Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza is one of the greatest representatives of rationalism. He was born in Amsterdam to a Jewish family in 1632. He received a religious education under the guidance of rabbis. After the death of his father, he spent some time in the commercial affairs that he inherited, without showing much interest in these activities. He did not express a desire to become a rabbi. Thanks to Van den Enden, who taught him Latin, Spinoza made acquaintances among Christian scholars (Meyer, Oldenburg, etc.). Spinoza’s way of life aroused suspicions among the leaders of the community that he showed insufficient respect for the religion and customs of his ancestors. In 1656, they subjected Spinoza to the “great excommunication”, he was abandoned by his relatives. Forced to leave Amsterdam, Spinoza lived for a long time in small settlements (Rijnburg, Voorburg), later moving to The Hague. He earned his living by grinding optical glass. Limiting himself to the bare necessities, he devoted his life to philosophical research. At the same time, Spinoza continued to maintain contact with his learned friends (mostly through correspondence).
Spinoza rejected the position of professor of philosophy at Heidelberg University, believing that the freedom of expression promised to him would hardly be complete. Spinoza’s worldview was to a certain extent influenced by the ideas of Descartes and Hobbes (which, of course, does not diminish the originality of his own philosophical system). During his lifetime, he published only one work under his own name – “Fundamentals of the Philosophy of Descartes” (1663). His anonymously published “Theological-Political Treatise” (1670) caused extensive controversy, often accompanied by accusations of atheism. In 1674, this book was among those banned by the Dutch authorities (along with Hobbes’s “Leviathan”). Spinoza’s main philosophical work is “Ethics” (completed in 1675). It was published by Spinoza’s friends as part of a collection of his “Posthumous Works” (1677) (Spinoza died in 1677). The Ethics presents the main parts of his philosophical system: ontology, epistemology, anthropology, ethics. In this work, Spinoza uses the rationalistic “geometric method” of presentation: he begins with definitions and axioms, moves on to theorems and their proofs, supplying them with explanations (scholia) and auxiliary theorems (lemmas).
Theory of Being. Spinoza is the leading representative of pantheism. According to his teaching, God is the only substance existing in the world. “Except God, no substance can either exist or be conceived” (1: 1, 263). He defines substance as “that which exists in itself and is conceived through itself” (1: 1, 253). Substance is “the cause of itself.” In substantiating the thesis of God’s existence, he uses ontological proof. “The existence of God follows most clearly and certainly from the very idea of him” (1: 2, 463). The idea of God is the idea of an absolutely perfect being. But “perfection does not destroy the existence of a thing, but rather posits it” (1: 1, 261-262). God is understood as an absolutely infinite being, which, by virtue of this infinity, must contain the capacity to exist. In the Correspondence, Spinoza emphasized that from the definition of a thing, its being can be deduced only in relation to one object – God (after all, only He is absolutely infinite and perfect).
The essential characteristics of a substance are its attributes. According to Spinoza’s definition, an attribute is “that which the mind conceives of in a substance as constituting its essence” (1:1, 253). Divine substance has an infinite number of attributes. The more reality an object has, the greater the number of attributes that can be ascribed to it (1:2, 360). God, as an absolutely infinite being, has the highest degree of reality, so he must have countless attributes. Attributes, being really different, cannot limit each other. Attributes are also known independently of each other. Each of them expresses in some specific aspect the infinite essence of God. Justifying ontological monism, Spinoza refers precisely to the infinite number of attributes of God. If there were any other substance in the world, different from God, it would have to be characterized by one of those attributes that reveal the divine essence (after all, in God there are countless, and therefore all attributes capable of existing). Consequently, such a substance would coincide with God. Moreover, the thesis about God as the only substance is also confirmed by the fact that “one substance cannot be produced by another substance” (1: 1, 256). Denying the existence of created substances, Spinoza points out that the existence of such entities contradicts the very definition of substance (which is, after all, a self-sufficient being existing thanks to itself). But if there are no created substances, it remains to agree that only one uncreated substance really exists, i.e. God.
