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Baruch Spinoza was one of the great philosophers of the age of Rationalism and a major influence thereafter, as on, paradoxically, both of the bitter enemies Arthur Schopenhauer and G.W.F. Hegel. From ...
Baruch Spinoza was one of the great philosophers of the age of Rationalism and a major influence thereafter, as on, paradoxically, both of the bitter enemies Arthur Schopenhauer and G.W.F. Hegel. From a Portuguese Jewish family that had fled to the relative tolerance of the Netherlands, one of the most famous things about Spinoza was his expulsion from the Dutch Jewish community. This is often called an 'excommunication,' though, as I used to have a high school teacher protest, there is really no such thing as 'excommunication' in Judaism. Nevertheless, Spinoza was expelled from the Jewish community and anathematized. Although he is today recognized as one of the greatest Jewish philosophers ever, and the chief Rabbis of Israel have been petitioned to formally lift the curse upon him, this has not happened: Spinoza remains a controversial person in Judaism, for very much the same reasons that led to his expulsion in the first place. Spinoza's God is not the God of Abraham and Isaac, not a personal God at all, and his system provides no reason for the revelatory status of the Bible or the practice of Judaism, or of any religion, for that matter.
The purpose of mystical rapture is often not just to see God or know God directly, but to become one with God through complete loss of self. This is what we often see in Islâmic mysticism, Sûfism, but also in India, where the self can ultimately be identical (advaita, 'non-dual') with Brahman. In Spinoza, indeed, there is no independent substantial self. The Qur'ân says that God is as close to us as the jugular vein, but Spinoza goes rather further than this. Everything that we are is just a modification of an attribute of God, just a small and transient part of the existence of God. We are absolutely nothing apart from God. This gives a considerably stronger impression that we might think from the notion of the 'intellectual love of God' that Spinoza is often said to recommend. To really feel an absolute absorption into God and abolition of self (fanâ', 'extinction' in Arabic) would be a mystical rapture indeed. This may be the key to the emotional pull of Spinoza's theory for him: It would be a consolation of religion indeed for him to lose all sense that his life, circumstances, and misfortunes are of more than the most trivial consequence. Sub specie aeternitatis, from the viewpoint of eternity, nothing imperfect ever happens, and we can imagine Spinoza transported right out of his own rather sad and solitary existence into the comforting companionship of God.
This is the key to Spinoza's paradoxical and even disturbing view that things like right and wrong, good and evil, do not exist for God. Things only appear right or wrong, good or evil, to a self, and the self does not have substantial existence. Spinoza rather heatedly disputes the relevance of this to God, in whom all is perfect. It is only our selfishness that generates these dichotomies. However, we also might say that it is selfishness that results in wrongs and evils as matters of action, since people do bad things expecting some personal benefit from them. It would not occur to someone without sense of self to be harming others for personal gain. This is an area where Spinoza is appealing to Schopenhauer, who sees selflessness as the motive for good and noble action, and who sees the denial of self as the basis of all holiness and emancipation from the Will. But where Schopenhauer would see holy selflessness as freedom from the thing-in-itself as Will, Spinoza would see it as freeing us from the transient and the individual to become one with God. Where Schopenhauer, a determinist also, saw the denial of the Will as the only truly free action available to us, the corresponding free action for Spinoza, as we might interpret him, would be to turn towards God.
http://www.friesian.com/spinoza.htm
The purpose of mystical rapture is often not just to see God or know God directly, but to become one with God through complete loss of self. This is what we often see in Islâmic mysticism, Sûfism, but also in India, where the self can ultimately be identical (advaita, 'non-dual') with Brahman. In Spinoza, indeed, there is no independent substantial self. The Qur'ân says that God is as close to us as the jugular vein, but Spinoza goes rather further than this. Everything that we are is just a modification of an attribute of God, just a small and transient part of the existence of God. We are absolutely nothing apart from God. This gives a considerably stronger impression that we might think from the notion of the 'intellectual love of God' that Spinoza is often said to recommend. To really feel an absolute absorption into God and abolition of self (fanâ', 'extinction' in Arabic) would be a mystical rapture indeed. This may be the key to the emotional pull of Spinoza's theory for him: It would be a consolation of religion indeed for him to lose all sense that his life, circumstances, and misfortunes are of more than the most trivial consequence. Sub specie aeternitatis, from the viewpoint of eternity, nothing imperfect ever happens, and we can imagine Spinoza transported right out of his own rather sad and solitary existence into the comforting companionship of God.
This is the key to Spinoza's paradoxical and even disturbing view that things like right and wrong, good and evil, do not exist for God. Things only appear right or wrong, good or evil, to a self, and the self does not have substantial existence. Spinoza rather heatedly disputes the relevance of this to God, in whom all is perfect. It is only our selfishness that generates these dichotomies. However, we also might say that it is selfishness that results in wrongs and evils as matters of action, since people do bad things expecting some personal benefit from them. It would not occur to someone without sense of self to be harming others for personal gain. This is an area where Spinoza is appealing to Schopenhauer, who sees selflessness as the motive for good and noble action, and who sees the denial of self as the basis of all holiness and emancipation from the Will. But where Schopenhauer would see holy selflessness as freedom from the thing-in-itself as Will, Spinoza would see it as freeing us from the transient and the individual to become one with God. Where Schopenhauer, a determinist also, saw the denial of the Will as the only truly free action available to us, the corresponding free action for Spinoza, as we might interpret him, would be to turn towards God.
http://www.friesian.com/spinoza.htm
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