"True virtue is life under the direction of reason."

Much of this was gleaned from reading Will Durant's "History of Philosophy" It includes a brief examination of Spinoza's four major works.

Spinoza was one of the first modern day Pantheists, holding that the universe is identical with God, the uncaused "substance" of all things. Essence is a term that was created by the scholastics. It is a metaphysical entity that is the true reality of the universe. Spinoza held that only two attributes of substance, are accessible to the human mind, Extension, (physical, Material), and conscious thought. Thought and extension are considered to depend on and exist in an ultimate reality that humans only indirectly experience through the attributes of extension and consciousness. To explain the apparent causality between objects and ideas, Spinoza advanced a Dualism known as parallelism, according to which every idea has a physical counterpart and every physical object has an ideational counterpart. (See Dualism)

Spinoza's conception of essences is closely related to the Scholastic conception of "reals" (Realism) and Plato's Forms. The fundamental difference between material things and essences is that the former have their being in time, but the latter are outside of time. Because mortality can pertain only to things subject to the law of time, the realm of essences is eternal. (This concept is furthered by Ken Wilber)

Every existence has a universal/essential character, that can be realized only through transcending its own intrinsic form and freeing itself from the boundaries of its own mortal structure - only by identification with substance, or God, is immortality and peace, obtained. Immanent causation, according to Spinoza's metaphysics, means self-causation, and that which is self-determined is free. From this, he developed his doctrine of freedom as a good to be won only in the realm of essences. He rejected providence and freedom of will, since existence in either attribute (extension or thought) is bondage-each existent thing is determined by its own causal series; (Psychic Determinism) every object or idea is subject to other objects or ideas, and is determined by them.

Spinoza was struck by Moses of Cordova's indentification of God and the universe; and Hasdai Creccas's belief that the universe of matter was the body of god.

Spinoza found that Maimondides and his work "Guide to the Perplexed" was a failed defense of religion. He noted, quite honestly, that the contradictions of the Old Testament lingered in his thoughts long after the solutions Maimonides proposed dissolved away. As Will Durant writes: the cleverest defenders of a faith are it's greatest enemies: for their subtleties only serve to engender doubt and stimulate the mind. To a mind such as Spinoza's, doubt lead to a rejection of the Old Testament and a search for how God and universe really worked.

Here here!

Spinoza saw several great christian skeptics of his time die on the gallows: Van den Ende and Bruno (1548-1600), who he admired.

Bruno stated that all reality is one in substance, cause and origin, the object of philosophy is to percieve unity in diversity, and to find the synthesis in which opposites and contradictions meet and merge.

Spinoza, like Descartes, based his theory on the primacy of consciousness. Yet, while Descartes held that there was a homogeneous substance underlying all forms of matter, Spinoza felt that there was another, distinct homogenous subsance underlying all forms of mind as well. Two substances, not one.

Why two, when one is so clearly more logical?

Descartes desired to explain the world in mathematical determinism, but he steered clear from explaining god in such a fashion, out of fealty to religion and fear of reprisal.

Spinoza would go past this.

Spinoza the Heretic

Spinoza was excommunicated because he told the truth: The Old Testament is an allegory, there are no promises of eternal life in it, angels are most likely hallucinations and that soul might just be merely life.

Spinoza was offered a great deal of money to shut the fuck up. He refused. He was cast out - out of the fear he caused not only to the Jewish community, but to his Holland Christian hosts, who recoginzed that any succesful attack on the Old Testament was just as much a threat to christians as to Jews.

Karen Armstrong writes:

In 1656, at the age of 24, Spinoza was formally cast out of the synagogue of Amsterdam. While the edict of excommunication was read out, the lights of the synagogue were gradually extinguished until the congregation was left in total darkness, experiencing for themselves the darkness of Spinoza's soul in a Godless world:

Let him be accursed by day and accursed by night; accursed in his lying down and in his rising up, in going out and in coming in. May the Lord never more pardon or acknowledge him! May the wrate and displeasure of the Lord burn against this man henceforth, load him with all the curses written in the book of the law, and raze out his name from under the sky.

