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.