According to Spinoza’s teaching, of all the infinite attributes of God, only two are known to man: extension and thought. He justifies this position by referring to the fact that man deals only with such objects that are characterized by either extension or thought. Thus, the two Cartesian substances within the framework of Spinoza’s philosophy are transformed into attributes of one and only one. In his opinion, what was called the thinking and extended substances are in fact one and the same thing, only considered from the point of view of its different attributes. Putting forward the pantheistic formula “God, or nature” (1:1, 394), Spinoza specifically emphasizes (both in the “Theological-Political Treatise” and in his “Correspondence”) that nature should not be completely identified with matter, understood as a corporeal “mass” (after all, in addition to extension, it also has other attributes).
According to the author of Ethics, divine substance (or nature) is infinite, indivisible, eternal, immutable, free and at the same time necessary in its essence. The indivisibility of substance is proved by contradiction: if it were divisible, then the parts into which it would be divided would either retain its essence or not. Both assumptions lead to a contradiction: in the first case, we get several substances with the same attribute, which is impossible; in the second, it turns out that the substance, losing its essence, is destroyed (this is also impossible). The eternity of substance is directly related to its uncreatedness and the absence of external causes capable of destroying it. The immutability of substance is related to the fact that its essence, expressed in countless attributes, cannot be subject to any transformations (otherwise it would cease to be an essence). Divine substance is characterized by freedom, since there is nothing outside of it that would force it to any actions. It should be noted, however, that Spinoza defends a unique interpretation of freedom, defining it through necessity. “A thing is called free that exists only by the necessity of its own nature and is determined to act only by itself” (1:1, 253-254).
The opposite of freedom is compulsion – when a thing is not self-sufficient, dependent in its actions on something else. Therefore, the freedom of God does not mean arbitrariness in his actions. Substance is not at all like a person subject to passions. The freedom of God means that he acts (as well as exists) only by the necessity of his nature. Since God is the only substance, it follows that “in the nature of things there is nothing accidental”, and “any thing is called accidental … only because of the imperfection of our knowledge” (1: 1, 276, 279). The assumption that the existence and actions of God are not of a necessary nature leads to a contradiction: in this case, it must be recognized that another order of things is possible than the one that already exists, i.e. a different nature of God is possible, or – some other substance, in addition to the only one that exists. Defending the idea of the necessity of everything that happens in nature, Spinoza rejects teleology: “nature does not intend any goals for itself and … all final causes are only human inventions” (1:1, 284). God is an all-perfect being; if he were guided by some external goals, then he would experience a deficiency in something, i.e., he would not be God. The doctrine of final goals is a “prejudice” that arose as a result of people trying to judge God, guided by their imagination and attributing to him motives of behavior reminiscent of human ones. God, according to Spinoza, has little in common with man, and even if we attribute intelligence and will to him, we must admit that they are as little like human qualities as the constellation Canis Major is like an ordinary dog.
According to Spinoza’s teaching, “individual things are nothing other than states or modes of the attributes of God” (1:1, 274). He defines a mode as “that which exists in another and is conceived through that other” (1:1, 253). Modes are manifestations of substance. Since substance has an infinite number of attributes, it follows that there are infinitely many individual things (modes). At the same time, Spinoza believed that there are two infinite modes: a) movement, which acts as a link between the attribute of extension and material objects, b) infinite intellect, which is a link between the attribute of thinking and spiritual objects. Other modes (individual things) are finite and limited in their existence. All modes follow from the necessity of the divine nature. Spinoza was often reproached for not considering it possible to consider movement as a special attribute of substance. But he was quite consistent in this matter: in a letter to Oldenburg he explained that movement cannot be thought of without extension, and yet attributes must be accessible to knowledge completely independently of one another. Distinguishing between “generative nature” and “generated nature”, Spinoza understood the former to mean God, considered as a substance, and the latter to mean “all modes of God’s attributes, insofar as they are considered as things that exist in God” (1:1, 276). Moreover, generation is not at all creation from nothing: “it is impossible… for anything to come from nothing” (1:1, 409). In the “Correspondence”, Spinoza (discussing human bodies) says that generation presupposes the presence of an object earlier (i.e., before what people consider birth), only in a different form. It is quite significant that in Spinoza’s system “God is the immanent cause of all things, and not acting from outside” (1:1, 270).
Theory of knowledge. In his epistemology, Spinoza was an adherent of rationalism. Knowledge of the essence of various objects is achieved through reason, while sensory “experience does not teach any essences of things” (1: 2, 361). Experience cannot reveal the nature of a substance; it is comprehended only through reason. Nevertheless, the cognitive process cannot do without experience: with its help we learn about the existence of individual modes. Spinoza considered the world knowable: this conviction found its expression in his classic formula: “The order and connection of ideas are the same as the order and connection of things” (1: 1, 293). Justifying this position, he refers to the unity of the world substance: no matter what attribute (thinking or extension) it is expressed by, the order of causes will be the same.
