Al
eerder, in het blog van 15 juli 2017, meldde ik dat Don Garrett, van
de University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, de auteur is van het Lemma Spinoza, Baruch in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, [1995, 1999] edited by Robert Audi. De second
edition staat gedigitaliseerd op archive.org. Al vaker heb ik gezegd “dat ik gek ben” op
zulke lemma’s, zeker als ze gescherven zijn door deskundige Spinoza Scholars. Ik
heb dan ook besloten dit al op internet toegankelijke lemma, alsnog naar dit
blog te halen. Eerder meende ik dat de tekst daarvoor misschien te lang is,
maar dat vind ik niet meer (de tekst 14-punts en regelafstand van tenminste 17
pt geeft 6 A-4tjes]
Spinoza,
Baruch (1632–77), Dutch metaphysician, epistemologist,
psychologist, moral philosopher, political theorist, and philosopher of religion,
generally regarded as one of the most important figures of seventeenth-century
rationalism.
Life and works. Born
and educated in the Jewish community of Amsterdam, he forsook his given name
‘Baruch’ in favor of the Latin ‘Benedict’ at the age of twenty-two. Between
1652 and 1656 he studied the philosophy of Descartes in the school of Francis
van den Enden. Having developed unorthodox views of the divine nature (and
having ceased to be fully observant of Jewish practice), he was excommunicated
by the Jewish community in 1656. He spent his entire life in Holland; after
leaving Amsterdam in 1660, he resided successively in Rijnsburg, Voorburg, and
the Hague. He supported himself at least partly through grinding lenses, and
his knowledge of optics involved him in an area of inquiry of great importance
to seventeenth-century science. Acquainted with such leading intellectual figures
as Leibniz, Huygens, and Henry Oldenberg, he declined a professorship at the University
of Heidelberg partly on the grounds that it might interfere with his
intellectual freedom. His premature death at the age of fortyfour was due to
consumption.
The
only work published under Spinoza’s name during his lifetime was his Principles
of Descartes’s Philosophy (Renati Des Cartes Principiorumn Philosophiae,
Pars I et II, 1663), an attempt to recast and present Parts I and II of
Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy in the manner that Spinoza called geometrical
order or geometrical method. Modeled on the Elements of
Euclid and on what Descartes called the method of synthesis, Spinoza’s “geometrical
order” involves an initial set of definitions and axioms, from which various propositions
are demonstrated, with notes or scholia attached where necessary. This work, which
established his credentials as an expositor of Cartesian philosophy, had its
origins in his endeavor to teach Descartes’s Principles of Philosophyto
a private student. Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise (Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus) was published anonymously in 1670. After his death, his
close circle of friends published his Posthumous Works (Opera
Postuma, 1677), which included his masterpieces, Ethic, Demonstrated in Geometrical
Order (Ethica, Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata). The Posthumous
Works also included his early unfinished Treatise on the Emendation of the
Intellect (Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione), his later
unfinished Political Treatise (Tractatus Politicus), a Hebrew
Grammar, and Correspondence. An unpublished early work entitled Short
Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being (Korte Vorhandelung van God, de
Mensch en deszelvs Welstand), in many ways a forerunner of the Ethics, was
rediscovered (in copied manuscript) and published in the nineteenth century.
Spinoza’s authorship of two brief scientific treatises, On the Rainbow and
On the Calculation of Chances, is still disputed.
Metaphysics. Spinoza
often uses the term ‘God, or Nature’ (“Deus, sive Natura“), and this identification
of God with Nature is at the heart of his metaphysics. Because of this
identification, his philosophy is often regarded as a version of pantheism
and/or naturalism. But although philosophy begins with metaphysics for Spinoza,
hismetaphysics is ultimately in the service of his ethics. Because his
naturalized God has no desires or purposes, human ethics cannot properly be
derived from divine command. Rather, Spinozistic ethics seeks to demonstrate,
from an adequate understanding of the divine nature and its expression in human
nature, the way in which human beings can maximize their advantage. Central to
the successful pursuit of this advantage is adequate knowledge, which leads to
increasing control of the passions and to cooperative paction.
