Welcome to the Deep Dive, the show that takes
a stack of sources, articles, research, sometimes
centuries of controversial philosophy, and extracts
the precise nuggets of knowledge and insight
you need to fully grasp the figures who define
modernity. Today, we are opening the file on
a, well, a monumental and profoundly disruptive
thinker from the 17th century, Baruch Spinoza.
Right, and this is a man who's... rigorous, almost
mathematical approach to truth caused him to
be expelled from his community. And I mean, the
harshest possible way. And subsequently labeled
the most dangerous atheist of his age, which
is ironic because his philosophy is in a way
all about God. That's the paradox we're getting
into. We are diving deep into the life and the
radical thought of Baruch Spinoza, born in 1632,
who died too young in 1677. Our mission today
is a critical one, to unpack the most crucial
insights from the sources regarding his controversial
life, and maybe more importantly, his breathtaking
philosophy, which just fundamentally reshaped
our concepts of God, nature, and, well, human
freedom. Spinoza's system is essential. I mean,
you could argue it laid the intellectual groundwork
for the Age of Enlightenment. We're going to
examine how his work challenged traditional religious
and political authority. From his masterwork,
The Ethics, which is written in this incredible
way. Geometric proofs. All the way to his defining
and still scandalous equation of reality, Deus
is Natura. God or nature, the two are one and
the same. Okay, let's unpack this. We have to
start with the man and his environment. Because
the context of 17th century Amsterdam is absolutely
essential to understanding why his ideas were
so explosive and why they led to his exile. It
really is. You can't separate the philosophy
from the life. So let's get into it. Part one,
the life of a radical. Spinoza's origins are
critical. He was born Baruch Espinosa in 1632
in the Dutch Republic to a family of Portuguese
Jews, and they were Moranos. OK, so that term
Morano, what does it mean for his family history?
It means their ancestors had been forced under
the threat of the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions
to convert to Catholicism. So on the surface,
they were Catholic. Right. Outwardly Catholic
for generations. But many of them, and we can
probably assume Spinoza's family as well, were
practicing crypto Judaism. They were Jewish in
secret. That immediately gives us this historical
tension, doesn't it? They arrive in Amsterdam
seeking religious tolerance. They're already
accustomed to living a kind of double life, one
public, one private after generations of persecution.
Precisely. And Amsterdam was, you know, relatively
tolerant. It's often described as a haven for
religious dissenters. But that tolerance was.
It had conditions. It had conditions, big ones.
It existed on the condition that religious practice
remained discreet, especially non -Christian
practice, and most importantly, that the various
communities did not disturb the civil peace or
provoke the Dutch Calvinist authorities. So it
rocked the boat. Do not rock the boat. And the
Spinoza family, especially his father Michael,
was a big deal in the community. He was a prominent
wealthy merchant, and he even served as an officer
of the United Congregation, the Talmud Torah.
So young Baruch had a very traditional and academically
rich start, right? He's attending the Talmud
Torah school. He's soaking up the sacred texts,
the literature of the community. Yes, a rigorous
classical education. He was a brilliant student.
But his life took a pretty sharp turn when he
was still quite young. What happened? The sources
indicate that his older brother, Isaac, who was
the one expected to inherit and run the family
business, died prematurely in 1649. Ah. And that
loss suddenly pulled the scholarly Baruch away
from his books and straight into the family's
commercial enterprise. So we see this shift then.
The intellectual ambitions get momentarily sidelined
for commerce. And this happened, I believe, right
when the successful family firm was starting
to struggle financially. The timing couldn't
have been worse, really. The first Anglo -Dutch
war from 1652 to 1654 just crippled the Spinoza
firm. English ships seized a lot of their valuable
cargo, their shipping lines were disrupted, and
the business was suddenly saddled with substantial
debt. So when Michael Spinoza, the father, died
in 1654, Baruch... then in his early 20s, inherited,
well, not a thriving enterprise, but a heap of
financial obligations. The family fortune was
gone. By 1655, it was essentially gone. Okay.
And this is where the personal financial crisis
starts to metastasize into an ideological and
ultimately a religious one. The sources suggest
the path to his expulsion was really paved with
legal paperwork. Absolutely. The crisis point
arrives in March of 1656. To protect himself
from creditors and this inherited debt, Spinoza
took a really radical legal step. What did he
do? He appealed to the city authorities, so the
secular power of Amsterdam, to declare him a
legal minor or an orphan. Would it do what for
him, legally? It would allow him to renounce
his inheritance and therefore escape the debts.
