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Baruch Spinoza

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Philosophers

   Western Philosophy
   17th-century philosophy
   Benedictus de Spinoza
   Name: de Spinoza
   Birth: November 24, 1632 (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
   Death: February 21, 1677 (The Hague, Netherlands)
   School/tradition: Rationalism, founder of Spinozism
   Main interests: Ethics, Epistemology, Metaphysics
   Notable ideas: Pantheism, Neutral Monism, intellectual and religious
   freedom/ separation of Church and State, Criticism of Mosaic authorship
   of certain Old Testament books, Political society derived from power,
   not contract
   Influences: Hobbes, Descartes, Stoics, Avicenna, Maimonides, Nicholas
   of Cusa, Aristotle, Bacon, Plato
   Influenced: Kant, Hegel, Davidson, Schopenhauer, Deleuze, Einstein,
   Goethe, Nietzsche, Althusser, Hardt, Negri, Fromm

   Benedictus de Spinoza or Baruch de Spinoza (Hebrew: ברוך שפינוזה)
   (lived November 24, 1632 – February 21, 1677) was a Dutch philosopher
   of Portuguese Jewish origin. He is considered one of the great
   rationalists of 17th-century philosophy and, by virtue of his magnum
   opus the posthumous Ethics, one of Western philosophy's definitive
   ethicists. Spinoza was a lens crafter by trade, an exciting engineering
   field at the time because of great discoveries being made by
   telescopes. Like his fellow rationalists, his work reveals considerable
   scientific aptitude, including mathematical training and understanding.
   The full scope and importance of Spinoza's work was not realized until
   years after his death and the publication of Opera Posthuma. He is now
   recognized as having laid the groundwork for the 18th century
   Enlightenment, and as a founder of modern biblical criticism.

   Spinoza lived a quiet life as a lens grinder. He turned down rewards
   and honours throughout his life, including prestigious teaching
   positions, and gave his family inheritance to his sister. Spinoza's
   moral character and philosophical accomplishments prompted twentieth
   century philosopher Gilles Deleuze to name him "The absolute
   philosopher, whose Ethics is the foremost book on concepts" (Deleuze,
   1990). Spinoza died in February 1677 of consumption, likely compounded
   by fine glass dust inhaled while tending to his trade. Variations to
   his surname are abundant: Despinoza, d'Espinoza, de Spinoza, Spinoza,
   etcetera.

Life

   Following their expulsion from Spain around 1492, many Jews sought
   refuge in Portugal, only to be instructed to accept Christianity or be
   expelled. Spinoza was born in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, to parents
   Miguel de Espinosa and Ana Débora who were of Sephardic Jewish descent,
   among the Portuguese Jews in the city. Débora was Miguel's second wife
   and died when Spinoza was only six years old. Spinoza's parents were
   Marranos who fled from Portugal to escape the Portuguese Inquisition
   and return to Judaism. Some historians argue the Spinoza family had its
   remote origins in Spain, others claim they were Portuguese Jews who had
   moved to Spain and then returned to their home country in 1492, only to
   be forcibly converted to Catholicism in 1498. Spinoza's father was born
   roughly a century after this forced conversion in the small Portuguese
   city of Vidigueira, near Beja in Alentejo. When Spinoza's father was
   still a child, Spinoza's grandfather, Isaac de Spinoza (who was from
   Lisbon), went with all his family to Nantes in France. They were
   expelled in 1615 and moved to Rotterdam, where Isaac died in 1627.
   Spinoza's father and his uncle, Miguel and Manuel respectively, then
   moved to Amsterdam where they assumed their Judaism (Manuel even
   changed his name to Abraão de Spinoza, though his "commercial" name was
   still the same). His father was a successful importer/merchant and
   Baruch had an orthodox Jewish upbringing; however, his critical,
   curious nature would soon come into conflict with the Jewish community.
   After wars with England and France decimated his family's fortune and
   the death of his father, he was eventually able to relinquish
   responsibility for the business and its debts to his brother, Gabriel,
   and devote himself to philosophy and optics.

