Baruch Spinoza was a 17th century Dutch philosopher who
tried to reinvent religion, moving it away from something
based on superstition and ideas of direct divine
intervention to being a discipline that was going to be far more impersonal,
quasi scientific and yet also at times serenely consoling. Baruch - the word means blessed in
Hebrew, was born in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam
in 1632, a thriving central Jewish commerce in
thought. His ancestors were sephardic Jews who'd fled the Spanish Peninsula
following the Catholic conspired expulsion of 1492 Baruch, a studious, highly
intelligent child, received an intensely traditional Jewish education. He went to the local Jewish school, the
Yeshiva and followed all the Jewish High Holidays and rituals But gradually he began to distance
himself from the faith of his ancestors. "Although I have been educated from
boyhood in the accepted beliefs concerning Scripture", he later wrote with characteristic
caution, "I have felt bound in the end to embrace other views". His
fully fleshed-out views would to be expressed his great work 'The
Ethics', written entirely in Latin and published in 1677. In The Ethics
Spinoza directly challenged the main tenets of Judaism in particular and organized religion in general. God is
not a person who stands outside of nature there is no one to hear our prayers or
to create miracles or to punish us for misdeeds. There is no
afterlife man is not God's chosen creature. The
Bible was only written by ordinary people. God is not a craftsman or
an architect, nor is he a King or military strategist who calls
for believers to take up the Holy Sword. God doesn't see anything, nor does he expect anything. He doesn't judge. He doesn't even reward the virtuous with the life after death. Every representation of God as a
person is a projection of the imagination and everything in the traditional
liturgical calendar is pure superstition and mumbo-jumbo. However, despite all this, remarkably,
Spinoza did not declare himself an atheist He insisted that he remained a staunch
defender of God. God plays an absolutely central role
in Spinoza's ethics. But it isn't anything like the God who
haunts the pages of the Old Testament. Spinoza's God is wholly impersonal and
indistinguishable from what we might variously called 'nature' or 'existence' or a 'world soul'. God is the universe and its laws God is reason and truth. God is the
animating force in everything that is and can be. He is not
in time and he cannot be individuated.
Spinoza writes: "Whatever is, is in God and nothing
can exist or be conceived without God." Throughout his text, Spinoza was keen to
undermine the idea of prayer. In prayer, an individual appeals
to God to change the way the universe works. But
Spinoza argues that this is entirely the wrong
way around. The task of human beings is to try to understand how and why the
universe works the way it does and then accept it, rather than protest
at the workings of existence by sending little messages up into the
sky. As Spinoza put it beautifully but rather caustically: "Whoever loves God cannot strive
that God should love him in return". In other words
only a deeply distorted and infantile narcissism would lead someone
that wants to believe in God and then to imagine that this God
would take an interest in bending the rules of existence to improve his or her life in some way.
Spinoza was deeply influenced by the philosophy of the Stoics of ancient
Greece and Rome. They had argued the wisdom lies not in
protest against how things are but in continuous attempts to understand
the ways of the world and then bow down peacefully to
necessity Seneca, Spinoza's favorite philosopher, had
compared human beings to dogs on a leash being led by the necessities of life in
a range of directions. The more one pulls against what's
necessary, the more one is strangled. And therefore the wise must always
endeavor, to try to understand ahead of time how things are. For example what love is like or how
politics works. And then change their direction
accordingly so as not to be strangled unnecessarily. It is this kind of stoic attitude that
constantly pervades Spinoza's philosophy. To understand God, traditionally means
studying the Bible and other holy texts. But Spinoza now introduces another idea. The best way to know God is to understand how life and the
universe work. It's through a knowledge of psychology, philosophy and the natural
sciences that one comes to understand God. In traditional religion believers ask special favors of God. Spinoza proposes instead that we should understand what God wants
and we can do so in one way above all - by studying everything that is. By
reasoning we can exceed to a divine eternal
perspective. Spinoza made a famous distinction
between two ways of looking at life. We can either see it egoistically from our
limited point of view. As he put it: sub specie durationis (under the aspect of time) or we can look at things globally
and eternally: sub specie aeternitatis (under the
aspect of eternity). Our nature means that we'll always be
divided between the two. Sensual life pulls us towards a time-bound
partial view. But our reason and intelligence can give us
unique access to another perspective. It can quite literally allow us - and
here Spinoza becomes beautifully lyrical - to participate in eternal totality. Normally we call bad, whatever is bad
for us, and good whatever increases our power and
advantage. But for Spinoza, to be truly ethical means rising above
such local concerns. It might all sound forbidding, but
Spinoza envisaged his philosophy as a route to a life based on freedom
from guilt, from sorrow, from pity or from shame. Happiness involves aligning our will with
that of the universe. The Universe God has its own projects
and it's our task to understand rather than rail against
these. The free person is one conscious of the
necessities that compel us all. Spinoza writes, the wise man, the person
who understands how and why things are, possesses eternally true complacency
of spirit. Needless to say these ideas got Spinoza
into a very deep trouble. He was excommunicated
from the Jewish community of Amsterdam in 1656 The rabbis issued a censure known as 'cherem' against the philosopher. It went by the
decree of the angels and by the commander of the holy man -
we excommunicate, expel, curse and damn Brauch Spinoza with all the
curses which are written in the book of law cursed he be by day and cursed be he
by night. Cursed be he when he lies down and cursed be he when he rises up. Spinoza
was forced to flee Amsterdam and eventually settled in The Hague,
where he lived quietly and peacefully as a lens grinder, and private tutor till his death in 1677.
