Spinoza, Baruch de

SPINOZA, BARUCH de. - Philosopher, b. in Amsterdam on 24 Nov. 1632 to a Jewish family of Portuguese origin, d. at The Hague on 21 Feb. 1677. He represents the highest and most coherent expression of modern rationalism, Cartesian, mathematical, phenomenalistic, which he logically carries to its extreme rationalistic-monistic conclusions, unhindered by practical motives, as Malebranche and even Leibniz (v.) were, and he stands in the small band of the great modern philosophers.

I. LIFE AND WORKS

S. drew from his strong Jewish education that pervasive and absorbing sense of the divine which is characteristic of him. He was then introduced to Jewish philosophy, Neoplatonic-medieval in character, by the famous Rabbi Morteira: whence came his pantheistic conception of the divine. But such a conception — in which God and the world are resolved into a unity of nature — is in no way coherent with a Revelation, which presupposes divine transcendence. S.'s acute intellect must have realized this at once; while his straightforward will prevented him from adhering to a religion of which he was not rationally convinced. Wherefore, refusing any practical compromise, he was solemnly excommunicated by the Synagogue, which had set him on the path to the rabbinate, on 27 July 1656; and was subsequently even exiled by the Protestant authorities of Amsterdam as a blasphemer of Scripture. S. withdrew first to the surroundings of Amsterdam, then to Leiden and from there to The Hague (1664). At twenty-four years of age, without homeland, family, health, or wealth, S. would remain isolated even religiously. The other most notable facts in his spiritual and speculative formation are his discipleship under Franciscus van den Ende and his participation in certain Christian-Protestant circles in Holland. From van den Ende S. learned first of all Cartesian science and philosophy, which would be a precious instrument for the rational systematization of his fundamental mystical-pantheistic intuition, and then Latin and a little Greek. The Dutch religious circles that S. frequented advocated a Christianity without dogmas and with an essentially moralistic content (Collegiants, Mennonites, etc.): from these depends his substantial knowledge of Christianity, and, at least in part, his religious philosophy. Apart from these, it may be said that no other external events are encountered in the brief and intense life of S. He provided for his extremely limited material needs essentially by grinding optical lenses, for microscopes and telescopes, much sought after because of their perfection; and also with some small help from a select group of admirers, friends and disciples. But he refused every condition that could have limited or disturbed his speculative quiet and scientific independence (the rich testamentary legacy of Simon de Vries; the life annuity offered him by the great Condé; the chair at the University of Heidelberg, proposed to him by the Palatine Elector Charles Louis, brother of Princess Elizabeth, an admirer of Descartes). As Pascal observes, it seems that he had understood — unlike the worldly Leibniz — how "all evils come from not knowing how to remain at rest in a room."

Undermined by hereditary tuberculosis, after a few months of illness S. passed away quietly at only 44 years of age. His savings were barely sufficient to pay the few insignificant debts contracted during his illness. Weak health did not prevent S. from being a great thinker: indeed, according to his contemporary Pascal, it would have been a necessary condition for this. Another characteristic trait of S.'s personality is his ethical conception of philosophy, as the resolver of the problem of life, whence also the rigorous coherence of his life with his philosophy; but at the same time his firm conviction that the resolution of this ultimate problem is not possible except theoretically, through the rational and intellectual contemplation of eternal and infinite Reality (cf. the opening of the De intellectus emendatione and the appendix to Book IV of the Ethica). But since it is not granted to the human intellect to see concretely the rationality of the world, because of the imposing presence of the evil of negation and of privation, S. needed a tremendous strength of mind in order to overcome humanly this twofold resistance of evil, which comes to culminate in spiritual pride.

