This biography of the philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, checks in at over twelve hundred pages. It has many digressions—about the two seventeenth century Anglo-Dutch wars, disputes amongst the many Protestant sects in Holland, a history of the Sephardim in Europe, as well as potted histories of Descartes and Hobbes, amongst others. All the asides give relevant, if excessive, background into Spinoza’s milieu.
To contemporaries, Spinoza was considered a heretic and an atheist, kicked out of his own synagogue in Amsterdam for his radical beliefs. He believed that all of nature was God. “Except God, no substance can be or be conceived.” Furthermore, he did not believe in free will, but instead a completely necessary consequentialism. “All things which follow from the absolute nature of any of God’s attributes have always had to exist and be infinite…. In nature there is nothing contingent, but all things have been determined from the necessity of the divine nature to exist and produce an effect in a certain way…. The will cannot be called a free cause, but only a necessary one.” Israel expands, “Spinoza is especially concerned to reject all aspects of theological thinking that envisage mankind as a privileged segment of nature…. Hence, an important general consequence of Spinoza’s identifying God with nature is the removal of all conscious intent or purpose from God’s creative power, his sweeping denial of all divine teleology.”
Spinoza broke off from writing his great philosophical treatise, “The Ethics,” because he felt the political situation in the Netherlands demanded an immediate response in the kind of his “Tractatus Theologico-Politicus.” This book was a mix of biblical hermeneutics combined with anti-monarchist politics. Spinoza states, “If, finally, we remember that everybody’s loyalty to the state, like their faith in God, can only be known from their works, that is, from their charity toward their neighbor, it will not be doubted that the best state accords everyone the same liberty to philosophize as we showed that faith likewise allows.” He continues, “It is not the purpose of the state to turn people from rational beings into beasts or automata, but rather to allow their minds and bodies to develop in their own way in security and enjoy the free use of reason…. Therefore the true purpose of the state is in fact freedom…. [The] chief feature of a democratic state is that its excellence is valued much more highly in peace than in war.” Spinoza believed in a overriding social contract amongst citizens of a democratic republic. “No one can rightly obey God if they do not adapt pious observance to the public interest to which everyone is bound, and do not, as a consequence, obey all the decrees of the sovereign power.”
Spinoza believed scripture, whether Christian or Jewish, properly understood, is universal in its teachings. “What is most universally declared in Scripture (whether by prophets, scribes, or Christ) is that God exists, is one, and omnipotent, that he alone should be venerated and cares for all, favouring above others those who venerate him and love their neighbour as themselves, etc.” Spinoza sought to debunk the relevance of all occurrences of miracles in the Bible. “Miracles and ignorance I equate because those who try to erect the existence of God and religion on miracles seek to reveal something obscure by something more obscure which they are completely ignorant of.” On Jewish law, Spinoza opined, “With their state now dissolved, there is no doubt the Jews are no more bound by the Law of Moses than they were before the commencement of their community and state. For while dwelling among other peoples, before the Exodus from Egypt, they possessed no special laws, being bound only by the natural law along with the law of the state in which they were living, so far as it did not conflict with the natural divine law.” He continues by stressing that the Christian Apostles were simply teachers who were trying to convince others through philosophy, “The Apostles always employ arguments, so that they seem to be engaged in a debate rather than prophesying.” On Paul of Tarsus, Spinoza declares, “The long deductions and arguments of Paul, such as in the Epistle to the Romans, were not written on the basis of supernatural revelation. Rather, the Apostles’ modes of discourse and discussion very plainly reveal that they wrote their Epistles not on the basis of divine command and revelation, but simply that of their own natural judgment…. Finally, [Paul] says no one is blessed unless he has the mind of Christ in him (Romans 8:9) whereby undoubtedly one may understand God’s laws as eternal truths.” Spinoza continues, “All Christ’s teaching consists primarily of moral doctrine…. There can be no doubt that many disputes and schisms have arisen because different Apostles constructed religion on different foundations.”
In “The Ethics,” Spinoza describes the good life, “It is the part of a wise man, I say, to restore and refresh himself with moderate and pleasant food and drink, and also pleasant smells, with the beauty of vigorous plants, with decoration, music, games that exercise the body, theatre and all else of this sort which we all can enjoy without causing harm to another…. Such a style of life accords best both with our principles and the common practice…. The greater the joy we are affected with, the higher the perfection to which we ascend, that is the more we participate in the divine nature…. Nothing forbids our pleasure except a grim and sad superstition. For why is it more proper to relieve our hunger and thirst than to rid ourselves of melancholy?” Furthermore, for Spinoza, ethics is in harmony with human nature, rightly reasoned. “Virtue is nothing but acting from the laws of one’s own nature…. [Reason only requires] everyone love himself, seek his own advantage, what is really useful to him, and desire what will really lead men to greater perfection, and finally, that everyone should strive to preserve his own being as far as he can…. We ought to want virtue for its own sake.”
On the foundational basis of morality, Spinoza concludes, “For whether or not the moral teachings themselves receive the form of law, or are legislation from God himself, they are nevertheless divine and salutary, and the good stemming from virtue and love of God will be just as desirable whether we receive it from God as judge, or from the necessity of the divine nature. Nor are the bad things ensuing from evil actions and passions any less fearful because they follow from them necessarily. Thus, whether we do those thing that we do necessarily or contingently, we are still led by hope and fear.” His last words on the good life were, “No life, therefore is a life worth living without understanding, and things are good only insofar as they aid men to enjoy the life of the mind, which is defined by knowledge; while, on the contrary, only those things hindering man from perfecting his reason and leading a rational life can by us be called bad.”
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