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Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632, into a family of Jewish emigrants fleeing persecution in Portugal. He was trained in Talmudic scholarship, but his views soon took unconventional ...
Spinoza The First Modern Pantheist
Einstein's Poem About SpinozaFrom Jammer, p. 43; the complete poem is available in German in the Appendix of the book.
How much do I love that noble manMore than I could tell with wordsI fear though he'll remain aloneWith a holy halo of his own.
Why Einstein Admires SpinozaFrom a letter to Dr. Dagobert Runes, Sept. 8, 1932, Einstein Archive, reel 33-286, quoted in Jammer, pp. 44 - 45
When asked to write short essay on 'the ethical significance of Spinoza's philosophy,' Einstein replied:
do not have the professional knowledge to write a scholarly article about Spinoza. But what I think about this man I can express in a few words. Spinoza was the first to apply with strict consistency the idea of an all-pervasive determinism to human thought, feeling, and action. In my opinion, his point of view has not gained general acceptance by all those striving for clarity and logical rigor only because it requires not only consistency of thought, but also unusual integrity, magnamity, and — modesty.
The God of Einstein and Spinoza From a letter to Eduard Büsching, Oct. 25, 1929, Einstein Archive, reel 33-275, quoted in Jammer, p. 51:
When its author sent a book There Is No God to Einstein, Einstein replied that the book did not deal with the notion of God, but only with that of a personal God. He suggested that the book should be titled There Is No Personal God. He added further added:
We followers of Spinoza see out God in the wonderful order and lawfulness of all that exists and in its soul as it reveals itself in man and animal.It is a different question whether belief in a personal God should be contested. Freud endorsed this view in his latest publication. I myself would never engage in such a task. For such a belief seems to me to the lack of any transcendental outlook of life, and I wonder whether on can ever successfully render to the majority of mankind a more sublime means in order to satisfy its metaphysical needs.
Einstein's View of God — and Spinoza's
From a letter to Murray W. Gross, Apr. 26, 1947, Einstein Archive, reel 33-324, Jammer, p. 138 - 139:
When question about God and religion on behalf of an aged Talmudic scholar, Einstein replied:
It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropomorphic concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near to those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order and harmony which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem — the most important of all human problems.
On Loving Your Enemies
From a letter to Michele Besso, Jan. 6, 1948. Albert Einstein—Michele Besso, Correspondance 1903-1955 (Hermann, Paris, 1972) , p. 392. Einstein Archive, reel 7-382, quoted in Jammer, p.87. Jammer gives the quotation in its original German along with an English translation. I have taken the liberty of cleaning up the English, mainly by replacing 'cogitative' with 'cognitive' as the translation of 'gedanklich.
'Upon a friend commending the Christian maxim 'Love they enemy' Einstein replied:
agree with your remark about loving your enemy as far as actions are concerned. But for me the cognitive basis is the trust in an unrestricted causality. 'I cannot hate him, because he must do what he does.' That means for me more Spinoza than the prophets.
Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632, into a family of Jewish emigrants fleeing persecution in Portugal. He was trained in Talmudic scholarship, but his views soon took unconventional directions which the Jewish community – fearing renewed persecution on charges of atheism – tried to discourage. Spinoza was offered 1000 florins to keep quiet about his views, but refused. At the age of 24, he was summoned before a rabbinical court, and solemnly excommunicated. Spinoza refused all rewards and honours, and gave away to his sister his share of his father’s inheritance – keeping only a bedstead for himself. He earned his living as a humble lens-grinder. He died, in February 1674, of consumption, probably aggravated by fine glass dust inhaled at his workbench.
For a short time Spinoza was exiled from Amsterdam, but he returned and began a life supporting himself by grinding lenses and teaching. In 1660 he moved to Voorburg and then on to the Hague, where he lived with great frugality on a small pension. This allowed him his desired freedom to think and write, and that he did. He served as a philosophical master for many of his students, who were widely scattered around Europe. He died of phthisis, possibly brought on by his trade as a lens-grinder. There remain numerous testimonies to his simplicity, virtue, charm, and courage.
Spinoza’s philosophy is strikingly different than any before or after him; he was a true pantheist, which is rare in Western thought. Using Descartes’ works, he proceeded to formulate a system of the world by using his idea of substance. This substance is the one that the world is made of, as every thing must precede from it. Using this supposition and its proof, he goes on to create a system of ethics and politics that precedes from this idea. Use the bar on the left to explore a part of Spinoza’s philosophy.
