Spinoza's arguments in the "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" are almost throughout connected either by way of agreement or opposition with those of Maimonides on the same topics. One of the main objects of the book is to show the contradictory nature of statements in the Scriptures, and Spinoza speaks with contempt of the efforts of the Rabbis to reconcile them. He is no doubt here referring to the most important work of his teacher Manasseh b. Israel the "Conciliador." In his chapter on prophecy Spinoza differs from Maimonides in regarding the work of a prophet as being due almost entirely to imagination, which can not, like reason, give rise to truth. Spinoza does an injustice in stating that Maimonides regards angels as existing only in dreams, which was partly due to a misreading in the edition of Maimonides used by him; this again is one of the test questions leading to his excommunication. The criterion of a true revelation selected by Spinoza—the vividness of the prophetic vision—is that used by Crescas ("Or Adonai," II. iv. 3), and both thinkers used the same example, that of Hananiah. Spinoza's view of the selection of the Israelites, that they exceeded other nations neither in learning nor in piety, but in political and social salvation, places him in opposition to both Maimonides and Crescas. He here attributes the preservation of the Jews to their rites ("Tractatus Theologico-Politicus," iii. 53), but sees no reason why they should not once again become an independent nation (ib. iii. 55). In his discussion of ceremonies Spinoza declares that they are no longer binding on Jews or others, and were put into force only through the influence of the Rabbis and other ecclesiastical authorities. In opposing belief in miracles, as he does in the sixth chapter of the "Tractatus," Spinoza has in mind the examples and arguments of both Maimonides and Gersonides; in the remaining part Spinoza outlines what was later known as the "higher criticism," and anticipates in a somewhat remarkable manner some of the results of the school of Kuenen and Wellhausen, declaring, for example, that the Law was introduced, if not written, by Ezra. Many of the examples of inconsistency in the Pentateuch here cited were those familiar to Spinoza from Abraham ibn Ezra (see pentateuch). Spinoza throughout argued against the connection of creed with citizenship, claiming liberty of thought, and to that extent pleading the cause of his own people; but in reality the book is an expansion in Latin of his former apologia written in Spanish for withdrawing from Jewish communion, and is opposed to ecclesiasticism of all Kinds. Hence the violence of the opposition which it found in the age of ecclesiasticism.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
His Philosophy
It has been both asserted and denied that the thoughts developed in Spinoza's short life of forty-four years, and put forth anonymously after his death with such remarkable influence on the history of European speculation for at least the last one hundred and fifty years, were derived in large measure from his Jewish training and reading. The question is a very difficult one to decide, owing to the close-linked chain of Spinoza's thought, which he designedly made in his "Ethics" a continuous course of reasoning, each proposition being dependent upon the preceding, exactly after the manner of Euclid. In order to determine the extent of his Jewish indebtedness it is necessary, therefore, to attempt some slight sketch of his whole system. Apart from this object it deserves such exposition as the most influential body of doctrine ever produced by a Jew since Philo.
The key to Spinoza's philosophic system is to be found in his method of investigation as indicated in the fragmentary "De Intellectus Emendatione." Finding that none of the ordinary objects of man's desire—wealth, power, and the like—affords permanent satisfaction, Spinoza came to the conclusion that only the attainment of truth gives that increase of power and accompanying joy which can be described as true happiness or sal vation. Turning to the search for truth, he found the powers of the mind to be of a treble nature, each particular function yielding knowledge of various degrees of adequacy: (1) imagination, yielding only confused and inadequate ideas; (2) reason, giving the essences of things, and (3) intuition, disclosing the fundamental principles uniting those essences into a system and connecting individual things with those principles. The logical foundation of his whole system lies in the denial of the validity of all relative propositions, leaving the Absolute as the sole reality of the universe. On this see B. Russell, "Principles of Mathematics" (p. 448, Cambridge, 1903), which work is so far a justification of Spinoza's method in that it proves the possibility of deducing all the principles of pure mathematics and physics from a certain number of indefinables and indemonstrables. All turns with Spinoza, as with Descartes and the scholastics, on getting true and adequate knowledge of the essences of things. All the essences, when presented to the mind, carry with them a conviction of their own truth, and, as they can not contradict one another, they form a system of truths deduced from one principle as their primary cause. Such a principle can only be God, from whose qualities all the essences of things must flow as a matter of necessity, or, in other words, be "caused," since Spinoza does not distinguish between logical dependence anddynamic causation. In this way his logic passes over into his metaphysics, and in attempting to determine the cause of things, from the contemplation of which he is to obtain salvation, Spinoza has to determine the essences of things and their relation to the Highest Reality.