The works of S. are relatively few but profoundly meditated, synthetic and containing, even if some are unfinished, a complete philosophical system. The principal ones are the Ethica, more geometrico demonstrata, in 5 books (posthumous, Amsterdam 1677), which contains his philosophical system and is his masterpiece; and the Tractatus theologico-politicus, published anonymously (Hamburg 1670), which contains his religious and political philosophy. The list of (philosophical) works further includes Renati des Cartes Principiorum philosophiae pars I et II more geometrico demonstratae (Amsterdam 1663); Tractatus de intellectus emendatione, unfinished (posthumous, ibid. 1677); Tractatus politicus, unfinished (posthumous, ibid. 1677); Tractatus de Deo et homine eiusque felicitate, rediscovered in the last century, originally written in Latin but of which two Dutch versions survive (ed. by E. Böhmer, Halle 1852); Epistulae, greatly enlarged in the more recent editions and very important for understanding his thought.

II. THOUGHT

The sources of Spinoza's thought are essentially four: a) the orthodox Jewish theistic religion; 2) Jewish Neoplatonic-pantheistic speculation; 3) Cartesian philosophy in particular; 4) modern thought in general (Bruno, Hobbes, etc.). Ignored and despised for about a century after his death, S.'s thought particularly and powerfully interested and influenced German culture after Kant (Lessing, Goethe, Fichte, Schelling, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Schopenhauer), supplying idealism with the monistic metaphysical element, naturally filtered through Kantian criticism.

a) God. — Theology, that is, Spinoza's metaphysics, is substantially contained in Book I of the Ethics (De Deo). From God S. would like to deduce rationally, logically, geometrically, all of reality. God, as he is the sole cause, is the sole substance (Ethics, Book 1, def. 3). The divine substance is eternal and infinite, that is, supratemporal and unfolding in an infinite number of perfections or infinite attributes. Of these attributes, however, the human intellect, although it can achieve its identification with the divine intellect, knows only two: spirit and matter, cogitatio and extensio. These, from diminished substances as they were in Descartes, issue in Spinozistic monism as attributes of the one substance. Thought and extension are different and irreducible expressions of the absolute substance, but unified, corresponding in it thanks to the Spinozistic doctrine of psychophysical parallelism. Here arises the exegetical-critical problem of the relationship between substance and attributes, particularly discussed by Erdmann and Fischer, primarily on the basis of definition 3 of Book II of the Ethics. Substance and the attributes constitute natura naturans. From natura naturans (God) proceeds the world of things, that is, the modes: which are modifications of the attributes and which S. calls natura naturata. The modes are then distinguished into primitive and derived. The primitive modes represent the most immediate and universal determinations of the attributes and are eternal and infinite: for example, in the attribute thought the intellectus infinitus and in the attribute extension the motus infinitus. The derived modes in turn represent the modifications of the primitive modes, and are temporal and finite: for example, the various souls and the various human bodies, which are not substances, but complexes of derived (elementary) modes of thought and extension. The law of psychophysical parallelism, which governs the world of the attributes, consequently governs the whole world of primitive and derived modes: so to speak, every body has a soul (mens) as every soul has a body, which would constitute the fundamental content of that soul's knowing (mens = idea corporis: cf. Ethics, Book II, prop. 13). That is, to every mode of being and operating in extension corresponds a mode of being and operating in thought: «ordo et connexio idearum idem est ac ordo et connexio rerum» (ibid., prop. 7). No action is possible between the soul and the body, as Descartes also thought, and as S. maintains to the end. The supreme law of the one and universal Spinozistic reality is necessity (c.). As everything is necessary in natura naturans (that is, the relationship between substance and the attributes), everything is equally necessary in natura naturata (that is, the relationship among the various modes within the sphere of the respective attributes) and equally necessary is the bond that unites natura naturans and natura naturata to each other. God is rationally necessitated not only in his interior life, but necessarily manifests himself (determines himself) in the world, in which in turn everything is necessitated, matter and spirit, intellect and will.

