Continental Rationalism: The Philosophy of Baruch Spinoza by Leonard Peikoff

alright ladies and gentlemen let us begin our subject this evening is three followers of Descartes who formed the bridge between the rationalism of Descartes in the 17th century and the subjectivism and skepticism of Berkeley and Hume respectively in the 18th century the three men that we are going to cover this evening are two continental rationalist namely Spinoza and Leibniz and one British empiricist John Locke will consider Locke after the break in terms of his actual influence on later philosophers and on later cultural developments Locke is definitely the most important of the three we'll be discussing this evening I am however giving him comparatively less time than the other two tonight only because his ideas are largely unoriginal in metaphysics epistemology and ethics and in politics where he shines his politics is very simple to understand and therefore the presentation of law takes comparatively less time than of Spinoza and Leibniz now turning to Spinoza and Leibniz your understanding of the history of philosophy requires that you have a knowledge of perspective of who is and who isn't crucially important so I want to say at the outset that Spinoza and Leibniz are not major turning points or profoundly influential philosophers they exerted some but comparatively little influence on subsequent philosophers and virtually no direct influence on the man in the street nobody or if there is such is very very hard to find virtually nobody is a spinet sister alive knits in the way people are obscene or Cartesian or platonic or ours to tell you in a way these two are the least influential of the major world famous first rank philosophers now I include them in the course partly because they are world famous and therefore you are naturally curious I assume partly because they do have one major function in the history of philosophy they for petrol eight and transmit Cartesian rationalism they developed the philosophy of Descartes to its ultimate consistent consequences and in so doing they produce such bizarre philosophic systems that it occurred to philosophers watching the spectacle that something major was wrong with Descartes in other words with the general rationalist approach to philosophy and the ground was thereby prepared for a school emphasizing that knowledge begins with sense perception in other words for the empiricist school you will see that the systems of Spinoza and Leibniz are ingenious complicated deductive systems they are in effect dream-worlds of thought intellectual castles in the air' unrelated to the world to life as we actually experience a day by day and they're very remoteness from this world produced the empiricist reaction to them now I should add that certain individual points of these philosophers definitely did influence later philosophers Spinoza for instance had a vogue in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th century and is one of the formative factors on Hegel and live Nets formulated certain concepts which were utilized by fraud and in other ways he definitely helped to influence human and current so you mustn't think that these people are only curiosity pieces about they're certainly not the equivalent in influence of the major ones we've been stressing now I will therefore stand up sighs only the key points and conclusions necessary for our purposes and not attempt anything like a detailed exposition or presentation even of their basic arguments you will get this evening a kind of hit and run Spinoza and Leibniz let us turn to Spinoza 1632 to sixteen seventy seven so he was about 18 when Descartes died now the notes as sources are in part medieval Jewish philosophy he was himself a Jewish philosopher and very much influenced by medieval Jewish philosophy he was taught a great deal of scholasticism and was thoroughly familiar with the Scholastic tradition and he was familiar with the developments of modern science one of the primary goals of his philosophy was to reconcile his religious heritage with the developments of modern science he will see in him a peculiar blend of religious mysticism and logical modern science you remember the Descartes also had attempted to escape the materialist conclusions of Hobbes by finding a place for what he regarded as the religious conclusions in the world of science and Descartes had done it by dividing the world up into two substances mine belongs to religion and matter belongs to science well but no it's also is interested in finding a place for religious worship in a universe properly studied by the physicists he wants to save both but his solution is rather different from Descartes turning to his epistemology briefly Spinoza as I said was a rationalist he is the second famous continental rationalist accordingly he believes that the proper method of acquiring knowledge is the mathematical method or in particular the geometrical method that is to say we must matter philosophy on geometry it must start with basic axioms staff evident axioms which are clear and distinct if you remember that expression of Descartes which our grasped intuitively in Descartes sense that is simply self-evident we do not require proof and there are then the foundation for everything else all subsequent knowledge will be acquired by deduction from the clear and distinct starting points this was of course des cartes program but Descartes if you recall had not been very rigorous about it he had proceeded along the path of his deductions and every time he was stuck he had a new intuition of a clear and distinct idea to help him along in the path and smooth the transition onto the next series now as the notes however is much more rigorous about applying Descartes Smith he wants to apply the method literally and make philosophy exactly like geometry you're not allowed to have subsidiary intuitions along the way you must have said specify all your axioms and definitions at the very outset every one and once these are laid down every step must be deductively proved rigorously we must really emulate geometry and of course the title of Spinoza's famous work is Ithaca ordinary geometrical demonstrator ethics demonstrated in geometric fashion and it is exactly in structure like a geometry text it starts with numbered axioms and definitions and it deduces the theorems each one numbered there's about oh I think something like 250 altogether and it's common in discussing Spinoza to say proposition 78 book 1 etc now since Spinoza is a continental rationalist you can guess what his attitude to sense perception is he takes the Cartesian view sense perception is inadequate confused basically an invalid form of knowledge he subscribes with Descartes with hobbes with galileo to the distinction that law christened the primary secondary quality distinction remember the view that matter is really only extension three dimensionality spread out this in space and that therefore the way matter looks to us with sound and color and taste and so on is really deception by the senses as the notes we cannot distinguish what really Kayne's two things in reality and what is just the subjective secondary