Today in The Philosopher's Zone,
we meet Spinoza's God. Now, that might seem an odd thing to do,
especially as Baruch Spinoza, one of the greatest philosophers of his day, was expelled from
the Amsterdam Synagogue in 1656, probably because of his unorthodox religious views. Ever since, Spinoza has been regarded as
the great atheist of the Western tradition. Between the 17th and the 19th centuries, not
only were his works periodically suppressed, but even being named a Spinozist
could have had grave consequences. Hello, I'm Alan Saunders. And here's the odd thing. Spinoza refers to God throughout his writings. His central work, the Ethics, opens with a
definition of God, and closes with a discussion of divine love. Another of his books, The Treatise of Political
Theology, deals extensively with the law of Moses and the role that religion plays in
the formation and perpetuation of states. So can we reconcile the paradox in
Spinoza between his perceived atheism and his constant references to the divine? Today we're joined by Beth Lord, who teaches philosophy at the University of Dundee, and
is the Director of the Spinoza Research Network. Beth, welcome to The Philosopher's Zone. Thank you very much,
it's a pleasure to be here. Let's begin, not with Spinoza but with somebody
we can all agree genuinely is an atheist, Richard Dawkins. Now he entertains in his central book on atheism,
he entertains the idea of Einstein's God. And Einstein's God--the God who, as Einstein
said, does not play dice with the universe-- Einstein's God is essentially Spinoza's God. So, what is Dawkins getting at? This is a really interesting point. Dawkins actually opens his book, The God Delusion,
with a discussion of what he calls Einsteinian Religion, and essentially what he's
talking about is Spinoza's God. Now Spinoza's God is essentially equivalent
to nature, and by nature we don't just mean the whole of the experienced and perceived
world around us, but actually all of being, which for Spinoza is infinitely rich
and expresses itself in infinite ways. So, when Dawkins refers to Einstein's God
or Einsteinian religion, of course Einstein was a great reader of Spinoza, he was a great
fan of Spinoza, and he claimed on more than one occasion that the God he
believed in was Spinoza's God. And when Dawkins quotes this material, he
makes clear that the God that he is denying in his book and the delusion that he associates
with that God, is not concerning Einstein's God or Einsteinian religion, but is concerning
the God of theology, supernatural Gods essentially. So Dawkins' view basically is that you can
have Einstein's God, Spinoza's God, if you want to, but why bother? Essentially that's right. He seems to be perfectly happy to accept that
some scientists and other atheists might well want to hold to a notion of the Einsteinian
God or the Spinozistic God, but he has problems with calling that being 'God'. Dawkins thinks that if we call nature 'God',
we're kind of confusing our terminology, and why would we do that if we're really
atheists? Why would we call nature 'God'? Why not call nature, 'nature', and take
God out of the equation altogether? Well indeed, why not call nature, 'nature'? Why does Spinoza talk so much about God? Well Spinoza believes that the true understanding
of God really does equate to the whole of being. So let me put a little bit more detail on that. Spinoza thinks that any kind of basic theological
definition of God, whether that be from a Jewish, Christian, Muslim perspective, or
even from other religious perspectives, any basic definition of God is going to include
the definition that God is a substance of infinite attributes. Now
what does that mean? Well for Spinoza, 'substance' basically means
an independently existing being, that is something that doesn't depend on anything else for
its existence, and 'infinite attributes' really means that this being exists in
infinite different kinds of ways. So Spinoza thinks that if you take your basic
theological definition of God and you strip away all the stuff that's said about this
God in the Bible or through conventional religion, then what you'll be left with is
that definition, a being of infinite attributes. Spinoza thinks that there's good reason to
carry on calling this being 'God', because that for him, is basically what God is. So we should carry on calling it 'God', but
his point is that the theologians and people who believe in religion need to understand,
they need to come to true understanding of the fact that the God that they believe
in turns out to be 'being,' the substance of infinite attributes. If that's who God is, or if that's what God
is, doesn't that make Spinoza a pantheist? Yes. Spinoza is certainly a pantheist. He's usually called an atheist, and it's also
true to say that he's an atheist in the sense that he denies the God of theism. So the God of theism would be God as he is
described in the Bible let's say, and Spinoza certainly thinks that that God is a fiction,
a fictional construct that human beings use, for very good reason. So Spinoza can be said to be an atheist in
that sense, but as you've pointed out already, it's pretty strange to call someone an atheist
whose work is so infused with the notion of God. So the term Pantheist is often used to describe
Spinoza, and a Pantheist is really someone who believes that God is
everywhere, God is in everything. But even the word 'Pantheist' can be a bit
problematic when talking about Spinoza, because really Spinoza believes that God IS
being, not that God is in being, or that God is dwelling in things, or anything like
that, but that God just is equivalent to all of existence. Spinoza thinks that there are 3
