When understanding Spinoza we discover that the most profound conclusion from his philosophy is to be found in Part I, Proposition XXIX.

‘In the nature of things nothing contingent is admitted, but all things are determined by the necessity of divine nature to exist and act in a certain way.’

There are a number of ideas and concepts wrapped up in this sentence and Spinoza’s philosophy is probably best explained by understanding what this one proposition entails. The first point to note is that Spinoza wants to make the assumption that all things are caused by other things. Basically there is a causal explanation for anything that exists. The one exception to this is the universe itself, which can only be self caused. There can only be one existing thing that is self caused, as was argued in the part 2 of Understanding Spinoza..

Now to say that a thing is determined is to say that the existence of a thing is caused by something else. In the case of inanimate objects such a position is without doubt. A table is caused by outside agents crafting the design; the table’s existence is fully determined by causes external to that table. With living and thinking creatures the certainty that all is externally caused is less obvious. We can say that I am determined by my parent’s acquaintance for example. My ideas and habits are caused by my past life experience. The events that have caused me to be how I am currently are outside of me. But can I then claim that I am free to make my own choices? Surely there is a case to state that my ability to be truly free depends on my past experience and that my education and training will determine my capability for truly free thinking.

But then we are accepting that freedom is again determined on past experience and that any free thinking is caused by agents outside of the thinker.

One way to fashion the question ‘whether I am free’ is to ask if I could have done some past act in a different way. Could I really have acted differently in identical circumstances? I made a choice given my assessment of those circumstances and acted accordingly. Just what would have caused me to behave in a different way given identical circumstances? Spinoza is clear in his view on this point:

‘In the nature of things nothing contingent is admitted, but all things are determined by the necessity of divine nature to exist and act in a certain way.’

Spinoza argues that nothing at all could be different than how things actually are. He even applies this idea to God or nature which he concluded are the same.

The one true existing free entity for Spinoza is God. But we have to be careful when we interpret exactly what Spinoza means by the term ‘free.’ For Spinoza, free in this context is to be free from being determined by outside agents. God or nature is not caused or determined by other things; rather God is self caused. God is not limited by outside agents; God is limited only by His own nature.

This is the most important difference between the pantheist God and the Theist God. The Theist God is assumed to have some kind of supernatural magic power which enables a magician like capability. The pantheist God has no such power. The pantheist God is restricted in His power by His own nature. He is not restricted by anything else, just Himself. The pantheist God is how He is because that is how He must be, determined by His own nature and by nothing else.

But a God who is determined by His own nature is a God with no will and no desire. God is how He is because it is in His nature to exist in that way. As Spinoza points out this is manifested in the way the universe is and how everything in the universe must be. Things are as they are because they could not exist in any other way.

If we consider Spinoza’s position we see that his claim is that there is one thing that exists. That one thing is God. Everything else is a part of, or an attribute of God. The universe and all things in it are God, or nature. Now atheists always state at this point in the discussion, why bother calling the universe God? Why not just call the universe the universe?

The fundamental reason for Spinoza is that if things could be no other way, then the universe has to exist in the way that it does. If the universe could not exist in any other way and is here as a result of self creation followed by a causal chain of events, then our existence is intimately wrapped up in the first cause itself. The universe at its core or essence necessarily contains thinking things (us) and has to contain thinking things because that is how the universe is. Spinoza was so convinced that this was the true nature of the universe that he argued any resistance to the idea was based on a refusal to think clearly or an unwillingness to attend to the necessary definitions.

For me, the idea of God and the universe being the same is a strong and valid metaphor. Any enquiry into understanding the world in which we live will require using ideas with which we are familiar in order to explain more complex ideas. Using the metaphor of God helps to emphasise the necessary nature of our existence and the intimate conjunction with the universe that we have. These ideas are some of the oldest explanations of existence that there are and predate theism by many centuries.

The concepts and definitions which can be applied to the pantheist God are the same as those used with the theist God, but are coherent and consistent. For example, to claim that God is omnipotent is to state that all power (think all energy) belongs to God. All things that exist are attributes of God. There is no thing outside of God. Similarly omnipresence; God is everywhere because all things are attributes of God. The concepts that theists wish to apply to their God but cannot, because they fall into contradiction, can be quite readily applied to the pantheist metaphor without contradiction. But of course the theist God evolved as a political tool. An all seeing, all knowing, eager to punish God of Big Brother Theism has been utilised for political control rather than as a means to knowledge and understanding. In understanding Spinoza we note that the pantheist God has existed only as a conclusion of rational enquiry.

