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Meditations
SEE ALSO 왘 Reason and experience (pp.66–73)
Driven from Portugal by the Inquisition, Spinoza’s family settled in Amsterdam where Baruch (later Benedictus) was born. He had an Orthodox Jewish upbringing and was a gifted student, but he quit his formal studies aged 17 to join the family business.
In 1656 Spinoza was shunned by the Jewish community as the inevitable consequence of giving voice to ideas that were to appear in his later writings, such as his denial that the Jews were the chosen people; his rejection of the idea of a personal God, or that the Bible is revealed truth; and the denial of the immortality of the soul.
He changed his name to its Latin form, Benedictus, and left
Spinoza made his living crafting lenses for the optical instruments, like this microscope, of the new age of scientifi c investigation.
Amsterdam, fi nding employment as a lens crafter, grinding and polishing lenses for telescopes, microscopes, and the other new optical
instruments of the day.
Spinoza completed the only work he would publish in his life-time under his own name, a critical exposition, Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy, in 1663.
At this time he was also working on the Theological-Political Treatise which, published anonymously in
1670, secured his infamy, and his masterpiece, the Ethics, published posthumously.
Spinoza died young of tuberculosis, probably precipitated by inhaling glass dust while grinding lenses.
Spinoza’s masterwork, the Ethics, is presented in the manner of a geometry textbook. Beginning with axioms and defi nitions of, for example, “substance”
and “attribute,” it deduces a series of theorems, and ultimately constructs a complex system embracing metaphysics, ethics, and psychology, all established in the same dispassionate manner as if studying lines, planes, and solids.
In the fi rst section, Spinoza establishes that there can be only one substance, so there can be nothing outside the natural
world. Since this one substance is everything that there is, it answers to what we normally mean by the words
“Nature” and “God,” meaning that these are one and the same. Although Spinoza deployed several arguments to prove God’s existence, the apparent identifi cation of God with material substance seemed to many to be tantamount to atheism, and was the principal reason for his denunciation as an apostate and his notoriety as a challenging and dangerous radical.
ESSENTIAL TEXTS Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy (Principia philosophiae
cartesianae); Theological-Political Treatise (Tractatus Theologico- Politicus); Ethics.
KEY IDEAS LIFE AND WORKS
Benedictus Spinoza
b 1632–1677 n The Netherlands
Spinoza was the most radical of the early modern thinkers.
He applied the methods of mathematics to philosophy and constructed an elaborate metaphysical system according to rational principles. His criticism of organized religion, and his liberal political views, won him many enemies.
SEE ALSO 왘 The consciousness puzzle (pp.124–7)
• Philosophy of religion (pp.138–59) • Grounding morality in reason (p.105) • The liberal ideal (pp.162–71) • Descartes (p.276–9) Seventeenth-century Holland was a liberal and
progressive environment in which scientifi c and philosophical enquiry thrived—as seen in Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp.
TWO WAYS OF KNOWING While there is only one substance, it has different modes, and there are two of which we are cognizant, namely mind and matter. In other words, the mental and physical constitute the two ways in which we are aware of the one substance. This development of Descartes’s dualism of mind and body appears to imply that all physical things, not just human bodies, are to some degree sentient. Another implication is that the disintegration of the body must involve the death of the person, hence there is no room for otherworldly rewards or punishments.
THEOLOGY AND POLITICS In the Theological-Political Treatise, Spinoza was the fi rst to examine the Bible and scriptures as historical documents rather than revealed truth, and he concluded that they were written by many human authors over many years. He rejected the theology of the
Old Testament as anthropomorphic and argued that its myths and stories should not be taken literally. The importance of the Bible lies in its moral message.
Close textual analysis, Spinoza argued, reveals its support for the tolerance of different religious views.
Like Hobbes before him (see p.275), Spinoza used the idea of an original state of nature in his political thinking, but he used it to argue that the right of government to exert powers extends only so far as it can expect cooperation from its citizens, and that government should allow for freedom of expression and religious practice as the best means to ensure good public order.
Spinoza defended democracy as the most stable form of government and the system that best promotes individual wellbeing—something that can only be achieved by escaping enslavement to our passions for ephemeral goods and religious superstitions, and living in the pursuit of knowledge.
SPINOZA 281
Locke’s father fought on the side of the Parliamentarians in the English Civil War, and Locke remained committed to the view that the people, not the monarch, are ultimately sovereign.
