Spinoza’s god: a god only an atheist can love

[No Robots]

Spinoza famously equated God and Nature. Most people take this to be a thoroughly materialist position, but this means ignoring Spinoza’s frequent and insistent distinctions between matter and thought. In the early twentieth century, two proponents of Spinoza, Constantin Brunner and Harry Waton, attempted to set the record straight. In doing so, they revealed Spinoza’s god as the basis of the real itself.

As Max Dimont puts it:

The nineteenth-century Jewish Enlightenment was like a beam of light refracted through a prism into a spectral band of brilliant intellectual colors spread across Western Europe. The prism through which Jewish thought was refracted was a Jew born in Amsterdam in 1632, a Jew so modern in his thinking that the second half of the twentieth century has not yet caught up with him. Excommunicated by the Jews in the seventeenth century, abhorred by the Christians in the eighteenth century, acknowledged great in the nineteenth century, Baruch Spinoza will perhaps not be fully understood even in the twenty-first century. But perhaps by then Spinoza's philosophy will have become the basis of a world religion for neomodern man.

Constantin Brunner’s book, Our Christ: The Revolt of the mystical genius, contains a significant passage wherein the god of Spinoza is identified with the idea at the root of the Biblical Jahve:

Jahveh ehad, cried Moses: "Hear O Israel, Being is our God, Being is One" (Deut. 6:4).

Yet this quotation provides precisely the historically monstrous example of how Israel hears and how the truth is straightway transformed into superstition in Israel's ears. For this magnificent saying is at once a hymn of exultation and a wrathful protest against idol worship of any kind; but despite this protest, it now signifies—in the conception of Israel, the Jewish, Christian and Muslim Israel—the well-enough known, imbecilically wrong translation: "Hear O Israel, the Lord our god is the only God!" (Brunner, Spinoza gegen Kant, page 43). Moses said that thou shalt not make unto thee any image of this Jahveh, no imagination of it, i.e., it is that which cannot be thought as things are thought, as if it had the same sort of being as things—I am that I am (Ex. 3:14)! Jahveh, Being, is the term for the wholly abstract spiritual; it has no relation to the relative world. By Jahveh, the wholly great is meant. It means the same thing as Spinoza does in his great—his absolutely great expression, Ens constans infinitis attributis (Absolute Being with infinite attributes.) And Jahveh Tsebaot, Jahveh of infinite powers, is nothing but the mystical expression of the same thing as is expressed philosophically by Ens constans infinitis attributis. The whole tremendous concern of Judaism lies in this phrase Jahveh ehad [Ehad=one and only. Pronunciation; with a gutteral 'kh', accent on the second syllable], in that single word Jahveh, which was ultimately forbidden even to be pronounced, and to pronounce which was a deadly sin. The mystical primordial character of Judaism—so naturally mystical that the Jews, in spite of their having made Jahvism into religion, never established a mythology, even while their Jahveh always remained exalted as God over every god of other religions, so that other ancient civilizations did not recognize him as a god, and said the Jews were without religion and atheistic—the mystical primordial character of Judaism expressed itself in this, its ineffable holy word.

Harry Waton develops this theme:

In a grain of sand God is as absolute, infinite and eternal as in the whole infinite and eternal existence. But the realities of existence are implicit, that is, they are not conscious of God. Only man is destined to attain to explicitness, that is, the consciousness of God. Man attains to this consciousness of God when he attains to the intellect. The intellect is the soul wholly explicit. The soul becomes conscious of God, the soul perceives that she is part of God. The soul then identifies herself with God, and then attains to what Spinoza calls the intellectual love of God. When man attains to the intellect, he then perceives that he is the I am I of God; that is, God sees himself in man as the I am I, and man sees himself in God as the I am I of God. Then man and God are one, not only in essence, but also in consciousness and understanding. This is the highest state that man can attain. This profound idea was expressed in the Shemah— the holiest sentence in the Bible and in Judaism. The Shemah tells us: Hear, O Israel, Jehovah our God Jehovah is one! Here the name Jehovah is mentioned twice. What does this mean? This expresses the profound truth. The second Jehovah is man— the man that attained to the intellect and who perceives that he is the I am I of Jehovah. This sentence tells us that Jehovah our God and Jehovah the man of intellect is one. This is the deepest and highest truth that mankind attained and will ever attain. Thus we see that Moses and the Prophets already attained to the deepest and the highest idea — there will never be a deeper and higher idea revealed to man.