effects on us sensory knowledge is therefore confused in an adequate it won't tell us what really exists the senses of course are helpful for practical purposes they may even be helpful as a suggestive stimulus to make us think of ideas that we subsequently validate by deductive means but we can know nothing about reality only on the evidence of the senses the true method of knowledge is to focus on our clear and distinct ideas and then deduce the consequences this is of course typical Cartesian rationalism and as well see Spinoza assumes as self-evident as clear and distinct a great many scholastic platonic ideas just as Descartes did all right let us turn to Spinoza's metaphysics what is the nature of the universe well where does the notes the start you remember Descartes had begun with the cogito with the self and had then gone on to prove the existence of God and finally the physical world Spinoza has a different starting point in essence is philosophy starts with the proof of the existence of God and his basic proof is a version of st. Anselm's ontological argument I count on your remembering that because I'm not going to repeat it now to synopsize Spinoza's argument amounts to this I have he says the concept the idea of an absolutely independent self-contained infinite being well now let us just reason from this idea if such a being exists it can't be because some outside entity brought it into existence because if so the being would be a product of outside factors it wouldn't be completely self-contained completely independent in other words it must be such if it exists at all that it's very nature requires it to exist its essence as he puts it implies existence but if a thing is such that its essence implies its existence that means from the very concept of such a thing you can conclude that it must exist therefore it does you got that you see this is in effect an sounds argument only instead of talking about the concept of the most perfect being and concluding from its definition that it must exist spin also somewhat changes the initial definition Amyas argument is open to all the objections that an Psalms is but it's all simply hypothetical and it only proves if there is you being answering to your definition then there is one we knew that in advance the question is is there one in any event we pass on this absolutely independent entity onset is infinite and spinosa takes this seriously what does it mean to be infinite well of course it means not to be limited now if you contrast this this entity with a human being the human being is limited or finite in two ways it has only two attributes for instance mind and matter or body and each of those attributes is finite in amount it has a finite mind and a finite body in saying that God is infinite Espinosa we say that he is excuse me I should use the word God yet Spinoza calls this being God so now I can use the word God this infinite independent self-contained be since God has infinite attributes since God is infinite he has infinite attributes that is an infinite number of different attributes and each of them is infinite in extent in quantity so he is not limited in either of the ways that we are now this is a perfectly typical position the idea that God is infinite the point is the notes that takes it seriously which few philosophers prior to him some but few did he argues as follows if God is infinite if he possesses infinite attributes each of which is infinite in extent how can there be room for anything else to exist besides or in addition to God God is being who has every imaginable and unimaginable attribute an infinite number and an infinite quantity of each he must then be everything there is know how to do is left for anything else to have so we can only conclude that God is the only thing which exists the perfectly logical deduction from the premise while you ask what about the world what about the physical nature what about reality well the answer the word is God is the world God or nature or reality are just different names for the same one independent infinite entity this view of course is called pantheism the view that God is other than identical with the totality of the world God is everything and everything is God and we have seen this view in Stoics it's a theory which goes back to ancient Greece now you may ask when Spinoza says the God and the universe or nature are only two different names for the one same totality isn't this merely semantics and the answer is yes and no but mostly no it's not semantics because he conceives the universe in such a way that it has very very religious attributes as you'll see so there is a real legitimate usage of the term God as applied to the universe Espinosa conceives however in one sense Spinoza is an atheist in one sense if you conceive God in the traditional judeo-christian fashion as a supernatural being beyond the world of nature with a personality a will a plan etc looking down at the spectacle from his own dimension and having his own purposes interfering with the course of nature and performing miracles etc if that's your idea of God then Spinoza is an avowed atheist he says God is nature it's not a ghostly father controlling nature from beyond and by the way this position subjected spur notes it to the first fiercest vilest form of attacks from the people his contemporaries he is the only really world-famous Jewish philosopher in all of that and the Jews formally excommunicated him for being this horrendous atheist he denies that God created the world out of nothing he believes the universe is eternal he denies that God has a personality that he's a loving or providential father you cannot pray to Spinoza's God any more than you can pray to the total of reality he has no plan and Spinoza is a real polemicist against miracles against the argument from design you know only God can make a tree that Reader's Digest type of argument now I have no time to quote Spinoza here but I do want to at least mention that he makes many very very good remarks criticizing the traditional religious view there is a definite rational scientific side to Spinoza which is very admirable as far as it goes and very uncharacteristic of the 17th century so bear that in mind but let us proceed with Spinoza system well the first thing to recognize is that if everything which exists is in God or as a part of God then it can obviously only be understood by seeing its relation to God now this is a typically religious attitude in a non pantheistic philosophy everything depends on God and can be understood only as caused or produced by God in some way the question is what does this mean if you're a pain theist it can't be that God has a plan and by an act of will produces everything because God is everything not an outsider imposing his will well at this point but notes that takes a turn determined by his rationalism the university believes with Descartes is a logical universe after all that's why we can study a geometrically with axioms leading to theorems reality is a logically related integrated totality where everything happens as it does as an inevitable logical consequence of previous events and the nature of the whole