Baruch Spinoza (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Cite this entry Search the SEP • Advanced Search • Tools • RSS FeedTable of Contents• What's New• Archives• Projected ContentsEditorial Information• About the SEP• Editorial Board• How to Cite the SEP• Special CharactersSupport the SEPContact the SEP ©Metaphysics Research Lab,CSLI,Stanford University  Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative. Please Read How You Can Help Keep the Encyclopedia FreeBaruch SpinozaFirst published Fri Jun 29, 2001; substantive revision Thu Jul 10, 2008Baruch (or Benedictus) Spinoza is one of the most importantphilosophers — and certainly the most radical — of the early modernperiod. His thought combines a commitment to Cartesian metaphysical andepistemological principles with elements from ancient Stoicism andmedieval Jewish rationalism into a nonetheless highly original system.His extremely naturalistic views on God, the world, the human being andknowledge serve to ground a moral philosophy centered on the control ofthe passions leading to virtue and happiness. They also lay thefoundations for a strongly democratic political thought and a deepcritique of the pretensions of Scripture and sectarian religion. Of allthe philosophers of the seventeenth-century, perhaps none have morerelevance today than Spinoza.1. Biography2. Ethics 2.1 God or Nature2.2 The Human Being2.3 Knowledge2.4 Passion and Action2.5 Virtue and Happiness3. Theological-Political Treatise 3.1 On Religion and Scripture3.2 The StateBibliographyOther Internet ResourcesRelated Entries1. BiographyBaruch Spinoza was born in 1632 in Amsterdam. He was the middle son ina prominent family of moderate means in Amsterdam's Portuguese-Jewishcommunity. As a boy — known to his fellow Portuguese as Bento— he had undoubtedly been one of the star pupils in thecongregation's Talmud Torah school. He was intellectually gifted, andthis could not have gone unremarked by the congregation's rabbis. Itis possible that Spinoza, as he made progress through his studies, wasbeing groomed for a career as a rabbi. But he never made it into theupper levels of the curriculum, those which included advanced study ofTalmud. At the age of seventeen, he was forced to cut short his formalstudies to help run the family's importing business.And then, on July 27, 1656, Spinoza was issued the harshest writ ofcherem, or excommunication, ever pronounced by the Sephardiccommunity of Amsterdam; it was never rescinded. We do not know forcertain what Spinoza's "monstrous deeds" and "abominable heresies"were alleged to have been, but an educated guess comes quite easy. Nodoubt he was giving utterance to just those ideas that would soonappear in his philosophical treatises. In those works, Spinoza deniesthe immortality of the soul; strongly rejects the notion of aprovidential God — the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; andclaims that the Law was neither literally given by God nor any longerbinding on Jews. Can there be any mystery as to why one of history'sboldest and most radical thinkers was sanctioned by an orthodox Jewishcommunity?To all appearances, Spinoza was content finally to have an excuse fordeparting from the community and leaving Judaism behind; his faith andreligious commitment were, by this point, gone. Within a few years, heleft Amsterdam altogether. By the time his extant correspondencebegins, in 1661, he is living in Rijnsburg, not far from Leiden. Whilein Rijnsburg, he worked on the Treatise on the Emendation of theIntellect, an essay on philosophical method, and the ShortTreatise on God, Man and His Well-Being, an initial but abortedeffort to lay out his metaphysical, epistemological and moral views.His critical exposition of Descartes's Principles ofPhilosophy, the only work he published under his own name in hislifetime, was completed in 1663, after he had moved to Voorburg,outside The Hague. By this time, he was also working on what wouldeventually be called the Ethics, his philosophicalmasterpiece. However, when he saw the principles of toleration inHolland being threatened by reactionary forces, he put it aside tocomplete his "scandalous" Theological-Political Treatise,published anonymously and to great alarm in 1670. When Spinoza died in1677, in The Hague, he was still at work on his PoliticalTreatise; this was soon published by his friends along with hisother unpublished writings, including a Compendium to HebrewGrammar.2. EthicsThe Ethics is an ambitious and multifaceted work. It is alsobold to the point of audacity, as one would expect of a systematic andunforgiving critique of the traditional philosophical conceptions ofGod, the human being and the universe, and, above all, of thereligions and the theological and moral beliefs groundedthereupon. What Spinoza intends to demonstrate (in the strongest senseof that word) is the truth about God, nature and especially ourselves;and the highest principles of society, religion and the goodlife. Despite the great deal of metaphysics, physics, anthropology andpsychology that take up Parts One through Three, Spinoza took thecrucial message of the work to be ethical in nature. It consists inshowing that our happiness and well-being lie not in a life enslavedto the passions and to the transitory goods we ordinarily pursue; norin the related unreflective attachment to the superstitions that passas religion, but rather in the life of reason. To clarify and supportthese broadly ethical conclusions, however, Spinoza must firstdemystify the universe and show it for what it really is. Thisrequires laying out some metaphysical foundations, the project of PartOne.God or Nature"On God" begins with some deceptively simple definitions of terms thatwould be familiar to any seventeenth century philosopher. "Bysubstance I understand what is in itself and is conceived throughitself"; "By attribute I understand what the intellect perceives of asubstance, as constituting its essence"; "By God I understand a beingabsolutely infinite, i.e., a substance consisting of an infinity ofattributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and infiniteessence." The definitions of Part One are, in effect, simply clearconcepts that ground the rest of his system. They are followed by anumber of axioms that, he assumes, will be regarded as obvious andunproblematic by the philosophically informed ("Whatever is, is eitherin itself or in another"; "From a given determinate cause the effectfollows necessarily"). From these, the first proposition necessarilyfollows, and every subsequent proposition can be demonstrated usingonly what precedes it. (References to the Ethics will be bypart (I-V), proposition (p), definition (d), scholium (s) andcorollary (c).)In propositions one through fifteen of Part One, Spinoza presents thebasic elements of his picture of God. God is the infinite, necessarilyexisting (that is, uncaused), unique substance of the universe. Thereis only one substance in the universe; it is God; and everything elsethat is, is in God.Proposition 1: A substance is prior in nature to itsaffections. Proposition 2: Two substances having different attributes have nothingin common with one another. (In other words, if two substances differin nature, then they have nothing in common).Proposition 3: If things have nothing in common with one another,one of them cannot be the cause of the other.Proposition 4: Two or more distinct things are distinguished fromone another, either by a difference in the attributes [i.e., thenatures or essences] of the substances or by a difference in theiraffections [i.e., their accidental properties].Proposition 5: In nature, there cannot be two or more substances ofthe same nature or attribute.Proposition 6: One substance cannot be produced by anothersubstance.Proposition 7: It pertains to the nature of a substance toexist.Proposition 8: Every substance is necessarily infinite.Proposition 9: The more reality or being each thing has, the moreattributes belong to it.Proposition 10: Each attribute of a substance must be conceivedthrough itself.Proposition 11: God, or a substance consisting of infiniteattributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence,necessarily exists. (The proof of this proposition consists simply inthe classic "ontological proof for God's existence". Spinoza writesthat "if you deny this, conceive, if you can, that God does not exist.Therefore, by axiom 7 [‘If a thing can be conceived as notexisting, its essence does not involve existence’], his essencedoes not involve existence. But this, by proposition 7, is absurd.Therefore, God necessarily exists, q.e.d.")Proposition 12: No attribute of a substance can be truly conceivedfrom which it follows that the substance can be divided.Proposition 13: A substance which is absolutely infinite isindivisible.Proposition 14: Except God, no substance can be or be conceived.This proof that God — an infinite, necessary and uncaused,indivisible being — is the only substance of the universeproceeds in three simple steps. First, establish that no twosubstances can share an attribute or essence (Ip5). Then, prove thatthere is a substance with infinite attributes (i.e., God) (Ip11). Itfollows, in conclusion, that the existence of that infinite substanceprecludes the existence of any other substance. For if therewere to be a second substance, it would have to havesome attribute or essence. But