Henceforth Spinoza belonged to none of the religious communities of Europe. As such, he was the prototype of the autonmous, secular outlook that would become current in the West. In the early 20th century many people refvered Spinoza as the hero modernity, feeling an affinity with his symbolic exile, alienation and quest for secular salvation.

"Those who wish to seek out the causes of miracles, and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those who the mob adore as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is perserved."

Spinoza's opponents then attemped to kill him. This choice of debate tactic is telling of the intellectual honesty of his opponents.

Others relied on rhetorical appeals, such as his former student, who converted to catholicism, Albert Burgh:

You assume that you have at last found the true philosophy. How do you know that your philosophy is best of all those which have ever been taught in the world, are now taught, or shall be taught hereafter? To say nothing of what may be devised in the future, have you examined all those philosophies, both ancient and modern, which are taught here, in India, and all over the world? And even supposing that you have duly examined them, how do you know that you have chosen the best?

You assume that you have at last found the true religion. How do you know that your religion is best of all those which have ever been taught in the world, are now taught, or shall be taught hereafter? To say nothing of what may be devised in the future, have you examined all those religions, both ancient and modern, which are taught here, in India, and all over the world? And even supposing that you have duly examined them, how do you know that you have chosen the best?

Though I were at time to find the fruit unreal which i gather by my natural understanding, yet this would not make me otherwise than content: because in the gathering I am happy.

Treatise on Religion and the State

In this work, Durant again notes the following:

It is unwise of an author to prove his point to thoroughly; his conclusions pass into the currency of all educated minds, and hs works no longer have that mystery about them which draws us ever on.

"Faith" has become a mere compound of credulity and prejudices, a tissue of meaningless mysteries. (Looking at biblical history critically, he stated:) The Israelities had called any phenomenon that they could not understand "God" This problem continues today, and is seen the logical fallacy of arguing through ignorance, where a theist maintains that science's inability to answer a question means that the answer must be that God did it.

What Spinoza found most interesting is that common man imagines god as inactive unless miracles occur. Therefore, it became important to create a false, shallow image of god so that common men could see him. Spinoza felt, that as God was immanent with the universe itself, he was in all things, and therefore more glorious than the common man could grasp. To ask a god who created the universe to peform parlor tricks to prove himself seemed ridiculous, but parlor tricks were all the rabble could comprehend. God and the processes of nature are one. God doesnt need to break the natural order to prove himself, when he himself is the natural order. This of course, was far more wonderful and astounding than that god was a man with a white beard, and therefore, out of the ken of the ordinary.

Spinoza was careful to say that the Bible doesn't contradict reason. Instead he says that as a rhetorical piece, it is to be taken as litature, not literal. Therefore it no more contradicts reason than does a poem or a song. Again, common folk demand a religion phrased in the supernatural, only a philosopher could be impressed with the more subtle reality.

While Spinoza supported the Bible thusly, he made certain to point out the hypocracy of the adherents to the scriptures. He noted that the true virtues of religious faith seemed to be intolerance, animosity, hatred and persecution. He noted that the philosophical Jew and the philosophical christian had more in common than either had with the common man of each respective religion. He sought therefore, to find a rational system for a synthesis of the two religions, and began by viewing Jesus as the greatest prophet, the intellectual expression of the love of god, and the opponent of dogmas.

We now move on to Spinoza's next great work

The Improvement of the Intellect

This book is terrific, because in it, Spinoza speaks directly about his love for philosophy. He speaks about his search for something that is objectively good. he notes that honor, riches, and fame are all transitory joys - once sated with these "goods" we may find them a burdon. For example, a famous writer must forever more write to please the fancy of his readers. (Quick aside: If you get a chance, compare this to Jeremy Bentham's views on motivation)

Spinoza felt the only real good was something eternal and infinite. The greatest good therefore, is the knowledge of the union which the mind has with the whole of nature, since nature is eternal and infinite. The more the mind knows, the better it understands. Our knowlege is our power. The pursuit of this knowledge brings joy, which is good.

He then paused to consider the one true rebuttal to this: how does one know that their knowledge of this can be trusted? (A concern Descartes' shared)

In answering this epistemolical concern, he delineated the types of knowledge into a hierarchy of certainty. Let's take at look.