Spinoza’s
ontology, like that of Descartes, consists of substances, their attributes
(which Descartes called principal attributes), and their modes. In the Ethics,
Spinoza defines ‘substance’ as what is “in itself, and is conceived through
itself”; ‘attribute’ as that which “the intellect perceives of a substance as
constituting its essence”; and ‘mode’ as “the affections of a substance, or that
which is in another through which also it is conceived.” While Descartes had
recognized a strict sense in which only God is a substance, he also recognized
a second sense in which there are two kinds of created substances, each with
itsown principal attribute: extended substances, whose only principal attribute
is extension; and minds, whose only principal attribute is thought. Spinoza, in
contrast, consistently maintains that there is only one substance. His
metaphysics is thus a form of substantial monism. This one substance is God,
which Spinoza defines as “a being absolutely infinite, i.e., a substance
consisting of an infinity of attributes, of which each expresses an eternal and
infinite essence.” Thus, whereas Descartes limited each created substance to
one principal attribute, Spinoza claims that the one substance has infinite
attributes, each expressing the divine nature without limitation in its own way.
Of these infinite attributes, however, humans can comprehend only two:
extension and thought. Within each attribute, the modes of God are of two
kinds: infinite modes, which are pervasive features of each attribute, such as
the laws of nature; and finite modes, which are local and limited modifications
of substance. There is an infinite sequence of finite modes.
Descartes
regarded a human being as a substantial union of two different substances, the thinking
soul and the extended body, in causal interaction with each other. Spinoza, in
contrast, regards a human being as a finite mode of God, existing
simultaneously in God as a mode of thought and as a mode of extension.
He holds that every mode of extension is literally identical with the mode of
thought that is the “idea of” that mode of extension. Since the human mind is
the idea of the human body, it follows that the human mind and the human body
are literally the same thing, conceived under two different attributes. Because
they are actually identical, there is no causal interaction between the mind and
the body; but there is a complete parallelism between what occurs in the
mind and what occurs in the body. Since every mode of extension has a
corresponding and identical mode of thought (however rudimentary that might
be), Spinoza allows that every mode of extension is “animated to some degree”;
his view is thus a form of panpsychism.
Another
central feature of Spinoza’s metaphysics is his necessitarianism, expressed in
his claim that “things could have been produced . . .in no other way, and in no
other order” than that in which they have been produced. He derives this necessitarianism
from his doctrine that God exists necessarily (for which he offers several arguments,
including a version of the ontological argument) and his doctrine that
everything that can follow from the divine nature must necessarily do so. Thus,
although he does not use the term, he accepts a very strong version of the principle
of sufficient reason. At the outset of the Ethics, he defines a thing as
free when its actions are determined by its own nature alone. Only God – whose
actions are determined entirely by the necessity of his own nature, and for
whom nothing is external – is completely free in this sense. Nevertheless,
human beings can achieve a relative freedom to the extent that they live the
kind of life described in the later parts of the Ethics. Hence, Spinoza
is a compatibilist concerning the relation between freedom and determinism. “Freedom
of the will” in any sense that implies a lack of causal determination,
however, is simply an illusion based on ignorance of the true
causes of a being’s actions. The recognition that all occurrences are causally
determined, Spinoza holds, has a positive consolatory power that aids one in
controlling the passions.
Epistemology and
psychology. Like other rationalists, Spinoza distinguishes
two representational faculties: the imagination and the intellect. The
imagination is a faculty of forming imagistic representations of things,
derived ultimately from the mechanisms of the senses; the intellect is a
faculty of forming adequate, nonimagistic conceptions of things. He also
distinguishes three “kinds of knowledge.” The first or lowest kind he calls
opinion or imagination (opinio, imaginatio). It includes “random or
indeterminate experience” (experientia vaga) and also “hearsay, or
knowledge from mere signs”; it thus depends on the confused and mutilated
deliverances of the senses, and is inadequate. The second kind of knowledge he
calls reason (ratio); it depends on common notions (i.e.,
features of things that are “common to all, and equally in the part and in the
whole”) or on adequate knowledge of the properties (as opposed to the essences)
of things. The third kind of knowledge he calls intuitive knowledge (scientia
intuitiva); it proceeds from adequate knowledge of the essence or
attributes of God to knowledge of the essence of things, and hence proceeds in
the proper order, from causes to effects. Both the second and third kinds of
knowledge are adequate. The third kind is preferable, however, as involving not
only certain knowledge that something is so, but also knowledge of how
and why it is so. Because there is only one substance – God – the
individual things of the world are not distinguished from one another by any
difference of substance. Rather, among the internal qualitative modifications
and differentiations of each divine attribute, there are patterns that have a tendency
to endure; these constitute individual things. (As they occur within the
attribute of extension, Spinoza calls these patterns fixed proportions of
motion and rest.) Although these individual things are thus modes of the
one substance, rather than substances in their own right, each has a nature or
essence describable in terms of the thing’s particular pattern and its mechanisms
for the preservation of its own being. This tendency toward self-preservation Spinoza
calls conatus (sometimes translated as ‘endeavor’). Every individual
thing has some conatus. An individual thing acts, or is active, to the
extent that what occurs can be explained or understood through its own nature
(i.e., its selfpreservatory mechanism) alone; it is passive to the extent that
what happens must be explained through the nature of other forces impinging on it.