so religion said everything comes from God rationalism said everything happens geometrically in other words biological necessity from basic principles spinosa puts the two together and says everything comes from God geometrically or logically in other words he puts together religion and geometry in a pantheistic form and the upshot is therefore his view that reality or God and you can always use those two as synonyms for Spinoza reality or God has a certain basic nature and from that basic nature every single aspect of reality follows inexorably with the same logic as theorems in geometry follow from axioms now you know for instance that if I give you the definition of a triangle and the appropriate actions I can deduce the absolute necessity of the angle sum of that triangle being 180 degrees and we're here talking about Euclidian triangle any alternative would be logically impossible it would be a contradiction and therefore be forbidden by the laws of logic well that's the model to keep in mind to understand Spinoza's view of the universe everything that exists everything that happens for him is related to the basic nature of reality in the way that the angle sum of a triangle is related to the nature of a triangle and if therefore you clearly grasp what is the nature of reality you will see that everything that's Wallis aspect and the broadest principle is logically inevitable and any alternative would be illogical self-contradiction would be forbidden by the very laws of logic themselves when then we say that God is the cause of the world we really mean that God or reality has a certain basic nature and that everything follows logically from this nature God causes the world in the same sense exactly the geometric axioms caused their theorems in other words he logically implies them and anything else would be a self-contradiction now if you drop the religious references you're probably making you uncomfortable forget the word God for a moment 1 Spinoza is saying is that we live in a rational logical world ineffective it's governed by an ironclad law of cause and effect and that the LAV cause and effect itself is guaranteed by the laws of logic and he is of course correct in this view he has been attacked endlessly by people following David Hume for believing that the universe is logical when huemul edge idli proved that it wasn't so I want to emphasize that stripped of its religious aspects the correspond Oates his view on this one point is certainly correct however Spinoza draws from it a conclusion of Objectivism certainly would not namely he believes that if you believe in an ironclad logical universe where everything happens according to the law of causality in accordance of the laws of logic you must then be a determinist and he is accordingly a determinist he says man is also part of reality he is also a logically inevitable consequence of the total nature of reality and every aspect of him his thoughts his emotions his actions are as absolutely logically necessitated as the angle sum of a triangle if man did anything differently even the tiniest thing different from the way he actually did that would violate the very laws of logic themselves it would require a contradiction to their first but now it says sometimes referred to as a logical determinist meaning by that determinism via the laws of logic itself we cannot suspend I would say even imagine in fantasy an alternative to any human action thought or emotion which has ever occurred any more than you can imagine a round square because the alternative to anything which happens would be a contradiction we do this but not to have a sense of freedom but this is an illusion this is caused by the fact that we do not understand the causes operating if a Stoney says somewhere we're rolling downhill in complete blind obedience of the law of gravity and if it were conscious it would probably think to itself how free I am going down the hill but the fact is the stone is a pawn completely moved by factors outside of its control and it's illusion of freedom is an illusion caused by ignorance it looks to the future and doesn't realize the past factors which are necessitating its behavior well soul for man in this respect Spinoza is perhaps the most rigid determinist in the whole history of philosophy and you see he derives it simply from the law of cause and effect from the idea that the universe is rigidly logical and therefore the problem he poses is how do you reconcile freewill with the laws of causality and logic now since I've covered that elsewhere I will not go into it here but if you do not have the answer to that question now is the time to be sure you have it otherwise you will be trapped in the spin artistic determinism I'll let us proceed with Spinoza we said that God is the world well let's now ask what kind of world is it or put the same question another way what kind of being is God well first but notes that there's only one independent entity which is the universe which following the terminology of Descartes he calls a substance remember des cartes definition of substance is a thing which is independent of everything else there's only one such substance according to Spinoza namely the universe as a whole or God well yet that is the status of mind and matter Descartes thought these were each substances so he is classified as a duelist but of course for Spinoza mind and matter cannot be substances only the totality is a substance and therefore what else can they be but mind and matter must be properties or attributes of something well of not obviously of the only thing which exists namely God therefore mind and matter must be two attributes or properties belonging to and expressing God's nature they must be two attributes of the one reality namely God now we have a problem an attribute in this terminology is supposed to express the basic nature of a substance it's supposed to tell you what essentially a substance is and on the face of it on the face of it now whenever I say that you should know that I'm about to contradict you but on the face of it mind and matter are radically different things consider for instance an actual physical earthquake and a mental phenomenon which corresponds to it your thought of that earthquake now these we could list radically different characteristics message your thought of the earthquake doesn't make any noise the earthquake does your thought of the earthquake doesn't destroy human lives the earthquake does your thought of the earthquake is at no particular point in space and doesn't register on the Richter scale so on the earthquake does and so on now mind and matter in other words seem to be radically different how can one single entity namely God be at the same time essentially mind and essentially matter how can two such different properties both Express what God essentially is how do we understand it well of course if you're not a rationalist you will say I better start over again and check my basic premises by observation and see how I got into this snow but if you are a rationalist you will procede headlong with your chain of deductions because you've got your clear and distinct axioms and you must be right