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Baruch SpinozaFirst published Fri Jun 29, 2001; substantive revision Mon Jul 15, 2013

Bento (in Hebrew, Baruch; in Latin, Benedictus) Spinoza is one of themost important philosophers—and certainly the most radical—of the earlymodern period. His thought combines a commitment to a number ofCartesian metaphysical and epistemological principles with elements fromancient Stoicism and medieval Jewish rationalism into a nonethelesshighly original system. His extremely naturalistic views on God, theworld, the human being and knowledge serve to ground a moralphilosophy centered on the control of the passions leading to virtue andhappiness. They also lay the foundations for a strongly democraticpolitical thought and a deep critique of the pretensions of Scripture andsectarian religion. Of all the philosophers of the seventeenth-century,perhaps none have more relevance today than Spinoza.

1. Biography2. Ethics

2.1 God or Nature2.2 The Human Being2.3 Knowledge2.4 Passion and Action2.5 Virtue and Happiness

3. Theological-Political Treatise3.1 On Religion and Scripture3.2 The State

BibliographySpinoza's WorksRecommended Secondary Literature

Academic ToolsOther Internet Resources

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1. Biography

Bento (in Hebrew, Baruch; in Latin, Benedictus: all three names mean"blessed") Spinoza was born in 1632 in Amsterdam. He was the middleson in a prominent family of moderate means in Amsterdam's Portuguese-Jewish community. As a boy he had undoubtedly been one of the starpupils in the congregation's Talmud Torah school. He was intellectuallygifted, and this could not have gone unremarked by the congregation'srabbis. It is possible that Spinoza, as he made progress through his studies,was being groomed for a career as a rabbi. But he never made it into theupper levels of the curriculum, those which included advanced study ofTalmud. At the age of seventeen, he was forced to cut short his formalstudies to help run the family's importing business.

And then, on July 27, 1656, Spinoza was issued the harshest writ ofherem, or excommunication, ever pronounced by the Sephardiccommunity of Amsterdam; it was never rescinded. We do not know forcertain what Spinoza's “monstrous deeds” and “abominable heresies” werealleged to have been, but an educated guess comes quite easy. No doubt hewas giving utterance to just those ideas that would soon appear in hisphilosophical treatises. In those works, Spinoza denies the immortality ofthe soul; strongly rejects the notion of a providential God—the God ofAbraham, Isaac and Jacob; and claims that the Law was neither literallygiven by God nor any longer binding on Jews. Can there be any mysteryas to why one of history's boldest and most radical thinkers wassanctioned by an orthodox Jewish community?

To all appearances, Spinoza was content finally to have an excuse fordeparting from the community and leaving Judaism behind; his faith and

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religious commitment were, by this point, gone. Within a few years, heleft Amsterdam altogether. By the time his extant correspondence begins,in 1661, he is living in Rijnsburg, not far from Leiden. While in Rijnsburg,he worked on the Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, an essay onphilosophical method, and the Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well-Being, an initial but aborted effort to lay out his metaphysical,epistemological and moral views. His critical exposition of Descartes'sPrinciples of Philosophy, the only work he published under his own namein his lifetime, was completed in 1663, after he had moved to Voorburg,outside The Hague. By this time, he was also working on what wouldeventually be called the Ethics, his philosophical masterpiece. However,when he saw the principles of toleration in Holland being threatened byreactionary forces, he put it aside to complete his “scandalous”Theological-Political Treatise, published anonymously and to great alarmin 1670. When Spinoza died in 1677, in The Hague, he was still at workon his Political Treatise; this was soon published by his friends along withhis other unpublished writings, including a Compendium to HebrewGrammar.

2. Ethics

The Ethics is an ambitious and multifaceted work. It is also bold to thepoint of audacity, as one would expect of a systematic and unforgivingcritique of the traditional philosophical conceptions of God, the humanbeing and the universe, and, above all, of the religions and the theologicaland moral beliefs grounded thereupon. What Spinoza intends todemonstrate (in the strongest sense of that word) is the truth about God,nature and especially ourselves; and the highest principles of society,religion and the good life. Despite the great deal of metaphysics, physics,anthropology and psychology that take up Parts One through Three,Spinoza took the crucial message of the work to be ethical in nature. It

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consists in showing that our happiness and well-being lie not in a lifeenslaved to the passions and to the transitory goods we ordinarily pursue;nor in the related unreflective attachment to the superstitions that pass asreligion, but rather in the life of reason. To clarify and support thesebroadly ethical conclusions, however, Spinoza must first demystify theuniverse and show it for what it really is. This requires laying out somemetaphysical foundations, the project of Part One.

2.1 God or Nature

“On God” begins with some deceptively simple definitions of terms thatwould be familiar to any seventeenth century philosopher. “By substance Iunderstand what is in itself and is conceived through itself”; “By attributeI understand what the intellect perceives of a substance, as constituting itsessence”; “By God I understand a being absolutely infinite, i.e., asubstance consisting of an infinity of attributes, of which each oneexpresses an eternal and infinite essence.” The definitions of Part One are,in effect, simply clear concepts that ground the rest of his system. Theyare followed by a number of axioms that, he assumes, will be regarded asobvious and unproblematic by the philosophically informed (“Whateveris, is either in itself or in another”; “From a given determinate cause theeffect follows necessarily”). From these, the first proposition necessarilyfollows, and every subsequent proposition can be demonstrated using onlywhat precedes it. (References to the Ethics will be by part (I-V),proposition (p), definition (d), scholium (s) and corollary (c).)

In propositions one through fifteen of Part One, Spinoza presents the basicelements of his picture of God. God is the infinite, necessarily existing(that is, uncaused), unique substance of the universe. There is only onesubstance in the universe; it is God; and everything else that is, is in God.

Proposition 1: A substance is prior in nature to its affections.

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Proposition 2: Two substances having different attributes havenothing in common with one another. (In other words, if twosubstances differ in nature, then they have nothing in common).

Proposition 3: If things have nothing in common with one another,one of them cannot be the cause of the other.

Proposition 4: Two or more distinct things are distinguished fromone another, either by a difference in the attributes [i.e., the naturesor essences] of the substances or by a difference in their affections[i.e., their accidental properties].

Proposition 5: In nature, there cannot be two or more substances ofthe same nature or attribute.

Proposition 6: One substance cannot be produced by anothersubstance.

Proposition 7: It pertains to the nature of a substance to exist.

Proposition 8: Every substance is necessarily infinite.

Proposition 9: The more reality or being each thing has, the moreattributes belong to it.

Proposition 10: Each attribute of a substance must be conceivedthrough itself.

Proposition 11: God, or a substance consisting of infiniteattributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence,necessarily exists. (The proof of this proposition consists simply inthe classic “ontological proof for God's existence”. Spinoza writesthat “if you deny this, conceive, if you can, that God does not exist.Therefore, by axiom 7 [‘If a thing can be conceived as not existing,

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This proof that God—an infinite, necessary and uncaused, indivisiblebeing—is the only substance of the universe proceeds in three simplesteps. First, establish that no two substances can share an attribute oressence (Ip5). Then, prove that there is a substance with infinite attributes(i.e., God) (Ip11). It follows, in conclusion, that the existence of thatinfinite substance precludes the existence of any other substance. For ifthere were to be a second substance, it would have to have some attributeor essence. But since God has all possible attributes, then the attribute tobe possessed by this second substance would be one of the attributesalready possessed by God. But it has already been established that no twosubstances can have the same attribute. Therefore, there can be, besidesGod, no such second substance.

If God is the only substance, and (by axiom 1) whatever is, is either asubstance or in a substance, then everything else must be in God.“Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God”(Ip15). Those things that are “in” God (or, more precisely, in God'sattributes) are what Spinoza calls modes.

As soon as this preliminary conclusion has been established, Spinozaimmediately reveals the objective of his attack. His definition of God—

its essence does not involve existence’], his essence does notinvolve existence. But this, by proposition 7, is absurd. Therefore,God necessarily exists, q.e.d.”)

Proposition 12: No attribute of a substance can be truly conceivedfrom which it follows that the substance can be divided.

Proposition 13: A substance which is absolutely infinite isindivisible.

Proposition 14: Except God, no substance can be or be conceived.

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condemned since his excommunication from the Jewish community as a“God existing in only a philosophical sense”—is meant to preclude anyanthropomorphizing of the divine being. In the scholium to propositionfifteen, he writes against “those who feign a God, like man, consisting of abody and a mind, and subject to passions. But how far they wander fromthe true knowledge of God, is sufficiently established by what has alreadybeen demonstrated.” Besides being false, such an anthropomorphicconception of God can have only deleterious effects on human freedomand activity, insofar as it fosters a life enslaved to hope and fear and thesuperstitions to which such emotions give rise.

