Spinoza

Or how life feeds a philosopher’s mind (and our own) and vice versa

3/3. The Ethics, a masterpiece of metaphysics, epistemology, psychology, ethics – in short, a comprehensive works

In a very different mode, the Ethics completes his radical reappraisal by questioning the reality of evil, the status of human freedom, the ontological relationship between the world, all of existence and God in an implausible architecture made up of:

definitions

axioms

postulates

propositions

demonstrations

lemmas

corollaries

forming a structure of strict propositions stripped of all unnecessary words, which in turn adorn his scholia: rich comments filled with affects and emotions with an occasional high-Baroque feel.

When studies alone, these logical categories (the difference between a proposition and a demonstration, or a postulate and an axiom, etc.) provide valuable indications as to the structure of thought. When applied to Spinozian themes, their possibilities are increased exponentially.

That is one of the reasons why this truly unique text is, in my opinion, more of a matrix for thinking that which must be thought, than a system. And the tremendous resurgence of interest in Spinoza today can be explained by the potential the matrix presents.

Layout of the Ethics

Of God

A text of pure ontology.

Of the Nature and Origin of the Mind

A treaty of knowledge combined with a physics treaty and another on physiology. A close study could surely substantiate the existence of an information treaty as well (in the 21st century sense of the term).

Of the Nature and Origin of the Affects

A treaty on psychology and psychiatric medicine: the philosophical dimension of addictions is addressed in a manner unparalleled to this day.

Of Human Bondage

Of the Power of the Understanding, or of Human Freedom

Each of the last four Books is based on the eight definitions that open the first.

Definition 1

In calling something ’cause of itself’ I mean that its essence involves existence, i.e. that its nature can’t be conceived except as existing.

The text begins as so. Some call is arid. The eight definitions from the beginning of the book should in fact be seen as folded paper flowers that gradually bloom throughout the rest of the Ethics. In a sense, the text is nothing more than a commentary on the eight definitions, and an enunciation of their consequences.

To read the Ethics, to garner its complexity and use it to good purpose, and to be attentive to its network-type structure that opens doors all around, you must be prepared to erase from your mind the occidental mythico-religious representations of an Almighty God the Creator with mankind at the center as a middleman between Nature and Him. You must be prepared to enter into a relative strangeness where the antagonistic Aristotelian concepts that so largely govern our occidental thinking in terms of philosophy and taken as commonplace like the opposition between good and evil, essence and existence, human beings and animals, no longer structure our representations.

Let’s pore over a few of the definitions:

3rd definition

By ‘substance’ I understand: what is in itself and is conceived through itself, i.e. whose concept doesn’t have to be formed out of the concept of something else.

Other than “what is,” other than the state of being of each thing, nothing can fit this definition since everything we imagine as existing or produced must be conceived by something else in order to ‘be’, or in other words an external causality. A man, a paper knife and a banana tree, all need something outside of themselves to exist.

This substance (referring to the 6th definition, since the first mention of God is in the 6th definition. This is an ontology after all), called God, consists of an infinity of attributes.

And an attribute, according to the 4th definition, is what the intellect perceives of a substance as constituting its essence.

Thus, there is only one substance.

And it is infinite.

Really, so what about us?

What are we in all of this?

Let’s refer to the 5th definition:

By ‘mode’ I understand: a state of substance…

Since we exist, we are modes of substance, modes of the attributes of substance, or otherwise stated, modes of existence.

We are ways of being of the sole substance.

But what ways of being are we?

Well, ways of being among the only two attributes of substance known to us (and that’s not many considering their infinite number) and that we are capable of knowing — extension (what in the 17th century they called the physical world) and thought.

Of the infinite number of other attributes, we can say nothing at all. We are incapable of it. It is because we are body and mind that we are able to conceive the physical world and thought.

We mustn’t be deceived by the impression of plain obviousness. In establishing a strict parallelism between body and mind, Spinoza radically shifted the limits of our shared representations, even for us in 2019. Body and mind, to Spinoza, are two aspects of one same thing. The body is the mind seen through the attribute of extension (physical world) and the mind is the body seen through the attribute of thought. Extension is to our body a mode of thought for our mind. Spinoza (before Nietszche, who owes so much to him) gave us the less hierarchized philosophy imaginable in which an immanence, a perfect equality between all existence and ways of being, is what governs what is.

Equality between a pig and a sage? Yes. Between a stone and a philosopher? Yes. They simply belong to very different degrees of thought and extension: a bird can fly, a stone is more solid than a man, and man reasons better than a crow. But ontologically-speaking, they’re all the same.

My body and my mind are the same way of being, there’s no supremacy of one over the other, and especially not — this is the heart of the matter — no supremacy of the mind over the body, as upheld by an age-old tradition.

