SPINOZA’S VIEWS ON GOD/NATURE AND RELIGION

Sine Bağatur

Rotterdam/2009

Introduction

Benedict de Spinoza is undoubtedly one of the philosophers whose thoughts have been subject to many interpretations and attracted endless speculations. Spinoza’s identification Deus, sive Natura-God, or Nature- and his demonstration of God as the infinite, self-determined, extended and thinking substance in his Ethics have been interpreted as a form of pantheism: God is nothing but nature (Mason, 2007: 164). Besides pantheism this identification has been labeled also as panentheism, atheism, reductionism, naturalism, materialism, spiritualism and probably much else as well (Mason, 2007: 2). Moreover, demonstration of God or Nature as the only, self-subsistent, eternal substance amounts to a denial of first principles of Judaism and Christianity as it repudiates the possibility of a transcendental creator distinct from his creation. Spinoza’s God is radically different in many aspects than God(s) of monotheistic religions. As such, Spinoza’s views on God and religion, as well moral implications of these views, have attracted different and sometimes contracting interpretations. As Richard Mason states in the opening sentence of his book The God of Spinoza: “Spinoza has been called both a ‘God-intoxicated’ man and an atheist, both a pioneer of secular Judaism and a bitter critic of religion”.[1]

According to Mason, “questions such as was Spinoza a rationalist (nominalist, atheist, liberal, Platonist, Christian …)? may provide exercises for students, but have a value which is mainly negative”. This is because of Spinoza’s particular case: he removed teleological beliefs and religious practice from his texts to a large extent and the more closely one studies him the less well he seems to fit a historical niche and a label (Mason, 2007: 2-3). Nevertheless, what is clear from the correspondence by Spinoza that these type of questions were also bothering people of his time and they asked Spinoza through letters asking more clarification on his views on God and religion. In this essay, referring to Ethics and correspondence of Spinoza[2], I would like to examine Spinoza’s views on God and religion . In the first section I will focus on Spinoza’s views on God/ Nature and point out how these views are radically different from 17^th century theological-views. In the second part I would refer to Spinoza’s views on religion referring to his correspondence. The final section concludes with an assessment of Spinoza’s views on God and religion and how these views incorporate to his philosophical system.

The God of Spinoza

In the first fifteen propositions of Part I of Ethics, Spinoza demonstrates God’s necessary existence. Moreover, in several Letters exchanged with Oldenburg and Hudde Spinoza provides an a priori (ontological) proof of God’s necessary existence derived from the true definition of God as a substance consisting of infinite attributes, attributes being things which are conceived in itself and through itself. [3] Thus, the existence of a God is proved from the true definition of God which includes his necessary existence.[4]

Manson (2007: 21-22) argues that Spinoza’s demonstrations of God’s existence were not meant to be proofs that might be used to persuade or convince an atheist or agnostic. Nowhere in Ethics, have we found Spinoza addressing the possibility that God might not exist. The first demonstration of God’s existence in Ethics I, P11 illustrates this point: “God…necessarily exists. Dem.: If you deny this, conceive if you can, that God does not exist”.[5] The existence of God is not “self-evident”[6], yet non-existence is inconceivable and thus cannot be formulated. Whether or not Spinoza’s God can be adopted or brought into some relation with the God of conventional or historical religions, its necessary existence is claimed or assumed in Part I of Ethics (Mason, 2007: 23).  There is no place for doubt about existence of Spinoza’s God in his system. As he writes to Boxel, “I have a clear idea of God as of a triangle…We cannot imagine God, but we can apprehend him by the intellect”.[7] Therefore calling Spinoza an atheist will be a faulty label which Spinoza himself openly denies.[8] Nevertheless, Spinoza’s demonstration of God as unique, eternal, infinite and self-caused substance and his identification of God with Nature have many implications which make his God radically different than the God of conventional religions. Spinoza himself makes the statement: “I entertain an opinion on God and Nature far different from that which modern Christians are wont to uphold”.[9]

