SPINOZA, BARUCH (BENEDICT)

Jewish philosopher and foremost exponent of rationalism; b. Amsterdam, Nov. 24, 1632; d. The Hague, Feb. 21, 1677. It may have been fear of the Inquisition that caused his grandfather, Abraham, to leave Vidigueira, Portugal, and settle in Holland. The Union of Utrecht had granted the greatest religious freedom to all sects, and Abraham was there able to profess openly the religion of his ancestors. Soon he had acquired the esteem of his coreligionists and a large fortune. His son Michael, the father of Baruch, was principal of the Jewish community school in Amsterdam.

Life and Studies. Details of Baruch's childhood are almost entirely unknown. He lost his mother at the age of six, and in school he showed a lively and open mind. Since his teachers, devoted to the Talmud, could not give satisfactory answers to his religious difficulties, he attempted to probe alone the problem of his eternal destiny. Yet until his father's death (1654), he practiced Judaism faithfully. Then he no longer observed the rituals and began to criticize the various dogmas more and more openly. After vain attempts to bring him back to orthodoxy, religious authorities excommunicated him on July 27, 1656.

Influence of Jewish Philosophy. The notoriety of the excommunication brought Spinoza many admirers and disciples. Under pressure from the synagogue at Ouwerkerk he was banished from the capital but returned some months later to study the great Jewish philosophers. Moses maimonides, who showed him how religion can be formed by reason, made the deepest impression; in fact, Spinoza transcribed long passages of Maimonides's Guide for the Perplexed and presented them as his own. Another philosopher, levi ben gerson, encouraged him to break completely with the tradition of his ancestors—to deny the creation of the world and to explain miracles by the forces of nature. Certain passages of Levi's works may be found almost exactly in Spinoza's Tractatus theologicus-politicus (ch. 2). Hasdai crescas taught Spinoza to conceive of space as an attribute of God and free will as mere immunity from constraint. Leo Ebreo (1463-?), in his doctrine on intellectual love, gave an affective complement to Spinoza's philosophy. Finally Abraham ben Esra (1092–1167) showed him how God may be conceived both as a unity and as a totality in the pantheistic sense.

Other Intellectual Influences. In order to study other philosophers, Spinoza learned Latin under the guidance of Francis van den Enden, who taught him the elements of scholastic philosophy, which he himself had learned in his 14 years as a Jesuit. (Van den Enden was expelled from the Society before ordination because of his errors against the faith; he led an incredibly adventurous life that ended on the gallows in France, under charge of being a political conspirator, in 1674.) Instead of reading the more respected scholastics, however, Spinoza contented himself with manuals by obscure compilators, such as Heerbord and Kekermann. He must have known little of the works of St. thomas aquinas, for he imputes to Thomas ideas he never had. Still less did he know plato and aristotle; for his knowledge of Greek was inadequate, as he himself confessed (Tract. theol.-pol. ch.10), and the Latin translations available were incomplete and imperfect. Of all the systems of classical antiquity, he was most familiar with stoicism, which he could study in cicero and seneca. No doubt the philosopher he knew best was R. descartes, to whom he owed his theory of knowledge, his geometrical method, and his physics.

In an effort to find the meaning of his destiny, Spinoza studied Christianity also. Of its representatives in Holland, he preferred the Mennonites and the Collegiants, who were strongly influenced by rationalism and naturalism. His most intimate friends, most faithful disciples, and best collaborators were of this religious persuasion.

Work and Character. Since he had no source of income, Spinoza began to polish optical glass, a work in which he achieved rare skill. He also painted, but as an amateur. In 1660 he settled in Rijnsburg, but three years later moved to Voorburg, then in 1670 to The Hague, where he remained. These three places became successively the centers of numerous visits paid him by illustrious scholars such as C. Huygens and G. W. leibniz. He led a sober, peaceful, and hardworking life and stoically accepted his suffering from tuberculosis. His virtue, however, did not merit the title of saint that some lavished on him, nor did his vices suggest a comparison with the devil. According to S. von Dunin-Borkowski, Spinoza "had no idea of self-criticism, and so considered himself an infallible oracle; self-sufficiency often made him partial and impolite, and sometimes arrogant and autocratic" [Stimmen aus Maria Laach (1902) 28]. He died in the presence of a doctor who was an intimate friend. The theory of suicide has never been completely proved, although it remains plausible.

Teaching on Truth and Method. The end of philosophy, says Spinoza, is to teach one to form true ideas and to distinguish these infallibly from false or doubtful ideas. But in what does the truth consist? It does not consist in the "correspondence of resemblance" between the idea and its object, since, for example, the idea of a mechanic who has conceived a machine to build is said to be true although the machine does not, and may never, exist. So also the ideas that the mathematician develops are truly independent of all reference to the objective order. Truth is something intrinsic to the idea. In order to grasp truth, man needs a method that does not stop at the periphery of things but penetrates to the interior of the idea and assists at its birth. Such a method is a priori and deductive. Experience as such reaches ideas only through the modifications produced by the exterior object on the senses; thus it gives a mediate, indirect, and relative knowledge. Experience registers facts, describes them, classifies them, and that is all; in sum, it is only a "story." As much can be said of the knowledge given by hearsay or faith.

