"I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of all that exists, but not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind." Einstein

Spinoza posited "a universe ruled only by the cause and effect of natural laws, without purpose or design." The God of this universe was a noninterventionist whose essence and pervasiveness might best be described as Nature...

Given God's noninterference policy, Spinoza believed the modern state had the responsibility of looking after the common man, and the common man had the responsibility of looking after himself.

In all this, Spinoza saw freedom and"anticipated later philosophical and scientific developments by two and sometimes three centuries."

Baruch Spinoza(1632-1677).

Despite its imposing mathematicalstructure, the Ethics was "a heartfelt proposal for a better way to live, a solution to loneliness and isolation, an answer to the suffering and frustration of life...

a Stoic text..."

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.

Some of us know how he felt.

Benedict de Spinoza was among the most important of the post-Cartesian philosophers who flourished in the second half of the 17th century. He made significant contributions in virtually every area of philosophy, and his writings reveal the influence of such divergent sources as Stoicism, Jewish Rationalism, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Descartes, and a variety of heterodox religious thinkers of his day.

For this reason he is difficult to categorize, though he is usually counted, along with Descartes and Leibniz, as one of the three major Rationalists. Given Spinozas devaluation of sense perception as a means of acquiring knowledge, his description of a purely intellectual form of cognition, and his idealization of geometry as a model for philosophy, this categorization is fair. But it should not blind us to the eclecticism of his pursuits, nor to the striking originality of his thought...

Among philosophers, Spinoza is best known for his Ethics, a monumental work that presents an ethical vision unfolding out of a monistic metaphysics in which God and Nature are identified. God is no longer the transcendent creator of the universe who rules it via providence, but Nature itself,

understood as an infinite, necessary, and fully deterministic system of which humans are a part. Humans find happiness only through a rational understanding of this system and their place within it.

IEP

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them

For the radical thinkers of the Enlightenment, he was the first man to have lived and died as a true atheist. For others, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he provides perhaps the most profound conception of God to be found in Western philosophy. He was bold enough to defy the thinking of his time, yet too modest to accept the fame of public office, despite numerous offers

He can claim influence on both the Enlightenment thinkers of the 18th century and great minds of the 19th, notably Hegel, and his ideas were so radical that they could only be fully published after his death...

But what were the ideas that caused such controversy in Spinozas lifetime, how did they influence the generations after, and can Spinoza really be seen as the first philosopher of the rational Enlightenment? -In Our Time

Top 10...IOT Philosophy Resource

Jonathan Re, historian and philosopher and Visiting Professor at Roehampton University. Sarah Hutton, Professor of English at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. But what were the ideas that caused such controversy in Spinozas lifetime, how did they influence the generations after, and can Spinoza really be seen as the first philosopher of the rational Enlightenment? John Cottingham, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading

Spinoza on determinism, fate, acceptance, bliss... and pantheism.

Pantheism: God and the universe are one and the same. One universal substance, infinitely modified: this is a technical solution to the mind-body problem, but is its message of reconciliation between persons, nature, and God - "our sense of distance from God is mistaken" - worth the price of determinism or fatalism?

"Whatever happens to us happens for a reason" and by necessity. "It is pointless to want that which we are not determined to have... much of what we wantunion with other people, oneness w/Godwe already have. what we need is control of our emotions... the proper philosophical attitude is acceptance or resignation' leading to bliss...

Does Spinoza's version of freedom sound blissful to you?

GW von Leibniz (1646-1716). The world consists of innumerable simple substances, "monads," self-contained, independent, and windowless. God is the Super-monad.

"No monad actually interacts with any other." There is a divinely-ordered, pre-established harmony governed by the Principle of Sufficient Reason. This is the best of all possible worlds.

"In times of turmoil, it is always a relief to believe that there is some reason behind whatever happens...

But as Voltaire acerbically noted, some events defy reason... and some philosophies defy credulity.

Leibniz's monads -

Gottfried Leibniz's squashed Monadology

All hail the monad!: this was Leibnizs motto...

Gottfried Leibniz(1646 1716)

Originally designed in 1673 and first built in 1694, the Leibniz Calculator had the ability to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. By using wheels placed at right angles which could be displaced by a special stepping mechanism, it could perform rapid multiplication or division. Just as with the Pascaline, the Leibniz Calculator required that the operator using the device had to understand how to turn the wheels and thus, know the "programming language" of the calculator.

Baruch Spinoza was the brilliant outcast heretic who broke open the doors to modern thought with his assertion that God is, essentially, Nature. No more and no less. His great philosophical adversary was the glittering Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, defender of the old, transcendent God. They met, they fought, and the fight goes on today in the dance of humanism and faith.