The author of “Ethics” distinguishes three stages of knowledge. The first is sensory knowledge, which he also calls “opinion” and “imagination”. Spinoza divides it into two types: a) knowledge “through disorderly experience”, when individual things are “reproduced” by the senses, and the senses do this “distorted” and “vaguely”; b) knowledge “from signs”: when, thanks to reading or hearing a familiar word, a person remembers some objects, moreover, in a form that corresponds to the way in which he first perceived them. The second stage of knowledge is reason. At this level, a person forms general concepts and “adequate ideas about the properties of things”. Finally, the third stage is intuitive knowledge (we are talking about intellectual intuition). This is the highest level of knowledge. Intuitive knowledge “leads from an adequate idea of the formal essence of some attributes of God to an adequate knowledge of the essence of things” (1: 1, 321). An exhaustive understanding of the nature of any thing is possible only when it is considered in its true perspective – as one of the manifestations of the divine substance. Therefore, the highest level of knowledge of things implies knowledge of God. Intuitive knowledge is the comprehension of things by the mind “from the point of view of eternity”. Spinoza says that a person can represent things in two completely different ways. The usual way is to consider things as separately existing in a certain place and time. The other, deeper way of seeing reality is to consider things as being in God and following from the necessity of his nature (this is knowledge “under the form of eternity”). Comprehending objects “under the form of eternity”, the mind treats them not as accidental, but as necessary. After all, the necessity of things is a consequence of the necessity of the divine nature. Therefore, the third kind of knowledge is knowledge “under the form of necessity”. The adequate idea of any single thing contains within itself the idea of one of the divine attributes; apart from such an idea, the thing cannot be truly known. By means of the third kind of knowledge, the mind thus represents objects “through the essence of God.”
A true idea, according to the author of the Ethics, is such that it agrees with its object. A true idea is clear and distinct. A person who has a true idea knows a thing “in the best possible way” and cannot doubt it. A true idea is always certain. “As light reveals both itself and the surrounding darkness, so truth is the measure of both itself and falsehood” (1:1, 322-323). Ideas that follow from true ideas will also always be true. Moreover, clear and distinct ideas of a person “are as true as the ideas of God.” False ideas are inadequate; falsity consists in “a lack of knowledge.” Falsehood cannot be something positive, since otherwise it would have to constitute a special mode of divine substance. Falsehood is an incompleteness of knowledge; False ideas, unlike true ones, are “distorted” and “vague”. “The only cause” of falsity is sensory knowledge. Rational and intuitive knowledge is always true. In polemics with Descartes, Spinoza claimed that the will cannot be the cause of human errors.
Spinoza connects the emergence of universal (common) concepts with the activity of the “imagination” (i.e. with sensory cognition). Perceiving a large number of images of somewhat similar things, the imagination cannot grasp either their exact number or their distinctive features, recording only some of their similarities. This similarity is the basis of universal concepts; moreover, these concepts are not the same among people, each person puts a special meaning into them, in accordance with his own experience and memories. Universal concepts, due to the peculiarities of their origin, inevitably had to cause empty disputes among philosophers (representatives of scholasticism); with the help of such concepts it is absurd to count on true knowledge of nature, “universal images” of things are completely insufficient for this purpose.
The doctrine of man. According to Spinoza, “the essence of man consists of certain modifications (modes) of the attributes of God” (1:1, 296). These are the modes of the attributes of thought and extension. Therefore, Spinoza also says that man “consists” of soul and body. The modes of thought are reason, desire, love, etc. The modes of extension are quite numerous: “the human body is composed of very many individuals (of different natures), each of which is very complex” (1:1, 304). At the same time, the author of “Ethics” emphasizes that the soul and body actually constitute one and the same thing, which can be represented either under the attribute of thought or under the attribute of extension. Since the various attributes of the divine substance cannot limit each other, it follows that “neither the body can determine the soul to thought, nor can the soul determine the body either to movement or to rest” (1:1, 337). In his Correspondence, Spinoza argues that it is a mistake to consider thinking a “bodily process.” The soul and body cannot influence each other; and yet there is a mutual correspondence between the states of the body and the states of the soul. This parallelism of mental and bodily changes is explained by the fact that both attributes express the same order in different ways and relate to the same thing. Spinoza said that there cannot be absolutely free will in the human soul. The illusion of such freedom arises in people because they are aware of their desires, but do not know how to accurately establish their causes. It is important to note that, defining the will as the ability to affirm and deny, Spinoza directly identifies it with reason (1:1, 328), effectively dissolving the will in reason.