Thus, every thing, to whatever extent it can, actively strives to persevere in
its existence; and whatever aids this self-preservation constitutes that
individual’s advantage.
Spinoza’s
specifically human psychology is an application of this more general doctrine
of conatus. That application is made through appeal to several specific
characteristics of human beings: they form imagistic representations of other individuals
by means of their senses; they are sufficiently complex to undergo increases
and decreases in their capacity for action; and theyare capable of engaging in
reason. The fundamental concepts of his psychology are desire, which is conatus
itself, especially as one is conscious of it as directed toward attaining a
particular object; pleasure, which is an increase in capacity for action; and
pain, which is a decrease in capacity for action. He defines other emotions in
terms of these basic emotions, as they occur in particular combinations, in
particular kinds of circumstances, with particular kinds of causes, and/or with
particular kinds of objects. When a person is the adequate cause of his or her
own emotions, these emotions are active emotions; otherwise, they are passions.
Desire and pleasure can be either active emotions or passions, depending on the
circumstances; pain, however, can only be a passion. Spinoza does not deny the phenomenon
of altruism: one’s self-preservatory mechanism, and hence one’s desire, can become
focused on a wide variety of objects, including the well-being of a loved
person or object – even to one’s own detriment. However, because he reduces all
human motivation, including altruistic motivation, to permutations of the
endeavor to seek one’s own advantage, his theory is arguably a form of
psychological egoism.
Ethics. Spinoza’s
ethical theory does not take the form of a set of moral commands. Rather, he seeks
to demonstrate, by considering human actions and appetites objectively – “just
as if it were a Question of lines, planes, and bodies” – wherein a person’s
true advantage lies. Readers who genuinely grasp the demonstrated truths will,
he holds, ipso facto be motivated, to at least some extent, to live
their lives accordingly. Thus, Spinozistic ethics seeks to show how a person acts
when “guided by reason“; to act in this way is at the same time to act
with virtue, or power. All actions that result from understanding – i.e., all
virtuous actions – may be attributed to strength of character (fortitudo).
Such virtuous actions may be further divided into two classes: those due to
tenacity (animositas), or “the Desire by which each one strives, solely
from the dictate of reason, to preserve his being”; and those due to nobility (generositas),
or “the Desire by which each one strives, solely from the dictate of reason, to
aid other men and join them to him in friendship.” Thus, the virtuous person
does not merely pursue private advantage, but seeks to cooperate with others;
returns love for hatred; always acts honestly, not deceptively; and seeks to
join himself with others in a political state. Nevertheless, the ultimate
reason for aiding others and joining them to oneself in friendship is that
“nothing is more useful to man than man” – i.e., because doing so is conducive
to one’s own advantage, and particularly to one’s pursuit of knowledge, which
is a good that can be shared without loss. Although Spinoza holds that we
generally use the terms ‘good’ and ‘evil’ simply to report subjective
appearances – so that we call “good” whatever we desire, and “evil” whatever we
seek to avoid – he proposes that we define ‘good’ philosophically as ‘what we
certainly know to be useful to us’, and ‘evil’ as ‘what we certainly know
prevents us from being masters of some good’. Since God is perfect and has no
needs, it follows that nothing is either good or evil for God. Spinoza’s
ultimate appeal to the agent’s advantage arguably renders his ethical theory a
form of ethical egoism, even though he emphasizes the existence of common
shareable goods and the (instrumental) ethical importance of cooperation with
others. However, it is not a form of hedonism; for despite the prominence he gives
to pleasure, the ultimate aim of human action is a higher state of perfection
or capacity for action, of whose increasing attainment pleasure is only an indicator.
A
human being whose self-preservatory mechanism is driven or distorted by
external forces is said to be in bondage to the passions; in contrast, one who
successfully pursues only what is truly advantageous, in consequence of genuine
understanding of where that advantage properly lies, is free. Accordingly,
Spinoza also expresses his conception of a virtuous life guided by reason in
terms of an ideal “free man.” Above all, the free man seeks understanding of
himself and of Nature. Adequate knowledge, and particularly knowledge of the
third kind, leads to blessedness, to peace of mind, and to the intellectual love
of God. Blessedness is not a reward for virtue, however, but rather an integral
aspect of the virtuous life. The human mind is itself a part of the infinite
intellect of God, and adequate knowledge is an eternal aspect of that infinite intellect.