since God has allpossible attributes, then the attribute to be possessed by this secondsubstance would be one of the attributes already possessed by God. Butit has already been established that no two substances can have thesame attribute. Therefore, there can be, besides God, no such secondsubstance.If God is the only substance, and (by axiom 1) whatever is, is eithera substance or in a substance, then everything else must bein God. "Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceivedwithout God" (Ip15).As soon as this preliminary conclusion has been established, Spinozaimmediately reveals the objective of his attack. His definition of God— condemned since his excommunication from the Jewish communityas a "God existing in only a philosophical sense" — is meant topreclude any anthropomorphizing of the divine being. In the scholiumto proposition fifteen, he writes against "those who feign a God, likeman, consisting of a body and a mind, and subject to passions. But howfar they wander from the true knowledge of God, is sufficientlyestablished by what has already been demonstrated." Besides beingfalse, such an anthropomorphic conception of God can have onlydeleterious effects on human freedom and activity.Much of the technical language of Part One is, to all appearances,right out of Descartes. But even the most devoted Cartesian would havehad a hard time understanding the full import of propositions onethrough fifteen. What does it mean to say that God is substance andthat everything else is "in" God? Is Spinoza saying that rocks,tables, chairs, birds, mountains, rivers and human beings are allproperties of God, and hence can be predicated of God (justas one would say that the table "is red")? It seems very odd to thinkthat objects and individuals — what we ordinarily think of asindependent "things" — are, in fact, merely properties of athing. Spinoza was sensitive to the strangeness of this kind of talk,not to mention the philosophical problems to which it gives rise. Whena person feels pain, does it follow that the pain is ultimately just aproperty of God, and thus that God feels pain? Conundrumssuch as this may explain why, as of Proposition Sixteen, there is asubtle but important shift in Spinoza's language. God is now describednot so much as the underlying substance of all things, but as theuniversal, immanent and sustaining cause of all that exists: "From thenecessity of the divine nature there must follow infinitely manythings in infinitely many modes, (i.e., everything that can fall underan infinite intellect)".According to the traditional Judeo-Christian conception of divinity,God is a transcendent creator, a being who causes a world distinctfrom himself to come into being by creating it out of nothing. Godproduces that world by a spontaneous act of free will, and could justas easily have not created anything outside himself. By contrast,Spinoza's God is the cause of all things because all things followcausally and necessarily from the divine nature. Or, as he puts it,from God's infinite power or nature "all things have necessarilyflowed, or always followed, by the same necessity and in the same wayas from the nature of a triangle it follows, from eternity and toeternity, that its three angles are equal to two right angles"(Ip17s1). The existence of the world is, thus, mathematicallynecessary. It is impossible that God should exist but not theworld. This does not mean that God does not cause the world to comeinto being freely, since nothing outside of God constrainshim to bring it into existence. But Spinoza does deny that God createsthe world by some arbitrary and undetermined act of free will. Godcould not have done otherwise. There are no possible alternatives tothe actual world, and absolutely no contingency or spontaneity withinthat world. Everything is absolutely and necessarily determined.(Ip29): In nature there is nothing contingent, but allthings have been determined from the necessity of the divine nature toexist and produce an effect in a certain way. (Ip33): Things could have been produced by God in no other way, andin no other order than they have been produced.There are, however, differences in the way things depend on God. Somefeatures of the universe follow necessarily from God — or, moreprecisely, from the absolute nature of one of God's attributes —in a direct and unmediated manner. These are the universal and eternalaspects of the world, and they do not come into or go out of being.They include the most general laws of the universe, together governingall things in all ways. From the attribute of extension there followthe principles governing all extended objects (the truths of geometry)and laws governing the motion and rest of bodies (the laws ofphysics); from the attribute of thought, there follow laws of thought(understood by commentators to be either the laws of logic or the lawsof psychology). Particular and individual things are causally moreremote from God. They are nothing but "affections of God's attributes,or modes by which God's attributes are expressed in a certain anddeterminate way" (Ip25c).There are two causal orders or dimensions governing the production andactions of particular things. On the one hand, they are determined bythe general laws of the universe that follow immediately from God'snatures. On the other hand, each particular thing is determined to actand to be acted upon by other particular things. Thus, the actualbehavior of a body in motion is a function not just of the universallaws of motion, but also of the other bodies in motion and restsurrounding it and with which it comes into contact.Spinoza's metaphysics of God is neatly summed up in a phrase thatoccurs in the Latin (but not the Dutch) edition of theEthics: "God, or Nature", Deus, sive Natura: "Thateternal and infinite being we call God, or Nature, acts from the samenecessity from which he exists" (Part IV, Preface). It is an ambiguousphrase, since Spinoza could be read as trying either to divinizenature or to naturalize God. But for the careful reader there is nomistaking Spinoza's intention. The friends who, after his death,published his writings must have left out the "or Nature" clause fromthe more widely accessible Dutch version out of fear of the reactionthat this identification would, predictably, arouse among a vernacularaudience.There are, Spinoza insists, two sides of Nature. First, there is theactive, productive aspect of the universe — God and hisattributes, from which all else follows. This is what Spinoza,employing the same terms he used in the Short Treatise, callsNatura naturans, "naturing Nature". Strictly speaking, thisis identical with God. The other aspect of the universe is that whichis produced and sustained by the active aspect, Naturanaturata, "natured Nature".By Natura naturata I understand whatever followsfrom the necessity of God's nature, or from any of God's attributes,i.e., all the modes of God's attributes insofar as they are consideredas things that are in God, and can neither be nor be conceived withoutGod. (Ip29s).Spinoza's fundamental insight in Book One is that Nature is anindivisible, uncaused, substantial whole — in fact, it is theonly substantial whole. Outside of Nature, there is nothing,and everything that exists is a part of Nature and is brought intobeing by Nature with a deterministic necessity. This unified, unique,productive, necessary being just is what is meant by‘God’. Because of the necessity inherent in Nature, thereis no teleology in the universe. Nature does not act for any ends, andthings do not exist for any set purposes. There are no "final causes"(to use the common Aristotelian phrase). God does not "do" things forthe sake of anything else. The order of things just follows from God'sessences with an inviolable determinism. All talk of God's purposes,intentions, goals, preferences or aims is just an anthropomorphizingfiction.All the prejudices I here undertake to expose depend onthis one: that men commonly suppose that all natural things act, as mendo, on account of an end; indeed, they maintain as certain that Godhimself directs all things to some certain end, for they say that Godhas made all things for man, and man that he might worship God. (I,Appendix)God is not some goal-oriented planner who then judges things by howwell they conform to his purposes. Things happen only because ofNature and its laws. "Nature has no end set before it … Allthings proceed by a certain eternal necessity of nature." To believeotherwise is to fall prey to the same superstitions that lie at theheart of the organized religions.