Baruch Spinoza
(1632 – 1677)
Dutch philosopher of Jewish origin. Following Descartes he was a Rationalist and an early thinker of the Enlightenment. He is one of the most important and radical philosophers of the early modern period, who contributed immensely to modern conceptions of the self, freedom, universe, and biblical criticism. He lived and followed his philosophy, despite the fact that it led him to be excommunicated by both the Jewish and Christian communities. He led a simple life without much money and worked as an optical lens grinder.
His magnum opus, the Ethics (1677) was published posthumously in the year of his death. It is a bold and systematic work that criticises traditional philosophical and theological conceptions of God, the world, and human place within it.
It builds on Cartesian metaphysics and epistemology (and opposes Descartes’s mind-body dualism), while combining elements of ancient Stoicism, Hobbes’s political philosophy and medieval Jewish thought. Spinoza’s naturalistic philosophy serves to ground a moral philosophy and ethical world-view, aiming to show that happiness, virtue and well-being lie in a life that is not enslaved to passions, desires and transitory goods.
Spinoza’s God:
Following from Descartes conception of an infinite substance (that which is absolutely independent) – Spinoza says there can only be one infinite substance, that is God.
– Spinoza’s God has infinite attributes, among which are the mind and the body (*note: the mind and the body in Spinoza are one of the many attributes of God. In Descartes’s system, the mind and the body are finite substances that descend from God).
– In this way, the mental (the mind) and the corporeal (the body) are two ways of looking, or two perspectives on reality (ie. God) – one through the mind (idealism) and the other through the body (materialism), but they are not mutually exclusive and in this way totally compatible.
Spinoza equates infinite substance not only with God, but also with Nature – “God is Nature and Nature is God” (Deus sive Natura) – a view, which got him in trouble with all kinds of religious authorities.
—> According to him, God is “the sum of the natural and physical laws of the universe and certainly not an individual entity or creator”. So, God is everything in the universe, and everything is a part of God.
He also makes an important distinction of how, as finite beings, we have two possible ways of looking at the world:
– sub specie durationis (under the aspect of time) – to look at things from a limited, time-boud POV – sub specie aeternitatis (under the aspect of eternity) – to look at things globally and eternally.
The true philosopher attempts to transcend the limited human perspective and view the world from the perspective of eternity (God). Spinoza writes that in this way, one comes to realize that humans have no privileged position in the cosmos, and no more or less dignity than any other living being, and one sees everything as a necessary part of the whole (naturalism).
In Spinoza’s system knowledge of the world (philosophical knowledge of reality) = knowledge of God = love of God and everything that is (once you know that God is in everything, you must either love everything or nothing at all).
—> This moral view has both a stoic and mystic component, because knowledge and love of reality leads to the realisation that everything happens out of necessity, encapsulated in Spinoza’s words as: Natura naturans – translated roughly as “nature doing what nature does”, meaning everything happens from the necessity of God’s nature.
—> Knowing and understanding the above, one can grasp the structure of reality, free himself from the desires and passions that guide us, and live in harmony with nature/God.