Hence, as one gains knowledge, a greater part of one’s own mind comes to be
identified with something that is eternal, and one becomes less dependent on –
and less disturbed by – the local forces of one’s immediate environment. Accordingly,
the free man “thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation
on life, not on death.” Moreover, just as one’s adequate knowledge is literally
an eternal part of the infinite intellect of God, the resulting blessedness,
peace of mind, and intellectual love are literally aspects of what might be
considered God’s own eternal “emotional” life. Although this endows the free
man with a kind of blessed immortality, it is not a personal immortality, since
the sensation and memory that are essential to personal individuality are not
eternal. Rather, the free man achieves during his lifetime an increasing
participation in a body of adequate knowledge that has itself always been
eternal, so that, at death, a large part of the free man’s mind has become
identified with the eternal. It is thus a kind of “immortality” in which one
can participate while one lives, not merely when one dies.
Politics
and philosophical theology. Spinoza’s political
theory, like that of Hobbes, treats rights and power as equivalent. Citizens
give up rights to the state for the sake of the protection that the state can
provide. Hobbes, however, regards this social contract as nearly absolute, one
in which citizens give up all of their rights except the right to resist death.
Spinoza, in contrast, emphasizes that citizens cannot give up the right to
pursue their own advantage as they see it, in its full generality; and hence
that the power, and right, of any actual state is always limited by the state’s
practical ability to enforce its dictates so as to alter the citizens’
continuing perception of their own advantage. Furthermore, he has a more
extensive conception of the nature of an individual’s own advantage than
Hobbes, since for him one’s own true advantage lies not merely in fending off death
and pursuing pleasure, but in achieving the adequate knowledge that brings
blessedness and allows one to participate in that which is eternal. In
consequence, Spinoza, unlike Hobbes, recommends a limited, constitutional state
that encourages freedom of expression and religious toleration. Such a state –
itself a kind of individual – best preserves its own being, and provides both
the most stable and the most beneficial form of government for its citizens.
In
his Theological-Political Treatise, Spinoza also takes up popular
religion, the interpretation of Scripture, and their bearing on the well-being
of the state. He characterizes the Old Testament prophets as individuals whose
vivid imaginations produced messages of political value for the ancient Hebrew
state. Using a naturalistic outlook and historical hermeneutic methods that anticipate
the later “higher criticism” of the Bible, he seeks to show that Scriptural
writers themselves consistently treat only justice and charity as essential to
salvation, and hence that dogmatic doxastic requirements are not justified by
Scripture. Popular religion should thus propound only these two requirements,
which it may imaginatively represent, to the minds of the many, as the
requirements for rewards granted by a divine Lawgiver. The few, who are more philosophical,
and who thus rely on intellect, will recognize that the natural laws of human psychology
require charity and justice as conditions of happiness, and that what the
vulgar construe as rewards granted by personal divine intervention are in fact
the natural consequences of a virtuous life.
Because
of his identificaton of God with Nature and his treatment of popular religion,
Spinoza’s contemporaries often regarded his philosophy as a thinly disguised
atheism. Paradoxically, however, nineteenth-century Romanticism embraced him
for his pantheism; Novalis, e.g., famously characterized him as “the
God-intoxicated man.” In fact, Spinoza ascribes to Nature most of the
characteristics that Western theologians have ascribed to God: Spinozistic
Nature is infinite, eternal, necessarily existing, the object of an ontological
argument, the first cause of all things, all-knowing, and the being whose
contemplation produces blessedness, intellectual love, and participation in a
kind of immortality or eternal life. Spinoza’s claim to affirm the existence of
God is therefore no mere evasion. However, he emphatically denies that God is a
person or acts for purposes; that anything is good or evil from the divine
perspective; or that there is a personal immortality involving memory.
In
addition to his influence on the history of biblical criticism and on
literature (including not only Novalis but such writers as Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Heine, Shelley, George Eliot, George Sand, Somerset Maugham, Jorge Luis Borges,
and Bernard Malamud), Spinoza has affected the philosophical outlooks of such
diverse twentieth-century thinkers as Freud and Einstein. Contemporary physicists
have seen in his monistic metaphysics an anticipation of twentieth-century field
metaphysics. More generally, he is a leading intellectual forebear of twentieth-century
determinism and naturalism, and of the mind–body identity theory.
See
also DESCARTES, LEIBNIZ, RATIONALISM.
D.Garr.
[Don Garrett]
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