It was a clever legal move. Weakly, he's just
using the Dutch civil code to protect his future.
But in doing so, he broke a major rule within
the synagogue. Critically so. The synagogue had
a very strict regulation that all business disputes,
especially internal ones about debt or inheritance,
had to be arbitrated internally within the community
structure. You don't air your dirty laundry in
public. And you certainly don't go to the secular
court. By doing that, he publicly undermined
the autonomy and the authority of the community
leadership. That's one huge layer of offense.
But the community's fear was deeper than just
a bookkeeping dispute, right? This was about
survival. Exactly. This brings us right back
to that fragile tolerance in Amsterdam. The municipal
government had explicitly ordered the Jewish
community to keep strict religious observance
and civil order. So the leaders were walking
on eggshells. They were terrified. They were
terrified that Spinoza's increasingly controversial
philosophical views, which were already becoming
known through his conversations with, you know,
free thinkers and dissidents, would lead to persecution.
Or worse, the expulsion of the entire community.
Because the civil authorities would just see
it as the Jewish community failing to maintain
order. Failing to control their own? So his intellectual
radicalism was viewed as a genuine existential
threat to hundreds of families. And that provides
this chilling context for the severity of the
punishment that came next. On July 27, 1656,
at only 23 years old, The community leaders issued
the harem, the writ of censure. In our sources,
Cress, this wasn't just any censure. No. This
was the harshest censure ever pronounced in that
community's history. It was read out loud in
the synagogue. And the language was extreme,
wasn't it? They didn't even detail his philosophical
crime. They just invoked abominable heresies
and monstrous deeds. They chose that vagueness
deliberately. It was a strategy. By not publicizing
his specific theological challenges, which we
now know included denying the immorality of God,
Immortality of the soul, questioning the design
authorship of the Torah, things like that. Really
fundamental stuff. Core tenets. By keeping it
vague, they avoided inflaming the general public
and provoking the Dutch Calvinists. They were
essentially sending a message. We have dealt
with our internal radical. Please do not punish
us all for his sins. It's fascinating, though,
that even before his major works were published,
his skepticism was already so disruptive. He
was related to another controversial figure,
Uriel da Costa. Yes. Screw his mother. DaCosta
had been excommunicated twice for questioning
fundamentals. He was a cautionary tale. So Spinoza
wasn't the first, but his case was handled with
this unprecedented finality. Spinoza's case was
different because he refused to repent. He refused
to recant. He just accepted the expulsion, embraced
his isolation, and moved on. The harem was never
rescinded because, frankly, there was nothing
Spinoza wanted to return to. He distanced himself
from all religious affiliations. He didn't convert
to Christianity. No, he became purely secular,
a man of philosophy alone. And his life completely
shifts. He dedicates himself entirely to philosophical
inquiry, and he sustains himself through a truly
remarkable trade. It's a beautifully symbolic
choice, really, when you think about it. Lens
grinding requires meticulous precision, enormous
patience, and a deep scientific understanding
of light and optics. I mean, these are the very
tools of the scientific revolution. He became
a highly skilled craftsman, constructing optical
instruments, microscopes, telescopes. And the
quality wasn't just good. It was recognized by
the intellectual elite of Europe. Absolutely.
Christian Huygens, who was one of the most important
astronomers and physicists of the age, he praised
the quality of Spinoza's lenses. Wow. So this
shows us that Spinoza was still deeply embedded
in the intellectual community, corresponding
with them, working alongside the scientific revolution,
even while living this solitary, frugal life
that relied heavily on occasional support from
his loyal friends. This shift from prominent
merchant's son to anonymous, isolated craftsman,
it forced him to adopt a philosophy. The Thorney
Rose. Beautiful, insightful philosophy, but protected
by the thorns of caution. So Spinoza is now isolated,
cautious. but intensely intellectually active.
