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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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May 9, 2006 by Edward W. Younkins, Ph.D.
Metaphysics There is no ontological hierarchy for Spinoza. For him, the transcendent world does not exist. He proclaims there is no world except the existing one. In Spinoza's pantheistic notion there is only one substance (God), an absolutely infinite being made up of infinite attributes of which only two, thought and physical extension, are known by man. He states that God's existence is necessary and that, because there is nothing other than the divine substance and its modifications, there is nothing that is contingent. All entities, including man, are determined by universal natural laws to exist and to act in a given definite and fixed manner. Spinoza maintains that all things in the universe are modifications of the same single substance and, therefore, not totally free in the sense in being able to do anything whatsoever. Man is a modification (or mode) of the unique, infinite substance that is God or Nature. Nature is an indivisible, uncaused, and substantial whole and is the only substantial whole. God is simply nature under another attribute. Every single mode is caused by God's infinite power that necessarily creates the whole of nature. Spinoza thus conceives of God as the immanent cause of Nature. Spinoza's God is the cause of all things because all things follow necessarily and causally from his divine nature. This is in contrast to the Judeo-Christian idea of God as a transcendent being who causes a world separate from himself to exist by creating it out of nothing. Man is a composite mode of the attributes of thought and extension and therefore man only knows two attributes of God or Nature &endash; mind and body. Mind and body are different aspects of a single substance that Spinoza calls alternately God and Nature. For Spinoza, man is non-durational and rooted in the timeless essence of God, expressly as one of the innumerable specific ways of God being externalized. The mind and the body are different expressions under thought and under extension of the same existent &endash; the human person. Human Nature Human beings are bound by the same natural laws as are all other segments of the universe. Man is an integral part of nature and therefore subject to its laws. In Spinoza's system, men are undisputably part of nature, a domain governed by cause and effect. However, the human body, including its corresponding mind, is significantly more complex than other entities with respect to its composition and in its dispositions to act and to be acted upon. For Spinoza, action refers to the human power to influence causal chains. He explains that all thinking is action and that all action has its concomitant in thought. According to Spinoza, primacy of self-interest is a basic law of human nature. He says that human beings share a common drive for self-preservation and seek to maintain the power of their being. Conatus is the power to preserve in being. Spinoza's conatus principle states that human individuals aim to persist in being in order to assert themselves in the world in their distinct individuality. Like all things in nature, man through his body and through his mind strives to persevere in his being and his mind is conscious of this striving. It is in man's capacity to think that he differs from all other natural entities. Spinoza explains that all things in nature proceed from an eternal necessity. Viewing cause and reason as equivalent terms, Spinoza says that there is no freedom if we understand freedom to be to the power of performing an action without cause or reason. Everything, including man, is bound by laws of nature and other natural constraints. Human beings have a caused nature and are not outside nature. Nature's bounds are set by laws which have attachment to the eternal order of the whole of Nature, of which man is but a part. Man functions as an individual relative to other entities, and, at the same time, he is part of the universe. Freedom and Ethics How can freedom exist in Spinoza's "deterministic" universe? According to Spinoza's definition of freedom, a thing is said to be free which exists by the mere necessity of its own nature and is determined in its actions by itself alone. Like Aristotle, Spinoza values something as terms to the extent to which it realizes its nature. Real freedom, for Spinoza, means acting according to the necessary nature of man. Freedom means to follow the determined conatus which is man striving to persist in his own being. When applied to human beings, the general law of self-preservation has distinctive importance to Spinoza's concept of freedom. Spinoza's ethics is based on an ontology of man whose moral condition can only be accounted for by his own existential condition. Spinoza's moral philosophy has a definite naturalistic character. He sees the foundation of virtue as the endeavor a person makes to preserve his own being. It follows that the basic unit of Spinozist ethics is the individual human person. The attainment of virtuous beliefs is a legitimate end the acquisition of which is something for each individual to achieve if he can. It is in a person's interest to be moral and virtuous. For Spinoza, virtue involves the fuller development of one's individuality. If ethics is possible, there must be a mode in which determinism is combined with freedom. Spinoza notes that people experience and distinguish between good affects that favor the originating conatus of life and bad ones that do not. He explains that in a totally determined system there would be no reason for such