In his philosophical work, Spinoza dealt with the question of how man can achieve individual freedom. This makes his work relevant today and he can therefore be regarded as one of the most independent thinkers of the New Age, that is to say from the period after the Middle Ages. In his short life, which he spent largely as an outcast, he tried to see Being from the perspective of eternity.
Cultural-historical background
Spinoza was born in 1632 as the son of a Jewish family that had emigrated from Portugal. The family lives in Amsterdam. Spinoza was expelled from the Jewish community early on because of a view of God that was not in accordance with the Jewish faith. According to Spinoza, Christianity and Judaism only existed thanks to rigid dogmas and meaningless rituals. He also viewed the Bible in a historical-critical manner. The Bible was not inspired by God word for word and, according to Spinoza, the Bible must therefore be seen in the light of the times. According to Spinoza, Jesus could be regarded as an expressor of the word of God in the New Testament. The coming of Jesus meant a liberation from the rigidity of Judaism, although Christianity would soon become bogged down in dogmas and rituals. Spinoza advocates tolerance, freedom of thought and expression regarding religious matters. Spinoza’s enemies come from both ecclesiastical and political circles and there has even been an assassination attempt on him. The Netherlands is currently an independent state with significant economic growth. According to Aufenanger (1990), Holland is the only country that continued the revolutionary ideas of the Renaissance, especially in the years of the liberal government leader Johan de Witt, with whom Spinoza is friends. Aufenanger (1990) believes that Spinoza’s radical thinking at this time would not have been possible anywhere else than in Holland.
Project
The central question that Spinoza asked himself is how man can achieve individual freedom. He tries to formulate an answer to this question by using human reason, which makes him an outspoken rationalist. One of the characteristics of Spinoza is that he wants to encompass all of Being in the perspective of eternity. In his main work The Ethics (1675), Spinoza describes the way in which man achieves knowledge of Being as a whole and thus of individual freedom. According to Aufenanger (1990), Ethics is one of the most radical descriptions of individual human freedom. It is precisely because of his position as an outcast that it is possible for Spinoza to focus his gaze on Being as a whole.
Methodical working method
Both the structure and the way of thinking of Ethics are characterized by a very rational mathematical method and are full of statements, proofs, definitions and follow-up statements. Spinoza uses these propositions as clear representations, or axioms. An example by Aufenanger (1990) is: ,Nothing exists from nature from which some consequence does not follow, (p. 101). Then, by means of deduction, which excludes everything that is foreign to the representation, we move on to the next representation. In this way Spinoza arrives at the laws of Being, which he also calls nature. The prerequisite for this way of thinking is the acceptance of the highest axiom. According to Spinoza, this method is only reserved for those who do not suffer from prejudices. An objection to this method is that an axiom can be completely clear to one person and yet unclear to another. Yet you have learned to think through a critical thought completely and to the end. ,But if people think consistently to the end, if they skip nothing, if they stop at no prejudice, feeling or thought, then they must also establish a new order, because radical thinking is always a criticism of the existing, (Aufenanger, 1990, p.102).
God or nature
In his ethics, Spinoza wants to demonstrate that our lives are determined by the laws of nature. Virtue is inherent in man or nature itself, at least when man fully understands the pure laws of nature. “He saw God in all that exists and he saw all that exists in God” (Gaarder, 1998, p. 270). This coincidence of God and nature is also called pantheism. While Descartes had determined before Spinoza that there are two substances, namely thought and extension, Spinoza claims that there is only one substance, namely God or nature. Spinoza is therefore a monist; he says that nature and all conditions of life can be traced back to one and the same substance. Precisely when he equates God and nature, he distances himself from the Christian and Jewish views. According to Spinoza, we know God under two appearances, which he calls attributes, namely thought and extension, or spirit and matter. God or the laws of nature are the internal cause of everything that happens. God is therefore not a puppeteer who controls the world from outside, but God controls the world from the laws of nature (Gaardner, 1998). Everything that happens becomes necessary. Spinoza therefore has a deterministic view of the life of nature.
Freedom
According to Spinoza, we only live in freedom when we can freely develop our innate possibilities. However, we are always determined by internal predispositions and external conditions. Spinoza means by this that although a person can strive for freedom to live without external coercion, man remains bound to the laws of nature and will therefore never gain free will. After all, we cannot determine for ourselves what happens to our body and, according to Spinoza, we cannot determine for ourselves what we think. Only God or nature is able to act in complete freedom. “If we realize that everything that happens is necessary, we can acquire intuitive knowledge of nature as a whole. We can reach a point where we experience with clarity that everything is connected, yes, that everything is one. were to encompass everything that exists in a total view. Only then can you achieve the highest happiness and the greatest peace of mind, (Gaarder, 1998, p.276). Spinoza calls this ‘sub specie aeternitatis’, or seeing everything from the perspective of eternity. To achieve this we must free ourselves from our feelings and affections. Those who are guided by affections are, according to Spinoza, unfree. However, by using our reason, man can drive away the affects. Man then becomes active and is able to create clear ideas and the necessary power to know. This is the path to inner freedom.
Conclusion and reading tips
With Being from the perspective of eternity and the existence of natural laws, Spinoza formulates an answer to the question of how man can achieve individual freedom. He states that freedom is not obtained on the basis of a written law or power, but only on the basis of a right in nature and one’s own ability. According to Spinoza, society and the state must therefore be constructed differently. When man is no longer ignorant, there will be a shift towards Being itself rather than the morality of ought-to-be (Aufenanger, 1990). Some books that tell more about Spinoza include The Riddle of Spinoza by Yalom, The World of Sophie van Gaarder and Philosophy by Aufenanger.