ways of apprehending the world: There's intuition, there's reason--which means
philosophy & science--and there's the imagination. Now we can presumably use all of them to understand
God, but imagination is very important here, isn't it? That's right. The 3 kinds of knowledge
are crucial to Spinoza's system. Imagination is the way we know through experience. So anything that has to do with the way we
experience and perceive the world, with our memories, with our anticipations, with our
dreams, all of these kinds of things are what Spinoza calls 'imagination'. And imagination, while it's less adequate
than rational knowledge, as Spinoza puts it, it's a kind of confused and partial and mixed-up
version of true knowledge, nevertheless, it's not entirely false or illusory, we shouldn't
take the word 'imagination' necessarily to mean made up, or anything like that. Imagination is essentially empirical knowledge,
and empirical knowledge is hugely important in building up our true rational knowledge,
which is sort of the next stage up. Now imagination is important with respect
to this question of God and religion, because through the imagination we build up what
Spinoza calls 'fictions'. And fictions, they have quite an interesting status
in Spinoza's epistemology. Fictions are neither true nor false. They're
kind of organized systems of images based on our experiences, based on the
experiences that human beings share. These fictions are hugely useful in structuring
our experience and helping us to decide how to behave and how to live our lives. And religion, and the Biblical notion
of God, fit into this idea of fiction. So religion is a fiction. Does that mean that again, contrary to Dawkins,
it's not among those things that can be said to be either true or false?
That's right. Spinoza thinks that because religion is fictional,
it means that it's not the kind of thing that can be demonstrated to be true or false. It's a useful organizing structure that
helps us to organize our experience. And Spinoza thinks that religion is specifically
useful in helping people to behave better and to be obedient to the law. So this is quite an interesting
factor of Spinoza's thought. He's all in favour of religion, not because he
thinks that religion gives us a true understanding of God, but because religion interprets God
to people in a way that they can easily understand. And Spinoza thinks that that's far preferable
than that people should hold false notions or that they should just be left to their
own devices. He thinks religion is actually quite a useful structure in making people
kind of get along well with one another and, as he puts it, loving their neighbor in
living peacefully and harmoniously. And that's really what fictions are for. Let's just tease out the notion
of fictions a bit more. And let's take an example: Hamlet. Okay, Hamlet is a fiction. However, there are
things I can say about Hamlet which are not true. If I say that Hamlet is a black man who lives
in Venice, I've confused him with Othello. And it is not true that Hamlet is
a black man who lives in Venice. So I can make true or false
statements about a fiction. You can, but the truth and falsity of those
statements are only relative to the fictional world of Hamlet. In a sense, there is no true or false statement
that can be made about Hamlet because Hamlet isn't a true idea. So Spinoza really holds to a very
specific understanding of truth. And true ideas for Spinoza are ideas
that exist in God, that is, in being. So Hamlet for Spinoza really isn't
a true idea, but nor is it false idea. Again, it's a fiction. It's an idea that's
neither true nor false that might be useful for us. So the story of Hamlet and the play of Hamlet
might be useful for our society, or just useful for entertainment or for telling a story. But the whole question of true and false statements
about it, while we might say one could make true and false statements about the events
in the play, they're not ultimately true or false for Spinoza they're just imaginary. So the function of religion then is
that it promotes peace and harmony. It has a social utility? Yes. And it needs to be kept away, theology and faith
need to be set apart from reason and philosophy. Exactly. What Spinoza says is that reason and
philosophy have a different aim from religion. The purpose of reason, philosophy,
and science are to discover the truth. So through our rational thought, we attain
more and more true knowledge or adequate knowledge. And what that means really is that
we tap in to true ideas as they exist in God. It's quite a strange notion, but
Spinoza explains it quite clearly. How we do this is basically through things
like scientific experiments, where we pick up on what's called the common notions, and
these are kind of ideas that are common to ourselves and to the things
that we interact with. So as build up more and more of these common
notions, we attain more and more true knowledge. And we do that through
science, through philosophy, through various other kinds
of human endeavors as well. So the aim of science, philosophy
and reason is to get at the truth. Now the aim of religion is rather different. Spinoza, again, because he thinks that
religion is fictional & he thinks that therefore its status is neither true nor false, and
in a sense truth and falsity just don't really pertain to religion. Religion's job is to interpret the truth about
God to people in a way that they can understand. So its role is to tell stories, to interpret
the truth about the world to people, and therefore its aim is not to tell the truth
or even to discover the truth, its aim is to make people behave better
and to keep people obedient. Now that sounds rather sinister, but actually