out to here so you just take the bull by the horns and go on from there now in principle you've got two choices if you come this far with me you can either say well one of those two isn't really real mine and I are both real one of them is really an illusion and appearance and that would solve the problem because they could say god Francis is really only mind and we don't have to explain how he can also be really matter cuz we say matter is an illusion if you regard that as a solution that's one possibility the other possibility is to take a bold leap and the bold leap is the leap that Spinoza toe namely these two properties are not really different they are ultimately the same mind and matter are simply two different ways of expressing the same thing in other words either you get rid of one of them and say it's just an illusion or you say there's no problem because the two aren't really different Leibniz took the first alternative and of course you can guess which one he got rid of as unreal namely matter under the influence of Descartes prior certainty of consciousness spinosa took the other side now what does it mean to say mind and matter are the same ultimately two different expressions of God well here I must resort to an analogy consider two different languages French and English now this is just an analogy but it's Apfel analogy and suppose that the standing for God in this analogy is a discussion a discussion now our discussion can be in French or the same discussion could be in English now suppose for instance at the same discussion were taking place in two different rooms the exactly same discussion there was a point for port correspondence every time a question was asked in French the same question was asked in English when the answer was given in French in the next room the answer was given in English these are two self-contained little discussions well it would be the same one discussion manifesting itself in two different forms now notice that French and English in this analogy don't divide the discussion between themselves it's not as though half the discussion is French and half as English although that's in French and in the same room simultaneously all of its in English well that's the pattern on which you have to understand the notes this theory of the relation of mind and matter there are two different expressions of the one same reality two different forms in which God's nature manifests itself each expresses completely what God essentially is just as each of those two languages expresses the discussion completely in the analogy and each expresses the same underlying reality just as it's only the one discussion it's just that God happens to express or manifest itself in two different forms so it's not that reality is partly matter and partly mind as Descartes said no mind and matter don't divide reality the whole of reality or the whole of God is completely expressed by mind the mind series of events the mind language if you want to look at it that and the whole of reality is completely expressed by matter the body or matter language if you want to look at that at it this way and therefore mind and matter are ultimately the same they are in effect two different expressions of one identical reality now if you're with me so far it follows that there must be a point for point correspondence between the mental and the physical since each expresses the same reality and does so in a rigidly logical inevitable fashion the two must parallel each other just as in the analogy of the D to discuss the two languages we can translate back and forth for every sentence in the one discussion there'll be an exact counterpart in the other because each expresses the same discussion in the same order and so there's a point for point correspondence for every French word there's an English equivalent well so with mind and body we can for spinosa translate back and forth there are two series of events the mental series and the physical series this viewpoint is known as the metaphysics of psychophysical parallelism psychophysical parallelism that means simply mind body parallelism it's the view that there is an exact point for point parallelism between mental and physical events and that the reason there is such a parallelism is that ultimately the two sets of events are really the same one phenomena or same one entity now before we go any further I'd better add there remember there's an infinite number of attributes not just mind admired God is infinite now you might ask me what about the other infinity minus two and I'll simply say this promotes us as these happen to be unknowable to the human mind so you have to think in the analogy that the same discussion is going on in an infinite number of languages from eternity to eternity but we're already tuned into two of these languages so to speak but we all live in countless other worlds beyond the mental and the physical that happened to be unknowable to us well we can leave the unknowable ones and come back to just the two we know the mental physical now you might ask what would possess anybody to take a view like this there are several reasons I'll mention one it avoids the problem of interaction now you remember the problem the Descartes bequeathed mind and matter are so radically different Descartes said one is in space and moves only on physical contact by mechanical law the other is exclusively a conscious thinking entity does not occupy space how can the two of them possibly influence each other well Descartes had said it's a miracle god is great God is marvelous and somehow incomprehensibly he allows them to influence each other Spinoza is much more rigorous and consistent he won't permit that kind of miracle he says the solution is there is no interaction mind cannot act on matter matter cannot act on mine there was no mutual influence at all each of these two attributes is a completely self-contained closed system events in the mental world are caused only by preceding mental events events in the material world are caused only by preceding physical events just as in the analogy French doesn't cause English the English doesn't cause French there two self-contained little dimensions which run parallel to each other now where would anybody get the idea that there's interaction he mixes up his series suppose for instance you hear a question in English and then you'll rush to the French room when you hear the answer in French you might think if you're confused enough you say that the French question interacted with the English and produce the answer well that's obviously your confusion so sister notes I can account for the appearance of interaction while denying the actual existence of of coracii sets whenever you have an act of will for instance to move your arm they arm will move and that's you see the apparent example of mind influencing matter of course whenever I stick a pin in you which is a physical event you'll experience a little thrill of pain which is a mental event but that doesn't mean there's any causal interaction in either direction each series goes its own way the reason that the act of will in the bodily movement or the sticking of the pin and