This period after 1656 really defines the trajectory
of his thought. He needs the tools to construct
his radical philosophy. And those tools came
from his new intellectual circle. His education
in Latin, the arts and sciences, began in earnest
with a man named Franciscus van den Enden. And
who was he? A fascinating character, a former
Jesuit, but also a staunch political radical,
and by many accounts, an avowed atheist. Van
den Enden is the one who introduced him to modern
philosophy, with René Descartes being the dominant
influence at the time. Descartes, the man who
argued for radical doubt and established that
famous dualism of mind and body. Spinoza clearly
found his initial framework there. He did, but
he very quickly moved past Descartes. It was
through this period that Spinoza attracted what
was often derisively called a philosophical sect.
A sect. It was a dedicated circle of followers
and friends, people like Lodewijk Meyer, Jarek
Gels, who were often secularized freethinkers,
religious dissidents, or members of these sort
of fringe Christian groups like the Collegians.
But this wasn't just a book club, though. The
sources suggest this group functioned as a crucial
intellectual crucible for him. It was their private
university. It was a testing ground. They meticulously
scrutinized early drafts of his masterpiece,
The Ethics. They were a mirror for his ideas,
allowing him to hone his arguments against critical
intelligent minds. But they paid a social price
for it. Oh, yes. They were publicly despised
in Amsterdam, broadly disparaged as dangerous
atheists just for questioning orthodox religious
views. And this, of course, only reinforced Spinoza's
need for caution. Now, when he decided to finally
publish something under his own name, he didn't
start with his own revolutionary system. His
first major publication was actually an exposition
of Descartes. That's right. But it was revolutionary
for its method. Exactly. His Descartes Principles
of Philosophy from 1663 was crucial not for its
content, but for its form. It's where he established
his famous geometric method. We often hear this
phrase geometric method, but why was it so important
to a philosopher? I mean, why is structure philosophy
like Euclid's geometry? Spinoza believed that
traditional philosophical prose, which relies
on, you know, rhetoric, metaphor, persuasion.
It was inherently flawed. It was subject to human
bias and emotion. He wanted to remove the messy
human element. He wanted to remove all of it.
He saw mathematics, particularly geometry, as
the only pure path to truth because it begins
from self -evident definitions and axioms and
then proceeds through these absolutely necessary
propositions and proofs. So she's trying to demonstrate
the necessity of his conclusions rather than
merely arguing for them. It was an attempt to
make philosophy as demonstrable and irrefutable
as two plus two equals four. He saw this rigorous
mathematical structure as the key to reaching
the highest truth and ultimately achieving a
state of intellectual peace and harmony. If you
accept the starting points. You must accept the
conclusions. There's no room for debate. And
this method, the scaffolding, is what he would
use to build his greatest work, the ethics. That
structural rigor is astonishing. But he then
followed it up with a book that was, well, intentionally
inflammatory. It was designed to disrupt the
political order, the Tractatus Theologico -Politicus,
the TTP. The TTP, published in 1670, is rightly
described by our sources as one of the most important
books of Western thought. He started writing
it around 1665, prompted by the chaotic political
environment of the Second Anglo -Dutch War. It
was a comprehensive intervention into theology,
politics, and war. So what were the core revolutionary
arguments that sent Europe into a complete uproar?
There were two major lines of attack, both utterly
radical for the time. First, he used rigorous
biblical criticism and legal analysis to argue
for the complete separation of church and state.
And what did that mean practically? It meant
that ecclesiastic authority should have absolutely
no role in the function of a secular democratic
state. So religious leaders shouldn't be dictating
civil law or foreign policy or public education.
I mean, that is a truly modern concept being
birthed right there. It is the foundation of
secular liberalism. And the second radical argument
was theological. He subjected the Hebrew Bible
to unprecedented critical scrutiny. How so? He
openly questioned its divine origin. He argued
that the prophets were men of vivid imagination,
not necessarily reliable conduits of objective
truth, and that the laws in the Bible were specific
to ancient Jewish kingdoms and held no legal
authority over modern secular governments. So
the TTP was essentially a demolition of theocracy.
It questioned the very concept of divine revelation
as a source of political authority. Exactly.
And for that reason, it had to be published anonymously
under a fictitious publisher and a fake place
of publication. The scandal was immediate and
intense. Scholars all across Europe, even Thomas
Hobbes, who ironically agreed with many of the
political conclusions, attacked the TTP as dangerous,
subversive and undermining the very foundations
of civil society. And Spinoza. knew the risks
intimately, didn't he? He had the tragic fate
of his friend to remember. He did. The memory
of Adrian Korbeck was a potent lesson. Korbeck
had published similar ideas denying divine authorship
the impossibility of miracles, but he made a
fatal error. Which was? He published in Dutch.