[People] find — both in themselves and outsidethemselves — many means that are very helpful in seeking theirown advantage, e.g., eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, plants andanimals for food, the sun for light, the sea for supporting fish… Hence, they consider all natural things as means to their ownadvantage. And knowing that they had found these means, not providedthem for themselves, they had reason to believe that there was someoneelse who had prepared those means for their use. For after theyconsidered things as means, they could not believe that the things hadmade themselves; but from the means they were accustomed to preparefor themselves, they had to infer that there was a ruler, or a numberof rulers of nature, endowed with human freedom, who had taken care ofall things for them, and made all things for their use.And since they had never heard anything about the temperament of theserulers, they had to judge it from their own. Hence, they maintainedthat the Gods direct all things for the use of men in order to bindmen to them and be held by men in the highest honor. So it hashappened that each of them has thought up from his own temperamentdifferent ways of worshipping God, so that God might love them aboveall the rest, and direct the whole of Nature according to the needs oftheir blind desire and insatiable greed. Thus this prejudice waschanged into superstition, and struck deep roots in their minds. (I,Appendix) A judging God who has plans and acts purposively is a God to be obeyedand placated. Opportunistic preachers are then able to play on ourhopes and fears in the face of such a God. They prescribe ways ofacting that are calculated to avoid being punished by that God andearn his rewards. But, Spinoza insists, to see God or Nature as actingfor the sake of ends — to find purpose in Nature — is tomisconstrue Nature and "turn it upside down" by putting the effect(the end result) before the true cause.Nor does God perform miracles, since there are no departureswhatsoever from the necessary course of nature. The belief in miraclesis due only to ignorance of the true causes of phenomena.If a stone has fallen from a room onto someone's head andkilled him, they will show, in the following way, that the stone fellin order to kill the man. For if it did not fall to that end, Godwilling it, how could so many circumstances have concurred by chance(for often many circumstances do concur at once)? Perhaps you willanswer that it happened because the wind was blowing hard and the manwas walking that way. But they will persist: why was the wind blowinghard at that time? why was the man walking that way at that time? Ifyou answer again that the wind arose then because on the precedingday, while the weather was still calm, the sea began to toss, and thatthe man had been invited by a friend, they will press on — forthere is no end to the questions which can be asked: but why was thesea tossing? why was the man invited at just that time? And so theywill not stop asking for the causes of causes until you take refuge inthe will of God, i.e., the sanctuary of ignorance. (I,Appendix)This is strong language, and Spinoza is clearly not unaware of therisks of his position. The same preachers who take advantage of ourcredulity will fulminate against anyone who tries to pull aside thecurtain and reveal the truths of Nature. "One who seeks the truecauses of miracles, and is eager, like an educated man, to understandnatural things, not to wonder at them, like a fool, is generallyconsidered and denounced as an impious heretic by whose whom thepeople honor as interpreters of nature and the Gods. For they knowthat if ignorance is taken away, then foolish wonder, the only meansthey have of arguing and defending their authority is also takenaway."The Human BeingIn Part Two, Spinoza turns to the origin and nature of the humanbeing. The two attributes of God of which we have cognizance areextension and thought. This, in itself, involves what would have beenan astounding thesis in the eyes of his contemporaries, one that wasusually misunderstood and always vilified. When Spinoza claims inProposition Two that "Extension is an attribute of God, or God is anextended thing", he was almost universally — but erroneously— interpreted as saying that God is literally corporeal. Forjust this reason, "Spinozism" became, for his critics, synonymous withatheistic materialism.According to one interpretation, God is indeed material, even matteritself, but this does not imply that God has a body. Anotherinterpretation, however, one which will be adopted here, is that whatis in God is not matter per se, but extension as an essence. Andextension and thought are two distinct essences that have absolutelynothing in common. The modes or expressions of extension are physicalbodies; the modes of thought are ideas. Because extension and thoughthave nothing in common, the two realms of matter and mind are causallyclosed systems. Everything that is extended follows from the attributeof extension alone. Every bodily event is part of an infinite causalseries of bodily events and is determined only by the nature ofextension and its laws, in conjunction with its relations to otherextended bodies. Similarly, every idea follows only from the attributeof thought. Any idea is an integral part of an infinite series ofideas and is determined by the nature of thought and its laws, alongwith its relations to other ideas. There is, in other words, no causalinteraction between bodies and ideas, between the physical and themental. There is, however, a thoroughgoing correlation and parallelismbetween the two series. For every mode in extension that is arelatively stable collection of matter, there is a corresponding modein thought. In fact, he insists, "a mode of extension and the idea ofthat mode are one and the same thing, but expressed in two ways"(IIp7s). Because of the fundamental and underlying unity of Nature,or of Substance, Thought and Extension are just two different ways of"comprehending" one and the same Nature. Every material thing thus hasits own particular idea — an eternal adequate idea — thatexpresses or represents it. Since that idea is just a mode of one ofGod's attributes — Thought — it is in God, and theinfinite series of ideas constitutes God's mind or infiniteintellect. As he explains,A circle existing in nature and the idea of the existingcircle, which is also in God, are one and the same thing, which isexplained through different attributes. Therefore, whether we conceivenature under the attribute of Extension, or under the attribute ofThought, or under any other attribute, we shall find one and the sameorder, or one and the same connection of causes, i.e., that the samethings follow one another. (IIp7s)It follows from this, he argues, that the causal relations betweenbodies is mirrored in the logical relations between God's ideas. Or,as Spinoza notes in Proposition Seven, "the order and connection ofideas is the same as the order and connection of things".One kind of extended body, however, is significantly more complex thanany others in its composition and in its dispositions to act and beacted upon. That complexity is reflected in its corresponding idea.The body in question is the human body; and its corresponding idea isthe human mind or soul. The mind, then, like any other idea, is simplyone particular mode of God's attribute, Thought. Whatever happens inthe body is reflected or expressed in the mind. In this way, the mindperceives, more or less obscurely, what is taking place in its body.And through its body's interactions with other bodies, the mind isaware of what is happening in the physical world around it. But thehuman mind no more interacts with its body than any mode of Thoughtinteracts with a mode of Extension.One of the pressing questions in seventeenth century philosophy, andperhaps the most celebrated legacy of Descartes's dualism, is theproblem of how two radically different substances such as mind andbody enter into a union in a human being and cause effects in eachother. How can the extended body causally engage the unextended mind,which is incapable of contact or motion, and "move" it, that is, causemental effects such as pains, sensations and perceptions. Spinoza, ineffect, denies that the human being is a union of twosubstances. The human mind and the human body are twodifferent expressions — under Thought and under Extension— of one and the same thing: the person. And because there isno causal interaction between the mind and the body, the so-calledmind-body problem does not, technically speaking, arise.KnowledgeThe human mind, like God, contains ideas. Some of these ideas —sensory images, qualitative "feels" (like pains and pleasures),perceptual data — are imprecise qualitative phenomena, being theexpression in thought of states of the body as it is affected by thebodies surrounding it. Such ideas do not convey adequate and trueknowledge of the world, but only a relative, partial and subjectivepicture of how things presently seem to be to the perceiver. There isno systematic order to these perceptions, nor any critical oversightby reason. "As long as the human Mind perceives things from the commonorder of nature, it does not have an adequate, but only a confused andmutilated knowledge of itself, of its own Body, and of externalbodies" (IIp29c). Under such circumstances, we are simply determinedin our ideas by our fortuitous and haphazard encounter with things inthe external world. This superficial acquaintance will never provideus with knowledge of the essences of those things. In fact, it is aninvariable source of falsehood and error. This "knowledge from randomexperience" is also the origin of great delusions, since we —thinking ourselves free — are, in our ignorance, unaware of justhow we are determined by causes.Adequate ideas, on the other hand, are formed in a rational andorderly manner, and are necessarily true and revelatory of theessences of things. "Reason", the second kind of knowledge (after"random experience"), is the apprehension of the essence of a thingthrough a discursive, inferential procedure. "A true idea meansnothing other than knowing