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Tieferes Studium der Natur, noch Jahrtausende fortgesetzt,
wird auf Spinozismus führen. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799) |
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Wim Klever
Wim Klever taught at the Erasmus University of Amsterdam from 1964 to 1995. Some years ago he published (at the age of 87!) De historische Spinoza, Nieuw profiel van een universeel wetenschappelijk genie, Vrijstad, 2017 (The historic Spinoza, New profile of a universal scientific genius, Vrijstad, 2017).
Wim Klever is a passionate ‘Facebooker’ who uses this medium to make his ideas about Spinoza, his philosophy and his contemporaries known to a wide audience. He therefore wrote a summary in episodes of his ‘Historic Spinoza’ in English for his worldwide followers.
Wim Klever gave permission to publish the full series of his Facebook summary (99 posts!) on our site. They are now available to our visitors, grouped and illustrated.
We thank Wim Klever very much!
https://www.facebook.com/wim.klever.1
Wim Klever is a passionate ‘Facebooker’ who uses this medium to make his ideas about Spinoza, his philosophy and his contemporaries known to a wide audience. He therefore wrote a summary in episodes of his ‘Historic Spinoza’ in English for his worldwide followers.
Wim Klever gave permission to publish the full series of his Facebook summary (99 posts!) on our site. They are now available to our visitors, grouped and illustrated.
We thank Wim Klever very much!
https://www.facebook.com/wim.klever.1
Spinoza's false start in his 'Treatise of the Emendation of the Intellect' (TIE)
Deviating from my intention not to write a biography, I now have, before discussing Spinoza’s first writing, to say a few clarifying words about its origin in Spinoza’s life, because in the totality of his works it has an outspoken personal character. It cannot have fallen suddenly from the air. Spinoza must have been around 28 years, when he confided his first philosophical reflections to the paper. His merciless and ferocious banishment from the Portuguese synagogue on account of heretic opinions and unusual behaviour, reminding us of the Islamic cruelties towards infidels not keeping the sharia, must have produced a dramatic shock in the community, given also its extremely sharp curses and the prohibition of all social contacts between members and the one excluded. The banishment must have transformed the already emancipated Baruch to a mentally ripened young man, well conscious of his new way and the novelties he would get on his shoulders. Pierre Bayle, the untraditional French Rotterdam historian, who informed us in his DICTIONAIRE HISTORIQUE ET CRITIQUE about the major event of the Dutch society, that the recalcitrant Jew had defended himself in Spanish against the accusations in an APOLOGIA DE SU ABDICACIÓN (now lost), which title seems to indicate his voluntary departure from the community he was born and educated in and his deliberate abjuration of its idolatry of the Torah, the complex of Mosaic laws and customs. |
Pierre Bayle
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Spinoza did not become a lonely swerver in the turbulent and prosperous world-metropole Amsterdam. His previous activity, as a merchant continuing with his brother Gabriel after their father’s death his trade in dried fruits, had brought him on the Bourse in contact with freethinking Christians, the so-called Collegiants, who in turn prophetically admonished each other in their gatherings. Professional dealing on products and contracts could easily end up in a discussion on religious things that highly interested both parties. The Collegiants opposed to and averted from the discipline and dogmatic coercion of the Dutch Reformed Church, precisely as Spinoza had withdrawn himself from the intolerable yoke of the fanatic rabbinical authorities in he synagogue.
On this background, namely the experience and hard confrontation with fanatic superstition in his natural environment, it is understandable that in the mindset of a gifted, intellectually interested and moreover isolated young man rises the idea and is felt the need to write as a philosophical starter about and against it. On the Latin school of Van den Enden he had somehow a gift of the master got access and had become there thoroughly acquainted with classical authors like Seneca, Tacitus and Vergil, later referred to, but he missed any further professional education in this direction. Like every bright youngster he naturally picked up, apart from the master’s political philosophy, quite a part from the stirringly new mechanistic philosophy of the French immigrant Descartes, who upset with his PRINCIPIA PHILOSOPHIAE the Dutch universities, perceiving as an amateur the relevance of his new approach for his personal situation. One ought, therefore, not to have a too high expectation of his first exercise.
On this background, namely the experience and hard confrontation with fanatic superstition in his natural environment, it is understandable that in the mindset of a gifted, intellectually interested and moreover isolated young man rises the idea and is felt the need to write as a philosophical starter about and against it. On the Latin school of Van den Enden he had somehow a gift of the master got access and had become there thoroughly acquainted with classical authors like Seneca, Tacitus and Vergil, later referred to, but he missed any further professional education in this direction. Like every bright youngster he naturally picked up, apart from the master’s political philosophy, quite a part from the stirringly new mechanistic philosophy of the French immigrant Descartes, who upset with his PRINCIPIA PHILOSOPHIAE the Dutch universities, perceiving as an amateur the relevance of his new approach for his personal situation. One ought, therefore, not to have a too high expectation of his first exercise.
The output of the process, the TIE-ms, was by its author never considered as being publishable, but only provisionally saved and carried further in a chest to his new domiciles Rijnsburg and The Hague. On the interested informative question and light pressure of his intimate friend Tschirnhaus his reaction was, that the thing was not yet rounded off. The deep reason was not that circumstances were unfavourable (what they were indeed), but because he himself considered in retrospect his text being a premature product and wrong undertaking. In the process of writing he already became convinced, that the starting point chosen in the treatise could not lead to his purpose: the improvement of the intellect (intellectus emendatio). A wrong starting cannot arrive at a satisfying endpoint. That we now dispose of the text we only owe to his dedicated friends caring for the posthumous edition of all his Latin works in 1677.
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In his precious introduction to their Dutch version (not present in the Opera Posthuma/Nagelate Schriften) Spinoza’s oldest companion and close friend Jarig Jelles betrays the hesitation: “This TREATISE OF THE EMENDATION OF THE INTELLECT, which we give you here, kind reader, in this UNFINISHED AND DEFECTIVE STATE, was written many years ago now. He always intended to finish it, but hindered by other occupations and finally snatched away by death, he was unable to bring it to the desired conclusion. But since it contains many excellent and useful things, which - we have no doubt - will be of great benefit to anyone seeking the truth, we did not wish to deprive you of them. And so that you would be aware of, and find less difficult to excuse, the many things that are OBSCURE, ROUGH AND UNPOLISHED, we wished to WARN YOU. Farewell.” Further on I will try to explain why this first take-off was according to the master himself a ‘false start’.
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According to its title and headline in the body of the text the treatise is set up as a kind of post-Cartesian or pre-Kantian critique of our mental equipment: whether it is an appropriate instrument for getting certainty on our way to happiness. Is this a wrong beginning? In the process of writing Spinoza becomes more and more convinced that the subjectivity of one’s consciousness is not an adequate and stable foundation and does not give enough handhold for our way to the highest good we aspire to. Much later he will in Ethica 2/10s explicitly mention this his previous ‘conversion’, where he discusses the right ORDER of philosophizing. His explicit argument sounds here: if one considers the ‘divine nature’ (...) that one ought consider before anything else, since she is cognitively and in reality the first - in one’s philosophy at last and moreover does believe that the sensible objects constitute our intellectual starting point, one then ends up in conceiving the divine nature as a kind of supernatural man, provided with human, all too human, properties.
Extraordinarily impressive ego-document.
The wild and in a certain sense random composition of the text has a spectacular opening, of which there does not exist in the history of philosophy any equivalent, not even in the Stoa of Antiquity. The fragment has an outspoken personal signature as a reflection of what the author experienced in his own life. Yet it is not only an autobiographical document, since according to its global drift it is clearly also meant as a sketch of everybody’s initial aspirations and mental career. I cannot avoid to present here the whole first page, precisely because Spinoza must have amply meditated it and have carefully chosen the words of his ‘coming out’, which moreover contain immediately its main reason. Between brackets I give certain Latin terms, which will function as elements in the thread of my later argument.
The wild and in a certain sense random composition of the text has a spectacular opening, of which there does not exist in the history of philosophy any equivalent, not even in the Stoa of Antiquity. The fragment has an outspoken personal signature as a reflection of what the author experienced in his own life. Yet it is not only an autobiographical document, since according to its global drift it is clearly also meant as a sketch of everybody’s initial aspirations and mental career. I cannot avoid to present here the whole first page, precisely because Spinoza must have amply meditated it and have carefully chosen the words of his ‘coming out’, which moreover contain immediately its main reason. Between brackets I give certain Latin terms, which will function as elements in the thread of my later argument.
“After experience had taught me, that all things which often (frequenter) occur in our ordinary life are empty (vana) and futile, and I saw that all things, which were the cause or object of my fear had nothing of good or bad in themselves, except insofar as my heart (animus) was moved by them, I resolved at last to try to find out whether there was anything which would be the true good (verum bonum), attainable (sui communicabile) and by which alone my heart would be affected, all others being rejected; whether there was something which, once found and acquired, would continuously give me the greatest joy, to eternity....
I say that 'I resolved at last’, for at first glance it seemed ill-advised to abandon something certain for something then uncertain. I saw, of course, the advantage that honour and wealth bring, and that I would be forced to abstain from seeking them, if I wished to devote myself seriously to something new and different; and if by chance the greatest happiness (felicitas) lay in them I saw that I would have to do without it. But if it did not lie in them and I devoted my energies in acquiring them, then I would equally go without it.
So I turned my thoughts and wondered whether perhaps it would be possible to reach my new life program (institutum), or at least the certainty of attaining it, without changing my conduct and plan of life that I shared with other men. Often I tried this, but in vain. For most things which present themselves in life, and which, to judge from their actions men think to be the highest good, may be reduced to these three: wealth (divitias), honour (honorem), and sensual pleasure (libidinem). The mind (mens) is so distracted by these three that it cannot give the slightest thought to any other good. For as sensual pleasure is concerned, man is so caught up in it (suspenditur), as if resting in something good, so that he is quite prevented from thinking anything else”.
I say that 'I resolved at last’, for at first glance it seemed ill-advised to abandon something certain for something then uncertain. I saw, of course, the advantage that honour and wealth bring, and that I would be forced to abstain from seeking them, if I wished to devote myself seriously to something new and different; and if by chance the greatest happiness (felicitas) lay in them I saw that I would have to do without it. But if it did not lie in them and I devoted my energies in acquiring them, then I would equally go without it.
So I turned my thoughts and wondered whether perhaps it would be possible to reach my new life program (institutum), or at least the certainty of attaining it, without changing my conduct and plan of life that I shared with other men. Often I tried this, but in vain. For most things which present themselves in life, and which, to judge from their actions men think to be the highest good, may be reduced to these three: wealth (divitias), honour (honorem), and sensual pleasure (libidinem). The mind (mens) is so distracted by these three that it cannot give the slightest thought to any other good. For as sensual pleasure is concerned, man is so caught up in it (suspenditur), as if resting in something good, so that he is quite prevented from thinking anything else”.
This is not yet the end of the ego-passage. Spinoza also reflects on the effects of the pursuit of gain and greed, which might be worse than those of the libido. Mostly one never regrets them as is not exceptional in sexual behaviour. The desire of more of them is unsatisfiable. One also directs himself at the external world in an orientation ad captum vulgi.
Spinoza writes further about his personal calculus of probability. Continuation of his usual way of life was not an option. He thoroughly realizes that the mentioned illusory fake goods constitute, taken as an action focus, constitute an obstacle for acquiring the stable good (fixum bonum), he aims at. “In a lasting meditation” (assidua meditatione), he discovered in a second order reflection that he, then, arose above uncertainties towards a certainty that implies the seeked good.
At the end of his initial methodical reflection Spinoza formulates as his conclusion the program of a universal scientist he intends to focus at, i.e. to contribute personally to the mentioned disciplines. At first is mentioned MORALIS PHILOSOPHIA, to be translated as ‘behavioural science’. Second comes (and must be devised!) INTEGRA MEDICINA, which he also sees as his responsibility. He read medical works, probably attended chirurgical practica in the Leiden University by the Danish visiting fellow Steno and advised his Amsterdam friend De Vries to study anatomy.
At the end of his initial methodical reflection Spinoza formulates as his conclusion the program of a universal scientist he intends to focus at, i.e. to contribute personally to the mentioned disciplines. At first is mentioned MORALIS PHILOSOPHIA, to be translated as ‘behavioural science’. Second comes (and must be devised!) INTEGRA MEDICINA, which he also sees as his responsibility. He read medical works, probably attended chirurgical practica in the Leiden University by the Danish visiting fellow Steno and advised his Amsterdam friend De Vries to study anatomy.
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But most energy must be reserved for physics or natural science, which was in his post-cartesian time indicated as ‘MECHANICA’. Why? Because by this technical science (ars) many difficult things can be made easily, and much comfort can be realized. In fact, Spinoza anticipates the big role of technique in modern science. His own contribution consists specifically in OPTICA, in which he acquired great fame. Leibniz addressed him as ‘insignis opticus’, Christiaan Huygens praised his lenses, and he discussed optical theory with the mathematician Hudde.
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Christiaan Huygens
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After having amply written on the dangerous and sometimes destructive effects of greed, ambition and the libido, if not moderate, Spinoza’s self-knowledge induces him to confess bluntly, that he personally did not succeed to restrain himself: non poteram tamen, I could not withdraw myself from these passions or to contain myself. But in the context, he gives already the solution (of Ethica V) for superseding the seductive power of the passions. Our soul must be filled and ‘feeded’ with “love of the eternal and infinite THING” for overcoming them. We ought first to realize our own divinity, or - said alternatively - to acquire a stronger nature by realizing our actual unity with the whole nature (cognitione unionis, quam HABEMUS cum tota natura). Knowledge of our complete naturalness/divinity is in fact the experience of our stronghold, firmitudo, which enables us to become master of our passions instead of remaining their puppet. The immense happiness, which is the fruit of being intoxicated by the infinite Thing, makes the sensual pleasures worthless or weak. The Stoa’s illusionary voluntarism is not to Spinoza’s taste, as he will later signalize in E5/pref.
“Ante omnia”/first of all", with this stopgap (frequently used by his impatient master Van den Enden) Spinoza, after describing his universal scientific program, returns to the conclusion of his initial reflection that we ought to concentrate on the emendation of our intellect. For this purpose, he inventories the four kinds of knowledge, no, the 4 modes of perceiving (MODI PERCIPIENDI) by which we are conscious of something. Or in his terminology: the ways along which we come to affirm something without any doubt (ad aliquid INDUBIE affirmandum). They are
1 by what we hear (ex auditu) or see (ex signo);
2 by undetermined experience (experientia vaga);
3 the indirect and inadequate knowledge (!) we acquire by DEDUCING x from y. E.g a cause from its effect or a universal character as distance making objects look smaller;
4) adequate and fully evident knowledge of the essence. Spinoza remarks that up to his moment he has only ‘very few’ (perpauca) of this kind of immediate and direct access to reality (intuitive nullam operationem facientes), namely intuition as opposed to rational deduction and simple visual perception.
1 by what we hear (ex auditu) or see (ex signo);
2 by undetermined experience (experientia vaga);
3 the indirect and inadequate knowledge (!) we acquire by DEDUCING x from y. E.g a cause from its effect or a universal character as distance making objects look smaller;
4) adequate and fully evident knowledge of the essence. Spinoza remarks that up to his moment he has only ‘very few’ (perpauca) of this kind of immediate and direct access to reality (intuitive nullam operationem facientes), namely intuition as opposed to rational deduction and simple visual perception.
No discussion, of course, about the best knowledge, but how do we come to the highest type? Which is the shortest or most ‘economic’ way? Spinoza’s use of ‘compendiose’ in this context is significant; later he will also use it for qualifying the function of money! Descartes favoured a too short-through-the-curve solution by starting from fictive inborn ideas, as if we dispose already of the best ideas at our birth. He compares our mental development with the slow development of technical instruments in our cultural history as the effect of an enormous amount of various experiences. But then, he (our Spinoza) makes a mistake: “With its inborn power (vi nativa) the intellect makes better and better instruments ... till it arrives at the top of wisdom”.
Looking much later again to his TIE-draft, he discovers that his text was too close in the wake of Descartes and, then, makes in the marge an important remark: “PER VIM NATIVAM INTELLIGO ILLUD, QUOD IN NOBIS A CAUSIS EXTERNIS CAUSATUR, QUODQUE POSTEA IN MEA PHILOSOPHIA EXPLICABIMUS” (under inborn power I understand what in us is caused by external causes, as WE (!) will later explain in my (!) philosophy). Apart from the interesting fact that Spinoza here explicitly affirms his work as a co-production of him WITH his friends, he also denies ages before Gebhardt’s so-called academic, but corruptive edition the introduction of a ‘non’ between ‘nobis’ and ‘a’ in the middle part of the note. The absence of a negation here is authentical, despite all available translations.
Looking much later again to his TIE-draft, he discovers that his text was too close in the wake of Descartes and, then, makes in the marge an important remark: “PER VIM NATIVAM INTELLIGO ILLUD, QUOD IN NOBIS A CAUSIS EXTERNIS CAUSATUR, QUODQUE POSTEA IN MEA PHILOSOPHIA EXPLICABIMUS” (under inborn power I understand what in us is caused by external causes, as WE (!) will later explain in my (!) philosophy). Apart from the interesting fact that Spinoza here explicitly affirms his work as a co-production of him WITH his friends, he also denies ages before Gebhardt’s so-called academic, but corruptive edition the introduction of a ‘non’ between ‘nobis’ and ‘a’ in the middle part of the note. The absence of a negation here is authentical, despite all available translations.
The TIE is in modern philosophical jargon a kind of epistemological work focused on methodology. In contemporary philosophical faculties this is a separate discipline among metaphysics, formal logic, anthropology and ethics. Never, however, Spinoza would like to teach a similar program apart from physics itself. A Lucretian approach starting with “the first elements of nature”, a physical mechanical practice provides itself what knowledge, correct thinking and the right method is. Separate disciplines in this direction cannot provide what they promise. Only physics (veritates naturae) does so. We ought to concentrate before anything else on the ‘veritates naturae’. Insofar we have them, we have automatically the above-mentioned specifications, because true ideas have the property of being at once ideas of external things AND of themselves as such. Truth throws light on itself (veritas se ipsam patefacit) and demonstrates itself as being such and the opposite as being wrong: VERUM INDEX SUI ET FALSI. Why looking then elsewhere for a formal theory about correct logic or correct method. “Method is nothing else than REFLEXIVE knowledge or the idea of the idea” (methodum esse nihil aliud nisi cognitionem reflexivam aut ideam ideae, TIE 38). Knowing the elementary natural laws cannot but indicate most clearly the way to go further with your research. Away with non-physical soft philosophy, away with old style philosophical faculties different from physical ones. We need to reform our universities.
