Spinoza en de autonome natuur
De schrijver Nathan Schneider, momenteel visiting assistant
professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, schreef eind
vorig jaar (wat klinkt dit alweer lang geleden…) een column met de
titel: “How much does it matter whether God exists? [Cf.]
Ik zou zeggen: It does matter which God exists.
Iets dergelijks zegt de columnist ook. Hij vergelijkt het godsbewijs van Anselmus met dat van Spinoza en zegt van de laatste: "he took the reasoning but mostly put aside the God." En realiseert zich dan: "the difference was in the kind of God they had in mind."
In dit blog signaleer ik een paar recent verschenen boeken die een verschillende insteek, maar toch raakvlakken hebben, daar ze beide teruggrijpen op oude, antieke tijden en hun relevantie voor onze tijd. ‘t Thema zou je kunnen omschrijven met: “Hoe God verdween uit de natuur.” Anders dan het boek dat ik onlangs besprak, Benjamin Lazier’s God Interrupted, die het a.h.w. 'twee kanten op' van die beweging besprak, enerzijds de terugtrekkende beweging richting ver weg, van de afwezige God van het gnosticisme en het deïsme, anderzijds de God die geheel in de natuur opging, zoals in het pantheïsme en bij Spinoza. Bij Carolyn Merchant vind je niets over die eerste lijn, alleen over de tweede, in haar boek waarin ze uitgebreid Spinoza aan de orde stelt:
Carolyn Merchant, Autonomous
Nature: Problems of Prediction and Control From Ancient Times to the Scientific
Revolution. Routledge, 2015 – books.google
Autonomous Nature investigates the history of nature as an active, often unruly force in tension with nature as a rational, logical order from ancient times to the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. Along with subsequent advances in mechanics, hydrodynamics, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism, nature came to be perceived as an orderly, rational, physical world that could be engineered, controlled, and managed. Autonomous Nature focuses on the history of unpredictability, why it was a problem for the ancient world through the Scientific Revolution, and why it is a problem for today. The work is set in the context of vignettes about unpredictable events such as the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, the Bubonic Plague, the Lisbon Earthquake, and efforts to understand and predict the weather and natural disasters. [..]
In hoofdstuk 5, “Natural Law. Spinoza on Natura naturans and Natura naturata” kom je uitgebreid een behandeling van Spinoza tegen. Ik neem hier de samenvattende inleiding over:
In this chapter, I argue that Spinoza developed a rational system of philosophy that militated against chaotic, unruly nature and for the idea of a rational society based on natural law and a rational cosmos described by the laws of nature. I distinguish between natural law as applied to society and the laws of nature as applied to the universe as a whole. For Spinoza, natural laws govern political and moral life; they are prescriptive and normative. The laws of nature, on the other hand, are mathematical and logical; descriptive and deterministic. Through rationality any apparent disorder in nature can be explained away and disorder in society can be held at bay. Both types of law stem from belief that the universe could be understood as a totally rational entity.
In developing his system, Spinoza rejected earlier beliefs (e.g., Plotinus, Lucretius, Renaissance writers) in the chaotic dimension of nature naturing (natura naturans), while embracing its rational, creative, active aspect. In so doing, he identified nature (natura naturans) with the created world (natura naturata) that could be described by logic and mathematics. God and Nature were one (a position later identified as pantheism). Only one Substance, God or Nature (Deus sive Natura), existed. That Substance (Being, or reality), manifested itself simultaneously in many Attributes, two of which were available to humans—thought and extension. God was not corporeal (as his accusers had alleged), but there was a corporeal, i.e., "extended," aspect or Attribute of God. God/Nature was active, changing, and in continual process. Through understanding nature and describing it mathematically, its actions could be understood, predicted, and potentially controlled. Heavily influenced by and indebted to Descartes, Spinoza saw his philosophical system as responding to the problems posed by Cartesian dualism (see below).
In contrast to many who preceded him, Spinoza asserted that Nature was not capricious in any way. Natura naturans had no rebellious identity or personality, no soul or "will of its own" that caused it to act in defiance of God. Any apparent willfulness within nature was incorrectly projected onto it by humans. Earthquakes, droughts, and famines were not a consequence of nature's reprisals against humans; rather humans irrationally insinuated such ideas onto the will of God/ Nature. The laws of nature in the physical world and natural law in the human world converged to create a rational order, with a goal of establishing harmony, order, certainty, and coherence in the cosmos as a whole.
Spinoza's system was a major influence on Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) who argued that while God had indeed created a rational world, he remained a personal God. Spinoza also influenced a number of philosophers and writers who considered themselves pantheists, along with a number of scientists, including Albert Einstein (1879-1955).
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Carolyn Merchant’s website. Daarop wordt een foute link gegeven naar An Interview with Carolyn Merchant. Merkwaardig hoe vaak je tegenkomt dat webmasters van wetenschappelijke instituten een document naar een andere directory verplaatsen; alsof ze niet doorhebben hoe internet werkt; ik geef hier de goede link.
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Het tweede boek is
Tim Whitmarsh, Battling
the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World. Alfred
A. Knopf, November 10, 2015 - 304 pages. Als paperback: Faber & Faber,
2016 – books.google
In dat boek komt Spinoza - uiteraard - niet voor, maar twee reviewers verwijzen wel naar hem:
Review by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein in de New York Times. Daaruit deze alinea:
And then there are those pre-Socratics, like Xenophanes and Anaxagoras, who, in my mind, foreshadow what would be Spinoza’s special brand of atheism, identifying God with nature — or, more specifically, the intelligible structure of nature expressed in unchangeable laws. “Xenophanes, then, was not an atheist in any straightforward sense,” Whitmarsh writes. “He was not denying the existence of deity but radically redefining it.” The author goes on to ask whether anything would be lost “in Xenophanes’ account of the world if we substituted ‘nature’ for ‘the one god.’?” Such a redefinition reappears not only in Spinoza’s magnum opus, the posthumously published Ethics, but in those who studied Spinoza, including Einstein. When asked whether he believed in God, Einstein responded, “I believe in Spinoza’s God,” which amounted to an affirmation of the guiding principle of science, namely nature’s beautiful intelligibility.
Review by Arlice Davenport: “Denying the gods in ancient Greece” in The Wichita Eagle, met:
Where “god” had reigned in the Greek consciousness, “nature” forcefully took its place. This has been a position that has thrived in Western philosophy for centuries. Perhaps the most famous example is that of Baruch Spinoza in the 1600s: For him, God is nature, at least the intelligibility of its regular laws.
Hier ook de cover van de paperback