For the masses. He was arrested, thrown in prison,
and died shortly afterward from the harsh conditions.
So Spinoza's Kant motto... dictated his publishing
strategy for the TTP. It absolutely confirmed
it. His book was significantly safer because
it was written in Latin. He was intentionally
targeting a narrower intellectual and educated
elite academics, philosophers, theologians. And
the sources confirmed this was a deliberate strategy.
Oh, yes. Spinoza explicitly forbade its translation
into Dutch. He wanted to ensure the general populace,
the potentially riotous or easily offended public,
wouldn't be able to easily access or weaponize
his ideas. aiming for an intellectual revolution,
not a street fight. The TTP was his public political
intervention. But the Ethics, which was published
after he died, is his attempt to redefine reality
itself. Let's move to the core of his thought.
The system that tries to explain the universe,
God, humanity, and freedom all derive logically
using that geometric method. The Ethics is Spinoza's
profoundest philosophical legacy. It belongs
firmly to that 17th century rationalist school,
along with Descartes and Leibniz. It assumes
that reality is perfectly intelligible to reason,
just like mathematics is. He's aiming for perfect
logical deduction from self -evident truths.
That's a goal. But he takes this giant leap past
his predecessor, Descartes, by collapsing all
of reality into a single entity. He rejects the
idea of mind and body as separate things. He
does, which is why we have to start with his
metaphysical triad, substance attributes and
modes. Let's break down substance first. Okay,
what is substance? Substance is the absolute
foundation of his entire system, and he defines
it with that geometric rigor. Substance is that
which is conceived through itself and requires
nothing external for its understanding or existence.
So it's completely self -sufficient. It is the
ultimate cause of itself, or kazasui. It is eternal,
infinite, and it necessarily exists. It can't
not exist. And the immediate revolutionary logical
deduction he makes from this definition is that
there can only be one such thing. Precisely.
If there were two substances, they would have
to limit each other, right? Which would make
neither one of them truly infinite. Therefore,
there can only be one absolutely infinite, eternal,
and independent substance. And that single substance,
Spinoza declares, is God. God or nature. Okay,
now let's define the other two terms, starting
with modes. I think those are a little easier
to grasp. Modes are the exact opposite of substance.
They are things that cannot exist independently.
They must exist as a modification of something
else. So everything we see and touch. Exactly.
Modes include all individual objects, properties,
relations, events, everything we see, touch,
or think about. So my body is a mode, my individual
thoughts are modes, and the entire physical universe,
the cosmos itself, is a giant, though infinite,
mode of substance. That's correct. It is the
structure or the modification, not the underlying
essence itself. Okay, which brings us to attributes,
the critical middle term that connects the two.
How does Spinoza define attributes and how do
they function here? Attributes are what the intellect
perceives as constituting the very essence of
substance. Now, God, being the one infinite substance,
must have an infinite number of attributes. But
we can't perceive all of them. As finite human
beings, as modes, we are only aware of two of
these infinite attributes, thought, the mental
or ideational, and extension. the physical or
spatial. So we only get to see two sides of an
infinite coin. And those two sides, thought and
extension, they represent complete parallel accounts
of reality. Exactly. There are like two fundamentally
different languages that perfectly describe the
exact same event. They never interact. Thought
does not cause extension and extension does not
cause thought. They just mirror each other. They
perfectly mirror each other because they are
both expressions of the single unified substance.
This technical framework brings us to the most...
defining, and, I guess, notorious phrase in his
entire philosophy, Diosi Venatra, God or Nature.
Spinoza's definition of God is definitive. A
substance consisting of infinite attributes.
He argues God must exist because any cause that
could prevent the existence of an absolutely
infinite being would have to be either external
to it. Which is impossible since substance is
self -caused. Right. Or it would have to be internal,
which would contradict the very definition of
an infinite being. So existence follows necessarily
from the definition. This single infinite necessary
substance is God or nature. They are synonymous.
Let's spend some time on this because this is.
the concept that earned him the title of atheist
and heretic. This God is radically impersonal.
What attributes of the traditional Abrahamic
God does Spinoza's God not possess? Well, pretty
much all of them. Spinoza's God lacks all anthropomorphic
traits. This God is not an individual entity,
not a conscious creator. So no personality. No
personality, no consciousness, no intelligence,
no feeling, no free will. And crucially, Spinoza
argues God does not act according to purpose.