Much of the technical language of Part One is, to all appearances, right outof Descartes. But even the most devoted Cartesian would have had a hardtime understanding the full import of propositions one through fifteen.What does it mean to say that God is substance and that everything else is“in” God? Is Spinoza saying that rocks, tables, chairs, birds, mountains,rivers and human beings are all properties of God, and hence can bepredicated of God (just as one would say that the table “is red”)? It seemsvery odd to think that objects and individuals—what we ordinarily thinkof as independent “things”—are, in fact, merely properties of a thing.Spinoza was sensitive to the strangeness of this kind of talk, not tomention the philosophical problems to which it gives rise. When a personfeels pain, does it follow that the pain is ultimately just a property of God,and thus that God feels pain? Conundrums such as this may explain why,as of Proposition Sixteen, there is a subtle but important shift in Spinoza'slanguage. God is now described not so much as the underlying substanceof all things, but as the universal, immanent and sustaining cause of allthat exists: “From the necessity of the divine nature there must followinfinitely many things in infinitely many modes, (i.e., everything that canfall under an infinite intellect)”.

According to the traditional Judeo-Christian conception of divinity, God is

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a transcendent creator, a being who causes a world distinct from himself tocome into being by creating it out of nothing. God produces that world bya spontaneous act of free will, and could just as easily have not createdanything outside himself. By contrast, Spinoza's God is the cause of allthings because all things follow causally and necessarily from the divinenature. Or, as he puts it, from God's infinite power or nature “all thingshave necessarily flowed, or always followed, by the same necessity and inthe same way as from the nature of a triangle it follows, from eternity andto eternity, that its three angles are equal to two right angles” (Ip17s1).The existence of the world is, thus, mathematically necessary. It isimpossible that God should exist but not the world. This does not meanthat God does not cause the world to come into being freely, since nothingoutside of God constrains him to bring it into existence. But Spinoza doesdeny that God creates the world by some arbitrary and undetermined act offree will. God could not have done otherwise. There are no possiblealternatives to the actual world, and absolutely no contingency orspontaneity within that world. Everything is absolutely and necessarilydetermined.

There are, however, differences in the way things depend on God. Somefeatures of the universe follow necessarily from God—or, more precisely,from the absolute nature of one of God's attributes—in a direct andunmediated manner. These are the universal and eternal aspects of theworld, and they do not come into or go out of being; Spinoza calls them“infinite modes”. They include the most general laws of the universe,

(Ip29): In nature there is nothing contingent, but all things havebeen determined from the necessity of the divine nature to existand produce an effect in a certain way.

(Ip33): Things could have been produced by God in no other way,and in no other order than they have been produced.

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together governing all things in all ways. From the attribute of extensionthere follow the principles governing all extended objects (the truths ofgeometry) and laws governing the motion and rest of bodies (the laws ofphysics); from the attribute of thought, there follow laws of thought(understood by commentators to be either the laws of logic or the laws ofpsychology). Particular and individual things are causally more remotefrom God. They are nothing but “affections of God's attributes, or modesby which God's attributes are expressed in a certain and determinate way”(Ip25c). More precisely, they are finite modes.

There are two causal orders or dimensions governing the production andactions of particular things. On the one hand, they are determined by thegeneral laws of the universe that follow immediately from God's natures.On the other hand, each particular thing is determined to act and to beacted upon by other particular things. Thus, the actual behavior of a bodyin motion is a function not just of the universal laws of motion, but also ofthe other bodies in motion and rest surrounding it and with which it comesinto contact.

Spinoza's metaphysics of God is neatly summed up in a phrase that occursin the Latin (but not the Dutch) edition of the Ethics: “God, or Nature”,Deus, sive Natura: “That eternal and infinite being we call God, or Nature,acts from the same necessity from which he exists” (Part IV, Preface). It isan ambiguous phrase, since Spinoza could be read as trying either todivinize nature or to naturalize God. But for the careful reader there is nomistaking Spinoza's intention. The friends who, after his death, publishedhis writings must have left out the “or Nature” clause from the morewidely accessible Dutch version out of fear of the reaction that thisidentification would, predictably, arouse among a vernacular audience.

There are, Spinoza insists, two sides of Nature. First, there is the active,productive aspect of the universe—God and his attributes, from which all

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else follows. This is what Spinoza, employing the same terms he used inthe Short Treatise, calls Natura naturans, “naturing Nature”. Strictlyspeaking, this is identical with God. The other aspect of the universe isthat which is produced and sustained by the active aspect, Naturanaturata, “natured Nature”.

There is some debate in the literature about whether God is also to beidentified with Natura naturata. Be that as it may, Spinoza's fundamentalinsight in Book One is that Nature is an indivisible, uncaused, substantialwhole—in fact, it is the only substantial whole. Outside of Nature, there isnothing, and everything that exists is a part of Nature and is brought intobeing by Nature with a deterministic necessity. This unified, unique,productive, necessary being just is what is meant by ‘God’. Because of thenecessity inherent in Nature, there is no teleology in the universe. Naturedoes not act for any ends, and things do not exist for any set purposes.There are no “final causes” (to use the common Aristotelian phrase). Goddoes not “do” things for the sake of anything else. The order of things justfollows from God's essences with an inviolable determinism. All talk ofGod's purposes, intentions, goals, preferences or aims is just ananthropomorphizing fiction.

By Natura naturata I understand whatever follows from thenecessity of God's nature, or from any of God's attributes, i.e., allthe modes of God's attributes insofar as they are considered asthings that are in God, and can neither be nor be conceived withoutGod. (Ip29s).

All the prejudices I here undertake to expose depend on this one:that men commonly suppose that all natural things act, as men do,on account of an end; indeed, they maintain as certain that Godhimself directs all things to some certain end, for they say that Godhas made all things for man, and man that he might worship God.

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God is not some goal-oriented planner who then judges things by howwell they conform to his purposes. Things happen only because of Natureand its laws. “Nature has no end set before it … All things proceed by acertain eternal necessity of nature.” To believe otherwise is to fall prey tothe same superstitions that lie at the heart of the organized religions.

(I, Appendix)

People] find—both in themselves and outside themselves—manymeans that are very helpful in seeking their own advantage, e.g.,eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, plants and animals for food, thesun for light, the sea for supporting fish … Hence, they consider allnatural things as means to their own advantage. And knowing thatthey had found these means, not provided them for themselves,they had reason to believe that there was someone else who hadprepared those means for their use. For after they considered thingsas means, they could not believe that the things had madethemselves; but from the means they were accustomed to preparefor themselves, they had to infer that there was a ruler, or a numberof rulers of nature, endowed with human freedom, who had takencare of all things for them, and made all things for their use.

And since they had never heard anything about the temperament ofthese rulers, they had to judge it from their own. Hence, theymaintained that the Gods direct all things for the use of men inorder to bind men to them and be held by men in the highest honor.So it has happened that each of them has thought up from his owntemperament different ways of worshipping God, so that Godmight love them above all the rest, and direct the whole of Natureaccording to the needs of their blind desire and insatiable greed.Thus this prejudice was changed into superstition, and struck deeproots in their minds. (I, Appendix)

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A judging God who has plans and acts purposively is a God to be obeyedand placated. Opportunistic preachers are then able to play on our hopesand fears in the face of such a God. They prescribe ways of acting that arecalculated to avoid being punished by that God and earn his rewards. But,Spinoza insists, to see God or Nature as acting for the sake of ends—tofind purpose in Nature—is to misconstrue Nature and “turn it upsidedown” by putting the effect (the end result) before the true cause.

Nor does God perform miracles, since there are no departures whatsoeverfrom the necessary course of nature. The belief in miracles is due only toignorance of the true causes of phenomena.

This is strong language, and Spinoza is clearly not unaware of the risks ofhis position. The same preachers who take advantage of our credulity willfulminate against anyone who tries to pull aside the curtain and reveal the

If a stone has fallen from a room onto someone's head and killedhim, they will show, in the following way, that the stone fell inorder to kill the man. For if it did not fall to that end, God willingit, how could so many circumstances have concurred by chance(for often many circumstances do concur at once)? Perhaps youwill answer that it happened because the wind was blowing hardand the man was walking that way. But they will persist: why wasthe wind blowing hard at that time? why was the man walking thatway at that time? If you answer again that the wind arose thenbecause on the preceding day, while the weather was still calm, thesea began to toss, and that the man had been invited by a friend,they will press on—for there is no end to the questions which canbe asked: but why was the sea tossing? why was the man invited atjust that time? And so they will not stop asking for the causes ofcauses until you take refuge in the will of God, i.e., the sanctuaryof ignorance. (I, Appendix)

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truths of Nature. “One who seeks the true causes of miracles, and is eager,like an educated man, to understand natural things, not to wonder at them,like a fool, is generally considered and denounced as an impious hereticby those whom the people honor as interpreters of nature and the Gods.For they know that if ignorance is taken away, then foolish wonder, theonly means they have of arguing and defending their authority is alsotaken away.”

