Spinoza

Spinoza (1632-1677) is one of my favourite philosophers. His ideas are at once simple and complicated; understandable and obscure. It would be a task beyond my capabilities to fully describe these ideas - there are those who spend all their lives studying the works of Spinoza and still feel there is more to learn. Still, I'm going to try my hand at it here.


The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR)

I don't think Spinoza actually ever explicitly mentions this principle, but it is fundamental to his philosophy. It is the principle that states that every fact has an explanation; a dutiful follower of this principle, as Spinoza was, will never accept the presence of a brute fact, or a fact that cannot be explained as having a cause. When a child demands a reason for something beyond "because I said so" they are in a way using the PSR. I am fond of this principle because I too am no lover of arbitrary lines and brute facts - they arouse my suspicion. For example, I am not satisfied when someone draws a line at the 'Big Bang' and says that before this nothing is understandable and therefore there must needs be an intelligent creative force. This is presenting a brute fact, this is declaring that natural explanation abruptly ends where our current understanding does, which is too convenient to sit well with me.

On the flip side, following the PSR strictly will lead one down paths towards truly bizarre conclusions. Descartes thought that there were many "substances"; that tree has a substance that is unique from the substance of the sun, both of which are unique from the substance of a mind. To Spinoza this violated the PSR. In virtue of what are there many substances instead of one? He could not think of a good reason for this, so he concluded that there is just one substance, and this substance has an infinite number of attributes and an infinite number of modes, or ways of existing. So that our mind is one way this substance exists, our body another way, and that tree yet another mode of the same substance. He called this substance God or Nature interchangeably, and so he is often thought of as being a pantheist; someone who believes that everything is God. Our mind is but one way that God exists, and that is but scratching the surface of his strange conclusions.

A Theory of Everything

Einstein was once asked by telegram if he believed in God. His response:
“I believe in Spinoza’s God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.”

Stephen Hawking seems to be something of a Spinozist himself. From a Brief History of Time:
"However, if we discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable by everyone, not just by a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we should know the mind of God."

I'm not writing these quotes as an appeal to authority, to prove that Spinoza was right, but to show that his views were - in the 17th century - not at all out of line with modern physics. To his mind, as well as many physicists today, there must be something that explains everything. It is not rationally satisfying at all that matter should exist completely independent of energy - that would be too arbitrary. There must be something that explains both phenomena, something that unifies all seemingly disparate theories. In String Theory the fundamental constituents of the universe are tiny sub-microscopic strings which oscillate at different frequencies; the particles they correspond to are determined by the frequency they vibrate at, one frequency corresponds to a photon, another to an electron. The popular analogy is the guitar string: at one frequency the string produces a C note, at another an A. Is this so different from Spinoza's Substance? In detail only. The essentials are the same: from one fundamental "substance" comes all the laws of nature, all we see and know.

Ethics

Spinoza's most widely read book is his Ethics, but it is no light read. Will Durant wrote in the Story of Philosophy: "Read the book not all at once, but in small portions at many sittings. And having finished it, consider that you have but begun to understand it." So far be it from me to assume I fully understand these things.

In the first part of the book Spinoza aims to prove his notion of God through the geometrical method; that is, through axioms and propositions. This method, he supposes, adds a bit of oomph to his ideas, as if they are self-evident and undeniable. Eventually he explores what this theory means for morals and ethics.

His philosophy of ethics can be thought of as an ethic of "enlightened self-interest". The goal of our conduct should be to promote our happiness, and our happiness can be promoted through increased joy in those we interact with. To see how he gets there I'll have to get a few definitions out of the way (these are, of course, Spinoza's definitions), and then I'll see if I can make sense of it:

-The "essence" of a thing is the striving of the thing to persevere is its being (according to Spinoza, the will towards self-destruction has nothing to do with ones essence, which only strives to persevere, but is brought about by external affects)
-Happiness is simply the presence of pleasure, the absence of pain.
-Joy is "the passion by which the mind passes to a greater perfection."
-Sadness is the opposite passion, by which the mind passes to a lesser degree of perfection.
-By perfection Spinoza is referring to the degree to which one is able act, as opposed to being acted upon. In joy you are elevated to a place where you have a greater ability to act. In sadness you are acted upon. 
-Love is joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause. That is, we are aware that the one we love is the cause of our joy.

"One who loves necessarily strives to have present and preserve the thing he loves." This aids in the perseverance of being. 

"Man is affected with the same affect of joy or sadness from the image of a past or future thing as from the image of a present thing."

"Therefore, the images of things that posit the existence of a thing loved...affect the mind with joy."

He goes on at great length defining and explaining every passion and way they affect us, I have not even taken a chip off the tip of the iceberg. But if I go down that road things will get very muddled, if they aren't already! The important thing is to recognize that for Spinoza we necessarily strive to persevere in our being, and that increasing our ability to act is essential to this goal. This is the 'self-interested' part of his enlightened self-interest. However, we do not live in a vacuum. There are other minds around us, and according to Spinoza's notion of substance, our minds are all a part of the Mind of God, or all a part of the same Nature. So, for the 'enlightened' part I take it to be described in this passage:

"From this it follows that men who are governed by reason - that is, men who, from the guidance of reason, seek their own advantage - want nothing for themselves which they do not desire for other men. Hence they are just, honest, and honorable."

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I'll leave it there before I gum up the works. I really enjoy this stuff, though. I won't say that I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Spinozist. I'm unsure of how necessary it is to have such a complicated justification for conducting ourselves in goodwill, and I think that when Spinoza laid down his pen and went out into the streets, he was not carefully considering every interaction through his philosophy, but acted through his moral sense - which we all have - instinctively.