a thing perfectly, or in the bestway"(IIp43s). It involves grasping a thing's causal connections notjust to other objects but, more importantly, to the attributes of Godand the infinite modes (the laws of nature) that follow immediatelyfrom them. The adequate idea of a thing clearly and distinctlysituates its object in all of its causal nexuses and shows not justthat it is, but how and why it is. Theperson who truly knows a thing sees the reasons why the thing wasdetermined to be and could not have been otherwise. "It is of thenature of Reason to regard things as necessary, not as contingent"(IIp44). The belief that some thing is accidental or spontaneous canbe based only on an inadequate grasp of the thing's causalexplanation, on a partial and "mutilated" familiarity with it. Toperceive by way of adequate ideas is to perceive the necessityinherent in Nature.Sense experience alone could never provide the information conveyed byan adequate idea. The senses present things only as they appear from agiven perspective at a given moment in time. An adequate idea, on theother hand, by showing how a thing follows necessarily from one oranother of God's attributes, presents it in its "eternal" aspects— sub specie aeternitatis, as Spinoza puts it —without any relation to time. "It is of the nature of Reason to regardthings as necessary and not as contingent. And Reason perceives thisnecessity of things truly, i.e., as it is in itself. But thisnecessity of things is the very necessity of God's eternalnature. Therefore, it is of the nature of Reason to regard thingsunder this species of eternity" (IIp44). The third kind of knowledge,intuition, takes what is known by Reason and grasps it in a single actof the mind.Spinoza's conception of adequate knowledge reveals an unrivaledoptimism in the cognitive powers of the human being. Not evenDescartes believed that we could know all of Nature and its innermostsecrets with the degree of depth and certainty that Spinoza thoughtpossible. Most remarkably, because Spinoza thought that the adequateknowledge of any object, and of Nature as a whole, involves a thoroughknowledge of God and of how things related to God and his attributes,he also had no scruples about claiming that we can, at least inprinciple, know God perfectly and adequately. "The knowledge of God'seternal and infinite essence that each idea involves is adequate andperfect" (IIp46). "The human Mind has an adequate knowledge of God'seternal and infinite essence" (IIp47). No other philosopher in historyhas been willing to make this claim. But, then again, no otherphilosopher identified God with Nature.Passion and ActionSpinoza engages in such a detailed analysis of the composition of thehuman being because it is essential to his goal of showing how thehuman being is a part of Nature, existing within the same causalnexuses as other extended and mental beings. This has serious ethicalimplications. First, it implies that a human being is not endowed withfreedom, at least in the ordinary sense of that term. Because ourminds and the events in our minds are simply ideas that exist withinthe causal series of ideas that follows from God's attribute Thought,our actions and volitions are as necessarily determined as any othernatural events. "In the Mind there is no absolute, or free, will, butthe Mind is determined to will this or that by a cause that is alsodetermined by another, and this again by another, and so to infinity"(IIp48).What is true of the will (and, of course, of our bodies) is true ofall the phenomena of our psychological lives. Spinoza believes thatthis is something that has not been sufficiently understood byprevious thinkers, who seem to have wanted to place the human being ona pedestal outside of (or above) nature.Most of those who have written about the Affects, andmen's way of living, seem to treat, not of natural things, whichfollow the common laws of nature, but of things that are outsidenature. Indeed they seem to conceive man in nature as a dominionwithin a dominion. For they believe that man disturbs, rather thanfollows, the order of nature, that he has absolute power over hisactions, and that he is determined only by himself. (III,Preface)Descartes, for example, believed that if the freedom of the humanbeing is to be preserved, the soul must be exempt from the kind ofdeterministic laws that rule over the material universe.Spinoza's aim in Parts Three and Four is, as he says in his Preface toPart Three, to restore the human being and his volitional andemotional life into their proper place in nature. For nothing standsoutside of nature, not even the human mind.Nature is always the same, and its virtue and power ofacting are everywhere one and the same, i.e., the laws and rules ofnature, according to which all things happen, and change from one formto another, are always and everywhere the same. So the way ofunderstanding the nature of anything, of whatever kind, must also bethe same, viz. through the universal laws and rules ofnature.Our affects — our love, anger, hate, envy, pride, jealousy,etc. — "follow from the same necessity and force of nature asthe other singular things". Spinoza, therefore, explains theseemotions — as determined in their occurrence as are a body inmotion and the properties of a mathematical figure — just as hewould explain any other things in nature. "I shall treat the natureand power of the Affects, and the power of the Mind over them, by thesame Method by which, in the preceding parts, I treated God and theMind, and I shall consider human actions and appetites just as if itwere a Question of lines, planes, and bodies."Our affects are divided into actions and passions. When the cause ofan event lies in our own nature — more particularly, ourknowledge or adequate ideas — then it is a case of the mindacting. On the other hand, when something happens in us the cause ofwhich lies outside of our nature, then we are passive and being actedupon. Usually what takes place, both when we are acting and when weare being acted upon, is some change in our mental or physicalcapacities, what Spinoza calls "an increase or decrease in our powerof acting" or in our "power to persevere in being". All beings arenaturally endowed with such a power or striving. Thisconatus, a kind of existential inertia, constitutes the"essence" of any being. "Each thing, as far as it can by its ownpower, strives to persevere in its being." An affect just isany change in this power, for better or for worse. Affects that areactions are changes in this power that have their source (or "adequatecause") in our nature alone; affects that are passions are thosechanges in this power that originate outside of us.What we should strive for is to be free from the passions — or,since this is not absolutely possible, at least to learn how tomoderate and restrain them — and become active, autonomousbeings. If we can acheive this, then we will be "free" to the extentthat whatever happens to us will result not from our relations withthings outside us, but from our own nature (as that follows from, andis ultimately and necessarily determined by the attributes of God ofwhich our minds and bodies are modes). We will, consequently, be trulyliberated from the troublesome emotional ups and downs of thislife. The way to bring this about is to increase our knowledge, ourstore of adequate ideas, and eliminate as far as possible ourinadequate ideas, which follow not from the nature of the mind alonebut from its being an expresssion of how our body is affected by otherbodies. In other words, we need to free ourselves from a reliance onthe senses and the imagination, since a life of the senses and imagesis a life being affected and led by the objects around us, and rely asmuch as we can only on our rational faculties.Because of our innate striving to persevere — which, in thehuman being, is called "will" or "appetite" — we naturallypursue those things that we believe will benefit us by increasing ourpower of acting and shun or flee those things that we believe willharm us by decreasing our power of acting. This provides Spinoza witha foundation for cataloguing the human passions. For the passions areall functions of the ways in which external things affect our powersor capacities. Joy [Laetitiae, sometimes translated as"pleasure"], for example, is simply the movement or passage to agreater capacity for action. "By Joy … I shall understand thatpassion by which the Mind passes to a greater perfection"(IIIp11s). Being a passion, joy is always brought about by someexternal object. Sadness [Tristitiae, or "pain"], on theother hand, is the passage to a lesser state of perfection, alsooccasioned by a thing outside us. Love is simply Joy accompanied byan awareness of the external cause that brings about the passage to agreater perfection. We love that object that benefits us and causes usjoy. Hate is nothing but "Sadness with the accompanying idea of anexternal cause". Hope is simply "an inconstant Joy which has arisenfrom the image of a future or past thing whose outcome we doubt". Wehope for a thing whose presence, as yet uncertain, will bring aboutjoy. We fear, however, a thing whose presence, equally uncertain, willbring about sadness. When that whose outcome was doubtful becomescertain, hope is changed into confidence, while fear is changed intodespair.All of the human emotions, in so far as they are