511.
Spinoza in threes
There
are three Spinoza’s.
First,
Spinoza was the man who was ostracised and excommunicated as an atheist from
the Jewish community in Amsterdam, for holding and professing the view of God
as the whole of nature with its laws, in contrast with the accepted view of God
as the personal, provident and benevolent creator of the world, rising above
it. For Spinoza, god was indifferent to human existence, and humans simply had
to abide by the order of nature, without free will.
Second
is the political philosopher who on the one hand pleaded for democratic freedom
of expression and separation of church and state, but on the other hand was
autoritarian, rejecting rebellion and accepting merciless control by the state,
including the death penalty Some people even call him fascist. This is
consistent with his view of God as the whole of laws of nature, without
transcendence. A German philosopher had said that the lack of transcendence
lies at the basis of fascism. However, I think this is exaggerated effect seeking:
Fascism celebrates violence, and one cannot accuse Spinoza of that.
Third,
Spinoza proposed the idea of conatus and
the relation between mind and boby. Conatus
is the irrepressible drive of everything to survive, maintain itself.
Spinoza proposed that the mind is the idea of the body, that thoughts and
feelings arise from processes in body and mind that sustain the conatus. This
was adopted and developed by Damasio (2003). We now see that these routinised,
automatic, largely subconscious processes of body and mind have developed in
evolution, contributing to survival. Carriers of traits that did not contribute
were selected out, in evolution.
Feeling
good reflects balance, homeostasis, in the the whole of body and emotions, and
feelig bad reflects a disbalance. As a result, people avoid situations that
cause bad feeling and seek situations that cause good feelings, and in this way
feelings become part of the whole homeostatic system of body and mind. Feeling
good can trigger the release of chemicals (serotonin, oxytocin) that enhance wellbeing,
which reinforces the seeking of the sources of it.
All
is not well. Some of the homeostatic mechanism that evolved because they
promoted survival in the distant past now overshoot and no longer necessarily
enhance survival in the current selection environment. An example is the drive
to seek foodstuffs like sugar, fat and salt that now is unhealthy. Seeking
property and power once enhanced survival but it now leads people to gain
riches and power they don’t need for survival, but still trigger the urge for
them.
There
now is an arms-race between natural and cultural selection (including science
and technology). Medical care is enhanced by scientific and technological
progress, but reduces natural selection by reducing illness and death. Natural
selection is too slow compared to cultural selection to penalise the lack of
death. At the same time, health and social care reduce the need for the
homeostatic mechnisms such as empathy, shame, discipline, resilience, altruism,
trust, and enhance greed and the seeking of pleasure and entertainment, which
reduces the beneficial effects of cultural evolution. This seems to be creating
new selection environments of greed, discrimination, nationalism, strife and
war, where might re-stablishes itself as right. One may hope that the ravages
of war will lead to the re-establishment of the beneficent values, but this is
whistling in the dark.
Spinoza’s
approach was to present his views by mathematical deduction from basic definitions
and axioms taken to be indubitable. God necessarily exists, the essence of God
is the cause of all things, and our knowledge of him is necessary because God ‘communicates
his essence to our minds directly’ (Melamed, 2010: 132). When I first read Spinoza
as a student of mathematics, I was immensely intrigued. Later, I arrived at the
objection that the theses Spinoza posits are no more true than the definitions
and axioms they are deduced from, and those definitions and axioms could be
different. For example, Spinoza argued in terms of ‘substances’, which exist in
themselves. By contrast, I accept the ontology that things do not exist by
themselves but in relations with other things. For Spinoza,’x is caused by y if
and only if x inheres in and only if x is conceived in y’.(Della Rocca, 2010: 189).
Identification of implication and causation, the basis of Spinoza’s philosophy,
is a category mistake.
In
the Ethics, Spinoza began with the
definition of something being the cause of itself as something whose essence
implies its existence, or whose nature cannot be thought other than as
existing. However, this may be no more than the prejudice of false thought. To
give an example, it was once thought that parallel lines do not intersect, but
later it was seen that on a sphere they do, such as the lines of longitude on
the globe that converge on the poles
Melamed,
Y.Y (2010), ‘The metaphysics of the Theological-Political Treatise’ in: Y.Y
Melamed & M.A. Rosenthal, Spinoza’s
Theological-Political Treatise, Cambridge University Press, pp. 128-42.
Della
Rocca, M. (2010),’Getting his hands dirty: Spinoza’s criticism of the rebel’, in:
Y.Y Melamed & M.A. Rosenthal, Spinoza’s
Theological-Political Treatise, Cambridge University Press, pp. 168-91.
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