First was hearsay knowledge - this is knowledge that authorities present to us, that we accept uncritically. The second klnd is vague experience, not empirical experience, but intuitive grasping of how things work, without really knowing the processes involved. (Explain how to tie a shoelace. Can't do it, right? But you can tie a shoelace.) Third, immediate deductions, of the type Plato so valued. Last and best was immediate deduction and direct perception - a working knowlegde - the rational-empirical method! Knowing how something works from the inside, knowing its parts, how it functions, its essence. Spinoza noted that this kind of knowledge is rare, but that it's truth clearly overwhelmed all other ways of knowing. In all of this, Spinoza basically outlines the experimental method(!), for an example of this level of thought would include experimentation which show the truth or falsity of a hypothesis. In brief, the four stages go from mere belief to true knowledge. Believing vs. knowing.

Spinoza was wise. He notes one other conundrum. He sees that in seeking causes, many things are so complex, that its unlikely that we will truly understand many of the things we observe in our universe thoroughly. But he was pleased enough to uncover the essence of how things worked, the fixed and eternal laws that he saw as one and the same with god.

In this, we can perhaps see Spinoza as a precursor to chaos theory. But perhaps I overstate the case.

Let's move on to Spinoza's next work, The Ethics.

The Ethics

"Human nature obeys fixed laws no less than do the figures of Geometry. I will therefore write about human beings as though I were concerned with lines and planes and solids."

The Ethics is quite intriguing to read, as it is unlike any modern philosophy text. The work is presented in mathematical form, as in Euclid: from definitions and axioms to propositions deduced from them. He defines concepts such as Causaility, the finite, substance, attribute, modes, god, freedom and eternity.

In Spinoza's Ethics, he sought to reduce the complexity of the universe into unity and order, in which he would combine the laws of nature with the strains of human existence, to find a synthetic system that explains both. As Will Durant says: "Spinoza had an artistic character, but the artist in him was purely an architect, building a system of though to peferct symmetry and form"

Nature and God

In Spinoza's metaphysical examintion of nature and god, he sought to reach the highest of all generalizations - to think things out clearly to their ultimate significance. He was working Descartes' side of the street.

There are three pivotal terms in spinoza's philosophy, as Durant tells us, , substance, attribute and mode.

Modes, Substance and Attributes

Attributes refer to either the physical or mental realm of existence, just as Descartes saw them.

A mode is an individual event or phenomena, such as a chair, substance is not material, it's the opposite - its the underlying reality matter (of this mode), the essence of reality. In the case of a chair, it's not the wood that makes up the chair, for this is merely another mode - all matter is mode. It is whatever is eternal and immutable about the chair, of which everything else (all modes) are but transitory and temporal object/idea. Descartes went through the same mindset when he examined a ball of wax in the meditations. He noted that even if the ball of wax were to be altered greatly, it would still be the same "something". Even if it were to melt away entirely from his sight, something of it would remain in the air, and in his mind. Whatever this "this" was, was essence.

But Spinoza means something a bit different than Descartes. He means here, the eternal laws that govern our universe, without which, nothing could exist. I would hazzard a guess that a substance would be the fixed laws that shape our universe, such as gravity. Although gravity's power or pull may change slighty, gravity itself would appear an eternal facet of reality. What is most intriguing, is that one can draw this back to Spinoza's work, The Improvement of the Intellect, and note that his search for the 'good" would in fact be a search for these laws. Here, Spinoza goes one step further - he indentifies these laws, this substance with God. Therefore, the search for the good necessarily is a search for god. Nice.

Spinoza conceives reality not in duality, as Descartes does, but in Double Aspectism: two aspects of the same reality - nature begetting and nature begotten, with all modes being both conscious (God begetting) and extended in space (begotten). Nature begetting is the eternal substance, and nature begotten is the secondary modes. But the latter is merely a surface for the former.

Spinoza held this view constant for all modes, including human "modes." Human thought in this view is a mode, which in turn is how we experience the physical laws that determine brain activity. Therefore, since thought is ruled by the same physical laws that rule every other part of the universe, free will is but an illusion that stems from the overcomplexity of our thoughts - from the fact that we cannot recognize all the determinants of our thoughts. (This same viewpoint would be taken up by Sigmund Freud.) Additionally, since the mind is but a mode of the physical body, there can be no existence beyond physical existence. There can be no individual immortality.

