I didn’t used to know what I was. If I felt that the term “God” could be applied to something real, but didn’t believe in the supernatural, what was I? Not really an atheist or agnostic. But also not a religious believer. Someone suggested the label “pantheist” and when I read the definition it certainly seemed to fit. Later I read that one of the key exponents of pantheism was the Dutch philosopher Benedict de Spinoza (1632-77). When I read his Wikipedia page I found that his worldview sounded very like my own. Perhaps most importantly, he was a determinist. He didn’t believe in the existence of free will.
The way I put the argument against free will myself is to say that everything is linked by chains of cause and effect which feed back on each other in unthinkably complex ways. Nevertheless, if it were possible to know everything about the past, the future could be predicted. This isn’t possible because it is impossible to know everything about the past. As far as each of us as individuals are concerned, our output, i.e. our behaviour, is determined by our input, i.e. all of the influences which come from outside of us and react with or against each other within us. For some reason, this issue has been very important to me ever since my adolescence when I would argue the point with my mother, who insisted that I was the “captain of my soul”.
Somehow, in my teens I also heard a version of the story of Buridan’s ass (which Spinoza refers to in Book 2 of Ethics). As expressed by French philosopher Jean Buridan, and responded to by Spinoza, it deals with a donkey who is equally hungry and thirsty and positioned equally far from a bale of hay and a bucket of water. In the version I heard he was simply hungry and positioned equally far between two bales of hay. It is a paradox meant to illustrate that determinism is absurd, because, if we simply follow the path of least resistance or the strongest impulse, then, if there is nothing to choose between two courses of action we will be able to chose neither and thus will be paralysed into fatal inaction. The donkey dies of thirst or starvation. I know that I knew this story, because I remember one lunch time at high school screwing up my lunch wrapper and finding myself approximately equidistant between two rubbish bins. “I’m like that donkey,” I said, though I was ultimately able to chose. I was a very strange kid.
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Spinoza sets out to use logic to learn about God, the workings of the mind, the nature of the affects - our emotions and desires, the nature of our bondage to these affects, and how we can liberate ourselves and find blessedness through the intellectual love of God.
I’m not sure how well the logic holds up. Spinoza has a unique way of defining things, for instance, to him, perfection and reality are synonymous. I might tend to think of perfection as an imaginary ideal which cannot be met in reality. But the best thing is to go with him and see where it leads. The overall vision is inspired, and perhaps the formal structure of axioms and propositions along with the unconventional use of terms, can best be conceived less as building blocks for that vision as a technique for breaking the chains of our preconceptions.
Spinoza sticks with the tradition of referring to God as “he” even though it is clear that he is not talking about something with a human personality. For him God and Nature are synonymous. This is “that whose nature cannot be conceived except as existing.” Thus God is eternal, by definition not having the option of not existing. This may seem weird, perhaps a verbal trick. God is eternal because that is how I’ve defined him. But when I was at school they taught us that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So in energy we already accept the existence of something whose definition doesn’t allow for it to cease to exist. We will cease to exist. All matter will cease to exist. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t an essence of which the things which cease to exist are made which is eternal. Spinoza likes to use the concept of the triangle as something unchangeable. God is all powerful. He can do everything which can be done. But he can’t make a triangle whose angles don’t add up to two right angles. Perhaps we could conceive of the concept of the triangle as something eternal. Everything which can be aware of the nature of a triangle might cease to exist. All actual physical triangles might cease to exist. But what a triangle is is unchanging and thus eternal.
Some would question the point of identifying God and Nature. If God is not conceived as a personality who created the universe from the outside, and stands in judgement of us, why not simply say there is simply nature and no God? The reason, I think, is that Spinoza’s vision is very much a spiritual one, i.e. one which deals with the realm of immaterial connection. God is a “substance” through which all things are connected, and, to the extent that they are not disturbed by our affects, our thoughts are God’s thoughts. Thus it is that reason can allow us to connect with the eternal and enter into a state of blessedness from which arises naturally the virtuous behaviour which makes loving community possible. We didn’t invent reason. It is an expression of our nature, which each individual may apply to their own situation. The ability to find meaning and coherence is born in us, and is just another manifestation of the meaning and coherence which makes us possible - God within and without.
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For Spinoza, our highest virtue lies in self-preservation and the ability to maximise our capacity for action in the world. This might, at first, seem a selfish philosophy. But, in his vision, the healthily functioning individual finds joy in the joy of others, and thus is motivated to assist them to realise themselves in the same way. If we don’t assume the responsibility to look after our own welfare first, we will be of little use to others. It’s like that sign they have in planes which tells you to put on your own oxygen mask before trying to help anyone else.
What holds us back is our own affects, our reactive emotions and desires. It seems fairly obvious that the best basis from which to solve the problems we find ourselves in is reason. If we acquire knowledge, draw conclusions and base our actions on those conclusions, we are liable to arrive at better results than if we simply act directly on our immediate emotional response to the situation. Of course, there are times when there is no time for thought, such as when confronted with a sudden danger. But, even then, to the degree that we have previously exercised our reason on the possibility that such a thing might happen, we may respond more effectively. One of Spinoza’s more unusual definitions is that he classifies all negative emotions as sadness. Everything reduces to sadness or joy. We experience joy as our power of action is increased through reason. Negative emotions, which drain us of our energy to act or distract us from reason, are sadness, and sadness is evil, precisely because it acts against our competence and our reason. This is an unusual way of looking at things, but, I think, a useful one. What stands in the way of our self-realisation? And what can we do about it?
The key to liberation from enslavement to the affects is to understand what they are and how they function. If I become angry in response to something someone has done, I might just punch them in the nose. That would be to be a slave to my affects. Or I might recognise with my reason that I am angry and that acting directly on that anger will not produce the best result for me in the longer term. The more we learn to stand outside our affects and recognise them for what they are, the less powerful they are.
Something else which aids in this is the concept of determinism. It is a great reliever of suffering and stress. When tragedy befalls us, much of the emotional turmoil revolves around “what if?” questions. What if I’d stayed home that day? What if I’d behaved differently? What if I’d been more careful? But if we accept that whatever happens was always bound to happen, we can accept it more easily and concentrate on repairing the damage. And if we believe in free will, then when someone does something destructive towards us we may tend to be overwhelmed by anger, but if we recognise that they were expressing their current nature over which they had no choice, then we can more easily respond to the situation in a practical way targeted more precisely toward arriving at the best possible outcome. (It is important to recognise that determinism doesn’t mean that a person who behaves destructively can’t change their behaviour, only that their behaviour couldn’t have been otherwise at the time.)
Just because Spinoza was a champion of reason, and a critic of superstition, doesn’t mean that his philosophy is necessarily antagonistic to the moral principles expressed by the great religions. For instance, by his own reasoning, he arrived at a principle which is central to Christianity. “IIIP43 Hate is increased by being returned, but can be destroyed by love.”
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| AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS - AUGUST 22: City sculpture from bronze of Spinoza on August 22, 2015 in Amsterdam Copyright: frugo / 123RF Stock Photo |
