how Spinoza’s Ethics differ from Descartes’ Meditations
Introduction
Among philosophers,
especially in the Renaissance period, Spinoza is best known for his Ethics,
a monumental work that presents an ethical vision unfolding out of a monistic
metaphysics in which God and Nature are identified.[1]
God is no longer the transcendent creator of the universe who rules it via
providence, but Nature itself, understood as an infinite, necessary, and fully
deterministic system of which humans are a part.[2]
Humans find happiness only through a rational understanding of this system and
their place within it. On account of this and the many other provocative
positions he advocates, Spinoza has remained an enormously controversial
figure. For many, Spinoza is the harbinger of enlightened modernity who calls
us to live by the guidance of reason. For others, he is the enemy of the
traditions that sustain us and the denier of what is noble within us.
Spinoza’s metaphysics provide the
substance for his ethics; hence it is simply apt that a study of his ethics
begins with an adequate comprehension of his ontology.[3] Whereas the terminus of
his entire intellectual project was ethics, the starting foundation for it was
his metaphysics, in which he articulates his view of reality as a whole. This
is further confirmed by the fact that he furnishes his reader with the
comprehensive elucidation of his metaphysics in the first two parts of his
Ethics, in which he also infers his psychology and finally constructs his
ethics on the basis of his metaphysics.[4]
However, in this essay, we shall discuss
how Spinoza’s Ethics differ from Descartes’ Meditations,
for Spinoza was Descartes’ pupil. We shall discuss how Spinoza treats of a
Pantheistic monism, the Divine nature and a Deterministic nature, to show how
Nature of importance for Man to attain happiness. A critical evaluation and
conclusion follows afterwards.
Distinction between Spinoza’s Ethics
and Descartes’ Meditations
The seventeenth century was a time
in which geometry was enjoying a resurgence of interest and was held in
extraordinarily high esteem, especially within the intellectual circles in
which Spinoza moved.[5]
We may add to this the fact that Spinoza, though not a Cartesian, was an avid
student of Descartes's works. As is well known, Descartes was the leading
advocate of the use of geometric method within philosophy, and his Meditations
were written more geometrico, in the geometrical style. In this
respect the Ethics can be said to be Cartesian in inspiration. The Meditations
and the Ethics are very different works, not just in substance, but
also in style.[6] In
order to understand this difference one must take into account the distinction
between two types of geometrical method, the analytic and the synthetic.
Descartes explains this distinction as follows:
Analysis
shows the true way by means of which the thing in question was discovered
methodically and as it were a priori, so that if the reader is
willing to follow it and give sufficient attention to all points, he will make
the thing his own and understand it just as perfectly as if he had discovered
it for himself. . . . . Synthesis, by contrast, employs a directly opposite
method where the search is, as it were, a posteriori . . . . It
demonstrates the conclusion clearly and employs a long series of definitions,
postulates, axioms, theorems and problems, so that if anyone denies one of the
conclusions it can be shown at once that it is contained in what has gone
before, and hence the reader, however argumentative or stubborn he may be, is
compelled to give his assent.[7]
The
analytic method is the way of discovery. Its aim is to lead the mind to the
apprehension of primary truths that can serve as the foundation of a
discipline. The synthetic method is the way of invention. Its aim is to build
up from a set of primary truths a system of results, each of which is fully
established on the basis of what has come before. As the Meditations
is a work whose explicit aim is to establish the foundations of scientific
knowledge, it is appropriate that it employs the analytic method.[8]
The Ethics,
however, has another aim, one for which the synthetic method is appropriate. As
its title indicates, the Ethics is a work of ethical philosophy.
