When1: 1663
When2: 1677
Who: Benedict de Spinoza [Spinoza, Benedict de] or Baruch de Spinoza [Spinoza, Baruch de]
What: philosopher
Where: Amsterdam, Netherlands
works\ Principles of Descartes' Philosophy [1663]; Tractatus Theologico-Politicus or Theological-Political Treatise [1670: Bible as guide to ethics]; Short Treatise on God [1677]; Man and his Well-being [1677]; Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect [1677]; Ethics [1677: including Concerning God, On the Nature and Origin of the Mind, Concerning the Origin and Nature of the Emotions, Of Human Bondage or the Strength of the Emotions, On the Improvement of the Understanding, and Of the Power of the Intellect or of Human Freedom]; Political Treatise [1677]; On the Improvement of the Understanding [1677]
Detail: He lived 1632 to 1677 and was determinist. He derived Cartesian philosophy from axioms and definitions. He used Scholastic concepts for axioms and definitions.
Epistemology
People know God through intuition. People can know the parts of God {doctrine of modes}.
The physical can explain the mental, and vice versa. Physical and mental worlds exhibit parallelism. Ideas have objects or relations and essence of God.
Ideas and thoughts all logically connect, and understanding and reasoning mind perceives that fixed logical relations are between all objects and events, so all determines each. Effects are cause or premise logical consequences. All actions and objects are necessary and sufficient. No cause hierarchy exists, only a systematic whole. Causes and effects do not just happen in time.
Sense perceptions and emotions are body processes. Perceptions are external-object representations used by mind as it tries to maintain existence and perfect itself. Perceptions and emotions can become perfect in mind by clear and distinct understanding of their causes.
Purpose is human idea that does not apply to God's actions.
Ethics
Only finite minds see evil. Because everything is necessary, world as a whole has no evil.
Because everything is necessary, free will does not exist.
Man should seek order, give up passion, and try to find and understand God's plan. Attaining clear and distinct understanding improves mind's reasoning powers and allows more activity and freedom. Freedom is the understanding that God grants existence to people to act in predetermined ways manifesting God's power and law. The highest state of living, insight, and understanding {intuition, Spinoza} is intellectual love of God, union of thought and emotion, and joyful realization that all is eternal necessity under control of God, not contingent on time but determined by laws. Virtue is acquiescence in this knowledge and living life based on it.
People start with emotion and experience, then learn to reason, and eventually become free through insight, if they are perfectly active, not reactive, in oneness with God and nature.
Because the future is certain, hope, anxiety, repentance, and fear are not real but are passions based on inadequate knowledge. Other passions are effects of outside world. Passions distract from vision of God and unity of all.
True freedom is feeling and acting self-determination. Control from outside is bad. Reason is outside time and is certain. Knowledge leads to proper necessary action, and error leads to wrongdoing.
Self-preservation governs all behaviors. Fundamental desires are desire or appetite, pleasure, and pain or sadness. Self-preservation requires only these.
Metaphysics
Substance needs only itself to exist {substance monism}. Physical and mental are different perspectives on same reality {anomalous monism, Spinoza} {double-aspect theory, substance} {dual-aspect theory} {dual-attribute theory, Spinoza}. Substance has God as essence and nature as laws, is infinite, and has an infinite number of attributes, such as thinking and spatial extension.
All finite things, such as minds and bodies, are not substances but are only substance parts, manifestations, fragments, states, or expressions {mode, Spinoza}. Finite things maintain their being {conatus}, perfect their existence, and are aware of pleasure and pain. Finite things can be more active or more reactive.
Nothing can be different than it is, because everything results from God, who is necessary and eternal being. God is cause and essence of all things. Actual world and all knowledge derive from God, and this unifies them. All infinite attributes unite in God's reality, whose essence involves its existence. God has no qualities, no consciousness, no will, and no body. All things are God modifications, and God is in all things.
Mind
Soul and body exhibit parallelism. Mind is thoughts of body. Body is mental matter. Mind and body are different aspects of Nature or God.
Politics
States should control the church. However, each age changes religious dogma, so state should not force dogma upon people. State religion should be about ethics, not dogma. Social life comes from individual interests. State is an agreement that unites people into group with common interests, to ensure their interests. Agreement makes people give up some rights to authority to enforce laws. Aristocratic republics are best.
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Date Modified: 2022.0224