A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 2: Modern Philosophy

by Herbert Ernest Cushman

2. His Impulse from the New Science—Descartes’ Influence. The “free thinking” for which Spinoza was excommunicated by the Synagogue was obtained firstfrom his instruction in the school of Van der Ende, a physician of daring naturalistic tendencies. This was when he was eighteen. Spinoza had already learned Italian and French; Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Hebrew were his native tongues; Van der Ende taught him German and Latin, and introduced him to the science of the time. It was then that he read Descartes, whose philosophy he made the basis of his own. Spinoza was not an inventive genius like Descartes and Leibnitz, but he was more rigidly systematic than either. He was by nature a thinker who was obliged to carry his thought through to its logical conclusions. He had already, at this early age of eighteen, begun to make independent theological excursions. Consequently the mathematical methods of Descartes furnished him a method, and Van der Ende gave him the encouragement for carrying out his independent thinking unrelentingly to its logical end. To state his modified Jewish conception of God in mathematical terms became his task, and his success in thus stating it, with Descartes as a starting point, made him the most complete representative of Rationalism.

3. His Acquaintance with the Collegiants. After his expulsion from his kindred, he lived for seven years with a sect of Baptist Quakers called Collegiants. This was a dissenting religious body without priests or set forms of worship. The members were simple, pious people, who regarded moral living as superior to creed; and Spinoza’s life in their midst must have determined to some degree the lines of his thought. To a man of Spinoza’s simplicity of mind and kindly disposition, the Collegiants would prove to be not only congenial companions in his hours of distress, but they would confirmhis own love for the ethical as an ideal. Spinoza says that the motive of his philosophy is a practical one; that he is seeking that which would “enable me to enjoy continuous and supreme and unending happiness.” He is seeking a theory of life that would aid in allaying the unrest of his time; and he is the only philosopher who has called his metaphysics Ethics. The humaneness of his doctrine, the practical purpose of his writings, and the ethical ideal that informed his whole life had at least their reinforcement, and perhaps their origin, in his contact with the Collegiants during this critical period. His life with this sect influenced him in his refusal to accept the chair of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, and to remain content to be the obscure grinder of optical lenses.

The Life and Philosophical Writings of Spinoza[31] (1632–1677). The history of philosophy presents in the person of Spinoza a lovable, interesting, and striking character, as well as the author of one of the profoundest of philosophical systems. His life was one of social isolation and retirement rather than of solitude. The Jews to whom he belonged lived a kind of double exile—they were exiled from their home in Spain, and they lived by themselves apart from the people of Amsterdam. When Spinoza was excommunicated by his brethren, he suffered, therefore, a threefold exile. Moreover, Spinoza was not only excommunicated by his people, but he was hated by the contemporary Catholics, Protestants, and the prevailing Cartesian school. Even the free-thinker, Hume, spoke of him as “the infamous Spinoza,” and another philosopher described his philosophy as “the hideous hypothesis of Spinoza.” But his isolation wasfar from solitude, and he had many eminent and faithful friends and a notable correspondence. Of his short life of forty-five years, he spent twenty-four, or more than half, as a member of the Jewish synagogue. During the next seven years he found refuge among the Collegiants. In the last fourteen years of his life he became widely known, mainly through the Theological-Political Tract, published in 1670, the only one of his writings which he himself published. This brought him the call to the University of Heidelberg, which he declined. His life may be conveniently divided into three periods, as follows:—

1. In Israel (1632–1656). Spinoza was educated at the Jewish academy at Amsterdam, where he studied theology and learned a trade, according to the Jewish custom. This trade was the grinding of optical lenses; that is, he became an optician, and this required some knowledge of mathematics and physics. During these years he got instruction from Van der Ende in science and Latin. He also read Descartes and learned many languages. He wrote a compendium of a Hebrew Grammar, of which the date is doubtful. In 1656 he was excommunicated by the synagogue. The charges brought against him were that: (1) he denied that the Old Testament taught the doctrine of immortality; (2) he affirmed that angels may be only phantoms or ideas in men’s minds; (3) he affirmed that God may have a body.

2. In Retirement (1656–1663). Spinoza spent this time with the Collegiants, and this was his most fruitful intellectual period. He brought his ontology, ethics, politics, and physics into a unified system; and he formulated his theory of determinism and his mathematicalmethod. In 1658–1661 he was writing his so-called Short Treatise, “concerning God, man and his well-being.” This was the first draft of his Ethics. In 1656–1662 he was writing his Improvement of the Understanding. In 1662–1663 he wrote a summary of the principles of Descartes.

