SPINOZA, BARUCH de. — Philosopher, born in Amsterdam on 24 Nov. 1632 to a Jewish family of Portuguese origin, died at The Hague on 21 Feb. 1677. He represents the highest and most consistent expression of modern rationalism—Cartesian, mathematical, phenomenalistic—which he carried logically to its extreme rationalistic-monistic conclusions, unhampered by practical considerations, as were Malebranche and even Leibniz (v.), and stands in the small circle of great modern philosophers.
I. LIFE AND WORKS
Spinoza drew from his strong Jewish upbringing that pressing and absorbing sense of the divine which is characteristic of him. He was thus introduced to Jewish philosophy, of Neoplatonic-medieval stamp, by the celebrated Rabbi Morteira, from whom he derived his pantheistic conception of the divine. But such a conception—whereby God and the world are resolved into a unity of nature—is in no way consistent with a Revelation that presupposes divine transcendence. Spinoza’s keen intellect soon perceived this; yet his straightforward will prevented him from adhering to a religion of which he was not rationally convinced. Thus, refusing every practical compromise, he was solemnly excommunicated by the Synagogue, which had destined him for the rabbinate, on 27 July 1656, and was also banished by the Protestant authorities of Amsterdam as a blasphemer of Scripture. Spinoza first withdrew to the environs of Amsterdam, then to Leiden, and from there to The Hague (1664). At twenty-four, without country, family, health, or wealth, he remained isolated even religiously. Other notable facts in his spiritual and speculative formation were his studies under Franciscus van den Ende and his association with certain Christian-Protestant circles in Holland. From van den Ende, Spinoza first learned Cartesian science and philosophy, which became a precious tool for the rational systematization of his fundamental mystical-pantheistic intuition, as well as Latin and a little Greek. The religious circles in Holland that Spinoza frequented advocated a Christianity without dogmas and of essentially moralistic content (Collegiants, Mennonites, etc.): from these he derived his substantial knowledge of Christianity and, at least in part, his religious philosophy. Apart from these, one may say that no other external influences are found in the brief and intense life of Spinoza. His very limited material needs were met chiefly by grinding lenses for microscopes and telescopes, which were highly sought after for their perfection, and also by small contributions from a select group of admirers, friends, and disciples. Yet he refused every condition that might have limited or disturbed his speculative quiet and scientific independence (the rich testamentary bequest of Simon de Vries; the life pension offered by the Grand Condé; the chair at the University of Heidelberg, proposed by the Palatine Elector Charles Louis, brother of Princess Elizabeth, an admirer of Descartes). As Pascal observed, it seems that Spinoza had understood—unlike the worldly Leibniz—how «all evils come from not knowing how to remain at rest in a room.»Stricken by a hereditary disease, after a few months of illness Spinoza quietly died at the age of only forty-four. His savings barely sufficed to pay the few insignificant debts contracted during his illness. His frail health did not prevent Spinoza from being a great thinker; indeed, it may have been—according to the contemporary Pascal—a necessary condition for II. Another characteristic trait of Spinoza’s personality is his ethical conception of philosophy as the resolution of the problem of life, which accounts for the rigorous consistency between his life and his philosophy; yet at the same time his firm conviction that the resolution of this ultimate problem is possible only theoretically, through rational and intellectual contemplation of eternal and infinite Reality (cf. the opening of *De intellectus emendatione* and the appendix to Part IV of the *Ethics*). But since human intellect cannot concretely perceive the rationality of the world, given the imposing presence of evil as negation and privation, Spinoza required a tremendous strength of soul to overcome, in a human way, this double resistance of evil that culminates in spiritual pride.
Spinoza’s works are relatively few but deeply meditated, synthetic, and containing—even if some are unfinished—a complete philosophical system. The principal ones are the *Ethics*, demonstrated more geometrico, in five parts (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 his (philosophical) works also 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*, discovered in the last century, originally written in Latin but surviving in two Dutch versions (ed. E. Böhm, Halle 1852); and the *Epistolae*, greatly expanded in later editions and highly important for understanding his thought.
