Baruch Spinoza

Born: 1632

Died: 1677, at the age of 44

Country of origin: Netherlands

Major Books written by Baruch Spinoza:

• "A Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well-Being" (1662)
  
  
• "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" ("A Theologico-Political Treatise") (1670)
  
  
• "Ethics" (1677)

Cocktail summary of Baruch Spinoza's main ideas:

Spinoza was the first of the modern sentimental rationalists. He built a system of philosophy which was purely rationalistic and which saw all natural events and all human actions as being purely deterministic, totally devoid of free will. Mechanics ruled all of life, from the laws of nature to the patterns of human behavior. However, once he had reduced the entire universe to one big machine, eliminating all ideas of the supernatural and any notions of a personal God, he then described all of nature in religious terms.

His ideas have been famously called "pan-theistic" (a term he personally never used) since he basically described God as being in everything and everything being God. He essentially buried personal religion within an impersonal science, but retained the old religious vocabulary.

Spinoza's writings are full of the word "God", but he clearly argues that the content of this word is basically empty. For example, he says it is understandable to express a love for God, but we can't expect God to love us back. God is just a poetic word for nature itself, and nature is impersonal. He argued that religious Scripture is nothing more than history, poetry, and wishful thinking. Miracles are nothing more than unexplained natural phenomenon, and there is no such thing as a soul independent of the body. So Spinoza used religious terms sort of as a marketing-gimic to help sell radical new ideas to his peers. Or, alternately, his religious language can be seen as a poetic device to describe the beauty of nature.

Like all great philosophers, Spinoza was something of a martyr for his ideas. As with most prophets who aren't recognized in their own home town, Spinoza was appropriately cast out of his Jewish community and forced to work for a living. (Day-jobs are often an unwelcome source of irritation for most philosophers). The fact that Spinoza lived a meagre life, ground glass lenses for a living, never married, and was often in danger of physical harm while spending his spare time writing down dangerous ideas, gives his legacy an element of romance and daring in modern eyes. Persecution usually elevates any philosopher's resume, and many modern books about Spinoza devote a lot of space to the opposition he experienced. Any philosopher who faces criticism must be saying something important.

Spinoza is often invoked as an inspiration by scientists who feel a desire to personify the beauty they see in nature, but without sounding too religious. Religion and science sometimes intersect, despite efforts to the contrary, when people talk about issues such as elegance in mathematics, the poetry of science, or the appealing symmetry of the Universe. While nature is usually described as inherently impersonal by most scientists, the elegance of the universe often invokes pseudo-religious feelings.

Spinoza's ideas are appealing largely because of their combination of a strict rationalism with a poetic, semi-religious vocabulary. His ideas about the word "God" being nothing more than a different name for nature itself, with the Universe and God being one and the same, have a certain safe mathematical poetry. The idea of nature existing as an impersonal entity yet possessing great beauty, with our psychological need for a personal Creator being projected onto the impersonal Universe, make many Rationalists feel comfortable using religious words, without having to claim allegiance to any traditional religious doctrine. Spinoza-ism is sort of a user-friendly, custom spirituality.

Famous smart guys like Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell have claimed Spinoza as an inspiration in their ideas. Most of Einstein's famous statements about God playing dice with the universe and the need for a semi-religious awe when pondering nature, were penned from within a laregely Spinoza-ist mindset. This mindset is still strong in the 21st century, where user-friendly custom spiritualities are very common. Religious words are safe so long as they are couched within poetic generalities, against a background of impersonal science.

Spinoza's own version of Rationalism and Cartesian mathematics at the root of his philosophy has been discarded in the modern era, since nature is no longer understood as being regulated by strictly deterministic math. Modern physics throws in a considerable amount of statistics when describing nature at its smallest scale, so the pure geometry and determinisitc mathematics used in the 17th century no longer apply. But Spinoza's general views of nature and religion are still very appealing to many modern minds, so while his mathematical foundation no longer stands firm his poetic philosophical vision is still very marketable.

Philosophy in the 1600's was largely preoccupied with answering the questions of Descartes. The so-called "mind-body problem" that Descartes had put before his peers was all the rage across Europe at the time. His "dualism" saw all of reality as being defined by 2 distinct substances: spirit and matter. Mind and spirit both referred to the same thing - the "ghost" that resides in our material bodies and does the thinking. Descartes had asked how the one substance influences the other. How does the mind "steer" the body? How does spirit interact with matter? Descartes had convinced himself that his mind existed, by the very fact that he was thinking. But he couldn't figure exactly how the mind controlled the body. He suggested that the pineal gland in the brain might be the place where this mind-body interface happens, but he was open to other suggestions.

Spinoza answered the question by taking one step behind Descartes' "dualism" and suggested that mind and body are simply 2 forms of one basic, underlying substance. All of reality, he said, was composed of one basic substance, and we are aware of 2 of its modes - mind and body - but these are only temporary variations of this single substance. He called these 2 attributes of the underlying unity "thought" and "extension", with thought referring to the mind and extension referring to matter. In much the same way as a block of ice and a cloud of steam are both just two different forms of water, so too are mind and body just two different forms of the same underlying unity. Therefore Descartes' question is really meaningless, and is due to us simply being distracted by 2 forms of the same thing.

Spinoza described a universe that is ruled by the geometric, mathematical precision that Descartes had spelled out, and he applied this mathematical determinism to all of reality, totally eliminating any idea of free will. All that happens, happens because we have no choice or any other possible options. The wheels of the great machine that is the universe spin with precision and do so according to mathematical necessity. But due to Spinoza's appreciation for nature's poetry, he made it safe for agnostics to describe nature religiously, without themselves being personally religious.