The principal interpretations of Spinozistic monism can be distinguished into emanatistic and acosmic. For the emanatistic interpretation (e.g., Delbos), alongside natura naturans (substance and attributes) there would stand natura naturata (primitive and derived modes), even if connected to each other by the necessity of emanation. For the acosmic interpretation (e.g., Camerer) natura naturata would be (ontologically) resolved into natura naturans, with the passage from illusory, sensory knowledge to true, rational knowledge. The most reliable interpretation seems to be the pantheistic-emanatistic-causal one (for the relations of natura naturata to natura naturans), in which, however, the pantheistic-acosmic-rational conception also has a part (as regards natura naturans in itself).

b) Man. — In Book II of the Ethics S. considers the human spirit (De mente), or rather integral man, soul and body: because, due to his psychophysical parallelism, it would not be possible to consider the soul and the body separately. There is no need to repeat that for S. man is not a substance. But the so-called soul is nothing but a complex of elementary derived modes of the attribute thought of the one substance. And likewise the body is nothing but a complex of elementary derived modes of the attribute extension of that same substance. Man, soul and body, turns out to be dissolved into a complex of psychophysical phenomena. Yet while denying the soul and its faculties, S. recognizes various psychic activities, theoretical and practical, each split into a sensory degree and a rational degree. As regards sensory knowledge (imaginatio), it would be, as such, entirely subjective. In the sense that sensory knowledge does not give the nature of the thing known but a representation, in which the qualities of the known object and of the knowing subject would be confused; and such representations are arranged in a fragmentary and irrational order (association, memory, etc.). Hence, if this sensory knowledge is considered as absolute, error results (cf. Ethics, Book II, prop. 35). Rational knowledge is distinguished into two degrees: general and particular. General rational knowledge gives the attributes (and the primitive modes) in their universality. The order furnished to us by particular rational knowledge is nothing other than the divine substance, which rationally embraces in its unity the infinite attributes and the infinite modes that determine it. And from this intuitive (mystical) knowledge there necessarily descends the supreme happiness and virtue (for which general rational knowledge was a preparation): as from the limitation of sensory knowledge there necessarily descends pain and passion, given the universal Spinozistic correspondence of theoretical and practical (ibid., coroll. of prop. 49). In reality this wisdom, generative of happiness, ends up being a resignation in the face of universal necessity, more or less rational.

Given psychophysical parallelism, there is no need to say that knowledge for S. is not constituted by the relationship of the mind with the thing, but by the relationship of the mens of the knowing subject with the mens of the known object; while in parallel to this relationship in the order of thought there occurs a specific relationship in the order of extension. And knowledge, the true idea, will not consist in adequation to an ideatum, to a thing (adaequatio mentis et rei), but in adequation to the logical order of ideas in the divine attribute thought, to which there corresponds in parallel the physical order of the ideata in the divine attribute extension (ibid., def. 4 and prop. 3).

c) Ethics. - The moral problem is treated in books III-V of the Ethica. In book III (On the origin and nature of the passions) S. gives a natural history of the passions, that is, he considers the passions theoretically, scientifically, not practically, moralistically. The philosopher must "humanas actiones non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere", as S. expresses it forcefully in the proem to book III. In him, moreover, this rigidly scientific attitude is favored by his universally deterministic conception of reality, whereby the mechanism of human passions is as necessary as the physico-mathematical mechanism, and the passions can be treated with the same serene indifference as lines, surfaces, geometric figures. And so S. seeks to reconstruct, to deduce the world of the passions from certain fundamental passions, derived in turn from human nature. After giving a system of the mechanism of the passions, in book IV (On human bondage, or the power of the passions), S. illustrates in particular the bondage of man subject to the passions. A servitude that is necessarily connected to the error of sensory knowledge: whereby man considers finite things as absolute and therefore clashing among themselves and with him, and thus finds himself fatally in a condition of passivity before them. Then liberation will necessarily be connected to rational, true knowledge: the realization of which, however, does not depend on human free will - which S. denies - but on the particular nature with which individual beings are originally endowed. "The fool is no more obliged to live according to the laws of reason than a cat is obliged to live according to the laws of the nature of a lion" (Tractatus theologico-politicus, ch. 16). If liberation from the passions depends on rational knowledge, one must nevertheless bear in mind that pure knowledge (abstract knowledge) cannot have efficacy on the passions (which are concrete) except on condition of itself becoming practical, affective: since only a passion can conquer a passion, just as only a (true) knowledge can make a (false) knowledge true (Ethica, V, prop. 42).