II. THOUGHT
The sources of Spinoza’s thought are essentially four: 1) 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, Spinoza’s thought particularly and powerfully influenced German culture after Kant (Lessing, Goethe, Fichte, Schelling, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Schopenhauer), providing idealism with the monistic metaphysical element, naturally filtered through Kantian critique.a) GOD. — Spinoza’s theology, or rather his Spinozistic metaphysics, is substantially contained in Book I of the *Ethics* (On God). From God Spinoza seeks to deduce rationally, logically, and geometrically all reality. Since God is the only cause, He is the only substance (*Ethics*, I, 1, def. 3). The divine substance is eternal and infinite, that is, supratemporal and unfolded in an infinite number of perfections or infinite attributes. Of these attributes, however, the human intellect, despite its capacity to achieve identification with the divine intellect, knows only two: mind and matter, *cogitatio* and *extensio*. These, which in Descartes were diminished substances, in Spinoza become attributes of the single substance. Thought and extension are diverse and irreducible expressions of the absolute, unified substance, corresponding within it thanks to Spinoza’s doctrine of psychophysical parallelism. Here arises the exegetical-critical problem of the relationship between substance and attributes, much discussed by Erdmann and Fischer, primarily on the basis of Definition 3 of Ethics I.
Substance and 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 Spinoza calls *natura naturata*. The modes are then distinguished into primitive and derived. Primitive modes represent the most immediate and universal determinations of the attributes and are eternal and infinite: for example, in the attribute of thought, the *intellectus infinitus*, and in the attribute of extension, *motus infinitus*. Derived modes, in turn, represent modifications of the primitive modes and are temporal and finite: for example, the various human souls and bodies, which are not substances but complexes of elementary derived modes of thought and extension.
The law of psychophysical parallelism, which governs the world of attributes, consequently governs the entire world of primitive and derived modes: so to speak, every body has a soul (*mens*), just as every soul has a body, which would constitute the fundamental content of that soul’s knowing (*mens = idea corporis*: cf. *Ethics*, II, prop. 13). That is, to every mode of being and operation in extension there corresponds a mode of being and operation in thought: “the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things” (*ibid.*, prop. 7). No action is possible between soul and body, as Descartes also thought, and as Spinoza consistently maintains.
The supreme law of Spinoza’s single and universal reality is necessity (v.). Just as everything is necessary in *natura naturans* (that is, the relationship between substance and attributes), so too everything is equally necessary in *natura naturata* (that is, the relationship among the various modes within their respective attributes), and equally necessary is the bond that unites *natura naturans* and *natura naturata*. God is rationally necessitated not only in His inner life but necessarily manifests (determines) Himself in the world, in which, in turn, everything is necessary: matter is spirit, intellect, and will.
The principal interpretations of Spinoza’s monism may be distinguished as emanatist and acosmic. According to the emanatist interpretation (e.g., Delbos), alongside *natura naturans* (substance and attributes) there would be *natura naturata* (primitive and derived modes), though connected by the necessity of emanation. According to the acosmic interpretation (e.g., Camerer), *natura naturata* would be (ontologically) resolved into *natura naturans*, with the transition from illusory, sensory knowledge to true, rational knowledge. The most plausible interpretation seems to be the pantheistic-emanatist-causal one (for the relations of *natura naturans* to *natura naturata*), though it also incorporates the pantheistic-acosmic-rational conception (for *natura naturata* in itself).
b) MAN. — In Book II of the *Ethics* Spinoza considers the human mind (*De mente*), or rather the integral human being, soul and body: because, given his psychophysical parallelism, it would not be possible to consider soul and body separately. It need not be repeated that for Spinoza man is not a substance. The so-called soul is merely a complex of elementary derived modes of the attribute of thought of the single substance. And likewise the body is merely a complex of elementary derived modes of the attribute of extension of that same substance. Man, soul and body, is thus dissolved into a complex of psychophysical phenomena.