For centuries, Spinoza has been regarded—by his enemies and hispartisans, in the scholarly literature and the popular imagination—as a“pantheist”. It is not clear, however, that this is the proper way to look athis conception of God. Of course, Spinoza is not a traditional theist, forwhom God is a transcendent being. But does Spinoza's identification ofGod with Nature mean that he is, as so many have insisted for so long,from the early eighteenth century up through the most recent edition of theCambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, a pantheist?

In general, pantheism is the view that rejects the transcendence of God.According to the pantheist, God is, in some way, identical with the world.There may be aspects of God that are ontologically or epistemologicallydistinct from the world, but for pantheism this must not imply that God isessentially separate from the world. The pantheist is also likely to rejectany kind of anthropomorphizing of God, or attributing to the deitypsychological and moral characteristics modeled on human nature. Thepantheist's God is (usually) not a personal God.

Within this general framework, it is possible to distinguish two varieties ofpantheism. First, pantheism can be understood as the denial of anydistinction whatsoever between God and the natural world and theassertion that God is in fact identical with everything that exists. “God iseverything and everything is God.” On this view, God is the world and allits natural contents, and nothing distinct from them. This is reductive

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pantheism. Second, pantheism can be understood as asserting that God isdistinct from the world and its natural contents but nonetheless containedor immanent within them, perhaps in the way in which water is containedin a saturated sponge. God is everything and everywhere, on this version,by virtue of being within everything. This is immanentist pantheism; itinvolves that claim that nature contains within itself, in addition to itsnatural elements, an immanent supernatural and divine element.

Is Spinoza, then, a pantheist? Any adequate analysis of Spinoza'sidentification of God and Nature will show clearly that Spinoza cannot bea pantheist in the second, immanentist sense. For Spinoza, there is nothingbut Nature and its attributes and modes. And within Nature there cancertainly be nothing that is supernatural. If Spinoza is seeking to eliminateanything, it is that which is above or beyond nature, which escapes thelaws and processes of nature. But is he a pantheist in the first, reductivesense?

The issue of whether God is to be identified with the whole of Nature (i.e.,Natura naturans and Natura naturata) or only a part of Nature (i.e.,Natura naturans alone), which has occupied a good deal of the recentliterature, might be seen as crucial to the question of Spinoza's allegedpantheism. After all, if pantheism is the view that God is everything, thenSpinoza is a pantheist only if he identifies God with all of Nature. Indeed,this is exactly how the issue is often framed. Both those who believe thatSpinoza is a pantheist and those who believe that he is not a pantheistfocus on the question of whether God is to be identified with the whole ofNature, including the infinite and finite modes of Natura naturata, or onlywith substance and attributes (Natura naturans) but not the modes. Thus,it has been argued that Spinoza is not a pantheist, because God is to beidentified only with substance and its attributes, the most universal, activecausal principles of Nature, and not with any modes of substance. Otherscholars have argued that Spinoza is a pantheist, just because he does

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identify God with the whole of nature.

However, this debate about the extent of Spinoza's identification of Godwith Nature is not really to the point when the question is about Spinoza'salleged pantheism. To be sure, if by ‘pantheism’ is meant the idea thatGod is everything, and if one reads Spinoza as saying that God is onlyNatura naturans, then Spinoza's God is not everything and consequentlyhe is not a pantheist, at least in the ordinary sense. Finite things, on thisreading, while caused by the eternal, necessary and active aspects ofNature, are not identical with God or substance, but rather are its effects.But this is not the interesting sense in which Spinoza is not a pantheist.For even if Spinoza does indeed identify God with the whole of Nature, itdoes not follow that Spinoza is a pantheist. The real issue is not what is theproper reading of the metaphysics of Spinoza's conception of God and itsrelationship to finite modes. On either interpretation, Spinoza's move is anaturalistic and reductive one. God is identical either with all of Nature orwith only a part of Nature; for this reason, Spinoza shares something withthe reductive pantheist. But and this is the important point—even theatheist can, without too much difficulty, admit that God is nothing butNature. Reductive pantheism and atheism maintain extensionallyequivalent ontologies.

Rather, the question of Spinoza's pantheism is really going to be answeredon the psychological side of things, with regard to the proper attitude totake toward Deus sive Natura. And however one reads the relationshipbetween God and Nature in Spinoza, it is a mistake to call him a pantheistin so far as pantheism is still a kind of religious theism. What reallydistinguishes the pantheist from the atheist is that the pantheist does notreject as inappropriate the religious psychological attitudes demanded bytheism. Rather, the pantheist simply asserts that God—conceived as abeing before which one is to adopt an attitude of worshipful awe—is or isin Nature. And nothing could be further from the spirit of Spinoza's

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philosophy. Spinoza does not believe that worshipful awe or reverence isan appropriate attitude to take before God or Nature. There is nothing holyor sacred about Nature, and it is certainly not the object of a religiousexperience. Instead, one should strive to understand God or Nature, withthe kind of adequate or clear and distinct intellectual knowledge thatreveals Nature's most important truths and shows how everything dependsessentially and existentially on higher natural causes. The key todiscovering and experiencing God, for Spinoza, is philosophy and science,not religious awe and worshipful submission. The latter give rise only tosuperstitious behavior and subservience to ecclesiastic authorities; theformer leads to enlightenment, freedom and true blessedness (i.e., peace ofmind).

2.2 The Human Being

In Part Two, Spinoza turns to the origin and nature of the human being.The two attributes of God of which we have cognizance are extension andthought. This, in itself, involves what would have been an astoundingthesis in the eyes of his contemporaries, one that was usuallymisunderstood and always vilified. When Spinoza claims in PropositionTwo that “Extension is an attribute of God, or God is an extended thing”,he was almost universally—but erroneously—interpreted as saying thatGod is literally corporeal. For just this reason, “Spinozism” became, forhis critics, synonymous with atheistic materialism.

According to one interpretation, God is indeed material, even matter itself,but this does not imply that God has a body. Another interpretation,however, one which will be adopted here, is that what is in God is notmatter per se, but extension as an essence. And extension and thought aretwo distinct essences that have absolutely nothing in common. The modesor expressions of extension are physical bodies; the modes of thought areideas. Because extension and thought have nothing in common, the two

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realms of matter and mind are causally closed systems. Everything that isextended follows from the attribute of extension alone. Every bodily eventis part of an infinite causal series of bodily events and is determined onlyby the nature of extension and its laws, in conjunction with its relations toother extended bodies. Similarly, every idea follows only from theattribute of thought. Any idea is an integral part of an infinite series ofideas and is determined by the nature of thought and its laws, along withits relations to other ideas. There is, in other words, no causal interactionbetween bodies and ideas, between the physical and the mental. There is,however, a thoroughgoing correlation and parallelism between the twoseries. For every mode in extension that is a relatively stable collection ofmatter, there is a corresponding mode in thought. In fact, he insists, “amode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing,but expressed in two ways” (IIp7s). Because of the fundamental andunderlying unity of Nature, or of Substance, Thought and Extension arejust two different ways of “comprehending” one and the same Nature.Every material thing thus has its own particular idea—an eternal adequateidea—that expresses or represents it. Since that idea is just a mode of oneof God's attributes—Thought—it is in God, and the infinite series of ideasconstitutes God's mind or infinite intellect. As he explains,

It follows from this, he argues, that the causal relations between bodies ismirrored in the logical relations between God's ideas. Or, as Spinoza notesin Proposition Seven, “the order and connection of ideas is the same as the

A circle existing in nature and the idea of the existing circle, whichis also in God, are one and the same thing, which is explainedthrough different attributes. Therefore, whether we conceive natureunder the attribute of Extension, or under the attribute of Thought,or under any other attribute, we shall find one and the same order,or one and the same connection of causes, i.e., that the same thingsfollow one another. (IIp7s)

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order and connection of things”.

