Silliman's Papers

Some thoughts on Spinoza extracted from a take home midterm for Modern Philosophy
Spinoza: There is only one substance, thought that substance has mental and physical modes. God cannot create a world separate from his self, since something outside of God is something external and that which is external is limiting, making him, in some way, finite and unfree. Since a finite and unfree God is absurd, Spinoza says there is only one substance, God. A substance is that which is in itself, and that which is totally and absolutely in itself is the Necessary of Existence, which can only be God. All things possible of existence are not substances – since Spinoza wants to rigorously apply the idea of a “substance” as that which exists in itself – but attributes of the One, the Necessary Being, which absolutely exists within itself. Spinoza’s substance is, to steal language from Anselm, “that which none other than which can be conceived.” While that substance has finite modes (a word he uses instead of the traditional “accident”), it is finally one. There is only one, which exists through itself, and all attributes are attributes of the one. The substance is greater than the sum of modes and is beyond the many finite modes. The substance, that is God, is infinite and has infinitely many attributes, and can be divided into the kinds of mind and body. We know thinking things and extended things, which are both one substance and the substance is God.

Spinoza sees his view as neither a materialist nor a dualist, and sees free will and determinism as compatible. His view is strange enough as to be almost wholly outside of the materialism/dualism debate. A view like this, complete with talk of The Substance and the chorus of “all is one” is more akin to Parmenadis and Hereclytis than Descartes and Hobbes. To follow Spinoza is to back out of the traditional modern debate all together and take a different track from the ancient philosophical talk. This could be a profitable route, especially if one finds the dualism/materialism debate stagnating. I worry about the “all is one” but find the double aspect theory appeal in ways worth exploring.

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Spinoza’s God is not transcendent if transcendent is taken to mean “over all.” Spinoza’s God is all, is the one substance and the only Necessarily Existent. Spinoza’s God is being itself, in that God = is. This would not be a God that one prays to, worships, serves or any of the other ways typical of the trappings of religion, but God one participates in as a mode of The Substance.

I don’t have a major problem with Spinoza’s ontology – I find his talk of a single substance with many modes interesting, and open to some possibly profitable directions. Theologically, to speak of the one substance as God is not only heretical, but also ridiculous. Similar to Anselm’s ontological proof, we find that Spinoza’s God and Anselm’s God aren’t worth much as Gods. If Spinoza’s line of thought on substances can be separated from the talk of God, it could be well worth the trouble to approach and handle his often complex and non-intuitive theory. I especially find interesting his two aspects theory, and might decide to use a modified form of this in some work on contemporary philosophy.