passions, areconstantly directed outward, towards things and their capacities toaffect us one way or another. Aroused by our passions and desires, weseek or flee those things that we believe cause joy or sadness. "Westrive to further the occurrence of whatever we imagine will lead toJoy, and to avert or destroy what we imagine is contrary to it, orwill lead to Sadness." Our hopes and fears fluctuate depending onwhether we regard the objects of our desires or aversions as remote,near, necessary, possible or unlikely. But the objects of ourpassions, being external to us, are completely beyond ourcontrol. Thus, the more we allow ourselves to be controlled bythem, the more we are subject to passions and the less activeand free we are. The upshot is a fairly pathetic picture of a lifemired in the passions and pursuing and fleeing the changeable andfleeting objects that occasion them: "We are driven about in many waysby external causes, and … like waves on the sea, driven bycontrary winds, we toss about, not knowing our outcome and fate"(IIIp59s). The title for Part Four of the Ethics reveals withperfect clarity Spinoza's evaluation of such a life for a human being:"On Human Bondage, or the Powers of the Affects". He explains that thehuman being's "lack of power to moderate and restrain the affects Icall Bondage. For the man who is subject to affects is under thecontrol, not of himself, but of fortune, in whose power he so greatlyis that often, though he sees the better for himself, he is stillforced to follow the worse". It is, he says, a kind of "sickness ofthe mind" to suffer too much love for a thing "that is liable to manyvariations and that we can never fully possess."Virtue and HappinessThe solution to this predicament is an ancient one. Since we cannotcontrol the objects that we tend to value and that we allow toinfluence our well-being, we ought instead to try to control ourevaluations themselves and thereby minimize the sway that externalobjects and the passions have over us. We can never eliminate thepassive affects entirely. We are essentially a part of nature, and cannever fully remove outselves from the causal series that link us toexternal things. But we can, ultimately, counteract the passions,control them, and achieve a certain degree of relief from theirturmoil. The path to restraining and moderating the affects is throughvirtue. Spinoza is a psychological and ethical egoist. All beingsnaturally seek their own advantage — to preserve their own being— and it is right for them do so. This is what virtue consistsin. Since we are thinking beings, endowed with intelligence andreason, what is to our greatest advantage is knowledge. Our virtue,therefore, consists in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding, ofadequate ideas. The best kind of knowledge is a purely intellectualintuition of the essences of things. This "third kind of knowledge"— beyond both random experience and ratiocination — seesthings not in their temporal dimension, not in their duration and inrelation to other particular things, but under the aspect of eternity,that is, abstracted from all considerations of time and place andsituated in their relationship to God and his attributes. They areapprehended, that is, in their conceptual and causal relationship tothe universal essences (thought and extension) and the eternal laws ofnature.We conceive things as actual in two ways: either insofar aswe conceive them to exist in relation to a certain time and place, orinsofar as we conceive them to be contained in God and to follow fromthe necessity of the divine nature. But the things we conceive in thissecond way as true, or real, we conceive under a species of eternity,and to that extent they involve the eternal and infinite essence ofGod. (Vp39s)But this is just to say that, ultimately, we strive for a knowledge ofGod. The concept of any body involves the concept of extension; andthe concept of any idea or mind involves the concept of thought. Butthought and extension just are God's attributes. So the proper andadequate conception of any body or mind necessarily involves theconcept or knowledge of God. "The third kind of knowledge proceedsfrom an adequate idea of certain attributes of God to an adequateknowledge of the essence of things, and the more we understand thingsin this way, the more we understand God" (Vp25d). Knowledge of God is,thus, the Mind's greatest good and its greatest virtue.What we see when we understand things through the third kind ofknowledge, under the aspect of eternity and in relation to God, is thedeterministic necessity of all things. We see that all bodies andtheir states follow necessarily from the essence of matter and theuniversal laws of physics; and we see that all ideas, including allthe properties of minds, follow necessarily from the essence ofthought and its universal laws. This insight can only weaken the powerthat the passions have over us. We are no longer hopeful or fearful ofwhat shall come to pass, and no longer anxious or despondent over ourpossessions. We regard all things with equanimity, and we are notinordinately and irrationally affected in different ways by past,present or future events. The result is self-control and a calmness ofmind.The more this knowledge that things are necessary isconcerned with singular things, which we imagine more distinctly andvividly, the greater is this power of the Mind over the affects, asexperience itself also testifies. For we see that Sadness over somegood which has perished is lessened as soon as the man who has lost itrealizes that this good could not, in any way, have been kept.Similarly, we see that [because we regard infancy as a natural andnecessary thing], no one pities infants because of their inability tospeak, to walk, or to reason, or because they live so many years, as itwere, unconscious of themselves. (Vp6s)Our affects themselves can be understood in this way, which furtherdiminishes their power over us.Spinoza's ethical theory is, to a certain degree, Stoic, and recallsthe doctrines of thinkers such as Cicero and Seneca:We do not have an absolute power to adapt things outside usto our use. Nevertheless, we shall bear calmly those things that happento us contrary to what the principle of our advantage demands, if weare conscious that we have done our duty, that the power we have couldnot have extended itself to the point where we could have avoided thosethings, and that we are a part of the whole of nature, whose order wefollow. If we understand this clearly and distinctly, that part of uswhich is defined by understanding, i.e., the better part of us, will beentirely satisfied with this, and will strive to persevere in thatsatisfaction. For insofar as we understand, we can want nothing exceptwhat is necessary, nor absolutely be satisfied with anything exceptwhat is true. (IV, Appendix)What, in the end, replaces the passionate love for ephemeral "goods"is an intellectual love for an eternal, immutable good that we canfully and stably possess, God. The third kind of knowledge generates alove for its object, and in this love consists not joy, a passion, butblessedness itself. Taking his cue from Maimonides's view of humaneudaimonia, Spinoza argues that the mind's intellectual loveof God is our understanding of the universe, our virtue, ourhappiness, our well-being and our "salvation". It is also our freedomand autonomy, as we approach the condition wherein what happens to usfollows from our nature (as a determinate and determined mode of oneof God's attributes) alone and not as a result of the ways externalthings affect us. Spinoza's "free person" is one who bears the giftsand losses of fortune with equanimity, does only those things that hebelieves to be "the most important in life", takes care for thewell-being of others (doing what he can to insure that they, too,achieve some relief from the disturbances of the passions throughunderstanding), and is not anxious about death. The free personneither hopes for any eternal, otherworldly rewards nor fears anyeternal punishments. He knows that the soul is not immortal in anypersonal sense, but is endowed only with a certain kind ofeternity. The more the mind consists of true and adequate ideas (whichare eternal), the more of it remains — within God's attribute ofThought — after the death of the body and the disappearance ofthat part of the mind that corresponds to the body's duration. Thisunderstanding of his place in the natural scheme of things brings tothe free individual true peace of mind.There are a number of social and political ramifications that followfrom Spinoza's ethical doctrines of human action and well-being.Because disagreement and discord between human beings is always theresult of our different and changeable passions, "free" individuals— who all share the same nature and act on the same principles— will naturally and effortlessly form a harmonioussociety. "Insofar as men are torn by affects that are passions, theycan be contrary to one another …[But] insofar as men liveaccording to the guidance of reason, they must do only those thingsthat are good for human nature, and hence, for each man, i.e., thosethings that agree with the nature of each man. Hence, insofar as menlive according to the guidance of reason, they must always agree amongthemselves" (IVp34-35). Free human beings will be mutually beneficialand useful, and will be tolerant of