Spinoza

The Spin on Spinoza

by Dave Shafer

Fairfield, CT

• Spinoza in his time and place (Spinoza in context)

• Spinoza the philosopher

• Spinoza the humanist

Presentation outline

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

In 1632 Spinoza was born, then was circumcised by the mohel of the

Portuguese Jews of Amsterdam

Spinoza, the man

• Born and lived in Amsterdam (1632-1677)• Family was Portuguese Crypto-Jews, then later

reverted to Judaism when left Spain for Holland• Mother died when he was 6 years old, father

when he was 22• Extended family was prosperous merchants• Education at Hebrew school, with added

secular tutors at home.

Spinoza was a serious student

Spinoza the linguist

• Knew Portuguese and Spanish from parents• Knew Dutch from his environment• Knew Hebrew from religious school• Learned Latin from a tutor• Knew some French and Italian• Maybe some German from a German tutor

who taught him Latin • Self- taught in some Greek

Born in Amsterdam, died in the Hague

Amsterdam in 1660

Spinoza lived during the Dutch “Golden Age”. Cheap energy from windpower fed sawmills and made Holland a world boat building and shipping power (think Dutch East Indies). This prosperity and a society that welcomed artists, scientists, philosophers and religious diversity made Holland a hotbed for new ideas and an ideal place for Spinoza – who pushed to the limits and then far beyond, which ideas could be tolerated.

It was a “Little Ice Age” in Europe – unusually cold, for decades

Amsterdam Town Hall

Dam Square, commerce heart of city

Dutch tulip mania peaked in 1637, when Spinoza was 5 years old. This particular bulb type set a record as selling for 10X the annual earnings of a skilled craftsman, for just one bulb!

Dutch tulip mania – the first of modern “bubbles” bursting

Amsterdam synagogue built right after Spinoza’s death – regarded then as the 8th wonder of the

world because of its size. Still there today.

Rembrandt was a Dutch contemporaryAlso Vermeer

Rembrandt was close to the Jewish community and used many Jewish themes and models

Saul and DavidAhasueras

We can see how some contemporary Jews, like Spinoza, looked and dressed, as in this Rembrandt painting.

Sephardic Jewish dress in 1600’s

Spinoza was a lens grinder, by profession

Nobility kept ornately decorated lens grinding machines as art objects.Spinoza made lenses for spectacles, magnifying lenses, and telescopes. He eventually died from many years of inhaling glass dust.

Rembrandt painting, with a lens

The microscope had just been invented

by Dutch scientist Van Leeuwenhoek

Tiny lenses were needed for it

The telescope had also been recently invented. It and the microscope both need lenses to operate

Spinoza made contributions to optics

His theory of the rainbow correctly explains the role of water drops in its creation

This was an age of important optical discoveries, with the microscope and the telescope

Science and this Age of Reason were opening up new worlds to explore, with important philosophical and religious consequences

New understandings about the universe and our place in it gave new perspectives on human possibilities.

Maybe there was even life on other planets, that might visit us.

Got milk?

Spinoza the PhilosopherSpinoza developed the first “theory of everything”. It is a lot to swallow in a short presentation like this one.

But let’s dive in and to try to assess it

It would be nice if there was a single big answer to all of our questions. Spinoza took off on a quest for the BIG ANSWERS.

Spinoza knew it is best to start simple and build up from there to greater complexity.

Simplified chess game for kids

We will just give the highlights here of his complex thoughts

Spinoza took a deductive approach, like Euclid’s geometry

Starting with a few premises he built up an enormous philosophical edifice – a theory of everything, people included

But the whole edifice is only as strong as those few starting premises

If these are false or unclear the whole structure gets very unsteady, since it is resting on a very small pivot area

Then, like a house of cards, the whole thing tends to collapse. Most grand, expansive, philosophical theories are like that. They may contain very many interesting ideas but basically lack the logical rigor that good philosophy requires.

Adding complexity to a fatally flawed system does not make it any stronger

The weight of Spinoza’s huge structure could not be supported by his weak and flawed premises

• Premise 1Some things (e.g. watches) are very complicated. They contain many parts which fit and work together in an orderly and regular manner to achieve their end (e.g. telling the time). Premise 2This complexity is evidence of design - the parts could not have come together in this way by chance - they must have been put together deliberately to achieve their purpose.

• Premise 3Where there is evidence of design, there must be a designer. In the case of a watch, this is the watchmaker.