Spinoza thinks that's good thing. It's a good thing because most people
are irrational most of the time, he thinks. Most people live according to their imagination. So they're driven by their experiences, by
the feelings that they associate with their experiences, by different chains of association
which differ from person to person. And when people are irrational, they tend
to come into conflict with each other; they tend to desire the same things and they fight
over those things, and people don't get along very easily. So the role of religion is really in controlling
and helping to manage people's feelings and images when they're
in this irrational state. And Spinoza's aim is always for people to
become more rational and to be able to govern themselves through their own
true knowledge about the world. But he's kind of realistic about the prospects
of that happening, and since he doesn't see humanity becoming enormously rational any
time soon, he tends to think that structures like religion are necessary
to keep people in line. On ABC Radio National, you're with The Philosopher's
Zone, and I'm talking to Beth Lord from the University of Dundee about Spinoza's God,
who seems to be an atheist's God. Beth, from what you've just said, it sounds
as though what Spinoza might be hoping is that eventually we'll be able to do without
these fictions, that we will learn to behave rationally, and we can put
the fictional God behind us. Spinoza certainly would hope that we could
do that, that human beings could become more and more and more rational. And when human
beings are more and more and more rational, they understand themselves better and furthermore
they come into communities with other rational human beings and they're able to manage themselves
almost automatically without having to have organizing structures like religion or politics. However, Spinoza is also quite realistic
about whether this might be possible. He doesn't really believe in this kind of
ideal, perfect rational community, or rather he doesn't believe that it
could really come about. And the reason for that is that human beings
are inevitably governed by images and feelings. We can't take ourselves out of the world of
finite objects such that we could somehow become unaffected by the
things that we interact with. It is of the nature to be a finite being,
such as ourselves, that we are constantly interacting with other people,
with other things. We need other things like food and water
and shelter in order to keep ourselves alive, but furthermore we need these human interactions
in order to do the things we do, and in order to keep ourselves going. And when we interact with things,
we are inevitably affected by them. And when we are affected by things, we tend
to be overcome by our feelings, our passions, and those passions really cloud over our rational
knowledge, and make it pretty unlikely that we're ever going to become 100% rational. So the best that Spinoza thinks we can hope
for is that everybody becomes a little bit more rational than they were when they started
life, and he does think that's a realistic prospect. The definition of God which I mentioned
at the beginning of the Ethics, is extremely similar to the definition put forward by
the great medieval Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides. Now Maimonides was also a Rabbi; I assume
that really Spinoza is turning his back on a whole tradition of thinking about God, and
he's turning his back on his contemporaries as well, like Descartes, isn't he? He is. I mean certainly Spinoza was thoroughly familiar
with Maimonides, with Aristotle, with Plato, with Descartes, and with a number of other
thinkers from the classical and medieval traditions. Really he's turning his back on
any theistic conception of God. So I think Maimonides is a kind of crucial
turning point because Maimonides of course is bringing the language of Aristotle
into religious questions. But Maimonides doesn't quite make the move
that Spinoza does to equating God entirely with being, I think. And I presume one thing about Maimonides'
God is that He is the God of the Old Testament, he does rule providentially over the universe
and Spinoza's God presumably doesn't do that. That's right. Spinoza denies that God is a legislator, he
denies that God is interested in human affairs, he denies that God is interested
in intervening in human affairs. So Spinoza is really critical of the anthropomorphic
notion of a God who kind of sits up there in Heaven and judges human
actions and human behavior. For Spinoza's God doesn't do any of those
things, of course, because God is being. God doesn't make judgments about good
and evil or about rewarding good behavior or punishing bad behavior
or anything like that. So it's really a very radical shift in the
notion of what God is and what God does. God just is nature, and God's being just
goes on and on indefinitely, infinitely in fact. And God is really indifferent, Spinoza's God
is really indifferent to human suffering and human actions. So, where does divine love, which, as I
mentioned, is discussed at the end of the Ethics --where does divine love come into it? This is a really interesting question because
for many readers of Spinoza when you get to the end of the Ethics and Spinoza starts talking
about eternal being and divine love, it's very strange; it almost seems that Spinoza
is reverting to a kind of theological model of thinking about the relationship to God. This is perhaps best explained through Spinoza's
notion of 'blessedness'. And essentially he believes that as we become more and more rational,
in other words, we gain more and more true knowledge, we kind of come to
