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Contents
I
-
Introduction
I
2
-
BasicMetaphysics
8
3
-
Mind andBody
31
4
-
Psychology
52
5
-
EthicalDoctrine
67
6
-
Method
8l
Bibliography
94
1
Introduction
Spinoza's philosophy is attractive and worth studying for many
reasons,but
perhaps
the most
important is that it offers a unified and
deepview of all the issueswhich matterto us
philosophically,
such
as
the nature of
reality, human nature, what we can know and the good
life. There are three fundamentalfeatures of his
philosophy which
particularly
contribute
to its unity-the doctrine of substancemonism,
the unrelenting naturalism, and the
geometric
mode
of exposition
which Spinozaemploys
in the Ethics.
The doctrine of substancemonism is
the hallmark of Spinoza's
philosophy.
Spinoza
was neitherthe first nor the last philosopherto
espousemetaphysicalmonism,or the doctrine
that reality is one. The
first
was Parmenides(ca. 500 B.C.E.) who maintained that what is
(reality) is eternal, immutable,homogeneous,
continuous,immobile,
completeand whole, "like the bulk of a well-roundedsphere".l In the
late nineteenthcentury the British Idealists conceived of
reality as a
singleall-embracing
experience(the absolute),within which all finite
experienceswere somehowsubsumed.2Spinoza'smonism
is
superior
to both of thesedocffines,but in different
ways.
Unlike
Parmenides,
Spinozadoes
not deny the reality of difference, but rather explains it.
The contrastbetweenSpinoza's monism and that of
the British Idealists
is more complex, but
two points can be made briefly. First, unlike the
British ldealists, Spinoza does not reduce or subordinate mafier
to
mind-extension and
thought are equally real in his philosophy.
Second,
in offering the principle of the unity of a single experienceto
explainthe unity of reality, the British Idealists
gave us little more than
Introduction
a metaphor
which raises more questions
than it answers. What
principles
explain the uniff
of a singleexperience? Spinoza'sdoctrine
of
substancemonism, however,provides
a basisfor his articulationof
principleswhich explain
theunity of reality.
Another less immediately
evident but pervasive and unifying
feature
of Spinoza's philosophy is its
thoroughgoing naturalism.
Spinozais committed
to explaining and analyzingeverything
in natural
terms. As one recent commentator
aptly put it, Spinoza even
naturalizedtheology.
3
Spinozatitled the first part
of
his
Ethics
"On
God," and God is both the
beginningand the end of his philosophy
in
the sensethat
He is the ultimate causein terms
of which everything
must be understood,and
the ultimate object that we
seekto know and
love. Yet
his views on God and His relation
to the world bearonly a
superficialresemblance
to thoseof traditional monotheism.
God is not
a being
who transcendsnature,but God
and the world are one, divine
law is nothing but natural
law, andGod's power is identicalwith
that of
naturalthings.
In his anthropologyhuman
beingsarenot distinguished
from othersby a transcendentpurpose,
by their free will, or even
by
their possession
of a soul or mind. Nothing
in nature has a
transcendentpurpose or end for which
it exists. There are no final
causes. Nothing
acts by freedom of the will,
but everything is
determinedby antecedentnecessity.
And everything is animate
or
besouled,although
in differentdegrees(panpsychism).
Animals areno
more
unfeeling machines than are
humans, although their feelings
differ from humanfeelings.
Spinoza'sethical docffine is also
completely naturalistic. Terms
such as "good" and "beautiful"
do not denote any real property
of
things
but only how we are affected
by them. We call things "good"
becausewe desirethem,
not vice versa. Values originate
from us, not
from a
transcendentsource,and are relative
to us. The only objective
sense which can be given
to
"good"
is that of being genuinely
advantageous
to humannature.
Perhapsthe most
obviouslyunifying-and at the
sametime most
daunting-feature
of Spinoza's philosophy
is the
geometrical
form of
exposition in which his major
work, the Ethics, t cast. The
Ethics
containsa
completeexpositionof his
entire maturephilosophyand is
written in the style of
Euclid's Elements. In it Spinozaproceeds
from
explicitly stated definitions, axioms
and postulatesto propositions,
which are demonstrated
from the former along
with
previously
demonstratedpropositions.
Commentators have offered a variety
of
reasonsto
explain why Spinozachosethe geometrical
form to expound
his philosophy. According
to onethe geometricalmethod
of expositon
was particularly
suited to Spinoza's
subject matter, with the logical
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