3. In the Public Eye (1663–1677). During this period Spinoza lived at or near the Hague, where he had many visitors and a large correspondence.[32] He was an intimate friend of the brothers DeWitte, who made so large a part of the political history of the country. In 1662–1665 he was writing his Ethics, his monumental work. In 1663–1670 he wrote and published the Theological-Political Treatise, the only work published during his life. Although received with horror, it was widely read. It aimed to show that the Bible is history. In 1673 he declined the call to the University of Heidelberg. Just before his death, in 1677, he wrote the fragment of the Political Treatise.

The Method of Spinoza. The method which Spinoza employed in writing his Ethics must not be regarded by the reader as a fantastic dress that he capriciously chose. It had for Spinoza a real and not merely an external significance. On taking up the book, one finds philosophy treated exactly as Euclid treated his geometry. Beginning with a number of definitions and axioms, there are deduced, step by step, propositions with appended scholia and corollaries. To Spinoza this was not pressing philosophy into an artificial and rigid form, but was only the natural mode of philosophical expression. For, in the first place, if the new method of science had proveditself successful in treating physical phenomena, why should not the same method have the same success with problems of the world of the spirit—and in this way bring the two worlds into harmony? By deduction one could then arrive at absolute certainty and unassailable proof of the solutions of metaphysical problems that had long vexed the Middle Ages. With the perfect geometrical method all problems in heaven and earth could be solved. In the second place, the religious conviction of Spinoza that all things come from God required the deductive method to explain them. The order in which we should study phenomena should correspond to the real order in which they stand to God. God is the ground or reason of things, and all are derived from Him as consequents. The deduction of the relation of finite things to God will correspond to the real relation in which God stands to them.

The Fundamental Principle in Spinoza’s Philosophy. The philosophy of Spinoza seems to be Cartesian in every respect except one; and that one difference was like the leaven in the lump—it transformed his philosophy into a radically different one from that of Descartes. Spinoza’s point of departure was the philosophy of Descartes, all his presuppositions are the fundamental principles of Descartes, and the structure of his system seems to be that of Descartes. He has the same respect for the power of the reason to know all truth, the same faith in the omnipotence of the mathematical method, the same general conception of substance, the same idea of the qualitative difference between the worlds of thought and extension, the same belief in the mechanical structure of the world of nature. He made these his own and accentuated them. But headded to these a new and transforming principle: he conceived that the substance, God, is not merely one object of knowledge, but He is the only object of knowledge. He is the only substance, and finite things are only modifications of Him. Finite things are alike at bottom, and to know them truly is to know God.

This new principle transforms all the Cartesian elements in Spinoza’s teaching. It changes the Cartesian theism into a pantheism; it supplants Descartes’ theological orthodoxy with a naturalism and Descartes’ doctrine of freedom with a determinism; and it turns the cultured aloofness of Descartes into a benevolent mysticism. This new principle becomes “the head of the corner.” The oneness and universality of God is the single proposition from which Spinoza deduced his whole philosophy. God is the ultimate ground whose existence must be real, because it is conceived. The intrinsic scholasticism of the philosophy of Spinoza appears in his definition of substance, for it is only a condensed statement of St. Anselm’s argument for the existence of God. Spinoza says, “By substance I mean that which is in itself and conceived through itself alone.” There are, therefore, two kinds of things: the thing that has existence in itself and the things that have existence in something else. God stands alone in the first class; all other things make up the second class. Spinoza’s world is divided into two parts: God and the modes of God. God is self-explanatory and self-existent, while everything else is explained through Him. The only object of knowledge and the single presupposition of existence is God. In a phrase that has become classic, Novalis described Spinoza as a “God-intoxicated man.”

Three Central Problems in Spinoza’s Teaching. We have already noted that Spinoza was the chief exponent of “clearness and distinctness” in this epoch when all mysteries were to be revealed. He sought to articulate a metaphysics that would spread out the plan of the world like a demonstration in geometry. His definition of substance is perfectly intelligible; he accepted the mathematical analysis of the material world into a world of extension, and that of the world of conscious states into one of thought—all this for the sake of simplification and clearness. How simple such a philosophy at the first blush appears—the world is God and his modifications. As a matter of fact it is one of the many examples of the irony of history that the philosophy of Spinoza is one of the most difficult to interpret. Its difficulties do not arise from its having a novel point of view, for on the contrary it is one that appeals strongly to the popular imagination. Its difficulties arise from its very simplicity, for, after all, human life is so rich and varied that a simple formula will hardly express it. From beginning to end Spinoza’s thought has a vagueness for which the beginner in vain strives to find the cause. The cause lies in the seemingly simple principle that God is all that really exists, and yet the world consists of God and other things.