the thrill of pain seemed to be causally related is because they are actually the same one event manifesting itself in two different languages expressing the same one reality we just get our languages confused you see and therefore of course there will be parallelism between the two now you see force from spinosus point of view there are great advantages in this scheme we have saved a mechanistic material physical world of science entirely untouched by mind and so mine can't influence matter and the scientists are presumably happy they now have their preserve of a strict mechanical world to study and no mind is going to interfere with the laws of mechanics on the other hand we haven't done it at the price of falling into Hobbes's trapped of denying mind and thought and purpose and so on we have saved a world of thought and purpose independent of matter that's the mind series and we did it although this is basically a Cartesian Division we have done it in a way without being unintelligible like Descartes was because we can account for the appearance of interaction while denying the fact now I think you can see that while this is a fantastic viewpoint it is not because Spinoza is inconsistent on the contrary it is because he is so consistent Spinoza is a much superior philosopher to Descartes granted the basic premises Spinoza carries them out to the bitter a Descartes gets scared and has a new intuition and turns his self on to the next direction and of course Descartes was not the man to come in conflict with the church now you may ask how does psychophysical doesn't apply to rocks and rivers and inanimate things now this is the debated point in spin artistic interpretation I simply say that spinosus seems to say that everything is to some degree animate alive or even conscious in a way and that the correlate of every physical fact is some kind of mental state but this is a highly debated point and we don't have to pursue it here well now we have another problem if these are to mind and matter are two expressions of the same one reality what is this reality in itself apart from its expressions now it can't be mine because mind is just an expression of them and it can't be matter because matter is just an expression now you see this is where my analogy to the discussion breaks down because the discussion is there is a reality there apart from the French or English that is being spoken namely people having thoughts and so it's possible to talk about two manifestations but here what are the manifestations manifestations of this apparently nothing for a reality in itself to be because remember all attributes are simply expressions of it an infinite number now apparently and again this is debated point but apparently Spinoza believed that God therefore or reality in itself apart from its manifestations was actually nothing and all the manifestations were therefore really manifestations of a cosmic metaphysical zero now to try to make this intelligible you must remember the school of negative theology which we discussed remember the idea that God I've discussed that some weeks ago that God can't be limited you can't give him any attributes or qualities because if you give him any ID entity that he's a versus non and that's impious and irreligious and it was common in the negative theology tradition to say if you want to say what God is you have to deny any characteristics to him in other words you have to say he is really nothing nice but no it's a really I think although this is debatable really belongs to the school of negative theology and you see the mysticism involved here at the core of the spinet Cystic universe is there's a mystical indeterminate uncharacterized able entity lacking identity which manifests itself at all these attributes as one commentator puts it in a pregnant ly bizarre statement God is everything and therefore nothing if you follow them now there are people who say that's not fair to Spinoza God is just a name for him for the various theories for the mind series in the body series and he's not anything underneath them that's all but it seems unlikely that this is his view because the attributes are supposed to parallel each other because there are two expressions of the same one reality which raises the question expressions of what well some people say expressions of each other but is each other is an expression you have expressions of expressions of what sorry seems that you're driven back to nothing we can leave that point though the situation is actually still worse than this because we've talked up to now of mind and matter in general as being identical attributes now what about particular specific individual Minds and particular specific individual material things are the tables and chairs or your individual mind and my individual mind fair on spinosus metaphysics well here you should be able to force it he is a pantheist God is the whole the single integrated substance well what is going to happen then to the reality or individuality of what we call particular things Spinoza's answer is going to be particular things are just separated aspects of the whole individuality is not really real neither mentally nor physically really there are no autonomous independent entities at all there is only the one cosmic substance now consider for instance matter we know its essence is extension three dimensionality spread out now strip ass all secondary qualities format no color so it's invisible no texture you can't touch it no sound it makes no noise it set you now ask yourself this pure extension how does it differ from space ordinary empty space so there is no difference between matter as it really is in space and I mean this is plausible when you strip off all the secondary qualities when you have only extension left well space is supposed to be extended he did not by the way originate this conclusion Descartes also equated matter true matter with simply space well if so you can't break space up into separate real hopes any divisions you make in space is only a fragmented human way of looking at all it really exists is the indivisible infinite slab of space a piece of space if I tell you focus on this little piece over here that's simply an abstraction obviously it's not a separate real entity and that is pronounces view therefore since you equate space with matter of physical entities so when he talks of matter he doesn't mean bodies you could weigh and measure and dissect and sit on kick around that all is the world of appearance the material world in the material world individual entities merely are appearance now what about individual minds are they real no individuality is unreal in mind just as it isn't matter now of course if you introspect you feel that there is a you which is distant which is definitely you and absolutely different from everybody else's mind but if you reach the level of fat that just is the crude confused level of sense perception but if you reach the level of abstract thoughts Espinosa you'll well come to realize that that isn't true think about it now remember now I'm counting on the idea that mind and matter are identical ultimate which means therefore that your fat of