In the work of these two great teachers we find the foundation of a truly rational spirituality that provides the way forward for mankind and science.

 

[rousseau]

I've noticed that in a number of traditions (over the past few millennia) there's been movement from dualism to materialism, which makes sense when you consider that we're gradually figuring out the world.

Usually this ends up manifesting itself in the realization that, as individuals, we're not fundamentally distinct from everything around us. Western religion invokes 'God', Eastern religion invokes 'Brahman'. The terminology is different but points to the same thing, which is that we're interconnected with everything, and not fundamentally in opposition to the world around us.

Personally I prefer to avoid the term 'God', but it's not surprising that Spinoza would invoke it.

 

[No Robots]

While modern man has accepted that his material body is contiguous with the whole of reality, he is still having trouble recognizing that the same is true of his mind.

According to Brunner, there is evidence that Spinoza had originally intended to forego using the word God altogether in favour of the word Nature. Brunner points also to Spinoza's use of the word Being, and how this is the root meaning of the word Jahveh. Brunner himself uses das Denkende (the Cogitant) thereby focusing on thought as the root of all activity.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Definitely the use of nature would have made the discussion more attractive. So maybe the title should say 'a god that only some atheists can love.' Speaking personally the concept drips of woo and anthropomorphism, at least semantically. I'm more moved just picking up a bug or walking into a cave or watching a toad trill from a pond or gazing up the bough of a giant redwood. I suppose the argument can be made that my reaction to the universe is precisely what is meant. But if that is so why lessen the experience with more religious hackneyism? The obvious greatness and connectedness when experienced in its nakedness neither needs nor requires amplification or augmentation.

 

[No Robots]

Science is concerned with the discovery of the order and connection between phenomena. This requires the premise that all phenomena are indeed connected, the phenomena of thought included. Most people have no difficulty accepting that the real is comprised of an integrated material continuum. This is sufficient to meet all their bodily and egoistic needs. For these people the notion of the real as a continuum of thought serves no evident purpose and indeed seems wholly superstitious. For others, however, investigation of the order and connection of ideas is just as valid a scientific activity as the investigation of the order and connection of material things. Indeed, whereas the physical universe has now been completely understood, the mind remains an undiscovered country, the last frontier of scientific discovery. Advances can be made here only by departing from the premise that the universe is just as much a continuum of thought as it is a continuum of matter/energy.

 

[Politesse]

I don't know why you would suppose that only atheists could love Spinoza, he's the most basic of readings for pantheists and those interested in that philosophy.

 

[steve_bank]

Science is concerned with the discovery of the order and connection between phenomena. This requires the premise that all phenomena are indeed connected, the phenomena of thought included. Most people have no difficulty accepting that the real is comprised of an integrated material continuum. This is sufficient to meet all their bodily and egoistic needs. For these people the notion of the real as a continuum of thought serves no evident purpose and indeed seems wholly superstitious. For others, however, investigation of the order and connection of ideas is just as valid a scientific activity as the investigation of the order and connection of material things. Indeed, whereas the physical universe has now been completely understood, the mind remains an undiscovered country, the last frontier of scientific discovery. Advances can be made here only by departing from the premise that the universe is just as much a continuum of thought as it is a continuum of matter/energy.

Idea and thought causality and the like we now call psychology. If you want to go back in time karma is just psychology in older cultural terms. Today its what goes around comes around so to speak. All our actions and reactions are part of a causality we are immersed in.

How the brain is wired is neuroscience. If you want to argue mind not a function of organic brain cells we can detail to yet another mind-body thread on philosophy.

Way back in the 70s I read Tibetan Buddhism. Once I got over the Sanskrit terms it became evident it was a psychology. Mind as utltinate reality did not mean thoughts are physical reality. It means we cearte our own internal mental reality, which is 'ultimate reality' in a sense.

