The CyberPhilosopher

1. What is Spinoza’s method?

I would have to describe Spinoza’s method of philosophy as reason and rationality on steroids. Spinoza recognized the wholeness of the human intellect (reason, will, and passions) and instead of attempting to subjugate the passions to Reason, he instead incorporates them and says that it is the understanding of our passions which is required. Russell quotes him as saying, “He who clearly and distinctly understands himself and his emotions, loves God, and so much the more as he more understands himself and his emotions” . Strauss goes further to describe Spinoza as believing that “Man’s right is identical with his power, and his power is limited by his passion”.

Spinoza develops the view that we live in a deterministic universe, as manifestations of the perfect substance, i.e. God, which I will return to. As such, we can not use reason to change what we are, but only to better understand what we are. He follows a method similar to Euclid, and based entirely on the faculties of Reason. Russell points out that that his Ethics his method leads to conclusions “incompatible with modern logic and with scientific method”. This is because Spinoza relies entirely, as much as he can, on his definitions and Axioms, and then the propositions that he can develop from them, without reference to the reality of the world. While I agree with Russells’, conclusion, I think Spinoza would respond by pointing to his description of how prejudices are developed and point to the mind instead of the external world we perceive with it.

What is the relation of God to nature in the philosophy of Spinoza?

Unlike my opinion that Descartes most likely did believe in a God of sorts, I believe that Spinoza, if alive today, would be a strict atheist and in fact was one in his own day. For Spinoza, the use of the word God is similar to Einstein’s use of God in his writings, both believing that their is no personal, anthropomorphic god, but instead the Nature of the Universe.

For Spinoza, God is analogous to the primary substance of the universe from which all other things are manifest. He logically moves from propositions such that “Two Substances having different attributes have nothing in common with one another” (prop 2) and “If two things have nothing in common with one another, one cannot be the cause of the other” to show that all things must be part of the same infinite substance. Russell points out that this is a philosophy similar to Parmenides.

The consequences of this are profound. For Spinoza, there is not Mind and Body and God, but simply the one substance which we experience in limited attributes and modifications (modes). This further means that God’s nature is ‘natura naturans’, or conceived only through itself, while we and all things we experience and see are ‘natura naturata’, or following from the NECESSITY of Gods’s nature. Spinoza goes even further to point out that God does not have free will (Prop. 32, corol 1) and to this effect, nor do we.

If you were to do a word/replace on Spinoza’s texts, and replace every instance of God with a word such as Nature or Physical Law, I believe you would have a text that would sit very well with most empirical determinists.

Why did Spinoza take this route? Strauss points out that Spinoza was more than willing to use Religion in order to shape the minds to more correct systems of thought. So while he used Scripture in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus to create a bridge between what he believed and what the people believed, he (in my opinion) use the word God in his Ethics in order to attempt to convey his beliefs in such a way as to meet those who he knew would disagree with him, if not anywhere near half way as the repercussions of his system are obvious, a portion of the way in between.