an object is really ultimately identical with the object when you think of an earthquake or we talk about the actual physical earthquake the fat in the object the earthquake are really two different expressions of the same thing they're really identical well now think about your mind is all of your ideas in other words everything you think about and namah is all of my ideas everything I think about but we both think about the same thing namely the universe and therefore my mind is the same as your line you get that this is a triumph of geometric deduction over reality I lost but I also wouldn't put it that and other where it says promote so we can conclude that in the deepest sense each of us intellectually psychologically mentally is all of the others in a word there's parallelism between the two spheres and there must always be an exact correspondence if individuality is unreal and matter it must be unreal in mind also and really therefore there is only an infinite slab of space and an infinite divine mind or system of ideas our own sense of personal identity therefore our own personality our own sense of uniqueness is a confusion it's the way things appear to us but an actual reality also called separate bodies are many more aspects of one's lab of space and also called lines are merely modes or aspects of one cosmic infinite mind or a system of ideas and if you add to that that mind is matter ultimately identical so that space and the infinite mind are really the same thing we will come to the final conclusion that everything is ultimately one ultimately identical to everything else in other words that distinctions are really unreal now you see I think the very platonic character of this viewpoint even Neoplatonic character and here is the real influence of Plato again on the one hand there's a true reality which consists of a cosmic system of ideas and a slab of space that's pure plain as against a world of appearances which is not true reality there is reason the faculty which knows true reality versus the senses the faculty which knows the world of appearances and there's even the Platonic idea that individuality and distinctions are not ultimately real remember platanus is view that everything is ultimately the one so you see that all of this platonic mysticism comes out again in Spinoza and that shouldn't surprise you because this world is always metaphysically degraded by rationals after they get finished with their deductions this world always ends up as an appearance a reflection or something of a lesser States true reality is always some superior realm and this is the essential illustration of the connection between rationalism as that term is used for the Safa key and religion and it's inherent in the very rationalist approach because if the senses are no good then the world must be basically different from the way it appears if a rationalist came out at the end of his chain of deductions with the world that was identical to the world given us by the senses he would be in a ridiculous position why be a rationalist to begin with it and therefore you always end up with a superior reality and almost nine times out of ten you end up with Plato's now there's a final problem I want to mention in dealing with Spinoza that is an epistemological problem I'm jumping over dozens of points just to give you one more let us grant him the best let us grant him that his axioms really are clear and distinct and unanswered and that he has deduced all of their consequences unanswerably as a perfectly consistent unobjectionable system we must now observe however that all of his axioms and theorems are general propositions universal propositions you don't have a clear distinct insight that some particular triangle imagine there was a blackboard before you with a whole bunch of particular triangles inscribed up you do not have a clear and distinct insight innately that some particular triangle is three feet away from another one and it has to be by the definition of triangle nothing in the definition of triangle will tell you that you don't have a clear and distinct insight that there are ten triangles on that board drawing one in white chalk and that that must be so by the nature of reality the most you could have would be some general proposition of the order triangularity has certain properties and no one on they say in philosophy has ever claimed innate knowledge of particular things because of knowledge of particular things - obviously depends upon experience from Plato on the knowledge which comes above experience as always explained as universal knowledge you know for instance a is a perhaps but you don't know that a is a puppy dog you know two and two is four you don't know those two students are to the left of those two students you know mine is rational but you don't know that man is marvelous in geometry you see well where are we then at the end of all of our deductive reasoning we have only knowledge of general universal truths well how do we ever get knowledge a particular individual specific concrete actually existing entities and events how do we get to see the necessity of particular events in Spinoza has told us that everything is logically necessary and then as a rationalist he would explain everything now if I jump ahead a while I'll simply tell you an anecdote in regard to Hegel who took the same view us but note so that everything is logically deducible by rationalistic fashion and he was confronted one day by an obscure gentleman known as hare Krug KR ug held up his prosaic pen and said to Hegel all right you claim to be able to deduce the entire universe including everything which is in it by rationalistic deduction here's my pen my particular real concrete paint go ahead and deduce it from your categories or principles or whatever it is you started with I'm waiting for you to show how my pin follows now according to the story that has come down to us Hegel answered in effect I'm a philosopher and I can't be bothered with pens in other words he used his fame and prestige to crush poor hair crew and you see what conceivably let's grant him the most he could may be deduced the theorem I don't know pen this implies ink enos some general principle but why there must be this particular pen here and now he couldn't do it and you see why he couldn't derive existence concrete real actual existence from concepts in consciousness and that was of course the problem Descartes bequeathed and here it's breaking out again how do you get from concepts and consciousness to the actual facts of existence which means force but note so how can we ever know the necessity of particular things in the world if we are locked in consciousness studying universal principles and concepts now Spinoza answered this question in his own way he said there is actually a third kind of knowledge which is the highest kind of knowledge first and the lowest kind is sensational sense perception that is the confused knowledge that's the law that simply tells you that particular things exist but doesn't tell you what the next level is rational knowledge that involves the grasping of clear and distinct general principles and the deduction from