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Chapter 11
SPINOZA
Among all the modern philosophers, Spinoza occupies a unique position, not
alone in terms of his extraordinary contributions to the world of philosophy, but
also by distinguishing himself as a moral exemplar. Bertrand Russell considers
him as the noblest and most lovable of the great philosophers, who might have
been intellectually surpassed by some others, but remained ethically supreme.
He lived a very simple life, almost like an ascetic sage, and insisted that like a
true Jew, he would meet his personal requirements with an occupation that
involved physical labour. He thus made his living by polishing lenses. However, he
remained unorthodox in his philosophical and religious views, thanks to his
predominant philosophical wisdom that made him one of the greatest minds in
modern European philosophy.
His parents were originally from Portugal and had taken refuge in Amsterdam,
where Spinoza was born in 1632. Though was reared up in orthodox environment,
Spinoza often expressed his doubts about accepted religious beliefs and practices.
Spinoza’s unorthodox views and approaches in philosophy not only gained him
reputation, but also enemies and rivals who even attempted to physically annihilate
him. The Jewish community to which he belonged initially tried to silence him
through persuasions and then thorough threats and ultimately excommunicated him in
1656. Spinoza had enemies both among the Jews and the Christians, as these two
religions held many common beliefs, which he questioned. Some of them even
considered his views atheistic, while some others considered him primarily as a
religious thinker. The poet Novalis has even given to him the name “God-
intoxicated."
Spinoza had his early education much in the traditional lines and the elders in
the community began to view him as a promising young Jewish scholar of faith. But
Spinoza soon stumbled upon several issues and problems to which the answers given
by Jewish scholars were far from satisfying him. He thus began to learn Latin to gain
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Aspects of Western Philosophy: Dr. Sreekumar Nellickappilly, IIT Madras
an insight into the Christian tradition and such endeavours helped him to gain a
thorough understanding of the Medieval European thought. He was significantly
influenced by the Scholastic thinkers and owes to them for the geometrical method of
exposition by axiom, definition, proposition, proof etc. (Will Durant: A Story of
Philosophy)
Spinoza’s Philosophy: Influences
Spinoza was influenced by many of his predecessors, including the Greek masters, the
scholastic philosophers and most importantly by Rene Descartes, who presented a
picture of reality constitutive of three substances. According to the Cartesian picture,
though there are three substances, God alone qualifies to be designated so in the true
sense of the term, as substance is defined as something that subsists independent of
everything else. In this sense, there can only be one substance and that is God. The
two other substances—mind and matter that are created by him and therefore, he can
annihilate them if he wishes so—are dependent on him and are termed as dependent
or relative substances. God alone is substance in the absolute sense of the term. This
conception of a homogenous substance has substantial appeal on Spinoza’s thinking.
But, at the same time, Descartes maintains that the two relative substances of
mind and matter, though are dependent on God, are independent of each other by
virtue of possessing different and opposite attributes; thinking and extension
respectively. This enabled Descartes to reflect the modern scientific temperament,
which needed to assign a different domain for the material world—the world of the
natural sciences, independent of the world of the mind or the spirit—with its own
laws and principles. The Cartesian dualism, however, had given rise to several other
dilemmas, as once separated them, Descartes was then in pains to explain their
interrelationship. Nevertheless, the mind-body dualism helped explaining the
workings of the material world and the domain of the body, independent of other
metaphysical considerations that dominated human thinking during the scholastic age.
Metaphors like “the body as a machine” had helped development of modern medical
sciences in major ways.
But Spinoza had a different mission. Though he too represents the modern
rationalistic spirit, his preoccupation was, as observed by Bertrand Russell, with
questions related to religion and virtue. He attempted to bring ethical questions to the
forefront of philosophy, while remaining faithful to a philosophical outlook that was
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Aspects of Western Philosophy: Dr. Sreekumar Nellickappilly, IIT Madras
Infinite Thinking
Substance
GOD
Res Cogitans
Thinking Substance Finite Thinking
Substance
WORLD Individual minds
But this theory of three substances further affirms the supremacy of God and in the
true sense of the term He alone is substance. Minds and material bodies are dependent
on God and hence are not real substances. They are relative substances and God has
created them and can also annihilate them if he wishes so. Descartes also holds that,
though mind and matter depend on God, they nevertheless are mutually independent.
God is the creator of the world, which is constitutive of minds and matter. In this
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sense He enjoys a distinct and different status. He is separated from and is different
from both mind and matter.
This is one aspect of Descartes theory, which Spinoza found problematic.
