Spinoza: Lecture One

 

1. Born 1632.  Amsterdam.  Son of Jewish Marrano immigrants from Portugal.  These were Jews who had converted to Christianity under pressure from Spain and/or Portugal, but who upon emigrating to the Netherlands converted back to Judaism.  Spinoza’s father was a merchant.  Spinoza was named Baruch, which means blessed, i.e., Benedict.  He had a Jewish upbringing, going to the local Jewish school until he was around 14 years old.  Apparently, Spinoza did not do the advanced studies that would lead to the rabbinate, but instead went into his father’s business, and then when his father died in 1654, he was in business with his brother.

• Spinoza’s native language would have been Portuguese.  He obviously learned Hebrew as a religious language—and eventually even wrote (though did not finish) a grammar of Hebrew.  The cultural language of Marrano immigrants in the Netherlands was actually Spanish.  But Spinoza’s famous works are written in Latin.  No doubt he knew Dutch as well.
• We don’t know much about Spinoza’s early life.  One biographer speculates as follows.  Spinoza read the Jewish theologians, especially Moses Maimonedes (explain).  But was not satisfied.  Instead of pursuing his academic studies in a Jewish setting, he opted for the commercial life, which put him in touch with various non-conservative thinkers like Mennonite merchants, who were interested in Descartes.  Eventually, Spinoza would learn Latin—it’s not clear when exactly this happened—at the school of Franciscus Van den Enden, a gentile of rather unorthodox theological views.  Van den Enden wrote a pamphlet which was quite similar to Spinoza’s metaphysics.
• Eventually, Spinoza was excommunicated—1656.  The text of the excommunication mentions both his wrong opinions and his lack of Jewish practice.  It’s interesting to note that Spinoza later defended himself on the grounds that the details of Jewish practice are not important.  A view like that would have put him strongly at odds with Jewish orthodoxy, because rabbinical Judaism holds that the practice is much more important than details of belief.
• Upon excommunication, the civil authorities kicked S. out of Amsterdam.  Eventually, this civil penalty was removed.
• Spinoza deeply studied Descartes and wrote on him.  He wrote several philosophical and political works, including a political treatise arguing for a state that is religiously tolerant.
• Among other contributions, Spinoza was interested in biblical interpretation.  He held that the right way to interpret the Bible was by scientifically examining the original language, history, etc.  Interestingly, he did not think that philosophy entered into this interpretation, in the way that various thinkers before him thought.  Probably his reason for this was that he did not think the Bible was divinely inspired.  For if the Bible is divinely inspired, then its meaning will have to agree with the true philosophy—thus Moses Maimonedes, for instance, argued.  But since Spinoza can just say that the Bible is plain wrong—though he is too cautious to say that in those words no doubt—he doesn’t need to bring his philosophy to bear on the interpretation.
• We do not quite know what Spinoza lived on.  He probably got some money from friends.  He did work as a lens-grinder, but this may have been only for scientific instruments, and may not have been very remunerative.
• Some of Spinoza’s works provoked vituperation from his contemporaries, mainly due to his views of religion.
• Spinoza was too cautious to publish the Ethics in his lifetime.  It was published posthumously.  He died in 1677 at age 54.  Important people showed up to his funeral.
• Spinoza’s followers did not so much go into philosophy, as the practice of science.  This is quite compatible with Spinoza’s ideals.

2. Spinoza’s approach is geometrical, that is modeled on the reasoning in geometry.  Euclid defined various terms, provided axioms, and everything else was to be proved from the axioms and definitions.

• How do we prove the axioms?  Obviously, we can’t.  For if we could, then, as Aristotle noted, the proof of the axioms would start with other axioms and so on ad infinitum. 
• So the axioms are assumed.  There are two approaches one can take to this.  The first is that they are just assumed.  Thus, all that one’s proofs entitle one to say is that such and such conclusion follows from such and such axioms.  But they don’t entitle one to say that the conclusion is true—only that it would be true if the axioms were true.  This is a common contemporary mathematical approach to things like the axioms of Euclidean geometry.  We know the axioms of Euclidean geometry aren’t quite true of space, but when we say that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees, we mean simply that if the axioms are true, then the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. 
• But this isn’t going to be Spinoza’s approach.  Rather, Spinoza thinks that the axioms are in fact true.  The axioms can’t be proved, of course.  But they are supposed to be self-evident, in the sense that they provide evidence for themselves.  If we look at the axioms, we will simply see that they are correct.
• The definitions are a somewhat different mater.  In the definitions, Spinoza defines various traditional philosophical terms, and sometimes the definitions are pretty close to traditional definitions and sometimes very distant.
• The most distant is the notion of an attribute.

3. The central notion here is that of a substance.  A substance is something which is in itself and conceived through itself.  Thus, to conceive of or understand a substance, we do not need to conceive of anything other than that substance.  (Spinoza is going to identify conceiving of something with understanding it.)  To conceive of strength, you have to conceive of someone who is strong.  But this someone is different from her strength, and hence to conceive of strength, you must conceive of something else.  Or consider the notion of a queen.  To conceive of a queen requires that we conceive of a body of people whom the queen rules.  We cannot know what a queen is like in isolation, since the concept makes no sense.  Thus, a queen as such is not a substance.  Traditionally, monarchies distinguish the person of the queen from her office.  The person might be conceivable, we might think (though Spinoza will deny), in isolation from everything else.  I can arguably understand Elizabeth Windsor without understanding anything outside her (though Spinoza will disagree).  But I cannot understand Queen Elizabeth II in this way: to understand who Queen Elizabeth II is, I must understand the legal institutions that installed her as queen, and I must understand who her subjects are.

