Don Garrett’s lemma #Spinoza, Baruch in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy

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]