understand God more and more. Because God is equivalent to being or nature,
as we come to understand nature more and more, that obviously means we're coming
to understand God more and more. And understanding God more and more, Spinoza
explains, also makes us more and more virtuous. And this is quite an interesting argument
because virtue for Spinoza is equivalent to power. He draws on the Latin term 'virtus' which means
'power'. And so, as we know more and more, we become more and more rational, we also
become better at being human beings. We understand ourselves, we understand what's
good for us and how to act, and how to become stronger and better at being what we are. And so as we become more rational, more virtuous,
we're sort of climbing up the ladder to greater virtue and knowledge, Spinoza says
we also become more blessed. And what he really seems to mean by that is
that we kind of regain more and more of our essence as it exists in God. So human beings, along with all other finite
beings, have an essence which exists in God; in being, that it to say for Spinoza. And as we regain more and more of our true
essence, what we truly are, it's almost as if we come back to our true
nature which is to be in God. And that sort of how Spinoza understands
blessedness and the notion of the love of God. It's kind of an affirmation of our being
as being part of nature. And the importance of religion, which you've
already alluded to, it's not just bringing order to daily life, it actually plays a role in the
formation and the perpetuation of political states. It does. One of the interesting aspects of the theological
political treatise--this is the text that Spinoza wrote, well that he published in 1670
and which was promptly banned and censored all across Europe and was
censored for hundreds of years. One of the interesting factors of this text
is the way in which Spinoza brings religion and politics together. So he offers an extensive analysis of the
Bible. And he argues that in the Bible and particularly with respect to the Mosaic Law,
the laws that Moses got supposedly directly from God were actually laws about
how to govern the State of the Israelites. And Spinoza's pretty clear throughout that
politics holds a very similar role to religion. Political systems, systems of civic laws, are
fictions in the same way that religion is a fiction. If people were perfectly rational, people
would be able to govern themselves without recourse to laws because everyone would behave
according to their true nature, their true essence, and there wouldn't be any conflict or any problems. But of course, people aren't fully rational
and therefore people need governance, and they need to be punished when they do
the wrong thing and they need to be praised when they do the right thing. And therefore, government systems of law
work hand-in-hand with religion to keep people in check. Well keep people in check, yes. You said
earlier that this could potentially sound slightly sinister and I wonder, it's as though you,
I and Spinoza can talk about atheism but not in front of 'the help' in case they get uppity. That's a bit worrying, isn't it? Spinoza certainly thinks that there is potential
for these fictions, whether they be political or religious fictions, to be
used in negative ways. For instance, if you had a leader of a group
of people who was himself or herself not very rational and very dependent on their own emotions
and passions and images, that person would likely not be a very good leader. They would probably rule tyrannically and
they would make use of fictions and affects in order to rule people through fear.
And Spinoza's pretty clear that that's a bad form of governance. And of course religion can also effect
fear and loathing among people as well. Again, as people become more and more rational,
more and more rational forms of governance and civil state and religion come about. So Spinoza's clear that a democratic civil
state is the best kind of political state, and the most rational kind of political state,
the one which most allows people most freedom and tolerance among each other. In the 18th century the German writer and
philosopher, Novalis, referred to Spinoza as "ein Gott betrunkene mensch",
a God-intoxicated man. Do you think that despite his notion that
God is a fiction, this is an accurate description of Spinoza?
I do in a sense. It's clear if you read the Ethics that the
notion of God as Nature is absolutely central to Spinoza's system. And as I was saying earlier, it is important
that Nature is called 'God' for Spinoza, because Spinoza thinks that this is what God is. At the same time, I don't think it's essential
that we use the term 'God' when we're talking about Spinoza's God. I often say to my students that, you know,
if you don't like the word 'God', it's perfectly acceptable to use the word 'being' or to use
the word 'energy' to refer to Spinoza's God or indeed to use the word 'nature'
as he sometimes does. So while I think Spinoza had good reason
for using the word 'God' and while I think he believed that this is what God is, that God
is being, nevertheless I think he thinks the word 'God' is really just a word, and we
don't necessarily have to use that word. Well, for more on Spinoza or to share your
thoughts on him, or for that matter, God or Nature, with us and your fellow
listeners, check our our website. Beth Lord, thank you very
much for joining us today. Thank you. Beth Lord teaches philosophy
at the University of Dundee. And she's the Director of the Spinoza Research
Network, which itself has an extensive web page devoted to all things Spinozistic.
Links to that too on our website. The show is produced by Kyla Slaven, Charlie
McCune is the sound engineer, I'm Alan Saunders.
