Spinoza’s philosophy

The premise of the truth as obviousness became the outset standpoint of all other systems of the new time rational philosophy after Descartes. The most famous and considerable among them are systems of Spinoza and Leibniz.

Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza developed the pantheistic system of philosophy proceeding from the identifying God and the Universe. (Pantheism is the approach or viewpoint asserting the identity of God and the Universe). Spinoza affirmed that there exists the only single substance (Divine Substance or God) comprising in itself all visible and invisible nature which is its representation. This is the outset axiom in his main work called "Ethics" (the treatise written in so-called geometric means i.e. that at first some basic axioms are put up then from them the inferences (theorems with their proofs) are put out, then other theorems and so forth, by analogy with the Geometry of Euclid). The Divine Substance is endowed with infinite quantity of different attributes, the main among which are extent and thinking (or consciousness). There are also many other attributes but these are main. The individual souls and material things have no independent existence and are nothing else but God's manifestations (of thinking and extent attributes accordingly). The personal immortality doesn't exist but the impersonal consisting in the unity with God does. All things are determined by their boundaries i.e. thereby they are not. The one single being whose essence is not limited is the Divine Substance or the Universe on the whole. All limited things are inside of it subdued to the severe predetermination, all that happens happens through and from it. Freedom is possible through cognition of this predestination. The freedom is the cognized necessity ─ said Spinoza. Evil consists in negation of something and exists only from the viewpoint of limited creatures, for God (for the Universe on the whole) no evil exists. Because there is no negation for it.

The human soul possesses the innate adequate knowledge of its unity with the eternal and infinite God, but passions distract it from the intellectual contemplation of the Divine and lead to loss of this knowledge. The main cause of passions is the aspiration of every limited being to self-preservation. But the situation is changed as soon as we have realized that all positive consists in that that unites us with God and all negative in that that separates us from it. The passions being realized cease to inflict us and retreat before the Whole.

The human who realized his unity with the Whole has nothing more to fear (with God or the Universe on the whole nothing can happen). He gets free from the tyranny of fear and doesn't think of death but of life. The chief thing is the love to God. This is the part of the love with which God loves itself. This love is the highest virtue. It isn't the moral prescription but the necessary sequence of comprehension. It requires no reward because it's the highest grace and reward by itself. This is the main ethical inference of Spinoza ─ the virtue doesn't require reward because of being reward by itself [10].

Date: 2014-12-21; view: 1197