Spinoza's Ethics
Spinoza's Ethics is a remarkable work in two regards:
First, it is written in an unusual style - patterned after Euclid's Geometry with Definitions, Axioms, and Propositions. The definitions are stipulated definitions of key terms used in the work. These definitions do not purport to explain ordinary uses of the words, only to specify how they are being used in the present text.
III. By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself; in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception.
IV. By attribute, I mean that which the intellect perceives as constituting the essence of substance.
The axioms are statements about the key terms and are given as self-evident.
I. Everything which exists, exists either in itself or in something else.
II. That which cannot be conceived through anything else must be conceived through itself.
The propositions are statements that follow from the definitions, axioms and other propositions.
PROP. II. Two substances whose attributes are different have nothing in common.
Proof.--Also evident from Def. iii. For each must exist in itself, and be conceived through itself; in other words, the conception of one does not imply the conception of the other.
The result is a text that provides all of its own evidence. Every statement in the book has a clearly identified set of arguments (proofs) given for it. Sometimes when you read a technical or old text, the very language can be a challenge to overcome. With Spinoza, the main technical terms are explicitly defined. The challenge of Ethics is to follow the lines of thought directly and grasp how each point is constructed from the foundations laid in the definitions and axioms.
The second remarkable aspect of Ethics is the striking conclusions Spinoza derives in it. Most of the work revolves around his conception of God.
VI. By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite--that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.
See Def.III above for the term "substance" and Def.IV for the term "attribute." Put all these together, and you have a concise picture of Spinoza's concept of God. This is significant because by his system of proofs, Spinoza derives the following conclusions (among others):
There can only be one substance in existence. That substance is God and everything that exists is part of that substance. God is nature.
God has infinite attributes, of which only two, thought and spatial extension can be known by us. The universe that we apprehend is but a limited portion of the whole.
This leads from an investigation of the structure of reality to practical propositions about how we should think about life and how we may best live it.
· Human beings are in a state of bondage, so long as they act solely from emotions.
· Freedom can be attained by understanding out own emotional processes and rationally conforming to the conditions of human existence - an acceptance of the world as it is.
On the one hand, Spinoza's reasoning builds a case against popular religion (e.g. Christianity, Judaism, Islam) as a mere reflection of human imagination. On the other hand, Spinoza's philosophy is constructive of an alternate spiritual view. The picture of God/Nature as a whole system of which we individual humans are parts, is an attractive idea for many.
Biography
Benedict De Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632. He lived to the age of 42. Spinoza's father was a successful merchant, which enabled him to give Spinoza the best education.
In the Jewish community, it was assumed that Spinoza would become a leader of the community, and that he would possibly become a rabbi. As Spinoza showed brilliance in his learning skills, he became dissatisfied with the conventional and orthodox methods of teachings.
Around the age of 16, Spinoza became aware of the advanced thoughts and ideas of Descartes, Bacon, and other scholars who he studied fervently. Of course, the ideas and thoughts of these scholars were outside the beliefs and teachings of the Jewish community.
At the age of 21, Spinoza was excommunicated from the Jewish community because he could no longer follow or accept the Jewish customs and rigid beliefs. After studying Descartes and others, he began to develop his own philosophy. Spinoza began to see the possibilities for man as a being with a mind that has clear and distinct ideas. Spinoza believed that freedom comes from the understanding and the love of God, and that this love would free us from all emotions, which are passions that can lead to our ruin.
What has challenged the so called educators, even to this day, is that Spinoza proved that everything revolves around two of God's attributes, " THOUGHT AND EXTENSION," which are only two of an infinite number of attributes that express God's essence. The attribute of extension follows all the laws that govern and flow from HIS nature. Subsequently, Spinoza proves that there is no such thing as free will, and that everything that exists and happens can be explained by understanding the laws and the causes of things.
