Just to practice concision.
1) In anthropology, Spinoza emphasized what we are not. We are not a "kingdom within the kingdom." We are a subject of nature, which is the only kingdom.
2) In metaphysics, Spinoza is remembered for his naturalized God, or for his deification of nature. They work out to be the same thing, which is the point. This has the odd-seeming but predictable consequence that he has been called an atheist by some commentators and a "God-intoxicated man" by others.
3. In epistemology, Spinoza believed in "geometrical order." The best way to approach truth was to start with a small number of premises that are recommended by their clarity and the difficulty of seeing how things could be otherwise, and to spin out their logical consequences.
4. In ethics, Spinoza believed that the real problem was the confusion and frustration that comes our way when we think we ARE a kingdom with the kingdom, and the solution is just to learn better.
5. In politics, Spinoza asserted that "the validity of an agreement rests on its utility, without which the agreement automatically becomes null and void,” by which dictum he meant to undermine 'social contract' theorizing.
6. Finally, Spinoza is associated with a variety of Biblical exegesis which presumes that the Bible offers only a moral system -- it does not teach philosophical or scientific truths.
Christopher, if I may clarify your second point for those who have not studied Spinoza, by "naturalized God" you don't mean that God is part of nature (that is, a material object), but that he is nature. Thus, Spinoza was a pantheist.
ReplyDeleteYour fourth point requires elaboration if it is to have meaning, at least to me.
Your fifth point caused me to wonder who theorized about social contract before Spinoza; the first social contract theorist I know of was Locke, but I didn't know whether he lived before Spinoza. It turns out that they were both born in 1632. But Locke outlived Spinoza by 27 years, and I don't know whether he wrote about the social contract while Spinoza was alive.
I made a mistake. Hobbes was a social contract theorist who was born in 1588--42 years before Locke and Spinoza. But he outlived Spinoza by almost three years.
DeleteI meant 44 years before Locke and Spinoza. I wish that your blog permitted editing.
DeleteHenry,
ReplyDeleteWith regard to the fourth point: I'm thinking especially of Spinoza's elaborate definitions of the emotions, and especially of love as "joy, accompanied by an idea of its external cause." The point, for him, is that since the source of our joy is external, it is (usually) insecure, and we set ourselves up for misery trying to make the things we love last as long as we do, or trying to bind the people we love to us in ways that set us up for jealousy and other miseries. Ethics, for Spinoza, means abandoning all loves except the love of God, or nature, and understanding that THAT love means the joyful acceptance of what comes.
And yes, Spinoza's comments on the social contract had Hobbes as their target. LEVIATHAN appeared in 1651, when Spinoza was in his late teens.
Thank you; that clarifies it well. But, in #4, I think that "with" should be "within," which would conform to the quotation in #1. A "kingdom," I take it, means nature or God, or having the power of nature or God.
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