Baruch Spinoza praised & criticized:

• Spinoza had a long-lasting effect on Enlightenment thinkers in the century after his death, due to his strict mathematical methods which appealed to the Rationalists of the 18th century. He also had a strong effect on the Romantic writers of the 19th century who saw in him a role-model for essentially re-deifying a cold, Rationalist universe with religious poetry. In the 20th century his deterministic ideas have been dropped due to the lack of mathematical certainty at the smallest scales of modern physics, but his poetic, pseudo-religious pantheistic view of nature has appealed to many otherwise agnostic thinkers.
  
  More recently, modern Environmentalists have invoked the name of Spinoza as a precursor to the modern idea of "Gaia", in which the Earth is seen as one giant living organism. The pantheistic ideas of Spinoza sound very similar to the pseudo-pantheistic ideas of modern radical Environmentalists in which humans are to the Earth what amoebas are to a petrie-dish, with all things living together as one giant symbiotic cell.
  
  However, Spinoza has also been criticized for ushering in the modern Romantic view of nature that uses religious language but replaces the content of the words with totally new meanings. The language sounds the same as the old-time religion, but the words refer to totally different concepts. Pantheism means everything and nothing at the same time, since if God is in everything then he is in all people all and ideas and all actions, whether those ideas are wrong or right. God is in ideas that the Earth is round and God is in ideas that the Earth is flat. God is all, and therefore he his nothing, in Spinoza's philosophy.

Notable Facts about Baruch Spinoza:

• Religious affiliation:
  Spinoza's attitude towards religion is central to his ideas, and was also central most of his social problems. His real religion was Mathematics, and he had no use for any kind of traditional religion. He was born Jewish and actually studied Hebrew scriptures as a child, but by the time he was in his early 20's he was spending a lot of time sharing his ideas that involved no belief in any personal God, no free will, no miracles, and not recognizing any authority in religious Scripture. He was formally expelled from his the Jewish community in July of 1656, when he was 23 years old. This served basically the same function as an excommunication, and he was condemned by his rabbis with these words:
  
  "With the judgment of the angels and the saints we hereby excommunicate, execrate, and anathematize Baruch de Espinoza. Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night, cursed in his lying down and cursed in his rising up, cursed in going out and cursed in coming in. The Lord shall destroy his name under the sun and cut him off for his undoing from all the tribes of Israel. None may speak with him by word of mouth nor by writing nor show any favor to him, nor be under one roof with him, nor come within four cubits of him, nor read any document written or dictated by him."
  
  This ban was officially lifted by the state of Israel in 19###.
  
  
• Spinoza was Dutch, but his parents had emigrated from Portugal to Holland before he was born.
  
  
• Spinoza never married, devoting his romantic instincts to thinking deep thoughts. However, he was rumored to have fallen in love at least once, with the daughter of his employer, when he was teaching at a private school. Her name was Clara Maria and she also taught at the school, teaching music. She was apparently very pretty, but it came to nothing, since she later married someone else. However, this story is a bit mysterious, since according to contemporary accounts Clara Maria would have been around 12 years old at the time, and Spinoza was in his mid-20's. Perhaps she looked older than her years, or perhaps Spinoza had other more serious problems than his Philosophy.
  
  
• His father died when Spinoza was ## years old. He inherited a small fortune but Spinoza's sister sued him to get at the money. Spinoza fought the suit in court and won, but then changed his mind and gave her all the money anyway. He was more interested in the principle of the fight than in the material results.
  
  
• Some time in the 1650's Spinoza changed his first name from Baruch to Benedict. Both names mean "blessed", but the new name sounded less Jewish, which he perhaps felt sounded safer in Christian Europe of the time.
  
  
• In 1673 the University of Heidelberg offered Spinoza their Chair of Philosophy. This offer was arranged by the Count Palatine Carl Ludwig, and his only condition was that Spinoza vow to not teach anything contrary to established Church doctrine. But Spinoza turned down the offer, fearing that he would have less time to think and write. So his one chance at an academic job came and passed.
  
  
• In 1676, one year prior to Spinoza's death, the celebrity philosopher Gottfried Leibniz payed a visit to the lens-grinding Philosopher in Holland. This meeting of two of the most influential minds of the time has been a source of endless fascination and speculation, since many of Leibniz's own ideas sound almost identical to Spinoza's.
  
  
• Spinoza is buried in Amsterdam, in the Neukirk Church in Dam Square.

Quotes:

• "Mind and Body are one and the same individual which is conceived now under the attribute of thought, and now under the attribute of extension."
  
  
• "Deus sive Natura." (God or Nature)
  
  
• "For existence so conceived is an eternal truth, inasmuch as it is the essence of the eternal thing. Therefore it cannot be explained by duration or time, although duration can be conceived as without beginning or end."
  
  
• "Pleasure is man's transition from a state of less perfection to a state of greater perfection."
  
  
• "Wonder is the thought of any thing on which the mind stays fixed because this particular thought has no connection with any others."
  
  
  

Other stuff going on during Baruch Spinoza's life:

• History:
  
  
  • #####
  
  
  
• Art:
  
  
  • #####
  
  
  
• Music:
  
  
  • #####
  
  
  
• Literature:
  
  
  • #####
  
  
  
• Religious trends:
  
  
  • #####