Spinoza lived his philosophy, and whoever had the honor to meet Spinoza came away with the understanding that he lived his life with a love of God and a love of human nature, and that he was a man who lived by the highest principles.Thursday, December 4, 2008
The Modern philosophy
Modern philosophy is philosophy done in Europe and North America between the 17th and early 20th centuries. It is not a specific doctrine or school, (and so should not be confused with Modernism) although there are certain assumptions common to much of it, which helps to distinguish it from earlier philosophy.
The 17th and early 20th centuries roughly mark the beginning and the end of modern philosophy. How much if any of the Renaissance it should include is a matter for dispute; likewise modernity may or may not have ended in the twentieth century and been replaced by post-modernity. How one decides these questions will determine the scope of one's use of "modern philosophy". The convention, however, is to refer to philosophy of the Renaissance prior to Rene Descartes as "Early Modern Philosophy" (leaving open whether that puts it just inside or just outside the boundary) and to refer to twentieth-century philosophy, or sometimes just philosophy since Wittgenstein, as "Contemporary Philosophy" (again, leaving open whether or not it is still modern). This article will focus on the history of philosophy beginning from Descartes through the early twentieth century ending in Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Modern Philosophy's Beginings
Things began to get better: The economy improved; There was a return to building, cathedrals, universities, cities...; a return to “luxuries” -- paper, plays, music...; a return to invention -- the compass, printing...; a return to exploration -- Africa, the New World, the Pacific.... It was the renaissance, which we date (roughly!) from 1400 to 1600 or so. They were vigorous times, interesting times, dangerous times!The aristocracy had won the day over the fledgling monarchies and even the church’s heavy hand, at least for now. So there were just tons of these upper-crust types, often with lots of money, totally in love with the idea of themselves. Religious and other thinkers were freed, to one extent or another, from the powerful central authority of the church to create their own, very reasonable or totally outlandish, religious philosophies. And merchants found that money can buy almost anything, including the traditional respect that the aristocracy received. In fact, aristocratic title and merchant wealth were a perfect combination for a good marriage! These aristocrats and merchants believed in the "perfectibility" of mankind: We could become better human beings! Most importantly, we could become more powerful, richer -- more aristocratic, if you will. Much attention was paid to behaving like a gentleman or a lady, as reflected, for example, in Baldesar Castiglione’s guide to proper conduct, The Book of the Courtier. They were practical, interested in real events and real people in the real world. Individualistic and competitive (and very “dog eat dog”), they liked their politics, and they like to play rough. But, they were also anti-intellectual, even cocky in their ignorance. They tended to think of scholars as dry, impractical types, who might be able to forecast eclipses, but probably couldn’t tie their own shoes, much less make money or run estates! And they were superstitious, spiritualistic, fascinated by astrology, ancient Egypt, the Kabbalah, alchemy, magic -- a Renaissance version of our “New Age” movement. Two events in particular stand out as representative of the renaissance: The first was printing. Johann Gutenberg (c 1400-1467) of Mainz invented the printing press and movable type, and printed the Gutenberg Bible in 1455. The second was the discovery of the New World, which meant lots of gold and silver and a stoked-up international economy, as well as an outlet for those discontented with life in Europe (“Lebensraum” -- room to live, as the Germans call it). This, of course, is usually credited to Christopher Columbus (1451-1506).