   He initially gained infamy for positions that defied the Jewish law,
   with highly critical positions towards the Talmud and other sacred
   texts. In general, Judaism is quite tolerant with atypical
   representations of God; nonetheless, Spinoza believed that God was
   Nature/Universe, a thought that was unacceptable to the Jewish
   community of the era. In the summer of 1656, he was issued the writ of
   cherem (Hebrew: חרם, similar to excommunication) from the Jewish
   community, for the apostasy of how he conceived God. The terms of his
   cherem were quite severe (see Kasher and Biderman): it was never
   revoked. Following his excommunication, he adopted the first name
   Benedictus, the Latin equivalent of his given name, Baruch; they both
   mean "blessed". In his native Amsterdam he was also known as Bento de
   Spinoza, which was the informal form of his name.

   After his excommunication, it is purported that Spinoza lived and
   worked in the school of Franciscus van den Enden, who taught him Latin
   in his youth and may have introduced him to modern philosophy, although
   Spinoza never mentions Van den Enden anywhere in his books or letters.
   Van den Enden was a Cartesian and atheist who was forbidden by the city
   government to propagate his doctrines publicly. Spinoza, having
   dedicated himself completely to philosophy after 1656, fervently
   desired to change the world through establishing a clandestine
   philosophical sect. Because of public censure this was only eventually
   realized after his death through the dedicated intercession of his
   friends.

   During this period Spinoza also became acquainted with several
   Collegiants, members of a non-dogmatic and interdenominational sect
   with tendencies towards rationalism and Arianism. Spinoza also
   corresponded with Peter Serrarius, a radical Protestant merchant.
   Serrarius is believed to have been a patron of Spinoza at some point.
   By the beginning of the 1660s, Spinoza's name became more widely known,
   and eventually Gottfried Leibniz and Henry Oldenburg paid him visits.
   He corresponded with the latter for the rest of his life. Spinoza's
   first publication was his Tractatus de intellectus emendatione. From
   December 1664 to June 1665, Spinoza engaged in correspondence with
   Blyenbergh, an amateur Calvinist theologian, who questioned Spinoza on
   the definition of evil. Later in 1665, he notified Oldenburg that he
   had started to work on a new book, the Theologico-Political Treatise,
   published in 1670. It should be noted that Leibniz disagreed harshly
   with Spinoza in Leibniz's own published Refutation of Spinoza.

   When the public reactions to the anonymously published
   Theologico-Political Treatise were extremely unfavourable to his brand
   of Cartesianism, Spinoza was compelled to abstain from publishing more
   of his works. Wary and independent, he wore a signet ring engraved with
   his initials, a rose and the word "caute" (Latin for caution). The
   Ethics and all other works, apart from the Principles of Cartesian
   Philosophy and the Theologico-Political Treatise, were published after
   his death in the Opera Postuma edited by his friends in secrecy to
   avoid confiscation and destruction of manuscripts.

   Spinoza relocated from Amsterdam to Rijnsburg (near Leiden) around 1661
   and later lived in Voorburg and The Hague respectively. He earned a
   comfortable living from lens-grinding. While the lens-grinding aspect
   of Spinoza's work is uncontested, the type of lenses he made is in
   question. Many have said he produced excellent magnifying glasses, and
   some historians credit him with being an optician (in the sense of
   making lenses for eyeglasses). He was also supported by small, but
   regular, donations from close friends. He died in 1677 while still
   working on a political thesis. His premature death was due to a lung
   illness, possibly silicosis, the result of breathing in glass dust from
   the lenses he ground. Only a year earlier, Spinoza had met with Leibniz
   at The Hague for a discussion of his principal philosophical work,
   Ethics, which had been completed in 1676 (Lucas, 1960). Spinoza never
   married, nor did he father any children.

Overview of his philosophy

   Spinoza's system imparted order and unity to the tradition of radical
   thought, offering powerful weapons for prevailing against "received
   authority." As a youth he first subscribed to Descartes's dualistic
   belief that body and mind are two separate substances, but later
   changed his view and asserted that they were not separate, being a
   single identity. He contended that everything that exists in
   Nature/Universe is one Reality (substance) and there is only one set of
   rules governing the whole of the reality which surrounds us and of
   which we are part. Spinoza argued 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, that all
   things are determined by Nature to exist and cause effects, and that
   the complex chain of cause and effect are only understood in part. That
   humans presume themselves to have free will, he argues, is a result of
   their awareness of appetites while being unable to understand the
   reasons why they want and act as they do. The argument for the single
   substance runs as follows:
    1. Substance exists and cannot be dependent on anything else for its
       existence.
    2. No two substances can share the same nature or attribute.