the opinions and even the errorsof others. However, human beings do not generally live under theguidance of reason. The state or sovereign, therefore, is required inorder to insure — not by reason, but by the threat of force— that individuals are protected from the unrestrained pursuitof self-interest on the part of other individuals. The transitionfrom a state of nature, where each seeks his own advantage withoutlimitation, to a civil state involves the universal renunciation ofcertain natural rights — such as "the right everyone has ofavenging himself, and of judging good and evil" — and theinvestment of those prerogatives in a central authority. As long ashuman beings are guided by their passions, the state is necessary tobring it about that they "live harmoniously and be of assistance toone another".3. Theological-Political TreatiseThe ostensive aim of the Theological-Political Treatise (TTP),widely vilified in its time, is to show that the freedom tophilosophize can not only be granted without injury to piety and thepeace of the Commonwealth, but that the peace of the Commonwealth andPiety are endangered by the suppression of this freedom. But Spinoza'sultimate intention is reveal the truth about Scripture and religion,and thereby to undercut the political power exercised in modern statesby religious authorities. He also defends, at least as a politicalideal, the tolerant, secular, and democratic polity. On Religion and ScriptureSpinoza begins the treatise by alerting his readers, through a kind of"natural history of religion", to just those superstitious beliefs andbehaviors that clergy, by playing on ordinary human emotions,encourage in their followers. A person guided by fear and hope, themain emotions in a life devoted to the pursuit of temporal advantages,turns, in the face of the vagaries of fortune, to behaviors calculatedto secure the goods he desires. Thus, we pray, worship, make votiveofferings, sacrifice and engage in all the various rituals of popularreligion. But the emotions are as fleeting as the objects thatoccasion them, and thus the superstitions grounded in those emotionssubject to fluctuations. Ambitious and self-serving clergy do theirbest to stabilize this situation and give some permanence to thosebeliefs and behaviors. "Immense efforts have been made to investreligion, true or false, with such pomp and ceremony that it cansustain any shock and constantly evoke the deepest reverence in allits worshippers" (TTP, Preface, G III.6-7/S 2-3). Religious leadersare generally abetted in their purposes by the civil authority, whichthreatens to punish all deviations from theological orthodoxy as"sedition". The result is a state religion that has no rationalfoundations, a mere "respect for ecclesiastics" that involvesadulation and mysteries but no true worship of God.The solution to this state of affairs, Spinoza believes, is to examinethe Bible anew and find the doctrines of the "true religion". Onlythen will we be able to delimit exactly what we need to do to showproper respect for God and obtain blessedness. This will reduce thesway that religious authorities have over our emotional, intellectualand physical lives, and reinstate a proper and healthy relationshipbetween the state and religion. A close analysis of the Bible isparticularly important for any argument that the freedom ofphilosophizing — essentially, freedom of thought and speech— is not prejudicial to piety. If it can be demonstrated thatScripture is not a source of "natural truth", but the bearer of only asimple moral message ("Love your neighbor"), then people will see that"faith is something separate from philosophy". Spinoza intends to showthat in that moral message alone — and not in Scripture's wordsor history — lies the sacredness of what is otherwise merely ahuman document. The Bible teaches only "obedience [to God]", notknowledge. Thus, philosophy and religion, reason and faith, inhabittwo distinct and exclusive spheres, and neither should tread in thedomain of the other. The freedom to philosophize and speculate cantherefore be granted without any harm to true religion. In fact, suchfreedom is essential to public peace and piety, since most civildisturbances arise from sectarian disputes. The real danger to theRepublic comes from those who would worship not God, but some words ona page: "It will be said that, although God's law is inscribed in ourhearts, Scripture is nevertheless the Word of God, and it is no morepermissable to say of Scripture that it is mutilated and contaminatedthan to say this of God's Word. In reply, I have to say that suchobjectors are carrying their piety too far, and are turning religioninto superstition; indeed, instead of God's Word they are beginning toworship likenesses and images, that is, paper and ink" (TTP, chap. 12,G III.159/S 145-6).From a proper and informed reading of Scripture, a number of thingsbecome clear. First, the prophets were not men of exceptionalintellectual talents — they were not, that is, naturally giftedphilosophers — but simply very pious, even morally superiorindividuals endowed with vivid imaginations. They were able toperceive God's revelation through their imaginative faculties viawords or real or imaginary figures. This is what allowed them toapprehend that which lies beyond the boundary of theintellect. Moreover, the content of a prophecy varied according to thephysical temperament, imaginative powers, and particular opinions orprejudices of the prophet. It follows that prophecy, while it has itsorigins in the power of God — and in this respect it is, inSpinoza's metaphysical scheme, no different from any other naturalevent — does not provide privileged knowledge of natural orspiritual phenomena. The prophets are not necessarily to be trustedwhen it comes to matters of the intellect, on questions of philosophy,history or science; and their pronouncements set no parameters on whatshould or should not be believed about the natural world on the basisof our rational faculties.Spinoza provides an equally deflationary account of God's election, orthe "vocation", of the Hebrews. It is "childish", he insists, foranyone to base their happiness on the uniqueness of their gifts; inthe case of the Jews, it would be the uniqueness of their being chosenamong all people. The ancient Hebrews, in fact, did not surpass othernations in their wisdom or in their proximity to God. They wereneither intellectually nor morally superior to other peoples. Theywere "chosen" only with respect to their social organization andpolitical good fortune. God (or Nature) gave them a set of laws andthey obeyed those laws, with the natural result that their society waswell-ordered and their autonomous government persisted for a longtime. Their election was thus a temporal and conditional one, andtheir kingdom is now long gone. Thus, "at the present time there isnothing whatsoever that the Jews can arrogate to themselves aboveother nations" (TTP, chap. 3, G III.56/S 45). Spinoza thereby rejectsthe particularism that many — including Amsterdam's Sephardicrabbis — insisted was essential to Judaism. True piety andblessedness are universal in their scope and accesssible to anyone,regardless of their confessional creed.Central to Spinoza's analysis of the Jewish religion — althoughit is applicable to any religion whatsoever — is the distinctionbetween the divine law and the ceremonial law. The law of God commandsonly the knowledge and love of God and the actions required forattaining that condition. Such love must arise not from fear ofpossible penalties or hope for any rewards, but solely from thegoodness of its object. The divine law does not demand anyparticular rites or ceremonies such as sacrifices or dietaryrestrictions or festival observances. The six hundred and thirteenprecepts of the Torah have nothing to do with blessedness orvirtue. They were directed only at the Hebrews so that they mightgovern themselves in an autonomous state. The ceremonial laws helpedpreserve their kingdom and insure its prosperity, but were valid onlyas long as that political entity lasted. They are not binding on allJews under all circumstances. They were, in fact, instituted by Mosesfor a purely practical reason: so that people might do their duty andnot go their own way. This is true not just of the rites and practicesof Judaism, but of the outer ceremonies of all religions. None ofthese activities have anything to do with true happiness orpiety. They serve only to control people's behavior and preserve aparticular society.A similar practical function is served by stories of miracles.Scripture speaks in a language suited to affect the imagination ofordinary people and compel their obedience. Rather than appealing tothe natural and real causes of all events, its authors sometimesnarrate things in a way calculated to move people — particularlyuneducated people — to devotion. "If Scripture were to describethe downfall of an empire in the style adopted by politicalhistorians, the common people would not be stirred …" Strictlyspeaking, however, miracles — understood as divinely causeddepartures from the ordinary course of nature — areimpossible. Every event, no matter how extraordinary, has a naturalcause and explanation. "Nothing happens in nature that does not followfrom her laws" (TTP, chap. 6, G III.83/S 73). This is simply aconsequence of Spinoza's metaphysical doctrines. Miracles