceived as an
objective reality (entia realia) but
as a mental entity (entia rationis).
As Spinoza explained:
After men persuaded themselves,
that everything which is created is created for their sake, they were bound to
consider as the chief quality in everything that which is most useful to
themselves, and to account those things the best of all which have the most
beneficial effect on mankind. Further they were bound to form abstract notions
for the explanation of the nature of things, such as goodness, badness, order, confusion, warmth, cold, beauty, deformity,
and so on; and from the belief that they are free agents arose the further
notions of praise and blame, sin and
merit. . .. We have now perceived, that all the explanations commonly given
of nature are mere modes of imagining, and do not indicate the true nature of anything,
but only the constitution of the imagination; and, although they have names, as
though they were entities, existing externally to the imagination, I call them
entities imaginary rather than rea1.
Thus, Spinoza denied that "evil" could have any
objective meaning. Rather, "knowledge of evil" was, in his view,
"inadequate knowledge" and would not be conceived of at all "if
the human mind possessed only adequate ideas."
Echoing some, but critically not all of Spinoza's ideas
about evil, Leibniz also wrote in a monist sense that "all the evils in
the world contribute, in ways which generally we cannot now trace, to the
character of the whole as the best of all possible universes." However,
where Spinoza made the stronger claim that the absolute perfection of the world
was "a necessary expression of the eternal and infinite perfection of God
or Nature," Leibniz argued that this was "the best practicable
world." Indeed, taking this argument to its logical extreme, Leibniz
argued, "If the smallest evil that comes to pass in the world were missing
in it, it would no longer be this world; which, nothing omitted and no
allowance made, was found the best by the Creator who chose it." As Susan
Neiman explains, in making this argument that the creation is "the best of
all possible worlds," Leibniz was, in part, referring to the Castilian
King Alfonso X, a student of Ptolemaic astronomy who appeared in Bayle's work.
Significantly, Bayle devoted some attention to Alphonso's blasphemous claim
that "if he had been God's counsel at the time of creation, certain things
would be in better order than they are.” For Alfonso, this was certainly not
the "best of all possible worlds" and, as such, he "proved a
perfect foil in Leibniz's polemic against Bayle."
In part, the wide discrepancy between Alfonso's and
Leibniz's views of the order of creation can be attributed to "the
miserable state of thirteenth-century astronomy." Neiman writes in this
vein that, "had the world been created as Ptolemy supposed, the Creator
could indeed have used advice in design." However, Leibniz's view of
future understanding was far more optimistic:
And if we hold the same opinion as
King Alfonso, we shall, I say, receive this answer: You have known the world
only since the day before yesterday, you scarce see farther than your nose, and
you carp at the world. Wait until you know more of the world and consider
therein especially the parts which present a complete whole (as do organic
bodies); and you will find therein a contrivance and a beauty transcending all
imagination. Let us thence draw conclusions as to the wisdom and the goodness
of the author of the world, even in things that we know not. We find in the
universe some things which are not pleasing to us; but let us be aware that it
is not made for us alone. It is nevertheless made for us if we are wise: it
will serve us if we use it for our service; we shall be happy in it if we wish
to be.
What accompanied Leibniz's theodicy was a division of human
misery into metaphysical, physical (natural), and moral categories of evil, a
division that echoed King's earlier attempt at the categorization of evils.
Metaphysical evil, Leibniz argued, "consists in mere imperfection";
that is, it was viewed as a function of creation's finitude." Physical
evil is conceived as suffering and, although Leibniz claimed that God
"does not will [it] absolutely: he does "will it often as a penalty
owing to guilt, and often also as a means to an end, that is, to prevent
greater evils or to obtain greater good." That is, physical evil was
understood to be the "pain and suffering" humans experience as the
penalty for committing moral evil, conceived as sin." Thus, Leibniz
argued, as Augustine had done before him, that human beings suffer because they
sin, although he thought the connection "too self-evident to warrant
serious question.” This, however, was all to change with the destructive force
of one of the most spectacular events of the early modern period, the Lisbon
earthquake.
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