 

[rousseau]

Definitely the use of nature would have made the discussion more attractive. So maybe the title should say 'a god that only some atheists can love.' Speaking personally the concept drips of woo and anthropomorphism, at least semantically. I'm more moved just picking up a bug or walking into a cave or watching a toad trill from a pond or gazing up the bough of a giant redwood. I suppose the argument can be made that my reaction to the universe is precisely what is meant. But if that is so why lessen the experience with more religious hackneyism? The obvious greatness and connectedness when experienced in its nakedness neither needs nor requires amplification or augmentation.

Spinoza was born in the 17th century, you could only stretch religious metaphors so far at the time. As someone looking in retrospect in a much safer world, you need to look at the meat of the idea and not the façade around it.

 

[No Robots]

Idea and thought causality and the like we now call psychology. If you want to go back in time karma is just psychology in older cultural terms. Today its what goes around comes around so to speak. All our actions and reactions are part of a causality we are immersed in.

Our psychology is still in a rudimentary state owing to the resistance to applying scientific determinism to our undersstanding of thought processes. Spinoza considered himself an innovator in this regard, writing:

[T]rue science proceeds from cause to effect; though the ancients, so far as I know, never formed the conception put forward here that the soul acts according to fixed laws; and is, as it were, a spiritual automaton (automatum spirituale).

The advance that allowed physical science to attain to full maturity was the notion of the space/time continuum. Similarly, psychology can advance only on the basis of the thought continuum. To quote Spinoza again:

[M]an conceives a human character much more stable than his own, and sees that there is no reason why he should not himself acquire such a character. Thus he is led to seek for means which will bring him to this pitch of perfection, and calls everything which will serve as such means a true good. The chief good is that he should arrive, together with other individuals if possible, at the possession of the aforesaid character. What that character is we shall show in due time, namely, that it is the knowledge of the union existing between the mind and the whole of nature…. Thus it is apparent to every one that I wish to direct all sciences to one end and aim, so that we may attain to the supreme human perfection which we have named; and, therefore, whatsoever in the sciences does not serve to promote our object will have to be rejected as useless.

Spinoza's intellectual love of God is the love of the whole of reality when it is understood as a continuum of thought.

 

[No Robots]

I don't know why you would suppose that only atheists could love Spinoza, he's the most basic of readings for pantheists and those interested in that philosophy.

Although the term was coined to describe the philosophy of Spinoza, pantheism is rather a distortion of it. Pantheism does not recognize the distinction between Natura naturans and Natura naturata, the former being the generative power of nature and the latter being the manifestations of infinite forms.

 

[No Robots]

It might be worth arguing that a Kabbalist would embrace Spinoza's god, and, in fact, Waton wrote a book to this effect: The Kabbalah and Spinoza's Philosophy as a Basis for an Idea of Universal History.

 

[steve_bank]

Our psychology is still in a rudimentary state owing to the resistance to applying scientific determinism to our undersstanding of thought processes. Spinoza considered himself an innovator in this regard, writing:

Gobbledygook. Scientific determinism means what in this context?

Psychology has become in part an experimental science. The problem with psychology and metaphysics in general is there are no objective reference points as is the case with physical science Meters, kilograms, and seconds.

I am sure Spinoza thought high;y of himself. William James' Variety Of Religious Experience presents a psychological approach and methodology to understanding religion.

Still nothing to do with existence of gods.

Whatever the current state of psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience it is light years ahead of non science based philosohy and metaphysics.

Spinoza like Plato and theerst are now historical footnotes.

 

[steve_bank]

Definitely the use of nature would have made the discussion more attractive. So maybe the title should say 'a god that only some atheists can love.' Speaking personally the concept drips of woo and anthropomorphism, at least semantically. I'm more moved just picking up a bug or walking into a cave or watching a toad trill from a pond or gazing up the bough of a giant redwood. I suppose the argument can be made that my reaction to the universe is precisely what is meant. But if that is so why lessen the experience with more religious hackneyism? The obvious greatness and connectedness when experienced in its nakedness neither needs nor requires amplification or augmentation.

Spinoza was born in the 17th century, you could only stretch religious metaphors so far at the time. As someone looking in retrospect in a much safer world, you need to look at the meat of the idea and not the façade around it.

Good point. Newton was on dangerous ground for his beliefs on the Trinity.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Spinoza's intellectual love of God is the love of the whole of reality when it is understood as a continuum of thought.