A member of the Sephardic Jewish community of Amsterdam, Spinoza received a thorough education in the tradition of medieval philosophical texts as well as in the works of Descartes, Hobbes, and other writers of the period. After charges of heretical thought and practice led to his excommunication from the Jewish community in Amsterdam in 1656, he Latinized his name to Benedict. He was by trade a lens grinder, modestly rejecting offers of an academic career, but he nevertheless became celebrated in his own day and was regularly visited by other philosophers. Spinoza’s system is monist, deductive, and rationalistic. Politically he posited the idea of the social contract, but unlike Hobbes he visualized a community in which human beings derive most advantage from the rational renunciation of personal desire. He rejected the concept of free will, holding human action to be motivated by one’s conception of self-preservation. A powerful, or virtuous, person acts out of understanding; thus freedom consists in being guided by the law of one’s own nature, and evil is the result of inadequate understanding. He saw the supreme ambition of the virtuous person as the “intellectual love of God.” Spinoza shared with Descartes an intensely mathematical appreciation of the universe: truth, like geometry, follows from first principles, and is accessible to the logical mind. Unlike Descartes, however, he regarded mind and body (or ideas and the physical universe) as merely different aspects of a single substance, which he called alternately God and Nature, God being Nature in its fullness. This pantheism was considered blasphemous by the religious and political authorities of his day. Of his works, only A Treatise on Religious and Political Philosophy (1670) was published during his lifetime. His Ethics, Political Treatise, and Hebrew Grammar are included in his posthumous works (1677).
His philosophy is summarized in the Ethics, a very abstract work, which openly expresses none of the love of nature that might be expected from someone who identified God with nature. And Spinoza’s starting point is not nature or the cosmos, but a purely theoretical definition of God. The work then proceeds to prove its conclusions by a method modelled on geometry, through rigorous definitions, axioms, propositions and corollaries. No doubt in this way Spinoza hoped to build his philosophy on the solidest rock, but the method, as well as some of the arguments and definitions, are often unconvincing.
Spinoza believed that everything that exists is God. However, he did not hold the converse view that God is no more than the sum of what exists. God had infinite qualities, of which we can perceive only two, thought and extension. Hence God must also exist in dimensions far beyond those of the visible world.
Significantly, Spinoza titled his chief work The Ethics. He derived an ethic by deduction from fundamental principles, and so his ethics were closely linked to his view of “God or nature” as everything. The highest good, he asserted, was knowledge of God, which was capable of bringing freedom from tyranny by the passions, freedom from fear, resignation to destiny, and true blessedness.
At first Spinoza was reviled as an atheist – and certainly, his God is not the conventional Judo-Christian God. The philosophers of the enlightenment ridiculed his methods – not without some grounds. The romantics, attracted by his identification of God with Nature, rescued him from oblivion.
Spinoza expressed his resolve to: “…inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else; whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.” He found, for himself, that the “chief good” is “knowledge of the union existing between the mind and the whole of nature.
”The true study of Spinoza’s ideas involves the study of our own particular nature, seeking to clarify the confusions and passive emotions brought about through our own imagination and, by using Reason and Intuition, to direct our mind toward union with our Eternal Essential Being.
Maat’s Official BlogPublished by Illuminates Of Kemet (IOK)
http://maat-order.org/blog/?p=1442
Einstein's Poem About SpinozaFrom Jammer, p. 43; the complete poem is available in German in the Appendix of the book.
How much do I love that noble manMore than I could tell with wordsI fear though he'll remain aloneWith a holy halo of his own.
Why Einstein Admires SpinozaFrom a letter to Dr. Dagobert Runes, Sept. 8, 1932, Einstein Archive, reel 33-286, quoted in Jammer, pp. 44 - 45
When asked to write short essay on 'the ethical significance of Spinoza's philosophy,' Einstein replied:
do not have the professional knowledge to write a scholarly article about Spinoza. But what I think about this man I can express in a few words. Spinoza was the first to apply with strict consistency the idea of an all-pervasive determinism to human thought, feeling, and action. In my opinion, his point of view has not gained general acceptance by all those striving for clarity and logical rigor only because it requires not only consistency of thought, but also unusual integrity, magnamity, and — modesty.
The God of Einstein and Spinoza From a letter to Eduard Büsching, Oct. 25, 1929, Einstein Archive, reel 33-275, quoted in Jammer, p. 51:
When its author sent a book There Is No God to Einstein, Einstein replied that the book did not deal with the notion of God, but only with that of a personal God. He suggested that the book should be titled There Is No Personal God. He added further added:
We followers of Spinoza see out God in the wonderful order and lawfulness of all that exists and in its soul as it reveals itself in man and animal.It is a different question whether belief in a personal God should be contested. Freud endorsed this view in his latest publication. I myself would never engage in such a task. For such a belief seems to me to the lack of any transcendental outlook of life, and I wonder whether on can ever successfully render to the majority of mankind a more sublime means in order to satisfy its metaphysical needs.
Einstein's View of God — and Spinoza's
From a letter to Murray W. Gross, Apr. 26, 1947, Einstein Archive, reel 33-324, Jammer, p. 138 - 139:
When question about God and religion on behalf of an aged Talmudic scholar, Einstein replied:
It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropomorphic concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near to those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order and harmony which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem — the most important of all human problems.
On Loving Your Enemies
From a letter to Michele Besso, Jan. 6, 1948. Albert Einstein—Michele Besso, Correspondance 1903-1955 (Hermann, Paris, 1972) , p. 392. Einstein Archive, reel 7-382, quoted in Jammer, p.87. Jammer gives the quotation in its original German along with an English translation. I have taken the liberty of cleaning up the English, mainly by replacing 'cogitative' with 'cognitive' as the translation of 'gedanklich.