He studied at Westminster School and Oxford, where he went on to teach, gaining a degree in medicine. During this time, his encounter with Aristotelian scholasticism did not endear him to philosophy. However, in 1675 he spent some years in France, where his studies of Descartes’s philosophy made a lasting impact. In 1681 his patron, the Earl of Shaftesbury, was tried for treason, and soon after Locke left England for Holland, where he worked on his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. He was
active in support of the accession of William of Orange and after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Locke returned to England. In 1690 he published the Essay and the Two Treatises of Government, the works which secured his reputation. He subsequently became more engaged in the business of government.
ESSENTIAL TEXTS Essay Concerning Human Understanding;
Two Treatises of Government.
KEY IDEAS
Locke was deeply infl uenced by Robert Boyle’s “corpuscular” theory of matter, a revival of the ancient Atomists’ idea that the universe is composed of particles too small to be seen, and that the behavior and appearance of all material things can be explained in terms of these particles. These solid corpuscles are describable in geometric terms—they possess position, size, and shape and they move around in space—but our perception of qualities such as colors, smells, and sounds is produced in us by the insensible arrangements of these particles. So Locke’s picture of reality is fi rmly mechanistic.
Locke adheres to a “representative”
theory of perception, meaning that perception is a consequence of the impact of physical objects upon our
John Locke
b 1632–1704 n England
As the fi rst of the great British empiricist philosophers, Locke’s project was to determine the limits of human knowledge. Since this comes via the senses, its acquisition must be piecemeal, limited by the fi nite nature of our experience and so leaving some concerns beyond our ken.
LIFE AND WORKS
LOCKE 283
Locke opposed the divine right of kings, in which God’s representatives acknowledge at the coronation the monarch’s direct descent from Adam.
sense organs and that the sensations produced are like a picture of reality.
We have direct access only to our own sensations and must infer from these the nature of the world beyond. He argued that knowledge is possible only of the observable characteristics of objects, not of what they are in themselves. In this way he gives the sceptic room to question our knowledge of reality.
POLITICS
Locke’s political philosophy was as infl uential as his work in epistemology.
Following Hobbes (see p.275), Locke used
the device of the state of nature to justify political authority. Before politicization, humans would have banded together to defend themselves, and needed to fi nd an impartial judge to adjudicate in internal confl icts. The judge would need the support of the community as a whole.
Each individual would need to recognize the supreme authority of the law. There is, therefore, an implied contract between subjects and rulers: the ruler’s authority is not absolute; rather, ultimately the ruler is answerable to the majority. If the ruler breaks the terms of the contract, the governed have the right to rebel.
SEE ALSO Mind-dependence (pp.82–99) • The liberal ideal (pp.162–71)
In his early career, Leibniz worked for the Baron Boineburg, and then for the Duke of Hanover in many capacities, including secretary, counselor, diplomat, and librarian, conducting his academic studies in his spare time. He was known for his work in law, geology, physics, and engineering, as well as for his philosophy.
On one diplomatic mission to England, he was received by the Royal Society, to which he presented his invention: a calculating machine, the fi rst that could execute all four arithmetical operations.
On his way back from England in 1676, he visited Spinoza in Holland and read some of his unpublished writings.
He wrote a page-by-page commentary on Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, although on hearing of Locke’s death, he decided not to publish.
He was best known in his lifetime as a mathematician, and although he
discovered calculus independently of Newton, in 1711 the Royal Society accused him, apparently with Newton’s blessing, of plagiarism, an accusation not fi nally put to rest until after his death.
However, Leibniz’s reputation in Britain and France was already in decline. In his novel Candide, Voltaire famously caricatured him in the naively optimistic fi gure of Pangloss; and the fashionable empiricist spirit of the 18th century saw Leibniz’s standing fall still further.
German philosophers, however, maintained interest in him, and since the late 18th century, respect for this complex and ingenious thinker has gradually deepened; he is now recognized as one of the great European minds.
ESSENTIAL TEXTS Discourse on Metaphysics;
The New Essays on Human Understanding;
Theodicy; Monadology.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
b 1646–1716 n Germany
Leibniz stands alongside Spinoza as one of the foremost rationalist philosophers of the modern era. He developed an intriguing philosophy of mutually interlocking theses, with the consequence that an exposition of it can begin almost at random since each idea leads on to the others.
LIFE AND WORKS
“EVERY BIT OF MATTER CAN BE CONCEIVED AS A... POND FULL OF FISH.
BUT EACH MEMBER OF THE ANIMAL, EACH DROP OF ITS BODILY FLUIDS, IS