Firstly, his God is the “immanent cause”[10] of all things. All things are in God and move in God. Therefore Spinoza’s metaphysics is different than ethico-religious view of a transcendent God which created the world and which is separate from his creation. In Judeo-Christian view it is believed that God has created the material world out of nothing and by his free will. According to Spinoza this is an anthropomorphic view of God and misleading. Everything in Nature happens necessarily and according to laws of nature. God or Nature has not a pre-designed plan and realize it by an act of will at a certain point in time. “Nature has no end set before it … All things proceed by a certain eternal necessity of nature.”[11] Because we act for an end, we attach final causes and ends to Nature and human actions like hearing, seeing, willing, etc. and human emotions like pity, anger, love to God. In the appendix to the first part of Ethics Spinoza tells that these prejudices about God and Nature having will, end and emotions are constitution of human imagination, products of teleology and effects of anthropomorphism. He tells in one letter: “a triangle, if it could speak, would likewise say that God is eminently triangular and a circle that God’s nature is eminently circular. In this way each would ascribe to God its own attributes, assuming itself to be like God and regarding all else as ill-formed”.[12] Secondly, derived from rejection of critique of anthropomorphism and also of anthropocentrism Spinoza’s God is not one that punishes or rewards human beings as the God of religions. The belief that God has created the world for human and “Man in nature is a dominion within dominion” is false and telling God punishes or rewards human beings is confusing the power of God with power of kings. God is indifferent to human beings. These implications of Spinoza’s God are radically different from God of religions.

Moreover, Spinoza’s identification of God with Nature is also interpreted as pantheism. Spinoza, tells “God is an extended thing (Deus est res extensa)”[13]. An extended God suggests physical pantheism (Mason, 1997: 29). However, scholars such as Curley (1991) distances Spinoza from pantheism by claiming that Spinoza’s identification of God with nature is not as “the totality of things” but as the most general principles of order exemplified by things. God or nature is not the sense of the world as we know it, or “face of the whole universe” but as more like those most general principles of order described by the fundamental laws of nature (Mason, 1997: 31).[14] Spinoza, was clear enough that he did not want to identify nature or God with corporeal nature- a point stressed in a letter to Oldenburg: “as to the view that of certain people that the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus rests on the identification of God with Nature (by the latter of which they understand a kind of mass or corporeal matter), they are quite mistaken”.[15] Therefore, it seems that the labeling of Spinoza as atheist, pantheist, etc. can be an anachronistic and misleading exercise since his philosophical system, his notion of God as the unique substance and God’s relation to modes radically different from philosophers of his time such as Descartes and cannot lend themselves to straightforward interpretations. What we can tell at best, might be that Spinoza both divinizes Nature as well as naturalizing God when he identifies God with Nature therefore he bridges the gap in both ways.

Spinoza on Religion

As I briefly outlined in the above sections, Spinoza’s notion of God differs radically from religious views of God and has further implications that are criticized as being against religion. In the correspondence with Spinoza, we witness many correspondents asking Spinoza questions related to religion such as his opinions on sin, good and evil, Jesus Christ and the Scripture.

