Spinoza’s Ethics - By Joe Sturdy

 Spinoza’s Ethics

Imagine that there is a God. Not a religious God, but just a thing, a power, called God – it is in nature and is absolutely infinite, that is – it has no beginning or end and causes itself. This is a key concept. It is the only such thing in the universe and can only be so, as it causes itself and for anything else to do so, would mean that it wouldn’t be by itself in the cosmos. You get the idea.

This ‘God’ must exist. As a result, if it must exist and self-causes itself, it must have some life-force. It cannot negate itself: it must thus produce something to carry on living, says Spinoza: he calls these 'somethings' modes. This is a very versatile term: they can be thoughts, imaginings, memories or anything at all physical – not just human bodies, but animals, carrier bags, cars, trees, the molecules and atoms that we breathe and come into a contact with on a daily basis. Think of a mode like this: the cricket ball smashing the window, the person tripping over the ball that was just kicked. Each of these, the cricket ball, the window, the person are modes.  These are produced endlessly, constantly. These are an abundance of richness.

As each of these is produced by God, which has a certain power as its life-force: the power to exist and thus produce, each of these modes too, has a little bit of God’s power in them. While they cannot, as God does, create themselves, they do have a bit of life-force within them: the power to keep living at all costs. This makes sense to us with humans: we snatch a hand away from intense heat, but what about a table? Spinoza would say that its property of staying upright and not breaking would consist as its life-force.

God has this life-force and constantly has to pump these modes out into existence, for that is what its essence and self-cause is: the force of needing to do whatever is needed to carry on existing. God cannot negate itself – it must keep on existing: by production of modes. As a result, we should see God as a power.

What sort of power? ‘One that creates all events and all things’, says Spinoza rather simplistically. The things, we understand: modes. But events? Each little event – the bag floating up into the air (caused by the movement of air), or the cricket ball smashing the window? Really, this is caused by God? Ultimately, yes; except to us, we don’t picture it as that; rather we see it as the cricket ball that was thrown by the child, smashing the window. In one way, that is of course true: the cricket ball did smash the window; modes can still interact with one another – but God is, in Spinoza’s eyes, the cause of events, as he produced the modes.

At this point, then: What have we got? Let’s take stock. The following points should be able to be seen:

An infinite (never ending, never beginning), self-caused and producing being that must necessarily do this to exist: ‘God’. It is non-religious. It produces a huge abundance of modes.

Modes – thoughts, memories, imaginings; physical things – atoms, molecules, trees, animals, human beings, carrier bags, cars, sugar, wood – you name it. These are produced by God and have a little bit of desire to do what they can to survive within them.

At this point, a couple of points should be made: if this has been set out well, it should be clear by now that, while we traditionally think that life events revolve around one another: the child cries and the mother sees this and picks it up and makes it happy again; what actually occurs is that each of these events is determined by God.

As a result, choice does not exist. Everything is determined by God, through God: he is the mover and shaker of the universe – he is within everything. Even though modes (the child and mother, for example) can still interact, ultimately all this is decided by God. We are, contrary to our beliefs not the most intelligent things on Earth: we are just another mode, fighting for survival like everything else (or so says Spinoza in part 1 of his Ethics, but will he maintain this deterministic world view in later parts? - Ed).

The traditional hierarchies of the Church, and indeed life, are now abandoned. There is no more supreme being: he is in all of us, in all things. Equality, should, according to Spinoza, now exist.

By Joe Sturdy

Philosophy Tales : The Quest - By Ellese Elliott

Philosophy Tales : The Quest

Once upon a time, in the depths and wisdom of space, a lone man traveled across a strange land in the pursuit of something great. His search had lasted (it seemed) as long as time existed and he had traveled over six hundred thousand plethrons.

He was not weary, he was not wavered as his belief, a belief in something greater kept him going.  It had kept him Alive! The land he traveled across was by far the most treacherous. However, he was an experienced traveler and was equipped with all sorts of gadgets and tools to overcome the danger. He believed he would live.