On Point, WBURGuests:Matthew Stewart, author of The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World

Stewart is an Oxford-educated philosopher whose studies presumably taught him the folly of waiting for providence, contrived to create his own good luck. He helped build up a successful management consulting firm, and the proceeds of its sale allowed him to devote himself to a "life of contemplation."

Part of this new life turned out to be an exploration of what he portrays as a tale of 17th-century deceit: the dealings of a "crooked and ungainly" philosopher, the bewigged Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, with a beauteous contemporary with "dark, languid eyes," the Portuguese-Dutch-Jewish thinker Baruch de Spinoza, who, Stewart maintains, created the foundations of modern philosophy.

-- Review by LIESL SCHILLINGER, nytbr 2.26.06

The Courtier and the Heretic

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wbur

"The program at the core of all of Leibniz's political activites throughout his career" can be summarized in a single slogan: Stop Spinoza." ---The Courtier and the Heretic, by Matthew Stewart

In Spinoza's time, the question that gripped hidebound thinkers leery offlouting popular opinion or alienating wealthy patrons, was this: If youbelieved in Spinoza's God, were you not in actuality an atheist, anoffense then punishable by exile, imprisonment or death? Leibniz thought so, and many others agreed? like the bishop who denounced Spinoza as "that insane and evil man, who deserves to be covered with chains and whipped with a rod" and the Jewish community of Amsterdam, which excommunicated him.

The mystery that grips Stewart is whether Leibniz himself believed in Spinoza's God, cribbed his teachings (while pretending unfamiliarity with them) and cynically invented his own philosophy in reaction to Spinoza's, to mask his secret atheism.

I believe in Spinoza's God...

When Albert Einstein was asked if he believed in God, the great 20th century scientist reached back to a 17th century philosopher for an answer. I believe, said Einstein, in Spinozas God.Baruch Spinoza was the brilliant outcast heretic who broke open the doors to modern thought with his assertion that God is, essentially, Nature. No more and no less. His great philosophical adversary was the glittering Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, defender of the old, transcendent God. They met, they fought, and the fight goes on today in the dance of humanism and faith.Hear about Leibniz, Spinoza, and a new telling of the fate of God in the modern world. On Point, WBURGuests:Matthew Stewart, author of The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World

*Is Spinoza's pantheistic "bliss" a form of stoicism, a way of "enduring" and"transcending" an unpalatable anduncontrollable reality? Do you see it as "resignation" or as a more positive vision of life?

Antonio Damasios Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain ...brings together Spinoza's account of the relationship between body and mind with his program for increasing human happiness and freedom, drawing upon up-to-the minute scientific knowledge - Damasio is a neurologist - to establish that Spinoza's conceptual framework is remarkably attuned with contemporary neurobiology.

...a feeling arises as "an idea of the body when it is perturbed by the emoting process." Because they "bear witness to the state of life deep within," feelings are a vital guide to decision-making.

Damasio sympathizes with Spinoza's "secular religiosity," which identified God with nature. He ends by discussing spiritual feelings, which he relates to "the sense that the organism is functioning with the greatest possible perfection."

Spinoza's ambitions on behalf of reason are staggering: he aims to give us a rigorously proved view of reality, which view will yield us, if only we will assimilate it, a life worth living. It will transform our emotional substance, our very selves. The truth shall set us free...

There are contemporary physicists and cosmologists who are inspired by the Spinozist ideal of "a theory of everything," one in which the mathematics alone would determine its truth.The spirit motivating String theorists, in particular, is Spinozism.

Rebecca Goldstein

...so mercilessly parodied by Voltairein Candide -- all for the best in this,the best of possible worlds--and reviledby William James as superficialityincarnate, the blatherings of a wig-patedage no longer credible in our time.

Voltaire (1694-1778)

Is suffering necessary? One could take refuge in the mysterious and incomprehensible nature of divine mind and argue that, from a Gods-eye perspective, human suffering is necessary to bring about a greater good whose full dimensions we can-not see. This is theodicy, the view associated with the German philosopher Leibniz...

G. Leibniz (1646-1716)

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Leibniz: this universe must be in reality better than every other possible universe...Leibniz

Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716)

Master Pangloss taught the metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigology. He could prove to admiration that there is no effect without a cause; and, that in this best of all possible worlds, the Baron's castle was the most magnificent of all castles... "It is demonstrable," said he, "that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end. Observe, for instance, the nose is formed for spectacles, therefore we wear spectacles. The legs are visibly designed for stockings, accordingly we wear stockings...

Voltaire, Candide

Franois-Marie Arouet Voltaire 1694-1778

*Is the Matrix scenario (every living consciousness literally contained and isolated from every other, but fed neural illusions of external reality... to power a society of artificiallife forms with harvested human "energy" possible?

Plausible? Acceptable? Disturbing? Entertaining? [compare to Descartes' speculations concerning an evil genius, &Leibniz' "windowless monads"] What would constitute evidence for or against the hypothesis?