                Proof: Two distinct substances can be differentiated
                either by some difference in their natures or by the some
                difference in one of their alterable states of being. If
                they have different natures, then the original proposition
                is granted and the proof is complete. If, however, they
                are distinguished only by their states of being, then,
                considering the substances in themselves, there is no
                difference between the substances and they are identical.
                "That is, there cannot be several such substances but only
                one."

    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 one in the same. The body and the
   mind are both comprised of the universal substance, and no difference
   exists between them. This formulation is a historically significant
   panpsychist solution to the mind-body problem known as neutral monism.
   The consequences of Spinoza's system also envisage a God that does not
   rule over the universe by providence, but a God which itself is part of
   the deterministic system of which everything in nature is a part. Thus,
   God is the natural world and has no personality.

   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, with 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. However, Spinoza also held that everything must necessarily happen
   the way that it does. Therefore, there is no free will.

   Spinoza's philosophy has much in common with Stoicism in as much 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:
     * The natural world is infinite.
     * Good and evil are definitions of Humans not nature.
     * 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, according to a rational consideration of the benefit as
       well as the animals' status in nature.

Ethical philosophy

   Encapsulated at the start in his Treatise on the Improvement of the
   Understanding (Tractatus de intellectus emendatione) is the core of
   Spinoza's ethical philosophy, what he held to be the true and final
   good. Spinoza held a relativist's position, that nothing is
   intrinsically good or bad, except to the extent that it is subjectively
   perceived to be by the individual. Things are only good or evil in
   respect that humanity sees it desirable to apply these conceptions to
   matters. Instead, Spinoza believes in his deterministic universe that,
   "All things in nature proceed from certain necessity and with the
   utmost perfection". Therefore, no things happen by chance in Spinoza's
   world, and reason does not work in terms of contingency. In the
   universe anything that happens comes from the essential nature of
   objects, or of God/Nature. Perfection therefore abounds according to
   Spinoza. If circumstances are seen as unfortunate it is only because of
   our inadequate conception of reality. While elements of the chain of
   cause and effect are not beyond the understanding of human reason, our
   grasp of the infinitely complex whole is limited because of the limits
   of science to empirically take account of the whole sequence. Spinoza
   also asserted that sense perception - while the basis of all ideas -
   leads only to what is false, because we are ignorant of the causes that
   determine our desires and actions. His concept of " conatus" - man's
   natural inclination to strive toward preserving essential being, and
   assertion that virtue/human power is defined by our success in this
   preservation of being by the guidance of reason is his central ethical
   doctrine; the highest virtue being the intellectual love or knowledge
   of God/Nature/Universe. In the final part of the " Ethics" his concern
   with the meaning of "true blessedness" and his unique approach and
   explanation of how emotions must be detached from external cause in
   order to master them is distinctive and presages 20th c. psychological
   techniques. His concept of three types of knowledge - opinion, reason,
   intuitive - and assertion that intuitive knowledge provides the
   greatest satisfaction of mind, leads to his proposition that the more
   we are conscious of ourselves and Nature/Universe, the more perfect and
   blessed we are (in reality) and that only intuitive knowledge is
   eternal. His unique contribution to understanding the workings of mind
   is extraordinary, even during this time of radical philosophical
   developments, in that his views provide a bridge between religions'
   mystical past and psychology of the present day.

The pantheism controversy

   In 1785, Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi published a condemnation of
   Spinoza's pantheism, after Lessing was thought to have confessed on his
   deathbed to being a "Spinozist", which was the equivalent in his time
   of being called an atheist. Jacobi claimed that Spinoza's doctrine was
   pure materialism, because all Nature and God are said to be nothing but
   extended substance. This, for Jacobi, was the result of Enlightenment
   rationalism and it would finally end in absolute atheism. Moses
   Mendelssohn disagreed with Jacobi, saying that there is no actual
   difference between theism and pantheism. The entire issue became a
   major intellectual and religious concern for European civilization at
   the time, which Immanuel Kant rejected, as he thought that attempts to
   conceive of transcendent reality would lead to antinomies in thought.

