Baruch Spinoza

Qu'est-ce que l'Absolu ? Dieu existe-t-il ?

God, or Nature: an infinite substance without will or ends

Un Absolu impersonnelIl le dit expressément

Spinoza understands by God an absolutely infinite being, a substance consisting of infinite attributes, and demonstrates that apart from it no other can exist or be conceived: whatever is, is in God. This God is not a person. He does not act for ends or by a free decree of the will, but from the necessity of His nature, as its properties follow from the nature of a triangle. The appendix to the first part of the Ethics dismantles the image of a God who arranges the world for man and rewards or punishes, and the preface to the fourth states that the reason why God, or Nature, acts and exists is one and the same. The Absolute is the whole of reality understood in its necessity, accessible to the intellect and the object of an intellectual love that does not expect to be returned.

Qui suis-je ? Existe-t-il un vrai soi ?

The mind is part of the infinite intellect of God

Le Soi est l'AbsoluCela se déduit de sa doctrine

Spinoza denies that the soul is a substance: the human mind is the idea of an actually existing body and, as such, a finite mode of God's thought. From this he draws a consequence he states plainly: the human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God. Its actual essence is the striving (conatus) to persevere in its being. While it knows itself confusedly, it takes itself for a dominion within a dominion, free and independent; when it knows itself adequately, it knows that it is in God and is conceived through God. The fifth part of the Ethics adds that something of the mind is eternal, and that the intellectual love with which the mind loves God is part of the love with which God loves Himself. The true self is the one that understands itself from the Absolute.

Pourquoi souffrons-nous ?

We suffer because we know the causes of our affects badly

L'ignorance de ce que nous sommesIl le dit expressément

Spinoza calls bondage human powerlessness to moderate and restrain the affects: a man subject to them is not his own master but at the mercy of fortune. Sadness is the passage to a lesser perfection, and the sad passions — hatred, fear, envy, anxious hope — arise from inadequate ideas, that is, from knowing in a mutilated and confused way what affects us and what we are. That is why the remedy is cognitive: an affect that is a passion ceases to be one as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it. Understanding that everything happens necessarily gives the mind greater power over the affects and makes it suffer less from them. His maxim of method sums up the attitude: not to laugh at human actions, nor weep over them, nor detest them, but to understand them.

Que se passe-t-il après la mort ?

Something of the mind is eternal: not lasting afterwards, but outside time

Ce que je suis ne naît ni ne meurtIl le dit expressément

Spinoza denies personal immortality as it is usually understood: the mind can imagine or remember nothing except while the body endures, so no memory or personality survives. But he affirms that the mind cannot be entirely destroyed with the body: something of it remains that is eternal, the idea that expresses the essence of this body under the aspect of eternity. That eternity is not an endless duration that would begin after death, but a way of being outside time, and it is experienced even now: we feel and know by experience that we are eternal. The more the mind understands by the third kind of knowledge, the greater the part that does not perish and the less it fears death. That is why the free man thinks of nothing less than of death.

Comment atteint-on la libération ou le salut ?

Freedom is born of understanding: happiness is virtue itself

Par la connaissance directeIl le dit expressément

Spinoza calls by the same name freedom, blessedness or salvation: the constant and eternal love of God that is born of knowledge. The fifth part of the Ethics traces the way. First, reason orders the affects and weakens them by understanding their causes; then the third kind of knowledge, intuitive science, sees each singular thing in God and produces the greatest contentment of mind. From it arises the intellectual love of God, which does not expect to be returned and in which salvation consists. Happiness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself: we do not enjoy it because we restrain our passions; we restrain them because we enjoy it. The way is hard, he admits, but all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

Faut-il un maître ?

Neither prophets nor theologians: in speculative matters, reason alone judges

Aucune autorité spirituelleIl le dit expressément

The Theological-Political Treatise is largely a plea against spiritual authority in matters of truth. Spinoza shows that the prophets excelled in imagination and moral uprightness, not in philosophical knowledge, and that their opinions about nature bind no one. Scripture teaches only obedience, justice and charity; its interpretation belongs to each person by the natural light, without need of a caste of interpreters. That is why philosophy must not be the handmaid of theology, nor theology of philosophy, and the State must guarantee freedom to philosophise. Spinoza had teachers and correspondents, but in the Ethics the only guide is the order of the demonstrations, which anyone can follow and check.