There is no divine plan. No teleology. None.
Everything just happens from necessary natural
law, not from divine intention. So the idea that
God created the world for a reason or that God
loves you and answers your prayers, all of that
is wiped away. From Spinoza's perspective, yes.
He viewed the idea of God acting for a purpose
like creating humanity as a mere human illusion
born from our ignorance. If God had a purpose,
it would imply God lacked something and needed
to achieve it. Which contradicts the definition
of an infinite perfect substance. Exactly. God
is existence. God is the underlying law and structure
of the universe, not a character in it. When
his critics accused him of crude materialism,
of just equating God with rocks and trees, he
strongly objected. How did he clarify this identity
of God in nature? He was very emphatic in denying
that he equated God with mere corporeal matter.
The material world, the physical cosmos, that's
just a modification expressed under the attribute
of extension. It is not the whole of God. So
how did he explain it? Well, the German philosopher
Karl Jaspers made a distinction that is essential
to understanding Spinoza here. He distinguished
between natura naturans and naturata. Okay, let's
hear that distinction because it sounds key to
reconciling God and nature. Naturalations is
nature naturing. This is the active, eternal,
and necessary essence of everything. It's the
underlying power and source of all things. This
is God, the infinite substance. That is nature
already created. This is the finite, structured,
physical world of modes that results from the
necessary laws of naturans. So God is the cause.
The world is the effect. They are identical in
essence, but not interchangeable in function.
So some scholars argue this means he's not really
a pantheist where God is everything, but maybe
a panentheist, that the world is in God, but
God is greater than the world. Does that distinction
matter for our understanding here? It matters
greatly for theological debate, sure. But for
the listener, I think the takeaway is that Spinoza
created a unified monistic system where nothing
exists outside of God. Whether you call it panentheism
or classical pantheism, the essential point remains.
There is only one substance and everything, including
our mind, follows from the necessity of that
substance. And this leads us to the most intellectually
challenging consequence of his system. Strict
determinism. If God nature is one necessary substance,
then everything that happens must follow necessarily
from its laws. Does that leave any room at all
for human free will? It leaves none whatsoever.
Spinoza states it plainly. Things could not have
been produced by God in any other way or in any
other order than is the case. The universe is
strictly necessary, fixed by immutable causality.
No contingencies, no accidents. No free choices
in the libertarian sense. Nothing could have
been different. But wait a minute. If everything
is determined, if my decision to drink coffee
this morning was determined by the entire causal
chain of the universe stretching back to infinity,
Why bother striving for anything? I mean, doesn't
this lead straight to fatalism or nihilism? That
is the most common objection. And Spinoza's response
is, I think. really elegant. He says determinism
doesn't remove action, it only removes the illusion
of uncaused action. What does he mean? We strive,
what he calls conatus, because it is our nature,
our very essence, to strive to persevere in our
being. That striving itself is determined. Spinoza
argues that we feel compelled to act, but we
confuse that feeling of compulsion with the feeling
of choice. And he gave us that famous quote about
the infant to illustrate how widespread this
illusion is. It's highly memorable because it
just strips away our most cherished illusion.
He said, the infant believes that it is by free
will that it seeks the breast. The angry boy
believes that by free will he wishes vengeance.
All believe that they speak by a free command
of the mind, whilst in truth they have no power
to restrain the impulse. And his stark conclusion
from that is that men are conscious of their
desire and unaware of the causes by which their
desires are determined. Free will, for Spinoza,
is simply the name we give to our profound ignorance
of the true causes acting upon us. So let's return
to the mind and body. Spinoza rejected Cartesian
dualism, that the mind is a separate non -physical
thing that somehow interacts with the physical
body. How does his monism account for the connection
between my thought and my physical action? Spinoza's
monism is radical. He argues that the mind and
the body are one and the same thing, but they
are just conceived under two different attributes,
thought or extension. Can you give an analogy
for that? It's a tricky concept. Sure. Think
of it like this. If I decide to raise my hand,
that decision, that idea, is a modification,
a mode of substance under the attribute of thought.
The physical act of my hand rising is the exact
same modification, but it's perceived under the
attribute of extension. So it's like a song.
The sheet music is the thought, and the sound
waves are the extension. They're two completely
different ways of representing the same underlying
piece of music. That is an excellent analogy.
