Baruch Spinoza
From Freepedia
| Western Philosophers 17th-century philosophy | ||
|---|---|---|
| Benedictus de Spinoza | ||
| Basic Information | ||
| Name | Benedictus de Spinoza | |
| Dates | November 24, 1632 – February 21, 1677 | |
| Place of Birth | Amsterdam, Netherlands | |
| Place of Death | The Hague, Netherlands | |
| School/Tradition | Continental rationalism | |
| Major Works | Ethics, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus | |
| Main Interests | Ethics, Epistemology, Metaphysics | |
| Influences | Hobbes, Descartes, ibn Sina, ben Maimon, Kryfts | |
| Influenced | Conway, Kant, Hegel, Davidson | |
| Famous Ideas | Pantheism | |
| Quote | Mind and body are one and the same individual which is conceived now under the attribute of thought, and now under the attribute of extension. -Ethics II prop. 7 | |
| Philosophers By Era | ||
| Pre-Socratic, Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, 1900s | ||
Benedictus de Spinoza (November 24, 1632 – February 21, 1677), was named Baruch Spinoza by his synagogue elders and known as Bento de Spinoza or Bento d'Espiñoza in his native Amsterdam. Along with René Descartes and Gottfried Leibniz, he was one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy. He is considered the founder of modern Biblical criticism. His magnum opus was the Ethics.
Contents |
Life
Born to a Sephardic family among the Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam, he gained fame for his positions of pantheism and neutral monism, as well as the fact that his Ethics was written in the form of postulates and definitions, as though it were a geometry treatise. In the summer of 1656, he was excommunicated from the Jewish community for his claims that God is the mechanism of nature and the universe, having no personality, and that the Bible is a metaphorical and allegorical work used to teach the nature of God, both of which were based on a form of Cartesianism (see René Descartes). Following his excommunication, he adopted the first name Benedictus (the Latin equivalent of his given name, either Baruch or Bento). The terms of his excommunication were quite severe; excerpts from the text may be found at [1].
Since the public reactions to the anonymously published Theologico-Political Treatise turned unfavourable to his brand of [2] Cartesianism, he abstained from publishing more of his works. The Ethics was published after his death, in the Opera postuma edited by his friends.
Some of the major figures whom Spinoza met include Henry Oldenburg and Leibniz.
Philosophy
Known as both the "greatest Jew" and the "greatest Atheist", Spinoza contended that God and Nature were two names for the same reality, namely the single substance (meaning "to stand beneath" rather than "matter") that underlies the universe and of which all lesser "entities" are actually modes or modifications. The argument for this single substance runs something as follows:
- 1. Substance exists and cannot be dependent on anything else for its existence.
- 2. No two substances can share an attribute.
- Proof: If they share an attribute, they would be identical. Therefore they can only be individuated by their modes. But then they would depend on their modes for their identity. This would have the substance being dependent on its mode, in violation of premise 1. Therefore, two substances cannot share the same attribute.
- 3. A substance can only be caused by something similar to itself (something that shares its attribute).
- 4. Substance cannot be caused.
- Proof: Something can only be caused by something which is similar to itself, in other words something that shares its attribute. But according to premise 2, no two substances can share an attribute. Therefore substance cannot be caused.
- 5. Substance is infinite.
- Proof: If substance were not infinite, it would be finite and limited by something. But to be limited by something is to be dependent on it. However, substance cannot be dependent on anything else (premise 1), therefore substance is infinite.
- Conclusion: There can only be one substance.
- Proof: If there were two infinite substances, they would limit each other. But this would act as a restraint, and they would be dependent on each other. But they cannot be dependent on each other (premise 1), therefore there cannot be two substances.
Spinoza contended that "Deus sive Natura" ("God or Nature") was a being of infinitely many attributes, of which extension and thought were two. His account of the nature of reality, then, seems to treat the physical and mental worlds as two different, parallel "subworlds" that neither overlap nor interact. This formulation is a historically significant panpsychist solution to the mind-body problem known as neutral monism.
Spinoza was a thoroughgoing determinist who held that absolutely everything that happens occurs through the operation of necessity. For him, even human behaviour is fully determined, freedom being our capacity to know we are determined and to understand why we act as we do. So freedom is not the possibility to say "no" to what happens to us but the possibility to say "yes" and fully understand why things should necessarily happen that way. By forming more "adequate" ideas about what we do and our emotions or affections, we become the adequate cause of our effects (internal or external), which entails an increase in activity (versus passivity). This means that we become both more free and more like God, as Spinoza argues in the Scholium to Prop. 49, Part II.
Spinoza's philosophy has much in common with Stoicism inasmuch as both philosophies sought to fulfil a therapeutic role by instructing people how to attain happiness (or eudaimonia, for the Stoics). However, Spinoza differed sharply from the Stoics in one important respect: he utterly rejected their contention that reason could defeat emotion. On the contrary, he contended, an emotion can be displaced or overcome only by a stronger emotion. For him, the crucial distinction was between active and passive emotions, the former being those that are rationally understood and the latter those that are not. He also held that knowledge of true causes of passive emotion can transform it to an active emotion, thus anticipating one of the key ideas of Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis.
Some of Spinoza's philosophical positions are:
- God is the natural world and has no personality.
- The natural world made itself.
- There is no real difference between good and evil.
- Everything must necessarily happen the way that it does. Therefore, there is no free will.
- Everything done by humans and other animals is excellent and divine.
- All rights are derived from the State.
- Animals can be used in any way by people for the benefit of the human race.
Modern relevance
Albert Einstein said that Spinoza was the philosopher who had most influenced his worldview (weltanschauung). Spinoza equated God (infinite substance) with Nature, and Einstein, too, believed in an impersonal deity. His desire to understand Nature through physics can be seen as contemplation of God. Arne Næss, the father of the deep ecology movement, acknowledged drawing much inspiration from the works of Spinoza.
In the late twentieth century, there was a great increase in philosophical interest in Spinoza in Europe, particularly from a left-wing or Marxist perspective. Notable philosophers Gilles Deleuze, Antonio Negri and Étienne Balibar have each written books on Spinoza. Stuart Hampshire wrote a major English language study of Spinoza, though H H Joachim's work is equally valuable.
Spinoza's portrait featured prominently on the older series of the 1000 Guilder banknote, which was legal tender in the Netherlands until the euro was introduced in 2002.
The highest and most prestigious scientific prize of the Netherlands is named the Spinozapremie (Spinoza reward).
Bibliography
By Spinoza
- Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well-Being
- On the Improvement of the Understanding (1662) (Project Gutenberg Entry: [3])
- Principles of Cartesian Philosophy (1663)
- Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (A Theologico-Political Treatise) (1670) (Project Gutenberg Entry: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)
- Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (The Ethics) (1677) (Project Gutenberg Entry: [4])
- Hebrew Grammar (1677)
About Spinoza
- Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life, Cambridge U. Press, 1999, ISBN 0-521-55210-9
- Margaret Gullan-Whur, "`Within Reason: A Life of Spinoza". Jonathan Cape, 1998, ISBN 0-224-05046-X
See also
External links
- The Ethics - Split-screen Latin/English or Latin/French
- The EthicsA READABLE version with all the content still there.
- Vereniging Het Spinozahuis
- The Spinoza Net
- Spinoza and Spinozism - BDSweb
- A Theologico-Political Treatise -English Translation
- HyperSpinoza
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Spinoza
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
Categories: 1632 births | 1677 deaths | Dutch philosophers | Early modern philosophers | Enlightenment philosophers | Rationalists | Spanish and Portuguese Jews