The unfinished and to Spinoza’s taste unpublishable TIE-draft prepares its preliminary and hypothetical ending with a few interesting remarks:
1 our active (!) understanding of reality in adequate ideas and its progress works as a kind of spiritual automatism (quasi aliquod automa spirituale). Our thinking happens in perfect conformity with the things thought about. The intended automatism will later be theoretically explained and demonstrated in Ethica V.
2 to excuse himself as an author Spinoza complains in this context about “the shortage of words” (propter penuriam verborum). There do not exist enough (Latin) words for enabling him to express his ideas more precisely.
3 most surprising is his final shot in his section 100 on the “seriem rerum fixarum aeternarumque”, the range of fixed and eternal principles or fundamental laws of nature. Their universal presence and broadest power are the ‘causae proximae omnium rerum” (creative motors of everything). (101). Here we arrived where the KV and the Ethica take off. The youngster Spinoza repents his false TIE-start and discovers the structure of his subversive system.
1 our active (!) understanding of reality in adequate ideas and its progress works as a kind of spiritual automatism (quasi aliquod automa spirituale). Our thinking happens in perfect conformity with the things thought about. The intended automatism will later be theoretically explained and demonstrated in Ethica V.
2 to excuse himself as an author Spinoza complains in this context about “the shortage of words” (propter penuriam verborum). There do not exist enough (Latin) words for enabling him to express his ideas more precisely.
3 most surprising is his final shot in his section 100 on the “seriem rerum fixarum aeternarumque”, the range of fixed and eternal principles or fundamental laws of nature. Their universal presence and broadest power are the ‘causae proximae omnium rerum” (creative motors of everything). (101). Here we arrived where the KV and the Ethica take off. The youngster Spinoza repents his false TIE-start and discovers the structure of his subversive system.
Our next item is the misnaming of the Korte Verhandeling (Short Treatise) (KV), first discovered at the end of the 19th century, misnamed since the work of about 50 printed pages is everything but a summary. It is first referred to by its author in april 1662 in a letter to Oldenburg, who had asked him about the origin of things and their relation to the first cause: “About this and (!) the emendation of the intellect I composed an encompassing (integrum) work which draft I am now rewriting for an eventual publication”. That this info focused on the original draft of the later named ethics appears from a remark of Rieuwertsz jr in 1704 to Stolle and Hallmann. Spinoza’s rash and headlong false start in the TIE after his banishment, ending with “the fixed and eternal things” had now already, in his 30-iest, condensed to a complete system in current prose that without any argument started with god’s existence. The KV is as text a deposit of his ‘meditation about nature’ (overweginge van de natuur, 1/1/nt), called in the TIE “the eternal and infinite THING” and here “the every thing being” (alle iet zynde), which must possess all properties existing. It (!) is also called ‘Alwesen’ (allbeing) or “UNCAUSED NATURE THAT WE KNOW AS EXISTING NECESSARY AND ESSENTIALLY ABSOLUTELY PERFECT”.
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The following step in the KV is more than a logical one. After assessing Nature as ‘Every-Thing’, infinite and eternal, you cannot but further qualify it as ‘independently existing on and by itself’, which sounds in Dutch ‘ZELFSTANDIGHEID’ and was probably already in his own original Latin expressed by ‘substantia’, deficiently so on account of the prefix ‘sub’. The construction ‘ipseitas’ would better have rendered the element of autonomy in the Dutch ‘zelfstandigheid’.
But the accent is put on its extension in the combination of the adjectival ‘zelfstandig’ with ‘uitgebreidheid’ and the immediate continuation of the text with “Daar en is geen ydel”. Vacuity is impossible. “Partition never happens in the ‘zelfstandigheid’ but always only in its modes (wysen). Also, passions (lydinge) are only found in modes of extension, as in the case of changing/dying man, a thing composed of particles.
But extension is not all alone. The text explicitly affirms that “we actually know but two properties (eygenschappen): thinking (denken) and extension” (1/2/27-28). This is quite natural: our sensitive equipment is affected by material things and we experience them. So, we know material objects and know our knowing them, as Spinoza had demonstrated in his TIE.
But the accent is put on its extension in the combination of the adjectival ‘zelfstandig’ with ‘uitgebreidheid’ and the immediate continuation of the text with “Daar en is geen ydel”. Vacuity is impossible. “Partition never happens in the ‘zelfstandigheid’ but always only in its modes (wysen). Also, passions (lydinge) are only found in modes of extension, as in the case of changing/dying man, a thing composed of particles.
But extension is not all alone. The text explicitly affirms that “we actually know but two properties (eygenschappen): thinking (denken) and extension” (1/2/27-28). This is quite natural: our sensitive equipment is affected by material things and we experience them. So, we know material objects and know our knowing them, as Spinoza had demonstrated in his TIE.
The next item is Spinoza’s ‘theory of everything’ or “how God is a cause of all things”. He distinguishes between his direct and indirect activities. As concerns his direct working I quote:
“God is the principal (voorname) cause of what is his immediate creature, like the motion in the stuff” (ROERINGE IN DE STOF). In the following sentence this point is commented with: “God is the closest (naaste) cause of “the things which are infinite and unchangeable”.
All this means, that the infinite and unchangeable motion or energy-quantum is the way or procedure as which God does exist and functions: he coincides with motion. Albeit being creative working, he does not and cannot create singular things like Adam and Eve. They are the effect of finite and changeable causes. It is separately stressed that yet everything originating is the effect of “God’s necessarily working" (GODS NOODZAAKELIJKE WERKEN, 1/4) according to energetic laws. Motion works as it lawfully must! In the context falls the PREDESTINATION, which word so central in Dutch Calvinism is from now onwards physically interpreted.
“God is the principal (voorname) cause of what is his immediate creature, like the motion in the stuff” (ROERINGE IN DE STOF). In the following sentence this point is commented with: “God is the closest (naaste) cause of “the things which are infinite and unchangeable”.
All this means, that the infinite and unchangeable motion or energy-quantum is the way or procedure as which God does exist and functions: he coincides with motion. Albeit being creative working, he does not and cannot create singular things like Adam and Eve. They are the effect of finite and changeable causes. It is separately stressed that yet everything originating is the effect of “God’s necessarily working" (GODS NOODZAAKELIJKE WERKEN, 1/4) according to energetic laws. Motion works as it lawfully must! In the context falls the PREDESTINATION, which word so central in Dutch Calvinism is from now onwards physically interpreted.
The young Spinoza does not hesitate to use now and then theological concepts, maybe to conciliate apriori his readers from this corner. Their meaning, however, is secular. So he talks in KV1/5, about ‘gods providence’ (voorzienigheid) understanding by this term nothing but “the EFFORT (poginge) we discover in the whole nature and in the particular things, serving to their conservation and salvation (behoudenisse en bewaring)”. The later so central ‘conatus’ is here introduced in a religious terminology: our endeavour is presented as the effect of ‘god caring for us’, “Because it is evident that nothing is by its own nature enabled to try acting to its own destruction... Each act of human willing (deze en gene wille van den mensch) must have an external cause by which it is caused necessarily”.
And nothing can go wrong in the nature. We have no right to reproach her (or a personally conceived god) disasters or chaotic developments. Similar superstitious misjudgements originate from our tendency to posit universal ideas and our belief that everything must convene with them. This is a bad habit of “the followers of Plato and Aristotle”. Spinoza gives here a heavy stab to scholasticism.
And nothing can go wrong in the nature. We have no right to reproach her (or a personally conceived god) disasters or chaotic developments. Similar superstitious misjudgements originate from our tendency to posit universal ideas and our belief that everything must convene with them. This is a bad habit of “the followers of Plato and Aristotle”. Spinoza gives here a heavy stab to scholasticism.
Plato en Aristoteles
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Sketching his own philosophy against Plato, Aristotle and scholasticism in his KV 1/8 Spinoza starts with a fake (!) distinction, namely between ‘natura naturans’ and the ‘natura naturata’, in other words the ONE AND SAME nature as active and as passive. He immediately provides us the result: “From the creatures, which directly depend on god or are created, we don’t know more than two, namely motion in matter (beweginge in de stoffe) and understanding in the thinking thing (verstaan in de denkende zaak). These have existed eternally and will remain in eternity”.
We know eternal divine matter and its eternal divine conceiving, “from which sprouts an infinite or most perfect and unchangeable pleasure”.
This we are, this we know. Point. Understanding the KV-Dutch and reading it, I cannot and will not dispute the capital phrases. My experience and conscience do affirm their truth.
We know eternal divine matter and its eternal divine conceiving, “from which sprouts an infinite or most perfect and unchangeable pleasure”.
This we are, this we know. Point. Understanding the KV-Dutch and reading it, I cannot and will not dispute the capital phrases. My experience and conscience do affirm their truth.
Spinoza starts the second part of his system-draft KV with an impressive multi-faceted note to its preface, remarkable for its key terms as well as its PHYSICALISTIC contents, one cannot pay enough attention to: “How each particular thing starts existing (wezentlyk .. zyn) does originate by motion and rest (beweging en stille). So are caused all modes in the substantial extension (wyzen in de zelfstandige uitgebreidheid), which we call bodies. Their differences are only due to various proportions of motion and rest, by which this is so and not so, this and not that. Of each thing there is knowledge, called ‘soul’ in our case. Because so as the body is, so also the soul, idea, knowledge (WANT ZO HET LICHAAM IS, ZOO IS DE ZIEL)”.
This surprising and fully ahistorical thesis about the constitution of bodies and the essential ‘conformity’ between mind and body is further exemplified. Given f.i. for our body a proportion of motion to rest as 1:3 (not a too curious or abnormal hypothesis!), then our material/spiritual identities will be subject to changes, but not outside those boundaries. As far the body, rather stable, changes, also its soul does. What affects the body, is remarked/perceived. This is our EXPERIENCE (gevoel). A drastic mutation which disturbs the constitutive proportion means nothing but DEATH (dood) and destruction of the soul (vernietiging der ziel), because its specifically qualified object disappears!
This surprising and fully ahistorical thesis about the constitution of bodies and the essential ‘conformity’ between mind and body is further exemplified. Given f.i. for our body a proportion of motion to rest as 1:3 (not a too curious or abnormal hypothesis!), then our material/spiritual identities will be subject to changes, but not outside those boundaries. As far the body, rather stable, changes, also its soul does. What affects the body, is remarked/perceived. This is our EXPERIENCE (gevoel). A drastic mutation which disturbs the constitutive proportion means nothing but DEATH (dood) and destruction of the soul (vernietiging der ziel), because its specifically qualified object disappears!
Things are selfconscious modes of substantial extension as certain identifying (individualising) proportions of moving and resting particles. Epicurean and Lucretian atomism is further developed in Spinoza's mechanistic corpusculism.
After his general fysical survey Spinoza continues in KV2/1 with bringing his TIE division of 4 kinds-of-perception in a surprising new set of three (!) kinds that ask our attention: WAAN, GELOOF, WETEN.
'Waan' is Dutch for imagination, fiction, phantasy. 'Geloof' means 'belief', but in the commenting context Spinoza elucidates that he with this word focuses on the abstract knowledge we acquire by rational deduction, leading to a WEZEN VAN REEDEN (ens rationis), what we might today prefer to call a rational construction, and has nothing to do with the religious and superstitious belief.
Real knowledge (weten) we only possess when reality is fully 'transparant' (deurzichtig) and open for our mind. This kind coincides with the earlier in the TIE and later in the Ethica mentioned 'intuition'.
Most important in this passage is Spinoza's qualifying a result of reasoning as an abstract and therefore partial access to reality, on account that give a false 'picture', which can best estimated a poor 'belief'.
After his general fysical survey Spinoza continues in KV2/1 with bringing his TIE division of 4 kinds-of-perception in a surprising new set of three (!) kinds that ask our attention: WAAN, GELOOF, WETEN.
'Waan' is Dutch for imagination, fiction, phantasy. 'Geloof' means 'belief', but in the commenting context Spinoza elucidates that he with this word focuses on the abstract knowledge we acquire by rational deduction, leading to a WEZEN VAN REEDEN (ens rationis), what we might today prefer to call a rational construction, and has nothing to do with the religious and superstitious belief.
Real knowledge (weten) we only possess when reality is fully 'transparant' (deurzichtig) and open for our mind. This kind coincides with the earlier in the TIE and later in the Ethica mentioned 'intuition'.
Most important in this passage is Spinoza's qualifying a result of reasoning as an abstract and therefore partial access to reality, on account that give a false 'picture', which can best estimated a poor 'belief'.
The title of KV2/2 says everything, no, is the keyword of Spinoza’s message, his discovery during the many hours of his TIE-meditation. In Glazemaker’s translation of his Latin ms it sounds in the compact formula: LYDINGS OORSPRONK UYT WAAN (origin of passion from imagination/fiction). This is his thesis: that we suffer because and insofar we are the puppet of our opinions and phantasy, and that we only supersede our unhappy passivity by adequate knowledge.
HATRED (haat) f.i. “originates only from listening people talking as Turks (=Moslims) against Jews and Christians, Jews against Turks and Christians, Christians against Jews and Turks. How ignorant is the mass of this people about religion and customs of the other ones!”. If we knew each other’s life and motivation, our attitude would be different. Why? Spinoza answers my question in KV2/6: “Correctly practicing our reasoning (onze redenen wel gebruikende) we cannot cherish hatred to or aversion from things, realizing that we in this way rob ourselves from the perfection being in everything”. Aha! That is another, and quite salutery, perspective!
HATRED (haat) f.i. “originates only from listening people talking as Turks (=Moslims) against Jews and Christians, Jews against Turks and Christians, Christians against Jews and Turks. How ignorant is the mass of this people about religion and customs of the other ones!”. If we knew each other’s life and motivation, our attitude would be different. Why? Spinoza answers my question in KV2/6: “Correctly practicing our reasoning (onze redenen wel gebruikende) we cannot cherish hatred to or aversion from things, realizing that we in this way rob ourselves from the perfection being in everything”. Aha! That is another, and quite salutery, perspective!
Like crumbs of bread so many precious pearls are thrown around in the KV. Like:
"Naturally we are not the cause of our acting (HANDELEN)." “By ‘things in our power’ we understand those which we effectuate (uitwerken) by order/command and together (DOOR ORDRE OF TE ZAMEN) with nature, of which we are a part”.
Mocking and sneering was never practiced by our hero. “Mockery and sneering (BESPOTTING EN BOERTERYE) rest on a false opinion and indicate an imperfection in him who mocks and ridicules”. (2/1).
KV2/14 explains that “True belief (waar geloof) or reason (REEDEN) brings us to the knowledge of good and evil”. But Spinoza further stresses that this is only powerless abstract knowledge, “because I don’t think that reason alone is able to liberate us from evils”. Later will be demonstrated that this is only acquired by intuition.
We do not really need a theory of truth like professional philosophers today try to make us believe. “Truth reveals itself and its opposite”, as we read also in the TIE. Here (2/15) is added the proposition that “It is stupid (ZOTHEID) to ask how one knows that one knows”. A methodical or epistemological discipline is fully superstitious.
But two other remarks are equally important. Whoever ‘stays in truth’, has ‘stability’ (BESTENDIGHEID), a fixed position. But this is not thing for personal glory. Finally, and after all it is a grace from nature: “Understanding is a pure passion” (VERSTAND IS EEN SUYVERE OF PURE LYDING). If, if, if, it happens to us.
Regrettably, scholars nearly always forget to mention this consolatory ‘endpoint’.
"Naturally we are not the cause of our acting (HANDELEN)." “By ‘things in our power’ we understand those which we effectuate (uitwerken) by order/command and together (DOOR ORDRE OF TE ZAMEN) with nature, of which we are a part”.
Mocking and sneering was never practiced by our hero. “Mockery and sneering (BESPOTTING EN BOERTERYE) rest on a false opinion and indicate an imperfection in him who mocks and ridicules”. (2/1).
KV2/14 explains that “True belief (waar geloof) or reason (REEDEN) brings us to the knowledge of good and evil”. But Spinoza further stresses that this is only powerless abstract knowledge, “because I don’t think that reason alone is able to liberate us from evils”. Later will be demonstrated that this is only acquired by intuition.
We do not really need a theory of truth like professional philosophers today try to make us believe. “Truth reveals itself and its opposite”, as we read also in the TIE. Here (2/15) is added the proposition that “It is stupid (ZOTHEID) to ask how one knows that one knows”. A methodical or epistemological discipline is fully superstitious.
But two other remarks are equally important. Whoever ‘stays in truth’, has ‘stability’ (BESTENDIGHEID), a fixed position. But this is not thing for personal glory. Finally, and after all it is a grace from nature: “Understanding is a pure passion” (VERSTAND IS EEN SUYVERE OF PURE LYDING). If, if, if, it happens to us.
Regrettably, scholars nearly always forget to mention this consolatory ‘endpoint’.
Goodbye to the abortive traditional truth-concept as ‘convenience with reality’, as we saw in the previous post. But Spinoza also says (in KV2/16) farewell to the populistic or scholastic ‘creation’ of a separate faculty somewhere in our mind, by which we will this or that. This ‘ens rationis’ originates from our tendency to construct a general entity responsible for our various conscious ‘voluntary’ acts. But this confused general idea is nothing but an ornament (VERZIERINGE), a confuse way of thinking. Stone hard the adult philosopher affirms, that the will is ‘not a thing’ and therefore cannot be considered a cause (oorzaak), “since what does not exist cannot produce an effect. Ex nihilo nihil fit”.