in other words de cartes approach and that's fine says per note so that gives you to knowledge but only general knowledge and then finally we get to something which he called ski antia into a diva which is essentially intuitive knowledge but that's a different use of intuition from day cards now this is to make a long story short a mystical vision in which we grasp in an ineffable insight how every actual concrete particular thing necessarily comes from God when you have this vision you see how hair Krug's pen had to be by the nature of the whole totality but it is an ineffable in effect mystic trance you see that from this and many other signs I've indicated Spinoza as a pantheism is not simply a matter of semantics and you see that the most consistent rationalist usually end in a mystic vision of some kind Plato ended with his vision of the form of the good Platini ascended with his ecstasy and the explanation of it is very simple since they don't derive their concepts from percepts they can't derive percent from their concepts and consequently they are left with only a mystical recourse now we can make a prediction de rationalist and person of Spinoza declare that reality is logical and then they construe reality as a super realm from which they cannot deduce the actual facts of this world now if you are familiar with the extent to which false alternatives exist in philosophy you shouldn't be surprised to find that their archenemies the empiricists will say watching the failure of the rationalist to deduce the actual concretes of this world this proves that reality is illogical at least things don't happen for logical reasons they just happen they're brute unintelligible quote contingent fast and of course that viewpoint is all over the place today if today you should ever say to a professional philosopher you believe that reality is logical if you should ever say God help you the real is rational that being a phrase immortalized by Hegel you are done for because I have known a professor who did this very date in spite of all I'm not just one in spite of all my arguments with him insist that I am a follower of Hegel on some news he thinks of Spinoza because I hold that reality is rational and if you're all the reality is rational you must be a rationalist who believes that everything is deducible rationalistic aliy and so on now of course the answer is reality is governed by logic but only a proper epistemology will enable you to discover its laws not a rationalistic one but you simply can't communicate that to certain mentalities now we must leave Spinoza now I simply want to say that he has a very famous ethical theory it hasn't been particularly influential compared to other theories but it's certainly famous and so I would like to have said a few words about it and if you ask me the question period about Spinoza's ethics I will utilize five minutes or so to give you the highlights at any event we can say for Spinoza in leaving him that his system is certainly ingenious it's thoroughly worked out in deductive fashion and if you consider it as an integration of the most diverse elements in the original even if often baldly contradictory and in any event I've really given you only less than the taste of it that's all that we have time for how does but not to show that his basic axioms are true he can't deduce them from anything more primary well in a way he would simply say sure that's why you have to start with clear and distinct self evidences which are neither sensory nor deductive they're simply clear and distinct but in a deeper way Spinoza would say a point that I left out of the lecture an appointment was very influential on Hegel all ideas are - even the idea that you consider to be the falsest are really substantially true and here he defends this viewpoint by reference to his psychophysical parallelism - every mental phenomenon there is a physical correlate to every thought there must therefore being a corresponding object and if truth means the correspondence of a thought to an object every thought must have its truth well what do we call error error is simply a thought that gets attached to the wrong object that's all it's like a misplaced truth so for instance if you have a hallucination of a pink rat we say you're wrong but that doesn't mean there is no physical object associated with the program it's just that you got mixed up as to what the physical coral it is the actual physical physical object is not an actual pink rat but a pint of alcohol in your blood let us say you get the idea so in this sense there is no false ideas all ideas are guaranteed to be true by virtue of the fact that all ideas express inevitably the development of God now of course that doesn't mean that on a lower level there aren't so superficially false ideas but notes that would say for instance Descartes is wrong on certain points that he's right but that's on a lower level so to speak on the deeper level all ideas are - and therefore spurn ancestor now this particular theory was developed by Hegel what was called the coherence theory of truth but all ideas have a degree of truth and there's no such thing as a completely false idea but it's it's a hinted at in Spinoza and that's one of the reasons that Spinoza is said to have an influence on Hey was announced an advocate or champion of individual freedom even though he didn't believe individuality was real yes he was but also was a definite individualist politically and I think I will take this point to answer this question which reads Spinoza's ethics because they will help to clarify for you how could an individualist believe that individuality is unreal now very few people could do that but Spinoza now let's take a look at his ethics which is the background of his individualist politics of course the whole 17th century is a germinal individualist era you see that's what laid the ground for all the individualist revolutions of the 18th century and for America and therefore to a certain extent but Oates is simply reflecting in his individualism the cultural climate of the emphasis on reason this world science the individual which seeped into everybody's thought in this sense the cultural climate of the age of reason was infinitely superior to anything you can dream of living in the 20th century in the cesspool of irrationalism so to some extent no matter what a philosopher's foundation was he absorbed the individualist politics even Kant has large elements of individualism in his politics their grotesque conflict with the rest of his philosophy but he didn't see fully there could political conclusions his immediate followers did but he didn't now on Spinoza's ethics it is a blend of two elements just as his whole philosophies just as his metaphysics and epistemology are partly a religious mysticism and partly a logical pro-science view so his ethics is partly a kind of historic platonic other worldliness and contempt for the world of appearances and yet partly it's a this worldly naturalistic egoism Spinoza is classified as an egoist in ethics and there are many points which out of context students of Objectivism would very much approve of and agree with in Spinoza's