   The attraction of Spinoza's philosophy to late eighteenth-century
   Europeans was that it provided an alternative to Materialism, Atheism,
   and Deism. Three of Spinoza's ideas strongly appealed to them:
     * the unity of all that exists;
     * the regularity of all that happens; and
     * the identity of spirit and nature.

   Spinoza's "God or Nature" provided a living, natural God, in contrast
   to the Newtonian mechanical First Cause or the dead mechanism of the
   French "Man Machine."

Modern relevance

   Late twentieth century Europe has demonstrated a greater philosophical
   interest in Spinoza, often from a left-wing or Marxist perspective.
   Notable philosophers Gilles Deleuze, Antonio Negri, Étienne Balibar and
   the Brazilian philosopher Marilena Chauí have each written books on
   Spinoza. Deleuze's doctoral thesis, published in 1968, refers to him as
   "the prince of philosophers". (Deleuze, 1968). Other philosophers
   heavily influenced by Spinoza include Constantin Brunner and John David
   Garcia. Stuart Hampshire wrote a major English language study of
   Spinoza, though H. H. Joachim's work is equally valuable. Unlike most
   philosophers, Spinoza and his work were highly regarded by Nietzsche.

   Prominent Cambridge philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein evoked Spinoza with
   the title (suggested to him by G. E. Moore) of the English translation
   of his first definitive philosophical work, Tractatus
   Logico-Philosophicus, an allusion to Spinoza's Tractatus
   Theologico-Politicus. Elsewhere, Wittgenstein deliberately borrowed the
   expression sub specie aeternitatis from Spinoza (Notebooks, 1914-16, p.
   83). The structure of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus does have
   certain structural affinities with Spinoza's Ethics (though,
   admittedly, not with the latter's own Tractatus), in erecting complex
   philosophical arguments starting from basic logical assertions and
   principles. Furthermore, in propositions 6.4311 and 6.45 he alludes to
   a Spinozian understanding of eternity and interpretation of the
   religious concept of eternal life: stating that "If by eternity is
   understood not eternal temporal duration, but timelessness, then he
   lives eternally who lives in the present." (6.4311) "The contemplation
   of the world sub specie aeterni is its contemplation as a limited
   whole." (6.45) Wittgenstein's interpretation of religious language, in
   both his early and later career, may be said to bear a family
   resemblance to Spinoza's pantheism.

   Spinoza has had influence beyond the confines of philosophy. The
   nineteenth century novellist, George Eliot, produced her own
   translation of the Ethics, the first known English translation thereof.
   The twentieth century novellist, W. Somerset Maugham, alluded to one of
   Spinoza's central concepts with the title of his novel, Of Human
   Bondage. Albert Einstein named Spinoza as the philosopher who exerted
   the most influence on his world view ( Weltanschauung). Spinoza equated
   God (infinite substance) with Nature, consistent with Einstein's belief
   in an impersonal deity. In 1929, Einstein was asked in a telegram by
   Rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein whether he believed in God. Einstein
   responded by telegram "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself
   in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns
   himself with the fates and actions of human beings." Spinoza's
   pantheism has also influenced the environmental theory. Arne Næss, the
   father of the deep ecology movement, acknowledged Spinoza as an
   important inspiration. Moreover, Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges,
   was greatly influenced by Spinoza's world view. In many poems and short
   stories, he makes constant allusion to the philosopher's work, not as a
   partisan of his doctrines, but merely in order to use these for
   aesthetical purposes. He has done it many times with all the
   philosophers whose work he admired.

   Spinoza is an important historical figure in the Netherlands, where his
   portrait was featured prominently on the Dutch 1000- guilder banknote,
   legal tender until the euro was introduced in 2002. The highest and
   most prestigious scientific award of the Netherlands is named the
   Spinozapremie (Spinoza grant).

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