One kind of extended body, however, is significantly more complex thanany others in its composition and in its dispositions to act and be actedupon. That complexity is reflected in its corresponding idea. The body inquestion is the human body; and its corresponding idea is the human mindor soul. The mind, then, like any other idea, is simply one particular modeof God's attribute, Thought. Whatever happens in the body is reflected orexpressed in the mind. In this way, the mind perceives, more or lessobscurely, what is taking place in its body. And through its body'sinteractions with other bodies, the mind is aware of what is happening inthe physical world around it. But the human mind no more interacts withits body than any mode of Thought interacts with a mode of Extension.

One of the pressing questions in seventeenth century philosophy, andperhaps the most celebrated legacy of Descartes's dualism, is the problemof how two radically different substances such as mind and body enter intoa union in a human being and cause effects in each other. How can theextended body causally engage the unextended mind, which is incapableof contact or motion, and “move” it, that is, cause mental effects such aspains, sensations and perceptions. Spinoza, in effect, denies that thehuman being is a union of two substances. The human mind and thehuman body are two different expressions—under Thought and underExtension—of one and the same thing: the person. And because there isno causal interaction between the mind and the body, the so-called mind-body problem does not, technically speaking, arise.

2.3 Knowledge

The human mind, like God, contains ideas. Some of these ideas—sensoryimages, qualitative “feels” (like pains and pleasures), perceptual data—areimprecise qualitative phenomena, being the expression in thought of states

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of the body as it is affected by the bodies surrounding it. Such ideas do notconvey adequate and true knowledge of the world, but only a relative,partial and subjective picture of how things presently seem to be to theperceiver. There is no systematic order to these perceptions, nor anycritical oversight by reason. “As long as the human Mind perceives thingsfrom the common order of nature, it does not have an adequate, but only aconfused and mutilated knowledge of itself, of its own Body, and ofexternal bodies” (IIp29c). Under such circumstances, we are simplydetermined in our ideas by our fortuitous and haphazard encounter withthings in the external world. This superficial acquaintance will neverprovide us with knowledge of the essences of those things. In fact, it is aninvariable source of falsehood and error. This “knowledge from randomexperience” is also the origin of great delusions, since we—thinkingourselves free—are, in our ignorance, unaware of just how we aredetermined by causes.

Adequate ideas, on the other hand, are formed in a rational and orderlymanner, and are necessarily true and revelatory of the essences of things.“Reason”, the second kind of knowledge (after “random experience”), isthe apprehension of the essence of a thing through a discursive, inferentialprocedure. “A true idea means nothing other than knowing a thingperfectly, or in the best way”(IIp43s). It involves grasping a thing's causalconnections not just to other objects but, more importantly, to theattributes of God and the infinite modes (the laws of nature) that followimmediately from them. The adequate idea of a thing clearly and distinctlysituates its object in all of its causal nexuses and shows not just that it is,but how and why it is. The person who truly knows a thing sees thereasons why the thing was determined to be and could not have beenotherwise. “It is of the nature of Reason to regard things as necessary, notas contingent” (IIp44). The belief that some thing is accidental orspontaneous can be based only on an inadequate grasp of the thing's causalexplanation, on a partial and “mutilated” familiarity with it. To perceive

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by way of adequate ideas is to perceive the necessity inherent in Nature.

Sense experience alone could never provide the information conveyed byan adequate idea. The senses present things only as they appear from agiven perspective at a given moment in time. An adequate idea, on theother hand, by showing how a thing follows necessarily from one oranother of God's attributes, presents it in its “eternal” aspects—sub specieaeternitatis, as Spinoza puts it—without any relation to time. “It is of thenature of Reason to regard things as necessary and not as contingent. AndReason perceives this necessity of things truly, i.e., as it is in itself. Butthis necessity of things is the very necessity of God's eternal nature.Therefore, it is of the nature of Reason to regard things under this speciesof eternity” (IIp44). The third kind of knowledge, intuition, takes what isknown by Reason and grasps it in a single act of the mind.

Spinoza's conception of adequate knowledge reveals an unrivaledoptimism in the cognitive powers of the human being. Not even Descartesbelieved that we could know all of Nature and its innermost secrets withthe degree of depth and certainty that Spinoza thought possible. Mostremarkably, because Spinoza thought that the adequate knowledge of anyobject, and of Nature as a whole, involves a thorough knowledge of Godand of how things related to God and his attributes, he also had noscruples about claiming that we can, at least in principle, know Godperfectly and adequately. “The knowledge of God's eternal and infiniteessence that each idea involves is adequate and perfect” (IIp46). “Thehuman Mind has an adequate knowledge of God's eternal and infiniteessence” (IIp47). No other philosopher in history has been willing to makethis claim. But, then again, no other philosopher identified God withNature.

2.4 Passion and Action

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Spinoza engages in such a detailed analysis of the composition of thehuman being because it is essential to his goal of showing how the humanbeing is a part of Nature, existing within the same causal nexuses as otherextended and mental beings. This has serious ethical implications. First, itimplies that a human being is not endowed with freedom, at least in theordinary sense of that term. Because our minds and the events in ourminds are simply ideas that exist within the causal series of ideas thatfollows from God's attribute Thought, our actions and volitions are asnecessarily determined as any other natural events. “In the Mind there isno absolute, or free, will, but the Mind is determined to will this or that bya cause that is also determined by another, and this again by another, andso to infinity” (IIp48).

What is true of the will (and, of course, of our bodies) is true of all thephenomena of our psychological lives. Spinoza believes that this issomething that has not been sufficiently understood by previous thinkers,who seem to have wanted to place the human being on a pedestal outsideof (or above) nature.

Descartes, for example, believed that if the freedom of the human being isto be preserved, the soul must be exempt from the kind of deterministiclaws that rule over the material universe.

Spinoza's aim in Parts Three and Four is, as he says in his Preface to Part

Most of those who have written about the Affects, and men's wayof living, seem to treat, not of natural things, which follow thecommon laws of nature, but of things that are outside nature.Indeed they seem to conceive man in nature as a dominion within adominion. For they believe that man disturbs, rather than follows,the order of nature, that he has absolute power over his actions, andthat he is determined only by himself. (III, Preface)

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Three, to restore the human being and his volitional and emotional lifeinto their proper place in nature. For nothing stands outside of nature, noteven the human mind.

Our affects—our love, anger, hate, envy, pride, jealousy, etc.—“followfrom the same necessity and force of nature as the other singular things”.Spinoza, therefore, explains these emotions—as determined in theiroccurrence as are a body in motion and the properties of a mathematicalfigure—just as he would explain any other things in nature. “I shall treatthe nature and power of the Affects, and the power of the Mind over them,by the same Method by which, in the preceding parts, I treated God andthe Mind, and I shall consider human actions and appetites just as if itwere a Question of lines, planes, and bodies.”

Our affects are divided into actions and passions. When the cause of anevent lies in our own nature—more particularly, our knowledge oradequate ideas—then it is a case of the mind acting. On the other hand,when something happens in us the cause of which lies outside of ournature, then we are passive and being acted upon. Usually what takesplace, both when we are acting and when we are being acted upon, is somechange in our mental or physical capacities, what Spinoza calls “anincrease or decrease in our power of acting” or in our “power to perseverein being”. All beings are naturally endowed with such a power or striving.This conatus, a kind of existential inertia, constitutes the “essence” of anybeing. “Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere

Nature is always the same, and its virtue and power of acting areeverywhere one and the same, i.e., the laws and rules of nature,according to which all things happen, and change from one form toanother, are always and everywhere the same. So the way ofunderstanding the nature of anything, of whatever kind, must alsobe the same, viz. through the universal laws and rules of nature.

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in its being.” An affect just is any change in this power, for better or forworse. Affects that are actions are changes in this power that have theirsource (or “adequate cause”) in our nature alone; affects that are passionsare those changes in this power that originate outside of us.

What we should strive for is to be free from the passions—or, since this isnot absolutely possible, at least to learn how to moderate and restrain them—and become active, autonomous beings. If we can acheive this, then wewill be “free” to the extent that whatever happens to us will result not fromour relations with things outside us, but from our own nature (as thatfollows from, and is ultimately and necessarily determined by theattributes of God of which our minds and bodies are modes). We will,consequently, be truly liberated from the troublesome emotional ups anddowns of this life. The way to bring this about is to increase ourknowledge, our store of adequate ideas, and eliminate as far as possibleour inadequate ideas, which follow not from the nature of the mind alonebut from its being an expresssion of how our body is affected by otherbodies. In other words, we need to free ourselves from a reliance on thesenses and the imagination, since a life of the senses and images is a lifebeing affected and led by the objects around us, and rely as much as wecan only on our rational faculties.