• Premise 4The universe shows evidence of design. Nature has many complicated parts which work together to achieve their end (e.g. the eye, the pollination of flowers by bees, the orbits of the planets, the conditions of the Big Bang). They could not have come together in this way by chance.

• ConclusionIf the universe shows evidence of design, then it must have a designer. This we call God.

Therefore God exists This argument is not from Spinoza

Argument by design, for the existence of God

Premise #2 and #4 are false, so conclusion is not justified. Extremely simple recursive rules in nature can lead to extreme complexity, in physics and in biology. Evolution then keeps those biology results that work well. No designer is needed.

(Flawed premises invalidate conclusion)

The questions are the key to fame

Most philosophers become famous for the questions they ask, not for the very flawed answers they give, like Descartes (here) and his “Mind-Body problem”, or Spinoza and his struggles with religion and human destiny.

Tough questions

Descartes – “how can the physical brain think?”

Spinoza – “Do we have free will? (his answer – “No!”)

Descartes tried to doubt the existence of everything and concluded that at least he existed (“I think, therefore I am”). Seeing the fly here is not enough to know that it truly exists.

But then he waffled and accepted God as a given.

Spinoza was a braver man and excluded all supernatural content from his system, since it can be doubted and is unnecessary.

Spinoza’s influence• Spinoza was very important for his own ideas• And his critique’s of the ideas of others, like

Descartes.• But few take seriously his grand philosophical

project, a theory of everything. One modern philosophical journal rejected a submitted article about Spinoza, saying “we are not now, have never been, or will we ever be interested in Spinoza”

Spinoza the pioneer

Unlocking Spinoza’s complex ideas about ethics, nature, psychology, emotions, politics and biblical criticism is not easy. But he tackled the very big questions and had some shocking ideas for his time.

In the world of ideas Spinoza was never a follower. Always a leader

Way before Einstein, Spinoza tackled the really hard questions

Some things in life are simple, like men, but Spinoza’s thought is not one of them

We should try to learn from a deep thinker like Spinoza, to help us with life choices

We are always facing both large and small issues and have decisions to make

Spinoza the humanist

Getting into Spinoza’s metaphysics is heavy lifting, but Spinoza the humanist is much more accessible, and of greater interest to our group here.

We all know where we are headed, so Spinoza’s views on religion are of

special interest

“Relax, honey – change is good.”

It is hard to put a good spin on death

What comes at the end of life – a great adventure, something awful, or nothing?

Spinoza came down firmly on the side of “nothing”

Spinoza rejected all supernatural ideas

He wasn’t a real skeptic (a doubter) – instead he completely disbelieved in anything supernatural

Spinoza the skeptic

A willful blindness to the flaws in religions was not his cup of tea. Spinoza tried to see clearly and bravely, starting with “God”

A skeptical thinker will have a hard time with the way God and religion are often presented

Spinoza rejected the anthropomorphic images of a god, like Jupiter here, as do most skeptics

Today, of course, we can even joke about God, but not at all back then.

Spinoza also rejected traditional ideas about heaven and hell

Spinoza was willing to bravely set off on a dangerous train of thought, with no care about where it might lead him.

Spinoza rejected a literal reading of the bible

Adam and Eve, by Von Stuck

These are unsophisticated religious ideas that are taught to small children before they are old enough to know any better.

He valued reason way above sense impressions, and rejected miracles

Spinoza was very familiar with Christian thought and had many Christian friends

Water into wine miracle

Some basic truths about Spinoza

• Spinoza was a deeply religious man (this needs to be explained, but is still quite confusing)

• He believed in a pantheistic God, a god of Nature, who is conscious and omniscient but has no free will or purposes, with no care for us

• He rejected free will and was a complete determinist. Minds as well as bodies are part of deterministic Nature

• He distanced himself a very long way from Judaism. Jews cannot really say that he was “one of us”, although many do say that

Most people find complete determinism to be a very disturbing idea

The one exception we might not mind is romance, where we may feel that we were fated (kismet) to be with some particular person

Spinoza and free will• We think we have free will but it is an illusion. Everything is

predetermined by physics = Nature, which is the same as God

• Nature = God has no free will of its own

• All we can control, in a free will sense, is our emotions – to some degree

• We can change our emotions some by understanding why we feel that way (he was a very early precursor to psychoanalysis)

Spinoza advised an early form of psychoanalysis

Spinoza ideas that shocked his contemporaries

• Spinoza thought that a mind is that part of God’s mind that is aware of a particular body

• There is no causal connection between mind and body, just a parallel correlation