But the sheet music doesn't cause the sound waves,
and vice versa. They're just perfectly synchronized
representations of the same thing. That's it.
Spinoza calls this the doctrine of psychophysical
parallelism. The order and connection of ideas
are the same as the order and connection of things.
They are two faces of the same coin, which is
the underlying substance. This completely eliminates
the need to explain how an immaterial mind can
push a material body around, which was the central,
unsolvable problem of Cartesian dualism. but
as cognitive processes. This is truly modern
thinking. Spinoza views emotions, he calls them
effects, as highly cognitive. He thinks they're
often caused by flawed perceptions, which he
calls inadequate ideas. Emotions for him are
either passive or active. That's a passive emotion.
A passive emotion is one where we suffer because
we don't understand the true cause of what's
happening to us. We are, in his terms, enslaved
by forces external to our understanding. And
his great insight. one that really anticipates
therapeutic practice centuries later, is how
we move from that passive suffering to active
understanding. Exactly. The power of his insight
lies in this transformation. When we grasp the
true necessary cause of a passive emotion, when
we understand why we are suffering, that knowledge
transforms the emotion into an active emotion.
An active emotion is one that's derived from
reason and understanding. Can you give us a concrete
example of that shift? Certainly. Imagine you
were insulted by a colleague at work. If you
react with immediate, overwhelming anger, that
anger is a passive emotion, you are suffering
because of an external cause, the insult, you
are enslaved by the event. Spinoza would argue
that if you step back and through reason realize
that the insult was not a reflection of your
worth, but rather the necessary consequence of
the colleague's own personal insecurity or their
desperation or just a bad temper, you now see
the cause. You transform the feeling of being
personal victimized into the intellectual understanding
of necessity. Yes. And that intellectual understanding
fundamentally diminishes the emotional power
of the event over you. The anger might transform
into an act of emotion, maybe a rational pity,
or simply acceptance. You have gained power by
replacing an inadequate passive idea, I was personally
wronged, with an adequate rational idea. the
colleagues' action was a necessary determined
outcome of their condition. And that process
of achieving adequate knowledge is the path to
freedom. It's the whole game. Spinoza's system,
while it is rigorously intellectual, is deeply
concerned with how humans actually live and how
they can achieve the best possible state of existence,
both individually and, you know, collectively.
Yes, his politics, though they're often seen
as secondary to the ethics, are intrinsically
linked to his ethical goal of achieving freedom
within this necessary determined world. His final
unfinished work was the Tractatus Politicus,
or TP, written in 1676. What was the goal of
the TP? It was intended to be a practical manual
on good state function. Following his earlier
secular arguments in the TTP, the TTP set out
to demonstrate that among all political arrangements,
monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, that democratic
states are the best form of government. Why do
you think that? Because he believed they most
closely align with the natural striving of the
individual, the canatus, to live freely and rationally.
But the sources also flag a significant contradiction
here. Despite his radical secularism and his
pro -democracy stance, his social views on gender
were, well, they were conventional for the time.
They were disappointingly conventional. The TP
included a very terse, unelaborated section concluding
that women were naturally subordinate to men.
And why? He just attributed this to inherent
differences that he believed made them unfit
for public office or political rule. While we...
rightly judge this today, it is important to
remember that his radicalism was focused purely
on metaphysics and the separation of political
and religious power, not on social hierarchy.
Okay, let's pivot to his core ethical concern,
because this is the entire point of the ethics,
right? How does one achieve salvation or blessedness
in a determined universe with a completely impersonal
God? Spinoza defined the highest good, what he
called blessedness, as the constant and eternal
love of God. He refers to this ultimate state
as the intellectual love of God, or amor dei
intellectualis. This sounds completely paradoxical.
If God lacks personality and doesn't love us
back, how can we possibly love God? That is the
paradox that makes his ethics so profound. We
don't love God in the sense of, you know, reciprocal
affection. Since God is identical to the necessary
eternal laws of nature, the love is purely cognitive.
So what does it mean to love God then? To love
God means to fully, rationally understand and
affirm the necessary order of the universe and
our tiny place within it. It's the intellectual
satisfaction you get from grasping the perfect,
immutable structure of reality. And this blessed
state is linked directly to that concept you
mentioned before, kanatis. Yes, kanatis is the
defining element of our existence. It means the
striving, the effort, or the impulse of every
single thing to persevere in its own being. For
a human, our kanatis is driven by this desire
for self -preservation and self -actualization.