Because of our innate striving to persevere—which, in the human being, iscalled “will” or “appetite”—we naturally pursue those things that webelieve will benefit us by increasing our power of acting and shun or fleethose things that we believe will harm us by decreasing our power ofacting. This provides Spinoza with a foundation for cataloguing the humanpassions. For the passions are all functions of the ways in which externalthings affect our powers or capacities. Joy [Laetitiae, sometimes translatedas “pleasure”], for example, is simply the movement or passage to agreater capacity for action. “By Joy … I shall understand that passion bywhich the Mind passes to a greater perfection” (IIIp11s). Being a passion,

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joy is always brought about by some external object. Sadness [Tristitiae,or “pain”], on the other hand, is the passage to a lesser state of perfection,also occasioned by a thing outside us. Love is simply Joy accompanied byan awareness of the external cause that brings about the passage to agreater perfection. We love that object that benefits us and causes us joy.Hate is nothing but “Sadness with the accompanying idea of an externalcause”. Hope is simply “an inconstant Joy which has arisen from theimage of a future or past thing whose outcome we doubt”. We hope for athing whose presence, as yet uncertain, will bring about joy. We fear,however, a thing whose presence, equally uncertain, will bring aboutsadness. When that whose outcome was doubtful becomes certain, hope ischanged into confidence, while fear is changed into despair.

All of the human emotions, in so far as they are passions, are constantlydirected outward, towards things and their capacities to affect us one wayor another. Aroused by our passions and desires, we seek or flee thosethings that we believe cause joy or sadness. “We strive to further theoccurrence of whatever we imagine will lead to Joy, and to avert ordestroy what we imagine is contrary to it, or will lead to Sadness.” Ourhopes and fears fluctuate depending on whether we regard the objects ofour desires or aversions as remote, near, necessary, possible or unlikely.But the objects of our passions, being external to us, are completelybeyond our control. Thus, the more we allow ourselves to be controlled bythem, the more we are subject to passions and the less active and free weare. The upshot is a fairly pathetic picture of a life mired in the passionsand pursuing and fleeing the changeable and fleeting objects that occasionthem: “We are driven about in many ways by external causes, and … likewaves on the sea, driven by contrary winds, we toss about, not knowingour outcome and fate” (IIIp59s). The title for Part Four of the Ethicsreveals with perfect clarity Spinoza's evaluation of such a life for a humanbeing: “On Human Bondage, or the Powers of the Affects”. He explainsthat the human being's “lack of power to moderate and restrain the affects

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I call Bondage. For the man who is subject to affects is under the control,not of himself, but of fortune, in whose power he so greatly is that often,though he sees the better for himself, he is still forced to follow theworse”. It is, he says, a kind of “sickness of the mind” to suffer too muchlove for a thing “that is liable to many variations and that we can neverfully possess.”

2.5 Virtue and Happiness

The solution to this predicament is an ancient one. Since we cannotcontrol the objects that we tend to value and that we allow to influence ourwell-being, we ought instead to try to control our evaluations themselvesand thereby minimize the sway that external objects and the passions haveover us. We can never eliminate the passive affects entirely. We areessentially a part of nature, and can never fully remove ourselves from thecausal series that link us to external things. But we can, ultimately,counteract the passions, control them, and achieve a certain degree ofrelief from their turmoil.

The path to restraining and moderating the affects is through virtue.Spinoza is a psychological and ethical egoist. All beings naturally seektheir own advantage—to preserve their own being—and it is right forthem do so. This is what virtue consists in. Since we are thinking beings,endowed with intelligence and reason, what is to our greatest advantage isknowledge. Our virtue, therefore, consists in the pursuit of knowledge andunderstanding, of adequate ideas. The best kind of knowledge is a purelyintellectual intuition of the essences of things. This “third kind ofknowledge”—beyond both random experience and ratiocination—seesthings not in their temporal dimension, not in their duration and in relationto other particular things, but under the aspect of eternity, that is,abstracted from all considerations of time and place and situated in theirrelationship to God and his attributes. They are apprehended, that is, in

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their conceptual and causal relationship to the universal essences (thoughtand extension) and the eternal laws of nature.

But this is just to say that, ultimately, we strive for a knowledge of God.The concept of any body involves the concept of extension; and theconcept of any idea or mind involves the concept of thought. But thoughtand extension just are God's attributes. So the proper and adequateconception of any body or mind necessarily involves the concept orknowledge of God. “The third kind of knowledge proceeds from anadequate idea of certain attributes of God to an adequate knowledge of theessence of things, and the more we understand things in this way, the morewe understand God” (Vp25d). Knowledge of God is, thus, the Mind'sgreatest good and its greatest virtue.

What we see when we understand things through the third kind ofknowledge, under the aspect of eternity and in relation to God, is thedeterministic necessity of all things. We see that all bodies and their statesfollow necessarily from the essence of matter and the universal laws ofphysics; and we see that all ideas, including all the properties of minds,follow necessarily from the essence of thought and its universal laws. Thisinsight can only weaken the power that the passions have over us. We areno longer hopeful or fearful of what shall come to pass, and no longeranxious or despondent over our possessions. We regard all things withequanimity, and we are not inordinately and irrationally affected in

We conceive things as actual in two ways: either insofar as weconceive them to exist in relation to a certain time and place, orinsofar as we conceive them to be contained in God and to followfrom the necessity of the divine nature. But the things we conceivein this second way as true, or real, we conceive under a species ofeternity, and to that extent they involve the eternal and infiniteessence of God. (Vp29s)

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different ways by past, present or future events. The result is self-controland a calmness of mind.

Our affects themselves can be understood in this way, which furtherdiminishes their power over us.

Spinoza's ethical theory is, to a certain degree, Stoic, and recalls thedoctrines of thinkers such as Cicero and Seneca:

The more this knowledge that things are necessary is concernedwith singular things, which we imagine more distinctly andvividly, the greater is this power of the Mind over the affects, asexperience itself also testifies. For we see that Sadness over somegood which has perished is lessened as soon as the man who haslost it realizes that this good could not, in any way, have been kept.Similarly, we see that [because we regard infancy as a natural andnecessary thing], no one pities infants because of their inability tospeak, to walk, or to reason, or because they live so many years, asit were, unconscious of themselves. (Vp6s)

We do not have an absolute power to adapt things outside us to ouruse. Nevertheless, we shall bear calmly those things that happen tous contrary to what the principle of our advantage demands, if weare conscious that we have done our duty, that the power we havecould not have extended itself to the point where we could haveavoided those things, and that we are a part of the whole of nature,whose order we follow. If we understand this clearly and distinctly,that part of us which is defined by understanding, i.e., the betterpart of us, will be entirely satisfied with this, and will strive topersevere in that satisfaction. For insofar as we understand, we canwant nothing except what is necessary, nor absolutely be satisfiedwith anything except what is true. (IV, Appendix)

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What, in the end, replaces the passionate love for ephemeral “goods” is anintellectual love for an eternal, immutable good that we can fully andstably possess, God. The third kind of knowledge generates a love for itsobject, and in this love consists not joy, a passion, but blessedness itself.Taking his cue from Maimonides's view of human eudaimonia, Spinozaargues that the mind's intellectual love of God is our understanding of theuniverse, our virtue, our happiness, our well-being and our “salvation”. Itis also our freedom and autonomy, as we approach the condition whereinwhat happens to us follows from our nature (as a determinate anddetermined mode of one of God's attributes) alone and not as a result ofthe ways external things affect us. Spinoza's “free person” is one whobears the gifts and losses of fortune with equanimity and does only thosethings that he believes to be “the most important in life”. He also, despitethe fundamental egoism, engages in behavior toward others that istypically regarded as "ethical", even altruistic. He takes care for the well-being and virtuous flourishing of other human beings. He does what hecan through rational benevolence (as opposed to pity or some otherpassion) to insure that they, too, achieve relief from the disturbances of thepassions through understanding, and thus that they become more like him(and therefore most useful to him). Moreover, the free person is notanxious about death. The free person neither hopes for any eternal,otherworldly rewards nor fears any eternal punishments. He knows thatthe soul is not immortal in any personal sense, but is endowed only with acertain kind of eternity. The more the mind consists of true and adequateideas (which are eternal), the more of it remains—within God's attribute ofThought—after the death of the body and the disappearance of that part ofthe mind that corresponds to the body's duration. This understanding of hisplace in the natural scheme of things brings to the free individual truepeace of mind.