• We are not morally responsible for our actions, since they are determined in advance

• Both our thoughts and our bodily actions are predetermined

Spinoza would accept this line of thought

This is a rather grim view of the world

Spinoza saw that it is a dangerous place out there

Spinoza thought that fear is what keeps most of us from evil deeds

Spinoza considered everyone to be out for themselves

Yet Spinoza urged a life of virtue

Spinoza seemed to have incompatible ideas about how we should live a life of virtue if we also have no free will

It’s hard to see how living an ethical life can be married to complete determinism

Spinoza’s noble impulses were dragged down by the weight of his fatalistic philosophy of complete determinism

It’s hard to put a good face on this basic flaw

Spinoza’s thought

Spinoza’s thought teeters between bold radical ideas about God, man, free will, ethics, etc. that are clearly expressed, and fuzzy concepts that are supposed to ground everything in the rigor of logical deduction. But without a solid basis his ideas become just very interesting opinions,like much of philosophy through history.

Spinoza’s influence

• Many writers, artists, scientists and philosophers have been inspired by the boldness of his ideas, his personal courage, and his putting reason as the source of all knowledge

• His exemplary personal life was one of generosity, humility, frugality, and a kind of “saintly” disposition – a model for many people

Even today Spinoza casts a big shadow

People were starting to hear about Spinoza’s alarming and radical ideas

When heard, these were startling thoughts for his day.

Certainty from belief in a Holy Book was being attacked

In the Age of Reason, religious certainty was about to take a big plunge

Spinoza’s heretical ideas got the authorities very upset

His chances of being accepted by the establishment were about as dim as the prospects of this hitchhiker

Spinoza was excommunicated in 1656

The Church was also trying to stamp out heresies and the Dutch Jews did not want to offend their Christian host community by tolerating an atheist within the Jewish community

Spinoza’s 3 top heresies1) Angels don’t exist – they are imaginary

2) God is purely material (= Nature)

And is controlled by the laws of physics, just like everything else – which is only natural since god = everything = pantheism

3) The soul dies with the body

The “soul” and the body are somehow different aspects of a single substance. The soul is not “in” the body in a normal location sense, but it is so closely associated with the body that it cannot survive the body’s death. Hence, no afterlife. No heaven or hell.

But Spinoza did not mind being cut off by excommunication, and had left most of Judaism behind

He felt he could no longer fit in the way he would like

For Spinoza the bible was ready for a great fall – and he undertook a radical critique

Today we have critical biblical thinkers like Sonny and Cher, who have benefited from Spinoza’s efforts hundreds of year ago. Or not.

Spinoza took aim at the weaker aspects of the bible, as a document

He thought the Torah had been written by Ezra, not Moses, and that it was a purely human inspired work

Spinoza read the bible with the same skepticism that we bring to the supermarket tabloids. My own favorite tabloid headline =

“Skydiver eaten by starving birds”

Spinoza was a pioneer in critical biblical scholarship

Spinoza was a very brave man, like these strollers here. He boldly and willingly, without any safety net, abandoned both his community and his culture

Spinoza died in 1677 in The Hague, with his main works yet unpublished

Spinoza was a mensch• He won a legal dispute with a stepsister over his

father’s estate, yet gave her almost all of it.• A close friend wanted to make him sole heir.

Spinoza declined and also declined a very large money gift.

• When the friend died and left him 500 florins,

he would only accept 300.• He was very widely liked, even by his religious

and philosophical opponents

The bleakness of Spinoza’s philosophy is at odds with the warmth and appeal of the man

He thought we should seek fulfillment in each other

We can help each other towards happiness

As far as we know, Spinoza never had much to do with women

Spinoza had many good friends, but never married. He was a happy bachelor, married to his ideas

Spinoza did not become discouraged or bitter over his ideas about life, like nothingness after death and complete determinism

Spinoza had an upbeat spirit that endeared him to his many friends

Spinoza never gave in to a grumpy last stage of life.

He remained fully engaged with life, with his friends, with his ideas, right up until the end.

Like Nietzsche, Spinoza’s thought has been widely misrepresented and very selectively used.

Theists, deists and atheists have all claimed Spinoza as one of their own, by willful misreadings

This can make for some strange bedfellows

These days everyone is climbing on board the Spinoza bandwagon, mistakenly or not. The diversity of his thought and his appealing personality have attracted many.

But now we are out of time and must close.

Enough already – The End

This slideshow presentation is online at

www.slideshare.net/operacrazy/the-spin-on-spinoza