Spinoza's work was largely forgotten down the ages. Hegel took an interest, as did Wittgenstein
and several other twentieth century philosophers. But from many perspectives Spinoza's
work constitutes a warning about failures of philosophy. The ethics
is one of the world's most beautiful books. It contains a calming perspective for
storing take on life. It replaces the God of superstition with
a wise and consoling pantheism. And yet Spinoza's work failed utterly to
convince any but a few to abandon traditional religion and to
move towards a rationalist, wise system of belief. The reasons are in a way simple and banal. Spinoza failed to
understand, like so many philosophers before and
since, that what leads people to religion isn't just reason, but far more importantly: emotion, belief,
fear and tradition. People stick with their beliefs
because they like the ritual, the communal meals, the yearly traditions, the beautiful
architecture, the music and the lovely language read out in a sinagoge or
church. Spinoza's Ethics arguably contains a
whole lot more wisdom than the Bible. But because it comes without any of the Bible's
supporting structure it remains a marginal work, studied here
and there at universities in the West. What the
traditional religion, that Spinoza thought outmoded in the 1670s, continues to thrive and convince people. If we're ever to replace traditional beliefs, we
must remember just how much religion has helped along by ritual, tradition, art and a desire to
belong. All things that Spinoza, despite its
great wisdom, ignored it as peril in his bold attempt
to replace the Bible.
I thought this was an excellent breakdown, but the narrator started laying his opinion on pretty thick at the end. I didn't care for that much.
The video's explanation of Spinoza's motivation focuses too heavily on the Stoic influence. A better articulation of Spinoza's project, the drive many folks overlook, is found in the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect.
Spinoza writes, "After experience had taught me that all the things which regularly occur in ordinary life are empty and futile, and I saw that all the things which were the cause or object of my fear had nothing of good or bad in themselves, except insofar as [my] mind was moved by them, I resolved at last to try to find out whether there was anything which would be the true good, capable of communicating itself, and which alone would affect the mind, all others being rejected - whether there was something which, once found and acquired, would continuously give me the greatest joy, to eternity."
The pursuit of the true good, the greatest joy, is not an attitude of Stoic acceptance or balance. Spinoza did not abandon ordinary life due to discomfort; he abandoned the ordinary because it is "empty and futile". Spinoza wants to find "the greatest joy, to eternity."
That's his motivation. That's his project. He wants to Know the true, eternal, greatest joy.
It's a mysticism and hopeful idealism that folks often overlook or dismiss.
Spinoza is amazing. Talk about cautious optimism!
Fun fact: he was Einstein's favorite philosopher.
For whatever it's worth, I'm a pastor of a church and I agree with everything that Spinoza taught. I think the Christian world, at large, has a very narrow view of God and how He operates. I think Spinoza's point is spot on that God is everything and that understanding God means observing our world around us.
A personal viewpoint I hold is that faith, science, and philosophy are all working towards the pursuit of truth. Truth is a constant and one day all of these factions looking for truth will find it and agree on what that truth is.
are there any prominent criticisms of Spinoza?
So I understand the latin breakdown of pantheism and atheism, but from a really practical standpoint is there really any difference? Or is the only real difference is that pantheism is more or less a way to retain the word, god, through scientific perspective?
Why is this getting down voted? (just curious, I don't really have an argument for or against) -Btw, I love this series of videos, it's always my "go to" when someone asks about complex ideas that I'm not able to truncate/distill.
I love Spinoza! I always thought of his work as a Western counterpart to Eastern Philosophy.
My SO bought Spinoza's 'Ethics' at the same time I bought 'The Way of Zen' by Alan Watts and those books, while being on opposite sides of the spectrum writing-wise, contained just about the same content.
Alan Watts does a few lectures on him and they are great. Watts has a great way of explaining things if you find Spnozia confusing.
Edit: Spinoza