There are a number of social and political ramifications that follow fromSpinoza's ethical doctrines of human action and well-being. Because

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disagreement and discord between human beings is always the result ofour different and changeable passions, “free” individuals—who all sharethe same nature and act on the same principles—will naturally andeffortlessly form a harmonious society. “Insofar as men are torn by affectsthat are passions, they can be contrary to one another …[But] insofar asmen live according to the guidance of reason, they must do only thosethings that are good for human nature, and hence, for each man, i.e., thosethings that agree with the nature of each man. Hence, insofar as men liveaccording to the guidance of reason, they must always agree amongthemselves” (IVp34–35). Free human beings will be mutually beneficialand useful, and will be tolerant of the opinions and even the errors ofothers. However, human beings do not generally live under the guidanceof reason. The state or sovereign, therefore, is required in order to insure—not by reason, but by the threat of force—that individuals are protectedfrom the unrestrained pursuit of self-interest on the part of otherindividuals. The transition from a state of nature, where each seeks hisown advantage without limitation, to a civil state involves the universalrenunciation of certain natural rights—such as “the right everyone has ofavenging himself, and of judging good and evil”—and the investment ofthose prerogatives in a central authority. As long as human beings areguided by their passions, the state is necessary to bring it about that they“live harmoniously and be of assistance to one another”.

3. Theological-Political Treatise

The ostensive aim of the Theological-Political Treatise (TTP), widelyvilified in its time, is to show that the freedom to philosophize can notonly be granted without injury to piety and the peace of theCommonwealth, but that the peace of the Commonwealth and Piety areendangered by the suppression of this freedom. But Spinoza's ultimateintention is reveal the truth about Scripture and religion, and thereby to

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undercut the political power exercised in modern states by religiousauthorities. He also defends, at least as a political ideal, the tolerant,secular, and democratic polity.

3.1 On Religion and Scripture

Spinoza begins the TTP by alerting his readers, through a kind of “naturalhistory of religion”, to just those superstitious beliefs and behaviors thatclergy, by playing on ordinary human emotions, encourage in theirfollowers. A person guided by fear and hope, the main emotions in a lifedevoted to the pursuit of temporal advantages, turns, in the face of thevagaries of fortune, to behaviors calculated to secure the goods he desires.Thus, we pray, worship, make votive offerings, sacrifice and engage in allthe various rituals of popular religion. But the emotions are as fleeting asthe objects that occasion them, and thus the superstitions grounded inthose emotions subject to fluctuations. Ambitious and self-serving clergydo their best to stabilize this situation and give some permanence to thosebeliefs and behaviors. “Immense efforts have been made to invest religion,true or false, with such pomp and ceremony that it can sustain any shockand constantly evoke the deepest reverence in all its worshippers” (TTP,Preface, G III.6–7/S 2–3). Religious leaders are generally abetted in theirpurposes by the civil authority, which threatens to punish all deviationsfrom theological orthodoxy as “sedition”. The result is a state religion thathas no rational foundations, a mere “respect for ecclesiastics” thatinvolves adulation and mysteries but no true worship of God.

The solution to this state of affairs, Spinoza believes, is to examine theBible anew and find the doctrines of the “true religion”. Only then will webe able to delimit exactly what we need to do to show proper respect forGod and obtain blessedness. This will reduce the sway that religiousauthorities have over our emotional, intellectual and physical lives, andreinstate a proper and healthy relationship between the state and religion.

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A close analysis of the Bible is particularly important for any argumentthat the freedom of philosophizing—essentially, freedom of thought andspeech—is not prejudicial to piety. If it can be demonstrated that Scriptureis not a source of “natural truth”, but the bearer of only a simple moralmessage (“Love your neighbor”), then people will see that “faith issomething separate from philosophy”. Spinoza intends to show that in thatmoral message alone—and not in Scripture's words or history—lies thesacredness of what is otherwise merely a human document. The Bibleteaches only “obedience [to God]”, not knowledge. Thus, philosophy andreligion, reason and faith, inhabit two distinct and exclusive spheres, andneither should tread in the domain of the other. The freedom tophilosophize and speculate can therefore be granted without any harm totrue religion. In fact, such freedom is essential to public peace and piety,since most civil disturbances arise from sectarian disputes. The real dangerto the Republic comes from those who would worship not God, but somewords on a page: “It will be said that, although God's law is inscribed inour hearts, Scripture is nevertheless the Word of God, and it is no morepermissable to say of Scripture that it is mutilated and contaminated thanto say this of God's Word. In reply, I have to say that such objectors arecarrying their piety too far, and are turning religion into superstition;indeed, instead of God's Word they are beginning to worship likenessesand images, that is, paper and ink” (TTP, chap. 12, G III.159/S 145–6).

From a proper and informed reading of Scripture, a number of thingsbecome clear. First, the prophets were not men of exceptional intellectualtalents—they were not, that is, naturally gifted philosophers—but simplyvery pious, even morally superior individuals endowed with vividimaginations. They were able to perceive God's revelation through theirimaginative faculties via words or real or imaginary figures. This is whatallowed them to apprehend that which lies beyond the boundary of theintellect. Moreover, the content of a prophecy varied according to thephysical temperament, imaginative powers, and particular opinions or

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prejudices of the prophet. It follows that prophecy, while it has its originsin the power of God—and in this respect it is, in Spinoza's metaphysicalscheme, no different from any other natural event—does not provideprivileged knowledge of natural or spiritual phenomena. The prophets arenot necessarily to be trusted when it comes to matters of the intellect, onquestions of philosophy, history or science; and their pronouncements setno parameters on what should or should not be believed about the naturalworld on the basis of our rational faculties.

Spinoza provides an equally deflationary account of God's election, or the“vocation”, of the Hebrews. It is “childish”, he insists, for anyone to basetheir happiness on the uniqueness of their gifts; in the case of the Jews, itwould be the uniqueness of their being chosen among all people. Theancient Hebrews, in fact, did not surpass other nations in their wisdom orin their proximity to God. They were neither intellectually nor morallysuperior to other peoples. They were “chosen” only with respect to theirsocial organization and political good fortune. God (or Nature) gave thema set of laws and they obeyed those laws, with the natural result that theirsociety was well-ordered and their autonomous government persisted for along time. Their election was thus a temporal and conditional one, andtheir kingdom is now long gone. Thus, “at the present time there isnothing whatsoever that the Jews can arrogate to themselves above othernations” (TTP, chap. 3, G III.56/S 45). Spinoza thereby rejects theparticularism that many—including Amsterdam's Sephardic rabbis—insisted was essential to Judaism. True piety and blessedness are universalin their scope and accesssible to anyone, regardless of their confessionalcreed.

Central to Spinoza's analysis of the Jewish religion—although it isapplicable to any religion whatsoever—is the distinction between thedivine law and the ceremonial law. The law of God commands only theknowledge and love of God and the actions required for attaining that

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condition. Such love must arise not from fear of possible penalties or hopefor any rewards, but solely from the goodness of its object. The divine lawdoes not demand any particular rites or ceremonies such as sacrifices ordietary restrictions or festival observances. The six hundred and thirteenprecepts of the Torah have nothing to do with blessedness or virtue. Theywere directed only at the Hebrews so that they might govern themselves inan autonomous state. The ceremonial laws helped preserve their kingdomand insure its prosperity, but were valid only as long as that political entitylasted. They are not binding on all Jews under all circumstances. Theywere, in fact, instituted by Moses for a purely practical reason: so thatpeople might do their duty and not go their own way. This is true not justof the rites and practices of Judaism, but of the outer ceremonies of allreligions. None of these activities have anything to do with true happinessor piety. They serve only to control people's behavior and preserve aparticular society.

A similar practical function is served by stories of miracles. Scripturespeaks in a language suited to affect the imagination of ordinary peopleand compel their obedience. Rather than appealing to the natural and realcauses of all events, its authors sometimes narrate things in a waycalculated to move people—particularly uneducated people—to devotion.“If Scripture were to describe the downfall of an empire in the styleadopted by political historians, the common people would not be stirred…” Strictly speaking, however, miracles—understood as divinely causeddepartures from the ordinary course of nature—are impossible. Everyevent, no matter how extraordinary, has a natural cause and explanation.“Nothing happens in nature that does not follow from her laws” (TTP,chap. 6, G III.83/S 73). This is simply a consequence of Spinoza'smetaphysical doctrines. Miracles as traditionally conceived require adistinction between God and nature, something that Spinoza's philosophyrules out in principle. Moreover, nature's order is inviolable in so far as thesequence of events in nature is a necessary consequence of God's

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attributes. There certainly are “miracles” in the sense of events whosenatural causes are unknown to us, and which we therefore attribute to thepowers of a supernatural God. But this is, once again, to retreat tosuperstition, “the bitter enemy of all true knowledge and true morality”.