The perfect architecture of the ETHICA does not fully cover the riches of the KV. In its prose text Spinoza is less constrained by the narrow structure of his system and do we find many surprising passages. In 2/18 f.i. he enumerates the ‘utilities’ (NUTTIGHEDEN) of the preceding chapters, i.e. what PROFITS we draw from it:
1 The first he accentuates, is: “that we see then that because man is part of the whole nature, depends on it and is governed by it, he can do nothing of himself toward his salvation and well-being”... From this it follows that we are “God’s SLAVES” (gods slaven).
2 This knowledge also has the result that after the accomplishment of something excellent “we do not pride ourselves on this ...; that we ascribe everything we do to God, who is the first AND ONLY CAUSE of all we accomplish”.
3 third fruit is “the true love of our fellow man ... It disposes us so that we never hate him or are angry to him, but are instead inclined to help him and bring him to a better condition”.
4 The political effect: “This knowledge serves to further the common good”. Judges will not favour parties.
5 Finally, this knowledge will liberate us from sadness, despair, envy, fright. And make us happy (GELUKZALIG).
1 The first he accentuates, is: “that we see then that because man is part of the whole nature, depends on it and is governed by it, he can do nothing of himself toward his salvation and well-being”... From this it follows that we are “God’s SLAVES” (gods slaven).
2 This knowledge also has the result that after the accomplishment of something excellent “we do not pride ourselves on this ...; that we ascribe everything we do to God, who is the first AND ONLY CAUSE of all we accomplish”.
3 third fruit is “the true love of our fellow man ... It disposes us so that we never hate him or are angry to him, but are instead inclined to help him and bring him to a better condition”.
4 The political effect: “This knowledge serves to further the common good”. Judges will not favour parties.
5 Finally, this knowledge will liberate us from sadness, despair, envy, fright. And make us happy (GELUKZALIG).
In my previous posts I gave already a selection of precious KV-jewels, we do not find so in Spinoza’s later work. Most striking are sentences like the following:
“Knowing and enjoying the best, the evil cannot dominate us” (Het beste kennende en genietende, heeft het slegte op ons geen macht”. This shot is directed to the weakness of abstract knowledge, which cannot empower us to master our passions. For this noble purpose we need intuition of god. Our union with god, called in this context ‘grace’ (GENADE) or ‘rebirth’ (WEDERGEBOORTE) makes us participate in his immutable stability (BESTENDIGHEID) and ‘eternity’ (EEUWIGHEID) and makes us share in his superpower and become invincible kings of the world. .
Let us, however, not forget the care for our fellow men, whose help we need for the political Common Good, since we are chained or fettered on each other. Spinoza never forgets the political fruit of his meditation, already indicated in the TIE. “I am obligated to reveal these things also to my fellow man and to make him taste the union with god, since I am saved or slain with him” (IK BEN MET HEM GEHOUWEN OF GESLAGEN).
“Knowing and enjoying the best, the evil cannot dominate us” (Het beste kennende en genietende, heeft het slegte op ons geen macht”. This shot is directed to the weakness of abstract knowledge, which cannot empower us to master our passions. For this noble purpose we need intuition of god. Our union with god, called in this context ‘grace’ (GENADE) or ‘rebirth’ (WEDERGEBOORTE) makes us participate in his immutable stability (BESTENDIGHEID) and ‘eternity’ (EEUWIGHEID) and makes us share in his superpower and become invincible kings of the world. .
Let us, however, not forget the care for our fellow men, whose help we need for the political Common Good, since we are chained or fettered on each other. Spinoza never forgets the political fruit of his meditation, already indicated in the TIE. “I am obligated to reveal these things also to my fellow man and to make him taste the union with god, since I am saved or slain with him” (IK BEN MET HEM GEHOUWEN OF GESLAGEN).
Next comes in my book ch.2, titled “Geometrical truc in PPC/CM”. The origin of this work that Spinoza published with his name as “Amsterdammer” is well known. His friends were jealous that their master, having meanwhile moved to Rijnsburg, was continuing there teaching his anti-Cartesianism to Leiden students. He had already critically reorganized the stuff of Descartes’ PRINCIPIA PHILOSOPHIAE, part 2. They wished to be informed about his progress. As was mentioned by the Danish scientist Olaus Borch visiting Amsterdam in 1661-2 in his journal (explosive information discovered by me (in 1988, published in STUDIA SPINOZANA, V), Spinoza’s fame as an original heterodox philosopher was rashly increasing and spread. L. Meyer, Leiden medical doctor and himself a great scientist in other fields (quite somebody!), was asked to mediate between the friends and Benedictus. He succeeded in filching from his friend the already drafted text PPC2 and convincing him to add a geometrically rewritten PPC1. He wrote himself an introduction with a magistral praise of the geometrical method, exclusive basis for a scientifical (= philosophical) system. Moreover, he tactically warned the reader that Spinoza did not show the backside of his tongue. The way he summarized the hidden points was on itself their clear and provocative proclamation and publication, about which misunderstanding was impossible.
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René Descartes
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In the ‘prolegomenon’ to his PPC1 Spinoza explicitly discusses why Descartes, in order to obtain “a solid foundation of the sciences”, a thing he himself also focuses at, doubted of everything, which is according to Spinoza’s explicit statement fully superfluous. We have already a true idea of God. And it is even impossible to doubt his existence. Our cognitive equipment cannot but produce the acknowledgement of the infinite all encompassing thing ('De Zaak' in the KV) and this fundamental idea automatically duplicates itself in its consciousness, in such a way that it is equally impossible for us to think that the three angles of a triangle are not equal to two right ones than to imagine that God cheats us or that our idea of him is an illusion.
In this context we also meet his characterization of god as ‘substantia’, which term is defined as “what we understand to be highest (hoogst) perfect and in which we don’t conceive any defect or limitation”.
This is only Spinoza’s first anti-Cartesian step, an epistemological one. His next anti-cartesian step, we will present next time, will be a physical GIANT STRIDE.
In this context we also meet his characterization of god as ‘substantia’, which term is defined as “what we understand to be highest (hoogst) perfect and in which we don’t conceive any defect or limitation”.
This is only Spinoza’s first anti-Cartesian step, an epistemological one. His next anti-cartesian step, we will present next time, will be a physical GIANT STRIDE.
Spinoza’s giant stride above Descartes is provided by Descartes himself, who did not follow neither apply the principle he formulated in his MEDITATIONES, namely axioma 10: “No lesser cause is required for a thing’s conservation than for its first production”. This axiom has capital relevance for Spinoza’s critique on the Cartesian physics, more specifically for his rejection of inertia as a property of matter, by which Spinoza developed to the renovator of Cartesianism with Descartes’ own weapon. Immediately follows this application: “From the fact that we are now thinking, it does not follow that we will think after this moment”. For continuing (pergere) our process of thinking, one needs the same power as for starting it. Each conatus, also the one of a stone in its flight after its being thrown, exists in its next moment thanks the same or equal productive powers, which were responsible for its origin. This is Spinoza’s most important correction of Descartes, about which his 4 discipels Tschirnhaus, Cuffeler, Overkamp and De Volder had their mouth full and were never ready with proclaiming the message.
Spinoza’s annotation on the Cartesian physics in PPC2 is skipped in all modern survey’s on Spinoza’s philosophy, whereas it contained, on the contrary, the starting point of his own theory. Read his scholium to df 8 on local motion. Descartes defined local motion as the translation of a part of matter from the vicinity of a body considered as being in rest to elsewhere. Spinoza arrives around the corner, when remarking: “which action is usually deemed to be required for motion and not for rest. In this people totally err” (in quo plane decipiuntur). The same degree of power is needed for moving a ship forward as for stopping its motion. On the other hand, it is not true that the body from which something is removed, remains without any impact or affection. Spinoza takes the example of a ship that has run aground on the sand. It cannot be pushed to motion without pressure on the sand. One-directional pressure is impossible. TRANSLATIO EST RECIPROCA. As the ship is removed from the sand, the sand is removed from the ship. I once experienced it myself with my 16 feet sailing boat: my wife had to descend into the water to stay with her feet on the sand and so pushing our ship forward.
Spinoza concluded his critical comment on Descartes’ wrong definition of local motion (df 8 ) by characterizing the physical world as a CIRCLE OF MOVED BODIES (circulum corporum motorum) and visualizing it in his own drawing like the sketch below., which reappears after the 22nd axiom, sounding: “If, when body 1 moves toward body 2 and sets it in motion, body 8 is moved toward body 1 by this impulse, bodies 1, 2, and 3 etc. , cannot be in a straight line, but all of them will form a whole circle up to body 8”.
This drawing, actually, symbolizes how Spinoza conceives the infinite universe of bodies (parts of matter) impacting/affecting each other and so moderating/creating each other. Cf. Ep. 32. A sphere in which lines of motion in all directions would push each other, would be a still perfecter symbol: a similar sketch, however, is inexecutable.
This drawing, actually, symbolizes how Spinoza conceives the infinite universe of bodies (parts of matter) impacting/affecting each other and so moderating/creating each other. Cf. Ep. 32. A sphere in which lines of motion in all directions would push each other, would be a still perfecter symbol: a similar sketch, however, is inexecutable.
CIRCLE OF MOVED BODIES (circulum corporum motorum)
Spinoza is world-champion in debunking our dear illusions. Like all other bodies we do not move ourselves, we are not automatically moving engines without energetic imput. “Variatio in aliqua re procedit a vi fortiore” (each change is the effect of a stronger power). Also resting and remaining the same is not in our own power, but is totally caused by the environment, not only our immediate surrounding, but even further and further circles and finally the infinite amount of bodies constituting the infinite Stuff or Substance of the universe. By ‘stuff’ we must take in view the swarming of undivisible ‘atoms’ who constitute by various proportions of motion: rest complex things. Also, the so called “sensible qualities like colour, weight, hard/soft” are fictive and not essential in objects. If removed the nature of bodies remains nonetheless integrally (PPC2/1). A whole range of fictions is slain by the young and fearless fighter Ben: vacuity, heterogeneity, attraction. 2/2: “A vacuum is contradictory”; 2/6 “Matter is indefinitely extended; matter of heaven and earth is one and the same”; “Materia non est multiplex”. Spinoza’s drastic mechanicism (motion only by impact of other things) excludes the possibility of sympathy and antipathy (2/8s). Spinoza will often return to this point (and we, following meticulously his text, with him).
His text is full of brilliant pearls, like this one in PPC2: ‘quantitas quietis’ (amount of rest). You can have more or less rest, which is not the same as a longer or shorter time of rest, but a higher or lower degree of having no motion at all, i.e. a degree of stability depending on more or less compressive powers.
Descartes formulated 6 laws of collision quoted integrally by Christiaan Huygens, but Spinoza criticised Descartes and his Voorburg-co-scientist concerning the fourth rule: ‘if body A is fully in rest and a bit greater than B, then: with whatever velocity B moves to A, it will never move A, but be struck back in the same line without loosing any degree of its motion”.
The mathematician Spinoza (as he qualifies himself) does not follow the great names. “To my view in these bodies must in this case originate a minimal mutation”.
Descartes formulated 6 laws of collision quoted integrally by Christiaan Huygens, but Spinoza criticised Descartes and his Voorburg-co-scientist concerning the fourth rule: ‘if body A is fully in rest and a bit greater than B, then: with whatever velocity B moves to A, it will never move A, but be struck back in the same line without loosing any degree of its motion”.
The mathematician Spinoza (as he qualifies himself) does not follow the great names. “To my view in these bodies must in this case originate a minimal mutation”.
Anno 1663, when New Amsterdam was founded (a few years later overtaken by the English and then renamed into New York) and Van den Enden wrote his 'Kort verhael van Nieuw Nederlants/Short story of New Netherland', Spinoza was writing in Voorburg about the universe as an immense 'Corpus fluidum'. His perceiving the fluidity of the universe build forth on the so-called VORTEX hypothesis of Descartes, in which unnumerable minacious particles accumulate and swerve around whirling clusters and exploding stars. A fluidum is defined by Spinoza as a body (!) in which particles move through each other in all directions; water and air but also the heavens are fluid. It is worthwhile to pay attention to this theory and to immunize our thoughts against the seductive illusions of unassailable hardness; wherever it may be: in physics or in human social institutions. Like colour and odour/scent also hard/soft are secondary as reality; they are SENSIBLES, i.e. effects of our sensitive equipment.
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Having finished our analysis of Spinoza’s PPC1-3, we will now pay attention to the riddle of its appendix COGITATA METAPHYSICA, which comprises in print a rough 50 pages, everything but a short extra, as one night receive in a concert hall. The famous German scholar Freudenthal suggested that it might date from Spinoza’s stage at the Leiden university before his moving to a residence in Rijnsburg. It anyhow originated from a period before he commented Descartes’ PP in 1662, since in his geometrization of the PP he referred at least 5 times to his CM. In this appendix he once mentioned the Leiden professor Heereboord, who precisely taught the same kind of ‘novantiqua’ stuff that Spinoza treated in his CM, which title is actually also the same as the masterwork of Heereboord, who, however, used the Greek version MELETEMATA PHILOSOPHICA. One cannot abstain, therefore, from suspecting that the CM is a deposit or notes from the period Spinoza sat at Heereboord’s feet.
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Let us fix, then, 1661 as the probable year of its early birth. But on the request of Pieter Balling, who translated the whole PPC and published it in 1664 Spinoza added many elucidations in Dutch to his text. So, he remarked to CM1: “The purpose and upshot of this part is to demonstrate that the customary school logic and philosophy does only serve to exercise and strengthen the memory (...) and in order that we may keep the ideas swerving in our mind, but not that they anyhow help our understanding (verstand)”.
But everywhere in the text we meet precious fragments anticipating the later writings of the master. One example here: “IMAGINING is nothing else than the origin of tracks (vestigia) in our brains as an effect of the motion of fluent particles, impacted in our senses by the objects affecting us. A similar sensation can only be confused. |
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A careful analysis of the 1661-Appendix CM1 shows that Spinoza is already the improved Descartes 2.0. Imagination is the mental confused reflection (=thinking/reflection) of the brain’s particular traces of the affected senses (1/1). A chimera is less than a fiction, only a verbal being, ‘like a quadratic circle’.
One finds plenty examples of Spinoza’s early determinism. “No creature does anything at all by itself” (nulla res creata propria vi aliquid facit). Good and evil are not absolute properties in whatever but are only relative qualifications (BONUM ET MALUM DICI RELATIVE). “Achitofel’s advice to Absolom is called in Scriptures good but was extremely bad (pessimum) for David”.
One finds plenty examples of Spinoza’s early determinism. “No creature does anything at all by itself” (nulla res creata propria vi aliquid facit). Good and evil are not absolute properties in whatever but are only relative qualifications (BONUM ET MALUM DICI RELATIVE). “Achitofel’s advice to Absolom is called in Scriptures good but was extremely bad (pessimum) for David”.
Spinoza is not averse from summarizing parts of his new philosophy in ‘oneliners’. So, we concluded our former piece with his deadly blow to common prejudices: “bonum et malum dicuntur relative” (good and evil are said in a relative sense). Against the whole scholastic tradition that is full with arguments for Gods existence he places his cool antithesis (in his Dutch introduction to CM2): “We have (!) the true idea of God”, and so cancels the classical argumentation.
But most striking is here (to my taste) his statement, that in extension/matter one finds “ONLY MECHANICAL TISSUES AND OPERATIONS” (mechanicas texturas et operationes). This is Spinoza’s earliest statement about his adhesion to the mechanical natural science, which was not yet for 100% exercised by Descartes. In the chapters CM2/7-9 about Gods will and power Spinoza amuses himself about people’s widely practiced excuse by their ‘RIDICULOUS’ recourse to the ASYLUM of Gods inscrutable will. To him gods will is not mysterious: ‘We know it insofar we understand things in our clear and distinct ideas’.
In this context Spinoza also anticipates Laplace: “If we could clearly understand the total order of nature, we would consider everything equally necessary as what is treated in mathematics (mathesis). But because this is above our reach, some things are considered by us as possible and others as necessary.” This was also the lesson of Greek Epicurism: POSSIBLE IS ONLY WHAT ACTUALLY EXISTS AND WILL EXIST.
But most striking is here (to my taste) his statement, that in extension/matter one finds “ONLY MECHANICAL TISSUES AND OPERATIONS” (mechanicas texturas et operationes). This is Spinoza’s earliest statement about his adhesion to the mechanical natural science, which was not yet for 100% exercised by Descartes. In the chapters CM2/7-9 about Gods will and power Spinoza amuses himself about people’s widely practiced excuse by their ‘RIDICULOUS’ recourse to the ASYLUM of Gods inscrutable will. To him gods will is not mysterious: ‘We know it insofar we understand things in our clear and distinct ideas’.
In this context Spinoza also anticipates Laplace: “If we could clearly understand the total order of nature, we would consider everything equally necessary as what is treated in mathematics (mathesis). But because this is above our reach, some things are considered by us as possible and others as necessary.” This was also the lesson of Greek Epicurism: POSSIBLE IS ONLY WHAT ACTUALLY EXISTS AND WILL EXIST.
Approaching the end of Spinoza’s Leiden academic scripture CM one can only admire the early ripening of his brain, when he writes about his “being kept by the most happy contemplation of this Thing” (beatissima contemplatio huius Entis teneri). But he rises even higher in ch. 11 (De concursu Dei), in which he returns to the undeniability of Gods permanent physicalistic ‘procreation’, to be understood as: “that all things in nature are by each other (VICISSIM) determined to their operation”, about which is moreover stipulated the exclusion of a causal relation from the past to the future: ‘tempus praesens nullum habet connectionem cum tempore futuro’. This proposition is integrally retrievable in the Essay (1690) of the plagiarizing Locke a few decades later!
But the young genius Spinoza rises to the highest top of the Olympic mountain in CM12 (De mente humana/on the human mind). Writing about the human machine (FABRICA) he states that it experiences at a certain moment its destruction and dies. But focusing on the general laws of the mechanistically working nature we discover a different story. “We clearly understand that it is impossible that a part of matter could be destroyed”. Not only Revelation teaches this; we also know it by natural light. The reference to Revelation is, of course, inserted for preventing his shocking Calvinistic society in which he lives.
Yes, yes. Spinoza is right. As thinking undestroyable matter, I, my soul, is IMMORTAL.