ethics now I'll give you just a sample of the egoistic this-worldly side of Spinoza well to begin with although you wouldn't agree at this point he has a psychological egoist he believes that all men are necessarily egoistic in their actions they believes the basic motivation of all men is self assertion self fulfillment self preservation now this is incorrect as I've mentioned in the lecture as a universal observation but it is a reflection in Spinoza of the common Greek advocacy of psychological egoism and Spinoza goes on with the Greek view this is good men should be selfish he has an ethical egoist now you can ask on this as you asked on the question of politics as you see his individualism comes from his egoism how can he be an egoist if he holds at the individual self his only appearance and his answer would be well even so that is how it appears we do appear to be separate individuals and we must act accordingly now what do you think of that did any avenges it's not a very substantial foundation but nevertheless virtually says therefore any insists on this is not self-sacrifice virtue is self fulfillment self perfecting perfecting the power of the mind to think and of the body to act and the result of virtue sense / notes it will be personal individual happiness pleasure which is the proof of a truly moral man now all this you see is in a general way within the Greek tradition in ethics and you can find many points to agree with in Spinoza's views here phrases his insistence that pleasure is not bad but good that life has to be lived enjoyed quote from Spinoza assuredly nothing forbids a man to enjoy himself save griemann gloomy superstition unquote the wise man he says enjoys the things of this life in Spinoza has many pungent things to say about those who are obsessed with the afterlife and who tremble in the face of death the wise man says the notes that pays no attention to death whatever he doesn't waste his time brooding about it quote his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life unquote of course he doesn't believe in any personal immortality when you're dead that's in and then of course all the Christians chimed in well that there was no personal immortality if we didn't fear an afterlife no one would be more to which Spinoza answers very clever answer which I will read you from him to say that the man who does not believe in personal immortality has no incentive to write living is not less absurd than to suppose that because he does not believe that he can buy wholesome food sustain his body forever he should wish to cream himself with poisons and deadly fare that because he sees that the mind is not eternal or immortal he could prefer to be out of his mind altogether and to live without the use of reason these ideas are so absurd as to be scarce worth refuting unquote now you see you can find a lot of that in Spinoza is very interesting from that point of view and that's just a sample but now mixed in with this this worldly egoism is a profound strain of Platonism and stoicism deriving from the playtest elements in his metaphysics and epistemology most men he says are slaves to their emotions to emotions which are thrust on them by external causes causes that they do not really clearly under stately understand and the result is most men spend their lives buffeted and ravaged by blind emotions hatred fear envy guilt rivalry etc now in a famous section of his work on ethics a section entitled of Human Bondage which is where some are said long about the title from Spinoza tells us how to escape from bondage to such emotions and how do you do it well you must in essence understand the universe fully you must see how everything falls inevitably from the nature of reality in other words of God you must see that nothing could possibly in any detail have been different and then you will experience serenity tranquility acceptance peace of mind you won't feel fear you won't feel hate you won't feel any emotional rebellion who can rebel against the inevitable when he sees it clearly as inevitable now you see the obvious stoicism of all of this we must he says in a famous phase perceived the world Subspace EI Eterna ptosis which means under the aspect of eternity which amounts to we have to lose the Nile petty perspective of our own confining cares and concerns and see the universe from the aspect of the grand totality and then we will see that all of us really won I was inevitable we really are the famous each other and we will find peace now you see there's not much left of his egoism when you combine it with the rest of this because if I am you and you are human we're all automatically identical then living for myself becomes living for the whole totality of the universe and the whole distinctively egoist character of the ethics is gone in any event the crowning virtue for Spinoza is what he calls the intellectual love of God now since God means reality is the intellectual love of reality in other words the full understanding of the universe by man's intellect the dedication to grasp and explain everything about the universe by human reason until finally the totality has been mastered so in this respect Spinoza is an art champion of the full free unfettered scientific use of the human mind that's his scientific rational side you see but he uses it to prove the deterministic rigidity of the universe and the importance of turning away from the petty cares of this world in immersing oneself in the contemplation of eternity so again you have that terrific mixture of plateless mysticism and naturalistic scientific rational egoism but if you exercise simply the egoist element you can find a lot in Spinoza very interesting I've often in conversations been accused of being a spin on sister doesn't last for very long when they hear what the rest of my views are but there is to that extent a certain similarity out of context on certain points I've always heard determinism expounded in relation to a divinity or man's genes as the causal factor considering Spinoza's pantheism and lack of individuation I don't understand how determinism applies well no you're quite wrong determinism is simply the view that everything that happens is inevitable it doesn't have to be garden it doesn't have to be genes it can be atoms following mechanistic laws our Democritus and the materialists it can be your Eden in your toilet training all of the Freud's it can be your economic environment our lemarcus it can be the logic of reality our Spinoza determinism is a very broad abstraction God and genes are only two popular versions of it there's many others

Channel: Ayn Rand Institute

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Keywords: history of philosophy, history, philosophy, history of western philosophy, western philosophy, leonard peikoff, ayn rand, ayn rand institute, objectivism, objectivist, political theory, modern philosophy, ancient philosophy, school of life, crash course, lecture, educational video, secular humanism, Continental Rationalism, Baruch Spinoza, spinoza, spinoza ethics, spinoza god, God’s nature, descartes

Id: W4CvGPQ3Lco

Length: 70min 30sec (4230 seconds)

Published: Fri May 01 2020