One can interpret Spinoza’s views on religion by referring to his life and his texts.  Spinoza was born and brought up in a Jewish community. One can detect traces of Jewish philosophy in Spinoza’s work such as references to Jewish philosophers such as Maimonides and Crescas. [16] Some scholars, notably Yirmiyahu Yovel, have seen Spinoza’s Jewish background as a key to interpretation of his thoughts. Yet, as Mason points out, Spinoza takes us to Jewish philosophy to show us how he differs from it, not to say what he has taken from it (Mason, 1997:2).[17] After his excommunication from Jewish community, Spinoza has not been attached to any religious view in his life. This fact, Mason makes the claims that he harbored secret Christian beliefs unlikely, “because there is no imaginable reason why he should have kept such beliefs secret: life would be a great deal easier for him” (Mason, 2007: 6). Neither does Spinoza suggest that practiced religions will and should fade away under the light of reason. Many of his correspondents and friends were Protestants and there is an anecdote by Colerus that Spinoza told his landlady that her religion is a good one if she lives a peaceful and happy life practicing it. [18] Moreover, he talks about prophets and the Scripture with much respect and severity. Yet, though Spinoza was not against religion he has separated obedience (which is the goal of faith) and truth (which is the goal of philosophy) in his Theological-Political Treatise. Spinoza’s explains religious practice trough “history and language” in the Treatise as natural human activity which could be understood in varying stages of sophistication[19].  He tells that holy books adapted to the language of common people and the roads to salvation revealed to prophets are written in the form of laws depicting God as a king and lawgiver.[20] Spinoza believed that the common moral implications of all religions “love your neighbor” and love of God is the true road to salvation yet it is depicted in the form of laws. The virtuous and moral life derived from religions depends on the fear and obedience of people not on truth and reason. Prophets are neither theologians nor philosophers; but poetic souls with a vivid “power of imagination”. Since their subjects are not people trained in philosophy their teaching are “brought” by revelation not natural reason. With respect to Jesus Christ, Spinoza put him in a somewhat higher position than other prophets as he tells: “ I do not believe that anyone has attained such a degree of perfection[in knowledge] surpassing others, except Christ . . .we may conclude that, with the exception of Christ, God’s revelations were received only with the help of imaginative faculty.”[21] Spinoza had no doubt that Jesus Christ lived and but has denied his incarnation as he told Oldenburg “ the passion, death and burial of Christ I accept literally. . .but his resurrection I understand in an allegorical sense” [22]

When one examines letters of Spinoza on religious matters one can realize that the tone of his argumentation differs according to his correspondents. At the beginning of Blyenbergh correspondence, not knowing much about his correspondent and trusting on the face value of his first letter in which Blyenbergh tells he has “no other aim than truth itself”[23], Spinoza replies arguing his thoughts that good and evil are not in nature but they are constituted by our imagination. Blyenbergh could not understand Spinoza’s arguments and accuses with opinion that “men are like beasts”, and that tells that Spinoza’s arguments undermine the practice of virtue. Spinoza at the end seems to believe that he and Blyenbergh do not agree on the first principles and he kindly tells Blyenbergh that he has “good reason to believe in Holy Scripture” but it is no mutual help to continue their exchange. However, when writing to Alfred Burgh who turned to Roman Catholic Church and who felt the mission of converting Spinoza to the Roman church[24], the tone of Spinoza’s reply is harsher. For instance he tells: “but please be of good cheer and come to yourself again. When you were in good senses…I have no doubt you will at last recover your senses”. [25] This might be partly due to Spinoza’s dislike particularly to Catholic Church as he mentions in his letter, and partly Burgh’s questioning of Spinoza’s philosophy and attempting to convert him. It seems that what matters most or Spinoza is to free his philosophical thinking from authorities and accusations from religious thinking as he tells in his reply: “ I do not presume that I have found the best philosophy but I know what I understand is the true one. If you ask me how I know this, I reply that in the same way that you know that the three angles of triangle are equal to right angles”.[26]

Concluding Remarks

In his introduction to his book Spinoza: Logic, Knowledge and Religion, Richard Mason argues that Spinoza was an unusually systematic philosopher such that logic, knowledge and religion in his philosophy could not be prised apart (Mason, 2007: 7). According to Mason, Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise must be considered alongside his Ethics, since the former’s attempt to make religion possible has a close analogy  with latter’s attempt to make science possible (Mason, 2007: 7 italics original). The understanding of God, or Nature in Ethics offered a plausible transition from metaphysics to natural philosophy (or physics) making natural laws and (second kind) knowledge of them possible. The deterministic necessity in Nature makes “laws of nature always and everywhere the same”, so to understand is to know through the universal laws and rule of Nature.[27] The conditions of philosophizing are closely related to religious practice according to Spinoza. Despite the fact that Oldenburg in a subtle way scorns at Spinoza saying: “I see that you are not so much philosophizing as theologizing, …for you are recording your thoughts about angels, prophecy and miracles”.[28] In his answer to Oldenburg Spinoza tells that his writing a treatise on Scripture, namely, Theological-Political Treatise, in order to vindicate the freedom to philosophise from the prejudices and excessive authority of theologians and preachers.[29]