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Biography
René Descartes, often called the father of modern philosophy, attempted to break with the philosophical traditions of his day and start philosophy anew. Rejecting the Aristotelian philosophy of the schools, the authority of tradition and the authority of the senses, he built a philosophical system that included a method of inquiry, a metaphysics, a mechanistic physics and biology, and an account of human psychology intended to ground an ethics. Descartes was also important as one of the founders of the new analytic geometry, which combines geometry and algebra, and whose certainty provided a kind of model for the rest of his philosophy. After an education in the scholastic and humanistic traditions, Descartes’ earliest work was mostly in mathematics and mathematical physics, in which his most important achievements were his analy>tical geometry and his discovery of the law of refraction in optics. In this early period he also wrote his unfinished treatise on method, the Rules for the Direction of the Mind , which set out a procedure for investigating nature, based on the reduction of complex problems to simpler ones solvable by direct intuition. From these intuitively established foundations, Descartes tried to show how one could then attain the solution of the problems originally posed. Descartes abandoned these methodological studies by 1628 or 1629, turning first to metaphysics, and soon afterwards to an orderly exposition of his physics and biology in The World. But this work was overtly Copernican in its cosmology, and when Galileo was condemned in 1633, Descartes withdrew The World from publication; it appeared only after his death. Descartes’ mature philosophy began to appear in 1637 with the publication of a single volume containing theGeometry, Dioptrics and Meteors, three essays in which he presented some of his most notable scientific results, preceded by the Discourse on the Method, a semi-autobiographical introduction that outlined his approach to philosophy and the full system into which the specific results fit. In the years following, he published a series of writings in which he set out his system in a more orderly way, beginning with its metaphysical foundations in theMeditations (1641), adding his physics in the Principles of Philosophy (1644), and offering a sketch of the psychology and moral philosophy in the Passions of the Soul (1649). In our youth, Descartes held, we acquire many prejudices which interfere with the proper use of our reason. Consequently, later we must reject everything we believe and start anew. Hence the Meditations begins with a series of arguments intended to cast doubt upon everything formerly believed, and culminating in the hypothesis of an all-deceiving evil genius, a device to keep former beliefs from returning. The rebuilding of the world begins with the discovery of the self through the ‘Cogito Argument’ (‘I am thinking, therefore I exist’) – a self known only as a thinking thing, and known independently of the senses. Within this thinking self, Descartes discovers an idea of God, an idea of something so perfect that it could not have been caused in us by anything with less perfection than God Himself. From this he concluded that God must exist which, in turn, guarantees that reason can be trusted. Since we are made in such a way that we cannot help holding certain beliefs (the so-called ‘clear and distinct’ perceptions), God would be a deceiver, and thus imperfect, if such beliefs were wrong; any mistakes must be due to our own misuse of reason. This is Descartes’ famous epistemological principle of clear and distinct perception. This central argument in Descartes’ philosophy, however, is threatened with circularity – the Cartesian Circle – since the arguments that establish the trustworthiness of reason (the Cogito Argument and the argument for the existence of God) themselves seem to depend on the trustworthiness of reason. Also central to Descartes’ metaphysics was the distinction between mind and body. Since the clear and distinct ideas of mind and body are entirely separate, God can create them apart from one another. Therefore, they are distinct substances. The mind is a substance whose essence is thought alone, and hence exists entirely outside geometric categories, including place. Body is a substance whose essence is extension alone, a geometric object without even sensory qualities like colour or taste, which exist only in the perceiving mind. We know that such bodies exist as the causes of sensation: God has given us a great propensity to believe that our sensations come to us from external bodies, and no means to correct that propensity; hence, he would be a deceiver if we were mistaken. But Descartes also held that the mind and body are closely united with one another; sensation and other feelings, such as hunger and pain, arise from this union. Sensations cannot inform us about the real nature of things, but they can be reliable as sources of knowledge useful to maintaining the mind and body unity. While many of Descartes’ contemporaries found it difficult to understand how mind and body can relate to one another, Descartes took it as a simple fact of experience that they do. His account of the passions is an account of how this connection leads us to feelings like wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sadness, from which all other passions derive. Understanding these passions helps us to control them, which was a central aim of morality for Descartes. Descartes’ account of body as extended substance led to a physics as well. Because to be extended is to be a body, there can be no empty space. Furthermore, since all body is of the same nature, all differences between bodies are to be explained in terms of the size, shape and motion of their component parts, and in terms of the laws of motion that they obey. Descartes attempted to derive these laws from the way in which God, in his constancy, conserves the world at every moment. In these mechanistic terms, Descartes attempted to explain a wide variety of features of the world, from the formation of planetary systems out of an initial chaos, to magnetism, to the vital functions of animals, which he considered to be mere machines. Descartes never finished working out his ambitious programme in full detail. Though he published the metaphysics and the general portion of his physics, the physical explanation of specific phenomena, especially biological, remained unfinished, as did his moral theory. Despite this, however, Descartes’ programme had an enormous influence on the philosophy that followed, both within the substantial group that identified themselves as his followers, and outside.
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