By analyzing prophecy in terms of vividness of imagination, Jewishelection as political fortune, the ceremonial law as a kind of social andpolitical expediency, and the belief in miracles as an ignorance of nature'snecessary causal operations, Spinoza naturalizes (and, consequently,demystifies) some of the fundamental elements of Judaism and otherreligions and undermines the foundations of their external, superstitiousrites. At the same time, he thereby reduces the fundamental doctrine ofpiety to a simple and universal formula, naturalistic in itself, involvinglove and knowledge. This process of naturalization achieves its stunningclimax when Spinoza turns to consider the authorship and interpretation ofthe Bible itself. Spinoza's views on Scripture constitute, without question,the most radical theses of the Treatise, and explain why he was attackedwith such vitriol by his contemporaries. Others before Spinoza hadsuggested that Moses was not the author of the entire Pentateuch. But noone had taken that claim to the extreme limit that Spinoza did, arguing forit with such boldness and at such length. Nor had anyone before Spinozabeen willing to draw from it the conclusions about the status, meaning andinterpretation of Scripture that Spinoza drew.

Spinoza denied that Moses wrote all, or even most of the Torah. Thereferences in the Pentateuch to Moses in the third person; the narration ofhis death and, particularly, of events following his death; and the fact thatsome places are called by names that they did not bear in the time ofMoses all “make it clear beyond a shadow of doubt” that the writingscommonly referred to as “the Five Books of Moses” were, in fact, writtenby someone who lived many generations after Moses. Moses did, to besure, compose some books of history and of law; and remnants of those

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long lost books can be found in the Pentateuch. But the Torah as we haveit, as well as as other books of the Hebrew Bible (such as Joshua, Judges,Samuel and Kings) were written neither by the individuals whose namesthey bear nor by any person appearing in them. Spinoza believes that thesewere, in fact, all composed by a single historian living many generationsafter the events narrated, and that this was most likely Ezra. It was thepost-exilic leader who took the many writings that had come down to himand began weaving them into a single (but not seamless) narrative. Ezra'swork was later completed and supplemented by the editorial labors ofothers. What we now possess, then, is nothing but a compilation, and arather mismanaged, haphazard and “mutilated” one at that.

As for the books of the Prophets, they are of even later provenance,compiled (or “heaped together”, in Spinoza's view) by a chronicler orscribe perhaps as late as the Second Temple period. Canonization intoScripture occurred only in the second century BCE, when the Phariseesselected a number of texts from a multitude of others. Because the processof transmission was a historical one, involving the conveyence of writingsof human origin over a long period of time through numerous scribes, andbecause the decision to include some books but not others was made byfallible human beings, there are good reasons for believing that asignificant portion of the text of the “Old Testament” is corrupt.

Now in 1670 there was nothing novel in claiming that Moses did not writeall of the Torah. Spinoza's most radical and innovative claim, in fact, wasto argue that this holds great significance for how Scripture is to be readand interpreted. He was dismayed by the way in which Scripture itself wasworshipped, by the reverence accorded to the words on the page ratherthan to the message they conveyed. If the Bible is an historical (i.e.,natural) document, then it should be treated like any other work of nature.The study of Scripture, or Biblical hermeneutics, should therefore proceedas the study of nature, or natural science proceeds: by gathering and

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evaluating empirical data, that is, by examining the “book” itself—alongwith the contextual conditions of its composition—for its generalprinciples.

Just as the knowledge of nature must be sought from nature alone, so mustthe knowledge of Scripture—an apprehension of its intended meaning—besought from Scripture alone and through the appropriate exercise ofrational inquiry.

When properly interpreted, the universal message conveyed by Scriptureis a simple moral one: “To know and love God, and to love one's neighboras oneself”. This is the real word of God and the foundation of true piety,and it lies uncorrupted in a faulty, tampered and corrupt text. The lessoninvolves no metaphysical doctrines about God or nature, and requires no

I hold that the method of interpreting Scripture is no different fromthe method of interpreting Nature, and is in fact in complete accordwith it. For the method of interpreting Nature consists essentiallyin composing a detailed study of Nature from which, as being thesource of our assured data, we can deduce the definitions of thethings of Nature. Now in exactly the same way the task ofScriptural interpretation requires us to make a straightforwardstudy of Scripture, and from this, as the source of our fixed dataand principles, to deduce by logical inference the meaning of theauthors of Scripture. In this way—that is, by allowing no otherprinciples or data for the interpretation of Scripture and study of itscontents except those that can be gathered only from Scriptureitself and from a historical study of Scripture—steady progress canbe made without any danger of error, and one can deal withmatters that surpass our understanding with no less confidencethan those matters that are known to us by the natural light ofreason. (TTP, chap. 7, G III.98/S 87).

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sophisticated training in philosophy. The object of Scripture is not toimpart knowledge, but to compel obedience and regulate our conduct.“Scriptural doctrine contains not abstruse speculation or philosophicreasoning, but very simple matters able to be understood by the mostsluggish mind” (TTP, chap. 13, G III.167/S 153). Spinoza claims, in fact,that a familiarity with Scripture is not even necessary for piety andblessedness, since its message can be known by our rational facultiesalone, although with great difficulty for most people. “He who, whileunacquainted with these writings, nevertheless knows by the natural lightthat there is a God having the attributes we have recounted, and who alsopursues a true way of life, is altogether blessed.”

It follows that the only practical commandments that properly belong toreligion are those that are necessary to carry out the moral precept and“confirm in our hearts the love of our neighbor”. “A catholic faith shouldtherefore contain only those dogmas which obedience to God absolutelydemands, and without which such obedience is absolutely impossible …these must all be directed to this one end: that there is a Supreme Beingwho loves justice and charity, whom all must obey in order to be saved,and must worship by practicing justice and charity to their neighbor”(TTP, chap. 14, G III.177/S 161–2). As for other dogmas, “every personshould embrace those that he, being the best judge of himself, feels will domost to strengthen in him love of justice”.

This is the heart of Spinoza's case for toleration, for freedom ofphilosophizing and freedom of religious expression. By reducing thecentral message of Scripture—and the essential content of piety—to asimple moral maxim, one that is free of any superfluous speculativedoctrines or ceremonial practices; and by freeing Scripture of the burdenof having to communicate specific philosophical truths or of prescribing(or proscribing) a multitude of required behaviors, he has demonstratedboth that philosophy is independent from religion and that the liberty of

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each individual to interpret religion as he wishes can be upheld withoutany detriment to piety.

Faith and piety belong not to the person who has the most rationalargument for the existence of God or the most thorough philosophicalunderstanding of his attributes, but to the person “who best displays worksof justice and charity”.

3.2 The State

As to the question of what God, the exemplar of true life, really is,whether he is fire, or spirit, or light, or thought, or something else,this is irrelevant to faith. And so likewise is the question as to whyhe is the exemplar of true life, whether this is because he has a justand merciful disposition, or because all things exist and actthrough him and consequently we, too, understand through him,and through him we see what is true, just and good. On thesequestions it matters not what beliefs a man holds. Nor, again, doesit matter for faith whether one believes that God is omnipresent inessence or in potency, whether he directs everything from free willor from the necessity of his nature, whether he lays down laws as arule or teaches them as being eternal truths, whether man obeysGod from free will or from the necessity of the divine decree,whether the rewarding of the good and the punishing of the wickedis natural or supernatural. The view one takes on these and similarquestions has no bearing on faith, provided that such a belief doesnot lead to the assumption of greater license to sin, or hinderssubmission to God. Indeed … every person is in duty bound toadapt these religious dogmas to his own understanding and tointerpret them for himself in whatever way makes him feel that hecan the more readily accept them with full confidence andconviction. (TTP, chap. 14, G III.164/S 162–3)

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Spinoza's account of religion has clear political ramifications. There hadalways been a quasi-political agenda behind his decision to write theTreatise, since his attack was directed at political meddling by religiousauthorities. But he also took the opportunity to give a more detailed andthorough presentation of a general theory of the state that is only sketchilypresent in the Ethics. Such an examination of the true nature of politicalsociety is particularly important to his argument for intellectual andreligious freedom, since he must show that such freedom is not onlycompatible with political well-being, but essential to it.