• Contrasted with substance is the notion of a mode or affection of substance.  This is something that we understand through understanding something else.  Thus, Queen Elizabeth II is a mode of the British political system (or of something further) and of Elizabeth Windsor—we need to understand the British political system and Elizabeth Windsor to understand what it is to be Queen Elizabeth II.
• Note that there is no reason why there can’t be affections of affections.  Thus, we can think of the Queen’s executive power and say that this executive power is an affection of the Queen whereas the Queen is an affection of the British political system.  We can’t understand the executive power without understanding the Queen, and we can’t understand the Queen without understanding the British political system.
• A central notion is that of an attribute.  Normally, the word just means: Something that a substance has.  But that is not Spinoza’s sense of the word.  Rather, an attribute is a characterization of a substance’s essence.  Spinoza doesn’t actually tell us here what an essence is.  Traditionally, an essence is what specifies the most basic features of something, the features which are both necessary and sufficient for its being what it is.  Thus, it might be that the essence of the human being is being a rational animal. 
• Recall Leibniz’s views here.  According to Leibniz, the only essence there is of something is its complete individual concept.
• Spinoza leaves open the possibility that something might have more than one attribute—more than one complete characterization.
• When I conceive of B through A, I am explaining B through A.  I conceive of the Queen through the British political system—thus, I am explaining the Queen’s existence or nature through the existence or nature of the British political system.
• Axiom 2 says that if something cannot be conceived through something else, then it must be conceived through itself.  This is a statement of the Principle of Sufficient Reason: If something has no explanation outside itself, then it must have an explanation in itself.  In other words, Spinoza does not allow for the possibility that something might have no explanation at all—that it might be entirely inconceivable.

4. This said, let’s jump into Spinoza’s arguments.  What I am going to give is my version of the arguments for some of the propositions you read.

Proposition 2.  Two substances having different attributes have nothing in common.

•   Suppose that we had two substances with different attributes, Bob and Jane, say.  Suppose they have something in common, call it X.  To conceive of Bob, I must conceive of this X.  But this X is also in Jane.  Thus, in conceiving of Bob, I am conceiving of something in Jane.  Now, to understand this X, I must understand what it is in, namely Jane.  That is what it means for Spinoza to say one thing is another: X is in Jane if to understand X, I must understand Jane.  Now, I understand Jane by understanding her attribute.  But her attribute is different from any of Bob’s.  Thus, to understand Bob, I must understand X, and to understand X, I must understand an attribute of Jane, and this attribute is not an attribute of Bob.  Thus, I cannot fully understand Bob without understanding something outside him--an attribute of Jane.  But this contradicts the definition of substance.

Proposition 3.  If A causes B, then A and B have something in common.

•   If they have nothing in common then by Axiom 5, I cannot understand one through the other.  But I can undersand the effect through the cause (Axiom 4).

Proposition 4. Two things are distinguished either by the attributes of substances or by the affections of substances.

•   The only things that existence are substances and their affections.  And substances are defined by their attributes.  So that’s all that’s available to distinguish things by.

Proposition 5. Two substances can’t share an attribute.

•   If two substances share an attribute, then they must be distinguished by their affections (Prop. 4).  But the substance can be understood apart from its affections--otherwise it wouldn’t be substance.

•   Query: Why can’t they share one attribute but be distinguished by another?  For then the one attribute they share would not completely express the nature of the substance.

Proposition 6. A substance can’t produce a substance.

•   If a substance produced another, it would have something in common with it.  (Proposition 3.)  By Proposition 2, what they would have in common is an attribute.  But by Proposition 5, two substances can’t share an attribute.

Proposition 7. It is part of the very nature of substance to exist.

•   Substance has no cause outside of itself.  Thus, by the PSR (Axiom 2--this isn’t Spinoza’s exact argument), substance must be self-explanatory.

Proposition 11. God, a substance having infinite attributes each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, exists.

•   God’s nature, like that of every substance, involves existence.  Hence, God exists.  (Standard ontological argument.  Note how S. doesn’t here feel the need to prove the possibility of God like L. does.  S. assumes we have a fine adequate concept of God.)

•   There is an explanation for every fact.  (Not one of Spinoza’s axioms.  Axiom 2 only says this for things, not facts.)  So if God doesn’t exist, there is an explanation of this non-existence.  The explanation is either external to God or internal.  But a substance other than God would have nothing in common with God and hence couldn’t annul him--for then he (or more precisely his non-existence) would be involved in the other substance.  Nor can there be anything in God that would prevent him from existing.  For then God’s nature would be self-contradictory--only a self-contradictory being can be proved from its own nature not to exist.  This is a version of an argument of Duns Scotus.  Duns Scotus argued that the argument works even with a weaker version of the PSR, the claim that every fact can have an explanation, even if it doesn’t have it.  But the non-existence of God cannot have an explanation, Blessed Duns argues.

•   If God didn’t exist, then finite things would be more powerful than God.  But this is absurd.