God's nature changes as well. "He" is no longer a "He". God is immanent in the universe, not a ridiculous anthropomorphic creature living amongst it all. What the law of circles is to circles, God is to us all. God is the underlying condition of all things. He's Plato's universal reals, the inmutable laws of nature.

"...I hold that god is the immanent, and not the extraneous cause of all things."

From Spinoza, as to why a an extraneous cause cannot serve as the basis for a natural entity, or any natural system, such as logic:

Proposition 3: Things which have nothing in common cannot be one the cause of the other

proof: if they have nothing in common, it follows that one cannot be apprehended by means of the other - see axiom V

Axiom V Things which have nothing in common cannot be understood, the one by means of the other; the conception of one does not involve the conception of the other

and therefore the one cannot be the cause of the other - see axiom 4

Axiom IV the knowledge of an effect depends on and involves the knowledge of the cause.

QED

proposition 4: Two or more distinct things are distinguished one from the other either by difference of the attributes of the substances, or by the differences of their modifications.

A substance would be a metaphysical level understanding of a thing's essence

The essence of the supernatural is, by definition, a different substance than the natural order.

Ergo, the supernatural cannot be the cause of logic.

QED

addendum

Spinoza also proves that there cannot be two identical substances (defined as two identical metaphysical levels of substrates to all of reality) nor can one substance create another - for it is impossible that one substance (metaphysical level) share properties with another (metaphysical level). Therefore, there must be one substance.

The common man still needed such a god (as Freud later so poigantly pointed out.) But to a philosopher, such a god was petty and insigificant. To a philosopher, a God of mathematics, immutable laws, was preferable, for while such a god was not placable by prayer, he was comprehendable to the mind.

After all, God is what we need him to be. And Spinoza needed a god who could be understood like any deterministic cause. Where Descartes saw mechanism in animals, and not man, let alone god, Spinoza saw determinism even in god. To Spinoza, God was not an some really powerful being with emotions, whims and desires, he wasn't even intellect or willpower, God was invariable, determined law, the eternal reality that forever goes unchanges, even as the universe fluctuates every instant.

In one sense, Spinoza was wise to one of the greatest errors in philosophy: th constant flaw of projecting our human purposes and preferences onto the objective universe. In another sense, he fell for it just like everyone else. Spinoza attacked the concepts of "good" and "evil" as subjective human concepts with no eternal truth - they have no validy in a universe determined by immutable law. Just as Job learned in the Old Testament, God is beyond good and evil.

Spinoza explains it thusly:

Whenever then, anything in nature seems to us ridiculous, absurd or evil, it is because we have but a partial understanding of things, and are in the main ignorant of the order and coherence of nature as a whole, and because we want everything to be arranged according to the dictates of our own reason (watch it Baruch, this may be an unconscious admission); although in fact, what our reason pronounces base is not bad as regards the order and law of the unviersal nature, but only as regards the laws of our own nature taken separately... As for the terms good and bad, they indicate nothing positve considered in themselves... For one and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad and indifferent. For example, music is good to the melancholy, bad to the mourners, and indifferent to the dead.
- Ethics, IV

Spinoza also questions other Platonic reals (other than good, the ultimate real) such as beauty and grace. He notes that only in relations can something be beautiful, only in our nervous systems can something excite or repulse us. In this, he rejects the platonic reals of Plato, who held that his own esthetic judgements must be the laws of creation and the eternal decree of god. (However again, this may be an unconscious admission, for the same argument could be lobbed at Spinoza).

To anyone who attacked Spinoza's impersonal view of god, he offered them an argument straight from Xenophanes that if a triangle could pray, his god would have three sides. Yet again, this sword had two edges, one reserved for Spinoza himself, the man who sought to comprehend god, and then found the most comprehendable god of all.

Spinoza states:

Neither the intellect, nor the will, pertains to the nature of God. The "will" and "intellect" of god are the sum of all causes and all laws. Neither mind nor matter is god, for God is behind both.