But the young genius Spinoza rises to the highest top of the Olympic mountain in CM12 (De mente humana/on the human mind). Writing about the human machine (FABRICA) he states that it experiences at a certain moment its destruction and dies. But focusing on the general laws of the mechanistically working nature we discover a different story. “We clearly understand that it is impossible that a part of matter could be destroyed”. Not only Revelation teaches this; we also know it by natural light. The reference to Revelation is, of course, inserted for preventing his shocking Calvinistic society in which he lives.
Yes, yes. Spinoza is right. As thinking undestroyable matter, I, my soul, is IMMORTAL.
In chapter 4 of my Dutch 2017-book under this title I discuss at length Spinoza’s “LEARNED CORRESPONDENCE”, which colours him in various ways as a mathematician, critical chemist, optician, mechanical scientist and lover of experimental try-outs, but certainly not as a meta-physician. The first friend we put on the stage is his ‘most dear’, ‘very learned and capable’ Dr. Lodewijk Meijer. This outstanding Leiden medical doctor was an acknowledged specialist in many disciplines, among them also language theory and rhetoric. Well-known is his famous Ep.12 ON INFINITY, in which time, measure and number are declared to be only AUXILIA IMAGINATIONES, unable to determine infinity. Whoever tries to determine it with them, is bluntly condemned as being insane (insaniat).
He was the leader of a highly active art and theatre company ‘NIL VOLENTIBUS ARDUUM’, to which also another close friend of Spinoza belonged: dr. Johannes Bouwmeester. Affinity between Spinoza’s and Meijer’s small physics is undeniable. No wonder that Spinoza asked him editorial assistance for the publication of PPC. His Letter 12A turned up for sale in Amsterdam in the sixties of former century, when I was librarian in the University and advised to buy it. |
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This series number intends to introduce the correspondent to whom Spinoza sent his first letter, still from Rijnsburg, and with whom he also exchanged most, actually many (25), letters: Henri Oldenburg, the secretary of the English Royal Society, born 1618 in the German harbour Bremen as a higher class member of its citizens, and acting as an ambassador to Cromwell for acquiring mercantile privileges for his home town during the English war. He spoke many languages and guided a young nobleman, nephew of Boyle, on his educative/cultural Europe tour. After hearing in Amsterdam about Spinoza’s great scientific renewal of Descartes he, curious about every kind of scientific development, decided to knock on his door when passing Rijnsburg on his way to England. In Ep.1 he referred to this visit, during which he had become very enthusiastic about Spinoza’s philosophy. And asked further details about man’s relation to the universe, assessing him meanwhile with Bacon as an ‘unequal analogy’ to the world, which occasioned Spinoza’s first critique. He died in the same year as Spinoza: 1677.
In greatest sadness Oldenburg had said farewell to Spinoza in Rijnsburg in 1661, where he was overly impressed by his ‘solid (!) science, humanity and moral elegance’. They had discussed about convenience and difference between gods’ infinite attributes thinking and extension.
In his first letter to B.d.S. he now asked Spinoza which according to him were the deficiencies (defectus) in Descartes’ and Bacon’s theories and sent him for comment Boyle’s new experimental writing EXERCITATIONES PHYSIOLOGICA (on air/fluidity and fix stuff). He either had not understood Spinoza’s critique of Descartes or forgotten it. Spinoza’s answering letter was intentionally rather short. Concerning Descartes, he mentioned a few items (freedom of will etc.) sending him for a complete exposition of his superseding him his 1663-PPC. About Bacon’s error he bluntly rejects his undertaking by calling it simply a ‘story’ (historia), a fairy tale. He reproaches him his fundamental diffidence in human nature, “as supposing that apart from the failing character of our senses we essentially conceive things analogously to our own nature instead of in analogy to the universe, with the consequence that we would essentially, as a kind of anequal glass, reflect its arrays”, and so disturb necessarily its pure message, its Truth. The ‘insignis opticus’ (as he later would be addressed by Leibniz) was already philosophizing as a general, a professional optician. |
Henry Oldenburg
Robert Boyle
Francis Bacon
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Oldenburg’s first letter to Rijnsburg was the starting point of a true scientific cooperation between Rijnsburg and Oxford, where Boyle’s laboratory, the Royal Society, was temporarily settled for political reasons. Oldenburg emphasized that in Boyle’s vision forms and qualities are only due to mechanical principles. Boyle was now busy to demonstrate this by various experiments.
Naturally, this program was totally to the taste of Spinoza, who certainly had already radicalized this method in his PPC. He received another report by Boyle about saltpetre experiments: DE NITRO DEQUE FLUIDITATE AC FIRMITUDINE, likewise, intentionally based on corpuscularism. But the Christian believers Boyle and his secretary were split personalities as the divine creation of man was not a point of discussion for them. Spinoza could not keep critique in his heart: “Think, my friend, that men are not created, but only generated (generari) and that their bodies existed already previously, although configurated in a different way”. Oldenburg, who also had studied theology, must have been shocked by this drastic demythologizing attack of the Dutch Jewish colleague.
Naturally, this program was totally to the taste of Spinoza, who certainly had already radicalized this method in his PPC. He received another report by Boyle about saltpetre experiments: DE NITRO DEQUE FLUIDITATE AC FIRMITUDINE, likewise, intentionally based on corpuscularism. But the Christian believers Boyle and his secretary were split personalities as the divine creation of man was not a point of discussion for them. Spinoza could not keep critique in his heart: “Think, my friend, that men are not created, but only generated (generari) and that their bodies existed already previously, although configurated in a different way”. Oldenburg, who also had studied theology, must have been shocked by this drastic demythologizing attack of the Dutch Jewish colleague.
In the rather long Ep. 6 Spinoza reacts in fine detail on Boyle’s EXERCITATIONES, in fact his report about his experimental analysis of saltpetre (‘nitre’; kaliumnitraat), used for making gunpowder. It would too far inflate my post to follow them all. I only accentuate the striking feature of his comment, in which he opposes Boyle’s supposition that the difference between the spirit of nitre and its rest would prove their heterogeneity, whereas they can easily be explained by the different degree of motion in its phases. In its stony condition particles are in rest, whereas in its fluent condition they are moving, reason why saltpetre is in that case not inflammable. Since for fire it is more difficult to move and change fix than fluid stuff. Anyhow the experiment does not undermine Spinoza’s fundamental hypothesis of the identity of matter (materia ubique idem) under its different degrees if motion.
Spinoza writes to Oldenburg that “the famous man (Boyle) seems trying to prove that the heated salty parts of the spirit of nitre MOVE THEMSELVES upward into the air” (salinas partes se proprio impulsu in aerem tollere), which is, of course, in straight contradiction with the shared principles of mechanical natural science. In his view they must be pushed by invisible particles of subtle matter.
In the same 6th letter Spinoza repeats a lesson he also gave in the PPC. Most notions cherished by common people about things around them do not declare them as they are on themselves, but as they are perceived by our senses. Heavy/light, fluent/firm, hot/cold and colours are not real, but only SECUNDAIRY QUALITIES. And the English sir commits even a hefty absurdity (sic) by supposing the possibility of a vacuum! The nobleman also writes about nature determining animals to swim or fly. Spinoza becomes cynical in his irony: “He seeks the cause in the purpose”. Spinoza’s commenting letter will not have contributed to heightened feelings of comfort chez Boyle.
In the same 6th letter Spinoza repeats a lesson he also gave in the PPC. Most notions cherished by common people about things around them do not declare them as they are on themselves, but as they are perceived by our senses. Heavy/light, fluent/firm, hot/cold and colours are not real, but only SECUNDAIRY QUALITIES. And the English sir commits even a hefty absurdity (sic) by supposing the possibility of a vacuum! The nobleman also writes about nature determining animals to swim or fly. Spinoza becomes cynical in his irony: “He seeks the cause in the purpose”. Spinoza’s commenting letter will not have contributed to heightened feelings of comfort chez Boyle.
When Oldenburg reports about Boyle’s experiment about air pressure, Spinoza, who is likewise a first-class experimental scientist, reacts with a visual report of his own ingeniously devised experiment about an eventual difference between horizontal and vertical air pressure. The result is negative, there does not exist such a difference.
Spinoza’s long correspondence with Oldenburg is full of surprising details. Take f.i. the relativizing remark: “Bodies are heavier or lighter depending on the fluids in which they find themselves”. The secretary writes to him for refuting Spinoza’s critique on Boyle’s saltpetre proof: that he used Epicuristic principles according to which particles would have in themselves a ‘conatus’ to move. He told him about his migration to Voorburg and the publication of his PPC/CM to make people curious for his real work, the Ethica. But never, never he intends to publish anything ‘invita patria’, against the laws of his (!) fatherland. The effervescence of the spirit of saltpetre must have been mechanically caused by ADVENTITIA MATERIA. Boyle fails in demonstrating that matter would not be homogeneous. Also, the air itself is not homogeneous but is a mixture of various parts, invisible for our eyes. ‘Saltpetre and its spirit differ like ice and water’. Spinoza has finally some success chez Boyle, who distances himself from his proof, but not yet from his (stupid for Spinoza) acceptance of the possibility of a vacuum. Anyhow does he now acknowledge the acuity of Spinoza’s scientific genius in Ep. 16 (MATHEMATICI TUI INGENUI ACUMINE). The Dutchman has made impression in Albion: “We, Boyle and I, often talk with each other (confabulamur) about your erudition and your talent”.
Letter 32, answering Oldenburg’s question about how parts of matter cohere with the whole extension, is a first revelation of Spinoza’s basic vision. He clearly confesses: “that I don’t adjudge to nature any beauty, deformity, order or confusion. It is only in relation to our imagination that things are called beautiful, deformed, orderly or chaotic”.
Accordingly, coherence and harmony of parts belong to these unapplicable categories. When I yet use the term, I intend nothing but that parts accommodate themselves lawfully to other parts thwarting them (contrarientur). |
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And to illustrate this point Spinoza refuges to one of his most attractive metaphors: let us think to be a worm (vermicula) in an animal’s blood. Our situation in the universe is comparable with the situation of that worm, distinguishing only the parts it meets in the blood-world and only feeling its affections or impacts by other parts of the blood. This worm would conceive other parts as a whole and it would not be able to know how all parts would be dependant on blood as such....
“LIKEWISE ALL BODIES ARE ENCLOSED BY OTHER BODIES AND DETERMINED BY EACH OTHER (ab invicem) TO EXIST AND WORK IN A FIRM AND DETERMINATE WAY”. And since the universe is infinite, its parts are forced in infinite ways to suffer infinite mutations.
This is an EXPLOSION of authentic physicalist Spinozism, sent to the English Royal Society in London from Voorburg.
“LIKEWISE ALL BODIES ARE ENCLOSED BY OTHER BODIES AND DETERMINED BY EACH OTHER (ab invicem) TO EXIST AND WORK IN A FIRM AND DETERMINATE WAY”. And since the universe is infinite, its parts are forced in infinite ways to suffer infinite mutations.
This is an EXPLOSION of authentic physicalist Spinozism, sent to the English Royal Society in London from Voorburg.
We are still busy with resuming the contents of my chapter 4 on Spinoza’s learned correspondence. After Oldenburg turns up Simon de Vries, an Amsterdam friend, with questions on the concepts of definition and attribute. Spinoza’s explanation in Ep.9 is fascinating by its clearness.
A DEFINITION explains a thing as it can be understood consequently, a bad definition is a sentence which cannot be understood. In the literature one finds plenty of them! |
Simon de Vries
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Personally, however, I am much more impressed by his super lucid scientific illustration of the relation substance/attribute, with his reference to the perception of a perfect PLANE (planum) as WHITE (album). ”By plane (vlak) I understand that which reflects the rays of light without any change; I understand the same under white (album/wit) unless it is said about man seeing a perfectly equal plane.
Likewise are extension and thinking our two ways of perceiving/knowing substance”.
I guess that this illustration is on itself an original contribution of Spinoza to the history of optics. I do not know about any predecessor in this respect.
De Vries had a second question: whether we need experience for learning to know the truth of an attribute. Spinoza’s answer was straight and square: no. Although he is, as we will show further on, a lover of experiments, he yet writes: “Experience cannot teach the essence of things” (experientia nullas rerum essentias docet). Ideas of affections by experience are necessarily partial and confused. It is only by becoming automatically conscious of what is common to them that we understand the essence of attributes.
Likewise are extension and thinking our two ways of perceiving/knowing substance”.
I guess that this illustration is on itself an original contribution of Spinoza to the history of optics. I do not know about any predecessor in this respect.
De Vries had a second question: whether we need experience for learning to know the truth of an attribute. Spinoza’s answer was straight and square: no. Although he is, as we will show further on, a lover of experiments, he yet writes: “Experience cannot teach the essence of things” (experientia nullas rerum essentias docet). Ideas of affections by experience are necessarily partial and confused. It is only by becoming automatically conscious of what is common to them that we understand the essence of attributes.
Earlier I mentioned Spinoza’s experimental confirmation that there is no difference between horizontal and vertical air pressure. In his correspondence with Hudde he shows himself as an experimenting opticus. And in his epistolary contact (Ep.41) with his close friend Jelles he writes about his experiment in Voorburg. We see him busy with various pipes and water letting stream through them to discover whether it loses on a distance a degree of its pressure (AQUAE PRESSIO). Yes, indeed Spinoza is not only a scientific theorist, but likewise already an EXPERIMENTATOR, as it appears from his hydrographic experiment, in which he comes to the conclusion, that water streaming through a pipe loses “little or nothing” from its pressure.
We talked about a typesetter’s mistake in Spinoza’s third letter (Ep.36) in which he tried to demonstrate for Hudde God’s unicity. The great mathematical Cartesian was possibly not quite convinced by the power of Spinoza’s argument, since decades later, when he was one of the powerful magistrates or burgomasters in Amsterdam, and Van Limborch, a remonstrant theologian told him about Locke’s new philosophy in the ESSAY, he wanted to learn, whether it contained an argument for Gods unicity. Locke was anxious to burn his fingers.
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Johannes Hudde
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Accidentally the Leiden crypto-Spinozistic professor De Volder attended the discussion between Van Limborch and Locke and provided immediately the solution for Hudde’s problem: “Whatever Hudde wants with infinite thought (cogitatio infinita) totally escapes me, but only a thinking thing or substance (rem vel substantiam cogitantem), finite or infinite”. Infinite thought must be thought of infinite extension, otherwise it is speculative or phantastic flattering in the air, i.e. non existent.
This authentical Spinozistic solution was then passed to Hudde and will have satisfied him.
This authentical Spinozistic solution was then passed to Hudde and will have satisfied him.
Willem van Blijenbergh, like Spinoza born in 1632, was a grain broker in the city Dordrecht, where in 1618 the world-famous Calvinistic Synod was held to decide between the Gomarist and Arminian interpretation of the reformed belief. He was well educated, but no scientist, yet interested in books like the PPC, and started (in Dutch) a correspondence of 8 letters with its author, while so much ‘desiring the truth’, he did not find in it. His main objection was that given the absence of working causes besides Gods determination of everything (predestination!), it would follow that man could not commit any evil act (geen quaet in de wille van de ziel). Spinoza, who addressed him as “very learned and wise sir”, answered with his too high lesson, that on itself nothing in the world is good or bad, otherwise than in relation to or for other beings.
One ought to carefully discriminate: the same acts we condemn in humans, like war and jealousy, we praise and admire in or among bees and pigeons. One must not take Scriptural sentences always literally. Scripture talks on God as if he is a superman or king: ‘humanly’ (menschlijkerwijs) prescribing his people a certain behaviour, remunerating or punishing him afterwards. Many sections of its text are metaphorical (parabels), like the eating of a forbidden apple in the paradise, simply meaning eating a poisonous fruit causing one’s disease or death. Part of Spinoza’s reaction to Blijenbergh could have been drawn from his Apology against the rabbinical authorities who also took Scripture literal.
What else shocked Blijenbergh so much and was so sharp against his reformed taste?
“By you, Benedictus, we are made equally dependent on god as elements, herbs, stones etc. What, then, could be the use of having a reasoning faculty? We deprive ourselves from prayer, sighing to God, by which we often felt to be strengthened... We equalize ourselves to BLOCKS, and all our working is nothing less than the MOVEMENT OF A CLOCKWORK” (een uurwercks beweginge).
His frequent invoking Scripture elicits Spinoza’s harsh statement, “that he (Spinoza) does not understand scripture albeit having studied it for quite many years”. In the context one finds a most important elucidation of this position, in which Spinoza fully sides his friend Meyer’s PHILOSOPHIA S.S. SCRIPTURAE INTERPRETES (1665).
Listen: “I probably not find in Scripture the truth that you ascribe to it, but anyhow more authority, whereas I am on guard not to impute her infantile or stupid opinions, to which attitude is only capable the person who is well versed in philosophy (QUI PHILOSOPHIAM BENE INTELLIGIT)”.
Spinoza claims his hermeneutics to be scientific. Nobody can better explain an obscure text than the one who is philosophically educated and masters philosophy.
“By you, Benedictus, we are made equally dependent on god as elements, herbs, stones etc. What, then, could be the use of having a reasoning faculty? We deprive ourselves from prayer, sighing to God, by which we often felt to be strengthened... We equalize ourselves to BLOCKS, and all our working is nothing less than the MOVEMENT OF A CLOCKWORK” (een uurwercks beweginge).
His frequent invoking Scripture elicits Spinoza’s harsh statement, “that he (Spinoza) does not understand scripture albeit having studied it for quite many years”. In the context one finds a most important elucidation of this position, in which Spinoza fully sides his friend Meyer’s PHILOSOPHIA S.S. SCRIPTURAE INTERPRETES (1665).
Listen: “I probably not find in Scripture the truth that you ascribe to it, but anyhow more authority, whereas I am on guard not to impute her infantile or stupid opinions, to which attitude is only capable the person who is well versed in philosophy (QUI PHILOSOPHIAM BENE INTELLIGIT)”.
Spinoza claims his hermeneutics to be scientific. Nobody can better explain an obscure text than the one who is philosophically educated and masters philosophy.