Thought is part of reality just as we are part of nature. I don't see how we can rationally separate thought from all of matter. Thought obviously proceeds from matter. If we separate thought from matter we are committing woo. It's impossible to go through a day of living without someone expressing the claim that man and nature are distinct things. Perhaps this false dichotomy has become so culturally entrenched in western thought that it will never be expelled.

As for Spinoza I suppose it is understandable his attachment to woo in such an unscientific time. Were he speaking today we may find a totally different person, one whose brain, naturally endowed with a deep sense of scientific curiosity somewhat like Darwin, was able to look past the woo, be more forensic based on simple observation.

 

[No Robots]

To quote Harry Waton:

Why are ordinary men opposed to philosophy? This is the answer. Whatever is beyond our perception and above our understanding we negate, we declare that it either does not exist or it is not worth considering. We negate this to relieve ourselves of an unbearable consciousness of incompetency and inferiority; this consciousness strikes at the essence of our being and is unbearable. To admit that there is a thing which exists and which is worth knowing, and yet not be able to know and understand it, is to admit that he is incompetent and inferior to other men who do know and understand this thing. Hence, he persuades himself that either the thing does not exist or that it is not worth knowing. Now, ordinary men have not yet developed to such degree of explicit reason to understand philosophy, to reflect philosophically on existence. Philosophy is the language of explicit reason. Since ordinary men cannot understand philosophy, they negate philosophy; they persuade themselves that philosophy is only a vain speculation, and it is not worth bothering about.

 

[No Robots]

Thought obviously proceeds from matter.

Quite the opposite:

When absolute thought slows down, it becomes light; and, when light slows down, it becomes matter. Thus we see that light is only an intermediary state between absolute thought and matter.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Thought obviously proceeds from matter.

Quite the opposite:

When absolute thought slows down, it becomes light; and, when light slows down, it becomes matter. Thus we see that light is only an intermediary state between absolute thought and matter.

But for someone thinking scientifically that contains appreciable elements of woo. We can measure electrical emittance from the brain but neural signals within move at about the speed of a donkey cart. Dead brains emit not. It's not magic. It feels great to pretend in things, that's something we can always and have always done. But knowing about those things comes about slowly and we're in a bit of a golden age in that respect. If we aren't exterminated by our own actions or other natural phenomenon we'll learn a lot more, which I think is the greater rush.

And it's very possible that the phenomenon we call light involves only vibration, not motion, despite how we are measuring things.

There's a lot we don't know, though we have good models presently.

 

[ramoss]

Thought obviously proceeds from matter.

Quite the opposite:

When absolute thought slows down, it becomes light; and, when light slows down, it becomes matter. Thus we see that light is only an intermediary state between absolute thought and matter.

One point with that statement, it can not be tested nor shown to be true. You can not, for example show that 'when light slows down it becomes matter', and you can't even define what 'absolute thought' is .

 

[abaddon]

Jahveh, Being, is the term for the wholly abstract spiritual; it has no relation to the relative world.

How is "being" that abstract?

IMV, being is the most obvious thing of them all. We're "one" with it already. It's our thoughts that make us feel different from the rest of Nature (or "Being"). And I think that's why religion is so abstruse, "woo", anthropocentric and generally dualistic. It's so caught up in abstractions that it makes it seem like conceptual abstraction is more real (like a variety of platonic realm) than immediate reality.

"Being" is the "relative world" too, so the claim about "no relation to the relative world" is strange to my mind. The "ultimate reality" isn't separate and distinct from the display of phenomena. That's what mahayana buddhists are getting at when they say nirvana is samsara and samsara is nirvana.

Advances can be made here only by departing from the premise that the universe is just as much a continuum of thought as it is a continuum of matter/energy.

Is the "continuum of thought" distinct from the "continuum of matter/energy"?

---

Oh, and hello! Welcome back! I remember you from FRDB days!

 

[No Robots]

Hello, Abaddon. I've always appreciated your contributions. As a devotee of The Master and Margarita, I love your handle, too.

You raise some important and difficult points. For now, I'll just point again to Spinoza's distinction between Natura naturans and Natura naturata.