Is the mental process the cause of bodily action, or is body action the cause of the idea. Or are both providentially parallel as Liebnitz proposes? Spinoza rejects all three arguments, for he rejects the duality itself. The decision of the mind and the desire of the body are one. All ideas have correlate in the body, but this process is bidirectional because they are one - the body is extended material just as the idea is "extended" mental existence of the universal substance.

Spinoza rejected willpower and free will, seeing instead that universal law dictated all action. Where Descartes saw design, Spinoza saw determinism. Spinoza felt that desire sprung from the instinct for survival, whose cause is actually deep within us and unthinking. We are driven by it to the point that we believe it is our will:

"We do not desire things because they give us pleasure, but they give us pleasure because we desire them. and desire them, we must. Men think themselves free because they are conscious of their volition and desires, but are ignorant of their causes by which they are led to wish and desire.

"Since human actions obey laws as fixed as those as geometry, psychology should be studied in geometrical form, and with mathematial objectivity. I will write about human beings a though I were concerned with lines and planes and solids. ... I look upon passions not as vices of human nature, but as properties (and forces)"

Will Durant notes that there are three main conceptions of ethics: the feminine virtues of equality, democracy and love as personified in Jesus, the masculine virtues of inequality, dictatorships and power personied in Machiavelli (and later, Nietzsche) and finally the ethics of Socrates and Plato, which combine aristocracy and democracy, and identify virtue with intelligence.

Spinoza attempts to synthesize all three.

Spinoza begins his study of ethics by stating that happiness is the goal of conduct, which he defined no differently than the mechanists, or the later utilitarians did as the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain. But we can already guess that Spinoza would find pain and pleasure as relative, and not absolutes. They are also transitory, by nature. All passions are passages, he notes.

By emotion I understand the modifications of the body by which the power of action in the body is increased or diminished, aided or restrained, and at the same time the ideas of these modifications.

A passion or an emotion is bad or good not in itself, but only as it decreaes or enhances our virture. Spinoza dos not ask a man to sacrifice himself to another's good, in this he is kinder than nature. he thiks that egoism is a neceesary corollary of the instinct of self preservation: no one ever neglects anyonthing which he judges to be good, except with the hope of gaining a greater good"

Spinoza builds ethics not on altruism, or self interest, but on the egoism that stems from self preservation. A system of morals that teaches man to be weak is worthless; the foundation of virtue is no other than the effort to maintain one's being, and man's happiness consists in the power of doing so.

Are you surprised to hear a foreshadowing of Nietzsche in Spinoza? You'll be further stunned to hear that Spinoza equally disdained humility - he felt it hypocrisy, for it implies the absence of power. Spinoza noted that true humility was actually near to non existent - he noted that as Cicero once said, "even the philosophers who write books in praise of humility make sure to put their names on the title page." Spinoza postulated that "One who despises himself is the nearest to a proud man" By stating that a conscious virtue works to correct a secret vice, he was taking on a psychoanalytical explanation of narcissim!

Spinoza's embracing of the Nietzchian side of morals is not the totality of his moral view, for again, Spinoza is a synthesizer, attempting to include the best of each view of morality. This is why Spinoza next sought to take ideas that Nietzsche would have reviled, and included them in his moral equation.

Spinoza saw that the words "love thy enemy" made logical sense. he saw that love tends to beget love, while hate needs more hate to constantly refuel it. He saw hate as an indicator of weakness, a sign that there is something more important within ourselves that we need to address: "To hate is to acknowledge our inferiority and our fear, we do not hate a foe that we are confident to overcome."

Finally, while Spinoza accepts the message of the Galilean, he does not do it on Galilean terms. He does so in Socratic terms. "The endeavor to understand (our enemy) is the only basis of virtue.) He provided yet another cogent warning to us:

"We think we are most ourselves when we are most passionate, whereas it is then we are the most passsive, caught in some ancestral torrent of impulse and swept on to a precipitate reaction which meets only part of the situation because without thought, only part of a sitaution can be perceived.