The death of the body, according to the author of the Ethics, does not lead to the complete destruction of the soul. The eternal part of the soul is reason. It is to this part of the soul that the clear and distinct knowledge acquired by man belongs. The transient part of the soul is imagination and memory. Therefore, “the soul can imagine and remember things past only as long as its body continues to exist” (1:1, 466). Death “does less harm” the more extensive the clear and distinct knowledge acquired by the soul. Compared to the eternal part of the soul, the transient part “will have no significance.” It is easy to see that in fact, in Spinoza’s system, a significant part of those characteristics that people are accustomed to associate with ideas about individuality do not relate to the eternal existence of the soul.
Ethics. Within the framework of Spinoza’s ethics, the main attention is paid to the study of affects. “The affect called passion of the soul is a confused idea in which the soul asserts a greater or lesser force of existence of its body or of some part of it than before, and by which the soul itself is determined to think one thing rather than another” (1: 1, 391). Affects are “excitements of the soul”, they can be mixed with each other in all sorts of ways, therefore their quantity “cannot be determined by any number”. Spinoza distinguishes three basic affects, from which all the others are derived: desire, pleasure, displeasure. He defines desire as an attraction accompanied by its awareness. Pleasure (or joy) is a state of the soul, thanks to which it passes “to greater perfection”. Displeasure (sadness) is a state of the soul, thanks to which it passes “to lesser perfection”. The same object can cause different affects in different people; even the same person, depending on the time, can experience opposite affects in relation to one or another object. It is with affects that the author of “Ethics” connects human power and powerlessness. He calls “slavery” the powerlessness of people in relation to affects: a person subject to affects “no longer controls himself”. The power of the soul lies in its ability to limit the power of affects. This path leads a person to freedom.
Virtue, according to Spinoza’s teaching, consists in acting according to the laws of one’s nature (it should not be forgotten that man is included in the general necessary order of existence and is not a privileged being isolated from the world). Good and evil, he believes, are not found in things in themselves. Good and evil are modes of thinking, they arise as a result of comparing things. People consider good to be what is useful to them, and evil to be everything that hinders good. The most important benefit for a person is to preserve his own existence. Acting according to the laws of his nature, everyone strives for his own benefit, i.e., to preserve his existence. It follows from this that “the desire for self-preservation is the first and only foundation of virtue” (1: 1, 410). But self-preservation, like any action, is impossible without knowledge. Therefore, there is no virtue without knowledge. The highest knowledge accessible to man is the knowledge of an absolutely infinite being, i.e., God. True knowledge of things means considering them as modes of the infinite attributes of God. Therefore, “the highest good for the soul is the knowledge of God” (1:1, 412).
Spinoza associates the ability to limit the influence of affects with the knowledge of God. All the power of the soul, he believes, is determined by its cognitive ability. True knowledge allows a person to curb the power of affects. The author of “Ethics” admits that the power of a person in relation to affects is great, but not unconditional. A person is not able to completely free himself from affects, but he can achieve a decrease in their influence on his soul. The better a person understands the nature of affect, the less he suffers from it. The comprehension of the nature of affect is the more complete, the better a person realizes the necessity of all the events that happen to him. Such awareness comes only thanks to the third kind of knowledge – intuitive. Understanding the linkage of causes that produce affects, the soul experiences less anxiety about them. Comprehension of things under the form of eternity, considering them as modes of eternal substance makes a person free. In the spirit of Stoic philosophy, Spinoza says that a wise man calmly endures everything that happens to him, guided by the thought of a necessary chain of events. Man is a part of nature, subject to its order, and it is not in his power to change this order. People easily calm down if they understand that it was not in their power to preserve this or that lost thing. True freedom consists precisely in peace of mind. Thus, freedom presupposes the knowledge of necessity.