This post is to develop further towards understanding Spinoza’s metaphysics and to look at the crucial ideas he raises. Spinoza’s main work, The Ethics, in effect introduces a set of definitions and elucidations of each of the fundamental notions of substance, cause, attribute, freedom and necessity, explaining each in terms of the others. When Spinoza has defined these logically connected notions he defines what it is he means by God or nature.

An important point is that Spinoza does not present his definitions as one arbitrary set of alternative possible definitions. Rather he insists that to conceive the world in any other way than this is to be involved in contradiction, or to be using words without any clear meaning attached to them. It is the interconnectedness of Spinoza’s definitions that gives force to his position.

In understanding the universe the notion of substance is a good place to start. What actually exists? The story of understanding the world can be viewed as one which is attempting to answer this one question. In answering the ‘what exists?’ challenge we have to unravel the world into those things that exist by necessity and those things that exist as modifications or attributes of necessity. In stripping substance down to its fundamental and necessary components we can get a true understanding of reality. Those things that exist but are not fundamental are attributes of substance.

Descartes explained this very well with his lump of wax. He asked ‘what are the fundamental characteristics of the wax?’ and he decided that it was essentially the fact that it existed in three dimensions – or had extension. Wax, as a solid lump is white and solid. In moving the wax towards a heat source we notice that the wax turns into a liquid and becomes transparent. The essential characteristic of the wax, that it exists in three dimensions, remains. The attributes of the wax, its colour and solidity however change.

When Spinoza applied the idea of substance to the world as a whole he realised that there are some definite ideas we are forced to conclude. For example, any substance has to be the cause of itself. If a substance were caused by some other substance then the two substances would have characteristics which were the same. There would be something more fundamental underpinning the two different things. Anything we identify as a fundamental substance therefore must be explainable only through reference to itself and to no other thing. If there are two substances, then neither can be the cause of the other, each must cause itself and they must not contain any attributes which are the same. Two different substances have to be independent from each other, have nothing in common and not be the cause of each other.

Now any rational understanding of the universe is undertaken by an examination of causation. Rational explanation is explaining those causes. To abandon an investigation of causes is to abandon all hope of knowledge. If there are two substances which co-exist and which are completely independent of each other we would have to ask just how can two independent things coexist that are separate. Both substances would have to be causes of themselves and to have two such substances would be impossible. There can be only one self caused entity and that entity gives rise to all else that exists.

Now we can apply the consequences of this argument in a few different ways. First of all how we interpret the ontology (what things exist?) of the universe and secondly how we view the notion of God as a creator.

Theists argue that God and the universe are two separate entities. But if the universe is a consequence of God’s necessary existence, ie: if God created the universe then the universe and God must have some characteristics in common. The universe must be an attribute of God’s existence. God and the universe could not be made of two distinct substances. If God causes the universe then they must have some attributes in common. This is a denial of theism as defined because God and the universe cannot be two separate things. A Deist account or a pantheist account can sidestep this argument but a theist account cannot.

Spinoza drove home this position very strongly by describing how theists approach their discussions and descriptions of God. He had a clear and logical description which associated the idea of nature precisely with God or the one true substance. He argued that it is the association of anthropomorphic and personal imagery which obstructs reason in the logical necessity of this identification. When we dissociate the word “God” from all of these figurative descriptions and no longer picture the deity as a person, then mere logic forces us to recognize that God and nature are precisely the same.

As Theists have insisted on making a distinction between God the creator and His creation, so they are constantly forced into contradiction. Imagining God as some super-person, with a will and purpose can only lead to logical difficulty. The perennial contradictions and controversies eg: the problem of evil, of God’s freedom of choice and His reasons for choosing the actual world in preference to other possible worlds.

There are more clear logical arguments which seriously refute the theist position. In having a creator God and a separate creation the all powerful nature of God is contradicted. God’s eternal existence is also demolished if He set the universe up and then stood back.