No, we are not yet ready with stipulating important points of Ch.2 in my book. I now wish to conclude my remarks on the correspondence of Blijenbergh by referring to his admitted visit to Voorburg, in which he could directly talk with his opponent. When he later wrote a refutation of Spinoza in his THE TRUTH OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION he reported there his interview, saying that “Spinoza advances a political religion” (Het is syne intentie een politieke godsdienst in te voeren). At the time of his visit Spinoza was busy writing the first chapters of his TTP, in which he precisely developed his thesis, that we serve God by politically realizing justice and charity. Naturally, this also became a point of discussion during their coffee session.
PS. Dear friends, this interview, my discovery in/about 1985, is not yet an element in the current biographical literature.
PS. Dear friends, this interview, my discovery in/about 1985, is not yet an element in the current biographical literature.
Hugo van Boxtel proposed Spinoza a series of very curious, even childish questions about the existence of ghosts or spectres. He was not an Amsterdam friend, but a casual relation from the time that Spinoza visited, probably on instigation of pensionary De Witt, the French headquarter in Utrecht, travelling via Rotterdam on ship to the river harbour Gorcum, and lodging there met the intermediary Van Boxtel. Remaining polite Spinoza strategically discards his superstitious suggestions not worth a serious reaction. But one always finds precious pearls in Spinoza’s letters.
To Van Boxtel’s invoking the beautiful harmony in the universe and its immensity that would require numerous spirits elsewhere, Spinoza breaks out with a first class aesthetic theory, a typical flower of his original explanation of perception in the PPC. “Beauty (pulchritudo), illustrious sir, is not a quality of the observed object but an effect in the observer. If our eyes were longer or shorter or our biological mix (temperamentum) were different, then what is now called beautiful would appear deformed and what is now deformed would be viewed as beautiful. On itself things are neither beautiful nor ugly”. Like heavy/light and colours, beauty is only a secundary property IN US.
To Van Boxtel’s invoking the beautiful harmony in the universe and its immensity that would require numerous spirits elsewhere, Spinoza breaks out with a first class aesthetic theory, a typical flower of his original explanation of perception in the PPC. “Beauty (pulchritudo), illustrious sir, is not a quality of the observed object but an effect in the observer. If our eyes were longer or shorter or our biological mix (temperamentum) were different, then what is now called beautiful would appear deformed and what is now deformed would be viewed as beautiful. On itself things are neither beautiful nor ugly”. Like heavy/light and colours, beauty is only a secundary property IN US.
We were in no. 52 discussing the correspondence between the Gorcum upstart and quasi erudite Van Boxtel and Spinoza. A famous saying of Spinoza is about his decided rejection of scorning, ridiculing and scolding other people. Here, however, he does so himself! He simply derides Van Boxtel’s idiotic suggestions. F.i.: that spectres would better than bodies equal and express God, which is far from his mathematical bed, because there is no proportion between finite and infinite (INTER FINITUM ET INFINITUM NULLAM ESSE PROPORTIONEM). Further Van Boxtel imagines ghosts as living in the highest regions of the universe. Hereupon Spinoza remarks satirically not to know which are those highest or lowest regions except on the basis of the supposition that the earth is the centrum of the universe: “If Sun or Saturnus would be the centrum, Earth would belong to its lowest region”. Spinoza gives currently short shrift to Boxtel’s stupid arguments.
P.S. In TTP2 Spinoza testifies to be fully updated qua physical information in remarking: “Scientists know that the earth moves and the sun rests OR AT LEAST DOES NOT TURN ROUND THE EARTH”. Work of Copernicus and Galilei was integrated in his mind.
P.S. In TTP2 Spinoza testifies to be fully updated qua physical information in remarking: “Scientists know that the earth moves and the sun rests OR AT LEAST DOES NOT TURN ROUND THE EARTH”. Work of Copernicus and Galilei was integrated in his mind.
Among Spinoza’s learned correspondents one ought certainly not forget Leibniz, who already for quite a long period had been rather curious about this new type of radicalized Cartesianism that he represented. After the appearance of the TTP his waiting for contact became unbearable. He devised a trick that would be uncompromising for his Christian name and introduced himself in a flattering letter (45): “Among the honours that fame has bestowed on you I consider also your excellent expertise in optics (insignem rei opticae peritiam)”, while mentioning irrelevant literature in this discipline and an essay by his own hand, that was not difficult for Spinoza to make short work with in his answer. In fact, Spinoza had already developed to a first rang expert in theoretical and practical optics, who even made microscopes and telescopes with home-turned lenses; cf my article INSIGNIS OPTICUS. SPINOZA IN DE GESCHIEDENIS VAN DE OPTICA (De Zeventiende Eeuw, Jg. 6, 1990). Finally, Leibniz succeeded a few years later to be personally received by the Headfigure of Enlightenment in his apartment in The Hague for further discussion about God. They did not succeed in arriving to a common conclusion, as it appeared at the end of the century when Leibniz sustained and defended his anti-Spinozism against the crypto-spinozistic Leiden professor De Volder and completely lost the fight. See about this my article in LIAS 1988, 191-244. But above all one should read about the relation between the two Matthew Stewart’s unsurpassable bestseller THE COURTIER AND THE HERETIC.
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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Schema van 17de-eeuwse lenzenslijpbank
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Who most of all is not allowed to remain absent in our list of Spinoza’s learned correspondents is certainly his student companion from the time he circled around 1660 in the Leiden Academy and became his confident there: the physics/medical student baron Walther von Tschirnhaus, from the German Saxony, who had also temporarily served in the Dutch States army. Their correspondence, in which Schuller played a secretary role for him, consisted of 12 letters, among which Ep.58 about the flying stone is by far the most important one.
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Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnaus
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1674 was a dangerous year for Spinoza on account of the official proscription of his TTP by the States of Holland in a placard. Actually, he was condemned for his atheism. The Christian Tschirnhaus had difficulties with his friend’s rough determinism, including the denial of a free will in man. Spinoza spends maximal energy in trying to persuade him, writing: “Let us descend to the finite things, all of which are determined by external causes to exist and operate in a definite and determinate way. Let us take, in order to conceive it clearly, a very simple feat before our eyes, e.g. a stone receiving by the impact of an external cause a certain quantity of motion, by which it afterward will necessarily continue to move, even though the impulse of the external cause ceases”.
The OP-Latin text sounds: CERTAM MOTUS QUANTITATEM ACCIPIT QUA POSTEA (,) CESSANTE CAUSAE EXTERNAE IMPULSU MOVERI NECESSARIO PERGET. The comma after ‘postea’ is misplaced by the typesetter, while suggesting that the thrown stone would continue after the throw its motion by a received internal energy. Placing, however, the comma after ‘cessante’ corrects the sentence to its pure mechanistic meaning. After leaving the throwing hand (qua cessante) the stone continues its flight not by an own imaginary energy, but by the pressure of air particles moved by the throwing hand! The text correction was done by Bruder in the 19th century and rediscovered by me. I defended the important correction in my article INERTIA AS AN EFFECT IN SPINOZA’s PHYSICS (on internet). The application of the example follows further on in the letter: man is like the stone, going forward without consciousness of his being propelled by external causes.
The OP-Latin text sounds: CERTAM MOTUS QUANTITATEM ACCIPIT QUA POSTEA (,) CESSANTE CAUSAE EXTERNAE IMPULSU MOVERI NECESSARIO PERGET. The comma after ‘postea’ is misplaced by the typesetter, while suggesting that the thrown stone would continue after the throw its motion by a received internal energy. Placing, however, the comma after ‘cessante’ corrects the sentence to its pure mechanistic meaning. After leaving the throwing hand (qua cessante) the stone continues its flight not by an own imaginary energy, but by the pressure of air particles moved by the throwing hand! The text correction was done by Bruder in the 19th century and rediscovered by me. I defended the important correction in my article INERTIA AS AN EFFECT IN SPINOZA’s PHYSICS (on internet). The application of the example follows further on in the letter: man is like the stone, going forward without consciousness of his being propelled by external causes.
No wonder that Tschirnhaus has a dominating position in Spinoza’s correspondence, worth to be honoured with a separate biography. I would like to write it, should my age not forbid the enterprise. More than other friends he is uttermost caught by Spinoza’s new physics and was privately in face to face meetings informed about its features. Impatient he asks his master in Ep.59: how long do we have to wait for your treatise about GENERALIA IN PHYSICIS. And in another letter: ‘personally’ (praesens) you informed me about the method to discover new unknown truths. He was perfectly initiated, as it also becomes evident by the fact that he later, when traveling to Paris, had a copy of Spinoza’s Ethica-ms in his luggage. Leibniz tried without success to copy it for himself: he only was told about a few head points, that inspired him to note that Spinoza supports a kind of Pythagorean transmigration of our souls from body to body!
But super most important is Tschirnhaus because and insofar he is demonstrably the author of many very illuminating (!) marginal notes in his OPERA POSTHUMA-copy, which is now property of the Leiden University Library. Two years ago, I posted a whole series about those notes; in this series I will again often return to them. Pay attention, please, to their formidable riches. |
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Against the background of the heavy Dutch discussion between Arminians (accepting human free merit or guilt) and Gomarists (Gods absolute predestination, decided in the Dordrecht Synod 2018) it is an elevating relief to read Spinoza’s SCIENTIFIC proposition about our being not more than a machine without an internal responsible steering ‘chief’, since a machine only operates, impacted by external causes, along general physical laws. In fact, this is the hard core of his Ethica, which in far details explores and describes the inexorable behaviourial mechanisms of HUMANI CORPORIS FABRICA (de machine van het menselijk lichaam). Our so-called faculty of free will responsible for our behaviour is a pure fiction. In the early 18th century this rough but authentic Spinozism is best explained and propagated by Bernard Mandeville.
Having emphasized and explained the title of my 5th chapter (‘machinal man’) I now start to make a few remarks about Spinoza’s ‘modernistic’ but hopeless undertaking to proceed geometrically in demonstrating the aspects or details of his totalitarian groundview in a series of definitions and propositions. A priori one already suspects the impossibility of this project. And indeed: one cannot take its deductive character seriously. The coherence of definitions, axioms and propositions is not a linearity, but has everything of an interweaving, a network or a complicated reference system. Let us not forget, that the author does not claim its geometrical character but by using ‘more’ (as it were) only its external similarity to abstract geometry. The procedure is nonetheless totally new, impressive, but risky and provocative, testifying to the maker’s audacious self confidence.
Take the first two pages. All you need is on them. The formulas are the fruits of many years of deep meditation. And imagine now Spinoza thinking: how shall we start our ‘system’ in order to persuade the foreign people and the mass of our opponents of the correctness of our intuitive certainty about god as the THING, the EVERYTHING.
Take the first two pages. All you need is on them. The formulas are the fruits of many years of deep meditation. And imagine now Spinoza thinking: how shall we start our ‘system’ in order to persuade the foreign people and the mass of our opponents of the correctness of our intuitive certainty about god as the THING, the EVERYTHING.
On his first page Spinoza plays already his game with open cards on the table. Look carefully! Card 1 is the beautiful and crystal-clear definition of ‘causa sui’ as x (id) that essentially and therefore necessarily does exist. Card 2 can hardly be called a definition and contains too much. Finite is what is determined by another finite x in the same category, e.g. a body by another body. This at once excludes mutual interference of a thought and a body, as is explicitly affirmed. Card 3 is the foundational concept of the INFINITE THING, infinite matter, infinite stuff, here designated as SUBSTANCE, a choice maybe disputable on account of the misleading ‘sub’ (under what?). In the KV Spinoza had preferred the neutral two words DE ZAAK (the thing), but he changed his mind, regrettably, I think. Attribute, on the fourth card, is what we perceive as the essence of the substantial x; in other words: HOW we perceive IT, or: what we understand. Card 5 is ugly. The definition of mode as ‘affection of substance’ cannot be correct, given its infinity. Meant is internal differentiation among its innumerable finites. God is, 6th, defined correctly as infinite qua categorical diversification of content: whatever is infinite does belong to THE THING. Card 7 determines FREE (liber) as autonomy and stipulates liberty as the opposite of coercion by something else (= necessity). Card 8 simply explains that eternity has nothing to do with time, but again said simply: a point of X.
PS. Sorry for my bold remarks.
PS. Sorry for my bold remarks.
My fb-follower will certainly have remarked that I put the heaviest accent on Spinoza’s physicalism. He favours a philosophy without emptiness. Vacuity is irrational and therefore impossible and non existent. This means that the material reality is strictly undivisible. What we call its parts are fictions. They are nothing more than various modes of the same substance, which is everywhere the same: MATERIA UBIQUE EADEM EST (matter is everywhere the same). We do not willingly believe it, but it is Spinoza’s reality, who sees in his highest faculty an infinite mass of subtlest atoms moving with various speeds. Our things are modes of the same stuff. And this is our substantial god, i.e. the substance (!) of our life: we ARE IT (not him). The name ‘god’ is not wrong unless we personalize x to our own image or model. IT is indeed the absolute cause of our being and behaviour, but one must understand this, as earlier indicated in the PPC/CM, circularly, like this: all things cause each other reciprocally in endless series.
Lastly, we talked about Spinoza’s physicalism as it prompts up everywhere in Ethics I. His work is often misnamed as metaphysics, the title he only used in his CM for referring to scholasticism. In his textual self-advertisement ‘philosophia’ is a frequent indication of the thing he does, but this word does not cover the soft content of nowadays philosophy. It coincides with universal science of nature. As far as I know it is only in 1/33s2 that we meet the word SCIENTIA for his demonstrating propositions like 1/29 (exclusion of contingency in nature), 1/28 (universal determination of finite by finite beings in endless series), 1/33 (impossibility of being otherwise), etc. In the second scholium to this 1/33 he writes that the fact of our not knowing the order of causes (ordo causarum NOS latet) is the great obstacle of science à la Spinoza (MAGNAE SCIENTIAE OBSTACULUM). In the phantastic summary of his physicalist procedure in the Appendix he recapitulates it unsurpassably in the two words CONCATENATIO RERUM. Our not being conscious of this is the origin of our many prejudices, among which above all our belief that everything acts for a purpose, yea, that even God directs in his creatures everything to man’s wellbeing and finalizes man to serving God.
Having presented his assets in E1 Spinoza adds in its appendix apart from stressing his deterministic mechanicism also a few remarks on the origin of superstition from our deficiency of knowledge and inclination to put everything upside down when not searching their causes. He particularly accuses peoples reversion of the usual method of refutation by a reduction to the absurd into the reduction to God’s will, which is in fact a reduction to an ASYLUM IGNORANTIAE, an asylum of ignorance, which is invalid and brings us no step further. The appendix fascinates also by its short but powerful anticipation of his epistemological exposition on our superficial and confuse imaginations in the forthcoming treatise on “the human nature”. E2 is called science of man’s nature. “If the motion, which our sensual nerves receive from the objects before our eyes, leads to our health, they are called beautiful, otherwise ugly”. Similarly, subtle stimuli of other senses give the impression of a fine odour or stench, heavy or light, hard or soft, luminous or dark etc. Those impressions are nothing but our becoming conscious of minute changes in our body by the received sensual affections. They are called IMAGINATIONS, i.e. ideas of the images or codes in our body. Everybody judges and must judge according to the DISPOSITION of his body, under the permanent influences from its environment.
This theory is purely physicalist and as such highly original in the whole history of philosophy AND the psychology of later centuries.
This theory is purely physicalist and as such highly original in the whole history of philosophy AND the psychology of later centuries.
The last word of E1/app is ‘emendari’ (corrigere), which reminds us of the title of Spinoza’s first work (Tractatus de intellectus emendatione). It is as it were the point behind his denunciation of superstition and his genealogy of our fake knowledge, namely our imaginations.
Henceforward Spinoza is focused upon real, authentic knowledge, as announced in his earlier ‘scientia’. Title and preface of E2 deserve our full attention. DE NATURA ET ORIGINE MENTIS (on nature and origin of the mind). Starting point and business is now anthropology, science of man: “I now proceed to explain the things that necessarily follow from god or the eternal and infinite being, not all of them since they are infinite, but only those, which may lead us as it were by hand TO THE KNOWLEDGE of man and his highest happiness”.
The primary purpose is not the discovery of moral presciptions for our behaviour, but knowledge of our nature.
Henceforward Spinoza is focused upon real, authentic knowledge, as announced in his earlier ‘scientia’. Title and preface of E2 deserve our full attention. DE NATURA ET ORIGINE MENTIS (on nature and origin of the mind). Starting point and business is now anthropology, science of man: “I now proceed to explain the things that necessarily follow from god or the eternal and infinite being, not all of them since they are infinite, but only those, which may lead us as it were by hand TO THE KNOWLEDGE of man and his highest happiness”.
The primary purpose is not the discovery of moral presciptions for our behaviour, but knowledge of our nature.
My reader will now have understood one thing particularly; that it is not Spinoza’s intention to provide us in the Ethica with a moral handbook. We only want to know what human nature is and how it works, without the illusion of being able to change its mechanism. His preliminary definitions are worth reading, especially the one of something’s essence: ‘given, the thing is given, taken away, the thing is lost’, or: ‘without which, the thing also doesn’t exist’. And ‘idea’ refers to the concept we form when thinking. The term ‘adequate’ is likewise important: qualifies the idea insofar it on itself/intrinsically, without any relation to an object, has the property of truth. Def. 6 is in fact a synonymous one, of great relevance indeed: ‘reality and perfection are the same for me/according to me. A quite revolutionary position! Among the 5 axioms I mention man’s contingency (1), thinking (2), his passions being modes of thinking (3), the affections of his body being the objects of his perception (4), man’s thinking nothing but bodies and modes of thinking (5).
Oh, oh, how rich is this arsenal of intellectual weapons! War against all kind of mysteries can start, the earlier the better. Spinoza follows the slogan of his master: NEC MORA NEC REQUIES (Aeneis 10/52). We have no time to lose for our appropriation of Spinoza’s physics of man.
Oh, oh, how rich is this arsenal of intellectual weapons! War against all kind of mysteries can start, the earlier the better. Spinoza follows the slogan of his master: NEC MORA NEC REQUIES (Aeneis 10/52). We have no time to lose for our appropriation of Spinoza’s physics of man.