qualitative distinctions. He concludes that people live in a universe determined by a type of relative necessity in the circumstances and not in one of absolute necessity. According to Spinoza, man's necessary nature (i.e., to persist in his own being) is not absolutely necessary. Instead, it is possible, contingent, and voluntarily acquired depending upon an effective person's chosen activities. For Spinoza, freedom means the existence of options and the ability to make value judgments and decisions. He says that a human being has the power to act and is the origin of the impulse to act. Spinoza teaches that to behave virtuously is to act, live, and preserve one's being in accordance with reason and on the basis of what is in our own interest and is useful to us. He views freedom as the positive intellectual capacity to act in order to attain our own ends with the knowledge that our actions are always limited by natural law. For Spinoza, power is the knowledge of necessity. He explains that powerful (i.e., virtuous) persons act because they understand why they must act. To be free is to be guided by the law of one's own nature which, according to Spinoza, is never inconsistent with the law of another's nature. He explains that a person's interactions with the rest of nature can either increase his ability or power to preserve in his existence or decrease his ability to do so. It follows that we should pursue what we believe will benefit us by increasing our power to act. The conatus is a potency which requires human effort. According to Spinoza, ideas are active and prompt people to act. He explains that the failure to act may indicate an absence of insight. He says that insight into a man's relation to God is the initial step toward virtue. Virtue consists in the pursuit of knowledge and the understanding of adequate ideas. Spinoza sees rationality as an essential means of attaining the good life. Man reaches happiness through understanding. Happiness and well-being lie in the life of reason. Spinoza describes perfection of the human mind in terms of its power of thinking and freedom in terms of not being controlled completely by external forces. We are free when the causes of our action are internal to us and we are unfree when those causes are external to us. Bondage means acting because of forces external to the actor or being moved by causes of which the person is unaware. We are not free to the extent that we act because something beyond our control causes us to act. When the cause of something lies in our own nature, it is a matter of the mind acting. When the cause is external to our nature then we are passive and being acted upon. Things that happen to us tend to produce joy or sadness. It follows that people should attempt to understand the reasons they are affected by the outside world in the ways that they are affected. Reason helps individuals to understand the causes in the form of external forces that limit their power to act. Once understanding is achieved people are able to overcome their sadness. In addition, the act of understanding the cause or nature of anything naturally leads to joy. Spinoza maintains that emotions may be the most serious threat to a person's freedom and that it takes a man of wisdom to break the chains that enslave him to his passions. An individual is capable of controlling his passions by attaining insight into the nature and causes of his emotions. A man should endeavor to free himself from his passions, or at the minimum try to restrain or moderate them, thus becoming an active autonomous person. If this freedom can be achieved, a person will be free in the sense that whatever happens to him results from his own nature rather than from things external to himself. Spinoza teaches that a man can moderate and restrain the affects via virtue. A person should free himself from reliance on the senses and imagination and rely as much as he can on his rational faculty. Liberation lies in acquiring knowledge which empowers the mind thus making it less susceptible to external circumstances. Knowledge, virtue, power, and freedom are one. Ethics, for Spinoza, is a matter of liberation from the bondage to passive affects through the cultivation of reason. He says that the mind is able to weaken the hold passions have over an individual. This is accomplished by acquiring adequate ideas of the affects. To reach higher intelligent expressions of human power, reason must regulate passion. As we gain more adequate understanding of the causes acting on us, our power (or freedom) increases. Such freedom is realizable through the exercise of reason and reflection. A person's goal is to attain a relative adequacy that will increase his powers of intellectual and physical self-determination in place of passive, self-enslaving passions. This involves acting to escape the constraints and to embrace the possibilities and necessitates an enactive enhancement of individual power and autonomy. The mind is active only in so far as it understands adequate ideas. This understanding is the basis of virtue. In fact, the effort to understand is the primary and sole foundation of virtue. According to Spinoza, adequate ideas are formed in an orderly and rational manner in three stages including sense experience (and imagination), reason, and intuition. If a mind reaches the level of scientia intuitiva it realizes its actual nature and sees individual things for what they truly are. Understanding through this type of knowledge is under the aspect of eternity and in relation to God. Spinoza was optimistic with respect to the cognitive powers of human beings for understanding the nature of the individual human person and other organisms and