And how does that relate to being perfect? Spinoza
argues that the more we act according to reason
and the less we are enslaved by our passive emotions,
the more we fulfill our conatus and thus the
more perfect we become. But he also redefines
perfection itself, moving away from moral judgment.
He clarifies that perfection does not mean moral
excellence. It means completeness. Individual
humans, being mere modifications or modes of
the infinite substance, can never be absolutely
complete or perfect. That absolute completeness
is reserved solely for God, the substance itself.
So we strive toward a lesser form of completeness,
a state of maximal fulfillment of our rational
nature. How do we access this lesser blessedness?
Through knowledge. Spinoza posited three kinds
of knowledge, which move us from slavery to freedom.
Okay, what's the first kind? The first kind of
knowledge is imagination or opinion. This is
sensory. It's fragmented. It's based on inadequate
ideas, rumor, or poorly analyzed experience.
This is the source of all passive emotion and
suffering. The default state for most of us,
probably. What's the second? The second kind
of knowledge is reason. This is based on adequate,
clear, and distinct common notions. It allows
us to understand things deductively, establishing
universal laws. This is where we grasp the general
structure of the universe. I'm finally the highest
state. The third kind of knowledge, which he
called intuitive knowledge. This is immediate,
direct insight into the essence of things. It
allows the individual to see themselves and all
other modes, not as isolated entities, but subspecie
eternitatis. Under the aspect of eternity. Exactly,
as necessary. modifications of substance. So
this lesser blessedness is achieved through this
intuitive knowledge, which allows us to see our
own life and our own destiny as part of the total
necessary and perfect order of God nature. Precisely.
When the mind links its fundamental striving,
its kanatis, to this intuitive knowledge, that
rational understanding naturally produces the
highest possible human state, the intellectual
love of God. So freedom in Spinoza's system is
not defying necessity. No, it's rationally understanding
and embracing it. We are most free when we act
according to the laws of our own rational nature,
which is itself a necessary part of nature. It's
a radical inversion of freedom. We're most free
when we are most aligned with the necessary laws
that govern us. It's the ultimate rationalist
project. He shifts the goal of life away from
seeking supernatural salvation or praying for
a miracle and towards objective study and reason.
Through reason, we shed our passive suffering
and become active participants in the eternal
order. Benozzo lived a cautious, isolated life.
But after his death in 1677, his friends secretly
published his opera postuma. which included the
TTP and the ethics, to prevent them from being
confiscated and destroyed. The impact of these
works was seismic, even if it was delayed by
decades of suppression. The impact was revolutionary.
The great German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel, asserted that Spinoza is essentially a
testing point in modern philosophy, so that it
may really be said, you are either a Spinozist
or not a philosopher at all. That puts him in
the absolute pantheon of Western thought. Why
was his system so appealing to later generations
of thinkers, especially those struggling with
the implications of the Enlightenment? Because
Spinoza offered a compelling alternative to two
extremes. On one hand, you had pure materialism
that denied spirit, and on the other, you had
traditional deism that separated God entirely
from the world. And Spinoza offered a middle
path. A unified path. He provided a model for
the unity of existence, the regularity of everything
that happens, and the fundamental identity of
spirit, which he called thought and nature, which
he called extension. And the list of thinkers
influenced by him reads like a syllabus of 19th
and 20th century intellectual history. It's absolutely
staggering. He influenced the German idealists
like Kant, Fichte and Schelling, and then later
thinkers like Marx, Nietzsche and even Freud.
He was also particularly instrumental in post
-war French philosophy. How was Spinoza used
in the French intellectual scene? Well... French
thinkers like Gilles Deleuze used Spinoza as
a powerful bulwark against what they saw as the
irrationalist and subjectivist tendencies of
phenomenology and existentialism, which often
prioritize the subjective human experience. And
Spinoza's system is the opposite of that. It's
a unified, objective, deterministic system. It
offered a solid metaphysical foundation for understanding
reality independent of human consciousness. Deleuze,
who was profoundly influenced by him, named him
the Prince of Philosophers. Spinoza also captured
the imagination of poets and novelists. I love
the phrase Novalis used for him, the God -intoxicated
man. That phrase, God -intoxicated, it perfectly
captures the intense, almost religious dedication
Spinoza had to understanding the necessary, rational
God of nature. And he influenced writers, too.