Spinoza was already an advanced (yes,) experimental (yes!) physicist, doing research in optics, chemistry and air and water pressure, all this on mechanistic principles [see below by this relevant scans from his correspondence], when he started his writing and demonstrating universal science in Ethica I DE DEO.
Inside this general frame his ‘science of human nature’ (DE NATURA HUMANA) finds its place, and in this context he inserted 2/13s: ‘PAUCA DE NATURA CORPORUM’, what by later commentators was indicated as his ‘small physics’. I shall discuss this section in my next post. Here I only wish to emphasize the fact that our Spinoza does judge it necessary, for acquiring a good concept of human nature, to acquire first elementary physical knowledge, for which he, as a professional scientist in his time, can and does give us the foundational principles with short introduction.
Inside this general frame his ‘science of human nature’ (DE NATURA HUMANA) finds its place, and in this context he inserted 2/13s: ‘PAUCA DE NATURA CORPORUM’, what by later commentators was indicated as his ‘small physics’. I shall discuss this section in my next post. Here I only wish to emphasize the fact that our Spinoza does judge it necessary, for acquiring a good concept of human nature, to acquire first elementary physical knowledge, for which he, as a professional scientist in his time, can and does give us the foundational principles with short introduction.
Drawings in Spinoza's letters: 1 Geometry - 2 Optica - 3 Hydrostatica - 4 Physica - 5 Physica - 6 Ethica Vaticaans handschrift
Spinoza’s fundamental mind-body-coupling is most prominently formulated in 2/7 (the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection ot the things [sc. bodies]) and 2/13 (the objects of the ideas that constitute our mind are bodies, sc. certain actually existing modes of extension AND NOTHING ELSE). It is precisely in the scholium to this proposition that Spinoza justifies his inserting of a small physics to get a clear concept of the human mind. Pay attention: the more physics, the more science of your own mind!
Starting immediately his own physics he mentions as axiom 1 that bodies move or are resting and as axiom 2 that all bodies interchangeably move faster or slower. Hereupon are based 7 physical propositions, called ‘lemma’ as differing from the ‘propositions’ in the human (ethical) section of general physics.
This first lemma is highly interesting: BODIES DIFFER FROM EACH OTHER ON ACCOUNT OF MOTION AND REST, FASTNESS AND SLOWNESS BUT NOT AS DIFFERENT SUBSTANCES.
This lemma will be despised by many innocent people but cannot really be disputed by reasoning folk. The basic stuff is the same in all its variations effectuated by different degrees of motion.
Starting immediately his own physics he mentions as axiom 1 that bodies move or are resting and as axiom 2 that all bodies interchangeably move faster or slower. Hereupon are based 7 physical propositions, called ‘lemma’ as differing from the ‘propositions’ in the human (ethical) section of general physics.
This first lemma is highly interesting: BODIES DIFFER FROM EACH OTHER ON ACCOUNT OF MOTION AND REST, FASTNESS AND SLOWNESS BUT NOT AS DIFFERENT SUBSTANCES.
This lemma will be despised by many innocent people but cannot really be disputed by reasoning folk. The basic stuff is the same in all its variations effectuated by different degrees of motion.
Having learned that bodies differ from each other by motion or rest and their degrees (also rest has a quantity!) and in L2: that bodies necessarily agree in certain respects (how could it be otherwise between modes of the same?) Spinoza proceeds to his most original and revolutionary L3, sounding that: “A moving or resting body must have been (debuit) determined to its motion or rest by another body, which likewise must have been determined to its motion or rest by another body and so infinitely further”. As notified in the demonstration this lemma is the logical implication of 1/28, saying that everything is ‘usque in infinitum’ determined to its existence and operations by other and other things. OK, but what the corollary to L3 says, goes straight against our prejudices! Don’t we automatically believe that what is forced to rest remains so indefinitely and what is brought to motion does go forward by itself? L3c-Quote: “From this follows that a moving body moves untill it is by another body determined to rest and that a resting body rests as long till it is by another body determined to motion”. But this is not so evident as Spinoza seems to indicate, implying meanwhile the 1/28 foundation. In fact we might accuse him of a misleading omission (!) that is handwritten added by Tschirnhaus in his Leiden-OP copy, probably drawn from his own Ethica-ms:
“Tamdiu enim causa movens et causa quietem constituens considerantur agere sive nunc producere effectum”. This correction of the OP-omission makes crystal clear that according to Spinoza’s physics, that whatever moves is permanently forced to moving, and that whatever rests is permanently by an external cause forced to rest. Bye-bye Descartes’ phantasy about inertia as a property of matter! Inertia in motion and rest is per se an effect.
PS. The point I present here is unknown by all professional Spinoza scholars, French or American.
“Tamdiu enim causa movens et causa quietem constituens considerantur agere sive nunc producere effectum”. This correction of the OP-omission makes crystal clear that according to Spinoza’s physics, that whatever moves is permanently forced to moving, and that whatever rests is permanently by an external cause forced to rest. Bye-bye Descartes’ phantasy about inertia as a property of matter! Inertia in motion and rest is per se an effect.
PS. The point I present here is unknown by all professional Spinoza scholars, French or American.
The small physics is not a linear composition and not rather demonstrative. Axioms and lemmata interchange wildly. After L3c Spinoza pursues with a new set of both unequal physical basements. No wonder that historians of philosophy generally skip the section in their commentary supposing that it is not so relevant. The opposite is true: it is the clue to E2. A1 is simple: when a body is affected by another body, the resulting mode has affinity with both causes, to the effect that it may be diversified according to different variations of the mover and of itself. A3 says that when a body impacts another one that cannot be moved, it will reflect with the same corner as its invasion. Next comes the definition of identity pregnant (!) with a concept of gravity:
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INDIVIDUALITY.
“When bodies of the same or different volume are só coerced by the others on each other that they touch each other (sibi invicem incumbant) or, when moving in different degrees of velocity, they share their motions in a certain proportion, we’ll call them UNITED and assert them to compose an individuum, different from others by this specific unity”. The underlying proposition is here that all identities are the effect of pressure from the environment. Bye bye Newton! |
Bye bye, Isaac Newton...
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In my enthusiasm to hurry on to Spinoza’s ‘small physics’ I neglected to refer to Tschirnhaus’ improvement c.q. correction of 2/13s, in which Spinoza first asserts that all beings (not only all animals) are animated (animata) and then continues writing that he intends to explain in what sense the human mind differs from other minds and better is than other minds (quidque reliquis praestet). At this point Spinoza’s intimate Tschirnhaus, who owns his E-ms, inserts/adds ‘VEL CEDET’ (or remains behind the minds of other animals).
This is a hugely important correction of the passage, because Spinoza himself explains further on why. The level of one’s intelligence fully and exclusively depends on one’s sensitive equipment, which is in many animals far more, further and sharper developed than in mankind. Those animals must therefore be supposed to have higher intelligence than we human folk. The only thing is that we cannot see their thoughts from the outside, but only conclude it.
This is a hugely important correction of the passage, because Spinoza himself explains further on why. The level of one’s intelligence fully and exclusively depends on one’s sensitive equipment, which is in many animals far more, further and sharper developed than in mankind. Those animals must therefore be supposed to have higher intelligence than we human folk. The only thing is that we cannot see their thoughts from the outside, but only conclude it.
After his definition of individuality Spinoza proceeds in Axioma 3 distinguishing between hard, soft, and fluent bodies according to their having many or few upper surfaces in common or no at all, as moving among each other.
In the following four lemmata Spinoza focuses his attention on the living organism and describes the elementary principles of its processes of metabolism, nutrition, growth and unrigging, inclination and transposition. Each thing is a function of the universe. Finally the daredevil Spinoza doesn’t hesitate to call “the whole nature óne individual” (totam naturam unum individuum esse) “the parts of which, so-called all bodies, vary in infinite ways without any mutation of the whole individual”.
Subsequently Spinoza enumerates six postulates, of which I quote:
1 “The human body is composed of many different individuals that are again composed by plural individuals”, and
4 “For its conservation human body needs many other individuals, by which it is continuously regenerated”.
Our life is a process of continuous regeneration, which once upon a time comes to its end at the deficiency of required ‘food’ or other chemicals.
In the following four lemmata Spinoza focuses his attention on the living organism and describes the elementary principles of its processes of metabolism, nutrition, growth and unrigging, inclination and transposition. Each thing is a function of the universe. Finally the daredevil Spinoza doesn’t hesitate to call “the whole nature óne individual” (totam naturam unum individuum esse) “the parts of which, so-called all bodies, vary in infinite ways without any mutation of the whole individual”.
Subsequently Spinoza enumerates six postulates, of which I quote:
1 “The human body is composed of many different individuals that are again composed by plural individuals”, and
4 “For its conservation human body needs many other individuals, by which it is continuously regenerated”.
Our life is a process of continuous regeneration, which once upon a time comes to its end at the deficiency of required ‘food’ or other chemicals.
The clever Spinoza accurately prepares in 2/13/post. 5 the physical basis of his new E2-epistemology. One reads here: “When a fluid part of the human body (spirits in the nerves) is so determined by an external body, that it often gives impact to another soft part, it changes its surface and impresses in it as it were a trace (vestigium) of the impacting external body”.
Well, given the fact that we actually do in our mind reflect or think whatever small mutation in our body, we also necessarily think, yes, the existence of the external impacting body, of which we received via our sensorium the trace in our brains. This means we MUST imagine it, so-called thinks its ‘imago’/physical trace.
But, but: the impressions in our brains caused via our sensual equipment and their plural affections are not precise pictures of the figures of the seen, heard, felt... objects, because they are, as a mixture, co-produced by them and our own body, whereas we cannot distinguish those two factors. Consequently: our imaginations are NECESSARILY CONFUSED IDEAS of our surrounding world, not clear, but inadequate or partial.
Well, given the fact that we actually do in our mind reflect or think whatever small mutation in our body, we also necessarily think, yes, the existence of the external impacting body, of which we received via our sensorium the trace in our brains. This means we MUST imagine it, so-called thinks its ‘imago’/physical trace.
But, but: the impressions in our brains caused via our sensual equipment and their plural affections are not precise pictures of the figures of the seen, heard, felt... objects, because they are, as a mixture, co-produced by them and our own body, whereas we cannot distinguish those two factors. Consequently: our imaginations are NECESSARILY CONFUSED IDEAS of our surrounding world, not clear, but inadequate or partial.
Not only are we rather often the prey of our wild and vague imaginations about what happens around us; what is worse, is that we sometimes feign things or facts that do not exist at all. We call this type of fiction an HALLUCINATION and Spinoza is better than any other psychologist or philosopher capable to give physiologically a causal explanation of this phenomenon, which we will certainly adhere to after reading our previous post. “If the human body is affected in a way, which involves the nature of an external body, the human mind will contemplate the same body as actually existing or present, until his body is affected with a reaction (affectu) that excludes its existence or presence,” (E2/17).
Meanwhile the external situation may have been changed or reversed by various causes, of which the subject in question has no perception. The original trace in his brain is not cancelled, so that he MUST still have its idea, i.e. an idea of what did not continue to exist. This thinking of what does not exist is a quite normal and unavoidable hallucination, as Spinoza magisterially demonstrates and exemplifies in 2/18s.
Meanwhile the external situation may have been changed or reversed by various causes, of which the subject in question has no perception. The original trace in his brain is not cancelled, so that he MUST still have its idea, i.e. an idea of what did not continue to exist. This thinking of what does not exist is a quite normal and unavoidable hallucination, as Spinoza magisterially demonstrates and exemplifies in 2/18s.
Whoever and whichever epistemologist is seriously interested in himself and his own mind, ought to follow a whole range of propositions after 2/18.
2/19: no such knowledge, except by ideas of what happens to (affections) our body. Etc indefinitely: “as soon we know something, we know that we know, and do we know to know”. (2/2s). This results in 2/22: “We don’t only know the affections of our body, but likewise perceive those ideas”. And this is how we know ourselves: 2/23. This body-knowledge is inadequate (2/24). The parts of our body are extremely composite individuals, they on their turn again (2/24s). Spinoza proceeds by heavily stressing the inadequate character of all our imaginations on whatever level, and finally draws in 2/29s a great and even explosive conclusion, which may be considered an eye-opener or clue to the understanding of his Ethica:
“I declare expressly, that the mind does have neither of herself nor of her body or of external bodies any adequate but only a confuse knowledge as often she perceives things along the common order of nature, i.e. as often as she externally, so-called according to the fortuitous happening of things, is DETERMINED to contemplate this or that x, but, but non when she is INTERNALLY determined, namely when through contemplating together (simul) more things understanding their conveniences, differences and oppositions. Because when she is in this way internally (!) disposed, then she contemplates things clearly and distinctly” (2/29s).
Dear friends, dear readers, this famous scholium does teach us that we, humans, do rise automatically to highest wisdom, as Spinoza was once, by way of a critical letter, taught by his best friend Bouwmeester. Cf my paper HOE MEN WIJS WORDT.
2/19: no such knowledge, except by ideas of what happens to (affections) our body. Etc indefinitely: “as soon we know something, we know that we know, and do we know to know”. (2/2s). This results in 2/22: “We don’t only know the affections of our body, but likewise perceive those ideas”. And this is how we know ourselves: 2/23. This body-knowledge is inadequate (2/24). The parts of our body are extremely composite individuals, they on their turn again (2/24s). Spinoza proceeds by heavily stressing the inadequate character of all our imaginations on whatever level, and finally draws in 2/29s a great and even explosive conclusion, which may be considered an eye-opener or clue to the understanding of his Ethica:
“I declare expressly, that the mind does have neither of herself nor of her body or of external bodies any adequate but only a confuse knowledge as often she perceives things along the common order of nature, i.e. as often as she externally, so-called according to the fortuitous happening of things, is DETERMINED to contemplate this or that x, but, but non when she is INTERNALLY determined, namely when through contemplating together (simul) more things understanding their conveniences, differences and oppositions. Because when she is in this way internally (!) disposed, then she contemplates things clearly and distinctly” (2/29s).
Dear friends, dear readers, this famous scholium does teach us that we, humans, do rise automatically to highest wisdom, as Spinoza was once, by way of a critical letter, taught by his best friend Bouwmeester. Cf my paper HOE MEN WIJS WORDT.
God the Hard Core of everybody's experience.
The quote 2/29s I gave in nr 73 is the summit of Spinoza’s physiological explanation of our knowing process. By automatically perceiving the agreements and differences between our innumerable confuse ideas of the affections of our body we get immediately the COMMON NOTIONS, common to everybody and concerning everything, including ourselves. Naturally, our head is full of adequate and inadequate ideas (2/36). We cannot doubt our adequate ideas (2/43), in which we have clear and certain concepts of the world and the lawful necessity of its processes and transformations (2/44). Yea, we even SEE through all things to their immutable structural principles (2/44c). Everything, each mode, becomes transparent to its eternity. Now we read Spinoza’s acme of E2: “THE HUMAN MIND HAS ADEQUATE KNOWLEDGE OF THE ETERNAL AND INFINITE ESSENCE OF GOD” (2/47). It is impossible not to perceive and understand and love, as modes of substance, the hard core of everything: God.
The quote 2/29s I gave in nr 73 is the summit of Spinoza’s physiological explanation of our knowing process. By automatically perceiving the agreements and differences between our innumerable confuse ideas of the affections of our body we get immediately the COMMON NOTIONS, common to everybody and concerning everything, including ourselves. Naturally, our head is full of adequate and inadequate ideas (2/36). We cannot doubt our adequate ideas (2/43), in which we have clear and certain concepts of the world and the lawful necessity of its processes and transformations (2/44). Yea, we even SEE through all things to their immutable structural principles (2/44c). Everything, each mode, becomes transparent to its eternity. Now we read Spinoza’s acme of E2: “THE HUMAN MIND HAS ADEQUATE KNOWLEDGE OF THE ETERNAL AND INFINITE ESSENCE OF GOD” (2/47). It is impossible not to perceive and understand and love, as modes of substance, the hard core of everything: God.
Ethica, 3 is titled: “On the origin and nature of ....”. In Latin: “De origine et natura affectuum”. I intentionally left the genitive ‘affectuum’ at first untranslated, because ‘affectus’ is generally unspecified translated with a variant of ‘passion’, this in the wake of Descartes’ PASSIONS DE L’AME (1649). The word ‘passion’ is misleading insofar it does alone suggest man’s passivity and doesn’t make the reader think of an active aspect of ‘affectus’, which is clearly underlined in Spinoza’s own description of our human behaviour as an effect of affections of our body, so-called: what happens in the/our machine (!) by external bodies touching it.
In the following quote I use/introduce my personal [historically completely new] translation of ‘affectus’ with ‘REACTION’ that implies in the prefix ‘re’ an active moment. Pay attention: “Nothing happens in nature that might be seen as her vice. Therefore follow reactions of hatred, anger, envy etc. from the same necessity and power of nature as other phenomena”.. finally this positive contects comes to its upshot in the definition of ‘affectus’ as: “the affection by which the action power of the body increases or diminishes, is favoured or restrained, at once also the ideas of these processes”. This is again a strong anti-Descartes position. The effect of the affections is not a pure passivum, but also an activum, a re-action or a respons, a nuclear conatus, thought as a desire, toward or against... In the old Dutch translated as a ‘TOCHT’ (= motion or inclination to...). ‘Reaction’ is the best choice as translation of ‘affectus’, correctly fitting to ‘spes’, ‘laetitia’, ‘indignatio’ and many other ‘affectus’, which cannot well be called ‘passions’! |
First edition, 1649.
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Last time we learned that our material/spiritual reacting specifically on all kinds of external impacts. We have no influence on this process. Man, however, generally attributes to himself an intellectual grip on it, but this is one of his misunderstandings, or better self-deceptions. We might have concluded this from 2E7 (“Order and connection of the ideas is the same as the order and connection of the things), but Spinoza deems it necessary to trumpet as it were from the roofs: “Neither can the body determinate the mind to thinking nor the mind the body to move or bring it to rest...” (3/2). Why? They are the same: MENS ET CORPUS UNA EADEMQUE RES EST. It is logically impossible a thing would be able to change itself.
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And indeed: “experience amply (satis superque) demonstrates that men have nothing less in their power than their tongue and cannot moderate their desires” (3/2s).