While denying the soul and its faculties, Spinoza nonetheless recognizes various psychic activities, theoretical and practical, each of which is twofold: a sensible grade and a rational grade. As regards sensible knowledge (*imaginatio*), it would be, as such, entirely subjective. That is, sensible knowledge does not yield the nature of the thing known but a representation in which the qualities of the object known and the subject knowing are confusedly intermingled and arranged in a fragmentary and irrational order (association, memory, etc.). Hence, if this sensible knowledge is taken as absolute, error results (cf. *Ethics*, II, prop. 35).
Rational knowledge is distinguished into two grades: general and particular. Rational knowledge in the general grade presents the attributes (and primitive modes) in their universality. The order provided by particular rational knowledge is nothing other than the divine substance, which rationally embraces in its unity the infinite attributes and infinite modes that determine II. From this intuitive (mystical) knowledge there necessarily follows supreme happiness and virtue (to which general rational knowledge was a preparation); just as from the limitation of sensible knowledge there necessarily follows pain and passion, given Spinoza’s universal correspondence of the theoretical and the practical (ibid., corollary to prop. 49). In reality, this wisdom that generates happiness ends by being a resignation before universal necessity, more or less rational.
Given the psychophysical parallelism, it need hardly be said that for Spinoza knowledge is not constituted by the relation of the mind to the thing, but by the relation of the *mens* of the knowing subject to the *mens* of the object known; while, parallel to this relation in the order of thought, there occurs a specific relation in the order of extension. And true knowledge, the true idea, will consist not in the adequation to an ideatum, to a thing (*adequatio mentis et rei*), but in the adequation to the logical order of ideas in the divine attribute of thought, to which there corresponds, in parallel fashion, the physical order of ideata in the divine attribute of extension (ibid., def. 4 and prop. 3).
c) Morality. — The moral problem is treated in Books III–V of the *Ethica*. In Book III (On the Origin and Nature of the Passions), Spinoza offers a natural history of the passions, that is, he considers the passions theoretically, scientifically, not practically or moralistically. The philosopher must «humanas actiones non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere», as Spinoza himself forcefully expresses it in the preface to Book III. In him, this rigidly scientific attitude is furthered by his universally deterministic conception of reality, according to which the mechanism of human passions is as necessary as the physical-mathematical mechanism, and the passions can be treated with the same serene indifference as lines, surfaces, and geometric figures. Thus Spinoza seeks to reconstruct, to deduce the world of the passions from certain fundamental passions, which in turn derive from human nature.
After having provided a system of the mechanism of the passions, in Book IV (On Human Bondage, or the Power of the Passions), Spinoza illustrates in particular the bondage of man subject to the passions. This servitude is necessarily connected with the error of sensory knowledge: through it, man regards finite things as absolute and thus in conflict with one another and with himself, and consequently finds himself fatally in a condition of passivity toward them. Liberation will therefore necessarily be connected with true rational knowledge, the attainment of which, however, does not depend on human free will—for Spinoza denies this—but on the particular nature with which individuals are originally endowed. «The infant is not obliged to live according to the laws of reason any more than the cat can be obliged to live according to the laws of the lion’s nature» (*Tractatus theologico-politicus*, chap. 16). If liberation from the passions depends on rational knowledge, it must be borne in mind, however, that pure knowledge (abstract knowledge) cannot have efficacy over the passions (which are concrete) unless it becomes itself practical and affective: for only a passion can conquer a passion, just as only a true knowledge can correct a false one (*Ethica*, V, prop. 42).
Given this Spinozist morality—eudaimonistic, monistic, rationalistic—it is natural that it is not absolutely ascetic, despite the deception that may arise from Spinoza’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, from which alone moral and physical evil, as well as metaphysical evil, derive (*Ethica*, IV, scholium to prop. 45).