The consequences of this model are immeasurable in all areas of our existence. There is only one I will probe here, being the articulation between moral and ethic and the fundamental difference between the two.

For there to be morals (or something resembling them, there are plenty of modern discourses out there with the structure), we need a rather specific mental and conceptual landscape, we need a general idea of the essence of man, an idea of what man should be, we need a conception of the essence of man. Humans as individuals can only attain this conception imperfectly, which is why morals guide them toward a state of perfection that is in fact a purpose (essence as a purpose). In this representation, it’s necessary to step outside the logic of a being in order to decide that people must be guided toward the ideal of a generic perfection of man. To be able to judge what is, to be able to say that someone is deviant, a being needs a compass outside of itself that is the One, the Law and the Good all at once. We recognize a great many thinkers in these statements, from Plato to Kant. Highly characteristic of moral discourse, this stance overhangs all of existence, allowing for judgement made in the name of greater values, without which no correction is not possible.

To Spinoza, it’s unjustifiable.

Firstly, to him, purpose is something that exists only in the mind of man. The superiority of law over beings he deems impossible, as the being, the substance is everything and there is nothing outside of it. In other words, nothing can overhand it. Spinoza’s logic has no God Creator of All. In his logic, all existence comprises the modes and ways of being of a substance that is God: “Deus sive natura,” God or Nature, the view that God and nature are interchangeable. God didn’t make the world in 7 days or in 1000. God is what exists, and we are his/its ways of being. Such an immanence implies that the notions of Good and Evil are irrelevant. Spinoza would surely have agreed with Plato’s writings in his Meno contending that Evil is nothing as no one errs with the intention to do evil, but he would also have added that Good is nothing either. The words Evil and Good are meaningless.

Is that so?

Does that mean everything is irrelevant?

No!

Because every existing thing, in its way of being, has a form of power. That is the essence of which Spinoza speaks: the power a being holds within itself. Essence belongs to each individual. There is no general concept of essence.

The notion of individual essence is how an ethic can be recognized.

Sheep eat grass. When they come across lush green grass, they’re happy. They suffer when there is none. With sheep, there is a clear distinction between what is good for them (lush grass to persevere in their beings) and brings them pleasure, and what is bad for them (a long stretch of sand) and brings them pain since the absence of grass diminishes their power of being. And in this manner, emotions are reinstated as an indicator of the understanding of what we call values.

In the 3rd book of the Ethics, Spinoza lays out a panorama of all affects and feelings, from the foundation of three fundamental affects being desire (the will to persevere in one’s being), pain (passing from a greater to a lesser perfection) and pleasure (passing from a lesser to a greater perfection).

A sample?

Love is a pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause.

Hatred? Pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause.

Fear is an inconstant pain arising from the image of something past or future whereof we to a certain extent doubt the issue.

Despair is pain arising from the idea of something past or future, wherefrom all cause of doubt has been removed.

Confidence is pleasure arising from the idea of something past or future, wherefrom all cause of doubt has been removed.

Disappointment is pain accompanied by the idea of something past or future which has had an issue contrary to our hope.

Shame is pain accompanied by the idea of some action of our own which we believe to be blamed by others.

Honour is pleasure accompanied by the idea of some action of our own which we believe to be praised by others, etc.

What in moral terms is known as Good and Evil, in ethics is simply good or bad: every way of being, all placed differently on the scale of powers, relates differently to Pleasure, Pain and Desire (or appetite). Something that leads us to persevere in our being and our power of action is good; something it lessens our being and our power of action is bad. In a way, Spinoza’s Ethics are an opening onto Ethology as a practical science of ways of being in regard to the infinity of substance.

To Spinoza, values do not exist prior to individual, real and existing situations. They are brought forth, revealed, through the manifestation of our affects and provide an indication of how to act in order to act in the best possible manner. There are no absolute values to Spinoza, which he places among the painful passions. His Ethics portends and sets out the meaning of modern-day ethics committees.

So what can Spinoza do for us today? I shall conclude this brief window onto a huge thinker with a recommendation aimed at combatting the idea that philosophy should only be exercised by those who are paid for it, and another idea that only by the means of professional mediators can the great philosophers be brought to us.

Do not read reactions to the Ethics before reading the Ethics itself, and read it as you see fit, bit by bit in an arbitrary order, or eagerly from beginning to end.

The Ethics is not a system but rather a matrix for reflecting on what is and what exists. As a high-calibre intellectual exercise or a helping hand to enter into a dialogue with our doubts and sorrows, it is among the very best antidotes to boredom and a genuine and inspirational partner for all our interrogations. There is still more to understand and everyone is invited to join in the efforts.

A final open ear to Spinoza in an excerpt from his correspondence — now an ethical proverb:

I have laboured carefully not to mock, lament or execrate (meaning judge) human actions, but to understand them!