Le monde est-il réel ?

Everything follows necessarily from God: nothing is contingent, nothing is a miracle

Un ordre naturel en transformationIl le dit expressément

For Spinoza the world is real and governed by a seamless necessity. In nature there is nothing contingent: everything is determined by the necessity of the divine nature to exist and to act in a certain way, and things could not have been produced in any other manner or order. He distinguishes natura naturans, God as free cause, from natura naturata, the totality of modes that follow from it. The Theological-Political Treatise draws the consequence: a miracle understood as a violation of natural laws is impossible, because those laws are eternal decrees of God; what we call a miracle is an event whose cause we do not know. The world is neither appearance nor a stage for man: it is the very order of the real.

Qu'est-ce que l'amour ?

Intellectual love of God and desire of the good for all men

L'amour de Dieu et du prochainIl le dit expressément

Spinoza defines love as joy accompanied by the idea of an external cause, and from there builds an ethics of love without sentimentality. Whoever loves God cannot strive for God to love him in return: the intellectual love of God, born of the third kind of knowledge, expects nothing back, and is part of the love with which God loves Himself. That love does not isolate: the good that whoever follows virtue desires for himself he also desires for others, and all the more the greater his knowledge of God. Towards others, reason counsels answering hatred with love and generosity, because hatred conquered by love turns into love, and that love is greater than if hatred had not preceded it.

Sommes-nous libres ou tout est-il déterminé ?

We think ourselves free because we ignore the causes; freedom is understanding

Nous sommes des machines jusqu'à l'éveilIl le dit expressément

Spinoza denies free will: in the mind there is no absolute will; it is determined to will this or that by a cause, which is determined by another, and so on to infinity. Men believe themselves free because they are conscious of their desires and ignorant of the causes that determine them; in a letter he illustrates this with a thrown stone that, if it could think, would believe it moved by its own will. While man lives under the passions he is driven by external causes like the sea by contrary winds. But there is a true freedom: to act from the necessity of one's own nature alone, guided by reason. One is free not by escaping necessity but by understanding it.

Pourquoi méditer ou prier ?

Not praying to change the order of nature, but understanding it

Voir la réalité telle qu'elle estCela se déduit de sa doctrine

Spinoza does not pray in the usual sense: if God does not act for ends or change His decrees, asking Him to alter the course of nature makes no sense, and the Theological-Political Treatise analyses superstition as the child of fear and hope. What takes the place of prayer is meditation on life, not on death, and the exercise of understanding. In the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect he tells how he resolved to seek a true good which, once found, would give continuous and supreme joy, and the Ethics identifies it with knowledge of the union of the mind with the whole of Nature. His practice is to see each thing in God, under the aspect of eternity, and in this he finds contentment.

La raison peut-elle connaître l'ultime ?

The human mind has adequate knowledge of the essence of God

L'étude et le savoirIl le dit expressément

Spinoza is the most confident in this group in the power of reason. In the Ethics he demonstrates that the human mind has adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God, and he distinguishes three kinds of knowledge: imagination, source of error; reason, which forms common notions; and intuitive science, which sees each singular thing in God. The ultimate is not beyond the mind: it is its supreme object. At the same time he separates philosophy from faith: in the Theological-Political Treatise he holds that Scripture teaches not speculative truths but obedience and charity, and that neither must theology be the handmaid of reason nor reason of theology. Knowing is a long road, requiring method and the emendation of the intellect.

Se retirer du monde ou le transformer ?

The end of the State is freedom: a political order that lets people think

Ordonner la sociétéIl le dit expressément

Spinoza led a retired life: he ground lenses, declined a chair at Heidelberg to preserve his freedom and lived soberly in lodgings in Rijnsburg, Voorburg and The Hague. But his philosophy does not counsel flight from the world. The free man sketched in the Ethics is freer in the State, where he lives by common laws, than in solitude, and nothing is more useful to man than another man guided by reason. His two political treatises seek the conditions of a just and stable order: the Theological-Political Treatise concludes that the end of the State is in truth freedom, and defends tolerance and freedom of expression. For Spinoza the philosophical life needs a well-ordered society, and thinking about it is part of his task.