Its ultimate aim is to aid us in the attainment of happiness, which is to be
found in the intellectual love of God. This love, according to Spinoza, arises
out of the knowledge that we gain of the divine essence insofar as we see how
the essences of singular things follow of necessity from it. In view of this,
it is easy to see why Spinoza favoured the synthetic method. Beginning with
propositions concerning God, he was able to employ it to show how all other
things can be derived from God. In grasping the order of propositions as they
are demonstrated in the Ethics, we thus attain a kind of knowledge
that approximates the knowledge that underwrites human happiness. We are, as it
were, put on the road towards happiness. Of the two methods it is only the
synthetic method that is suitable for this purpose.[9]
Pantheistic Monism: Unity
of Substance And Its Attributes
In discussing the unity of substance and
positing a consequent monistic doctrine, Spinoza amid at refuting the
philosophic dualism which was espoused by many thinkers prior to and during his
time. There was held a twofold dualism; one was the view, inaugurated by Plato
and modified by Aristotle, that posited in the world itself a duality of matter
and form, and the other was the position in which the duality was maintained,
of a material, multifarious, changeable world and an immaterial, simple and
immutable God, who is pure form, whose essence is thought and whose activity is
thinking. Spinoza’s contention was particularly against the latter phase of
dualism. He speaks of the mediaeval contrast between God and the world as a
contrast between two substances which he vigorously opposed and argued against.[10] There cannot be an existence of two
substances.
Spinoza commences his argument by
acknowledging the general principle that a thing is known by way of its cause
and that the knowledge of effect involves and depends on the knowledge of
cause. In defining his terms, he writes that a thing is a cause of itself
“whose essence involves existence and whose nature cannot be conceived unless
existing”.[11]
He also define substance as that which is in itself and is conceived through
itself, that is, the conception of which does not depend on the conception of
another thing from which it must be formed. [12] Since substance is that
which is known through itself, it cannot have an external cause, hence
substance is what Spinoza refers as ‘cause of itself’.
The definition, thus, implies
that a substance is completely self- dependent. It does not depend on any
external cause either for its existence or for its attributes[13] and
modifications. This means that the essence of a substance involves its
existence since substance is cause in itself and that is cause in itself whose
essence involves existence[14]. Hence, “existence
appertains to the nature of substance.”[15] He adds that it is
impossible for one to hold a clear and distinct, that is, a true idea of
substance does not exist outside the mind unless it exist in themselves for
they are conceived in the in the mind through their existing in themselves.[16]
More so, following the
definition of substance, Spinoza deduced the absurdity of holding that
substance was created. According to him, it should be necessarily acknowledged
that the existence of substance, like its essence, is an eternal truth, hence
it logically follows that there cannot be two substance of the same nature. He
also argued that no two or more substances can have the same attribute and
since all substance is necessarily infinite, it would also be consist of
infinite attributes each of which expresses a certain eternal and infinite
essence.[17]
In proposition eleven, in the
first part of his work, Spinoza begins to use God interchangeably with
substance, thus identifying it as one with the substance he has been
discussing. In this way, the pantheistic bearing of his doctrine becomes
manifest. In this proposition, he talks about God or a substance, which is
necessarily infinite, as necessarily existing. This follows, as already argued,
from the fact that the essence of substance involves its existence.[18] For him, Nature is not
ontologically distinct from God and the reason is that God is infinite and if
he is infinite, he must in himself, comprise all reality.[19] Furthermore, in
subsequent propositions, he states and argued that except God, no substance can
be granted or conceived. Herein, his monism becomes apparent. God, who is the
unique substance, for Spinoza, encompasses the whole reality. Basing his justification
on his earlier proven proposition, he writes:
As God is a being
absolutely infinite, to whom no attribute expressing the essence of substance
can be denied, and as he necessarily exists, if any other substance than God be
given, it must be explained by means of some attribute of God, and thus two
substances would exist possessing the same attribute, which is absurd; and so
no other substance than God can be granted and consequently not
even be conceived. For if it can be conceived it must necessarily be conceived
as existing, and by the first part of this proof is absurd. Therefore except
God no substance can be granted or conceived.[20]
So, for Spinoza, only one substance
can be granted and it is only in this substance, which he identifies as God
that everything exists and is conceived. [21] For him, finite beings
are modifications of God who possesses an infinitely of attributes out of which
two are known to us, namely, thought and extension; finite minds are modes of
God under the attribute of extension.[22] In holding the monistic
doctrine of a unity of substance, Spinoza collapses the distinction between God
and nature and posit the existence of streaming
‘beings’ within the infinity of the one substance, God or nature, as its
modes under different attributes.