Cartesian dualism has amounted to the removal of God from the world and made
the latter a far-away observer. The Cartesian paradigm has emptied the idea of
God of any content and this has created several issues apart from the conceptual
riddles created by the dualism of mind and body. Spinoza found that, the world,
as it is constitutive of minds and bodies, needs a rational account for its existence
as well as behaviour. There are several things in the world, which a dualistic
framework fails to explain. Only with a notion of God, with the conception of a
divine unity of things, we would be able to resolve these riddles. Hence, the
immediate task before Spinoza is, how to reestablish the intimate connection
between God and the world, which the Cartesian dualism has separated. He was
attempting to interpret all reality in terms of God’s ultimate perfection and unity.
In other words, Spinoza was attempting to unify the apparently discrete and
diverse things in this world, in terms of a principle that would logically establish
the fundamental oneness of everything. For this he needs to establish the
essential interconnectedness of things he sees around. The doctrine of infinite
substance is introduced in order to explain this interconnectedness.
The doctrine of Infinite Substance
The world is not a collection of independent persons and objects, each of them
complete in itself and real in itself. Such a proposition would make the world
disintegrate in no time. No object can be understood in isolation and every object
is connected with other objects. In this sense objects in this world form an
endless series with necessary interconnections between them.
This necessary interconnectedness ultimately points to the ultimate unity
of things. In this context Spinoza turns to Descartes whose concept of
homogenous substance, he thought, would help resolving certain logical
problems encountered while trying to comprehend the relationship between res
cogitans and res extensa. Though he had reservations in accepting the dualism
implicated in the Cartesian paradigm, he thought he could derive the existence of
multiplicity of finite objects from this homogenous infinite substance. He thus
begins his analysis of the concept of substance—a problem that occupied a
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Aspects of Western Philosophy: Dr. Sreekumar Nellickappilly, IIT Madras
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This position enables Spinoza to solve the problem Descartes faced while
he visualized the dualistic scheme. The latter was worried about the problem of
interaction between the two substances which are entirely different from each
other, owing to their diametrically opposite attributes. Spinoza resolves the
paradox with a doctrine of psycho-physical parallelism. He contends that the
attributes of thought and extension are not two separate things, but are only
aspects of one and the same thing. He argues that, for each mode of thought a
mode of extension will exist. Finite minds are modes of God under the attribute
of thought and finite bodies are modes of God under the attribute of extension.
Spinoza’s Doctrine of Attributes
While Descartes’ dualistic scheme distinguishes the world as an extended
substance from the thinking substances (God and mind), Spinoza dissolves all
such separations with his idea of infinite homogenous Substance or God. For
Descartes, God is the cause of the external world of extended substances and He
remains distinct from the latter. He maintains that God, who is an external cause
of the world, has caused motion in the world and has fixed the amount of motion
constant. According to him, motion-and-rest is the fundamental mode of
extension and understanding or apprehending is the fundamental mode of
thought.
Spinoza rejects all such distinctions. He maintains that there is no
external cause to nature and it is not different from God. Motion and rest are only
the logically prior state of substance under the attribute of extension. The
universe or world is ultimately not different from God who is the infinite
substance with infinite attributes. Hence God and nature are not distinct. Since
there is no external cause that create motion in the natural world, movement
must be a characteristic feature of nature itself. In other words, there is no cause
distinct from nature that can confer or impress movement upon nature.
Hence Spinoza’s Pantheism is both similar to and different from
Descartes’ view. Like the latter, he too conceives that motion-and-rest as the
fundamental mode of extension and as constituting the primary characteristic
feature of the extended nature. Again with Descartes he agrees that the total
proportions of motion-and-rest remain constant in the world. But unlike his
predecessor he contends that the physical universe is a self-contained system of
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Quiz
1. Spinoza’s major preoccupations were with …………….problems.
(a) Metaphysical (b) Epistemological (c) Ethical (d) Political
2. Spinoza’s Substance is not:
(a) Heterogeneous (b) Homogenous (c) Self-caused (d) Eternal.
3. Spinoza adopts ……………….method in philosophy
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Aspects of Western Philosophy: Dr. Sreekumar Nellickappilly, IIT Madras
Answer Key:
1. (c)
2. (a)
3. (d)
4. (b)
5. (a)
Assignments
References
Books
1. Copleston, Frederick, A History of Philosophy, vol.4: The Rationalists
Descartes to Leibniz, London, Continuum, 2003.
2. Durant, Will, A Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Greater
Philosophers of the Western World, Pocket Books, 1991.
3. Kenny, Anthony, A New History of Western Philosophy, Oxford, Clarendon
Press, 2012.
4. Rogers, Arthur Keyon, A Student’s History of Philosophy, New York, The
Macmillan Company, 1935.
5. Russell, Bertrand: History of Western Philosophy, London, Routledge
Classics, 2004.
6. Thilly, Frank: A History of Philosophy, New Delhi, SBE Publishers, 1983.
7. Zeller, Eduard, A History of Greek Philosophy, London, Longmans, green and
Co., 1881.
Web Resources
1. “Benedict De Spinoza (1632-1677)”, in Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, available at: http://www.iep.utm.edu/spinoza/.
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