In this context Spinoza quotes empathically Ovid’s very famous verse: ‘video meliora proboque deteriora sequor” (I see the better and approve it, but choose what is wrong). Two- or three-times Spinoza characterizes the human illusion about his capacity to freely and autonomously regulating of his reactions as “dreaming with open eyes”. No, four times we meet the word ‘SOMNIAMUS’ (we dream). This is clear language. |
Publius Ovidius Naso
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Scholars generally consider the so-called CONATUS-proposition 3/6 as the central and most important proposition of E3. It sounds in Latin: ‘Unaquaeque res, quantum in se est, in suo esse perseverare conatur’. As on itself each thing tries to persevere in its existence; we want to go on and live further. But let us not misunderstand the ‘As on itself’! In his physics Spinoza explicitly demonstrated that everything is permanently determined to his moving or resting, to his mode of existing. It is totally conditioned. And as idea of our body we think it and pose it and wish it, not being able to deny or reject it. As a reflection of its physical energy our soul cannot (!) have the idea of its auto destruction (3/10). Everything that heightens or reduces our acting power does make us happy or sad (3/11). Arrived at this point we have identified three primary reactions: the conatus itself and its transition to more and less. All other reactions like hope, fear, sympathy, antipathy, envy, proud, arrogance etc can and will be deduced by our master and causally defined on this threefold basis.
Spinoza develops a complete system of all human reactions/emotions, which does not have a historical precedent, not in Descartes, nor in Aristotle or the Stoa. Next time we will mention a few items of this inventory.
Spinoza develops a complete system of all human reactions/emotions, which does not have a historical precedent, not in Descartes, nor in Aristotle or the Stoa. Next time we will mention a few items of this inventory.
Man as machine, Spinoza’s scientific persuasion, could not be better illustrated than by his emphasis on our uncontrollable imitation of another’s reaction: “This imitation of reactions (AFFECTUUM IMITATIO, 3/17s1), when related to sadness, is called commiseration, but when related to desire (cupiditatem) it is called emulation, which therefore is nothing but the desire of something that ingenerates in us by the imagination that other people equal to us have it”.
So, Spinoza also comes to rather bold statements that could not and cannot be decently said in each company. Like 3/28: “Everything we imagine contributing to our pleasure, we will try to realize; whatever blocks it, we’ll try to remove or destroy”. 3/39: “Who hates somebody, will try to cause him sorrow, unless he fears that from this reaction will follow greater evil for himself”. 3/40: “Who thinks to be hated by somebody and does believe never to have given occasion to it, will in return hate him/her”. The sentences with ‘will’ are grammatically in the indicativus futurus. Spinoza describes behavioural mechanisms. The automatism of this human, too human (Nietzsche!), process is in a magnificent way formulated in the final general definition of CUPUDITAS/desire: “Man’s essence insofar he is conceived as by whatever given affection to be determined to act thus or so” (cupiditas est ipsa hominis essentia, quatenus ex data quacumque eius affectione determinata concipitur ad aliquid agendum”. And let us not forget that pleasure or sadness consist in the TRANSITION from less to more or more to less acting power, not its high or low degree without dynamics. |
Man as machine ... NASA robot Valkyrie
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The last section of my 5th chapter is dedicated to E4: the powers of the reactions. Spinoza’s title is a bit longer: “De servitute seu de affectuum viribus”. In fact, we are the slaves of our reactions. In a first line he explains this heavy message about our impotence with a reference to the classical goddess Fortuna, by whose power man is so much chained that he is often coerced to do the evil although he sees the better”. Again, appears in the text Ovid’s verse “video meliora proboque deteriora sequor”, which rhythmically detects our inner cleavage.
Actually, we live in a serious crisis as going straight to our ruin, the situation that was the starting point of Spinoza’s personal reflection in the TIE. No rescue or deliverance is in sight. We are not well constructed/created, we are not capable to repair our basic defect.
Actually, we live in a serious crisis as going straight to our ruin, the situation that was the starting point of Spinoza’s personal reflection in the TIE. No rescue or deliverance is in sight. We are not well constructed/created, we are not capable to repair our basic defect.
Epicurus
A picture of the ideal and perfect man without failure is in everybody’s mind, but is always a vague, confuse and illusionary concept that does not have any effect in practice. Our rational paradigms are not a match for the untakeable power of our reactions.
Hopeless. Or not? At this moment we must be realistic. Our live is a trial of strength between reactions and the weak rational decisions. But the fight is not a priori lost. Spinoza gives only one axiom in E4, and this is quite relevant. It sounds: “Nothing exists in nature than which doesn’t exist a stronger one. Against any given thing there does exist a stronger one”. Spinoza announces man’s salvation by intuition, to be treated in E5: a major solution of our great master that builds forth on Epicurus.
Hopeless. Or not? At this moment we must be realistic. Our live is a trial of strength between reactions and the weak rational decisions. But the fight is not a priori lost. Spinoza gives only one axiom in E4, and this is quite relevant. It sounds: “Nothing exists in nature than which doesn’t exist a stronger one. Against any given thing there does exist a stronger one”. Spinoza announces man’s salvation by intuition, to be treated in E5: a major solution of our great master that builds forth on Epicurus.
Spinoza’s divine siren song in E4 started with a shrill cry (axiom) about the warlike confrontation of opposite powers in human existence. With dubious outcome? Not at last. Our starting capital starts with shadow ideas, which however constitute the basis for a later superseding and overpowering higher knowledge, as we will see in E5. The scenario is not totally black, although our persevering power is rather restraint and subject to external enemies (4/3) who have us in their grip (4/4). It may be noticed that the first sentence in 4/4d is rather relevant, because it contains Spinoza’s unique equation ‘deus=natura’: “The power by which singular things, as also man, conserve their being, is the power itself of God or nature”.
But there are two levels in the process of our salvation, depending on rationality alone or intuition. Reason teaches us the necessity of cooperation with fellow travellers on earth for withstanding dangers and keeping ourselves in life. In 4/4s the text talks about the prescripts of reason (rationis dictamina), which primarily have a political intention: “When e.g. two individuals of the same kind are joined the result is a doubly powerful individual... Nothing is more useful for man than another man. For self conservation people can do nothing better than that all convene in all respects (omnes in omnibus ita conveniant) that all their souls and bodies constitute one soul and body and try together as a community to acquire their common wealth (commune utile) (4/18s). Do we succeed in it? And if yes, how?
Spinoza deduces our political obligation from our essential orientation on what is useful. Our rationality steers us to political cooperation with our fellows. Solidarity is her most urgent prescript. Political motivation is not optional. It is worthwhile to follow a chain of propositions. 4/19: according to natural laws everybody strives necessarily after what seems good to him. 4/20: his virtue/power is proportional to the degree of his success in this respect. Nobody cares for himself and his salvation with an eye on something else (4/25). Man is not an altruist.
On behalf of our survival we consider nothing as a higher value than understanding things, the acquisition of knowledge. One might call this ‘intelligendi conatus’ an Aristotelian theme in Spinoza’s anthropology. “The highest good of the mind (mentis summum bonum) is the knowledge of God and this is highest virtue too” (4/28). The cycle rises to its top in 4/37: “The good man desires for himself, he will also desire for other people, the more so in the degree he has better knowledge of God (= nature, = mechanism of world and society). Does Spinoza manifest himself here as a globalist, as a propagandist of loving the whole human race? Certainly not. The fellow men are the compatriots, those of one’s own people who share his language, his customs and location, as Spinoza clearly stipulates in a particularly important scholium, which we will discuss next time.
On behalf of our survival we consider nothing as a higher value than understanding things, the acquisition of knowledge. One might call this ‘intelligendi conatus’ an Aristotelian theme in Spinoza’s anthropology. “The highest good of the mind (mentis summum bonum) is the knowledge of God and this is highest virtue too” (4/28). The cycle rises to its top in 4/37: “The good man desires for himself, he will also desire for other people, the more so in the degree he has better knowledge of God (= nature, = mechanism of world and society). Does Spinoza manifest himself here as a globalist, as a propagandist of loving the whole human race? Certainly not. The fellow men are the compatriots, those of one’s own people who share his language, his customs and location, as Spinoza clearly stipulates in a particularly important scholium, which we will discuss next time.
My promise was to present now Spinoza’s political scholium 4/37s2, but deviating from my Dutch book text I first will present part of the first scholium to 4/37, in which he defines a few concepts: PIETAS is called the desire to do good generated insofar we are lead by reason. All kinds of rational activity fall in this (religious) category. Think of our endeavour to politically realize justice and charity, as explained in the TTP and there called piety too. Another concept is HONESTY, defined as the desire to adapt one’s behaviour to whatever is considered laudable among one’s friends and in one’s social community; let us say: what convenes with the codes of the current civilization. Spinoza negatively exemplifies this: “that law, which forbids slaughtering animals, is more a product of superstition and female compassion than founded on sane reason. Reason teaches us the necessity to acquire our utilities in companion with other humans, but not with animals (brutis) or things, whose nature differs from ours. On the contrary (sed): the same right they have on us, we have on them. Indeed, since everything’s right is defined by its virtue or power, man has far more right on animals than they on men. I don’t deny that animals have sensitive capacities, but I deny, that we would for that reason not be permitted to favour our advantage and use them as we like (ad libitum) and this as is most convenient for us”.
4/37s2 is a compact but sublime treatise about necessity of state building for mankind. Spinoza must have written it shortly before he interrupted writing the Ethica, while his life was in danger for being accused of being a danger for the republic, which urged him to write first his TTP-apology. The line of the scholium is that everybody has the highest right on doing what furthers his comfort, talent and safety, to hate, revenge or destroy hostile elements. There would not originate a problem when people lived to the lessons of reason, but in fact we are a plaything of our reactions and as such we are drawn apart against each other’s interest. Peace remains far away.
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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Well, to get concord and be helpful for each other’s safety and salvation, we must renounce from our natural right to act according our own desires and assure to do nothing to the disadvantage of other people. Naturally, we prefer our common good, i.e. the commonwealth above individual fear, evil, chaos and damage. HAC LEGE (see 4/7 and 3/39} this mechanism produces the SOCIETY, the common way of life prescribed and coerced/defended by all together in their common laws. The state (civitas) of democracy is born, in which is decided in unanimity (COMMUNI CONSENSU) what is good and evil and what every fellow must obey. From this point onwards justice will be practiced and each one receives his profit, care, and charity.
In the history of Western civilisation we will have to wait more than a century before Rousseau arises, who in his CONTRAT SOCIAL (1762) will take up Spinoza’s NOVUM (2000 years after the Greek practice) the defence of DIRECT DEMOCRACY (under explicit exclusion of representative pseudo-democracy).
In the history of Western civilisation we will have to wait more than a century before Rousseau arises, who in his CONTRAT SOCIAL (1762) will take up Spinoza’s NOVUM (2000 years after the Greek practice) the defence of DIRECT DEMOCRACY (under explicit exclusion of representative pseudo-democracy).
The salvation spoken about up till now did not concern the healing of the alienated and internally split soul, but man’s material existence and his social liberation. Spinoza continues his text with a few specifications of his secular intention.
Utility is qualified as “what contributes to a real community of people or effectuates their unanimity” and evil as what imports discord. “Hatred can never be good” (4/45).
But did our master not recommend hating hostile elements on our way to political integration in 37/s2? At this point the acquired social/political dimension must be in his view. Hatred is not condemned for/in international relations. In a civilised situation, in which people live under the guidance of reason, hatred, anger, contempt and derision are not on their place (4/46).
In a more general sense, he also asserts the stupidity of commiseration. 4/50: “In rational man commiseration is per se evil and useless”. This message is especially directed to the leftist and Marxist globalists of the 21st century, who stipulate a moral obligation to support all poor peoples and refugees in the world by financial and economic assistance. The dictates of reason (justice and charity) are, however, to be practiced only inside political/national boundaries. An international application is essentially above each state’s possibility and energetic wisdom.
Utility is qualified as “what contributes to a real community of people or effectuates their unanimity” and evil as what imports discord. “Hatred can never be good” (4/45).
But did our master not recommend hating hostile elements on our way to political integration in 37/s2? At this point the acquired social/political dimension must be in his view. Hatred is not condemned for/in international relations. In a civilised situation, in which people live under the guidance of reason, hatred, anger, contempt and derision are not on their place (4/46).
In a more general sense, he also asserts the stupidity of commiseration. 4/50: “In rational man commiseration is per se evil and useless”. This message is especially directed to the leftist and Marxist globalists of the 21st century, who stipulate a moral obligation to support all poor peoples and refugees in the world by financial and economic assistance. The dictates of reason (justice and charity) are, however, to be practiced only inside political/national boundaries. An international application is essentially above each state’s possibility and energetic wisdom.
After asserting that commiseration is a weak and contra productive reaction, E4 shows at its end another facet: a realistic view on a required social mentality in whatever state.
Ch. 17: “Helping everybody is above the power and profit of an individual. Private possessions are insufficient. Singular power is inadequate and too restraint for friendly binding everyone. Therefore, CARE FOR THE POOR (cura pauperum) IS TASK OF THE COMMUNITY AND ONLY ORIENTED ON THE COMMON INTEREST”, but without globalist illusions c.q. aspirations.
Spinoza’s concept of sound state is not capitalistic, but socialistic, even (but do not misunderstand this racialistic) ‘nationalistic-socialistic’. A plea for a well-organized national system of commonwealth for all participants. Later we will call this with Blijenbergh “Spinoza’s political religion”.
Ch. 17: “Helping everybody is above the power and profit of an individual. Private possessions are insufficient. Singular power is inadequate and too restraint for friendly binding everyone. Therefore, CARE FOR THE POOR (cura pauperum) IS TASK OF THE COMMUNITY AND ONLY ORIENTED ON THE COMMON INTEREST”, but without globalist illusions c.q. aspirations.
Spinoza’s concept of sound state is not capitalistic, but socialistic, even (but do not misunderstand this racialistic) ‘nationalistic-socialistic’. A plea for a well-organized national system of commonwealth for all participants. Later we will call this with Blijenbergh “Spinoza’s political religion”.
Before treating in my ch. 6 Spinoza’s paradoxical theology in his TTP and in ch. 8 the automatism of our becoming wise and happy acc. to E5, I inserted in my book an intermezzo on Lodewyk Meyer’s anonymous PHILOSOPHIA SACRAE SCRIPTURAE INTERPRES (PSSI), a world-shocking book of 1666, edited by Rieuwertz; a year later followed by his own translation PHILOSOPHIE D’UYTLEGSTER DER H. SCHRIFTURE. EEN WONDERSPREUCKIG TRACTAET.
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This was a powerful clarion call at the frontline of the scientific fight against prejudice and superstition in the traditional reading of Scripture, by which cannon shot Spinoza’s learned companion, which whom he had already cooperated for the PPC/CM, smooth the way for his friend’s TTP. A special reason for my insertion was the wrong and backward French (Zac, Moreau, Lagrée a.o.) contraposition of Spinoza against Meyer. I demonstrate that they do not in the least disagree on the principles of interpreting Scripture. Quite on the contrary: they operate perfectly on the same line. Spinoza quotes Meyer and Meyer inspires, anticipates and even announces him. All catholic and protestant theologians reacted furiously on Meyer’s heretical attack on their naive exegesis, in the same high degree of indignation as they would later show at the appearance of the TTP. They wrote at least 20 refutations of the devellish PSSI. MEYER did not use Descartes’ philosophy as norm of his interpretation, but only followed “his most happy and successful method and rule, to adhere to and affirm nothing but what one clearly and distinctly perceives and understands”. Following Descartes’ footsteps, it was his intention, by doubting customary readings, not to import a sense into Scripture, but draw its true sense critically out of Scripture”.
In my previous post I praised the great work PSSI by Lodewijck Meyer as a clarion call at the frontline of the Dutch enlightenment and characterized his anonymous work as paving the way for his addicted friend Spinoza, who actually with his TTP-hermeneutics was his successor.
BUT HOW AND BY WHICH THEORY WAS MEYER SPINOZA’s PRECURSOR? Answer:
By his hermeneutic distinction between three ‘senses’ in any text, also in the bible:
“One has to distinguish between three senses:
1 the at first sight simply obvious and customary meaning;
2 the true meaning of a word or word-combination;
3 the truth.
Listen to this revolutionary (yes) quote from PSSI:
“That God, Iike humans, would be a lord, a king, produces something, or loves somebody, nobody who only lightly wants to know more than the common man, will not accept this. Therefore, the true sense must be the result of a deeper search. The professional hermeneutic must not be concerned about the truth or falsity of a series of words. He only has to demonstrate that the sense he deems to be their true sense convenes with the intention of the author, ALTHOUGH IT DIFFERS FROM THE AUTHENTIC REASON AND IS IN CONFLICT WITH THE TRUTH”. On this point, namely the certainty to have tackled and demonstrated the authors intention, Meyer does no concession, and he requires cast-iron literary proofs.
And exactly on this point Spinoza does follow him in his TTP perfectly.
It is very regrettable that no Spinoza-scholar ever detected this lifeline between Meyer and Spinoza, which so much clarifies his hermeneutic practice in the TTP.
BUT HOW AND BY WHICH THEORY WAS MEYER SPINOZA’s PRECURSOR? Answer:
By his hermeneutic distinction between three ‘senses’ in any text, also in the bible:
“One has to distinguish between three senses:
1 the at first sight simply obvious and customary meaning;
2 the true meaning of a word or word-combination;
3 the truth.
Listen to this revolutionary (yes) quote from PSSI:
“That God, Iike humans, would be a lord, a king, produces something, or loves somebody, nobody who only lightly wants to know more than the common man, will not accept this. Therefore, the true sense must be the result of a deeper search. The professional hermeneutic must not be concerned about the truth or falsity of a series of words. He only has to demonstrate that the sense he deems to be their true sense convenes with the intention of the author, ALTHOUGH IT DIFFERS FROM THE AUTHENTIC REASON AND IS IN CONFLICT WITH THE TRUTH”. On this point, namely the certainty to have tackled and demonstrated the authors intention, Meyer does no concession, and he requires cast-iron literary proofs.
And exactly on this point Spinoza does follow him in his TTP perfectly.
