Spinoza

Life

Bento (Baruch/Benedictus) Spinoza (1632 - 1677)

Early life

• Born in Amsterdam in 1632
  • Son in a prominent family of moderate means in the Portuguese-Jewish community
  • It was a thriving center of Jewish commerce and thought
  • His ancestors, Sephardic Jews, fled the Spanish peninsula after their expulsion in 1392
  • He had a traditional jewish schooling, but later embraced other views
  • Star pupil in the congregation’’s Talmud Torah school
  • Intellectually gifted from a young age
  • Perhaps being prepared to become a rabbi
  • At 17, he cut his formal studies short to help manage his family’s importing business
• Excommunication
  • 1656, he is excommunicated (issued a writ of herem) by the Sephardic community of Amsterdam, the exact reason is not stated, but it was likely due to his work that denied the immortality of the soul and refute of the law originating from God
  • Probably was content to leave his community and judaism
  • He leaves Amsterdam
  • He lived in Rijnsburg and Voorburg, completing some works on the philosophical method, a critique of Descartes, and his philosophical masterpiece Ethics
• Works
  • He writes Treatise on the Emendation of Intellect, Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well-Being, in Rijnsburg
  • The principals of tolerance in Holland was threatened by the Dutch Reformed Church
  • He therefore anonymously published Theological-Political Treatise in 1670 which appalled theologians
  • He died seven years later in Den Haag

Philosophy

Religion

• His picture of God, explain in the section “on God” in Ethics he presents some propositions on God
  • Ethics critiques traditional theological thinking
  • He writes that God is infinite, necessarily existing (and self-caused) unique substance of the universe, He is everything, the only substance is God and everything else that is, is in God
  • He had a more scientific, and reasoning approach to religion and scholarly approach to the bible
• Religion
  • He did not believe in the level of divine intervention some others subscribed to
  • He did not think there was anyone to pray to or create miracles, or punish us
  • There is no afterlife, the soul is therefore not immortal
  • Religious texts originate from ordinary people
  • God is not a king or leader
  • He does not judge, grant gifts, perceive or act
  • He is a projection and religion is man-made
  • Spinoza challenges the main tenets of Judaism and organized religion
  • Spinoza still proclaimed himself to be a defender of God
• Spinoza’s God
  • Impersonal
  • God is more like nature, the animating force of the world, reason and truth beyond time
  • Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can exist or be conceived without God
  • People should not pray to change the world, but understand how the universe works and accept it
  • He was influenced by the Stoics, who found wisdom not protest but understanding the world and being content with it or changing what is within our power (he liked Seneca)
  • Understanding God means understanding everything that is
  • We should look at things over time and globally, sub specie aeternitatis
  • Reason should take us away from sensual, partial views
  • Ethics means overcoming a view that the world revolves around us
• Pantheism - jediism
  • Pantheism: the doctrine that the universe conceived of as a whole is God and, conversely, that there is no God but the combined substance, forces, and laws that are manifested in the existing universe. The cognate doctrine of panentheism asserts that God includes the universe as a part though not the whole of his being.

The state

• State of nature
  • Religion should not interfere with politics
  • His state of nature is one without law or religion or justice and injustice, just the right of the individual to strive for self-preservation
  • He agrees this leads to chaos, like Hobbes
  • We must therefore live under reason and not nature
• Obligation of the state
  • We give our sovereign our natural right and power to strive however we may to satisfy our interests
  • The sovereign is unrestrained
  • It must keep society to the agreement to live under law of reason by enforcing the social contract
  • We are still autonomous, since we authorized the authority of the sovereign and the object of its commends is our self interest
  • Best gov for this is democracy, people only obey laws that they issue through the body of politic
  • Monarchies have a proclivity to tyranny
• Politics and religion
  • The state should have power over secular and spiritual matters
  • Instituted and regulated religion
  • Division between religious and government power, the church should not play a role in society or politics
  • The church should teach and inspire rationality and morality
  • A very interventionist gov, centralized and authoritative sovereign
  • God’s law must be enforced
  • Inner piety belongs to the individual, people have a right to their thoughts
  • Everyone is by absolute natural right the master of his own thoughts, and thus utter failure will attend any attempt in a commonwealth to force men to speak only as prescribed by the sovereign despite their different and opposing opinion.
  • Speech and teaching should only be limited when it violates or encourages sedition of the social contract, but gov should err on the side of leniency
  • In a free state every man should think what they like and speak what they think
  • One cannot control the mind of people, tolerance is necessary

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Conclusions

• Countries have their own unique political cultures
  • Originates from traditions over centuries
  • Decentralized state of the provinces created a system still applicable to modern times
  • This Dutch system is now known as the Polder Model
  • Today, .75 is needed for a seat in parliament
  • No party has ever taken a majority