A Deterministic Nature
Spinoza holds that infinite things in
infinite modes must necessarily follow from the necessity of divine nature and
the truth of this proposition is, for him, manifest to anyone who considers
that from a given definition certain properties necessarily follow. [23] This means that substance must have modes as
already shown, and as substance is infinite modes are caused necessarily by God
such that “in the nature of things nothing contingent is granted, but all things
are determined by the necessity of divine nature for existing and working in
certain way” [24]
According to Spinoza, “the essence of
things produced by God does not involve existence”[25] for if it did, they would
be causes of themselves and change the fact. The reason behind the inability to
see this is the imperfection of our knowledge for, as he writes:
When
we are not aware that the essence of a thing involves a contradiction, or when
we are quite certain that it does not involve a contradiction, and yet can
affirm nothing with certainty concerning its existence, as the order of causes
has escaped us, such a thing can seem neither necessary nor impossible to us:
and therefore we call it either contingent or possible[26].
Critical Evaluation
As Spinoza studied Maimonides, the other
Medieval thinkers, and Descartes, he concluded that a radical philosophy was
needed, one would once and for all cut the umbilical cord which tied philosophy
to religion and that would provide a coherent and true account of man’s place
in the world.[27]
If this could be achieved, human happiness would be attainable through man’s
effort and devices. The Ethic is after all the book designed to teach how to be
happy in the life that have, which had been the goal of philosophy for the
Greeks.[28]
There
are, Spinoza insist, two sides of Nature. First, there is the active,
productive aspect of the universe—God and his attributes, from which all else
follows. This is what Spinoza, employing the same terms he used in the Short
Treatise, calls Natura naturans, “naturing Nature” Strictly
speaking, this is identical with God. The other aspect of the universe is that
which is produced and sustained by the active aspect, Natura naturata,
“natured Nature”.[29]
By Natura naturata I understand whatever follows from the necessity of
God's nature, or from any of God's attributes. That is, all the modes of God’s attributes insofar as
they are considered as things that are in God, and can neither be nor be
conceived without God.[30]
There is
some debate in the literature about whether God is also to be identified with Natura
naturata. Be that as it may, Spinoza’s fundamental insight in one is that
Nature is an indivisible, uncaused, substantial whole—in fact; it is the only
substantial whole[31].
Outside of Nature, there is nothing, and everything that exists is a part of
Nature and is brought into being by Nature with a deterministic necessity. This
unified, unique, productive, necessary being just is what is meant by
‘God’. Because of the necessity inherent in Nature, there is no teleology in
the universe. Nature does not act for any ends, and things do not exist for any
set purposes. There are no “final causes” (to use the common Aristotelian phrase).
God does not “do” things for the sake of anything else. The order of things
just follows from God's essences with an inviolable determinism. All talk of
God's purposes, intentions, goals, preferences or aims is just an
anthropomorphizing fiction.[32]
This is the heart of Spinoza’s Ethical Naturalism.
However,
in line with Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, i do not agree with Spinoza’s idea
that Nature does not act to an end. According to St. Thomas Aquinas:
Everything which happens naturally either happens in
every instance or in most instances. But nothing which happens by fortune or by
that which is per se vain, i.e., by chance, happens in every instance or
in most instances. Everything which happens either happens by chance or for the
sake of an end. Now those things which happen outside the intention of an end
are said to happen by chance. But it is impossible for those things which
happen in every instance or in most instances to happen by chance. Therefore,
those things which happen in every instance or in most instances happen for the
sake of an end. Now whatever happens according to nature happens either in
every instance or in most instances, as even they admitted. Therefore, whatever
happens by nature happens for the sake of something.[33]
Things which happen naturally are done so that they
lead to an end. Therefore, they are disposed to be done in such a way that they
are for the sake of an end. And thus nature seeks an end, i.e., nature has a
natural disposition for an end. Hence, it is clear that nature acts for the
sake of an end.[34]
Furthermore, if Spinoza were to be right
in his idea that everything which exists is a part of Nature and is
brought into being by Nature with a deterministic necessity, then what will be
the cause of Nature? What creates nature? In line with John Scotus Erigena,
there is Nature that creates and is not created, and this is God. He does not
need to be caused. There is also Nature that is created and does not create,
and this the world of things as we experience it.[35]
Nature does not act on its own accord as Spinoza put’s it but it depends on an
agent for its operation. Nature is said to be in motion according to Aristotle,
so it cannot be said to be the ultimate reality but has to moved by another
Agent. So if it is moved by another
agent, that agent has to be by itself uncaused and not move. This Agent is God.