Spinozas explains religious practice trough “history and language” in the Treatise as natural human activity which could be understood in varying stages of sophistication[30].  Thus, philosophy and religion, reason and faith, inhabit two distinct and exclusive spheres, and neither should thread the other domain. The freedom to philosophize and speculate can therefore be granted without any harm to true religion. [31] In short we can conclude that it is not easy to label Spinoza as an atheist, pantheist and he did not associate with any religion himself. Yet, for him human laws and religions are neither socially avoidable nor desirable to abolish. They are like everything else natural, that is to be understood through their neither causes, not praised nor condemned (Mason, 2007: 200).

Bibliography

Curley, E. “On Bennet’s Interpretation of Spinoza’s Monism”, in Y.Yovel ed. God and Nature: Spinoza’s Metaphysics, Leiden: Brill, 1991.

Cook, J.T. “Did Spinoza Lie to His Landlady?”, in Piety,Peace ant the Freedom to Philosophize, P.Bagley, ed.. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999.

Mason, R. The God of Spinoza: A Philosophical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Mason, R. Spinoza: Logic, Knowledge and Religion. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.

Spinoza, B. Ethics, edited and translated by Edwin Curley, with an introduction by Stuart Hampshire. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1996.

Spinoza, B. The Letters, translated by Samuel Shirley, introduction and notes by Steven Barbone,Lee Rice and Jacob Adler. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1995

Yovel, Y. Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of Reson. Princeton and New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989.

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[1] Mason, 1997, front cover.

[2] Undoubtedly, the most articulated views of Spinoza on religion is present in his Theological-Political Treatise(TTP) but in this essay I confined myself to Spinoza’s notion of God and his views on religion as present Ethics and Letters of Spinoza.

[3] Letter 2, E1Def6, E1Def4. Arguments about the necessary existence of God in letters (cf. Letters 34-36),are parallel to arguments in Ethics Part I drawing in issues such as eternity, necessity, perfection, etc.

[4] Letter 2, Letter 34,

[5] Ethics I, P11, Demonstration

[6] ‘per se nota’, TTP

[7] Letter 56. A similar argument is presented in Ethics II, P47: “The human mind has an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite esence of God”.

[8] Letter 30.

[9] Letter 73,also in Ethics I Appendix

[10] Ethics I, P18.

[11] Ethics I, Appendix.

[12] Letter 56.

[13] Ethics II, P15.

[14] Spinoza wrote “law, or nature” in Letter 32.

[15] Letter 73.

[16] Mason refers to Spinoza’s attitude towards Maimonides in the Theological-Political Treatise and brutality in his refutation of Maimonides’ view as an example which shows how Spinoza managed to antagonize so many people so violently (Mason, 1993: 2-3).

[18] Colerus (1906: 41) quoted in Cook (1999:209)

[19] TTP, XIV, p. 159 cited in Mason,2007: 7.

[20] Letter 19.

[21] TTP GIII21/3-5 and GIII21/23-4 quoted in Mason (1997: 214).

[22] Letter 73.

[23] Letter 18.

[24] Letter 67

[25] Letter 76.

[26] Letter 76.

[27] Ethics III Praef.

[28] Letter 29.

[29] Lettter 185.

[30] TTP, XIV, p. 159 cited in Mason,2007: 7.

[31] Nevertheless, when these two spheres conflict Spinoza has an inclination to favor philosophy as he writes to Blyenbergh: “it is your conviction that God speaks more clearly and effectually through Holy Scripture thanthrough the light of natural understanding which he also granted us andaintains strong and uncorrupted through his divine wisdom, you have good reasons to adapt your opinions which you acribe to Holy Scripture.Indeed, I myself could do no other” (Letter 21).