Spinoza’s ethics are closely connected with his ontology and epistemology. In his system, the highest virtue is unthinkable without intuitive knowledge of substance. Moreover, in his view, virtue finds its complete expression in this intuitive knowledge: “the highest aspiration of the soul and its highest virtue consist in the knowledge of things according to the third kind of knowledge” (1:1, 468). To know God means to follow the laws of one’s nature. Perfection of intuitive knowledge develops intellectual love for God. This is eternal love, and (within the framework of the pantheistic worldview) it turns out to be God’s love for himself. Intuitive knowledge can arise thanks to reason (knowledge of the second kind), but cannot flow from the senses (knowledge of the first kind). Intuitive knowledge brings man the highest pleasure, since with its help man passes to the highest spiritual perfection. In his main work, Spinoza directly identifies virtue and happiness (or bliss). His ethical ideal is a sage who has achieved happiness through knowledge. “Bliss is nothing other than the spiritual satisfaction that comes from the contemplative (intuitive) knowledge of God” (1:1, 445). Spinoza’s ethical ideal inseparably unites virtue, happiness, knowledge, and freedom. True happiness (which Spinoza also calls “salvation”) is very rare and is truly accessible only to a sage. A wise person, who has power over his emotions, is characterized by true peace of mind: “the wise man as such is hardly subject to any spiritual agitation” (1:1, 478). There is another sign of wisdom: “A free man thinks about nothing so little as about death, and his wisdom consists in thinking not about death, but about life” (1:1, 440).
Socio-political views.Spinoza subscribed to the theory of social contract. The state is established by an agreement between people. The natural right of man is as extensive as his power. In the state of nature, everyone cares only about his own benefit, there are no generally recognized norms of good and evil, therefore there is no concept of crime, and there is no law or property. Civil status arises with the appearance of supreme power. The purpose of civil status is peace and security of people. In the state of nature, people are guided not by reason at all, but by affects. Needing mutual assistance, they constantly come into conflict. The state is called upon to free people from constant fear. “In order that people can live in harmony and serve each other for the sake of each other, it is necessary that they give up their natural right and undertake to each other not to do anything that can harm the other” (1: 1, 421). People enter into an agreement (it does not matter whether “tacitly” or “expressly”), trusting the supreme power with the right to establish laws and “prescribe a common way of life.” Spinoza emphasizes that civil status is established “naturally” by people seeking to avoid “common misfortunes.” He identifies three forms of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. He is critical of existing forms of monarchical government: “the supreme secret of monarchical government and its greatest interest lies in keeping people in deception,” “the transfer of all power to one is in the interests of slavery, but not peace” (1: 2, 9, 273). At the same time, he speaks of the basic principles of the “best” monarchy (such a government is possible, but it has not yet existed): the head of state should not have absolute power, he should be limited by “immutable” laws that he has no right to cancel; the monarch should have a numerous elected council that would assist him, and, if necessary, even replace him. Spinoza associates aristocratic government with the presence of supreme power in the hands of a certain group of people who make up a special council. He offers two thoroughly developed variants of the structure of a “stable” aristocracy (in one case, the supreme power resides only in the capital of the state, in the other it is “concentrated in many cities”). Spinoza speaks in detail about the order of election and functioning of the council of patricians, about the activities of the senate (a body subordinate to the supreme council of the state) and the court. Finally, in a democracy, the supreme power “rests in an assembly made up of the whole people” (1:2, 257). A democratic state “is the most natural and comes closest to the freedom that nature grants to everyone, for in it everyone transfers his natural right not to another, depriving himself of the right to vote for the future, but to the greater part of the whole society, of which he is a unit. And on this basis, all remain equal, as before – in the state of nature” (1:2, 182). Spinoza insisted thatthat in a free state every person should have the right to think and say whatever he considers necessary (people’s actions, but not their opinions, should be subject to certain prohibitions). In his view, philosophy should not be subordinate to religious faith, their areas are completely different: “Scripture… has nothing in common with philosophy” (1:2, 12). Faith prescribes rules of moral behavior for people, but does not reveal either the nature of God or the structure of the universe. The goal of philosophy is the study of truth by means of reason, the goal of religious faith is “only obedience and piety.”
Spinoza’s ideas influenced the views of Lessing, Goethe, Edelmann, Herder, Schelling, Hegel. Certain aspects of his work influenced the views of representatives of enlightenment philosophy.
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