Winds as strong as a herd of wild horses stampeded over his blistered body. Blistered by the cold. The hail, like blocks of ice, battered everything in its way. The sky emerged as a shattered mirror, the ground a pebbled desert of glass. The whole world was a luminous white. His belief had led him here and his belief would lead him out of here.

As he reached the peak of the mountain a peculiar noise filled his ears. A silent ringing, whistled. The strong forces of nature seemed to immediately subside and he thought his eyes blurred the view. Removing his shield from his aged face, some of his skin was removed with it.  He rubbed his eyes trying to focus, squinting into the distance.

There was nothing wrong with his eyes.  

"Hergh" he gasped as shock overcame him; traveling down his frozen nerves, cracking his insides. He wailed with every muscle left in his body, but no noise was absorbed by any object to use for its own life force. The silence traveled endlessly.  There in front of him, his belief was realized. It was something great. It was nothing. "Ex Nihilo" he mouthed; the nothing. All around, everywhere and nowhere, emptiness.

He looked back at the battered land and at this point, at this peak, it seemed to emanate from the nothing. How can the nothing create this world? Equally, the world seemed to dissipate into the nothing, gaseous and intangible, then gone. He removed a glove from his left hand exposing his tender flesh to the bitterness of the cold and reached slowly out into the unknown. As he did his hand seemed to run away from him like water rushing over a fall. He quickly retracted. His hand however, remained intact.

The man stood between the vortex of creation and destruction wondering if he himself at that moment was being created or destroyed. His whole quest appeared to be a journey into a great nothingness. A grand voyage away from reason.  "How could this be?" he asked himself, questioning what was not before him.

In a state of disbelief he pondered on the borders of this contradiction. 'Maybe,' he thought, 'it was just that things had never traveled any further then this point. So if I throw something into the nothing then there may be something.' This seemed to be a half reasonable hypothesis to make. 'Now what something shall I throw, aha a rock, a rock is a something.' He hesitated for a minute, not quite sure. Then he picked up an icy rock from beneath his feet. In the face of its potential end it shone with every imaginable and unimaginable colour possible.  Giving himself enough space he threw the rock as hard as he could into the nothing, his body nearly flew with it.  The rock fragmented into a rainbow of light then disappeared. His fear was confirmed.

He was not shocked as he only had fooled himself intently that this was a possibility. A possibility from the old life.

The old system, or way, of seeing things before such discoveries of non-being. Behind him the day was turning to night. The sun set and the stars rose. And yet before him remained still. If the something, the rock, could not travel through the nothing, does that mean that the sun is not traveling through nothing either, but always traveling through something? How can this make sense? How can anything move if there is always something in its way? The world has become a plenum of glass pebbles on the edge of a vacuum according to reason. Maybe it was his mind that created such nonsense. 

He then thought that maybe it was his belief that had caused such events. He believed there was something greater and yet he did not know what that something was. This is what led him here. Therefore because he did not know what that something was nothing then stood before him. His belief had created the reality. But was the nothing, something? The simple answer was no. He believed in a great something not in a great nothing. As the nothing wasn't something he dismissed this idea as absurd.

In turmoil the man reflected on his life. The great journey he had taken because he believed in something greater and now he had found it, but he didn't understand it. The man stood on the edge of everything for a long time thinking how all this, all of this could be possible and how he could find out what it all meant. His whole life had led to a point of not knowing and he was not willing to except it. No way. What was worse then any event that had happened on his journey was to come this far to discover something great and not know what it was.

He must know.

He held his breath and believed - 'I will know the truth' and he leapt out of the something and into the nothing. He felt alive.

He was gone.

Did he find the answer? No one knows. No living being would come across the nothing for over five million years. When they did they would not have to find the answer by jumping in, as they had advanced way beyond the powers of reason we have today. But I will tell you one thing for certain. The being did not have even an inkling of passion for knowledge as the man who made a great leap from belief to knowing. 

The End

By Ellese Elliott