astraditionally conceived require a distinction between God and nature,something that Spinoza's philosophy rules out in principle. Moreover,nature's order is inviolable in so far as the sequence of events innature is a necessary consequence of God's attributes. There certainlyare "miracles" in the sense of events whose natural causes are unknownto us, and which we therefore attribute to the powers of asupernatural God. But this is, once again, to retreat to superstition,"the bitter enemy of all true knowledge and true morality".By analyzing prophecy in terms of vividness of imagination, Jewishelection as political fortune, the ceremonial law as a kind of socialand political expediency, and the belief in miracles as an ignoranceof nature's necessary causal operations, Spinoza naturalizes (and,consequently, demystifies) some of the fundamental elements of Judaismand other religions and undermines the foundations of their external,superstitious rites. At the same time, he thereby reduces thefundamental doctrine of piety to a simple and universal formula,naturalistic in itself, involving love and knowledge. This process ofnaturalization achieves its stunning climax when Spinoza turns toconsider the authorship and interpretation of the Bible itself.Spinoza's views on Scripture constitute, without question, the mostradical theses of the Treatise, and explain why he wasattacked with such vitriol by his contemporaries. Others beforeSpinoza had suggested that Moses was not the author of the entirePentateuch. But no one had taken that claim to the extreme limit thatSpinoza did, arguing for it with such boldness and at such length. Norhad anyone before Spinoza been willing to draw from it the conclusionsabout the status, meaning and interpretation of Scripture that Spinozadrew.Spinoza denied that Moses wrote all, or even most of the Torah. Thereferences in the Pentateuch to Moses in the third person; thenarration of his death and, particularly, of events following hisdeath; and the fact that some places are called by names that they didnot bear in the time of Moses all "make it clear beyond a shadow ofdoubt" that the writings commonly referred to as "the Five Books ofMoses" were, in fact, written by someone who lived many generationsafter Moses. Moses did, to be sure, compose some books of history andof law; and remnants of those long lost books can be found in thePentateuch. But the Torah as we have it, as well as as other books ofthe Hebrew Bible (such as Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings) werewritten neither by the individuals whose names they bear nor by anyperson appearing in them. Spinoza believes that these were, in fact,all composed by a single historian living many generations after theevents narrated, and that this was most likely Ezra. It was thepost-exilic leader who took the many writings that had come down tohim and began weaving them into a single (but not seamless) narrative.Ezra's work was later completed and supplemented by the editoriallabors of others. What we now possess, then, is nothing but acompilation, and a rather mismanaged, haphazard and "mutilated" one atthat.As for the books of the Prophets, they are of even later provenance,compiled (or "heaped together", in Spinoza's view) by a chronicler orscribe perhaps as late as the Second Temple period. Canonization intoScripture occurred only in the second century BCE, when the Phariseesselected a number of texts from a multitude of others. Because theprocess of transmission was a historical one, involving the conveyenceof writings of human origin over a long period of time throughnumerous scribes, and because the decision to include some books butnot others was made by fallible human beings, there are good reasonsfor believing that a significant portion of the text of the "OldTestament" is corrupt.Now in 1670 there was nothing novel in claiming that Moses did notwrite all of the Torah. Spinoza's most radical and innovative claim,in fact, was to argue that this holds great significance for howScripture is to be read and interpreted. He was dismayed by the way inwhich Scripture itself was worshipped, by the reverence accorded tothe words on the page rather than to the message they conveyed. If theBible is an historical (i.e., natural) document, then it should betreated like any other work of nature. The study of Scripture, orBiblical hermeneutics, should therefore proceed as the study ofnature, or natural science proceeds: by gathering and evaluatingempirical data, that is, by examining the "book" itself — alongwith the contextual conditions of its composition — for itsgeneral principles.I hold that the method of interpreting Scripture is nodifferent from the method of interpreting Nature, and is in fact incomplete accord with it. For the method of interpreting Nature consistsessentially in composing a detailed study of Nature from which, asbeing the source of our assured data, we can deduce the definitions ofthe things of Nature. Now in exactly the same way the task ofScriptural interpretation requires us to make a straightforward studyof Scripture, and from this, as the source of our fixed data andprinciples, to deduce by logical inference the meaning of the authorsof Scripture. In this way — that is, by allowing no other principlesor data for the interpretation of Scripture and study of its contentsexcept those that can be gathered only from Scripture itself and from ahistorical study of Scripture — steady progress can be made withoutany danger of error, and one can deal with matters that surpass ourunderstanding with no less confidence than those matters that are knownto us by the natural light of reason. (TTP, chap. 7, G III.98/S 87).Just as the knowledge of nature must be sought from nature alone, somust the knowledge of Scripture — an apprehension of itsintended meaning — be sought from Scripture alone and throughthe appropriate exercise of rational inquiry.When properly interpreted, the universal message conveyed by Scriptureis a simple moral one: "To know and love God, and to love one'sneighbor as oneself". This is the real word of God and thefoundation of true piety, and it lies uncorrupted in a faulty,tampered and corrupt text. The lesson involves no metaphysicaldoctrines about God or nature, and requires no sophisticated trainingin philosophy. The object of Scripture is not to impart knowledge, butto compel obedience and regulate our conduct. "Scriptural doctrinecontains not abstruse speculation or philosophic reasoning, but verysimple matters able to be understood by the most sluggish mind" (TTP,chap. 13, G III.167/S 153). Spinoza claims, in fact, that afamiliarity with Scripture is not even necessary for piety andblessedness, since its message can be known by our rational facultiesalone, although with great difficulty for most people. "He who, whileunacquainted with these writings, nevertheless knows by the naturallight that there is a God having the attributes we have recounted, andwho also pursues a true way of life, is altogether blessed." It follows that the only practical commandments that properly belongto religion are those that are necessary to carry out the moralprecept and "confirm in our hearts the love of our neighbor". "Acatholic faith should therefore contain only those dogmas whichobedience to God absolutely demands, and without which such obedienceis absolutely impossible … these must all be directed to thisone end: that there is a Supreme Being who loves justice and charity,whom all must obey in order to be saved, and must worship bypracticing justice and charity to their neighbor" (TTP, chap. 14, GIII.177/S 161-2). As for other dogmas, "every person should embracethose that he, being the best judge of himself, feels will do most tostrengthen in him love of justice".This is the heart of Spinoza's case for toleration, for freedom ofphilosophizing and freedom of religious expression. By reducing thecentral message of Scripture — and the essential content ofpiety — to a simple moral maxim, one that is free of anysuperfluous speculative doctrines or ceremonial practices; and byfreeing Scripture of the burden of having to communicate specificphilosophical truths or of prescribing (or proscribing) a multitude ofrequired behaviors, he has demonstrated both that philosophy isindependent from religion and that the liberty of each individual tointerpret religion as he wishes can be upheld without any detriment topiety.As to the question of what God, the exemplar of true life,really is, whether he is fire, or spirit, or light, or thought, orsomething else, this is irrelevant to faith. And so likewise is thequestion as to why he is the exemplar of true life, whether this isbecause he has a just and merciful disposition, or because all thingsexist and act through him and consequently we, too, understand throughhim, and through him we see what is true, just and good. On thesequestions it matters not what beliefs a man holds. Nor, again, does itmatter for faith whether one believes that God is omnipresent inessence or in potency, whether he directs everything from free will orfrom the necessity of his nature, whether he lays down laws as a ruleor teaches them as being eternal truths, whether man obeys God fromfree will or from the necessity of the divine decree, whether therewarding of the good and the punishing of the wicked is natural orsupernatural. The view one takes