There is both Nature and God, but God or that noblest being is that which causes
things to be, not nature with a deterministic nature.
Conclusion
The Ethics is an ambitious and multifaceted
work. It is also bold to the point of audacity, as one would expect of a
systematic and unforgiving critique of the traditional philosophical
conceptions of God, the human being and the universe, and, above all, of the
religions and the theological and moral beliefs grounded thereupon. What
Spinoza intends to demonstrate (in the strongest sense of that word) is the
truth about God, nature and especially ourselves; and the highest principles of
society, religion and the good life. Despite the great deal of metaphysics,
physics, anthropology and psychology that take up Parts One through Three,
Spinoza took the crucial message of the work to be ethical in nature. It
consists in showing that our happiness and well-being lie not in a life
enslaved to the passions and to the transitory goods we ordinarily pursue; nor
in the related unreflective attachment to the superstitions that pass as
religion, but rather in the life of reason.
Bibliography
Aquinas
Thomas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics,
Book II, Lectio 13. Transl. by Richard
Blackwell,
Richard J. Spath & W. Edmund Thirlkel. Yale: U.P, 1963
Bonnen
A. Clarence, Flage
E. Daniel. Descartes and Method: A Search
for a Method in Meditations. Taylor & Francis, 2002.
Copleston
Frederick, History of philosophy Vol. 4.
New York: Image Book, 1963
Nadler
Steven. Spinoza: A Life. Cambridge: University Press, 2001.
Spinoza
Benedict, Ethics, trans. by A. Boyle.
London: J. M Dent and Sons Ltd., 1950
.
______________.Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect
and Selected Letters. Transl. By Samuel Shirley .Oxford: Hackett
Publishing, 1992.
_____________.“The Ethics”, B.D Button (ed.), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. www.iep.utm.edu/Spinoza/
Stumpf
Samuel Enoch, Philosophy History and
Problems. USA: Library of Congress, 1994
Wofson
Harry Austryn, The philosophy of Spinoza.
New York: Meridian Books, Inc.,1958.
.
.
[1] Benedict de Spinoza, “The Ethics”,
B.D Button (ed.), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. www.iep.utm.edu/Spinoza/
[5]
Benedict de Spinoza, “The
Ethics”, B.D Button (ed.), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
[6] See Benedict de Spinoza. Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect
and Selected Letters. Transl. By Samuel Shirley (Oxford: Hackett Publishing,
1992), p. 7.
[7]See Clarence A. Bonnen, Daniel E. Flage. Descartes and Method: A Search for a Method in Meditations. (Taylor & Francis, 2002),
pp. 130-33.
[8]
Clarence A. Bonnen, Daniel E. Flage. Descartes and Method: A Search for a Method in Meditations.
[10]
See.Harry Austryn Wofson,
The
philosophy of Spinoza, (New
York: Meridian Books, Inc.,1958) , pp79-80.
[11]
See
Baruch Spinoza, Ethics, trans. by A. Boyle, (London: J. M
Dent and Sons Ltd., 1950), pa t I, def. I
[21] Baruch Spinoza, Ethic, trans, by. A. Boyle, part I,
prop, XV
[22]
Frederick Copleston, History of
philosophy Vol. 4.p.223
[23] Baruch Spinoza, Ethics, trans, by .A. Boyle, prop. XVI, proof.
[24] Frederick Copleston, History of philosophy Vol. 4.p.
225.
[25] Baruch Spinoza, Ethics, trans, by .A. Boyle, prop., 29
[26] Baruch Spinoza, Ethics, trans, by .A. Boyle, prop. 33 Note 1
[27] Benedict de Spinoza. Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect
and Selected Letters. Transl. By Samuel Shirley
[28] Benedict de Spinoza. Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect
and Selected Letters. Transl. By Samuel Shirley
[29] Steven Nadler. Spinoza: A Life, (Cambridge: University Press, 2001), p. 231.
[30] Steven Nadler. Spinoza: A Life 2231
[33] See Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, Book
II, Lectio 13. Transl. by Richard J. Blackwell,
Richard J. Spath & W. Edmund Thirlkel (Yale: U.P, 1963)
[34] Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, Book
II, Lectio 13
[35] See Samuel Enoch Stumpf Philosophy History and Problems (USA:
Library of Congress, 1994), .p 156
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