"Passion is an inadequate idea, thought is response delayed til every vital angle of a problem has been aroused a correlative reaction, only then the is the idea adequate, the response all that it can be. The instincts are magnificent as a driving force, but dangerous as guides; for by what we may call the individualism of the instincts, each of them seeks it sown fulfilmen, regarldess of the godo fo the whole personality - we become appendages of the instinct that has mastered us."

In this part of Spinoza's take on morals, he sounds like the student of Socrates that he is - all would do the "good" (examine the universal laws) if we could simply knew the good. To be ourselves, we must complete ourselves. But he goes past merely harkening back to Socrates in that he attempts to weld together a moral sense that requires both passion and reason. Passion without reason is blind, but reason without passion is dead. We need our emotions, for "(a)n emotion can neither be hindered nor removed except by a contrary and stronger emotion..." Yet, these contrary emotions can be refined, informed, by reason: "A passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form aa clear and distinct idea of it, and the mind is subject to passions in proportion to the number of adequate ideas which it has. All appetites are passions only so far as they arise from inadequate ideas, they are virtues... when generated by adequate ideas. In the end, there is no virtue but intelligence."

Durant notes that Spinoza's ethics are connected to his metaphysics, just as reason is called upon to make order out of the chaotic flux of things in the world, reason is called upon to so there is also a need for reason to make internal rules of law for the chaotic flux of desires, and in doing so, we make ourselves fit into the eternal law of the universe. Reason allows us imagination of things better, which otherwise, as non existent entities in our present reality, would have no play upon the immediate emotions. The greatest challenge, of course, is the superior vividness of present emotions as compared to projected memories. By imagination and reason we turn experience into forsight, we become creators of our future, and casee to be slaves of the past. We become free. We become more godlike, if you will. Spinoza writes:

We are free only where we know. To be great is not to be placed above humanity, ruling others, but to stand above the partialities and futilities of uniformed desire, and to rule one's self.

There is no free will in Spinoza's system, but this does not free man from responsibility in morals. In fact, Spinoza held that determinism makes for a better moral life, "...it teaches us not to despite or ridicule anyone, or be angry with anyone, men are "not guilty"; and though we punish miscreants, it will be without hate; we forgive them because they know not what they do." Those with low morals are unconscios of themselves, to be conscious of one's self is the road to morality and personal betterment. Our actions are determined by what we know of ourselves, the less we know, the more dangerous we are, to ourselves and to others.

This awareness that mens' actions are determined by their memories, goads us all to ensure that society works to educate everyone, to the best of their abilities, and instills hope and reduces fear, for these are the motivations for actions.

Lastly, Spinoza's moral sense takes on a stoic nature, as he teaches us that a deterministic universe fortifies us to expect and to bear both facrs of fortune with an equal mind: wre remember that all things follow by the eternal decres of god. God is no capricious personality absored in the private affairs of his devotees, but the invariable sustaining order of the universe. Durant quotes Nietzsche by saying "That which is necessary, does not offend me."

Religion and Immortality

One might surmise that Spinoza does not believe in a personal immortality. In fact, Spinoza felt individual separateness was illustionary. This certainly was why, as he said, "the greatest good is the knowledge of the union which the mind has with the whole of nature." for only in this do we tear away the illusion and meld with the essence of existence. "The more we conceive things, the more eternal our thought is." Yes, mind go on, for it shares essence with the eternal mind, but personal memory dies with the body.

Spinoza also rejected the concept of heavenly rewards.

Those are far astray from a true estimate of virtue who expect for their virtue, as if it were the greatest slavery; that God will adorn them with the greatest rewards; as if virtue and the serving of God were not happiness itself and the greatest liberty. And from Proposition XLII: "Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but the virtue itself."

What about religion's supposed utility as a means to control the masses? Spinoza was also swift to destroy the Platonic conception of religion as a "necessary lie" required to reign in the impulses of the masses. The fear here is based on the assumption that if man were to learn that he were not immortal - that he was not in line to win the reward of eternal bliss in return for acting good (not being good, of course, for all is pretense - since this behavior stems only out of a desire to win a reward) that man would seek to quench his most violent and lustful desires, unabatted by fear of hellfire. Spinoza writes:

Such a course appears to me no less absurd than if a man, because he does not believe that he can by wholesome food sustain his body forever, should wish to cram himself with poisons, or if, because he sees the mind is not immortal, he should prefer to be out of his mind altogether, and to live without the use of reason; these ideas are so absurd as to be scarcely worth refuting.

