steinberg, diane - on spinoza.pdf - spinoza - faketrain

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Contents

I - Introduction

2 - BasicMetaphysics

3 - Mind andBody

4 - Psychology

5 - EthicalDoctrine

6 - Method

Bibliography

Introduction

Spinoza's philosophy is attractive and worth studying for many

reasons,but perhaps the most important is that it offers a unified and

deepview of all the issueswhich matterto us philosophically, such as

the nature of reality, human nature, what we can know and the good

life. There are three fundamentalfeatures of his philosophy which

particularly contribute to its unity-the doctrine of substancemonism,

the unrelenting naturalism, and the geometric mode of exposition

which Spinozaemploys in the Ethics.

The doctrine of substancemonism is the hallmark of Spinoza's

philosophy. Spinoza was neitherthe first nor the last philosopherto

espousemetaphysicalmonism,or the doctrine that reality is one. The

first was Parmenides(ca. 500 B.C.E.) who maintained that what is

(reality) is eternal, immutable,homogeneous, continuous,immobile,

completeand whole, "like the bulk of a well-roundedsphere".l In the

late nineteenthcentury the British Idealists conceived of reality as a

singleall-embracing experience(the absolute),within which all finite

experienceswere somehowsubsumed.2Spinoza'smonism is superior

to both of thesedocffines,but in different ways. Unlike Parmenides,

Spinozadoes not deny the reality of difference, but rather explains it.

The contrastbetweenSpinoza's monism and that of the British Idealists

is more complex, but two points can be made briefly. First, unlike the

British ldealists, Spinoza does not reduce or subordinate mafier to

mind-extension and thought are equally real in his philosophy.

Second, in offering the principle of the unity of a single experienceto

explainthe unity of reality, the British Idealists gave us little more than

Introduction

a metaphor which raises more questions than it answers. What

principles explain the uniff of a singleexperience? Spinoza'sdoctrine

of substancemonism, however,provides a basisfor his articulationof

principleswhich explain theunity of reality.

Another less immediately evident but pervasive and unifying

feature of Spinoza's philosophy is its thoroughgoing naturalism.

Spinozais committed to explaining and analyzingeverything in natural

terms. As one recent commentator aptly put it, Spinoza even

naturalizedtheology. 3 Spinozatitled the first part of his Ethics "On

God," and God is both the beginningand the end of his philosophy in

the sensethat He is the ultimate causein terms of which everything

must be understood,and the ultimate object that we seekto know and

love. Yet his views on God and His relation to the world bearonly a

superficialresemblance

to thoseof traditional monotheism. God is not

a being who transcendsnature,but God and the world are one, divine

law is nothing but natural law, andGod's power is identicalwith that of

naturalthings. In his anthropologyhuman beingsarenot distinguished

from othersby a transcendentpurpose, by their free will, or even by

their possession of a soul or mind. Nothing in nature has a

transcendentpurpose or end for which it exists. There are no final

causes. Nothing acts by freedom of the will, but everything is

determinedby antecedentnecessity. And everything is animate or

besouled,although in differentdegrees(panpsychism). Animals areno

more unfeeling machines than are humans, although their feelings

differ from humanfeelings.

Spinoza'sethical docffine is also completely naturalistic. Terms

such as "good" and "beautiful" do not denote any real property of

things but only how we are affected by them. We call things "good"

becausewe desirethem, not vice versa. Values originate from us, not

from a transcendentsource,and are relative to us. The only objective

sense which can be given to "good" is that of being genuinely

advantageous

to humannature.

Perhapsthe most obviouslyunifying-and at the sametime most

daunting-feature of Spinoza's philosophy is the geometrical form of

exposition in which his major work, the Ethics, t cast. The Ethics

containsa completeexpositionof his entire maturephilosophyand is

written in the style of Euclid's Elements. In it Spinozaproceeds from

explicitly stated definitions, axioms and postulatesto propositions,

which are demonstrated from the former along with previously

demonstratedpropositions. Commentators have offered a variety of

reasonsto explain why Spinozachosethe geometrical form to expound

his philosophy. According to onethe geometricalmethod of expositon

was particularly suited to Spinoza's subject matter, with the logical

steinberg, diane - on spinoza.pdf

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