Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)
Spinoza tries to unify Descartes with traditional scholastic metaphysics. The meditation that produces a true insight (like the cogito) is also simple. Philosophy should be a coherent system based on this kind of simplicity, it should be "geometrical." The certainty of the truth of an idea is not external to it. We know that it is true from the idea itself. This means that we grasp truth as one, in an immediate act of comprehension. This is different from laboriously arguing over small distinctions and artificial problems.
1. Die Substanz ist in sich und wird durch sich begriffen: Gott
2. Ausdruck des Wesens der Substanz sind die unendlich vielen Attribute, von denen uns zwei bekannt sind: das Denken und die Ausdehnung. Grund (Denken) und Ursache (Ausdehnung) sind identisch.
3. Die Attribute entfalten sich in die Modi: Welt. Die unendlichen Modi sind beim Denken Verstand und Wille, bei der Ausdehnung Bewegung und Ruhe. Die endlichen Modi sind beim Denken die Ideen, bei der Ausdehnung die Körper (Dinge). Die Ordnung der Ideen ist gleich der Ordnung der Dinge.
4. Der menschliche Geist ist die Idee eines wirklich existierenden Einzeldings, der menschliche Leib ist das Objekt der Idee, die der menschliche Geist ist. Durch das Fühlen der Affektionen des Leibes gelangen wir zur Erkenntnis des Leibes und des Geistes. Wille und Trieb sind identisch. Selbstbewusstsein und Reflexion stellen die Idee der Idee dar.
Erkenntnis
Anders als Descartes’ »Ich denke« gibt es bei Spinoza keinen privilegierten Ausgangspunkt wahrer Erkenntnis. Die Wahrheit der Erkenntnis zeigt sich vielmehr an ihrer inhaltlichen Klarheit und Vollständigkeit. Denn nur ein unvollständiges Erkennen kann irren. Wenn aber das Denken die Wirklichkeit vollständig begreift, indem es alles aus seinem Seinsgrund her versteht, dann kann es nicht mehr fehlgehen. Die logische Grund-Folge-Ordnung eines solchen Denkens wird daher mit der realen Ursache-Wirkung-Ordnung identisch. Wir erfassen die Wirklichkeit in ihrem Ansichsein. Spinoza geht also (wie später Hegel, wenn auch auf andere Weise) davon aus, dass das Wahre das Ganze ist. In seiner »Ethik« drückt Spinoza dies einmal dadurch aus, dass er zu Beginn des zweiten Teils die adäquate Idee als diejenige definiert, die sich allein von ihren Eigenschaften und Merkmalen her als wahr erweist (Eth. II, Def. IV). Und an einer anderen Stelle macht er klar, dass es kein Wahrheitskriterium geben kann, das noch einmal über der Wahrheit stünde, da die Wahrheit selbst über allem steht und somit Kriterium für wahr und falsch ist: »Sane sicut lux seipsam, et tenebras manifestat, sic veritas norma sui, et falsi est.« (Wie nämlich das Licht sich selbst und die Finsternis offenbart, so ist die Wahrheit die Norm ihrer selbst und des Falschen: Eth. II, 43, Schol.) Die niederste Stufe der Erkenntnis ist die inadäquate Erkenntnis der Sinne, von der bislang zumeist die Rede war. Adäquates Erkennen vermitteln erst die zweite und dritte Weise der Erkenntnis. Die zweite Weise ist das Erfassen dessen, was allem gemeinsam ist, wie etwa bei der Materie die Ausdehnung. Dies wird in »notiones communes« (Gemeinbegriffen) ausgedrückt, während die Universalien (Allgemeinbegriffe)und Transzendentalien nur abstrakte und daher vage und unbrauchbare Verallgemeinerungen liefern. Die höchste, intuitive Erkenntnis erfasst alles von Gott her, d. h. aus dem Wesen seiner Attribute heraus und somit »sub specie aeternitatis« (unter dem Gesichtspunkt der Ewigkeit), d. h. in seiner ewigen Notwendigkeit und Wahrheit. Dies ist die Erkenntnis, wie sie in der Natur der Vernunft liegt.
Schöndorf, Harald. Philosophie des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts: Grundkurs Philosophie 8 (Kohlhammer Kenntnis und Können) (German Edition) (pp. 141-143). Kohlhammer Verlag. Kindle Edition.
Metaphysics and Ethics are aligned, and they are both rational endeavors. Philosophy also consists in showing that our happiness and well-being lie not in a life enslaved to the passions and to the transitory goods we ordinarily pursue; nor in the unreflective attachment to the superstitions that pass as religion, but rather in the life of reason.
Humans must develop their “superior nature.” This superior nature “is the knowledge of the union that the mind has with the whole of Nature.”
Freedom is an illusion, the world is strictly deterministic, but we fail to understand this.
Spinoza does not accept "dogmatic" religion, he is a secular priest of rationality.
Spinoza advocates a form of monism. Is it pantheism?
There are two sides of Nature. First, there is the active, productive aspect of the universe—God and his attributes, from which all else follows. This is what Spinoza calls Natura naturans, “naturing Nature”. Strictly speaking, this is identical with God. The other aspect of the universe is that which is produced and sustained by the active aspect, Natura naturata, “natured Nature”.