We now move on to Spinoza's last great work.

The Political Treatise

Much of this work was written in response to the absolutism of Hobbes as seen in his work Theory of Government".

All political philosophy must grow out of a distinction between the natural and the moral order. Spinoza, like Rousseau after him, supposes that men once lived in comparative isolation without any conceptions of right or wrong other than "might makes right", and "Whatever I desire is what is good."

Spinoza makes a great point about the lawlessness of nature by pointing to lawlessness between nation states. "There is no altruism amongst nations, for there can be law and morality only where there is an accepted organization, a common and recognized authority." The rights of states now are really no different than the rights of individuals were - might makes right.

What brings men together then? Spinoza holds that man is terrorized by lonliness, because in solitude, no one is strong enough to defend himself against other men, or nature. To guard against this danger, man must join forces with other men. Men are not by nature equipped for the mutual forebearance of social order; but danger begets association, which gradually nourishes and strengthens the social intincts: "Men are not born for citizenship, but must be made to fit for it." Spinoza states that men are individualistic rebels at heart - social instincts being far weaker than individual interests. Conscience is deposited into our psyches through moral traditions of the group, so that society can make an ally in the heart of its enemy - the naturally individualistic personality.

Might still makes right, but the might of the whole limits the might of the individual. We abandon the right to fly into angry violence, but are protected from the angry violence of others. We surrender a part of our personal power, but in return recieve the freedom of safety. Just as in metaphysics, reason is the perception of godlike order in the universe, and ethics is the establishment of order among desires, so too is politics the establishment of order amongst men. The perfect state would withdraw no liberty except to add a greater one. The end of a state should be liberty.

What then, of laws that stifle freedom? Spinoza tells us to obey such laws, provided that reasonable protest and free speech are left to secure a peaceful change. Freedom of thought and speech both in civl and religious matters are essential to the well being of both the church and the state. Only where free speech itself is threatened, is there a need to rebel against the state, for laws against free speech are subversive of all law - men cannot respect laws that they may not criticize:

The more government strives to curtail freedom of speech, the more obstinately is it resisted by those whom good education, sound morality and virute have rendered more free. ... Laws which can be broken without any wrong to one's neighbor are coutned but a laughing-stock, ...laws restraining the appetites and lusts (only) heighten them.

(For stating this, Spinoza's work was placed on the forbidden list by the Catholic church.)

There are defects to democracy, however, and some of the defects that Spinoza was concerned with seem eerily prescient. First, he was concerned that democratically elected leaders might try to subvert the power of the people through secret diplomacy:

It has been the one song of those who thirst for power that the interest of the state requires that its affairs should be conducted in secret. ... But the more such arguments disguise themselves under the mask of public welfare, the more oppresive is the slavery to which they will lead. ... Better that right counsels be known to enemies that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the people.

It is unfortunate that we don't have any of Spinoza's remedies for these concerns, because it was during this chapter that he died.

In brief: Spinoza relied on the Ontological Proof for God's existence, because he felt he required that 'certainty' in order to have the confidence necessary to make other deductions about reality. But God to him was no different than the scientists assumption of order and universality of natural laws. God was merely natural law. Like Newton, Spinoza returned to the philosophical idea of emanation. Because God is inherent in all things, it is the law that orders all existence. God's activity in the world is revealed in mathematical principles, not revelation. Yet, this should bring us a greater sense of awe than any anthropomorphic deity could ever bring.

Assessment: Hegel once wrote that "to be a philosopher, one must first be a Spinozist." Ernest Renan stated that "the truest vision one ever had of god, came from Spinoza." Along with his brilliant view of reality comes also his heroic personage - all through his life he remained devoted to truth - risking excommunication in this youth, and much later, rejecting university honors, lest the university seek to edit what he wrote. In both cases, he gave up much to remain devoted to freedom of thought.

Special thanks to Will Durant's History of Philosophy, and Karen Armstrong's Á History of God, for the additional sources for this entry. Check out Spinoza Net for more on Baruch Spinoza