their place in the natural order of the world. Spinoza explains that a person whose mind is made up mainly by adequate ideas participates more fully in eternity than a man whose mind is constituted largely by inadequate ideas. He says that a man's intellect is eternal as part of God's infinite intellect. Genuine understanding of the universe is the form of a person's participation in the absolute and eternal God-substance. The human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God, and, when the mind knows, it is God who knows and who is known to the extent that he can be explained through the nature of the human mind. A person of higher understanding is aware of a certain eternal necessity of himself, of objects, and of God. As a result, he enjoys peace of mind and self-control. Spinoza's free person experiences calmness of mind and experiences good and bad events with equanimity. By living under the guidance of reason, a person will enjoy the pleasure of self-contentment. He will concentrate on doing those things that are most important to him and he will take care of others. For Spinoza, virtue involves the seeking of one's own advantage. The virtue of courage is the desire of an individual to endeavor to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alone. In addition, nobility is the virtue of a person to attempt to help others and to be friends with them. Man is aware of his kinship with, and similarity to, others. Recognizing man's natural sociality, Spinoza states that it is natural to pursue the happiness of our fellow men. According to Spinoza, the free individual does not fear eternal punishment nor does he expect eternal rewards in some after-life. He is not concerned with notions such as apocalypse, redemption, and so on. Such a man realizes that the mind (or soul) is not immortal in any personal sense but that it does have a particular type of eternity. The human mind, being part of the intellect of God, cannot be destroyed absolutely with the body. There is something of it that remains which is eternal. Although Spinoza holds a doctrine of personal identity, he does not hold a doctrine of personal immortality. Spinoza provides the moral world with an immanent basis. His metaphysics and ethics are inextricably connected. He says that to act in accordance with our nature is to act virtuously. The purpose of his ethics is free people to live in the world as it is without distracting themselves by appealing to a transcendent divine providence. In his ethical naturalism, ethical propositions are explainable in terms of natural propositions. Spinoza's goal was to bridge gaps and reconcile schisms such as God versus Nature, determinism versus freedom, fact versus value, mental versus physical, eternity versus temporality, reason versus passion, objective versus subjective, etc. Spinoza explains mental phenomena as grounded in the objective natural world and moral values as rooted in the objective characteristics of the universe. He views the study of the mind and the study of ethics to be deeply intertwined &endash; ethics is a function of the understanding mind. By nature, the domain of the mind is ethical in character. Spinoza's ethics is organized around the search for the highest good, the achievement of the highest human perfection, which once attained will guarantee happiness. The good is whatever makes a person more perfect and it is up to each individual to evaluate or judge what is good and what is bad. For Spinoza, something is useful and, therefore valuable, if it increases a person's power of action. It is obvious that Spinoza's value theory is connected to his metaphysics. He says that if something agrees with our nature then it cannot be bad and that a useful thing is valuable in relation to a particular agent. Although value is relative to a man's essence as a rational being, it is also objectively valuable because it is grounded on a standard independent of subjective attitudes. Although maintaining that goods are only valuable relative to particular individuals, Spinoza argues that some goods have value which does not change with the person or the circumstances. He distinguishes between circumstantially valuable goods and non-circumstantially valuable goods. According to Spinoza, goods for the body can be truly valuable and good, but what leads to understanding is certainly valuable and good. He says that knowledge of God is the mind's greatest good. Knowledge of God is always useful and is thus non-circumstantially valuable. Whereas some knowledge is useful in some circumstances and for some persons but not for other persons, knowledge of God is always beneficial to every individual. Knowledge of God is knowledge of nature including the principles, laws, and rules by which nature operates. |
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If
one mentions the name Spinoza, he is likely to get
as a response something like "Oh, wasn't he the
pantheist philosopher who lived around the time of
Hobbes and Locke?" Of course, he was but he was
also much more than that. Baruch (Benedict de)
Spinoza (1632-1677) promulgated a deductive,
rational and monist philosophy that exhibited a
mathematical appreciation of the universe and that
held that things can only be understood when viewed
in relation to a total structure. Spinoza's thought
is still extremely relevant to 21st Century
thinkers in areas such as methodological
individualism, value theory, ethical naturalism,
self-perfectionism, and political philosophy. For
example, many of Spinoza's ideas are reflected in
the works of contemporary philosophers such as
Douglas Den Uyl, Douglas Rasmussen, and Tibor
Machan.
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