Oh, yes. Percy Shelley, whose essay The Necessity
of Atheism, echoed Spinoza's deterministic arguments.
Jorge Luis Borges dedicated two sonnets to him.
And there's Isaac Bashevis Singer's short story,
The Spinoza of Market Street. About a man who
studies the ethics. Yes, he studies it religiously,
seeing in it a kind of divine order amidst the
chaos of everyday life. But perhaps the most
enduring modern connection is between Spinoza
and 20th century physics, bridging that 17th
century rationalism with the modern scientific
worldview. Albert Einstein. He repeatedly cited
Spinoza as the philosopher who had the most profound
influence on his worldview. Why was that? Einstein
was deeply drawn to the idea of an impersonal
deity that was equated with the elegant, orderly
laws of nature. This link became famous in 1929
when Einstein was asked a direct question about
his beliefs via telegram. What was his reply?
And how did it encapsulate Spinoza's system?
The telegram asked him, do you believe in God?
And his famous response was... That is pure Spinozism.
It's the reverence for the mathematical, impersonal,
immutable law of the universe. It is the intellectual
love of God for the scientific age. Finally,
let's return to the beginning, the harem and
his identity. His expulsion sparked this massive
debate about whether he should be viewed as the
first modern Jew. His intellectual break with
rabbinic tradition and his embrace of pure secular
rationalism undoubtedly paved the way for the
concept of the secular Jew, someone who maintains
a cultural identity without religious observance.
He profoundly shaped subsequent Jewish Enlightenment
figures, the Haskalah, like Moses Mendelssohn.
And ironically, even while he was alienated from
his community, one of his political writings
was later seized upon by proto -Zionists. Yes,
that is due to a fascinating brief passage in
the Tractatus Theologico -Politicus. Spinoza
suggested that if the Jewish people could overcome
what he called their religiously imposed discouragement
of manliness, meaning physical and political
strength. What did he say would happen? He said
he would not hesitate to believe that they will
one day, given the opportunity, establish once
more their independent state. Wow. And this prophetic
passage was used by secular Zionist forerunners
like David Ben -Gurion, who saw Spinoza as the
first secular proto -Zionist thinker. Now, in
the 21st century, there have been movements to
officially lift the harem and welcome him back,
metaphorically, into the fold. What has been
the fate of those efforts? The Portuguese -Israelite
commune of Amsterdam has consistently refused.
The most recent instance was in 2015 when the
chief rabbi maintained that Spinoza's ideas,
his fundamental tearing apart of the concept
of a divine, willful, personal God, had not become
less problematic over time. So the preposterous
ideas are still preposterous. To the Orthodox
view, yes. The harem remains in effect a 367
-year -old marker of intellectual defiance. So
he remains an officially banished heretic. And
yet his status in the Netherlands today is monumental.
He's a cultural and intellectual hero. He is
a core figure in Dutch history. His portrait
was on the 1000 Gilder banknote and the highest
scientific award in the country is named the
Spinoza Prize. His enduring legacy lies in his
success at intellectually separating theology
from politics and establishing the rigorous path
of modern rationalism. A path that demanded we
understand the world through necessary objective
law. Right. And the final word on his political
vision remains inscribed on the statue dedicated
to him in Amsterdam, a quote from the TTP. It
reads, the objective of the state is freedom,
a freedom defined not by political whims, but
by rational self -governance. Spinoza's trajectory
from merchant to exiled lens grinder to monumental
philosopher is one of pure, defiant intellectual
striving. He challenged us to accept the most
difficult truth, that we are not the center of
the universe and we are not endowed with some
special magical free will. His final teaching
was that understand the true causes of our actions,
replacing our inadequate ideas with adequate
ones, is the only way to move toward genuine
freedom and blessedness. It is the ultimate act
of rational self mastery. So here is a provocative
thought for you to carry forward as you conclude
this deep dive. If, as Benoza argues, everything
that happens, including your specific thoughts,
your most cherished desires, and your greatest
decisions, follows necessarily from the immutable
eternal laws of nature, does true human freedom
lie not in the ability to choose differently
from what is, but rather in the purely rational
acceptance, through intellectual love, of the
necessity of the universe? And if so, what would
it take for you to truly embrace that necessity?