Given this Spinozian ethics - eudemonistic, monistic, rationalistic - it is natural that it is not absolutely ascetic, despite the deception that can derive from S.'s contempt for the empirical world: not in itself, because it is substantially divine, but solely as it is presented by the illusion of sensory knowledge, on which alone depends evil, moral and physical as well as metaphysical (Ethica, IV, scholium to prop. 45).

In the fifth and last book of the Ethica (On the power of the intellect, or human freedom) S. illustrates in particular the condition of the wise man who, now free from the servitude of the passions and from ignorance, has realized happiness and virtue together with rational knowledge. Since happiness and virtue depend on science, on intuitive rational knowledge, which is in turn the knowledge of things in God, the sage who has reached this point will necessarily love God, who is the cause of his happiness and power: amor Dei intellectualis, that is, the joy accompanied by the rational cause that produces it: God. This love of man toward God is returned by God to man: not as between two persons, because personality is excluded from S.'s metaphysics, but in the sense that man is pantheistically identical with God: and therefore the love of men toward God is identical with the love of God toward himself (ibid., V, corollary to prop. 36). Having arrived at knowledge and the rational life, the sage already lives in eternity, in the sense that he has eternal knowledge of the eternal. As for the immortality of the soul, this is naturally excluded by S. as personal survival, because person and memory belong to the imaginatio. Immortality then can only be understood as the eternity of true ideas, which belong to the divine substance itself. Hence immortal, that is, eternal, or for the most part immortal, will be the souls or thoughts of the wise, that is, of philosophers. Whereas to the soul and thoughts of the common man, almost limited to sensory knowledge and life, is reserved an almost total nullification in the rational system of the divine substance.

d) Politics and religion. - S. examined the political and religious problem in particular in the Tractatus theologico-politicus, considering the State and the Church as irrational means for the advent of rationality (cf. especially ch. 16, and also 6 and 20). Actions done - or omitted - in view of the temporal and eternal punishments or rewards, threatened and promised by the State and the Church, depend on fear and hope: which for S. are irrational passions, but serve the tranquility of the sage and the training of the common man. In the state of nature, preceding political organization, men find themselves in perpetual war, in a struggle of all against all. It is egoism itself which drives men to unite, to agree among themselves in a kind of social pact, whereby they promise to renounce all violence, mutually benefiting one another. But the pact alone is not enough, if it is not provided with a force capable of sustaining it, since through it men have not ceased to be more or less irrational; and right without force has no efficacy. Then the members must cede to a central power the force at their disposal, giving it the task and the means to protect the rights of each. Only thus does the State prove truly constituted. However, the State, the government, the sovereign can do all that it wishes: it has the power and therefore it has the right, finding itself still in the state of nature, from which the subjects have emerged. The State, however, cannot be the supreme dominator, because it does not represent the supreme end of man. Its supreme end is to know God through reason and to act accordingly, whence reason will be the supreme norm of human life. The office of the State is to help man in the rational attainment of God. Therefore if the State were to remain in primitive violence and irrationality, hindering the rational development of society, the subjects - if more rational and therefore more powerful than it, by virtue of the psychophysical parallelism - will necessarily rebel against it and it will fall. Lacking force, it will also lack right. And from its ruin a State more conformable to reason must arise. Thus S. derives the rational state from the naturalistic state.

The other great irrational institution in the service of rationality is, according to S., religion: which represents a surrogate of philosophy for the common people. The content of positive, revealed religion is rational, but its form is absolutely irrational. For the rational knowledge of God degenerates into a mythical revelation; rational action, which should descend from rational knowledge with the same necessity whereby light emanates from the sun, degenerates into the heteronomous divine commandment. That is, positive, revealed religion represents sensibly, symbolically, in a manner suited to the popular mentality, the rational philosophical truths about God and about man, which can benefit the good of the latter, concretizing them in dogmas. Therefore what is of value in them is not, according to S., the exterior formulation, but the moral content; nor should one seek in them arcane metaphysical meanings, because their purpose is essentially practical; that is, to induce submission to God and love of neighbor, in the final unification of all and of all in God.

Umberto A. Padovani