Spinoza, in effect, denies that the human being is a union of two substances. The human mind and the human body are two different expressions - under Thought and under Extension - of one and the same thing: the person. And because there is no causal interaction between the mind and the body, the so-called mind-body problem does not, technically speaking, arise.
God or Nature does not act for any ends, and things do not exist for any set purposes. There are no “final causes” (to use the common Aristotelian phrase). God does not “do” things for the sake of anything else. The order of things just follows from God’s essences with an inviolable determinism. All talk of God’s purposes, intentions, goals, preferences or aims is just an anthropomorphizing fiction.
There is nothing holy or sacred about Nature, and it is certainly not the object of a religious experience. Instead, one should strive to understand God or Nature, with the kind of adequate or clear and distinct intellectual knowledge that reveals Nature’s most important truths and shows how everything depends essentially and existentially on higher natural causes. The key to discovering and experiencing God, for Spinoza, is philosophy and science, not religious awe and worshipful submission
"In his Cogitata, as in the rest of his work, Spinoza tries reconcile Descartes’ “metaphysics,” which Spinoza understood as a call for integral rationality aligned with the fundamental idea of an infinite substance cause of itself, with the legacy of School metaphysics, which Descartes had rejected. Spinoza thus sought to synthesize classical, or School, metaphysics with the new Cartesian metaphysics, in the name of the metaphysics of absolute divinity, posited as the unique substance without which things “can neither be nor be conceived.”
Like Avicenna, the Cogitata metaphysica identify two types of Being. (1) Being that necessarily exists in virtue of its nature—that is, its essence involves existence; and (2) Being whose essence only implies a merely possible existence.
Necessary Being, in which all things “are,” is nevertheless conceived as a perfectly simple reality. If it were a composite, its parts would exist prior to God, which would be absurd. The divine substance’s simplicity stems from the fact that its essence involves its existence. (Grondin, p. 124)
The essence of human nature in Spinoza: desire and passion
Within this doctrine, how should we understand the essence of human nature? There is in us an active element that Spinoza named "conatus," a drive intrinsic to every being:
The conatus, denotes the effort by which each thing, provided it is in itself, strives to persevere in its being.
But when the conatus becomes conscious of itself, it is called desire, which thus identifies the “appetite” accompanied by the consciousness of itself.
Conatus, as desire, creates the dynamic self-assertion of our beingness.
Human desires can be altered by the intervention of external causes.
We are the objects of natural forces that are necessarily linked, since we are a part of Nature.
Thus we are creatures of the passions, which are modifications of our passive being.
Joy and sorrow are the two fundamental passions which lead to other passions: joy is the transition to greater perfection, sadness is the passion of the less perfect human.
For Spinoza, human life is marked by the sad procession of sad passions (hatred, envy …). These passions reduce man to a state of servitude, that is to say, passivity.
Quotes
(From: Ethics. 1677)
AXIOMS
I. Everything which exists, exists either in itself or in something else.
II. That which cannot be conceived through anything else must be conceived through itself.
III. From a given definite cause an effect necessarily follows; and, on the other hand, if no definite cause be granted, it is impossible that an effect can follow.
IV. The knowledge of an effect depends on and involves the knowledge of a cause.
V. Things which have nothing in common cannot be understood, the one by means of the other; the conception of one does not involve the conception of the other.
VI. A true idea must correspond with its ideate or object.
VII. If a thing can be conceived as non-existing, its essence does not involve existence.
PROPOSITIONS.
Proposition 1: A substance is prior in nature to its modifications.
Proposition 2: Two substances having different attributes have nothing in common with one another. (In other words, if two substances differ in nature, then they have nothing in common).
Proposition 3: If things have nothing in common with one another, one of them cannot be the cause of the other.
Proposition 4: Two or more distinct things are distinguished from one another, either by a difference in the attributes [i.e., the natures or essences] of the substances or by a difference in their affections [i.e., their accidental properties].
Proposition 5: In nature, there cannot be two or more substances of the same nature or attribute.
Proposition 6: One substance cannot be produced by another substance.
Proposition 7: It pertains to the nature of a substance to exist.
Proposition 8: Every substance is necessarily infinite.
Proposition 9: The more reality or being each thing has, the more attributes belong to it.
Proposition 10: Each attribute of a substance must be conceived through itself.
Proposition 11: God, or a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists. (The proof of this proposition consists simply in the classic “ontological proof for God’s existence”. Spinoza writes that “if you deny this, conceive, if you can, that God does not exist. Therefore, by axiom 7 [‘If a thing can be conceived as not existing, its essence does not involve existence’], his essence does not involve existence. But this, by proposition 7, is absurd. Therefore, God necessarily exists, q.e.d.”)
Proposition 12: No attribute of a substance can be truly conceived from which it follows that the substance can be divided.
Proposition 13: A substance which is absolutely infinite is indivisible.
Proposition 14: Except God, no substance can be or be conceived.
Discussion
Do you see any connections between Spinoza and Parmenides?
Views the world as "sub specie aeternitate," from the standpoint of eternity.
Rejects any form of anthropocentrism.
Spinoza is a deeply religious man who uses philosophical terminology to express a mystical experience of the world. (Similar to Wittgenstein?)
This is not a form of philosophy based on empirical exploration and science, this is a constructed system: There are definitions, axioms, and proofs.
Is Spinoza's philosophy a form of atheistic materialism?