The philosopher, therefore, should follow the geometric method. To begin with, let him take some self-evident ideas or axioms. Applying these to definitions that he has chosen well and determined well, he then deduces more geometrico propositions whose truth need no longer be questioned. The train of ideas implied in this deduction has nothing to do with the psychological or the physiological trains that are at the basis of the association of ideas by the imagination and the memory. In fact, the knowledge that such association gives is always imperfect and inadequate. It is knowledge of the first degree. General ideas also belong to this degree, including tran scendentals (e.g., being and thing) or universals (e.g., man and horse). Such ideas are only confused agglomerations of sense impressions.

Concept of Being, Substance, and God. To avoid all danger of error, Spinoza built his system starting with the idea of being as the clearest and the simplest available. Such an idea, for him, does not lend itself to approximation or to analogy. It excludes all multiplicity and is unique. As such it does not comply with the traditional division of being into created and uncreated. Considered as the ultimate ground of intelligibility, i.e., as "that whose concept does not require, for its formation, any other concept" (Eth. 1, def. 3), this unique being is at the same time substance.

In virtue of its uniqueness, substance is also infinite since nothing exists to limit it. Infinite as it is in all lines of being, however, substance is known only under two attributes: thought and space.

The relation between substance and God is easily explained by Spinoza. In his view, everyone conceives God as the absolutely infinite being, the substance with infinite attributes (ibid. def. 6). And substance is by its essence unique. Thus God is identical with substance. The universe is God's infinite mode, and the particular things that make up the universe are His finite modes. But although He is extended, God is nonetheless indivisible and simple, because all division produces multiplicity. And the infinite is essentially unique. It cannot degrade itself in a collection of other finite beings. In this way also it is incorporeal, for a body is nothing other than a finite area. The same reasoning shows that God is not a spirit. He is simply thought, whose finite modes are particular human spirits.

As God is infinite in all lines of being, He is also infinite in action. But the effect of this activity remains necessarily within Him, since He exists alone. Thus God is always an immanent, and never a transitive, cause. As a cause He is supremely free; for, existing by Himself, He can suffer no constraint from outside. Just as mathematical properties flow from a triangle in an infallible, eternal way that does not alter its essence, so also an infinitely long and rich train of modes (creatures) proceeds necessarily from God. Thus creation is at the same time free and necessary. The modes of God (e.g., man) cannot be free, since they are determined to be and to act through God-substance.

Notions of Morality and Religion. Philosophers traditionally regard morality as based on two postulates as its sine qua non condition, viz, free will and the existence of moral good. But Spinoza completely rejected free will and considered the notions of good and evil as mere fictions of the imagination. He conceived these only in relation to the end, which for him is only the last term of the activity that is developed independently of man's free will. In Spinoza's view, the moral problem lies in the area of the metaphysics of being. It is transposed into ontological terms: man acts morally well if his action is developed according to the second or third degree of knowledge. Thus also does man deliver himself from the yoke of passions, his dutiful companions at the first degree.

What is commonly called natural law is, for Spinoza, only the manner of being of the individual; it merges with his nature. It extends as far as does his physical power. In the state of nature everything is permitted. However, since men could not live long in anarchy, they had to come to an agreement, to renounce the violence of their individual appetites, and to conform themselves to the will of their chief (Eth. 4.37). All must execute every one of the chief's commands, even the most absurd (Tract. theol.-pol. ch. 16), and he himself is limited by no law. He can command whatever he wills—and in every matter, especially in religious affairs. The whole community belongs to him, as does all that it possesses: land, houses, etc. This explains why Communists feel justified in considering Spinoza as "the father of Bolshevism" (A. Deborin).

In Spinoza's system there is no room for a positive religion, especially not for Christianity. In his view, one could never deduce the truths it teaches mathematically, as from necessary principles. Such truths imply the idea of grace, which, in its turn, is inextricably associated with a supremely free choice. This perhaps explains why historic Christianity seemed to Spinoza a superstition unworthy of discussion.

Critique. A refutation of Spinoza and his philosophy is not difficult. It suffices to examine closely the notions that Spinoza candidly accepted as "clear and distinct" and on which he based his entire metaphysics, viz, truth, methodology, being, and substance. The arguments of centuries weigh heavily against his simplistic solution.

See Also: cartesianism; pantheism; rationalism.

Bibliography: Works. Opera, ed. c. gebhardt, 4 v. (Heidelberg 1924); The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza, tr. r. h. m. elwes, 2 v. (London 1883–84; repr. in 1 v. New York 1951); Spinoza Selections, ed. j. wild (New York 1930); The Principles of Descartes' Philosophy, tr. h. h. britain (Chicago 1905). Studies. f. c. copleston, History of Philosophy (Westminster, MD 1946–) 4:205–263. a. guzzo and v. mathieu, Enciclopedia filosofica (Venice-Rome 1957) 4:873–888. j. d. collins, A History of Modern European Philosophy (Milwaukee 1954) 199–251. p. siwek, Spinoza et le panthéisme religieux (rev. ed. Paris 1950); Au Coeur du spinozisme (Paris 1952); L'Âme et le corps d'après Spinoza (Paris 1930). s. von dunin-borkowski, Der junge De Spinoza (Münster 1910); Spinoza, 2 v. (Münster 1933–36); Spinoza nach dreihundert Jahren (Berlin 1932). h. a. wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza, 2 v. (Cambridge, Mass. 1934; repr. in 1 v. 1948). e. l. schaub, Spinoza: The Man and His Thought (Chicago 1933).

[p. siwek]