In Book V, the last of the *Ethica* (On the Power of the Intellect, or Human Freedom), Spinoza illustrates in particular the condition of the wise man who, now freed from the servitude of the passions and 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 attained this state will necessarily love God, who is the cause of his happiness and power: *amor Dei intellectualis*, that is, joy accompanied by the rational cause that produces it: God. This love of man for God is reciprocated by God toward man: not as between two persons, because personality is excluded from Spinoza’s metaphysics, but in the sense that man is pantheistically identical with God; hence the love of men for God is identical with God’s love for Himself (ibid., V, corollary to prop. 36). Having attained knowledge and 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 Spinoza as personal survival, because person and memory belong to the realm of the imagination. Immortality can therefore be understood only as the eternity of true ideas, which belong to the same divine substance. Hence, souls or thoughts of the wise, that is, of philosophers, will be immortal, or for the most part immortal. On the other hand, the soul and thoughts of the multitude, confined to sensory knowledge and life, are reserved for almost total nullification within the rational system of the divine substance.
d) Politics and Religion. — Spinoza examines 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 chap. 16, and also chaps. 6 and 20). Actions performed—or omitted—in view of temporal and eternal rewards and punishments threatened and promised by the State and the Church depend on fear and hope: which, for Spinoza, are irrational passions, yet serve the tranquility of the sage and the training of the multitude. 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 that drives men to unite, to agree among themselves in a kind of social contract, by which they promise to renounce all violence and to benefit one another reciprocally. But the mere pact is not enough unless it is 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 is ineffective. The members must therefore cede to a central power the force at their disposal, entrusting it with the task and means of protecting each one’s rights. Only thus is the State truly constituted. Yet the State, the government, the sovereign can do whatever it wishes: it has the power, and thus the right, since it remains in the state of nature from which the subjects have emerged. The State, however, cannot be the supreme ruler, because it does not represent man’s supreme end. Man’s supreme end is to know God through reason and to act accordingly; hence reason will be the supreme norm of human life. The office of the State is to assist man in the rational attainment of God. Therefore, if the State were to remain in primitive violence and irrationality, obstructing the rational development of society, the subjects—if more rational and thus more powerful than it, by virtue of the psychophysical parallelism—would necessarily rebel against it, and it would fall. Lacking force, it would also lack right. And from its ruin a more rational State must arise. Thus Spinoza derives the rational State from the naturalistic State.
The other great irrational institution serving rationality, according to Spinoza, is religion: which represents a substitute for philosophy for the multitude. The content of positive, revealed religion is rational, but its form is absolutely irrational. For rational knowledge of God degenerates into a mythical revelation; rational action, which should follow from rational knowledge with the same necessity with which light emanates from the sun, degenerates into a heteronomous divine commandment. In other words, positive, revealed religion represents, in a sensory and symbolic manner suited to popular mentality, the rational philosophical truths about God and man that may benefit the latter, by embodying them in dogmas. Therefore, what is valid in them, according to Spinoza, is not their external formulation, but their moral content; nor should one seek in them arcane metaphysical meanings, because their purpose is essentially practical: to induce submission to God and love of neighbor, in the final unification of all and all in God.
SPINOZA BARUCH — SPIRA
1844: P. L. Couchoud, Benoit de S., ibid. 1902; K. Fischer, S., Leben, Werke und Lehre, 5th ed., Heidelberg 1909; S. von Dunin-Borkowski, Der junge De S., Munich 1910; id., S. nach dreihundert Jahren, Berlin-Bonn 1932; id., Aus den Tagen S. s. 3 vols., Münster 1932; F. Pollock, S., his life and philosophy, 3rd ed., London 1912; T. Camerer, Die Lehre S. s., Stuttgart 1914; F. E. Jacobi, Lettere sulla dottrina dello S., Bari 1914; V. Delbos, Le spinosisme, Paris 1916; L. Brunschvicg, S. et ses contemporains, ibid. 1923; A. Guzzo, Il pensiero di S., Florence 1924; C. Appuhn, S., Paris 1927; P. Brunner, Probleme der Theologie bei Maimonides, Thomas von Aquin und S., Heidelberg 1928; P. Siwek, L'idée et le corps d'après S., Paris 1930; various authors, S., straordinario della Riv. di filosofia, Milan 1934; T. Moretti-Costanzi, S., Rome 1945; G. Rensi, S., Milan 1945; Further references in W. Ziegenfuss, Philosophen-Lexikon, II, Berlin 1950, pp. 605-606.
Umberto A. Padovani