The individual egoism of the Ethics plays itself out in a pre-politicalcontext—the so-called “state of nature”, a universal condition where thereis no law or religion or moral right and wrong—as the right of everyindividual to do whatever he can to preserve himself. “Whatever everyperson, whenever he is considered as solely under the dominion of Nature,believes to be to his advantage, whether under the guidance of soundreason or under passion's sway, he may by sovereign natural right seekand get for himself by any means, by force, deceit, entreaty, or in anyother way he best can, and he may consequently regard as his enemyanyone who tries to hinder him from getting what he wants” (TTP, chap.16, G III.190/S 174). Naturally, this is a rather insecure and dangerouscondition under which to live. In Hobbes' celebrated phrase—and Spinozawas clearly influenced by his reading of that British thinker—life in thestate of nature is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. As rationalcreatures, we soon realize that we would be better off, still from athoroughly egoistic perspective, coming to an agreement among ourselvesto restrain our opposing desires and the unbounded pursuit of self-interest—in sum, that it would be in our greater self-interest to live under the lawof reason rather than the law of nature. We thus agree to hand over to asovereign our natural right and power to do whatever we can to satisfy ourinterests. That sovereign—whether it be an individual (in which case theresulting state is a monarchy), a small group of individuals (an oligarchy)

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or the body-politic as a whole (a democracy)—will be absolute andunrestrained in the scope of its powers. It will be charged with keeping allthe members of society to the agreement, mostly by playing on their fearof the consequences of breaking the “social contract”.

Obedience to the sovereign does not infringe upon our autonomy, since infollowing the commands of the sovereign we are following an authoritywhom we have freely authorized and whose commands have no otherobject than our own rational self- interest. The type of government mostlikely to respect and preserve that autonomy, issue laws based on soundreason and to serve the ends for which government is instituted isdemocracy. It is the “most natural” form of governing arising out of asocial contract—since in a democracy the people obey only laws that issuefrom the general will of the body politic—and the least subject to variousabuses of power. In a democracy, the rationality of the sovereign'scommands is practically secured, since it is unlikely that a majority of alarge number of people will agree to an irrational design. Monarchy, onthe other hand, is the least stable form of government and the one mostlikely to degenerate into tyranny.

Since the outward practices of religion impinge upon the comportment andrelations of citizens, they fall under “state business” and, thus, within thesphere of the sovereign's power. The sovereign should have completedominion in all public matters secular and spiritual. There should be nochurch separate from the religion instituted and regulated by the state. Thiswill prevent sectarianism and the multiplication of religious disputes. Allquestions concerning external religious rites and ceremonies are in thehands of the sovereign. This is in the best interest of everyone, since thesovereign will, ideally and in conformity with its “contractual” duty,insure that such practices are in accord with public peace and safety andsocial well-being. The sovereign should rule in such a way that hiscommands enforce God's law. Justice and charity thereby acquire the force

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of civil law, backed by the power of the sovereign.

On the other hand, dominion over the “inward worship of God” and thebeliefs accompanying it—in other words, inner piety—belongsexclusively to the individual. This is a matter of inalienable, private right,and it cannot be legislated, not even by the sovereign. No one can limit orcontrol another person's thoughts anyway, and it would be foolhardy anddestructive to the polity for a sovereign to attempt to do so. Nor canspeech ever truly and effectively be controlled, since people will alwayssay want they want, at least in private. “Everyone is by absolute naturalright the master of his own thoughts, and thus utter failure will attend anyattempt in a commonwealth to force men to speak only as prescribed bythe sovereign despite their different and opposing opinions” (TTP, chap.20, G III.240/S 223). There must, Spinoza grants, be some limits to speechand teaching. Seditious discourse that encourages individuals to nullify thesocial contract should not be tolerated. But the best government will err onthe side of leniency and allow the freedom of philosophical speculationand the freedom of religious belief. Certain “inconveniences” will, nodoubt, sometimes result from such an extensive liberty. But the attempt toregulate everything by law is “more likely to arouse vices than to reformthem”. In a passage that foreshadows John Stuart Mill's utilitarian defenseof liberty nearly two centuries later, Spinoza adds that “this freedom is ofthe first importance in fostering the sciences and the arts, for only thosewhose judgment is free and unbiased can attain success in these fields”(TTP, chap. 20, G III.243/S 226).

It is hard to imagine a more passionate and reasoned defense of freedomand toleration than that offered by Spinoza.

Bibliography

Spinoza's Works

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Spinoza Opera, edited by Carl Gebhardt, 5 volumes (Heidelberg: CarlWinters, 1925, 1972 [volume 5, 1987]). Abbreviated in text as G.Note: A new critical edition of Spinoza's writings is now beingprepared by the Groupe de recherches spinoziste; this will eventuallyreplace Gebhardt. As of July 2012, three volumes have appeared:Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Tractatus Politicus, and Premiersécrits, all published by Presses Universitaires de France.

Spinoza, Ethics, in Edwin Curley, translator, The Collected Writings ofSpinoza (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), volume 1.

Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, Samuel Shirley, translator, secondedition (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2001). Abbreviated in textas S.

Spinoza, The Letters, Samuel Shirley, translator (Indianapolis: HackettPublishing, 1995).

Recommended Secondary Literature in English

Note: There is an enormous body of literature on Spinoza in manylanguages, especially French, Italian, Dutch and German. This is a highlyselective list of books in English that are especially helpful for the study ofSpinoza's philosophy in general, as well as for learning more aboutparticular dimensions of his thought. There is also the series StudiaSpinozana, each volume of which contains essays by scholars devoted to aparticular theme.

Allison, Henry, 1987. Benedict de Spinoza: An Introduction, New Haven:Yale University Press.

Balibar, Etienne, 1998. Spinoza and Politics, London: Verso.Bennett, Jonathan, 1984. A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, Indianapolis:

Hackett Publishing.Curley, Edwin, 1988. Behind the Geometric Method, Princeton: Princeton

University Press.

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Della Rocca, Michael, 2008. Spinoza, London and New York: Routledge.Donagan, Alan, 1988. Spinoza, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Garrett, Don (ed.), 1996. The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza,

Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.Huenemann, Charlie (ed.), 2008. Interpreting Spinoza: Critical Essays,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.James, Susan, 2012. Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion, and Politics: The

Theological-Political Treatise, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Kisner, Matthew J., 2011. Spinoza on Human Freedom: Reason,

Autonomy and the Good Life, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Koistinen, Olli, 2009. The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza's Ethics,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Koistinen, Olli and John Biro (eds.), 2002. Spinoza: Metaphysical Themes,Oxford: Oxford University Press.

LeBuffe, Michael, 2010. From Bondage to Freedom: Spinoza on HumanExcellence, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lord, Beth, 2010. Spinoza's Ethics: An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide,Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Melamed, Yitzhak and Michael A. Rosenthal (eds.), 2010. Spinoza'sTheological-Political Treatise: A Critical Guide, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Nadler, Steven, 1999. Spinoza: A Life, Cambridge and New York:Cambridge University Press.

–––, 2002. Spinoza's Heresy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.–––, 2006. Spinoza's Ethics: An Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.–––, 2011. A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the

Birth of the Secular Age, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Popkin, Richard, 2004. Spinoza, Oxford: One World.Preus, J. Samuel, 2001. Spinoza and the Irrelevance of Biblical Authority,

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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Ravven, Heidi and Leonard E. Goodman (eds.), 2002. Jewish Themes in

Spinoza's Philosophy, Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Smith, Steven B., 1997. Spinoza, Liberalism and the Question of Jewish

Identity, New Haven: Yale University Press.–––, 2003. Spinoza's Book of Life, New Haven: Yale University Press.Viljanen, Valtteri, 2011. Spinoza's Geometry of Power, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.Verbeek, Theo, 2003. Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise: Exploring

‘the Will of God’, London: Ashgate.Wolfson, Harry, 1934. The Philosophy of Spinoza, 2 vols., Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press.Yovel, Yirmiyahu, 1989. Spinoza and Other Heretics, 2 vols., Princeton:

Princeton University Press.––– (ed.), 1991. God and Nature: Spinoza's Metaphysics, Leiden: Brill.––– (ed.), 1994. Spinoza on Knowledge and the Human Mind, Leiden:

Brill.––– (ed.), 1999. Desire and Affect: Spinoza as Psychologist, New York:

Little Room Press.Yovel, Yirmiyahu and Gideon Segal (eds.), 2004. Spinoza on Reason and

the “Free Man” , New York: Little Room Press.

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Other Internet Resources

Necessarily Eternal: A Catablog of (All) Things SpinozaSpinoza Bibliografie (in German), an online bibliography at theSpinoza Gesellschaft e.V..

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