There are however some very important consequences and surprising conclusions if we accept Spinoza’s arguments. Toward the aim of understanding Spinoza further I shall deal with these in the next post.

If you are ever going to get more than a brief understanding of pantheism then it is vital to get to grips with understanding Spinoza. Spinoza was not the first pantheist, but he is probably the most influential pantheist since the time of the enlightenment. The decline of theism and the rise of alternative beliefs can be traced back directly and indirectly to Spinoza. He was not only a chief architect in the rise and success of science; he was also a fundamental force behind the gradual decline of theological authority. Understanding Spinoza is not easy, but the difficulties involved in grasping his ideas are no less worthy of making the effort.

If you were to take a random page and quote form Spinoza’s main work, the ethics, you will no doubt find a sentence in which you understand all of the individual words. Yet I am reasonably sure that you would also find a sentence which is seemingly incomprehensible too. For example: The first axiom that Spinoza presents is “Everything which exists, exists either in itself or in something else.”

An axiom is something that is assumed to be self evidently true, so Spinoza must have presented this axiom as something which he believed to be one of nature’s ultimate and self evident truths. The whole of Spinoza’s philosophy is set out in this way. He begins with a set of definitions, which he then uses to write his axioms. He then moves to working out how the universe must be given his definitions and on the assumption that his axioms are in fact true. To that extent his work is a work in logic, similar to a Euclidean system. It is probably the case that if you were to agree and accept just one of his axioms then you are logically committed to accepting his other axioms which follow rationally and necessarily from each other. In doing this Spinoza creates a set of principles and consequently a metaphysical system which he considers to be how the universe must be.

To take the first step towards understanding Spinoza it is necessary to put into context the time in which he wrote. He lived in the mid seventeenth century and wrote in response to the work of Descartes. Descartes had proposed that the world consisted of two types of thing, matter and the mind, and his system was designed to show that the world of the material was comprehensible to the mind. Spinoza picked up on the inconsistencies in Descartes writings and determined that he would make them right. In doing so he demoted God form the realm of theistic interpretation and placed God on a par with the universe or nature. Descartes had worked around the theistic belief that society insisted upon, and came up with what was an inconsistent philosophy. Spinoza ignored the requirements of the church and wrote as he saw the truth to be. He stood by the world of rationalism and followed rationality to wherever it took him. He knew that his views would not be acceptable to the church so his work was not published until after his death. Such were the circumstances that thinkers had to live under before men like Spinoza had changed how society viewed rational enquiry.

Prior to Descartes and Spinoza, there was no belief that the world was understandable. Part of the programme that they instigated was the idea that human beings had the capability of investigating and understanding the world around them. The church had always claimed that knowledge was something that could only be found in scripture. That all knowledge was in the bible and thus mankind had no other means of understanding the universe. Descartes and Spinoza amongst others challenged and ultimately changed all of that. Not only did they show that the world was understandable, they demonstrated that a rational enquiry was the best route to knowledge.

When it comes to understanding Spinoza there are two very different but equally important sides to his story. The first is his philosophy. His philosophy has been picked up and held high by many notables in the past 350 years. He has influenced the metaphysical poets; Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley for example. He influenced the philosophy of Hegel and Kant. In the twentieth century he was also a source of much inspiration for Godel and probably most notably Einstein who was never short of a reference to the God of Spinoza. Most impressively his philosophy still stands as one of the greatest metaphysical systems that has ever been produced and is still as impressive despite mans great strides in knowledge over the past three centuries. Spinoza’s metaphysics has endured throughout the last three hundred years in which countless other ideas have been and gone.

This longevity is down to the thoroughness that Spinoza put into his philosophy. He grasped fundamental principles and he squeezed them until he had understood the logical consequences of all that followed from those principles. He didn’t shy away from the conclusions that he was forced to make based on rationality. He developed a system which was free from inconsistency and which rationally he felt obliged to accept. For me one of the greatest achievements of Spinoza was his insistence to have faith in the tools that God endowed him with. God gave him his rational faculty and Spinoza chose to use that God given gift to the end. He relied on it over and above the theocratic powers that persecuted those who spoke against them. In understanding Spinoza, one of the most important aspects to remember is that he followed God more closely and dutifully than any of those who would accuse him of being a heretic.