'Upon a friend commending the Christian maxim 'Love they enemy' Einstein replied:
agree with your remark about loving your enemy as far as actions are concerned. But for me the cognitive basis is the trust in an unrestricted causality. 'I cannot hate him, because he must do what he does.' That means for me more Spinoza than the prophets.
Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632, into a family of Jewish emigrants fleeing persecution in Portugal. He was trained in Talmudic scholarship, but his views soon took unconventional directions which the Jewish community – fearing renewed persecution on charges of atheism – tried to discourage. Spinoza was offered 1000 florins to keep quiet about his views, but refused. At the age of 24, he was summoned before a rabbinical court, and solemnly excommunicated. Spinoza refused all rewards and honours, and gave away to his sister his share of his father’s inheritance – keeping only a bedstead for himself. He earned his living as a humble lens-grinder. He died, in February 1674, of consumption, probably aggravated by fine glass dust inhaled at his workbench.
For a short time Spinoza was exiled from Amsterdam, but he returned and began a life supporting himself by grinding lenses and teaching. In 1660 he moved to Voorburg and then on to the Hague, where he lived with great frugality on a small pension. This allowed him his desired freedom to think and write, and that he did. He served as a philosophical master for many of his students, who were widely scattered around Europe. He died of phthisis, possibly brought on by his trade as a lens-grinder. There remain numerous testimonies to his simplicity, virtue, charm, and courage.
Spinoza’s philosophy is strikingly different than any before or after him; he was a true pantheist, which is rare in Western thought. Using Descartes’ works, he proceeded to formulate a system of the world by using his idea of substance. This substance is the one that the world is made of, as every thing must precede from it. Using this supposition and its proof, he goes on to create a system of ethics and politics that precedes from this idea. Use the bar on the left to explore a part of Spinoza’s philosophy.
A member of the Sephardic Jewish community of Amsterdam, Spinoza received a thorough education in the tradition of medieval philosophical texts as well as in the works of Descartes, Hobbes, and other writers of the period. After charges of heretical thought and practice led to his excommunication from the Jewish community in Amsterdam in 1656, he Latinized his name to Benedict. He was by trade a lens grinder, modestly rejecting offers of an academic career, but he nevertheless became celebrated in his own day and was regularly visited by other philosophers. Spinoza’s system is monist, deductive, and rationalistic. Politically he posited the idea of the social contract, but unlike Hobbes he visualized a community in which human beings derive most advantage from the rational renunciation of personal desire. He rejected the concept of free will, holding human action to be motivated by one’s conception of self-preservation. A powerful, or virtuous, person acts out of understanding; thus freedom consists in being guided by the law of one’s own nature, and evil is the result of inadequate understanding. He saw the supreme ambition of the virtuous person as the “intellectual love of God.” Spinoza shared with Descartes an intensely mathematical appreciation of the universe: truth, like geometry, follows from first principles, and is accessible to the logical mind. Unlike Descartes, however, he regarded mind and body (or ideas and the physical universe) as merely different aspects of a single substance, which he called alternately God and Nature, God being Nature in its fullness. This pantheism was considered blasphemous by the religious and political authorities of his day. Of his works, only A Treatise on Religious and Political Philosophy (1670) was published during his lifetime. His Ethics, Political Treatise, and Hebrew Grammar are included in his posthumous works (1677).
His philosophy is summarized in the Ethics, a very abstract work, which openly expresses none of the love of nature that might be expected from someone who identified God with nature. And Spinoza’s starting point is not nature or the cosmos, but a purely theoretical definition of God. The work then proceeds to prove its conclusions by a method modelled on geometry, through rigorous definitions, axioms, propositions and corollaries. No doubt in this way Spinoza hoped to build his philosophy on the solidest rock, but the method, as well as some of the arguments and definitions, are often unconvincing.
Spinoza believed that everything that exists is God. However, he did not hold the converse view that God is no more than the sum of what exists. God had infinite qualities, of which we can perceive only two, thought and extension. Hence God must also exist in dimensions far beyond those of the visible world.
Significantly, Spinoza titled his chief work The Ethics. He derived an ethic by deduction from fundamental principles, and so his ethics were closely linked to his view of “God or nature” as everything. The highest good, he asserted, was knowledge of God, which was capable of bringing freedom from tyranny by the passions, freedom from fear, resignation to destiny, and true blessedness.
At first Spinoza was reviled as an atheist – and certainly, his God is not the conventional Judo-Christian God. The philosophers of the enlightenment ridiculed his methods – not without some grounds. The romantics, attracted by his identification of God with Nature, rescued him from oblivion.
Spinoza expressed his resolve to: “…inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else; whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.” He found, for himself, that the “chief good” is “knowledge of the union existing between the mind and the whole of nature.
”The true study of Spinoza’s ideas involves the study of our own particular nature, seeking to clarify the confusions and passive emotions brought about through our own imagination and, by using Reason and Intuition, to direct our mind toward union with our Eternal Essential Being.
Maat’s Official BlogPublished by Illuminates Of Kemet (IOK)
http://maat-order.org/blog
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