It is very regrettable that no Spinoza-scholar ever detected this lifeline between Meyer and Spinoza, which so much clarifies his hermeneutic practice in the TTP.
It is a misconception to accuse Lodewijk Meyer of having adopted a particular philosophy, in casu Descartes’, as being the best starting point or instrument for the interpretation of Scripture. No, he intended simply, that whoever excels in knowledge is the best expositor of difficult places. For this purpose, the prophets are useless. “It is not Scripture that teaches its sense, but nature itself. It is philosophy, which by the light of nature, clearly demonstrates that God does exist, and which properties have to be attributed to him”. And what must be denied: like the idiot doctrine of the Trinity and a lot of trifling metaphysical distinctions. The ‘common notions’ of the reason are never in conflict with Scripture if, and only if one explains its text by using their light. They teach e.g. “that the world is eternal, that one is not three, that from nothing nothing originates”. It is impossible to find the true sense of Scripture without using our reasoning faculty. It is the intention of PSSI to defend that reason, not believer’s tradition, is the unique norm or touchstone of whatever is proposed as its authentical meaning.
The words of Scripture are not more than ‘INCITAMENTA’ (prickling's) in our brain, as an effect of which we think A or B, ideas that are also electrified by other life experiences and affects of our sensitive nerves.
The words of Scripture are not more than ‘INCITAMENTA’ (prickling's) in our brain, as an effect of which we think A or B, ideas that are also electrified by other life experiences and affects of our sensitive nerves.
In no. 88 my reader will have understood that Meyer’s position in his PSSI anticipates Spinoza’s in TTP, but what is more: he in a subtle but clear way announces his (and Descartes’) follower:
“By whom will be broadly and extensively brought to light such things about God, the rational soul, the human highest happiness, and more similar things about the acquirement of the eternal life, which will get full power and domination in the exposition and clarification of the holy Writing”. Meyer alludes not only to the clandestine Short Treatise, but also to the forthcoming Ethica and TTP. (New document in 1666).
“By whom will be broadly and extensively brought to light such things about God, the rational soul, the human highest happiness, and more similar things about the acquirement of the eternal life, which will get full power and domination in the exposition and clarification of the holy Writing”. Meyer alludes not only to the clandestine Short Treatise, but also to the forthcoming Ethica and TTP. (New document in 1666).
Paradoxical Theology.
My comment on the Ethica is now interrupted before E5 (like Spinoza did in writing the E) to pay first due attention to his genial apology of the TTP that appeared in 1670. For heading this section I choose and take a word from Van Velthuysen’s characterization of Meyer as ‘theologus paradoxus’ in his letter to Ostens (42) in which he misconceives (!) Spinoza’s relation to him, writing: “He, therefore, thinks that all those people follow closely his sentence, who deny that reason and philosophy are the interpreter of Scripture”, which false suggestion Spinoza on his turn sharply rejects in Ep. 43: “I don’t know why he writes this since I refuted their sentence”.
Nonetheless it is with fullest right and quite to the point to qualify Spinoza’s and Meyer’s position in theology as being paradoxical, i.e. against the δοξαι of the current theologians and their Christian believers.
Why did Spinoza write the TTP? He explains his reasons in a letter to Oldenburg, when living in Voorburg and after a public protestant accusation of being “A dangerous element of the Republic” and thereupon the threatening of a second banishment, this time from the state.
“I am busy writing a treatise with my insights concerning Scripture. I am motivated to this by:
1 the prejudices of the theologians...;
2 the opinions about me cherished by the common people, which does not stop accusing me of atheism; I feel coerced to turn away this thought as much as possible;
3 the freedom of doing science and to publish our points of view (libertas philosophandi). On behalf of this freedom, which is here in all possible ways suppressed as an effect of the too great authority and brutality of the preachers I wish to plea to my utmost”.
There can be no doubt that the main purpose of his Scripture-book was apologetical. A political pamphlet would not be an appropriate frame for a scientifical/hermeneutical/philological treatise, of which only the last, 20th, chapter was dedicated to a political justification of the libertas philosophandi.
My comment on the Ethica is now interrupted before E5 (like Spinoza did in writing the E) to pay first due attention to his genial apology of the TTP that appeared in 1670. For heading this section I choose and take a word from Van Velthuysen’s characterization of Meyer as ‘theologus paradoxus’ in his letter to Ostens (42) in which he misconceives (!) Spinoza’s relation to him, writing: “He, therefore, thinks that all those people follow closely his sentence, who deny that reason and philosophy are the interpreter of Scripture”, which false suggestion Spinoza on his turn sharply rejects in Ep. 43: “I don’t know why he writes this since I refuted their sentence”.
Nonetheless it is with fullest right and quite to the point to qualify Spinoza’s and Meyer’s position in theology as being paradoxical, i.e. against the δοξαι of the current theologians and their Christian believers.
Why did Spinoza write the TTP? He explains his reasons in a letter to Oldenburg, when living in Voorburg and after a public protestant accusation of being “A dangerous element of the Republic” and thereupon the threatening of a second banishment, this time from the state.
“I am busy writing a treatise with my insights concerning Scripture. I am motivated to this by:
1 the prejudices of the theologians...;
2 the opinions about me cherished by the common people, which does not stop accusing me of atheism; I feel coerced to turn away this thought as much as possible;
3 the freedom of doing science and to publish our points of view (libertas philosophandi). On behalf of this freedom, which is here in all possible ways suppressed as an effect of the too great authority and brutality of the preachers I wish to plea to my utmost”.
There can be no doubt that the main purpose of his Scripture-book was apologetical. A political pamphlet would not be an appropriate frame for a scientifical/hermeneutical/philological treatise, of which only the last, 20th, chapter was dedicated to a political justification of the libertas philosophandi.
Starting now to describe in English summary the content of my 6th chapter on “Paradoxical theology TTP 1-15” my energy is blocked by a serious hesitation on account of Spinoza’s too rich, too original, too daring and too overpowering take-off on the first pages that impede my regular breathing in reading them, as is my custom, in his clear, classic and catching Latin. What to do? Endeavouring to motivate my readers to take a course for learning Latin? Would be excellent for them. Spinoza’s mind, instructed by his great Latin teacher Van den Enden, is drenched in classical literature and culture, which props up in each paragraph. Engaging his sketch of pernicious superstition dominating everyone’s life he takes from reading Curtius Alexander the Great as fascinating and at once also exemplary execrable victim of superstition.
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The Preface of the TTP accentuates that the treatise combats the social poison of the theological prejudices, which dominate and over cross everything, but is also a first move in the direction of a radical political message from a realistic reading of the Bible, addressed to the Calvinistic orthodox hotheads , the preachers wishing to found a theocracy, against which fatal development the courageous rebellious Jew resists. The Dutch society is on the edge of civil war between remonstrants and contra remonstrants. Spinoza’s tone is high and his indignation stark. “Fright is the cause of the superstition all people are by nature subject to”. In the context he quotes Curtius: “Nihil efficacius multitudinem regit quam superstitio”. Interested persons like pastors and king’s cloth and ornate it in an apparat of ceremonies and declare any deviation as being criminal. In the Islam disputation is even a capital crime. But quoting Tacitus and Meyer Spinoza does praise his situation of living in a free Republic and enjoying the ‘rara felicitas’ (rare happiness) of being permitted to the ‘libertas philosphandi’.
This authorizes him to write the most revolutionary interpretation of the Scripture ever appearing on earth. Its scientific analysis leads to the upshot that we serve God by (politically) practicing justice and charity, and nothing else.
This authorizes him to write the most revolutionary interpretation of the Scripture ever appearing on earth. Its scientific analysis leads to the upshot that we serve God by (politically) practicing justice and charity, and nothing else.
Spinoza complaints, still in his preface, that Christianity is degenerated to an indescribably low level of dissolute living and debauched unreliability, in which the light of reason is despised or exstinguished. It went so far down that piety consists in absurd secrets. In its stupidity theology follows Plato and Aristotle and adapts the lessons of Scripture to their philosophy. Its high, sublime and divine content is not even dreamt off. Precisely in this respect Spinoza finds his job and task, being from his early youth onwards versed and steeped in its language style and technicalities. In Meyer’s trace he follows his attack on the theological bastion of prejudices. Frankly and boldly (libero animo) he searches and analyses the text and presents courageously and plainly the upshot of how “the divine or catholic religion” looks like according to the prophets and apostles. The reader of the world shocking TTP cannot at this point avoid thrilling when meeting the golden summary of the holy Scripture: “SERVING GOD WHOLEHEARTEDLY BY PRACTICING JUSTICE AND CHARITY” (deo integro animo obedire justifiam et caritatem colendo). This is, and nothing else can and must be called true religion.
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It is uncontroversial that the TTP divides in the 17th century the European elite in two camps, roughly the cesura between sympathisers on the one side and fierce opponents and refuting theologians and pamphletiers on the other hand. I will not repeat here this interesting cultural story. I am focused on its quite original content. In his philological (yes) treatise Spinoza operates very systematically and concentrates on all biblical books. He is moreover an expert in the Hebrew language of which he was one of the first to write a grammar, never reproduced in the existing editions of his works except in the OPERA POSTHUMA and in my own Bruder-edition (1843) under the title COMPENDIUM GRAMMATICES LINGUAE HEBRAEAE (120pp). His Latin work is interlarded with Hebrew words or allusions to their meaning.
Rather surprising is the title of his first chapter: prophecy. This is his first theme, in the frame of which he heavily accentuates that the Revelation has only to be drawn from Scripture: ex scriptura sola peti debet. As if he was a follower of Luther, whose motto this world-famous saying was. But in distinction of the RC-version he does not acknowledge the medieval tradition of the church as a separate source for finding/defining the holy message.
Rather surprising is the title of his first chapter: prophecy. This is his first theme, in the frame of which he heavily accentuates that the Revelation has only to be drawn from Scripture: ex scriptura sola peti debet. As if he was a follower of Luther, whose motto this world-famous saying was. But in distinction of the RC-version he does not acknowledge the medieval tradition of the church as a separate source for finding/defining the holy message.
The bible the word of God? Only metaphorically. Finite physical things like words cannot have a connection of similarity or revelation with the infinite. Nowhere Scripture qualifies God as a spirit. Christ does have a special position. “Nobody else has risen to such high degree of perfection above other people as Christ. God’s decisions concerning human salvation were immediately without words or visions revealed to him. Therefore, his voice to the apostles can be understood as God’s voice... and so we can consider his wisdom as God’s wisdom. In his mind he directly communicated (de mente ad mentem) with God”. Christ is according to Spinoza a first-class philosopher but yet as a human, too human type with, moreover, rebellious attitude and protestation against the superstitious arrogance of the politically upstarted pharizees of his time. SPINOZA GREATLY ADMIRES CHRIST and sees in him a forerunner of himself. But this also means that the clear ideas of the debunked divinised Christ are rather different from the ‘spirit’ (ruach) and vague visionary imaginations of the many other prophets appearing in Scripture.
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Statenbijbel
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After ‘prophecy’ is ‘The Prophets’ the second item in TTP2. They are not a more perfect type of human race, but surely affected abnormally by a strong and often wild imagination, talking always cryptically under reference to an arbitrary token, that would confirm their guessing. Their morality was often contestable, like also their views. There actually were atheists among them in Israel because they never spoke of “the necessity of the perception of the perceived or contemplated things”. This formula is a phantastic paraphrase of E2/29s about the origin of the common notions. Their message was always in contrast with a sound philosophy. According to the particular mixture of their bodies (pro dispositione temperamenti corporis) and the differences of their experiences, they proclaimed and preached merry and optimistic happenings or sad announces of war, oppression and perish. Depending on whether they were farmers, soldiers or courtiers, their style and word choice differed in proportion. Most prophets were also convinced that man acts from his own free power, whereas the apostle Paulus teaches the opposite: that man cannot do anything than by God’s power and grace. “The Jews practically knew nothing about God although he was revealed to them!" They adored him as a golden calf! To be short: we do not become wiser from their revelations or better their visions and their vague rhetoric.
In TTP3 Spinoza discusses the question whether the Hebrews were an ‘elected people’. No. Impossible on account of the unchangeable order of nature and the necessary and lawfull concatenation of things, which cannot be interrupted in his physical worldview, in spite of the fact that its network is for its largest part unknown to us. But this does not imply that Israel’s fate was not lucky. Quite on the contrary. Thanks to the smart management of their clever general and legislator Mozes the Hebrews could occupy a fruitful soil and form a state with excellent laws, “in which all powers were collected and bounded into ONE BODY”. They effectively succeeded in regulating and guaranteeing the safety of their life (vitae securitatem feliciter). One naturally might call this temporal well-being an election. But intellectually and morally the Jews scored below the golden mean. Metaphorically Spinoza would for that reason prefer to qualify their situation as a damnation instead of an election! Arrived at this point Spinoza judges realistically (sed res est). The prophets, ‘augures et divinos’ as in the surrounding countries who all had their ‘oracles’, didn’t make people better. No, it is ‘quite ridiculous’ (RIDICULUM SANE) to speak forthwith about Israel as an elected people. Is simply a stupid idea! As a serious historian Spinoza opposes without any hesitation the misleading fairy-tales of the theologians.
The THORA/‘Divine Law’ is the subject of Spinoza’s next chapter. Like every state also Mozes’ construction had its inbuilt rules for its collective behaviour that in the course of years and tradition was in their superstition more and more declared as Jhwh’s holy will. Three thousand years later Baruch had suffered its heavy burden in the seclusion of the Amsterdam synagogue, from which he as a rebellious youth was finally expelled in 1656 with heavy curses. The Jewish ‘sharia’ was full of extravagant obligations and superstitious food tabu’s. Spinoza’s own idea of ‘divine law’ in scripture was totally opposed and incomparable: not at all a human institution for politically bridling and controlling a people, but finalized to their highest good and the true knowledge and love of God (summum bonum, hoc est Dei veram cognitionem et amorem). In this context he provides us with a foretaste of a core point in the later to write Ethica: “How more we know the natural things, the greater and more perfect knowledge and love we acquire of God”. The means for this purpose ought to be called ‘God’s prescripts’ (iussa dei). This, and only this is the true and worthy alternative of the idolatrous fake ‘thora’! You need not follow curious customs and ceremonies as the will of God. Divine law is a thing of your heart.
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Mozes door Michelangelo
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Spinoza not a christian, or worse, an anti-christian? Not at all. He adored Jezus of Nazareth as our example par excellence, as a model of humanity, who, however, did not prescribe any morality, let alone ten orders.
“He had a true and adequate understanding of things via universal common notions. God was revealed to his soul immediately, without words or imaginations. He adapted his insights to the intellectual level of his public and communicated the secrets of the reign of heavens in parables. It was given only to a small number of disciples to understand the heavenly mysteries as eternal truths. And in this way, he freed mankind from the slavery of law meanwhile affirming and stabilizing the divine law”.
As mentioned, before he considered Christ as a first-class moral philosopher, not primarily a theoretical one. At the end of TTP4 he incidentally remarks that “THE DIVINE LAW CONTAINS A TRUE ETHICA AND POLITICA, WHICH PERFECTLY CONVENES WITH THE NATURAL SCIENCE THAT LIKEWISE INCLUDES AN ETHICA”. Scripture (N.T) does not require a certain belief nor a cultus of ceremonies or sacraments. It indeed emphasizes and inculcates principles that are already INSCRIBED IN OUR BOWELS. Instead of founding a new state-like church with bishops and priests he was completely oriented on man’s ethical and political secular well-being.
“He had a true and adequate understanding of things via universal common notions. God was revealed to his soul immediately, without words or imaginations. He adapted his insights to the intellectual level of his public and communicated the secrets of the reign of heavens in parables. It was given only to a small number of disciples to understand the heavenly mysteries as eternal truths. And in this way, he freed mankind from the slavery of law meanwhile affirming and stabilizing the divine law”.
As mentioned, before he considered Christ as a first-class moral philosopher, not primarily a theoretical one. At the end of TTP4 he incidentally remarks that “THE DIVINE LAW CONTAINS A TRUE ETHICA AND POLITICA, WHICH PERFECTLY CONVENES WITH THE NATURAL SCIENCE THAT LIKEWISE INCLUDES AN ETHICA”. Scripture (N.T) does not require a certain belief nor a cultus of ceremonies or sacraments. It indeed emphasizes and inculcates principles that are already INSCRIBED IN OUR BOWELS. Instead of founding a new state-like church with bishops and priests he was completely oriented on man’s ethical and political secular well-being.
Defining the political implications of the scriptural Divine Law Spinoza develops already a nuclear political theory, long before he will become more explicit on this subject. “A society/state not only provides safety against enemies, but is also especially useful as an applicable and highly necessary medium (compendium) to realise many things at once. Because if people would not exert themselves to help each other, then would fail them skill and time to sustain and preserve themselves as far as possible. Not all men are equally capable of all things, and no one would be able to acquire the things which a man alone needs most. Everyone would lack the strength and time, if he had alone to plow, to sow, to reap, to grind, to cook, to weave, to sew etc.., not to mention now the arts and sciences, which are also supremely necessary for the perfection of human nature and for its blessedness”.
But there is a problem. People do not live according to the light of reason. Everybody seeks his own profit. If nature had so constructed men that they desired nothing except what true reason teaches them to desire, then of course a society could exist without laws. Now however a state cannot exist without violence (absque imperio et vi). And such a situation never existed for a long period, because people cannot and will not suffer it.
What is the solution? Direct democracy, in which they keep authority in their own hands (COLLEGIALITER IMPERIUM TENERE DEBENT).
This sound was unheard off in the last 2000 years. Spinoza was after the Greeks the first defender of Direct Democracy in a modern age.
But there is a problem. People do not live according to the light of reason. Everybody seeks his own profit. If nature had so constructed men that they desired nothing except what true reason teaches them to desire, then of course a society could exist without laws. Now however a state cannot exist without violence (absque imperio et vi). And such a situation never existed for a long period, because people cannot and will not suffer it.
What is the solution? Direct democracy, in which they keep authority in their own hands (COLLEGIALITER IMPERIUM TENERE DEBENT).
This sound was unheard off in the last 2000 years. Spinoza was after the Greeks the first defender of Direct Democracy in a modern age.