on these and similar questions has nobearing on faith, provided that such a belief does not lead to theassumption of greater license to sin, or hinders submission to God.Indeed … every person is in duty bound to adapt these religiousdogmas to his own understanding and to interpret them for himself inwhatever way makes him feel that he can the more readily accept themwith full confidence and conviction. (TTP, chap. 14, G III.164/S162-3)Faith and piety belong not to the person who has the most rationalargument for the existence of God or the most thorough philosophicalunderstanding of his attributes, but to the person "who best displaysworks of justice and charity".The StateSpinoza's account of religion has clear political ramifications. Therehad always been a quasi-political agenda behind his decision to writethe Treatise, since his attack was directed at politicalmeddling by religious authorities. But he also took the opportunity togive a more detailed and thorough presentation of a general theory ofthe state that is only sketchily present in the Ethics. Suchan examination of the true nature of political society is particularlyimportant to his argument for intellectual and religious freedom, sincehe must show that such freedom is not only compatible with politicalwell-being, but essential to it. The individual egoism of the Ethics plays itself out in apre-political context — the so-called "state of nature", auniversal condition where there is no law or religion or moral rightand wrong — as the right of every individual to do whatever hecan to preserve himself. "Whatever every person, whenever he isconsidered as solely under the dominion of Nature, believes to be tohis advantage, whether under the guidance of sound reason or underpassion's sway, he may by sovereign natural right seek and get forhimself by any means, by force, deceit, entreaty, or in any other wayhe best can, and he may consequently regard as his enemy anyone whotries to hinder him from getting what he wants" (TTP, chap. 16, GIII.190/S 174). Naturally, this is a rather insecure and dangerouscondition under which to live. In Hobbes' celebrated phrase —and Spinoza was clearly influenced by his reading of that Britishthinker — life in the state of nature is "solitary, poor, nasty,brutish and short". As rational creatures, we soon realize that wewould be better off, still from a thoroughly egoistic perspective,coming to an agreement among ourselves to restrain our opposingdesires and the unbounded pursuit of self-interest — in sum,that it would be in our greater self-interest to live under the law ofreason rather than the law of nature. We thus agree to hand over to asovereign our natural right and power to do whatever we can to satisfyour interests. That sovereign — whether it be an individual (inwhich case the resulting state is a monarchy), a small group ofindividuals (an oligarchy) or the body-politic as a whole (ademocracy) — will be absolute and unrestrained in the scope ofits powers. It will be charged with keeping all the members of societyto the agreement, mostly by playing on their fear of the consequencesof breaking the "social contract".Obedience to the sovereign does not infringe upon our autonomy, sincein following the commands of the sovereign we are following anauthority whom we have freely authorized and whose commands have noother object than our own rational self- interest. The type ofgovernment most likely to respect and preserve that autonomy, issuelaws based on sound reason and to serve the ends for which governmentis instituted is democracy. It is the "most natural" form of governingarising out of a social contract — since in a democracy thepeople obey only laws that issue from the general will of the bodypolitic — and the least subject to various abuses of power. In ademocracy, the rationality of the sovereign's commands is practicallysecured, since it is unlikely that a majority of a large number ofpeople will agree to an irrational design. Monarchy, on the otherhand, is the least stable form of government and the one most likelyto degenerate into tyranny.Since the outward practices of religion impinge upon the comportmentand relations of citizens, they fall under "state business" and, thus,within the sphere of the sovereign's power. The sovereign should havecomplete dominion in all public matters secular and spiritual. Thereshould be no church separate from the religion instituted andregulated by the state. This will prevent sectarianism and themultiplication of religious disputes. All questions concerningexternal religious rites and ceremonies are in the hands of thesovereign. This is in the best interest of everyone, since thesovereign will, ideally and in conformity with its "contractual" duty,insure that such practices are in accord with public peace and safetyand social well-being. The sovereign should rule in such a way thathis commands enforce God's law. Justice and charity thereby acquirethe force of civil law, backed by the power of the sovereign.On the other hand, dominion over the "inward worship of God" and thebeliefs accompanying it — in other words, inner piety —belongs exclusively to the individual. This is a matter ofinalienable, private right, and it cannot be legislated, not even bythe sovereign. No one can limit or control another person's thoughtsanyway, and it would be foolhardy and destructive to the polity for asovereign to attempt to do so. Nor can speech ever truly andeffectively be controlled, since people will always say want theywant, at least in private. "Everyone is by absolute natural right themaster of his own thoughts, and thus utter failure will attend anyattempt in a commonwealth to force men to speak only as prescribed bythe sovereign despite their different and opposing opinions" (TTP,chap. 20, G III.240/S 223). There must, Spinoza grants, besome limits to speech and teaching. Seditious discourse thatencourages individuals to nullify the social contract should not betolerated. But the best government will err on the side of leniencyand allow the freedom of philosophical speculation and the freedom ofreligious belief. Certain "inconveniences" will, no doubt, sometimesresult from such an extensive liberty. But the attempt to regulateeverything by law is "more likely to arouse vices than to reformthem". In a passage that foreshadows John Stuart Mill's utilitariandefense of liberty nearly two centuries later, Spinoza adds that "thisfreedom is of the first importance in fostering the sciences and thearts, for only those whose judgment is free and unbiased can attainsuccess in these fields" (TTP, chap. 20, G III.243/S 226).It is hard to imagine a more passionate and reasoned defense offreedom and toleration than that offered by Spinoza.BibliographySpinoza's WorksSpinoza Opera, edited by Carl Gebhardt, 5 volumes(Heidelberg: Carl Winters, 1925, 1972 [volume 5, 1987]). Abbreviatedin text as G.Spinoza, Ethics, in Edwin Curley, translator, TheCollected Writings of Spinoza (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1985), volume 1.Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, Samuel Shirley,translator, second edition (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2001).Abbreviated in text as S.Recommended Secondary LiteratureAllison, Henry (1987), Benedict de Spinoza: AnIntroduction (New Haven: Yale University Press).Balibar, Etienne (1998), Spinoza and Politics (London:Verso).Bennett, Jonathan (1984), A Study of Spinoza's Ethics(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing).Curley, Edwin (1988), Behind the Geometric Method(Princeton: Princeton University Press).Donagan, Alan (1988), Spinoza (Chicago: University ofChicago Press).Garrett, Don, ed. (1996), The Cambridge Companion toSpinoza (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press).Nadler, Steven (1999), Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge and NewYork: Cambridge University Press).Nadler, Steven (2002), Spinoza's Heresy (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press). Popkin, Richard (2004), Spinoza (Oxford: One World).Preus, J. Samuel (2001), Spinoza and the Irrelevance ofBiblical Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).Ravven, Heidi and Lenn E. Goodman, eds. (2002), Jewish Themesin Spinoza's Philosophy (Albany, NY: SUNY Press).Smith, Steven B. (1997), Spinoza, Liberalism and the Questionof Jewish Identity (New Haven: Yale University Press).Smith, Steven B. (2003), Spinoza's Book of Life (NewHaven: Yale University Press).Verbeek, Theo (2003), Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise:Exploring 'the Will of God' (London: Ashgate).Wolfson, Harry (1934), The Philosophy of Spinoza, 2 vols.(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).Yovel, Yirmiyahu (1989), Spinoza and Other Heretics, 2vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press).Other Internet ResourcesThe Infography about Baruch SpinozaNecessarily Eternal: A Catablog of (All) Things SpinozaRelated Entries Descartes, René | emotion: 17th and 18th century theories of | Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm | Spinoza, Baruch: modal metaphysics | Spinoza, Baruch: physical theory | Spinoza, Baruch: political philosophy | Spinoza, Baruch: psychological theory | Spinoza, Baruch: theory of attributes Copyright © 2008 bySteven Nadler<smnadler@facstaff.wisc.edu> |
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